Guanajuato's Failure

El Universal ran a rather long piece purportedly about Germán Martínez's strategy to translate the PAN's success in Guanajuato to the rest of the nation. In fact, the article had more to do with the economic problems facing Guanajuato thanks to the crisis and to a long-term strategy of maquiladora-led growth, but it was still interesting. I think it gets at a larger problem for Mexico's political leaders in the next decade or so: American consumption will remain low, and exports will not be much of an engine for the economy. That doesn't entirely invalidate the PAN and the PRI's economic policies over the past two decades, but it should make the political class reflect on why exactly growth in Mexico lagged behind other export-reliant nations, and what the decline in American consumption implies for Mexico's potential in the post-crisis economy. If for no other reason than for political gain, the PRD should be leading that conversation, but instead most PRD leaders toss out words like "neoliberal", "mafia", and "legitimate government", and pretend that such semantic cues approximate a broad outline of what they are offering.