Mexico Is On the Brink of Its Third Revolution

[Joanne98]

The Question is Whether That Revolution Will be Peaceful... Or if it Will be Violent with an Uprising of Millions of Down-Trodden Citizens


By Ramón Alberto Garza
Reporte Indigo
January 4, 2010


Mexico City, January 1: The question is if that revolution will be peaceful, with a change of attitude and a re-founding of the Republic that would be developed beyond the interests that currently paralyze the nation…

Or if it will be violent, through force, with the uprising of millions of destitute people who can’t manage to guarantee their survival in the present, much less bet on a brighter future.

Let’s look at writer and historian Francisco Martin Moreno’s x-ray of the revolutions that forged the Mexico of today. And with the reflections of historians Patricia Galena, Enrique Serna, and Alejandro Rosas, let’s evaluate the similarities of the conditions that would allow us to understand the changes that are upon us. Let’s analyze…


The Third Revolution

Mexico is on the brink of its third revolution.

Everyone is aware that the political, economic, and social models that the country experimented with in the 20th century are worn out; they’ve expired. They no longer respond to current demands.

The structures forged in political centralism, which manipulates democracy, and in monopolistic practices of an economy that feigns free competition did not produce results sufficient to close the social gap.

At the dawn of 2010, 100 years after the Revolution and 200 years after Independence, the vices that provoked those revolts and that today create an opportune medium for a shake-up of the system and, consequently, the nation is being recycled.

The demands for fiscal autonomy, which was what set off the Independence, are mirrored in the tax centralism of a federal government that is insatiable, obese, and inefficient.

A government that first feeds its noble bureaucracy and then uses the leftovers to buy new regional leaders, the current governors.

The demands for effective suffrage, the same ones that detonated the explosion in 1910, have arisen once again in the face of a party-ocracy that with its self-serving laws kidnaps the political system and impedes that any Mexican could aspire to hold an elected position. It has to be according to its rules, subdued by its rules.

The legislative seats that decide, those that have real power, aren’t won in the ballot boxes. They are pacted as plurinominals by leaders who are co-opted by de facto power. And the votes that decide the winner in many cases are not the citizens’, but rather the unions’ who serve the highest bidder. Who currently represents Mexicans? Congress? Who listens and complies with their wishes?

A handful of dignitaries decide, as if they were colonial or Porfirian lords, the political, economic, and media game that allows them to impose their conditions over public interest. The benefits are for the few who have more. And those who pay taxes or for overpriced goods and services are the many who have less.

And the inequality that pops up in a nation that, 100 years after its great revolution, is incapable of weaving, beyond its recycled discourses, a horizon of hope for its downtrodden.

The registry that over the past few years has gained more followers was not the registry of the electors, nor the enterprisers, nor the creators of wealth, nor the growing middle class, nor the Mexicans with more or better education. The registry that grew more was that of the poor.

One hundred years after the revolution that demanded social justice, one out of every two Mexicans are inscribed on the ignominious list under the seal of “poor.” The country’s viability is at risk.

Even more when there are two powers that have settled on top of those who should legitimately govern the nation.

One is the power of neo-Porfirism; the control of a privileged caste that enthrones itself in politics and the economy after 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI). A political and economic elite that closed ranks behind Salinas’ neoliberalism that even today continues imposing its will upon the national routine.

The same men who inherit legislative seats, the same men who dominate public and private businesses, the same men who, installed in union reserves, charge an arm and a leg for their protection. The other is the power of neo-Villaism. That of a handful of bandits labeled as drug traffickers, the members of so-called organized crime, who impose their law upon the State.

The difference is that at least Francisco Villa put forward a social cause in order to justify his capacity as a bandit. The neo-villaists of today only buy the system at all levels.

Continued>>>
http://www.narconews.com/Issue63/article4002.html

[Warpy]

1. They also have narco gangs filling some of the vacuum

left by half hearted government social programs, winning the hearts and mind of some of the poorest citizens who have gotten absolutely nothing since the last revolution.

There was massive unrest after the last election. If another conservative gets into power, they just might have that long overdue next revolution.

[Selatius]

2. And our own government would intervene to crush the people's rebellion down there.

The elites who run our country do not want a left wing government with a rewritten and more democratic constitution on its southern frontier. There would be American boots in Mexico, I fear, if the elites here have their way.

[bemildred]

3. Well on the way to being a "failed state" at least.

And an illegitimate government by any measure.

[notesdev]

4. Something so familiar about this

"A handful of dignitaries decide, as if they were colonial or Porfirian lords, the political, economic, and media game that allows them to impose their conditions over public interest. The benefits are for the few who have more. And those who pay taxes or for overpriced goods and services are the many who have less."

[endless october]

5. does Carlos Slim still own that whole country?

he had a pretty good monopoly going on almost everything, last time i checked.

maybe they need to enact some anti-trust legislation for starters.

[a la izquierda]

11. sort of...

but Carlos Slim truly is the least of Mexico's problems.

[enid602]

6. card

Even more reason to institute a US national identity card RIGHT NOW!!!

[Demeter]

7. I got news for you: So is the US

Our first Revolution ran from 1775–83, and is also known as the American War of Independence.

Our second Revolution ran from 1861–1865, and is also known as The American Civil War, or the War Between the States, among other names.

Our Third Revolution was due in the 1950's, if analysis of two data points can produce a trend. Due to McCarthyism and several well-timed assassinations, it was delayed, but the bill is coming due, and the Corporations, who seized power following the Second Revolution, have finally bought themselves a big-scale retribution. With any luck, said retribution will fall upon those who earned it, and the original Nation our Founding Fathers envisioned will rise from the ashes of Globalism.

That is my best hope for our future.

[Vidar]

8. I hope you're right.

[Selatius]

10. The Early Roman Republic only lasted about 200 years. The Late Roman Republic was a different era.

The latter era was characterized by assassinations, nepotism, favoritism, bribery, and all sorts of corruption over roughly the next 200 years. People stopped entering government to serve the people. Instead, they entered government to loot everything, the public wealth. Eventually, the Republic was overthrown, and a hereditary dictatorship was installed to keep together what was left, but even that arrangement failed in the end.

[Vidar]

9. Recommended. I dearly hope they succeed& join the rest of Latin America.

[a la izquierda]

12. Well, I certainly hope you want it to be peaceful.

More than a million died during the 1910-1920 revolution.
During the Reform Wars of late 1850s, early 1860s, tens of thousands died because of political ideologies.

So, a violent revolution in Mexico is precisely NOT what that country needs. Change, systematic upheaval in the political system, no doubt. But not any more violence.

[pscot]

13. Oil Exports have been

paying a large share of the bills, but that will end as Cantarell dies. The pressure on the government will become intense. It's hard to imagine a resulution that doesn't devolve into civil disorder, if not chaos.

[bhikkhu]

14. Oil revenues have tanked, the government is broke

and revolution is one way of describing the arc of a failing state. You can clothe it in whatever political mumbo-jumbo you want, but its about the decline of the wells that were the backbone of government revenue. Without money, the functions of government don't get done. As the money isn't coming back, Mexico may be the first post-oil nation in the Americas to go belly up and have to find its own diverse ways into the future.