Immigration debate impacts Mexican race

[struggle4progress]

IOAN GRILLO
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - ...

U.S. immigration reform has been a cornerstone of the presidency of Vicente Fox. For nearly six years he has lobbied the U.S. government to allow more legal migration, meeting regularly with President Bush and traveling to California, Utah and Washington.

Lopez Obrador, a fiery leftist, has accused Fox of being weak when dealing with Washington. When Bush announced plans to send 6,000 National Guard soldiers to the border, Lopez Obrador called Fox a U.S. "puppet" and "lackey" for not vigorously opposing the measure ..

Calderon, a career politician and son of a National Action Party founder, staked out his own nationalist credentials on the immigration issue, attacking the U.S. Senate for approving 370 miles of triple-layer border fencing ..

Third-place candidate Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until Fox's historic victory in 2000, is also hitting the immigration issue hard with peasant farmers, a key base of the party ..

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/world/14689701.htm

[msongs]

1. sounds like an indictment of their entire political system

when they are so concerned about exporting people instead of providing a safe, secure place to live and jobs at home.

the people of Mexico deserve better.

Msongs
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[struggle4progress]

2. Maybe. Or it may be an indictment of the Monroe Doctrine, in whatever

form it is currently applied.

The tendency of the US to intervene in other American states seems unchecked: to name but a few, there has been the thirty-year terror that followed our 1954 Guatemala coup; our 1970 overthrow of Chile (which had been the oldest democracry in South America), murder of its President, and installation of a brutal dictator; the 1980's US-supported bloodbath in El Salvador and terrorist activity against Nicaragua; the bombing of Panama in the early 1990's so that Noriega wouldn't expose the CIA-cocaine connection; the Bush Administration's abortive coup against Chavez during the first term; and the overthrow (twice) of Haiti's first elected president Aristide, once by Bush I, and again by Bush II.

In this context, "little signals" (such as Jeb Bush's advertisements in Nicaraguan papers several years ago, warning the population that his brother didn't support one of the Presidential candidates) begin to acquire a particular punch.

Beyond the overt and covert terror, much of the world staggers under an enormous debt load, associated with the IMF and World Bank (now headed by Bushista Wolfowitz), and has to play along with the multinational corporations.

If many of Mexico's problems are Mexico's fault, not all are, and the US may share some responsibility for local economies which pay dirt-poor wages.

[KingM34]

3. re: Mexico

Mexico is not a poor country, it is a middle income country with a per capita income above the global average. It also has a large wealthy class that enjoys one of the lowest tax rates in the world. The white elites have been maintaining their power in large part by exporting their poor brown people north.

I think very little of what happens in Mexico, either good or bad, can be blamed on the United States.

[struggle4progress]

4. Mexico Practices What School of the Americas Teaches

by Darrin Wood
Covert Action Quarterly magazine, Winter 1996-97

... Chiapas has also reportedly suffered the presence of a group of mercenaries from Argentina who were sent to the infamous 31st Military Zone in July of 1994 to help the Mexican Army perfect its counterinsurgency tactics. These same Argentines have worked for the CIA in the past in training US-backed death squads in Honduras led by SOA graduate Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.

SOA vs. EPR On June 28, a new guerrilla organization calling itself the EPR (Ejercito Popular Revolucionario-Popular Revolutionary Army) appeared in Guerrero during a memorial service for 17 peasants murdered by police in Aguas Blancas the previous year. In August, the EPR carried out coordinated attacks throughout Mexico. In their pursuit were SOA graduates in the states of Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacan, Morelos, Oaxaca, Tamaulipas, and Yucatan. Some SOA grads who were stationed in Chiapas and are now involved in anti-EPR operations are generals Menchaca Arias, Garcia Ruiz, and Juan Lopez Orkiz.

With US-trained troops or weapons on the ground almost everywhere, US Ambassador to Mexico James Jones was coy about Washington's role. After the EPR's attacks in August, he said that although Mexico still hadn't directly asked for support from its friendly northern neighbor, the US would be more than willing to offer help and expertise in combating the new guerrillas. Mexico has yet to publicly accept that goodwill. But so far, military aid to Mexico, mostly under the guise of anti-drug campaigns, has led to many "gifts" of helicopters and airplanes.

Predictably, the militarization of Mexico, which was occurring before the appearance of the EPR, has been accompanied by an increase in the number of reported human rights abuses. Nowhere has that link been more prominent than in the long suffering state of Guerrero, whose 9th Military Region contains two military zones, the 27th, located in the tourist resort town of Acapulco, and the 35th, located in the town of Chilpancingo. From the June 1995 peasant massacre by police, to the recent allegations of the rape of 12 indigenous women by the army, Guerrero had more than its share of brutality-and of School of the Americas graduates ... http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/SOA/Mexico_SOA.html



Mexican graduates of the School of the Americas have played a key role in the “low-intensity conflict” in the States of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca. At least 13 top military officials involved in the conflict are SOA grads. These are: Col. Harold B. Rambling Torres , Brig. Gen. Carmelo Teheran Montero, Col. Jose Luis Ruvalcaba , Brig. Gen. Carlos Demetrio Gaytan Ochoa, Col. German Antonio Bautista , Gaston Menchaca
Arias, Miguel Leyva Garcia, Enrique Alonso Garrido, Manuel Garcia Ruiz,
Adrian Maldonado Ramirez, Edmundo Elpidio Leyva Galindo, Renato Garcia
Gonzalez, and Jose Ruben Rivas Pena (see below). (Nuevo Amanecer Press
and Covert Action Quarterly). http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=242

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. Weird politics. They're each promising the voters...

That under their leadership, citizens will be better able to flee the country.

[Igel]

6. Mmmm ... yeah.

Vote for me, go to the great racist oppressor in the north where you can make more money and get a better education--but remember my party when the next election rolls around and vote for us again! Remember, it's your constitutional right to live in the US!

[Terran1212]

7. The leftist candidate is actually looking at domestic reforms

Fox is the "open border" nut who wants to send all his people away.

Mexico City's Mayor is probably just rightly condemning Bush's plan to militarize the border, a harsh and authoritarian response to immigration problems.