Peña Nieto to mark new cycle in Mexican history
It is fitting then, that this will be the month that Mexican history rolls both forward and backward at once. After a 12-year hiatus, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will reclaim power on Saturday, December 1, when Enrique Peña Nieto is sworn in as president.
The fresh face of a party still intrinsically linked to an authoritarian age of political dinosaurs, Peña Nieto won 38 percent of the vote, beating his closest rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by a margin of around three million votes.
Having ruled Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until the turn of the century, the PRI lost successive elections to National Action Party (PAN) candidates Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon in 2000 and 2006.
This was considered a major turning point in the nation’s history. Yet Mexico’s nascent democracy has struggled, with the 2006 and 2012 elections both marred by allegations of voting fraud.
The PRI appeared fatally wounded in 2000, but now voters have surrendered their country to the ghosts of the past, like a damaged spouse returning to her abusive ex.
Fox and Calderon must shoulder much of the blame for failing to convince Mexico that their pro-business party offered an improvement on the ways of old.
Above all else, two overriding factors explain why the PAN fell from first to third in the polls over the last six years: inequality and insecurity.
Despite the country’s steady but unspectacular economic growth under Calderon, inequality has also risen, with more than half of Mexicans now living in poverty. A lack of opportunities for those at the bottom has in turn fueled the violence in Mexico, as the poorest are driven to a life of crime in order to make ends meet.
Some 60,000 were slain during Calderon’s six-year war on drug trafficking. But for every capo felled by the government, new rivals sprung up in their place, ever-more savage in their lust for power.
In this context, Mexico’s left could and perhaps should have benefited from the failings of the conservative PAN, but Lopez Obrador was unable to find a message attractive enough for voters to put aside their reservations over his divisive persona. Liberals will now be looking to outgoing Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard in the hope that he provides a more modern and appealing candidacy in 2018.
In the meantime, the PRI will reassert its control over Mexico. Only now will we find out what the still-enigmatic Peña Nieto has in store for the country. Only now will we find out if the next cycle in the Mayan calendar sees Mexican history move forward or backward.
Calderon to draw massive state pension
Calderon will receive 19,000 dollars per month, equivalent to 228,000 dollars a year, from the federal government, which already pays out a total of 2.23 million dollars a year to former presidents Luis Echeverria, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox.
On average, more than 100 family members and staff benefit from each of these pensions, with a number of gardeners, chefs, maids and drivers typically on each former president’s payroll. The ex-presidents also receive aid from secretarial staff and protection from a large group of bodyguards.
Other perks of life as an former president include: use of properties belonging to the state, free health insurance, free water, free electricity, free telephone service, free airline tickets, free armored cars and at least three vehicles for bodyguards (all with maintenance, insurance and gasoline included).
These benefits were secured in two presidential agreements enacted by Luis Echeverria in 1976 and Miguel de la Madrid in 1987.
Polemic PRI politician pins hopes on Tijuana soccer team
Controversial gambling magnate and former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon revealed this week that he will run for the Baja California governorship in next year’s state election.
Hank, whose son Jorge Hank Inzunza owns local soccer club Tijuana, believes that if the side wins the Mexican league final this weekend it will boost his chances in the election.
Tijuana, also known as Xolos, faces Toluca in the final of the Apertura 2012 soccer league, with home and away ties scheduled for Thursday night and Sunday afternoon.
Founded in 2007, Tijuana is in search of its first title, having only been promoted to Mexico’s top division, the Liga MX, in the summer of 2011.
“Xolos are obviously the team of Baja California, but also the team of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party),” Hank said. “The rise of Xolos … brings votes for the party, and for me in the race for governor.”
The PRI will need any additional support it can muster, having not won the Baja California governorship since the election of National Action Party (PAN) candidate Ernesto Ruffo Appel in 1989. Ruffo was the first opposition-party governor of any state since the Mexican Revolution.
Hank, 56, faces competition from several other local PRI politicians in the state election set for August 4, 2013, but he is by far the most high-profile candidate in the race. The owner of lucrative gambling syndicate Grupo Caliente and the father of 19 children, he has a colorful past to put it lightly.
He was born into a political dynasty, the son of Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a self-made billionaire who served as mayor of Mexico City, and secretary of agriculture and then tourism under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
As a young man, Hank showed little interest in politics, using his father’s money to set up Tijuana’s Agua Caliente racetrack complex and a private zoo that now houses some 20,000 animals (his love of exotic beasts gave rise to many colorful myths, such as his supposed penchant for bull’s penis and tiger’s testicles soaked in tequila).
In 1991 he was detained in San Diego for transporting a white Siberian tiger – a species in danger of extinction – and four years later he was stopped at Mexico City airport in possession of ivory and endangered animal hides, but subsequently acquitted.
Hank first gained notoriety in 1988, when two of his bodyguards were arrested and convicted of the murder of Hector Felix Miranda, co-founder of Zeta, a Tijuana daily that boldly probed the drug trade.
Hank did not face charges, but rumors of his involvement never abated and Zeta ran a full-page spread each week for many years, asking him the same question: “Why did your bodyguards kill Hector Felix?”
Hank first sought the Baja California governorship toward the end of his tenure as Tijuana Mayor from 2004 to 2007, but his bid was undermined by legal action from local PAN politicians and he ended up losing to PAN candidate Jose Osuna by almost 55,000 votes.
Hank most recently made headlines in June 2011, when he was charged with illegal possession of firearms after Mexican military personnel raided his luxury compound, discovering 88 mostly unlicensed weapons (49 of which were high-caliber rifles and handguns designated for the sole use of the Mexican military) and over 9,000 rounds of ammunition.
Hank’s accomplished lawyers had him released, citing an apparent “lack of evidence,” and a federal judge later dismissed the charges, but he was detained again the same day in connection with two murders allegedly committed with guns found at his mansion.
Once again, Hank’s lawyers secured his release within hours, arguing the raid was unconstitutional and had been carried out without the prerequisite legal paperwork. The case did little to dispel rumors of Hank’s involvement with organized crime.
For a full preview of Tijuana vs. Toluca, see my piece at Soccer365.com.
The Tequila Files 