La Jornada: Julio Hernández López
Translated by Sally Seward
Seven and a half months after its first legal action against Elba Esther Gordillo (last February 27), Peña Nieto's administration has brought a new accusation against the ex-leader of the SNTE [National Union of Education Workers]. There is no act that is legally unacceptable in the sudden addition of charges (tax fraud), since the prosecutor has the ability to promote processes according to his particular point of view. However, it calls attention to the fact that this new attack has happened right after the federal justice system approved an amparo [appeal] in favor of the once powerful woman from Chiapas, based on errors attributed to a great inefficiency on the part of the federal Attorney General's office led by the supposedly meticulous Jesús Murillo Karam.
Apart from the new procedures, the additional charges of illegal activities leave the impression that Peña Nieto's team is trying to keep Gordillo from walking out the doors of the medical section of the penitentiary where the judicial process took place, and that the current federal government began this action against her with unambiguous political motives, specifically that of showing the forcefulness of those who recently arrived at Los Pinos [Mexican White House] and giving viability to the reformist project that is not looking so good these days.
The first powerful strike from Peña Nieto (admirably highlighted at the time by a lot of the media) did not report the political dividends expected by the official strategists. It is true that there was not an energetic reaction on the part of the Gordillo faction dominant in the union structure. The slap to Elba Esther was swallowed without major complications by the mafia leadership, and it soon became comfortable with the designation of Juan Díaz de la Torre, from Jalisco, as her successor, as he ran the threat of meeting the same luck as his previous boss in the case of any attempt at insubordination. But the union apparatus was reduced to a shamefully ineffective situation, forced to remain silent and immobile while Peña Nieto advanced with the imposition of his "educational reform".
Into this reorganization of the blackboard barged the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers [CNTE], an instrument in a fight separate from the maneuvers and interests of Gordillo, which was present in certain sections of the country and acted cyclically based on demands from the union. The abatement of the official unionism and the lack of political sensitivity by the new federal government team then created the conditions that the CNTE took advantage of to legitimately take the flag of the opposition to the "educational reform", with an ability to pressure which overtook the state governments and that of the capital, and which ended up changing the organization, marginalized until just recently, into a formal representative for the purposes of teachers and a point of convergence for other political and social fights.
Removed from power and jailed, the woman who efficiently controlled the teachers for decades can no longer do anything to help restore the old balance of power (through pressure and concession, services to those in power and blackmail) that allowed for the long conditional peace of the majority of Mexican teachers. The new leaders are not teacher trainers but senior Peña Nieto government officials: Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong and, especially, the golden boy Under-Secretary of Government Relations, Luis Miranda, openly displacing the Secretary of Education, Emilio Chuayffet, who is relegated to giving solemnly superfluous speeches.
But the Peña Nieto group cannot give itself the luxury of seeming stupid at the moment it remands Professor Gordillo, so it has decided to write new accusatory charges to avoid the ridicule of seeing the adversary set free. They are not moves towards justice, but rather political conveniences. Elba Esther could be remanded with high possibilities of success because of the many illegal acts that she committed in complicity with those in power, from both the PRI and the PAN, but on this occasion she is being prosecuted only on some of the excesses that she committed regarding money.
On another topic: Miguel Ángel Mancera yesterday announced an important correction to the most recent of his loud blunders. The center where goods are being gathered for storm victims will be "compacted" and there will be space in that Zócalo [main plaza] for a book fair to be put in place, which had been proposed arbitrarily a day before. Just as the last minute rush was visible at the press conference in which the organizers of the fair found out about the bitter news a minute before it was made public, now the head of the government of Mexico City mentioned that this weekend they will work to create, as quickly as possible, what 24 hours before he had moved to a nebulous date subject to certain "conditions" being created which, it seems, yesterday were well looked upon by the main federal authority.
The revival of that important fair brings with it a reopening of the public space par excellence that is the Plaza of the Constitution [Zócalo]. As Mancera announced, the containment fences will be taken down and the same will probably happen with the groups of federal police that virtually have the Zócalo held hostage. In that way, it should be possible for protest groups, like the CNTE, to go there and eventually set themselves up, even if it were representatively, in some part of the square. We will soon see if the liberation of the Zócalo is true or if it just signifies another trick to occupy the plaza using subsequent noble aims.
And, while the ex-governor from the PAN from San Luis Potosí, Marcelo de los Santos (later named the fierce director of the Mint of Mexico by Felipe Calderón), in the first instance has been disqualified for 20 years from occupying a public post and fined with almost 8 billion pesos by the Comptroller General of Mexico, as a consequence of the diversion of public resources, specifically of a loan for 15 billion pesos at the end of his term, I hope you have a good weekend!
Twitter: @julioastillero
Spanish Original