Posted on 06/20/2006 7:37:10 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN BERNARDINO -- A group of Latino activists on Monday delivered a letter to the Mexican Consulate, urging the administration of President Vicente Fox to stop using federal funds for partisan political purposes. The National Alliance for Human Rights, a Riverside-based immigrant rights network, gave the letter to Mexican Consul Carlos Giralt Cabrales, who promised to forward it to his superiors in Mexico.
The two-page letter accuses the federal government and the Fox administration of spending public money to support the candidacy of Felipe Calderon, who is hoping to succeed Fox in the July 2 presidential election.
From his D Street office across from San Bernardino City Hall, Giralt Cabrales denied the assertion, saying that Mexican elections are run by the Federal Electoral Institute, an independent body free of political influence.
Calderon is a member of the conservative National Action Party, which ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party when Fox was elected president in 2000. By law, Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term.
The National Alliance also announced it was supporting Calderon's chief rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in the July 2 election. Polls in Mexico show Calderon and Lopez Obrador in a tight race to become the country's next president.
Armando Navarro, coordinator of the alliance, said Lopez Obrador has proposed programs to reduce poverty and create jobs that would lessen the need for Mexicans to cross the border illegally in search of work in the United States.
Navarro, an ethnic studies professor at UC Riverside, urged the estimated 30 million Mexicans in the United States to make phone calls and send letters and e-mails to their friends and relatives back home to encourage them to vote for Lopez Obrador.
"People know the candidate who offers the best solution to the immigration crisis in the United States is Lopez Obrador," Navarro said in Spanish during a news conference outside the consulate.
Navarro said the free-market policies of the Fox administration have concentrated wealth into the hands of the top 2 or 3 percent of the population while leaving half the country's residents in poverty.
Lopez Obrador has promised to improve Mexico's economic situation by raising the minimum wage, providing food subsidies for the elderly and increasing public-works spending.
But Lopez Obrador has been attacked by some of Mexico's elite for espousing policies that would harm business growth and investment.
The former Mexico City mayor has vowed to renegotiate parts of the North American Free Trade Agreement such as the elimination of tariffs on corn and bean imports starting in 2008.
Lopez Obrador also has some worried that he would govern in the mold of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has angered the United States with his fiery anti-American rhetoric.
George W. Grayson, a government professor at the College of William and Mary who specializes in Mexico, said he doubts Lopez Obrador would form an alliance with Chavez or other U.S.-bashers in the region.
"The problem is Lopez Obrador's policies date back to the 70s," Grayson said. "He's for big government, lots of subsidies and protectionism. What Mexico needs now is a lean, mean economic machine to be able to compete with China. China is eating Mexico's lunch. Unless there are major reforms, China is going to eat Mexico's breakfast and dinner, too."
If Lopez Obrador became president, the budget deficit would widen, inflation would increase and Mexico would become less attractive to foreign capital, Grayson said.
"The current flood of illegal immigration would become a tsunami," Grayson said.
Jose Bedolla, who heads a Mexican community activist group in Riverside, said he is concerned Fox and his supporters will rig the election to prevent Lopez Obrador from becoming president.
If that happens, Bedolla said there could be a violent uprising.
"We are afraid that there is going to be electoral fraud in Mexico," Bedolla said in Spanish. "We don't want another civil war in Mexico. We don't want another revolution."
Giralt Cabrales said he expects the election to be clean and honest, and the outcome to be accepted by all political parties.
"Mexico is a peaceful nation," Giralt Cabrales said. "At this point, I don't see any major concern regarding our next federal election."
Aw, Gee! The Mexicans are CORRUPT? WHO Da ever guessed it!
Yup, Vicente is a Good Guy.. according to his backers here and in DC.
I read that to mean the Mexican Communist party is threatening civil war if their candidate, Lopez Obrador, is defeated in the election on July 2.
Gees,, unrest in Central America during and after an election.
Now that's news. ;-)
Sadly, Mexico is suffering a gubamint by the rich, filled with the rich taking care of the rich.
In such times, subversives are always seeking to use that state of things as a tool to seize power for their own agenda with the popular support of the poor and disaffected.
When good people do nothing, evil prevails.
"Navarro, an ethnic studies professor at UC Riverside, urged the estimated 30 million Mexicans in the United States to make phone calls and send letters and e-mails to their friends and relatives back home to encourage them to vote for Lopez Obrador."
Would be better to encourage them all to go back home and vote and make something of their country.
Navarro, an ethnic studies professor at UC Riverside, urged the estimated 30 million Mexicans in the United States to make phone calls and send letters and e-mails to their friends and relatives back home to encourage them to vote for Lopez Obrador.
UC Riverside should fire that boob so he can devote himself full-time to saving Mexico.
I hope the Chinese have upgraded their plumbing to handle the diarrhea that their about to have as a result... ;-)
I bet the Mexicans could put the RATS and the Pubbies to shame.
'Vicente Fox, Executive Director
North American Union Steering Committee'
'Vicente Fox, Executive Director North American Union Steering Committee'
The citizens of the USA will no doubt be seeing and hearing these words more often, North American Union.
I read it as there is no better candidate, both S***!
One's a communist, the other is Fox's proxy.
No good to be expected from either one.
What Mex. REALLY needs is a true "La Revolucion", perhaps led by some of the "hard working" "migrants" who have experience of what it is like to live in the U.S., a country that is mostly free of corruption.
Even if a Commy revolution were to erupt in Mex. it might actually be a good thing, IF it toppled the current thugocracy.
That's what folks said about overthrowing the Czar. The Russians suffered for 3 generations over that, and continue to suffer over it today.
Lopez Obrador is pretty friendly with the both Jihadies and the likes of Castro and Chavez. You want that, er stuff, on our border? More than it already is?
My actual hope, as forlorn as it may be, is that the Mexican people decide to emulate the U.S. revolution and ideals.
A very long shot, Mex. is pretty well a commie/socialist hole already, and the Mex. people appear to like their meager entitlements and rampant corruption much more than they admit.
If they really despised it they would have taken care of it already, as corrupt as it is, Mex. is still not the complete totalitarian pit that Nikolai Ceausescu's Romania was.
If Romania could free itself, so can the people of Mex., if they ever decide to do so.
There is no legitimate reason for Mex. to remain the third world hole that it is, they have natural resources, access to technology, plenty of available capitol, and a claimed surplus of "hard workers".
It's time for the people of Mexico to do some genuine hard work, throwing off the shackles of their current thugocracy, instead of continuing to take the lazy way out, running away to El Dorado de Norte America*.
*Yes, I probably screwed up the sentence structure, I know very little spanish beyond the swear words I learned from coworkers.
That line of thinking has resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths over the years. World history can verify that nothing good has ever been the result of a communist revolution.
Call me old fashioned, but a hostile Hugo Chavez/Fidel Castro type communist nation on our wide open southern border with one tenth of its population already illegally living in the United States could not possibly be a good thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.