Welcome Mr. President

Barack Obama´s becoming the first African-American president didn’t fully sink in until yesterday. Watching the inauguration with my co-workers, including one other American, it was surreal and fantastic.

Just when the world was losing hope in the U.S. after eight years of recklessness and arrogance, we made a great leap forward by showing everybody how much we had advanced since the Civil Rights era.

Barely one year ago, I was in Mexico for the holidays, and I was staying at a hostel in Oaxaca when Iowa held its first primary – the official kick-off of election season. I woke up the next day and heard excited ruckus from other gringos –

“Did you hear Barack Obama won the Iowa primary?”

Someone asked me, “Who is Barack Obama?”

“He’s a black presidential candidate.”

I thought, how amazing it would be to elect the country’s first non-white president, but he probably won’t make it past Super Tuesday...

Now, a year later, our country and the rest of the world face huge problems, and Obama has Superman-like expectations. By electing him we’ve already regained some of the credibility we’ve lost, but let’s see what happens when our new president flexes his muscles and gets his hands dirty. I hope you can pull us through, Mr. Obama. I have a lot of confidence in you.

Obama and Calderon: an urgent meeting

At this moment, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are meeting in Mexico City. While this is the first time a president-elect has met with a Mexican president pre-inauguration day, I hope this meeting is more than just symbolic.

Mexico is quickly on its way to becoming a severely injured state – and a civil war breaking out isn’t difficult to imagine. Since Calderon took office in December 2006, more than 8,000 Mexicans have died as a result of drug violence, many innocents, most of those taking place in the north (in Ciudad Juarez, more than 1,600 were killed in 2008 alone), but the whole country seems to be infected, as drug traffickers, under pressure from increased military presence, fight for increasingly constricted trafficking routes to the U.S.

Just last week, a TV station in Monterrey was attacked with grenades, and Mexico’s interior secretary and head of the drug war (No. 2 man after the president) died in a plane crash (it may or may not have been an accident). Mexico is among the worst countries to be a journalist, after Iraq and Russia.

A report from the United States Joint Forces Command, which monitors other countries for possible, unexpected and sudden problems, recently released considers Mexico and Pakistan as states that are in risk of collapse if they don’t take immediate action.

“Such states, it says, usually pose chronic, long-term problems that can be managed over time,” the article says.

“But the little-studied phenomenon of "rapid collapse," according to the study, "usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems."

”Kidnappings have become a routine part of Mexican daily life. Common crime is widespread. Pervasive corruption has hollowed out the state,” the article says.

While Pakistan is more of a risk, the U.S. has a deeply vested interest in Mexico. It’s its third-largest trading partner after Canada and China and third-largest oil importer.

It’s a complex problem that spans across many levels – from corrupt top government officials to police officers to drug dealers, but the U.S. needs to take action, and not through military force.

One of the things that both sides of the border need to do is legalize marijuana, sell it, regulate it and tax it. That would remove pressure on the military, drug enforcement officials and police, reduce the number of innocent people killed, and allow officials to focus on more serious problems, saving millions of dollars.

Hopefully, Obama and Calderon’s meeting today is fruitful and launches what needs to be quick, efficient action. Mexico’s – and the US´ -- future depends on their cooperation.

Coincidences

Thanks to Bralapa readers for voting for Obama! If you voted for another candidate, well, it's ok because he didn't win. I celebrated heavily with friends and an expensive bottle of champagne. It was more exciting than Christmas when I was 10. I was thinking the race would be closer but once he nabbed Ohio it was over. I'm not a huge sports fan, but Tuesday was the world cup for political junkies.

Despite all the US' voting problems, we're lucky to have absentee and overseas voting. Some of my co workers were abroad during 2006's presidential elections and couldn't vote. If you're Mexican you can vote at the embassies, but not every place has one. Mexico was plagued by voter fraud and rigged elections for 70 years thanks to single-party dominance until 2000, so voting is still sort of a fragile issue.

And now for something completely different. For having 20 million people, Mexico City is really fricking big. Strangely, though, I see the same people over and over, and it´s happening more frequently. It´s mostly on the MetroBus, which is a linear route along Insurgentes. Everyone has his or her routes for home-work-home, but I see more familiar faces on the bus with each day: and it´s strange because I have a 30-minute window when I leave for work, between 8:05 and 8:35, and on top of that there are frequent busses, so given all these variables, the chance of the same people on the same bus day after day is rare. Or maybe not...

...on Sunday, I was running all over Mexico City with a friend, who was interviewing people about their jobs and recording them for a work project, and I saw this kid near a cafe. An hour later, we took the metro from Chilpancingo (see photo; bottom left) to Chabacano, then up to Pino Suarez (top right). Changing lines at Pino Suarez I see the same kid from the cafe, walking to connect as well, but going the opposite direction!! It might sound whoop-dee-doo to you, but living in a big city you get used to the idea that most of the people on the street you´ll never see again in your life.

Obama in Mexico

One of the most common questions people ask me, after they find out I´m gringo, is: "What do you think of Obama?"

I always tell them I hope he wins, but it´s such a close race that it´s too hard to predict (and if he loses, I´m moving to Canada -- or staying in Mexico).

Then I return the question, asking, "what do you think"?

The response depends on who I´m talking to: unless it´s a young person, they usually say they have no opinion (in general, Mexicans tend to err on the cautious side when talking about politics, especially if it´s with foreigners). But if it´s someone under 30, undoubtedly they will say Obama.

Curiously, Mexicans showed little interest in the US presidential race. According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey conducted in June, Mexico is the country with the fourth-lowest interest in the race (of the 23 nations polled). 30 percent of Mexicans have a favorable image of Obama (compared to 19 percent of McCain). There´s something to be said, however, about the timing of that poll: it´s two months old, the race has certainly heated up since then, and McCain made a brief stop to Mexico last month, in what was a widely publicized event, and to some, a misguided and awkward excuse to garner Latino votes in the US. What´s more, McCain is Protestant, and received blessings in the Basilica (Mexico´s equivalent of the Mecca), in an overwhelmingly Catholic country and one in which (unlike the US) politicians avoid mixing religion with their campaigns. Misguided, indeed.























Elsewhere

The U.S. presidential race is captivating far more than Americans´attention: it´s safe to say that in nearly every country, particularly in Western Europe, foreigners favor Obama by as much as 53 percent over John McCain (72%:19% in Spain; 84%:33% in France), and in some countries (notably, Japan, at 83 percent, and Germany, about 82 percent), the election is being followed heavily or somewhat (in the US, it´s at 80 percent). Not surprisingly, McCain maintains his highest ratings in the US (60 percent have favorable views of McCain, 59 percent for Barry), while every other country polled by Pew (except Jordan) favors Obama.