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 Editorials | July 2006 
America Ignores Mexican Election Fiasco
 Randy Shaw - BeyondChron.org
| | A supporter of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) protests during a demonstration in front of Mexico's Televisa network in Mexico City July 21, 2006. The supporters were protesting against Calderon's July 2 election victory, which they say was riddled with fraud. (Reuters/Henry Romero) |
The July 18 New York Times included another lengthy story on the after-effects of Ukraine’s controversial 2005 election. Although this contest involved presidential candidates unknown to most Americans, and occurred in a country with little strategic connection to America, the story of people taking to streets in an “Orange Revolution” to protest election fraud dominated our media for weeks. This ongoing coverage of alleged Ukrainian election fraud stands in sharp contrast to the scant coverage of alleged improper ballot counting in Mexico’s recent election.
Even intense media coverage of the US Senate’s recent immigration hearings ignored links between Mexico’s denial of democracy and increased immigration to America. Why did protests in a distant country that little impacts America get broader and more sympathetic media attention than similar events in Mexico? Once again, the answer involves both politics and race.
The politics of the Ukraine do not usually make the list of top-100 issues of importance to Americans. Yet in 2005, the American media was running daily stories on reports of election fraud that apparently cheated the pro-West presidential candidate out of victory.
Why such major coverage? One reason is that the American government supported the candidate cheated out of victory. Another reason is that the American media is not troubled by scenes of Eastern Europeans taking to the streets in the way that they are when covering mammoth protests in Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, and other Spanish-speaking countries.
What is astonishing about the media silence about Mexico is that America has recently had millions take to the streets over immigrants’ rights, and both the left and right are focused on the issue. People on all sides agree that there is a connection between Mexico’s internal politics and increased immigration.
Shouldn’t this make a challenged Mexican presidential election an important ongoing news story? If America views increased immigration from Mexico as a national crisis demanding action, shouldn’t the media examine how the perception of election fraud - in the wake of the 1988 presidential election that even conservatives agreed was stolen from the progressive candidate - might heighten the future exodus of Mexicans to the United States?
The media could also be asking whether the huge exodus from Mexico since the election of PAN President Fox in 2000 might now continue under his successor, Felipe Calderon. People tend to leave their home country when they feel they have no future, yet our media is strangely unconcerned over whether low-income people considering leaving Mexico were impacted by the perception that Lopez-Obrador was cheated out of victory.
Had Felipe Calderon been the Mexican candidate allegedly fraud, the American media would be all over the story. George W. Bush would likely be threatening to send troops to Mexico to prevent the hijacking of democracy by populist Lopez-Obrador.
Some have suggested that Mexican election coverage has been crowded out by events in the Middle East. But the July 18 New York Times story on the ongoing fallout from the 2005 Ukrainian election occurred at the height of the Middle East conflict, and editors nevertheless felt it important to keep readers up to date on Ukrainian news
When it comes to an alleged kidnapping in Aruba or an alleged rape at Duke University, the American media hits every conceivable angle of the story. But massive protests occurring in our neighbor to the south is covered like a crime or accident story, with reporters not covering more than the who, what and where of major events.
The lack of interest in Mexican election fraud is part of a long American media tradition of ideologically-driven coverage of Latin American politics. For example, in the July 20 Washington Post longtime columnist David Broder referred to the “disguised dictatorships run by Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and Hosni Mubarak.”
Having easily prevailed in five consecutive elections monitored by international observers, Hugo Chavez is more a product of democracy than George Bush, who became president despite receiving only a minority of votes. Further, Egypt’s Mubarak has never prevailed in a truly democratic election, and has in fact cancelled elections to keep his party in power. Yet Broder and others in the American media put Chavez and Mubarak in the same camp.
We saw the same media hypocrisy when the Sandinistas’ were elected in Nicaragua, and when the democratically elected Aristide was overthrown in Haiti. In both cases the media described winners of valid elections as “strongmen” or dictators, and hence legitimate targets of US-backed violent overthrow by media-proclaimed “forces of democracy.”
American Latinos have been strangely quiet over the events in Mexico, or if they have tried to get their voices heard the English-language media has not been listening. Univision, America’s dominant Spanish-language television network, pulled out all stops for Calderon, and is certainly not going to allow its airwaves to become an organizing tool for pro-Lopez Obrador Mexican immigrants.
One gets the impression that the American media can only handle one issue impacting Latinos at a time, and that immigration reform is the issue for 2006. But the media’s recent performance even on this issue has been weak, with little focus on right-wing House Republican’s success at derailing bipartisan reform.
Immigration reform’s defeat and election fraud in Mexico could increase Latino voter turnout in November, as conservatives have clearly challenged reform advocates to prove themselves at the ballot box. But the derailing of democracy at home and in Mexico could also convince Latino immigrants that voting is futile.
We will know which option Latino immigrant voters took on the night of November 7, with the short-term future of American politics likely at stake.
Send feedback to rshaw@beyondchron.org |
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