Jason and I were driving near Lake Merritt on Sunday, August 6. When we were passing right next to the Grand Lake Theater, I caught a glimpse of its marquee, which to my surprise read “Mexico is rejecting election theft! Why do we Americans allow this treasonous assault on freedom?”
While I don’t have the answer to that question (could it be somehow related to the comfort and convenience tacitly described in Anne’s email “Bidding adieu to Cody’s”?) I certainly know lots of reasons as to why we, in Mexico, are fiercely rejecting electoral fraud and I want to share some of them with you.
The first one is that we just don’t believe what our government says. Period. The way popular wisdom goes is: “whatever they say, it’s really the complete opposite”. This has proven totally true over the years, i.e. when they say taxes won’t be raised, taxes are raised, when they say our currency will keep current level with the dollar, the peso it’s devaluated, when they say that they respect indigenous groups, they smash them to death. Nowadays, our illiterate and cowboy president Fox and his cabinet are saying that we live in a wonderful and quiet world and that the elections were clean. U-hu.
To give you some background about this; when I say “we” I’m referring to the millions of Mexicans just like me, with indigenous roots (or just indigenous like myself), working class, honorable hardworking people that revere the land and that despite being under intense pressure to forget their roots they still have and perform Aztec, Maya, Mixtec, and other indigenous rituals and traditions. I cannot say that all of us distrust our government, but certainly the big majority of us do.
There are other groups of people in Mexico that always support the government and its repressive tactics against us; these are the rich, some members of the middle class, the upper middle class, and the conservative right-wingers, the majority of whom happen to be white descendants of the Spaniards that invaded us more than 500 years ago. These groups always put pressure on the government for tough laws and tough penalties, which are curiously and exclusively applied to us (indigenous) and never applied to them (whites) no matter how horrible the crime they have committed (i.e. massacre, big fraud) and no matter how valid the “crime” we have committed (i.e. stand up and fight for our rights and our dignity). These groups of rich people have always controlled the “elections” and always performed blatant and openly illegal and immoral frauds in front of everybody. However, in 1988 for the first time after our revolution (1910) we had a real chance to vote in a highly contested electoral process, this was possible after millions of Mexicans had fought and died for clean and democratic elections during the previous seventy years or so.
I recall that not long ago somebody from the US told me that they were surprised that despite living under one of the most corrupt governments in the whole world we just wouldn’t do anything about it. I don’t remember if I had the chance to reply to that statement, which revealed a painful and blatant ignorance about the matter, but here are some recent events that bring us to this very moment when we are rejecting election theft and also illustrate what we have done about corruption:
In October 2nd 1968 thousands of students were massacred in the Tlatelolco Plaza (Mexico City) by the PRI government. The reason? They were fighting for a democratic society. To this day nobody knows the exact number of students that were killed that day because the regime took the bodies of the dead and the wounded alike and hid them somewhere (or just destroyed them). The open “dirty war” against us had officially begun.
June 10th 1971. The surviving students kept on fighting for a democratic society and for their killed friends. The result? Another massacre, this time a much more sophisticated operation as there are fewer pictures, eye witnesses and chronicles about it than in the 1968 massacre.
September 1985. On Thursday the 19th and Friday the 20th two powerful 8.1 and 7.9 earthquakes respectively hit Mexico City, along with the Estado de Mexico, Michoacan and Jalisco states. The PRI government was stunned and obviously ill prepared to face a challenge like this. They were paralyzed (or just didn’t want to do anything about it) and for more than seventy two painful hours did nothing while wounded survivors were trapped under the rubble of hundreds of buildings. It was the regular people, who only few hours after the first earthquake hit organized themselves and began rescuing and helping survivors. We have never forgotten and forgiven our government for this crime.
July 3rd 1988. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the first real opposition candidate, won the Presidential elections by a landslide. The PRI was finally defeated. The result? The PRI obviously didn’t accept this defeat, turned down the computers that contained the election results, erased the database (smells like Florida?), burnt the paper-ballots and declared the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari the winner. Most Mexicans didn’t accept this blatant fraud and they fought for their rights … more than five hundred of them were killed or disappeared along the way.
January 1st 1994. The day the infamous NAFTA took effect. It was the pearl of the crown of the Salinas’ spurious government. But most Mexicans didn’t accept it. In the early morning of that first day of the year, thousands of Mayans, Tojolabales, Tzotziles and Tzeltales peasants took over San Cristobal de las Casas in the Chiapas state and fought with their lives to defend the indigenous and Mexican sovereignty against US corporations. These indigenous groups called themselves the Zapatistas in honor of our Revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata. To this day, more than three thousand Mexicans have died while trying to cross the border with the US, they had been expelled from their lands by the criminal neo-liberal policies of Nafta.
July 1994. Mobilizing their vast resources, the right-wingers and rich people manipulated in their favor yet another presidential election. The PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo was declared the winner (he’s currently a Procter and Gamble highly paid executive). The population was deeply dissatisfied and angry. The government intensified the “dirty war” to placate the angriness.
February 9, 1995. Todos somos Marcos (We all are Marcos). The PRI government desperately needed to put an end to the Zapatista movement, so they deployed a huge military campaign to capture and kill Subcomandante Marcos, one of the leaders of the movement. But yet again, thousands, millions of Mexicans marched throughout the country, all wearing the same kind of mask Marcos wears, all chanting “I am Marcos, arrest me!” Needless to say, the government stopped the Marcos’ hunt.
December 22nd 1997. As part of the “dirty war” against the Zapatistas 43 Mayans refugees (most of them women and children) displaced by the government’s tactics were massacred in Chiapas while praying. Thousands of Mexicans marched protesting the massacre of those innocent civilians. The government then decided to change the tone of the war from an open one to a “low intensity war”. Equally brutal than the other.
July 2nd 2000. Presidential elections. Mexicans were sold a cowboy, illiterate product named Fox, who along with right-wingers took power after using a very effective marketing campaign (Clinton’s and Bush’s advisors had been hired for this campaign). Mexicans had been deceived – the thought they had voted for a change, they thought they had kicked the PRI out of the government but they were wrong.
2000 – 2006. Massive frauds committed by Fox, his wife, children, his peers and colleagues. Due to horrible economic conditions in the country more Mexicans are expelled and they go north to look for jobs. Fox and his government desperately seek the money Mexicans send from the US. In turn, US companies desperately seek cheap labor. People in Mexico protest and growth tired of Fox.
March 2002. Fox’s government plans to build a new airport in the Texcoco area (close to Mexico City). They plan to buy lands that have been under the care of indigenous people for centuries. They plan to pay the indigenous groups ridiculously low prices for their land. Texcocanos, Teotihuacanos and other indigenous groups don’t accept the deal despite being threatened by the government. They resist intimidation and clash with them often.
August 1st 2002. After a long, bloody and painful battle with the government, the indigenous group’s rights prevail and the plans to build the airport are cancelled. Government withdraws from the area. The indigenous people have won this battle!
2004-2005-2006. Massive electoral fraud / pre-coup d’état in the works for the upcoming presidential elections prepared by the government and its allies: Federal resources devoted to marketing campaigns and to help prepare the government candidate. The national voters’ database is stolen and used by the official candidate and its advisors (again, some of Bush’s and Clinton’s). Pseudo-legal arguments are brought against the main opposition candidate (López Obrador who runs in a campaign to help the poor) aiming to charge him with a crime so that he was prevented from running for president. Millions of Mexicans go to the streets to protest this illegal strategy and the government quickly backs off.
May 3rd and 4th 2006. In an act of savage revenge by the Fox government, the town of San Salvador Atenco (where the airport was going to be built in 2002) is attacked by military police. Thirty indigenous women are raped (the perpetrators only spared women older than 70 and younger than 10), there are mass arrests, beating, torture, imprisonment without charges and two deaths. This attacked was triggered after about a dozen flower sellers refused to move their merchandise from the main plaza and after the people from Atenco supported them.
May 2006. Mining workers in Michoacan state are killed by military police when protesting for the horrible working conditions they have to accept in exchange for a meager salary.
May 2006. Oaxacan teachers began a state wide strike to demand humane working conditions and decent salaries. The whole Oaxacan population supports them at first, then the protests growth reaching pretty much all popular sectors of the state: indigenous groups, unions, artists, workers, etc. The state government initiates a campaign of repression against the teachers, some of the leaders are kidnapped and tortured. Oaxacans don’t accept this and demand that the governor steps down. They organize themselves and take over the state. The repression escalates.
As of August 18, 2006, the strike continues, the repression has worsen, two kidnapped and tortured teachers were finally released from captivity few days ago but one is still missing. Dozens of teachers, indigenous and union leaders have been assassinated.
July 2nd 2006 – Presidential elections. Mexicans vote. Massive and sophisticated fraud against the opposition candidate, manipulation of the statistics, manipulation of the software programs that control the data from the precincts, the media (the big majority being right-winger) manipulates tendencies and opinions.
July 8th ,9th, …– Millions of Mexicans reject the electoral fraud and fight for a complete recount of votes! At least two million people gathered at the Zocalo (Mexico City main square) and in other important cities all over the country to protest the fraud.
July 31st 2006- (From DemocracyNow.org) “2 Million Protest In Mexico City For Vote Recount. As many as 2 million people rallied in Mexico City on Sunday to call for a full recount in the country’s disputed presidential election. Presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged his supporters to camp out in the city’s streets until a recount occurs.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: "I propose we stay here day and night until the votes are counted and we have a president-elect with the minimum legality that we Mexicans deserve."
Within hours of the protest, people began setting up tents across the capital. Sunday’s rally was the third and largest protest organized by supporters of Lopez Obrador since the July 2nd election which he lost by about half of a percentage point.”
August 6th 2006 – (From DemocracyNow.org) “Over the past two weeks, supporters of Lopez Obrador have virtually shut down parts of Mexico City by setting up street blockades and tent cities in the middle of the capital city. On Sunday thousands of supporters of Lopez Obrador took to the streets to form a human chain along miles of Mexico City's streets.”
August 18, 2006 – The fight for a full recount continues. Blockades continue. The fight for better salaries, fair labor conditions and a democratic society will continue in Oaxaca and other parts of Mexico. There’s no end date. For as long as the government continues representing only the whites, the rich and the corporations, Mexicans will continue to doubt every word they say.
[Ver también: Mexicanos, los más desconfiados de sus gobiernos, según encuesta de TI, artículo del 8 de diciembre del 2006 publicado en La Jornada]
