Opinion

After Ayotzinapa: What the Mexican protests mean

By Cesar Renero ’17

In Mexico, there have been waves of protests and citizen upheavals that it has not experienced in recent memory. The protests before the 2012 presidential elections pale in comparison to the current situation, and perhaps now more than ever it is critically important to be watchful of the development of this latest chapter in the country’s history.

On Friday, Sept. 26, a single incident precipitated the narrative that has covered the front page of every major newspaper in Mexico. Students from a college in Ayotnizapa were going to a protest in the city of Iguala. Upon their arrival, the local police shot at the bus carrying the students, killing six, injuring dozens and abducting forty-three passengers. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

In Mexico, students’ freedom of speech is an extremely sensitive and complicated matter. On Oct. 2, 1968, students protested the government of then president, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, days before the start of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Ordaz, who belonged to the same political party as the current president of Mexico (the long-ruling PRI), responded with deadly military force, and due to the subsequent government and media cover-up, the fate of many of the students remains uncertain to this day. NGOs and scholars estimate that between 1,000 and 5,000 students were summarily killed, with hundreds more injured.

The Mexican people are fed up. Latin American governments throughout the 20th century have a terrible history regarding disappeared persons. Primarily, it was US-backed dictatorships that undertook state terrorism and removed from public existence thousands of people, with Pinochet’s Chile and Videla’s Argentina as prime examples. However, it now seems that what used to be a past agony—for parents to not even have a body to bury their children—is back to haunt Mexico.

The parents of the 43 disappeared students want their children back alive. “Los queremos vivos” (we want them alive) has become the unifying chant of the Mexican people to vociferate their deep disapproval of Peña Nieto’s current administration. Calls for him to resign have started, and this is what is so critical about the situation in Mexico. As journalist Jorge Ramos articulated in an open letter earlier this week, Mexican presidents simply do not resign. Constitutionally, it is a difficult maneuver requiring the consent of Congress, and there is no precedent of a president quitting his job for the past 80 years. But it seems a growing number of people want to change that. It is not just the lack of popular power to remove corrupt and inept politicians that infuriates Mexicans; they want to overhaul the political culture in the country.

The actions of the Iguala police are cold, unquestionable proof that the government and drug cartels are colluding. The Mexican government’s response has been paltry; it took President Peña Nieto weeks to give a public announcement and over a month to finally meet the parents of the students. If Obama took such a lethargic and delayed approach, he would be shunned by all sides. Such is the state of Mexico’s broken political culture.

However, this week the protests have taken a far more revolutionary tone. The PRI’s local offices in Guerrero (the state that Ayotzinapa and Iguala are in) have been torched, along with a myriad array of other government offices. In Mexico City, a bus stop was also hit by arsonist fire, along with a bus that was partially occupied by passengers the moment it was set afire. Thankfully, no one has been hurt so far, but they demonstrate the increasingly anarchic actions people are undertaking out of desperation more than anything.

Perhaps at the heart of the aftermath of the students’ abduction is the Mexican people’s deep feeling of powerlessness. Peaceful, vocal protests have characterized Mexico’s political climate for the past 20 years, yet there has been little change on the part of the government’s attitude towards its citizens. Yes, the economy has improved, jobs have been created, the pollution that once ravaged Mexico City is now under control and a gamut of other small changes have happened that reflect Mexico’s continued development and growth but the police remain corrupt and untrustworthy, cartels still rule from their large drug plantations and politicians remain above the power of the common people.

Many analysts in Mexico believe this latest wave of protests may lead to something bigger. Mexico had transformative wars in 1810 (the independence) and 1910 (the revolution), but in 2010, Mexico had already been fighting the drug war for years, and now in 2014, it seems little has changed. I hope Mexico does not descend into a full-blown war, but a true reforming movement is long overdue. After having a part in the student protests in 2012, I am convinced that the only way for Mexicans to regain their freedom, rights and security is to take to the streets and pressure the government in increasing steps. These protests have shown that Mexicans are shedding the opiate effects of cowardice, apathy and lethargy, and are starting to take reins of the situation. Calls from the protests have generally carried an apolitical air, if not supra-political, with all parties being shunned in favor of a direct democratic approach.

I believe that now is the time to begin seriously analyzing this situation. The geopolitical implications of the protests may be present on the border over the coming weeks, and an unstable Mexico will have profound implications for the US. Mexico is the US’s second biggest trading partner, with over 600 billion dollars’ worth of trade between the two countries. Mexico is also the biggest contributor to ancestry in the United States and the largest American expatriate community is Mexico, with around two million American citizens residing in their southern neighbor. With so many links to Mexico, it is dumbfounding to me that we do not spend more time talking about the subject. Perhaps we should, because not only will we learn more about the struggles of development, but because the fate of Mexico will impact the US economically, socially and culturally.

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