The Spirit of Resistance in Mexico City

by Stephen Lendman

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
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site at sjlendman.blogspot.com