Understanding structural changes in contemporary Mexico: an approach towards Peña Nieto's first year of government.
Author: Tomás Vera Ziccardi.
About the Author.
Tomás Vera Ziccardi was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2013 he obtained his bachelor's degree in foreign affairs. During part of his academic formation in the Argentine Republic he published several articles, papers, researchs and opinion columns on his website. Most of them are related to Latin American politics and foreign affairs. Some of the most recognized ones are The influence of the United States in Latin America (2010), Mexico and the end of an era (2011), The Democratic Decade in Brazil (2011), Time for South American Unity (2011), Surinam: reconfiguration towards South America (2012), Brazil and Mexico: a comparative study (2012), The importance of the Argentina - Brazil relations (2012), The formation of the independent state in Mexico (2012), Presidents of Brazil (2012), The US - Latin America relation in the immediate Post Second World War (2012), The Tlatelolco Treaty (2012), Itamaraty and the search for a place within the United Nations Security Council (2013) and Brazil (2013). Due that most of his works were published in Spanish, Mr. Vera Ziccardi decided to start writing in English language. His passion for Latin American Studies and the will to introduce the own view of latin americans to english speakers lead him to publish his work Understanding structural changes in contemporary Mexico: an approach towards Peña Nieto's first year of government (2014).
The year 2012 proved to be a turmoil moment for mexican politics. Seen from the citizenship's perspective this was more than clear, despite for most political analysers, by December of the mentioned year, it was just about the realization of a long process gestated during the PAN's experience in office. Going back to the final months of the Calderon Hinojosa Administration, the internal dispute among the government, the exhaustion over its first government experience and the changing political scene gave a perspective of future change. The PAN (Partido Autonomista National for its spanish syllables, known in english for Autonomist National Party) had governed Mexico for 12 years during both, Fox and Calderón Hinojosa administrations. It is important that readers understand that in Mexico presidential terms last 6 years, rather than 4, as it is common in the United States. Hereby, a single presidential turn can be extremely exhaustive for a leader. In a nation where the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, in english Institutional Revolutionary Party) governed for more than 70 uninterrupted years, this 12 years, of somehow 'opposition government' experience, proved to be more complex than past government ones.
Structural forces, manipulation by traditional lobbies and some traditional business sectors were foreseeing an eventual political change. Here is where traditional party, PRI, saw the possibility of overthrowing their recent years rival, PAN. Which strategy would PRI use this time in order to achieve its goal of landing again at 'Los Pinos'? First of all we should take into account that despite more than a decade had passed since their last government experience with President Ernesto Zedillo, public opinion kept on having a negative image of the party known as 'The Dinousar' among young mexicans. Even social changes took place. The urban mexican middle class saw PRI as a party full of corruption, with links to local mafia, lobby practices and manipulation of the public administration. By now it was patent that the party had to adopt a brilliant strategy, above all if they wanted to gain votes from the middle classes of cities such as Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City, essential to win a presidential election.
The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Revolutionary Institutional Party) is one of the most relevant political parties in Mexico. On December the 1st of 2013 its candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, assumed the presidency of Mexico.
Timing inside the PRI headquarters ended up creating the perfect formula with a view to 2012. Mass media, specially major tv brands such as giants TV AZTECA and TELEVISA, started encouraging a young political figure that had big chances to land at the presidency. Enrique Peña Nieto had familiar connections with the mexican political elite. With a wealthy background, Mr. Peña Nieto began to progress inside the State of Mexico, upto the point of entering national administration. His young figure, gave PRI a new face. His experience as Governor of the State of Mexico, made the perfect combo for 2012. The media began to explode Mr. Peña Nieto, as the charismatic, new wave inside the old PRI. His popularity rised, especially among the west states. Despite having served as former governor, most of the opposition he received came from the East states, including urban middle class, academicians and young students from the leading national universities. The 'Dinosaur's Comeback' was almost certain, something that increased confrontation among some sectors of mexican society.
Finally in December 2012 Mr. Peña Nieto became the President of the Mexican United States. The coalition between PRI and PVEM (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, know as the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico) won with more than 38% of the votes. PAN, with the innovative presentation of Mrs. Josefina Vázquez Mota, ended up in third place (with 25% of the votes), falling behind the so called 'Progressist Movement' of López Obrador. Things seemed to have changed since those final sunny days of 2000 when PAN finished more than seven decades of uninterrupted PRI hegemony. Now the old political machine was back to power. It was time for President Peña Nieto to pay back the favours he received during his campaign from so many sectors of Mexico's elite, political world, economy and media. Mexico would enter a new stage of political and social confrontation. Not the type of one the latin american nation was used to during the '60s and '70s, mexican political stabilty strenghtened specially after the 1994 Tequila Crisis. Despite this, different sectors from civil society, the political sphere and labor unions began showing considerable opposition to Peña Nieto's political and economical decisions. After all, PRI's agenda did not have in mind people's opinion and it would prove to introduce few changes in accordance to its conventional way of acting.
Enrique Peña Nieto became the first president representing the PRI after 12 uninterrupted years of PAN governments. The historical comeback represented a break point in mexican politics.
Precisely in terms of foreign affairs Mexico sought deepening the relation with North American neighbours. The 20th Anniversary of the NAFTA creation, impulsed by a former PRI president, should become a milestone for Mexico. Peña Nieto's foreign policy has NAFTA as a focal point. The Mexico - Washington relation should not introduce any type of alteration that could result in a regression of the bilateral agenda. On the other hand, we can expose mexican diplomats agenda, trying to position Mexico on the international sphere as a powerful nation. The G-20, relations with major South American nations such as Brazil, Chile and Argentina, negotiations with the European Union, the strenghening of bilateral ties with People's Republic of China and Japan and of course the expansion of relations with nations such as Indonesia, Turkey and India proved to be the response of a nation foreseeing to establish itself a a key player from Latin America and at the same time the NAFTA.
We shall come back to Mexico's foreign policy when we talk about the oil sector, as for now it is time to look at the internal measures adopted by Peña Nieto.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, mostly known as NAFTA, remains as a key element for Mexico's foreign policy. Under the Peña Nieto Administration ties with regional partners are meant to be strengthened.
Being a complex subject among Latin American nations, education, is becoming each time more a central point of competitive nations core policies in the early XXI Century. Mexico proved to be during the past century a nation which formed three nobel prize winners, dozens of researchers among an extended amalgam of areas, maintained top regional universities such as UNAM and Tecnológico de Monterrey and of course a pioneer in Latin America as for universitarian graduates. Despite all these achievements, if Mexico is willing to expand during this century, educational reforms should be introduced in order to include millions of young mexicans who do not even have access to elementary education (specially among the poor states). According to the official website of the mexican presidency, the so called 'Educational Reform' is a core policy created during Peña Nieto's government. The main ideas of the reform endorse the role of the federal government for education, working together with local governments, establishing the professionalization of teachers and professors among the entire nation, in order that trained personnel conducts the formation of young students, the creation of a national evaluation service (here is where the debate turned spirited) and a major level of autonomy for school management (which at some extent proves to have contradictions with other mentioned points of the reform, such as a major control from local and national governments).
Regulation or deregulation, in educational terms, here is where Peña Nieto has experienced the first opposition to his major policies. The reform is willing to increase communication between school authorities and government officials. Despite it, when it comes to high level coordination, the autonomy in decision making that parents and school authorities will have, seem to be almost absolute. How could it work out in a nation where school authorities that ask for financial support receive a respond after years? The reform is not specific among these issues. The establishment of a national evaluation service (for schools, managers, teachers and students) does not show the aim to revert the distance between urban private schools and rural public ones. Even further, the reform does not suggest any type of plan at all in order to change this situation. Will the evaluation have the aim of an standardization or it will end up expanding the distance between extreme poles? We shall remember that high level education in Mexico does not reach every freshman. Again the reform proves to be fuzzy when it comes to a minimum of 6 to 8 hours of compulsory class assistance. The so called 'full time scholar development' does not suggest the new subjects that are going to be added at elementary school nor the development of new activities that students will perform, it just talks about academic, cultural and sporting development. Opposition among universitarian students, scholars and workers unions related to education accuse that the reform is willing to expand the distance between young mexicans, in educational terms. Rather than including people at high level education (tertiary and universitarian), it will make the urban middle class improve its performance at top level universities and maintain lower class students at a marginalized position, where accesing to universities would not be much of a trouble as it would be for them to mantain the academic level once inside. Remembering what was mentioned at the very beginning, Latin America's educational shortcomings, it is clear that Mexico is not able to adopt an elitist universal service (in educational terms). The standardization, on the other hand, shows that structural problems will expand rather than contract. At the same time, groups of power will see how their interests variate. In a nation where vertical coordination (from national government upto county government) has not worked and where the executive has to attend to major issues such as fighting against drug cartels, their possibilities of changing Mexico's educational performance seem to be far distant. This should not be taken in the wrong way. Education should be Mexico's major goal, but little has been done over the past decades. We could end up the educational reform analysis by pointing out the prevailing confronted positions. As far as Peña Nieto's Administration desires to change educational parameters, it will prove to be an uphill battle, where dialogue should be the keyword, rather than mere empirical suggestions.
Known as the best Latin American university, the UNAM is one of the most important educational institutions in Mexico. In the picture you can appreciate one of its main buildings.
According to the First Government Report, introduced in May 2013, Mexico is willing to improve federalism, in order to adopt a more efficient level of cooperation between the different stages of public service. The most interesting issue regarding federalism is faced in the report by stating the Mexico has major difficulties to weaken centralization. The absence of intergovernmental cooperation has lead through out the last decades to an enlargement of the differences between economical regions and federative entities. In order to counterbalance these negative effects, the executive branch proposes the inclusion and participation of municipal and federal governments on the different instances of decision making that englobe national policies, such as tax coordination, the National Health System and the National System for Social Development. We are going to analyse the proporsals regarding the NSSD. This system is a mechanism of permanent attendance that includes national, state (provincial level) and municipal level. Its major proposal was the National Crusade Against Hunger, which englobes the cooperation of all government levels, plus social and private entities. Taking into account such a complex issue, the results of this cooperation are expected to arose in the upcoming years.
The National Conference of Mexican Municipalities and the 'Agenda Desde lo Local' are other interesting proposals that are meant to attack centralization. Since 2013, the last mentioned tool was able to receive the report of 1,117 municipalities and 30 states acknowledging the major difficulties local entites face in their public administration. Despite its slow progress, after an entire year, there have been efforts in order to improve coordination and cooperation, something that again, keeps on being one of the major difficulties for latin american nations. Despite the will from the mexican state to counterbalance centralization, as we shall see next, this issue is the epicenter of problems to the national government. With respect to certain topics, like the ones exposed in the past paragraph, centralization is an obstacle to national development, but in others cooperation proved to be inefficient, and here is where centralization must take the lead.
Mr. Peña Nieto will retain the mexican presidency until the year 2018.
Regarding national security, the mexican state has been working on a multidimensional approach to counterbalance the growing power of drug cartels, non-belligerent groups and internal actors which by the use of force delegitimize the role of the central state on to what refers to mantaining peace at a national scale. Under the Calderon Hinojosa Administration, Mexico began fighting armed groups by utilizing the different branches of national security, that means from low scale police upto the mexican army. The securityt issue has become a core topic in mexican politics, not leaving away the President from the debate. From Fox up to Peña Nieto, the different executives that have governed Mexico emphasized the need to strengthen the role of the state over security issues. We should remind that the mexican constitution points out that national security is a responsability attached to the President. How did Peña Nieto face the difficulties of security during his first year in office? Once again we shall appeal to the First Government Report. In the Unit 1.2, 'Guarantee National Security', it is emphasized the role of the state in order to preserv national security. The report suggests that it is a priority to rebuild social trust over the government institutions, throughout the combat against corruption and impunity, the development of a legal framework which controls the performance of the state duties and international cooperation. The document continues enumerating different strategies taken in order to preserv national security. Still, it does not show any type of specific measure to fight against drug cartels, corruption inside the political spheres and their conexions with the mexican underworld, opposition movements against the State (such as E.Z.L.N) and perhaps Mexico's newest update in terms of security, the formation of armed groups inside civil society that fight for themselves against major drug cartels.
Rising insecurity has been a major issue for millions of mexicans. President Peña Nieto has proposed an inclusive strategy in order to counterbalance its negative effects. In the picture the mexican army patrols the streets.
The fight against mafia and organized crime might have some sort of influence on the daily life of mexican citizens, but at this point it makes more sense if we try to understand it through the position that Mexico wants to enhance, as a modernized and developed nation. If Mexico wants to secure a position as the maximum representative of Latin America, it should end the political and economic power that local mafias have. Something similar has been arising in Brazil since Fernando Erique Cardoso landed at the 'Planalto Palace' during the '90s. These type of nations, willing to become regional hegemons, have to leave away the underdeveloped, unestable and countries of constant conflict generators image they had during past decades, and that is something the mexican state has been willing to achieve since the 2000's.
Taking into account the conditions of national security, where the state has an outstanding debt, it is clear that the recent PRI government has not adopted any type of clear measure in order to counterbalace crime, assasinations and the colateral effects of drug cartels in the streets of the entire nation. This is something that indeed worries the common mexican citizen. A brief look at the newspaper covers and tv news of the last 10 years, show mass killings, debt adjustments, kidnappings and armed groups on some rural locations blocking the entrance of state armed forces, proving that crime and violence is attached to Mexico, and that unless serious measures to stop the retrofitted circle are taken (politics, mafia & drugs), the situation shall persist. Once again taking as reference the documents enacted by the mexican state, the First Government Report, on its unit 1.3 (Improving Public Security Conditions), suggests that 'one of the main issues mexican families claim to be worried about is the growing insecurity'. The document states that the government has assumed the compromise to impulse actions in order to regain peace, guarantee physical integrity of the population and public security in order to transmit tranquility. From one side we can realize that this unit has just a few paragraphs filled of empty words, rather than describing concrete actions to fight insecurity, it just defends some principles that have been on the national constitution for more than a century. We shall counterpose the words of the mexican government against the ones of the people.
According to the 'National Poll of Victimization and Perception of Public Security 2013', released by the National Institute of Statistic and Geography, more than 70% of the people surveyed have expressed their concern towards rising insecurity.
In September 2013 the National Institute of Statistic and Geography (the most prestigious national research center) released the 'National Poll of Victimization and Perception of Public Security 2013'. The structure of this research was probabilistic, multifaceted and stratified. It included 95,810 houses, where people above 18 years old were surveyed. Lets take into account two more aspects, on the first place it lasted 50 days, and on the second it was taken at national, federative, urban and rural stages.
This official and recent data source shows that for 72.3% of the people surveyed, the perception of insecurity increased in their respective areas. The research shows that an estimated US$ 15,974 millions, consisting a 1.34% of national GDP, were lost due to insecurity.
The NISG suggests that the crime rate is of 35,139 per 100,000 inhabitants, something that lets us see that within 10 mexican citizens, three of them have suffered from some sort of crime. There are other interesting indicators, for instance, from the total crimes suffered during the year 2012, 64% of them were reported to the autorithies, while almost 20% were not. As for this the National Institute suggests that an important portion of active society does not report crimes they suffer or are directly/indirectly related to, in front of the authorities. The two main reasons why these things take place are luck of trust on the police and governmental authorities, and on the other side claiming that once before they reported, but as nothing happened they decided not to report on a second case.
According to what the mexican states denominates as crime and the insecurity index, these and further information can be consulted at the website of the NISG. As we are not conducting an academic research, introducing all the empirical variables and concepts that the NISG takes into account will signify a deviation from the core of our article, hence the reader can visit the official website of the mexican research institute and find there all the information regarding to security in Mexico. As for us, we can conclude by saying that public opinion has a critic perception of security and the role of the state. Crime and insecurity perception have been on the rise for the last year, Peña Nieto, as the incumbent President during part of this period, cannot just rely himself on a simple speech of fight against crime, when as we have seen Mexico suffers each day more. Insecurity hits the common mexican citizen so hard that the economic losses derived from it have a national impact. At this point we can add that in order to end insecurity, the national state should change the mechanisms it has been using and at the same extent it should introduce concrete measures into civil population, so that the perception towards government institutions change, helping the state to counterattack the growing crime indicators. But as it was seen on previous paragraphs the multidimensional approach on some issues and the unilateral one on the other, has been a debate which created paralysis inside the executive power. Should Peña Nieto endorse an unilateral and centralized plan in order to face crime and reduce the high insecurity levels? Or perhaps he should opt for a different approach, would a more cooperative position with civil society work? What´s clear is that after one year of government, Peña Nieto has not been able to introduce nor apply any serious measure against growing insecurity. It would be appropiate that when he decides to do so, he starts by listening the claims of the mexican people.
Focusing ourselves on the last focal point of Mexico's situation during Peña Nieto's government, we shall analyse the so called 'Energetic Reform'. First of all it should be clear that the reform endorses the energetic situation of a nation where oil consumption and exports are some of the core elements of its economy. Oil in Mexico has been a major issue since the first decades of the past century. Nowadays, Mexico is positioned as a key player in the international oil market. As the mentioned reform settles direct measures over the oil industry, which in fact we should call 'Oil Web' due that it englobes an enormous quantity of elements and players, it is more than clear that it has been one of the most relevant measures introduced since the PRI came back to power.
Beforehand it is important to point out that during the promotion of the reform the national government stressed out two elements. On the first place the idea of changing Mexico's image, as a modernized nation, where the energetic situation is faced with innovative measures and according to the parameters of the XXI Century. The second issue that the government intended to emphasize was to position Mexico in the international system as a great nation. As we are going to take into account both, the energetic measures and the political ones, these previous appreciations need to be understood. We shall take into account the document released by the Secretary of International Affairs of the mexican state, titled 'Energetic Reform: Executive Summary'. This public document, available on the website of the mentioned institution, suggests that as Mexico has a significant amount of gas and oil reserves (both undersea and subterraneous), the nation should attract investment in order to improve its performance in such a relevant area of the economy. Up to this point things make more than sense. Every nation should intend to attract foreign or private funding ir order to invest on key areas that are relevant for economic stability. The document goes further, establishing some true factors, for instance the one that implores that during the last years Mexico has demanded foreign gas from northern african and middle east nations, paying a price four times higher than if it would have extracted its own gas. Facing the same problems other underdeveloped nations have, Mexico understood that its lack of private and public funding, plus the low specialization of human resources and lack of technology, obstruct rewarding opportunities, in this case, related to the oil market. Much of the criticism wielded from the opposition featured the fear towards foreign private corporations, which would exceed the position PEMEX historically had. Would Mexico go back to the situation where foreign corporations control the resources of the mexican people? Would the so called 'Energetic Reform' take the nation to a loss of sovereignity regarding this issue? PRI, willing not to enlarge the overshadowing situation Peña Nieto's government was facing, decided to use major media in order to convince public opinion that this was not the situation Mexico was going to face with the reform. As we could appreciate on the document published among many public institutions, the state wills to strengthen the idea that the reform ensures that gas and oil resources will keep on being in the hands of the people, and that it will bring extra benefits such as the reduction of the demand (of foreign resources).
It is important to remember something we introduced at the beginning of the economic and energetic discussion. The government had the desire to position Mexico as a modernized nation, at this extent in terms of energetic policies. As a two - way conduit, the government holds the position that this type of measures have been enforced in other nations. Here the core idea is to introduce the reform as both, something necessary to acquire the high level position in the international sphere, and also as something that should be done because other nations also did it, sending an internal message which legitimated the proposal. The emulation hiddens a much more complex plan.
One of the most relevant policies taken by the PRI government was the one of swapping every key point the opposition criticised from the reform. As we have mentioned before, political opposition (specially the one from Lopez Obrador's party), pointed out that the reform was willing to open the market to foreign corporations. The executive power pointed out that the resources were going to continue as national property. Nobody was going to steal from the mexican people. Once again the opposition suggested that the reform was meant to be a so called de facto privatization. The government's slogan was 'No privatization, Yes energetic reform'. Over this issue is where we probably have to give credit to the PRI and Peña Nieto. It is not appropiate to talk about a privatization, which for instance would mean that PEMEX would end up being acquired by a foreign or private corporation/investment group. Also, the reform wills to change Article 27 of the Constitution, 'developing the oil industry under the State's guidance'. The reform does not mean that oil, public corporations and the core decision makers regarding the energetic oil will be controlled by the private sector, in fact the reform desires to improve the productivity, rather than the control, from the State. Facing this situation, it is clear that the reform had a much more political debate, rather than an energetic one, specially coming from the political, economical and social opposition.
PEMEX, one of the major latin american oil corporations, has had since its creation historical control over the national market. The government, throughout the mentioned document, has argued that PEMEX is going to continue being a relevant player (once again the opposition's speech faces an attack from the governments side). It is more than clear than foreign investment is going to be relevant, specially for technology and research, but the difference is that now the participation is going to end, at some extent, the monopolic control PEMEX has historically had. Due that Mexico has major oil reserves on the sea and in the so called 'campos maduros', an specific technology is going to be needed, something that PEMEX lacks from. Here the national government suggests that specialized investment is going to be needed. Regarding PEMEX's historical control over the market, new variables are going to compromise decision making over explorations and extractions. These ones are going to be conducted by the national government rather than by PEMEX. Here is where one of the most arguable points of the reform comes into play. We are talking about the shared utility contracts between PEMEX and other corporations. Most of these decisions will have now the authority, approval and control from the national government, ending the monopolic control (both in political and economical terms) of PEMEX and the oil lobby attached to it.
Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) was founded in 1938. The oil corporation has had an historical control over this key area of national economy.
After exposing and briefily analysing some of the main aspects of the energetic reform, we desire to point out two more relevant issues. First of all the media campaign around the reform had the will to gain public support and acceptance. The government faced this important issue with the next strategy. In order to gain support, the reform had to emphasize the 'improvement of family economy'. Detached from this a simple equation comes out, if the reform was approved by the legislative and executive branches, people would experience a reduction on their gas, oil and electricity taxes. This plus the assurance that resources would continue under national sovereignty meant that public opinion tacitly gave the green light to the reform (despite political and social movements opposed to it, even those demonstrations against it and the Peña Nieto government). Talking about green lights, the second issue we desire to mention is that the reform has a much wider extent, including alternative energies such as wind & solar energy. Green reforms that desire to reduce electric consumption by introducing alternative options, among other measures. As on historical terms, oil has been a central topic of discussion in Mexico, we decided to expose this aspect of the reform, but it is important for the non related readers to this type of topics to understand that the reform englobes other aspects of Mexico's energetic web.
During 2013 the Energetic Reform was approved by the legislative branch as a constitutional reform. It covers most of the relevant areas of energetic production, supply and commercialization, being the so called 'Oil Web' one of these ones.
Contemporary Mexico has proved to be an extremely interesting unit of analysis. During recent years the nation has seen an extraordinary political debate englobing different political units. At some extent we could even go further and assure that Mexico is a pioneer nation in political terms (always talking about Latin America). After the PAN experience during the last decade, PRI's comeback called the attention of the international system. As we have seen, the Peña Nieto Administration on it's first anniversary has tried to endorse structural reforms which refer to economy, security, resources, education and politics. For some groups, political and social opposition increased, something that seemed to be less common during the previous governments of Fox and Calderón Hinojosa. Political instability could enter the debate, but we believe Mexico is a much more stable nation than other regional powers. Even by reforming focal points, PRI and Peña Nieto might have a sense of stability which is not a common feature for Latin America. Some elements threatened by the reforms might create a clash. It is clear that groups of power do not wish to see their interests affected. But at the same time, other groups support Peña Nieto's reforms, due that they might bring major earnings. Most of them did support Peña Nieto during the presidential campaign. But if we are willing to go beyond mere speculation, we should take into account the strategies behind mexican politics. Is the 'Dinosaur' adopting a new costume in order to seduce public opinion and work on the shadows while it gains power? Are we facing a new and modernized PRI? Many of these questions will be answered as time goes by. Till then we can understand the most relevant issues of Peña Nieto's first year in office. That is exactly what we did in this article, give a major outlook of the most relevant topics in nowadays Mexico. We can conclude emphasizing that the PRI has made a major political move since 2012. After 1 year in power they have proposed several reforms. Some of them are just empty speeches that cannot transmit calmness nor can attack the structural problems Mexico has been suffering for decades. Perhaps one of the conclusions we can introduce is the role of Peña Nieto, a young leader who tries to continue with his party's agenda. As far as he can hoard with every political, economic and social area, the will to transform Mexico might take place. But once again, and maintaining the line displayed on our article, we could ask ourselves: would it be a real change or just another empirical construction of a political party who is one of the major responsibles of Mexico's current situation?
Tomás Vera Ziccardi.
* This work is physical and intellectual property of Mr. Tomás Vera Ziccardi. The rights of this work are reserved to TVZC® by express request of the Author.
