Announcement

**Harry Tuttle** · September 17, 2006, 20:19

Where's General Pershing when you need him?

**chequita guevara** · September 17, 2006, 20:22

Maybe we wouldn't have had someone who wasn't elected by the people of Florida destroying America right now. The American people should have put a stop to Bush before he was inaugerated, but they were cowards and so got an unelected President. Frankly, if Gore had loved democracy, he might have fought harder for all Floridians to have their votes counted, instead of only in the counties where he thought he might win while not allowing fraudulent absetee ballots to be counted.

Funny how right-wingers can support this kind of thing in the Ukraine or Yugoslavia and even grudgingly well after the fact in the Philippines, but not if it's a leftist who's claiming fraud.

In any event, there is substantial evidence of vote fraud and electoral abuses in Mexico. They should have held a run-off, and that would likely have settled it. Considering that Calderon can't go anywhere without attracting massive protests, it seems unlikely he'll be able to govern.

**chequita guevara** · September 17, 2006, 20:27

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
Where's General Pershing when you need him?

Dead, thankfully.

**chequita guevara** · September 17, 2006, 20:28

Who Benefits?
Mexico's Time of Troubles

By DICK J. REAVIS

On Sept. 6 the Mexican Federal Electoral Tribunal drew its breath, crossed its fingers and, hoping that its decision would stick, declared Felipe Calderón the winner of the nation's July 2 presidential election.

Its dictum was an exercise in wishful thinking, because it is one thing to be named as president and another to be regarded as competent, honorable or benign.

Even when on Sept. 16 opponents of the new president-elect give up their camp-outs in downtown Mexico city, acquiesce and with a sigh of resignation, return to their homes, Calderón will take office under scorn, hobbled by infamy.

His inauguration on Dec. 1 will be bubble in a boiling pot, not the beginning or end of anything.

A pre-election editorial by the New York Times best described the handicap that Calderón can't wish away or resolve: "He is a respectable model of the Latin American colorless, Harvard-educated, pro-business candidate."

Calderón's past, his personality and his politics do not fit him for leadership in country of the hard-pressed and poor. His persona is that of a placeholder for the rich, and his electoral victory-if it was that--is dubious.

The economic program of Calderón predecessor, Vicente Fox, also made him a candidate of the rich, but Fox's cowboy boots, braggadocio and public swearing persuaded the voters otherwise. Fox, like George W. Bush, had the redneck touch. But Calderón is John Snow, the U.S. Treasury Secretary whom almost everyone quickly forgot.

To say that the tepid Calderón will be a rich man's president, and that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his main opponent, was the champion of the poor, is not to say that in Mexico millions of people don't belong to a middle class-or that much of that middle class didn't vote for Calderón. Instead it is to say that the rich backed Calderón, while the poor sympathized with López Obrador.

A Tainted Election

One of the chasmic difference between Mexico and the United States is that in Mexico, the poor are a slim majority, not a mere niche. Perhaps more than that, Mexico is a country with a deeply populist civic self-image and tradition: the country's political founders were not middle-to-upper-class planters or merchants in white wigs, but rough-and-ready warriors, grimy miners and peasants. In Mexico, to speak for the poor is to speak for "the people." To represent anybody else is to represent an oligarchy of some kind.

Calderón bases his claim to legitimacy on having won the presidency by 243,000 of some 42 million votes cast, .58 percent of the total. His margin was paper-thin, but he won fair and square, his backers say.

If he won.

In challenging the vote count, López Obrador (also known as AMLO and "El Peje") showed that mathematical errors afflicted more than 40 percent of the vote tallies. The Electoral Tribunal ordered recounts of only 9 percent of the total, still enough to trim Calderon's margin by 10,000 votes.

The Electoral Tribunal turned down a request to see the ballots, made by a panel of citizens-AMLO supporters, to be sure-that included novelist Elena Poniatowska. Ballots are not public records, it said. And already, there's a move to burn those ballots, as the Mexican Congress did following the 1988 election, which, by nearly all accounts, was stolen by Carlos Salinas of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI. Ballot-burning, if it comes this time, will be easier because it's been legalized.

But it won't be more convincing.

In northern Mexico, which Calderón strongly carried, it is likely that the PRI, desperate for appointive jobs and committee positions, both legally and in some locales, illegally shifted votes to Calderón´s Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, in line with a plot, captured on telephone tapes, that was promoted by the then-PRIista leader, Elba Esther Gordillo. But the Electoral Tribunal did not look into the northern-state shenanigans.

Only in a perfunctory way did the Tribunal weigh charges that President Fox violated Mexican electoral law by taking a partisan role in the campaign, and that a group other than a political party-a consortium of businessmen-had run hundreds of television defaming AMLO. The Tribunal´s seven judges found that both Fox and the business group had indeed stepped on the toes of legality-but that their transgressions hadn't significantly altered outcomes at the polls.

Was the Tribunal´s sage sociological speculation based on the premise that Mexicans don't watch television? The very lower-middle class that may have swung its vote to Calderón is as addicted as in the United States.

Even without the help of the business group, the Calderón campaign out-spent AMLO on advertising crusades two-to-one. The PAN had the backing to upset the polls, which for two years, until last April-when the onslaught of business-group ads began--had given López Obrador margins of 8 to 20 points.

As the election went, neither Calderón nor AMLO can claim a margin wide enough to govern comfortably: both polled less than 36 perfect of the vote because the wily PRI managed to garner 22 percent. A run-off was needed, but Mexico's electoral system, like the American one, fails to provide for as much. The PRI didn't carry a single state, but because its strongholds are among the peasantry-people who are unquestionably poor-the likelihood is that López Obrador would have won had a run-off been possible.

If by some improbability, Calderón cleanly won the vote under the extant rules, by even as much as .58 percent cent, López Obrador must of course share the blame. His campaign slogan, "For the Good of All-the Poor First!" was not calculated to appeal to the pride of those who, though they may have formerly considered themselves poor, are today teetering above that abyss. Indeed, AMLO's poor-mouthing may have offended them--and they are legion.

About 40 percent of the Mexican workforce is employed in the formal economy and therefore enjoys minimum wage, retirement and unemployment protections, plus housing benefits. Almost all economists agree that Mexican workers have not made gains since as far back as what's called "The Crisis," a downturn that began with the oil bust and devaluation of 1982 and hasn't ended yet.

But during the Fox administration, thanks in part to the internationalization of Mexico's banking chains-all of them are foreign-owned today-participants in the formal economy gained access to credit. Millions of Mexicans have since made down payments on cars and houses, taken out variable-rate loans for the balances, and are feeling flush.

Just like millions of workaday Americans, their sense of well-being is fueled by what they can borrow, not what they have earned. The zillion television ads that the business group-the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, or Business Coordinating Council-broadcast over television warned that if López Obrador were elected and kept his promise to establish a $70-per-month pension for people over 70, interest rates would rise. The ads struck home. The creditworthy voted from fear, not faith.

Blame may also be owed, not only to Fox and the fat cats, but to López Obrador 's associates in the Partido de la Revolución Democrático. In two states the party turned out less voters than when it elected governors. The same thing happened in various municipalities governed by the PRD, though whether the falloff is due to perceived corruption, or to the PRD's cutthroat factionalism, is not clear.

But Calderón made an unpardonable mistake when he was first named as ostensible winner in July. Given Mexico's venerable history of vote fraud, if Calderón won fair and square, he should have shown the Mexican public as much. He should have joined López Obrador in calls for a recount or nullification of the vote. That he didn't indicates that he wasn't sure.

The upshot of all of these factors is that there's nothing happy on the Mexican political horizon. For the first time in the nation's history, a president was unable to deliver his customary September state of the union message because of a rebellion by PRD congressmen, who took the podium and wouldn't yield. López Obrador and his allies are threatening to carry off a similar performance for Calderón's Dec. 1 inauguration. At a minimum, they will again put a million banner-waving, traffic-blocking protestors into the streets.

When Vicente Fox drapes Felipe Calderón in the tricolor Mexican presidential sash-as he will, even if the ceremony is staged like his state of the union address, in a television studio-a lasting image of Calderón will emerge. In the minds of millions of Mexicans, he will be the rich guy who, with all the money that plutocrats could supply, and all the fear that consumer debt could feed, managed to hold onto the presidency with a mere palm full of votes in his favor. He'll be seen as a classic miser, as an aristocrat who bickered with his yardman over an hour's wage or a tip-and had the last word because of who he was, the bossman, the man with the pencil, the child of Those Who've Always Won. He is anything but populist, and as president, is likely to be anything but popular.

The Future of the PRD

López Obrador has declared that he will never recognize Calderón as president, and that he will now form a parallel government, whatever that will mean, to conduct the affairs of the majority that, he still insists, elected him. Though he has throughout his career pulled off feats that even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. couldn't have matched, I doubt that the campaign will prosper: people can't stay mobilized forever because they have to chase furtive livelihoods. What is more likely-and perhaps Calderón is counting on this-is that the coaltion that the AMLO bound together will collapse, and maybe, the PRD itself. Already, Convergencia, one of the two minor parties in the PRD electoral front, has agreed to cooperate with Calderón's PRI-PAN regime.

If Calderón is looking forward to the dissolution of the PRD, he lives in a world that is too genteel. Opposition will not simply dry up nor will opponents give in as they go about their daily lives. The PRD, if it has accomplished nothing else, has drawn thousands of working-class supporters into its ranks, putting politics back into kitchen-table talk. It has also knitted into a functioning unit the scores of leftist sects, composed mainly of middle-class intellectuals, that have played the gadfly's role in Mexican politics since the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968. The restive elements of both strata include hundreds of thousands of people who are young, impatient and bold.

Mexico's revolutionary tradition is neither so distant nor one-offish as that of the United States. Its independence was born of the Revolution of 1810, when a priest led Indian mobs in a rising against Spain, and the Mexican political system's contemporary form stems largely from the Revolution of 1910, when the likes of the bandit Villa and the peasant Zapata turned the country upside-down for nearly 20 years. Every child in Mexico was raised to revere the nation's rebels in arms.

In a land whose hallowed prehispanic ancestors believed that all of life is cyclical, a double anniversary-a revolutionary year--is also drawing near. The Chiapas uprising led by Subcomandate Marcos in 1994 was not an anomaly but a recurrence--and could prove prophetic in 2010.

Already guerrilla bands that have stayed hidden, never disarming in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero, are showing themselves again. Thanks to prosperity of Mexico's narcotraffickers, new guerrilla movements will have no trouble procuring small arms, despite long-standing gun control laws.

But any new return to arms is likely to involve hundreds, not thousands of rebels. Rural revolts by themselves cannot carry Mexico into a new day, as in 1810 and 1910, and urban organizations with revolutionary intent have always been short-lived and rare.

López Obrador does not have any significant following, nor has his party tried to inseminate support inside the Mexican army, whose disposition would be critical to any renewed revolt: had Venezuela's Hugo Chávez not once been Colonel Chávez, and had he not won a loyal following in that country's officer corps, the ballots that elected him might not have been scrupulously tallied, either-nor could he have survived the coup of 2002. Because AMLO laid no groundwork in the armed forces, unless they limit themselves to purely symbolic assaults, the firebrands who will take up arms to vindicate him will see their plots and plans-and their very sincere and patriotic idealism-crushed, snuffed, burlesqued and condemned.

When Calderón becomes president, the perspective for his nation will be of the plainest and commonest, even of the most traditional, kind. Mexico will pass through a time of troubles that will benefit no one.

Dick J. Reavis, an assistant professor of English at North Carolina State University, has covered Mexican elections for Texas Monthly since 1982. He can be reached: dickjreavis@yahoo.com

**chequita guevara** · September 17, 2006, 20:29

Adios, To the Fox!
Death of the Mexican Presidency

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City.

The tableau of 155 leftist deputies and senators storming the tribune of congress here September 1 to prevent President Vicente Fox from delivering his sixth and final State of the Union address (the "Informe") should be mandatory viewing for members of both houses of the U.S. Congress who, year after year, burst into servile applause for George Bush when each January he imposes his own infernal Informe upon the citizens of Gringolandia.

One crucial political distinction between these two distant neighbor nations is the presence of a third party in the Mexican mix, one that at least purports to be left of the center. Swindled out of the presidency by fraud this past July 2, the party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)--the Party of the Democratic Revolution or PRD--appears to have broken with the political class and traditional cronyism.

It is not that the PRD's hands are clean its legislators have regularly prostituted their wares - but in the wake of the stolen election and having been frozen out of any power positions in the brand-new congress despite being Mexico's second political force, the Party of AMLO has little to lose, and is suddenly speaking its truth to power, a singular position for any politico right or left.

Despite rampant corruption, regular vote stealing, and authoritarian tendencies, Mexico's multi-party system makes U.S. "democracy" with its two-headed single party rule, look a lot more like Idi Amin's Uganda than what the Boston tea party had in mind for the future citizens of the United States of North America.

The spectacle of elected officials being pissed off enough to stare down tin-plate potentates like President Vicente Fox topped off weeks of scuffling in and around the 10 kilometer steel wall Mexican troops had thrown up around the Legislative Palace to keep Lopez Obrador's die-hard supporters from congregating in shouting distance of the congress of the country. On the government side of the barricade, 6000 preventative police (drawn from the military) and Fox's own presidential guard or the Estado Mayor had turned the congressional precinct into a war zone. One side in this standoff was equipped with clubs, electric shields, tear gas, water cannons, light tanks, live ammunition, and snipers up on the rooftops. The other only with its dreams and its "coraje" (righteous anger.) Guess which side won?

When I first touched down in this mile-high capital a full generation ago, Informe Day was a sacrosanct national holiday. Banks closed, workers got the day off, the streets were lined with adoring fans of the sitting president who was always a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the confetti drizzled down from the heavens above like worthless manna. Each September 1, El Presidente would be escorted into the PRI-controlled congress by a military honor guard and a gaggle of obsequious legislatures for sometimes six-hour speeches to the nation.

But little by little, this pompous ritual, which is not contemplated by the constitution and was first mandated by the PRI's founder General Plutarco Elias Calles in 1928 with the sole goal of aggrandizing an imperial presidency at the expense of the other two houses of government, has been stripped down to the bone largely due to the incessant heckling of a third party, the PRD.

This year, Informe Day dawned dark and apocalyptic, an evil wind snaking through the deserted streets of the capital in anticipation of violent clashes to come. At 4 in the afternoon, Lopez Obrador summoned his followers to the great Zocalo plaza, where he and 10,000 more have been encamped for five weeks now, to issue marching orders to the left-leaning hordes about to throw themselves against the military's metal walls. But despite the masses' eagerness, AMLO's marching orders were not to march after all. His people now occupied the political heart of Mexico, he reasoned, why give it up? Moreover, the Fox was pouring hundreds of thousands of pesos every day in policing costs just to keep them right where they were, the most strategic space in the nation. So should we march, Lopez Obrador asked the assembly. The vote was mixed, with many hands raised in favor of mayhem and AMLO had to cajole the crowd into non-violence. As if on cue, Lila Downs and Rita Guerrero, two of Mexico's stellar songbirds, were brought out to warble for the born-again pacifist throng.

Nonetheless, bands of hot-hearted students and workers set out for the nearby Legislative Palace to do battle with the robocops. Although this movement has been miraculously free of violence, after a month of living in the streets, many are itchy for fisticuffs.

While ski-masked youths scrimmaged on the barricades with Fox's cops and others shook their bodies in the Zocalo, the 155-member congressional delegation of AMLO's Coalition for the Good of All was examining its options. Having literally forced their way through the military checkpoints and the metal detectors to enter the Legislative Palace, they were in no mood for symbolic protest, as has so often been the antistrophe during the President's annual address. "We come as aggrieved citizens" warned Carlos Navarete, leader of the PRD in the senate and an ex-communist, and they were going to let the President, his bogus successor Felipe Calderon, and the archly right-wing PAN party know it. Besides stealing the election and unconstitutionally cordoning off congress with the troops, Fox's PAN, in league with
the PRI had rubbed salt in the PRD's wounds by keeping AMLO's party out of the direction of every committee in the new legislature. Now it was pay back time.

One after another, the parties, starting with the most inconsequential--the so-called "Alternative Social Democratic Farmers Party" (two seats)--followed each other to the podium to diss the Fox in the traditional run-up to the President's blahblah.

When it was Navarete's turn, the Senator seized the microphone to denounce the constitutional violations that had turned congress into an armed camp and declared that he would not budge from the podium until the barriers came down and the robocops sent back to barracks. 154 more leftist senators and deputies solemnly filed onto the tribune and proclaimed their solidarity. In a matter of seconds, the Mexican Congress had been transformed into an extension of the seven-mile encampment of AMLO's devotees that has clogged the city's thoroughfares for a month and so enraged the motoring class here.

No matter how many times the frozen-faced PANista president of congress Jorge Zerminio rapped his gavel and ordered the leftists back to their seats, AMLO's legislators would not be moved. They proudly stood their ground up on the podium, waving signs and banners labeling Vicente Fox "a traitor to democracy" and much worse.

After weeks of being excluded from the cameras of Mexico's two-headed television monopoly, Lopez Obrador's message was suddenly being carried on prime time. Both Televisa and its pipsqueak partner TV Azteca, obligated by time constraints and the imminent arrival of the President, could not cut away. There in the eye of the nation, newly-elected senators Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, the grande dame of Mexico's human rights movement, and the luminous actress Maria Rojo, kept flapping their insolent signs and chanting that Fox was a traitor.

The President and his pouting wife Martita had been helicoptered in from Los Pinos, Mexico's White House to deliver his State of the Union message. Guarded by hundreds of dark-suited goons, they were then transferred to a fleet of bulletproof SUVs, and warned that there was trouble in the congress. When the convoy pulled up to the principle door of the legislative palace, the President tentatively emerged as if not knowing what to expect--Martita was held back by the bodyguards--and slowly, painfully mounted the great steps of congress (he has a bad back.) The tension was now as taut as a drawn catapult. The sacred scenario of the Informe was about to go kaplooy.

The Fox got about a foot and a half inside the lobby of congress before he found himself face to face with the indignant leaders of the PAN contingent in the new legislature who had the unpleasant task of informing him that the tribune was occupied by AMLO's dirty yellow scum and for the first time in modern Mexican political history, the President would not be allowed to deliver his State of the Union bull**** to the nation. Fox got gray real quick, his jowly face a mask of indecision and befuddlement for all to see. The cameras were grinding and the whole country glued to the tube as Fox's authority and what was left of the imperial presidency collapsed into dust.

After conferring with his attorney general, the President must have realized that the final nail had been driven into the coffin of this useless ceremony, handed the text of his Informe to the secretary of the Congress in completion of his constitutional obligations, turned on his heels, and phalanxed by the Presidential Guard, trudged back down the steps of Congress. "ADIOOOOOS!" AMLO's leftists crooned from the tribune.

Outside, Martita was waiting for the green light to enter the Palace and flout the dazzling new frock the taxpayers had bought her and when she realized that her hubby had been rebuffed, her little face crumpled up in a grimace of disgust. The President and the First Lady were then driven back to the whirlybirds and returned to Los Pinos where Fox was rushed into the presidential television studio to doctor up a tape of the thwarted address pre-recorded for just such a contingency. Broadcast an hour later on all television and radio outlets and intercut with footage of smiling Indians and exuberant school children, the once-inviolable Informe was reduced to an info-mercial.

Meanwhile back in Congress, the leftist legislators clung to the podium despite the snarling insults of the PANistas, waving their mocking signs and tootling little Fox-40 Classic whistles as if they had suddenly all become soccer referees, until they were finally assured that the troops outside were being retired and the metal barriers disassembled. By then, the TV buzzards had long since lost interest in the denouement and one by one faded back into regular programming. Mr. Bean and Bart Simpson now filled the screen.

At the most nerve-wracking juncture in this battle for the soul of Mexico, AMLO had won a stunning propaganda victory, pyrrhic as it may prove to be, and his people celebrated accordingly. In the camps along the Paseo de Reforma and in the Zocalo, supporters embraced and jumped up and down ("he who does not jump is a PANista"), yodeled "adiooooooses" at the Fox, waved flags, detonated bottle rockets, and rehydrated a movement that had been flagging under a deluge of hard rain and bad news.

For Vicente and Martita this farewell fracaso capped a disastrous plunge from grace. Elected in 2000 in a geyser of hope as the first opposition candidate to take the presidency since the PRI had franchised the office, things had soured fast. After pledging to resolve the crisis in Chiapas "in 15 minutes" and promising in his inaugural address to make the Indian rights accords that the Zapatistas had signed with the outgoing PRI government the law of the land, Fox had failed to deliver and the rebels had broken off all contact with his government. Six years later, that southern state still leaked blood.

Here at the end of his reign, Oaxaca was on fire--a new guerrilla group had appeared in public on the day of the Informe--and in the wake of the stolen election, the tangled traffic, and the military takeover of congress, Mexico City was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

In the six years Fox had occupied the throne of Mexico, the rich had grown exponentially richer and the poor were just as poor as ever. During his years in office, 4,000,000 of Vicente Fox's fellow citizens had been forced to abandon the country for El Norte because of zero job growth and the depletion of the agricultural sector. The President much hoopla'd "Whole Enchilada" i.e. integral immigration reform had been flushed down Bush's toilet and the nation had endured six years of legislative gridlock. Hundreds of women had been slaughtered in Ciudad Juarez and the narco gangs were beheading their rivals in broad daylight on the streets of provincial cities. Meanwhile Martita's sons were about to be indicted for "illegal enrichment."

With the country divided in half between brown and white, rich and poor, the future - the imposition of Felipe Calderon upon an incredulous populace--looks dim.

The Informe and the display of military might in which it had unfurled was a dress rehearsal for December 1 when Fox will try and hang the tri-color presidential sash around Calderon's neck as if it were Coleridge's albatross. AMLO himself is about to set up a parallel government that will dog Fox's successor for the next six years when the leftist convenes the Democratic National Convention on Mexican Independence Day September 16. A million delegates are expected to attend this milestone in the heroic resistance of AMLO's people to the imposition of Calderon.

Such a government would be illegal and constitute usurpation of functions, a crime punishable by many years in prison, threatens Attorney General Carlos Abascal. The officious presidential spokesperson, Ruben Aguilar, proposes that Lopez Obrador
be tried for rebellion, another felony. The taking of the tribune of Congress by his senators and deputies could result in the cancellation of the PRD's registration as a political party, the PAN advises. The criminalization of AMLO--Fox has been trying to lock him up in La Palma, the nation's maximum lock-up, for years--is in the wind.

But September 1 was a moment in this skein that not many Mexicans of meager means and less power will soon forget. "We sure showed those 'pinches rateros' who this country belongs to, no Juanito?" bellowed 71 year-old Isidro Garcia, a former boxer who handymans here at the Hotel Isabel, clapping me hard on my bum spine. I saw that same twinkle now gleaming in Isidro's eye long ago after Cuauhtemoc Cardenas had whipped the reviled Carlos Salinas, the root of much of this evil, out in Michoacan back in '88. Some precincts had come in 600 to zero not so much for Cardenas but against the PRI. When I asked the colonos what had happened, they would gleefully report "nos hemos chingada el PRI".

"Do you know what a pendejo (cuckold or idiot) is?" Celia Cruz, an increasingly hunched-over "camarista" (bed maker) here at the Isabel laughed up at me, her eyes dancing to the top of her head, "a pendejo is an "arrogante" (arrogant person) who doesn't know he is a pendejo. Este Fox! Que pendejo!"

As I top off this chronicle, the seven judge panel or TRIFE that must at last declare a winner in this stolen election, is about to name Felipe Calderon the next president of Mexico, although the court's rotund condemnation of Fox's unconstitutional intervention on behalf of his fellow PANista would seem to have called for annulation of the July 2 election.

But for Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinajosa and his elite white ilk, the TRIFE's confirmation would seem to be another pyrrhic victory when the fury of those who have been once again defrauded out of their votes is measured. This battle for the soul of Mexico is not over yet.

John Ross's ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 will be published by Nation Books in October. Ross will travel the left coast this fall with the new volume and a hot-off-the-press chapbook of poetry Bomba!--all suggestions of venues will be cheerfully entertained--write johnross@igc.org

**chequita guevara** · September 17, 2006, 20:30

What Democracy Looks Like?
Elections and Lesson from Mexico

By MARY TURCK

As the intensity of internal conflict mounts, Mexico awaits the verdict of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (variously known as the TEPJF or the Trife), and the streets of Mexico City are occupied by encampments of protesters demanding a full recount of the ballots in the July 2 presidential election, "vote by vote, precinct by precinct." The constitution says the seven-judge Trife must complete its work by August 31 and must announce its decision by September 6.

At stake is the outcome of the July 2 presidential election, and perhaps much more. The Federal Election Institute (IFE) declared Felipe Calderón, candidate of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), the winner of the election by 243,000 votes, a razor-thin margin of the 41.5 million votes cast. Supporters of the Democratic Revolutionary Party's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) insist that he won the election, pointing to numerous instances of fraud. Among them: ballot boxes found in garbage dumps, boxes stuffed with additional ballots, tally sheets reporting totals that do not match the number of votes inside the box the list goes on and on.

After two rallies of more than a million people each, AMLO supporters have settled in a well-organized, well-supplied encampment in downtown Mexico City, spilling out from the Zócalo (central square), blocking roads and disrupting daily life in the capital.

Despite evidence of widespread election irregularities, the Trife refused the call for a complete national recount, agreeing only to examine the results in 11,839 of the nation's 130,000 precincts. That recount was completed in mid-August, though the results have not yet been publicly released. The Mexican daily La Jornada reported conflicting PRD and PAN claims about the results of the recount, with PRD insisting that the Trife had uncovered major problems and PAN dismissing the irregularities as "errorcitos." But La Jornada's website features videos showing violated ballot boxes and other evidence of fraud from sites across the country. Narco News Bulletin, which has closely followed the election and post-election results, claims it has received information that the Trife's partial recount showed irregularities sufficient to reverse the results of the election. (Mexico's Partial Vote Recount Confirms Massive and Systematic Election Fraud, Narco News Bulletin, 8/15/06)

The Trife has several options. First, it could annul the results in specific precincts, based on its examinations. Many results are tainted by "taqueo" (stuffing ballot boxes as if they were tacos) or by "saqueo" (theft of ballots.) In either case, determining the true count for the precinct is impossible, so annulment is the remedy. Annulments of even a portion of the 11,000 recounted precincts could reverse the margin of victory, giving the presidency to AMLO.

Second, the Trife could annul the entire election. It has annulled local and even gubernatorial elections in the past. If it annulled the entire election, Congress would select an interim president to govern and new elections would be scheduled within two years. Since Congress is effectively controlled by the governing PAN party, with the support of the deposed and discredited Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a two-year delay in elections would mean two more years of PAN rule.

Whatever decision the Trife takes, they are not the only actors on the scene. López Obrador has pledged "civil resistance" if the Trife declares in favor of Calderón, beginning on September 1 when President Vicente Fox gives his annual State of the Union address to Congress.

As in the U.S. presidential election in 2000, it seems clear that various kinds of election irregularities (or outright fraud) resulted in the initial award of victory. Unlike the Democratic candidate and party in the United States in 2004, AMLO and his supporters have refused to yield, instead pledging to escalate their campaign of nonviolent civil resistance and to prevent a Calderón presidency.

While the magnitude of Mexico's electoral fraud may be even greater than the "irregularities" of Florida in 2000, that alone does not explain the militance of the resistance. "Mexico has a revolution every hundred years," say many voices from the street. In 1810, the War of Independence began. The Mexican Revolution came in 1910. Today, millions of voices are raised in protest, peaceful resistance fills the streets of the capital with encampments, the Zapatistas' La Otra Campaña marches through the countryside and, in Oaxaca, teachers lead a popular revolt against a corrupt and abusive governor.

This may be what a revolution looks like. It may be what democracy looks like. And it may be in a lesson to the citizens of the neighbor to the north what principled resistance to corrupt abuse of power and theft of elections looks like.

Mary Turck is the editor of Connection to the Americas and WWW.AMERICAS.ORG, for the Resource Center of the Americas, where this article first appeared. She can be reached at: mturck@americas.org

**Drake Tungsten** · September 17, 2006, 20:41

Jesus. This Mexican guy must really hate democracy for che to support him this much...

**Kuciwalker** · September 17, 2006, 20:42

Che is a tool.

As are Obrador's supporters.

**notyoueither** · September 17, 2006, 21:07

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Maybe we wouldn't have had someone who wasn't elected by the people of Florida destroying America right now. The American people should have put a stop to Bush before he was inaugerated, but they were cowards and so got an unelected President. Frankly, if Gore had loved democracy, he might have fought harder for all Floridians to have their votes counted, instead of only in the counties where he thought he might win while not allowing fraudulent absetee ballots to be counted.

Funny how right-wingers can support this kind of thing in the Ukraine or Yugoslavia and even grudgingly well after the fact in the Philippines, but not if it's a leftist who's claiming fraud.

In any event, there is substantial evidence of vote fraud and electoral abuses in Mexico. They should have held a run-off, and that would likely have settled it. Considering that Calderon can't go anywhere without attracting massive protests, it seems unlikely he'll be able to govern.

Funny. I've heard a left-leaning, American ex-pat university professor say the same things about Kennedy-Nixon, except it was Ohio IIRC.

**Whoha** · September 17, 2006, 21:15

"Despite rampant corruption, regular vote stealing, and authoritarian tendencies, Mexico's multi-party system makes U.S. "democracy" with its two-headed single party rule, look a lot more like Idi Amin's Uganda than what the Boston tea party had in mind for the future citizens of the United States of America."

We had a weak and fractured government, it was called the Articles of confederation. It was said to have sucked ass and replaced with a stronger central government.

**DinoDoc** · September 17, 2006, 21:31

whatever that will mean, to conduct the affairs of the majority that, he still insists, elected him.

Bull****. Even if what he says is true he only represents at best a 1/3 of the country. Hardly the basis for claiming majority support for the so-called "People's President."

**Velociryx** · September 17, 2006, 21:44

Bull****. Even if what he says is true he only represents at best a 1/3 of the country.

*shrug* Is this not true for every American President in the last 30+ years? Including, of course, our boy Shrub....

"Democracy."

-=Vel=-

**DinoDoc** · September 17, 2006, 21:57

Originally posted by Velociryx
*shrug* Is this not true for every American President in the last 30+ years? Including, of course, our boy Shrub....

No.

....

Well Ok maybe Clinton.

**DanS** · September 17, 2006, 23:04

I don't know what Che thinks a couple of articles will prove. He's missing the point. I was looking for an elevated discussion about the fragility of democracy and what maintains it in the face of a close election.

Announcement

What if Gore hadn't loved our democracy?

What if Gore hadn't loved our democracy?

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