In the latest issue of the Nation, longtime Mexico based journalist
John Ross writes of what has been stirred up around the bitterly fought presidential elections.
For the new president, the task of governance will not be an easy one. The country is divided in half geographically (Calderón won the industrial north, López Obrador the highly indigenous, resource-rich south) and by critical issues of class and race. The breach between the brown underclass and the tiny white elite that Calderón represents will limit his ability to institute the free-market neoliberal policies that his campaign championed... Calderón will have more support outside Mexico than inside...Now that the [the Electoral Court] has confirmed his "victory," Washington and European Union members--like Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero--are eager to get in on the ground floor of the PEMEX [state owned gigantic oil producer] fire sale and will seek to legitimize Calderón's presidency beyond Mexico's borders.
Not giving up, not going away. More below.
People simply are NOT GIVING UP and they are NOT GOING AWAY -- unlike the right's taunts, people are starting to see that this is not just AMLO personality worship, this is real activism for social change. What were we hearing so many times, that once Lopez Obrador was denied the title, that his foolish minions would glumly fade away. But those who don't see the value of social movements always miss this -- that people are willing to struggle for real goals and often just need a spark around which to ignite themselves.
As to the title article, "Class War Looms in Mexico," in Mexico as well as in the US, not all stirring up of class resentment and class-related issues is bad. What's really bad is when suffering continues unabated for decades, and in fact, worsens, as has happened with a net job loss and increase in poverty over the past 5 years of former Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox as President. There is no doubt that Mexico (like its neighbor the U.S.) had better begin taking on the issues of the wealthiest tiny fractions of its population cruelly concentrating resources away from a greatly suffering population.
A quarter of Mexico's millions of indigenous (i.e., primarily speakers of Indian languages) population have no indoor plumbing, and their children die of easily curable diseases and lack of safe drinkable fluids. But all we ever see in the U.S. media is the concerns of the small percentage of Mexican professionals such as investors, traders, and executives, as if only their perspectives mattered. We have seen more mention in the U.S. in the past few months of the discomforts caused to downtown Mexico city professionals by pro-recount activists than we have ever seen covered a video-filmed massacre of peasants by state cops in Guerrero state in 1995 in the entire decade since then.
Second, my advice is to not read everything quite so literally as headlines & phrases would often suggest, especially with such phrases as "class war" or "revolution" or "parallel government." Remember, participants in the image war in Mexico are just as clever as they are up here.
More from Ross (please follow link for full text, and my thanks to ZNet from ZMagazine for pointing the article out):
The military is soon expected to evicttens of thousands of AMLO diehards who have been encamped since July 30 on Mexico City's most traveled thoroughfares and in the great Zócalo plaza, protesting the manipulated election. In a prerecorded speech to the nation on the night of the TRIFE's confirmation, Calderón went out of his way to praise the Mexican military as one of the nation's most cherished institutions--López Obrador has often called upon the generals not to allow the army to be utilized in a political conflict against his people.
On September 15, the eve of Mexican Independence Day, President Fox intends to deliver the traditional "grito" of "Viva Mexico!" from the balcony of the National Palace overlooking the Zócalo. AMLO's supporters have vowed not to yield the plaza and to proclaim their own grito to the nation on that day.
Another flashpoint will come September 16, when a major military parade will be staged to commemorate the 196th anniversary of Mexico's liberation from Spain. López Obrador has summoned as many as 1 million delegates from all over the country to converge on the Zócalo that day for a "National Democratic Convention" that is expected to declare a "government in resistance" and formulate strategies to prevent Calderón from ruling for the next six years.
ZNet has also featured a translation of an article from Mexico City liberal daily La Jornada, and my thanks for the translation (excerpt, please follow link for full text):
Blockades
by Luis Hernandez Navarro
La Jornada
[c/o ZNet]
A profound political crisis is shaking up the country. The rules that regulate the balance of power between elites have been violated. From above, there is no agreement or any possibility for one in the short term. The occupation of the lectern of the Palace of San La'zaro (the Chamber of Deputies, lower house of the Mexican Congress) by legislators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD in its Spanish initials) and the Labor Party (PT) in order to prevent President Fox from giving his speech this September 1 is one example.
A severe crisis in the model of control pierces the relationships of domination in large regions of the Mexican national territory. People accustomed to obeying have refused to do so. People that think they are destined to rule have been unable to impose their command. Those from below have become disobedient. When those on the top want to impose their opinion from above, in the name of the law, they are ignored from below. This can be seen with Oaxaca, Chiapas, the miners of La'zaro Ca'rdenas, and the peasants of Atenco...
...In order to recover the institutions of political representation, there is no viable option besides confronting and corralling these powers with social mobilization. There is no other course of action than to drain the powerful of their authority by putting up blockades against its exercise.
There is no other way forward than to prove, step by step, the illegitimacy of those that have assumed for themselves the power of governing.
In this way, the actions such as the blockades of the streets or of the legislative stage that have been carried out by mobilized citizens are a response to the blockades of information and of political representation carried out from above. They are a response to a previous obstruction...
But hey, now that they've gained from the system, why shouldn't Mexican conservatives copy their Republican brothers to the North, whom upon manipulating both the 2000 and 2004 election (and despite whatever debates about fraud in counts or electronic voting machines, it is absolutely undeniable that a key strategy of Republicans was to make voting difficult or impossible in pro-Democrat, particularly African-American areas) then decide that THEY are the good-government reformers and will reform the system. Rove, Harris, and Blackwell -- the Republican electoral Mod Squad, perhaps.
(Excerpt below from El Universal's English language section in the Miami Herald, which recently fired many of its own reporters who were acting as paid agents of the US government to write on Cuba.)
PAN leader backs electoral reform
BY ANDREA MERLOS
El Universal
September 10, 2006
The only way to guarantee effective government in the newly seated 60th Legislature is to ignore what is happening in the street and make legally sound decisions aimed at modernizing the nation´s electoral systems and its institutions, said a top legislator [of the right-wing PAN party] on Saturday.
Héctor Larios, the National Action Party (PAN) leader in the Chamber of Deputies, spoke to EL UNIVERSAL about the prospects for the new Congress and insisted that he was optimistic about the possibilities for reform.
"Regardless of political loyalties, the most important thing is to leave the post-electoral conflict at the door to Congress," he said. "Here we must devote our energy to building dialogue, constructing accords and addressing the needs of our countrymen."
Larios also thinks the post-electoral discord will die out soon enough, further encouraging all parties to focus on institutional political activity.
"I think that since the courts decided that Felipe Calderón is the president-elect, those who were banking on a different ruling will realize it is time to work toward modernizing Mexico. And the best way to do that is through the existing institutions," he said.
Wow. This stuff can still manage to make me nauseous. It reminds me what one of the DailyKos bloggers (forgive me, I forget) wrote of "bipartisanship" between Republicans and Democrats in the U.S.: "bipartisanship" is only good when BOTH SIDES give something up -- if it's only one side giving in, it's CAPITULATION.
Please add Mexico news & views below.
UPDATED:
Berkeley-based French Socio-Anthropologist Loic Wacquant suggests that the Mexican political crisis should be resolved by new elections. [Note: my translation, corrections welcomed, follow link for full text.]
Mexico Needs New Elections to Legitimize President
- Either Political Regression or Democratic Consolidation, says Loic Wacquant
- Nation Has Opportunity to Reinforce Worldwide Democratic Values Considers Wacquant
- For a Decade Political System Disconnected from Popular Demands
by Arturo Jimenez
La Jornada
A political impasse exists in Mexico -- "which we all hope can be resolved by peaceful means" -- in which very significant doubts persist regarding the transparency of the July 2nd elections, which makes one fear that "if the current president elect maintains himself thus there could be launched very strong social movements."
This analysis comes from Loic Wacquant, French sociologist and anthropologist based in the USA, a specialist in themes of democracy; he adds that because of this imasse, independent of the official view "perhaps the best manner in which to reinforce Mexican democracy would be to ask for new elections, with the goal of eliminating any doubt and so that the President Elect would be very legitimate."...
..."For a decade now Mexico has experienced an important proto-political crisis, in which there is a continually worsening disconnection between the political system -- which is orbiting freely, around itself -- and popular demands.
"Mexican politicians want to be like US or European [politicians], to enter political modernity, imitating Blair, Clinton, Jospin, or Bush, as much the left as the right. They recreate their political strategies, making use of polls, of marketing, going back to the experts, at media campaigns.
"That is, they are playing a type of game which increasingly is that of the specialists, who talk only with themselves, with other politicians or with major media, losing contact with average people. This is a certitude in Brazil and many other nations.
"Aiming to imitate the first world politicians, they are deepening their disconnection from the average person. Thus, the political sphere evolves more and more into its own world, like a lost planet. But society is crying out: And what of us? When are you going to pay attention to us?"...
..."Indirectly, major media are able to play a decisive role while giving the impression that they are merely observing, when the truth is that they are co-producing the political reality. Thus the major media bear a great historical responsiblity."...
Question from Jimenez: As a sociologist, do the massive demonstrations of more than 2 million Mexicans denouncing electoral fraud suggest anything to you?
Response: On the one hand, you have to give credit to the people who have demonstrated, since with these acts they have demonstrated their commitment to democratic values. And this demonstrates [on the other hand] that if there are this many people in the street, there really is a problem.