Democracy will not come to Mexico as the result of supposedly optimal policies prescribed by self-appointed saviors bent on economic stabilization.
Denise Dresser
The U.S.-Mexico border has often been described as an open wound. NAFTA was expected to heal it, albeit through a long, slow, and imperfect scarring process, by creating a basic framework for cooperation between the two countries.
Trump has said he will dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement. This would be hugely harmful for Canada and the U.S. and for integration in the region.
Pena Nieto is a product of the two television networks that groomed him for power and then propelled him to the presidency.
The tin man vs. the straw man. The candidate with a brain but without a heart against the president with a heart but without a brain. That's how many Latin Americans are viewing the race between John Kerry and George W. Bush.
Mexico isn't a country of routine debates among presidential candidates.
The PRI portrays itself as the force of the center, of stability.
So many people view the war on drugs as a failure, as something that was perhaps intended and carried out with good intentions but very badly executed.
Zedillo's lack of political savvy is a personal flaw. But his insulated and elitist governing style reflect the age-old vices of the political system itself.
It would indeed be fortunate for Mexico if a new era of PRI presidencies were a sign of healthy rotation in power rather than a regrettable step backwards.
While the United States is closing doors, Canada is opening them. While U.S. President Donald Trump is slouching toward authoritarianism, Canada is safeguarding democracy.
Canada has a stand on human rights in many places, just not when Donald Trump violates them in Latino neighbourhoods.
Unless the immigration issue is tackled in a constructive way, Mexico and the United States will probably revert to a historic cycle of confrontation and recrimination.
When former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari passed the torch to Zedillo, he knew that economic difficulty lay ahead but believed that the Yale-trained economist's impeccable technical credentials would be enough to maintain Mexico's stability.
Those who voted for Vicente Fox endorsed his call for change - better economic management, less crime, and less corruption - and they expect him to deliver.
Mexico City is being used as a laboratory to send the message throughout the rest of Mexico that the Left can govern. That here, it can be different, and it can actually get things under control and provide an alternative to the National Action Party and its conservative views.
The Left discovered that its post-electoral strategy of constant confrontation was actually helping Felipe Calderon and his popularity instead of undermining it. So Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of Mexico City, who's a very savvy politician, he changed course. He decided to actually govern instead of simply trying to bring the Calderon government down.
Suddenly, I'm like this political Ann Landers, which is a role I'd never envisioned for myself.
In Mexico, the perception of power is power.
Jesse Helms has historically been identified as an enemy of Mexico; therefore, by definition, anyone who opposes him is a friend of Mexico.
PRONASOL repositions the PRI as a welfare machine.
Mario Ruiz Massieu's resignation places the ball very firmly in Zedillo's court. A key decision he will have to make is whether he is going to govern with, without, or against his own party.
For Mexicans, corruption is not a deal breaker.
The National Action Party, in many ways, emulated the PRI in the way in which it conducted itself in government, supporting corporatist leaders, supporting corrupt oil worker union leaders.
The PRI can afford to push democratization; it can afford to be generous because it has a very good chance of winning in clean elections.
I'm not necessarily opposed to greater American involvement. But if that's the way the Mexican government wants to go, it needs to come clean about it. Just look at what we learned from Iraq. Secrecy led to malfeasance. It led to corrupt contracting.
The emergence of cross-border coalitions and issues shows the advent of a whole new era in U.S.-Mexican and Mexico-California relations.
Aguilar Zinser played a crucial role in the struggle for democracy in Mexico. He was on the right side of that battle, however strident, passionate, and difficult he was.
Spoiling my ballot paper is the only way I can see of stripping the system of legitimacy, shaking it up, and reforming it so that it favours citizens.
The Chapultepec Accord is a pact among concessionaires to protect concessions.
Mexico is a free trade partner of Canada. Despite that, for many Canadians, Mexico is even more foreign, unknown, and uninteresting than many countries in Africa.
I tweet 20 times a day, not only about Mexican politics, but about film, books, restaurants, U.S. politics.
Canadians have much to be proud of and much to teach the world about compassion.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaches out to embrace suffering Syrians, his government seems ready to throw embattled Mexicans under the bus just to appease Mr. Trump.
Vicente Fox beat the PRI by gambling on a simple formula: Marketing + Money = Presidency.
Ignoring party leaders in order to sway public opinion may work in countries where elected representatives are responsive to their constituencies. But in Mexico, members of the legislature cannot be reelected, so their destinies depend less on the will of the people than on party bosses.
Undoubtedly, Mexico's crime-related problems have become a focus of attention among lawmakers, law enforcement, and the media in the United States.
Mexico doesn't know whether it should pay more attention to those who advocate militarizing the border or to those - like President Obama - who have come out against it.
The problem with Mexico isn't so much the men who govern but the lack of rules to govern by and the absence of institutions to rule with.
During the Fox administration, Mexico turned into a more violent country than Colombia; Calderon's task is to recover lost ground and clean it up.
Government after government has prioritized the preservation of corporatist loyalties over the promotion of economic growth and emphasized clientelist distribution over entrepreneurial innovation and creation of level economic playing field.
Mexico is trapped by a dense network of rent-seekers and monopolies in sectors that are crucial for economic growth, including telecommunications, energy, transportation, and financial services.
There are too many unions, monopolists, and bureaucrats that behave like hungry sharks, accustomed to feeding off oil revenues and appropriating the extraordinary wealth that Mexico produces but does not share in an equitable and democratic way.
For too long, government officials have tinkered with Mexico's economic structure through piecemeal reforms that seek to ensure political stability but that do not address the key obstacles to greater innovation and competitiveness.
In Latin America, many people live with outstretched hands. Throughout the hemisphere, paternalistic governments accustom people to receiving just enough to survive instead of participating in society.
Democratic Latin America limps sideways because it can't run ahead. There are too many entry barriers to the poor, the innovative, and those without access to credit.
Latin America's economies are organized in a way that concentrates wealth in a few hands but then leaves it untaxed, depriving governments of the resources needed to invest in their citizens' human capital.
Governments that don't need to broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people.
Two considerations led President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to choose Luis Donaldo Colosio as his successor: history and loyalty.
NAFTA was conceived to avoid discrimination against goods. A U.S.-Mexico treaty on immigration should be devised to prevent discrimination against people.
