Mayor says immigration keeps Mexico from social unrest
By Manuel Durán
(EDITED TRANSLATION FROM REFORMA, DECEMBER 28, 2004, MEXICO CITY)
Inequality in Mexico has not resulted in social unrest due to, among other things, Mexicans immigrating abroad and the responsibility of citizens, said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mayor of Mexico City.
In agreeing with Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, on the need to change Mexico’s economic model before there is a civil conflict, López Obrador said that the only explanation for people in Mexico not having protested in light of more than 20 years of economic stagnation is because escape valves, such as immigration, have been found.
(Note: López Obrador said this in response to a reporter who asked about recent statements by Cardinal Rivera, the Archbishop of Mexico, who warned of conceivable social disorder if changes are not made in Mexico’s economic model.)
“But how else can one explain 20 years without economic growth, (with) jobs not being created, and political stability being maintained without having had social unrest?” López Obrador asked rhetorically. He explained that while the annual departure of 500,000 Mexicans to the U.S. is not what is best stability has been maintained.
”That which is depopulating the country, that is leaving women, children and senior citizens in the towns because the younger people must leave, is not what is best. Of course that represents the failure of the economic policy,” López Obrador said during his morning press conference. The effects of migration are twofold, López Obrador said. On one hand the pressure is removed with regard to zero economic growth, and on the other those who are in the U.S. send about US$17 billion to Mexico annually.
”That helps to reactivate the economy, but clearly it is not due to economic policy,” he
explained.
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Mexico labor unrest could get worse -- maybe a lot worse, some warn
Web Posted: 05/02/2006 04:49 PM CDT
Sean Mattson
Express-News Mexico Correspondent
GUADALAJARA, Mexico - In the early hours of April 20, some 1,000 riot police raided a striker-occupied steel mill in the Pacific port city of Lázaro Cárdenas.
A tumult of Molotov cocktails and burning vehicles ensued. Police shot and killed two steelworkers, left a dozen more with gunshot wounds - but failed to oust the strikers.
The botched raid stoked nationwide union unrest that had first flared in February with the deaths of 65 miners in a coalmine explosion in Coahuila state.
Strikers have since shut down the steel mill and four mines. Union members paralyzed Mexico City streets Friday to support them. And critics say outgoing President Vicente Fox's administration is being ham-fisted in its attempts to defuse the growing unrest.
It's an election year and upsetting Mexico's unions is never a good idea, politically. But experts are divided over how much worse things could get. The presidential candidate most unions support, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, needs a boost to improve his third-place spot in the polls. He warned last week that "a great worker-employer crisis" could spiral out of control if something wasn't done soon. At a Labor Day rally Monday in Mexico City, the leader of one union umbrella group, Francisco Hernández Juárez, threatened a nationwide strike if Labor Secretary Francisco Salazar did not resign.
Labor unions are nine parts threat to one part action, said Ricardo Pascoe, a political expert with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who thinks widespread the unrest is unlikely.
"The only thing that could change the situation is (that) the PRI, thinking that it needs to radicalize its discourse in the face of its electoral fall, might propose a strike in solidarity with the miners to recover its image as a party of opposition and struggle," Pascoe said.
The PRI established its tight relationship with Mexico's unions during seven decades of rule that ended when Fox won the presidency in 2000. But presidential politics would not be the only motive behind a broader strike, said Jephraim P. Gundzik, the president of Condor Advisers, a California-based consulting firm specializing in emerging markets.
"My opinion is that this type of industrial action will probably spread into other sectors of the economy," said Gundzik, pointing at years of declining social welfare, stagnant salaries and deteriorating industrial safety conditions. "You could be faced with a nationwide strike across many industries."
Ousted union leader
When the Pasta de Conchos mine exploded at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning in February, the union leader who appeared on the scene was Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, who essentially inherited the post from his father, who had it for four decades.
But the government said it had documents proving the union voted in a new boss two days before the explosion and Gómez was no longer the leader.
Some miners back the new chief, Elias Morales, but his control is tenuous. Miners and steelworkers striking in four states say the government imposed Morales to benefit Grupo Mexico and Villacero, operators of the striking mines and the steel mill, respectively. They want Gómez reinstated, plus better wages and working conditions.
"The government deposed (Gómez) illegally," said a union member by phone from Mexico City, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Because he had fought for salary increases and benefits."
Company spokesmen said the strikes are the only illegal part of the dispute, and said they can't negotiate with a handful of union dissidents because the government no longer recognizes Gómez as union leader.
Reinstating Gómez "has nothing to do with collective contracts, the conditions of the mine or labor relations," said Juan Rebolledo, a Grupo Mexico spokesman.
"The company in this case has absolutely nothing to do with it," agreed Villacero spokesman Ignacio Treviño. "We are facing an illegal act. It is an illegal work stoppage."
Gómez is also being investigated for suspicion of embezzling part of a $55 million payoff to the union for a mine privatization deal, which his supporters deny.
Fox spokesman Rubén Aguilar said last week the strikers were blackmailing the government. But after videos surfaced showing riot police shooting at striking steelworkers, the government said it would begin talks.
The investigation into who was responsible for the shooting has state and federal authorities pointing fingers at each other.
Economic, social uncertainty
Grupo Mexico is one of the world's leading copper producers and the strike at one of its copper mines may force it to suspend deliveries, Rebolledo said.
Villacero spokesman Ignacio Treviño said the steel mill, Mexico's largest, normally produces $3 million worth of steel daily but has lost more than 100 days of production since 2004 due to strikes.
"The signals we are sending abroad ..... are harmful and detrimental to the development of investments and job creation," Treviño said.
Neither corporate spokesman could guess when the strikes might end or if they might spread.
Gundzik, the consultant, said Mexico's economy could be put at risk by a prolonged dispute. Investor uncertainty is already high given the prospects of presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a populist who some fear could threaten Mexico's recent economic stability.
But stability has come with a price, said Gundzik, who traces the origins of the present industrial action back to the early 1990s.
Mexico "is moving forward in industrialization but backwards in social welfare," he said, pointing to the poor enforcement of safety regulations at Pasta de Conchos as the most recent example.
"There's a backlash going on and the government is so weak it doesn't even have the capability to respond," Gundzik said. "It doesn't know what to do."
Online at:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA050206.strike.EN.24296bb.html
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MEXICO:
Zapatista Leader Reaches Out to Neglected Minorities
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, May 3 (IPS) - "They torture and kill us because we are different. But we are going to put an end to that from below, where the best people are found," Zapatista guerrilla leader ‘Subcomandante' Marcos said in the Mexican capital Wednesday, addressing a crowd made up of transvestites, homosexuals, prostitutes and indigenous people, who cheered him on.
Sporting his trademark black ski mask and military-style outfit, Marcos said his six-month tour of Mexico, which began in January, is the seed of "a great movement that will rise up to put an end to the hypocrisy" of the political parties, the government and "the powerful."
The spokesman for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous group that rose up in arms in January 1994 in the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas, is leading what the rebel group calls "the other campaign," by contrast to the ongoing campaign for the Jul. 2 presidential elections.
The aim of Marcos' tour is to bring together "the true left" and marginalised sectors of society in a front seeking to bring about "change from below" through peaceful social struggle.
The barely-armed insurgent group scorns traditional electoral politics and all of the country's parties, including the leftwing Party for the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
"We have learned to respect the struggle of sex workers," Marcos said Wednesday, the last day of a six-day visit to the capital, where he also met with organisations of students, campesinos (peasants) and slumdwellers.
He said prostitutes and others who are exploited and "looked down upon" form part of "the other campaign" and are the seed of structural changes that he believes must be brought about on the political, economic and cultural fronts in Mexico.
Marcos urged his listeners not to put up with mistreatment "from above," and to fight for their rights.
Emiliano Zapata, one of the leaders of the early 20th century Mexican revolution, "Lives, and the struggle continues on and on!", "Long live ‘the other campaign'!", and "EEEZZZLLLNNN" were the chants heard during the rally, which was addressed by representatives of organisations of transvestites, sex workers, gays and lesbians.
With his ever-present pipe hanging from his lips, and flanked by two prostitutes, Marcos listened attentively to each speech, while journalists, tourists and Zapatista followers elbowed each other aside to snap photos of the charismatic Zapatista leader.
"The struggle to be different is the struggle for life," said Marcos. From a distance, a handful of police officers kept watch over the rally, where security was in the hands of a group of young people wearing black t-shirts and red scarves around their necks.
The meeting with the representatives of sexual minorities, held in Alameda Park in the capital, was attended by around 200 people. The crowds have been of a similar size in most of the meetings and rallies held by the EZLN in towns and cities around the country in the last four months.
The small number of participants and the scant media coverage that the Zapatista nationwide tour has received contrast sharply with the massive crowds that the group drew in the past and the position it once enjoyed in the international limelight.
"It doesn't matter that it looks like there are few of us, because there are actually a lot of usàMarcos isn't alone, and the Zapatistas aren't alone," Diego Martínez, a university student taking part in the rally, told IPS.
Juana García, a young indigenous woman who stood with a baby in her arms during the more than two hours of speeches, told IPS that Marcos - the EZLN's only mestizo (mixed-race) leader - "is a good guy, and looks out for those of us who are poor." (The rest of the Zapatista leaders are indigenous).
But in other circles that in the past respected Marcos and saw him as a vital component of the Mexican political scene with an important role to play, he has lost backing. Supporters of the PRD and of the party's presidential candidate, former Mexico City mayor Andrés López Obrador, criticise him harshly.
For his part, Marcos, who is touring the country unarmed and on foot or horseback or by car or motorcycle, has described the PRD as "the left hand of the right," and says the party's political leaders are "shameless scoundrels" and that López Obrador is "ambitious and sinister" as well as "neoliberal."
Writer Guadalupe Loaeza, who backs the PRD candidate and who saw Marcos in 2001 as a brave, idealistic and youthful leader, now says he is "old and paunchy" and that "he can't stand fading out of the spotlight, he needs a leading role, and he needs people to talk about him."
In 1995, Mexico's intelligence services said Subcomandante Marcos was really Rafael Guillén, a former university professor with a degree in philosophy who would be turning 49 on Jun. 19. However, Marcos has consistently denied that he is Guillén.
Most of the members of the EZLN are holed up in the remote hilly jungles of Chiapas. The group has not fired a single shot since the second week of 1994, when the government of then president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) was pressured by public opinion to stop cracking down on the rebels and adopt a ceasefire.
The Zapatistas broke off peace talks with the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) in 1996.
Up to 2001, the EZLN continued to organise high-profile political initiatives, such as international conferences in the jungles of Chiapas attended by renowned personalities like U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone and former French first lady Danielle Mitterand.
The activities organised by the group, which had allies all over the world, called for in-depth democratic reforms in Mexico that would include the recognition of the rights and culture of indigenous peoples and their right to autonomous control over their territories.
But as Congress and the government gradually began to respond to the demands of the country's indigenous people - who account for approximately 10 percent of the population of 106 million - the previously strong support enjoyed by the Zapatistas became less enthusiastic, and the group began to fade into the background.
When for the first time in 71 years Mexico began to be governed in 2000 by a president from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) - conservative President Vicente Fox - steps were taken towards the official recognition of indigenous rights and some of the EZLN's demands were met.
But little has changed in Chiapas, which continues to be one of the poorest, most neglected areas of Mexico, despite its enormous wealth in natural resources.
Marcos went on an earlier tour in 2001, when he and other EZLN leaders visited the capital amid great fanfare, to directly ask the legislature to approve several constitutional reforms.
However, despite the changes promised by Fox and the political parties, the new legislation ended up leaving out key aspects of the only agreement that had been reached in the peace talks between the Zapatistas and the Zedillo administration, involving the self-determination of indigenous communities and the collective use of the natural resources in their territories.
Although he no longer draws huge crowds, Marcos says that "the other campaign" will lead to a true revolution in the next few years. (END/2006