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 Editorials | July 2006 
Punishing the PRI
 Rachel Blustain & Jennifer De Barros - American Prospect
| | A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) passes a mural depicting the Mexican revolution inside the headquarters in Mexico City July 7, 2006. The PRI suffered a shattering defeat in the national elections on Sunday dealing a severe blow to the party that ruled Mexico for 71 years. (Reuters/Daniel LeClair) |
For the last six weeks, the roads leading to the central square of the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico have been draped with blue tarp to protect the teachers camped out there from the sun and the heavy rains. Since a massive strike began in May, tens of thousands of teachers have poured into the city for demonstrations organized regularly by the National Education Workers' Union (SNTE), while hundreds of die-hards have spent night after night sleeping in the streets, blocking traffic, and forcing business to a standstill with their tarps and their bodies.
In the central square - usually a haven of tranquility where the city symphony performs several times a week - the stone columns and the walls of cafes are marked by red graffiti, depicting the governor of the state, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, as a rat, accusing him of murder, and calling for him to leave office.
Many had thought that the national election for president and legislature July 2 would help bring an end to the strike, but it has continued. All but one faction of the union have stepped up their efforts, crowding the streets around the main square and picketing businesses throughout Oaxaca purportedly owned by members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which until the election on Sunday had held hegemonic power in the state (also called Oaxaca). They have also thrown their support behind the leftist candidate for president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, joining those in the country challenging the results of the presidential election, in which a razor-thin victory was declared official on Thursday for the business-backed candidate Felipe Calederon of the National Action Party (PAN).
That challenge - replete with street protests in Mexico City, court challenges, and demands for more recounts - looks likely to drag on, and the country’s Florida-style political standoff has fueled much worried commentary about the precarious health and stability of the young democracy. The central effect of the election on Oaxaca, however, has been more straightforward and, from the perspective of democratic development, encouraging. It is the political eclipse of the PRI - which controlled Mexico for much of the 20th century - in one of its last major remaining strongholds in the country.
The teachers’ strike is a Oaxaca perennial - the powerful union, 70,000 members strong, has struck every year since 1980. (This year, the union’s demands include higher wages, increased construction of schools in remote villages, and free breakfast and uniforms for every child in Oaxaca, which is one of Mexico’s poorest states.) This strike took on a new significance, and broader public support, precisely as it became a focal point of protest against the PRI’s one-party rule in the state and the corruption that has been a hallmark of politics here. Sunday’s elections provided an official forum for expressing the discontent that the strike had catalyzed, and the results were dramatic and consequential. In Oaxaca, a coalition led by Obrador’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was the highest vote-getter in nine out of the 11 contested districts for the country’s Chamber of Deputies. 45 percent of the the state's votes for Mexico’s Senate went to the PRD, while 32 percent went to the PRI and 16 percent to the PAN. For the presidential race, those figures were 47 percent, 31, and 17, respectively.
Through its vote, the state of Oaxaca contributed to the historic change that has taken place in this country, where the PRI has lost its plurality in Congress for the first time since 1929. The mobilization of voters in Oaxaca has also broken the stranglehold that the PRI has held over this state since the party’s creation and caused hope that this election will lead to greater democratization in future elections.
While the PRI began slowly to lose its dominance over Mexican politics starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, vestiges of one-party rule remained, particularly in poorer states like Oaxaca. The PRI was able to maintain its grip on Oaxaca in part by handing out jobs and goodies, such as cement or farm equipment, before elections. But corruption and election rigging were also key. “Oaxaca has had some of the most corrupt governors the country has ever seen, though none have been convicted,” according to Rodrigo Gallegos, a specialist in Mexican politics (he asked that his organizational affiliation not be disclosed).
Frustration with the current governor has run particularly high ever since he took office two years ago after a close election sparked demonstrations and outcries of election fraud. Said Vicente, a private language school teacher in his 20s and the brother of one of the strikers, points to the posters that dotted the Oaxacan landscape and the TV and radio spots in support of PRI candidates in the national elections as evidence that corruption is still alive in this state. “The governor says there’s no money for the teachers, but all over Oaxaca state, there is lots of publicity and spots on the television and radio that the governor is paying for [with taxpayers’ dollars] ... It is not official, he’s not going to say it, but everyone knows he is.” Vicente added that the destruction by the police in June of Radio Plantoon, a station in downtown Oaxaca that had been critical of the governor, is further evidence of the government’s suppression of democratic institutions.
The strike mushroomed in size and significance this year after Ruiz ordered the use of tear gas and police power on June 14 to try and disperse protestors. The violent police action outraged many in the city, and as a result the teachers’ union, in coalition with other groups including farmers’ cooperatives, Indian rights organizations, and revolutionary parties, revised their demands to include the governor stepping down from power. The coalition refused to drop this demand even after President Vicente Fox sent his deputy interior secretary to try to broker a peace.
Though the political context has proved to be especially significant this year, the ongoing strike still draws on fundamental economic and class grievances. Education levels in Oaxaca are among the lowest in the nation. Some of the poorest families in Mexico live in the state’s remote mountain villages, cut off from the rest of the country by poorly paved or unpaved mountain roads. Ismael Toledo Martinez, a history teacher in the mountain village of Ixtepec, has spent weeks sleeping on the streets, he said, because the parents of his students gave him permission to travel to the capital city to attend the protest, and he does not want to return empty-handed.
Certainly many Oaxacans are more cynical about the union’s motivations, which they say consist mainly of power politics and self-interest. Elvia Morales Sanchez, the mother of a 14-year-old and a cousin of the governor, marched in protest against the teachers earlier this month. Sanchez herself worked as a teacher for one year before quitting in frustration. She accused the teachers’ union of operating as a political machine, and it is certainly undeniable that the union has long been a potent power player in the state’s political scene.
Ruiz has accused his political opponents of using the strike to destabilize his government, and there is reason to believe there is some truth to this. According to Gallegos, many believe that the teachers’ strike is being supported in part by one division of the PRI party that opposes the governor and wishes to see his downfall, as well as by local political elites who have broken with the PRI and recently joined other parties. It is also widely thought that the national head of the SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo - who now backs the PAN’s coalition - failed to intervene when the strike escalated because she wished to undermine the PRI’s candidate for president, Roberto Madrazo.
Indeed, the politics of this state are convoluted, and it is easy to get lost in the swirl of intrigue and infighting. But the tangible results of Sunday’s elections in Oaxaca - the breaking of the PRI’s political stranglehold and the establishment of real electoral competition in the state, with the PRD newly dominant - are clear. Just as clear is the strike’s role in helping to set the context for these developments.
For some, the international attention that the teachers' strike has brought to this state has been gratifying on a personal level. “Last year, I lived in France,” Said Vicente explained. “I saw Germany, England, Spain. Those places are totally different ... . It’s very frustrating for me to live in a place where the laws are not respected. That is why I thank all the visitors to this state who take an interest in what is going on here.” The hope, for Mexico and for Oaxaca, is that the heated political and labor conflicts playing out on the street are signs not only of rancor, but of democratic health.
Rachel Blustain is a writer living in New York. Jennifer De Barros is a social worker living in New York. |
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