[Peace-discuss] p.s. Fox on Fox

[Ricky Baldwin]

Whoever said Fox News was slanted?  Check out the
carefully-worded version of recent events in Mexico
below!  In this looking-glass account, Mexican
teachers in Oaxaca on strike for higher wages and
against alleged human rights abuses – Mexican police
recently dropped tear gas on them from helicopters and
severely beat many of them – are to blame.  Likewise
those who challenge the election.

Acually, I like it side-by-side with independent labor
journalist David Bacon’s background piece, which I’ll
attach at the end.  Explains a lot.  In the words of
one of the Bush presidents, “no linkage!”

-Ricky

http://www.fox11az.com/news/other/stories/KMSB-20060808-dnbp-mexicoteachers.60274e7.html

Teachers add to Mexico's political unrest

Protest on wages becomes 'opportunity to revise
history' 

12:48 PM MST on Tuesday, August 8, 2006

BY ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News 

OAXACA, Mexico – Barricades block the streets leading
into the leafy central plaza of this colonial capital.
Where tourists from Texas and California once
strolled, protesting teachers now sleep in stinking
tents. And the image of Che Guevara is painted over
political posters of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in
tribute to the leftist presidential candidate. 

What began as a teachers' strike for higher wages more
than two months ago has morphed into a broader
movement with myriad goals, from ousting the governor
to supporting Mr. López Obrador in his presidential
bid and his claim that the July 2 election was
fraudulent. 

"This is an opportunity to revise history, to restore
dignity to our people and stand up against the
powerful," said Eduardo Martínez, a leader of the
organization representing 70,000 teachers. "With a
popular movement, so much is possible." 

On another level, the turmoil underscores the many
challenges to the rule of law in Mexico, including
widening drug violence and the electoral dispute that
is paralyzing parts of Mexico City. 

Mr. López Obrador lost the July 2 election to
conservative candidate Felipe Calderón by only 244,000
votes of the 41 million cast. The leftist candidate's
protestscalling for a full recount, rejected Saturday,
have been drawing large crowds to the capital. 
If there's no total recount, the "confrontations will
intensify, jeopardizing the stability of the nation,"
Mr. López Obrador said. 

As President Vicente Fox's six-year term winds down,
analysts say that the unsettled political situation
and the associated unrest, including the strike in
Oaxaca, could push Mexico along the path toward a
democratic, pluralistic future or send it tilting back
toward its authoritarian past. 
"The transition of power has now really begun," said
Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico
Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies. "This is a very difficult,
potentially dangerous time because the battle is over
which Mexico – the old or new – emerges." 

The standoff in Oaxaca and the presidential dispute
add to other tensions. Around the nation, warring
drug-trafficking organizations are taking advantage of
a presidential power vacuum, law enforcement officials
say. They're battling over routes from the Pacific
Coast and Mexico's south to the huge commercial funnel
at Laredo and into the largest consumer market in the
world . 
"What's at stake in Mexico is whether the rule of law
will be paramount, to reach deeper levels of needed
reforms, or whether it will go back to the whims and
fancies of someone," said Arturo Sarukhan, Mr.
Calderón's aide and a former Mexican consul general in
New York City. "That's why American society has a lot
at stake in whether Mexico has a plural, more open
society as its neighbor." 

For now, Oaxaca is on edge. Teachers and their
supporters from 350 organizations, including
anarchists and communists, have taken over large parts
of the state capital. A sea of tents dominates the
main square. 

The protests forced the cancellation of the state's
largest Indian festival – Guelaguetza – causing an
estimated $60 million loss in tourism revenue. 

In recent days, supporters shut down highways leading
in and out of the city and the airport, ransacked
state offices and spray-painted centuries-old
buildings with slogans, along with a few apologies for
"ongoing inconveniences" to bewildered tourists. 

Tensions rose Monday as Gov. Ulises Ruiz called for
the military and federal agents to help preserve
stability. Protesters took over more state offices, at
times skirmishing with police. 
The teachers stopped short of taking an official
position on Mr. López Obrador's election challenge.
His party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or
PRD, won overwhelmingly in Oaxaca state, thanks in
large part to the powerful support of the teachers
union, which has 1.3 million members nationwide and is
the largest union in Latin America. 

"We respect the people's will, and we condemn
electoral fraud," said Daniel Rosas Romero, union
spokesman. 

The teachers want Mr. Ruiz out, accusing him of
corruption and political repression. The cry
intensified June 14, when the state sent in 1,500
police officers with tear gas to disperse the
demonstrators. The teachers were back in the square
the next day. 

"The city is now simply ungovernable," said Raymundo
Riva Palacio, a political columnist and expert on
national security issues. "It's out of control." 

The federal government has encouraged both sides to
resolve their differences in a "legal, peaceful
manner," phrases that sound empty to many here. 

"Vicente Fox doesn't want to go down in history as the
government that forced teachers out," said Ana María
Salazar, an expert on national security and former
Pentagon official. 
The U.S. Embassy issued a travel advisory, warning
tourists to stay in their hotels. 

Restaurateur Illiana De la Vega, who gives culinary
classes each year in Dallas, said she voted for Mr.
López Obrador because of his emphasis on Mexico's
poor, but she is having second thoughts. She fears the
teachers' protest will merge with the electoral unrest
and continue indefinitely. Her restaurant, El Naranjo,
is feeling the effects: Tourists, and even vendors,
are staying away."This is not fair to Oaxaca," she
said. "And it isn't fair to Mexico."
 
E-mail acorchado at dallasnews.com 


  - OPEN FORUM
Mexican workers want a recount
David Bacon
Monday, July 17, 2006

Huge national demonstrations in Mexico are now
demanding a recount of the votes cast in the
presidential election, tainted by allegations of vote
fraud. 

Mexico's wealthiest families have a lot to lose. All
benefited from Mexico's conservative economic reforms,
which the leading candidate, Felipe Calderon of the
conservative National Action Party, vows to continue.
The Villareals' Grupo Villacero, for instance, was
virtually given the huge Sicartsa steel mill by the
government in the early 1990s for a tenth of its
value, according to Mexican press reports, when
government holdings were privatized. The Larreas'
Grupo Mexico got Mexico's two great copper mines in
the 1980S. 

Mexican workers, however, gained little from the
privatization and want a change in political
direction. 

People in the United States will be affected if a
recount results in the defeat of Calderon and his
reforms. If Mexican workers win better jobs and
stronger unions, they will feel less pressure to
migrate north. Higher wages will create a market for
U.S.-made products, while decreasing the incentive for
moving factories south. 

Privatization and economic reforms have undermined
labor rights, however. Last April, Sicartsa's
steelworkers stopped work and occupied the mill,
accusing the government of trying to take over their
union. Local police made an unsuccessful attempt to
evict them on April 20, shooting and killing two.
Miners belonging to the same union in Sonora shut down
Grupo Mexico's two copper mines, making the same
protest. 

Oaxaca's teachers have been striking for higher
salaries and an end to alleged human rights'
violations by Gov. Ulisses Ruiz. Conflict became so
bitter that on June 14, helicopters bombarded teachers
occupying the city's central square with tear gas.
Police beat scores of them. Three days before the
Oaxaca confrontation, Ruiz promised business owners he
would use the mano dura, or heavy hand, to put down
protest. 

Mexican employers are discarding the social contract,
in which unions had a place at the table so long as
they didn't upset it. Increasingly, corporations such
as Grupo Mexico and Grupo Villacero want no unions at
all. 

President Vicente Fox, who heads the PAN, pushed hard
to eviscerate the country's labor laws at the
corporations' behest. Mexican law prohibits
strikebreaking, gives workers the right to health care
and housing, protects job security, mandates strict
work hours, and imposes severance pay for laid-off
employees. Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, head of the miners'
union, led a labor effort that spiked Fox's proposals.


But labor conflict grew more heated when 65 miners
died on Feb. 19, in a huge explosion in the Pasta de
Conchos coalmine, owned by Grupo Mexico. Workers told
the union they were required to weld while high
concentrations of explosive methane gas filled the
shafts in the days before the accident. The gas
ignited in a huge fireball. 

Two days after the explosion, Gomez Urrutia accused
the Secretary of Labor and Grupo Mexico of "industrial
homicide." Corruption charges were made against him
less than a week later, and Labor Secretary Francisco
Xavier Salazar Sáenz appointed a more "cooperative"
replacement to head the union. Salazar owns two
companies that supply chemicals to Grupo Mexico. 
Gomez says the country's wealthy families "think
unions are like a cancer, and should be exterminated."


Forty of the dead miners were contract workers, who
have no union or safety committee. They were getting
$9 a day, working 10-to-12 hours, well beyond the
legal 8-hour limit. Contract employment is a new
phenomenon in Mexico. When the mines and mills
belonged to the government, workers became permanent
employees after probation. But when the Sicartsa mill
was sold to the Villareals, they put half the
workforce on temporary contracts and ended their labor
rights. 

At the Cananea copper mine, workers struck against
Grupo Mexico in 1998 over similar demands. When they
lost, 800 people were blacklisted. Displaced miners
left for Arizona, 50 miles north. "I had no
alternative," says Jorge Mendoza, now an undocumented
worker in Phoenix. "I went a year without being able
to find work." 

When Gomez Urrutia was elected union general secretary
in 2001, he began to push back hard. So when Labor
Secretary Salazar tried to replace him, workers
re-elected him twice, and then struck the copper pits
and the Sicartsa mill, demanding his reinstatement. 

Mexicans headed for the polls in the middle of this
turmoil. Grupo Mexico and Grupo Villacero poured money
into Calderon's campaign, funding commercials
predicting chaos if Lopez Obrador, candidate of the
Party of the Democratic Revolution, were elected.
Lopez Obrador himself declared "we will promote
respect for union democracy, and there will be no
intervention in the life of the unions." No wonder
Mexico's most progressive unions then called for a
recount, after accusations of fraud threw Calderon's
tiny margin into doubt. 

Some, like the miners, the telephone workers and the
Authentic Labor Front, a Mexican union federation,
have partnerships with unions on the U.S. side of the
border. The United Steel Workers, which represents
U.S. copper miners, sheltered Gomez Urrutia and his
family when they were forced to flee Mexico. Relations
between Mexican and U.S. mining unions go back
decades. Copper miners come from the same families on
both sides of the border. In 1998, union caravans from
Arizona brought food to Cananea during the strike. 

Those historic ties give U.S. workers a stake in
Mexico's direction. Unions here know that if the
conservative reforms continue, they will produce even
greater numbers of displaced people. Many will have
little alternative but to look for work in the north.
Meanwhile, jobs move south. While closing 14 U.S.
plants, laying off thousands, Ford Motor Company is
investing $9 billion in new Mexican plants. 

"Grupo Mexico now owns the American Smelting and
Refining Company, and mines on the U.S. side, so we're
facing the same employers," explains Gerry Fernandez,
United Steelworkers international director. "We're
directly affected by the attack on the miners, and
we're going to defend them." 

David Bacon is the author of "The Children of NAFTA"
(University of California, 2004) and the forthcoming
"Communities Without Borders" (Cornell University
Press, 2006). dbacon.igc.org An earlier version of
this article, "Mexico's Labor Rebels," was published
by the Nation. 


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