By Víctor M. Quintana S., December 1, 2006

Translated from: El corto verano de la democracia liberal by Alan Hynds

(This is an edited version of a longer article that can be found at www.irc-online.org)

The best assessment of Mexico's recent presidential election is the ruling handed down by the Federal Election Tribunal (TEPJF) on the challenges submitted by the Coalition for the Good of All (Coalición por el bien de Todos). The tribunal found that there had been improper meddling by the president of the republic; an illegal fear-mongering campaign orchestrated against López Obrador by business and some civil organizations; and a smear campaign waged by the national television networks. While acknowledging that all of these irregularities occurred, the tribunal, astonishingly, did not consider them grounds to annul the election. The tribunal's decision is at the center of the country's current political crisis and democratic regression.

Amid the signs of a democratic regression, the energy of the people at the bottom, the underdogs, has made itself felt. In the spring of 2005, the government attempted to strip López Obrador of his immunity from prosecution to prevent him from running for president. In response, a broad social movement emerged supporting him. This movement evolved and grew stronger when López Obrador won that battle and launched his presidential campaign. It thus became a new expression in civil resistance against electoral fraud and the imposition of the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN). A very significant moment in the evolution of this movement, the most important in Mexico in recent decades, was the National Democratic Convention (CND) held on Sept. 16. Now named the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), the movement is vigorous, creative, and much more broad-based than the parties that made up the Coalition for the Good of All.

But the civil resistance against electoral fraud has hardly been the last expression of bottom-up democracy. Since June, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), an umbrella group representing teachers and social, popular, indigenous, and campesino organizations in that rural state, has practically held the state capital under siege. APPO's main demand is the resignation of the governor, Ulises Ruiz, who also came to power through electoral fraud. The first two years of Ruiz's term have been characterized by repression, disdain for social and popular organizations, corruption, and heavy-handed rule.

The movement in Oaxaca is not led by any party or armed group. It emerged as a spontaneous, organized expression of direct social participation, of neighborhood assemblies, of plebeian democracy. Expressions such as this have been seen in several parts of the country, including the uprising of comuneros (rural land holders) in Atenco, the protests by relatives of miners killed in Pasta de Conchos, and the striking workers at the Siderúrgica Lázaro Cárdenas steel plant. Movements that not only express and symbolize the disgust from the depths of society but that have also been instrumental in seeking actions to defend the Earth, community, and union rights.

A Country That Is Breaking Apart

All these processes are taking place in an increasingly fragmented country. This social fragmentation is on display in various forms in the country's different regions. There is a great bipolar divide: on the one hand, the Mexico of the integrated, as sociologist Sergio Zermeño calls them—those who have bet on successful globalization, who believe that the key to solving the country's problems is taking the free-market and free-trade model to its extreme conclusion. Most Mexicans who are banking on this model voted for Felipe Calderón and, to a lesser extent, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); although they mainly live in the north and the west, many also belong to the urban middle and upper classes elsewhere in the country.

At the other extreme are those who believe that Mexico urgently needs a transformation to bring about greater equity and end the structural poverty preventing the nation's integration and development, which is a cause of the ongoing violence. These are the lower class and working sectors, both urban and rural, above all in the center and south of the country. But they are not only there, since growing numbers of Mexicans in the north and west, and also an important segment of the enlightened middle class, belong to this group. This is the Mexico that supported López Obrador's Alternative Nation Project.

Lastly, there is what Zermeño describes as the broken Mexico: the Mexico of extreme poverty, the lumpen, the mass of underlings who serve as the manpower of criminal organizations, those who live on the edge. This is the sector that failed to turn out at the polls; they have never been interested in voting, because they see no possibility of improving their situation through elections. The few among this sector who did cast a vote sold it to the PRI.

The French sociologist Alain Touraine points out that Latin America is in the throes of a crisis of the institutions that make up the political system. There is no effective link between social movements and political parties. The movement headed by López Obrador appeared to be overcoming this obstacle: Many organizations and social sectors have made themselves heard within the political system, not through the PRD, on whose ticket López Obrador ran, or the Labor Party, or the Convergencia party, but through the candidacy of the former Mexico City mayor. The movement being constructed is a break not only with the economic but also with the political elites and with the professional politicians, whom López Obrador has harshly criticized. The groundswell of participation of the masses was more evident in the postelection protest, in the encampments on the corridor from the Zócalo to Reforma, and in the massive, million-person-plus assemblies called by the candidate of the Coalition for the Good of All. Slowly, symbols of identity are being generated and a community is being constructed around civil resistance to the imposition of Felipe Calderón.

Conditions for Successful Transformation

It is possible that the Convention's momentum and energy will fizzle out. The second possible outcome is that the Convention will consolidate and become an authentic, collective, popular actor, composed of men and women citizens in control of the processes that affect their lives. For this to occur and for the Convention to become a decisive political and social force for the transformation of Mexico, the following conditions need to be met:

Formulation of a solid strategy on the left, with the convergence of all of the country's democratic, popular, and progressive forces.
Maintenance of López Obrador's unquestioned leadership, all while giving the movement systemic mechanisms allowing for joint decision-making and dialogue.
Combination of civil resistance with actions in favor of direct democracy and with legislative proposals to establish and consolidate participatory democracy as the general rule and not the exception in the country's most important political and social processes.
Establishment of ongoing, systematic ties with social movements in all regions in the country.
Promotion of the participation of citizens as effective stakeholders rather than as an excuse to channel lavish amounts of money to political parties and electoral institutions, especially the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and its state committees and institutes and federal and state agencies charged with ensuring transparency and public access to information, etc.
Reliance on participatory mechanisms to design, reach consensuses on, and carry out a plan for the social transformation of the country and the eradication of inequality and extreme poverty and to lay the foundations for economic development with a sufficient number of dignified, well-paid jobs and with a type of social development that meets the needs of all citizens, both men and women.
What is needed is a new political culture in Mexico, that is, a new type of relationship between the citizenry and the political system. A relationship in which citizens are the actors, the ones who demand, who insist on accountability, who make proposals, and in which politicians, as neo-Zapatistas say, "lead by obeying."

Víctor M. Quintana S. is a collaborator with the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). He is an adviser to the Frente Democrático Campesino in Chihuahua and researcher at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez.