Rally in Mexico City

The U.S. media routinely—even gleefully?--touted the fear gripping Mexico in anticipation of Saturday’s rally, which, it was said, would quietly likely lead to violence. Once it was peaceful, we’ve now turned again to predicting potential future violence. The NYT headline is:

Leftist Predicts Unrest Without Complete Recount of Mexican Election

So you have the two things that make a Latin America story juicy—violence and leftists. Even worse, I find this paragraph:

Mr. Calderón would seem a certain ally for the United States, and political analysts have suggested that a Calderón presidency could signal an end to the advance of left-wing politics across Latin America, as neoliberal economic policies from Washington have fallen from favor.

So who are these political analysts? Elections in the past few years in Latin America have yielded a stew of conservatives, populists (of various stripes), and social democrats, but only a sprinkling of anything we could really call “left-wing.” Yes, many people are wary of the Washington Consensus, but that does not automatically make them devotees of Hugo Chávez.