There are too many unions, monopolists, and bureaucrats that behave like hungry sharks, accustomed to feeding off oil revenues and appropriating the extraordinary wealth that Mexico produces but does not share in an equitable and democratic way.
For too long, government officials have tinkered with Mexico's economic structure through piecemeal reforms that seek to ensure political stability but that do not address the key obstacles to greater innovation and competitiveness.
In Latin America, many people live with outstretched hands. Throughout the hemisphere, paternalistic governments accustom people to receiving just enough to survive instead of participating in society.
Democratic Latin America limps sideways because it can't run ahead. There are too many entry barriers to the poor, the innovative, and those without access to credit.
Latin America's economies are organized in a way that concentrates wealth in a few hands but then leaves it untaxed, depriving governments of the resources needed to invest in their citizens' human capital.
Governments that don't need to broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people.
The tin man vs. the straw man. The candidate with a brain but without a heart against the president with a heart but without a brain. That's how many Latin Americans are viewing the race between John Kerry and George W. Bush.
Two considerations led President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to choose Luis Donaldo Colosio as his successor: history and loyalty.
NAFTA was conceived to avoid discrimination against goods. A U.S.-Mexico treaty on immigration should be devised to prevent discrimination against people.
The U.S.-Mexico border has often been described as an open wound. NAFTA was expected to heal it, albeit through a long, slow, and imperfect scarring process, by creating a basic framework for cooperation between the two countries.
It would be a mistake to view Camacho as the beacon of democracy in Mexico. He has played by the PRI's rules for more than 15 years. As mayor of Mexico City, he was recognized as a political broker, not as an apostle of substantive political reform.
