Little Big Brother
Reuters photo by Stefan Rouseau
Mexico, unlike other major Latin American nations, is supportive of British plans for “reforming” the International Monetary Fund rather than looking at new and different economic systems, like the pan-Latin Bank of the South.
With Brazilian President Lula de Silva’s impolitic remarks about blue-eyed white bankers putting him in the British doghouse, the president of the “other” large Latin American nation is being given the royal treatment ahead of next week’s G-20 Summit in London.
Felipe Calderon is being housed with the nice elderly couple at Buckingham Palace, where he told his hostess that “Mexico has returned to its role as the natural leader in the region [Latin America] and will be playing an important role in multilateral conferences.”
Mrs. Windsor, or “Reina Isabella” as she’s styled in these parts, responded that Great Britain was prepared to assist Mexico in taking a more integral role in world affairs. The Queen didn’t plunk down any cash, but she did give Calderon a lovely gift, a first edition of George Orwell’s 1984.
The British are known for their dry wit, but presenting the Mexican President with Orwell’s dystopic novel about duplicitious language used to justify control by competing hyper-states, might not be a joke.
Maybe the British just want to sell more security cameras. Just saying.
mexfiles.net 
Do you know anything I (we) don’t know that might further explain this strange gift? All I can think of is that it might be a warning Calderón that the Big Powers are veering towards a Big Brother world and they might be better off without IMF. Also, how do you think Lula will take Calderóns declaraion of his own role?
Orwell is said to be Calderon’s favorite English writer. What to make of that I don’t know.
I’m perseverating on this, but can you tell me where you learned this? My dim high school memories of 1984 and Animal Farm didn’t seem to provide any reason why Orwell should be Calderón, the PANista’s, favorite author. So I Googled of course and found a website with all Orwell’s writings and read one essay called On Nationalism which certainly wouldn’t make Orwell a favorite of either Calderón or the Queen as far as I could tell, though it was an interesting essay in a kind of British-assertive mold. It was a good reminder that the nutty right in the US is not a new phenomenon and that such a phenomenon doesn’t depend on ignorance to exist.
So if you can tell me where I might find out more about Calderón than I have in the first three pages of Google I would appreciate it. (He did write a book, by the way, called “The Disobedient Son.” I suspect it has to do with returning to the folds of PAN after his father left it. It’s not available for my Kindle. I will have to check a local bookstore.)