Blogging the democratic revolution
Nogales is a city on the border, split right down the center, with a wall running down the middle of it. The line separates more than the city itself, though. The two sides are worlds apart. In American Nogales, tourists cruise across the border within minutes into a mile-wide arena of discount pharmacies and craft…
Less than TEN DAYS to go for the most important, as well as the very closest race of the entire year – MEXICAN ELECTIONS! As Mexican voters make up their minds, Boz has the latest poll numbers, showing a slight lead in many cases for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But it’s not all of them…
Hates Free Trade: Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Source: EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico If polls are right, Mexican leftist presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has probably taken the lead in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election July 2. If he comes to power, we will have a leftist on our border who’s going to…
A new flavor Frito Bandito? Source: Venezuela Today Have you ever wondered whether leftist populist Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was really cut out of the same kind of cloth as his natural ally, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez? This informed essay by Gustavo Coronel, on Venezuela Today lays the two of them out,…
Mexico held its presidential debate last night, and pundits are divided as to who won. Boz has some fascinating commentary here, and this Reuters piece here gives further reliable detail, as does this excellent longer EFE piece. Goldman Sachs summarizes it well: Calder????n Had a Slight Edge on the Second Televised Debate Yesterday, the five…
Why is this man smiling? And why should we smile back? This may shock you, but he’s happily, shamelessly taking credit for the U.S. House and Senate votes on immigration this week. He didn’t have all that much to do with it, except a little and except that it was none of his business. Nevermind….
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is nothing more than a brutal leftist thug with aspirations of being the next Simon Bolivar, the next Fidel Castro. He seeks to unite all the nations of Latin America under his wing, so that together, they may challenge the United States. He would lure them into his axis with the…
In a little-reported story last week, Mexico experienced some fearsome riots, with Sweetness & Light reporting that they were about opposition to a new Wal-Mart. In San Salvador Atenco, in central Mexico state, not far from the capital, over 200 people were arrested, protesting a new Wal-Mart about to go up. One 14-year-old was killed,…
???????America is a nation of immigrants!??????? ???????America is the melting pot of the world!??????? America is whatever we want it to be. It is once in a blue moon that we discuss American politics here at Publius — the much looked-over world of frozen separatist conflicts, democratic movements, and Hugo Chavez keeps us pretty busy….
Blogging live from Los Angeles – on a too tight schedule and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Here’s what is going on on this Day Without An Immigrant: 1. Highways very quiet, no blockages, but traffic rushing through as if everyone expects some and wants to get to work first. The Santa Monica freeway (10) is especially…
…of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico. It’s a thing of beauty. The latest poll shows that the right-leaning free-market PAN party candidate’s lead is now E-X-T-E-N-D-I-N-G well ahead of AMLO’s. This is the third straight poll showing this awesome trend ahead of the July 2 presidential election. Here’s what’s cool about it: Tonight is…
Boli-Nica has a tremendously important piece about the role of the Internet is having on burning down Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s lead in Mexico’s presidential election to be held on July 2. Well, we here certainly don’t like the guy! But more importantly, Boli points out how Mexico’s bloggers are warning, criticizing, exposing and ridiculing…
Boz has his weekly polls roundup from around the Americas, and first, the best part: Spanish voters rank Chavez and Castro as rock bottom from among the region’s leaders. Chavez’s trips to Spain, where he made an incredible fool of himself, obnoxious all the way, must have had something to do with this. Castro, meanwhile,…
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is really starting to tumble in the Mexican presidential polls, to be held July 2. He’s still ahead, but now only by 3 or 4 points. And with three months to go before election day, his trajectory is down. Reuters has a new story here showing that for the first time…
You thought commissars were a thing of the past? Not at UCLA. Here in the states, a fierce debate is going on as to whether illegal immigrants should all walk out on their jobs on May 1 to make a political point, one that says the U.S. economy cannot function without illegal immigrants. It’s a…
Conservative PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon, who’s leading or nearly leading the polls in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, is determined to drive home that his opponent, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a second Hugo Chavez. I wasn’t sure if he was going to do this – both Chavez and AMLO himself said that…
Polls can be unreliable but this news is truly radical: Goldman Sachs, in its daily emerging market report, says: Grupo GEA Reports Calder????n Ahead of AMLO in the polls According to GEA (a consulting firm), in a poll conducted between March 18 and 21, Felipe Calder????n (PAN) overtook AMLO in the opinion polls. According to…
Thousands of Mexican campesinos in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas have taken to the streets to protest the government’s neglect of their poor state. This isn’t the Subcommandante Marcos blond-haired, blue-eyed internal Sandalista crowd at work, but a spontaneous protest by the poor to seek concrete action from the government to improve their lives….
Sunburnt and exhausted, I return from the biggest rally for immigrant rights in the history of Los Angeles. Five hundred thousand mostly Latino, mostly young, and mostly protest-babe-caliber people marched in the streets of This Proud Capital Of The Third World to demand a halt to various immigration control measures in Congress – like building…
Mexico’s governor of Sonora state makes an impassioned declaration about how free trade works awesomely in his state and in neighboring Arizona. He explains how free trade lifts businesses across the board. How great it is to look on Mexico as an equal neighbor instead of a problem issue. That’s the beauty of free trade…
It’s written all over the visa lines, stretching from Mexicali to Caracas, from Havana to San Salvador, from Buenos Aires to Guayaquil, from La Paz to La Paz – and like the Drug War, its most violent edge is at the 1400-mile-long U.S. Mexican border, from Matamoros and Brownsville to Tijuana and San Diego where…
Speaking from Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa really gave it to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The short news account is here. It follows recent condemnations of the Venezuelan dictator by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, here.
Venezuela’s Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has a stunning piece translated from the Mexican press about the extent of Hugo Chavez’s and Fidel Castro’s political meddling in Mexico and its elections. That’s MEXICO – right on our border, walking distance from San Diego and El Paso and Laredo and Matamoros and Yuma – that Mexico! The…
…through free trade. It’s put Mexico on the world map as a player, while Venezuela grows ever less significant. The Fox-Chavez spat just brought it all to everyone’s attention. Investor’s Business Daily has the editorial here. Meanwhile, via Boz, I read in Marcela Sanchez’s pretty good column of the critical need for free trade and…
In the wake of the Fox-Chavez spat, Mexico’s leftist presidential frontrunner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has slid by nearly 8 basis points in the presidential polls. From a Goldman Sachs research note: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines – AMLO Slightly Down on the Polls According to pollster Mitofsky, in November Lopez Obrador (AMLO) lost some ground…