[News] A real blast: Bombs, resistance mark 100th anniversary of Mexican Revolution

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/mexico-anarchists-celebrate-mexican.html

A real blast: Bombs, resistance mark 100th anniversary of Mexican Revolution

By John Ross / The Rag Blog / January 10, 2010

MEXICO CITY -- Every hundred years on the tenth 
year of the century, Mexico seems to explode in 
social upheaval. In 1810, the war of liberation 
from the Spanish Crown unleashed a genocidal 
decade-long conflict. In 1910, the overthrow of 
dictator Porfirio Diaz triggered a fratricidal 
bloodbath. In recent months, dire expectations 
that 2010 would signal similar violence have been 
running high in this distant neighbor country, 
mired as it is in a grinding depression where 80% 
of Mexico's 107,000,000 citizens subsist in and around the poverty line.

It is now the tenth of January 2010 and no new 
revolution has broken out -- yet.

Nonetheless, the New Year was welcomed in here 
with a blast of revolutionary fireworks: bank 
bombings in Mexico City, surrounding Mexico 
state, and San Luis Potosi in the distant north, 
blew out a dozen ATM machines. Walls were 
scorched and windows shattered by firebombs at 
three auto showrooms in the greater metropolitan 
area and the government palace in the Mexico City 
delegation (borough) of Milpa Alta (an explosive 
device failed to ignite in Ixtapalapa, the 
capital's most conflictive demarcation).

Incendiary attacks also struck a Telmex branch 
office, the Mexican phone monopoly owned by 
Carlos Slim, the richest tycoon in Latin America. 
A slaughterhouse and a police car were also 
firebombed. In Tijuana on the northern border, an 
anarchist group claimed to have machine-gunned 
three municipal police vehicles and a private 
security patrol car to welcome in 2010 in 
addition to "expropriations" at seven OXXO 
convenience stores during one of which a police officer ("placa") was killed.

"It was either him or us," lamented a communiqué 
from the purported perpetrators who signed off as 
"another anonymous anarchist action" in a 
document posted January 2 on "Conspiracy of 
Fire," a direct action 
<http://conspira1970.wordpress.com/>electronic clearing house.

The spate of bombings by anarchist cells was 
similar to a string of 15 such incidents in 
Mexico City and Guadalajara timed to coincide 
with Mexican Independence Day last September. A 
student activist at the National Autonomous 
University was jailed briefly by federal police 
for several of the fiery assaults in September and released.

Among the groupings that claimed responsibility 
for the actions that took place between December 
31 and January 2 were the Propaganda Of The Deed 
Brigade which posted a declaration of war on the 
Conspiracy of Fire page that read in part,

With this document, we declare a war that will 
not end until all business people, the Bourgeois, 
militaries, governments, and all kinds of totalitarian power are exterminated.

What has happened today is just a small 
demonstration that we have lost our fear and our 
hatred of the system has grown. They can no 
longer kill or jail us with impunity. We are not 
afraid. Un Ojo por Un Ojo! ('An Eye for an Eye')."

The document and two other communiqués taking 
responsibility for the bombings made explicit 
reference to the exorbitant cost of government 
celebrations of both the centennial of the 
revolution and the bi-centennial of independence 
and noted that "although we do not believe in 
absolute dates, 2010 will be a year of struggle 
and a platform of preparation for what is to 
come..." -- the 1910 uprising led by Francisco 
Madero was only the opening gong of a series of 
revolutions that finally fizzled out in 1919 with 
the assassination of the revolutionary martyr Emiliano Zapata.

Among the heroes lauded in the communiqués were 
historical anarchist leaders Praxides G. Guerrero 
and Ricardo Flores Magon, the Great Zapata, the 
Centaur of the North Francisco Villa, and Lucio 
Cabanas, the 1970s guerrillero leader of the 
Party of the Poor. Conspicuously absent from the 
list was Subcomandante Marcos who 16 years ago 
this January 1st gave voice to the Zapatista 
rebellion in Chiapas in the very first hour of 
the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Other participants in the New Year's Eve Molotov 
cocktail party were the Simon Radowisky Brigade, 
named for a little-known Ukrainian-Argentinean 
anarchist who died in Mexico in 1956 while at 
work in a toy factory he was trying to organize, 
and the "May 25th 1910 Committee of Adjudication" 
which takes its name from the date that Praxides 
G. Guerrero fell in Janos, Chihuahua, the first 
anarchist to give up his life in the Mexican 
Revolution -- the anarchist-led insurrection in 
Chihuahua preceded Madero's revolution by six months.

Meanwhile, in Chiapas where mass psychosis that 
the Zapatistas would rise again January 1 has 
reigned for months, the Mayan rebels' caracoles, 
or public centers, were shut down tight for the 
first time in 15 anniversary markings of that historic rebellion.

But the Zapatista Army of Liberation is hardly 
the only armed indigenous force for which 
rebellion in 2010 is an option. The Conspiracy of 
Fire page features an analysis of revolutionary 
prospects attributed to the TAGIN or National 
Indigenous Guerilla Triple Alliance that predicts 
"the calendar of conflict will spread throughout 
the country in the next 12 months," claiming that 
70 armed organizations have joined forces for 
concerted action in 2010. The article is 
illustrated by photos of armed guerilleros taken 
at a press conference held in Guerrero last 
summer by "Comandante Ramiro" (Omar Solis) of the 
ERPI ("Revolutionary Army of The Insurgent 
People") -- several months later, Ramiro's body 
was recovered from a clandestine grave in the 
high sierra of that conflictive state.

While boasts of renewed revolution fly, President 
Felipe Calderon, now halfway through his 
calamitous six years in office, sought to put a 
happy face on the disasters his administration of 
Mexico has inflicted upon the country. Speaking 
from sunny Acapulco where the beaches were 
buckling under the weight of buxom bikini-clad 
tourists while the rest of the country shivered 
in the glacial cold, Calderon urged his 
compatriots to celebrate "this Year of the Patria 
(Fatherland) with happiness, working together in 
each home. This year we will write pages of glory 
and live the flame of our values that make us proud to be Mexicans (sic)."

In what could only have been an effusion of 
irony, the beaming president wished his bankrupt 
constituents a "Prosperous New Year." Many 
observers (this writer was not alone) wondered 
what country Calderon thought he was addressing.

The COPAMEX, Mexico's most influential business 
federation, was significantly more guarded in 
greeting the New Year, warning Mexicans to avoid 
violence in celebrating the duel centennials.

Despite veiled threats from the business sector, 
Mexico's working class is in an uproar. A New 
Year's Day zafarancho (riot) outside a power 
generating substation in Mexico state between 
displaced members of the Mexican Electricity 
Workers Union (SME) trying to prevent scabs from 
taking their jobs, and heavily armed federal 
police, left a dozen injured and the nearby 
pyramids of Teotihuacan, the City of the Gods, wreathed in tear gas fumes.

The confrontation marked the first violence in 
what has been largely a peaceful resistance 
movement ever since Calderon shut down the Luz y 
Fuerza power company last October putting 42,000 
workers on the street, and suggests that an 
increasingly frustrated rank and file is prepared 
to raise the ante. On January 5 and again on the 
6th, bands of SME workers stormed through the old 
quarter of Mexico City after the explosions of 
electrical transformers in the neighborhood 
brought out detachments of federal police.

Sabotage is rumored.

It is not mere coincidence that both the 
confrontation at Teotihuacan and many of the 
anarchist bombazos took place in Mexico state, 
which is governed by Enrique Pena Nieto, the 
presidential front-runner in 2012. Pena Nieto is 
a luminary of the resurgent Party of the 
Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) that ruled 
Mexico for seven decades until it was displaced 
from power in 2000 by Calderon's rightist PAN 
party. The PRI won a landslide majority in the 
lower house of congress in 2009 mid-term 
elections and is expected to sweep all 12 
governors' races up for grabs in 2010.

In a remarkable reprise of the social unrest that 
detonated after runaway inflation excited hungry 
masses to rise up against the Diaz dictatorship 
100 years ago, an abrupt jump in gasoline and 
diesel prices that kicked in on the final day of 
2009 has set off a chain reaction of protests in Mexico City and the provinces.

On the first workday of 2010, 2000 truck drivers 
shut down key national highways for seven hours 
to protest the hikes -- in Puebla, the drivers 
were joined by 500 electricistas from nearby 
Necaxa, the so-called "cradle" of Luz y Fuerza 
and the SME. The success of the blockade in 
Puebla, Hidalgo, and Veracruz states has inspired 
truckers' association director Edmundo Morales to 
call for a national strike. Participation of the 
SME at the barricades may well be a precursor of 
increased worker solidarity in the coming year.

In Tepic, Nayarit, bus drivers protested the 
increase in fuel prices by parking their 
vehicles, paralyzing that provincial capital. 
Massive protests in Mexico City by independent 
unions and farmers' organizations are expected later in the month.

The price surge viscerally wounds a popular 
economy that was grievously lacerated in 2009. 
The Calderon government's annual daily minimum 
salary increase is less than 5% for 2010 and 
fails to match 6% inflation. The 2.60 peso a day 
"raise" does not even buy a ride on the Mexico 
City Metro that ferries millions of workers to their jobs each day.

On New Year's morning, the leftist Mexico City 
government of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard raised the 
heavily subsidized Metro ticket price from two to 
three pesos a ride. The back of the ticket now 
reminds riders that the real cost is nine pesos.

A survey of public markets reported by the left 
daily La Jornada calculates a 30% rise in the 
basic food basket in the first week of 2010, 
largely due to fuel and electricity rate 
increases -- tortillas, the essential nourishment 
for 26,000,000 Mexicans living in extreme 
poverty, leaped 10% a kilo throughout central Mexico.

Much like Obamaland, where the President crows 
about recovery in a jobless economy, Calderon 
pledged in a nationally-televised New Year's 
message that 2010 will be a "year of 
recuperation" for Mexico although his predictions 
of 3% growth seems delusionally rosy -- in 2009, 
the Gross National Product contracted 7% and growth was negative.

Unemployment, as measured by the government's 
obfuscated system, is at a 15 year high of 6.8% 
-- in the real world 6.8% translates to 40% of 
the work force not working, according to social 
economist Julio Boltvinik. 100,000 jobs are 
reportedly being lost each month (nearly 50,000 
went down the tubes in October when Calderon 
fired the Luz y Fuerza workers.) But there is 
light at the end of the tunnel: according to the 
Wall Street Journal, a half million Mexican 
workers have found employment in the illicit drug industry.

The much-respected Economist Intelligence Unit's 
yearly ratings of political instability take into 
account the socio-political dynamic in 165 
countries. In 2010, Mexico places in the upper 
third of nations at risk of violent political 
upheaval. Whether this is an indicator of 
resurgent revolution here in 2010 is a story...

To Be Continued

[During the next three months, John Ross will 
travel the U.S. from sea to stinking sea with his 
new cult classic El Monstruo: Dread and 
Redemption in Mexico City which the New York Post 
(!) recently recommended as a "gritty, pulsating" 
read. For suggested venues (particularly in the 
Chicago and St. Louis areas) write <mailto:johnross at igc.org>johnross at igc.org.]



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