Interviewed by José Luis Granados Ceja of the Mexican Solidarity Project (www.mexicosolidarity.com)
Yes, the first question is if you could help us to disprove this narrative of the opposition and their allies who want to present this as a state election, that is, what do you mean by that?
Look, Mexico had for decades in the government a state party. So what we had were state elections in which the state operated absolutely everything, from advertising to the casillas.
In fact, the national regeneration movement was born fighting against state elections. It is a deeply democratic movement. So they accuse us that we are making a state election, it is even offensive. That is, it is not only against what has been the historical struggle of Morena, but it is an act of cynicism.
Here the government is not sponsoring candidates, it is obviously a political party, but this is not a state operation. It is a democratic and clean election. In fact, I think that in the last six years we have had several electoral processes and the opposition has never been able to say that the government has perpetrated a fraud or that it has meddled in favor of a candidate.
And that is the first thing to consider.
State elections are very complex. They actually imply that the machinery of the state is involved and is making the election. This is not the case.
How can you observe it? What are you going to be able to observe these days? So the bottom line is that in Mexico the right, this right, even the one we are talking about, this right actually has an uninterrupted tradition of electoral fraud. The Mexican right has made electoral fraud all its life. It made fraud in the first election, at the beginning of the 19th century, and it has already made fraud in the Mexican right. It committed fraud, Porfirio Díaz remained in the government through electoral fraud.
The PRI was born being a party, the Mexican Revolution, the PRI arises from the Mexican Revolution and one of the consignments or petitions of the Mexican Revolution is respect for the suffrage. The PRI did not respect the suffrage. It consolidated very quickly as a state party and remained in government through uninterrupted fraud. So that is what we are facing.
What are the elements that the party is concerned about? For example, here in the presentation you mentioned that the judiciary is lending air to this narrative of fraud.
What we are facing, what all the governments of Latin America are facing, are the de-facto powers. What we are facing is the fact that winning the presidency, controlling congress, winning the governorships does not mean having power, power is a complex framework, so obviously there are things that we do not have control over.
Specifically, the old regime has been entrenched itself in apparatuses, in powers that are very specific and that have a decisive force in specific communities. So they are anchored in the media power and they are anchored in the judicial power. So what all the governments of Latin America have faced are media and judicial wars.
In these elections there is a media and judicial strategy. They want to judicialize the electoral process. They want to say that these are elections that are not valid and for that they are going to do an implacable media campaign and they already have the support of the judicial power.
In fact, one of the things that must always be present in this electoral process is that the president of the judicial power, Norma Piña, organized at the house of Judge Alcántara Carranca, who is also a member of the judicial power, a dinner with three very important electoral judges and Alejandro Moreno, who is the president of the PRI, who presented as a partner and ally. And that dinner was also invited by Santiago Creel, who for some reason was not, who is an operator of the PAN. So that is clearly, that dinner is typical of the judicial war operations and that is what we are going to face.
And there is one thing that is important, the media have not kept an absolute silence on that dinner. It is as if it did not exist when it is already documented.
So what is this owed to? Do they want to ignore the result to promote a coup like Bolivia? Or maybe weaken the government of a future government?
They want to weaken the future government and they want to see how far they can go.
That is, if they see that they can weaken it enough to give a coup d’état, they will do it.
What they are looking for is to delegitimize the next government and they are also looking to subsist.
And well, last, how should the international community respond, the working class in the United States that is receiving all this media bombardment?
The first thing is that you have to inform yourself and you have to break the media circle.
There is a media circle, you have to break that media circle and people have to inform themselves of what is really happening through alternative media.
That would be the first thing.
And the second thing is that they would have to understand how the process is going and they would have to look and from there they would have to look for their networks of solidarity.
And briefly, what is happening here? There is a lot of people who say that this is an ordinary election, it is not historical despite the fact that a woman could be president.
What is happening?
It is a very important election. This election can mark the point of no return of Latin American progressivism and it can mark the end of the system of neoliberal parties.
The PRI and the PAN and the PRD. If the PRI and the PAN and the PRD lose, they do not win neither in the government of Mexico City nor in the presidency of the Republic, they go to extinction and they know it.
And well, maybe they just fear these mass media from the United States that the people of the United States come to be inspired by the Mexican case?
Yes, of course. Look, the transformation processes have a peculiarity and they are very contagious. So of course what they are looking for is to isolate the information and say that nothing happened here, to pretend that this did not happen.
Thank you very much.