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"God doesn't belong to the PAN!"
"AMLO deserves a miracle"
"No Pasaran!"
Mexico
Approaches the Combustion Point
By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.
The Congress of the country is ringed
by two-meter tall grilled metal barriers soldered together apparently
to thwart a suicide car bomb attack. Behind this metal wall,
3000 vizored, kevlar-wearing robocops -- the Federal Preventative
Police (PFP, a police force drawn from the army) -- and members
of the elite Estado Mayor or Presidential military command, form
a second line of defense. Armed with tear gas launchers, water
cannons, and reportedly light tanks, this Praetorian Guard has
been assigned to protect law and order and the institutions of
the republic against left-wing mobs that threaten to storm the
Legislative Palace -- or so the President informs his fellow
citizens in repeated messages transmitted on national television.
No, the President's name is
not Pinochet and this military tableau is not being mounted in
the usual banana republic or some African satrap. This is Mexico,
a paragon of democracy (dixit George Bush), Washington' third
trading partner, and the eighth leading petroleum producer on
the planet, seven weeks after the fraud-marred July 2 presidential
election of which, at this writing, no winner has been officially
declared. One of the elite military units assigned to seal off
congress is indeed titled the July 2 brigade.
MEXICO ON A KNIFEBLADE headlines
the British Guardian, but the typically short-term-memory-loss
U.S. print media seems to have forgotten about the imbroglio
just south of its borders. Nonetheless, the phone rings and it's
New York telling me they just got a call from their man on the
border and Homeland Security is beefing up its forces around
Laredo in anticipation of upheaval further south. The phone rings
again and it's California telling me they just heard on Air America
that U.S. Navy patrols were being dispatched to safeguard Mexican
oil platforms in the Gulf. The left-wing daily here, La Jornada,
runs a citizen-snapped photo of army convoys arriving carrying
soldiers disguised as farmers and young toughs. Rumors race through
the seven mile-long encampment installed by supporters of leftist
presidential challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) three
weeks ago who have tied up big city traffic and enraged the motorist
class here, that PFP robocops will attack before dawn. The campers
stay up all night huddled around bum fires prepared to defend
their tent cities.
The moment reminds many Mexicans
of the tense weeks in September and October 1968 when 12 days
before the Olympic Games were to be inaugurated here, President
Gustavo Diaz Ordaz ordered the military to massacre striking
students in a downtown plaza not far from where AMLO's people
are now camped out. 300 were killed in the Plaza of Three Cultures,
their bodies incinerated at Military Camp #1 in western Mexico
City. The Tlatelolco massacre was a watershed in social conflict
here and the similarities are sinister. In fact, Lopez Obrador
has taken to comparing outgoing President Vicente Fox with Diaz
Ordaz.
Fox will go to congress September
1 to deliver his final State of the Union address. The new legislature
will be convened the same day. The country may or may not have
a new president by that day. In
anticipation of this show-down,
on August 14, newly-elected senators and deputies from the three
parties that comprise AMLO's Coalition for the Good of All attempted
to encamp on the sidewalk in front of the legislative palace
only to be rousted and clobbered bloody by the President's robocops.
With 160 representatives, the
Coalition forms just a quarter of the 628 members of the new
congress but they will be a loud minority during Fox's "Informe".
Since the 1988 "presidenciales" were stolen from Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas, founder of AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution,
PRD legislators have routinely interrupted the president during
this authoritarian ritual in orchestrated outbursts that have
sometimes degenerated into partisan fisticuffs.
The first to challenge the
Imperial Presidency was Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a hoary political
warhorse, who in 1988 thrust a finger at President Miguel De
la Madrid, accusing him of overseeing the theft of the election
from Cardenas. Munoz Ledo's J'Accuse stunned the political class.
He was slugged and pummeled by members of De la Madrid's long-ruling
PRI when he tried to escape the chamber. Munoz Ledo now stands
at AMLO's side.
But perhaps the most comical
moment in the annals of acting out during the Informe, came in
1996 when a brash PRI deputy donned a Babe the Valiant Pig mask
and positioned himself directly under the podium from which President
Ernesto Zedillo was addressing the state of the nation, and wiggled
insouciant signs with slogans that said things like 'EAT THE
RICH!" Like Munoz Ledo, Marco Rascon was physically attacked,
his mask ripped off like he was a losing wrestler by a corrupt
railroad union official who in turn was hammer locked by a pseudo-leftist
senator, Irma "La Tigresa" Serrano, a one-time ranchero
singer and in fact, the former very close friend of Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz.
This September 1, if martial
law is not declared and the new congress dissolved before it
is even installed, the PRD delegation, which will no doubt be
strip-searched by the Estado Mayor for incriminating banners,
is sworn to create a monumental ruckus, shredding the tarnished
decorum of this once-solemn event forever to protest Fox's endorsement
of electoral larceny. Some solons say they may go naked.
There is a reptilian feel to
Mexico seven weeks after a discredited Federal Electoral Institute
(IFE) cemented Lopez Obrador into a second place coffin by awarding
the presidency to right-winger Felipe Calderon by a mere 243,000
votes out of a total 42,000,000 cast. Both Calderon and IFE czar
Luis Carlos Ugalde (Calderon was best man at Ugalde's wedding)
make these little beady reptile eyes as they slither across national
screens.
Those screens have been the
scenes of some of the slimiest and most sordid political intrigue
of late. One of the lizard kings who is fleetingly featured on
Televisa primetime is an imprisoned Argentinean construction
tycoon, Carlos Ahumada, who in 2004 conspired with Fox, Calderon's
PAN, and Televisa to frame AMLO on corruption charges and take
him out of the presidential election."El Peje" (for
a gar-like fish from the swamps of Lopez Obrador's native Tabasco)
was then leading the pack by 18 points.
Charged by Lopez Obrador, then
the mayor of this megalopolis, with defrauding Mexico City out
of millions, Ahumada had taken his revenge by filming PRD honchos
when they came to his office to pick up boodles of political
cash. Although the filthy lucre was perfectly legal under Mexico's
milquetoast campaign financing laws, the pick-ups looked awful
on national television. AMLO's former personal secretary was
caught stuffing wads of low denomination bills into his suit
coat pockets as if he were on Saturday Night Live.
Ahumada subsequently turned
the tapes over to the leprous, cigar-chomping leader of Fox's
PAN party in the Senate, Diego Fernandez de Cevallos ("El
Jefe Diego") who in turn had them delivered to a green-haired
clown, Brozo, who was then reading the morning news on Televisa.
Then the Argentine blackmailer fled to Cuba in a private plane.
Televisa would air the incriminating videos day and night for
months.
Apprehended in Veradero after
his lover Robles was shadowed to that socialist beachfront, Ahumada
spilled the beans to Cuban authorities: Interior Secretary Santiago
Creel, who was then AMLO's lead rival for the presidency, had
cooked up the plot with the connivance of reviled former president
Carlos Salinas, Lopez Obrador's most venomous foe, the then attorney
general, and Fox himself, to remove AMLO from the race.
The Mexican government did
not ask for extradition and Ahumada's deportation from Cuba was
not seen as a friendly gesture. Within a month, diplomatic relations
between Mexico and Cuba were broken off and ambassadors summoned
home. The construction tycoon has been imprisoned in Mexico City
ever since he was booted out of Cuba and was last heard from
when he had his rogue cop chauffer shoot up the family SUV, a
charade both Fox and Televisa tried to pin on AMLO. Ahumada had
suggested he was about to release two more incriminating videos.
These dubious events took place on June 6, the day of a crucial
presidential debate between AMLO and Calderon.
Then last week, Ahumada abruptly
resurfaced, or at least his videotaped confession to Cuban authorities
did. Filmed through prison bars, he lays out the plot step by
step. Yes, he affirms, the deal was fixed up to cut AMLO's legs
out from under him and advance the fortunes of the right-wing
candidate who turned out to be Felipe Calderon and not the bumbling
Creel. The conspiracy backfired badly as his supporters rallied
around him and Lopez Obrador's ratings soared.
The origins of the confession
tape, leaked to top-rung reporter Carmen Aristegui, was obscure.
Had Fidel dispatched it from his sick bed to bolster Lopez Obrador's
claims of victory as the PAN and the snake-eyed Televisa evening
anchor Joaquin Lopez Dorriga hissed? The air grew serpentine
with theories. There was even one school that speculated Calderon
himself had been the source in a scheme to distance himself from
Fox (there had always been bad feelings between them) and Creel,
now the leader of the PAN faction in congress.
AMLO advanced a variant of
this explanation: the specter of Ahumada had been resuscitated
to divert attention from the evidence of generalized fraud the
Coalition had submitted to the TRIFE and the panel's impending
verdict that Calderon had won the election.
Perhaps the most nagging question
in this snakepit of uncertainty is what happened during the partial
recount of less than 10per cent of the 130,000 ballot boxes ordered
by the TRIFE to test the legitimacy of the IFE's results. Although
the recount concluded on August 13, the judges have released
no numbers and are not obligated to do so. Their only responsibility
is to certify the validity of the election.
Although AMLO's reps in the
counting rooms came up with gobs of evidence -- violated ballot
boxes, stolen or stuffed ballots, altered tally sheets and other
bizarre anomalies -- only the left-wing daily La Jornada saw
fit to mention them. The silence of the Mexican media and their
accomplices in the international press in respect to the Great
Fraud is deafening, although they manage to fill their rags with
ample attacks on Lopez Obrador for tying up Mexico City traffic.
According to AMLO's people,
119,000 ballots in the sample recount cannot be substantiated
in about 3500 casillas, 58,000 more votes were cast than the
number of voters on the voting list. In nearly 4000 other casillas,
61,000 ballots allocated to election officials cannot be accounted
for. The annulment of the casillas in which these alterations
occurred would put Lopez Obrador in striking distance of Calderon
and in a better world, would obligate the TRIFE to order a total
recount.
But given the cheesy state
of the Mexican judiciary this is not apt to happen. One of the
judges who will decide the fate of democracy in Mexico is a former
client of El Jefe Diego for whom the PANista senator won millions
from the Mexico City government in a crooked land deal.
Meanwhile, thousands continue
to camp out in a hard rain for a third week on the streets of
Mexico City awaiting the court's decision. They have taken to
erecting shrines and altars and are praying for divine intervention.
Hundreds pilgrimage out to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
some crawling on their knees, to ask the Brown Madonna to work
her miracle. "God doesn't belong to the PAN!" they
chant as they trudge up the great avenue that leads to the Basilica.
"AMLO deserves a miracle" Esther Ortiz, a 70 year-old
great grandmother comments to a reporter as she kneels to pray
before the gilded altar.
At the Metropolitan Cathedral
on one flank of the Zocalo, a young worshipper interrupts Cardinal
Norberto Rivera and is quickly hustled off the premises by his
Eminence's bouncers. The following Sunday, the Cathedral's great
doors are under heavy surveillance, and churchgoers screened
for telltale signs of devotion to Lopez Obrador. Hundreds of
AMLO's supporters mill about in front of the ancient temple shouting
"voto por voto" and that Cardinal Rivera is a pederast.
AMLO as demi-god is one motif
of this religious pageant being played out at what was once the
heart of the Aztec theocracy, the island of Tenochtitlan. The
ruins of the twin temples of the fierce Aztec war god Huitzilopochtli
and Tlahuac, the god of the rain, are adjacent to the National
Palace against which AMLO's stage is set. Lopez Obrador sleeps
each night in a tent close by.
Many hearts were ripped out
smoking on these old stones and fed to such hungry gods before
the Crusaders showed up bearing the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
AMLO is accused by right-wing
"intellectuals" (Enrique Krauze and the gringo apologist
George Grayson) of entertaining a Messiah complex. Indeed, he
is up there every day on the big screen, his craggy features,
salt and pepper hair, raspy voice and defiantly jutted jaw bearing
more of a passable resemblance to a younger George C. Scott rather
than The Crucified One. AMLO's devotees come every evening at
seven, shoehorned between the big tents that fill the Zocalo,
rain or shine. Last Monday, I stood with a few thousand diehards
in a biblical downpour, thunder and lightening shattering the
heavens above. "Llueve y llueve y el pueblo no se mueve"
they chanted joyously, "it rains and rains and the people
do not move."
The evolution of these incantations
is fascinating. At first, the standard slogan of "Voto Por
Voto, Casilla por Casilla!" was automatically invoked whenever
Lopez Obrador stepped to the microphone. "You are not alone!"
and "Presidente!" had their moment. "Fraude!"
is still popular but in these last days, "No Pasaran!"
-- they shall not pass, the cry of the defenders of Madrid as
Franco's fascist hordes banged on the doors of Madrid, 1936 --
has flourished.
In this context, "No Pasaran!"
means "we will not let Felipe Calderon pass to the presidency."
AMLO, who holds out little hope that the TRIFE will decide in
his favor, devotes more time now to organizing the resistance
to the imposition of Calderon upon the Aztec nation. Article
39 of the Mexican constitution, he reminds partisans, grants
the people the right to change their government if that government
does not represent them. To this end, he is summoning a million
delegates up to the Zocalo for a National Democratic Convention
on Mexican Independence Day September 16, a date usually reserved
for a major military parade.
Aside from the logistical impossibility
of putting a million citizens in this Tiennemens-sized plaza,
how this gargantuan political extravaganza is going to be financed
is cloudy. Right now, it seems like small children donating their
piggy banks is the main mode of fund-raising. Because AMLO's
people distrust the banks, all of which financed Calderon's vicious
TV ad campaign, a giant piggy bank has been raised in the Zocalo
to receive the contributions of the faithful.
Dreaming is also a fundraiser.
10,000 raised their voices in song this past Sunday as part of
a huge chorus assembled under the dome of the Monument to the
Revolution to perform a cantata based on the words of Martin
Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. This too is a form of civil
resistance, Lopez Obrador commended his followers.
The first National Democratic
Convention took place behind rebel lines in the state of Aguascalientes
in 1914 at the apogee of the Mexican Revolution when the forces
of Francisco Villa and his Army of the North first joined forces
with Zapata's Liberating Army of the Southern Revolution. The
second National Democratic Revolution took place 80 years later
in 1994, in a clearing in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas when
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation wedded itself to the
civil society in an uprising that rocked Mexico all throughout
the '90s. Eclipsed by events, the EZLN and its quixotic spokesperson
Subcomandante Marcos have disappeared from the political map
in the wake of the fraudulent election.
What this third National Democratic
Convention is all about is now being debated in PRD ruling circles
and down at the grassroots. Minimally, a plan of organized resistance
that will dog Felipe Calderon for the next six years, severely
hampering his ability to rule will evolve from this mammoth conclave.
The declaration of a government in resistance headed by Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador is one consideration. The National Democratic
Convention could also result in the creation of a new party to
replace a worn-out PRD now thoroughly infiltrated by cast-offs
from the PRI.
The Party of the Democratic
Revolution has always functioned best as an opposition party.
With notable exceptions (AMLO was one), when the PRD becomes
government, it collapses into corruption, internecine bickering,
and behaves just as arrogantly as the PAN and the PRI. No Pasaran?
Seven weeks after the July
2 electoral debacle, Mexico finds itself at a dangerously combustible
conjunction ("coyuntura") in which the tiny white elite
here is about to impose its will upon a largely brown and impoverished
populous to whom the political parties and process grow more
irrelevant each day. "No Pasaran!" the people cry out
but to whom and what they are alluding to remains to be defined.
CounterPunch
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