Mexico Popular Congress: Is It a New Start for Citizen Power? Julio Hernandez Lopez - La Jornada
go to original February 8, 2014

In size and mood, the Popular Congress was successful. Some 2,500 people gathered on the esplanade of the Monument to the Revolution (the rented chairs numbered 2000) from around the country to participate in building a movement to join forces to reverse the Peña Nieto reforms, in particular the energy reform, and confront the ongoing neo-Salinist project politically and through social action.

The most important resolutions were precisely on these issues. One involved the politcal revocation of the energy reform approved on December 20. Another proposed organizing a public protest on March 18 (a day which is now even more symbolic [anniversary of President Lázaro Cárdenas' expropriation of oil from foreign companies in 1938]) in the Zocalo [central plaza] and in the greatest number of public places in the country.  Wednesday's meeting issued the express call for the maximum unity of progressive forces, seeking links with the main personalities on the left (Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Andrés Manuel López Obrador being the primary ones).

The conference, which started by giving the floor to citizens chosen by lot, featured a remarkable mosaic of opinions and proposals and involved leaders of unions and social and civic movements.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

MV Note: President Carlos Salinas, 1988-94, initiated the privitization of state owned businesses and the creation of NAFTA and other commercial and property laws which opened Mexico to the global economic forces of the "neo-liberal free market". Peña Nieto is viewed as continuing this "project" with his reforms.

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