Probably no one could have delivered that line quite like Emilio ?El Indio? Fernández. He plays Mapache, a Huertista gen eral fighting against Pancho Vil la, in Sam Peckinpah's ?The Wild Bunch? (1969). The scene for the line is set by William Holden and the surviving members of the Wild Bunch returning to reclaim their friend and fellow outlaw, Ángel, who is being tortured to death by Mapache's minions.

The Wild Bunch then shot up the whole garrison with a pres ence all outsized to what they re ally were. They go down in a blaze if not of glory, then to a code of male bonding and a late bloom ing identification with the Mex ican Revolution. Finally, they leave a big mess for everyone to clean up. This latter is the theme I wish to take up in reference to U.S. campaign consultants in Latin America and Mexico.

No country in Latin America has been blessed or cursed with more U.S.-style campaign polling and advice than Venezuela. Since the early 1960s, the new generation of U.S. con sultants found their way to Cara cas and helped both the COPIE and Acción Democrática. In the consultants? words, it wasn't so much for the money (although they were well paid), but for the prestige and the adventure.

VENEZUELA

And within the Venezuelan system, no politician spent more time listening to U.S. consultants than Carlos Andrés Pérez. His distinction now in Venezuelan history is that he was corrupt, and put under house arrest at the end of an unfinished presidency that in its ineptitude destroyed the party system and left the space now filled by Hugo Chávez. No one could blame the U.S. consul tants for this result, but they cer tainly participated in the mis chief of an increasingly miscre ant political culture.

In 2002, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was elected president of Bolivia for the second time. He had served from 1993-1997 in a lackluster administration. The U.S.-educated Sánchez de Loza da was down in the polls, but thanks to the art and craft of James Carville and Stanley Greenber's GCS, he fought his way back to win. That Sánchez de Lozada never should have won was obvious after his unfinished presidency lasted barely a year, and left a mess that was only cleaned up after other unfinished presidencies and the recent elec toral landslide in favor of Evo Morales.

CLINTON CONSULTANT

Which brings us to Dick Mor ris, the well-known consultant who boasts a brilliant track record in electing Republicans and Democrats in the United States. He is most well known for the 1996 Clinton re-election cam paign and an interesting sexual preference for which he was busted in a Washington hotel. By the way, it is fair game to mention such things, for after all he is the master of the negative campaign, featuring the use of personal at tacks; actually, I could have used more innuendo or just made something up, and that would have been fair game on his terms as well.

Morris is the guy who claims to have written the ?campaign book? for Fox in 1999-2000, and is now spreading tail feathers about his role in the Felipe Calderón campaign. From 1999, he lists on his vita as having scripted the campaign of Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina. This, too, was an unfinished presidency, with de la Rúa failing in mid-term and leav ing Argentina with a mess not settled by a revolving door of var ious presidential substitutes un til the definitive election of cur rent President Néstor Kirchner.

Morris may or may not have been the foreign consultant of choice for Felipe Calderón, but here he is and full center stage by his own insistence.

Calderón has a big problem. He is at the center of a campaign squeezed by two parallel opera tions: one run by Los Pinos, an other by the sharply ideological Christian Democratic wing of the PAN. It is very rare that a candi date who does not control his party or his campaign makes an effective elected official.

INDEPENDENCE

One likes to think of Calderón as more independent than Los Pinos would let him be if elected, and more enlightened than Es pino, the PAN leader. With this conflictive operation, the Morris book is the script keeping it to gether for now, because it is all about winning, no matter how.

The book is that of a relentless negative campaign, using all forms of media, electronic and informal ? all, at a cost that sim ply cannot be met by other cam paigns. This campaign book has become the choreography of a strange morris dance that en ables the very different factions and interests to hold together and focus on the real enemy, namely Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

There are plenty of consul tants from the United States, Eu rope and other parts of Latin America who have been in Mex ico over the years on campaigns at various levels, and not all are disaster stories. However, the real money is in the United States; the Campaign Media Analysis Group has forecast po litical ad spending will top US$1 billion in the United States this year, and it is only a mid-term election.

DICK MORRIS Nonetheless, the current elec tion in Mexico is noted for the self-promoting Dick Morris presence, a very discreet foreign consulting presence for the PRI, and no foreign consulting what soever for AMLO.

Madrazo controls the PRI and there is but one campaign orga nization. The control may be im perfect, but that is because of the historic fragmentation of the par ty itself. That is another story, and one that a foreign consultant would be extraordinarily ill-equipped to help out on. If there are foreign consultants, they are used discreetly, given the history of Carville and Stan ley Greenberg in the 2000 Labastida campaign. In any event, Madrazo's campaign is fo cused on Fox and AMLO. His goal is to go head to head with AMLO, and emerge as the best option, namely the restoration of the PRI after the failed PAN administra tion.

AMLO controls the PRD and his campaign. He is what U.S. consultants would regard as a heretic ? that is, López Obrador is his own campaign manager. He is adamantly against becoming a campaign market product, ex cept on his own terms ? grass roots in form and news driven in media. His goal is to establish himself as the one true option for the long-yearned-for change. The incompatibility of López Obrador with any consultant is simply that he is sui generis.

Dan Lund is the president of MUND Américas, a market and public policy research group in Mexico City. (dlund@mundameri cas.com)