The new kid on Mexico’s presidential block, Enrique Peña Nieto, is causing a bit of a stir to say the least. Peña Nieto is the new face of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the PRI), a party whose 71 years of repressive and authoritarian politics until their defeat 12 years ago, earned them the nickname los dinosaurios for devouring much of what was in its path.... social movements, trade unions and opposition parties. Now back in power, the PRI have hatched a new baby T-Rex. But this was never going to be a smooth transition of power..........
The latest rumblings of tension in Mexico started from the beginning of September when President Peña Nieto and the PRI announced reforms in the education and energy sectors; reforms that include an obligatory evaluation of teachers, the lessening of teacher unions’ power in politics and the restructuring of the national gas company PEMEX. According to Peña it is Mexico’s responsibility to undertake these reforms and modernise the country: a change that will benefit all.........
Yet in Mexico City’s central square, angry and frustrated teachers, students and other left-wing groups have been demonstrating and camping out in protest against these proposals, claiming that these are not benefits for all, but to the contrary, are a reflection of the exclusive and corrupt PRI of the 20th century. The protestors are adamant that Peña’s proposals will not address the more pressing concerns of insufficient funding of schools which leaves many students without access to materials and education. Furthermore, protestors also claim that reforms in the energy sector will result in a privatisation of PEMEX and the exploitation of its resources and wealth for foreign companies.
In the latest protests which were even attended by the retired and notorious left-wing leader Cuahetémoc Cárdenas, there have been calls for an obligatory evaluation of not only the teachers in Mexico but all those in public service, starting right from the President of the Republic: Enrique Peña Nieto.
Heeding these calls we briefly report on Peña Nieto’s first presidential term to see if he measures up to the change and progress he claims to represent or if he is merely a replica of the dinosaurios of the 20th century.
The media has also battled with the idea of whether the intellect of Peña Nieto can stand up to his high rising quiff ‘copete’. Some strongly conclude that it certainly does as Peña Nieto has even been hailed to be the new Clark Kent: Mexico’s own Superman! A much needed Superman who was to rescue the country from the outgoing PAN government’s disastrous War on Drugs which, since 2006, has escalated violence and put Mexico’s death toll amongst the world’s highest.
A light hearted relief from Mexico’s mounting violence and security issues was provided by Peña Nieto’s minutely constructed 2012 electoral campaign that ended up looking more like a One Direction music tour than a political manifesto. The PRI’s presidential candidate created a fan base that became loyal to his youthful looks, perfected copete and public romance with famous telenovela wife, Angélica Rivera. ‘The ideal candidate’ was even rumoured to have been modelled on the widely popular heartthrobs of telenovelas but would Mexico’s new sweetheart be able to live up to the country’s challenges?
Attempting to penetrate through Peña Nieto’s glistening image were the student movement #YoSoy132, left-wing groups and even the Guardian newspaper who all claimed that the pretty young face provided a cover up for a return of the old dinosaurios’ appetite for electoral fraud and bias media coverage. Perhaps Mexico’s intellectual left had been spurred on to reveal another face to the PRI of the 21st century by recalling the words of Octavio Paz who warned of the Mexican whose ‘face is a mask’. The summer of 2012 saw youths and activists join forces in a series of mass protests from Mexico City to the Yucatán Peninsula which contributed to the de-masking of the PRI.
Protests continued to the 1st of December 2012 in Mexico City where the celebrations for Peña Nieto’s official assumption of the presidency were diluted by protestors, and infiltrated rioters, who distracted from the events in the official ceremony hall. Protestors’ banners named the act an imposition and demanded democracy in place of a telenovela show. The government’s response: a violent crackdown on protestors and the wrongful imprisonment of students, later proven innocent from charges of street rioting and vandalism. All in all, Peña Nieto’s smoke-screen act was not dramatic enough to pull audiences away from noticing governmental actions reminiscent of the PRI’s dinosaurio responses to protests; the most famous of which resulted in a massacre of students prior to the 1968 Olympics in the Three Cultures Square in Tlatelolco, Mexico City.
To draw the curtains on the first episode of this telenovela, the teachers camped out in the Zócalo in protest to the latest reforms, were forcefully removed from the site by federal agents on the 14th of September 2013. Coincidentally the next evening, the Zócalo was cleared and glistening as a stage for Peña’s re-enactment of Hidalgo’s call for Mexican independence. The need for a more receptive audience than protesting teachers may have provoked Peña Nieto’s ‘new’ PRI to follow in the tracks of the dinosaurios and clear its way to power by means of force.
Despite this, Peña claims that the full benefits of the reforms will be obtained upon his exit from the presidential office in six or seven years time. Is it then the case that viewers of these latest political debacles in Mexico, like fans of telenovelas, must wait for the closing sequences to cast judgement on the main protagonist? Either way, from Peña Nieto’s first episode in a six year presidential term, it appears that no smoke-screen curtain is large enough to hide dinosaurios...............
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