East Germany’s Stalinist regime built the Berlin Wall in 1961, to prevent captive Germans from fleeing to West Berlin, where freedom prevailed. The order to shoot those attempting to flee was not lifted until 1989, the same year the wall came tumbling down. A remnant now turns up in Tijuana, Mexico.
Major Montserrat Caballero and Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard have installed near the border a segment of the Berlin Wall bearing the inscription: “May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges.” As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) of Monty Python might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of international relations?
Marcelo Ebrard served as mayor of Mexico City from 2006-2012 and mounted a failed campaign for president in 2011. After a stint with the Global Network of Safer Cities, the failed Mexican candidate became involved in American politics.
“How a One-Time Political Star in Mexico Ended Up Campaigning for Clinton,” headlined a November 6, 2016 New Yorker profile of Ebrard by Francisco Goldman. “It was after hearing Donald Trump speak,” Ebrard explained, “that I decided to get much more involved, beyond just giving opinions. The risk represented by el Señor Trump, the things that he says, in particular about Mexico, but in general, too, are like nothing else I’ve encountered.”
According to Ebrard, Trump’s wall “is a publicity scheme,” and “he, like Hitler, is a good communicator.” Ebrard “decided to get more involved” by getting out the vote for Hillary Clinton.
As Goldman notes, Ebrard had “previously worked with Voto Latino, and with other voter-registration and participation groups in California, Arizona, Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere, and he is working with those groups again now.” During the 2016 campaign, Ebrard explained, he went “from being a consultant to somebody committed to direct political action.”
A ruling-class Mexican politician openly participates in an American election, deploying “direct political action” on behalf of open-border Democrat Hillary Clinton. This all went down without any charges of collusion or election interference by American politicians and the establishment media.
Ebrard is now running for president of Mexico with the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA) party. If the candidate wants to teach an historical lesson, he might dial it back to 1968, in the run-up to the Mexico City Olympics.
On October 2, 1968, several thousand students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, the main square in the Tlatelolco neighborhood of Mexico City. According to eye-witness accounts, the majority of the protesters were college and high-school students. Mexican government troops began firing on the crowd from the surrounding rooftops, joined by helicopters.
The government claimed only 25 casualties, including seven policemen, but hundreds had been killed. The official figures and names of those murdered, arrested and imprisoned were never released.
The ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) regime, which had dominated Mexico since the 1920s, conducted no investigation. President Diaz Ordaz and interior minister Luis Echeverria faced no charges and Echeverria, who became president in 1970, maintained the same pattern of violence.
On June 10, 1971, government-trained paramilitary forces attacked peaceful protesters at the Santo Tomás campus of the National Polytechnical Institute. An estimated 120 perished in what has become known as the Corpus Christi Massacre. Nobody faced charges and the PRI regime continued to cover up both attacks and smother dissent across the country.
The PRI regimes continued until 2000 when Coca-Cola magnate Vincente Fox of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) took power, but this was little more than a change of labels. The PRI continued to dominate Mexican institutions and Fox maintained the coverup.
In 2014, students at a Mexican teacher college commandeered buses to attend demonstrations commemorating the 1968 massacre. Mexican police attacked the students, killing six and dragging off 43 others. The PRI government claimed they had been taken by a drug gang and incinerated in a garbage dump.
Six months after the murder-kidnapping, Vincente Fox appeared on Univision and said “it’s about time” the parents give up their demands on the Mexican government and “accept reality.”
In September 2018, Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador showed up at Tlatelolco plaza pledging to “never ever use the military to repress the Mexican people.” As far as an investigation into the 1968 slaughter holding PRI bosses to account, and advocacy for victims’ families, AMLO had nothing to say.
Statements on the massacre by Marcelo Ebrard are hard to find. Maybe he’ll make one on October 2, the 55th anniversary. The “one-time political star” wants to teach the USA a lesson, but as Mexicans know, he has plenty to deal with at home. Maybe Hillary Clinton can help him get out the vote.