Read the one assigned to you and respond to these prompts:
1. What is the author’s thesis?
2. Substantial list of data supporting the thesis.
3. 3 most interesting lessons learned.
4. What does this source suggest about the state of democracy in Mexico (a paragraph)?
5. 1 question for the author.
Mexico’s erratic and authoritarian president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is scheming to end the country’s quarter-century commitment to multiparty liberal democracy. He is subverting the institutions that have upheld Mexico’s democratic achievement—above all, the country’s admired and independent elections system.
“The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.” Leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins Mexico presidency in landslide with mandate to reshape nation. (Globalism is getting it from all sides.)
+ Here’s more on Obrador’s election from WaPo, including this remarkable detail. “The campaign season has been marked by violence, with some 130 candidates and campaign staff assassinated across the country.”
+ “For the past 12 years, Mexico has fought violent drug gangs by deploying thousands of police, soldiers and intelligence officers to crack down on cartels and their leaders. If its new president-elect gets his way, however, negotiation may replace the hard-line strategy that critics say has only perpetuated violence.”
These links are from Next Draft
Spatial divisions in Mexico’s modernisation are still obvious today…economic productivity in Nuevo León, a heavily industrialised state close to the American border, is at South Korean levels. In the south of Mexico it is close to that of Honduras. The country’s industrial clusters devoted to the manufacture of cars, planes, electric goods and electrical equipment—categories which between them account for two-thirds of Mexico’s manufacturing exports, and thus for about 18% of GDP—are largely to be found in a band next to its northern border and in the central states below it. These states account for about 70% of the 120m population.
Read this Economist Special Report on troubled economic development in Mexico.
Language is shaped by a people’s environment. Inuits famously have more than 50 words for snow, while Hawaiians have 65 to describe fishnets. In Mexico, there are 300 terms to refer to corruption.
They are compiled in a new book, the “Mexican Corruptionary,” a tongue-in-cheek effort to get Mexicans to own up to their corrupt behavior, which costs their country’s economy billions of dollars a year and has wreaked social havoc by undermining its institutions. It was put together by Opciona, a civil society group that seeks to improve civility in Mexico under the motto #EmpiezaPorTi, or start with you.
Mexicans rank corruption as their second biggest concern (link in Spanish) after insecurity and crime—which in turn can be linked to corruption via dirty elected officials. (See G, for Góber, short for governor. )
Twenty years after the uprising, activists say Zapatistas have influenced radical movements around the world.
“Today the rebellion remains a work in progress. Having established complete political and economic autonomy, the Zapatistas govern and police their own communities across five regions of Chiapas. Relations with the state remain strained, and Zapatistas complain of regular harassment by the military and paramilitary forces that surround their territory...
After the fall of the Soviet Union … and the collapse of so many revolutionary movements, it’s really become clear that the old, 20th-century model of revolution by building up the party and capturing control of the state just didn’t work,” explained Holloway, author of Change the World Without Taking Power…
A Place Called Chiapas is a 1998 Canadian documentary film of first-hand accounts of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) the (Zapatista Army of National Liberation or Zapatistas) and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the southwestern Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TffwElt_UU
A survey of 43 countries published on October 30th by the Pew Research Centre of Washington, DC, shows that people in emerging markets are within a whisker of expressing the same level of satisfaction with their lot as people in rich countries. The Pew poll asks respondents to measure, on a scale from zero to ten, how good their lives are. (Those who say between seven and ten are counted as happy.)
In 2007, 57% of respondents in rich countries put themselves in the top four tiers; in emerging markets the share was 33%; in poor countries only 16%—a classic expression of the standard view that richer people are more likely to be happy.
But in 2014, 54% of rich-country respondents counted themselves as happy, whereas in emerging markets the percentage jumped to 51%.
Maybe I should move to Mexico?
A new report by a Mexico-based think tank has revealed some real zingers, including 70 teachers who haul in more pesos than the president of the nation. One impoverished state, Hidalgo, was said to have more than 1,000 teachers listed as 100 or more years old.
The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) calculated the average teacher’s monthly salary at 25,000 pesos, or nearly $2,000, making it the highest paid profession in the country.
That salary is nearly three times the average of any other salary, thanks in large part to powerful labor unions that have secured high wages for teachers, who can sell their positions to friends or bequeath them to relatives, none of whom ever have to be tested for abilities or skills.
On February 2nd 1848, following a short and one-sided war, Mexico agreed to cede more than half its territory to the United States. An area covering most of present-day Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, plus parts of several other states, was handed over to gringolandia. The rebellious state of Tejas, which had declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, was recognised as American soil too. But a century and a half later, communities have proved more durable than borders.
Here is the 2012 survey and here are the response questions.
Also, so that we can refer to the piece in our conversation, please print out the one article assigned to you (just a couple pages).
All read and respond to the introductory article. Then Groups 1-4 read:
1. Señores, start your engines
2. The gain before the pain: Mexico’s demographic dividend will be short-lived
3. Stretching the safety net: Falling ill is no longer an economic disaster
4. Mexico’s states: The 31 banana republics
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has signed a controversial law that allows foreign companies to drill for oil for the first time since the sector was nationalized in 1938.
You were assigned to read and respond to the introduction AND one of the following articles from the Economist Special Report on Mexico:
The response questions are here.
So all of you will answer questions 1-6 after which you will only respond to the questions which pertain to the article assigned to you.
Also, so that we can refer to the piece in our conversation, please print out the one article assigned to you (just a couple pages).
As Mexico’s incoming President Enrique Pena Nieto prepares to take office, the BBC’s Will Grant looks at the challenges facing him and the mixed expectations of his population.
Yo Soy 132 is an ongoing Mexican protest movement centered around the democratization of the country and its media. It began as opposition to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican media’s allegedly biased coverage of the 2012 general election.The name Yo Soy 132, Spanish for “I Am 132”, originated in an expression of solidarity with the protest’s initiators.
The phrase draws inspiration from the Occupy movement and the Spanish 15-M movement.
On May 23, 2012, the movement released its manifesto. An excerpt from it states:
First – we are a nonpartisan movement of citizens. As such, we do not express support of any candidate or political party, but rather respect the plurality and diversity of this movement’s participants. Our wishes and demands are centered on the defense of Mexicans’ freedom of expression and their right for information, in that these two elements are essential to forming an aware and participating citizenry. For the same reasons, we support informed and well-thought out voting. We believe that under the present political circumstances, abstaining or making a null vote is ineffective in promoting the edification of our democracy. We are a movement committed to the country’s democratization, and as such, we hold that a necessary condition for this goal is the democratization of the media. This commitment derives from the current state of the national press, and from the concentration of the media outlets in few hands.
Domestic and international audiences are now looking to the next government to pass the structural reforms needed for Mexico to become more productive, more competitive, and grow faster. This starts with the state-owned energy sector. Enshrined in Mexico’s Constitution, oil reserves are property of the state, and managed by Petróleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX, which retains full, control over exploration, processing, and sales. A modest 2008 energy reform pushed on the margins of this arrangement, allowing Pemex to offer incentive-based service contracts to private firms. These new rules so far have disappointed, with few foreign oil companies substantially upping their foreign direct investment or bringing in the technological know-how needed to unlock potential reserves and boost long term production.
Though notoriously a political third rail in Mexico, during the campaign Peña Nieto promised to open up the sector to private investment, à la Brazil’s Petrobras. In a 2011 interview with Financial Times he claimed that Pemex “can achieve more, grow more and do more through alliances with the private sector.” He reaffirmed this position just this week when talking with the press—saying he was convinced that the PRI could reach an agreement on energy through “much negotiation ” between his party and the opposition.
The PRI also has the advantage of counting on the PEMEX union as a political ally rather than an opponent. In fact, the union’s leader, Carlos Romero Deschamps, was just elected to the Senate on the PRI’s proportional representation list, as was the union’s treasurer, Ricardo Aldana. Their presence, rather than stymieing negotiations, may help smooth the process.
Since 2004 oil output has dropped by roughly a quarter (stabilizing in 2010). Under the status quo many expect further declines, which are worrisome not just for the economy; oil revenues account for a third of the government’s budget. Even if production remains stable Mexico will likely become a net oil importer during Peña Nieto’s tenure. For a party that aspires to remain in power, unleashing additional revenues is vital.
An astute series of articles about Mexican culture and politics from BBC.
Ending the drug war is only half the battle for the candidates to replace Calderon in 2012; the second half will be convincing the rest of the world that Mexico’s not just a narco-state.
Read Malcolm Beath from FP Magazine
Methinks COHA underplays Mexican history when they conclude that, “Fox will go down in Mexican history as little more than a “lame duck” throughout his entire presidency, who failed to accomplish anything approaching a string of concrete improvements for his country, even though he held on as the symbol of Mexico’s turn to democracy.” But you should really explore the COHA argument and judge for yourself.
