Blood, Money and Flowers

[johnhannahthree]

Blood, Money and Flowers
by: John Hannah

Earlier this month, either “hundreds” or “thousands” (depending on the reporting) of Mexican state and federal police beat, gassed and shot their way through San Salvador Atenco. Their goal was to restore government control of the town and to secure the release of eleven police officers captured and beaten by local residents during an earlier government attempt to evict unlicensed flower vendors.

But much more is represented by the violence in Atenco than who can sell flowers and where.

While the mainstream American media has given scant attention to the situation, and none that I know of to its underlying causes, Atenco is a flash-point for a clash at least as old as the Bible, but also a reminder of dilemmas that are uniquely contemporary for all Americans. It is a conflict between traditional values and a narrow, but conventional, definition of progress. It is, simply put, a fight between the haves and the have-nots - fought against the backdrop free trade and globalization, the same geopolitical scenery decorating the immigration debate in the United States.

Since the 1910 Mexican Revolution, indigenous families have held Atenco land in common as part of the ejido system. They have lived and made their modest livelihoods there for generations and have no inclination to stop. The Mexican government has other ideas. It wishes to see the campesino flower merchants replaced by a sprawling airport meant to facilitate the unfettered movement of people and money that is the fundamental goal of the vision it shares with its the fellow politicians in Washington. The ejidatarios, for now, refuse to budge.

The Atenco rising and its accompanying T.V. images of police being beaten and captured by angry citizens - and then those of citizens being beaten and captured by angry police - have come into Mexican living rooms via television during an election year. A most important election, as it is the country’s second only real and free one. Major presidential candidates are now operating, nervously, within the context of Atenco.

For over three generations Mexico was ruled by one party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in its Spanish acronym). For longer than the Communist Party of the Soviet Union administered Russia, the PRI was in charge of America’s neighbor to the South, consolidating its power and ingraining graft and corruption deep into the Mexican social fabric. Bad government became a redundant term until Vincente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) won the 2000 election and Mexico witnessed its first ever peaceful transition of power.

Mexico now has three major parties. In addition to the PAN and the PRI, there is the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD.) Its candidate, Lopez Obrador, has until some recent campaign missteps, been the clefront-runnerner. He is now running neck and neck with Felipe Calderon, the PAN candidate. Fox can’t run due to term limits.

Roberto Madrazo, the third place PRI hopeful is taking full advantage of the turmoil at the expense of the two front runners. He has accused the governing PAN (the more economically conservative of the three) of neglecting the rule of law by not taking a harder (more confrontational and violent) approach with Atenco residents, while accusing Obrador of actually inciting the locals. The PRD’s Obrador is a left-of-center populist who has pledged to pay more attention to Mexico’s long-ignored poor.

Another player in all of this is the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which launched an armed rebellion in January 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas, demanding rights for the region’s poor indigenous population and decrying NAFTA and so-called global free trade in particular. The rebels later renounced violence and vowed to work within the confines of the political system. Reacting to the Atenco crackdown, the EZLN has renewed its calls for a government overthrow and declared its solidarity with the Atenco flower sellers.

So what exactly is economic globalization? In short, it is an effort by corporations to ignore such pesky things as international borders and the laws on either side of them through agreements like NAFTA. American workers seeking protection from the wage-shrinking effect of illegal immigrant labor and Bolivians wishing to control the oil that is under their feet inconveniences large international conglomerates that swear allegiance to no flag or nation.

We Americans have been slow to see the real problem. While we complain about illegal Mexican immigrants, we have failed to recognize the men behind the curtain who keep our government from enforcing our already existing labor laws. The voters of other nations in the Western Hemisphere, like Argentina and Brazil, are getting wise. They are demanding a say in how their politicians conduct themselves visa vi powerful, stateless interests like the oil companies now picking the pockets of Americans daily at the gas pumps.

The flower vendors of Atenco see the globalization debate as a matter of life and death.

John Hannah is writer, teacher and former Texas political and media consultant who currently lives and works in the Western Central Highlands of Mexico.