There is still no legislation on the rights of indigenous peoples. President Zedillo sabotaged the San Andrés Sakamcheen negotiations with the Zapatistas on a constitutional recognition of Mexico's pluri-national and pluri-lingual reality. One of the consespecial offer regular
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4 International Viewpoint #292
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quences of the new elections is that the new majority of "opposition" forces could pass a law like that proposed by the Cocopa co-ordination of indigenous groups, even without PRI support.
Although the national balance of forces still favours the right, the left has emerged from these elections particularly strong in some regions. The cardinista movement linked to Cárdenas' bid for the presidency was more spectacular than the PRD campaign in these elections. But this elections represented a deeper movement - they took place in a more developed and better organised civil society, with a deeper level of rejection of the ruling class ideologies. Nevertheless, the conservative opposition PAN is still gaining ground against the PRI in the north and centre of the country.
In Mexico City, Cárdenas won 47% of votes (1,860,000), double the score of the PRI candidate Alfredo Del Mazo and three times higher than the PAN candidate Castillo Peraza. The PRD also won 29 of the 30 seats in the Federal District's Representative Assembly, and 38 of the capital region's 40 seats in the national parliament.
The Trotskyist PRT signed a pre-electoral agreement with the PRD, as the result of which PRT member Patria Jiménez, a leader of the country's lesbian and gay movement, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the PRD list. Though the party has no representatives in the Congress or in Mexico City's special parliament, it intends to "assume its responsibilities with respect to the programmatic agreement with the PRD."
According to Jiménez, "we are not automatically part of the new government... The Cárdenas government is neither a class force nor a socialist one. That has been clear for a long time. But it is a democratic local government, with a multi-class composition, confronting the PRI national government. Strong PRD support in the capital will enable the party to press forward with some elements of its programme: public works, job creation, modification of economic policies and budgets. With social programmes as the top priority."
No-one expects the PRD to seek a radical rethinking of the neo-liberal agenda. PRD leader López Obrador says that the party only seeks to "file the roughest edges of neoliberalism."
But the PRD victory does mean a step forward for the movement against neo-liberalism. Particularly in the field of opposition to privatisation and defence of the social security system. The PRD's parliamentary base may prove an important ally in campaigns to reverse or slow down the privatisation of pension funds.
Cárdenas cannot prevent President Zedillo from continuing his neo-liberal orientation. But his relative strength will enable a large-scale confrontation over the orientation The results the congress for the first time in 70 years. In the Chamber of Deputies the PRI will have 240 representatives, the left-wing PRD 122, the conservative PAN 120, the ecologists (PVEM) 11, and the Workers Party (PT) 7. The PRD is now the second most important party in the Chamber.
In the Senate, 32 out of 128 senators were up for election). The PRI now has 76 Senators; the PAN, 32; the PRD, 16; the PVEM 1; there are two independents and one vacent seat following the death of a senator.
For the first time since the 1920s, the Mexican President and the PRI will not The Zapatistas and the
The Chiapas Uprising of January 1994, led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) created a new left in Mexico. Because it arose as an armed movement outside of the state and the legal, parliamentary parties, and because it took its stand with the poorest and most oppressed people in Mexico, that is the Mayan Indians of Chiapas, the EZLN enjoyed enormous moral authority.
Many leftists who had become disillusioned and dissatisfied since the collapse of the old left and since the failures of the PRD rallied to the EZLN. Even more important, many Indians, peasants, and workers, and above all many young middle class students, who had never had any political experience now supported the EZLN. Thus the Chiapas Rebellion and the EZLN created a "new left" outside of the political parties.
After the National Democratic Convention (CND) held in August 1994, this new left split into two factions. The Zapatista Front for National Liberation (FZLN,
Mexico * of the economy, and the social priorities of the country. A few modest propositions
In any case, the PRT will combine its parliamentary work with extra-parliamentary activities. The party has not ruled out participation in the administration of the capital region, though this would have "strengthen the democratic struggle, and put our socialist stamp on that struggle." Cárdenas has four months to form the Federal District's new government, which will take office on 5 December 1997.
One area of parliamentary and extra-parlamentary confrontation will be over the national government's creeping introduction of military control over the various police have an automatic majority in the legislature.
The rightist National Action Party (PAN) succeeded in winning two governorships. Their victory in Nuevo Leon, a conservative northern state, had been expected, but the PAN victory in Queretaro was a surprise. Historically the PRI, through its Mexican Confederation of Workers (CTM) has held control of this central manufacturing state.
In total, 57.1% of those eligible voted. 22.4 million people did not, or could not vote. [DLB] * "new left" claiming 10,000 members), continues to support the Zapatistas. The second faction, the Broad Front for the Creation of a National Liberation Movement (FACMLN), a coalition of poor peoples organisations, has became sympathetic toward Mexico's second major guerrilla organisation, the Peoples Revolution Army (EPR). The EPR virtually endorsed Cárdenas, and thus despite its armed organisation, becomes oddly enough a political satellite of the PRD
The strength of the EZLN is that it continues to talk about the need for organisation from below to force changes in the political system. When Cárdenas and the PRD become the establishment, Marcos and the EZLN-FZLN will still be the opposition. The EZLN remains the most important group on the new left, and what it says and does in the next few months could be very important for defining the Mexican left for the next decade. But the Zapatistas remain in what Marcos has called a moment of indefinición politica. A moment which presumably cannot last forever. [DLB] *
5
The Institutional Revolutionary Party suffered a devastating defeat, losing control of
The Institutional Revolutionary Party suffered a devastating defeat, losing control of