Giordano: The Coup d’Etat in Mexico

Friday, December 1, and the scheduled ascension of Felipe Calderón to the presidency, will mark the culmination of a Coup d'Etat in Mexico, reports Al Giordano.

Connecting the dots between July's fraudulent presidential election, the popular rebellion in Oaxaca and the brutal repression against it, and the completion, today, of the 11-month marathon listening tour throughout Mexico by the Zapatista Other Campaign, Giordano predicts more repression to come but the rise of a national movement to reverse the coup d'etat:

"The events in recent days in Oaxaca mark the largest mass arrest in Mexico since May 3 and 4, when 217 citizens were detained in Atenco and nearby Texcoco, outside of Mexico City. Within days of the Atenco police raid, the first witnesses to the beatings, rapes and tortures of the detained appeared: five foreigners - journalists and human rights observers - that had been swept up by police as they documented the events in Atenco, who were kept incommunicado for various days then deported back to Barcelona, Berlin and Santiago de Chile. From them the world learned of the gang rapes and other savagery inflicted on bound and blindfolded women and men as they were taken to prison. Federal police bosses have openly scoffed at the stern recommendations by the National Human Rights Commission, a government agency, that the police brutality be investigated and punished. In that context, the secretive stance of the State regarding the Oaxaca prisoners is worrisome.

"...The PAN again jumped the gun on Tuesday. Misinterpreting the appearance on the Congressional Hall podium of a sole PRD legislator as a 'signal' that the dissident legislators were about to take the stage en mass, the PAN legislators launched a preemptive strike. This provoked the PRD legislators to follow them up there. Pushing and shoving, and more than a few fisticuffs ensued for control of the three-tiered podium. One PAN legislator pulled out a spray-can of mace, and tear-gassed a PRD legislator in the face, leading to his hospitalization. Another PAN legislator, 35-year-old Violeta Lagunes, of Puebla, was captured on film dumping soda and other liquids onto rival legislators. The melee continued throughout the day and night, with both sides vowing to hold the stage until Friday: one side to guarantee Calderón's ascent, the other to prevent it.

"...Today marks the final stretch in the eleven-month marathon that has been the Zapatista Other Campaign's listening tour of all of Mexico. Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos, who has visited every corner of the country since January 1, taking notes of the testimony of 'the simple and humble people who fight,' will make one more stop in the rural Huasteca region of the state of San Luis Potosí and soon head back to Chiapas to inform his indigenous comandantes of his findings. December will be dedicated to meetings between Other Campaign adherents to determine the next steps of what is now a truly nationwide effort to topple not just an illegitimate government but also 'the capitalist system' that it serves. At the end of the year, December 30, the Zapatistas will receive delegates from throughout the world for an international gathering in the autonomous municipal seat of Oventik, Chiapas.

"...Whether by commission or omission, Vicente Fox Queseda, who wanted so much to be known as a statesman that ended 70 years of single party dictatorship, leaves with a legacy as having been just one more bumbling repressor and looter in a long list of them. Calderón and his team, on the other hand, begin with no such transcendent illusions. They are the proud architects and heirs of the 21st Century Coup d'Etat, and payday comes on Friday."

The incoming Calderón government has hinted, by way of it's cabinet appointments, that it will be using a more heavy-handed approach than the outgoing administration when dealing with social movements such as the APPO in Oaxaca and the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

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