#IAm132: A symbol of outrage and resistance

Here we offer a chronological reconstruction of #YoSoy132 (#I am132) in its first four months of life, tracing its evolution and explaining the beginnings of this energetic, playful and intelligent movement. These months express the process the movement has gone through and the trends defining its direction.

Jorge Alonso

The propaganda coming out of Mexico’s 2012 presidential campaign presented Enrique Peña Nieto, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate, as having won even before voters went to the polls. Rigged surveys gave him an unbeatable lead. And in the seven years prior to the elections, the powerful television consortium Televisa dedicated itself to forging an image of Peña as the future President despite his shortage of good qualities and his poor governing of the state of Mexico.

Peña Nieto: A violent governor

Using an international index to determine the quality of democracy, well documented studies of all the states in the Mexican republic found the state of Mexico, governed by Peña Nieto, trailing in positive items and leading in negative ones. In 2011 the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Center published a book on the systemic violations of human rights during his government. These included criminalizing social protest, leaving real criminals unpunished and persecuting the innocent. His administration saw an alarming increase in femicides. The publication gave concrete facts showing the state of Mexico to be one of the most institutionally broken and corrupt, in which the rule of law was absent and authoritarianism prevailed.

The center published another book this year that delved further into the six years of impunity surrounding the Atenco case, one of the emblematic cases of repression for which Peña is held responsible. In May 2006 the police in Atenco carried out an operation in which they violently attacked protestors against the construction of an airport on cooperatively held land. Dozens of women were sexually assaulted during the operation. The wife of one of the leaders of the Atenco incident stood up to Peña during an event of the Peace Movement in which the presidential candidates participated and stated, “While you were governor of the state of Mexico you ordered the operation against our people. Your government caused the violence. It was an act of vengeance planned by you against the people who resisted being thrown off their lands. You are responsible for two murders that have gone unpunished and for the fact that a band of rapists is still acting with the protection of the police you created. You used all the powers of your government to condemn those who were only defending their land to 112 years of prison. What you represent is an arrogant and violent government.”

“Atenco is not forgotten!”

On May 11 of this year Peña Nieto spoke at the Jesuits’ Ibero-American University in Mexico City as a presidential candidate. It was a well-organized event for which his campaign team had invited a large number of sympathizers from outside the university to occupy the main seats. University students with posters criticizing the candidate tried to enter but Peña’s security personnel wouldn’t let them in. Some of them made it inside but without their posters.

When Peña ended his boring political spiel, these students criticized his actions in Atenco. Peña took the microphone to emphatically assert that he had decided on the Atenco operation to impose order. At that point a woman student shouted that he was a murderer and a chorus of voices outraged by the candidate’s arrogance and lack of self-criticism ordered him to leave their university. Thus cornered, Peña hid in a restroom and finally fled the university among shouts of “Atenco is not forgotten!”

Peña’s team tried to minimize what happened, claiming it was a small group, while the president of the PRI accused them of not being students but rather outsiders manipulated by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate. The students, outraged they were not respected as people thinking on their own, responded by making a video in which 131 of them showed their student ID cards. Within minutes this video went viral throughout Mexico’s Internet social networks and beyond. Students from other private and public educational institutions showed their solidarity with these students by holding up their own student ID cards and claiming I am number 132. This quickly sparked a spontaneous movement among the social networks called #IAm132.

From social networks to the streets

A week after this unexpected echo, the young people moved from internet social networking to the streets and on May 18 they held the first massive demonstration against Peña and the PRI. There were marches in the capital and in other major cities in the country. With that the Spanish newspaper El Pais announced the birth of a Mexican movement of outraged youth. The marches multiplied creatively across the country. The youth’s main demands were democratization of the media and criticisms of the media’s manipulation of the campaign in favor of the PRI candidate. But they seemed to be cooking up something larger, something beyond the elections.

On May 26 in the emblematic Plaza of the Three Cultures, Tlatelolco, where dozens of students were killed by the Mexican government on October 2, 1968, young people from a variety of universities joined in an assembly where they came out against the PRI candidate for representing the business class, which wanted him imposed as President. They urged citizens not to think that the elections were already decided, as the media kept saying. On that day they agreed to combine their social network activism with taking to the streets.

“The Mexican spring”

On May 29 the coordination of the #IAm132 movement stated that Mexico’s economic and political system did not respond to people’s demands. They made right to information and freedom of expression their main demands, and declared themselves autonomous, nonpartisan and anti-neoliberal, and promoters of an informed vote. They demanded that an upcoming presidential debate be broadcast on a national channel rather than the weaker channels they were going to use.

On May 30 the movement held its first general assembly in Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), in which 54 universities were represented. There were group discussions then a plenary session. They rejected the return of the old regime, which they identified as the face of Peña. They declared they had suffered economic crises and electoral frauds and were the heirs of the previous student struggles. They demanded a political trial of outgoing President Calderon for the thousands of dead left by his failed anti-drug campaign and a separate trial of Peña for the repression he ordered at Atenco. They called this event “the Mexican Spring.”

During the first week of June there were marches throughout the country repudiating Peña and the media attempt to impose him as president. The movement was fed up with the manipulation of information directed by the Televisa station, which had led to its creation. It stated that it had sufficient evidence of media manipulation to see that Peña was imposed.

Against “a soap-opera democracy”

The #IAm132 movement was also building in other states of the republic. Wherever the PRI candidate appeared in public there were student groups rejecting him. On June 10 the movement organized a large carnival in the country’s capital. They demanded that the television stations cover the news impartially and not contribute to a “soap-opera democracy.” They chanted “Peña, the TV is yours, but the streets are ours!”

The movement took shape with its ability to discuss and debate. On June 13 it held a festival of lights outside the Televisa station to protest the actions of the television station. They shouted “Turn off the TV and turn on the truth!” On June 14 they demonstrated in front of the Canadian Embassy in solidarity with that country’s student movement and that same day met with the Chilean student leader, Camila Vallejo, who declared herself as 132.

The second assembly of #IAm132 was held at the Ibero-American University. The declaration of principles—nonpartisan, nonviolent and pluralistic—was approved and they agreed to strengthen what they called the “defend the vote brigade.”

On June 19 the movement organized a third debate which was broadcast on Internet. Candidate Peña did not attend. Three days later they held the third inter-university general assembly in which the various commissions—communications, press, logistics, brigade work, finances and security—were formed. They also agreed to seek ways to change the neoliberal economic model and the education model.

“A vigil for democracy”

The night before the July 1 elections they promoted a demonstration they called “en vela por la democracia.” Vela means both candle and vigil, while en vela means staying up all night. They carried lighted candles as they marched. It was the first time in the history of Mexican elections that a citizens’ march demanded clean elections on the very eve of those elections.

The coercion and massive buying of votes was evident on election day. Throughout the country students marched against the imposition of Peña in the nondemocratic election process. The movement distributed 16 pages in which they listed the results of the citizens’ oversight committee and the serious irregularities attacking a free vote that occurred on election day.

On July 4 the movement held its fifth national assembly in the UNAM with representatives from 108 public and private universities and 250 observers. Each local assembly shared its point of view. The assembly pointed out that the imposition process had been conceived several years earlier by the national and foreign powers behind the scenes. Thus the assembly decided to camp out around the electoral headquarters. They argued that those in power took advantage of people’s poverty, that the media manipulation was massive and that the opinion polls had been tampered with. The result was a marred process with institutions deliberately incapable of preventing and sanctioning the anomalies aimed at imposing the PRI candidate. Election day was filled with irregularities and unlawful actions that provoked outrage by a large sector of the Mexican population.

Repudiation of Peña and Televisa

The movement held the first national student gathering on July 6 in the town of Huexca, the state of Morelos, with 354 representatives from 26 universities and 8 states. The meeting was designed more for reflection than for coming up with resolutions. For two months the Huexca community has been fighting to defend its lands against the government’s construction of installations that put the population at high risk. The #IAm132 movement gave its support to the people from Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala in their struggles.

The next day, 70,000 people, not all of them from the student movement, marched on the capital in repudiation of Peña, Televisa, the PRI party and the retail store chain Soriana, which had participated in the vote-buying with its credit cards. The march had no bandstand, speakers, speeches or leaders. It was only a citizens’ repudiation. There were also marches in 28 other cities in a majority of states throughout the country—20,000 marched in Guadalajara alone.

Another of the movement’s actions was to go on July 11 to the embassies of those countries that had congratulated Peña to make clear to them that the legal electoral process was not over until the authorities issued their findings on the challenges of serious improprieties in the electoral process. To recognize Peña prematurely implied endorsing these illegal acts, about which they provided information in a detailed report.

Symbol of resistance

In the second week of July the movement held its sixth assembly in the National School of Anthropology and History, in which 173 spokespeople from 115 local assemblies attended to discuss a plan of action. A few days later there was a second massive march in the capital city against Peña’s imposition. Many wore #IAm132 tee-shirts. Again there were no speakers but they formed groups that became small assemblies.

The First National Convention against the Imposition was held in the village of Atenco. In attendance were 2,600 delegates representing 360 organizations from 25 states. It was organized by the People’s Front in Defense of the People, dissident teachers, electricians, peasant farmers and #IAm132. They analyzed the evidence and concluded that the electoral process had been corrupt for the past six years, during which the campaign headed by Televisa to promote the figure of Peña had intensified, paid for by millions in public resources.

Government programs—credit programs to the countryside, the food program, the program to support working mothers, the aid in housing construction—had also been used to buy votes. Immense amounts of public funds from 20 states and thousands of mayors had illegally been used to shore up the Peña campaign. The trade unions in support of the PRI were seen to be using coercion in the voting process. It was verified that on election day some polls were only open half the day, exchanges of money were proven by photographs, ballot boxes were stolen, Monex and Soriana credit cards were distributed to buy votes... The electoral body in charge of the election process saw all of this and became an accomplice.

“It’s dangerous to return to the PRI”

Their analysis was that the PRI had introduced neoliberalism to Mexico and Peña was committed to deepening it. But the greatest danger of returning to the repressive and authoritarian PRI regime was that it would worsen corruption, state violence, government in service to the drug traffickers, violation of human rights, etc. They announced they would fight to stop Peña from becoming President.

UNESCO-decorated Mexican sociologist and critic Pablo González Casanova urged the convention participants to form an umbrella organization made up of the various organizations, linked into networks of collectives that would encourage dialogue and fraternal debate in making decisions, without making concessions that would involve negotiating democracy, justice or the general national interest. Atenco’s leader asked that they not stop with just marches and public statements but move forward to more forceful actions.

They agreed on a national demonstration against fraud, in which there would be boycotts against the businesses that had participated in the electoral fraud, ringing or takeovers of Televisa offices and closing of highways. The convention was understood as a long process, a place to link up the plans of action and struggle coming from the local assemblies and going beyond election issues. The organization was declared to be broad, inclusive, sovereign, democratic and horizontal, with rotating representation and commissions and with long- and short-range objectives.

The surrounding of Televisa

In the middle of July youth who had not been accepted to UNAM held an assembly on the esplanade in front of the President’s house and joined the #IAm132 movement. Between July 20 and 22, the third massive march against Peña was held in the capital city and in 18 other states. In those same days 69 local assemblies in public and private universities studied what they would do for the opening of the Olympic Games in London, which would be broadcast by Televisa. They decided to nonviolently and symbolically surround Televisa—which they called “the television station of the lie”—for 24 hours on July 27. Among their many different banners was one that said “The PRI can buy the bed but not the dreams.”

They also read a position statement that began, “When we arrived there was the world and we were already a hungry people with centuries of oppression. We are an accumulation of discontent... We are the effect of outrage. We take on the dignity of the defamed and their fight as our own....We say #IAm132 which means directly face the insult and emphatically refuse to bow our heads. It means don’t accept their depiction as the truth....”

They stressed that their movement is a student movement that is social, political, nonpartisan, nonviolent, anti-neoliberal and independent of political parties, candidates and organizations that answer to an electoral program. They defined themselves as a democratic movement that makes decisions through local and general assemblies, goes beyond the present electoral scene and will continue to fight to profoundly transform Mexico.

They strongly criticized the fact that over half of the Mexican population lives in poverty while a few enjoy obscene wealth and that economically abandoning the countryside produces migrants. They opposed the mega-projects that threaten collective rights. They harshly criticized the disinformation and the fact that a minority controls public opinion and that information has become a commodity to be bought and sold. They emphasized that they had decided to go forward and not turn back and they proposed to build true democracy in Mexico.

They presented the Mexican people with a program of struggle including six major points: democratize the mass media, transform the education model, change the neoliberal economic model, abandon the current national security model so peace can be restored, achieve political transformation and promote connections between social movements with solidarity and respect for autonomy. At the same time they recognized themselves as one among many actors expressing social discontent.

That day’s symbolic peaceful takeover of Televisa, which was protected by thousands of police, was an historic event, expressing the struggle against the monopolies that control and manipulate information by excluding society. As in all previous demonstrations of the #IAm132 movement, an atmosphere of creativity and festiveness prevailed. A similar action was held in 12 other cities in the country.

Democracy abused in the elections

Towards the end of July the movement held its seventh general assembly in the city of Morelia, which was attended by 104 representatives from local assemblies. As in all previous meetings, they were able to clearly differentiate consensus from dissent. Among the issues of consensus they defended were the way of working together and participating through local assemblies, that those assemblies were the basis of the movement’s coordination and that the general assembly was the governing body. They recognized the need to decentralize the structures so they could be adjusted to the specific local, state and regional issues and problems. One the issues of dissent was disagreement on how the local assemblies should be composed—whether only of students or open to other sectors of society. Another problem was how to define the criteria for representation and how to establish what coordination methods should be adopted.

The declaration of the academic #IAm132 assembly on the electoral process was presented in the Morelia assembly. The academics called it an abuse of Mexico’s fragile democracy. The number and severity of the irregularities had been overlooked by the institutions in charge of safeguarding the process. The media manipulation in favor of the Peña campaign had been obvious and there was fully documented massive coercion and buying of votes. They also criticized the National Action Party (PAN) and the candidate of the party known as PANAL for accepting their defeat as early as the presentation of the preliminary voting results. They considered the fact that the media called Peña the winner based on results from a sample of voters a mockery of legality.

Evidence against the
imposition of Peña Nieto

In early August the #IAm132 movement reported that it had 52 local sites of representation internationally—the most active being in London, Barcelona, Madrid, New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Quebec.

The communications and press commission warned that the health assembly, made up of medical students and unemployed doctors and nurses had information that Peña was planning to privatize the health services. The movement also published the second 100-page report of electoral irregularities and crimes, which specified the use of government programs and other public resources for campaign activities, buying of electoral credentials, illegal campaigning before and during the actual voting, buying of votes and coercion, stealing and burning of ballots, voting crimes involving violence, irregularities in the candidate listings on ballots and threats against observers. Attached to all of this were videos that showed these election irregularities. The document was based on 2,700 pieces of evidence.

The provisional national coordinating committee met in Guadalajara on August 4 and 5 to prepare for the second National Convention against the Imposition of Peña. The #IAm132 Movement and 130 organizations from various places in the country had an active presence. The objective was to create a broad national front to implement strong actions against Peña Nieto’s imposition to keep him from assuming the presidency and to lay the groundwork to fight the foreseeable structural reforms the PRI party would promote.

On August 11, the movement held a sit-in to reject the imposition in front of the national PRI headquarters, in which they silently read from among a pile of books. It was a reminder to people that during the 2011 International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Peña had been unable to answer what three books he had read, and couldn’t recall who had written the only one he did remember.

The movement’s eighth general assembly was held at UNAN on the 18th and 19th, with 136 assembly representatives and 210 observers in attendance. They did a political analysis, discussed organizational problems and worked more on preparing for the Second National Convention against the Imposition. One of the disagreements at this assembly was about how to prevent a nucleus in the capital city from centralizing decisions. It was decided that each region would discuss issues beforehand so they could arrive at the general assembly with clear points and the decentralization would be reflected in the facts. On the 19th the movement blockaded the daily paper Milenio, which was acting in conjunction with Televisa and was openly partial to the PRI candidate.

Peña Nieto imposed
by the electoral tribunal

On august 30 the electoral tribunal, without speaking to the merits of the documented accusations of multiple abuses, decreed the elections clean, legal and exemplary; thus Enrique Peña Nieto was President-elect. The #IAm132 movement repudiated this inconsistent ruling and held many demonstrations in which they depicted the death of Mexican democracy. Each assembly carried out the actions decided upon by its own members: demonstrations in front of public offices, the takeover of toll booths on highways and very active participation on Internet’s social networks.

On September 1, following Calderón’s last presidential report, the movement held several events to present a 300-page counter-report pointing out the outgoing government’s lies, corruption, complicity and state of exception, backing it up with data and analysis. Peña’s imposition seeks to finish up the work of Presidents Fox and Calderón in which the private sector benefits at the expense of the people. The poet peace activist Javier Sicilia, on tour in the US those days trying to make the victims of both sides of the drug war visible, endorsed the counter-report as clearly demonstrating Calderón’s lies.

On September 4 the #IAm132 movement’s legal and human rights committee reported that all levels of authorities had reacted violently to the many demonstrations against the electoral tribunal’s validation of the presidential election, particularly violating demonstrators’ human rights in Nuevo León, Veracruz, Tabasco, Jalisco, Yucatán and the capital city.

Since the University of Saltillo authorities opposed the movement’s use of it for the ninth general assembly, Bishop Raul Vera offered a retreat house. Everyone attending worked to ensure an autonomous and non-violent citizen agenda. They unanimously approved the proposal to make the National Convention an arena of convergence to nourish and strengthen the social processes and better prepare for the struggle with the arrival of the Peña government. More than 200 students—62 spokespeople and 91 observers—were in attendance. They decided to participate in local grassroots Independence celebrations and thus replace the traditional cry of “Long live Mexico without the PRI!” with alternative nonviolent events instead of the official events and military parade.

They changed Televisa’s script

As its own writings attest, the #IAm132 movement was born of disgust at the cynicism of the political elite cut off from society, personified in the repressive candidate as an enthronement of the old authoritarian regime. This regime never
left and the false illusion of a democratic transition has now gone up in smoke. The movement straddles two protests: opposition to the repression of the popular movement in Atenco and repudiation of the present powers’ ability to impose an oppressor as President, mainly through the mass media.

Born of a specific event, it had immediate and generalized repercussions for solidarity among students who refused to allow their dignity to be violated. They rejected the candidate and his party for all they represent of corruption and violence and rejected the media that manipulated information to orchestrate a political imposition.

The movement proposed to stop this imposition, first by exposing it and then by seeking ways to see that the presidential election would be based on an informed and free vote. The first emphasis was on the election, which consequently raised the issue of the television companies’ script.

At first those who back the political game didn’t see a movement pushing for electoral participation from a civic perspective and outside the parties in a bad light. But the movement suffered the aggression of PRI followers from the beginning. They also suffered an attempt by the PRD to co-opt them. Nevertheless, they managed to maintain independence from the parties—which is one of their defining characteristics. The movement then decided to document the electoral irregularities, believing this would oblige the electoral tribunal to act accordingly. This didn’t happen and all the parties accepted the election verdict. Only the movement headed by López Obrador, now separated from the PRD, and those in the #IAm132 refused to accept either the fraud or the imposition.

The grassroots student movement considers the electoral path to be closed to those citizens from below, both due to the powers that be and to the institutions that must supposedly guarantee equal participation and a free vote. Once the vote was stripped of its civic nature and turned into a commodity like any other at the mercy of who has the most money, the movement declared democracy dead and symbolically buried it. Another kind of democracy would have to be built.

Learning along the way

On this path, the youth movement has been joining with other grassroots movements that have their own struggles. Given the drive, vitality, freshness, joy and creativity it has shown, it has survived two important moments in this respect. The first was characterized by the attempt of other movements to take advantage of its dynamism. The same thing happened earlier with the Javier Sicilia’s Peace Movement. In the second, the other movements came to understand that this was one more movement within the concert of movements and that what was needed was a common arena of convergence, which the Convention against the Imposition has become.

Each movement is continuing with its own autonomy and specific agenda and finding places for designing common actions. The student movement learned a lot in its contact with the existing grassroots movements, which widened its perspective. It could have remained limited to dealing with electoral politics but quickly realized it had to incorporate a long-range struggle against neoliberalism together with other grassroots forces. For this reason the aggression against it grew not only from the PRI and the powers behind the throne but also from other parties, indeed from a whole spectrum of those in power. Faced with the danger of massive repression, the movement has been very careful to try to avoid repression.

#IAm132 also confronted the problem of many people, particularly academics and politicians, wanting to define what these young people should do. The movement defended itself by insisting that it chose to seek its own expression and development and not accept anyone’s line. It was tempted to become part of the old line but overcame that temptation. In its search for organic expressions it has defended the autonomy of the collective participants and has continued to try new forms of internal convergence with new ways of leaderless open discussion and assemblies.

It also experienced the temptation to centralize in order to move with greater force, but preferred to give expression to
its own rich diversity and thus try to find consensus, leaving disagreements for larger discussions.

The challenge

The youth movement’s enemies tried to break it through internal divisions, but they failed. It has been able to maintain an agile, horizontal, non-bureaucratic way of working. It has proposed a profound change in Mexico in which democracy from below, created by everyone without contradictions and tensions, will reign. Its members have sought to express themselves massively in the streets and in the Internet social networks and have also sought dialogue with other grassroots organizations.

Even though they did not succeed in ensuring free elections or in getting the electoral tribunal to take the serious electoral irregularities into account, and even if they are most surely unable to stop Peña Nieto from taking office, they have helped delegitimize both the process and the anointed. The challenge is to deepen their learning together with the other grassroots collectives and use their actions to open a deep crack in the power of the State and the control by capital.

Jorge Alonso is a researcher with CIESES West and envío correspondent in Mexico.

Print text

Send text