One interesting thing AMLO mentioned, and which the local press picked up on, was that the candidate specifically turned down any offer of help from Sinaloan governor, Mario Vásquez Lopéz (MALOVA), who is — in theory — heading a PAN/PRD fusion administration.

While the right-left coalition was popular with many in the PRD leadership and did win in several states, here in Sinaloa, the results have been less than satisfactory for the left.  MALOVA himself was a PRI militant and office holder, who switched his party affiliation to PAN at the last possible minute to qualify as the fusion ticket gubernatorial candidate.  Although the new administration is arguably less overtly crooked than previous PRI administrations, the left has been frozen out of state administration.  No one from PRD holds any significant posts at the state or municipal executive level.  Here in Mazatlán (where the Municipal President on the fusion ticket was a former PAN municipal president), the administration has lurched strongly to the right, especially in social policy, basically forgetting they were in partnership with the left-wing parties.  The sense among the left seems to be that the fusion ticket was a huge tactical error.

MALOVA probably still owes some favors to the leftists, and the best he can do is promise not to support PAN’s Josefina Vásquez Mota, and it would be the kiss of death for his future within the new party to support Enrique Peña Nieto.  But, not supporting AMLO seems to be AMLO’s decision.  The presidential candidate was one of those on the left strongly opposing a fusion ticket in Sinaloa and his instincts may have been right.

Don’t classify me, read me. I’m a writer, not a genre.

Reed Johnson’s fine obituary in the Los Angeles Times memorialized Fuentes as:

The prolific author of more than 20 books, including novels, short story collections, essays and often-scolding commentaries, Fuentes was among those most responsible for raising the profile of the hemisphere’s Spanish-language literature in the second half of the 20th century, following decades in which it had languished in the shadow of better-known European and U.S. modernists.

The Mexican writer, as far as most of the outside world goes, Fuentes was born in Panama, educated in the United States and lived for much of his life in England. He was attacked by the Mexican right (especially Enrique Krauze) on the bizarre count of being too elegant and dapper to be a true leftist, and by the left for packaging a stereotyped Mexico:

… depicting [...] a mythological and stereotypical image of Mexico as a neocolonial, violent and corrupt country, an image [...] believed was designed to appeal to Fuentes’ growing numbers of U.S. and European readers.

On the other hand, Fuentes — who supported Vicente Fox in 2000, was supporting AMLO in this year’s election. and was once branded a “reconquistador” by the lunatics at Fox News (for once giving a learned talk on Mexican cultural influence on the United States) and Vicente Fox’s one-time Secretary of Labor, the ultra-Catholic (and ex-Fascist) Carlos Abascal, launched a personal crusade against Fuentes for daring to write a classic of young adult literature:

Abascal attacked Carlos Fuentes’ Aura, a novel of teenage angst, and a juvenile classic in Spanish literature — demanding the novel be withdrawn from Mexican schools (and getting his daughter’s private school Spanish teacher fired) because — well — there’s a crucifix on the bedroom wall where two kids have sex (er… actually, in the imagination of a teenage boy. And, being Mexican teenager, he thinks about sex in terms of Mexican bedrooms … where very likely there will be a crucifix).

Fuentes enjoyed spending the unexpected jump in his royalties for Aura (which, despite what Reed Johnson says, is not “surrealistic” any more than Henry James’ Turn of the Screw or William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” … both of which are creepy and twisted, but firmly rooted in the physical realities of this world) as he did spending the money he made over his long and successful career.

Certainly, there were tragedies. Two of his children died young, and his first marriage ended in divorce. He tried sometimes to live up to his public image as a Mexican caballero: his claims of affairs with French actresses never being taken particularly seriously and his often aloof public demeanor, coupled with his ironic vision of his country — often written while he was a safe distance away — make him one of those maddening men of letters impossible to classify.  Novelist, fabulist, political commentator, scholar and scold.  There are, as Leslie Bird Simpson famously wrote  “many Mexicos” all of which are equally valid and all of which exist simultaneously in one place.  There were many public intellectuals existing simultaneously in the one Mexican who was Carlos Fuentes Macías.

Adios, a este triste puto…

Nobody writes off el Gabo.

Talk about spin!

From Guanabee:

… last week Enrique [Peña Nieto] … gave some face at Mexico’s Ibero university, completely BOMBED and, had he stayed an extra five minutes in the campus, would have probably been lynched or stoned to death.

Of course a collective, obvious, and resounding GET THE FUCK OUT isn’t what Peña’s party took away from their candidate’s appearance at Ibero. PRI’s well-known twisted scheming is presenting the incident like a generic, mildly positive informercial:

The audience scenes may have been filmed at Ibero, but not at Peña Nieto’s speech. The young fellow in the purple shirt is Paris Piñera, a Peña Nieto campaign worker (and a student at an altogether different university). As of this writing, the youtube posting of this video garnered had 752 “likes” and 17,903 “dislikes” from 263,895 viewers.

The Ibero incident maybe hasn’t sunk in with all voters, but it certainly has raised a storm among the “wired” voters. All over the Mexican internet, but not much reported in the “mainstream” press, there are calls for an “informational march” in cities throughout the Republic next Saturday .

Billed as a “Marcha anti-Peña” or “Marcha anti-EPN”, the anonymous organizers (and more than one website appears to be from the “Anonymous” on-line collective) claims not to favor any of the other candidates, but only to be against the PRI front-runner. Several of the on-line (but off camera or disguised) spokes-people specifically say they are not supporting PRD, although it’s obvious from the comments on the several sites that the supporters are more likely to reject “PRIAN” (PRI and PAN) than the other main party.
While I haven’t heard specific denials that this is something organized by PANAL, I haven’t seen any pro-Quadri mention in the comments.

Ibero is not normally considered anti-establishment, or unfriendly territory for PRI candidates. The Jesuit-run institution counts several of the more prominent conservatives among its alumni (including Josefina Vásquez Mota), and has never been a hotbed of student unrest. In 1968, the year of student protests world-wide and especially in Mexico (and even more especially in Mexico City) it was notable mostly for not having much of anything go on and accepting the status quo. If Ibero students did show up at student protests in that era, it was a rare enough event to be noted.

So, while it’s no surprise that Peña Nieto might expect a less-than-friendly audience, the reception he received was unexpected — crowds yelling “¡Fuera! ¡Fuera!” (Get out! Get out!) and hecklers demanding answers to his role in the Atenco “civil unrest” and other repressive and questionable activities during his tenure as State of Mexico governor, as well as his ties to Carlos Salinas. Peña Nieto had to hide in a bathroom for around 20 minutes before he was hustled out the back door of the auditorium.

You would think the PRI candidate and his handlers would just say “well, that didn’t go well” and move on.  But then, that’s not the PRI way.

First up was the “outside agitator” defense.  Party spokesman Eduardo Sanchez is trying to sell the line that the protesters didn’t “fit the exact profile” of Ibero students.  Meaning… one supposes… they didn’t act like docile preppies and show proper deference.  In  other words, they acted like normal students.

Universidad Iberoamericano is located on the upscale outskirts of Santa Fé in Mexico City… an exclusive neighborhood of office parks and upscale housing. The corporate office parks out there have their own buses for their support staff  (the foreign-owned companies seemed to assume that, like the United States, secretaries and clerks and janitors had cars) … and there’s no metro running out there.  There is a bus, but you need to transfer at Chapultepec and it’s extremely crowded during the course of the day with just ordinary workers and household staff and shoppers.  Add too that access to the campus was restricted to Ibero students and staff and the credentialed media.

The OEM chain of papers (El Sol, La Prensa, etc… for better or worse, the most widely read papers in Mexico) are trying a different approach, claiming Peña Nieto’s appearance was a “success”, and a strike against the PRD, which — of course — PRI and Televisa wants to blame for the Jesuit university students doing what students are supposed to do:  question authority.

How this will change the dynamic of the election, I don’t pretend to know.  Student protests against Peña Nieto are spreading (the clip is a protest in Saltillo, put down with violence),, but I do note that even in the possibly skewed Milenio daily poll, Peña Nieto is starting to drop in the “if the election was today, who would you vote for” category, which doesn’t include undecided voters and may not accurately reflect the voting population, as there is no good way to gauge voter sentiment among groups that get most of their information from the internet, or who don’t have land lines, or simply give the name of the party to which they normally owe allegiance.  I DO know I am hearing from PRI militants (what in the U.S. would just be called party activists) who are reconsidering their choice, usually looking more at AMLO than at Vasquez Mota.

I suspect the “mainstream press” (both here and abroad) anointment of Peña Nieto as the next president of Mexico, and the assumption that the next administration would be pretty much the same as the last couple of administrations, was highly premature.

A lot can happen in the next month and a half, and I suspect a lot WILL happen.

… Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, whose new study shows that America is exporting our obesity crisis to Mexico. Coupling health statistics with U.S. export data since the North American Free Trade Agreement tore down Mexico’s agriculture trade barriers, researchers found that the Mexican market was flooded by American agribusinesses’ taxpayer subsidized commodities (corn, soybeans) and their processed derivatives. According to the report, that quickly wiped out Mexico’s local food economy, leaving its food system exactly “like the industrialized food system of the United States — characterized by the overabundance of obesogenic foods.” Not surprisingly, Mexican obesity rates have consequently skyrocketed.

David Sirota in Salon (“Our Guns and Butter Economy”

One of the greatest composers — if not the greatest — of the Mexican baroque was Portuguese.  We know little about the early life of Gaspar Fernandes other than he was born in 1566, and was a choirmaster in the Evora Cathedral before taking up a post as  organist for the Cathedral of Santiago (today’s Antigua, Guatemala) in 1599.  In 1606, he was recruited by the Cathedral of Puebla, where he worked as choir director until his death in 1629.

In Guatemala, besides arranging music by other composers for choirs, he had composed several liturgical pieces still sung today. In Puebla, he also wrote secular music, and Portuguese villancicos…  folk songs adapted for polyphonic choral singing.

Which, to take things back to those multi-ethnic Iberians and the Mexican influence on them, is nicely summed up with a Nahautl lullaby, composed in a Portuguese musical style, sung by a Catalan choir.

Capella Reial de Catalunya:   Xicochi Conetzintle Xochipitzahuac

Xicochi, xicochi, Xicochi, xicochi, Xicochi conentzintle, Xicochi conentzintle. Caumiz hui hui joco in angelos me, Caumiz hui hui joco in angelos me, Caumiz hui hui joco in angelos me, In angelos me, in angelos me. Alleluya, alleluya.

(Sleep, sleep my little child, go to sleep while the angels play their music, while the angels play for you, while the angels play.  Alleluja, allelajua).

… alas, for Peña Nieto, what they were yelling was “¡Fuera! ¡Fuera!” 

They did, however, break into applause when PRD supporters hung a banner out the window of the District Assembly building around the corner. 

(Source: SDPNOticias.com)

Gabriel Quadri does about twice as well in this poll as he does nationally, but even with being Esther’s hand-picked choice to run as presidential candidate in a party supposedly designed to keep SNTE in power (actually, to keep Elba Esther in power, and unindicted) four percent can’t be good. Especially when the union membership is backing the guy who calls Elba Esther a mafiosi and makes attacks on her union a regular part of his stump speeches is polling over 40 percent in a four-candidate field.