Amnesia And Election Fraud In Mexico

Yesterday, tens of thousands of Mexicans went into the streets of Mexico City to protest against fraud in the claimed election of Enrique Pena Nieto (EPN), the PRI candidate, as president of Mexico. MSNBC reports:

Tens of thousands of protesters, many holding hand-written placards, marched through the Mexican capital on Saturday against President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, accusing him of buying votes and paying off TV networks for support.

The demonstrators, including students, leftists, anarchists and union members, shouted slogans criticizing Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the electoral authority.
"Mexico without the PRI," "Mexico voted and Pena didn't win," and "If there is an imposition, there will be a revolution," chanted demonstrators, according to Spanish-language Mexican newspaper La Jornada....

Many carried signs reading, "Pena, how much did it cost to become president?" and "Mexico, you pawned your future for 500 pesos." ...

"The PRI threatens many people and buys others with a couple of tacos," said Manuel Ocegueda, a 43-year-old shop worker participating in the march....

Oops. Apparently, the Mexican electorate forgot about the PRI's extensive seven decade track record. Or it was seduced by PRI's assertion that it in its exile from national power it had found the Savior. Or it was overcome by desperation about the nearly 60,000 deaths in the PAN led War on Drugs. To me, it looks a lot like amnesia.

The PRI, the party of the institutional revolution, ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000. It maintained itself in power with outright violence, buying elections, repression, and pervasive corruption. PRI governments were involved in disappearances and torture. PRI governments shot unarmed civilian demonstrators. PRI was synonymous with impunity. EPN said he was "different." And that the "new" PRI was different. Many disputed this. Then, in the wake of the election, the videos demonstrating vote buying emerged on youtube. It appears there was a run on a Soriana Supermarket when a rumor started that the gift cards voters received in exchange for votes would be canceled. None of this is new. This is exactly what should have been expected. And many people did expect it. Just not enough.

In fact, more Mexicans voted against EPN than for him, but only Andrew Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will file a complaint about the election. So far, PAN, the incumbent party, seems willing to accept the results. It is extremely unlikely that EPN's election will not be sustained. In time the furor will die down. In time the haze of forgetfulness will obscure what happened in this election. In time there will be no more demonstrations. There will be only shrugs. And resignation.

Apparently, a remembrance of history is not something that plays an extremely vital role in Mexican (or for that matter, US) politics. Nor is accountability. Nor is a consciousness of the struggles of the past. Nor is preserving all of the myths of struggles for greater democratization. No. There is widespread amnesia. Only a few remember the past, fewer recount those events. And their audience? Their audience is oh so very distracted and entranced. Or asleep. Or for sale.

Yesterday, I was immersed in Paco Taibo II's memoir, "'68," a recounting of the 1968 Mexican student revolution and its murderous suppression by the PRI government of the time. I recommend reading it. It is a great memoir.

There is only one very minor point to be made here. It's about institutional amnesia. We're prone to forget the stories and the idealism and the struggles of the past, to permit them to be pushed out of our minds by time, distractions and outright repression. Look at the results of amnesia. Look at the results in Mexico even if we can't look at them in the US. This is what happens when people forget. This is what happens when people are asleep. Despierta ya!

Mexico Votes On Sunday: Will This End The Killing?

Yo Soy 132 demonstrators on May 1

Mexico goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a president.

It’s widely predicted that the PRI, swept out of office in 2000 after 71 years of rule, and its pretty boy candidate, Enriquie Pena Nieto (EPN), will win. This, despite opposition from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who nearly won the last election (some believe he actually did win) and who seems to have moved toward the center to capture more votes, and from Mexican students whose movement, Yo Soy #132, has brought thousands into the street in opposition to EPN, and from the presently ruling PAN party, whose candidate is trying mightily to distance herself from the Calderon presidency and its war on drugs that has killed more than 50,000 people by saying she's "different."

A description of the major candidates is here.

If it’s true, as Yo Soy 132 assert and the Guardian hints, that there has been a deal between the media and PRI that accounts for the opinion polls showing EPN far ahead, Sunday could be very interesting. Such a deal has great plausibility in Mexico. In the US such assertions are usually in the bailiwick of conspiracy theory. And there remains the question of whether Lopez Obrador, if he is told he lost, will accept that or will bring people into the streets to contest the election.

Most of us in Gringolandia don’t understand Mexico’s politics. At all. Or don’t care. But for those who want the quick, pre-election course, there’s William Finnegan’s a wonderful article in the New Yorker, Crime, Drugs, and Politics in Guadalajara.

Though he’s writing about the apparent contradictions between seeing Guadalajara as a cultural center and its being at the same time a city dominated by the narcos, his observations generally fit most of Mexico. In focusing on this contradiction and noting the pantallas (the screens) that shield motivations in Mexican government, politics, and crime, he joins in non-fiction the novels Los minutos negros (the Black Minutes) by Martin Solares and No habra final feliz (No Happy Ending) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. The takeaway: when institutions are corrupt, and they are clearly so in Mexico, it's scary, you never know who’s really in charge, you don’t know whose toes you may have stepped on, so you don’t know really why things are happening. In the worst case, bad things are happening to you or your family for reasons you don’t quite fathom. Or they happen and nobody knows why.

All of the candidates say that they will do something about the War on Drugs that has left so many dead. What they will do remains quite murky. Everyone agrees that things will have to change. How things will change remains a question without a firm answer.

Put another way, will the Government take the army off the street and just make a deal with the cartels that stops the killing? Or are the cartels at this point so much stronger than the Government that no acuerdo of this kind is possible?

The simplest, most important question about the election: will Sunday's vote move Mexico toward an end of the killing, or will it just fuel more of it?

Juarez, I Can Hear You Crying, Part 2

Mexico hates you, EPN

This LA Times Op-Ed doesn't pull any punches about Mexico's upcoming presidential election and the PRI's illustrious candidate for president:

The Mexican version of the old Soviet Politburo is poised to make a comeback, with potentially disastrous consequences for North America. In 2000, the world hailed the end of more than 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, as a sign of democratic transition. Today, the PRI's presidential candidate in the July 1 election, Enrique Peña Nieto, threatens to bring back the authoritarian ways of the past.

The PRI has not cleaned up its act or modernized over the last 12 years. To the contrary, it has deepened its networks of corruption and illegality in the territories it still controls. The 10 states where the PRI has never lost power are among the most violent, underdeveloped and corrupt in the country. In these states, democratic transition and accountability are exotic concepts and the local governors rule like despotic feudal lords.

For example, the state of Veracruz is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. Recently, four journalists were assassinated in a single week. In January, officials close to the governor were detained in an airport with a suitcase containing nearly $2 million in cash, supposedly for an advertising campaign.

What this isn't, is a surprise. Shocking perhaps. Business as usual, perhaps. But, sadly, no surprise at all. And you don't need to read deeply in Paco Igancio Taibo II or Martin Solares or the Mexican press to be reminded that it's been like this for quite some time. For a very, very long time. It's a tradition. A way of life.

And, of course, the Op Ed actually says it:

Peña Nieto is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He hides behind a telegenic smile and sharp attire, but he represents Mexico's old corrupt political class. Last week, for example, a high-ranking general apparently close to Peña Nieto and his group of politicians from Mexico state was arrested on organized-crime charges.

During his governorship, Peña Nieto allegedly spent tens of millions in public funds to illegally boost his image on national television. But he has few ideas of his own and questionable moral character. He fathered a son in an extramarital affair and has come under fire from the boy's mother for being an irresponsible parent.

When Peña Nieto was asked at a book fair to name three books he had read, he could only mention that he had gone over "parts" of the Bible. The late Carlos Fuentes, who died May 15, said that Peña Nieto's "ignorance" cast serious doubts on his ability to be a good president. No intellectual or independent journalist is willing to publicly endorse Peña Nieto's candidacy.

Well, your Bloguero can relate to all of this. Most Norteamericanos should be able to, also. After all, your Bloguero lives in a country that has "elected" the seeming Village Idiot in 2000 and, as if that weren't enough, again in 2004. So the piquant smell of opaque stooge-ism and favoritism and corruption and hypocrisy and plunder of the system by its supposed curators isn't at all unfamiliar. You could wish such things were only for Banana Republics. What a joke.

Meanwhile, the current Mexican administration, once the supposed antidote to PRI's pervasive corruption, is engaged in its own crazy, deathly War on Drugs that has left more than 50,000 people dead in its wake and has reduced cities like Juarez to places to escape from. Places where the army fights pitched battles with the cartels. Places where innocent people get killed. Or kidnapped. Or maimed. Places where going out at night is extremely dangerous. Where being in public places is a risk. Where speaking out or blogging or posting on FB leads to reprisals. Where riding public transportation may expose the commuter to a hail of random bullets. In sum, Juarez represents the dystopian narco-state at its most virulent and most dangerous.

And then there's this, lest one think that the PRI has the monopoly on corruption and that the War on Drugs has nothing to do with that:

President Felipe Calderon's reliance on the army in Mexico's war on drugs was shaken in the past days with the arrest of three generals and a lieutenant colonel on corruption charges.

With Mexico's presidential election just six weeks away and political campaigns in full swing, supporters allege that at least one of the arrests is politically motivated.

Most shocking was the detention of retired major general Tomas Angeles, a close aid to Defense Minister Guillermo Galvan and a soldier with a sterling reputation.

Angeles was the second highest-ranking officer in the ministry during the first two years of Calderon's administration and had been seen as a likely candidate for defense minister until his retirement in 2008.

Javier Sicilia may have a solution to all of this. But even if he does, it's going to take major upheaval and time to move the inert, corrupt narco-state in a direction away from corruption and toward peace. One thing is sure: EPN and Calderon both have no plan, no idea, nothing relevant to say that will end the killing. They continue to fill their pockets. And they attempt to shoulder their rivals away from the public trough.

All that means, I am sorry to note, that Juarez, City of Tears and Death and Displacement, your weeping is in vain. And your obvious, uncontrollable pain is not going to be swiftly abated.