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A few points in response to this analysis.

In the first place, while not directly relevant to the issue, Obama did not rush to congratulate EPN on behalf of the "American ruling class with all its investments in Mexico." The ruling class in the United States is based on the hegemonic fraction of capital, the transnational corporations. These corporations span the globe and their executives and directors come from many different countries. Transnationals also have interlocking boards of directors. So the "American ruling class" cannot be differentiated from the Mexican ruling class or the ruling class from any country within the U.S.-OECD bloc--they are one class. Obama congratulated EPN because the U.S. is the global defender of the interests of transnational corporations and the transnational capitalist class.

Now to the elections:
The statement, "I do not believe that one can build a politically independent or eventually socialist working class movement within such a political operation as López Obador’s Morena organization or in the corrupt PRD," is true, but it is not the issue. Mexico in 2012 is not the same country as it was even in 2006. Decades of neoliberal policies have impoverished the people, displaced hundreds of thousands of small farmers as agriculture was transformed by capitalist production methods, and made the country more violent. The world economic crisis has hit Mexico as it has all other countries. Further exacerbating the crisis is the forced return of hundreds of thousands of workers from the U.S., which deprives the state (and the people) of some of the remittances it has counted on to close its trade deficit and as a social pressure release valve.

All that was needed at this point was an issue that galvanized the people. In Canada, it's student debt; in Mexico, it's electoral fraud. I agree that AMLO should not be trusted, and he may even be a U.S. asset like El Salvador's Mauricio Funes, who's first job was working for the CIA. However, it is what the people do at this point that counts, and the people are rising up. So the PRT made the right decision strategically, to support the candidacy, because it is now in a position to push the struggle to the left and raise the demand of ending neoliberalism, which it is doing. It is also in a position to recruit honest members of the PRD and MORENA to its side.

But the student movement is especially significant, because the students are embracing the participatory and democratic forms of organization and struggle pioneered by Spain's "indignados," the first occupiers. They are also reaching out to workers and ordinary people and forming an alliance that has the potential to challenge the reformist and opportunistic tendencies of the PRD and MORENA. We are just witnessing the beginning.

Regarding the drive-by at Hugo Chávez, people who have studied the Bolivarian revolution and gone to Venezuela understand what a great socialist leader he is, not only in Venezuela but throughout Latin America. To separate him from the socialist movement he founded is ludicrous. Chávez began the campaign to rewrite the constitution when he was running for president in 1997, calling on all social sectors to form constitutional assembly fronts. Nor can he be blamed for the government corruption left over from the old regime, which he has struggled against since he took office. One example of this is his creation of local communal councils, which are parallel governments with participatory planning a budgeting. These were necessary to get around local politicians who were not meeting people's needs but just advancing their own interests.

Criticizing the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia may have its place, but only at the very bottom of a long series of articles criticizing the other governments in the region, starting with the United States, Colombia and Mexico.