https://socialistaction.org/2016/08/24/crime-and-punishment-in-pena-nietos-mexico/
Crime and Punishment in Peña Nieto’s Mexico
/ 11 hours ago
Protesters from the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE)
teachers’ union clash with riot police officers during a protest, in
Nochixtlan
Protesters from the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE)
teachers’ union clash with riot police officers during a protest against
President Enrique Pena Nieto’s education reform, in the town of
Nochixtlan, northwest of the state capital, Oaxaca City, Mexico June 19,
2016. REUTERS/Jorge Luis Plata
By MANUEL AGUILAR MORA
On July 18, in the National Palace at the enactment ceremony of a
package of laws to create the National Anti-Corruption System (SNA), in
front of an audience composed of hundreds of public officials, and
flanked on both sides by the presidents of the houses of the Congress
and secretaries of state, President Enrique Peña Nieto “apologized.”
These were his words: “Even though I acted in accordance with the law,
this mistake affected my family, hurt the institution of the presidency,
and damaged confidence in the government […] I felt the irritation among
Mexicans firsthand. I understand it perfectly; for that reason, with all
humility, I ask your forgiveness.”
He was referring to the scandal that Carmen Aristegui and her team of
journalists sparked in November 2014, when they made public the Peña
Nieto family’s acquisition of a mansion (the “White House”) worth
several million dollars, that was built by a construction company
favored by his government with contracts worth billions of pesos in a
situation that appeared transparently to be a typical case of influence
peddling and flagrant corruption.
A Fake Apology
As we know, in these times of permanent crisis, it is fashionable for
presidents to ask for forgiveness. In the last few years many have, from
Paraguay and Argentina to France and Norway. But the outrageous
arrogance of the dictatorship of the “peculiar,” “adaptable,” and
“flexible” Mexican presidency during the greater part of the 20th
century has been decisive, so that in 100 years, there are only two such
occasions, prior to the recent one by Peña Nieto.
The first was in 1911, when the dictator Porfirio Díaz, from the ship
that would carry him to his exile in Europe, declared the he had never
done anything to cause the revolution that forced him to resign, and if
history found it to be so, he would apologize for it now. The second
occasion was in 1982, when a tearful José López Portillo apologized to
the poor for having been unable to eliminate their misery.
Why did Peña Nieto apologize? All the critical analyses agree in
pointing to the terribly disastrous results of last June, in which,
among other losses, the PRI [Peña Nieto’s party, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party–Ed.] lost several governorships in states where it
is traditionally dominant. The tremor that made itself felt in the
highest circles—and the first victim—was the powerful president of the
PRI, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who had to resign immediately, thus
removing himself as a possible successor for Peña Nieto in 2018.
In that defeat, which seemed more like an electoral massacre, Beltrones
himself recognized that the PRI was paying for what the Peña Nieto
government had done. And indeed, since 2004 the popularity and public
approval of the actions of the president have plummeted, surpassing the
record popularity drop of the previous PAN [National Action Party]
government of Felipe Calderón. In fact, the electoral defeat cannot be
separated from the decisive defeat of the policy of structural reforms
that has been the hallmark of the Peña Nieto government—a defeat that
even bourgeois groups recognize, including some leaders of the Catholic
Church.
A year and a half passed between November 2014 and the “humble apology.”
Much will have been discussed in the president’s inner circle that this
man would decide to bend his arrogance before a nation that had turned
its back on his overwhelming majority—if we pay attention to the
“popularity” polls so in fashion.
But within this resounding fall of a government that aspired to restore
the dominance of the PRI, the struggle of the CNTE (National
Organization of Education Workers) against the school reform stands out
without a doubt, having put in motion throughout the country the
numerous education workers’ unions—mobilizations that since May have put
hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets, resulting in the
awakening of others in the working class.
The highlights of the career of decline and illegitimacy of the current
government consist of a list in which the issue of the “white
house”—even though it provoked not just “irritation,” as Peña Nieto
said, but great popular outrage—is far from being the most serious.
Tlataya, Ayotzinapa, Nochixtlán, greenlighting energy privatization,
“education” reform that in reality is labor counter-reform, spiraling
national debt, alarming devaluation of the peso, an unparalleled boom in
corruption in the states and the federal government itself, these are
the true highlights that have sunk the Peña Nieto government.
The president asked for “forgiveness” at the announcement of the new
anti-corruption laws that have already brought his absolution, since
they include presidential immunity. In addition, as he didn’t break any
law in the matter of the “White House,” it was all legal. The
“forgiveness” was for a “mistake” he made, not for a criminal offense.
The “damage to the institution of the presidency” and the “distrust of
the government” must have been because the Mexican people are very
cynical and attributed the fact to an act of corruption. But no, it was
all a misunderstanding of “perception.”
At the same time, and despite the “humble apology,” Joaquin Vargas of
the television channel MVS Communications, driven by Los Piños, is
hounding Carmen Aristegui, who was in charge of making public the
existence of the “White House,” and afterward was fired for it. Now
bringing a lawsuit for “moral damage,” he is demanding millions of
dollars of “compensation” from Aristegui for the prologue that she wrote
for the book “Peña Nieto’s White House: The story that shook the
government,” and demanding that the book’s publisher, Grijalbo, remove
the prologue.
So, in fact there will be no punishment, and impunity will prevail, as
it has always prevailed in the highest levels of the government. In that
too Mexico is special. As in Spain, Brazil, and many countries,
corruption is a congenital disease of capitalism, especially in its
governments. But in many of these countries as well, the struggle
against corruption sometimes has effective results and can appreciate as
certain former rulers are imprisoned. Not in Mexico; there are
innumerable cases to prove it.
There is the scandal of Humberto Moreira, the ex-governor of Coahuila
and ex-president of the PRI, arrested in Spain a few months ago and
freed immediately under pressure from the Peña Nieto government. At the
same time, there are the scandalous cases of the two outgoing PRI
governors of Veracruz and Chihuahua, who are publicly identified as
being involved in dirty businesses that involve billions of pesos. And
in the case of Veracruz, Javier Duarte is implicated in several infamous
assassinations of journalists critical of his government. All
indications are that they will go unpunished, thanks in no small part to
the Peña Nieto government.
The crude, classist character of justice can be seen quite clearly in
Mexico’s prisons, full of petty criminals and many innocent people
caught up in a justice system that is also corrupt. Prisons that were
created for populations three or four times smaller than what they
currently hold. Cells designed for three or four prisoners that today
are packed with 10 or 12 people, some of whom have to sleep tied to the
bars. But also for a small minority there are cells that seem more like
hotel rooms for stars.
CNTE: Igniter of the masses
Since May, demonstrations beginning in the southern strongholds of the
teachers union, CNTE [National Education Workers’ Coordination]—Chiapas,
Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán—have spread all over the country with
more or less force. The waves have reached all the way north, with
demonstrations in Baja California, Sonora, and Nuevo León. It even
reached Mexico City, where Local 9 of the SNTE [National Education
Workers’ Union], the largest union with around 100,000 teachers, began
to mobilize.
The breaking point that caused the surge of protests nationwide was the
Nochixtlán massacre [on June 19, when police opened fire on striking
CNTE teachers who were blockading a highway, killing 13]. The government
had to give in, agreed to “negotiate” with the representatives of the
teachers, and even saw itself forced to move its biggest piece within
the teachers’ union bureaucracy, the flashy leader of the SNTE, its
general secretary, Juan Díaz de la Torre, propelling him to lead a
“re-evaluation of education reform,” crudely trying to snatch away the
banners of the dissident teachers.
For its part, the most extreme section of the bourgeoisie, that had been
pushing for a no-holds-barred policy against the CNTE—a group called
“Mexicans First”—along with business owners affected by the
mobilizations, blockades, and occupations of highways and railroads
(hotel owners in Oaxaca, and mining, automobile, and steel businesses)
demand a government crackdown and proclaim in a manifesto, “We don’t
want a government that folds its hands,” and openly call for the “use of
force.”
All these movements, from an untimely trip by Peña Nieto to Washington
to meet with Obama in recent days to the appointment of a new president
of the PRI, a functionary completely unknown to the public, a
technocratic government official (he was the director of the Federal
Electricity Commission), are the palpable demonstration that in the
upper layers of the establishment something very important is happening.
And no wonder—the temperature of the crisis rises every day.
So July 26 arrived, 22 months after the Iguala massacre and the
disappearing of the Ayotzinapa students, the demonstration of the family
members of the 43 students was held again and coincided with the start
of several days of mobilizations that the CNTE and its allies had
planned in 27 states and Mexico City, in which the various contingents
got together to defend the rejection of the government’s educational
reform and the demands that they have in their local areas.
Confronting the official “bargaining tables” at which the government
wants to ease teachers’ unrest, the CNTE announced a meeting on Aug. 3
to discuss a “democratic education project” in which a combination of
intellectuals and progressive academics who had declared solidarity with
the protests would participate, where they would present alternative
proposals to the government’s education reform.
On exactly that day, the representatives of the CNTE, after a break in
negotiations, restarted the endless, exhausting series of talks,
delaying tactics, and empty words with management, in which the
government only delays, in hopes of overwhelming blows that put an end
to the protests. The problem is that in Nochixtlán they knew what they
were confronting, and that to put themselves at risk of even greater
repression—perhaps even a new Tlatelolco—would be totally counterproductive.
But also the favored action of the leadership of the CNTE is becoming
wearying, consisting of mobilizing and negotiating and then doing it all
over again. It has taken them more than 20 years with these tactics. It
is a vision that stays within the limits of trade unionism without
having been able to forge a comprehensive independent strategy that
displays totally and forcefully the potential for struggle not just of
education workers but of all Mexican workers.
It is on this strictly political level where we find the heart of the
problem. The firm and intransigent struggles of the CNTE teachers and
their allies still have not led to the forging of revolutionary
political objectives, despite the social context urgently demanding
them. It is evident that today the level that the extraordinary
mobilization of primary and secondary education workers has reached—for
they are the ones who make up the rank and file of the CNTE—is inspiring
many other groups, especially workers. But we must bring them together
into a combined struggle.
For example, we must organize all of the teachers in order to form a
movement that covers the entire country. This would mean a democratic
restructuring of the leadership of the CNTE that would allow for the
inclusion of representatives from the different movements of the center
and the north of the country that currently are not part of the CNTE. Or
also address itself to the tens of thousands of workers in universities
who are beginning to understand that the consequences of this “education
reform” will be devastating for them. Everything indicates that on the
agenda in the next period is the preparation of overwhelming actions
that have never been done in the history of Mexican workers, especially
the struggle for a national strike.
Presidential succession in 2018
Peña Nieto and the leaders of the parties are now preparing for the 2018
presidential elections. The situation of the PRI makes it almost a
“mission impossible” for the novice politician Enrique Ochoa, the
party’s new president, to know and ensure that the PRI’s presidential
candidate will succeed Peña Nieto. But nor was the Mexican bourgeoisie
in a comfortable position before the disaster of the restoration of the
Peña Nieto government. The other bourgeois party that it counts on, the
PAN, isn’t exactly very popular in the hearts of the masses.
The PRD [Democratic Revolutionary Party] is dismissed as a major
player—and its role is that of a satellite of the two main bourgeois
parties, since it has remained in tatters after its shameless alliance
with those in the Pact for Mexico, and above all for its nefarious role
in the events in Iguala. Morena (National Regeneration Movement), the
party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is only supported by a minority of
bourgeois groups, and it appears very difficult—in spite of its openly
conciliatory politics—for it to gain the support of the more significant
groups of the dominant class.
Up to now, the majority of the leadership of the CNTE has come from
popular-front organizations and traditions, promoted by Stalinist groups
and their offshoots (Maoists, Hoxhaists, etc.). In practice, this has
meant that, without openly saying it, the CNTE’s orientation initially
clearly favored PRD-style politics. Today, with the PRD’s resounding
crisis, many are turning to López Obrador. But an alliance with Morena
will be the classic case of what Trotsky called—referring to the
alliance of the socialist, communist, and anarchist leaders in the
Spanish Popular Front in 1936—an alliance with “the bourgeoisie’s shadow.”
Indeed, why should Mexican workers, instead of forging their own
political alternative, independent and powerful, loyal to their own
interests, support a party that subordinates them to “the bourgeoisie’s
shadow?” Why continue with the traditional copying of bourgeois groups
that characterized the workers’ movement in the 20th century, led by the
nationalist leadership and Stalinist reformists like Vicente Lombardo
Toledano?
The CNTE, its allies, and the combination of independent, socialist, and
revolutionary groups that work in the movement of resistance and
struggle against the policies of the Peña Nieto government and the rest
of the bourgeois parties must prepare themselves before the next crucial
challenges that they will confront very soon and begin to discuss and
forge the anti-capitalist strategy that for the first time in the
history of Mexico will allow the strength of its workers to rise up as
the only democratic and independent alternative politics capable of
liberating the people from the convulsive state of decline that they
find themselves in today, as a result of the policies of violence,
corruption, and repression of the ruling class.
The education workers’ fight has created the conditions to put into
effect this inspiring and revolutionary perspective in Mexico today. It
is the task of the most conscious sectors and the vanguard to begin the
efforts to reach this objective, bringing together meetings and actions
that work in that direction.
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August 24, 2016 in Latin America, International. Tags: Mexico
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