The Zapatistas and the "new left"
PAN is still gaining ground against the PRI in the north and centre of the country.
In Mexico City, Cárdenas won 47% of votes (1,860,000), double the score of the
The Chiapas Uprising of January claiming 10,000 members), continues to
PRI candidate Alfredo Del Mazo and three times higher than the PAN candidate Castillo onal Liberation (EZLN) created a new tion, the Broad Front for the Creation of a
Peraza. The PRD also won 29 of the 30 seats left in Mexico. Because it arose as an ar- National Liberation Movement (FACin the Federal District's Representative med movement outside of the state and MLN), a coalition of poor peoples orga-
Assembly, and 38 of the capital region's 40 seats in the national parliament.
The Trotskyist PRT signed a pre-electoral agreement with the PRD, as the result of which PRT member Patria Jiménez, a leader of the country's lesbian and gay movement, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the PRD list. Though the party has no representatives in the Congress or in Mexico
City's special parliament, it intends to
"assume its responsibilities with respect to the programmatic agreement with the PRD."
"we are not auto-
According to Jiménez, matically part of the new government... The
Cárdenas government is neither a class force nor a socialist one. That has been clear for a long time. But it is a democratic local government, with a multi-class composition, confronting the PRI national government.
Strong PRD support in the capital will enable the party to press forward with some elements of its programme: public works, job creation, modification of economic policies and budgets. With social programmes as the
1994, led by the Zapatista Army of Natithe legal, parliamentary parties, and because it took its stand with the poorest and most oppressed people in Mexico, that is the Mayan Indians of Chiapas, the EZLN enjoyed enormous moral authority.
Many leftists who had become disillusioned and dissatisfied since the collapse of the old left and since the failures of the PRD rallied to the EZLN Even more important, many Indians, peasants, and workers, and above all many young middle class students, who had never had any political experience now supported the EZLN. Thus the Chiapas Rebellion and the EZLN created a "new left" outside of the political parties
After the National Democratic Convention (CND) held in August 1994, this new left split into two factions. The Zapatista support the Zapatistas. The second facnisations, has became sympathetic toward Mexico's second major guerrilla organisation, the Peoples Revolution Army (EPR). The EPR virtually endorsed Cárdenas, and thus despite its armed organisation, becomes oddly enough a political satellite of the PRD
The strength of the EZLN is that it continues to talk about the need for organisation from below to force changes in the political system. When Cárdenas and the PRD become the establishment, Marcos and the EZLN-FZLN will still be the opposition. The EZLN remains the most important group on the new left, and what it says and does in the next few months could be very important for defining the Mexican left for the next decade. But the Zapatistas remain in what Marcos has called a moment of indefinición politica. A moment which
5
at the Industrialists Club on June 11 to sharing. [DLB] * forces.
The PRT will propose, through the PRDled coalition, a commune and district-level policing policy, as a democratic solution to the problem of public security. The democratic rights of the population have to be respected, including through the use of referendums.
The party will also be proposing the introduction of a participatory budget, like that introduced by the left within Brazil's Workers Party, in which local communities fix the priorities for government spending, with the aid of technicians and economists from the town hall.
This is one way of breathing reality into Cárdenas' promise that "all will govern. participatory budget for Mexico City would be a strong power-base for the next round of conflict over the introduction of neo-liberal policies in Mexico.
The PRT seeks to root its activities in the actual level of consciousness of the masses, participating in mass struggles with the goals of strengthening the left camp, creating new, higher forms of organisation of mass struggles, and supporting wherever possible unitary demands. The focus is on direct parti-
Small parties collapse,
The Institutional Revolutionary Party's pseudo-socialist satellite parties saw their electoral support collapse. The
Greens, however, increased their vote.
The Partido Cardenista (PC, former