The Economist 29Feb2020

The EconomistFebruary 29th 2020 The Americas 35

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Bello Political theatre

M

exicans havebeen outraged this

month by two brutal murders: one

of a woman whose body was mutilated

by her partner, the other of a seven-year-

old girl who was kidnapped and seem-

ingly tortured. Needless to say, neither of

these cases was the fault of Mexico’s

president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador

(known as amlo). But he is the man in

charge. When questioned at his early-

morning press conferences about the

wave of violence against women in his

country, his first response was to blame a

“progressive degradation [in Mexican

society] which had to do with the neolib-

eral model” that he accuses his predeces-

sors of adopting. He then claimed that

feminist groups, who blame the violence

on patriarchy and lawlessness, had been

infiltrated by conservatives, and tried to

change the subject.

This episode conforms to the pattern

of amlo’s 15 months in the presidency. If

the motto of Porfirio Díaz, Mexico’s

dictator from 1877 to 1911, was “little

politics, much administration”, amlo’s

guiding formula seems to be almost the

opposite. He inherited three big pro-

blems: rampant crime, including vio-

lence against women; slow economic

growth; and corruption. On the first two

issues, Mexico is at best treading water.

A 12-year war with drug gangs drove

the murder rate up and helped spread

insecurity across the country. amlo

promised to stop this and tackle the

causes of crime, offering “hugs, not

bullets”. His government has given

scholarships to some 800,000 young

dropouts, but there is little sign that this

will help them get jobs. More significant

is a new paramilitary National Guard,

70,000-strong and due to rise to 150,000

troops by 2021. When the new force was

first conceived of a decade ago, the idea

was that it would work to take back control

of violent rural areas from the drug gangs.

amlois spreading it thinly across the

country (and using it to stop migrants

crossing the southern border, at Donald

Trump’s behest). It is replacing the federal

police, whom he distrusts.

Although the number of murders rose

last year to 34,582, a record since statistics

began in 1990, the peak came in the third

quarter of 2018.amloappears to have

given instructions to the security forces to

minimise the use of lethal force, according

to Eduardo Guerrero, a security consul-

tant, writing in Nexos, a magazine. The

problem is that this may reduce violence,

but not crime. “Between half and two-

thirds of the country is not under the

effective control of the state,” says a for-

eign security specialist. Two incidents last

year illustrated that. In October troops in

the city of Culiacán were ordered to release

the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a

notorious drug trafficker, after his arrest

triggered a battle. In November three

Mormon women and six children with

dual Mexican and American citizenship

were murdered when gunmen shot at

their vehicles near the northern border.

The economy is no brighter. It shrank

slightly last year, the worst performance

since 2009. Many economists blame

amlo’s policies. One of his first acts was

to cancel a $13bn half-built airport in

Mexico City. He has stalled private in-

vestment in energy, on nationalist

grounds. The government will pay for

amlo’s pet $7.4bn railway in the south-

east, after it failed to interest investors.

amloargues, correctly, that incomes

of poorer Mexicans rose sharply last year,

through handouts and an increase in the

minimum wage. But there is little reason

to believe that investment or growth will

revive. The president promised not to

increase taxes in his first three years. But

this month he invited business leaders to

a frugal dinner and asked them to buy

tickets for a “lottery” whose proceeds

would be used for medical equipment.

This shakedown raised $80m and dis-

tracted attention from femicides, but

will do nothing for business confidence.

This poor policy performance is bad

for Mexico, but not necessarily for the

president. Polls put his approval rating at

between 55% and 72%. Many poorer

Mexicans see him as honest and on their

side. His potential Achilles heel is crime

and insecurity. His remedy is likely to be

more political theatre, at which he is a

master. The undoubted corruption of the

previous government of Enrique Peña

Nieto may give him plenty of material.

This month the former head of Pemex,

the state oil company, was arrested in

Spain. The Wall Street Journal then re-

ported that prosecutors are investigating

Mr Peña. (Both men deny wrongdoing.)

amloclaimed no knowledge of that. But

it is hard to imagine that the showman

will miss an opportunity like this.

Mexico’s president shows little ability to get to grips with governing

“Giro na Chuva” (roughly, Reverse the Rain)

is a “mission worthy of science fiction”.

Whether it’s science or fiction is up for

debate. The use of cloud-seeding to in-

crease rainfall dates back to the 1940s. But

the United States government stopped

funding it in the 1980s due to a lack of “sci-

entific proof of the efficacy of intentional

weather modification”, according to the

National Research Council. A new paper

based on experiments in Idaho found that

seeding clouds with silver iodide increased

snowfall on three occasions, but the au-

thors say that more research is needed to

figure out if it can reliably promote precip-

itation. Paulo Artaxo, a Brazilian physicist,

says flatly that cloud-seeding is “useless”.

Still, governments and firms in many

countries use the technology. The city of

Beijing tried cloud-seeding to divert rain

away from the Olympic games in 2008. São

Paulo’s water company has signed million-

dollar contracts with ModClima to induce

rain over reservoirs, most recently during a

drought in 2014-15. Although cloud-seed-

ing normally uses a chemical such as silver

iodide to provide a surface around which

water or ice droplets form, ModClima says

it has invented an “experimental” method

that uses water alone. Droplets sprayed

into clouds expand as they are lifted by air

currents and collide with others, forming

raindrops, the firm claims.

Carnival-goers cheered when the first

two days were cloudy but dry. “Not all he-

roes wear capes,” one wrote on her retweet

of Skol’s video. But at around 5pm on Feb-

ruary 24th, the sky darkened and rain pelt-

ed down. Revellers at one block party left

the Skol stands and flocked to a vendor sell-

ing plastic rain capes. “Only God can con-

trol the weather,” said the poncho man. 7