Mexico: Peak Oil in ActionAn excerpt:
The American Response
The fact that the United States has put in place a number of detention camps across the Southern and Central United States seems to indicate that the administration is aware of an impending immigration crisis. What is significant and instructive, as well as worrying, is the nature of the official response to this insight. The camps that have been contracted are explicitly characterized as detention camps, not as refugee camps.
The official attitude underlying this approach is an illustration of the growing tendency to criminalize and militarize social problems in the United States. The current administration's prevailing ethos of control, punishment and retribution pervades such programs as "The War on Drugs", 'The War On Terror" and "The War on Poverty" (which is characterized by many on the target side as a "War on the Poor"). To this can now be added "The War on Immigration" which, while as yet undeclared, is in full swing along the Mexican border, under the auspices of the DHS and INS.
Countries like the Philippines, Chad and Pakistan have hosted large refugee processing centers under the direction of UNHCR. The mandate of such camps is protective: to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees and provide physical care for them. By contrast, the purpose of the detention camps established in the United States is primarily one of movement control and the segregation of refugees from the indigenous population.
The fact that this is widely perceived as appropriate by American citizens is yet another illustration of the shifting tenor of American public discourse since 2001: a shift away from the values of inclusivity, generosity and freedom to those of exclusion, parsimony and control. A return swing of that pendulum would be most welcome but does not, unfortunately, seem imminent.
The Spectre of Revolution
When contemplating Mexico's future you should always remember her past. Mexican history is full of revolutionary episodes: the War of Independence of 1810; the Mexican Civil War or War of Reform of 1857; the Mexican Revolution of 1910; the Zapatista actions in Chiapas in 1994; and the recent violent confrontations in Oaxaca.
The effect of NAFTA on the lives of the Mexican poor has been devastating. In an echo of the enclosure movement in Britain many have been forced off land they traditionally occupied, either by economic circumstances or legislation. A good overview of Mexican agrarian history, including the impact of NAFTA, is available in this FAO document.
The 100+ year-old push-pull effect of the US economy on Mexican migration is a very well documented historical phenomenon. This time, circumstances are somewhat different. Many Mexican campesinos — subsistence farmers that either owned their own land or held it jointly in a collective called an ejido — were forced off their land due to NAFTA rules that allowed the dumping of highly subsidized, below market-priced US corn on the Mexican market. The land is still there, but now sits idle. In the event of a severe economic downturn there would likely be a large movement to return to the land as well as increased northward migration.
Cantarell's crash and PEMEX's impending bankruptcy present a political crisis of the first magnitude for Mexico's elite and threaten the stability of the small middle class. This crisis presents a great opportunity for the long downtrodden majority to gain power as has happened in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Conditions will be ripe for a resurgence of revolutionary sentiment in Mexico, which will probably take the form of an import of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chavez.
Of course, having such an incendiary political movement on their very doorstep will not sit well with the American industrial/political establishment. The probability of direct American political, economic and even military involvement in Mexican affairs as a result should not be lightly dismissed.
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