IFE: AMLO not "legitimate president"

David Agren
The News

The Federal Electoral Institute on Tuesday scolded the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Labor Party for referring to 2006 election runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the “legitimate president” during television commercials.

The Executive Secretary of IFE, as the election regulator is known, said using the “legitimate president” phrase was unconstitutional as the country already has an elected president, who is carrying out constitutional duties.

It added that federal electoral tribunal, or Trife, validated President Felipe Calderón’s victory. The Executive Secretary has proposed slapping the two left-wing parties with fines totaling 912,030 pesos. The full IFE board decides Wednesday if it will order the PRD and Labor Party to stop using the phrase and impose the fines.

López Obrador represented a coalition including the PRD and Labor Party in the last federal election, which he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderón. The former candidate rejected the outcome, which he alleged was rigged, and declared himself the “legitimate president” on Nov. 20, 2006.

He also has a history of disparaging the IFE and Trife – he commented, “To hell with your institutions,” in September 2006 after the latter rejected his allegations of electoral fraud. The IFE board overseeing the 2006 election lacked PRD representation. The left-wing party walked out of 2003 negotiations for electing the board after its two main candidates were rejected.

The electoral reforms passed last fall give IFE broad powers to strike down political ads deemed negative or inappropriate.

Strike took its toll on tourism

In a state dependent on tourism, striking schoolteachers assail Oaxaca's economic engine – again

OAXACA – Striking teachers pitched tents and held demonstrations in front of the El Importador restaurant over the past three weeks in the popular and leafy central square of this colonial city and state capital. According to shift manager Juan Vázquez, the protests drove down sales by 50 percent.

But even before the demonstrations began, he said, business had yet to fully rebound to levels achieved prior to the teachers strike in 2006 that descended into five months of violent street protests.

And so it was with a sigh of relief that he watched strikers packing up and heading home Saturday after a noisy rally, during which a band of young men wearing gas masks and toques used spray paint to scribble anti-government slogans on the walls, sidewalks and historic buildings that ring the Zócalo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“This state depends heavily on tourism,” Vázquez said. “People here want to work.”

Ongoing disruptions by striking teachers and protesters from a left-wing group known as APPO have seriously damaged Oaxaca's tourism-dependent economy, according to many in the tourism sector, which the state government says directly and indirectly accounts for 80 percent of the region's economic activity. And the lack of visitors and plunge in sales comes mere weeks before the state's premier culture festival, the Guelaguetza, is scheduled to commence.

Some tourist-dependent workers expressed worries that the strikes and protests would continue keeping tourists away from the state famous for its archeological sights, diverse indigenous cultures and gastronomic delights like mole, mezcal and chocolate.

Like Vázquez, cabbie Daniel Moldonado, who ferries visitors from the airport to various parts of Oaxaca City, reported a 50-percent drop in business over the past three weeks.

While running a fare to the Zócalo on Saturday, he pointed at people waiting along the highway for buses that wouldn't arrive due to the “mega-march” that capped off the weeks-long sit-in.

“There's a way of protesting without interfering with bystanders,” Maldonado said.

Closer to the Zócalo, Ricardo Cruz, who teaches computer courses at a private college, said enrollment had dropped by two-thirds during the recent strike. He said the strike had divided Oaxaca residents – including his own family.

“Of every 10 people you meet, eight of them have teachers in their [immediate] family,” he said while eating a breakfast of tlayudas (a delicacy known as “Oaxacan pizzas”) at a café.

As if to illustrate his point, one elderly diner who identified himself as a teacher took exception to Cruz’s grumblings and stormed off.

Not all local entrepreneurs reported suffering from the strike, however. Local street vendors peddled everything from ice cream to pirated movies amidst the makeshift tent city that blanketed the city center.

And while local media reported that the teachers union and APPO had charged the vendors up to 150 pesos a day for the right to work in the encampment, those interviewed by The News denied the allegations. Some, in fact, said they were able to work more freely, since the municipal government was unable to carry out campaigns aimed at removing them.

“The teachers and APPO let us do our jobs,” said Ángel Ríos, a veteran vendor of ice cream bars.

“They're good people ... and good customers,” he added.

David Agren, The News

Strike took toll on tourism

OAXACA – Striking teachers pitched tents and held demonstrations in front of the El Importador restaurant over the past three weeks in the popular and leafy central square of this colonial city and state capital. According to shift manager Juan Vázquez, the protests drove down sales by 50 percent.

But even before the demonstrations began, he said, business had yet to fully rebound to levels achieved prior to the teachers strike in 2006 that descended into five months of violent street protests.

And so it was with a sigh of relief that he watched strikers packing up and heading home Saturday after a noisy rally, during which a band of young men wearing gas masks and toques used spray paint to scribble anti-government slogans on the walls, sidewalks and historic buildings that ring the Zócalo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“This state depends heavily on tourism,” Vázquez said. “People here want to work.”

Ongoing disruptions by striking teachers and protesters from a left-wing group known as APPO have seriously damaged Oaxaca's tourism-dependent economy, according to many in the tourism sector, which the state government says directly and indirectly accounts for 80 percent of the region's economic activity. And the lack of visitors and plunge in sales comes mere weeks before the state's premier culture festival, the Guelaguetza, is scheduled to commence.

Some tourist-dependent workers expressed worries that the strikes and protests would continue keeping tourists away from the state famous for its archeological sights, diverse indigenous cultures and gastronomic delights like mole, mezcal and chocolate.

Like Vázquez, cabbie Daniel Moldonado, who ferries visitors from the airport to various parts of Oaxaca City, reported a 50-percent drop in business over the past three weeks.

While running a fare to the Zócalo on Saturday, he pointed at people waiting along the highway for buses that wouldn't arrive due to the “mega-march” that capped off the weeks-long sit-in.

“There's a way of protesting without interfering with bystanders,” Maldonado said.

Closer to the Zócalo, Ricardo Cruz, who teaches computer courses at a private college, said enrollment had dropped by two-thirds during the recent strike. He said the strike had divided Oaxaca residents – including his own family.

“Of every 10 people you meet, eight of them have teachers in their [immediate] family,” he said while eating a breakfast of tlayudas (a delicacy known as “Oaxacan pizzas”) at a café.

As if to illustrate his point, one elderly diner who identified himself as a teacher took exception to Cruz’s grumblings and stormed off.

Not all local entrepreneurs reported suffering from the strike, however. Local street vendors peddled everything from ice cream to pirated movies amidst the makeshift tent city that blanketed the city center.

And while local media reported that the teachers union and APPO had charged the vendors up to 150 pesos a day for the right to work in the encampment, those interviewed by The News denied the allegations. Some, in fact, said they were able to work more freely, since the municipal government was unable to carry out campaigns aimed at removing them.

“The teachers and APPO let us do our jobs,” said Ángel Ríos, a veteran vendor of ice cream bars.

“They're good people ... and good customers,” he added.

David Agren, The News

Strike took its toll on tourism

OAXACA – Striking teachers pitched tents and held demonstrations in front of the El Importador restaurant over the past three weeks in the popular and leafy central square of this colonial city and state capital. According to shift manager Juan Vázquez, the protests drove down sales by 50 percent.

But even before the demonstrations began, he said, business had yet to fully rebound to levels achieved prior to the teachers strike in 2006 that descended into five months of violent street protests.

And so it was with a sigh of relief that he watched strikers packing up and heading home Saturday after a noisy rally, during which a band of young men wearing gas masks and toques used spray paint to scribble anti-government slogans on the walls, sidewalks and historic buildings that ring the Zócalo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“This state depends heavily on tourism,” Vázquez said. “People here want to work.”

Ongoing disruptions by striking teachers and protesters from a left-wing group known as APPO have seriously damaged Oaxaca's tourism-dependent economy, according to many in the tourism sector, which the state government says directly and indirectly accounts for 80 percent of the region's economic activity. And the lack of visitors and plunge in sales comes mere weeks before the state's premier culture festival, the Guelaguetza, is scheduled to commence.

Some tourist-dependent workers expressed worries that the strikes and protests would continue keeping tourists away from the state famous for its archeological sights, diverse indigenous cultures and gastronomic delights like mole, mezcal and chocolate.

Like Vázquez, cabbie Daniel Moldonado, who ferries visitors from the airport to various parts of Oaxaca City, reported a 50-percent drop in business over the past three weeks.

While running a fare to the Zócalo on Saturday, he pointed at people waiting along the highway for buses that wouldn't arrive due to the “mega-march” that capped off the weeks-long sit-in.

“There's a way of protesting without interfering with bystanders,” Maldonado said.

Closer to the Zócalo, Ricardo Cruz, who teaches computer courses at a private college, said enrollment had dropped by two-thirds during the recent strike. He said the strike had divided Oaxaca residents – including his own family.

“Of every 10 people you meet, eight of them have teachers in their [immediate] family,” he said while eating a breakfast of tlayudas (a delicacy known as “Oaxacan pizzas”) at a café.

As if to illustrate his point, one elderly diner who identified himself as a teacher took exception to Cruz’s grumblings and stormed off.

Not all local entrepreneurs reported suffering from the strike, however. Local street vendors peddled everything from ice cream to pirated movies amidst the makeshift tent city that blanketed the city center.

And while local media reported that the teachers union and APPO had charged the vendors up to 150 pesos a day for the right to work in the encampment, those interviewed by The News denied the allegations. Some, in fact, said they were able to work more freely, since the municipal government was unable to carry out campaigns aimed at removing them.

“The teachers and APPO let us do our jobs,” said Ángel Ríos, a veteran vendor of ice cream bars.

“They're good people ... and good customers,” he added.

David Agren, The News

PAN dumps Creel as Senate leader

PAN dumps Creel as Senate leader

David Agren
The News

Sen. Santiago Creel was sacked as the National Action Party leader in the Senate as the governing party tries to improve its chances of winning approval for a series of reforms to the state-run energy sector.

A Tuesday press release from the PAN national executive committee said, “The PAN is restructuring in order to give a new push to the reforms.”

Creel’s ousting comes as the Senate is holding a marathon session of 22 debates on energy reform – a key initiative in a series of overhauls to the federal government being undertaken by President Felipe Calderón.

The debates, an April takeover of Congress by opposition lawmakers and now a proposed public consultation on energy reform in Mexico City by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, could further impede passage of energy reform.

Analysts were quick to note, however, that Creel’s exit also continued a purge of leaders with loyalties to the conservative wing of the party that was deposed last December by the ascent of Germán Martínez, a close confidant of Calderón, to the PAN presidency.

Pollster Dan Lund, president of the Mund Group in Mexico City, said that Creel, a former interior secretary, was not part of Calderón’s inner circle.

“This is a tightly controlled party, which is not pluralistic and everything functions at the direction of [Calderón],” Lund said.

Sen. Gustavo Madero, president of the Senate finance committee, was named as Creel’s replacement.

Lund described Madero as “one of the president’s men.”

Creel will continue serving as President of the Senate until Aug. 31, according to the Senate press office.

Héctor Larios, PAN coordinator in the Chamber of Deputies, survived Monday’s purge, but acknowledged that he was serving at the pleasure of the party president.

Both Creel and Larios were appointed by former party president Manuel Espino – a longtime Calderón adversary – during the period when Calderón was still waiting for the electoral tribunal to adjudicate PRD complaints from the 2006 vote.

Calderón – who Lund said is calling the shots in the PAN – moved against Espino last fall by having Martínez run unopposed for the party presidency.

Personal indiscretions may have also tripped up with Creel, who had gravitated toward the PAN’s conservative and Catholic factions earlier this decade.

He generated scandalous headlines earlier this month when it was revealed that he fathered a child out of wedlock with a soap opera star Edith González.

Sergio Valderama Herrera, political science professor at UNAM Xochimilco, attributed Creel’s fall to “political and personal shortcomings.

“He broke with one of the PAN’s traditional values: Family,” said Valderama Herrera.

Creel stumbled at times in his PAN leadership position – most notably when he accepted a challenge to debate energy reform with former PRD presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. PAN officials later quashed plans for the debate.

Ironically, Creel narrowly lost the 2000 Mexico City mayoral election to López Obrador.

He subsequently served as interior secretary and gained the backing of the PAN establishment, including Former President Vicente Fox, for a 2006 presidential run.

Calderón derailed those plans as he upset Creel in the 2005 PAN primaries, however.

Prelate's murder still haunts Jalisco

The Templo Expiatorio in Guadalajara

DAVID AGREN
The News

Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo went to the Guadalajara airport 15 years ago to welcome papal nuncio Archbishop Giralamo Prigione, who was coming to the country's second largest city to bless a furniture factory. But the two men never met.

Cardinal Posadas Ocampo, who was dressed in his usual clerical robes, was shot dead shortly after 5 p.m. as he stepped out of his car in front of the terminal.

A federal investigation said the prelate was inadvertently caught up in the crossfire of a shootout between the rival Tijuana and Sinaloa drug cartels, which were active in the Jalisco capital during the 1990s. Catholic officials reject the official explanation, however. They note that Cardinal Posadas Ocampo was shot at close range in an attack that also claimed the life of his chauffer and five others. No one has ever been convicted in the matter, although the investigation officially remains open.

The cardinal's death and the unresolved investigation have been long-standing sources of consternation in Jalisco, where the events of May 24, 1993 – and a massive explosion blamed on gasoline leaking into the sewer system barely 13 months prior – ushered in sweeping political and social change in one of the country's most fervently Catholic states.

"With the death of the cardinal, the government left a lot to be desired in its official explanation," said Mario Ramos González, a political science professor at the University of Guadalajara. "In the Catholic Church, there's still a lot of outrage."

Analysts credit the ascent of the National Action Party, or PAN, in the region to the general disgust with the inept government response to the 1992 explosions that flattened a five-kilometer stretch of a working class part of Guadalajara and killed at least 200 residents, and a Catholic backlash against the perceptions of a cover up in the investigation into the violent death of a popular prelate.

Agriculture Secretary Alberto Cárdenas, then the little-known mayor of Ciudad Guzmán, deposed the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in 1994. The PAN, which tilts decidedly conservative in the region, later won consecutive gubernatorial elections in 2000 and 2006.

Columnist Jorge Zepeda, editor of the now-defunct Guadalajara daily Siglo 21 in the 1990s, compared the political impact of the explosions and assassination to the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which gave rise to social movements and the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD. But the shift in Jalisco went in the other direction, he added.

"The 1985 earthquake generated the formation of a civil society with distinct ideologies while in Guadalajara it was essentially a turn to the right," Zepeda said. "The cardinal's assassination generated a conservative militancy in defense of the church."

STATE CRIME

Speculation about what really transpired at the Guadalajara airport and who might be responsible for the cardinal's death is still rife in Mexico – even 15 years later. Theories on who might have carried out the cardinal's death range from narcotics traffickers to gunmen acting on the orders of senior politicians to the Masons.

Alfredo Araujo Ávila, a key hit man for the Arellano Felix cartel, was arrested in January and implicated in the Guadalajara shootout.

Cardinal Posadas Ocampo led an Archdiocese that was the base for narcotics trafficking gangs during the 1980s and 90s, leading to speculation that his criticisms - or relations with - might have sparked their wrath.

The Archdiocese of Guadalajara said the Araujo Ávila meant little as many Catholic officials consider the cardinal's death to be premeditated murder. Last week, the Mexican bishops' conference described the cardinal's death as "a state crime" and called on former President Carlos Salinas, who governed from 1998 to 1994, to produce more information on the matter.

Salinas has long been a polemic figure in the Cardinal Posadas Ocampo affair.

A new book by Guadalajara-area lawyers José Antonio Ortega and Fernando Guzmán – presently the No. 2 official in the Jalisco state government – alleges the former president made efforts to close the preliminary investigation.

They also allege that officials in the federal government are still hindering the investigation.

Salinas has denied any culpability in Cardinal Posadas Ocampo's death.

But the former president, according to a pair of reports by Ortega and Guzmán for then Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was seeking the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI to have the death "not declared a state crime."

The report, which was obtained by the Excelsior newspaper last May, added that Salinas was also advancing the idea that "Freemasons and public servants of that persuasion" - Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, who passed away in 2000, was mentioned by the lawyers - possibly ordered the cardinal's murder. The lawyers also noted that Cardinal Posadas Ocampo had been under surveillance in the days leading up to May 24, 1993.

One prominent Catholic leader during the 1990s disagreed, however. Luis Reynoso, a lawyer and the former bishop of Cuernavaca, quashed the conspiracy theories in a series of investigations in the late 1990s. Reynoso died in 2000, but his nephew recently released a book based on the bishop's investigations that insists the cardinal was in the wrong place at the wrong time and no proof of premeditated murder exists.

UNSATISFACTORY INVESTIGATION

Salinas left office in late 1994, but during the administration of his successors – Former Presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox – the investigation "did not advance," according to the reports by Ortega and Guzman.

"There hasn't been any will on the part of the government," said Adelberto González, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Guadalajara. "Until now there hasn't been a single conviction for having the cardinal murdered."

Church officials insist they're not looking for revenge. Cardinal Posadas Ocampo's successor, Cardinal Juan Sandoval, said in a statement issued last week, "The church wants to know the truth – even so that we know whom to forgive.

A little too close for comfort

A government donation in support of an Archdiocese of Guadalajara construction project raises uncomfortable questions about the separation of church and state in Jalisco.

David Agren
The News

Tlaquepaque, Jal. – In his 14 months in office, Jalisco Gov. Emilio González has seldom shied away from publicly expressing his Catholic faith, his socially conservative viewpoints, or even the cozy relationship he enjoys with the local archdiocese and its leader, Cardinal Juan Sandoval.

Priests from the Archdiocese of Guadalajara lead a weekly Bible study for the governor's Cabinet in his official residence, the Casa Jalisco. Last Spring, with Mexico City on the verge of legalizing abortion, González and Cardinal Sandoval made joint public statements against the initiative.

The socially conservative governor also objected to parts of an AIDS prevention program that would allow for the distribution of condoms to teenagers. He later questioned sarcastically if the government should also provide adolescents with "a six pack of beer … and a hotel voucher."

His antics and pronouncements drew criticism from some local commentators and opposition politicians, but little widespread outrage in Jalisco – one of the Republic's most conservative and Catholic states, a place where martyrs of the Cristero Rebellion are lionized, church-sponsored events are well-attended and the largest chain of pharmacies in the region only started stocking contraceptives earlier in the decade.

But then González handed over 30 million pesos of taxpayer money in late March for the construction of a massive Catholic sanctuary in the Guadalajara suburb of Tlaquepaque – and all hell broke loose.

Guadalajara residents took to the streets in protest and a record number of complaints – more than 6,500 – were filed with the state human rights commission. Calls for the governor's resignation also mounted.

González responded by making another 15-million-peso donation to a church-run food bank and acerbically telling his critics, "Me vale madre, [I don't give a f—k]," in a profanity laced speech at the check presentation banquet.

SEPARATION FROM THE STATUS QUO
The donation – and González's previous antics – are a departure from the historically strict separation of church and state in Mexico, a concept championed since the Reform Laws of Benito Juárez in the 1850s and reinforced by the Constitution of 1917 and subsequent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, governments.

But the separation encountered resistance in Jalisco and its environs, where the Cristero Rebellion – an uprising against anti-clerical laws that forbade Catholic officials from preaching politics from the pulpit, stripped the church of its rights to own property and banned prelates from wearing clerical garb in public – raged in the late 1920s.

It also spawned several Catholic-friendly political movements, including the National Action Party, or PAN, and a Sinarquista organization, which is currently being revived through a new party.

The church largely exited the political arena after the Cristero Rebellion and coexisted peacefully with the PRI for the proceeding decades.

But with the country gradually opening up, the abolishment of many anti-clerical laws in 1992 and the PAN beginning its ascent to national governance, the church became more assertive in social and political matters – especially in Jalisco, where the PAN claimed power in 1995 and has won three consecutive gubernatorial elections.

"The PAN has found the church – not trade unions and the civil parts of Mexican society – to be its main source of social support," said Ilán Semo Gorman, a history professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

"In almost every state where you have a PAN governor, what you're going to see is [the party] trying to reconstitute power on the basis of church orientation."

Analysts are at odds over exactly how much the Catholic Church actually influences the PAN, which is divided into pragmatic and religious factions nationally. Party president Germán Martínez – a close confidant of President Felipe Calderón – deposed the religious-conservative wing of the PAN by winning power last December.

Some experts say the religious-conservative wing still holds enormous sway on the state level in Western Mexico, leading to perceptions of church influence over the party. Others disagree.

"It's an aberration," said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM, referring to the PAN's religious-conservative strains.

He said the party still mostly attracts followers who believe in the separation of church and state. Weldon added that close church-state ties are only found "in maybe half of the PANistas in the Guadalajara area and in certain parts of Guanajuato."

Still, that religious affiliation is the source of much speculation, particularly surrounding "El Yunque," or the Anvil, which is thought to be a secret and deeply Catholic and conservative society.

Gonzalez, according to the local media, is a Yunque member – a charge he denies.

But whether or not the Yunque exists is still up for debate.

"It's exaggerated. It probably exists in some kind of form, but I think it's mostly just a group of people that think similarly, much more than something that looks like the Ku Klux Klan ... or the Masons," Weldon said.

"It's usually more a brush that people are painted with than reality."

FROM THE CATHOLIC HEARTLAND
Gonzalez originally hails from Los Altos, a region of dry highlands northeast of Guadalajara known for tequila, ranching and blue-eyed inhabitants. It was in Los Altos that the Cristero Rebellion flared most forcefully, and to this day, monuments to martyrs like parish priest Toribio Romo, the patron saint of undocumented migrants, attract thousands of visitors.

In the 1930s the region produced the National Sinarquista Union, an anti-communist Catholic group that opposed the revolutionary rhetoric of then President Lazaro Cárdenas, who nationalized the oil industry in 1938, distributed large tracts of hacienda land to landless campesinos and declared that public education be free, secular and "socialist."

The PAN was also founded around the same time. It drew a Catholic following, but unlike the Sinarquistas, the PAN appealed more to urban, middle class and business voters, according to Alan Riding's 1985 book "Distant Neighbors."

González, now 47, began his political career with another Sinarquista group, the Mexican Democratic Party, or PDM, a regionally popular outfit during the 1970s that lost its official standing in 1990s. He even won the mayor's office in his birthplace of Lagos de Moreno for the PDM in the 1980s before drifting over to the PAN later in the decade, becoming state party president, mayor of Guadalajara and eventually governor.

But González only won the gubernatorial seat after waging a negative campaign that saw federal investigators appear on his opponent's doorstep mere days before the 2006 election, acting on a PAN legal complaint regarding the legalization of properties supposedly purchased as part of a money-laundering scheme. The investigation was later dropped.

And González, it was later revealed, had boasted of having another ace up his sleeve: support from the local archdiocese.

A U.S. consular document published last month in Público, a Guadalajara daily newspaper, reported that in 2005, González had bragged about having widespread church support.

"Emilio claimed that high-level church officials in Jalisco have committed that organization to supporting his candidacy," the document read. "Emilio claimed, the Church has committed its 3,000 priests in Jalisco to working for an electoral victory for both him and the PAN."

The Archdiocese of Guadalajara has denied supporting the González campaign and spokesman Antonio Gutíerrez said that Cardinal Sandoval enjoys good relations with politicians from all parties and levels of government.

ALL ABOUT TIMING
The revelation of the supposed church support emerged just as the governor was defending his donation – which will eventually total 90 million pesos – toward the Sanctuary of the Mexican Martyrs, a project valued at 2 billion pesos. The governor has defended the sanctuary plan, saying that the site will promote religious tourism in Jalisco, which is already home to some the country's most popular pilgrimage sites, including San Juan de los Lagos, Talpa and the Basilica of Zapopan.

The money also went to a non-profit civil association responsible for raising funds for the sanctuary's construction – and not the archdiocese – he said.

And in spite of the protests and public outcry – a recent Grupo Reforma survey showed that 57 percent of respondents opposed the governor's actions – the donation came as little surprise to some local observers.

"We have a governor that is very conservative ... and a cardinal that believes religious values should be society's main values," said Víctor Ramos Cortes, a religious studies professor at the University of Guadalajara.

"With this governor, [the cardinal] has a very close relationship … which explains the donation."

That doesn't mean people are happy about where the money's going, however.

Guadalajara resident Mario Díaz, who says he attends Mass at least twice a month, is just one among many. "We don't have enough beds in the Hospital Civil, but the governor goes and gives 90 million pesos to the cardinal," he complained.

But backers of the sanctuary say it will improve local infrastructure like roads and drainage and will include social projects that include a soup kitchen, nursing school and public hospital.

Armando Martínez, president of the College of Catholic Lawyers in Mexico City, accused critics of being "hypocritical," noting that all churches are property of the state and that various levels of government have contributed toward the construction and expansion of the Basilica of Guadalupe – the world's most visited Catholic shrine – and renovations at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City.

Gutíerrez, the archdiocese spokesman, acknowledged the public dissatisfaction over the donation, and arguments that the money should be directed toward other community projects. But he attributed much of the resistance to the conservative nature of Guadalajara residents and an aversion to large construction projects.

"Guadalajara has a fear of large projects," Gutíerrez said.

"You have to realize that Guadalajara is a city with small buildings. Unfortunately, the Tapatío mentality is a mentality that there shouldn't be any big buildings."

CONVINCING NONBELIEVERS
Even with construction proceeding on the sanctuary, wooing the public – and investors – hasn't been easy, and probably won't be.

Signs lining the road up to the construction site, high up on the edge of the Cerro del Tesoro in Tlaquepaque, speak of the promise of the place.

"Being here is being with God," reads one sign near the sanctuary, which when completed, is expected to seat 12,000 and provide standing room for another 50,000.

Gutíerrez said the site would host Catholic events that currently take place at the local bullfighting ring and Estadio Jalisco, where the church hosted a 2005 service that beatified 13 Cristero Rebellion martyrs.

But investment hasn't been forthcoming. "Large sums of money aren't flowing in," Gutíerrez said, adding that the construction is being carried out with the help of in-kind donations from construction firms.

Ironically, Cardinal Sandoval actually might have alienated many of the business groups that have supported church projects over the years by telling a gathering of journalists last month, "There isn't a single honorable rich person, because working never made anyone wealthy … If that were the way to become wealthy, then donkeys would be the richest."

The cardinal later explained that he had been referring to the annual list of billionaires published by Forbes magazine, but business groups in Western Mexico rebuked the comments, pointing to Sandoval's penchant for rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and his frequent golfing excursions to an exclusive country club.

Ramos Cortes, the religious studies professor, said that many parish priests also privately oppose the project, but are afraid to voice their criticisms.

"All of the temples in the archdiocese have collection boxes so that people can collaborate in the project, but there have been very few donations," he said.

JUDGMENT DAY
Ultimately, the construction of the sanctuary, investment in it or lack thereof, and public opinion could be litmus tests for religious power in the region.

The lack of donations and immense criticism of the Sanctuary of the Mexican Martyrs, according to Ramos Cortes, reflect a changing social dynamic in Guadalajara, which, while remaining solidly Catholic, is becoming less fervent in its zeal for religious meddling in social and political matters.

"The governor thinks that with this [donation] he's going to win over Catholics, but in my opinion, he's making a bad calculation," Ramos Cortes said.

"Catholics are gradually developing a more critical attitude toward the political maneuverings of the local clergy – and particularly this cardinal."