The CLB Mexican Political and Economic Update

Dinosaurs on the prowl again

An electoral comeback for the former ruling party raises questions about the country's democracy

ON AUGUST 1st Mexico held the latest round of this year's 14 state and local elections. Confirming a trend that started with the mid-term congressional elections in 2003, the day once again belonged not to President Vicente Fox but to his main opponents, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In the southern state of Oaxaca, where the PRI has never lost an election, it claimed a narrow victory in the face of an unusually vigorous and united challenge from an opposition coalition. In the border city of Tijuana, the PRI's Jorge Hank Rhon, a controversial gambling tycoon, won the mayoralty by a margin of barely 1% from Mr. Fox's National Action Party (PAN), which had held it for 15 years.

These results echo those of other state elections a month ago. On current trends, the PRI has a reasonable chance of returning to power at the next presidential election in 2006—a prospect that seemed unthinkable four years ago when Mr. Fox ended its seven decades in power. True, the PAN retained the governorship of the small northern state of Aguascalientes. But overall, the results have been depressing for Mr. Fox and his party. Voters seem to be showing their disillusion with the president's failure to accomplish his promised “transformation” of Mexico.

Significantly, the PRI's victories last weekend were a triumph for its traditionalist wing. Often characterized as the “dinosaurs”, they prefer the old patronage system of government to the political pluralism and market economics championed by the party's modernizing technocrats. The traditionalists are led by the party's national president, Roberto Madrazo, whose power lies in southern states such as Oaxaca. Defeat there might have seen his leadership challenged; victory will enhance his prospects of becoming the party's presidential candidate in 2006.

Oaxaca is typical of old-style PRI politics. It is one of the poorest states in Mexico and many of its people are Indian farmers. Alberto Alonso Criollo, a political scientist at the local Vasconcelos University, says the old patronage system still works fairly smoothly in a place where the state government is one of the few sources of jobs and money. The outgoing governor, José Murat, was adept at co-opting potential opponents with jobs and contracts.

The opposition candidate, Gabino Cué, claimed that the election showed another of the PRI's darker sides. The campaign was marked by violence: in July, a man was clubbed to death by PRI supporters in front of photographers. Mr. Cué claimed that the PRI tampered with ballot papers and the computer logging the returns. He refused to accept a preliminary result in which he trailed by 2.5%. He called on his supporters to take to the streets, and is also likely to challenge the result in the electoral tribunal.

If Oaxaca is part of Mexico's deep south, Tijuana, home to many maquiladora assembly plants, is in its dynamic north. And yet Mr. Hank, the PRI victor there, is a dinosaur's dinosaur. His campaign spent a lot of money (much of it his own) on lunches and parties to bring out his vote. Mr. Hank has fathered 18 children by a variety of ex-wives and mistresses; his huge fortune was partly inherited from his father, himself a PRI baron, and partly derived from a racetrack business. More worrying are claims (which he denies) of links with the drugs trade, which thrives in Tijuana. In 1988, two of his employees were convicted of murdering an editor of Zeta, a Tijuana weekly which has campaigned against the drug mobs.

Mr. Madrazo is now likely to continue his drive to marginalize the more liberal wing of his party, headed by Elba Esther Gordillo, the teachers' union leader. She supported Mr. Fox's efforts to persuade Congress to approve economic reforms against the opposition of Mr. Madrazo's followers. Bulmaro Rito, the PRI's president in Oaxaca, calls Ms Gordillo a “traitor”. He says he expects her to be expelled from the party.

But a more important question for many Mexicans is what the apparent resurgence of the old PRI means for the country's still uncertain democracy. The presidential campaign is barely starting. In recent elections, the PRI has done well on a low turn-out, as voters once enthused by Mr. Fox stay at home. In 2006, it will face a stronger challenge—from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the populist mayor of Mexico city, as well as from the PAN. Mexican politics is far more competitive, and cleaner, than it was two decades ago. But the sort of animosities and controversies generated by the recent elections are reminiscent of a past that many had hoped they had finally left behind.

A comic defense

Mexico City's noble mayor is valiantly fighting the “Dark Forces of Evil”, who are determined to prevent him from providing opportunities for the poor. But their dastardly plotting only strengthens his resolve to build schools and help old people. This, at least, is the version of events as told in cartoon strips dreamt up by the office of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico City's mayor. Mr. López Obrador is attacking his political opponents by lampooning them in free comics, some 2.2 million of which are distributed around the city.

In “Tales of the City”, now in its third installment, the Dark Forces look like something between killer sharks and Ku Klux Klan members. They go around hiring mafia figures to destroy Mr. López Obrador's reputation. Unfortunately, as a comic strip it has the fundamental failing of being neither funny nor compelling. In toe-curling dialogue, city dwellers beatify the mayor: one mother even reassures her daughter that plots against Mr. López Obrador will simply assure him of a place in Heaven. Real citizens of the capital seem under whelmed, with only 17% confessing to having read the strip and nearly six in ten objecting to public money being spent on it.

The president will not, after all, be succeeded by his wife

THIS time, it seems, the dream really is over. On July 12th, Marta Sahagún read a terse statement announcing that she would not seek to succeed her husband, Vicente Fox, as Mexico's president, in an election in 2006. Thus ended an avalanche of speculation and intrigue that had all but buried Mr. Fox's presidency over the past year. As often as he would rule out his wife's political ambitions, she would seem to publicly contradict him.

Two things forced Marta to pull out. The first was a decision by her husband's conservative National Action Party (PAN) to choose its presidential candidate by a ballot of party militants rather than an open primary. Ms Sahagún is mistrusted as a political parvenu by many Panistas. Her only option would have been to risk humiliation by standing for one of several fringe rent-a-parties.

The final blow was the stinging resignation letter tendered on July 5th by Alfonso Durazo, Mr. Fox's private secretary. In it, he spelt out just how far Ms Sahagún's political ambitions were destabilizing the presidency. And he warned that Mexico's fledgling democracy would be jeopardized if it was perceived that Mr. Fox was working “to leave the presidency to his wife”.

Even loyalists had been dismayed by allegations against Marta's charitable foundation, Vamos México. Critics always saw this as a vehicle for her own Catholic social agenda and for raising her profile, rather than to help the poor, its professed aim. Recently, it has been accused of spending too much on administration, and improperly receiving public money.

Despite all this, Ms Sahagún remains popular, especially with women. She has often said that her true opponent is Mexico's reactionary, macho culture. She is also the victim of snobbery for her provincial origins. She may fail to become Mexico's Eva Perón, let alone Hillary Clinton. But she might still seek minor office, in Congress or as a state governor. It may be a case of hasta luego rather than adiós.

Mexicans agree that expats should vote—but how?

ON THE eve of a recent trip to the United States, President Vicente Fox dusted off an old campaign promise: on June 15th he sent his Congress a bill which would give some Mexicans living abroad the right to vote for president ahead of an election in 2006. Approval ought to be easy. Public opinion is not unfavorable, the three main parties all claim the idea was really theirs, and the electoral authorities say they are keen to put it into practice. But there are daunting practical difficulties: 10 million Mexicans live in the United States alone. Allowing even some of them to vote would amount to an unprecedented experiment in absentee balloting.

Mexico changed its constitution in 1996 to allow émigré nationals (who can hold dual citizenship) to vote, but the change cannot be implemented without an enabling law. Mr. Fox's delay in introducing one was criticized by leaders of Mexican communities in the United States, many of whose members had welcomed his defeat of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2000.

Voting rights for Mexican-Americans might assuage frustration at home over Mr. Fox's failure to achieve a migration accord with the United States—while also recognizing the vital contribution of remittances ($13 billion last year) to Mexico's economy and its relative social peace.

The three main parties had agreed in April to try to enact legislation for émigré voting by 2006. Even the PRI, still the largest party in Congress, signed up; it had blocked previous attempts, fearing migrants' presumed antagonism to it. But recent studies indicate that the allegiances of migrants are more fluid than previously thought. The most enthusiastic supporter of the idea is the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution. It has promoted absentee voting since 1988, and has branches in five American states. It sees Mr. Fox's bill as merely a first step.

That it is: voting would be for president only, not for Congress; it would be restricted to migrants with voter-registration cards. At most, only 1.5 million of up to 9 million adult Mexicans living in the United States are thought to hold these. Since most of those lacking them are illegal migrants, they are unlikely to make the hazardous double journey to register and go north again.

The bill's proposed ban on campaigning by Mexican candidates north of the border flies in the face of reality. Mexican-American communities are regularly visited by politicians who hope they will influence friends and family back home. A forthcoming election for governor of Zacatecas state has drawn a string of candidates to Chicago, for instance. But Mr. Fox's conservative National Action Party, which enjoys less sympathy in the United States than the president (who has often campaigned there), is unlikely to budge on the campaigning ban. Without it, officials point out, it would be impossible to enforce legal restrictions on foreign campaign financing.

Florencio Zaragoza, of the Arizona branch of the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans Abroad, welcomes the Fox plan, though his group wants other rights too, including that of election to office in Mexico. The Fox bill “will be easier for Congress to agree upon,” he says. Nevertheless, he hopes it will set a precedent for further political rights.

Many Mexican political analysts are skeptical about the bill's prospects. It suggests three possible voting mechanisms: mobile polling stations, internet voting and postal ballots. It leaves the final decision to the Federal Electoral Institute. But the institute is likely to insist that Congress must decide. That could spell endless debate—not least because Mexico had a long tradition of electoral fraud, ended only recently. Another stumbling block is the potentially huge cost of organizing an election abroad. Mexicans are already fed up at the 13 billion pesos ($1.37 billion) of public money spent on the presidential election of 2000.

None of this bodes well for the bill. Mr. Fox has hitherto shown little ability to get legislation through the opposition-dominated Congress. The next election is two years off—but that may still be too soon for the political aspirations of Mexican-Americans to be fulfilled at last.

Kidnapping is a blight that Mexicans do not like to acknowledge. Its victim’s hope that is about to change

JUAN (not his real name) had a cruel May. In that month alone, seven of his friends and acquaintances were kidnapped, and three of those were killed. This came on top of the kidnapping of two members of his immediate family. He is now thinking of selling his share of the business that he co-owns, and going to live abroad. If he does, he would be following other members of his family who have already emigrated for the same reason.

Mexico, especially its capital, is suffering an epidemic of kidnapping. For the first time, ordinary citizens are organizing public protests against a crime that they feel is out of control. Shoppers and local residents held a demonstration early June at a mall in the south of Mexico City, demanding tighter security after a rash of assaults and kidnaps in the car park. Several such groups have joined forces for what they hope will be a big rally on June 27th.

Many of the protesters are not in the habit of organizing anything bigger than family weekends to Acapulco. They are mostly well-to-do, strangers to the ritual demonstrations by teachers, farmers and electricity workers that often swamp Mexico City. The leaders of these novel protests, such as José Antonio Ortega, a lawyer, are tapping a new mood of anger. He argues that for too long the crime of kidnapping has been brushed under the carpet by politicians, and that none of the pledges to do something about it has ever been fulfilled. It is up to potential kidnap victims to get the issue taken more seriously, he says.

In Argentina, the kidnapping and murder of a young student in March prompted huge public protests that have forced the government to react. Will the same thing now happen in Mexico?

Kidnapping is a big problem throughout the region, though just how big and whether it is worsening are disputed. Kroll, a security company based in New York, estimates that half of all the world's kidnappings occur in Latin America. Colombia has long been the world leader: Kroll reckons 4,000 kidnaps took place there last year (just 2,043, says the government). But Mexico is now in second place, with 3,000 cases, ahead of Argentina (2,000), according to Kroll. Security consultants say that while the trend is falling in Colombia, it is rising in Mexico.

Mexico's government disagrees. Its figures show kidnaps falling, from 568 in 2001 to 531 last year. But these are only the reported incidents. Many families are terrified of reporting cases to a notoriously corrupt police force—some of whose officers have been found to be involved in kidnaps themselves. Even the official figures display some alarming trends. In Mexico City, for instance, they show kidnaps rising from 141 in 2000 to 185 in 2003. In the State of Mexico, which surrounds the capital, the numbers rose from 65 to 135 over the same period. In the past three months alone, 33 businessmen have been kidnapped in Mexico City's downtown areas.

Until recently, kidnappers would target very wealthy victims, in military-style operations. Now they are preying on the middle classes. Having moved to a mass market, they are settling for smaller ransoms: $100,000 is now deemed to be a worthwhile haul. The government has had some success in dismantling some of the prominent kidnap gangs, but smaller, amateurish outfits have proliferated.

In addition, kidnappers have become more violent. In the past, victims were rarely molested. Now female captives are usually raped, and men are often beaten and mutilated. Ears and other body-parts are sent to the victim's families. One security consultant speculates that this is a kind of class warfare. He says that the kidnappers, usually poor slum-dwellers, “hate their victims, and so this contributes to the violence.”

Police collusion, and the consequent fear of reporting kidnaps, mean that this crime epidemic has failed to receive the kind of relentless media coverage given to drug trafficking. The protesters argue that politicians, too, have ignored kidnapping because its victims make up a relatively small middle-class constituency. But its cost to Mexico goes much wider. Who wants to invest money and effort in building a business if their reward is to risk losing their life and/or their money?

Mr. Ortega argues that the numbers of kidnappings can be reduced quite easily, by rooting out corruption and applying laws that already exist. But that, he argues, is a matter of “political will, at a federal, state and local level.” It remains to be seen whether the politicians are listening.

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