Moving the masses -- Mexico City and across borders

It's official... Sunday's pro-democracy (or pro-AMLO, depending on how you look at it) demonstation did attract over a million people. The ALWAYS trustworthy Kelly Arthur Garrett writes in today's Mexico City Herald:

The million-plus Mexicans who gathered peacefully in Mexico City´s Zócalo Sunday may have participated in history, not just for their record-setting numbers but as mass inaugurators of what´s being billed as a new and permanent pro-democracy movement. But opponents of Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who led the march and rally, moved quickly Monday to accuse the PRD candidate of organizing the massive mobilization as an "incendiary" tactic designed to influence the contested election´s outcome. ... López Obrador has insisted since shortly after the July 2 vote that fraud perpetrated by the ruling PAN and facilitated by high officials in the Federal electoral Institute (IFE) tipped the balance in favor of Calderón. On Monday, he characterized the fraud as "old style" - such as ballot box stuffing and tally-tampering - rather than "cybernetic." The PRD candidate said that a certification of a Calderón victory by the Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) - which he said he would accept "under protest" - would only underscore the need for an ongoing, mass democracy movement. "It´s unacceptable that a privileged group can use money and dirty tricks to illegally impose an illegitimate president," he said Sunday. "That´s why the general objective of this movement is the defense of democracy."

President Fox had to fly the whole way to St. Petersburg to get a few minutes with a guy who, thanks to "money and dirty tricks" is -- maybe, perhaps -- an "illegitimate president." Only to have George W. tell him that his goal, an immigration agreement with the United States, is dead. Nothing will be done before the end of Fox's term at the end of November (and coincidentally, just after the U.S. Congressional elections). Is this a failure for Fox or for Bush? Flying to Madrid for the "Encuentro Iberoamericano sobre Migración y Desarrollo" (Iberio-American Conference on Migration and Development), Fox said that immigration should be seen as an opportunity rather than a problem for destination societies. He spoke very little on its affects within the emigrant country however. At the same conference, the Subsecretary for Population, Immigration and Religious Affairs (all lumped together as a historical amomaly ... foreign missionaries and Spanish priests being at one time the bane of the government's existence), Lauro López Sánchez, called for the elimination of discriminatory policies and violence against migratory labor. And, in the "turnabout is fair play" department, runners up in the State elections in Chiapas are accusing the PRD governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía of using state resources to favor his party over opposition groups, including PAN and PRI. More later