Mexican commentator at UCB blasts Mexico's political elite

A leading Mexican political commentator came to Berkeley yesterday with a trenchant and far-reaching critique of her country.

The savage violence of the drug war, combined with the country's inadequate political reforms, are pushing Mexicans back into the arms of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that ruled an essentially one-party state for 71 years, said Denise Dresser, a professor of political science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

"People clamor for a Mexican Putin" to restore order with a firm hand or "mano duro," Dresser told a packed house at an event presented by UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies Thursday afternoon.

Because President Felipe Calderon, a member of the National Action Party, must negotiate with a divided legislature, he has made alliances with the PRI, said Dresser, a columnist for the Mexican newspaper Reforma and the newsweekly Proceso. But in the process he is strengthening the party's "dinosaurios," the corrupt, authoritarian old guard, she said.

"Mexico today has a low-grade democracy characterized by parties that are very well-financed but not particularly representative," she said. "There's a great deal of wealth for a few beneficiaries, stagnant growth, very little competition and concentrated power."

That depressing scenario is only exacerbated by the fact that Mexican law prohibits re-election of public officials, eliminating voters' ability to hold them accountable at the ballot box.

"Mexico caught the Obama administration by surprise," asserted Dresser, who earned her PhD at Princeton and has taught at several U.S. universities. The American president, preoccupied by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a raft of domestic crises, was not thinking of Mexico as a priority. But the alarming level of drug cartel violence, and the new focus brought to it by Congressional hearings, caught his attention, she said.

Dresser said she was heartened that "he has adopted the ethic of co-responsibility" for the drug problem, recognizing that U.S. policies have a big impact on drug demand and the availability of guns and cash that strenghten the Mexican cartels. But she added that she was disappointed that Obama had backed off his campaign commitment to push for a renewed assault weapons ban, a measure she feels could help a lot.

U.S. help in fighting the drug war must go beyond providing Mexico with better military hardware, said Dresser, to helping the country reform its legal and judicial institutions. But even that won't make a dent unless Calderon is willing to fundamentally tackle the high-level corruption that has enabled the cartels to become so powerful, she said.

Phew! She made the case in testimony before the U.S. Senate last month as well.

Posted By: Tyche Hendricks (Email) | April 24 2009 at 03:22 PM

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