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MEXICO AT WAR, THE US IS TO BLAME

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PARIS, Dec 23 2010 (IPS) - November 20 was the hundredth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, the first major social revolution of the 20th century: a heroic deed carried out by two legendary popular figures, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, whose victory was a victory for workers and peasant farmers: rights, agrarian reform, free, non-religious public education, and social security.

One hundred years later, paradoxically, the situation of Mexico “is analogous in many respects to that at the and of 1910: an obscene concentration of wealth accompanied by widespread social backwardness; distortion of the popular will; infringement of workers rights; the negation of basic guarantees by the authorities; ceding of sovereignty to international capital, and a oligarchic, patrimonialist, technocratic political class out of touch with the people.[i]”

Add to this depressing catalogue of problems a war -or, to be more precise, three wars: one waged among the drug traffickers for the control of territory; one of the Zeta groups (criminal groups comprised of ex-military and ex-police) that rob and kidnap the civil population; and one of the military and special forces against their own citizens.

Starting December 1, 2006, under pressure from Washington, recently elected Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched his “offensive against drug trafficking”. The wave of violence that followed left about 30,000 dead in Mexico.

Mexico increasingly resembles a “failed state”, caught in a deadly trap, beset by every type of armed thug: paramilitary and parapolice; bands of “legal” and “liberated” assassins; US agents from the CIA and DEA; and finally the Zetas, who target particularly Central and South American migrants on their way to the United States. They are without a doubt responsible for the atrocious murder of 72 migrants discovered last August 24 in the state of Tamaulipas.

Every year some 500,000 Latin Americans cross through Mexico on their way north. During the passage they undergo a wide range of abuses, from arbitrary arrest, robbery, and plundering to rape. Eight of ten Mexican women experience sexual abuse; many are impressed as servants to criminal gangs or forced into prostitution. Hundreds of children are put to work. Thousands of migrants are kidnapped. The Zetas make the families of their victims (whether in the US or their country of origin) pay ransom.

“For organised crime it is easier to kidnap 50 or so unknown people for a few days and receive payments of between 300-1500 dollars than kidnap an important businessman. [ii]” If the kidnapped person has no way to pay the ransom, he is killed. Each Zeta cell has its own “butcher” to decapitate and dismember the victims, and burn the remains in a steel barrel. [iii] In the last decade some 60,000 undocumented people whose families were unable to pay their ransom were “disappeared”.

Such barbaric violence concentrated in certain cities, like Ciudad Juarez [iv], and in certain states, has spread to the rest of the country (except, it is important to point out, the capital, Mexico City). Washington has designated Mexico a “dangerous country” and ordered its consulate workers in various cities to send their children back to the US.

President Calderon regularly announces successes in the war on drug trafficking and the arrest of important narco leaders. He is content to have mobilised the army. The majority of Mexicans do not agree, because the military, who have no experience in this sort of intervention, increase the “collateral damage”, killing hundreds of civilians by mistake.

By mistake? Abel Barrera Hernandez, who just won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Prize, awarded in the United States, doesn’t believe it. To the contrary he believes that the drug war is being used to criminalise civil protest: “The victims of this war are the most vulnerable: the indigenous, women, youth. The army is used to intimidate, demobilise, sow terror, mute social protest and fragment and criminalise those who fight. [v]”

The Obama administration believes that the bloodbath Mexico has become is a threat to the security of the US. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “The threat of drug trafficking is changing form and in certain cases associating itself with the insurgency.” She added that Mexico today resembles Colombia of the 1980s.”

In reality, the US bears a major share of the responsibility for this war. It is the main opponent of the legalisation of drugs. It is the supplier of (up to 90 percent of [vi]) the weapons used in the violence, whether by the cartels or the Zetas or the army or the police. Moreover, the US is the main drug power: it is a major producer of marijuana and the largest producer of chemical drugs like amphetamines, ecstasy, etc.

The US is, above all, the largest drug market in the world, with 7 million cocaine addicts. And the mafias that operate in its territory make the largest profits off of the sale of drugs: 90 percent, or 45 billion dollars per year. In contrast, the total made by all of the Latin American cartels come to a mere 10 percent.

Yet again, rather than give its neighbours (bad) advice, which has precipitated Mexico into a hellish war, Washington should clean its own house. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Ignacio Ramonet is editor of “Le Monde diplomatique en espanol”.

[i] La Jornada, Mexico, 20 November 2010.

[ii] See the exceptional book by Oscar Martinez, “The Migrants that Don’t Count. On the Road with Undocumented Central Americans in Mexico”, Iracia, Barcelona, 2010.

[iii] Proceso, Mexico, 29 August 2010.

[iv] See the blog of Judith Torrea Ciudad Juarez, in the shadow of drug trafficking

[v] La Jornada, op. cit.

[vi] El Norte, Monterrey, 9 September 2010.

 
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