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[moonraven]

The best conversation clubs for teens that we had at the language school I directed were led by two teenagers who had finished our program and were volunteering as teachers' aides in exchange for free tuition for their younger brother.

When teens pick the topics they seem to get more enthused about them.

[moonraven]

From today's La Jornada: Statement by Jos� Saramago, Noble Laureate in Literature and great friend of Mexico--

Saramago: sin pudor se busca eliminar a L�pez Obrador

�Fox ser� consciente de lo que hace o permite?
Me cre�a vacunado contra la estupefacci�n, esa reacci�n instintiva de la raz�n cuando se encuentra ante algo que no s�lo excede los l�mites del sentido com�n sino que adem�s lo ofende sin la m�s m�nima sombra de pudor.

Lo que est� pasando en M�xico es eso: falta de pudor. Me inclino a pensar que se trata de una enfermedad cr�nica en el pa�s de un Ju�rez o de un C�rdenas que, por lo visto, mejor suerte merec�an, si pensamos en la lista de casos en que el poder de las oligar- qu�as pol�ticas y econ�micas no ha escatimado medios cuando apunta a la eliminaci�n, moral o incluso f�sica, de un adversario.

Cualquier mexicano honesto sabe de lo que estoy hablando. Ahora tenemos ah�, en el pared�n, a Andr�s Manuel L�pez Obrador. Dicen que cometi� un crimen grav�simo y por eso ha sido desaforado. No nos equivoquemos. La hipocres�a es reina en M�xico. Muchos de los que condenan a L�pez Obrador son culpables de delitos que seguramente justificar�an la c�rcel, y eso lo sabe todo el M�xico lindo.

Se pretende eliminar pol�ticamente a L�pez Obrador, y para eso hasta una simple infracci�n de tr�fico les hubiera servido a las sanguijuelas que llevan generaciones chup�ndole la sangre al pueblo mexicano. Me pregunto si el presidente Fox ser� realmente consciente de lo que est� haciendo o permitiendo. Pilatos tambi�n se lav� las manos y al final no le sirvi� de nada.

Jos� Saramago

[MixtecaMike]

[moonraven]

Today, from Common Dreams:

Published on Saturday, April 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Political Lynching of Mexico�s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
by Ted Lewis

Mexico�s fragile hold on democracy was dealt a serious blow last week when its House of Representatives voted to impeach and possibly jail the country�s leading candidate for the 2006 presidency. In 2000, when President Vicente Fox defeated the long ruling PRI party and its 70 year monopoly on power few, such as myself who was there as an election observer, would have predicted that five years later Fox would willingly join his old nemesis in a political shenanigan with such grave implications for Mexico�s democratic future and stability.
The target of the impeachment vote, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was, until last Thursday, the popular center-left mayor of Mexico City. Then, just hours after he announced his intention to run for president to a rally of 150,000 supporters he was stripped of his mayoral immunity. Now he may face jail for allegedly ignoring a judge�s order to halt construction of an access road to a city hospital across a contested patch of private land. That a low level administrative dispute of this sort could be parlayed into an impeachable offense reflects the backsliding of Mexican politics under President Fox.

Fox, who was in Rome for the Pope�s funeral the day of the congressional vote, hailed the political lynching as a �shining example to the world of law and order in action in a democracy.� In fact, what it reflects is desperation by two conservative parties so lacking confidence in their own anemic candidates and records of failure that they feel obliged to stage a pre-emptive coup 15 months before the next presidential election. Their problem now will be that Lopez Obrador has consistently led presidential preference polls for the last 18 months and he will not fade away. He is an experienced and charismatic politician who knows how to take advantage of a fight like this. His response to Fox: "I am proud to be accused by those who deceived Mexico, who offered change, and then defrauded the public."

Why do Fox and the PRI so fear Lopez Obrador that they would risk the huge protests which have already begun and the political firestorm sure to result if they jail him and disqualify his candidacy? Perhaps because they know the �Washington Consensus� model of prosperity through trade pacts and privatization has failed to deliver the promised goods and that as a result populist and left-wing governments are being elected in unprecedented numbers throughout the hemisphere. Maybe there is a reason Lopez Obrador is so popular.

In Mexico, the undeniable failure of free trade/privatization economic model � developed by the PRI and then championed by the Fox administration -- fuels the candidacy of Lopez Obrador who has consistently called for the re-negotiation of NAFTA and has long opposed the wholesale privatization of Mexico�s strategic resources and industries. So, rather than risk the election of someone who challenges the self-serving structures of wealth and power in Mexico, the conservatives have allied to keep Lopez Obrador from even running.

Mexico�s current rulers and their silent partners in the White House apparently hope that by the time Mexico�s election arrives in the summer of 2006 few will remember what they did to deprive Mexicans of a real choice. This is where they underestimate the caliber of their opponent.

In 1996 I met Lopez Obrador at his modest middle-class home in the capital of his native state of Tabasco situated on the oil rich coast of the Gulf of Mexico. After having been fraudulently denied the governorship of the state in 1994 he and hundreds of Indian peasants from the oil producing regions were engaged in a campaign to pressure the national oil giant, PEMEX, to compensate their communities for damage to their livelihoods caused by intensive drilling, production, and transport of oil in their communities. The reparations campaign was strategic and sophisticated, but what was most striking was the disciplined and explicitly non-violent character of it. Lopez Obrador and his close allies had studied the campaigns of Ghandi and Martin Luther King and sought to put those tactics and principles to work on behalf of the downtrodden.

Now, nine years later, as Lopez Obrador makes his long awaited debut on the national stage his political enemies may be playing directly into his hands. By attacking Lopez Obrador, his opponents risk increasing his stature. More importantly though, this unfolding struggle is not about any political mortal or his policies, it is about Mexico�s future. Will Mexicans truly be free to choose their national leaders or be forced back into the twilight of unaccountable rule?

Ted Lewis is the founding director of Global Exchange's Mexico Program and has traveled to Mexico on more than thirty-five election and human rights missions during the last decade.