Jerry Lara/Express-News
A coalition of leftist neighborhood groups protests a lack of affordable housing during a march in Mexico City.
Posted on 02/19/2006 8:05:27 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY — Everywhere citizens look, they see reminders that there are too few jobs, too much crime and no way to know if things will get better.
As they prepare to choose a new president, many are doubting even a superhero could make a difference.
Doctors, engineers and lawyers are joining the ranks of the unemployed. Some work as cabbies to put food on the table — and for many, the four food groups are rice, beans, eggs and tortillas.
Poor mothers recently marched to the capital's historic central plaza to demand affordable housing, calling themselves part of the "Leftist Social Movement" — a brand of politics that has helped elect several Latin American presidents recently, much to the worry of U.S. officials.
Not far away, a billboard with a photo of a police commander turned kidnapper asks motorists to call authorities if they've been victimized by him.
"Everyone thought we would have a new country in five or six years. Where is it?" asked José Gutiérrez, 60, a retired office manager who now mops floors for minimum wage, $5 a day, to augment his pension.
Wearing the pleated pants and sweater vest of his old life, along with the red rubber gloves of his new one, Gutiérrez said he hasn't given up hope that life will improve for his grandchildren.
"Things have got to change," he said.
As presidential campaigning gets under way for the July 2 showdown, Mexicans are edgy, worried about the economy and tired of being tired.
They're sick of violent crime. And they're disillusioned by police incompetence and corruption, which makes daily life less secure and turns entire regions over to drug-trafficking cartels whose turf wars have wreaked havoc on Nuevo Laredo and other cities.
These factors are rattling U.S.-Mexico relations, because they drive about 400,000 people a year to sneak into the United States to find work, and because the drug violence at the border has exacerbated American national security worries.
But voters here, like U.S. policymakers, know Mexico's political system is too paralyzed to respond to these problems no matter who becomes president.
The national Congress is sure to remain deadlocked in a three-way split.
This year's election is unprecedented in modern history because three major parties each has a shot at winning. But the candidates are saying much the same thing on the most pressing issues of crime, corruption, the economy and immigration.
Voters so far have been looking at their personalities, track records and party affiliation to make a choice.
People danced in the streets in 2000, when Vicente Fox was elected president after vowing to make lives better and the economy stronger. He defeated a party that had made similar promises while ruling like a dictatorship for 71 years.
But Fox, who warned at his inauguration that change takes time, has been lambasted for not turning things around fast enough. He can't be re-elected and now is urging patience, trying to salvage his legacy as a reformer.
"If we stay on this path, Mexico will be better tomorrow than it was yesterday," he repeatedly tells Mexicans, imploring them not to give up.
It's no accident that phrase talks of the past and future, but doesn't mention today.
Anguish overload
In the nation's capital, anguish verges on overload. Like Gutiérrez, the janitor retiree, millions of Mexicans still earn incredibly low wages — $600 a month or less is common.
Chemical engineer Fernando Hernandez, 38, has all but given up on ever finding work in his profession. His only income: teaching part time at a junior high school for $75 a week.
Taurino Troncoso, 56, a soft-spoken butcher and father of two, said the tale of the times is carved into his wooden cutting board, where steaks are thinner and orders fewer.
"When I can help, I do," Troncoso said of his customers. "I can give them a meat bone or something, so the soup can have flavor."
As for his own family, Troncoso said he hopes his teenage sons have more options than he had.
Voters now have a little more than four months to sift through candidates' promises, advertising and news reports to make choices.
Although rallies draw thousands, the streets are not yet plastered with propaganda. Mexicans are bracing for an onslaught of handbills, commercials and mudslinging.
Polls show the candidates aren't running neck and neck, but their support is volatile and anything could happen.
Front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 52, is the former mayor of Mexico City. A self-described man of the people, he gained his populist credentials by starting pension plans for the elderly and government support for single mothers — and by a blunt, two-fisted approach to detractors and enemies.
He could be the first president ever elected from the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which emphasizes social expenditures and "anti-imperialism," the core of leftist agendas in Latin America.
López Obrador doesn't use firebrand anti-capitalist rhetoric, but a smooth relationship with the United States is seen as less of a priority for him than the other candidates.
In second place in the polls is Felipe Calderón, 43, of Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, a former energy secretary under Fox who resigned to run.
Calderón is a Harvard-trained economist and his party is seen as conservative and representing the wealthy and large portions of the middle class. Although most likely to continue the president's reforms, it will be tough for him to draw as diverse a following as Fox, who convinced voters to cross party lines and unite for change.
Running third is Roberto Madrazo, 53, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which long ran Mexico. He seeks to appeal to people who feel their lives have worsened after the PRI lost to Fox.
Madrazo casts himself as the leader of a party that can make government work, but he will have to convince voters that the PRI won't roll back the clock to a time when it tolerated opposition parties only as window dressing for a sham democracy.
Water and plumbing
The hundreds who marched through the city on a recent afternoon to demand housing were supporters of López Obrador. "People ask who we are," they chanted in the shadow of a huge banner of Ché Guevara, the Argentine compatriot of Fidel Castro who came to symbolize revolution after he was killed trying to start one in Bolivia in 1967.
"We are the ones who demand solutions, solutions, solutions," they chanted.
Among the marchers was Asunción Sánchez, 42, a mother of two who runs a store in the shanty where she lives in one of Mexico City's rougher neighborhoods.
"We want things to at least be a little better so we can help our children," she said later, walking among the plywood, tarpaper and cement slabs forming the tangle of shelters she and 31 others call home.
"We want what any normal family wants, water and plumbing," Sánchez said.
Javier Domínguez, 9, lives nearby and climbs on cannibalized cars, the grittiest of playgrounds. He sucks his thumb, but his dreams are grown up.
"I want to be a policeman — one of the good ones," he responded when asked what he wants to do in life. "You can take people who sell drugs and put them in jail ... You can take the people who rob and hurt and put them in jail."
Several miles and income brackets away, all a mother wanted was for her son's body to be returned and his kidnappers to be punished.
María Isabel Miranda said she is sure her son, Hugo Wallace, 36, is now dead, as he was kidnapped more than six months ago outside a theater.
Federal agents arrested César Freyre, a former police commander in the state of Morelos, but are expected to release him soon if they don't get more evidence.
To help keep Freyre off the streets, Miranda said friends and family pooled money to pay for the billboard, which urges anyone who has been his victim to call police.
In the photo, Freyre's shirt is shredded and he looks beaten. It remains to be seen if the appeal generates tips. But it is drawing plenty of stares from passersby who see it as yet another sign of tough times.
"Just think about it — it scares me," said Paula Morales, 27, walking to her secretarial job. "In what kind of country do we live? It should make authorities ashamed that a mother had to do this."
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dschiller@express-news.net
A coalition of leftist neighborhood groups protests a lack of affordable housing during a march in Mexico City.
Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
I worked overseas with an executive from Mexico. He made a high salary and planned to go back to Mexico City at some point. He said that he would buy a home with a stone wall with glass embedded in the top and barbed wire to keep out criminals. More importantly, he would go down to the local Chief of Police and work out the $$$ for monthly payments for "protection." He said the protection was not just from criminals, but FROM THE POLICE AS WELL.
Until Mexico changes the culture of corruption and adopts the rule of law and the protection of private property, the economy will continue to suffer.
Which is the "stay home" party?
| We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America. As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico. It is a tribute to a promising new president -- and a tribute to a visionary out-going president as well. Later today, I will meet with the president-elect of Mexico, and begin what I hope is a strong and constant friendship. I have a vision for our two countries. The United States is destined to have a "special relationship" with Mexico, as clear and strong as we have had with Canada and Great Britain. Historically, we have had no closer friends and allies. And with Canada, our partner in NATO and NAFTA, we share, not just a border, but a bond of good will. Our ties of history and heritage with Mexico are just as deep. George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000. |
Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster
The only thing that will save Mexico is a revolution complete with lining corrupt politicians and governmemnt officers against the wall and shooting their sorry a$$es.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I go to Mexico pretty regularly ... but until they get rid of the corruption from TOP to BOTTOM, they cannot hope to turn around. Graft is pervasive and deeply ingrained in the system. I don't see an end ot it soon.
You are correct! Even worse would be if Obrador, a certain commie, gets in the presidency, we will be sure to see another Chavez and this one nearby. War with Mexico and Venezuela would be a real possibility. If the oil taps are shut off, we would have no alternative than to repeat 1847-48. That's my prediction for today.
Manyana. It's siesta time. ;)
There's the problem in a nutshell - the elephant in the living room that neither of our parties want to recognize, only exploit.
Umtil we pressure the Mexican government into reforming, we will always be like the Dutch Boy trying to plug that leaking dike.
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Let's ride!
Old "Fuss and feathers"!
You forgot a major piece of the puzzle....the corrupt aristocracy of Mexico that is the phantom government which owns the means of prodcution and control.
The hard part is finding a Jefferson-Washington-Adams type to do it instead of a Lenin.
No I havent forgotten them, because they usually pass the government offices around amongst themselves.
I could have been President.
If I wasn't an overweight, 'tard.
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