South of the Border Again

Maybe the highway scribe was wrong to sign off after the Mexican elections, backing off on his prediction that ALL HELL WAS GOING TO BREAK LOOSE IN MEXICO.

It was hard to visualize how the losing left-wing guy, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was going to make good on his promise to declare himself legitimate president of Mexico and get enough lunatics to show up and cheer him on.

But there you have the pictures and also a nice “L.A. Times” article about how he’s held onto his supporters and juiced them with this latest bit of political theater.

And not only that, it's not so crazy at seems because, according to the piece, because others have done so in Mexico before.

the scribe suspects AMLO's job of making Mexico ungovernable is going to be a lot easier than presidente-elegido Felipe Calderon’s task, which is just the opposite.

And here’s an article picked up by the “San Diego Union-Tribune,” about how...well ALL HELL IS GOING TO BREAK LOOSE IN MEXICO.

highwayscribery never found a way to link what was going on in Oaxaca to the larger question of the election, although while down in San Diego two weeks ago, some protestors camped out on the Mexican consul’s doorstep told him so.

It was a question of how to propose the piece, of its place in highwayscribery’s overall coverage.

None of which you care about.

But S. Lynne Walker of Copley News Service cornered one academic who said, “Oaxaca is the price for winning the elections.”

the scribe crazy, but if there was a price to pay for taking power, doesn’t that imply something must have gone wrong during the voting and tallying?

Walker was permitted unusual latitude in the Copley story, calling the election rife with “so many irregularities” when, during Lopez Obrador’s occupation of central Mexico City, it was considered by many to be the “cleanest election in generations.”

Maybe international capital is having buyer’s remorse; realizing Obrador’s succession to power was a natural step in the country’s civic development and that repressing it has made Mexico a less worthwhile place to invest.

And isn’t that what it’s all about?

the scribe wrote Walker and protested her having referred to the slain Brad Will as a “reporter-activist,” which seemed to us a disqualifier as much as a qualifier.

Brad was a reporter, like all reporters, and was activist to the extent the profession is activist.

She never answered and if we weren’t in such a good mood about the most recent review of “Vedette” (see post below), we’d rain the full thunder and fury of highwayscribery down upon her.

The rebellion in Oaxaca is covered well in her piece and the violence of Mexican drug lords is given equal weight, suggesting Calderon may have bought a pig in a poke staked, as he will be, to the lowly job of restoring order and rule of law to a country in short supply of both.