The
Spirit Of Resistance In Mexico City
By Stephen Lendman
03 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
National Action Party (PAN) candidate
Felipe Calderon had center stage at 12:01 AM, December 1 at the presidential
residence of Los Pinos as Mexico's new president addressed the country
on national television after a brief stealth swearing-in ceremony for
him to the office he didn't win and will now assume illegitimately because
of the fraud-laden electoral coup d'etat that gave it to him. He then
had to be slipped in a back door of the Congress later that morning
to take the oath of office there, as constitutionally required, in a
second "lightning-fast" chaotic ceremony preceded by a brawl
between lawmakers for and against the new president who then left as
fast as he entered and is now off to a rocky start.
At the same time, outside
in Mexico City's streets, hundreds of thousands of people assembled
early in the morning in the vast Zocalo square supporting opposition
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,
who changed his earlier plans to march on Congress and instead held
a peaceful mass-protest march of his supporters through the city center
to avoid clashes with the police that might have turned violent. It
went as far as Chapultepec Park, the entrance to the secured area, to
demonstrate opposition to Mr. Calderon and to support Lopez Obrador
who was denied the presidency he won now handed over illegitimately
to Mr. Calderon. Obrador told the crowd his fight will continue because
"it is not possible that there are no democratic elections in Mexico.
We are not rebels without a cause, like the media want to portray us.
Sometimes they forget the real issue at hand, they forget that we were
robbed of the presidential election."
Earlier on Tuesday, November
28, opposition legislators occupied the speaker's podium in the Parliament's
Chamber of Deputies lower house where Calderon was scheduled to be sworn
in as is customary. They remained there, humiliating Mr. Calderon and
forcing him first to settle for a well-guarded private bewitching hour
ceremony, unprecedented in the country's history, and then have to repeat
it in the brawling environment of the lower house and mass-opposition
controlled anger in the streets outside. Not a good way to begin a presidency
that may not get any easier ahead. It led the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs (COHA) on December 1 to write an article with the long and ominous
title - "With Calderon's Deeply Troubled Inauguration Last Night,
Amidst a Deteriorating Security Situation in Oaxaca, the Possibility
of a New Mexican Revolution Cannot Be Ruled Out." What COHA didn't
say was that it appears that revolution may have already begun and is
beginning to spread slowly throughout most parts of the county where
"the people the color of the earth" live and are now demanding
their rights.
In the earlier wee-hours
ceremony COHA referred to, Calderon was presented the tri-color ceremonial
sash by outgoing PAN president Vincente Fox, and it now remains to be
seen what he can do with it as he assumes his new office in a weakened
position against an opposition with vast support determined to continue
resisting his legitimacy. For weeks following the fraud-laden July 2
general election, mass protests filled the streets of Mexico City and
its vast Zocalo square.
The struggle continued in
an atmosphere of post-election turmoil that energized the Mexican public
including the courageous people of Oaxaca who've been battling since
May for the rights they've long been denied including the removal of
the corrupt and repressive state governor Ulises Ruiz and united to
do it by forming the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).
They're now faced off against 4500 of the country's Federal Preventative
Police (PFP) and thuggish paramilitary assassins sent to the state to
target them. Still, they've stood their ground bravely in their determined
confrontation that shows no signs of ending despite brutal police harassment
on the streets with tear-gassing, illegal home searches and seizures,
people disappeared, many dozens or hundreds illegally arrested for protesting
injustice and falsely accused of "hindering free passage, sedition,
criminal association, conspiracy, theft, rebellion, and threats"
and at least 17 killed including American documentary filmmaker and
jurnalist Brad Will and dozens wounded.
Weeks before the early morning
stealth inauguration in Mexico City, the ruling PAN party set up a militarized
zone around the Chamber of Deputies in the capital preparing for whatever
might unfold in the run-up to December 1 and its aftermath still to
come. The area was turned into an armed camp with 1200 elite PFP in
riot gear along with Police of the Presidential Guard manning checkpoints
in the surrounding streets in an atmosphere of martial law that persists
and may signal trouble ahead on the streets of Mexico City similar to
what's now happening in Oaxaca and beginning to spread elsewhere.
In addition, three-meter
high metal fences were erected around the Chamber of Deputies building
and remain in place, closing it off like a fortress needing protection
from the people of Mexico the elected leaders are supposed to represent
but never do in a country with a long tradition of authoritarian rule,
corruption, dismissiveness of peoples' rights, and service only to the
interests of wealth and power. The scene there represents an ominous
symbol of state repression past and more likely to come that Felipe
Calderon signaled on November 20 when he said: "My government will
make use of all the force of the Mexican state, with the laws at hand
and the power of the institutions. This is a war that we are going to
win..."
Straightaway, this man shows
he means it by his appointment of Jalisco Governor Francisco Ramirez
Acuna to the powerful post of Interior Minister that effectively puts
him in charge of state-directed repression. He assumes his new office
with a well-earned reputation in his home state as a hard line authoritarian
known for cracking down on protesters and imprisoning dissidents while,
at the same time, allowing narco-traffickers and criminal entrepreneurs
safe haven under his jurisdiction and benefitting along with them.
He, Mr. Calderon, and others
in the new government will get plenty of support for what they have
in mind from the Bush administration. It has its eye on exploiting all
remaining parts of Mexico it hasn't yet gotten its hands on since it
grabbed so much of it from the IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies
of the 1980s that resulted in large-scale privatizations of state-owned
industries, economic deregulation favorable to Washington, and mandated
wage restraint that held pay increases below the rate of inflation whenever
any were gotten at all.
Calderon and Bush will also
be close allies working together to further the business gains already
in place from the destructive 1994 NAFTA agreement that predatory corporate
giants benefitted hugely from and now want to broaden into a North American
union, effectively erasing the borders of the three NAFTA-participating
countries and surrendering the sovereignty of the two smaller ones to
the hegemony of the one dominant one, adversely affecting the people
of all three countries who always end up the losers in deals like this,
if it happens.
If the opposition in Mexico
has any say about it, post-election schemes cooked up by the PAN in
service to its dominant northern neighbor may not go as planned. Opposition
PRD candidate Lopez Obrador (ALMO, as he's affectionately known) promises
to resist the new illegitimate government, and on November 20 (the anniversary
date of Mexico's 1910 revolution) conducted his own swearing-in ceremony
in Mexico City's Zocalo as Mexico's "legitimate president"
before hundreds of thousands of supporters. He named his cabinet members
joining him and told the crowd "There are millions of Mexicans
who are not willing to accept more abuses (and that his) legitimate
government (would work for the poor)." He added Mr. Calderon (he
calls a US "puppet") "cannot feel secure (in the office
he didn't win and he's) the lowly servant of the white-collar criminals
(who stole it for him)." He also presented 20 measures he intends
to work for including preventing the privatization of the nation's energy
sector Big US Oil has log eyed to control.
The battle lines are now
drawn and began peacefully on the streets near the Parliament building
on December 1 in response to Lopez Obrador asking his supporters to
come out in them in protest with more sure to follow. Security forces
have been there for months and will be aligned against them whenever
they're in the streets or square and were joined by hundreds of Navy
officers deployed around the Parliament, at least for the inauguration,
already protected by several thousand elite police and members of the
Presidential Guard. This was just day one of round one as Felipe Calderon
begins his potentially turbulent six-year term in office that may hold
many surprises as it unfolds.
The people of Mexico have
shown they're fed up with decades of fraud, corruption and abuse and
for months have taken to the streets in numbers large enough to make
a difference and for the world to take note. They're joined in protest
by their comrades in Oaxaca, other states, and by Subcomandante Marcos
and the many thousands of his supporters and organizations across the
country. He's leading them in his national Zapatista Other Campaign
organized outside the political process to end Mexico's unjust economic
system of neoliberal predatory capitalism wanting to replace it with
a democratic system of social and economic justice for the people in
a country long denied either.
Events ebb and flow south
of the border, but overall the atmosphere's electric and more ripe for
change now than it's been since Emiliano Zapata Salazar's heroic efforts
led a national revolutionary movement against the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship
in 1910 that overthrew him the following year. It was historic and now
is a symbol of what courageous people hope will ignite a new spirit
of resistance leading to change in what may be a watershed moment in
Mexico's history.
If it happens, it won't come
without struggle. Mexican governments aren't known for yielding easily
to protests against their authority, and this one can expect plenty
of help from the Bush administration already reeling from the opposition
it faces in a growing number of Latin American nations and sure to become
more hostile and determined to resist new threats in the region as they
arise. For Washington, Mexico is the cornerstone of the hemisphere it
feels it has a lien on and losing it would be another catastrophic blow
adding to its strategic defeats in the Middle East brought on by the
Bush administration's arrogance, blunders and ineptness.
The people of Mexico have
other ideas, they're now playing out in real time, and as events ahead
unfold it may be that Mexican history will be made in the hearts of
the people and the spirit they show in the streets they take to and
not in the halls of power where it usually happens.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights