Shakeup

The head of SIEDO, the organized crime division of Mexico's justice department, has resigned in what is being described as the first in a series of changes. The impetus for the shakeup came from Felipe Calderón. The president was unsatisfied with the general decline in public security, as well as a few specific mishaps: the continued inability to break traffickers' control over the Mexico City airport, the suicide of a major kidnapper in SIEDO custody this April, the systemic failures brought to light by the Zhenli Ye Gon case, among others. 

More Welters

In an interesting welterweight battle whose winner would be a likely candidate to fight Antonio Margarito, Josh Clottey and Zab Judah face off this weekend. I like Clottey. 

The Family

El Universal examines the growing ambitions of The Family, the Michoacán-based drug-trafficking group. Michoacán is a vital transit route from the Pacific coast to the interior, but author Francisco Gómez says that the Family aspires to expand across the nation. In addition to moving cocaine, the group has focused on stamping out crystal meth and kidnapping in the areas it dominates. This aspect of the group --ostensibly providing a societal benefit-- has naturally grown into Italian mafia-style extortion of legitimate businesses. (That's a pretty nice taco stand you have here--it'd be a shame if something happened to it.) The Zetas --with whom the Family is allied-- have evidently applied similar tactics, which marks a potentially important shift in the industry. 

Sánchez on Constitutions

Taking a look at Ecuador under Rafael Correa, Marcela Sánchez examines the downside of the Latin American mania for new constitutions. Mexico's experience supports her argument. Operating under the same magna carta since 1917, the nation is politically one of Latin America's most stable. Since the Revolution, it has suffered not a single coup, nor has any president been forced from office ahead of time. Its political parties are stronger than those of its southern neighbors, and there no demagogues with mass followings that threaten to crash the system from the outside (AMLO doesn't count). 

Big News

Federal police in Mexico City captured one of the so-called "seven horsemen" of the international drug trade, Ever Villafañe Martínez. The Colombian, the biggest kingpin caught during Calderón's term, will be extradited to the United States for trial. Calderón has taken some heat for not jailing more big fish. That's a crude way of measuring his policies' success, but it should buy him a grace period. 

Thanks, New Yorker

A story from the late Chilean novelist Robert Bolaño. 

Democrats and the Rest

Good stuff from Samantha Power about Democrats and the future of American foreign policy in a review of Matthew Yglesias' and Peter Scoblic's new books. 

PAN vs. PRI Proposals

Today, in addition to eating my morning broccoli, I read Macario Schettino's economics blog post from El Universal, and I'm feeling a lot more enlightened for it. He goes over the differences between the PRI and PAN energy reform proposals, which are mostly minor, with two exceptions: the constitution of the advisory council, and the level of involvement of private industry and refineries and pipelines. 

In the first, the PRI plan calls for four additional full-time Pemex citizen advisors, to be selected by the president and ratified by the Senate. (Now, the advisory board of 11 is comprised of five union reps and six government officials.) Calderón wants two of them to be part-time, presumably so that they may be prominent businessmen fulfilling a public service. Schettino criticizes the proposed selection procedure, arguing that it would unnecessarily politicize the process. 

The second difference is that under the PRI plan, private businesses would be able to build refineries and pipelines, but not operate them after their completion. Pemex subsidiaries would take over after construction. Schettino says that in terms of policy (though not politics) this is a flawed idea, because it forces Pemex to absorb all the risk. 

Decisions

John Dickerson has an interesting piece on Slate about John McCain's convention dilemma: what does he do with President Bush, who is ostensibly the foremost party figure, but one less than 30 percent of Americans support? He sees three choices: invite Bush to come with his family and thus dilute some of the anger directed specifically at W, make him a character witness for McCain, or focus on issues where he and McCain have clashed.

I imagine it will be some combination of the second and the third, but I would make sure it is a positive speech. Bush can still be pretty effective when he is gracious and complimentary; praise of Bill Clinton at a White House ceremony three or four years ago comes to mind (I can't for the life of me remember what the occasion was), as well as his congratulations to Nancy Pelosi in the 2007 State of the Union address both come to mind. As an attack dog, it reminds people of why they don't like him: dishonesty, hardheadedness, buffoonishness, et cetera.

Awful

Six people, including two girls of 7 and 8 years old, were found executed in Jalisco on the property of Agricultural Secretary Alberto Cárdenas. Condolences to his family. 

Economic Jitters

The papers here are all leading with inflation stories: it's getting worse, though it's far from catastrophic. Thanks to a declining construction industry and a harsher posture toward illegal immigrants in the US, remittances payments are also down 2 percent, which is the first such drop in a decade. All this, combined with zero or very low growth in the United States, might lead one to worry about Mexico's economy, but it's still projected to grow by 2.75 percent in 2008. That's lower than the regional average and well below its potential, but it does indicate an increased economic durability compared with the volatility of years past. 

Don't Go to the Light!

Manuel Espino, whose self-aggrandizing antics I wrote about here, says that he wrote his recent book with no less a goal than to save his party from death. Said party, the National Action Party, presently controls the presidency, and has the largest bloc in both houses of Congress, so yeah, clearly without Espino's literary mouth-to-mouth, the panistas would be shopping for headstones. 

Mexico in the News

The latest American media narrative about Mexico, insofar as one exists, seems to be, Mexico: A Bad Place to Be a Civilian. In addition to the Charles Bowden piece from GQ from three posts ago, check out the Washington Post version here, the Houston Chronicle's here. 

The Dark Knight, Reviewed Irritatingly

Among the more annoying habits of certain movie reviewers is the insistence on inserting politics into everything, not just movies making a discernible political statement. This has been the case with The Dark Knight, which certainly made a few allusions to post-9/11 America, but was first and foremost a superhero flick. As such, reviews of the blockbuster didn't require more than a mention in passing of the War or Terror, a limit which many reviewers ignored. Some manifestations of this are sillier than others, but I'd like them all to stop it. Please? I watch Batman to forget about W, not be reminded of him. Or I guess I could just stop reading those reviewers. 

This is the observation that reviewers should be making: the fight scenes are weak.

Aziz on Referenda

Alberto Aziz Nassif says the problem with Sunday's referendum wasn't the idea but the execution: ambiguous and misleading questions and a lack of consensus about the consultation doomed it to something between irrelevance and farce. (That's my characterization, not his.) I disagree. Referenda can have a valuable role in democracy, but only on simple questions. That's not a slam of José Sixpack; no one who didn't devote hours upon hours reading up on Mexico's energy reform would be able to make an informed decision. Contrast that with perhaps the most famous referendum ever --Chile's defiant "No" to Augusto Pinochet in 1988-- and you get a good idea of the sort of gut-level questions for which a referendum makes sense. Perhaps the principle should be, if you can summarize the positions and the basic case for pro and con in a 90 seconds or less, than a referendum makes sense. If you can't, it doesn't. 

Vignettes from Bowden!

Charles Bowden, author of easily the best English-language book on drugs I've ever read, returns to Juárez for an article for the present issue of GQ. Juárez has descended into violence in 2008, and Bowden says the culprit is not battles between cartels, but the fighting among small-time drug dealers. There are a couple of reasons to be skeptical. One is that Bowden's article, a gripping series of vignettes, includes little in the way of official comments on his hypothesis, and nothing in the way of statistics. Second, 500 people have been killed in Juárez this year, a huge number for a bunch of street-side slingers. The level of intimidation of the police and politicians, which Bowden covers, also seems impossible without the cartels being intimately involved in the violence. Third, right now the cartels are rather famously undergoing a violent reorganization of alliances and smuggling routes, and the Juárez border crossing is one of the country's most important. It's only logical that this would generate a lot of turmoil. And four, Bowden ignores some stories that would contradict his thesis, such as the Zetas --the most notorious of the cartel gangs-- hanging banners in Juárez inviting soldiers to desert and join up with them.

Despite that, it's a beautifully written, thought-provoking piece. Mexico's homegrown drug use hasn't gotten enough official attention; up until Calderón launched an anti-drug use initiative last year, the response was almost always, "It's an American problem, we're just the trampoline." Drug abuse is on the rise in Mexico, which, even if you are unconvinced by Bowden's article, certainly could fuel a surge of violence like that of the late 1980s and early '90s in the US. 

Oil Polls

Some fun polls in today's Excelsior break down support for Calderón's energy plan by party and by city, covering Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. In each area, the priístas and panistas were for the reform, and the perredistas against, by roughly equal margins everywhere. People who didn't identify with any party were for the reform in Monterrey (by a margin of 57 to 25), for it in Mexico City (47-45), and against it in Guadalajara (36-55). In none of the cities, the three largest in Mexico, did more people oppose Calderón's reform than favor it. When respondents were asked about the reform's various facets one by one, in not one city did those against any of the six proposed changes outnumber those for it. I hope AMLO had a chance to take a look at all this. 

Peña on Marcelo

Marcelo Ebrard 4
Originally uploaded by lcorolla

Yesterday in Washington, Enrique Peña Nieto took a shot at Marcelo Ebrard for announcing his interest in the presidency to an American TV network a couple of weeks ago. I disagree; a little more candor doesn't hurt, especially among Mexican politicians.

What are all these governors doing in Washington, anyway?

And doesn't Ebrard look a lot like Dwight from The Office (although sadly I can't find a photo that truly captures the resemblance)?

Obama in Mexico

Barack Obama is planning a trip to Mexico, according to El Universal, to take place before the Democratic convention begins on August 26. I believe this would be his first trip to a Latin American country. I'm guessing the public reaction will be notably less enthusiastic than in Europe. 

El Peje Fires a Warning Shot

Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns of national mobilizations if an energy reform allowing the participation of private business is passed. The basis for his position is the consultation Sunday, in which 870,000 capital city residents (out of a Mexico City metro total of some 25 million) charted the nation's future, or AMLO would have us believe. Never mind the number of polls that show a slight majority favoring the specifics of the Calderón reform. 

It'll be interesting to see what happens if PRD legislators take over congress again should the PRI and PAN pass a reform they view unfavorably. The voices calling for their forcible removal will surely be louder this time. 

The Prez

El Universal provides weekly column space to --among other random figures like actress Edith González, whose writing rarely comes within miles of coherence-- José Sulaimán, president of the World Boxing Council. Sulaimán spent this week's piece tearing apart the idea of an Oscar de la Hoya-Manny Pacquiao bout, on the basis that the size difference would be too much to make the fight legitimate. He goes as far as to call the proposed scrap a "joke" and "an affront not only to the boxers, but to fans of the world of boxing." He also laments "those people who are only interested in money are trying to take over boxing," although he could have been speaking about himself there. 

Strong words. Given that this is the biggest bout you could make in boxing (with the possible exception of Klitschko vs. Klitschko), this is an odd argument to hear from a guy who benefits from boxing being popular. As to the size difference, Oscar is bigger but no insurmountably so. In short, the argument is dubious. Sulaimán must have an ax to grind, but I have no idea what it is. 

And, as long as we're on boxing, belated congratulations to Antonio Margarito for his win on Saturday in one of the most entertaining fights of the year. Hopefully, they'll do it again. 

Mexico's Medical Problem

Ricardo Raphael compares Mexico's drug problem to fighting a metastasized cancer, and says President Calderón's strategy --which he compares to a big knife-- is more apt for attacking a tumor. The metaphor is imperfect, but his basic point is correct. 

In Mexico, there are regions in which the society and the economy have been "narcotized." This doesn't been that they've been overcome by drugs but rather that their daily functioning can't be conceived of without the role that drugs play in the community relationships. 

Those that put in motion Calderón's [anti-drug] operation knew this fact. They well knew that they weren't going after a solitary tumor, but rather against an extended cancerous web well rooted in the social body. 

The thing is, even accepting Raphael's conclusion, I'm not sure that makes Calderón's strategy wrong. Whether the society is indistinguishable from the drug trade or only partially dependent on it, the first step still needs to be weakening the cartels. You can disagree with tactics, but there is no victory that isn't predicated on lower-profile, more defensive trafficking organizations. In any event, there's no Looking for Relative Victories while Losing the War on Drugs for Dummies that Calderón or anyone else can consult, so everybody is traveling without a map. 

More on the Referendum

My opinion on the aforementioned vote and the PRD's tactics in the oil reform debate is here.