Mexico: This Saturday real Freedom becomes our Example

[Wiley50]

Blockades
“Those that underestimate the popular opposition don’t know what they are talking about”

By Luis Hernández Navarro
La Jornada

September 7, 2006

A profound political crisis is shaking up the country. The rules that regulate the balance of power between elites have been violated. From above, there is no agreement or any possibility for one in the short term. The occupation of the lectern of the Palace of San Lázaro (the Chamber of Deputies, lower house of the Mexican Congress) by legislators from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD in its Spanish initials) and the Labor Party (PT) in order to prevent President Fox from giving his speech this September 1 is one example.

A severe crisis in the model of control pierces the relationships of domination in large regions of the Mexican national territory. People accustomed to obeying have refused to do so. People that think they are destined to rule have been unable to impose their command. Those from below have become disobedient. When those on the top want to impose their opinion from above, in the name of the law, they are ignored from below. This can be seen with Oaxaca, Chiapas, the miners of Lázaro Cárdenas, and the peasants of Atenco.

The political crisis and the crisis in the model of control have joined hands. Taking advantage of this fight on the top, millions of people from below have shown their insubordination. They are not ready to accept any more impositions. So they slip through the gaps that are left open by the dispute up above.

The country does not fit into the political regime. All the organizations that regulate the struggle for power, its exercise, and its values have been kidnapped by the powers that be. They have taken these organizations hostage. People that demand that the PRD choose between the rule of law and social mobilization are behaving like a thief who, upon being discovered, yells, “stop, thief!” They have been the first to impose extrajudicial force upon these institutions. What else could this be if not the famous Chapultepec Pact of Carlos Slim?

People that try to make a scandal of the plantón on Reforma Avenue and of the occupation of the lectern at the Chamber of Deputies are the same people blocking the political representation of more than 15 million Mexicans who voted in the ballot boxes and of many millions more who did not vote because they have seen that any participation that is not subordinated to institutional politics has always been blocked off. It is they who obstruct the access of millions of Mexicans to the world of political affairs. It is they who have kidnapped the federal government, using its programs for partisan purposes. It is they who have prevented voices against the imposition from being heard in the electronic media.

In order to recover the institutions of political representation, there is no viable option besides confronting and corralling these powers with social mobilization. There is no other course of action than to drain the powerful of their authority by putting up blockades against its exercise. There is no other way forward than to prove, step by step, the illegitimacy of those that have assumed for themselves the power of governing.

http://narconews.com/Issue42/article2042.html