Columns

When Mexican-born U.S. citizen Yanira Maldonado, 42, was released May 30 after “only” a stretched week in Sonora’s women’s prison, everyone following what was dubbed Mexico’s “shakedown justice” was relieved. 

This undoubtedly included President Enrique Peña Nieto.  The president has recently clamped down on media outlets in Mexico, admonishing them not to deal in the number of casualties, carved up bodies, civilian deaths caused by Mexico’s law enforcement system, and associated official corruption.  In other words, no drug gang tales no matter how appalling.  That would reflect poorly on Mexico’s already well-known image – and coincidently on government’s slippery grasp of Mexican culture, though that wasn’t directly mentioned.  

Memorial Day was fittingly celebrated, both here and north of the border, with solemnity, reverence, good cheer and elegant settings wrapped in moving the world’s “universal tongue” — music.  The occasions that many of us witnessed, rightly, and thankfully, emphasized a nation’s often awkward hand of aid to those who have served to defend the United States in ways and venues complex and baffling, most of them dangerous.

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.

Eleno Diaz was boldly, if shakily, perched at the peak of my teja-and-carrizo roof, and in a satirical voice reviewing the local chismes from his pueblo. (Non-Spanish speakers: chisme means gossip.

But today when Mexicans greet one another with an early “Buenos dias,” asking, “Hay chismes hoy?”, it’s assumed they’re inquiring if there is news about some outage straight from a police blotter of earlier times — deaths occasioned by breaking and entering, robberies, kidnappings, and the night’s unadorned mindless killings, etc.) However, “Leno” was speaking with rural cynicism of purely political behavior, often so outrageous as to appear clownish — and maybe dangerous — to campesinos.

With much of Mexico’s media daunted by presidential command and recent murders of journalists, “anonymous” social media reports and careful cantina talk become indispensable sources of unintimidated news.  But, despite the admonitions to the media from Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to sing rosy songs rather than report continuing cartel butchery, local, careful chismorreo was putting the reported – and unreported – total of victims since Mexico’s new jefe took office December 1 at more than 5,000.  That exceeds the 4,200 the media was reporting during and after President Obama’s innocuous visit to Mexico last week.  

Amid a challenging week for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, as a salto of critical reports crowded media headlines here and internationally, there was a conversation between two Mexican newsmen that was refreshing.  Veteran Mexican newsmen, they well knew what they were talking about. Meaning that they had face-to-face experience with the history of Peña Nieto’s political and personal life, and of the aromatic history of his political party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).  And because they are experienced political investigators, they clearly recognized the often veiled nuances of political malfeasance, no matter how distractingly adorned.  Yet they had some rather differing opinions.