Update for November 2006	Mexico City, Mexico
	David and Tule Apdo Postal 83-026 CP 13011 Mexico
	Website: http:\\www.davidcox.com.mx email: dcox@davidcox.com.mx	house 011 525 5842-1449 mobil 011 043 525 55 3025-8018

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Dear Praying Friends,

I would ask for prayer for our political situation. I am very concerned about our political situation. We had elections July 2, and it was extremely close, but according to the Mexican election officials Calderon won, and Obrador lost. International watchers said on the day of the election that it was a election, no real cases of fraud.  [Calderon is on the left of the photo, Obrador on the right]

Obrador promised a monthly check to every Mexican in the country that is under a certain income level if he won. Questions like where this money will come from, how can you verify the income level of people who sell in the streets, etc. never were answered. But Obrador got all the poor of Mexico behind him and still carries many of them. Basically the politics last year were 3 parties, the PRI (the old establishment party 30%), the PAN (Calderon's Catholic party 40%), the PRD (Obrador's party 25%) and the rest were fractional parties. With Lopez Obrador's promises, the election went something like this 34% PAN, 33% PRD, and 20% PRI. The bottom line is that Obrador was very close but lost. But he does not want to accept defeat. He wants to destabilize our country, and he is willing do anything to get back at Calderon for winning.

He is ideologically aligned with with Communism  (taking from the rich to give to the poor), even though some of the things he has done as mayor has been seen as good. He has set up a system of bribes and kickbacks to gets millions of dollars a day in cash (it doesn't enter the government accounting or books) through corruption and which in turns breads more corruption. He has funneled a lot of that money back into the people (free apartments and such for key supporters) and public works. I saw a statistic that is sobering. 20% of the Mexican adult population makes less than $20/week. That does not include the unemployed but only the underemployed. Of our church, half are unemployed looking for work. For $60 a week, they just cannot make it on so little, and two jobs is out of the question. We are helping the worse cases among our church people, but the pull for someone like Obrador is tremendous.

Oaxaca [wha-ha-ka] (Tule's home state) - Obrador and the PRD have decided that since the same electoral situation occurred in the Oaxaca governor's race, they are going to use it as a dry run for what they are going to try on the whole country. They have basically held the entire capital and most of the state of Oaxaca captive since June. They claim that there is no governing ability in Oaxaca, which translated, the PRD will not allow the state to function as normal, barricades in the streets (see left), no services, etc. They keep the police out (see picture below), the government refuses to use force, and they hold everything hostage. 19 people have died since June in all this in Oaxaca. It is ludicrous, but the PRD says "the police are responsible for their deaths" even though the police were kept out by the PRD. Most of the dead are Press or the PRD people (regular citizens are defending their homes and businesses, and fighting among the PRD fractions). Starting in a few days, all this starts in Mexico City.



Obrador has decided to set up his own opposition government, and has self-pronounced himself as the legitimate but not officially legal president of Mexico, complete with a cabinet. This installation ceremony is Monday, Nov 20. They are going to take their 30% of the PRD Senators and Representatives and disrupt / stop / prevent the swearing in ceremony on December 2 of Calderon in the Mexican Congress. They are not going to let the Senators and Representatives in the building. :-(

Obrador does not have support from anybody except the poor, the crooks, thugs, and the like. Supposedly he gathered 100,000 people in this rally (left) in August to protest election injustices. Even though this rally looks impressive, we found out from people that went to it that Obrador and the PRD paid them $30 each for the day, gave them free lunch, and a free T-shirt. A month later they couldn't get half this many even paying them to attend.

It is just pure craziness what he is doing. They marched against the Human Rights Commission here in Mexico City. Aren't they the ones you go to defend you when the government abuses you unjustly? The Human Rights Commission will never speak out for Obrador.

The three principal unions (think AFL-CIO) have all come out against Obrador. Even the founder of the PRD has come out against Obrador and is distancing himself. Big business are all against Obrador. They have an unlimited bankroll from the scams the city does to get money. Since the city is a Federal District (like District of Columbia) it is immune from Federal intervention. A difficult situation with a crazy person like Obrador and a third of the Congress are PRDs. Obrador and the PRD simply want Calderon to step down and let Obrador take over as President of Mexico.

There is a possibility of violence here in the next two weeks. The Power company is joining in with them and will start power outages in protest of the elections. He is getting key groups (paying them) to support him to cripple the country in his temper tantrum. Things are just crazy, and growing worse. Calderon and Fox both look to be way too passive to do anything stop this thing.

I would ask that this Sunday (Obrador has his unofficial inauguration ceremony) and the Sunday before December 1st (when Calderon takes office) you please say a special prayer for Mexico that we would have a peaceful transition and peace. Things are just getting down right dicey down here.

Our church continues to grow slowly with a new family every month or so. We are moving into a new building in December. Please pray for our evangelism efforts, and several sick with surgeries.

In Christ,
David and Tule Cox