 Hi everyone, welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast on Code Pink YouTube every Wednesday, 12 p.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. I'm your host, Terri Mattson. This week we will be discussing the Mexican Senate support of the referendum to judge five former presidents and the National Petition Drive leading up to this decision. Our guest is Mexican independent journalist, Alina Duarte. You can catch her on Scenicensura and follow her on Twitter at Alina Duarte underscore. Welcome Alina. Thanks for having me, Terri. And this is like, so for our viewers I have to say this is a particularly enjoyable interview. We are broadcasting today from Mexico City, so where Alina lives and I'm visiting. So this is a really unique and wonderful opportunity for us to sit down and talk to space to face like this. So this is a little different format for all of you to watch. So let's talk about what happened last week with the Mexican Senate and what maybe you can give us a quick breakdown on what happened in the Senate and then let's talk about what led up to basically almost kind of forcing them to make that decision. Yeah. Okay. So one of the Mexican Senate decided to approve this petition of judging the former presidents and in general, like every single politician who has been going through corruption or something else. The Senate said like, yes, we need to put this demand on the public stage. We need to talk about it. We need to discuss it. And they decided for it was a majority. And as you say, there was a whole process behind it. These were, I mean, this is my, I'm always insisting that this is about popular resistance. This is about popular power. This is something really new in Mexico, especially during the last two years with this government of Andrés Manuel Opresobrador and we decided to make a whole movement to do this to put in jail the former presidents to start with the former presidents. And who compices the movement? Yeah. Well, first, this was a petition made to the Senate in late August by Omar Garcia, who is a survivor of Ayotzinapa. This massacre occurred in 2014 and also Ariadna Baena, who's a student who has been displaced from Guerrero, that it's a very complicated state here in Mexico after these so-called drugs started in 2006. So they both decided to put this initiative in the Senate, saying we need to discuss, we need to, we want to put in jail former presidents because of all the violence that they were, they started actually. It's now liberal government, so they decided to go to the Senate. They presented this initiative and the Senate said like, yeah, okay, but you need more, almost 2,000 million signatures to make a public consult. And we started to do this campaign and we had only 15 days to collect more. Yeah, almost 2,000 signatures. Right before or right after I got arrived here, it was amazing what you accomplished. Yeah, I was really happy because for the last two years, people here, I think most of them, well, we need to say that AMLO has 60 more than 60% of approval here in Mexico. So for the last two years, people have been just waiting for a call or for something they haven't been organized until since the elections in 2018. So that's why they decided to participate. That's my impression that even with the pandemic here, they decided to go and give us their signatories and we collected more than 2.5 million signatories in just two weeks throughout the country. Yeah, so just for our viewers, regarding Omar and Adriana, they come from the state of Guerrero and Omar was on one of the buses, September 26, 2014 in Ayotzinapa. And this was the situation where the normaliznes, the students who were training to become teachers, were disappeared, 43 of them. And he is actually was in one of the buses that was not hijacked. But that crime has never been prosecuted, resolved, nothing. And so he's a really significant person to be pushing. Yeah, I mean, that's what I think people just decided to participate because there was no doubt, any doubt about the importance of who they were. Who they were like Omar and Adriana. It was a really legitimate voice. They were like the representation of what happened for the last 20 years at least, or with the war on drugs, so cool that it's just a civil war that has been going on here in Mexico since 2012. And they decided to participate and they said, like, there are so many crimes to be judged, so let's start this campaign. And people just decided to participate with the presidents. Yeah, five of them. Five of them, you know, like people are really sick. Even when we are young, we've been, we are now the like, we have memory. We remember my whole life. I've been just listening about massacres, about reforms and your liberal reforms, we've been, you know, we're just like the consequence of all of those governments, so that's why most of the people who were collating signatories were mostly young people. And it was amazing. People responded like easily, even when we didn't have a real platform as a oligarchy has in this country. We just had our, you know, like our own resources, just table, just the kind of basic issues and things. But I think what you saw was there was, there's so many, there is a lot of ground support for the president to go in a progressive direction. And I think one of the things you shared with me was what in, when you were doing this petition drive, we said, you saw a real, you saw a real generational definition of progressivism. Older people, people my age, who never thought they would ever see someone like Amal in office, think the government's fairly progressive now and are fairly happy with it. Younger people, your elimas generation and those of you in your age and younger, feel the government's not progressive enough. And I think that has a lot to do with just, you know, since the day you were born, you've seen nothing but violence, whether, and it's kind of like the states where you have two parties and one slightly to the right, slightly to the left, but they basically just shift. Do you need something more? I'm really afraid that this government, we don't push it, if we don't push this government really to the left, there are going to be more opportunities for the youngest people for my age to become reactionary as they do in Venezuela, in Cuba, you know, it's something I'm really afraid, I'm really scared because now that I see it, as I tell you, people like, for example, my mom, my dad, my grandma, they're so happy with this government after being part of this neoliberal, but also these dictatorships that they weren't called like that in Mexico. So after the 80s, after the 60s, the 80s, after the fraud in 88 here in this country in 2006 with Amlo and Felipe Calderón, after all of those issues, of course, they think that this is the most progressive government that we can have. And it's not, it is not, it's not a feminist government also. I mean, I'm not trying to say this is not a progressive government. This is the best progressive than you have so far. Yeah, of course. The last government that we have like this was in 1980, like in the 40s, mid 40s with Lázaro Cardenas, that was the nationalist progressive government. And I think it's something like this. But now the, the situation in the, in the region, it's, I think we need more, you know, and this is opportunity. So there is a legitimate movement in the streets, a feminist movement, a young people, young student movement, and they're just looking for more with this, with, with Amlo. So I'm really scared that this, this government doesn't move to the left and they, they can be co-opted for, from the, like the far right movement and these people who now are in front of the national college. Well, let's talk about the far right movement. Well, there's a couple of things I'm thinking now, family is one, you know, with, as far as, you know, the prior governments you've seen, and one of the things that the president said when he was inaugurated, is that, you know, the country is the current situation in the country is the result of 30 years of neoliberalism. And, and that's a lot of what the progressivism is pushing back again. I think it's fascinating that, that the support is on the ground for him to become more progressive, you know, but it's not quite organized yet. But you saw in this petition drive how much energy was there and that people readily showed up to sign that petition to prosecute the prior president. So let's talk about what the conservative, the right wing people are doing. And this is a fascinating, I don't know for our viewers, if you've been reading or seeing anything about Frena, F-R-E-N-A like break. And this is hard right. They are making their political statement against progressivism in the so-called by pitching tents. They're not sleeping in these tents overnight, by the way, but they are coming from all over the country to pitch a tent in the so-called as a symbolic statement against progressivism for fear of going towards the direction of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, I think is their narrative. And every week there's more and more tents there. So their message is growing at least among themselves. Yeah, it's, it's the same as we've seen so many times with the Venezuelan opposition sometimes that really have a kind of flashbacks, you know? Of their speeches, what they're saying against socialism, communism, the one where one day we're going to become like Venezuelan in Mexico. They're saying all the time the same things, that the Venezuelan opposition or the fascist in Bolivia, or this quality, the, the, the, the, the, in Cuba. You know, all of them have the same speech. And I wasn't really, I mean, I've been afraid. It's like a lot of time now it is not something new. But I'm really scared about how people here are really confident that they are majority in the Congress, that they now are in presidency with AMLO, that they, they know that AMLO has enough support for like this reactionary movement. They don't have any opportunity to, to win elections or to have the Congress in their power. I already know that part. But at the same time in Venezuela, for example, they are not majority and they did a coup, they, they, they've been trying to, to, to, like a regime change. It's 1998, it's 1999, yeah. This kind, this attempt to coup in 2002. So they don't need to be majority to win something and to, to push an idea of regime change in this country. Also, they are supported by the oligarchy in this country, you know, it's, there are so many rules. throughout the atmosphere. Yeah, and they're, they're connected with oligarchy in Venezuela, in Colombia, in Honduras. I mean, this is not something new. But the problem is that these kind of speeches against the president, who is considered a communist by, by them, just for them, because it's not, it's never a doubt about it. Like hopefully one day you forget about it. You can't even sleep on the ground in your own tent. Yeah, exactly. So they were just a few in the main plus of this country without that. I mean, there were tents in the main plus because as you said, they weren't sleeping there. But now there are more and that or it's almost full now. Yes, we went, we were there on the 26th, the sixth anniversary of Ayotzina, but end up, Sokolo was about half full. And then we visited a week ago. Do we? Well, yeah, we're so Margo and it was like three quarters. So it's a growing statement and sentiment. One of the things that you mentioned was with, you know, the power of Morena inside the government. And the thing to be concerned about is that now that the more progressive party is in power with the majority. What do you do with that? You can't, you know, is the party lacks now that they actually hold power? Is that your concern that they're in office now? They hold power and there's not that attention to mobilizing community at the street level, keeping that base motivated and pushing. Yeah, I think something I remember of the time is what happened in Bolivia or in or even in Venezuela when a progressive movement wins the election, the presidential election. It is normal to see these leaders, union leaders, activists who were in the streets now being part of the government. The problem was or is nowadays here in Mexico that the streets are empty and they're taken by the opposition. Now the people who were in the street, like us, we were now most of them are in the government doing nothing. The party now they're been fighting for for the internal powers of the main party of this country and of Latin America. There are millions in this party. It's one of the biggest parties in the whole continent. Now they've been fighting again against each other with so much immature and they're not looking what happened in Latin America for the last 20 years, at least. So the opposition is taking advantage of that. The party is not in the central debate. Yeah, no, so now we will have new leaders of the party. We expect that they really consider the role, the real role of a party being the right of the movement. Yeah, and they need to be like to the left of the president. That's the role of a party. So they haven't been organized for the last two years. They've been fighting against each other. So that's why the opposition is taking advantage. And now with this campaign that we did during the last month, that's something that reactivates a lot of the of that movement that make make possible for us to take power. So now we are seeing next year our elections in this country, middle term elections. So that's why we we we see that during the next month we will have now several mobilizations. Or that's what I hope that the party, Morena realizes that this is something huge, that these kind of speeches in the main plaza of this country is now is now listened by the middle class of this country. At the beginning, there were only like in Venezuela, just white upper class people in the in the downtown. And now you can see that there are a lot of people who are part of the middle class who really believe what the media is saying, what these people are saying. So that's really dangerous. When this speech is copped and copped, a lot of these kind of people, it's not any it's not a joke anymore. And that's that's the reaction of the gradual erosion. Yeah, and they are like laughing all the times. Well, look at that. They are not even asleep in their tents. It's like that's not the issue. No, it's just that was growing the tent. Yeah. Yeah. The message is the tent, not whether they're occupying. Right. In the sense that the the former governments, the past governments, and we we've been repressed so many times in that plaza, you know, we took thousands of lives by the fascists, you know, these fascist speeches. It's like really are we and also I need to say a lot of the people who I talked to in downtown, they're really pissed just to see those kind of people. Now, sleeping in the main plaza, who, as I said, it took several lives of so many people who have been fighting for democracy in this country. And now they're like, you know, but I guess an issue of freedom of speech as well. They do have that right to. Yeah, the problem is that they express their dissatisfaction with the government. Yeah, I agree. But the point is that they are not. Yeah, they are not looking for a democratic way of push their ideas. They're calling for a day and they've been saying it. People of them are saying that they would burn alive people of Marina if there was the inquisition. And, you know, it's not a joke. People have been working in Venezuela and Nicaragua in the last year. So, you know, it's more than freedom of speech. That threat of for listeners, viewers, that threat of that verbal threat of burning people alive is not is reality in countries. And we've seen it in recent years in Venezuela and Nicaragua both. So it's it's not simply a threat. It's a real fear. Yeah, it has been carried out. But, you know, there's a let's talk about a couple of things with party politics specific, because I think sometimes the notion in the United States, North America regarding Morena, is that it's progressive, the president is progressive. There's this huge potential new wave of a new paradigm for Mexico. But one of the things you and I have talked about a number of times in the past is a concern is that Partido Morena is going to end up very much like Korea's Arianza de Paz in Ecuador, where the party is basically an electoral platform and not a movement of political expression to basically be the wings beneath the government. Yeah, Morena, Morena nowadays is just an electoral platform. It was created four years ago looking. Well, I'm a little decided to not to be a movement anymore. And he decided to take power through a political party. That's how they created Morena and they left the other party was Partido Revolutionario Democrático, like the Democratic Revolutionary Party that it become just another party in this country. And that's why I'm not anymore. We can be a new expression of democracy in this country. So that's why they created with the help and support of the social movements, with the teachers, with the students, with so many people. Who were fighting for democracy in Mexico for many decades. So it happened. They won the elections. There is no doubt about how Amo was elected democratically by 30 million of Mexicans in this country. So it was amazing at the very first moment. I couldn't even believe it. You know, I was I was shocked. I think a lot of people are on the continent. Yeah, he has been participated since 2006 for being president. And in 2018, he won. And we were like, now what, you know? But at the same time, it wasn't the same Amo as he used to be in 2006. That's really important. No, because he was so like the real leader of every social movement. But by 2018, he decided to make alliances with a leader key in this country. So that's why really he won. So it's part of the nature of the contradictions of Morena at this moment that you are seeing that you are a popular, progressive movement, party, government, and at the same time, you are defending. You are making so many alliance with the whole leadership in this country. So you have a national policy, the same people who were the leaders of the unions, of the movements, but you have the oligarchy. And of course, that you by the end, you want to have a progressive result. You agree? So it's part of the contradictions. And the point is that the party has been so weak for the last two years that, of course, the oligarchs are going to be winning in so many issues. The people are not anymore in the streets. They are not pushing a more progressive movement. They are also tired. They've been looking how to do it. But he's not a socialist. He's not an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist. No, he's a nationalist. Nationalist, he has been like a leader. Of course, he's not part of the elites of this country. But at the same time, if you don't have a progressive movement in the streets, of course, you won't take a real leftist decisions. This is the thing that I wonder in our last few minutes of our conversation, we could take what you've said and look, you know, at the at the U.S. elections in November, because so many of us progressives in the states have been loath to jump on the Biden bandwagon with the Democratic Party. We're in so many of us really looked at Bernie Sanders to be that progressive right, you know, not a socialist. He's not. He isn't a socialist. Not a leftist, but for progressive ideas and a more progressive economy that benefits, you know, working people, everyone. And so this is one of the things we see in the states, where, OK, everybody get behind Biden. We want to get the Democrats back in office. But what happens with progressives who join that if there is not a movement outside of the party on the ground in the community, organized and pushing as as all of you young people here in Mexico discovered when you went out those 15 days to have the petition signed. All of a sudden, you know, no, there's people begging for organizing and for pushing. And I think there's a lot of parallels to that right now in the states. We don't as progressive have that outside social movement, political movement, labor movement based in community to really push the Democrats should they regain the White House. Yeah, well, here we need to say that also the narratives are trying to say that the whole opposition to this government is just the people who are in downtown and they're not. In other hand, you have social movements defending their territory, defending life, who are not really like the opposition of Anglos, they've been there for so many decades. So we cannot say there are movements against Anglos or the so called for transformation, like what you know, they're not. They've been there for so many years, they've been fighting. And also, for example, there are so many, as I said, contradictions because I'm not, for example, in one of these states in Morelos, he said during his campaign that he will stop the thermoelectric plant for energy, you know. So he said that he would stop it and he promised to do it. And by the end, he continued. So, you know, these are people who voted for him. These are people who voted for him who don't really I don't consider them like the opposition. They're just against this system. They are anti-capitalist like the Esatile and the Zapatistas, you know, this is not a movement against Anglos. They've been there for so many years. So now those those movements were just blocked in the in the media because they have powerful speeches. They have powerful narratives and they were like, no, they don't matter. They don't matter because at the end, these corporate media are defending the interests of the oligarchs. So of course, they're not going to show that they are going to show the oligarchs who are really peas, who are in downtown, saying we're going to burn people of Morena in this country. So there are so many movements. My I'm really scared that this government doesn't listen to the real movements who've been taking the street for so many years. And the people who are legitimate in these movements become part of this neo-Nazis fascist movement who is growing each day in this country. And we've seen it in Ecuador, for example, this Bolivia. In Bolivia, the people who are defending the territories, the people who are defending the territory, they're not against the government. But if the government doesn't doesn't listen to these people, of course, they're going to become a part of the opposition, you know. So I think we're seeing this kind of contradictions every single day. And I need to say again, I really consider that this is the best president that we've ever had for the last 50 years or more in this country. But it is not enough. It is not enough considering that we have these kind of experiences in the rest of Latin America for the last 20 years. And we need to see what consequences it had like not wait. Yeah, not wait, but to be proactive. Yeah, that's where that movement. Or again, if you want to support Amno, do it. But at the same time, Amno is not enough. Social democracy is not enough in this moment of the history in the world. It is not enough. So we need to solve those kind of contradictions inside and outside the government so we can push to a leftist you know, organization movement, but we need to take the streets. We need to push pressure if there are so many allies, you know, it's not like, oh, we are a lot in the streets and we are the only radical movement. No, like now there are so many people who I really appreciate their job, their work in the government. So I think this is the opportunity I see as an opportunity to go to the left in this country and to support the leftist movements in the rest of Latin America. I mean, the U.S. of course, yeah. Well, our viewers aren't making necessarily going to like us. You got too hard on the left in the United States, but it's but it is a matter of degree, right? And you know, to become more progressive, the government needs to be pushed from the community level up. But also the government needs to know it has the support of a wide percentage of the population, which will help it. So you need the people, the Morena Party, and I would say the progressives in the states in the government. And then you need the movement on the ground to reinforce that support and also keep pushing. And I think as we close this conversation, that that is really what progressives need to be doing in the states as well, not just vote for a democratic executive, but to be organized and pushing so that yeah, I guess I get compromised. I've been saying this for the last month, every single day, when since we started the campaign against the former presidents, this is a campaign that even we we couldn't have done it. I'm looking to have done it without any campaign and without any signature. But at the end, he decided to do another petition when he saw that he had the support. So that's like the example, the perfect example to say, of course, maybe I'm always trying to solve communism or something. But if he doesn't see anything in the streets, if he he lives up, he's alone and I mean, democracy is not only going to vote. And I said this to so many generations, you know, from the youngest to the oldest. It's like democracy didn't start last 2018, July 2018, when you want something that we build every single day. It's not enough with voting. It's not enough with collecting signatures. It's a day to organize in every single place that we have. In the schools, in the fabrics, in the in the neighborhood. And it's not only like something really idealistic, it's something that it works. Yeah, it works. You can't you can't simply change politics by voting. There has to be that movement behind the vote. Yeah, I think now that I'm thinking in the US, it's something that happened with Bernie Sanders, you know. Now the conversation turned to the left with with a movement, a mass movement like he had last during the last months. So I think it's something possible, something that we are obligated to do. It's not only like, oh, we should do it like, no, we had to do it. We should go vote and occupy every single space that we can for these kind of discussions and not just let even our congressmen or people who decided for us is like, no, we need to be sure that they are listening to us. But also that we are building something else, something different. And I think you're in Mexico. It's the opportunity to go to left even when I know he doesn't have like real progressive politics, for example, towards feminism. He's really conservative. But at the same point, there is so many feminists in the government who are pushing to a left these narratives, these organizations, these public politics, you know, so it's something possible. And I think in Mexico, we have now the opportunity. And I think for the next month, something is going to happen for for good. It goes here and that next year we have new term elections. Well, let's have another conversation about the midterm elections. And let's have a conversation after the US elections in November. And there's a lot of good comparing and contrasting we can do, particularly with movement building states, depending on who wins on November 6th. It's the movement building the social, the labor educators, as you say, every space to give the government to push the government. If it's not exactly where you want it to be. But also to reaffirm that the government has your support. It's a two-way, it's a two-way street. Definitely. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. It's a really fun format and different for us and different for our viewers. And so I hope you join us again next week. We air what the F is going on in Latin America every Wednesday, 12 p.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific on Code Pink YouTube. And also don't forget to catch Code Pink Radio on WBAI WPSW every Thursday, 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you next week.