This was a week in which credulity was repeatedly and severely tested. Let’s leave aside the ouija board meanderings of U.S. political thought, a fantasy made boring months ago by what seemed to be 300 vitriolic Republican candidates destructively denouncing one another.
In Mexico we are watching the leading candidate in a three-way race testing both citizens’ patience and intelligence. There is no doubt among veteran journalists, political scientists and observers that Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), will win. It is also widely feared that Peña Nieto (alway defined by the tired journalistic adjective “telegenic” — meaning a bit too pretty to take seriously) will bring back the authoritarian, brutal, openly corrupt habits the PRI ruthlessly displayed for 71 years of continuous rule. Trying to counter this brambly combination, Peña Nieto was noisily declaring this week was that the PRI “will respect transparency and plurality” if he wins the presidency.
The history of decades of PRI presidents, legislators, governors, tens of thousands of miscellaneous officials gives voters little reason to have faith in such a flamboyant claim. Yet, there are a few exceptions. The last PRI chief executive, the scrupulously honest Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), with a Yale PhD. in economics, was a last-minute “accidental president.” The party’s chosen candidate, Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated at a Tijuana campaign rally on March 23, 1994. A crime that, because of dark implications for several competing and suspect elements within the PRI, has never been really solved. And today, it is not readily referred to by priista officials.
Zedillo, while at times inclined to adopt a traditionally expected “tough president” attitude, eventually quietly cleared the path for an anomalous “fair and free” election (Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party) in 2000.
Outside of Mexico, Zedillo is highly regarded, and is on the boards of several foreign corporations and prestigious economic advisory groups. He works most closely with Yale University. In contrast to Peña Nieto, he is a quiet, modest — and well-read — executive, with an unusually untainted reputation. That appears to some Mexicans to be an exception to the PRI norm. But perhaps not if the party really has rehabilitated itself.
As all the polls and political palaver point to a Pena Nieto victory July 1, a series of incidents point to the fact that the return of the PRI won’t be welcomed by an applauding youth vote.
When Peña Nieto made a May 11 campaign appearance at the elite Ibero-american University, it ignited an unexpected wave of protests by young people opposing the return of a PRI to full national power. Wednesday, May 23, thousands of students marched through the center of Mexico City to protest media coverage of the presidential campaigns that students said favors Peña Nieto. They were especially critical of Mexico’s television giant, Televisa, most well-known for its telenovelas (soap operas). Many students ended their protest at the Televisa studios where Peña Nieto was conducting a live interview. Other media outlets reported smaller, coordinated marches in at least a half-dozen other Mexican cities.
PRI spokespersons are continuing to label the students as either non-students or supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which has further inflamed the protesters’ ire. That’s because in this series of manifestations, most participants have declared they support none of the three major candidates. This is because so many believe they’re yet again being lied to by the country’s political elite.
Earlier, on Saturday, May 19, an even larger demonstration by college-age youths took over Mexico City’s main boulevard, Reforma, to protest the possible return to power of the PRI. Some of the protesters had heckled Peña Nieto at the Iberoamericano. Unusual for Mexican protest marchers, these young people did not carry banners supporting any political candidate. Instead they loudly chanted slogans condemning the return of the PRI. The banners they did carry, played on that party’s acronym: “We don’t want a PRImitive Mexico.”
Peña Nieto has contended that he is leading a “new and reformed PRI,” but the students and their allies point out there has been no evidence of that. Peña Nieto, they note, just finished a six-year term as governor of the state of Mexico, which cups Mexico City. His administration, according to a number of political observers, seemed to display the same old, and unfortunate, habits typical of the PRI of the past. Contrary to Peña Nieto’s happy talk about the party’s rehabilitation (after 71 years), those states where the PRI has always maintained power are among the most underdeveloped, corrupt and most violent.
In Mexico State, during Peña Nieto’s governorship, poverty and homicide rates have soared, “femicides,” killings targeting women only, have become common crime-page fare, according to John M. Ackerman, professor at the Institute for Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. A recent study shows that “millions in government social spending was unaccounted for” during Peña Nieto’s time in office. Those conducting the study believe it went to “illegally” fund his presidential campaign. This perception sprouts from what veteran political analysts noted in state expenditures; much apparently “diverted” to promoting Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign before he became a presidential candidate.
One of the three Mexican army generals detained last week on organized-crime charges appears to have been close to the former Mexico state governor and his political associates, according to knowledgeable sources in the Toluca Valley. This cross-pollination of criminals and politicians is not new, of course. But it has seldom been so seemingly obvious to so many Mexican citizens. While many municipalities in most Mexican states — Jalisco, for instance — have plead penury when citizens begged local authorities for police protection, these same officials are presently spending grandly to influence voters. Where is that money coming from, ask voters. Too often the answer they provide themselves is a crushingly bitter, but not totally surprisingly one.It does, however, stun many foreigners. To this date foreigners have not been the target of drug cartel mayhem. The travel editor for the “Lonely Planet” guide, Robert Reid, has been long familiar with Mexico and the Lake Chapala area, where he owns a home. It is a place that, he notes, is safer for Houstonians than Houston. “I frequently get asked if it’s safe to go to Mexico. I’ve always said that, if you’re thoughtful about where you go, the answer is yes.” Recently, he’s been responding to that question with a question of his own: “Do you think it’s safe to go to Texas?”
Mexico’s drug-related casualties are 47,000 killed in five and half years. “Its murder rate — eight per 100,000, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report — is more than three times the U.S. rate of 4.8 per 100,000. Yet Mexican tourism is starting to bounce back.” U.S. citizens seem more reluctant to return to Mexico than Canadians or Brits.
But what you don’t get from such statistics is that Americans are “less likely to face violence in Mexico that at home,” particularly if you look at Mexico’s most popular travel targets. The gateway to Orlando’s Disney World registered 7.5 murders per 100,000 residents in 2010, according to the FBI. That is higher than Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, with rates of 1.83 and 5.9 respectively, a Stanford University study shows.
Consider these few important bits of information, Reid suggests: 1) Though Mexico may be more dangerous than the U.S., it isn’t for Americans. U.S. Crime statics compiled by the FBI show that 4.8 Americans per 100,000 were killed in 2010. The State Department reports that 120 of the 5.7 million Americans who visited Mexico last year were murdered. That’s a rate of 2.1 of 100,000 visitors. 2) Texans are twice as safe in Mexico and three times safer than in Houston. 3) And it’s not just Texas that shows interesting comparisons. The host city of next year’s Super Bowl, New Orleans, exceeded its own tourism record in 2011 with eight million visitors. Still, the Big Easy has ten times the U.S. homicide rate, nearly triple Mexico’s national rate. 4) Most of Mexico is not on the State Department’s travel warning, certainly not the best of Mexico. U.S. officials warn against “non-essential travel” to only four of Mexico 31 states. All of these are in the north: Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and Tamaulipas. The State Department also recommends against traveling in selected part of other states, but not the popular tourist spots such as Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, the Riviera Nayarit, Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum, Reid says. 5) and he notes that when 13-year-old Malia Obama wanted to go to Oaxaca for spring break this year, the President and the first lady said fine. But, unsurprisingly, former Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, made derogatory remarks about that. Perhaps, Reid suggests, he “overlooked” the fact that Oaxaca state has a smaller body count from the drug war than his home state’s murder rate: Oaxaca, 4.39 per 100,0000, Pennsylvania, 5.2.
Along Lake Chapala’s shore, resident expats were saying that they were taking reasonable precautions but are not “overly concerned.”