Mexico's presidential election

Diaspora apathy

No rush to the ballot box

Feb 25th 2012 | MEXICO CITY

THE 12m or so Mexicans who live in the United States are equal to a tenth of Mexico’s population, and the remittances they send home make up over 2% of the economy. But when it comes to politics, they are far less influential. At the latest presidential election in 2006, they had the right to vote for the first time, but only 57,000 applied to do so.

This year’s election, on July 1st, is no different. On February 17th the electoral authority announced that only 62,000 expatriates had registered before the deadline. Three-quarters were in the United States (mainly California, Texas and Illinois).

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Immigrants in Belize

A Spanish accent

How foreigners are transforming a small English-speaking country

Feb 18th 2012 | BELMOPAN

BELIZE has long been a country of immigrants. British timber-cutters imported African slaves in the 18th century, and in the 1840s Mexican Mayans fled a civil war. More recently, North American sun-seekers and retired British soldiers have discovered its coast. Light- and dark-skinned men stand side by side on the country’s flag.

The latest migration is from elsewhere in Central America. Thousands of Salvadoran refugees arrived in the 1980s. More recently, Guatemalans have come seeking land. Of Belize’s 300,000 people, 15% are foreign-born. Thanks to higher birth rates, mestizos have overtaken creoles (of mixed African ancestry) to become the biggest group, making up half the population.

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Women in Mexican politics

The XX factor

Can a woman candidate count on female voters’ support?

Feb 11th 2012 | MEXICO CITY

UNTIL this year, no woman had ever been the presidential candidate for any of Mexico’s main political parties. That changed on February 5th, when Josefina Vázquez Mota, a former secretary of education and of social development, won the primary of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). “I will be Mexico’s first presidenta” (female president), she said in her victory speech.

Ms Vázquez is a clear underdog in the July 1st election. Polls taken before the primary put the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) nearly 20 points ahead of the ruling PAN (see chart). Voters have tired of the PAN, which has presided over slow growth and rising violence during 11 years in power. Ms Vázquez could even finish third behind Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, a left-winger who narrowly lost the 2006 race.

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Carlos Slim

Let Mexico’s moguls battle

Mexico suffers from two near-monopolies. It should let them fight each other

Feb 4th 2012 | MEXICO CITY

IN A futuristic art gallery which Carlos Slim opened last year in Mexico City, visitors can enjoy, among other things, a hall of rare coins and share certificates. Sometimes art speaks louder than words.

Mr Slim is the richest man in the world. According to Forbes, he and his family have amassed a comfortable nest egg of $63 billion. (Bill Gates would be richer had he given away less of his stash, or Mr Slim more of his.) In Mexico Mr Slim is a giant: his companies account for more than a third of the stockmarket.

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Crime in Nicaragua

A surprising safe haven

How Central America’s poorest country became one of its safest

Jan 28th 2012 | MANAGUA

LYING between Colombia’s coca bushes and Mexico’s cocaine traffickers, Central America is a choke point on the drugs trail. In 2010 the smugglers ensured that Honduras, El Salvador, Belize and Guatemala were among the world’s seven most violent countries. Costa Rica and Panama are richer and safer. But since 2007 their murder rates have respectively risen by a third and nearly doubled.

Amid this inferno Nicaragua, the poorest country in mainland Latin America, is remarkably safe. Whereas Honduras’s murder rate in 2010 was 82 per 100,000 people, the world’s highest in over a decade, Nicaragua’s was just 13, unchanged in five years. That means it is now less violent than booming Panama, and may soon be safer than Costa Rica, a tourist haven. What explains the relative peace?

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Mexico's do-nothing legislature

The siesta congress

Reforms languish while overpaid, underworked lawmakers bicker

Jan 21st 2012 | MEXICO CITY

AFTER a fortnight of Christmas fiestas, Mexicans groggily returned to work two weeks ago. Or rather, most of them did. For the 500 deputies and 128 senators of the national Congress, the holidays roll on until February. Mexico’s lawmakers sit for only 195 days a year, the second-fewest among Latin America’s bigger countries. (Their $11,200-a-month pay, however, is the highest after Brazil’s.) When they do stir themselves to vote, it is more often to block rivals’ bills than to pass reforms.

Gridlock in the palace of San Lázaro partly explains why Felipe Calderón’s presidency, which ends in December, now looks like a six-year damp squib. Mr Calderón has identified many of Mexico’s bottlenecks. But most of his big proposals have floundered in Congress. A modest fiscal reform passed in 2007 was eased along only by an electoral law to help the opposition. Last year a competition law tentatively prodded the country’s mighty monopolies. But changes to the backward energy sector in 2008 were diluted beyond recognition. A reform of the political system has been similarly gutted and is yet to pass. And there is still no sign of a promised law to improve competition in telecoms.

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Tequila

Storm in a shot glass

Can a succulent be claimed as a trademark?

Jan 21st 2012 | MEXICO CITY

Floral and oaky, with a hint of sunscreen

LIKE champagne, tequila may be called tequila only if it comes from a specific region. Distillers in five of Mexico’s 31 states have the exclusive right to produce the famous firewater. Bottlers elsewhere must use alternative names, though their product is distilled in the same way from the sap of the agave, a spiky desert succulent often wrongly referred to as a cactus.

Demand for tequila is growing fast. Americans now drink more of the stuff than Mexicans—a head-throbbing 120m litres a year. Producers outside the official tequila region are cashing in. The “agave liquor” they sell is cheaper than real tequila and tastes identical, at least to the barbarian gringo palate.

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