Mexico’s PRI faces a bitter battle over leadership
A bitter battle for succession is threatening to split Mexico’s former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as its governing council meets on Wednesday to vote on a new leader.
The party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before the victory of Vicente Fox, the president, in 2000, still has more members of Congress and more state governors than any other, and the rupture could possibly affect its chances of regaining the presidency next year.
The next party president will have the power to set the rules for the PRI primary, which could affect Roberto Madrazo’s chances of holding off a strong challenge from Arturo Montiel, governor of Estado de Mexico, the country’s biggest state.
Mr Madrazo, the party’s president, is standing down to run for the party’s presidential nomination, which will be decided in a primary election later this year. He has called for his successor to be named on Wednesday at an extraordinary meeting of the party’s 282-strong political council, where he is thought to control a majority.
But Elba Esther Gordillo, the teachers’ union leader who was elected the party’s secretary general on the same ticket, said that party statutes clearly provided for the secretary general to take over when the president resigns.
More: news.ft.com
Leaders of Mexico's PRI feud as presidential election season nears
A year before the presidential election, this nation's oldest, most powerful party headed toward a destructive split, resulting from the bitter enmity between its top leaders -- probable presidential nominee Roberto Madrazo and teachers union leader Elba Esther Gordillo.
Madrazo was to have resigned Tuesday as the Institutional Revolutionary Party's chief to campaign full time in next year's Mexican presidential election, but he delayed his move after the party's leadership council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask him to stay on until early August.
More: sfgate.com
Mexico's former ruling party stumbles in struggle to find new leader
Mexico's largest party struggled on Wednesday to find a compromise choice for its top leadership post following a bitter falling-out between the two highest-ranking officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The confusion reflected internal disputes within the once-monolithic party, in which current party president Roberto Madrazo appears poised to roll over the competition for the 2006 presidential nomination.
As nearly 1,000 delegates chanted "Unity! Unity!" at the PRI's cavernous Mexico City headquarters, Madrazo clasped hands with Arturo Montiel, the only other major contender for the 2006 nomination, and
Mexico's governing party chooses presidential candidate
A surprisingly bitter primary election for Mexico's governing party on Sunday could set the major-party lineup for next July's historic presidential election, with former Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon most likely to make the ballot.
Calderon was the unexpected winner of the first two rounds of primary voting for President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, topping favored Santiago Creel, the former interior secretary, and Alberto Cardenas, former governor of Mexico's Jalisco state.
If Calderon can win a bit more than 50 percent of the vote on Sunday, he would avoid a possible Nov. 6 runoff. Fox is
Parties Battle For Mexicos Swing Vote Middle Class Torn Over Countrys Future
José Luis Arriaga is the kind of voter Mexicos presidential campaigns are spending millions to reach -- or at least scare. If he makes the wrong choice on election day, they warn, his hard-earned savings might disappear into thin air.
They also remind him of what frustrates him most: spiraling crime, unemployment, rampant corruption and the fact that so many of his fellow citizens are leaving for the United States. On occasion, they appeal to his sense of social equality.
The taco stand owner is an undecided voter in an election
Mexico's Madrazo Wins Court Battle Against Party Foe Gordillo
Mexican presidential hopeful Roberto Madrazo won a legal battle against a party foe as the nation's electoral court confirmed one of his allies as president of his Institutional Revolutionary Party, Mexico's biggest.
The electoral court yesterday dismissed a motion by Elba Esther Gordillo, the party's executive secretary, to oust Madrazo's ally from the party's presidency, according to a statement on the court's Web site. The decision is final.
Gordillo had argued before the court that by party statutes she should be made party president, succeeding Madrazo after he stepped down to
American community in Mexico faces uncertain future
Grady Snell and his neighbors were working on a dead utility pole as the truck drove down the sun-soaked dirt road.
A mid-summer thunderstorm hit the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental the night before knocking out power to parts of the Chamal Valley.
Instead of waiting hours or days for officials to send help, Snell and his neighbors made use of a ladder truck to try and restore power themselves.
Like his American parents who arrived in the area in 1903, Snell and his neighbors are self sufficient and tied to this land where he and
Mexico mine rescue faces new obstacles on 5th day
A struggling operation to save 65 Mexican miners trapped in a coal mine faced new obstacles on Thursday as underground air quality and digging conditions worsened.
Rescuers came across piles of rubble from collapsed roofs where two of the men were working when a huge gas explosion ripped through the Pasta de Conchos mine on Sunday.
Since the collapse there has been no contact with the miners, who only had six hours' worth of oxygen with them and no food.
Relatives were hanging on the hope that they may be still be alive thanks to
Runner-up in Mexico discounts election
Mexicos leftist presidential candidate said Thursday that he would never recognize the results of the election he said he lost by fraud, and Catholic bishops called for a week of prayer to heal the divisions widened by the bitter dispute.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador implied that the country could plunge into instability if courts dont order a vote-by-vote recount. His supporters demonstrated outside an airline in the latest in a series of blockades and protests.
Lopez Obrador lost the July 2 election to conservative ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon by less than 0.6 percent, according to official vote tallies.
FIFA U-17 World Championship Final Preview: Brazil x Mexico
The most effective attack will meet the most efficient defense in the final of the FIFA U-17 World Championship. Brazil, actual World Championship holders and three-times champions, will be looking to capitalise on their goalscoring talents to make the leap to ‘pentacampeões’. Mexico have already bettered their previous appearances by getting to the final, and rely on a solid team that defend maturely.
Both nations have clocked up the same results so far – three wins and a defeat – but Brazil have scored 16 times in five games, but this average
CERRO DE SAN PEDRO, Mexico (Reuters) - In this centuries-old desert ghost town, a bitter dispute pits a Canadian company eager to unearth mineral riches against local peasants worried about environmental damage.
Mining companies say the spat involving Metallica Resources Inc. (MR.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , a precious and base metal exploration company, is a test of how open Mexico is to foreign investors.
Metallica wants to dig for gold and silver at the once-vibrant but now decrepit Cerro de San Pedro.
But the 400-year-old mining town faces fierce opposition from some of its very few remaining residents and many
