#YoSoy132 (#IAm132)

[Rev]

I dont know bro its too complicated the cartels are too deep in there is a mess
i read a part of a book where it said that el chapo called EPN telling him that since he helped the beltran cartel el chapo was going to make sure epn wouldnt make it as president
im leaving to mexico exactly july 1st my plane gets to mexico city at exactly 6:00 AM sunday morning

[(this is) john.]

someone want to tell me what she said?

[shakur420]

I'm glad to be hear, glad that the music touches people, etc., etc.

I have to be here, have to support. I'm #132 and I'm down with the movement cause I want a better country, I want us to be happy, to have peace, lots of life, lots of music. It's time for us to raise our voices and not be conformist, and I'm here with everything.

My part is to share music and support this movement and inject joy, energy. I feel like this is a very important moment (time?) and what's going on right now, we shouldn't let it happen. We shouldn't let go of our anger, (something about) we shouldn't stop informing ourselves. We should pull up our pants like the Mexicans we are (lol, some kind of saying?). It's a really important time, and personally I'd like to see young people wake up and I hope I wake up too. I feel like if with my music, if I wake up, it can show others that have the potential, that they can wake up too, like I did.

I get really emotional about it, these kinds of things are emotional. With all these people marching on the weekend, with this whole movement and all the energy we're seeing we haven't seen a lot of it in Mexico before, and obviously it has to happen. It gets me very emotional and it moves me, I want to be a part of it.

(message to the youth) Just want to say that the (your?) vote isn't like "whatever". We need to inform ourselves about what's gonna happen, what the issues/policies are, we need to get informed as much as possible. Everyone should vote because for a long time there's been a feeling of ignoring (?) elections, and really I believe we need to vote this time, cause it's really important we vote. It's very dangerous, this thing so we need to make sure that what we want is represented in the outcome (?), and afterwards, we can't give up our demands just cause stuff doesn't turn out the way we wanted. We will change (evolve?) too.

I'm gonna vote for AMLO. I don't like (Pena Nieto), I don't trust/believe him, I don't think he's competent, but to each his own (?). We just need to educate ourselves, that's what I believe, that we need to figure out for ourselves who's going to give us a future in this country.

(maybe about a new album?) We finished recording, recorded some songs, it was pretty cool.



So, that's the general idea. You should get someone else to edit it a bit, it's not exact. I had to paraphrase and shit, lol. If I translated word for word, it would be kinda whack, so I had to kind put some things in terms people reading in English would understand, but that's basically what she was saying.

[(this is) john.]

no, that was great, thanks man. you think after like 6 years of spanish class i would be better lol. but i blame my grandma for not teaching me when i was younger and only speaking to me in english haha


the movement seems like a good thing to me. even if it isn't perfect and some rich fucks are trying to use for political gain or whatever, at least the people are waking up, doing something. it's a start.

[shakur420]

Mexico’s Spring of Discontent Reaches Climax



A Nation Holds Its Breath

It’s been a long time coming but the outcome of the Mexican presidential election next Sunday is no longer a sure thing. Say “gracias” to those students from the University Iberoamericana in Mexico City – alternatively written off by the country’s corporate media as “puppets”, “thugs” and “children” – who started a nationwide protest movement against Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and haven’t let up since.

In the space of a few short weeks, the so-called “#YoSoy132” (“I am 132”) movement has taken to the streets and altered the complexion of the race, peaking thus far with a 100,000-strong march on Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue on June 10. They’ll hit the asphalt again on June 30, the day before the big vote.

It wouldn’t mean anything if there weren’t now the genuine possibility of an upset. The only question is whether the palpable shift in public opinion translates into apathy, or support for leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Progressive Movement coalition. A stalwart of the Left and former Mexico City mayor, Lopez Obrador (usually referred to as AMLO) had been written off by the same noxious media as yesterday’s news. Yet recent polls have him within single digits or even neck-and-neck with the PRI candidate.

The #YoSoy132 movement emerged from an already-legendary student protest at the (conservative) University Iberoamericana on May 11. After spontaneously driving the visiting Peña Nieto off their campus with cries of “Coward!”, “Murderer!” and “Get out!” the students were labeled by the PRI and its media backers as “puppets”. Thus was born a movement that has thoroughly overshadowed the election race and held the country in thrall. T-Shirts, flags and Facebook avatars reading “#YoSoy132” are now part of the national iconography. Of course, all that these “puppets” and “thugs” actually want is a clean, democratic election.

With all due respect to #YoSoy132, the chances don’t look great. No way on earth do the Mexican elite and its Washington sugar-daddy allow AMLO to take power, and if he did, they would surely do everything they could to get rid of him. If the Barack Obama administration is willing to stand by while Manuel Zelaya or Fernando Lugo gets the coup d’etat treatment in Honduras or Paraguay, what would one expect in Mexico?

The overwhelming majority of the US (and “western”) media are predicting an easy victory for Peña Nieto despite numerous independent polls to the contrary, while last week The Economist charmingly described him as “the least bad” of the four candidates. Few of these outlets have even mentioned the strong possibility of fraud on July 1 – for which evidence is already gathering – the bully tactics of the PRI during campaigning or the icky relationship between the party and TV network Televisa, the Hispanic world’s largest mass-media power.

Ask yourself why anyone would want the return of a party that governed Mexico as a de facto dictatorship for 71 years, suppressing political opposition, leaving countless dead in a “dirty war”, and generally keeping the country’s tens of millions of poor and extremely poor under its boot. Incredibly, there are those that do, but only because for the past twelve years the National Action Party (PAN) has driven the country even deeper into despair with, yes, the suppression of opposition, countless dead in a “war on drugs”, and economic policies that even governments in the developed world are struggling to justify.

What a surprise, then, that many of Mexico’s potential 78 million voters don’t buy it. The #YoSoy132 movement has become a rallying cry for anybody who’s had it up to here with the PRI-PAN duopoly. Written off as angry young students rebelling against anything-you’ve-got, any visit to a #YoSoy132 demonstration around the country – and there have been many since May 11 – reveals the social and cultural diversity of its supporters; ordinary Mexicans who resent the return of the old dictatorship and the money, power and propaganda it is wielding in the election race.

It’s been hyped by its enthusiastic supporters as a “Mexican Spring”. The question is what happens to the movement if Peña Nieto does indeed emerge victorious on July 1, by hook or by crook? And what happens in that long, long interim until his inauguration on December 1?


“Turn off the TV; Switch on your Conscience”

So influential has the #YoSoy132 movement been that it forced three of the candidates to appear in a third televised debate this past Tuesday, organized by students, broadcast via You Tube, and hailed as “Debate132”. This was a response to the truly pathetic “official” debates held by Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which gained more column inches for the surreal appearance of busty former Argentine Playmate Julia Orayen as chaperone.

Come “Debate132”; guess which of the four candidates was AWOL? Of course, the event was barely given the time of the day by the PRI’s media shills, who blamed “technical difficulties” resulting from a poor live stream on being unable to broadcast it. They also trumpeted that “only 90,000” people watched the debate live. As of this writing, the You Tube video has 1.3 million views.

In fact, much of #YoSoy132’s ire has been directed at the country’s media giants. Although IFE tightened the rules this time around, they’ve had little effect in preventing a “dirty campaign” by the big-money media and its preferred candidates (the PAN’s Josefina Vazquez Mota included) against the populist AMLO, who in comparison has one national newspaper (“La Jornada”, which Noam Chomsky calls “the only independent newspaper in the hemisphere”) and a weekly magazine (“Proceso”) behind him. As AMLO has risen in the polls, TV spots presenting him as a boorish, sombrero-wearing shit-stirrer who believes in “revolution” and “insurgency” have been eagerly financed by both the PRI and the PAN.

Documents allegedly leaked by a Televisa employee and published by Britain’s Guardian newspaper on June 7 reveal that the PRI paid the network millions of dollars for glowing coverage of Peña Nieto’s campaign. The documents also confirmed what everybody already knew – that Televisa had a clear strategy to defame AMLO’s presidential bid in 2006 when he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderon.

Televisa responded that the documents were forged but for many in Mexico the scandal has only confirmed what has been an open secret for years – the grubby, incestuous relationship between the network and the PRI. Two years ago, Peña Nieto got hitched to one of the company’s most glamorous telenovela stars, Angela Rivera aka “The Seagull”, and hasn’t been out of the spotlight since.


Anything to Stop AMLO

After the May 11 protest, the PRI accused #YoSoy132 of being manipulated by AMLO’s coalition, but the movement’s leadership has never openly endorsed the leftist candidate. In fact, it arguably has more in common with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity against the “Drug War”, which formed in May 2011, and whose influential leader Javier Sicilia has also declined to endorse a candidate in this year’s race. Sicilia joined #YoSoy132 sympathizers for a protest outside Televisa’s studios in Mexico City on May 22 and has publicly described AMLO as “arrogant” and “messianic”.

Yet AMLO is clearly the candidate to gain most from the anti-PRI and Televisa protests. Nearly 40% of this year’s electorate is under the age of 30, and he has undoubtedly tried to win the students over to his cause. On May 21, two days after the first #YoSoy132 march, he held an emotional rally in the capital’s Three Cultures Plaza where a PRI government infamously massacred as many as four hundred student protesters ahead of the Olympic Games in 1968. “We don’t want a return to authoritarianism,” AMLO told the crowd of young people. “This is the generation of change that will transform the country.”

At the most recent #YoSoy132 march on June 10, protesters were split between sympathy for AMLO and those who say they won’t vote for any candidate. In response, many supporters of the Progressive Movement coalition carried placards reading: “A blank vote is a vote for the PRI”.

AMLO’s political career has been drenched in controversy but he’s always had the support of the majority of Mexicans who live in poverty. Like many in the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), which heads the leftist coalition, he’s an ex-PRI man who joined Cuauhtemoc Cardenas’s newly-formed party after the electoral fraud of 1988 when a “computer failure” saw Carlos Salinas take the presidency.

Known for his outspoken rhetoric, AMLO ascended to the leadership of the PRD in 1996, was a wildly popular Mexico City mayor between 2000 and 2006, and ran for the presidency that same year, dominating the polls for months before Felipe Calderon – Washington’s pick – beat him in an election that the late, great Counterpunch writer John Ross described as “one of the most egregious frauds in Mexican history.” When he was sworn in at a closed-door ceremony on December 1, at least 36% of the country believed that Calderon was illegitimate.


2006 Revamped?

Another aim of the #YoSoy132 movement has been to encourage more citizens to register as election observers to prevent the kind of fraud that has occurred frequently in Mexican history. Unfortunately, there are signs that some kind of electoral voodoo may already be underway.

On June 8, ballots with print errors were reported in several municipalities in the southern state of Oaxaca along with 31 missing – they’re distributed nationwide by ludicrously heavily-armed elements of the Navy. On June 20, a taxi driver in the state of Chiapas walked into a regional IFE office and announced he had found 183 presidential, congressional and senatorial ballots that had been reported missing the previous week. IFE insists the ballots are “impossible” to clone.

The most shocking incident yet, however, was the murder of a PAN campaigner gunned down in the small town of Villaflores, Chiapas. The town’s PRI mayoral candidate Ulises Alberto Grajales has since been arrested in connection with the murder and replaced on the local ballot.

At a rally in Ciudad Juarez on Wednesday, AMLO accused the PRI of already plotting a fraud, citing a “secret” meeting of 16 PRI governors at the house of Eruviel Avila in Mexico State, the party’s electoral stronghold. A day later, Avila confirmed the meeting had taken place, but retorted that “PRI governors are very united… Every time we meet, it’s to share successful experiences and analyze the socio-political panorama of the country.”

IFE has announced that 31, 401 electoral observers will be present at the polls on July 1, including 501 foreign observers, which still doesn’t instil confidence in a population so convinced that the Right can steal an election in a heartbeat.

On June 22, a coalition of more than 600 civil organizations – including religious, peasant, migrant, ecological, union and human rights groups – released a joint statement saying they would take to the streets in protest should there be clear evidence of fraud in the result.

As such, a nation doesn’t so much hold its breath as wait with a kind of anxious resignation. Here in Mexico City, AMLO is overwhelmingly the people’s choice, but at the national level a large number of his supporters – and neutrals – are fully anticipating the kind of dirty tricks that have haunted Mexican elections in the past. The only question is how the country fights back.



June 25, 2012
Paul Imison
CounterPunch

[Raheem]

You think some type of protest will keep on going on? Will a revolution happen?
My cousin who has been in these protest says that they are real close to one. Not necessarily a violent one, but it can escalate to one.

[shakur420]

Well, my wife and her brother have been saying the same thing for a couple months. Not a revolution, but basically they think that if AMLO looses, especially by a close margin like last time, people will light shit up. They're saying that all of the stuff they see online, people they talk to back home, etc., it just shows overwhelming support for AMLO, so if he looses, there's some fraud and shit going on, and that that's a popular feeling in the country. I've read similar stuff, but a lot of the good shit about Mexico is in Spanish, and I don't fuck with that shit too much, so I don't consider what I know as too credible. I'll have a general idea maybe, see what my wife, her family, friends say, check in here with you guys, but I can't be confident, personally, about much in Mexico. I'm not really well informed. I wouldn't be surprised, though. My wife was saying the other day that a lot of public figures, like famous people, artists and shit, who've been (and I guess still are) PAN supporters have come out publicly throwing their votes behind AMLO cause they don't think PAN has a chance anymore and it's about strategic voting or whatever, they just want to defeat PRI, and AMLO's now basically the only viable opposition.

It's fucked too, lol, cause by the time my wife started gettin all heavy with this, it was too late to register to vote from outside the country or some shit. Her brother kept telling her, I think, but she was just like "fuck it, who cares? It's not gonna matter". lol, then, as she started reading more about AMLO and realizing how fucked the PRI are, she was like "oh shit, I can't vote now, fuck". Not sure if her brother's gonna vote, he's still here with us for a few more months and I'm not sure if he got his shit together. Fucking lazy bums, HAHAHAHAHA

[Rev]

Hahaha yeah i didnt register in time either to vote u.u
but if AMLO looses all hell will break loose lets hope another 68' doesnt happen in Mexico u.U

[Killuminati]

Fuck, I didn't even know you could register to vote from OUTSIDE the country. Son of a bitch, I would have registered.

Anyways, I've read this thread from first post to last, and I didn't know about some of the things you guys have been talking about, like the political connections that the candidates have with drug cartels. Good information, good shit guys.

Mexico's future hangs in the balance... *sigh

[Killuminati]

This just in: Josefina Vasquez Mota announced she would give Calderon a spot as attorney general if she won the vote.

http://aristeguinoticias.com/josefina-po...n-la-pgr/?

She just lost the vote, rofl.

[Raheem]

I heard that peña nieto was giving out a thousand pesos if you vote for him hahaha

[Rev]

yeah its 500 or 1000 depends on the state

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all the northern states are with EPN

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