<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07122006.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07122006.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>July 12,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000"><b>
History is What Comes Next<br><br>
<br>
</i></font>Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the
Streets</b></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By JOHN
ROSS<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">A</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2> full week after the most viciously contested
presidential election in its modern history, a Florida-sized fraud looms
over the Mexican landscape and the nation has been divided almost exactly
in half along political, economic, geographical and racial lines.
<br><br>
Mexico has always been two lands "Illusionary Mexico" and
"Profound Mexico" is how sociologist Guillermo Bonfils
described the great divide between rich and poor. But now, should it be
allowed to stand, right-winger Felipe Calderon's severely questioned
243.000 vote victory over left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
(AMLO) will split the country exactly in half between the industrial
north and the impoverished, highly indigenous south with each winning 16
states although the southern states won by Lopez Obrador, who also won
Mexico City by a million votes, constitute 54% of the population.
<br><br>
Moreover, the disputed election pits an indignant Indian and mestizo
underclass that believes AMLO was swindled out of the presidency by
electoral fraud against a wealthy white conservative minority that
controls the nation's media, its banks, and apparently, the Federal
Electoral Institute (IFE), Mexico's maximum electoral authorities. Lopez
Obrador charges the IFE and its president Luis Carlos Ugalde with
orchestrating Calderon's uncertain triumph.<br><br>
At a raucous July 8th rally that put a half million supporters in Mexico
City's vast Zocalo plaza, the political heart of the nation, Lopez
Obrador called upon his people to demand a complete vote by vote recount
of the results. Speaking from a flatbed truck set up in front of the
National Palace, the official seat of the Mexican government, the fiery,
former Mexico City mayor characterized President Vicente Fox as "a
traitor to democracy" and for the first time at a public meeting
uttered the word "fraud", accusing the IFE of rigging the
election to favor his opponent.<br><br>
Indeed, fraud was the central motif of the mammoth meeting. Large photos
of IFE president Luis Carlos Ugalde slugged "Wanted for Electoral
Fraud" were slapped up on central city walls and tens of thousands
of protestors waved home-made signs dissing the IFE official with such
colorful epithets as "No To Your Fucking Fraud!" Throughout the
rally, (which was billed as a "first informative assembly"),
the huge throng repeatedly drowned out Lopez Obrador's pronouncements
with thunderous chants of "Fraude Electoral!" At times, AMLO
seemed on the verge of tears at the outpouring of support from the sea of
brown faces that pressed in around the speakers'
platform.<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560255781/counterpunchmaga">
<img src="http://www.counterpunch.org/../rossmurd.jpg" alt="[]"></a>
</font><font size=3><br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>The gathering in the Zocalo signaled
the kick-off to what is sometimes called "the second election in the
street"; a mass effort to pressure electoral officials into a
ballot-by-ballot recount that Lopez Obrador is convinced will show that
he was the winner July 2nd. The IFE has resolutely resisted such a
recount.<br><br>
AMLO, a gifted leader of street protest, is always at the top of his game
when he is seen as an underdog battling the rich and powerful and the
next days will be heady ones here. This Wednesday (June 12th), the left
leader is calling upon supporters in all 300 electoral districts across
Mexico to initiate a national "exodus" for democracy that will
converge upon the capital on Sunday, July 16th for a mega-march that may
well turn out to be the largest political demonstration in the nation's
history. Indeed, AMLO already set that mark in April 2005 when 1.2
million citizens surged through Mexico City to protest Fox's efforts to
bar the leftist from the ballot the president dropped his vendetta
three days after the march. <br><br>
But Lopez Obrador and his Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) will
not just do battle in the streets. Evidence of wide-spread ballot box
manipulation in a third of the 130,000 polling places (including
ballot-stuffing and duplicate numbers in thousands of them), malfeasance
in the reporting of district totals to the IFE, inexplicable cybernetic
confabulations in both the preliminary count or PREP (`3,000,000 mostly
AMLO votes were removed) and the final tabulation in the districts, are
being presented to the nation's top electoral tribunal (code-named the
TRIFE) by Lopez Obrador's battery of attorneys in an effort to persuade
the seven justices that a hand recount is the only way to determine who
will be the next president of Mexico. Such recounts have recently been
conducted in close elections in Germany, Italy, and Costa Rica as well as
in Florida 2000 until ordered shut down by the U.S. Suprime
Court.<br><br>
Felipe Calderon and the PAN and Ugalde's IFE consider AMLO's demands to
open the ballot boxes an "insult" to the "hundreds of
thousands of citizens" who were responsible for carrying out the
election. "The votes have already been counted - on Election
Day" Ugalde upbraids Lopez Obrador.<br><br>
The TRIFE is an autonomous judicial body with powers to annul the
presidential election it has annulled gubernatorial elections in
Tabasco (AMLO's home state) and Colima and invalidated results in entire
districts because of electoral flimflam in recent years. Lopez Obrador
and the PRD have also petitioned Mexico's Supreme Court to invalidate the
election because of Vicente Fox's apparently unconstitutional meddling on
behalf of Calderon, and this reporter has learned that AMLO is
considering calling upon all PRD elected officials not to take office
December 1st if the ballots are not recounted, a strategy that could
trigger constitutional crisis.<br><br>
Despite the uncertainty about who won the July 2nd election, the White
House and Ambassador Tony Garza, a Bush crony, have been quick to
congratulate Felipe Calderon for whom they exhibited an undisguised
predilection during the campaigns President Bush actually called the
right-winger from Air Force One and Garza has been lavish in his praise
of the much-questioned performance of the IFE as proof of "a
maturing Mexican democracy." <br><br>
The U.S. embassy has a track record of intervening in Mexico's
presidential selection Ronald Reagan recognized Carlos Salinas as the
winner of the stolen 1988 election within 96 hours of the larceny. In
1911, U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson signed off on the assassination
of Mexico's first democratically elected president Francisco Madero, to
whom Lopez Obrador has often compared himself.<br><br>
Most of the U.S. Big Press has followed in lockstep with the White House
the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post all
expressed editorial satisfaction at Calderon's coronation based on the
results of the admittedly manipulated preliminary count. The New York
Times, however, which 18 years ago, after free-marketeer Carlos Salinas
stole the presidency from leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, called that
tormented proceedings "the cleanest election in Mexican
history", this time around was more cautious, voting for a ballot by
ballot recount before extending its benediction to the winner. <br><br>
As tens of thousands of AMLO's supporters, "the people the color of
the earth" Subcomandante Marcos names them, march across the Mexican
landscape on their way up to the capital to demand electoral justice,
invoking scenes of the great movement of "los de abajo" (those
from down below) during Mexico's monumental 1910-1919 revolution, the
country holds it breath. <br><br>
In Mexico, the past has equal value with the present and the memory of
what came before can sometimes be what comes next. These are
history-making moments south of the Rio Bravo. North Americans need to
pay attention. <br><br>
<i>A shortened version of this piece appeared on the Nation.com.
<br><br>
</i><b>John Ross</b> is in Mexico City waiting to see How It All Turns
Out so that he can write the epilogue to his latest opus "Making
Another World Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" to be
published in October by Nation Books.<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>