Dr. Gilberto López y Rivas is a professor of ethnology and social anthropology at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. He is a longtime progressive Mexican activist who writes extensively on the political and social struggles taking place in Mexico and Latin America. He is a contributing writer for La Jornada newspaper, among other publications.
Gloria La Riva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation interviewed Dr. López y Rivas at the “In Defense of Humanity” conference in Rome, Italy, on Oct. 14, 2006. Click here to read the first part of the interview on the struggle in Oaxaca.
Although the Mexican elections were marred with fraud and millions of people are demanding the resignation of the declared victor, Filipe Calderón, it also seems that many people voted for him. Perhaps it was close to a tie, similar to what occurred in the United States.
In the United States, many people were deceived by the Bush campaign, mainly for the fear that it instilled in certain sectors about other social issues. Can you comment on the apparent division in Mexico?
What occurred in Mexico is a clear demonstration of the workings of what we call a protected, fixed or captive
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Therefore, they violate the real meaning of democracy. They void it of real meaning and convert it into a question that is strictly procedural. In other words, they reduce it to a choice between two parties that can think exactly the same on the principal issue, which is the economic system. That fixed or captive democracy is how the capitalists assure the continuance of its system.
What happened specifically in Mexico? In Mexico, the PRD, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, presented 15 points of denunciation about the electoral fraud. Twelve of those points had to do with violations that occurred before election day, which is part of this “protected” democracy. For example, the republic’s president shamelessly intervened in the process in favor of his candidate, which is prohibited by law in Mexico. Second was the participation of the corporate establishment.
Is this behavior by corporations illegal in Mexico?
It is illegal. Only the political parties can buy political propaganda in Mexico. In this case, the corporate establishment bought ads against Andrés Manuel [López Obrador], saying he was a “danger for Mexico,” on television and radio.
Most of the election was conducted in a climate of distortion, of pressure and attacks—a dirty war. The fraud began when the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), appointed Luis Carlos Ugalde as president of the IFE. He is an unconditional ally of Elba Esther Gordillo, the head of the Teachers Union, who organized and orchestrated the electoral fraud in Mexico. The teacher’s union is the largest union in Latin America.
Is that the same union on strike in Oaxaca?
Yes. Section 22 in Oaxaca is a militant “rebel” section of the same union. But Elba Esther operates at the national level for the teachers’ organization and for a recently created party named the New Alliance Party (PANAL). That party worked 92 percent of the polling places when the PRD covered only 60 percent.
How does one explain that a small and new party could cover 92 percent of the polling places, and the PRD, already the second largest electoral force, covered only 60 percent and in some places, not even 50 percent?
The fraud was committed in all those districts that the left didn’t monitor. But who orchestrated the fraud? It was representatives of the parties like the PAN, the PRI and PANAL.
What is PANAL’s ideology and history?
It is a creation of the PRI. Elba Esther formed it along with ex-leaders of the PRI. It was a way to divert votes, but at the
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They also used the traditional means of fraud by stuffing the ballot boxes. They used privileged and confidential information of the IFE to know where the key voting areas were located.
They subtracted or “shaved” people’s votes from the tallies. They knew that if they introduced about 15 or 20 votes per polling place, they would win with what they claimed in the results. Andrés Manuel won by 1.5 million votes. But they subtracted votes from Andrés Manuel and added those votes to Calderón.
The official tally was represented by numbers that statistically could not exist in reality, as a uniform campaign. In other words, López Obrador and Calderón, one below and the other above on a graph, they had exactly the same line of votes throughout. Why? Because they used an algorhythm that took votes from one to give to the other.
When was it done and how was this discovered?
It was done in the first count.
Scientists from the Nacional Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and of several institutions of higher education studied the statistical probabilities and IFE’s conduct of the vote. They discovered that, in reality, it was impossible for the similarity between both candidates’ vote curves to exist because they never crossed.
I have participated in three elections. I have lost one and won two. When one participates in an election where there is no fraud, a candidate may start out winning and the other candidate starts out losing. That is logical. In a statistical curve it is represented as one going downward, and the other moving upward.
Let’s say that the ballot boxes come in from the rich neighborhood. Well, the left candidate starts out losing. That means I would go down and the right-wing candidate moves up. When the ballot boxes come from the poor neighborhood, I start to go up and the other goes down.
And our vote curves cross at that point. That goes on until the final tally decides the winner. For example, in Tlalpan, I won by a 5 percent margin between the losing and winning candidates. But we didn’t know until five in the morning who would win.
In Calderón’s case, he started out winning, Andrés Manuel started out losing, and they never crossed. Never. That was in the first vote count. In the second round, it was the opposite but at the last moment, Calderón wins. All this was shown scientifically, they even discovered the algorithm.
An algorithmis a number, a program introduced in a computer, so that for each number of votes for a candidate, the machine counts more votes for the opposing candidate. Let’s suppose that there are 10 actual votes for AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] and five actual votes for Calderón. The machine disturbs that reality to create another reality.
It is a counting program. That is why the demand was for the count to be done in computers of the university that were not manipulated, and with independent programmers.
So, it was fraud and not just media manipulation.
It was also fraud. In the Other Campaign, we believed that AMLO was winning and that he did win. We had not figured on the fraud, and neither had AMLO. Thus, he left a good part of his electoral protection exposed.
When people claim that the Zapatistas caused the loss of Andrés Manuel, it is not true, because obviously what caused Andrés Manuel to lose was his failure to take care of his representation in the northern states, particularly in the PAN-dominated states.
Also, AMLO did not have confidence in the people during his campaign. He didn’t promote a movement for his campaign. He acted in an individual manner and, as the elections approached, he went more to the right, promising there would be no essential economic changes.
His campaign was very gray, ambiguous, and full of omissions and contradictions. One day he would say that he
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There were contradictions in his electoral proposals. During the whole campaign, AMLO was concerned about the media impact of his proposals. He was not a candidate who said what he really believed in a direct, honest and audacious manner. Instead he measured within a center-left parameter what he could do so that the middle class could vote for him and so the poor would vote for him. That’s the way it went until the day that he realized that fraud had been committed against him.
When he became aware of the fraud, he underwent a change and radicalization, which is the situation today.
Some have said that the Other Campaign was mistaken in not helping or supporting AMLO, but his radicalization took place after the elections.
The Other Campaign was not mistaken in its analysis of AMLO. It was not mistaken in characterizing his program as a type of neoliberalism with a human face, of assistance akin to relief aid, along with proposals of national capitalist development. But the Other Campaign did not understand in time the popular, genuine and massive nature of the struggle against the fraud.
It recognized that fraud had been committed, but it did not see the radicalization of AMLO and especially the movement that he is leading. In other words, it is not the same thing to speak of AMLO before the elections as after the elections. The Other Campaign did not make the necessary evaluation to change its opinion with respect to the struggle against the fraud.
And up until now the Other Campaign maintains that position: It does not recognize the importance of the movement in defense of the vote and for the dignity of the citizenry.
As supporters of the Other Campaign, Pablo González Casanova, Luís Hernández Navarro and I published an article, which appeared in La Jornada newspaper on Sept. 16, called “The big lie and alternatives for a democratic Mexico.”
It is a very important article because it recognizes AMLO’s leadership in the struggle for the vote, it puts into perspective the circumstances under which the fraud took place, and it demands respect for the Zapatistas’ autonomy as they follow their own course.
It is a document that expresses a distinct program from that which Marcos developed in other documents after the election. I consider it important because within the Other Campaign there is a difference on this fundamental theme.
Do you think the struggle independent of the elections is relevant?
The people should sustain a program that strengthens the institutions of participatory democracy. No struggle should base itself solely in the electoral arena. It shouldn’t abandon the electoral process, but the foundation of the struggle cannot be electoral.
