Columns

After a haystack full of unfulfilled political promises, Mexico’s Senate March 13 finally approved a constitutional amendment making attacks on journalists a federal crime. This came after years of public pressure, both here and abroad, especially from news gatherers and their supporters in this country, where 51 journalists were killed from 2000 to 2011, according to the latest figures from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. That number is disputed by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, and numerous journalists. The Human Rights Commission presently places the number at 74, since President Felipe Calderon launched his “war on drugs” in December 2006. That move now is widely considered precipitant by international law enforcement experts, by Mexican journalists, even by members of his own administration. Such critics generally agree that he should have taken a year to shake-out and coordinate the nation’s law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and the military, preparing them to launch an unprecedented nationwide anti-crime campaign. “He bit off way more than he could chew,” as one U.S. drug cartel analyst has said. Clearly journalists in Mexico, and elsewhere, agree with that.

Mexico’s middle class is now the “new majority,” according to the authors of a new, and much-quoted book, “Mexico: A Middle Class Society, Poor No More, Developed Not Yet.” The authors, economist and Mexico’s former undersecretary of Trade, Luis de la Calle, and Luis Rubio, former advisor to Mexico’s secretary of Treasury, write that “Even though there is no consensus on what exactly constitutes the middle class, there is no doubt that a significant portion of the Mexican population behaves and perceives itself as one.” This will surprise many — including many Mexicans — several analysts have noted.

A Mexican judge March 6 ordered authorities to investigate the killings of hundreds of women in the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City, which took place during the former governorship of Enrique Peña Nieto (2005 to 2011), now the leading contender in the July 1 presidential election.

Abruptly, the word, “prostitute” – not greatly used in public political speech because of that iron truism, “Those who live in glass houses ...” – is extremely popular.   Suddenly it’s a favorite among Republicans.  They seem consumed with sex, especially Rick Santorum and the weirdly loathsome Rush Limbaugh.

It has become more and more difficult to explain the United States presidential election process to Mexican friends. (This predicament is glittery with irony, because after 20 Republican debates it’s become difficult for most U.S. citizens to make coherent sense of what’s going on.) The picky interest in the U.S. political process for many of my Mexican friends and acquaintances is relatively new — certainly it’s a newly informed interest. The quickly spreading appearance of computers in middle-class homes here — and in poorer households, where hand-me-down PCs are appearing — means the sudden arrival of a social media among people whose spotty educations don’t equip them to usefully handle the avalanches of information rushing their way. Yet their interest is not idle curiosity. A great many have family members — some legal, some illegal — living in states where anti-Latino laws and racists are rife. And they are seeing these rough attitudes being flourished in various ways by the revolving cast of over-excited and verbally undisciplined aspirants battling to become the Republican candidate in the coming general campaign for president. That fosters apprehension here regarding relatives living in such states as Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, and, especially Arizona.

The media in Mexico and the United States are noting that the electorates in both countries are “weary” of the narrowness of their national political discourse. In other words they are both cynical and bored with their politicians, the campaigns, their national political rhetoric and their meager political choices.