By Alfredo Peppard
On the fourth of July the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution -- the PRI -- lost their first ever election in the State of Oaxaca. Eighty-one years of one-party rule came to an end when a candidate for governor, Gabino Cué, won despite the PRI’s usual display of dirty tricks, including two murders and a kidnapping. Eviel, the PRI candidate, was carrying a heavy handicap in the person of the sitting governor, Ulises Ruiz. Ruiz is hated by the people of the state for his stealing of the election in 2006 and for the violent suppression of the 2006 uprising which culminated in the massacre in Zocalo, where 21 people died. The Supreme Court of Mexico recently found Ruis culpable in these deaths and huge banners were strung up in the Zocalo to remind people of that fact.
Gabino Cué of the Convergence Party was the candidate of a coalition that covered a wide range of the Mexican political spectrum. On the left was the PRD, the Party of Democratic Revolution that has been responsible for much progressive legislation in Mexico City and the Federal District. On the right of the coalition was the PAN, the Party of National Action, whose leader Felipe Calderon is president of Mexico.
Weeks prior to the election the Teacher’s Union occupied the Zocalo and surrounding streets with a tarp city where they slept on the pavement vowing to fight any election fraud on the part of the PRI. Unlike free and democratic America, no police riot squads attacked them to preserve the sanctity of free automobile passage.
For weeks the PRI treated the city to elaborate political theater: Airplanes towing banners and haranguing the people below with loudspeakers, attractive young women waving to people on the streets from the back of flatbed sound trucks, more attractive young women at major intersections waving party banners and employing sound systems worthy of Rock ‘n’ Roll concerts -- all failed to convince a majority of the voters that Ruis’ handpicked successor Eviel was the heralding of a new PRI.
With the PAN in the Peace and Progress Coalition. the national government cannot rule in favor of PRI fraud as in the past, and with a serious threat of revolt by unions and farmers organizations if the PRI tried to steal another election, the PRI was forced to back down on some of their more heavy-handed methods. (Not that they didn’t try. The head of the State Electoral Institute, José Luis Echeverría, was caught in a phone tap ordering 70,000 extra ballots for PRI use.) Not only did Gabino Cue’s coalition win the governor’s office, it won the Municipal Presidencies in the larger cities of the state as well Oaxaca has been having a party ever since.
What this election will mean in terms of the burning social issues that face the State of Oaxaca remains to be seen. The wide ideological spread of the coalition poses an interesting question. Although the PRD represented the majority of Cabino Cué’s votes, the ultra conservative position of the PAN may well serve as a counterweight.
The PRI represented the moneyed elite of the state. As a party they originated as an alliance of generals who emerged victorious from the revolution and civil war of 1910-20. Their role in Oaxaca as in most of Mexico was to end the revolution, restoring property forms as they were before the uprising. They did this with the use of pistoleros and police for 81 years and were strongly supported by the great land owners, mine operators and bankers.
Whether the rule of this elite is over, only time will tell
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
The match in the powder keg?
By Alfredo Peppard
What is going on? What is going to happen next? These two questions are a regular part of the conversation of the expatriates (known here as expats) who congregate at the Prima Vera in the Zocalo. The Zocalo is where it all comes down. Does it belong to the tourist industry or the people of the countryside? The people of the countryside say it is theirs by several hundred years’ tradition. It was once their open air market; it is where they come in their numbers to speak truth to the power symbolized by the former Governor’s Mansion, now a museum, on the south end of the square. The Gov moved to a less exposed residence after the 2006 uprising.
Last week Pauline and I were walking down to the Prima Vera to check in with our friend Frank when we became aware of dozens of dilapidated old third-class buses from outlying pueblos. Sure enough, as we entered the Zocalo we could see hundreds of campesinos sitting on the flower bed walls.
One of the Mexican Communist Parties was setting up a small stage with a sound system. They were calling for support of the striking miners in the north. We worked our way through the crowd to Frank’s table in the sidewalk part of the Prima Vera. Norm, the retired Canadian teacher, was there, so we all started discussing what we thought the present political moment was all about. In the last month prices of basic commodities had jumped ten or more percent. People are mad as hell; the more Spanish you speak the more you can hear and feel this growing rage.
The cops are pussyfooting around, no more provocative pickup trucks full of masked heavily-armed cops; they have been off the streets for about a month now. There were no cops in the Zocalo as this rally for working class unity went on.
Just a day before, I had witnessed a bust right across the street from where our callejon enters Tinoco and Palacio. The cops were just bringing out three young people in handcuffs, two men and a woman. They were all good-looking clean-cut types. The cops were in a hurry. As soon as they had the three prisoners in the back of the pickup they left. Suddenly there appeared from seemingly nowhere six or seven cops with M16s, all of whom jumped on their motor bikes and a pickup and were gone. The whole thing could not have taken more than 5 minutes.
Could it be that they don’t want to be the ones who strike the match in the powder keg? Who knows?
The State of Oaxaca, the powder keg, is a fiefdom of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the PRI. Essentially the PRI was the party formed by the generals who won the civil war. It has ruled Mexico since its organization in the early 20s. Although the PRI lost the presidency to PAN, the National Action Party or Partido Acción Nacional, it is still the most powerful political party in Mexico.
And like the Democratic and Republican parties of the United States the PRI top leadership betrayed the interests of its working and middle class constituents in favor of an elitist partnership with the lords of finance. Salinas and his gang got to go to all those really cool conferences in cool places in the French Alps. And oh yeah, while they were at it they got fabulously wealthy by selling the property of the Mexican people to insiders and transnational corporations. Carlos Salinas, Brian Mulroney, and Bill Clinton got together and made the three national economies into one international economy -- an economy that has no nation, no government, and no democracy.
NAFTA has created a single integrated economy in North America that is outside the laws of any of the three countries. As a binding treaty, it brings into being a confederation of billionaires whose interests as investors supersede any laws that try to maintain the gains of past labor and environmental struggles or any social services needed by the less fortunate. The effect that this anti-democratic rule by plutocrats has had upon the life of the people of all three countries is plain to see in the job loss, distortions in agricultural policies, destruction of social-safety nets, and the loss of public control of resources. Clinton, Salinas, and Mulroney were promised a place in history for the efforts.
Yeah, Bill. Charley and Brian sold out their working people so they could run with the big dogs. So that they could go to all those nifty meetings in cool places; and yes they will have their place in history. They were the guys who brought into being one single working class in the three nations. That’s right. One integrated economy, one integrated work force. We all work for the same bosses now. More on this later.
What is going on? What is going to happen next? These two questions are a regular part of the conversation of the expatriates (known here as expats) who congregate at the Prima Vera in the Zocalo. The Zocalo is where it all comes down. Does it belong to the tourist industry or the people of the countryside? The people of the countryside say it is theirs by several hundred years’ tradition. It was once their open air market; it is where they come in their numbers to speak truth to the power symbolized by the former Governor’s Mansion, now a museum, on the south end of the square. The Gov moved to a less exposed residence after the 2006 uprising.
Last week Pauline and I were walking down to the Prima Vera to check in with our friend Frank when we became aware of dozens of dilapidated old third-class buses from outlying pueblos. Sure enough, as we entered the Zocalo we could see hundreds of campesinos sitting on the flower bed walls.
One of the Mexican Communist Parties was setting up a small stage with a sound system. They were calling for support of the striking miners in the north. We worked our way through the crowd to Frank’s table in the sidewalk part of the Prima Vera. Norm, the retired Canadian teacher, was there, so we all started discussing what we thought the present political moment was all about. In the last month prices of basic commodities had jumped ten or more percent. People are mad as hell; the more Spanish you speak the more you can hear and feel this growing rage.
The cops are pussyfooting around, no more provocative pickup trucks full of masked heavily-armed cops; they have been off the streets for about a month now. There were no cops in the Zocalo as this rally for working class unity went on.
Just a day before, I had witnessed a bust right across the street from where our callejon enters Tinoco and Palacio. The cops were just bringing out three young people in handcuffs, two men and a woman. They were all good-looking clean-cut types. The cops were in a hurry. As soon as they had the three prisoners in the back of the pickup they left. Suddenly there appeared from seemingly nowhere six or seven cops with M16s, all of whom jumped on their motor bikes and a pickup and were gone. The whole thing could not have taken more than 5 minutes.
Could it be that they don’t want to be the ones who strike the match in the powder keg? Who knows?
The State of Oaxaca, the powder keg, is a fiefdom of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the PRI. Essentially the PRI was the party formed by the generals who won the civil war. It has ruled Mexico since its organization in the early 20s. Although the PRI lost the presidency to PAN, the National Action Party or Partido Acción Nacional, it is still the most powerful political party in Mexico.
And like the Democratic and Republican parties of the United States the PRI top leadership betrayed the interests of its working and middle class constituents in favor of an elitist partnership with the lords of finance. Salinas and his gang got to go to all those really cool conferences in cool places in the French Alps. And oh yeah, while they were at it they got fabulously wealthy by selling the property of the Mexican people to insiders and transnational corporations. Carlos Salinas, Brian Mulroney, and Bill Clinton got together and made the three national economies into one international economy -- an economy that has no nation, no government, and no democracy.
NAFTA has created a single integrated economy in North America that is outside the laws of any of the three countries. As a binding treaty, it brings into being a confederation of billionaires whose interests as investors supersede any laws that try to maintain the gains of past labor and environmental struggles or any social services needed by the less fortunate. The effect that this anti-democratic rule by plutocrats has had upon the life of the people of all three countries is plain to see in the job loss, distortions in agricultural policies, destruction of social-safety nets, and the loss of public control of resources. Clinton, Salinas, and Mulroney were promised a place in history for the efforts.
Yeah, Bill. Charley and Brian sold out their working people so they could run with the big dogs. So that they could go to all those nifty meetings in cool places; and yes they will have their place in history. They were the guys who brought into being one single working class in the three nations. That’s right. One integrated economy, one integrated work force. We all work for the same bosses now. More on this later.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Mexico: The earth is shaking
By Alfredo Peppard
The year 2010 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. The word is that 2010 is going to be a hot year, made so by the resistance. The economy in the U.S. and our treatment of Mexican immigrants have driven tens of thousands of migras back to impoverished Southern Mexico. Neo-liberalism, made law by NAFTA, has forced two million small farmers off the land and has devastated Mexican manufacturing industries. In Oaxaca and Chiapas it is capitalist agriculture destroying an essentially peasant, mostly indigenous rural economy.
In losing their U.S. jobs, these returning workers have lost the income that was crucial to their families here. Now they are coming home and finding no work. The price of tortillas is going up and the Federal Government is talking about a 2% sales tax on all consumer items. Two per cent might not sound like much in the Imperial Center, but here in the colonies, where malnutrition is widespread, the people say it is better to die fighting than to starve to death.
Floating on tourist and expat money, the City of Oaxaca is a relatively prosperous island surrounded by a sea of dire rural poverty. Even here, there are many barrios of improvised shacks with palm leaf roofs and cardboard walls. In the countryside of Southern Mexico, there are thousands of empty villages whose men have gone north in search of work. The lands lie fallow and are being bought up by speculators hoping to turn them into the sort of factory farms that blight Northern Mexico.
My Spanish is still inadequate to learn much from talking to those who don’t speak English, so I am reliant upon those who do. I had the privilege recently of being introduced to an older man. Like me, he was a lifelong socialist; like me he was waiting for the revolution; and like me, he wanted to live long enough to see it.
He told me that he hadn’t pinned any hopes on Obama, but that he had friends who had been stripped of their illusions by the Honduran coup. He had no doubt that the first task of the Mexican revolution was to free the nation from U.S. neo-imperialism. As is common among the people here, especially the more educated, he was conversant with the history of American interventions and invasions. Obama to him was just one more enforcer of an interventionist policy that runs back in a straight line from Obama to G. H. Bush, through Reagan and Eisenhower, to Woodrow Wilson.
The victims of aggression have much longer memories than the aggressors.
Most of the Mexican people are quite forgiving of the individual American. A few days ago, a man in his forties stopped me on the street to tell me that he had just been deported after 15 years in Los Angeles and he was hungry and could I help him. I gave him a few pesos and apologized for the vicious stupidity of my government. He was embarrassed by my apology. He told me it was not necessary; that he knew from his 15 years in the States that the decent people of our country had very little effect on government policy.
One of the more outstanding contrasts between the situation here and that in Seattle is the frequency of protest marches. Paradoxically, in this repressive environment they don’t need a police permit to gather peacefully and petition the government – that is, unless the authorities fear international embarrassment, as when the Orator in Chief was in Mexico City arming the repression under the guise of the War on Drugs. The organizers let the cops know they are going to march, and when and where, and a few traffic cops show up to stop traffic at intersections. No squads in riot gear or bicycle cops pushing people around.
We recently witnessed a march of a couple of hundred people, tiny by Oaxaca standards. The marchers were carrying dozens of red flags and posters calling for the ouster of the governor. As we stood watching them go by, and grinning from ear to ear, my eyes met those of one of the participating taxi drivers. He gave me a big smile and thumbs up. We exchanged clenched fist worker salutes and even bigger smiles.
Not that the forces of repression are not omnipresent. The streets are patrolled by the municipal, state and Federal police in pickup trucks, with policemen in the back wearing helmets and flack vests and armed with assault rifles. The Federal police are the most ominous – they frequently wear masks.
At a festival in the Zocalo before Christmas, thousands of people were present and TV cameras were set up to cover the governor as he addressed the crowds. Heavily armed police were on the rooftops and in the crowds. Riot squads were in nearby side streets. When Pauline and I witness these events, we feel like volcanologists monitoring tremors. We will keep you informed.
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The year 2010 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. The word is that 2010 is going to be a hot year, made so by the resistance. The economy in the U.S. and our treatment of Mexican immigrants have driven tens of thousands of migras back to impoverished Southern Mexico. Neo-liberalism, made law by NAFTA, has forced two million small farmers off the land and has devastated Mexican manufacturing industries. In Oaxaca and Chiapas it is capitalist agriculture destroying an essentially peasant, mostly indigenous rural economy.
In losing their U.S. jobs, these returning workers have lost the income that was crucial to their families here. Now they are coming home and finding no work. The price of tortillas is going up and the Federal Government is talking about a 2% sales tax on all consumer items. Two per cent might not sound like much in the Imperial Center, but here in the colonies, where malnutrition is widespread, the people say it is better to die fighting than to starve to death.
Floating on tourist and expat money, the City of Oaxaca is a relatively prosperous island surrounded by a sea of dire rural poverty. Even here, there are many barrios of improvised shacks with palm leaf roofs and cardboard walls. In the countryside of Southern Mexico, there are thousands of empty villages whose men have gone north in search of work. The lands lie fallow and are being bought up by speculators hoping to turn them into the sort of factory farms that blight Northern Mexico.
My Spanish is still inadequate to learn much from talking to those who don’t speak English, so I am reliant upon those who do. I had the privilege recently of being introduced to an older man. Like me, he was a lifelong socialist; like me he was waiting for the revolution; and like me, he wanted to live long enough to see it.
He told me that he hadn’t pinned any hopes on Obama, but that he had friends who had been stripped of their illusions by the Honduran coup. He had no doubt that the first task of the Mexican revolution was to free the nation from U.S. neo-imperialism. As is common among the people here, especially the more educated, he was conversant with the history of American interventions and invasions. Obama to him was just one more enforcer of an interventionist policy that runs back in a straight line from Obama to G. H. Bush, through Reagan and Eisenhower, to Woodrow Wilson.
The victims of aggression have much longer memories than the aggressors.
Most of the Mexican people are quite forgiving of the individual American. A few days ago, a man in his forties stopped me on the street to tell me that he had just been deported after 15 years in Los Angeles and he was hungry and could I help him. I gave him a few pesos and apologized for the vicious stupidity of my government. He was embarrassed by my apology. He told me it was not necessary; that he knew from his 15 years in the States that the decent people of our country had very little effect on government policy.
One of the more outstanding contrasts between the situation here and that in Seattle is the frequency of protest marches. Paradoxically, in this repressive environment they don’t need a police permit to gather peacefully and petition the government – that is, unless the authorities fear international embarrassment, as when the Orator in Chief was in Mexico City arming the repression under the guise of the War on Drugs. The organizers let the cops know they are going to march, and when and where, and a few traffic cops show up to stop traffic at intersections. No squads in riot gear or bicycle cops pushing people around.
We recently witnessed a march of a couple of hundred people, tiny by Oaxaca standards. The marchers were carrying dozens of red flags and posters calling for the ouster of the governor. As we stood watching them go by, and grinning from ear to ear, my eyes met those of one of the participating taxi drivers. He gave me a big smile and thumbs up. We exchanged clenched fist worker salutes and even bigger smiles.
Not that the forces of repression are not omnipresent. The streets are patrolled by the municipal, state and Federal police in pickup trucks, with policemen in the back wearing helmets and flack vests and armed with assault rifles. The Federal police are the most ominous – they frequently wear masks.
At a festival in the Zocalo before Christmas, thousands of people were present and TV cameras were set up to cover the governor as he addressed the crowds. Heavily armed police were on the rooftops and in the crowds. Riot squads were in nearby side streets. When Pauline and I witness these events, we feel like volcanologists monitoring tremors. We will keep you informed.
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