tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95875162024-03-07T08:54:02.329-05:00Latin America: Economy and SocietyRodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-72011491910814484802012-05-13T23:21:00.000-04:002012-05-13T23:21:37.543-04:00Obsessed about TwitterAfter the rather mediocre presidential debate, life in Mexico has plunged into one of those moments when one can see how immature Mexican democracy is.<br />
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The debate, unlike what happens in other democratic societies, displayed at once, the stiffness and shallowness of our public life.
Stiffness, because the underlying problems were left untouched, since each candidate had less than 30 minutes and there was no real exchanges among the participants.
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Shallow, because on top of wasting, <a href="http://noticias.terra.com.mx/mexico/politica/elecciones/sucesion-presidencial/ife-gasta-4-millones-de-pesos-en-primer-debate-presidencial,59e6b83836937310VgnVCM3000009acceb0aRCRD.html">four-million Mexican pesos</a> (more than 300, 000 USD), the presence of Playboy playmate Julia Orayén, the usher of the debate, gave a glimpse of how the top bureaucrats at IFE, the country’s top election authority, perceive themselves as <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/414026/may-09-2012/mexico-s-debate-playmate">entitled to such perks</a>.<br />
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IFE, far from acknowledging the seriousness of its task, insists on acting as if it the Mexican democracy was robust and solid.
But not only IFE.
The main parties also show stiffness and shallowness.<br />
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The best place to watch how stiff and superficial political life is in Mexico is the social media, a much distorted mirror of what happens in Mexico.
Before a detailed analysis the Mexican social media and the stiff and shallow approach of the parties, it is important to note that, according to the information available in the <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/venturis/amipci-hbitos-de-los-usuarios-de-internet-en-mxico-2011">AMIPCI 2011 survey</a>, only 29 percent of the Mexican households have at least one computer.<br />
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About 21 percent of the Mexican households have Internet access, providing access to just over 31 million people.
Internet users tend to be mostly males, living in cities of more than 100 thousand people. They are very young, a good number underage. Many of them are members of families with medium to high income and a good number of them live in Mexico City or the State of Mexico. These numbers depict the <a href="http://www.itesm.mx/sistema/cms/snc/docs/WIP2011.pdf">proverbial Internet/technology gap between Mexico City’s metro area and the rest of the country</a> (see page 7).<br />
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Another important fact is that the <a href="http://consulta.mx/web/index.php/estudios/mexico-opina/507-usuarios-de-redes-sociales-encuesta-nacional-en-viviendas">interest in politics among users of social media is markedly higher</a> (16 percent), actually the double, as compared with people not participating in social media.<br />
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That is why it is more surprising that the three main political parties are spending so much time, money and energy in trying to dominate, to “colonize”, the Internet, the social media and, more specifically, Twitter.<br />
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This week provided a good chance to see how futile these efforts to “colonize” the Internet are since, right after the debate, someone published a video of one of the so-called “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RzehWtTtwc">Twitter farms</a>” in Mexico.
One can listen in this video a soft-spoken boss instructing others about fighting a couple of Twitter hash-tags criticizing, Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, the PRI.<br />
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The video is just over a minute-long, and is almost impossible to understand what is actually happening in the room.
One cannot tell whether the people in the room are volunteers, as PRI officials said or if, as many assume, they are workers or “cyber-hauled” (ciberacarreados) operating accounts in social media to win the so-called Trending Topics.<br />
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What is clear to the educated user in Twitter in Mexico is that PRI tries very hard to give the impression of a unanimous support to their candidate, pretty much the way it used to be back in the 1960s or the 1970s.
The video confirms the suspicions many have expressed had about the PRI’s social media strategy, as there are way too may accounts supporting Peña Nieto which only post information or ideas favorable to Peña Nieto.<br />
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These accounts lack pictures or use photographs of professional models taken from other websites, so they are easily spotted as not related to real users.
Moreover, there is a deep chasm between the profile of those who could vote for Enrique Peña and the profile of Mexican Internet users and, more specifically, of <a href="http://blogs.eluniversal.com.mx/weblogs_detalle15861.html">social media users in Mexico</a>.<br />
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This gap combined with the false sense of unanimous support to Peña Nieto in Twitter reveals the PRI’s intention to manipulate, to lie, about their ability to communicate.
PRI communication in social media lacks meaning. It, merely repeats slogans and ideas in a way leading many to wonder what else is the PRI willing to create this false sense of unanimous support.
Social media users rightly feel cheated and, given their academic achievement, income, and political preferences, they do not hesitate to worry about the risk of allowing the PRI to act like that.<br />
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On top, one needs to add the growing tensions between the old and the new media just emerging in Mexico. Conflicts between old and new media are not new, but they are more severe in Mexico because the old media is much more dependent on public resources transferred to them by the municipal, <a href="http://mexico.cnn.com/nacional/2012/02/21/11-estados-mexicanos-duplicaron-su-gasto-en-publicidad-de-2005-a-2010">state</a>, and <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2011/03/%C2%BFa-cuanto-equivale-el-gasto-en-publicidad-del-gobierno-federal/">federal</a> levels of government. See also the paper published by the NGO <a href="http://www.articulo19.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=258:gasto-en-publicidad-oficial-en-los-estados-opaco-y-multimillonario&catid=5:boletines">Article 19</a>.
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It is a very unfavorable situation, aggravated by the way in which press offices allocate their budgets, and by the brutal concentration of income making very difficult for small and medium-size businesses to invest resources in advertising.
This is not just a matter of perceptions. As I said two weeks ago, there are on-going projects to analyze what happens in social media in Mexico.<br />
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One of such projects is <a href="http://www.monitoreoelectoralmexico.com/">Monitoreo Electoral en México</a> (Monitoring Elections in Mexico), which shows that both the PRI and PAN presence in Mexican social media does not reflect the activity of real, flesh and blood, users but rather the operation of social media farms like the one in the video I referred previously.<br />
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The rather shallow and conceited attitude of the Mexican political parties has come to generate “Trending Topics wars” that have been solved following three logics. PRI has resorted to using so-called BOTS, which are programs generating fake users and to using so-called “social media farms”, and a very active presence in social media of some of its regional leaders.<br />
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The ruling party, PAN, also uses BOTS. It has displayed some level of coordination of its grass-roots membership, with some presence of key congresspersons and top-cabinet officials. However, Ms. Josefina Vázquez-Mota’s BOTS strategy, an attempt to match Peña Nieto’s follower numbers in Twitter, <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/animal-electoral/2012/04/24/aumenta-vazquez-mota-87-mil-seguidores-en-twitter-de-un-dia-a-otro/">ended up in a major gaffe</a>.<br />
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The weakness of Ms Vázquez-Mota social media strategy is only one of the PAN candidate’s problems. She had the worst “post-debate” performance of the four presidential candidates, which included his appearance in “Third Degree”, the news commentary and analysis show of Televisa, the media monopoly in Mexico.<br />
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During the interview, Ms Vázquez-Mota not only refused to distance herself from Felipe Calderon’s administration. She even regretted the fact that Mexican law prevents the acting president from attending campaign rallies and events.
Ms Vázquez-Mota decided to become the heir of the Calderón administration legacy, despite the fact that she has been unable to match Peña Nieto and despite the fact she is now trailing Mr Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the<a href="http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/noticias2011/ba3affde584f0c18a954d6a77766851a"> Milenio daily poll</a>.<br />
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Her situation is so difficult now, that voices talking about replacing her as candidate have multiplied. The problem here is, Who could become the PAN new candidate? If Ernesto Cordero decides to step in he will have to fight the ghost of his unfortunate statements about <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?m=nota&id_nota=716177">how some families survive on six thousand pesos (450 USD) a month salary</a>. Who else then? Could Margarita Zavala, the Mexican First Lady, step in? Would Diego Fernandez de Ceballos come back from his retirement?<br />
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What many panistas are unwilling to acknowledge is that the problem is not Ms Vázquez-Mota, but the heavy, unsustainable burden of 60 000 dead from the futile war on drugs and, above all, the dismal performance of the economy. Mexican economy has been unable to create formal, well-paid, jobs. As the National Statistics Office, INEGI, acknowledged, during the last twelve months, <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2012/05/11/1145174-se-suman-763-mil-personas-al-sector-informal-inegi">763 000 persons joined the informal, so-called, “black” economy</a>.
With those numbers, there is no way for any ruling party to win.<br />
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PAN should acknowledge that Josefina is not a miracle worker. Moreover, Josefina would have to acknowledge the risks involved in being the heir of the current government’s legacy.<br />
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However, not only PAN and PRI make mistakes, the left too. Although no there are no documented cases of BOTS or “social media farms”, Mr. Lopez Obrador is, as I said two weeks ago, the “king of Twitter” in Mexico.
And indeed, the left, specifically the left in Mexico City dominate at its pleasure the Mexican social media. There is no real need to inflate the Twitter Trendinr Topics with hash tags pushed in social media “farms”, because the left has a “natural” majority of users identified with Mr. Lopez Obrador and Mr Miguel Mancera, the left mayoral candidate in Mexico City.<br />
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However, something that left the City has failed to understand since last year, when <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/america/2011/07/04/mexico/1309746907.html">Eruviel Avila swept the gubernatorial race in Mr. Peña Nieto home State of Mexico</a>, is that the reality in Mexico City is vastly different from the rest of the country, including that of State of Mexico municipalities within the Mexico City metro area.
That is why leftist social media users discredit almost all polls. They do not understand, as an example, why there might be people who want to cast a vote for the PRI.<br />
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The main problem for the Mexican left in Twitter is the fact that their dominance turns into insults, verbal aggression, and even bullying of whoever breaks rank with what the left perceives as politically correct.
This was evident in the reactions to the unfortunate episode that starred Enrique Peña Nieto and a group of people at Mexico City’s Universidad Iberoamericana campus.<br />
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The protest was not spontaneous. Far from it, it was prepared as a series of activities to <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/39432.html">express rejection to the PRI presidential candidate</a>. However, rather than arguing with Peña and his ideas, a dynamic of insults and verbal aggressions broke out in the Iberoamericana campus.<br />
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As this was unfolding in the Jesuit University in Mexico City, in Twitter, PAN supporters allied themselves with the left to insult the PRI presidential candidate, despite the fact that Felipe Calderon has been repeatedly the target of insults from the left.
It is hard to know what will happen from now on. I have, however, some questions. what is the limit, if there is any limit at all, of the harassment strategy in Twitter? Is the left aware of the fact that there is a deep disconnection between the “Republic of Love” proclaimed by Mr. López Obrador and the active and systematic harassment in Twitter?<br />
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As far as PRI is concerned, would it be too hard to acknowledge that Twitter is not PRI territory and to stop using social media farms and BOTS to generate the false impression of an overwhelming majority supporting Peña Nieto? Does PRI realize how harmful is their leader’s obsession with unanimous support for their candidates? Will they ever acknowledge how this behavior comes out as harassment?<br />
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Does PAN will ever acknowledge that they have been ruling for almost twelve years Mexico? Will they ever acknowledge how unable they have been to do what people expected from them? Will they keep blaming PRI for their misadventures? Will they ever learn to admit their own mistakes? Will they take advantage of the remaining seven of weeks before Election Day?<br />
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Will the left acknowledge that Twitter is not Mexico? Will they acknowledge that rather than insisting on showing how much they hate Enrique Peña or Felipe Calderon they should be concerned, for example, with having enough representatives for <a href="http://www.ife.org.mx/documentos/DECEYEC/septimo_VIII_3_15.pdf">little more than 120 000 polling stations</a>? Something that, incidentally, they were unable to do back in 2006.<br />
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What is clear is that Mexican politics are far from being as mature as circumstances require and we get lost, sadly, in scandals which do not facilitate solving the country's problems.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-14887855295148394312012-05-06T02:03:00.000-04:002012-05-06T02:03:09.743-04:00Debates, Institutions, and DistrustJust a few hours before the first presidential debate one should stop and think how we come to this date. It is hard to face it, but there are little or no expectations about what might happen in the debate. One of the most prestigious political marketing consultants in Mexico, <a href="http://about.me/GiselaRubach">Gisela Rubach</a>, put it briefly in her Twitter account: "<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/GiselaRubach/status/197802463158476800">This Sunday’s debate will determine who is gets the number 2 slot</a>".<br />
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In other words, do not expect too much of a debate with a rather stiff format. A debate where <a href="http://mediosenmexico.blogspot.mx/2012/04/cuidan-imagen-de-candidatos-durante.html">cameras will be zoomed in on whoever is talking</a>, most likely without a boom, an open microphone, so you will only hear whoever is on your TV screen, and, with nothing but 30 minutes for each candidate.
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In such a short time, candidates most probably will reiterate the general lines of their campaign ads. Ms. Vazquez Mota will insist in that she is “different”, but will not tell us why she is. Mr. Enrique Peña Nieto will tell us that he does not want to split the country, without any explanation. Mr. Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador will tell us that both PAN and PRI are nothing but the same and that we must vote for him.<br />
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The organizers keep telling us that there will be exchanges; but with 30 minutes per candidate it will be difficult to go beyond the same platitudes that have marred the presidential contest. It is hard to expect any change because <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/92535233/Ife-Preguntas-Debate">the questions for the debate</a> are extremely broad, allowing the candidates to avoid, with relative ease, any specific or technical answer. There are no mechanisms to force some degree of technical precision.<br />
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If they offer a million or one million and a half jobs, there is no way to force them to tell us how they will achieve such goals.
A basic comparison between the debate in Mexico and the debate between François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy in France is shocking. Here in Mexico each candidate will have 30 minutes.<br />
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The French candidates had 75 minutes per person, plus the time to each of the two moderators. That is without taking in consideration that the French debate had wide camera shots, open microphones, and the very setup of the TV studio. In Paris, everything seemed to facilitate the discussion. In Mexico City, everything seems to preclude any exchange. Moreover, in Paris the moderators had the authority to force answers from either Sarkozy or Hollande.<br />
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In light of these differences it should not surprise the arrogance of Mexican TV mogul Ricardo Salinas Pliego <a href="http://eleconomista.com.mx/sociedad/2012/05/04/debate-no-interesa-mayoria-mexicanos-salinas-pliego">who decided not to broadcast the debate</a> in any of the two TV Azteca national networks.
To this sad story of the Mexican presidential debate one should add yet another problem: the conflicting distrust in the two highest authorities on electoral matters in Mexico.<br />
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First, the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, has been far too lenient with the parties and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. The Federal Electoral Tribunal, Trife, on the other hand issued on the early hours of this Saturday, May 5th, a rather troublesome ruling forbidding the IFE from carrying a “<a href="http://www.te.gob.mx/comunicacionsocial/boletines/boletines_prensa.asp">quick count</a>” after the election.<br />
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The ruling came after the Democratic Revolution Party, the largest left-to-center party in Mexico, filed a complain against the the IFE’s decision to carry the the" quick count ", as it has been done in previous presidential elections.
This ruling raises several questions. Why the PRD filed the complain when it should be interested in giving certainty to the election? This question raises more questions:<br />
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Does Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-to-center candidate asked for this? What reason could there be to maim the electoral authority? Was this a decision pushed by Manuel Camacho Solis, the broker of the endless struggles of the Mexican left? Was this a decision of the national leadership of the PRD? If so, is this yet another expression of the endless struggle between Mr López Obrador and the PRD leaders?<br />
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There are too many questions and all very difficult to answer. One needs to keep in mind that eliminating the IFE’s "quick count" does not preclude the parties or any pollster from organizing their own "quick counts". Killing the IFE’s "quick count" will generate a period, who knows how long, of uncertainty about the election.The electoral court's reasoning is rather poor. The judges say that "<a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/845475.html">IFE used a fuzzy reasoning when it approved the quick count</a>".<br />
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However, it is hard to understand the judges ruling, but even if they are right, this does not invalidate, on the one hand, the need to have a "quick count" as complement all the other <a href="http://www.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ifev2/menuitem.92faac40ea85399517bed910d08600a0/?vgnextoid=b013ddf681136310VgnVCM1000000c68000aRCRD">tools available to the public on Election Day to know who wins the election</a>. On the other hand, it does not invalidate the "quick count" technique as such.<br />
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The Trife had a choice to demand a better implementation of the “quick count”. What is ludicrous is to say that we can forget about the “quick count”. The Trife seems to be out of touch regarding the overall trust in the Mexican electoral authorities. Trust is not the fruit of isolated acts. It needs redundancy, that is to say, it needs systems and instruments supporting other systems and instruments if they fail.<br />
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I do not know if the judges are too influenced by the overall perception that the election is already decided with a wide margin, but that would be absurd. Although all the available surveys give a wide lead Mr. Peña Nieto, that advantage will narrow, so the need for exit polls, “quick counts”, and other instruments will be higher.<br />
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Having a "quick count" organized by the electoral authority could be extremely useful to avoid the kind of uncertainty we had back in 2006.
The electoral authorities, IFE and Trife, have been unable to promote trust in their actions. IFE, as an example, has been extremely weak in its dealing with media mogul Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Trife’s ruling on the “quick count” far from strengthening the IFE, its administrative pair, weakens it further.
One should keep in mind that IFE has been hostage of the levity, arrogance, and diva attitudes of some of the council members.<br />
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In March, as an example, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/837083.html">the council members were forced to put some limits</a> to the astronomical bonds and perks they were going to assign themselves after the election.
These excesses were tamed only after the public outrage at the council members was way too evident.
It is worth keeping in mind that trust in IFE is still recovering from the 2006 slump brought by the fickleness and irresponsible behavior of then Chairman, <a href="http://www.letraslibres.com/revista/libros/asi-lo-vivi-de-luis-carlos-ugalde">Luis Carlos Ugalde</a>.<br />
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Now, according to data from Consulta Mitfosky polls, only 28 percent of Mexican citizens trust the IFE, 41 percent have some trust on the electoral authority and <a href="http://consulta.mx/web/images/eleccionesmexicopdf/13_Variables_abril_4.pdf">27 percent have little or no trust in IFE</a> (see third chart on page 7 of report).<br />
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These numbers are very bad for an institution as important as IFE should be and if one adds the decision to ban the "quick count", there is little or no chance to overcome the effects of the 2006 election night.
And the worst part is that 24 hours before the debate, instead of talking about what the candidates are telling us, we are talking about the lack of trust in the electoral authority. Take counselor Marco Antonio Baños’s behavior.<br />
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Far from contributing to improve the overall conditions in which the election will happen, he seems to be determined to encourage confrontation. <a href="http://sociedad.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/nueva-respuesta-al-consejero-electoral-marco-antonio-banos/">One only needs to see his exchanges</a> with <a href="http://rtrejo.wordpress.com/">Raul Trejo Delarbre</a>, a prestigious scholar at UNAM’s Institute of Social Research.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-18097269818301125782012-04-29T15:20:00.005-04:002012-04-30T02:51:35.858-04:00The end of the first thirdMexico is at the end of the first third of the presidential campaign. It is time to measure what the candidates and their parties have done so far.<br />
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The worst performance of the electoral season comes from Josefina Vazquez Mota, the right-to-center candidate of the incumbent party. Her campaign has been marred since day one with the failed inauguration of her campaign at the Estadio Azul in Mexico City.
Ms. Vázquez Mota campaign has been a string of errors without some counterweight suggesting that things will get better from here on. Something that would have allowed her to hint where she wanted to go was to distance herself from Fernando Larrazábal, the former mayor of Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest metropolitan area. <a href="http://www.sinembargo.mx/12-04-2012/205213">Far from it, Ms. Vázquez Mota kept Mr. Larrázabal close during a campaign drive in Monterrey.</a><br />
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In doing so, she protected and endorsed Mr. Larrazábal. Keeping Larrázabal away was important for Ms. Vázquez Mota because she has been pushing to eliminate the full-blanket immunity protecting all Mexican top-level officials. Far from breaking with Larrázabal, the conservative candidate endorsed him as a candidate for the House. Moreover, Ms. Vázquez Mota has failed to understand how to operate and work around the social networks.<br />
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This was clear, for example in the episode at Tres Marias, which quickly spread through social networks, while her team tried to counter with an “old media” approach, including carefully edited videos aimed at discrediting what had been published in Twitter already.
More recently, it was noteworthy how <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2012/04/aumenta-jvm-87-mil-seguidores-en-twitter-de-un-dia-a-otro/">she added more than 87,000 new followers on Twitter, on a single night!</a> Most of these new followers, however, were newly created accounts, publishing nothing but information related to Vázquez Mota, nothing but BOTS.<br />
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The remainder of Ms. Vázquez Mota campaign has been a regrettable string of errors and mishaps coming out of her campaign manager, Roberto Gil Zuarth. The have been some snapshots of what her campaign could have been: <a href="http://www.informador.com.mx/mexico/2012/372765/6/josefina-reitera-propuesta-de-eliminar-fuero.htm">the removal of the full-blanket immunity</a>. These flashes, however, give no hope of a consistent performance in the immediate future.<br />
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The PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, has hardly had a setback and, most of them do not go beyond some minor exchanges in either Twitter or Facebook. He has been severely criticized for his unwillingness to grant interviews with impartial journalists and he avoids going deep to explain some of his proposals. The only exception was the interview with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVsmCwwEAAw">Ciro Murayama for the National University TV channel</a>.<br />
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Overall, Peña Nieto appears as an unsinkable battleship. The latest accusation seems to come out of a 1978 film by Arturo Ripstein, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076336/">The Hell with No Limits</a>, inspired by a José Donoso novel. The film broke several taboos at its time for Roberto Cobo’s performance as a transvestite.
In real life, Enrique Peña is accused of having sustained a homosexual relationship with a teacher in his native State of Mexico and of ordering or consenting a severe attack on the professor, <a href="http://www.losangelespress.org/victima-de-homofobia-cuenta-su-relacion-con-enrique-pena-nieto/"> who now lives as a refugee in the U.S.</a><br />
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It is not clear what will happen with this accusation, and as Guadalupe Lizárraga tells in her account of the story, <a href="http://www.losangelespress.org/medios-y-diputados-sabian-de-violaciones-de-derechos-humanos-de-pena-nieto-en-caso-estrada/">several Mexican and US media dismissed the story</a>. There is an <a href="http://www.losangelespress.org/enrique-pena-nieto-desestimo-observaciones-de-la-cidh-sobre-caso-de-homofobia/">ongoing judiciary process</a>, but it is not clear what will come out it.
What is clear is that, until now, is that the Peña Nieto battleship remains unsinkable. All the available surveys tell a story in which Peña keeps a comfortable lead and the changes happen among people who originally were on the Vázquez Mota camp now moving to Mr. López Obrador side.<br />
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Apparently, the Vázquez Mota campaign acknowledges this and that is way now she throws punches at both Peña Nieto <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=305619">and López Obrador</a>.
Peña is sticking to his “I will not divide Mexico” plea and there seems to be little or no reason for him to change. However, despite all this advantages the PRI campaign also has trouble figuring out how to behave in the social networks.<br />
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It is possible to see among Mr. Peña Nieto supporters a certain attempt at crushing their opponents. One possible reason for this is the PRI interest in winning both the presidential and the congress elections, by locking at least the 42.2% of the congressional votes.
However, even if this is the case, it hard to understand why the PRI is acting the way they do.<br />
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The most pessimistic available estimates give the PRI-Greens coalition 266 out of 500 seats in the House. The most optimistic scenario gives them up to 303 seats in the House. In any of both scenarios, the PRI-Greens coalition will have enough votes to pass any bill, provided it does not involve amending the Constitution, since they will also control the Senate.<br />
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Finally, Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador had a very good performance during the first month of campaigning. The most important is to eradicate the perception that Mr. López Obrador is a radical. Even the polls of the Reforma group of newspapers, that frequently punish leftist candidates, acknowledge a remarkable improvement in Mr. López Obrador performance. In the Covarrubias y Asociados poll, a pollster close to the Mexican left, he appears in a tie with Ms. Vázquez Mota.<br />
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However, there are also some problems. As with the other candidates, Lopez Obrador has troubles figuring out how to manage his presence in the social networks. If one wants to find reasons not to believe the argument of the “Republic of Love” all one needs to do is to follow some Twitter and Facebook die-hard accounts to see how they attack and insult anyone who dares to criticize their presidential candidate, revealing intolerance.<br />
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It is hard to think that a presidential candidate will get a free pass on each of their proposals.
The most loyal to Mr. López Obrador would do well to acknowledge what <a href="http://www.monitoreoelectoralmexico.com/">www.monitoreoelectoralmexico.com</a> reveals clearly. This Web site is part of an academic project to understand the role of social networks. They use the Twitter feed to provide a living picture of the campaigns in that social network.
The most interesting fact is in its page “<a href="http://www.monitoreoelectoralmexico.com/mexico_twitter.html">If Mexico was Twitter</a>”, as it tells us that as far as Twitter is concerned Mr. López Obrador is king.<br />
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The Website has devised an algorithm allowing to measure actual, real, activity on Twitter, i.e. the activity resulting from discounting BOTS accounts. In doing so, Mr. López Obrador has a 40.24% of the activity, Peña Nieto has 36.08%, and Vazquez Mota gets 23.68%<br />
<br />
These numbers obviously do not correspond to those of most of the surveys available in Mexico that place, all of them, Peña as the leader of the pack, with Vázquez Mota and López Obrador struggling for the second position. The numbers coming out of www.monitoreoelectoralmexico.com about the activity on Twitter reveal how effective has been the López Obrador campaign to attract sympathizers, but also reveals that there is a huge gap between the activity at Twitter and what happens outside of Twitter.<br />
<br />
Internet access in Mexico, including the so-called smart phones, is heavily biased due to income.
Another aspect that talks about the intolerance of some of the most faithful to AMLO can be seen in the way they whip unfavorable polls, while they happily cheer at the surveys giving an overwhelming advantage to their candidate in the Mexico City mayoral race, Mr. Miguel Mancera.<br />
<br />
One key flaw is that none of the candidates has presented a glimpse of how they expect to have the moneys to keep their promises for better and new services. None of the candidates has told how they will fund such promises. <a href="http://www.24-horas.mx/asegura-amlo-que-ganara-100-mil-pesos-si-llega-a-la-presidencia/">López Obrador keeps telling that he will reduce the salaries of top officials of the executive branch</a>, but there is no way such cuts will be enough, especially since he is promising lower prices of electricity <a href="http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/Nacional/25042012/587847.aspx">and gasoline</a>. Lower wages of public officials is positive, necessary and possible, but these economies are not enough to fund his proposals. All candidates must explain how they will finance their proposals.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0Plaza de La Constitución G, Centro, Cuauhtémoc, 06000 Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico19.4326077 -99.13320819.1930247 -99.44906499999999 19.672190699999998 -98.817351tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-53529350630169259672012-04-22T03:03:00.001-04:002012-04-22T03:03:30.801-04:00Obrador is coming back<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It was easy
to see it coming. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-to center Mexican presidential
candidate is already in a virtual tie with Josefina Vázquez Mota. Actually, on
Thursday, April 19, Mr Obrador <a href="http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/noticias2011/cdb0f8d66d4a6061be57478c62c07a21">took the second position</a> in <a href="http://www.isa.org.mx/">ISA-Milenio</a> daily
presidential poll, Mexico’s <a href="http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/noticias2011/ba3affde584f0c18a954d6a77766851a">most contested poll these days</a>. The shift is the
logical outcome of both some mistakes in Ms. Mota team, and some good moves in Mr
Obrador campaign.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The key to
this change has been mr Obrador’s decision to avoid all the mistakes he did
back in 2006 and the perfect place to show his transformation was the meetings
that Obrador and the other presidential candidates had with the Roman Catholic
Bishops of Mexico.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The Mexican
Bishops hold two annual meetings, one after Easter, and the other right before
Advent. <a href="http://www.cem.org.mx/index.php/component/k2/item/1551">Mr Obrador</a> attended the meeting, paying no attention to the most radical
wing of his movement, and using it as a way to build bridges with actors that
were pretty much against him back in 2006. This approach has been successful
enough to get Mr Obrador a key endorsement from laureate <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102138_2102238,00.html">poet Javier Sicilia</a></span><span lang="EN-US">. Mr Sicilia, leader of the
<a href="http://movimientoporlapaz.mx/">Movement for Peace with Dignity and Justice</a></span><span lang="EN-US">, said that Mr Obrador <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2012/04/21/185527481-pena-nieto-en-la-presidencia-lo-peor-que-le-podria-pasar-a-mexico-sicilia">“is the best”</a>
presidential candidate in the race, although Mr Sicilia insisted that he will
void his vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Ms Mota’s
position is by far the hardest at this point, mainly because of the legacy of the current government, and the growing rebellion
in her party’s ranks. Ms Mota is not only competing against other registered
candidates (Obrador, Nieto, and Quadri), but also against an independent
presidential candidate, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/clouthiermanuel">Manuel Clouthier</a>, who was elected in 2009 as a member
of the federal parliament. Mr Clouthier was not only a member of the same ruling
party, he is also the son of one of the Mexican right-to-center<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Clouthier"> most beloved leaders</a>. On top of that, Ms Mota faces a series of mishaps in the nomination of
parliamentary candidates, and a break-up of the relations between her party and
social leaders in the Benito Juárez borough of Mexico City that ended up with a
bloody beating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.cem.org.mx/index.php/component/k2/item/1548">Ms Mota</a>
adhered firmly to the official position of the Roman Catholic Church on
abortion and same-sex marriages. In doing so, she dismissed the poor
performance of Mexican economy and the growing concentration of income. Her
firm acceptance of the Church’s official position on abortion and same-sex
marriages probably helped her score some points with some bishops, but is very
difficult to assume the same among the public.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">As usual,
Mr. Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, the
party that ruled Mexico for seven decades, avoided any clear-cut definition. He
said that he is against abortion, but he also refused pursuing policies leading
to penalizing women who choose to have an abortion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It is
important to keep in mind that 2009 and 2010 were the years when a wave <a href="http://www.nosotrasenred.org/aborto/mapamexico.html">of reforms to state legislation in 18</a> (out of 32) states set different types of
punishments on women and doctors performing abortions. These changes came as a
response to reforms in<a href="http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Ciudad/Mexico/despenaliza/aborto/elpepuint/20070425elpepuint_3/Tes"> Mexico City in 2007-8</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Mr Nieto
unwillingness to make clear-cut definitions on key issues will be the overall
approach of his campaign from here until July 1<sup>st</sup>. It will be up to
his party to challenge his rivals’ assertions. Most notably, his party will
take care of the accusations from the ruling National Action Party claiming Mr
Nieto is a liar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Such
accusations already lead to an unusual debate among leaders of both the ruling
National Action Party and Mr. Nieto’s party in the streets of <a href="http://maps.google.com.mx/maps?hl=es&safe=off&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&q=tlalnepantla+google+maps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x85d1f794873fb4e1:0x400d7f380728180,Tlalnepantla,+MEX&gl=mx&ei=gquTT8fVIKK82wWOi5WgBQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCEQ8gEwAA">Tlalnepantla</a>, one
of Mexico’s City most crowded suburbs. The debate was brief, heated and full of
outbursts, and insults, so the moderator called it off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The ruling
party must be careful because, for better or for worse, one can verify, and
accept or reject any of the more than 600 commitments publicly signed by Nieto as
the governor of the State of Mexico, the most populated state in the Mexican
union. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">On the
other hand, one cannot do the same with most of the current national government
campaign promises. Felipe Calderón, as an example, said back in 2006 that he
was willing to become the <a href="http://www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=238128">“president of employment”</a>. One cannot verify such
statement. Moreover, the National University released this week a detailed
analysis of Mexican labor market. The study states that <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/04/19/sociedad/043n1soc">55 percent of the newjobs in the last five years were informal jobs</a>. The same study underscores that
<a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?m=nota&seccion=peso&cat=395&id_nota=827891">unemployment in Mexico grew by 33 percent over the same period</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Even when
one considers the key policy of the current administration, Mr Calderón’s war
on drugs, the results are poor. This week the United Nations High Commissioner
on Refugees set the number of persons forced out of their homes in <a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpEnvelopes)/4C0E3C51D1A69771C125795200493D30?OpenDocument&count=10000">no less than160, 000</a>. One should add to this figure any number between <a href="http://www.sinembargo.mx/11-12-2011/93525">30, 000 and 60, 000people dead </a>because of violence, on top of unreported figures of wounded,
widows, widowers, and orphans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Hence, one
should ask what is going to come out of the “mud wars”. Although such “wars”
are rather common in established democracies, it is important to take into
consideration that there is a huge deficit of trust in the Mexican electoral
authorities. Six years ago, it was very hard for Mr. Calderón to be sworn as
president in the House of Representatives, and if one is to believe in Mr.
Obrador, there was a huge risk of a break-up of social order in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">As usual,
the wildest performance of the week came from Gabriel Quadri, the candidate of
the Nueva Alianza (New Alliance) Party, who refused <a href="http://noticias.terra.com.mx/mexico/politica/elecciones/sucesion-presidencial/rechaza-gabriel-quadri-evaluacion-de-maestros,6c4f2cd1896d6310VgnVCM10000098cceb0aRCRD.html">any kind of evaluation ofthe teachers</a>. Nueva Alianza is a party funded by the coffers of the all-mighty Teacher's Union in Mexico, the <a href="http://www.snte.org.mx/">SNTE</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">One thing
to keep in mind as Mexico goes deep in the campaign season is that in France
there is a good chance that the challenger, Mr. François Hollande will beat the
incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Hollande’s candidacy is important because he
has proposed <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17189739">a bold 75% tax rate</a> on any person with a yearly income of over one-million
euros.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
This is
important because one of Mexico’s key challenges is to develop an overhaul of
the tax code. If Mr. Hollande wins in France there is a good chance that all
over Europe and, eventually in Latin America, there will be pressure to
introduce major changes in the tax code. Without such changes, it will be very
difficult for the candidates in the Mexican race to achieve any of their major
goals.<br />
<br /><span class="technoratitag"></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1152734451989471762006-07-12T15:57:00.000-04:002006-07-12T21:22:29.430-04:00The problem with Mexico: 25 thesesThe problem with Mexico and especially with Mexican elections is that:<br /><br /><ol><li>Due to poor design, mistakes of key functionaries, or lack of legitimacy, institutions remain weak.</li><li>Candidates, party leaders, and key functionaries of the federal and local governments in charge of the institutions, the federal electoral authority (Instituto Federal Electoral) included, dismissed painful recent experiences emphasizing short-term goals over long-term aims.</li><li>The election, especially the TV and radio ads, became a mudslinging contest.</li><li>The intensity of the attacks plays now a key role in preventing agreements among the political forces.</li><li>To think that “such is the modern way of a democratic polity” is misleading and appears as an ad-hoc response of the PAN to justify what was a witch-hunting campaign against López Obrador.</li><li>The TV and radio, overwhelmingly owned by private corporations, emphasize their own political agendas over their commitment with truth and the free flow of opinions.</li><li>Despite improvements in the literacy rate, the readership of newspapers and magazines is low.</li><li>Access to Internet is heavily biased by income distribution.</li><li>Numbers 4 through 8 limit our ability to communicate with each other and to reach agreements.</li><li>That is why for a large number of people, the evidence presented by the IFE and the media about the July 2nd election is hard to believe.</li><li>That is also why many Mexicans are willing to embark in vast social mobilization to challenge the outcome of the election.</li><li>Recent efforts to improve access to electronic media, via community radio stations, have been blocked by the new laws regulating the media, one of the few reforms passed during the Fox administration.</li><li>Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in a region (Latin America) known by its awful patterns of income distribution. Income distribution inequality was not invented by López Obrador and it is not true that we need to grow (more) before distributing the wealth.</li><li>Party and congressional leaders have been unable to reach agreements to introduce a major tax reform to address income distribution inequality.</li><li>Big business owners are unwilling to support reforms to address income distribution inequality.</li><li>Blaming Andrés Manuel López Obrador of preaching “class struggle” is just a partial truth.</li><li>Another partial truth is blaming Fox for not addressing the structural sources of distribution inequality or to label him as a puppet of big business.</li><li>Another partial truth is to blame the PRI for these issues.</li><li>However, the three major parties in Mexico have played a key role in preventing, at different points in time and for selfish and opportunistic reasons, tax reforms to address income inequality and to release some of the social pressure created by it.</li><li>López Obrador needs to realize that his motives are not transparent and are not equally perceived by all the political actors in the country. For many of them he is using these features of Mexican reality for selfish purposes.</li><li>Most of these failures and the source for so many partial truths come from the fact that candidates and party leaders have little or no incentives to reach agreements to confront the issues at hand, as there are much more incentives to prevent agreements.</li><li>A weak presidency combined with a strong federalism, as in contemporary Mexico, makes harder for candidates and party leaders to reach agreements and hampers the chances to consolidate democracy.</li><li>There is little or no interest among the political elites to talk about possible changes to presidentialism.</li><li>The only option presented so far to address the maladies of presidentialism, that of ballotage or a second round of presidential elections, have had negative outcomes in other countries in Latin America.</li><li>Right now, the best hope for Mexico is the Judiciary. However, a deep paradox exists there as the Judiciary was an institution heavily attacked by Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his run as mayor of Mexico City.</li></ol><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexico" rel="tag">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/pol%C3%ADtica+mexicana" rel="tag">política mexicana</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexican+politics" rel="tag">Mexican politics</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/elecciones+M%C3%A9xico+2006" rel="tag">elecciones México 2006</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com134tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1151970365634138562006-07-03T19:40:00.000-04:002006-07-03T19:46:05.653-04:00Mexico, Deep in the electoral labyrinthJuly 2, 2006 will go to the annals of Mexican history as the night that never ended.<br /><br />After more than seven decades of relatively smooth and predictable transitions from one government to the next, Mexico found itself confronted, heavily divided, and with little or no chance of a smooth solution in the near future.<br /><br />The best case scenario, as things are now in Mexico, is that populist leader <span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</span> will acknowledge what appears to be an extremely narrow but consistent defeat to share the spotlight as opposition leader with other figures of Mexican politics.<br /><br />However, the chances of such “best case scenario” are slim to none as Mr. López is known for his confrontational style and, more importantly, by his emphasis on mobilization politics. Not only that, even if he was willing to acknowledge he will have to deal still with many of his supporters who are far more radical and confrontational than him.<br /><br />That is why it is hard to think about a possible easy way out of the current impasse in the Mexican election.<br /><br />It is true, the Preliminary Electoral Results Programme (PREP, by its acronym in Spanish), has been reporting a slight advantage for the conservative candidate <span style="font-weight: bold;">Felipe Calderón Hinojosa</span> since the closing of the election booths. The advantage has been going from less than .50% to little more than 1.2%, and by Monday’s afternoon it was of little more than 300 thousand votes.<br /><br /><br />Tight rules<br />However, given the tight rules of the Mexican electoral laws, the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, was unable to declare a winner and had no confidence on its own numbers to officially declare advantage to any of the candidates. His president, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Luis Carlos Ugalde</span>, a young political scientist with little or no practical political experience, appeared twice on Mexican radio and TV to congratulate the workers of the federal electoral authority, while asking the parties and their candidates to avoid what ultimately happened.<br /><br />In the absence of official numbers, the IFE decided to wait, giving both López and Calderón a chance to be declared by their parties as winners. To make matters worse, the leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the party that dominated 70 years of Mexican politics, decided not to acknowledge the numbers provided by the PREP.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mariano Palacios Alcocer</span>, a former president of a small public university and former governor of Querétaro, asked Mr. Ugalde to avoid declaring a winner on July 2. It will be hard to believe that Mr. Palacios Alcocer had the political muscle to force something like that. Mostly, because the PRI’s candidate, a former governor of Tabasco, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Roberto Madrazo Pintado</span>, had the worse performance of any PRI presidential candidate ever.<br /><br />What was clear, however, is that neither Mr. López nor Mr. Calderón had the trust in their own numbers to go out and declare themselves winners. When they did so, both appear nervous. Mr. López’s fiery rhetoric was out, while Mr. Calderón appeared on TV sweating heavily, unable to spark his own plug. Both cited their own exit polls as sources, but at the same time, both lacked the spirit that shaped their performances during the electoral campaign.<br /><br />Extra Bandwidth<br />During Monday morning and early afternoon, Mexico has been possessed by the need for extra bandwidth to keep PCs connected to the PREP’s various mirror websites where we were able to see how the data from each of the country’s electoral booths were transmitted to the IFE’s mainframe to be displayed, almost in real time, in thousands of PCs all over the country.<br /><br />As much as the PAN was able to win both houses of the Congress, its candidate advantage over Mr. López never went beyond the 1.0%, probably in any other country that will be enough to settle the score of an election with a robust 59% turnout.<br /><br />However, in a country marred by deep and wide social divisions, one of Mr. López’s favorite campaign topics, the rather slim margin of victory of Mr. Calderón, has prompted all kinds of conspiracy theories.<br /><br />These theories find fertile ground, among many other reasons, because of the many shenanigans marring Vicente Fox’s term, most notably, his rather ludicrous attempt to promote Mrs. Fox, his wife, as his successor.<br /><br />But also—and this is very important to take into consideration—because of the perception that even before election day there was a rather robust agreement among the political and entrepreneurial elites to prevent Mr. López from becoming President.<br /><br />Many of the most important Mexican private firms in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey allowed for the participation of their employees in “seminars” whose main purpose was to “prove” the kinds of risks that electing Mr. López implied for the rather weak Mexican economy.<br /><br />Not only that, many of the largest firms exerted their own kind of veto by signaling their reluctance to invest in Mexico if Mr. López was elected. The message, however, was not powerful enough to prevent a strong performance of Mr. López, the best ever for a candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática.<br /><br />Mr. López fueled these concerns by launching bitter attacks on key leaders of the Mexican entrepreneurial elite. Most noticeable were his critiques against the former owner of Banamex, Banco Nacional de México, the eldest Mexican bank which ended up its independent life when US based Citibank swallowed the Mexican bank in a heavily contested buyout.<br /><br />This issue was particularly sensitive as later it was discovered that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Roberto Hernández</span>, one of the former owners of Banamex, was able—thanks to Mexican hole-ridden tax laws—to avoid paying any kind of tax on the huge profit that he pocketed.<br /><br />Naïve Politics<br />López Obrador was naïve enough to assume that his bitter accusations against Hernández and many other Mexican fat-cats were going to be forgiven or forgotten by the Mexican entrepreneurial elite; one of Latin America’s more organized and sensitive to any such criticisms.<br /><br />Not only that. As much as López Obrador was hitting soft-spots in the relation between Fox and key Mexican businessmen, he had a rather obscure relation with several local entrepreneurs in Mexico City. Riobóo, a local builder in Mexico City, was awarded several uncontested, unpublished contracts. Also, key members of López’s party, the Democratic Revolutionary Party were involved in a video-scandal starred by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Carlos Ahumada</span>, another local builder, who handed out undisclosed amounts of US dollars to Lopez’s underlings.<br /><br />Ahumada has been in a local Mexico City jail for the last two years, following a rather anomalous process that involved being deported from Cuba where several sources claim that Mr. Ahumada was “squeezed” by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fidel Castro</span>’s underlings. It is not clear where is the “juice” of such squeezing, but the Cuban government has acknowledged that it impounded several videos taped by Mr. Ahumada himself, where political and economic operations were recorded in painful detail.<br /><br />What is clear, then is that as much as Mr. López’s criticism of the wrongdoings of the Mexican business elite are perceived by many as legitimate, his own record is far from clear.<br /><br />The Desafuero<br /><br />Not only that. It is necessary to acknowledge that the episode of the “desafuero,” a rather arcane process, similar to an impeachment in the US political system, by which the Mexican Congress retires the immunity that high-ranking officials of the Mexican Federal and local governments have, also prompted all kinds of criticisms against Mr. López.<br /><br />Mostly because he used the powers of Mexico City’s mayoralty to mobilize media, unions, students, and the elderly (whom were benefited by a bold program of universal pensions providing little more than 60 US dollars to each person older than 65), to support him in challenging both the Congress and, more importantly, the Judiciary.<br /><br />The episode took Mr. López to the peak of his popularity in Mexico City, but sparked broad concerns in other regions of the country, as they were seen as the prelude to a new wave of populist politics in Mexico, bringing back—with the help of the media—bad memories from the 1970s and 1980s and, more importantly, linking the Mexican election with other elections in South America, particularly with Venezuela and Bolivia.<br /><br />Those memories played, months later, during the heat of the political campaign, a key role in PAN’s mudslinging media campaign presenting Mr. López as “a treat,” and/or as the inheritor of presidents Echeverría and López Portillo style of politics.<br /><br />In the end, Mr. Fox intervened blocking the accusation brought by the Judiciary against Mr. López, leaving the whole process in a politico-judiciary limbo that strained even more his government’s relation with the Revolutionary Institutional Party, a key supporter of the proceedings to stripe Mr. López from his immunity.<br /><br />In the end, the election was extremely tight. Mr. Calderón was not as attractive as a candidate as his own party, in similar fashion to Mr. Madrazo, while Mr. López out-performed the coalition of parties supporting him.<br /><br />If nothing changes in the coming hours, Mr. Calderón will be president and he will have weak but consistent support in the House and the Senate of the Mexican Congress. That will give Calderón an edge that neither Mr. Zedillo nor Mr. Fox have had in recent Mexican history, as both were confronted by powerful parliamentary groups of the PAN and the PRI, respectively, unwilling to collaborate with them.<br /><br />The PRD will be confronted with the demons of the rather loose coalition created by Mr. López, while the PRI, heavily wounded by his presidential candidate poor performance, will remain a key player in Mexican politics, although it is almost impossible for it to avoid a deep reform.<br /><br />Otherwise, if Mr. Madrazo remains in charge with no sign of a deep ideological and organizational reform, the PRI will delude rapidly through alliances with some of the other parties.<br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/M%C3%A9xico" rel="tag">México</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexico" rel="tag">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/pol%C3%ADtica+mexicana" rel="tag">política mexicana</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/elecciones+M%C3%A9xico+2006" rel="tag">elecciones México 2006</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1151353113576996912006-06-26T16:03:00.000-04:002006-06-26T16:18:33.616-04:00Mussings on the Mexican Election<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/peje.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 209px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/peje.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />With less than one week before the presidential election in Mexico, the dust begins to settle as the candidate of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</span> has sent his first conciliatory message. His message of conciliation and willingness to prevent post-electoral conflict comes as some kind of surprise as the media campaigns in Mexico reached a new low in the relatively short history of open electoral competition.<br /><br />The message reflects, on the other hand, the fact that López holds a small but consistent lead in almost all the polls taken before the poll-curfew enforced by the federal electoral authority in Mexico, the Instituto Federal Electoral.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/ELBAESTHERGORDILLO25_n.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/ELBAESTHERGORDILLO25_n.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Despite this change, it is necessary to emphasize that the Mexican election confronts unexpected challenges. The most important of them come from the Southern state of Oaxaca, where <span style="font-weight: bold;">Elba Esther Gordillo</span>, the leader of the Teachers’ Union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, decided to support long-time critics of her within the union itself as a way to “get even” with the presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institutional, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Roberto Madrazo</span>.<br /><br />Ms. Gordillo is still, nominally, a member of the PRI. Moreover, she was elected as General Secretary of the PRI at the same time that Madrazo was elected president of that party.<br /><br />However, differences in the relation with the Mexican Federal government, and more specifically with Vicente Fox, broke the feeble alliance between Madrazo and Gordillo. Since then, Mrs. Gordillo has launched a series of attacks on Madrazo that included the creation of a new party, the Partido Nueva Alianza, who was expected to capture at least 1 million votes, as that is the number of members of the Teachers’ Union.<br /><br />Despite such assumption, Nueva Alianza appears in most polls as unable to gather the minimum 1% of the overall vote to keep its registration.<br /><br />The conflict in Oaxaca has deep roots as often times the local section of the Union has confronted on several issues the leadership of Mrs. Gordillo, however, at this point they found themselves in a situation in which both Mrs. Gordillo, the raucous local 22 of the Teachers’ Union in Oaxaca, and several former governors of the state hold—for different reasons—grudges against the current governor, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ulises Ruiz</span>, and Mr. Madrazo.<br /><br />This is more important, as Oaxaca is a vital reservoir of votes for Madrazo and the PRI, so preventing a relatively smooth evolution of the election in this state means trouble for Madrazo and the PRI at large, as they really need the votes from Oaxaca to boost their performance.<br /><br />The key problem for Mrs. Gordillo, however, is that his election is showing how fragile is the hold that the old union leaders in Mexico have over their members and grass-roots organizations.<br /><br />In recent days, as an example, the leader of the Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos, decided to publicly express his support to López Obrador, a rather shocking development as the CROC has been a union relatively loyal to the PRI. So loyal, that the leader of the CROC in the Southern state of Yucatán rejected his national leader’s commitment, committing his own support to Mr. Madrazo.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Lona.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 197px; height: 262px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Lona.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />As it is frequently the case in Mexico, the intensity of the conflict in Oaxaca has been overstated by the Mexican national media and by the international media paying attention to it, as both follow their own strategies of “news building.” However, it will be foolish to assume that there is no potential in the current conflict in Oaxaca to go out of control, specially now that the local 22 of the Teachers’ Union has increased its visibility, as it was able to force the creation of a commission seeking to establish some form of dialog between the state government and the union’s leaders.<br /><br />It is interesting to stress the role that one of Mexico’s few representatives of the Liberation Theology, Bishop <span style="font-weight: bold;">Arturo Lona</span> will have, as his involvement in the solution of this issue appears as a sequel of that of the Catholic bishops during the conflict and talks in the neighboring state of Chiapas.<br /><br />The risk, of course, in those kinds of scenarios is that, as in Chiapas, opportunistic "leaders" as Rafael Sebastián Guillén, aka Subcomandante Marcos, will try to seize control of the social movement to subordinate it to his larger agenda.<br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexico" rel="tag">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/M%C3%A9xico" rel="tag">México</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/pol%C3%ADtica+mexicana" rel="tag">política mexicana</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexican+Politics" rel="tag">Mexican Politics</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/elecciones+M%C3%A9xico+2006" rel="tag">elecciones México 2006</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexican+Election+2006" rel="tag">Mexican Election 2006</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Oaxaca" rel="tag">Oaxaca</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1150772398275500532006-06-19T22:37:00.000-04:002006-06-19T23:07:36.256-04:00The Mexican Hot Summer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/fox.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 251px; height: 167px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/fox.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />On July 2, Mexico will elect President, members of the two houses of the federal congress, and an assortment of local officials in states such as Nuevo León, Jalisco, Sonora, Morelos, Chiapas, and the country’s capitol city, the Federal District.<br /><br />The election has been on the making pretty much since the end of the 2000 election, mostly because of the ability of then recently elected mayor of Mexico City, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</span>, to position himself as a “natural” candidate to succeed <span style="font-weight: bold;">Vicente Fox</span>.<br /><br />Not only that, Mr. Fox’s presidency was marred from the very beginning from a series of shortcomings. These shortcomings were connected, on the one hand, with the novelty of the whole process. After all, it was the first president elected from a party other than the Revolutionary Institutional Party in 70 years.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Caste%3F%3Feda.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 171px; height: 258px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Caste%3F%3Feda.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />There was too the issue of the lack of experience of Fox himself and key top officials of his administration, such as the former secretary of the Foreign Office <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jorge G. Castañeda</span> and the former secretary of the Interior, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Santiago Creel</span>. In addition, it was possible to notice the tensions and stress created by the constant interference of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Marta Sahagún de Fox</span>, originally the spokesperson of the Presidency and later wife of Mr. Fox. Finally, it is important to stress the role played by the very flaws in Mexican institutional.<br /><br />Here it is important to notice that it is there, in the shared fascination with the presidential regime where most of the problems associated with the performance of Latin American democracies exist. However, with the exception of specialized journals and textbooks on Latin American politics, there is little about the role that such flaws have.<br /><br />In Mexico, those flaws were tamed by the extra-legal powers of the presidency during the years of dominance of the old PRI. Sadly, many of the reforms pursued by the De la Madrid, Salinas, and Zedillo administrations actually undermined the power of the Presidency, without compensating with similar changes in the relations between the Executive and the Judiciary and, more importantly, between the Executive and the Congress.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Presidential</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Curse</span><br /><br />Consequently, the Mexican presidency as most of its peers in the Western Hemisphere has little or no way to build winning legislative coalitions. Consequently, the ability of the Executive branch to pursue its own goals is greatly reduced and it is forced to operate within the narrow spaces allowed by the Legislative’s branch ability (or lack of it) to reach agreements.<br /><br />The phenomenon has been discussed in detail in other entries of this blog as it explains many of the misfortunes of Latin American polities, especially those related with the never-end<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/andres_manuel_lopez_obrador320.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 216px; height: 288px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/andres_manuel_lopez_obrador320.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>ing conflicts between the presidents and their congresses that are at the core of the endless succession of weak presidencies in countries such as Ecuador or Bolivia.<br /><br />Moreover, in the cases of countries such as Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, with a rather strong federal design, the governors create an additional source of tension that fractionalize power and greatly reduces the ability of the Presidency to pursue its agenda.<br /><br />These flaws in the Mexican institutional design contributed to create a climate of growing confrontation with the Congress. On top of it, it is necessary to emphasize the role played by Andrés López Mexico City’s mayor, who right from the very beginning of his administration did as much as possible to differentiate and to compete with President Fox.<br /><br />While Fox was having problems transitioning from candidate to President, for López there was no real change, as he designed his administration as a six-year electoral campaign for the presidency. To do so, López borrowed many of Fox’s moves during his own run as governor of the state of Guanajuato, with the relative difference that López remained for the most part in Mexico, while Fox engaged himself on a very active international agenda.<br /><br />One of López’s key moves was to develop early during his term as mayor a vast network of supporters whose main commitment was to him and not to López’s Party of the Democratic Revolution. In doing so, López was able to alienate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the founder and “moral leader” of the PRD who unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1988, 1994, and 2000.<br /><br />Besides building the network of support for his candidacy, López launched what amounts to a bloodless pogrom against <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rosario Robles Berlanga</span>, his predecessor in the city’s mayoralty. The pogrom against Robles is still going, as Robles’s former lover and financier, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Carlos Ahumada Kurtz </span>remains in one of the city’s prison.<br /><br />López’s campaign faced a major roadblock when a series of mistakes from underlings at the city’s government detonated a judiciary process that could have been defused by López himself. However, being the greedy politician that he is, he saw in the confrontation with the Judiciary, and more importantly with the Supreme Court, a chance to present himself as a nation-wide champion of those affected by Mexico’s flaw ridden judiciary.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Desafuero</span><br /><br />Fox, his National Action Party, and the Revolutionary Institutional Party actually went through the painful process of retiring the constitutional immunity that López, as any other governor, representative, and senator in the country has. However, after gathering enough votes in the House of Representatives to remove the immunity, Fox decided not to pursue the case.<br /><br />Fox’s decision was one more of a string of shortcomings when dealing with key issues in his relation with the other branches of the Mexican government. Moreover, it prevented any possible agreement with the leaders of the Revolutionary Institutional Party who had been fighting a series of small skirmishes with Fox and his party.<br /><br />The outcome of such confrontation was the inability of the Mexican government to pursue any meaningful agenda, but more importantly, it provided López with broad support for his cause.<br /><br />As the conf<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Marta%20de%20Fox.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Marta%20de%20Fox.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>rontation with López was developing, Fox was unable to prevent an avalanche of criticism against his wife, her Vamos México foundation, and—more important—against Mrs. Sahagún de Fox’s sons from an earlier matrimony.<br /><br />In the first stages of this conflict, Mrs. Sahagún de Fox remained actively involved in the day-to-day management of <span style="font-style: italic;">Vamos México </span>while keeping open a possible run for either the presidency or Mexico City’s mayoralty for her. Mr. Fox’s presidency resented the effects of the confrontation and even the leaders of the National Action Party expressed concern with such possibility, as it will open the flood of increased criticism for Mr. Fox, while undermining the credibility of the 2006 elections.<br /><br />In the end, there was no candidacy for Mrs. Fox de Sahagún, but for the most part the damage was done, as a congressional committee was formed to investigate the operations of several firms owned by Mrs. Fox de Sahagún’s sons. The committee is still working and so far, it has been possible to unearth a series of questionable practices that have been heavily publicized in the Mexican media.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Madrazo%20PRI.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 173px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Madrazo%20PRI.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Meanwhile, by the end of 2005, Mr. López was elected as presidential candidate of the PRD. Roberto Madrazo, a former governor of the Southern state of Tabasco, was nominated by PRI, after his rival, the former governor of the State of Mexico, stepped out of the primary due to a tax evasion scandal.<br /><br />Finally, the ruling PAN nominated Felipe Calderón, a short-lived secretary of Energy of the Fox administration, as its presidential candidate in what was a major blow for Mr. Fox within the PAN itself.<br /><br />Currently, after heavy negative campaigning from both PAN and PRD, the election is—depending on the poll used—either a three-way or a two-way tie between the candidates, and it is hard to think that any new poll will provide more insight into the possible outcome of the election.<br /><br />López has centered his campaign on promises of harder laws to prevent tax evasion while increasing the role of the government as provider of key goods and services. He has offered also a major tax cut for Mexicans earning more than 500 and less than 900 US dollars a month.<br /><br />Similar offers have been made by Madrazo and Calderón, who is second in the most recent polls, although they lack the Robin Hood-like approach that is the trademark of López’s “messianic” speech.<br /><br />Moreover, several political commentators and analysts of Mexican politics, most notably Héctor Aguilar Camín and Enrique Krauze, consider that López’s campaign and attitudes leave little or no room for his eventual, and still possible, defeat on July 2. If that is case, they assume, the country will go deep into a period of political mobilization whose consequences are hard to foresee.<br /><br />On top of the uncertainty, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that the election has been affected in recent weeks by the reemergence of rumors of imminent treats of fraud. More importantly, it has been affected by the reemergence of Rafael Sebastián Guillén, aka “Subcomandante Marcos.” After leaving Chiapas, he is now the surrealist self-appointed leader of an ghostly movement who is doing every thing within his power to magnify and capitalize minor and marginal regional movements as a way to present them as part of a large movement to introduce radical changes in Mexican politics.<br /><br />The Mexican election remains, less than two weeks before the actual vote, an open game. There is little or no indication of what the future may bring to a country that has been up until now an oddity of stability a relatively good mixture of economic and political reforms in an area marred by instability, coups, and the worst income distribution patterns in the world.<br /><br />Something that we do know at this point is that neither the PRD nor the PAN will be able to control the Congress. It will be once again the PRI the party on control of the Congress. If that is the case, then it is possible to assume that Mr. López's or Calderón's presidency will be marred by many of the same problems and tensions that affect other presidencies in Latin America and the United States.<br /><br />As the election approaches, I will be posting more frequently in my Spanish-speaking blog <a href="http://mexicodesdefuera.blogspot.com/">México desde fuera</a>, where you can find more information on the current election.<br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexico" rel="tag">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/M%C3%A9xico" rel="tag">México</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexican+politics" rel="tag">Mexican politics</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexican+election+2006" rel="tag">Mexican election 2006</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1150091209039291712006-06-12T01:08:00.000-04:002006-06-12T08:41:30.300-04:00Football (and any other Sport) as a Metaphor<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Germany%20World%20Cup.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 262px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Germany%20World%20Cup.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> This week and the next four, the world outside the United States devotes itself to the unique quadrennial experience of the Football World Cup, something that not even the Olympics, much less other sports, are able to match. <p></p> The wave of the World Cup affects not only the 32 national teams participating in the finals at Germany, but almost all the countries of the world, with the relative exemption of the United States(paradoxically enough one of the 32 teams participating at Germany) and Canada.<p></p>The reasons of the US disinterest in football (soccer for them) lay deep within the isolationist doctrine that populist politicians imposed as a worldview in that country back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. <p></p>Such worldview was matched by the development in the US of powerful leagues of professional baseball and the heated disputes (often times violent) between the owners of the two main leagues (National and American) and those of competing circuits (Federal) which ultimately were prevented from participating in professional baseball.<p></p> The prohibition, issued by the Congress, grants one of the very few monopolies that exist in the United States and has been since its inception the source of interest for economists, political scientists, and sociologists interested in analyzing the evolution of those professional leagues and, more specifically, the role that governments have in shaping not only the practice of professional sports, but—generally speaking—the practice of any sport.<p></p> Sports and Government Intervention<p></p>The protection granted to baseball guaranteed during several years a special position for the sport, despite its racist practices reflecting the reality of many communities across the United States, where racism was alive and kicking despite the Civil War and the efforts of Abraham Lincoln to put and end to slavery, hiding behind the doctrine of “equal but separate.”<br /><br />Such doctrine existed even in ba<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/photograph_negro_leagues_01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 258px; height: 173px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/photograph_negro_leagues_01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>seball. Besides the two “major” leagues and the complex network of “minor” leagues developing “talent” for the “majors”, it was possible to find the so-called Negro Leagues, where players of African American and Afro-Caribbean ancestry “were allowed” to play.<p></p>In Latin America it is impossible to find something similar when thinking of any given sport practiced in the region. No government has granted similar monopolies to any professional sports league and, despite some bouts of racism plaguing the histories of the professional leagues in Peru, Brazil, and other countries with sizeable populations of persons of African ancestry, sports has played since the early 1930s, a key role in the development and evolution of the nation-states, the so-called “imagined communities.”<p></p> However, if one analyzes carefully some of the histories of success and failure in the region it will be possible to observe that one key feature in, let’s say the success of the Brazilian or Argentine football national teams, has been the active (or not) role of the authorities.<p></p> At different levels the cases of Mexico and Chile, on the one hand, and Brazil and Argentina, on the other, reflect this reality. While no one would be willing to question the interest (“passion” is the code word that one finds in the Sports from all over the world) of the fans and even the level of sophistication of their professional leagues, neither Mexico nor Chile have been able to come close to Brazil or Argentina when one thinks of success.<p></p> Moreover, sadly enough the fortunes or misfortunes of the teams playing the World Cup provides fertile ground for the emergence of all types of fatalistic, providentialist, and racist “explanations.”<p></p><br />The “Green Mice”-Cachirules Generations<p></p>In Mexico, as one of many possible examples, up until the late 1980s and early 1990s it was possible to find references to the so-called “ratones verdes” or “green mice,” a metaphor developed out of the desperation and exasperation that caused in Mexico the elimination from the World Cup played<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/posterwc70Fifa-P8-9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/posterwc70Fifa-P8-9.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> in the (then) German Federal Republic in 1974.<p></p> Mexico was coming from a rather good performance (for Mexican standards) during the World Cup played in Mexico in 1970, so there were all sorts of expectations and hopes about the possibility of becoming a regional football powerhouse in the North, Central American and Caribbean Football Confederation. <p></p> However, Mexico was humiliated in the qualifiers to the World cup played in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city. Four years after the painful performance in Haitian fields, Mexico was able to qualify with relative ease for the World Cup hosted by the military regime in Argentina in 1978. <p></p> The Mexican team was assumed to be a major contender after the Olympic selection was able to win, in an odd decision, with Brazil the Gold in the Pan-American games celebrated in Mexico in 1975. Many of the players in the Olympic team (especially <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hugo Sánchez</span>) who won the gold in the Pan-Am Games, during many years Mexico’s best feat, went to Argentina. <p></p> Sadly enough, Mexico was crushed in the first round. First Tunisia, then West Germany, the ruling World Champion, and finally Poland. The Mexican team received 12 goals and was able to score only two (to Tunisia and Poland) in what has been probably the worse record for a Mexican team in the W<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/posterwc78Fifa-P8-11.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/posterwc78Fifa-P8-11.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>orld Cup. After the humiliation in Argentina, things were still far from any improvement. Not only that, the self-defeating nick-name of “Green mice” came to summarize both the performance of the Mexican national team and, up to a certain extent, the overall attitude of many Mexicans when thinking about themselves. For the tournament in Spain (1982) Mexico was unable to qualify.<p></p> In 1986, Mexico found itself with the chance of being, once again, the host of the World Cup. With no need to go through the qualification process, the country was able to concentrate on developing a consistent team under the guidance of Velibor Milutinovic, one of the most successful coaches in the national league with the Pumas of the Universidad Nacional team. Successful especially when thinking about the development of new talent and in achieving titles in the local league.<p></p> The Mexican team ended sixth, after a painful tie with Germany that was solved with a series of penalty kicks. Despite the relative success of the Mexican team in that tournament, things went even worse before improving. <p></p> For the Cup played in Italy, in 1990, the Mexican Football Federation reached one of its all-time lows when its chairman, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rafael del Castillo</span>, was found responsible of registering players with fake certificates of birth and fake IDs for one of the juvenile tournaments organized by FIFA. The episode came to be known as the “cachirules,” a slang term used in Mexico to depict a crooked situation.<p></p> Del Castillo was forced out as chair of the Mexican league in the middle of a scandal fueled by the pressure of the then State-owned TV corporation Imevisión (Instituto Mexicano de Televisión) exposing the corruption plaguing the relation between Femexfut and the Mexican TV giant Televisa.<p></p> After the “cachirules” episode a process of change and adjustment in the Femexfut started but it is clear that despite the more stable performance of the Mexican national team in the tournaments held in the US in 1994, France 1998, and Korea-Japan 2002, and more importantly in the regional tournaments in North (Golden Cup) and South America (Copa América), Mexico still lags behind Brazil or Argentina when it comes to the performance of their national teams and the ability of the countries to produce football cracks.<p></p> Football, Fascism, and Populism<p></p> If one considers Argentina’s or Brazil’s football history it will be possible to find a completely different account mostly because of early and very aggressive interventions of the governments of both countries in shaping, on the one hand, the institutional framework regulating sports education and activity since the mid and late 1930s and early 1940s.<p></p> For the governments of Argentina and Brazil sports’ promotion and participation became a matter of public policy because, unlike Mexico, their governments found—early in the twentieth century—that there were a series of premiums to their involvement in this activity.<p></p> It is not out of coincidence that it was at that time that the fascist governments in Germany and Italy were colleting the fruits of their interventions in the school system favoring a more active role of physical education activities. In Germany’s case, the r<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/GetnoPoder.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/GetnoPoder.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>oots of such activities existed deep in the early and mid nineteenth century, and from there similar programs expanded to other countries in continental Europe.<p></p> Italy, as Argentina, and Brazil, found themselves developing these kinds of very aggressive and interventionist programs of physical education within the contexts of the emergence of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Benito Mussolini</span>’s fascism, the Conservative Restoration of the military governments during the 1930s in Argentina, and the populist regime of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Getulio Vargas</span> in Brazil.<p></p> It is not a coincidence that even if Mexico was living also its own populist or national-revolutionary experience with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lázaro Cárdenas del Río</span>, in Mexico there was no real emphasis on developing aggressive programs of physical education tailored after the models in place in Germany, Italy, Brazil, or Argentina.<p></p> Moreover, in the case of Argen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/1936_hitler_at_olympics_02.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 247px; height: 171px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/1936_hitler_at_olympics_02.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>tina it was possible to observe independent and earlier developments as byproducts of the explosive rate of European immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the concomitant expansion of civil rights of the governments of the Unión Cívica Radical. <p></p> These developments put athletic and sporting clubs at the center of processes of political mobilization that increased the interest of politicians in promoting the development of strong athletic traditions. This happened, among other reasons, because it was in there, in nurturing those athletic traditions were local political leaders emerged despite the gentrified and British titles of many of these organizations (as in the case of <span style="font-style: italic;">Gimnasia y Esgrima </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">Newells’ Old Boys</span>).<p></p> Mexican "Exceptionality"<p></p> In Mexico, on the other hand, the early evolution of sports and more specifically of football was less dependent on the intervention of political leaders. Moreover, unlike Argentina, Brazil or, for these purposes, the rest of Latin America, where the only sport that allowed for the development of professional leagues was football, in Mexico it was possible to find as early as the late 1920s, despite the consequences of the Mexican Revolution, strong traditions of practice of baseball (as good as to beat twice the star-filled team of the United States in the first Baseball World Classic), and other sports such as boxing and wrestling that followed, as in the case of football, baseball, and even American football (another oddity in the Latin American context), independent paths of institutionalization and in some cases of professionalization, without<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Mexico%20baseball.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 259px; height: 221px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Mexico%20baseball.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> the intervention of the State.<p></p> Of course, in Argentina and other South American countries it is possible to find also strong traditions of practice of rugby and even cricket, but they did not allowed for the professionalization of the sport as in the case of football or as in the case of baseball in Mexico.<p></p> It is in this important distinction between Mexico on the one hand and Argentina and Brazil on the other, where it is necessary to find the reasons that explain the differences in the performance of the three countries in the World Cup. This is more relevant when one takes into consideration the fact that despite the apparently low level or organization of the Mexican football players, the Mexican league pays higher salaries than most of the leagues of the Western Hemisphere.<p></p> This is not to say that in Mexico there has been no attempts of intervention of the public sector in sports promotion or organization. As early as the 1930s it was possible to find attempts of the Mexican government to intervene in the sector, but these attempts were not as organized as those carried by their Brazilian or Argentine colleagues.<p></p> The trademark of the intervention of the Mexican government has been, up until Vicente Fox’s support to the bid of Guadalajara to host the Pan-American games, to provide the kinds of supports necessary to host tournaments. With the games to be organized in Guadalajara in 2011, Mexico will be the only country in the region to host those games for the third time.<p></p> Moreover, it is the only one to host the Olympics, and the only one in the region to host the Football World Cup twice. It has hosted several times the Central American and Caribbean games and other international competitions such as the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/interior.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 177px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/interior.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Universiada or World University Games.<p></p> Here is noticeable that other Latin American countries have tried to be hosts of the Olympics, and yet the International Olympic Committee has been unwilling to favor their proposals.<p></p> Structural reasons, Racist Excuses<p></p> Regardless of the outcome of the World Cup, when talking about the differences in the performances of countries with strong football traditions it is necessary to take into consideration the structural reasons that explain the differences in the performance of the teams.<p></p> “Explanations” as those spurred after the “Green Mice” generation shed little or no light on the issues at hand. Quite the opposite, they blur behind a curtain of inverse racism the true reasons behind Mexico’s “failure” in World football competitions and they converge in a rather explosive combination with other self-deprecatory “explanations” of Mexican “failure” as the epithet about the “raza de bronce” (bronze race) as a way to talk about the difficulties that Mexican athletes face to achieve more than third places (or bronze medals) in international competitions, connecting it with the coloration of the skin of large groups of Mexicans.<p></p> Moreover, those kinds of explanations blur also the deep regional and class divisions that explain in Mexico attendance and/or practice of different sports. Among the first type of divisions, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that in many cities in the Northwest and Southeast of Mexico (Hermosillo and Mérida, among others) football is second in the hearts and minds of their inhabitants after baseball, and that for many generations now in large urban areas such as Mexico and Monterrey (where baseball is also very important) football competes with strong traditions of practice and attendance via TV of American football.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/logoNT_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/logoNT_.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><p></p> For many young urban males from the middle and upper classes, football expresses at different levels all that is wrong in Mexico, while American football, a sport deeply connected with what the United States represent and requiring heavy public or private investment in training facilities, equipment, and medical services, expresses better than any other sport their desire to overcome Mexico’s backwardness. <p></p> Such fixation with American football (good enough for the National Football League to take pre-season and regular season games to Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium) reflects deeper class- and race-based cleavages, frequently blurred by double standards when dealing with issues of race and national origin: highly critical of racism in the United States and yet very discriminatory of foreigners (as in the case of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ricardo Antonio LaVolpe</span>, the Argentine -born coach of the football team) and of Mexican Indians.<p></p> The paradoxes grow deeper, because as much as many in the country remain—at least until this Sunday morning—skeptical about LaVolpe’s role as national coach mostly because of issues of national origin (see as awful examples of it Hugo Sánchez’s trashing of La Volpe on the grounds of national origin and alleged sexual preference) many Mexicans also find comfort in rooting for the Brazilian national team as soon as the national team is eliminated in international competitions.<p></p> On a personal level, I rather stay with the “flawed” Mexican model of minimal or no governmental intervention on the field of professional or high performance sport. I think that it reflects the true nature of the authoritarian but non-ideological regime that existed in Mexico from 1929 until 1997.<p></p> However, it is almost impossible to observe how, ultimately, the lack of interventionism on this issue could play a significant role in explaining the legitimacy deficits that the Mexican polity confronted since the late 1960s. This is even more relevant when one takes into consideration not only the stories of success in football coming from Argentina and Brazil, but also the case of Cuba when it comes to baseball and other sports.<p></p> The three countries have been able, at different points in time and with different strategies, to use the successes of their national teams in different sports and international competitions to compensate for similar or even worse legitimacy deficits that those happening in Mexico after the 1960s.<p></p> The problem, of course, is that as profitable as the investment in sports programs and facilities is, questions exist regarding the legitimacy of diverting public investment into sports programs.<p></p><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mexico" rel="tag">Mexico</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Argentina" rel="tag">Argentina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Brazil" rel="tag">Brazil</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Football+World+Cup" rel="tag">Football World Cup</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Negro+Leagues" rel="tag">Negro Leagues</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Baseball+World+Classic" rel="tag">Baseball World Classic</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1149398261907040142006-06-03T23:45:00.000-04:002006-06-04T18:13:41.180-04:00Alan García or the Ultimate Latin American Paradox<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/alan22.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/alan22.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="" lang="EN-US">This Sunday Peruvians will finish the process to elect a new President for their country. The two finalists in the second round of the election are the former President <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alan García</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ollanta Humala</span>, a rather unknown leader of marginalized groups in the Peruvian countryside who follows, for the most part, the recipes of confrontation and ra</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">dical mobilization that helped <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hugo Chávez</span> in Venezuela and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Evo Morales</span> in Bolivia.</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The latest polls showed García as the frontrunner in a heavily contested election that has been deeply affected by Venezuelan interventionism and, strangely enough, by the ability of García to gather unexpected expressions of support from those who, few years ago, were his fiercest critics.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Public figures like <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mario Vargas Llosa</span>, who lost in a similar runoff to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alberto Fu</span></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-weight: bold;">jimori</span> back in 1990, and many others have expressed, one way or the other, their support for former President García.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The fact that they are doing so is not so much an expression of belief in García’s proposals or because of “happy memories” associated with his presidential term. Quite the opposite. They express one of Peru's most dramatic and painful paradoxes.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">To stress the very nature of the paradox, it is interesting to hear Hugo Chávez throwing at García similar darts to those thrown at García by Vargas Llosa and other figures of the Peruvian national scene back in the 1980s.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Chávez's bitter depiction of García as “a thief” and responsible of one of the worst crisis in Peruvian (and Latin American) history is, for the most part, accurate. It reminds me of the kind of things that people said of Garcí</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">a at the end of the 1980s, when Mr García left an e</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">xhausted Peruvian economy, and a country at the brink of civil war.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">At that time, I was a junior editor in the International Desk at Mexico City’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Excélsior</span>, then the largest newspaper in Mexico, and I read with a sense of both awe and pain the reports of both Excélsior’s correspondent, the envoys, and the wires from the Associated Press, EFE, Xinhua, and France Press.</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/vargas-llosa-sm.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/vargas-llosa-sm.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Not only that, I was a subscriber of the Mexican literary and critical magazine <span style="font-style: italic;">Vu</span></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-style: italic;">e</span></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-style: italic;">lta</span>, whose director was no other than <span style="font-weight: bold;">Octavio Paz</span>, a close friend of Vargas Llosa and my</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> </span><span style="" lang="EN-US">pundit, at a time in which, because of my age, my personal views on the region were developing.<o:p> </o:p></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-style: italic;">Vuelta </span>supported, of course, Vargas Llosa's bid, although I still remember how disappo</o:p></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p>inted was don Octavio because, in his mind, Latin America was about to loose one of its brigh</o:p></span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p>test writers.<br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Also, a few years later, I was lucky enough to have in one of my courses a student of mine a beautiful and very inteligent Peruvian student, Vanes</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">sa, who gave detailed depictions of what it was for her,</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> as a teenager, to grow up in a country thorn by Civil War, hyperinflation, and the (mis)deeds orf irresponsible politicians as Mr García.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I was hoping for a victory of Vargas Llosa. He was unable to win, and instead Fujimori-san took over as President launching very aggressive policies to curb inflation, as at some point at the end of the García era, it was spiraling beyond the 3000 percent mark yearly, something only surpassed by the even worse situation in Brazil and Argentina. (For an analysis of <a href="http://cambiosociallatinoamerica.blogspot.com/2005/02/latin-america-before-neo-liberal-wave.html">those years in Latin America click here</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Fujimori led a bloodless auto-coup d’Etat, mercilessly killed guerrilla partisans, forced the resignation of the country’s Supreme Court and Congress, and, more importantly, was able to bring some sense of order to the Peruvian ma</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">rkets, going through a painful renegotiation of the debt with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Peru’s renegotiation was harder than others in Latin America, because by the end of his term, Mr García decided to withhold the payments of his country’s debt while launching a desperate diplomatic blitz to gather support from other Latin American countries.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">García, did so with many of the gimmicks that Chávez does nowadays. I remember a picture of him with a Mariachi hat in the very famous Garibaldi square in Mexico City, singing with a large crowd of Mariachis, his own ent</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">ourage, and innocent bystanders, after seeeking to secure the support of the Mexican government.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">However, as with Chávez, the gimmicks achieve little or no success outside of their countries, although, unlike Chávez, García was a “pobre Presidente de un país más pobre” (a poor President from an even poorer country), so any appeal was made on the grounds of solidarity and the Boliviarian rhetoric that is always used in these kinds of situations. Chávez, on the other hand, has oil and the supp</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Fujimorisan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Fujimorisan.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="" lang="EN-US">ort of the efficient Cuban Foreign Office to pursue his agenda.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Interestingly enough, th</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">e P</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">eruvian citizens, as it is often the case in Latin America, dug their own grave. When confronted with the proposals made by Vargas Llosa (a “shock” plan to bring the economy back in line with an aggressive negotiation with the multinational financial institutions), Peruvians decided to elect Fujimori-san.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Unlike Vargas Llosa the writer, Fujimori-san, the populist outsider, then a bureacrat in one empoverished public college, with little or no political experience, presented himseld as unwilling to perform the “shock” plan that years before Chile and Mexico had performed. Instead, he offered a guilt-free and pain-free solution to the Peruvian crisis…<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Of course, he was lying. Fujimori-san, the Peruvian samurai, applied a “shock” plan harder than the one originally proposed by Vargas Llosa and, at least when dealing with the economy and the Shining Path guerrilla, he was very successful. Vargas Llosa went back to writing and eventually became a citizen of Spain, d</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">is</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">connecting himself from the tensions and erosion of partisan Peruvian politics.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">As it is possible t</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">o s</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">e</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">e, there are no real reasons to think that Mr García will be the best possible choice for Peru.</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> Moreover, unlike Ollanta Humala, García has been “vetoed” by Chávez, the self-appointed oil em</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/chavez_humala_ap203b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 204px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/chavez_humala_ap203b.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></span><span style="" lang="EN-US">peror of Latin America, unless… No reasons unless one co</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">nsiders Ollanta Humala’s propositions, marred by the same rhetoric and ideas that one finds in Evo</span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> Morales's and Hugo Chávez's speeches.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The Peruvian electorate i</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">s, to my mind as immature as it was back in 1990 when they chose Fujimori over Vargas Llosa, and that expresses itself in the outcome of the first round of the Presidential election, as much as it expresses on many of the attitudes that distinguish Peruvian political debate. The Peru</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">vian section at Blogalaxia provides a good sample of the kind of excesses that bloggers from that country do when arguing about politics, with more passion for personal insults and attacks and the ever present racial remarks that have marred Peru since its very origins, th</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">an with any sense of the kinds of pressures that Peru is confronting.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">They are, as in many other Latin American countries, trapped in a "victim centered" discourse of their own misfortunes, unwilling to acknowledge how they have contributed, over time, to build one of the worse case scenarios of what, accurately enough, Chilean sociologist <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=es&lr=&id=eq8nQG9EAyIC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PR5&sig=T1h_5473kE-U9G9QJMFkVHwj6UM&dq=%22Garreton%22+%22Democracy+in+Latin+America:+Reconstructing+Political+Society%22+&prev=http://scholar.google.com/scholar%3Fq%3Dauthor:%2522Garreton%2522%2Bintitle:%2522Democracy%2Bin%2BLatin%2BAmerica:%2BReconstructing%2BPolitical%2BSociety%2522%2B%26hl%3Des%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Manuel Antonio Garretón</span></a> identifies as "regressions from democratic to authoritarian regimes." The other regressions in Garretón's framework are, interestingly enough, Ecuador. Bolivia, and Venezuela.<br /><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p>However, I think that this time around García is the lesser of two possible evils. One hopes that he will succeed not only for the sake of Peru, but also for the sake of Latin American politics at large. The last thing we need at this point is to have Peru as the fourth jewel in Chávez’s crown, although as Vanessa used to tell me, “When it comes to Peruvian politics, you never know.”</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal">PS: I thank David McDuff, authior of <a href="http://halldor2.blogspot.com/">One Step at a Time</a>, for encouraging me to update this blog again. I will do my best to do it so more frecuently.<br /></p><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Per%C3%BA" rel="tag">Perú</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alan+Garc%C3%ADa" rel="tag">Alan García</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Ollanta+Humala" rel="tag">Ollanta Humala</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Mario+Vargas+Llosa" rel="tag">Mario Vargas Llosa</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Manuel+Antonio+Garret%C3%B3n" rel="tag">Manuel Antonio Garretón</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alberto+Fujimori" rel="tag">Alberto Fujimori</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1139626052460755652006-02-10T21:34:00.000-05:002006-02-10T21:57:39.233-05:00Malvinas Argentinas, but...<span style="" lang="EN-US">One of the open wounds in Latin American history has been since the mid 1800s the British occupation of the relatively small but strategic Archipelago of Malvinas, or Falkland as the British cynical stubbornness insist in calling them. The Archipelago became in the early 1980s the source of an armed conflict that unexpectedly ended the Military Junta rule in Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Unexpectedly, because the military assumed that by waging war against Britain, the people in Argentina (energized after the victor</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">y in the 1978 Football World Cup), would be willing to forget the many human rights abuses. After all, nothing suits better the needs of a weak government, than a patriotic war, as many of George Bush’s decisions attest. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Moreover, the gorillas in charge in Buenos Aires assumed that the political cleansing carried out in Argentina itself against the guerrillas, and the help they provided to the U.S. in Central America by training the counter-insurgency in Central America, were enough to guarantee that the U.S. was going to step aside in the event of a war against Britain. Not only that, the Argentine military assumed that the agreements with the then ruling military elites of other South American countries were enough to secure their support against Britain.</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/malvinas.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/malvinas.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">As it usually happens with grandiose project</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">s, they were dead wrong. The U.S. would rather die than breaking away from their alliance with Britain (after all the Cold War was quite hot at that time), Pinochet had too much in common with Margaret Thatcher, and the Central American governments were too deep in their own problems to provide any help to Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Only Brazil assisted to Argentina during the war, and it was mostly marginal help in the form of information on the movements of the British Navy, and in the form of fuel for Argentine vessels and planes guarding-off the Argentine North-East shore.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president reopened the Malvinas’ wound by throwing his darts at Tony Blair’s face after the British Prime Minister criticized the close relations between Venezuela and Iran.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I certainly believe that the Malvinas Archipelago is rightfully Argentine territory and, eventually, the British must leave the islands. However, the question is if in actuality throwing the Malvinas issue to the mix of the Iranian conflict, as Mr. Chávez did, is the best path to secure the return of Malvinas to Argentine sovereignty, especially when one takes into consideration the role that the Venezuelan leader has played in providing some sort of legitimacy to Iran’s nuclear program.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I do not think so. Not only it is absurd to use once again the issue of Malvinas to polarize popular support (whether in Arg</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Ch%3F%3Fvez%20con%20ni%3F%3Fa.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Ch%3F%3Fvez%20con%20ni%3F%3Fa.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="" lang="EN-US">entina or in Latin America at large) against a real or fictional threat, it is even more when one is doing it by connecting that legitimate claim of Argentina with the ongoing conflict between Teheran and Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Moreover, Mr. Chávez attack on Mr. Bla</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">ir (who is certainly a puppet of U.S. interests as any other British government would be) comes together with the decision of the Venezuelan Treasury to buy, at the request of its Argentine counterpart, bonds issued for 308 million USD. In doing so, Venezuela has become a key financier of Mr. Kirchner’s government buying since May 2005 2,300 million USD in bonds issued by the Argentine Treasury.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Paradoxically enough, as the Argentine newspaper <a href="http://buscador.lanacion.com.ar/Nota.asp?nota_id=779492&high=Malvinas">La Nación</a> reports, the Argentine bonds are in high demand in the Venezuelan market because it is one way that Venezuelan investors have to bypass the tight exchange controls in their own country:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>La compra de bonos locales le genera un buen negocio al gobierno de Venezuela, que ya revendió más de US$ 600 millones a bancos de su país que los colocaron entre clientes deseosos de contar con un vehículo de inversión que les permita fugar dólares y evitar los férreos controles cambiarios. Tal vez por este motivo, el ministro de Finanzas de Venezuela, Nelson Merentes, afirmó recientemente que su país compraría bonos argentinos cada vez que desde aquí se lo pidan.</blockquote></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It is noteworthy that the Argentine media did not highlight Mr. Chávez’s request to the British government. <a href="http://buscador.lanacion.com.ar/Nota.asp?nota_id=779414&high=Malvinas">La Nación</a> published a brief note on this Friday February 10<sup>th</sup> edition (page 3) with a picture of Mr. Chávez rallying in Venezuela. Clarín omitted any reference to Mr.Chávez’s cry. Even the leftist and pro-Kirchner <a href="http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-62888-2006-02-10.html">Página 12</a> buried Mr. Chávez’s reference down in its page 17, publishing merely two paragraphs with a small picture of the Venezuelan leader.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Apparently, the Argentine media know better how to deal with the Malvinas issue. This is more relevant when one takes into consideration how painful is this issue. Not only there are, as with many other wars, many veterans affected by the loss of limbs wandering in the streets of Buenos Aires, seeking a coin or two as a way to deal with their needs, but also Argentina is starting to acknowledge the magnitude of the hoax posed by the military Junta. It is as a part of such process, that <a href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0288569/">Iluminados por el fuego</a>, a film on the war in Malvinas, received the Goya a few days ago, the equivalent of the Oscar in Spain to the best foreign film.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" lang="EN-US">To my mind, Mr. Chávez’s attitudes provide little or no fope for a solution to the Malvinas issue. More so now that he has decided to tie this issue with the larger and broader conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.S. government. It is not that I believe in Mr. Bush’s claims about Iran, especially when one takes into consideration how the U.S.</span><span style="" lang="EN-US">“intelligence” services faked information on Iraq, but because the path of conflict and confrontation that Mr. Chávez follows is very dangerous not only for Venezuela but for the entire region.<br /></span></p><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez" rel="tag">Hugo Chávez</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Malvinas" rel="tag">Malvinas</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Argentina" rel="tag">Argentina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Tony+Blair" rel="tag">Tony Blair</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Venezuela" rel="tag">Venezuela</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Latin+America+Economy+and+Society" rel="tag">Latin America: Economy and Society</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+contemporary+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1138133395194655562006-01-24T12:55:00.000-05:002006-01-24T15:09:55.236-05:00Inflation's Intimidating Return in South AmericaIn the last two weeks newspapers and magazines in Argentina and Brazil have been commenting on the growing rate of inflation in both countries. Moreover, in Argentina, Ernesto Kirchner's government attempted to establish some mechanism to prevent sudden changes in the prices of key products.<br /><br />Kirchner's efforts, however, confronted an unwilling <a href="http://www.ruralarg.org.ar/">Sociedad Rural Argentina</a>, a powerful association of meat and grains producers that has a long history of confrontations with the current president that reached a peak when in the (austral) winter of 2004 the President decided not to assist to the yearly expo and convention of "la Rural," as the association is popularly known.<br /><br />With La Rural other two major groups (the Confederaciones Rurales Argentinas and the Centro de Consignatarios de Hacienda) representing most of the 190 thousand meat producers in Argentina rejected the agreement proposed by Felisa Miceli, the Economics Minister. Soon after La Rural's rejection, <a href="http://www.lanacion.com.ar/774857">Aníbal Fernández</a>, the Interior Minister announced that the Argentine government will not hesitate to increase the taxes that the Argentine national government imposes on meat's exports.<br /><br />How rejecting an agreement to limit increases on the price of the meat connects with the need to raise taxes is--at least to my mind--impossible. Taxes should never be tools to punish unwilling political or social actors, much less economic agents and yet--in its desperation to prevent increases in the rate of inflation--the Argentine government seems to be willing to go down a road that will only increase the level of conflict and distrust in its ability to conduct the economy, which ultimately will lead to more tension, distrust, and yes, more inflation.<br /><br />Despite the partial failure with the foodstuffs producers, Kirchner's ministers have been able to sign agreements with U.S. based Procter & Gamble and with the Molinos firm, that produces and distributes all sorts of foods, breads, and groceries in Argentina. Procter & Gamble will freeze the prices of 31 of its products and Molinos will do it with 9 key products (oil, rice, bread, and pasta).<br /><br />In Brazil things are not easier for the government of former labor leader Luiz Lula da Silva. On the one hand, the prices of fuel keep growing despite the efforts of the Brazilian government to reach an agreement with the producers along the lines of the one negotiated with the meat producers in Argentina. The key price of the hydrated alcohol went from <a href="http://oglobo.globo.com/petroleo/materias/2006/01/23/190042000.asp">R$ 1.724 on January 14, to R$ 1.735 on January 21</a>, as a sign of the weakness of an agreement that included this critical type of fuel for the Brazilian market.<br /><br />As a consequence, the Brazilian equivalent of the Federal Reserve Bank, the <a href="http://www.bcb.gov.br/">Banco Central do Brasil</a> issued a less than optimistic forecast for the Consumer Prices' Index. Two weeks ago, the Banco Central forecasted a 4.58 yearly for 2006. One week later, the Index had gone to 4.61 yearly for 2006, with a rate of growth for the year of 3.5. It is important to notice, however, that for the twelve months going from November 2004 to November 2005, the <a href="http://www.bcb.gov.br/htms/relinf/port/2005/12/ri200512sep.pdf">Banco Central set</a> an inflation rate of 6.22 per cent.<br /><br />The inflation rates in both Argentina and Brazil still far from the rates reached by the mid and late 1980s that forced the shock plans, but they prove that there is something wrong in the economies of both countries and that the work of the political leaders is not enough to induce the trust to help prevent any new growth of the inflation. Both countries and Latin America at large are aware of the <a href="http://cambiosociallatinoamerica.blogspot.com/2005/02/latin-america-before-neo-liberal-wave.html">consequences that inflation had for the markets in the 1970s and 1980s</a> and yet, trapped in the labyrinth of populist politics á la Chávez, the political leaders leaders of the region seem to be unable to find the right combination to secure growth and to avoid inflation.<br /><br />If you are interested on the issue of inflation you can also read from the Archives of this website:<br /><br /><a href="http://cambiosociallatinoamerica.blogspot.com/2005/02/latin-america-before-neo-liberal-wave.html">Latin America before the Neo-Liberal Wave</a><br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/inflation" rel="tag">inflation</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Ernesto+Kirchner" rel="tag">Ernesto Kirchner</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Lula+da+Silva" rel="tag">Lula da Silva</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Brazil" rel="tag">Brazil</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Argentina" rel="tag">Argentina</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1137434251975547832006-01-16T11:15:00.000-05:002006-01-16T19:52:40.053-05:00Parallel Presidencies?<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/461px-Michelle_Bachelet_promo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/461px-Michelle_Bachelet_promo.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />This weekend, two issues overwhelmed Latin American news services. On the one hand, the public relations <em>blitzkrieg</em> launched from La Paz, Bolivia, by former coca-growers’ leader and new President <strong>Evo Morales</strong>. Hurricane <em>Evo</em> visited four continents in the short period between his election and his inauguration. In some cases, he brought relief, as in Brazil, as Morales seems to have changed his mind about expropriating several oil refineries of Brazilian capital, and in some others, as in Mexico, heightened concerns about the future of Bolivia and its role in the Latin American relations, as Morales hinted the possibility of limiting the exports of gas to Mexico.<br /><br />On the other hand, in Chile it was all about good news. <strong>Michelle Bachelet</strong> not only confirmed her success in the presidential election, as hinted in the first round of the elections, but she was able to increase the margin of support for the <em>Concertación</em>, expanding the base of social support for the coalition that Christian-Democrats and Socialists have maintained in Chile for almost 20 years now.<br /><br />Both electoral stories provide interesting hints about the possible future of the rest of the region. On the one hand, Morales faces challenges that seem to overwhelm him. Not only he already is backing away (for good) from offers made during his presidential campaign, but he has decided to ignite other conflicts in the region with a rhetoric that seems carbon copied from, and in some cases more radical, than <strong>Hugo Chávez</strong>’s. The difference is that Venezuela never actually confronted a major process of structural reform, while Bolivia confronted the exact opposite situation.<br /><br />It should not come as a surprise that in one interview with Argentine newspaper <a href="http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-61696.html">Página 12</a>, Morales expressed nothing but rejection for the policies sponsored by the International Monetary Fund. It is important to stress, however, that the tragedy of Bolivia during the 1990s was co-written by the IMF and local politicians as <strong>Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada</strong>. Moreover, it is necessary to stress—once again—that in the 1980s and 1990s the IMF sponsored many different policies in Latin America and elsewhere.<br /><br />The radical policies pursued by Sánchez de Lozada may appear as similar to those sponsored by the Concertación in Chile or by <strong>Carlos Menem </strong>in Argentina or by <strong>Carlos Salinas </strong>in Mexico, but there were key differences that is necessary to keep in mind for a meaningful analysis of contemporary Latin America. For starters, neither Mexico nor Chile denationalized key industries such as the oil or copper, while in Argentina and Bolivia<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/marcha%20en%20Bolivia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/marcha%20en%20Bolivia.jpg" border="0" /></a>, the political elites carried away what in the 1990s were called “Garage sales” of pretty much all within their reach, so to assume that it was only the IMF’s fault is, to say the least, absurd.<br /><br />Moreover, in Morales's interview with Página 12, Bolivia's new president emphasizes how there are not going to be anymore "imported models," just to talk immediately about the micro-credits program that he will launch. And of course, any person that has read a little bit the programs of micro-lending sponsored by the World Bank, the sister institution of the International Monetary Fund, cannot but smile at Morales's naïve attitude, because even on that policy, he will be following a program brought from outside, revealing once again the pattern of lies that constitute the backbone of the recent wave of Latin American populists. <a href="http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/volume_7/Rahman1200.html">Read here, by the way, a critique authored by Aminur Rahman</a> of such microlending programs in Bangladesh, following a rationale developed by Indian economist <strong>Amartya Sen</strong>.<br /><br />Sadly enough, the excesses of liberal (conservative in the U.S.) president Sánchez de Lozada, combined with the structural failure of Latin American presidentialism (and particularly with the Bolivian version of it) had created all the necessary conditions for the emergence of these kinds of nationalist and nativist approaches emobodied by Morales. These nativist approaches assume that only what has been thought in Latin America or more specifically in their own countries is good to deal with delicate issues. Such approach seems out of line, because as rich as the Aymara tradition is it would be ludicrous to assume that a mere return to such roots will guarantee the solution of Bolivia's problems.<br /><br />Morales will help himself by turning his head to Lima, the capital of Peru, to see the troubled presidency of the other Aymara president in contemporary Latin America, <strong>Alejandro Toledo</strong>, who assumed the presidency of Peru under similar circumstances to find himself, 4 years, later pretty much unable to do anything with a political leadership that appears exhausted and confronting a disillusioned public opinion.<br /><br />Here it is important to stress how in Bolivia all the market-centered fallacies of the liberalism (or conservatism in the United States) were applied. The all-encompassing privatization carried by President Sánchez de Lozada left thousands of persons without access to water and other public goods and services, triggering a popular movement to resist any form of market-inspired solution to the issues affecting the Andean country. It should not come as a surprise that the privatization launched in Bolivia has now, as one of its unexpected consequences, the emergence of Morales's charismatic leadership, with all its contradictions and risks not only for Bolivia itself but also for the entire region.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, on the other side of the Andes, in Chile, Michelle Bachelet—the first female to be president in Chile—appeared with a fresh and conciliatory message in her discourse, and more important without any pretension to have all the answers in the backpack of Chilean or Latin American “culture.”<br /><br />Quite the opposite, President Bachelet appears willing to embrace more intensely than ever the Chilean vocation to open markets with a very active and very responsible public sector willing to intervene whenever such interventions seems necessary, while acknowledging the role that markets should play in allocating scarce resources.<br /><br />This is more relevant when one takes into consideration key aspects of her biography. She and her family suffered the excesses of <strong>César Augusto Pinochet</strong>’s brutal dictatorship. Bachelet’s presidency will be more important because she is the only true socialist in a continent where many populist leaders, as Hugo Chávez or <strong>Ernesto Kirchner</strong>, disguise themselves as leftists, whithout having gone through the painful experience that represented for the Chilean Socialist Party acknowledging its own mistakes in pursuing its policy goals without paying attention to the delicate mechanisms of the market.<br /><br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%83%C2%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Evo+Morales" rel="tag">Evo Morales</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Michelle+Bachelet" rel="tag">Michelle Bachelet</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alejandro+Toledo" rel="tag">Alejandro Toledo</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Carlos+Salinas" rel="tag">Carlos Salinas</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Bolivia" rel="tag">Bolivia</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Chile" rel="tag">Chile</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez" rel="tag">Hugo Chávez</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/microlending" rel="tag">microlending</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1136916780299621182006-01-10T11:40:00.000-05:002006-01-10T13:13:00.336-05:00Peruvian ShadowsThis Tuesday January 11, the Board of Elections in Peru decided to refuse former President <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alberto Fujimori</span> a chance to seek what would have been his third Presidency. The decision hardly surprises anybody, but it provides an excellent chance to see at the painful state of contemporary Peruvian politics.<br /><br />As with other countries that I have considered in this blog before, I do not think that we should assume that what is happening nowadays in Peru will happen later in Argentina or Mexico. The intricacies of Peruvian politics prevent from any possible contagion, and yet it is possible to see in Fujimori's biography some glimpses of the kinds of things that are wrong region wide in Latin America.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/1600/Fujimori%202.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1468/674/320/Fujimori%202.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>First it is necessary to acknowledge that as repulsive as Fujimori may be for some in Latin America he was able to address critical issues in Peruvian politics that many others before him were unable or unwilling to address. The problem, of course, exists in the kind of means that he used to pursue his goals. For one, we have the case of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Vladimiro Montesinos</span>, the former chief of the political police in Peru who gained fame as one of the bloodiest torturers in a region full of them.<br /><br />In addition, one can think of Fujimori's decision to dissolve the Peruvian Congress and Supreme Court. The "auto-golpe" or "self-coup" as it came to be known in the early 1990s was with his aggressive counter-terrorist tactics and his economic shock plan, the features that gained "El Chino" (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Chinese</span>), as he came to be known, world fame. By the way, if you are interested in Peruvian politics and you like movies, watch <a href="http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0118926/">The Dancer Upstairs</a>, an excellent movie directed by <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Malkovich</span> dealing precisely with aspects of the counter-terrorist tactics used by Fujimori and Montesinos.<br /><br />These aspects of Fujimori's biography have been the subject of many commentaries and criticism, some of them accurate and fair, some of them exaggerated by Fujimori's foes. What is more relevant, however, is to ask how a former professor in a technical university (<a href="http://www.lamolina.edu.pe/portada/">Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina</a>), ended up walking the path Fujimori walked.<br /><br />To my mind, Peru and Fujimori provide a text-book case to understand what is wrong with presidential regimes and the kind of contradictions that constitute the core of such regimes. I cannot think that a guy such a Fujimori, a college professor in Agronomy, was since his early youth the corrupted and mischievous politician that was forced out of his country to seek refuge in his unique condition as both former President of Peru and Japanese citizen.<br /><br />Quite the contrary, people who knew the early Fujimori, the one who came to be the president of his Alma Mater, have expressed over and over their surprise with the kind of policies, and more specifically with the decisionmaking processes used by Fujimori as President of Peru.<br /><br />First, of course his decision to shutdown the Peruvian congress and Supreme Court. He did so after it was clear that his government had no chance to overcome the grip that before him had affected former presidents <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fernando Belaúnde Terry</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alán García</span> during their terms. Belaúnde ended up being ousted by a coup back in the 1960s, and García avoided any further confrontarion with the Congress by becoming more radical than the Congress and the leaders of <a href="http://www.apra.org.pe/">APRA</a> itself.<br /><br />No wonder, by the end of his term Peru was deep into the worst crisis of its history confronting two choices, Alberto Fujimori as the rather surprising candidate of Cambio 90, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mario Vargas Llosa</span>, the novelist turned into politician who was unable to defeat Fujimori when El Chino was able to gather the support of García and other leaders of APRA who expected to be able to control his presidency.<br /><br />Fujimori himself contributed to such perception as his first presidential campaign was based on a bold rejection of the structural reform policies that Vargas Llosa openly proposed to the Peruvian electors. However, Fujimori proved to be a resourceful politician gathering the support of the Armed Forces to launch, rather late when compared with other Latin American countries, an ambitious reform program. The program included not only the usual shock policies to freeze the mounting inflation rate, but also a broad diplomatic effort to recast Peru's relation with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.<br /><br />Fifteen years later, Fujimori is nothing but a shadow of his old self, and sadly, Peru is in no better shape. After Fujimori's exile in Japan, the administration of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alejandro Toledo</span> faced, as his predecessors did, the negative consequences of presidential regimes, making the very process of government almost impossible.<br /><br />Despite the decision of the Peruvian electoral board it is important to stress that the Fujimoris are coming. Keiko, the former president's daughter and Santiago, the former president's brother are already registered as candidates. It is not clear, however, who will takeover as Santiago running mate, now that it is clear that Alberto will not be able to run as presidential candidate to compete with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ollanta Humala</span> and another shadow from the past, former President Alán García who expects to become the newest of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hugo Chávez</span>'s partners in Latin American politics.<br /><br />The problem, however, is in the institutional designs and more specifically in presidentialism. That is why politicians with different approaches to politics such as Belaúnde, García, Fujimori, and Toledo share all similar fates, similar flaws. It is not in the Peruvian or in the Latin American "culture," but in the rules of a perverse game that we are unable to stop.<br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/A%C3%A9rica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Peru" rel="tag">Peru</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alberto+Fujimori" rel="tag">Alberto Fujimori</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alejandro+Toledo" rel="tag">Alejandro Toledo</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Ollanta+Humala" rel="tag">Ollanta Humala</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Alan+Garcia" rel="tag">Alán García</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Populist+Politics" rel="tag">Populist Politics</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1136308266487540342006-01-03T10:55:00.000-05:002006-01-15T18:39:25.530-05:00Kirchner's Full PaymentToday January 2, 2006, the media in <a href="http://www.lanacion.com.ar/EdicionImpresa/economia/nota.asp?nota_id=769472">Buenos Aires</a> and elsewhere in <a href="http://diario.elmercurio.com/2006/01/03/economia_y_negocios/economia_y_finanzas/noticias/6AE2451C-EF01-44A6-9BBC-78FF3FA0C3F2.htm?id=%7B6AE2451C-EF01-44A6-9BBC-78FF3FA0C3F2%7D">Latin America</a> and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/international/americas/03argentina.html">United States</a>, call attention on the decision of the Argentine government to pay in full the country's debt with the International Monetary Fund.<br /><br />The IMF was informed of President Ernesto Kirchner's decision to pay in full in mid December. At that time, the IMF released a <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2005/pr05278.htm">brief statement on the issue</a> with little or no comment on the reasons and the consequences of the decision, which is, by itself, a good sign of the ability of the Argentine economy to recover .<br /><br />In Argentina, the decision has polarized the opinions of economists, politicians, and journalists who have expressed in some cases satisfaction and in some others caution with a decision that leaves the Argentine Treasury with little more than 18 thousand 500 million U.S. dollars in reserves after paying little more than 9 thousand 500 million to the IMF.<br /><br />To my mind there are two issues that one needs to pay attention to try to understand the reach of this decision and its possible consequences in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America. More so, because Mr. Kirchner and his ministers have emphasized the idea, rather ludicrous, that they have decided to pay in full as a way to have more "freedom" to pursue their own economic policies.<br /><br />First, it is necessary to take into consideration that those 9,500 million are only little more than 10 percent of the overall Argentine debt, which—as with most of the Latin American countries—comes from credits with private banks, and not with multinational institutions as the IMF or the Inter-American Development Bank . This is relevant because, actually, the credits with the IMF usually are less abusive than those with the private banks. That is something that has remained absent in most of Kirchner's statements on the issue.<br /><br />To my mind, if one really wants to achieve more freedom in the design of the economic policy, what is really important is to repay the debt with the private banks and not to seek the easy applause that comes out of slapping the IMF's face. More so, when it is clear that the measure appears as designed to achieve two goals. On the one hand, to fascinate certain leftist media in Argentina and Latin America (one only needs to pay attention to <a href="http://www.pagina12web.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-61223.html">Página 12's</a> take on the issue to understand it) than to pursue a major goal and, on the other, to insist in the rather ludicrous idea that the crises that Argentina and other countries in the region confront are the consequence of the "tight" controls that the IMF impose on the countries.<br /><br />The fact, however, is that such controls have been rather loose and that is why it has been possible to witness the abuses as that of former President Menem and his one-peso-to-one -dollar policy of the 1990s. One only needs to go over the files of the IMF and other multilateral financial institutions to see how even if at one point the IMF praised the fixed-parity as a way to address the hyper-inflation of the 1980s (5000 percent yearly in 1988-9), there were many warnings about the negative consequences of the policy.<br /><br />Moreover, many in Argentina and elsewhere insisted in the need to change the monetary policy, but Menem was unwilling to do so out of fear of the possible consequences. Something similar can be said of the rather dumb decision of the Mexican government to pursue a semi-fixed parity in the early 1990s while reducing the fiscal revenue by lowering the VAT rate from 15 to 10 percent in the last two years of the Salinas administration. Neither Menem’s nor Salinas’s policies were imposed by the IMF.<br /><br />The same can be said of the unwillingness of many governments in Latin America to pursue sound fiscal policies during the 1980s and 1990s. Otherwise, all the countries in region would be either disasters as Bolivia or buoyant economies as Chile. In actuality, however, there are variations that go from the performance of Chile and Mexico to the failure of Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. <p class="MsoNormal">However, in contemporary Latin American blaming the IMF for all the wrongdoings of irresponsible politicians is the best way to secure an ovation. <span lang="ES-TRAD"><span style="font-size:+0;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">In any case, the question now is what Argentina will do with the “freedom” that— if one accepts Kirchner’s hypothesis—comes after the decision to pay in full the debt with the IMF.<br /><span lang="ES-TRAD"><span style="font-size:+0;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">One discouraging sign can be found in the decision of the Venezuelan government to increase its role as financier of Kirchner. Because that is the aspect of Kirchner’s move that has not been really taken into consideration in the analysis. Only during the last three months of 2005, Venezuela bought 1,500 million dollars of Argentine bonds and the expectation is that Caracas will lend more money to Buenos Aires. It will be naïve—to say the least—to think that Hugo Chávez’s government will do it without seeking to impose its own economic agenda on Argentina.</p><p class="MsoNormal">In any case, questions about the future of the Argentine economy remain open. Hopefully, for the sake of the millions and millions of Argentines who have survived the economic catastrophe co-authored by Menem and De La Rúa, Kirchner will pursue sound policies to guarantee a better distribution of the wealth in that country.</p><br /><br /><hr /><span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags: <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Aérica+Latina" rel="tag">América Latina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Latin+America" rel="tag">Latin America</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Argentina" rel="tag">Argentina</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/International+Monetary+Fund" rel="tag">International Monetary Fund</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/World+Bank" rel="tag">World Bank</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Ernesto+ Kirchner" rel="tag">Ernesto Kirchner</a>, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/Carlos+Menem" rel="tag">Carlos Menem</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Rodolfo+Soriano" rel="tag">Rodolfo Soriano</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Social+Change+in+Latin+America" rel="tag">Social Change in Latin America</a></span>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1134993060007454082005-12-19T06:43:00.000-05:002005-12-19T16:13:51.650-05:00Evo Morales presidentThis Sunday, Evo Morales, leader of the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo, won the presidential election in Bolivia. He did it with an astounding 50% of the vote, leaving behind one of Bolivia’s recurring nightmares (that of the so-called ballotage) and more important, giving the new president the hope of a more stable Presidency than Morales’s predecessors. If that is the case, Morales’s presidency will be an immediate paradox as he played a key role in forcing-out of the Presidency both Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa.<br /><br />Morales played a key role in the mobilizations that swept Bolivia at the beginning of 2005, and—as such—he can be blamed of pretty much the same misdemeanors or Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president who actively supporter Morales in his quest for the Presidency.<br /><br />However, to the so-called “pundits” that immediately want to draw inaccurate comparisons between Bolivia and Venezuela it is important to remind them that the similarities that actually exist are more the function of similar institutional designs than the product of similar “cultures”. Both Bolivia and Venezuela were for many years Centralist republics, a feature that made both countries, as others in South America, prone to instability, that on top of the instability that is inherent to presidential regimes.<br /><br />The fact that both Bolivia and Venezuela have been commodities exporting economies, with little or no ability to industrialize, just compounds the overall weaknesses of the presidential regime institutional design. To make matters worse, as far as the institutional design is concerned, Bolivia’s reliance on the ballotage system, a political pipe-dream cooked and long-time ago dropped by the French, put Bolivia—over and over—in extremely fragile situations since 1982.<br /><br />One key difference that is necessary to keep in mind has to do with the processes of structural adjustment of the late 1980s are early 1990s. While Bolivia followed a rather brutal path of “neo-liberal” (neo-conservative in the U.S.) adjustment, in Venezuela nothing like that has ever happened, despite the whining and crying of Chávez and his Bolivarian Movement Fifth Republic.<br /><br />Morales reaches the Presidency of his country facing mounting pressure to address the many problems inherited by the draconian economic policies pursued, with little or no success (besides cooling down the mammoth inflation rate) during the 1980s . His warning about changes in his dealings with the firms that invested in the exploration and exploitation of the vast gas fields in his nation already had a negative effect pushing up the prices of the product in the World markets.<br /><br />He is already assuming that his presidency will have the kinds of cash flows that have allowed Chávez to become the leading voice of those who criticize the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as the main culprit for what often times is presented as a dark conspiracy, however they should know better. If—as they say—all the suffering is the IMF’s and WB’s fault, then we should see the exact same outcomes in all the countries when structural adjustment policies were pursued; the fact, however, is that there are important differences from country to country, and those differences are closely related to the specific policies pursued by the political leaders.<br /><br />That is, however something that we will never hear from Morales and much less from Chávez who is the main beneficiary of the Bolivian election. Not only now he has a reliable partner, willing to reproduce and amplify Chavez’s anti U.S., and anti IMF, discourse. Moreales will do it with two features that Chávez neve has had. On the one hand, Morales brings an ethnic base that can resonate with the rest of Latin America that Chávez never had before. Second, unlike Lula in Brazil or Kirchner in Argentina, Morales will command a clear majority in a government that, with the gas revenue, can be rich as Venezuela’s.<br /><br />For the U.S., Morales represents a challenge like never before. Not only he is close to Chávez, but he is also close to Castro. Cuba will then has a chance to expand its now narrow trade and, as such, will contribute to facilitate Morales’s decision to denounce or breach the contracts with the forms involved in the exploitation of gas, as such firms will be forced to choose between being at odds with the absurd trade embargo imposed on Cuba and those doing business with Cuba, or fighting a legal battle that is doomed in the Bolivian courts.<br /><br />Morales will not have, despite the gas related income, an easy ride. On the contrary, the “rebel” province of Santa Cruz still seeks its independence from the rest of Bolivia and it is there where the bulk of the gas is, setting the stage for what will be an epic battle. Also, it is important to keep in mind, despite the current buzz about Morales's ethnic origin, that Alejandro Toledo, the Peruvian president, is also a pure Aymara, and that heritage provided little or no advantage to his troubled presidency.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1134414014526849152005-12-12T13:15:00.000-05:002005-12-12T14:00:14.556-05:00Elections in South America, Truce in Mexico<p class="MsoNormal">After six months of involuntary but unavoidable absence, I am writing in this corner of the web. I finished the dissertation, so I am free again to write about Mexico and Latin America.<br /><br />While in Mexico a truce in the electoral campaigns during the Holiday season (Dec. 12-Jan. 12) was engineered by the Federal Electoral Institute, in Santiago de Chile, socialist presidential hopeful <b>Michelle Bachelet</b> reached the second round of the presidential election.<br /><br />Bachelet's partial victory allows seeing deep changes among the Chilean voters that, for the first time since the end of <b>Augusto Pinochet</b>'s dictatorship, decided not to give the candidates of the Christian Democrat and Socialist coalition a win in the first round of the presidential contest.<br />Moreover, the Chilean voters gave the center-to-right and right opposition of President Ricardo Lagos more votes than those gathered by Bachelet, although almost all pollsters assume that Bachelet, a former Health and Defense minister in Lagos's cabinet, will win in the second round to happen on January 2006. If Bachelet wins, the Christian democrat-Socialist coalition will extend their control of Chilean politics for 20 years.<br /><br />During the last 15 years, the coalition has not affected the institutional design of Pinochet's dictatorship on financial, economic, and trade matters, but it has deepen the logic and the direction of the reforms originally launched by the military government at the beginning of the 1980s. Here it is important to stress that until the arrival of the so-called <i>Chicago boys</i> to the Chilean government, Pinochet's dictatorship was not only as brutal, but also as inefficient as the Argentine Military Junta.<br /><br />However, what is more relevant to consider at this point is that the willingness of the Socialist government led by Lagos in Chile to preserve Pinochet's institutional design, stands in sharp contrast with the policies pursued by "leftist" governments in other countries of Latin America, and more important in sharper contrast with the propositions made many of the presidential candidates in other countries of the region. This difference is often times overlooked as the recent, rather poor reports of Juan Forero and Larry Rother of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/international/americas/10bolivia.html"><i>The New York Times</i></a> exemplify.<br /><br />To think, as an example, that Bachelet is closer to <b>Andrés Manuel López Obrador</b> than to <b>Carlos Salinas de Gortari</b> would imply a naivety the size of the Andes. Not only Bachelet, but Lagos and the representatives and senators elected under the banner of the <a href="http://www.pschile.cl/pschile/ambientes/0/index.jsp"><i>Chilean Socialist Party</i></a> have been wise enough to build a healthy and cooperative relation with their colleagues of the <a href="http://www.pdc.cl/"><i>Christian Democrat Party</i></a>, they have been unwilling to relinquish the political leadership of their country as that would favor the parties closer to Pinochet.<br /><br />They have not done so, unlike the conspiracy theories of López Obrador and the insults of <b>Felipe Calderón</b>. Bachelet, Lagos, Zaldívar and other Chilean politicians of the Christian democrat-Socialist coalition have been able to conduct themselves with a maturity that is unseen in these days in Latin America. The same can be said of any comparison between Bachelet and <b>Ernesto Kirchner</b>, Bachelet and <b>Hugo Chávez</b>, or Bachelet and who appears to be the next president of Bolivia, the former leader of the coca producers <b>Evo Morales</b>.<br /><br />Now that everything seems to indicate a new defeat of the PRI in the July 2006 elections in Mexico, the concern that I have is how many years would the political watch go back with mister López as President? Would he be willing to risk the last of Mexican oil reserves in a desperate attempt to be more like his chief financial officer, Mr. Hugo Chávez?<br /><br />These kinds of questions are more pressing when one considers how López has started already a personal war against the Banco de México chairman <b>Guillermo Ortiz Martínez</b>, and has already challenged any reform to the financial system because in his conspiratorial mind any reform is aimed at tying his hands.<br /><br />In any case, I cannot but express my happiness for the outcome of the Chilean election, and more specifically for the success of the coalition. As far as Mexico is concerned, all I can do is to get ready to swim deep into six years of populism, irresponsibility and paranoia starting on July 2006.</p>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1119842434540275522005-06-26T21:38:00.000-04:002005-06-27T18:23:38.643-04:00Religion, Politics, and Football<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">While the football (soccer) national teams of Mexico and Argentina were playing a delightful semifinal of the Confederations Cup at Hanover, Germany, the newspapers of both countries were reporting, among many other things, of a couple of messages released by the Catholic bishops of both countries.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Both messages deal with politics in their countries and, more important, both put forward severe critiques of the performance of the political parties in both </span><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Argentina</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US"> and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Mexico</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US">.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In Argentina, Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, the archbishop-cardinal of Buenos Aires, one of the few Latin American members of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuitas, promoted by John Paul II to become bishops and, even more, to become archbishop and cardinal during his long pontificate, issued a lengthy message (28 pages) in which he criticizes the performance of political leaders in his country stressing the negative role that political struggles have had for the development of democracy in Argentina.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The cardinal stresses the negative role of political struggles within the context of the forthcoming primary elections in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Argentina</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US">. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">La Nación</span>, a distant equivalent of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The New York Times</span> in Argentine journalism, endorsed Bergoglio’s critique of the politicos’ performance with extensive front page coverage. Moreover, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">La Nación</span> quotes Bergoglio’s as saying that <a href="http://www.lanacion.com.ar/EdicionImpresa/politica/nota.asp?nota_id=716201">“political struggles are the great illness of Argentina.”</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The second paragraph of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">La Nación</span>’s note is a full quote of Bergoglio’s message stressing how: “while various interests play their game, afar from the needs of all, it is possible to see in the horizon the shadow of a cloud of social disarray.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">However, and this is relevant to understand the role and the aims of the Church in Latin American countries, Bergoglio’s document displays a broad and sound diagnosis of the situation in contemporary Argentina, the sources of the conflicts, and—more important—it offers a enlightening interpretation of the parable of the good Samaritan as an image to try build a solution for the conundrum of contemporary Argentinean politics.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Interestingly enough, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">La Nación</span>—a newspaper that can hardly be identified as Catholic—provides a link to download the full message from Cardinal Bergoglio.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">As far as Mexico is concerned, <a href="http://www.terra.com.mx/elecciones2006/articulo/163962/">Terra</a>, a pan-Latin American web-based service quotes the auxiliary bishop of Mexico City Felipe Tejeda who criticized the primary elections of the presidential candidates saying that the “expenses associated (with such elections) are scandalous and useless.” Here is necessary to stress that the ruling National Action Party (Christian democrat right-to-center) alone has authorized expenses of 350 million pesos (34 million U.S. dollars) for each of its four presidential hopefuls. It is not clear yet how much will the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI, social democrat) will authorize its pre-candidates to spend.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The “leftist” Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has not set a limit, but one of its most likely candidates, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Mexico City</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-US">’s mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador benefits from the huge budgets of the public relations and media areas of the City’s local government.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Moreover, once the candidates are nominated by the parties, the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE) will allocate federal public monies, plus time in the national, and regional TV and radio networks, plus the monies that the parties will get from the local governments in states (like Nuevo León or the Federal District) where on top of the federal election, local elections happen simultaneously, plus marginal private contributions that the parties and candidates could raise for up to a ten percent of the total public contributions to their campaigns.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">These sums will be pre-set by the </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">IFE</span></st1:place></st1:city><span lang="EN-US"> by September 2005. Then the Secretary of the Treasury (Hacienda) will incorporate such request in the National Budgets that will present some time between the end of September and the end of October 2006, waiting for approval by </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Mexico</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US">’s lower chamber (Cámara de Diputados).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Church is not the first, and will hardly be the last to criticize how much money the Mexican parties get from the Treasury. In </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Argentina</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US">, the Church’s criticism of the politicos’ behavior is a concern shared by many other political actors in that country. What is relevant, however, is the fact that the Church enjoys in both countries and all over </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Latin America</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-US"> great levels of trust and public support. However, it is not clear what will the Church make out of such trust when confronting increasingly complex, impoverished, and fractured societies.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Criticizing the expenditure in political struggles is a rather easy task. What is necessary now is to confront the challenge to become an efficient political actor to promote agreements and reforms in countries in great need of them. It could be possible for the Church to perform that important role, although it is clear that it will be necessary to improve its ability to facilitate the dialogue without seeking to push forward its own institutional agenda.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">That is easier in Mexico, where the Church does not receive and is not asking for public subsidies. In Argentina, because of the agreements signed during the 1960s (civil governments), ratified by the military rulers of the 1970s and Mr. Menem's democratically elected governments is harder. Mostly, because for the Church there is always the risk of opening a debate that could make them loose more than they could get, especially in the topic of religious education.</p>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118865462029760372005-06-15T15:11:00.000-04:002005-06-28T15:19:50.713-04:00The Church: Silence and Expectations<o:p></o:p>A constant in different polls carried all over <st1:place>Latin America</st1:place> is the great level of trust (confianza) that the Catholic Church enjoys. <a href="http://www.latinobarometro.org/Upload/Informe%20LB%202004%20Final.pdf">Latinobarómetro</a>, <a href="http://www.consulta.com.mx/interiores/99_pdfs/12_mexicanos_pdf/mxc_NA050328_ConfianzaInstituciones.pdf">Consulta Mitofsky</a>, and many other pollsters regularly register trust levels for the Catholic Church well into the 70 and even 80 percent. <p class="MsoNormal">This perception (which is nothing but that) is the source of great tension and debates inside and outside the Church. Do such measures represent an unrestrained ability of the Church to set the public agenda in the countries of the region, in ways similar to those of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>? Hardly. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Is the Catholic Church falling in patterns similar to those of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>? Hardly. Is competition with other Christian (Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals) or non-Christian (Jehovah’s Witnesses) or para-Christian (Mormons) denominations shaping the Latin American landscape in similar ways to those observed since the mid 18<sup>th</sup> century in what is nowadays the United States? I do not think so.</p> The evolution of Catholic Church, and religion at large, in the region follows historically situated patterns. There are some similarities with processes going on in different countries of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>, and some with processes occurring in the <st1:country-region><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but for the most part, Latin America poses a key challenge to the future of Catholicism. <p class="MsoNormal">I think that even the <st1:country-region><st1:place>Vatican</st1:place></st1:country-region> itself is having a hard time figuring out how to address the religious conundrum posed by <st1:place>Latin America</st1:place>. A way to measure the problems that the <st1:country-region><st1:place>Vatican</st1:place></st1:country-region> is having trying to develop pastoral policies for the region is to observe the silence of the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI. So far, there has been no specific statement on <st1:place>Latin America</st1:place> as a region. The pope expressed his concern with the evolution of the conflict in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Bolivia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but that has been it, with the dubius addition of a brief prayer in Spanish before an image of the Virgion of Guadalupe a few days after his election.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>However, the clock is ticking and some definitions will come in the coming days. Such possibility is stressed by the fact that it is expected that the pope will attend, as his predecessors did, the General Conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM, for its initials in Spanish). It is not clear yet if what will be the Fifth of such conferences will happen either in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Argentina</st1:place></st1:country-region> or in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Chile</st1:place></st1:country-region>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What is clear is that, after a statement of Msgr. Carlos Aguiar Retes, first vice-president of the CELAM, on the possibility of such trip a wave of expectation swept both <st1:country-region><st1:place>Argentina</st1:place></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1:place>Chile</st1:place></st1:country-region>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Benedict XVI’s silence about Latin America is more compelling when one considers that the region is the global stronghold of Roman Catholicism, and that Brazil, Mexico, and the United States (with a large Hispanic population) are the three countries with the largest Catholic populations worldwide.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The pope, so far, has been trying to smooth the relations with the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. The move makes sense from an European perspective when one considers the challenges that Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutheran churches face there, and the fact that it is far easier to find a solution to the dispute with the Orthodox churches than to find it with the Lutheran or Anglican churches, mostly because of the issue of the female priesthood. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is clear that if the Catholic and Orthodox churches expect to have a future in <st1:place>Europe</st1:place> they need to learn to coexist. Moreover, they need to learn to share resources and to face together the challenges of the double process of de-Christianization of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>: on the one hand, the pressure created by the Islam, and on the other hand, the changes brought by the secularization process in <st1:place>Europe</st1:place> (although such process is far from being universal).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>However, it would be a huge mistake if the <st1:country-region><st1:place>Vatican</st1:place></st1:country-region> forgets <st1:place>Latin America</st1:place>. In <st1:place>Latin America</st1:place>, the Church faces equally important challenges that require not only resources, but above all the imagination and compromise of the church’s grassroots organizations, hierarchies, and the laypersons. Moreover, unlike Europe, where it is forced to seek collaboration and support from the Orthodox churches, in Latin America the Church goes by itself.<br /></p>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118435815719856822005-06-10T16:06:00.000-04:002005-06-10T16:36:56.133-04:00New President, New Hopes?<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Carlos Mesa's presidency in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US"> finally ended when the Congress decided to accept his resignation. Mesa’s, the most recent “interrupted presidency” in the long lineage of “interrupted presidencies” in the poorest country in South America, was an actor of a process that put the country at the brink of civil war and, eventually, of its disintegration.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The independent movement based in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Santa Cruz</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style="" lang="EN-US">, the wealthiest province in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US">, has achieved an unexpected level of support that has created expectations about a possible quick, easy solution to the longstanding problems or poverty and marginalization that have plagued the country since its very origins.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">So far, it is not clear if the recently appointed president, Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, the former Chief Justice of Bolivia’s Supreme Court, will be able to carry the reforms he has sketched so far. What is necessary to keep in mind is that there is no easy way out to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s legacy of poverty and institutional conflict. In addition, at least in the coming days, Rodríguez Veltzé will be forced to perform his duties as president under the same rules and with the same institutional design that damaged Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s and Carlos Mesa’s presidencies.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Moreover, that institutional design has been behind the long chain of “interrupted presidencies,” coups, and political instability that has plagued </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s history in the twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">So far, his main proposal implies a significant change in the institutional design: moving the country from a central presidential design, into something similar to a federal presidential system although interestingly enough I have not been able to find specific references to a reform aimed to move </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US"> from its status as a centralist regime into a federalist one.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It is important to stress that he has been appointed for a very short, six-month term, which will give him little or no effective power to carry away the kind of deep reforms that </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US"> needs at this point. The risk, of course is that his presidency could end up becoming some sort of lame duck and that the truce he requested will be actually granted just as a way to set the stage for the new presidential election. And here a painful remainder, such election will be affected (unless an overhaul of the electoral system is achieved before Christmas), once again, by the institutional design flaws (ballotage, as an example) that explain </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bolivia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s never ending crisis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118247072551911872005-06-08T11:19:00.000-04:002005-06-21T16:21:37.800-04:00Mexico's Electoral Labyrinth<p class="MsoNormal">In July, <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s most populated state, the State of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region> (hehe, we had some problems figuring out new names for the states) will held its gubernatorial election.<br /><br />Traditionally, since the late 1970s that race has been seen as the key match of the electoral calendar of the year, but mostly it has been seen as a general rehearsal for the general elections that are usually held one year after. This year, however, the situation will not be like that. The numbers in the state race will hardly match the expected numbers in the presidential election. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As far as the state election is concerned, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the old PRI, Enrique Peña Nieto, has a relatively easy advantage on most polls and will be, if nothing changes, the winner of the election, however such win will mean little or nothing for the outcome of the presidential election in 2006.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The “leftist” candidate (and I use such term as loosely as possible) of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) Yeidckol Polevensky Gurvitz has a dark history of name changes (she is not Polish as her name will hint), family conflicts and lies that have been haunting her electoral bid. Fortunately, she is far behind in the race with little or no chances of a come back.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Rubén Mendoza Ayala, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) started the race with some advantage, however poor decision-making, and the lack any relevant ideas has put him in an increasingly weak position. During the weekend, he starred one of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s worst displays of electoral behavior. While heading a rally with sympathizers in a small town, he charged against the owner of a pick-up truck filled with balls marked with propaganda of the PRI’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto. Moreover, he instigated the crowd to take over the balls and to hit the owner of the truck.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As of yesterday, the candidate had repaid the balls, and did a tour of some of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s news outlets claiming that was the victim of a conspiracy. Fortunately, someone in the crowd had a video camera on, so his speech instigating the crowd, insulting the PRI’s candidate and charging against the owner of the pick-up were all recorded in vivid colors and displayed by <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s newscasts. In the video, it is possible to see Mendoza Ayala calling himself “ugly as all other Mexicans” and yet, claiming that the electoral race is not a beauty contest. <st1:city><st1:place>Mendoza</st1:place></st1:city>’s rant and rave came very close to mutiny.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As usual in contemporary <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>, <st1:city><st1:place>Mendoza</st1:place></st1:city> has been talking of a media conspiracy instead of acknowledging his responsibility in the violent behavior of his sympathizers, while making all sorts of sexual innuendos with references to the balls, his alleged ugliness, and—to fully integrate the picture—with sexual insults that involve the mother of the candidate of the PRI.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What a shame.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, I expect a close call in the election in the state of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Mexico</st1:place></st1:country-region>, with Enrique Peña Nieto as the winner, but with all sorts of pressure from the “leftist” PRD’s candidate who is running with the support of <st1:city><st1:place>Mexico City</st1:place></st1:city>’s mayor and future presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The candidate of the PAN, the party of Vicente Fox, the President of the country, will continue with his allegations of conspiracy and perhaps electoral fraud, which ultimately will be dismissed by his own party.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the only good thing that will come out of this is the realization among the PRI leaders that they cannot waste time or effort in more internal conflicts. If so, they will be able to concentrate their efforts in the election of 2006, which will be—by all accounts—the toughest in Mexico’s history, a new and more painful labyrinth for which the old easy recipes of democratization and dismissal of the old authoritarian regime will not work any more.<o:p></o:p> </p>Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118162307364409182005-06-07T12:28:00.000-04:002005-06-07T12:38:27.386-04:00Bolivia or the eternal crisisA few hours after Carlos Mesa's new attempt to step down as president of Bolivia (his most recent attempt happened in March of this year), the Congress has been unable to reach an agreement to hold the joint session that will analyze if they accept or not (as it happened in March) the president's decision to resign. Unfortunately, the solution to this conflict will hardly come that easy.<br /><br />When Mesa first tried to resign, he proposed a series of reforms that included the disolution of the Congress in order to build a new representation of the Congress. A new Congress able to better represent Bolivia. That, as many other propositions, was rejected by the Congress. All his other propositions to push forward a political and a fiscal reform were rejected too.<br /><br />What is left now is a country sunk in the worst crisis of its history, with little or no hope for a solution. Again, the answer to many of its troubles lie deep in the very configuration of its institutions. It is not out of chance that Bolivia has been one of the most unstable and poor countries of the region. It is because its institutions are designed to perpetuate chaos and instability by over-emphasizing a separation of powers that is so perfect that prevents any collaboration.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118118589723757802005-06-06T23:24:00.000-04:002005-06-07T00:32:25.150-04:00Bolivia, Once AgainTonight, as I was doing my last tour of the day over the Internet, I found the information of Carlos Mesa's resignation as president of Bolivia.<br /><br />What a shame, and what a waste.<br /><br />Mesa has been trying to find a solution to Bolivia's catastrophe, to Bolivia's labyrinth since the end of 2004 with little or no success A few weeks ago, he tried to find a solution to this conflict by resigning his post. The congress, immersed as it has been in the kinds of power struggles that are the trademark of presidential regimes and lie at the very core of Bolivia's longstanding history of instability, conflict, and poverty, will have, one more time a chance to try to find some sort of solution to its own riddle.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I am skeptic about a possible solution in the short run. On the contrary, I think that the contradictions that have affected Bolivia in the last 15 years are for from solved. That is the case of the debate about the nationalization of the oil industry, a measure that will prompt the immediate rejection of the United States, its oil industry, and the I International Monetary Fund.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1118095483485997022005-06-06T17:27:00.000-04:002005-06-06T18:04:43.490-04:00Again in the TimesThis Monday, The New York Times published a brief piece about an angry Condolezza Rice criticizing the major Latin American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil) for being unwilling to support the latest pipe dream of George Bush as far as Latin America is concerned.<br /><br />Mr. Bush wants the Organization of American States to develop "a process to assess, as appropriate, situations that may affect the development of a member state's democratic political institutional process or the legitimate exercise of power."<br /><br />Wisely enough, the ambassadors of the aforementioned countries plus Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, let Mrs. Rice know in advance that they were going to oppose the creation of such "process," signaling the death of this veiled intervention sponsored by the White House on the internal affairs of the countries of the region.<br /><br />The piece published by the <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2005/06/06/international/americas/06oas.html&tntemail0">Times </a>emphasizes the fact that Venezuela was the undisclosed destinatary of the so-called "process," while stressing also how hard it was for Mrs. Rice to digest this new defeat for the Bush administration and their aim to become the benchmark of democratic practices all over the world.<br /><br />And of course, hehe, the irony of it all is that when one compares the U.S. democracy, its standards, its abuses, the gerrymandering with other democracies of the world, there is no way to think that mr. Bush could go around lecturing on (and, what is worse, sanctioning) democratic practices.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9587516.post-1117857146450548732005-06-03T21:49:00.000-04:002005-06-05T23:22:54.120-04:00Bolivia: Back in the TimesSadly, Bolivia is once again in the pages of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/04/international/americas/04bolivia.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The New York Times</span></a>. Sadly, because unlike what happens with China, Japan, or Europe, Latin American countries reach the pages of The Times only when tragedies have happened or are about to happen. Bolivia is actually a special case among the sea of tragedies that happen on a regular basis in the region. So many, that the very definition of tragedy has gone through an overhaul when one needs to address whatever happens in that country.<br /><br />With the patronizing tone that erases from his name and skin the sin of being a "Latino ," Juan Forero, the Times correspondent in Santa Fe de Bogota, offers a sketchy account of Bolivia's recent crisis, with little or no context to understand it. In any case, English speaking audiences have now a glimpse to one of South America's sadest stories ever, even if they get it from Colombia, which is as absurd a if I was writing a a journalist from New York about stories happening in Toronto or Montreal, Canada.<br /><br />They do so, but unfortunately little or no change can be expected as a consequence of the sudden notoriety of that country's crisis. In the short term, little or nothing will change, mostly because the country is deep in a political deadlock hard to break, and whose consequences are even harder to foresee. The fact that Bolivia is the poorest country in South America makes the whole situation even worse, because it will always be possible to keep large sectors of Bolivia's poor mobilized and as radicalized as possible, preventing any solution to the many issues that affect that country.<br /><br />The Organization of American States has been traditionally unable to address crises like this, and the fact that OAS has now a Chilean general-secretary, former Interior minister Luis Miguel Insulza, will make any intervention of the regional organization harder, since Bolivia and Chile have no diplomatic relations, because of Chile's military aggression that locked out Bolivia in the 19th century.<br /><br />Bolivian President Carlos Mesa has been trying to reach an agreement with Evo Morales, the leader of the coca growers and the radical voice of the opposition, pretty much since his inauguration, with no success at all. Moreover,the fact that the country is a centralized presidential republic, with a very unfair income distribution, and a very unstable political system, only makes harder to achieve the kinds of agreements that the country needs, mostly because as soon as a new president is inaugurated the cycle comes to life again.<br /><br />Mesa is offering a broad overhauling of the country's institutional design, mainly he is offering more autonomy to Bolivia's deportments, but so far no word on a possible change from the current presidential regime to a parliamentary one.Rodolfo Soriano-Núñezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00490280914809458842noreply@blogger.com0