The second people of great significance preceding the Aztecs into the Valley of Mexico were the Tepanecs. Their key city was Azcapotzalco which then dominated the valley and had a cultural tradition prior to the Tepanecs of nearly a thousand years. A bit before A.D. 1300, the people we know today as the Aztecs (they called themselves Mexica – me-shee-ka – until a Spanish historian prompted the use of “Aztec” in the 18th century) arrived and settled in what now is Chaputlepec. They were not welcomed. Noted as perversely savage trouble-makers, who tended to slaughter neighbors, the Mexicas had a rough time there and were expelled twice. This is where today’s Mexican presidents reside. Some of those presidents have sworn the old gods jinxed the place. Today, several 21st century political and cultural observers suggest that if that were true, those ancient gods are tweaking the Republic of Mexico’s present leader, Enrique Peña Nieto, with a canastafull of testing.
The economy is in a surprising first-quarter slump. “Surprising,” for Peña Nieto had filled the Mexican air with a carnival of lavish campaign declarations that his election (July 1, 2012) marked the beginning of a new “Mexican Moment” of growth, renovation and middle class accession. Then Peña Nieto was sworn in. Soon there was a presidential move to levy taxes on food and medicine. It was a move that seemed purposefully aimed at keeping the 51.3 percent of the population living below the poverty line (as of February 23, 2013) out of the middle class. A great many of these people had voted for Peña Nieto. Some Mexican analysts wondered if the new president, behind that grimace/grin and the shiny unmoving pompadour, had gone daft. The electorate sent up pained groans. The air was clotted with obscenities. The president retracted his words.
In tens of thousands of pueblos prices crept up. The killing and butchery by the drug cartels, consistently undercounted by government and conventional media, quivered a bit, but the true count of that war remained unrevealed. Popular female journalists were kidnapped and viciously tortured and beheaded. Others, escaping this fate, were threatened; some had to ask, then publicly demand, police protection. A questionable request, since many police officers seemed in league with the cartelistas. Some cops endangered the lives placed in their care. This was no surprise to the governing elite.But the seemingly agreed on number of murdered at every step seemed peculiar. And the new president declared he didn’t want to put great emphasis on the capture of drug lords, the number of henchmen killed or the number of the victims. He didn’t want to downplay these “events.” Strange. Of course, this didn’t work. The drug gangs wouldn’t obey. (They, and info about their whereabouts, appeared on surveillance screens, and headline-making arrests were made.) Yet the number of those killed marched in lockstep together in nearly all the media. There were people being killed daily in remote reaches of the nation. Local papers, social media aficionados reported different numbers. But not the national media of either the United States or Mexico. Abruptly all the outlets, more or less, chose a certain number which rose hand-in-hand. Why was this? A coordinated quota for any increase?
Across the border, at a southwest university, an anthropological researcher was quietly keeping careful count of the total homicides committed by Mexico’s cluster of cartels and associated drug thugs (including law enforcement personnel). The total of such drug-related deaths from September 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began the drug war, to June, 2012, was 110,061, a number, some Mexican journalists say Peña Nieto has ignored, and anyway doesn’t care to address. And, of course, he seems unaware of what has been considered the Chapultepec curse of the original Mexicas.
Peña Nieto had just taken office when Human Rights Watch Americas division presented a report regarding missing Mexicans. Though it covered a Calderon period in which Mexican security forces, particularly the much praised Mexican Marines, were accused by eye witnesses of committing the crime of “enforced disappearance” against a wide array of citizens. In some cases this included fellow security officers. This report was followed by the accusation that Mexican security forces murdered dozens of innocent citizens in the name of the drug war. These, too, were committed before Peña Nieto was in office. But these two deadly habits, practiced by the trusted Navy Marines, have settled ominously in his lap. And the administration’s response was the predictable, “We’ll investigate these reports.” It is said that 99 percent of Mexico’s kidnappings go unreported, because of this response.
Next, the ancient pre-Mexica god of rain,Tlaloc, launched two fierce tropical storms, Manuel on the Pacific side, Ingrid on the Veracruz side. They hit Mexico simultaneously. What the storms revealed, besides 147 deaths and 53 missing (at deadline time), was the faulty “construction in high-risk areas with low-quality material and a lack of procedure criteria,” a leading Mexico City daily, El Universal, pointed out.
Building procedures in both the United States and Mexico have become surreal, for differing reasons. One former Mexican government official has noted that at every step in the Mexican building process, especially for government-related structures, 20 percent of the budget goes to corruption. And, naturally, if one wishes to build in vulnerable or “prohibited areas,” the payoff costs increase. It has been said that corruption consumes 9.5 percent of the Gross National Product. The World Bank says nine percent. The former government official puts it much higher. “Just think of everything we pay mordida on. And all those instances where some of us don’t ever realize it.” His informed calculation is in the double digits.
This, of course, is not solely the president’s fault. This has been going on since the viceregal governments of New Spain. And it hasn’t made any difference what political ideology was ruling. In recent time, this included the once smug pro-business, pro-Church party, the National Action Party (PAN) interlude – 2000-2012. Perhaps its theoretical alliances to Church and business made its “sins” seem so outrageous. So bad that people began praying for the return of the bloody, intricately corrupt rule for 71 continuous years, by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). A noisy amount of Mexican voters wanted the PRI to return to power. Now those wishful voters have what they prayed, and voted, for. But, with reason, they plead innocence: “We had no other choice.”
The economy, which many priistas believed would soar, at least for the politically well-connected, faltered in the first quarter. When Peña Nieto came into office the economic prediction was a 3.5-percent growth. That has been sharply trimmed to 1.7 percent by the Finance Ministry. Others, such as Credit Suisse, have slashed it to just 1.1 percent. And the calendar is racing toward the end-of-the-year deadline that Peña Nieto set for his “transformational” reform agenda that has thrown Congress into a circus of horse-trading.
Equally as important, is the country’s “economic mood,” which means the erosion of consumer confidence including those now being called the “captive ones,” the miraculous emerging middle class. Already, businesses – in the Lake Chapala area, for instance – have seen a new wave of workers seeking work, any kind of work at all. If the U.S. economy is made any more rickety by its crazed, and economically ignorant legislators, Mexico’s growth will dip even more, say both independent and government analysts.
Thus, while U.S. observers here may criticize Mexican politicos for questionable analyses and “reckless” planning, for a useful lesson they need only observe their own self-designed economic disaster worsening. As for corruption, look at all the wealthy politicians. Then there’s the twin conundrums of how all those drugs get across the border, and then get distributed so efficiently.