Check out this piece in the LA Times about growing support for Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; maybe fear can unite the United States and Mexico? We're awfully good at it, and it sounds like Mexicans (OK, wealthy Mexicans) are honing their fear-skills, too:
The 10-foot walls and the electrified fences that are de rigueur for most homes can't keep the force out, nor can the neighborhood's ubiquitous private security guards. It seeps in, like a noxious vapor: the possibility that a certain leftist politician with a tropical accent might be elected the next president of Mexico in July.
And fear of Venezuela:
As mayor of Mexico City from 2000 until last year, Lopez Obrador instituted a variety of public works programs and subsidies for the poor. Most residents saw him as a competent and compassionate administrator of an overpopulated megalopolis beset by social ills: He left office with an 84% approval rating in the city, according to one poll.
But Calderon, once significantly behind, has had considerable success playing on the fears of the wealthy — and the anxieties of many in the middle class. He has used a series of ads attacking Lopez Obrador to propel himself forward in several recent polls.
"Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico," intoned one of the ads, comparing him to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a self-styled populist and the bete noire of Latin American conservatives. Another ad argues, with considerable exaggeration, that Lopez Obrador bankrupted Mexico City with expensive public works projects.
A
poll (this appears in the Reuters "Stock Market News" category) released today shows AMLO regaining some of that lost ground, now just four points behind Calderon.
Mexico City has vast miserable slums surrounding it (some of the worst I've seen anywhere, including Venezuela). If I were Mexican, I'd be pretty concerned, as well as ashamed. Wealthier Latin Americans like to treat it as natural, and then go into self-defense mode. Just like us nortenos.
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