This nation leaves a lackluster economic 2013, stuffed with uncertainty for a new year that the Mexican street views as more of the same.
A good slice of the so-called, much-touted middle-class doesn’t have a reassuring impression of their government-changed economy or the man who’s responsible for that condition, Mexico’s new president Enrique Peña Nieto. The fact that media reports slip into that adjective “new” indicates citizens‘ uncertainty about their present chief executive ... and his actions, or, at times, inaction.
Among the most important and hazily promising pledges made by Peña Nieto when he was both a candidate and when he was freshly inaugurated: A specially trained gendarmerie, a large corps – first of 50,000, then of 10,000, then of 5,000 – a combination of police and military. That now has become a vanished dream, not spoken of. The much mentioned surge in the economy also quickly evaporated, as did the war against crime. As the new year looms, no one seems to know what’s happened to the drug war. The previously daily reports of its activities, of victims butchered and slain have disappeared – with the exception, primarily, of outbreaks in Jalisco’s neighboring state, Michoacan.
But almost every Mexican one speaks with has a woeful tale of kidnappings and extortions – be it personal, or involving family members or friends. “As other crimes such as murder went down this year (a contested assertion), kidnappings and extortion have increased, Dwight Dyer reported, according to one of Mexico City’s leading dailies, Reforma. Other investigators and reporters across the nation put the rate at 1,000 a month. And the numbers of kidnappings and extortions are misleading because even the government has repeated that most kidnappings and extortions go unreported.
It is well to remember past reports in this space, and the statement by President Felipe Calderon to CNN, May 12, 2010: “First, it is not exactly a war on drugs ...” Knowledgeable and candid journalists agreed at a time when they were generously criticizing Calderon.As one full-time collector of government and mainstream media reports on crime in Mexico has noted: “Power in Mexico works as a system of arrangements between government, business and narco-trafficking. The drug business has functioned pretty well for decades, generating huge sums of money and funneling it into government and legitimate businesses. Violence was always part of its corporate culture as there is no way to enforce contracts in the drug business without murder. For years this level of violence seemed acceptable to those in power.”
A piquant fact is that, first, Peña Nieto leaned on the media not continue its customary fulsome reporting of drug cartel activities, and then, second, the former government’s daily reports of violent deaths and other crimes ceased. A good many Mexicans find this strange – and doubt the silence – though they’re relieved at the disappearance of the constant reminder of mass killings.
Regarding Peña Nieto’s tax plans for the new year, consumers will soon note a sales tax of 16 percent on a slew of new items. In a bid to fight Mexico’s rampant obesity problem, the price of sugary drinks was raised about eight cents per liter. A tax was also put on junk food, defined as products with 275 calories or more per 100 grams. The president dropped his plan to slap a sales tax on food and medicines, which would have decimated not only the poor. It would have badly wounded people in the government, the wealthy elite and a large group, erroneously classified as middle class. A National Institute of Statistics and Geography analysis released June 6, 2013, reported that nearly 60 percent of Mexico’s estimated 112 million people still belonged to the lower classes in 2010, and suggested things had not changed suddenly. The difficulty that presidents who speak bombastically (if usually with safely half-hearted intent) about lifting up the poor, is the fact that Mexico is a very class conscious society. Many “better-off people,” at whatever level, believe there are certain groups that simply do not belong – for one of a large cluster of reasons – ”too high” up on the economic ladder.
That is a harsh but unfortunately evident reality. One notes this in conversations, in relationships with employees, the residents of poor neighborhoods and even in the smallest pueblos. One certainly sees it in the United States, for it is made dramatically obvious by the professional haters in that society. They have their own political representatives, television “commentators,” and wealthy supporters that they swoon over, individuals who seem to take a repulsive amount of glee in boastfully open, or poorly veiled hate. These people are often racists or sexists or ... well, the list is too long.
Peña Nieto’s popularity has dropped as he’s maneuvered to put his “projects” into place. New taxes are never popular, particularly to the majority of Mexicans who will have a very hard time affording them. Besides, taxes tend to ignite the ever-present outrage regarding the insidious evil of corruption so evident in every “official” cranny. And Peña Nieto’s 2012 election which cannot withstand a probing examination, is frequently a conversational subject of ire. Which is why, when one views a piece such as that by the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor, December 15, zanily-titled “Country of the Year? Try Mexico” with its fantasy about how “The successes of the ... Pact of Mexico only adds to the nation’s achievements in becoming fully democratic in 2000 and in joining NAFTA in 1994,” one wonders how members of the editorial board ever learned to tie their shoes.
The constitutional energy reform will not have pumped a drop of oil until after Peña Nieto’ leaves office. Despite a continuing energetic liturgy of promises, his disapproval rating has gone up more than 50 percent since April; just 44 percent approve of his performance, a survey reported in Reforma.
Professor Frederico Estevez, a political science professor at Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), insightfully told a USA Today reporter: “He (Peña Nieto) is very careful; he doesn’t make big mistakes. But in the end he doesn’t pull people ... get popular support behind him.”
But Peña Nieto says he’s determined to continue on his current path. And the newly approved energy reform seems to confirm this. Yet many Mexicans here, — while conceding there may be jobs for specially trained workers in the future’s newly structured petroleum industry that plans to give concessions to foreign oil giants — think the reform will lavishly enrich Mexico’s already wealthy elite, enlarging the inequality gap.
Thus one notes media reports of a certain “pessimism, or “gloominess” among Mexican citizens. The results of the 2012 election did not turn out as they assumed it would. They had believed the (clearly false) claim that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had actually changed. Corruption – so lavish and open that it smacked of contempt for voters – seemed to some to prove that before most people voted.
Dangerously, the disillusionment of that election and the continuously growing rate of kidnappings and extortion is sowing doubt regarding “democracy,” say an increasing number of political analysts. All forms of modern progress do not offer requisite amounts of political, financial and humanitarian opportunity, or of tolerance or fairness. And it is these things – not as mere words, but concrete, far-reaching and profound acts – that Mexican citizens are seeking. And some significant slices of such values, say keen-minded analysts of history, are what they deserve after such a long string of predatory governments.