Gage A. Griffin
It’s nice to be an Aunt.
Year: 2005
Shooting in all directions
Elba Esther gave a lively press conference yesterday, during which she said things like:
“[Madrazo] es un seductor” but “¡Con Madrazo no me vuelvo a reunir! ¡No quiero verlo! ¡Se acabó! ¡Es más, dejaré de hablar de él!” [and then proceeded to discuss him for the remainder of the meeting]
“¡Estoy harta de que me pongan el sello de salinista!”.
“[Madrazo] Es el político de las ces: ”Lo promueve Carlos Hank, lo financia Carlos Cabal y lo hace gobernador Carlos Salinas, mientras, ¡qué paradoja!, hace exactamente lo contrario por lo que luchó su padre, Carlos A. Madrazo: la democratización del PRI”
“es fácil esconderse detrás de las faldas de una mujer, pero hay que ver si en los pantalones hay lo que hace falta”
“¡Estoy hasta la madre de la actitud de Roberto [Madrazo]!”
“Me costó mucho dejar mi cargo, pero sería estúpido de mi parte seguir donde no me quieren.” […and so many are wondering what took her so long to wise up….]
Elba Esther and the PAN?
Oh my. The PAN leadership says it’s important for candidates to maintain good relationships with leaders like Gordillo, and the President’s office admits that Gordillo is a friend of the President.
Many who have whispered about La Maestra’s ties to Fox can now openly say, “I told you so.”
Here we go again
The PRI and PAN are planning to take up the issue of labor reform, again. I would put the probability of success at less than 30%.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire trailer
Here.
Social security & union follow-up
The Secretary of Labor discussed the social security conflict at a meeting of the Telmex workers’ union, another of the founding members of the UNT.
Elba Esther, destroyed but not defeated
La Maestra finally stepped down from her PRI post, saying that she could be destroyed but not defeated, to quote Hemingway. This article has a very good history of her conflict with Madrazo over the last 5 years. Madrazo is relieved. Other PRIistas are relieved. And the PRI leadership has already been reorganized.
Meanwhile, La Maestra has not ruled out her own presidential bid, though finding a registered party that doesn’t already have a candidate may be a challenge. She’s not ruling out a small party, however. She had much more to say, and most of her statement is reprinted by La Jornada.
If I were a Mexican politician, I think I would be more worried now that she’s untethered to any one party. At least if she’s in your party, you can try to reason with her. On her own, who knows what trouble she can cause.
AMLO PRD candidate by default
The PRD will submit the paperwork to officially make AMLO its candidate for President in 2006. (Though the exact timing of the submission will be delayed because of election rules and legal concerns.) They will forego the open primary that was planned. Lopez Obrador is the only candidate that registered with the party for the nomination.
How’s that for democracy?
Capital flight?
Between January and July of this year, Mexicans have sent over 1 billion US$ abroad for safekeeping. Moving your money abroad before an election is nothing new in Mexico, especially given the devaluation after Salinas left in late 1994. (Although, in 1994-95, a lot of the capital that left was foreign in the first place.) This year, however, Mexicans have already sent more money abroad than they did in 2000, which should give you a good sense of public sentiment and uncertainty concerning the 2006 elections.
From my inbox….
Need a place to send that manuscript of non-results lying dormant in your bottom drawer? Try this new journal this new journal. (Thanks for the correction, Chris.)
I wonder, what would Munger think? Would a publication in the Journal of Spurious Correlation be better than no publication at all?
As a Popperian social science, I often wonder why major political science journals only publish results that support hypotheses and few that falsify them. Since political science is a Popperian social science (in general), why do major journals in the discipline only publish results that support hypotheses and few that falsify them? Maybe this is one step in that direction.
No campaigning in the U.S. in 2006
The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute finally issued some guidelines for absentee voting by Mexican nationals living abroad and campaign activities abroad in 2006.
According to La Jornada:
Estas opciones, impulsadas en principio por el PRD, permitirían subsanar la ausencia de campañas que por disposición expresa de la legislación operará en el proceso electoral de 2006. En el documento que este miércoles habrá de aprobar el Consejo General del IFE, se establecen prohibiciones mas allá de las campañas y se alude incluso a las actividades ordinarias:
“Durante el proceso electoral federal, en los plazos establecidos por el Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales -en cuanto arranque del proceso electoral, en octubre próximo-, los partidos políticos no podrán erogar recursos provenientes del financiamiento público o privado, en cualquiera de sus modalidades, para actividades ordinarias en el extranjero”, definidas éstas como todas aquellas que no estén comprendidas en las actividades de campaña.
Ello, además de ratificar las disposiciones de ley, subrayando la expresión “en ningún tiempo”, que fue el supuesto que argumentaron para sugerir al aspirante perredista, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, no salir a Los Angeles. En el artículo 2, se cita que “se entienden como actos de campaña las reuniones públicas, asam-bleas, marchas y en general aquellas actividades en las que los partidos políticos, sus candidatos o voceros se dirijan al electorado para promover sus candidaturas” a los diferentes puestos de elección.
En este supuesto se considera que los partidos políticos que realizan actividades de campaña a través de sus candidatos, dirigentes, militantes, simpatizantes, empleados, e incluso personas ajenas a estos organismos, si los actos de estos últimos inciden en el cumplimiento de las funciones del partido político, así como en la consecución de sus fines. Asimismo se estipula que los partidos tienen prohibido contratar en México o en el extranjero, por sí mismos o por interpósita persona, mensajes o propaganda electoral que se difundan fuera del país, cualquiera que sea su duración, contenido o formato.
I guess that means that we won’t get any campaign stops in the U.S., nor we will get to watch campaign ads on Spanish-language television in the U.S. On the other hand, I wonder how this will affect parties with foreign offices, like the PAN. Will they have to close?
Calderon “feels like a winner”
At an impromptu news conference (that, not incidentally, was covered in the leftist La Jornada), Calderon said he already felt that he had won the PAN nomination and was looking toward the elections in 2006.
He said that Creel’s problems had to do with his strategists and that Cardenas Jimenez sought to divide, rather than unite, PANistas.
When asked about whether there was a place for Elba Esther in the PAN if she is expelled from the PRI (see related story about procedures to expel La Maestra), Calderon said he didn’t think La Maestra was looking for another party and that he wanted to “dialogar con los maestros de México, encontrar las diferencias y resolverlas por el bienestar de la educación nacional.”
This is fairly consistent with the PAN’s strategy toward teachers in general; try to talk directly to teachers without engaging the union. Such a strategy seems more feasible in the post-2000 world, where the teachers’ union, too is being pulled this way and that by political alliances with the PRI and the PRD at different levels of organization.
Fighting fire with fire
As I’ve mentioned before, the workers of the Mexican Social Security Institute, which is the largest public health care institution in Mexico, have an on-going conflict with the Institute’s administration.
This week, the union plans to submit a counter-reform proposal to the floor of the Chamber of Deputies in order to overturn the August 2004 reform. Essentially, since all its legal options via the Mexican courts have not stopped the reform, the union has decided to try fighting the reform in Congress.
As the article points out, the union will need to get support not only from the PRD, but also smaller opposition parties like the PT and Convergencia and a section of the PRI. The Congressional committee that will need to vote to pass the reform initiative to the flow is chaired by a PRDista and leader in the teachers’ union. Several of the committee members are PRDistas, who are more likely to support the union’s counter-reform proposal since they voted against the August 2004 initiative. On the other hand, most of the PRIistas on the committee voted in favor of the reform in August 2004, even though they are union reps themselves. I’d give the initiative a 50-50 chance of getting out of committee, though the union official cited in the article talks about it as a sure thing. If it does make it out of committee, I’d say pre-election politics have a lot to do with it.
The strike deadline for the new contract expires in mid-October. The union could shut down the public health care system by striking and maybe even rally enough support for a general strike. In the past, the union leadership avoided such measures, in large part because its leadership was closely associated with the PRI. At the same time, the union is technically an “unofficial” union (i.e., not formally allied with the PRI) and is one of the founding members of the UNT, an organization of “independent” unions.
In August 2004, the main leader of the union was roundly criticized by the rank-and-file and other independent union leaders for not standing up to the social security administration and mobilizing the full weight of the union. Since then, delegations and sections of the union have been cozying up to the PRD, and the umbrella organization to which it belongs (the UNT) has formalized its alliance with the PRD in 2006. It’s not likely that the union leadership will be able to maintain its close ties with the PRI if it’s being pressured from above and below to rethink that alliance. Further, it’s not likely that the PRI would consider credible any union promises for future electoral support of the party. (See also: Some say Elba Esther can’t promise the PRI the teacher vote either.)
All this leaves me wondering whether the union leadership will indeed strike in October and try to force the administration’s hand. The current political context makes it seem more likely than ever.
Viva Mexico Cabrones!
Go to story from El Universal.
Today is Mexican Independence Day. Tomorrow, everyone will be crudo and sleep in.
If you want to smear your enemy….
Say they hang out with Salinas. At least, that strategy works in Mexico.
Lopez Obrador cancels campaign stop in L.A.
As I mentioned before, now that the government has approved absentee voting, politicians have an incentive to court the 1.5 million voters (of an estimated 3 million citizens) who reside in the U.S. AMLO was going to visit a Mexican Independence Day celebration tomorrow in L.A., but cancelled it due to warnings from IFE that it might violate election law.
Belated Mexican politics update
Last Sunday, the PAN held its first stage of the internal election to determine its presidential candidate for 2006. The forerunners were Santiago Creel (Secretary of State under Fox) and Felipe Calderon. Caleron won with 45.6% of the vote, while Creel came in second with 35.5%. (You can listen to audio of the press conference online.) Creel had been criticized for his involvement with the desafuero of Lopez Obrador and more recently, his approval of gambling concessions that were ultimately rescinded.
Since the elections, some have asked what high levels of abstention mean for the democratic process within the PAN. You can visit Calderon’s website and read a summary of his experience.
Updated to add: You can visit the PAN’s election website and view a map of the remaining elections.
The remaining stages include votes in the North and South and the D.F., but it’s likely that Calderon will stay in front. Creel is unlikely to garner a larger margin in many of those states, and will certainly do worse in his home district, Mexico City. His performance as Secretary of State and participation in the desafuero has not endeared him to many, including many PANistas (who in the past voted for the PAN as a vote against the PRI). Cardenas Jimenez is a very distant third, and while he may do well in his home state of Jalisco (where he was governor), Calderon also has yet to compete in his home state of Michoacan (though his ties to the state are perhaps weaker than Cardenas’s ties to Jalisco). I think Cardenas Jimenez will have a difficult time overcoming Calderon. Calderon has had a high profile in the party (former President of the Party in the late 1990s) and publicly, but has also avoided major posts with controversy (with the Secretary of Energy being a possible exception), which gives him legitimacy without all the baggage of Creel.
That Calderon had already begun distancing himself from Fox and Creel will only be to his advantage, now that some claim that Fox is trying to interfere in the internal struggle tearing apart the PRI.
Essentially, as I have explained before (but am too lazy to dig through the archives to find the links), the President of the PRI was Madrazo and the Secretary General (#2) of the PRI was La Maestra or La Profesora or Elba Esther. Madrazo wants to be the PRI candidate for President of the country, but to do so, he must step down as President of the PRI. The statutes of the PRI dictate that the Secretary General would automatically take his place. Since La Maestra is such a polarizing figure and many PRIistas do not support her, this has caused many problems. Non-Elbista PRIistas fear, and perhaps rightly so, that once in control of the PRI as President, she would control the PRI with an iron-fist as she has the teachers’ union for decades.
This means that since April, the PRI has been trying to figure out some way to allow Madrazo to step down without allowing Gordillo (Elba Esther) to entrench herself in the PRI Presidency. Talks were made of a pact allowing a short-term transition and then the election of a new PRI President and CEN (National Executive Committee), but few of the PRIistas trust each other to not defect from any pact, and again, probably rightly so. [There’s probably a really neat game that could be used to model the interactions, and since the PRI institutions are weak, defectors are probably not likely to be punished, making cooperation that much more difficult.]
It seems that the PRI figured out a way to get a new President without allowing La Maestra to take the post, but it involved calling a meeting and making some changes and decisions that didn’t necessarily follow the letter of PRI statutes. And, unfortunately for the PRI, there is now external oversight of internal party processes, including a court designed to resolve conflicts and hear disputes, to which La Maestra filed a petition contesting the decision to replace Madrazo with Mariano Palacios Alcocer. The tribunal has decided only some of the issues under review, granting a small procedural win to the PRI, but the main claim by La Maestra has yet to be reviewed. I wouldn’t bet on the remaining cases filed by either side.
Madrazo is now saying that Fox has been working with La Maestra to undermine the PRI and is especially interested in supporting the Elbistas now that his horse in the PAN race has lost. (There have been other instances where the media have suggested that Fox and La Maestra have formed pragmatic alliances. Again, too lazy to look up my previous posts, but they exist.) There’s talk of expelling her from the Party, but she won’t go without a fight. (Though she has had several health problems in recent years that may make it more difficult.)
The other five pre-candidates for the PRI (remember Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo, TUCOM?) are notably quiet during this fracas. I’m thinking it can only hurt Madrazo and make him even less likely to “win” the PRI nomination, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still nominated.
(What’s the difference? Well, I think this public struggle with La Maestra will only hurt even more his public image and he will lose any waning public support he might have had. Since internal PRI election procedures are closed to registered members of the party and the potential for fraud is still real, I wouldn’t be surprised if Madrazo was still “elected” to be the PRI candidate. I think he’s one of the weaker PRI candidates in a race against Calderon and Lopez Obrador, though.)
In a Calderon, Lopez Obrador, and Madrazo race, I would put my money on either Calderon or Lopez Obrador. I think Jackson would be a poor choice, too, given his role in the desafuero. It’s going to be an interesting election year.
Favela tourism
See Rio the way thousands of favela residents see it:
“In a very central part of the city (Laranjeiras/Santa Teresa), inside Rio´s most beautiful and tranquil favela, the unique Hostel “Favelinha” welcomes travelers from around the world. It gives backpackers and other interested tourists the opportunity to discover what life is like for a great majority of Rio´s inhabitants. You will be amazed at how friendly you will be welcomed by the people in the favela and you will not believe your eyes when you step out on your balcony and start to overlook the bay of Guanabara, the sugar loaf and some of Rio´s famous beaches like Botafogo and Flamengo.”
Favela where Pousada Favelinha is located.
According to this story in a major Brazilian news magazine, only 20% of Rio residents live in favelas.
Favela tourism has been around for a while, though the local guide we used for our study abroad trip in 2003 told us that it was too dangerous to visit the favelas at that time. (And, maybe it was too dangerous to take 20 young U.S. students. On the other hand, he took us to see live, street capoiera in an area crawling with paint-huffing street children, so it’s all relative.)
Here’s a satellite photo of Rio’s largest favela (Rocinha), which is less than a kilometer from the beach and very close to some of the most expensive real estate in Rio.
If I remember the geography of Rio correctly, you can see the favela Rocinha in the background of this Ipanema beach photo. It’s the area sloping up the hillside.
I was only in Rio 4-5 days with our study abroad program, but I was amazed at the extent to which the violence and poverty associated with drug running and the favelas was kept away from the touristy areas near the beach (where our study abroad was centered). The order in the Copacabana and the Ipanema areas belied the poverty and dangerousness associated with urban Brazil. Whereas, even when you’re in ‘nice’ parts of the D.F., you can still sense the poverty and disorder and feel that the city is living on the edge of chaos.
For a Amores Perros-like look at life in the favelas, you can watch City of God. (I admit that I haven’t seen this one yet. We missed it on the big screen, and then didn’t really want to watch it while living in Mexico City. Just like I wouldn’t watch Amores Perros while living in the D.F. It would just heighten anxiety about living in the city.
For a Hollywood-esque look at life in the favelas, you can watch Orfeu, with music by Caetano Veloso.
For a sense of the optimism of the late 50s when economic prospects looked good for Brazil, I recommend Black Orpheus. (Orfeu is a bad remake of the classic.)
Thanks, Elena Mary, for the suggestion.
New site on Brazilian politics
Here. Not much content yet, but it has the potential to grow.
According to an article in the Comparative Politics section newsletter, five percent of all comparative dissertations are about Mexico. Maybe I should start a Mexican politics site. Any takers?