Excerpted from David Bacon:

“The hundred organizations that cooperated in organizing the zocalo protest called their rally the National Day of Indignant Mexicans. Their purpose was to present an alternative to the “official” picture painted by Calderon, and to call for a different direction for the country. They charged that, in five years, the number of Mexicans in poverty has grown by ten million, that working income has dropped by a third and that three million more people find themselves jobless. The crisis has hit especially hard at young people, who are the fastest growing segment of the population. Seven million of them can’t find work and have no money to go to school.”

The background:

“Calderon’s policies, which have produced these results, are part of a program of economic liberalization opening Mexico to private, domestic and especially foreign capital. Former Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador, who ran against Calderon five years ago and, most people believe, defeated him, says these reforms have been “imposed on Mexico from outside over the last two decades, including labor law reform, energy reform, fiscal reform and education reform.” By outside, Lopez Obrador means from the colossus of the north – the US. In the wake of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, Mexico underwent a terrible economic crisis in which it lost a million jobs in a single year. The Clinton administration bailed out the government and its bondholders and, in the end, Mexico lost its financial system to Wall Street and London banks. Since then, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have indirectly written Mexico’s economic policies.

“At the same time,” Lopez Obrador charges, “the fight against inequality and poverty is not on the national agenda.” In 2010, Mexico had 53 million people living in poverty, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology. Half the country’s population lives in poverty and almost 20 percent in extreme poverty. Some estimate that there are more workers in the economy’s informal sector than in the formal one. Even for those working, according to the Bank of Mexico, 95 percent of the 800,000 jobs created in 2010 paid only $10 a day. Yet, in a Tijuana or Juarez supermarket, a gallon of milk can cost even more than it would on the US side. In a recent diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, the US government admits, “The net wealth of the 10 richest people in Mexico – a country where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty – represents roughly 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.” Carlos Slim became the world’s richest man when a previous president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, privatized the national telephone company and sold it to him. Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who owns TV Azteca, is now worth $8 billion, and Emilio Azcárraga Jean, who owns Televisa, is worth $2.3 billion. Both helped Calderon get elected in 2006.“