Michael Barone Has Dangerous Insight About Mexican Politics
07/05/2012
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Bigfoot columnist Michael Barone, reliably clueless about immigration, nevertheless has an interesting description of Mexican politics, specifically Mexico's presidential elections.  Briefly recounting the history of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish acronym: "PRI"), which was Mexican politics from PRI's founding in 1929 until the election of Vicente Fox in 2000, Barone writes:

The PRI was established in 1929, after two decades of revolutionary violence. Each Mexican president would serve for a single six-year term, and in the last year would pick his successor — put his finger, or dedazo, on him — who would be nominated by the PRI. After a campaign of elaborate ceremony around the country, he would be routinely elected. Bad things would tend to happen in each president’s sixth year, or sexenio, and after he left office he would be reviled and in many cases would leave the country altogether.

The PRI system appealed to an Aztec sensibility, containing as it did elements of elaborate ceremony, calendrical regularity, and (in the expulsion of the former president) human sacrifice.

[Mexico's Quiet Election, National Review Online, July 5, 2012]

"Aztec sensibility"!  "Human sacrifice"!!  Will Barone have to retire in disgrace, once those instances of unwittingly telling the truth become more widely known?

But then again, maybe Barone's closing, stupid remarks will be enough to get him off the hook:

As for immigration, it appears that the flow of Mexicans to the U.S. has been reversed since 2007.

What is clear is that Mexico has become a neighbor much easier to live with.

 

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