CASE STUDIES/209The middle classes, small producers, small businesspeople, and a
section of the professional classes have also been severely hit by neo-
liberal policies, especially since the December 1994 crisis. Debt has
grown to unsustainable levels in these sectors of the population. One-
third of private bank customers - 4 million people - are insolvent (in
1996, annual bank interest rates were nearly 4 5 per cent). One result
has been the emergence of a 'debtors movement', known by the name
of the umbrella organisation El Barzon. This movement describes
itself as a 'regrouping of the middle classes, whose relative comfort is
threatened'; it has 1.8 million members (see interview with El Barzon
national leader Juan Jose Quirino, La Jornada, 21 July 1996).
Apart from the increase in the job deficit, the fall in purchasing
power and the rise in personal debt, there are other ways to measure
Mexico's social disaster: 21 million Mexicans have no access to basic
education; 15,000 schools have only one teacher; 50 per cent of the
population has no social protection; and 20 per cent of children suffer
from malnutrition. According to the UN-funded Economic
Commission for Latin America (CEPAL), between 1982 and 1992 the
number of Mexicans living in poverty rose from 48.5 million to 66
million. In 1982, 16.2 per cent of the poor lived in conditions of
extreme poverty; by 1992, the proportion was 48.6 per cent.
Social Movements: Fragmented Resistance
The forms of social resistance have been uneven, in a patently
unfavourable climate for the working classes. Admittedly, there have
been encouraging signs - like the second consecutive independent
May Day trade union mobilisation held in 1996. Several hundred
thousand demonstrators took to the streets across the country that
day - in spite of opposition from the eternal lider mdximo of the ruling
party-controlled trade union movement, Fidel Velazquez (who died
in 19 9 7, well into his nineties). May Day 19 9 6 was an historic event;
the new 'May First Inter-Union' grouping played a central role.
The El Barzon debtors' movement has also organised ma] or protest
actions and demonstrations among the middle classes. This
movement, oriented towards non-proletarian sectors of the
population, could well radicalise leftwards. One encouraging sign, for
example, was the July 1996 national gathering it held in a Zapatista