Mexico News Aug.15

Posted by the Generals on September 4, 2011, 7:57 pm
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Subject: Mexico News DAILY August 15, 2011 LatinNews Daily - 15 August 2011 US sends top official to Mexico Development: On 12 August the US announced that the Deputy Secretary of State, Bill Burns, would visit Mexico from 15 to 17 August. Significance: It is not clear why Burns, a professional diplomat who is a former ambassador to Russia and Jordan and also the former head of a State Department key section, the Near East, is making the trip. Unusually, as well as meeting Mexico’s foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, Burns will also meet a range of Mexicans outside government. The wide scope of the visit suggests that the US wants to get a better handle on what might happen in Mexico running up to the presidential election, due on 1 July 2012. Key points: • The political situation in Mexico is unclear. Enrique Peña Nieto, the outgoing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) governor of the Estado de México, is the opinion poll frontrunner for the presidential election. The most likely candidate for the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), finance minister Ernesto Cordero, has yet to declare himself but is making work for himself (most recently reviewing and sorting out states’ over-indebtedness), which suggests that he prefers technocratic detail to big-picture national politics. • The Left has rival candidates Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was narrowly defeated by President Calderón in 2006, and Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of Mexico City, competing against each other; neither seems likely to give way to the other to unite the Left’s vote. • The security situation is appalling. Two incidents on 14 August illustrate the problem. First, gangsters being chased through the streets of Veracruz (in the east) by a squad of marines chucked a grenade at people waiting to go into the aquarium, killing one adult and wounding two children. Separately, gangsters in Jalisco, western Mexico, eventually killed a police chief they had previously wounded when they ambushed the ambulance taking him to hospital.

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