Insurgent Mexico – Disintegrating Iraq
While our attention is rightfully riveted on the dramatic and accelerated unraveling of U.S. policy in Iraq, our immediate neighbor to the south seems to be entering its own period of escalated instability.
By the time you read this on Friday, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, will or will not have successfully been sworn in on the floor of the national congress. The governing PAN party and the opposition left-of-center PRD party maintain literal rival campouts on the floor of the legislative chamber. The PRD has vowed to physically block Calderon from taking the oath. And the PAN promises to block the PRD's blocking maneuver. Two days this stand-off came to juvenile fisticuffs.
There's not much to laugh about in this tragi-comic opera. And it's a shame that Mexican politics and the immediate future of the Mexican people might hang in the balance of this lucha libre.
The PRD -- and about half the Mexican population according to recent polls-- believe that Calderon stole last July's election. Since then, defeated leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has been leading a campaign to render Mexico ungovernable. AMLO had requested a recount of the votes, having lost to Calderon by a half-point in a three-way election. The national election council, after conducting a sample of contested precincts, said such a recount wasn't necessary.
No doubt that most Mexicans live in a world of shortened horizons and heightened frustrations. The initial promise of reform heralded six years ago by the election of Vicente Fox has dead-ended into continued corruption and crony capitalism. Promised structural reform hasn't materialized, economic growth is anemic, the poorest half of the country has only gotten poorer, and entire cities of the country have devolved into drug-driven chaos and gang warfare. All that and little reason to believe that pro-business, conservative Calderon will make any dent in the mess.
Meanwhile, a mini-insurrection still rocks the volatile, southern state of Oaxaca. Months of protests have been quashed by security forces. But discontent still simmers.
That said, I think any honest observer has to seriously question the strategy and tactics of the AMLO and the PRD. Lopez Obrador recently proclaimed himself president, appointed a shadow government and, as noted above, is now trying to disrupt the swearing-in of Calderon. This is rather reckless and dangerous brinksmanship that threatens the already fragile institutionality of the Mexican state. The PRD is not a revolutionary party that could, for better or for worse, lead an armed revolt. And yet it is contributing to an atmosphere that creates the impression that peaceful change is impossible. That's almost a text book definition of demagogy -- demagogy of the sort that usually ends in a bloodbath of those sucked into a movement that has no plausible exit.
AMLO's extreme strategy would be more credible, more responsible, and more effective if he himself had a bigger mandate. But both he and Calderon barely captured 35% of the vote each. So even if Calderon's count was inflated enough to push him over the line, AMLO's claim on being the legitimate president of Mexico is just as tenuous.
Beyond Friday's antics on the congressional floor, Mexico now enters a period of dangerous and extended turbulence. Who, by the way, in Washington is paying any attention to this? Poor Mexico. So far from God. So Close to the U.S.
While we're on the subject of Mexico, I've been meaning to post a note on the passing last week of heroic journalist Jesus Blancornelas. Here was a journo who literally put his life on the line to expose drug cartel corruption in Tijuana and Baja California. It's a miracle that Jesus made it to age 70 and died of natural causes. Nine years ago his car was riddled with 180 bullets, four of which struck his body. Blancornelas survived, his driver was murdered. Since then two of the editors of his Zeta magazine were also murdered. And Blancornelas had been under armed guard till the day he died. Three years ago I had the privilege of hosting Jesus at a Tijuana dinner organized for a group of USC Annenberg journalism fellows. It was a stunning, highly emotional moment for us to watch this gentle and soft-spoken man give his humble talk while a half-dozen plainclothes armed guards watched the windows and the doors. Here was a true hero who could only make the rest of us question our own relevance and courage. Adios, compadre.
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Now to Iraq, already in an advanced stage of dissolution. The "debate" over the coming Baker-Hamilton report registers as sterile. After sifting through the mounds of accumulating BS on the subject, the stark reality remains more war. At least for another couple of years. Or more.
The baldly ignorant national wank-fest now underway on this issue can be described as no less than astounding. This or that faction attaches itself to this or that bumpersticker solution and the facts, well, the facts be damned.
The new line we're hearing -- in different shades from both Republicans and Democrats-- is that we are going to slowly redeploy our combat troops while stepping up our training of Iraqi troops and police.
But as Peter Galbraith said in a radio interview I heard last night, this will only make things worse. These armed groups are not neutral tools of the Iraqi state but instead act as partisans in a bloody and mounting civil war. If we embed more U.S. advisers and/or trainers among these forces, Galbraith argued, we will either wind up facilitating their ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis. Or if we try to restrain them, they will kill us.
Then again, becoming witting accessories to the Shia blood-purges in Iraq just might become our official policy. Pobre Estados Unidos. Tan lejos de dios. Punto.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:44 am
The only good thing I will say for Fox is the announcement of government culpability in the disappearances, murder and torture of dissidents from the 1960′s to the 1980′s.
Of course he waited till the 11th hour and in a fashion to emulate Bush, he released the news on a friday afternoon.
December 1st, 2006 at 9:43 am
Agreed that “gradual redeployment” is a terrible idea. Talk about “not supporting the troops-” the last thing we need is to have US troops in a hostile country in numbers that are not adequate to defend themselves.
However, as you know, this idea is not a serious proposal-it’s a focus-group tested slogan designed not to be offensive to either pro- or anti- war constituents and thus to avoid exacerbating the US gov’s credibility problems.
On the PRD, though, I’m not sure what you are advocating. As you say, they are not a revolutionary party and are not going to mount an insurrection. If the electoral process blocks them out, what are they going to do other than use the strongest tactics available that are short of armed struggle? Should they give up on ever attaining power? Try to mount an unconstitutional coup?
December 1st, 2006 at 10:11 am
I agree with Snorri that the options are quite limited for the PRD but this is a crisis that will be felt here as the instability in Mexico City and the “troubles” in the South have only got to exacerbate the problem of illegal immigration here. And while I understand the fixation with Iraq in official Washington – it is a war after all – the total lack of interest in what is happening in Mexico shown by what passes as the leadership in this country is stunning.
I guess we really can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
December 1st, 2006 at 11:45 am
On Iraq while I still think the Baker boys are there to provide a figleaf I wonder if Bush will take it?
The latest pronouncement -courtesy of the NYT – that the ISG will not call for a timetable but advocate all combat forces out by 2008 (now why is that not a “Timetable”) seems to have already been rejected by the boy-empereor. Read today’s editorial in the TIMES.It sounds like they want an intervention with a recalcitrant teen who won’t clean up his room.
And if Mexico is now dumped on this administration’s plate – well we live in interesting times don’t we?
December 1st, 2006 at 2:31 pm
“Agreed that “gradual redeployment†is a terrible idea. Talk about “not supporting the troops-†the last thing we need is to have US troops in a hostile country in numbers that are not adequate to defend themselves.”
Horsefeathers. That’s a bald face lie. The
political scientists on my side of this so-called debate, like Intelligent decisions it’s only a debate with a moron on the other end of the table, are the top political scientists in the world, such as the ones at Enviormental 2. What fools et al are. Nothing but right-wing propgandists.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
We are fighting the insurgents, and they are Sunni. We are training mostly Shia as police and soldiers.
Our allies in the middle east–Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for example–are Sunni.
Most Iranians and all the leadership of this point on the Axis of Evil are Shia.
“The man for the job” as prime minister of Iraq, al Maliki, spent the last 22 years before returning to Iraq after our invasion in Iran and Syria…doing what we know not.
Al-Maliki is supported in Iraq most strongly by Moqtada al-Sadr, who is deemed a fanatic warlord, and referred to as “the most dangerous man in Iraq.”
I don’t know that we are wrong to continue acting as we have been the last 18 or so months, particularly the last 9 or so since al-Maliki was chosen p.m., but I would think the administration would have to admit that it pretty likely that they are training units that will be effectively commanded from Teheran. So maybe Iraq will finally have that nuclear capability we invaded in order to locate, as a benefit to its status as client of Iran.
December 1st, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Randy, Fox may have recognized the government’s killing sprees of the 60′s and 70′s but lets not let him off the hook. He needs to be held accountable for the atrocities occuring right now in Oaxaca. In the last three weeks 50 activists have been disappeared and nearly 20 murdered. This morning I heard talk of list of 200 activist in Oaxaca that are being targeted for arrest by the Mexican federal police.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Obrador is no Al Gore, and there seem to be even more ‘irregularities’ in the Mexican election than Fla ’00. Marc’s point about the two frontrunners having only 35% each is weakened by the fact that there were several other candidates and, if I recall correctly, the leader of the also-rans had 7%. That the Jimmy Carter-endorsed election council there didn’t do a full recount is suspicious.
Mexico is such a mess. Recently I heard it estimated that thier illicit drug trade makes up 1/3 of thier economy. Can a president that is anti-NAFTA and pro-land reform be that bad for a country with loads of oil and tons of poor people?
Apathy (well-founded in my opinion) kept any grass-roots protest from materializing in response to the Fla ’00 scandal – I suspect fear for thier lives and pessimism is preventing any massive protest in Mexico…
December 1st, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Marc’s point about the two frontrunners having only 35% each is weakened by the fact that there were several other candidates and, if I recall correctly, the leader of the also-rans had 7%.
Mexico and Argentina are, to my knowledge, the only democracies in Latin America that do not have any minimum threshhold to reach in order to avoid a runoff over the top two positions.
December 1st, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Crosby writes: “Al-Maliki is supported in Iraq most strongly by Moqtada al-Sadr, who is deemed a fanatic warlord, and referred to as “the most dangerous man in Iraq.â€
Is this the Moqtada al-Sadr currently boycotting parliament because Maliki went to meet Bush? As for “fanatic warlord”, it appears that some of his erstwhile loyalists are spinning off–I guess because he’s no longer dangerous enough?
rlc: “… all combat forces out by 2008 (now why is that not a “Timetableâ€)”
A timetable is a table, and has to have more than one row. A few weeks can be a lifetime in politics, so “2008″ is just another way of saying “after several reincarnations of all present game-players, but before the Apocalypse.” (Mixing a Hindu/Buddhist metaphor with a Judeo-Christian one — no doubt I’ll be slaughtered as a syncretic apostate for that.)
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:07 am
While we are on the topic of disintegrating Iraq, the November/December issue of the Columbia Journalism Review features excerpts of oral histories of leading reporters and photographers who have spent the last several years in Iraq watching it all happen. This is also available at their Web site at the following link, which includes a fair bit of the audio as well. Absolutely essential reading and listening, riveting stuff and an important antidote to right wing criticisms of the press’s performance:
http://www.cjr.org/iraq/
December 2nd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Marc, thanks for posting about Jesus Blancornelas. (I tried to post a comment on your site about him last week, but that was when my computer was acting up.)
Listening to him at that dinner you arranged was an indelibly inspiring privilege. True heroes really do exist among us. He was the genuine article.
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:05 pm
There are a lot of reports out of Oaxaca of torture, rape, killings and disappeareances. Various paramilitaries and porros are doing drive bys and Oaxaca city has become a police state. Maybe Cooper could give us an article.
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
My, my what a disingeuous little pot shot that was!
Here’s ur article/s
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=oaxaca&btnG=Search+News
There’s this new invention. Called Google.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Calm down Cooper– It was a frickin complement. I thought you might have something to add about what’s happening.
December 5th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Huh?
Publius>Horsefeathers. That’s a bald face lie. >The political scientists on my side of this so->called debate, like Intelligent decisions it’s >only a debate with a moron on the other end >of the table, are the top political scientists in >the world, such as the ones at Enviormental >2. What fools et al are. Nothing but right->wing propgandists.