Back in the 1960s, Mexico was a developing nation with strong rates of growth and a large and growing middle class. Mexico in the era of corporate-driven globalization, however, has been a society rapidly running in reverse with surging inequality of wealth and opportunity and communities undergoing social dismemberment.
The disappearance of 43 normal school students in the State of Guerrero on September 26, 2014 and the killing of 6 others by police under orders of the Mayor of Iguala and an allied narco gang gave rise to mass expressions of repressed anger and protest by the Mexican people. Distraught in their grief, the parents and fellow students of the disappeared have demonstrated all over Mexico, calling on the government to remove corrupt officials, to end the so-called war on drugs that has cost at least 70,000 lives since it began under the orders of President Felipe Calderon in 2006. And behind all this are the demands of students and their teachers to stop the austerity which impoverishes rural Mexico and gives them an inferior education with only phony education reforms which only lead to greater inequality.
Since the early 1980s Mexico suffered from structural adjustment at the hands of the International Monetary Fund so it could pay its debts to international banks. This began wave upon wave of “reforms” which have culminated in the social chaos that is Mexico today. The IMF and U.S. creditors forced Mexico to open to foreign investment, sell off its public sector, cut spending on education and health and ultimately in 1994 completely bend to the will of foreign and homegrown elites and accept the North American Free Trade Agreement.
As multi-national corporations took over the economy, regular jobs disappeared. In the cities wages declined and in rural areas 2-3 million farmers were displaced from their lands by a flood of U.S. agricultural commodities. The fastest growing industry was narco trafficking, which became a viable career choice for many of the displaced and the youth with no good prospects for their future except emigration to the U.S. The violence and corruption are worse in the poorest rural and largely indigenous parts of the country.
In 2008 just before he left office, President Bush signed the Merida Initiative, otherwise known as Plan Mexico, a “new security cooperation initiative” between Mexico and the U.S. aimed at combatting drug trafficking and organized crime. The Obama administration has continued it with gusto so that by the end of 2013, the U.S. had delivered over $1.2 billion in equipment and training out of $2.3 billion in appropriated funds. Funds were used to train, arm and advise Mexican police, prison authorities, prosecutors and others in the criminal justice system. Some are trained at the notorious School of Assassins, formerly called the School of the Americas. The program contains aircraft including nine UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters, satellite tracking devices, communications equipment and software, upgraded prisons, Culture of Lawfulness programs in junior high schools in 31 states, and, of course, improved border security.
However, as the events surrounding the disappearance of the 43 students make clear, narco trafficking in Mexico has morphed into a narco State. Torture is still widely used to exact false confessions. The close ties between the cartels and public officials at all levels only appear to deepen. It is estimated that 90% of weapons used by drug cartels come from the U.S. Are many of these funded by U.S. taxpayers?
Nor do the billions envisioned in the Merida Initiative address in any significant way the root causes of all this: the economic devolution of Mexico under the regime of debt slavery, global restructuring and free trade. Yet addressing the proliferation of poverty to over half the population is fundamental to solving the problems of drugs, crime and corruption. Mexico’s economic policies continue to center on holding down wages to attract foreign investment, selling off assets, and exporting its people to find jobs in the U.S. and Canada and send back billions in remittances.
It’s no coincidence that the Ayotzinapa Caravan participants plan to go to Ferguson, Missouri after visiting Kansas City. Just as the U.S. substitutes a viable plan to address poverty and racism with the War on Drugs and the militarization of our police, so too Mexico, uses the War on Drugs and its accompanying militarization of society instead of finding real solutions to poverty and racism against indigenous people.
The disappearance of 43 normal school students in the State of Guerrero on September 26, 2014 and the killing of 6 others by police under orders of the Mayor of Iguala and an allied narco gang gave rise to mass expressions of repressed anger and protest by the Mexican people. Distraught in their grief, the parents and fellow students of the disappeared have demonstrated all over Mexico, calling on the government to remove corrupt officials, to end the so-called war on drugs that has cost at least 70,000 lives since it began under the orders of President Felipe Calderon in 2006. And behind all this are the demands of students and their teachers to stop the austerity which impoverishes rural Mexico and gives them an inferior education with only phony education reforms which only lead to greater inequality.
Since the early 1980s Mexico suffered from structural adjustment at the hands of the International Monetary Fund so it could pay its debts to international banks. This began wave upon wave of “reforms” which have culminated in the social chaos that is Mexico today. The IMF and U.S. creditors forced Mexico to open to foreign investment, sell off its public sector, cut spending on education and health and ultimately in 1994 completely bend to the will of foreign and homegrown elites and accept the North American Free Trade Agreement.
As multi-national corporations took over the economy, regular jobs disappeared. In the cities wages declined and in rural areas 2-3 million farmers were displaced from their lands by a flood of U.S. agricultural commodities. The fastest growing industry was narco trafficking, which became a viable career choice for many of the displaced and the youth with no good prospects for their future except emigration to the U.S. The violence and corruption are worse in the poorest rural and largely indigenous parts of the country.
In 2008 just before he left office, President Bush signed the Merida Initiative, otherwise known as Plan Mexico, a “new security cooperation initiative” between Mexico and the U.S. aimed at combatting drug trafficking and organized crime. The Obama administration has continued it with gusto so that by the end of 2013, the U.S. had delivered over $1.2 billion in equipment and training out of $2.3 billion in appropriated funds. Funds were used to train, arm and advise Mexican police, prison authorities, prosecutors and others in the criminal justice system. Some are trained at the notorious School of Assassins, formerly called the School of the Americas. The program contains aircraft including nine UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters, satellite tracking devices, communications equipment and software, upgraded prisons, Culture of Lawfulness programs in junior high schools in 31 states, and, of course, improved border security.
However, as the events surrounding the disappearance of the 43 students make clear, narco trafficking in Mexico has morphed into a narco State. Torture is still widely used to exact false confessions. The close ties between the cartels and public officials at all levels only appear to deepen. It is estimated that 90% of weapons used by drug cartels come from the U.S. Are many of these funded by U.S. taxpayers?
Nor do the billions envisioned in the Merida Initiative address in any significant way the root causes of all this: the economic devolution of Mexico under the regime of debt slavery, global restructuring and free trade. Yet addressing the proliferation of poverty to over half the population is fundamental to solving the problems of drugs, crime and corruption. Mexico’s economic policies continue to center on holding down wages to attract foreign investment, selling off assets, and exporting its people to find jobs in the U.S. and Canada and send back billions in remittances.
It’s no coincidence that the Ayotzinapa Caravan participants plan to go to Ferguson, Missouri after visiting Kansas City. Just as the U.S. substitutes a viable plan to address poverty and racism with the War on Drugs and the militarization of our police, so too Mexico, uses the War on Drugs and its accompanying militarization of society instead of finding real solutions to poverty and racism against indigenous people.
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