Fraude México 2006 (review)

To argue that Mexican elections have faced problematic irregularities in the past is most likely a polite understatement. This is the theme of Luis Mandoki's 2007 documentary, Fraude México 2006 which argues that the Mexican presidential election of 2006 was tainted by fraud. In that election the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was declared the winner over Roberto Madrazo from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and Andrés Manuel López Obrador from the Partido de la Revolución Democrático (PRD). Madrazo, who finished a poor third in the election with 22.3% of the vote, accepted the results. Lopéz Obrador, who was in a virtual tie with Calderón Hinojosa (35. 3% to 35.9%, a difference of under 250,000 out of approximately 42 million votes cast), unsuccessfully challenged the election results.

The film begins with a short retrospective to questionable presidential election results in Mexico. Mandoki takes the viewer back to Carlos Salinas de Gortari's presidential inauguration on December 1, 1988. This election is thought by many to have been stolen from Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, one of the founders of the PRD. From the beginning, the film claims that little has changed since in Mexico, despite the peaceful handover in 2000 to the conservative PAN after more than seventy years of one-party PRI rule.

Moving on to the disputed 2006 presidential election, Mandoki uses footage from ordinary citizens filmed during the elections and the subsequent recount protest period. The film features long interview segments with Andrés Manuel López Obrador as well as his voice-over to footage of the masses gathered in Mexico City's Zócalo. The subtle, original piano score is highly emotive.

López Obrador cites Salvador Allende, democratically elected President of Chile (1970-1973) as one of the first victims of the "right," which cannot accept a challenge to the status quo. This scene establishes a main theme of the film, that parties of the left in Latin America frequently face electoral fraud or worse when they present a serous threat to the conservative establishment; the recent success of Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega, and Evo Morales notwithstanding.

The ruling of the Federal Electoral Tribunal on September 5, 2006, which confirmed the election of PAN candidate Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, triggered massive protests throughout Mexico and, especially, in Mexico City, where Lopéz Obrador had been mayor. Scenes of the crowds gathered at the Zócalo in Mexico City to protest the ruling are breathtaking--a sea of people covers the 40,000 square meter plaza. López Obrador addressed the crowd, arguing that Mexico had never experienced true democracy.

The film then presents a brief account of López Obrador's personal life-long struggle for democracy in Mexico. It next discusses efforts by conservative PAN and PRI politicians to keep López Obrador off the 2006 presidential election ballot or to discredit his campaign. These included a smear campaign and negative advertising supported, according to evidence presented in the film, by substantial contributions from President Vicente Fox and PAN. Despite these actions, López Obrador gained strong public support.

On Election Day, 2 July 2006, voters discovered they were purged from voting lists, even though they had voted many times before, and by midnight, protesters filled the streets of Mexico City, as news of the electoral deadlock was broadcast. Samples from exit polls were accepted early on as confirming that the PAN had won. However, by the evening of 3 July, the inconsistencies were apparent: according to the film, 2,581,226 votes were unaccounted for. Some ballots had been stuffed; others had too few ballots to account for voter turnout. On 5 July, the investigations began. The footage from the regional meetings of voting bodies is perhaps the most damning: the numbers didn't add up, yet the federal electoral institute (IFE) representatives refused to open up the ballot boxes.

In...