Gancho

Peña Nieto's Imperfect Candidacy

2012-02-02T06:31:00.001-08:00

New piece here:

Sin embargo, es indudable que esto representa otra mancha en la imagen de un candidato que parecía impecable y invencible hace unos meses. No es justo, pero es la realidad. Y aunque no nos diga mucho sobre la capacidad de Peña Nieto como ejecutivo, este escándalo a medias sí nos brinda otra lección política: las campañas presidenciales son completamente diferentes a cualquier otro desafío político. Las investigaciones en el pasado de los candidatos son más a fondo; la atención diaria es más abrumadora; las preguntas de la prensa son más y más detalladas; el estrés es más constante. Antes de que pase por todo eso, es casi imposible ver de lejos quien está a la altura de las exigencias. Algunos aspirantes que parecen ideales antes de arrancar el proceso no lo son.
Peña Nieto (junto con su equipo) ha hecho un trabajo de maravilla en aprovechar a los medios durante los últimos seis años y pico. Siendo un personaje altamente conocido, atractivo, experimentado, y no panista, parecía el hombre ideal para las circunstancias actuales. Pero entre los Tuits de su hija, su falta de conocimiento sobre el precio de tortillas o el salario mínimo, la alianza fracturada con Panal, sus vínculos con Humberto Moreira, y varias vergüenzas más, ahora queda claro que un candidato ideal no es.

On Joaquín Villalobos' Nexos Piece: Hope's Turn

2012-02-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Hope has a response to Joaquín Villalobos' sprawling and in many ways curious defense of Calderón's crime policy here. The conclusion:

No existe contradicción entre construir el Estado y lo que Joaquín llama “administrar el crimen”. Esa tarea la hacen todos los Estados modernos del mundo. No implica entrar en componendas con los delincuentes. Significa que el Estado, en situación de fuerza pero con plena conciencia de sus limitaciones, ponga rayas, fije prioridades y disuada las peores conductas, aun si eso implica tolerar temporalmente otras. No hay nada particularmente conservador en esa visión y nada eminentemente progresista en sugerir que no hay más ruta que el combate a ultranza, sin referencia a costos y vidas humanas.

My own contribution to antivillalobismo can be found here.

There Are No Scandals in Peña Nieto's World

2012-02-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

As with all the past missteps, the revelation that he had a child out of wedlock has had little effect on the support for Enrique Peña Nieto. Sixty-nine percent of those who were aware of the charges basically dismissed their relevance to the presidential race, according to a new BGC poll. That may change once people are paying more attention to the race, and perhaps the most striking thing is that people were largely unaware of the infidelity story. In this case, the widespread dismissal is also logically correct and shows admirable maturity, even if it strikes me as unusual, child of the Clinton years that I am. But when you start comparing Peña Nieto's merits and advantages to his scandals and drawbacks, it's hard not to wonder if a crash is around the corner.

Pobre Giovani

2012-01-31T12:06:00.001-08:00

Another transfer window comes and goes, and Giovani stays locked onto Tottenham's bench. Since his breakout performance in the 2010 World Cup, he's had two semesters of absolute irrelevance in London with another on the way, and a single half-season at Racing in which he was the team's most important player and a huge reason they weren't relegated. Harry Redknapp is a fun character and he's doing a good job with the Spurs, but he is screwing dos Santos out of quality years, and he's going to wind up losing him for nothing in the long run.

Also, you know who could have used Gio? Barça, which is wracked by injuries, is lacking in depth (relative to Real anyway), and often shows a surprising lack of attacking spark from the midfield depth when Iniesta is out.

The PRI's Missteps

2012-01-29T07:01:00.001-08:00

Jorge Fernández Menéndez talks about how a collection of personal problems have turned into a political nightmare for the PRI.

On Veracruz

2012-01-29T06:57:00.000-08:00

New piece here. Highlights:

While both government sources and outside analysts have trumpeted the Zetas as the most powerful and dangerous band in Mexico, the ability of a little-known group, even one with the backing of a larger organization, to move into the Zetas’ turf and fight for control of the region demonstrates that all gangs have become vulnerable to the prevailing chaos.

The spike in killing in Veracruz also exemplifies the fact that the parts of Mexico with the most significant recent rises in violence are not the border towns notorious for wanton killings, such as Juarez or Tijuana. Indeed, the violence has decreased in each of those border cities and in other regions that have long been closely tied to the drug trade. In recent months, however, it is in coastal states like Michoacan, Guerrero, and Jalisco, as well as staging-area cities just a few hours from the border like Monterrey and Torreon, where the most significant increases have been witnessed.

On Meth's Growing Importance to the Mexican Drug Trade

2012-01-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

Sorta new piece here. Highlights:

The location of the clandestine laboratories suggests that the Mexican production of synthetic drugs is dominated by the same group that has long towered over the industry as a whole: the Sinaloa Cartel. The organization led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has long been the strongest criminal group along the Pacific coast region, as well as one of the most innovative in producing and smuggling drugs. It’s also noteworthy that the regions under the control of their biggest enemies, the Zetas, have comparatively little synthetic drug production.
This state of affairs seems unlikely to last. The Sinaloa Cartel has more experience at the production levels of the supply chain than many rival organizations, but the relative simplicity of synthetic drug production suggests that other gangs will inevitably eat into their market share. Furthermore, because there is no inherent geographic benefit to one region or another for producing synthetic drugs -- unlike marijuana and poppy, which are ideally suited to the remote mountain ranges of western Mexico -- a long-term shift toward synthetic drugs could eat into the natural advantages that the Sinaloa-based traffickers enjoy.

While there are a great deal of factors driving the violence in Mexico, it also seems logical that the greater amount of money at stake with synthetic production could encourage more bloodshed. Indeed, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that the rise in synthetic production has occurred alongside the notorious spike in Mexican violence. Insofar as the shift toward synthetic drugs is permanent, it will likely make the recent wave of violence more difficult to rein in.

Also, the always essential Alejandro Hope has a new piece (translated into English) here.

On Monopolies

2012-01-26T06:43:00.001-08:00

Jesús Ortega here. I'm a fan of his, and of any attempt to knock down monopolies, but I think his take is a little too tied to the ideological breakdown in Mexico regarding monopolies, ie (in simplified form) Pemex/CFE not so bad for the left, Televisa/TV Azteca not so bad for the right.

Also, he says Pemex is not, strictly speaking, a monopoly, because other companies are involved in extraction and other secondary industry activities. That's, in the kindest take, needless hair-splitting; moreover, there are no retail gas merchants in the nation outside of Pemex.

2011? A Penny for a Last-Second Copy Edit.

2012-01-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

Current History's annual Latin America issue is out:

On Castañeda's New Book

2012-01-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a review of Mañana Forever. Short version: lots of good diagnoses regarding what ails Mexico, but the critique of national character over top of it fell short.

The PRI's Mistake

2012-01-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

Leo Zuckermann says the gang blew it in Mexico City with Beatriz Paredes, pointing to a recent phone poll by El Universal putting her 13 points down to Miguel Mancera. Her once-impressive showing in previous local polls seems to have stemmed more than anything from her advantage and name recognition, and perhaps better fundamentals from the PRI several months ago.

Sunday Reading

2012-01-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

For that hour between the end of the Barça-Málaga tie and the opening game of the NFL, here's a long piece from Gatopardo about Jorge Hank Rhon. Early paragraphs:

Dos años antes de morir, su padre le escribió una carta que Jorge Hank lee todas las noches. En ella le dice lo orgulloso que se siente de él, al verlo convertido en todo un padre de familia y en empresario de éxito, y le habla de la gran satisfacción de poder servir a los demás desde la función pública. Sin embargo, el profesor muere sin ver que su hijo tome un día la decisión de dedicarse a la política. Hasta hace menos de un año, Jorge Hank Rhon no hacía vida pública y afirmaba que él nunca se dedicaría a la política. Nunca pasó por una brigada juvenil priista ni coqueteó con alguna candidatura, pues él siempre dijo sentirse más feliz entre sus animales que entre la gente.

¿Cómo ha sucedido esa transformación? ¿Cómo ha operado el milagro? Entre las múltiples carreras políticas que el profesor Carlos Hank González apadrinó, destaca la de Roberto Madrazo Pintado, quien quedó huérfano en 1969, cuando la avioneta en la que viajaba su padre, el ex líder nacional priista Carlos Madrazo, se desplomó extrañamente en Nuevo León. Hank González adopta al huérfano adolescente y encauza su carrera, primero en el Departamento del Distrito Federal y después apoyándolo para una diputación a los veinticuatro años de edad. Más tarde le da todo su respaldo para convertirse en gobernador de Tabasco e intenta impulsarlo sin éxito como candidato presidencial en 1999. En 2004, Roberto Madrazo es presidente nacional del PRI, y es él quien le pide como un favor personal a su compadre y amigo Jorge Hank Rhon que acepte la candidatura a la presidencia municipal de Tijuana. Vicente Fox le ha arrebatado al pri la presidencia y su influencia está aún vigente. Baja California pertenece al partido del presidente. Sin embargo, una de las enseñanzas de su padre, repetida hasta el final de sus días, es que un verdadero priista es un soldado de su partido que debe estar listo para entrar en batalla cuando se lo piden, aun cuando todos los factores estén en contra.

Celebrating the Polling Industry

2012-01-19T08:19:00.000-08:00

Here's last week's column from Macario Schettino, noting that two decades ago, there was no polling industry to speak of in Mexico. Among other more important things, this would have severely limited the ability to write about elections with some degree of precision, which would have sucked for op-ed columnists. Or maybe the alternative: they could write about whatever they wished without any regard for objective perceptions of electoral reality, in which case it would have been a bad deal for the readers. Anyway, the current existence of so many top-flight pollsters in Mexico is another of the illustrations of how far the nation has come in two decades.

Also, today Schettino notes the unusually wide swings in opinion regarding the economic prospects for 2012.

Wayne Weighs In

2012-01-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

Rooney was also left indignant by Pepe's behavior. Incidentally, that lack of a Real-Man Utd matchup following Ronaldo's exit is quite a disappointment. Maybe next year.

How about a Win, Barça?

2012-01-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

Update: Thank you, that was just what I was looking for. Pepe's performance was apropos of the Hanson brothers. Between the artillery captain's approach to tackling (which is standard), the element of diving (which was novel!), and the blatantly premeditated hand-stomp on Messi, it was simply insane.

On Boz's New E-Book

2012-01-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

Boz and Sam Logan, that is:

There is much evidence to suggest that the decentralization of violence predicted in "Beyond 2012" is already underway. While Guzman and Lazcano remain big names, the relative power of the capos of their stature has been reduced during the Calderon years, ebbing away thanks in large part to the rise of smaller, more regionally isolated gangs.
Some of these form from the ashes of larger groups, like the Mano con Ojos (an offshoot of the Beltran Leyvas) and the Caballeros Templarios (a splinter from the Familia Michoacana). Others, like the Zetas, start as simple enforcer groups but evolve into something very different: perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is La Linea, a Chihuahua gang that has essentially subsumed the Juarez Cartel, its initial sponsor.

There are also innumerable local street gangs, which, though they have existed in some form for decades, are now more violent and more connected to the transnational groups than ever before. While the principal driver of violence in Juarez appears to be fighting between the forces of Guzman and Carrillo, local gangs are a significant factor in sustaining the bloodshed: Mexican authorities have estimated that there are up to 1,500 street gangs operating in Juarez alone.

There are even questions of the degree of control that Lazcano and Guzman exercise over the organizations they lead. "Beyond 2012" mentions rumors of a divide between Lazcano and his number two, Miguel Treviño, and as InSight Crime has pointed out, it appears that many of the most spectacular acts of violence perpetrated by the Zetas were not orchestrated by the Lazcano and Treviño, but rather by lower-level members. Guzman’s control over the Sinaloa Cartel appears less frayed, but a wave of violence last year in Durango -- a state long controlled by Guzman where hundreds of bodies were discovered in mass graves last spring -- was attributed to infighting among Sinaloa cliques.

You can (and should!) buy the book here.

Also, SOPA seems to suck: when Boz, Richard, and Wikipedia are all lined up on the same side of an issue, chances are that's a good place to be.

On Legalization and Violence

2012-01-18T06:16:00.000-08:00

From Este País, on legalization and a relatively new paper from Cornell researcher Emily Greene Owens here.

Where Will Calderón Land?

2012-01-17T20:49:00.000-08:00

Evidently, Calderón is considering relocating to the US or to Spain when his term is completed. He would be the third of the last four presidents to hit the road once they leave office, along with Zedillo and Salinas (who has since come back and I believe is now a full-time resident of Mexico). Unless I am mistaken, Fox is the only president since De la Madrid to remain in Mexico following his exit from the presidency. It's hard to fault anyone individually for living where they want to, but the collective effect is unfortunate.

I wonder if Televisa could set up a The Decision-style special program to let the world know where Calderón is going to take his talents.

Well, This Is Unseemly

2012-01-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

Mexico was booed at the Republican debate last night. The country was mentioned in reference to Mitt Romney's ancestors, but the booing appeared apropos of nothing, other than a perennial disdain for Mexico among some in the crowd.

When the Washington Post Reports on Mexico, Mexican Media Listens

2012-01-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

The above is a screen shot of Excélsior's home page, right now. The article precipitating all the attention is here. Can you imagine a scenario in which a foreign report on the US would receive similar attention from the Washington Post? For a variety of reasons, I cannot.

Optimistic for 2012

2012-01-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

Liébano Sáenz says that 2012 will be a year of validation for Mexico's democracy.

Also, just for fun, here's an old story from the NY Times about allegations about Sáenz while serving in the Zedillo administration, and how it drove a wedge between the US and Mexican governments. The same thing happened with regard to Manlio Fabio Beltrones a couple of years prior, and the subsequent history certainly seems to suggest that the Mexicans were right in dismissing the allegations, while the American officials pushing the stories were overzealous and credulous. I'm not as familiar with the allegations regarding Sáenz, but his recent record and this passage together seem to suggest that a similar dynamic was at play in his case.

Mexican officials said the allegations against Mr. Saenz came from half a dozen sources, including several drug traffickers. All offered second-hand information about his activities, or claimed ties to him that they could not prove. At least one failed a lie-detector test, the officials said.

It's kind of ridiculous that despite the bolded section, the charges were given sufficient credence to spark a diplomatic row that wound up in the NY Times. For a Mexican drug trafficker, starting a whisper campaign against an honest official would not be a particularly complicated affair, so if officials in a position to act on those rumors are not endowed with much skepticism, this is what happens.

The Second Round

2012-01-14T07:06:00.000-08:00

Arjan Shahani argues at Americas Quarterly that Mexico needs a presidential runoff, so that winning candidates have a stronger mandate than 35 percent of the votes, and some 20 percent of the total electorate. True enough! A second round would certainly alleviate that somewhat unseemly facet of Mexican politics, and would certainly an improvement. (It would also give journalists an easy topic to write about for another several months.)

However, that lack of mandate in and of itself isn't Mexico's foremost problem; the real issue is that weak presidents have a hard time enacting any agenda. But that's not so much a factor of the lack of support for the president as it is a product of a tripartite political landscape existing over top of a presidential system. If Calderón (who had approval ratings brushing up against 70 percent for much of his year, you may remember) had won a second round against AMLO, presumably the PRD would have emerged less intransigent, but he still would have had to deal with a majority-opposition Congress, one in which the incentives for the opposition were still to block or water down any presidential agenda item that comes down the pike. That's the problem that needs to be addressed, and I don't see any easy way to do so.

On Joaquín Villalobos' Nexos Piece

2012-01-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

Calderón advisor Joaquín Villalobos penned a long defense of his crime policy in the latest Nexos, an article to which I responded here. Highlights:

Perhaps the piece's most glaring problem is Villalobos’ focus on Mexicans’ supposed cultural aversion to conflict, which he claims prevents them from supporting a robust response to the security problems. In his telling, Mexicans’ longstanding preference for negotiating their way out of problems rather than confronting them directly is responsible for the existence of criminal gangs, and has made it impossible to marshal the collective force of the law-abiding masses.

One problem with this argument is the source; for a member of the administration to publicly blame the population at large for the ill effects of government policy is inappropriate, aside from being politically tone-deaf. Beyond that, cultural critiques from whatever source are particularly unhelpful for a number of reasons: they are unfalsifiable, because they are not based on data but rather on impressions and anecdotes; and they earn acceptance through rote repetition rather than careful analysis (Villalobos, for instance, bases his cultural generalization on a recent book of Jorge Castañeda’s, who in turn borrowed many observations from authors like Octavio Paz and Manuel Gamio). In addition to this, even if the critique is on target, changing a country's culture is difficult to the point of futility, so it’s not clear what the policy implications would be.

Rather than worrying about correcting or overcoming something so amorphous and unidentifiable as culture, officials would do much better to analyze specific institutional bottlenecks, such as the inability of the Mexican justice system to process cases efficiently. Thorough institutional reform is a painstaking process, but it is more likely to work than changing an entire culture via public haranguing.

Villalobos goes on to dismiss the idea that Mexico should consider the security landscape from the criminal’s perspective, which is an odd argument, given that in any conflict it is a useful exercise to put yourself in your adversary’s shoes in order to predict their next move.

He also criticises dissuasive approaches to crime reduction such as that put forward by UCLA criminologist Mark Kleiman in an article in Foreign Affairs last year. In it, Kleiman proposed identifying the most violent of Mexico’s criminal networks through an elaborate scoring system, and then targeting them for extinction by coordinating law-enforcement activities in both the US and Mexico.

There are certainly elements of Kleiman’s strategy that are unconvincing; as Villalobos indicates, he spends very little time on issues of institutional quality and corruption, which are huge obstacles to any security improvement in Mexico. But Kleiman is certainly correct in his belief that the incentives currently driving violence in Mexico need to be reversed, and that smart policy-makers should be thinking about ways to encourage less aggressive modes of conduct. In fact, Villalobos’ call for stronger institutions is, in a broad sense, just the sort of dissuasive tactic that he criticizes: the theory behind it is that if criminals have a greater chance of being imprisoned and less ability to corrupt security agencies, they will naturally respond with more defensive, less violent operations.

More on the piece from Leticia Ramírez of México Evalúa here.

DF Mayoral Race

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

With the announcement that anti-crime activist Isabel Miranda de Wallace would be the PAN candidate to succeed Marcelo Ebrard, there exists a significant possibility that there will be a three-woman race for the second most powerful position in Mexico, with Alejandra Barrales and Beatriz Paredes representing her potential opponents. However, Barrales has a significant barrier in the form of former DF procurador Miguel Ángel Mancera, who has a six-point edge over Barrales in an El Universal poll published yesterday.

Related writing: Aguachile has a great anecdote as to why as a med student Mancera became a lawyer, and Martín Moreno argues that the PRD will come out on top, regardless of their nomination. On that last point, I believe there are a number of polls refuting that claim, but we shall see.

Now, More Data

2012-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

A day after I wrote this piece criticizing Calderón for hiding the data regarding drug-related murders, the PGR released the tally for the first nine months of 2010. (To avoid any unintended implications, let me make perfectly clear that the above sentence's first clause has virtually nothing to do with the second.) The total through September: 12,903, which puts Mexico on pace for some 17,200 murders linked to organized crime this year. The figure represents an increase of roughly 11 percent from 2010. Any increase is unfortunate, though the rate of increase appears to have slowed (something Alejandro Hope has been saying for months): in 2010, drug-related murders jumped by 70 percent, in 2009 by 63 percent, and in 2008 by 110 percent.

Silly Knock

2012-01-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

This is rather odd: I feel obligated to support a position of Mourinho's and applaud a moment of graciousness from Ronaldo:

Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho has defended star player Cristiano Ronaldo over criticism that he does not celebrate his goals with enough passion.
Some Madrid fans made their feelings known in the 5-1 win over Granada at the weekend, whistling and jeering their own player after he had scored. The abuse caused Ronaldo to make an angry gesture and walk back to the centre circle with his head bowed, but Mourinho insists that the £80 million man is happy at the Bernabeu.
"He seems fine to me," Mourinho told reporters, ahead of their Copa del Rey last-16 second leg away to Malaga on Tuesday night. "I think it is more relevant that he celebrates the goals that win games and not the fifth goal in the 90th minute.
"I saw him celebrate the other four that were the important ones. If there are going to be criticisms of a player for not celebrating goals, then why not criticise me because I didn't celebrate any of the five goals. I didn't even get up."
In the face of unusually strong criticism from the pro-Real Madrid media over the incident, Mourinho was also keen to play down suggestions that the title race was over after Barcelona's 1-1 draw with Espanyol.

In any event, this reflects a significant difference between European football and most American sports: in the US, the "act like you've been there before" ethos generally and the Colin Cowherds in particular love to go after players who celebrate individual accomplishments too excitedly, while European fans seen the failure to toot your own horn as, I dunno, a lack of appreciation of the honor of wearing a given team's jersey. The context matters a great deal, but more times than not, I think soccer gets the better of this debate.

A Penny for a Better Memory of My Own Words

2012-01-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

I hope Aguachile doesn't mind me lifting this post entirely, but it's an anecdote worth repeating.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) said that he is not an enemy of private investment, and that he has not ever called businessmen "white collar criminals." He went as far as to say that he never used the phrase, and would even resign as presidential candidate if it were ever proven that he had uttered these words.

Yes, step down from the presidential contest.

La Jornada, Michoacán edition, June 27, 2006:
"No son empresarios, son traficantes de influencias los que están impulsando esa campaña, nada más que no tiene ni caso mencionarlos, son los que han hecho jugosos negocios, son delincuentes de cuello blanco, traficantes de influencias, los que no quieren que las cosas cambien verdaderamente en nuestro país."
So...

I'm actually kind of surprised at the date of this comment. My memory is that his rhetoric was notably less fiery prior to the election.

Kate del Castillo Says Some of the Silliest Things I've Ever Heard

2012-01-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

Aiming to definitively disprove the idea that one can be a successful actor and a thinking human being, here comes the star of La Reina del Sur:

This Tuesday morning, the star of the televsion series La Reina del Sur, wrote through her account @katedelcastillo:

[...]

“Today I believe El Chapo Guzmán more than the government that hide painful turths from me, those who hide the cure for cancer, AIDS, et cetera for their own benefit and wealth", wrote the actress who then asked the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to change, to stop trafficking and live right, and to thus turn himself into the "hero of heroes". In her note she said wouldn't it "be cool" if El Chapo began to traffic for the sake of good, with cures for the sick...

The mixture of a 6-year-old's naivety and a crackpot's conspiratorial suspicions is an odd one.

No More Data

2012-01-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece about the Calderón administration's decision not to publish the data related to murders linked to organized crime. Highlights:

Regardless of its reasons, the Calderon administration’s decision to block the information represents an unfortunate prioritization of short-term priorities over the long-term interests of the nation. While Calderon’s government has been rightly criticized various elements of its security policy, his team has been admirably open about the number of killings.

Indeed, when Guillermo Valdes, the director of Mexico’s intelligence agency (CISEN), announced in 2010 that some 28,000 murders linked to organized crime had taken place under the Calderon administration, this was significantly higher than most media organizations had counted. Similarly, despite the temptation to take advantage of the semantic murkiness and re-interpret the meaning of “linked to organized crime” in order to arrive at a lower number, Calderon’s team remained open about the data through most of last year.

In 2011, Alejandro Poire, currently the secretary of the interior and previously Valdes’ successor as the director of CISEN, continued the policy with the forthright admission that more than 15,000 of the prior year's murders could be connected to organized crime, a sharp increase from 2009. In short, even as the numbers indicated a worsening climate, the government helped provide a fuller sense of the circumstances around Mexico.

Instead of hiding the stats, Poire’s approach was to dispute their significance. He argued, for instance, that the government’s targeting of capos did not cause the murder rate to spike, and repeatedly emphasized that the violence was concentrated in a relatively limited number of municipalities.

While InSight Crime has argued that many his arguments were misleading, presenting an alternative spin on unflattering statistics is far preferable to hiding them from view.

Moving and Shaking in the Polls. Up to a Point.

2012-01-10T06:27:00.000-08:00

Josefina Vázquez Mota stands atop the list of presidential aspirants based on Excélsior's mixture of public notoriety and popularity. She has net opinion rating of +36, compared to +21 for Peña Nieto and +10 for López Obrador. Just 9 percent of those polled expressed a negative opinion about her, compared to 31 percent for Peña Nieto and 25 percent for López Obrador. Furthermore, 28 percent either didn't know here or didn't have an opinion on her (9 and 6 percent, respectively, were the corresponding figures for Peña Nieto and López Obrador), which suggests that her popularity could grow significantly. However, it also suggests that no one knows here particularly well, and she could crater as the microscope trains on her ever more intensely. In any event, this is positive news for the PAN. Now, if they could only get around to nominating her.

The bad news, however, is that 50 percent of those polled expressed a preference that the PRI win in the coming election, a figure 24 points above that of the PAN and 26 above that of the PRD.

Another Embarrassing Debt Scandal Involving a PRI Governor

2012-01-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

It's not just Coahuila now:

In a bit more than a year, the PRI's Miguel Alonso Reyes, governor of Zacatecas, multiplied the state's debt by a factor of almost eight.

The preceding administration, headed by the PRD's Amalia García, left the state with a debt of 718 million pesos, in September of 2010. In December of 2011, the total was 5.261 billion. This figure surpasses, by more than 200 million, what was approved by the local Congress. Additionally, the governor sought to issue another 372 million in debt.

The current administration no longer has enough to pay its suppliers nor the second part of its aguinaldo [the annual Christmas bonus].

Wasn't the younger generation of the PRI supposed to be different? I don't ask that to be a smartass, I find it genuinely odd that the exceedingly conservative management of debt and the generally responsible conduct of the economy in general over the past 15 years would not have rubbed off more on the 40-something set, and turned into something like the default approach to the political economy. I guess the lesson is that as the early 1980s and the mid-1990s fade from memory, younger politicians are growing more comfortable with risky fiscal policies.

More on Security and Mexico's Presidential Race

2012-01-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

In response to last week's article on security and the presidential campaign, Boz adds the following point, which is also quite correct and which I erred in omitting:

Part of this is due to the fact that while Mexicans are generally displeased by Calderon's results, polls suggest they are in surprising agreement with the basic outline of his strategy. Only a small minority of the public wants to see a pact with the criminals at one extreme or an even more violent military campaign at the other. So the candidates end up dancing around the issue, offering modest alterations to Calderon's framework.

What will be interesting is whether in the final months of the campaign as one candidate is down in the polls if he or she throws that Hail Mary pass and offers something completely different to try to distinguish their policies and draw media attention and votes.

Good question.

I also feel compelled to add that no sooner was that piece published than half the slate of candidates began to prove me wrong. Here's AMLO and Creel returning to the familiar terrain of Calderón-knocking, and here's Vázquez Mota proposing life in prison for dirty politicians. More on that second part in a bit.

A Nicer Campaign?

2012-01-08T08:34:00.000-08:00

I was wondering a few days ago what will be the approach to AMLO in the current campaign, given the arguably successful but widely disparaged "danger to Mexico" allegation from Calderón in 2006. I don't quite remember why, but I expected that we would see less of those sorts of attacks. And then, in this morning's paper, Jefe Diego emphatically demonstrated the silliness of whatever reasoning upon which I was basing that conclusion:

Of course, if I was called a mafia leader time and time again, I might want to respond with a serpentine epithet too. Anyway, it's an interesting interview.

On Messi's Rivals, and What They Say about Messi

2012-01-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

Ahead of his third straight Ballon D'Or, which he presumably will be lifting tomorrow, Graham Hunter says:

Xavi is, in my view, the greatest Spanish footballer ever. He is a serial trophy winner and has matured into a fantastic leader for club and country. Cristiano Ronaldo has scored some utterly unbelievable figure like 111 goals in 112 games for Real Madrid, produces feats of athleticism and power that have rarely been seen and, were it not for Messi, would probably stand unchallenged as the most remarkable footballer of our times. Yet they and everyone else are significantly, and I mean significantly, behind Messi in terms of his utter, divine brilliance. We live in extraordinary football times. Cherish them.

Goalie Turned Kidnapper, Allegedly

2012-01-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

Omar Ortiz, a former keeper with Rayados de Monterrey, was arrested on January 5 for participating in dozens of kidnappings, including that of the husband of Gloria Trevi. Ortiz, who also played on Mexico's national team a handful of times, was only a couple of years removed from his playing career, which ended early because of positive anti-doping tests. Authorities say that a cocaine addiction led him into the life of forcible abductions for ransom.

A Blast from the Past

2012-01-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yuriria Sierra has a bit more on the plea deal under which notorious Tijuana boss Benjamín Arellano will do no more than 25 years in a US prison, when he was facing 150.

In Honor of the Primera División Kicking Off

2012-01-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

I have a new piece about Santos' recent run and that horrible loss to Tigres at The Classical:

Santos had been the most electric offensive team in the tournament, but their one goal was the only shot they put on goal in the entire second leg.
In contests of even strength, Tigres, in contrast, preferred to play with some 17 men behind the ball at every moment. Their semifinal win over Querétaro was a miserable 180 minutes, with the lone score for either team coming on a horrific own goal. Only one of the eight playoff teams scored fewer goals over the course of the regular season than Tigres. Nonetheless, overcoming that natural inclination toward dreadful soccer, the Tigres attackers came at the net in waves in the second half of the vuelta. They scored their first goal of the night in the 51st minute, netted another 12 minutes later, and added a final dagger in the game’s waning minutes. Another two or three goals would not have outstripped the run of play.
As if intent on proving that his initial game-changer was not a one-off spasm of bad judgment, Rodríguez continued to seek the spotlight in a series of bizarre interventions. Like a two-pistoled gunmen in a Western—picture Kevin Costner’s move at the end of Silverado—he whipped out the double yellow card in the 56th minute, simultaneously warning Carlos Morales and Héctor Mancilla. (What ref carries around two yellow cards waiting for that moment?) He later awarded Santos’ defensive anchor, Felipe Baloy, a straight red card for a tackle in which the Panamanian actually clipped the ball first.

Also, the Christmas break from fútbol seemed thankfully short, this year.

Security in the Campaign

2012-01-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

Given the importance of the issue in Mexico, it seems like the candidates are taking their time to really dig in to public security issues. More here:

Peña Nieto’s approach serves as a microcosm for insecurity’s role in the campaign in general: rather than taking center stage, public security has drifted into the background. As the campaign continues, this may change -- it’s hard to imagine the presidential debates passing without more substantive discussion of organized crime -- but there’s little question that the candidates’ reticence reflects a disinclination to engage the issue. As a result, there is a misalignment between the significance of the issue and the amount of attention it has received.

What this tells us is that for all of the dissatisfaction with the current state of security, there are no alternatives that slip easily into a campaign sound bite. While it’s easy to lament the spike in violent deaths under Calderon, it’s comparatively difficult to envision a reliable, short-term path out of the current morass. And any candidate who capitalizes on the security woes in order to win himself (or herself) the presidency would soon face the unenviable task of having to live up to his promises.

Reading Rec

2012-01-05T07:49:00.000-08:00

Richard Grabman has a new e-book titled Gorostieta and the Cristiada: Mexico’s Catholic Insurgency of 1926-1929, which can be purchased here. I've not had the pleasure of reading the book yet (though I will!), but the Cristiada is a fascinating and all-too-overlooked period in Mexican history, and, based on his writing at Mexfiles, I can only imagine that Grabman's opus is well worth your time.

Also, Mexico's biggest bookseller Gandhi has launched a new e-reader. Hopefully, this will be part of a broader shift toward Mexican books becoming available digitally. Physical books from Mexico are hard to track down in the US, and are shockingly expensive wherever you are.

More on AMLO's Swing to the Center

2012-01-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

New piece from Este País:

Por eso hemos visto un discurso notablemente tranquilo hasta el momento. No le ha dicho “chachalaca” a nadie ni ha callado a ni un rival. La palabra “mafia” —anteriormente una de sus etiquetas favoritas para sus adversarios—no ha aparecido en los comunicados de su campaña desde Septiembre. Anunció que tres figuras con reputaciones muy buenas aún afuera de las filas de la izquierda—Rogelio Ramírez de la O, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, y Marcelo Ebrard—tomarían puestos claves en una administración suya.
Y, más curiosamente, el ex gobernador del DF ha hecho hincapié en la importancia del amor en la vida pública. Apostar por el amor como parte clave en una campaña presidencial puede o no resultar una decisión acertada, pero sí es extraña, ya que el amor es probablemente la emoción menos vista en la política.

La jugada, pues, es clara: hacerse el moderado por siete seis meses más, lograr que desvanezcan las memorias de López Obrador mandando las instituciones al diablo, y ofrecer un programa centrista. Esta estrategia demuestra una buena comprensión de los deseos del electorado, y puede tener un efecto en la percepción popular del candidato de la izquierda. Según el mismo reporte de Mitofsky, las opiniones negativas de López Obrador bajaron nueve puntos de febrero a noviembre del año pasado.

Sin embargo, ahora la pregunta más importante no es si tomó la decisión correcta en diseñar su estrategia, sino si será suficiente un simple cambio en su discurso. Es decir, López Obrador está haciendo lo más que puede con las cartas que tiene, pero los obstáculos que le impiden están muy fuertes.

New Piece on the Spread of Gang Control at the Municipal Level

2012-01-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

Here is the full piece. Here are some highlights:

Particularly problematic is his reasoning that if criminal activities are conducted openly, that means a particular group now controls the local government. While blatant examples of impunity suggest some degree of official collusion, there is a great deal of distance between some corrupt interaction and a gang’s total control of a city.
The reality is, of course, much more complicated. The interplay between any city’s underworld with its legitimate political leadership is a tangled mess consisting of ever-evolving alliances, corrupt officials working alongside their honest colleagues, and certain gangs colluding with the authorities while their competitors confront them. To offer but one possible scenario, a gang of pirate merchandisers may be making payoffs to the local beat officers and the director of the municipal unit in charge of investigating the crime, while simultaneously having no relationship with the mayor’s office or the federal police deployed locally.

In such a context, any notion of criminal control is a fleeting. The criminal group may feel comfortable conducting their business out in the open, but that doesn’t mean they have purchased the loyalty of the local government wholesale, much less that they are pulling the strings at city hall.

Another problem with Buscaglia’s analysis comes from the fact that he is drawing broad conclusions regarding a shadowy industry based only on activities carried out in the light of day. A smart criminal group, especially one dedicated to hidden activities like drug smuggling, may well exert its control behind the scenes, without leaving any indication of their influence. Such a circumstance is likely not uncommon, which means that Buscaglia’s analysis is unable to account for much of the influence exerted by Mexico’s criminal gangs.

An Amusing Illustration of AMLO's Swing to the Center

2012-01-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Since October, there is not a single press release from el Peje's website that uses the word "mafia" in the headline or in the summary sentence. Prior to that, a typical month's press releases would deploy the epithet a half dozen times.

Día de los Inocentes Success

2012-01-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Excélsior, this was definitely my favorite:

Bullfighting Popularity

2012-01-01T09:40:00.000-08:00

According to Mitofsky, a larger proportion of Mexicans have attended a cockfight (20 percent) than a bullfight (17 percent). Forty-five percent of the population has attended a soccer game, the sport with by far the highest number. Bullfighting is associated with Mexico more than with any other country outside of Spain, but in all my time there, I only met one person who was a real fan of it. I was the passive recipient of invitations to watch all types of competition, from pro wrestling to amateur football, but I was invited to watch as many contests of ullamalitzli as I was bullfights: zero.

Feliz Año

2012-01-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

Back from vacation. The normal posting routine --that is, irregular commentary and consistent promotion of pieces published under my byline-- returns now. A happy 2012 to one and all.

2010 Murder Figures

2011-12-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Diego Valle-Jones picks at the just-released database of homicides in 2010 here. As always, his analysis is worth a couple of reads.

New Piece

2011-12-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

A review of Charles Kenny's Getting Better, and an argument that much of the same logic applies to Mexico here.

Jarring Stat of the Day

2011-12-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

According to the insurance firm AXA, just 16 percent of Mexicans habitually save money for retirement.

The lack of medium and long-term spending affects young Mexicans and their families, because it diminishes their capacity to create a nest egg or invest in their first home, higher education or universities for their children, or confront some medical emergency.

Seconding

2011-12-26T08:14:00.000-08:00

On Aguachile's recommendation, this profile of Enrique Krauze from novelist Jorge Volpi is great Dec. 26, lingering food hangover reading.

On Sicilia's Truce and the Philosophy It Represents

2011-12-26T07:45:00.000-08:00

Víctor Beltri captures a lot of what I find wrongheaded about Mexican oppositionalism with this line:

Why not direct public attention to the need for confronting national problems with unity, instead of undermining confidence in the institutions?

That is perhaps a bit of a simplification, but there is a lot of truth to it. I tend to think of it as a holdover from the priísta era, in which merely expressing opposition to a closed political system was the most important stance one could take. Today, avenues for collaboration need to be explored and embraced, whereas many of the current movements rooted in frustration with the status quo seem to be searching for excuses to throw up their hands and walk away from the legitimate system. It will be interesting to see if this continues to be a problem to the same degree as more and more voters who have no memory of PRI rule come of age.

Puebla Is US Soccer South

2011-12-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

Eddie Johnson joins DeMarcus Beasley in Puebla. Hérculez Gómez also enjoyed a successful stint there in 2010, though he is suiting up for Santos in the coming Clausura. That brings the total of Americans without Mexican roots in the Mexican league to at least three: Beasley, Johnson, and Jonathan Bornstein. And as far as the Mexican-Americans, aside from Gómez, there are José Francisco Torres, Michael Orozco, Homie Castillo, and I imagine there are a few more, but I can't think of any offhand. For the sake of both the US players and the Mexican league (or at least my interest in it), it'd be nice to see those numbers grow.

Friday Reading

2011-12-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Hope has a long, convincing look at the role Mexican criminal organizations play in American cities, which you should read now, before the eggnog impairs your analytical functions. The gist is that the frequent arguments from American officials that Chapo (or whoever) is taking over street-corners from Baltimore to Fargo are unsupported and unlikely, something with which I heartily concur. He also generously mentions a couple pieces of mine, which really only scraped the surface.

On the Mexican Cinema

2011-12-22T05:44:00.000-08:00

Carlos Puig notes that 52 movies in Mexico sold some 13 million tickets through November, out of a total of 200 million tickets sold. He also notes that the average movie brings in 8 or 10 million pesos in revenues, which, given the costs of making a movie and the theater's cut, means that almost all of them are losing money. More:

Many of the movies that are made today are essentially vehicles of tax deductions thanks to the so called "226", the article of the Law of Taxes on Profits through which busineses can give money to directors to make movies instead of giving money to the treasury. In reality, the incentive no hasn't produced better movies but rather many of them which allows the businessman to deduct, and later they remain in mothballs forever or they are a box office failure.

I am convinced that the although the rules, habits, and customs of our cinema are not conducive to more Mexicans seeing Mexican movies, the quality also plays a part in this disaster. No theater or distributor that has in front of him a movie that will make millions will neglect to do so because it is Mexican, nor are Mexicans crueler with Mexicans than with other people. Should Mexicans be more tolerant because they are Mexican movies? That is a question that is not easy to answer. Do we want garbage on our screens just because it is Mexican?

That's a pretty harsh take, though one I think you hear frequently in Mexico. My biggest problem with Mexican movies was that for the last ten years, so many of them seem to imitate González Iñárritu's depiction of life in Mexico City as an impossibly bleak existence. There are several inter-related problems with this obsession: 1) Most directors can't pull it off as well as González Iñárritu; 2) After dozens of movies trading on this, it is now extremely trite; 3) It's painful to watch and offers little in the way of insight into the human condition or payoff to the viewer; and 4) It willfully ignores the rest of the country, where 80 percent of Mexicans live.

Although I've been out of the country for a year and a half now, so maybe that's not as much of an issue anymore.

The Next Generation of Smuggling Ingenuity

2011-12-21T17:51:00.000-08:00

A Spanish model was arrested in Italy when authorities discovered that she had two kilos of cocaine hidden in her breast and buttock implants. There is an obvious late-night talk show joke begging to be written but I would probably whiff. I dunno: One breast started arguing with the other about the best DJs in Ibiza?

Evidence of Vázquez Mota's Continued Lead

2011-12-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

This comes from an El Siglo de Torreón online poll. Reforma had similar info, though I imagine a bit more scientifically collected, last week. Santiago Creel said a couple of days that he had erased the lead and that he was on top. Cordero claimed, with a similarly absent factual basis, that he and Vázquez Mota were tied a couple of weeks ago. If poll after poll means nothing, it seems like they could keep this up forever, to say nothing of February.

Mass Arrests in the US

2011-12-21T06:31:00.000-08:00

Seventy people were arrested in a drug sting in DC this week, and media outlets (though not the DC police news release) are calling it a blow to La Familia. More than 200 people were arrested in Arizona, an operation that the DEA and the media alike are hailing as a shot against Chapo Guzmán and company. I wonder what proportion of these two groups are Mexican citizens; I'm guessing it's not high. I also wonder if these types of reports, which are common, stem from a genuine lack of understanding of how a supply chain works or if it's just cynical horn-tooting.

As always, the emblematic case of this faulty logic is that of Otis Rich.

Mexican Gangsters and American Agencies

2011-12-20T14:21:00.000-08:00

Proceso had an interesting piece about the relationship between a lieutenant of Chapo Guzmán's and a couple of agents from ICE last week, which I have partially translated here. And here is part of what I wrote as a prelude:

While US agencies often employ a combative, not-one-step-back rhetoric with regard to Mexican criminal gangs, the reality is a bit more complicated. Rather than a straightforward situation with authorities like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in constant pursuit of criminal gangs, the two sides sometimes stumble into cooperative arrangements, which have periodically caused embarrassment for the US government.

One illustration of this is the case of Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of one Mexico's most famous traffickers, who was arrested in Mexico in 2009 and extradited to the US a year later. He has alleged that officials in the DEA, the FBI, and the Department of Justice had worked out an agreement with the Sinaloa Cartel to reduce the pressure on the gang in exchange for information on other groups. ICE's relationship with informant Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro caused a scandal in 2010, when it was revealed that he had been paid some $250,000 over several years while also participating in at least 12 murders and continuing to traffic drugs across the US border. Going back decades, as (among others) books like "El cartel de los sapos" and "El narco: La guerra fallida" have detailed, Latin American drug lords have often sought to turn themselves in to US authorities as a way out of the drug trade, exchanging information about criminal associates for a lighter sentence.

Another example of this deal-making is given in a recent report by Proceso magazine on the testimony of Jesus Manuel Fierro Mendez, who has been cooperating with justice since his arrest in 2008. He says that he was the spokesman for Joaquin Guzman, alias "El Chapo," in his dealings with US authorities. Fierro Mendez depicts a symbiotic relationship in which each side made use of the other: agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would arrest Sinaloa’s adversaries, while Fierro Mendez would provide tips and confirm leads for the US authorities.

American Views of Latin America

2011-12-20T06:34:00.000-08:00

I have a new piece at Este País on two frequent flaws of US analysis of Latin America: that Latin America is a coherent region, and that it needs more attention from the US.

AMLO Seeks to Explain the Reaction in 2006

2011-12-19T16:09:00.000-08:00

AMLO has an explanation for his heated reaction to the 2006 elections: if he hadn't launched the blockade of Paseo de la Reforma, there would have been violence in the streets. This single action, which is almost single-handedly responsible for his negative polling numbers being the highest of any prominent pol in Mexico, was an act of peace.

This is both self-serving and logically faulty. I mean, that's a nice, convenient, unfalsifiable assertion to get you off the hook. And wouldn't droning on about the pinche fraude, instead of repeating time and again that there was no evidence of a systemic, widespread fraud, have made violence more likely? And why was sending the institutions to hell necessary? However, addressing 2006 to start off with shows more self-awareness as to his predicament than I would have guessed.

Update: Upon reflection and re-reading, I should add that AMLO deserves some credit for tamping down on some of the potentially violent passions within his movement. All of the above remains true, however, so this is a bit like praising a weapons manufacturer for improving the safety-locks while fueling an arms race.

Romney's Description of the Honduras Coup

2011-12-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

This is an amusingly slanted take on the Honduran coup from the Romney campaign:

[Obama] has allowed the march of authoritarianism to go unchecked. In some cases, he has actually encouraged it, as when he publicly backed former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya — a Hugo Chavez ally — despite Zelaya’s unconstitutional attempt to extend his term as president in defiance of the Honduran supreme court and legislature.

This is all the paper has to say on the incident, so hopefully no one reading this white paper is using it as their only source of information.

Old Pieces I Meant to Mention

2011-12-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

Saturday catch-up:

Carlos Loret de Mola suggests that all the hullabaloo over Michoacán was a dry run at a coming attempt to invalidate the 2012 elections. His logic isn't particularly convincing--if annulment was the goal Michoacán, it didn't work. Plus, it's objectively and obviously a horrible idea for the country, for whatever that's worth. Nonetheless, he is quite connected, and therefore this scenario is a bit alarming.

This Milenio Semanal piece about the youth gangs in Monterrey is informative, but the pictures are the most memorable aspect to me. Who knew Cleveland State and died bangs were popular in the barrios of Monterrey?

Fifty-eight percent of Mexico's Senators have abandoned their posts so as to seek positions in 2012. It's easy to be indignant about an absentee legislature, but in a country where there is no reelection and the Senate elections aren't staggered, such high figures are perhaps not inevitable, but nor are they surprising.

Pascal Beltrán del Río was impressed with the left's unity in the AMLO campaign kickoff.

Mexico's government is getting (marginally) better at bringing in increasing (though still small) quantities of tax revenue.

If the PRI Loses?

2011-12-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

Macario Schettino's column last week wondered what would become of the party if, despite all the circumstantial advantages and despite its candidate, the PRI were unable to win in 2012:

The old president the PRI turned out to be a liar, and he is already gone. The president candidate turned out to be vulnerable. What will they do with him? Will the initial advantage be enough? Will the PRI really be able to stay united around this hope? Because if with this candidate the PRI doesn't win the election, it will have hard time continuing to exist.

On the Zetas' Breakdown in Authority

2011-12-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

Here's a new piece at InSight:

As Borderland Beat reports, the banners, or "narcomantas," appeared on Monday morning in at least 10 different spots around the city, signed with the name of Zetas boss Miguel Angel Treviño, alias "Z-40." The messages' first paragraph declares:

We do not govern this country, nor do we have a regime; we are not terrorists or guerrillas. We concentrate on our work and the last thing we want is to have problems with any government, neither Mexico nor much less with the US.

The message went on to distance both Treviño and the Zetas from a recently uncovered alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, as well as an August attack in a Monterrey casino that killed more than 50 people. A Zetas cell has been linked to the latter incident, while the assassination plot, according to US authorities, revolved around an alleged Irani agent contracting members of the Zetas to murder the diplomat in Washington, DC.

The most recent narcomantas contradicted a series of messages left in Nuevo Laredo earlier this month, in which someone writing in Treviño’s name openly challenged the governments of the US and Mexico. As that message's authors wrote:

Not the army, not the marines nor the security and anti-drug agencies of the United States government can resist us. Mexico lives and will continue under the regime of the Zetas. Let it be clear that we are in control here and although the federal government controls other cartels, they cannot take our plazas.

This episode raises a couple of points about the current state of the Zetas. One is that the group seems to be suffering a significant amount of organizational deterioration. This is clearly demonstrated by the disdain with which the latest banners refer to the Monterrey attackers; Treviño refers to them as having “chicken brains” and emphasizes repeatedly that the attack was not ordered from above.

This conclusion is supported by the contradictory messages appearing in the same, Zeta-controlled city just weeks before. There are two possible explanations for this: either Treviño’s subordinates felt comfortable issuing a challenge in his name and without his consent, or a rival group infiltrated a Zeta stronghold and managed to hang a handful of narcomantas around town without them knowing. Neither possibility would seem to reflect a finely tuned operation humming perfectly.

More broadly, the insistence on linking capacity to violence to the strength of the group behind bloodshed is one of the frequent problems in analysis of Mexico. We all have a tendency to exaggerate the size the enemies about which we know relatively little, but so much of what we've seen from the Zetas in the past year strikes me as the behavior of a headless chicken, not a stalking lion. Of course, that distinction matters little to the people who are victimized, so perhaps the proper comparison is a stalking lion to an epileptic lion attacking people willy-nilly without any clear plan. Or maybe animal metaphors aren't really the proper approach to this issue.

Mexico's Most Unconvetional Bishop

2011-12-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

Gatopardo has a long profile of Raúl Vera López, the notoriously liberal bishop from Saltillo, that makes for some great reading. Highlights:

Raúl Vera has not been tortured or exiled, but he has already taken precautions: his left wrist carries a bracelet with his name, his contact information, his blood type, and his antibiotic allergies: "So that the day they shoot me they know who I am", he tells me...

Among the Rafto recipients, Raúl Vera López is famous as a night owl and partier. And it's well earned: the bishop from Saltillo feels as comfortable in the buzz of a cantina as in the silence of his recliner, and as at home celebrating mass with prostitutes on Good Friday as he is discussing dogmas of faith with theologians from around the world. He is always conversing --whether with someone else or with himself-- and for that reason the small tasks of daily life, like dressing himself or parking the car, take forever.

On Presidents and Books and Enrique Peña Nieto

2011-12-13T14:15:00.001-08:00

New piece here. With regard to the last paragraph, I can't count: that number is closer to six than eight months.

Back

2011-12-13T14:02:00.001-08:00

Evidently, the celebration on Saturday night was just a bit too much for my weak constitution--I passed out not long after the third goal from Cesc and just woke up 20 minutes ago. Wow! Quite a game. It seems I was lucky to have Van Winkled the second leg of the Mexican final.

On the Clásico

2011-12-10T07:13:00.000-08:00

I recently read that Bismarck often used to, in his words, spend nights simply "hating". While I don't embrace hatred in the abstract, with the Clásico to kick off in just under six hours, I found myself filled with admiration for the master of Realpolitik. And while the hours of deep meditation on Ronaldo, Mouriño, Pepe, and every other horrible ogre taking the field in white today were quite satisfying, we also need spend some feeling the love:

That was nice. And while we are at it:

Here's a characteristically trenchant analysis of the tactical challenges for each team from Zonal Marking.

Threat to Elections

2011-12-09T06:18:00.000-08:00

Apropos of Calderón's claim that threats from organized crime forced 50 candidates out of the Michoacán elections, I have a piece at InSight regarding the potential threats to the outcome of 2012. I focused not on the possibility that criminals could influence policy after the election, but whether they are actually capable of swinging a significant chunk of the votes, a la Michoacán (allegedly, anyway). Highlights:

However, there is reason to doubt that the presidential vote will be marred by criminal influence to the same extent as the local elections described above.

One fundamental reason is that in the three states in question, the influence of criminal groups arguably runs more deeply than anywhere else in the country. Each of them have spawned their own trafficking groups -- the Sinaloa Cartel in Sinaloa state, the Gulf Cartel (and the Zetas) in Tamaulipas, and the Familia and Caballeros Templarios in Michoacan -- which have deep ties to local business and politics. Crime hasn’t been imported from outside, but is an organic part of public life in each state, which makes it much more difficult to isolate politics from crime.

Vizcarra’s explanation for the photo with Sinaloa capo Zambada was illustrative: he didn’t deny it was real, but said it didn’t show collusion of any kind. As a rancher with ties to powerful business interests in Sinaloa, it was only natural that Vizcarra would have become acquainted with the longtime kingpin.

In some other states, even those which suffer high levels of violence, the links between drug trafficking and politics are not so inevitable, because organized crime is a comparably recent arrival. It is far less likely for criminals in, say, Queretaro or San Luis Potosi to be willing or able to exert influence over an election in the same way the Familia attempted to do in Michoacan.

For similar reasons, it is unlikely that there are photos floating around of the leading presidential candidates --Mexico State’s Enrique Peña Nieto or Tabasco’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- arm-in-arm with a wanted man.

Furthermore, the presidency is chosen by a nationwide, winner-take-all election in which some 40 million people will cast a ballot. Even in the unprecedentedly close 2006 presidential elections, the difference between Calderon and runner-up Lopez Obrador approached 250,000 votes. Against that backdrop, any drive to redirect votes from one candidate to another, even by the most powerful gangs, would almost certainly be futile.

Un Guerrero Nunca Muere, Says the Slogan. That's Great, But Hopefully He Can Also Bring Home a Title.

2011-12-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Santos has once again reached the final of the Liguilla, for the third time in four tournaments, and therefore the third time in two years. Hopefully, they can avoid the pattern of heartbreak of the previous two.

The opponent is Tigres of Monterrey, who employs Carlos Salcido and Jonathan Bornstein. In the few games of theirs I have seen, Tigres have been horribly boring and very stingy on the defensive side, which probably has a good bit to do with Bornstein not playing. Santos provides quite a contrast; they light it up.

The Joke Parade

2011-12-08T06:04:00.000-08:00

Here's AMLO poking fun at Peña Nieto's book blunder:

Toward the end, he invited Peña Nieto to take a reading workshop: “Paco Ignacio Taibo II has a a workshop to foster reading. I think that, with all due respect to Paco Ignacio, he could invite Peña Nieto to participate in the workshop", joked the Tabascab, who then said, "What reading doesn't give you, marketing can't provide".

I expect another six million comments in that vein over the next several weeks.

This horrible week of Peña Nieto is further evidence of how much the PAN is screwing up their nomination process. Right now, most of the people who are both leaning toward Peña Nieto and horribly offended by his callous daughter and his demonstrated disinterest in book-learnin' have a few options: they can either drop out of the election, shift their support toward AMLO, or hold their nose and continue supporting Peña Nieto. They cannot, however, latch on to the PAN alternative, because there isn't one yet. If Vázquez Mota were already the candidate, she could be using this to slam Peña Nieto and make herself seem comparatively smarter and appealing and all that crap that political consultants surely talk about in meetings, but in February, this will be a distant memory. All of the negative Peña Nieto energy from this episode will have dissipated, with no boost to the PAN.

Not a War

2011-12-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

I have a new piece at Este País on the problems that occur when you take the war metaphor for Mexican insecurity too far. Highlights:

Así pues las conclusiones de RAND serían mucho más preocupantes si México de verdad sufriera de una insurgencia. Ante la coyuntura actual, decir que México está en el lado equivocado de 13 de 27 factores insurgentes es igual que decir que Chivas de Guadalajara está bien puesto para competir con los mejores equipos de básquetbol en el mundo; puede ser un dato interesante, pero como Chivas juega fútbol, es completamente irrelevante a su propósito y agrega muy poco al análisis de su capacidad.

I also mention the effort to bring a case against Calderón in the ICC, which frankly I don't think a whole lot of. However, I feel obligated to add that the administration's response, that it will consider legal action against those behind the movement, is utterly indefensible. It smacks of authoritarianism and is politically stupid, in that it makes him rather than his accusers look like the spaz with no sense of proportion. I don't know if the long presidency has sapped Calderón's common sense, but he's a veteran politician, and obviously he should know that virulent, even hysterical, criticism comes with the territory. Somehow, he's forgotten that.

Ball on the Clásico

2011-12-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

Just five days away, I am already bubbling over with emotion. All I can think to write is "Please, please, please win Barça", so I'll cede the floor to Phil Ball:

Next week the Clasico will play on these emotions, but in a rather more nationally-focused fashion. The eternally wonderful thing about these games is that every one is slightly different, each one bringing its own particular set of contexts and circumstances to the stage. This time around, the difference is that the usual yin-yang nature of the two clubs' situations - whilst one is up the other tends to be down - is not the case at all. This is the first time for several seasons that I can recall a Clasico where both teams are frothing at the mouth with their own possibilities. Real Madrid's unquestionable improvement over the last year or so cannot be allowed to foreshadow Barcelona's continued excellence. Their home record is simply without precedent. Nine games played, 39 goals scored and none conceded. It would seem inhuman if it weren't for the relative contrast with their away record, with eight goals scored and seven conceded. Real Madrid will have taken note, as will have most of the Iberian Peninsula.
[...]
Barcelona brought forward their game with Rayo Vallecano in midweek, and have thus reduced Madrid's lead to three points, but have played a game more. They know that defeat in the Bernabeu could condemn them, after Christmas, to a nine-point gap whose psychological effects might cause difficulties for certain members of the Barcelona squad, accustomed as they have grown to always being ahead. I only suggest this as a possibility. It may motivate them to perform even better, but the discourse in Spain has changed. Mourinho is deliberately remaining quiet, since he knows, for the first time since he trod Spanish soil, that his project is bearing fruit and that his team may be about to dethrone their eternal rivals. The change of the guard might be upon us, or not. It's going to be a fascinating game, but Mourinho's non-provocative silence is an implicit message of his confidence. He only stirs it up when he's feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Complications in Sinaloa

2011-12-05T18:41:00.000-08:00

I have a partial translation at InSight Crime of a Ríodoce report on the Zetas' incursions into Sinaloa. Highlights:

The suspicions of the government regarding the “presence in Culiacan of a large group of Zetas” was confirmed on November 4 when a narco commando unit murdered eight people on a volleyball court in the Colonia Pemex.

Although they don’t specify how many there are nor in what areas of Culiacan they operate, the 9th Military Zone, in coordination with the Elite Group [a specialized unit of the state police] and the Mixed Urban Operation Bases implemented a perimeter around the limits of the state capital towards the beginning of November so as to prevent the entrance of more Zetas. Nevertheless, the gunmen managed to slip through to the capital.

On November 24, reacting to 24 murders ocurred a day earlier, including the 16 burned bodies, the governor confirmed that “we all know that here the Pacific Cartel [an alternative name for the Sinaloa Cartel] operates and that there are other cartels or local cells that are allied with some of the Zetas, the Beltran Levyas, the Carrillos, that are in conflict ... It’s a product of groups, messages that are sent, that no one is strong or protected enough to prevent all incursions,” he said.

[...]

In Culiacan, a city previously not included in public security operations by state and federal police, some 300 soldiers were mobilized. Since the afternoon of November 23 they have patrolled the zones considered the most troubled and installed checkpoints in strategic locations.

In some cases, such as in the boroughs of Angostura, Salvador Alvarado and Guasave, the mayors were “advised” to tell the population to exercise precaution. One of the suggestions was to avoid being out on the streets, highways, or roadways after eight at night.

It was reported that in the community of Palmitas, in the city of Angostura, a commando unit that on Monday in the middle of the night kidnapped three police officers whose burnt bodies appeared in Culiacan on Wednesday morning, left a message threatening the residents that they would have the same luck if they were found outside of their houses at night.

Troublesome Tweets

2011-12-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

Enrique Peña Nieto's 16-year-old daughter's Twitter account earned some attention for the following retweet:
She, or more likely he, has since closed the account. Personally I think we should make all the candidates and their family members tweet a "saludo a la bola de pendejos, que..." and then just see how they finish the thought. It could be more illuminating than a debate.

Rolling Stone Spanish Edition, You Are Just Terrible

2011-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

What the hell is this?!?!Oh how I hope Barça drops another manita on them. Or rather him. Animus aside, I am looking forward to the eventual breakup once he leaves Real. I figure the leaks to the media will be five times juicier than they were at Chelsea.

Cotto-Margarito II

2011-12-02T07:22:00.001-08:00

Cotto's loss to Margarito was one of the greater disappointments of spectating life. That night, I also also came away with food poisoning and had an enormous fight with my then-girlfriend, so really I think it is in the running for one of the worst days of my entire life, at least in the "long-term triviality" category. Since then, however, my stomach has bounced back like a champ, and I married the woman who had me so agitated, which is to say, I have addressed two of the three traumas that ruined what should have been a fantastic summer night out on the town. One remains: Cotto needs to whoop up Tony Tornado this Saturday.

Here is what appears to be the most entertaining part from their press conference:

Miguel Cotto, with an elegant gray suit, waited his turn at the microphone and answered, "Take a dictionary and see what 'criminal' means, it's someone who uses a weapon to hard someone else and you with your illegal handwraps are a disgrace for the boxing world."

Also, Eric Raskin's meditation on boxing and violence captures my ambivalence as a fan quite nicely. It's really a fantastic piece.

A Skeptical Take on Money-Laundering

2011-12-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

A new piece here for InSight:

Neither Mexico nor the U.S. government has adequately defined the goal of AML: is it to reduce the amount of revenues, or is it to dismantle existing gangs?
If it is merely to reduce the profits, it’s worth noting once again the tiny size of the amounts seized thus far. Is the legislation being proposed going to lead to exponentially larger amounts of dirty cash being seized? The seems an unlikely result. This doesn’t make stricter AML laws a bad idea, but government officials and analysts alike would do well to temper their enthusiasm and weigh the potential benefits against the costs to the legitimate economy.

If the primary goal is to dismantle existing groups, then the question becomes whether AML is successful where other law enforcement tactics -- infiltrating smuggling networks, electronic surveillance, etc. -- fail to bring about a criminal group’s demise. While there may be some isolated instances of this dynamic, they are the exception rather than the rule. In any event, no one arguing for stronger AML provisions is making this case.

An alternative argument for AML laws is that captured criminals and their families should be prevented from enjoying ill-gotten wealth. This may be valid, but it means that attacking dirty money is essentially an after-the-fact, punitive measure rather than the head of the law enforcement spear.

Many analysts point to crackdowns on terrorist financing as evidence of the AML’s potential for organized crime, but there is an important difference between the two: money is a terrorist group’s means to the end, i.e. launching terrorist attacks. Governments do not worry about terrorist groups having large bank accounts, per se, but rather about them being more able to carry out attacks on civilians. AML efforts reduce the ability of terrorist groups to kill civilians, even if they don’t necessarily lead to prosecutions.

The dynamic with organized crime groups is fundamentally different. A large bank account is the end in and of itself for a capo like Joaquin Guzman, alias "El Chapo." Therefore, attacking his assets doesn’t reduce his ability to harm society the way it does for a terrorist boss. If anything, in fact, it does the opposite; a capo could very well compensate for a marginal reduction in his profits by ramping up production of illegal drugs and flooding the market with more merchandise.

Also, Steve Dudley has an engrossing account of a virtual kidnapping.

Memory Lane

2011-11-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

I randomly bumped into this article during a totally unrelated Google search today. I wonder how many people would have guessed then that Guzmán would still be on the loose more than ten years later.

On the Massacres in Guadalajara

2011-11-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

New piece from InSight. Highlights:

The Guadalajara killings offer the latest illustration of an alarming trend in Mexico's underworld: attention-grabbing massacres. This latest incident comes just weeks after dozens of bodies were dumped around Boca del Rio, Veracruz, a populous state along Mexico’s Gulf coast. The Boca del Rio killings, in turn, followed the August arson attack on a Monterrey casino, which left 52 civilians dead. In June, more than 20 people were killed in a Monterrey nightclub when gunmen entered and opened fire.
Prior to the attacks in Monterrey, massacres already appeared to be on the rise. Three different attacks on nightclub in the northern city of Torreon killed scores of civilians in 2010. Attacks on migrants and bus passengers in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas earlier this year and in August 2010 led to the discovery of hundreds of bodies around the small city of San Fernando.

While mass killings were certainly not unheard of in the past, such attacks seem to be growing more frequent, and spreading across the country. They are not confined to a single group: the Zetas are thought to be responsible for the casino attack as well as the San Fernando killings, the Gulf Cartel for the previous Monterrey attack, the CJNG for the Boca del Rio killings, while a local group linked to the Sinaloa Cartel has been blamed for the Torreon shootings.

Malcolm Beith also has a two-parter distinguishing Mexico from Colombia.

Looking for Lessons from Juárez

2011-11-29T07:01:00.000-08:00

New piece here.

Facts Matter

2011-11-29T06:12:00.000-08:00

Mary Anastasia O'Grady with a fantastically ahistorical take on Mexico's response to the crisis:

In contrast to the U.S., PAN President Felipe Calderón rebuffed Keynesian proposals that Mexico increase deficit spending to counter the slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Mr. Peña Nieto concurs.

Personally, I think transferring domestic political disputes onto foreign terrain is a recipe for misunderstanding, as every nation's context and history are simply too important for easy equivalences, such as, the PRD is the Democratic Party of Mexico. Or, the stimulus was a bad idea in the US and therefore must be a bad one in Mexico. However, if you do want to engage in cross-border partisanship, facts, as ever, are important, and O'Grady's assertion is simply incorrect. Here's Calderón announcing his economic stimulus in January of 2009. Here's a rundown of the plan's provisions. Here's me thanking Calderón for the portion of it that reduced my gas bill. And, here's Enrique Peña Nieto, supposedly Calderón's partner in a fiscally conservative response to the crisis, endorsing his plan, with the reservation that it should not be used for electoral purposes.

In summary, there was a Keynesian response to Mexico's crisis, and the primary criticism of it was that it ran out of money and was cut short in the summer of 2009.

Josefina: Worry!

2011-11-28T06:52:00.001-08:00

I wrote last week about how the PAN's inability to select a candidate in a timely manner was handcuffing the party ahead of the 2012. Since Josefina Vázquez Mota seems the most likely candidate, this seems an especially problematic issue. (For Cordero, in contrast, it just means he gets to stay in the limelight for another several months.) However, she comes across relatively unconcerned about the PRD and PRI head start in this article:

It's been said that the fact that the PRI and PRD have a single candidate could be an advantage and that the PAN has months to go before selecting their candidate. What do you think about that?

I am sure that we will resolve the issue correctly, that we will resolve it fulfilling the goals of unity and cohesion, which, in this case, is the most important thing for the party.

Maybe they are going to speed the process along, but that doesn't sound like it to me.

Ebrard's Future

2011-11-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

Marcelo Ebrard is promising another, non-abortive presidential campaign in 2018. He is also trying to bring Britney Spears to Mexico City for a holiday concert.

I wish him more luck in the first endeavor than in the second. I would have thought in 2007 that it was impossible we'd be facing a 2012 in which AMLO defeated Ebrard for the nomination, so that makes me wonder: why are we so sure that AMLO will stand aside in 2018? Presumably, Ebrard received some assurance over the past several months that if he supported AMLO with little fuss, he'd have a crack at the presidency down the line, but promises can be broken. AMLO will be 65 in July 2018, which isn't young, but nor is it mandatory retirement age for politicians. And I can't see his support base disappearing. They had all the evidence of AMLO's defects was manifest in 2006, and yet here we are, readying ourselves for another Peje presidential campaign.

Silliness

2011-11-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

This is a couple weeks old, but the stupidity remains worth highlighting: there is a proposal floating around the Chamber of Deputies to make writing or broadcasting narcocorridos or other "apologies for crime" punishable by four and a half years in prison.

The Impact of Insecurity on Business

2011-11-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

The Economist with an interesting dispatch from Juárez. For the record, the notorious border town had witnessed just under 1,600 murders in 2011 as of November 1, putting it on a pace for some 1,900 on the year, the lowest number since 2008.

Predictions

2011-11-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

Ricardo Alemán sees the recent seizure of $15 million belonging Chapo Guzmán as evidence of a renewed push against the notorious drug lord, and says that we will see him captured before December 2012, when Calderón leaves office.

Remaining Piece of the PRI Puzzle

2011-11-23T06:33:00.000-08:00

With Manlio Fabio Beltrones bailing, probably the biggest piece of the PRI campaign team still unsettled is that of party president. Thanks to a potential criminal case against him in the Coahuila debt/fraud scandal (his ex-treasurer has already been arrested), and thanks more generally to being a polarizing figure, Moreira seems to be teetering. His best bet to stick around seems to be his close relationship with Peña Nieto, which Moreira's comments yesterday emphasized:

With the candidate considers necessary for the operation of his campaign is what will be done. I can't say "I'll be here until 2015". That's the party discipline.

Inside Baseball from Way Outside

2011-11-23T06:27:00.001-08:00

Excélsior had a brief profile of Grover Norquist today, dealing with his success in blocking efforts to reduce the deficit. Good on them. As good as many American newspapers are, the asymmetry between the ambitions of their foreign coverage and other nations' coverage of the US is quite striking. (Perhaps it's merely a US-Mexico asymmetry, but I suspect it's broader.) I can't imagine the Times dedicating more than an article or two a year, at most, to Mexican budget debates, and here Excélsior gave readers a rundown of one of the more obscure, in the sense that he's not an elected official, yet vital actors.

On Blake Mora's Crash and the PAN's Missing Candidate

2011-11-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

These are actually two separate pieces. Here's the first, and here's the second. The aforementioned gratuitous reference to Messi can be found in the second.

Peña Nieto Goes All Authorly on Us

2011-11-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

Via Shannon O'Neil, Enrique Peña Nieto has a new book out: México, la gran esperanza. Un Estado Eficaz para una democracia de resultados. Campaign books are generally a painful genre, but I've liked Peña Nieto's written efforts in the past (or rather, I've liked his staff-members' written efforts), so this could be the rare exception.

Messi Windu

2011-11-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

Phil Ball on the spat between Guardiola and those [your blogger's hand is raising, though a bit more slowly and sheepishly thanks to Pep's response] who worry about Messi getting a bit burnt out:

Talking of other greats, Leo Messi was the subject of some controversy in midweek, the journalists at Pep Guardiola's press conference asking if he was to be rested, after flying home from South America quite late in the week. Guardiola, annoyed by the questions, asked the journalists if they preferred him not to play - which may well have been the case with several of them.
Of course, Messi did play against Zaragoza, and of course he scored. Which doesn't mean that (some of) the journalists don't have a point, but Messi is simply from a distant planet, in most respects. He is also very probably a Jedi. If he doesn't need to rest, he doesn't need to rest. It defies belief, after flying so many miles, cooped up in a pressurized cabin, but it would seem to be second nature to these guys.

Beltrones Is Out

2011-11-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

The supposed non-Dinosaur Jr.* alternative to Enrique Peña Nieto as the PRI candidate has dropped out. It's been clear for years that Manlio Fabio Beltrones was not going to come out ahead without a major scandal in Mexico State, but AMLO winning the poll on the left increased the urgency for the PRI to formally decide. And the PAN? I should have a piece coming out a bit later, which includes a completely gratuitous reference to Barça and Lio Messi, wondering about that very question.

*As far as I know, I just invented that moniker, and I feel quite satisfied. Let's all watch this video to celebrate.

Less Suspicious

2011-11-21T06:25:00.000-08:00

Excélsior has an interesting poll today comparing reactions to the crash that killed Blake Mora to the one that killed Mouriño. The publicly available evidence for each strongly suggested an accident, yet in 2008 Mouriño, 33 percent said they thought the crash was an intentional act, with just 28 percent calling it some kind of accident. However, this time, just 22 percent thought the crash was no accident, compared to 40 percent who said it was. The pro-accident numbers might have been slightly juiced by the fact that Excélsior had more categories that could be broadly defined as an accident this time around, but that's still quite a shift.

In 2008, I mentioned that at least virtually no one was wildly claiming that Calderón was behind the crime. That reaction was, and this one is, progress. I also think it demonstrates that a widespread belief in conspiracies is linked to an authoritarian system with no free press. The more that era fades into the rear-view mirror, the less the conspiratorial mindset will dominate.

A Modest yet Important Achievement

2011-11-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Hope points us to a report that Juárez went an entire 24-hour day without a single murder, something that would have seemed impossible a year ago. In fact, this is the fourth time in recent weeks that Juárez has gone a day without a killing. Hope has also argued recently that the explosion in violence in Mexico is slowing, and has speculated that in three decades, Mexico could well have a murder rate comparable to Europe's today.

On Mexico's Response to the HRW Report

2011-11-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

New piece, though not a particularly new argument, at it reflects a longstanding flaw from Calderón:

Calderon responded, as he has in the past, by saying the main threat to citizens is from criminals, not the government. It is almost certainly true that the human rights violators represent a small minority of the government officials, while violating human rights is a rather fundamental part of most gangs’ operations, but in his response, Calderon is skirting the issue.
The most obvious flaw with Calderon’s logic is that he is comparing apples to oranges -- the criminal gangs are more abusive precisely because they are criminal gangs. If the best the government can do to address the issues raised by the HRW report is to say that the criminals are worse, it’s hard to imagine a more damning indictment.

Furthermore, while the government is understandably embarrassed by the content of the report, the automatic assumption that the ultimate interests of HRW and the Mexican government are in conflict is short-sighted. One point that does not get made often enough is that the abuses outlined in the report are not the case of a juggernaut government stepping on a few toes while otherwise doing a good job; they are symptomatic of a broadly ineffective force unable to keep up with the demands of the task at hand. If the Mexican military and police agencies were less prone to extra-legal activities, then they would almost certainly be more effective in their pursuit of criminals.

Mutually Assured What Now?

2011-11-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

Bill Simmons on the NBA's labor problems:

For that reason and all the others, I keep saying "no" whenever anyone asks me if there will be a 2011-12 NBA season. Just know that there's no side to take — it's mutually assured destruction in its purest form. That's difficult to explain to anyone losing their job over these next few months.

Putting aside all the inherent problems in comparing the potential annihilation of the human race to a single league's labor negotiations, this is an inappropriate metaphor that Simmons has used more than once. MAD was a long-term mechanism for a tenuous peace; if the NBA were the Cold War, this is a parallel version where the missiles are flying, something we avoided thanks precisely to MAD. Indeed, the fact that the NBA is heading into its "nuclear winter" itself is proof that the metaphor is inapt. The way this would work is if there was a horrible CBA for 40 years whose limits would be pushed but without anyone bailing, knowing that it could easily trigger the end of the league. But clearly that's not what is happening.

So what is the best possible international relations metaphor for the NBA? They are all limited, but I think maybe World War I is the best fit; two sides misread their opposition and underestimate the potential damage, and in so doing blunder into a tragic and avoidable catastrophe. And the power relationships everywhere are likely to be completely scrambled in very unpredictable ways. (That part may be a reach.) So where are we presently? I'd say it's February 1916.

Too Much Time behind Bars

2011-11-18T07:52:00.001-08:00

I am not particularly familiar with the back-story here, so maybe there is more to Johnny Jolly's history than is being reported, but it seems just a phenomenal waste of resources, and not to mention the prime of a person's life, to send someone to prison for six years for a series of non-violent codeine possession charges. Granted, 600 grams of codeine is a lot, but even so.

Stupidity in College Sports

2011-11-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

This is far from the worst example of the phenomenon in recent weeks, nor is it anything particularly new, but this story about the NCAA's continued unwillingness to consider a college football playoff is, as the topic always is, irritating as can be.

Among a handful of suggested format changes being considered by Bowl Championship Series members is an informal proposal that would radically change the structure of the BCS and significantly alter the major bowl selection process.
According to sources with direct knowledge of meetings held in San Francisco earlier this week, the suggested change calls for the BCS to sever its direct ties with the so-called BCS bowls -- the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Discover Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio -- and concentrate solely on arranging a No. 1 vs. No. 2 national championship matchup.
[...]
"There's a lot of stuff being thrown at the wall," said one official who attended the meetings. "I think the people in the room really want to get it right. They're tired of getting beat up. So you'll probably see us go slow on this one."

They're tired of getting beat up, and yet they don't consider the one solution that would satisfy everyone immediately and has long been used to great success in pro sports leagues and international competitions around the globe: a playoff. There's not need to throw a bunch of crap at the wall! There is your solution! Evidently, they're not tired enough of getting smacked around.

For the record, the word "playoff" appears once in the article, and not until the 23rd paragraph.

Blake's Replacement

2011-11-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

Alejandro Poiré, who has served as Calderón's security spokesman and was named director of Cisen a couple of months ago, has been named the new secretary of gubernación, in place of José Francisco Blake Mora. Given the promotion, Poiré will presumably soon be granted the perennial modifier "Harvad-trained".