New at Reason
David Agren reports from the newly-Vicente Fox-free Mexico to see what legacy - if any - the country's first conservative president might claim.
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He wasn't a conservative. He was more of a centrist populist, trying to appease everybody, while getting himself in a political jousting match with Mexico City's governor, later presidential candidate and all-purpose fool, Andres Manuel Lopez.
The Mexican government still intervenes too much on the economic affairs of people. Many Mexicans still expect government to solve many problems that private enterprise could solve more easily; however, since many are indoctrinated into a Government=good, private sector=bad mentality, it is difficult not to have people voting for those representatives that promise MORE regulation instead of less. This is what Fox had to face once elected: a Congress filled with socialist-leaning, anti-market ideologues.
Nevertheless, the intervention level on the market is such that it matters little if the macroeconomic performance is stellar - the market is still heavily regulated by a cadre of bureaucrats that understand little of the entrepreneurial process. -
I didn't know Porfirio Díaz was so left-wing...
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Its interesting the author blames Fox for not sending in the troops sooner into Oaxaca to crack the heads of teachers and dissidents (now underway) rather than dealing with the notoriously corrupt and repressive state government in Oaxaca that brought the mess there about.
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The Oaxaca PRI is more of a criminal organization than a political party and should be ousted. But in this whole uproar, no side is without blame. It seems there are just varying degrees of bad.
Take the teachers. They've gone on strike every year for 26 straight years. And the lefist protesters (APPO), which is often portrayed as an organic uprising going against a corrupt governor when that's not entirely true. Grupo Reforma columnist Sergio Sarmiento points out that APPO used to receive money from the previous Oaxaca governor. The present governor cut the money, drawing APPO's wrath.
The unrest in Oaxaca has damaged the state's tourism-based economy and should have been quelled long ago.