Its origins are somewhat obscure, but the term "Mexican standoff" arose in the late 19th century, after a turbulent century in which Mexico underwent uprisings against the Spanish conquerors; occupation by a Habsburg prince under French auspices; continued strife and loss of large stretches of territory at the hands of the emerging, supremely self-confident and expansionist United States;

Keele McFarlane

and more than three decades of autocratic rule by a strongman who emerged out of all this chaos. Initially, the term was derogatory, implying that Mexicans couldn't decide anything, but as time wore on it took on the more neutral meaning of an irreconcilable situation - classically, in movie terms, two men with guns drawn who don't really want to shoot, but who don't want to be the first to put the gun down.
Now, two men, each of whom very much wants to be president of Mexico, have found themselves in just such a situation.

Forty-one million Mexicans turned out to polling places last Sunday to choose a new president, 628 members of the two houses of congress, the government of Mexico City and local offices. The Federal Election Institute counted the votes, but for a while it was unclear who would emerge as the country's new president.

Forty-four-year-old Felipe Calderón represents the National Action Party - known by its Spanish initials PAN. That's the party of the incumbent president, Vicente Fox. It's a right-of-centre grouping favourable to business, and was the group which dislodged the party that ran Mexico's business single-handedly for seven decades. That outfit - the Institutional Revolutionary Party - is known to almost every Mexican as Pree - from the Spanish initials, PRI. The name is a bit of an oxymoron - the terms revolutionary and institutional are completely contradictory, and the PRI demonstrated this dichotomy during its 70-odd years in charge of Mexico.

It became a tradition for the outgoing president to "lay the finger" on the party's chosen successor, since the constitution stipulates that the president can serve only one six-year term. Even though it was the PRI which brought Mexico into the North American Free Trade Agreement, and has seen the country's economy open up, the party has favoured a nationalistic economic policy, particularly in areas like natural resources. It has shunned foreign investment in the huge oil sector, preferring to foster the national oil giant, Pemez.

CALDERON... Assuming that his victory holds, it's by no means a certainty he'll be able to carry out all the reforms he wants to

The PRI is represented this time by Roberto Madrazo, a long-time politician who has served as a member of the chamber of deputies, senator and state governor. He's been trying to bring the party back together after it split into two main factions a few years ago. He never even came close to winning the presidency, ending up with a respectable one-fifth of the vote. The two other candidates didn't make much of an impression.

The other main contender is a charismatic former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel López Obrador, 52, known in the popular press and to his fanatic supporters as AMLO.

He ran for the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and appeals to the lower economic classes, as demonstrated by his campaign slogan, "For the good of all, the poor first". His nationalistic line talks about "purifying national life, and these sentiments do not go down too well with the business classes and foreign investors.

They paint him as a left-wing firebrand, part of a dangerous leftward trend in the region, as personified by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. But observers say he's neither very strongly left-wing nor very anti-American, tending instead to direct his wrath at the very wealthy elite of his own country. It is they, he says, who will have to make the sacrifices necessary to create more jobs and expand the economy.

As the polls closed on Sunday night, the count was too close to call, and the election institute, which is well respected throughout the hemisphere for its integrity, refused to declare anyone the winner. The early returns showed Calderón with a lead of about one per cent, but there were still many votes outstanding, and AMLO started kicking up a fuss.

By mid-week as authorities began the final tabulation of the votes, they announced that about two million votes had not been accounted for in the preliminary count. López charged that the election had been rigged against him and demanded a vote-by-vote recount. In the event, as the final count ploughed on, he took a slight lead. However, when the final tally was in on Thursday evening, the result was Calderón by a razor-thin margin - 35.8 per cent to 35.3 per cent for López.

Separating them is a measly 220,000 votes, or 0.6 per cent.
López says he'll appeal to the election institute, and a seven-judge panel has until September 6 to hear such a motion. And the new president doesn't take office until December. Until all this is resolved, the Mexican standoff could continue, bolstered by mass demonstrations among AMLO's followers, beginning as soon as today in the capital. Assuming that Calderón's victory holds, it's by no means a certainty he'll be able to carry out all the reforms he wants to, as the PRI has a considerable presence in the national congress, and could easily stymie his efforts.

Mexico has never been an easy place to govern, and the new president will need all the toughness he can muster to try to improve the lives of his 100 million compatriots, many of whom continually seep across the northern border in search of a better life in the United States.

The country, long regarded as a source of low-wage labour, also faces serious competition from the vast pool of even cheaper labour in India, China and other parts of Asia. It also has some unresolved internal challenges such as integrating the native groups in several parts of the country into the national economic life. Most recently, natives in the southern region of Chiapas rose up a few years ago against what they felt was the iniquitous treatment of their fellow citizens by mainstream Mexicans.

The demagogue who ruled Mexico at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Porfirio Díaz, once moaned at what he saw as the big problem his country faced as it tried to dig itself out of its colonial past and bloody relationship with its northern neighbour: "Poor Mexico - so far from God and so close to the United States."

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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