PROJECT OF OBSERVATION AND MONITORING OF THE POLITICAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLES IN CHIAPAS 2006

MONTHLY REPORT - SEPTEMBER 2006

(Period: September 6^th to 30^th)

• PROPAZ SWITZERLAND
• CDH FRAY BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS
• SIPAZ
• ALIANZA CIVICA CHIAPAS
• PEACE WATCH SWITZERLAND

OCTOBER 2006

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In September, the national context was focused on the following issues:

• The decision by the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJ/TRIFE), the Federal Electoral Court, to confirm Calderón’s (PAN, Partido de Acción Nacional) victory on the presidential elections on the 2nd of July 2006 and the resulting movements of the main political actors.
• The rising of the popular mobilization in Oaxaca and the rumours about the imminent repression by the federal government.
  López Obrador (AMLO) and the CPBT (Coalición por el Bien de Todos or Coalition For the Common Good) confirmed they do not accept the official electoral results, and they called the Convención Nacional Democrática (CND, National Democratic Convention).

Two events that were causing concern for possible episodes of unrest, the 15 and 16 September (respectively the Grito de Independencia, or Cry of Independence, and the military parade), were solved politically, in the absence of violence.

President Fox decided to change the location for the Cry of Independence ceremony, which usually takes places in the Zocalo (Mexico City’s main square), to Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato.  Major safety measures were taken for the ceremony. In Mexico City, the negotiation reached an agreement by which Alejandro Encinas, Mexico City’s mayor, was to led the ceremony. The Federal Minister of Gobernación also attended the cerimony.

A few days before the yearly military parade on Mexico’s independence day, AMLO decided to remove the resistance camps that were blocking the city’s most important streets and also changed the timetable for the CND, in order to make the parade easier.
On the 16th, the CND took place in the afternoon. More than one million representatives from all over the country were registered, and they proclaimed AMLO as the only legitimate president.

They also approved a six-point Plan:

1. Not recognizing Calderon as the president to prevent his usurpation.
2. Swearing him in as the legitimate president on the 20th of November.
3. Authorizing AMLO to create his cabinet.
4. Further resistance actions in the short term: demonstrations against the privatization of energetic resources (27th of September), in defense of public education and democratic liberty and against discrimination (2nd to 12th of October) and in order to prevent Calderon from swearing in (1st of December).
5. Further CND meetings (next one in March 2007).
6. Integrating three coordinating commissions (“National Politics”, “Civil Resistance” and “Organizing the Plebiscite and the New Constituent”), headed by politically diverging leaders.

The CND caused very diverse reactions in the political left: the majority applauded enthusiastically, others supported the CND from a critical perspective, while some questioned and rejected it.

From the 17th of September, AMLO visited the state of Tabasco, in order to support his party’s candidate in the elections. In this occasion, AMLO showed a more radical position, which provoked a rupture with Carlos Slim (a Mexican businessman, considered the 3rd richest person in the world), with whom he had kept a discrete strategic alliance.

Meanwhile, president Fox and Calderón (both members of PAN) were repeatedly surrounded and harassed by AMLO’s supporters in several public meetings and events. For instance, Fox could not lead the Cry of Independence celebration in Mexico City, and Calderón had to receive the document that proclaims him as the elected president in an semi-clandestine way.

As soon as Calderón was declared president, two important meetings were held in the most discrete way. Representatives of transnational corporations, Mexican businessmen and two people related to former president Salinas de Gortari's government (1988-1994), Pedro Aspe and Luis Téllez, attended them. Aspe was the minister of Treasury and Téllez was the undersecretary of Agriculture during that time. Nowadays, they are known as Calderón’s advisers, and likely ministers of his cabinet.

In the course of the Second North American Forum, held in Canada on 12-14 September,  and the the Forbes CEO Mexico Forum, held in Mexico City, structural reforms were discussed on fiscal, labor and energetic issues. Measures to ensure the oil supply from Mexico to the US were also under debate.

In September, the PRI made efforts to consolidate its role as a “hinge party”, by negotiating with the PAN. PRI tried to ensure its presence in the most important commissions of the Congress and also to maintain Ulises Ruiz as a governor of Oaxaca. The main negotiator, Emilio Gamboa (coordinator of PRI’s group in Congress and president of the Political Coordination Commission) was involved in a major scandal when a telephone conversation with the businessman Kamel Nacif was made public. Nacif has publicly mantained links with an alleged pedophile pending extradition from the USA.

The following are some other important events of September:

1. Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, one of AMLO’s advisers, publicly denounced that president Fox met the 7 judges from the TEPJF (the Federal Electoral Court), just before they confirmed Calderon’s victory, in order to put pressure on them.
2. The process to substitute 6 of the 7 judges of the TEPF started.
3. The constitutional controversy, finally won by the citizens’ candidatures in the state of Yucatán.
4. The CPBT chnged its name to FAP (Frente Amplio Progresista, Wide Progressive Front), and registered the new denomination with the IFE (Instituto Federal Electoral, Federal Electoral Institute).

The social movement kept on rising in Oaxaca and Popular Assemblies in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán were also created. This forced the political actors to take a position on the matter.

AMLO spoke in favor of governor Ulises Ruiz’s dismissal and challenged Calderón to prove his independence from PRI. He made him responsible of any potential repression in Oaxaca.

At the same time, Calderón opposed the governor’s dismissal and rejected what he described as APPO’s (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) “pressure and blackmailing”. He demanded Fox’s administration to solve the conflict before his swearing in.

Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN issued a long communiqué, showing their support and recognition for the APPO. Marcos explained they will not offer direct help to the APPO, as this would seve as an excuse for the government to justify further repression by linking it to armed groups.

The negotiations between Secretaría de Gobernación (Ministry of Interior) went through a series of highs and lows: the APPO kept demanding governor Ulises Ruiz’s dismissal, and the government rejected this possibility. The APPO also denounced the unwillingness of the Secretaría de Gobernación to consider lobbying the Congress, the only institution legally entitled to dismiss a state governor, to request  Ulises Ruiz’s dismissal.

Given the situation, the APPO started a massive rally to Mexico City to demand the “desaparición de poderes”, a constitutional figure that makes it possible to elect a new cabinet in cases of ungovernability. The federal government, consequently, hardened their discourse and deployed the Federal Preventive Police (Policía Federal Preventiva, PFP) and other security forces in Oaxaca. As a consequence of this, rumors started to spread about an imminent repressive action.

It is important to keep some elements of the political situation in mind:

1. Given the poor results of PRI in Oaxaca in the last federal elections (on 2nd of July), Ulises Ruiz’s dismissal and consequent elections would favor PRD and AMLO, making it hardly acceptable for both PRI and PAN.
2. Most of the experts and political commentators seem to agree that a possible solution to the crisis could be Ulises Ruiz’s voluntary resignation, so that the state Congress can elect his substitute.
3. The southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas and Tabasco have the most important strategic natural resources in the country. They are also the states where marginality and injustice are more present and they consequently all have a long history of popular struggle and social conflict (both peaceful and violent). AMLO has a enjoys  strong support in these states.

At a national level, the narcos (drug trafficking cartels) remained unpunished. During the period of this report (25 days), the media showed 42 murders related to drug trafficking. The victims were police officers in 12 of the cases.

In Chiapas, the political news were focused on the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial del Estado (TEPJE, State’s Electoral Court).  State elections were held on the 20th of August. The Court decided to confirm Juan Sabines’ victory (belonging to CPBT, Coalición por el Bien de Todos or Coalition For the Common Good), in spite of PRI’s allegations of fraud. Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía, the exiting governor of Chiapas, was accused of supporting Sabines.

During the whole month of September, the PRI kept blocking a law proposed by exiting governor Salazar Mandiguchía and  supported by the CPBT (“Ley Estatal de Acceso a la Información”) arguing that this bill, far from guaranteeing the right to access to information, would instead ensure impunity to the members of the exiting government.

Two opposed political actors, have reappeared these days on the state political stage:

1. Roberto Albores, former PRI governor, that was expelled from its party, accused of trahison for supporting the PRD candidate (Sabines);
2. The subcommander Marcos, who returned to Chiapas to accompany seven EZLN commanders to Mexco City

For its part, the Other Campaign repositioned itself and set up a new future agenda, following three months of a low-profile limited agenda. The EZLN announced the restart of the  national tour of the Delegate Zero, to visit all the remaining 11 states between 8 october and 30 november.   At the same time it announced that it will mantain its support to the Popular Front for the Defense of the Land (FPDT) of Atenco by keeping three EZLN commanders in Mexico City.

The most important event for the Other Campaign has been the public release of a large and strongly critical document titled “The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign: the Pedestrians of History”, published in five parts by the Delegate Zero, o behalf of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN. In this document, the EZLN makes and historical review, a critical analysis of the current situation and a redefinition of its agenda. It talks about the events that brought the EZLN to a rupture with the “political class”; the reasons that lead the Zapatistas to the creation and elaboration of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Forest; the decision to take distance from what Marcos calls “the middle class and the enlighted PRD supporters [the intellectuals]” and their resolution -as EZLN- to build something new with the people “from below”, based on a anti-systemic and anti-capitalistic initiative.

The document goes on explaining the differences and critiques vis-à-vis the PRD, AMLO and what he calls “the supposed left”. He argues that Lopez Obrador’s project was as neoliberal as Calderon’s, with the only difference of attempting to “administer and control social discontent”.

Marcos highlights the existence of three different stances within the Other Campaign with regard to the mobilizations in favor of AMLO:

1. The “dishonest and opportunistic” one that tries to take the lead of this movement making it its “vanguard”;
2. The “honest” one which wants join the movement in favor of AMLO, to get closer to those people “from below” who take part to it, not to remain isolated;
3. The one that “really exists”, and that asserts that this option is not “our path”.

Marcos states that the entrepreneurs really believed that AMLO was a leftist and that it is for this reason that they supported Calderón and the electoral fraud. Some power-related deals (i.e. privatization of PEMEX), drug-trafficking business and lack of vision where also behind their stance.

He further criticizes the fact that AMLO is surrounded by people that had some important charges during the time president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (PRI) was in power. He claims that this is a general trend within the leadership of the National Democratic Convention (CND), hence his skepticism towards this mobilization.

The sub-commander reaffirms the support to Oaxaca to the rebellion and the struggle of indigenous people, youth, sex workers, people working in the “maquilas” (assembly factories), women and organizations of the anti-capitalist left.

Marcos concludes by proposing 6 point to be discussed and defined within the Other Campaign: its features; its structure; its alliance strategy; the role and place for the differences; the people who are convened and those who are not and the shared tasks.

He also makes some propositions for the internal discussion and the realization of a new general consultation to discuss these points, suggesting scheduling it between October 2006 and February 2007.

As for the social conflicts in Chiapas, the victims of the hurricane Stan started setting up new mobilizations to protest against the inactivity of the authorities and the interruption of reconstruction works. More unrest was sparked by the alleged electoral fraud which prevented PRI gubernatorial candidate José Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, who was born in the region. An official advertisement campaign, sponsored by the government, was launched to stop the protest.

A new controversy between the state and federal government also started in relation with the use of the funds for the reconstruction and with the presentation of official figures on advancements and results.

In the Highlands (Los Altos), some of the conflicts unrelated to the post-electoral conflict (between catholic and protestant churches as well as between supporters of different parties) continued. Two new conflicts have also emerged in relation to the access and use of strategic natural resources (biodiversity and water) in Huitepec and Shuljá.

In the Lacandon Forest, some isolated acts of provocation have also been observed against one of the four communities, located in the north-west border of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, that had previously been threatened with expulsion.

In the central region of the state, the community of Nicolás Ruiz restarted its struggle for the official and final recognition of its communal territory. The community fears that, due to a lack of response from the government, the conflict could escalate. In the meanwhile, in the municipality of Venustiano Carranza, allegations of corruption of the  municipal president sparked a new wave of protests.

In September, during the first state meeting against the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the participating communities exchanged experiences and started to discuss a joint strategy of resistance and struggle.

In the same month, the Human Rights Center Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas reiterated its concerns for alleged cases of torture in the state prisons and for the death in custody of a detainee, the third in a month. This case reflects a pattern of human rights violations in the prisons in Chiapas.

Finally, a year after hurricane Stan, the lack of a real policy of aid and reconstruction of the areas hit by the natural disaster is in itself a grave violation of the human rights of the local people.   As pointed out in a report by Human Rights Center Fray Matías de Córdova of Tapachula, this situation of violated dignity also creates feeling of abandonment, desperation and uncertainty for the future for wide sections of the population affected, especially in the Sierra (Zona Sierra).