Mexican Elections:  Looks Like AMLO

The latest polls suggest strongly that left-of-center candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, better known as AMLO, will be elected President on July 1.  He shows about 50% of voter preference in recent polls, sometimes more, in what is essentially a three-man race.  Just as important, his lead has widened considerably in the past few weeks, extending from about 15 points to 25 points over his closest rival, Ricardo Anaya, of the right-leaning PAN Party.  The candidate for the party in power, the PRI, Antonio Meade, is down to only 19 points.  That leaves less than 10% undecided.  AMLO has strong momentum going into the last week of campaigning.

In Mexico government took a nosedive around 30 years ago when the PRI selected someone now considered one of the worst presidents in the past century, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.  Salinas implemented what are known as neo-liberal reforms, reversing the New-Deal-like program of previous PRI presidents, much as has been the case in the United States since the election of Ronald Reagan.  He began selling off government enterprises, usually to cronies for low-ball prices, in alliance with the country's exceptionally wealthy upper classes, based in Mexico City and Monterrey.  The political system took a strong turn toward corruption, as it did in the US, which has weakened the appeal of the nation's two most popular political parties, the PAN and the PRI.  

Both parties became enabling kleptocracies for the rich and well connected after Vicente Fox's administration from 2000-2006, not only at the national level, but also in state governments ruled by the two major parties in the 33 states of Mexico.  As in the US, people do not trust either major party.  Making matters worse, drug trafficking, has gotten unbearably violent.  Cocaine, heroin, and other illegal substances, which used to operate prior to 1988 as a sort of franchise system controlled by the government, which took a cut of the action of each cartel but unofficially permitted orderly and non-violent trafficking.  After Fox's administration ended in 2006, the rules of the game got muddled, as one part of the Mexican government did as it was told by the DEA, while another part (largely law enforcement) continued enabling it.  For years these highly inconsistent policies led to intense rivalries between drug organizations and no new franchise rules emerged as violence spun out of control.  It was a dog-eat-dog environment with the stakes worth billions of dollars and it made Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in the world, affecting many sectors of the population.

Donald Trump hovers over the election like a Holloween gremlin.  Incumbent President Enrique Peña Nieto, already highly unpopular for his outlandish enrichment in the first three years of his do-nothing presidency, became a national embarrassment twice when, in Trump's presence, he froze, unable to formulate any response to Trump's insistence that Mexico will pay for "the wall."  This hurt Meade, who was a cabinet minister under Peña Nieto.  The other candidate, Ricardo Anaya, is also weakened by a long history of corruption within his party.  In truth, they are also bad candidates, with little charisma.  AMLO owns virtually all of the charisma in this election.  He has run for president three times now.  Quite possibly he won the election of 2006, in which Felipe Calderon was declared President, which led to a weeks-long occupation of Paseo de Reforma, one of the world's most elegant boulevards.

What is AMLO likely to do as President?  He will be more than capable of holding his own against Trump, and he promises to cut down on the corruption and violence that has plagued Mexico for two decades.  He also is likely to be less inclined to kiss up to Donald Trump in negotiating over NAFTA, and less inclined to swallow the mantra of privatization sweeping through the country for 30 years, and which has led to massive amounts of corruption and serious poverty in the countryside.  He's tough and, from what we know, principled.  His support is roughly like Bernie Sanders' support in 2016:  college educated, working class, very youthful, and concerned about fairness issues.

What You Should Know About Albert Speer, Nazi Architect in World War II

Albert Speer was a brilliant architect who joined the Nazi Party in Germany and designed the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld Stadium in Nuremberg.  He was part of Hitler's inner team and became the Minister of Armaments and War Production during World War II.  He was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to twenty years in prison, which he served in Spandau prison in West Berlin.  He wrote a fascinating book called Inside the Third Reich after being released from prison, in which, among other things, he comes to terms with his own guilt.  I remember an interview he once gave, I believe to 60 Minutes while still in prison, in which he readily acknowledges his guilt.  Let me paraphrase what he said.

I knew nothing about the holocaust, he insisted.  Yes, he said, I had heard rumors about bad things, but you always hear rumors in government and in wartime and you never know where they are coming from or whether they were planted.  I didn't want to know.  I was in charge of keeping the economy of Germany producing goods and services and I was very busy doing this.

But one day, he said, returning to his office from lunch, "I found a manila folder, addressed to me from an anonymous source.  I opened it up and saw some photographs which suggested the rumors I had heard might be true.  I took the folder across the hall to Geobbels' (Minister of Propaganda) office and asked him directly what these pictures were all about."  Goebbels got angry "and told me I didn't want to know.  You are in charge of economic production.  Leave these pictures here, go back to your office, and ask no more."

"I took his advice and returned to my office," he said.  That made me guilty.  As a human being it was my responsibility to learn more about what was happening.  My refusal to act in the face of evidence of crimes against humanity makes me guilty of complicity.  

Speer acknowledged his guilt by complicity, if you believe his version of things, because he saw some photographs that demanded his attention as a human being, and he did nothing to learn more, much less do something about it.  Like Speer, Susana Martinez has seen the photographs and the tapes.  Unlike Speer, who claimed he simply went back to his office and did nothing to find out more about these crimes, Martinez has publicly supported the specific policies--of separating parents from their children when migrants come to the border seeking asylum from severe danger in their own countries.  By the logic of a confessed war criminal, she is not complicit indirectly, as he claims to have been, through silence in the face of crime, but directly, through the bully pulpit of her office, supporting the crimes.

Years from now people will judge our own humanity and actions or in-actions in the face of crimes against humanity. Now that you know, what are YOU going to do about it?  What will be said about YOU years from now?  What would you like for people to say about YOUR reaction to these crimes?

SUSANA MARTINEZ HAS DEFINED HERSELF MORALLY IN SUPPORTING SEPARATION OF CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS

Once in a while a choice you make will define you at once, indelibly, as a person, as a citizen, and as a moral being.  Susana Martinez has done this.  She has allied herself with the forces of evil in America today, supporting the crimes against humanity--national government policies--that have been going on for weeks.  In doing so she has betrayed her ethnic roots, her background as a law enforcement advocate, and her own humanity.  

If you want to hear a concrete example of the crimes Governor Martinez has supported, click here.  You have probably already heard it.  

It is a human cry of a six-year old cry for her mother, who was hoping to seek asylum for herself and her daughter at the U.S.-Mexico border, perhaps inspired by the words on our Statue of Liberty:  Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to breathe free.  Instead of breathing free, the daughter, as a matter of official US policy, was separated from her mother by officials of the U.S. government.  She had memorized the telephone number of her aunt, hoping somehow a phone call would put things right.  Thousands of people have become victims of these crimes.  There are, of course, policies in place, as there were in Nazi Germany, to prevent such crimes by public officials from being recorded.  People know when they are committing crimes against humanity, and they naturally try to hide their faces, ashamed of the actions they are committing in loyalty to authority rather than to human decency.

Once in awhile, again, the choices we are forced to make will define us, indelibly, as persons, as citizens, and as moral beings.  What Susana Martinez did in voicing support for these atrocities defined her, once and for all, at a key moment in American history.  And history will not forget this.  The woman who used to like to read stories to small school children has morphed into a woman who agrees officers should snatch children from parents who have come fleeing from oppression, seeking safety.  Please remember:  what YOU do in response to these atrocities will define YOU as well.