Mexico Missed a Chance To Change

BUENOS AIRES--In mid-2004, celebrated Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi wrote a column for Mexico City newsmagazine Proceso headlined "The Disappearance of Mexico." Mexico, he said, had inspired all of Latin America with its leap to multi-party democracy in 2000, only to "fade away" as a beacon of change in subsequent years. "Mexico has disappeared completely as an example of change for Latin America" under the presidency of Vicente Fox, wrote Volpi.

Volpi's words appear prophetic now that the candidate of change appears to have been defeated in Mexico's presidential elections to pick Fox's successor. Although leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador vows that he will fight the results in the courts, official ballot tallies give a narrow victory to technocrat and center-right candidate Felipe Calderón, Fox's former energy minister and the darling of the business community and the conservative northern states.

It's clear to most analysts that Mexicans voted not for Calderón but against the risks of change. In Buenos Aires, conservative daily newspaper La Nación hailed Calderón's victory in an editorial, but noted that the "Hugo Chávez effect" -- the fear that López Obrador might become "another Chávez" -- played a major role, as it had in Peru's recent elections. In other words, any of the votes for the government candidate were cast out of fear that López Obrador, once in power, would emulate the worst populist excesses of Venezuela's leader. In the same way, Peruvians recently chose as president Alán García, despite his disastrous first presidency in the 1980s, rather than former military officer Ollanta Humala, who was considered "Chávez's candidate."

But Ollanta Humala was a nationalist and had no track record in government, while López Obrador launched his campaign as a successful mayor of Mexico City, the world's largest metropolis.

It's possible that we won't ever know what López Obrador's presidency would have been like, although if the courts decide that he did indeed lose the election he could conceivably run again and win in 2012. What's certain is that a leftist Mexican presidency does not necessarily mean a populist debacle. López Obrador's plan of subsidizing the underprivileged could have had results similar to Brazil's successful implementation of innovative welfare programs under leftist President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva.

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