Responding to pressure, the Peña Nieto administration finally deployed federal police to the state of Guerrero Wednesday to deal with the almost daily seizures of toll booths along the Mexico City-Acapulco highway, mostly by militant teachers and other supporters of the 43 disappeared normal school students. Only Excelsior neglects any front-page mention of this third turning point in three days regarding the Iguala case. El Universal leads with it: “Guerrero government applies zero tolerance in Guerrero.”
The “zero tolerance” thread runs through every paper’s account and surely originated with law enforcement itself. The term makes the intended point, but it’s a misnomer in this context. Zero tolerance as it applies to police work removes discretion from officers and requires them to act on the pettiest of infractions. Here, though, it means that the cops are going to stop letting masked gangs take over public facilities and extort money from their users.
It didn’t take long for the operation to swing into action. According to the news reports, 80 officers were stationed along the sides of the road at the Palo Blanco toll booth near the state capital of Chilpancingo yesterday when a group of masked people pulled up to “take” the toll booth. Emboldened by four months of impunity, the gang ignored police orders and started about their business. When reality sunk in, they fled. They were caught. Thirteen (El Universal) or 14 (La Jornada), all students as a teachers college, were detained.
They were soon freed. According to La Jornada they were let go because of “pressure from Aytozinapa students and teachers from CETEG,” gathered outside the building where they were being held. If that was really the reason for their release, the new “zero tolerance” policy doesn’t seem to have changed the balance of power much.
FUNPEG, the teachers college organization the arrested students belong to, says it will file a complaint on their behalf with the National Human Rights Commission. You can almost see the nation’s eyes rolling.
Still, the surest way for the new policy to backfire is for the police to act abusively, and with unnecessary force against unarmed troublemakers, or criminal suspects, if you will. La Jornada runs a front-page photo of an officer with a two-fisted grip on his pistol, aiming it near one of the students, sans mask now and subdued on his knees. This is not the kind of image the nation needs to see right now.
IT’S NOT OVER ’TIL IT’S OVER
The dailies give voice to a number of individuals and organizations taking issue with the conclusions of the Attorney General’s Office investigation released Tuesday. One of them is the National Human Rights Commission, quoted in La Jornada’s No. 2 headline: “The case of the 43 ‘is not over,’ CNDH says.” Among those differing with the report are CNDH head Luis Raúl González Pérez, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the writer Elena Poniatowska.
Excelsior adds another voice to the it’s-not-over chorus: “PGR: Iguala case is open. “PGR” is the Spanish initials of the very same Attorney General’s Office that released the report yesterday. “I never said the inquiries have closed,” Excelsior quotes Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam as saying Wednesday. “I’m still investigating.”
Nevertheless, he indicated, the principal conclusion won’t change — that the 43 disappeared students were murdered by members of the Guerreros Unidos drug trafficking organization. This is still controversial in some circles. The parents of the victims and their supporters won't accept that the students are dead until physical evidence proves it. Others think additional players were involved to a greater or lesser degree in the horrific events — including the army.
Murillo made another comment that surely occurred to anybody who watched the PGR video that included the killers themselves re-enacting their deeds in detail, as though they were bricklayers explaining the finer points of mortar and pestle work. “I was impressed by how natural it was for the detainees to acknowledge the horrific deeds they had committed,” said the attorney general, who’s dealt with more than his share of violent criminals. “The lack of humanity worried me. It worried me a lot.”
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, RIGHT?
La Jornada, curiously, goes with the following as its top headline: “Line 12 will be safe and a priority, Mancera guarantees.” Miguel Ángel Mancera is the head of government for the Federal District — that is, Mexico City’s mayor —who is presiding over one of the holiest of messes ever a hizzoner faced. The new Line 12, aka the Golden Line, of the Mexico City Metro system was inaugurated shortly before Mancera took office, and was partially shut down just over a year into his term when design flaws were discovered.
Almost a year later, investigators revealed last week that all 30 trains may have to be replaced. This week we learned that a third of the 24-kilometer line will have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Also this week, a congressional committee called Line 12 a “disaster” and placed the blame squarely on Mancera’s predecessor, Marcelo Ebrard. Just like that, the once internationally acclaimed progressive mayor who was only an AMLO away from being the PRD’s presidential candidate in 2012 with a decent chance to win, is now the proud father of a certifiably botched 22 billion-peso mega-project. He tried to speak this week before the committee. They wouldn’t let him in the door.
The news today that inspired La Jornada’s uncharacteristically optimistic headline is based on Mancera’s assurances Wednesday that there is money for the reconstruction, that the train problem is salvageable, and that his government is committed to getting the full line up and running before the end of the year. Everything, we're being told, is going to be okay.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Today's Headlines: The final word on Iguala . . for now
Yesterday the Attorney General’s Office released the long-awaited findings of its investigation of the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala last September. President Enrique Peña Nieto chimed in with a speech on the subject. All five major Mexico City dailies lead with these twin developments.
Excelsior’s across-the-top head is succinct in delivering the take-home message: “Officially dead.” Reforma, not as prone to banner heads as the other dailies, goes big and bold this time with the same thought: “Case closed: the 43 are dead.”
That word “closed,” standing alone before the colon (the noun “case” is understood but not actually in the headline; translator’s prerogative) reflects the federal government’s hoped-for outcome in releasing the report. Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam’s presentation to the press (a transcript in Spanish is available here) was peppered with phrases like “legal certainty” “historical truth” and “scientific evidence.” The intent is to put an end to four months of uncertainty, of persistent counter-explanations, of accusations of army involvement and of an insistence that the students are still alive.
Citing mainly 39 confessions (out of 99 so far in custody), 386 declarations, 487 analysis-based expert opinions and 153 inspections by investigators, the official conclusion is consistent with what we’ve been told in dribs and drabs over the last few months: Students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos teachers college in the town of Ayotzinapa were in Iguala to commandeer passenger buses when they were attacked by local police who killed three of them and three bystanders. Then 43 of them were taken prisoner and delivered to the Guerreros Unidos drug-trafficking gang, who killed them, burned the bodies, put the remains in bags and threw them in a nearby river, never to be seen again save for 17 pieces.
The Attorney General’s Office released a documentary-style video that takes the viewer through the events from beginning to end, using graphic illustrations, footage of the locations and, most chillingly, detailed reenactments of the crimes by the killers themselves.
ARE WE TRAPPED?
El Universal chooses to lead with Peña Nieto’s speech, under the banner “Peña: We cannot stay trapped in Ayotzinapa.” As the head indicates, the address, delivered at the presidential residence of Los Pinos during a forum on higher education, was mostly about the perceived need to get on with the nation’s business now that “the unprecedented effort to investigate the disappearance of the 43 teacher trainees” has yielded final results.
The president said the case “marked and hurt us” and that “justice must be served.” But, he said, “It is important for us not to stand still, or to remain paralyzed, but always to be ready to move forward in the quest for what we desire for the good of this society and future generations.”
This is a reasonable, maybe even necessary, message for a president to deliver. The problem is that when any administration official talks about “moving on” or “not getting trapped” a sizable part of the population hears only a euphemism for blowing off the tragedy, an excuse for not trying to get to the bottom of the case.
An administration press release in English that includes excerpts from the speech can be seen here.
ABOUT THAT SMALL MATTER OF PHYSICAL PROOF . . .
Predictably, the official investigation results were rejected by the victims’ families and supporters. Less predictable was the accusation highlighted in La Jornada’s sub-head quoting the parents’ reaction: “Official ‘haste’ to conclude the investigation.” So after four months of being accused of dragging their feet, federal investigators are now seen as acting too quickly.
To be fair, it’s not impossible for an agency to stall a meaningful inquiry and then toss out a quick and dirty finding to get things over with. That’s certainly what the parents think happened. We’ll probably get an idea sooner rather than later about how much of the nation sees things their way.
The parents have a trump card in their rejection of the attorney general’s conclusion that the students are dead. “There’s no scientific evidence for it,” Jornada quoted the families’ legal representative as saying. His point is that save for one of the 43, no remains have been identified.
The parents also got support from Human Rights Watch, which called the official report “not very serious,” according to Reforma. The bottom line, I’m sorry to report, is that readers who are hoping yesterday's release will cut down the Iguala case’s dominance of Today’s Headlines — this page’s author among them— will probably have to hold on for a while more.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Today's Headlines: A look at how the Mexico City daily newspapers presented Monday's massive demonstrations on their front pages
Two DF dailies play yesterday’s mega-march for justice in the Iguala case as a local inconvenience. El Universal runs a fairly big vertical photo of the multitudes under a small headline reading: “DF suffers from marches.” A caption refers the reader to a story inside. Reforma runs two small photos under the fold with a common caption, headed by “Capital residents hit by 10 hours of marches.”
Excelsior, a broadsheet like El Universal and Reforma (and thus with plenty of room to run a front-page march story, should it have preferred to do so) also chooses to photo-reefer their coverage, using a perfunctory, neutral headline that at least has the virtue of describing the event as something more than a traffic report: “March marks fourth month of Iguala case.”
SMALLER IS BIGGER
The two tabloids stay on topic. La Jornada’a front-page treatment captures the event’s significance, and perhaps its spirit: “They’re counting on us forgetting, but we’re still here: parents of the 43.” A mass rally like this one — peaceful with no major incidents, according to the reports — reminds everybody that the outrage over the disappearance of 43 teachers college students is nationwide, broadly shared and not a passing cause de jour. The protest’s image of almost daily violence and vandalism by the victims’ relatives and Guerrero teachers faded Monday in favor of a determined mass movement. Which is interesting, because it was those same relatives and teachers who lwere front and center at the rally.
Milenio, the only paper to actually lead with the march, went for the news value, using this double-deck banner headline: “Parents: Any vote in Guerrero is a vote for the drug traffickers.” This belief — that the line between organized crime and the state apparatus has been erased —is fueling the idea of a nationwide organized boycott of the June 7 elections. Comments by march leaders, however, sounded a lot more like threats to forcibly prevent the elections from taking place — a different animal than voluntary mass abstention.
Reforma later reported on its web site that Felipe de la Cruz, who has served as spokesperson for the parents of the Iguala victims, ruled out force. “No,” he said during an interview with Radio Fórmula, when asked if the activists planned to occupy polling places and physically prevent citizens from voting. “We’re counting on a raised consciousness on the part of the people of Guerrero.” We'll see about that.
THAT OL’ RIVER IN EGYPT AGAIN
Probably the most telling story of the day didn’t get much front-page play, although La Jornada found room for: “The good things the government does are too easily forgotten: Peña.” This from a speech by the president in his home State of Mexico in which he lauded yet again the passage and ongoing implementation of his reform package, including overhauls of energy, telecommunications and education policies, among others.
The image that goes out, then, is of the nation’s leader not only ignoring the voices being raised on the streets of the capital, literally as he spoke, but pointedly dismissing them as misguided about the true priorities of the nation. I was about to insert “intentionally or not” in that last sentence but thought better of it. Either President Peña Nieto needs new media handlers or he's becoming positively Nixonian in his denial of what’s going on.
Excelsior, a broadsheet like El Universal and Reforma (and thus with plenty of room to run a front-page march story, should it have preferred to do so) also chooses to photo-reefer their coverage, using a perfunctory, neutral headline that at least has the virtue of describing the event as something more than a traffic report: “March marks fourth month of Iguala case.”
SMALLER IS BIGGER
The two tabloids stay on topic. La Jornada’a front-page treatment captures the event’s significance, and perhaps its spirit: “They’re counting on us forgetting, but we’re still here: parents of the 43.” A mass rally like this one — peaceful with no major incidents, according to the reports — reminds everybody that the outrage over the disappearance of 43 teachers college students is nationwide, broadly shared and not a passing cause de jour. The protest’s image of almost daily violence and vandalism by the victims’ relatives and Guerrero teachers faded Monday in favor of a determined mass movement. Which is interesting, because it was those same relatives and teachers who lwere front and center at the rally.
Milenio, the only paper to actually lead with the march, went for the news value, using this double-deck banner headline: “Parents: Any vote in Guerrero is a vote for the drug traffickers.” This belief — that the line between organized crime and the state apparatus has been erased —is fueling the idea of a nationwide organized boycott of the June 7 elections. Comments by march leaders, however, sounded a lot more like threats to forcibly prevent the elections from taking place — a different animal than voluntary mass abstention.
Reforma later reported on its web site that Felipe de la Cruz, who has served as spokesperson for the parents of the Iguala victims, ruled out force. “No,” he said during an interview with Radio Fórmula, when asked if the activists planned to occupy polling places and physically prevent citizens from voting. “We’re counting on a raised consciousness on the part of the people of Guerrero.” We'll see about that.
THAT OL’ RIVER IN EGYPT AGAIN
Probably the most telling story of the day didn’t get much front-page play, although La Jornada found room for: “The good things the government does are too easily forgotten: Peña.” This from a speech by the president in his home State of Mexico in which he lauded yet again the passage and ongoing implementation of his reform package, including overhauls of energy, telecommunications and education policies, among others.
The image that goes out, then, is of the nation’s leader not only ignoring the voices being raised on the streets of the capital, literally as he spoke, but pointedly dismissing them as misguided about the true priorities of the nation. I was about to insert “intentionally or not” in that last sentence but thought better of it. Either President Peña Nieto needs new media handlers or he's becoming positively Nixonian in his denial of what’s going on.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Today's Headlines: There's something happening here
All dailies mention, some front, and none lead with, the story on everybody’s mind — today’s mega-march in the Federal District (DF) on the four-month anniversary of the killing and disappearance of teachers college students in Iguala, Guerrero. Excelsior’s below-the-fold head puts it this way: “Blockages and marches threaten the DF.” (Notice that the chosen topic is the “threat,” not the purpose of the demonstration. That is always the case.)
Busloads of militant teachers from the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacán were arriving early this morning. The marches will have begun from four different points in Mexico City by the time you read this. Teachers and family members of the victims will be joined by electricity and telephone workers, university staff, pilots and flight attendants, nurses, campesinos and truckers. Not to mention the usual assortment of trouble-making anarchists, unreconstructed Stalinists and political performance artists.
There will also be demonstrations in cities across the country, we are told. Abroad, too — in the United States, Spain and France, and possibly elsewhere.
The unknowns, as always, are how peaceful the events will turn out, how tolerant city commuters will be of the inevitable traffic mess, whether the nature of the event will expand or alienate support for the cause (which is “to demand justice from President Enrique Peña Nieto”), how law enforcement will react during the demonstrations, and how the federal government will respond afterward.
A BIG ¡BASTA! FROM BUSINESS
El Universal gives its top head and considerable space to a new offensive by the private sector, usually referred to in the Mexican press as the IP, for iniciativa privada. Here’s the wording: “IP: Enough! Insecurity has hit the economy.” A coalition of chambers of commerce and other business organizations is taking out media ads — and thus generating news coverage — alleging that growing unpunished crime is costing the nation billions of pesos per year in lost investment, increased security costs and the value of stolen merchandise. It is also responsible, they say, for shaving as much as 1.5 points off the annual growth rate.
The campaign isn’t aimed specifically at the unrest in Guerrero. It’s burgeoning crime in general that’s pushed the business community to the breaking point. Of course, crime’s been burgeoning for many years now. But it apparently wasn’t “enough!” until the bottom line started to buckle.
What the private sector is demanding here, reasonably, is an end to impunity, which they consider “hostile to economic activity.” El Universal quotes the director general of one group, the Center for Private Sector Economic Studies, as saying, "There’s no rule of law, no confidence in the institutions.” Funny, the folks marching on the streets today are complaining about the same thing.
LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
Excelsior’s top story gives the para-state oil monopoly some love: “Pemex surviving the oil price drop.” It’s still one of the most profitable petroleum enterprises in the world, the paper tells us. Citing Pemex statistics, the article points out that even with the recent 63% drop in global oil prices to $38.03 dollars per barrel registered last Friday, production cost averages just $9.25 dollars per barrel, leaving a nice little profit of more than $28 dollars per barrel.
Frankly, the article reads like a plant. I will point out for the record that “reading” like a plant doesn’t mean it is one. I will also point out that though $28 dollars a barrel is indeed a decent profit in absolute terms, it’s still a heck of a lot less than what was expected and what the 2015 federal budget was based on. There’s still a problem.
Busloads of militant teachers from the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacán were arriving early this morning. The marches will have begun from four different points in Mexico City by the time you read this. Teachers and family members of the victims will be joined by electricity and telephone workers, university staff, pilots and flight attendants, nurses, campesinos and truckers. Not to mention the usual assortment of trouble-making anarchists, unreconstructed Stalinists and political performance artists.
There will also be demonstrations in cities across the country, we are told. Abroad, too — in the United States, Spain and France, and possibly elsewhere.
The unknowns, as always, are how peaceful the events will turn out, how tolerant city commuters will be of the inevitable traffic mess, whether the nature of the event will expand or alienate support for the cause (which is “to demand justice from President Enrique Peña Nieto”), how law enforcement will react during the demonstrations, and how the federal government will respond afterward.
A BIG ¡BASTA! FROM BUSINESS
El Universal gives its top head and considerable space to a new offensive by the private sector, usually referred to in the Mexican press as the IP, for iniciativa privada. Here’s the wording: “IP: Enough! Insecurity has hit the economy.” A coalition of chambers of commerce and other business organizations is taking out media ads — and thus generating news coverage — alleging that growing unpunished crime is costing the nation billions of pesos per year in lost investment, increased security costs and the value of stolen merchandise. It is also responsible, they say, for shaving as much as 1.5 points off the annual growth rate.
The campaign isn’t aimed specifically at the unrest in Guerrero. It’s burgeoning crime in general that’s pushed the business community to the breaking point. Of course, crime’s been burgeoning for many years now. But it apparently wasn’t “enough!” until the bottom line started to buckle.
What the private sector is demanding here, reasonably, is an end to impunity, which they consider “hostile to economic activity.” El Universal quotes the director general of one group, the Center for Private Sector Economic Studies, as saying, "There’s no rule of law, no confidence in the institutions.” Funny, the folks marching on the streets today are complaining about the same thing.
LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
Excelsior’s top story gives the para-state oil monopoly some love: “Pemex surviving the oil price drop.” It’s still one of the most profitable petroleum enterprises in the world, the paper tells us. Citing Pemex statistics, the article points out that even with the recent 63% drop in global oil prices to $38.03 dollars per barrel registered last Friday, production cost averages just $9.25 dollars per barrel, leaving a nice little profit of more than $28 dollars per barrel.
Frankly, the article reads like a plant. I will point out for the record that “reading” like a plant doesn’t mean it is one. I will also point out that though $28 dollars a barrel is indeed a decent profit in absolute terms, it’s still a heck of a lot less than what was expected and what the 2015 federal budget was based on. There’s still a problem.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Quotables: Soft Parade
“On paper, Mexican soft power is impressive: extraordinary gastronomy and more museums and art galleries than many countries in the world . . . but Mexico doesn’t sell all this well . . . and the story of Mexico that the international press presents is still dominated by crime and violence, and if that doesn’t change, none of the rest matters.”
The quote is out of a recent edition of the Canadian magazine Monocle. It refers to the oldest conflict in journalism — the duty to keep readers informed about important issues versus the desirability of presenting a balanced picture of reality. Most of us in Mexico are aware of our blessings — cultural, social, historical and natural — though we’re not in the habit of referring to them as soft power. The rest of the world is less informed of the “impressive” elements, since all they hear about is violence, corruption, crime and unrest. The only respite is in tourism promotion and “travel” (really vacation) journalism, which skews reality in a different way. I don’t know the solution, but I do know what would help: significantly less violence, corruption, crime and unrest for us to write about.
“It’s not normal.”
These are words that Amnesty International spokespersons used as a summary, a slogan and a hashtag (#noesnormal) during a press conference Friday accusing the Attorney General’s Office of carrying out a half-hearted investigation of the disappearance of 42 students in Iguala. The phrase is a play on words, perhaps unintentional, of the victims’ origins (they were students at a rural teachers college, called normal schools in Mexico). But its purpose was to underscore the urgency of the crime investigation and chide the Peña Nieto administration for allegedly trying to manipulate public opinion in order to “move on” from the tragedy.
“I know now I was happy. If I cried I also loved. I can go on to the end . . . my way.”
What we have here is (deep breath) a translation back into English of the Spanish version of the English lyrics to “My Way,” which itself is a revised version of the original 1970s French pop song “Comme d’habitude,” which was not about the end of life but the end of a marriage. They (the Spanish lyrics) were sung at a farewell party by the recently dismissed security commissioner for Michoacán, Alfredo Castillo. Captured on video, the performance can be seen here. The press and nation don’t seem to be quite sure what to make of it. Should we be outraged or endeared? I report. You decide.
Castillo, by the way, will not be replaced as security commissioner; the slot is eliminated. But a general named Felipe Gurrola Ramírez was sent in to take charge of the federal military presence in the state. He was greeted by several attacks against military and police personnel, leaving four dead in the first 24 hours of his assignment.
“There are 2,040,000 members who continue to be affiliated with the PRD nationwide, compared to 28 resignations in the last three months . . . A party is much more than six founders and 28 renouncers.”
That’s Carlos Navarrete, president of the Democratic Revolution Party, responding to death knells in the press about his party after many of its most important members — including its founders and both of its only presidential candidates — bolted. Navarrete insists that the PRD will not be damaged by the desertions. The thing is, though, that the desertions are the result of a damaged party, not the cause.
The quote is out of a recent edition of the Canadian magazine Monocle. It refers to the oldest conflict in journalism — the duty to keep readers informed about important issues versus the desirability of presenting a balanced picture of reality. Most of us in Mexico are aware of our blessings — cultural, social, historical and natural — though we’re not in the habit of referring to them as soft power. The rest of the world is less informed of the “impressive” elements, since all they hear about is violence, corruption, crime and unrest. The only respite is in tourism promotion and “travel” (really vacation) journalism, which skews reality in a different way. I don’t know the solution, but I do know what would help: significantly less violence, corruption, crime and unrest for us to write about.
“It’s not normal.”
These are words that Amnesty International spokespersons used as a summary, a slogan and a hashtag (#noesnormal) during a press conference Friday accusing the Attorney General’s Office of carrying out a half-hearted investigation of the disappearance of 42 students in Iguala. The phrase is a play on words, perhaps unintentional, of the victims’ origins (they were students at a rural teachers college, called normal schools in Mexico). But its purpose was to underscore the urgency of the crime investigation and chide the Peña Nieto administration for allegedly trying to manipulate public opinion in order to “move on” from the tragedy.
“I know now I was happy. If I cried I also loved. I can go on to the end . . . my way.”
What we have here is (deep breath) a translation back into English of the Spanish version of the English lyrics to “My Way,” which itself is a revised version of the original 1970s French pop song “Comme d’habitude,” which was not about the end of life but the end of a marriage. They (the Spanish lyrics) were sung at a farewell party by the recently dismissed security commissioner for Michoacán, Alfredo Castillo. Captured on video, the performance can be seen here. The press and nation don’t seem to be quite sure what to make of it. Should we be outraged or endeared? I report. You decide.
Castillo, by the way, will not be replaced as security commissioner; the slot is eliminated. But a general named Felipe Gurrola Ramírez was sent in to take charge of the federal military presence in the state. He was greeted by several attacks against military and police personnel, leaving four dead in the first 24 hours of his assignment.
“There are 2,040,000 members who continue to be affiliated with the PRD nationwide, compared to 28 resignations in the last three months . . . A party is much more than six founders and 28 renouncers.”
That’s Carlos Navarrete, president of the Democratic Revolution Party, responding to death knells in the press about his party after many of its most important members — including its founders and both of its only presidential candidates — bolted. Navarrete insists that the PRD will not be damaged by the desertions. The thing is, though, that the desertions are the result of a damaged party, not the cause.
Today's Headlines: Not for the queasy
The top headlines this morning are all Iguala and all unpleasant, so if you’ve been thinking of skipping a dose of TH, this is a good day for it. If you choose to soldier on (you have tomorrow off anyway), you’ll find a good object lesson in a basic law of newspaper consumption — the information you get out of it is input, not the final word.
Milenio, for example, uses as its lead headline a quote from Felipe Rodríguez Salgado, the recently captured high-ranking member of the Guerrero/Morelos drug gang Guerreros Unidos: “I received 15 students alive and I killed them.” This is the kind of screamer you expect to see in the afternoon exploitation tabloids, but it’s supposedly verbatim out of a leaked Attorney General’s Office (PGR) document. Apparently Milenio got the exclusive.
Rodríguez, aka El Cepillo, also said the other 28 teachers college students delivered that night (September 26/27, 2014) by the Iguala and neighboring Cocula police were already dead from asphyxiation when he and his men proceeded to shoot the rest, burn their bodies and systematically dispose of the remains.
We know that El Cepillo’s story supports the PGR’s explanation of the tragic events. What we don’t know is whether he was telling the truth, whether the document is legitimate, how reliable the leaker was, what the motive may have been for leaking it, how consistent the account is with other, unleaked testimony, and why no other news source had the story.
CAN WE SEE SOME ID, PLEASE? PROBABLY NOT.
El Universal also got itself an exclusive, the result of an interview with the lab chief at the University of Innsbruck’s Forensic Medicine Institute, which has been analyzing the 17 bits of remains investigators were able to find at the Cocula killing fields. The interview didn’t yield much new, and the resulting main EL U headline could have run days earlier: “Little possibility of identifying remains.”
The lab had already informed the PGR that the DNA in the remains was insufficient to make any positive ID through traditional testing (save for the one that was announced in December). Furthermore, the method of last resort — massive parallel sequencing — is a long shot at best.
ARE CHARGES OF DISAPPEARANCE AMONG THE DISAPPEARED?
The above reminds us that there’s probably never going to be anything meaningful in the way of corpus delicti in this case, which in turn implies that the victims’ parents are never going to stop insisting that the 42 are alive. Hence their anger at the situation summed up in La Jornada’s No. 2 headline: “Not one suspect held is accused of forced disappearance.” They’re all being held on kidnapping and homicide charges. To the parents and their supporters, the case is about disappearance, not homicide.
This might be a good time to point out that their intransigence on this issue is not merely naive wishful thinking from aggrieved relatives. There’s a political strategy at work, based on the conviction of lifelong radicals that what happened in Iguala was a crime of state. Putting some cops and narcos behind bars, in their view, is a distraction from the true crime — a corrupt and violent state apparatus intent on eliminating dissent.
Another Mexico City march is planned for Monday, the four-month anniversary of the Iguala massacre.
MACABRE SERENDIPITY
La Jornada’s top page one head may be the weirdest in today’s uncomfortably weird line-up: “Family members have found 39 corpses in Iguala mass graves in two months.” Add the 28 that the PGR found earlier, and you have this grotesque development: After the September events, authorities, relatives and concerned citizens went out in search of 43 bodies. They found 67 others instead.
It’s been an under-covered story from the beginning. Eliminate the 43 from the picture and think of what you’ve got — scores of unidentified bodies strewn about the outskirts of a single town. Who are they? Who put them there? Why was nobody looking for them before? How many others are there? And in how many towns could similar discoveries be made?
Milenio, for example, uses as its lead headline a quote from Felipe Rodríguez Salgado, the recently captured high-ranking member of the Guerrero/Morelos drug gang Guerreros Unidos: “I received 15 students alive and I killed them.” This is the kind of screamer you expect to see in the afternoon exploitation tabloids, but it’s supposedly verbatim out of a leaked Attorney General’s Office (PGR) document. Apparently Milenio got the exclusive.
Rodríguez, aka El Cepillo, also said the other 28 teachers college students delivered that night (September 26/27, 2014) by the Iguala and neighboring Cocula police were already dead from asphyxiation when he and his men proceeded to shoot the rest, burn their bodies and systematically dispose of the remains.
We know that El Cepillo’s story supports the PGR’s explanation of the tragic events. What we don’t know is whether he was telling the truth, whether the document is legitimate, how reliable the leaker was, what the motive may have been for leaking it, how consistent the account is with other, unleaked testimony, and why no other news source had the story.
CAN WE SEE SOME ID, PLEASE? PROBABLY NOT.
El Universal also got itself an exclusive, the result of an interview with the lab chief at the University of Innsbruck’s Forensic Medicine Institute, which has been analyzing the 17 bits of remains investigators were able to find at the Cocula killing fields. The interview didn’t yield much new, and the resulting main EL U headline could have run days earlier: “Little possibility of identifying remains.”
The lab had already informed the PGR that the DNA in the remains was insufficient to make any positive ID through traditional testing (save for the one that was announced in December). Furthermore, the method of last resort — massive parallel sequencing — is a long shot at best.
ARE CHARGES OF DISAPPEARANCE AMONG THE DISAPPEARED?
The above reminds us that there’s probably never going to be anything meaningful in the way of corpus delicti in this case, which in turn implies that the victims’ parents are never going to stop insisting that the 42 are alive. Hence their anger at the situation summed up in La Jornada’s No. 2 headline: “Not one suspect held is accused of forced disappearance.” They’re all being held on kidnapping and homicide charges. To the parents and their supporters, the case is about disappearance, not homicide.
This might be a good time to point out that their intransigence on this issue is not merely naive wishful thinking from aggrieved relatives. There’s a political strategy at work, based on the conviction of lifelong radicals that what happened in Iguala was a crime of state. Putting some cops and narcos behind bars, in their view, is a distraction from the true crime — a corrupt and violent state apparatus intent on eliminating dissent.
Another Mexico City march is planned for Monday, the four-month anniversary of the Iguala massacre.
MACABRE SERENDIPITY
La Jornada’s top page one head may be the weirdest in today’s uncomfortably weird line-up: “Family members have found 39 corpses in Iguala mass graves in two months.” Add the 28 that the PGR found earlier, and you have this grotesque development: After the September events, authorities, relatives and concerned citizens went out in search of 43 bodies. They found 67 others instead.
It’s been an under-covered story from the beginning. Eliminate the 43 from the picture and think of what you’ve got — scores of unidentified bodies strewn about the outskirts of a single town. Who are they? Who put them there? Why was nobody looking for them before? How many others are there? And in how many towns could similar discoveries be made?
Friday, January 23, 2015
Today's Headlines: Michoacán's viceroy is packing it up and going home after a year and a week on the job. The mess remains behind.
Three papers lead with, and all front, the end of Alfredo Castillo’s 53-week reign as the federally appointed security commissioner in Michoacán. The development was summarized tersely in Excelsior’s top head: “Commissioner leaves Michoacán.” For the federal government’s shaky effort to restore order in the troubled state, this removal marks a turning point — though toward what remains to be seen.
Castillo came on the scene a year ago when Michoacán, infiltrated by organized crime at all levels of government and law enforcement, was beginning to be referred to as a “failed state” — a touch of word play on three meanings of “state.” With more than 6,000 federal troops deployed there, it was not a great leap at the time to designate a representative of the federal government to run things. Castillo was soon tagged with the moniker “viceroy.”
It was understood that the state government was not up to the task. After a succession of left-leaning PRD governors, Michoacán came into the hands of the PRI’s Fausto Vallejo in February of 2012. Vallejo soon went on sick leave. His replacement was arrested and jailed for mob connections.
When Vallejo came back, photos and videos began circulating of his son palling around with Servando Gómez, aka La Tuta, capo of the Knights Templar drug-trafficking gang responsible for a large percentage of Michoacan’s woes. The son was arrested and jailed.
Vallejo stepped down permanently in June, citing health concerns. His appointed replacement is a figurehead whose name is seldom mentioned or remembered. (It’s Salvador Jara.) Castillo was in charge.
A priority was the capture of La Tuta. Part of the strategy was to deputize members of the grassroots self-defense groups that had sprung up the year before, turning them into Rural Forces. The problem with that, it turned out, was that these groups too include a certain percentage of drug gang members.
A year later, three top auto-defense group leaders, one governor and one governor’s son are behind bars. La Tuta isn’t.
But Castillo wasn’t yanked for sub-par performance, at least not officially. The reason given yesterday by Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong for the action was “to avoid hindering the state electoral process that has gotten underway.”
That’s why El Universal worded its lead head like this: “Castillo out of Michoacán for elections.” And Milenio like this: “Castillo’s exit is for safeguarding the elections: Osorio.”
A question suggests itself: Why would the continued presence of a security commissioner in Michoacán hinder the elections for governor, schedule for June 7? Apparently none of the working press at the announcement in the state capital of Morelia yesterday thought of asking it, because it’s not answered in any of the articles.
Osorio did say, however, that the three major party candidates for governor pushed to have the post dissolved, sooner rather than later. Which makes sense. They’re presumably not interested in running for a figurehead position subordinate to a Peña Nieto administration appointee.
You’ll be hearing a lot about those three in the months ahead, by the way, as they vie for the unenviable task of leading the effort to clean up the state (assuming, perhaps naively, that that’s why they’re running).
They are: José Ascensión Orihuela, a PRI senator; the PRD’s Silvano Aureoles, who is taking another shot at the governorship after finishing third in the November 2011 race; and Luisa María Calderón of the PAN, who finished a close second last time. Yes, she’s the sister of former President Felipe Calderón, who first sent troops to Michoacán (his home state) shortly after taking office in December of 2006.
Castillo came on the scene a year ago when Michoacán, infiltrated by organized crime at all levels of government and law enforcement, was beginning to be referred to as a “failed state” — a touch of word play on three meanings of “state.” With more than 6,000 federal troops deployed there, it was not a great leap at the time to designate a representative of the federal government to run things. Castillo was soon tagged with the moniker “viceroy.”
It was understood that the state government was not up to the task. After a succession of left-leaning PRD governors, Michoacán came into the hands of the PRI’s Fausto Vallejo in February of 2012. Vallejo soon went on sick leave. His replacement was arrested and jailed for mob connections.
When Vallejo came back, photos and videos began circulating of his son palling around with Servando Gómez, aka La Tuta, capo of the Knights Templar drug-trafficking gang responsible for a large percentage of Michoacan’s woes. The son was arrested and jailed.
Vallejo stepped down permanently in June, citing health concerns. His appointed replacement is a figurehead whose name is seldom mentioned or remembered. (It’s Salvador Jara.) Castillo was in charge.
A priority was the capture of La Tuta. Part of the strategy was to deputize members of the grassroots self-defense groups that had sprung up the year before, turning them into Rural Forces. The problem with that, it turned out, was that these groups too include a certain percentage of drug gang members.
A year later, three top auto-defense group leaders, one governor and one governor’s son are behind bars. La Tuta isn’t.
But Castillo wasn’t yanked for sub-par performance, at least not officially. The reason given yesterday by Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong for the action was “to avoid hindering the state electoral process that has gotten underway.”
That’s why El Universal worded its lead head like this: “Castillo out of Michoacán for elections.” And Milenio like this: “Castillo’s exit is for safeguarding the elections: Osorio.”
A question suggests itself: Why would the continued presence of a security commissioner in Michoacán hinder the elections for governor, schedule for June 7? Apparently none of the working press at the announcement in the state capital of Morelia yesterday thought of asking it, because it’s not answered in any of the articles.
Osorio did say, however, that the three major party candidates for governor pushed to have the post dissolved, sooner rather than later. Which makes sense. They’re presumably not interested in running for a figurehead position subordinate to a Peña Nieto administration appointee.
You’ll be hearing a lot about those three in the months ahead, by the way, as they vie for the unenviable task of leading the effort to clean up the state (assuming, perhaps naively, that that’s why they’re running).
They are: José Ascensión Orihuela, a PRI senator; the PRD’s Silvano Aureoles, who is taking another shot at the governorship after finishing third in the November 2011 race; and Luisa María Calderón of the PAN, who finished a close second last time. Yes, she’s the sister of former President Felipe Calderón, who first sent troops to Michoacán (his home state) shortly after taking office in December of 2006.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Twelve wholesome Hollywood films for a happier planet
León Krauze, a media commentator who works both sides of the Río Bravo/Grande, recently posted that the worldwide popularity of Hollywood movies is key to the United States’ formidable lead in “soft power.” (Its hard power isn’t shabby either.)
Krauze felt the need to remind his readers that many in Mexico and across the globe find this fact disturbing. Presumably, that’s due to the widespread misconception that U.S. commercial cinema consists primarily of mindless drivel, glorified violence and obsession with the dark side of life.
Nothing could be further from the truth! To help the good people of Mexico and the rest of the planet to recognize the wholesome underpinnings of U.S. cinema, I offer the following list of a dozen classic Hollywood releases whose inspiring, universal messages can bring Mexicans and Americans closer together, and make the world a happier place:
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) — A moving tale of an exemplary family, with a father who’s not afraid to show his love for his daughter, and sisters who are truly close.
Goodfellas (Martin Scorcese, 1990) — As in Mickey Rooney pics of yore, a young man and his friends attain fulfillment and financial success by starting their own projects.
Scarface (Brian DePalma, 1983) — A legal immigrant lives the American dream.
Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) — An uplifting fable of the importance of persistence and commitment in making a relationship work.
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) — Two average, hardworking young men are given the chance of a lifetime — getting to know the president of the United States of America!
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) — A cinematic reminder of the lost art of personal hospitality, as offered in the charming, offbeat motels along the U.S. blue highways before the chains took over.
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) — An actor finds success, his wife finds motherhood, and the neighbors are there to help. Heartwarming!
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) — A single mother and her spunky daughter explore their Catholic faith.
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorcese, 1976) — An honest working man meets fascinating people as he tours the scenic streets of the city that never sleeps.
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) — Is there a more therapeutic family value than sharing an interest?
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) A compelling combination of self-expression, interior decorating and the culinary arts.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) A timeless testament to that most American of life lessons — get the right tool for the job!
Krauze felt the need to remind his readers that many in Mexico and across the globe find this fact disturbing. Presumably, that’s due to the widespread misconception that U.S. commercial cinema consists primarily of mindless drivel, glorified violence and obsession with the dark side of life.
Nothing could be further from the truth! To help the good people of Mexico and the rest of the planet to recognize the wholesome underpinnings of U.S. cinema, I offer the following list of a dozen classic Hollywood releases whose inspiring, universal messages can bring Mexicans and Americans closer together, and make the world a happier place:
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) — A moving tale of an exemplary family, with a father who’s not afraid to show his love for his daughter, and sisters who are truly close.
Goodfellas (Martin Scorcese, 1990) — As in Mickey Rooney pics of yore, a young man and his friends attain fulfillment and financial success by starting their own projects.
Scarface (Brian DePalma, 1983) — A legal immigrant lives the American dream.
Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) — An uplifting fable of the importance of persistence and commitment in making a relationship work.
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) — Two average, hardworking young men are given the chance of a lifetime — getting to know the president of the United States of America!
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) — A cinematic reminder of the lost art of personal hospitality, as offered in the charming, offbeat motels along the U.S. blue highways before the chains took over.
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) — An actor finds success, his wife finds motherhood, and the neighbors are there to help. Heartwarming!
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) — A single mother and her spunky daughter explore their Catholic faith.
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorcese, 1976) — An honest working man meets fascinating people as he tours the scenic streets of the city that never sleeps.
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) — Is there a more therapeutic family value than sharing an interest?
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) A compelling combination of self-expression, interior decorating and the culinary arts.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) A timeless testament to that most American of life lessons — get the right tool for the job!
Today's Headlines: The PRD keeps sinking and its best and brightest keep bolting. Put it on the endangered species list.
Sprawling and teeming, Mexico City is divided into 16 administrative districts called delegaciones,
many of which have larger populations than most cities. “Delegación” is
often translated these days as “borough,” since the system is
reminiscent of, though not exactly equivalent to, that of New York.
The borough chief is still usually referred to as the delegado, a term left over from when each was appointed by the regente, or head of the Federal District (Mexico City), himself appointed by the federal executive branch. Now everybody’s elected, and the borough chief position is roughly equivalent to what a municipal president— a mayor — would be if Mexico City were a state rather than a Federal District.
Except no borough has a legislative body — no city council or cabildo. There’s only the citywide Federal District Legislative Assembly, or ALDF. Hence a borough chief’s function is strictly administrative, with almost all effort aimed at land use decisions, borough-specific public works projects and the handling of local law enforcement.
The nature of the job, then, puts it firmly into the political stepping-stone category, a launching pad for higher office. It’s also akin to a baseball umpire — only your failures are noticed. And, inevitably, it attracts charges of corruption.
This mini-civics lesson is by way of introducing today’s slightly hysterical lead headline in El Universal, which brings together those three elements of the job description: “Chapulines leave behind chaos in public works and security.” This needs some exegesis, so let’s take a look.
“Chapulines” comes from the native Náhuatl word for grasshoppers. It’s operative slang for political office holders who are abandoning their incumbency to run for a different position. The term especially applies to those Federal District borough chiefs seeking to make the hop to a legislative post, either as a federal deputy or member of the ALDF. It’s not meant as a compliment.
All 14 PRD delegados acted en masse this week, taking leaves from their posts to seek their party’s nomination as deputy candidates. The exodus was unpopular, and is attacked almost daily in the press.
Never mind that their terms are up this year and they can’t run for re-election. Never mind that they can’t be borough heads and seek a congressional nomination at the same time. In the public eye, their action removed all doubt about their commitment to personal gain over governing well. And the fact that they can come hustling back to their jobs if their new dreams don’t work out, like cheating spouses, infuriates their constituency all the more.
El Universal’s story today attempts to stir the pot by showing the business of the 14 PRD borough chiefs-on-leave is not only unfinished but poorly performed. An “analysis carried out by El Universal” finds that the crime rate increased in half the boroughs, and the number of complaints about land use or construction violations went up in eight of the 14. “In some cases,” the paper concludes, “the situation is worse than when they took office in 2012.”
That’s hardly “chaos.” If crime is up in half the boroughs, it’s down in the other half. If “some” PRD boroughs are worse off, then most are better off. It’s all how you look at it.
The real story of the chapulines is that virtually all of them have been accused of corruption or something resembling it. Some of the charges are petty and all are unproven. But the fact remains that the 14 PRD borough chiefs (the two others belong to the conservative PAN and the PRI-affiliated Green Party) have contributed more than their share to the party’s increasingly wretched reputation.
URGE FOR GOING
Things are so bad chez PRD that several of its most respected members have bolted in recent weeks — either to retirement, to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s nascent left-of-center alternative party (Morena), or to as-yet-undefined greener pastures. The latest is former Mexico City Mayor and current Senator Alejandro Encinas, an avuncular professor-type who balances solid man-of-the-left credentials with a respectable image and responsible demeanor.
He summed up his reasons for leaving rather convincingly yesterday: “There’s a great disenchantment, a malaise, much indignation, even shame at the current situation in the PRD.” An equally honest way of putting it might have been: “I’m getting out of this hell-hole while I still have a piece of my reputation intact.” El Universal’s No. 2 front-page head puts it a third way, quoting Encinas: “The PRD is hopeless.”
Encinas hasn’t yet revealed what he’ll be doing, or with whom. Perhaps more will be forthcoming at another speech he has planned for today. The guest list is interesting: PRD co-founders Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Ifgenia Martínez, plus fellow former Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, once the party’s shining light and as of now still a member.
THE END OF THE LINE
To be fair, the PRD is probably no more corrupt than the PRI, no more dysfunctional than the PAN, and no more riven with self-absorbed careerists than any of the nine parties, large or small. But the worst of its woes are more recent than those of other parties, and they include the biggest fish of them all — the alleged mass murder mastermind of Iguala, the former PRD Mayor José Luis Abarca.
And as luck would have it, the party’s latest scandals are of the lingering variety, such that each day’s headlines take its image down another notch. Today’s example is Reforma’s main front-pager: “Line 12 gets worse.” This refers to the newest addition to Mexico City’s once-proud Metro system, which was built to take passengers from the isolated Tlahuac borough 25.5 kilometers across the southern part of the city. Half of it was shut down last March because of construction incompatibilities, just months after its much-ballyhooed inauguration.
The closure was a political blow for Ebrard, not to mention for the hundreds of thousands of commuters that used the line daily. It was during Ebrard’s administration that the mega-project was planned, built and put into service. Now the “incompetent” label that political enemies had tried to pin on the PRD city government — unsuccessfully, as the city noticeably improved during the party’s 17-year reign — finally had a basis in reality.
City leaders under Ebrard’s successor, Miguel Ángel Mancera, knew the only way to stop the hemorrhaging was to get the damn thing fixed. That hasn’t happened. Now it looks like the trains will never fit the curvy tracks of the above-ground stretch of the line. Replacing them will be costly, to say the least, and will also remind everybody of the strange decision to lease the current cars for more than what it would have cost to buy them.
The fallout from all this is that the PRD faces the prospect of losing its majorities in the ALDF and among the 16 borough chiefs in the June election (Mancera has three years left in his term). That scenario becomes even likelier when you factor in the intention of AMLO’s Morena party to go all out in the DF, splitting the left vote. If the abstention or annulled-vote campaigns amount to anything, that will hurt the PRD as well, since most of that movement’s advocates reside on the left.
Mexico City has been the PRD’s bastion since the party was born in 1989. With no real nationwide presence, they don’t have much if they don’t have the capital. A dwindling minority in the federal Congress, maybe a few governorships, a state legislature or two. That’s it.
Unless the PRD base somehow holds, Mexico is looking at a stretch without a viable progressive electoral force. Even its traditional detractors, such as big business, will lament the loss, as right-wing pols trot out the old bromide, “Mexico needs a responsible alternative on the left.” What they’ll mean, of course, is, “We need a convenient straw man to scare people with.” But they’ll still be right.
The borough chief is still usually referred to as the delegado, a term left over from when each was appointed by the regente, or head of the Federal District (Mexico City), himself appointed by the federal executive branch. Now everybody’s elected, and the borough chief position is roughly equivalent to what a municipal president— a mayor — would be if Mexico City were a state rather than a Federal District.
Except no borough has a legislative body — no city council or cabildo. There’s only the citywide Federal District Legislative Assembly, or ALDF. Hence a borough chief’s function is strictly administrative, with almost all effort aimed at land use decisions, borough-specific public works projects and the handling of local law enforcement.
The nature of the job, then, puts it firmly into the political stepping-stone category, a launching pad for higher office. It’s also akin to a baseball umpire — only your failures are noticed. And, inevitably, it attracts charges of corruption.
This mini-civics lesson is by way of introducing today’s slightly hysterical lead headline in El Universal, which brings together those three elements of the job description: “Chapulines leave behind chaos in public works and security.” This needs some exegesis, so let’s take a look.
“Chapulines” comes from the native Náhuatl word for grasshoppers. It’s operative slang for political office holders who are abandoning their incumbency to run for a different position. The term especially applies to those Federal District borough chiefs seeking to make the hop to a legislative post, either as a federal deputy or member of the ALDF. It’s not meant as a compliment.
All 14 PRD delegados acted en masse this week, taking leaves from their posts to seek their party’s nomination as deputy candidates. The exodus was unpopular, and is attacked almost daily in the press.
Never mind that their terms are up this year and they can’t run for re-election. Never mind that they can’t be borough heads and seek a congressional nomination at the same time. In the public eye, their action removed all doubt about their commitment to personal gain over governing well. And the fact that they can come hustling back to their jobs if their new dreams don’t work out, like cheating spouses, infuriates their constituency all the more.
El Universal’s story today attempts to stir the pot by showing the business of the 14 PRD borough chiefs-on-leave is not only unfinished but poorly performed. An “analysis carried out by El Universal” finds that the crime rate increased in half the boroughs, and the number of complaints about land use or construction violations went up in eight of the 14. “In some cases,” the paper concludes, “the situation is worse than when they took office in 2012.”
That’s hardly “chaos.” If crime is up in half the boroughs, it’s down in the other half. If “some” PRD boroughs are worse off, then most are better off. It’s all how you look at it.
The real story of the chapulines is that virtually all of them have been accused of corruption or something resembling it. Some of the charges are petty and all are unproven. But the fact remains that the 14 PRD borough chiefs (the two others belong to the conservative PAN and the PRI-affiliated Green Party) have contributed more than their share to the party’s increasingly wretched reputation.
URGE FOR GOING
Things are so bad chez PRD that several of its most respected members have bolted in recent weeks — either to retirement, to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s nascent left-of-center alternative party (Morena), or to as-yet-undefined greener pastures. The latest is former Mexico City Mayor and current Senator Alejandro Encinas, an avuncular professor-type who balances solid man-of-the-left credentials with a respectable image and responsible demeanor.
He summed up his reasons for leaving rather convincingly yesterday: “There’s a great disenchantment, a malaise, much indignation, even shame at the current situation in the PRD.” An equally honest way of putting it might have been: “I’m getting out of this hell-hole while I still have a piece of my reputation intact.” El Universal’s No. 2 front-page head puts it a third way, quoting Encinas: “The PRD is hopeless.”
Encinas hasn’t yet revealed what he’ll be doing, or with whom. Perhaps more will be forthcoming at another speech he has planned for today. The guest list is interesting: PRD co-founders Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Ifgenia Martínez, plus fellow former Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, once the party’s shining light and as of now still a member.
THE END OF THE LINE
To be fair, the PRD is probably no more corrupt than the PRI, no more dysfunctional than the PAN, and no more riven with self-absorbed careerists than any of the nine parties, large or small. But the worst of its woes are more recent than those of other parties, and they include the biggest fish of them all — the alleged mass murder mastermind of Iguala, the former PRD Mayor José Luis Abarca.
And as luck would have it, the party’s latest scandals are of the lingering variety, such that each day’s headlines take its image down another notch. Today’s example is Reforma’s main front-pager: “Line 12 gets worse.” This refers to the newest addition to Mexico City’s once-proud Metro system, which was built to take passengers from the isolated Tlahuac borough 25.5 kilometers across the southern part of the city. Half of it was shut down last March because of construction incompatibilities, just months after its much-ballyhooed inauguration.
The closure was a political blow for Ebrard, not to mention for the hundreds of thousands of commuters that used the line daily. It was during Ebrard’s administration that the mega-project was planned, built and put into service. Now the “incompetent” label that political enemies had tried to pin on the PRD city government — unsuccessfully, as the city noticeably improved during the party’s 17-year reign — finally had a basis in reality.
City leaders under Ebrard’s successor, Miguel Ángel Mancera, knew the only way to stop the hemorrhaging was to get the damn thing fixed. That hasn’t happened. Now it looks like the trains will never fit the curvy tracks of the above-ground stretch of the line. Replacing them will be costly, to say the least, and will also remind everybody of the strange decision to lease the current cars for more than what it would have cost to buy them.
The fallout from all this is that the PRD faces the prospect of losing its majorities in the ALDF and among the 16 borough chiefs in the June election (Mancera has three years left in his term). That scenario becomes even likelier when you factor in the intention of AMLO’s Morena party to go all out in the DF, splitting the left vote. If the abstention or annulled-vote campaigns amount to anything, that will hurt the PRD as well, since most of that movement’s advocates reside on the left.
Mexico City has been the PRD’s bastion since the party was born in 1989. With no real nationwide presence, they don’t have much if they don’t have the capital. A dwindling minority in the federal Congress, maybe a few governorships, a state legislature or two. That’s it.
Unless the PRD base somehow holds, Mexico is looking at a stretch without a viable progressive electoral force. Even its traditional detractors, such as big business, will lament the loss, as right-wing pols trot out the old bromide, “Mexico needs a responsible alternative on the left.” What they’ll mean, of course, is, “We need a convenient straw man to scare people with.” But they’ll still be right.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Today's Headlines: The Iguala case appears to be heading nowhere
The Iguala case dominates the headlines today. Four of the five major dailies lead with developments indicating that the case of the 43 disappeared rural teachers college, or normal school, students may never be resolved in any satisfying way. Excelsior leads with “Identification of normalistas fades,” and El Universal with something similar. This arises out of a communication delivered Tuesday from Austrian forensic experts who have been examining for months now the scant remains found at what is thought to have been the killing site. The samples, Mexican authorities were informed, are inadequate for any kind of DNA matching. The trail is dead, save for a longshot alternative ID method that will take another three months.
I DON'T NEED NO STINKING MATCHES
La Jornada and Milenio come at the same story in a different way, leading with Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam’s reaction to the news that there will probably be no DNA matches ever. As La Jornada puts it in its main head: “Murillo Karam: As far as I’m concerned, the 43 were killed in Cocula.” That has been the working hypothesis all along — that the 43 students rounded up by local Iguala cops after three were shot to death on September 26, 2014 were handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug-trafficking gang and taken to neighboring Cocula. There they were assassinated, their bodies burned and the remains hidden or destroyed so thoroughly that the examiners at the University of Innsbruck were able to identify only one victim.
Scores of suspects are in custody, including Iguala cops, members of Guerreros Unidos and the former mayor of Iguala and his wife. It is presumably through the results of their interrogations, along with eyewitness testimony, that the attorney general feels sure enough about what happened to issue the statement in that headline with so little forensic support.
His saying so, of course, will do nothing to sway the victims’ families and their militant supporters, who insist the normalistas are being held alive, and are waging what amounts to a crime wave to push their case. The rest of the nation is left in limbo with unanswered questions:
What kind of country do we live in where government officials and local law enforcement can cooperate in a mass murder? How can it be that a case of such magnitude has been stalled for so long? And where is the resulting unrest taking us?
ANOTHER CONTRACTOR, ANOTHER HOUSE
Most of the papers front a revelation from the Wall Street Journal that President Enrique Peña Nieto was involved in another real estate transaction with a future government contractor soon after his inauguration as governor of the State of Mexico in 2005. According to the WSJ, Peña Nieto bought property in an exclusive golf club in the spa town of Ixtapan de la Sal from a businessman who later received at least 11 government contracts. Those contracts were federal, not state, and a spokesperson for the president denied any connection or wrongdoing.
Peña Nieto had already come under suspicion for a luxury house his wife was buying from a winning contractor in the since-annulled bidding for the Mexico City-Querétaro high-speed train project.
The story ran in the Journal yesterday, and the Mexican papers based their reports on it. The WSJ charges for its content, but sometimes makes exceptions. You can see try to see the original article, in English, here.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Could the best way of making your vote count be by not voting?
There are plenty of ways not to vote in an election. They include, among others, old-fashioned abstention, organized boycotts, legal postponement, a show of ripping up ballots, defacing of ballots in the booth, intentionally invalidating the ballot (such as voting for two candidates for the same office), or sabotaging the process with violence, as teachers in Guerrero are threatening to do.
Most have been proposed for the June 7 mid-terms in Mexico.
Of course, a self-important clique of don’t-voters makes itself heard in every election, everywhere. At heart, their appeal is mostly to sloth and fatalism, even more to their own egos, but also for some true believers to a conviction that voting is either pointless (“they’re all the same”) or counter-productive (“it delays real change”).
After they fail to convert anyone, they slink back into their hole when the polls close.
This time around, a small chance exists that a significant number of people across the ideological and socioeconomic spectra could be convinced to use the elections to register a protest rather than choose new legislators and a handful of governors.
The reasons for this window of opportunity are well known — the general ungovernability of the nation as a whole, the close links between organized crime and authorities at all levels and in all regions, the oppressive atmosphere that unchecked violence imposes on even the unharmed, the ignored national shame of unmitigated poverty and inequality, and the gelling conviction that the political class — the ones we’re being asked to choose among — are either incapable of or uninterested in doing something about any of these things.
Even that noxious list of indictments might motivate voting rather than discourage it. Why not send a message by sweeping the non-performing bastards out of office?
Because in Mexico today, that’s not seen as an option. The bastards aren’t bastards because they’re in office. They’re bastards because they’re in political parties. As their replacements will be.
Despite formidable competition, no institution is respected less these days than the parties — all of them. Corruption and careerism aren’t so much problems for the parties as descriptions of them. Thus a vote for a decent, competent candidate (they do exist) is in reality a vote for that candidate's party, and the decency is subsumed into the dreck.
Which is why the idea of a protest vote has more appeal than usual so far this year. The total collapse of party integrity may be the tipping point for the viability of a vote protest. It’s more tempting than before to see a non-vote as the clearest way to send a message — a demand, really — to the political class to clean up the mess, now.
For anything to come out of it there will have to emerge an organized movement with broad appeal. More likely is a loose movement with narrow appeal — one that, for example, makes it clear that if you don't oppose the energy and telecommunications reforms, you’re not welcome.
Agreement must exist on the nature of the protest. Should it be negative, such as a boycott? Or positive, like an intentionally annulled ballot, roughly equivalent to a none-of-the-above vote?
The movement organizers, should they exist, will need to find a convincing way to distance themselves from the thugs in Guerrero. Can they? Will they even want to?
And what’s the tipping point? How much of a total non-vote is enough to make anything happen?
These are the kinds of things that will have to be batted around and resolved soon. It may all be for naught, but the discussion at least adds a savory new element to the proceedings.
Most have been proposed for the June 7 mid-terms in Mexico.
Of course, a self-important clique of don’t-voters makes itself heard in every election, everywhere. At heart, their appeal is mostly to sloth and fatalism, even more to their own egos, but also for some true believers to a conviction that voting is either pointless (“they’re all the same”) or counter-productive (“it delays real change”).
After they fail to convert anyone, they slink back into their hole when the polls close.
This time around, a small chance exists that a significant number of people across the ideological and socioeconomic spectra could be convinced to use the elections to register a protest rather than choose new legislators and a handful of governors.
The reasons for this window of opportunity are well known — the general ungovernability of the nation as a whole, the close links between organized crime and authorities at all levels and in all regions, the oppressive atmosphere that unchecked violence imposes on even the unharmed, the ignored national shame of unmitigated poverty and inequality, and the gelling conviction that the political class — the ones we’re being asked to choose among — are either incapable of or uninterested in doing something about any of these things.
Even that noxious list of indictments might motivate voting rather than discourage it. Why not send a message by sweeping the non-performing bastards out of office?
Because in Mexico today, that’s not seen as an option. The bastards aren’t bastards because they’re in office. They’re bastards because they’re in political parties. As their replacements will be.
Despite formidable competition, no institution is respected less these days than the parties — all of them. Corruption and careerism aren’t so much problems for the parties as descriptions of them. Thus a vote for a decent, competent candidate (they do exist) is in reality a vote for that candidate's party, and the decency is subsumed into the dreck.
Which is why the idea of a protest vote has more appeal than usual so far this year. The total collapse of party integrity may be the tipping point for the viability of a vote protest. It’s more tempting than before to see a non-vote as the clearest way to send a message — a demand, really — to the political class to clean up the mess, now.
For anything to come out of it there will have to emerge an organized movement with broad appeal. More likely is a loose movement with narrow appeal — one that, for example, makes it clear that if you don't oppose the energy and telecommunications reforms, you’re not welcome.
Agreement must exist on the nature of the protest. Should it be negative, such as a boycott? Or positive, like an intentionally annulled ballot, roughly equivalent to a none-of-the-above vote?
The movement organizers, should they exist, will need to find a convincing way to distance themselves from the thugs in Guerrero. Can they? Will they even want to?
And what’s the tipping point? How much of a total non-vote is enough to make anything happen?
These are the kinds of things that will have to be batted around and resolved soon. It may all be for naught, but the discussion at least adds a savory new element to the proceedings.
Today's Headlines: The crisis that dares not speak its name
The 2014-15 oil crisis, if we can call it that, has been partially eclipsed by all those other apocalyptic headlines we see daily. But it could easily bring on the most serious short-term calamity for the nation as a whole. The problem this time around is the result of plummeting — not rising — crude prices, so it’s oil-exporting nations such as Mexico that are getting hit. But low prices are only half the problem, as El Universal’s top headline tell us: “Mexico experiencing a collapse in crude production.” So not only is oil being sold for less, there’s less of it to sell.
El U cites data straight from Pemex, the (still, as of now) state-controlled oil monopoly, showing that production dropped in 2014 for the tenth consecutive year since a historic high in 2004. The decline is significant — Mexico is producing nearly a million barrels a day less than in 2004, when the daily yield was 3.38 million a day. It was 2.43 million in 2014.
TRIPLE PLAY
La Jornada also leads with oil, coming at the story from a different direction: “Pemex will make major cuts in its expenditures.” The announced reductions total 21.3 million pesos (about $1.5 million dollars) spread over four years. The cuts will mean fewer contracts for goods, services and public works, as well as 17,000 jobs lost. Pemex says the reason for the reduced spending is “savings through efficiency,” but Jornada quotes experts who think the real reason is the low price of crude on the market.
So . . . price, production, investment. All down. At once. El Universal paraphrases the prognosis of sector experts as follows: “The decline of the principal deposits, combined with a possible cut in investment by the company [Pemex] and the price collapse could create a perfect storm in the next several months that could put pressure on government revenue.”
Not mentioned is the social unrest that the euphemistic “pressure” could lead to when the inevitable spending cuts follow. Also not mentioned — never mentioned in any petroleum coverage in the five major dailies — is that today’s low prices and low production amount to mere practice for the day, not all that far away, when both reach zero. Yet transition to renewable energy is left out of the conversation. Which is strange, given that Mexico is as blessed with wind, geothermal and solar in the 21st century as it was with hydrocarbons in the 20th. More so, in fact, since the alternative sources won’t run out.
LET NONE OF THEM BE MISSED
Last year the SAT, the tax-collecting wing of the Finance Secretariat, started publishing lists of companies and individuals who were behind on their tax payments. This list strategy, often referred to by the untranslatable slang term “balconeo,” was part of the fiscal reform package approved by Congress. Not surprisingly it caught a lot of flack, mostly from the business community, which considered the lists defamatory.
It’s more likely that the private sector’s real problem with the rosters of deadbeats had more to do with how much harder dodging the SAT became as a result. Today’s lead Reforma head supports that theory: “The balconeo is working; 24 billion pesos collected.” That’s 24 billion pesos (about $1.7 billion dollars) more than what would have been collected without the lists.
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, FOLKS
Milenio leads with, and most others front, reassurance by Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong that the June elections will not be disrupted: “There will be secure elections throughout the country: Osorio.” The importance of the story isn’t so much his guarantee of safety — what else is he going to say? — but the fact that he needed to give it (and that the journalists present felt the need to ask about it).
The press also grilled the secretary on reports that he tendered is resignation in December, only to have it refused by President Peña Nieto. Many believe Osorio Chong is considering a run for elected office. He refused to comment.
WHO SAYS THERE'S NO CHEAP GAS?
Excelsior finds a way to combine the oil and crime crises in one lead headline: “Organized crime controls 20% of gas stations.” The figure comes from the gasoline dealers association. Despite the headline, they don’t mean that crime figures own the gas stations. Rather, they are stealing the gasoline —usually by milking the pipes — and selling it along rural roads. Apparently, plenty of drivers are happy to accept the lower prices and fill up at the makeshift stations. After which they presumably go home, turn on the news, and complain about the crime problem.
HOW EXCELSIOR FITS 16 NEWS ITEMS ON ITS FRONT PAGE
Excelsior is a broadsheet, so its front page is twice the size of the tabloids Milenio and La Jornada. That gives it room to run the actual stories on the cover, rather than heads alone with a referring page number. But there are usually only three front-page stories with text, sometimes fewer, and even that text is condensed, with the full story on the inside. The rest of the front page is all reefers or teasers — mini-heads with mini-subheads, sometimes with, but usually without, a photo, and a page number to turn to for the actual story.
There are no fewer than 13 such reefers on Excelsior's front page today, which is not untypical. There’s also an index of 12 columnists. Just for fun, and maybe a little enlightenment, let’s see what the once-venerable daily considers tease-worthy today, working our way from top to bottom:
“The trick revealed” — The making of The Boxtrolls, nominated for a best animated picture Oscar.
“Cheating in the NFL” — Did the New England Patriots deflate the football to give Tom Brady a better grip in the AFC championship game?
“Prosecutor who accused president is killed” — The subhead over a photo of protesters is “Argentine Scandal.” The president referred to is Cristina Fernández.
“Liquid gas is much more expensive than in the U.S.” — That’s literally gas, not gasoline. But the price differential holds true for gasoline as well.
“Ficrea sent 300 million to Spain” — That’s pesos. Any tidbit of information that comes out about Ficrea will get coverage, such is the public anger at the sham firm that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of pesos. The best part of this reefer is the small image attached to it, showing the Ficrea logo with its slogan: “We believe in what you believe.”
“Seizure of Templarios” — The Templarios, or Knights Templar, are the major, but not the only, drug trafficking organization in the state of Michoacán. The seizure was of real estate assets, not people.
“For love of the bicycle” — An upcoming exhibit at the Franz Mayer Museum, one of the premier private art museums in Mexico City, is dedicated to the bicycle and will feature 50 classic bikes.
“Elections guaranteed” — This is the promise from the interior secretary that Milenio leads with.
“Son of Aguirre is uncovered” — That is, uncovered as a candidate for mayor of Acapulco. Aguirre refers to Ángel Aguirre, père, the former PRD governor of Guerrero who resigned after the Iguala tragedy last fall.
“Election offices set afire” — More “protests” from the Guerrero teachers organization CETEG.
“Survey staff rescued” — Three men and two women doing some kind of polling work (this and much else are never explained) in the rugged and dangerous Tierra Caliente region of Guerrero were taken by masked men on motorcycles on Saturday, then rescued by law enforcement on Monday.
“Children, free of lead” — In the state of Chihuahua 363 minors, thought to be contaminated by lead, weren’t.
“Total change for Line 12” — This refers to the newest Mexico City Metro line that has been partially shut down owing to incompatibility between the wheels and the tracks. The blurb head is slightly misleading; it has been suggested, not decided, to solve the problem by trading in the entire fleet of train cars for new ones.
El U cites data straight from Pemex, the (still, as of now) state-controlled oil monopoly, showing that production dropped in 2014 for the tenth consecutive year since a historic high in 2004. The decline is significant — Mexico is producing nearly a million barrels a day less than in 2004, when the daily yield was 3.38 million a day. It was 2.43 million in 2014.
TRIPLE PLAY
La Jornada also leads with oil, coming at the story from a different direction: “Pemex will make major cuts in its expenditures.” The announced reductions total 21.3 million pesos (about $1.5 million dollars) spread over four years. The cuts will mean fewer contracts for goods, services and public works, as well as 17,000 jobs lost. Pemex says the reason for the reduced spending is “savings through efficiency,” but Jornada quotes experts who think the real reason is the low price of crude on the market.
So . . . price, production, investment. All down. At once. El Universal paraphrases the prognosis of sector experts as follows: “The decline of the principal deposits, combined with a possible cut in investment by the company [Pemex] and the price collapse could create a perfect storm in the next several months that could put pressure on government revenue.”
Not mentioned is the social unrest that the euphemistic “pressure” could lead to when the inevitable spending cuts follow. Also not mentioned — never mentioned in any petroleum coverage in the five major dailies — is that today’s low prices and low production amount to mere practice for the day, not all that far away, when both reach zero. Yet transition to renewable energy is left out of the conversation. Which is strange, given that Mexico is as blessed with wind, geothermal and solar in the 21st century as it was with hydrocarbons in the 20th. More so, in fact, since the alternative sources won’t run out.
LET NONE OF THEM BE MISSED
Last year the SAT, the tax-collecting wing of the Finance Secretariat, started publishing lists of companies and individuals who were behind on their tax payments. This list strategy, often referred to by the untranslatable slang term “balconeo,” was part of the fiscal reform package approved by Congress. Not surprisingly it caught a lot of flack, mostly from the business community, which considered the lists defamatory.
It’s more likely that the private sector’s real problem with the rosters of deadbeats had more to do with how much harder dodging the SAT became as a result. Today’s lead Reforma head supports that theory: “The balconeo is working; 24 billion pesos collected.” That’s 24 billion pesos (about $1.7 billion dollars) more than what would have been collected without the lists.
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, FOLKS
Milenio leads with, and most others front, reassurance by Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong that the June elections will not be disrupted: “There will be secure elections throughout the country: Osorio.” The importance of the story isn’t so much his guarantee of safety — what else is he going to say? — but the fact that he needed to give it (and that the journalists present felt the need to ask about it).
The press also grilled the secretary on reports that he tendered is resignation in December, only to have it refused by President Peña Nieto. Many believe Osorio Chong is considering a run for elected office. He refused to comment.
WHO SAYS THERE'S NO CHEAP GAS?
Excelsior finds a way to combine the oil and crime crises in one lead headline: “Organized crime controls 20% of gas stations.” The figure comes from the gasoline dealers association. Despite the headline, they don’t mean that crime figures own the gas stations. Rather, they are stealing the gasoline —usually by milking the pipes — and selling it along rural roads. Apparently, plenty of drivers are happy to accept the lower prices and fill up at the makeshift stations. After which they presumably go home, turn on the news, and complain about the crime problem.
HOW EXCELSIOR FITS 16 NEWS ITEMS ON ITS FRONT PAGE
Excelsior is a broadsheet, so its front page is twice the size of the tabloids Milenio and La Jornada. That gives it room to run the actual stories on the cover, rather than heads alone with a referring page number. But there are usually only three front-page stories with text, sometimes fewer, and even that text is condensed, with the full story on the inside. The rest of the front page is all reefers or teasers — mini-heads with mini-subheads, sometimes with, but usually without, a photo, and a page number to turn to for the actual story.
There are no fewer than 13 such reefers on Excelsior's front page today, which is not untypical. There’s also an index of 12 columnists. Just for fun, and maybe a little enlightenment, let’s see what the once-venerable daily considers tease-worthy today, working our way from top to bottom:
“The trick revealed” — The making of The Boxtrolls, nominated for a best animated picture Oscar.
“Cheating in the NFL” — Did the New England Patriots deflate the football to give Tom Brady a better grip in the AFC championship game?
“Prosecutor who accused president is killed” — The subhead over a photo of protesters is “Argentine Scandal.” The president referred to is Cristina Fernández.
“Liquid gas is much more expensive than in the U.S.” — That’s literally gas, not gasoline. But the price differential holds true for gasoline as well.
“Ficrea sent 300 million to Spain” — That’s pesos. Any tidbit of information that comes out about Ficrea will get coverage, such is the public anger at the sham firm that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of pesos. The best part of this reefer is the small image attached to it, showing the Ficrea logo with its slogan: “We believe in what you believe.”
“Seizure of Templarios” — The Templarios, or Knights Templar, are the major, but not the only, drug trafficking organization in the state of Michoacán. The seizure was of real estate assets, not people.
“For love of the bicycle” — An upcoming exhibit at the Franz Mayer Museum, one of the premier private art museums in Mexico City, is dedicated to the bicycle and will feature 50 classic bikes.
“Elections guaranteed” — This is the promise from the interior secretary that Milenio leads with.
“Son of Aguirre is uncovered” — That is, uncovered as a candidate for mayor of Acapulco. Aguirre refers to Ángel Aguirre, père, the former PRD governor of Guerrero who resigned after the Iguala tragedy last fall.
“Election offices set afire” — More “protests” from the Guerrero teachers organization CETEG.
“Survey staff rescued” — Three men and two women doing some kind of polling work (this and much else are never explained) in the rugged and dangerous Tierra Caliente region of Guerrero were taken by masked men on motorcycles on Saturday, then rescued by law enforcement on Monday.
“Children, free of lead” — In the state of Chihuahua 363 minors, thought to be contaminated by lead, weren’t.
“Total change for Line 12” — This refers to the newest Mexico City Metro line that has been partially shut down owing to incompatibility between the wheels and the tracks. The blurb head is slightly misleading; it has been suggested, not decided, to solve the problem by trading in the entire fleet of train cars for new ones.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Today's Headlines: School daze
Monday morning ennui reigns among the dailies, with the most eye-catching lead headline coming from Milenio and dealing with that old standby — the misbehavior of protesting teachers in the state of Guerrero. The story deals with a warning from a top legislator, Emilio Gamboa Patrón, the PRI leader in the Senate: “CETEG has provoked too much.” CETEG is the Guerrero-based radical educators organization that has attacked government and army installations, blocked highways, intimidated election workers and extorted money from everyday individuals, with carte blanche impunity.
“The violent acts that have taken place in some regions harm the majority of Mexicans,” Gamboa said in an interview, and then added a thinly veiled threat: “We’re sure that if this continues, nobody will come out ahead.”
The legislator’s comments came after similar statements from the powerful Coparmex business organization. But neither Congress nor the private sector has the capacity to wage a crackdown on its own. That has to come from state and federal law enforcement, and so far neither has seen an upside in going after the vandals.
MORE EDUCATION WOES
The education financing system has another challenge, summed up in El Universal’s lead headline: “Teacher pension crisis in 20 states.” This latest predicament is revealed by a study from the teachers’ union itself, the National Education Workers Syndicate, or SNTE. The pension system is in deep trouble, according to the SNTE, and retired teachers in 20 states are at risk of not being paid. The report urges a major reform of the system, which would require the union and government working in cooperation. Meanwhile, payments for teachers still working are complicated by as many as 198,000 spurious names on the payroll, causing one to wonder about the integrity of the pensioner roster.
WE'RE NOT ALONE
La Jornada also leads with negative education news, more global in scope: “Education failures persist in OECD countries.” In the 34 developed democracies, including Mexico, that belong to the organization, the average 15-year-old “hasn’t acquired the skills necessary to fully participate in life today.” The report also notes that the number of young people between 15 and 29 who neither work nor study has risen 1.3% since 2008.
“The violent acts that have taken place in some regions harm the majority of Mexicans,” Gamboa said in an interview, and then added a thinly veiled threat: “We’re sure that if this continues, nobody will come out ahead.”
The legislator’s comments came after similar statements from the powerful Coparmex business organization. But neither Congress nor the private sector has the capacity to wage a crackdown on its own. That has to come from state and federal law enforcement, and so far neither has seen an upside in going after the vandals.
MORE EDUCATION WOES
The education financing system has another challenge, summed up in El Universal’s lead headline: “Teacher pension crisis in 20 states.” This latest predicament is revealed by a study from the teachers’ union itself, the National Education Workers Syndicate, or SNTE. The pension system is in deep trouble, according to the SNTE, and retired teachers in 20 states are at risk of not being paid. The report urges a major reform of the system, which would require the union and government working in cooperation. Meanwhile, payments for teachers still working are complicated by as many as 198,000 spurious names on the payroll, causing one to wonder about the integrity of the pensioner roster.
WE'RE NOT ALONE
La Jornada also leads with negative education news, more global in scope: “Education failures persist in OECD countries.” In the 34 developed democracies, including Mexico, that belong to the organization, the average 15-year-old “hasn’t acquired the skills necessary to fully participate in life today.” The report also notes that the number of young people between 15 and 29 who neither work nor study has risen 1.3% since 2008.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Mexico by the Numbers: Don't worry. Be happy. Most of us are.
50.7 . . . percentage of Mexicans who said they felt better at the end of 2014 than a year ago, according to a new survey by Consulta Mitofsky, one of Mexico’s premier polling organizations. That’s an improvement over December 2013, when 47.2 % thought things were going better than a year earlier. The highest feel-better percentage of the century was 68.6% at the end of 2001, the first full year that the PRI was out of power in seven decades. In only three years have feel-worse responders outnumbered the feel-betters — 2009, 2011and 2013.
36.7 . . . percentage of those who felt things got better in 2014 who credit the government for the improvement.
60.4 . . . percentage of those feeling things worsened in 2014 who blame the government for the decline.
18.0 . . . Percentage of Mitofsky respondents who cited “more security” as the most important factor for improving the country in 2015. It topped the list. But:
4.3 . . . Percentage who cited “more security” as the most important factor for improving their own lives in 2015. Improved personal economy was the winner by far.
3,000 . . . Number of meters into the air smoke and steam rose during an explosion of the Colima volcano on January 4. It was one of several such events in recent months. The volcano, on the border of the states of Colima and Jalisco, is one of the most active in Mexico, along with Popocatépetl, near Mexico City.
5,298,000 . . . number of U.S. tourists arriving in Mexico by air January through September of 2014, a 19.3% increase over the same period in 2013, despite negative publicity.
97.5 . . . room occupation percentage in the Zona Dorada tourist area of Acapulco during the winter holidays, again despite negative publicity.
79,000 . . . population of Mexican crocodiles (Crocodylus morelettii) along the Gulf Coast and Yucatan Peninsula. The small species was endangered in the 1970s, but protection programs were implemented and recovery has been successful enough that hunting restrictions in the state of Quintana Roo have recently been relaxed. The skin trade is seen as a means of improving the economy of marginalized areas.
15.9 million . . . Number of shares in the New York Times acquired last week by Carlos Slim, bringing his total to 27.8 million. The Mexican mogul is the venerable U.S. paper’s top outside investor, now with a 16.8% stake in tradeable Class A stocks. The Ochs-Sulzberger family still has a firm hold on the company.
100 million . . . number of euros Mexico’s Roberto Alcántara, whose holdings include the airline VivaAerobus and the IAMSA passenger bus empire, has invested in Prisa, the Spanish publishing group. Prisa publishes the Spanish daily newspaper El País, which circulates in Mexico.
36.7 . . . percentage of those who felt things got better in 2014 who credit the government for the improvement.
60.4 . . . percentage of those feeling things worsened in 2014 who blame the government for the decline.
18.0 . . . Percentage of Mitofsky respondents who cited “more security” as the most important factor for improving the country in 2015. It topped the list. But:
4.3 . . . Percentage who cited “more security” as the most important factor for improving their own lives in 2015. Improved personal economy was the winner by far.
3,000 . . . Number of meters into the air smoke and steam rose during an explosion of the Colima volcano on January 4. It was one of several such events in recent months. The volcano, on the border of the states of Colima and Jalisco, is one of the most active in Mexico, along with Popocatépetl, near Mexico City.
5,298,000 . . . number of U.S. tourists arriving in Mexico by air January through September of 2014, a 19.3% increase over the same period in 2013, despite negative publicity.
97.5 . . . room occupation percentage in the Zona Dorada tourist area of Acapulco during the winter holidays, again despite negative publicity.
79,000 . . . population of Mexican crocodiles (Crocodylus morelettii) along the Gulf Coast and Yucatan Peninsula. The small species was endangered in the 1970s, but protection programs were implemented and recovery has been successful enough that hunting restrictions in the state of Quintana Roo have recently been relaxed. The skin trade is seen as a means of improving the economy of marginalized areas.
15.9 million . . . Number of shares in the New York Times acquired last week by Carlos Slim, bringing his total to 27.8 million. The Mexican mogul is the venerable U.S. paper’s top outside investor, now with a 16.8% stake in tradeable Class A stocks. The Ochs-Sulzberger family still has a firm hold on the company.
100 million . . . number of euros Mexico’s Roberto Alcántara, whose holdings include the airline VivaAerobus and the IAMSA passenger bus empire, has invested in Prisa, the Spanish publishing group. Prisa publishes the Spanish daily newspaper El País, which circulates in Mexico.
Today's Headlines: A suspected fixer in the Iguala atrocity is captured, but you'd never know it by reading the front pages
Excelsior is the only daily that leads with — or even appears to be aware of — a break in the Iguala case. Captured and interrogated Friday night was one Felipe Rodríguez Salgado, aka El Cepillo or El Terco, a high-ranking hit man with the local mafia Guerreros Unidos. That’s the crime organization accused of having killed last September the 43 missing students from a rural teachers college and burned their bodies.
Excelsior’s head is “Material author in Iguala case captured,” with “material author” implying more direct involvement in the carrying out of the atrocity than “intellectual author,” which would refer to a mastermind. Rodríguez is thought to have taken charge of the removal of all traces of the cremated bodies. This was apparently done so thoroughly that investigators have found little in the way of remains, and have only identified one of the victims.
Already in custody is Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, capo of Guerreros Unidos, as well as then-Mayor José Luis Abarca, who is charged with setting the round-up in motion, and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, accused of involvement with organized crime. Most of the local police force is also behind bars. Another key suspect, gang member Gildardo López Astudillo, is still at-large.
The story broke Friday night via Twitter, which may be why the other four papers didn’t have it. However, there was still no news about it this morning in their online editions. The New York Times does feature it, which you can read in English here.
WHEN 3.5 BILLION PESOS AREN'T ENOUGH
There was also a development in another case that has stirred resentment. That would be the defrauding of thousands of clients — including state governments and courts — by the big financial firm Ficrea, whose ownership simply disappeared with the invested funds. El Universal reports as its top story: “More than 3.5 billion pesos seized from Ficrea owner.” The “seized” funds are those that were insured.
Federal banking and securities officials said those assets will be used to pay off the bilked investors. But Milenio’s No. 2 headline puts that in perspective: “Assets won’t be enough to pay clients.” Reforma’s second front-page head provides another juicy tidbit about Rafael Antonio Olvera Amezcua, the fugitive Ficrea owner: “Olvera fled with 25 million pesos . . . in cash.”
JOBLESS, BUT NOT DUMB
La Jornada takes a consistently critical approach to its new coverage, so it wasn’t about to let stand recent (relatively) positive news about a falling unemployment rate. It’s top story, with the headline “Unemployment growing among most educated: INEGI,” reveals a feature of the Mexican job market that shouldn’t be ignored. Figures coming from the National Statistics Institute (INEGI) show that the degreed population makes up nearly half (48.22%) of the nation’s jobless. The stereotype of Ph.D.’s driving taxis for cash is not all fiction.
WHEN TO ARREST, HOW TO VOTE, WHOM TO PAY
If elections are coming up, it’s the traditional time for the private sector to enhance its profile. Yesterday we learned that the Mexican Employers Confederation (Coparmex) had on Thursday lobbied the Peña Nieto administration to start cracking down on vandalism by activist teachers in the state of Guerrero. Maybe it's a coincidence that two were arrested Friday (and released) for tearing down campaign material.
Now, according to Reforma’s lead head: “IP preparing blacklist of pre-candidates.” “IP” is headline shorthand for the private sector, capitalized as Iniciativa Privada in Spanish. Doing the preparing is the Mexico City arm of Coparmex, which is vetting all announced hopefuls for congressional seats or other posts up for election in June. The list in question will be of those stained by corruption or scandal. It won’t be short.
Another business organization, Mexicanos Primero, focuses on education reform and has for several years now been going after teachers’ unions with a passion. Its action yesterday is summed up in Excelsior’s No. 2 front page headline: “Cleansing of teacher payroll called for.” The federal Education Secretariat (SEP) withheld payment to more than 48,000 teaching positions for the first pay period of 2015, citing “irregularities.” Mexicanos Primero says that’s not nearly enough, claiming that 298,000 names on the payroll are ghosts, freeloaders, non-teachers or other fraudulent collectors of wages.
Excelsior’s head is “Material author in Iguala case captured,” with “material author” implying more direct involvement in the carrying out of the atrocity than “intellectual author,” which would refer to a mastermind. Rodríguez is thought to have taken charge of the removal of all traces of the cremated bodies. This was apparently done so thoroughly that investigators have found little in the way of remains, and have only identified one of the victims.
Already in custody is Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, capo of Guerreros Unidos, as well as then-Mayor José Luis Abarca, who is charged with setting the round-up in motion, and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, accused of involvement with organized crime. Most of the local police force is also behind bars. Another key suspect, gang member Gildardo López Astudillo, is still at-large.
The story broke Friday night via Twitter, which may be why the other four papers didn’t have it. However, there was still no news about it this morning in their online editions. The New York Times does feature it, which you can read in English here.
WHEN 3.5 BILLION PESOS AREN'T ENOUGH
There was also a development in another case that has stirred resentment. That would be the defrauding of thousands of clients — including state governments and courts — by the big financial firm Ficrea, whose ownership simply disappeared with the invested funds. El Universal reports as its top story: “More than 3.5 billion pesos seized from Ficrea owner.” The “seized” funds are those that were insured.
Federal banking and securities officials said those assets will be used to pay off the bilked investors. But Milenio’s No. 2 headline puts that in perspective: “Assets won’t be enough to pay clients.” Reforma’s second front-page head provides another juicy tidbit about Rafael Antonio Olvera Amezcua, the fugitive Ficrea owner: “Olvera fled with 25 million pesos . . . in cash.”
JOBLESS, BUT NOT DUMB
La Jornada takes a consistently critical approach to its new coverage, so it wasn’t about to let stand recent (relatively) positive news about a falling unemployment rate. It’s top story, with the headline “Unemployment growing among most educated: INEGI,” reveals a feature of the Mexican job market that shouldn’t be ignored. Figures coming from the National Statistics Institute (INEGI) show that the degreed population makes up nearly half (48.22%) of the nation’s jobless. The stereotype of Ph.D.’s driving taxis for cash is not all fiction.
WHEN TO ARREST, HOW TO VOTE, WHOM TO PAY
If elections are coming up, it’s the traditional time for the private sector to enhance its profile. Yesterday we learned that the Mexican Employers Confederation (Coparmex) had on Thursday lobbied the Peña Nieto administration to start cracking down on vandalism by activist teachers in the state of Guerrero. Maybe it's a coincidence that two were arrested Friday (and released) for tearing down campaign material.
Now, according to Reforma’s lead head: “IP preparing blacklist of pre-candidates.” “IP” is headline shorthand for the private sector, capitalized as Iniciativa Privada in Spanish. Doing the preparing is the Mexico City arm of Coparmex, which is vetting all announced hopefuls for congressional seats or other posts up for election in June. The list in question will be of those stained by corruption or scandal. It won’t be short.
Another business organization, Mexicanos Primero, focuses on education reform and has for several years now been going after teachers’ unions with a passion. Its action yesterday is summed up in Excelsior’s No. 2 front page headline: “Cleansing of teacher payroll called for.” The federal Education Secretariat (SEP) withheld payment to more than 48,000 teaching positions for the first pay period of 2015, citing “irregularities.” Mexicanos Primero says that’s not nearly enough, claiming that 298,000 names on the payroll are ghosts, freeloaders, non-teachers or other fraudulent collectors of wages.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Today's Headlines: You don't see much in the way of courtroom drama movies made in Mexico. Time to do something about that.
Mexico City implemented a new system of streamlined, oral trials for non-major offenses Thursday, described by Reforma’s top headline as “First step taken on judicial reform.” More accurately, it's the first step taken in the Federal District. Twenty-eight states had already converted to the new system.
Even with the vast majority of crimes going unreported, the courts were hopelessly backlogged. They were also inefficient, opaque and not always dedicated to the honest dispensation of justice. The idea is for the new adversarial system to speed things along, clean them out and open them up. “Conciliation,” will also be encouraged. Serious crimes — kidnapping, murder, armed robbery — will be prosecuted in the traditional inquisitorial way for the time being, which in most cases takes place out of the sunshine.
THE PARTY PARTY
El Universal leads with “Mexico asks U.S. to extradite Ficrea owner.” Rafael Olvera Mezcua, the majority partner of the fraudulent financial firm, is thought to be in the United States. Interpol is also after him.
More interesting on El U’s front page is a fotonota — a picture with a head (“Another party”) and caption referring to a story inside — revealing that two PRD officials hosted a private party in a protected Mexico City historical site. The paper’s published photos (there’s a whole gallery on its web site, no doubt the work of a party guest with a cel phone) show José Luis Muñoz Soria, a federal deputy who is a candidate for delegation head of the downtown Cuauhtémoc borough, and the current Cuauhtémoc director of social development, his wife Verónica Olvera, and party guests. All are in formal attire that varies but makes a common statement: “I have more money than taste.”
According to EL U, the party took place on December 20 and violated several regulations governing the Capilla Británica, a neocolonial, turn-of-the-(20th)-century chapel supposedly reserved for cultural events and conferences. Those rules concern the time of night, the serving of alcohol and performances by live musicians.
Even if the couple shows they did nothing wrong, you have to wonder what they were thinking. You have to wonder even more when you remember that something similar had taken place months earlier at the Monument to the Revolution.
Against all odds, the PRD has managed to overtake the PAN and PRI in the bad image department. Are they trying to beat out the Green Party too?
VACATION TREND: MOJITOS ON THE BEACH AT VERADERO
La Jornada goes fiscal in its top head, announcing a “Budget gap of 198.36 billion pesos in 2014.” This was announced before, but repeated as Finance Secretariat officials met with a congressional committee. Falling oil prices are blamed.
Jornada also give a lot of play to the news that “Normalization of relations between U.S. and Cuba begins.” The reference is to new U.S. rules going into effect today that make it possible to go to Havana (as soon as the airlines are ready) simply by booking a flight online and getting to the airport on time.
KEEP ON TRUCKIN'. . . OR NOT
Excelsior also fronts the rules relaxation, but its top head gives the following statistic: “In Guerrero, 212 trucks taken.” That figure refers to delivery trucks stolen in just the last few weeks by protesting teachers and students. The story came out of a meeting Thursday between the Mexican Employers Confederation and Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.
Citing disappearing investment, Coparmex leader Juan Pablo Castañon asked Osorio for “immediate intervention, investigation and punishment of the guilty parties.” That would be a novel approach. Plenty of truck heists go unpunished nationwide — because the perpetrators are good at it and get away. Many, however, do get caught. It's the GPS age, after all.
In Guerrero, it's . . . different. The teachers affiliated with Ceteg announce their hijack plans in advance, carry them out in front of cameras, and then brag about their actions afterward.
Even with the vast majority of crimes going unreported, the courts were hopelessly backlogged. They were also inefficient, opaque and not always dedicated to the honest dispensation of justice. The idea is for the new adversarial system to speed things along, clean them out and open them up. “Conciliation,” will also be encouraged. Serious crimes — kidnapping, murder, armed robbery — will be prosecuted in the traditional inquisitorial way for the time being, which in most cases takes place out of the sunshine.
THE PARTY PARTY
El Universal leads with “Mexico asks U.S. to extradite Ficrea owner.” Rafael Olvera Mezcua, the majority partner of the fraudulent financial firm, is thought to be in the United States. Interpol is also after him.
More interesting on El U’s front page is a fotonota — a picture with a head (“Another party”) and caption referring to a story inside — revealing that two PRD officials hosted a private party in a protected Mexico City historical site. The paper’s published photos (there’s a whole gallery on its web site, no doubt the work of a party guest with a cel phone) show José Luis Muñoz Soria, a federal deputy who is a candidate for delegation head of the downtown Cuauhtémoc borough, and the current Cuauhtémoc director of social development, his wife Verónica Olvera, and party guests. All are in formal attire that varies but makes a common statement: “I have more money than taste.”
According to EL U, the party took place on December 20 and violated several regulations governing the Capilla Británica, a neocolonial, turn-of-the-(20th)-century chapel supposedly reserved for cultural events and conferences. Those rules concern the time of night, the serving of alcohol and performances by live musicians.
Even if the couple shows they did nothing wrong, you have to wonder what they were thinking. You have to wonder even more when you remember that something similar had taken place months earlier at the Monument to the Revolution.
Against all odds, the PRD has managed to overtake the PAN and PRI in the bad image department. Are they trying to beat out the Green Party too?
VACATION TREND: MOJITOS ON THE BEACH AT VERADERO
La Jornada goes fiscal in its top head, announcing a “Budget gap of 198.36 billion pesos in 2014.” This was announced before, but repeated as Finance Secretariat officials met with a congressional committee. Falling oil prices are blamed.
Jornada also give a lot of play to the news that “Normalization of relations between U.S. and Cuba begins.” The reference is to new U.S. rules going into effect today that make it possible to go to Havana (as soon as the airlines are ready) simply by booking a flight online and getting to the airport on time.
KEEP ON TRUCKIN'. . . OR NOT
Excelsior also fronts the rules relaxation, but its top head gives the following statistic: “In Guerrero, 212 trucks taken.” That figure refers to delivery trucks stolen in just the last few weeks by protesting teachers and students. The story came out of a meeting Thursday between the Mexican Employers Confederation and Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.
Citing disappearing investment, Coparmex leader Juan Pablo Castañon asked Osorio for “immediate intervention, investigation and punishment of the guilty parties.” That would be a novel approach. Plenty of truck heists go unpunished nationwide — because the perpetrators are good at it and get away. Many, however, do get caught. It's the GPS age, after all.
In Guerrero, it's . . . different. The teachers affiliated with Ceteg announce their hijack plans in advance, carry them out in front of cameras, and then brag about their actions afterward.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Today's Headlines: The fine print
Daily newspapers have come full circle since the 19th century. As in those days, modern Mexican front pages are filled with mini-items, often only a line or two long. Today’s papers don’t look the same, of course, as their text-heavy ancestors. White space and color photos open things up, and the short blurbs and teasers share space with bold mega-point headlines. But in today’s Milenio and La Jornada, for example, there are a dozen or so front-page items each, with only two (La Jornada) or three (Milenio) using headline type bigger that blurb size. Also, other than a short front-page editorial by Milenio editor Carlos Marín, provocatively titled “The perverse ‘search’ for the 42,’” there’s no body text on the cover of either tabloid Even the main headlines tease stories inside.
Milenio always uses a blaring three-deck, four-column (out of five) head for its top story, no matter how trivial the topic. Today it’s “Parents want to review army barracks beyond Iguala," which sounds like yesterday’s news. (“Parents” in Mexican news headlines these days usually refers to those of the disappeared normalista students, who in turn are referred to as "the 43" or "42"). A helpful kicker above the main head notes that “Around 400 military installations exist in the country,” which helps explain the adjective “perverse” in Carlos Marin’s headline.
The second head is “Debts to Oaxaca doctors paid,” which should put an end to work stoppages by public sector physicians in that state who hadn’t been receiving their salaries and bonuses owing to budget shortfalls. Then comes, at the lower left, this: "PAN leaders only think about themselves,” with a kicker indicating the quote’s author — Margarita Zavala. The wife of former President Felipe Calderón, Zavala is seeking the presidency of the conservative, pro-Church party, after the leadership rejected her bid to run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
The rest are teasers. Four are related to the main story: “Without sustenance” is another official denial that the military had anything to do with the Iguala calamity, this time from Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong. “DF, Oaxaca and Guerrero” refers to more open house at army installations in those three entities, in this case to allow "forensic archeologists" to look for the long-missing bodies of two former guerrillas. “There’s Progress: Peña,” comes from a speech by the president in which he noted the significant reduction of violence in the border city of Juárez, only recently one of the most terrifying towns in the world. “Commissioner” is about the one-year anniversary of Alfredo Castillo’s appointment as security commissioner to Michoacán, which essentially established federal control in that state. Castillo says crime has diminished since he rode into town. Others disagree.
The remaining Mileno teasers, reefers and fotonotas deal with Al Qaeda’s involvement in the Paris terror attack, the alliance between Milenio and the small newspaper El Mundo, the owner of the Chivas soccer club from Guadalajara denying that the team will be sold, the escalating amount of funds being handed out to the political parties for their campaigns (up 47% since 2009), and a list of today’s columnists.
THE ARMY FINDS ITSELF AT THE CENTER OF THE CONVERSATION
La Jornada leads with “CNDH will be invited to tour the Iguala barracks,” meaning that trained investigators of the National Human Rights Commission will accompany the parents of the 42 as they search for clues about their sons, at least in that one site. Excelsior also leads with a similar headline.
Yes, a lot of people see the effort to find the 42 alive as “perverse,” in Carlos Marin’s word. But the developments in the last two days has put the army in the middle of the muddle of news about human rights abuses. That's what the parents and their supporters want, and what the federal government has been trying to avoid.
Not helping matters from the feds’ point of view are headlines such as El Universal's leader today: “State of Mexico investigating 20 for torture in Tlatlaya.” Tlatlaya is the town where soldiers allegedly slaughtered 22 detained suspects. Torture is now part of the evolving picture. EL U also reports that three survivors of the massacre told investigators from the National Human Rights Commission that they were threatened and intimidated before they gave testimony.
We like to be thorough here at Today's Headlines, but not sadistic. So we'll spare you the rundowns of the other papers' reefers and teasers until future dates. They each go about it differently, but the goal is the same all round — to encourage newsstand browsers to buy the paper.
Milenio always uses a blaring three-deck, four-column (out of five) head for its top story, no matter how trivial the topic. Today it’s “Parents want to review army barracks beyond Iguala," which sounds like yesterday’s news. (“Parents” in Mexican news headlines these days usually refers to those of the disappeared normalista students, who in turn are referred to as "the 43" or "42"). A helpful kicker above the main head notes that “Around 400 military installations exist in the country,” which helps explain the adjective “perverse” in Carlos Marin’s headline.
The second head is “Debts to Oaxaca doctors paid,” which should put an end to work stoppages by public sector physicians in that state who hadn’t been receiving their salaries and bonuses owing to budget shortfalls. Then comes, at the lower left, this: "PAN leaders only think about themselves,” with a kicker indicating the quote’s author — Margarita Zavala. The wife of former President Felipe Calderón, Zavala is seeking the presidency of the conservative, pro-Church party, after the leadership rejected her bid to run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
The rest are teasers. Four are related to the main story: “Without sustenance” is another official denial that the military had anything to do with the Iguala calamity, this time from Interior (Gobernación) Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong. “DF, Oaxaca and Guerrero” refers to more open house at army installations in those three entities, in this case to allow "forensic archeologists" to look for the long-missing bodies of two former guerrillas. “There’s Progress: Peña,” comes from a speech by the president in which he noted the significant reduction of violence in the border city of Juárez, only recently one of the most terrifying towns in the world. “Commissioner” is about the one-year anniversary of Alfredo Castillo’s appointment as security commissioner to Michoacán, which essentially established federal control in that state. Castillo says crime has diminished since he rode into town. Others disagree.
The remaining Mileno teasers, reefers and fotonotas deal with Al Qaeda’s involvement in the Paris terror attack, the alliance between Milenio and the small newspaper El Mundo, the owner of the Chivas soccer club from Guadalajara denying that the team will be sold, the escalating amount of funds being handed out to the political parties for their campaigns (up 47% since 2009), and a list of today’s columnists.
THE ARMY FINDS ITSELF AT THE CENTER OF THE CONVERSATION
La Jornada leads with “CNDH will be invited to tour the Iguala barracks,” meaning that trained investigators of the National Human Rights Commission will accompany the parents of the 42 as they search for clues about their sons, at least in that one site. Excelsior also leads with a similar headline.
Yes, a lot of people see the effort to find the 42 alive as “perverse,” in Carlos Marin’s word. But the developments in the last two days has put the army in the middle of the muddle of news about human rights abuses. That's what the parents and their supporters want, and what the federal government has been trying to avoid.
Not helping matters from the feds’ point of view are headlines such as El Universal's leader today: “State of Mexico investigating 20 for torture in Tlatlaya.” Tlatlaya is the town where soldiers allegedly slaughtered 22 detained suspects. Torture is now part of the evolving picture. EL U also reports that three survivors of the massacre told investigators from the National Human Rights Commission that they were threatened and intimidated before they gave testimony.
We like to be thorough here at Today's Headlines, but not sadistic. So we'll spare you the rundowns of the other papers' reefers and teasers until future dates. They each go about it differently, but the goal is the same all round — to encourage newsstand browsers to buy the paper.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Why we're hearing more than the usual chatter about a vote protest
This year’s mid-term elections coincide with an epidemic of cynicism especially virulent even by Mexican standards. The national mood is nasty, and talk of turning an otherwise moribund election into a protest action has started earlier than usual.
Of course, election protest has always been part of the ritual. It can be big, a la Venezuela, with an entire political force boycotting the whole show — generally a ploy for turning certain defeat into a noble statement.
In the States it can take the form of a third-party candidate, like a Ralph Nader, who helped Bush to victory on the grounds that there was no difference between him and Gore. Turned out there was a rather signficant difference, and the world still hasn't recovered from it.
It can be a call for abstention by the Zapatistas in 2006, not generally heeded but perhaps enough to keep AMLO out of Los Pinos, given his razor-thin margin of defeat that year.
It can be the narcissist who, no matter what else is at stake, “just wouldn’t feel right” voting for a candidate who hadn’t committed political suicide by promising to legalize pot on day one, or whatever his pet single-issue was. As if en election were about his warm, fuzzy little feelings . . .
It can be the voto útil of 2000, in which supporters of the left-wing candidate, who was lagging in the polls, tossed aside their conviction to vote for the right-wing candidate. The idea was to get rid of the PRI at any cost. That cost was the most ineffective president in recent memory. They waited 72 years to oust the PRI. Six more would have killed them?
It can also be a reasonable response to a pseudo-election staged by an authoritarian state. Boycott or abstention may not change anything, but either beats lending legitimacy to a farce.
Things smell different this time around here in Mexico. Seldom has an election been so ripe for some kind of protest.
It isn’t so much the integrity of the election itself. To be sure, the process won’t be squeaky clean. Vote-buying, for example, will again be rampant, as it always will be as long as poverty is so brutal that a little added incentive for a vote is seen as morally equivalent to accepting a tip. Still, outright fraud is not the issue.
The issue is that the nation's entire institutional infrastructure is perceived as hopelessly corrupt. Not corrupt in a quaint, Runyonesque kind of way. Criminally corrupt. Violently corrupt. In the public eye, the lines separating the political leadership, law enforcement and organized crime are gone. They are three, yet one, like the Holy Trinity.
Worst of the lot are the political parties, rotten one and all to the core. Never revered, they’ve recently managed to sink to the bottom of public esteem. Each still has its voto duro — its base — but not one makes much of an effort any more to even pretend that they’re in it for any other reason than getting in on the action. Ideology no longer matters. The closest thing to a coherent program any candidate will offer is a parroting of the issues de jour, which this time around will be corruption and violence — precisely what they themselves are guilty of as far as the public is concerned.
Yet, save for a so-far insignificant handful of newly allowed independent candidates, this election is only about choosing between parties. To what appears to be a growing number of would-be voters, that’s like being asked which criminal organization you support. In any event, it doesn’t look like a productive way to force the state to clean itself up.
This isn’t Bush vs Gore, or AMLO vs Calderón. It’s not right vs left, free market vs anti-poverty, liberal vs conservative.
It’s rehabilitation vs implosion. And that’s not on the ballot.
Which is why some kind of election-related protest strategy seems attractive to so many people — responsible, non-fanatical people. What do they have in mind? Will it do any good? We’ll take a look next time.
Of course, election protest has always been part of the ritual. It can be big, a la Venezuela, with an entire political force boycotting the whole show — generally a ploy for turning certain defeat into a noble statement.
In the States it can take the form of a third-party candidate, like a Ralph Nader, who helped Bush to victory on the grounds that there was no difference between him and Gore. Turned out there was a rather signficant difference, and the world still hasn't recovered from it.
It can be a call for abstention by the Zapatistas in 2006, not generally heeded but perhaps enough to keep AMLO out of Los Pinos, given his razor-thin margin of defeat that year.
It can be the narcissist who, no matter what else is at stake, “just wouldn’t feel right” voting for a candidate who hadn’t committed political suicide by promising to legalize pot on day one, or whatever his pet single-issue was. As if en election were about his warm, fuzzy little feelings . . .
It can be the voto útil of 2000, in which supporters of the left-wing candidate, who was lagging in the polls, tossed aside their conviction to vote for the right-wing candidate. The idea was to get rid of the PRI at any cost. That cost was the most ineffective president in recent memory. They waited 72 years to oust the PRI. Six more would have killed them?
It can also be a reasonable response to a pseudo-election staged by an authoritarian state. Boycott or abstention may not change anything, but either beats lending legitimacy to a farce.
Things smell different this time around here in Mexico. Seldom has an election been so ripe for some kind of protest.
It isn’t so much the integrity of the election itself. To be sure, the process won’t be squeaky clean. Vote-buying, for example, will again be rampant, as it always will be as long as poverty is so brutal that a little added incentive for a vote is seen as morally equivalent to accepting a tip. Still, outright fraud is not the issue.
The issue is that the nation's entire institutional infrastructure is perceived as hopelessly corrupt. Not corrupt in a quaint, Runyonesque kind of way. Criminally corrupt. Violently corrupt. In the public eye, the lines separating the political leadership, law enforcement and organized crime are gone. They are three, yet one, like the Holy Trinity.
Worst of the lot are the political parties, rotten one and all to the core. Never revered, they’ve recently managed to sink to the bottom of public esteem. Each still has its voto duro — its base — but not one makes much of an effort any more to even pretend that they’re in it for any other reason than getting in on the action. Ideology no longer matters. The closest thing to a coherent program any candidate will offer is a parroting of the issues de jour, which this time around will be corruption and violence — precisely what they themselves are guilty of as far as the public is concerned.
Yet, save for a so-far insignificant handful of newly allowed independent candidates, this election is only about choosing between parties. To what appears to be a growing number of would-be voters, that’s like being asked which criminal organization you support. In any event, it doesn’t look like a productive way to force the state to clean itself up.
This isn’t Bush vs Gore, or AMLO vs Calderón. It’s not right vs left, free market vs anti-poverty, liberal vs conservative.
It’s rehabilitation vs implosion. And that’s not on the ballot.
Which is why some kind of election-related protest strategy seems attractive to so many people — responsible, non-fanatical people. What do they have in mind? Will it do any good? We’ll take a look next time.
Today’s Headlines: See? All you have to do is ask nicely.
A day after they tried to force their way into an Iguala army barracks using rocks, bottles and stolen trucks, parents of the disappeared Ayotzinapa students got permission to inspect army installations to their heart’s content. The family members contend that the students are alive and the military knows where they are. Their belief is not widely shared.
A spokesperson for the families said they plan to take full advantage of the invitation and will inspect “every barracks in the country.” If they mean that literally, they’ll be busy for a while. There are 44 military zones in Mexico, spread out over 12 regions.
The announcement came from the federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) after a long meeting Tuesday attended by the parents and several cabinet members, as well as Tomás Zerón de Lucio, head of the PGR’s Criminal Investigation Agency, who said, “The entry will have to be orderly and with respect for our institutions.” The parents will probably enter anyway.
Three dailies lead with the story, and the other two front it. Milenio plays it straight: “Barracks will be opened to the parents of the 43.” The “43” refers to the original number of missing students; the remains of one has since been identified. Three others were killed by local police before the abduction, as were three bystanders. Reforma’s head reminds readers of the context of the authorities’ tension-reducing move: “Barracks opened after the aggression.”
Excelsior, at least in its main head, goes with a different piece of news coming out of the meeting: “Army not at fault: PGR.” This is consistent with the PGR’s refusal to lend any credence to some press reports that the military may have been involved in the shooting and disappearance of the rural teachers college students in Iguala on September 26-27.
MACABRE EVIDENCE
El Universal leads with a massacre that the army clearly was involved in — the slaughtering in the State of Mexico town of Tlatlaya last June of 22 kidnapping suspects who had already been detained. The events were originally sold as resulting from a shoot-out, but evidence later surfaced that the suspects were gunned down in cold blood. Now, in the words of the El U head, “CNDH reclassifies Tlatlaya as a serious case.”
The CNDH is the National Human Rights Commission, and the word “serious” here (grave in Spanish) is a meaningful one, triggering an enhanced investigation. Helping sway the commission was evidence that at least five of the dead were shot repeatedly with their own weapons.
CRIME DOESN'T PAY
La Jornada turns to another source for its contribution to the unpleasant news of the day: “Latin America one of the most violent regions, World Bank says.” The World Bank wasn’t ranking world regions by violence in the report used for the story. It was pointing out that the situation hurt GDP growth throughout Latin America in 2014, which is expected to come in at 0.8% after reaching 2.5% in 2013. Murder rates three to four times higher than the global average had a lot to do with that, according to the report.
WHO'S PAYING WHOM?
Surely owing to the agency of an ill-natured duende, the following words got typed Monday in a Today’s Headlines item about the Oaxaca teachers in Section 22 of the education workers union (SNTE), and its parallel activist organization CNTE, being unhappy with a new payroll system: “ . . . payment [is] now coming via the state government rather than directly from the federal treasury.”
Tom Buckley, the former editor of The News who follows these things closely, points out that this is exactly backwards. Here’s his take:
* * * * *
Section 22 is protesting the fact that the federal government (SEP) is now managing the payroll, not that the state government is handling it. The way I understand it, the payments had been coming from the federal government to the state government which dumped the entire payroll into the IEEPO accounts (which Section 22 controls) and then the union distributed the money to the teachers (most likely siphoning off large amounts to finance the leaders and the “cause”). The new change means the federal government is paying the teachers directly. The CNTE is trying to paint their objections as part of their opposition to the new education reform, insisting that the change implies the reform is being imposed on them. However, the reality is probably that they don’t want to cede direct control of the purse strings.
—Tom Buckley
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Today's headlines: Another round
Parents of the 43 disappeared students and their allies struck again Monday, trying to force their way into an Army barracks in Iguala, Guerrero. Four civilians were injured in the ensuing battle, during which the parents, along with members of the militant teachers organization Ceteg and students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college, stole beverage delivery trucks and used them to try to ram their way in. The bottles themselves served as missiles.
All five major Mexico City dailies front the events, though only as a reefer in the case of Excelsior. Three lead with the story, and four of the five heads use a variation of Reforma’s “Army barracks assaulted in Iguala.” La Jornada spreads the blame around a bit more in its lead headline: “Fracas between civilian and military groups in Iguala barracks.”
The melee in Iguala, the city where the September 26 attack on the rural teachers college students took place, was part of a coordinated effort aimed at army barracks in five cities. The other four were the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo, the Michoacán state capital of Morelia, the port of Veracruz and a barracks in the south of Mexico City.
The parents, teachers and students insist that 42 of the 43 missing students are still alive, and the army knows where they are. They say their actions Monday were aimed at gaining access to the barracks so they could look for the disappeared students, or for clues to their whereabouts. Federal law enforcement officials, for their part, have refused to investigate possible military involvement in the September 26 events. The standoff ensures more violent actions by the Guerrero-based parents/teachers/students coalition. Tension, meanwhile, escalates.
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY
El Universal turns back to the Ficrea scandal for its top head: “Daughter of Ficrea’s managing partner reveals a luxurious lifestyle.” It’s a bizarre story, “the result of an investigation carried out by El Universal” which consisted of little more than browsing through social media sites to find photos posted by María Fernanda Olvera Silva, daughter of the fugitive owner of the fraudulent financial services firm.
Among the rich kid’s sins are attending a Super Bowl, sailing in a boat with her husband, posing with the pop singer Mijares, vacationing over the years in Africa, Europe and the United States, and taking in a NASCAR event. Pretty standard fare for the offspring of the well-to-do. True, most of them pull it all off without their father robbing billions of pesos from unsuspecting investors. Still . . . top front-page story? Really?
All five major Mexico City dailies front the events, though only as a reefer in the case of Excelsior. Three lead with the story, and four of the five heads use a variation of Reforma’s “Army barracks assaulted in Iguala.” La Jornada spreads the blame around a bit more in its lead headline: “Fracas between civilian and military groups in Iguala barracks.”
The melee in Iguala, the city where the September 26 attack on the rural teachers college students took place, was part of a coordinated effort aimed at army barracks in five cities. The other four were the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo, the Michoacán state capital of Morelia, the port of Veracruz and a barracks in the south of Mexico City.
The parents, teachers and students insist that 42 of the 43 missing students are still alive, and the army knows where they are. They say their actions Monday were aimed at gaining access to the barracks so they could look for the disappeared students, or for clues to their whereabouts. Federal law enforcement officials, for their part, have refused to investigate possible military involvement in the September 26 events. The standoff ensures more violent actions by the Guerrero-based parents/teachers/students coalition. Tension, meanwhile, escalates.
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY
El Universal turns back to the Ficrea scandal for its top head: “Daughter of Ficrea’s managing partner reveals a luxurious lifestyle.” It’s a bizarre story, “the result of an investigation carried out by El Universal” which consisted of little more than browsing through social media sites to find photos posted by María Fernanda Olvera Silva, daughter of the fugitive owner of the fraudulent financial services firm.
Among the rich kid’s sins are attending a Super Bowl, sailing in a boat with her husband, posing with the pop singer Mijares, vacationing over the years in Africa, Europe and the United States, and taking in a NASCAR event. Pretty standard fare for the offspring of the well-to-do. True, most of them pull it all off without their father robbing billions of pesos from unsuspecting investors. Still . . . top front-page story? Really?
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