Perhaps the hottest topic in Mexican domestic politics right now is the potential reform of the country’s national oil company, PEMEX. At least, it seems hot. Yet, a new survey released today shows that the Mexican public, while somewhat divided, is mostly ignorant of the reform, which was proposed by the president in April. A full 44 percent of respondents in a poll for El Universal, a major Mexican daily, were unsure of their position on the issue.

The reform of PEMEX is undoubtedly a complex matter about which rational people might have mixed feelings. Elites have tended to try to simplify that complexity by positioning along a classical divide: statists versus neoliberals. Statists (represented by the leftish PRD) have rejected the reform, arguing for continuing state control at current levels, and liberals (represented by the PAN) have embraced greater opening to the private sector.

Sadly, after months of speculation about the reform, a full month since the president introduced his bill, a burlesque takeover of the Congress for the purposes of extending debate on the bill, and major opposition rallies led by Mexico’s leading opposition figure, AMLO—after all of this, there is little evidence that the public is anymore informed about what the PEMEX reform entails than they were before. Interestingly, the press and the public seem to be relating the reform to the price of gasoline for the average consumer, an indication that the broader ideological debate between neoliberals and statists is an overblown conflict between elites that the public does not completely buy into.

Whatever else one may think about the reform of PEMEX, the astonishingly hollow level of understanding and debate about possible reform is an indictment of Mexican democracy. After months of media coverage, it is incredible that so few Mexicans have an opinion about the most important reform item on the country’s current political agenda. But don’t blame the public: blame the politicians. After so many months, they have still failed to present the public with a set of clear, reasonable arguments, for or against reform.   Here’s hoping that as the debate accelerates over the next few weeks, that begins to change.

One would think that a country like the United States, deep-rooted in shame over the treatment of Native Americans at our foundation, African Americans during slavery, the Japanese during World War II or even the Latin Americans during immigration disputes would be learning how to evolve past racism. But even though it breaks my heart to admit this, it seems that instead of evolving past racism we are simply evolving to be more racist. Instead of overcoming stereotypes and prejudices, as a nation, the United States only increases the number of minority groups it decides to marginalize without fully overcoming the ramifications of the last debacle.

Since September 11th, 2001 that group has been Muslims… and Arabs and South Asians and Hindus and Sikhs and anyone or anything that seems to resemble a Muslim. We’ve all blurred into one fuzzy category with “potential terrorist” written all over. An era of fear (strongly instigated by our government) allows citizens to throw humanity and good sense out the window in exchange for suspense and racism. It has suddenly become acceptable to speak of Arabs and Muslims publicly in such negative ways that would NEVER be tolerated by any other ethnic group. This fosters a poor international reputation and a strong resentment from a minority group that ends up leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of despair.

The government causally discusses the war in Iraq and our continued presence there almost never mentioning the Iraqis as people, as humans, and their stake in this conflict. When polled, a significant majority of congressmen admitted that they didn’t even know the different between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. If your career involves figuring out how to solve the insurgent fighting between Sunni and Shiite groups it doesn’t seem like too much to ask of our congressmen that they know the difference. At Guantanamo Bay hundreds of detainees are held for months, even years, without charge and any basic rights whatsoever because they are often mistakenly associated with terrorism in some way because of where they come from or what they believe in. Our government speaks of torture like it is an acceptable necessity and “enhanced” interrogation tactics are common practice – we have come to treat these detainees so inhumanely that we have to extradite them to foreign countries because such atrocities cannot even take place on American soil. In a campaign speech Rudy Giuliani audaciously claimed that we are not afraid to call Nazis by their true names - so why are we afraid about speaking of “Islamic terrorism?” In another speech, he made Nazi/terrorist references six times. Violent acts of terrorism are despicable and out security is a number one priority, but equating Nazism with Islam is unacceptable and ludicrous, painting a horrific picture of Islam to the general public. With the total lack of humanity for this group by the government it seems to be no surprise that the general public has been strongly influenced.

Ethnically ambiguous and born and raised in the USA, I am not the main target for this newfound racism, which only makes others feel more comfortable making harsh remarks in my presence. I have been told at university that, “Arabs are less than human” and they deserve their fate. I have been instructed not to speak Arabic because it is the language of terror and that I may be suspect if I use the language. Friends make casual racist jokes about Islam and Arabs that would never ever be acceptable if we were referring to a different ethnic group. A recent NY Times article revealed that a Muslim educator lost her dream of founding a public school where children could learn Arabic because people wrongly accused her of being a fundamentalist. I am hurt and ashamed, but I know that I am not alone, for today it is Arabs and Muslims that we have evolved to hate and tomorrow it will surely be someone else.

It is with some trepidation that any analyst proffers predictions about the arrival of national health insurance in America. Unless, of course, your bet is that we never get it, a prognostication that is certainly supported by many decades of failed attempts.

Here’s my bet: if America is ever going to get national health insurance, it is going to be because the difference between people who have insurance and those who do not have insurance has become relatively trivial, and a coalition of the willing can be formed between them. The key to this happening is that national health insurance no longer represents, as it long has, a major threat to the quality and cost of care for the already insured.

The increasing costs associated with doing nothing are probably our best chance for a future reform that is anything more substantial than tinkering. Fortunately, if the New York Times is any indicator of trends, there does seem to be a narrowing of the gap between the insured and the uninsured. In particular, neither group can afford care anymore.

Yesterday, the Times reported that, since 2001, the employee share of annual health insurance premiums has risen from $1800 to $3300, much faster than wages. On April 14, 2008, the Times reported that insurers were increasingly adopting formularies which require high out-of-pocket expenditures for expensive medications. These so-called “Tier 4” and “Tier 5” drugs are no longer paid for with a simple co-pay of $10 to $30 like all other drugs, but require a percentage (from 20 to 33 percent, according to the article) payout. The result is that drugs that used to cost patients a few hundred dollars a year will now cost a few thousand dollars a year, or even much more.

The idea behind this cost-shifting on to individual patients is to keep the premium burden down for others, the “average” insured person. This kind of logic will work for diseases which are very rare and very expensive (although it violates principles of equity). As prices continue to escalate, however, companies will want to move farther down the prevalence hierarchy and start pushing off ever more common and costly interventions onto patients. And at some point, there will be a lot of these patients who are unable to pay these costs on their own.

At that point, the insured and the uninsured will have more to talk about. And maybe that talking will lead to some action. Maybe then, when we’ve run out of clever ideas for containing costs in the private market (which it seems like, short of denying care to the sick, we have), a national health insurance program will start to look like the only viable option left on the table.

Over a month ago, I wrote about the struggle within Mexico’s Left party, the PRD, between the radicals and the moderates, and I argued that the party’s internal elections were a critical juncture. In these elections, I opined, the party would choose who it wanted to be: a political party that attempts to operate through parliamentary rules and pressure, or a social movement that uses non-institutional means to advance its agenda.

Today, I still think I was right about what was at stake in these elections. However, I got the date and the stage for this epic struggle badly wrong. Today, on April 28, the internal elections are still mired in controversy, and no official president has been declared. In the meantime, the initiative has been taken by AMLO and the radicals, who, in a spectacular manoeuvre of political theatre, physically took over and closed down the Congress for two weeks to pressure the president to allow a longer period of debate on the reform of the state-owned oil company, PEMEX.

The radicals won the procedural victory, and the country got its Congress back. But what of the party? The decision to pursue this line of action has further deepened the schism between the radicals and moderates. If Alberto Encinas, who is backed by AMLO, takes over the presidency of the PRD, as looks increasingly likely, the party will shift dramatically toward the radicals. The moderates will most likely be purged, if they do not end up leaving on their own.

A shift between moderate and radical wings of a party does not necessarily hold any deep significance for democracy, but in this case, unfortunately, Mexico is likely to pay a heavy price. The party will be further deinstitutionalized, and will ultimately serve solely as a vehicle for the ambitions of its charismatic leader, AMLO. It will also continue to undermine attempts to build a responsible, democratic Left which participates in parliamentary debates and is willing to negotiate reforms with the Right. We have already seen the effects of this kind of behaviour: the PAN and the PRI passed 14 bills during the takeover of Congress without the participation of the PRD.

Unless AMLO really does lead a revolution, Mexico will continue to be governed by the state, and not by the streets. If the Left has no serious representation within that state, policymaking may shift further to the Right, and disaffection with politics is likely to grow. This could plausibly lead to a revolution one day, but it isn’t clear that AMLO would lead it, or that he would like the results. Latin American revolutions have a tendency to lead to counter-revolutions. And those tend not to be pretty.

In one week we will mark the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. One year also marks 60 years of Palestinian dispossession, or the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, meaning the catastrophe. I find myself torn and distraught that there seems to be no middle ground, no commemoration for the moderates in this conflict. Does celebrating 60 years of Israel’s independence mean that you support the 6 million Palestinian refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods once they were forced off what used to be Palestine? And does commemorating the Nakba also mean that you lament the creation of the state of Israel and therefore its existence?

Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund and advisor to Ben-Gurion wrote, “The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer.” Millions of Palestinians left their homes leaving all of their belongings behind expecting to return only in a few short days or weeks. Thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing from the Holocaust and from all over Europe where they were marginalized or impoverished poured into the region often taking up residence in the Palestinian homes that weren’t destroyed. One group sought refuge in the same land that others were forced to flee. Both groups suffered and now they continue to suffer, but at the expense of each other.

Today, 6 million Palestinian refugees continue to live in worsening situations many of them in refugee camps. Those living in the camps in the West Bank live minutes from their original homes, but are forbidden from ever going there for the sole reason that they are not Jewish. Jews from anywhere in the world with no ties to the land at all could go there at any moment and take up residence simply because they are Jewish.

Negotiations today are so far from where they stood in 1948. The new “ideal” point is to end the occupation and create a state of Palestine on post-1967 borders. The pre-1948 lines shall be forever forgotten, except to the old Grandmother who still wears the key to her house in Israel around her neck every single day awaiting the day she can return. The creation of the state of Israel fulfilled the dreams of millions of dispossessed Jews around the world as well. A group that suffered immensely throughout history was finally able to create a homeland of their own. Everyone deserves the right to a homeland.

People often argue that this conflict can only be solved by the moderates, those willing to see both sides, and those willing to come to the middle for compromise. But what I ask, is where is this middle? How can these differences be reconciled? How can we celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday and still consider that it meant the dispossession and suffering of Palestinians for 60 years? How can we mourn the Nakba while understanding that it enabled the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people? The sides are growing farther apart with the middle ground fading into an abyss…

He was only appointed about two months ago, but the head of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), is already threatening to resign. Leonardo Valdés Zurita is unhappy, it seems, because the IFE has a slew of important but unfilled positions, and the president does not seem to be able to get any support from the other councillors for his choices to fill them. On Sunday, Mexico’s El Universal reported that the councillors had rejected Valdés Zurita’s choice for General Secretary of the IFE.

Valdés Zurita’s appointment seemed a major breakthrough in Mexican politics. In a surprise turn of events, the PAN and PRD, who agree about almost nothing, managed to agree about Valdés Zurita in February, 2008. Until then, it had looked probable that the parties would repeat their disastrous performance of 2003, in which the council was renewed without the support of the PRD. This had been one of the key factors in the declining credibility of the electoral institute, and played an important role in the 2006 electoral crisis, an election which many Mexicans still believe was stolen.

Valdés Zurita has brought a fresh perspective to IFE, and he is certainly an interesting thinker, open to democratic innovation. He recently suggested that, in the future, Mexico should make use of referenda to deal with issues like the reform of Mexico’s national oil company. (I am not a big supporter of referenda, but this is the kind of thinking out loud that the head of the IFE should be doing.) He has also suggested that the ballots from the 2006 election should be made available in some form, however limited, to the public, a position at odds with the prior council. He is no radical, to be sure, but the heads of electoral institutions probably should not be, and Mexico hardly needs any more polarization than it has at the moment. Valdés Zurita understands above all the importance of being measured, a hard-to-find commodity in contemporary Mexico.

Unfortunately, the IFE was deeply divided before the new president arrived, and it continues to be, like Mexican society, deeply divided today, in addition to being understaffed. This may prove more than Valdés Zurita can handle. The councillors complain that the president has not followed proper procedures in his attempts to fill positions at IFE. That may be true. Putting procedure aside, I, for one, have no idea whether the president’s choice for General Secretary was a good one. What seems certain, however, is that if the IFE doesn’t get its act together soon, it is going to be overseeing yet another credibility crisis and potential electoral disaster in the mid-term elections of 2009.

Each year, the Harvard Program in International Education holds an essay contest for high school students that are part of the HPIE program. It is our pleasure to reproduce the winning essay from this year’s contest, written by Keaboka Nyumbu.

There are so many problems in society nowadays, but the major problem facing the world today is the “I” mentality. We live in the world of “I” (selfishness) instead of “we” (altruism), and this orientation has caused many problems far beyond anyone’s comprehension. In this paper, I will give examples of why “I” is the biggest problem facing our environment and society. 

Global warming is one of the biggest problems facing the environment today, a problem that could be prevented if people concentrated less on themselves, and more on the environment and other people instead. Unfortunately, this seems impossible in a world where each person will do whatever it takes to get their monthly checks even if it means destroying the earth. Money has become more important than the earth because people focus too much on their individual needs instead of the needs of all people. Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding.” People, companies, and countries don’t bother to take action if doing so will cause them to lose money. For example, why aren’t car companies making Hybrid cars cheaper than regular cars? They choose not to, largely because they won’t make as much profit from selling them. But why is making profits more important than saving the planet? It’s more important to each car company that wants to make more money for itself. No one seems to care if their way of making money is contributing to droughts or other natural disasters caused by global warming. 

Despite these problems, there are a few people in this world who are trying hard to create change by focusing more on the world as a whole instead of on themselves alone. Among these people is Dr. Wangari Maathai . She began The Green Belt Movement which did more than just plant trees; it gave hope to the people of Kenya, and it helped restore trees and environments lost to deforestation. Despite being persecuted and beaten by government officials, she still continued to pursue her goal of changing the world. She managed to do just that; she grew over thirty million trees in her country and inspired countless others. This is just one example of what can be accomplished if people tried to think outside of their own personal gain. 

In conclusion, creating the world of “we” may seem impossible. But I firmly believe that it is possible; other people have already begun by setting an example. They have acted not for their own personal gain, but for the gain of all living things in this world. If this ethic continues, we can stop global warming, we won’t have wars, we can eliminate poverty, and no one will lose a friend or family member to an illness that could have been prevented with enough money to afford medicine. We would eliminate the things that are too selfish, too prideful, or too egotistical. A world where everyone helped each other and contributed to the greater good is a reality that we can all reach if we have the courage to try. If we learn how to work together as human beings, things will change for the better.

As a child, upon hearing the word “gypsy” my mind immediately conjured up visions of enchantment, wonder, and beautiful women in flowing skirts with jewelry. (We can thank Disney for that; it was usually where I got all of my historical data). To my great surprise and interest when I began reading Arab literature in college I discovered a similar sense of mystique and wonder towards the ideas of gypsies. While they were looked down upon in society, women and girls often secretly envied their free and wild lifestyle. Free to roam as they pleased, travel the world, dance openly, and dress in colorful and enchanting clothing the Gypsy lifestyle was one that many Arab women knew very little about.

It wasn’t until my first visit to Spain that I realized the dark reality and sadness that befell the state of the gypsies and my naïveté was squandered by great remorse. Through their longstanding history and oral traditions, mainly through the art of Flamenco, they sing and dance about the great pain and suffering they have endured for all of time. History indicates that many of the Gypsies came from the Punjab region in India and lived nomadic lifestyles traveling throughout Europe. They were poorly received and rarely accepted by society in almost every country in which they took up residence. In Nazi Germany estimates of up to 500,000 Gypsies were massacred in the Holocaust. In other parts of Europe they were often denied the right to work and other basic rights and were often forced in to thievery, which perpetuated their negative stereotype and the harsh racism they continue to face.

Today the greatest numbers of Gypsies reside in the Southern Spanish province of Andalusia. No longer nomadic, they reside among Spanish society, but are often isolated in ghettos and face great economic hardship. The massive influx of Moroccan immigrants in to Andalusia has resulted in gang violence between the two marginalized ethnic groups. Not unlike minority gang groups in urban areas of the United States, the Gypsies and the Moroccans are often left to their own devices and not cared for by the Spanish government. They are left to fight and revel in their misfortune.

It is somewhat ironic that while the mystical and enchanting legends of the Gypsies live on, the reality of their hardships is devastatingly forgotten.  

This week, President Calderón announced that he wanted Mexicans to “live better.” Vivir Mejor is the name of the administration’s new social policy strategy. The new agenda, which has been compared in the past week to former President Carlos Salinas’s mega-program, Solidarity, was officially launched in Chiapas this weekend.

We are now several days into the media hype around the new strategy, but nobody really seems to know what it is. News reports suggest that, like Solidarity, Vivir Mejor is an umbrella for many different social programs. The president’s own website suggests that it will include established programs such as the existing anti-poverty transfer policy, Oportunidades, the existing health program Seguro Popular, the existing housing improvement program, Piso Firme, and the existing non-contributory pension plan, 70 Años y Más. That is a lot of existing programs. So what’s new?

Some of the media coverage has suggested that the President is unhappy with the lack of political impact of these programs. A lot of time and money goes into distributing benefits through them, but few people understand or appreciate them. If that is true, then perhaps what is new is that the president is going to start talking a lot more about social policy than in the past. And the programs will keep doing whatever they do. And essentially, nobody is going to live any better than they already do.

It is possible, however, that Calderón has something more ambitious in mind. Solidarity was not just an umbrella for a slew of social programs. Solidarity was based on the idea that citizens should participate directly in petitioning, from the President, various goods and services. The program created tens of thousands of “Solidarity Committees” at the local level to do just this: both make demands, and then provide sweat equity or local resources for joint projects with the presidency. The political goal of Solidarity was to build a new relationship between communities and the federal government, one that would replace the deteriorated corporatist links between the ruling party and various social organizations.

Does Calderón have something like this in mind? He did go to Chiapas to kick off Vivir Mejor, Mexico’s poorest state and a place that received a lot of attention under Solidarity. But something doesn’t add up. Solidarity was a program based on citizen participation which guided the kind of investments that the president made. None of the existing social programs in Vivir Mejor functions this way. They are all targeted, top-down policies managed without any citizen input. Sticking them all in a bag and calling them something else won’t change that. Unless Calderón really plans to put the “solidarity” back into social policy, no one is going to be living any better, or even any differently, under his new strategy.

A tight election between a “radical” and a “moderate.” A jittery crew of partisans allege fraud long before the election even starts, and both sides assure the press and their followers that they will win no matter what (even while claiming that they will “respect” the outcome of the vote). Powerful leaders intervene in the campaign in ways that are at best unethical and at worst illegal. Citizens and lower level partisans call for a moratorium on the distribution of anti-poverty and other social policy resources, arguing that they are being used to influence the vote. After the election, early exit poll results seem to show a clear victory for one side, and the other alleges fraud. A variety of irregularities lead to at least a partial attempt to carefully consider the vote in a number of places. The result hangs in the balance…

This is a decent description of Mexico’s 2006 presidential election, an election that was slammed by the opposition PRD (the Party of the Democratic Revolution) for egregious fraud. It is also, sadly, a reasonably accurate description of the PRD’s own internal elections which took place about a week ago, and which have been challenged by both sides due to an incredibly high degree of brutish behavior on polling day. The abysmal conditions under which the election occurred and the bitter name-calling which has ensued led the party’s founder, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, to call for the annulment of the elections last week.

Mexico is a curious case of democratization. It appeared to transition relatively smoothly from a hegemonic, one-party regime to a three-party competitive regime somewhere around the late 1990s. It has ostensibly powerful political parties. These parties vote as well-defined and disciplined blocs within the national legislature, and they have managed to maintain an impressive monopoly of social representation.

And yet, scratch the surface a bit, and it turns out that Mexico’s parties are rather weak, given to the kind of visceral infighting that has been on display this past week. All three parties are, to varying degrees, at the mercy of a set of power brokers whose factions engage in conflicts that range from the gentlemanly to the violent. The PRI, the former ruling party, was unable to reinvent itself sufficiently as an organization during the 2006 elections and was forced to field a powerful, but highly unpopular candidate who performed miserably. Last year, the PAN edged toward implosion when a conflict emerged between the President of Mexico and the party president, who appeared to be set on undermining President Calderón and regional partisans at every turn. The party has emerged from this mess far more unified, but largely around the President and his close associates: this is the triumph of a clique, not necessarily of institutional discipline. And now the PRD, the youngest and most fractious of the three, has reached the edge of a cliff, driven by factional power struggles which may either drive it into oblivion or split it permanently.

The underlying weakness of Mexican parties today is the result of the long shadow of Mexico’s political history. A one-party dominant regime that consistently undermined the formation of a strong opposition was finally defeated by the PAN in 2000. But the PAN, traditionally a small and reasonably organized party during its many years in opposition, expanded rapidly in order to accomplish this task, opening itself to a wide variety of actors who did not share the party’s core ideology. Both the PAN and the PRD grew regionally, taking on the PRI in specific areas (e.g., the PAN in the North, the PRD in the South), but avoiding others. The nature of competition was frequently two-party, and the logic of opposition was simply to be “non-PRI.” This privileged the construction of broad, loosely structured movements running under a party label, rather than compact and unified party organizations.

Today, these broad coalitions are frail conglomerates, fueled by the quest for power. They maintain their unity on the barest of policy platforms. And sometimes, as seems to be happening before our eyes, they simply fall apart. It is going to be a long week for the PRD. It looks like, more than eight days after the election, the Left is still deciding who it wants to be.