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