In-Depth: The Mexican Presidential Election and Youth Movement

The first impression that many have when they travel to Mexico is a bewildering sense of chaos and disorder. But such an impression belies the reality that powerful forces and hidden powers have always controlled almost every aspect of Mexican life. They have successfully manipulated politics and events to serve their interests.

Although many benefit from this oligarchic control, almost all have links to the powerful broadcast media outlets Televisa and TV Azteca and are linked to an elite group of friends known as the Atlamulco group. The fingers of Emilio Azcárraga Jean (Televisa) and Ricardo Salinas Pliego (TV Azteca) stir the pot and pull many of the strings that have led to the enrichment of many of their friends in that circle.

Both of these powerful media ignored the Mexican public and their civic and moral responsibility, and in their decision to broadcast futbol semi-finals instead of broadcasting the first presidential debate of 2012, but that may be the least onerous act of political manipulation in support of their favorite son and PRI presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. Their money and influence have played an important part in promoting the popularity of their glamorous candidate, whose second wife is a former soap opera star. Their support and connections to Peña Nieto and to his political mentors Emilio Chuayffet Chemor are well known. Emilio Azcárraga Jean, former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the wealthiest members of the PRI elite were guests at his lavish wedding to the glamorous soap-opera star and daughter of Emilio Chuayfett Chemor.

Pubic opinion polls and news reports have consistently reported that Peña Nieto has a lead of at least 20 points, leaving challengers (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – AMLO, and Josefina Vasquez Mota – La Chepina) trailing far behind and only ahead of Gabriel Quadri de la Torre, who is running as a front for the powerful teacher union cacique Elba Esther Gordillo. As most people know, public opinion polls are sometimes wrong, but a 20-point lead with a month to go is a substantial margin that is hard to explain away by fraud or manipulation. Nevertheless, there are many people in Mexico who doubt the numbers and who firmly believe that Televisa in cooperation with the powerful forces of PRI and Atlamulco have successfully distorted the results to reinforce a perception that Peña Nieto has an insurmountable lead and is the people’s choice.

As someone with training in statistical analysis, I do find it difficult to believe that there could be such a gross manipulation of data, but my Mexican friends who also have an understanding of methodology and statistics assure me that the results are much closer than Televisa, TV Azteca and the PRI would have us believe. They point to the large number of people who have refused to participate and to the large number of undecided voters who did answer, representing more than 50 percent of the sample are not providing a choice. This creates a margin of error that is incredibly broad and leaves the interpretation in the unreliable zone.

But no matter what polls have indicated, Peña Nieto appeared to be sailing smoothly toward the presidency, supported by legions of adoring female supporters yelling vacuous things such as “come home with me please my beautiful man.” Peña Nieto’s scripted campaign has been a powerful juggernaut in spite of flubbing a softball question to identify three influential books at Latin America’s biggest book fair in Guadalajara.   His daughter’s subsequent tweet complaining about “los proles” and their lack of respect for her father. The Twitter universe jumped all over her comments and generated a hashtag that went viral, #YoSoyProle. But, these two things had little impact on the campaign nor did they provide any momentum to turn polling numbers around. The campaign to install Enrique Peña Nieto followed the script to a T, in much the same way that Televisa and TV Azteca generated soap-operas for the mindless masses.

The incident at Iberoamericana University

But something unexpected happened, and Enrique Peña Nieto’s momentum may have hit a major roadblock. It’s too early to say that Enrique Peña Nieto and his team made a major mistake and that their weakness in substance and policy have been completely exposed. But it’s clear that a game-changing event happened on May 11 when Enrique’s campaign advisors scheduled a rally at the Jesuit-run, private Iberoamericana University in the wealthy Santa Fe area of Mexico State,  where both Peña Nieto and his father-in-law had been the governor and where Salinas has his family estate.

The student rally appeared to be going well until the issue of Atenco protests and the police response in Pena Nieto’s state were raised in a question period. As governor, Peña Nieto had called in the police with the full support of the PRI government of President Ernesto Zedillo. Peña Nieto defended police actions as a necessary and said that the state had a moral obligation to respond to violence with force. His response generated a audible groans and shouting that Peña Nieto get out of here (Fuera!) The noise became so loud that he fled with a look of panic etched on his face, and he was quickly surrounded by his advisers, all of which was captured by video cameras showing that his trademark smile had become a worried grimace.

Afterwards, PRI spin doctors suggested that this rally had been sabotaged and organized in advance by PRD activists and agitators who were not students at Iberoamericana. However, the rally was open only to students and video evidence showed that the only organized group on campus that day was a PRI rally team with pre-printed professional campaign posters. Eventually, 131 protesting students from Iberoamericana came forward and they presented their student ID’s to prove it. They claimed they had not organized ahead of time and that what happened at the Iberoamericana rally was a spontaneous reaction to an answer that the students did not believe nor accept.

A war of words escalated, and everything the PRI spin doctors tried had an effect opposite to what they intended. The more they said, the angrier the reaction became, and student protests materialized across most of the country, albeit with more participants in some parts than in others. And student marchers  adopted a new slogan – YoSo132 – i.e. they wanted to add their name as the 132 student opposed to Peña Nieto. The slogan served as another Twitter hashtag #MarchaYoSoy132 that went viral, and is part of a massive Twitter wave of comments reinforcing the view that Peña Prieto is a candidate of the elite and powerful, no friend of the students.

The tuits also connected Peña Nieto and Televisa, and have led to protests in front of public monuments, such as the much criticized Estella de Luz monument in the symbolically important Plaza de Tres culturas in Tlatelolco, and ended up outside of Televisa offices and studios in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and in other parts of Mexico. The headlines in the Guadalajara version of La Jornada screamed in bold letters “”Somos jóvenes, sabemos lo que está pasando – We are young, we know what’s going on.” There is rapidly growing viral campaign in the Twitterverse to shut off Televisa.

To an outsider, these protests against a candidate seems like it should be inconsequential, but the fact is that the Iberoamericana events have escalated into major repercussions with the real potential to alter what happens in the final weeks of the campaign. The rejection by the students of an elite and conservative university has left the PRI scrambling to change the message of Peña Nieto, and he recently proposed several intiatives and promises to help youth find jobs. He has begun to emphasize that he will be  more transparent and open in dealing with students and with other Mexican citizens. But, he hasn’t set foot on another campus, and editorial cartoons ridicule his fear of students.

The PRI has apparently decided that its best response is to mobilize one supporting constituency it believes it can count on — women — and apparently have called for a march of 15,000 women to protest the bad treatment of their glamour boy by rowdy students at Iberoamericana and the agitators protesting in front of Televisa (Mujeres priistas marcharán en desagravio de “agresiones” a EPN).