Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico's Future
Carlsen, Laura
gustAvo grAF / ArcHivo LAtino SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future George W. bush and mexican president Felipe Calderón attend a news conference in...
...12 (May–August 1992): 189–206...
...The human rights violations interests of a weak federal government that fears popular related to this strategy stem from the mentality of conprotest, and to state and local governments in many cases frontation, the lack of training of security forces in proper controlled by despots...
...Bush, Mexican president Vicente Fox, and certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA...
...gustAvo grAF / ArcHivo LAtino SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future George W. bush and mexican president Felipe Calderón attend a news conference in mérida, mexico, in march 2007...
...Several other rural leaders have been picked up on the same charge and members of the social movement fear a general crackdown on social movement activists...
...In Mexico, the first two objectives, which are widely viewed as counter to Mexican interests, have been downplayed and the initiative is billed exclusively as a counter-narcotics plan...
...190 (March/April 2004): 37–50...
...an accentuated crisis in tures such as the media, schools, the church, culture and the judicial branch...
...11...
...Víctor Quintana, “Drug Trafficking, Violence and Repression,” CIP Americas Program, May 8, 2008, available at americas.irc-online.org...
...21...
...Hubert Cartón de Grammont, “El mercado de trabajo en el campo: unas reflexiones a partir de la lectura del libro Portraits de Bahia, de Hèléne Rivière d’Arc,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología no...
...government and the Bush adminis- on equity and inclusion...
...When these mechanisms ceased to (over-exploitation of water, destruction of forests, pollu- be effective to control the widespread discontent that has tion) that ratifies the monstrosity of neoliberalism...
...world...
...23...
...Instead of women by army agents in other parts of the country, includlooking to overcome the polarization left in the wake of his ing the western state of Michoacán and the northern border questioned election, the president has set a course that relies state of Coahuila.10 The lack of prosecution for the rape and on the armed forces for bolstering his presidency...
...and the commoditization of natural resources...
...tered by the PRI through its system of political patronage via Rules against government intervention made it very difnational organizations of farmers, workers and the popular ficult for the government to negotiate solutions to popular urban sector—began to crumble as the abstract market re- demands as it had in the past...
...officials’ support of ecological death the exercise of politics...
...Just days later, Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a social activist and adviser to families of women killed in the border area, was violently detained and accused of “attacking general communication pathways” on the basis of a bridge protest in October 2005...
...But the counter-terrorism/drug-war Program of fairs, described the SPP’s purpose with remarkable model elaborated in the SPP and embodied later the Center for candor: The SPP, he declared, “understands North in Plan Mexico (known officially as the Merida International Policy America as a shared economic space,” one that “we Initiative) encourages a crackdown on grassroots (www.americas need to protect,” not only on the border but “more dissent to assure that no force, domestic or foreign, 17 17 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS participated in this market and those who did not added structural exclusion to the age-old problem of poverty...
...41...
...2. Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship and Community (Verso, 1992), 13...
...Verónica Martínez, “Refleja México ineficiencia en agro,” Reforma, April 29, 2008...
...labor competition and downward pressure on wages and conditions...
...families, along with entire communities ther “security” nor “prosperity” is seen to include problems and regional organizations fractured...
...6. Blanca Rubio, Explotados y excluidos (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 2001), 128–29...
...colonialism, with more than 85% percent of exports and the Under the drugwar model, there has been a countrywide increase of attacks on women by security forces...
...the U.S...
...17...
...In the context of impunity in Mexico, where accusations of attacks on women by people with ties to power rarely make it inside a courtroom, the practice has been spreading since the war on drugs sent the army out into the streets.8 A particularly outrageous case is the rape and murder of an elderly indigenous woman in the Sierra Zongólica, proved by initial investigations and later covered up by the Calderón government and higher-up members of 21 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS channels for pulling the divided nation together or deepenreport: mexico ii the political opposition...
...line...
...officials whose continued presence in of- and police) to exercise social control...
...28 (July–December 2006): 117–58...
...As evi- in its territory due to a history in which the United States denced in Assistant Secretary Shannon’s remark about “ar- itself has posed the greatest threat to its national security...
...3 (May/June 2008): 31–33...
...Ibid...
...2 (1991...
...La Consulta, un logro del movimiento ciudadano,” La Jornada, June 23, 2008...
...There is no clearer example shaken and discredited by their evasive or downright du- of this disastrous policy than the recent Merida Initiative...
...11...
...increased military aid in Latin American and that is deeply divided both politically and economically, concludes that “too often in Latin America, when armies the defense of neoliberalism not only further divides socihave focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies ety, but threatens the legitimacy of the state...
...agents to operate to shield the agreement from potential attacks...
...Changes in laws preceding and following NAFTA, and the practical impact of the trade and investment agreement, eroded the ability of the poor to fight back by eliminating their social and territorial bases...
...the following october, the governments of both countries announced a joint security program approved by the U.S...
...4. “Aprueban diputados que se penalice el delito de terrorismo . . . ,” La Jornada, February 21, 2007...
...Congress in June...
...Juárez,” NACLA Report on the Americas 41, no...
...19...
...14 Moreover, curtailing civil liberties Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center reports: weakens, rather than strengthens, both institutions and the “As the neoliberal economic project advances, which puts public’s faith in legal channels to resolve differences...
...The pretense was both predictable and preposterous: Zapatista communities have a strict policy banning drugs and alcohol, and the armed forces did not produce any evidence of having found such substances...
...First, there have been due to a spreading war mentality in Mexico...
...14...
...govern- economic dependency to a degree not seen since Spanish ment support...
...report: mexico ii “market fixes all” ideology precluded attempts to help eco- have found it necessary to invent a mechanism to protect nomic actors successfully negotiate the transition to a more their “shared economic space”: the SPP...
...Structural adjustment conditions by international decided—and the Mexican government conceded—that finance institutions and the rules of NAFTA and the World top-down economic integration necessitates shared secu- Trade Organization (WTO) reduced the state’s capacity to rity goals and actions...
...For Mexico, these and an alternative course for the nation...
...Another problem is the way the false applied in Colombia beginning in 2000...
...Migration was transformed from health issues like bird flu, the “partnership” emphasis is on a temporary or cyclical escape valve to the motor of many protecting property rather than people...
...security is synonymous with a strategic the lines of battle...
...and the movement of indebted people against the banks and mortgage companies...
...on specific issues at specific moments, taken together they The SPP was born post-9/11 and reflects the priorities constitute a fundamental challenge to the NAFTA model of the Bush counter-terrorism agenda...
...Social movements since then have drawn to believe that U.S...
...José Galán and Laura Poy Solano, “Abierta violación al espíritu constitucional: expertos,” La Jornada, April 28, 2007...
...the unsustainable high civil acts derives from the slight-to-zero effectiveness of the cost of living, the disaster—universally recognized—in mechanisms of control conventionally employed by the public and private education...
...Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño has been questioned for signing contracts with his family’s oil company while serving in public office...
...3. Víctor Quintana, “Saldos del TLCAN,” La Jornada, December 31, 2002...
...15...
...con T w p e b i r e t e o hen nafta went into effect on january 1, majority f depend of n imports , neolib oriented ral integ to at the on U.S...
...Shortly before the government’s anti-drug Operation Chihuahua began, Armando Villareal, leader of the rural movement for fair electricity rates and against the privatization of fertilizer production, was assassinated.11 When the operation began, four farmers, members of Villareal’s organization Agrodinámica Nacional, were apprehended by officers of Mexico’s Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) and accused of “electricity theft” and later released thanks to pressure from the organization...
...9. John Ackerman, “Democratización: pasado, presente y futuro,” Perfiles Latinoamericanos: Revista de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Sede México 14, no...
...Roberto González Amador and David Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo altos precios de alimentos: FMI,” La Jornada, April 11, 2008...
...2 d d n p u s o p ge esident pr countries, A NAFT n march 2005, the U.S...
...7. Ibid., 127, 131...
...the U.S...
...Silvia Ribero, “Agrocombustibles: secretos y trampas del Banco Mundial,” La Jornada, July 5, 2008...
...a weak presidency and suppressing dissent, the regional Mexico is thus at a critical juncture...
...16...
...the interest of business above those of the majority of the O 17 .” easingly undermine its legitimacy will incr make did list w so s the published country’ a letter cial containing oes.15 The a laundr not y list of spaces for the private sector, the political costs to the Stat a m s o e r n a n june 23, a group of mexican intellectuals population ppropriate and atu pr al omotes resourc economic s social go pr d ojects , and that com seek un to e l for comfortable reading: “Drug-related violence with an The report also mentions the traditional mechanisms for exceedingly high cost in lives (not only those directly in- building social consensus that have broken down and the volved...
...The expansion of NAFTA into the security arena, first through the SPP and now through its offspring, Plan Mexico, report: mexico ii country, the war on terrorism is not a security priority...
...ture, Mexico’s shaky transition to democracy could regress In international relations, NAFTA ushered in political and to presidential authoritarianism, with explicit U.S...
...13...
...administration reveals that the basis for the new “Regional Security Cooperation Initiative” comprises three Bush policies that have utterly failed to meet their objectives in other settings.5 These are (1) militarized border security that indiscriminately targets immigrants, drug traffickers, and terrorists...
...It is a strategy meant to confront heading to the crisis and extend it into security issues in a closer on the widespread demands for a new social order based alliance with the U.S...
...Confrontations between Zapatista communities and security forces are again on the rise, particularly in areas, like ecotourism sites, that are of interest to developers...
...Neoliberal policy makers’ 18 FridA HArtz SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Zapatista supporters block the advance of the mexican army into Amador Hernández, an eco-reserve, in Chiapas in 1999...
...Latin American Working Group, the Center for International Policy, and the Washington Office on Latin America, “Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S...
...Alejandro Nadal, “Crisis alimentaria: ganancias para buitres,” La Jornada, May 7, 2008...
...withdrawal of the state from gration to the United States—though it is worth noting that social programs to promote development...
...The commission reports a rise in military incursions, arrests of community leaders using fabricated evidence, and physical abuse and torture of Zapatista militants...
...Particularly in a nation pact of U.S...
...So NAFTA”—locking in the neoliberal economic model that far, the federal government’s response has been to defend has contributed to a dangerous disintegration of the social the neoliberal model that has played a major role in lead- compact in Mexico...
...10...
...In addition to military activity, there has been in recent months a buildup of paramilitary activity against the Zapatista communities, related to attempts to take back land the Zapatistas had won in the period following the 1994 uprising...
...Measures designed to “push final bill contains no U.S...
...These attempts have been particularly intense in areas like ecotourism sites, water sources, and zones believed to contain important biodiversity resources, all of which are of interest to developers.7 An increase in militarization of Mexican society will very likely lead to an increase in the scope and activity of both the army and of paramilitary groups...
...12...
...A close review of the detailed proposal presented by the An elite army unit parades in mexico City...
...notes Displaced People 1. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response,” Washington, D.C., 1990...
...Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, “Sobre la situación de los derechos humanos en Chiapas, Balance Anual 2007,” available at www.frayba.org (translation by the author...
...It continues to be the largest market for illicit drugs in the world, and its burgeoning demand But economic dependency and the military superiority supports Mexico’s ever more powerful drug cartels...
...5. Comisión de Desarrollo Rural de la Cámara de Diputados, La soberanía económica de México en riesgo, cited in La Jornada, November 28, 2002...
...of malnutrition, infant mortality, or other human security up on January 1, 1994, the rebels protested the social ex- Aside from real doubts about their effectiveness, these clusion and marginalization of indigenous peoples and programs also raise serious questions of national soverthe poor, an exclusion that would later be exacerbated by eignty and national priorities...
...8. “México es tercer país receptor de remesas en el mundo, según Banco Mundial,” July 15, 2008, www.informador.com.mx...
...9. Inter-American Development Bank, “Remittances and Development: The Case of Mexico” June 28, 2005, available at www.iadb.org...
...The initiative, heralded as the next step ment and social cutbacks—comes with a necesin regional integration within the “NAFTA Plus” sary degree of force, but this was the first time agenda, is described on its Web site (www.spp.gov) that a U.S...
...25...
...2. USDA, Foreign Agricultural Service, “Mexico: Trade,” available at www.ers...
...6. David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/Anti-Globalization (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 13...
...7. Claus Offe, “El dilema de la sincronía: democracia y economía de mercado en Europa Oriental,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Constitucionales no...
...The country has a policy of neutrality in international affairs that preempts its governments from becoming embroiled in conflicts that do not directly affect the nation...
...In an incident on June 4, more than 200 soldiers and police tried to enter the Zapatista regional government seat La Garrucha and then went into the villages of Hermenegildo Galeana and San Alejandro supposedly in search of illegal drugs...
...placed the state as the entity responsible for improving social By extending NAFTA into regional security, Washington welfare...
...NAFTA dictated a sink-or-swim strategy ers from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ushered of pushing Mexico into the world economy that led to the in the neoliberal model, notably presidents Carlos Salinas disintegration of many social-sector organizations...
...The official description of the SPP didn’t list political opposition as one of the threats adds that it is “based on the principle that our to be countered...
...18...
...moral lynching cam- paradigm has led to a further breakdown of institutional paigns against the opposition . . . ”16 The country’s weak democratic institutions have been ing a transition to democracy...
...González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo...
...In general, no one would deny privatization, calls for national programs to recognize and that fighting international terrorism and organized crime support the contributions of “non-competitive” sectors, requires mechanisms of global cooperation, intelligence defense of indigenous rights and decision-making over sharing, and coordinated actions...
...The political-party leaders...
...fighting its own drug war...
...7. Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, “Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform,” January 7, 2004...
...moring NAFTA,” the three North American governments Given the lack of threats from international terrorism in the 19 19 JuLio etcHArt NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS of international relations...
...Imelda García, “Crece importación de fertilizantes,” Reforma, May 3, 2008...
...leaders of the Geor three br r oadly ved “ thr ec oughout rity coo North eratio America” .” He ad thr e ough : “T im o a - Mexicans and other Latin Americans have Texas, and launched a regional defense-based ini- learned that adopting the U.S.-promoted neolibertiative called the Security and Prosperity Partner- al economic model—with its economic displaceship (SPP...
...Given the huge imbalance of eco- broker clientelist relationships with organized sectors of socinomic and political power between Mexico and ety, since it had fewer resources for special subsidy the United States, that meant that Mexico had to and support programs...
...There are simply few reasons the agreement...
...priorities are expensive and politically threatening...
...12 Like the attacks on women, the repression in the context of an operation that has some 3,000 extra army and police members in the streets of northern cities sends a signal that dissidence will be harshly treated as delinquency...
...Mexico No wonder, then, that NAFTA promoters saw the need has historically been reticent to allow U.S...
...Of course, Shannon cooperation...
...The corporatist social compact—adminis- the fringes of political and economic life...
...But The agreement, hammered out behind closed doors and more devastating was what it did in the national sphere...
...The NAFTA model exerted significant political pressure on Mexico in the international sphere to toe a U.S...
...15...
...José M. Maravall, “Economía y regimenes políticos,” Working Papers, Instituto Juan March, no...
...8. Luis Hernández Navarro, “La guerra de los alimentos,”La Jornada, October 22, 2002...
...Mexico’s U.S.-style anti-terrorism laws have already been range of activities...
...Mario Marín, governor of Puebla, was recorded discussing the apprehension and harassment of human rights defender Lydia Cacho with a Puebla industrialist allegedly connected to the pedophile rings Cacho wrote about...
...fice constitutes a major challenge to legality (Juan Camilo The imposition of the Bush national security-free trade Mouriño, Ulises Ruiz, Mario Marín...
...8. Adam Prezeworski, Michael Álvarez E., José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 164–68...
...Every day the newspapers report human rights, and the impunity of knowing they can get incidents and declarations that reflect a loss of faith in the away with just about anything as long as the victim is outsystem and the loss of credibility of the institutions charged side the inner circles of power...
...sacrificing Mexico’s historic doctrine of neutrality, and dropNAFTA locked in the fundamentals of neoliberalism: an ping issues that caused friction with the Bush government, open market...
...must be developed in the context of each country’s national Although these movements for the most part lack a perma- security agenda and defined by the confluence of particular nent and solid organizational structure and tend to coalesce priorities...
...the crisis of the national security apparatus...
...Juan Antonio Zúñiga, “Creció 55 por ciento la importación de alimentos básicos en los pasados seis años,” La Jornada, January 16, 2007...
...The few and Ernesto Zedillo, the neoliberal model attacked the PRI’s that refused to swim, or even get in the water, were forced to corporatist base...
...etw market...
...Rape and murder of women has been seen as both a symbol of conquest and the spoils that go to the victor...
...Although many trade barriers had already been Mexican government, especially under the administrations W e e i p a m d i d a fl y s Mexico’ it tari 1994, hailed then-pr as esident Carlos entr Salinas into the de Gor first - and icts a n developing also inev countr tably y o was in bound te the to ol cause tical r some alm...
...has included political opponents of the regime in power, In Chiapas, a state rich in coveted natural resources, the even those working within the political system such as activ- link between the breakdown of the social compact and the ists, independent journalists, labor organizers, or opposition pressures of the neoliberal model are particularly stark...
...See also testimonies on the CCIODH video at cciodh.pangea.org...
...3. Alejandro Estivill, conference on SPP, Universidad de las Américas (Cholula), June 12, 2008...
...Workers were shunted into the atomized and insecure civil society institutions, criminalizes opposition, justifies informal economy as small- and medium-size national busirepression, and curtails civil liberties...
...Rights, available at cciodh.pangea.org...
...See also Tania Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras,” in Masiosare, a supplement to La Jornada, January 12, 2003...
...Military Programs in Latin America,” September 2004, available at ciponline...
...The imposed on an uninformed society, led to the dismantling of agreement presented constituted a grave threat to traditional many of the basic institutional relationships that had united concepts of national sovereignty and reweaving an already Mexicans in the past...
...report: mexico ii director of the Mexico City–based Americas policy.org...
...In many ways, by taking on the U.S...
...Rubio, Explotados y excluidos...
...impu- been expressed in mass demonstrations and acts of civil nity of the powers that be, who hold themselves up as the disobedience, the State has frequently and disproportionnew ‘moral authority...
...an export-oriented economy...
...an intense campaign to privatize ately employed the intervention of security forces (army energy resources...
...Armoring NAFTA 1. See the official Web site, www.spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp...
...13...
...5. Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, “Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response...
...abuse of women protesters in police custody following the Three examples of the “collateral damage” to society conflict in San Salvador Atenco also demonstrates that Mexican women and their rights are suffering heavy casualties A third example involves the murders of grassroots leaders in the state of Chihuahua...
...security agenda Mexico puts itself at greater risk and violates historical precepts indicates that the Calderón administration has chosen a path 20 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 mexico’s antiterrorism laws have already been invoked against members report: mexico ii of authoritarianism and rule by force over one that might the security forces.9 There have also been numerous rapes of strengthen the country’s democratic institutions...
...the women’s movement against femicide...
...24...
...and (3) waging the “drug war...
...The justice system remains bound to the opposition through force...
...Associated Press, “Report: Mexican Army Used Rape, Torture in Drug War,” September 21, 2007, available at www.usatoday.com...
...security perimeter” under the SPP have pres- vent illegal drug use, increase rehabilitation of addicts, stop sured Mexico to militarize its southern border and adopt the flow of contraband arms to Mexico, or prosecute money repressive measures toward Central and South Americans laundering...
...Ribero, “Agrocombustibles...
...In addition to bolstering with upholding and extending it...
...Ulises Ruiz, governor of Oaxaca state, stands accused of authoritarianism and violent repression of the social movement...
...the eagerness to reduce the State, specifically those operated through ideological strucelectoral process to vote buying...
...4. Jeanne Batalova, “Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Information Source, available at www.migrationinformation.org...
...2) unilateral, pre-emptive counter-terrorism measures...
...By furthering the Calderón strat- producer prices fell with the inflow of cheap agricultural imegy of confrontation, it blocks avenues for development of ports...
...international not even Fox could stomach the invasion of Iraq...
...4 Bush, allocates $400 million to Mexico for 2008–09...
...Desolation 1. This article is a revised, updated version of Sergio Zermeño, “Desolación en México...
...government will allocate about $1.4 billion over a three-year period to the mexican military, police, and judicial systems for training and equipment...
...For decades, the relationship between war and violence against women has been documented and understood as the result of power built through force rather than social consensus...
...Inexplicably, neilocal economies...
...16...
...The irony is the United States’ long history of failure in efforts...
...Second, there has been a countrywide increase of attacks invoked against members of social movements, since the definition of “terrorism” is sufficiently vague to lend itself to a broad range of activities.13 The war on drugs/counterterrorism model embodied in Plan Mexico invariably extends into repression of political opposition in countries where it has been applied, blurring the lines between the war on drugs, the war against terrorism, and the war against on women by security forces...
...Peter Rosset, “La hora de La Vía Campesina,” La Jornada, May 9, 2008...
...At this critical junc- nesses closed their doors...
...When the Mexican Congress dutifully presented a revised counter-terrorism law in Congress this year, an opposition congressman argued against the imposition of the vaguely defined category of “international terrorism,” saying, “We don’t want to be immersed in a cycle where the enemies of other nations are automatically put forth as our own enemies...
...4. José Luis Calva, quoted in La Jornada, November 16, 1991...
...privileges for most notably support for Cuba and the regularization of mitransnational corporations...
...There have been mobilizations against security plan for Mexico...
...59 (1994...
...When the Zapatista Army for National Liberation rose issues critical to Mexico...
...en a su This erpo form h er - eliminated, the agreement—a treaty under Mexican of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), responded law—established Mexico’s full commitment to economic to this dependency by protecting “Americanized” interests, integration as defined by the Washington Consensus...
...Support for the use of the armed forces in the drug war Nonetheless, the Mexican government has implicitly accept- within Mexican communities creates a situation in which ed this conflation by accepting “border security measures” counter-narcotics programs extend into counter-insurgency aimed at migrants in both the SPP and Plan Mexico...
...by laura Carlsen Canadian prime minister Paul Martin met in Waco, IW...
...12...
...1 In April 2007, on the eve of the North American “economic space” needed to be protected against “the threat of terrorism and against a threat of Laura Carlsen is Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S...
...Ibid...
...Social benefits emanating adopt the foreign policy objectives and the desta- from a paternal state began to disappear with the bilizing, militaristic counter-terrorism agenda of growing dominance of the international market...
...he simply argued that the new prosperity is dependent on our security...
...increased attacks on autonomous Zapatista communities in Chiapas, which have been documented by the International Civil Commission on Human Rights...
...6. Associated Press, “Mexican President Decries Anti-Immigrant Tone,” February 14, 2008...
...4. Silvia Gómez Tagle, “Public Institutions and Electoral Transparency,” in Kevin Middlebrook, ed., Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (San Diego: Center for U.S...
...Israel Rodríguez J. , “El alza en alimentos cuesta a México 5 mil mdd: Banxico,” La Jornada, May 4, 2008...
...González Amador and Brooks, “Tensa al mundo en desarrollo...
...A 2004 report documents the im- tration’s counter-terrorism strategy...
...official had stated outright that regional as “a White House–led initiative among the United security was no longer focused on keeping the States and the two nations it borders—Canada and citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico Mexico—to increase security and to enhance pros- safe from harm, but was now about protecting a perity among the three countries through greater regional economic model...
...market.6 have led to the deaths of thousands of Mexican migrants...
...Nearly seven years conflation of undocumented immigration with homeland and $6 billion after Plan Colombia began, the result is no security in the United States has led to measures that have appreciable decline in production of illegal drugs or in the little or nothing to do with regional national security and flow to the U.S...
...While of the United States have forced NAFTA’s junior partners to touted as a giant step forward in bilateral cooperation, the adopt Washington’s priorities...
...The Tby Congress on June 26 and signed into law b d s s a p e i t i n . . T o i x e l security he latest is s P te a p n f M orwa c rd . in h “ is in U te S gr i atin a g ti ” v r , egion e a y l original plan foresees about $1.4 billion over a three-year period to the Mexican military, police, and judicial systems for training and equipment...
...5. See “A Primer on Plan Mexico,” available at http://americas.irc-online.org...
...But these mechanisms ancestral territory, and demands for inclusive democracy...
...usda.gov...
...Even though a new generation of rul- frayed social fabric...
...6. International Crisis Group, “Latin American Drugs: Losing the Fight,” March 7. See the recent report by the international Civil Commission on Human 8. See Lourdes Godínez Leal, “Combating Impunity and Femicide in Ciudad 9. See Erich Moncada, “Mexico’s Military and the Murder at Zongolica (II),” 14, 2008, available at www.crisisgroup.org...
...3. North American Transportation Statistics Database, “Transportation and the Economy,” Table 2-3, “Employment in Transportation and Related Industries,” available at nats.sct.gob.mx...
...14...
...the way in which they are being supplanted by force: destruction of the social fabric...
...The Mexican government The division of the economy into those who has received this new mandate with ambivalence, seeking, in the words of one official from the Foreign Ministry, to move the focus away from security and toward development, while at the same time welcoming the military and police aid offered in the Merida Initiative.3 This “securitization” of the trilateral relationship under NAFTA has profound implications for Mexican civil society...
...Mexican Studies, 2004), 88–95...
...State representative and human rights activist under the drug-war model embodied in Plan Mexico suffice to demonstrate the risks at stake...
...22...
...22 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008 Elections in Mexico 1. Portions of this essay draw on many of the ideas I developed in collaboration with Enrique Conejero in the introduction we wrote together for a book we coedited, Democratización y globalización en América Latina (Spain: Universidad Miguel Hernández, 2005...
...5. Norberto Bobbio, El futuro de la democracia (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 25...
...Although some competitive framework or to compensate the “losers” in SPP working groups have addressed natural disasters and the new economic wars...
...10...
...2. WTO study cited in Reuters, “Países en desarrollo pierden 24 mil mdd por subsidios al agro,” published in La Jornada, August 27, 2003...
...Campesinos migrated off their land as much of it was privatized and as report: mexico ii effectively questions the future of the system...
...Antonio Sánchez, “Entrevista: Fernando Canales Clariond: comercio, la prioridad,” Reforma, January 22, 2003...
...Ibid...
...obligations or benchmarks to preout the U.S...
...17...
...plicitous responses to the electoral conflicts of 2006, to The extension of NAFTA into SPP and Plan Mexico enpowerful politicians who openly defy the rule of law, and forces a strategy of the current Mexican government to deal to the inequality of daily life generated under the neoliberal with organized crime as a violent crusade, and to handle economic model...
...presumably in transit to the United States, going against a The model of counter-narcotics work focused on the suphistory of relatively free transit and increasing tensions with ply side through interdiction and enforcement measures was its southern neighbors...
...Molina Ramírez, “El campo en cifras...
...the expansion of fear and “The tendency to criminalize and repress protest and panic in broad sectors of society...
...NarcoNews, April 10, 2007, available at narcosphere.narconews.com...
...Los campesinos del siglo XXI,” Nueva Sociedad no...
...9. Alejandro Nadal, “Maíz, cosechar tempestades,” La Jornada, January 17, 2007...
...government...
...3. Jorge Carpizo, El presidencialismo mexicano (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1994), 121– 22...
...2. Thomas Shannon, speech to the Council on the Americas, April 3, 2008...
...Víctor Suárez Carrera, “La economía agroalimentaria, un desastre,” La Jornada del Campo, April 8, 2008...
...as- natural disasters and environmental and ecologisistant secretary of state for western hemisphere af- cal disasters...
...It can either take security strategy outlined in these alliances pursues the up the challenge to strengthen democratic institutions, or goal of assuring access to natural resources and “armoring it can fall back into rule by force and authoritarianism...
...of social movements, since the definition of “terrorism” is sufficiently vague to lend itself to a broad Víctor Quintana calls this wave of criminalization “an attempt at threatening the leaders of three movements that have been at the forefront on a national level: the rural producers’ movement to get electricity at competitive prices and renegotiate NAFTA’s agricultural terms...
Vol. 41 • September 2008 • No. 5
