When Miguel de la Madrid, who died April 1, at 77, began his six-year term as Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) president in 1982, he inherited from his mentor, President Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-1982), a trashed economy, and a lavish and unabashed level of corruption in every sector of government. Lopez Portillo was one of three consecutive megalomaniacal presidents who had brought Mexico to it knees, destroying its economy by the end of each of their sexenios (administrations), shattering the public’s  bruised confidence in critical government institutions, even in its own calloused ability to judge the sanity and harmfulness of its leaders.

Mainstream media in both Mexico and the United States lost a useful opportunity when they produced the internet era’s requisite undernourished obituaries (the best: Associated Press) of former Mexican president (1982-1988), Miguel de la Madrid, who died April 2, at 77.   He and his presidency are both basic and critical tools to understanding Mexico today – but not because de la Madrid was a dramatically innovative, or transformative chief executive. He is pertinent today primarily because his former long-ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is expected to return to power in the mannequin-like figure of Enrique Peña Nieto, former governor of the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City.  And because Latin America’s drug war isn’t working, Peña Nieto, whose PRI has a disastrous past of colluding with drug traffickers, is making grand promises to overhaul the current policy and reduce violence in general.

After a haystack full of unfulfilled political promises, Mexico’s Senate March 13 finally approved a constitutional amendment making attacks on journalists a federal crime. This came after years of public pressure, both here and abroad, especially from news gatherers and their supporters in this country, where 51 journalists were killed from 2000 to 2011, according to the latest figures from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. That number is disputed by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, and numerous journalists. The Human Rights Commission presently places the number at 74, since President Felipe Calderon launched his “war on drugs” in December 2006. That move now is widely considered precipitant by international law enforcement experts, by Mexican journalists, even by members of his own administration. Such critics generally agree that he should have taken a year to shake-out and coordinate the nation’s law enforcement agencies, the judiciary and the military, preparing them to launch an unprecedented nationwide anti-crime campaign. “He bit off way more than he could chew,” as one U.S. drug cartel analyst has said. Clearly journalists in Mexico, and elsewhere, agree with that.

Easter is often said to be a time of reflection.  It certainly is for any mind even vaguely curious about Christianity (even as not more than an amazingly world-shaping idea) during what Mexicans call Semana Santa/Semana de Pascua and English-speakers of the world term the “Easter Season.”