[News] Crisis in Mexico Mounts as Opposition Rejects Privatization of Mexico's Oil

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Political Crisis in Mexico Mounts as Opposition
Rejects Privatization of Mexico's Oil Resources

By ALAN BENJAMIN

April 18, 2008 -- "The movement headed by Andrés 
Manuel López Obrador is fomenting a coup d'etat 
aimed at dismantling the Mexican nation and 
provoking a bloody civil war." This highly 
charged accusation by the Consejo Coordinador 
Empresarial (CCE), the equivalent of the Chamber 
of Commerce in the United States, was featured 
prominently in most of Mexico's newspapers this morning.

The spokesperson for the CCE, joined in a press 
conference by high-ranking figures in the ruling 
right-wing National Action Party (PAN), called on 
PAN leader Felipe Calderón to put an immediate 
end to the takeover and occupation by the 
opposition movement of the Mexican Senate and 
National Assembly. Calderón was imposed as 
Mexico's president by massive fraud in July 2006 
against López Obrador, the man most Mexicans 
consider to be their "legitimate" president. "The 
country is slipping into anarchy," the CCE 
spokesperson continued. "We call upon the 
president and the Security Forces to dislodge by 
force the Congresspersons and their gang of 
supporters from the premises of our National Congress."

For 10 days now, the Mexican Senate and National 
Assembly in Mexico City have been totally shut 
down, as opposition senators and deputies from 
the Broad Progressive Front (FAP) -- consisting 
of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), 
the Party of Labor (PT) and Convergencia -- have 
occupied the podiums of both legislative houses. 
They placed huge banners in both buildings that 
read, "Clausurado," or "Closed Down," explaining 
that both legislative branches would not be 
allowed to renew their deliberations until a 
genuine national debate could be organized on the 
proposals submitted by Calderón on April 8 to 
privatize Pemex, Mexico's national oil corporation.

López Obrador and his movement, the National 
Democratic Convention (CND), are calling for a 
Nationwide Referendum on Calderón's five 
proposals to "modernize" Mexico's oil industry -- 
all of which they characterize as privatization 
measures aimed at handing over Mexico's oil to 
the transnational corporations. They also insist 
that a five-month period of national discussion 
must precede this Referendum, with, among other 
things, a series of televised debates between 
López Obrador and Calderón, on the one hand, and 
between their respective secretaries of Energy -- 
Claudia Sheinbaum from the "Legitimate Government 
of Mexico" and Georgina Kessel from the 
fraudulent Calderón administration, on the other.

Calderón has stated he is open to a "national 
debate" on his proposals, but he has insisted 
that the only place such a debate can take place 
is the Mexican Congress. He and his supporters in 
the PAN and the Revolutionary Institutional Party 
(PRI), the two main parties who command a large 
majority of representatives in the Congress, have 
rejected categorically what they call "the 
attempt by López Obrador to wrest legitimacy from 
Mexico's political institutions by creating an 
illegitimate dual power in the streets." (Uno Más Uno, April 17)

Brigadistas and Electrical Workers Mobilize

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of activists of the 
Frente en Defensa del Pétroleo [Front in Defense 
of Mexico's Oil resources]  -- also known as 
"adelitas" and "adelitos," a reference to the 
footsoldiers of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 -- 
have circled the two legislative buildings as a 
human shield to prevent the security forces from 
entering the buildings and squashing this 
"legislative strike" by the opposition members of 
Congress. The Brigades have been 
well-disciplined, blockading the Congress in rotating eight-hour shifts.

"We have put our bodies on the line," explained 
one "adelita" to La Jornada newspaper. "Let them 
come with their guns and bayonets. We are not 
leaving. We have said, 'Enough is Enough!' ... We 
will not allow them to privatize our oil, shatter 
our Constitution [a reference to overturning 
Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, which 
stipulates that Mexico's oil is the property of 
the nation -- A.B.] and destroy our future and 
that of our children and grand-children. We have 
said, 'La Patria No Se Vende, El Petroleo Se 
Defiende'!" [Our Nation Is Not For Sale; Our Oil 
Must Be Defended!] (La Jornada, April 17)

When the Senators of the PAN and PRI attempted 
yesterday to transfer the Senate proceedings to 
an alternate site in Mexico City, they were 
dogged by thousands upon thousands of "adelitas" 
and prevented from reconvening at a nearby Senate 
building. The PAN Senators, led by federal 
stormtroopers (or "gorillas," as they are known 
in Mexico), made their way through the human 
barricade set up by the "adelitas." But the 
Senators of the PRI -- the party that ruled 
Mexico for more than 70 years -- refused to cross 
the adelitas' human chain, reflecting the 
political crisis in the summits of the PRI over a 
privatization measure they know is repudiated by 
the overwhelming majority of the people of Mexico.

The PRI, which still claims to stand on the 
principles of the Mexican Revolution, was 
compelled to say that it "wouldn't accept any 
privatization of Pemex." Emilio Gamboa Patrone, 
coordinator of the PRI's parliamentary fraction, 
declared: "We will never allow for the 
establishment of contracts of shared risk with 
the corporations, nor the participation of 
private capital in the activities reserved for 
the state by the Constitution." (La Jornada, March 27, 2008)

At the same time, the Electrical Workers Union 
(SME) took to the streets yesterday in what was 
to be the first of a series of mass mobilizations 
to demand a genuine national debate and 
referendum over the future of Mexico's energy 
sovereignty. "We will not allow the government to 
privatize Pemex, and nor will we allow them to 
restrict the debate within the four walls of the 
Mexican Congress," said Martin Esparza Flores, 
president of the SME, at a rally near the Senate 
building. "We need a full debate in the Mexican 
media so that the millions of people in Mexico 
can hear our arguments and see our figures. ... 
We are certain that if we are able to compel the 
radio and TV stations to air our message, we will 
win the debate hands down and force them to 
withdraw their country-selling privatization scheme."

At the end of the day, Senators from the PAN, the 
PRI, and the Partido Verde Mexicano (PVM) -- the 
Green Party, a longstanding ally of the most 
right-wing forces in Mexico -- issued a statement 
calling on Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a 
member of the PRD and ally of López Obrador, to 
order the city police to "restore law and order, 
by forcing the unruly mob to disband their 
encirclement of the two houses of Congress." If 
this is not done immediately, stated PVM 
spokesperson Arturo Escobar, "the Senate will 
have no choice but to remove Ebrard from his 
responsibilities as mayor of Mexico City, 
something that is within the Senate's purview."

Calderon's Plan and López Obrador's Response

The mounting political crisis that is rocking the 
institutions of the Mexican State to its very 
foundations is rooted in a privatization scheme 
of Mexico's oil industry that has been dictated 
by Washington in the interest of U.S. oil 
corporations. For decades, U.S. corporate 
interests have been champing at the bit, seeking 
by every possible means to take back the oil 
resources that were nationalized by Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1938.

Over the past 14 years under NAFTA, major sectors 
of Mexico's petrochemical industry have been 
taken over by foreign oil interests. But these 
inroads have been deemed totally insufficient. In 
2006, the Bush administration, responding to the 
lobby of Bush's oil cronies, orchestrated the 
electoral fraud that brought Washington's towel 
boy, Felipe Calderón, to the presidency -- 
ChoicePoint voting machines and all. It was 
necessary to take this assault on Mexico's oil 
resources to a new level, to break the political 
logjam that resulted from the legacy of the 
Mexican Revolution and its obstinate resistance 
to the privatization of the crown jewel of Mexico's sovereignty.

Felipe Calderón -- understanding the deep-seated 
refusal by the Mexican people to turn over Pemex 
to foreign interests -- has had to wrap his 
privatization proposals in the mantle of 
nationalist rhetoric. He has repeated ad-nauseam 
that his five proposals have nothing to do with 
privatization. His propaganda machine has 
insisted that these measures are simply aimed at 
"modernizing" Mexico's aging infrastructure in 
oil ducts, transportation, storage, exploration, 
and drilling (especially deep-water drilling in 
the Gulf of Mexico). Foreign capital is needed, 
the story goes, to increase oil revenues for 
Mexico, with ownership and decision-making in the 
new joint ventures remaining firmly in the hands of the Mexican state.

Calderón and his PR campaign also have insisted 
that Pemex is broke and that it does not have the 
funding or technical capacity to make the company 
profitable and to build the refineries that Mexico needs.

Not so, counter López Obrador and his team. "In 
the name of greater management 'autonomy'," 
Claudia Sheinbaum explains, " they intend to hand 
over the administration of the system to the oil 
multinational conglomerates in the form of 
'service contracts' and 'expanded contracts.' 
This so-called autonomy, Sheinbaum continues, is 
aimed at redirecting the profits and tax revenue 
from Pemex to the private sector. This would mean 
the loss to the Mexican State of more than 40% of 
its income and would lead to the immediate 
destruction of publicly funded education, health 
care, social security, transportation, environmental protection, and more.

In his speech to the Brigadistas on April 6 at 
the Monument to the Revolution, López Obrador 
explained that the recent PRI and PAN 
administrations have consciously decapitalized 
Pemex with the aim of handing over Mexico's oil 
to the U.S. oil robber barons. He lambasted the 
corruption at the highest levels of Pemex and the 
State and insisted that the solution is not 
privatization, but a cleansing of this corruption 
and the recapitalization of the oil industry.

"Pemex is extremely profitable," Lopez Obrador 
explained. "A barrel of Mexican oil is currently 
selling at US$95, while it costs only $3 to 
produce. ... The billions of dollars in revenue 
can and must go to building the three refineries 
that Mexico needs to fully meet our energy needs 
and fuel the economic development of our nation 
-- to provide millions of jobs at a living wage, 
so that our sons and daughters do not have to 
risk their lives crossing the border into the 
United States in search of the means to feed their families."

López Obrador continued, "To claim the system is 
bankrupt and that we lack technical expertise to 
turn the system around is a cruel hoax. Our 
Mexican engineers have the know-how to build the 
finest infrastructure in the world. ... We don't 
need so-called reforms to the 'secondary laws' 
governing Pemex; we need to return Pemex to the 
Mexican people. We need to get rid of the corrupt 
officials and make this bastion of our national 
sovereignty fully accountable to the Mexican people."

"We are not going to be duped," López Obrador 
stated. "'Association' with private capital is 
privatization. 'Alliances' with foreign 
corporations is privatization. 'Risk Contracts' 
is privatization. 'Contracts with Third Parties,' 
or 'Multiple Service Contracts,' or 'Management 
Autonomy" ... all these are privatization. 
Anything and everything that involves sharing the 
revenue of Pemex with local or foreign investors 
is privatization -- and we will not allow it to pass."

López Obrador went on to excoriate all the 
institutions of the Mexican political regime that 
have permitted the decapitalization of Pemex, the 
electoral fraud of July 2006, the destruction of 
Mexico's agricultural base [through the new 
agricultural chapter of NAFTA that went into 
effect on Jan. 1, 2008, and that will lead to the 
liquidation of Mexico's native corn and bean 
production], and the subordination of Mexico's 
sovereignty to the Empire to the North. He said 
all these fraudulent institutions must go, to be 
replaced with the institutions of a "New 
Republic" that are based on the "values of 
equality, solidarity, and national sovereignty."

And López Obrador concluded, "We will not go back 
to the days of the Porfiriato [a reference to the 
decades of dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz that 
preceded the Mexican Revolution of 1910--AB]. We 
will not take one single step back. If we allow 
them to privatize our oil, we will fuel chaos and 
violence among our people. Pemex has ensured the 
peace of our nation, as we have been able to use 
its resources to develop our country. But without 
this revenue, regions of our country will be 
pitted against each other in a fight over 
ever-decreasing resources. ... There is no 
compromising here with our national sovereignty. 
Every single proposal by Calderón is unacceptable and unamendable."

López Obrador's speech was met with thunderous 
applause, as the Brigadistas began chanting, "Ni 
Un Paso Atrás! [Not One Step Backward!] and "No 
Tenemos Miedo! [We Are Not Afraid!]

Crisis in the PRD and New Challenges

Many Mexican political observers believe that 
Calderón chose this particular moment to 
introduce his "oil reform" measures because of 
the deep political crisis in the PRD, the party 
of which López Obrador is a leader.

Two months ago, internal elections were held in 
the PRD to determine the party leadership. Two 
wings -- one led by Alejandro Encinas, an ally of 
López Obrador; the other led by Jesus Ortega, 
linked to the more conservative sectors in the 
PRD -- have been feuding openly over central 
questions of Mexican politics. The Ortega wing 
(known as the "Chuchos") have lambasted López 
Obrador for refusing to accept the outcome of the 
2006 elections and for taking the struggle 
outside the framework of the Mexican Congress and 
the institutions of the State. Ortega has the 
full support of the PRD state governors, all of 
whom have recognized the legitimacy of the 
Calderón government and accused López Obrador of 
fomenting unrest with his "infantile" refusal to 
accept the 2006 election results.

Two months after the internal elections, the PRD 
leadership has yet to disclose the winner of its 
internal leadership election, so deep is its 
internal crisis. The party's rank-and-file, 
basing themselves on exit polls, are convinced 
that the Encinas wing won the election by an 
overwhelming margin. But PRD Election Commission 
leaders have told the press, off the record, that 
the Ortega wing appears to have won. Insiders 
believe the "Chuchos" were aided by massive 
ballot-stuffing by PRI operatives in the PRD.

The imminent split in the PRD has fueled deep 
resentment and anger among the ranks of the PRD. 
"Not only did López Obrador lose the 2006 
election because of voter fraud," a PRD activist 
told La Jornada after the March 18 López Obrador 
rally in Mexico City, "it appears he is now going 
to be the victim of voter fraud within his own 
party. This is sickening. We did not build a new 
party, the PRD, to have this kind of thing happen." (March 19, 2008)

But if Calderón was counting on a demoralized and 
demobilized opposition movement to introduce his 
"reform" packet, he had to be surprised by the 
immediate and massive response to his proposals 
-- a response organized largely outside the 
framework of the PRD and its allies in the Broad 
Progressive Front (FAP). The center of the 
resistance has been the National Democratic 
Convention (CND), a genuine and autonomous 
grassroots movement, and the newly formed Front 
in Defense of Mexico's Oil Resources, headed by Claudia Sheinbaum.

 From the beginning, the CND has had an uneasy 
alliance with the parties in the FAP -- but more 
and more the CND's center of gravity has shifted 
away from reliance on the parliamentary fraction 
of the FAP toward building an independent mass 
movement in the streets to defend Mexico's sovereignty and democracy.

The takeover and occupation of the Mexican Senate 
and National Assembly by senators and deputies of 
the FAP is extremely significant. But support for 
this action is far from unanimous within those 
parties. On April 7, after López Obrador swore in 
the 10,000 women Brigadistas at the Monument to 
the Revolution, PRD parliamentary fraction leader 
Ruth Zavaleta announced publicly that if the 
"adelitas" blocked the entrance to the National 
Assembly, she would call in the federal police to have them taken away.

The determination of the movement behind López 
Obrador and the huge number of Brigadistas made 
it politically impossible for Zavaleta to call in 
the police. It would have been political suicide 
for her to take such a drastic action.

Instead, it appears a growing wing of the FAP 
parliamentary fraction, including some prominent 
allies of López Obrador, is seeking a deal with 
Santiago Creel, former Minister of the Interior 
under Vicente Fox and current national 
coordinator of the PAN, to forge a "Third Way" 
for a national debate on "energy reform." Creel 
is proposing a series of public forums over the 
next 50 days, but with a binding vote on the 
"reform proposals" to take place in the Mexican Congress.

Such a proposal has been rejected publicly by the 
spokespersons of the CND, but López Obrador has 
yet to issue a statement dissociating himself 
from his FAP allies on this question of the 
"Third Way." This has raised deep concern among 
many CND activists and prompted a number of them 
to call on López Obrador to affirm his 
independence in relation to the parties of the 
FAP, whom they consider unreliable allies in the 
struggle to safeguard the interests of the Mexican people and nation.

Along these lines, the Democratic and Independent 
Workers Party (PTDI) -- which has strongly 
supported the CND and the movement to defend 
Pemex -- issued a statement calling on López 
Obrador and the CND coordinators to issue a call 
to convene a mass National Democratic Convention 
of 1 million people in the downtown central 
square of Mexico City, the Zócalo -- as they did on September 16, 2006.

The PDTI statement reads, in part:

"The political situation is very grave. The PRI 
and PAN -- with their false majority -- have 
announced they will vote to support Calderón's 
privatization proposals in the Mexican Congress, 
even though the PRI has expressed a number of 
reservations with these proposals. All the 
political institutions of the current regime, as 
López Obrador himself has stated time and again, 
are profoundly undemocratic and fraudulent. This 
includes the presidency, of course, but also the Legislature and the Courts.

"So the question becomes: Who has the legitimacy 
to decide such a fundamental question as the one 
posed by the proposed plan to privatize and liquidate Pemex?

"Only the people, truly represented by its legitimate government, can decide!

"Is it therefore not necessary to convene a new 
assembly of the National Democratic Convention to 
counterpose the legitimate will of the people to 
the illegitimate power of Calderón and to all the 
other fraudulent institutions that are ready to sell out our nation?

"The entire nation is rising up. Is it not the 
moment to convene 1 million representatives of 
the Mexican people so that they can be the ones 
to take the decisions of the nation into their 
own hands, responding to the will of the people, 
who have stated in one firm voice: 'No to the 
privatization of Pemex! Withdraw all the 
privatization proposals! Defend the Mexican nation'!"?

The struggle to compel the Mexican government to 
hold a nationwide Referendum with a real public 
debate in the mainstream media is gaining 
widespread support. It is essentially a demand 
for the government to withdraw its privatization 
plan. But that will only come about if the 
millions of people across Mexico are mobilized to 
come to aid of the valiant Brigadistas who are 
confronting the federal police in Mexico City -- 
and who will likely be met with repression as 
they hold the line around the government buildings.

The call to form Committees in Defense of 
Mexico's oil all across Mexico and to mobilize 1 
million people in Mexico City in the coming weeks 
is not only timely, it is a vital necessity to 
the deepening struggle to defend Mexico's sovereignty.

----------

[Alan Benjamin is the co-coordinator of the Open 
World Conference Continuations Committee, based 
in the San Francisco Labor Council. He has 
traveled to Mexico repeatedly over the past two 
months. Most recently, he helped to coordinate a 
delegation of 32 U.S. unionists and activists who 
participated in the Second Continental Conference 
Against NAFTA and Privatizations, held in Mexico City on April 4-6, 2008.]



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