that 43 students were murdered. what it was revealed was to what degree corruption and crime had penetrated government institutions, because those responsible for what happened, at least in the official version that we have up to now, with the municipal president and the police and to an unknown degree, the military. and then you got the white house scandal of which i'm sure all of you have aware of. a scandal that had it occurred in the united states, had it been revealed that michelle obama owned a $7 million house but that the title was in the name of a contractor who had won multimillion dollar bids by the obama administration and they would have been impeached or

there would have been endless congressional investigation into that what is clearly a conflict of interest. and if you would like further details on this case, i know well because it cost someone a job on the radio, and i left with her as her collaborator, but i know how this story emerged. the investigation process, what the reaction was and how it's reacting now. in mexico is problem is that, and i always say this. conflict with interest isn't even a conflict. it's a way of live. it's the way things traditionally have been done. in terms of government relations with contractors and politicians and with another key player in the mexican political system which is telavisa who owned the first house next to the second house that was built and she

says she bought with a $10 million severance bonus because she was just an incredible actress, but the issue of conflict, and i say this in a satirical fashion, please. and this was followed by the revelation of the house owned by the finance minister that was purchased from the same contractor with the nonbanking loan at an interest rate of 5% when the going interest rate, and i know this because i was paying the mortgage on my own house, was 13%, and this is the finance minister, the person who is in charge of collecting taxes. the person who is in charge of making sure that the budget is well spent. so imagine the perception of ordinary mexicans to find out that their finance minister was involved in the same sort of very shady or at least highly

questionable relationships with the contractor. and then you get the executions of the military, growth estimates, they're lowered on a monthly basis by the bank of mexico and every other financial institution in the country, and then two weeks ago the presentation of a study that has had a great deal of impact in mexico on inequality in mexico with some startling numbers. put this all together, and combine it with the fact that a friend and colleague who had fled vera cruz, a photo journ journalist fled because of threats and it's become most

dangerous place to be a journalist. 15 journalists have been killed there in the past three years. he fled to mexico city speaking protection for the mechanism for protection of journalists. it's a sham. it provides you with allegedly a panic button but it takes them six months to determine if your case is urgent or not. in those six months, reuben was killed, and i spent friday afternoon with one of his friends, a political cartoonist who we are all trying to get out of the country. that's how things are. so what has the response from lo s penos been? they feel misunderstood and that the criticism is from those who don't want reform. those who criticize them,

they're against reform, that they don't want competition. that the opposition is from the interests that are being affected by the reforms, and in none of these cases that i've mentioned, the white house, the cancellation of the bid for the high-speed train, the escape of el chapo, there has not been a single resignation of a single member of the pena nieto administration or of the cabinet. in my mind and in the mind of many mexicans, it's at the very least what should occur. not only a resignation. what does that occur? a recognition that mistakes were made. a recognition that the course has to be changed, that the buck stops here, that heads have to roll because if heads don't roll, then it means that what

credibility does the term maximum security prison in mexico have when someone can build a tunnel and please reflect for a moment on how is it possible for a tunnel to be built over the course of a year in what is allegedly a higher supervised and controlled area, in a prison where they were digging from below and the hole was actually dug from above. so, yes, there was clearly complicity from the people at the prison, but one wonders as mexicans do, whether it was just that. whether it was just corruption involving the prison system. or whether it's much more deeply ingrained and affects higher levels of government in mexico. all the way to the top, or at

the very least the federal police or the military. what did pena nieto say about the escape? that he was deeply upset, that it was a regrettable indent, that it was an undignified incident and that every day he asked the minister, are you sure el chapo will never escape. so what did the escape do? well, it tarnished the government's reputation even more. it put the issue of government competence at the center of the public debate. it revealed deep institutional weaknesses. not only of the prison system but of just security in general, and competence -- i mean, what does it say when a government cannot keep the most sought

after criminal in the world today in prison? so -- and this is in the context of pena nieto's official state visit to france which he didn't cancel where he took along 441 guests and shortly after his wife appeared on the front cover of all of the -- like people magazine or "vanity fair," not even that level. revealing in the minds of many mexicans a profound insensitivity in the same week of el chapo's escape, the imagery of the pena nieto administration is of him inaugurating things in france. what are the hypotheses, and i'm not an expert in security

issues. i have friends who work on this, though. what do they say? well, the high boypotheses are l chapo was going to be extradited because you can't continue to run your business from a u.s. prison like you can from a mexican prison. the other idea was the mexican government didn't want to extradite him because he had too much information about how many people he'd been paying off in the government structure for the last 15 years. another idea is that he was set free deliberately so that he could actually regain, reestablish the primacy of the cartel and end the violence because the violence does not come from stable cartels. the violence comes when the heads of cartels are either

heired hei arrested or killed and infighting begins. the one thing i can can say, having no information to validate any of these hypothe s hypotheses, and i don't think anyone in mexico does in terms of independent analysts, the one thing i can say is that he's not going to be caught any time soon, if ever. the incident has turned the pena nieto administration into the butt of a thousand jokes. the first reaction was hilarity, not indignation because for mexicans now laughter is better than the alternatives. i'll give you a sense of the flavor of the reaction or the jokes. that el chapo's company, the one that built the tunnel is the one

that should be building mexican infrastructure. ports and tunnels and the metro that has been stalled for the last year due to problems in the construction process. so -- yeah. homicide numbers are down. that's true in terms of general insecurity. but you -- what mexico is witnessing is the eruption of instances of violence that have become uncontrollable, so perhaps people from the embassy would tell you yes, the homicide numbers are down. we should celebrate that, but then you get something that happened two months ago where the city was paralyzed for a day due to infighting between the government and the cartels. or you get other instances like that. and the recent report i was alluding to, what does it show? what does the report say?

that the mexican military has an order now to this morning as i was preparing my notes, i did not know how to translate this word. how would you say it? take on. civilians during the night and this is -- and this report includes official documents. these are the orders. in the minds of many, and at least in the minds of the mexican military, means to kill. it doesn't mean to apprehend and submit to the justice system for trial. it means if you believe someone is a criminal, you kill him. that's the problem of having the military substituting for what is a dysfunctional police force. they are not trained or at least not trained well to deal with civilians in context of

confrontation. the order is kill i don't recollect not apprehend and take to trial. for now the attention has been centered on el chapo, on who allowed him to escape, and i will make a bet with you. and if i lose, i will come back to the dialogue and i will take you all out for tacos. my bet is that the only people who will be found responsible for his escape will be low-level prison guards and prison administrators, and no one else. but the escape, and everything surrounding it reveals a fundamental problem that this government and the other government didn't know how to deal with which is a nondeclared war on drugs because we don't call it that way anymore. we don't refer to it in that

fashion anymore as a war, but it continues to be a war. a de facto suspension by the military in confrontations with civilians. and adversary drug cartels in my mind and in expert's minds, cannot be beaten. and this accompanied by the rising tide of criminality and violence that the war has produced. so i go to my second i, which is impunity. a month ago, a respected academic published a report called anatomy of corruption in mexico where she examined that it is present in almost all transactions. there are 4 million acts of corruption in mexico committed on a yearly basis. corruption is ever-present in everyday life from the bribe you

have to pay the person who collects the trash who works for the city government at the gasoline pumps where you're -- you pay more than what you get for. corruption present in the escape of el chapo and public goods whether it be spectrum or a high-speed train. corruption present in tax breaks for mexican companies. with increasingly negative consequences. i'm sure there are people here who would argue, that can't be the issue that's holding mexico back. look at china. there are countries that are extremely corruption and they're growing. the problem is it's an emerging market that is competing for foreign investment with other emerging markets that don't have this problem. the problem of corruption that is also accompanied by the

absence, the absence of the ruefurule of law, or the intermittent application of the rule of law. negative consequences in terms of slowing economic growth, foreign investment. in 2014 mexico obtained a score of 35 points out of 100 possible from transparency international. 90% of mexicans believe corruption to be a problem and 91% believe that all political parties are corruption. yet ordinary mexicans are also complicit. a predatory state generates a population that is predatory. a state that dolls out justice in a discretionary manner leads citizens to take things into their own hands. and that's why i think the

resolution of the casablanca will be a thermometer into whether this administration plans to take the corruption seriously or not. they have said there will be a report released in the next two weeks about whether or not there was a conflict of interest in that case or not. my third i inequality. i'm told that i have very little time, but this is -- add to this mix, as i said, the weakening peso, the lowering growth predictions, and then in the last two weeks, the report that poverty in mexico had grown by two million people in the last year, and the report with numbers that are just mind blowing. 1% of the most wealthy in mexico

concentrate 20% of the income. the wealth of mexico's multimillionaires grew by 32% between 2007 and 2012. the wealth of the 16 mexican multimillionaires on the top of the list represented 2 % of gdp five years ago. it now represents 9% of gdp. the four men in the first four places of their list, of that list, have made their wealth in sectors that involve public concessioned goods such as spectrum and telecommunications and transportation. these are creatures of the state. rent seekers that have grown in power and influence due to poor regulation or excesses in fiscal privileges, leading to the

perpetuation, and i've argued this before, of mexico's suboptimal capitalism accompanied by bad social policy. the institutionization of a permanent underclass of 50 million people, 23 million of which who do not have enough money to eat. understand why, then, there is a polarized violent society where six vosas, graves, six are discovered every day. one had become the most violent municipality in the government and the government knew this. they knew this three years ago and no one acted. and this accompanied by a low-grade democracy captured by interest that put interest at their disposal. they cannot detonate economic

growth due to the inability to create level playing field capitalism, despite the 11 structural reforms and growth that simply cannot occur in the context of the state that lacks the credibility, the institutional mechanisms to provide kwoit, transparency, regulation, accountability about the white house or any other issue. and how is this playing out politically and with this i will end. the pri continues to win under the circumstances i described. but what you see is a growing rejection of political parties and a crisis of representation. and that explains to you why an independent candidate who did not come out of the fold of the parties won in mexico's most important economically speaking state where the rate of participation in a midterm election which is usually 40% grew to 78% because people believed that an independent

candidate outside of the party system was the way to go because there's no longer any trust in the party's system as it works today. there is a growing disallusionment with democracy in mexico. and the sense that independent candidates could save us. there are only 127 independent candidates out of 16,000 that ran for election in this last election. and what does this mean for politics and the presidential race in 2018? two days ago, a poll came out with the following numbers. at the head of the pack, numbers that range from between 25 to 29% of the vote. second place, mareita. the wife of the former president

taking the hillary clinton route, trying to be a candidate for the national action party with 14% of preferences. and 14% for any pri candidate. what does this show you? they don't have a viable presidential candidate, and the winner of this crisis is the man who has built a political career as the leader of the opposition to the establishment. the anti-institutional leader who will make government corruption the centerpiece of his campaign, and i leave you with this food for thought. the crisis is empowering a left that is provincial and tribable

anti-global in markets and a political force described by one as conservative populism that is leading to what i agree with, his view -- we are not witnessing the emergence of a modern functional left with concrete policy proposes, a left whose incarnation we've seen in places like chili but not in mexico. what is my conclusion? an uncertain future, a country of intense discussions over the functionality of our governance system and our democracy, bitter confrontations over public policy issues, the most recent being education.

increasing violence. a dysfunctional democracy that is lacking in accountability, transparency and representativeness and that's why you see someone like elle blanco winning. corruption intransigence, intolerance that are deeply damaging our collective ship. i, for one, continue to remain on the ship and will continue to paddle but the impression that one gets from the government and from the parties at this point is a sense of the rearrangement of the deck chairs on the titanic and not a sense of clarity as to how we deal with this crisis and resolve these problems and pull mexico out of the hole that the attorney general was peering into, and that, as i said, has become an embl

emblemmatic feel for how mexicans feel for their country today. thank you. >> thank you very much, denise. now for a pessimistic view. just kidding. >> thank you, michael, and thank you for inviting me to comment on these remarks. dr. dresser is a very eloquent and harsh critic of mexico and the business and political leaders and has been ever since i first met her nearly 20 years ago, and i think such criticism is important even if i disagree with a good part of it. what it hopefully will do is arouse the mexican people to actually take the government and their country in their own hands. that's something that has not been a part of their history up to this point. i have a different point of view about mexico, where it is now and where i think it's going to

go. i have one of the advantages of having the long life. i've had a long history with mexico. going back 50 years when i was a young assistant to president johnson at the white house, and he asked me to go to mexico to set up his first trip there in 1966, and it truly was a third-world country. it was amazing. you talk about corruption today. well, it was really magnified in those days, and then 23 or 24 years ago, i became ambassador to the united states at roughly the same time mexico decided to enter the world having joined just a couple of years ago before that the world trade organization in the final throws of negotiating the north american free trade agreement which really opened up mexico to the world.

it was a country at that time with inferior industry, inferior businesses, and inferior form of government and democracy and has been transformed in many ways in the last 25 years. it clearly isn't at the optimum yet, but it is so different than what i discovered 50 years ago and even 25 years ago, that it is a different country. now, i'm not here to defend any individual or office holder in mexico or any institution that dr. dresser outlined with the various grievances, for am i here to defend in the most advanced democracy of the world, the united states, the situation we have in the united states where one percent of our population controls an enormous disproportion gn

disproportion at amount of wealth in the united states. i'm not here to defend the gun violence that happens all across the united states in california and louisiana and tennessee and new york and various states across this country. and we're not able, as a government, to get ahold on the control of the use of guns in our society. for am i here to defend political parties where justice in mexico, american people are fed up with the current state of our political parties, and show it in the polls. that leads to another one i'm not here to defend, the antics of donald trump who the american people have turned to because of their disenchantment with the traditional political parties in the united states. all i'm saying is, both of our countries are going through similar throws of democracy, and i think both of our countries are going to come out of it just fine. i was actually -- when el chapo

was released, or when we got out -- that was a mistake. when he got out, i was hoping we would get him here to washington and help us on our metro system which needs a lot of help from someone with his talents. i will say all the hypotheses that dr. dresser outlined are familiar because those are the same ones that experienced in mexico 20-some years ago when the then biggest drug lord seemed to be acting with impunity and one attempt to get him was compromised within the pgr, and, there are, he got out. but when he was caught not too long after that, he was on a plane headed to houston. his mother must have been very athletic because he had both a texas and a mexican birth

certificate, and the mexican government decided to recognize the texas birth certificate and to expel him, and to this day, he is in that maximum security prison in colorado. but those same issues were raised 20-some years ago and all i'm saying is you can get past those things, and i think the kind of public outcry helps to get you there. >> i thi i think also we have to recognize where mexico was 25 years ago and where it is today. 25 years ago it was one of the most closed economies in the world. it was one of the most closed noncompetitive political systems in the entire world, and i think what you have today is one of the most competitive economic systems in the world in terms of trade, a country that has more free trade agreements with other countries than any other

country. where you have a political system that clearly has its flaws still. but is competitive. and where the government can't intervene and basically pick the winners as i was speaking with someone who was an ambassador to a joint audiences and i was commenting in the 1994 elections we had a great deal to do with that, of having international observers and a lot of support from the u.s. government on their then-electoral system, and while the campaigns up until the election were still fraught with the problems of the past where the government intervened with different kinds of resources, the fact is on the election day and on the conduct of the election, all of the international observers and the u.s. embassy said these were free and fair elections conducted on election day, and

we also didn't have a media that was as competitive as it is today. if you'll recall, the mexican government either directly or indirectly controlled what went in the mexican press, and that is really not their ability to do that today. and one of the reasons we see things that are going on in gaerer row, for example, and other states of similar problems, is the fact that they're being reported, and similar things went on when i was ambassador but they were never reported. they were covered up, so to speak. so i think while things are still not where we would want them, not where the mexicans would want them, the fact is that they're substantially ahead of where they were just 25 years ago. so where they have their greatest deficiency, and dr. dresser alluded to that in all

of her comments, and that is while a first-world country needs an open, competitive political system, an open, competitive economic system, it needs a rule of law that their own people can have confidence in. and that's what mexico needs and must work on. they've made some strides forward with the election -- with the judicial reforms of 2008 which are supposed to be implemented fully next year. many of the states are way behind but we're hoping for progress on that. that's where mexico really needs help, because a rule of law with sound institutions that can enforce a rule of law is what cuts into corruption, cuts into the kinds of things dr. dresser talked about, and that's, i think the major challenge for mexico today, and if you have a

rule of law that people have confidence in, i think you will not have the same kinds of insecurity that exist in several of the states in mexico, and you will not have the kinds of corruption that exist in many states in many governments in mexico. i think also the open economic system and the more foreign investment that comes into mexico also helps to move in the direction we're talking about in the rule of law, because international investors, businesses, don't want to do business. for example, from the united states. where they're going to be subject to foreign corrupt prak tigss act violations if they participant in a system that is not fair and open and transparent and honest. so the influence of foreign investors, i think is going to significantly help mexico. where do i see mexico going?

they've made -- and this government, has made a great start with the reforms that occurred three years ago. particularly in the energy, particularly in education, particularly in labor reforms. the latter two of which still have to be implemented, two of the three at least have to be implemented well, and i think that's going to be a test that we need to look at mexico. how serious are they, this government in actually implementing the education reforms? education in mexico is whoafully behind. there are competitors in asia and elsewhere. it is a system that has just not performed up to the standards of international education. that's a big test. on energy, i guess i'm not so concerned about the problems of the first round of auctions, because here you have a situation where they have no

experience, basically, in how do you run an auction, how do you have a free market system in energy. this generation has never seen that. and so they're going to make mista mistakes along the way. the question is are they learning from the mistakes and will the next round be more fair and open, and if it is, you're going to see a lot more foreign investment as well as mexican investment. if it's not, it's a failure. i think it will be a success. i guess there's many more notes here i made of her comments. the fact that depacto broke apart. that's inevitable. your not going to get three major political parties agreeing on everything as you go forward so the fact that you could get that done in the first year was remarkable, and it's knot

remarkable or unusual that it would break apart, because each of those political parties want to have their own identity so they can go to the polls in the next election and try to have success. so i don't think that that's anything that's -- that we should be concerned about. i do believe there's another reform that holds promise of bringing, having a more representative government in mexico. and that's the reelection in the congress which is which has never been possible before. when you get a situation where you have to run for reelection, you have to present yourself to the constituents who elected you one time, you want to show them what have you done for them? what have you done for them lately and during your time in office, and i think you're going to see a much more representative group of people elected to office as a result of

that. we won't know because it just goes into effect, i guess, 2018, something like that, so i think that's something to keep our eye on. again, it's a positive move in reform in mexico. so i think it's very good to criticize what's going on, and on a constant basis, as dr. dresser has. i think that's good for a democracy. i think we also have to take a realistic view as to where the country was, where this has now, and where it's going, and i'm positive on that. >> thank you. >> why don't we try to -- why don't we take some questions and then maybe you can kind of, you know, and then respond as the questions. we have about a half hour, and a lot of people there are a lot of issues. if i can ask you to identify yourselves, wait for the microphone. be brief. if you have a comment, don't

disguise it as a question. just make the comment. let's start with jose. >> i'm a reporter from mexico. just a question on how you see the u.s. role-playing in all of this. it seems the obama administration is not saying that much about mexico these days. they seem rez ig nated in some ways. how are you feeling of where the u.s. could help or not on this. >> thank you. david, you want to -- >> thank you. david with princeton in latin america. one of the reasons i'm here. anyway. >> princeton, reforma. >> exactly. >> can't escape it. >> given what happened to

carmen, if you felt under threat of losing your job in any particular area that you're now working? >> thank you. we with have one right here and then we'll go to the back, and then we'll give it back to denise. >> hi. i am from mexico. my question is regarding civil society. i don't know what's the role of civil society in all this. it's been growing in mexico, and it's been very strong since pena nieto, but i don't know. right now, it has fallen a little bit, and i don't know. >> great. thank you. good questions. >> denise? >> i'll take the first three questions, and i have a rejoiner to ambassador jones. i think your use of the world resigned is absolutely

appropriate. i think the u.s. has given up on mexico. and what do i mean by given up? the obama administration has too much on its plate in terms of isis, in terms of dmomestic violence, i don't have to delve on the list. you're aware of it. and from what i sense, and from speaking to american officials in mexico, is that ever since the casablanca scandal erupted and pena nieto came here, the obama administration made a deliberate decision to not involve itself. it could have take an stand. it could have alluded to conflict of interest issues. it could have alluded to corruption. it has decided not to do so. i believe that is a deliberate

stance on the part of the obama administration. and this sense of disconnection, i think, has been and will be heightened by the escape of el chapo. because what was the first news to come out in the new york times? that government officials had immediately -- u.s. government officials immediately contacted the u.s. government offering assistance to help find him. drones and all sorts of intelligence and so on, and that the mexican government was not responding. so tie that to the hypotheses about el chapo's escape, and you'll understand the frustration of the u.s. government regarding mexico's handling of el chapo and others. and there was a fascinating piece about how el chapo was actually captured with u.s.

assistance but that assistance was never made public. so if, indeed, that was the case, and that was reported by someone from washington, if the u.s. helped capture him but it was presented by a triumph of the pena nieto administration, how does the u.s. feel now that he's escaped two weeks after the extradition request was put in. second question, do i feel pressured about losing my job? well, one of the things i always tell my students and anyone who is involved in the public debate in mexico is you cannot ever have just one job. that makes you extremely vulnerable. i have five jobs. i'm a professor and columnist, i have conferences and i write books. if i'm fired from one, i have

the others. in what ways have i felt pressured, and this has been very, very ugly. i was one of the advocates of the annulment of the vote in the midterm election. this is a position i had in 2009, and it was influential in 2009 because it led to an agenda of political reform that one adopted because it was so significant and the agenda for reform was reelection, and it was many things that became part of the political reform that they pushed through. why did it support it on this occasion? because i don't see incentives for the party system to change. i was part of the movement that pushed something called tres detres.

we called on every candidate to disclose his -- how do you call it in english -- your assets. that was one. the other was your tax return and the other was potential conflict of interest issues, because these three things are not required of candidates by law in mexico, in our wonderful democracy. we pushed and pushed and pushed. only 397 candidates out of more than 16,000 complied with the request. the other role that i was involved with as an activist was to get significants for the national electorate to take away the green party. we managed to get together 175,000 significants which is the languagest numbrgest number change.org has gotten in mexico.

nothing has changed. not eve an debate. but because i pushed it, what happened? the parties hated me and those who were pushing for it, because it exposes the party system. it says, don't vote. don't legitimize, instead of an staining, go and annul your vote. it shows content. and here's the agenda for what they want. after that, the threats came. death threats, a deliberate campaign on the part of the mexican left, those -- that was the faction that felt the most vulnerable to the annulment of the vote. they're trying to present themselves as the anti- -- as the real opposition, and if we were saying annul your vote because there isn't a real opposition and there isn't a party that represents you, and

so the most paradoxical thing of my entire career has been to feel the worst threats in my professional career and the worst campaign of efforts to discredit me because i charge for conferences. i mean, just go look on twitter. you'll see. and i am an american spy because there was a wikileaks that described a breakfast that i had with someone at the u.s. bz. on and on. the worst threats and worst campaign to try and get me removed from my multiple jobs have come from the left. the role of civil society, that is my source of optimism. and here is my rejoinder to ambassador jones' comments.

he said dresser's harsh criticisms. i would say they're realistic, and i would say who is being realistic here? because mexico is a country of many masks, and in 1966, i was three years old, but i have witnessed the changes of mexico, and i could list them, and they are significant. but the problem for me is that when i hear these arguments of oh, well, but, you know, at least they -- they're competitive in manufacturing, and they have competitive -- at least now they have competitive elections, there's more media and they're revealing corruption even if they're getting killed for it, the it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull for me, because it's the argument of

brdlomanos. at the very least we're better off than one. and that's what they said three days ago in mexico. headline, there are countries that are better off than mexico. well, i'm sorry. [ speaking in spanish ] . it's not the level of the ground. i'm not going to congratulate myself and the country, because what did people used to say yrve welwell [ speaking in spanish ] . we have reformed and there have been many reforms. i lived as an adult through reforms that created many of the problems that we are dealing with now. reforms that were, at the time, were applauded, and were very

poorly instrumented and contributed to cementing the system of crony capitalism that makes the economy uncompetitive because yes, there is competitiveness in manufacturing. look at every other sector. this is not my impression. these are the numbers that the world economic forum publishes on mexican competitiveness and we are falling behind time and again. so why can't we reform properly? why do we never achieve our full potential? why is it that with a privileged, privileged gree graphical locations, millions of talented hard working people who end up in this country, we move sideways, time and again, because there isn't enough honesty in our diagnosis of the situation of the country, and when there's not enough honesty in the diagnosis, the solutions are not the appropriate ones and they're not as deep as they

should be, and they do not take on the vested interests as they should. >> so why do i place my hopes elsewhere? at this point i do not believe that trying to influence the mexican political class to, on its own, adopt appropriate public policy reforms to benefit mexican citizens. that is not going to happen. it's not going to happen unless there's pressure from below, and in that agree with ambassador jones. it's time for mexicans to take their country and make responsibility for their country. it's very difficult for them to do so as a civil society because they lack the channels. i can get 175,000 significants on twitter in a week. i can take this to every single congressman, and i will ignore the significants because there's no reelection, because there's no incentive to be connected to

your constituent, because, yes, there's competition, but there's no accountability or representation. so yes, it's a democracy with competition, and it works very well for the parties because we adopted a system of public financing. their survival doesn't depend on the vote. it depends on a mathematical formula related to how many people turn age 18 every year in the electoral roll call. i call it a system of extraction without representation. and civil society is learning how to organize, but it gets tired. it gets tired because it mobilizes. it organizes. it petitions. it lobbies, and change is very difficult to enact in a system that has been established to not represent people. [ speaking spanish ] . ambassador jones says,

reelection. i was among many who pushed for reelection. and we got the reform, and what happened? look at the [ speaking in spanish ] . the parties set audiotape system of controlled reelection whereby they controlled the lists of who can be reelected. it's not reelection as it's viewed in the united states or as it works in other countries. it's another reform that was applauded and then badly instrumented. so it will not have the effect that we all wanted it to have, and this is what happens in mexico time and again. so, yes, i am -- i celebrate the fact that we have education reform. i celebrate the fact that at&t is going to come to mexico. there will be advances for consumers as a result of telecoms reform. i can see those little lights. but those little lights are not enough, and i don't think it's fair to compare income

concentration in mexico with income concentration in the united states, because here you have that level of income concentration, but you do not have half of your population living in poverty. and you have a substantial middle class that actually has political representation, and when citizens in this country organize a petition with 175,000 significants, they get listened to. or otherwise the bum gets tossed out and the problem in mexico is that we, with this electoral system and this party system, we cannot toss the bums out. >> thank you. we're going to take a few more questions, and then i'm going to give you an opportunity to have a rejoinder to the rejoinder, and then we'll give the final word to denise. we want to end close to 11. let's go first to peter.

>> primarily to denise, but i'd love to here jim jones an this as well. you said you had some optimism about, and sort of there may be, that means to me some realistic path out of this moras you described. can you trace out a few of the ste steps in what you might call the best scenario you can imagine, even if it's only 1% or 5%? what's a scenario that might in ten or 15 years lead mexico to sort of a better place, and tell me what country you might want mexico to have as its objective. is it brazil? is it chilly? is it china? what's the objective. >> okay. thanks. let's go to the back.

>> thank you. i am with epi. you recently wrote that mexican-used papers were shedding their investigative departments. what's the government's roll in this. >> thanks. yes, sir. >> i start with two disclaimers. i have only one job, so i have a stake on my personal capacity and my institutions. the second one is after listening to your second comments, my comment changed a little bit. but i believe that we mention cabs have the obligation to start a country our kids dream about. but sometimes i think we look at a traditional culture. we look at everything from the center, the president, mexico city, and i wonder if how do we empower the communities? how do we empower the local societys? imagine what would happen in the

municipalities instead of having a municipal president being formed by the party, which, by the way, those presidents report to the party and the society, if they are formed by the pharmacies, by the store owner or the professor who really care about the community?