210/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
bastion par excellence: the community of La Realidad in the southern
state of Chiapas.
Another sign of rising discontent has been protest activity from
the poorest sectors of the population. On 30 May 1996, at San
Nicolas de los Garza, a large number of poor people attacked a train
transporting corn, Mexico's staple food. Corn is being imported in
ever greater quantities from the US; previously, Mexico was self-
sufficient. The poor ambushed the train in order to eat. In July 1996,
in a state in the north of the country, day labourers from the southern
state of Oaxaca looted shops of their food supplies. They were driven
by hunger, plain and simple.
However, this vast manifestation of protest and direct action has
not come together under a common umbrella. Moreover, the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) still controls most factory
worker trade unions. The success of independent protest on 1 May
1996 highlights the growing crisis of the PRI system of control over
mass movements; but an alternative is emerging only slowly and
very unevenly.
Regime Down but Not Out
There is certainly no shortage of signs that the regime is in crisis: the
failure of neo-liberal policies carried out since 1982; the victory of
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas - leader of the centre-left Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) - in Mexico City's first mayoral election
on 6 July 1997; the PRI's loss of its absolute majority in the national
Congress as a result of the July 1997 elections; election victories by
the right-wing National Action Party (PAN) in a number of states;
internal struggles within the PRI (including the assassination of two
main PRI leaders - Colosio and Massieu - in 1994, probably under
orders from opposing factions; the Irish exile of former president
Salinas and the imprisonment of his brother, Raul; the partial loss of
PRI control over mass movements; government agreement to
negotiate with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN)
indigenous armed rebellion; and growing PRI involvement in
criminal activities (especially in the rapidly growing drug trade to
the US). There can be no denying that there is a crisis.
The following commentary from Rhina Roux is straight to the
point: