Another left-wing party engulfed in turmoil

David Agren
The News

The Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, staged a contentious and yet-undecided internal election on March 16 that threatens to fracture the left-wing party.

Mexico’s other left-wing party, the Social Democratic Alternative, or Alternativa, also faces a similar fate on Sunday, when it selects a new slate of national leaders.

Even worse for Alternativa is the distinct possibility that the three-year-old party could disappear entirely after the 2009 midterm elections if its official status is rescinded by the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.

“How it [breaks up] is problematic because it’s not big enough to split successfully [since] neither side could actually survive,” said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM.

The outcome could also see Alternativa lose its best-known figure, Patricia Mercado, a prominent women’s rights crusader whose maverick 2006 presidential campaign garnered attention by highlighting controversial social issues like drug legalization, gay rights and access to abortion.

Mercado’s campaign won the Alternativa five seats in the Chamber of Deputies and enough votes to remain registered with the IFE. But her success – becoming Alternativa's public face – and agenda-driven approach to party-building sparked disquiet in the party's senior ranks.

Luciano Pascoe, the Alternativa's IFE representative described Mercado as “gold” for the party, but accused her of claiming too much credit for past successes.

“We invested every penny this party had in her image,” he said.

“She's gold because she has a team behind her.”

Mercado is vying for the Alternativa presidency against incumbent Alberto Begné, a former IFE official. Mercado accuses Begné of selling out the party’s original social democratic agenda by forging alliances with political rivals that guarantee money and legislative seats rather than pushing her social agenda forward.

Her supporters also accuse Begné of employing thug tactics at local-level conventions – six of which have resulted in complaints to the electoral tribunal, or Trife, that were dismissed on Friday.

Mercado told The News that “hired goons” from the National Polytechnic Institute were unleashed on her supporters at Alternativa’s Mexico City convention on March 16.

She also accused party leadership of swelling her opponents’ ranks with PRD supporters.

Pascoe denied Mercado's allegations. He also defended the Alternativa's party-building strategies and said Mercado was running her side of the party like a “caudilla,” or strong woman.

“We can't afford to build a party that's focused on one person,” he said, describing that strategy as the principal weakness of Mexican political parties.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY

The party was founded in 2005 with the idea of providing a “modern left” that would promote individual rights and break from the tendencies of some PRD and PRI leaders to form patronage alliances, said Alternativa Deputy Aida Marina Arvizu Rivas.

But it got off to an awkward start as a coalition of social activists pushing for minority rights, intellectuals who were previously affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and several campesino groups.

Tensions surfaced almost immediately as the campesino wing advanced the presidential nomination of Víctor González Torres, a discount drug baron famous for womanizing.

González Torres, a self-described populist better known as Dr. Simi, promised to bring a war chest to the Alternativa campaign, but the IFE quashed his bid by ruling in favor of Mercado. The campesino wing later crawled back to the PRI in the waning days of the campaign.

“It was oil and water. A bunch of city intellectuals that dress well and speak fancy and a bunch of rowdy [campesinos],” said Federico Estévez, also a political science professor at ITAM. “Of course they split apart.”

Mercado went on to lead a shoestring campaign that caught fire after she performed strongly in the first presidential debate. She gained further notoriety by attending a rally promoting marijuana legalization in Mexico City’s hip Condesa neighborhood.

In the end, Alternativa wound up with slightly less than 3 percent of the presidential ballots – enough to deny López Obrador the presidency.

MONEY TROUBLE

The result also allowed the Alternativa to exist as a registered political party that receives public funding from the IFE – 130 million pesos in 2008.

But spending irregularities from 2006 resulted in a 15 million-peso fine last year, forcing the party to depend on a 60-million-peso line of credit that is still being repaid, according to the El Universal newspaper.

Mercado said the party was being run as a “franchise” – a factor driving the current leadership to forge alliances with larger parties that can guarantee continued funding for the Alternativa.

Estévez attributed much of the Alternativa’s discord to money rather than ideological and strategic differences.

He also noted that Mercado has a history of being involved with upstart political parties in search of public financing and she mortgaged her house during an unsuccessful candidacy in 2000.

Estévez predicted the ongoing Alternativa row – and the turmoil engulfing the PRD – would persist due to the high stakes involved.

“National party leaders have enormous power in this country, legal power as well as financial support, so it’s worth fighting practically to the death,” he said.

Oil boom delivers wealth, pressures to Campeche town

David Agren
The News

Ciudad del Carmen, Camp. – Rudecindo Cantarell was fishing in a rich shrimping zone known as Las Delicias in the early 1970s, when he noticed thick crude floating past his boat. He initially attributed the slicks to leaks spilling from ships passing through the area. But the oil continued reappearing.

The veteran fisherman eventually notified officials with Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz of his discovery on two occasions, but the state-owned oil concern showed little interest. Cantarell would later go to the Pemex headquarters in Mexico City with news of oil bubbling up to the surface of the Campeche Sound.

Pemex eventually dispatched technicians to Las Delicias, and, within three years, the company constructed its first offshore platform in an area that would eventually produce more than 2 million barrels of crude on a daily basis.

Cantarell had discovered the world's second-largest oil field, which now bears his name, but because the Constitution grants the state ownership rights to all natural resources, he had no legal claim to it. He died penniless in 1998.

"If he had been an American, he would have been a millionaire," said Dr. Daniel Cantarell, a local historian in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, and a distant relative of the fisherman.

But Rudecindo Cantarell's inadvertent find unleashed an economic boom in Ciudad de Carmen, now a port city of 155,000 inhabitants on a slender island surrounded by mangroves just off the Campeche coastline.

The discovery of oil transformed the modestly prosperous fishing outpost into a boomtown. Warehouses and industrial facilities now occupy the main docks once used by some of the more than 4,000 fishing boats that previously hauled in jumbo shrimp – the region's principal product prior to the discovery of oil. Helicopters departing for the drilling platforms some 80 kilometers offshore are a common sight. Two modern bridges – which were built after a ferry accident – now link the island with the mainland.

Crude pumped from Cantarell has been a boon for the federal government, which today supports 40 percent of its annual budget with oil revenues. But it also has produced a windfall for local contractors, whose services range from supplying offshore oil rigs with everything from milk to tortillas to furnishing Pemex with sophisticated equipment for extracting oil from deep below the ocean floor.

Pemex employees and contract workers in Ciudad del Carmen – many of whom hail from other parts of Mexico – have cashed in with relatively generous benefits and salaries. The employees and contractors use their earnings to purchase homes in modern subdivisions and large pickups and sport utility vehicles, which they drive down newly paved streets. Municipal officials estimate the oil industry now accounts for 80 percent of the regional economy.

But many locals missed out on the newfound prosperity. They watched Pemex and an army of contractors displace the local fishing industry and then found themselves largely passed over for positions with the petroleum monopoly.

In addition, the influx of outsiders – comprised of wealthy oil workers and impoverished job-seekers arriving from other states – placed enormous strains on a municipality that previously lacked paved roads, adequate drainage and a secure source of drinking water. Meanwhile, those flush with cash began crowding locals out of the rental market and paying inflated prices for basics like food and transportation.

"If a rental property used to cost 800 pesos, after Pemex arrived, it cost 5,000 pesos," said Dr. Cantarell, who recalled oil workers pitching tents in the town square during the early days of the boom due to a lack of accommodations.

"Pemex never prepared the town to receive so many people."

PERPETUAL BOOM TOWN
Since its founding in 1716, when the Spanish finally evicted marauding pirates from the area, Ciudad del Carmen has lived through a series of serendipitous economic bonanzas. Past booms ranged from the harvesting of dyewood to exporting chewing gum to catching jumbo shrimp.

"They say that this place has been blessed, that the Virgin of Carmen looks out for us," said Dr. Cantarell, who has authored 19 books on Campeche history. "As one activity would disappear another would almost immediately take its place."

But oil was different from the other booms – and many of its riches have failed to trickle down to the native population.

"We're not rich, but we have a mentality of wealth here because nothing was ever lacking until Pemex arrived," said Marco Antonio Rodríguez, president of Marea Azul, a local environmental advocacy group.

Resentment toward Pemex and the oil industry still runs high in the area, according to some local observers.

"There are frictions here because so many people born in Ciudad del Carmen aren't hired by the industry," said Jorge Luis Sansores, communications director at the Universidad Autónoma del Carmen.

Those people include Bernardo Pantoja, a fisherman-turned taxi driver, who, along with his three brothers, abandoned shrimping in the early 1990s after Pemex forbade them access to the waters surrounding its oil platforms and their catches dried up.

"There used to be a lot of shrimp and it was really profitable," Pantoja said, holding his hands six inches apart to show the size of the jumbo shrimp he used pull from the areas now occupied by drilling platforms.

"But Pemex entered the area and screwed everything up," he said. "They installed the first wells and shut down everything."

Pemex prohibits fishing in a large area surrounding its drilling platforms – and navy patrols ward off potential interlopers. The company expanded its exclusion zone after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Its drilling activities and a spate of oil spills are blamed for wiping out the prime breeding grounds for jumbo shrimp, but Dr. Cantarell said poor management and over-exploitation by fishermen from outside of the region also played a role. The Agriculture Secretariat reported that the shrimp catch in the Campeche Sound declined from 2,938 tons in 2000 to just 843 tons in 2006. Catches in the 1970s averaged more than 20,000 tons. The Environmental Secretariat recently listed the beaches around Ciudad del Carmen as some of the most polluted in Mexico, although much of the contamination is from untreated sewage rather the oils spills, which are generally carried by currents toward Tabasco and Veracruz.

MISTRUST OF TRUST FUNDS
The federal government and Pemex established two trust funds as compensation for the displaced fishermen, who were expected to use the 15-million-peso annual payments to establish other economic activities. Some of the fishermen are now trying to establish fish farms, while a group of ribereños – fishermen that stick close to shore and mostly catch robalo, shrimp and oysters – established an ice house and a bottled water business.

Some ribereños still engage in fishing, but they say their catches are modest.

"There are some good days, but our haul often doesn't even cover the cost of buying fuel," said Jorge Alonso Jiménez, 30, as he clutched a tall can of beer after a morning of fishing for robalo.
Jiménez pointed to corruption and irregularities with the trust funds as a prime source of the problem.

"Pemex gives a lot of money so that you stay out of its exclusion zone," he commented, adding that much of the money appears unaccounted for and that many non-fishermen are listed on the padron, or beneficiaries' list.

Jiménez said he receives only about 1,000 pesos per year from one of the funds.

"If Pemex sends 10 pesos, we might get one peso," he explained, adding: "I'd rather be an oil worker."

No one from either of the trust funds was available for comment.

PREFERENTIAL HIRING
There are two principal labor organizations in Ciudad del Carmen's oil industry. Section 42 of the national oil worker's union represents those Pemex employees manning the company's offshore drilling platforms, while Section 47 is responsible for administrative and support workers.

Lázaro Gómez, a Ciudad del Carmen native, works 12-hour shifts on a drilling platform for two weeks at a time. He landed his job through a connection: his sister was a nurse in a hospital for Pemex employees, where, he said, "Pretty much everyone is working with a family member."

His job includes generous health and retirement benefits and a Christmas bonus worth 57 days' pay. According to Pemex salary figures dated Aug. 1, 2006, entry-level support employees working in marine maintenance earn 8,042 pesos per month while an engineer's assistant makes 14,389 pesos. All employees receive monthly allowances for food, housing and fuel totaling another 8,354 pesos along with 35 days' paid vacation, attendance and performance bonuses and scholarships for their children.

Gómez did not disclose his salary, but several contractors said that Pemex employees generally work fewer hours and receive a better overall compensation package that those in the private sector.

According to Gómez, most Pemex workers in Ciudad del Carmen had previous connections with one of the union bosses, who often dictate hiring, influence working conditions and sell positions.

He estimated that 75 percent of his coworkers come from outside the local area.

A Pemex spokesman, who was unauthorized to speak on the record, attributed the hiring of outsiders to a lack of qualified local candidates, but added that the situation was gradually changing. Officials from Section 42 declined comment for this story.

José Francisco Chi Dominguez, a spokesman for the municipal government, said Pemex hires a few locals for unskilled positions and that some of the multinational contractors hire graduates from the local university.

But he cited "union influence" for the presence of so many out-of-state workers.

"The union has more deeper roots in states like Tamaulipas and Veracruz so they bring in people from those places," he said.

Chi Dominguez acknowledged the lingering dissatisfaction over Pemex's hiring practices and impact on the fishery, but he said the oil giant plows money back into the municipality through several programs meant for improving the local waterworks, paving roads and funding public works projects like police precincts and health clinics.

AN END TO THE BOOM
Ciudad del Carmen's petroleum boom could ironically end before the local population starts occupying key positions in the industry. Production in the Cantarell oil field has already started declining, prompting concern for many in the local government.

"As [the oil field] gradually declines, the city could go back to what it was in the early 70s," Chi Dominguez said.

Dr. Cantarell, the historian, spoke of past precedents for what was happening in Ciudad de Carmen.

"The oil here is going to run out. That's obvious," he said.

"And people are once again standing around asking, 'What comes next?'"

Mexican left on verge of splitting

David Agren
The News

Members of the Democratic Revolution Party select a new national president on Sunday, concluding an oft-contentious internal election.

And while the national race officially features five candidates, representing disparate factions in the center-left party, the vote is shaping up as more of a referendum on competing visions for the center-left party instead of a traditional leadership contest.

Voters will decide if the 19-year-old PRD should mature and become more institutional or whether it should continue in a perpetual anti-establishment role.

Analysts say that differences over strategy could jeopardize the future of the party, which is the second-leading force on the federal level.

“It’s very possible that after the internal elections the party will split into a current composed of [PRD moderates] and a current for those following [former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel] López Obrador,” said Aldo Muñoz, political science professor at Universidad Iberoamericana.

“The losers will almost certainly form a new party.”Both of the leading candidates – Alejandro Encinas and Jesús Ortega – often speak of unifying the PRD and downplay talk of abandoning the party. But their methods and proposals for vaulting the PRD into power and unifying the Mexican left differ radically.

Encinas, an economist by training and former American football player, represents a combative current known as the United Left, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of President Felipe Calderón and eschews brokering deals with rival political parties.

The former Mexico City mayor kicked off his campaign by blasting the pragmatic actions of party moderates, whom he described as “nothing more than conservatives, only more desperate.”

He most notably objected to the PRD courting former members of the right-leaning National Action Party, or PAN, as potential candidates in Yucatán and Guanajuato, warning the party risked losing its identity as a left-wing party.Encinas also picked up the backing of López Obrador, an anti-establishment figure, who once commented, “To hell with their institutions,” after the nation’s electoral tribunal rejected his allegations of fraud after the 2006 election. López Obrador presently heads an alternative government that is separate from the PRD.

Jesús Ortega, Encinas’ main rival, also views the 2006 election as rigged, but many in his New Left current of the PRD – also known as Los Chuchos – have shown a willingness to work with the federal government and want the party to participate more in the country’s political institutions. They also have expressed some interest in reforming the government-controlled energy sector – a proposal that López Obrador has been tirelessly campaigning against.

Ortega recently warned that the PRD risked being viewed as “immature and violent” if it continued fomenting protests and failed to fully participate in the nation’s political life.

“Los Chuchos doesn't think the [PRD] can win power unless it cooperates more with the government,” Muñoz explained.

But members cooperating with the government and participating in legislative bargaining – most notably Ruth Zavaleta, PRD speaker of the Chamber of Deputies – have drawn intense fire from some quarters of the PRD.

Zavaleta, a member of the New Left, said she wants the PRD to “mature” and become more “institutional” – and stop excluding itself during key legislative debates.

“The PRD should become an institution … and mature within the existing structures,” she told The News.

“It should be a party based in rules, in statutes [and] in principles.”

But becoming more institutional might prove difficult given the party’s origins as a coalition of diverse groups pursuing their own agendas that initially were seeking to topple to long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

DIVERSE ORIGINS

The PRD was founded in 1989 by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas – a former PRI governor of Michoacán and the son of a revered former president – just one year after nearly winning the presidency.

He had bolted from the PRI earlier in the decade due to ideological differences and after being passed over for the party’s presidential nomination in favor of future President Carlos Salinas.

Cárdenas formed the National Democratic Front, which quickly attracted an unlikely assortment of groups the PRI’s old corporatist structure was unable to co-opt.

The coalition ranged from social activists working on behalf of earthquake victims in the capital to guerrillas that were previously hunted by the military in the hills of Guerrero state to small left-wing political parties with socialist and communist ideologies. It also gained support from former PRI members – like López Obrador – who were dissatisfied with the party’s shift to pro-market policies and the advent of technocrats like Salinas.

“The PRD is very pluralistic. It ranges from former guerrillas to people that used to be involved heavily with the PRI,” Zavaleta explained.

Zavaleta jumped into the political arena at the age of 21 after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake destroyed her home in the Centro Historico. She was moved to a temporary camp for displaced residents near the airport, where she began agitating for better services like garbage collection and drainage and pressing the local government for credit to rebuilt damages homes.

But she and her colleagues began drifting into local politics by capturing low-level positions – like jefe de la manzana, or block captain – and eventually found themselves organizing in boroughs on the eastern side of Mexico City for the National Democratic Front.

“We started to be a different kind of struggle: The struggle for democracy in the country,” Zavaleta recalled.

“All of the groups ... decided to back Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas so he could win power and depose the old [PRI] regime.”

The movement almost succeeded in 1988 as Cárdenas, an uncharismatic figure known for his stern facial expressions, staged a popular presidential campaign.

But a mysterious computer crash in the Interior Secretariat wiped out the early voting results favoring the National Democratic Front.

Cárdenas would never recapture the same magic – although he became Mexico City’s first elected mayor in 1997 – as he ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency in 1994 and 2000, placing third in both races.

Support for the party subsequently diminished with his poor electoral performances.

Zavaleta cited the perpetual caciquismo, or dependence on a strong figurehead like Cárdenas, as one of the PRD’s main weaknesses.

“[The party] can’t be sustained in caciquismo,” she said.

“As soon as the cacique disappears, the party then divides.”

Cárdenas’ fading from the national scene created the conditions for another leader to emerge: López Obrador, who as Mexico City mayor championed social programs like stipends for seniors and single mothers and big public works projects, which included restoring the Centro Historico and constructing a second level on the Periferico expressway.

López Obrador and Cárdenas have been estranged in recent years.

The PRD nearly captured the presidency in 2006, when López Obrador fell short by less than one percentage point in an election he branded “fraudulent.” But the PRD, riding López Obrador’s coattails, won a record number of congressional seats in 2006 and supplanted the PRI as the second-leading party in Congress.

The results reaffirmed López Obrador as the face of the party – even though his tactics of belittling Calderón as the “spurious president” and chiding members for working with other political groups irritated many in the PRD. But even López Obrador’s critics recognized the benefits of having an influential front man.

“The problem we have is that Andrés Manuel needs to continue being a strong leader and we need to strengthen our [movement] and his leadership,” Camilo Valenzuela, one of the five aspirants for the PRD presidency, told The News.

“But [he] also needs a strong party,” Valenzuela added.

The candidate also expressed concern that López Obrador was positioning himself as the unofficial PRD president by endorsing Encinas, who succeeded López Obrador as Mexico City mayor in 2005.

Columnist Sergio Sarmiento noted the same thing in a recent Grupo Reforma column.

“There’s not much difference between what López Obrador is doing and what President Felipe Calderón did by placing a close confidant at the head of the [National Action Party],” he wrote.

Many analysts give Encinas an advantage in the race due to López Obrador’s support, even though Ortega’s PRD faction controls the majority of the party’s state and national leadership positions.

“The grassroots came because of López Obrador so I still expect the grassroots to follow López Obrador whatever the organizations do in the states,” said Federico Estévez, political science professor at ITAM.

Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM, also predicted an Encinas victory due to fears that López Obrador’s backers might break away from the PRD.

“This threat of defections is going to actually weigh pretty heavily on a lot of people,” he said.

“They all know that without López Obrador the party is going to be a lot weaker."

Contentious judicial reform provision dropped

Contentious judicial reform provision dropped

David Agren
The News

The Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday discarded a controversial provision from its wide-ranging judicial reform package that would have allowed for police searches of private homes without the officers first obtaining a warrant.

Members of all eight parties approved dropping the measure, which had been bitterly opposed by the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, the Convergence Party and the Labor Party over concerns the provision would provide a pretext for persecuting social and political groups and foment corruption by unscrupulous police officials.

The legislation, which the Chamber of Deputies had been expected to approve on Tuesday, now goes back to the Senate, where debate on judicial reform will begin on Thursday.

Judicial reform would overhaul the nation's oft-maligned criminal justice system by introducing oral trials, providing speedier access to the courts and bringing improved transparency to a process that's largely carried out on paper and behind closed doors.

But the reforms provoked disquiet among opposition political parties, social movements and human rights groups due to the provisions allowing for police searches without a warrant.

The groups also objected to provisions for fighting organized crime, which included proposals that would permit authorities to detain suspects for up to 80 days without charges being laid and better facilitate the extradition of suspects to foreign countries.

National Human Rights Commission President José Luis Soberanes said over the weekend that the judicial reform package "constituted a step backwards for individual rights."

Ruth Zavaleta, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, told The News that "80 percent" of the reforms were excellent, but added that the parts allowing for police searches could be used by ruling politicians seeking revenge against their ousted rivals.

The Chamber of Deputies originally approved the judicial reform package in December, but the Senate modified the legislation by taking out a provision allowing investigators to search financial records without first obtaining legal permission and removing four words from the clause permitting police searches. The Senate is expected to pass judicial reform promptly and sources in the Chamber of Deputies said the package would pass before the current legislative session ends in late April.

Sayulita dispatch

I decamped Mexico City last month for a few days and jetted to Sayulita, a Nayarit beach town 40 kilometers north of Puerto Vallarta. The town is kind of grungy with many unpaved roads and packs of stray dogs roaming the streets, but it also attracts an eclectic mix of expats, fashionistas and hippies. The influx of the latter groups produces a bizarre mix of upscale delights - great wood-oven pizzas, lychee martinis and a shop selling Tahitian black pearls - and down-market charms like beach vendors, locals igniting pre-dawn fireworks and one of the best fish tacos on the Pacific Coast. (I'm still partial to Happy Fish by my old place in suburban Guadalajara, though.)

The Globe and Mail ran my dispatch last Saturday.

A political Pandora's Box

With more NAFTA protests scheduled for Jan. 31, calls for change are getting louder



By David Agren
The News

Corn farmer Pedro Galicia was girding for a fight earlier this month as he marched down Mexico City's Paseo la Reforma to the U.S. Embassy, clutching a rusty machete in his calloused right hand.

The native of San Salvador Atenco, State of Mexico, has a history of struggling against long odds. He participated in a 2002 uprising of machete-wielding campesinos that derailed plans for a new Mexico City airport, which was scheduled to be built on his ejido, or communal farm. He also scrapped with local and state police in May 2006 after vendors were removed by force from a San Salvador Atenco flower market. Galacia and his ejido members regularly wade into conflicts around the region, waving their machetes at demonstrations as a show of solidarity.

Now he's vowing to fight the 14-year-old NAFTA agreement that mandated the lifting of agricultural import tariffs on Jan. 1.

Galicia, a short man with thick stubble, proudly pointed his machete skyward has he expressed concern that a flood of duty-free corn and beans from highly subsidized U.S. producers would wipe out his livelihood and eventually drive members of his ejido from their land.

"[The opening] puts us at a disadvantage against our rivals," he said.

"We want to be able to eat … to live with dignity."

Galicia is just one of millions of campesinos facing an uncertain future as duty-free imports of white corn, beans, sugar cane and powdered milk started flowing duty-free into Mexico on New Year's Day.

The opening has provoked concerns that some of the country's poorest and most marginalized residents will be forced to abandon the countryside, unable to compete against better equipped and more highly subsidized competitors looking to claim market share south of the border.

Nationwide protests have flared since Jan. 1. The nation's largest farm group, the National Campesino Confederation, or CNC, also promised a day of action on Jan. 31, saying the new NAFTA measures would adversely affect 1.4 million campesinos in 2008.



COUNTING DOWN TO ZERO

But if everyone knew it was coming, why was no one ready?

Mexican producers have had 14 years to get ready for the arrival of foreign competition, but many corn and bean producers still seem unprepared for open markets - even though the federal government has been increasing its funding for agriculture support programs.

"It ended up being a mixed blessing to have 14 years [to prepare]," said Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, political science professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

"It turned out to be too long. If the timeline had been five years ... I think it would have been very clear to many of the producers that this was [more urgent]."

The angst over NAFTA's impact on the rural economy has spurred opposition politicians into action. Former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the reworking of NAFTA an integral part of his 2006 president campaign. And the Permanent Commission of Congress passed a non-binding resolution on Jan. 4 urging President Felipe Calderón to revisit the parts of NAFTA governing agricultural issues.

But opening NAFTA, while possible, would put everything on the table – including the manufacturing sector and labor standards – said Sidney Weintraub, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"If they were to renegotiate agriculture they'd have to renegotiate everything," he explained.

He added that any NAFTA partner could, in theory, opt out or ask to rework sections of the agreement, but he said that wasn't likely to happen.

"You don't sign free trade agreements to renegotiate them every five years," he said.



KEEPING 'PANDORA'S BOX' SHUT

The federal government appears unwilling to propose NAFTA revisions.

Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico's ambassador in Washington, recently cautioned against reopening NAFTA, saying that doing so could "open a Pandora's Box."

Calderón also publicly dismissed calls for reworking NAFTA, telling a gathering of the country's diplomatic core: "The countries in the region now buy five times more from Mexican producers than they did in 1994."

Analysts agree with the president.

"In terms of agriculture, things have actually gone pretty decently under NAFTA," said Federico Estévez, a political science professor at ITAM.

"[Farmers] haven't adjusted fully ... but it's clear that productivity has risen - even production itself has risen in certain key areas."

Mexico now produces more corn than when NAFTA was implemented in 1994, with production jumping from 18 million tons to 33 million tons in 2007, according to the Agriculture Ministry, or Sagarpa. Productivity also improved, with corn yields going from the less than two tons per hectare 14 years ago to 2.9 tons last year.

Corn and beans were among the final products left protected by NAFTA, however. (Tariffs on other crops were slashed at earlier dates.) Agriculture Secretary Alberto Cárdenas Jimémez pointed to the removal tariffs on 40 agricultural items in 2003 as evidence that the forecasts of misery in the countryside were unfounded.

"They said there was going to be chaos and that death would come to the countryside, but what happened with the majority of those [40] crops is that production and productivity increased over a period of three to four years," he said in early January.



BEHIND THE FARMERS' FIGHT

The CNC, an organization founded in 1938 that has long been closely affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, disagreed with the favorable assessments of NAFTA, which it blamed for displacing five million campesinos. CNC spokesman Guillermo Correa accused successive federal governments of forgetting the countryside over the past 20 years and pursuing policies that would see "campesinos disappear."

Many Mexican farmers work on small plots of land – 57 percent of corn producers have less than two hectares – that were often distributed as ejidos after the Revolution. The ejidos tied farmers to their properties as they were unable to sell. (A land reform package passed during the presidency of Carlos Salinas now allows ejidos to be sold.)

The ejiditarios became dependent on government institutions for providing fertilizer, supplies and credit – often though corrupt and inefficient institutions – and sold their products to Conasupo, a government buyer. Come election time, organizations like the CNC would marshal campesino support behind the PRI.

Correa blamed many of the current problems in the countryside on a lack of infrastructure, the dismantling of Conasupo in the 1990s and the closing of agencies selling basic agriculture supplies.

Estévez, the ITAM political science professor, said that much of the money previously mandated for farm programs was gobbled up by middlemen and vast bureaucracies, leaving producers with only a trickle of funds.

He also described much of the current CNC maneuvering and some campesino behavior as a throwback to the long period of PRI rule.

"You still have a mass of people tied to the soil in the countryside that are relatively unproductive ... and they're waiting for handouts," he said.

"That's all they've ever gotten; of course they're wanting more."

The federal government will spend 20 billion pesos on agriculture in 2008 with much of the money going to farmers through the Procampo program, which pays stipends directly to those who work the land – often around election time, according to Estévez. The Procampo program was also introduced during the Salinas administration. The program was expanded under President Vincente Fox – a move that Estevez says helped boost the National Action Party's rural vote in 2006.

Iberoamericana political science professor Aldo Munoz noted that large producers in northern and western Mexico collect most of the Procampo money, but he added that the modest amount paid to small producers "deactivates protests" in the countryside.

Galicia, the machete-wielding farmer, begged to differ. At the protest, he spoke of the unrest springing from increased competition ushered in by NAFTA and the continued neglect of the countryside.

"The government is creating the conditions for rebellion," he said.

The rise of Jesus Malverde reveals a downside of Mexico's drug war

By David Agren
The News

Six months ago, Cesar Moreno was flat broke. His paycheck was already three days overdue. Desperate and hungry, he visited a sidewalk shrine in the Colonia Doctores dedicated to Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of narcotics traffickers, where he asked for a miracle. While walking home, he stumbled upon a 100-peso note.

"It wasn't much ... but it was something," he recalled while clutching a green candle during a monthly celebration at a Mexico City Malverde shrine.

Today, Moreno regularly prays to the figure. Dressed in western clothing with pale skin, a full mustache and a thick shock of dark hair, Malverde is a pseudo saint beloved by some of Mexico's most unsavory characters.

Moreno is one of a growing number of believers in Malverde, a stagecoach bandit, who supposedly carried out his misdeeds in the hills of Sinaloa a century ago. In spite of his notorious handle – the patron saint of narcotics traffickers – or perhaps even because of it, Malverde's appeal has spread in recent years from the narco heartland of northwestern Mexico and spilled into the nation's capital, immigrant communities in the United States.

The surge in Malverde's prominence coincides with an escalation in drug-related violence in Mexico, which claimed more than 2,500 lives during 2007. Since taking office, President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 30,000 federal troops and policemen to various states throughout the country to crack down on organized crime.

Experts say Malverde's rise to prominence is no coincidence, directly attributing Malverde's appeal to the growing influence of the drug business and the culture that surrounds it.

"The phenomenon of Malverde has been promoted in other parts of Mexico thanks to narcotics traffickers. There's no other explanation for this," said César López, a history professor at the University of Guadalajara.

"Narcotics trafficking is a growing industry in this country and the saint's popularity has been growing along with it," he said.

In a country where drug culture has spawned celebrities, perhaps Malverde's popularity really isn't that surprising.  Sandra Avila Beltran, otherwise known as "La Reina del Pacifico," was known to dine in some of Mexico City's swankiest restaurants. Before her 2007 arrest – the cops tracked her down through her usual eating haunts – her rise to power in the male-dominated world of drug-trafficking had created a cult of personality embraced by feminists around the country.

Narcocorridos,  a subgenre of Nortena music featuring lyrics about kidnappings, drug deals and local narco bosses, are sold in markets throughout the nation's most drug-plagued states.  Various YouTube sites are dedicated to drug-traffickers like "Chapo" Guzman. Just as gang culture is celebrated by some in the United States,  narcos are increasingly admired by many in Mexico.

But the Malverde phenomenon currently appears to be in a league of its own.

For one, it has become big business. Guadalajara brewery Cervecería Minerva recently launched a pilsner with the label, "Malverde," and a chain of "kitsch" bars in the capital region has adopted the unofficial saint's name. (The Condesa branch features one of his busts inside.) Malverde's entered the art world too: a Malverde-inspired piece won acclaim at a recent national exhibition. Even the Mexican military has placed a Malverde bust in its Mexico City museum.

THE FAITHFUL
Most Malverde followers insist he isn't just for narcos. Alberto Jiménez, a vendor in the Mercado Sonora – a hub for witchcraft-related items, dubious miracle cures and folk saints unrecognized by the Catholic Church - said Malverde images began appearing at the market about five years ago and became popular with people going through rough spells.

"Jesús Malverde is who you turn to when things are tough," the market veteran explained. Jiménez, like many Malverde followers, acknowledged the narco saint's murky background as a bandit, who, like Robin Hood, reputedly stole from the rich and gave to the poor. And while most adherents also identify themselves as Catholics and profess a belief in the Virgin of Guadalupe, few express misgivings about Malverde's unrecognized status as a saint.

"[The Catholic Church] doesn't like him," said Sabino Martínez, a musician playing guitar at the shrine, who referred to Malverde as "a saint for the poor.

"They won't make a saint out of someone who robbed to help the poor."

Thief or not, no solid proof of Malverde's existence has ever surfaced, although his image resembles famed actor and Sinaloa native Pedro Infante.

THE MAN MALVERDE
The story has it that Malverde was born JesúsJuárez in 1870 and was hanged from a tree on May 3, 1909. His legend, however, lives on, especially in Sinaloa, a western state with a long coastline, some of Mexico's most abundant agricultural regions and a rugged sierra. Sinaloa officially lives for agriculture and the state license plate boasts an image of a tomato. But with the advent of marijuana and other smuggling activities, Malverde's fame grew throughout the state.

"He might not have existed before, but he sure exists now," said James Griffith, a retired University of Arizona professor and expert on Mexican folk saints.

A shrine built in Malverde's honor was moved in the 1970s, but only in order to accommodate the construction of a new state legislature. Maps provided by the Culicacán tourism board give directions to the new shrine. Outside, vendors hawk Malverde trinkets – wallets, key chains and pendants. Bands milling around the exterior play narcocorridas.

Inside, people wait patiently to enter a dimly-lit central room adorned with wood paneling and red carpeting that houses a venerated Malverde bust, which most followers kneel in front of and gingerly touch with an outstretched hand.

The narco saint's adherents fail to fit any one stereotype, according to an elderly woman named Doña Tere, a long-time vendor, peddling Malverde paraphernalia-like busts, necklaces and belt-buckles in a corner.

"All sorts of people come here ... famous people, important people, poor people [and] rich people," she said, pulling out a stack of photos featuring banda musicians and famous actors who had paid a visit.

Some followers leave Polaroid photos taken at the shrine. Others leave notes. Consider one from Daniel, Alejandro and Miguel. "Jesús Malverde, help us with our objective and care for us on this road we have chosen and permit us to return to give thanks for our fortune and health," wrote the trio.

Those returning with cash sometimes pay for plaques, which speak of "favors received" and "success in business." Visitors also leave behind donations that fund the shrine, charity projects like burials for those who lack money and an annual party on May 3. At the bash, bands play narcocorridos and the attendees are showered with giveaways, including toys and household items.

A similar, but lower-key scene plays out at the Colonia Doctores shrine on the third day of each month, when some 30 to 70 adherents gather. At dusk, a life-size statue of Malverde – with a noose around its neck and dollar bill tucked in its shirt pocket – is loaded into a pickup truck for a spin around Doctores, a tough barrio known for chop shops and Arena Mexico, home of the Lucha Libre.

María Alicia Pulido Sánchez erected the shrine last fall after her teenage son recovered from an automobile accident more quickly than expected. She turned to Malverde at the recommendation of a friend. But with growing commercialization, it's not only the disenfranchised who are turning to Malverde. Fresas, or snobs, are increasingly indulging in the naco – the tacky or low class, side of Mexico's popular culture.

At Bar Malverde in Mexico City's hip Colonia Condesa the house specialty is an 80-peso Martini Malverde, a mix of vodka, melon liqueur, Cointreau and lime juice.

Apparently ignoring narco-saint Malverde's bust right next to him on the bar, bartender Luis Mondragón insisted the name "isn't about glorifying narcos."

Cervecería Minerva, which leveraged the narco saint's name, branding its newest pilsner "Malverde," claims that sales are doing well.

Malverde was mostly unknown outside of Northwestern Mexico a decade ago, according to sales manager Alejandro Orozco, but now he's "known by everyone." He attributed Malverde's popularity to the national trend of embracing "kitschy" things rather than the tendency to glorify criminals.

But he did compare his brewery's feting of Malverde to marketing efforts north of the border that have leveraged the notoriety of gangster Al Capone and other nefarious characters.

"[Malverde] isn't just liked by narcos, but by honorable people too," he said.