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 Editorials | At Issue | August 2006 
Violence, Election Split has Nation Walking on Eggshells
 Dane Schiller - Express-News
August 26, 2006
| | Commuters ride a pick-up truck past a bus stop during a strike in Oaxaca August 29, 2006. Shops and restaurants were shut and buses did not run during the 24-hour stoppage to demand an end to violent clashes. (Reuters/Stringer) |
In Mexico city, an illegal tent city blocks banks, businesses and traffic here as hundreds of federal police and soldiers brace for a showdown with leftist demonstrators.
In the city of Oaxaca, riots continue almost nightly in the wake of an activist being shot to death and the burning of multiple buses blockading a highway.
Along the Caribbean near Cancún, two newspapers vow to keep publishing after grenades were lobbed into their offices, damaging walls and windows, but killing nobody.
Mexico is a long way from Baghdad or Bogotá, but with tension building over the past week, it remains anyone's guess if things are going to get worse.
"They are ringing the bells," Alicia Cortéz, 42, a housewife raising five children in a sprawling slum just outside Mexico City, said of the various grim developments. "They are warning of an emergency."
Related or not, these events add to a feeling of uncertainty against a backdrop of a divided nation waiting for an electoral tribunal to order a recount or certify the winner of a bitter July 2 presidential election.
The results showed the closest presidential race in Mexican history. Conservative Felipe Calderón beat populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador by 0.6 percent of about 41 million ballots cast.
López Obrador said nothing short of a full recount is acceptable.
To pressure authorities and make life miserable in Mexico City's financial and tourist districts, he has thousands of followers living in a miles-long tent city, directed from the city's central plaza, known as the Zócalo.
In the coastal state of Quintana Roo last week, there was some damage but no injuries at two newspapers attacked with grenades.
Miguel Menéndez, an editor of Por Esto!, said he doesn't know who's responsible, but the theory is that drug cartels were behind the attacks.
"The reporters are scared," Menéndez said.
In Oaxaca, a teacher's strike has steadily intensified, with the latest violence including arson and the shooting of an activist who was accompanying the teachers.
President Vicente Fox called for calm in Oaxaca, a place known to U.S. tourists not for political violence, but steaming cups of hot chocolate and colorful Indian artisanship.
Fox said when he leaves office Dec. 1 he intends to hand over a peaceful country with strong democratic institutions.
"I know my responsibilities for the rest of my term," Fox said.
"I know very well what I should and have to do, and the first thing is to keep the country on track as a country that is advancing, that is tranquil and that has social peace," he said. "We cannot lose all that we have."
Jorge González, a Trinity University economist, said although more people are taking notice of events in Mexico, the stock market and the value of the peso have not yet suffered.
"The message they are sending is that there are hot spots that will be taken care of and Mexico will continue to do well," González said.
But it is hard to predict what López Obrador could do to the country, he said, and investors have previously been overly-optimistic about Mexico.
"Investors have only so much tolerance for instability and that tolerance is being tested," González said.
Meanwhile, as election results hover unchanged but not yet official, Calderón has been unable to assume the role of president-elect.
He has had to endure abuse by López Obrador's followers, and stay behind closed doors when it comes to assembling a cabinet or making plans for a six-year presidency that is to start Dec. 1.
"What is proven is that you can expect almost anything right now," said Ana María Salazar, a Mexico City commentator. "It is a mistake to underestimate Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his ability to go to the extremes. What those extremes are, we do not know yet."
The first half of September should be a gauge, especially when the electoral tribunal issues its ruling.
On Friday, Fox is to give his annual state-of-the-nation address, televised at the rowdy 500-member Congress.
Fox can expect to be heckled by opposition lawmakers, who in previous years have shown no restraint in shouting insults, getting out of their chairs and holding up signs during the presidential speech.
In the streets, federal police and soldiers already have taken up positions around the congressional compound, closing it to the public.
Security barricades and water cannons are being deployed as part of a strategy to keep crowds as far as 2 miles away.
This month, protesters tried to blockade the congressional compound well in advance of Fox's speech. Police launched tear gas. Protesters threw rocks and bottles. Some congressmen from López Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party were among the dozen injured.
"Are they trying to send us a message of intimidation?" López Obrador said afterward. "We could be scared because we are human, but we are not cowards, Mr. President."
Police have sealed off the congress ever since.
Another potential clash could come Sept. 16 when the army is to march in the Independence Day parade to the central plaza, where López Obrador's supporters have been camping for weeks.
Complicating matters, López Obrador has said he'll convene a "people's congress" in the square that day, part of an effort to invoke quasi-constitutional powers to name him the president-elect.
Fox is also to give the annual grito, or shout of independence, from the balcony of the presidential palace that overlooks the square — and thus López Obrador's encampment.
"There seems to be an interesting game of chicken going on," Salazar said. "How this is going to be resolved is somewhat of a mystery and it is making a lot of people nervous."
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, said that once the electoral tribunal makes its ruling, López Obrador's supporters — both in politics and the streets — will quickly abandon him.
"Once the tribunal decides that Calderón is the winner, López Obrador is going to lose supporters like a tree loses leaves in the winter," Grayson said.
dschiller@express-news.net |
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