The Hope and Chaos of Mexico's Elections: Democratic Left Interviews Enrique Dávalos

• Published in: Democratic left 2006-12, Vol.34 (3), p.12
• Main Author: Shore, Herb
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: College professors; Davalos, Enrique; Political analysis
• ISSN: 0164-3207

So the people supported their teachers, and the movement changed from being a strike for salaries and local demands to a political movement for the removal of the governor of Oaxaca. Even though the Mexican government had the authority to do it, they didn't, and for reasons that most people do not understand. The call to remove of the governor was immensely popular in Oaxaca and would have defused the immediate political crisis. The movement that they created - almost an insurrectionary movement - is called the Asemblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca. It's a very horizontal organization, including people from the PRI and the guerilla groups in Oaxaca; the diversity is unimaginable! However, they are able to get together to make resolutions. The teachers and indigenous groups are the backbone of this movement. Most of the people back their initiatives. They have been able to confront the government - confront the repression - functioning as a kind popular state council that was prepared to negotiate, but also to mobilize. They are an image of a kind of movement that we could have in a future Mexico. Not exactly a revolution led by a "vanguard," but more a popular insurrection coordinated by a coalition of different organizations. We saw the military police entering the city, only to be confronted by groups of old women talking to them as if they were their children. You could see that the police are deeply moved by these women; we are going to see a lot of that in the future in Mexico if things keep going in the direction they are now. We will never know who was the real winner. Early on, López [Obrador] had a clear advantage over Calderón in the polls, but in the last months the distance between him and the right-wing candidate shrank. At the very end, he still led Calderón, but when the election results came in, it was announced Calderón won with about 1 percent more votes than López Obrador. López Obrador's campaign claimed there was a disparity between the votes registered in the polls and the votes that appeared in the central computer in Mexico City. They said that in addition to other tricks, there was a major problem with software fraud. They requested a manual recount, without the computer, to check if Calderón was the real winner. The [centrist] PRI, PAN, and the government controlled by the PAN, opposed this request. They said, "No, we won - period," and they declared Calderón the new preside