An article I wrote regarding developments in Oaxaca since 2006 was published last month in Solidarity's Against the Current magazine. Below is an excerpt, here is the full article.
“THINK ABOUT IT,” a popular bumper sticker read, “6 more years would be 86.” On July 4, 2010, the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca held statewide elections. Despite open vote-buying and other fraud perpetrated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), it was not enough to ensure victory on this occasion, thereby ending 81 years of uninterrupted PRI rule in Oaxaca.
On December 1, 2010, the state will have the first non-PRI governor since the consolidation of the Mexican Revolution, which began 100 years earlier.
Few people, however, are under the impression that the triumph of Gabino Cué, the victorious candidate for governor, signifies a complete victory in and of itself. In the end, little more than 25% of eligible voters cast their ballots for him. Moreover, career politician though he is, even Cué will be hard pressed to manage the very unstable coalition that brought him into power, which consists of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), and the center-left parties of Convergencia and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
More than anything, the vote represented not support for Cué, but popular anger with the PRI, which translated itself into a punishment vote directed primarily against current governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, who during his six-year term has fostered a climate of severe corruption, impunity and violence, which most notably led to the uprising in 2006 that is the focus of this article.
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