By Johnny Hazard
The Mexican movement in resistence to electoral fraud nears the two-month mark with no sign of letting up. The electoral tribunal ordered a partial (nine percent!) recount, which, though completed two weeks ago, has not been acted upon. The tribunal has until September 6 to declare a victor or annul the election. Observers` reports indicate that in the districts where the electoral packets were officially counted, massive inconsistencies were found. According to the campaign of left populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two thirds of the packets opened had either more votes registered than ballots or vice versa. He claims to have evidence that, were all the votes to be correctly counted, he would beat right-wing candidate Felipe Calderón by two million votes. (Current officialist results show Calderón winning by about 240,000 votes.)
On August 6, at the largest of several marches that have taken place in favor of López Obrador and/or against the fraud, those present decided to take advantage of the critical mass--two million people in the streets--and convoke a "permanent assembly" in much of the center of the city, occupying the Zócalo (central plaza) and one major and two less important, traffic-wise, but symbolic streets. Today I read a report from a U.S. corporate information service called Stratfor informing that only 4,000 to 8,000 people continue to participate in the movement. Funny, because I arrived at the daily assembly a few hours later and couldn`t even enter the plaza until many of those present left. This took about twenty minutes. Despite daily rain, frequent hail, and strong winds, the people are staying.
What I heard first from the sidelines as I arrived was López Obrador challenging the pundits who, U.S.-style, have taken to crying CLASS WARFARE whenever the poor or the dissident respond to the, well, class warfare of the right. Referring to his right-wing, ruling class adversaries, his words were:
"Of course they`re classist. Of course they´re racist. Of course they discriminate. All of this is simply coming to the surface now."
Responding to the allegation that he´s manipulating people to satisfy his unquenchable search for power, he said:
"Power isn´t palaces, nor is it accumulating titles and occupying positions of influence; power is the people....The candidate of the right is beginning to make appearances in some states, surrounded by body guards, using all the security apparatus really reserved for the president, appearing with the media personalities who suck up to him, with the sycophants. Do you think he´ll be able to govern that way? I will remind him that the stain of an electoral fraud can`t be washed away with all the waters of the oceans." Later, again alluding to Calderón´s campanions in the fourth estate, he said: "Referring to the fraud, there has been a compliant silence in the news media, with some honorable exceptions." In spite of this belief, shared with more passion by most of those present, he denied rumors that he would soon advocate the taking over of media facilities as is happening in the state of Oaxaca, where activists for a different cause are occupying several TV and radio stations:
"I neither celebrate nor condemn these actions." Many in the crowd were clearly ready to move their tents to Televisa, the largest Mexican network.
In López Obrador we see an activist/leader who is not prone to depression and who is not afraid. He is the rare politician who, if we can resort to macho language, has balls. Yet he insists on non-violence. Non-violence in a country where no one has been to non-violence workshops, as was the case during the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s and in more recent movements. Non-violence in a country where Martin Luther King and Mohandas Ghandi are familiar names only to the educated, where Henry David Thoreau is almost completely unknown, where the principal heroes--and not just on the left--are Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Che Guevara, people who advocated and engaged in, shall we say, more aggressive tactics than López Obrador.
Wandering among the camps in the Zócalo or along Reforma, Juárez, and Madero Avenues, about an eight-mile stretch, you can see something similar to Woodstock, in the left kitsch way that Abbie Hoffman described it: an improvised but intentional community where people learn new forms of living with others. Even the mayor-elect, Marcelo Ebrard, a former police chief who many have considered to be López Obrador´s yuppie Achilles heel--he´s his preferred successor--has been living on the street and participating fulltime.
Some serious yuppie whiners have gone as far as to file human rights complaints because they can`t use Reforma in their cars nor, in many places, even cross it. The response of the movement is to say that human rights are for human beings, not for cars. The face of the city is changing as places once dominated by cars are now dominated by--how vulgar!--people.
The area outside the Congress, on the other hand, is now controlled by the military-like Policía Preventiva Federal (PFP) who are really denying access to everyone, pedestrians, neighbors, and in some cases opposition congress members included. (Some were tear-gassed recently.) This cordoning, and the positioning of water tanks with hoses, is in preparation for outgoing president Vicente Fox´s final State-of-the-Union-like informational speech on September 1. The anti-fraud movement has called for disruption, inside the halls and outside, of this speech. Actually, Fox´s annual speeches have never gone off without disruption, even his first one, when he`d only been in office nine months. I remember the event: I`d lived in Mexico for a little over a year, and this was, I think, the first time I saw Mexican television. Opposition congress members held up protest signs every few minutes and occasionally yelled slogans or jokes. This happens in almost every country except the U.S., where an antidemocratic sense of decorum prevails even during moments of elevated opposition to a given president`s policies, like during the Vietnam war, Watergate, and the current war.
Fox`s designated successor, Calderón, is keeping a low profile, which is fitting, because he`s personally irrelevant, a figurehead, little known before grabbing the nomimation of his party from better-known opponents. López Obrador, in spite of being shut out or branded a loser by most major media, continues to dominate discussion. His and his movement`s strategy now seems to be not to bother to see what the tribunal will say. They are calling for a National Convention of Democracy for September 16, Mexican independence day. (The previous night is traditionally when the president heads an independence ceremony in the Zócalo.) Fox recently announced that he has no intention to change that plan despite the Zócalo´s being occupied by his opponents and López Obrador´s announced intention to lead an alternative celebration before launching the convention in the same site the next morning. The convention harkens back almost 100 years to the time of the Mexican Revolution, when major decisions were taken in similar conventions. And it´s worth remembering that the straw that broke the camel´s back and started that revolution was an election fraud committed by "free-market" president-for-life Porfirio Díaz against Francisco Madero, another politician who wasn´t much of a leftist but who...had huevos.
Johnny Hazard is a former Minneapolis resident who now teaches in Mexico City. You can contact him at jhazard99@yahoo.com
A los hijos del Status Quo
Centro Cultural
José Martí
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