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 Monday September 25, 2006 19:38 by Marcos - EZLN
 Communique from the EZLN on Mexican election results and the other campaign Major communique from the EZLN on the reasons for their recent strategy including the presumption that Lo’pez Obrador would win "the presidency with legitimacy and with the support of big business, in addition to the unconditional backing of the progressive intellectuals; the process of destruction of our homeland (but with the alibi of being destruction “of the left”); and whatever kind of opposition or resistance would be qualified as “sponsored by the right, at the service of the right, sectarian, ultra, infantile. The Zapatistas and the Otra: The Pedestrians of HistoryIntroduction:This document is especially intended for and directed toward the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign. And, of course, to those who might sympathize with our movement. What is presented here is part of the reflections and conclusions that have been shared with some persons, groups, collectives and organizations, adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacando’n Jungle. In accord with our “mode” of doing things in the Other Campaign, first we listened to the words of these companer@s and then we put forward our analyses and conclusion. The Sixth Commission of the EZLN has been attentive to the opinions and proposals of a part of the companer@s of the Other Campaign with regards to what is referred to as the “postelectoral crisis,” to the mobilizations in various parts of the country (in particular in Oaxaca with the APPO and in Mexico City with AMLO) and to the Other Campaign. Through letters, through meeting and assembly minutes, via the web page, in some cases through publicly stated positions, and in personal and group meetings, some adherents have expressed their opinions on these issues. During part of the month of July and the entire month of August, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN held multilateral meetings with some of our compas adherents from 19 states of the Republic: Mexico City, Mexico State, Morelos, Michoaca’n, Quere’taro, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Jalisco, Hidalgo, Zacatecas, Nuevo Leo’n, San Luis Potosi’, Colima, Nayarit, Guanajuato, and Aguascalientes. In addition, [we also met] with political and social organizations with a presence in various parts of the country and with our companer@s of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). In accord with our limited possibilities, we held these meetings in locales of comp@s of the Other Campaign in Mexico City and in the states of Morelos, Michoaca’n, Quere’taro, Tlaxcala, and Puebla. It was neither possible nor desirable for us to talk directly with all adherents, this with the result that in some places we were accused of “excluding” some people. With regards to this we say that in the Other Campaign it is the concern of each group, collective, organization, or individual to decide with whom they will meet in the Other, as well as when, where, and with what agenda. In exercise of this right, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN listened to and spoke with those who accepted our invitation. However, although these were private meetings, our interventions were not and are not secret. To those who graciously listened to us, we asked that they make known to other companer@s in their states and work organizations what we, as the Sixth Commission of the EZLN, are thinking. Some of them nobly acceded to this request and have carried it out fairly. Others have taken advantage of the situation to add their own judgments as if they were the opinions of the EZLN, or they have purposefully edited their “summaries” of these meetings so as to give a slanted version of what it was that we proposed. The themes of these meetings were: The national situation “above,” particularly with regards to the elections. The national situation “below,” with regards to those who are not part of the Other. The situation of the Other Campaign. The proposal of the EZLN for the “what’s next?” of the Other Campaign. Some of the reflections of the companer@s with whom we met have now been incorporated into our own thinking, reflections and conclusions. However, it is necessary to clarify that what we are now communicating and what we propose to all of our companer@s of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign is the sole responsibility of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN, and it is as an adherent of the Other Campaign that we do so. To those who felt excluded or marginalized, our sincere apologies and our request for understanding. We here present, and in only a partial manner, a brief summary of what occurred within the EZLN and resulted in the Sixth Declaration, our evaluation (which does not pretend to be THE evaluation) at one year of the Sixth and the Other, our analysis and position on what is taking place “above,” and our proposal for the next steps of the Other. What we present here was already consulted, in broad strokes, with the comandant@s of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee of the EZLN; thus it represents not only the position of the Sixth Commission but also of the leadership of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Sale y Vale. The Zapatistas and the Otra: The Pedestrians of HistorySeptember 2006 Part One: The Paths of the SixthHere we will briefly delineate, as we have already expounded on this topic, the internal process of the EZLN previous to the Sixth Declaration: 1. The betrayal and decomposition of the Mexican political class. At that point something was definitively ruptured. This deed (carefully forgotten by those who criticize us for our critiques of the political class in its entirety) was fundamental for the steps that were to come on the part of the EZLN, both internally and externally. From then on, the EZLN carried out an evaluation of what had been its proposal, the process that followed, and the possible causes of this betrayal. Through public and private analyses, the EZLN characterized the dominant socioeconomic model in Mexico as NEOLIBERAL. We indicated that one of [neoliberalism’s] characteristics was the destruction of the Nation-State, which includes, among other things, the decomposition of political actors, of their relations of domination, and of their “modes.” The EZLN had believed, up until that time, that there was a certain sensibility among some sectors of the political class, particularly those grouped around the figure of Cuauhte’moc Ca’rdenas Solo’rzano (within as well as outside the PRD), and that it was possible, through mobilizations and in alliance with this sector, to “yank” the recognition of our rights as indigenous peoples from those who govern. For this reason, a good part of the public external actions of the EZLN were directed toward a discussion with this political class and a dialogue with the federal government. We thought that the politicians from “above” were going to understand and try to meet a demand that had already cost an armed rebellion and the blood of Mexicans; that this would direct the process of dialogue and negotiation with the Federal Government to a satisfactory conclusion; that this way we might be able to “come out” and do politics by civil and peaceful means; that with the constitutional recognition there would be a “juridical roof” for the processes of autonomy that were taking place in numerous parts of indigenous Mexico; and that this would strengthen the path of dialogue and negotiation as an alternative for the resolution of conflicts. We were wrong. The political class as a whole was avaricious, vile, despicable, and stupid. The decision that the three principal political parties (PRI, PAN and PRD) then made showed that the supposed differences among them were nothing more than mere simulations. The “geometry” of the politics from above had gone mad. There was no left, center, or right. There was only a band of thieves with immunity... and cynicism during prime time hours. We don’t know if we were mistaken from the beginning, if by 1994 (when the EZLN opted for civil and peaceful initiatives), the decomposition of the political class was already a fact (and so-called “neocardenismo” was just nostalgia for ‘88), or if in those 7 years, Power had accelerated the rotting process of the professional politicians. Since 1994, persons and groups of what was then referred to as “civil society” had come to us to tell us that neocardenismo was honest, concordant, and a naturally ally of all popular struggles, not just that of the neozapatistas. We believe that, the majority of the time, these people were well-intentioned. The position of who is today an employee of Vicente Fox, Cuauhte’moc Ca’rdenas Solo’rzano, and his son, the pathetic La’zaro Ca’rdenas Batel (today governor of a Michoacan controlled by narcotraffic), in the indigenous counterreform is already known. From the hand of the later flaming campaign manager for AMLO, Jesu’s Ortega, the PRD senators voted for a law that was denounced as a farce by even anti-zapatista indigenous organizations. They thus confirmed the words of an old militant of the left, “the general Cardenas died in 1988.” The PRD representatives of the lower house, for their part, approved a series of secondary laws and regulations that consolidated the betrayal. We only have to remember that when we publicly denounced the behavior of neocardenismo, we were attacked (even in cartoons) by the same people that now say, in effect, that Ca’rdenas is a traitor (except now it’s for not supporting Lo’pez Obrador). Of course, it’s one thing is to betray some indians, it is something very different to betray the LEADER [Lo’pez Obrador]. We were then called “sectarian,” “marginals,” and, for having “attacked” Ca’rdenas, “the zapatistas played to the right-wing.” Sound familiar? And now the engineer [Cuauhte’moc Ca’rdenas] wants to be “leftist” and criticize AMLO...while he works for the tenants of Los Pinos in the commission of the bicentennial independence day celebrations. After this betrayal, we couldn’t act like nothing had happened (we’re not perredistas). With the objective of the indigenous law we had entered into the dialogue process and negotiations with the federal government and made agreements, we had constructed an interlocutor with the political class, and we had made a call to the people (in Mexico and in the world) to mobilize with us for this demand. In our error we had brought along a lot of people. Not anymore. The next step by the EZLN would not only not be directed toward talking and listening with those above, but would confront them....radically. That is, the next step by the EZLN would go against all of the politicians. 2. Armed struggle or civil and peaceful initiative? The choices that were planted from above (and that certain “leftist” intellectuals have made theirs) are false, it was by looking inside ourselves that we decided to do neither one. We had then the option of renewing combat. And we had not only the military capacity but also the legitimacy to do so. But military action is a typical exclusive action, the best example of sectarianism. In this action are those that have the equipment, the knowledge, the physical and mental condition, and the disposition not only to die but to kill. We had resorted to this because, like we already said, they had left us with no other choice. What’s more, we had made, in 1994, a commitment to pursuing the civil path, not with the government but with “the people,” with that “civil society” that not only supported our demand, but had also participated directly in our initiatives over those 7 years. These initiatives were spaces for everyone’s participation, without more criteria for exclusion than dishonesty and crime. According to our judgment, we had a commitment to these people. So our next step, we thought, should be a civil and peaceful initiative. 3. The lesson of the previous initiatives: look below. And the evaluation that we presented coincided with that of the 5,000 delegates of the 1999 referendum and the March of the 1,111 in 1997. Namely, there was a sector of the population that called to us, that said to us, “we support you in these indigenous demands, but, what about us?” And it was this sector that was, and is, composed of peasants, workers, employees, women, young people. Above all women and young people, of all colors but with the same history of humiliation, dispossession, exploitation, and repression. No, we didn’t understand them to be saying that they wanted to rise up in arms. Neither were they waiting for a leader, a guide, a caudillo, or a “ray of hope.” No, what we read and understood was that they hoped we would struggle alongside them for their own specific demands, just as they had struggled with us for ours. We read and understood that these people wanted another form of organizing, of doing politics, of struggling. The “going out” of the 1,111 and the 5,000 had signified “opening” even more our hearing and our gaze, because these compas had heard and seen, directly and without intermediaries, those from below. Not just the living conditions of people, families, groups, collectives, and organizations, but also their conviction to struggle, their history, their “I am this” and their “here I am.” And these were people that had never been able to visit our communities, that did not know directly our process, that only knew of us from what our own words had narrated to them. And they weren’t people that had been on the stage in the distinct initiatives where the neozapatistas had made direct contact with citizens. They were humble and simple people to whom nobody listened, and whom we needed to listen to...in order to learn, in order to become companer@s. Our next step would be to make direct contact with these people. And if before it had been to talk to them and they to listen to us, now it should be to listen to them. And not in order to relate to them in one specific situation, but for the long-term, as companer@s. We also analyzed that the zapatista delegation, when it “went out” on a given initiative, was “isolated” by a group of people-those that organized, those that decided when, where, and with whom. We’re not making a judgment as to if this were good or bad, we’re just pointing it out. For this reason, the next initiative should be able to “detect” these “isolations” from the beginning in order to avoid them further ahead. What’s more, whether it was desired or not, the “going out” of the EZLN had privileged the interlocution of a sector of the population: the cultured middle class, intellectuals, artists, scientists, social and political leaders. If made to choose, in the new initiative we would have to decide between this sector and that of the most dispossessed. And if we had to decide, we would decide in favor of the latter, those from below, and we would construct a space where we could meet them. 4. The “cost” of being consistent with one’s word. That sector, formed principally but not only by intellectuals, artists, scientists, and social leaders, also included what is called “the PRD social base,” and many people who, without being PRD fans or sympathizers, think that there was or is something salvageable in the Mexican political class. And all these people, along with many more that did not and do not subscribe to the analysis and positions of the PRD, formed a kind of “shield” for the zapatista indigenous communities. They had mobilized each time that we suffered an aggression.....except when that aggression came from the PRD. The critique and distance with regard to AMLO, would be assumed by those who considered and consider their alternative to be above to be a critique of they themselves. Ergo, not only would they stop supporting us, but they would go so far as to attack us. And that’s what happened. Among the triumphs of those who, from academics, the sciences, the arts, culture and information, gave their unconditional and uncritical support to Lo’pez Obrador (and who make an ostentatious show of intolerance and despotism...even without having the government) is one that has slipped by unperceived: they managed to do what neither money nor pressures and threats had been able to, that is, to close the few public spaces that had given space to the word of the EZLN. First they lied, later they twisted meaning and slandered us, after that they cornered us, and finally, they eliminated our voice. Now they have the field clear to make themselves the strident echo for what AMLO says and contradicts (previous edition), without anybody or anyone overshadowing them. But the cost of this will not only be political...it is also military. That is, the “shield” will cease to be so and the possibility of a military attack against the EZLN will be more and more attractive to the powerful. The aggression will come then in olive green uniforms, as wells as in blue, tri-colored...or, as it happened, yellow (the perredista government of Zinacanta’n, Chiapas, attacked a peaceful mobilization by zapatista support bases with firearms April 10, 2004; the yellow paramilitaries which were formed afterward, sponsored by the PRD, the first “AMLO citizen support networks”-another “forgotten” of those that reproached and scolded the EZLN for having not supported and not supporting now the perredista). So we decided to separate the political-military organization from the civil structure of the communities. This was a utmost necessity. The influence of the political-military structure in the communities had become, instead of a thrust, an obstacle. It was the moment to step to one side and not disturb. But this was not just about avoiding a situation where the process that the zapatista communities had constructed (with their own contributions, genius, and creativity) be destroyed at the same time as was the EZLN, or that this process not be disturbed by the EZLN. It was also aimed at insuring that the cost of the critique of the political class was “paid” only by the EZLN and, preferably, by its military chief and spokesperson. But not only this. In the case that the zapatista communities would decide to take the step that the EZLN viewed as necessary, urgent, and concordant, we would have to be ready to survive an attack. For this reason, a time later, the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondo’n Jungle would start off with a red alert, and we would have to prepare, for years, for that. 5. Anticapitalist and from the left. And defining capitalism as the culprit and the enemy brought with it another conclusion: we needed to go beyond the indigenous struggle. Not only in declarations and propositions, but in organization. We needed, we need, we thought, we think, a movement that unites the struggles against the system that plunders us, that exploits us, that represses and looks down upon us as indigenous. And not only us as indigenous, but millions who are not indigenous: workers, peasants, employees, small business people, street vendors, sex workers, unemployed, migrants, under-employed, street workers, homosexuals, lesbians, trangendered people, women, young people, children, and the elderly. In the history of the public life of the EZLN, we had met other indigenous peoples and organizations and we had good relations with them. The National Indigenous Congress had permitted us not only to know and learn from the struggles and processes of autonomy that Indian peoples were carrying out, it also taught us to relate to them with respect. But we had also met organizations, collectives, political and cultural groups clearly defined as anticapitalist and of the left. With them we had always remained distrustful, distant, and skeptical. The relationship had been, above all, a continuing misencounter...on both sides. Upon recognizing the capitalist system as the source of indigenous pain, the EZLN had to recognize that it was not only in us that it produced this pain. There were, there are, these others that we had encountered over these 12 years. Recognizing their existence was to recognize their history. That is, none of these organizations, groups, or collectives had been “born” with the EZLN, nor by its example, nor in its shadow, nor under its wing. There were, and are, groups with their own history of struggle and dignity. An anticapitalist initiative should not only take them into account, but propose an honest relationship with them, that is, a relationship of respect. The compas of the national Indigenous congress had shown us that to recognize histories, ways, and contexts is the base of respect. In that sense, we thought that it would be possible to propose this to other anticapitalist organizations, groups, and collectives. The new initiative should propose the construction of commonalities and alliances with those others, without that implying an organic unity or hegemony by them or by the EZLN. 6. Looking Above...what is not said. As it has been pointed out, not just by us, the supposedly “leftist” proposal (of the PRD in general and AMLO in particular), was not and is not [leftist]. It was and is a project for the administration of the crisis, assuring profits for large property owners and controlling social discontent with economic support, the cooptation of leaders and movements, threats, and repression. From the arrival of Ca’rdenas Solo’rzano to the government of the capital, later with Rosario Robles and after that with Lo’pez Obrador and Alejandro Encinas, the city of Mexico was and is governed by the PRI, but now under the PRD flag. It changed party but not politics. But AMLO had, and has, what none of his antecessors did: charisma and ability. If before, Ca’rdenas used the government of the city as a trampoline for the presidency, Lo’pez Obrador did also, but with more ability and better luck than the engineer. The government of Vicente Fox, with all of its awkwardness, became the principal promoter and publicist for the candidacy of the perredista. According to our evaluations, AMLO would win the election for president of the Republic. And we were not mistaken. Lo’pez Obrador obtained the highest number of votes among those that fought for the presidency. Although not with the grand margin foreseen, his advantage was clear and certain. Where we were mistaken was in thinking that the recourse of electoral fraud was something of the past. But we’ll talk about this below. Following our analysis, the arrival of AMLO and his team (formed purely by shameless and pathetic salinistas, in addition to a rabble of vile and despicable people) to the presidency of the Republic would mean the installation of a government that, while appearing to be left, would operate as if it were right (exactly as it did and does in the government of Mexico City). Additionally, it would take power with legitimacy, support, and popularity. But nothing essential in the economic model would be touched. In the words and AMLO and his team: “we will maintain macroeconomic policy.” As almost no one says, “macroeconomic policy means a rise in exploitation, the destruction of social security, the precarization of work, the dispossession of ejidal and communal lands, an increase in migration to the United States, the destruction of history and culture, the repression of popular discontent...and the privatization of petroleum, the electric industry, and the totality of natural resources (which, in Lo’pez Obrador discourse, is disguised as “co-investment”). The “social” politics (the analysts close to AMLO “forget” once again the strong similarities with the “solidarity” of Carlos Salinas de Gortari-the “unnameable” renamed by Lo’pez Obrador’s team) of the perredista proposal, they told us, would be possible by reducing the expenditures of the governmental apparatus and eliminating (ha!) corruption. The savings obtained would serve to help the “most vulnerable” sectors (the elderly and single mothers) and to support the sciences, culture, and art. So we thought: AMLO wins the presidency with legitimacy and with the support of big business, in addition to the unconditional backing of the progressive intellectuals; the process of destruction of our homeland (but with the alibi of being destruction “of the left”); and whatever kind of opposition or resistance would be qualified as “sponsored by the right, at the service of the right, sectarian, ultra, infantile, an ally of Martha Sahagu’n (then it was Martita that it seemed would precandidate of the PAN-afterwards etiquette would say “ally of Calderon”) and blah blah blah,” and repressed (like the student movement of 1999-2000; the town of San Salvador Atenco-we should remember that all this started with the PRD municipal president of Texcoco; the representatives of the PRD in the State of Mexico, who today demand the liberation of the prisoners at that time nodded to and supported the police repression; and the young people that were repressed by the perredista government of that “defender of the right to free expression” Alejandro Encinas, paradoxically, for blocking a street in demand of liberty and justice for Atenco); attacked (like the zapatista support bases in Zinacanta’n); or slandered, pursued, and satanized (like the Other Campaign and the EZLN). But the illusion would end the minute that they saw that nothing had changed for those from below. And then would come a stage of disappointment, desperation, and disillusionment-that is, the breeding grounds for fascism. For this moment an alternative leftist organization would be necessary. Following our calculations, the true nature of the so-called “Alternative Project for the Nation” would be defined in the first 3 years of governance. Our initiative should take this into account and prepare itself to go with everything it has against (including cartoons) for various years, before converting itself into a real left, anticapitalist option. 7. What followed? The Sixth. In January of 2003, dozens of thousands of zapatistas “took” the city of San Cristo’bal de las Casas, Chiapas. Machetes (in honor of the rebels of Atenco) and pine limbs burning brightly illuminated the central plaza of the ancient Jovel. The zapatista leadership spoke. Among them, Comandante Tacho warned that those that bet on forgetting, cynicism, and convenience “are mistaken, there is something else.” In this moment, still in the shadow of dawn, the Sixth Declaration began to walk... (to be continued) For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN and the Sixth Commission. Part II: The Paths of the OtherIn August of 2003 the caracoles Zapatistas are born, and with them, the Councils of Good Government, advancing the emerging separation between the political-military apparatus of the EZLN and the civil structures of the Zapatista communities. Parallel to this we worked on the structure of the chain of command and refined the details for defense and resistance in the case of eventual military attack. The first steps for the Sixth Declaration and what would later be the Other Campaign were already being taken... 1. Alone? The electoral battle had already been moving forward for awhile already. At that moment three possible paths presented themselves to the EZ: to incorporate itself into the lopezobradorista wave, effectively omitting the signals and facts that we had about its true tendencies (that is, we would have to be inconsistent with ourselves); maintain silence and wait to see what happened with the electoral process; or launch the project that we were preparing. The decision to be made did not belong to the Zapatista leadership, but to the communities. Thus we began to prepare what would later be the red alert, the internal consulta, and depending on its result, the Sixth Declaration. The immediate precedent to the Sixth was the text called The Impossible Geometry of Power. It came after the red alert, which some interpreted as an announcement of a Zapatista offensive or a response to the constant military patrols. It wasn't either one, but rather an act of prevention in the face of possible enemy military action...which would be encouraged through media attacks by progressive intellectuals whom, disenchanted with us for not accompanying them in their praise of AMLO and our refusal to be quiet about it attacked us without a second thought. The Sixth is consulted with the Zapatista communities and they decide and state 'we are willing, even if we are alone.' That is, to alone tour the country, listen to the people from below, build with these people a National Program of Struggle to transform the country and create a new agreement, a new Constitution. For this eventuality, we had prepared for 3 years: to be left alone [abandoned]. But it didn't happen that way. Soon the Sixth Declaration began to receive adherents. From all over the country communications arrived demonstrating that the Sixth was not only understood and accepted, but that many had made it their own. Day by day, the Sixth grew and became national. 2. The First Steps...and faces. We began the meetings with the political organizations, to show them the place that we recognized for them. After that with indigenous communities and organizations, to reemphasize that we had not abandoned our struggle, but rather were conjoining it to a bigger one. Next with social organizations, recognizing a terrain where 'the other' had constructed its own history. After that, with diverse NGO's, groups, and collectives that had remained close to our struggle. Next with families and individuals, in order to say that, for us, everybody counts, regardless of their size or their number. And finally, with 'the others,' that is, recognizing that our vision of the outside may be limited (as of course it is). In July, August, and September of 2005 we held what were known as the 'preparatory meetings.' In these we honored our word, we listened with attention and respect to EVERYTHING that was said, including reproaches, critiques, threats...and lies (although at the time we didna't know they were lies). One year ago, September 16, 2005, with the presence of the now deceased Comandanta Ramona, the EZLN leadership formally handed over the self-named 'Other Campaign' to the group of adherents; [the EZLN] stated that it would participate in the movement with, in addition to its role with the Zapatista communities, a delegation (called the 'Sixth Commission'??) of its leadership. [The EZLN] announced the 'going out' of the first explorer, the delegate number zero (to indicate that other delegates would follow), who would have the mission of meeting and listening to those all over the country who were now companer@s but hadn't been able to attend the preparatory meetings, and to explore the conditions in which the constant work of the Sixth Commission would be carried out. In this first plenary, the EZLN proposed that in order to be consistent with the proposal of the Sixth in constructing another form of doing politics, that the words of everyone must be taken into account, no matter if they had attended the meetings or not. The leadership of these few organizations were not honest. As it would become evident later, their gamble was to join the movement in order to lead it, to lead it breakdown...or in order to negotiate a better position in the 'marketplace' that the movement around AMLO was turning into. They were so sure that he would be president.....well, official president, that they felt that the train (the budget) was passing them by and they didn't even have a ticket. And the Other Campaign was the merchandize they could exchange for cushy jobs, candidacies, and positions. 3. The first problems. We should say on this point that the majority of adherents of the Sixth Declaration are indigenous (and this is without counting the Zapatistas). If that isn't reflected in the acts and meetings, it is because indigenous peoples have other spaces of participation, of struggle, which are less 'visible.' For now it is sufficient to say that if all of the adherents were to meet, on one occasion and in one place there would be (in a very conservative calculation), a proportion of 10 indigenous people for each person from another political or social organization, NGO, group, collective, family, or individual. One wishes this could happen, the indigenous peoples could teach everyone, then, that we don't use 'I' but rather 'we' to name ourselves and to be ourselves. We saw all this and a few more things (for example, that there wasn't a mechanism for making decisions, nor a space for debate; that the groups and collectives wanted to impose their ways on the political and social organizations and vice versa), but we weren't worried. We thought that the first thing to be done was for everyone to get to know each other and, then later, define between all of us the profile, then still incomplete, of the Other. 4. The stages. Another reason, no less important, was that, as we were going out to listen to those from below, the word of these other struggles would become visible and thus their histories and trajectories would become palpable. So 'showing oneself' in the Other would also be 'showing oneself'?? to the repression of the caciques, the government, business owners, and political parties. According to us, the fact that it was an electoral period would elevate the 'cost' of a repressive action and diminish the vulnerability of the smaller organizations and struggles. One more advantage was that, absorbed as they were up there above in all things electoral, they would leave us alone to do our project and neozapatismo would cease to be in fashion. So then we thought of the following stages: 6 months of a exploratory tour and getting to know each other throughout the country (from January to June of 2006). Finishing that, a report to the whole Other Campaign: 'this is who we are, we are here, this is our story'; let the electoral period pass and prepare the following step. After that, the following stage would deepen the 'knowing' each other and create modes of communication and support (the network) between the adherents in order to support and defend ourselves and each other (now with the participation of more delegates from the Sixth Commission - September 2006 to the end of 2007 - with intermediate breaks in order to report back and relieve the delegates). Later on, the elaboration, debate, and definition of the profile of the Other according to its adherents, not just the EZLN (all of 2008). For 2009, according to our analysis, the 'lopezobradorista dream' would have ended. Our homeland would not have disillusionment, discouragement, and desperation as its only future; there would be 'something else' (an 'other' thing)... 5. The steps toward Atenco: to be companer@s? The tour began, and what happened happened. The pain that we had intuited did not come anywhere near to what we actually encountered, heard, and came to know along the way. Governments of all the political parties (including those of the supposed 'left' - PRD, PT, and Convergencia) allied with caciques, landowners, and business people to plunder, exploit, scorn, and repress the ejidatarios, the indigenous communities, the small business people and street vendors, the sex-workers, laborers, employees, teachers, students, young people, women, children, elderly; in order to destroy nature, to sell history and culture; to strengthen a way of thinking and acting that is intolerant, exclusive, machista, homophobic, and racist. And none of this appeared in the mass media. But if the Mexico of below that we were finding exuded an indignant pain, the organized rebellions that kept appearing, and uniting, revealed (and 'kept awake in each other') an 'other' country, a country at its boiling point, in struggle, in the construction of its own alternatives. If in its first steps the journey of the Sixth Commission was seen, with the clumsiness of those who only look above, as a 'mobile mailbox of complaints,' soon it transformed itself and the word of the other [el otro, la otra] began to take on the size of the silence that those above had hidden until then. Astonishing stories of heroism, dedication, and sacrifice resisting the destruction that came from above were heard and echoed in other honest adherents. We arrived to the State of Mexico and the Federal District with cargo that included perhaps all the colors that struggle below. The calendar marked May 3 and 4 of 2006, and pain and blood painted the town of Atenco and the compas of the Other Campaign. Providing a true lesson of what it is to be companer@s in the Other Campaign, the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) of Atenco mobilized to support compas in Texcoco. The municipal government (PRD) faked a dialogue and negotiation while they called the state (PRI) and federal (PAN) police to repress this movement. The parties most representative of the political class, PRD-PRI-PAN, joined forces to strike at the Other Campaign. Approximately 200 compas were attacked, beaten, tortured, raped, and incarcerated. One underage boy, Javier Cortes Santiago, was assassinated by the police. Our young companero Alexis Benhumea Hernandez, adherent of the Other Campaign and student at the UNAM, after a long agony, died, also assassinated. The majority [of the Other Campaign] reacted and carried out actions of solidarity and support, as well as acts of denunciations and pressure. With the minimum of decency and companerismo, we detained the tour of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN and dedicated ourselves, first of all, to contesting the smear campaign and lies that were made against the Peoples Front in Defense of the Land in the mass media (which offended some compas of the alternative media); and later, to activities to collect funds for the prisoners and expose the truth about what happened. In contrast to the majority of the Other Campaign, some organizations only worried and mobilized as long as their own militants were held prisoner, or while the acts gained them attention. When their companer@s were released and Atenco 'went out of fashion,' they dropped the demand for liberty and justice for the remaining prisoners. Awhile later they would be the first to run to install themselves in the sit-in for AMLO in the Zocalo and on Reforma. What they didn't do for Atenco they did for Lopez Obrador...because with him were 'the masses!'...well, and also the stagelights. Other organizations dedicated themselves to taking advantage of the conjuncture in order to, maliciously, try to impose on the Other Campaign a policy of alliances with who were, and are, looking above. With the pretext of 'we have to unite ourselves in the struggle for the prisoners,' they attempted (by manipulating plenary assemblies) to impose agreements that tied the Other to the electoral calculations of openly or shamefully yellow [colors of the PRD] organizations. And not only that, they dedicated themselves to sowing discord and division, saying that the EZLN wanted to impose on the people of Atenco a politics of sectarian alliances. But they failed. Another organization, where there are some companer@s, dedicated itself to saying that the prisoners would not be released soon, that there was no reason to dedicate so much effort to this, that 'someone' (that wouldn't be them, of course) would take charge of the situation, that the Other Campaign should continue, and that the Sixth Commission of the EZLN had committed an error in delaying its tripa - that this had been a unilateral decision and that it should continue its journey...so that it could get to those places where they [this organization] had political work or interest in doing it. But the attitude of these 'companer@s' was surpassed by the solidarity activity of the majority of the Other Campaign. In all of Mexico, and in more than 50 countries around the world, the demand for liberty and justice for the prisoners of Atenco resonated with people of many colors. 6. Indians versus mestizos and provinces versus Mexico City (DF). In these meetings, the 'assembly professionals' attempted to convert them into decision making bodies, without caring that this left aside one of the essential propositions of the Sixth: to take everyone into account. Some organizations, groups, and collectives, primarily from D.F., tried to manipulate the assemblies, which had been convoked because of Atenco, into making decisions and definitions...that suited them. And this logic became generalized. Some discussions and decisions were, to say the least, ridiculous. For example, in one of the plenaries, someone who does cultural work in the Nahuatl language proposed that Nahuatl be the official language of the country and that the document be delivered to the EZLN (which is made up by 99.99% indigenous peoples that speak languages of Mayan roots). The assembly voted unanimously in favor. In this way, the plenary of the Other decided to try to impose what had not been achieved by the Aztecs, the Spanish, the Gringos, the French, the etceteras, and all of the governments since the colonial era: to strip the Zapatista communities of their original language[s]...which is not Nahuatl. In a previous assembly, the facilitation team attempted to put into discussion whether the indigenous peoples were a sector or not...without the indigenous companer@s having said anything. After 500 years of resistance and struggle, and 12 years since the Zapatista armed uprising, the assembly was going to discuss what the indigenous peoples are...without giving them a chance to speak. If the repression in Atenco obligated us to respond organizationally as a movement, the void created by the lack of basic definitions (like the function of debate and the form and manner for making decisions) runs the risk of being filled by the proposals and 'ways' of those who, in contrast to the rest of the adherents, could not only be present in the assemblies, but could also endure hours and hours waiting for the opportune moment (that is, when they could win) to vote on their proposal...or to filibuster the vote with 'motions' (when they were going to lose). In an assembly, it is one who speaks who is valued, not one who works. And one who speaks Spanish. Because when someone only spoke in indigenous language, the 'espaolistas' took advantage of the moment to go the bathroom, eat, or nap. The Zapatistas have reviewed the Sixth and nowhere does it say that, in order to be an adherent, you have to speak Spanish...or be an orator. But, in the assemblies, the logic of these organizations, groups, and collectives has imposed just that. And there's more. In these assemblies votes were carried out by raising hands. And it so happens that, as the assemblies take place in one geographic point (that is, DF), the Other Campaign in the states and regions send delegates with the decisions agreed upon by the adherents in those places. But at the moment of the vote, this wasn't taken into account. In the assemblies, the vote of a state or regional delegate was worth the same as the vote of someone who was part of a group or collective. There were companer@s that had to travel days in order to get to the assembly, but it was established that they had to submit themselves to the same 3 minutes per intervention as the person who had arrived to the meeting by subway. And, if the state or regional delegate had to leave because they had days of journey in front of them to get home and couldn't stay until the end of the assembly (when the facilitators-like in the July 1 plenary - were voting resolutions with only adherents from D.F. - with one foot out the door because they were turning out the building lights already), oh well. And if the resolution was to agree that there would be another assembly in 15 days, to be held there in DF, well then the companer@ delegate from an indigenous community would have to hurry to get home and impose city time on an indigenous community that had entered the Other Campaign precisely because they thought that this was the place where their ways...their times, would be respected. The actions and attitudes of these groups and collectives (that are a minority in the national and DF Other Campaign, but they make noise as if they were the majority) provoked the appearance of two identifiable tendencies in the Other: - that some compas from the province identify the DF'ers with this authoritarian and dishonest style (disguised as 'democratic,' 'anti-authoritarian,' and 'horizontal') of participating, discussing, and making agreements. While they don't take part in this form of breaking up the meetings, the majority of DF is included as object of this accusation. - that compas from the National Indigenous Congress identify the scorn and clumsiness of these groups as the 'way' of all the mestizos. Because if anybody knows how to be, discuss, and agree in assembly, it is the indigenous peoples (and rarely do they resort to a vote to see who wins). This is another injustice, because the immense majority of those who are not indigenous in the Other Campaign respect the indigenous. Both tendencies are unfair and false. But the problem is, we the Zapatistas think, that in the assemblies this trap is permitted; that is, that some groups, collectives, and organizations present their dirty and dishonest ways of debating and agreeing as if they were the ways of everyone, or of the majority. No. The zapatistas think that the assemblies are in order to inform, or at most, to discuss and agree upon operative questions, not to discuss, agree, and define. We think that it was our error, as the EZLN, to not have outlined from the beginning of the Other Campaign the definition of the spaces and mechanisms for information, debate, and the making of decisions. But pointing out our deficiencies as an organization and as a movement does not resolve the problem. We still lack these basic definitions. With regard to this, regarding what are referred to as the '6 points,' we will make a proposal in the final chapter of these reflections. 7. Another 'problem.' And also we have received, directed against us, true stupidities, disguised as 'criticisms.' We haven't responded to those...yet. But we have differentiated between these and those that are made honestly to point out our errors and make us better. 8. Tendencies regarding the AMLO postelectoral mobilization. - There is the dishonest and opportunist position of some, a few, leftist political organizations. They maintain that we are now faced with a historic and pre-insurrectional moment ('un parte aguas, mano, y con esta lluvia lo que se necesita es un paraguas'), but that AMLO is not a leader who knows how to conduct the masses to attack the winter palace...well, the national palace. But this is what the conscious vanguards are for, what the masses, now convoked by the PRD, hope and long for. So they join the sit-in and the lopesobradista mobilizations 'in order to create conscience among the masses,' 'to steal away' the movement from this 'reformist' and 'self-defeating' leadership, and take the mobilization to 'a higher stage of struggle.' As soon as they gather their little monies, declare 'dead and defunct' the Other Campaign (and Marcos? bah! a political cadaver), they buy their tent and they install themselves in the sit-in on Reforma. Then they call for collections of supplies. No, not for the compas that, in heroic conditions, maintain the sit-in at Santiaguito in support of the prisoners of Atenco, but for the lopezobradorista sit-in. There they organize conferences and round tables, they distribute fliers and 'revolutionary' newspapers with 'profound' analyses on the contemporary conjuncture, the correlation of forces, and the rising up of the masses, popular coalitions...and more promotoras and national dialogues. Hurray! Yesssss! And well, there they wait patiently for the masses to realize their error (the error of the masses course) and recognize the clarity and determination (of these organizations, of course), or for Lopez Obrador, or Manuel Camacho, or Ricardo Monreal, or Arturo Nunez to come to them looking for advice, orientation, support, l-e-a-d-e-r-s-h-i-p...but nothing. Later they attend, impatiently, the National Democratic Convention to pronounce and proclaim AMLO as the legitimate president. No joke, then and there they accept the leadership and the political control of, among other 'distinguished' 'revolutionaries': Dante Delgado, Federico Arreola, Ignacio Marvan, Arturo Nunez, Layda Sansores, Ricardo Monreal, and Socorro Diaz (if you can find one that hasn't been a priista, you win a prize); that is, the fundamental pillars of the 'new' republic, the 'new' generation of the future, the 'new' political party (damn! am I getting ahead of myself?) The masses went home, went back to work, went to their struggles, but these organizations know how to wait for the opportune moment...and they steal away from Lopez Obrador the leadership of the movement! (ha!) Whatever for whomever. aren't they endearing? There is also, within the Other Campaign, an honest tendency that is sincerely preoccupied about the 'isolation' that could come about if they don't join AMLO's mobilization. They assume that is possible to support the mobilization, without this implying support for the PRD. They analyze that there there are people from below, and that one has to get close to them because our movement is with and for those from below, and because if we don't, we will pay a high political cost. 9. The Actually Existing Other. And this position clearly maintains that the considerations that give strength to the Sixth Declaration have not changed, that is, to birth and grow a movement from below, anticapitalist and from the left. Because, outside of these problems that we detect and point out here, and that locate and focus on some compas dispersed in various parts of the country (not just in DF) and in these few organizations (that, now we know and understand, were never and will never be except where there are masses....waiting for a vanguard), the Other all over the country will continue its walk and will abandon neither its path nor its destiny. It is the Other of the political prisoners of Atenco, of Ignacio Del Valle, Magdalena Garcia, Mariana Selva and all of the names and faces of this injustice. It is the Other of all the political prisoners of Guanajuato, Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Guerrero, State of Mexico, and in all of the country; The Other of Gloria Arenas and Jacobo Silva Nogales. It is the Other of the National Indigenous Congress (Central-Pacific Region) that extends its contacts to the peninsula of the Yucatan Peninsula and Baja California and to the Northeast, and it grows. It is the Other that in Chiapas blooms without losing identity or roots, manages to organize and articulate zones and struggles that have been separate, and advances in the explanation and definition of the other struggle of gender. It is the Other that in cultural and informational groups and collectives continue demanding liberty and justice for Atenco, which strengthens its networks, which plays music for other ears and dances with other feet. It is the Other that in the sit-in at Santiaguito maintains and converts itself into a light and a message for our companer@s prisoners: 'we will not forget you, we will get you out.' It is the Other that in the states in the north of Mexico, and on the other side of the Rio Bravo, did not stop to wait for the Sixth Commission but continued working. It is the Other that in Morelos, Tlaxcala, Queretaro, Puebla, la Huasteca Potosina, Nayarit, State of Mexico, Michoacan, Tabasco, Yucatan, Quintano Roo, Veracruz, Campeche, Aguascalientes, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Colima, Jalisco, the Federal District, learn to struggle saying 'we.' It is the Other that in Oaxaca makes grow, below and without protagonisms, the movement that now amazes Mexico. It is the Other of young people, women, children, elderly, homosexuals, lesbians. It is the Other of the people of Atenco. It is the Other, one of the best things that these Mexican lands have given. (to be continued...) For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Sixth Commission of the EZLN. Translated by El Kilombo Intergalactico
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Jump To Comment: 1 2The 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pezobrador-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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez Obrador’s political privileges. Fox not only failed here, but also converted Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 lo’pezobradorism” 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 1500 hours. 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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), Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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: “Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez Doriga (Televisa anchor and de facto minister of communication) and Javier Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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%.
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 Lo’pez 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 Lo’pez 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:
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 2nd 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 ? Lo’pez Obrador’s proposal contemplated the transitsmico, the 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 Lo’pez 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, Lo’pez Obrador offered three fundamental things to the capitalists:
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 Lo’pez’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 Lo’pez 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, Lo’pez Obrador’s team was already handing out “bones.” But afterwards we will talk more about the Coalition, the resistance movement against the fraud, and Lo’pez 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
Part IV: Two Pedestrians on Different Paths...and with Different Destinations
1. The “ways” of a leader. The rejection of Lopez Obrador by the “presidential couple” grew along with the candidacy of the Tabasque~o. With his morning conferences (and the broad coverage afforded him by the mass media, today declared enemies of the perredista), the mayor of Mexico City went about making the agenda for Los Pinos...and for the rest of the political class. One could be in the most remote corner of the country and would still know what Fox had said (well, when he managed to articulate something comprehensible), what AMLO had said, and at the end of the day, what the rest of the cast of Mexican politics said about what was said by what was said by the mayor of Mexico City. For Fox this didn’t seem to be a problem...for awhile. In one television program, Lopez Obrador mentioned he was disconcerted by the sudden hostility of “Mr. President” (remember that part about “you have to protect the presidential office”). “Yes he was my friend, I don’t know what happened to him,” AMLO said. Well, what happened is that the “presidential office” was now a couple: that formed by Vicente Fox and Martha Sahagu’n. And “Mrs. Martha” as her husband calls her, wanted, and wants, not to be the Mrs. of the president, but to be Mrs. President.
If it sounds something out of the theater, that’s no accident. In the daily comedy that Los Pinos represents, Mrs. Sahagu’n always had the starring role (although not always the most fortunate, one can’t be demanding). Mrs. Martha launched her long, and for now stunted, career for the presidential seat very early on precisely when only Lopez Obrador appeared on the scene as the strongest aspirant. But, while she went about ridding the cabinet and Fox’s inner circle of those uncomfortable (for her) personalities, Martha looked with desperation on the fact that AMLO maintained position. One didn’t have to have much sense (and they didn’t in fact have much) to realize that who would be Martha’s rival if she became candidate for the PAN.
The work of the “video scandals” was the first indication of a serious struggle to try to take AMLO out of the presidential race. The struggle was raised to the category of battle with the attempt to strip him of immunity and remove him from office. If in the videos you could see the hand of the Fox government, in the “desafuero” [like “impeachment”] their nerve was unparalleled. A growing citizen mobilization (that Lopez Obrador himself de-activated) promised Fox a crushing defeat. But in politics there are no final battles.
Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador was constructing a candidacy, that is, an image. Of course in order to achieve it the privileged balcony of the Mexico City government would not be enough; in the PRD the figure of Cuauhtemoc Ca’rdenas Solorzano still carried a lot of weight. But the Mexico City government was not only an opportunity to be in the media spotlight, it also meant money, lots of money. And this tune had a lot of “rating,” among the political class as a whole, not to mention in the perredista leadership. With discrete agility, AMLO began “winning” the sympathy of (and control over) the apparatus of the Revolutionary Democratic Party...and an important sector of intellectuals, artists, and scientists. For the former, a budget. For the latter, engagement and special attention.
In summary, everything was going well.
It was then that some of the informational media released its first bait, which lopeobradorismo swallowed happily: the first polls. As in these polls he appeared with a scandalous advantage over the other hopefuls, AMLO gave them credibility and backing. Favored and adored by the press at that point, Lopez Obrador forgot a basic rule of the puddled territory of the media: the fleeting and the instantaneous. The media make heroes (“and heroines, Martha adds enthusiastically I’ll leave it up to you if the diminutive has an “h”) and villains (“and [female] villains adds Elba Esther Gordillo), not just in soap operas, but also on the political scene. But just as they make them, they unmake them. The “mature,” “prudent,” and “responsible” head of government Lopez Obrador was at the beginning later became the “irresponsible,” “messianic,” and “provocateur” politician, and the polls that had put him ahead, now put him behind.
In the mobilization against the “impeachment,” one could see the first indications of Lopez Obrador’s “ways.” Although it was evident that not a few of those who mobilized did so against the injustice, not because they supported him, AMLO used this movement to openly launch his campaign for the Mexican presidency. When the mobilization began to convert itself into a movement (in some groups there appeared a restlessness to talk about deeper problems such as the place of science, art, culture, and above all, political goings on) and the Fox government recoiled, Lopez Obrador sent the people home.
The objective to stop the “impeachment” and put AMLO and the top of the wave had been achieved and AMLO had pledged to stop the mobilizations. And he did.
Lopez Obrador’s message to the rest of the political class (of which he is a part, don’t forget) and the gentlemen (and ladies) of money was clear: “I have the capacity not only to convoke a huge mobilization, but also to direct it, control it, measure it out...and stop it.”
2. AMLO’s intellectuals. From one part of the progressive intellectual sector began to arise, as of then, what we know as “cultured lopezobradorismo.” This tendency would initiate the construction of a new classification to locate those who moved within or hang around political Mexico, a classification which can be divided in two: the good (those that are with AMLO, that is, the “nice” and “popular”), and the bad (those that are not with AMLO, that is, the envious, according to Elenita). Whatever criticism or questioning directed at Lopez Obrador, even if they were lukewarm and harmless, was catalogued as a conspiracy, as coming from Carlos Salinas de Gortari, from the dark forces of the far right, from the Yunque, from a hidden conservatism. Now that they are somewhat “tolerant,” the criticisms of lopezobradorismo are labeled “sectarian,” “marginal,” “ultra,” or “infantile.”
With a stagnation worthy of a better cause, this sector began constructing a sectarian, intolerant, despotic, and petty thought. And it did this so effectively that this thinking is what guided Lopez Obrador’s intellectual “mirrors” in the electoral campaign, later in the resistance movement against the fraud, and now in AMLO’s CND.
When the Mexican newspaper La Jornada headlined one of its August 2005 editions (on the occasion of the first preparatory meeting of the Other Campaign): “they’re either with us or against us” (something like that), they were both mistaken and not. Marcos didn’t say it. But the phrase was said then and continues to be said since by the “cultured lopezoradorismo.”
This thinking (that began to be consolidated by ignoring the PRD’s support for the indigenous counterreform) encouraged the closing of eyes and ears when the perredistas from Zinacantan, in the Altos of Chiapas, attacked Zapatista support bases; when it was permitted that the assassinations of human rights defender Digna Ochoa y Placido, as well as the young student Pavel Gonzalez, were managed by the perredista government of Mexico City with a corruption that later would become routine. In the cases of Digna and Pavel, with the additional crime of humiliating the death of social strugglers, honest voices kept silent...”in order not to play to the right.” “Cultured lopezobradorismo” had then its first triumph, illegitimate just like all those that followed.
If the PRD leaders, sympathizers, and militants, this intellectual sector and AMLO himself were silent then, it could only be expected that they would say nothing when the assassins of perredista militants occupied candidacies under the yellow and black flag.
And that’s what happened.
When someone is silent faced with something like that, they will be quiet in the face of anything. The phantasm of the “unnameable” Carlos Salinas de Gortari lurked on all sides and anything against him was considered valid; everything, even recycling those discontinued salinistas...in the PRD and the inner circle of Lopez Obrador.
With this autochthonous modality of “unique thought” came a new system of evaluation, a new standard of measure: the same thing was judged differently depending on who did it or proposed it. If AMLO or one of his sympathizers did or proposed it, then the act or project acquired every imaginable virtue; but if it was someone who criticized AMLO, then it was a project of the “dark forces” of the ultra-right.
When we pointed out (in “The Impossible Geometry of Power”) that AMLO’s project was salinista, the intellectuals screamed to high heaven (they’re still up there, hysterical). But when the head of the of the lopezobradorista economic plan (Mr. Ramirez de la O, political economic advisor who, according to some, would have been Secretary of State if AMLO won the presidency) declared, a few days before the elections, that his proposal would be for a “social liberalism” similar to that of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, these intellectuals looked away.
Meanwhile, the actually existing right-wing continued triumphal. Some of their thought and proposals had already been incorporated into the perredista line: Vicente Fox’s bad, and badly executed, Plan Puebla Panama would find its “purification” in AMLO’s Project Transitsmico; the approval of the “Televisa law” by the perredista bench in the lower house was a “tactical error”; the minor laws and regulations also approved by this party which legalized the dispossession of indigenous lands, were not “so serious”; the promiscuous relationship between Lopez Obrador and businessman Carlos Slim was “high politics”; the privatization of the Historic Center of Mexico City was “modernity”; the colossal investment in the second floor of the freeway that connects to one of the riches zones of DF at the same time that the public transport budget was cut was an example of “good government” (and not an omission of that “ first the poor”); the repression of the popular urban movement was “establishing order”...and the political patronage that was generated and cultivated...”the emergence of a new leadership.”
Without any indication whatsoever of what this meant, Lopez Obrador decreed that he was leftist because...because...well, because he said so (well, sometimes, sometimes not, depending on who he was talking to).
The calendar arrived at May 3rd and 4th, and pain and death arrived at San Salvador Atenco and Texcoco, in Mexico State. The polls said one had to support the repression or stay quiet. Fecal [Felipe Calderon] said good, magnificent, that this is what had to be done. Madrazo appeared weaker and weaker. On the “left,” the perredista contingent in the Mexican congress applauded the police action and supported Pe~a Nieto. For his part, Lopez Obrador...remained silent. Atenco would be useful if it worked to influence the elections, but the “mediations” of the media signaled the contrary. “Cultured lopezobradorismo” complained a little, without the slightest conviction, for this or what was to follow.
It has also been forgotten that, during the entire trajectory of his candidacy, AMLO made an effort to be friendly to the business sector. If you review his pre-campaign and electoral campaign discourses and declarations, they have nothing to do with what has come out after July 2nd. Time and time again he insisted to politicians that “there would be no revenge” And to the business sector he said, word for word, “don’t be scared of me.” That is, “I will not affect your properties, nor your profits, nor the habits and customs of the political class.
To not see this you would have to have a very serious myopia. But to see it and not say anything, you would have to have a cynicism that doesn’t cease to haunt us.
A time later, now in the mobilization against the fraud, Lopez Obrador said, in the Zocalo of Mexico City, that the victory of Juan Sabines in Chiapas had detained....”the advance of the right!” That AMLO promoted this conclusion which “purified” (and made leftist) those who supported him take note and continue after all, he created it. But that “cultured lopezobradorism” applauded enthusiastically a stupidity of this degree was incomprehensible...or else a palpable demonstration of the degree of cretinism it had achieved. This “detaining the advance of the right in Chiapas” had meant recycling Croquetas Albores and the author of that famous phrase that “in Chiapas a chicken is worth more than an Indian” (Constantino Kanter). Anyone who could swallow this would swallow anything. And if anything was abundant in “cultured lopezobradorismo” it was “windmills” of this size.
In this “healthy” environment of discussion and “high” level of analysis, the July 1st arrived with “cultured lopezobradorism” elaborating not just a progressive program of citizen participation (that is, fighting with the political parties over political terrain), nor a novel proposal for art, culture, and science, but rather a slogan full of pride and arrogance: “smile, we’re going to win.” No, they didn’t call for the detainment of the right-wing (of course now they will say that they did). They called for preparations to celebrate their triumph (this of course, with moderation and maturity).
Ah! It was all going to be so easy, so without mobilizations, so without repression, so without clashes, so without political and ideological confrontations, so without debate, so without internal struggles, so peaceful, so calm, so stable, so balanced, so without radicalism, so without the flight of capital, so without a fall in the stock market, so without international pressure, so without anybody realizing anything, so without class struggle, so...so.
Repression? Well that would belong to the Other Campaign, Atenco, to these, yes, these “vulgar plebes.” And nothing of this blocking of main highways, even if it was for a legitimate demand for liberty and justice for the prisoners of Atenco. When the Other Campaign blocked streets in solidarity with our companer@s, the Mexico City police attacked in order to “assure free transit.” Dozens of young people, majority students of the ENAH and the CCH Sur, were beaten and gassed on the Periferico Sur, and pursued even inside the installations of the National School of Anthropology and History.
“Cultured lopezobradorismo” said good, bravo, that the street, the cars, the gang number 13 (expedited by AMLO when he was mayor), the free circulation, that the “ultras,” that order, that stability. After all this, it was just a few kids (and probably they wouldn’t vote anyway and didn’t even have electoral credentials). That is, as Alaska and Thalia would say, “who cares.”
A while later, the mobilization against the fraud, making use of the legitimate right to free expression, blocked the Avenue Reforma (I think that’s what it’s called). When the businessmen and the “good people” protested (despite monetary backing), and demanded the head of the mayor of Mexico City, Elenita Poniatowska interviewed mayor Alejandro Encinas. He declared that one had to respect and protect the right to protest.
Perhaps moved by Encinas’ suffering, Elenita “forgot” to ask him why these freedoms were worthy and respected when carried out by AMLO sympathizers and not when carried by the Other Campaign, or by the movement of those rejected from higher education, or by those movements that resort to these actions in order to be seen and heard. In the “forgotten” of the interviewer and interviewee you could hear clearly: “there is one law for some (those that are with me) and another law for the others (who do not support/follow/obey me).”
But the night of June 1st, “cultured lopezobradorismo” dreamt that, by just going to a ballot box, the country would change. And they tolerated with modesty, how generous of them, the grateful manifestations of the poor (“look little one, there goes the doctor, he gave classes to Mr. President and his son; and there go those we saw on stage, wave to them because they are going to direct our liberation”), of the indigenous (not of the Zapatistas, because it is well known that they are ungrateful), of the workers, of the peasants, of the women, of the young people, of the elderly, of Mexico. And internationally there would be conferences and round tables. And “cultured lopezobradorismo,” these ones yes, with modesty and self-control, would tell what they had done for Mexico... all that was missing was for them to have said it from centerstage.
But July 2nd arrived, and with it, Gordillo. And with her...fraud.
3. The mobilization against the fraud. But, after the initial disconcert and now that the stage had been set to annihilate Marcos, the EZLN, the Other Campaign, and all those that resisted to being “purified,” these intellectuals realized that what had happened had happened. AMLO demonstrated, once again, that he is more intuitive and more intelligent than the “cultured lopezobradorismo.” He knew how to play a mobilization against fraud so that it depended on what he said and did, and indeed he said and did. And so arose a popular movement authentic, legitimate, and just: the mobilization against the fraud, and consequently against the imposition of Felipe Calderon.
It has been said that the mobilization was not and is not what it’s said to be. They talk of a disgrace, of the blatant and impertinent meddling of the Mexico City government and the PRD structure, that they were not and are not what they said they were. That could be. What is without doubt, at least for us as Zapatistas, is that there was and are honest people in this mobilization, who were and are there by conviction and on principal. These people deserve and have our respect, but their path leads to a place we don’t want to go.
We share with them neither path nor destination.
And our form of respecting them is not joining their mobilization, not to dispute with AMLO the indisputable leadership he has there, not to sabotage it, nor to take advantage of the situation, nor in order to “enlighten” the masses (which are some of the arguments and reasons for which some organizations and groups are there, although they aren’t in agreements with the leadership of the movement).
The honest people who are there, we understand, think that it is possible to convert the mobilization into a movement (with the CND), and that this does not depend on a leader or the structure of control that was imposed on those that attended the convention. That could be. We don’t think so, and what’s more we think that it wouldn’t be ethical to “join up” or “take advantage of” a mobilization for which we haven’t done anything, except maintain a critical skepticism.
That said, about the mobilization against the fraud and the attempt to convert it into a movement via the CND, we say the following:
4. Below...And meanwhile, in the Mexico of below...The honest people. The large part of those that participated in the mobilizations against the electoral fraud are found “below”: those that wanted AMLO to be president because they voted for him and he won; those that defend the right to democratically choose their government; those that don’t want another 1988; those that had and have a healthy distrust of the party apparatus of the Coalition; those that challenge existing power and want a change in the neoliberal system that has been destroying the social fabric and abandoning the country.
Oaxaca. The “below” also erupted in Oaxaca and took shape and path with the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The veto capacity of this movement has been worthy of taking it into account It does not matter whether those that participate voted or not (or if they did whether it was for the Coalition or whatever other partisan force). This is not what matters, but rather that they had faith in forces that went beyond the leaders and their allies. This trust has permitted them, up until now, to decide for themselves their tactics without ceding to external pressures or to the advice of the “good consciences.” As the EZLN we support his movement and try to see and learn through the companer@s of the Other Campaign that struggle there. Our support does not go beyond that for two reasons: one is that it is a complex movement; a more direct support could provoke “noise,” confusion, and distrust; the other reason is that several times the Oaxacan movement has been accused of having links to armed groups, and our direct presence could increase the media campaign that they already have against them.
The Others. Apart from the gossip and backscratching of the politics of above, another rebellion has been constructing itself at the deepest part of society: among the indigenous peoples, among young people abused by the powers that be (including the PRD), among the maquila workers, the sex workers, among those unsubmissive women that live with the anxiety that their husbands will migrate north, in the political organizations of the left that are convinced that something beyond capital and representative democracy exists, among all those that comprise the Other Campaign, which exists in all parts of the country and is organizing and inventing another form of doing politics and of relating to their equal-differents.
The Other Campaign is not what has come out in the mass media, nor is it what some of its participants say about it, and well, neither is it what the Sixth Commission of the EZLN has said about it. It is much more than all of this. It is a torrent that continues below, that does not yet express itself completely, that exists and reproduces itself in the basement of Mexico.
But also below exist millions, the majority, who do not vote; who do not believe in the elections (many of them, like we the Zapatistas, have never voted upon conviction). Those that form part of that Mexico which is scorned and humiliated (and now “cultured lopezobradorismo” wants to scorn and humiliate them more, blaming them for the defeat). Many of them are part of the Mexico of the indigenous peoples, that just a few years ago were held up for their willingness to struggle and resist.
With the latter, with those that don’t look above, are the Zapatistas. And we think that it is with them that the Other Campaign should be.
Because some of those from below, those of us who are in the Other Campaign, already identify our pain and the enemy that causes it: capitalism.
And we know two central things: one, that in order to free this struggle we need the construction of a social-political movement that is autonomous and independent. And the other, that above there is no real solution for the economic and social problems that plague the people of Mexico, nor for the hijacking that the political class has committed against the participation and organization of the people.
We, the Zapatistas of the EZLN, as of one year ago opted for launching a national anticapitalist movement, below and to the left, that would pass over the electoral conjuncture, where one could be independently of what one decided about the elections. Now we have seen and learned many things. From those from above, from the Other Campaign, from we ourselves.
We think that, whether one is in agreement or not with the legitimacy and popularity of the movement headed by Andres Manual Lopez Obrador, this is not the path of the Other Campaign, and, above all, it des not have the same destination of those of us who are compa~er@s of the Other Campaign.
We, the Other Campaign, do not look for who will rule us, nor who we can rule. And we don’t look to obtain from above what is constructed below.
And it is you, our companeras and companeros of the Other, to whom we want to make a proposal...
(to be continued...)\
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
Sixth Commission
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico
September 2006
Part Five: The Hour of Definitions T
In the collective heart that we are, the Zapatistas don’t know exactly how our word in the Sixth Declaration arrived to you all. What we do know is that it was there, in your places, your histories, and your struggles, where you all responded “yes” to the invitation to the Sixth and what later became known among us as the Other Campaign. It is in this heart that each one of us, sometimes as individuals, sometimes as collectives, as indigenous peoples, as political or social organizations, as NGOs, as collectives, as groups, as individuals, where it was decided to take this step that is no longer just Zapatista but rather many, the all that we are.
In this past year, since the plenary in the caracol of la Garrucha(September 16, 2005) up until these agitated days, we have seen that some go, some stay, that others near, that some work, that others are just making trouble and creating obstacles in the path, that some the majority have made this project theirs. These fluctuations have not only provoked “noise” within the Other Campaign; they have also made more widespread its face, its word, its path.
As Zapatistas, we think that this year that has passed has functioned well to get to know each other. And also to know who has come to us only for purposes of political opportunism sometimes in order to try to capitalize on the supposed “media” impact of the EZLN, sometimes to try to create hegemony in the Other Campaign, sometimes to direct it toward a politic of alliances for their own benefit, sometimes to see what it was about and later go somewhere else to keep looking, sometimes to try to homogenize it according to their own ideas.
We think that this has been due in part to our own mistakes (some of which we have recognized and pointed out and others which you all add), and in part because the Other Campaign carries with it a good dose of indefinition.
What was a virtue at the beginning, because it helped to convoke a wide spectrum of the best of the national anticapitalist movement, now starts to become a detriment.
The basic definitions of the Other Campaign, while fundamental, are too general, above all with regard to the organizational structure, the politics of alliances, the place of differences, and with regard to who is convoked and who is not.
In addition, according to what we have seen and heard in our journey and in the different meetings and assemblies, it is necessary to pronounce if the current characteristics are complete or not. As one example, it has been pointed out more than a few times that the Other should include “anti-patriarchal” as a basic characteristic.
Another serious and urgent problem is that we haven’t defined how we make decisions of the Other Campaign as a movement. Thus at times the position of a person, group, or organization (including the EZLN) is presented as if it were the position of the whole Other.
In the reflections that we have presented here, we have explained that we had first conceived the Other Campaign as something that would be necessary at a future point and, for that reason, we had a bit of time to go about getting to know, accommodating, and defining ourselves.
As we also already explained, we think that this moment of political crisis above, where a leftist anticapitalist alternative is necessary, is already here.
Although the profundity of the political crisis above is palpable, we the Zapatistas know very well that, if there is no alternative below, those above will end up fixing things and giving themselves another chance.
We think that that hour of the Other, the hour of the nobody that we are, has arrived.
That we should begin now our direct contact with all those from below, our people, and begin to construct with them a national plan of struggle.
Now it’s not just knowing each other, spreading the word, and linking all the resistances in our country together, but beginning to organize ourselves according to this plan, its content, its objectives, and the steps and ways to carry it out.
But we don’t yet have our own face as the Other Campaign. We think it is now time to do this all together. And it is now time for those who do not feel identified with the majority thinking of the Other to leave, and time for those who do recognize themselves in this collective face that we build to stay, or to join.
We think, that is, that the hour of the definitions that were left pending is upon us.
The definitions that we think are principal are grouped into the so-called 6 points: the characteristics of the Other; who is convoked and who is not; the organizational structure (including here the mechanism or mode for the making of decisions); the place of differences; the politics of alliances; and the immediate tasks ahead.
These issues we detected in the preparatory meetings, and in the first plenary we proposed that they be be put to discussion and decision of all the adherents. But there was no date set, nor was it established how to take into consideration everyone’s voice on these issues.
And taking everyone into account is one of the things that distinguishes us from other proposals, projects, or political movements.
For more than year we have advanced a lot or a little in the discussion of these 6 points. We think that we should now conclude this phase and that everyone should take a position and that we should assume a position as the Other Campaign.
That is, to respond now as the Other to the questions: Who are we? Where are we? How do we see the world? How do we see our country? What do we want to do? How are we going to do it?
For all the reasons we here state, and because of what we have seen, heard, and said in this year, we propose:
1. That all of the adherents conclude now our analysis, discussion, and definition, and that we take a position with respect to:
2. That the conclusion of this analysis, discussion, and definition is carried out in the place where each adhesion [to the Sixth] was decided: as an indigenous people, political or social organization, NGO, group, collective, family, individual. This is where each of us resist and struggle. And it is there where each of us discusses and decides what kind of Other is the best for what we propose to ourselves.
3. That for this analysis and discussion, all those who so choose can make known to every else their positions and arguments. For now we don’t have a common space other than the electronic pages of the Sixth Commission as well as those of the organizations, groups, and collectives. We think, though it may be little and limited, that we should put at the service of this analysis and discussion all of the means we have at our disposal. Via articles, alternative radio or TV programs, “blogs,” emails, round tables, meetings, conferences, flyers, newspapers, assemblies, or however possible, the positions individuals, families, groups, collectives, and organization on these issues can be made known to the other adherents; for example, regarding being anti-patriarchal (what that means, why the Other should be it, and how). In sum, to generate an intense, though always respectful, debate on everyone’s ideas and proposals.
4. That this analysis, discussion, and debate internal to the Other be carried out during the months of October and November of this year, 2006.
5. That the decision of each be manifested in a consulta [referendum] of all the adherents, a universal internal consulta, where the opinion of each and every one of the adherents will be taken into account, regardless of where they are, what language they speak, their age, their race, their sexual preference, their level of education, whether they know how to speak in public or not, etc,; it matters only that they are adherents of the Sixth Declaration. A vote, then, of all adherents.
6. That this consulta be carried out December 4-10 of this year.
7. That the carrying out of this consulta be taken on by the distinct organizational work units that exist or are created for this purpose. That although someone cannot attend an assembly or meeting for whatever reason, someone from the Other should go to the place where they work, study, or live and ask and take note of their opinion on each of the points, no matter if it is one or many people.
8. That the ways each and every one uses to express themselves and make their opinion known be respected, whether that be a pronunciation by individual, family, group, collective, organization, or indigenous people.
9. That each organizational work unit decide the form and content for the carrying out of the consulta and the environment in which it will be held.
10. For those who so choose, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN offers itself to receive and consider any opinion (even though it doesn’t coincide with ours or is contrary to what we maintain as Zapatistas) in the internal consulta of the Other.
11. That, finishing the consulta, each organizational work unit make publicly known, on the Enlace Zapatista webpage, the results they obtained and from where. In that way we will all be able to analyze the results and know what the majority has decided.
12. That, when we all know the final result, we will inform all the adherents using the same means used to consult them.
13. That in this way, the Other will have clearly defined its characteristics, its organizational structure, its politics of alliance, the places of everyone, who is present and who isn’t, as well as the common tasks to be done, by the end of this year.
14. That in February 2007, another phase of the Other begins in which we put into effect the National Program of Struggle, with the direct participation of the delegates of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN in the direct contact with our peoples, as well as in the general tasks that are agreed upon, such as the struggle for liberty and justice for the prisoners of Atenco, the liberation of all the political prisoners in the country, the appearance of the disappeared (alive), and the cancellation of all arrest warrants against social strugglers.
15. That the adherents that are in agreement with this proposal should let us know by diverse types of correspondence, through their organization work units of the Other in all of Mexico, or by whatever means they consider convenient.
This is our proposal, companeras and companeros of the Other Campaign.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission of the EZLN
Comandanta Grabiela (delegate one)
Comandante Zebedeo (delegate two)
Comandanta Miriam (delegate three)
Companera Gema (delegate four)
Comandanta Hortensia (delegate five)
Comandante David (delegate six)
Comandante Tacho (delegate seven)
Subcomandante I. Marcos (delegate zero)
Mexico, September 2006
Translation El Kilombo Intergalactico