A previously unknown armed group, the People's Revolutionary Army (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo or ERP) appeared in the town of Aguas Blancas, Guerrero on January 28, 1996 at a memorial service held by 5,000 peasants to remember 18 local peasant activists murdered by the police there one year before.
The new group of between 40 and 100 men and women, hooded and armed with high powered weapons, first caused panic among and then won cheers from those present to remember the victims of the police murder. When the group first came marching out of the nearby wooded hills, the crowd panicked and began to run. But the organizers of the memorial service reportedly told them, "Don't run, they are our comrades."
The ERP members then carried out a brief ceremony, firing off
rounds for each of the 18 victims, then honoring the Mexican flag, and finally read a
statement from the General Command of the ERP titled "The Manifesto of Aguas
Blancas." The programmatic part of the statement called for the following five
points:
"1. For the overthrow of the anti-people, anti-democratic, demagogic and illegitimate
government at the service of great national and foreign capital and the forces which
sustain it, and for the establishment of a new government essentially different from that
which today holds power.
"2. For the restitution of popular sovereignty and the fundamental rights of man. We will achieve this objective with the participation of the people and the establishment of a popular democratic republic exercising the legitimate right of the people to alter or modify the form of their government.
"3. For the solution of the immediate demands and needs of the people, realizing the economic, political and social changes that they require.
"4. For the establishment of just relations with the international community.
"5. For the punishment of those guilty of the political oppression, repression, corruption, poverty, hunger and crimes against humanity committed against the people."
The statement concluded: "We call upon all democratic, labor union, political, progressive, and armed organizations, upon social activists and progressive and democratic people to bring together all forms of struggle in a democratic and revolutionary struggle for the conquest of justice, democracy, freedom and a life worthy of all Mexicans."
EZLN Denies Ties
Two and a half years ago, on January 1, 1994 another previously unknown group the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional or EZLN) led an armed uprising in the state of Chiapas. The EZLN leader, Subcomandante Marcos, denied any connection between the EZLN and the ERP. Others close to the EZLN said that the appearance of the ERP could interfere with peace talks with between the EZLN and the Mexican government.
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, national leader of the Party of theDemocratic Revolution (PRD), and twice candidate for president of Mexico, who was present in Aguas Blancas at the ceremony, referred to the ERP's appearance as a "grotesque pantomime." Cardenas called the ERP's acts a "provocation" and a danger tothe community.
Two other groups involved in the memorial service, the Peasants' Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS) and the Broad Front for the Construction of the National Liberation Movement (Frente Amplio para la Construccion del Movimiento deLiberacion Nacional FAC-MLN) both denied any connection to theERP.
Political analysts and commentators, however, have speculated that the ERP might be linked to one of those two groups or to the Clandestine Revolutionary Union Workers Party-Party of the Poor (PROCUP-PDLP). High officials of the Mexican federal government and of the government of Guerrero suggested, however, that the ERP was a criminal gang probably linked to drug dealers.
The Mexican government responded quickly to the appearance of the ERP, sending 3,000 Mexican Army troops to comb the hills and villages of the area. All activity in the area has been made difficult by the recent passage of hurricane Boris and heavy rains which left hundreds homeless. The OCSS has complained that leaders and members of that organization have been arrested and tortured. Leaders of the FAC-MLN reported that they had received death threats from unknown sources.
Long History of Political Activity
Peasants in Guerrero have a long history of both social activism and guerrilla warfare. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Genaro Vazquez Rojas, a Guerrero school teacher, organized the Guerrero Civic Association to fight for land and justice for the peasants. Genaro Vazquez supposedly died in a car accident, though some believe he was murdered. After his death, Lucio Cabanas Barrientos created the Party of the Poor, and fought on until he was killed by the Mexican Army.
The recently established Organization of the Southern Sierra(OCSS) which had been organizing peasants in the area had suffered several attacks by the police and the military, including the murder of 18 of its members in the massacre at Aguas Blancas one year ago. FAC-MLN a new coalition of social movements linked to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), to the Independent Proletarian Movement (MPI) and to theMexico City Route 100 Bus Drivers Union (SUTAUR) has also been active in the area recently.
Guerrero Killing Fields
While little is known about the ERP, the state of Guerrero, where the group has appeared has been the center of controversy for the last year. On June 28, 1995 police murdered 18 peasants in Aguas Blancas, as later revealed by what were apparently police-made video tapes of the event shown on national television.
The public outcry over the massacre forced President Ernesto Zedillo, who until then had ignored the matter, to assign the case to investigation by the Mexican Supreme Court and to force the resignation of Guerrero's governor Ruben Figueroa Alocer. Thecourt found that Figueroa could not be held directly responsible for the murders and the PRI majority in the national and state courts subsequently voted to find Figueroa innocent of any wrongdoing. The murders in Guerrero continued under Figueroa and hissuccessor.
*July 7, 1995 - In Ajuchitlan del Progreso 12 farm laborers were assassinated.
*July 10, 1995 - In Cualac the assistant agent of the Public Minister of Huamustitlan,
Arquimides Nambo Arteaga, was shot and killed.
*August 22, 1995 - In the state capital of Chilpancingo, a policeman murdered a PRD
member and a member of the Self-defense Committee of las Grutas de Cacahuamilpa,
Andres Velazquez Nava.
*September 6, 1995 - In San Vicente de Benitez in the mountains of Atoyac, commander
Adalid Araujo Avila and police officer Calixto Simbras Torres were killed in an
ambush.
*September 22, 1995 - In Tlacoachistlahuaca, Francisco Albino Tello, a PRD activist and
a
member of the Guerrero Council 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, was
assassinated.
*September 24, 1995 -In the Community of Ajuchitlan del Progreso, seven municipal
police officers were killed after being ambushed.
*September 27, 1995 - Three fishermen found dead with a bullet in the forehead of each.
In the town of San Luis de Cruz Grande, a judicial police officer murdered a PRD
activist.
*September 29, 1995 - In the community of La Cebada in the mountains
of Atoyac, four peasants were assassinated.
*October 11, 1995 - In the cemetery of San Pablo Sur, Ajuchitlan del Progreso, two
families engaged in a gun fight leaving six dead.
*October 12, 1995 - In El Mango in the mountains of Tepetixtla, three peasants were
ambushed and assassinated.
*January 4, 1996 - In the town of Xochiapa in the municipality of Alcozauca, six people
were murdered, presumably by soldiers of the Mexican army.
*January 9, 1996 - In Acapulco, three heavily armed men murdered six people in an auto
shop.
*January 22, 1996 - In the town of El Tomatal in the municipality of Iguala, three
peasants were murdered in their beds.
Governor Ruben Figueroa who was forced to resign from office a few months ago, was the fifth Figueroa to govern the state of Guerrero since the Mexican Revolution. The Figueroa dynasty has a reputation for violence, with hundreds of peasants murdered by the ruling party or government officials over the last 25 years.
Fortunately, the teachers proved me overly skeptical when I wrote (in the May 16th issue of Mexican Labor News and Analysis) that their mobilizations were "simply contributing to intensive regrouping among political currents attempting to channel teachers' discontent and desperation with their rapidly deteriorating conditions." A brief review of the meaning of the most recent teachers' struggle for union democracy in education should correct my initial appreciation.
The most crucial new element is the rank and file character of the mobilizations spreading over the entire country. Teachers are taking to the streets for new reasons, or at least for a new combination of reasons. The economic demand of a 100% salary increase is not the only common denominator which brings teachers together across regions. Rank and file teachers organizing at the delegation (school district) level are questioning both theState's educational modernization policy and the lack of political clout of the National Union of Educational Workers (SNTE)
.
Teachers are as much upset about what educational decentralization means for them as workers (more direct and individualized administrative controls, replacement of supervisors and directors who were considered too lax with teachers, new bureaucratic judicial procedures, etc.) as they are about the SNTE's increasing incapacity to fulfill its mediator or regulatory role. This function is even more basic than the representative issue which has traditionally been at the center of the dissident demands for union democracy.
Since 1992, the SNTE has appeared as the Education Ministry's right hand: a declared co-implementor of government policies. Teachers resent the loss of SNTE's legitimacy as defender of their rights. Teachers are facing new working conditions whereby, during its prolonged decentralization process since 1978, the government has expropriated traditional union functions benefitting teachers, and converted them into new concepts "rationalizing" teachers' work processes. This has meant that the usual labor benefits are now submitted to government controls and out of the hands of local-level union representatives, leaving the union structure quite bare and theunion officials powerless. Teachers are feeling more vulnerable to Mexico's crises pushing them into informal labor markets and unemployment.
In addition, top-level SNTE officials have supported government policies such as Carrera Magisterial [Teacher Career],a merit-pay system designed to channel additional funds to the most productive teachers. Teachers have mixed feelings towards a program recognized as economically necessary, but politically divisive. Local-level demands are extremely diverse and uneven: some call for the program's cancellation; others for increased financial allocations, and still others for more teacher participation in decision making. This program has probably done more for moving teachers to discuss their working conditions among themselves than even the activists of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (la CNTE), the reform current within the union, who are often times rejected by the rank and file as too radical.
Teachers' protests, then, seem not to be as direct a response to union charrismo (paternalistic and clientelistic features of an authoritarian union-government political system) as they do to the changed working conditions in the schools. In the past, rank and file teachers ousted SNTE representatives who were unwilling to take up their demands. While this type of dynamic is still present, new organizational forms are by-passing the union altogether. In a very uneven way within union delegations and across regions, rank and file teachers are taking the initiative in creating new autonomous bodies outside SNTE structures in order to address teachers' issues directly with local administrative units. Teachers' resistance seems to be tending towards the construction of new autonomous "social territories," whereby teacher organization depends on greater responsiveness tocommunity interests.
This direct and transparent teacher-government relationship (without the charros' or union bureaucrats' mediation) explains the more belligerent or militant character of many of the National Coordinating Committee's (la CNTE's) most recent actions. Teachers' sit-downs in banks, on highways, in embassies and in state congresses are politicizing new social spaces, very much inspired by the peoples' suffering from neo-liberal [conservative] economic policies and not restricted solely to teachers' professional interests.
What teacher activists are now discussing as the most important political gain of
the mobilizations is the re-emergence of political actor. This is because the CNTE went
beyond its traditional role (during times of political retreat) of giving nominal
representation to dissident teachers, and indeed, la CNTEactually coordinated the national
expression of struggles in the 27 states where teachers moved.
The CNTE's recuperation of its rank and file character, as well as its leaders'
ability to overcome its old and much criticized dynamic of exclusionary ideological
discussions is leading some to believe the CNTE is emerging as the one mass movement
that can articulate a national popular movement capable of democratizing Mexico "from
below."
If the CNTE was able to overcome its appearance of being an empty shell, this is probably due to the persistence of direct democracy in the two democratic union sections serving as the"vanguard" contingents: Section 18 of Michoacan and Section 14 of Guerrero. These are the two SNTE sections which best survived the government's repression since 1989, after the massive protests in Mexico City leading to the overthrow of Carlos Jongitud Barrios, then head of the teachers' union, along with other PRI dinosaurs at the pinnacle of union power.
Michoacan teachers consolidated their democratic union section by strengthening their ties with parents at the school level and by opening negotiations with the Michoacan government, which had previously recognized the legality of democratic control of Section 18 during the struggles of late 1994. This time, one hundred democratic representatives participated on the state-level negotiating commission and produced close to 200 agreements for teaching and non-teaching personnel. As one leader explained to me: We were able to play an important role at the national level because we had total confidence in our rank and file organization in sustaining the struggle in our state. We didn't have to worry about whether the teachers would come out for this or not. And, we simply started to see the rest of the country's teachers as if they were members of Section 18.
Another indicator of the CNTE's new legitimacy among teachers was the
impulse it gave to older and less dynamic democratic sections, in particular, Section 22 of
Oaxaca and Section 9 of the Federal District. Preschool and primary teachers in Mexico
City complain that their CNTE leadership actually played a demobilizing role. Section 9
teachers were slow to join the national work stoppage in June and the few schools that
did go out soon found themselves without the leaders' support andsubject to strict
administrative sanctions. Section 9's executive committee--previously considered party of
the democratic movement--is now seen by many as an obstacle to union democracy: they
made no formal demands (pliego petitorio), no effort at union flying squads (bridadeo) to
the schools, no formal consultations with the rank and file and no distribution
of information about the struggle to the population of Mexico City in general.
Likewise, some say that Oaxaca resisted actively joining in the sit-down demonstration (planton) in Mexico City which involved tens of thousands of teachers, because of agreements with the state-level government to down play teacher involvement. Nonetheless, after more than 60 teachers were injured during the government's repression of the May 23 march (which forced the dismissal of the Mexico City police chief), teachers' spontaneous reaction of anger brought many to the streets, giving added force to the CNTE's demands. Oaxacans were thus pulled into thea ctions.
Finally, CNTE's success at providing protection for teachers' protests and at converting local demands into one unified and homogenous political platform can be seen by the fact that the teachers are still moving. Even after teachers returned to their states after the national agreement to set up state-level negotiating table to resolve the specific regional problems, teachers had to keep up the pressure to make those agreements effective. Criticisms of SNTE's general secretary(Humberto Davila) for his passive acceptance of the government's first salary hike offer, in the wake of CNTE's success, have inspired many democratic teachers to bet on the pending democratization of SNTE's national executive committee, a task now on the agenda for the new school year in September.
*
Mexico is in the process of privatizing the Mexican National Railroads (Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico or Ferronales or FNM) and intends to lay-off all 47,000 of the active workers on the lines, according to Emilio Sacristan, sub-director of the Restructuring of Ferronales. The plan is that the new private employers will then re-hire something like 18,700 workers to run the private railroad lines. That is: about 60 percent of the workers will lose their jobs.
Victor Flores Morales, head of the 100,000 member Mexican Railroad Workers Union (STFRM), and at the moment head of the Congress of Labor (CT), declared that his union will not accept the lay-offs. (The union is made up of about 50,000 working and about 50,000 retired members.)
"We are going to fight for the job security of all of our members," said Flores Morales. "I don't believe there are too many workers. You have to remember that between 1992 and 1994 more than 30,000 railroad workers left."
Head of the union Flores Morales operates under a cloud, as he has been accused of murder and embezzlement of 25 million pesos by an opposition group in the union. Some 30 national and foreign groups have expressed interest in buying the railroad lines worth about 6 billion dollars or 45 billion pesos. Among the U.S. firms interested are Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Corporation, Union Pacific Railroad Co.,Genesse and Wyoming Industries, Inc., CSX Transportation, Inc., General American Transportation, Omnitrax, Inc. and Illinois Central Corporation. The groups would be given 50 year concessions with the possibility of 49 percent foreign ownership.
A rank and file rebellion has broken out in the large sugar workers union (STIAASRM). Dissident members of the sugar workers' union have engaged in a series of protests against the union leader Enrique Ramos Rodriguez who is both head of the union and a member of Congress for the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI). The workers accuse Ramos Rodriguez of embezzling six billion pesos, a charge they have made in the Mexican labor courts, as well as lobbying the Mexican Congress.
The leaders of the opposition movement, Oscar Romero Popoca and Liverio Rico Mendoza, accuse Ramos Rodriguez of having done away with 12 union trust funds, including funds for housing and retirement. A spokesman for the union leadership, Adrian Sanchez Vargas, said the dissidents' accusations were fantastic.
In a visit to the Mexican Congress the dissident workers called for the support of the 500 members of the Mexican congress "without distinction of party or ideology." In another protest, thirteen sugar workers, 12 men and a woman, tied themselves with wire to the building of the Secretary of the Interior (Gobernacion).
Fidel Velazquez, head of the Confederation of MexicanWorkers, attacked the dissident sugar workers accusing them ofsplitting the labor movement. "Don't doubt that we will show our force," he warned them.
Meanwhile, Ramos Rodriguez is in negotiations with the sugar industry, and the employers are demanding an end to the contrato ley or pattern agreement which covers tens of thousands of sugar workers throughout the country. In an apparently unrelated move, 300 workers seized the close Purauran sugar plant near Morelia, Michoacan, demanding that the plant be put back into operation to provode jobs.
Human rights' organizations criticized the Mexican government last month for the violation of human rights in Mexico. Morris Tidball Binz of Amnesty International told the press that Mexico continues to violate human rights by holding political prisoners or prisoners of conscience, engaging in torture, and practicing extrajudicial execution. According to Tidball Binz, Mexico currently has 56 prisonersof conscience, including the former head of the Petroleum Workers' Union Joaquin Hernandez Galicia known as "La Quina." There were also at least 40 cases of torture in the Federal District and thestate of Guerrero, and 16 cases of extrajudicial execution. Mexico is also one of the biggest importers of equipment used for torture.
The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations responed to the charges, accusing Amnesty International of exaggerating the human rights situation and distorting the information. At the same time the Roman Catholic Centro Augustin Prohuman rights organization criticized the Mexican government for violation of human rights in the Federal District, Guerrero,Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Tobasco. The violations included 37 political murders, 277 political arrests or arrests involving police abuse, 137 attacks on individuals, 42 evictions from public property, 30 cases of harrassment of individuals or groups, 15 cases of torture, 15 death threats against social activists or human rights activists, 13 kidnapping for political motives, as well as 10 rapes for political reasons, and 5 poitical attempted murders.
The Mexican Government's National Commission for Human Rights also pointed
out violations in the states of Morelos,Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Michoacan and San Luis
Potosi. Peasant and union organizers, members of opposition political parties, and
activists in social
movements, or in human rights workers are among the most common victims of
muder, torture, rape, and kidnapping in Mexico. The situation shows no sign of
improvement, and every indication is that the Mexican government is moving from
arbitrary repression to more systematic terror in some states.
The head of the Secretary of Labor's Occupational Health Department, Juan Antonio Legaspi, told leaders of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) that workers' health and safety in Mexico is "a dead letter." Legaspi' agency is theMexican equivalent of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Mexican and foreign firms simply do not comply with workers' health and safety laws and regulations. For example, 560 toxic and highly dangerous substances which should be controlled are not in fact controlled in any way, Legaspi said.
The government's answer to the problem will be to reduce the number of health and safety regulations from 1,383 to just 183,since the majority of the laws are ignored in any case. A reduction in the number of health and safety regulations might permit the government to target specific problems and train inspectors to deal with them. The real problem is that the Mexican government does not have enough well trained inspectors, equipment for testing, or adequate engineering controls in the workplace. Perhaps even more important, the Mexican government does not have the political will to improve workers health and safety, since the attraction of foreign capital depends upon a law attitude toward health and safety regulations, environmental regulations, and the continuance of low wages.
The Mexican government reports that:
*In 1995 Mexican workers reported 358,000 accidents in the workplace, according to the Secretary of Labor.
*The direct and indirect cost to businesses of workers' illnesses and injuries is estimated at 25 billion new pesos in1995.
*Some 13 million worker-days are officially reported lost each year through accidents.
*The rate of accidents if 5.6 percent. Legaspi said about 4 for every 100 workers is injured on the job ever year.
*The micro and small business which employ 85 percent o Mexico's workers report only 16 percent of the accidents.
*The government carries out 30,000 inspections in firms every year. The non-governmental Mexican Association of Health and Safety reports that there are 600,000 accidents each year, nearly double the governments' statistics. Studies, such as one done in the State of Mexico, have found that workers' injuries and illnesses are highly under-reported in official statistics.
For eight weeks now the Morales Brothers Print Shop (Imprenta Morales Hermanos) in the Federal District has not paid its workers. Workers filed complaints with the Local Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, but the employer has refused to show up for the conciliation sessions.
The 40 workers who are affiliated since 1992 with the Authentic Labor Front have filed a strike notification (emplazamiento a huelga), and plan to go on strike within the next 15 days if the employer does not make good on their backpay. "The workers will begin their strike without having been paid for two months. This will be a hard situation which could go on for several months, and we need solidarity from everyone,"said FAT spokesman Benedicto Martinez.
U.S. or Canadian labor unions or other organizations orindividuals who would like to support the workers at MoralesBrothers can contact Benedicto Martinez at the FAT at 011-525-556-93-75 in Mexico City.
Meanwhile, members of the FAT at Transportes Los Angeles in Leon, Guanajuato
continue their struggle after having been firedby their employer for attempting to organize
an independent union. Those workers would also welcome support, call 556-93-75 in
Mexico City.
The Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (STUNAM) voted on June 17 with 8,024 for and 3,251 votes against to accept the university's offer of a 12 percent wage increase.
Workers in the Chemistry Department continued to block the chemistry
administrative office and laboratories over their particular demands. Both the union
leadership and the university administration are attempting to settle the problem in that
department.
Rich Mexicans
FORBES magazine reports that among the 447 multi-millionaires of the world,
Mexico has 15. The richest is Carlos Slim head of the Mexican groups Telmex, Carso,
and Inbursa with 6.1 billion dollars. Next come Alejo Peralta of IUSA with 2.5 billion
and Emilio Azcarraga of
Televisa with 2.0 billion. Altogether the richest 15 Mexicans are worth 25.6 billion
dollars.
("Los ricos mas ricos de Mexico," table, REFORMA 2 Julio 1996.)
Bank Deposits
The balance of public and private Mexican money deposited in the United States
rose to 24.6 billion dollars by the end of 1995, or double the amount reported in
December of 1994.
(Roberto Gonzalez Amador, "El monto de los capitales enviados equivale a 10.26
porciento del PIB," La Jornada 19 Junio 1996.)
Exports
Mexico's exports reached an
all time high of six billion dollars according to the Mexican Department of Commerce.
Mexicobalance of trade credits with the United States increased by 38.2percent. (Ansa,
Notimex, Efe, Afp, Reuter, Ap, Ips y Dpa,"Aumento 38.2% en abril el superavit
comercial de Mexico con EU;llego a mil 562 mmd: Kantor," LA JORNADA 21 Junio
1996.)
Maquiladoras
Mexico has 3,138 maquiladoras which employ a total of 833,103 workers. The total investment in the industry is aboutone billion two hundred million dollars, and the maquiladora sector generates five billion dollars. (Lourdes Gonzalez Perez,"Crecen 17% las exportaciones de maquiladoras," EL FINANCIERO, 29Junio 1996.) Workers at RCA, the biggest maquiladora in Juarez were surprised dumping toxic waste in the city drainage system by government inspectors. (Ruben Villalpando, "Empleados de una maquiladora vertian toxicos al drenaje en Juarez," LA JORNADA, 20June 1996.)
Employment
The employment situation in Mexico has improved some
over the last several months. The official rate of unemployment in May 1996 fell to 5.4%,
according to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics (INEGI). (Roberto Gonzalez
Amador and Carlos Antonio Gutierrez, "La tasa de empleo abierto fue de 5.4% en
mayo: INEGI," LA JORNADA 20 June 1996. In May 54,213 people were added to the
lists of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), the industrial workers national
health plan. In the first five months of this year, 213,396 persons were added to the IMSS
insurance roles. IMSS today insures 342,503 more persons than it did last July. The total
number of those insured by IMSS is 8,715,831. (RobertoAviles, "Generan 54 mil empleos
en mayo," REFORMA 27 June 1996.)
Nevertheless, Mexico remains deep in depression
economically.
Wages
Industrial workers wages fell by 3.2% in April of this year according to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics (INEGI), while industrial employment grew by 0.6%. (CarlosAntonio Gutierrez, "Cayo 3.2% el salario en la industria manufacturera," LA JORNADA 29 Junio 96.)
Real Wages
During the period between December 1987 and the present, the time necessary for a Mexican worker to earn enough money to buy the basic shopping basket of essential goods increased by 167% according to the Center of Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Economics Department of the National Autonomous University (UNAM). (Jesus Castillo, "Trabajan mas para comprar basicos,"REFORMA, 1 Julio 1996.)
Prices of basic products rose between 10
and 40 percent in the month of June according to the Mexican Associacion for theDefense
of the Consumer. (Patricia Munoz, "En junio, aumentos de10 a 40% en productos basicos:
Amedec," LA JORNADA, 1 Julio1996.)
The consumption of basic products has fallen 29 percent in the last 18 months,
according to the Mexican Institute of Statistics (INEGI). (Patricia Munoz Rios, "Cayo
29% el consumo debasicos en 18 meses," LA JORNADA, 25 June 1996.
Prices rose at the low rate of 0.86% in the first 15 days of June, according to the Bank of Mexico. (Felipe Gazcon, "Suben precios 9.86% en primera quincena," REFORMA, 25 1996.) However,the prices of medicines rose by 60% in 1996 according to the National Health System. (Roberto Garduno, "El precio de los medicamentos ha crecido 60% en 96: Salud," LA JORNADA 21 June1996.)
Informal Economy
The number of street vendors (comercio ambulante) in the City of Mexico grew by 30% in the last six months, according to Daniel Loaeza, head of the Merchants' Association of Mexico City. (Fabian Munoz, "Crece 30% el comercio ambulante," REFORMA 1 Julio1996.)
Migration
During the first half of 1996, the migration of Mexicans to the United States fell by 12 percent, according to the director of the College of the Northern Border (COLEF), Jorge Bustamante. At the same time, the Border Patrol in San Diego reports a 35 percent decline in the arrest of undocumented migrants. (JorgeAlberto Cornejo, Ruben Villalpando and Carlos Figueroa,"Disminuyo 12% la migracion de mexicanos hacia EU en el primer semestre de 1996, asegura el Colef," LA JORNADA, 26 Junio 1996.)
Poverty
In the first year and a half of the Zedillo government, the number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty increased by 5 million, so that today 22 million Mexicans live in extreme poverty and another 20 million in simple poverty, according to the Secretary of Social Development (SEDESO). (Laura GomezFlores, "42 millones de mexicanos en pobreza y pobreza extrema: Del Val," LA JORNADA, 25 June 1996.) The World Bank reported that in Mexico poverty affects 85 percent of the population (of 91 million) as a result of the peso devaluation of December 1996. That would be a total of 77.3 million Mexicans living in poverty. (Reuter, Dpa, Afp, Ips and Ansa, "BM: se extingue la clase media mexicana," LA JORNADA 24 Junio 1995.)
Half of the Mexican people do not reach basic nutrition levels, according to the
Commission for the Distribution and Management of Consumer Goods and Services of
the Mexican Senate.(Ismael Romer, "Deben matenerse los subsidios en los alimentos
populares," LaJornada 24 Junio 1996.)
###
Back to ALERT Main Page