[News] Mexico's Electoral Wildcard

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/ross05192006.html

May 19, 2006


Mexico's Electoral Wildcard


The Marcos Factor

By JOHN ROSS

The Marcos Factor has unexpectedly become a wild 
card in Mexico's closely fought July 2nd presidential election.

While out of earshot plying the back roads of 
provincial Mexico with his "Other Campaign", an 
anti-electoral crusade designed to weld 
underclass struggle groups into a new left 
alliance, the ski-masked rebel mouthpiece, now 
doing business as Delegate Zero, stayed aloof 
from the electoral mainstream although he 
attacked it relentlessly. But Marcos's arrival in 
the capital at the end of April has propelled him 
back into the national spotlight with less than 
50 days to go until Election Day.

Poll results are brazenly for sale in the run-up 
to Mexican elections and all are equally 
untrustworthy. For almost 30 months, Andres 
Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the former Mexico 
City mayor and candidate of the leftish Party of 
the Democratic Revolution (PRD) led preferences, 
sometimes by as much as 18 points.

But by April, under an unanswered barrage of 
attack commercials labeling him a danger to the 
nation in big block letters across the television 
screen, AMLO's lead had frittered away into a 
virtual tie with rightwing National Action Party 
candidate Felipe Calderon--polls paid for by the 
PAN even give Calderon a ten point advantage. On 
the other hand, Mitofsky Associates, contracted 
to produce monthly polls by the television giant 
Televisa, which tilts towards Calderon, gives the 
PANista just a one point edge with a two point 
margin of error. All pollsters have the 
once-ruling (71 years) Institutional 
Revolutionary Party's Roberto Madrazo running a 
distant third with 23-28%of voter preferences.

AMLO's diminished numbers were further 
complicated by ex-Subcomandante Marcos's arrival 
in the capitol. Delegate Zero has blasted the PRD 
and its candidate unceasingly in stump speech 
after stump speech across much of Mexico for the 
past five months. Although the Other Campaign 
focuses on the deficiencies of the electoral 
process and the 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560255781/counterpunchmaga>
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political parties to meet the needs of the 
people, Marcos always reserves special invective 
for Lopez Obrador and the PRD--the Other Campaign 
is, after all, a battle for the hearts and minds of the Mexican left.

But perhaps the cruelest blow that Delegate Zero 
has yet struck against his rival on the left came 
when he declared under the heat of national TV 
cameras that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be 
the winner of the July 2nd election. Marcos's 
"endorsement" is seen in some quarters as being 
akin to Osama Bin Laden's 2004 U.S. election eve 
TV appearance that frightened millions of voters into re-electing George Bush.

In truth, Marcos's appearance in Mexico City at 
the end of April generated little press interest 
and numbers at marches and rallies were 
embarrassingly small. But two days of bloody 
fighting between farmers affiliated with the 
Other Campaign and state and federal security 
forces at San Salvador Atenco just outside the 
capitol that resulted in hundreds of arrests, 
rampant violations of human rights, the rape of 
women prisoners, and the most stomach-wrenching 
footage of police brutality ever shown on Mexican 
television, put Marcos back in the media spotlight.

Leading marches in defense of the imprisoned 
farmers and vowing to encamp in Mexico City until 
they are released, Delegate Zero broke a 
five-year self-imposed ban on interviews with the 
commercial media (coverage of the Other Campaign 
has been limited to the alternative press.) A 
three part exclusive interview in La Jornada--the 
paper is both favorable to the Zapatista struggle 
and Lopez Obrador - revealed the ex-Sup's 
thinking as the EZLN transitions into the larger 
world beyond the indigenous mountains and jungle 
of their autonomous communities in southeastern 
Chiapas. After the Jornada interviews began 
running, dozens of national and international reporters lined up for more.

Then on May 8th, Marcos startled Mexico's 
political class by striding into a Televisa 
studio, an enterprise he has scorned and 
lampooned for the past 12 years and which that 
very morning in La Jornada he denounced as being 
Mexico's real government, and sat down for the 
first time ever with a star network anchor for a 
far-ranging chat on the state of the nation and 
the coming elections that effectively 
re-established the ex-Subcomandante's credibility 
as a national political figure in this TV-obsessed viodeocracy.

Among Delegate Zero's more pertinent 
observations: all three candidates were 
"mediocrities" who would administrate Mexico for 
the benefit of the transnationals but that Lopez 
Obrador had a distinct style of dealing with the 
crisis down below, and would emerge the winner on July 2nd.

Although observers differ about whether Marcos's 
"endorsement" was the kiss of death for AMLO's 
candidacy or just a peck on the cheek, Lopez 
Obrador's reaction was of the 
deer-caught-in-the-headlights variety, 
emphasizing the prolonged animosity between the 
PRD and the EZLN to disassociate himself from the Zapatista leader.

It was too late. Calderon, one of whose key 
advisors is right-wing Washington insider Dick 
Morris (the PANista is Washington's man), 
immediately lashed out at Marcos as "a PRD 
militant", claimed AMLO was under Marcos's 
ski-mask, and accused Lopez Obrador and Delegate 
Zero of being in cahoots to destabilize 
Mexico--the TV spots were running within 24 hours 
of Marcos's Televisa interview. In the 
background, the PRI's Madrazo called for the 
"mano duro" (hard hand) to control such 
subversive elements, tagging the farmers of 
Atenco whose broad field knives are the symbol of 
their struggle, AMLO's "yellow machetes" (yellow is the PRD's color.)

Lopez Obrador's only defense against this latest 
onslaught was to affirm that the mayor of 
Texcoco, who had been the first to send police to 
confront the farmers of Atenco, was a member of 
the PRD. Party members who are usually quick to 
denounce human rights violations here have stayed 
away from the police rampage in Atenco for fear 
that speaking out will further taint Lopez Obrador.

There are some who question Delegate Zero's 
widely circulated assessment that AMLO will be 
Mexico's next president, as disingenuous. After 
all, calling the election for Calderon after the 
Other Campaign has done its damndest to convince 
voters not to cast a ballot for AMLO could only 
arouse the ire of PRD bases along the route of the Other Campaign.

Even as Calderon uses Marcos to raise the fear 
flag, Marcos argues that voter fear of 
instability does not alter electoral results. 
Nonetheless, in 1994, Ernesto Zedillo parleyed 
fears triggered by the Zapatista rebellion and 
the assassination of PRI heir-apparent Luis 
Donaldo Colosio into big numbers to walk off with the Mexican presidency.

Although Delegate Zero equates all three 
political parties, the conventional wisdom is 
that a return to power by the PRI would animate 
elements in the Mexican military who still want 
to stamp out the Zapatista Army of National 
Liberation, and incite the lust of the 
PRI-affiliated paramilitaries for Zapatista 
blood. On the other hand, repeated violence 
against EZLN bases in Chiapas by PRD-affiliated 
farmers' groups, are not a harbinger of better 
times for the rebels under AMLO's rule.

Enfrented as the PRD and the EZLN remain, the 
only avenue of convergence could be in 
post-electoral protest. As the close race goes 
down to the wire, one good bet is that the July 
2nd margin between Calderon and Lopez Obrador 
will be less than 100,000 out of a potential 
72,000.000 voters. If Calderon is declared the 
victor by challengeable numbers, the PRD, 
invoking the stealing of the 1988 election from 
Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, is apt not to accept results 
issued by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) 
which AMLO's rank and file already considers 
partisan to the PAN, and the PRD will go into the 
streets--most noticeably in Mexico City where it 
concentrates great numbers and where the IFE is located.

How embarrassed Roberto Madrazo is by the PRI's 
performance July 2nd could determine his party's 
participation in mobilizations denouncing the 
results as well--Madrazo has thus far balked at 
signing a "pact of civility" being promoted by the IFE.

The EZLN has historically been more drawn to 
post-electoral protest than elections themselves. 
In 1994, convinced that Cuauhtemoc Cardenas would 
not take protests into the streets if he were 
once again cheated out of victory, the Zapatistas 
sought to inspire such protest themselves (they 
were successful only in Chiapas.)

The best bet is that given a generalized 
perception of a stolen election, the EZLN will 
put its animosity aside as it did last year when 
the PRI and the PAN tried to bar AMLO from the 
ballot, the "desafuero." But the Zapatistas will 
join the post-electoral fray calculating that 
AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, will 
seek to channel voters' anger into political acceptable constraints.

The return of Marcos to the national spotlight is 
an unintended consequence of the Other Campaign. 
Determined to use the electoral calendar to 
unmask the electoral process and the political 
class that runs it, Marcos's posture as an 
anti-candidate has made him as much of a 
candidate as AMLO, Calderon, and Madrazo. Indeed, 
Delegate Zero's primetime Televisa appearance has 
inducted him, voluntarily or not, into the very 
political class that the Other Campaign detests.

John Ross is on his way to California to watch 
basketball. His new opus "Making Another World 
Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" is in 
New York being inspected by editors. Ross will 
return to Mexico in early June to cover both the 
final spasms of the presidential race and the 
continued twitchings of the Other Campaign.

John Ross has covered four previous Mexican 
presidential election. He is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560255781/counterpunchmaga>Murdered 
By Capitalism.


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