According to this view, Mexico is supposedly moving in the right direction and the U.S. government, the media and civil society on both sides of the border should be patient with and support the country's new leader.

Such an approach is both wrong and dangerous. Numbers show that the Mexican economy is in fact stuck in a highly problematic low-growth cycle. According to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics, growth averaged only 1.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, underperforming in comparison to the rest of Latin America. During the 2008-2009 global economic recession, Mexico lost more economic ground than any other country in its region, losing 9.4 percent of GDP over four quarters, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Its recent rebound, growing at 5.5 percent in 2010 and almost 4 percent in 2011, only implies that the economy has managed to crawl itself out of the hole -- not that it has started to take off.

It is true that more Mexicans are using cellphones, computers, and credit cards as well as purchasing cars, homes and household appliances. But these external trappings of "middle class" life hide the fact that poverty has actually been on the rise, from 42.7 percent to 51.3 percent of the population since 2006. Prices for basic goods have skyrocketed and real wages have shrunk by 3.5 percent over the same period. With a Gini coefficient of 0.51, Mexico also ranks as one of the most unequal countries on earth. Ten families control 10 percent of GDP and Mexico is the home to the wealthiest man in the world, Carlos Slim.

This concentration of power at the top is holding back economic growth. The neoliberal economic strategy that has dominated Mexico since the economic crisis of 1982 has created a new, highly empowered upper crust that's connected to international capital markets but contributes little to the national economy. Both the OECD and the World Economic Forum have given Mexico failing grades with regard to monopoly control and economic competitiveness.

These new plutocrats will not cede power on their own. Only a countervailing force can kick the Mexican economy into action by redistributing social power and overturning the trickle-down theory of economic development. It is not enough to create a few new wealthy families to "compete" with the ones who are already in control, as Peña Nieto seems to be interested in doing. If Mexico hopes to escape from its low-level equilibrium trap it needs to break altogether with the neoliberal model of growth without equality.

Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country uninterrupted for 71 years until 2000, cannot be expected to stand up to the robber barons -- it was Nieto's party that put them in power in the first place. The last three presidents from the PRI were responsible for establishing the tenets of the contemporary growth system. Despite lip service to the contrary, Peña Nieto´s objective is to continue on with their legacy instead of looking toward new solutions.