Mexico’s post-election politics & violent cartels

Hour 1

On July 1^st, Mexican voters returned the PRI – the Institutional Revolutionary Party that controlled the Mexican presidency for 71 years until 2000 – to power by electing its telegenic candidate, former Governor Enrique Pena Nieto. His closest challenger, leftist candidate and former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is contesting the vote result, amid allegations of vote-buying and overspending. In a New York Times op-ed the day after the election, Pena Nieto vowed to “to address the issue of organized crime and drug trafficking head-on,” and promised 75,000 new officers to fight the country’s violent drug cartels. Our in-studio guest, GEORGE GRAYSON, Class of 1938 Professor at the College of William & Mary’s Government Department and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute here in Philadelphia, specializes in the intersection of Mexican politics, drug policies and deadly cartels. His latest book is “The Executioner’s Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs, and the Shadow State They Created.”

Listen to the mp3

Listen:
[audio: 071912_1o0630.mp3]