A Mexican Spring Begins to Blossom

By Marta Molina
Waging Nonviolence / News Report
May 29, 2012

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/05/a-mexican-spring-begins-to-blossom/

    "They are party-less but not apolitical. The
    supposed apathy and individualism by which the
    Mexican youth have been characterized has been
    disproved on the streets and on the web."

In Mexico City's daily life - in the shops, taxicabs, cafes
and lines waiting for the bus - one could hear conversations
between people of all ages saying Enrique Pena Nieto would,
without a doubt, win the presidential elections. "Either
something huge will happen," a taxi driver told me, "or he
will win." And when people referred to "something huge
happening," they were referring to violence, or some
unbearable crisis.

But it hasn't happened like that. Far from anything originally
expected, it is the Mexican youth and university students who
are doing "something huge." They have altered the political
agenda in the country to prove that no one wins an election
until the election itself.

The gathering began on May 23 at the Estela de Luz, or Pillar
of Light - a monument that has caused much controversy due to
the billions of pesos the government invested in its
construction. The students appropriated this symbol of
corruption to illuminate it with their democratic demands in a
key pre-electoral moment.

With only forty days left in the race, the protest was
provoked by the manipulation of information and the imposition
of a candidate by the corporate and media elites during the
hype of the electoral campaigns. In the end, twenty thousand
students from different universities, public and private,
marched for four hours along the main avenues of Mexico City.
The protests that followed have sparked talk of a "Mexican
Spring," making reference to the uprisings that began in North
Africa at the end of 2010.

Javier Sicilia, the poet, journalist and leader of the
Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), came to
give his support at the march and to share some very emotional
and inspiring words. Remembering his son Juanelo - who was
assassinated on March 28, 2011 and would surely have been
marching if he were still alive - Sicilia said, "I would want
to see my son here. I can't see him, but I see him in the
thousands of youth here."

Sicilia inspired the movement that shook the country last year
by asking for an end to the war on drugs, an end to the
violence in the country and justice for its victims. In
reference to the student protest he added that, "we are at a
historical breaking point, a crisis of the world's
civilization. We are coming through the cracks in the state
and the crumbling economy to build something new."

The poet expressed his excitement, "They are the ones fighting
for the present; it's the revolt of intelligence in the face
of barbarism. They are not minors. They are our elders
fighting for what we took from them, their present. It's a
marvelous lesson and we are here to support them."

The principal demands of the students coincide with the last
point of the National Pact for Peace that Javier Sicilia
proposed at the Zocalo in downtown Mexico City on May 8, 2011,
when the MPJD was just beginning: political reform, a
representative democracy, the democratization of the media and
state policy that breaks with the monopoly of the media - a
policy that will generate competition and make public media
stronger.

In this sense, it seems as though the Movement that had its
first anniversary on March 28, found in these students and
youth its perfect allies to rebuild the social fabric of
Mexican society.

The spark

Most news sources are funded by corporations and investors.
Their goal is to drive people to advertisers while pushing the
corporate agenda. The story started two weeks ago on May 11
during a meeting with Enrique Pena Nieto, the presidential
candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at
the Iberoamericana University (Ibero), one of the most
prestigious private universities in the country. Students
admonished the handsome candidate that aspires to be Mexico's
next president and give hegemonic power back to the PRI, which
lost twelve years ago. They shouted "Coward!," "Ibero doesn't
want you!," and "Assassin!,"  reminding the candidate of the
brutal repression he ordered against the farmers and florists
that mobilized in San Salvador Atenco in 2006, when he was the
governor of Estado de Mexico (the state bordering Mexico
City). This repression, in which two young men were murdered,
350 people were detained - including 10 minors - and 26 women
were raped, was one of the most violent episodes during his
mandate.

Trying to avoid a scandal in the media and attempting to
protect his image as a candidate in the face of the student's
disapproval, the PRI accused the students of being agitators
paid for by the candidate of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador (AMLO) of the Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD). The media duopoly that dominates 95 percent of
television concessions in Mexico - Televisa and TV Azteca -
followed the script by not giving visibility to the student
protest against the candidate that the two have already
determined will be the "winner" during the electoral process.

But Pena Nieto's advisers and the media duopoly missed a
detail: many students posted videos online that went viral on
the social networks, exposing how the two huge television
networks were omitting what really happened and selling what
occurred as a "campaign success."

Three days later, 131 students posted a video on YouTube in
which they identified themselves as students with their
official Student ID cards and they assured viewers that nobody
had paid them to admonish Pena Nieto. In this video, the
students insist that they do not belong to any political party
and express their disapproval of Pena Nieto and the evident
manipulation of information. The video has had over one
million hits to date.

Now, youth from other universities have decided to support the
Ibero students who exposed the relationship between Pena Nieto
and the media elites and the lack of fairness and equality in
the political campaigns. They then adopted the name #YoSoy132
(or #IAm132), because they united "in conjunction" as one
more.

Thus, a student movement with their name in the form of a
hashtag was born. It extended itself on the web and became a
worldwide trending topic for over six days. The movement
called for massive mobilizations on the streets of Mexico
City, such as the march led by students from four main private
universities - Ibero, Anahuac, Tecnologico de Monterrey and
the Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) - on May
18, who held a rally in front of the various Televisa offices
demanding "transparent, plural and impartial information that
promotes critical thinking" and does not favor any single
candidate.

With no relation to the youth of I am 132, the following day,
according to official estimates, 45,000 people marched against
the PRI's candidate Pena Nieto in downtown Mexico City without
representing any other political party or candidate. No
movement or organization took responsibility for the
gathering; it was all born out of the social networks.

On the afternoon of May 23, those who introduced the hashtag
on Twitter, also created their own website hours before the
march. Twenty thousand people showed up, marching with books
in hand - shouting and chanting for a change in the country.
Fliers that the students handed out stated their demand that
citizens can "criticize their government, politicians, the
heads of corporations, and society itself based on facts. This
is why, I am 132 makes the right to information and the right
to freedom of speech its main demand."

They also declared that they are a "movement free from any
political party and made up of citizens, and that's why they
do not support or reject to any political candidate." Another
demand of I am 132 is "the guarantee to internet access as a
constitutional right."

As people joined the protest, the students decided to march
along Paseo de la Reforma (one of Mexico City's main avenues),
to the monument of the Angel of Independence. Once there,
spontaneously, some of the protesters decided to continue to
the main headquarters of TV network Televisa to demand the
transmission of a second political debate on June 10 by the
candidates on national television. Another group of protesters
continued the march to the Zocalo in the centre of the city
capital.

During the march, the demonstrators chanted "We don't want a
Soap Opera of a Democracy" and "October 2 isn't forgotten," in
reference to the day in which the Mexican government tried to
dismantle the student movement of 1968, killing hundreds
according to independent investigations.

There were also demonstrations in other states on the country,
in Oaxaca, Jalisco, Morelos, Queretaro, Yucatan, Michoacan
Hidalgo, Chiapas, Baja California, Puebla, and Estado Mexico.

The students have called a general assembly for Wednesday May
30 in which representatives of each university will work on
their collective proposals.

Has the Mexican Spring arrived?

The students wanted to demonstrate that no one can win the
presidency before an election takes place. They ask for the
truth.

This is the self-expression of a generation that is
challenging the assumed victory of a presidential candidate 40
days before the elections. They are playing their role as
revolutionaries, as agents of change and of moral force. These
students know that social media can be a space where they can
participate as free and independent citizens and can serve as
a counterbalance to the discourse of the powers that be,
including the media duopoly.

As Lyalli, a 23-year old student from the Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana (UAM) says, "it's the first time in which many
of our generation are going to vote. They should see that we,
the youth are interested in our country, in changing it, in
creating a better society starting with ourselves."

"We are party-less. We are not favoring any political party or
candidate and we want the media to open up, to stop lying,"
said a student at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(UNAM).

They are party-less but not apolitical. The supposed apathy
and individualism and by which the Mexican youth have been
characterized has been disproved on the streets and on the
web. The budding movement intends to organize itself, to
create ties between the different universities, to elaborate
collective proposals and to develop a more concrete political
organization. Only after this happens can we start talking
about a Mexican Spring.

[Marta Molina is an independent journalist from Barcelona,
Catalunya. She has written about cultural resistance in Brazil
and Palestine, and now she is based in Mexico following the
steps of the Movement for Peace Justice and Dignity (MPJD)
against the war on drugs.]

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