[Marxism] John Ross: Social conflict rises in Mexico as vote nears

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I kind of like the campaign being waged by Subcomandante Marcos (sub to
whom? De Lawd?)  It seems to me, just from the brief description of it
here, less like Obrador-phobic sectarian leftism of the kind I am so
used to debating, and more like a constant reminder, not without uses,
that Obrador does not represent ultimately the poor and the oppressed,
but rather a sector of the upper classes that have been separated from
the "There is no alternative" crowd.  I think Lopez Obrador is a
bourgeois candidate, but then I have the same opinion of Peron, Aneurin
Bevan, Sukarno, LaFolllette, Bryan, Nkrumah, and quite a few others.  It
does not absolutely bar a vote for them.  I think Marcos keeps the
pressure on Obrador and tries to inspire the masses to act for
themselves, but he isn't waging a mad anti-Obrador campaign like the
much madder anti-Morales campaign waged in the Bolivian elections by the
top COB leaders, etc -- the latter is going to become my model
HOW-NOT-TO-USE-BOURGEOIS -ELECTIONS example.
 
Victory smells in the cards for Obrador (the Fox indictment of
Echevarria is a sign of the pressure he is under).  The bourgeoisie may
be too divided to stop his election effectively, and the anti-Chavez
campaign that helped Calderon for a time and got Garcia past the
election in Peru has clearly run out of steam, partly because the
diviisions in the ruling class of the various countries over how to
handle the internal crisis are coming to the fore. Demonizing Chavez and
Morales, who represent other social forces, does not seem likely to
solve the bourgeoisie's problem (and make no mistake, in Peru, the
rulers are MORE afraid of Morales than they are of Chavez -- this is the
fear that haunts the bloc of governing classes every night.  I think the
resistance to Humala was powered by a stronger racial solidarity against
the rural indigenous population than you seem to find in Mexico today --
Peru never had, to my knowledge, a successful popular revolution like
Mexico, which has had more than one.  Hence all the moralizing about the
unforgivable antiwhite feelings of the savages.
Fred Feldman
 

Mexico on the Brink


There's a Riot Going On


By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City, Mexico.

The furious mob lays siege to the Senate building here. Rocks fly and
riot police wielding truncheons wade into the boiling crowd. Sirens
scream throughout the old quarter of this conflictive capital. An army
tank positions itself above the esplanade and turns its cannon towards
the protestors. Special Forces troops in camou wave snub-nosed machine
guns at frightened onlookers, warning them to get back. A man in a beret
with a bullhorn assures the bystanders that there is no cause for panic.
It's all a Hollywood movie. "Vantage Point II", an updated version of
the old presidential assassination classic, starring Dennis Quaid and
Forest Whitaker amongst other idols of the silver screen, which was on
shoot last week in Mexico City's Centro Historico.

But to many jittery residents of the neighborhood like café proprietor
Carlos Diaz, "Vantage Point II" looked a lot like a dress rehearsal for
what could happen after the July 2nd presidential election here. "I hope
it's only a movie" Diaz muses to a regular patron.

Despite outgoing president Vicente Fox's avowal that Mexico is "at`
peace", it doesn't really look that way. As the tightest presidential
election in its 196-year history comes down to the wire, the nation is
wracked by a spasm of violent social confrontation.

Item--On April 21st, a thousand elite state and federal police descended
upon a striking steel plant in Lazaro Cardenas Michoacan, firing tear
gas and live ammunition wildly. But 600 strikers fought back with
slingshots and iron ore pellets and drove the police off with heavy
machinery. Two young workers were killed in the melee, inflaming a
usually quiescent Mexican labor movement. The strike at the Villacero
steel plant, Latin America's largest steel bar manufacturer, continues
in its fourth month.

The violence in Michoacan came after outgoing president Vicente Fox's
labor secretary ordered the longtime leader of the national miners'
union to which the steelworkers pertain, removed from office and a
reputed flunky for the mine owners installed. The move was seen as Fox
government retaliation after Napoleon Gomez Urrutia led a nationwide
wildcat strike to protest the death of 65 miners in a northern Mexico
coal pit. In addition to Michoacan, workers in Sonora have shut down the
nation's largest copper mines and tensions are on the rise in the
region. 

Now a coalition of maverick unions whose memberships total in the
millions, have called for an indefinite strike to protest Fox's
intervention in sacrosanct union autonomy. Last month, the coalition,
led by the National Workers Union (UNT) and telephone union boss
Francisco Hernandez Juarez, shut down key services for an hour in
solidarity with the miners. The "indefinite" strike is set to begin June
28th four days before the presidential election and could impact vital
communication systems.

Item--On June 15th, thousands of striking school teachers in the
southern state of Oaxaca encamped in the central plaza of the state
capitol were dislodged by a coordinated police attack that left 100
teachers injured, two of them wounded by gun fire--there are unconfirmed
reports of two deaths. Police claim they found a cache of automatic
weapons in the union headquarters--the union charges a frame-up. Hours
after the security forces occupied the plaza, which is considered a
world patrimony site by the United Nations, the "maestros", members of
the militant Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union
regrouped and took the square back - where they remain behind stout
barricades.

The teachers have been on strike for a month demanding cost of living
increases and educational improvements in this majority Indian state.
The strikers have called upon Oaxaca struggle groups to form an
autonomous popular assembly, which is now meeting behind the barricades
in the capital. 

The union is also demanding the resignation of Governor Ulisis Ruiz, a
member of the once-ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) and a
stalwart confederate of PRI presidential standard-bearer Roberto
Madrazo. Oaxaca is a PRI bastion and the striking teachers are urging
members not to vote July 2nd and have threatened to disrupt the
electoral machinery. About a quarter of Oaxaca's polling places are in
schools shuttered by the strike and teachers have intermittently blocked
access to the Oaxaca offices of Mexico's maximum electoral authority,
the Federal Electoral Institute. Governor Ruiz has called for the
intervention of the federal police and the IFE is on red alert. 

Item--It is now seven weeks since the brutal assault by state and
federal police on machete-wielding farmers in San Salvador Atenco just
outside Mexico City in which two young men were killed, hundreds beaten
and jailed, and at least 23 women either raped or sexually abused by the
invading security forces. Although protests of the atrocities have now
spread to 34 countries and Atenco has become a world-wide symbol of
Mexico's flagrant disregard for human rights, impunity reigns--23
low-ranking police "officers" accused of abuse have been rewarded with
"amparos" (injunctions) that protect them from being jailed. Meanwhile,
police continue to ratchet up tensions by patrolling Atenco and 13
surrounding communities and the IFE concedes that setting up polling
stations could trigger another round of rioting.

The farmers of Atenco are allied with the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) and its "Other Campaign", an anti-electoral effort
aimed at building a national alliance of underclass struggle groups to,
as EZLN mouthpiece Subcomandante Marcos (now doing business as Delegate
Zero) explains it, "peacefully overthrow the government." 

Marcos has been barnstorming the Mexican outback for months, preaching
"peaceful" class war and encouraging local rebellion. Sub Zero's swipes
at the political parties and their candidates, particularly leftist
front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD) have tested Mexico's free speech limits. As Election
Day nears, the bad blood between the PRD and the Other Campaign has
grown thicker.

Pledged to camp out in Mexico City until the government releases 26
prisoners taken at Atenco, Marcos and the "Otra" have lost visibility as
the election blitz and football-soccer's World Cup hullabaloo cranks up.
Marches and meetings in defense of Atenco have been reduced to
radicalized high school and university students, some of whom fly the
portrait of Joe Stalin at public gatherings, and the Other Campaign
seems to have run out of steam. 

Nonetheless, some Otra groups are reportedly planning to "interfere"
with the July 2nd balloting although what such interference might
consist of is unclear. Marcos is said to have frowned on the action. In
Chiapas elections, the Zapatistas have sometimes dismantled polling
stations and burnt ballot boxes.

But its not just Atenco or Oaxaca. "Focos Rojos" (red bulbs) are
flashing all over Mexico's electoral map. San Blas Atempa on the Oaxaca
isthmus is a potential Atenco as state authorities threaten to crush a
local autonomous council that has the support of the Zapatistas' Other
Campaign. On the fringes of Mexico City, gangs of "ruteros" or freelance
bus drivers battle savagely for hours over turf and police are powerless
to intervene. The narco wars rage in Mexican cities with five beheadings
in Tijuana last week rivaling Baghdad on a bad day--such bloodshed does
not help to turn out the vote. If Mexico had won the World Cup the
streets would have been filled with riotous jubilation but now that the
national team has been eliminated, frustration could tripwire angry
street rioting. 

The tensions are openly exploited by Mexico's two-headed television
monolith, Televisa and TV Azteca. Primetime newscasts zoom in on
sensationalist footage of violent confrontations like Atenco and Oaxaca
as commentators seek to associate the discontent with the leftist Lopez
Obrador. Right-wing candidate Felipe Obrador deluges the screen with Get
Lopez Obrador spots, sometimes four in a single commercial break, that
label the leftist a danger to Mexico in a not-so-veiled scheme to incite
the so-called "vote of fear"--in 1994, after the Zapatistas rose and PRI
candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was gunned down in Tijuana, Ernesto
Zedillo rode the fear vote to big numbers.

The left daily La Jornada reports that the IFE has flagged 43 out of 300
electoral districts as hot spots where local conflicts could impede
voting July 2nd. Criteria for IFE alarm include social instability,
public insecurity, and battling between political parties. 

But the biggest trouble could come not on Election Day but the day after
if a closely fought vote is not resolved quickly and cleanly to the
satisfaction of the participants. With Lopez Obrador and Felipe Calderon
still nose to nose and the PAN's attack ads flying, emotions on both
sides are peaking. 

The consensus of the pundits is that although Lopez Obrador has pulled
ahead by three points in late polling, this is still a very close
election that could be decided by a 100,000 votes or less out of an
expected 43,000,000 ballots cast and the IFE, which in the last days of
the campaign has been lacerated by charges of favoritism and cooking the
vote, will be in the eye of the storm. 

Should Lopez Obrador be denied victory, a conclusion that his followers
are not likely to swallow, or should the system "collapse" as it did in
1988 to deny leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas victory, or if the numbers come
up slow with no clear winner emerging for days, Lopez Obrador's people,
with or without their fearless leader, will go into the streets. And it
won't be a movie.

John Ross is in Mexico City waiting to see How It All Comes Down so that
he can finish his latest cult classic "Making Another World
Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" to be published by Nation
Books this October.



 


 
<http://promos.hotbar.com/promos/promodll.dll?RunPromo&El=&SG=&RAND=1276
3&partner=hbtools> Upgrade Your Email - Click here! 

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism