'Rosario' draws crowds
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16 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1988 (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International, has attracted thousands of supporters to her election rallies and to her openly socialist program.
PRT leader Hector de la Cueva told Socialist Action that more than 300,000 people have attended Rosario's campaign rallies. This is a far greater number than in 1982, when Rosario ran for president on the PRT ticket. In 1982, Rosario officially obtained 1.8 percent of the vote, just enough to win parliamentary representation, though the PRT insists she actually won 8 percent of the 23 million votes.
De la Cueva also noted that sizable mass organizations, such as the 90,000-strong Committee for the Victims of the Earthquake (CUD) and the National Revolutionary Civic Association (ANCR), have endorsed her campaign this time.
Rosario's campaign has also received some international attention. The March 1988 issue of Ms. magazine, for example, devotes a full page to "Mexico's First Woman for Prez."
The article highlights Rosario's mammoth work in defense of Mexico's political prisoners and the disappeared. [Rosario is a leader of the National Front Against Repression.] It also notes that "Ibarra and the PRT are working for legal abortion and equal rights for women" in a country where "women are not readily accepted into TIJUANA, Mexico-Rosario Ibarra, presidential candidate of the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) electoral coalition in the July Mexican election, has campaigned across Mexico reaching every corner of the country.
As the only candidate of the independent revolutionary left with ballot status, she is challenging the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the capitalist-reform campaign of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Her campaign is actively supported by the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International.
Rosario's campaign tour to Baja California in early June illustrates the extent of the effort to reach every part of Mexico with her message.
Rosario Ibarra traveled to Tijuana during her tour. She was greeted at the Tijuana airport by her supporters. A long auto caravan then brought the candidate downtown to the center of Tijuana, where four streets had been in Baja California blocked off for the rally. For an hour, local PRT candidates had been warming up the crowd, which had grown to hundreds as the anticipation built.
Before Rosario spokè, local candidates —including Catalino Zavalo and Urania Isis-and national PRT leader Edgardo Sánchez set the spirited tone. Rosario spoke of the need of workers to elect their own representatives and of the electoral fraud her campaign anticipated and had already begun to actively oppose.
The crowd responded repeatedly with enthusiasm-especially the members of Cucutac, a mass organization of homeless and slum residents. Rosario spoke about the problems of the states along the Mexico-U.S. border, focusing attention on the repression of unions in the region.
Rosario later spoke in Ensenada and Mexicali, where she continued to put forward her open socialist program, winning more workers to a socialist platform and future. ary mass movement. It is only by creating an alternative independent pole that we will bring the masses who are attracted to Cárdenas for healthy reasons toward socialist conclusions."
Electoral fraud expected
In the meantime, the July 6 elections are certain to be plagued with massive fraud. PRT leader Hector de la Cueva told Socialist Action that a broad front against the election fraud is already coming together. It includes parties on the left and right wings of the political spectrum.
The idea of forming such a front arose after a number of clandestine factories were discovered printing PRI ballots that would be illegally stuffed in the boxes at election time.
Rosario's campaign has already been attacked and harassed by the government and the police. Two PRT peasant organizers and ' active supporters of Rosario's campaign, for example, were recently killed by local police in the northern state of Sonora.
The PRT leadership expects that the government may attempt to commit massive fraud against the Rosario Ibarra campaign and the PRT in order to remove the PRT's electoral ballot status. This is a possibility we in the United States must be seriously attentive to.