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Two Mexicos

It has been said that there is not one Mexico but two: the north and the south, with the City of Mexico defining the border between the two. Northern Mexico resembles the US in its lifestyle, large-scale farming and landscape. The south has more in common with Central America with large indigenous populations, mountainous terrain and a history of social unrest. Mexico City is the giant metropolis where all the aspects of Mexico, past, present and future collide. Sitting where it does at the border of the industrial, Americanized north and the impoverished, indigenous south Mexico City is witness to a cultural assimilation that is in many ways too large and multifaceted to imagine or understand. But sometimes the forces that move the Mexican country and culture erupt and when they do Mexico City always plays witness.

The most recent example of the underlying conflict unfolded on the 3rd and 4th of May when the Mexico City suburb of Atenco erupted into violence as a result of the attempt of local police to remove several flower vendors from the city center. The violence that ensued was extreme in many regards. Citizens revolted against the municipal police forces, taking several police hostage and forcing the rest to flee from the city. A day later more police returned under orders to take the city by any means necessary. In all, almost 200 were arrested, hundreds injured, dozens raped or sexually abused, and one, a 14 year old boy, killed by a close range gun shot to the chest. The horror stories are still pouring out of the city of Atenco and 150 of the detainees are yet to be released from prison. By all accounts it could be months or years before all the events that transpired during those 2 days come to light, if they ever do.

Foreigners often come to Mexico for the sun. Millions of tourists come here for the beaches, palm trees and the temples all depicted bathed in bright light. But what often startles people here is the darkness. Street lights are a luxury that rarely makes it far out of the larger city centers. Light leaves Mexico every night suddenly and profoundly, but life here continues. In Mexico night is not the absence of day, but another thing altogether, with a culture, life and laws of its own. It is something that all Mexicans seem to be aware of subconsciously. Everything has another side and nothing is as simple as it first appears.

The story of Atenco goes much deeper than a spontaneous conflict between flower merchants and municipal police. Atenco was a new battleground where the old conflict between the government and the peasant (popular) movement came to a head. For months the municipal government had been trying to evict the merchants from the central market; they had development plans. Most of the vendors had given into the pressure or accepted the gifts but some still refused. In late April or early May, 800 members of the peoples front in defense of the land (FPDT), a group affiliated with the Zapatista peasant movement, came to Atenco to stand in solidarity with the vendors in their struggle against eviction. On the morning of May 3rd the municipal police arrived to carry out the long anticipated forceful eviction. Hours later the FPDT set up roadblocks on the Texcoco-Lecher'a highway. The police arrived immediately, flanked by the Mexican media, and surprisingly the 200 lightly armed police were easily beaten back. Early the next morning 2500 metropolitan police from various parts of Mexico City, as well as 900 special-forces police, entered the city with riot gear, tear gas and concealed weapons under orders to take the city by any means necessary. Using local informants they stormed hundreds of homes and rounded up dissidents. They beat and arrested indiscriminately, they took cameras and destroyed film of reporters. Detainees were placed in trucks and driven on excessively long trips to the local detention center, where the majority of the abuse cases are reported to have happened.

Early this year the Mexican government signed into law amendments to the federal telecommunications law that strongly restricted independent media. The new law was dubbed the ëTelevisa law'; Televisa is the large broadcasting company that has a virtual monopoly over Mexican news. Under the new law, the monopoly of the large broadcasting corporations was strengthened and the free diffusion of reliable information was weakened. When the 200 local police arrived they came with television crews. Their farce-like attempt to retake the city and subsequent hasty retreat were recorded and widely broadcast. The police, trained not to break formation during a riot situation did just that. The media images showed police in riot gear running away from the machete welding mobs and diving for cover from Molotov cocktails in what seemed almost too good to be true. Had the peasants scored a victory in one of the most heavily policed cities in the world? Were the police so unprepared for the resistance in Atenco that they literally turned and ran, riot shields at their sides? The real victory was scored by the Mexican government. The images recorded and widely broadcast were intended to be sufficient evidence to warrant what was to come next and had been planned long before: an all out assault against the resistance movement.

The violence in Atenco is seen as a part of the government's struggle to open Mexico to foreign investment. A free and open market is in the investing community's interest and the march towards privatization and free markets has been underway in Mexico for decades. In 1994 when the Zapatistas took control of the state of Chiapas their main demand was the right to communal lands which had been expropriated from the indigenous peasant population. The ejido or communal system, fought for and won in the revolution of 1910-1920, had been signed away by amendments to the constitution in 1992. Communal property didn't equate with the principles of NAFTA and the government was struggling to do away with it. The Zapatistas took parts of the southern state of Chiapas and have held them since, refusing to do away with their traditional way of life and trying to build something against the grain of the new global economy.

Mexico is and has been for 500 years a country divided in many ways. It is this division that has lead to Mexico's first two revolutions: 1810 and 1910. Two Mexicos: the industrial north and the rural south, the neoliberalist government and the communal farmers, the wealthy immigrant upper and the impoverished peasants, those who work in the bright light of official media and propaganda and those who work in the darkness. There are always the extreme elements and the large segments of the population in the twilight, aware of the duality and undecided where they stand. Whether this newest conflict is in its dawn or dusk is yet to be seen.

Often overlooked in the media reports of the violence is why the police were initially trying to evict the flower sellers; the municipality has plans to build a Wal Mart.

May 19, 2006

Subscribe to TravelBlogsPosted by Geoff Affleck on May 19th, 2006 in Articles.