Where the hell is Blake? Valdés: IFE has "full authority" to investigate complaints.

Head of the Federal Electoral Institute, Leonardo Valdés, after receiving a legal complaint from the national branch of the PRD, notably declared that the institute has "full authority" to investigate the claims that the church is breaking the COFIPE, or federal electoral law of constitutional rank, as well as constitutional articles regarding the role of religious organizations in Mexico. As such, IFE has the authority to pass on the case to the interior ministry, should it find the church guilty of constitutional transgressions. 


Yet the million-peso question is: Where the hell is José Francisco Blake Mora?
We must not lose sight of the fact that it was the PGR, or the national Attorney General-Prosecutor, that complained the alleged unconstitutionality of the gay weddings to the Supreme Court in the first place. As is now well known, the Supreme Court dismissed the Calderón-instigated complaint, and the issue is now blowing up in the president's face, chiefly due to the virulent and very public reactions of the church. While it is likely too much to ask that the president would take responsibility and ask the church to cool its tempers, one would certainly expect that the interior minister would make some kind of statement. 


Yet Blake's silence on this hugely important issue, which involves the defense of the constitution, the secular state, and Mexico's legal and democratic institutions, is, if a cliché is allowed, absolutely deafening. 

The church - and Calderón - is reaping what it sowed.

An ever growing chorus of voices condemns the Mexican church's intolerance and flouting of the Mexican constitution:


* Rubén Moreira Valdez, PRI national deputy from Coahuila, and the president of the Human Rights Commission in the Chamber of Deputies, responds: 

"Laws that permit marriage between the same sex and the right to adoption, do not not hurt the family; the injury happens when 'thugs' irresponsibly hurl curses or insults against people and institutions."

*Raúl Plascencia, Mexico City human rights ombudsman, calls on the catholic hierarchy to be tolerant and respect Mexico's institutions. 


* Ricardo Bucio, president of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, said he will seek talks with the church to explain them the importance of not discriminating against others. 


* The PRD in Mexico City, for its part, filed a separate complaint to IFE, the Federal Electoral Institute, against cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez and church spokesman Hugo Valdemar for calling upon people outright to note vote for the PRD, and for its many hateful statements against the political party. In my view, the party has demonstrated much patience in not doing so before. 


* Emilio Alvarez Icaza, El Universal: "Can someone tell them that the Middle Ages have ended?"

* José Cárdenas, prominent commentator, gets the final word in his column, entitled:  "Sandoval is a blight on society.""

"A blight is a scar. The product of a wound. In the body and the soul. An ailment. A vice that brands the sufferer. A blight is usually a depravedperson. Perverse. His Eminence, Cardinal Juan Sandoval, is all that. A blight on society. A homophobe. A hypocrite. Slander. He does not speak as a pastor. He speaks as a herder. Crude. He is abusive. He distorts the doctrine of christ. He discriminates. He uses the cross as a sword. He confuses religious dogma and law. He is sweeping in the sewers of the secular state. He abuses the name of  god. He poisons." 

Amen to that. 

United Nations react to Guanajuato's war against women

The state persecution and high levels of violence toward women in Guanajuato is drawing the attention of the United Nations. Its Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights noted the "worrying levels of violence, against women, including sexual," in the state, whose state government is run by the ultra-conservative wing of the PAN and where the extremist catholic organization El Yunque has particular influence. Some tangible effects: Persecution of women who have aborted, including having had miscarriages; ignorance of high levels of violence toward women; and the banning of sex education in schools. As noted, Guanajuato's levels of teen pregnancy are as a consequence exploding. 

After having visited several women locked up in jail accused of having had an abortion - illegal in the state - the UN mission presented formal  several recommendations to state governor Juan Manuel Oliva to protect women's rights in the state. 

The observer mission confirmed "the persistence of  cultural patterns that encourage discrimination against women, while limiting the full exercise of sexual and reproductive rights."

One can only hope that the renewed international spotlight on Guanajuato may force the government into backtracking in its war against women.

Who is intolerant and hateful?

The Mexican church, as noted, has resorted to a time-worn tactics of launching vicious tirades against its stated enemies, yet whenever any political actor responds to the what often amounts to hate speech, the church plays the victim, such as in the recent declarations by

Hugo Valdemar, top spokesperson for the Mexican church, where he accused its critics of fomenting "visceral intolerance and hate."

The same Valdemar in a recent radio interview with Radio W, volunteered his opinion on Marcelo Ebrard and the PRD


* "He has a fascist calling"
* "They [PRD and Ebrard] are doing worse damage than drug trafficking and have become the family's worst enemy; he is responsible for this disaster" [gay marriage in Mexico City]

The response of Alejandro Encinas, PRD group leader in the Chamber of Deputies:

"I reiterate the respect of the PRD parliamentary group and our whole party to ideological and religious diversity of our country, and I reject statements that only leads to polarization and discrimination, factors which are not conducive to democratic development and equality we have built. "

Who is the intolerant? You be the judge.

An important point that begs repeating: Excessive transitions between state governments

The critique is not new, but El Universal deserves credit for bringing it up at a particularly important juncture in time, namely following the first transitions in 80 years to an opposition party in Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa: The excessive transition period between governments. 


While most other countries allow for a mere few weeks between the election of a new governor and his or her assumption of power, Mexico is an extreme outlier. Some examples :

* Sinaloa: The new governor will have to wait six months to take power
* Puebla: The new governor will have to wait eight months to take power


* Hidalgo:  While the ruling party won (though its victory remain disputed), the new PRI governor will not take office until April 2011 - ten months after the election.


To those who have followed in particular the highly authoritarian and corrupt PRI states that finally switched parties, one does not need much imagination to envision the outgoing party, still in shock from its loss, desperately trying to cover its tracks and/or trying to sabotage the incoming administration. 


In sum: As far as I can see, there are no valid practical arguments for maintaining these excessive transition times, yet plenty of anecdotal evidence that keeping them is a really bad idea. In the paradigmatic case of Oaxaca, for instance, the lame-duck PRI-controlled congress' recent vote to absolve outgoing governor Ulises Ruis for any responsibility for the killings in 2006, as well as attempts to preempt future revisions of the state expenses during Ruis' reign, are very likely only the tip of the iceberg. 


And yet Oaxaca still has months to go. 

What century does the church live in? Ebrard is too kind.

Marcelo Ebrard:

"It's very serious that the majority church in Mexico call for a crusade against any party and and violates with this g Article 130 of the Constitution. This would mean that church is going to tell us who we are to vote for and what laws should be approved, so we would be in the nineteenth century."

Consider the following statement, who made it, and under what circumstances:

"In an interview given before the opening of the Congress of Exorcists, Father Pedro Mendoza Pantoja, coordinator of Exorcists of the Archdiocese of Mexico, said that homosexuality is against God's plan and warned of 'the temptations of the devil and the perversion of natural laws.'" (From La Jornada)

I wonder if Ebrard is being too generous. 

Brinkmanship from the Mexican Church: No apology or retraction, but attack

It is now clear that rather than stepping back from its aggressive rhetoric the past days, the Mexican catholic church is rather going on the attack. 

The Mexican Episcopal Conference, a permanent organization of bishops that make out the official leadership of the Mexican Church, expressed full support for the statements by cardinals Norberto Rivera Carrera  and Juan Sandoval íñiguez, defending its right to "free speech"  and astonishingly referred to its critics as "intolerant."  

To recall, not only is the Church's denigration of Mexican political institutions, its interference in national politics, and call to not vote for the leftwing PRD ("a fascist party") blatantly unconstitutional, but its attacks on gays is nothing but hate speech.

(the story was also just picked up by L.A. Times, which offers a good summary of the controversy).

Yet the church also accused the Supreme Court of having been bribed by no less than Mexico City Chief of Government Marcelo Ebrard (thanks to Mexfiles for an etymological exploration of the word used by the church, "maicedo").

Sandoval, however,  declared he would not apologize or retract the statements, and that "proof" existed.

Ebrard followed through on his warning yesterday that that unless the church retract these very serious accusations - can one even imagine an equivalent situation  in the United States? - Ebrard would take legal action, bringing a complaint to the to the Superior Tribunal of Justice in Mexico City. 

The general perception, judging from the reactions of newspaper editorials and national political actors, is that the church has gone too far with its shrill statements and accusations.  

Nnotable political figures like Enrique Peña Nieto,  Fidel Herrera, Juan Manuel Oliva and José Reyes Baeza Terrazas, governors of Mexico State,  Veracruz, Guanajuato and Chihuahua, respectively, unequivocally stated they would not question the Supreme Court's ruling.

Notably, CONFRATERNICE, the National Fraternity of Evangelical Christian Churches - of ever-growing importance in Mexico - notably distanced itself from the catholic church, noting: 

"it is clear that we disagree with the policies carried out by the chief of government of the Federal District, Marcelo Ebrard, and with with the legal criterion of nine of the 11 ministers who supported the reforms; however, we respect the laws of democratic institutions."

It remains equally clear that the same cannot be said for the Mexican Catholic Church.