People continue to protest in Mexico around charges of electoral fraud and corruption centered on liberal candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as well as for broader economic change -- are they a group of
hangers on to a "3 year old" sore loser as one American columnist suggests? Are they a
dangerous, nation-splitting force for sedition? Is what they actually need harsher free-market reforms to put them in their places?
Or is there actually the possibility of a national grassroots social movement being founded in Mexico which might prompt the changes so desperately needed?
Below the fold, a few views from US and English-language sources, unfortunately no counter-vailing view from AMLO or the protesters (no time this AM to do any more than this), and how Mexican journalists have faced the most life threats under outgoing President Coca Cola Fox than ever. Other Mexico news & views comments encouraged.
Tensions have largely been defused around the dueling ceremonies of the "Grito de Independencia" (Declaration of Independence, basically) on September 15th, traditionally given by the President in the Zocalo (central plaza of Mexico City), and the following day's September 16th army parade. But AMLO has vowed to give his own "Grito", and more significantly the National Democracy Convention has been convoked for the 16th. [As usual, excerpt, follow link for full.]
Zócalo to host dueling ´gritos´
The weekend announcement that protesters will remove their encampments from downtown Mexico City in time for an Independence Day military parade brought a collective sigh of relief Monday.
But it begged another question:
What will happen the night before?
That´s when President Vicente Fox and opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador plan to perform the traditional re-enactment of the 1810 call to independence, or "Grito" - at the same time and in the same place.
"The issue of the 16th is already resolved," said Mexico City mayor Alejandro Encinas, referring to López Obrador´s decision to clear out his supporters´ tents and other installments in the central plaza (Zócalo) and the broad nearby avenue Paseo de la Reforma so the September 16 parade can proceed as scheduled. "I expect we´ll be able to settle the 15th as well."
For the last century, the grito - a short, passionate evocation of nationalist sentiment - has been delivered at 11 p.m. on Independence Day eve. Municipal presidents and capital precinct heads perform the ritual locally, but the major nationally televised event is the president´s grito, which is almost always given from the balcony of the National Palace on the east side of Mexico City´s Zócalo.
Tens of thousands attend the event live, most arriving hours earlier to party themselves into a patriotic fervor. The grito itself ends with a call-and-response coda that sends in-unison shouts of "Viva Mexico" from the assembled revelers.
But this year the Zócalo has been occupied by thousands of tent-dwelling López Obrador supporters since July 30, protesting what they insist was an unfair election that robbed their candidate of the presidency. And they´ll still be there during the Friday night festivities, since the removal of the encampments isn´t set to take place until after midnight.
It´s not clear whether the protesters plan to provide more room in the square itself by taking down all of the tents that cover the plaza. Spokespersons from López Obrador´s Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) have indicated that some material will start getting moved out in the next several days, but weren´t specific.
Next, the views from Kenneth Emmond of the [Miami] Herald Mexico, of the "three year old" viewpoint:
Defusing AMLO
Kenneth Emmond/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Lunes 11 de septiembre de 2006
...It's frustrating to lose a closely-contested election and some bitterness is to be expected, but Lopez Obrador is the living antonym of the "gracious loser."
Like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum, he's lashing out at the system in which he was defeated - the electoral machinery, the courts, the presidency, even Mexico's institutions in general. When he said, "to hell with Mexico's institutions," he became the King of Vituperation.
Calculating politician that he is, he conducts his histrionics in front of a sympathetic audience - thousands of Mexicans who, far from checking him up on his facts, also feel victimized by the system and have countless stories of injustice of their own.
What further complicates the situation is that Lopez Obrador has never shown himself capable of negotiating. He confronts, he twists terminology, and, like a medieval alchemist trying to turn lead into gold, he tries to transform opinion into fact...
...Lopez Obrador's plans for a National Democratic Convention on Sept. 16 in the Zocalo clash with the annual military parade. The shutdown of Paseo de la Reforma continues.
With tactics bordering on sedition, Lopez Obrador has evolved from being a legitimate presidential candidate into being, if not a "danger to Mexico," then certainly a danger to political stability. That is President-Elect Calderon's first problem...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary!!!
The McClatchy News Service has this unsigned editorial, urging action against the seditious nut, and also labeling Al Gore a "ninny." No, I'm not exaggerating.
A model for Mexico
When Mexico's electoral court declared Felipe Calderon president-elect, sore loser leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to set up a dissident government, thus courting treason.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declared George Bush winner of the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore grudgingly accepted the ruling, then would tell the world that global warming will destroy us.
Mexico has the prospect of serious civil unrest, but even our ninny abided by the rule of law.
Here's what Calderon can do if he truly intends reform, based on suggestions from The Heritage Foundation:
* Privatize the corruption-riddled, inefficient state petroleum company
* Dismantle collectivized, subsistence agriculture. Develop a system of private property whereby farmers register their titles and sell or trade their land
* Either make peace with Mr. Lopez Obrador or outmaneuver him with coalitions
* Engage the global marketplace.
For Mexicans, a model for action is just north of the border. Not so that they become interlopers here but so they may improve their native land.
GIVE US YOUR OIL COMPANY NOW!!! TIRED OLD STATE-OWNED OIL COMPANIES DON'T WORK, SELL IT TO US NOW!!! Under Fox, he managed to take the record profits and send PEMEX further into debt, thus following Margaret Thatcher's (so far failed) strategy to try and kill Britain's National Health Service not directly but with a thousand bureaucratic cuts until its popularity was driven down. If you can't beat 'em, betray 'em, conservatives always say.
And, Yay!!! What you poor folks need down there is MORE globalization!! MORE unrestricted trade!!! More 'austerity measures'! And make poor subsistence farmers need to get off their land given in the Revolution of 1910 (and Cardenas' reforms in the late 1930s) and participate in the free market by exposing them to land taxation and large landholder consolidation, thus enabling them to sell their tiny patch of land for just enough money to go to the city and be jobless. YAAAAAAYYYY!!! And, after all, they have a 'model to the north,' since right now the US is a GREAT example of how to transform a largely poor and still farmworking population into... oh, well, my snark is running out until the coffee kicks in.
However, Herald Mexico correspondent Fred Rosen is a little less quick to write off the anti-Calderitos as dangerous seditious children living off the government teat. In fact, he has the remarkable initiative to think that the very gravity of the social issues involved requires a bit of returned attention to -- YIIIIIIKES -- The "M" Word:
What Price Reconciliation?
Fred Rosen/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Lunes 11 de septiembre de 2006
...This past Wednesday, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, former Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda weighed in on what it would take to put that reconciliation in motion. His suggestions are reasonable, and should be taken seriously by the incoming government, but real, long-term reconciliation will require a good deal more than Castañeda proposes...
Reconciliation will require a great deal more than some new social welfare programs for targeted populations - worthy as such programs may be. Real reconciliation will require a redirection of the past quarter century of Latin American policy initiatives - a redirection currently embodied (albeit imperfectly) by the cooperative social initiatives of the countries of the South American Common Market (Mercosur).
This would require a more difficult "triangulated" position on Calderón's part. Such a position is well expressed in an essay on the decline of the appeal of Marxism by centrist political philosopher Tony Judt in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. "If Marxism fell from favor in the last third of the twentieth century," writes the anti-Marxist Judt, "it was in large measure because the worst shortcomings of capitalism appeared at last to have been overcome. The liberal tradition-thanks to its unexpected success in adapting to the challenge of depression and war and bestowing upon Western democracies the stabilizing institutions of the New Deal and the welfare state-had palpably triumphed over its antidemocratic critics of left and right alike. A political doctrine [i.e. Marxism] that had been perfectly positioned to explain and exploit the crises and injustices of another age now appeared beside the point."
But now, writes Judt, the "Social Question" has returned "with a vengeance" in the form of the market fundamentalism embraced by, among a great many other political actors, Felipe Calderón. "What appears to its prosperous beneficiaries as worldwide economic growth and the opening of national and international markets to investment and trade is increasingly perceived and resented by millions of others as the redistribution of global wealth for the benefit of a handful of corporations and holders of capital..."
"In the coming years, as visible disparities of wealth increase and struggles over the terms of trade, the location of employment, and the control of scarce natural resources all become more acute, we are likely to hear more, not less, about inequality, injustice, unfairness, and exploitation..."
If Judt is right, until a Mexican government can begin to challenge the market fundamentalism that has been producing wealth and poverty in equal measure, we may see periods of relative peace, but not much reconciliation.
Oh dear lord. I hope Mr. Rosen will be strong enough to not be harmed by the oncoming braying of the Washington Post market fundamentalist brigades -- you know, U.S. editors have an amazing ability to endure any amount of suffering by impoverished Latin American masses for their greater market fundamentalist goals. You gotta admire that level of courage and strength. It's weak-kneed losers like me, who don't enjoy the tight, hard spank of the market enough, who are the real danger.
By the way, it's under crusading reforming conservative Fox that journalists have been most frequently killed and threatened [excerpted from Editor & Publisher]:
Mexican Congress: Fox's Term Most Dangerous Ever For Journalists
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: September 11, 2006 3:25 PM ET
CHICAGO As Mexico's electoral tribunal was confirming Felipe Calderón as the nation's next president last week, a Mexican congressional task force confirmed that the six-year term of the current president was the most dangerous period on record for journalists.
During the "sexenio" of President Vicente Fox, 23 journalists have been assassinated because of their work, and another three have disappeared, according to the Working Group on Aggression Against Journalists and the Communications Media of the Chamber of Deputies.
Virtually all the murders remain unsolved, the working group said.
Journalism has become "the riskiest of professions right now," the report says.
"In different states of the nation, in recent year, the (incidents of) aggression against communicators and the media can be counted in the hundreds," it adds.
In some ways, Fox has been the strongest friend of the press of any recent president. He eliminated the overt and covert government bribery of journalists that compromised most of the nation's bigger newspapers. He for the first time mobilized federal law enforcement forces to investigate crimes against journalists. And he signed into law the first freedom of information statute in the nation's history.
Fox created a special federal prosecutor for crimes against the press, which now has a caseload of 35 criminal incidents.
But journalism has become undeniably a riskier occupation during his term as warring drug cartels, aided by corrupt police, have threatened, assaulted and, often, killed journalists whose investigations inconvenience their illicit trade.
Journalists have been killed at an average of four every year during Fox's term, the working group's president, Beatriz Mojica, said at a press conference on the release of the report. The Mexico City daily El Universal, in an article by Silvia Otero, published an account of the report and remarks of Mojica, a legislator with the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the party whose leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was declared the loser of July's extremely close race for president...
Update away below, all.....