Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on August 13, 2007.
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Monday, August 13, 2007
The most influential Mexican you’ve never heard of
While she is largely unknown beyond Mexico’s borders, there may be no more influential politician in Mexico right now than Elba Esther Gordillo, the boss of the powerful Mexican teachers union.
Gordillo has shown a knack for swinging elections, from the presidency to this month’s governor’s race in Baja California. She is also credited (and blamed) for facilitating passage of a highly controversial pension reform bill and for hand picking officials in the federal education department. [The Economist] magazine (http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9516526) says she may be “the second most powerful politician in the country” behind President Felipe Calderon.
Calderon most likely owes his razor-thin victory to the Gordillo, who famously broke with the PRI and convinced her teachers army to support Calderon. I remember being at the Zocalo during one of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s protest rallies when the losing leftist candidate played some secretly recorded phone calls between Gordillo and several PRI governors on election day July 2006. Gordillo basically ordered the governors to swing their people toward Calderon (candidate of the rival PAN). The deferential tone of the governors toward Gordillo (yes, ma’am, no ma’am) was amazing to hear.
Since then Gordillo has announced that Calderon owes her a heavy debt and has already cashed in. Her son-in-law was named sub-secretary of basic education.
Two weeks ago Gordillo struck again, this time in Baja California. Experts there attributed the victory of the PAN over controversial PRI candidate Jorge Hank Rhon to Gordillo. In the key border state, Gordillo once again mobilized her teachers against her old allies in the PRI, no doubt winning more credit at Los Pinos.
Look for Gordillo to continue to be a key figure during Calderon’s term. Many observers say the president can’t withstand the political price of distancing himself from her.