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The Zapatistas and the Other

The Pedestrians of History, Part III

The longest day of the longest year.

1. The year 2006 starts in the month of January… 2004. Fox’s mediocrity as federal executive and his consort Martha Sahagun´s personal ambition not only led the dispute around succession to advance but also made it cheeky and imprudent beyond precedent.

In any case, the basic “laws” of the political class of above were always clear. The stage was, and is, neoliberal politics. The actors can move from one extreme to another (in fact, this was what they did), but without leaving the established script (that’s to say, to maintain and strengthen “the macroeconomic variables”). The politics of above were, and are, about restricted access, where only political parties can be involved and the citizen’s role is to be a silent spectator that watches scandals pass by (only applauding or hissing on voting day). What’s more, all of these political “actors” (one usually uses this name as a last resort, but it has never fit better) should recognise that mainstream media communication is the only place for them. And polls as well, since the media constructs the new point of reference in modern democracy. As such, polls have become the post-modern version of the “applause-o-meter”. There wasn’t and isn’t a single political actor that doesn’t follow them.

As one will recall, the struggle for presidential succession takes on a stronger tone as of the beginning of 2004. By medium of a series of home videos, the mass media use the former boss of the PRD, Carlos Ahumada, to fight with López Obrador. People close to the Obrador administration were seen by millions of people gambling in Las Vegas and receiving huge sums of money. In what was obviously the handiwork of the “Coyota” Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, the mass media (markedly electronic media) substituted the public minister’s functions, signaled, judged and condemned… with the greatest sentence that there is for the Mexican political class: a bad media reputation.

Although this scandal began with the family clan of the Partido Verde Ecologista (Green Ecological Party), the blow principally struck the real leader according to the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) (that is, according to polls): Andres Manuel López Obrador. And he, in order to defend himself, turned to what would become his most useful resource and his favourite saying: “it’s a conspiracy.”

And it was. The filming, just as much as its earlier handling, was part of the handiwork of a reoccurring coup. The “presidential couple” was starting to buy into a particular phobia: the Lópezobrador-fobia, and it used all the apparatus at its disposal and the “disinterested” help of some of the mainstream media in order to “heal itself” (it would have been cheaper in every sense, to go to a psychoanalyst, but Lady Martha was determined to do whatever necessary for one simple reason, to show that she was in command).

However, neither López Obrador nor the PRD (nor the many apologisers that arose from then on) responded to the fundamental questions: Why were these people accepting multiple bribes and making use of the public treasury? And why were these people close to the perredista? The most offensive thing about this immediate handiwork against AMLO is that it would impede questioning.

Following this was the attempted removal of López Obrador’s political privileges. Fox not only failed here, but also converted López Obrador into a strong contender, at the national level, for the presidential seat.

2. A long, long 3rd of July. If 2006 is the longest year, then the 3rd of July (the day it would be know who would become the new president) was the most prolonged. Fraud executed by the Mexican government and aided by the largest sector of shareholders and some of the mainstream media, pushed the PAN´s Felipe Calderon Hinojosa to the Mexican Presidency.

The 3rd of July began on the 2nd, at 1500 hours. (3pm), and it was extended until the 4th of September, the day when, in the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE), 7 people usurped the vote of millions of Mexicans. Along with the verdict of the TRIFE (a true “jewel” of juridical stupidity: “yes, there was cheating, but that doesn’t affect the result”) arrived the most acute point in the self-named crisis of “representative democracy” (that is, electoral) of the Mexican political system.

After the spending of millions of dollars on laughable campaigns; after all types of speeches, spots, acts and declarations by electoral actors (markedly those belonging to the criminal mafia otherwise known as the “Federal Electoral Institute”) regarding the value of the vote and the importance of citizen participation; after the deaths, disappearances, prisoners, those physically beaten in the struggle for the legitimate right to democracy; after the reforms and developments; after the “citizenization” of the electoral body, it turns out that the designated title of federal executive wasn’t decided by winning more votes, but by the decision of the 7 “judges.”

If it took more than two months for the electoral fraud to be concreteized, it owed this to a significant extent, to the actions of resistance taken by the citizen’s resistance that Andres Manuel López Obrador leads and represents.

Regarding the fraud, on the 3rd of July at 20 00 hours on the radio program “Politica de Banqueta” (by the Frente del Pueblo- UNIOS, adherent to the Sixth Declaration), we revealed the number of manipulated votes (one and a half million). This provoked an order from Los Pinos that forced the owner of the station to cancel the program (afterwards we learned that the veto had been extended to all of the radio networks and that, curiously, it was lifted after the TRIFE declared the election valid). The denouncement (and the subsequent cancellation of the program) deserved the mere scorn of the “cultured lópezobradorism” and, a little more than a week later, the leaders were just beginning to realise, and complain, that this had occurred.

What we present here is what we know of a part of the history of one of the clumsiest and dirtiest frauds in the extended life of the Mexican political class. The information came from people “from the inside” that were direct witnesses. Although it’s not possible to confirm the information (there are no videos or recordings), one can corroborate by “crossing” facts contributed by diverse citizens without party affiliation that have been made public.

The day of the 2nd of July, 2006 1500hours. The final surveys show how the winning candidate from the so-called “Coalicion por el bien de todos” (Coalition for good of everyone), Andres Manuel López Obrador, with the advantage of a million or 1.5 million votes over the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa. Inside the official residence, Los Pinos, the “presidential couple” receive notice with revealing expressions on their faces. The calculations had failed. According to these, the enormous campaign against López Obrador, along with the very original handiwork of Lady Macbeth (Elba Esther Gordillo) to shift votes cast for the PRI to the PAN, should have been enough to beat AMLO with close to a million votes. But Plan “A” for Calderon’s imposition failed.

Plan “A”. According to Los Pino´s calculations, in a cosmos with close to 40 million electors (with the 40% abstention rate expected by all political actors weeks before the election), López Obrador would obtain around 15 million votes, and Calderon and Madrazo around 13 million. However, ” the teacher” had promised the “transport” of 3 million votes, “expropriated” from Madrazo to the PAN’s count. The result would be tight: 16 million to Calderon, no more than 15 million to López Obrador (and Madrazo with 10 or less). With good media management, “legitimate” status would be achieved because it would be “clean” handiwork, without the vices that marked the electoral processes of the PRI before the “Fox’s era”: not “ratones locos”, nor “casillas zapatos”, nor “operation tamale”, nor the theft of ballot boxes, nor any of the etceteras that should be left in the past.

But the numbers weren’t coming out right: this 2nd of July López Obrador could gain 15 million and a half votes, and Calderon wouldn’t reach 14 million. But there was no time to recruit and rehabilitate the old “alchemists” of the PRI (additionally, some–like Jose Guadarrama—were PRD candidates).

Plan “B”. Brimming with hysteria, Fox’s Martha Sahagun pressures the self-titled Mexican president, Vicente Fox Quesada, to get in touch with ” la maestra” Elba Esther Gordillo. Fox, as is his custom, obeys the Lady Sahagun and the “red telephone” puts him in direct contact with Gordillo. She confirms the information: “López Obrador will come out with an advantage of around one million votes. ” What do we do?” asks Fox. “I want to speak with Felipe”, Elba Esther responds. The hands of the clock hadn’t reached half past when the three way conversation begins:

Vincente Fox: – Maestra, Felipe is on the other line.

Elba Esther Gordillo: – Felipe?

Felipe Calderon: – Yes?

Elba Esther Gordillo: – I am going to make you an offer that you can’t refuse…

Finishing the phone call, Plan B goes into effect. Following the instructions of Gordillo, Mr. Fox makes another phone call, now to Mr. Ugalde, President of the IFE (the Federal Electoral Tribunal). He asks that the PREP (vote counting) be administered so that, first and in adequate doses, results would begin appearing that show Felipe Calderon ahead of López Obrador (for this reason the strange and abnormal behaviour in the results “curves” – denounced by various specialists and addressed, above all, in the column “Astillero” by journalist Julio Hernandez López in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada).

A new call made to the huge media consortium confirms their silence about the results of the final surveys. The version agreed upon was that a result couldn’t be given, that one would have to wait for the IFE (ha!) to give the results. Crafty. The mainstream media had done as they pleased with the “electoral institutions” and had imposed (with the agreement of ALL parties and ALL candidates) the culture of poll surveys as a “democratic model.” It is infinitely laughable that Joaquin López Doriga (Televisa anchor and de facto minister of communication) and Javier López Doriga (TV Azteca anchor), like their “mirrors” in radio and the press, would call for people to wait for the official resolution by “electoral authorities.”

In the end, the objective of all of this was the gain something fundamental: time.

“Time, I need time”, Elba Esther Gordillo, “la maestra”, said at the end of the three way phone call with Fox and Calderon. ” Give me a few hours, I’ll take care of it “, she declared just before ending the phone conversation.

So Gordillo began to activate the telephone directory (including via satellite) that had been setup for “cases of extreme necessity”. ” La Maestra” gives orders to her operators around the key points of electoral geography. The order is simple: modify the results.

The absence of representatives from the so-called “Coalicion por el bien de todos” at the ballot boxes, for one part, helped a lot. Journalists Gloria Leticia Diaz and Daniel Lizarraga from the Mexican publication Proceso (#1549. June 9 2006, “Las redes, un fracaso”) indicate that the so-called “redes ciudadanas” (citizen networks) complicated the participation of the Coalition in the surveillance of ballot booths, also AMLO´s distrust of the PRD´s structure and the buying and selling of guards: “in agreement with official information from the PRD, a major part of the resources, some 300 million pesos, were directed to this parallel organisation (in reference to the citizens networks) and were administered by (Alberto) Perez Mendoza. It was one week before the 2 nd of July when López Obrador permitted the PRD´s intervention, distributing lists of voting booth representatives to local directors to coordinate surveillance during the elections. Despite the fact that this information was already public in the IFE, in the campaign headquarters militants were denied access in order to prevent lists from being sold to the PRI or the PAN. A PRD supporter who received a list of booth representatives at midnight, Friday, June 30th, confided in Proceso that while the militants were prohibited from forming part of the electoral structure, when he went around in order to coordinate with those in charge of the booths he found that “in front of some of the booths some had propaganda from the PRI or the PAN, and for that reason on the Sunday ” we had to implement a surveillance operation of our own representatives”. On the 2nd of July, he continues, when he went to look for the representatives that didn’t help out in the ballot booths, they said that while the PRD gave them 200 pesos for monitoring the election, there were others who would give them a thousand pesos for not showing up. Around the entire country, the absence of ballot box representatives was on average 30%, which necessarily debilitated the expected votes for López Obrador, above all in the north and northeast of the country, zones originally assigned to Manuel Camacho Solis and Socorro Diaz. According to the IFE´s register, the coalition managed to cover 90.55% of ballot booths in Nuevo Leon, but the PRD´s internal documents, to which this weekly paper had access, confirm that the party was only present in around 31%. (my emphases ).

Yes, “la maestra” had done her homework. Detailed information was in her hands not only regarding the location of the ballot booths, but also who those responsible were and who the representatives were in every one. That is, she knew the weak spots in the electoral system. What’s more she had sifted out the weakest links in the Coalition’s surveillance.

Here precisely is the essence of the fraud. A new recount of votes would reveal the clear and transparent fraud: in a great number of booths, what appears in the results does not correspond to the ballots in the boxes.

The demand by the Coalicion por el bien de todos and the civil movement’s push for “vote by vote, booth by booth”, driven by AMLO, was not only legitimate and correct but also aimed at revealing where, how, and by whom the fraud was committed. One more little detail: the recount revealed that the winner of the election, yes, had indeed been Andres Manuel López Obrador.

This is the reason why Calderon, the IFE, the mainstream media, all accomplices in the fraud, and later the TRIFE, were completely against a recount. A recount would have meant significant evidence to prove López Obrador´s electoral victory and a public list of the electoral delinquents (in which would appear in the top spot the IFE´s president, Ugalde).

Although one part of Lopez Obradors’s “cultured” cretinism bought the version that he had lost the election, launching a Santa Cruzada in search of those responsible for his defeat (some of them: Marcos, the EZLN and the Other Campaign), the truth is that:

a) López Obrador won the presidential elections on the 2nd of July, 2006.

b) The Presidency and the IFE constructed the fraud.

c) The whole process was manipulated by some of the mainstream media.

d) Polls were conducted to deceive. POlls don’t measure public opinion, they create it.

e) Their party organisms and citizens’ networks were inefficient, they suffered from conflicting internal elements and some were corrupt.

3. Other lies. During the post-election days, from diverse and well recognised ambits, the attempt was made to convert the lie into the truth: the elections of the 2 nd of July, 2006 were the most crowded and abstentions were abated. But this is no more than a huge farce (almost as huge as to declare that Fecal won the election). Since 1994, the drop in electoral participation has been constant. Three things are simply outstanding, while the electoral census grew –between 1994 and 2006—by 26 million, the number of votes only grew by 6 million, that is; only 23% of Mexicans who appeared in the electoral censuses since 1994 voted. On the other hand, the abstention rate surpassed 22% en 1994, 36% in 2000, and was calculated at no less that 41.5% in 2006. Also, the votes for president had dropped even further: Zedillo received over one million more than Fox, and he received over 2 million votes more than Calderon (even given that the recent election was 76% bigger than the 1994 election). The real abstention (including cancelled votes) was more than 30 million citizens, and the vote total for Fecal and AMLO doesn’t meet this number.

4. ¿Why fraud? Now understanding the how, where and who constructed the electoral fraud, this leaves us with the question “why?”

Like the Zapatistas say, AMLO was the “better” option (the “lesser evil” according to “cultured cretinism” ) to provide continuity to the neoliberal politic, he would have concentrated on (with the critical aid of intellectuals) the privatisation of petroleum, electricity and natural resources (through co-investment).

The difference between AMLO and Fecal isn’t found between their two projects for nation-building; both defend the foundations of the neoliberal project (NAFTA, privatisation, a sweatshop Mexico, the World Bank’s autonomy, punctual payments of foreign and domestic debts, Mexico as a stop over point for the world market – López Obrador´s proposal contemplated the transitsmico, hte bullet train, and finishing the 21st century highway).

There also wasn’t any difference in the relationships they would establish between society and politics (that to “do” politics is the job of the political class only).

If this was the way things were, why then, would those of above opt for Calderon? This question is not the product of our “radical infantilism”. When interviewed by Elena Poniatowska, Andres Manuel López Obrador responded with the following:

E.P:- Andres Manuel, I sincerely think that business people shouldn’t be afraid of you, because your Presidency will not affect them-

AMLO: No, no it won’t.

E.P: Upon becoming President, will you take anything away from them?

AMLO: No, I have said it many times in the public arena; I have said that I don’t hate, and that revenge is not in my nature.

E.P: How is it possible that they still don’t realise that a country can’t get ahead with a huge mass without adjustment capacity?

AMLO: They don’t realise because they aren’t capable of understanding that the governability of a country cannot be obtained, that it’s impossible to guarantee tranquility, social peace, and social stability in a sea, an ocean of inequality; that one cant achieve social, political, economic, and financial stability while the majority of people’s unjust, backward, abandoned and impoverished situation continues. They are very backward, reactionary.

To sum up, López Obrador offered three fundamental things to the capitalists:

a) The promotion of a government that would not appropriate such a large part of the social surplus. The corruption would continue, but with much higher developed levels of self-control (and with more exposure to video cameras).

b) The capacity for social control would be the basis and the security for capital investment. For example: the transitsmico idea existed since the epoch of the “Puebla Panama Plan”, a plan that got around, from office to office and from university to university. But it turned out that neither the PRI nor the PAN could implement this project (directed at a redesigning of the national geography via border fluidity). AMLO was confident that he would gain the social consensus in order to complete the project (it’s not too much to say that, this would destroy the region’s indigenous communities).

c) The reconstruction of State power that would allow the political class to reform itself in such a fashion that it wouldn’t consider only its own interests but would be the instrument needed in order to create a long-term project in accordance with neoliberalism.

Therefore, AMLO promised them a strong State, governability, tranquility, social peace, public security and stability. In other words, what capital needs to be able to prosper.

So why didn’t the big businesses grab López´Obrador´s offer?

“They left themselves to grow cobwebs and they believed the dark legend” responds AMLO (well, the big businesses weren’t the only ones to believe “the black legend” that López Obrador was leftwing; some leftwing political organisations, social organisations and intellectuals did too).

Yes, AMLO made sense when he answered: because they not only believed that I was leftwing… but also anticapitalist. But not only for that reason. Here we put forward other possible answers, following, always, our Zapatista way of thinking:

First. Power negotiations. The Mexican politic of above reaps a lot of profits (one only has to invest in one party), and the privatisation process of the two old pearls belonging to the old Mexican State (petrol and electricity), and would leave a million for those that would authorise it. If one says that only PEMEX costs 250, 000 million dollars, we can understand what is pocketed by he who administers sales.

Secondly.- The real power of drug trafficking. Privatisation isn’t the only business of politicians (president, secretaries of State, governors, municipal presidents, deputies and senators), there is also what’s known as “the administration of drug trafficking” that works in favour of one group or another. In Fox’s 6 year period, one might say that the Chapa Guzman group was favoured. The entire structure of the State: army, federal police, judicial system (including judges and prison directors), served this group in its battle against its rivals. This relation was not only established by this group, but was supported also by sectors of the PRD, who, having won positions in government, immediately entered negotiations with this drug trafficking organisation. Such is the case of the governors in Michoacan and Guerrero. Therefore, the political class, even more than in the period of the PRI, form part of organised crime. The President of the Republic equally, because when a group reaches power, its leader not only “administers” judicial power but also takes power in one of these drug trafficking organisations.

However, in spite of the advantages AMLO promised the bosses of money, in the end the decision did not lean towards the option that was being imposed all over Latin America (with the passing of neoliberal projects in the hands of “leftwing governments” that guarantee the “lubrication” of capitalism’s barbaric nature). The majority of the political class and the associated bourgeoisie decided to chose the most familiar path, provoking the worst crisis of control in recent years. Further above, between those that truly command, it was decided to push for Calderon without considering what this would cause.

5. Political Parties. The 2nd of July demonstrated that political parties have ceased to exist, which was already apparent in the convergence between the political class and organised drug trafficking, because they are nothing more than electoral umbrellas for such and such politician or such and such franchise owner. Not a single characteristic of what were political parties remains to be seen. Now it is something of a complex “cocktail” where corrupt businesspeople and criminals mix. Programme, principles, rules? Come on! This is for infantile radicals and “ultras.”

But the crisis didn’t end within the institution’s terrain, it began sustaining “modern” democracy’s lies: representative democracy, that is, bourgeois democracy. The Nation-State crisis goes hand in hand with that of representative democracy and political parties.

But we will see how the options from above differ:

PRI: On the PRI’s side, one works under the illusion that the old corporative vote will express itself from the ballot boxes of the 2 nd of July. Its triumphs in the state elections of 2005 allowed the party to work with the variable, that despite their repulsive presidential candidate Madrazo, its solid vote would enable it to win the Presidency.

On the other hand, the stress on the old corporative structure is deeper than they thought. The old workers hubs, constantly diminishing and poorly functioning, divided between themselves when the Confederacion Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC, or Revolutionary Confederation of Industrial and Rural Workers) decided to support AMLO. In this sense, the PRI, along with its old corporative structure, enters a profound crisis for not having created new structures of bureaucratic control. New centres such as the Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT, or The National Workers Union), which has its roots in the PRI, decided to support AMLO with the conviction and promise of the construction of a new organism of bureaucratic control. The rise of a new type of cooperativism is offered by the ideology of a “new labour culture,” closely connected to employers. This situation in which the PRI finds itself marks one of the essential characteristics in the crisis: the old control mechanisms are not only ineffective, but above all, burdensome. So many years of PRI’s dominance caused a double effect: firstly, that the PRI would be unable to regenerate itself; and that secondly, the PRI as State party

would convert into the ideal to be sought. Due to this, the PAN and equally the PRD and other “bonsai” parties are full of “ex-PRI” members.

PAN: In the Partido de Accion Nacional (National Action Party), they shovelled the last few loads of dirt into the tomb that Vincente Fox had opened. The party alone was a screen that served the Presidency (to be more precise: it served Martha Sahagun) in order to implement the fraud. It wasn’t only on the 2 nd of July but during the whole electoral process: the relationship with polling houses; alliances with the mainstream media; the organisation of a team of businesspeople and business organisations in order to create a war against AMLO; the alliance (that later would become a relation of subordinance) with Elba Esther Gordillo; and resources exchanged by Chapo Guzman’s drug traffickers for protection during this six year term etc.

The PAN suffered a definitive transformation: the old democratic-conservative party, that played a certain part in the struggle against the single party system, ceased to exist. If the PRI had been beaten by the arrival of the “northern barbarians,” this process intensified when the “presidential couple” arrived on the scene. The PAN would lose its identity because of this element, it would become a PRI dressed in blue, especially when one refers to the use of the state apparatus for personal use, links with organised crime and the set up of functionaries that charge for doing no work (the similarities between Luis H. Alvarez, Fox’s “peace commission” and Zedillo’s Emilio Rabasa, there are several).

A secret extreme right organisation, “el Yunque,” had taken control of the party. The fascist nature of this party is more than clear, it’s undoubtable that the right isn’t alone and invisible (see the books written by journalist Alvaro Delgado on this topic). The Yunque’s presidential candidate was first Martha Sahagun; later it was Santiago Creel. Fecal’s triumph, disputed by the PAN’s candidature, obliged the Yunque to settle down and push for the same privileges with Calderon as it had with Fox.

Until now, the PAN has been incapable of finding mechanisms to construct a stable and long-term form of social domination (which is what it needs so that capital will be invested). If the PAN’s members don’t have a clue as to what politics based on the masses is, Fecal’s team is even worse. That is why Elba Esther Gordillo will be the new ideologue-operator-leader. Yes, a PRI member will command the actions of the PAN.

The dwarf parties: PANAL and PASC were two parties made to fit the current electoral situation. Their actions are evidence enough to prove the true objective of electoral law: power itself decides who will be its “rivals.” In legal terms, the possibility of creating an authentic political party that confronts the political dispute between independence and autonomy doesn’t really exist. For an honest struggle, the electoral path is now a closed route.

PRD-PT-Convergencia: Before the 2nd of July, the Coalicion por el bien de todos was delighted in its triumph… although it hadn’t yet won The intellectuals that are today hysterically screaming about the triumph of the extreme-right then limited themselves to repeating the phrase “smile, we’re going to win,” and it is public knowledge that on the 1st of July, López Obrador’s team was already handing out “bones.” But afterwards we will talk more about the Coalition, the resistance movement against the fraud, and López Obrador’s CND (National Democratic Convention).

6. And below? Well, below is something different…

(To be continued…)

For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation

Sixth Commission

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos