GEYER: A populist future for Mexico?

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The Iraq story makes the papers about once a day, although ever more unenthusiastically for the American reader. Afghanistan edges into newsprint occasionally. But our own hemisphere? Or our important, long-suffering neighbor, Mexico? There the coverage is even worse.

The only stories you read about Mexico these days are of the bitter gang and drug killings along the Mexican-American border. More than 4,000 people, including some 450 members of the police, have been murdered in drug-related violence since the conservative President Felipe Calderon took over a year and a half ago.

This "story" is even sadder for us journalists because, in fact, a lot of changes are occurring in Mexico, some for the good. But they go barely noticed in the United States because of our obsessions and condescensions. These changes were outlined at an unusually frank and insightful dinner here given by the Mexico Institute and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. Here are some of the major points:

President Calderon, a bookish man from the conservative PAN Party and the first leader to try to guide Mexico toward a long-lost center, wants, as Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan says, "300,000 Mexicans crossing the border - but doing so legally." Unlike previous presidents, the new president is not encouraging illegal immigration. This is because Mr. Calderon, the ambassador added, is a "very pragmatic guy - he is not charismatic."

Meanwhile, Enrique Krauze, one of Mexico's leading historians and intellectuals, and author of "Mexico: Biography of Power," fears the drug wars along the border "could lead to the breakup of our fragile Mexican democracy." Mr. Krauze's dramatic main point, however, was that he can foresee a Mexico led by a caudillo or strongman for the first time in modern history. "Never has Mexico had a charismatic president," Mr. Krauze said, noting that the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country with an autocratic but highly bureaucratized hand from 1929 until 2000, put forward only the grayest and least charismatic of leaders. But now?

Mr. Krauze is deeply worried that Mexico may be heading toward a caudillo-style leader in the 2012 elections with the ongoing candidacy of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the longtime populist mayor of Mexico City, who lost to Mr. Calderon in the last election but has not given up his ambitions. This may seem strange to the reader of an American newspaper. I cannot find a single major article about Mr. Lopez Obrador since the election. But he remains an active, if not always obvious, player in the ongoing Mexican drama.

"The crisis in Mexico is not from the left," Mr. Krauze explained. "Lopez Obrador can get people on the streets and bring down the government. I have warned repeatedly of his messianism. He is a stubborn man, traveling around the country constantly. I still think he's strong. He has the support of the press - and he has Mexico City, resources, sympathy. I still think we'll hear a lot from him.

"If he came to power in 2012, he would probably unite with the PRI ... with the Bolivian [nativist] idea. ... The north of Mexico might seek autonomy ... the army would be presented with a terrible temptation to intervene."

In short, what was being suggested - for the first time since the election of 2006 when President Calderon defeated Mayor Lopez Obrador - is that the Mexican state might actually come to be ruled by a caudillo-style leader. Would that be possible? A Fidel Castro of Mexico? A Juan Peron of the Rio Grande? A Hugo Chavez of Baja California?

After all the historic changes in the world over recent years, just about anything is possible. A Mexico without the total control of the PRI would be a Mexico politically and psychologically floating free for the first time in its modern history - and therefore willing to accept a more radical populist figure, especially one who is as demagogically attractive as Mr. Lopez Obrador.

This, after all, is the mayor who polished up a down-in-the-mouth Mexico City into a beautiful gem and who met the press every day at 6 a.m. to prove what a hard worker he was.

Now it all depends upon what Mr. Calderon does. If this able, business-oriented president can remake Mexico before 2012, Mr. Lopez Obrador will have little chance. If Mr. Calderon cannot accomplish that remaking, or if Mexico continues the drift of recent years, with half the population living in poverty and almost a fifth living in extreme poverty, the door will be left open for the entry of a charismatic strongman who has all the answers.

Such progressions are actually natural: The transition from the one-party system to a multiparty democracy, if not carried through ably, has proven to be a dangerous moment in any country's history.

What can the United States do? Above all, says Enrique Krauze, repeating an old refrain, "Mexicans have to perceive that the U.S. really cares." We ought to ask ourselves whether we do indeed care, and be very careful about answering that question.

Georgie Anne Geyer is a nationally syndicated columnist.