Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Mexico Headed for Civil War?”

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September 1, 2006

Mexico Headed for Civil War?

Hatched by Dafydd

(And if they are -- think of the refugees!)

This AP story builds upon the increasingly violent antics and agitation of losing leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the "Democratic" Revolution Party (not enough Democratic, too much Revolution). Evidently, he has completely rejected the very concept of democracy: Leftists always love democracy... when they win. When they lose, it's a bourgeois running-dog imperialist plot against the people:

Vicente Fox was forced to forego the last state-of-the-nation address of his presidency Friday after leftist lawmakers stormed the stage of Congress to protest disputed July 2 elections.

It was the first time in modern Mexican history a president hasn't given the annual address to Congress....

"Whoever attacks our laws and institutions also attacks our history and Mexico," he said [in a written version of the speech that was blocked], a thinly veiled reference to leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The opposition lawmakers took over the stage in Congress, waving Mexican flags and holding placards calling Fox a traitor to democracy. They ignored demands that they return to their seats, shouting "Vote by Vote" - a rallying cry for López Obrador's bid for a full recount in the election.

Hm... does "vote by vote" sound anything like "count every vote?" I wonder if the Obradorians are as hypocritical, cynical, and mendacious about their slogan as the Gore campaign was about its. (Probably so.)

We've blogged on this curious contest several times before; for those interested in spelunking, here are the earlier posts:

Teleblogging 2: I Think Calderón Has Won...

"Democratic" López Obrador Threatens Revolution If He Loses

The More I Hear From the Obradorians...

Felipe Calderón Wins

I reckon number 2 was the most prescient of the lot:

The standoff came six days before the top electoral court must declare a president-elect or annul the July 2 vote and order a new election. So far, rulings have favored ruling party candidate Felipe Calderón, who was ahead by about 240,000 votes in the official count.

López Obrador has already said he won't recognize the electoral court's decision, and he plans to create a parallel government and rule from the streets.

So we have a close presidential election -- Calderón won by about 244,000 votes out of 41 million, or 0.6% -- and the leftist sore loser won't concede, instead calling out his supporters to riot in the streets. Again, the name is unfamiliar, but you should at least recognize the odor.

Only López Obrador goes even farther than simply trying to sue his way into the presidency, as Gore did; López Obrador has more guts: he clearly plans the violent overthrow of the Mexican government (perhaps with help from his close friend, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías in Venezuela), then to install himself as the new "people's president," assuming Al Sharpton is finished with the title. More than likely, People's President for Life -- just like Chávez.

If he's serious, if he doesn't plan to back down, then there will be civil war in Mexico, something we haven't seen since the days of Santa Anna and the Pastry War of 1828 and 1838-9. But it looks grim down there:

Protesters occupying Mexico City's center said they were ready to do whatever it takes to support Lopez Obrador. Fernando Calles, a 26-year-old university professor, said he was ready to fight for the former Mexico City mayor "until the death, until the final consequences."

"We lived 500 years of repression, and now we represent the new face of Mexico," he said.

The tight election left the nation deeply divided, with Lopez Obrador - who portrayed himself as a champion of the poor - alleging that fraud accounted for an official count showing him 0.6 percent behind Calderon.

Rival Reuters has a few more facts:

López Obrador's supporters have paralyzed central Mexico City with protest camps and he has vowed to make Mexico ungovernable if Calderón's victory is confirmed....

López Obrador railed on Friday against what he says are Mexico's corrupt institutions, such as the courts.

"To hell with their institutions," he told a rally of supporters in Mexico City's central Zocalo square. But he called on them not to march to the Congress building, where violent clashes had been feared.

To me, this truly reads like a gang banger hyping himself up to start shooting; you know, when they start running the dozens with the rival bangers in the parking lot, getting more insulting and vitriolic with every exchange... until someone busts a cap.

It's hard to believe López Obrador can raise his mob of tens of thousands to a fever pitch... and then just walk away without a war.

This affects America hugely: if Mexico degenerates into a civil war, the first thing that will happen is hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of hysterical Mexicans will pour across our border, where we have no hope of stopping them at the moment... particularly since they will claim "refugee" status -- and not without a good case.

But the next problem is that the Bush administration and Congress will have a very difficult decision to make: do we just stand idly by and watch a Communist dictatorship take over our southern neighbor and ally? Or do we take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them -- maybe.

If you think we have a threatening "southern exposure" now, with a relative conservative like Vicente Fox (former high executive at Coca-Cola) as president, just imagine how bad it would be with Communist-leaning Andrés Manuel López Obrador... especially having seized power by force of arms.

Recall that López Obrador is extremely close to Venezuelan People's President for Life Hugo Chávez -- who has a tight working relationship with Iran, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. A Mexico run by López Obrador is a continuously open invitation for Moslem terrorists to flood into our country... probably hiding amongst the mass wave of legitimate refugees fleeing the forced-labor camps that López Obrador will start building.

But on the other hand, do we really want to intervene in Mexico yet again? I would rather we did, if the alternative is to allow López Obrador to seize control by civil war or coup d'état. But it might be a hard sell to Congress right about now, just before the elections.

On the third hand (yeesh, Kerryitis strikes again!) it would be another perfect opportunity for Democrats to prove themselves childish and feckless about national security, perhaps also waking people up to the dangers all around us -- and especially the danger of an unsecured border, with a goon like López Obrador lurking in the shadows.

Remember... every challenge is an opportunity! Unfortunately, it's as much an opportunity for failure as success. We must choose, and we may have to choose quickly.

I sure hope somebody in la Casa Blanca is on top of this.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 1, 2006, at the time of 10:07 PM

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» The Zarathustra of Zocalo Plaza from Big Lizards
In Mexico Headed for Civil War?, we fretted that the continued defiance of leftist loser Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and his announced refusal to accept his defeat, even now that it has been certified by Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal, the... [Read More]

Tracked on September 5, 2006 4:51 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Dick E

Dafydd-

My Mexican wife and I are so sad about current events in her native land.

One of the hallmarks of a mature democracy is peaceful transfer of power to new leadership.

They did it last time, when Fox was elected.

Before that election, I told my wife’s family that I didn’t care who won the election, just so it wasn’t the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for over 70 years.

I was happy when Fox won. The whole country, even those who voted against Fox, was ecstatic to see that a non-PRI candidate could be elected.

The real hero then was Ernesto Zedillo, the PRI president who, on election night, went on TV to tell the nation that Fox had won. People had been hopeful, but they assumed the PRI would delay announcing election results until the “right” candidate won. Zedillo cut them off at the knees.

Now I’m not so sure the right candidate won in 2000. Fox is certainly a better President than any of the other candidates would have been. But if the PRD had won last election, they would have had a much harder time justifying the shenanigans currently underway.

The above hissed in response by: Dick E at September 2, 2006 1:23 AM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

I know that we give cubans sanctuary because of casttro. In fact when that little boy was sent back to his father in Cuba, a lot of people on the right were upset. Would they be willing to afford the same rights to Mexicans if their country went Communist? I doubt it. I just hope this simmers down. I wonder how most Mexicans actually feel about it all, they might be getting sick of it all.

This is like a throw back.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye at September 2, 2006 3:00 AM

The following hissed in response by: tolonaro

"On the third hand" If you check out the book "The Mote in God's Eye" by Jerry Pournelle, you will find that the proper term :) is: "On the gripping hand". This is a phrase that has slowly been creeping into the language. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/index.html

On the Mexican problems, maybe the time is right to offer statehood to those Mexican desiring it, and leaving the rest to the PRD to learn that they should have chosen US statehood.

The above hissed in response by: tolonaro at September 2, 2006 6:24 AM

The following hissed in response by: MTF

I know little of the legal history of Mexico. Is it, for example, a crime to threaten armed insurrection against the government? Do the governmental institutions have enough legitimacy in the eyes of the voters to prosecute a crime like that, if indeed it is a crime?

The above hissed in response by: MTF at September 2, 2006 8:11 AM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

My bet is that Obrador's whiny rebellion fizzles out. I think this will be very different form the Orange revolution in Ukraine, where the rightful winners by a large margin were cheated. Obrador lost, his party is a minority party, and there is no convincing majority he can claim.
We will see, unless the election commission punks out and calls for a new election, a steadily decreasing cadre surrounding Obrador.
The lefties assault on Fox, preventing his delivering his state of the union address, likely alienated a lot of people in the middle against the lefties.
If we approach this with patience and subtlety, we can avoid becoming an excuse for the left to fight harder.
Mexico is an amazing dysfunctional country that seems to muddle through no matter what.
And if Obrador goes for the violence, I think his ending will come even more quickly and decisively.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at September 2, 2006 11:51 AM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Excellent, and very alarming, post Dafydd. I added an excerpt and link to another Dog's post: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrad-Gore

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith at September 2, 2006 12:12 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Tolonaro:

Actually, the Mote in God's Eye is by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; it's a collaboration. And of the two, in fact, Larry is far more famous in the SF world than Jerry! (And Larry wrote the best scene, anyway.)

(They're both friends of mine... well, to be more accurate, friendly acquaintances.)

But "the gripping hand" is a Larry-Jerry construct, not a Dafydd construct, which is why I don't use it.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at September 2, 2006 12:57 PM

The following hissed in response by: Infidel

How is all this that much different from the tantrums that Gore threw after the 2000 election , and that Kerry threw after the 2004 election (Ohio).

We DO KNOW that there are tremendous numbers of ballots stuffed in our national and local elections. How many?

I've seen plausible estimates that 800K to nearly 2.5 million illicit ballots (dead people, multiple votes cast, felons, fabricated people, etc) were cast in the 2000 and 2004 elections. When they run close, even the low estiamtes will throw an election.

Every indication of ballot box stuffing points back to Democrats, yet they come up with the cockamamie rants (psychological deflection ?) about people not being allowed to vote, etc., but the stories never hold up.

Think: Who are the biggest pushers of "Motor Voter" and who was it offering voter registration forms during the rallies for illegal aliens?

The above hissed in response by: Infidel at September 2, 2006 6:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Infidel,
Hammer. Nail. Head.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at September 2, 2006 8:37 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

Actually, the Mote in God's Eye is by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; it's a collaboration. And of the two, in fact, Larry is far more famous in the SF world than Jerry! (And Larry wrote the best scene, anyway.)

Niven is better known because of his Ringworld and Known Space series yet Pournelle's Falkenberg series is every bit as good - if more earnest and not as quirky. I love them both and buy everything they publish.

The above hissed in response by: Don at September 3, 2006 4:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

Liars assume everyone else is a liar. Cheaters assume that everyone else cheats. Dead on.

What really worries me is the effect on oil prices. Mexico is one of our few reliable suppliers of oil.

Venezuela and Iran? Never were there two stranger be fellows. But hatred of the U.S. does funny things to people...

The above hissed in response by: Big D at September 5, 2006 10:10 AM