La Jornada's Point of View

Mexico's leftist paper of record was, not surprisingly, somewhat more hostile to the takeover than the others I've quoted thus far on the issue. It's editorial today said that Calderón's explanation used "demagogic arguments" and "blackmail", and was unconvinced by both the concern he voiced for the tens of thousands of workers who are now out of a job, as well as the the denial of plans to privatize the company. The editorial goes on to say that if the primary motivation was the company's inefficiency, there were less disruptive ways to deal with it than shutting it down (i.e., a bailout, which have been used for private companies in Mexico on more than one occasion). Furthermore, the primary cause of the financial problems were cuts in the amount of cash supporting the company in recent years, according to the piece. The editorial also alleges that the true motivation behind the takeover was to guarantee fiber-optic bandwidth to certain unnamed someones.

There are perhaps some valuable points here, which are then utterly spoiled by the conspiracy theory at the end. Even for those opposed to the move, Ebrard's approach (see previous post) is far better.