By Andrew L. Jaffee

¿Quién pensaría que el PRI perdería energía política en México? Well, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost control, and Vicente Fox became president of Mexico in 1990. In some ways, the PRI’s loss was a milestone in Mexican history, in others — to quote Pete Townsend — “meet the old boss, same as the new boss.” Fox is not a mestizo, nor an indio, whom make up the bulk of Mexico’s population — rather, he is from the clase predominante mexicana, “born … to a wealthy Mexican family of mixed Spanish-Irish descent,” Harvard-educated, and became “supervisor of Coca-Cola’s operations in Mexico, and then in all of Latin America.” Will it really matter who wins today’s Mexican elections, a contest between “conservative” Felipe Calderon and “leftist” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador?

Cuando era un muchacho, viví en Ciudad de México. I also spent a lot of time traveling in Latin America. One thing I learned very quickly there: The darker your skin, the worse you were treated. That type of thinking still pervades official Mexican institutions.

Vicente Fox stuck his foot in his mouth in 2005 by defending two official Mexican postage stamps, featuring Uncle Tom, Al Jolson, blackface-like caricatures of black people. In May, 2005,

Mr Fox had caused offence when he said Mexicans did jobs in the US “that not even blacks wanted to do”.

What a track record Mr. Fox developed. Oh, but I thought leaders of third world countries were “incapable” of racism — as they’ve spent their lives trying to overcome their white, American imperialist overlords (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). After all, Fox is a good guy. He opposed the Iraq “blood-for-oil” war.

Cuando estaba en América latina, trataron a los indios el peor — except for the few black people. They got the worst of it; the “dirty jobs” so to speak. Some of our neighbors en el Ciudad de México frowned upon two of my good friends, dos indios of Mayan descent. The neighbors were of course lighter-skinned Mexicans. But they didn’t have as light skin as the director of el Instituto in which my father was on sabbatical.

But our not-so-dark-skinned neighbors still railed against the awful Americans — politically, at least. They were nice to me, but I was a Catholic-Lithuanian-(Rastafarian)-Jew-boy. In other words, at least half of me was OK — the lighter-skinned one.

Of course I met people of all stripes in Mexico, many without a drop of prejudice in their souls. It is a country as diverse as any other in the Americas. But it is hard to forget some memories.

One Christmas, my family was vacationing in Merida, the provincial capital of Mexico’s state of Yucatan. The population of this southern, Caribbean rain forest paradise is predominantly Mayan. A party representing los indios won the election. The next day, my parents and I took a walk through Merida’s main square. Truck-loads of Mexican soldiers started pouring into town. The troops were non-Mayan of course, but many were from other “indigenous” tribes. We didn’t see any violence, but the locals were petrified.

The soldiers presided over an official election “recount.” Guess what, in a stunning turnaround, the pro-Mexican candidate “won.”

Judging by Mexican President Fox’s statements regarding black people, and the two commemorative Uncle Tom/Sambo postage stamps, things haven’t changed much.

Before anybody goes looking for greener grasses and wishful-thinking-rainbow-coalitions in the third world, just remember: Think clearly, take off the rose-colored glasses, and see people as they are: people like the rest of us, with all our human foibles.

Granted. There are differences between the two candidates now standing in the Mexican elections. From the BBC:

Mr Lopez Obrador is a former mayor of Mexico City, who has championed the poor and promised major public building programmes.

His main rival, Mr Calderon, is a Harvard-educated former government minister who calls for more foreign investment and greater links to the global economy.

My guess would be that Obrador would bring a Hugo Chavez style to Mexican politics, a populist, blame the U.S., and spend lots of taxpayer money on white elephant public works projects style. Perhaps Calderon could bring much-needed economic reforms to Mexico.

Who knows at this point? In the short term, I doubt either candidate will stop the implicit policy of dumping Mexico’s unemployed on the U.S., nor tackle wide-spread corruption, nor put a stop to rampant drug trafficking and gang-related violence.

And for Mexico’s mestizos, indios, and negros, the song will probably remain the same (to quote Led Zeppelin).

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Related: Latin America, Elections

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