The not-so-low-rent correspondent

Annulment solves little for PRD

2008-07-21T07:59:00.000-05:00

Annulment solves little for PRD

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

The two frontrunners in the Democratic Revolution Party´s internal election on Sunday blasted an internal decision to annul the party´s March 16 leadership vote, setting the stage for more factional infighting at the nation´s largest leftist party.

Candidate Jesús Ortega, the front man of a pragmatic faction known as the New Left, said that the party known as the PRD "is shooting itself in the foot" by annulling the election that he had led by 16,000 votes over rival Alejandro Encinas.

"With this, it´s only causing damage to the PRD and bringing about further discredit in the eyes of the media and the public," he added.

Ortega said that he would petition the federal electoral tribunal, or Trife, to overturn the annulment.

The PRD´s three-member Guarantees Committee voted late Saturday to void the internal election due to allegations of irregularities at more than 20 percent of the polling stations, among other problems.

If the Trife upholds the annulment, party bylaws say the PRD´s National Committee must meet within 30 days to set a new election date.

Encinas, who was projected as the early winner by a quick-count program and two exit polls, said the annulled election was a "triumph of cheats and scoundrels."

"They´ve stripped us of a real and legal [victory]," he said, adding that he would no longer negotiate for a compromise.

Encinas, who belongs to the party´s hard-line United Left faction, demanded another election be held within 45 days.

The annulment leaves the PRD without a permanent party president and under pressure to resolve its infighting before fielding candidates in the 2009 midterm elections.

Guadalupe Acosta will continue as interim president, but the Encinas camp refuses to recognize his leadership.

Ortega´s and Encinas´ factions are divided over whether or not they should work cooperatively with the federal government or continue in their role as an anti-establishment player in the nation´s political scene.

Allegations of vote tampering, ballot box thefts and outside interference from non-PRD state governors were rife throughout the campaign and election. Prior to the vote, former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador drew criticism for backing Encinas and signing campaign materials deemed inappropriate by the party - a violation cited Saturday by the Guarantees Committee in its annulment decision.

The rival campaigns met last week to seek a resolution to the impasse, but talks stalled when Encinas insisted on Acosta´s ouster, El Universal reported.

The annulment did not surprise political observers.

"It was very predictable . given the irregularities and outside interference," said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana.

Some in the PRD had been calling for an annulment prior to the Guarantees Committee´s announcement.

"It´s already been too long ... we´re no longer in a position to move forward," PRD Dep. Aleida Alavez, an Encinas supporter, told The News in a recent interview.

"No one gives an inch, no one owns up to his mistakes or errors in the internal elections," she added. "What would help most would be an annulment and later having a serious, responsible discussion in the party´s National Congress."

A National Congress is a provisional forum for PRD members to vote on leaders and statutes, she said.

IFE: AMLO not "legitimate president"

2008-06-18T15:09:00.002-05:00

David Agren
The News

The Federal Electoral Institute on Tuesday scolded the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Labor Party for referring to 2006 election runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the “legitimate president” during television commercials.

The Executive Secretary of IFE, as the election regulator is known, said using the “legitimate president” phrase was unconstitutional as the country already has an elected president, who is carrying out constitutional duties.

It added that federal electoral tribunal, or Trife, validated President Felipe Calderón’s victory. The Executive Secretary has proposed slapping the two left-wing parties with fines totaling 912,030 pesos. The full IFE board decides Wednesday if it will order the PRD and Labor Party to stop using the phrase and impose the fines.

López Obrador represented a coalition including the PRD and Labor Party in the last federal election, which he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderón. The former candidate rejected the outcome, which he alleged was rigged, and declared himself the “legitimate president” on Nov. 20, 2006.

He also has a history of disparaging the IFE and Trife – he commented, “To hell with your institutions,” in September 2006 after the latter rejected his allegations of electoral fraud. The IFE board overseeing the 2006 election lacked PRD representation. The left-wing party walked out of 2003 negotiations for electing the board after its two main candidates were rejected.

The electoral reforms passed last fall give IFE broad powers to strike down political ads deemed negative or inappropriate.

Strike took its toll on tourism

2008-06-15T22:00:00.002-05:00

OAXACA – Striking teachers pitched tents and held demonstrations in front of the El Importador restaurant over the past three weeks in the popular and leafy central square of this colonial city and state capital. According to shift manager Juan Vázquez, the protests drove down sales by 50 percent.

But even before the demonstrations began, he said, business had yet to fully rebound to levels achieved prior to the teachers strike in 2006 that descended into five months of violent street protests.

And so it was with a sigh of relief that he watched strikers packing up and heading home Saturday after a noisy rally, during which a band of young men wearing gas masks and toques used spray paint to scribble anti-government slogans on the walls, sidewalks and historic buildings that ring the Zócalo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“This state depends heavily on tourism,” Vázquez said. “People here want to work.”

Ongoing disruptions by striking teachers and protesters from a left-wing group known as APPO have seriously damaged Oaxaca's tourism-dependent economy, according to many in the tourism sector, which the state government says directly and indirectly accounts for 80 percent of the region's economic activity. And the lack of visitors and plunge in sales comes mere weeks before the state's premier culture festival, the Guelaguetza, is scheduled to commence.

Some tourist-dependent workers expressed worries that the strikes and protests would continue keeping tourists away from the state famous for its archeological sights, diverse indigenous cultures and gastronomic delights like mole, mezcal and chocolate.

Like Vázquez, cabbie Daniel Moldonado, who ferries visitors from the airport to various parts of Oaxaca City, reported a 50-percent drop in business over the past three weeks.

While running a fare to the Zócalo on Saturday, he pointed at people waiting along the highway for buses that wouldn't arrive due to the “mega-march” that capped off the weeks-long sit-in.

“There's a way of protesting without interfering with bystanders,” Maldonado said.

Closer to the Zócalo, Ricardo Cruz, who teaches computer courses at a private college, said enrollment had dropped by two-thirds during the recent strike. He said the strike had divided Oaxaca residents – including his own family.

“Of every 10 people you meet, eight of them have teachers in their [immediate] family,” he said while eating a breakfast of tlayudas (a delicacy known as “Oaxacan pizzas”) at a café.

As if to illustrate his point, one elderly diner who identified himself as a teacher took exception to Cruz’s grumblings and stormed off.

Not all local entrepreneurs reported suffering from the strike, however. Local street vendors peddled everything from ice cream to pirated movies amidst the makeshift tent city that blanketed the city center.

And while local media reported that the teachers union and APPO had charged the vendors up to 150 pesos a day for the right to work in the encampment, those interviewed by The News denied the allegations. Some, in fact, said they were able to work more freely, since the municipal government was unable to carry out campaigns aimed at removing them.

“The teachers and APPO let us do our jobs,” said Ángel Ríos, a veteran vendor of ice cream bars.

“They're good people ... and good customers,” he added.

David Agren, The News

PAN dumps Creel as Senate leader

2008-06-12T15:52:00.002-05:00

PAN dumps Creel as Senate leader

David Agren
The News

Sen. Santiago Creel was sacked as the National Action Party leader in the Senate as the governing party tries to improve its chances of winning approval for a series of reforms to the state-run energy sector.

A Tuesday press release from the PAN national executive committee said, “The PAN is restructuring in order to give a new push to the reforms.”

Creel’s ousting comes as the Senate is holding a marathon session of 22 debates on energy reform – a key initiative in a series of overhauls to the federal government being undertaken by President Felipe Calderón.

The debates, an April takeover of Congress by opposition lawmakers and now a proposed public consultation on energy reform in Mexico City by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, could further impede passage of energy reform.

Analysts were quick to note, however, that Creel’s exit also continued a purge of leaders with loyalties to the conservative wing of the party that was deposed last December by the ascent of Germán Martínez, a close confidant of Calderón, to the PAN presidency.

Pollster Dan Lund, president of the Mund Group in Mexico City, said that Creel, a former interior secretary, was not part of Calderón’s inner circle.

“This is a tightly controlled party, which is not pluralistic and everything functions at the direction of [Calderón],” Lund said.

Sen. Gustavo Madero, president of the Senate finance committee, was named as Creel’s replacement.

Lund described Madero as “one of the president’s men.”

Creel will continue serving as President of the Senate until Aug. 31, according to the Senate press office.

Héctor Larios, PAN coordinator in the Chamber of Deputies, survived Monday’s purge, but acknowledged that he was serving at the pleasure of the party president.

Both Creel and Larios were appointed by former party president Manuel Espino – a longtime Calderón adversary – during the period when Calderón was still waiting for the electoral tribunal to adjudicate PRD complaints from the 2006 vote.

Calderón – who Lund said is calling the shots in the PAN – moved against Espino last fall by having Martínez run unopposed for the party presidency.

Personal indiscretions may have also tripped up with Creel, who had gravitated toward the PAN’s conservative and Catholic factions earlier this decade.

He generated scandalous headlines earlier this month when it was revealed that he fathered a child out of wedlock with a soap opera star Edith González.

Sergio Valderama Herrera, political science professor at UNAM Xochimilco, attributed Creel’s fall to “political and personal shortcomings.

“He broke with one of the PAN’s traditional values: Family,” said Valderama Herrera.

Creel stumbled at times in his PAN leadership position – most notably when he accepted a challenge to debate energy reform with former PRD presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. PAN officials later quashed plans for the debate.

Ironically, Creel narrowly lost the 2000 Mexico City mayoral election to López Obrador.

He subsequently served as interior secretary and gained the backing of the PAN establishment, including Former President Vicente Fox, for a 2006 presidential run.

Calderón derailed those plans as he upset Creel in the 2005 PAN primaries, however.

On leftist party's birthday, two factions, visions, cakes

2008-05-06T22:26:00.001-05:00

On leftist party's birthday, two factions, visions, cakes

David Agren
The News

The two candidates contesting the still-undecided Democratic Revolution Party internal vote, Alejandro Encinas and Jesús Ortega, marked the PRD's 19th anniversary by speaking of unity – an elusive objective during the party's oft-contentious leadership campaign and post-election fallout.

"We have problems, but that's not going to overshadow the anniversary of the PRD," Ortega told The News while celebrating at the Revolution Monument.

But the pair made their pronouncements at separate birthday bashes mere blocks from each other in central Mexico City, where card-carrying PRD members – and others simply accepting free junkets to the national capital – spoke ill of their opponents and even disparaged the rival celebrations.

"All of the traitors are over there," said Encinas supporter Rafael Acosta, pointing toward Ortega's celebrations.

Acosta, a self-described "social fighter," objected to the willingness of the Ortega wing of the PRD – known as "Los Chuchos" – to broker deals with the federal government, which many in the party consider illegitimate due to allegations of fraud in the 2006 presidential election.

"They're a bunch of sellouts … and trying to steal the [PRD] election," he added.

Differences over strategy threaten to split the PRD less than two decades after Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas founded the party, which has long been beset by infighting among its disparate currents.

And neither Encinas nor Ortega has been willing to entertain the possibility of stepping aside, even though the election, held March 16, has been plagued by allegations of vote tampering, improper campaigning and favoritism on the part of senior PRD officials.

The pair couldn't even agree on an interim leader as Encinas rejected the appointment of Guadalupe Acosta to the post by the PRD national council over the weekend.

Encinas, who was named the winner by a PRD committee last Tuesday – despite only 84 percent of the votes being counted – held a relatively modest party in the Colonia Juárez complete with birthday cake, yellow balloons and free T-shirts.

Rosalba Carmelita Cruz, who said she was previously offered giveaways of food and household items from the Ortega campaign, objected to the Chuchos' birthday bash.

"They're throwing a bigger party to attract more followers," she said.

"There's more of a party, more food, more giveaways."

Ortega feted the PRD anniversary at the Revolution Monument with bands, clowns and a demonstration by the masked men of the Lucha Libre. He also called for the Left to become more "modern" and "critical."

But many of the attendees, including Nezahualcóyotl resident Faustino López Benitez, appeared more interested in freebies and complimentary taco dinners than left-wing political discourse.

He confessed to boarding a bus earlier in the day at the urging of an organizer known as "the drunk" and after "a friend told me that it was the [PRD] anniversary."

When asked about Ortega and later Encinas, López Benitez responded both times "I have no idea who that is," while waiting for a plate of pastor tacos.

The lack of passionate support at the Ortega event allowed interlopers like Eligio Manuel Hernández to sell an estimated 100 straw hats with the slogan "¡Viva AMLO!" a reference to party stalwart Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who backed Encinas and raised the ire of Ortega by signing campaign propaganda deemed illegal by PRD election officials.

"Ortega's been brought in by [President Felipe] Calderón to trip up Encinas," Hernández alleged.
The elderly weaver also insisted that party members "get along fine" and would emerge united. But he wasn't sure how.

CNDH backs Huichol exiles

2008-04-09T11:55:00.003-05:00

David Agren
The News

The National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, demanded the Jalisco government better protect indigenous Huicholes, who have been expelled from their communities for not following traditional religious practices.

The CNDH also admonished the state attorney general’s office for failing to take action on legal complaints of religious intolerance filed by Dagoberto Cirilo Sánchez, a Guadalajara missionary, on behalf of the expelled residents. The first complaints were lodged in 2003.

“This national organization has no proof that shows the government of Jalisco has taken actions that would restore the victims’ properties or help them purchase other lands,” the CNDH said in a press release issued on April 7.

The CNDH press release added that Huicholes residing in the municipality of Mezquitic in northern Jalisco state were banished by an elders’ council after joining the Seventh Day Adventist church.

Nearly 300 Huicholes departed Mezquitic in August 2005, when they reported having their houses burned down and lives threatened. Many of the converts stopped participating in rituals that involved drinking tejuino – a fermented corn beverage – and consuming peyote, a hallucinogenic plant harvested in San Luis Potosí state by Huicholes fulfilling community obligations.

The expelled Huicholes are now living in Nayarit state near the Agua Milpa dam. The CNDH described their living conditions as “deplorable” due to a lack of basic services and an inability to participate in a local fishery, which an ejido, or communal farm, has the right to exploit.

The Huichol, who are famed for their artwork and colorful clothing, are known to be reclusive and live in the dry sierra of Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas states. Many of their communities are not accessible by roads.

Another left-wing party engulfed in turmoil

2008-03-30T16:55:00.004-06:00

David Agren
The News

The Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, staged a contentious and yet-undecided internal election on March 16 that threatens to fracture the left-wing party.

Mexico’s other left-wing party, the Social Democratic Alternative, or Alternativa, also faces a similar fate on Sunday, when it selects a new slate of national leaders.

Even worse for Alternativa is the distinct possibility that the three-year-old party could disappear entirely after the 2009 midterm elections if its official status is rescinded by the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.

“How it [breaks up] is problematic because it’s not big enough to split successfully [since] neither side could actually survive,” said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM.

The outcome could also see Alternativa lose its best-known figure, Patricia Mercado, a prominent women’s rights crusader whose maverick 2006 presidential campaign garnered attention by highlighting controversial social issues like drug legalization, gay rights and access to abortion.

Mercado’s campaign won the Alternativa five seats in the Chamber of Deputies and enough votes to remain registered with the IFE. But her success – becoming Alternativa's public face – and agenda-driven approach to party-building sparked disquiet in the party's senior ranks.

Luciano Pascoe, the Alternativa's IFE representative described Mercado as “gold” for the party, but accused her of claiming too much credit for past successes.

“We invested every penny this party had in her image,” he said.

“She's gold because she has a team behind her.”

Mercado is vying for the Alternativa presidency against incumbent Alberto Begné, a former IFE official. Mercado accuses Begné of selling out the party’s original social democratic agenda by forging alliances with political rivals that guarantee money and legislative seats rather than pushing her social agenda forward.

Her supporters also accuse Begné of employing thug tactics at local-level conventions – six of which have resulted in complaints to the electoral tribunal, or Trife, that were dismissed on Friday.

Mercado told The News that “hired goons” from the National Polytechnic Institute were unleashed on her supporters at Alternativa’s Mexico City convention on March 16.

She also accused party leadership of swelling her opponents’ ranks with PRD supporters.

Pascoe denied Mercado's allegations. He also defended the Alternativa's party-building strategies and said Mercado was running her side of the party like a “caudilla,” or strong woman.

“We can't afford to build a party that's focused on one person,” he said, describing that strategy as the principal weakness of Mexican political parties.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY

The party was founded in 2005 with the idea of providing a “modern left” that would promote individual rights and break from the tendencies of some PRD and PRI leaders to form patronage alliances, said Alternativa Deputy Aida Marina Arvizu Rivas.

But it got off to an awkward start as a coalition of social activists pushing for minority rights, intellectuals who were previously affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and several campesino groups.

Tensions surfaced almost immediately as the campesino wing advanced the presidential nomination of Víctor González Torres, a discount drug baron famous for womanizing.

González Torres, a self-described populist better known as Dr. Simi, promised to bring a war chest to the Alternativa campaign, but the IFE quashed his bid by ruling in favor of Mercado. The campesino wing later crawled back to the PRI in the waning days of the campaign.

“It was oil and water. A bunch of city intellectuals that dress well and speak fancy and a bunch of rowdy [campesinos],” said Federico Estévez, also a political science professor at ITAM. “Of course they split apart.”

Mercado went on to lead a shoestring campaign that caught fire after she performed strongly in the first presidential debate. She gained further notoriety by attending a rally promoting marijuana legalization in Mexico City’s hip Condesa neighborhood.

In the end, Alternativa wound up with slightly less than 3 percent of the presidential ballots – enough to deny López Obrador the presidency.

MONEY TROUBLE

The result also allowed the Alternativa to exist as a registered political party that receives public funding from the IFE – 130 million pesos in 2008.

But spending irregularities from 2006 resulted in a 15 million-peso fine last year, forcing the party to depend on a 60-million-peso line of credit that is still being repaid, according to the El Universal newspaper.

Mercado said the party was being run as a “franchise” – a factor driving the current leadership to forge alliances with larger parties that can guarantee continued funding for the Alternativa.

Estévez attributed much of the Alternativa’s discord to money rather than ideological and strategic differences.

He also noted that Mercado has a history of being involved with upstart political parties in search of public financing and she mortgaged her house during an unsuccessful candidacy in 2000.

Estévez predicted the ongoing Alternativa row – and the turmoil engulfing the PRD – would persist due to the high stakes involved.

“National party leaders have enormous power in this country, legal power as well as financial support, so it’s worth fighting practically to the death,” he said.

Mexican left on verge of splitting

2008-03-14T12:59:00.001-06:00

David Agren
The News

Members of the Democratic Revolution Party select a new national president on Sunday, concluding an oft-contentious internal election.

And while the national race officially features five candidates, representing disparate factions in the center-left party, the vote is shaping up as more of a referendum on competing visions for the center-left party instead of a traditional leadership contest.

Voters will decide if the 19-year-old PRD should mature and become more institutional or whether it should continue in a perpetual anti-establishment role.

Analysts say that differences over strategy could jeopardize the future of the party, which is the second-leading force on the federal level.

“It’s very possible that after the internal elections the party will split into a current composed of [PRD moderates] and a current for those following [former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel] López Obrador,” said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at Universidad Iberoamericana.

“The losers will almost certainly form a new party.”Both of the leading candidates – Alejandro Encinas and Jesús Ortega – often speak of unifying the PRD and downplay talk of abandoning the party. But their methods and proposals for vaulting the PRD into power and unifying the Mexican left differ radically.

Encinas, an economist by training and former American football player, represents a combative current known as the United Left, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of President Felipe Calderón and eschews brokering deals with rival political parties.

The former Mexico City mayor kicked off his campaign by blasting the pragmatic actions of party moderates, whom he described as “nothing more than conservatives, only more desperate.”

He most notably objected to the PRD courting former members of the right-leaning National Action Party, or PAN, as potential candidates in Yucatán and Guanajuato, warning the party risked losing its identity as a left-wing party.Encinas also picked up the backing of López Obrador, an anti-establishment figure, who once commented, “To hell with their institutions,” after the nation’s electoral tribunal rejected his allegations of fraud after the 2006 election. López Obrador presently heads an alternative government that is separate from the PRD.

Jesús Ortega, Encinas’ main rival, also views the 2006 election as rigged, but many in his New Left current of the PRD – also known as Los Chuchos – have shown a willingness to work with the federal government and want the party to participate more in the country’s political institutions. They also have expressed some interest in reforming the government-controlled energy sector – a proposal that López Obrador has been tirelessly campaigning against.

Ortega recently warned that the PRD risked being viewed as “immature and violent” if it continued fomenting protests and failed to fully participate in the nation’s political life.

“Los Chuchos doesn't think the [PRD] can win power unless it cooperates more with the government,” Muñoz explained.

But members cooperating with the government and participating in legislative bargaining – most notably Ruth Zavaleta, PRD speaker of the Chamber of Deputies – have drawn intense fire from some quarters of the PRD.

Zavaleta, a member of the New Left, said she wants the PRD to “mature” and become more “institutional” – and stop excluding itself during key legislative debates.

“The PRD should become an institution … and mature within the existing structures,” she told The News.

“It should be a party based in rules, in statutes [and] in principles.”

But becoming more institutional might prove difficult given the party’s origins as a coalition of diverse groups pursuing their own agendas that initially were seeking to topple to long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

DIVERSE ORIGINS

The PRD was founded in 1989 by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas – a former PRI governor of Michoacán and the son of a revered former president – just one year after nearly winning the presidency.

He had bolted from the PRI earlier in the decade due to ideological differences and after being passed over for the party’s presidential nomination in favor of future President Carlos Salinas.

Cárdenas formed the National Democratic Front, which quickly attracted an unlikely assortment of groups the PRI’s old corporatist structure was unable to co-opt.

The coalition ranged from social activists working on behalf of earthquake victims in the capital to guerrillas that were previously hunted by the military in the hills of Guerrero state to small left-wing political parties with socialist and communist ideologies. It also gained support from former PRI members – like López Obrador – who were dissatisfied with the party’s shift to pro-market policies and the advent of technocrats like Salinas.

“The PRD is very pluralistic. It ranges from former guerrillas to people that used to be involved heavily with the PRI,” Zavaleta explained.

Zavaleta jumped into the political arena at the age of 21 after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake destroyed her home in the Centro Historico. She was moved to a temporary camp for displaced residents near the airport, where she began agitating for better services like garbage collection and drainage and pressing the local government for credit to rebuilt damages homes.

But she and her colleagues began drifting into local politics by capturing low-level positions – like jefe de la manzana, or block captain – and eventually found themselves organizing in boroughs on the eastern side of Mexico City for the National Democratic Front.

“We started to be a different kind of struggle: The struggle for democracy in the country,” Zavaleta recalled.

“All of the groups ... decided to back Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas so he could win power and depose the old [PRI] regime.”

The movement almost succeeded in 1988 as Cárdenas, an uncharismatic figure known for his stern facial expressions, staged a popular presidential campaign.

But a mysterious computer crash in the Interior Secretariat wiped out the early voting results favoring the National Democratic Front.

Cárdenas would never recapture the same magic – although he became Mexico City’s first elected mayor in 1997 – as he ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency in 1994 and 2000, placing third in both races.

Support for the party subsequently diminished with his poor electoral performances.

Zavaleta cited the perpetual caciquismo, or dependence on a strong figurehead like Cárdenas, as one of the PRD’s main weaknesses.

“[The party] can’t be sustained in caciquismo,” she said.

“As soon as the cacique disappears, the party then divides.”

Cárdenas’ fading from the national scene created the conditions for another leader to emerge: López Obrador, who as Mexico City mayor championed social programs like stipends for seniors and single mothers and big public works projects, which included restoring the Centro Historico and constructing a second level on the Periferico expressway.

López Obrador and Cárdenas have been estranged in recent years.

The PRD nearly captured the presidency in 2006, when López Obrador fell short by less than one percentage point in an election he branded “fraudulent.” But the PRD, riding López Obrador’s coattails, won a record number of congressional seats in 2006 and supplanted the PRI as the second-leading party in Congress.

The results reaffirmed López Obrador as the face of the party – even though his tactics of belittling Calderón as the “spurious president” and chiding members for working with other political groups irritated many in the PRD. But even López Obrador’s critics recognized the benefits of having an influential front man.

“The problem we have is that Andrés Manuel needs to continue being a strong leader and we need to strengthen our [movement] and his leadership,” Camilo Valenzuela, one of the five aspirants for the PRD presidency, told The News.

“But [he] also needs a strong party,” Valenzuela added.

The candidate also expressed concern that López Obrador was positioning himself as the unofficial PRD president by endorsing Encinas, who succeeded López Obrador as Mexico City mayor in 2005.

Columnist Sergio Sarmiento noted the same thing in a recent Grupo Reforma column.

“There’s not much difference between what López Obrador is doing and what President Felipe Calderón did by placing a close confidant at the head of the [National Action Party],” he wrote.

Many analysts give Encinas an advantage in the race due to López Obrador’s support, even though Ortega’s PRD faction controls the majority of the party’s state and national leadership positions.

“The grassroots came because of López Obrador so I still expect the grassroots to follow López Obrador whatever the organizations do in the states,” said Federico Estévez, political science professor at ITAM.

Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM, also predicted an Encinas victory due to fears that López Obrador’s backers might break away from the PRD.

“This threat of defections is going to actually weigh pretty heavily on a lot of people,” he said.

“They all know that without López Obrador the party is going to be a lot weaker."

Contentious judicial reform provision dropped

2008-02-27T12:30:00.002-06:00

Contentious judicial reform provision dropped

David Agren
The News

The Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday discarded a controversial provision from its wide-ranging judicial reform package that would have allowed for police searches of private homes without the officers first obtaining a warrant.

Members of all eight parties approved dropping the measure, which had been bitterly opposed by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, the Convergence Party and the Labor Party over concerns the provision would provide a pretext for persecuting social and political groups and foment corruption by unscrupulous police officials.

The legislation, which the Chamber of Deputies had been expected to approve on Tuesday, now goes back to the Senate, where debate on judicial reform will begin on Thursday.

Judicial reform would overhaul the nation's oft-maligned criminal justice system by introducing oral trials, providing speedier access to the courts and bringing improved transparency to a process that's largely carried out on paper and behind closed doors.

But the reforms provoked disquiet among opposition political parties, social movements and human rights groups due to the provisions allowing for police searches without a warrant.

The groups also objected to provisions for fighting organized crime, which included proposals that would permit authorities to detain suspects for up to 80 days without charges being laid and better facilitate the extradition of suspects to foreign countries.

National Human Rights Commission President José Luis Soberanes said over the weekend that the judicial reform package "constituted a step backwards for individual rights."

Ruth Zavaleta, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, told The News that "80 percent" of the reforms were excellent, but added that the parts allowing for police searches could be used by ruling politicians seeking revenge against their ousted rivals.

The Chamber of Deputies originally approved the judicial reform package in December, but the Senate modified the legislation by taking out a provision allowing investigators to search financial records without first obtaining legal permission and removing four words from the clause permitting police searches. The Senate is expected to pass judicial reform promptly and sources in the Chamber of Deputies said the package would pass before the current legislative session ends in late April.

Sayulita dispatch

2008-01-30T14:04:00.000-06:00

I decamped Mexico City last month for a few days and jetted to Sayulita, a Nayarit beach town 40 kilometers north of Puerto Vallarta. The town is kind of grungy with many unpaved roads and packs of stray dogs roaming the streets, but it also attracts an eclectic mix of expats, fashionistas and hippies. The influx of the latter groups produces a bizarre mix of upscale delights - great wood-oven pizzas, lychee martinis and a shop selling Tahitian black pearls - and down-market charms like beach vendors, locals igniting pre-dawn fireworks and one of the best fish tacos on the Pacific Coast. (I'm still partial to Happy Fish by my old place in suburban Guadalajara, though.)

The Globe and Mail ran my dispatch last Saturday.

The Hanson Brothers

2008-01-01T12:10:00.001-06:00

What better way to celebrate the New Year than with the thuggery of the Hanson Brothers and the Charlestown Chiefs?

Following explosion, fireworks town safer, but less-visited

2007-12-30T21:22:00.000-06:00

David Agren
The News

Hugo Domínguez is a self-confessed pyromaniac. The Cuernavaca native has always been always fascinated with fireworks; he often played with fire as a child. And so Domínguez entered the pyrotechnics industry as a naïve 14 year old, moving from Cuernavaca to Tultepec, State of Mexico so he could pursue his mischievous passion.

He immediately began learning the craft from veteran pyrotechnics makers in Tultepec, where a thriving cottage industry in fireworks dates back to the late 1800s. Domínguez worked in both legal and illegal workshops, where he would mix chemicals, roll firecrackers and stuff gunpowder into bottle rockets, known as cohetes. He also stared peddling fireworks, ranging from sparklers to Roman candles, at a crowded seasonal tanguis market for the pyrotechnics industry.

Safety was always an afterthought.“I didn’t really know the risks … that the whole thing could blow up,” he said during an interview one recent afternoon at the San Pablito fireworks market on the outskirts of Tultepec, a municipality of 130,000 just north of Mexico City.

But shortly after 1 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2005, the eve of Independence Day celebrations, one of the busiest selling days for the fireworks industry, the entire market exploded. Domínguez, still a baby-face teenager, vividly recalled hearing a rapidly growing crescendo of firecrackers as he was serving a customer.

“I knew right away,” he said.

He abandoned his stall and darted out of the market, which was flattened in mere minutes by an estimated 150 tons of exploding fireworks. No one died in the blast, but civil protection officials in Tultepec reported 128 injuries, including burns, bruises and broken bones. Merchandise loss totaled nine million pesos and 40 cars in the parking lot were torched.

The blast’s origins remain uncertain, but the incident tarnished the reputation of Tultepec, which has become infamous for calamities stemming from the irresponsible handling and storage of gunpowder and fireworks. But the explosion also ushered in even more industry regulation as the Defense Secretariat, or Sedena, imposed new rules for boosting vendor, producer and customer safety.

NEW RULES, NEW LOOK

The new rules radically transformed the Mercado de Artesanias Pirotecnicos de San Pablito, where vendors previously occupied a single area full of small plastic stalls that were bursting at the seams with pyrotechnics. The market officially reopened in December 2005 with enhanced security precautions like a permanent firefighter base and weekly Sedena inspections.

It now lacks electricity wire and phone lines – or anything else that could create a spark. A large sign at the entrance admonish customers not to smoke. Another tells drunken patrons to stay away.

An orderly collection of 80 red and white brick huts with metal roofs now house 300 small pyrotechnics businesses, which are christened with colorful names like Pingüino, Miguelito and Danubio Azul. The huts dot a 5,000-square meter property and are separated by 11-meter-wide aisles crisscrossing the market. Each business measures nine square meters and is supplied with 200 liters of water, 100 kilograms of sand, a fire extinguisher, shovel and pick. Explosive merchandise must now be stored behind thick plastic display cases.

But convincing the public of the new commitment to security has been difficult. Vendors at San Pablito report seeing fewer customers and experiencing diminished sales during the busy September and December sales seasons.

“There still aren’t as many people as before,” Domínguez said.

“Many people know that we’re open … they’re just scared that it’s going to blow up if they come.”

A Sedena rule limits customers to purchases to 10 kilograms of fireworks per visit, something Domínguez says state and federal police officers use a pretext for pulling over customers from outside the municipality.

“The police are always hassling our customers,” he said.

“They steal their merchandise or demand a bribe.”

Javier Bolaños regularly patronizes San Pablito, where he buys sparklers and bottle rockets for traditional Christmas posadas in his hometown of Tultitlán, a municipality sandwiched between Tultepec and Mexico City. He says the new market is a vast improvement over the previous version of San Pablito.

“Trips here used to be a really frightening experience,” he said while exiting the grounds with a bundle of sparklers slung over his shoulder.

“People would be doing stupid things … like smoking.”

Many vendors also speak well of their new facilities – even if sales are slack.“[Customers] used to enter drunk, or they were smoking … they didn’t know the seriousness of this,” says vendor Lizdeth Campos Sánchez, who managed to survive the San Pablito blast despite being slowed while helping a pregnant customer to escape the area.

Despite the risks, she says almost all of the vendors working prior to the explosion returned to San Pablito, which is open from mid July through Dec. 31.

“This is what we know,” Campos Sánchez said.

FIREWORKS TOWN

An estimated 30,000 people work in the Tultepec fireworks industry, according to the artisan promotion department of the municipal government. And a large yellow sign on the way into town dubs the municipality, “The fireworks capital of Mexico.”

Each year on March 8, local residents fete San Juan de Dios, the patron saint of those working with explosives and fire, with a series of castillos, towering wooden-frame structures with spinning wheels that spew sparks and fireworks. The National Fireworks Fair takes place every November.

The percentage of the population making a living from pyrotechnics was higher in previous years, according to Campos Sánchez, who grew up in a family of fireworks makers.

“We used to make bottle rockets on the kitchen table,” she said.

Unlike several her siblings, who still make pyrotechnics, Campos Sánchez opted for retailing fireworks instead of dirtying her hands with gunpowder.

Her shop, No. 143, hawks the standard assortment of locally-produced merchandise, including 50-peso bags each containing 500 firecrackers and 35-peso boxes of “chupacabras” that shoot off sparks and violently slither across the floor upon being lit.

Business was steady prior to the explosion as Campos Sánchez averaged sales of 15,000 pesos per month. But those numbers tumbled by 70 percent after San Pablito reopened, she said.

EXPLOSIVE SITUATION

The Tutltepec government and Sendena moved many previously home-based fireworks makers to a 10-hectare farm on the outskirts of town in the early 1990s after a series of explosions.

Regulations also gradually tightened over the years – especially after a 1998 explosion that claimed ten lives and damaged 180 homes. Legal fireworks makers – Antonio Urban Ramírez, director of the Tultepec government’s artisan promotion office says 551 licensed shops operate in the municipality – must purchase their supplies, including gunpowder, from Sedena.

But clandestine workshops and sales outlets still persist, including several tucked away on a rutted alleyway mere blocks from city hall, just off Calle 5 de Mayo. On this day, a 13-year-old boy riding a mountain bike lured customers to the shops, which operate out of private homes where entrepreneurs are wary of answering questions about their operations.

However, these unlicensed operators are becoming less common as the older generation of fireworks makers retires from the business, said Nacho Reyes, a Spanish-trained fireworks maker, whose hands and clothes were blackened with gunpowder.

“It’s a lot of old-timers who don’t want to leave their homes,” he said of the clandestine producers.

Neither Reyes nor anyone else interviewed in Tultepec criticize the new safety measures or crackdown on clandestine operations, but Domínguez, the young vendor, reminisced about the old days of lax regulation.

“It’s safer now, but not nearly as much fun,” he said.

Felipe Calderón gets his man

2007-12-24T12:11:00.000-06:00

By David Agren
The News

Germán Martínez Cázares, a staunch supporter of President Felipe Calderón, assumes the presidency of the National Action Party, or PAN, on Dec. 8.

Officially, the 40-year-old former federal comptroller will head the governing party for the next three years and lead it into the crucial 2009-midterm elections.

Unofficially, his ascent will sideline the party’s conservative-minded old guard, which has frequently bickered with the president and enjoyed little electoral success over the past year.

Martínez’s rise to prominence also marks a victory for Calderón and his pragmatic stream of the PAN as the president finally wrests control of his center-right party away from his detractors in the PAN’s conservative-leaning Catholic wing.

“It puts someone in who is close to the president,” said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM, who noted Martínez’s moderate political views.

CLEANING UP AFTER ESPINO

Martínez inherits a badly divided party rife with ideological and personality-driven feuds that has sputtered of late in state and local elections – most notably in Yucatán and Aguascalientes, where conflicts over candidate selection and forging alliances doomed PAN campaigns in traditional party strongholds.

And his party presidency, which ushers in a younger generation of leadership, comes at a time when the PAN is making the difficult transition from being an erstwhile opposition fighting the previously entrenched Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to establishing itself as the governing party.

Martínez succeeds outgoing president Manuel Espino, a polemic figure identified with the PAN’s conservative-Catholic wing, whose term as party head ends three months earlier than scheduled. Espino frequently squabbled in public with Calderon, who represents a more moderate and pragmatic faction that until recently was not well-represented in the PAN leadership.

“[Espino] created this view of a divided PAN,” Weldon said.

The tension between Espino and Calderón dates back to before Espino became party president in 2005, when Calderón endorsed a rival candidate for the PAN's top position.

Later, the Espino-led party hierarchy, which included former president Vicente Fox, openly supported former interior secretary Santiago Creel for the PAN presidential nomination and never enthusiastically backed Calderón’s presidential bid.

Calderón responded to the lack of support by branding himself “the disobedient son” during last year’s campaign.

CALDERON’S COUP

Calderón and Martínez share many similarities, dating back their modest upbringings in Michoacán and later advancements into the upper echelons of the PAN.

“They’re both very much the same kind of person in terms of who they are and where they come from and what they’re seeking,” said Federico Estévez, a political science professor at ITAM.

Both men hail from from lower middle class backgrounds and were mentored by Catholic academic and former PAN stalwart Carlos Castillo Peraza. The pair, both self-starters, also climbed the ranks of the education system, won two terms as federal deputies, served in high-level party positions and showed sharp political instincts for advancing to the top and “staying there,” according to Estévez.

Martínez also brings less baggage to the PAN presidency than Espino, who claimed the party’s top job under cloud of controversy after being accused him of rigging the party leadership vote and employing corporatist practices during the contest.

Espino, who won with Fox’s backing, took active interest in the selection of local candidates, taking advantage of the influence wielded by the presidents of Mexico’s political parties.

“[Party presidents have] a lot of discretionary power,” Estévez said.

“You can’t get anywhere without the [party] president coming onboard.”

Relations further soured with Calderón after the July 2, 2006, when, according to Mexico expert George Grayson, “Espino became a thorn in the side” of the recently-elected president.

Grayson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, said that Espino appointed PAN leaders in the new Congress affiliated with the party faction hostile to the president and dithered over forming an alliance with the PRI in last summer’s Chiapas gubernatorial election, which was narrowly captured by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

Espino’s tough approach to leadership also dismayed many in the PAN as internal conflicts dominated the headlines during his term. The federal Electoral Tribunal recorded complaints from 1,530 PAN members over the past year regarding the infringement of their party privileges – some 77.5 percent of all grievances filed.

It also led to mixed electoral results. The PAN successfully maintained its grip on the presidency and captured record pluralities in both houses of Congress in 2006 – accomplishments Espino frequently points out. But the PAN suffered some embarrassing losses in state and local contests afterwards, which Martínez addressed when he announced his candidacy for party president on Oct. 29.

“If we continue losing municipal governments we risk losing the presidency in 2012,” he said at the time.

According to Aldo Muñoz, a political science professor at Universidad Iberoamericana, Calderón and Martínez champion a pragmatic, “neoPANista” wing of the party, while Fox and Espino allegedly lead a religious-conservative “doctrinal” branch, which is influential on the state and local level in Western Mexico and is often referred to as “El Yunque,” or The Anvil.

Martínez recognized the PAN schisms during a campaign rally in his hometown of Quiroga, Michoacán and promised to include members from both sides of the party in the party’s executive committee. He also noted the challenge of incorporating new members drifting over to the PAN due to its proximity to power.

But pollster Dan Lund questioned whether Martínez and Calderón would be able to unite the party around themselves going forward.

Lund noted that the PAN has long lacked the underpinning of a policy agenda, which has made it more vulnerable to internal disputes and power struggles.

“I don’t think anyone has forged policy leadership,” said Lund, president of the Mund Group in Mexico City.

“And when you don’t have a plan you tend to get bogged down in personalities and fiefdoms.”

Guerrero inches toward the brink

2007-12-19T21:44:00.001-06:00

With political and social conditions ripe for upheaval, a studentmovement could push the state over the edge

David Agren
The News

Once again, trouble is brewing in Guerrero.

Since November, striking students from a teachers' college in thestate of Guerrero have raided the state legislature, barricaded thedoors to the governor's residence and fought with state and federal police officers in an effort to extract more funding for rural education and reverse plans for closing down their college.

After unsuccessfully pressing their case to the state governor lastweek, the students, known as "normalistas," blockaded the MexicoCity-Acapulco highway, one of the nation's busiest roads, and occupied radio stations in the state capital Chilpancingo.

The normalistas' protests have made national headlines – especiallyafter they took over a highway tollbooth in order to raise money fortheir struggle.

Although observers say the protests are not without precedent, thestrife comes at a time when political conditions are.One party rule reigned in the state until the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was unseated in 2005. And as acounterpoint to the official political powers-that-be, Caciques, or local strongmen, have long laid down the law.

Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, candidate Zeferino Torre blancafinally ousted the PRI in 2005 after campaigning on an agenda casting aside decades of repression and dirty tricks. But his failure to meet expectations of change and achieving social calm has left many voters disenchanted, said Mario Patrón, a lawyer with Centro Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, a human rights group based in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero.

Patrón explained that the 2005 political transition is now viewed assimply one of "alternating power," rather than change. "There have been the same practices, same methods, basically the same vices."

CLIMATE FOR CONFLICT

The current tensions have provided just the right conditions forupheaval, according to analysts.

"Conflicts between the state and the normalistas have always occurred. It's not anything new," said Aldo Muñoz, political science professorat Universidad Iberoamericana. "The difference is [that before], there had been a period of stability and calm."

That relative calm may about to end in the state, which ranks among Mexico's poorest and most underdeveloped. The state's illiteracy rate is more than than 40 percent in many rural areas and the human development index scores of its most marginalized municipalities are on par with Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations.

Guerrero's rugged hills have also spawned social uprisings and guerrilla movements since the time of the Revolution and been the scene of massacres and intense military activity as soldiers hunt down rebels and marijuana growers."

Guerrero is a state that has been marginalized for decades," Muñoz said. "Because of this marginalization there have been guerrilla groups, groups that are extremely radical in their political postures."

And discontent has been simmering throughout 2007. The EPR, a guerrilla group originating in the state, bombed Pemex pipelines on two occasions over the summer. Campesinos near the coastal city of Acapulco are currently taking legal action against amassive hydroelectric project that threatens to submerge their humbleplots of land. They suffered a major setback last month, and the EPR announced it would take up their cause. Narcotics-connected gang violence and recent crime-related beheadings in Acapulco have led to an increasingly tense climate in the state.

EDUCATIONAL UNREST

The Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa opened its doors in 1926 with the aim of training teachers to work in the state's rural schools. The school, located in the community of Ayotzinapa, 14 kilometers from state capital of Chilpancingo, enrolls students from small towns and farms. The pupils live at the college duringtheir four years of studying and receive scholarships to attend.

"We're children of campesinos. We're children of the villages wherepoverty exists," said Alejandro González, a normalista from El Portero Oriental, a town of 544 people, where 46 percent of the population lacks an elementary school education, 18 percent of its residents are illiterate and 31 percent of homes have dirt floors, according to the government.

"All of us studying here understand that our communities need public education," he added.

The striking normalistas left their classrooms in early November, demanding that the state government not close their college (it citedbudget concerns as the reason for wanting closure), guarantee teaching positions each year for graduating students and scrap plans for ending a degree program that trains elementary school teachers. They also wanted the education system in Guerrero improved.

González said the state lacks 1,000 teachers in rural areas. Schools in some remote towns have been closed for up to five years, he added.

José Luis Rosas Acevedo, director of regional development institute at Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero in Acapulco, said the level of public education in the state was "very low."

The Escuela Normal has a long reputation for grooming politically minded teachers, and has also gained fame for producing rebels. (A large mural of Chiapas rebel subcomandante Marcos gracesthe Ayotzinapa campus.)

"The normal has historically graduated teachers known for their social combativeness," said Patrón."

"It's also known for imparting a social and left-wing ideology withits students."

Lucio Cabañas, perhaps the school's best-known graduate, founded the Partido de los Pobres, or the Party of the Poor, in the late 1960s. The armed group kidnapped then PRI Sen. Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, holding him three months in 1974. Figueroa, who later became state governor, was rescued during a police raid. Cabañas was assassinated before the end of the year.

WHEN EDUCATION AND POLITICS COLLIDE

According to Rosas Acevedo, Guerrero's teachers – despite being poorly paid – are often held in high esteem in the communities where they work.

"Teachers, priests and doctors are very important people in thesecommunities," he explained.

"The teachers have a lot influence."

Their influence extends to the political arena, where teachers areespecially active. The Guerrero section of the national teachers' union, or SNTE, has a reputation for radicalism and has had frequent feuds with the national leadership.

"The [current] conflict could [have] many repercussions because the teachers and normalistas in Guerrero manage the political parties on the regional level," Muñoz said.

Patrón, whose organization operates in several of the state's poorest regions, expressed pessimism about the ongoing conflicts in the statebeing resolved peacefully, given the attitude of the state government.

"The present administration … is closing practically all the placesfor dialogue with social movements and organizations," Patrón said.

"It's generating a tremendous social polarization and social movements are becoming more radical."

Across Mexico, water bills go unpaid

2007-12-14T12:33:00.000-06:00

By David Agren
The News

For six months of the year, water flows only intermittently from the taps in Guadalupe Nava’s apartment in the capital’s Colonia San Rafael neighborhood, often forcing her to haul buckets down to a local well for filling.

Nava grumbles about the price she pays for the unpredictable utility, which is subsidized by the city and costs just over three pesos per 1,000 liters. The elderly homemaker would prefer not to pay at all, though not necessarily because of the inconsistent service.

“For households, it should be free,” she said while washing clothes at a laundry in another neighborhood due to a lack of water at her apartment.

Even so, Nava says she always manages to pay her water bill, though it’s often a late settlement on an overdue account, and one that’s made largely made due to pressure from the other tenants in her cooperative apartment complex.

Nava’s story illustrates a Catch-22 of water service in Mexico, where many users, citing poor quality and a belief in the constitutional right to free water, pay infrequently or not at all. For their part, providers say the lack of reliable customer payment prevents them from making much-needed infrastructure and service improvements.

A DEEPLY ROOTED PROBLEM

According to the National Water Commission, or Conagua, 60 percent of water bills go unpaid nationwide. In some municipalities in the Valle de Mexico, the agency says, the delinquency rate reaches 90 percent, causing some water providers to give up on pursuing deadbeat customers.

In September, Conagua director José Luis Luege Tamargo called the present water billing problem “extremely critical” and blamed payment delinquency for leaving the country's water infrastructure in a sub-standard state. He went on to warn that the lack of revenue from payments could jeopardize the long-term supply of water in northern and central Mexico, where more than 70 percent of the population resides and one of every six aquifers is “overexploited.”

In an effort to address the problem, the Environment Secretariat, or Semarnat, launched an ad campaign over the summer, warning consumers of the long-term consequences of not paying their water bills – like continued inconsistent service, a lack of new pipes and persistent drainage problems.

The effort to rally citizens to pay their water bills may be largely in vain, said Sylvia Gutiérrez y Vera, a sociology professor at Universidad Iberoamericana, who added that the idea of free water is ingrained in the psyche of many Mexicans.

“In Mexico, it used to be said very clearly that water should not be denied to anyone,” she said.

The concept originated in a social pact between the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the citizenry, Gutiérrez y Vera said. It resulted in local laws that barred utility companies from cutting service to delinquent customers – no matter how much they owed or how long they had owed it.

And the culture of nonpayment extends beyond cash-strapped pueblos. Some of the country's best-known institutions – and even the federal government – have accumulated enormous water debts.

Popular soccer franchise Chivas left an unpaid 5-million-peso water bill upon closing its Guadalajara sports club last fall. In September, Ramón Aguirre Díaz, water systems director for Mexico City, criticized the federal government for running up a debt of 4.6 billion pesos with his municipal utility.

Aguirre Díaz also accused Conagua of owing 2.8 million pesos, a charge hotly denied by the agency. Federal officials maintain that a constitutional amendment exempts them from paying for water services.

ONE CITY TAKES A STAND

In the central city of Aguascalientes, capital of a small, semi-arid state 500 kilometers northwest of Mexico City, a private waterworks concessionary demands timely payment and cuts service to delinquent customers after just two months.

According to the waterworks, Concesionaria de Aguas de Aguascalientes, or CAASA, 90 percent of its customers remit payment before the deadline. By comparison, in Mexico City, where service is seldom – if ever – suspended for nonpayment, one-third of bills go unpaid after two months.

Water customers in the city of 633,000 pay some of the highest rates in the country: 8.80 pesos per cubic meter, or 1,000 liters. The fee covers the full cost of the liquid flowing from users’ taps, something rare in a country awash in government subsidies.

“In the (country’s) 100 biggest cities, only four or five will charge the real price for water,” said former Aguascalientes governor Otto Granados Roldán of the PRI, who presided over the water privatization.

CAASA, a French, Spanish and Mexican partnership that assumed control of the Aguascalientes waterworks in 1993, says its network serve 99 percent of the municipality’s residences, up from 70 percent at the time the concession was granted. In addition, some 80 percent of city neighborhoods receive 24-hour service, a jump from 51 percent in 1996, according to CAASA. The firm also boasts that nearly all its wastewater is treated, while nationwide, Conagua put the number at around 30 percent.

Per-capita water consumption also dropped by 20 percent after privatization, added Granados Roldán, now a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Aguascalientes.

“What we wanted, in effect, was a measure – like the concession was – to change people’s habits,” he said.

Still, some Aguascalientes residents complain about the relatively high price of their water. And CAASA recently landed on the consumer protection agency Profeco’s list of most complained about companies.

Enriqueta Medellín, legal representative for the (NON-GOVERNMENTAL?) environmental group Conciencia Ecológica de Aguascalientes, agreed with the idea of making delinquent customers pay their water bills. But she said that CAASA’s service is too expensive for poor residents and the quality fell short of what was mandated in the original concession.

“It’s been a bonanza for the water company, but from a social point of view, no,” she said, pointing out that in her own neighborhood, service is often intermittent.

“It’s the same or even worse service.”

Water issues surfaced in summer municipal election as the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Convergence Party promised to revoke CAASA’s concession. Both parties, however, finished well behind the PRI and the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, which have shown a more favorable attitude toward the concession. In 2006, the PAN and PRI voted down a measure that would have revoked CAASA’s right to suspend service.

BUT WOULD IT WORK IN THE CAPITAL

Water tariffs in Aguascalientes, a relatively prosperous industrial city, increase regularly to keep pace with inflation. But in Mexico City, PRD Mayor Marcelo Ebrard opted this fall to keep prices low and not to impose a retroactive rate hike for the remainder of 2007. Instead, the mayor said the capital would improve on its collection rate before raising tariffs.

David Barkin, a water expert at the capital’s Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, said charging higher rates or bringing in a concessionaire wouldn’t necessarily solve Mexico City’s problems. As evidence, he cited mixed results after four private companies were hired in 1994 to handle commercial affairs for the municipal waterworks, including billing.

Barkin also questioned the fairness and viability of charging poor residents high rates for a service so essential for life.

“How can you charge a private rate of return to people whom the system doesn’t pay a living wage?” he asked.

Nava, the San Rafael resident with intermittent service, said “the poor shouldn’t pay for water,” but citing the example of a neighbor that never remits payment, she acknowledged, “Some people would abuse it.”

12 de diciembre

2007-12-11T20:20:00.001-06:00

Sandcastle in Puerto Vallarta
Originally uploaded by David Agren

An estimated eight million Mexicans will descend on the Basílica de Guadalupe in the capital this week and fete Our Lady of Guadalupe, the country's most revered religious icon. This gentleman in Puerto Vallarta honored the Guadalupe with a sandcastle by the Malecón

I spent the wee hours of Wednesday morning at the basilica. Here's what ran the following day in The News.

Pilgrims descend on the capital to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe

David Agren
The News

Esteban Cruz tumbled into the deep end of a swimming pool six years ago while horsing around with a cousin. Unable to swim, he quickly sunk to the bottom. Desperate and "drowning" he begged the Virgin of Guadalupe for intervention. A lifeguard pulled him from the pool moments later, sparing him a watery death.

Cruz has made a pilgrimage every December since to the Basílica de Guadalupe, where he gives thanks for what he considers a miracle. This year, he pedaled his red mountain bike from Valle de Chalco Solidaridad, a sprawling municipality on the southeastern outskirts of the capital, to the basilica in the northern part of Mexico City, leaving at 9 p.m. and arriving just in time for Midnight mañanitas.

"I thought I was going to die," Cruz recalled while sitting on the curb in front of the basilica during the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

"Thankfully, the virgin intervened."

Cruz was just one of an estimated eight million Mexicans flocking to the basilica over the past week as the country feted its patron saint, a dark-skinned virgin that they believe appeared in front of an indigenous farmer named Juan Diego on Dec. 12, 1531. And 476 years later, the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe still captivates tens of millions of devotees in the world's second most populous Catholic country.

The virgin also draws adherents from immigrant communities in the United States and Latin America. The Basílica de Guadalupe attracts 20 million visitors a year, ranging from gaggles of clowns decked out in face paint and baggy pants to world leaders – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega paid a visit over the summer, fulfilling a campaign promise to visit the shrine if he retook power in the Central American
country.

Her influence on Mexican society is still strong. Author and social commentator Carlos Fuentes even called President Felipe Calderón's win in last year's election, "A triumph of the Virgin of Guadalupe."

STRONG IN SPITE OF CATHOLIC WEAKNESS
In spite of a long-term decline in the percentage of the population that identifies itself as Catholic, the virgin's popularity shows few signs of waning.

"In reality, it never has diminished, but actually grown," said Conrado Ulloa Cárdenas, a philosophy professor at the University of Guadalajara.

"The devotion [is still] growing against all our predictions to the contrary."

Devotion to the virgin persists most strongly in Mexico City and the states surrounding the capital, especially among the working classes and the poor, according to Ulloa Cárdenas.

He added that wealthier Mexicans still believe in the virgin but are less inclined to publicly show their devotion.

MASSES FOR THE MASSES
Many of those arriving at the basilica arrived on foot, walking for days in many cases. Others rode bicycles or took the Metro. Entire families toting backpacks, blankets and bagged lunches spilled out of the Metro stops surrounding the basilica in the hours leading up to Midnight on Tuesday.

As the clock struck 12 a.m., fireworks exploded, trumpets from the assembled mariachi bands blared and the assembled masses began singing traditional mañanitas, or birthday songs to the virgin.

Many of the out-out-state pilgrims would later camp out on the streets and sidewalks surrounding the basilica – and even between the pumps at a Pemex station.

Midnight also ushered in a day of 15 masses. The lineup included a solemn mass featuring mariachi groups, a 2 a.m. service for construction workers and concheros, or traditional Aztec dancers, and a mass for cyclists coming in from two municipalities in Puebla.

Some visiting the Basilica started repaying mandas, or fulfilling promises made to the virgin in exchange for intervention.

María Luisa Guerrero and four family members poured 100 cups of coffee for pilgrims caught in the crushing line to enter the basilica, starting at midnight.

"It's something small, but it's the act that counts," she said.

"It's what I could afford to do."

MASS MARKETING
Guerrero prayed to the virgin after her daughter was hospitalized with severe intestinal problems during the spring. She promised that she would serve coffee to the pilgrims streaming past her home every Dec. 12 if her daughter was cured.

"I always had a lot of faith," Guerrero said, adding that her daughter made a full recovery.

Guerrero, who lives mere blocks from the basilica, has always believed in the virgin, but never participated in the Dec. 12 festivities until recently. She said the numbers were as large as ever, but the local government and church officials had created a more controlled atmosphere.

A force of more than 2,200 police officials – some in riot gear – patrolled the area along with support workers from the local borough and inspectors from the federal consumer protection agency Profeco on the lookout for price gouging.

The numbers could grow even larger said borough of Gustavo A. Madero spokesman Ruben Chavarría as the Archdiocese of Mexico City builds a new plaza near the basilica containing shops, a museum and crypts.

Vendors in the area viewed the new project with suspicion, however.

"The government and the church is kicking us out of here," said Jazmín Hernández, a vendor whose family has been selling religious items at the basilica for four generations.

"The church sees a business opportunity and wants to capture all of it," she added.

Her family is devoted to the virgin, but Hernández's merchandise selection now features statues of the Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a skeletal figure popular with the downtrodden and kidnapping gangs. She expressed misgivings about the church, but not the virgin.

Others were less questioning, including Cruz, the Chalco resident, who planned on leaving the Basilica at 4:30 a.m.. That would provide him with enough time to pedal home and still arrive at work on time. Although he acknowledged his fatigue and carried a heavy portrait of the virgin on his back, he was undaunted by his journey and the full day of manual labor at a marble cutting business awaiting him back in Chalco.

"If you don't have faith, the [pilgrimage] can be pretty uncomfortable," he said.

The Real Deal (My account of the Lucha Libre)

2007-12-03T09:18:00.000-06:00

I penned a rather large account of the Lucha Libre, Mexico's campy, but increasingly popular, version of professional wrestling: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071130.lucha01/BNStory/specialTravel/home

The Lucha libre is good fun and worth taking in during a trip to Mexico. Shows are staged regularly around the country, although the epicenter is the Arena Mexico in Mexico City's Colonia Doctores.

Viva The News

2007-11-30T22:30:00.000-06:00

The News, Mexico's English-language daily, on sale at the Jardin in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.

'Bridge between politics, culture' faces uncertain future

2007-11-17T15:26:00.000-06:00

David Agren
The News

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, selected a new rector last Tuesday. But given the media coverage of the secretive selection process, one could be forgiven for thinking the country had elected a new president.

Or as some observers perhaps more aptly put it, named a new Pope.

José Narro Robles, former dean of the UNAM medical school, officially takes over as the university’s rector on Nov. 20.

Unofficially, he assumes a much larger role in Mexico’s cultural and political life as the leader of the country’s pre-eminent institution of higher education, which has been described by outgoing rector Juan Ramón de la Fuente as the “grand social project of the Mexican nation.”

“Rectors have always had an important role, like that of a [cabinet] minister without legal recognition, someone [whose position] had enormous weight,” said UNAM professor Imanol Ordorika, who studies higher education institutions and co-authored a book on UNAM’s internal politics.

“The rector has an enormous influence in the national political scene.”

That influence stems from the stature and size of UNAM, which educates nearly 300,000 students per year, carries out roughly half of the nation’s scientific research and has produced graduates who went on to become presidents to Nobel Prize winners to billionaire businessmen – former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, writer Octavio Paz and impresario Carlos Slim Helú, to name three.

Its sprawling Ciudad Universitaria campus in southern Mexico City recently attained status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And the school’s professional soccer team, Pumas, has a long history of success and a large and loyal following.

UNAM also defines and dominates much of the nation’s intellectual scene and is affiliated with La Jornada, a left-leaning daily newspaper. As UNAM sociology professor Roger Bartra Muria put it, “[UNAM] is the principle bridge between politics and culture.”

Outsiders agree about UNAM's role. The university is a “very important, very influential institution,” said Carlos Briseno Torres, rector of the University of Guadalajara, the nation's second largest public university.

The school has always held a proud place as a public institution providing generations of Mexicans from all social classes with a secular and free education.

But UNAM’s sway has diminished somewhat with the advent of private universities. Private schools now educate approximately 40 percent of the nation’s university students, a 400 percent jump over the past three decades, according to Ordorika, who added that the federal government hasn’t invested in expanding access to public higher education over that time.

Although widely regarded for its profession programs, some UNAM humanities and social sciences graduates entering the job market report having their credentials belittled by private sector employers.

Thus, one of Narro’s biggest challenges will be maintaining the national university’s stature as Mexico’s educational and political landscape continues to shift. And already, the new rector has pledged during his candidacy to uphold the tenets of secularism and free access, which perhaps give the national university its greatest fame.

“The big challenge is to put [UNAM] in tune with the needs of Mexico and the challenges of the future,” the new rector said on Thursday.

Many UNAM professors have already expressed approval for Narro’s approach.

“For the population that doesn’t have easy access to education, the university resolves that problem,” said Rafael López González, an UNAM professor and coauthor of a book on the university’s political history.

“It’s a fundamental institution for higher education in Mexico.”

UNAM students only make a voluntary payment of 20 cents towards the cost of their studies. According to political science student Lucía Alvarado, “When you pay, you get a stamped receipt that costs more than the actual fee.”

Alvarado opted for studying at UNAM instead of an expensive private university costing 7,000 pesos per month, explaining, “UNAM is a better school in terms of research, freedom of thinking and the humanities.”

She also liked UNAM’s approach of admitting students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

"There are all types of people ... including the children of important political figures studying here," she said.

"We're all equal friends here ... in the [private schools], there are so many cliques."

Many of Alvarado’s classmates lacked her educational options, though.

Adrián Paredes, also a political science student, said he enrolled in UNAM for “the quality of its programs,” but more importantly, “It’s accessible.”

He noted, however, that the lack of resources generated by a tuition fee creates challenges for UNAM. The school only accepts about one-third of all applicants on an annual basis. It also urgently needs to upgrade aging classrooms and fading athletic facilities, Paredes added.

University administrators proposed a tuition fee in 1999 as a means of funding infrastructure improvements, but the plan sparked a backlash that shut down the school for nine months.

Outgoing rector De la Fuente assumed UNAM’s top job in the midst of the student strike. But during his eight-year tenure the school regained some of the stature it lost during the shutdown. It climbed into the ranks of the top 100 universities in the world on a prestigious survey of higher education institutions and undertook ambitious research projects, including developing the most powerful supercomputer in Latin America.

In spite of the fact he's inheriting a top university, Narro will face challenges as the new rector. Already, he has faced criticism, albeit indirectly.

Some faculty members, observers and protesting students – who burned down the doors to the rectory building on Thursday night – objected to the perpetuation of a management style they described as secretive and not fitting with the country becoming more open and democratic. They also took exception with the 15-member UNAM Board of Regents’ less-than-transparent method of choosing De la Fuente’s successor.

Ordorika compared the selection process to that of the Vatican.

“It’s like a conclave of cardinals, where the cardinals – in this case, 15 cardinals – meet behind closed doors and decide who is going to be rector,” he said.

Narro’s ascent into the rector’s office was greeted on Wednesday with newspaper headlines and commentaries inferring that De la Fuente was instrumental in naming his successor – a charge the outgoing rector and board members deny. But Ordorika noted that 13 of the 15 current board members were appointed during De la Fuente’s tenure by the UNAM University Council.

Additionally, “The proposals made by the rector are always approved,” Ordorika explained.

The list of eight aspirants vying for the rector’s position also drew scorn from some UNAM faculty members, who were hoping for candidates who would usher in a new era of leadership, untainted by previous political connections.

Bartra, the UNAM sociologist, said, “Many of the candidates are actually old PRIistas.”

He noted that all but one of the candidates either had deep roots in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, or have recently switched to the governing National Action Party, or PAN.
Only candidate Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, who rose through the ranks of the faculty unions and student movements, lacked such a background. (Narro previously headed the IMSS during the administration of former president Ernesto Zedillo.)

Still, with a PAN president in Los Pinos, Bartra sees opportunity for UNAM and Narro.

Previous PRI presidents would often meddle in the rector selection process and by proxy, the UNAM agenda, according to Bartra.

But with the PAN – a party whose senior officials mostly attended private universities – now occupying presidency, he ironically saw an opportunity for UNAM to part with the remnants of the old PRI system.

“I believe this is a good thing,” he said.

“It implies more autonomy. A real autonomy.”

And with increased autonomy for the university – which President Felipe Calderón has promised to respect – Bartra expressed cautious optimism about the future of UNAM.

“It seems that now UNAM is in a new stage that hasn’t ever been explored,” he said.

“It’s something fascinating to witness.”