Socialist Action /September 2002
Mexican Campesinos Defend Land and Water
Against Privatization
By JAIME GONZALEZ
MEXICO CITY-Consider the following scene, which actually took place on
Aug. 27: A group of around 30 campesinos from San Salvador Atenco-a town
in the eastern side of the Mexico City Valley-is traveling on several vehicles
over a toll road. Their final destination will be a demonstration in solidarity
with a group of activists that were arrested and jailed some days before
in Cuernavaca, an important city and state capital about an hour and a half
away.
When the Atenquenses reach the toll booth, one of them gets down and
lifts the barrier so their vehicles can pass without paying. The well-armed
Federal Police do not interfere, and the only reaction by the road-administration
personnel-impotent, at least for the time being-is to try to photograph
the small caravan from the booth complex's command post. In a jesting tone,
one of the campesinos tells the others: "Smile to the camera! They
already know who we are!"
The governor of Morelos, the state where the repression and jailings
have just taken place, has vowed publicly not to let the macheteros (machete-brandishing
people) from Atenco to reach Cuernavaca. He must have changed his mind,
since the Atenquenses successfully participated in the huge demonstration,
of more than 10,000, asking for the immediate release of the 30 activists
who had been violently repressed and jailed on Aug. 22.
The activists had been protesting the final dismantling of a former cultural
site known as the Casino de la Selva, where some of the Mexican muralist
masters had left important works. The supermarket chain Costco wants to
build a huge store complex over the area the activists wanted to protect.
After the violent arrests, outrageous bail amounts are set. Criminal
offenses are poured on against participants in a peaceful movement whose
worst offense has been, at the most, to upset traffic in a busy intersection.
A story of solidarity
Reporters ask the Atenquenses why they attended the Cuernavaca demonstration,
about 100 miles from their township, which moreover was apparently not related
to their own issues. The answer-"we won because of solidarity"-refers
to their recent victory in turning down an attempt by the federal government
to expropriate their land in order to build a new Mexico City airport. The
government pretended to compensate their land at seven U.S. cents per square
meter.
Their truly determined resistance to the government's plan reached a
critical point last July 12, when another governor, Arturo Montiel, from
the state of Mexico (to which the Atenco municipality belongs) sent riot
police against an Atenquense demonstration that tried to reach the place
where he was heading an official ceremony. Montiel's police had staged a
savage attack, resulting in several wounded and arrested campesinos (one
of whom died, as a consequence of not receiving adequate medical attention
while in custody).
But repression turned out to be completely counterproductive. The Atenquenses
reacted by taking police and district attorney's personnel as hostages,
blocking the important highway that runs along their municipality, and then
barricading themselves in their township, in defiance of the state and federal
governments.
The ensuing stand-off, starting on the evening of July 12, was remindful-despite
its modest scale-of legendary popular uprisings: the Atenquenses (5000 at
the most, counting children), armed with sticks and machetes, were surrounded
by several thousand Federal Police troops, supported with helicopters and
armed with automatic weapons.
A TV channel (CNI Canal 40), for once, gave us a taste of what was really
going on: on one side, the people meeting in the improvised town auditorium,
somewhat nervously but seriously determined to face whatever was coming;
and, on the other side, escorted, elegant, vans hectically arriving with
all sorts of secretaries and top brass at the Gobernación
(Interior) headquarters, only to depart a short while afterward for President
Fox's residence.
Montiel's blunder had put the whole government in a quandary: the world
was watching, the whole of Mexico was transfixed with the images of the
conflict, and no amount of drum-beating, helicopter-chopping, and saber-rattling
seemed to intimidate the Atenquenses.
Worse even, the real boss-President Bush-has been so distracted by his
maneuvers to beat some sense into the whole world that he has not delivered
anything of substance to boost his most devout south of the border ally.
So what is a poor filthy-rich, pro-U.S., neoliberal cabinet to do? Well,
the same that President Toledo, facing a widespread discontent over his
privatization plans, did in Peru just some weeks before-begin the excruciating
process of pulling back.
After a confusing period of attacks and counter-attacks in ruling circles,
plans to build the new airport in the Texcoco area (which includes San Salvador
Atenco) were cancelled.
Pity those brave investors who, acting on "insider" information,
had spent millions of dollars buying land and facilities in preparation
for the $2 billion fallout from the over-gigantic public spending on a private
(Yes! Fox's most important public works project was a private airport financed
with public funds!) that would have benefited only the minority among minorities
in the Mexican population that uses air transportation.
Mobilization in Guanajuato
The victory by the Atenco campesinos was like a wide-ranging echo of
a not so well known fight in the state of Guanajuato, some 300 miles north
of Mexico City. The population of Romita ("little Rome"), an 80,000-person
municipality dedicated to agriculture that is being depleted of its water
by the industrialists in Leon, Guanajuato's main city.
The municipal president (the mayor), who had sworn to defend the aquifers,
was somehow "convinced" that he had to understand the strategic
importance of Leon's tanning and shoe production industry, and had to concede
new wells being dug in the Romita area. After all, it was just a few wells
more: only about 500, to make a total of around 1600 wells in the area (many
of which are not productive anymore, due to overexploitation of the aquifer).
The rising popular movement in defense of the aquifer asked for a very
reasonable solution: to give Leon drinking-grade water, and to get in return
recycled agriculture-grade water, with the only condition that it had to
be free of salt and toxic substances, such as heavy metals. But the capitalists
in Leon, after contaminating their own aquifers, simply refuse to make the
necessary investments in order to avoid turning their waste-water into something
that is useless for agriculture.
Demonstrations by the Romitenses were getting larger and larger; so the
state governor decided he should do something about them. On the occasion
of a new demonstration against the mayor on June 19, he sent in the state
police, with instructions to teach the peasants who are the bosses in Guanajuato.
Hundreds were tear-gassed and bludgeoned; 300 were rounded up and had to
spend the night in state prisons, many still bleeding.
The state governor, former University of Guanajuato Professor Romero
Hicks, thought he had really intimidated the population, divided the leadership,
and that he had the most important "subversives" on the run. But
a widespread discontent in the population and an energetic campaign, in
which socialist activists in the state played a crucial role, turned the
tide completely.
On June 23, more than 4000 Romitenses marched in their city, defying
the state of siege instituted by the police. The state police did not show
up this time. And a few days later, on June 29, a national forum in defense
of Romita took place, with the presence of dozens of Atenquenses (who showed
up, machetes in their hands), as well as workers from the Euzkadi plant
in nearby Jalisco state, who are fighting wholesale layoffs.
Sometime later, in July, the Romitenses duly paid back the solidarity
they had received from the Atenquenses, when they visited San Salvador Atenco
in times of much needed support.
The aquifer issue remains undecided, but the popular movement is once
again alive and well. Romero Hick's ridiculous "zero tolerance"
police-state program (a caricature of New York Mayor Giuliani's nefarious
practices), directed against youth as well as against social discontent,
is silently being scuttled.
And now, the heavy battalions
Taking all of the above into account, how could it be that President
Fox thought this was the right moment to launch his initiative to privatize
Mexico's electrical power production?
On Aug. 22 he announced a political agreement with his own political
party, the PAN, and with a fraction of the recently-deposed-from-power PRI,
by which all legal obstacles to private (specially foreign) investment in
electricity are to be removed, including crucial sections of Articles 27
and 28 of the Constitution. Readers who are not familiar with this issue
must take into account that a very similar plan was turned back in 1999
and 2000, during the last years of Ernesto Zedillo's presidency, by a wide
popular mobilization.
Again, the reaction by electrical workers was announced quickly and decisively.
In a formal membership meeting on Aug. 26, the 50,000 strong Mexican Electrical
Workers Union (SME) adopted a very strong rejection of Fox's plan, and a
complete action program to mobilize against it, including the call for demonstrations
and a massive public propaganda campaign.
Your correspondent was there at the union headquarters, attending a socialist
literature table. From this modest-but privileged-standpoint the picture
is very clear: electricians are ready for battle, and on their side they
not only have confident popular movements like the one at Atenco, but a
widespread rejection of privatization as well.
Why do electricians take this privatization plan so much at heart? Because
if-as the likes of Enron, Dynergy, and Haliburton propose-Mexican electricity
is not only produced by private plants but marketed by them as well, a great
majority of electrical workers can bid farewell to their jobs.
I notice that our socialist newspaper, some videos, and several books
are being picked up by workers at a pace I have not seen for decades.
"¿Cuánto por el barbas?" (How much for
the bearded guy?). I am disconcerted for a moment. "Wha...? Oh, yes!
The Karl Marx button, of course! That's 10 pesos!" Sure enough, radicalization
is taking place, swiftly and naturally.
Socialist Action /September 2002 |