Some sense of Mexico's transformation can be gleaned from one fact: In order to run competitively in the 2006 election, leftist Andres Manuel López Obrador had to jettison most of his left-wing stances during the campaign in order to be competitive with the PAN -- and he lost anyway.
That seems like an awfully broad and somewhat suspect conclusion to draw from an election that was decided by less than 1 percent of the vote. First of all, I don't remember AMLO jettisoning a whole lot of his ideas (though maybe I'm forgetting); he just made more of a rhetorical shift to the center, standard practice in any general election before a moderate electorate. Moreover, his policies weren't the problem; his persona was. Another leftist candidate with the same policies but a less divisive and less extreme demeanor would have likely won handily. AMLO himself probably would have taken the election had Roberto Madrazo's candidacy not been such a disaster as to hand a big chunk of the conservative PRI vote to Calderón.
The following passage is also problematic, though for pettier reasons (after all, I agree with him here):
There are no foreign troops on Mexican soil. There is no martial law. Garbage is picked up, streets are swept and children go to school. Middle-class couples take weekend getaways, and drive there on highways as good as those in the United States.
Two points here: regarding Mexico's highways, evidently, Dr. Haber isn't familiar with the Autopista del Sol, connecting Mexico City and Acapulco. Nor, to take a local episode, was he following Torreón's anguish over the construction and subsequent demolition of the DVR, after a handful of fatal accidents were chalked up to engineering flaws.
Second point: please read the first bolded section, which is part of a brief argument about the strength of the Mexican state (like I said, he goes in a lot of directions in this column). Now, compare it the following passage, which is from an as yet unpublished piece that I wrote several weeks ago:
There are all-too-frequent gunfights and executions, but the state never truly recedes, much less fails entirely. Government offices continue to run. The schools stay open. The trash gets picked up.
Crap! It's like he had access to my computer. I guess that part's not going to work anymore.
2 comments:
If I may quibble, since you generally agree with Steve and I generally agree with you:
(1) Highways. I didn't know about the DVR, but I can't agree with you about the Autopista del Sol. I've driven it on multiple occasions, and considering the terrain that it goes through I am continuously amazed. Whether it's worth either the construction cost or the high maintenance cost is a different issue. But it's a pleasure to drive.
(2) AMLO: I think Steve's point holds. AMLO's shift to the center may be standard in U.S. elections, but it isn't universal in Latin America. Viz the campaigns in Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. Mexico's 2006 campaign didn't fit that mold at all, and it's one of the reasons investors often separate the country out from the rest of Latin America. I take your point about another leftist candidate being able to win, but I'm not sure that it contradicts Steve's general argument.
Hi Noel,
You certainly may quibble. Two good points, and kind of a sloppy post. Fair enough about the Autopista del Sol. I've heard lots of complaints, but I've only been on it once, and I was prompted about how bad it was the entire time, so I was paying more attention to every bump than I would be on, say, the Jersey Turnpike. But now thinking back, the Turnpike has consistently been far worse than my experience on the Autopista del Sol. The DVR is, however, a giant waste of money.
As far as #2, you're right that my point doesn't contradict Steve's, if you take his point to be that despite the bad press, Latin America is making strides with sensible alterations to government policies. That portion does read in his column as though the point hinged on the leftist losing, which I maintain was more a product of specific circumstances rather than a general reaction against AMLO's leftistness.
As to what you were saying about the rest of Latin America, yeah that's true too, "Any general election" should have read "any American general election, likewise for Mexico in the last cycle and likely for the next few as well."
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