Voices of Mexico no. 67
Our Voice
The current international situation is dominated by trends that were thought to have faded with the end of the Cold War. The United States has gone from playing a protectionist role mainly on economic issues to reinforcing its isolationist policy since the 9/11 attacks. This has been bolstered through mechanisms that strengthen the so-called National State of Security. One of these mechanisms has been the implementation of “preventive war,” actually quite an old foreign policy instrument in the U.S. diplomatic tradition.
In that sense, and in the context of the imposition in international relations of hegemonic national security criteria —today beginning to be called “securitization”— the following elements have been involved: a) the notion of cooperative security; b) prevention as a long-term concept and policy instrument; c) the return to a predominantly hegemonic international climate instead of a balance of powers which dominated in the bipolar era —this is the origin of the question of whether hegemony is the same as world stability; d) the real —and legitimate?— room for manoeuver that the democratic system has for implementing preventive wars; e) the impact that these wars have on democratic governability, on the integrity of democratic institutions, on the interests and rights of civil society, which seems to be reacting in a new way to the doubtful consensus underlying this state of war; and, lastly, f) the meaning that all this has and will have (mainly because of the invasion of Iraq) with regard to the current organization of the United Nations and the future of multilateralism.
Editorial
Our Voice
José Luis Valdés-Ugalde
Politics
Mexico’s 2004 Local Elections
What to Expect
Gustavo Ernesto Emmerich
The PRD’s Institutional Crisis. Prospects for 2006
Esperanza Palma
The Changing Face of Latin American Democracies Is the “Democratic Boom” Over?
Rosario Green
Mexico U.S. Relations
A Reply to Samuel Huntington’s
“Hispanic Challenge”
Leonardo Curzio
José Luis Valdés-Ugalde
U.S.-Mexico Border Health
For a Consistent Policy
Rodolfo Hernández Guerrero
Economy
Mexico’s Foreign Trade in Trouble
China’s Impact
Elaine Levine
Problems of Mexican Fiscal Federalism
And the National Fiscal Convention
Fernando Butler Silva
Society
Notes on Unemployment in Mexico
Javier Aguilar García
United States Affairs
2004: Elections that Will Define
The United States
Jose Luis Valdés-Ugalde
María Fernanda Valencia
The Antinomies of the Dollar
The U.S. Fiscal Deficit and Current Account
Ignacio Perrotini Hernández
The North American Fossil Fuel Market
Part II. Integration
Miguel García Reyes
Canadian Issues
Going After Quebec’s Water
Delia Montero C.
Museums
The Alfredo Zalce
Contemporary Art Museum
Juan Manuel Morelos
Ecology
Paradise Lost. The Forests of Michoacán
Josefina María Cendejas
Literature
A Tribute to Juan García Ponce
Three Images of Juan García Ponce
Hernán Lara Zavala
The Seagull (Fragment)
Juan García Ponce
Fair at Dusk (Fragment)
Juan García Ponce
A Truly Posthumous Homage
Graciela Martínez-Zalce
Inmaculada or the Pleasures of Innocence (Fragment)
Juan García Ponce
Life’s Impossible Death
Bruce-Novoa
The Impossibility of Dying (Fragment)
Juan García Ponce
On Literary Heroism or Art as Ceremony
Adolfo Castañón
Chronicle of an Intervention (Fragment)
Juan García Ponce
The Unending Errantry García Ponce, Essayist
Huberto Batis
In Memoriam
Luis González. An Invitation to Micro-History
Francisco Miranda
Reviews
La economía mexicana bajo la crisis de Estados Unidos
Alfredo Álvarez Padilla
The Splendor of Mexico
Morelia. The Imprint of Time
Francisco Xavier Tavera Alfaro
Yuriria, Cuitzeo and Copándaro
Three Stone Arrows in the Heart of Michoacán
Jaime Abundis Canales
Martha Camacho Pacheco
Patzcuaro’s Lakeshore
Towns and Villages
Alberto de Lachica
Miguel Monje
Art and Culture
The Life of Morelos
A Paradigmatic Mural
América Gabrielle
Behind the Art
Three Michoacán Painters
Ariel Ruiz Magaña
Michoacán’s Fairs
A Lively Tradition
Zulema Carrillo
Arturo Ysi