White House silence on Mexico protests speaks volumes

[cbayer]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/11/mexico-protests-usculpability.html



We have created the Mexico from which we now distance ourselves

November 20, 2014 2:00AM ET
by Christy Thornton

In early October, I attended a rally outside the Mexican consulate in New York City to protest the disappearance of a group of students taken by police in the state of Guerrero two weeks earlier. On a busy midtown Manhattan street, a dozen people gathered to call attention to the missing students and demand their return. A passerby, puzzled by the commotion, stopped a protester to ask what they were shouting about. When he was told what had happened, he asked incredulously, “But they were Mexican students? Killed in Mexico? Why should we care here?”

Indeed, why should ordinary Americans care about the rampant corruption, extrajudicial violence and culture of impunity that has overtaken Mexico in the eight years since then-President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels? Why should they care about 100,000 dead and at least 20,000 disappeared, some of whose remains are being uncovered in a quickly metastasizing map of mass graves? Why should they care about the 43 teachers in training, rounded up by police and turned over to a gang of killers who, it is alleged, burned their bodies and dumped what remained in a local river? Why should they care about the surging protests, the tens of thousands marching in the streets of Mexico’s cities and towns, calling for the renunciation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and declaring “Fue el estado” (It was the state)?

Here’s why Americans should care: We are collectively funding this war. Our tax dollars, in the form of security aid, provide the equipment, weapons and training to state security forces responsible for an ever-lengthening rap sheet of human rights abuses. U.S. drug habits, in the form of an insatiable market for narcotics, marijuana and amphetamines, provide the liquid cash that has proved so corrosive when it has come into contact with every level of the Mexican state.

This is our war, on our drugs. We have created the Mexico from which we now distance ourselves — but we can’t afford to turn our backs any longer.

more at link

[Nitram]

1. White House "silence" is just the good manners of good neighbors.

This is something that Mexico needs to work out for itself. If the U.S. plays too visible a role, the Mexican government loses credibility and legitimacy. I don't doubt we are offering help in numerous ways, but cannot play a high-profile role without undermining the Mexican government. The Mexican people will have to decide when enough is enough, and the government will have to step up and help solve the problem. There is not a great deal we can do. We cannot force the government to do what we think it should do, and we cannot invade and take matters into our own hands.

[cbayer]

2. I think the point of the article is that the US is already up to it's eyeballs in this.

There is a lot of room between becoming actively involved (which I don't support) and saying something about it.

There is also a lot of room between becoming actively involved and looking at how the US may be contributing to the problems.

The is little credibility and legitimacy for the Mexican government to lose at this point.

While I agree that Mexico needs to fix this problem, and I fully expect that they will, the brother to the north should at least acknowledge what is going on.

[KoKo]

3. Good points...something to think about. n/t