Recently, in a blog post entitled ‘Monumentalising Revolution’, my commentary argued that the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City stands as an ambiguous carrier of utopian promise, which links past and present generations of struggle. Specifically, my concluding point was that this architectural space stands as a possible symbol of ‘the effective participation of the present generation in shaping the utopian desires of the oppressed, linked to ongoing past and present social struggles’. Written in April, there was no anticipation in this piece of the events to come that have swirled around the student movement #YoSoy132 in contesting the presidential election process in Mexico.
Posts tagged: Televisa
From the Frying PAN into . . .
Is the heat in Mexico’s presidential election increasing on Enrique Peña Nieto as candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)? Coming into the final week of the election on July 1, it is suggested that he is a comfortable front runner ahead by 10 points in the opinion polls in relation to his nearest rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). Since 2000, Mexico has been governed by the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). But with the PAN under President Felipe Calderón mired in the “war on drugs” that has cost some 60,000 lives since 2006, the party’s candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota is struggling to define a sense of difference in her campaign. With security such a hot topic in Mexico, one of Peña Nieto’s policy proposals is to create a paramilitary gendarmerie of 40,000 recruited from the army. In that sense it could well be a case of from the frying PAN into the fire of the PRI.
Televisa, #YoSoy132 and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico
Having taken on elements of the News Corp mass media empire run by Rupert Murdoch, involving the UK newspaper division of News International, linked to the phone hacking scandal, the Guardian is at the centre of a fresh furore. This time the target is the Televisa group in Mexico, which has about 70 percent of the television audience in the country and is the largest mass media company in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world.
The controversy surrounds the accusation of alleged collusion between Televisa and Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the forthcoming July elections, who is also the current frontrunner according to opinion polls. Specifically, the allegations have derived from the freelance correspondent, Jo Tuckman, in an article on 7 July, claming ‘dirty tricks’ in the race for the presidency. Documents apparently reveal the Televisa network to have both favoured Peña Nieto ahead of the presidential elections on 1 July and smeared the left-leaning candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), currently second in the polls, who also narrowly lost the 2006 election.
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