MEXICO CITY—Utmost care had been exerted by the
Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to prepare the stage for the “impeccable”
electoral process that culminated on July 1. For months, day in and day out,
the media drummed the message that there would be no excuse for not voting:
this time, all precautions had been taken to guarantee a clean election. With
great fanfare, the four registered presidential candidates signed an agreement
binding them to respect the results.
For a long
time, however, it had been quite obvious that big money had already selected
the next president. More specifically, it had infused enormous amounts of cash
into the race in order to bring forth a near miracle—to revive the PRI
(Revolutionary Institutional Party), the political machinery that had served
the dictatorship centered on an all-powerful president and had oppressed Mexico for the last 70 years of the 20th
century. A telegenic state governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, had been chosen, and
no largesse was spared. The TV monopolies went as far as organizing Peña’s
wedding with a soap-opera actress, including a trip to visit the Pope at the Vatican.
The
backdrop to this cheap comedy was the widely felt perception that the whole
country has been sinking under the presidency of Felipe Calderón, who had also
been chosen by the owners of Mexico. Calderón had dutifully obeyed his
master’s voice in Washington, and carried out a disastrous
extension of the ineffectual and discredited 30-year-old “war of drugs.”
Nobody
really knows how many people have died during the last five years and a half
because of Calderon’s brute-force approach, but the number of victims most
probably lies between 50,000 to 100,000 (most of them people who had nothing to
do with trafficking, and much less with armed crime). When the Army and Navy
were unleashed in a purported fight against the drug lords, the PAN government
brought out a monster that preyed on society, as has been only too evident in
the state of Chihuahua.
The world
economic crisis hit Mexico’s economy really hard in 2009, and
since then economic growth has been lackluster at best. The most evident
problem is the huge youth unemployment rate.
A profound
apathy towards elections and the registered political parties had set in, in
great measure as a consequence of Calderon’s rigged election victory in 2006.
Only a small proportion of potential voters seemed to be paying any attention
to the boring campaigns of this year’s three main contenders: Peña Nieto, for
the PRI; the PAN’s Josefina Vázquez Mota, who used every opportunity to promote
herself as “different;” and the so-called candidate for the left, Andrés Manuel
López Obrador, who was running under the slogan that he would preside over a
“loving republic” (“la república amorosa”).
López
Obrador retained only shreds (substantial shreds, but shreds nonetheless) of
the popularity he had enjoyed in 2006. His party, the PRD (Party of the
Democratic Revolution), had been suffering serious defeats as a consequence of
betrayal of the aspirations of its followers, and also because of the
corruption and incompetence of many of its elected mayors and governors. In
order to distance themselves from the PRD, many of López Obrador’s closest
followers created a whole collection of groups and fronts as a way of promoting
their candidate.
The
“loving” candidate (“el amoroso”) had radically changed his rhetoric from
emphasizing his worries for the poor and destitute in 2006 to an effort to
create the most attractive image possible towards business people—going as far
as publicly forgiving the media monopolies for the role they had played in the
last election. His efforts were to no avail; all polls showed that his ratings
were far behind Peña Nieto.
The
YoSoy132 movement
At the end
of May, a totally unexpected phenomenon changed the electoral climate. Students
at a private university for the well-to-do, the Iberoamerican University (popularly known as La Ibero),
carried out a loud and energetic protest against Peña Nieto, during a visit his
campaign organizers had regarded as simply routine. At one point, the PRI’s
candidate had to run in order to avoid the students, who reminded him that he
had repressed the inhabitants of Atenco township near Mexico City (a repression that included serious
human rights violations, including rapes and torture).
With the
usual help by the TV monopolies, the PRI’s machine answered this affront with
its usual slandering: those who protested were not real students, but
provocateurs who had been planted by Peña’s opponents. This inflamed the
protesting students even more, and they called on colleagues from nearby
universities to join them in protesting in front of one of the main studios of
the Televisa consortium, a dominating media corporation that they correctly
perceived as being central in the huge operation to install Peña as president.
One hundred
and thirty-one students put together a video on YouTube to show their
Iberoamerican University ID cards. Many more had posted their own videos
claiming “I am 132.” And so, the #YoSoy132 movement was born. The movement
quickly spread to the main university in Mexico, UNAM.
The
movement’s most visible feature is its repugnance toward the PRI and the TV
monopolies, and it has inspired not only huge concentrations and
demonstrations, but a widespread and enthusiastic monitoring of the electoral
process as well.
López
Obrador’s ratings began to climb rapidly, leaving PAN’s candidate far behind.
The chance of stopping the PRI created a massive wave or electoral enthusiasm.
“El amoroso” López Obrador proudly announced that he was going to win the
elections.
No matter
how much López Obrador courted them, however, the owners of Mexico had planned otherwise, and the size
of the humongous machinery they had set in motion was only too evident. On June
26, just a few days before the election, the London-based newspaper The
Guardian claimed it had received information that proved Televisa had been
using a secret unit to promote Peña and to “rubbish” his rivals.
More and
more evidence
July 1 was
the day of reckoning for all electoral illusions. As voters went to cast their
votes, more and more disquieting evidence of the magnitude of the fraud began
to appear in internet sites run by citizens’ groups who were monitoring the
elections. Contamos.org.mx, for instance, was flooded with complaints about
ballots being stolen in one place or another, all sorts of irregularities at
voting stations (especially in PRI dominated districts), and most notoriously,
the widespread buying of votes. The aforementioned contamos.org.mx has been
exhibiting a video taken inside a PRI so-called “raccoon hideout”(an epithet
that is very unfair to raccoons, of course) where people are shown receiving
money in exchange for their electoral ID cards.
In the
evening, when preliminary results were announced, with Peña pulling several
points ahead of his rivals, López Obrador was stunned. He had no further
messages other than he would wait until the counting was over, and that he
would abide by his promise to respect the results.
On Monday,
July 2, people who had received the PRI’s money in the form of pre-paid cards
for the Soriana supermarket chain, went wild trying to spend their money as
fast as possible, and clogged many of the chain’s stores. Two of these stores
had to be closed by authorities, due to safety concerns. PRI spokespeople deny
that these tumults had anything to do with the elections, claiming the pre-paid
cards were legally given out by the State of Mexico’s Education Department as part of a
stimulus program.
The Mexico City daily La jornada sent reporters to
the stores, and they spoke to several people who had sold out their votes only
to find out that that their cards had no funds (www.jornada.unam.mx, July 5).
In several State of Mexico districts that are very close to Mexico City, the
PRI operatives “offered cards with 1500 pesos [about 110 U.S. dollars], but
only if we gave them our voter ID.” The operatives asked for a photo of the
ballot, with the PRI symbol crossed out and, in exchange, they handed out the
cards. All those interviewed claimed to have acted “out of necessity.”
There is no
doubt that the U.S. State Department was very much aware of how Peña Nieto’s
victory was being cooked (as evidenced by U.S. Embassy cables published in
Wiki-leaks), and there is little doubt it was also aware of the scam unfolding
on election day. So the only reason for Obama to rush to congratulate the PRI’s
candidate shortly after the preliminary results were announced is that the U.S. government was complicit in the
show.
While López
Obrador is trying to channel discontent into a lengthy and tricky legal
process, the #YoSoy132 movement has pledged to continue its protests, and to
spread them far and wide.
The FIS:
a new front is born
Socialist
Action’s sister organization in Mexico, Liga de Unidad Socialista (LUS), had been
waging an energetic campaign to create awareness that the election had already
been set up, and called on potential allies to form a political front to
explain that the poor, the exploited, and the oppressed of Mexico were not
represented by any of the registered candidates. Four organizations answered
our initial call: the Grupo de Acción Revolucionaria (GAR), a Trotskyist
organization that was formed mainly by activists and leaders of the 1999-2000
student strike at UNAM; the network around Madera, a web-based newspaper led by
former guerrilla fighters and political prisoners of the 1970s; the Partido
Obrero Socialista-MAS (POS-MAS), another Trotskyist organization, who had
launched the leader of a successful workers cooperative, Jesús Torres Nuño, as
a non-registered presidential candidate; and a women’s rights organization, the
Feministas Comunistas.
Preceded by
several joint actions, on June 23, these four groups and the LUS announced the
formation of the Frente de Izquierda Socialista (FIS) in a very enthusiastic
ceremony attended by 150 people. The wide majority of those present were young,
and many are active participants and leaders in the #YoSoy132 movement.
Also
present at the founding of the FIS were participants of the Atenco township,
one of the most important symbols or popular movements in Mexico. The leaders of this movement
addressed the gathering in very enthusiastic terms, but explained that their
organization could not join the FIS because it, by its very nature, was
politically plural. Dozens of participants from several other movements and
regions of Mexico addressed the meeting as well,
which ended with the singing of “The Internationale.”
The
participating organizations are considering not only joint actions but a deeper
political discussion on how to effectively propel the demands included in their
front’s proclamation, such as the need for truly democratic elections, a
Constituent Assembly, the 35-hour week, an end to impunity (referring to the
fact that human rights abuses by police and other officials rarely go to
trial), and other crucial questions that affect the Mexican population. The
FIS’s initial program culminates in the goal of forming a workers and peasants
government. The foundation of this front has opened an opportunity to give wide
visibility to a program that represent the interests of workers, the poor, the
oppressed, and all those that were invisible for the rich and powerful that
staged the electoral show.
> The
article above was written by Jaime Gonzalez, and is reprinted from the July
2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.
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