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to further nazify Latin American society must be the answer, eh?
Not.
It's interesting what happened in Guatemala in the last election--in which Guatemala elected its first progressive government, ever. Guatemala has similar crime problems to Mexico. The fascist candidate proposed a "police crackdown" on the violence, and touted a campaign poster with a closed fist. The progressive candidate, Alvaro Colom, opposed this "police state" policy and touted a poster with two open hands and a dove. He said that Guatemala's crime problems are above all caused by poverty, and the matter should be addressed, first of all, as a poverty issue. He won the election--overturning centuries of rightwing rule in Guatemala (which have produced nothing but vast poverty, death and crime). Another factor in Guatemala was the Reagan crime wave, back in the 1980s, when TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers were slaughtered by death squads, trained and funded by the Reagan regime, with Reagan's direct complicity. This devastation not only literally removed ten of thousands of leftist voters and their progeny from the voting rolls--election fraud by mass murder--it devastated Guatemala's political culture and society, and produced entrenched rightwing corruption, which, among other things, means no money for education, medical care, housing, land reform and all the things needed to "bootstrap" the poor out of poverty and create a just and prosperous country.
Alvaro Colom is an interesting leader, for sure. He looks like a privileged, upper class white guy, and has for his VP a famous heart surgeon who has had a high end practice in Texas, but also does free operations for the poor in Guatemala. I just found out that Colom is an ordained Mayan priest. He has been studying Mayan culture for years, and identifies with the poor, indigenous majority. We don't know yet if his more peaceful policies are going to work. He has an uphill battle just to achieve decent, honest, beneficial government. But nothing else has worked, as Guatemala has descended into a spiral of misery and desperation.
The various models of good government in South America--in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and to some extent in Brazil--are working both to empower and to bootstrap the poor majority. The Bushwhacks failed to sabotage and topple good government in Venezuela--not for lack of trying. They are currently trying to sabotage Bolivia's best and most democratic government, ever. But it is nevertheless very clear that "police state" methods are not the answer, that the war on poor coca leaf farmers is extremely wrong-headed and unjust, and that leftist/progressive government is enormously beneficial to the society as a whole. Venezuela has significantly reduced poverty, and has wiped out illiteracy, and has seen an economic growth rate of nearly 10% over the last five years, with the most growth in the private sector (not including oil). Argentina did a complete turnabout, from World Bank/IMF and 'free trade" induced ruination--with the leftist policies of Nestor Kirchner, and now Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Bolivia is now providing a modest pension ($35/mo) to the elderly poor, who were simply allowed to starve and die by previous rightwing regimes. Decency toward the elderly is an unmistakable message to everyone that society cares. Some of these countries still have street crime problems (nothing like the gang war problems of Mexico and Guatemala, though), but both street crime and gang crime problems are the result of decades of bad land policy, which has driven millions of very poor people off farmlands and into urban squalor, where there are few or no jobs, and--until the election of leftist governments--no help in the transition.
The worst case scenario of the "police state" method of governing has unfolded in Colombia, which receives $6 BILLION in U.S. "war on drugs" military aid (through Bushites fingers), and where thousands of union leaders, small peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers, journalists and other innocent people have been slaughtered by the Colombian military and its death squads--not to mention the toxic pesticide spraying of small farmers' FOOD crops, for merely growing a few coca leaves for local use (a traditional indigenous medicine). Tens of thousands of poor Colombian refugees have fled into Venezuela, mostly from the Colombian "security" forces and closely tied death squads. Colombia is a horror, in which the government is at war with its poorest, most vulnerable citizens. That is what the militarization of a social problem--drug use, drug trafficking--does.
Mexico does not need more police state weaponry from Bushite war profiteers. What it needs is , a) the alleviation of poverty, and most especially land reform, and b) GOOD policing, of the kind you get when everyone has a stake in community safety. Also, a SANE drug policy would help. (Marijuana use and coca leaf chewing should not be illegal.) Mexico's current rightwing/Corpo president is busy trying to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource for his pals in the White House. There is an enormous leftist movement against him, which almost elected leftist Lopez Obrador as president a few years ago (he lost by 0.05%, in what was probably a stolen election). The Bushwhacks have also larded Calderon with billions in "war on drugs" money, the purpose of which is more than likely "controlling" the people, if oil privatization is achieved, and to put down peasant farmer land movements and other rebellions, such as the teachers' union strike in Oaxaca, and rebellion of the huge population of displaced poor in Mexico City. If the "war on drugs" was genuine, drug gang executions like this (if that's what it was) wouldn't be happening. The "war" has been going on for decades. What the hell is being done with these billions and billions of dollars we keep pouring into it?
Calderon has the problem of protecting the riches of the rich, making the rich richer, and retaining the support of U.S. Corpos (and war profiteers) in an increasingly leftist region (South and Central America). Good policing, community safety and stopping the criminal drug and weapons trade are not a priority. If they were, he would long ago have removed the murderous fuck who is governor of Oaxaca, and whose thugs have tortured, raped and murdered dozens of innocent people for their political activism.
I am not without hope that Calderon might turn out to be a better president than he appears to be. The U.S.-Bush policies in Latin America are so bad that even a loyalist like Calderon felt obliged to publicly lecture Bush--on Bush's Latin American tour in 07--on the sovereignty of Latin American countries, using Venezuela as an example! Most Latin American leaders these days are tempted to bail from U.S.-dictated policy. Honduras just did (--they just poked the Bushwhacks in the eye, and joined the Bolivarian trade group, ALBA). Paraguay, of all places--Paraguay!--just elected a leftist president (who has a 92% approval rating!) The new South American "Common Market" (UNSASUR) is looking very enticing. Sovereignty. Self-determination. Cooperative projects. Throwing off the bully behemoth to the north. I don't know if Calderon is too far gone to the Dark Side, to see this. But it's a possibility that he will--if for no other reason than to stay in office (with Lopez Obrador and the left breathing down his neck).
To bring an end to drug gang warfare needs the cooperation of all Latin American countries--on issues of poverty and good policing. UNASUR could be--and should be--the vehicle for this, not the DEA, Blackwater, Dyncorp and the U.S. 4th Fleet. Bushwhackism--nazism--is not going to solve it. Nor is Corpo fascism going to solve poverty. Both problems--drug trafficking in dangerous drugs (cocaine, not coca leaves; heroine), and poverty--just keep getting bigger. They are insoluable with Corpo fascist and nazi state methods, and inevitably result in brutality and oppression, as the Corpo fascist state tries to silence its critics, and profound corruption in the governments that use such tactics. We see a type case of this in Colombia. It is increasingly true here. And it is where Mexico is tending. The rest of Latin America, however, is tending the other way, toward progressive policies--very strongly so in South America. This is why our Bushfucks hate South American democracies so much. They aren't buying our Corpo fascist, "war on drugs" bullshit any more.
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