Frontera NorteSur Apr - June 2008

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Oil, Migrants and Santa Anna

The future of the Pemex nacional oil company continues to be at the center of  national politics in Mexico. Negotiations to lift the four day-old blockade of the Mexican Congress, which was carried out by legislators opposed to the privatization of Pemex,  were expected to take place, on Monday, April 14. Affilated with the Progressive Action Front (FAP), the legislators stormed and seized the tribunals in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies last Thursday after the administration of President Felipe Calderon submitted a fast-track set of proposals designed to permit the greater involvement of national and foreign capital in the government-owned company’s functions, many of which are already outsourced to both Mexican and foreign businessmen. Opponents of the Calderon plan argue that it violates the
Mexican Constitution, which reserves petroleum resources to exclusive government ownership, jeopardizes national security and cheats social services, which are heavily dependent on Pemex’s income for funding. A second group of  lawmakers opposed to the Calderon legislation announced a hunger strike on Sunday, April 13.  

Meanwhile, legisators from the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), an organization which is not participating in the anti-privatization protests, proposed that Pemex bonds be sold to Mexican migrant workers as way of averting foreign investment while putting remittances earned in the United States to good use back home. The PRI proposal expands on an earlier one pitched by President Calderon that would allow Mexican citizens to buy Pemex bonds in order to strengthen the company’s finances and permit it to expand production, especially in deep ocean waters located in the Gulf of
Mexico where Mexican and US territorial waters converge.  

Noting that almost all migrant dollars sent back to Mexico go for basic survival needs, PRI Congressman Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, who serves as the secretary for the border and migrant affairs commission in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, said investing remittances in Pemex could uplift the quality of life for migrant families.

“If we offer them a return of 10 percent, many Mexicans who have gone to work in the US for lack of employment, could then have an important investment and an additional income for their families,” Martinez said.

Holding the decisive vote in legislative showdown over Pemex,  the PRI is torn over the Calderon initiative. Congressman Jose Aispuro Torres said the president’s legislation coincides with many PRI proposals,  but that party members have “serious doubts” about the participation of private capital in Pemex. The nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry in 1938 by then-President Lazaro Cardenas remains perhaps the key legacy of a political party that aims to recover the Mexican Congress in 2009 and the Mexican White House in 2012.  Clearly, PRI leaders are worried about being outflanked by opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, who is leading popular and legislative protests against the Calderon legislation.

Compared by the media to the “Adelitas,” or women combatants of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, pro-Lopez Obrador brigades led by women are spearheading the anti-privatization movement across the country. Posters with a picture of the revered President Cardenas backdropped by an oil rig and pointing a finger at passerby have begun appearing on Mexican streets. “Now it’s your turn: Mexico needs you,” they read, in a direct appeal to patrirotism. Adding a blast at Mexican electronic media coverage of the Pemex issue, which Lopez Obrador’s partisans accuse of bias in favor of the federal government, the posters urge citizens to “Turn off the television, and turn on your mind.”

On Sunday,. April 13,  tens of thousands of demonstrators once again turned out in Mexico City’s Zocalo Plaza to hear Lopez Obrador speak against the Calderon plan. It was the third large anti-privatization demonstration in the Zocalo since last March 18. To counter negative media coverage, Mexico’s leading opposition politician announced that his followers would distribute information about the Pemex issue door-to-door. “Everyone of us will be a medium of communication,” Lopez Obrador vowed. Comparing President Calderon with 19th century President Santa Anna, the leader who ceded Mexico’s northern territory to the United States, Lopez Obrador said it was “almost a certainty” that the actions of the FAP legislators and  the “Adelitas” had rendered the Calderon legislation a dead letter for the current congressional session, which ends on April 30. Joining others, he called for a broader national debate over Pemex’s future.  

In response to the growing anti-privatization mobilization, Mexico’s federal government is stepping up its own publicity offensive. Running ads on national television that say reforms  are meant to strengthen Pemex and not privatize it, the oil company is making its own brand of appeal to Mexicans’ futures. If it is reformed, Pemex promises, enhanced oil and gas revenues will translate into better educational opportunities, improved social services and universal health care for all Mexican citizens.
 

Additional sources: AFP, April 14, 2008. El Universal, April 14, 2008. Article by Ricardo Gomez and Andrea Merlos. La Jornada, April 14, 2008, Article by Enrique Mendez and Alma E. Munoz. Televisa, April 14, 2008. Frontera, April 13, 2008. Proceso, April 13, 2008. Articles by Jenardo Villamil and Rosalia Vergara.

From North to South: Zapata Vive!

Although the Mexican media was focused on the occupation of the nation’s congressional tribunal April 10 by opposition legislators protesting the
Calderon administration’s proposed PEMEX oil company reform, other events of national significance unfolded on the 89th anniversary of the assassination of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. Across rural and urban Mexico, farmers and their allies held protests, conducted highway blockades, convened meetings and staged marches to vent their anger over current agricultural and other policies.

“If we were to deliver a report to General Zapata today, we could say that poverty in the countryside continues,  that migration to the US grows daily and that the agricultural branches of production are not profitable,” said Federico Valle Vaquera, national director of the CIOAC rural advocacy organization. 

Involving thousands of people, and encompassing political forces ranging from the revolutionary left to the centrist National Campesino Confederation, numerous activities were reported in the states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, Guerrero, Veracruz, and Chiapas, among other places.  In Chiapas, members of the National Struggle Front for Socialism blockaded an international bridge connecting Mexico to Guatemala.

In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, hundreds turned out for a march to protest the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),  social security and energy reform initiatives, the Lomas de Poleo land conflict, and the presence of the Mexican army in the border city. 

Ciudad Juarez’s El Diario newspaper ran a photograph that showed a Mexican soldier with a camera allegedly snapping pictures of protestors and journalists from El Diario and TV Azteca.

Demonstrators also blasted last month’s assassination of farm leader Armando Villareal Martha and the recent arrests of social activists Cipriana Jurado and Carlos Chavez. Attending the event, Jurado reported that charges against her for allegedly participating in the blockade of an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez in 2005 had been dropped.

While Zapata anniversary protests are nothing new in Mexico, a noteworthy development in this year’s actions was the linkage between agricultural, water and energy issues. In the northern border state of Sonora, for instance, forty farmers blockaded the state office of the federal Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries to protest what they said were excessive electricity and water rates. In the coffee-producing highlands of Veracruz, an estimated 500 growers demanded $150 million in government subsidies as an answer to 80 percent price hikes for petrochemical-based fertilizers.

Soaring fertilizer prices also prompted farmers in Guerrero to seize state and federal agricultural agency offices and blockade for one hour the Highway of the Sun that connects Mexico City to the tourist resort of Acapulco.

Small growers in the indigenous La Montana region of Guerrero have complained of fertilizer price hikes in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 percent in recent months. Schooled in the practices of the Green Revolution, most Mexican farmers still rely on petrochemical-based fertilizers to grow their crops.

Agriculture and energy was a theme picked up by Mexican Agriculture Minister Alberto Cardenas yesterday.  Speaking at an official Zapata anniversary ceremony in the state of Morelos, Cardenas implied a direct relationship between improvement in the rural economy and passage of the Calderon Administration’s controversial energy reform package in the Mexican Congress.

“(Rural Mexico) can’t be removed from the issues related to the energy reform,” Cardenas said. “We can’t bet on populism or on deceit,” Cardenas added in an indirect poke at opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s movement against the privatization PEMEX.   

In recent weeks, the heated debate over PEMEX has diverted public attention away from Mexico’s ongoing rural crisis, which resurfaced as a pressing national issue in the wake of the mass farmer protests against NAFTA earlier this year. Negotiations between farm groups and the Calderon Administration have since broken down. To the chagrin of many farmers, Calderon administration officials insist that renegotiating NAFTA is off the table. Consequently, more rural protests are almost certain in the weeks and months ahead. It remains to be seen to what degree the anti-NAFTA movement will coalesce with the campaign against the privatization of PEMEX.

Sources: La Jornada, April 11, 2008. Articles by Andres T.Morales, Matile Perez U., P. Munoz, C. Gomez, J. Aranda, and correspondents. El Diario de Juarez, April 11, 2008. Article by Pedro Sanchez Briones. El Sur, April 11, 2008. Articles by Zacarias Cervantes.

NAFTA Back on the Political Agenda

Following in the footsteps of Mexican farmers and other free trade critics, US Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are calling for renegotiating aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The candidates' statements have special relevance in two upcoming primary states, Texas and Ohio, that could be pivotal in deciding who wins the Democratic nomination.

According to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, Ohio lost 50,000 jobs from 1993 to 2004 due to NAFTA. In relation to NAFTA, the United States Department of Labor certified 75 Ohio plant closures from 1993 to 2002, the EPI said in a press statement late last week.

While taking on NAFTA is likely to score votes in Ohio, it is less certain how the free trade issue will play out in Texas. A recent report from Texas A&M University contended that NAFTA was responsible for increasing the state's trade with Mexico from $25 million in 1990 to $332 million in 2006. According to the study, border communities especially benefited from NAFTA, with 35,000 new jobs created in Laredo, Texas, alone during the last 16 years.

"I am convinced that NAFTA has been the conducive force behind this phenomenon," said Michael Conchas, director of the Laredo Chamber of Commerce."  

Meanwhile, as the Democratic presidential contenders are taking pot shots at NAFTA, others are rising to defend the treaty. In an important development, pro-NAFTA politicians and government leaders increasingly argue that free trade, border security and the war against terrorism are inextricably bound together for the public good.

Responding to Clinton's and Obama's NAFTA comments, Republican presidential frontrunner John McCain said this weekend that renegotiating NAFTA would anger the Canadians and jeopardize their support of the Afghan war. NAFTA and national security are "interconnected with each other," McCain said.

Making free trade an essential ingredient of a larger political and economic package emerged as a prominent theme at the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America meeting last week between Canada, Mexico and the US held on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The participating nations lauded NAFTA, crediting the pact with increasing trade between the three countries to nearly $900 billion dollars by 2007.

"(NAFTA) has contributed significantly to economic growth and the quality of life in the three nations," said the Baja declaration. According to US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, the US gross national product has increased by 54 percent and 26 million jobs have been created since NAFTA went into effect.

NAFTA'S critics would take issue with Gutierrez's rosy assessment of the trade deal. The EPI, for instance, blames NAFTA for the loss of 1 million jobs in the US between 1994 and 2004, including 659,000 high-paying manufacturing jobs. According to the think tank, real hourly wages for Mexican manufacturing workers fell 12 percent between 1993 and 2006, while one million jobs related to the production of corn in Mexico were lost during the same general time period.

Yet NAFTA's worst impact, argues the EPI, was its success as “the prototype of hundreds of corporate-backed trade deals negotiated by the Clinton and Bush administrations," including China's joining of the World Trade Organization. Far from creating jobs, trade deficits with China displaced 2.7 million US workers by 2006, the EPI contends. 

Sources: Associated Press, March 1, 2008. Article by Libby Quaid. La Jornada, February 29, 2009. Article by Fabiola Martinez and Raymundo Leon. Tribuna de la Bahia/Notimex, February 28, 2008. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, February 29, 2008. Article by Ariadna Garcia.  Economic Policy Institute, February 29, 2008, Press statement. 

Super Tuesday in Mexico

On Tuesday, February 5, Democrats in the US states having presidential primaries or caucuses won't be alone in helping select their candidate for the 2008 fall face-off with the Republicans. In Mexico and other foreign nations, US citizens abroad will also have an opportunity to cast ballots for their standard-bearer. Organized by Democrats Abroad, the Mexico primary will help choose 22 foreign-based delegates who will participate in the Democrat's 2008 nominating convention. A part of the Democratic Global Primary for US citizens abroad, the Mexico primary is scheduled to run between February 5 and 12. Other Latin American countries where the primary will take place include Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

In an e-mail interview with Frontera  NorteSur, Nancy Evans,  Mexico representative for Democrats Abroad, said the US immigrant community was showing an "overwhelmingly positive" response to the electoral initiative.

"The first ever Global Primary put on by Democrats Abroad-International allows each and every one of us to have an impact upon the candidates who are running for US president on the Democratic Party ticket," Evans said.
"The global primary is not merely a 'straw vote' or a 'beauty contest,' it's a way to express our US presidential candidate preference. The concept of one person-=1 vote is truly in play here."

Starting on Super Tuesday, the Mexican primary will allow expatriates and other US citizens abroad the opportunity to cast ballots via the Internet and fax. For the first time, polling stations, or voting centers, for US citizens are scheduled to open on February 5 in and around Puerto Vallarta, Lake Chapala, San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City, all areas with high concentrations of US immigrants. Evans said any US citizen who will be 18 years of age or older on November 4, 2008, is eligible to participate in the primary. 

According to primary rules, prospective voters can register on-site at one of the voting centers but must provide an acceptable picture identification.  Additionally, each voter will be asked to sign a declaration foreswearing participation in any other US primary or caucus.

Evans framed Super Tuesday south of the border as a concrete way for expatriates to overcome the sense of powerlessness they feel about their ability to influence the US political system. Expatriates care deeply about developments in their native land, she said, but “don’t feel they have much impact on the political process from hundreds of miles away.” According to the Democratic Party activist, she’s received complaints from US citizens about not receiving requested absentee ballots on time or at all during previous elections.  

"It's a really fascinating development in the nature of US politics and how they are affected by globalization," said Dr. Sheila Croucher, professor of
political science at Ohio's Miami University. "This is a unique circumstance because the Democratic National Committee treats Democrats abroad as a
51st state."  The author of a forthcoming book from the University of Texas Press about US immigrants in Mexico, Croucher called the Mexico primary an example of the "political transnationalism" of the times. She cited both the 2008 US Democratic primary in Mexico and the 2006 Mexican presidential election in the US as indicators of this trend.

Although widely-criticized for its costly price-tag but ultimately low degree of voter participation, the 2006 Mexican presidential election allowed Mexican immigrants residing in the United States to cast absentee ballots in a presidential election back home for the first time. On an ongoing basis, all three of Mexico's major political parties maintain offices and representatives in the United States.

In a phone interview with Frontera NorteSur, Croucher   challenged the issue of "dual allegiance" expressed by critics of expatriate voting, whether in Mexico or in the US. The Ohio professor criticized the “potential hypocrisy” of politicians critical of Mexican nationals who vote in Mexican presidential elections from the US while US citizens cast ballots in US presidential races from Mexico. 

Both Croucher and Evans concurred that US-born residents of Mexico are concerned about issues, including the Iraq war, impeachment, Medicare and taxes. Many expatriates want Medicare payments, a system which they have paid into all their lives, extended to Mexican doctors and hospitals. Another hot topic is taxation. "Many people complain that the US is one of the few developed countries that levies taxes based on citizenship and not residence," Croucher said.

Though virtually ignored by the US media, the Democratic primary in Mexico has received some nods of attention from the party’s presidential aspirants. According to Croucher, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who dropped out of the race last month, made a phone call to a Democrats Abroad regional meeting in Mexico City last October. Hillary Clinton’s  campaign sent a video to the same meeting, Croucher said. Other candidates have e-mailed answers to policy questions from Democrats Abroad, she added. 

It's still a hard guess how many US-born immigrants currently reside in Mexico, but some estimates put the number at one million-strong. The US Census Bureau does not count US citizens in Mexico or other countries, and US Department of State does not make public its own calculations based on security reasons.

Depending on the closeness of Tuesday's election results, the Mexico primary could end up being a surprising factor in choosing the Democrats' 2008 candidate. "We hope, in fact, that Democrats Abroad members voting as a bloc worldwide will have a major impact as "the 51st state upon the US presidential candidates and make our presence felt at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado in August 2008," Evans affirmed.

For Croucher, the Democrats’ Global Primary is a watershed in modern politics. The event, she noted, "steps up institutionalization of (expatriate) voices and involvement in the American political system from abroad."

-Kent Paterson 

The Commotion in Coahuila

As the winter holidays crawl near, many news outlets on both sides of the border focus on soft news stories of non-stop shopping, holiday recipes and travel conditions. They deliver ritualistic appeals to help poor people who are largely invisible in the media the remainder of the year. But in the northern Mexican border state of Coahuila, December provided plenty of hard grist for the journalistic mill. In the days leading up to the Christmas holiday celebrations, Mexican soldiers were gunned down gangland-style, the office of an outspoken bishop was burgled, the Cimari hazardous waste dump went up in flames, the state governor staged a splashy wedding in Franciscan ruins, and even Carlos Salinas de Gortari came to town.

Commotion reigned in Torreon on Tuesday, December 18, when as many as nine gunmen ambushed four Mexican soldiers in a cell-phone store located in the downtown section of the city.  Three of the soldiers were killed while a fourth was sent to the hospital with injuries. Almost immediately following the attack, a convey of Mexican troops riding in Hummers, tanks and other vehicles was spotted moving toward the city. The brazen assault was among the worst episodes of violence to strike Coahuila, which has been the scene of a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels on one side and the Gulf Cartel on the other during 2006 and 2007. Once relished for its cotton, mining and dairy industries, Coahuila is now defined by an economy revolving around migration, maquiladoras and marijuana.  Strategically wrapped around routes that lead  to the US border,  Coahuila’s highways move jeans, dope and people. As in Ciudad Juarez, violent attacks against women have paralleled the rise of the legal and illegal global export industry. From 1998 to 2006, the bodies of at least 7 women were found scattered near the city of Saltillo. Showing signs of bite marks and sexual abuse, the women’s bodies were found naked and wrapped in plastic bags. A US national, William Wade, was once arrested for some of the crimes but later released.

Two Coahuila residents appear on a list of disappeared women issued by the Federal Office of the Attorney General.  In June 2003, 17-year-old Adela Jazmin Solis Castaneda vanished in Torreon after leaving for school. A Moncolva resident, Mayela Paola Muzquiz Aguilar, disappeared in August 2004 while going to a corner store near her home. The mother of the 21-year-old woman has since reported receiving strange phone calls with no one speaking on the other end of the line.
As Coahuila was coping with the Torreon slayings, word came December 21 that the offices of Saltillo Bishop Raul Vera were ransacked by two hooded suspects who attacked a secretary before departing. A well-known human rights activist, Vera was apparently on his way to the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas when the assault occurred. “This is part of the harassment that the father has been suffering, we can’t interpret it any other way,” said priest Pedro Pantoja, coordinator of the Saltillo diocese’s social and migrant program. “They went through files, electronic apparatuses, and no money was missing…”
Bishop Vera has been a prominent advocate for families of coal miners killed in the 2006 Pasta de Conchos disaster as well as for the 14 sex workers gang-raped by soldiers in the Castanos red light district last year. The bishop’s criticisms of Judge Hiradier Huerta, who found only three  soldiers guilty of  crimes, recently prompted the judge to write the Vatican demanding Vera’s removal. Coahuila Governor Humberto Moreira and other political leaders sharply condemned the attack on Vera’s office. Not all the recent news coming from Coahuila had a somber streak. Ample coverage was devoted to the December 21 wedding between Governor Moreira and Irma Vanesa Guerrero Martinez in the ruins of the St. Bernard Mission south of the border town of Piedras Negras. Bride Guerrero is a relative of prominent TV Azteca personality Paty Chapoy. Protected by hundreds of federal police and soldiers, the guest list read like a Who’s Who of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its allies.  Enjoying champagne and whiskey, hundreds of invitees danced to the live sounds of Camila, Grupo Pesado, Rondalla de Saltillo, Napoleon, and Celso Pina. Overwhelming the Piedras Negras airport with dozens of private jets, the wedding was an economic boost for area hotels including businesses in the Texas border cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio. Well-known PRI politicians topped the list of guests, including Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones, Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza and Mexico state governor Enrique Pena Nieto. El Universal publisher Francisco Ealy Ortiz, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster and businessman Alfonso Ancira Elizondo attended the festivities. Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari served as a witness for the enamored couple. In some ways, the Moreira-Guerrero wedding could be viewed as an end-of-the-year celebration for the PRI, which won many local and state elections in 2007. It could also prove to be an early coming out for an eventual Moreira presidential candidacy in 2012. Perhaps standing out among the wedding guests was Rosario Robles, who once served as mayor of Mexico City for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Robles was a close associate of the enigmatic, Argentine-born businessman Carlos Ahumada, whom supporters of 2006 PRD presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador accused of scheming with Salinas de Gortari, Vicente Fox and others to deny Lopez Obrador Mexico’s presidency. Released from prison earlier this year, Ahumada quickly faded from the limelight but not before making the comment that he had put in his “two cents” to stop AMLO dead in his tracks. Interviewed by reporters, Robles denied that divisions plague the tribalistic PRD, and she praised Governor Moreira of the ostensibly rival PRI for being a man committed to the poor and social equality.   Immersed in his  wedding day, Governor Moreira declined to comment on political matters, only saying that his new wife “stole my heart.” The newlyweds asked guests to donate wedding gifts to a bank account set up to aid low-income residents of  Piedras Negras.  Preliminary reports indicated that at least $200,000 had been rapidly collected for the fund.

Sources: Zocalo.com.mx, December 22 and 24, 2007. Articles by Hilda Aguilar and Juan Ramon Garza. El Diario de Coahuila, December 22, 2007. Frontenet/Notimex, December 21, 2007. La Jornada, December 19 and 21, 2007. Articles by Leopoldo Ramos. El Universal, December 21, 2007. Articles by Alberto Morales and the Notimex news service. Cimacnoticias.com, December 20 and 21, 2007. Articles by Hypatia Velasco Ramirez and Sofia Noriega. La Voz de Nuevo Mexico/Agencia Reforma, December 7, 2007. Proceso/Apro., November 10, 2006 and December 21, 2007. Articles by Arturo Rodriguez Garcia.

Chihuahua Voter Participation Plummets

With each passing election in the northern Mexican border state of Chihuahua, less eligible voters are inclined to turn out to the polls. New vote numbers reported by the head of the Chihuahua State Electoral Institute (IEE) show a steady trend of abstentionism in state and local elections from 1992 to 2007, a period of time when Mexico was officially moving from an authoritarian one-party state and approving democratic reforms at all levels.

According to IEE President Fernando Herrera Martinez, voter turnout in Chihuahua state gubernatorial elections reached 63.5 percent in 1992, decreased to 57.1 percent in 1998 and slid to 44.2 percent in 2004, the year the current governor, Jose Reyes Baeza, was elected. Abstentionism was even more pronounced in elections for state legislators, mayors and city councils, which are held in different years than the governor's race. According to the IEE's numbers, 55.1 percent of voters turned out in the 1995 elections, 43.2 percent cast ballots in 2001 and 37.5 percent voted  in last July's contest.

In comparison to voter participation in other Mexican states, Chihuahua ranks below Tamaulipas, Baja California, Sinaloa and Michoacan, among many others.

In comments to the Mexican press, Herrera said the IEE plans to work on increasing voter participation by means of civic education and media publicity. Part of the funding for the campaign could be drawn from the IEE'S 2008 proposed $7 million budget that will be considered by state lawmakers, Herrera added. 

"The proposal is to involve all the political actors in the task of increasing citizen participation in the coming electoral processes: political parties, media outlets, educational institutions and other groups with a broad social  presence," Herrera said.

Herrera’s IEE faces a daunting challenge. In conversations, many would-be Mexican voters express a profound distrust of politicians of varying political stripes, characterizing all of them as hopelessly corrupt.  In border states like Chihuahua, migration could also be a factor in explaining the high rates of electoral abstentionism.

Source: El Diario de Juarez, November 28, 2007.  

President Felipe Calderon: Year One

Marking his first year in office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon delivered a state-of-the-union speech on Saturday, December 1. Speaking in an optimistic tone, Calderon expressed confidence the political divisions that characterized his highly-challenged election in 2006 had been overcome. "Today, after one year of government and in before  a truly different panorama, I am more convinced than ever that Mexico's problems have solutions, but that they require unity and the solidarity of all," Calderon said.

In his address, Calderon emphasized economic, education, anti-crime and anti-poverty initiatives. Missing from his speech were recognitions of the special problems faced by Mexican corn farmers, tortilla consumers, battered women, indigenous groups, and Mexico-US border residents.

Calderon failed to make any mention of Mexican migrants in the United States and Canada.  Accounting for nearly one of every ten Mexicans, migrants help fuel the Mexican economy with more than $20 billion annually in remittances. The president's omission of the migration and remittance issues from his speech was even more striking at a moment when immigration is emerging as a key, contentious issue in the 2008 US presidential election, a development certain to affect Mexico-US relations one way or another.   

President Calderon lauded the creation of 800,000 jobs, the passage of new social security and tax reforms and the expansion of anti-poverty programs rooted in old Institutional Revolutionary Party governments. He emphasized the landing of $18 billion in foreign investment, an amount thirty percent higher than the previous year's figure, and  pending federal investments to the tune of  $5 billion in roads, ports, airports, energy installations, re-gasification facilities, telecommunications, and refineries, all part of the federal government's 2007-2012 national infrastructure program.  

"Despite the stagnation that threatens the economy of the United States, upon which we are dependent and which limits us, our growth of a little more than three percent this year, from December 1 of last year to now, (shows) the confidence in Mexico that permitted the creation of formal employment," Calderon said. To keep the economy on track, he reiterated an announcement made days earlier in Monterrey to slash electricity rates by 30 percent for an estimated 44,200 enterprises beginning on January 1, 2008.   

"We are going to reform and reinforce the dynamic of the internal market," Calderon vowed. "We are going to promote key sectors including construction, tourism, agriculture, housing, energy, and telecommunications, and we will diversify exports outside the North American market that grew at a rate superior to 25 percent this year."

The Mexican president devoted considerable time in his speech to detailing the expansion of anti-poverty and health insurance programs initiated by the Fox administration. According to Calderon, the federally-supported Seguro Popular health insurance program now covers 7 million families, one-third more than in 2006.  Calderon also cited the 70 and Older Program that gives the elderly, marginalized poor about fifty dollars per month. The program mimics one pioneered by former Mexico City Mayor and Calderon nemesis Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The Mexican federal government will spend about $100 billion on  health,  education and public services in 2008, Calderon added.

Completing a year in office dramatized by big drug seizures and the extradition of some leading drug traffickers to the United States, Calderon hailed the detention of 15,000 people linked to organized crime, including 20 regional drug cartel chiefs. "With each drug confiscation, with each criminal behind bars, with each zone  we recover from organized crime, we drive away our children from addictions, from violence and from delinquency," Calderon declared.

Noticeably, Calderon did not directly refer to the central role of the Mexican Armed Forces in the anti-drug campaign. Indeed, President Calderon's second year in office began just as his first did- with the deployment of the army.  Last year, shortly after taking office, he sent troops to Baja California and Michoacan. On the eve of his presidential speech this year, Calderon authorized the dispatch of army special forces to the northern border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where the Gulf drug cartel has particular sway. In recent days, the region has been struck with new outbreaks of suspected narco-violence,  including the November 29 murder of former Rio Bravo Mayor Juan Antonio Guajardo and five companions.

Briefly mentioning the recent natural disasters in Tabasco and Chiapas, Calderon’s speech treaded lightly on the environment. In terms of climate change, Calderon stressed the addition of new land into natural protected areas,  as well as PROARBOL, a program he said has achieved the planting of 217 million trees. Calderon boasted that PROARBOL’S accomplishments account for one-fourth of the United Nations’ global tree replanting goal. However, Mexico’s chief executive did not speak about mass transportation or other strategies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the thorny issue of human rights, Calderon was silent. No comments were made by the president about ongoing political and social conflicts in Chiapas and Oaxaca states. Weeks before his speech, the European Parliament passed a resolution that put the unresolved femicides of Ciudad Juarez and other places in Mexico squarely back on the international agenda. As a presidential candidate, Calderon pledged justice for the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez. It was a campaign promise many victims' relatives say is far from fulfilled.  

Even as Calderon was speaking, new human rights crises were brewing. A violent eviction by the Federal Preventive Police of protesting students who had occupied a highway toll booth near Acapulco November 30 left one student gravely injured and 56 others detained. Three reporters from La Jornada and El Sur newspapers were allegedly roughed up by police in the incident.

Two days before the president’s speech, the Mexican Supreme Court rendered a decision that many human rights advocates contend will go down in infamy. By a slim majority, court justices ruled no evidence existed to investigate Puebla Governor Mario Marin and other members of his administration for violating the rights of Cancun journalist Lydia Cacho, who was irregularly detained and threatened with rape in 2005 after she published a book exposing an international pedophile ring. The court also declined to investigate  Cacho’s well-documented expose of the ring, which allegedly included prominent businessmen and officials.

Stunned by the turn in her case, Cacho found herself at the huge Guadalajara International Book Fair as the Supreme Court’s decision was steadily condemned in the Mexican press. Surrounded by thousands of people from across Latin America and the world, Cacho vowed to take her case to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights and “two important European organisms.”   

In Washington, meanwhile, human rights are emerging as an issue in the Bush administration’s Plan Mexico anti-drug legislation under consideration by the US Congress.

As his first year in office closed, President Calderon maintained high levels of popularity,  according to a poll conducted by the Mexico City newspaper Reforma and disseminated in the electronic media. The poll reported that 64 percent of Mexicans surveyed approved of the president's record, while 23 percent disapproved. An additional 13 percent said they did not know how to respond. Paradoxically, Calderon's purported popularity has done little for his conservative National Action Party, which fared badly in state and local elections across Mexico this year.  

Sources:  El Universal, November 28 and 29, 2007; December 1, 2007. Articles by Sergio Jimenez, Francisco Gomez,  Natalia Gomez, Justino Miranda, Silvia Otero, and editorial staff. Univision, December 1, 2007.  La Jornada, November 30 and December 1, 2007. Articles by  Jesus Aranda, Juan Carlos Partida and Misael Habana de los Santos. El Sur, December 1, 2007. Article by Xavier Rosado. Proceso/Apro,November 27, 2007. Article by Luciano Campos Garza.

Narco Politics, Video Bombs and Political Spying

Refusing to follow Mexican presidents before him into quiet retirement, former President Vicente Fox continues to make waves. In the latest controversy involving the ex-president, Fox claimed during an October 25  California visit that Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones had been linked to illegal drug trafficking. The Guanajuato-based Fox Center, an organization established to promote Fox's conservative brand of politics in Mexico and abroad, issued a statement the following day repeating the accusation.

"Mr. Manlio Fabio Beltrons should dedicate himself to being a senator and not promoting his current aspirations to be President of the Republic. Manlio Fabio Beltrones has a record with the DEA connected with drug trafficking," the explosive missive claimed. 

The accusation followed remarks made last week by Beltrones, who said the sons of Fox's wife, Martha Sahagun, were connected to a contractor for the national oil company PEMEX that was involved in an October 23 accident in Campeche state which left at least 22 workers dead.

A former governor of Sonora state, Beltrones is a prominent politician who served as a federal deputy and then as a senator during the Fox administration. Beltrones' alleged involvement in drug trafficking was not made a public issue by the Fox government during its 2000-2006 administration. Indeed, a recent article in Proceso magazine recounted how Fox's former presidential secretary and trip coordinator were both suspected of involvement with organized crime.

In response to Fox's accusation, Beltrones charged that the ex-president was trying to confuse public opinion with a "smokescreen" designed to "hide corrupt acts of his family." In October, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies approved a special commission to probe the legality of personal property acquired by Fox during his presidency, a move Fox blasted as being politically-motivated. Beltrones said he would not sue Fox for libel, but suggested that the outspoken former president needed to visit a psychiatrist.

The Fox-Beltrones flap was just the latest public scandal swirling around politicians and their alleged ties to drug trafficking. The hoopla comes amid President George W. Bush's unveiling of a $1.4 billion drug war economic assistance package for Mexico known as Plan Mexico. If the financial assistance approved by the US Congress, Mexican senators and congressmen will have a role in deciding how the money should be spent on the ground.

A likely focal point of Plan Mexico spending is the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where intense bouts of narco-violence have erupted during the last four years. Tamaulipas is also currently the scene of a highly charged state election campaign that culminates on November 11. Threats,  reported acts of violence and mutual accusations of lawbreaking between the PRI and Fox's National Action Party (PAN) have characterized the contest so far. At one point, bomb threats against PRI offices in Matamoros were called in to the local police command and control center. 

Recently, Tamaulipas PAN leader Alejandro Saenz accused political opponents of carrying out acts of physical aggression against PAN candidates. "In previous days, the PAN mayoral candidate for Reynosa, Gerardo Pena, was kidnapped by presumed drug traffickers who ordered him to renounce his candidacy," Saenz said, adding that his party's mayoral candidates for Ciudad Mier and Nueva Ciudad Guerrero were forced to drop out of the race because of threats from criminals.  

Earlier this month, Saenz demanded that the Federal Office Attorney General (PGR) investigate purported ties between drug traffickers and PRI candidates. Saenz's demand came after a video was publicized that showed a meeting at the Laguna Madre restaurant in which an alleged drug dealer and the campaign coordinator of the PRI's Reynosa mayoral candidate, Oscar Luebbert, supposedly discussed why a raid was carried out on a drug stash house. 

Luebbert's public image has suffered other blows. An anti-Luebbert book some journalists suspect of being financed by the PAN has been circulating in Tamaulipas. Authored by Antonio Rosario, the book implicates Luebbert in shady insurance dealings during the 1990s.

After the Laguna Madre video was released, the PRI filed legal charges with the state attorney general's office and the PGR. The complaints accuse Saenz, as well as PAN federal congressmen Omehira Lopez Reyna and Raul Garcia Vivian and former Reynosa Mayor Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, of engaging in political spying and  waging a "dirty war" against the PRI. "We have been the clear targets of telephone espionage and this is typified in the law as a crime," the local PRI leadership charged. 

Under a glare of negative publicity, Luebbert announced this past weekend that he had taken a drug test to prove he was as clean as a whistle. Adding that he couldn’t acknowledge if PAN members were working with organized crime,  Luebbert nevertheless contended that "suspicions accompany them."

Meanwhile, another important PRI candidate in Tamaulipas, Arturo Diez Gutierrez Navarro, who is running for the strategic mayoral position in the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, was recently forced to answer questions about suspicions of drug money in his campaign.

"We are good people, and we have nothing to do with (drug traffickers)," Melendez told reporters.  Diez's brother-in-law, Alfredo Melendez, was gunned down gangland-style in a restaurant in Mexico state at the end of 2006.

Until now, no one has been held accountable for the alleged threats and illegal activities which have tainted the 2007 Tamaulipas electoral process.

In another recent instance of the "n" word sending jolts through the Mexican political landscape, PRI Governor Humberto Moreira of Coahuila accused PAN members of involvement with the drug underworld. Delivering his annual state-of-the-state report on October 15,  Gov. Moreira turned heads when he accused Panistas of "being up to their knees in drug trafficking."

In an equally surprising move, Moreira quickly backtracked from his accusations. The governor then held a meeting with PAN Senator Guillermo Anaya Llamas, one of the politicians implicated by Moreira in his speech. When asked by a reporter about the sudden turn-around in his posture, Moreira replied that it was for the public good.

"We talked with Senator Anaya and we came to an agreement to work together for Coahuila," Moreira said. "In (Coahuila), we have a great deal of public works, of social development, and we have a work dynamic that begins early and ends very late, so that's why we come to a point of agreement that we must work together for the future."
 
German Martinez Cazares, Mexico’s former anti-corruption czar who is vying for the presidency of the PAN, called on Moreira as well as Fox to present concrete proof of their respective accusations.

Mexico's contemporary round of narco-polemics underscores the persistence of a politically explosive but little-resolved issue.  At a Ciudad Juarez forum this month, leaders of the powerful Coparmex employers' organization insisted that political parties as well as businesses had been infiltrated by narcos. Rogelio Serna Michelena, vice-president of the public safety commission of the Coparmex, said large sums of money of illegal origin were being spent on many elections. Although accusations and counter-accusations of narco activity are flying fast and loose on Mexico's political scene, rarely does such rhetoric ever get translated into actual criminal prosecutions or other actions like putting greater controls on the private financing of election campaigns. 

Sources: Univision, October 27, 2007. El Universal, October 11, 17, 26, 27, 2007. Articles by Lilia Saul, Fernando Pedrero, Jose Luis Ruiz, Ricardo Gomez, and the Notimex news agency. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, October 27, 2007. Milenio.com, October 27, 2007. Proceso/Apro, October 16, 17 and 23, 2007. Articles by Gabriela Hernandez,  Jose Gil Olmos and Arturo Rodriguez Garcia. Enlineadirecta.info, October 22 and 27, 2007. Articles by Anabel Rocha Garcia, Hugo Reyna and editorial staff. La Jornada, October 18 and 28, 2007. Articles by Georgina Saldierna. El Diario de Juarez, October 11 and 22, 2007. 

The Border’s Summer of Discontent

It's as if all the contradictions of the US War on Terror, immigration reform, US-Mexico relations, free trade, and sagging economies on both sides of the border have burst at the seams, and at the same time. As the record hot summer of 2007 crawls to a close, the political barometer on the US-Mexico border is tipping red. Barely a day goes by without hunger strikes, human chains, border crossing demonstrations, marches, and calls for economic boycotts.

In a press conference this week, Carlos Marentes, director of the El Paso-based Border Agricultural Workers Project, said "neo-liberal" economic policies exemplified by the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) are sparking a growing crisis in the borderlands and beyond. He contended that US immigration laws and policies are shrouded in a veil of "hypocrisy" which views immigrant workers as an indispensable, cheap labor pool but then turns them into convenient political scapegoats. "We want to stop them, but we also need them," Marentes said. 

While border protests are hardly new, what's striking about the latest manifestations of discontent is how they are cutting across the political spectrum and even incorporating centrist and conservative forces that are increasingly frustrated by a status quo dictated in Washington and Mexico City.

In the wake of the US Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year, several developments are rekindling citizen activism. Among the most important are the construction of new border walls, long waits at border crossings, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown on undocumented workers, the deaths of detained immigrants while in US custody, Border Patrol shootings, and the August 19 deportation of activist Elvira Arellano.

The August 8 shooting of Jose Alejandro Ortiz by the US Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, unleashed a wave of indignation on the border and in Mexico. Ortiz, who reportedly had a criminal record in both the US and Mexico, was allegedly involved in an attempt to smuggle immigrants when he was fatally shot.  

According to the Border Patrol's account, Ortiz threatened to throw a rock at a still-unidentified agent, who was forced to fire in self-defense at the young man. At least one witness contradicted the official version, and the local US attorney's office is investigating the killing. Since Ortiz supposedly died south of the border, Mexico's Office of the Federal Attorney General has also opened an investigation. The Ortiz shooting was the fifth time El Paso Border Patrol agents have shot an undocumented person this year, but the first fatal incident of 2007.

Ortiz's killing was condemned in strong language by Ciudad Juarez Bishop Renato Ascensio Leon, Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and members of the federal Mexican Congress. On Saturday, August 25, several federal congressmen from President Calderon's center-right National Action Party leafleted motorists crossing the Bridge of Americas between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. Two days earlier, Ortiz family members and supporters burned a Border Patrol pinata at another bridge linking the two cities.

El Paso Democratic Congressman Silvestre Reyes, who headed the El Paso Border Patrol office during the 1990s, said an investigation of the Ortiz killing was necessary but challenged critics he said downplayed the seriousness of rock-throwing against agents. "Anybody who thinks you can't get killed by a rock is a fool," Congressman Reyes said at an El Paso border security conference.

The construction of new US border walls is another issue stoking anger in the region. While proponents of physical barriers insist the walls will guard against terrorists, deter illegal immigrants and curb drug traffickers, opponents, including most Texas border city mayors, contend the million-dollar structures will divide sister cities, intrude on private lands, create flood hazards, threaten ecosystems and wildlife like rare jaguars, and funnel undocumented immigrants to deadlier, isolated desert crossings. Isabel Garcia of the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition, said more than 200 migrants have died trying to cross the border in the Arizona-Sonora corridor alone since October of last year. The Arizona-Sonora border is "the epicenter of the war on immigrants," Garcia charged.
 
In opposition to border walls, a Texas-based group called Border Ambassadors kicked off a 16-day campaign August 25 in El Paso. Led by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, the group organized a small human chain across the Santa Fe Bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.

The demonstration was supported by the League for United Latin American Citizens, Miss Latina Texas beauty contest queens and the mayors of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. El Paso Mayor Cook said that people outside the region don't understand the "symbiotic relationship" between border communities dependent on mutual economic, academic and social exchanges. Border Ambassadors plans human chains in the coming days in other Texas-Mexico border cities.

A separate anti-wall mobilization is planned for October 11-13. Endorsed by 37 Western Hemisphere non-governmental groups, the action grows out of last year's Border Social Forum held in Ciudad Juarez. Protest organizers   include San Antonio's Southwest Workers Union, the Border Agricultural Workers Union, Southwest Organizing Project, and many others.

Economic grievances remain are the core of many border-area protests. Former Bracero Program guestworkers, for instance, are renewing demands that the Mexican government compensate all the eligible braceros who had money deducted from their paychecks decades ago for savings accounts that never materialized.

On Monday, August 27, nine women initiated a week-long hunger strike in El Paso against the North American Free Trade Agreement, the conditions of women workers and treatment of immigrants in the US. Organized by La Mujer Obrera, a longtime group of former garment industry workers, the hunger strikers demand investment in women-centered economic development enterprises.

In Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, thousands of teachers are expected to hold a border demonstration August 31 to protest the Mexican government's passage of a new social security law that lengthens retirement age eligibility requirements and sets the stage for the privatization of pension accounts.

Building on a trend that's developed over the past few years, the latest round of border activism is connected to issues affecting communities across North America. In Prince William County, Virginia, the Sin Fronteras organization launched an economic boycott this week to protest a new county law that gives local police immigration law enforcement responsibilities.

In an August 27 telephone press conference, representatives of several US-based human rights and Latino and Asian community organizations criticized the expansion of law enforcement measures once confined to the border region to the interior of the United States. Activist leaders condemned house-to-house ICE raids, alleged detention center abuses, employer verification letters, the use of local police forces to enforce immigration laws, and the appearance of high-tech aircraft monitoring communities far from the border.  

Immigrant communities are in a "state of siege," charged Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee. Activists are "now calling for our communities to come together and say enough to these governmental initiatives," Ramirez added.

Veronica Carmona, an organizer for the New Mexico-based Colonias Development Council, told Frontera NorteSur that pro-immigrant groups are backing a national day of action for September 12. Carmona said the character of the protest is still being debated.

If cross-border activism needed a media face, Elvira Arellano certainly provided it. The undocumented Mexican worker's long fight to remain with her child, a US citizen, was abruptly interrupted when ICE agents arrested Arellano as she was leaving a Los Angeles press conference this month. Arellano's rapid deportation to Mexico drew the protest of the Mexican government.

Arellano's arrest injected new life into the immigrant rights movement, and thousands of people streamed into the streets of Los Angeles on August 25 chanting "We are all Elvira," a slogan evocative of the 1994 cry in Mexico, "We are all Marcos," in allusion to the Zapatista subcomandante. The Arellano case received ample coverage and touched off sharp commentary in the Mexican media, with some outlets proclaiming the young woman as the “symbol” of the Mexican immigrant in the US.   

Additional sources: Univison, August 18 and 27, 2008. El Universal, August 26, 2007. Article by Julieta Martinez.  El Sur, August 26, 2007. Norte, August 14, 16, 25 and 26, 2007. Articles by Ricardo Espinoza, Antonio Flores Schroeder, Pablo Hernandez Batista, Jorge Chairez Daniel and Carlos Huerta. La Jornada, August 11, 21 and 26, 2007. Articles by Ruben Villalpando, the Notimex news agency and editorial staff. El Paso Times, August 21, 24, 25 and 26, 2007. Articles by Daniel Borunda, Louie Gilot and Adriana M. Chavez.  Lapolaka.com, August 9, 14, 25, 26, 27, 2007. El Diario de Juarez, August 9, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 2007.

The PRI Dominates Mexico’s North

In a reversal of last year’s poor political performance, the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has emerged as the clear winner in local elections held in three north-central Mexican states last weekend.  

A survey of election results in Chihuahua, Durango and Zacatecas shows the PRI gaining control of municipal presidencies that govern 61 percent of the population in the three states. President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National Action Party came in second, winning mayoral offices that cover 27 percent of the population in the region. The center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was the big loser in the balloting, winning  municipal presidencies that are responsible for only 8 percent of the population.

“The PRI made an important advance, with its candidates predominating in the north of the country,” said the party leadership in a statement.

Chihuahua, Durango and Zacatecas  all rank high among migrant-expelling states in Mexico. The arid, northern states are also the scenes of  intense levels of illegal drug cultivation and trafficking.

To one degree or another, all three elections were characterized by negative campaigning,  nepotism, mutual accusations of election law violations and widespread voter apathy. In Chihuahua, for instance, more than 60 percent of the electorate reportedly stayed home, with absenteeism reaching record rates of more than 70 percent in Ciudad Juarez alone. In an election with extremely low voter turn-out in the border city,  the PRI’s Jose Reyes handily beat the PAN’s Sergio Holguin  in the mayor’s race.

A cliff-hanger mayoral contest  in the state capital of Chihuahua City almost turned into a drawn-out, post-electoral conflict when both the PAN and PRI candidates proclaimed victory. Reminiscent of former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the PRI’s Alejandro Cano Ricaud initially demanded a vote-by-vote recount but later accepted a ruling by the Chihuahua State Electoral Institute that rejected Cano’s request and handed the victory to the PAN’s Carlos Borruel Baquera by a margin of only 387 votes.

Local election results in Zacatecas  unleashed new political tremors within the faction-ridden PRD, which dominated the state prior to last Sunday’s election.
Besides losing the state capital of Zacatecas to the PAN, the PRD also lost the mining city of Fresnillo to the Labor Party, which participated with the PRD in last year’s coalition that ran Lopez Obrador for president.

The PRD’s Zacatecas debacle is widely viewed as the outcome of a conflict between former PRD Governor Ricardo Monreal and current PRD Governor Amalia Garcia. Holding presidential ambitions, Monreal heads up a family with widespread political influence in the state. He has been sometimes compared to a cacique, or old-time political strongman.

Monreal’s brother, David, earlier attempted to run on the PRD ticket in a bid to succeed another brother,  Rodolfo, as mayor of Fresnillo. When his aspirations were rejected, David Monreal hopped over to the welcoming Labor Party and won the election.  

The Zacatecas campaign was punctuated by bitter rhetoric, accusations of dirty campaign tactics and, on election day, a strange incident in which Rodolfo Monreal and a political colleague were supposedly kidnapped for 15 minutes by an armed commando that invaded a ranch belonging to businessman Guillermo Huizar.

Accused of mounting a “state election,” Governor Garcia shot back at critics. She contended that Ricardo Monreal had employed “crude” and “violent” language in the race, and denied charges that her government was using state resources to promote its candidates.

Gov. Garcia added that state subsidies to bean growers, who produce the majority of the national crop, were due to the lack of federal support for the agricultural sector as well as the looming crisis confronting  producers next year when the North American Free Agreement eliminates all tariffs on the product.

In the wake of the Zacatecas electoral defeats, a movement has gained momentum within the PRD to expel Ricardo Monreal from the party. Last year, Monreal played a prominent role in Lopez Obrador’s campaign.

Sources: Norte, July 6, 2007. Article by Ricardo Espinoza Rodriguez. Lapolaka.com, July 5, 2007. Proceso/Apro, July 5, 2007. El Sur/Agencia Reforma July 4, 2007.  La Jornada, June 30. 2007; July 1, 2 and 6, 2007. Articles by Gerardo Flores, Alonso Urrutia, Miroslava Breach and Ruben Villalpando.

The Ciudad Juarez Mayor's Race: Police, Pavement, Pop Music and the Poor

Although it received much less attention than Sunday's debate between the Democratic presidential hopefuls in the United States, a candidates' debate organized to discuss the future of a major Mexican border city was also staged over the past weekend in front of television cameras and radio microphones. Struggling with an inattentive public and a skeptical media, the five candidates for the mayoralty of Ciudad Juarez sat down at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ) on the evening of June 2 to answer pre-written questions in a carefully-managed, two-hour format.

Competing for the top office in next month's municipal elections are Jose Reyes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and National Alliance Party coalition, Sergio Pedro Holguin of President Calderon’s  National Action Party (PAN),  Hector Sandoval of the Mexican Green Party, Sandra Rivera of the Alternative Social Democrat Party, Raul Reyes of the Labor Party, and Francisco Javier Franco of the Party of the Democratic Revolution and Convergence coalition.  Reyes served as an interim mayor of Ciudad Juarez several years ago.

All the candidates are associated with the dominant professional, business and political sectors of Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua.  Sandra Rivera, the only woman running for mayor, stresses her working-class, migrant background but is currently employed as customs specialist for a maquiladora. A doctor, Reyes is the owner of a private clinic that he says serves the poor. Exemplifying the chronic tribalism that afflicts Mexico's left, three parties which were united in Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's coalition last year are fielding two competing candidates, Franco for the PRD/Convergence slate and Reyes for the Labor Party. 

Addressing the issues of Mexican federalism, public insecurity, women's rights, police corruption, low-income health needs, and pollution, the candidates proposed very little in the way of novel ideas or solutions. The PAN's Holguin, who displayed a good on-camera presence and a clear if heavily criticized message, perhaps grabbed the most attention. In simple terms, Holguin's platform can be summarized as more police and more pavement.

Vowing to pave every street in dusty Ciudad Juarez within the next three years, Holguin said that much of the city's air pollution can be attributed to the rustic roads that predominate in Ciudad Juarez. In a post-debate press conference that was fed to journalists via closed circuit television, the PRI's Reyes slammed Holguin for making a financially unrealistic promise.

In the debate, Holguin pounded on an issue that resonates with Ciudad Juarez's electorate: public insecurity. With at least 127 slayings reported by the press from January 1 to May 31 of this year, Ciudad Juarez's 2007 murder rate could be the highest on record since 2003. At least 15 of this year’s murder victims have been women.

A 2005 UACJ poll curiously released the day before the mayoral debate, showed that 79 percent of 729 residents between the ages of 15 and 64 perceived their city was a violent one. Polled residents blamed the violence on police corruption, impunity and the disappearance of values. 

Claiming one in ten of the border city's estimated 1.5 million residents is a consumer of illegal drugs, Holguin called his city "Number one in the consumption of heroin" in Mexico. The conservative candidate promised to assign police in every single school in the city, a proposal that campaign rival Reyes also later attacked as financially problematic.

Ironically, Holguin's emphasis on public security hit close to home only hours after the debate.  Gathered in a city park, Holguin campaign supporters were witness to the nearby armed robbery of a couple and the theft of an automobile belonging to one of Holguin’s supporter.
 
A youthful Hector Sandoval, who's the standard bearer of former federal Congresswoman Maria Avila's Green Party, attempted to differentiate himself from the PRI and PAN parties, which have alternated the mayor's office in Ciudad Juarez since the mid-1980s. In a cross-border fusion of President Felipe Calderon's youth-oriented 2006 campaign and the late Yippie Jerry Rubin's slogan "Don't Trust Anyone over Thirty," Sandoval pledged that his collaborators in a future municipal administration would be young professionals below 40 years of age. In one of the livelier moments of the debate, Sandoval held up a black-and-white "certificate" that he said would be awarded to companies which maintain a violence-free workplace for women.    
 
In its sarcastic style, Ciudad Juarez's LaPolaka news outlet judged the June 2 debate as the "most boring in history." The Internet news service concluded that "the best thing that the Juarez public could have done is to not see it." In fact, many local residents were seemingly thinking along the lines of LaPolaka. A quick telephone poll done by the Diario de Juarez newspaper reported that only 33 of 126 respondents confirmed watching the debate. Of the 126 people questioned, 25 people rated the PAN's Holguin as the winner, while only 8 gave the victory to Jose Reyes.  Either Reyes or Holguin is likely to win the election.  

Besides indifference, Ciudad Juarez's mayoral candidates were up against another serious problem in attracting at least a sector of the public's attention on June 2. The debate was held on the same evening as a city concert by local boy-makes-good and music legend Juan Gabriel. The flamboyant crooner of  "El Noa Noa" and other classic hits was scheduled to perform at Ciudad Juarez's Carta Blanca venue for ticket prices ranging from about $45 to $95 per seat. 

Additional Sources: Lapolaka.com, June 3 and 4, 2007. El Diario de El Paso, June 1 and June 3, 2007. Articles by Mayra Salinas, Mauricio Rodriguez and Armando Rodriguez.  Frontenet.com, June 3, 2007. Article by Felix Gonzalez. El Diario de Juarez, June 3, 2007.

Mexico’s Hot Month of May

As the month of May opened with tornadoes striking the northern borderlands, Mexican unions and their allies stepped up an offensive against government economic
policies. From Chihuahua in the north to Chiapas in the south, tens of thousands of protestors staged rallies, occupied government buildings, seized highway toll booths,
and temporarily shut down some border crossings to the United States and Guatemala. In Baja California and Chihuahua, classes were cancelled by striking teachers.

Members of Mexico’s National Teachers Union (SNTE) played leading roles in the welling mass movement. A central issue was the passage of a new federal law that changes the troubled ISSSTE retirement system for teachers and other federal workers. Opponents object to the higher premiums and longer working years that are mandated in the new law.

Government spokespersons say that the reform is necessary to salvage a system on the verge of collapse and assure a decent retirement for ISSSTE members. But critics, fearing the privatization of the ISSSTE system, charge that they were not consulted about reforms that could leave them with less future money and healthcare.

“We’re teachers and they have to respect us,” said Tijuana strike leader Juan Ramirez Sanchez. “We’ll stop work until we are protected, because the law is unjust.”

In addition to the street struggle, ISSSTE law opponents took their fight to federal courts. By May 2, about 100,000 individual legal challenges to the law were piling up in federal offices in Mexico City.

The protest movement, which picked up steam on May Day when anti-ISSSTE law teachers upstaged official celebrations in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Aguascalientes and other places, varied in size and impact depending on the location. Downtown Chihuahua City was paralyzed May 2 by thousands of protestors, while Oaxaca City’s Zocalo was reoccupied by a reinvigorated popular movement. On the other hand, a mass movement failed to immediately materialize in Tamaulipas state.

Besides the ISSSTE law, protestors slammed Mexico’s growing security cooperation with the United States, criticized proposals to privatize energy resources and denounced the high cost of living. Other objections were raised to the North American Free Trade Agreement, and criticism was voiced about the recent release of alleged Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from a US immigration jail.

Although some immigrant advocacy groups in the United States like the March 25 Coalition had earlier declared that a broad coordination of US and Mexican organizations existed for this year’s May Day protest in both nations, little attention was focused in the Mexican actions on the situation of Mexican migrants in the United States. One notable exception was in Nuevo Laredo, where members of the border city’s Migrant House and the Mexico-USA United Front Association, marching in the annual May Day parade, protested the Bush Administration’s border wall and the overall treatment of migrants in the US.

More court battles, teacher strikes and other protests are expected in the days ahead. “We have to meet and establish our appropriate conditions of struggle, which aren’t the same conditions as in other states,” said Jose Francisco Ramirez, a protest leader in Aguascalientes. “Additionally, we don’t want to expose our protesting comrades to the repression of the armed forces or public order.”

Additional sources: Frontera, May 1, 2 and 3, 2007. Articles by Manuel Villegas and Kriztian Camarena. Lapolaka.com, May 1 and 2, 2007. Enlineadirecta.info, May 1 and 2, 2007. Articles by Hugo Reyna and Jesus Hernandez Garcia.

Mexico's 2007 Political Season Unfolds

Barely removed from the tumultuous 2006 presidential election, Mexico is embarking on a new round of elections this year. On different dates, voters in 14 states will elect 1,923 candidates to fill offices at both the state and municipal levels. Besides mayors, city council members and state legislative representatives, voters in three states- Baja California, Michoacan and Yucatan- will pick new governors.

For the 2007 season, 8 political parties will be bankrolled with at least $260 million dollars in public funding channeled by the Federal Electoral Institute. The funding formula, dividing 30 percent of the money equally among the 8 political organizations while distributing the remaining 70 percent according to the percentage of votes received by each party in the 2006 federal congressional election, reinforces the domination of the three big parties-President Calderon's conservative National Action Party (PAN), the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). 

The election outcomes will help determine the ability of new President Felipe Calderon to implement his agenda on the ground. In the last round of similar state congressional elections in 2004, the PRI won 10 of the races, while the PAN and the PRD took two each. In 2001, the last time governors' elections were held in the three states having such contests this year, the PAN claimed the governorships of Baja California and Yucatan, while the PRD conquered Michoacan.  For the first time, US-based migrants will be able to vote from abroad by mail in the 2007 Michoacan state election.

A big question is whether a public weary of politicians and expensive campaigns will turn out in big enough numbers to give any one force a legitimate mandate. Voter turnout in state and local elections is usually less than in presidential elections, and the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots in presidential elections has steadily fallen from about 77 percent of registered voters in 1988 to barely 58 percent in 2006. The 14 states where elections will take place this year account for roughly 40 percent of the Mexican population.

The Broader Political Context :

At this stage in the electoral process, intra-party conflicts have generally overshadowed any programmatic or ideological difference between the parties. Disputes over candidacies, leadership roles and political direction have erupted within the PAN in Aguascalientes, Yucatan and Chihuahua states, and have broken out inside the PRD in Baja California, Chihuahua and Zacatecas states, among other places. In Chihuahua state, an internal PRD conflict revolves around the candidacy of Ciudad Juarez business woman and former Lopez Obrador presidential campaign coordinator Edna Lorena Fuerte for a state legislator's seat.

Non-party political actors will directly or indirectly influence the elections in several states. In Michoacan, for instance, a shadowy crime syndicate called "The Family" that reportedly counts several thousand members and controls many drug trafficking routes, could be a force behind the scenes. In virtually all the states in which state and local elections will take place this year, recurrent bouts of narco-violence, political scandals and exposures of law enforcement corruption have characterized the landscape in recent months.

In the southern border state of Chiapas, reports of a resurgent anti-Zapatista paramilitary movement and harassment of non-governmental organizations could foreshadow a new outbreak of political violence. As is custom, the indigenous-based Zapatista movement is not likely to participate in this year's elections because of political principle.

In southern Oaxaca state, a renewed teacher's movement and a revived Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan Peoples (APPO) which was suppressed by federal and state security forces last fall amid hundreds of murders, disappearances and arrests, is back in the streets demanding a solution to educational problems and the resignation of PRI Governor Ulises Ruiz. In light of the simmering conflict, it's hard to imagine how authorities will stage their part of the Miss Universe Pageant at the Monte Alban ruins next May. Already, pro-APPO counter-protests are being organized for the internationally-famous Miss Universe event.  

Some warn of new episodes of Oaxaca-style repression in the southern state and elsewhere. Supporters of the Democratic Peasant Front (FDC) of Chihuahua state denounced the March 9 arrest of FDC leader Jesus Emiliano Garcia in Chihuahua City during a visit by President Felipe Calderon .  Garcia’s supporters reported that the campesino activist was arrested by the Federal Agency of Investigations on “sabotage” charges related to an earlier occupation of a federal building conducted to protest the corn crisis. Visiting the United States at the time of Garcia’s detention, Victor Quintana, another FDC leader and prominent PRD figure in Chihuahua state, expressed fears of being detained along with others if he returned to Mexico.

Finally, it remains to be seen whether Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, self-proclaimed as Mexico's "legitimate president" in a massive ceremony last November, will stage a comeback. Now largely operating outside his PRD party, Lopez Obrador is going ahead with plans to hold his National Democratic Convention in Mexico City on March 25.

The convention is likely to challenge President Calderon's economic program, and endorse a campaign to defend state ownership of energy resources. Conceivably, the national convention could add impetus to the gathering labor, campesino and popular protests that are spreading across Mexico against high prices and President Calderon's policies. If Lopez Obrador's partisans leave the meeting better organized than they have been until now, their influence will certainly be felt one way or another during this year's elections.     

Border Brouhaha :

Baja California and Chihuahua are two of the states where increasingly heated contests define the political scenes. Without a doubt, former PRI Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon's bid for the Baja California governorship has taken center stage in the northern border state.  The controversial politician, gaming industry magnate and private animal collector overcame a potential legal obstacle to his political ambitions when Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that an article in the Baja California constitution did not prevent Hank Rhon from resigning his mayoral post and running for the governor's office.

In Chihuahua, sparks are flying over a PAN-sponsored television spot that portrayed a den of con-men dressed as wolves learning how to deceive the public. Perceiving themselves as the target of the political ad, PRI leaders filed a complaint with the State Electoral Institute (IEE), which ordered the 30-second spot yanked from the airwaves.  Fernando Herrera Martinez, president of the Chihuahua IEE, justified the move as necessary to prevent a "dirty war.” The IEE's decision was welcomed by PRI and PRD leaders, but blasted by local PAN officials who demanded that the IEE reimburse the party for the $20,000 dollars spent on the ad. 

Chihuahua PAN leaders vow to take the matter to federal electoral court if necessary. But in comments that perhaps reflect divisions within the party, Manuel Espino, PAN national leader, distanced himself from the wolf ad. Espino considers Ciudad Juarez and 15 other cities as must wins for the PAN in 2007, and warns against engaging in campaign tactics that will alienate the electorate. According to the conservative political leader, local and state election victories this year will provide a base for the PAN to win a majority in the federal Chamber of Deputies in 2009, a triumph that would solidify President Calderon’s hold on power.

The Media is the Message :

Image is the strategic imperative in the Chihuahua election. Usually close to the PRI, Chihuahua's branch of the Mexican Green Party (PVEM), is undergoing a makeover in an effort to obtain a greater share of political power. Headed by Maria Serna Avila, a former federal deputy who once served on a congressional commission established to investigate the Juarez femicides, the party has contracted public relations specialists and professional trainers to hone the political skills of its cadres.

Several names of PVEM trainers have emerged in the press, including Jorge Acosta, an associate of Alterpraxis, which reportedly has performed public relations work for Microsoft, GEO and UPS, among others; Jogin Abre, a political consultant and pollster associated with the national Reforma newspaper; and Hernan Rivera, a Tec de Monterrery-schooled marketing specialist who reportedly has advised several political projects, including the campaigns of Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours, Nuevo Leon Governor Natividad Gonzalez and outgoing Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector "Teto" Murguia, who has been in the limelight in recent days.   

Announced only months before the end of his administration, Mayor Murguia's cabinet reshuffle and the appointment of a former journalist and public relations official as the new police chief are attracting lots of press attention and even sarcastic commentaries. One of the first changes announced by new Chief Marco Anonio Torres Moreno, who counts some policing experience in Mexico state under his belt, was the creation of an intelligence department within the municipal police. Chief Torres confronted his first crisis barely five days into office when one of his sergeants was murdered in a crime that bore the hallmarks of a yet another gangland-style slaying.

Additional sources :  Norte, March 7 and 11, 2007. Articles by Ricardo Espinoza, Francisco Lujan, Salvador Castro, and Adrian Ventura Lares. Frontera, March 7, 2007. Article by Luis Adolfo San. El Diario de Juarez, February 24, 2007; March 7, 8, 9, 10, 2007. Articles by Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, S. Macias, A. Salmon, J.M. Cruz, Blanca Carmona, and the Apro news service. El Universal, February 16 and 20, 2007; March 7 and 9, 2007. Articles by Jorge Octavio Ochoa, Julieta Martinez, Ella Grajeda, and the Notimex news service.

La Jornada, December 24, 2006; February 9, 10, 18, 27, 2007; March 8, 9 and 10, 2007. Articles by Antonio Heras, Ernesto Martinez Elorriaga, Guillermo Almeyra, Ruben Villalpando, Octavio Velez Ascencio, Alma E. Munoz, Gerardo Flores, Gloria Munoz Ramirez, and the Notimex news service. Proceso/Apro, March 8, 2007. Article by Pedro Matias. Narconews.com. Lapolaka.com, February 12, 2007;  March 9 and 11, 2007. Rebeldia, October 2006. Article by Sergio Rodriguez Lascano. What Country Did Fox Leave Us? Grupo Editorial Norma/IETD, September 2006.  Woldenberg, Jose, et.al,  Mexico in Numbers, Grijalbo, 2002. Aguayo, Sergio.

And the (Political) Beat Goes On....

In Mexico City , protests by supporters of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are far from over. In southern Chiapas state, the PAN and PRI parties refuse to recognize the recent gubernatorial election victory of Lopez Obrador's endorsed candidate. On Mexico 's northern border, however, political parties and actors are already setting their sights on local and state elections in 2007. Indeed, entirely new political parties are emerging in some locales.

In Baja California , two new parties are marshaling their forces for 2007 races. The Social Encounter Party (PES) is the first new party that's requested registration from the Baja California State Electoral Council (CEE). Luis Moreno, an ex-deputy from Lopez Obrador's PRD party, is identified as one of the leaders of the new party. The Democratic Inclusive Front (Fidel) is the second new political force that's solicited state registration. Fidel's principal promoter is an unnamed leader of a non-governmental organization dedicated to the legalization of illegal vehicles in Baja California .

According to CEE official Raul Flores Adame, the two new parties will be granted the necessary status to receive public campaign financing and compete in elections if they meet the legal prerequisites of Baja California 's electoral law. Flores said two other new nationally-organized parties that won federal registration due to their showings in the July 2 elections, Roberto Campa's National Alliance Party and Patricia Mercado's Alternative Social Democrat and Campesino Party, are also seeking registration in Baja California . If approved for registration, the four parties will join 7 previously-registered parties in the border state. Existing, officially-recognized parties include the PAN, PRI, PRD, PT, PVEM, Convergencia, and Baja California Party organizations.

In Nuevo Laredo , Tamaulipas, Felipe Calderon's PAN party is preparing to choose its mayoral candidate for the 2007 city election. Jorge Ramirez Rubio, president of Nuevo Laredo 's PAN branch, said three possible candidates for mayor are under consideration. Besides Everardo Quiroz Torres, a Tamaulipas state legislator, the possible candidates include two customs agents: Francisco Gonzalez Quezada and Hugo Galindo Leal. According to Ramirez, the next mayor of Nuevo Laredo will administer a city that employs more than 2,500 municipal workers and boasts an annual budget of about $140 million dollars.

Sounding very optimistic about his party's 2007 prospects, Ramirez said he is "completely sure" the PAN will win Nuevo Laredo 's mayoral election. Ramirez said the main battle will be against the former ruling PRI party, adding that the current municipal administration of the border city of Reynosa is a "living example" of what the PAN can deliver at the local level. Ramirez contended that the deepening conflict over the results of the July 2 presidential election should not have big repercussions in next year's local election. "This is another movie..," Ramirez said. "There will be another movie next year that has nothing to do with the one that showed."

Nuevo Laredo 's next mayor will take the reigns of power an from a city administration that's presided over unprecedented bouts of narco-violence, generalized public insecurity and declining cross-border tourism. Everardo Quiroz, one of the possible PAN mayoral candidates mentioned by Ramirez, said public insecurity and economic development should be the top priorities of the next PAN candidate.

" Nuevo Laredo should be a pole of development that generates thousands of jobs for all, and it should be a national example as well," Quiroz said. "I believe that the priority is to improve the quality of life through education, sports, culture, jobs, and public security."

Sources: Frontera, August 29, 2006 . Enlineadirecta.info, August 28, 2006 . Articles by Angel A. Guerra Salazar and Blanca Leticia Guerra Guerrero.

Border Governors and NGOs Gear Up for Austin Meets

Governors of the 10 Mexican and US border states will begin their annual meeting in Austin , Texas on Wednesday, August 23. And for the second year in a row, civil society groups organized by the Albuquerque-based Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice will stage an "alternative" conference during the official three-day gathering. The 2006 events will take place against a backdrop of stalled US immigration reform legislation, renewed opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, deployments of US National Guard troops near the Mexican border, protests over the July 2 Mexican presidential election results, and the upcoming US mid-term elections that increasingly feature immigration and border security as hot-button issues.

As in previous years, the governors are expected to pass resolutions on matters that affect border communities and states. Working groups have traditionally focused on the issues of agriculture, border crossings, economic development, education, energy, environment, health, security, tourism, water, and wildlife. Held with support from Cemex, AT&T, Western Union , the Texas Border Coalition and other sponsors, most of the conference's Austin sessions will be closed to the press.

Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores said he plans to propose strengthening and expanding the North American Development Bank (Nadbank), which was established under a side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement to fund environmental and infrastructure projects on both sides of the border.

Pointing to studies that predict the emergence of the US-Mexico border region as the most dynamic economic zone in the world within the next 50 years, Gov. Hernandez said the Nadbank needs to broaden its mandate. "We need projects to come that fortify development, an ordered development that doesn't translate into the loss of the quality of life," Gov. Hernandez said.

Dissolving the Nadbank was a topic of conversation between Mexico 's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit and the US Department of Treasury earlier this year. Since its inception, the San Antonio-based bank has distributed nearly $400 million dollars in grants and loans to border communities.

While the border governors and their representatives debate and shape public policy in their sessions, members and supporters of the SNEEJ will also gather in Austin August 23-25 to draft an alternative agenda opposed to border militarization and walls, National Guard deployments and the NAFTA.

"We feel that the policies, resolutions and strategies that the governors have been discussing a these border conferences for the last 14 years have been very negative for the border communities," contended Tomas Garduno, SNEEJ border campaign organizer. "We've got the solutions. They need to listen to us," Garduno said.

According to the SNEEJ activist, civil society groups meeting in Austin will demand that the governors urge their respective national governments to renegotiate the NAFTA to include worker, community and environmental protections. Regarding the Nadbank, Garduno said the SNEEJ has many concerns about the financial institution's role in the direction of the border economy. "We're against any entity that is not accountable to the people having more power," Garduno said.

Garduno told Frontera NorteSur that the Austin event will include a vigil in memory of dead migrants, panel discussions and a public protest. For the second time, Garduno said the NGO conference will draft a letter to the governors containing demands and recommendations. Mexican and US state leaders did not respond to a similar letter delivered last year, Garduno added. "We plan on having as many (alternative conferences) as possible until they do," he said.

Additional Sources: Enlineadirecta.info, August 21, 2006 . Article by Roberto Aguilar Grimaldo. Irc-online.org, June 9, 2006 .: "North American Development Bank: An Institution Worth Saving." Article by Andrea Abel and Marico Sayoc. Bordergovernorsconference.com

Post-Election Conflict Continues; Border States Face Renewed Scrutiny

Repudiating the Federal Electoral Tribunal's August 5 decision not to order a complete recount of the July 2 presidential results, candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the For the Good of All Coalition vowed to step up the mass protest movement he heads. In a speech before supporters in Mexico City 's Zocalo, Lopez Obrador blasted the TEPJ's decision limiting the vote recount to only 9.07 percent of Mexico 's more than 130,000 precincts

The former Mexico City mayor contended that 72,000 precincts exhibited the same sort of irregularities as the 11,839 precincts selected by the TEPJ for a recount. He also charged that 900,000 presidential election ballots were missing. Predicting greater emigration and the intensification of other social problems if conservative candidate Felipe Calderon assumes the presidency, Lopez Obrador warned that the future of Mexico was at stake.

"This is a democratic movement, but at the same time we contend that democracy is a path, the most important one to make social justice a reality," Lopez Obrador said. "If we let them impose the project of the right, it means not only the trampling of the popular will, but more poverty and margination as well."

In contrast to Lopez Obrador's sharp rejection of the TEPJ's decision, other political actors praised the action of Mexico 's top elections' court. Both the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the newly-formed Alternative Social Democrat and Campesino organization, which fielded feminist Patricia Mercado as its presidential candidate, backed the TEPJ's ruling. Calderon's National Action Party (PAN) quickly applauded the move.

German Martinez Cazares, the PAN's representative to the Federal Electoral Institute, expressed confidence that the recount will "clarify the victory" of Felipe Calderon. Sounding the trumpet of victory, Martinez added that Calderon was willing to engage in serious talks with his opponents about Mexico 's most severe political crisis in years. "We once again extend the hand of dialogue," Martinez said.

In its ruling on the so-called "mother" legal complaint presented by the Lopez Obrador camp, the 7-member TEPJ also rejected charges that President Fox had unduly intervened in the electoral process; that unfair media treatment prevailed; that campaign expenditures surpassed legal limits; that foreigners illegally participated in the campaign, and that the Office of the Federal Attorney General's election crimes division was negligent in investigating complaints.

In reaching its decision on how many ballots should be recounted because of presumed irregularities, the TEPJ employed a strict legal interpretation based on existing election law and the documentation presented by Lopez Obrador and his supporters. According to the election judges, Lopez Obrador did not specifically challenge the results in all of the nation's 300 electoral districts, a condition required under Mexican law to conduct a full recount.

The precincts the TEPJ agreed should be recounted paint an interesting political and geographic picture. In Jalisco state, where PAN Governor Francisco Ramirez Acuna openly backed Calderon as a presidential candidate in May 2004, the TEPJ ordered the votes recounted in 2,705 precincts. Neighboring Aguascalientes , also governed by the PAN, emerged as the state facing the greatest percentage of precinct recounts- 35 percent- under the TEPJ's ruling.

Standing out in the TEPJ's order were the 6 northern border states of Baja California , Sonora , Chihuahua , Nuevo Leon , Coahuila, and Tamaulipas. Despite constituting a distinct minority of the total nationwide pool of potential votes, border state ballots now represent a disproportionately high percentage of votes subject to the recount. The TEPJ found that the votes cast in 4,470 precincts scattered throughout the 6 states should be recounted. The number make ups nearly 40 percent of the 11,839 precincts nationwide pinpointed by the TEPJ for a recount.

Downplaying the local implications of the TEPJ's decision, the Ciudad Juarez-based Internet news service LaPolaka.com claimed that the vote recount in Chihuahua state will be "minimal." However, the TEPJ actually ordered that the votes be recounted in slightly more than 18 percent of the precincts in Mexico geographically biggest state.

Election results in the northern border region raised interesting questions, especially in Sonora, where a PRI governor, Eduardo Bours, was known to be on the outs with his party's presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, and in Tamaulipas, where another PRI governor, Eugenio Hernandez, was allegedly a player in a complicated scheme involving ousted leading PRI member Elba Esther Gordillo, the longtime leader of the National Teachers Union who's immersed in a political blood feud with Madrazo. The Lopez Obrador campaign charges that Gordillo organized anti-Madrazo PRI factions to funnel votes to Felipe Calderon.

Both Sonora and Tampaulipas, as well as the remaining northern border states , favored Calderon, according to the Federal Electoral Institute's official vote tallies. While flirting with the PAN, Gordillo is credited with helping form the New Alliance Party (PANAL), which ran Roberto Campa for president. As part of its legal complaint, the Lopez Obrador campaign contended that the PANAL actually transferred votes to Felipe Calderon, another contention the TEPJ rejected. Lending some credence to Lopez Obrador's claims were the preliminary election figures that showed a three-fold difference between votes cast for Campa and the PANAL's congressional candidates, with the latter curiously racking up a far greater total than their presidential standard-bearer.

Meanwhile, in Tamaulipas, pro-Lopez Obrador protests spread to the Texas border on Friday, August 4. Demonstrations or partial bridge closings by scores of Lopez Obrador supporters were reported at international crossings at Nuevo Laredo , Reynosa and Matamoros . The participants in the protests, which drew the ire of some motorists trying to drive over to the US, included members of the National Movement for Democracy, For the Good of All Coalition and Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). No major incidents ensued, but a tense stand-off between demonstrators and heavily armed elements of the Federal Preventive Police temporarily chilled the Reynosa action.

Miguel Angel Almaraz, Tamaulipas PRD leader, said he expected more protests in the border state in support of a national vote-by-vote recount, but was awaiting further instructions from the party leadership in Mexico City .

Sources: Enlineadirecta.info, August 5 and August 6, 2006 . Articles by Gaston Monge, Hugo Reyna, Rodolfo Sanchez Barron, and Federico Zuniga Garcia. La Jornada, August 6, 2006 . Articles by Alonso Urrutia and Fabiola Martinez. El Universal, August 5, 2006 . Articles by Jorge Herrera, Arturo Zarate, editorial staff, and the EFE and Notimex news agencies. Laredo Morning Times/Tiempo de Laredo, August 5, 2006 . Article by Vicente Rangel. Lapolaka.com, August 5, 2006 . Univision, August 5 and August 6, 2006 .

Pre-Election Tempers Sizzling

Like the blazing desert temperatures this time of year, political tempers are sizzling in the northern border state of Sonora . Denied the registration of candidate slates in 10 Sonoran municipalities and 21 local legislative districts, members of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's For the Good of All Coalition occupied the offices of the Sonora State Electoral Council (CEE) in the state capital of Hermosillo on Sunday, May 21. The protestors, who included members of Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the allied Labor Party (PT), charged that Sonoran election officials used "biased" reasons for denying the coalition the right to run its chosen candidates in the upcoming state election. In addition to a national president and congress, Sonoran voters will elect new municipal governments and state legislators on July 2.

Hildelisa Gonzalez Morales, leader of the Sonora PRD, declared that her party will "go all out" to defend the rejected candidacies. The protest followed a CEE decision that was taken in an extraordinary session held late on Saturday, May 20. In a press statement, the CEE justified its ruling on several grounds based in Sonora 's state election law. According to the CEE, some pro-Lopez Obrador slates in question did meet state requirements for gender balance; failed to present candidate identification documents and, in other instances, did not provide signed, sworn documents attesting to the nationality of two candidates for city council positions.

The CEE's ruling affected For the Good of All Coalition slates in the municipalities of Empalme, La Colorada, Bacerac, Rayon, Atil, Banamichi, Divisaderos, San Javier, San Pedro de la Cueva, and San Felipe de Jesus. Empalme has been governed by the PRD for the last three municipal administrations. The PRD-PT coalition can appeal the CEE'S decision and, in the event of a lost appeal, take the matter to state and federal election courts.

Jesus Humberto Valencia Valencia, CEE president, later said the PRD and PT were warned May 15 they had three days to remedy their slates' deficiencies. But PRD leaders questioned the motives of CEE President Valencia. Last November, Jesus Bustamante Machado, the coordinator of the PRD fraction in the Sonora state congress, denounced that Valencia omitted from a personal declaration to a state legislative committee that he had been fired as a federal judge in 1997 for freeing alleged drug traffickers in Hermosillo during the 1990s.

Confronted with a sudden political crisis, Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours, a member of the Institutional Party of the Revolution (PRI) quickly disassociated himself from the CEE's decision, adding that the state election authority is an autonomous institution that makes its own decisions.

In other action, the CEE approved PRD-PT slates for 18 municipalities, but rejected a PRD-PT challenge to 6 PRI-PANAL slates for the municipalities of Nogales , Guaymas, Cajeme, San Luis Rio Colorado , Navojoa, and Hermosillo . The CEE also approved Mexican Green Party (PVEM) candidacies for state legislative decisions, as well as for municipal positions in the historic mining municipality of Cananea .

The pre-election conflict in Sonora erupted amid an increasingly charged national political atmosphere. Accusations of character assassination, dirty campaigning and undue interference by the Fox Administration are flying all over the airwaves and in the press. Largely lost in the sharpening acrimony is any serious debate about the issues facing Mexico . Speaking out in Sonora , Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, secretary general of the PRD, charged President Fox's office with spending about $90 million dollars to promote National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate Felipe Calderon during the month of April alone. Acosta contended that the government publicity subliminally included phrases and slogans used by the Calderon campaign.

Like Acosta, the PRI is making similar accusations about unfair publicity. Felipe Solis Acero, the PRI's representative to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) , claimed that a media monitoring study contracted by his party revealed that the federal government ran 456,375 television and radio spots promoting its programs during the months of April and May at an estimated cost of $160 million dollars. On Tuesday, May 23, an IFE-negotiated “neutrality agreement” went effect that bars federal, state and local government agencies from publicizing their public works for the remainder of the election campaign.

In the manner of old PRI governments, Calderon's opponents charge the Fox Administration with preparing a "state election" to thrust their man into office. On Monday, May 22, PRD national President Leonel Cota filed criminal charges with the Federal Office of the Attorney General ( PGR ) against President Fox. The complaint accuses the president with illegally interfering in the political campaign . Earlier, PRI President Mariano Palacios Alcocer announced that his party too would file charges with the PGR and the IFE on similar grounds.

Vowing to take the election intervention issue to the international stage, Cota based the PRD's complaint, in part, on statements by PVEM President Jorge Emilio Gonzalez Martinez. The so-called "Green Boy," of Mexican politics, Gonzalez created a recent scandal when he said President Fox personally tried to convince the PVEM leader, on three separate occasions, to ally with the PAN. The PAN and PVEM formed the coalition that elected Vicente Fox president in 2000, but the Greens broke with Fox shortly after he assumed office and are supporting the campaign of the PRI s Roberto Madrazo this year. According to Gonzalez, President Fox told him that Madrazo isn't "trustworthy," while Lopez Obrador represents a "danger for the country."

President Fox's critics charge the Mexican leader will use his planned tour of the United States this week to campaign on behalf of Felipe Calderon. Only slightly more than 30,000 Mexicans residing in this country will be eligible to cast absentee votes, but their preferences could prove crucial in the event of a tight Calderon-Lopez Obrador race, which some polls indicate. Campaigning for candidates abroad, nonetheless, is illegal under Mexican election rules, save for the 5-minute messages from each candidate that are recorded on a DVD included in the election packages containing the absentee ballots mailed to Mexican expatriates. Rejecting his critics' charges, President Fox responded this week that he is not interfering in the election. In a broadcast statement, he assured viewers that Mexico "will have the cleanest elections" in its history.

Sources: La Jornada, May 22 and 23, 2006. Articles by Cristobal Garcia Bernal, Alfonso Urrutia and editorial staff. El Imparcial ( Hermosillo ), Article by Luis Alberto Medina. Cambio Sonora , May 22, 2006 . El Universal/Notimex, May 22, 2006 . Univision, May 22, 2006 . Proceso/Apro, May 18, 2006 . www.ceesonora.org.mx, press statement.

Migration, Narco-Violence Shape Political Landscape

With less than 7 weeks to go before Mexico 's July 2 election, political and other red flags are fluttering in Nuevo Leon , a northern state that shares a border with Texas . Blaming migration to the United States , the president of the Nuevo Leon State Electoral Commission (CEE), Eduardo Guerra Sepulveda, has announced that not enough people will be available to supervise polling stations for the July 2 state congressional and municipal elections. Legally charged with organizing state elections, the CEE is a separate entity than the Federal Electoral Institute, which will oversee the federal congressional and presidential elections also scheduled for July 2.

In some cases, Guerra said intense out-migration has prevented state election officials from locating up to 80 percent of previously selected and trained polling booth officials. In one place, Los Aldama, a municipality located southwest of the border city of Reynosa , Tamaulipas, Guerra contended that the CEE could not locate a single pre-approved election worker because every last individual was in the United States , legally or illegally.

Statistics from Mexico 's National Population Council report that 500,000 residents of Nuevo Leon , or more than 10 percent of the total state population of 4 million people, currently reside in the United States . Reportedly, the majority of the population of the northern municipalities of Hualahuises, Mier, Noriega, Los Ramones, Agualeguas, and General Bravo has relocated to the United States .

Guerra said the population deficit made it impossible for election authorities to find replacements for the leadership posts of polling stations before a May 15 deadline. "(The people) that remain are minors or old people who don't have an education and can't be trained to count votes," Guerra said. Due to the election official shortage, Guerra said some polling stations will have to be closed and fused with others. The CEE's president did not disclose how and when eligible voters will be informed about the ballot box changes.

Meanwhile, escalating narco-violence is increasingly tainting the pre-election landscape in Nuevo Leon . A grenade and AK-47 attack on the Punto Vivo night-club in San Nicolas de los Garza early Monday morning on May 15 that killed four persons and wounded 25 others was blamed by authorities and business leaders on organized crime.

Owned by Salvador Corona Duenas, the Monterrey metro-area club hosted dozens of youthful clients at the time of the bloody assault. Local police pursued suspects and recovered a vehicle with Tamaulipas license plates linked to the attack, but as in countless similar incidents, the gunmen escaped. One press story suggested that the attack was directed against an individual known as "Danny Boy," but ended up killing and injuring innocent people instead. Two of the slain victims, Rene Espinosa Sanchez and Oscar Villareal, were employed as Punto Vivo security guards.

Jesus Marcos Giacoman, the president of the Monterrery Chamber of Commerce," called the attack "an act of war." Saying he will demand serious federal action , Nuevo Leon Governor Jose Natividad Gonzalez Paras (a member of the opposition PRI party) charged that the Federal Office of the Attorney General is "not responding to the narco-war" and losing the national battle against drug trafficking.

At least 30 people have been reported murdered in Nuevo Leon in cases to narco-violence since the beginning of the year, though Gov. Gonzalez has said that 10 murders were committed in neighboring Tamaulipas state and the victims' bodies later dumped in Nuevo Leon . Along with the PRI governors of Tamulipas and Coahuila, Gov. Gonzalez said that he will present a new series of anti-organized crime proposals to Mexico's National Governor's Conference.

Sources: Proceso/Apro, May 16, 2006 . Article by Arturo Rodriguez Garcia. El Universal, May 14 and 16, 2006. Articles by Juan Cedillo. Milenio ( Monterrey ), May 16, 2006 .

Voters Tune Out Presidential Debate

Anecdotal reports hint that many Mexicans decided they had better things to do the evening of April 25 than watch the televised debate between four of the five presidential candidates. In the first of two debates, candidates Roberto Madrazo, Felipe Calderon, Patricia Mercado, and Roberto Campa faced a broadcast audience which might have been much smaller than they had desired. Candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not participate in the event, but is expected to join his political rivals in a second debate scheduled for June 6.

An unscientific poll conducted by the Diario de Juarez newspaper, which is historically close to Roberto Madrazo's Institutional Revolutionary Party, reported that 118 out of 150 people interviewed said they did not see the debate. According to El Diario, the non-viewers said they did watch the debate because of they did not know about it; had conflicting work schedules, or were not interested.

Of the 32 people interviewed by El Diario in Ciudad Juarez who said they watched the debate, 75 percent judged the National Action Party's Felipe Calderon the winner, a result that was similar to two other unscientific post-debate polls carried out by Mexico City's Reforma daily- a newspaper partisans of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador accuse of favoring Calderon. The post-debate polls led Maria Elena Salinas, Univision's star news anchor, to declare that Calderon was now clearly the front-running presidential candidate.

Interestingly, one of the Reforma polls indicated that Patricia Mercado of the Alternative Social Democrat and Campesino party could have been the second real beneficiary from the debate, especially considering that her new political organization is short on money, publicity and infrastructure and is in desperate need of a shot-in-the-arm just to keep its electoral registration. According to Reforma, 14 per cent of the respondents to one poll gave Mercado the debate victory.

But in Acapulco , Guerrero, a city which is governed by Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution and under siege from violence attributed to border drug cartels, journalist Ricardo Castillo Diaz declared that indifference was the genuine winter of the debate. In an excursion with friends through popular cafes and restaurants in the City that Never Sleeps, Castillo encountered turned off television sets, empty seats or groups of people busily watching soap operas, soccer matches and waitresses during the two hours of the political debate.

In one case, clients of a Sanborn's Cafe became upset and yelled after Castillo and company asked the waiter to turn up the volume on the televised political debate. Castillo's experience led him to suggest that many voters might just simply stay away from the polls on July 2. If Castillo's observations are accurate, then it is increasingly likely the party/coalition that mobilizes its hard-core base of support will take the election.

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, April 26, 2006 . Frontera/EFE, April 26, 2006 . El Sur, April 26, 2006 . Article by Ricardo Castillo Diaz. Univision, April 26, 2006 , 2006.

Amid Media Blackout, Congressional Campaigns Unfold

Virtually overlooked by the US and international press, Mexico 's congressional campaigns are getting underway in the border and other states. Much of the media's attention is focused on the 2006 race for the Mexican presidency, but scant international press coverage is being devoted to the battle for the federal Mexican congress. Given the historic weakening of the authoritarian Mexican presidency, the media blackout of the congressional election is especially glaring in light of the potential power of Mexican senators and deputies. Pre-election polls suggest Mexico 's next president could confront a similar political equation faced by outgoing President Vicente Fox: a divided congress capable of blocking or drastically compromising the executive branch's political agenda.

In the Baja California border city of Tijuana , the competing political parties recently unveiled some of the strategies they will employ to get their candidates elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies on July 2, 2006 . Currently running Tijuana 's municipal administration, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) and its Alliance for Mexico will rely on direct, door-to-door contact with the city's population, according to Carlos Barboza Castillo, the party's Tijuana leader. As in other Mexican cities, the PRI can rely on a hard-core network in Tijuana of supporters mobilized by colonia leaders, merchant association heads and other political operatives.

For President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN), the record of current Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon's government will be put to the scrutiny of the voters. Salvador Morales Riubi, the state leader of the PAN in Baja California , said the conservative party will ask voters to compare previous PAN administrations with PRI ones.

Members of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's For the Good of All Coalition said they will ask voters to give thumbs down to the performance of both the PRI and PAN parties, or the so-called "Prian," as the two organizations are sometimes derisively called. Lopez Obrador's partisans will emphasize the candidacy of their standard-bearer to benefit the campaigns of their other candidates. Besides the big three, two smaller parties also will field congressional candidates.

Martha Patricia Avalos Valenzuela, the state coordinator of prominent feminist Patricia Mercado's Social Democrat and Campesino Alternative party, said a lack of resources will demand creative and intense contact with the electorate. As of late last week, Roberto Campa's Social Alliance Party, which was formed from a split in the PRI, had not publicly announced their Tijuana and Baja California strategies.

In multi-party alliances that include smaller parties, the electoral coalitions are an unparalleled opportunity for the smaller organizations to inflate their influence by means of congressional candidacy concessions negotiated with the larger parties. Political scrambling in Mexico during the past weeks and months demonstrates that the high-stakes nature of the congressional races has not been lost on the various political actors. Power plays, positional bargaining, party switching, and top-down candidate impositions all have been features of behind-the-scenes dramas that could strengthen as well as weaken the prospects of the different parties/political coalitions and their respective presidential candidates.

As in Lopez Obrador's coalition, sometimes polemical candidate selection processes can provoke internal political discord, Dissension over the Chihuahua senatorial candidacy of longtime Priista and sudden Lopez Obrador convert Victor Anchondo, who served as government secretary during the controversial 1998-2004 administration of Chihuahua Governor Patricio Martinez, has threatened splits in Lopez Obrador's own center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution at a time when the party enjoys its best prospect ever of winning the presidency of the republic.

Sources: lapolaka.com, April 21, 2006 . Frontera, April 20, 2006 . Article by Luis Adolfo San and Fausto Ovalle.

Election Judges Order Migrant Voter Guide Revision

Responding to a challenge from a supporter of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a federal electoral tribunal has ordered the revamping of a guide that will be sent to absentee voters living abroad. Horacio Duarte, a representative of Lopez Obrador's For the Good of All coalition on the Federal Electoral Commission (IFE), filed a complaint with the tribunal over allegedly negative publicity about Lopez Obrador that was included in an initial IFE voter guide prepared for absentee voters residing in the United States and other countries. Duarte 's complaint arose from a statement in the guide that accused Lopez Obrador of eliminating the jobs of 47,000 people when the candidate served as mayor of Mexico City .

After reviewing the complaint last week, the legal panel determined that the source of the statement was President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party (PAN). The judges said the accusation was “black propaganda” that violated principles of equity in the presidential campaign. Consequently, the IFE was ordered to strike the controversial statement from voters' guides that soon will be sent with mail-in ballots to absentee voters.

Although seemingly a minor bump in the electoral road, the controversy over the absentee voter guide is another example of how the Mexican presidential campaign is becoming more acrimonious. Launching their campaigns last January with a focus on their declared positive qualities and personal proposals, the major candidates lately have been lsucked into a whirlpool of negative campaigning, personal attack and scandal. Lopez Obrador's supporters, for instance, vigorously protested a PAN-sponsored television spot that compared the presidential hopeful with Venezuela 's President Hugo Chavez. The PAN ran the ad after Lopez Obrador publicly urged President Vicente Fox to “shut up” and refrain from allegedly campaigning on behalf of PAN candidate Felipe Calderon.

La Opinion ( Los Angeles ), April 13, 2006 . Article by Francisco Robles Nava.

Richardson Speaks Out on Immigration, NAFTA

As a high-profile border state governor with long-standing ties south of the border, New Mexico Democrat Bill Richardson carries weight in Washington D.C. , Mexico City and in state capitals on both sides of the border. Gov. Richardson's declaration of a state emergency along the New Mexico-Mexico border last year influenced similar measures in Arizona and elsewhere, helping fuel the immigration and border security debates taking center stage in recent weeks. Although he won't say yes or no, the talk of the town in Santa Fe and beyond is that Gov. Richardson will seek the 2008 presidential nomination for the Democratic Party.

In an April 3 interview with liberal Air America Radio host Al Franken, Gov. Richardson expanded on his views concerning immigration, guest workers, the Minutemen, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Queried by Franken about his stance on the immigration issue, Gov. Richardson said he favored a multi-pronged approach that legalizes the status of undocumented workers, with a formula involving penalties, payment of back taxes and English-language instruction, while instituting a guest worker program.

The Democratic governor defined undocumented immigrants as generally "patriotic" people who root for the Dallas Cowboys (The governor said NFL team-deprived New Mexicans usually go with the Cowboys or Denver Broncos), work hard and send their children to school. On the Minutemen, Gov. Richardson called border watchers "dedicated individuals" who are frustrated at federal shortcomings in border security. However, he said the Minutemen create potential problems for professional law enforcement personnel because the civilians are untrained elements who could confront dangerous situations. "It's better that they don't do (border watches)," Gov. Richardson said.

New Mexico 's chief executive said he is receiving good cooperation from the Chihuahua state government on border security matters. He pointed to the Chihuahua government's willingness to undertake some actions in the town of Las Chepas , a place reputed to be a staging ground for migrant traffickers known as coyotes. "You know, the state of Chihuahua , the governor (Jose Reyes Baeza) and I get along very well," Gov. Richardson said. Minutemen deployments only complicate the relationship, he said, adding the Minutemen crop up in discussions with Chihuahua officials. Drug-smuggling, human trafficking, property destruction, and cattle-rustling are common complaints he hears from New Mexico border-area residents, Gov. Richardson said.