Pena Nieto, a 45-year-old former state governor, has been carefully groomed for this position. He is the very model of the modern telegenic candidate, handsome and glamorous. After his first wife (who bore him three children) died of an epileptic seizure in 2007, he began dating the superstar telenovela actress Angelica Rivera of the Televisa network. They had a fairy-tale "wedding of the century" in 2010, and Mexicans, like people everywhere, love a fairy-tale. Cynics (and there are many here, it is a national pastime just as much as star-gazing is) pointed out that the Televisa network is one of Pena Nieto's biggest supporters politically and that the whole arrangement is, shall we say, convenient. The leftist, anti-Pena Nieto newsmagazine Proceso has the journalistic equivalent of paroxysms on the subject.
Last December Pena Nieto, who had "written" a book promoting his candidacy, as politicians will, made an appearance at the Guadalajara book fair, and was asked during a press conference which books had influenced his life. Pena Nieto, who works best scripted (hence the frequent accusations against him of being an "empty suit"), visibly struggled with the question, and when he finally coughed up a title, misidentified the author. Well, this created a scandal. Everyone weighed in. A potential president who doesn't read? Shocking. Many accused Pena Nieto of being unworthy of office on this basis. Mexico's greatest living novelist, Carlos Fuentes (since deceased), said that Pena Nieto "does not have the right to become the President of Mexico due to his ignorance" (Fuentes's vehemence was perhaps not surprising, since he was the actual author of the book Pena Nieto misattributed to Enrique Krauze). Pena Nieto weathered the affair, but it was delicioso.
More recently came the revelation that, during his first marriage, Pena Nieto had fathered two sons out of wedlock with two different women. One had died in infancy; he supported the other financially, although he had little contact with the boy. Now, this was certainly newsworthy, but as far as scandal, no go; nothing compared to the book crisis. The general reaction seems to have been, so we have a male presidential candidate who is virile and keeps mistresses. What else is new? It's far less disqualifying than not being a reader; it's not disqualifying at all. Imagine the same situation in the United States, where the book business would barely create a ripple, but the paternity stories would destroy the candidacy.
If people want to ask me what I have learned after a year in Mexico, it has not related to drug cartels, but is instead this: Mexico (like, I presume, all the rest of the Latin American nations) is essentially a European country. The values, the emphases, are European; they have nothing to do with the United States.The intellectual class is tiny, a mere sliver of the population, but it is taken with the utmost seriousness (Fuentes's death was an occasion for national mourning). This may cast a cloud over Pena Nieto's presidency right from the start, because the intellectual class has a really hard time taking him seriously, and all his mis-steps are going to provoke a "We told you so - the guy is a nothing" reaction from many highly respected parties. It should be quite interesting.
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