José Ángel Córdova goes for Guanajuato - what will El Yunque do?

Mexico's very able secretary of health, José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, will step down in September in order to seek the PAN's nomination to be governor of Guanajuato.

Guanajuato Governor Juan Manuel Oliva will not be happy with this. He is instead pushing his own candidate, namely his state secretary of social development, Miguel Márquez Márquez, linked to the secret extremist Catholic society El Yunque, as is another former government secretary and Yunquista, Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez.

Yet Córdova - a far more liberal-minded panista -  remains very popular in Guanajuato. He has even kept up his local practice and continued to receive patients - all the while remaining the federal secretary of health. It will truly be a challenge for El Yunque, despite their strength in Guanajuato, to take on such credentials.

INM collusion with organized crime continues

An in-depth story in yesterday's El Universal is a recommended read on the plight of migrants in Mexico, who, as the priest Heyden Vázquez Medina of the migrant shelter Hogar de la Misericordia in Arriaga, Chiapas details, are continually abused by INM agents often in direct collusion with organized crime.

How many of these stories will it take before INM head Salvador Beltrán del Río stop sheepishly dismissing them as "exceptions"?

Yet another bad omen for 2012: IFE councilors attack own president

It may be exaggerated to call it a civil war, as IFE's Marco Antonio Baños and Francisco Guerrero make out a "dynamic duo" that for a long time has consistently defended the PRI rather than Mexican democracy as councilors of Mexico's federal electoral institute, but it certainly does not bode well for IFE's future stability that said councilors launch a full broadside against their own boss, IFE president Leonardo Valdés, in media, directly claiming that he really does not know about IFE´s internal work, being more busy with international conferences and backing a proposed political reform, rather than engaging himself in IFE´s preparations for 2012.

Whoever is right here, it´s a bad omen for 2012.

Mexico City Polls: For PRD, the opponent to beat is the PRI.

Here are the results from a recent poll on vote intention in Mexico City, in today's El Universal (direct link to detailed PFD here). Notably, for the PRD, which leads in party intention with 26 percent, in every imaginable scenario (the paper lists an amazing 10 options), PAN leads in none, with the PRD and PRI coming on top in respective candidate scenarios.

A consistent vote winner: PRI's ex-president Beatriz Paredes Rangel. Will the 2012 PRI formula be Peña Nieto-Paredes? Much caution nonetheless: At this point, of course, polls more than anything reflect merely name recognition.

A poor Economist article on Mexico

A recent Economist article that attempts a side-by-side comparison of Marcelo Ebrard/Mexico City and Enrique Peña Nieto/Mexico State fails badly when it comes to informing its reader, stumbling as it does into social science territory with what may be an agenda of its own, namely to varnish the highly dubious crime-fighting credentials of the Mexico State governor.

In its attempt to outline the different crime strategies and successes of Ebrard and Peña Nieto, the article neglects to mention, to cite but two examples, the explosive rise in femicidios in Mexico State, and the very poor handling of the Paulette case, but  instead seems to suggest that Mexico State has been equally or even more successful than its Mexico City neighbor in reducing crime. I have never read any serious study that corroborates this - quite the opposite.

After making no mention of the unique social programs in Mexico City created by Andrés Manuel López Obrador and much developed by Ebrard, the article claims that "If Mr Ebrard has a slight edge in keeping a lid on violence, that is mainly because he has a big, unified police force."

Is it really? What is the evidence for this grandiose claim? What about counter claims that Mexico City has been remarkably successful in staving off violence through the use of other mechanisms such as innovative social programs for youth and young adults?

Readers of The Economist should keep well in mind the old adage: That which is postulated without any evidence may also be completely dismissed without any evidence.

Illiteracy in Mexico: 6.9 percent

Alonso Lujambio, secretary of education, said the level of illiteracy in Mexico is currently 6.9 percent, with 1.6 percent illiteracy in the 15-24-years group.

It is here I am yet again annoyed by the practice of Mexican newspapers of "strict reporting" rather than actual journalism. Any comparative context? Is illiteracy rising or falling? One would think it would be quite natural to include this context in a story on illiteracy.

Jeffrey Davidow on current US-Mexican relations

Jeffrey Davidow was the U.S. ambassador to Mexico 1998-2002 (he wrote a rather frank book about these years, though not exactly self-critical), and has since 2003 been head of the Institute of the Americas at UC-San Diego. He recently was interviewed by El Universal, where he called the current level of U.S.-Mexican cooperation "incredible":

"I would say that things have changed a lot. If someone had told me 10 years ago that the United States would send $500 million a year in counternarcotics assistance to Mexico and that the Mexican government would accept it, I would have said it was impossible."