It looks like an ordinary news photo until you look closely at the handshake. A mysterious "third hand" is there. Where's the body belonging to the hand? I don't see anyone who could be hiding behind Obama. It's just a disembodied hand. It's either the coolest magic trick imaginable. Or someone is up to some shenanigans with Photoshop.

Then again, maybe it's just a floating hand -- perhaps the long lost hand of Benito Juarez or Lazaro Cardenas -- or perhaps some other lost soul wanting to "lend a hand" to U.S.-Mexican relations.

President Barack Obama has just left Mexico City after a little less than 24 hours in the city. He spoke publicly on two occasions and held two private sessions with President Enrique Pena Nieto, including a working dinner Thursday night.

In his public remarks, Obama was quite effusive about changes here, describing a “new Mexico,” one that “has lifted millions from poverty” and with a “courageous press” and “robust civil society.”

A “majority of Mexicans now call themselves middle class,” Obama said Friday morning at the National Museum of Anthropology. Here’s the text of the prepared speech although he departed from text several times.

The visit certainly pleased the Pena Nieto government, which is eager to change the tone of US-Mexico relations away from an emphasis on public security and fighting crime into what Pena Nieto called “a multi-thematic” relationship that embraces trade and other issues as well.

Pena Nieto wants to get crime off the front pages, and Obama certainly offered a vote of confidence in his still-ill-defined strategy of prioritizing a reduction in violence over the busting up of drug cartels and the capture of their leaders.

As Adam Thomson of the Financial Times noted, the Obama visit was successful in broadening the bilateral agenda:

Peña Nieto, who has wowed international investors thanks to his apparent determination to push through an ambitious economic reform agenda, wants to promote trade and investment as the two guiding missions of his country’s relationship with its northern neighbor.

Mexico-US trade is already about $1.4bn a day – almost US$1m a minute for the nerds out there – but there is little doubt that it could grow significantly in the coming years. Thursday’s announcement of a joint working group to be populated by Mexican cabinet secretaries and their US counterparts was a clear step in the direction of refocusing the agenda.

But some of the coverage was far more skeptical about what Obama said and the reality of life in Mexico. Here’s an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times story that moved this morning after Obama’s speech at the museum:

Obama described a Mexico that many Mexicans do not recognize. He praised a growing middle class when, in fact, economists say the middle class in Mexico has been stagnant for years, and violence has hurt the pocketbooks of many of those who barely emerged from poverty.

Obama lauded a courageous press that holds authorities accountable, when in fact violence and intimidation has silenced most newspapers outside of Mexico City; they do not report on drug trafficking and other issues because of threats or bribes from criminals or local authorities.

His discourse, however, fits in with efforts by both Washington and the Pena Nieto administration to change the image of Mexico, regardless of the facts on the ground.

The Proceso newsweekly magazine was even harsher. It’s story (here in Spanish) said Obama hailed Mexico for lifting millions from poverty “without providing any evidence.”

This gets into tricky terrain because there is no “go to” source. Rather Mexican government agencies even disagree among themselves, and the United Nations and World Bank take sharply different tacks.

First off, Mexico’s population is about 113 million people. According to the Social Development Secretariat, 13 million of them live in “extreme poverty.” Coneval, the agency that measures poverty, said in 2011 that 52 million Mexicans live in poverty.

A U.N. agency, the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, says 40.8 million Mexicans live in poverty while another 14.9 million are indigent (see page 14 of this study which expresses percentages rather than numbers).

Measuring the middle class is less easy, and the World Bank is the one that has touted its expansion in Mexico, saying that 17 percent of the population joined the middle class between 2000 and 2010. It describes middle class as people who make between $10 and $50 per day, so it places the bar low, too low in my opinion. Can someone making $300 a month in Mexico be considered middle class? If so, then maybe Obama wasn’t offering “happy talk” on Mexico. I’m not so sure myself.

A couple of months ago, Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald noted in a column that everybody is upbeat on Mexico – except Mexicans themselves. That jibes with my experience as well. So maybe what Obama said was meant more as a pep talk than as a description of reality on the ground.

President Obama offered a press conference a few hours ago, and the subject of Mexico came up only at the very end even though Obama will be landing here in Mexico City on Thursday for about 24 hours.

Here is the transcript of his remarks on Mexico, in response to a question from Antonieta Cadiz, a Chilean correspondent. She asked how the U.S. felt about Mexico saying Monday that all future contact with U.S. law enforcement will now go through a single gateway, the Mexican Interior Secretariat:

When it comes to Mexico, I’m very much looking forward to taking the trip down to Mexico to see the new President, Peña Nieto. I had a chance to meet him here, but this will be the first, more extensive consultations and it will be an opportunity for his ministers, my Cabinet members who are participating to really hammer out some of these issues.

A lot of the focus is going to be on economics. We’ve spent so much time on security issues between the United States and Mexico that sometimes I think we forget this is a massive trading partner responsible for huge amounts of commerce and huge numbers of jobs on both sides of the border. We want to see how we can deepen that, how we can improve that and maintain that economic dialogue over a long period of time.

That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be talking about security. I think that in my first conversation with the President, he indicated to me that he very much continues to be concerned about how we can work together to deal with transnational drug cartels. We’ve made great strides in the coordination and cooperation between our two governments over the last several years. But my suspicion is, is that things can be improved.

And some of the issues that he’s talking about really had to do with refinements and improvements in terms of how Mexican authorities work with each other, how they coordinate more effectively, and it has less to do with how they're dealing with us, per se. So I’m not going to yet judge how this will alter the relationship between the United States and Mexico until I’ve heard directly from them to see what exactly are they trying to accomplish.

But, overall, what I can say is that my impression is, is that the new President is serious about reform. He’s already made some tough decisions. I think he’s going to make more that will improve the economy and security of Mexican citizens, and that will improve the bilateral relationship as well.

A group of some 15 students, most wearing hoods, have won headlines by seizing the administration tower at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The rebel students have been holed at Latin America’s largest university since last weekend, and images of the takeover (like the AP photo of the student above) are on the front pages of newspapers.

While the incident focuses on matters particular to Mexico, it brings together facets of university life across Latin America, especially the notion of autonomy of campuses – meaning that the police and the army must stop at the gates. Students generally play a role in Latin universities, including in academic affairs, that might seem incomprehensible on a U.S. campus, partly because student leaders are often affiliated to political forces off campus. University battles can seem like societal battles. A third element is the tolerance for violence on the part of students that might seem alien to an outsider.

So the takeover at the UNAM, as the university is called, drags on as the university rector decides whether to invite in federal police to dislodge the protesters. Police say they are ready.

The case at the UNAM, though, is not about major social issues. The hooded students are protesting the expulsion of five students from a different campus following a melee early in February.

According to news reports from Mexico City (I’m in Acapulco following a different story), some 115,000 students, teachers and staff members have signed petitions calling for the removal of the hooded students.

Some 200 student supporters have encircled the administration tower, an iconic building which houses gigantic murals by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Much of Mexico City awaits to see what will happen next.

It's possible to read too much in photos from a summit that took place half a world away. President Enrique Pena Nieto attended a summit of Latin and European leaders over the weekend in Santiago, Chile. But I must say, I was struck with the body language seen in some of the photos. Pena Nieto seemed completely at ease with Cuban leader Raul Castro in the photo above. Someone seems to have told a good joke.

These photos are handouts from the Mexican presidency.

In contrast, both Pena Nieto and Argentine leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner seem very formal and slightly uncomfortable in the handout photo. It's not like they don't know each other. Pena Nieto visited Argentina last fall before taking office as part of a swing through South America. Language is not a barrier for the two.

Losing elections can be hell on a political party. Just ask the National Action Party (PAN), which ruled the country until Dec. 1.

As recently as October, the PAN had 1,868,604 registered active members.

But in an interview published in El Universal Friday, PAN President Gustavo Madero acknowledged that many of the members had joined hoping that they’d get jobs under the center-right party, which had the presidency 2000-2012.

So how many members does Madero think will remain with the PAN now as the party finishes its latest registration drive? 500,000.

It could be a long, long time before the PAN gains relevancy again in Mexico.

A little more than a week before leaving office, President Felipe Calderon has a beef and he appeared before the media to get it off his chest.

“Pardon the expression, but the name of Mexico is Mexico,” he said.

It’s not the United States of Mexico, as the nation’s constitution says. Indeed, before the nation’s delegates at the United Nations, the plaque says simply “Mexico.” Same goes at the Organization of American States.

“When we Mexicans are asked abroad where we are from, we say Mexico. We don’t say the United States of Mexico,” Calderon said.

Calderon referred to history, noting that names bandied about once the country became independent from Spain included: North America Morelos, Mexican America, Mexican Empire, the United Republic of Anahuac, Republic of Mexico, and the United States of Mexico. The last name was chosen in emulation of the neighbor to the north.

Calderon asked Congress to change the country’s name simply to Mexico.

“It is time that we return to the beauty and simplicity of the Mexican name of our country: Mexico. A name that we chant, we sing, that we identify with and that fill us with pride,” he said.

Several hours after Hugo Chavez won a new six-year term as president of Venezuela, Mexico's secretariat of foreign relations sent a short, proper note wishing him well. It said:

The Government of Mexico, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), congratulates President Hugo Chavez for his victory in the presidential elections in Venezuela today.

The Government of Mexico reiterates its full readiness to further strengthen the friendly relations and cooperation between Mexico and Venezuela.

While several other hemispheric leaders took to Twitter to wish Chavez well, President Felipe Calderon here in Mexico remained silent. Perhaps it is not a surprise. Calderon and Chavez have notably chilly relations that date back several years. Blame the Wikileaks scandal over the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. One 2009 cable in particular revealed that Calderon believes that Chavez helped finance his rival in 2006 elections, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and wanted US help in pressuring Brazil to restrain Chavez.

It may only be natural that when a loved one is gunned down, some nasty words get spoken. But what the wife of Jose Eduardo Moreira tweeted a few hours ago is worth studying in greater depth.

The 25-year-old Moreira was found slain Wednesday night outside of Ciudad Acuna, a border city across from Del Rio, Texas. That's him to the left in an AP photo from 2007.

The slaying has caused an uproar. Moreira was a scion of a dynastic PRI family. His father, Humberto Moreira, served for nine months last year as the president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, assuming the job after a term as governor of Coahuila state from 2005 to 2011. His uncle, Ruben Moreira, is now the governor.

Coahuila state is deeply under the shadow of Los Zetas. While news reports indicate that Ciudad Acuna is a cartel battleground, I was there twice earlier this year and didn’t find it so.

In any case, under the Moreiras Coahuila has run up monumental public debt. Just under Humberto Moreira, the debt rose to $2.6 billion. Some of it went for public works but a lot simply disappeared. The scandal forced Humberto Moreira out of his PRI leadership post.

His father, overcome with grief, stated at the wake that the son was a senseless victim of organized crime. But the widow, Lucero Davis (@lucerodavis), was not singing off the same song sheet. Starting Thursday evening and going into this morning, she sent out three tweets. Here they are in chronological order, two of them addressed to her uncle:

@rubenmoreiravdz I demand justice!!!!! For the murder of my husband Jose Eduardo

JUstice!! Justice!!

@rubenmoreiravdz. You don’t know how to govern!!! This is your f---ing fault!!!! Resign

So the widow blames the uncle for her husband’s murder – not organized crime. Like many cases this muddies the waters. Presumably Lucero Davis was privy to much of her husband’s thinking. She was clearly very in love with him. A tweet she sent in March said: “A handsome, active, intelligent, TOO HARD-WORKING man. Who is it? Yes, my husband @jeduardomoreira”

So if she conflates organized crime with the elected leaders of the state, is it just anguish and bitterness? Or could she know something more? If it is the latter, my money says the rest of us may never learn the truth.

It is more than likely that Sofia Covarrubias’s father has taken her to the woodshed.

She may be only 14 years old but she’s caused quite a stir. And it is because she is the daughter of one of Mexico’s state governors, Marcos Covarrubias of Baja California Sur.

Yesterday, Sofia took to Twitter – okay, that gives you an idea of what is to come. Mix a teenager, a political family and Twitter and you get dynamite. We’ve seen it before here and here. Hundreds of Twitter users are piling on with their criticism of Sofia Covarrubias.

Sofia made fun of young Mexicans who cross the border to San Diego and don’t have money to go to one of the fanciest shopping malls in southern California, Fashion Valley, ending up instead at the more downscale Plaza Las Americas.

Here are translations of her two tweets including of her #esdeindigenas hashtag:

“#itssoindian to get excited when you go to the usa and post thousand photos of each step you take without going to fv hahahah :)”

and

“haha there’s always some Indian who gets all excited about going to ‘plaza las americas’ haha”

Today, her father admitted that he’d had a good talking to with his two daughters, saying that the household had instilled in them “good education, with principles and values” and that family members try to be “humble and treat equally all those around us.”

But then he told the citizenry and Twitter users to lay off his daughters.

“I share these experiences with you because my daughters, who are 13 and 14, are confronting unprecedented public scorn because of an unfortunate commentary,” he said.

It’s not the first time the Covarrubias family has caught flak in social media. Two months ago, when members of the family posted Facebook photos of their vacation in London, where they flew first class, attended Olympic events and shopped at luxury stores, the trip quickly became a trending topic in social media. See here and here for photos.