Olympic Mistakes

About the Olympics: I can imagine nothing more boring than sitting through hour upon hour upon hour of the opening ceremony. Do Lebron James and all the other athletes have to be there the whole time, sitting on their hands? Do they stop selling alcohol to the fans at some point in the event, like after the seventh inning at Wrigley? I shudder. 

About the soccer tournament, I was glad Lionel Messi got the green light to play from Barcelona, even more so after watching his brilliant performance against the Ivory Coast. Given Messi's importance to the squad, and having witnessed the Ronaldo melodrama this summer, why would Barca risk having the only other Ronaldo-level talent in the world unhappy? Makes no sense to me. 

Also, why are five teams in the tournament from East Asia or Oceania (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand), which is hardly a soccer hotbed? At the same time, there are only two South American clubs and three African teams. That's even sillier than pissing off Lionel Messi. 

Agreement

The leaders of the PAN, PRI, and PRD agreed to pass a Pemex reform during the September legislative session. The presence of the PRD would seem to rule out a protest (such as retaking the congressional building) from the party's militants after the reform is passed. Or, it might precipitate the disintegration of the party of the Aztec sun. Who knows what AMLO has planned.

Crime in Latin America, Crime in Mexico

Kevin Casas Zamora, the former vice president of Costa Rica, writes that the mano dura is not controlling crime in Latin America. 

Felipe Calderón, who missed that column, is calling for a life sentence in some cases of kidnapping. Kidnappers who are police or ex-police, who abduct children, or who torture or murder the victim will face life in prison if a piece of legislation that Calderón is sending to Congress today is passed. Mexican society's frustration with kidnappers seems to have boiled over with the murder of 14-year-old Fernando Martí, whose killers certainly deserve a harsher penalty than a liberal society has to offer, but if the goal is reduce the number of abductions, this isn't the proper approach. Impunity is the problem, not the severity of sentences. If kidnappers knew that they had a 98 percent chance of getting caught and spending eight years in prison, there probably wouldn't be a whole lot of them. However, if they had just a 2 percent chance of spending the rest of their lives in prison, but the rest got off scot free, that's not much of a deterrent. 

Prosecuting Kidnappers

Stats from Excelsior: from start to finish, the prosecution of a kidnapper can last up to four years. Despite being, according to some sources, the country most plagued by kidnapping, Mexico only convicts 9.6 people a year with offenses related to the crime. One thousand minors are presently missing. 

Deadbeat

Now that's plagiarism. Unreal.

Reaction to an Execution

The AP's Mark Stevenson writes about the subdued reaction in Mexico to the execution of José Medellín, attributing it to Mexicans being fed up with violent crime. 

That fits pretty well with what I've seen. I've been reluctant to bring the matter up with people around here, since I generally don't go out of my way to set the US up as a punching bag, but the only conversation I've had on the matter was not what I expected: 

Mexican: What did he do?

Me: He led a group that raped and killed two teenage girls. 

Mexican: And he's dead now?

Me: Yes. 

Mexican (with finality): Good.

Obama Counterpunch

I agree with Joe Klein's response (and Jason Zengerle's) to Obama's line about Republicans taking pride in being ignorant: 

It seems to me that this gleeful counterpunch thrown by Barack Obama shows exactly the sort of facility that Al Gore and John Kerry lacked as candidates....and it gets right to the heart of the teenaged, testosterone-addled irresponsibility of the McCain campaign.

I acknowledge that the presidential campaign is not the same as the West Potomac High School lunchroom, but for every election I can remember Republicans have won when they painted the other guy as a dweeb (Gore, Kerry, Dukakis), and lost when they couldn't (Clinton). In the clip, Obama comes across as superior, but all politicians do, albeit in very different ways. What Obama isn't is nerdy, and that's an important difference.

Economic Disruption

The rote complaint about Mexican cartels' financial networks never being disturbed is often contradicted by reality. Here is more evidence: 14 businesses were fingered for laundering drug money connected with the Sinaloa Cartel. 

More Bolaño

Triple Canopy has a translated speech from Roberto Bolaño on its website, which is really cool if you have a Mac, but kind of a pain if you don't. 

Cabinet Changes

More changes among cabinet heavyweights: Felipe Calderón sent Secretary of the Economy Eduardo Sojo to INEGI, the agency charged with demographic analysis. INEGI is a respected body, so this isn't quite the step down it may seem, but I'm guessing there aren't a whole lot of smiles in the Sojo household today. Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, a businessman said to be close to Calderón, is the new Economy boss. In response to the changes, Macario Schettino strikes a note of slight concern. 

Calderón has a long way to go before he approaches the haphazard turnover that we saw in the Fox cabinet, and presumably he wants to get pending changes out of the way before the mid-term campaign begins in earnest, but one has to wonder how many more cabinet adjustments are in the offing. For the sake of appearances, the fewer the better. 

Update: Salvador García Soto sees the move as a promotion for Sojo, as well as a step further in the "Guanajuatizing" of the PAN. I'll take his word for it. 

Bolivia Boils

I just read Javier Santiso's book The Latin American Political Economy of the Possible, which examines how the most successful countries in the region have adopted a pragmatist economic approach that uses the best practices of the left (greater social spending) and the right (fiscal and monetary discipline). Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have enjoyed unprecedented spells of economic stability because they've stopped searching for an instant fix in strict neoliberal orthodoxy or Marxist statism.

Bolivia, as today's Washington Post article demonstrates, hasn't gotten there just yet. With a vital referendum on President Evo Morales and his governors looming on Sunday, the country is torn between Morales' socialist approach and the Santa Cruz-based elites demanding more autonomy. To be fair, Morales' economic team hasn't been terribly irresponsible, and the opposition to him owes a lot to the old ruling elites' racism and the loss of their privileges, but whatever the reason, the pragmatic consensus remains elusive in Bolivia.

For more info on Bolivia, check out any one of these detailed Crisis Group reports.

Crabby

Richard Cohen has a column today complaining about the decline of books, the latest in a string of pieces that seem like caricatures of Grandpa Simpson. 

Improvement

Next Monday, Mexico will apply a test in order to fill 7,000 teaching positions at public schools around the nation. The prevailing custom is to sell positions or pass them to a friend or family member. While such practices will most likely remain quite common, this is a step in the right direction. A pure teaching meritocracy would eat into the influence of the super-powerful union boss Elba Esther Gordillo, so the process will only move in fits and starts. In a long interview with Excelsior, Secretary of Public Education Josefina Vázquez Mota said that she trusted Gordillo, after which she was presumably not given a polygraph test, because none was necessary. 

Another interesting nugget: 

Q: Are you familiar with the test [to be taken on Monday]?

A: No I'm not.

Q: Shouldn't the secretary of education be familiar with the test?

A: I prefer not to; otherwise, one gets suspicious. It's better like this, because it's a great responsibility. A letter was made up from Transparency Mexico, and they have agreed to accompany us in the process of confidentiality.

Such is Mexico's all-encompassing distrust of officials that the Secretary of Education doesn't feel comfortable even glancing over one of her greatest accomplishments in office. Nice. 

Popularity

Excelsior turned its popularity meter, which measures both voter recognition as well as public opinion of different figures, toward the PRI yesterday. Of the three most likely PRI presidential candidates, Beatriz Paredes scored 82 on voter recognition and Enrique Peña Nieto tallied 80, while Manlio Fabio Beltrones scored only 40. Part of the discrepancy is owed to the fact that the first two have long track records in Mexico City, and Beltrones is from more remote Sonora, but the latter lags on the confidence scores as well. Fifty-five percent of respondents have a good or very good opinion of Paredes, 69 percent feel the same about Peña, but only 33 percent offered such an endorsement of Beltrones. 

Kidnapping and Stuff

According to some outlets, Mexico now occupies the top spot internationally in kidnapping. Mexican society marked this dubious achievement with collective indignation toward the kidnapping of Fernando Martí, a 14-year-old Mexico City boy who was kidnapped in July and found dead on Friday despite his family having paid the ransom. The group behind it was a kidnapping syndicate called The Flower, which included active members of the capital city police. Three people are in custody for the crime so far. 

In a poll about kidnapping today on Imagen Radio, 92 percent of respondents say that kidnappers should receive the death penalty. 92 percent! Imagen has a slightly more conservative audience than the society in general, but that level of outrage, in a country that has never applied the death penalty for any crime in the modern era, is staggering. 

And the position at the head of the organized crime division at Mexico's Justice Department has been filled by Marisela Morales, who says that her priority will be stamping out kidnapping. 

Polls

Recent polling makes a mockery of Jorge Zepeda Patteron's claim that the PAN is staring into an electoral abyss: the panistas are tied for with the priístas in voter preference at 40 percent (excluding the quarter of respondents who expressed no preference). The PRD, whose decline in voter confidence has been well documented, mustered 17 percent.

Davidow on Executions

Jeffrew Davidow, the former American ambassador to Mexico and the author of a great memoir about his service there, writes about the pending executions of 51 Mexican nationals in the United States who were denied consular access during the course of the judicial proceedings.

More on Ousted Officials

El Universal is reporting that the recent reorganization in the highest levels of Mexico's law enforcement bureaucracy is the result of American conditions under the Mérida Initiative.

The agreements included [in the Mérida Initiative], he said, will permit the elimination of officials connected to corruption and the possible protection of the cartels, but they will also establish new areas of responsibility and the need to make the actions of each judicial department more transparent...

"We know that their exist officials in the Mexican government who have been threatened by drug traffickers, but we also know of complaints about performance, which is why the restructuring will allow the improvement of civilian judicial institutions," detailed another State Department official consulted on the matter.

So were those removed from their positions allegedly corrupt or inefficient? It remains unclear.

Zepeda on Fox's Return

Jorge Zepeda Patterson sees Calderón's cozying up to Vicente Fox as an act of desperation, a tacit acknowledgment that his branch of the PAN can't get it done electorally.

Nothing better exhibits the political difficulties through which Felipe Calderón is passing than his decision to throw his arms around Vicente Fox and the group [of panistas] from Guanajuato.

[break]

It's a decision that must have cost President Calderón sleep, and forced him to swallow a healthy dosage of his pride. And it shows that the PAN is entering the zone of desperation.

One poll after another reveals that the PAN will be erased by the PRI in the mid-term Congressional elections in 2009, which will further reduce the margins of operation in Los Pinos. The problem for the PAN is that in 2009 every one of the 300 districts goes to the polls, and in such terrain the PRI could presumably win 200 of them (let's not forget that it still governs 60 percent of the federal entities [i.e., local governments]).

[break]

The SOS call to Fox is a strategy to gain time. The panismo of Calderón lacks the charisma or the leadership to successfully deal with the bad times that are gathering around it.

Zepeda overstates the PAN's weakness. As far as the 2009 mid-terms go, the PRI has put itself in a great position to make gains, but it's way, way too early to start calling Calderón a lame duck. I've seen no polling that makes a PRI wipeout seem likely, and tellingly Zepeda offers no specifics. The PAN remains the strongest party in Congress, and the president remains a very popular figure. One of its biggest competitors, the PRD, has all but fallen apart, and barely gets off the ground in voter identification polls these days. The PRI might, might be able to take over as the largest congressional bloc, but it'll almost certainly fall short of an absolutely majority. In such a situation, I don't see the PRI going back to a strategy of constant obstruction, as it did while Fox was in power. Instead, I think it'll continue with the constructive approach that has served it so well over the past two years (though the bargains the PRI drives will likely be harder). As far as the outlook for the presidency in 2012, there's no question that the PAN's potential candidates look weak right now, but a lot can happen in four years. Calderón was unheard of in 2002.

It's also odd to see Fox hailed as some paragon of electoral leadership. Th 2003 mid-terms were an unmitigated disaster for the PAN. As a popular president, he couldn't even shepherd his own man through the PAN primaries before the 2006 elections. And Calderón, while not endowed with the same sort of cowboy charisma that Fox deployed in 2000 (and then discredited through six years of clownish ineffectiveness), is a dogged campaigner. Just ask Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Santiago Vasconcelos Out

The reorganization of Mexico's version of the Justice Department continues: the deputy official in charge of international affairs, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, has resigned. Santiago Vasconcelos is said to enjoy a tremendous reputation in American circles, as well as a not-so-friendly rivalry with federal police boss Genaro García Luna, so I'm not sure if this will wind up being a bump up or push out. The article, which mentions the admiration with which he is held in Washington, seems to suggest the former. I'll be interested to see what the Mexican security experts make of all this. In any event, no one can accuse Calderón of sitting on his hands. 

Let's Have Another Look

Mexican Secretary of the Economy Eduardo Sojo declared his country's willingness to reexamine Nafta after the presidential election this fall. He said the aim of such talks should be an "upgrade," which makes you wonder how Mexico's goals would square with those of an Obama presidency. 

Latin America: Not Abstaining

Latin American governments --including Mexico's, which is led by a broadly conservative party with intensely religious factions-- have agreed to phase out the teaching of abstinence in sex education, directly opposing the Catholic Church. This also places Latin America to the cultural left of the United States, at least the version of it led by W. 

Brooks on the League

From David Brooks' insightful column yesterday about the decline in executive authority compared with decades past.

The answer is that, in the late 1940s, global power was concentrated. The victory over fascism meant the mantle of global leadership rested firmly on the Atlantic alliance. The United States accounted for roughly half of world economic output. Within the U.S., power was wielded by a small, bipartisan, permanent governing class — men like Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, John McCloy and Robert Lovett.

Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

As a result, none of today's problems can easily be solved by one or even a handful of strong-willed leaders, which frustrates voters accustomed to more able executives. Brooks lists the many industrial-country leaders whose approval ratings are in the toilet, not just Bush but Gordon Brown, Yasuo Fukuda, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and Silvio Berlusconi.

All that seems right on. His solution, however, does not: the League of Democracies proposed by (among others) John McCain, effectively a China-less and Russia-less end run around the UN Security Council. The logic for such a plan is contradicted by Brooks' analysis in the column's first 600 words. As he notes, the world is multi-polar, and today's problems are such that everyone needs to be on board to solve them. We can't simply pretend that China and Russia don't have the power that they do. What use is a League of Democracies on nuclear proliferation if Russia can't be involved? How can you solve global warming or establish a more comprehensive international trade regime if China doesn't have a voice?

Nor am I convinced that a League of Democracies would make solving problems like Darfur and Iran a lot easier. Countries threatened by the West would rush to take cover under the Chinese/Russian umbrella (which the two powers, thumbed in the eye by the mere creation of the League, would be even more ready to provide than today), and we would probably find ourselves risking more Cold War-type escalations. As such, a League would inevitably lead to more antagonistic relations with between the US-led West and both nations mentioned above, which undoes a truly the historic achievement of the last 20 years: the absence of great-power animosity.