Healing the fissures in Mexico

MEXICO'S political system has already begun to appear more stable than it seemed last Friday, when the conservative Felipe Calderon was being sworn in as president while his supporters and opponents in Congress were exchanging blows and throwing chairs at each other. But the core issues in the electoral contest between Calderon and his left-wing challenger, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- widespread poverty, the chasm between rich and poor, and the insecurity spawned by violent drug gangs nourishing official corruption -- go on boiling under the crust of Mexico's routinized democratic politics.

It was a good sign that after months of protesting July's close presidential election as fraudulent, Obrador told his supporters over the weekend to turn their energies to pursuing social justice in other ways. For his part, Calderon is calling for cooperation with opponents in the Mexican Congress, where his National Action Party, or PAN, controls only 40 percent of the seats.

Living up to a reputation for pragmatism, Calderon is seeking to embrace the poverty issue that Obrador emphasized in the campaign. Calderon has made the shrewd symbolic gesture of cutting his own and his cabinet members' salaries by 10 percent. And in his inaugural address he pledged to fight poverty and to provide "dignified work." Calderon's pro-business tilt was evident in his brief for job creation as "the only effective path to fighting poverty."

Calderon is lucky to be entering office at a time when surging oil prices have produced healthy government revenues, contributing to a boom in construction, in the automobile industry, and in service employment. The growth rate of gross domestic product is projected to be 4.8 percent for this year, the healthiest in some time, and Mexico is on track to create a million new jobs this year.

But the short-term benefits of Mexico's petroleum profits will not suffice to remedy the ills of a country that has 40 percent of its people living below the poverty line, some of the world's wealthiest individuals, and some of the hemisphere's most vicious criminal rings. A crucial task for Mexico's politicians is to overcome the deep rifts among the principal political parties and cooperate in rooting out flagrant corruption that flows downward into local government and police departments. An entrenched culture of corruption thwarts the creation of new businesses, keeps rural agricultural workers mired in poverty, and allows narcotics gangs to murder their victims with impunity.

America's subsidies for farm products, its appetite for narcotics, and its unresolved disputes about immigration policy hardly help Mexico cope with the threats to its domestic stability. US politicians need to grasp their own interest in averting a social and political earthquake in Mexico.