The Presidential Race of 2018
The violence in northern Mexico of the years of the Calderon Administration opened the door for the national return of the PRI and led to the election of the former governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. The administration of Peña Nieto will end next summer. The election is to be held around July 1, 2018 and the inauguration of the new President on December 1, 2018. But under his administration the PRI has touched the lowest level ever of public support with currently about 15% approval ratings a decline from the 38% of the popular vote in his election in 2012.
The public disaffection comes from several areas. One is the lack of transparency and corruption of police and the military in many areas of Mexico. It began on a positive note in 2012 as Mexico was weary of the military combat efforts taken by President Calderon. But Peña Nieto’s first large scale failure was his administration’s inability to investigate and explain the capture and murder of 43 teachers’ college students from a rural area of the western state of Guerrero. To date there is no explanation of this matter though many in Mexico and elsewhere feel it was committed by a cartel, local police and with support by the Mexican army.
Two comes from the failure of Mexico’s relations with the United States, particularly President Donald Trump, who is seen by Mexicans as anti-Mexico and seeking to end NAFTA. Indeed much of Trump’s electoral success in traditional manufacturing states of the middle of the country including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio was fueled by traditional Democrats that suffered the loss of manufacturing jobs in the last two decades and viewed NAFTA as the mechanism that stole the jobs. Though less than expectations, NAFTA has brought prosperity to many in Mexico and placed Mexico in the world of leading manufacturing nations. The threats of ending NAFTA or of U.S. sanctions that result in tariffs on Mexican products to the United States have created serious concerns about the PRI’s leadership.
Three is the failure that comes from the growing list of corruption among PRI personalities from the President through several governors and mayors. Early in President Pena Nieto’s term evidence appeared in Mexican news media that centered on a mansion in the luxurious Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, purchased by First Lady Angelica Rivera on credit from an entity that was part of Grupo Higa, a company owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú, which had received millions of dollars in contracts from Peña Nieto when he was governor of the State of Mexico. The company had also won a contract, subsequently canceled, to build a high-speed train between Mexico City and Queretaro, about 120 miles northwest of the capital. First Lady Rivera later returned the mansion, and a government investigation subsequently found no wrongdoing by Peña Nieto or his wife. But the scandal contributed early to Peña Nieto’s plummeting approval ratings and the sense that corruption was one of the central failings of his government.
Peña Nieto came into the Presidency having previously served as the Governor of the State of Mexico. He has glamourous boyish good looks and was very popular with women voters In 1993, Peña Nieto married his first wife, Mónica Pretelini (b. 1963) and the couple had three children: Paulina, Alejandro and Nicole. Peña Nieto had two illegitimate children during this first marriage; a son with Maritza Díaz Hernández, and another child, with an undisclosed woman, who died as an infant. Pretelini died on January 11, 2007 as the result of an epileptic episode. Pretelini had a vital role during the campaign of Peña Nieto’s governorship.
In 2008, Peña Nieto began a relationship with Televisa soap opera actress Angélica Rivera, who he had hired to help publicize his political campaign for the State of Mexico. The couple married in November 2011, although media outlets have questioned the validity of the marriage as of 2015, alleging that Mexico’s Catholic Church bent rules or that the marriage could have been a publicity stunt to help his presidential campaign. Peña Nieto has said that he provides for the son he fathered with Hernández, but has little contact with him. His support for the child became a political issue during the 2012 presidential election, when both Hernández and rival candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota accused him of not supporting the child.
Corrupt Governors
Perhaps Peña Nieto’s path of corruption set the tone for his administration. During Peña Nieto’s term significant numbers of officials of his party, the PRI, have been prosecuted for corruption as have two more from the opposition party, PAN. Among those of the PRI convicted before Pena Nieto’s term is Mario Villanueva, who governed in Quintana Roo from 1993 to 1999, and is serving a 22-year sentence on a money-laundering conviction.
Among the most visible to Texas is Tomas Yarrington, Governor of the State of Tamaulipas from 1999-2005, who was implicated in money laundering for both the Gulf and Zetas Cartels and plotting the assassination of Rodolfo Torre Cantú in Cantu’s campaign in 2010 for Tamaulipas Governor. Yarrington had avoided arrest until apprehended in Italy in April of 2017. Mexican news sources claim he has three children with a former professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, Sindy Chapa, who knew Yarrington when she attended college at UT Brownsville from her home in Matamoros. She held at least two very expensive properties that were seized by the U.S. Justice Department and the IRS as part of a money laundering scheme moving payoffs from the Gulf and Zeta Cartels to Yarrington and Ms. Chapa purchasing property for him. She is now a faculty member at Florida State University.