Yearly Archives: 2011

David Lurie, the leading character in the novel Disgraceby CM Coetzee, appears to be devoted body and soul to courting disaster in his life, until he ends up fired from his job as professor and unhinged in his family life. In the face of his fall from grace, he concludes that, “when all else fails, […]

The problem with bad ideas is that they spread as if they were good but, when those who promoted them become aware of their error, there is no alternative other than simulation and lies. This is the inevitable case of the 2007 electoral reforms. Now that the electoral season is formally in place and campaigns […]

The ideal of the Euro constituted an enormous challenge for many countries that have nothing to do with the European Union. After years of economic crises, political ups and downs, and inflation, many nations, above all those of Latin America, regarded with envy the golden opportunity that appeared to present itself to countries such as […]

Aaron Copland, one of the great American composers of the past century, told the story of browsing in a bookshop one day, when he noticed a woman buying one of his books, “What To Listen for in Music”, together with a paperback edition of a Shakespearean play. As the customer left the shop, Copland stopped […]

“The decisive step toward democracy”, says Prof. Adam Przeworski, “is the devolution of power from a group of people to a set of rules”. The rules and principles on which the functioning of Mexican democracy is based are many, but they have never achieved the supremacy that is the essential requisite for democracy. This does […]

Luis Rubio One of my teachers, Roy Macridis, was fond of saying that public policy, in particular that which is relative to foreign policy, should be evaluated not for its objectives but for its consequences. The theme that especially grieved him was the Vietnam War, concerning which his pithy affirmation was that the United States […]

In the guise of Sherlock Holmes, many Mexicans ask, where is the narco-capo of the Potomac? The fact that the narcotics market in the U.S is such an important and central factor in the flow of drugs through Mexican territory has led to the conclusion that the ways and means of narco functioning in both […]

The film Sarafina!, starring Whoopi Goldberg, takes place in the South Africa of the Apartheid. Whoopi plays a teacher who attempts to instill a sense of dignity and a spirit of freedom in some children who suffer from an impenetrable climate of discrimination. Although this was a remote and distant place, radically different from ours […]

Some days ago, Jose Luis Reyna touched a sore spot when he differentiated between democratic from authoritarian regimes: “One difference between democracy and authoritarian systems is that the latter requires few institutions and scarce rules to govern; the leader in turn’s will is sufficient for him to impose his will, arbitrary or not, on the […]

The past several months have been exceedingly enlightening. To observe the manner in which Europeans have (half heartedly) conducted the Greek crisis or Americans writhing in anguish so as not to fall into default compelled me to reflect on our own financial crises of the past decades. The conclusion I arrived at is that we […]