Electing a New President Won’t Solve Mexico’s Problems, Author Says Agencia EFE
go to original June 3, 2017

“Over the long run, I wouldn’t have imagined that that corruption and that authoritarianism that existed in Oaxaca would be so commonplace in Mexico” - Diego Enrique Osorno (EFE)

Mexicans must use their indignation as fuel for collective action that strikes at the root of the nation’s problems, which cannot be solved merely by replacing one president with another, an author and journalist said.

“I think the problem is focusing everything on the presidential election. Believing that in 2018 all of (Mexico’s) problems will be solved with a change of president,” Diego Enrique Osorno said in an interview with EFE.

The 36-year-old journalist made his remarks in the border city of Tijuana, where he presented the latest edition of his book “Oaxaca sitiada” (Besieged Oaxaca).

He first wrote the work a decade ago to tell the story of a 2006 uprising in that impoverished, largely Indian-populated state against then-Gov. Ulises Ruiz.

That protest movement, which had begun in May of that year with a teachers’ strike, was crushed by thousands of federal police and troops in November 2006 but not before a score of people – mostly Ruiz opponents – had been killed and the demonstrations had caused millions of dollars in lost tourism revenue for picturesque Oaxaca city.

... “Over the long run, I wouldn’t have imagined that that corruption and that authoritarianism that existed in Oaxaca would be so commonplace in Mexico,” Osorno said, alluding to the large number of governors who have been implicated in corruption cases in recent years.

Referring to civil liberties, the author said there was no doubt that people are more able to question and denounce those in power today than 20 or 30 years ago.

Even so, he said that more Mexican reporters than ever before are being killed for exercising those rights.

Read the rest at Latin American Herald Tribune

Related: The Town Where Mexico’s Political Machine, and Six Governors, Were Born (WSJ.com)

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