Is Mexico Back?

Are the economic reforms promised since Vicente Fox was inaugurated in 2000 about to be instituted?  Will parts of the nation’s greatest dinosaur, Petroleos Mexicanos, be privatized?  Will the drug cartel violence recede?  Could all this happen with the Mexican party in charge, that is noted for its authoritarianism and corruption?

For all of Mexico’s many friends north of the border, we hope so.

The president-elect, Enrique Pena Nieto, is at least as media savvy as Fox, who remade the image of Mexican presidents.  Nieto’s party only won a plurality (38%) and not the lower house.  A far cry from the old days when the PRI would regularly win 100 percent of the vote.

Twelve years in the wilderness has taught the PRI how to campaign.  Now, we will see if it finds the talent to pass and implement its agenda.

Mexico’s political center is more left than in the U.S.  Their left candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who got 32 percent of the vote this year, is much closer to Hugo Chavez than Barack Obama. In 2006, he only lost by 250,000 votes out of 40 million cast.  Of course, Mexico will always have a more socialized economy than the U.S., and its foreign policy will remain more aligned with the developing world than the U.S.

But, they want to lift their GDP above its weak current 2 percent and they want Mexico, not Brazil, to be the Latin American country first thought of as on the move.

Go Mexico!  We’re pulling for you.