The real hand that rocks Mexico's cradle
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To most of the world Felipe Calderon is the man in charge, the citizen elected President chosen to move Mexico forward; sadly they are mistaken. President Calderon is a man of incredible conviction. Through hard work, reforms, and his huevos of high caliber he has proven himself to be, perhaps, the first President in decades to have a real concern for improving Mexico. Unbeknown to the rest of the free world, his rise to Presidency, although now looked upon as positive, was written in the cards long before we placed our citizen ballots.
The bare bones truth of the matter is not much of anything can happen in Mexico, politically or of any other great magnitude, without prior approval from the true hand that rocks our cradle, our native Lady Macbeth, Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra.
In a land of macho politicians, Mexico's top power broker these days is a petite union boss who loves Armani dresses and rules with an iron fist sheathed in an Escada glove.
Elba Esther Godrillo's rise to power over Mexico is a rags-to-riches story. Born in Chiapas, one of the poorest of Mexico's states, La Maestra had a very humble and difficult upbringing. Her grandfather, a prosperous businessman in the provincial city of Comitan, made most of his money running a distillery. A macho disciplinarian, he disowned Ms. Gordillo's mother after she married a traffic cop of whom he didn't approve. After the death of her husband, Ms. Gordillo's mother, Estela, supported her children and household provided by meager wages as a rural teacher.
By age 15, Ms. Gordillo, the oldest of two daughters, was helping the family survive by working as a rural educator, teaching peasants how to read and write. She married one of her high-school teachers, but her husband soon fell ill and died.
At 18, a widow with a young daughter and few prospects, Ms. Gordillo was teaching school in one of the capital's poorest neighborhoods. Soon, she was swept up in radical union politics. A fiery speaker and efficient organizer, she blasted Carlos Jongitud, then boss of the national teachers' union, at every turn.
With Mr. Jongitud's help, Ms. Gordillo enjoyed a rapid rise through union ranks during the 1970s and 1980s. Her big break came in 1989 when she was appointed by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to replace her former mentor, Jongitud, as General Secretary of the teachers union.
In March 2004, Gordillo was elected the national leader of the National Educators Workers Union. This new position gave her power and staus as "moral leader" of the country's 1.4 million teachers; she controls the largest labor union in Latin America and was a strong political pillar within the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI until she resigned after receiving a much better offer from President Vicente Fox.
As President, Fox also prepared the way for the 2006 elections. He made an alliance with Gordillo which would pave the way an insure PAN continued in Presidential power. In late 2003 she used the PRI’s General Secretariat to actively push for the reestablishment of the General Council of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE). She nominated five of the nine members of this electoral body and left the PAN to appoint four.
Gordillo’s second task was to encourage disunity within the PRI. She founded a new party that succeeded in registering for the elections and was promoted by activists among her union’s leadership. From there she encouraged the PRI state governors not to support their or even her candidate, but instead go for the PAN.
Her last task to insure the Presidential election was to move votes from her new teachers’ union party to the PAN’s presidential candidate, Felipe Calderon.
Gordillo has been called Jimmy Hoffa in a dress, the Queen Bee, and Mexico's Lady Macbeth Putting all paradoies behind, her power is beyond that of any other human in Mexico. Within minutes and she can assemble mass riots and protests from one extreme of the country to the other. With a few phone calls she can take over toll booths allowing all commuters to pass free and paralyze border entries coming in and out of Mexico.
Although Gordillo helped Calderon acquire his presidency he has not been spared her wrath until now. With their joint efforts and launching of the ACE program, we are all left wondering and waiting; What did Calderon promise her to make her release her talons from our painfully inept education system? Will Elba Esther Gordillo be our next President?
note: please see above video links
