"We don't want football, we want food!"
MEXICOSO
to the unorthodox policies of freezing prices and wages being applied now in Argentina and Brazil. But the new budget cuts indicated that the government did not feel that for the moment it had the necessary means
EVEN AFTER the earthquake in Mexico last September, one of the first declarations of the government was to affirm that the World Cup would go ahead. The first grants made towards reconstruction were ERIC MICHELOT
Today, 20,000 victims of the earthquake still live in makeshift camps set up in the streets in some parts of the city. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is feeding an underhand campaign slanders against the Unified Coordinating Committee for the Disaster Victims (CUD). One of the makeshift camps was hit by arson several weeks ago.
In the better parts of the town, the police have been given a new mission: evicting the innumerable beggars, street traders and entertainers that the crisis and unemploy. ment have thrown onto the streets. In passing, the cops never fail to misappropriate the merchandise: part of the police tradition.
For many months the front of the cathedral at Zocalo (the central square) has been besieged by hunger strikers and various demonstrations by workers, peasants' organizations and doctors. Twice at dawn the police have violently evicted the demonstrators.
The World Cup side of Mexico is best symbolized, without doubt, by the Neza stadium in the heart of Nezahualcoyotl, a huge shantytown of over three million inhabitants, a veritable town within a town. All the surroundings of the stadium have been repainted and repaved in a hurry, when for years the local people have been demanding improvements in water and electricity services. To cap it all, the local council has sent bills for the equivalent of 20 days minimum wage for each metre of wall redecorated. The local people refuse to pay and are mobilized around the slogan: "No queremos goles, queremos frijoles" - "We don't want football, we want food"
The tourists don't see any of this. One of the objectives of the World Cup is to restore a good image to Mexico. The president has gone as
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986 far as to place inserts in The Times signed in his own hand. The government also hopes to get a little respite from this episode, because today it is engaged in trying to implement drastic austerity policies.
The minumum wage has lost 40 per cent of this has been lost during the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. This decline is one of the most pronounced in Latin America. As well as adding to unemployment, it manifests itself in a profound main he gent erosion in the living standards of the great majority of the population. Dollars, deregulation and privatization
The government, badly hit by the fall in the price of petrol, has chosen to go for double or nothing. Therefore last month took three measures which surpassed anything that the International Monetary Fund could have recommended. The first was to make it possible to open bank accounts in dollars. This constitutes an important step in making the economy more subordinate to the United States and to the most speculative sections of the bourgeoisie. A law has also been passed allowing the government to privatize publicsector companies and then sell them off cheaply. Very recently it decided to let the smelting works at Monterrey go bankrupt, and to sell its shares to the Mexican airline company. Lastly, the prices of basic foodstuffs (such as tortillas) - until now subsidized by a public body, the Conasupo -have been deregulated.
It seems that the government envisaged an Azeca plan, similar to apply more classic austerity
The peculiarities of Mexican history revolution, workers' movement, proximity to the corporations) don't leave the government any other option than to consame frenzied austerity politics. All the traditional means beginning crumble little by little.
Paradoxically, Mexico, which has never known an outright dictatorship, has led the way when it comes to developing repressive structures. The May 1 demonstration this year was the latest example. While the official unions were parading in front of the National Palace - which has been transformed into a bunker - with their obscene slogan "Thank you, Senor President", the independent procession, banned from Zocalo, was a victim of a classic police provocation.
The garment workers' union, 19 septembre, which was born after the earthquake, revealed the incredible exploitation of women workers in the small workshops in San AntonioAbad. This union placed demands for recognition on the government, which could not then reasonably refuse them. But less than a year later they made up for it, and the procession of garment workers was particularly singled out for attention by the forces of law and order.
It seems impossible to get any legal changes. The deputies of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT -Mexican section of the Fourth International) voted against an anti-torture bill, because all the measures proposed were insufficient. The government in fact voted against an elementary demand that only confessions signed in the presence of a lawyer have any legal standing.
The World Cup must be an occasion for international democratic opinion to give a boost to the fight led by the National Front Against Repression (FNCR) for the return of the "disappeared" and amnesty for the hundreds of people arbitrarily detained. The campaign to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Rosario Ibarra de la Piedra, the chairperson of the FNCR, will be an important means of taking the struggle forward.
5
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