[Pvgreens-discussion] FORMER PRESIDENT OF MEXICO ERNESTO ZEDILLO TO SPEAK AT CSU SEPT. 28

[sandylemberg at juno.com]

Ernesto Zedillo, president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, will speak at
Colorado State University at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 28 in Moby Arena. Zedillo's
lecture is supported by the Monfort Family as part of the Monfort Lecture
Series at Colorado State.

Zedillo will speak on globalization and emerging markets, particularly in
Central and South America.

Admission to the talk is free but you must have a ticket. Tickets are
available at the Campus Box Office by calling 491-4TIX or visiting
www.csutix.com . Each person can reserve up to 10 free tickets.

A protest is planned is planned for 6:30 pm outside Moby Arena.

Zedillo is a Yale-trained technocrat who continued to the "perfect little
dictatorship" of the PRI party in Mexico.  His administration's project
was to enforce NAFTA with his election in 1994.  The Zapatista rebellion
(Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or EZLN) became public early
on Jan. 1 of that year. He followed the lead of U.S. academic Riordan
Rouett of the Johns Hopkins school of International studies who said to
international investors' conference:  if Mexico is to have a safe
political environment for foreign investment, the EZLN will have to be
eliminated.  Zedillo sent 70,000 federal troops to Chiapas to carry out
this task. Other wealthy governments, including the US, also provided
support of the "low intensity warfare" against the people of Mexico, not
only in Chiapas, but also in other areas of Mexico where support for
democratization of society emerged.

Part of Zedillo's legacy is the stolen election of 2006, which is
currently being challenged in street protests and other actions by 1/3 of
the Mexican Population.

This is an extremely important opportunity to make your voice heard on a
multitude of interrelated peace and justice issues, including
globalization - free trade, immigration, unemployment and poverty, fair
elections, and government violence. Please come to this event if you want
to be an effective voice and demonstrate to the financial establishment
that they cannot pursue their elitist agenda in our community without
serious resistance.

Sandy Lemberg

Here is some more info on the EZLN.

The EZLN arose among the Maya people in direct response to the extremes
of oppression that they have lived under for centuries by large
landowners (who stole their lands), but also to their impoverishment and
immiseration by the power elites and previous PRI governments.  Chiapas
is the poorest state in Mexico, although it has many resources that are
enjoyed by outsiders and not by the people of Chiapas, certainly not
Indigenous people.

Chiapanecos Mayas are now asserting their rights of self-determination
through their community-based rebellion. they have declared autonomous
zones in which they don't accept any token government help. They are on
their feet, cultivating their fields, setting up health clinics,
promoting literacy, institutionalizing equitable gender relations, and
demanding respect for their cultural and human rights.  The Zapatistas
are receiving substantial international support and are serving as a
model for grassroots mobilization for human dignity in the midst of
neoliberal economics policies.  They are a northern counterpart to the
struggles of many Central and South American countries and Indigenous
peoples who are changing the global trends of privatization of resources,
environmental destruction by corporate-led globalization, and
irresponsibility of their power elites.