Mexico slips and slides towards its July 5th mid-term election rendez-vous with belief in the legitimacy of the electoral - or any other governmental - institutions at an all time low. Turnout is expected to be an anemic 30% at best, and of that 30%, a growing campaign to spoil the ballot paper with one big X is gaining ground even among people who usually don't agree on anything else. The result could be - even given the highly dubious premise of an above-board election - a pack of 500 diputados (deputies, members of Mexico's lower house known as the Camara di Diputados) each elected by a third or so of 30%, plus the ballot spoilers, making for a plurality of less than 10% of the adult, voting-age population in their districts.
Low turnouts, of course, help the party with the best get-out-the-vote machine and core of loyal - or simply purchased - voters (known in Mexico as the "hard vote," or voto duro, traditionally made up of loyal "unions" and other organizations whose members vote as blocs), and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has 70+ years of experience in getting people to mark their box...by any means necessary. As for the foundering PAN, eager to avoid an argument over the tanking economy, the tack continues to be to point menacingly at enemies within and without: viruses (I saved the world from swine flu, contends an inebriated-looking Calderon on national television) and drugs (Support the President in his fight against organized crime, implores party propoganda) and to count on a potential alliance with the national teachers' union headed by Elba Esther Gordillo and good, old-fashioned governmental vote-rigging to avoid an otherwise-cataclysmic result. And as for the floundering PRD (the PAN founders, the PRD flounders), divided between the New Left (Nueva Izquierda or "NI," which columinst Julio Hernández has suggested truly stands for Ni Izquierda: Not the Left) -which with outside help and yet another baseless ruling by the Electoral Tribunal has taken control of the party machinery - and supporters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, "divided we fall" takes on a whole new, and imminent meaning.
In response to the New-Left hijacking of the PRD, and the refusal on its part to re-establish the three-party "Por el Bien de Todos" coalition of 2006, López Obrador has been urging his supporters in most of the country to vote for the other two members of that coalition: Convergencia and the Worker's Party, or PT. The strategy here is two-fold: first, to spank the national PRD machinery, led by Jesus Ortega, and the state parties in places where they have effectively sold out (Obrador is supporting PRD candidates only in Mexico City and his home state of Tabasco); and second, to ensure that the other two parties get enough votes to maintain their registros - or registries, government funds for parties that exceed a 2% vote threshold. This is all part of Obrador's one foot in-one foot out dance with the party he helped found - hoping to be the party's standard bearer once again in 2012 by maintaining other avenues open in case the path becomes blocked if anyone by Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who has already all-but-openly declared his candidacy, as well as to maintain a loyal wedge of deputies in Congress over and against the Ortega-ite wing of the PRD, known as the Chuchos.
So look for a new Congress with the PRIAN (the PRI-PAN duopoly) majority at least as large as the current one, if not larger, with the coopted sectors of the PRD added on, leaving little room open to the citizens' movement that struggled so hard, and successfully, to avoid PEMEX being privatized in the last session. Look for PEMEX privatization to be back on the table, as well as the proposal killed off in the Fox years to extend the value-added IVA tax to food and medicines, another blow to a recession-weary public, and Calderon's continued push for expanded executive powers that has even Senator 'Don' Beltrones openly worried about the progression of the nation in the direction of fascism (see Calderon's machine-gun military arrests of ten elected officials in Michoacan, without charges). In legislative terms, in short, things do not bode well for the next three years. What the non-party movements will be able to achieve on the streets through their activism is the only speck of hope on a gray legislative horizon.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
"Mexican" Flu: the 9/11 Katrina
Though Felipe Calderón has been trying his best to turn the Swine Flu Scare of 2009 into his personal 9/11, a quick look at the facts shows the resemblance to much closer with Hurricaine Katrina. Then again, if we are talking about 9/11 in terms of governmental negligence on a grand scale, the comparison is also apt. Now that the dust is settling, for the moment, on the worst of the hysteria, let's take a walk down Influenza Lane and see how that heady brew of corruption, incompetence and neo-liberal philosophy combined to make the Mexican Government the world's laughingstock.
First, the neoliberal philosphy: cut governmental services. In this case, the closing of the National Hygiene Institute and the National Virology Institute - whose job it was to investigate viral strains and to design vaccinations to combat them - under Ernesto Zedillo (and no doubt applauded by the IMF, which has recently extended a new loan to Mexico, keeping it under its yoke). This left only Birmex, the public laboratories for biology and reagents, but Vicente Fox did the work here, dismentaling the labs and privatizing them. The coup de grace was provided by the Little Napoleon himself, Calderón, whose 2009 budget reduced funds for epidemiological vigilance by 3.5%, a capper on years of underfunding of the Health Secretariat and the IMSS (private sector workers) and ISSSTE (government workers) health services. This to mention the privatizing of pensions and the funneling of these funds to the banks and the stock market, removing one of these institutions' main means of support.
Now, the incompetence. As far back as December of 2008 (earlier than I had known when I wrote my previous post), there was an outbreak of a serious respiratory sickness in La Gloria, Veracruz. Townspeople, who have protested for years against the presence of Granjas Carroll, owned by Smithfield Foods (see Jeff Tietz's 2006 exposé of Smithfield in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters) sounded the alarm, but little was done except to spray the pig shit piles with insecticide. Here is where the index case of swine flu was discovered in Edgar Hernández. Between the 10th and 20th of March, the World Health Organization, according to their April 29th report, asked Mexico for information about what was happening in La Gloria, and got a response which was apparently somwhere between Homer Simpson and Alfred E. Neuman. In the following month, 47 more cases of severe pneumonia were reported in various parts of the country, 12 of which proved fatal, but the government kept a lid on things, according to some analysts in order to avoid the canceling of Barack Obama's visit to Mexico - thus potentially putting the US President at lethal risk and even infecting one of his bodyguards, according to some reports, with the influenza. With all of this, it wasn't until April 13th that the first samples of infected persons were taken, which were not sent off until April 22nd, and the startling analysis came back on the 23rd. And so the panic began: schools and offices closed, people told to stay home, wildly gyrating reports of contagions and deaths, and most ominously, a presidential decree - which remains in force - allowing the government to enter into homes without a warrant, to quarantine people indefinitely, and to break up public demonstrations, all on health grounds. Four days after the alert, a laboratory was finally set up to track the outbreak. To effectively do so, 500 samples a day were needed; the laboratory was equipped to handle 15.
As it turned out, this flu is not lethal if treated on time, and practically very few have died in other countries, but Mexico's shabby health system, after first skimping for years on prevention, ignoring the problem when it did break out and then allowing it to spread, was unable to respond by identifying and attending to victims in time, leading to a host of unnecessary deaths. Instead, the governmental response was all propganda and jingoism: Calderón's embarrassing televised speech claiming that Mexico had "defended all of humanity" against the propogation of the virus, his bullying of countries that took sovereign measures to prevent the contagion from entering their countries, including a remarkably crude broadside against Haiti, which refused to let in a Mexican food donation: "They die of hunger there, not of the flu!", and the blatant use of this "firm response" to the crisis for electoral purposes by the PAN. The government's overreaction, in the midst of a recession, led to a drop in tourism, a swathe of bad press and protests from other countries that may shave yet another point off Mexico's nosedive in GDP for this year. To sum it up, in the words of the remarkable political cartoonist "El Fisgon":
"Thus, due to deficiencies in the health sector, the virus was detected late, the danger of it was exaggerated, people died who shouldn't have and, belatedly, radical measures were applied which were unncessary and damaged our economy, affecting our lives and sowing panic across the world."
And...the corruption. Whether or not Granjas Carroll provided the toxic brew where this particular virus was born (and the index case being next door warrants an exhaustive investigation which will never happen), its practices are a known and open scandal. As Al Giordano suggests ( http://www.truthout.org/043009S), this might as well be called the NAFTA flu. Smithfield, which had been forced by the EPA to build a sewage treatment plant and clean up their act even in the Reagan 80's, came down to Mexico to open Granjas Carroll the very same year NAFTA passed, in 1994. Simply put, "the so-called "swine flu" exploded because an environmental disaster simply moved...to Mexico where environmental and worker safety laws, if they exist, are not enforced against powerful multinational corporations." And why aren't they? Because Verazruz's governor, Fidel Herrera - who put down the protests against the Granjas in La Gloria with an iron fist, and once news was out, lashed around for a culprit for the disaster: China! Puebla! - for one is in bed with Smithfield (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/05/04/index.php?section=politica&article=015n1pol). And because the Granjas Carroll perform their own testing which always comes out - surprise! - squeaky clean.
It's a long, sad, but predictable story. And, absent any change, which appears unlikely, it is one that is bound to repeat itself, and with something much more serious than Swine Flu has so far turned out to be. Ignore the problem, propitiate the problem, exaggerate the problem, manipulate the problem - a winning combination!
First, the neoliberal philosphy: cut governmental services. In this case, the closing of the National Hygiene Institute and the National Virology Institute - whose job it was to investigate viral strains and to design vaccinations to combat them - under Ernesto Zedillo (and no doubt applauded by the IMF, which has recently extended a new loan to Mexico, keeping it under its yoke). This left only Birmex, the public laboratories for biology and reagents, but Vicente Fox did the work here, dismentaling the labs and privatizing them. The coup de grace was provided by the Little Napoleon himself, Calderón, whose 2009 budget reduced funds for epidemiological vigilance by 3.5%, a capper on years of underfunding of the Health Secretariat and the IMSS (private sector workers) and ISSSTE (government workers) health services. This to mention the privatizing of pensions and the funneling of these funds to the banks and the stock market, removing one of these institutions' main means of support.
Now, the incompetence. As far back as December of 2008 (earlier than I had known when I wrote my previous post), there was an outbreak of a serious respiratory sickness in La Gloria, Veracruz. Townspeople, who have protested for years against the presence of Granjas Carroll, owned by Smithfield Foods (see Jeff Tietz's 2006 exposé of Smithfield in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters) sounded the alarm, but little was done except to spray the pig shit piles with insecticide. Here is where the index case of swine flu was discovered in Edgar Hernández. Between the 10th and 20th of March, the World Health Organization, according to their April 29th report, asked Mexico for information about what was happening in La Gloria, and got a response which was apparently somwhere between Homer Simpson and Alfred E. Neuman. In the following month, 47 more cases of severe pneumonia were reported in various parts of the country, 12 of which proved fatal, but the government kept a lid on things, according to some analysts in order to avoid the canceling of Barack Obama's visit to Mexico - thus potentially putting the US President at lethal risk and even infecting one of his bodyguards, according to some reports, with the influenza. With all of this, it wasn't until April 13th that the first samples of infected persons were taken, which were not sent off until April 22nd, and the startling analysis came back on the 23rd. And so the panic began: schools and offices closed, people told to stay home, wildly gyrating reports of contagions and deaths, and most ominously, a presidential decree - which remains in force - allowing the government to enter into homes without a warrant, to quarantine people indefinitely, and to break up public demonstrations, all on health grounds. Four days after the alert, a laboratory was finally set up to track the outbreak. To effectively do so, 500 samples a day were needed; the laboratory was equipped to handle 15.
As it turned out, this flu is not lethal if treated on time, and practically very few have died in other countries, but Mexico's shabby health system, after first skimping for years on prevention, ignoring the problem when it did break out and then allowing it to spread, was unable to respond by identifying and attending to victims in time, leading to a host of unnecessary deaths. Instead, the governmental response was all propganda and jingoism: Calderón's embarrassing televised speech claiming that Mexico had "defended all of humanity" against the propogation of the virus, his bullying of countries that took sovereign measures to prevent the contagion from entering their countries, including a remarkably crude broadside against Haiti, which refused to let in a Mexican food donation: "They die of hunger there, not of the flu!", and the blatant use of this "firm response" to the crisis for electoral purposes by the PAN. The government's overreaction, in the midst of a recession, led to a drop in tourism, a swathe of bad press and protests from other countries that may shave yet another point off Mexico's nosedive in GDP for this year. To sum it up, in the words of the remarkable political cartoonist "El Fisgon":
"Thus, due to deficiencies in the health sector, the virus was detected late, the danger of it was exaggerated, people died who shouldn't have and, belatedly, radical measures were applied which were unncessary and damaged our economy, affecting our lives and sowing panic across the world."
And...the corruption. Whether or not Granjas Carroll provided the toxic brew where this particular virus was born (and the index case being next door warrants an exhaustive investigation which will never happen), its practices are a known and open scandal. As Al Giordano suggests ( http://www.truthout.org/043009S), this might as well be called the NAFTA flu. Smithfield, which had been forced by the EPA to build a sewage treatment plant and clean up their act even in the Reagan 80's, came down to Mexico to open Granjas Carroll the very same year NAFTA passed, in 1994. Simply put, "the so-called "swine flu" exploded because an environmental disaster simply moved...to Mexico where environmental and worker safety laws, if they exist, are not enforced against powerful multinational corporations." And why aren't they? Because Verazruz's governor, Fidel Herrera - who put down the protests against the Granjas in La Gloria with an iron fist, and once news was out, lashed around for a culprit for the disaster: China! Puebla! - for one is in bed with Smithfield (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/05/04/index.php?section=politica&article=015n1pol). And because the Granjas Carroll perform their own testing which always comes out - surprise! - squeaky clean.
It's a long, sad, but predictable story. And, absent any change, which appears unlikely, it is one that is bound to repeat itself, and with something much more serious than Swine Flu has so far turned out to be. Ignore the problem, propitiate the problem, exaggerate the problem, manipulate the problem - a winning combination!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Swine Flu Disinformation Show
In the world, flu paranoia reigns, the WHO raising its alert level for the imminent swine flu pandemic to 5, one below its maximum alert level of 6. In Mexico, what reigns is the typical circus of government obfuscation, incompetence and contradiction: what a day before was 159 swine flu deaths has magically dropped, in Benjamin Button-like fashion, to 7 (one can imagine Calderón and Dr. Miguel Angel Lazana, the head of epidimiological vigilance for the Health Secretariat - where incidentally, according to a reporter for El País, nobody is bothering to wear face masks - running the car backward like Ferris Bueller to get the flu odometer back where it started. Okay, two movie references in one sentence: enough). The other 150 now only "huelen" (smell) of influenza. Keep in mind that, for lack of viral assay technology, Mexico has had to send its swabs to a laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada, in order to identify the strain's genome, as Mike Davis reports, wasting a week in the process. Maybe the non-swine cases picked up some other kind of smell on the way there or back.
The question has then been clearly begged: if Ferris Calderón and Co. (same movie reference again, so it doesn't count) have managed to push the number of definitive swine-flu deaths back to 7, or 10, or even 20 (and without even the participation of the Federal Electoral Institute in such magic numbers, as Julio Hernandez pointed out), and if in the United States there has been 1 death of a Mexican infant in Houston, why the world pandemic level of five? Seasonal influenzas kill thousands of people every year. Well, apparently, this is a new virus, a mixture of swine and avian and who knows what else, which there is no history of human immunity to, so contagion could be quick and the consequences severe. So where, then, would such a new virus come from? In Mexico (and with belated interest by the international press), speculation is swirling around the American company Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork packer and hog producer, which is part-owner of a subisidary known as Granjas Carroll (along with Agroindustrias de México) in the Perote Valley in the State of Veracruz, in operation since 1994. Smithfield, which was hit by a enormous civil suit ($1.285 million dollars) in 1985 for violating the US Clean Water Act and $12.6 million dollar judgment in 1996 for falsifying documents and polluting the.Pagan River, through its Granjas Carroll subsidiary, has long been the target of local protests in Veracruz due to the horrible conditions of its 800,000 pig-a-year operations. Residents in surrounding areas, who have been subject to lawsuits for their activism, have complained about the clouds of flies surrounding the manure lagoons formed by such enormous mega-farms, or as they are called in the industry, Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). (see: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6182789.ece)
Without going into the entire timeline, in the nearby town of La Gloria, people started getting sick back in February. As the Times reports (see above link): "Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes." It was here where the first case of swine flu was definitively registered, of a 4 year old named Edgar Hernández (who fortunately has since recovered). As the Times also reports, this is the area famous for the 400 Pueblos, the 400 towns who allege the government stole their land back in 1992. A full 60% of La Gloria's population of 3,000 had sought medical assistance for flu symptoms and respiratory illness.
So if people are wearing masks that the Health Secretariat itself admits doesn't stop contagion, if the number of confirmed swine flu deaths is now apparently falling instead of rising, if flu vaccine shots that used to cost $400 pesos are now being sold in Oaxaca for $1,000 pesos (as a doctor confirmed to me yesterday) and can't even stop such a "new virus" at that, if attention is conveniently being diverted away from the 10,000 deaths from the drug war and the fat new $47 billion loan Mexico has just taken out from the IMF, if the military now has another reason to be out patrolling the streets, what are we to believe? I suppose all we can do is emulate the Mexican Government, which must be obsessively washing its hands at this very moment. Certain stains, however, do not come off.
The question has then been clearly begged: if Ferris Calderón and Co. (same movie reference again, so it doesn't count) have managed to push the number of definitive swine-flu deaths back to 7, or 10, or even 20 (and without even the participation of the Federal Electoral Institute in such magic numbers, as Julio Hernandez pointed out), and if in the United States there has been 1 death of a Mexican infant in Houston, why the world pandemic level of five? Seasonal influenzas kill thousands of people every year. Well, apparently, this is a new virus, a mixture of swine and avian and who knows what else, which there is no history of human immunity to, so contagion could be quick and the consequences severe. So where, then, would such a new virus come from? In Mexico (and with belated interest by the international press), speculation is swirling around the American company Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork packer and hog producer, which is part-owner of a subisidary known as Granjas Carroll (along with Agroindustrias de México) in the Perote Valley in the State of Veracruz, in operation since 1994. Smithfield, which was hit by a enormous civil suit ($1.285 million dollars) in 1985 for violating the US Clean Water Act and $12.6 million dollar judgment in 1996 for falsifying documents and polluting the.Pagan River, through its Granjas Carroll subsidiary, has long been the target of local protests in Veracruz due to the horrible conditions of its 800,000 pig-a-year operations. Residents in surrounding areas, who have been subject to lawsuits for their activism, have complained about the clouds of flies surrounding the manure lagoons formed by such enormous mega-farms, or as they are called in the industry, Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). (see: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6182789.ece)
Without going into the entire timeline, in the nearby town of La Gloria, people started getting sick back in February. As the Times reports (see above link): "Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes." It was here where the first case of swine flu was definitively registered, of a 4 year old named Edgar Hernández (who fortunately has since recovered). As the Times also reports, this is the area famous for the 400 Pueblos, the 400 towns who allege the government stole their land back in 1992. A full 60% of La Gloria's population of 3,000 had sought medical assistance for flu symptoms and respiratory illness.
So if people are wearing masks that the Health Secretariat itself admits doesn't stop contagion, if the number of confirmed swine flu deaths is now apparently falling instead of rising, if flu vaccine shots that used to cost $400 pesos are now being sold in Oaxaca for $1,000 pesos (as a doctor confirmed to me yesterday) and can't even stop such a "new virus" at that, if attention is conveniently being diverted away from the 10,000 deaths from the drug war and the fat new $47 billion loan Mexico has just taken out from the IMF, if the military now has another reason to be out patrolling the streets, what are we to believe? I suppose all we can do is emulate the Mexican Government, which must be obsessively washing its hands at this very moment. Certain stains, however, do not come off.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Meeting in the Zocalo: March 22, 2009 (report)
As Andres Manuel López Obrador steps down from the template after addressing another chock-full meeting in Mexico City's Zocalo, today's blog will be dedicated to a run-down of the events.
The meeting began with an announcement of the formation of Municipal Committees for the Legitimate Government. This follows on yesterday's meeting of 12,000 members of these Municipal Committees, the goal of which are to represent the Legitimate Government in every town and city in the country, and enroll as many people in the legimate government as electors who voted for López Obrador's coalition in the last election - 15 million. Obrador will be making another sweep through each state's capitals from June 1st to the 15th to assist in the establishment of the committees.
Following an eloquent address by Laura Esquivel, most well-known in the United States for her novel "Like Water for Chocolate," Senator Ricardo Monreal of the Worker's Party (PT) took to the stage, and focused his remarks on denouncing five major atrocities in current government policy:
1.) the government's depleting of its dollar reserves in propping up the peso. Who gains, asks Monreal, from buying up cheap dollars from Mexico's Federal Reserve and speculating on them? And why is the announced policy of support for the peso only to last until July, when the legislative elections will be taking place? Will the peso be allowed to go into free-fall after then?
2.) the government's supposed help for small businesses to weather the crisis, 80% of which is actually going to large, oligarchic consortiums such as Soriana, Coppel, Chedraui and Feromex. The government is simply using its anti-crisis funds to buy up the debt of these large consortiums, charged Monreal, acting as their guarantor. Not coincidentally, these are the same companies that supported the electoral fraud of 2006, proselytzing with their employees and contibuting to the media "dirty war".
3.) usurious interest rates on credit cards and banking services. Banks charge for everything, Monreal pointed out, even to the point of charging to close an account. Not suprisingly, the banks are the only institutions reporting profits to their mother nations in this time of crisis. Monreal reported a recent meeting of bankers, where the charges of usury were brushed off: "local lending institutions charge even more!"
4.) Banamex operating illegally. The United States of America, through its bailout of the Citigroup, is now the largest shareholder in Banamex. This is prohibited by the Mexican Constittion and even NAFTA, but Treasury Secretary Carstens is doing nothing about it, preferring instead to offer a three-year waiting period to see if the situation resolves itself.
5.) PEMEX is now giving concessions in blocks of territory to private companies for underground explotation of resources, exactly what the movement warned about when the Pemex law was passed late last year. Of the four counselors recently chosen to form part of Pemex's governing board, none of whom meets the legal requirements: 10 years of experience in the field and no political party connections. In fact, all of the four counselors have party ties: 2 to the PAN, 1 to the PRI and 1 to the PRD hierarchy.
López Obrador began his speech with the gains an unfinished business left with the Pemex issue. The movement succeeded in avoiding privatization of Pemex, but the work remains to avoid the block concessions of exclusive areas that Senator Monreal mentioned, to avoid the endemic corruption of Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), and to prevent Mexico's oil to continue being produced as a raw material for export and instead be used for the domestic production of gasoline ad petrochemical products.
As regards the economic crisis, he reiterated the movement's demands for reductions in the prices of electricity, gasoline and diesel, a reduction in interest rates for loans and mortgages, and a reduction of $200 billion pesos in unnecessary government spending which could be funnelled into social spending: interest-free loans to farmers, advances in health care and education, among others. He also called for the IETU (the flat-rate tax on businesses and the self-employed) tax to be abolished and for pension moneys which were invested in the stock market and losing their value to be protected by the government.
For those who may think our labors are futile, he reminded, without it, things would be a lot worse: Pemex would have been completely privatized and the economic crisis would be even worse. The government was forced into announcing they will build an oil refinery, he noted, after saying there was no money for it. The movement has also forced the government's hand into providing pensions for senior citizens in towns with populations of less than 30,000. Furthermore, a law to set maximum salaries for government officials - which could reduce bloated bureaucratic salaries up to 50% - has been approved in committee and awaits approval by both Houses of Congress. A rally will be held outside of Congress the following Wednesday in support of the bill.
Obrador praised the city government of Mexico City for freezing the cost of the subway at 2 pesos, for providing scholarships for students, increasing medical attention and initiating a program of free medications, and for setting up 300 eateries to make sure people do not go hungry during the crisis. On the national level, the legitimate government is setting up support centers in the capitals of each state to provide legal assistance to people burdened with excessive charges on credit cards, loans and mortgages.
Obrador has recently finished a two-year tour of every single one of the 2,038 municipalities in the country which operate on the political-party system. There remains, he pointed out, the 438 indigenous pueblos in Oaxaca governed by "usos y costumbres" (town meeting government) which he will be hitting later this year. "I am going to live in Oaxaca for a while," he noted.
He further lauded the establishing of the Municipal Committees for the Legitimate Government, which will have four tasks: 1.) organization - "we learned our lesson from 2006," he noted; 2.) support the development of democracy; 3.) support the "people's economy"; 4.) form a national network of information and communication, a nation-wide alternative news and information service, including the establishment of a weekly informative bulletin.
With respect to the national legislative elections in July, besides the standard rallying cry of "Not one vote for the PAN, not one vote for the PRI," Obrador left to each person's criteria which of the parties of the the 2006 coalition to vote for this year: either the PRD, or the "Save Mexico" coalition comrised of Convergencia and the Worker's Party (PT). Personally, he announced, he will be support the Save Mexico Coalition in Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca, and the PRD in Mexico City and Tabasco. The rest of the country he did not mention.
He concluded with a reminder that wealth and privilege in Mexico are more concentrated now than before the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Then, 300 families controlled the wealth of the nation; now, it is 20 or 30. We must form a new republic, one where people are valued for their honesty, and especially, by their generosity. With his standard recitation of Vivas!, Obrador left the stage and the National Movement for the Defense of Oil and the People's Economy returned to its labors.
The meeting began with an announcement of the formation of Municipal Committees for the Legitimate Government. This follows on yesterday's meeting of 12,000 members of these Municipal Committees, the goal of which are to represent the Legitimate Government in every town and city in the country, and enroll as many people in the legimate government as electors who voted for López Obrador's coalition in the last election - 15 million. Obrador will be making another sweep through each state's capitals from June 1st to the 15th to assist in the establishment of the committees.
Following an eloquent address by Laura Esquivel, most well-known in the United States for her novel "Like Water for Chocolate," Senator Ricardo Monreal of the Worker's Party (PT) took to the stage, and focused his remarks on denouncing five major atrocities in current government policy:
1.) the government's depleting of its dollar reserves in propping up the peso. Who gains, asks Monreal, from buying up cheap dollars from Mexico's Federal Reserve and speculating on them? And why is the announced policy of support for the peso only to last until July, when the legislative elections will be taking place? Will the peso be allowed to go into free-fall after then?
2.) the government's supposed help for small businesses to weather the crisis, 80% of which is actually going to large, oligarchic consortiums such as Soriana, Coppel, Chedraui and Feromex. The government is simply using its anti-crisis funds to buy up the debt of these large consortiums, charged Monreal, acting as their guarantor. Not coincidentally, these are the same companies that supported the electoral fraud of 2006, proselytzing with their employees and contibuting to the media "dirty war".
3.) usurious interest rates on credit cards and banking services. Banks charge for everything, Monreal pointed out, even to the point of charging to close an account. Not suprisingly, the banks are the only institutions reporting profits to their mother nations in this time of crisis. Monreal reported a recent meeting of bankers, where the charges of usury were brushed off: "local lending institutions charge even more!"
4.) Banamex operating illegally. The United States of America, through its bailout of the Citigroup, is now the largest shareholder in Banamex. This is prohibited by the Mexican Constittion and even NAFTA, but Treasury Secretary Carstens is doing nothing about it, preferring instead to offer a three-year waiting period to see if the situation resolves itself.
5.) PEMEX is now giving concessions in blocks of territory to private companies for underground explotation of resources, exactly what the movement warned about when the Pemex law was passed late last year. Of the four counselors recently chosen to form part of Pemex's governing board, none of whom meets the legal requirements: 10 years of experience in the field and no political party connections. In fact, all of the four counselors have party ties: 2 to the PAN, 1 to the PRI and 1 to the PRD hierarchy.
López Obrador began his speech with the gains an unfinished business left with the Pemex issue. The movement succeeded in avoiding privatization of Pemex, but the work remains to avoid the block concessions of exclusive areas that Senator Monreal mentioned, to avoid the endemic corruption of Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), and to prevent Mexico's oil to continue being produced as a raw material for export and instead be used for the domestic production of gasoline ad petrochemical products.
As regards the economic crisis, he reiterated the movement's demands for reductions in the prices of electricity, gasoline and diesel, a reduction in interest rates for loans and mortgages, and a reduction of $200 billion pesos in unnecessary government spending which could be funnelled into social spending: interest-free loans to farmers, advances in health care and education, among others. He also called for the IETU (the flat-rate tax on businesses and the self-employed) tax to be abolished and for pension moneys which were invested in the stock market and losing their value to be protected by the government.
For those who may think our labors are futile, he reminded, without it, things would be a lot worse: Pemex would have been completely privatized and the economic crisis would be even worse. The government was forced into announcing they will build an oil refinery, he noted, after saying there was no money for it. The movement has also forced the government's hand into providing pensions for senior citizens in towns with populations of less than 30,000. Furthermore, a law to set maximum salaries for government officials - which could reduce bloated bureaucratic salaries up to 50% - has been approved in committee and awaits approval by both Houses of Congress. A rally will be held outside of Congress the following Wednesday in support of the bill.
Obrador praised the city government of Mexico City for freezing the cost of the subway at 2 pesos, for providing scholarships for students, increasing medical attention and initiating a program of free medications, and for setting up 300 eateries to make sure people do not go hungry during the crisis. On the national level, the legitimate government is setting up support centers in the capitals of each state to provide legal assistance to people burdened with excessive charges on credit cards, loans and mortgages.
Obrador has recently finished a two-year tour of every single one of the 2,038 municipalities in the country which operate on the political-party system. There remains, he pointed out, the 438 indigenous pueblos in Oaxaca governed by "usos y costumbres" (town meeting government) which he will be hitting later this year. "I am going to live in Oaxaca for a while," he noted.
He further lauded the establishing of the Municipal Committees for the Legitimate Government, which will have four tasks: 1.) organization - "we learned our lesson from 2006," he noted; 2.) support the development of democracy; 3.) support the "people's economy"; 4.) form a national network of information and communication, a nation-wide alternative news and information service, including the establishment of a weekly informative bulletin.
With respect to the national legislative elections in July, besides the standard rallying cry of "Not one vote for the PAN, not one vote for the PRI," Obrador left to each person's criteria which of the parties of the the 2006 coalition to vote for this year: either the PRD, or the "Save Mexico" coalition comrised of Convergencia and the Worker's Party (PT). Personally, he announced, he will be support the Save Mexico Coalition in Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca, and the PRD in Mexico City and Tabasco. The rest of the country he did not mention.
He concluded with a reminder that wealth and privilege in Mexico are more concentrated now than before the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Then, 300 families controlled the wealth of the nation; now, it is 20 or 30. We must form a new republic, one where people are valued for their honesty, and especially, by their generosity. With his standard recitation of Vivas!, Obrador left the stage and the National Movement for the Defense of Oil and the People's Economy returned to its labors.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Deconstructing Mexico (Literally)
Suddenly, the word "Mexico" is on everyone's lips - drug-infested narco Mexico, that is, the shadowy projection of America's sunny, white, What-me-bomb? ego consciousness. Defense Secretary Robert Gates goes on Meet the Press to discuss putting aside some of the "old biases" against "cooperation with our - between our miliaries and so on." Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen briefs Obama on what his own Pentagon has conscpicuously labeled as a future failed state, and suggests borrowing from U.S. tactics in the war against terrorism to help Mexico in its drug fight, including the prospect of joint miliary operations; President Obama was reported to be "very interested in what kind of military capabilities could be applied." The governor of Texas calls for the border with Mexico to be militarized, with the military, the National Guard, Customs Agents, whoever. At a ceremony to name a new drug czar, and in the context of bringing about "the demise of the Mexican drug cartels," Vice President Biden suggests that "we've done this before. We did it in Cartagena -- I mean, excuse me, not Cartagena, we did it in Colombia, in Medellin." It has gotten to the point where little Don Lipe, the man who considers himself to be the President of Mexico, has felt it necessary to deny imminent US military involvement in Mexico. Alleging the existence of an international smear campaign designed to make Mexico look bad, Don Lipe goes on to deny that any part of the Federal Government is not in control of certain parts of its territory: "I'll take you there myself," he says with tremulous bravado at a business forum.
US policy towards Mexico is the moral, psychological and practical equivalent of forcing medieval Jews into money-lending, then blaming them for being usurers. The US needs its drug fix just like medieval Christians needed their money lent; better, however, to let a series of faceless Shylocks in their locked-away ghetto take care of the actual grubby business of lending, or in this case, a series of faceless Juans, shipping their merchandise past the borders of their locked-away nation so that a legion of doctors' sons can slip off and do a few lines behind the prep school gymansium.
And would that it stopped at mere demand for drugs. In fact, it is the United States that is arming Mexico to the teeth, either officially, through the Plan Mexico, the first $400 million dollars of which have just been disbursed for the purchase of "Bell helicopters, CASA maritime patrol planes, surveillance software, and other goods and services produced by US private defense contractors," or illegally through arms bought at US gun shops, often by US citizens, and smuggled into Mexico, undercutting Mexico's laudably stiff restrictions on the purchase of firearms. Both Mexican and US officials agree that over 90% of the weapons being used by Mexican drug cartels, including high-powered assault weapons, come straight from gun dealers in Texas, California and Arizona, thanks in large part, as ABC news put it, to "lenient American gun laws." John Smith provides the arms; Juan Pérez dies.
And if any further reminder is needed as to why American military intervention (disguised as "joint operations") in Mexico would be an unmitigated disaster, just have a look at the plan that Plan Mexico was based on: Plan Colombia. At a price tag of $6 billion dollars so far, Plan Colombia doesn't have much to recommend itself. As Robert Naiman reports, "an October report from the Government Accountability Office found that coca-leaf production in Colombia had increased by 15 percent and cocaine production had increased by 4 percent between 2000 and 2006." Human rights have fallen by the wayside: "Washington supports the Colombian government, and therefore the Colombian government can do whatever it wants without restraint." And does, from sending a bombing raid into neighboring Ecuador (Colombian President Uribe as a Latin American Nixon in Cambodia) to tarnishing human rights critics as members of an international guerrilla bloc, causing even members of the US Congress to fear openly for the human rights workers' lives. Result: following El Salvador's election last Sunday, the two remaining Latin American countries with propped up right-wing governments are...well yes, Colombia and Mexico.
But, as a certain Fr. Tothus reminds us in the comments string at the bottom of Robert Naiman's piece (http://www.truthout.org/030909T), it is difficult to be too cynical about what the real motives for Plan Colombia were. He writes:
Stop the drug flow? Human rights? This was never the intent. Plan Columbia's farcical premise was quite successful in providing cover for the actual US corporate aims, however. It provides a cover for US military "training" of quislings ready to overthrow a populist regime. It destroys native farmers and resistance to US Agro imports, impoverishes and starves the already poor. The cash generated keeps Wall Street busy laundering it, and provides funds for further US covert ops against official enemies. The drugs then find their way into American inner cities courtesy of our very own CIA. Meanwhile (surprise) it turns out that it is really a war on only certain drugs. Certainly not the world's deadliest - tobacco - which Columbia (among others) is forced to import and forced to allow advertising for, or US corporate Big Pharma. By US standards, Columbia ought to have the right to fund militant anti-US government groups, bomb our corn fields, and defoliate the Carolinas at the very least.
Mexico is teetering on the edge of this same fate, and Uncle Sam is its enabling accomplice.
US policy towards Mexico is the moral, psychological and practical equivalent of forcing medieval Jews into money-lending, then blaming them for being usurers. The US needs its drug fix just like medieval Christians needed their money lent; better, however, to let a series of faceless Shylocks in their locked-away ghetto take care of the actual grubby business of lending, or in this case, a series of faceless Juans, shipping their merchandise past the borders of their locked-away nation so that a legion of doctors' sons can slip off and do a few lines behind the prep school gymansium.
And would that it stopped at mere demand for drugs. In fact, it is the United States that is arming Mexico to the teeth, either officially, through the Plan Mexico, the first $400 million dollars of which have just been disbursed for the purchase of "Bell helicopters, CASA maritime patrol planes, surveillance software, and other goods and services produced by US private defense contractors," or illegally through arms bought at US gun shops, often by US citizens, and smuggled into Mexico, undercutting Mexico's laudably stiff restrictions on the purchase of firearms. Both Mexican and US officials agree that over 90% of the weapons being used by Mexican drug cartels, including high-powered assault weapons, come straight from gun dealers in Texas, California and Arizona, thanks in large part, as ABC news put it, to "lenient American gun laws." John Smith provides the arms; Juan Pérez dies.
And if any further reminder is needed as to why American military intervention (disguised as "joint operations") in Mexico would be an unmitigated disaster, just have a look at the plan that Plan Mexico was based on: Plan Colombia. At a price tag of $6 billion dollars so far, Plan Colombia doesn't have much to recommend itself. As Robert Naiman reports, "an October report from the Government Accountability Office found that coca-leaf production in Colombia had increased by 15 percent and cocaine production had increased by 4 percent between 2000 and 2006." Human rights have fallen by the wayside: "Washington supports the Colombian government, and therefore the Colombian government can do whatever it wants without restraint." And does, from sending a bombing raid into neighboring Ecuador (Colombian President Uribe as a Latin American Nixon in Cambodia) to tarnishing human rights critics as members of an international guerrilla bloc, causing even members of the US Congress to fear openly for the human rights workers' lives. Result: following El Salvador's election last Sunday, the two remaining Latin American countries with propped up right-wing governments are...well yes, Colombia and Mexico.
But, as a certain Fr. Tothus reminds us in the comments string at the bottom of Robert Naiman's piece (http://www.truthout.org/030909T), it is difficult to be too cynical about what the real motives for Plan Colombia were. He writes:
Stop the drug flow? Human rights? This was never the intent. Plan Columbia's farcical premise was quite successful in providing cover for the actual US corporate aims, however. It provides a cover for US military "training" of quislings ready to overthrow a populist regime. It destroys native farmers and resistance to US Agro imports, impoverishes and starves the already poor. The cash generated keeps Wall Street busy laundering it, and provides funds for further US covert ops against official enemies. The drugs then find their way into American inner cities courtesy of our very own CIA. Meanwhile (surprise) it turns out that it is really a war on only certain drugs. Certainly not the world's deadliest - tobacco - which Columbia (among others) is forced to import and forced to allow advertising for, or US corporate Big Pharma. By US standards, Columbia ought to have the right to fund militant anti-US government groups, bomb our corn fields, and defoliate the Carolinas at the very least.
Mexico is teetering on the edge of this same fate, and Uncle Sam is its enabling accomplice.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Mexico: On the Verge of Collapse?
Apocalyptic predictions about everything from dimes to donuts abound on the internet, and are often worth about a handful of the former or a dozen of the latter. But if the country in question is Mexico, and the year in question 2009, the only risk involved in making forecasts would be to understate the case. Things are, indeed, dire. How dire? Let's take a look.
- The peso has tumbled to 15.30 pesos to the dollar, a 50% devaluation in six months. The Mexican Central Bank continues to auction off dollars in an attempt to halt the slide that has so far done nothing more than, arguably, slow it down somewhat, and - no argument needed - make a fistful of currency speculators even richer. At the moment, the Central Bank is sitting on reserves of 80 billion dollars. At the current rate of hemmorhage - about a billion a week - that's 80 weeks before Mexico becomes another Argentina. And the worst is yet to come, economically speaking, for the second half of 2009.
- Narco-violence increases and disseminates itself, unabated, making a mockery of the idea that the state "holds the legitimate monopoly on violence." The Mexican government has effectively lost control of large swathes of territory - and not only on the northern border - where the drug cartels run the show, charge taxes, and operate their own mechanisms of justice (the death penalty being the preferred form of punishment).
- And even if the government had the monopoly on violence, it would still not be "legitimate." Half of Mexico - and growing - considers Calderon to be an illegitmate imposter in office, installed via electoral fraud and maintained there through the mass media and the propogation of fear in the form of "his" drug war (L'État, c'est moi.). Over 8,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in this "war" since Calderon took office - doublt the amount of American soldiers killed in Iraq in six years. The result? To turn the drug cartels - bad enough as they already were - into para-military organizations, armed to the teeth with the American weaponry that inevitably finds its way into their hands.
- The Mexican government is top-heavy in the extreme, with a non-existent separation of powers. In 2009, more than half the budget is going to paying the disproportionate salaries of the bureaucracy. Just to give an example, the members of the Supreme Court have just raised their salaries to 347,647 pesos base salary per month, plus bi-weekly bonuses, vacation bonuses (50% of ten days of their salary for each vacation period), a Christmas bonus of 40-days salary, two vehicles at their disposal, free cell phone and wireless internet use, a food budget, life insurance, retirement pension and health insurance. The President of the Court, Ortiz Mayagoitia, and Mariano Azuela, the Senior Member (he who plotted the desafuero of López Obrador with Vicente Fox), also receive special other perks, including three, tri-monthly bonuses of an extra month's worth of salary each. The collective cost of all of this is practically 10 million pesos per Justice per year; at 11 Justices on the Court, that's 110 million pesos annually. This is the same Court, mind, that ruled that the journalist Lydia Cacho was not tortured, threw out the case for abuses in Atenco, and refused to hear the appeal of the 2006 election, despite being constitutionally empowered to do so. This same week, the Federal Electoral Institute had to reverse course and cancel its planned 45% salary increase for its councilors in the face of bristling popular opposition.
- Meanwhile, according to INEGI, 890 Mexicans are currently losing their jobs every 24 hours. Mexican exports are down 30% this year, falling to a historic low, despite the weak peso making the goods half as cheap. Inflation, meanwhile, continues to rise due to consequently more-expensive imports and the increases in electricity, natural gas, gasoline and diesel, the last of which has transport workers demonstrating and striking across the country.
- The Pentagon comes out with a report putting Mexico in the same category as Pakistan in terms of potential failed states, a State Department report this past week lamented the country's excreable human-rights record, troop reinforcements are sent to Texas to protect the border, and, as of this week, the number one shareholder in the National Bank of Mexico is now...Uncle Sam!
Put all of this together and stir, then add a pinch of the legislative elections set for this July, elections which Calderon & Co. have been trying to interfere in and rig in any way possible over the last three years and which nobody except the candidates themselves seem to have any faith in as a mechanism of democratic governance, and you see why the odds of imminent collapse in Mexico, unless drastic action is taken (but by whom?), is an ever more-real possibility.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Commented Version of NY Times Piece: "Economic Decline Lifts the Prospects of a Vocal Populist"
Last week, The New York Times realized that López Obrador, and the movement he represents, is still a key force in Mexican politics. "Deconstructing Mexico" has decided to celebrate this belated realization by providing a running commentary in italics below on Elisabeth Malkin's perceptive and judicious piece.
Economic Decline Lifts the Prospects of a Vocal Populist
by Elisabeth Malkin
Published in The New York Times, February 3, 2009
MEXICO CITY — As the year began, the dominant political figure of Mexico’s left appeared to be heading swiftly toward irrelevance.
But Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not dead yet.
Only two years ago, Amlo, as he is known, was the driving force in Mexico’s polarized politics. After he narrowly lost the presidency and led months of street protests charging that it had been stolen from him, politics boiled down to one issue: who was for him and who was against.
Last year, his hold on public attention began to falter. The public, the news media and many of his supporters had simply moved on, letting the turmoil of the 2006 election fade into history.
Funny that the Mexican Secret Service, the CISEN, has been following Lopez Obrador to all of his rallies since 2006. As for the news media, especially the TV, I wouldn't call systemically shutting him out of their coverage in collusion with the higher-ups the same thing as "moving on," exactly.
But there are signs that the efforts of Mr. López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, to revive his political career may be gaining traction, as a deepening recession creates opportunities for his brand of economic populism.
"Populism," "vocal populist," as the title of the article has it. In my experience, all politicians are vocal - it's practically a job requirement. Why don't you just call him a "shrill agitator," Liz, and get it over with?
The question now is whether he can capitalize on that momentum to remake and expand the coalition that brought him to within a hair’s breadth of the presidency.
Funny how little of the direct evidence of fraud in 2006 made its way into the pages of the everything-that's-fit-to-print Times. Must have been a simple editorial oversight.
At a rally last week in Mexico City’s immense central square, the Zócalo, Mr. López Obrador, 55, drew tens of thousands of supporters. Though the crowd paled beside the hundreds of thousands who attended his rallies at the peak of the 2006 presidential campaign, it was significantly larger than that at any of his rallies in the previous year.
Unlike his campaign events, it was conducted without the benefit of his party’s machinery, which used to truck in supporters from around the country, demonstrating a substantial base of hard-core support.
A key point: people are participating in this out of their own volition, not for a boxed lunch and a T-shirt.
Saying that the economy will only get worse, Mr. López Obrador announced a campaign to press the government to cut wasteful spending, lower consumer prices and taxes, and do more for the poor.
“Our movement must continue demanding a change in economic policy, which has demonstrated its failure,” he said. “The model must be changed. You cannot put new wine in old bottles.”
The words clearly resonated with his poor and working-class base.
“We think he really can change things, so that people have the right to decide,” said Aide Florentino, 27, a member of a small garment cooperative in the rural southern part of Mexico City.
“It’s not important if López Obrador is the president,” said Víctor Baltasar, 49, who traveled to the rally from Guadalajara, where he is a supervisor for the city’s train system. “What’s important is that things change.”
This is a remarkably insightful opinion on the part of Mr. Baltasar that the press would do well to pick up on. The goal of this movement is to transform the country, not simply to install one person, or a series of people, in office so that they, too, can be co-opted.
But rising anxiety over the economy may be broadening his appeal. Despite government measures aimed at stimulating the economy and buffering households against the worst effects of the crisis, there is a widespread clamor to do more, from constituencies as varied as business groups and poor peasants and fishermen. That demand could alter the political calculus.
What government measures are you referring to exactly, Liz? The IETU tax? Higher electricity prices? Gas prices that were going up every week until public clamor put a stop to it? The diesel that keeps going up and has the fishermen out on strike? The pathetic two-peso minimum wage increase while the price of milk, tortillas and other staple items are going through the roof? The Afore retirement accounts that have been eviscerated by bad investments and ridiculous bank commisions? If you know something we don't, please come down to Oaxaca and tell us - I've got some neighbors who are pretty desperate to hear some good news.
“Mexico is fundamentally a conservative country,” said Federico Estévez, a political analyst at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “But in 2009, the cards are different.”
Referring to the left, he said, “I think they’re holding a wild card or a couple of aces.”
Hello, sweeping generalization. Mexico has one of the world's most progressive constitutions, has been through two revolutions, succeeded in nationalizing its oil right on the eve of the second world war, has the most-powerful empire in the history of humanity to the north aiding and abetting the country's right-wing and whose major media are in the control of two conglomerates who thumb their noses at the government and the rule of law. If the playing field were even close to level, such a comment might be even close to relevant.
With the next presidential election three years off, Mr. López Obrador’s precise ambitions are unclear. He calls his new campaign a social movement and clearly aims to be a force to be reckoned with.
But his relationship with his own party remains fraught. Last year he lost a battle with a rival faction over the presidency of the party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or P.R.D., and he no longer holds any official position in the party or in government.
The low point came last fall, when most of the senators from his party broke with him to approve an important energy bill, as his supporters scuffled with police officers in an attempt to block the vote.
To many who had backed his presidential bid, Mr. López Obrador's street-brawling political style had become a liability.
You mean the energy bill that was approved only after Lopez Obrador and his movement succeeded in getting the most toxic provisions removed from it? And hey, love those terms "scuffled with police" and "street-brawling style": how many more ways can we make a non-violent movement sound menacing to the American readership?
His campaign to overturn the results of the 2006 election, which he lost by only six-tenths of 1 percent of the total vote to Felipe Calderón, consisted of mass rallies and a tent city that shut major avenues in the capital for weeks. Refusing to concede, even after the country’s highest electoral court ruled in favor of Mr. Calderón, he held a grand public ceremony in which he had himself sworn in as the “legitimate president” of Mexico, a title he continues to claim.
Boy, the Electoral Tribunal sure must be happy that the Times still takes them seriously, seeing as nobody else does.
Such antics have damaged the party’s reputation, officials say.
Two words stand out, here. First, "antics." It may be easy to sneer from the comfort of your bureau office, Liz, but for millions of Mexicans, the whole point of the legitimate government is to end the republic of simulation and to build a real republic in its stead. By extension, our Declaration of Independence, promulgated by a bunch of lawyers in Philadelphia who had less popular support at that time then Obrador does now and who were engaged in a war that appeared hopeless at the time, could (and probably was) just as easily have been labeled "antics." And then there is the great line, "officials say." By definition, "officials" would be people in Calderon's administration, who would say just that, wouldn't they? Or are we talking about PRD party officials nominated by Jesús Ortega? It might help readers ascertain what point of view these "officials" are coming from if they actually had names.
Jesús Ortega, the party president, who defeated Mr. López Obrador’s choice for the post, said the party’s polling showed that two-thirds of Mexicans identified the P.R.D. as disruptive.
Moreover, the polls put the party in third place for midterm elections in July, when voters will elect all 500 members of Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. The party is currently projected to win 18 percent of the vote, half its showing in 2006.
Recently, the illustrious Federal Electoral Tribunal (see above) stripped the victory away from the PRD in two municipal elections, under the argument that some priest had improperly gotten involved in the campaign. Conclusion: even when the PRD wins, they're not allowed to. Not much has changed since the days of Salinas.
While Mr. López Obrador’s popularity catapulted it in 2006 from the third largest to the second largest party in Congress, the party now stands to lose many of the seats it picked up then.
Mr. Ortega, while shying away from blaming Mr. López Obrador for the decline of the party, made it clear that he wanted to remake its image into that of a party closer to social democratic governing parties in Chile and Brazil, and that street blockades were not in the plans.
“Protests against injustice should not affect citizens’ rights,” Mr. Ortega said. “We have to learn to fight within the limits of the law.”
Which includes stuffing ballot boxes and playing ball with PRI governors in order to win your own party's presidency, right Chuy?
The party has begun running gauzy television spots asking voters for their forgiveness and declaring its willingness to work with other parties, a pointed contrast with Mr. López Obrador’s campaign of permanent harassment.
You say "harrassment," I say "resistance." Shall we call the whole thing off?
Publicly at least, Mr. López Obrador and his party say they have worked through their differences. Analysts say neither one can afford a split. “If the left as a whole doesn’t recoup before the elections on the basis of economic issues alone,” Mr. Estévez said, “then they really have no chance of ever ruling.”
True, and I think we're all coming to realize that, however much one may hate the co-oped, bought-and-sold PRD.
Mr. López Obrador needs the structure and resources a large party provides, analysts said. And the party cannot jettison its most charismatic politician.
“The P.R.D. realizes they can’t give him up,” said Daniel M. Lund, a pollster who has done work for Mr. López Obrador, but not since 2004. “If the P.R.D. breaks with López Obrador, they will go to single digits.”
Why was it so important to point out that he worked for Obrador, but "not since 2004?" I've been to the bathroom today, but not since ten o'clock.
Where that leaves Mr. López Obrador’s movement is uncertain. Although 2012 is a long way off, none of the party’s current leaders have anywhere near his larger-than-life stature as a potential presidential contender.
What is evident is that while talk of a comeback may be premature, so was writing him off.
“He’s a charismatic, intuitive politician,” said Joy Langston, an analyst with the CIDE, a Mexico City research institution. “He not only knows how to win over the masses but also to govern in a way that continues his popularity. Amlo will never be completely finished.”
You may be onto something there, Liz.
Economic Decline Lifts the Prospects of a Vocal Populist
by Elisabeth Malkin
Published in The New York Times, February 3, 2009
MEXICO CITY — As the year began, the dominant political figure of Mexico’s left appeared to be heading swiftly toward irrelevance.
But Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not dead yet.
Only two years ago, Amlo, as he is known, was the driving force in Mexico’s polarized politics. After he narrowly lost the presidency and led months of street protests charging that it had been stolen from him, politics boiled down to one issue: who was for him and who was against.
Last year, his hold on public attention began to falter. The public, the news media and many of his supporters had simply moved on, letting the turmoil of the 2006 election fade into history.
Funny that the Mexican Secret Service, the CISEN, has been following Lopez Obrador to all of his rallies since 2006. As for the news media, especially the TV, I wouldn't call systemically shutting him out of their coverage in collusion with the higher-ups the same thing as "moving on," exactly.
But there are signs that the efforts of Mr. López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, to revive his political career may be gaining traction, as a deepening recession creates opportunities for his brand of economic populism.
"Populism," "vocal populist," as the title of the article has it. In my experience, all politicians are vocal - it's practically a job requirement. Why don't you just call him a "shrill agitator," Liz, and get it over with?
The question now is whether he can capitalize on that momentum to remake and expand the coalition that brought him to within a hair’s breadth of the presidency.
Funny how little of the direct evidence of fraud in 2006 made its way into the pages of the everything-that's-fit-to-print Times. Must have been a simple editorial oversight.
At a rally last week in Mexico City’s immense central square, the Zócalo, Mr. López Obrador, 55, drew tens of thousands of supporters. Though the crowd paled beside the hundreds of thousands who attended his rallies at the peak of the 2006 presidential campaign, it was significantly larger than that at any of his rallies in the previous year.
Unlike his campaign events, it was conducted without the benefit of his party’s machinery, which used to truck in supporters from around the country, demonstrating a substantial base of hard-core support.
A key point: people are participating in this out of their own volition, not for a boxed lunch and a T-shirt.
Saying that the economy will only get worse, Mr. López Obrador announced a campaign to press the government to cut wasteful spending, lower consumer prices and taxes, and do more for the poor.
“Our movement must continue demanding a change in economic policy, which has demonstrated its failure,” he said. “The model must be changed. You cannot put new wine in old bottles.”
The words clearly resonated with his poor and working-class base.
“We think he really can change things, so that people have the right to decide,” said Aide Florentino, 27, a member of a small garment cooperative in the rural southern part of Mexico City.
“It’s not important if López Obrador is the president,” said Víctor Baltasar, 49, who traveled to the rally from Guadalajara, where he is a supervisor for the city’s train system. “What’s important is that things change.”
This is a remarkably insightful opinion on the part of Mr. Baltasar that the press would do well to pick up on. The goal of this movement is to transform the country, not simply to install one person, or a series of people, in office so that they, too, can be co-opted.
But rising anxiety over the economy may be broadening his appeal. Despite government measures aimed at stimulating the economy and buffering households against the worst effects of the crisis, there is a widespread clamor to do more, from constituencies as varied as business groups and poor peasants and fishermen. That demand could alter the political calculus.
What government measures are you referring to exactly, Liz? The IETU tax? Higher electricity prices? Gas prices that were going up every week until public clamor put a stop to it? The diesel that keeps going up and has the fishermen out on strike? The pathetic two-peso minimum wage increase while the price of milk, tortillas and other staple items are going through the roof? The Afore retirement accounts that have been eviscerated by bad investments and ridiculous bank commisions? If you know something we don't, please come down to Oaxaca and tell us - I've got some neighbors who are pretty desperate to hear some good news.
“Mexico is fundamentally a conservative country,” said Federico Estévez, a political analyst at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “But in 2009, the cards are different.”
Referring to the left, he said, “I think they’re holding a wild card or a couple of aces.”
Hello, sweeping generalization. Mexico has one of the world's most progressive constitutions, has been through two revolutions, succeeded in nationalizing its oil right on the eve of the second world war, has the most-powerful empire in the history of humanity to the north aiding and abetting the country's right-wing and whose major media are in the control of two conglomerates who thumb their noses at the government and the rule of law. If the playing field were even close to level, such a comment might be even close to relevant.
With the next presidential election three years off, Mr. López Obrador’s precise ambitions are unclear. He calls his new campaign a social movement and clearly aims to be a force to be reckoned with.
But his relationship with his own party remains fraught. Last year he lost a battle with a rival faction over the presidency of the party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or P.R.D., and he no longer holds any official position in the party or in government.
The low point came last fall, when most of the senators from his party broke with him to approve an important energy bill, as his supporters scuffled with police officers in an attempt to block the vote.
To many who had backed his presidential bid, Mr. López Obrador's street-brawling political style had become a liability.
You mean the energy bill that was approved only after Lopez Obrador and his movement succeeded in getting the most toxic provisions removed from it? And hey, love those terms "scuffled with police" and "street-brawling style": how many more ways can we make a non-violent movement sound menacing to the American readership?
His campaign to overturn the results of the 2006 election, which he lost by only six-tenths of 1 percent of the total vote to Felipe Calderón, consisted of mass rallies and a tent city that shut major avenues in the capital for weeks. Refusing to concede, even after the country’s highest electoral court ruled in favor of Mr. Calderón, he held a grand public ceremony in which he had himself sworn in as the “legitimate president” of Mexico, a title he continues to claim.
Boy, the Electoral Tribunal sure must be happy that the Times still takes them seriously, seeing as nobody else does.
Such antics have damaged the party’s reputation, officials say.
Two words stand out, here. First, "antics." It may be easy to sneer from the comfort of your bureau office, Liz, but for millions of Mexicans, the whole point of the legitimate government is to end the republic of simulation and to build a real republic in its stead. By extension, our Declaration of Independence, promulgated by a bunch of lawyers in Philadelphia who had less popular support at that time then Obrador does now and who were engaged in a war that appeared hopeless at the time, could (and probably was) just as easily have been labeled "antics." And then there is the great line, "officials say." By definition, "officials" would be people in Calderon's administration, who would say just that, wouldn't they? Or are we talking about PRD party officials nominated by Jesús Ortega? It might help readers ascertain what point of view these "officials" are coming from if they actually had names.
Jesús Ortega, the party president, who defeated Mr. López Obrador’s choice for the post, said the party’s polling showed that two-thirds of Mexicans identified the P.R.D. as disruptive.
Moreover, the polls put the party in third place for midterm elections in July, when voters will elect all 500 members of Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. The party is currently projected to win 18 percent of the vote, half its showing in 2006.
Recently, the illustrious Federal Electoral Tribunal (see above) stripped the victory away from the PRD in two municipal elections, under the argument that some priest had improperly gotten involved in the campaign. Conclusion: even when the PRD wins, they're not allowed to. Not much has changed since the days of Salinas.
While Mr. López Obrador’s popularity catapulted it in 2006 from the third largest to the second largest party in Congress, the party now stands to lose many of the seats it picked up then.
Mr. Ortega, while shying away from blaming Mr. López Obrador for the decline of the party, made it clear that he wanted to remake its image into that of a party closer to social democratic governing parties in Chile and Brazil, and that street blockades were not in the plans.
“Protests against injustice should not affect citizens’ rights,” Mr. Ortega said. “We have to learn to fight within the limits of the law.”
Which includes stuffing ballot boxes and playing ball with PRI governors in order to win your own party's presidency, right Chuy?
The party has begun running gauzy television spots asking voters for their forgiveness and declaring its willingness to work with other parties, a pointed contrast with Mr. López Obrador’s campaign of permanent harassment.
You say "harrassment," I say "resistance." Shall we call the whole thing off?
Publicly at least, Mr. López Obrador and his party say they have worked through their differences. Analysts say neither one can afford a split. “If the left as a whole doesn’t recoup before the elections on the basis of economic issues alone,” Mr. Estévez said, “then they really have no chance of ever ruling.”
True, and I think we're all coming to realize that, however much one may hate the co-oped, bought-and-sold PRD.
Mr. López Obrador needs the structure and resources a large party provides, analysts said. And the party cannot jettison its most charismatic politician.
“The P.R.D. realizes they can’t give him up,” said Daniel M. Lund, a pollster who has done work for Mr. López Obrador, but not since 2004. “If the P.R.D. breaks with López Obrador, they will go to single digits.”
Why was it so important to point out that he worked for Obrador, but "not since 2004?" I've been to the bathroom today, but not since ten o'clock.
Where that leaves Mr. López Obrador’s movement is uncertain. Although 2012 is a long way off, none of the party’s current leaders have anywhere near his larger-than-life stature as a potential presidential contender.
What is evident is that while talk of a comeback may be premature, so was writing him off.
“He’s a charismatic, intuitive politician,” said Joy Langston, an analyst with the CIDE, a Mexico City research institution. “He not only knows how to win over the masses but also to govern in a way that continues his popularity. Amlo will never be completely finished.”
You may be onto something there, Liz.
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