The election has created a new situation in the country and posed bilities also loom of situations in which new and difficult tasks for revolutionaries. These were analyzed in classes can organize politically in order to a report adopted by the PRT Central Committee meeting of July win definitive solutions to this crisis.
Since last November, we stressed the
22-24, large excerpts of which follow.
possibility of the PRI losing the elections.
However, we did not think that this situation would be accompanied by the big mass mobilizations that have occurred and which have deepened the crisis of the PRI.
But we are still at the beginning of this crisis.
Throughout the election campaign, we saw Cárdenas gaining ground as Salinas lost it. While sections of the old political bureaucracy were convinced that it was necessary to maintain the old policy of crude election fraud, others thought it was necessary to come up with a more "respectable"
sort of fraud, which could also be a basis for a future deal. This explains the contra-
20 dictory statements on election night.
Everything was set up for the proponents of crude election fraud to have their way. That is why the action conducted by the three opposition candidates on the evening of July 6 was so important. The occupation of the Ministry of the Interior by FDMPMS, PAN and PRT activists and the sharply worded confrontation between Bartelett [the chair of the Board of Elections and the opposition candidates blocked this crude fraud.
A few hours later, the PRI president announced that the PRI had won a "crushing" victory, explaining that Bartelett was going to proclaim Salinas the victor in a few minutes. But nothing of the sort happened. One the following day, Salinas had to explain credited with 17%. representation in parliament. country. to mobilize against the fraud. that we had experienced the closest elections in our history, and that the opposition had achieved major victories.
From that time on, it was clear that the line that was going to win out was the one for "respectable" fraud. That reflected the contradictions that were being expressed in the PRI. When Camboa Pascoe's defeat 1. The FDN is the Cárdenas organization. The PMS is a coalition dominated by the Communist Party, which supported Cárdenas. PAN (National Action Party) is the traditional right-wing opposition party. 2. Camboa Pascoe and Fidel Velasquez are leading figures in the union bureaucracy linked to the PRI. Velasquez is the general secretary of the Mexican Workers' Confederation (CTM).
September 19, 1988 • #147 International Viewpoint was announced, Fidel Velásquez refused to accept the defeat of his candidates.? It is very significant that Fidel was only one of leaders of the various sections of the PRI to be absent when the election results were announced by Salinas. The division caused by the massive vote for Cárdenas was already evident.
In this regard, the fraud that was committed was not what was expected by the more retrograde sectors of the PRI. In practice, in the coming months, we are going to see a settling of accounts among the various currents within the party.
Divisions in trade-union bureaucracy
However, the most important aspect of the political struggle in the PRI will be seen in the trade-union bureaucracy. For a long time, our party has believed that the divisions within the PRI would show up first in splits in the union bureaucracy. This explains why we did not pay much attention to the emergence of the Democratic Current in the PRI. This view of possible splits in the union bureaucracy is based on two ideas.
The Miguel de la Madrid regime's economic and social policy affected fundamentally the mechanisms for controlling the mass movement, and we thought that this was going to lead some sections of the union bureaucracy to react and take the lead in some mobilizations. Secondly, in observing the development of the ripening political crisis, we thought that it would break out in all its dimensions if there was a split in the union bureaucracy, since this apparatus is the backbone of the rethe short run. Such a development will be even more likely if, as everything indicates, Salinas carries the policy of "modand industrial reconversion The trade-union bureaucracy's deeply cowardly character has led it into dangerous waters by forcing it to pursue a policy that is not its own.
Facing imminent attacks from the bosses and the government, sections of the trade-union bureaucracy are getting ready for a fight. Quina's actions and Romo's statement? are a warning to the modernizers about what the response will be if they persist in trying to touch the bureaucrats' share of power. Today, it will be easier for these bureaucrats to react because there is a new political force challenging the moderniza-
We are undoubtedly on the eve of a split of major sections of the trade-union bureaucracy from the PRI. What is keeping Quina in the party today is obviously not his loyalty to Salinas but the fight over succession in the CTM. If he sees that there is no chance of becoming Velásquez's successor, or if Velásquez dies and he is not crowned the new czar of the CTM, then his evolution toward Cárdenas will be more
In this situation, the closest circle of Salinas' collaborators took on the job of carrying out a "respectable" fraud. In fact, they had to deliver more than 50% of the votes cast in order to be able to govern with so-called legitimacy. However, the vote for the PRI was so low that they had no other solution than to push up the abstention
This sort of fraud implied the idea that a deal was necessary. In this respect, the
MEXICO at not getting a favorable response to their proposals for consensus. They even used the attorney general, who enjoys a certain sympathy in some sectors of the Cárdenas movement, to make a speech in which he insisted on the need for such consensus. Most journalists played up this appeal, but without saying this implied the "minority" recognizing the PRI's victory. The way things are going, the most probable thing is that Salinas will be the next president of the republic but that the government that he wanted to look strong and democratic will instead be weak and anti-democratic.
Salinas will be the new lonely man in the presidential palace, not only because of the desertions from the PRI but fundamentally because from the start of his term in office he will have to confront rejection by the people. It is probably under the Salinas administration that we will see the end of the present mode of domination. The man who wanted to be the modernizer of the PRI will be its grave-digger.
### Cardenas' political project
A few hours before the polls closed, some prominent Cárdenas people proclaimed that the PRI had won, that the vote for Cárdenas had been very high, and that the Cárdenas movement has established itself as the second political force in the country. In this connection, the socialists who supported Cárdenas were the first to be surprised by his triumph. A little later, at the time of the demonstration at the Ministry of the Interior and in faced with the scope of the reaction of the people who gathered there, they exhibited uncertainty about how
ROSARIO gime's political stability.
While it is true that the crisis within the PRI did not start with the union bureaucracy, there is no
Cárdenas himself was more at ease. All the statements that he made and all the political activity
IBARR doubt that the expression, development and conclusion of this crisis are entirely dependent on of the future of this apparatus domination. During the Salinas campaign, the divisions between the various sectors of the trade- union bureaucracy and the PRI candidate appeared in different he undertook showed him to be a very adept politician with a clear idea of what he wanted. Most surshowed for getting everyone to Cárdenas' reformism would show itself by rejecting mobilization. If he never accepted Salinas' vicforms.
All of this unfolded in the midst
• Cama of the struggle to succeed Fidel
Velásquez. For a long time, we have been pointing out the importance of this battle. The various currents preparing themselves for this fight have been considerably shaken up by the election campaign. It is clear that the hardest hit has been the Gamboa Pascoe current in the Federal District
Workers' Federation, which has about
700,000 members.
Today, we are more convinced than ever that the problems in the union bureaucracy are so great that it is no exaggeration to think that a series of breaks are possible in amount of ink spilled by journalists advising Cárdenas that he should be satisfied with his victories and participate in a consensus government was significant. These statements indicate the open or veiled fears of the PRI about the dynamic that could open up if Cárdenas did not recognize Salinas' victory.
Salinas' supporters are despondent today tory, that did not mean that he would mobilize the masses to defend his own victory. But
Cárdenas did mobilize hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, and not only in Mexico City. In many places in the provinces the mass mobilizations were impressive.
This should lead us to make a more accurate assessment of Cárdenas' political project. The most important thing is to understand his political strategy. An initial response has to lead us to get an overall view of Cárdenas' policy. It seems clear
21
3. Two union bureaucrats who came out for Cárdenas.
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International Viewpoint #147 • September 19, 1988
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Violent attacks against the ATTACKS suffered by our comrades in the PRT during the election campaign were not limited to verbal abuse — far from it. Physical attacks, rape and murder were the methods employed by PRI thugs in their attempts to silence the PRT and sow terror among its
• June 9: Jean McGuill de Conde, a PRT representative on the Election Commission in Morelos state, was attacked and raped at
• June 17: Meliton Hernandez Velasco, a PRT peasant activist and member of the executive committee of the peasants' union, UGOCP, in the state of Pueblo, was
• June 18: another PRT peasant activist was murdered by two members of the Antorcha campesina group, a group linked to
• June 21: Fatima Flores Palacios, PRT candidate for deputy in 1982, candidate in the 1985 federal elections and presently on the federal Election Commission, was also attacked and raped at her home.
• August 21: four young people aged from 16 to 18 years were found murdered by bullets fired at point blank range. The bodies of two of them showed traces of torture. Two of the four were respectively the son and nephew of a PRT militant, who had stood as a candidate for deputy in the previous July 6 elections. * that he is not looking for a negotiated solution to the present situation. We are convinced that his project was modified as his While it is true that in the first part of his campaign he envisaged the possibility of salvaging the PRI, he now has a radically different view. What he wants to do is to divide the PRI more. He intends to refashion the mechanisms of the relations between the masses and the government, between the masses and a party different from the PRI. On many occasions, we have seen that Cuauhtémoc is fully aware of the history of our country, and especially of the form of domination set up under his Cárdenas' project is to create a new Party of the Mexican Revolution, with the same vision as his father, but with a difference. While the general built up the party based on the state apparatus, his son wants to build the party in order to reorganize the state apparatus, starting from the firm conviction that it is impossible to carry accomplish this task with the sort of politicians the PRI has today. Cárdenas' conviction on this is based on another assumption: unless the social pact that came out of the Mexican revolution is reformulated, a social and political crisis of historic dimensions may break out. From this standpoint, the policy conducted by • Miguel de la Madrid and the one that Salinas wants to pursue is the best way to shatter the system as a whole into a thousand pieces. Cárdenas is trying to avoid this eventuality, and in order to do that he has to take very radical positions against Salinas.
In order to achieve his objective, he is extending a hand to sectors breaking with the PRI and independent left sectors. He is trying to transform the FDN into a political instrument (not necessarily by transforming it into a party initially) to structure the mass support that he has gained. The next step, undoubtedly, will be to organize this sup port in accordance with the various social categories. It seems that he has called on the three most important leaders of the University Student Council (CEU) to work in all the country's universities toward forming a Cárdenas youth organization.
### Building a movement from above
Obviously, he cannot call now openly for forming a new party, but that does not mean that he is not going to take the first steps in that direction. During the present struggle against the election fraud, he does not want to be accused of diverting energy. But then he has to prepare his forces, those that will be with him in this project.
Cárdenas has a vision of building this political instrument from above. In a meeting he had with the associations of the earthquake victims, he was faced with a flood of proposals about how to organize anti-fraud committees, with the traditional democratic discussion in the associations. Cárdenas responded by saying that all this discussion was pointless, that the fundamental question was to organize a single authority that would make the bulk of the decisions. Most of the associations accepted this point of view.
Our starting point is that Cárdenas' victory and the illusions it has created inevitably pose the possibility of moving forward in a process of reorganizing the mass movement. Of course, the workers in the cities and the countryside are not going to limit their democratic aspirations to the electoral arena. They want to democratize their social organizations, especially the unions. In accordance with what we have said before, forming a democratic front or a national democratic movement from above is not the same thing as something that comes out of the self-organization of the masses.
His project of restructuring the political mechanisms to help recompose the Mexican state and its relations with the masses can involve a certain corporatist attitude toward social sectors. It is clear that he is going to try to build such an organization, especially in view of the extent of the Cárdenas' movement's contradictions. In the same sectors, we find Cárdenas people who have nothing in common with each other.
In the trade-union movement the question is even more delicate because in almost every sector there are Cárdenas people both in the bureaucratic leaderships and in the democratic currents that are fighting them. With such a heterogeneous foundation, Cárdenas has to build a political organization from above, with an undisputed unity of command, in order to control the whole process and not let anyone get in his
In any case, Cárdenas is determined to fight Salinas. He knows that there is not much chance of keeping Salinas from taking office. But the same time, he is creating the conditions to prevent him from finishing his term. Precisely as a result of this project, his opposition to the current that Salinas represents is irreconcilable. Today this involves no end of dangers.
Gaining confidence in itself, the mass movement and its political expression will become more and more radical. This dynamic will inevitably combine demands for democratizing social organizations with those for a substantial improvement in living standards. The mass movement's need for democracy concerns not only its channels for expression but also encompasses the conduct of economic policy. The word "crisis" and a series of economic questions are beginning to lose their taboo character for the masses.
Struggles for wages and jobs will be central
It is inconceivable that the Mexican workers will confine themselves to fighting to democratize their unions, or more generally, their social organizations. At the same time, they will fight to improve their living conditions. In this regard, the wage and job struggle will be key, along with the struggle for democracy. And this is precisely where the limitations of Cárdenas' project appear. Its democratic struggle is restricted fundamentally to the fight for the presidency of the republic.
Significantly, the speech that Cárdenas gave at the July 16 rally clearly revealed his intentions. During it, he made not the slightest reference to the people's most urgent material demands. Nor did he talk about the wage and job fight or about better labor contracts.
Nor has the need for extending the fight for democracy to all areas of society received any attention. The speech did not mince words about Salinas de Gortari, who was called a usurper more than once. But there was not a word about the people's demands. This speech, written as a protest by a new president, was not intended for the people who massed on the Plaza de la Con4. General Lazaro Cárdenas was president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. He was the one who worked to get the bulk of the workers' and peasants' organization to come into the party that he created at the time, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). On the nature of Cárdenism, see Notebooks for Study and Research 6, "Populism in Latin America". 5. The CEU led the student movement during the mobilizations that took place in the winter of 1986-87.
September 19, 1988 • #147 International Viewpoint stitution, but rather for those who were not
— the bourgeoisie, the army, the Yan-
The PRT has formulated a political line based on the need for maintaining a pole of class independence in this election campaign. Some political opportunists, such as Marcos Rascon of Punto Critico, try to judge this decision on the basis of the election results. Obviously, this is not our way of analyzing the correctness or incorrectness of a given policy.
The importance of a long-term vision
In recent months, our party and still more our political project have been constantly attacked. Moreover, it has to be stressed that this is only the beginning. We are going to experience much stronger attacks. The attacks and harassment that we have been subjected to spring from the fact that the independent existence of the PRT is a thom in some people's side. They would like to see the entire Mexican left proud supporters of Cárdenas.
When our party decided to maintain its organizational independence and its independent line, it showed a great political firmness. And this takes on a still greater significance today when we realize that our party had been enjoying an ongoing series of political successes. What is more, we were a party where the ideology of engaging in big-time politics, breaking the sectarian schemas of the past, had become a kind of false consciousness. Some people left, and there is no doubt that we, who were the pioneers in the development of this false consciousness, bear a share of the responsibility.
In a few years, we had achieved so many successes that we lost the perspective involved in a vanguard project for society. We educated our members more in terms of short-term successes than in the long-term vision our socialist project represents. For this reason, we are right to be proud of our party, which has emerged triumphantly from this first great test without losing its revolutionary and socialist profile. It is true that in this trial, some comrades — many of them good comrades - have taken another road and broken with us. That was the price that had to be paid for maintaining a line of class independence.
Whether our decision was correct or not cannot be judged on the basis of our election results. Some comrades think that the decline in our vote reflects a drop in the level of consciousness of the masses. That is totally wrong. Those who argue that way do not seem to realize what our election results were before. The PRT did not get 30% or even 10% of the vote, and now, according to the government, our vote has fallen to 0.38%. The truth is that our party got about 3% of the vote in 1982 and about 2% in 1985, and in reality in these last elections we got about 1.5%. This is what has led some commentators to say that socialism is a minority current in Mexican society. But that is obvious. It was not only the case in 1988, but for many decades if not
These elections have not shown a decline in the level of consciousness of the masses. To the contrary, the defeat that the working people in the towns and countryside inflicted on the PRI government reflects a higher level of consciousness. It is true that this consciousness expresses itself in contradictory ways, but that could not be otherwise. Our tasks cannot be to adapt to the circumstances but to fight to raise this consciousness to a higher level.
Our policy has demonstrated a considerable coherence in this situation. Those who feared that we would be pushed to the political sidelines or even be rejected because we did not call for a vote for Cárdenas have to recognize now that this has not been the case. The masses have understood our position, even if for the moment they are not entirely in accord with us.
The socialist project, the class independence that our party represents, have to be pursued even more today. In crisis situations, revolutionists always face more sharply the problem of being a minority. But this cannot obscure the meaning of a strategic project. It is not the same thing to be a minority in a period of social calm and at a time when we see the masses gaining confidence in themselves and mobilizing in an impressive way. This is the truth that we
We have maintained our independent socialist project, not out of any narcissistic need for self-affirmation. We have maintained it, and will maintain it because it is necessary for the mass movement of our country, no more and no less. In the reformist avalanche that we are experiencing, the masses need a socialist reference point, and they are seeing it as a point of view that is necessary for understanding what is going on in our country.
Reorganizing the mass movement
As we said earlier, what is fundamental today for our party's perspectives cannot be perceived in terms of the present intentions of the leadership of the mass movement, but rather in terms of the dynamic that this movement is opening up. Our objective must not be to wait until a betrayal, or until the masses shed their illusions, in order to intervene. Our task is not to shatter the illusions of the masses but to channel these hopes toward other objectives. We have to insert ourselves into the dynamic of the masses today and participate with them not in something limited to elections, but rather in a process that offers the possibility of reorganizing the mass movement.
In the first place, we have to participate actively in building committees against the
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In the broader political arena we have to understand that, whithout having an orientation of outflanking the leadership, we have to throw ourselves entirely into the democratic struggle. Cárdenas has the view that in his fight to overturn Salinas' victory it might be possible to get the deputies to walk out of parliament. In view of this, we have to pose the need, once the Electoral College has ruled on the validity of Salinas' victory, for the congress to declare itself sovereign, to reject the president's authority and call new elections.
In the Electoral College, in which we have to participate, it will be necessary to fight first against a recognition of Salinas as president of the republic. But then we have to pursue a policy that will advance the crisis of the institutions. By calling on the Congress to act in a sovereign way, we will oblige the Cárdenas deputies to demonstrate whether they are really ready to defend the victory that Cárdenas won in the elections.
PRT must continue fight for legal registration
At the same time, we should not act as if we were no longer a legally registered party. It is clear that the PRT was also a victim of election fraud. We have to go into the Electoral College to fight for our legal registration, and at the same time to campaign fight there many limitations because of the small number of our party's representatives at the polls. Nonetheless, it is necessary to gather together all the evidence we have, together with other parties, in order to be able to compare these results with those announced by the government.
Once again, the government is trying to tame our party, thinking that we will give up our political profile in exchange for a handful of votes? Once things were clear for the authorities and for the slanderers on the left who were eager to accuse the PRT of lending itself to election fraud, they did not push the point any further. And, of course, they decided to take revenge by giving us a lower overall score in order to minimize our place in society.
The PRT came through this test. But that is no reason to rest on our laurels. If the PRT loses its registration, it will not be because of its electoral score but because of the goverment's decision to victimize us for our political positions. Therefore, our fight for our registration is not over, and in all the general mobilizations against the fraud, we must press to ensure that the defense of the PRT's registration be included in the demands. * 6. An independent left group that has become a compo nent of the FDN. 7. In some places, the PRT was credited with more votes than it actually got as a maneuver against Cárdenas. In those cases, the PRT refused to recognize the excess votes the authorities accorded to it.