http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2006/07/open-letter-to-supporters-from-peter.html
To: Votecamejo@topica.com
From: "Rachel Odes" Email: rachelodes@gmail.com
Subject: CAMEJO LIST: Open Letter to Supporters from Peter Camejo
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 16:34:46 +0000
An Open Letter to Supporters from Peter Miguel Camejo
(June 16, 2006)
Dear Supporters,
In the recent June 6th California Primary, the Green Party received an amazing surprise.
Our candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction, Sarah Knopp, received the largest statewide vote EVER for a Green in California, more than a HALF MILLION VOTES (570,000, or 17.3% of the total vote). Sarah finished second, defeating the Republican-endorsed candidate and several other candidates, and missed, by just 2 percent, forcing the incumbent into a runoff. Because of this surprise, the immediate impact will be that Sarah will gain important respect within her union, the California Teachers Association, and position her to represent us on the issue of education.
In the contested Green U.S. Senate Primary, Todd Chretien was elected. We want to congratulate his two opponents for their strong showing in what turned into a real three way contest for the right to meet pro-war incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein in November.
So, now, we are putting together a very strong team to build our gubernatorial campaign and our Million Votes for Peace statewide slate.
A GIANT AWAKENS
As we move past the Primary one factor is going to help us get an increased hearing for our platform: The new mass civil rights movement that has awoken in the Latino community.
On May 1, 2006 we had the largest demonstrations in the history of the United States. These demonstrations were of working people, many of them among the poorest people in our nation. They were organized in most cases by grass roots formations. In some areas Greens are participating in the broad coalitions that helped organize the mass rallies. At the rally in San Francisco that had at least one hundred thousand participants, I spoke as well as Greens Matt Gonzalez and Todd Chretien.
In Los Angeles, at a rally of possibly a half million or more, Nativo Lopez, President of the Mexican American Political Association and an out spoken Green and strong supporter of Todd’s campaign and mine, not only addressed the crowd, but has emerged as one of the key leaders of
this new movement nationally. Sarah Knopp, our surprise candidate, was also a guest speaker, and helped lead the March 25th coalition. When I spoke at the rally in San Francisco, I listed some of the key points in my campaign. And near the end of my presentation, I talked about the case of Santos Reyes, who is doing 26 years to life in prison for cheating on a DMV test. I asked the immense crowd to raise their hand to ask the Governor to free Santos Reyes. The response was massive with shouts as their hands rose. I then called out “not one hand let us raise both hands!” A roar broke out as people spontaneously raised both hands and shouted “libertad, libertad, libertad for Santos.” My speech was all in Spanish. When I finished we played a short message from Santos Reyes.
It is an interesting fact that the Green Party - in the middle of this massive new battle around the issue of immigration - has the only Latino and Spanish speaking candidate for governor. And, it opens up a great opportunity because we support a policy of full legalization, which is what the majority in the Latino community wants. The Republicans want criminalzation, discrimination and deportation, and the Democrats want an apartheid system of guest workers under separate and exploitive laws that will include deportations, work in only minimum wage jobs along with various denials of human rights.
While many will want to vote for us they will feel the pressure to accept voting against what they believe in because of our spoiler system winner take all with no run off. For people originally from Mexico this can be a shock because this conflict does not exist in their country where proportional representation is used.
We cannot be sure what our vote in the Latino Community will be. It was only 1% in 1998. With my first campaign as a Latino it rose to 8% in 2002 and then dropped to 5% in 2003 (in 2003 Cruz Bustamante, a Latino, was the Democratic gubernatorial candidate and yet we still retained a
5% support level.) If we can effectively reach out this year it is possible we could receive a very positive response from the Latino community.
NEW BOOK ‘CALIFORNIA UNDER CORPORATE RULE’ AVAILABLE
Our new book, “California Under Corporate Rule,” is now out. At our very first meeting with the book 25 copies were sold to an audience of 40. In Los Angeles at a meeting sponsored by the ACLU and some unions we sold about 25 copies to audience of about 100. Having a book that outlines in some details many of the major issues of our campaign in a popularized style will enhance the impact of the campaign and win new supporters to our party. We will use the book as a way to promote the campaign.
PHIL ANGELIDES BORROWS FROM US
As the primary campaign ends some of the points I have raised now in three campaigns for governor are being picked up by Phil Angelides. He is even using virtually the same words I have used for a fair tax. He refers to having people “pay their fair share. “ We should be glad to see this happen. It is troubling, however, that he ran a TV ad saying he is the only gubernatorial candidate calling for taxing the rich and corporations.
However, and most importantly, the impact of our focus to expose theregressive nature of taxation and how easy it is to fix our budget is finally being accepted to some extent.
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* THIS LETTER IS TOO LONG - BUT, PLEASE READ ON *
I know this letter is much too long, but permit me, on the following pages, to provide you a feel of the kind of issues we are going to raise from now to November by outlining what the Dems and Reps have done to California and what we would do.
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WHAT THE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS
HAVE DONE TO CALIFORNIA
§ California is the 48th state in school test scores!
§ California is next to last 49th having the largest class size.
§ California spends 600 dollars per student less than the national average. It used to spend 600 dollars more!
§ One percent of Californians has more income than sixty percent and the lowest State and local tax rate!
§ California taxes the bottom 20 percent at a 57 percent higher rate than the top 1 percent!
§ Taxes on California’s corporations have dropped 40 percent in the last 20 years.
§ Fifty two percent of all profitable corporations pay no taxes!
§ For 35 years 90 percent of Californians have had no inflation-adjusted increase in pay!
§ The poorest have had the minimum wage cut from $9.40 (in today’s dollars) an hour in 1968 to the present level of $6.75!
§ In 2005 the non partisan Government Performance Project rated California as the worst state, tied with lowly Alabama.
§ California is dead last in the ratio of counselors to students.
§ California is dead last in the ratio of librarians to students. The average is 1 per 900 in the country. In California it is 1 per 4,800!
§ California is dead last in traffic congestion and 48th on road conditions.
§ California is the 49th state in home ownership!
§ The State limits at 1/2 percent the amount of energy that can be generated from solar.
ALL THIS HAPPENED WHILE OUR ECONOMY MORE THAN DOUBLED!
The people of California have the right to know the truth and the real solutions to what is happening in their state and what we would do.
AS GOVERNOR, THIS IS WHAT I WOULD DO:
§ Establish a fair tax where the richest - those earning 200,000 or more a year (about 5 percent) - would pay the same tax rate the poorest people pay, INCREASING the state income $10 billion a year.
§ Bring universal health care to California by establishing single payer care as outlined in Senator Sheila Kuehl’s legislation, SB 840. According to the Lewin Report, single payer healthcare will SAVE the public $7.8 billion the first year and $343 billion in 10 years.
§ Raise the minimum wage to at least what it was in 1968, $9.40 an hour (in today’s dollars), INCREASING the state income $3 billion a year.
§ Return corporate taxes to what they were 20 years ago, INCREASING state income $5 billion a year.
§ Stop tax fraud and close loop holes for corporate and the rich, INCREASING state income $7 billion a year (based on IRS estimates; see our book on California).
WITH THESE EXTRA FUNDS AMONG THINGS I WOULD DO ARE:
§ Cut taxes on the bottom 60 percent of our people by $4 billion a year.
§ Make a zero tax revenue shift in property taxes by lowering homeowner taxes and increase Prop. 13 under valued corporate properties. We willgrandfather people over 55 so they can move without any increase in their homeowner taxes.
§ Begin emergency improvement of our levees and other projects, but also launch a 2 year study by a non-partisan group of professionals, labor, business, environmentalists and NGOs to develop a comprehensive, long-term 25 year infrastructure plan with mass transportation for
California.
Estimated cost: $4 billion a year.
§ Launch a crash program for alternative energy, including developing new technologies with an annual state subsidy of $3 billion, 13 times what is proposed by the Dems and Reps at present.
§ Establish assumable home equity loans to finance solar energy. Eliminate any limit on the amount of solar energy California can have. The cost for doing this is zero.
§ Launch a program for more affordable housing. Cost of $2 billion per year.
§ Develop a program like New Zealand, which has produced nearly 100 percent home ownership by helping with the down payment for first time home buyers. Zero impact on budget. Funding can be maintained by a rotating revenue municipal serial bond.
§ Increase allocation for education up to $8 billion a year, while cutting the number of over paid administrators. Shift allocation to teachers to what it was more than 40 years ago. That increases what goes to pay teachers and improving our school buildings and reducing class size.
OTHER OBJECTIVES
Even with all of these achievements, we would still have about $4 billion a year left over to build a reserve fund for emergencies in the state of California, to pay off debts and to fully-fund our pension funds, and also put forth the following objectives that are necessary to
benefit all of the people of our state:
§ Oppose the continued illegal, needless and counter productive war and occupation in Iraq. Bring our National Guard troops home.
§ Stop cutting our ancient forests.
§ Establish public funding of elections.
§ Establish IRV (instant run off voting) and proportional representation.
§ Abolish the death penalty and three strikes.
§ Review all cases of prisoners serving life sentences for minor nonviolent crimes with the intent to free them.
§ Free Santos Reyes who is serving 26 years to life for cheating on a DMV test.
§ Protect our bill of rights, the right to religion, assembly and petition and defend the first, fourth, and eighth amendment of our federal constitution openly violated today by the Democrats and Republicans.
§ End racial profiling. Protect the rights of our Muslim community.
§ Protect women’s right to choose. Promote contraception and safe sex in our educational system and to the public.
§ Maintain the constitutional separation of church and state. Govern based on facts not faith.
§ Assure equality for all including the right to marriage for gays and lesbians.
§ Reform our pension laws to protect the rights of shareholders. That is democratizing our pension funds. Prevent corporate management abuses or political raids of our pensions. Surpluses must be saved to protect future obligations.
§ Protect the right of labor to unionize. End apartheid policies for all working people in California. Establish driver licenses and full legal rights of labor laws for all working people living in California.
§ Reform our immigration policies, legalize those already here and fight to set a legalized immigration level from Mexico of one person per hundred Californians every four years. End the “Exclude Mexicans” laws perpetrated by the Democratic and Republican parties.
WONDERFUL NEWS
This campaign is underway while some major events are putting wind behind our sails in California, nationally and internationally. So often our movement is informing you of terrible things that are happening and asking for your support in our efforts to stop, or at least protest,
these events.
This letter is asking you to support our campaign because of the many new developments both here and abroad that are amazing and wonderful.
From Venezuela to Argentina, Progressives Are On the Rise.
Latin America is seeing a shift to more progressive candidates. In country after country, the people are rejecting the usual two parties sponsored by corporations in favor of new forces challenging them in the name of the people. It is inevitable that this new wave of progressivism, something unseen for over thirty years, will begin to have an impact inside the United States.
Americans Now Oppose the War in Iraq
Recent polls show the majority of Americans have now joined the world and oppose the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Suddenly, on the single most important issue of the 2006 elections, the Green Party - and not the Democratic or Republican parties - stands with the majority in our nation against the two pro-war corporate parties.
Democratic Party VS Rank and File
The Democrats in the Congress and Senate gave George Bush 28 standing ovations at the state of the union address, but the rank and file of the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly disenchanted. Polls are showing an overwhelming majority do not trust the two major parties,
favor some form of universal health care, want a moratorium on the death penalty and in many other ways are open to the platform of the Green Party.
Cindy Sheehan and Barbara Becnel
Cindy Sheehan has stated publicly that she voted for Kerry and now believes it was a mistake. As a Democrat she refuses to vote for her party’s candidates if they continue to support the war in Iraq. Because of this she has urged people in California to look at Todd Chretien’s Green Party campaign for U.S. Senate instead of Diane Feinstein.
One of the most amazing and wonderful new developments was the gubernatorial campaign in the Democratic Party primary of an African American woman, Barbara Becnel. A central leader of the anti-death penalty movement, she has publicly stated that she will not vote for a
candidate or Party that is for the death penalty.
The majority of rank and file Democrats agree with Barbara Becnel on issue after issue. Her campaign brought together a small but symbolic rebellion within the ranks of the Democratic Party. We extend our hand in solidarity to Barbara and Cindy, two women who are changing America on many issues, in part by introducing the very principle upon which the Green Party is founded: Vote for what you believe in. Stop voting against yourself!!
THE GREEN PARTY MUST ACT NOW
We must build a party which truly reflects the values of the rapidly growing number of people who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party.
This year is a critical moment to have the most effective Green Party campaign possible for Governor and all the other statewide races. We have a tremendous slate of candidates. In addition to my campaign for Governor and Todd Chretien’s campaign for U.S., the slate includes Donna
Warren, Lieutenant Governor; Forrest Hill, Secretary of State; Mike Wyman, Attorney General; Larry Cafiero, Insurance Commissioner and Mehul Thakker, Treasurer. We need to reach out to people alienated by the corporate-run parties and help them to join us and build the Green Party.
CAN WE GET A HEARING IN 2006?
The televised debates are a primary focus of our campaign
Our campaign will have a real impact in California especially if I can get in the debates again. Your assistance will make it possible to hire staff and produce materials to mount the kind of effort that will help me get invited to those debates. We need that help now. It is quite possible because of my name recognition and previous participation I can make it into the televised debates and get the truth to millions of voters.
WE’RE LAUNCHING A PAID TELEVISION CAMPAIGN!
In an effort to increase my visibility, increase the chances of being invited to the debates and generally expose the Green Party platform to the general public, we are planning to LAUNCH A TELEVISION CAMPAIGN - the first such campaign in the history of the Green Party. According to our communication director, this campaign will give us a level of exposure to propel my candidacy dramatically forward.
We need your help to make this special program work. We are asking supporters to donate $500 (or more, the maximum donation is $22,300) to a SPECIAL FUND reserved just for television ads. Mark on your check “TV Ads” and it will be used only for this.
We are at a turning point with a great potential to win new members among Latinos, African Americans, youth and working people that can begin to transform us into a party of the people. With Donna Warren for Lt. Governor as my running mate, our campaign will have a Latino and an African American leading our slate, and I am convinced this can win us many new supporters.
Finally, I am running to help all our Green candidates throughout California from the governor’s race to local city council races. As mentioned with assistance from some of the 2006 slate of Greens for statewide office, I have prepared a book entitled CALIFORNIA with a sub-title “Under Corporate Rule.”The book outlines the basic facts, statistics and issues about the state of California, as well as offering SOLUTIONS that will help our candidates in their campaigns.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
To do all of this work we need your help. We need volunteers who will table, hand out leaflets, and make telephone calls. We need you to put a bumper sticker on your car, sign in your yard and help set up local campaign committees in your community or work place.
To organize an effective statewide campaign that will assist our local candidates and win the minds and hearts of thousands if not millions to our party does not take much money. But we do need financial help. We need to print our basic materials, develop our web sites and have a small staff to coordinate volunteers. Compare our expenditures to the millions spent by Schwarzenegger and the leading Democrats, and you will see how modest the cost of an effective, non-corporate, grassroots Green campaign can be. A test fundraising letter in April resulted in an average $100 contribution to our progressive campaign. If you possibly can afford it please match that. Depending on the size of your donation, we’ll send you a free copy of “California” ($14.95 on Amazon.com) and several other books. (See details below).
Please Help Fund A Million Votes for Peace
Because of the spread between the two corporate candidates in the Senate race against Diane Feinstein, there is little to no spoiler issue. So, it is quite possible that the largest vote ever for a Green in a state race will be registered in November. We believe we can achieve a million votes for peace for Todd Chretien in the Senate race. We are calling our statewide Green Party 2006 campaign the MVP (Million Votes for Peace)campaign.
As I have previously stated this is the last time I will run for office. I want to make this the best and most successful campaign our Party has ever had. I see many new young candidates developing into the future representatives of our party such, including Aimee Allison in Oakland, Gayle McLaughlin in Richmond, Renee Saucedo in San Francisco, Pat Gray in San Mateo and let’s not forget Matt Gonzalez as well as many, many others.
We are about to make history. A million votes for Todd will be international news. It will give people new courage to organize and fight for peace.
Si Se Puede
This appeal letter is going out to more than 5,000 of our supporters who have contributed in the past. The maximum donation allowed by law is $22,000 per person. But if we could average just $100 per supporter, and receive an above normal contribution rate it would give us the funding
we need.
Please join us in making a pledge to give now or help raise $100 or more for our campaign. Any size donation is welcome. I thank you for your previous support and for joining us in our efforts in 2006.
In Solidarity,
Peter Miguel Camejo
P.S. We have three FREE books we will send you for free depending on your contribution. For a $25 contribution you will receive the book “CALIFORNIA.” For $100 you will also receive “DARE TO HOPE,” a book written by Jason West, the 28 year old Green Party mayor of New Paltz, New York who led the battle for Gay Marriage on the East Coast. And for contributions of $150 or more, you will receive a third book entitled “INDEPENDENT POLITICS THE GREEN PARTY STRATEGIC DEBATE,” providing documents and discussion pieces of the internal debate with in the Green Party.
P.P.S. Please check our website – www.VoteCamejo.com – for news and updates, as well as information on how you can join the campaign by donating, volunteering, hosting events, or just putting a bumper sticker on your car. Thank you.
Paid for by Camejo for Governor
FPPC #1281665
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This email was sent to: sacranative@yahoo.com
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http://www.votecamejo.com/index.html
Camejo's Five Point Plan
Peter Miguel Camejo has presented a five point plan to increase the state of California’s revenues by 32.6 billion dollars a year while lowering taxes for 60% of our people.
He will ask Steve Westly, Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barbara Becnel for a one to one meeting to urge them to support his plan that makes it possible to solve all the major issues of our state, improve education, stop all cut backs of needed social programs, plan and rebuild our infrastructure, start a massive march for alternative energy and to lower the excessive taxes on the average citizen.
Here is the plan:
FIVE POINT PROGRAM TO INCREASE REVENUES BY 32 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR
1. THE RICHEST 5% SHOULD PAY THE SAME TAX RATE THE POOREST 20% PAY. ADDS 10 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.
2. ESTABLISH SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. ADDS 7.6 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR*
3. STOP ALL LOOP HOLES AND TAX FRAUD. ADDS 7 BILLION A YEAR.
4. RETURN CORPORATE TAXES TO WHAT THEY WERE 20 YEARS AGO. ADDS 5 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.
5. RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE TO WHAT IT WAS IN 1968. ADDS 3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.
THIS FIVE POINT PROGRAM ADDS 25 BILLION DOLLARS TO OUR BUDGET IN CALIFORNIA.
*Savings for individual Californians, not in the budget (Lewin Study)
Click here for a more detailed explanation of the plan.
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http://www.votecamejo.com/contact.html
Contact
Our mailing address is:
Camejo for Governor
1710 Broadway #122
Sacramento CA 95818
Our phone number is:
1 (888) LEAVEIRAQ or 1 (888) 532-8347
Our email is:
info@votecamejo.com
Please call Cres Vellucci, press secretary, at (916) 996-9170 to request interviews with Peter Camejo.
More Emails:
votecamejo@topica.com
rachelodes@gmail.com
If you have questions or corrections for the website, please email Mitchell Smith at:
websmith2006@aol.com
c/s
Monday, July 03, 2006
07-03-2006 AM News Report:
Mexico’s Close Presidential Election
http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2006/07/07-03-2006-am-news-reportmexicos-close.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/world/americas/03elect.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
July 3, 2006: On a Peaceful Election Day Across Mexico, Growing Signs of a Maturing Democracy
By GINGER THOMPSON
MEXICO CITY, July 2 — If Mexico is a young democracy, it looked much older than its age during the uncertain presidential elections on Sunday.
Thousands of striking teachers in the southern state of Oaxaca postponed their protests to leave the polling places clear for voters. Subcommander Marcos, the ski-masked leader of the Zapatista rebels who was at the front of machete-wielding mobs just one month ago, led a peaceful march through Mexico City.
The government's Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, welcomed hundreds of observers from all over the world. The authorities estimated that more than two-thirds of registered voters would show up at the polls. And at polling places that once were scenes of huge voter fraud and intimidation, voting passed without serious disruptions or complaints. And at the end of the night, when President Vicente Fox went on national television to explain that the race was too close to call, a nation gripped by suspense and leery of dirty tricks remained calm.
"I know there is no Mexican who wants to go against democracy," Mr. Fox said after casting his ballot on Sunday. "And for that, I offer recognition to the people of Mexico who have known how to consolidate this democracy, to give it strength."
In 2000, Mr. Fox broke through the old system of fraud to become the first presidential candidate in 71 years to oust the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Robert Pastor, a Latin America expert at American University, who has observed Mexican elections for 20 years and once helped this country come up with mechanisms for cleaning out corruption, said the situation had changed.
"Mexico created an institution a decade ago which in many ways is one of the most sophisticated in the world today," Mr. Pastor said, referring to the IFE. "They have done so much to prevent fraud, implemented all kinds of safeguards, none of which we have in the United States."
On upscale boulevards and in gritty housing projects across Mexico City, voting was a family affair. Parents filled out ballots and children stuffed them into the boxes. Voters banded together to carry elderly people who showed up in wheelchairs. When a poll worker in Polanco announced it was his mother's birthday, the whole place joined together to sing to her.
That, however, was where the affinity among voters ended.
Well-to-do voters typically said they had cast ballots for the pro-business conservative Felipe Calderón, while voters in poorer districts said they voted for the leftist populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. José María Morera, 52, said he had decided to vote for Mr. Calderón because he worried that Mr. López Obrador "creates a situation of conflict between the social classes."
"He seems cynical, arrogant, uncultured, with no political skills," Mr. Morera said. "I do not think he's honorable."
That was not what Cuitlahuac Herrera Nolasco, a resident of Ixtapalapa, a working-class section of Mexico City, thought. "López Obrador is the only one who has shown, with acts, that he knows how to govern," Mr. Herrera said, referring to the former mayor of Mexico City, who is known for living in a modest apartment, driving a cheap car and building double-decker freeways. "To me he is the most honest. I like his austerity."
Middle class voters, like those in Ecatepec, a suburb north of Mexico City, seemed divided.
Georgina Martínez, 65, a former textile worker, was helped to the polls and to her political preferences by two sons, one a dentist and another who runs a small textile factory of his own.
They voted for Mr. Calderón, of the conservative National Action Party, PAN.
"I normally vote for the PRI," she said. "But after talking to my sons, I voted for the PAN."
Néstor Santoyo, a single father, said he voted for Mr. López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD.
"We have already tried the other parties," Mr. Santoyo said. "Now we will try the PRD. I hope it is better than the others."
Striking teachers in Oaxaca, which is still dominated by the PRI, took a break from their protests to rally voters to support Mr. López Obrador. The teachers had been striking for months to demand higher wages.
But after the police tried to break their protests by force last month, the teachers began to demand the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. And they have accused Mr. Fox of the National Action Party of ignoring them.
In the days before the elections, there were reports in Chiapas of PRI leaders using their old tricks to get votes. Residents in the town of Zaachila said party members handed out cement and other construction supplies in an effort to buy votes.
It was unclear whether their tactics had worked.
"The vote is ultimately secret and free," said Marta Rojas Sebastián, a lifelong resident there, "so we'll take whatever they give us and then we'll vote for whomever we want."
Antonio Betancourt and Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City for this article, and Mitch Carr from Oaxaca.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/world/americas/03cnd-mexico.html?hp&ex=1151985600&en=54a191f73704523c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Conservative's Slim Lead in Mexico Buoys Markets =July 3, 2006
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
MEXICO CITY, July 3 — The latest uncertified results in Sunday's fiercely contested Mexican presidential election show a slim lead for the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón.
Investors seized on the news and sharply bid up the prices of Mexican stocks and the value of its currency in early trading today. The Bolsa index gained more than 3 percent and the Mexican peso rose 9 percent against the dollar.
Election officials declared on Sunday that they could not immediately determine a winner, that certified results were days away, and that a recount was likely in the close race. The two front runners each declared victory anyway, setting in motion an electoral crisis.
The contest pitted Mr. Calderón, a conservative former energy minister backed by business leaders, primarily against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the firebrand leftist former mayor of Mexico City, supported mostly by the poor. A third candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco state, also received substantial support.
With 94.26 percent of the votes counted, the Federal Electoral Institute said this morning, Mr. Calderón had 36.55 percent of the count so far, and Mr. López Obrador with 35.46 percent. Mr. Madrazo trailed with 21.28 percent.
Mr. López Obrador said at a downtown hotel on Sunday that he would respect the decision of the election institute, even if he lost by one vote. Yet in the same breath, he said he was sure he had won by 500,000 votes. "This result is irreversible," he said.
Appearing before supporters a few minutes later at his party headquarters, Mr. Calderón rattled off the results of several surveys of voters as they left the polls, and the vote counts at crucial voting districts, all favoring him. "There is not the slightest doubt that we have won the election," he said.
Surveys of polling stations by election officials showed that the contest was too close to call, and they urged people to remain calm until official results could be reported.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Calderón's lead initially appeared wider, as much as three percentage points, when about 25 percent of the polling places had been counted. But as the night wore on, tension gripped the capital as it became clear that the race was razor-close.
For hours, the leading candidates remained closeted at their campaign headquarters rather than appear at the downtown hotels where they were expected to receive the results.
Luis Ugalde, the head of the Federal Electoral Institute, appeared twice on national television Sunday evening, urging the candidates and their supporters to wait for official results. President Vicente Fox also addressed the nation, pleading with voters to heed the election commission's decision. "It's the responsibility of all political actors to respect the law," he said.
But Mr. López Obrador, who critics say has an authoritarian streak, acted as if he was already the president-elect. After the electoral institute said the official results were days away, he went immediately to the historic central square, where thousands of his supporters had gathered to celebrate.
"We are going to demonstrate that we won, and they have to respect our victory," he told the crowd.
At stake in the contest is whether the country remains on a conservative track and stays a firm United States ally or joins a trend that has brought several leftists to power in Latin America in recent years, weakening Washington's influence.
"This is about the struggle between social classes," said Miguel Abel Sanchez, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, after he said he cast his vote for the leftist candidate in the rural town of San Rafael, 25 miles outside Mexico City. "We cannot live in a rich country with an enormous number of people in extreme poverty."
The election was another milestone in the country's march toward full democracy after more than seven decades of single-party, autocratic rule, which ended with the election six years ago of President Fox, who was not permitted to run for another term.
The campaign was marked by wide differences on how to handle the economy and a storm of negative advertising, as Mr. López Obrador's opponents tried to generate a high level of anxiety that his leftist populism would undo the country's democratic progress and stability.
Though Mexico has myriad problems, from rampant organized crime to environmental degradation, the election revolved around the issues of poverty and jobs, and how to close a yawning chasm between rich and poor that has sent some 10 million Mexicans north of the border in search of work since a free trade pact with the United States took hold over a decade ago.
Mr. Calderón, 43, said he would create jobs through securing more private investment and by cutting taxes. Mr. López Obrador, 52, said he would spend $20 billion on social programs and public works to jump-start the economy.
Underlying the debate was the larger issue of whether Mexico's attempt to fit into the global economy through free trade agreements had done enough to alleviate poverty. Mr. López Obrador argued that it had not and that a new economic policy to funnel more tax dollars to the poor was needed. Mr. Calderón wanted to stay the course.
Mr. López Obrador also promised to slash spending on government salaries, root out corruption and cut other waste. He attacked what he called the privileged elite in Mexico, a network of businessmen and politicians that he said for too long had evaded taxes and become rich from government contracts and the sale of state monopolies.
"There cannot be a rich government and a poor people," Mr. López Obrador said repeatedly in his campaign speeches.
Mr. Calderón warned direly that Mr. López Obrador's plan would lead to more debt and an economic collapse. He said that Mexico had to compete in the global economy and that it could triumph with his leadership. He said he would encourage more foreign investment, allow private partnerships in the state-run oil business and slash corporate taxes. "I want a winning Mexico," he said.
Mr. Madrazo, 53, carrying the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., tried to position himself in the center, promising to crack down on crime, cut taxes and provide more direct aid to the poor.
Throughout the country, from small towns to the sprawling capital, people stood patiently in line at open-air polling places, most of them little more than fold-up tables holding voter lists, ballots and cardboard ballot boxes with cellophane sides.
The line of voters in San Rafael was a panorama of Mexico: youths in shades and leather jackets, weathered farmers in white cowboy hats, sun-hardened old ladies in straw hats, small business owners in jeans, knit shirts and loafers. About two-thirds of Mexico's 71 million voters were expected to turn out.
Some said they were voting for Mr. Calderón, of President Fox's National Action Party, to give the free-trade and pro-business policies of the government more time to work. Mr. Fox made history in 2000 when he defeated the P.R.I., but most of the reforms he promised ran aground in Congress.
"In 6 years, you cannot undo what other people have done over 70 years," said Arturo Garcia, a 49-year-old tortilla maker. "Fox was tied up by the Congress."
Some left-wing fringe groups boycotted the election. On Sunday morning, Subcommander Marcos, the masked leader of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, marched down Reforma Avenue, the spine of Mexico City, with a few thousand supporters, heaping scorn on all the political parties. Some danced in the street and waved Communist flags.
This race was the first modern election in Mexico in which all three major candidates received equal coverage from the media and waged an American-style battle of advertisements on radio and television, from inspirational spots promising more jobs to clever mudslinging attacks.
Mexicans learned the pitfalls and advantages of negative advertising, as all sides delivered broadsides. Mr. Calderón's camp tried to paint Mr. López Obrador as a dangerous leftist and a closet dictator who would bankrupt the country with welfare programs.
Mr. López Obrador portrayed Mr. Calderón as a member of the ruling elite that has enjoyed what he called "privileges" in Mexico for centuries — government sinecures, sweetheart contracts and low taxes.
All three major candidates refrained from bashing the United States or making naked appeals to nationalism, which used to be a mainstay in political campaigns here. Though Mr. Calderón and Mr. Madrazo said they would be tough on crime, none of the candidates said how they would address the gangland war among drug dealers that has claimed hundreds of lives over the last year.
Neither did any of the candidates offer new solutions to illegal immigration, beyond saying the key was to create more jobs in Mexico, rather than to step up security along the border.
Until January, Mr. López Obrador had been leading all other candidates in most polls. An attempt to knock him off the ballot because his administration had ignored a court order backfired, as he mounted huge marches and rallies in his support. The more his political opponents tried to disqualify him from running, the more his popularity rose. Eventually Mr. Fox's prosecutors dropped the charges, as polls showed Mr. López Obrador with 40 percent of the vote.
But Mr. López Obrador stumbled in February when he attacked President Fox for using the bully pulpit of his office to campaign for Mr. Calderón. The leftist accused Mr. Fox of meddling in the election, compared him to a twittering tropical bird called a "chachalaca" and rudely told him to "shut up."
The comment did not sit well with many Mexicans, who revere the presidency, if not the president. Mr. Calderón's campaign pounced on the comment, running ads showing Hugo Chávez, the leader of Venezuela, insulting Mr. Fox side by side with Mr. López Obrador's rant. The Calderón campaign also began calling Mr. López Obrador "intolerant" and "a danger to Mexico."
Mr. López Obrador made a second mistake when he decided to skip the first presidential debate in early April. Mr. Calderon, a Harvard-trained economist, looked the part of a president, sounded well-informed and shot ahead in preference polls.
During the last three weeks of the campaign, Mr. López Obrador was hit with a blizzard of attack ads. Business leaders paid for spots that again used the image of President Chávez of Venezuela to scare voters, saying "Mexico doesn't need a dictator to come out ahead."
Other spots said voting for Mr. López Obrador was equivalent to voting for another economic crisis, like those of 1995 and 1982, in which Mexicans lost most of their savings as the value of the peso plummeted.
Mr. López Obrador struck back, calling his detractors in the business world "white-collar criminals" who used their links to politicians to make money. He also kept up the invective against the "privileges" of the rich, arguing they do not pay taxes and charging the current government was "a committee at the service of a minority."
In his final rally, however, Mr. López Obrador, apparently worried about the attacks, softened his rhetoric and took pains to say he would a careful steward of the economy. "We are not going to act irresponsibly," he said. "We're not going to provoke a crisis."
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070306Z.shtml
Confusion Grips Mexico Election
By Héctor Tobar / The Los Angeles Times
Monday 03 July 2006
Both leading candidates claim victory, but officials say they won't sort things out until Wednesday. One camp alleges fraud, and the president calls for calm.
Mexico City - Mexico's presidential vote was thrown into turmoil late Sunday, with both leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon claiming victory as election officials announced that the two men were separated by a razor-thin margin.
The Federal Election Institute said the result would not be known until Wednesday and that the margin between the two leading candidates would probably be less than a percentage point.
Electoral institute President Luis Carlos Ugalde announced that a "quick count" based on a sample of the votes from about 7% of the precincts had produced a result within the margin of error. Only a full count of the more than 40 million estimated votes could determine the winner, he said.
Lopez Obrador nonetheless announced victory, soon followed by Calderon. Both said late Sunday that their own data showed them winning.
The leftist candidate told supporters late Sunday that the government wanted to cheat him out of a larger victory. "I want to inform the people of Mexico that according to our calculations we have won the presidency," Lopez Obrador said. The final difference, he said, would be 500,000 votes.
Calderon appeared moments later, to say that numerous private exit polls showed he would win. "Today the trends announced by several firms … show that we have won the presidential elections," he said.
Lopez Obrador supporters gathered in the Zocalo, this city's central square, and shouted, "Fraud! Fraud!" Calderon backers at his National Action Party headquarters chanted, "We did it! We did it."
President Vicente Fox called for calm.
"The citizens can have the full certainty, the confidence, that all the votes will be counted and respected," Fox said in a nationally televised address moments after election officials announced their finding.
Early this morning, with 66% of polling stations counted, Calderon's ever-narrowing margin over Lopez Obrador had fallen to 1.2 percentage points.
In the coming days, the muddied result is sure to provide a stern test for Mexico's democratic institutions, which are still struggling to emerge from a long history of corruption and authoritarianism.
Lopez Obrador's statements seemed to play to the worst fears of his supporters, who have long seen themselves as victims of political shenanigans.
"It's difficult to see the elections be manipulated," said Veronica Martinez, who had gathered with a crowd to celebrate what they believed was a Lopez Obrador victory. "This seems like something out of the past."
The election was seen by many as a referendum on the open-market policies embraced by Fox. Dozens of labor unions and leftist groups supported Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was expected to finish a distant third. His party, which monopolized power for 71 years, faced the prospect of becoming the smallest bloc in Congress.
More than 40 million people, or about 60% of the electorate, are believed to have cast ballots, according to the Federal Election Institute. More than 130,000 polling places had been set up, from within yards of the U.S. border in Tijuana, to Indian villages in Chiapas.
The campaign was one of the most acrimonious in Mexican history, with the three leading candidates spending millions on television and radio commercials attacking their opponents.
"I have to vote because it's a duty," said Cleofas Chavez Rodriguez, a 66-year-old resident of San Salvador Atenco, just outside of this capital city. "Of the three, none of them convinced me because they attacked each other so much."
Calderon, 43, ran as the candidate who would best continue economic policies initiated by Fox, who is limited by the constitution to a single, six-year term.
Lopez Obrador, 52, the charismatic former mayor of Mexico City, held a slight lead in most polls. He promised to expand subsidies to the needy and to stimulate the economy with public works projects and reductions in fuel prices.
The campaign slogan of Lopez Obrador's leftist coalition was a succinct, populist message: "For the Good of Everyone, the Poor First."
"We agree a lot with Lopez Obrador because he fights for the poor and the marginalized," said Manuel de Jesus De Lucio, a 50-year-old farmer who cast his vote in a polling booth in an open field in Mexico state.
If Lopez Obrador wins, Mexico would become the latest in a series of Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Chile, to elect left-of-center presidents in recent years.
Lopez Obrador promised to renegotiate certain provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement that opened Mexican markets to U.S. and Canadian imports, and his victory could dramatically alter this country's relationship with the U.S.
Nationwide, only eight polling places failed to open, the best performance ever by Mexico's electoral system, officials said.
Business student Antonio Santiago, 24, was voting for the first time. "I'm voting so that there's democracy," Santiago said at a polling place just outside Mexico City. "So that democracy lives on."
Sunday's vote was also to elect a new Congress — 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 in the Senate.
No party holds a majority in either house, a state of affairs expected to remain unchanged after Sunday's vote.
Exit polls agreed that the PRI would fall from the being the largest to the third-largest party in Congress. Early results showed the PRI, for the first time in its history, would not carry a single state in the presidential election.
"The collapse of the PRI is one of the big stories of the night," said Pamela Starr of the Eurasia Group, a risk analysis firm. "It's much larger than we expected."
There were some scattered allegations of the kinds of voting irregularities that were common in Mexico's recent past. PRD officials reported that two party activists were killed in the southern state of Guerrero, in a Pacific Coast region beset by drug violence. Election officials said later the killings appeared to be the result of an attempted robbery.
Mexican citizens living in the U.S. were turned away by the hundreds after crossing the border to vote at special polling places that were allocated only 750 ballots each, news services reported.
In Oaxaca, groups of striking teachers surrounded a police station, alleging that officers inside had stacks of ballots pre-marked with votes for the candidates backed by PRI Gov. Ulises Ruiz, news agencies reported. For weeks, teachers have led a protest movement against Ruiz.
The most common complaint was one voiced by voters in many Mexico City neighborhoods: lines outside polling places stretched for blocks.
"I've been here for more than an hour, and I haven't advanced one meter," said Raul Cordero Lopez, a 42-year-old engineer, as he stood in a line with hundreds of voters in southern Mexico City. "It's totally disorganized. The poll workers got here late."
The new president will take the oath of office Dec. 1. Whoever is elected will have to deal with many of the political challenges faced by Fox, who proved unable to pass many legislative proposals, including a tax overhaul.
Since 2003, when he held a referendum in which Mexico City residents voted overwhelming to keep him in office, Lopez Obrador has been widely considered to be the favorite in the presidential race. But he had to fight off an effort last year to have him impeached, which also would have prevented him from running for president.
The Fox administration sought to prosecute Lopez Obrador on an obscure charge related to the construction of a local hospital. Congress impeached him, stripping him of his immunity.
But the charges were dropped after hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Mexico City. Lopez Obrador returned to office and his popularity soared.
Calderon, a former energy secretary under Fox who won his party's nomination in October, trailed Lopez Obrador until March, when he launched what was arguably the most sophisticated media campaign Mexican politics has seen.
In more than a dozen commercials, the Calderon campaign portrayed Lopez Obrador as a demagogue and spendthrift who would bring back the hyperinflation and dramatic currency devaluations of the 1980s and early 1990s.
On Sunday, many Calderon supporters echoed those arguments. "I hope Felipe Calderon wins because he will give more stability and security to all of those who want to live in a country that has prosperity, without any crisis," said Linda Claussen, a 39-year-old restaurant owner here. "I think Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico."
By April, Calderon surged into a narrow lead in most polls.
But Lopez Obrador revived his campaign with allegations of corruption against a firm owned by Calderon's brother-in-law. Calderon denied the charges.
The controversy helped propel the former mayor back into the lead in most polls.
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Times staff writers Sam Enriquez, Richard Boudreaux, Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20060703/ts_nm/mexico_election_dc_23
Mexico conservative claims win By Kieran Murray
47 minutes ago
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon declared victory on Monday in a bitterly contested election and official returns appeared to show his leftist rival could no longer catch him.
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Calderon said his lead was now "irreversible" because he had an advantage of almost 400,000 votes over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, with results in from 96 percent of polling stations.
"There is an irreversible result and it is in my favor," a confident Calderon of the ruling National Action Party said in a television interview. "The result gives me a very clear victory that cannot be reversed."
A Calderon victory would ensure Mexico sticks to the free-market policies of outgoing President Vicente Fox and hold steady as a U.S. ally, bucking a trend of Latin American nations who have turned to the left and away from Washington in recent years.
Lopez Obrador said on Sunday night he won the election by 500,000 votes and would insist that his victory be respected in an official recount but he appeared more open to a possible defeat on Monday.
"If in the count we conduct, it turns out the final result does not favor us, I am going to abide by the result," he said. However, he added, "We are going to defend the will of the people if it favors us."
The official returns and Lopez Obrador's softer tone reduced the risk of a major political crisis of a contested election, and Mexico's financial markets jumped on a wave of investor optimism.
Legislative election results from Sunday showed Calderon's party made major gains and would be the largest single party in the next Congress, although it fell short of a majority.
The stock market jumped 4.5 percent in early trade and Mexico's peso currency rose 1.5 percent.
Mexico's top election official said late on Sunday the race was too close to declare a winner and a recount was needed, but Calderon insisted that was no longer necessary.
With returns in from 96.3 percent of polling stations, the conservative had 36.4 percent support, 1 percentage point ahead of his rival. Lopez Obrador would have to see a dramatic swing in the remaining polling stations to catch up.
If the Federal Electoral Institute goes ahead with a recount, however, it could be days before a final vote count is in.
Some fear that delay and a combative Lopez Obrador could push Mexico toward political deadlock, street protests and volatility in financial markets.
Unrest would also worry the United States, which relies on Mexican help in securing its borders and tackling immigration and violent drug smuggling gangs.
FOUL PLAY?
The U.S. government took a cautious attitude on Monday, preferring to wait for the official final results.
"We note that the final results are still not available," said Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. "We along with the Mexican people look forward to the announcement of the results."
Lopez Obrador supporters, remembering a 1988 presidential election widely believed to have been stolen from another left-wing candidate, claimed foul play.
"They are up to their tricks because everyone knows Andres Manuel won," Gabriela Ramirez, a Mexico City student, said late on Sunday night.
Critics of Lopez Obrador, a feisty and austere figure who pledged to put Mexico's poor first if elected, said the close race played into his hands and that he was looking for an excuse to mobilize supporters and cause trouble.
"Now if he loses, he can say the rich guys stole it from us. It could lead to chaos," real estate agent Victor Perera said at an upscale Mexico City neighborhood restaurant.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-twomexicos2jul02,1,7264570.story?coll=la-headlines-world
ELECTION IN MEXICO
Divergent Visions for a Divided Nation
The two front-runners in Mexico's presidential race have built support bases that are split along economic, regional and social lines.
By Héctor Tobar, Times Staff Writer
July 2, 2006
MEXICO CITY — When car salesman Alejandro Alcantar looks at the Mexican business world, he sees a new U.S.-style order and efficiency. Interest rates are relatively low. More Mexicans bought new cars last year than ever before. Salesmen are learning about a newfangled idea called "customer service."
Corn farmer Antelmo Bahena feels like his rural world is collapsing around him. He can barely eke out a living on the three acres he rents south of Mexico City. When he can't afford basic things such as medicine, he blames the corn from Nebraska that's showing up in the local tortilla factories.
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The divergent fortunes of the two men reflect a great economic, regional and cultural divide here. In many ways, Mexico has become two countries. And when Mexicans go to the polls today to pick their new president, one side's idea of how Mexico should work will triumph over the other.
Caught, as always, between the United States and the rest of Latin America, Mexico will choose between one candidate who is U.S.-educated and one who isn't. They will pick between a politician who embraces U.S.-style media campaigning and one who leads a mass movement with roots in Latin American radicalism.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon even claim their strongest bases of support on opposite ends of the country: Lopez Obrador in southern states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca, Calderon in northern border states such as Durango and Nuevo Leon.
The candidates' economic proposals are as similar as those of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"We are in favor of modernization, but built from the ground up and for everyone," Lopez Obrador told supporters last week at his final campaign rally. He proposed increases in public spending and government subsidies. "The government I lead will always be guided by the principle: 'For the good of everyone, first the poor.' "
At his own closing rally, Calderon promised to continue the policies of outgoing President Vicente Fox. "We will guarantee policies that attract investment, that will create businesses big and small, which will create the jobs we Mexicans need."
The election of a president will determine whether Mexico continues on a path for the developing world that was laid down in the 1980s by conservative U.S. economists. Fox, who is precluded from seeking reelection, embraced the fundamentals of the neoliberal model: fiscal discipline, open markets and low taxes.
Fox's policies have brought unprecedented stability, enabling millions to secure home and car loans for the first time.
But the same policies also produced anemic rates of growth: An estimated 4 million Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search of work during the six years of Fox's term.
"You've always had a poor distribution of income in Mexico," said Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy research in Washington. "What's changed is that the growth levels of the economy have become so low. You can't pull people out of poverty without economic growth."
Frustrated by their struggles to make a living, millions of poor people are backing Lopez Obrador.
"You go to the grain buyers to sell your product, and sometimes they don't even pay you right away," said Bahena, the corn farmer. He rents farmland in the state of Morelos for $175 a year and barely makes enough money to pay for fertilizer and other costs.
The poverty, which causes so many Morelos residents to migrate to the U.S., is also causing a breakdown of social mores, he said. "The fathers leave to work on the other side, and the mothers are left alone and can't control their sons and daughters."
When the leftist Democratic Revolution Party came to his town to pitch for Lopez Obrador, Bahena listened intently.
Congressional candidate Julian Vences told a story people repeat here again and again. He had seen yellow corn — unmistakably from the U.S. because the local variety is white — in a local grain deposit and tortilla factory.
"Thanks to the [North American] Free Trade Agreement, it's become a rare thing to go to a tortilleria that sells us tortillas made of white corn," Vences said. "That's why Lopez Obrador wants to renegotiate that treaty."
First signed by the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico in 1994, the treaty created a mechanism that has gradually eliminated many trade barriers among the countries. A provision eliminating the remaining tariffs on U.S. corn and beans sold in Mexico will go into effect in 2008.
Most of the country's economic elite, and a big chunk of its middle class, is supporting Calderon. They back him in large measure because they remember the bad old days of high inflation and an unstable Mexican peso, a period that stretched, on and off, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.
"It was almost impossible to get credit," said car salesman Alcantar, 46. "You had to get a guarantor who would assume the debt if you couldn't pay." Most people who bought cars did so with cash saved over years.
Consumers didn't have many choices when it came to cars — or for many other commodities. "Before, there were just five kinds of cars available here in Mexico," Alcantar said. "When you walked into a dealership, you had to wait forever for a salesman to help you.
"Now we have literally a thousand different choices," Alcantar said. In the new Mexico, salesmen jump to their feet when they see a client, he added.
In the final days before the vote, with polls showing Lopez Obrador in the lead, Calderon's campaign saturated the airwaves with commercials suggesting Mexico's economic stability would disappear if the leftist was elected and increased public spending: The ads compared him to 1970s Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.
"Lopez Portillo made the same proposals. The result was a crisis that lasted 10 years," intones one Calderon ad that features a Mexican family standing in a neighborhood that resembles U.S. suburbia. "You could lose the house that you bought on credit with so much sweat…. Don't vote for another crisis."
The differences between the two campaigns and their supporters are apparent to even the most casual observer.
Like many recent Mexican presidents, Calderon has an advanced degree from a U.S. university — in his case, from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the affluent son of a founder of the National Action Party, or PAN.
Calderon's supporters circulate PowerPoint presentations outlining how well Mexico's economy has performed under Fox. Many think he's simply smarter than Lopez Obrador. A few have circulated a rumor (denied by the Lopez Obrador campaign) that the leftist candidate doesn't have a visa to visit the United States: Such visas are seen as a status symbol here.
The rumor goes to the heart of what many Mexicans think a leader should — or should not — look like. Should he be a technocrat who understands the pie charts and spreadsheets that dominate the world of the car salesman? Or should he be a man of the people who shares the anger of the impoverished peasant?
Lopez Obrador, the son of a humble merchant family, is a graduate of the public-funded National Autonomous University of Mexico. One of his first jobs in government involved traveling to the country's indigenous villages. He comes from the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, a tropical region that has never produced a president.
With its large crowds of passionate supporters and populist rhetoric, Lopez Obrador's campaign draws heavily from Latin American political traditions. It's not uncommon to see a supporter at his rally holding a portrait of Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Lopez Obrador's backers revel in the low-tech, making their own fliers with scissors and glue, photocopying them and passing them out. For some, the vote is only the latest chapter in a war for social justice.
Ascencion Jaramillo, 83, told seniors at a rally supporting Lopez Obrador in Mexico City to be ready for battle on election day. "We are at the point in the struggle where the time has come to load our weapons," Jaramillo said in a raspy voice. "Our weapon is our vote."
Historian Enrique Krauze has suggested that Lopez Obrador's followers believe in him with too much zeal, that they see him as a "tropical messiah" who will upend Mexico's political institutions in the name of social justice.
At the edge of Lopez Obrador's rallies, you can sometimes find supporters who jokingly suggest that their candidate is, in fact, a superhero. They dress in tight red shirts in the superhero style of El Chespirito, the lovable clown of 1970s Mexican television.
El Chespirito's costume bore the letters "CH" inside a yellow heart, but these people have hearts that announce "PG." The letters, pronounced peh-heh in Spanish, are a play on Lopez Obrador's nickname, El Peje, and also the name of a fish found in Tabasco's rivers.
But the actor who played El Chespirito, Roberto Gomez Bolaños, is backing Calderon. No longer the skinny young man he was in the 1970s, but a rounded-out senior citizen, he describes the PAN slate as the only one that will keep Mexico united.
"Vote always for the PAN." he said. Pointing to his temple, he added, "Think about it."
Then he did something that El Chespirito almost never did: He looked straight into the camera, and winked.
+++++++++
INFOBOX BELOW:
Front-runners= A look at the two leading presidential candidates:
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 52
* Democratic Revolution Party (Leftist)
* Bachelor's degree in political science
* Party president, 1996-'99
* Mexico City mayor, 2000-'05; promises to govern for the poor and forgotten
+++++++++++++++++
Felipe Calderon, 43
* National Action Party (Conservative)
* Law degree; master's degree in economics and public administration
* Congressman; headed party executive committee, 1996-'99; Banobras bank director, 2000; energy secretary, 2003-'04; supports free-market policies
--
Source: Associated Press
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Bio Boxes on Mexico's leading candidates = Mon Jul 3, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_bioboxes_3
By The Associated Press
NAME: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 52; Nov. 13, 1953, in Tepetitan, Tabasco state.
PARTY: leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in political science, National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
EXPERIENCE: Son of shopkeepers; director of Tabasco state Indigenous Institute, 1977; breaks with ruling party in 1988, runs unsuccessfully for Tabasco governor; local official and protest leader for the PRD, 1989-96; loses controversial 1994 Tabasco state governor's race to current presidential rival Roberto Madrazo; PRD president, 1996-99; Mexico City mayor, December 2000-July 2005.
FAMILY: Widower, with three sons.
PLATFORM: Promises to govern for Mexico's poor and forgotten, although he has adopted more centrist policies since beginning campaign.
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NAME: Felipe Calderon Hinojosa.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 43; Aug. 18, 1962, in Morelia, Michoacan state.
PARTY: President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in law, Free School of Law in Mexico City; master's degree in economics, Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico; master's degree in public administration, Harvard University.
EXPERIENCE: Son of one of PAN's founders; headed PAN youth movement; unsuccessful run for Michoacan governor in 1995; federal congressman, 1998-2000; headed PAN's executive committee, 1996-99; director of national development bank Banobras in 2000; energy secretary, September 2003-May 2004; topped two other candidates to win PAN's presidential primary in October.
FAMILY: Married to former PAN congresswoman Margarita Zavala. Three children.
PLATFORM: Says free-market policies would be cornerstone of his government; pledges to guarantee universal health care, better education and access for all to basics like food and water.
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Profiles of Mexico's 2 main candidates = Mon Jul 3, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_candidate_profiles_3
ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR =
MEXICO CITY - Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is a shopkeeper's son and a leftist who promises "the poor come first," but has sought to distance himself from the growing tide of leftist leaders in Latin America.
Mexicans, tired of politicians who get rich in office, like his frugal style. A widower and father of three, he lives in a modest Mexico City apartment and rides in a compact car, albeit with a driver.
Born on Nov. 13, 1953, in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, Lopez Obrador earned a political science bachelor's degree at Mexico's National Autonomous University and worked on development projects for Tabasco's impoverished Chontal Indians, sometimes living among them.
He left the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1988 to join the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, made a failed run for the Tabasco governorship, and took up street politics, joining in brief seizures of government-owned oil wells to demand payment for spill damages in 1996.
As mayor of Mexico City, he spent freely on ambitious freeways for the capital and a $65 monthly stipend for every resident over age 70. The city's debt is up but its traffic congestion persists.
Facing an impeachment effort last year that would have knocked him out of the presidential race, Lopez Obrador mobilized mass demonstrations and prevailed. After five years as mayor, he quit last July to run for president.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FELIPE CALDERSON =
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Felipe Calderon portrays himself as an underdog who will make good on President Vicente Fox's unfulfilled promises.
Calderon's father helped found the pro-business, pro-church National Action Party, or PAN, in the 1930s. Calderon, 43, is married to a former congresswoman.
Born in the central state of Michoacan on Aug. 18, 1962, Harvard-educated Calderon first went to work for PAN at age 26, heading its youth wing before running unsuccessfully for Michoacan governor.
He directed the party for three years until 1999 and twice served as a federal congressman.
After Fox won the presidency in 2000, ending the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year hold on power, Calderon headed the party's bloc in the House but his failure to broker compromises doomed many of Fox's pet projects.
Fox made him energy secretary, but Calderon stepped down in May 2004 after the president criticized him for launching his presidential campaign while still in office.
Fox is limited by the constitution to a single six-year term.
Although Calderon was not the president's top choice as his successor, he easily won his party's three-way primary race.
A father of three, Calderon is the youngest of three major presidential hopefuls and reached out to young voters and women. He promises to reduce crime, extend government health and service programs and continue market-friendly economic policies to create jobs.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/world/americas/03elect.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
July 3, 2006: On a Peaceful Election Day Across Mexico, Growing Signs of a Maturing Democracy
By GINGER THOMPSON
MEXICO CITY, July 2 — If Mexico is a young democracy, it looked much older than its age during the uncertain presidential elections on Sunday.
Thousands of striking teachers in the southern state of Oaxaca postponed their protests to leave the polling places clear for voters. Subcommander Marcos, the ski-masked leader of the Zapatista rebels who was at the front of machete-wielding mobs just one month ago, led a peaceful march through Mexico City.
The government's Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, welcomed hundreds of observers from all over the world. The authorities estimated that more than two-thirds of registered voters would show up at the polls. And at polling places that once were scenes of huge voter fraud and intimidation, voting passed without serious disruptions or complaints. And at the end of the night, when President Vicente Fox went on national television to explain that the race was too close to call, a nation gripped by suspense and leery of dirty tricks remained calm.
"I know there is no Mexican who wants to go against democracy," Mr. Fox said after casting his ballot on Sunday. "And for that, I offer recognition to the people of Mexico who have known how to consolidate this democracy, to give it strength."
In 2000, Mr. Fox broke through the old system of fraud to become the first presidential candidate in 71 years to oust the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Robert Pastor, a Latin America expert at American University, who has observed Mexican elections for 20 years and once helped this country come up with mechanisms for cleaning out corruption, said the situation had changed.
"Mexico created an institution a decade ago which in many ways is one of the most sophisticated in the world today," Mr. Pastor said, referring to the IFE. "They have done so much to prevent fraud, implemented all kinds of safeguards, none of which we have in the United States."
On upscale boulevards and in gritty housing projects across Mexico City, voting was a family affair. Parents filled out ballots and children stuffed them into the boxes. Voters banded together to carry elderly people who showed up in wheelchairs. When a poll worker in Polanco announced it was his mother's birthday, the whole place joined together to sing to her.
That, however, was where the affinity among voters ended.
Well-to-do voters typically said they had cast ballots for the pro-business conservative Felipe Calderón, while voters in poorer districts said they voted for the leftist populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador. José María Morera, 52, said he had decided to vote for Mr. Calderón because he worried that Mr. López Obrador "creates a situation of conflict between the social classes."
"He seems cynical, arrogant, uncultured, with no political skills," Mr. Morera said. "I do not think he's honorable."
That was not what Cuitlahuac Herrera Nolasco, a resident of Ixtapalapa, a working-class section of Mexico City, thought. "López Obrador is the only one who has shown, with acts, that he knows how to govern," Mr. Herrera said, referring to the former mayor of Mexico City, who is known for living in a modest apartment, driving a cheap car and building double-decker freeways. "To me he is the most honest. I like his austerity."
Middle class voters, like those in Ecatepec, a suburb north of Mexico City, seemed divided.
Georgina Martínez, 65, a former textile worker, was helped to the polls and to her political preferences by two sons, one a dentist and another who runs a small textile factory of his own.
They voted for Mr. Calderón, of the conservative National Action Party, PAN.
"I normally vote for the PRI," she said. "But after talking to my sons, I voted for the PAN."
Néstor Santoyo, a single father, said he voted for Mr. López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD.
"We have already tried the other parties," Mr. Santoyo said. "Now we will try the PRD. I hope it is better than the others."
Striking teachers in Oaxaca, which is still dominated by the PRI, took a break from their protests to rally voters to support Mr. López Obrador. The teachers had been striking for months to demand higher wages.
But after the police tried to break their protests by force last month, the teachers began to demand the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. And they have accused Mr. Fox of the National Action Party of ignoring them.
In the days before the elections, there were reports in Chiapas of PRI leaders using their old tricks to get votes. Residents in the town of Zaachila said party members handed out cement and other construction supplies in an effort to buy votes.
It was unclear whether their tactics had worked.
"The vote is ultimately secret and free," said Marta Rojas Sebastián, a lifelong resident there, "so we'll take whatever they give us and then we'll vote for whomever we want."
Antonio Betancourt and Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City for this article, and Mitch Carr from Oaxaca.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/world/americas/03cnd-mexico.html?hp&ex=1151985600&en=54a191f73704523c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Conservative's Slim Lead in Mexico Buoys Markets =July 3, 2006
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
MEXICO CITY, July 3 — The latest uncertified results in Sunday's fiercely contested Mexican presidential election show a slim lead for the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón.
Investors seized on the news and sharply bid up the prices of Mexican stocks and the value of its currency in early trading today. The Bolsa index gained more than 3 percent and the Mexican peso rose 9 percent against the dollar.
Election officials declared on Sunday that they could not immediately determine a winner, that certified results were days away, and that a recount was likely in the close race. The two front runners each declared victory anyway, setting in motion an electoral crisis.
The contest pitted Mr. Calderón, a conservative former energy minister backed by business leaders, primarily against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the firebrand leftist former mayor of Mexico City, supported mostly by the poor. A third candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco state, also received substantial support.
With 94.26 percent of the votes counted, the Federal Electoral Institute said this morning, Mr. Calderón had 36.55 percent of the count so far, and Mr. López Obrador with 35.46 percent. Mr. Madrazo trailed with 21.28 percent.
Mr. López Obrador said at a downtown hotel on Sunday that he would respect the decision of the election institute, even if he lost by one vote. Yet in the same breath, he said he was sure he had won by 500,000 votes. "This result is irreversible," he said.
Appearing before supporters a few minutes later at his party headquarters, Mr. Calderón rattled off the results of several surveys of voters as they left the polls, and the vote counts at crucial voting districts, all favoring him. "There is not the slightest doubt that we have won the election," he said.
Surveys of polling stations by election officials showed that the contest was too close to call, and they urged people to remain calm until official results could be reported.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Calderón's lead initially appeared wider, as much as three percentage points, when about 25 percent of the polling places had been counted. But as the night wore on, tension gripped the capital as it became clear that the race was razor-close.
For hours, the leading candidates remained closeted at their campaign headquarters rather than appear at the downtown hotels where they were expected to receive the results.
Luis Ugalde, the head of the Federal Electoral Institute, appeared twice on national television Sunday evening, urging the candidates and their supporters to wait for official results. President Vicente Fox also addressed the nation, pleading with voters to heed the election commission's decision. "It's the responsibility of all political actors to respect the law," he said.
But Mr. López Obrador, who critics say has an authoritarian streak, acted as if he was already the president-elect. After the electoral institute said the official results were days away, he went immediately to the historic central square, where thousands of his supporters had gathered to celebrate.
"We are going to demonstrate that we won, and they have to respect our victory," he told the crowd.
At stake in the contest is whether the country remains on a conservative track and stays a firm United States ally or joins a trend that has brought several leftists to power in Latin America in recent years, weakening Washington's influence.
"This is about the struggle between social classes," said Miguel Abel Sanchez, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, after he said he cast his vote for the leftist candidate in the rural town of San Rafael, 25 miles outside Mexico City. "We cannot live in a rich country with an enormous number of people in extreme poverty."
The election was another milestone in the country's march toward full democracy after more than seven decades of single-party, autocratic rule, which ended with the election six years ago of President Fox, who was not permitted to run for another term.
The campaign was marked by wide differences on how to handle the economy and a storm of negative advertising, as Mr. López Obrador's opponents tried to generate a high level of anxiety that his leftist populism would undo the country's democratic progress and stability.
Though Mexico has myriad problems, from rampant organized crime to environmental degradation, the election revolved around the issues of poverty and jobs, and how to close a yawning chasm between rich and poor that has sent some 10 million Mexicans north of the border in search of work since a free trade pact with the United States took hold over a decade ago.
Mr. Calderón, 43, said he would create jobs through securing more private investment and by cutting taxes. Mr. López Obrador, 52, said he would spend $20 billion on social programs and public works to jump-start the economy.
Underlying the debate was the larger issue of whether Mexico's attempt to fit into the global economy through free trade agreements had done enough to alleviate poverty. Mr. López Obrador argued that it had not and that a new economic policy to funnel more tax dollars to the poor was needed. Mr. Calderón wanted to stay the course.
Mr. López Obrador also promised to slash spending on government salaries, root out corruption and cut other waste. He attacked what he called the privileged elite in Mexico, a network of businessmen and politicians that he said for too long had evaded taxes and become rich from government contracts and the sale of state monopolies.
"There cannot be a rich government and a poor people," Mr. López Obrador said repeatedly in his campaign speeches.
Mr. Calderón warned direly that Mr. López Obrador's plan would lead to more debt and an economic collapse. He said that Mexico had to compete in the global economy and that it could triumph with his leadership. He said he would encourage more foreign investment, allow private partnerships in the state-run oil business and slash corporate taxes. "I want a winning Mexico," he said.
Mr. Madrazo, 53, carrying the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., tried to position himself in the center, promising to crack down on crime, cut taxes and provide more direct aid to the poor.
Throughout the country, from small towns to the sprawling capital, people stood patiently in line at open-air polling places, most of them little more than fold-up tables holding voter lists, ballots and cardboard ballot boxes with cellophane sides.
The line of voters in San Rafael was a panorama of Mexico: youths in shades and leather jackets, weathered farmers in white cowboy hats, sun-hardened old ladies in straw hats, small business owners in jeans, knit shirts and loafers. About two-thirds of Mexico's 71 million voters were expected to turn out.
Some said they were voting for Mr. Calderón, of President Fox's National Action Party, to give the free-trade and pro-business policies of the government more time to work. Mr. Fox made history in 2000 when he defeated the P.R.I., but most of the reforms he promised ran aground in Congress.
"In 6 years, you cannot undo what other people have done over 70 years," said Arturo Garcia, a 49-year-old tortilla maker. "Fox was tied up by the Congress."
Some left-wing fringe groups boycotted the election. On Sunday morning, Subcommander Marcos, the masked leader of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, marched down Reforma Avenue, the spine of Mexico City, with a few thousand supporters, heaping scorn on all the political parties. Some danced in the street and waved Communist flags.
This race was the first modern election in Mexico in which all three major candidates received equal coverage from the media and waged an American-style battle of advertisements on radio and television, from inspirational spots promising more jobs to clever mudslinging attacks.
Mexicans learned the pitfalls and advantages of negative advertising, as all sides delivered broadsides. Mr. Calderón's camp tried to paint Mr. López Obrador as a dangerous leftist and a closet dictator who would bankrupt the country with welfare programs.
Mr. López Obrador portrayed Mr. Calderón as a member of the ruling elite that has enjoyed what he called "privileges" in Mexico for centuries — government sinecures, sweetheart contracts and low taxes.
All three major candidates refrained from bashing the United States or making naked appeals to nationalism, which used to be a mainstay in political campaigns here. Though Mr. Calderón and Mr. Madrazo said they would be tough on crime, none of the candidates said how they would address the gangland war among drug dealers that has claimed hundreds of lives over the last year.
Neither did any of the candidates offer new solutions to illegal immigration, beyond saying the key was to create more jobs in Mexico, rather than to step up security along the border.
Until January, Mr. López Obrador had been leading all other candidates in most polls. An attempt to knock him off the ballot because his administration had ignored a court order backfired, as he mounted huge marches and rallies in his support. The more his political opponents tried to disqualify him from running, the more his popularity rose. Eventually Mr. Fox's prosecutors dropped the charges, as polls showed Mr. López Obrador with 40 percent of the vote.
But Mr. López Obrador stumbled in February when he attacked President Fox for using the bully pulpit of his office to campaign for Mr. Calderón. The leftist accused Mr. Fox of meddling in the election, compared him to a twittering tropical bird called a "chachalaca" and rudely told him to "shut up."
The comment did not sit well with many Mexicans, who revere the presidency, if not the president. Mr. Calderón's campaign pounced on the comment, running ads showing Hugo Chávez, the leader of Venezuela, insulting Mr. Fox side by side with Mr. López Obrador's rant. The Calderón campaign also began calling Mr. López Obrador "intolerant" and "a danger to Mexico."
Mr. López Obrador made a second mistake when he decided to skip the first presidential debate in early April. Mr. Calderon, a Harvard-trained economist, looked the part of a president, sounded well-informed and shot ahead in preference polls.
During the last three weeks of the campaign, Mr. López Obrador was hit with a blizzard of attack ads. Business leaders paid for spots that again used the image of President Chávez of Venezuela to scare voters, saying "Mexico doesn't need a dictator to come out ahead."
Other spots said voting for Mr. López Obrador was equivalent to voting for another economic crisis, like those of 1995 and 1982, in which Mexicans lost most of their savings as the value of the peso plummeted.
Mr. López Obrador struck back, calling his detractors in the business world "white-collar criminals" who used their links to politicians to make money. He also kept up the invective against the "privileges" of the rich, arguing they do not pay taxes and charging the current government was "a committee at the service of a minority."
In his final rally, however, Mr. López Obrador, apparently worried about the attacks, softened his rhetoric and took pains to say he would a careful steward of the economy. "We are not going to act irresponsibly," he said. "We're not going to provoke a crisis."
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070306Z.shtml
Confusion Grips Mexico Election
By Héctor Tobar / The Los Angeles Times
Monday 03 July 2006
Both leading candidates claim victory, but officials say they won't sort things out until Wednesday. One camp alleges fraud, and the president calls for calm.
Mexico City - Mexico's presidential vote was thrown into turmoil late Sunday, with both leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon claiming victory as election officials announced that the two men were separated by a razor-thin margin.
The Federal Election Institute said the result would not be known until Wednesday and that the margin between the two leading candidates would probably be less than a percentage point.
Electoral institute President Luis Carlos Ugalde announced that a "quick count" based on a sample of the votes from about 7% of the precincts had produced a result within the margin of error. Only a full count of the more than 40 million estimated votes could determine the winner, he said.
Lopez Obrador nonetheless announced victory, soon followed by Calderon. Both said late Sunday that their own data showed them winning.
The leftist candidate told supporters late Sunday that the government wanted to cheat him out of a larger victory. "I want to inform the people of Mexico that according to our calculations we have won the presidency," Lopez Obrador said. The final difference, he said, would be 500,000 votes.
Calderon appeared moments later, to say that numerous private exit polls showed he would win. "Today the trends announced by several firms … show that we have won the presidential elections," he said.
Lopez Obrador supporters gathered in the Zocalo, this city's central square, and shouted, "Fraud! Fraud!" Calderon backers at his National Action Party headquarters chanted, "We did it! We did it."
President Vicente Fox called for calm.
"The citizens can have the full certainty, the confidence, that all the votes will be counted and respected," Fox said in a nationally televised address moments after election officials announced their finding.
Early this morning, with 66% of polling stations counted, Calderon's ever-narrowing margin over Lopez Obrador had fallen to 1.2 percentage points.
In the coming days, the muddied result is sure to provide a stern test for Mexico's democratic institutions, which are still struggling to emerge from a long history of corruption and authoritarianism.
Lopez Obrador's statements seemed to play to the worst fears of his supporters, who have long seen themselves as victims of political shenanigans.
"It's difficult to see the elections be manipulated," said Veronica Martinez, who had gathered with a crowd to celebrate what they believed was a Lopez Obrador victory. "This seems like something out of the past."
The election was seen by many as a referendum on the open-market policies embraced by Fox. Dozens of labor unions and leftist groups supported Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was expected to finish a distant third. His party, which monopolized power for 71 years, faced the prospect of becoming the smallest bloc in Congress.
More than 40 million people, or about 60% of the electorate, are believed to have cast ballots, according to the Federal Election Institute. More than 130,000 polling places had been set up, from within yards of the U.S. border in Tijuana, to Indian villages in Chiapas.
The campaign was one of the most acrimonious in Mexican history, with the three leading candidates spending millions on television and radio commercials attacking their opponents.
"I have to vote because it's a duty," said Cleofas Chavez Rodriguez, a 66-year-old resident of San Salvador Atenco, just outside of this capital city. "Of the three, none of them convinced me because they attacked each other so much."
Calderon, 43, ran as the candidate who would best continue economic policies initiated by Fox, who is limited by the constitution to a single, six-year term.
Lopez Obrador, 52, the charismatic former mayor of Mexico City, held a slight lead in most polls. He promised to expand subsidies to the needy and to stimulate the economy with public works projects and reductions in fuel prices.
The campaign slogan of Lopez Obrador's leftist coalition was a succinct, populist message: "For the Good of Everyone, the Poor First."
"We agree a lot with Lopez Obrador because he fights for the poor and the marginalized," said Manuel de Jesus De Lucio, a 50-year-old farmer who cast his vote in a polling booth in an open field in Mexico state.
If Lopez Obrador wins, Mexico would become the latest in a series of Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Chile, to elect left-of-center presidents in recent years.
Lopez Obrador promised to renegotiate certain provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement that opened Mexican markets to U.S. and Canadian imports, and his victory could dramatically alter this country's relationship with the U.S.
Nationwide, only eight polling places failed to open, the best performance ever by Mexico's electoral system, officials said.
Business student Antonio Santiago, 24, was voting for the first time. "I'm voting so that there's democracy," Santiago said at a polling place just outside Mexico City. "So that democracy lives on."
Sunday's vote was also to elect a new Congress — 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 in the Senate.
No party holds a majority in either house, a state of affairs expected to remain unchanged after Sunday's vote.
Exit polls agreed that the PRI would fall from the being the largest to the third-largest party in Congress. Early results showed the PRI, for the first time in its history, would not carry a single state in the presidential election.
"The collapse of the PRI is one of the big stories of the night," said Pamela Starr of the Eurasia Group, a risk analysis firm. "It's much larger than we expected."
There were some scattered allegations of the kinds of voting irregularities that were common in Mexico's recent past. PRD officials reported that two party activists were killed in the southern state of Guerrero, in a Pacific Coast region beset by drug violence. Election officials said later the killings appeared to be the result of an attempted robbery.
Mexican citizens living in the U.S. were turned away by the hundreds after crossing the border to vote at special polling places that were allocated only 750 ballots each, news services reported.
In Oaxaca, groups of striking teachers surrounded a police station, alleging that officers inside had stacks of ballots pre-marked with votes for the candidates backed by PRI Gov. Ulises Ruiz, news agencies reported. For weeks, teachers have led a protest movement against Ruiz.
The most common complaint was one voiced by voters in many Mexico City neighborhoods: lines outside polling places stretched for blocks.
"I've been here for more than an hour, and I haven't advanced one meter," said Raul Cordero Lopez, a 42-year-old engineer, as he stood in a line with hundreds of voters in southern Mexico City. "It's totally disorganized. The poll workers got here late."
The new president will take the oath of office Dec. 1. Whoever is elected will have to deal with many of the political challenges faced by Fox, who proved unable to pass many legislative proposals, including a tax overhaul.
Since 2003, when he held a referendum in which Mexico City residents voted overwhelming to keep him in office, Lopez Obrador has been widely considered to be the favorite in the presidential race. But he had to fight off an effort last year to have him impeached, which also would have prevented him from running for president.
The Fox administration sought to prosecute Lopez Obrador on an obscure charge related to the construction of a local hospital. Congress impeached him, stripping him of his immunity.
But the charges were dropped after hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Mexico City. Lopez Obrador returned to office and his popularity soared.
Calderon, a former energy secretary under Fox who won his party's nomination in October, trailed Lopez Obrador until March, when he launched what was arguably the most sophisticated media campaign Mexican politics has seen.
In more than a dozen commercials, the Calderon campaign portrayed Lopez Obrador as a demagogue and spendthrift who would bring back the hyperinflation and dramatic currency devaluations of the 1980s and early 1990s.
On Sunday, many Calderon supporters echoed those arguments. "I hope Felipe Calderon wins because he will give more stability and security to all of those who want to live in a country that has prosperity, without any crisis," said Linda Claussen, a 39-year-old restaurant owner here. "I think Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico."
By April, Calderon surged into a narrow lead in most polls.
But Lopez Obrador revived his campaign with allegations of corruption against a firm owned by Calderon's brother-in-law. Calderon denied the charges.
The controversy helped propel the former mayor back into the lead in most polls.
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Times staff writers Sam Enriquez, Richard Boudreaux, Carlos Martínez and Cecilia Sánchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20060703/ts_nm/mexico_election_dc_23
Mexico conservative claims win By Kieran Murray
47 minutes ago
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon declared victory on Monday in a bitterly contested election and official returns appeared to show his leftist rival could no longer catch him.
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Calderon said his lead was now "irreversible" because he had an advantage of almost 400,000 votes over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-wing former mayor of Mexico City, with results in from 96 percent of polling stations.
"There is an irreversible result and it is in my favor," a confident Calderon of the ruling National Action Party said in a television interview. "The result gives me a very clear victory that cannot be reversed."
A Calderon victory would ensure Mexico sticks to the free-market policies of outgoing President Vicente Fox and hold steady as a U.S. ally, bucking a trend of Latin American nations who have turned to the left and away from Washington in recent years.
Lopez Obrador said on Sunday night he won the election by 500,000 votes and would insist that his victory be respected in an official recount but he appeared more open to a possible defeat on Monday.
"If in the count we conduct, it turns out the final result does not favor us, I am going to abide by the result," he said. However, he added, "We are going to defend the will of the people if it favors us."
The official returns and Lopez Obrador's softer tone reduced the risk of a major political crisis of a contested election, and Mexico's financial markets jumped on a wave of investor optimism.
Legislative election results from Sunday showed Calderon's party made major gains and would be the largest single party in the next Congress, although it fell short of a majority.
The stock market jumped 4.5 percent in early trade and Mexico's peso currency rose 1.5 percent.
Mexico's top election official said late on Sunday the race was too close to declare a winner and a recount was needed, but Calderon insisted that was no longer necessary.
With returns in from 96.3 percent of polling stations, the conservative had 36.4 percent support, 1 percentage point ahead of his rival. Lopez Obrador would have to see a dramatic swing in the remaining polling stations to catch up.
If the Federal Electoral Institute goes ahead with a recount, however, it could be days before a final vote count is in.
Some fear that delay and a combative Lopez Obrador could push Mexico toward political deadlock, street protests and volatility in financial markets.
Unrest would also worry the United States, which relies on Mexican help in securing its borders and tackling immigration and violent drug smuggling gangs.
FOUL PLAY?
The U.S. government took a cautious attitude on Monday, preferring to wait for the official final results.
"We note that the final results are still not available," said Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. "We along with the Mexican people look forward to the announcement of the results."
Lopez Obrador supporters, remembering a 1988 presidential election widely believed to have been stolen from another left-wing candidate, claimed foul play.
"They are up to their tricks because everyone knows Andres Manuel won," Gabriela Ramirez, a Mexico City student, said late on Sunday night.
Critics of Lopez Obrador, a feisty and austere figure who pledged to put Mexico's poor first if elected, said the close race played into his hands and that he was looking for an excuse to mobilize supporters and cause trouble.
"Now if he loses, he can say the rich guys stole it from us. It could lead to chaos," real estate agent Victor Perera said at an upscale Mexico City neighborhood restaurant.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-twomexicos2jul02,1,7264570.story?coll=la-headlines-world
ELECTION IN MEXICO
Divergent Visions for a Divided Nation
The two front-runners in Mexico's presidential race have built support bases that are split along economic, regional and social lines.
By Héctor Tobar, Times Staff Writer
July 2, 2006
MEXICO CITY — When car salesman Alejandro Alcantar looks at the Mexican business world, he sees a new U.S.-style order and efficiency. Interest rates are relatively low. More Mexicans bought new cars last year than ever before. Salesmen are learning about a newfangled idea called "customer service."
Corn farmer Antelmo Bahena feels like his rural world is collapsing around him. He can barely eke out a living on the three acres he rents south of Mexico City. When he can't afford basic things such as medicine, he blames the corn from Nebraska that's showing up in the local tortilla factories.
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The divergent fortunes of the two men reflect a great economic, regional and cultural divide here. In many ways, Mexico has become two countries. And when Mexicans go to the polls today to pick their new president, one side's idea of how Mexico should work will triumph over the other.
Caught, as always, between the United States and the rest of Latin America, Mexico will choose between one candidate who is U.S.-educated and one who isn't. They will pick between a politician who embraces U.S.-style media campaigning and one who leads a mass movement with roots in Latin American radicalism.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon even claim their strongest bases of support on opposite ends of the country: Lopez Obrador in southern states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca, Calderon in northern border states such as Durango and Nuevo Leon.
The candidates' economic proposals are as similar as those of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"We are in favor of modernization, but built from the ground up and for everyone," Lopez Obrador told supporters last week at his final campaign rally. He proposed increases in public spending and government subsidies. "The government I lead will always be guided by the principle: 'For the good of everyone, first the poor.' "
At his own closing rally, Calderon promised to continue the policies of outgoing President Vicente Fox. "We will guarantee policies that attract investment, that will create businesses big and small, which will create the jobs we Mexicans need."
The election of a president will determine whether Mexico continues on a path for the developing world that was laid down in the 1980s by conservative U.S. economists. Fox, who is precluded from seeking reelection, embraced the fundamentals of the neoliberal model: fiscal discipline, open markets and low taxes.
Fox's policies have brought unprecedented stability, enabling millions to secure home and car loans for the first time.
But the same policies also produced anemic rates of growth: An estimated 4 million Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search of work during the six years of Fox's term.
"You've always had a poor distribution of income in Mexico," said Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy research in Washington. "What's changed is that the growth levels of the economy have become so low. You can't pull people out of poverty without economic growth."
Frustrated by their struggles to make a living, millions of poor people are backing Lopez Obrador.
"You go to the grain buyers to sell your product, and sometimes they don't even pay you right away," said Bahena, the corn farmer. He rents farmland in the state of Morelos for $175 a year and barely makes enough money to pay for fertilizer and other costs.
The poverty, which causes so many Morelos residents to migrate to the U.S., is also causing a breakdown of social mores, he said. "The fathers leave to work on the other side, and the mothers are left alone and can't control their sons and daughters."
When the leftist Democratic Revolution Party came to his town to pitch for Lopez Obrador, Bahena listened intently.
Congressional candidate Julian Vences told a story people repeat here again and again. He had seen yellow corn — unmistakably from the U.S. because the local variety is white — in a local grain deposit and tortilla factory.
"Thanks to the [North American] Free Trade Agreement, it's become a rare thing to go to a tortilleria that sells us tortillas made of white corn," Vences said. "That's why Lopez Obrador wants to renegotiate that treaty."
First signed by the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico in 1994, the treaty created a mechanism that has gradually eliminated many trade barriers among the countries. A provision eliminating the remaining tariffs on U.S. corn and beans sold in Mexico will go into effect in 2008.
Most of the country's economic elite, and a big chunk of its middle class, is supporting Calderon. They back him in large measure because they remember the bad old days of high inflation and an unstable Mexican peso, a period that stretched, on and off, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.
"It was almost impossible to get credit," said car salesman Alcantar, 46. "You had to get a guarantor who would assume the debt if you couldn't pay." Most people who bought cars did so with cash saved over years.
Consumers didn't have many choices when it came to cars — or for many other commodities. "Before, there were just five kinds of cars available here in Mexico," Alcantar said. "When you walked into a dealership, you had to wait forever for a salesman to help you.
"Now we have literally a thousand different choices," Alcantar said. In the new Mexico, salesmen jump to their feet when they see a client, he added.
In the final days before the vote, with polls showing Lopez Obrador in the lead, Calderon's campaign saturated the airwaves with commercials suggesting Mexico's economic stability would disappear if the leftist was elected and increased public spending: The ads compared him to 1970s Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.
"Lopez Portillo made the same proposals. The result was a crisis that lasted 10 years," intones one Calderon ad that features a Mexican family standing in a neighborhood that resembles U.S. suburbia. "You could lose the house that you bought on credit with so much sweat…. Don't vote for another crisis."
The differences between the two campaigns and their supporters are apparent to even the most casual observer.
Like many recent Mexican presidents, Calderon has an advanced degree from a U.S. university — in his case, from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the affluent son of a founder of the National Action Party, or PAN.
Calderon's supporters circulate PowerPoint presentations outlining how well Mexico's economy has performed under Fox. Many think he's simply smarter than Lopez Obrador. A few have circulated a rumor (denied by the Lopez Obrador campaign) that the leftist candidate doesn't have a visa to visit the United States: Such visas are seen as a status symbol here.
The rumor goes to the heart of what many Mexicans think a leader should — or should not — look like. Should he be a technocrat who understands the pie charts and spreadsheets that dominate the world of the car salesman? Or should he be a man of the people who shares the anger of the impoverished peasant?
Lopez Obrador, the son of a humble merchant family, is a graduate of the public-funded National Autonomous University of Mexico. One of his first jobs in government involved traveling to the country's indigenous villages. He comes from the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, a tropical region that has never produced a president.
With its large crowds of passionate supporters and populist rhetoric, Lopez Obrador's campaign draws heavily from Latin American political traditions. It's not uncommon to see a supporter at his rally holding a portrait of Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Lopez Obrador's backers revel in the low-tech, making their own fliers with scissors and glue, photocopying them and passing them out. For some, the vote is only the latest chapter in a war for social justice.
Ascencion Jaramillo, 83, told seniors at a rally supporting Lopez Obrador in Mexico City to be ready for battle on election day. "We are at the point in the struggle where the time has come to load our weapons," Jaramillo said in a raspy voice. "Our weapon is our vote."
Historian Enrique Krauze has suggested that Lopez Obrador's followers believe in him with too much zeal, that they see him as a "tropical messiah" who will upend Mexico's political institutions in the name of social justice.
At the edge of Lopez Obrador's rallies, you can sometimes find supporters who jokingly suggest that their candidate is, in fact, a superhero. They dress in tight red shirts in the superhero style of El Chespirito, the lovable clown of 1970s Mexican television.
El Chespirito's costume bore the letters "CH" inside a yellow heart, but these people have hearts that announce "PG." The letters, pronounced peh-heh in Spanish, are a play on Lopez Obrador's nickname, El Peje, and also the name of a fish found in Tabasco's rivers.
But the actor who played El Chespirito, Roberto Gomez Bolaños, is backing Calderon. No longer the skinny young man he was in the 1970s, but a rounded-out senior citizen, he describes the PAN slate as the only one that will keep Mexico united.
"Vote always for the PAN." he said. Pointing to his temple, he added, "Think about it."
Then he did something that El Chespirito almost never did: He looked straight into the camera, and winked.
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INFOBOX BELOW:
Front-runners= A look at the two leading presidential candidates:
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 52
* Democratic Revolution Party (Leftist)
* Bachelor's degree in political science
* Party president, 1996-'99
* Mexico City mayor, 2000-'05; promises to govern for the poor and forgotten
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Felipe Calderon, 43
* National Action Party (Conservative)
* Law degree; master's degree in economics and public administration
* Congressman; headed party executive committee, 1996-'99; Banobras bank director, 2000; energy secretary, 2003-'04; supports free-market policies
--
Source: Associated Press
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Bio Boxes on Mexico's leading candidates = Mon Jul 3, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_bioboxes_3
By The Associated Press
NAME: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 52; Nov. 13, 1953, in Tepetitan, Tabasco state.
PARTY: leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in political science, National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
EXPERIENCE: Son of shopkeepers; director of Tabasco state Indigenous Institute, 1977; breaks with ruling party in 1988, runs unsuccessfully for Tabasco governor; local official and protest leader for the PRD, 1989-96; loses controversial 1994 Tabasco state governor's race to current presidential rival Roberto Madrazo; PRD president, 1996-99; Mexico City mayor, December 2000-July 2005.
FAMILY: Widower, with three sons.
PLATFORM: Promises to govern for Mexico's poor and forgotten, although he has adopted more centrist policies since beginning campaign.
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NAME: Felipe Calderon Hinojosa.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 43; Aug. 18, 1962, in Morelia, Michoacan state.
PARTY: President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in law, Free School of Law in Mexico City; master's degree in economics, Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico; master's degree in public administration, Harvard University.
EXPERIENCE: Son of one of PAN's founders; headed PAN youth movement; unsuccessful run for Michoacan governor in 1995; federal congressman, 1998-2000; headed PAN's executive committee, 1996-99; director of national development bank Banobras in 2000; energy secretary, September 2003-May 2004; topped two other candidates to win PAN's presidential primary in October.
FAMILY: Married to former PAN congresswoman Margarita Zavala. Three children.
PLATFORM: Says free-market policies would be cornerstone of his government; pledges to guarantee universal health care, better education and access for all to basics like food and water.
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Profiles of Mexico's 2 main candidates = Mon Jul 3, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_candidate_profiles_3
ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR =
MEXICO CITY - Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is a shopkeeper's son and a leftist who promises "the poor come first," but has sought to distance himself from the growing tide of leftist leaders in Latin America.
Mexicans, tired of politicians who get rich in office, like his frugal style. A widower and father of three, he lives in a modest Mexico City apartment and rides in a compact car, albeit with a driver.
Born on Nov. 13, 1953, in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, Lopez Obrador earned a political science bachelor's degree at Mexico's National Autonomous University and worked on development projects for Tabasco's impoverished Chontal Indians, sometimes living among them.
He left the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1988 to join the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, made a failed run for the Tabasco governorship, and took up street politics, joining in brief seizures of government-owned oil wells to demand payment for spill damages in 1996.
As mayor of Mexico City, he spent freely on ambitious freeways for the capital and a $65 monthly stipend for every resident over age 70. The city's debt is up but its traffic congestion persists.
Facing an impeachment effort last year that would have knocked him out of the presidential race, Lopez Obrador mobilized mass demonstrations and prevailed. After five years as mayor, he quit last July to run for president.
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FELIPE CALDERSON =
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Felipe Calderon portrays himself as an underdog who will make good on President Vicente Fox's unfulfilled promises.
Calderon's father helped found the pro-business, pro-church National Action Party, or PAN, in the 1930s. Calderon, 43, is married to a former congresswoman.
Born in the central state of Michoacan on Aug. 18, 1962, Harvard-educated Calderon first went to work for PAN at age 26, heading its youth wing before running unsuccessfully for Michoacan governor.
He directed the party for three years until 1999 and twice served as a federal congressman.
After Fox won the presidency in 2000, ending the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year hold on power, Calderon headed the party's bloc in the House but his failure to broker compromises doomed many of Fox's pet projects.
Fox made him energy secretary, but Calderon stepped down in May 2004 after the president criticized him for launching his presidential campaign while still in office.
Fox is limited by the constitution to a single six-year term.
Although Calderon was not the president's top choice as his successor, he easily won his party's three-way primary race.
A father of three, Calderon is the youngest of three major presidential hopefuls and reached out to young voters and women. He promises to reduce crime, extend government health and service programs and continue market-friendly economic policies to create jobs.
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Sunday, July 02, 2006
July 02, 2006 ~ Sunday: Immigrant-Rights-Agenda Report
http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/2006/07/july-02-2006-sunday-immigrant-rights.html
Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Immigrant-Rights-Agenda/
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Table of Contents: Links to Original Articles
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_us/mexico_expatriates_6;_ylt=AtC7DHdsK2pddpdY2S5y5YK9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--
Illegal status hinders Mexican voting bloc: Sunday, July 2, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_migrant_vote;_ylt=AtxSWQm5wRt_OuXqjASZX3G3IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
Mexican migrants in U.S. head to polls By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer: Sun Jul 2, 2006 5:06 PM ET
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_08_NativoLopez.shtml
Nativo López: What’s Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement?
June 30, 2006 | Pages 8 and 9
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_04_Mexico.shtml
The tale of two “campaigns” + What’s at stake in Mexico’s election?
June 30, 2006 | Page 4
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d90f4ce1b1bf4748cd8de75271ee7f0e
A New Generation of Immigrant Rights Leaders: Jun 26, 2006
By Eduardo Stanley, Traducción al español
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060626_tom_hayden_mexio_election/
Tom Hayden: Mexico’s Presidential Front-Runner May Roil U.S. Conservatives
= Posted on Jun 26, 2006
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/06/26/daily6.html
McCain blasts fellow Republican: Monday, June 26, 2006
by Mike Sunnucks / The Business Journal of Phoenix
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/politics/mainD8IE74QG0.shtml
GOP Candidate's Call for Labor Camp Rebuked: Jun. 23, 2006
Republican candidate's call for forced labor camp for immigrants angers two GOP lawmakers
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060531_rfid_chips.html
Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants: May 31, 2006
By Bill Christensen
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12369631p-13097093c.html
Tempers flare in heat: Anger mounts at rally; pro-immigration camp shows up to tell its side = June 25, 2006 By Tim Morgan / BEE Staff Writer
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/washington/25bush.html
June 25, 2006: Bush's Immigration Plan Stalled as House G.O.P. Grew More Anxious
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_us/mexico_expatriates_6;_ylt=AtC7DHdsK2pddpdY2S5y5YK9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--
Illegal status hinders Mexican voting bloc: Sunday, July 2, 2006
By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES - A potentially powerful expatriate voting bloc likely will have little effect on Mexico's presidential race because of the illegal status of many who live in the United States.
Thousands of Mexican expatriates streamed into border towns Sunday to vote in their homeland's elections and others were allowed to cast absentee ballots for the first time. Still, many more were disenfranchised by their fear of crossing the border as undocumented residents.
"I really wanted to vote, but I don't have papers so I couldn't go to Mexico" to get a voter card, said Adriana Lopez, 27, a housewife and illegal immigrant in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
Still, others expressed hope that more would participate next time.
"The main thing is, the door has been opened" for expatriates to vote, Jesus Hernandez, 47, one of only 13,500 Mexicans in California who sent in ballots. "Later, we can reconstruct the procedures to make it easier in the future."
Electoral officials said late Sunday the race was too close to call and they would have to wait for the district-by-district vote count that starts Wednesday to declare a winner.
When Mexico's congress passed a law last year extending suffrage to expatriates, Mexicans in the U.S. hailed it as overdue recognition of the billions of dollars they send home every year.
Their elation faded, however, when they learned that voters would need a current electoral card, and that the application deadline was nearly six months before the election. Furthermore, anyone needing a new card had to apply in Mexico — a risky chore for an illegal immigrant.
"They couldn't go to Tijuana to get their voting card ... so now they can't vote here or there," said Eduardo Ruiz, president of the Los Angeles-based Federacion de Aguas Calientes, which organized weekly trips to Tijuana last year to help people apply.
Of the estimated 4.2 million eligible Mexican voters living abroad, only about 41,000, or 1 percent, requested absentee ballots and, of those, only 28,335 were received by the Federal Electoral Institute.
The Mexican government set up 86 polls along the 2,000-mile border, mostly for migrants who missed out on its absentee ballot campaign. Leaving in the wee hours Sunday morning, dozens boarded buses in Los Angeles and other Southern California cities to head to Tijuana.
Voting was not all smooth at the special polling stations, which apparently received just 750 ballots each to prevent voter fraud. That left hundreds of voters in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, unable to vote.
Mexicans said the new president could play a vital role in helping millions of undocumented workers obtain legal residency. Outgoing President Vicente Fox traveled to the United States in recent months to encourage Congress to reform immigration policy.
"It's important for the new president to fight for rights for Mexicans in this country," said Araceli Rodriguez, of Florida City, Fla., who voted with an absentee ballot. "We're always fighting hard to make it, but we've been living under more pressure, more strain."
Some expatriates argue that more could be done to help them vote.
"If they really wanted us to vote, they would let us do it at a consulate," said Gustino Fermin, 47, who said he didn't have time to return to Mexico for a voting card.
Patricio Ballados, expatriate vote coordinator for Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, said the agency would consider recommending to Congress that Mexican nationals be allowed to renew their voting cards at consulates.
Apathy also is an issue. Some said that they came to the United States because Mexican governments has failed to create economic opportunities at home, and that they didn't see that changing anytime soon.
"No matter who they elect, the corruption will continue," said Amelia Juantes, 23, who didn't even attempt to get an absentee ballot
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_migrant_vote;_ylt=AtxSWQm5wRt_OuXqjASZX3G3IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
Mexican migrants in U.S. head to polls By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 2, 2006 5:06 PM ET
TIJUANA, Mexico - Thousands of Mexicans living in the United States traveled by plane, bus and car to Mexican border cities to vote in Sunday's hotly contested presidential election.
The Mexican government set up 86 polling places along the 2,000-mile border, mostly for migrants who missed out on the country's historic absentee ballot campaign.
Across the border from San Diego in Tijuana, a sprawling city of more than 1 million people, out-of-town voters arrived Sunday by bus from Los Angeles and other California cities. Many said they made the trip because they received little information about how to request absentee ballots, lacked the correct voting card, or did not fill out their applications correctly.
Maria Salome Rodriguez, a 38-year-old farm worker, drove eight hours with her husband from Fresno, Calif., and waited for two hours to vote at a polling booth outside Tijuana's airport. She and her husband decided to make the trip to the border after their applications for absentee ballots were rejected because they wrote down the wrong address.
"We want to vote so Mexico can improve and offer jobs to people here, because even though we're far away, our heart is still with our homeland," said Rodriguez, who declined to name the candidate she voted for.
Lawmakers approved a law last year to allow the estimated 11 million Mexicans living in the United States to vote by mail for the first time. But the effort was thrown together to beat electoral deadlines, and only about 32,632 absentee ballots from 71 countries were mailed to the Federal Electoral Institute.
Of those, 479 did not meet requirements and were rejected, electoral officials said.
In addition to Tijuana's regular polling centers for residents, 20 special centers were set up across the city for migrants as well as active-duty soldiers, factory workers and others who have come to the area recently from the interior of the country.
The presidential election is the first since outgoing President Vicente Fox's stunning victory in 2000 ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The race was close between former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, and Felipe Calderon, a former energy secretary from Fox's conservative National Action Party. Running in third place is Roberto Madrazo, the candidate for the PRI.
Salome's husband, 49-year-old construction worker Pedro Hernandez, said he was voting for Calderon.
"I could be resting at home but voting for me is a moral responsibility," Hernandez said. "I'm happy to be part of this because we're living a new democracy, and — who knows? — maybe my vote can decide this election."
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On the Net:
Federal Electoral Institute (with English link):
http://www-site.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_08_NativoLopez.shtml
Nativo López: What’s Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement?
June 30, 2006 | Pages 8 and 9
NATIVO LÓPEZ is president of the Mexican American Political Association. He was a leading organizer of the huge demonstrations for immigrant rights in Los Angeles on March 25 and May 1. He spoke at a panel discussion about the future of the immigrant rights movement at the Socialism 2006 conference in New York City.
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THANK YOU for the opportunity to make a presentation regarding the current status of the immigrant rights movement and attempt to answer the hardest question: What now?
We are in an interesting interlude. Some could paint it in a negative light, but I tend to believe that, in fact, there are very positive things we can draw from the current situation and the double fix the Democratic Party put this movement in, with the help of their auxiliary organizations.
I want to talk about this. Like in any movement, the struggle doesn’t move in a direct path. It’s more of a crooked path.
What the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations did for us during the Easter interlude was a big favor. We don’t realize it yet. We don’t understand it completely yet. I’m still analyzing that period--what occurred and where we are today--but I have concluded definitively that they did us a big favor.
What is the favor that they did us? Certainly we know that they betrayed us, as historically has been the case for immigrants, for the working class, for national minorities in the United States.
One has only to look at the 4,000-plus deaths that have occurred on the border since the institution of the Gatekeeper program brought to us by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of the Democratic Party, and your friend, but not mine, President Bill Clinton. We can wail all we want against President Bush, but we absolutely know that the 4,000-plus deaths on the border can be directly attributed to President Clinton and Dianne Feinstein.
The Democrats were a majority in the Congress when that passed. The 1996 immigration “reform” that occurred is the predecessor to the Patriot Act and everything the Bush administration did.
The swelling of the undocumented population in the United States, particularly from India, Mexico, the Philippines, is directly attributable to the legislation that was passed, which made it more difficult for families to reunify by putting a heavy burden on them, a heavy fine and forcing them to leave the country. Therefore, families stayed here to face greater penalties and the possibility of never legalizing their status.
All this is directly attributable to President Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus--those who seek to portray themselves today as the fighters for immigrant rights. It’s a bunch of hypocrisy.
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WHY WAS there so much unity and such a great, aggressive mass mobilization throughout the country at the beginning of 2006?
HR 4437, the author of which was Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, left absolutely no social space--none whatsoever--for the immigrant to accommodate themselves to a truly unjust system, but yet a system that allowed him or her to find a job that perhaps others were not willing to do and still survive and thrive and send money home to their loved ones.
HR 4437 didn’t just put the burden on the immigrant. Had that been the case, employer associations, trade associations, the masses of churches, social organizations and even the Democratic Party would not have come forward to join the immigrant in this fight to defeat that legislation.
There was a situation where most people in society connected in any way with the dynamic of immigration saw the possibility of being criminalized themselves. Therefore, they were willing to come forward and join the immigrant in this fight.
In that sense, Sensenbrenner became a unifying factor, similar to how Gov. Pete Wilson did in 1994, when he was the bandleader for Proposition 187. We were then united on what we did not want. But we were not as united, we’re still not united on what we want.
This struggle surged from the bases, not from the hierarchies. That’s an absolute truth that no one can deny.
To be completely honest with you, I can tell you that even the base leaders of this movement found themselves running a marathon--out of shape and trying to catch up to the masses that were demanding focused and disciplined action against HR 4437.
In fact, on March 25, when over 1 million people marched in Los Angeles, all the organizations in the coalition couldn’t muster more than 500 people for security for the march. But it’s a testament of the great discipline of the immigrant community that it self-secured a situation that could have easily gotten out of hand, had the police, LAPD and other right-wing forces been provoked into action.
After March 25 in Los Angeles, the hierarchies sought to assert themselves at the front of this movement, and to control it and force it and channel it to accept a compromise that they had already cut several years before.
That compromise that they cut several years before is embodied in the legislation called Kennedy-McCain, crafted by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, which essentially would codify in law more onerous employer sanctions than currently exist in law, and a massive contract-labor program in the United States.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, there is an existing contract-labor program in the United States. It’s called the H2A program. It uses approximately 50,000 to 60,000 contract laborers, predominantly in agriculture. The McCain-Kennedy bill would expand that to half a million workers a year, and perhaps more.
I call it a contract-labor program, because that’s what it is. They like to call it by a benign name--a guest-worker program. As if workers are truly guests in the American house, when we know that the contract workers are treated as less than second-class citizens, and certainly not as guests.
The auxiliary organizations of the Democratic Party sought to assert themselves as leaders in this movement, and it’s time to name names, because this is important. We must be truthful with our community. The deception must end.
The International leadership of the Service Employees International Union; the International leadership and some of the local leadership of UNITE HERE; the leadership of the United Farm Workers were all part of the deal. They were all part of the betrayal. The National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Forum, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Immigration Capital Coalition, the Center for Community Change.
These organizations, which are based in Washington, D.C.--lobbyists, for the most part--are truly disconnected to the masses of immigrants and do not represent the interests of the masses of immigrants.
They represent the interests of Corporate America, because it’s Corporate America that funds them and dictates to them the policies that they should pursue--beneficial to Corporate America, and perhaps some crumbs fall from the table that would benefit the immigrant community.
Certainly they need a façade to maintain the appearance of credibility, but we know that they’re corporate-funded, corporate-directed, and they were doing the bidding of Corporate America, including those unions.
How is it possible that those three unions bolted from the AFL-CIO to create the new progressive Change to Win coalition, and they accepted the premise that contract labor in massive form could exist in the United States, with those unions be the beneficiaries by cutting deals with Corporate America for yellow-dog collective bargaining agreements, in which they would receive dues money from those contract laborers.
It’s shameful, and Ernesto Galarza, Burt Corona and Cesar Chavez are turning over in their graves. The very thought that leaders of those unions--which are part of the legacy of those three men--would be cutting a deal with Corporate America to support bracero-type programs, when they fought their whole lives to sunset existing bracero programs, which existed for over three decades, and fought to prevent their reinstitutionalization in the United States.
What I say, brothers and sisters, may be unsettling to some when this is published, but we intend to take our show on the road and tell the truth to the immigrant community, because there is nothing stronger than the truth--that we have been betrayed by these institutions and individuals.
That’s why I say this is a positive occurrence. Because it removes any shadow of a doubt that such institutions represent the legitimate interests of immigrant workers in America.
The illusion will be shattered as it becomes quite apparent to the immigrant community that the nasty compromise the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations sought to consummate in the legislation of Hagel-Martinez was nothing but a sham and truly has nothing of merit for the immigrant community.
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THE MAY Day action, as never seen before, was truly a workers’ action--from the bottom, not from the hierarchy. The message of the Great American Boycott surged from below--it was not imposed from the top.
In fact, the Democratic Party; its auxiliary organizations; the National Council of Bishops, particularly, Cardinal Roger Mahoney; Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus fought tooth and nail, in tandem with corporate Spanish-language radio, to prevent the message of the masses in the Great American Boycott from reaching the ears of all immigrants throughout America, and they failed. They absolutely failed.
The Great American Boycott was successful because literally millions of people went into the streets, repudiating by their actions the message of the hierarchies. Because the message of the Great American Boycott was the message of the masses, and that’s why it prevailed--it was their own message. They imposed their message over the message of the hierarchies, and they won.
They demonstrated to all of America that their message was more powerful than the corporate media, their message was more powerful than the institution of the church, their message was more powerful than the institution of the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations. They heeded their own message, and they won.
Easter in 2006 is a day to be remembered, because just before the Easter recess, the immigrant rights movement won. It had definitively defeated HR 4437. It had prevented the Hagel-Martinez from seeing the light of day from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, in that one instance, obeyed the message of the masses to not compromise with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and allow Hagel-Martinez to see the light of day.
Do you all recall that? The national debate on immigration had shifted favorably to us--to the masses of immigrants.
And in that two-week interlude, the cardinals went to Washington, D.C., Mayor Villaraigosa went to Washington, D.C., the Congressional Hispanic Caucus huddled with Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid, and Eliseo Medina, international vice president of SEIU; Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers; John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE.
They all huddled in Washington, D.C., and politically, they beat up poor Harry Reid. And Harry Reid cut the deal. We saw Hagel-Martinez debated in the Senate and approved by the Senate. We saw Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the great California liberal, vote for the border wall, vote for National Guard on the border, vote for criminalizing employers with sanctions, vote for criminalizing immigrants with a misdemeanor offense instead of a felony offense, vote for eliminating due process rights to immigrants, vote for a massive contract-labor program. These are the measures they voted for, because this is what is contained in Hagel-Martinez.
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SENSENBRENNER AND Sensenbrenner Lite--this is what we have today on the table. We’re fighting not just one set of letters and numbers, we’re fighting two sets of letters and numbers: HR 4437 and S 2611.
But while it is a more difficult fight, the positive thing is that the immigrant will have no illusion that Barbara Boxer or the Democratic Party will fight to obtain what he and she truly deserve--a fair trade, a fair exchange for their labor.
This truly is the basis and the premise of our demand of amnesty for all immigrant workers, fully and immediately. It’s a fair exchange. This is our answer to the hypocrisy of the so-called free traders, the neoliberals of America, when they talk about free trade.
We talk about fair trade and fair exchange--that as an immigrant worker, if I am willing to come to America to work, to create value, to create wealth, to create assets for America, a true fair exchange to me should be permanent residence, immediately and fully for me and my family.
Brothers and sisters, I welcome your questions, but more your comments and your statements and your commitment to continue in this fight--to work with us to implement throughout the United States a popular referendum where we will go to millions of immigrants and ask them what they want in immigration reform. On November 7 of this year, we will ask all immigrants to go to the ballot to vote for true, fair, humane immigration reform.
The Republicans and the Democrats--these phonies will jostle and juggle over who will be the majority in Congress to continue to deny the rights of all working people. Because let us remember that with the Democrats controlling Congress and a Democratic president, they absolutely refused to reform federal labor law in America to allow workers to organize unions with no impediments.
So they’re no better than the Republicans in power. In fact, they do a better job than the Republicans to prevent the working class to truly be free in America.
Our struggle today is to eliminate all the illusions in these Democrats and their auxiliary organizations and some of the union leaders. I say some union leaders, because we have observed that those union leaders who are closer to the base are more true to the base. That also applies to the church--to the parish pastor, who is pastoring on a daily basis and sees the suffering on a daily basis. They’re closer to the truth, because they’re closer to the base.
So our job is to win over those intermediary and base leaders to have no illusions about what their leaders are doing in Washington, D.C. And be true to their constituencies, be true to the base, be true to the immigrants, and work with us to build the strongest, mightiest immigrant rights movement in America, which will spill over across all borders throughout the world.
Because our fight, brothers and sisters, is a fight to carry the message that the working class is an international class, and it has no borders.
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_04_Mexico.shtml
The tale of two “campaigns” + What’s at stake in Mexico’s election?
June 30, 2006 | Page 4
LANCE SELFA reports on the upcoming presidential elections in Mexico.
MEXICANS WILL go to the polls on July 2 to choose the successor of President Vicente Fox.
They will have three major choices: Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN), the candidate of the governing right, backed by his cohort Fox; Andres Manuel López Obrador, the populist candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and known by his initials “AMLO”; and Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the party that governed Mexico for almost seven decades before Fox’s election in 2000.
With the election a week away, AMLO and Calderón were in a virtual tie, with Madrazo a distant third, according to public opinion polls. This represents a drop in popularity for AMLO, who was leading in the presidential preference polls for more than a year.
One explanation for this is that AMLO has been attacked from both sides of the political spectrum.
From the right, with Fox’s encouragement, Calderón has accused AMLO of being a radical whose election would lead to chaos and social disorder. This multimillion-dollar negative campaign has had the desired effect.
In April, Fox’s government ordered troops to attack steelworkers occupying their plant in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific coast, and to repress flower vendors in the town of San Salvador de Atenco near Mexico City. In each case, the government used military force against social protests in order to blame the left for the resulting disorder.
According to some experts, these attacks are part of a campaign to instill fear and create the public perception that if AMLO wins the presidency, the country will descend into chaos. The PRI used a similar strategy in 1994, which helped it to win elections after the assassination of its first presidential candidate, followed by the Zapatista uprising. Today, the PAN hopes that history will repeat itself.
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AT THE same time that he has become a target for the right, AMLO has faced a challenge from the left--from the “other campaign” spearheaded by the Zapatistas (the EZLN).
At the beginning of this year, the Zapatistas and their supporters within the social movements and the “non-institutional” left (essentially, the left not in government) have traveled the country holding meetings and discussions with activists.
The “other campaign” wants to help reconfigure the anti-capitalist left with the idea of convening a constituent assembly to reform the Mexican constitution and, possibly, to launch a different organization that can bring together the different social movements.
At these meetings, the main Zapatista spokesperson, Subcommander Marcos--who has renamed himself “Delegate Zero” of the constituent assembly--has repeatedly blasted AMLO for his compromises with neoliberal policies, and for the PRD’s betrayal of indigenous rights. In 2001, PRD representatives in the National Assembly joined with the PRI and PAN to reject proposals granting autonomy to the indigenous people of Chiapas.
Throughout most of the “other campaign,” AMLO has kept his distance from Marcos and his supporters. But when Marcos traveled to San Salvador de Atenco in May to lead protests against government repression and the imprisonment of community leaders, the right lashed out. PAN TV ads linked AMLO with the Zapatista radicals.
For their part, AMLO and his party stayed silent on the events in Atenco, because the mayor who called the police to remove the flower vendors from the town square is a PRD member. Moreover, AMLO wants to present himself as being “tough on crime” and social disorder.
Another big problem for AMLO--at least from the point of view of the left--is that AMLO has recruited many ex-members of the PRI, including some who were involved in the administration of the corrupt and right-wing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-2004) to run as PRD candidates.
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DESPITE HIS populist rhetoric, López Obrador is no radical. Among his chief advisers is Manuel Camacho Solis, a former ally of Salinas de Gortari. In 2000, he paid more than $4 million in city funds to the consulting firm of Republican Rudolph Giuliani to bring a U.S.-style “war on crime” to Mexico City.
His election manifesto is full of generalities, but it supports the idea of “taking advantage of globalization, and not just suffering from it.” As China has developed by exporting its labor power, he argues, Mexico can develop by exporting its energy resources. He promises more social reform and completion of the San Andrés Accords with the Zapatistas, but none of his proposals challenge capitalism.
Left-wing commentator Alejandro Nadal, writing in La Jornada, worried that AMLO’s election manifesto--and the presence of advisers like Camacho Solis--signals that a number of “corrupt politicians, opportunists and architects of national pacts” are already lining up to jump on López Obrador’s bandwagon.
For these reasons, the respected activist and historian Adolfo Gilly, noting that AMLO’s circle of advisers includes many architects of the PRI’s neoliberal turn, wrote March 3 in La Jornada that “for reasons of morality, if you want to call it that, I will not vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, nor for any of [the PRD’s] candidates: you can be sure of that.”
Nevertheless, many activists want to vote for AMLO to strike a blow against the right in Mexico. Perhaps a vote for AMLO can be justified on these grounds. But it must be remembered that AMLO wants to revive the economic and social policies of the PRI of the 1970s, updated to the neoliberal era. Although the Mexican establishment doesn’t like AMLO, neither do they fear him.
Whoever wins, what will take place after the elections will be most important. This year has seen several crucial developments on the left--the “other campaign,” an all-but general strike that closed down the steel industry in April, and important political changes in Mexico’s unions. Meanwhile, north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the massive immigrant rights movement has had a huge impact.
The future for Mexico’s social movements and workers depends on the deepening of these developments, not on who sits in the presidential palace.
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http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d90f4ce1b1bf4748cd8de75271ee7f0e
A New Generation of Immigrant Rights Leaders: Jun 26, 2006
By Eduardo Stanley, Traducción al español
Editor’s Note: Working class immigrant women are emerging as potent leaders within the immigrant rights movement.
FRESNO, CA-- Margarita paced around the stage and practiced her speech. She had only spoken before small groups, but this was different. Nearly 20,000 people and their families had gathered in front of the Fresno City Council building, singing, dancing, demanding immigration reform, and promising to vote in the future.
“At first I felt nervous, but seeing so many people gave me strength,” says the 27-year-old construction worker. “Now I am more confident of what I am doing.”
Margarita arrived in the United States from Mexico when she was 11, with her mother. She had a humble life in Mexico City: helping with housework, taking care of her sisters, sharing with her aunts, and going to school. Like many girls, she grew up without the presence of her father, who immigrated to the United States, and then forgot the family he left behind.
At age 18, she completed high school and gave birth to her daughter Jesenia. Since then she has shared her life with her husband, Eduardo Ruíz, also from Oaxaca. After working various jobs, Margarita found her calling. “An African-American man offered me work in construction and since then I have not put down a hammer,” she says. “I like machines and heavy tools.” And, she adds, “In spite of my small stature, I am strong.”
In 1994, while the prospect of Proposition 187 shook communities throughout the state, Margarita also underwent her own transformative experience. A school security guard accused her of carrying a firearm. She was detained. “They searched me like a criminal, with guns in their hands,” she says. The episode convinced her of the need to raise one’s voice against abuses of power, she says.
That year she participated together with hundreds of students in the protest marches against Proposition 187, proposed by then-governor Pete Wilson. The measure aimed to prohibit illegal immigrants from accessing state services.
For the last several years, she and her mother have volunteered at a Catholic church in Fresno, where they collaborate on different social programs. There they met an immigrant rights activist who invited them to participate in the Coalition that organized the immigrant marches in Fresno.
“I believe it comes from family,” says Isabel Vasquez, 48, Margarita’s mother. “I read the bible and it speaks about justice but in real life it is very different. You have to achieve it for yourself.” She decided to emigrate to the United States because there were no jobs in her country, and because of this she feels expelled. She adds that the Mexican government not only does not help, but also hurts its people. “I would have been happier in my community,” she says.
She feels she has been strict with her three children but was afraid they would get involved in drugs or sex. However, she does not hide her satisfaction of seeing that her fears were unfounded and that between them there is communication. “I like to participate with my daughter in this movement. In the Coalition we can speak our opinion and they respect us.”
Margarita worries especially about the condition of Latina women, which she considers a product of her machista, or male-dominated culture. She says women who suffer domestic violence feel they cannot escape, but if they are helped they do change. “Then they will see that there is a different world and they can overcome it.”
Even she has proven herself. Today, Margarita works in a firm that installs rain gutters, mainly on new houses, and believes that she is in her own way advancing the cause of immigrant women. “I am the only woman. I feel good, and I believe I can open doors for other women.”
She moves quickly, climbs stairs, takes measurements, cuts the material and installs it. Always with a smile on her lips, she only interrupts her work for a few minutes to speak with her family on the telephone. “For a while I was chosen to supervise a group of 25 workers, but because they were men they resisted my instructions,” she says. She laughs, tosses her head back and adds, “They pretended not to hear me and even made jokes about the boss.”
But she managed. ”I do not feel discriminated against. They know what I can do,” she says. “I have a strong character. I do not like injustices. If I see my neighbor’s husband hitting her, I get involved.”
Although she loves her job, organizing has gotting Margarita to thing about bigger plans. “I would like to form a women’s coalition, so our voice can be heard.” She believes women are more convincing and visualizes a march of women, with their children. “We are going forward,” she says.
It is not surprising, because for Margarita, learning about human and labor rights is like learning to handle tools: Both things, she says, have a constructive purpose.
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060626_tom_hayden_mexio_election/
Tom Hayden: Mexico’s Presidential Front-Runner May Roil U.S. Conservatives
= Posted on Jun 26, 2006
AP / Guillermo Arias
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a rally, Friday, June 2, in Zamora, 380 kilometers from Mexico City. Elections will take place on July 2.
By Tom Hayden
Editor’s note: In this column, veteran social activist Tom Hayden reports on Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexico City mayor who is waging a progressive populist campaign for his country’s presidency, and whose plans are sure to incense U.S. conservatives in border states: redrafting the free-trade aspects of NAFTA that force Mexicans to emigrate northward; turning every Mexican consulate in the U.S. into a legal aid center to defend immigrant rights; and vocal opposition to the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Though the progressive media and bloggers are paying scant attention, a progressive populist is the front-runner in Mexico’s July 2 election, a man who would demand a revision of NAFTA, add a powerful workers’ voice to the roiling U.S. debate on immigration, and foster the new nationalism spreading in Latin America.
The candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, currently leads by 3 to 4% in official polling, while his internal surveys indicate a margin as high as 10%. Obrador represents the historical party of the left, the PRD. His closest rival is Felipe Calderon of the neo-liberal PAN. The traditional governing party, the PRI, continues to trail badly while retaining significant power at state and local levels.
The United States is not happy over the latest challenge to its faded hegemony over Latin America but is keeping a discreet profile. The only well-known American consultant involved with the candidates is ex-Clinton advisor Dick Morris, who assists the conservative Calderon.
Lopez Obrador benefits immensely from popular approval of his tenure as mayor of Mexico City, where he fought successfully for the elderly and ran a more efficient administration than most of his predecessors. As a candidate he promises to stop privatization of oil and gas industries and to offer free medical care and food subsidies for citizens over 65. He has tapped a passionate popular solidarity with his modest lifestyle and outspoken preference for Mexico’s poor, who are more than half the country’s population. Speaking under the blazing sun rather than the shaded canopies usually reserved for the powerful, he is often paralyzed by the frenzied joy of the crowds he draws.
Mexicans close to the campaign said in interviews that Lopez Obrador would insist on basic revisions to NAFTA, the trade pact that has only widened inequality in Mexico since 1994. As the Los Angeles Times noted in 2002, “few would argue that NAFTA has been anything but devastating for Mexican farm families.” In 2003, farmers stormed the doors of the Mexican legislature on horseback and threatened to seize customs checkpoints at the U.S.-Mexico border (L.A. Times, Jan. 1, 2003). With the situation worsening, Lopez Obrador would preserve subsidies for Mexican farmers that were set to expire under the NAFTA agreement.
He would make a priority of labor standards for immigrant workers, turning every Mexican consulate in the U.S. into a procuraduria, a kind of legal aid center. He also opposes the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border as an inhumane affront.
There would be major consequences for the American immigration debate with a new Mexican government that forcefully defended workers’ rights and blamed NAFTA and U.S. multinationals for the conditions forcing Mexican workers to emigrate northward. Pro-immigrant and anti-corporate forces in Mexico would be fortified. A majority in the U.S. Congress might consider seriously reforming NAFTA for the first time. Right-wing conservatives would become more frenzied about the radical “threat” on the border.
“Neo-liberalism is a failure for us,” said one of the Mexico City sources. “It is destroying our strategic national industries and resources: energy, phones, even privatizing health and education, the whole reform model achieved by the Lazaro Cardenas government since the 1930s.”
Lopez Obrador has survived the intense fear-and-loathing campaign generated by the Mexican businesses and right-wingers who charge that he would become Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro rolled into one populist nightmare. Fear is their brand, because their alternative is the widely unpopular gospel of free trade and free markets.
At the same time, Lopez Obrador has largely weathered the critique of subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas, who are carrying out their la otra campana [the Other Campaign], a speaking and organizing tour that rejects all political parties and seeks to unify Mexico’s social resistance movements. When pressed, Marcos will deny that the Zapatistas are urging a “no” vote on Lopez Obrador, saying they only are stressing that the presidential election will bring no fundamental change to the people of Mexico. The intensive and massive support for Lopez Obrador represents a “popular will” that the Zapatistas cannot ignore, according to a continuing Zapatista supporter I interviewed who also is working hard for Lopez Obrador. Similarly, the attachment of the independent media to the Zapatistas may have caused a lack of attention to the popular movement to elect Lopez Obrador.
Complicating the scene is the Zapatistas’ designation of election day, July 2, as a “national day of direct action,” a defiance of federal election laws. That could give the right a pretext to bring out police and troops to crush anyone blocking roads.
“The country is a powder keg that could ignite on election day,” warn activists who accompanied the recent Zapatista campaign and witnessed the police repression in May of flower vendors in San Salvador Atenco, where a land resistance movement had succeeded in becoming virtually autonomous from the state. The Zapatistas forged an alliance with the community and, for the present, Marcos and his associates have camped out in Mexico’s urban jungles instead of their traditional bases in the mountains of Chiapas.
Another flash point is Oaxaca, where teachers have camped in a tent city during a yearlong campaign for pay increases. The armed forces recently tried to dislodge the protestors, using gas from helicopters, and the resistance broadened to 70,000 in the colonial town square. Talks through a federal mediator have broken down and the standoff continues. Lopez Obrador supports the teachers.
Apocalyptic scenarios are never to be ruled out in Mexico. If Lopez Obrador wins by a close margin and sectors of the elite and armed forces refuse to accept defeat, much of Mexico might become like Oaxaca and San Salvador Atenco, with people pouring into the streets in a prolonged confrontation.
An even darker projection, commonly if privately expressed by many Mexicans, is that Lopez Obrador will be assassinated if he comes close to the ring of power. Luis Donaldo Colosio, a presidential candidate in 1994, was assassinated in broad daylight. That election ushered in the NAFTA era and the simultaneous Zapatista uprising.
If the supporters of Lopez Obrador sense that the election is stolen from them, they will not go quietly like Al Gore’s Democratic Party in 2000. It is accepted across Mexico that the 1988 presidential election was crudely stolen from the then-PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of Lazaro Cardenas. At that time, the lack of popular organization and fears of a massacre led the PRD candidate to accept the fraudulent outcome. “Not this time,” I was told. “The people won’t let this election be stolen.” The street demand to defend the vote could bridge the differences, at least temporarily, with the Zapatistas.
Indeed, a fusion of popular mobilization and electoral politics has saved Lopez Obrador before. In 1998, his campaigners blocked roads and oil fields after he lost a gubernatorial race in Tabasco described as “fraud-ridden” by the New York Times (March 16, 2005). Only last year, the major parties tried to force him off the ballot by indicting him on a spurious corruption charge involving the construction of a road to a private hospital. Presidential candidates are disqualified if they are indicted. So Lopez Obrador’s destiny was in doubt until hundreds of thousands of people rallied in the streets. Lopez Obrador announced he would go to jail rather than submit, leaving his enemies to ponder the prospect of 1 million Mexicans marching on his prison site. The charges went away.
This fusion of direct action and constitutional politics makes this a unique campaign in a country long ruled from the top down by chicanery and fraud. It appears that mass mobilization is necessary to make electoral politics work at all, and to defend the vote even when politics succeed.
Close supporters of Lopez Obrador dismiss these extreme scenarios, not wanting to increase tensions any further. They insist that their candidate will win decisively by peaceful means. They also are quick to reject any allegations that they are closet chavistas or fidelistas. Having an electoral strategy by itself separates them from the Zapatistas. While naturally part of the progressive trend now sweeping Latin America, they insist on a unique Mexican identity in the tradition of Morelos, Juarez, Zapata, Madero and, perhaps most of all, Cardenas. That tradition alone always has constituted a challenge to the United States.
In the new Latin American spectrum, it is indeed difficult to identify Lopez Obrador with any particular pole. That he and his supporters seek proper relations with the superpower on the border, rather than starting an ideological war, is understandable. That they would launch demands to reform NAFTA will make sense to many, and remove the underpinning of support that the Vicente Fox regime has provided. The call for a kind of “new New Deal” to increase jobs and lessen the causes of migration will stand as an alternative model to neo-liberalism in crisis. Poverty and history both will compel Lopez Obrador to a greater independence from the U.S. than the Mexican state has shown for decades.
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Tom Hayden is the editor of “The Zapatista Reader” (2001) and many articles on Latin America. His most recent book is “Radical Nomad,” a biography of C. Wright Mills (Paradigm). He is a member of The Nation’s editorial board.
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http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/06/26/daily6.html
McCain blasts fellow Republican: Monday, June 26, 2006
by Mike Sunnucks / The Business Journal of Phoenix
Arizona Sen. John McCain has come out against the Republican gubernatorial candidacy of Don Goldwater.
Goldwater -- nephew of late, former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater -- favors a hard-line approach to illegal immigration and border security. That includes construction of a border wall and putting some illegal immigrants who are arrested for crimes into work details to help build fences and walls.
McCain issued a statement Friday denouncing Goldwater's call for a border wall and work camps and urged fellow Republicans to take a similar stance.
The senator called Goldwater an "inappropriate messenger" for the GOP on the issue -- a major concern for Arizona's business community.
McCain -- who is eyeing a 2008 White House run -- favors a more moderate immigration approach including a business-backed guest worker program and legal path for some illegals already in the U.S. President Bush also backs that approach.
The Goldwater campaign said Friday it was disappointed that McCain did not contact them before issuing the official denouncement.
McCain could endorse conservative attorney Len Munsil in the September Republican primary for governor. Munsil is the former head of the Center for Arizona Policy, a socially conservative advocacy group and the main supporter of a proposed state ballot question banning gay marriage.
The Republican senator supports that state measure, but opposes a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.
Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano is heavily favored in this year's governor's race against potential Republican challengers such as Munsil, Goldwater and Scottsdale businessman Mike Harris.
Napolitano favors McCain and Bush's immigration and border security efforts despite their partisan differences.
There are 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and Arizona is a top crossing point for Mexican migrants, drug smugglers and other traffickers.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/politics/mainD8IE74QG0.shtml
GOP Candidate's Call for Labor Camp Rebuked: Jun. 23, 2006
Republican candidate's call for forced labor camp for immigrants angers two GOP lawmakers
WASHINGTON, By JENNIFER TALHELM Associated Press Writer
A Republican gubernatorial candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate.
Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a Mexican news service, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."
The article described Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants.
Goldwater, a candidate for governor in Arizona, said in a statement Friday that his comments were taken out of context. He said he was calling for a work program for convicted nonviolent felons, similar to "tried and tested, effective and accepted practices" used by state and local jails.
But two Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe, called Goldwater's comments "deeply offensive" and asked state Republicans to reject his candidacy in the Sept. 12 primary.
"That Mr. Goldwater is either unaware of or indifferent to the loaded symbolism, injustice and un-Americanism of his 'plan' to address the many serious issues caused by illegal immigration reveals his flaws as a candidate and a stunning lack of respect for the basic values of a generous and decent society," McCain said in a statement.
Kolbe said that if the comments are true, Goldwater "has demonstrated his complete unworthiness for public office, and I am confident he will be soundly rejected by Republicans from the party of Barry Goldwater, who consistently demonstrated his compassion and respect for all people. This is a sad day in the national debate on immigration policy."
McCain and Kolbe favor a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.
Goldwater made a similar comment at an April anti-immigration rally.
"Build us that wall _ now!" Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.
Barry Goldwater, the former Arizona senator, was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.
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http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060531_rfid_chips.html
Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants: May 31, 2006
By Bill Christensen
Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.
Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."
The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.
RFID tags have long been used to identify animals in a variety of settings; livestock, laboratory animals and pets have been "chipped" for decades. Privacy advocates have long expressed concerns about this technology being used in human beings.
In a related story, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe allegedly remarked that microchips could be used to track seasonal workers to visiting U.S. senators Jeff Sessions (Alabama) and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). "President Uribe said he would consider having Colombian workers have microchips implanted in their bodies before they are permitted to enter the US for seasonal work," Specter told Congress on April 25.
Implanting microchips in human beings for the purpose of monitoring is not exactly news for science fiction fans; Alfred Bester wrote about "skull bugs" in his 1974 novel The Computer Connection:
"...you don't know what's going on in the crazy culture outside. It's a bugged and drugged world. Ninety percent of the bods have bugs implanted in their skulls in hospital when they're born. They're monitored constantly."
(Read more about Alfred Bester's skull bugs)
VeriChips are legal for implantation in people in the U.S.; see VeriChip RFID Tag Patient Implant Badges Now FDA Approved. See also a related story on a Proposed National Worker DNA Fingerprint Database. Read more at RFID implants for guest workers, Latin leader keen on ID chips and Chip implants for migrant workers?.
Note: The source for this story was inadvertently omitted; read the press release at spychips.com; also, see the Silverman interview transcript. This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.
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http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12369631p-13097093c.html
Tempers flare in heat: Anger mounts at rally; pro-immigration camp shows up to tell its side
= June 25, 2006 By Tim Morgan / BEE Staff Writer
The nation's immigration policy was debated Saturday on the northwest corner of Briggsmore and McHenry avenues — frequently nose to nose and punctuated with four-letter epithets.
Groups from the polar extremes of the immigration issue demonstrated at midday Saturday, undeterred by the 90-degree heat.
A group called Save Our State has held controversial demonstrations against illegal immigration in Southern California in the past year. It held its first rally in Modesto, advertising it as "our fight to save America." The group has just started a chapter in Modesto, according to Debbie Monk, an events coordinator for the group.
Two other groups, Aztlan Rising and Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians Collective, held a counter demonstration after discovering Save Our State's plan.
Starting around 11 a.m., each side mustered about three dozen supporters with signs, flags, banners and a bullhorn.
The groups started on opposite sides of Briggsmore Avenue on the west side of McHenry but soon merged on the northwest corner of the busy intersection. About a dozen Modesto police officers stood by, frequently stepping in to separate the protesters when the rhetoric got heated.
"A lot of our taxes go to welfare payments for illegals," Monk said.
"Illegals work under the table for cash and pay no taxes. Many of them have 'anchor babies' so they can stay. It's got to stop."
An anchor baby, she explained, is a child born in the United States to illegal immigrants. Children born in the United States have citizenship, creating a path for the parents to stay, Monk said.
Felt need to give other side
Signs carried by the Save Our State side read, "It's not illegal immigration — it's an invasion," "No Amnesty for Illegals" and "Deport Illegals."
Doug Anderson of Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians Collective said his group decided to counter-demonstrate because the Save Our State position is illogical.
"They are attacking other working-class people," he said. "All workers need to be in solidarity against the forces affecting our lives. We would all be in a better place no matter what side of the border we are on."
Ricardo Gil Jr. of Aztlan Rising said his group promotes indigenous identity. "They wrongfully call us Hispanics and Latinos," he said. "They forget where we came from. We have the right to live anywhere on the continent. We have lived here 50,000 years."
The signs on the counterdemonstration side read, "Columbus was an illegal alien," "Where's your green card, pilgrim?" and "You are on Indian land."
Some of the demonstrators weren't affiliated with any of the groups.
Terry Stewart of Modesto said he came to demonstrate after reading about the issue on a modbee.com forum. Stewart said he was protesting the cost of illegal immigration: "The taxes we pay to ensure that illegal immigrants get a fair education."
Illegal immigrants get in-state tuition rates at state schools, but students from other states pay a higher rate, he said. "That's not fair."
Community activist John Mataka of Grayson said he came when he heard the Save Our State group was coming.
"We are against that kind of racism and immigrant bashing," he said. "This will be a majority Mexican community soon, and we want to let them know we aren't going to let them come here and talk smack against our Mexican and brown brothers."
Some seemed to have come for the confrontation. James Glenn of Fremont, wearing an American flag T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, instigated several shouting matches.
"You're illegal. Your mama's illegal; your daddy is illegal. Go home!" Glenn yelled at the counter-demonstrators. "You're a queer; your mama's a queer; your daddy's a queer. We all know where you live. Send them home."
He was answered with chants of "Europeans, go home."
Glenn later described himself as "just a worried American."
Police officers stood by and intervened when the verbal assaults appeared to be veering toward the physical. "We aren't going to let anything happen," Modesto police Sgt. Clint Raymer said. "It will stay peaceful."
Many cars passing by honked in solidarity with one side or the other, some waving American or Mexican flags. By 2:30 p.m., the demonstrators had left, neither side convinced by the other, and the corner returned to its usual traffic din.
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Bee staff writer Tim Moran can be reached at 578-2349 tmoran@modbee.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/washington/25bush.html
June 25, 2006
Bush's Immigration Plan Stalled as House G.O.P. Grew More Anxious
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
This article is by Adam Nagourney, Carl Hulse and Jim Rutenberg.
WASHINGTON, June 24 — For the White House, the Congressional picnic last week seemed like the perfect setting to mend strained relations with Republican allies on Capitol Hill: President Bush and his advisers eating taquitos and Mexican confetti rice on the lawn of the White House with Republican Congressional leaders.
But moments before Mr. Bush was to welcome his guests, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told the president that House Republicans were effectively sidelining — and in the view of some Congressional aides probably killing — what had become Mr. Bush's signature domestic initiative of the year: an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
That disappointing news for Mr. Bush signaled the apparent collapse of a carefully orchestrated White House strategy to push a compromise immigration bill through Congress this summer — and in the process invigorate Mr. Bush's second term with a badly needed domestic victory.
The decision by the House leadership to defy the president after he had put so much prestige on the line — including a rare prime-time Oval Office speech for a domestic initiative — amounted to a clear rebuke of the president on an issue that he has long held dear.
An account of the administration's push for the initiative, based on interviews with members of Congress and senior White House and Congressional officials, shows that Mr. Bush's immigration measure was derailed by an overly optimistic assessment by the White House of the prospects for building a bipartisan coalition in support of the bill. It was also hurt by a fundamental misreading of the depth of hostility to the measure among House Republicans.
It was undone as well, White House and Congressional leaders acknowledged, by a sharp division over whether to focus on the short term or on the party's long-term political prospects. Mr. Bush's aides saw the House bill, which would make it a felony to live in this country illegally and would close off any chance to win legal status, as a threat to their attempts to broaden the party's appeal to Hispanic voters.
House Republican leaders saw Mr. Bush's approach — calling for tougher enforcement as well as avenues to legalize the illegal workforce and create a possible path to citizenship — as a threat to House Republicans already fearful of losing control of this fall's elections by angering voters who viewed the plan as amnesty.
Mr. Bush's first attempt to advocate for the measure was described even by allies as initially muddled and tentative, permitting opponents to build a case against it before he made his Oval Office address. Republicans' apprehensions were cemented in June, when, in a special election for a vacant Congressional seat in California, Brian P. Bilbray, who ran on a pledge to build a fence along the border with Mexico, was elected after running against the president's position on immigration.
Coming in the same week that the White House showed effectiveness in rallying Republicans behind the war in Iraq, the setback raised questions about Mr. Bush's chances to achieve major domestic victories from a solidly Republican Congress. Unless a compromise is reached, it will mark the second time in two years, after Social Security in 2005, that Mr. Bush has failed to steer his major domestic initiative through the friendly terrain of a Republican Congress.
"This immigration legislation is very important, and if he doesn't get something in his administration, it will hurt his legacy domestically," said James A. Thurber, a presidential scholar at American University.
White House officials said they could point to several areas of progress in Congress — on extending tax cuts, pushing a line-item veto and overhauling the pension system. They said that they were under no illusions about the difficulties facing the immigration plan, but that it would never have gotten this far without the president, who will keep pushing for it. Aides say it is still possible to reach a compromise after the November elections, if not before. "We believe by being patient and sticking with it, in time people are going to be pretty happy with what the president proposes," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.
But several analysts were skeptical, noting that in just the past week a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona called for building prison camps for illegal immigrants. And the first campaign advertisement for Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who many believe is the most endangered Republican in the Senate, featured him talking about stringent border measures.
From the start of the year, after House Republicans passed a tough immigration measure that Mr. Bush's political advisers worried would undercut their effort to appeal to Hispanic voters, the White House tentatively pushed a more moderate, "comprehensive" bill that was gathering support in the Senate.
But Mr. Bush was criticized by both sides as not taking a public stand on specifics and permitting conservative members of the House to define the debate. Aides said the president was trying to stay above the discussion to remain flexible enough to broker a compromise.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said that in one strategy session Mr. Bush told the senator he could not be identified as publicly supporting the Senate bill, which sought to tighten border control but also give illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens after paying fines. "Don't quote me, Arlen," Mr. Specter recalled the president saying, implying that Mr. Bush had spoken approvingly of the bill.
In April, Mr. Bush brought Joshua B. Bolten on as the new chief of staff, shaking up a White House that had been criticized as adrift. With a new team in charge, Mr. Bush took a more forceful stand, using the issue as a way to reassert his leadership. In a speech televised in prime time, he supported the enforcement measures advocated by conservatives and called for sending National Guard troops to the border, but he also said that some illegal immigrants should be allowed legal status.
White House officials now credit Mr. Bush's address with providing impetus for passage of a compromise bill by the Senate that had earlier faltered, opening the door for a final compromise with the House, in a process that now hangs in the balance. Some officials privately had said failure to produce compromise before Congress's summer break would seriously hinder their effort.
But House Republicans said they never stopped pressing the case to the White House that the bill was a political disaster for endangered incumbents, and they were baffled at what they said was the failure of Mr. Bush's aides to appreciate their conviction.
One lawmaker said House Republicans who had attended two closed-door briefings on the issue by the White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and others, kept waiting for the administration to reverse their concerns that passing the bill would hurt Republicans; in the lawmakers' view, the administration never made a convincing case.
White House aides said Republicans had overestimated the bill's political liabilities and underestimated the long-term damage it could do to the party if Republicans were identified among Hispanics as anti-immigrant. "This is a bad trajectory for the Republican Party right now," said a senior Republican official who was granted anonymity to discuss the unusual friction in the Republican ranks.
Positions hardened when lawmakers went home for recess at the end of May and were confronted by constituents agitated over the issue. They returned to Washington to the news that Mr. Bilbray had narrowly won the seat vacated by Randy Cunningham, a Republican now jailed after a corruption scandal.
When House Republicans met for a conference that Wednesday, conservative members seized on the Bilbray victory as vindication of their argument that embracing the Senate and White House position would be poison in the fall elections, according to one participant in the meeting who was granted anonymity because the meetings were private.
Mr. Hastert and the House majority leader, John A. Boehner, told Mr. Bush in the Oval Office that the already long odds for passage of an immigration bill before the summer break had faded even more. But, aides said, the president, who has been concerned about the issue since his days as governor of Texas, where immigration is an important political and cultural issue, responded that he would not let up.
Over the next few days, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, went to Mr. Boehner and Mr. Hastert and, using polling data and pointing to what he described as politically implausible sections of the bill, warned of the consequences of enactment of the Senate legislation.
"Reynolds made clear to the leaders that the House had already staked out its position, and from a political standpoint it would be irresponsible to accept a bill that was much different," said Carl Forti, his communications director. He said Mr. Reynolds had told House leaders that supporting the bill would be "suicide for some of our members."
The White House and its supporters pointed to a poll that found strong support among Republican voters for a bill that allowed illegal immigrants to "earn" legal status. And senior White House aides argued that fellow party members were over-interpreting the meaning of Mr. Bilbray's victory in a traditionally solid Republican area. "We're happy he won," Mr. Snow said Friday. "But he barely got 50 percent."
When Mr. Hastert announced that he was postponing action on the bill until after a series of hearings around the country, the White House described the delay as temporary.
But in the Senate, the reaction to the House move was quite different.
"Thank God for the House," said a senior Senate Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the party's concerns about the debate.
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KEY LINKS:
http://www.cis.org/
Center for Immigration Studies
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http://humanebordersblogged.blogspot.com/
The Humane Borders Blog
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http://www.immigrationline.org/
Immigrationonline.org
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http://www.lawg.org/index.htm
Latin America Working Group
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http://pewhispanic.org/
Pew Hispanic Center
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http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services Home Page
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http://www.ice.gov/
U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement
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U.N. Refugee Agency
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home
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Aztlan Chicano 0101
http://www.0101aztlan.net/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aztlannet_Action/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aztlannet_news/
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National Immigrant Solidarity Network
http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
Border01 · US-Mexico Border Actions Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Border01/
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Total Amnesty Is Humane Sanity! Build Bridges, Not Walls!
Venceremos Unidos! United We Will Win!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta de Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Immigrant-Rights-Agenda/
Blog: http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com /
Blog: http://detodos-paratodos.blogspot.com/
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Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Immigrant-Rights-Agenda/
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Table of Contents: Links to Original Articles
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_us/mexico_expatriates_6;_ylt=AtC7DHdsK2pddpdY2S5y5YK9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--
Illegal status hinders Mexican voting bloc: Sunday, July 2, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_migrant_vote;_ylt=AtxSWQm5wRt_OuXqjASZX3G3IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
Mexican migrants in U.S. head to polls By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer: Sun Jul 2, 2006 5:06 PM ET
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_08_NativoLopez.shtml
Nativo López: What’s Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement?
June 30, 2006 | Pages 8 and 9
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_04_Mexico.shtml
The tale of two “campaigns” + What’s at stake in Mexico’s election?
June 30, 2006 | Page 4
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d90f4ce1b1bf4748cd8de75271ee7f0e
A New Generation of Immigrant Rights Leaders: Jun 26, 2006
By Eduardo Stanley, Traducción al español
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060626_tom_hayden_mexio_election/
Tom Hayden: Mexico’s Presidential Front-Runner May Roil U.S. Conservatives
= Posted on Jun 26, 2006
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/06/26/daily6.html
McCain blasts fellow Republican: Monday, June 26, 2006
by Mike Sunnucks / The Business Journal of Phoenix
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/politics/mainD8IE74QG0.shtml
GOP Candidate's Call for Labor Camp Rebuked: Jun. 23, 2006
Republican candidate's call for forced labor camp for immigrants angers two GOP lawmakers
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060531_rfid_chips.html
Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants: May 31, 2006
By Bill Christensen
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12369631p-13097093c.html
Tempers flare in heat: Anger mounts at rally; pro-immigration camp shows up to tell its side = June 25, 2006 By Tim Morgan / BEE Staff Writer
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/washington/25bush.html
June 25, 2006: Bush's Immigration Plan Stalled as House G.O.P. Grew More Anxious
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_us/mexico_expatriates_6;_ylt=AtC7DHdsK2pddpdY2S5y5YK9IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw--
Illegal status hinders Mexican voting bloc: Sunday, July 2, 2006
By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES - A potentially powerful expatriate voting bloc likely will have little effect on Mexico's presidential race because of the illegal status of many who live in the United States.
Thousands of Mexican expatriates streamed into border towns Sunday to vote in their homeland's elections and others were allowed to cast absentee ballots for the first time. Still, many more were disenfranchised by their fear of crossing the border as undocumented residents.
"I really wanted to vote, but I don't have papers so I couldn't go to Mexico" to get a voter card, said Adriana Lopez, 27, a housewife and illegal immigrant in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
Still, others expressed hope that more would participate next time.
"The main thing is, the door has been opened" for expatriates to vote, Jesus Hernandez, 47, one of only 13,500 Mexicans in California who sent in ballots. "Later, we can reconstruct the procedures to make it easier in the future."
Electoral officials said late Sunday the race was too close to call and they would have to wait for the district-by-district vote count that starts Wednesday to declare a winner.
When Mexico's congress passed a law last year extending suffrage to expatriates, Mexicans in the U.S. hailed it as overdue recognition of the billions of dollars they send home every year.
Their elation faded, however, when they learned that voters would need a current electoral card, and that the application deadline was nearly six months before the election. Furthermore, anyone needing a new card had to apply in Mexico — a risky chore for an illegal immigrant.
"They couldn't go to Tijuana to get their voting card ... so now they can't vote here or there," said Eduardo Ruiz, president of the Los Angeles-based Federacion de Aguas Calientes, which organized weekly trips to Tijuana last year to help people apply.
Of the estimated 4.2 million eligible Mexican voters living abroad, only about 41,000, or 1 percent, requested absentee ballots and, of those, only 28,335 were received by the Federal Electoral Institute.
The Mexican government set up 86 polls along the 2,000-mile border, mostly for migrants who missed out on its absentee ballot campaign. Leaving in the wee hours Sunday morning, dozens boarded buses in Los Angeles and other Southern California cities to head to Tijuana.
Voting was not all smooth at the special polling stations, which apparently received just 750 ballots each to prevent voter fraud. That left hundreds of voters in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, unable to vote.
Mexicans said the new president could play a vital role in helping millions of undocumented workers obtain legal residency. Outgoing President Vicente Fox traveled to the United States in recent months to encourage Congress to reform immigration policy.
"It's important for the new president to fight for rights for Mexicans in this country," said Araceli Rodriguez, of Florida City, Fla., who voted with an absentee ballot. "We're always fighting hard to make it, but we've been living under more pressure, more strain."
Some expatriates argue that more could be done to help them vote.
"If they really wanted us to vote, they would let us do it at a consulate," said Gustino Fermin, 47, who said he didn't have time to return to Mexico for a voting card.
Patricio Ballados, expatriate vote coordinator for Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, said the agency would consider recommending to Congress that Mexican nationals be allowed to renew their voting cards at consulates.
Apathy also is an issue. Some said that they came to the United States because Mexican governments has failed to create economic opportunities at home, and that they didn't see that changing anytime soon.
"No matter who they elect, the corruption will continue," said Amelia Juantes, 23, who didn't even attempt to get an absentee ballot
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_election_migrant_vote;_ylt=AtxSWQm5wRt_OuXqjASZX3G3IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
Mexican migrants in U.S. head to polls By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 2, 2006 5:06 PM ET
TIJUANA, Mexico - Thousands of Mexicans living in the United States traveled by plane, bus and car to Mexican border cities to vote in Sunday's hotly contested presidential election.
The Mexican government set up 86 polling places along the 2,000-mile border, mostly for migrants who missed out on the country's historic absentee ballot campaign.
Across the border from San Diego in Tijuana, a sprawling city of more than 1 million people, out-of-town voters arrived Sunday by bus from Los Angeles and other California cities. Many said they made the trip because they received little information about how to request absentee ballots, lacked the correct voting card, or did not fill out their applications correctly.
Maria Salome Rodriguez, a 38-year-old farm worker, drove eight hours with her husband from Fresno, Calif., and waited for two hours to vote at a polling booth outside Tijuana's airport. She and her husband decided to make the trip to the border after their applications for absentee ballots were rejected because they wrote down the wrong address.
"We want to vote so Mexico can improve and offer jobs to people here, because even though we're far away, our heart is still with our homeland," said Rodriguez, who declined to name the candidate she voted for.
Lawmakers approved a law last year to allow the estimated 11 million Mexicans living in the United States to vote by mail for the first time. But the effort was thrown together to beat electoral deadlines, and only about 32,632 absentee ballots from 71 countries were mailed to the Federal Electoral Institute.
Of those, 479 did not meet requirements and were rejected, electoral officials said.
In addition to Tijuana's regular polling centers for residents, 20 special centers were set up across the city for migrants as well as active-duty soldiers, factory workers and others who have come to the area recently from the interior of the country.
The presidential election is the first since outgoing President Vicente Fox's stunning victory in 2000 ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The race was close between former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, and Felipe Calderon, a former energy secretary from Fox's conservative National Action Party. Running in third place is Roberto Madrazo, the candidate for the PRI.
Salome's husband, 49-year-old construction worker Pedro Hernandez, said he was voting for Calderon.
"I could be resting at home but voting for me is a moral responsibility," Hernandez said. "I'm happy to be part of this because we're living a new democracy, and — who knows? — maybe my vote can decide this election."
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On the Net:
Federal Electoral Institute (with English link):
http://www-site.ife.org.mx/portal/site/ife
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_08_NativoLopez.shtml
Nativo López: What’s Next for the Immigrant Rights Movement?
June 30, 2006 | Pages 8 and 9
NATIVO LÓPEZ is president of the Mexican American Political Association. He was a leading organizer of the huge demonstrations for immigrant rights in Los Angeles on March 25 and May 1. He spoke at a panel discussion about the future of the immigrant rights movement at the Socialism 2006 conference in New York City.
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THANK YOU for the opportunity to make a presentation regarding the current status of the immigrant rights movement and attempt to answer the hardest question: What now?
We are in an interesting interlude. Some could paint it in a negative light, but I tend to believe that, in fact, there are very positive things we can draw from the current situation and the double fix the Democratic Party put this movement in, with the help of their auxiliary organizations.
I want to talk about this. Like in any movement, the struggle doesn’t move in a direct path. It’s more of a crooked path.
What the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations did for us during the Easter interlude was a big favor. We don’t realize it yet. We don’t understand it completely yet. I’m still analyzing that period--what occurred and where we are today--but I have concluded definitively that they did us a big favor.
What is the favor that they did us? Certainly we know that they betrayed us, as historically has been the case for immigrants, for the working class, for national minorities in the United States.
One has only to look at the 4,000-plus deaths that have occurred on the border since the institution of the Gatekeeper program brought to us by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of the Democratic Party, and your friend, but not mine, President Bill Clinton. We can wail all we want against President Bush, but we absolutely know that the 4,000-plus deaths on the border can be directly attributed to President Clinton and Dianne Feinstein.
The Democrats were a majority in the Congress when that passed. The 1996 immigration “reform” that occurred is the predecessor to the Patriot Act and everything the Bush administration did.
The swelling of the undocumented population in the United States, particularly from India, Mexico, the Philippines, is directly attributable to the legislation that was passed, which made it more difficult for families to reunify by putting a heavy burden on them, a heavy fine and forcing them to leave the country. Therefore, families stayed here to face greater penalties and the possibility of never legalizing their status.
All this is directly attributable to President Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus--those who seek to portray themselves today as the fighters for immigrant rights. It’s a bunch of hypocrisy.
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WHY WAS there so much unity and such a great, aggressive mass mobilization throughout the country at the beginning of 2006?
HR 4437, the author of which was Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, left absolutely no social space--none whatsoever--for the immigrant to accommodate themselves to a truly unjust system, but yet a system that allowed him or her to find a job that perhaps others were not willing to do and still survive and thrive and send money home to their loved ones.
HR 4437 didn’t just put the burden on the immigrant. Had that been the case, employer associations, trade associations, the masses of churches, social organizations and even the Democratic Party would not have come forward to join the immigrant in this fight to defeat that legislation.
There was a situation where most people in society connected in any way with the dynamic of immigration saw the possibility of being criminalized themselves. Therefore, they were willing to come forward and join the immigrant in this fight.
In that sense, Sensenbrenner became a unifying factor, similar to how Gov. Pete Wilson did in 1994, when he was the bandleader for Proposition 187. We were then united on what we did not want. But we were not as united, we’re still not united on what we want.
This struggle surged from the bases, not from the hierarchies. That’s an absolute truth that no one can deny.
To be completely honest with you, I can tell you that even the base leaders of this movement found themselves running a marathon--out of shape and trying to catch up to the masses that were demanding focused and disciplined action against HR 4437.
In fact, on March 25, when over 1 million people marched in Los Angeles, all the organizations in the coalition couldn’t muster more than 500 people for security for the march. But it’s a testament of the great discipline of the immigrant community that it self-secured a situation that could have easily gotten out of hand, had the police, LAPD and other right-wing forces been provoked into action.
After March 25 in Los Angeles, the hierarchies sought to assert themselves at the front of this movement, and to control it and force it and channel it to accept a compromise that they had already cut several years before.
That compromise that they cut several years before is embodied in the legislation called Kennedy-McCain, crafted by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, which essentially would codify in law more onerous employer sanctions than currently exist in law, and a massive contract-labor program in the United States.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, there is an existing contract-labor program in the United States. It’s called the H2A program. It uses approximately 50,000 to 60,000 contract laborers, predominantly in agriculture. The McCain-Kennedy bill would expand that to half a million workers a year, and perhaps more.
I call it a contract-labor program, because that’s what it is. They like to call it by a benign name--a guest-worker program. As if workers are truly guests in the American house, when we know that the contract workers are treated as less than second-class citizens, and certainly not as guests.
The auxiliary organizations of the Democratic Party sought to assert themselves as leaders in this movement, and it’s time to name names, because this is important. We must be truthful with our community. The deception must end.
The International leadership of the Service Employees International Union; the International leadership and some of the local leadership of UNITE HERE; the leadership of the United Farm Workers were all part of the deal. They were all part of the betrayal. The National Council of La Raza, the National Immigration Forum, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Immigration Capital Coalition, the Center for Community Change.
These organizations, which are based in Washington, D.C.--lobbyists, for the most part--are truly disconnected to the masses of immigrants and do not represent the interests of the masses of immigrants.
They represent the interests of Corporate America, because it’s Corporate America that funds them and dictates to them the policies that they should pursue--beneficial to Corporate America, and perhaps some crumbs fall from the table that would benefit the immigrant community.
Certainly they need a façade to maintain the appearance of credibility, but we know that they’re corporate-funded, corporate-directed, and they were doing the bidding of Corporate America, including those unions.
How is it possible that those three unions bolted from the AFL-CIO to create the new progressive Change to Win coalition, and they accepted the premise that contract labor in massive form could exist in the United States, with those unions be the beneficiaries by cutting deals with Corporate America for yellow-dog collective bargaining agreements, in which they would receive dues money from those contract laborers.
It’s shameful, and Ernesto Galarza, Burt Corona and Cesar Chavez are turning over in their graves. The very thought that leaders of those unions--which are part of the legacy of those three men--would be cutting a deal with Corporate America to support bracero-type programs, when they fought their whole lives to sunset existing bracero programs, which existed for over three decades, and fought to prevent their reinstitutionalization in the United States.
What I say, brothers and sisters, may be unsettling to some when this is published, but we intend to take our show on the road and tell the truth to the immigrant community, because there is nothing stronger than the truth--that we have been betrayed by these institutions and individuals.
That’s why I say this is a positive occurrence. Because it removes any shadow of a doubt that such institutions represent the legitimate interests of immigrant workers in America.
The illusion will be shattered as it becomes quite apparent to the immigrant community that the nasty compromise the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations sought to consummate in the legislation of Hagel-Martinez was nothing but a sham and truly has nothing of merit for the immigrant community.
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THE MAY Day action, as never seen before, was truly a workers’ action--from the bottom, not from the hierarchy. The message of the Great American Boycott surged from below--it was not imposed from the top.
In fact, the Democratic Party; its auxiliary organizations; the National Council of Bishops, particularly, Cardinal Roger Mahoney; Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus fought tooth and nail, in tandem with corporate Spanish-language radio, to prevent the message of the masses in the Great American Boycott from reaching the ears of all immigrants throughout America, and they failed. They absolutely failed.
The Great American Boycott was successful because literally millions of people went into the streets, repudiating by their actions the message of the hierarchies. Because the message of the Great American Boycott was the message of the masses, and that’s why it prevailed--it was their own message. They imposed their message over the message of the hierarchies, and they won.
They demonstrated to all of America that their message was more powerful than the corporate media, their message was more powerful than the institution of the church, their message was more powerful than the institution of the Democratic Party and its auxiliary organizations. They heeded their own message, and they won.
Easter in 2006 is a day to be remembered, because just before the Easter recess, the immigrant rights movement won. It had definitively defeated HR 4437. It had prevented the Hagel-Martinez from seeing the light of day from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, in that one instance, obeyed the message of the masses to not compromise with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and allow Hagel-Martinez to see the light of day.
Do you all recall that? The national debate on immigration had shifted favorably to us--to the masses of immigrants.
And in that two-week interlude, the cardinals went to Washington, D.C., Mayor Villaraigosa went to Washington, D.C., the Congressional Hispanic Caucus huddled with Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid, and Eliseo Medina, international vice president of SEIU; Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers; John Wilhelm of UNITE HERE.
They all huddled in Washington, D.C., and politically, they beat up poor Harry Reid. And Harry Reid cut the deal. We saw Hagel-Martinez debated in the Senate and approved by the Senate. We saw Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the great California liberal, vote for the border wall, vote for National Guard on the border, vote for criminalizing employers with sanctions, vote for criminalizing immigrants with a misdemeanor offense instead of a felony offense, vote for eliminating due process rights to immigrants, vote for a massive contract-labor program. These are the measures they voted for, because this is what is contained in Hagel-Martinez.
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SENSENBRENNER AND Sensenbrenner Lite--this is what we have today on the table. We’re fighting not just one set of letters and numbers, we’re fighting two sets of letters and numbers: HR 4437 and S 2611.
But while it is a more difficult fight, the positive thing is that the immigrant will have no illusion that Barbara Boxer or the Democratic Party will fight to obtain what he and she truly deserve--a fair trade, a fair exchange for their labor.
This truly is the basis and the premise of our demand of amnesty for all immigrant workers, fully and immediately. It’s a fair exchange. This is our answer to the hypocrisy of the so-called free traders, the neoliberals of America, when they talk about free trade.
We talk about fair trade and fair exchange--that as an immigrant worker, if I am willing to come to America to work, to create value, to create wealth, to create assets for America, a true fair exchange to me should be permanent residence, immediately and fully for me and my family.
Brothers and sisters, I welcome your questions, but more your comments and your statements and your commitment to continue in this fight--to work with us to implement throughout the United States a popular referendum where we will go to millions of immigrants and ask them what they want in immigration reform. On November 7 of this year, we will ask all immigrants to go to the ballot to vote for true, fair, humane immigration reform.
The Republicans and the Democrats--these phonies will jostle and juggle over who will be the majority in Congress to continue to deny the rights of all working people. Because let us remember that with the Democrats controlling Congress and a Democratic president, they absolutely refused to reform federal labor law in America to allow workers to organize unions with no impediments.
So they’re no better than the Republicans in power. In fact, they do a better job than the Republicans to prevent the working class to truly be free in America.
Our struggle today is to eliminate all the illusions in these Democrats and their auxiliary organizations and some of the union leaders. I say some union leaders, because we have observed that those union leaders who are closer to the base are more true to the base. That also applies to the church--to the parish pastor, who is pastoring on a daily basis and sees the suffering on a daily basis. They’re closer to the truth, because they’re closer to the base.
So our job is to win over those intermediary and base leaders to have no illusions about what their leaders are doing in Washington, D.C. And be true to their constituencies, be true to the base, be true to the immigrants, and work with us to build the strongest, mightiest immigrant rights movement in America, which will spill over across all borders throughout the world.
Because our fight, brothers and sisters, is a fight to carry the message that the working class is an international class, and it has no borders.
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/594/594_04_Mexico.shtml
The tale of two “campaigns” + What’s at stake in Mexico’s election?
June 30, 2006 | Page 4
LANCE SELFA reports on the upcoming presidential elections in Mexico.
MEXICANS WILL go to the polls on July 2 to choose the successor of President Vicente Fox.
They will have three major choices: Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN), the candidate of the governing right, backed by his cohort Fox; Andres Manuel López Obrador, the populist candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and known by his initials “AMLO”; and Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the party that governed Mexico for almost seven decades before Fox’s election in 2000.
With the election a week away, AMLO and Calderón were in a virtual tie, with Madrazo a distant third, according to public opinion polls. This represents a drop in popularity for AMLO, who was leading in the presidential preference polls for more than a year.
One explanation for this is that AMLO has been attacked from both sides of the political spectrum.
From the right, with Fox’s encouragement, Calderón has accused AMLO of being a radical whose election would lead to chaos and social disorder. This multimillion-dollar negative campaign has had the desired effect.
In April, Fox’s government ordered troops to attack steelworkers occupying their plant in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific coast, and to repress flower vendors in the town of San Salvador de Atenco near Mexico City. In each case, the government used military force against social protests in order to blame the left for the resulting disorder.
According to some experts, these attacks are part of a campaign to instill fear and create the public perception that if AMLO wins the presidency, the country will descend into chaos. The PRI used a similar strategy in 1994, which helped it to win elections after the assassination of its first presidential candidate, followed by the Zapatista uprising. Today, the PAN hopes that history will repeat itself.
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AT THE same time that he has become a target for the right, AMLO has faced a challenge from the left--from the “other campaign” spearheaded by the Zapatistas (the EZLN).
At the beginning of this year, the Zapatistas and their supporters within the social movements and the “non-institutional” left (essentially, the left not in government) have traveled the country holding meetings and discussions with activists.
The “other campaign” wants to help reconfigure the anti-capitalist left with the idea of convening a constituent assembly to reform the Mexican constitution and, possibly, to launch a different organization that can bring together the different social movements.
At these meetings, the main Zapatista spokesperson, Subcommander Marcos--who has renamed himself “Delegate Zero” of the constituent assembly--has repeatedly blasted AMLO for his compromises with neoliberal policies, and for the PRD’s betrayal of indigenous rights. In 2001, PRD representatives in the National Assembly joined with the PRI and PAN to reject proposals granting autonomy to the indigenous people of Chiapas.
Throughout most of the “other campaign,” AMLO has kept his distance from Marcos and his supporters. But when Marcos traveled to San Salvador de Atenco in May to lead protests against government repression and the imprisonment of community leaders, the right lashed out. PAN TV ads linked AMLO with the Zapatista radicals.
For their part, AMLO and his party stayed silent on the events in Atenco, because the mayor who called the police to remove the flower vendors from the town square is a PRD member. Moreover, AMLO wants to present himself as being “tough on crime” and social disorder.
Another big problem for AMLO--at least from the point of view of the left--is that AMLO has recruited many ex-members of the PRI, including some who were involved in the administration of the corrupt and right-wing President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-2004) to run as PRD candidates.
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DESPITE HIS populist rhetoric, López Obrador is no radical. Among his chief advisers is Manuel Camacho Solis, a former ally of Salinas de Gortari. In 2000, he paid more than $4 million in city funds to the consulting firm of Republican Rudolph Giuliani to bring a U.S.-style “war on crime” to Mexico City.
His election manifesto is full of generalities, but it supports the idea of “taking advantage of globalization, and not just suffering from it.” As China has developed by exporting its labor power, he argues, Mexico can develop by exporting its energy resources. He promises more social reform and completion of the San Andrés Accords with the Zapatistas, but none of his proposals challenge capitalism.
Left-wing commentator Alejandro Nadal, writing in La Jornada, worried that AMLO’s election manifesto--and the presence of advisers like Camacho Solis--signals that a number of “corrupt politicians, opportunists and architects of national pacts” are already lining up to jump on López Obrador’s bandwagon.
For these reasons, the respected activist and historian Adolfo Gilly, noting that AMLO’s circle of advisers includes many architects of the PRI’s neoliberal turn, wrote March 3 in La Jornada that “for reasons of morality, if you want to call it that, I will not vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, nor for any of [the PRD’s] candidates: you can be sure of that.”
Nevertheless, many activists want to vote for AMLO to strike a blow against the right in Mexico. Perhaps a vote for AMLO can be justified on these grounds. But it must be remembered that AMLO wants to revive the economic and social policies of the PRI of the 1970s, updated to the neoliberal era. Although the Mexican establishment doesn’t like AMLO, neither do they fear him.
Whoever wins, what will take place after the elections will be most important. This year has seen several crucial developments on the left--the “other campaign,” an all-but general strike that closed down the steel industry in April, and important political changes in Mexico’s unions. Meanwhile, north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the massive immigrant rights movement has had a huge impact.
The future for Mexico’s social movements and workers depends on the deepening of these developments, not on who sits in the presidential palace.
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http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d90f4ce1b1bf4748cd8de75271ee7f0e
A New Generation of Immigrant Rights Leaders: Jun 26, 2006
By Eduardo Stanley, Traducción al español
Editor’s Note: Working class immigrant women are emerging as potent leaders within the immigrant rights movement.
FRESNO, CA-- Margarita paced around the stage and practiced her speech. She had only spoken before small groups, but this was different. Nearly 20,000 people and their families had gathered in front of the Fresno City Council building, singing, dancing, demanding immigration reform, and promising to vote in the future.
“At first I felt nervous, but seeing so many people gave me strength,” says the 27-year-old construction worker. “Now I am more confident of what I am doing.”
Margarita arrived in the United States from Mexico when she was 11, with her mother. She had a humble life in Mexico City: helping with housework, taking care of her sisters, sharing with her aunts, and going to school. Like many girls, she grew up without the presence of her father, who immigrated to the United States, and then forgot the family he left behind.
At age 18, she completed high school and gave birth to her daughter Jesenia. Since then she has shared her life with her husband, Eduardo Ruíz, also from Oaxaca. After working various jobs, Margarita found her calling. “An African-American man offered me work in construction and since then I have not put down a hammer,” she says. “I like machines and heavy tools.” And, she adds, “In spite of my small stature, I am strong.”
In 1994, while the prospect of Proposition 187 shook communities throughout the state, Margarita also underwent her own transformative experience. A school security guard accused her of carrying a firearm. She was detained. “They searched me like a criminal, with guns in their hands,” she says. The episode convinced her of the need to raise one’s voice against abuses of power, she says.
That year she participated together with hundreds of students in the protest marches against Proposition 187, proposed by then-governor Pete Wilson. The measure aimed to prohibit illegal immigrants from accessing state services.
For the last several years, she and her mother have volunteered at a Catholic church in Fresno, where they collaborate on different social programs. There they met an immigrant rights activist who invited them to participate in the Coalition that organized the immigrant marches in Fresno.
“I believe it comes from family,” says Isabel Vasquez, 48, Margarita’s mother. “I read the bible and it speaks about justice but in real life it is very different. You have to achieve it for yourself.” She decided to emigrate to the United States because there were no jobs in her country, and because of this she feels expelled. She adds that the Mexican government not only does not help, but also hurts its people. “I would have been happier in my community,” she says.
She feels she has been strict with her three children but was afraid they would get involved in drugs or sex. However, she does not hide her satisfaction of seeing that her fears were unfounded and that between them there is communication. “I like to participate with my daughter in this movement. In the Coalition we can speak our opinion and they respect us.”
Margarita worries especially about the condition of Latina women, which she considers a product of her machista, or male-dominated culture. She says women who suffer domestic violence feel they cannot escape, but if they are helped they do change. “Then they will see that there is a different world and they can overcome it.”
Even she has proven herself. Today, Margarita works in a firm that installs rain gutters, mainly on new houses, and believes that she is in her own way advancing the cause of immigrant women. “I am the only woman. I feel good, and I believe I can open doors for other women.”
She moves quickly, climbs stairs, takes measurements, cuts the material and installs it. Always with a smile on her lips, she only interrupts her work for a few minutes to speak with her family on the telephone. “For a while I was chosen to supervise a group of 25 workers, but because they were men they resisted my instructions,” she says. She laughs, tosses her head back and adds, “They pretended not to hear me and even made jokes about the boss.”
But she managed. ”I do not feel discriminated against. They know what I can do,” she says. “I have a strong character. I do not like injustices. If I see my neighbor’s husband hitting her, I get involved.”
Although she loves her job, organizing has gotting Margarita to thing about bigger plans. “I would like to form a women’s coalition, so our voice can be heard.” She believes women are more convincing and visualizes a march of women, with their children. “We are going forward,” she says.
It is not surprising, because for Margarita, learning about human and labor rights is like learning to handle tools: Both things, she says, have a constructive purpose.
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060626_tom_hayden_mexio_election/
Tom Hayden: Mexico’s Presidential Front-Runner May Roil U.S. Conservatives
= Posted on Jun 26, 2006
AP / Guillermo Arias
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a rally, Friday, June 2, in Zamora, 380 kilometers from Mexico City. Elections will take place on July 2.
By Tom Hayden
Editor’s note: In this column, veteran social activist Tom Hayden reports on Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexico City mayor who is waging a progressive populist campaign for his country’s presidency, and whose plans are sure to incense U.S. conservatives in border states: redrafting the free-trade aspects of NAFTA that force Mexicans to emigrate northward; turning every Mexican consulate in the U.S. into a legal aid center to defend immigrant rights; and vocal opposition to the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Though the progressive media and bloggers are paying scant attention, a progressive populist is the front-runner in Mexico’s July 2 election, a man who would demand a revision of NAFTA, add a powerful workers’ voice to the roiling U.S. debate on immigration, and foster the new nationalism spreading in Latin America.
The candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, currently leads by 3 to 4% in official polling, while his internal surveys indicate a margin as high as 10%. Obrador represents the historical party of the left, the PRD. His closest rival is Felipe Calderon of the neo-liberal PAN. The traditional governing party, the PRI, continues to trail badly while retaining significant power at state and local levels.
The United States is not happy over the latest challenge to its faded hegemony over Latin America but is keeping a discreet profile. The only well-known American consultant involved with the candidates is ex-Clinton advisor Dick Morris, who assists the conservative Calderon.
Lopez Obrador benefits immensely from popular approval of his tenure as mayor of Mexico City, where he fought successfully for the elderly and ran a more efficient administration than most of his predecessors. As a candidate he promises to stop privatization of oil and gas industries and to offer free medical care and food subsidies for citizens over 65. He has tapped a passionate popular solidarity with his modest lifestyle and outspoken preference for Mexico’s poor, who are more than half the country’s population. Speaking under the blazing sun rather than the shaded canopies usually reserved for the powerful, he is often paralyzed by the frenzied joy of the crowds he draws.
Mexicans close to the campaign said in interviews that Lopez Obrador would insist on basic revisions to NAFTA, the trade pact that has only widened inequality in Mexico since 1994. As the Los Angeles Times noted in 2002, “few would argue that NAFTA has been anything but devastating for Mexican farm families.” In 2003, farmers stormed the doors of the Mexican legislature on horseback and threatened to seize customs checkpoints at the U.S.-Mexico border (L.A. Times, Jan. 1, 2003). With the situation worsening, Lopez Obrador would preserve subsidies for Mexican farmers that were set to expire under the NAFTA agreement.
He would make a priority of labor standards for immigrant workers, turning every Mexican consulate in the U.S. into a procuraduria, a kind of legal aid center. He also opposes the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border as an inhumane affront.
There would be major consequences for the American immigration debate with a new Mexican government that forcefully defended workers’ rights and blamed NAFTA and U.S. multinationals for the conditions forcing Mexican workers to emigrate northward. Pro-immigrant and anti-corporate forces in Mexico would be fortified. A majority in the U.S. Congress might consider seriously reforming NAFTA for the first time. Right-wing conservatives would become more frenzied about the radical “threat” on the border.
“Neo-liberalism is a failure for us,” said one of the Mexico City sources. “It is destroying our strategic national industries and resources: energy, phones, even privatizing health and education, the whole reform model achieved by the Lazaro Cardenas government since the 1930s.”
Lopez Obrador has survived the intense fear-and-loathing campaign generated by the Mexican businesses and right-wingers who charge that he would become Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro rolled into one populist nightmare. Fear is their brand, because their alternative is the widely unpopular gospel of free trade and free markets.
At the same time, Lopez Obrador has largely weathered the critique of subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas, who are carrying out their la otra campana [the Other Campaign], a speaking and organizing tour that rejects all political parties and seeks to unify Mexico’s social resistance movements. When pressed, Marcos will deny that the Zapatistas are urging a “no” vote on Lopez Obrador, saying they only are stressing that the presidential election will bring no fundamental change to the people of Mexico. The intensive and massive support for Lopez Obrador represents a “popular will” that the Zapatistas cannot ignore, according to a continuing Zapatista supporter I interviewed who also is working hard for Lopez Obrador. Similarly, the attachment of the independent media to the Zapatistas may have caused a lack of attention to the popular movement to elect Lopez Obrador.
Complicating the scene is the Zapatistas’ designation of election day, July 2, as a “national day of direct action,” a defiance of federal election laws. That could give the right a pretext to bring out police and troops to crush anyone blocking roads.
“The country is a powder keg that could ignite on election day,” warn activists who accompanied the recent Zapatista campaign and witnessed the police repression in May of flower vendors in San Salvador Atenco, where a land resistance movement had succeeded in becoming virtually autonomous from the state. The Zapatistas forged an alliance with the community and, for the present, Marcos and his associates have camped out in Mexico’s urban jungles instead of their traditional bases in the mountains of Chiapas.
Another flash point is Oaxaca, where teachers have camped in a tent city during a yearlong campaign for pay increases. The armed forces recently tried to dislodge the protestors, using gas from helicopters, and the resistance broadened to 70,000 in the colonial town square. Talks through a federal mediator have broken down and the standoff continues. Lopez Obrador supports the teachers.
Apocalyptic scenarios are never to be ruled out in Mexico. If Lopez Obrador wins by a close margin and sectors of the elite and armed forces refuse to accept defeat, much of Mexico might become like Oaxaca and San Salvador Atenco, with people pouring into the streets in a prolonged confrontation.
An even darker projection, commonly if privately expressed by many Mexicans, is that Lopez Obrador will be assassinated if he comes close to the ring of power. Luis Donaldo Colosio, a presidential candidate in 1994, was assassinated in broad daylight. That election ushered in the NAFTA era and the simultaneous Zapatista uprising.
If the supporters of Lopez Obrador sense that the election is stolen from them, they will not go quietly like Al Gore’s Democratic Party in 2000. It is accepted across Mexico that the 1988 presidential election was crudely stolen from the then-PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of Lazaro Cardenas. At that time, the lack of popular organization and fears of a massacre led the PRD candidate to accept the fraudulent outcome. “Not this time,” I was told. “The people won’t let this election be stolen.” The street demand to defend the vote could bridge the differences, at least temporarily, with the Zapatistas.
Indeed, a fusion of popular mobilization and electoral politics has saved Lopez Obrador before. In 1998, his campaigners blocked roads and oil fields after he lost a gubernatorial race in Tabasco described as “fraud-ridden” by the New York Times (March 16, 2005). Only last year, the major parties tried to force him off the ballot by indicting him on a spurious corruption charge involving the construction of a road to a private hospital. Presidential candidates are disqualified if they are indicted. So Lopez Obrador’s destiny was in doubt until hundreds of thousands of people rallied in the streets. Lopez Obrador announced he would go to jail rather than submit, leaving his enemies to ponder the prospect of 1 million Mexicans marching on his prison site. The charges went away.
This fusion of direct action and constitutional politics makes this a unique campaign in a country long ruled from the top down by chicanery and fraud. It appears that mass mobilization is necessary to make electoral politics work at all, and to defend the vote even when politics succeed.
Close supporters of Lopez Obrador dismiss these extreme scenarios, not wanting to increase tensions any further. They insist that their candidate will win decisively by peaceful means. They also are quick to reject any allegations that they are closet chavistas or fidelistas. Having an electoral strategy by itself separates them from the Zapatistas. While naturally part of the progressive trend now sweeping Latin America, they insist on a unique Mexican identity in the tradition of Morelos, Juarez, Zapata, Madero and, perhaps most of all, Cardenas. That tradition alone always has constituted a challenge to the United States.
In the new Latin American spectrum, it is indeed difficult to identify Lopez Obrador with any particular pole. That he and his supporters seek proper relations with the superpower on the border, rather than starting an ideological war, is understandable. That they would launch demands to reform NAFTA will make sense to many, and remove the underpinning of support that the Vicente Fox regime has provided. The call for a kind of “new New Deal” to increase jobs and lessen the causes of migration will stand as an alternative model to neo-liberalism in crisis. Poverty and history both will compel Lopez Obrador to a greater independence from the U.S. than the Mexican state has shown for decades.
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Tom Hayden is the editor of “The Zapatista Reader” (2001) and many articles on Latin America. His most recent book is “Radical Nomad,” a biography of C. Wright Mills (Paradigm). He is a member of The Nation’s editorial board.
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http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/06/26/daily6.html
McCain blasts fellow Republican: Monday, June 26, 2006
by Mike Sunnucks / The Business Journal of Phoenix
Arizona Sen. John McCain has come out against the Republican gubernatorial candidacy of Don Goldwater.
Goldwater -- nephew of late, former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater -- favors a hard-line approach to illegal immigration and border security. That includes construction of a border wall and putting some illegal immigrants who are arrested for crimes into work details to help build fences and walls.
McCain issued a statement Friday denouncing Goldwater's call for a border wall and work camps and urged fellow Republicans to take a similar stance.
The senator called Goldwater an "inappropriate messenger" for the GOP on the issue -- a major concern for Arizona's business community.
McCain -- who is eyeing a 2008 White House run -- favors a more moderate immigration approach including a business-backed guest worker program and legal path for some illegals already in the U.S. President Bush also backs that approach.
The Goldwater campaign said Friday it was disappointed that McCain did not contact them before issuing the official denouncement.
McCain could endorse conservative attorney Len Munsil in the September Republican primary for governor. Munsil is the former head of the Center for Arizona Policy, a socially conservative advocacy group and the main supporter of a proposed state ballot question banning gay marriage.
The Republican senator supports that state measure, but opposes a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.
Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano is heavily favored in this year's governor's race against potential Republican challengers such as Munsil, Goldwater and Scottsdale businessman Mike Harris.
Napolitano favors McCain and Bush's immigration and border security efforts despite their partisan differences.
There are 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and Arizona is a top crossing point for Mexican migrants, drug smugglers and other traffickers.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/23/ap/politics/mainD8IE74QG0.shtml
GOP Candidate's Call for Labor Camp Rebuked: Jun. 23, 2006
Republican candidate's call for forced labor camp for immigrants angers two GOP lawmakers
WASHINGTON, By JENNIFER TALHELM Associated Press Writer
A Republican gubernatorial candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate.
Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a Mexican news service, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."
The article described Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants.
Goldwater, a candidate for governor in Arizona, said in a statement Friday that his comments were taken out of context. He said he was calling for a work program for convicted nonviolent felons, similar to "tried and tested, effective and accepted practices" used by state and local jails.
But two Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe, called Goldwater's comments "deeply offensive" and asked state Republicans to reject his candidacy in the Sept. 12 primary.
"That Mr. Goldwater is either unaware of or indifferent to the loaded symbolism, injustice and un-Americanism of his 'plan' to address the many serious issues caused by illegal immigration reveals his flaws as a candidate and a stunning lack of respect for the basic values of a generous and decent society," McCain said in a statement.
Kolbe said that if the comments are true, Goldwater "has demonstrated his complete unworthiness for public office, and I am confident he will be soundly rejected by Republicans from the party of Barry Goldwater, who consistently demonstrated his compassion and respect for all people. This is a sad day in the national debate on immigration policy."
McCain and Kolbe favor a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.
Goldwater made a similar comment at an April anti-immigration rally.
"Build us that wall _ now!" Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.
Barry Goldwater, the former Arizona senator, was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.
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http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060531_rfid_chips.html
Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants: May 31, 2006
By Bill Christensen
Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.
Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."
The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.
RFID tags have long been used to identify animals in a variety of settings; livestock, laboratory animals and pets have been "chipped" for decades. Privacy advocates have long expressed concerns about this technology being used in human beings.
In a related story, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe allegedly remarked that microchips could be used to track seasonal workers to visiting U.S. senators Jeff Sessions (Alabama) and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). "President Uribe said he would consider having Colombian workers have microchips implanted in their bodies before they are permitted to enter the US for seasonal work," Specter told Congress on April 25.
Implanting microchips in human beings for the purpose of monitoring is not exactly news for science fiction fans; Alfred Bester wrote about "skull bugs" in his 1974 novel The Computer Connection:
"...you don't know what's going on in the crazy culture outside. It's a bugged and drugged world. Ninety percent of the bods have bugs implanted in their skulls in hospital when they're born. They're monitored constantly."
(Read more about Alfred Bester's skull bugs)
VeriChips are legal for implantation in people in the U.S.; see VeriChip RFID Tag Patient Implant Badges Now FDA Approved. See also a related story on a Proposed National Worker DNA Fingerprint Database. Read more at RFID implants for guest workers, Latin leader keen on ID chips and Chip implants for migrant workers?.
Note: The source for this story was inadvertently omitted; read the press release at spychips.com; also, see the Silverman interview transcript. This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.
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http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12369631p-13097093c.html
Tempers flare in heat: Anger mounts at rally; pro-immigration camp shows up to tell its side
= June 25, 2006 By Tim Morgan / BEE Staff Writer
The nation's immigration policy was debated Saturday on the northwest corner of Briggsmore and McHenry avenues — frequently nose to nose and punctuated with four-letter epithets.
Groups from the polar extremes of the immigration issue demonstrated at midday Saturday, undeterred by the 90-degree heat.
A group called Save Our State has held controversial demonstrations against illegal immigration in Southern California in the past year. It held its first rally in Modesto, advertising it as "our fight to save America." The group has just started a chapter in Modesto, according to Debbie Monk, an events coordinator for the group.
Two other groups, Aztlan Rising and Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians Collective, held a counter demonstration after discovering Save Our State's plan.
Starting around 11 a.m., each side mustered about three dozen supporters with signs, flags, banners and a bullhorn.
The groups started on opposite sides of Briggsmore Avenue on the west side of McHenry but soon merged on the northwest corner of the busy intersection. About a dozen Modesto police officers stood by, frequently stepping in to separate the protesters when the rhetoric got heated.
"A lot of our taxes go to welfare payments for illegals," Monk said.
"Illegals work under the table for cash and pay no taxes. Many of them have 'anchor babies' so they can stay. It's got to stop."
An anchor baby, she explained, is a child born in the United States to illegal immigrants. Children born in the United States have citizenship, creating a path for the parents to stay, Monk said.
Felt need to give other side
Signs carried by the Save Our State side read, "It's not illegal immigration — it's an invasion," "No Amnesty for Illegals" and "Deport Illegals."
Doug Anderson of Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians Collective said his group decided to counter-demonstrate because the Save Our State position is illogical.
"They are attacking other working-class people," he said. "All workers need to be in solidarity against the forces affecting our lives. We would all be in a better place no matter what side of the border we are on."
Ricardo Gil Jr. of Aztlan Rising said his group promotes indigenous identity. "They wrongfully call us Hispanics and Latinos," he said. "They forget where we came from. We have the right to live anywhere on the continent. We have lived here 50,000 years."
The signs on the counterdemonstration side read, "Columbus was an illegal alien," "Where's your green card, pilgrim?" and "You are on Indian land."
Some of the demonstrators weren't affiliated with any of the groups.
Terry Stewart of Modesto said he came to demonstrate after reading about the issue on a modbee.com forum. Stewart said he was protesting the cost of illegal immigration: "The taxes we pay to ensure that illegal immigrants get a fair education."
Illegal immigrants get in-state tuition rates at state schools, but students from other states pay a higher rate, he said. "That's not fair."
Community activist John Mataka of Grayson said he came when he heard the Save Our State group was coming.
"We are against that kind of racism and immigrant bashing," he said. "This will be a majority Mexican community soon, and we want to let them know we aren't going to let them come here and talk smack against our Mexican and brown brothers."
Some seemed to have come for the confrontation. James Glenn of Fremont, wearing an American flag T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, instigated several shouting matches.
"You're illegal. Your mama's illegal; your daddy is illegal. Go home!" Glenn yelled at the counter-demonstrators. "You're a queer; your mama's a queer; your daddy's a queer. We all know where you live. Send them home."
He was answered with chants of "Europeans, go home."
Glenn later described himself as "just a worried American."
Police officers stood by and intervened when the verbal assaults appeared to be veering toward the physical. "We aren't going to let anything happen," Modesto police Sgt. Clint Raymer said. "It will stay peaceful."
Many cars passing by honked in solidarity with one side or the other, some waving American or Mexican flags. By 2:30 p.m., the demonstrators had left, neither side convinced by the other, and the corner returned to its usual traffic din.
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Bee staff writer Tim Moran can be reached at 578-2349 tmoran@modbee.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/washington/25bush.html
June 25, 2006
Bush's Immigration Plan Stalled as House G.O.P. Grew More Anxious
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
This article is by Adam Nagourney, Carl Hulse and Jim Rutenberg.
WASHINGTON, June 24 — For the White House, the Congressional picnic last week seemed like the perfect setting to mend strained relations with Republican allies on Capitol Hill: President Bush and his advisers eating taquitos and Mexican confetti rice on the lawn of the White House with Republican Congressional leaders.
But moments before Mr. Bush was to welcome his guests, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told the president that House Republicans were effectively sidelining — and in the view of some Congressional aides probably killing — what had become Mr. Bush's signature domestic initiative of the year: an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
That disappointing news for Mr. Bush signaled the apparent collapse of a carefully orchestrated White House strategy to push a compromise immigration bill through Congress this summer — and in the process invigorate Mr. Bush's second term with a badly needed domestic victory.
The decision by the House leadership to defy the president after he had put so much prestige on the line — including a rare prime-time Oval Office speech for a domestic initiative — amounted to a clear rebuke of the president on an issue that he has long held dear.
An account of the administration's push for the initiative, based on interviews with members of Congress and senior White House and Congressional officials, shows that Mr. Bush's immigration measure was derailed by an overly optimistic assessment by the White House of the prospects for building a bipartisan coalition in support of the bill. It was also hurt by a fundamental misreading of the depth of hostility to the measure among House Republicans.
It was undone as well, White House and Congressional leaders acknowledged, by a sharp division over whether to focus on the short term or on the party's long-term political prospects. Mr. Bush's aides saw the House bill, which would make it a felony to live in this country illegally and would close off any chance to win legal status, as a threat to their attempts to broaden the party's appeal to Hispanic voters.
House Republican leaders saw Mr. Bush's approach — calling for tougher enforcement as well as avenues to legalize the illegal workforce and create a possible path to citizenship — as a threat to House Republicans already fearful of losing control of this fall's elections by angering voters who viewed the plan as amnesty.
Mr. Bush's first attempt to advocate for the measure was described even by allies as initially muddled and tentative, permitting opponents to build a case against it before he made his Oval Office address. Republicans' apprehensions were cemented in June, when, in a special election for a vacant Congressional seat in California, Brian P. Bilbray, who ran on a pledge to build a fence along the border with Mexico, was elected after running against the president's position on immigration.
Coming in the same week that the White House showed effectiveness in rallying Republicans behind the war in Iraq, the setback raised questions about Mr. Bush's chances to achieve major domestic victories from a solidly Republican Congress. Unless a compromise is reached, it will mark the second time in two years, after Social Security in 2005, that Mr. Bush has failed to steer his major domestic initiative through the friendly terrain of a Republican Congress.
"This immigration legislation is very important, and if he doesn't get something in his administration, it will hurt his legacy domestically," said James A. Thurber, a presidential scholar at American University.
White House officials said they could point to several areas of progress in Congress — on extending tax cuts, pushing a line-item veto and overhauling the pension system. They said that they were under no illusions about the difficulties facing the immigration plan, but that it would never have gotten this far without the president, who will keep pushing for it. Aides say it is still possible to reach a compromise after the November elections, if not before. "We believe by being patient and sticking with it, in time people are going to be pretty happy with what the president proposes," said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.
But several analysts were skeptical, noting that in just the past week a Republican candidate for governor in Arizona called for building prison camps for illegal immigrants. And the first campaign advertisement for Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who many believe is the most endangered Republican in the Senate, featured him talking about stringent border measures.
From the start of the year, after House Republicans passed a tough immigration measure that Mr. Bush's political advisers worried would undercut their effort to appeal to Hispanic voters, the White House tentatively pushed a more moderate, "comprehensive" bill that was gathering support in the Senate.
But Mr. Bush was criticized by both sides as not taking a public stand on specifics and permitting conservative members of the House to define the debate. Aides said the president was trying to stay above the discussion to remain flexible enough to broker a compromise.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said that in one strategy session Mr. Bush told the senator he could not be identified as publicly supporting the Senate bill, which sought to tighten border control but also give illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens after paying fines. "Don't quote me, Arlen," Mr. Specter recalled the president saying, implying that Mr. Bush had spoken approvingly of the bill.
In April, Mr. Bush brought Joshua B. Bolten on as the new chief of staff, shaking up a White House that had been criticized as adrift. With a new team in charge, Mr. Bush took a more forceful stand, using the issue as a way to reassert his leadership. In a speech televised in prime time, he supported the enforcement measures advocated by conservatives and called for sending National Guard troops to the border, but he also said that some illegal immigrants should be allowed legal status.
White House officials now credit Mr. Bush's address with providing impetus for passage of a compromise bill by the Senate that had earlier faltered, opening the door for a final compromise with the House, in a process that now hangs in the balance. Some officials privately had said failure to produce compromise before Congress's summer break would seriously hinder their effort.
But House Republicans said they never stopped pressing the case to the White House that the bill was a political disaster for endangered incumbents, and they were baffled at what they said was the failure of Mr. Bush's aides to appreciate their conviction.
One lawmaker said House Republicans who had attended two closed-door briefings on the issue by the White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and others, kept waiting for the administration to reverse their concerns that passing the bill would hurt Republicans; in the lawmakers' view, the administration never made a convincing case.
White House aides said Republicans had overestimated the bill's political liabilities and underestimated the long-term damage it could do to the party if Republicans were identified among Hispanics as anti-immigrant. "This is a bad trajectory for the Republican Party right now," said a senior Republican official who was granted anonymity to discuss the unusual friction in the Republican ranks.
Positions hardened when lawmakers went home for recess at the end of May and were confronted by constituents agitated over the issue. They returned to Washington to the news that Mr. Bilbray had narrowly won the seat vacated by Randy Cunningham, a Republican now jailed after a corruption scandal.
When House Republicans met for a conference that Wednesday, conservative members seized on the Bilbray victory as vindication of their argument that embracing the Senate and White House position would be poison in the fall elections, according to one participant in the meeting who was granted anonymity because the meetings were private.
Mr. Hastert and the House majority leader, John A. Boehner, told Mr. Bush in the Oval Office that the already long odds for passage of an immigration bill before the summer break had faded even more. But, aides said, the president, who has been concerned about the issue since his days as governor of Texas, where immigration is an important political and cultural issue, responded that he would not let up.
Over the next few days, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, went to Mr. Boehner and Mr. Hastert and, using polling data and pointing to what he described as politically implausible sections of the bill, warned of the consequences of enactment of the Senate legislation.
"Reynolds made clear to the leaders that the House had already staked out its position, and from a political standpoint it would be irresponsible to accept a bill that was much different," said Carl Forti, his communications director. He said Mr. Reynolds had told House leaders that supporting the bill would be "suicide for some of our members."
The White House and its supporters pointed to a poll that found strong support among Republican voters for a bill that allowed illegal immigrants to "earn" legal status. And senior White House aides argued that fellow party members were over-interpreting the meaning of Mr. Bilbray's victory in a traditionally solid Republican area. "We're happy he won," Mr. Snow said Friday. "But he barely got 50 percent."
When Mr. Hastert announced that he was postponing action on the bill until after a series of hearings around the country, the White House described the delay as temporary.
But in the Senate, the reaction to the House move was quite different.
"Thank God for the House," said a senior Senate Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the party's concerns about the debate.
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KEY LINKS:
http://www.cis.org/
Center for Immigration Studies
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http://humanebordersblogged.blogspot.com/
The Humane Borders Blog
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http://www.immigrationline.org/
Immigrationonline.org
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http://www.lawg.org/index.htm
Latin America Working Group
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http://pewhispanic.org/
Pew Hispanic Center
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http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services Home Page
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http://www.ice.gov/
U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement
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U.N. Refugee Agency
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home
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Aztlan Chicano 0101
http://www.0101aztlan.net/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aztlannet_Action/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aztlannet_news/
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National Immigrant Solidarity Network
http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
Border01 · US-Mexico Border Actions Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Border01/
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Total Amnesty Is Humane Sanity! Build Bridges, Not Walls!
Venceremos Unidos! United We Will Win!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta de Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
Join Up! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Immigrant-Rights-Agenda/
Blog: http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com /
Blog: http://detodos-paratodos.blogspot.com/
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