“MEXICAN presidents used to go to Congress on September 1st waving at the people in the streets like Stalin passing through Red Square. Soon they’ll be addressing the nation from a bunker.” So Lorenzo Meyer, a leftist Mexican historian, satirised Enrique Peña Nieto’s first state-of-the-nation address on September 2nd. The president delivered it not to a full house of Congress, as used to be common, nor in the National Palace. Instead—a day later than originally scheduled—he addressed a select audience under a canopy outside his home. From there his televised message was broadcast nationwide.It must have been galling. In a country that once invested so much power in its leaders it was dubbed “the perfect dictatorship”, September is the month of most presidential pomp. Two weeks after his speech to the nation, Mr Peña is due to deliver the annual “grito”, or cry of independence, from the balcony of the National Palace. But the balcony is boarded up for security, and anyone trying to get there has to trip over the tents and tarpaulins of thousands of striking teachers who are camped in the Zócalo, as the central plaza is called,...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21584972-enrique-pe-nieto-sticks-defiantly-his-reform-plans-he-bumpy-ride-suits-v?fsrc=rss%7Came
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