Down but not out
I’m having serious computer problems which I hope to have corrected by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, please browse and enjoy.
Renata Flores Rivera
Quechua singer from Ayacucho Peru.
Down, but not out
Interesting factoid…
Despite the incredibly shrinking peso (I doubt I’d ever see 10 to the dollar, as I did when I first came here 15 years ago, and even getting back to a respectable 12 -14 to the dollar is a pipe dream), Mexico’s currency is still one of the most important on the planet: more money changes hands in Mexican pesos than in Chinese Yuan:
From dusk to dawn… EPN sinks, AMLO rises (again)
If Time Magazine’s 24 February 2014 cover was a joke in Mexico when it was published, by now it must rank with the Chicago Tribune’s “Dewey Beats Truman!” headline as one of the greatest examples of wishful thinking over-riding good journalism in history. The assumption that Peña Nieto — having (with the assistance of a few million supermarket cash cards) eked out a victory over AMLO was going to “save Mexico” from its problems with corruption, crime, and economic malaise might have been the occasion for some black humor then (especially on the left), but are no joking matter now.
Two polls over the weekend, from Encuestras Grupo Reforma demonstrate just how much Peña Nieto has failed in “saving Mexico” and how much support AMLO is garnering… even now, three years before the next Presidential election.
On Friday, Alejandro Moreno and Rodrigo León informed us that, according to the polls, Enrique Peña Nieto’s approval rating had fallen another four points (to 34%) following Chapo Guzmán’s “escape”. While that’s not surprising given that in respect to his handling of the Chapo affair, a whopping 87% of citizens rate his government’s response as “bad”, what is really a shock is that among Mexican elites, Peña Neito’s approval rating overall is only 15%.
None… and we mean absolutely none… of Peña Nieto’s “reforms” have met with citizen approval, and, among the leadership, his approval rating in these areas is downright dismal. When it comes to “corruption”, the administration’s approval rating of how it handles the problem is only 3 percent… perhaps the one percenters benefitting from corruption and a few hangers on?
With such low favorability ratings, and wide-spread rejection of the government, is it any wonder that the president’s party support is also at an all-time low? A Sunday poll (a bit early considering the presidential election is three years away) showing AMLO as leading the pack, also shows that likely PRI support is only 18%. Normally (or, as normal as can be when the whole tri-party system is only a few election cycles old) PRI would be at least twice that high, with PAN trailing by a few percentage points. As it is, the three traditional main parties are all much lower than one would expect. PAN also is at 18%, with PRD (normally about 15 to 20%) likewise at only half its minimal “normal” level: 7 %.
MORENA, which didn’t even exist until this election, is the third place party, with 14% of likely voters. What makes that interesting is that MORENA is López Obrador’s party, but as a potential candidate, he’s the first choice of a full 25 to 30% of voters, and the likely winner of the 2018 elections, given any one of five potential scenarios.
Among “normal” voters, AMLO is an overwhelming favorite.
Margarita Zavala … Mrs. Felipe Calderón… who comes is second, is assumed to be a likely candidate in 2018, either for PAN or as an independent. She’s much more the favorite of the elites, but then, she doesn’t seem to make a name outside of the political elites, and — as she becomes known, may or may not poll higher.
I wonder about the choices of those “lideres”. It’s assumed AMLO, as a “populist” won’t appeal to the elites (and makes it his business to attack them), so would poll fairly low among them. Jaime Rodriquez, the independent governor of Nuevo Leon is too new a phenomenon for the voters to assess, but the “shock” to the elites of an outside candidate winning a major state has made them consider the very real possibility of an independent presidential candidate. Which leads to a second issue I have with the poll… the five scenarios presented to voters on possible 2018 candidates (all of which would make a quarter of the vote for AMLO a near-certain victory) all presume there will be an independent running for President, and that there will be five candidates. While that is possible, and I think it is likely that AMLO would receive the backing of more than MORENA (Citizens’ Movement and/or PRD and/or Nueva Alianza), there could be fewer or more candidates. While PAN’s last presidential candidate was also a woman, and a Calderónista — whether Zavela´s gender and close association with the now discredited Felipe Calderón helps or hurts, I can’t say. While Mexico “beat” the United States when it came to major parties nominating a woman for the Presidency, should Hillary Clinton (like Zavela, the spouse of a former president), become the “leader of the free world”, there could be a swell in support for her. And it is possible — something I think VERY possible — that Peña Nieto resigns for one reason or another. An internal president serving out the rest of the term who is minimally competent, could improve PRI’s standing. Or, at the very least, as happened when Emilio Portes Gil had to fill in for the assassinated Álvaro Obregón, the interim president could see it as his role to guarantee the party’s chosen leader is the winner in the regular election. On the other hand, an interim president being ineligible to ever hold the presidency again (even if his or her term was only a few months), it could take one of the potential candidates out of the running for 2018.
And… of course… this assumes the voters would actually get to chose the winner and we wouldn’t have another 1988 or 2006 (or 2012?) election when … well, let’s just say… strings were pulled… to prevent a left-wing victory.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
In the bad old days, the government would take land from indigenous communities by claiming they owed back taxes, and then resell them to foreign corporate interests. It appears now, the government just takes the land and gives it to favored national corporations.
For this we had a Revolution?
After years of demonstrations and court battles, President Enrique Peña Nieto signed an executive order this month expropriating 91 acres of what many here consider sacred land. And is it any wonder he did, residents argue. The same contractor carving through their land has held the title to the president’s family mansion, provided a house to the finance minister for zero profit and does billions of dollars in deals with the government.
Deals Flow to Contractor Tied to Mexican President, Paulina Villegas and Frances Robles, New York Times, 30 July 2015.
It was the first time in my life that I felt free. We could go anywhere we wanted, eat anywhere we wanted, do anything we wanted and not have to worry about anything. We just had a wonderful time and I owe that experience to Jorge Pasquel.
“The Untold Story of How Mexico Pushed Baseball Towards Integration”, Cesár Gónzales, Remezcla, 28 July 2015.
Our incredible shirking presidente
Peña Nieto’s magical thinking is that things will go away if you don’t talk about them. He’s wrong.
Jorge Ramos in Fusion on “Mexico’s paralyzed president”
[…]
Three crises have marked Peña Nieto’s presidency: the massacre of the Ayotzinapa students; the accusations of corruption about the house that his wife bought from a government contractor; and the escape of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera. In all three cases, Peña Nieto has shrunk – and refused to face the music.
It’s a very peculiar style of governing. Instead of handling a crisis, he hides. Instead of looking for solutions, he makes excuses. Instead of acting as a leader and assuming responsibility, he sends others to speak on his behalf.
[…]
Peña Nieto’s magical thinking is that things will go away if you don’t talk about them. He’s wrong. He doesn’t like to talk about the drug-related violence, but since he took office, more than 40,000 Mexicans have been killed, according to official data. Peña Nieto and his advisors think they are back in 1968 or 1988, when leaders were able to hide reality by keeping silence or censoring the media. That’s not the case anymore. The social media overwhelm them, and courageous Mexican journalists denounce abuses. And the international media won’t let the leaders lie.
The least we can ask from a president is to preside, to be accountable and not to hide. Facing a series of crises in Mexico, Peña Nieto has been a paralyzed president – almost irrelevant.
A boy’s best friend is his mother
Apologies (one more) to Marty Robbins
So Trump will go walking the streets of Lardo
Trump will go touring the streets of Lardo
This Thursday we’ll see him sportin’ his rug
Perched like a dead possum on top of his mug.
Oh come all you crazies and TEA party loons
For The Donald himself will be singing his tunes
On how the Mes’cans are all out to kill us
And rape us, and otherwise kick up a fuss
You’ll know by the outfit that turns out to cheer him
That anyone sane from Laredo will know his a flim-
flan man from New York, and though it’ll be YUUUGE
That he’s just a pendejo with nothing but bilge…
(and so on, and so forth)
Sr. Guzmán has left the building
The story being given out — that somehow someone managed to dig a 1.5 Km tunnel (just under a mile) from outside Altaplano Prison into Chapo’s shower… UNDETECTED — is shall we say, an unprecedented opportunity for Mexicans to indulge in mordant humor?
Even His Excellency, Bishop Raúl Vera, has turned stand-up comic, suggesting the country build a monument to Chapo… who by his escape has shown the world how very corrupt both the penitentiary system and the “high echelons of power” are in this country.
It’s hard to believe, and it appears almost none of those who make their living following the narco-biz, do believe the official story. Under the jokes there is the sense that the “great escape” is the final straw in any belief that the present administration is competent to deal with national issues.
Bishop Vera, and most commentators see Chapo’s disappearing act as an obvious sign that he has the money and resources to “corrupt” anyone. No doubt he does, and no doubt that is an issue that needs to be addressed. But is it simply “corruption”?
There are those who think the government (ours, or that of the United States) may have preferred Chapo to return to his role as “first among equals” and mediator of the various enterprises known as the Sinaloa Cartel. For the Mexican government, which is reluctantly in the “drug war” business, an organized export system is less harmful than the disorganized (and deadly) system in which rival gangs fight over export routes.
And for the United States? Besides allowing the U.S. government to justify intervention in Mexico under the guise of “assistance”, there are other advantages for them if Chapo is out of prison. In some ways, having a clear “chain-of-command” makes life easier for U.S. law enforcement types. As Paul Imeson mentions in his forthcoming book Blood and Betrayal (Montezuma Books, 2015, ISBN: 978-1-937799-96-0), the “cartels” are more or less a fiction, being simply various gangs that co-operate in various criminal activities. The fiction of a “cartel” makes it possible to create operations charts and to rank various criminal bands in a hierarchy, thus simplifying resource allocation (and justifying expenses for anti-drug bureaucracies).
And, it should be pointed out that Chapo out of prison is less a threat to powerful interests than Chapo would be in prison. Lydia Cacho , for one, addresses the meme being floated (mostly by foreigners. as far as I can tell) that Chapo should have been extradited to the United States… supposedly the land of inescapable prisons (I guess because they’re run by private corporations, the government might demand a refund for escapees). Given the huge reluctance of U.S. prosecutors to look into the financial institutions that handle Chapo’s earnings (U.S. and British banks, for the most part), and their determination not to seriously pursue criminal charges against bankers, there is no reason to presume that Chapo, in the U.S. would be tried in a court, where he might mention these matters. I think it highly likely, that in US custody, Chapo’s fate would be that of Vicente Zambada Niebla. Zambada Nieba, son of Chapo’s closest associate (or possible rival), “El Mayo”, Ismael Zambada García, was “disappeared” into the U.S. prison system after he started to talk about the U.S. banking and DEA cooperation with the “cartel” in open court. I don’t think it is so much Chapo feared extradition to the U.S. as U.S. prosecutors feared Chapo.
At any rate, my thinking is that Chapo by now is back in the Sinaloan hill country. While I might not like his business, give the devil his due. USAnians positively want (or need) the products supplied by Chapo and his associates, and USAnians have always admired those poor boys who make themselves rich supplying their consumer needs, and tend to overlook what it took to get rich. Sure, Andrew Carniege and John D. Rockefeller had the “law” on their side when massacres were carried out to further their business interests, and Minor Keith didn’t build the United Fruit Company by anything other than corrupting officials and killing those in their way… they have their monuments. Perhaps Chapo does, too.
Not only are Mexico City taxis hot pink and white, now at least some of them are electric…
The first twenty electric Nissans go into service today.
Although the rates are the same as other taxis, there is another difference, these taxis part of the district’s “Servicio de Transporte Eléctricos” which also operates the trolley system, so the electric taxis will only be running the same hours as the trolleys: 5:30 AM to 11:30 PM.