Saul Landau
US
pundits and government figures gush over Vicente Fox’s victory last Week as if
Mexicans had elected Abraham Lincoln’s reincarnation as their new president. Fox
represents the right of center PAN, National Action Party. He stands for NAFTA,
corporate globalization and extending the invasion of foreign capital into
Mexico.
PAN
contains religious Catholics and a Falangist wing as well – a clone of Francisco
Franco’s gang in Spain. The different sectors agree only that the egregious
corruption that has characterized Mexico for seven decades under the PRI, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, must go.
PRI
rule institutionalized not revolution, as its name suggests, but corruption and,
more important, a horrifically skewed pattern of income distribution. Mexico has
twenty plus billionaires and 60 million desperately poor people! The PRI loss
offers Mexicans a possibility to reclaim some of their lost rights, but not the
property stolen from them by the elite. Fox has not promised to redistribute
wealth. I’m glad PRI lost, but make no mistake: Vicente Fox does not represent
democracy. Rather, he stands for clean government, which is not the same as
democracy.
On
the contrary, the multinational corporations, who savor Fox’s victory, feel more
secure. They have invested billions in maquilas, export factories located along
mostly on the US border. Fox will guarantee them continued access to cheap
labor, lax environmental monitoring and low taxes. But he will also lower their
"security" costs.
Fox
a former Coca Cola executive, understands corporate needs. His victory doesn’t
mean that Pepsi sales will plummet, but rather that multinationals will transfer
their costs paid for private — read bribery, theft, anti-kidnapping and
extortion protection — to the state. Under Fox, they hope, the majority of poor
Mexicans will pick up the security costs.
Over
ten million Mexicans have been forced to leave their land over the last three
decades. Most have migrated to border cities like Juarez and Tijuana, where
they, their wives and teenage children got jobs in the maquilas. Fox has not
pledged to build decent housing for this new factory class; nor has he or his
Party initiated the social services desperately needed by the new working class.
Sventy percent of Juarez’s street remain unpaved. Many houses must
"steal" electricity from the power line. Occasionally, a man touches
the wrong wire and gets fried.
In
addition, the PAN has done precious little about the fragile social fabric that
has resulted from the maquila boom. Over the past four years, in Juarez,
hundreds of young maquila workers have been kidnapped, raped and mutilated.
Indeed, in 1998 the PAN governor belittled this wave of murder and lost the
women’s vote – and the Governorship. Nor is Fox and his PAN likely to create
conditions propitious for labor organizing.
In
states where PAN governors have ruled over the last decade, like Chihuahua and
Baja California, capitalism has barely stayed on the windy side of the law. In
the Han Young strike in Tijuana, according to David Bacon, Baja’s PAN government
defied Federal court orders, which upheld the union’s right to strike. Just last
week, PAN authorities brought in police and strikebreakers to beat strikers in
full view of state and federal labor officials.
In
Chiapas, outgoing President Ernesto Zedillo maintained a 60,000 man occupation
army. Fox has promised to grant limited autonomy to the Zapatista Army of
National Liberation, who represent hundreds of thousands of indigenous peasants.
By keeping his word, Fox will gain world prestige and relieve a tense situation
in Mexico.
But,
keep close watch on our southern neighbor. PRI functionaries will not go gently
into the proverbial night and Fox is no Lincoln, so treat skeptically the praise
over Mexico’s "democratic triumph" emanating from establishment
sources.
Saul
Landau is the Hugh O. LaBounty Chair of Interdisciplinary Applied Knowledge at
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Ave. Pomona,
CA 91768