Tag Archives: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

MEXICO: Mexican Spring?

I’ll be talking about the Mexican presidential elections today on KPCC, with Larry Mantle, host of Air Talk, beginning at 11 a.m. Please tune in.

Meanwhile, an interesting column from academic Guillermo Trejo about the rise of the Occupy-like student movement, Yo Soy 132, and whether it can influence the Mexican presidential election next Sunday.

Polls showed that the movement drained frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, of the PRI, of a good part of his c0mmanding lead, while Andrew Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the left PRD, surged to within a few points of him in some surveys.

The movement has put the issue of the manipulation by the Mexican media conglomerates — Televisa and Television Azteca — to the forefront of the campaign, where it deserves to be.

Still, it’s unclear whether 132 has enough oomph to push AMLO ahead for good. Should be an interesting election.

More soon on Pena Nieto and his political forefathers.

 

 

 

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MEXICO: Televisa paid to promote EPN, smear AMLO

Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui interviews Laura Barranco about the money reportedly paid by presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto (of the PRI) to Televisa, the country’s television and entertainment conglomerate, to promote his image and campaign.

Barranco is a former Televisa employee. The interview is in Spanish.

Added to that is a story by Jo Tuckman of the Guardian, who has reviewed documents, contracts apparently, that seem to show that Televisa sold time on entertainment and news shows to promote the candidacy of Pena Nieto, and smear the campaign and image of leftist candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. AMLO has called on EPN and Televisa to release the contracts.

“We’re watching a presidential candidate constructed openly, or sometimes not so openly, by the most important television network of the country,” Aristegui says during the interview.

Televisa has denied the claim.

 

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MEXICO: Presidential campaign photos by Keith Dannemiller

In Mexico, ace freelance photographer Keith Dannemiller has been traveling the presidential campaign trail.

He’s got many of the shots posted online. He paused long enough to add some comments on the job …

On the campaign: I have been covering these happenings for the last 24 years — this is my fifth time – as a photojournalist for various newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. I swore to myself that 2006 with Felipe Calderon (PAN), Andres Manuel López Obrador (PRD) and Roberto Madrazo (PRI) competing would be my swan song.

On weirdness: Just yesterday, ex-President Vicente Fox, he of the PAN, who so convincingly dethroned the PRI in 2000, says that he is backing the PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto for president.

Manuel Bartlett Diaz (then Secretary of the Interior and necessarily of the PRI), who infamously declared in 1988, that the vote tabulating computer system had crashed on election night, denying victory to the coalition that supported Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas for president, is now candidate for Senador in the state of Puebla from the left-center PRD party – the party of Mr. Cárdenas.

On Enrique Pena Nieto, candidate of once-ruling PRI: Everything during the trip to Queretero, three hours north of Mexico City was meticulously handled, just like it was in the good ole’ days of the PRI hegemony. Myself and the US reporter were picked up at the reporter’s Mexico City hotel and driven to the forum that Mr. Peña Nieto was leading on the aerospace industry in Mexico.

When the event was over we were led to a room by ourselves for an interview with the candidate. I was allowed to set up some small strobes with umbrellas and wander freely around the interview area. With a long lens, I could fill the frame with the candidate’s face and the images convey some of his emotional response to the questions. With the interview finished, to my surprise, Mr. Peña Nieto began to walk, surrounded by a couple of bodyguards, to his waiting SUV. I shot from the balcony of the building where we had just been and then moved down into the scrum. It took him an hour and a half to go about three hundred meters, and he was mobbed mostly by adoring female supporters, who were grabbing, kissing and posing for photos with the candidate.

On Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the leftist PRD: If I were a Mexican, I would vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This has to do with my political and philosophical beliefs, but more importantly with his style. The man can be sardonic, ironic, funny and heartfelt all in the same speech. In a word he is more human, than any of the other candidates on the stump, and this, by a long shot. In my opinion, he leaves himself open to more revealing photos. He seems to have the ability to step outside himself, distance himself from his persona as a political candidate and look back in at the situation in which he finds himself.

Check out all Keith Dannemiller’s photographs.

 

 

 

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MEXICO: Presidential poll echoes on

Thursday’s poll in Reforma showing leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador within four points of front-running PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto continues to echo today.

The PRI has redirected its focus at AMLO, according to Animal Politico, even as they discount the poll’s importance. To be sure, other polls

Meanwhile, the party’s corrupt past is once again on display with the scandal surrounding former Tamaulipas governor Tomas Yarrington, suspected of laundering narco-money.

The peso fell in value and stocks were off late Thursday, in part due to the poll and the apparent fear among investors and the business class that a leftist would become president of Mexico — though the European economic crisis is also a big player in this.

More later on who Enrique Pena Nieto is and the political clan he represents.

 

 

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MEXICO: Presidential race tightens

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate of the leftist PRD, has drawn within four percentage points of frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, candidate for the once-ruling PRI, according to a poll in Reforma in Mexico City.

Josefina Vasquez Mota, of the rightist PAN, the party of President Felipe Calderon, remains in the low 20s.

AMLO has been aided by student protests against Pena Nieto, who is viewed widely as a member of the PRI’s dinosaur element, young though he may be.

Pena Nieto is always widely viewed as being a creation of Mexico’s media elite, particularly the vast Televisa news and entertainment conglomerate, which many people charge has devoted enormous amounts of air time to promoting his candidacy and campaign over the last few years.

This makes the Reforma poll marking AMLO’s resurgence all the more interesting. One key force in EPN’s fall-off would seem to be the student-based Yo Soy 132, an Occupy-like movement that has held marches critical of the PRI candidate and the media promoting his campaign.

Animal Politico’s El Palenque debates whether AMLO can catch EPN, with discussions about which candidate will benefit from the large number of undecideds.

By the afternoon, EPN tells Reforma that the poll figures leave him “really animated” to campaign and that the real poll takes place July 1, when Mexican elect the new president.

By end of day, investors used the poll — fear of an AMLO presidency — to stage a big sell off in stocks and a fall in value for the Mexican peso.

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