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the Mexican revolution is "dangerous" and "could result in violence and disorder," that this revolution--like the revolution that is occurring throughout Latin America--is PEACEFUL, democratic, and representative of the majority, and most especially of the vast population of the poor and the brown who have been ignored, marginalized, oppressed, impoverished and brutalized, often by US-backed fascist governments, for decades and centuries.
This paradigm shift in Latin America is huge and unstoppable, and it goes very deep. My assessment of it is that Latin Americans have realized that the brutal fascist governments that WE have imposed, have often, in the past, lured them into futile armed resistance--an understandable response to what was done to them, but one that was, essentially, self-defeating. (Armed resistance succeeded in only one place--Cuba--and briefly in Nicaragua--and has resulted in brutal repression everywhere else.) The current leftist revolution is based on TRANSPARENT elections--and the hard work on that goal in many places, by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups. Its goal is to broaden political representation, and bring about justice and equity through democratic means--a more solid, more durable form of change. It failed in Mexico--but has succeeded magnificently throughout South America--in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia, and will likely succeed also in Peru over the next few years. The closer to the US, the harder it gets to hold transparent elections in a clean political process, Mexico being a prime example (also Guatemala which is still rightwing--although the heinous US-backed military dictatorship was overthrown.). (And Columbia remains in the grip of the US's murderous "war on drugs"--although there is a new political leftist movement even in Columbia.) (And it's interesting what happened with the leftist, anti-US vote in Bolivia. The winner--and the first indigenous president of Bolivia--Evo Morales, campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around this neck--sacred plant of the Andes, essential to survival in the cold high altitudes of the Andes mountains. Bechtel Corp.'s privatization of the water in one Bolivian city--and jacking up the price of water to the poorest of the poor--was also an issue in that election. Bolivians rose up against Bechtel and threw them out of the country; then elected Morales.)
The characteristic of all of these political revolutions is NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE, civil disobedience, civil protest, and the massing of thousands and millions to the cause of democratization. (In Argentina, the protest against onerous World Bank/IMF policy was a coalition of the poor and middle class which went round Argentina with little hammers and broke the ATM display windows in all the banks. Three governments later--in quick succession--and they finally got a left/center government to free them from World Bank debt--with Venezuela's help--and put Argentina's economy back together. As a consequence, Argentina and Brazil are now discussing a common currency--getting off the dollar!)
There no sign whatever that Mexico's new revolutionaries are anything but peaceful and well-intended. They have massed millions in rallies with no incident. Tens of thousands are camped out in Mexico City, without any incident of provocation or destruction. They have taken over the government of the state of Oaxaca, without violence. Whatever violence there has been, has been entirely perpetrated by the fascist state government (for instance, the midnight assault by Darth Vader forces upon striking teachers, who were camped out in protest, last June--the incident that inspired local teachers and other community leaders to rise up and peacefully institute an alternative state government.)
Our war profiteering corporate news monopolies are trying to set up a narrative that places the onus of any potential violence on the protesters--violence that, if it comes, will be committed by the state against peaceful people. These protesters did not create the division in Mexican society between the super-rich and the very poor. They are PROTESTING that division. Their action is corrective, not divisive. They have no desire for disorder. They want the disorder of vast economic injustice to END. And they clearly, in everything they have done--including this graceful stepping back for the military parade--do not desire violent confrontation, and will not instigate it. When you think of the organization that this implies--the grass roots, community cohesion that it represents--and more than this, the spiritual grounding that is so very apparent in this movement, it is an awesome event.
As Evo Morales has said, "The time of the people has come."
And no amount of slander by our corporate news monopolies can change this. You will notice where this further evidence of the peaceful intent and behavior of this awesome democracy movement in Mexico is reported--in the China Daily. Where else has this been reported? My guess: nowhere. Except here at DU.
Beware of the words "danger," "disorder," and "divisive" in the corporate news monopoly press. Beware of their entry into your subconscious, so that you, too, begin to think of peaceful, orderly, democratic protest as causing "danger," and fostering "disorder," and creating a "division." Martin Luther King was accused of these very things. So was Gandhi. These are the slanderous words of the super-rich who do not want to share, and have grabbed all wealth and power unto themselves.
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