When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
CLARIN

Is This The Man To Clean Up Mexico?

Sunday's presidential election in Mexico is "a referendum between honesty and corruption," says leftist underdog candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

López Obrador at a rally in Yucatán (AMLO)
López Obrador at a rally in Yucatán (AMLO)
Pablo Biffi

MEXICO CITY – "This election is a referendum between honesty and corruption." That's how candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) sums up this Sunday's presidential election in Mexico. What's at stake is nothing less than the future of the nation, he believes.

López Obrador served as mayor of Mexico City between 2000 and 2005. A year later he lost the presidential election by barely half a percentage point to Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). He cried foul, claiming colossal fraud. For months he mobilized his forces and, in a symbolic ceremony, "assumed" leadership as Mexico's "legitimate president." In the end, however, he would have to wait six years for another run at Los Pinos, as Mexico's presidential residence is called.

Polls show him trailing Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). López Obrador is confident, nevertheless, that he'll win on Sunday. He spoke with Clarín on Monday.

CLARIN: Your campaign has centered around the fight against corruption. Is this Mexico's biggest problem?
LOPEZ OBRADOR: Yes, without a doubt. That's why we'll create an anti-corruption ministry. Citizen committees will be set up to oversee every government contract. When people talk about structural reform, they tend to forget that the first thing needed is to end the corruption that hinders growth. This election is a referendum between honesty and corruption.

Is it really reasonable to expect that an apparatus of this nature, one that survived for 70 years under the PRI and another 12 under PAN, could really be dismantled?
I stand by my record, which includes 30 years of social struggle. During all that time I was committed to three things: to not steal, to not betray and to not lie.

López Obrador seems convinced by his own words. And despite the fact that Mexico's image abroad is of a country awash with the violence of its drug wars – which have left more than 60,000 dead in the past six years – he insists that corruption remains the biggest challenge for this nation of 112 million people. "I won't back down. There won't be impunity for anyone," he says sternly.

Recent polls have Peña Nieto (43%) well in front, with a 12 to 15 percentage point lead over López Obrador. Nevertheless the PRD candidate strongly believes that he'll win. "The polls are rigged by the media to broadcast the idea that the elections are already decided," he said. "But we have other polls that show us two points ahead of Peña Nieto."

Will you accept the official outcome of the election?
I receive information from all over the country about how the PRI is buying votes. But a few things have changed. There's more clarity about the need for free and clean elections. We'll be following closely what happens in every voting center, with 450,000 people monitoring what takes place. So I'll accept what the people decide.

For López Obrador, who was briefly involved with the PRI at the beginning of his political career, Peña Nieto embodies corruption and despotism. Peña Nieto is described by some as the "political godson" of ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994), considered by many to be the great demon of Mexican politics.

How would you tackle Mexico's violence problems?
My program focuses on creating jobs and improving education, as well as fighting against corruption and carrying out fiscal reform to provide more money to social programs that help keep young people from turning to crime.

A few weeks ago, posters began appearing in various cities showing López Obrador kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez – a clear attempt to discredit the PRD candidate and sow fear among the population. "That's part of the dirty campaign they've run. A sign that they're afraid they'll lose," said López Obrador. "I don't know Chávez. In my whole life I've never even spoken with him on the phone."

Read the original story in Spanish.

Photo- AMLO

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest