Spiegel: Mexican Elections
Post
Thursday June 29, 2006, Mexican Elections, Will America's Neighbor Lurch to the Left, Jens Glüsing
Mexico's upcoming presidential elections could mark yet another step in the region's shift to the left, as old school populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador vies for the country's highest office. For Mexico's powerful neighbor to the north, the prospect of having a left-leaning, nationalist caudillo running the country poses a nightmare scenario.
[photo REUTERS, Leftist candidate López Obrador: "My opponents are waging a smear campaign against me."]
Bolts of lighting twitch in the skies over Orizaba, a city in the shadow of the eponymous volcano, a three-hour drive from Mexico City. When the man in the yellow rain slicker takes to the stage, what has been a steady rain suddenly turns into a deluge. His audience, after spending hours waiting on balconies and rooftops, in trees and on the ground, is soaked to the skin.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by many in Mexico by the acronym formed by the initials of his name, AMLO, isn't troubled by the inclement weather. He allows his supporters to push him through the steaming mass of people, grabbing hands, kissing and hugging his adoring fans. Cheering onlookers shower Obrador with confetti, lovingly stroke the metal of his car and tug at his raincoat.
Women shove petitions into his pockets, petitions asking for work, for help curing their sons' drug habits or healing their sick mothers. They pray for him in the cathedral, murmuring his name as they kneel in their pews. Obrador, who hopes to be elected Mexico's next president this coming Sunday, is their only hope.
Hired supporters of his leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution call out "Peje, Peje!" Peje, Obrador's nickname, is also the name of a predatory fish from Tabasco, the tropical state Obrador calls home. The weather in Orizaba on this day is Tabasco weather, the air heavy as the candidate delivers a combative speech to the crowd. "My opponents are waging a dirty war against me," he complains. "They say that I'm Mexico's Chávez, that I will lead this country to ruin. But I've never even met the president of Venezuela."
Indeed, at first glance López Obrador, 52, bears almost no resemblance to the leftist leader from Caracas. He has no harsh words for the superpower next door, the United States. Nor does he have words of praise for Fidel Castro, Cuba's "Máximo Líder" and aging revolutionary. Neither does he hold up Cuban socialism as a model for Latin America. His hair is white, his face is tinted bronze and his features reveal a touch of indigenous blood. In his dark suit, he bears a closer resemblance to the amiable, elderly gentlemen one sees whiling away their afternoons on park benches in Mexico's plazas.
Subtle undertones
But, all appearances aside, those who listen closely to his words will indeed detect similarities with the Venezuelan populist. Amlo promises higher wages, cheap gasoline and three new refineries. He praises Pemex, Mexico's ailing state-owned oil company, and dreams of a new high-speed train from Mexico City to Tijuana, 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) away.
In Bolivia, indigenous leader Evo Morales evoked Hugo Chávez, a strategy that helped him win the election in that country. And although Obrador also occasionally imitates the populist in Caracas, he has become more cautious of late. Chávez is a polarizing figure, and Mexico is a relatively conservative country.
Will Latin America's leftward shift continue, or is it coming to an end? The Mexican election, by symbolically adding fuel to this alternative, has attracted attention well beyond Latin America.
Mexico is Latin America's most important economic power, exporting oil and cars to the United States and frequently called up to mediate international conflicts. But the man who hopes to become the next president of the world's twelfth-largest economy is proud of the fact that he has neither a passport nor virtually any experience abroad. He captivates his audiences with appeals to a deep-seated sense of nationalism, and he likes to evoke reformer Benito Juárez and the Mexican Revolution.
At such moments, the man historian Enrique Krauze calls a "tropical Messiah" reveals himself as an old school Latin American populist, a man who feels both persecuted and betrayed by the ruling classes. In this respect, he resembles Tomás Garrido Canabal, the authoritarian governor who ruled Obrador's home state, Tabasco, in the 1920s and 1930s. The English novelist Graham Greene, who traveled widely in Mexico in the 1930s, described Canabal as an aggressive mystic. López Obrador admires Garrido because he turned "Tabasco into the country's political mecca."
Sentiments of this ilk have prompted his opponents to fear that Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, remains a provincial caudillo at heart. If he wins the election, Venezuelan populist Chávez could very well gain an important ally. A left-leaning, populist government in Mexico could also put the region to yet another crucial test.
[photo REUTERS, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has drawn hundreds of thousands to his mass campaign rallies like this one on Mexico City's historical Zócalo Square.]
None of this year's many elections in Latin America is being watched with as much apprehension as the presidential race in this country of 107 million. The Americans are eying the man the New York Times calls "the populist at the border" with special concern. A Chávez-style caudillo on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande? That thought alone is a nightmare for Washington, which already finds itself confronted with growing tensions with its southern neighbor. More and more illegal immigrants are pouring across the border in search of work in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, the drug trade is flourishing and long stretches of the 1,952-mile border are seen as a risk to national security. To avert these ills, the Americans now plan to build a wall to insulate themselves against Mexico, providing populists to the south with welcome ammunition for ongoing anti-American tirades.
Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda sees Obrador as a representative of Latin America's traditional leftists, whose adversaries of choice included real and imagined enemies, the economic elite, the United States, and their political opponents. Castañeda likens López Obrador to oil populist Luis Echeverría, whose over-inflated government bureaucracy contributed to the 1982 economic crash, triggering the Latin American debt crisis and setting the continent back by decades.
Mexico's winners and losers
So far Mexico has been viewed as an island of stability in a region churning with social and political unrest. The Mexican economy blossomed and the shrinking peso became stronger under President Vicente Fox, a rancher and former Coca Cola executive. Fox's election victory also brought an end to the reign of the Party of Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which had maintained an iron grip over the county for more than 70 years. Freedom and democracy have blossomed. The musty odor of the "perfect dictatorship," as Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa called the PRI's rule, seemed to be dissipating.
But it was the urban, educated middle class that was benefiting most from Mexico's modernization. Progress never reached the poor and never made it into rural areas. "Fox created 10 million jobs -- in the United States," López Obrador says, sarcastically. More than half of Mexicans live below the poverty line, eking out a living on less than $4 a day. Many houses are empty in Orizaba, their owners busy seeking their fortunes in "El Norte," as the United States is called here. Globalization hasn't been kind to the city. Its textile factories are shuttered, driven into bankruptcy by China's low-wage competitors, and new industries haven't arrived to take their place.
Job creation has been the central issue of the election campaign. The poor place their hopes in Obrador, and the former Mexico City mayor even appealed to the middle class at one time. As mayor, he had the city's chronically clogged freeway enlarged and made its administration more accessible to citizens. He portrayed himself as a pragmatic social democrat, a strategy that helped him capture middle class votes. For months he was considered the frontrunner in the presidential election -- until his adversaries discovered the Chávez factor.
The big business competitor
Felipe Calderón, 43, of the conservative Party of National Action (PAN), is a pale technocrat who first had to overcome President Fox's reservations before pursuing his candidacy. Calderón, a Harvard graduate who was energy minister under Fox, wants to continue Mexico's modernization. He can depend on support from the country's banks and business community. But until recently this pale, bespectacled politician didn't stand a chance against the charismatic Obrador.
[photo AFP, By comparing, López Obrador to Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez, conservative challenger Felipe Calderón has been gaining lost ground in polls.]
In an effort to humanize his image, Calderón paid a visit to the village of Huajutla, where he awkwardly danced with a few Indian women. A disk jockey egged on the crowd, but the local peasant women remained unimpressed. A few well-to-do women waved brightly colored little flags and screeched "Felipe, Felipe," but only when Calderón began pepping up the tepid gathering with aggressive slogans did the general mood improve.
Former Spanish President José Maria Aznar, who sees the young politician as his Mexican foster son, has now found him a new campaign manager, who convinced Calderón that the only way to beat López Obrador is by adopting a decisively confrontational approach. Applying the new strategy, Calderón has now taken to calling Obrador the "Mexican Chávez" and "a danger for Mexico."
The approach has paid off. Calderón's approval ratings are up and the election is now seen as a neck-and-neck race. "The Mexicans are a conservative people," writes former Foreign Minister Castañeda. "They don't want abrupt change."
Changes of government in Mexico have often been associated with crises. In the past a sexenio, the Mexican expression for the six-year term to which a president is limited under the country's constitution, frequently ended with an economic crash, and violence and political uncertainty have overshadowed elections. "Mexico's presidential system is poorly equipped for changes in government," says historian José Antonio Crespo. Because presidents were once courted like kings, the fall of a ruler would wreak havoc in the political system.
[photo DER SPIEGEL, Graphic: Latin America's leftward shift]
Perhaps Mexicans were overly hasty in expecting democratic normalcy when the PRI's dominance came to an end. Indeed, a close result in this Sunday's election could trigger a new crisis. Election expert Sergio Aguayo warns, "if one of the candidates challenges the result, the country could face unrest until the new president's inauguration on December 1."
Election fraud and vote-buying were part of everyday political life in the old Mexico, and perhaps these customs haven't died out completely yet. As a precaution against potential irregularities, the Fox administration has asked the European Union to provide election monitors.
The man who faced an adoring crowd in that downpour in Orizaba has already challenged an election defeat once before. It was in the mid-1990s when Obrador failed to capture a majority of the vote in a bid for the governorship of Tabasco. In protest, he and his supporters occupied the oil fields in Tabasco, ultimately prompting the police to step in and restore order.
Mexico's upcoming presidential elections could mark yet another step in the region's shift to the left, as old school populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador vies for the country's highest office. For Mexico's powerful neighbor to the north, the prospect of having a left-leaning, nationalist caudillo running the country poses a nightmare scenario.
[photo REUTERS, Leftist candidate López Obrador: "My opponents are waging a smear campaign against me."]
Bolts of lighting twitch in the skies over Orizaba, a city in the shadow of the eponymous volcano, a three-hour drive from Mexico City. When the man in the yellow rain slicker takes to the stage, what has been a steady rain suddenly turns into a deluge. His audience, after spending hours waiting on balconies and rooftops, in trees and on the ground, is soaked to the skin.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by many in Mexico by the acronym formed by the initials of his name, AMLO, isn't troubled by the inclement weather. He allows his supporters to push him through the steaming mass of people, grabbing hands, kissing and hugging his adoring fans. Cheering onlookers shower Obrador with confetti, lovingly stroke the metal of his car and tug at his raincoat.
Women shove petitions into his pockets, petitions asking for work, for help curing their sons' drug habits or healing their sick mothers. They pray for him in the cathedral, murmuring his name as they kneel in their pews. Obrador, who hopes to be elected Mexico's next president this coming Sunday, is their only hope.
Hired supporters of his leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution call out "Peje, Peje!" Peje, Obrador's nickname, is also the name of a predatory fish from Tabasco, the tropical state Obrador calls home. The weather in Orizaba on this day is Tabasco weather, the air heavy as the candidate delivers a combative speech to the crowd. "My opponents are waging a dirty war against me," he complains. "They say that I'm Mexico's Chávez, that I will lead this country to ruin. But I've never even met the president of Venezuela."
Indeed, at first glance López Obrador, 52, bears almost no resemblance to the leftist leader from Caracas. He has no harsh words for the superpower next door, the United States. Nor does he have words of praise for Fidel Castro, Cuba's "Máximo Líder" and aging revolutionary. Neither does he hold up Cuban socialism as a model for Latin America. His hair is white, his face is tinted bronze and his features reveal a touch of indigenous blood. In his dark suit, he bears a closer resemblance to the amiable, elderly gentlemen one sees whiling away their afternoons on park benches in Mexico's plazas.
Subtle undertones
But, all appearances aside, those who listen closely to his words will indeed detect similarities with the Venezuelan populist. Amlo promises higher wages, cheap gasoline and three new refineries. He praises Pemex, Mexico's ailing state-owned oil company, and dreams of a new high-speed train from Mexico City to Tijuana, 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) away.
In Bolivia, indigenous leader Evo Morales evoked Hugo Chávez, a strategy that helped him win the election in that country. And although Obrador also occasionally imitates the populist in Caracas, he has become more cautious of late. Chávez is a polarizing figure, and Mexico is a relatively conservative country.
Will Latin America's leftward shift continue, or is it coming to an end? The Mexican election, by symbolically adding fuel to this alternative, has attracted attention well beyond Latin America.
Mexico is Latin America's most important economic power, exporting oil and cars to the United States and frequently called up to mediate international conflicts. But the man who hopes to become the next president of the world's twelfth-largest economy is proud of the fact that he has neither a passport nor virtually any experience abroad. He captivates his audiences with appeals to a deep-seated sense of nationalism, and he likes to evoke reformer Benito Juárez and the Mexican Revolution.
At such moments, the man historian Enrique Krauze calls a "tropical Messiah" reveals himself as an old school Latin American populist, a man who feels both persecuted and betrayed by the ruling classes. In this respect, he resembles Tomás Garrido Canabal, the authoritarian governor who ruled Obrador's home state, Tabasco, in the 1920s and 1930s. The English novelist Graham Greene, who traveled widely in Mexico in the 1930s, described Canabal as an aggressive mystic. López Obrador admires Garrido because he turned "Tabasco into the country's political mecca."
Sentiments of this ilk have prompted his opponents to fear that Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, remains a provincial caudillo at heart. If he wins the election, Venezuelan populist Chávez could very well gain an important ally. A left-leaning, populist government in Mexico could also put the region to yet another crucial test.
[photo REUTERS, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has drawn hundreds of thousands to his mass campaign rallies like this one on Mexico City's historical Zócalo Square.]
None of this year's many elections in Latin America is being watched with as much apprehension as the presidential race in this country of 107 million. The Americans are eying the man the New York Times calls "the populist at the border" with special concern. A Chávez-style caudillo on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande? That thought alone is a nightmare for Washington, which already finds itself confronted with growing tensions with its southern neighbor. More and more illegal immigrants are pouring across the border in search of work in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, the drug trade is flourishing and long stretches of the 1,952-mile border are seen as a risk to national security. To avert these ills, the Americans now plan to build a wall to insulate themselves against Mexico, providing populists to the south with welcome ammunition for ongoing anti-American tirades.
Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda sees Obrador as a representative of Latin America's traditional leftists, whose adversaries of choice included real and imagined enemies, the economic elite, the United States, and their political opponents. Castañeda likens López Obrador to oil populist Luis Echeverría, whose over-inflated government bureaucracy contributed to the 1982 economic crash, triggering the Latin American debt crisis and setting the continent back by decades.
Mexico's winners and losers
So far Mexico has been viewed as an island of stability in a region churning with social and political unrest. The Mexican economy blossomed and the shrinking peso became stronger under President Vicente Fox, a rancher and former Coca Cola executive. Fox's election victory also brought an end to the reign of the Party of Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), which had maintained an iron grip over the county for more than 70 years. Freedom and democracy have blossomed. The musty odor of the "perfect dictatorship," as Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa called the PRI's rule, seemed to be dissipating.
But it was the urban, educated middle class that was benefiting most from Mexico's modernization. Progress never reached the poor and never made it into rural areas. "Fox created 10 million jobs -- in the United States," López Obrador says, sarcastically. More than half of Mexicans live below the poverty line, eking out a living on less than $4 a day. Many houses are empty in Orizaba, their owners busy seeking their fortunes in "El Norte," as the United States is called here. Globalization hasn't been kind to the city. Its textile factories are shuttered, driven into bankruptcy by China's low-wage competitors, and new industries haven't arrived to take their place.
Job creation has been the central issue of the election campaign. The poor place their hopes in Obrador, and the former Mexico City mayor even appealed to the middle class at one time. As mayor, he had the city's chronically clogged freeway enlarged and made its administration more accessible to citizens. He portrayed himself as a pragmatic social democrat, a strategy that helped him capture middle class votes. For months he was considered the frontrunner in the presidential election -- until his adversaries discovered the Chávez factor.
The big business competitor
Felipe Calderón, 43, of the conservative Party of National Action (PAN), is a pale technocrat who first had to overcome President Fox's reservations before pursuing his candidacy. Calderón, a Harvard graduate who was energy minister under Fox, wants to continue Mexico's modernization. He can depend on support from the country's banks and business community. But until recently this pale, bespectacled politician didn't stand a chance against the charismatic Obrador.
[photo AFP, By comparing, López Obrador to Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez, conservative challenger Felipe Calderón has been gaining lost ground in polls.]
In an effort to humanize his image, Calderón paid a visit to the village of Huajutla, where he awkwardly danced with a few Indian women. A disk jockey egged on the crowd, but the local peasant women remained unimpressed. A few well-to-do women waved brightly colored little flags and screeched "Felipe, Felipe," but only when Calderón began pepping up the tepid gathering with aggressive slogans did the general mood improve.
Former Spanish President José Maria Aznar, who sees the young politician as his Mexican foster son, has now found him a new campaign manager, who convinced Calderón that the only way to beat López Obrador is by adopting a decisively confrontational approach. Applying the new strategy, Calderón has now taken to calling Obrador the "Mexican Chávez" and "a danger for Mexico."
The approach has paid off. Calderón's approval ratings are up and the election is now seen as a neck-and-neck race. "The Mexicans are a conservative people," writes former Foreign Minister Castañeda. "They don't want abrupt change."
Changes of government in Mexico have often been associated with crises. In the past a sexenio, the Mexican expression for the six-year term to which a president is limited under the country's constitution, frequently ended with an economic crash, and violence and political uncertainty have overshadowed elections. "Mexico's presidential system is poorly equipped for changes in government," says historian José Antonio Crespo. Because presidents were once courted like kings, the fall of a ruler would wreak havoc in the political system.
[photo DER SPIEGEL, Graphic: Latin America's leftward shift]
Perhaps Mexicans were overly hasty in expecting democratic normalcy when the PRI's dominance came to an end. Indeed, a close result in this Sunday's election could trigger a new crisis. Election expert Sergio Aguayo warns, "if one of the candidates challenges the result, the country could face unrest until the new president's inauguration on December 1."
Election fraud and vote-buying were part of everyday political life in the old Mexico, and perhaps these customs haven't died out completely yet. As a precaution against potential irregularities, the Fox administration has asked the European Union to provide election monitors.
The man who faced an adoring crowd in that downpour in Orizaba has already challenged an election defeat once before. It was in the mid-1990s when Obrador failed to capture a majority of the vote in a bid for the governorship of Tabasco. In protest, he and his supporters occupied the oil fields in Tabasco, ultimately prompting the police to step in and restore order.
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