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<a href="http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/mexico-anarchists-celebrate-mexican.html" eudora="autourl">
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/mexico-anarchists-celebrate-mexican.html<br>
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</a></font><font size=4><b>A real blast: Bombs, resistance mark 100th
anniversary of Mexican Revolution<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>By John Ross / The Rag Blog / January 10,
2010<br><br>
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.<br><br>
It is now the tenth of January 2010 and no new revolution has broken out
-- yet.<br><br>
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).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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
<a href="http://conspira1970.wordpress.com/">electronic clearing
house</a>.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font>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,<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br><br>
<dd>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')."<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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)."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Sabotage is rumored.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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...<br><br>
To Be Continued<br><br>
[During the next three months, John Ross will travel the U.S. from sea to
stinking sea with his new cult classic </i>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
<a href="mailto:johnross@igc.org">johnross@igc.org</a>.]</i> <br><br>
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