Real reform with real cojones...or is it politically savvy to take on some of those factional interests in your own party, the PRI, that don't align with your agenda and with that of your tecnico-friends/supporters? Will education reform be real?  Will it be effective or are they just trying to cut spending on education?  Or are they just trying to tame the Teacher's Union? Is this really about labor reform?  Is arresting Elba Esther Gordillo a sign of true cojones and not being afraid to stand up to vested interests and fighting corruption or is is just a way to get rid of a albatross around the PRI's neck and be seen to be fighting corruption in certain areas and talking about education (which is a real concern for voters)? Will PEMEX be privatized? Is he really taking on Carlos Slim and Televisa?  Is this about a free press or is Carlos Slim the equivalent of a Berezovsky or Khodorkovsky, an oligarch whose power must be tamed because there is a new sheriff in town?  Is this really about power?  Is this why Peña Nieto has come in guns ablazing?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  Read these articles and write a 300 word response.   

Read the following articles on Peña Nieto so far and comment...
on the Drug War?
on Education reform?
Vigilante Justice? 
Tackling corruption?
Other reforms? 
Peña Nieto's first 100 Days:http://www.voxxi.com/enrique-pena-nietos-first-days-office/
 On Drug War:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/enrique-pena-nieto-drug-war-policies_n_2575511.html 
On Education Reform and arrest of Elba Esther Gordillo and showdown with Teacher's Union:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/27/elba-esther-gordillo-mexico-union-embezzlement

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/14/mexico-education-reform-president-enrique-pena-nieto-teachers-revolt_n_3081442.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21582629 
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/27/3257950/mexicos-education-reform-may-prove.html (Historic education reform?)
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/mexico-education-reform-taming-teachers-union/ (Those who can't teach, strike)

Vigilante Justice in Mexico...when the state fails to serve and protect...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-vigilantes-20130412,0,4249646.story 

Corruption, Free Press, Televisa, Telecom Regulation, and the richest man in the world--Carlos Slimhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/nowthisnews/2013/03/22/carlos-slim-richest-man-in-the-world-in-93-seconds/ 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2013/03/21/the-evolution-of-mexican-president-pena-nietos-soap-opera-politics/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/enrique-pena-nieto-reforms-mexico-president_n_2906967.html

 
 
Yo Soy 132, emerged as a student movement for a more authentic democracy, for a free press, etc. and against the PRI in the last elections.  What will its role be in Mexico after the elections?  Will it help democratize Mexico?  Will it be co-opted?  Is co-optation an option for interest groups and civil society in modern Mexico?  Read this LA Times article and the Yo Soy 132 website that displays their current campaigns.  Your thoughts?  Comments?  Does Brazil need a movement like this?

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/13/world/la-fg-mexico-students-20120814



http://www.yosoy132media.org/ 

Watch their video with English subtitles here:
http://yosoy132.mx/
 
There are many articles out there like this one that talk  about the programs of Mexico's new president. They've all expressed reserved optimism and a "wait and see" attitude. They all also agree that things look different than they used to.  What has changed?  Your comments?  

 http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21575768-enrique-peña-nieto-has-set-furious-pace-he-will-be-judged-implementation-
See highlights below, but read the whole article at the link above.  

"Before last July’s presidential election the party (PRI)  did its best to block the proposals of Felipe Calderón (who in any case proved to be inept at constructing consensus). After Mr Peña’s victory this changed, with the passage of a labour reform that the PRI had previously blocked. An education law in February claws back control of teachers’ hiring and firing, previously the preserve of the teachers’ union. The new president sent a powerful signal to dissenters when the union’s leader, Elba Esther Gordillo, once a leader of the PRI, was arrested on charges of embezzling more than $150m of union funds (an allegation she denies).

Next came a shake-up of telecoms and television, passed by the lower house in March and expected to be passed by the Senate soon. Telecoms are dominated by Carlos Slim’s América Móvil, with 80% of landlines and 70% of mobile-phone and broadband connections. In television, Televisa has about 70% of free-to-air viewers and half of pay-TV subscribers."  (P.S.  Televisa has traditionally been in the hands of the PRI...)

"Behind these reforms lies a “Pact for Mexico” struck between the PRI and the two main opposition parties in December. The Pact unites Mexico’s political parties against the unelected interests that have long defied them. As he signed the Pact on behalf of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Jesús Zambrano declared that politicians were “outraged that de facto powers of all kinds have time and again broken governments of one party or another.”


"A bigger test of the Pact will come after the elections, when Mr Peña is due to publish his next proposal, a combined fiscal and energy reform designed to realise the enormous potential of Mexico’s oil and gas reserves. The country does not make the most of these: half its oil is in deep waters, of which Pemex, the state-owned oil and gas monopoly, has little experience. The state’s milking of Pemex’s profits has left it unable to invest in the necessary technology. To wean itself off oil revenue the government will have to raise taxes, probably applying value-added tax to food and medicine. The PRI changed its party constitution last month to allow this. But polls show overwhelming opposition to taxing those essentials."

 
Mexico is on the up and up... 
In 2011 the Mexican economy grew faster than Brazil’s—and will do so again in 2012. The US needs to rethink its notions about Mexico and trade and immigration.  But Peña Nieto needs to strengthen police force/security, rule of law and challenge important vested interests (neo-corporatism and camarillas) in his own party of the PRI in order to make needed reforms to energy sector and other major monopolies.  Your thoughts?


http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21567081-america-needs-look-again-its-increasingly-important-neighbour-rise-mexico?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/riseofmexico



 
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-trejo-mexican-spring-pri-20120624,0,6202904.story

This Op-Ed is written by Duke political science professor Guillermo Trejo. Despite the fact that the PRI did win the election in July, this student-led popular movement is important and may continue to impact policy-making and politics in the near future.

Will we see a 'Mexican Spring'? A student-led, social media-driven protest movement has become a key force for societal accountability.

The rise of a social media-based student movement is shaking up Mexico's July 1 presidential race. This is happening just as the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI — which ruled for seven decades until its defeat in 2000 — seems poised to return to power.

The movement, led by students from the country's leading private universities in Mexico City, aims to prevent the return of a PRI government and to democratize the mass media. Spreading rapidly throughout the country since May, it already has had a measurable impact, particularly among young voters and independents who represent 30% and 42% of the electorate, respectively. The gap between the PRI front-runner and the second-place candidate decreased from 25% to 16% a few weeks after the launch of the movement, according to polls from El Universal-Buendia & Laredo, and from 13% to 4%, according to Reforma newspaper.

The rise of social protest during an election cycle should not be surprising. Research I have conducted on rural indigenous mobilization shows that the number of protests tend to increase by 30% during Mexican presidential elections. In states where gubernatorial elections are concurrent with the presidential election — like Chiapas, Jalisco or Morelos — protests increase by up to 150%. These effects are likely to be greater in Mexico's major urban centers, where university students have played a leading role in different cycles of protest.

What is surprising this time is the unprecedented rise of a social movement led by students from Mexico's leading private universities — middle-class and well-to-do students who will land elite jobs after graduation. Movements led by students from public universities historically have been associated with the radical left and have not always enjoyed wide voter support. This movement led by private students, however, seems to be attracting the sympathies of the average voter rather than frightening him or her. Polls show approval rates for the movement ranging from 41% to 47%.

Known as YoSoy132 ("I am number 132"), the movement began as a response to the contentious visit in May by Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI presidential candidate, to the Ibero-American University — a Jesuit school in Mexico City. Calling him "assassin," students harshly reminded the PRI candidate of his poor human rights record while governor of the state of Mexico. His police forces had brutally repressed protesters in a 2006 clash in the city of San Salvador Atenco. He defended his actions then as maintaining law and order, which angered the students, who chased him off campus.

Echoing Mexico's authoritarian past, PRI officials and Televisa — the leading network of Mexico's television duopoly and a close ally of the PRI — called the students professional agitators and accused them of working for the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD. In the 1980s, this type of state response would have discredited the students. But after this incident, 131 Ibero students uploaded a video on YouTube showing their university IDs and condemning the PRI and Televisa for manipulating information. A second video, #YoSoy132, showing students from other private and public universities supporting their 131 Ibero peers appeared shortly after and has gone viral.

All this is having an effect in the polls. Voter support for the PRI candidate declined significantly among young, university-educated and independent voters, and the left has capitalized on this.

Three factors related to the dramatic deterioration of Mexico's social climate as a result of the war on drugs explain why young Mexicans are receptive to the message of YoSoy132.

Young males (ages 18 to 29) make up the vast majority of the nearly 60,000 deaths from Mexico's drug wars. Young unemployed men are being recruited into criminal insurgent groups to fight inter-cartel battles and the war against the federal government. Young university students with no criminal connections have become targets of cartels and government security forces in conflict areas.

The drug wars have transformed the daily lives of Mexico's youth. They can no longer go out freely to bars and discos and increasingly have had to limit their socializing to their parents' homes. Universities in Mexico do not have lodging facilities and students generally live with their parents until their mid-20s.

Finally, as a result of the drug wars, the nation's young people have turned to social media as their main source of information on local politics and violence. When cartels call for a de facto curfew in conflict areas, information flows through Facebook and Twitter. Major TV outlets and the print media are no longer the most reliable sources of information for Mexico's youth. And their active participation in a number of social media outlets facilitates the spread of the movement's message beyond the core group in Mexico City.

Public opinion surveys show that Mexico's youth — like the rest of the electorate — had initially accepted Peña Nieto's law-and-order message and the PRI's self-portrait as an experienced party that could solve the country's unprecedented drug war violence. But the incident at Ibero-American University and the subsequent manipulation of it by the media alerted the students to the fact that an uncontested PRI victory could be the prelude to a return to old authoritarian practices. Mexico could be the next Russia and Peña Nieto the Mexican Putin.

Young voters and independents have begun to migrate by default toward Lopez Obrador, who has become Peña Nieto's major challenger, while support for the candidate from the incumbent National Action Party, or PAN, has begun to languish. This has opened the possibility of strategic voting: PAN voters and independents leaning toward their second choice — the leftist PRD — to avoid returning the PRI to power. The question is whether the student movement's message will trigger enough anti-PRI sentiment to prevent a PRI victory on July 1. Evidence from the latest poll trackers suggests that the initial anti-PRI sentiment triggered by the movement may be reaching its limits.

Whatever its final electoral effect on the presidential election, Mexico's student movement has joined the movement of victims of the war on drugs as a powerful force for societal accountability. In a country where democratic institutions prevent, rather than facilitate, electoral accountability, social pressure from below has become a crucial means to keep political elites in check. In a country where political elites and the mainstream media continuously try to thwart the citizens' voice, the sound and fury of the streets have become a beam of hope — a hope for a "Mexican Spring."

Guillermo Trejo is an assistant professor of political science at Duke University and the author of the forthcoming book, "Popular Movements in Autocracies."