La Lucha Sigue

Six weeks after the elections and three weeks before a ruling from the federal electoral tribunal is constitutionally required, and no clear resolution of the crisis seems in sight. The partial recount ordered by the tribunal has been completed, but no announcement of the final results and what they signify has been made, at least not by the tribunal. The two opposing political forces have of course each made their own diametrically opposed pronouncements of what the results mean: the PRD arguing that major irregularities in over 70% of the casillas that were recounted clearly demonstrate systematic fraud, and the PAN claiming that the recount irrefutably showed only human errors and notable irregularities in only 2% of the reexamined polling stations. I have yet to figure out how the numbers can vary so widely and hold any inkling of truth, but Mexico is a land of contradictory realities existing side by side, and the truth is most certainly relative.

So what next? While everyone awaits a declaration of the tribunal's conclusions from the partial recount and, possibly, a pronouncement of a final winner or, less likely but still possible, a call for a total recount, the electoral conflict is only deepening. This weekend AMLO called for continuing protests, lasting years if necessary, and a new series of civil resistance actions between now and September 16, Mexican Independence Day. Meanwhile, Calderon continues calling for a final declaration from the tribunal as if naming him president will swiftly resolve the crisis. But this conflict appears to be taking root and has become representative of much more than a simple dispute over who won the most votes.

Embedded in the cries of fraud and demands for change that now echo regularaly each Sunday from the Zocalo are the frustrations and hopes of millions of Mexicans who feel powerless to shape their own future. AMLO has captured and maintained such an intense following not because he has offered effective policy solutions to the problems facing the country, but because he has given a voice to many who felt voiceless. For good or ill, the electoral crisis has taken on the much deeper conflicts of gross inequality, marginalization, and social divisions that have been driven by decades of failed policies and corrupt institutions. It has become a referendum on Mexico's past and its future.

It is hard then to carve out a position for justice and the peaceful prevention and transformation of conflicts within this political landscape. I find myself standing for the deeper causes of this movement demanding change but rejecting its political manueverings; supporting the calls for an end to inequality and a new empowerment of the poor, but disputing the tactics of division and confrontation; believing in a strong civil society movement to reshape Mexico, but questioning the potential for positive transformation from such anger and rejection of the other. I find truth in both sides and keep waiting for the cooperative path forward, knowing it is nowhere on the horizon.

So for me, along with the rest of Mexico, the struggle continues.