Forwarded message:
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 13:00:10 -0800
From: La Mujer Obrera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Urgent Action Alert
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From moonlight Sun Jan 15 11:50:07 1995
>From moonlight Sun Jan 15 11:50:17 1995
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 11:50:07 -0800
From: La Mujer Obrera <moonlight>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Urgent Congressional Action Alert
*****URGENT CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ALERT****
This is a critical week for the possibilities of peace in
Mexico and it requires people in the United States and Canada to
take some immediate actions with their political representatives.
The headlines proclaim the size of the economic package being put
together by the US to save Mexico. What people in North America
are not aware of is that the "conditions" under which this
package is being negotiated are under the utmost secrecy, but
information sources in Mexico are clear about the following; Wall
Street is asking for a military solution for Chiapas.
We are asking you once again to take some emergency actions
with your Congressional representatives. We suggest a meeting
with as large a group of people as you can gather, or a personal
phone call. We also suggest that you ask other groups to
participate in this action. This package will be completed in
the next 10 days AND IT IS CRITICAL THAT PEOPLE VOICE THEIR
OPINIONS AT THIS TIME. For those of you who are able, we suggest
some action with Wall Street, a stockholders statement, action
etc. In your public statement, point out that it is the
corruption and incompetence of the PRI that caused Wall Street
losses, because the PRI lied and deliberately covered up their
timeline on the peso devaluation without letting investors know.
Below we have a sample draft of the specific issues to
present, as well as a background article about the economic and
political crisis in Mexico, which hopefully will be useful to you
in explaining the situation there. Please call us if you have
any questions, or need specific information that we might be able
to help you with. Thank you so much.
TO PRESIDENT CLINTON [YOUR STATE SENATORS, AND REPRESENTATIVES]
Dear Sirs
We are very concerned with what amounts to the
Administration's wholesale endorsement of the rule of the PRI in
Mexico with its provision of the economic package. The
President's statements only direct themselves to Mexico's
economic problems. They make no mention of the political crisis
which many experts in Mexico are now saying need to be addressed
before any economic strategy will be effective.
The economic and political crises have been brought on by
the PRI government's ineptitude, corruption and authoritarian
rule. It is now evident that Salinas and the PRI [Institutional
Revolutionary Party] manipulated the Mexican economy in order to
win the August 1994 elections and as a result also caused a major
economic crash.
There is no doubt that the PRI government is going to use
the [US/Canada] support to maintain its control and to eliminate
those who are seeking democratic change in Mexico, using force if
necessary. With the added burden of defense of the US aid
package, the PRI will now proceed to eliminate any civil dissent
and rights they deem counter-productive to the economic progress
dictated by US policy.
The large amounts of money and support which you and your
administration are giving to the PRI are unprecedented and imply
the unquestioning support of the United States. We think that
this is a dangerous mistake.
Before any aid is given to the Mexican government, there
should be a thorough investigation of human rights abuses by the
Mexican government and Mexican military, of the PRI's capacity to
rule, and of the political assassinations of Luis Donaldo Colosio
and Francisco Ruiz Masseiu. Without such a complete review of
the PRI, we are holding the Clinton administration responsible
for all of the actions of the PRI, the Mexican government and its
military, especially in Chiapas.
There is a clear voice for democratic change in Mexico, and
the US is on the opposite side. END LETTER
1/10/95 By Cecilia Rodriguez National Commission for Democracy
(915) 532-8382,
For 20 days, at the foot of a large, beautiful statue in the
center of Mexico City, 23 hunger strikers protested for peace
in Mexico. The fast of the 70-year-old diabetic Catholic
Bishop of San Cristobal, Samuel Ruiz, lasted for 15 days. The
hunger strikers were demanding that steps be taken to secure
peace in the country. The Mexico City strikers later
requested a meeting with the President. They were met by riot
police.
In Chiapas, the Zapatistas have been armed and demanding
social change. They want land, housing, health, food, education,
jobs, peace, democracy, liberty, justice, independence. The
first six demands do not appear irrational. The poverty in the
country is indisputable. It is the other five that confuse and
frustrate the American public. Do a group of badly-armed
indigenous people have a right to demand political change on a
national level?
The situation in Mexico is the result of two principal
phenomenon, the economic re-structuring of the country and a
closed political system incapable of democratic change. The
country began changing its economic system in the late 70's. In
Mexico these policies translated into the following; industry
favored over agriculture, regions over urban areas, foreign
markets over national markets. From 1982-88 this massive
restructuring caused 4,165,819 layoffs, the closing of
almost 1000 firms, a jump in the unemployment rate from
14.5% to 17%. From 1988-94 the country lost 13,250 jobs per
month and created few new jobs for the 6 million young
people who entered the labor force. According to Business
Week, Mexico's GNP growth has been falling since 1990 from
4.5% to 0.4% in 93, its budget deficit growing from 8
billion in 1990 to 24 billion in 93. In addition Mexico
created 27 new billionaires at the same time as 40 million
of its people entered poverty. As a result of the recent
peso devaluation the hourly wage will now be 33 cents per
hour. I can be more specific about the high social cost
of these harsh economic changes. Let's look at a part of
the country where the new PRI governor is being asked to
resign. The state of Tabasco has a million and a half
people. As a result of the negligence of agriculture over
the past decade, half of the economically active
population, 500,000 is unemployed now. Most of them are
agricultural workers. They used to harvest or grow cacao,
cocoanut, banana, sugar, citrus, pepper, and fish. These
acute economic changes were accompanied by significant
political turmoil. The Mexican Constitution has undergone
500 amendments since this economic re-structuring began.
The changes have been characterized by a greater
centralization of power, a wearing away at civil
liberties, and an amplification of Presidential power.
The most recent demonstration of the growing political
crisis in the country is the peso devaluation. In 1992,
professor of economics Dr. Rudiger Dornbush of MIT said
the Mexican peso was overvalued and that Salinas should
act quickly. The need for the devaluation was
widely-known in Washington. Now the American media
cynically comments that all new "Mexican" administrations
devalue the peso as though this bungling was a cultural
flaw. The fact is that the PRI deliberately hid the
deficiencies of its economic reforms. It delayed a
devaluation which was not only necessary but inevitable,
in order to manipulate the elections.
"The problem of Mexico is not economic, it is political. And
the only viable exit to the dark alley in which the nation has
been submerged..will not come from sacrifice, or a tightening of
the belts, or a return to living on credit, but from democracy,"
states Elias Montanez Alvarado of El Diario de Juarez. Under the
rule of the PRI, Mexico is a nightmare of corruption, nepotism,
opportunism, and manipulation. Many prominent journalists in
Mexico have documented this, at the risk of their lives.
That is why the EZLN has been demanding "a peaceful transition
to democracy." While recent headlines say the contrary, our
reports from the ground is that war is being prepared in Chiapas.
The Wall Street Journal in a recent headline "Mexican stocks,
Despite Bloodbath, Could Pay in Next Year" anticipates the
ultimate resolution to the crisis. In the EZLN, the PRI
has found a force that cannot be bought, intimidated, or tricked
into anything less than genuine democracy. The most responsible
thing to be done by Americans is to support Mexico's struggle for
a genuine democracy, and to demand a political resolution to the
conflict.
El Proceso, Dec. 12 issue pg. 18-19
By Gerardo Galarza
Despite the economic crisis which the country suffered
during the 1980s, the Mexican Army not only did not have any
financial restrictions on its modernization, but in fact, from
the mid-80s through 1993, almost doubled its number of soldiers.
During the six-year term of Salinas, on top of getting new
responsibilities related to national security, the Army received
considerable increases in its budget.
Despite the irritation of the Mexican military forces
because of the criticism it received for its repressive tactics
and involvement in police and electoral matters, as well as
combat of drugtrafficking, military expenditures rose from $1.47
billion pesos [nearly $500 million at old exchange rates] in 1988
to $1.67 billion pesos [$550 million] in 1989 and $2 billion
pesos [nearly $700 million] in 1990 and 1991, according to a
master's thesis in political science, entitled "The Mexican Armed
Forces and the Process of Modernization (1988-1994)", written by
Erubiel Tirado in the London School of Economics.
The figures cited above "confirm the argument that there has
been a substantial change in the military as part of the
political modernization promoted by Salinas", added the thesis.
..This has led Mexico to a greater dependence upon the
United States, as the US has become Mexico's principal supplier.
"Between 1988 and 1992 military sales by the US to Mexico
totalled $214 million, which was sixteen times greater than
Mexico's purchases from France, its second largest supplier at
$13 million. This is a distinct change from the trend in
purchases during the previous two decades," according to the
thesis.
..In recent years, the number of soldiers in the Mexican
Army has increased notably..In the 70s the number grew from
71,000 to 80,000, and from 94,500 to 175,000 between the mid-80s
and 1993.
Among its conclusions the thesis stated," the [Mexican]
military has a high degree of financial independence. Military
leaders can spend their budget as they see fit. They are not
accountable to any civil authority."
In addition, in recent years the Mexican Army "has been used
more than before to meet presidential objectives which were part
of the Salinas' modernization." La Jornada 12-24-94 pg 2
Letters to the Editor
*I denounce the presence of Argentinean military advisors
by Dr. Julio Molina Esquivel, recipient of 1989 National Oncology
Award
.In recent days press reports sent from Buenos Aires, Los
Angeles and Mexico have told us of the presence in the country of
a group of military and police men from Argentina--technicians in
torture and assassination-- whose mission consists of aiding the
Mexican Army in torture and criminal techniques. In this aspect
it is important to remember that, in the so-called "dirty war"
which the Argentinean military junta carried out in the 70s, more
than 30,000 citizens of the Argentinean republic were
disappeared. Likewise these techniques of torture and crime were
exported-according to press reports--to some Central American
countries, whose people were immersed in civil or military
insurgency, and in which thousands of people were executed,
tortured and disappeared.
