The Mexican Press
I have been trolling the Mexican press via Internet and it seems there is a thriving newspaper world in Mexico. Almost every big city has a couple dailies that run the gambit from tabloid murder sheets to celebrity trash to erudite broadsheets. The capital alone has more than ten dailies. If anything, the Mexican newspaper industry is the opposite of America’s doom-riden newspapers who only see downward spiralling circulations and the conundrum that is the internet. The sheer number of journalists killed in Mexico in recent years points, I think, illustrates the power that newspapers have in Mexico. (Of course, it could be that it is just a dangerous place.)
While many of Mexico’s papers are filled with stories about corruption, strikes and weapons catches, newspapers in the U.S. have only posted typical “Mexican” stories; two big gun busts by the military – one in Tijuana and another in Cancun.
One particullarly interesting piece of news much in the Mexican press is the capture of at least ten Mexican citizens by the Colombian army. They where allegedly in a jungle hide-out with the FARC, Colombian leftist guerillas. While the Mexican press has been interested in the story because Mexicans were involved, the raid itself has been big regional news.The raid has become a fracas in the northern Andes between Ecuador and Venezuela on the one hand and Colombia on the other. After a cross-border raid by the Colombian army into Ecuador in pursuit of FARC rebels, Colombia has finally apologized. The press showed Ecuador’s president along side Colombia’s at a regional meeting of leaders in the Dominican Republic. What seemed like it might flare up into a border war has turned into an “incident.” At one point Venezuelan tanks were massing on the Colombian border.The ripples of this rift made their way as far north as Nicaraguan when that country’s president, and former revolutionary, Daniel Ortega clamored to back the left wing governments of Venezuela and Ecuador against the right wing president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
What this trouble in the Andes exposes is the increasing power of a bloc of Left leaning governments in Latin America. Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have all, in some form, moved left, away from the free market, pro-U.S, so called Washington Consensus, which had driven much of the region’s internal and external policies. Now, it seems this block of countries is willing to back each other up in the face of a strong U.S ally in the region. While it is no surprise that Venezuela and Ortega’s Nicaragua would take such a tack, other countries in the region have not in the recent past been so automatic to stand side-by-side against a right wing pro U.S. government like Colombia’s. It is just this kind of show-down that brings to the surface in what direction the current political winds in the region are blowing, and how strong. Winds that seem to be blowing to the left and all at the same time. Link to Mexican newspapers
