It Depends What You Mean By "Deep"

Emilio Rabasa Gamboa sees a lot of space between Calderón's call for a new approach to policy in Mexico and the budget his team submitted a few days later.

The tone of voice rose and he made a sharp gesture when he affirmed: "The citizens are not satisfied with the political representation and they see an enormous gap between their needs and the actions of the governors, representatives, and politicians". On September 2nd in the National Palace, President Calderón criticized his government, and later labeled as overwhelming the need to: "Pass from the logic of the possible changes, always limited by the actors' political calculus, to the logic of deep changes".

I thought that the editing of those words had been preceded by that phrase that some attribute to Guillermo Prieto and others to Lerdo de Tejada when they said to President Juárez: "Now or never, Mr. President". I naively believed that days after the presentation of ten objectives, there would come the announcement of truly significant transformations measuring up to the size of change foretold in the speech. It was not to be.

Three changes in the cabinet owing more to shame than glory and a financial package whose objective is to balance the finances so as to fill a hole of 374 billion pesos, but not to necessarily grow once more, are so far the "deep changes."