A funny thing happened on the way to the border. On Monday, George W Bush spoke to the nation, and announced that he will be sending 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border. This has has not been well received in California, Mexico, and by the Guard itself. Of course, there’s suspicion that this has nothing to do with immigration, and it just “politics.”
However that just doesn’t chalk up for me. There’s something deeper here, as much as the racist redneck has become the icon for Bush’s GOP, on immigration stemming the tide of Mexicans, and others crossing the border hurts Bush’s base. No, not the millions of voters who for the beating Bushonmics has given them cling to the belief that though poor at least they aren’t Mexican. The one’s who exploit Mexican workers, because American workers have developed excessive pride (and legal rights.) There’s something more here.
The last time the Guard were deployed to the US border was 1916 at the height of the Mexican Revolution when Pancho Villa raided Colombus, New exico,and burned down the town. In an interview with newsstation Televisa, Subcommandante Marcos warned that the Mexico is in a “state of rage” like that in 1994 when the Zaptista rebellion began.
A recent poll by Mexican polling firm Paremetrica show that 50% of Mexicans fear the country is on the brink of chaos.
A poll published Friday in Excelsior newspaper found 50 percent of respondents feared the government was on the brink of losing control. The polling company Parametria conducted face-to-face interviews at 1,000 homes across Mexico. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The conflicts are “a warning sign,” said Yamel Nares, Parametria’s research director.
Security is the top concern for Mexicans, and Fox has struggled to reform Mexico’s notoriously corrupt police. Meanwhile, drug-related bloodshed has accelerated, with some cities seeing killings almost daily.
The poll mentions two conflicts that in San Salvador Atenco, and in Michoacan. In San Salvador Atenco, a conflict between flower sellers and police developed into
riot, and brutal police represssion followed.
San Salvador Atenco, the town where the rioting erupted, has been in the news before. Five years ago, President Vicente Fox tried to build a badly needed airport there. Local land rights activists resisted violently, and Fox’s government retreated. Now Atenco is ruled by members of the same rebel group — which has fueled ridicule of Fox by his political rivals.
Last Wednesday, state police ousted eight of Atenco’s freelance flower sellers from their accustomed spot. The vendors had been notified of the move weeks before, ignored the warning and turned for help to the local land rights activists. Mayhem erupted.
As TV news cameras rolled, peasants blocked the highway and bludgeoned a policeman insensible. Other police were taken hostage. A 14-year-old boy died in gunfire. The next day, thousands of state and federal police flooded the town, seeking the missing lawmen and savagely clubbing locals.
In Mexico City, commentators aim suspicion for the chaos both at rebel leader Marcos and at Fox’s government. Marcos’ Zapatista uprising in 1994 played a key role in Fox’s election, which ended seven decades of one-party rule.
Since then, the publicity-craving Marcos has fallen into Mexico’s political margins. Though he has been coy about it, Marcos is thought by many to have encouraged Atenco’s militants to rise up against the state police.
Mexico’s federal and state governments also have reasons for wanting to be seen as tough guys. As Mexico enters the home stretch of a presidential election, both Fox’s National Action Party and Mexico State’s PRI party must play hardball to counter the humiliation from the airport debacle. Certainly, neither level of government inspired any professionalism or restraint from its police forces.
In addition to opening fire, Mexican police are also allegeded to have raped 23 women., the reaction of the man who lead the raid leaves little question why there is rage in Mexico.
Asked by the Milenio reporters about statements by Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos that various police rapists used condoms while raping the women, suggesting premeditation in the crimes, Robledo exclaimed:
“That makes me laugh!”
As Wilfrido Robledo Madrid was giggling, investigators from the human rights organization Comite Cerezo interviewed 19 Mexican women political prisoners inside of Robledo’s state prison on Monday.
These are their testimonies. Again and again, they corroborate the testimonies of the four foreign women who were deported to their home countries of Spain, Chile and Germany after their arbitrary arrests and sexual torture in Atenco. Such as the testimony of Catalonian Maria Sostres,
who told the daily El Pais in Spain: “They stuck objects, fingers and keys in their vaginas. They forced one girl to say `Cowboy! Cowboy!’ while a police officer smacked her ass.”
How wold you feel if that were your mother, wife, or sister? How would you feel if that were you? Is it any wonder that Mexico is in a state of rage?
Rapist and murderers, and there’s a link to the Bush White House.
And then there’s the other conflict in Michoacan, police brutally repressed striking miners following a sit down in one of Grupo Mexico’s (GIMM) plants. Trouble began after a mining accident that killed 65 workers in one of GIMM’s
mines in northern Mexico. Napoleon Gomex, leader of the union representing the miners, accused GIMM of industrial homocide.
Mexico’s mining industry has faced mounting unrest since an explosion at a coal mine in northern Mexico owned by Grupo Mexico killed 65 men last week. Gomez, who called the explosion “industrial homicide,” faces a leadership challenge and accuses the government and top mining firms of backing his rival….
The union says the government and mining companies backed attempts to oust Gomez because he is a tough negotiator.
Gomez is in turn accused by Grupo Mexico of misuse of funds. He faces a challenge by another union member, Elias Morales Hernandez, who says he is the legitimate leader.
The Mexican government removed Gomez from his position alledging that he emptied out pension funds that managed worker’s proceeds from the 1991 privatization of the plant. Both GIMM and the pension fund in question have close ties to the Caryle group, which Bush Sr is a prominent member of.
Villacero Steel and the Mexican Mining Industrial Group (GIMM) – a cog in the Carlyle Group, an international conglomerate with heavy investments in resource and defense – have dominated Mexican mining and steel production since the industry was privatized. Salinas had to send troops to keep peace at Cananea after that historic copper pit was sold to GIMM for a song in 1989…..
GIMM, Mexico’s leading mine operator, is closely tied to the Carlyle Group, a global investor with major holdings in mining and other defense-related industries – the soon-to-be-outgoing Fox is mentioned as a candidate for
Carlyle association. GIMM has a strategic alliance with the Southern Peru Copper Company, a Carlyle property, and the private pension fund Gomez Urrutia is accused of emptying out, Siglo 21, is a subsidiary of Fidelity Investment, also connected to the Carlyle Group.
The occupation of GIIMS’s Lazaro Cardenas plant was ended only after police action by the Mexican government that left 2 workers dead and 73 wounded. The timing of the massacre, and President Bush’s announcement that he will be sending Guard troops to the border come on an important anniversary in Mexican labor history.
100 years after the Mexican labor movement was birthed in the bloody massacre at the great Cananea Sonora copper pit, the blood of miners once again smears the face of Mexico.
On April 20th, 1,000 federal and state police backed up by Mexican military troops stormed the giant SICARTSA steel mill complex in the Pacific coast port of Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, intent on breaking a three week strike by the Miners and Metalworkers Union (SMTMMSRM), killing two workers, wounding 73, and arresting 13. The strike at the SICARTSA plant of Villacero Steel, the largest wire rod and steel bar maker in Latin America, was declared illegal only hours before President Vicente Fox’s labor secretary Francisco Xavier Salazar sent in the police to take back the plant by force.
The Fox government’s deadly sneak attack on the miners’ union came a century almost to the date after Mexico’s miners rose at Cananea against General William Green and the Anaconda Copper Company June 1st. 1906. 23 miners were gunned down when the governor of Sonora declared martial law and summoned the Arizona Rangers across the border to quell the strike said to have been organized by the U.S.-based anarchist Industrial Workers of the World.
Several bosses were burnt alive by the furious mob before a tense calm was restored.
Video of the attack doesn’t show any evidence that workers were burnt alive, but the are being punished for heresy all the same. Latin America is in revolt aginst the Washington Consensus and the excesses of neo-liberalism. We’ve seen the US government sponsor a coup against Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, because he has been a vocal critic of the Bush adminstration.
Mexico votes July 2nd, and while the election is going to be close if polls are any indication, the victory of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promises to bring Mexico to the Left like the rest of Latin America. Overtures made to Mexico by Mercosur and Hugo Chavezs would allow for Mexico to decrease its dependence on the US for its economic survival. Mexico is consistently one of the top 2 sources of American oil imports. While Felipe Calderon, candidate for current President Fox’s National Action Party (PAN), has hinted at altering the Mexican constitution to allow for at least partial privatization of Mexico’s state oil company (PEMEX), AMLO and his party would most likely reject any effort along these lines.
All this begs the quesion.
Why did President Bush send the National Guard to the border now after so many years of resisting efforts to enforce the border? And why was the Guard sent instead of hiring more Border Patrol guards? Are there plans for the deployment of American forces into Mexico to occupy oil fields and other facilities if AMLO wins in in July’s election, and rejects the tenets of the Washington Consensus?