Mexican People

Re "Don't fear a PRI win," Opinion, June 24 Jorge G. Castañeda practically equates the likely triumph of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Sunday's presidential election with the ultimate validation of the democratic achievements of the Mexican people. I view the PRI's return another way: the ultimate corroboration of how economic power can impose a candidate despite the democratic aspirations of the Mexican people. David Soto West Hills ALSO: Letters: Fighting polio in Pakistan Letters: A fair deal for online poker Letters: Historical ruling on healthcare  

MEXICO CITY - They elected a youthful president, a self-styled defender of democratic principles who promised to bring the country up to 21st century standards. But many Mexicans suspected that an old-fashioned dinosaur heart was beating beneath Enrique Peña Nieto's smartly tailored suits, an inheritance from his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose top-down, quasi-authoritarian rule defined much of Mexico's 20th century history. On Sunday, after 100 days of living under Peña Nieto's rule, the Mexican people have a better idea of the ways in which their 46-year-old president, and his vintage political party, plan to manage the future of the United States' southern neighbor, a country rife with promise and peril.

First Lady Nancy Reagan will briefly visit earthquake-devastated Mexico City on Monday as an expression of U.S. sympathy for the disaster that besets its southern neighbor, although the State Department pointedly warned others to stay home. Her plans were announced Saturday by President Reagan in his weekly radio broadcast, just hours after Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams harshly criticized Henry Cisneros, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, for making such a trip.

Re "Don't fear a PRI win," Opinion, June 24 Jorge G. Castañeda practically equates the likely triumph of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Sunday's presidential election with the ultimate validation of the democratic achievements of the Mexican people. I view the PRI's return another way: the ultimate corroboration of how economic power can impose a candidate despite the democratic aspirations of the Mexican people. David Soto West Hills ALSO: Letters: Fighting polio in Pakistan Letters: A fair deal for online poker Letters: Historical ruling on healthcare  

Re Mexican migratory labor, the U.S. and Mexico have had it both ways for a long time ("Mexican ID a Veiled Bid for Amnesty," Commentary, Aug. 6). Mexico has availed itself of its neighbor's superior economy while evading responsibility for strengthening its own; whole sectors of the U.S. economy depend on this labor influx to keep wage costs down as government largely ignores the legal status of these immigrants. Edward J. Erler and Scot J. Zentner's concerns about security and the potential for abuse in the matricula consular program are well founded.

MEXICO CITY - They elected a youthful president, a self-styled defender of democratic principles who promised to bring the country up to 21st century standards. But many Mexicans suspected that an old-fashioned dinosaur heart was beating beneath Enrique Peña Nieto's smartly tailored suits, an inheritance from his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose top-down, quasi-authoritarian rule defined much of Mexico's 20th century history. On Sunday, after 100 days of living under Peña Nieto's rule, the Mexican people have a better idea of the ways in which their 46-year-old president, and his vintage political party, plan to manage the future of the United States' southern neighbor, a country rife with promise and peril.

"Take the gift, but vote as you please." That was the advice dispensed to the Mexican people by opposition party candidates in the campaign just ended, as well as by the head of the independent Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE. But the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, incessantly delivered a starkly different message: "We've helped you; now you help us!" Whose advice would the voters take?

Scores of deaf Mexican nationals allegedly recruited to sell trinkets in New York City were probably smuggled into the United States via San Diego and then taken to Los Angeles before being transported east, according to federal authorities and court papers. In interviews with investigators, victims have described being recruited in Mexico, spirited across the border into Southern California and later taken on airplanes or buses to New York.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday delivered an uncommonly blunt and dispiriting assessment of the broad sway held by violent drug traffickers throughout the besieged country. From the "most modest little towns" to major cities, Calderon said, traffickers attack, intimidate and blackmail Mexican citizens as part of an illegal business that goes far beyond the simple transport of narcotics. "Their business is no longer just the traffic of drugs. Their business is to dominate everyone else," Calderon said.

The "ditch crisis" in U.S.-Mexican relations will probably not go down in the annals of binational relations as one of the more substantive confrontations between the two countries. But it does illustrate the complexities and contradictions of Mexican-American ties. To begin with, there is confusion about the origin of the proposal to construct a ditch along the Otay Mesa area of the U.S.-Mexican border, just east of Tijuana.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday delivered an uncommonly blunt and dispiriting assessment of the broad sway held by violent drug traffickers throughout the besieged country. From the "most modest little towns" to major cities, Calderon said, traffickers attack, intimidate and blackmail Mexican citizens as part of an illegal business that goes far beyond the simple transport of narcotics. "Their business is no longer just the traffic of drugs. Their business is to dominate everyone else," Calderon said.

Tucked away inside of one of Los Angeles' oldest buildings, the artist could be mistaken for a squatter. He sleeps on a ragged piece of carpet. He makes do without a shower. He wears nearly the same clothes every day: a plain T-shirt and worn-out sweat shorts. But around the corner from where he sleeps is Hugo Martinez Tecoatl's masterpiece: an elaborate array of murals vibrantly splashed across 4,000 square feet of space. Aztec gods, bicycles, serpents, marigolds and tributes to Pancho Villa, Benito Juarez and Emiliano Zapata stretch from the hardwood floor up 30- to 40-foot walls and across the ceiling.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday banned Americans from doing business with six Mexican companies and 12 people it said were fronts for the Sinaloa drug cartel. It said the companies and individuals were involved in the operations of Ismael Zambada, identified as "one of Mexico's most powerful drug kingpins." The department's action also freezes any of their U.S. assets. The Nino Feliz day care center in Culiacan is one of the institutions banned.

Re Mexican migratory labor, the U.S. and Mexico have had it both ways for a long time ("Mexican ID a Veiled Bid for Amnesty," Commentary, Aug. 6). Mexico has availed itself of its neighbor's superior economy while evading responsibility for strengthening its own; whole sectors of the U.S. economy depend on this labor influx to keep wage costs down as government largely ignores the legal status of these immigrants. Edward J. Erler and Scot J. Zentner's concerns about security and the potential for abuse in the matricula consular program are well founded.

A Northern California immigrant farmer who staged a triumphant return to his hometown in Mexico and won a mayoral election, only to see it overturned amid furious protests, said Sunday that he has given up his fight for the office. But the battle to change Mexican politics has just begun, Andres Bermudez said from his home near Sacramento. "I was going to start change, but they did not let me do it," said Bermudez, who entered the U.S.

"Take the gift, but vote as you please." That was the advice dispensed to the Mexican people by opposition party candidates in the campaign just ended, as well as by the head of the independent Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE. But the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, incessantly delivered a starkly different message: "We've helped you; now you help us!" Whose advice would the voters take?

Gaston Garcia Cantu, 68, is a noted Mexican historian, author and journalist. His outspoken analysis and criticism of government affairs have made his column in the daily newspaper Excelsior one of the most widely read in Mexico. He was interviewed in Mexico City, which is still littered with rubble from the Sept.

A Mexican legislator charged in Los Angeles Wednesday that the weekend slayings of four youths in Mexico City were political assassinations aimed at intimidating those contesting the results of the recent presidential election Gerardo Unzeuta, a member of the National Democratic Front, a leftist party that supported opposition presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, linked the killings to "extreme right-wing terrorist" forces "attempting to provoke a violent response from the Mexican people."

In early November 1999, nearly 9 million Mexicans made history. For the first time, they, and not a sitting president, chose the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by voting in an open primary. More than 5 million voted for Francisco Labastida, giving him a legitimacy hitherto unknown in Mexican presidential campaigns. Labastida's persona in Mexican politics depends on the eye of the beholder.

There are a million stories like hers in Mexico City. Her father was a humble baker and her mother took in laundry to help pay her Catholic school tuition. At 16 she stopped going to school and went to work as a secretary, part of an army of anonymous office workers struggling to get by in the crazy Aztec capital. Yet Marisela Quijano says she never felt the urge to improve her lot by coming north to the United States, as do so many immigrants from working-class ranks in her country.