Monday, September 18, 2006

 

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas vs. Lopez Obrador in Mexico

 

By Allan Wall

 

No living figure in the Mexican left has the stature of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

 

Cuauhtemoc is the son of Lazaro Cardenas del Rio, the 1930s Mexican president who broke up haciendas and nationalized the petroleum industry.  In 1989 Cuauhtemoc Cardenas was a founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), under whose banner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) ran for president this year against the National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Felipe Calderon.

 

In 1988, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas made a valiant run for the presidency of Mexico against Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). This was the infamous election in which supposed computer failure was used to cover up the PRI’s dirty tricks.

 

Now, in 2006, Lopez Obrador has refused to acknowledge Calderon’s slim victory and claims that the election was robbed in like fashion to that of 1988.

 

There was a lot of protesting in 1988, led by Cardenas and PAN candidate Manuel Clouthier.  But in the end Cardenas refused to take his followers over the brink, to ignite some sort of revolution.  He didn’t think it was good for the country.

 

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is still considered the “moral leader” of the PRD.  So it’s significant that he himself has refused to join Lopez Obrador in his Zocalo rallies and other protests.   It’s a fissure within the ranks of the PRD.

 

Though Cuauhtemoc did admit to having voted for AMLO, the Cardenas clan (including Cuauhtemoc and his son Lazaro Cardenas Batel, governor of Michoacan) has been decidedly unsupportive of Lopez Obrador both during the regular campaign and during the post-election contention.  And recently, Cardenas Batel has recognized Felipe Calderon’s triumph.

 

Most recently, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas himself has written an open letter to AMLO cultural advisor Elena Poniatowska that summarizes his differences with the Lopez Obrador camp.  Since Cardenas is considered the “moral leader” of the PRD, his comments bear considering.

In the long letter Cardenas writes, “What worries me profoundly are the intolerance and satanization, the dogmatic attitude” that Lopez Obrador displays toward “those who don’t unconditionally accept his proposals and question his points of view and his decisions, since these things contradict fundamental principles of democracy, such as respect for the opinions of others and readiness to dialogue.”

                           

Cardenas doesn’t oppose the protest in the Zocalo (the main plaza of Mexico City), but he writes that blocking of the boulevards was leading to “losses and the wear and tear on the democratic movement in general and the PRD in particular.”

 

Cardenas criticized AMLO for waffling on the question as to whether or not he even was a leftist, and for saying that he would have to moderate his views as president.  One must maintain his principles, says Cardenas, implying that AMLO doesn’t.

Regarding AMLO’s “National Democratic Convention,” Cardenas writes that “I don’t think that it should proceed like this. To do so would be a crass error with a high cost to the PRD and the entire democratic movement.”

 

It’s not that Cardenas doesn’t favor a “new constitutional pattern” – he does. But he thinks it requires more time to develop, and that delegates from all over Mexico should be consulted.

Cardenas wants a new constitutional model “constructed collectively in plurality and through democratic procedures, resulting in the construction of a new constitutional pattern.”

Cardenas writes that “Myself and many other fellow citizens believe that what is necessary is to move toward the gradual working out of a new national project for the near future.  An opposition project would follow certain regulative ideas: a new electoral law, new indigenous rights legislation, resistance to the privatization of natural resources, combat against corruption, expansion of education at all levels, a struggle to radically reduce economic and social inequalities.  A new left can unite without losing its differences, along the lines of a common project.”

And Cardenas closes out by writing that “… with this long letter, what I do is defend the right to dissent, to think differently.  When this way of thinking has been impeded, it has led to dictatorships, oppression, repression, sectarianism and intolerance, which I am certain, neither you nor I wish to see in our country.”

Will the posture of Cardenas towards AMLO deepen the fissure within the PRD, or is AMLO’s movement the wave of the future?

 

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Allan Wall, a MexiData.info columnist, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  He currently resides in Mexico, where he has lived since 1991. He can be reached via e-mail at allan39@prodigy.net.mx.