By RICARDO CASTILLO The good news is that more Mexicans are – at long last – interested in a presidential race. The figures for some foreign observers may not be impressive, but, locally, the audience participation results of last Sunday’s debate issued by the National Electoral Institute (INE) showed that 11.4 million Mexicans watched it and that two out of every
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Three issues are beleaguering the ongoing Mexican presidential election. One is the approval by the Electoral Court of the candidacy of now-fifth competitor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez as an independent candidate on the presidential electoral ballot. Second is the 70th birthday party of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari last week, and, finally, third, the apparent demise of
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Back on Jan. 7, 1994, I attended the press conference in Austin, Texas, in which then-Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari told the new U.S. president-elect, Bill Clinton, a phrase in English that is still at the very heart of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its core raison d’être. “We want trade, not aid,” Salinas said, emphatically correcting
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