Mexico’s new president has said his government will push for a ‘peaceful-but-radical’ transformation.
Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images
This Sunday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador
became the president-elect of Mexico. He won because he convinced a
majority that through him, a change of regime in Mexico can be achieved
through peaceful means – and without igniting a civil war. It will be a
first in our nation’s history.
In his final campaign speech, López Obrador announced that his
government will push for a “peaceful-but-radical” transformation. He
then added that “we haven’t made all this effort merely for cosmetic
changes, for lip service”.
The task ahead is monumental due to four major challenges Mexico
faces today: violence, corruption, inequality and Donald Trump. Their
resistance to his government will be vast and the outcome, uncertain.
To understand the significance of this moment, we need to look to the
history of the left in Mexico, and how it has confronted countless
massacres, assassinations, electoral fraud and smear campaigns over the
years. Indeed, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s life story is intermingled
with this movement.
Before 1968, leftwing parties were marginalized or irrelevant. When a
student movement appeared that year, peacefully demanding less state
violence and more liberties for the citizenry, the president at the time
sent his guards to shoot into a defenseless crowd. The night of Tlatelolco continues to be engraved not only on individual memories, but on our collective consciousness as well.
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Out of this tragedy was born the generation of transition. Some took
up arms, while most of us employed peaceful means as we continued to
further the agenda of ‘68 as professors, journalists, activists, labor
organizers, or professional politicians representing newly created
political parties. We also dedicated ourselves to reconstructing past
events in order to convey them to subsequent generations.
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These efforts have formed part of the Mexican transformation. In the
1970s, the modern human rights movement was born in order to attend to
the victims of the dirty war against the guerrillas, later encompassing
many other issues as well. Moreover, leftwing parties were legalized
and, in the presidential elections of 1988, achieved a basic
understanding with the party on the right in order to transform the
voting ballot into a lever for change. In the 80s began an alternation
that gradually undermined the governing party (PRI).
Then, in 1994, we saw the strength of the nonviolence. In Chiapas,
marginalized indigenous peoples rebelled and the Zapatista Army of
National Liberation announced that it was launching an offensive against
the “nation’s capital, to defeat the army”. Once the fighting began,
the social and political left poured out into the streets, demanding a
cease-fire from the government and from the insurgents. Both government
and insurgents acceded to the petition and by the presidential elections
that year, the Zapatistas would join in the demand for “free and
democratic elections”.
Out of that crucial moment came the great electoral reform of 1996,
permitting the defeat of the governing party (PRI) in the year 2000.
With Vicente Fox of the rightwing Pan began one of the unhappiest stages
of the transition, because he betrayed his democratic commitments.
Graver still, the three major parties (and that includes the leftwing
PRD) were contaminated with corruption and inefficiency, while the state
weakened and de-facto powers emerged, notably organized crime.
Mexican army troops escort arrested demonstrators during the 1968 massacre of Tlatelolco. Photograph: STR/Associated Press
During the Fox administration, the career of López Obrador as a
presidential candidate began. As the head of government of Mexico City,
he stood out for his personal honesty and a reasonably efficient
administration, distanced from radicalism. In 2006, he competed for the
presidency. Although he led in the polls, he lost due to strategic
errors, personality defects, and massive electoral fraud. In 2012, he
made another attempt and failed, although his ceaseless nationwide
canvassing allowed him to build a new kind of political and social base.
He learned from these lessons and in 2018, unfurled an impeccable
campaign that took advantage of the errors of his adversaries and the
disrepute of corrupt and inept parties. López Obrador is backed by a
formidable coalition of political, social, and cultural forces built on a
foundation of veteran leftwing organizations that have tolerated the
alliances the candidate has chosen to make with conservative
organizations.
Today, the future of Mexico is being forged. Let us indulge in a
brief moment of celebration that the Mexican left has resisted
aggression and temptation without altering its faith in nonviolence –
and that it has been rewarded for its perseverance.
Sergio Aguayo Quezada is a Mexican academic and human rights activist. His op-ed was translated from Spanish by Tanya Huntington
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