Intersections

Maya 'doomsday' may actually be Sunday, archaeologist says

** Originally published at World Now:

TULUM, Mexico – Hold on to your doomsday fever, folks, the Maya calendar date celebrated Friday as the “end of the world” might actually be off by two days – or a full year.

The end of the 13th baktun cycle of the so-called Long Count of the ancient Maya’s intricate, interlocking calendar system might correspond to Sunday, not Friday, said Carmen Rojas, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

As "end of the world" hype swept the globe Friday, scholars pointed out that the Maya calendar hasn't been decoded enough to make exact correlations with the Gregorian calendar that we use.

Rojas stressed that the Maya not only calculated baktun cycles of 144,000 days, but also had systems that measured the marches of Venus and the moon. Other scholars note some Maya glyphs mark dates thousands of years further into the future.

In addition, calendar dates that Maya leaders recorded on pillars that survive to this day might have been modified over time to suit certain cultural or political interests of the day, Rojas said during a walk-through Thursday of the ruins of Tulum, a pre-Hispanic port city situated on a spectacular bluff overlooking coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea.

One such inconsistency leads some Maya scholars to believe the 13th baktun cycle ends on Sunday, while others say it might be off by a full year or more.

Dec. 21 "is not a relevant date for us. It is an accident that someone would take and pull it out,” said Rojas, a specialist in the archaeology of cenotes, a type of sinkhole. “If you look at a book of Maya epigraphy, there are so many dates that could be commemorated. The glyphs are also not so easily interpreted. It depends on the correlation that you use.”

Nonetheless, in recent days, tourists from around the world have flocked to the so-called Maya Riviera on the Caribbean coast of Mexico’s Quintana Roo state, leading to higher-than-normal occupancy at hotels and on flights arriving at Cancun’s international airport, local reports said. Many visitors say they are using the supposed end of the 13th baktun as an opportunity for spiritual reflection and cleansing.

In Guatemala, people are gathering at the Maya site of Tikal for ceremonies marking the end of the baktun cycle and the winter solstice, which does correspond to sunset on Friday. Separately, highland Maya tied to the indigenous rebel army known as EZLN in Mexico’s state of Chiapas have mobilized and occupied at least five towns, reports said.

As tourists arriving on packed buses swarmed the Tulum site on Thursday, one visitor said she came to the region to get married at a nearby resort -- just in case.

"The end of a cycle is the end of a cycle, there are obviously translation issues," said Rhonda Church, a visitor to Tulum from San Marcos, Texas. "I find it interesting."

* Photo: People pray at Chichen Itza, on Dec. 21, 2012. Credit: Jacinto Kanek / EPA

Merida, Mexico, says: Hope to see you after the world doesn't end

** Originally published in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times:

MERIDA, Mexico -- Contrary to any Hollywood doomsday scenarios or a variety of less-than-optimistic New Age theories, the world will not end Friday, Mexican tourism authorities and Merida residents assure anyone who asks.

Yes, the end of the 13th baktun cycle in the so-called Long Count of the Maya calendar corresponds more or less with Dec. 21, this year's winter solstice.

But the event merely signals the "end of an era" and the start of a new one, locals and scientists say. Or, as some academic Mayanists have explained, the end of the 13th baktun — a date deciphered from totem glyphs and written numerically as 13.0.0.0.0. — is a sort of "resetting of the odometer" of time.

It has become reason enough for people of this flat, tropical region of Mexico to celebrate their Maya culture and history and make mystically minded calls for renewal and rebirth. Officials and residents have also expressed high hopes that foreign tourists will be inspired to visit the Yucatan Peninsula through Friday and beyond. (Assuming the world is still here.)

A handful of residents and officials from Merida, the capital of Mexico's Yucatan state, gathered Saturday at a small cenote, or freshwater sinkhole, for a "Blessing of the Water" ceremony. A man dressed in white and described as a shaman stood before an offering marking the four points of the compass, saying prayers in the Mayan language for Madre Tierra, or Mother Earth.

"We must reflect on how humanity has conducted itself, what we've done to the Madre Tierra during this cycle," said Valerio Canche, president of a local association of Maya spiritual healers.

Canche walked among the people, singing in Mayan in a low voice. He took a handful of herbs and dipped them in water drawn from the cenote, then splashed droplets on the heads of those gathered — a cleansing ceremony.

"Let us conduct ourselves, as brothers all, for the common good," Canche said. "Not only for the Maya people, but for the entire universe."

This cenote, in a community called Noc Ac about 14 miles outside the historic center of Merida, sits inside a dilapidated, unguarded government lot, little more than an opening in the ground shaded by a large tree.

Fine in HSBC case equal to U.S. drug-war aid to Mexico

** Originally published at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- The U.S. government's decision this week not to prosecute top executives at the global giant HSBC for the bank's systematic laundering of money tied to violent Mexican drug cartels or to hostile regimes has resulted in an interesting number.

The U.S. fined the bank a record $1.92 billion on Tuesday, saying HSBC is essentially too big to prosecute. With assets, subsidiaries and investments spanning the globe, pressing criminal charges against HSBC could harm the global financial network at large, the Justice Department reasoned.

The fine, coincidentally, is about equal to the amount that the U.S. government has sent to Mexico in security aid in recent years under the Merida Initiative: A little more than $1.93 billion was sent by the Bush and Obama administrations to Mexico since 2007 to help Mexico fight the drug trade.

In other words, the money the U.S. government would collect from the British-based HSBC for laundering cartel cash would match the cost of the six-year security investment that the United States has made in a neighboring country fighting a bloody internal conflict.

The Merida Initiative funds for military hardware, intelligence upgrades and training is meant to help Mexico's government fight a war against drug cartels, which has left at least 60,000 people dead or missing over six years but made no major dent in the trafficking of drugs to the United States.

HSBC operators in Mexico are accused of laundering $881 million in drug profits, primarily for the Sinaloa cartel, as well as other Mexican and Colombian traffickers. In doing so, it violated a variety of U.S. laws and bank regulations, including the Trading with the Enemy Act and Bank Secrecy Act.

"These traffickers didn't have to try very hard," U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Lanny Breuer said in announcing the decision against HSBC.

"They would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in a single day in a single account," using deposit boxes "designed to fit the precise dimensions of the tellers' windows in HSBC's Mexico branches," Breuer said.

Pablo Galvan Tellez, a banking professor at Mexico's Autonomous Technological Institute, said banks are their own first line of defense against laundering activity.

"At the end of the day, banks must be glass boxes, where we can see all the tubes of where the money is coming from and where it's going," Galvan said.

Academic Edgardo Buscaglia, a world expert on money-laundering and organized crime, said the fine was a "farce," a laughable sum that amounted to "peanuts." He told a radio interviewer Friday that the fine equaled five weeks of HSBC earnings.

HSBC apologized this week for its "mistakes" and promised to set up better safeguards against laundering. The Sinaloa cartel, meanwhile, is believed to still control trafficking routes over much of western and northern Mexico.

* Photo: Facundo Arrizabalaga / European Pressphoto Agency / December 14, 2012.

Chicago diary, Part 3

The talk at DePaul was about the processes in which the populist-progressive current leaders of Mexico City, under the administration of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, have re-socialized the core of the city into a "user-friendly" urban enthusiast's playden. The process I think at least partly reduces or represses some of the instinctual, genetic cultural ticks of improvisation and negotiation that define the true capitalino or chilango. "Safety first."

I'll have more about these ideas in future pieces. In the meantime, thank you Hugh Bartling and the DePaul community for the invitation. And thank you, Ector Garcia, gifted artist, for showing me around.

Chicago is impressive and I am eager to return.

** See Chicago diary, Part 1, Part 2.

Chicago diary, Part 1

This was some radical gang graffiti in Chicago, I guess, proclaiming, "Radicals Against Discrimination," like it was a slogan for a political party or a popular movement.

Somewhere along the north end of the city's shore on Lake Michigan, near Lincoln Park and DePaul University, an idealistic and committed Chicagoan, possibly a young person, decided it was necessary to say what she or he stood for.

Apart from the factor of a strong punk scene in Chicago, the gesture made me smile. People here are straight-up.

Chicago is huge. Some 2.7 million within the city limits and about 9.8 million people in the metropolitan region at large. I was more excited for this trip than any in a long while. What is going on down there? Had just a few short days to gather an impression, in for a talk at DePaul.

While landing, the city looked gargantuan and seemed to spread, dilligently and with evident muscularity, to the far-off horizons. Old-school, built-up, tough, efficient Americana. Chicago.

Upon arrival, the cold was significant. But it also felt good on the lungs. Above, your blogger before the Anish Kapoor sculpture "Cloud Gate" at Millenium Park near the Lake Michigan waterfront.

The Tribune Tower.

Pizza at a neighborhood family pizza spot in Brighton Park, a Mexican barrio near the Mexican Chicago epicenter of Pilsen. I was pretty astounded at first sight but now let's just say it flat and move on. "Chicago is a Mexican city," as ethnographer Daniel Makagon put it one night.

So here we were, a family pizza place on a Saturday night in Mexican Chicago. The pizza crust was amazing; rest of pie, so-so, but it didn't matter. The winning factor was the ambience. Almost everyone inside was brown. Others represented the ethnic diversity that is a standard cosmopolitanism of Mexican barrios anywhere in the world.

Anyone who lives in a pocho/paisa hood inevitably becomes somewhat Mexican themselves, right?

E-S-T-A-D-O *

ESTADO is a series of electronic music sets taking place each Saturday this month at the Estela de Luz monument in Mexico City, showcasing the most cutting-edge and challenging emerging talents from four eletronic music centers in Mexico: Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Monterrey, and D.F.

Here's the site, with samples and takes from each of the artists. The series is curated by Alberto Bustamante of N-A-A-F-I.

The Estela, a monumentally distastrous project since its inception, is being gradually claimed as everyday-usage public space along Paseo de la Reforma. This was where the #YoSoy132 movement held one of its earliest and most spontaneous demonstrations. Inside, or rather underneath the structure, a Centro de Cultural Digital was established, and from here, musical performances have taken place on the square at the base of the "Suavicrema."

The ESTADO site is well worth a browsing and listen. Here's a compilation of the artists at Soundcloud, with downloadable tracks.

* Also, upcoming in Tijuana, near where I am presently reporting, two good festivals I hope to check out: Norte Sonoro, curated by Jace Clayton, and All My Friends.

** PREVIOUSLY: See also, Estrella Cercana, "Teen DJ from Ciudad Juarez, Mock the Zuma, reflects a 'bizarro' reality," "More snapshots from Monterrey, NRML fest," "Estrella Cercana: A newspaper's obituary, Part 4."

Mexico City's new subway line alters transit map

** Originally published at World Now:

Maria Guadalupe Garcia usually spends two hours traveling from her home in southeast Mexico City's Tlahuac borough on bus and microbus to reach the city's west side.

On Tuesday, Garcia, 60, was one of the first riders of a new subway line inaugurated by the mayor and Mexico's president. She said she expects that those two hours of commuting will be reduced to 45 minutes.

"It's going to benefit us so much," Garcia said, standing with her husband, Angel Hernandez, on the platform of the Mixcoac station. "Now, we'll go with calm."

The 12th line of this city's moving hive of a subway system -- the loved and loathed el metro -- opened to the public in what leaders called the most significant and complex public-works project in recent Mexican history.

The new Line 12, or Gold Line, cost about $1.8 billion and is a capstone for the administration of outgoing Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard. The line also represented an unprecedented test for engineers, planners and politicians  who had to fend off vigorous protests and legal challenges from some residents.

For riders, the line makes a crucial alteration to the transit landscape of Mexico City: It adds a lateral connection across the southern end of the metro map, crisscrossing four lines and creating transfer points where previously none existed.

The line also connects Tlahuac, a large, semirural expanse on the southeastern end of the metropolis, to the subway grid. End to end, Mixcoac to Tlahuac, the line stops at 20 stations across 15.5 miles of tunnels and elevated tracks.

More than 380,000 people are initially expected to use Line 12 daily. Overall, nearly 4 million passengers ride Mexico City's subway every day, making it one of the largest such systems in the world.

"This is an immense project for Mexico City," Ebrard said. "It is the longest line and turned out to be most complex. We are very proud of our engineers, our workers."

President Felipe Calderon said he was proud the federal government supplied funds for Line 12, meant to commemorate the 2010 bicentennial of Mexico's independence.

"It was worth it," Calderon said. "This ... is a sustainable solution to the problems of mobility and transport in Mexico City. Moreover, it minimizes the impact of pollution on the city, and that's fundamental."

By noon, smiling, cheering riders were joining the inaugural train on which Calderon and Ebrard briefly rode. An hour later, at Mixcoac station, commuters were already moving about the transfer point as hardy residents of this city do: earphones in, bags held close, eyes alert to the journey ahead.

* Photo: Juana Cisneros, 59, and Jose Hernandez, 52, were among the first riders of the new Mexico City subway line, Line 12, on Tuesday.

Two die when boat carrying Cuban migrants capsizes off Mexico

** Originally published at World Now:

Two migrants have died after a boat carrying 23 Cuban nationals fleeing the tightly controlled Communist nation capsized near a tourist island off Mexico's coast, news reports said.

Ten of the migrants were in custody and 11 were missing but presumed to have made it to the island elsewhere, port captain Ismael Gonzalez Gil told the daily El Universal. Their whereabouts were unknown.

The migrants were trying to land at Isla Mujeres, about eight miles off the Yucatan peninsula, near Cancun, when their boat capsized in heavy surf early Friday. They were reached by a Mexican navy patrol after their improvised boat flipped, reports said.

Photographs published online showed a group of men standing on the beach, some crying and hugging, identified as migrants who were mourning the two dead.

Cubans have increasingly attempted to reach the United States through Mexico. The number of undocumented Cuban migrants arrested by Mexican immigration authorities soared from about 200 in 2004 to at least 2,000 in 2008, The Times reported.

Local naval authorities told news outlets they was searching the island and the mainland coast for the 11 missing migrants.

Latin American governments congratulate Chavez for Venezuela win

** Originally published at World Now:

Governments in Latin America quickly congratulated Hugo Chavez on his reelection Sunday as president of Venezuela, a sign of his convincing win over strong opposition challenger Henrique Capriles.

With Chavez's victory, Venezuela's socialist government is set to remain in power at least through 2019 and maintain its position as a regional leader for leftist governments that are Bolivarian ideological allies or depend on Venezuela's oil and subsidies.

The congratulations were effusive and personally directed at the president who has been in office for more than 13 years, making Chavez, 58, the longest-serving leader in Latin America.

"Your decisive victory assures the continuation of the struggle for the genuine integration of Our America," said Cuban President Raul Castro, in a statement released by the communist country's embassy in Mexico City.

Ecuad President Rafael Correa called Chavez "compa" -- short for compadre -- via Twitter and declared: "All of Latin American is with you and with our beloved Venezuela. ... Next battle: Ecuador!"

In Bolivia, President Evo Morales called Chavez's victory a win for "the nations of Latin America that fight for their sovereign dignity," according to the official Bolivian Information Agency.

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner sent an emotional tweet to the Venezuelan leader, saying: "Hugo, today I wish to tell you that you have plowed the earth, you have sown it, you have watered it, and today you have picked up the harvest."

Capriles conceded after voting Sunday showed Chavez winning by nearly 10 percentage points with 90% of votes counted. Despite the narrowing in his margin of victory over past elections, Chavez overcame the challenge due partly to what one pollster called an "irrational and emotional devotion" to him among poor Venezuelans.

By Monday, other regional players, including ideologically conservative governments that share closer ties to the United States, also recognized Chavez's win. The foreign relations ministries of Colombia and Mexico pledged in short statements to continue working with the Venezuela president, who has struggled against cancer.

"The government of Mexico reiterates its full disposition to keep strengthening the relations of friendship and cooperation that unite Mexico and Venezuela," the Foreign Ministry in Mexico City said.

China, the global communist powerhouse and a crucial trading partner for Venezuela, also congratulated Chavez, the New China News Agency reported.

* Photo: Front-pages in Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 8, 2012. Credit: AFP

Mexico declares zone on Cozumel a protected natural reserve

** Originally published at World Now:

Mexico's government has declared a 93,477-acre territory on Cozumel island off the Yucatan Peninsula a protected natural reserve, in a bid to limit development within the zone and protect wildlife.

The new federally protected zone covers the northern and eastern end of the teardrop-shaped island as well as an offshore zone of about 1,161 acres, Mexico's environmental and natural resources ministry said in a statement.

The designation is meant to help protect the 533 species identified in the region, including algaes, sea sponges, fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, said the agency, known in Spanish as Semarnat.

Rising tourism and development in Cozumel have threatened the wildlife, environmentalists say. Coral reefs and mangrove trees have suffered because of increasing human activity along the so-called Mayan Riviera, environmental studies show.

In August, Semarnat denied a petition by a private energy developer to build a wind-energy park on the island, citing lack of specifics on its potential environmental impact.

The Semarnat announcement is the 18th such designation made during the term of President Felipe Calderon. This year, Calderon's government canceled a proposed mega-resort project on the Baja California peninsula that environmentalists say would have harmed the biodiversity of the nearby Cabo Pulmo National Park.

The declaration on the Cozumel protected natural reserve prohibits any "change of use" of the land -- including construction -- that would affect the "original ecosystems." However, the decree permits sustainable tourism within the zone.

* Photo: A view of the northern shore of Cozumel island off the Yucatan Peninsula. Credit: Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat)

Adios Chavelita

* From Latino USA:

Singer Chavela Vargas was beloved throughout the continent for her rough yet tender voice singing songs of love gained and lost. She died August 5. Reporter Daniel Hernandez attended her very public wake in her adopted home, Mexico City.

Listen to the piece here. Previously, "On voting for the first time for president in Mexico."

** Photo: Fans at Garibaldi.

Excavations: Novacane

 

From Frank Ocean's first mixtape, a video and track that captures with uncanny accuracy a certain late-2000s decade Los Angeles lifestyle that led to many transcended boundaries for many kids in the city at the time -- right when no one was really paying attention.

* "Excavations" is not a category on this blog, it's a theme.

Mexico student movement plans more protests against Peña Nieto

** Originally published at World Now:

The student-led movement that emerged in Mexico against president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is planning another round of protests Sunday. The protests are part of a wave of demonstrations that began almost spontaneously during the presidential campaign and appear to still be drawing big crowds since the July 1 election.

The #YoSoy132 movement, or "I Am 132," said it will call demonstrations in "all public plazas" and at the presidential residence Los Pinos in Mexico City, in rejection of Peña Nieto's victory by more than 3 million votes over his nearest rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Each weekend since the July 1 vote, tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in dozens of cities in Mexico over the apparent victory of Peña Nieto, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled for seven decades until its ouster in 2000. The protests have been largely peaceful and almost entirely generated on social media; in fact, Sunday's planned demonstrations are only the second since election day that the #YoSoy132 movement has formally organized.

In one grassroots demonstration July 7, protesters stormed the live televised wedding of an actor and actress tied to the Televisa network. Televisa is a target of demonstrators who allege that the dominant media conglomerate in Mexico favored Peña Nieto's candidacy.

Protests have been buoyed by a string of reports that suggest the PRI campaign "bought" votes by handing out debit cards and allegations from rivals that it topped campaign spending limits -- including possibly laundered money -- in its effort to return the party to power.

The PRI denounced the allegations but acknowledged before federal investigators that it handed out debit cards to supporters, a practice the party claims is legal.

The second-place finisher, leftist stalwart Lopez Obrador, said he would seek to nullify the election result through Mexico's electoral tribunal system, and promised public "informative assemblies" of his own this month and in August. The leaders of both the main liberal and conservative parties said Thursday they would join forces to challenge the PRI victory over new allegations that some debit cards could be tied to sham companies formed by PRI supporters that served as fronts for laundering illicit money.

The transition of political power is scheduled for December. Lopez Obrador's declared "National Plan in Defense of Democracy and Mexico's Dignity" looks to repeat the movement he started in 2006 after he was defeated in his first presidential bid by less than half a percentage point.

The #YoSoy132 movement is thus left walking a narrow line between maintaining a non-partisan stance but supporting the broader goal of nullifying the election results.

Because of its arduous decision-making process, in which consensus must be reached on major points, the student movement has been unable to articulate a long-term plan in the likelihood that Peña Nieto takes office. More so-called "inter-university assemblies" are planned in the coming weeks.

In two conventions held recently outside Mexico City, one in a town in Morelos state and one in the political flash-point of San Salvador Atenco, participants said the movement resisted some internal pressure to support Lopez Obrador or the youth-oriented wing of his political movement.

"We remain non-partisan," Rodrigo Serrano, a student-movement spokesman at the Ibero-American University, said Friday. "We couldn't ... support [Lopez Obrador] because our original rules don't allow it."

The "I Am 132" movement is named after a Twitter hashtag that emerged in response to a YouTube video by students at the Ibero-American University, after a contentious Peña Nieto appearance there on May 11. On its website, #YoSoy132 has also begun circulating a question-and-answer video on the movement's origins and the claims made against it.

* Photo: Demonstrators gather to protest the results of the July 1 presidential election in the central plaza of Guadalajara, capital of the western state of Jalisco, July 7, 2012. Credit: Ulises Ruiz Basturto / European Pressphoto Agency

In Russa, 'Emo Sucks!'

Remember the emo wars? Well, in some parts of the world, like Iraq, being emo is still denegrated, and in some cases, fatal. In Russia, they wanted to outlaw emo. In the years since its boom in 2008, "emo" has completely lost its second original meaning. It now covers any visual or dress codes that signal modish, "Western," and queerish.

That bothers some people, and probably always will.

Above, an image sent to the Intersections news desk by photographer Conrad Starr, on May 15, 2012, from Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg, Russia. "And BTW it was like 10:30 p.m. and still pretty bright out. Sky is only black from like 11:45 to 3:45 or something," Conrad adds. Funny also that the tag is in English.

From the archive, as ever, the most viewed and most commented post ever on this blog, from 2008, "Violence against emos sweeps across Mexico."

Mexico signs anti-piracy treaty, setting up battle with activists

** Originally published at World Now:

Mexico this week quietly signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, a controversial multinational treaty that sponsors say protects intellectual property but opponents call an assault on privacy and freedom of expression.

Ambassador Claude Heller of Mexico signed the agreement Wednesday on behalf of the Mexican government in Japan.  The signing immediately set off condemnation among Internet activists in Mexico, who called the government's move a strategic ruse in an election year.

Mexico's Senate must ratify the treaty, but the chamber rejected ACTA in 2010.

By signing it while Congress is not in session -- and just days after the presidential election -- the administration of President Felipe Calderon is in effect forcing the issue to the front of the agenda once the new Congress convenes in September and before Calderon's term expires. The president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, assumes office for a six-year term in December. Peña Nieto has so far not indicated a position on the treaty.

ACTA has been negotiated and debated by world governments since it first emerged in 2008. The agreement would help improve international efforts to prosecute content and intellectual-property piracy, including digital and Internet platforms, but also covering trademarks, brands and pirated pharmaceuticals.

Opponents say governments could abuse ACTA and target private users  with criminal charges for downloading copyrighted material, for example, or force Internet service providers to monitor the  online activity of users and turn data over to authorities.

The United States is a key signatory as of October 2011 with Australia, Canada, Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Japan. Last week, the European Parliament rejected ACTA in a crucial vote, a setback for the treaty. ACTA is "too vague, open to misinterpretation, and could therefore jeopardize citizens' liberties," the parliament said in a statement.

Mexico's signing, although contingent on ratification by the new Senate, revives momentum for ACTA supporters.

Rodrigo Roque Diaz, director of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, or IMPI, said in an interview that the government would ask Congress to develop legislation in the fall that would "jointly" protect Internet users concerned about privacy.

"The idea is not to criminalize the independent, private user of the Internet;  the idea is to sanction those who are violating author rights on a commercial scale," Roque Diaz told The Times.

Piracy in Mexico, which is commonly associated with outdoor markets where illegally produced DVDs and CDs are sold, "generates great economic and tax losses" estimated at 2.7 million pesos (about $200,000) an hour, he said. 

Activists in Mexico promised this week to vigorously oppose ratification of ACTA once the Senate convenes. They've started a Twitter campaign to request that each senator-elect stake out a position now. 

So far, leftist legislators are assumed to oppose ACTA, while the ruling conservative party members are assumed to support it. Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party will hold the most seats in the new Senate, but the party's position on ACTA is yet unclear.

Antonio Martinez, a free-speech advocate and one of the forefront voices against the treaty during the Senate's working-group debates on the issue in 2009 and 2010, said the government's signing of ACTA is "trickery."

"It's a very bad signal from the government to the outgoing Senate and to civil society;  it's disdainful of all the work done in the legislature," Martinez said Friday. ACTA "is dangerous for what it doesn't say. The IMPI is wrong, and it's almost as though they haven't even read the treaty," he said.

* Photo: A vendor shows pirated DVDs on a sidewalk in central Mexico City in 2006. Credit: Sarah Meghan Lee / For The Times

Election recount begins at more than half of Mexico polls

** Originally published at World Now:

Mexico is recounting votes cast at more than half its polling places during Sunday's presidential election, the electoral body said Wednesday, as reports of vote-buying marred the apparent win of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Ballots from more than 54% of polling places will be recounted within 72 hours, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) said. The figure marks a huge increase over the 9% of ballots that were recounted in the long and contentious aftermath of the disputed 2006 election.

The recount began early Wednesday as part of the IFE's normal procedure of validating results gathered from the institute's 300 electoral districts. By law, ballots are recounted when a polling place shows irregularities, such as more votes cast than there are registered voters, a complete sweep by a single candidate or party, or a 1-percentage-point or smaller margin between first and second place.

Separately, the PRI is facing growing accusations that campaigns gave potential voters supermarket debit cards in exchange for their votes, among other allegations.

"They gave us the cards in the name of the PRI and Rep. Hector Pedroza [a PRI congressional candidate], and they said they were counting on our vote," a 20-year-old university student told the Associated Press at a Soriana supermarket in eastern Mexico City.

The PRI and Soriana chain said in statements that they had no such agreement.

Leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has yet to concede defeat after the initial "fast count" that began Sunday night had him about 6 points behind presumed winner Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI.

The recount is not expected to significantly alter the preliminary results. Such a prospect places pressure on Mexico's progressive factions to decide whether they will follow Lopez Obrador on another possible wave of protests and mobilizations like those that shut down the center of Mexico City for weeks after the 2006 vote.

In that race, the final official tally had Lopez Obrador lose the election to current conservative President Felipe Calderon by less than half a percentage point. The leftist leader never accepted those results.

As in 2006, the Lopez Obrador campaign is claiming widespread fraud in the 2012 vote. He reiterated his call for a vote-by-vote recount at every polling place. His campaign also said it would send scores of complaints of vote-tampering and vote-buying to Mexico's electoral tribunal.

"What we are demanding is that the electoral authorities ... assume their responsibility," Lopez Obrador said.

Meanwhile, the emergent national student movement known as #YoSoy132 held an all-day assembly at the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to determine how it would proceed after the apparent Peña Nieto victory.

Due in large part to huge demonstrations led by #YoSoy132 movement, the results of the  election have cast a harsh light on the relationship between the PRI; Peña Nieto; and the two leading media networks in Mexico, which control 95% of the airwaves.

Throughout the campaign, most polls showed Peña Nieto with a lead of 12 to 18 points over Lopez Obrador, but the initial results of the actual vote showed the spread to be half that.

The Times noted this week that the PRI's win is weaker than initially expected. And for Calderon's ruling National Action Party, or PAN, the 2012 results are an "unmitigated wreck," as a former party president put it. 

* Photo: An official with the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City checks one of the ballots cast in Sunday's national election. Credit: Alex Cruz / European Pressphoto Agency

Migrants abroad vote for Vazquez Mota and AMLO, reject PRI

** Originally published at World Now:

The tiny but closely watched migrant segment of the Mexican electorate voted for Josefina Vazquez Mota of the governing National Action Party (PAN), an opposite result to her third-place showing in the national race.

The results announced Monday by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) also showed a 23% increase in voter-abroad participation over the 2006 election, the first time Mexicans living abroad had the right to vote.

In all, 40,714 votes were counted from 91 countries, with a wide majority of those from the U.S., reflecting the deep civic engagement with Mexico that many established immigrants can maintain after decades away.

Voters abroad registered with the IFE months in advance to receive a postage-paid ballot by mail, which had to be returned by Saturday. Electoral authorities on Monday noted they were also able to reduce the budget for the vote-from-abroad count by more than half.

"It was a success because the goal was to get more votes than in 2006 at less of a cost, and that's what happened," said Ana Isabel Fuentes, IFE spokeswoman for the vote-abroad program.

The news was a bright spot in the post-election buzz for the PAN.

A PAN-led government under President Vicente Fox pushed changes in electoral laws in 2005 to give Mexicans living abroad the right to vote, which migrants in the United States had lobbied for since the 1970s. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had resisted giving migrants the vote throughout its presidencies.

PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto won Sunday's election, returning the party to power after 12 years in opposition. During the campaign, supporters of the PRI opened an unofficial campaign office in the Los Angeles area, and that may have given the party a boost over its showing in 2006. 

Vazquez Mota won 42.1% of the 2012 migrant vote, results showed. She was followed by leftist coalition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with 38.9%. The PRI finished with 15.6%, a low third place compared with its national victory of at least 38%, according to Monday's ongoing national tally.

In 2006, the PRI finished with a paltry 4% of the votes sent from abroad.

The migrant vote is minuscule compared with the tens of millions who vote in Mexico, but they often remain influential leaders in their communities here and account for a large portion of Mexico's wealth through remittances. 

In an interview with The Times conducted before the election, Peña Nieto's advisor on migrant affairs said that upon winning, the PRI would maintain and expand migrant-friendly programs developed by two consecutive PAN governments.

Arnulfo Valdivia, a political economist and dual Mexican-U.S. citizen himself, said Peña Nieto's administration would also seek to make it easier for the estimated 12 million Mexicans living in the U.S. to vote in future elections. Currently the IFE does not issue voter cards outside the country.

"The phenomenon of migration cannot be a point of pride," Valdivia said. "It's fundamentally a reflection of the lack of opportunities that exist in Mexico."

[Post edited slightly.]

* Photo: Ramiro Romero shows his ballot as a voter abroad in Mexico's July 1 presidential election, May 24, 2012, in the Lynwood suburb of Los Angeles.

Mexico's leftist candidate has high hopes, fervent supporters

** Originally published on June 27, in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times:

TLAXCALA, Mexico — His razor-thin defeat in the 2006 presidential election spiraled into a contentious political melodrama that divided Mexican society after he refused to accept the results.

Now Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is running again, his second and presumably last attempt to become Mexico's first leftist president in modern times.

"We are going to win the presidency of the country once more," the former mayor of Mexico City proclaimed triumphantly during a campaign stop last week in this small colonial center east of the capital.

Once again, his optimism may belie the facts on the ground. In national polls, he continues to lag far behind Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, although he says his own internal polling shows him running neck and neck.

Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, has been gaining slightly in national polls since the race began in March, capitalizing on discontent with two successive governments under the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, and on lingering distrust of Peña Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Wrapped in a long wool serape thrown on him as he inched his way through throngs of supporters, Lopez Obrador described his "adversaries" as "desperate," detailing what he views as a conspiracy of television and political propaganda to "impose" front-runner Peña Nieto on the public.

The crowd booed, jeered and banged on drums. "May God never will it," a woman huffed near the podium.

This week, Lopez Obrador called on PRD supporters to be vigilant observers at polling places Sunday in case the PRI or PAN attempted to steal votes or stuff ballot boxes, which his campaign claims occurred widely in 2006.

Silver-haired at 58, Lopez Obrador inspires fervent passion in supporters — and profound angst among his many critics.

Future in electoral politics for Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo?

** Originally published at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- Camila Vallejo broke into the international limelight in May 2011 as the beautiful revolutionary who led hundreds of thousands of student demonstrators in a call for education reform in Chile, toppling government ministers in the process.

She was, on the surface, an unlikely leader.

Just 23 at the time, the geography student dazzled the public early on with her statuesque features, shiny nose ring, and her soft, soothing manner of speaking. More alluringly, Vallejo was often inaccessible to the press, surrounded by student bodyguards.

Underneath the image, she was clearly exhibiting sharp political skills, both on the street among the droves of students and workers who managed to frequently shut down the capital of Santiago, and also in negotiations with the government of President Sebastian Piñera.

A year later, the students' demands for a freer, more equitable education system have made some progress against Piñera's initial response that higher education in economically prosperous Chile was "a consumer good."

But overall, the movement appears to be in a state of transition, if not stalemate.

Vallejo, now 24, has also reached a point at which she must decide what her next political role might be. Could a next step be toward the electoral arena in Chile? 

Last week, Vallejo visited Mexico for the first time, to speak at a conference on higher education at a Mexico City university. The visit had been planned since late last year, explained a spokesman at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (known as UAM for its initials in Spanish), but by now Vallejo's presence in Mexico had acquired politically significant overtones.

Since mid-May, Mexico has witnessed demonstrations across the country expressing opposition to the possible return to power of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the July 1 presidential election. The new student movement in Mexico, known as #YoSoy132, or "I Am 132," has won concessions from major newscasters and on Tuesday night organized an unofficial "citizen's debate," with all the presidential candidates except Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI.

Vallejo spent about three days in Mexico, speaking at the UAM's Xochimilco campus and meeting with members of #YoSoy132.

As the country bars foreigners from "participation" in politics, she made sure not to comment directly on Mexico's election. She also restrained from making any direct recommendations on #YoSoy132. "The students are their own advisors," Vallejo said at a news conference. "We're not here to intervene."

Despite the caution, she was treated like a rock star in liberal Mexico City.

UAM students clamored to reach out and greet her. At a public panel Saturday on a plaza near downtown, she was given bunches of flowers and greeted with shouts of "I love you!" from the crowds standing in the rain to hear her.

"What's happening here in Mexico and what's happening in Chile is that we're trying to repair the social fabric, organizing, mobilizing, so that we could more radically democratize our societies," Vallejo said in an interview with The Times on Friday.

"I believe the 'I Am 132' movement is in the same feeling," she added. "We are basically fighting for the same thing."

Her visit came at a moment of personal redefinition. In recent months, Vallejo may have seriously damaged her standing among less strident, more post-revolutionary young leftists in Latin America. She visited Cuba in April to attend the 50th anniversary of the Communist Youth Union, and apparently spoke approvingly about the Communist regime.

"If Camila Vallejo was born in Cuba, she'd be in prison or simply silenced by the mechanisms of power," said dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who sought unsuccessfully to meet Vallejo while she was in Havana (link in Spanish).

Vallejo has made no apologies for her affinity to Communist thought. She is the daughter of members of Chile's Communist Party and a member herself of the Communist Youth in Chile. With her charisma and political capital among Chilean society, some are beginning to wonder whether Vallejo would seek to further tilt Chile's current opposition more to the left, as a candidate of some sort for the Communist Party.

Speaking to The Times, she did not disavow the possibility.

"I think all the youth that have mobilized have a responsibility to assume a political role at the national level," she said. "We are going to fight until the end, and not just me, but many other new partisan militants who are young and want to build a social transformation."

"I will be there," she added, "and many other youth, social leaders, in that path." 

* Photo: Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo is shown before delivering a speech during a meeting with Mexican students in the #Yosoy132 movement, at the Metropolitan Autonomus University in Mexico City on Friday. Credit: Alfredo Estrella / Agence-France Presse

Mexico candidate Peña Nieto seeks Colombia drug fighter as advisor

** Originally published at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- Former Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto, leading in polls to become Mexico's next president, has appointed the former chief of Colombia's national police to work as an "external advisor" for public security if he wins the July 1 election.

The appointment of Gen. Oscar Naranjo, announced Thursday, is read as a signal to observers in Mexico and the United States that Peña Nieto would make the pursuit of drug trafficking a high priority amid growing allegations that top members of his party have had ties to organized crime.

Peña Nieto maintains a steady lead in polls as candidate for the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. He called Colombia a model for success in the U.S.-backed fight against drug traffickers.

Naranjo, 55, is credited with helping take down top Colombian trafficker Pablo Escobar in 1993, as well as for recent successes to curtail coca production and battle the country's largest guerrilla army,  the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Both Mexico and Colombia are recipients of U.S. security aid.

As he introduced Naranjo, Peña Nieto said that if elected he would seek collaboration with the U.S. on security issues.

"Mexico has accumulated achievements, it's delivered lives, enormous sacrifices," Naranjo said. "Security, understood as a democratic value, is expressed in policies that are totally inclusive, that protect everyone."

Naranjo told the Associated Press that he expects to be traveling regularly between Mexico City and Washington if Peña Nieto wins the election, hinting at closer ties with U.S. drug fighters if the PRI returns to power. It was voted out in 2000 after 71 years.

An official biography of Naranjo distributed to reporters lists him as an "honorary member" of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a point that rivals and political observers have latched on to in recent days.

"Unlike the PRI candidate, who trusts more in a foreigner than in our armed forces, I do trust in Mexico's soldiers," said Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate of the ruling National Action Party, referring to the current government's military-led campaign against traffickers.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, running under the banner of a leftist coalition, said bringing in Naranjo would violate Mexico's Constitution, which he said prohibits foreigners' participation in national security matters in Mexico.

"What is basically evident here is that the [PRI] is also betting on the same policies of force," Lopez Obrador said.

On Thursday, Naranjo said he would work "non-operationally, outside of hierarchies" in a Peña Nieto administration.

The announcement was made as the former state governor seeks to beef up his security credentials as the campaign heats up heading toward the July 1 election. Drug-related violence is growing during the campaign.

* Photo: Presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, right, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and Colombian retired Gen. Oscar Naranjo greet each other at a news conference in Mexico City on  Thursday. Credit: Christian Palma / Associated Press

Mexico cancels mega-resort project near Baja California reef

** Originally published at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's government on Friday halted a controversial mega-resort development in Baja California Sur after environmentalists said it would have threatened a large coral reef in the Sea of Cortes that has rebounded dramatically from years of damage.

The government canceled the proposed Cabo Cortes project by withdrawing provisional permits first granted in 2008 to the Madrid-based company Hansa Baja Investments. President Felipe Calderon said at the presidential residence Los Pinos that the company failed to provide enough proof that the project would not harm the rich biodiversity of the nearby Cabo Pulmo National Park.

The protected marine reserve of more than 17,550 acres -- most of it at sea near Cabo San Lucas -- has become  a symbol of environmental renewal after years of overfishing in the area.

"Due to [the project's] magnitude, we needed absolute certainty that no irreversible damage would be generated, and that absolutely certainty, simply and plainly, was not generated," Calderon said.

The Spanish company did not immediately react to the cancellation of the project. Hansa Baja Investments reportedly has been hard-hit by the Eurozone financial crisis.

Nonprofit groups, environmental advocates and researchers in Mexico campaigned heavily to stop the Cancun-size Cabo Cortes development, arguing that the proposed marina and 30,000-room hotel would be built too close to the reserve, one of the largest and most important in the country.

Since the Cabo Pulmo reserve was established in 1995, the total amount of fish rose by more than 460%  over a 10-year period, according to a 2011 study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Greenpeace Mexico said in a statement that more than 220,000 citizen signatures opposing the project were delivered to the federal government last week. The group hailed Calderon's decision as a victory but said that it would still press for investigations of authorities in Mexico's environmental agency over the Cabo Cortes development's permit process.

"The Cabo Cortes project was not only unsustainable, it was also illegal," said Greenpeace Mexico Executive Director Patricia Arendar. "Mexico needs accountability, transparency in the authorization of projects of this kind, and guarantees that environmental rights will be respected."

* Photo: An undated photograph of a humpback whale at the Cabo Pulmo National Park marine reserve. Credit: Prometeo Lucero / Greenpeace

Popular Chilean student leader to visit Mexico

** Originally published at World Now, Wed., June 13:

MEXICO CITY -- The Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo confirmed on Wednesday that she will visit a Mexico City university and meet with members of the nascent student movement in Mexico known as "I am 132."

Vallejo, a popular figure, is among listed participants for a conference on public education that started Wednesday at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, or UAM.

She is scheduled to meet students in the #YoSoy132 movement  Thursday at the UAM campus in Xochimilco, in southern Mexico City.

A 24-year-old geography student, Vallejo became internationally known as an early and telegenic leader in the movement calling for education reform in Chile. The demonstrations that began in May 2011 to press for more public funding in higher education have put pressure on the administration of Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.

Mexico's student movement, meanwhile, held another string of large demonstrations across the country on Sunday, along with concurrent, smaller protests by supporters in cities around the world, including Madrid, Chicago and Washington.

Demonstrators are opposed to the possible victory of presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto ofMexico's former ruling party in the July 1 election. The Institutional Revolutionary Party is leading in polls as the vote nears.

Demonstrators have declared themselves nonpartisan, but the "I am 132" movement has buoyed the campaign of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in some polls.

The movement took a hit Monday when a video emerged of students claiming to be #YoSoy132 but who were announcing a split with the group. "I am 132" organizers said the people who appear in the clip were unknown to them and had never been at movement meetings. (One figure in the splinter group told reporters Tuesday that it had only 15 members.)

"These are guys just looking for attention and the news media are giving it to them to weaken the movement," said Ignacio Martinez, a 23-year-old communications student at the Ibero-American University, where protests began against Peña Nieto on May 11.

Meanwhile, as reports of physical confrontations between alleged Peña Nieto supporters and Peña Nieto opponents have trickled into news accounts, Lopez Obrador on Wednesday said during his daily news conference that his campaign did not support violence of any sort.

"We are not in any act of confrontation," said Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and self-proclaimed pacifist. "We are in peace, peace, peace, peace."

Peña Nieto, former governor of the state of Mexico who has also disavowed any campaign violence, reaffirmed his position Wednesday to not attend an unofficial presidential debate being organized by the "I am 132" movement. The three other presidential candidates have agreed to participate.

"It's clear this is a movement that does not generate conditions for a neutral, impartial meeting," Peña Nieto said during a television interview.

* Photo: Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo, pictured in 2011. Credit: Luis Hidalgo / Associated Press

Mexico's PRI opens campaign office in Los Angeles

** Originally published at World Now:

LYNWOOD, Calif. -- Immigrants supporting Mexico's formerly long-ruling political party have opened a campaign office in the Los Angeles area for its 2012 presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The office, opened Thursday at a Mexico-themed mall in this suburb, is an unofficial headquarters for the party in Southern California and represents a shift both for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and for the increasingly influential communities of Los Angeles-area immigrants from various regions of Mexico.

Officially the office is for a group calling itself the Committee of Migrants United for Mexico. Leaders said they would be phone-banking with their relatives back home to encourage them to vote for the PRI.

"We opened this office so that any migrant who has a proposal [can] pass it to us, and we pass it" to the presidential candidate, said Roman Cabral, a former migrant-abroad state legislator from Zacatecas state.

"We will have direct communication with Mexico City," he said.

Photographs of Peña Nieto adorn the walls of the mostly bare new office, where tortas and pan de dulce were served for participants and journalists, a party custom.

And just like back in Mexico, the PRI activists wore the party's bright red campaign color and spoke glowingly about Peña Nieto -- who is leading in polls -- and what they described as the party's "regenerated" identity.

The PRI for many years resisted reforms that would have given Mexicans abroad the right to vote. Their new presence in Southern California also reflects a change in the party's ideals and shows that the "new PRI" will pay attention to migrants' needs, activists said.

Yet at the office opening at the suburban Plaza Mexico mall, the PRI members found themselves facing  tough questions from local Spanish-language reporters. How could you support the PRI, one reporter asked, if decades of PRI policies and corruption scandals pushed many migrants to come to the United States?

"Why would I vote for the PRI if the PRI was the reason that we came here? Well, I respond, 'Why don't you go back?' It's been 12 years without the PRI and no one's gone back," said Felipe Cabral, also of Zacatecas. 

"The last 10 years is when the most migrants came, and that shows the bad work done by other parties," said Mike Gonzalez, an immigrant from Jalisco, referring to President Felipe Calderon's ruling National Action Party, or PAN.

Another reporter asked what the migrant PRI members thought of the grassroots student demonstrations  in Mexico against their candidate. Protesters argue that the dominant news network Televisa favors Peña Nieto's candidacy.

"I think Mr. Peña Nieto has won his media power through his good record," migrant Arturo Vega said.

The PRI members said they would propose that, if elected, Peña Nieto open a Cabinet-level ministry for migrant affairs. They said their effort in L.A. was entirely volunteer-based.

Peña Nieto leads by at least 15 points in most polls, ahead of Josefina Vazquez Mota of PAN and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of a three-party leftist coalition.

This year, more than 59,000 Mexicans living abroad requested mail-in ballots for the July 1 vote, electoral officials in Mexico City said.

* Top Photo: Angel Morales, center, and other migrant voters answer questions during the opening of a new office for the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico at the Plaza Mexico mall in Lynwood, May 24, 2012. Credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

** Bottom Photo: A view of the outside of the office at the Plaza Mexico mall. Credit: Daniel Hernandez

Back again, AMLO makes pitch to business leaders

** Originally published at World Now:

In 2006, when he came within a hair of winning Mexico's presidency, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was called a "danger to Mexico" by his opponents on the right, a would-be Hugo Chavez who would plunge the country into an economic crisis.

Six years later, Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, is back and in a second run for the country's top office.

This time around, he has sought to soften his image, and the traditionally conservative business elites now appear open to at least listening to the man bidding to become Mexico's first leftist president in modern times.

On Thursday, Lopez Obrador addressed a group of leading private-sector finance chiefs for the first time in his political career. He was greeted with smirks and chuckles at some points, but drew applause when he said he'd basically "maintain macroeconomic policies" currently in place in Mexico.

"We have no plans to expropriate, we will respect concessions, contracts [to foreign companies]," Lopez Obrador said.

He also told the Institute of Mexican Finance Executives during a freewheeling two-hour breakfast session that he'd aggressively seek to reduce poverty and "combat corruption" and waste through austerity measures.

He said his team believes it can make Mexico's economy grow 6% annually while creating 1.2 million new jobs a year, through a mix of public and private investments, including roads and refineries. His overall model, he said, is rising economic powerhouse Brazil under leftist leader and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

With austerity cuts, the government could save billions of pesos a year, Lopez Obrador added; he'd start by halving the presidential salary and flying in commercial jets if elected.

"If we don't combat poverty and inequality, we will keep seeing frustration, insecurity, and violence," he said.

Lopez Obrador, 59, has been running third for most of this election season heading to the July 1 vote. Yet in recent days, as conservative opponent Josefina Vazquez Mota has made a series of stumbles, he appears to be moving up in some polls.

Still, even a dramatic surge in support for either candidate might be too little, too late, to top the candidate for the resurgent formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, Enrique Peña Nieto, who maintains a comfortable double-digit lead over both.

It was unclear how strongly Lopez Obrador's message resonated with the business group. One attendee, Beatriz Zarur, said that in 2006 she supported Felipe Calderon, the current president. This year, she said she was still unsure whom to support.

"I think he has some interesting proposals, but at the same time, he's got things that I don't agree with," said Zarur, who works for a law firm in Boston and whose mother is an IMEF member.

"I am not a partisan," Zarur added. "I don't care if she's a woman or he's handsome. I'm interested in proposals and in candidates."

Photo: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate of the leftist coalition of Mexico, speaks at his campaign launch March 30. Credit: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images

Death toll is 2 in Mexico quake; no volcano

** Originally published at World Now:

Two people have died after last week's large earthquake in Mexico, the first casualties reported since the magnitude 7.4 quake shook densely populated Mexico City and damaged thousands of homes across several southern states.

The mayor of a municipality in Guerrero state, near the border with Oaxaca and near the quake epicenter, said that one man died of his injuries after a wall fell on him and that another man died from complications of a heart attack suffered during the quake.

The deaths in the Cuajinicuilapa municipality were reported to the federal government during a tour Friday of the largely rural zone by Social Development Secretary Heriberto Felix Guerra.

Previously, no deaths and no major damages had been reported since the quake, which was centered in Ometepec, Guerrero state.

It was one of the largest seismic events in Mexico since the devastating magnitude 8 quake of 1985 that left more than 10,000 dead. (A quake of equal magnitude hit western Mexico in 1995, killing 49, and a quake measuring 7.6 hit the same region in 2003.)

The low death toll in Tuesday's quake suggests Mexico's progress on earthquake preparedness since 1985 makes the country a "model for preparedness in the developing world," said an online story by Nature. 

Mexico's interior secretariat said 29 municipalities in Guerrero would receive funds for damage to homes and buildings during the quake. Thousands were damaged in Guerrero and Oaxaca, officials said.

Separately, the geophysics institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico released a statement contesting a claim made by Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre that caused a brief buzz on social networking sites. The governor said Thursday that the university's geophysicists were headed to the quake zone to determine whether a small volcano was emerging and therefore causing the seismic activity.

The institute said it was routine to send analysts to earthquake epicenters to study seismic activity after a large quake. "The earthquake ... had a non-volcanic origin," the statement said.

On Sunday, a quake measuring 7.1 hit Chile, resulting in no deaths.

A new wave of SoCal ska, with a Latin beat *

** Originally published in the Calendar section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times:

On a wide but quiet strip of Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles, in the run-down Casa Honduras dance hall, the ska kids are waiting for the next band to start.

Couples are making out in the corners of the venue, attached to a Honduran restaurant. They sport dreadlocks, Afros and spiky punk 'dos and are dressed in everything from camouflage and combat boots to Chucks and suspenders.

A sound check ensues with a band called Blanco y Negro. Once its members get going, blasting the room with a frenetic Latin-punk sound sung both in English and Spanish, the young crowd forms a circle and begins to skank. The dance has them lifting their elbows and knees rhythmically to the ska beat, rushing and pushing against one another when the music accelerates into punk or metal.

Bodies are in motion, sweating, pounding skin to skin. Though just eight miles from downtown L.A., by the sounds and faces, this could be a jam in Mexico City or Tijuana.

Ska — the Jamaican sound that expanded into a variety of rock and reggae subgenres in the United Kingdom and then the United States in the late 1970s through the '90s — is booming again in Southern California. It is experiencing a comeback after a decade of relative exile, but this time around it's influenced by ska from Latin America.

Underground shows are happening in backyards and warehouses across Southern California, with mini-scenes developing in areas such as South and southeastern Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire.

"Do you remember the swing days? This is the new era of that," said Hollywood resident Josh Morales, 24. "But it's more ska-reggae."

"It's like a combination of cumbia with ska," Morales said as the band Los Chiles Verdes began warming up for its set. "It's like Spanish rock.... I don't know. It's hard to explain."

** Read the rest here. Read more ...

NRMAL music festival shows different side of Mexico

** Originally published in the L.A. Times Calendar section:

REPORTING FROM SAN PEDRO GARZA GARCIA, MEXICO -- Oakland-bred Raka Rich brought the flow of California hip-hop, in Spanish.

Puerto Rico's Davila 666 ignited a wild mosh-pit with its Latin-tinged punk.

And all kinds of new Mexican acts — as varied as Juan Cirerol of Mexicali and cumbia-rockers Sonido San Francisco — showed that Mexico's independent music scene just might be at its most dynamic in years. Over 12 hours on Saturday, some 4,500 fans gathered to hear more than 50 international acts at a sonically diverse annual music festival called NRMAL.

The name belies the fact that nothing here can be taken for granted. Not only was it the biggest NRMAL fest held in the past three years, but the fact that it took place in this industrial city of more than 4 million without any serious trouble makes it even more of a triumph.

Metropolitan Monterrey is currently a battleground in Mexico's ongoing drug war, where a string of deadly tragedies such as the last August's Casino Royale massacre, in which 52 people died after drug traffickers torched a casino, have traumatized a once-proud hub of industry and innovation.

The storied Monterrey night life that was once centered around the Barrio Antiguo neighborhood is all but dead after a series of shootings with multiple fatalities at popular night spots. Many musicians who in previous years helped make Monterrey an incubator for new Latino sounds — groups such as Kinky or newer rockers She's a Tease — have migrated to safer centers such as Mexico City or to the United States.

"There was sadness, deception, uncertainty, a lack of will to get things done," said NRMAL organizer Pablo Martinez, speaking about the effects of violence on the Monterrey scene. "I think the fruits of staying standing through this year is this festival."

The outdoor fete, with bands spread over three stages all day long, was a stylish yet friendly event where security was casual and the boundary between the performing musicians and the fans was almost nonexistent.

"This is definitely a cutting-edge festival," said Travis Egedy of Denver punk-rave act Pictureplane as the afternoon got going. "The idea to have a cross-cultural music festival is really important and really cool, getting Americans to play down here for Mexicans."

That welcoming vibe was partly the product of a new spirit of collaboration brought by this year's NRMAL co-curator, Brooklyn DIY promoter Todd P.

In 2010, Todd P. organized a separate festival in Monterrey dubbed MTY MX, competing with the budding NRMAL crew and its first festival. That same year, an outbreak of drug-war violence in Monterrey resulted in many U.S. performers canceling their visits at the last minute. Both festivals struggled.

This year, Todd P. joined forces with NRMAL, setting aside the previous atmosphere of competition. He pumped a New York indie ethos into the lineup with acts he invited such as Prince Rama, Liturgy and Gatekeeper.

"The story line is: It's so bad, things are falling apart and it's chaos," Todd P. said. "I'm here, I'm looking around. It's not falling apart. This is a functioning country. It has problems but it's not the country portrayed in the news."

* Read the rest here.

* Photo: Tijuana goth-pop singer Dani Shivers performs at Festival NRMAL in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, March 10, 2012.

A face among Mexico's 14 million informal workers

** Originally published at World Now:

She sits on a plastic stool patting blue-green corn between her palms in front of a portable charcoal grill on a street corner in this city’s dense and noisy downtown.

Lilia Dorantes, who sells the stuffed maize patties known as tlacoyos, works around the corner from a newspaper vendor, a fruit vendor, a pirated-DVD vendor and a vendor who sells dolls dressed as Mexican marines and federal police.

The street vendors belong to an army of off-the-book workers who now make up a record 14 million Mexicans pumping money into the informal economy, the national statistics institute reported last  week.

The number of informal workers in Mexico has increased by 1.6 million since 2010, the statistics agency reported. Overall, informal laborers make up nearly a third of all those employed in Mexico.

Although the informal market, drug money-laundering and remittances from Mexican workers in the United States all help keep the economy afloat, Mexico lost an average of $50 billion in the last decade to what are called illicit financial outflows — money circulating through Mexico but in theory not going toward infrastructure, healthcare or education, according to a January report by Global Financial Integrity.

"That is money that the Mexican government could have used to improve the lifestyle and quality of living for the average Mexican," said economist Sarah Freitas at the Washington-based group.

But informal workers have little to no safety nets to fall back on in case of emergencies and can remain off the books their entire lives.

"What happens when I get sick? Well, with whatever I have saved up...," Dorantes said, trailing off and swatting away at her charcoal so that it would keep burning.

Dorantes, 39, said she makes about 300 pesos a day, or about $23, sharing the approximation of her profits hesitantly. In Mexico City, the information can be tempting to would-be robbers or burglars.

Vendors are believed to pay a daily or weekly tax to powerful street "leaders" who overseeindependent vendor associations or neighborhood groups with revolutionary-sounding names.

Dorantes said she pays about $10 a week to her leader to operate on a downtown sidewalk. Her mother sold tlacoyos for about 20 years in Mexico City's Chinatown, she said. In 2007, after Mayor Marcelo Ebrard's administration negotiated with vendor groups to remove them from the streets of the historic center, Dorantes and her tlacoyo operation simply picked up and moved a few blocks away.

Dorantes said she's growing tired of her four-hour round-trip daily commute from a pueblo just outside Toluca, the capital of the neighboring state. She has a small daughter and a daughter entering high school and would like to be nearer to them, maybe by setting up a tlacoyo stand outside her door.

"I would like to have a legal place," she said, patting more maize together. "The difference here is, no one bosses me around."

Mariachis in Mexico struggle despite U.N. heritage nod

** Never got around to posting this here! Originally published at World Now (months ago):

Like most of the mariachi musicians milling about Plaza Garibaldi this early morning waiting for work, Juan Ramon Ramirez had his hands in his pockets, not on the strings of his vihuela.

It was cold, and there weren't many customers out looking for a song. Not even just a few days after Mexico's most well-known musical tradition got a dose of good news.

Mariachi music -- who hasn't ever heard that spirited strumming? -- now belongs to the world's list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," as declared this week by the United Nations.

Ramirez, 62, had heard about the U.N. designation and it sounded good to him.

"I hope it turns into more work," he said, not appearing very hopeful. "Well, it could turn into more work."

Minutes passed, and no one approached to commission a ringing rendition of "Cielito Lindo" or "El Rey."

"Let's hope this gets fixed," the musician said.

UNESCO, the U.N. educational and cultural agency, added mariachi and 18 other demonstrations of intangible world heritage to its list during a meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The additions include Chinese shadow puppetry and French horseback riding, which is intangibly vital for the world because it "emphasizes harmonious relations between humans and horses," the agency said.

UNESCO also added 11 demonstrations of intangible world heritage that, in its phrasing, are in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. These include Yaokwa, the "Enawene Nawe people's ritual for the maintenance of social and cosmic order," in the Brazilian Amazon, and a "circular breathing" singing technique from Mongolia.

But was mariachi placed on the wrong list? Could it be considered in Need of Urgent Safeguarding?

You might think so after a night at Plaza Garibaldi, or any plaza, it might seem, where mariachis traditionally gather and busk for work. Mariachis everywhere are having a tough time.

In Los Angeles, home to the world's second largest population of Mexicans, mariachis are feeling pushed out of the traditional Mariachi Plaza east of downtown due to the looming threat of development and gentrification.

In Guadalajara, the historic birthplace of mariachi, the musicians at the Plaza de los Mariachis complain of a declining clientele due to security fears and a lack of support from the local government.

The city is the capital of Jalisco state in western Mexico, and it means business when it often proclaims itself the "cradle" of Mexican culture. Tequila, the highly tangible alcoholic spirit, is also from there.

Here in Mexico City, Plaza Garibaldi north of downtown has been completely remodeled in the last two years, with a new plaza floor and a new tequila museum. Local mariachis, however, say the imposing museum structure is unwelcoming and "doesn't have a point." The remodeling also kept customers away for months at a time, and since the project was finished, they haven't quite come back.

That's how mariachi David Figueroa put it. The 66-year-old guitar player said the fixes to the plaza are largely cosmetic. He's played in Plaza Garibaldi, he said, since 1957. His workload suffered once the city started cleaning up the area, and it hasn't fully recovered since. 

Attempts at integrating mariachis into established unions have also produced poor results for the musicians, Figueroa added.

"What we really need is a good restaurant with good food where you can go listen to good music," Figueroa said. "They don't help us at all."

Indeed, mariachi's addition to the UNESCO list will probably mean little to the musicians who gather at places like Garibaldi. (The full-band price for a song, 150 pesos or about $11, has not changed since the Sunday news of the UNESCO list, several musicians acknowledged.)

Here, drunken revelers show up to hire bands or trios for whatever song they might want, in just about any genre. Few make much of a distinction between the traditional mariachis -- with their form-fitting suits and wide-brimmed sombreros -- and newer additions to the plaza who play popular nortenos from Mexico's north or jarocho from the tropical eastern coast.

"Now they think they own the plaza!" Figueroa huffed. "But here, the tradition of Plaza Garibaldi has always been mariachi. It's not norteno, not jarocho, not trio, it's mariachi."

A song wafted over the chilly night air from nearby. The men shivered.

"Hopefully the patrimony [list] will mean people will respect mariachis more," said viola player Antonio Hernandez, 55. "We only charge what you're supposed to charge."

* Photo: Mariachis perform in 2009. Credit: UNESCO

Mexicans confront racism with white, black doll video

** Originally published at World Now:

Is Mexico's an inherently racist society? Does the culture overwhelmingly favor those with light skin over those with dark skin? And if so, is that a legacy of European colonialism or present-day images in television and advertising?

These are among the thorny questions emerging in online forums in Mexico since a government agency began circulating a "viral video" showing schoolchildren in a taped social experiment on race.

The kids are seated at a table before a white doll and a black doll, and are asked to pick the "good doll" or the doll that most resembled them. The children, mostly brown-skinned, almost uniformly say the white doll was better or most resembled them.

One child in the video with mixed-race features says the white doll resembled him "in the ears."

"Which doll is the good doll?" a woman's voice asks the child.

"I am not afraid of whites," he responds, pointing to the white doll. "I have more trust."

Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, in mid-December began circulating the video, modeled on the 1940s Clark experiments in the United States. The children who appear in it are mostly mestizos, or half-Spanish, half-Indian, and a message said they were taped with the consent of their parents and told to respond as freely as they could.

Mexicans who saw the video said online that they were dismayed but not surprised by its results, and also offered some criticism for the agency that produced it.

Commenters have noted that the options were "very limiting" by offering only black and white, or good and bad, when in Mexico the majority of the population is mixed-race, mostly European and indigenous, and to a lesser extent African and Asian backgrounds.

"It is a poorly formulated question, it is pretentious," one user said on the website VivirMexico.

Yet many also said the video reveals a deep-seated prejudice that is taught to children in Mexico from an early age.

In 2010, the Televisa network was criticized for showing actors in black face during the World Cup in South Africa. In May, the case of a black man who died after a confrontation with police in Mexico City led to protests against Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

Wilner Metelus, a sociology professor and leader of a committee advocating for Afro-Mexicans and black immigrants, said the doll video shows how far the country must go to recognize the prevalence of racism and the need to educate young people. 

"The Mexican state still does not officially recognize Afro-Mexicans. There are few texts that talk about the presence of Africans in Mexico," Metelus said. "We need a project in the schools to show that the dark children are just the same as them, as the lighter children. And not only in schools; it is also necessary in Mexican families."

On Friday, the daily La Jornada published a report saying black immigrants in Mexico and the Afro-Mexican minority still suffer racism and discrimination that is not adequately acknowledged by the government.

"[Dark] skin color is still associated with foreignness," Luz Maria Martinez, a leading anthropologist on Afro-Mexican culture, told the newspaper. "We do not know how to value the indigenous culture, which is very rich, or the African culture, which is as great as any in the world."