Mexico

NOVANEWS  Oscar-nominated ‘No’ caricatures anti-Pinochet campaign An Oscar-nominated film on the 1988 plebiscite that ended the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet is a distortion of history, according to leaders of the real-life No campaign (above). “The central character and hero of ‘No’,” The New York Times reports, “is the fictional René Saavedra, a hip young advertising executive recently returned from exile in Mexico, played by Gael García Bernal (left). Hired to produce the ad campaign for the underdog No side, Saavedra faces resistance from stodgily doctrinaire politicians on the left, but he creates a hopeful rainbow logo and a slogan, ‘Chile, happiness is on its way,’ that turn the tide.”But leading activists from the campaign are highly critical of the film, directed by Pa...

NOVANEWS Baruch Vega, a long-time CIA operative, has raised a red flag over the incoming president of Mexico’s decision to employ the former head of the Colombian National Police, Gen. Oscar Naranjo, as his security advisor in the war on drugs. CIA Operative Claims Corrupt Colombian Law Enforcer Now Advising Peña Nieto Is Sign Of That Danger Ahead...  “I do not think Naranjo will be running a war against drugs,” Vega contends. “He will be running a war to protect Mexican drug traffickers.” Vega contends there is a real danger that Mexican president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is on a path to recreate a similar corrupt alliance between government security forces and major narco-traffickers — many shadowed in the trappings of legitimate business interests — as existed in the early to mid...

Proletarian The candidate of the left has been cheated of victory for a second time. As the masses take to the streets, US imperialism is wary. The month of July saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets of Mexico City to protest the electoral fraud that has, for the second time, deprived the left-wing candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as Amlo) of victory in the presidential election.Following the 1 July election, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was declared the winner with 38.2 percent of the vote. Amlo, who was the candidate of his Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Mexico’s largest left-wing party, along with a broad coalition of party and non-party progressive forces including the Party ...

NOVANEWS by Stephen Lendman   Like its northern neighbor, wealth and power dominate Mexican politics. Elections are notoriously tainted. Populist candidates are excluded. The late John Ross said Mexico perfected the art of electoral theft. Longstanding problems fester. For millions, they’re unbearable. They include extreme poverty, unemployment, underemployment, deep-seated private and public corruption, drug-related crime and violence, and political repression. Beyond lip service, none of the candidates addressed them. Conditions are worse now than years earlier. Sunday’s election changed nothing. Privately, Nieto assured Washington that business as usual will continue. On July 2, AP headlined “Mexican elections: PRI, former ruling party, voted back into office,” saying: Institution...