As Mexican economy stagnates, ruling Morena party imposes state law to suppress social protests

Don Knowland

On August 1 the so-called Law of the Garrotte, which effectively criminalizes opposition demonstrations, marches and protests, went into effect in oil-rich Tabasco, the home state of Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). The majority of the state Congress made up of deputies from AMLO’s party, the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), rammed through the legislation.

The law imposes a six- to 13-year sentence for interfering with “the execution of public private works and works or roads or communication channels,” and for “the extortion, coercion, attempt to impose or impose fees or totally or partially prevent free movement of people and vehicles, machinery, specialized equipment or the like.” The sentence increases to 10 to 20 years if violence accompanies an attempt to impose fees, or minors are used in blockades.

Morena depicted the legislation as an attempt to end shakedowns related to public and private works. But it has unleashed a firestorm of opposition from Mexico’s other major parties, the former ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolution), as well as the Party of National Action (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

While the handwringing by these right-wing bourgeois parties, all of which are responsible for bloody acts of repression, amounts to a hypocritical political gesture, the charges they level are nonetheless true.

The PRI charged that the Morena deputies were “acting as accomplices of a regime that wants to replace politics and dialogue with brute force.” The Tabasco PRI deputy who had proposed the higher sentence for extortion claimed he had not intended to “criminalize social protests,” or impede the right to free expression.

Another Tabasco PRI deputy, Ingrid Pantoja, said that the law is a “betrayal of the people,” intended as a pretext “to inhibit the right of citizens to exercise any type of demonstration against the federal, state government, municipality or any other public entity, even if they are peaceful.” Pantoja gave as an example that any citizen could go to prison for protesting the privatization of water promoted by the Morena mayor of the Tabasco city of Villahermosa.

The national president of the right-wing PAN, Marko Cortés Mendoza, called the law an attempt by the Morena government “to build a totalitarian and controlling system, which has gradually limited the checks and balances of all Mexicans.” He said PAN did not oppose “regulating” marches, but ruled out “repressing and criminalizing those who exercise their constitutional right to march in protest.”

Cortés Mendoza said “it is paradoxical” to see how AMLO—who 26 years ago seized oil wells for more than 10 days, generating losses according to Pemex, the national oil company, of more than 40 million pesos—now seeks to stifle such actions. PAN Senator Kenia López Rabadán said López Obrador would have faced more than 50 years in jail under the new law, since he led seizures of oil wells on four occasions.

The Extraordinary National Directorate (DNE) of the PRD said the law was intended to “protect the interests and businesses of Morena, and not to protect Tabasco citizens ... they just want to defend juicy businesses that will give them a lot of money.”

The DNE emphasized that “it is obvious that said law seeks to avoid protests before the imminent construction of the [$8 billion] Dos Bocas refinery by Pemex, to begin in August … money is what moved them to make those constitutional changes, and now it turns out that blocking a street is more painful than a homicide, or someone accused of rape in the state of Tabasco.”