July 2, 2000 Mexico elects its next president. It seems most bets are on the challenger, Vincente Fox, of the National Action Party and formerly of the Coca-Cola Company, to win the race. Much has been made of the manipulation of the media by PRI to swing the vote back in favor of their candidate, Francisco Labastida, after recent polls showed he was falling behind. But it seems Mr. Fox has a little PR campaign going of his own. Corruption charges have flown back and forth and neither candidate seems to be made of Teflon. The leftist candidate, Cardenas, is hardly mentioned in the press, though he draws huge crowds.

American election observer, Ted Lewis, from Global Exchange, was deported from the country though other elections observers, including Jimmy Carter and Ann Richardson, former governor of Texas, were not.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party has ruled the country for 71 years and may be ready to hand over power.

The push to privatization is unlikely to be perturbed no matter who wins. A report by 50 Years on the privatization of Telmex the Mexican telephone company shows those old disturbing trends. It majority stockholder Carlos Slim, is a fat cat. In fact, his assets total more than the annual income of Mexico's poorest 17 million. One of the many improvements for consumers after the acquisition, which Mr. Slim shares with Southwest Bell and France's Telecom, is the hike in charges for measured local calls, from 16 pesos per minute to 115 pesos. Foreign investors did not fare too badly capturing 67 trillion pesos as well as 90 per cent of the net benefits of the sale.

The military is also doing well in Mexico. In the years from 1985 to 1995, Mexico, increased its spending on the military from 2.6 per cent of the government's total spending to 5.1 per cent. The majority of Mexico's thirty-two states now have federal military participation in their civilian police command structures. Amnesty International reports that cases of torture and disappearances are steadily rising. Two hundred activists of the PRD, Democratic Revolutionary Party, were murdered between 1989 and 1997 in Guerrero.

Between 1996 and 1998 Mexico sent more military personnel to the United States for training than any country in the Western Hemisphere than, you guessed it, Colombia.

Barry McCaffrey recently applauded the estimated cut in opium gum production, though it is unclear exactly which red flowers the military seems to be after. The military have virtually occupied large tracts of three of Mexico's largely indigenous states, Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

In Barranca de Guadulupe in the poverty stricken state of Guerrero, which is also the largest producer of opium, the military have saturated the area presumably to fight the drug war. Says a local priest, "The military is involved in a surgical operation to leave the fish(the rebels) without water (potential popular support)".

Tacit acknowledgment of the true aims of the military was given by Mexican military analyst, Jore Luis Serra. "The only effective strategy is to destroy the groups completely. Not only their military capacity but their logistical infrastructure and any support they might have."