Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] Mexico's "perfect dictatorship"
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======== MEXICO'S "PERFECT DICTATORSHIP" =====================================
Michael Wilson, a graduate fellow at the University of California-Santa Cruz,
reports on Mexico's presidential election--and what it means for ordinary
Mexicans.
July 10, 2012
ON THE night of July 1, Enrique Peña Nieto shouted before cameras, "this
Sunday, Mexico won!" The presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI), Peña used the speech to declare himself the winner,
promising an "honest" and "democratic presidency."
Peña believed he had defeated both the conservative incumbent Partido
Acción Nacional (PAN), which placed legal restrictions on the privatization
of state enterprises, and the promise of redistribution posed by Andrés
Manuel López Obrador of the Partido Revolucionario Democrático. The PRI is
expected to return to market liberalization policies under Pena, the
election's largest spender, who has promised "neither a pact nor a truce" in
the war on crime.
As soon as legally possible, television networks' exit polls fired their
verdict--Peña by 5, 10 or even 15 percent--and the electoral commission's
first count confirmed him as virtual president. The PRI also took key
governorships--for example, in the state of Yucatán, where it won by less
than 400 votes.
The return of the PRI comes in the face of an escalating conflict, the
violence of which is palpable even across its borders. The party has a long
history corruption and violence, and the patterns of its connections to the
drug trade are well documented. Dismissing history, Mexicans have given the
party another chance.
Many still believe in the PRI, despite decades of growing inequality, poverty
and cronyism. Simply, the party relentlessly crushed its opposition,
maintained national unity through violence and retained order in the streets.
Understandably, some long for the days in which the government stayed out of
the way of criminal organizations and these consequently stayed out of public
view.
Under the PAN-led "war on drugs," the everyday lives of many citizens have
become increasingly affected by crime--the effects of the war may seem more
immediately damaging than the instability created by the PRI¹s economic
policy.
However, many see the escalating power of the cartels has some of its roots
in PRI-led neoliberalization, as well as how the PRI handled its relationship
with organized crime. In Mexico state, where Peña was governor, women are
murdered at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country.
Laura Becerril, a woman leaving the polls, commented, "I don't even know how
Peña won--everybody I know says they voted for López Obrador...I have a
friend who got there in the afternoon and couldn¹t vote because they were
out of ballots."
MORE THAN 1,000 citizen reports of such anomalies can be read online [1].
These range from delinquent proselytism, unusual conditions at polls and
missing ballots in left-leaning districts, to vote-buying and violence
against monitors.
According to a survey by academics and specialists at the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, 71 percent of Mexicans believe electoral fraud
to be a possibility, according to /La Jornada/.
They may be drawing from recent experience, such as the 1988 "system
collapse" electoral fraud, or the 2006 contested presidential appointment.
Some could even venture far more deeply into Mexico¹s history of
exploitation and resistance.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE 1821 emancipation from colonialism only shifted power to the local
elites. It was then ruled by various generals (40 governments in 50 years)
and invaded by the U.S. In the late 19th century, Mexico underwent several
reforms that undercut the power of the Catholic Church and the military; to
do this, it elected an indigenous Supreme Justice to the presidency, before
France, England and Spain invaded, using external debt as an excuse to take
ports.
After 30 years of one military dictatorship, indigenous uprisings and worker
strikes became a full-blown revolution that overturned the power structure
and enacted redistributive reforms; however, the "revolutionary" party used
these events to consolidate. It centralized the executive power, set up
unions and coopted them, and brutally silenced decades of resistance and
dissent.
Meanwhile, corruption and populism--evidenced in acts like the
nationalization of petroleum in 1938 (to the dismay of U.S. Standard
Oil)--defined the state monopoly. During the Cold War, it saw macroeconomic
growth (and mounting inequality) and adopted the U.S. National Security
Doctrine. Mexico became the "perfect dictatorship."
In 1982, it began to restructure policy with neoliberal reforms that opened
the economy to international capital. The influx of investment and
commodities culminated in the passage of the North American Free Trade
Agreement. Small-scale producers declined and migration skyrocketed. By this
time, the United States had secured a national security state in Colombia.
Although the U.S. war on drugs did not reduce demand for drugs in North
America, it shifted patterns in their production, transportation and
distribution. It created the rise of El Chapo Guzmán, the metaphor
representing Mexico¹s narco-traffickers. The notoriously violent cartel, Los
Zetas, was once a branch of the Mexican military, created through U.S.
military assistance under National Security Doctrine.
The party lost the presidency in 2000, creating a cloud of dust. The power
vacuum was coupled with scandals and manipulations. Every form of political
attacks were waged in law, media, and the streets. Mexico reached a level of
instability that looked as if it could not collapse any further; however, the
plausibility of extraction from the world's sixth-largest petroleum reserves
would be protected by larger power structures.
Two weeks after taking office, President Felipe Calderón opened a war on
drug cartels. In six years, militarization has resulted in the deaths of
60,000 and the disappearance of 100,000. The state of affairs has transformed
Mexico, and led to the inspiring rise of student-led movements like #YoSoy132
or the transnational network Movimiento Regeneración Nacional.
Peña has vaguely promised a change of strategy before the Mexican populace;
to U.S. policymakers, he avows the continuation of the anti-cartel military
combat. On Sunday night, Calderón celebrated Peña's victory and asked the
public to confront together the "many things" that are wrong with Mexico.
Days ago, Calderón announced he plans to leave the country at the end of his
term.
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[1] http://www.observacionelectoral2012.com.mx/
