Failed States, the Coming Mexican Revolution

[Daveparts]

The surrealism of a government that builds a wall at the same time it opens a highway gives one pause. The insanity of destroying the economy of your neighbor’s country and then to strut along obliviously thinking that it won’t affect your own. The realization of a duality, a fabricated reality were these things are done on purpose they are not just accidents or coincidences. Some of us live in wonderland and some of us our just visiting

George or as we should call him “Wrong way George,” invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who was mistreating and abusing the people. He invaded Afghanistan because it was a haven for terrorists such as the Taliban but since the Taliban’s demise ethnic warlords have sprung up fighting over and funding themselves with massive drug profits. NATO warns that Afghanistan could again become a failed state if it does not receive a massive influx of aid. Now stop and think about this for a minute, you’ve got a man as President who has made a career out of making the wrong decisions. To George Mexico’s not a failed state but a raging success and we are winning in Iraq too!

If wrong way’s goal had been to liberate people from tyrants and drug lords all he had to do was cast an eye southward and save the bus fare. America has a failed state on it’s own it southern border and we tend to ignore it because our media pretend its not there. Call it regrettable or unfortunate but the one thing it’s not is accidental. Mexico bar none is the most corrupt of all the Latin American countries. It is the neo liberal economic prototype a model fifty first American state, crooked corrupt and without standards. The Bush administration shifts with the discomfort in their chairs to hide the erections in their pants over their admiration of Mexico.

The myth of free trade helps to hold down Mexico down while corporate America pushes her legs wide apart. Since NAFTA was passed Mexican productivity is up 25% and Mexican real wages are down 10% that coupled with 40% of the population already living under the poverty level. Not the American poverty level the Mexican poverty level, a 10% decline when you’re living at subsistence levels to begin with is the difference between swimming and sinking.

But the media perpetuated myth is that we are increasing trade with Mexico but 85% of all of Mexico’s foreign trade is with the U.S. 10% is with other Latin American countries. Ford exports auto parts to Mexico then imports the completed autos back across the border. Paying only a fraction of the American wage so that neither the Mexican nor the unemployed American autoworker can afford to purchase the car. Mexico is a plantation state and corporate America are the owners the Mexican government merely the overseers; to complain or to file grievances is to invite disaster or death.

The Mexican police, government and even the Army work for the highest bidder for it’s a system with failure built in. There is no chance for advancement through legal means for an honest policeman he would watch his family suffer and make himself a target in a jungle of corruption. A country of 108 millions with 40% hungry yet 1% control 35.9% of all money in circulation, for every $100 in the Mexican economy $35.90 is in the pocket of one million eighty thousand Mexicans. Leaving the remainder of the $64.10 to be divided by 107 million Mexicans, two Mexico’s the haves and the get the fuck out of here’s.

The American government not content with exporting poverty and environmental degradation now plan on the free trade model to import poverty and pollution to this country as well. The plan is to allow Mexican truckers to traverse America’s highways at Mexican wages to in fact import the Mexican minimum wage. All is equitable they claim as American companies can apply to travel on Mexican highways at American wages, but so far no takers.

Mexico produces more oil than Kuwait but like the Tennessee Ernie Ford song “Sixteen tons” they owe their soul to the company store of the World Bank. Although they’ve been invited to join OPEC the voices of El Norta whisper, “I don’t think so, in fact we think free trade is the answer.” But Mexico resist’s deregulating the states oil industry how can the government loot the golden goose if it’s in someone else’s barn? The generational chain of corruption is not so easily broken.

Besides Mexico is at war with it’s self, several southern states are in open rebellion while the crooked Presidential election results were hailed in Washington over a quarter of a million Mexicans demonstrators shut down Mexico city for weeks. The new President like the quisling President of Iraq was sworn in quickly and without fanfare. The outgoing President was not even allowed to give his farewell address due to fistfights on the floor of the capital building. And a genuine concern for his security forced a tactical retreat as the general populace swarmed the capital.

Americans debate both thoughtfully and emotionally about illegal immigration but like most issues in America the corporate media spins the issue on its head. In Darfur no one calls those people immigrants when East Berliners went over the wall the issue wasn’t illegal immigration they are and were refugees. To call the Mexicans pouring into the United States immigrants is like calling the Katrina evacuee’s tourists it is a filthy media lie with the sole purpose to cloud the issue. That being said doesn’t change the fact that we still have a problem that these people are coming here to escape grinding poverty, a poverty the American government both encouraged and endorsed.

The corporate media would have you believe these new immigrants just decided the grass was greener on the other side. But the actual choice was a starker question of what are we going to do to keep from starving. No different from Darfur the fact that they are coming by thousands on foot across a desert should speak for itself. It is too easy to label the locals as racist’s and Xenophobes, were fifteen hundred to two thousand people a day wandering through your cities streets day and night it might try your Christian charity as well. That number doesn’t include drug traffickers or coyotes or even the Mexican Army units taking pot shots at the racist Americans for repairing their racist fences on their own racist property. If it were Iranians taking shots across the border at Americans in Iraq would the media portray it differently perhaps?

The crux of the issue is not about race or nationality or even immigration it is about the utterly failed policy of free trade which benefits a only a tiny fraction and penalizes a whole population like a Mississippi overseer at harvest time. We in America see only the symptoms that hit us in the face, as the media obediently looks the other way. As is the case so many times America is fortunate if we look at Mexico today we can see what America will become tomorrow. The Mexican refugees are not coming empty handed, they bring us a message. It reads you’re turn is next.

Wrong way George continues in his corporate crusade for crony capitalism masquerading as free trade. While in Mexico the pressure builds, two southern states already in open rebellion the drug gangs and street gangs grow stronger and more violent. Like Katrina in El Norta the Mexican army guards the oil wells and refineries and government officials as the refugees head north. In Los Angeles open gang warfare has made the south central neighborhoods begin to look like Baghdad as gang violence escalates by 25% this year alone.

The surrealism of a government that builds a wall at the same time it opens a highway gives one pause. The insanity of destroying the economy of your neighbor’s country and to strut along obliviously thinking that it won’t affect our own. The realization of a duality, a fabricated reality that these things are done on purpose they are not just accidents or coincidences. Some of us live in wonderland and some of us our just visiting

[Xipe Totec]

1. Three years away from the centennial of the Mexican Revolution

and three years away from the bicentennial of the Mexican war of independence.

Events seem to be right on schedule...

[fasttense]

2. Well said.

"The myth of free trade helps to hold down Mexico down while corporate America pushes her legs wide apart. Since NAFTA was passed Mexican productivity is up 25% and Mexican real wages are down 10%."

You are one of the few here on DU who can see reality. Keep it up and welcome.
:hi:

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I can't believe I've just accepted the 'immigrants' meme, when so

few years ago I was talking about the 'economic refugees' trying to swim in from Haiti.

Yes, they are immigrants, but that doesn't mean they are any less refugees than the Haitian boat people or the Irish escaping the potato famine. They are escaping a poverty that makes the poverty here look like the high life.

Thanks, for removing my blinders.

[ljm2002]

4. Great post!

And welcome to DU!

Your essay certainly helps to see events with a fresh perspective. Thanks for posting.

[Judi Lynn]

5. So very, very glad to see your comments. It's like water in the desert reading what you've posted.

You've expressed something in your last paragraph I've never seen anywhere, and it's a miracle, being so very true:

The surrealism of a government that builds a wall at the same time it opens a highway gives one pause.

Your words didn't fall on deaf ears. There are quite a few DU'ers who have been thinking about Mexico, and what has happened to it through the free trade agreements, and American manipulation of their politics and their economy.

Thanks to you for this heartfelt, informed writing.

[progressoid]

6. Yeah, I'll give this a big ole K&R.