By Ruben Rivera
June 25, 2001
During is electoral campaign, Vicente Fox, the right wing candidate of the Partido Accion Nacional (National Action Party), had promised a huge increase in employment, education, welfare, and peace in Chiapas, etc. Not only that, he also pointed out that this changes didn’t require much time. Campaign slogans as "today, today, today!", "75 economic growth in the first year!", "peace in 15 minutes!", at the moment Fox got in power these slogans became reclaims of the workers and youth everyday more intense.
Chiapas and the longest 15 minutes in history
Refereeing to the peace premise in Chiapas, the possibility of a peace agreement in a short term are quite small. An agreement with the EZLN was possible because the leadership of this movement has shown by all means possible their willing to negotiate. The EZLN’s demand for autonomy doesn’t mean to change in a deep way the social relations in the countryside and a concession from the government it would have mean any danger for the system and it’s legitimacy. Even so, the majority of the president’s party, uneasy about showing themselves to soft, have decided not to give any concessions, and with that the conflict has entered in a new impasse.
The line of the EZLN of trust in the president and the parlament, has direct this movement into a blind alley. After big mobilizations to Mexico city, tiredness and demoralisations is taking the lines of the pro-zapatista movement and the only think that prevents a new offensive from the government against the EZLN is the convulsive situation that they have in other fronts.
Either way for the government or for the EZLN this only will mean discredit for the youth and workers.
Only the working class can brake the blind alley in which the zapatist movement is seen itself and avoid that sooner or latter and in order to prevent a new escalation in the repression towards the zapatist bases.
Economy and the workers answer
According to reports for the Bank of Mexico, the was an economical growth of 1.9% in the first quarter of last year, which had growth in a 7.9% compared with 1999. This is a very sharp decay and it is reflected in 160.000 lays off recognised officially and the closer of several enterprises related with the export business. The new economical crisis is a fact, and to affront it the Fox’s government as use measures that are very well known in Mexico: a new external debt that can be up to 20 thousand millions of dollars, a cut in the bagged of more than 3.500 millions of dollars, and the threat of privatises state industry and the proposal of rise to 15% of the VAT for food and drugs.
One of the reasons of why this new attacks have been possible to carry out even with the general disgust is that the trade union leaders have not call to the fight at all. Even so workers have shown on May Day that government won’t have it easy.
For first time in history all workers, even the trade unions controlled by the PRI showed open disgust to the president’s politics, even during an official act, the slogans of protests where so unanimous that the president had to stop several times his speech.
Has it was to expect the trade union leaders, where very careful in not to do declarations that could engage them, although due to the pressure of the rank and file, some of them, as Hernandez Juarez of the trade union of communications, had to say that if the politics of the government carries on in the same line a general strike will be necessary.
It is the struggle the solution?
The decline in the image of the president is as strong as the one in the economical side. The slow down in the export market has not been qualified, but as the time is passing its effects will strike. The government will devalue the currency one again and it will repeat the old method known by the working class, the only different is that now, the capacity of the trade union leaders to contain the working class is minimal, this time they will have to fight back if they want to preserve they heads on their shoulders, thinks will be different. Fox’s government will attack back. The crisis of the USA and Mexico wont leave room for any other thing than cuts and the actual government hasn’t got the same means as the PRI had. Although their fall is not something that you can predict in a short term, it is not completely out of the picture.
The future for the working class in Mexico is the struggle, or there is not future at all