Free Republic

Latin America: Ahead of what should be a majestic presidential inauguration, Mexico's losing leftists are turning Mexico's Congress into a fighting ring before the world. That shows how unfit they are for democracy. In case you haven't heard, these leftists still haven't accepted the July 2 verdict of Mexico's voters, who chose Felipe Calderon to represent them as their president. Instead, they've protested and camped out in central Mexico City, falsely crying fraud. Their weeks of street blockades deprived thousands of poor Mexicans of the right to go to work. They also blocked critical trade routes into Texas in a...

Felipe Calderon has taken over as Mexico's president after an unusual midnight ceremony at the presidential residence in Mexico City. He replaces outgoing President Vicente Fox, a fellow conservative. Mr Calderon has said he is determined to be formally sworn in later on Friday despite a threat of disruption from opposition politicians. Members of the left-wing party, the PRD, say Mr Calderon won July's presidential election by fraud. He defeated the left-wing candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, by less than a percentage point. Mr Obrador last week launched a "parallel government" in

Venezuela's presence in Mexican presidential investiture unconfirmed Mexico City. - The government of Venezuela still has not confirmed whether it will send a representative to Mexico to the presidential investiture of Felipe Calderon, the 1st of December, according to the official list circulated today by the Mexican presidency. The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who is seeking reelection in the elections which will be carried out in his country the 3rd of December, up to now has avoided recognizing Calderon's victory, among other reasons since he considers there were "strange things" in the Mexican elections. According to information released...

PRI members ask Segob to investigate financing of APPO The National College of Adherent Organizations of the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] calls for the clarification of those who have supported the more than 160 days of protests which were carried out in Oaxaca Jorge Teherán El Universal (Mexico City) Tuesday 31 October 2006 6:31 p.m.   Organizations of the PRI demanded today of the Governmental Secretary, Carlos Abascal Carranza, to make publicly known who they find behind the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), since it is known that "these movements cost." In a press conference, organizations adhering...

OAXACA, Mexico (AFP) - Mexico demanded that protesters in the southern city of Oaxaca immediately lift barricades and evacuate occupied buildings, as federal forces massed for possible action. Some 70,000 Oaxaca teachers and supporters have been on strike in the city for five months demanding higher pay and the resignation of the state governor. A statement from the Mexican interior ministry demanded "the immediate handover of the streets, plazas, public buildings and private property" taken over by protesters. President Vicente Fox ordered federal police to Oaxaca on Saturday after a US cameraman for the Indymedia independent media website and two...

PFP arrives in Oaxaca; commerical air traffic closed Six Boeing aircraft have landed at the Benito Juarez International Airport with federal components; Bell type helicopters are also observed Jorge Octavio Ochoa and Alejandro Torres/Correspondents El Universal (Mexico City) Oaxaca City, Oaxaca Saturday 28 October 2006 12:15  An intense mobilization of aircraft of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) can be observed at this time at the Benito Juarez International Airport of this city. At 11:53 in the morning a Boeing airplane landed registered as XCMPF of the Federal Preventive Police, in the disembarkation quarter which it carried out this morning. On...

NEW YORK — Undeterred by violence, journalist Bradley Roland Will felt compelled to document what he called human rights abuses around the globe, so he headed to the volatile city of Oaxaca in Mexico. As the situation turned increasingly dangerous, Will decided to stay. Despite his fears, he wanted people to know what was happening in Oaxaca. "I am entering a new territory here and don't know if I am ready," Will wrote Tuesday in an e-mail to an ex-girlfriend. "Life is crazy." The 36-year-old videographer from New York was killed Friday in the Mexican city where protesters have barricaded...

APPO gives ultimatum to Ulises Ruiz to resign within 72 hours They announce that as of Friday they will put into effect throughout the day a blockade of major highways in all the state and they will maintain the barricades throughout the city Jorge Octavio Ochoa/Correspondent El Universal Oaxaca City, Oaxaca Tuesday 24 October 2006 1:49 p.m.  As of Friday a blockade of major highways will be put into effect throughout the day in all the state [of Oaxaca], barricades will be maintained throughout the city and for the first time since they began this movement, all the population will...

Who lost Nicaragua?By Oliver NorthFriday, October 6, 2006WASHINGTON, D.C. -- During the 1980 presidential campaign, Republicans pointed out that Jimmy Carter had "lost Nicaragua" to communism. The 1979 Sandinista "Revolution Without Frontiers" led by Daniel Ortega was just one of many foreign policy disasters during the Carter administration -- and Ronald Reagan assured Americans that such things wouldn't happen on his "watch." Unfortunately, Reagan is gone, and today Nicaragua looks like a case of "back to the future." On Nov. 5 -- just two days before our own mid-term congressional elections -- the people of Nicaragua will cast ballots for...

Jets to be sold to Mexico, Brazil, pilots trained in Venezuela 11:46 | 28/ 09/ 2006 BUENOS-AIRES, September 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's state-owned arms exporter said Thursday it will soon sign deals to export Sukhoi warplanes to Mexico and Brazil, and will open helicopter maintenance and pilot training centers in Venezuela. Rosoboronexport's regional department head, Sergei Ladygin, said: "We hope that Sukhoi planes will soon appear in Latin American countries." Speaking on the sidelines of a military exhibition in Argentina, SINPRODE-2006, Ladygin said Rosoboronexport will also offer a modernized version of the Mig-29 Fulcrum fighter to Mexico and Brazil....

Hugo Chávez and the Non-Aligned Movement. By Mario Loyola Behind the spectacle of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s insults against the West lurks something more sinister than meets the eye. Chávez seeks to lead the Non-Aligned Movement in a new cold war of race, class, and nationalism, to be fought everywhere on earth, chiefly against the United States. And before he’s done, he may hurt his people and ours more than he can imagine. In the 1950s, from the ashes of Europe’s colonial empires, there arose a wave of new “nations,” soon to be called the “third world.” Usually defined by...

The Oaxacanization of the Country: From the Myth of Fraud to that of Ingovernability It was left clear this week, the connection between the insurrectional strategy of Oaxaca and that of AMLO, which already seems to be weakening between desertions and the universal loss of prestige. The difference is one of perspective: For AMLO and his landscaped spaces it was considered vital to exhibit as a survival certificate the oxygen tank which he offered to the Popular Assembly of the People (sic) of Oaxaca (APPO) to identify its goal with that of the defeated presidential candidate: that of preventing...

Cardenas: Naming of AMLO a "Grave Error" The Moral Leader of the PRD indicates that the actions of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador "are pummeling and damaging all the Mexican Left." EFE News Service El Universal Madrid, Spain Monday, 18 September 2006 The actions of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador "are pummeling and damaging all the Mexican Left" and his naming as "legitimate President" in a voting of raised hands in the Zocalo capital plaza is a "grave error," according to the founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. In an interview with the Spanish daily newspaper La...

Convention Names AMLO "Legitimate President" After voting on this convention's proposals, the delegates agreed that they will not recognize Felipe Calderon as President-Elect nor the government which he heads 6:27 p.m. The resolutions of the Democratic National Convention designated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as "Legitimate President." After voting on this convention's proposals, the delegates agreed that they will not recognize Felipe Calderon as President Elect nor the government which he heads. In the midst of shouts of acceptance, the sympathizers await the arrival of Lopez Obrador, as reported [on the radio program] Formato 21. More information shortly

MEXICO CITY, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Leftist protests forced Mexican President Vicente Fox to abandon plans to lead a traditional ceremony in the capital on Friday, the eve of independence day, the Interior Minister said. Fox, targeted by leftists angry at what they say was fraud at July's presidential election, will instead hold the highly-symbolic cry of independence in the central town of Dolores Hidalgo, minister Carlos Abascal told reporters on Thursday. The ceremony, known as "el grito", takes place every Sept. 15 in the central Zocalo square but leftists have vowed to demonstrate against conservative Fox in the plaza.

Protest Encampment on Reforma Avenue is Slowly Being Removed In the stretch which goes from the Petroleum Fountain to the Zocalo capital square few guards are observed, there are now practically no kitchens, storage and food distribution centers Alejandra Martinez El Universal Mexico City Wednesday 13 September 2006 The protest encampments of the For the Good of All coalition which are located about the Paseo de la Reforma are beginning to be removed through an ant-like process, which is to say, in a discrete and gradual way. This Wednesday they have now initiated the removal of gas tanks, sound...

Mexico faces a plunge into political chaos after a senior aide to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that the Left-wing former mayor of Mexico City will set up a "resistance government" and declare himself president, despite being declared the loser of July's election. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Mr Lopez Obrador's campaign refuses to acknowledge defeat, and has set up sprawling protest camps in Mexico City's main square "Even though the official institutions, like a spent force, have recognised the Right-wing candidate, we are not going to," Gerardo Fernandez Norona, a senior strategist in Mr Lopez Obrador's campaign, told The Sunday...

Last updated 1:33 p.m. PT ASSOCIATED PRESS MEXICO CITY -- Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has given up efforts to have himself declared winner of Mexico's presidential race, but he still plans a parallel government to cater to the poor and keep alive his fight against the president-elect, a party spokesman said Friday. Since Mexico's top electoral court rejected Lopez Obrador's allegations of widespread fraud in the July 2 vote, he has focused on a Sept. 16 convention where supporters will declare him leader of a resistance government. The plan is to block President-elect Felipe Calderon at every step, including his...

Mexico City, Sep 7 (EFE).- Conservative President-elect Felipe Calderon said here Thursday that he was willing to embrace some of the ideas supported by the more than one-third of voters who cast ballots for his leftist rival in Mexico's closest election ever. "I will make my own the reasons and grounds whereby the voters voted for other candidates and I'll respond to their expectations," he said in his first session with foreign reporters since Tuesday's certification of his narrow victory over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The 44-year-old lawyer and former energy secretary, insisting on his willingness to engage in dialogue...

Ebrard's Group Throws Itself Against Cardenas Agustin Guerrero, director of the René Bejarano-supported National Democratic Left (IDN),1 qualified Cuauhtemoc Cardenas2 as a "traitor" to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). "Cardenas the Engineer3 is not with the PRD in principle nor with its project, and we did not sign a letter of renunciation, we simply made a decision to go to Fox's cabinet, because we are charging him there. That commission for the bicentennial of the celebrations of Independence is not an honorary post, it is a position which has a budget and pays him for organizing it; therefore...

The 10 Points of AMLO's Message Redaction EL UNIVERSAL.com.mx El Universal Mexico City Wednesday 6 September 2006 After the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) gave its qualification of the presidential election and declared Felipe Calderon President-Elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in his informative session [said the following]: 1. He accused the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation of submission, "they did not have the courage, the dignity, the pride, the arrogance to act as free men," in ratifying the triumph of the PAN candidate. 2. He stated that he...

EDITORIAL - Discussion of illegal immigration and the invasion of illegal immigrants have given speculation how a second Mexican-American war would look. A former Army officer recently said to me, "It definitely wouldn't be a conventional war. Considering that already so many of the enemy are within the United States, it would be an unconventional war to say the least." Mexicans certainly have their allies. As was reported recently by various agencies, Arabic terrorists are sneaking into the United States disguised as Hispanics. They look just like Mexicans and they speak fluent Spanish too. The Mexican military and Mexican cartels...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon won Mexico's ferociously contested July 2 election and is president-elect, the top electoral court said in a draft ruling on Tuesday. Earlier on Tuesday, the court said Calderon had won with a margin of about 234,000 votes. In this latest draft ruling, the court said he could now be declared president-elect, the first time the election body has made this announcement. The final, official decision is still to be voted on later in the day by a panel of seven judges, who have already thrown out leftist candidate Andres Manuel...

(9/05/06 - MEXICO CITY, Mexico) - The president of Mexico's top electoral court recommended Tuesday that the full tribunal uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. The recommendation must still be approved, but Leonel Castillo suggested that the seven magistrates certify a final vote count showing Calderon with a 233,831-vote lead out of 41.6 million cast. That would trim Calderon's earlier lead of 240,000. Such a decision has been widely expected, and the leftist rival candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador already has vowed to ignore the ruling, which comes after weeks of legal challenges and protests and...

Fernandez Noroña: "We are arriving first at the Zocalo Capital Plaza" The PRD spokesman rejects that they can be evicted by federal forces, because "they will need some five policemen per protestor, because they will have to carry us away." "We are arriving first" at the Zocalo capital plaza of Mexico City, Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, spokesman of the PRD, maintained while arguing that they will celebrate the National Democratic Convention on this spot,1 independently of what the Mexican Army anticipates, which is that the 16th of September will be an Independence Day parade. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has summoned more...

Entire text of the message of President Fox to the nation Message of President Vicente Fox Quesada to the Nation on the occasion of his VI Government Report Mexican men and Mexican women: As President of the Republic, the Constitution obligates me to attend the Congress each year, to present before the Deputies and Senators, a report about the results of the management of the Federal Government. On this occasion, a group of legislators of the Party of the Democratic Revolution prevented the President of the Republic from being able to direct his message to the Congress and to the...

Latin America: Bitterly refusing to concede the presidential election he lost, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vows to destabilize Mexico as payback for his defeat. The government will have to deal with him firmly. And that's a shame, because the final call, set for Sept. 6, on Mexico's July 2 presidential election should be pure celebration. The country should rightly recognize its free and fair vote, its emerging new parties and its solid institutions — all of which have come about in a mere decade of democracy from a one-party state — and winner Felipe Calderon should be able to begin...

PRD vows to block Informe BY JONATHAN ROEDER/THE HERALD MEXICO El Universal August 31, 2006 Though presidential spokesman Rubén Aguilar on Wednesday said he trusted that President Vicente Fox´s annual State of the Nation Address (Informe) will be received with respect by congressmen, a top official from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) countered that "at least 10" ways of preventing the speech from being delivered were under consideration. Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, the PRD´s secretary-general, said he and three other party leaders will decide "exactly two hours" before the event on Friday what action will be taken. "There will be no...

Tribunal finds no evidence of fraud Wire services El Universal August 29, 2006 The nation's top electoral court announced Monday that a partial recount of the votes in the disputed presidential election found no evidence of widespread fraud, a ruling that placed conservative Felipe Calderón tantalizingly close to victory. In a 7-0 ruling, the Federal Electoral Tribunal said it had found only minor mathematical and administrative errors in the initial vote count of the July 2 election. The tribunal said Monday its recount subtracted just 4,183 votes from Calderón's margin of victory, reducing it to about 240,000 over left-leaning candidate...

MEXICO CITY - Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, convinced he won't be awarded the presidency, has vowed to create a parallel leftist government and is urging Mexicans not to recognize the apparent victory of the ruling party's Felipe Calderon. .................... Both scenarios are possibilities as the former Mexico City mayor lays out plans to create his own government to rule from the streets, with the support of thousands who are already occupying protest camps throughout downtown Mexico City. ...................

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's top electoral court threw out leftists' allegations of massive fraud in last month's presidential election on Monday, handing almost certain victory to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon. The seven judges voted unanimously to reject most of the legal complaints by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he was robbed of victory in the July 2 vote. His supporters have paralyzed Mexico City with protests this month and he has vowed to make Mexico ungovernable if the court declares Calderon the winner of the country's most bitterly contested election in modern history. The initial result...

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: "They are stealing the presidency from me" Which are the elements making it possible to establish that there was fraud at the time of the elections of July 2 in Mexico? For more than three years we were victims of a campaign of all the state apparatus with the active participation of the President of the Republic because we represent an alternative project. Our adversaries wanted to destroy us politically. They tried to discredit me with the help of videos, but it was demonstrated that it was the acting out of a plot of former...

In the more than three weeks since the firebrand populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador began his protests in Mexico City to dispute the slim victory of his conservative rival Felipe Calderon in the July 2 presidential election, the Federal Electoral Tribunal has rejected a full recount and, after conducting a limited recount, found no evidence of fraud or serious irregularity. Mr. Lopez Obrador's opposition has become more vehement, however, most likely in anticipation of a final decision due from the Federal Electoral Institute on Sept. 6. The protests have caused problems for commuters and turned away tourists and visitors, costing...

The PRD: Solid in its decision to fight the imposition of Calderon The national director of the the PRD warns that "if they perpetrate the imposition [of Calderon as President] we are going to mobilize wherever they attempt to give proof of his majority." Leonel Cota Montaño made clear that "we are not going to modify a single line of resistance which the For the Good of All coalition has maintained in demanding the transparency of the presidential election." The national leader of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) said that it will solidly oppose "the decision to...

Displaying signs that said, ARCHBISHOP NORBERTO, HELL IS WAITING ON YOU, and a sign that said, GOD IS NOT PANISTA, dozens of protesters tried to push their way into the Cathedral in downtown Mexico City

Precinct reports of the Southern Most State of Mexico

Andrés Manuel López Obrador´s call for an ongoing "convention" of supporters to act as an extra-governmental political force underscores a tactical shift that has already changed the tone of the post-electoral dispute and also could define how Mexico is governed over the next six years. The proposed National Democratic Convention (CND), set to meet for the first time in Mexico City´s Zócalo on Sept. 16, seems designed to convert the current López Obrador-led civil resistance movement into a permanent political movement functioning outside the confines of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD). It also promises to be a permanent thorn...

Perredista,1 one third of the "Simulated Republic" AMLO wants to bring down Yesterday AMLO invoked constitutional Article 39 with everyone and made his appeal to the "people (who) have at all times the inalienable right of altering or modifying the form of their government." And he justified his appeal with the example of the Zapata uprising against President Madero, even though the Zapatista "Ayala Plan"2 was lauched in 1911, six years before the promulgation of the Constitution of 1917 and the vigorous entrance of its now publicized Article 39. But this inconsistency (of a grade school history book) is...

Will a fair vote stand? IN THE 6 1/2 weeks since he narrowly lost Mexico's presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has turned the nation's politics into a public spectacle. A fiery populist with a messianic streak, Mr. López Obrador has led thousands of his supporters to pitch tent cities in downtown Mexico City, occupying the Zocalo, its main square, and a two-mile stretch of the Paseo De La Reforma, one of its major boulevards. He has denounced the election as a fraud and the product of a vast conspiracy, without furnishing even remotely convincing proof. Now, after a...

AMLO Summons a National Democratic Convention The PRD member evokes Article 39 of the Constitution to affirm that the people are the only ones who can change the government; he recalls the "Ayala Plan," signed by Emiliano Zapata. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched his call for a "National Democratic Convention For the Good of All," with its basis in Article 39 of the Constitution, to be held the 16th of September in the Zocalo capital square [in Mexico City]. The PRD member read said constitutional precept aloud and recalled that therein it is indicated that national sovereignty resides in...

Encinas warns that an institutional political crisis is near He indicates that the GDF1 will not permit elements of the Federal Preventive Police to go out from their assigned perimiters. The Head of Government of the Federal District, Alejandro Encinas, warned that [the country] is on the brink of passing from a post-electoral conflict to an institutional political crisis. "I believe that there are three objectives in the situation which our country is living through. I believe that we are passing from a post-electoral conflict to an institutional political crisis. Whoever does not want to see it as such,...

The TEPJF will begin alleviation of appeals of electoral inconformity The Ex-Executive Secretary of the IFE,1 Maria del Carmen Alanis Figueroa, assures that they will not open a single additional electoral packet. With the end of the partial recount of votes in the 11,839 electoral packets of the presidential election, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) now has all the elements to begin to alleviate the 374 appeals of electoral inconformity, according to Maria del Carmen Alanis Figueroa, Ex-Executive Secretary of the IFE. In her analysis of the phase that the tribunal is about...

The For the Good of All coalition1 asks for an annulment of the votes of the 11,800 electoral packets under revision2 In light of the scant variations which the partial recount of votes ordered by the Electoral Tribunal has shown, the strategy of the For the Good of All coalition spun towards the nullification of the more than 11,800 electoral packets which began to be opened the 9th of August. Horacio Duarte, representative of the PRD in the IFE3, asserted that in 5,177 electoral packets of which he has reports, [the coalition] has detected 18,142 ballots overcounted4 and 51,658...

Election authorities on Wednesday began a court ordered partial recount of the July 2 presidential vote that revealed minor errors during the first day´s ballot reviews. Officials from the Federal Electoral Institute supervised by 192 federal judges began reviewing ballots from 9 percent of more than 130,000 polling places. The recount is part of the process for the court to settle challenges brought by second-place candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims fraud. The court-ordered recount will probably narrow Calderón´s margin of victory, said Chappell Lawson, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Such an outcome could...

AMLO's sympathizers block access to bank offices Civil resistance impedes the passage of employees at the offices of the Bancomer1 Center on Universidad Avenue, Banamex2 on Venustiano Carranza Avenue, and HSBC3 on the Paseo de la Reforma Avenue. The For the Good of All coalition4 initiated at 7:00 a.m. today a series of blockages at the central offices of the Banamex, Bancomer, and HSBC banks. Groups of the followers of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador left their encampments at the Zocalo capital plaza to direct themselves, first to the Banamex bank building, located on the street corner of Isabel La...

Roads entering Mexico from Cuernavaca, Pachuca and Puebla are FREE as of 730 am this a.m. People using turnpikes have free access, thanks to the PERREDISTAS who now have control of government toll booths.

AMLO is moving informative assembly1 to the TEPJF The candidate of the For the Good of All coalition2 called on his sympathizers to come together tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. at the offices of the Electoral Tribunal to carry out an assembly. The candidate of the For the Good of All coalition, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, announced that tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. the coalition will carry out an informative assembly in front of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation. During his fourth informative assembly in the Zocalo capital plaza, Lopez Obrador insisted on the necessity of...

Lopez Obrador supporters' protest camps have blocked Mexico City's main Reforma Avenue and Zocalo square, snarling traffic for a week in the cultural and financial heart of the capital. Braving near-nightly rainstorms and even flooding at the height of Mexico's monsoon, the protesters have refused to leave despite pleas from President Vicente Fox. "We are going to continue our peaceful civil resistance movement," Lopez Obrador said Saturday, adding that the tribunal's judges were "legally weak." He then spent his seventh straight night in a tent in the Zocalo, rising early Sunday and heading to his apartment to shower. His followers...

TEPJF rules against vote by vote recount The Electoral Tribunal presented the legal-electoral obstacles that the For the Good of All coalition1 did not surpass to attempt a precinct by precinct, vote by vote recount. The Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) rejected this morning the aspiration of the For the Good of All coalition that they carry out a recount of all the votes of all the precincts set up for the presidential election of this past July 2. To the hope of leaving it to judge this aspect of the vote, the Secretary...

The TEPJF Decides Tomorrow if There Will Be a Recount of Votes The Superior Court of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) will convene1 a public session at 10:00 a.m. this Saturday, to resolve 175 received incident reports and will make a special pronouncement with reference to the challenges to the presidential election. The seven magistrates who make up the Superior Court should pronounce their decision with respect to the electoral packets2 to determine whether or not it will carry out a recount of votes of the presidential election of July 2. At 10:15 a.m....