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So earlier today, a commenter asked my opinion about recent developments in Mexico, and I said I’d have to follow-up later. Specifically, anonymous (who appears to be from the D.F.) wants to know what I think about the fact that gunmen shot at the armored SUV of the wife of a businessman who is in jail after videos surfaced two years ago showing him bribing a D.F. official and close aide of Lopez Obrador. This happened this morning, the day that new videos, documenting corruption by another AMLO-government official, were to be presented.

Since I can’t watch the debates, and I’m too zapped to work on the book (ok, that’s a bit of an excuse, I am just procrastinating a bit, but I’ll get back to work after I post), I poked around the interweb a bit to see what I could find.

Here’s the crop of articles that I skimmed quickly, followed by my reaction:

Milenio overview
Hearsay description of contents of videos that weren’t released (El Universal)
(I won’t speculate or comment on the fact that Robles and Ahumado chat on the phone.)
Lopez Obrador’s campaign claims videos won’t hurt him (El Economista)
Some inconsistencies hamper the investigation of the gun attacks (El Economista)–this is the story that is repeated most often

My summary of what happened and a little background for readers

A couple of years ago, while AMLO was Mayor of Mexico City (affectionately known as the D.F.), videos surfaced of a businessman (Ahumado) giving large bribes to a close aide of AMLO in the city government. The videos showed the aide grossly stuffing large bills into his pockets, etc. Lopez Obrador was able to claim that he didn’t know what his aides were up to and pretty well distanced himself from the corruption scandal. Some, however, continue to be skeptical…and skepticism is always helpful when you’re talking about Mexican politics.

Fast forward to now. Sometime recently (I don’t know exactly when; I haven’t followed it that closely), the businessman’s wife and/or others have said they would be releasing additional videos that further implicate officials in Lopez Obrador’s government of corruption. Those videos were to be released today. This morning at 6:30am, someone shot at the wife’s SUV as she took her children to school. Nine to ten bullets hit the vehicle.

The following items currently being reported lend themselves to interesting speculation and/or conspiracy building:

The presentation of the videos has now been postponed indefinitely, according to the wife.

The wife says all this could be cleared up if they would allow journalists to interview her husband.

The police claim that there are some problematic inconsistencies in the witness accounts of the shootings.

I’m fairly agnostic about the interpretation of events, but I can imagine how the pro-AMLO and anti-AMLO camps will try to spin these events.

The pro-AMLO spin:

This is just another example of the conspiracy against AMLO (possibly even engineered by Salinas). The videos won’t prove anything and probably don’t even have anything damaging. It’s all a stunt to try to make AMLO look bad. The videos, the shooting (the Suburban was armored, after all, so it wasn’t a serious attempt), the withdrawal of the videos is all a well-orchestrated stunt to smear AMLO just before the debates. If the videos really were damaging, they would have presented them anyway. They were trying to use the videos to blackmail the PRD city government into giving Ahumado certain privileges. This just goes to show how far the anti-AMLO forces will go to keep him out of office.

The anti-AMLO spin:

This is just more evidence of the bad, marginal, corrupt way that AMLO and his clique do politics. It’s not surprising given the types of seedy types his government has cultivated for support. (I’m imagining here people thinking about AMLO’s ties to leaders in some poor barrios of Mexico City.) Of course, some gangster shot at Ahumado’s wife to try to intimidate her into not releasing the videos, and apparently it has worked. If we elect AMLO, this is the type of gangsterism and lawlessness that we can expect to continue. Oh, and of course the pro-AMLO police are going to make it seem like a set-up; we all know we can’t trust the police.

So which is the truth? Heck, if I know.

The pro-AMLO position smacks of conspiracy-theory craziness, and the anti-AMLO position makes you wonder if supporters of AMLO would really be dumb enough to think that shooting at Ahumado’s wife would be better for AMLO than the videos being released. If his supporters are that simple-minded….Well, it doesn’t say a lot for him even if he is elected.

Or, at least I can’t get the feed to work. Maybe it’s blocking foreign IP addresses?

So, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to watch the videos on YouTube.

Bummer. I guess that means I get back to work now.

If you’re interested in watching or listening to tonight’s second debate among Mexico’s presidential candidates for the upcoming election, the Federal Electoral Commission Institute will be streaming it online at 8:30pm CST. This is the only official debate feed of the debate among the candidates.

Update: Read more about the rules and content of the debates.

Yesterday, I gathered all the materials for one chapter and typed notes for the chapter, too. Not as much progress as I would have liked, and I would hope that today would be better except that I have a service-related meeting this afternoon and will need to spend about an hour preparing for that. Grrr.

NOTE TO SELF: Next time I plan to write a book (or even just in general), type notes/summaries of the things I read as a I read them.

Read this FT article.

Pages written: 1-2
Chapters reorganized and outlined, but not entirely revised yet: 1

Goal for tomorrow: Finish outlining/taking notes for rest of chapter. Begin shaping it into final form. Get more done!

PS. Of course, I know no one really cares about my progress except me…but I find that it’s helpful to think that I’m going to post my progress each night before bed.

Caleron and Lopez Obrador in online news and searches.

Overall, today’s NYT Magazine story about the Lopez Obrador and the upcoming presidential election in Mexico is pretty good. I’m not sure that I entirely agree with the conclusion:

As the presidential campaign enters its final and critical phase, there is no longer any question of where this campaign is being fought: on the terrain of populism. The fact that Calderón has chosen to challenge López Obrador there, on what had always been AMLO’s home ground, is a testament to how much López Obrador’s campaign has changed Mexican politics. Of course, if López Obrador goes on to lose an election that, three months ago, most Mexicans thought he would win, that fact is not likely to be much of a consolation to him.

I say that I don’t entirely agree only because I’m uncomfortable with the emphasis on populism, especially given its recent association in the press with several South American leaders. Rather than try to categorize candidates or races, why not provide a better explanation of their positions? But, I guess it wouldn’t be as catchy without a way to group a whole range of candidates and positions together.

Luckily, in the rest of the article, the author tries to provide a more nuanced portrait of Lopez Obrador and his positions:

López Obrador himself scoffs at these fears. “Change is possible,” he told me when we spoke in April on the patio of his home in the gated community of Galaxia in Villahermosa, the capital of his native state of Tabasco. “Of course I understand that globalization is a fact and that one has to act within its parameters. But this does not mean that we here in Mexico have to continue as we have been doing. This country is immensely rich. Its problems are problems of maladministration — above all, of corruption.” And he added, “The point is that the Washington consensus” — as the neoliberal model of development is known — “was applied more rigidly here, by successive Mexican governments, than it ever was in the U.S. and Europe, where there are many protected sectors, above all agriculture.”

The passage above suggests that Lopez Obrador is critical of neoliberalism but also understands that a return to the economic policies of the 1970s (i.e., populist spending) would be unwise. Which is why it is surprising that the author would then go on to write this statement about AMLO:

In fact, he insists, the model has not worked, and he vows that if he is elected, he will pursue a very different set of policies, ones that serve the poor rather than the rich.

What I’ve read doesn’t suggest that AMLO will pursue a “very different set of policies.” Instead, it seems that he will keep many of the neoliberal reforms in place (i.e., keep free trade provisions, will not nationalize industries that were recently privatized, respect central bank policy, etc.), but what he has promised to change is spending on the poor. Granted, how he’ll pay for all that is a difficult, and unanswered, question.

This passage about migration also reflects a more subtle picture of AMLO, the candidate:

“If I am elected,” he told me, “I will propose a conference on migration with the United States. Building a wall is not a viable solution. The only thing that will work is creating jobs in Mexico. Fox was not able to maintain good relations with Washington. But I can’t see any reason why I can’t succeed in doing so.”

This accomodationist language toward the United States might seem surprising coming from the politician the Calderón campaign has tried to associate with Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro’s greatest ally and the Latin American politician Washington fears most these days. But, in fact, it is consistent with the position López Obrador has taken throughout the campaign. His aides often point out that he has no quarrel with the United States, and in his campaign he reserves his scorn for the political and business establishment of Mexico. Although some American observers remain fearful of his leftist tendencies — The Wall Street Journal ran a column in March worrying that AMLO might be “laying the groundwork for an assault on the private sector” — none of the Americans I spoke to in Mexico seemed to believe that López Obrador will nationalize oil and gas resources, as Evo Morales has done and Hugo Chávez has threatened to do.

Update: After poking around the blogosphere some more, I find that Greg had a similar reaction to the article. The article is inconsistent–perhaps the effects of an editor trying to spice it up?

3.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the most economically advanced Latin American countries established extensive welfare institutions for government and industrial workers, only to begin the process of dismantling some of those institutions, notably pensions, in the last two decades of the century. Social insurance, including extensive pension, health, and worker’s compensation programs, protected formal sector workers, or those in the regulated labor market, in the majority of Latin American countries by mid-century. These welfare institutions were often central to the fabric of political life. The debt crisis of the 1980s ushered in a new economic orthodoxy and efforts in most countries to substantially reform social insurance institutions, though with varying success. The reform or privatization of public pensions was the most notable of this trend, though public health insurance was also targeted for reform. Given their political importance, the reform of these welfare institutions was (and is, where reform efforts are on-going) highly contentious. Despite the centrality of these welfare institutions to Latin American politics, few studies have systematically examined their political origins and historical development. This lacuna is conspicuous when compared to the extensive comparative literature on similar welfare institutions in the advanced industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America. This book begins to bridge this gap in our understanding of the dynamics of welfare in Latin America through a comparative historical analysis of social insurance institutions in Mexico since the Mexican Revolution.

The study of welfare in Mexico provides a good opportunity to deepen our understanding of the politics of welfare in Latin America because Mexico suggests a number of interesting theoretical puzzles. For instance, why would a country that was predominantly agrarian in the 1940s opt to invest considerable political and economic resources into welfare institutions that benefited a small, but growing, number of primarily urban, industrial workers? If the creation and expansion of welfare in Europe is associated with the expansion of suffrage to workers and the consolidation of democracy at the turn of the twentieth century, why were welfare institutions created during the consolidation of authoritarianism in Mexico? And, if organized labor was so co-opted and weak during the height of Mexican authoritarianism in the 1950s through 1970s, why was this the period of greatest expansion of welfare coverage and benefits? And more recently, if the regime that dominated Mexican politics for the majority of the twentieth century had so completely established control of organized labor, why was the regime unable to impose all the pension and health insurance reforms it favored during the 1990s? The answers to these questions, I argue, can be found in the relationship between organized labor and the state and in the processes of institutional change. My explanation is not one that stresses Mexican exceptionalism, though Mexican history does reveal certain particularities. Because my explanation is theoretically grounded in the literatures on welfare and institutional change, it emphasizes the theoretical affinities between the Mexican experience and those in other countries that have faced the incorporation of an organized working class into national politics.

This piece does a good job providing a little background.

Because of course, they like to paint him as a Chaves (Venezuela) or Morales (Bolivia) figure, when he’s probably more like a Lula (Brazil), at least when it comes to the economy. In recent campaign appearances, he’s tried to reassure voters (and investors) that he won’t destabilize the economy:

“Las reservas de divisas del Banco de México las tienen que manejar el gobernador y los técnicos financieros de la institución. Para que quede claro: la política económica que vamos a manejar va a guiarse con criterios técnicos, no ideológicos”, dijo el candidato presidencial de la coalición Por el Bien de Todos, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, antes de iniciar el primero de sus cuatro mítines este día por Jalisco, en su séptima y penúltima gira de campaña por la entidad.

I think this statement is consistent with his past behavior, especially during the desafuero (also). And, with no re-election, an AMLO in office would have little incentive to use outrageous populist spending–the best legacy would be stable economic growth, and I suspect that AMLO knows that.

2. But that’s ok.

Includes results from various polling agencies, not just Reforma.

Super interesting.

Also visit this great site where you can view public candidate statements by topic. Like this search on pensions.

Both via MexiCronicas, with this clever animated .gif. [Calderon in blue, AMLO in yellow, and that other guy in red]

Today, La Jornada is running a story that tries to besmirch Calderon’s reputation. During his tenure as President of the PAN, the party ran television ads to convince people that FOBAPROA would effectively rescue the banking system. FOBAPROA was a banking bailout that has been highly criticized for compensating the rich for risky investment and banking behavior. It is highly unpopular. During Calderon’s tenure as party President, the party asked for 5 million pesos reimbursement from the government for the FOBAPROA ads. And the leftist La Jornada is now reminding voters of that.

12. I’m hoping for at least another 10 tomorrow.

At least I haven’t heard of any of them threatening violence.

The following are excerpts from the editor’s report for Sociological Methodology (scroll down to SM):

Your editor reports a year of drama and success in preparation of his final volume of Sociological Methodology….

This has been a year punctuated by drama. Your editor seems to have encountered once again a small, previously unrecognized, nascent social movement that he calls the Thin-Skinned Scholar Movement (TSSM). TSSM serves the needs of scholars who object to publication of opinions that contradict their own. Your editor believes that the goals of TSSM are misguided, as his own professional fortunes have been advanced by the publication of debates about his own research. More important, disagreement is fundamental to scholarship, making the suppression of disagreements a fundamental violation of the purpose for which Sociological Methodology is published….

Your editor is deeply distressed by the style of the TSSM. In particular, consider the following incident: Several weeks ago, I encountered a thin-skinned scholar, who was driving in his car as I walked to my own car in a parking lot. Apparently unimpressed by the writings of Miss Manners, this scholar opened his car window, loudly and repeatedly declared strong views about the composition of my head and the phylum in which I should be classified, and rapidly drove his car so close to me that it did, on the third such maneuver, brush against my pants. I wonder still, is this thin-skinned scholar just a talented and kind-hearted stunt-driver with unusual ideas about parking? Or does he reveal true malice, a will to evoke fear and a willingness to use his car to damage a pedestrian? These are questions that I cannot answer. But answers are suggested by his emailed statement (with copies to others) that he would be pleased to see my body lifeless and in pieces. More to the point, these are questions that no editor should have to consider. This thinskinned scholar has wasted great volumes of an editor’s time and effort, reviled the editor in numerous hostile email letters (with copies sent to a variety of others), delayed publication of Sociological Methodology, wasted hours of time by talented and highly-paid lawyers, and badly strained relations between an editor who sought to uphold the principles under which scholarly journals are published, and the ASA executive officer, who sought to save the ASA the expense and trouble of a lawsuit by an enraged scholar.

This makes those Lodge and Russo books seem less like fiction.
Via Freakonomics, where Levitt asks readers to publicly out who the culprit may be. [The editor is on the faculty at Chicago.]

Miss Manners has suggested that students address their emails to Professor X or Dr. X, even when the professor signs “Firstname.”

I usually use the strategy used by Chris. I sign “md” with my signature below, with the following exceptions–if an undergraduate student sends me an email with a salutation “Hey” or “Miss Dion” or the dreaded “Mrs. Dion” OR if a graduate student sends me an overly formal email with “Dear Dr. Michelle Dion” (yes, this happens). In the former case, I sign my reply “Dr. Michelle Dion,” with the signature and in the latter, I sign “Michelle” with the signature. I’m hoping to correct overly informal and overly formal tendencies in favor of some middle ground. [In my department, several faculty members expect even graduate students to address them as Dr., so I also have to be careful not to deviate too much from that norm.]

Unlike Margaret, I am annoyed when I get a “hey” email. I also work in an engineering institution with too many young male students who seem to refer to my male colleagues as “Dr. Whoknowseverything” and my female colleagues as “Miss Whatwasyournameagain.”

While I’m personally not real picky with how students address me as long as they are respectful (which in my case has seldom been a problem–I’m a commanding 5’1″), I am sensitive to the pervasive gender biases among our students. To make a point to them, I address the problem directly, often with humor. By the end of the semester, students always get the gender pronoun right when we discuss different authors of the articles we read, so I feel justified in my little bit of consciousness raising. And no one has ever complained about it on my evaluations either.

Brian and I have been married 8 years today. We have been a couple a total of 13 years. We have known each other almost 23 years. And we’re still best friends–quite an accomplishment, I’d say.

After a White Sox game in April.

The PRI plans to expel party leaders who have suggested voters should vote for either AMLO or Calderon. Among those to be expelled are Senator Bartlett (for supporting AMLO), Senator Borrego (former head of IMSS, President of the party, and wanna-be presidential candidate in 94–for supporting Calderon), and Gordillo (former #2 at the party and head of the teacher’s union–for….being Gordillo?). (Bloomberg version.)

More on the polls and why some on the street think that Madrazo is behind.