The conservative PAN is now the largest party in Congress, with 206 out of 500 seats—41 percent—compared with 124 for the PRD, a capitalist party that promotes social-democratic-type policies. The biggest loser was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which fell from first to third place, with 104 seats. The PRI was the ruling party for seven decades until 2000, when Vicente Fox of the PAN was elected president. Since then the PRI continued to dominate Congress, blocking several of Fox’s initiatives.

The federal electoral tribunal must review the PRD complaint and name a president-elect by September 6.

The PRD organized demonstrations of 300,000 supporters on July 8 and of 1 million on July 16 in Mexico City’s Zócalo square, where López Obrador urged “passive civil resistance” and called for a recount. He has claimed election irregularities and alleged that pro-Calderón business groups ran “subliminal propaganda” TV ads against him.

Last year, as mayor of the capital, he led a march of 400,000 that pushed back an attempt to impeach him on a technicality that would have barred him from running for president.

Underlying the electoral dispute are the sharpening class tensions in Mexico.  
 
Different class realities
For capitalists in Mexico, “the economy is doing great,” Rafael Camarena of the Santander Central Hispano bank told Bloomberg News July 13. Industrial output rose 5.7 percent from a year ago. Auto production jumped 31 percent.

The reality is different, however, for most working people in Mexico. Millions of workers make the minimum wage of $4.50 a day or even less—and the minimum wage has lost 73 percent of its purchasing power since 1988.

These conditions have driven millions to migrate in search of jobs from southern Mexico to the industrialized areas of the north as well as to the United States. Last year Mexican immigrants in the United States sent home a record $20 billion, the country’s biggest source of foreign income after oil exports.

On July 14 government authorities approved Grupo México’s request to shut down the giant La Caridad copper mine in the northern state of Sonora, tear up its union contract, fire all 2,000 miners, and reopen with new personnel. The company said it sought to end a three-month strike protesting the removal of the miners’ national union president, which the labor ministry carried out under the pretext of combating corruption. Miners have also been on strike since June at the nearby Cananea copper mine.

In the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, cops fought a running battle June 14 with thousands of striking teachers who were engaged in a plantón (sit-in) in the central plaza since mid-May to fight for better wages. Two days later, tens of thousands of unionists and students marched in that state capital to protest the assault. The 60,000 teachers, members of Local 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), returned to work July 10 but have continued their mobilizations.

Protests have taken place across Mexico against a police assault in May on demonstrators in San Salvador de Atenco, a town near Mexico City that has been a focal point of land struggles. The protesters were resisting an attempt to evict flower vendors. More than 200 people were arrested and two killed in the police attack.  
 
Few fundamental differences
Despite the heated electoral rhetoric, there are few major differences in policies between the main capitalist parties. “They are not so much at odds on the country’s broad needs and goals,” a July 9 New York Times article noted.

Calderón, a former energy minister, is expected to continue the “free-market” policies of the Fox administration. He has said he will introduce a new, lower flat tax, according to the Reuters news agency. Calderón has also advocated beefing up the police and creating a new federal antinarcotics police agency.

The PRD was founded in 1989 by dissident leaders of the long-ruling PRI. A number of small radical organizations, including the Communist Party (PSUM), dissolved themselves into the PRD.

PRD leader López Obrador served as mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005. Like the PRI politicians before him, López Obrador’s policies included funding for welfare programs, intended to undercut independent mass struggles. He coupled such measures, popular among the most impoverished, with an “anticrime” police crackdown. Last year he invited former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to Mexico City as a “consultant” for the police.

The PRD’s presidential campaign slogan was “For the good of all, the poor first.” López Obrador, professing concern for devastated farmers, said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, and promised to spend more on federal poverty programs.

Foreign investors are hoping that, if he takes office, Calderón will take steps toward privatizing the state-owned Pemex oil company. Without a PAN majority in Congress, however, that goal “will most likely continue to lag,” an opinion column in the July 10 New York Sun pointed out.  
 
 
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