Although yet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Carlos Fuentes (born 11 November 1928) , remains at the top of anyone’s list of major Mexican writers, Latin American writers, late 20th century writers… writers.

Fuentes, like Elena Poniatowska, was the child of a diplomat and spent the first several years of life outside Mexico (Fuentes was born in Panama, not living in Mexico until he was a teenager).  Perhaps the foreign childhood was essential to their clear-headed embrace of their people, and their city.  La región mas transparente (in English, Where the Air Is Clear) is, as Amazon reviewer “A. Reader” wrote:

Considered by many to be Fuentes’ all-time masterpiece… a roller-coaster tour of post-revolutionary Mexican urban history. It’s all there, from roughneck taxi drivers and prostitues trying to make their daily bread, to bored members of a fading aristocracy, of which only the double-barreled names remain. The novel’s diverse characters meet and unmeet in a bizarre range of social situations, ever-observed by the Spanish-Indigenous hybrid Ixca Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos, a type of Greek Chorus character who watches the ups and downs of the novel’s cast like a mad-scientist doing an experiment, doesn’t hesitate to drop in for a chat to the characters, provoking them to pour out their hearts in sometimes tedious monologues. If you have a basic grasp of Mexico’s history you’ll understand this novel better, although if you don’t know the history, a stack of not too subtle symbols will help you out. … If you want to see how the thinking behind Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude would work, applied to a TV mini-series, and have a few days to spare, give it a go.

I would have said “telenovela” instead of “mini-series” — something developed the same year La Region was first published and destined, with their interlocking stories of social class conflicts, coincidence and recurring themes, to be the defining Mexican style of story-telling.

Like La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) or the 1999 complimentary novel (featuring some of the same characters) Los años con Laura Díaz, Fuentes writes of the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath — the triumphs, tragedies and ironies of the nations’ always uncertain modernity with a filmmaker’s — or telenovelista’s — eye.

Regrettably only “The Old Gringo” (El viejo gringo) has made it to the big screen, but that novel deals with a minor incident of the Mexican Revolution (the disappearance of Hearst correspondent, Civil War veteran and short story writer Ambrose Bierce) and — probably making Fuentes cry all the way to the bank — was only made because the Italian producers could use well-known Hollywood actors and could deal in Mexican stereotypes. And, two of the three protagonists are gringos.

Gachupines and Gringos have caught Fuente’s eye in the last few years.   As a companion piece to a television series on Latin America’s Hispanidad, he wrote El espijo enterrada (The Buried Mirror), his reflections on Spanish colonialism.  “His black comedy “Eagle’s Throne” tells the story of a futuristic “war on drugs” with U.S. President Condaleeza Rice resorting to magic to manipulate the election to replace multi-term President Vicente Fox.  A 93-year old Fidel Castro still holds power in this novel, set in 2020.   In 2006, he wrote “Contra Bush” — which is what you’d expect from a Mexican, though Fuentes is a bit further to the right than most of his contemporaries and the  main current of Mexican intelligencia.  Like many others, he backed Vicente Fox and the conservative PAN party’s attempts to break the stranglehold PRI had on the presidency in 2000.  Unlike the others, he continued to support the Fox administration, though with some distaste, now — as in his childhood — viewing his country from abroad.

Perhaps best able to view his people and his city, like the God Tezacatlipolco, only through a smoky mirror… or though a foggy one.  Fuentes lives in London.

One of the deciding factors in United States Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson’s support of the 1913 coup against Francisco Madero — and the anarchic violence that resulted from that coup — was the administrative change in the United States that would take place on 21 March of that year.  At the time, that’s the day the new President would be sworn in.  Ambassador Wilson, of course, would be expected to hand in his resignation when President Woodrow Wilson took office.  Making the minor point that Woodrow Wilson, as well as outgoing president William Howard Taft, and Progressive Candidate Theodore Roosevelt were all intellectually capable and the tragedy can’t be blamed on sheer Presidential stupidity, I added this small footnote to my discussion of the Ten Tragic Days in Gods, Gauchupines and Gringos:

The candidates in the 1912 election were probably the most scholarly ever in U.S. history. Taft was a recognized legal scholar, Wilson a professional historian and third-party candidate, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, among his many other accomplishments, was a well-regarded popular writer on natural history as well as a naval historian.

It was unusual at the time to have a university education, and of course Roosevelt was known for many other things as well as his scholarship, but I don’t think voters then would have voted for a President who was “just like you”.  Nor would they have wanted to.

I’m not sure when it happened, but even when a candidate for President of the United States was of somewhat modest educational achievement (Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman), they always highlighted thier intellectual abilities.  Ike was only “dumb” compared to the witty Adiai Stevenson — and he was President of Colombia University, when he started his political career. Barry Goldwater in 1964 was a brilliant orator, but running uphill against a popular president who — though crude and devious — was never seen as an average Joe.  Besides, what Goldwater was saying was nuts.  Nixon, Carter and Clinton all let you know exactly how smart they were.  Their oppenents were intellegent, and sometimes witty (like Bob Dole), but none of them ran on being “an average Joe.”  Jerry Ford came off as kind of an oaf… and lost badly when he ran for President.  Ronald Reagan wasn’t any sort of intellectual, but made up for it by his soaring oratory and verbal flair.

George W. Bush did run against a smart guy, who let you know it … and did not capture the popular vote (or, some say, even the Electorial vote).  But, assuming Bush did win that 2000 election, it marked the first time in a century that a President ran on the “Average Joe” platform.  I’ve seen a theory (and forgot where I saw it), the Bush really isn’t as dumb as he acts… but studies his verbal gaffes for political purposes to make him appear less like the graduate of private schools and a Yale MBA, and more like a Bubba from Midland.

I compare that (like I do everything else, sooner or later) to Latin America in general, and Mexico in particular.  Right now, three Latin American Presidents (Bachelet of Chile, Colom of Guatemala and Vasquez of Uruguay) are medical doctors.  Ecuadorian President Correa and Mexico’s Felipe Calderon (and Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis) have advanced degrees in economics and experience in international finance.  Parguay’s President Lugo studied abroad in Rome… quite an accomplishment for a Paraguayan President.  Even relatively uneducated leaders, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez (who isn’t shy about anything) lets you know what books he’s read, and they aren’t things like “My Pet Goat”.

While we haven’t always had the best leaders in Mexico, we’ve generally had highly educated ones…. or historically at least, those acheived an education against the odds.  Another footnote from my book:

A surprising number of Mexican leaders have been teachers, raised by teachers, or orphans. Some, like Obregón have been all three. Besides Obregón, Juárez and Calles were orphans. All three, as well as Porfirio Díaz were schoolteachers at one time or another…and interim president de la Huerta became a dance teacher.

(I poke fun at Adolfo de la Huerta who was the figurehead leader of a coup in 1924, and had to flee to the United States, where the highly cultivated, intellectual banker and diplomat made a good living in the 1920s, running a dance school). Sure, because of the Revolution, and the conditions before the Revolution, there weren’t a lot of leaders with university degrees, but all made a point of pride in speaking as learned men, and all surrounded themselves with intellectuals. Pancho Villa joined the Revolution in large part because of his thirst for education, and to be educated was to be a patriot for most of the last century.

And say what you will about the PRI era, political leaders were drawn from academia and the professions. Lopez Portillo, like Obregón in the 1920s, saw their poetry as something to be celebrated, not dismissed. Even Carlos Salinas (who earned his PhD in economics) fancies himself a scholar, and writes long, unreadable books. Ernesto Zedillo took up an academic career after the Preisdency. No one in Mexico finds in remarkable that their presidents are remarkable.

Vicente Fox, elected the same year as George W. Bush (though there is no doubt that Fox really was elected), probably comes closest to running as an “average Jose”. He’s known as something of a naco (a redneck boob) — one of his famous gaffes was when he met a group of indigenous women who were part of an adult education program, he told an illiterate, “you’re probably better off not reading the newspapers”.). But Fox ran as a successful international businessman — not “Jose Seis-chelas”. In the 2006 election, Felipe Calderon certainly made sure voters knew he had TWO masters’ degrees (one from Mexico in economics, one from the United States in Public Administration); Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s campaign literature listed his several books (including his Masters’ Thesis).

Is it enough to be a maverick?

Waymon Hudson, at the Bilirico Project, calls the present U.S. election, “the War on Intellectualism”. A Harvard-educated law professor is attacked for… horrors… being “professorial” while praise is heaped on a vice-presidential candidate with a journalism degree who can’t name the newspapers she reads. The head of her ticket glorifies in telling people he graduated near the bottom of his class… as if that were somehow an asset for the job

Is that screwed up, or are  the rest of the Americas behind the curve?

Lex Luthor’s eviller twin, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has been making the rounds lately, promoting his latest tome, “How Zedillo and Fox Fucked Up My Plans” “The Lost Decade” (La década perdida), in which he presents an alternative view of recent Mexican history.

Salinas blamed former presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox for allowing Mexico to wallow in economic stagnation between 1995 and 2005. Massive migration was the consequence, Salinas contended.

“Five million compatriots left the country in search of a future in order to respond to their own expectations and those of their families,” Salinas said. “It’s difficult to encounter a country in times of peace that has a migratory phenomenon of this magnitude.”

As is customary, Salinas accepted no responsibility for the peso devaluation and financial crash of 1994-95 that immediately followed his term in office and ushered in Mexico’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Alluding to his successors’ responsibility for the current public safety crisis and “moral tragedy” of the times, Salinas did not mention the consolidation of the Juarez, Tijuana or Gulf cartels during his presidency. Nor did he delve into the explosive events of the last year of his administration, including the slaying of Guadalajara Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas OCampo; the murder of Salinas’s likely successor, Luis Donaldo Colosio; the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas; and the Mexico City gangland-style killing of Salinas’ former brother-in-law and PRI leader Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

Although Salinas supposedly received a respectable hearing from the PRI leadership in Chihuahua, it’s hard to see him making any sort of come-back. While I agree that the PRI will do well in the 2010 Congressional elections, I think it has more to do with the PRI’s recovery from a very bad Presidential campaign, and the failure of the leftist coalition led by the PRD to form a viable center-left alternative to the neo-liberal and conservative PAN.

Where PRI — up until Salinas — was the party of everybody except for the reaction and the Catholic Church, it has been a party of about 30 to 35 percent of the electorate since 1998. Nominally a Socialist Party, by the time Salinas came to the Presidency, PRI didn’t seem to have any particular economic or social core, instead following prescriptions drafted by foreign think-tanks. Salinas himself was a Harvard-trained economist. While Ernesto Zedillo, another Ivy-League trained economist, did manage to stem the disaster Salinas left at the end of his term, he could not stop the democratic reforms that were, at least in large part, the price Salinas and the PRI had to pay for even coming to the Presidency after stealing the election from Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in 1988. Salinas proteges, like Elba Esther Gordillo, made common cause with the ascendant PAN to maintain the trappings of power, while the party made a disasterous decision in 2005 to run the widely despised party leader, Roberto Madrazo, for the Presidency.

The united leftist fusion ticket, under Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, may have won the election (we’ll never know for sure), but the PRI did much worse than expected. Madrazo received only 17 percent of the vote, compared to about a third each for Caleron and Lopez Obrador. Salinas protege Gordillo’s party (mostly formed from the Teachers’ Union after she was purged from the PRI Central Committee) was the party’s worst showing ever.

Party leader Beatriz Paredes (who I think is a strong contender to be Mexico’s next president) has stopped the slide into irrelevance by giving the PRI a stronger image as a center-left alternative to PAN, and — especially in parts of the country where PRD is a stronger opponent than PAN — an image as an historically pragmatic socialist party. Salinas may have support in some northern states, where PAN is the stronger opponent, but if the party is going to regain it’s dominance, it will probably be through alliances with the left.

The latest polls show the three main parties at about the strength they were before the presidential election: PRI 35%, PAN 33% and PRD 13%. The Greens, which so far have been PRI loyalists, more than balance out Gordilla’s PANAL when it comes to maintaining PRI as the largest single political force. PRD and it’s allies, the Workers’ Party and Convergence, together with the Social Democrats hold the other 19 percent. This means that various leftist and labor parties have the loyalties of about two-thirds of the electorate. Add in the Zapatistas, who are a political force, but a non-voting one (by their own choice) and it’s probably even a higher percentage.

Unless Salinas can somehow perform a mass lobotomy on a nation that remembers its history… and re-invent his neo-liberalismo and failed NAFTA plan as nationalist and leftist, I honestly don’t see him returning to any major political role. If he does re-enter politics, it will be more as a Ralph Nadar figure than as a Richard Nixon.

Under the Presidential system that prevailed in Mexico for most of the last two centuries, a “good” deputy was someone like 1960s president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. He made his reputation as a deputy, not for any innovative legislation, or any particular skill in shepherding legislation through the Chamber, but for making sure opposition deputies dutifully applauded the President. During the First of September Informe, Diaz Ordaz would position himself behind whoever was the leader of the few opposition party legislators in the Chamber, and jam a pistol in their ribs when they needed to applaud. After the 1988 Presidential elections, “won” by Carlos Salinas, the trade-off that allowed that dubious election to stand was that the legislative election results were relatively honest… giving Mexico for the first time a strong multi-party legislature. A series of political reforms followed, giving Mexico a more balanced political system.

While Felipe Calderon may have won the 2006 election (which is an interesting historical question, but I’ll assume he did), PAN does not control the legislature. Under the proportional system used to select legislators, PAN has the most seats, but not the majority. Only by working with PRI, the PRI allied Greens and PANAL (Elba Esther’s party), do they have enough votes to push through Don Felipe’s proposals. But … even in PAN, PRI and among the Greens, there are deputies and senators who believe in the separation of powers… and — even if they support the President — are loathe to act as a rubber stamp congress.

With PRI more or less in agreement with PAN on certain issues, it fell to FAP — the PRD, Workers Party and Convergencia alliance — to form a credible opposition. FAP (Frente Amplio Progresist, or “Wide Progressive Front”) is an outgrowth of Lopez Obrador’s “Benefit of All” coalition, nominally, AMLO remains the head of the opposition, though not everyone in the coalition supports his “legitimate presidency”.

Felipe Calderon’s administration has, after making concessions to PRI senators who would not accept the original proposal, finally submitted an “energy reform” (reform in Spanish does not necessarily mean “better”… just new and different) bill to the Legislature. Calderon is demanding that the bill be passed as written — with no discussion — within fifty days. The opposition, and some PRI legislators, are chary of allowing the Presidential demands. While they lack the votes to send the bill back to the President, the opposition is seeking changes.

However, FAP (and Lopez Obrador) sees the presidential timetable ias unrealistic. So, FAP locked the rest of the legislature out of the Chamber and has been holding a sit-in for the last two weeks.

It is not, as USA Today reports, a “Congressional Coup” … nor is it “stalling urgent energy reforms”. It is the way a government with separation of power is supposed to work. In the U.S. Senate, a filibuster would be used to hold up the bill until the minority was satisfied. Not having a fillibuster in either the Chamber or the Senate, the Mexican legislature has taken the creative step of taking over the Chamber, preventing any bill from coming to the floor… and denying a quorum to the bill’s supporters.

As “Burro Hall” said, “These are not long-haired student protesters, remember, but the elected representatives of the people. Real-life consequences of all this aside, how fuckin’ cool is this country?” How cool is it that even 80-year old Senator Rosario Ibarra is living on take-out pizza and making do with a sleeping bag at night (though, I have it on good authority that the Senadora gets to sleep on a couch). Very cool.

The legislative sleep-over is a lot more theatrical than a fillibuster, but then Mexican politics, despite it’s theatrical qualities, isn’t that different from politics anywhere else. Nor is the response.

PAN — and PAN advisors like Rob Alyn and Dick Morris — introduced American-style campaigning to Mexico during Vicente Fox’s 2000 campaign. After the 2006 campaign, complaints from FAP and PRI led to legal changes in election laws, which supposedly did away with the personal smear campaigns that U.S. Republicans had introduced to the Mexican counterparts. It seems that the Mexican reactionaries — like their counterparts in the U.S. — have found a temporary loophole.

In the U.S. we had “astroturf” organizations … supposedly “grass roots” citizen’s organizations that turn out to be fronts for corporate interests. In Mexico, there is “Mejor Sociedad Mejor Gobierno”, trying to create the illusion of a citizens’ group supporting the President in this struggle. However, “Mejor Sociedad Mejor Gobierno” seems to be businessman Guillermo Velasco Arzac, and a few of his friends. Velasco Arzac, as you might suspect, is the hierophant (high mucky-muck) of the secretive, fascist-Catholic “Yunque”.

The hierophant of el Yunque hasn’t just taken up “astroturfing”, but has adopted a second American political technique, swiftboating. According to Source Watch:

The term swiftboating “comes from a 2004 television ad that undermined [John] Kerry’s status as a decorated Vietnam War hero, making less stark the contrast between him and George Bush, a self-proclaimed ‘wartime leader’ who’d never heard a shot fired in anger,” William Triplet wrote in Variety, February 5, 2006.
“If you can construct believable stories with enough truth in them to smear somebody royally, boy, is there a pot of gold waiting for you in D.C.,” Triplet said. “Spin doctors are nothing new in politics, but a certain type — equal parts scriptwriter, opposition researcher and ruthless street fighter — is increasingly in demand, and for good reason.

What “Mejor Sociedad” has been doing is running commercials on television that compare Lopez Obrador in particular, and the FAP in general, to… Pinochet, Mussolini, Victoriano Huerta and Adolf Hitler. Which is a weird choice for a fascist front organization to do… but then, Velasco Arzac and company are smart enough to realize that their heros aren’t exactly near and dear to the Mexican heart. Nor, for that matter, are the two they don’t mention.

Carlos Montsivias notes that Yunque is rooted in Spanish Falangism… yet no mention is made of Francisco Franco. He isn’t the only one to call the campaign “abject, stupid and shameful”. Even PAN leaders are having a hard time defending this one.

Mexican political practice does have one huge difference from the U.S. These kinds of attack ads are illegal.  They are definitely illegal when done by political parties, but whether “swiftboating” by “astroturf organizations” are is still being determined.

Good propaganda?  That’s for you to decide:

I changed one paragraph Friday when I re-read this. It sounded as if I’d said 2/3rds of voters chose AMLO. He received a bit over 1/3rd of the vote. What I meant was 2/3rds of voters chose candidates from “leftist” parties.

Carlos Narvarette, the PRD Senate leader, set off a “tempest in a teapot” the other day with what seems a sensible proposal (My translation from Propone Navarrete fusionar partidos en torno a AMLO, by Andrea Becerril, Víctor Ballinas and the Jornada on-line staff):

In advance of Senate consideration of federal election law reform, Carlos Narvarette, Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) Senate coordinator had proposed starting internal discussions within his own party, as well as with two leftist parties – the Workers’ Party (PT) and Convergencia – on a proposed merger.

“The proposal would unite the three parties included in the movement headed byAndrés Manuel Lopez Obrador”, Narvarette explained.

“This would give Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, and the movement he represents, a stronger organization and a way to create a single organization that could win against the right in 2009 or 2012,” he added.

Narvarette expanded on his proposal. He said he would hope that “the PRD would put their registry and the votes the part obtained in 2006 in the service of a larger movement, and join in a broad movement that could become a new party with its own identity.

Fusing the three parties, would move beyond [temporary] electoral coalitions, and an alliance “would not waste its time in discussing percentage, prerogatives or candidates.

Narvarette rejected the idea that there are those within the PRD looking to debilitate Lopez Obrador, stressing that no party on the left would undercut its own leadership.

People in the U.S. have a hard time understanding that the rest of the planet finds the concept of only two political parties (and both ascribing to the same economic ideology — liberal capitalism) kinda lame. The U.S. has its own political language, of course — “liberal” having something to do with whether gays should marry or whether one says “Happy Holidays,” or nonsense like that — not, as on the rest of the planet with open markets.

Anyway, Mexico — in common with other representational states — gives voters a wide choice. Admittedly, the PRI controlled politics for years, but even that party, ostenively Socialist, made room for various economic ideologies.

The Lopez Obrador supporters — which is what Narvarette is talking about is a little over one-third of the voters ) included the “wide” party, the PRD (more openly Socialist), the PRI, two social democratic parties (Convergencia and Alternativa) and PT — orignally Maoist, though more or less just another Socialist party. This doesn’t include small state and regional parties, like the reformed Communist Unidad Democrática in Coahuila.

PRD is usually described as “Center-Left” — but “Center-Left” would include about 2/3rds of the mexican electorate. PRD, like PRI is a member of Socialist International, but then, so is the British Labour Party… it doesn’t mean much more than a more emphasis on the need to “promote the general welfare” of the people, and sees the “blessings of liberty” as independent from one’s access to cash. I’m including the Greens, the “Social Democatic” Alternativa, and Nueva Alianza as “Center-Left”.

All the leftist parties pretty much accept the existence of capitalist enterprises, and most have no problem with them. Except for a few very tiny stalinist parties (associated with the Zapatistas, who discourge voting anyway), there’s enough ideological similarity between PRD, PT and Convergencia to make Narvarette’s proposal sensible.

Given Mexico’s proportional representation system (also alien to those of us in the U.S. — a party gaining more than two percent of the electorate is guaranteed at least a congressional seat) and fusion politics.

In the U.S. only a few states like Minnesota and New York, even have important minor parties. In those states, the minor parties usually back one of the two major party candidates for national office. The only recent exception I can think of was James Buckley’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1970, from New York’s third largest party, the Conservatives.

In Mexico, fusion candidates are common — and do win. Vicente Fox was elected on the “Change Alliance” ticket — his own PAN, together with the Greens and two now forgotten minor Social-Democratic parties (at least one being allegedly financed by the U.S. government). Cuautemoc Cardenas probably won in 1988 on the “Democratic National Front” candidate, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the “Benefit of All” leader.

PRI normally runs a fusion candidate with the Greens, even for state office, so it’s become the norm — rather than the exception — to run a fusion candidate. The only problem is that with the proportional system, the parties within a coalition have to work out an agreement over whose candidate leads the ticket — and horse-trade the proportional seats. Normally, the larger party ends up ceding a few seats in congress or the state legislatures to one of the minor parties to get them to agree to a temporary merger — a great deal for the minor parties, but in reality, it gives small parties almost a veto over broader consensus issues. The Greens might have joined Fox and PAN in the 2000 election, but Fox made a strategic error, and the Greens made their legislative alliance with PRi… basically making anything Fox proposed though PAN DOA for the next six years.

I think what Narvarette is proposing is to make the existing PRD-PT-Convergencia congressional alliance (Frente Amplio Progressiva — “Broad Progressive Front”) a single entity. Of course, there would still be factions within the new party (as there are within PRD, PRI and PAN now — think of all the different factions within either of the two U.S. parties for an analogy). Of course, the various factions within PRD (not to mention the two smaller parties) will probably doom this idea to the graveyard of “good plan, poor execution”.

Had “Benefit of All” run as a single ticket in 2006, we’d probably be writing about President Lopez Obradór… the horse-trading, compromises, etc. necessary to work out a multi-party deal probably did cost AMLO some votes and time — not to mention having to get a sign off from three different party leaders every time there was a major policy decision — that could have been spent countering single-party Felipe Calderón’s very good (though dirty) campaign.

SOMEBODY’S not quite telling the truth here:

There’s a whole sub-genre of Mexican literature, the fictive biography. Carlos Casteñada (ok, he was Peruvian, but his subject was Mexican) inspired a whole generation of gringos to come looking for Don Juan (or at least hallucinate about him; Diego Rivera entertained himself (and the rest of us) making up his life story for his official biographer, Bertram Wolfe; Princess Salm-Salm milked her brief Mexican experience for all it was worth in her untrustworthy (but eminently readable) biography of Prince Felix; Martin Guzmán’s “Eagle and the Serpent” is sometimes listed as a biolgraphy of Pancho Villa, and sometimes as a novel about Pancho. It’s both. Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Fuentes have both written fictional biographies, which may or may not be true.

I don’t know that it’s a “Latin thing” — after all Emily Dickinson (about as un-Latin as you can get) once wrote “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” Burro Hall — who like Miss Dickinson — is from Massachucetts (which must mean something, I’m sure), is delighted with the latest contribution to Mexican fictography, Vicente Fox’s Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President (Viking, 2007. Listed at 27.95, but already marked down to $16.65 at Amazon).

Delighted, but not completely sold on it:

Ex-presidente Vicente “Fat Tony” Fox, the American-educated former executive for the American Coca-Cola Company, has written his life’s story (co-authored with his American political consultant Rob Allyn) about how, when he was president, he kept it real by wearing cowboy boots. He’s currently on a book tour in America. Why not Mexico? Because the book is written in American, not Mexican. After six years of Fox’s rule, the adult literacy numbers apparently aren’t high enough to justify publishing a book here.

Very odd to have the book that claims George W. Bush speaks “grade school Spanish” co-authored by a guy who sells the idea that George W. can speak coherently in English or Spanish:

“One of the first phone calls George W. Bush made after the inauguration was to Mexican president Vicente Fox. The men chatted amiably in Spanish. Perhaps President Bush ought to keep Rob Allyn’s phone number nearby, too—Allyn helped put Fox in power.

Burro has great fun in looking at Don Chente’s own reality-challenged claims, but he’s a politician and, we’d expect his autobiography to be at least half-bullshit, and 100 percent self-serving. Rob Alyn is only the co-author, but given Fox’s well-known aversion to reading, one suspects Alyn contributed something more than fifty percent of the total project.

Alyn is a professional sleaze-bag political media consultant. As Sourcewatch notes about his affairs in the U.S.:

Allyn was a key player in the George W. Bush campaign to discredit his rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination Senator John McCain. Millionaire Bush supporter Sam Wyly funded Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCain in key states during the 2000 primary campaign. Rob Allyn was paid $46,000 to help create the ads.

His pimping consulting for Fox’s 2000 campaign (suspected of being paid for the the U.S. Republican Party) was more controversial. Narco News has been on Alyn’s back for years. As they point out, Alyn set up a front group called “Democracy Watch” and engaged in all kinds of illegal activities in Mexico before and after Fox’s 2000 campaign, in his attempt to sell the candidate from a former fascist party as a “democratic alternative” to the PRI.

Don’t get me wrong… I like Mexican fiction, and I’m just twisted enough to enjoy Mexican politics. But, I want to wait until either Vicente Fox reads “his” book and gives a cogent report on it, or it’s marked down by Amazon to a buck.

State elections are this Sunday in Oaxaca, Baja California and Aguascalientes.

While any win in Oaxaca is going to be suspect (and even some within the party expect to do badly), the winners in these states may be PRI. The PRD-led coalition is the main opposition force in Oaxaca (in elective politics, that is).

In Baja California, the colorful (or notorious or sinister, depending on your attitude) Carlos Hank Rhon could very well win the Governorship. Widely beleived to have oganized crime ties, and the prime suspect in several unsolved murders, including that of pesky investigative reporters, Hank is naturally running as a “law and order” candidate. James McKinney’s excellent profile (subscription required) in Wednesday’s New York Times, makes me think of Hank as a Mexican version of Lousiana’s Eddy Edwards. When Edwards ran for Governor against white supremacist David Duke, Edwards supporters made bumper stickers reading “Vote Edwards. A scoundrel, but not a Nazi”.

The PRI, in a fusion ticket with the Greens and a state party, may have the edge, though PAN might hold on to their legislative majority. PRI-istas were caught recently distributing food bank rations in poor neighborhoods, leading the Archdiocese of Tijuana to remind the faithful that buying or selling a vote is equally sinful. But, then again, the PRI is traditionally an anti-clerical party, and there was no word on whether the food donations includes loaves and fishes.

I really pay very little attention to Aguascalientes, and haven’t a clue what to expect there. PAN has done well there every since sweeping on on Vicente Fox’s coattails in 2000. Like in some U.S. states, where Republicans swept into office on Ronald Reagan’s coattails, the religious conservatives thought they had a mandate in Aguascalientes, like they thought they had in places like Kansas or Iowa.

In Kansas, it was ridicule over attempts to teach “creationism” in the schools that did in the Republicans. In Aguacalientes it may be gays and swear words. In 2001, the PAN city council in Aguascalientes had signs posted in the city parks reading “No dogs or gays.” Widely reported and internationally ridiculed, even those who supported PAN’s conservative economic policies were less than thrilled with the Party. People just laughed when the city council last year tried to enforce a law against swearing in public. Fuck it, they said.

Aguascalientes has been relatively prosperous, and this is the center of PAN country, but people may be ready for a change. PRD has very little presence in the state, making PRI the only real alternative.

Complicating things, the PRI leaders are meeting this weekend in Durango to discuss the party’s future direction. Having ceded it’s ideological traditions (it is still a member party of Socialist International) to the PRD, and unable to mount sucessful national campaigns (PAN seems to have the edge in dubious electoral victories now), it seems to have no national focus, and is a dramatically different party depending on what state you are in. The PRI sponsored abortion reforms in the Federal District, while opposing them in Puebla. What happens in the states will play an important part in determining whether the party redefines itself, or continue letting internal disputes allow opponents to peel off segments of its core support, as with Esther Elba Gordilla, who pulled out of the party to form her own minor party, which sides with PAN, except in Oaxaca, where Gordilla (the head of the official teacher’s union) backs Ulises Ruiz and PRI over her own dissidentteachers.

Party chair Beatriz Paredes is an oddball PRI leader — the honest ones are usually incompetent and the competent ones are crooks, but she’s both honest and competent — has her work cut out for her.

Most of the foreign press thought it was some kind of joke when Andres Manuel Lopez Obradór was sworn in as “legitimate president” of Mexico, forgetting previous losing candidates (assuming AMLO really did lose) have done the same thing: the practice was started by Manuel Clouthier of PAN (Vicente Fox was his Agriculture Secretary), even though PAN clearly and decisively lost in 1988.

The 1988 election held another lesson for AMLO. That year too, a leftist coalition candidate either lost (or had the election stolen, which is more probable, and confirmed by those involved in stealing it). Cardenas backers were likely to rebel, and only systematic changes in the political and social system prevented overt violence. However, PRD (the party that came out of Cardenas’ coalition) members were killed, and there were serious frauds until it was able to make itself part of the political mainstream.

I hadn’t expected much from AMLO’s shadow government beyond a “think tank” (like Clouthier intended) and some legislative action. Cardenas made a tactical mistake by allying with the Zapatistas, who were anti-PRI, but — as traditionalists, have more in common with PAN, and generally work against democratic leftists like PRD. By avoiding the anti-democratic groups, and by focusing on party-building and realistic political change, the out-of-the-spotlight AMLO may surprise us yet again.

I’ll give AMLO this, too. He was locked out of the “mainstream media” for the last year, but he seems to have captured the geek vote… he’s all over the internet… how much “real” support he has is hard to gauge, though I suspect his urban support is much higher than thought, especially outside of the North. Unlike the Zapatistas, he’s not making a foreign appeal, so has been ignored by even the U.S. “progressives.” But, given the undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Calderón regime, from peasant groups, the poor and organized labor, and not much reported problems in places like Puebla (where the Governor is about to be impeached), there may be more support outside Mexico City than we think.

I somewhat changed the article to fit U.S. style reporting for my translation of Rogelio Hernández López interview with the CND’s Rafael Hernandez Estrada in today’s Milenio.

Less than two weeks from now, we will mark the first anniversary of the Federal Elections. In the Capital, at Monterrey 50, headquarters of the Broad Progressive Front (FAP, for its initials in Spanish), Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador is presiding at a series of meetings with federal and local legislators, party leaders and civil servants. The “legitimate president” is accompanied by members of his cabinet and leaders of the National Democratic Convention (CND in Spanish), taking in and recording testimonies of electorial fruad, the general health of the movement and “doing everything possible to bring more people to the Zocalo on July 1 than showed up March 25”.

Does it mean anything? Rafael Hernandez Estrada, general coordinator of the CND thinks it does:

“In short, this will prove that the movement is not failing.” He is not in the least disturbed by criticism of the movement, listening between sips of coffee:

The insurgency did not force Felipe Calderón to resign; state coalitions were not organized; the FAP has not coalesced into a formal aliance; State and Municipal CND chapters have not been created; the “legitimate president’s” cabinet has not so much been a people’s government as a leadership forum for the die-hards in the parties; the citizen networks have all but disappeared; and resent polls and elections indicate a disasterous fall from the coalition of July 2. Are the hard-liners the only remaining force? not become nor consolidated the electoral alliance of Progressive the Extended front; state and municipal structures of the CND were not created either; the credencializados ones of the “legitimate government” are not people who outside other people’s to the policy, but in fact are such militant of the allied parties and some others of their hard vote; the citizen networks instead of growing disappeared; the recent surveys and elections indicate a vertiginous fall of the preferences of votes that obtained the 2 of July… They are remaining only with the duros?

Rafael Hernandez is non-plussed. As in the CND meetings, he does not take notes, but considers each question separately.

“Look, in all the internal meetings which I have attended, Andrés Manuel has insisted on a balanced representation – the CND, the FAP, the legitimate cabinet and the PRD. Hernandez Estrada himself is also a leader in the PRD’s New Left faction.

“Andrés concluded this year, after meetings with tens of thousands of people in more than 500 municipalities that the decicision we made last July 2 was correct.

“First, never before in the history of Mexico have so many women and men expressed their desire to change the political system, and mobilized to do so. That is extraordinary.

“Secondly, Andrés Manuel emphasizes that under the circumstance, confirmation of the electorial frauds could lead to of generalized violence and the possibilities of virulent confrontations. The movement would have been at risk if we had succumbed to the temptation, and had to be channeled into other activities.

“Thirdly, as we all know, the way we chose to channel the people’s dissatisfaction was to create a permanent people’s front. The Broad Progressive Front has been consolidated in the legislature, and a growing coalition of unions, farmers and social organizations are contributing to the agenda for legal change. What we have to accept, though, is that we haven’t organized everywhere. It’s very difficult to establish an electorial coalition, as several of the Parties in the Front have found. But, for the most part, there is a common agenda within the Congress. The FAP will be making announcements in August regarding State organizations. That will be extremely important. W

“In fourth place , we have begun to construct a wide base for a Democratic National Convention. Starting September 16, when the civil resistence began, it provides a permanent structure for those who do not recognize Felipe Calderón as President, instead seeing Andrés Manuel as the legitimate president.. We have surveys from the capital and several important cities where 70 percent of people describe Calderón as “illegitimate.”

“Out of the CND, we have been making progress in forming operating committees in all 32 States, and in 800 munipalities.

“Fifth, the legitimate cabinet continues to fulfill it’s minimum expectations: generating public policy and alternative proposals; working with the FAP to coordinate legal strategies. There have been real gains from the close collaboration between the CND, the FAP and the legitimate government. To convert the movement into a national shift to the left, we will continue to function as a shadow government, systematically questioning the legimacy and governability of the de facto regime, and bringing up the proposals such as those Andres Manuel proposed for assisting senior citizens… fighting the sales tax on food and medicine for example. “

Asked how much weight we should still give to AMLO as the leader of the “movement”, and whether the movement won’t shrink to just the die-hards as people accept the electorial results, Hernández responds to the first, “quite a bit. Much,”

“The press has been suggesting that AMLO is imposing decisions on the left. I’d argue that his persistence and vision has been the essential factor in what the movement has accomplished so far. He is the leader. All we know it. And if he were as negative as many write, many already would have gone away. There have been no desertions by those who began this struggle, nor of any of the parties or organizations. We’ll see if it’s just the die-hards after we desseminate the data and testimony about the frauds, and when the people come to the Zocalo on the 31^st.

I have always been bothered by the misconception that PAN was a pro-democracy party, and that their victory in the 2000 Presidential election represented a forward movement for Mexico. First of all, it was the PRD that forced the country to open itself up politically, basically by trading off their “loss” in 1988 for political reforms.

PAN had been around since the 1930s, basically allowed to function to keep the reactionaries within the Mexican political system, and out of the guerrilla movements of the 1920s and early 30s. Being pro-heirachy and control-freaks (and anti-unionists to boot), naturally they appealed to the industrialists in the North, and when the democratic opening came in the 90s, were in a position to take advantage of it. With a healthy assist from the right-wing of the U.S. Republican Party (it was Jesse Helms of North Carolina who claimed Vicente Fox “ended 71 years of one-party rule” and Republican Party operatives who developed his U.S. style campaign) and Helms’ continual harping on every PAN loss as “proof” of PRI corruption (while ignoring things like the assassination of PRD organizers, or their election losses), PAN nearly became the main party in Mexico.

Like the far-right U.S. Republicans, they tended to overstep their mandate, and have been losing power, though they still control the administration (whether by honest close election or otherwise). Their fascist roots are no secret, though WE tend to ignore them. When Marta Sahagun de Fox was seriously mentioned as a Presidential candidate, U.S. reporters could only think of Hillary Clinton (a spouse with political ambitions), though Señora Fox — and everyone in Latin America — had another famous First Lady in mind… Eva Peron.

Marta’s so-called charity, “Vamos Mexico,” was openly modelled on Peron’s “Fundacion Eva Peron” — right down to the shakedowns, incessant propaganda and rampant corruption. As far as I can recall, the only charitable action (reported day after day after day… followed by commercials for Vamos Mexico) was to give bicycles to students in isolated rural areas. Mostly, it gave expensive gifts to its own leaders, spending more on administrative fees than it took in as reported donations.

If you look through the biographies of the Fox and Calderón cabinet secretaries, it’s surprising how many are either descendants of Porfirio Diaz-era landowners (Santiago Creel was a two-fer: a Creel, and a descendant of U.S. Grant) or from Synarchist families. I felt a little better about Felipe Calderón when I learned his own dad had quit PAN because of its Fascist tendencies, but the party still has more than its share of Synarchists, Francoists, ultra-montane Catholics and other odd rightists.

In a way, this article was no surprise. It’s long, and I didn’t so much translate it, as boil it down a little. It first appeared in the May 2007 Milenio Revista, and was reprinted by FLASCO Mexico

Supported by the Catholic ultra-right, Nazi and Fascist groups are growing in Mexico. Forced underground during the PRI era, they openly identify with the Felipe Calderón government and have taken to the streets to push their ideology…

In Mexico, Nazi and Fasicst moverments were in the hands of the Catholic ultra right – the old Cristero and Sinarquist movements, as well as Francoists. … According to reseacher Edgar González Ruiz, these groups make common cause with the Catholic hierachy, adding gay marriage and abortion legalization to what they claim is a “Jewish-Masonic plot”

Since the 1930s there have been extremist Catholics who found the totalitarian systems of Hitler, Benito Mussolini and especially Francisco Franco congenial to their own world-view. Adopting Hilter’s ideas to Latin America is not a new concept, González says, though joining in anti-gay and “right to life” demonstrations in support of the Church is a new role for the Nazis.

The Nazis themselves seem largely limited to the Internet. Mexican researchers have very information on neo-nazis within the country, and most organizations are unknown. The few known nazi sympathizers are mostly limited to web sites, featuring the expected attacks on abortion, lesbians, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the United States and Zionism.

Militants from the Partido Nacional Socialista (PNS) appeared on the streets of the Federal District during the recent debate over legalizing abortion. Overtly violent, they made common cause with the anti-abortion groups. UR, a non-catholic Fascist group going back to 1930s Italy, has joined pilgramages to the Basilica of Guadalupe, and has appeared at the Metropolitan Cathedral, as well as in the Federal District’s Legislative Assembly. UR members dress in white shirts and black pants, carrying what they way is a “celtic” cross, normally identified with the Ku-Klux-Klan.

Although claiming to be a non-Catholic group, its first appearance was at a recitation of the Rosary at a public “right to life” rally. The group attended a mass said by Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, during which they promenently flew their flag in the Basilica sanctuary.

The same flag was unfurled this past April 12, outside the Federal District Legislative Assembly. A right-wing activist and member of the Guardia Nacional Mexicana, was with the group, making death threats to Legislators if they voted to legalize abortion. De la Peña was denounced for these theats to the Federal Prosecutor, and PRD Deputy, Víctor Hugo Círigo, swore that the protestors were claiming the legislative vote was part of a “Jewish conspiracy.”

De la Peña may have been the total membership in the Guardia Nacional Mexicana, which hasn’t been heard of since he went underground. However, the UR has appeared at subsequent anti-abortion rallys in the Capital, and harassing Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social strikers (objecting to a new contract). They also have been shouting anti-semetic comments about IMSS director, Santiago Levy.

Much more wide-spread than Nazis or Fascists are Falagists, who take their cues from the Francisco Franco, and are associated with the most conservative forces in the Catholic Church.

Spanish Falangists in Mexico, together with the Sinarquists and members of various conservative Catholic movements were active members of PAN. PAN Secretary Carlos Abascal Carranza, and several business leaders active in the Party came out of these movements.There are a few other far-right groups, claiming ties to the Templars, the Knights of Malta and the Knights of Columbus, but the largest right-wing Catholic movement is the Francoist “ Movimiento de Cristo Rey” The group has four synarchist schools in Puebla, where they have held public receptions for José Luis Corral, the head of the Movimiento Católico Español and Acción Juvenil Español. Corral insisted to his audience on the need to political organize, gain power and write “Christian laws.”

Several participants at the event were wearing tee-shirts bearing Franciso Franco’s image, and photos of the Spanish dictator were promently displayed at the event.

Speaking in Cuernavaca, José Luis Corral told his audience that the Social Kingdom of Jesus Christ has a political dimension, and it is His will that countries with a Catholic majority (since as Spain and Mexico) are governed accordingly. He then called on the audience to organize and fight the state’s “unnatural” laws. A similar speech was later given in Toluca. In his Mexico City address, Corral assured his listeners that “Spain has destroyed the family, though divorce, free love, the gay agenda, pornography and immorality.”

For good measure, he added that “insecurity, terrorism, deliquency, domestic violence, abortion, drugs, euthanasia and the flag of the culture of death is worse than the Aztec Empire.”

Jorge Serrano Limón, Presidente of the ultra-right Provida, which has engaged in violent actions, claims he only knows about the Guardia Nacional Mexicana and similar groups from seeing them on television.

Serrano Limón speculates that these groups were set up by the PRD to discredit Catholics [Of course, Serrano Limón was also the guy who spent a government grant to promote birth-control on, tangas for himself and his male staff, that the "exposure" was a plot to discredit the Catholic Church, too -- something the Milenio article didn't bother to add, but I will.]

Even as an outsider, I’d noticed that the 2006 election bore more resemblance to the 1988 election than to anything in the U.S.  In 1988, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas probably got the most votes, but through some fancy manouvering (and possibly some nudges from the Reagan administration which certainly didn’t want a leftist administration in Mexico), Salinas de Gotari, “won”.  I always thought it was ironic that the political and social reforms forced through as a result of that shady election led to a PAN victory in 2000.  Which was followed by a shady PAN victory in 2006 (when again, a U.S. administration was very worried about a probable win by the Mexican left). 

Blogotitlan says it was no accident.  (My translation)

The corruption of political organisms in Mexico - esspecially by the outstanding political leaders — is the Aquilles heel of this nation. Their interweaving factional interests, to the detriment of national ones, have left the country open to the depredations of its natural resources and economy by the hegomenic United States.

Without getting into the corrupt origins of the various political parties – something more a subject for psychiatry than sociology – it is sufficient to focus on the consequences of their convergence of interests, and the criminal methods, legal and otherwise, that in their short-sighted and ignorant self-interest have negatively influenced all Mexican citizens.

Of course, it has to be said that without political apathy and tolerance, none of today’s poltical parties could have obtained the positions they occupy today, or get away with what they are doing.

When in 1988 the party failed to maintain control of the electoral system and the reality of the ballots upended the systemic inertia, “honest brokers” were immediately called on to mediate the situation. Business lawyer Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a PAN central committee member huddled with the worried PRI leaders, and managed to strike a compromise. Ultra-private talks and round the clock negotiations developed a new scenario (one favored by the U.S. trained technocrats at the Bank of Mexico) under which PAN would become the “loyal opposition”. This flew in the face of reality, and required the left to recognize as clean and unquestionable the triumph of PRI candidate, Carlos Saline de Gortari.

Obvious, there were political and economic costs, that Salinas immediately accepted, the first being that “Jefe” Diego Fernandez was allowed to win a governorship, which convinced PAN president, Luis H Álvarez to accept the deal.

When word came down from los Pinos that Salinas would win, the vote counting mechanism was suddenly suspended for several hours. When the system was restored, the miracle had occurred, and the gentleman selected as president, Carlos Salinas de Gortori, triumphed. PAN, as Diego and Álvarez had previously worked out, admitted it had lost, but it was their votes that give the slight edge to PRI.

The fly in the ointment was that the PAN candidate, Manuel “Maquío” Clouthier, was against the deal, recognizing that it was untrue. He knew the truth. Cárdenas had lead in the vote count.

Not that it mattered. The Electoral College, controlled by PRI, had the last word. And gave it. Despite the evidence of fraud, it recognized the “legal” — though illegitimate – triumph of Salinas, and at the same time saluted Jefe Diego’s victory as the first PAN governor of Baja California Norte.

Beneficiary of innumerable canonjías ^{[SEE NOTE]}, PAN, and the forces of the “institutional Revolution” functioned as a battering ram against the masses that had supported Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, indignant at the frustration of the democratic will of the people. Throughout the Salinas and Zedillo administrations, Diego’s PAN was indispensible to turning back the clock, and privatizing the country, “for the public good” to the benefit of the new political business groups that had been incubated under Miguel de la Madrid and stimulated into growth under Salinas.

The only renegade was Maquío Clouthier, who — before Cardenás turned to “institutional” conformism – set up a parallel cabinet which refused to recognize Salinas’ “triumph.” A providential auto accident took care of Maquío, and Diego and Salinas no longer had to continue fighting him.

PAN’s complicity allowed that Salinas to privatize everything, and render accounts on nothing. The famous libros blancos (white papers) that supposedly audited the privatizations were a farce that concealed outright thievery and left untouched financial mismanagement. As with the “untouchable” 1988 election results, which were under armed military guard, Jefe Diego made sure they were burned, covering the tracks of anyone involved in the frauds.

Whatever vestiges of ethics were left in the PRI government were gone. Collusion between PAN and PRI allowed Salinas to reign with impunity, in return for preparing the way for “el cambio” (the change) – an extraordinary deceit that installed a government “of the industrialists, by the industrialists, for the industrialists,” true predators of the national wealth and public property, as has been verified by the recent scandal involving the public audit of state accounts.

18 years later, the Salinas scenario was repeated, though in 2006 PRI played the supporting role to PAN’s lead. The new production was updated with technocratic “modern” touches: IFE, supposedly “citizenized” when in fact it was “mafia-ized”; new software that featured subroutines to change the calculated vote count to meet agreed upon results; mass media already dependent on timely canonjías suborned by the advertisers who had benefited from previous frauds; foreign advisors openly using lies, slanders and social manipulation in the electoral process, despite specific Constitutional prohibitions; purposely myopic electoral authorities ; and dubious court decisions based on the convenience of legitimizing results and not open to appeal despite numerous Constitutional violations. In a word… corruption.

As during the Salinas era, the unsanctified marriage of PRI and PAN, with the unholy brood of brats – the Greens, PANAL and Alternativa – seek to demolish the remaining social and political structure, one that took a lot of time and effort to construct and, despite imperfections, was the source of progress in this country, that allowed people to obtain an honest job and put food on the family table. But today, PRIAN [PRI+PAN, considered by many, like Blogotitlan, as one party] seeks to undo everything, auctioning off the pieces to private interests, who seek instantaneous returns on their investments, encouraged by tax exemptions that are supposed to “stimulate” investment, but are really a cover for bribes to the government, which do little to bring in national investments or create jobs.

The indignity is that both chambers of Congress write laws harmful to the citizens with the overt support of (when not actually written in) Washington, supposedly benefitting “national” industrialists, but – as soon as they’ve received the concession (or canonjía) turn around and sell them – tax free – to foreign multinationals, as was done with the banks and other state-owned enterprises. The country not only loses a source of wealth, but also sovereignty.

What is even more repugnant is the way that this corrupt political marriage is preparing the way for the political and social annexation of the country (the economic annexation being a done deal) to American hegonomy, transgressing the most elementary notions of policy and honor, racing to approve bad laws, throw up roadblocks in the way of necessary changes, and otherwise harm the people the chambers are supposed to represent.

In short, the litany of indignities and aggressions against the citizens of the country committed by that nauseous pair that proclaims itself “decent and responsible”, or “democratic and nationalistic”, is applauded by its accomplices in the political, media and business world.

For the good of the country, and for it’s survival, we hope that the growing awareness of citizen anger will be recognized by those around Andrés Manuel Lopez Obradór – a living demon to those “Men without a country” [apátridas]. There is a need for obstinate resistance to defend Mexico against the useless couple.

[TRANSLATION NOTE] “Canonjías” are literally “artillery barrages”, but the term is used figuratively in Mexico to mean economic an political arrangements used to co-opt the opposition.   It comes from Álvaro Obregón’s cynical observation that “no Mexican general can withstand a barrage of gold pesos”. Obregón consolidated the Revolution and ended the violence by basically coopting the opposition, both through power sharing arrangements, and through outright bribery.

 

Having gone from THE Party for so many years, to the third party has been kind of hard on the PRI. Heir to the Revolutionary Party (defined by Álvaro Obregón as “everyone who fought for the Revolution”) they never had to pick any specific ideology. Technically, they’re a Socialist party, but ever since the party was founded in 1948 (Vicente Fox did not “end 70 years of one party’s rule… he ended 70 years of the coalition that came out of the Mexican Revolution), it’s been decidedly capitalist friendly.

It was more like the U.S. Democrats than anything else… including the unions and the business executives and fostering national development. Since the 80s, it’s been “technocratic” and didn’t even bother to define an ideology. Just preserving the Revolutionary institutions seemed enough.

But, after 1988, when the PRD became the “real left” and PAN managed to carve out a democratic role for itself by playing down its fascist roots, it’s been adrift ideologically.

Losing to PAN in 2000 was a shock. Losing to PAN and the PRD in 2006 was more than they bargained for. While PRI still holds most governorships, their strength is local parties. Nationally, they’re a mess.

PRD took over the left and, not being the wild-eyed radicals their rivals tried to paint them as, have attracted much of the middle class. I expect the “Social Democratic” Alternativa will eventually join with the larger Social Democratic Convergencia and the “Maoist” (in the sense that some early party wonks had read the Little Red Book, or maybe Che Guevarra’s “Motocycle Diaries” in college) Workers Party (PT) in the PRD-led Broad Progressive Front (FAP, in Spanish).

PAN presents itself as center-right, and when it moves further right (like its doing now), it loses grass-roots support. But for now, it’s just about evenly split with FAP, making it the largest party in the Legislature, but not the majority. It needs the PRI (and the Greens) if its going to pass anything.

Right now, PAN can count on Esther Elba’s Nuevo Alianza, but that party is more a reflection of her ego, and attempt to hold on to the Teachers’ Union than anything else. As a Senator, she led the PRI bloc that backed PAN, but — like the Greens — I expect the party will go wherever they can cut the best deal for themselves… or eventually become irrelevant (as did the openly fascist Democratic Party, which eventually became part of PAN, or the Communist Party, which was absorbed by PRD).

This gives PRI a lot more relevance than it otherwise would have. No legislation can pass without their support. But, with the Party unsure of what they stand for (and you know the old saying… “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything), the legislature may break up into blocs supporting one or another of the two main forces (PAN and FAP)… the way normal legislations work in multi-party countries.

Beatriz Parades, the new PRI leader, says she’s on the left, and she’s an intriguing political figure. She was the first woman to be an elected governor, and is as skillful an infighter as any PRI leader… and — strangly enough — has a reputation for honesty, something you don’t find often in PRI leaders. Given PRD’s domination of Mexico City, she was the best candidte PRI could run for Jefa de Gobernacion in 2006, and did a credible job with a hopeless task. She seems to be like the Texas politicans who say “Ya gotta dance with them that brung ya.” Her task is figuring out who brung her.

 I’m sure there’s plenty of “spin” on what it all means (Kenneth Edmonds of the Mexico City Herald calls Parades “the most important politican in Mexico”), but natually, the Cuban press is looking at it from the left:

Mexico, Mar 2 (Prensa Latina)

The fear of seeming too leftist is keeping Mexico s PRI (Institutional Revolutionary) party on tenterhooks, following this major Mexican political party’s extraordinary assembly this week

Reluctant to accept they are a progressive organization, several delegates decided on Thursday to remain “ideologically undefined,” rather than including that concept in their declaration of principles.

Social democracy, revolutionary nationalism, social justice, and republican democracy were some of the suggestions in the debate, which confronted followers and detractors of the ideological turn proposed by Beatriz Paredes, who was elected PRI president.

Paredes told local press she supported the leftist proposal, which she considers a step forward beyond the initial central left formulation.

The Mexican political system has changed and become multiparty with competitive conditions, and it is necessary to act according to our principles, whether in power or not, she warned..

Paredes considered it very important that the governors participate with their own dynamics and personality, but insisted that she will accept neither apathy, nor self-satisfaction.

Dr. Juan Hernandez, a Texas Republican Party activist, is consistently referred to in news articles and on cable TV news shows as “a former member of the Vicente Fox cabinet”. 

Hernandez, a dual national, WAS head of something called the “Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad” (in other words, a special advisor to the President) for around for a year or so, until the office was abolished after came under investigation by the Mexican elections commission for having been a front to raise campaign contributions in the U.S. for PAN candidates.  Foreign campaign contributions are illegal in Mexico. 

Maybe it’s that whiff of electorial chincanery that makes Dr. Hernandez one of the few — make that the only — Mexican you’ll see on the same program with Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan. He’s no idiot and not a push-over, but comes across as sunny and positive… which may be the reason he’s never identified as a Texas Republican.  He just doesn’t fit the image.  But he is the conservatives favorite “go to guy” when they need a “clean and articulate” Mexican.   

A friend of George W. Bush and “acceptable” to folks like Lou Dobbs, it’s a natural that Dr. Hernandez would be asked to speak at at a Southern Baptist institution like Waco’s Baylor University.  And even in their chapel.  He wasn’t smitten (smited? smote?), but something about Southern Baptists and Mexicans (ok, half-Mexicans) that make for an uncomfortable mix:

 Juan Hernandez, former cabinet member for Mexican President Vicente Fox, visited Chapel Feb. 12. He began his speech by asking students to accompany him in his prayer for the illegal immigrants in danger. He said the United States is in need of 400,000 employees every year and about 320,000 immigrants cross the border from Mexico to work in the United States. Later Hernandez encouraged students to take out their cell phones and call Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to voice their opinions on immigration reform laws.

(Economics Professor John) Piscotti said it was inappropriate for Hernandez to speak and pray the way he did. He also said asking the students to pray for the mistreatment of illegal immigrants was “utterly absurd.”

Uhhh…. I think the Baylor Lariat meant Hernandez was praying for the immigrants who are mistreated, but… what’s so bad about praying?  In chapel? Did he make a sign of the cross or something?  I’ll never understand Southern Baptists, I guess.  But, then Waco isn’t part of the normal universe, even by Texas standards.