Foreigners almost universally paid little attention to Mexican politics when my wife and I landed at Lake Chapala in the sixties. Many Mexicans then seemed to know only enough to realize they were on the losing end of a very soiled stick.
Yet some “gringos” (meaning foreigners) held bountiful comidas for incoming presidentes municipales (inevitably called “mayors”) every three years when a new face took office for reasons too complicated for outsiders to easily – and accurately – uncover. Often the owner of this new face (always male) was a merchant whose business they patronized. The idea was for him to know them, so if a problem arose involving the law, they might have a – sometimes imaginary – sympathetic ear. But as far as the Republic’s president was concerned, few knew what he and cohorts were up to, besides now and then complaining about “arrogant” and “unfair” Washington decisions.
Very few northlanders had any idea how Mexican politics worked – or did not work. And to no little extent that also often seemed to be the perception of those Mexicans they knew well – meaning mostly their maid and gardener, merchants at whose stores they favored. Today, that is not the case, particularly for Mexican citizens. Television changed that. And now, the internet and its fellow “devices” inform their children and grandchildren who pass along the outlandish antics (which younger folk find most flavorsome) to their elders. Alerted, my Mexican friends tend to have pronounced opinions issuing from the often implausible official announcements and behavior. However, they still wisely tend to be wary in talking candidly about politics with anyone but close friends.
And in this present season, when both Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Barack Obama are having a surge of problems, both have leaned on the media. Peña Nieto’s solution to the Mexico drug cartel problem is to try to muffle the media. It’s reported that he has “suggested” such words as “homicide,” “narcotrafficking” and “cartel,” among others, be given a rest. As a consequence, according to the Observatory of Violence in the Media, an independent watchdog group, the use of those word have dropped by half. Obviously this trashes any Mexican claim to transparency and has absolutely nothing to do with solving crime, the huge number of cartel-associated brutal murders or the drug trade. The mainstream media, for instance, seems stuck with the number “about 70,000” for those that have been slain in the cartel war, though suddenly one now is seeing “about 50,000.” The 70,000 deaths cropped up toward the end of last year. But if Peña Nieto, and the media, are going to try to stick with that number much longer, it will put the veracity of the media – and of the government, which already has some “trust problems” – into question. Because, even though new figures are not reported, new deaths are increasing – though that, too, is be “altered” as of May 21.For his part, Obama amazingly allowed the Department of Justice to secretly seize two months of phone records from the Associated Press. The Republican Party has been giving President Obama enough trouble without having the Justice Department bring more to his door. This move created a wounding portrait of the lack of thought at the DOJ, if not the White House. In a functioning democracy, you can’t be that grossly clumsy – unless you’re Richard Nixon, of course, and are ready to endure the attendant consequences.
An American journalist wrote during the 1988 U.S. presidential campaign, ”The notion of voting as a consumer transaction might seem a spiritless social contract, although not – if it actually delivered on the deal – an intrinsically unworkable one.” Political spiritlessness seems a long-accepted reality here. Peña Nieto’s campaign bought votes outright to help get him elected. And even though a significant number of citizens who sold him their vote were almost immediately short changed, Mexicans do not seem to harbor long lasting outrage. That is because Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico for 71 consecutive years, habitually engaging in such behavior. And despite the fact that Peña Nieto had vowed he was leading a “new” PRI this time, citizens, including those voting for him, seem reconciled, for the moment, to the PRI they got. This, in part, is because the National Action Party (PAN), the pro-business, pro-Church party, that displaced the PRI in 2000, surprised Mexicans by seeming to possess a similar contempt for citizens, a ruthless overflow of greed and sleekly applied corruption. Soon many who had voted PAN into office were saying that PAN was worse than the PRI. Which seems something of an exaggeration.
Still, some of the last two weeks‘ events have been unkind to Peña Nieto’s intently declared dream-works. Mexico’s first quarter economic growth was the most laggard in the three years, disappointing for a society that was to be riding a rising wave of PRI-nourished optimism. Shortly after that truth was reported, the Treasury Department announced that because of the meager 0.8 percent growth, the formerly optimistic growth forecast for 2013 has been slashed from the formerly forecast 3.5. percent to 3.1. And 12-month inflation rose to 4.72 percent, more than the central bank predicted.
At about the same time (May 22), Internal Revenue Administration hail was hitting the Obama administration, as present and past IRS jefes went before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Lois Lerner, who runs the IRS office that targeted the Tea Party and other conservative groups, took shelter behind the Fifth Amendment (self-incrimination), which means she is gone. Her Bush-appointed predecessor Douglas Shulman was so unconvincing and evasive as to be laughable. Expect a special prosecutor to be appointed. But, then again, Schulman, appointed by Bush, was running the IRS when the targeting of conservative organizations abuses occurred. That may give some Republicans pause.
That same caution has been voiced by some senior Republican legislators – concerning the the September 2012 attack on the “so-called” U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Some termed it a “CIA station to maintain liaison” with Libyan jihadis. Security was lax because Ambassador Christopher Stevens, along with State Department and CIA colleagues, were “working with jihadis to deploy them to the Syrian front,” according to U.S. government investigators.
Republicans run the risk of overstepping their reach in this investigation. A number of analysts note that, like the 2012 election, overreach by the GOP blurs the party’s focus on what’s important, turning their effort to wound Obama into a mere political circus. “Five committees, nine investigative hearings, two reports, and the Republicans are still fixated on the talking points memo, said one veteran observer. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are wary of self-inflicted wounds. “Republicans have oversteped their bounds in questioning the integrity of Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen,” according to several media analyses. Pickering and Mullen have impeccable reputations. “Any attempt to besmirch the reputation of these career heroes will surely backfire.”
In Mexico this week, Peña Nieto, who vowed during his campaign and since that he would restructure the Republic’s war on drugs, was forced to imitate his PAN predecessor by sending 4,000 troops and 1,000 federal police into Michoacan. During Obama’s visit here, he had seemed to take large – if “risky” – steps uncoupling Mexico from well-organized, productive U.S. intelligence aid and training. Then suddenly this week, reality changed his mind. He’s doing exactly what PAN’s Felipe Calderon did in December 2006.
Such a cluster of unanticipated pressures startled some campo Mexicans, who suggested that Peña Nieto needed a Huevos Revueltos style of governance. Scrambled, unexpected problems needing scrambled, original answers, always in short supply. Characteristics that also seem to be marking Obama’s second term.