Enrique Krauze Wins the Caballero Bonald International Essay Competition [in Spanish]

Krauze

Mexican historian Enrique Krauze was declared the winner of the Caballero Bonald International Essay Competition on September 20th in Madrid.  The prize comes with 20 thousand Euros, and is for his essay “Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America” (Redentores. Ideas y poder en América Latina).Read More…

I am the People [Opinion in Spanish]

Letras Libres, August 2012

In this article Krauze discusses López Obrador’s potential effects on Mexico should the Tribunal rule in his favor.  He says if this occurs it will damage Mexican democracy because AMLO does not believe in limited personal power, which is why he fundamentally is not a liberal but a populist, a caudillo in the style of Porfirio Díaz.  He says that the thinks this of López Obrador because of his rhetoric regarding the law (that is a way for the bourgeoisie to dominate the proletariat) and because for him the “people” are those who follow him, not everyone in the nation who has the right to vote.  He says that this might be worse than the PRI’s long time in power because they had some limits on personal power, in that they had institutional limits on the amount of power a president could have even if he went too far with his own personality cult…

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A Stronger Future: Policy Recommendations for U.S.-Mexico Relations

Mexico Institute, 07/11/2012

The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands and the Wilson Center seized the opportunity provided by simultaneous election years in the United States and Mexico to convene a high-level retreat of preeminent political, business, academic, and media leaders from the two countries in March 2012. From this retreat emerged a fresh set of ideas to take the bilateral partnership to a new level that are put forth in the report, A Stronger Future: Policy Recommendations for U.S.-Mexico Relations.  The report presents recommendations to enhance regional competitiveness; reform the U.S. immigration system; more effectively fight organized crime and strengthen public security; further educational exchanges; increase energy cooperation; and develop ports of entry that strengthen trade and border security.

To download report click here.

For a video from the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands from A Stronger Future: Policy Recommendations for U.S.-Mexico Relations click here.

Mexico’s Strengths Still Peak Through Gloom: Enrique Krauze

Enrique Krauze, Bloomberg, 12/29/2011

The news from Mexico, in recent years, has most often been bad. For a while, it was largely reports of corruption, electoral fraud and economic crisis. These days, it’s all about crime and insecurity.

The country hasn’t been given sufficient credit for the good news it has generated since the 2000 elections broke the 71-year hegemony of a single party: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, better known as the PRI. Neither the international press nor we Mexicans have fully acknowledged what has been achieved or maintained. Still, Mexico’s dark image is valid, up to a point, but it’s only a fragment of the truth.

Corruption in government, for instance, has by no means disappeared. Yet in stark contrast to the long period of PRI domination (1929-2000), it has greatly diminished at the federal level, thanks to the 2002 Federal Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information. Mexico is now a democracy, with a true division of powers, full democratic freedoms and elections supervised by an independent electoral institute.

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Op-ed by Enrique Krauze: Can This Poet Save Mexico?

The New York Times, 10/1/11

SOMETHING amazing is happening in Mexico. A few weeks ago, a 14-bus caravan, which had been traveling under the leadership of Javier Sicilia, a poet and the founder of the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity, arrived here after a 10-day trek around the country. Its every move was followed by the national media, and thousands showed up to greet its return.

The caravan was organized in protest against the onslaught of drug-related violence that has cost my country 40,000 dead and at least 9,000 unsolved “disappearances” since 2006 — a few weeks ago, 35 bodies were left on a busy highway in Veracruz.

It was just one part of a larger awakening of civil society here, which can be seen in the strengthened investigative efforts of the press, a more aggressive application of anticorruption laws, and the formation of voluntary associations, focused on everything from the environment to poverty.

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Consenso contra el crimen

Reforma, 9/4/11

Krauze

No existe un consenso nacional de repudio al crimen organizado. España tardó en construirlo, hasta que la escalada de crueldad por parte de ETA convenció a la inmensa mayoría de que era necesario manifestarse clara y públicamente contra esa organización. También Colombia
tardó en construirlo, hasta que los crímenes de jueces y candidatos presidenciales tuvieron el mismo efecto. Gracias en parte a la cohesión que les dio ese acuerdo, España está muy cerca de doblegar a ETA y Colombia ha reducido a niveles manejables su problema de criminalidad asociada al narcotráfico y la guerrilla. En México, el no contar con un acuerdo semejante nos debilita y confunde como sociedad, mientras fortalece a los criminales y a sus cómplices políticos. Tarde o temprano llegaremos a él, pero es necesario que no ocurra demasiado tarde, cuando las tragedias recientes se hayan generalizado y multiplicado.

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Interpreting the Latin American Soul- Enrique Krauze’s “Redeemers”

The New York Times, 8/26/11

Enrique Krauze is a well-known historian in Mexico. He is also a documentary filmmaker and television talking head renowned for his mellifluous basso voice, a publisher of elegant coffee-table books and a canny operator within the upper murks of Mexican politics. He is the editor of a glossy highbrow magazine called Letras Libres.

There are corners of the Spanish-speaking universe in which he is omnipresent, and even a few corners of the English-speaking universe in which his byline is hard to miss. I have been following his work for decades. I subscribe to his magazine. Occasionally I contribute to it. He has always seemed to me a keen and judicious political observer, worldly and instinctively liberal.

But now it occurs to me that he is also marked by a rare and attractive gift for noticing the several ways that, under the bright sun of the imagination, the kingdom of politics and the kingdom of literature sometimes merge.

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Awards to Krauze, Loaeza y Solares (in Spanish)

Reforma, 11/17/2010

The historian Enrique Krauze, the political scientist Soledad Loaeza, and the writers Gonzalo Celorio and Ignacio Solares, as well as eight others, were awarded the 2010 National Prize in Science and Art.

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The PAN Has Never Understood Culture (in Spanish)

Krauze (left)

An Interview with Enrique Krauze, Milenio, 7/31/2010

Excerpts:

“I believe in criticism and I like controversy,” assured the director of Letras Libres in a conversation about everything from the Bicentennial to the need to reestablish dialogue within Mexican culture, which has been broken since the 2006 elections.”

“The Bicentennial was, beyond the festivities, an opportunity for citizen participation and collective debate, an opportunity to enrich the national public life. It still is, although I don’t think it’s being utilized.”

“No, no we are not reconciling ourselves with the past. To do so would mean many things that, again, have to do with debate. We would have to be seriously debating our national myths, return to the topic on the indigenous and Spanish, revising the various interpretations of 19th century Mexican history, seeing how the mythology absorbed the Mexican Revolution, including muralism. We live in a jungle of myths: the myth of petroleum, the myth of sovereignty…We would have to have advanced much further in the demystification of our history in order to see our heroes as men of flesh and bone (with virtues and defects).”

“Historically the PRI, the Mexican political system, had close and positive relations with the cultural world…The integration of the Mexican intellectuals with the powerful, until a certain momemt, was widespread and functional.  But this broke in the 60s, thank goodness, because if the intellectuals don’t use their weapons, which come from critique, they tie thier hands and put themselves at the service not of the public but of the powerful.”

“The PAN has never understood culture even though it was founded by an intellectual. It doesn’t understand culture nor will it, regardless of whether it has good or bad officials.  The work of Consuelo Sáizar is good, but the government does not have a cultural project. It doesn’t know what its legacy will be and has a series of identity crises. Naturally, its relationship with intellectuals is tenous, distant, or poor.

“All of us that have worked for culture in Mexico have to make the effort to recover a minimum of this harmony, of this respect that was lost on the day when the person that divided Mexico in two appeared [López Obrador].”

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Editorial: An Anti-Incumbency Wave—in Mexico

New York Times, 7/6/2010, Enrique Krauze

Perceptions, once firmly established, can often obscure the truth. The homicide rate in Brazil is twice that in Mexico, but it is my country that is portrayed as lawless and violence-ridden. So it is important to note some sudden good news: On Sunday, in 14 of Mexico’s 32 states, millions of citizens went to the polls and, defying the threat of violence from drug cartels, decisively consolidated our young democracy…

A country that becomes continually more comfortable with democracy and the rule of law in its states and cities can confront the challenge of organized crime in a more effective and responsible manner. Colombia has done it, and maintained democracy. Mexico — with some help and understanding from the United States — can do it as well. No matter the dangers, the future for Mexico must rest on maintaining and expanding its still young democracy.

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