the Real Motives for Launching a Drug War in Mexico

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From the article:

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These plans better U.S. chances of firming up energy security: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Colombia are oil countries. The plans also make it easier for the United States, Canada, and Mexico to use their arms against outside threats and, above all, internal opposition. They represent a new phase of contemporary imperialism.


What are the real targets of these plans for the international coordination and militarization of the struggle against alleged terrorists and narcos? They are aimed at immigrants, original peoples, guerrilla resistance, political dissidents, and social movements against transnational corporations taking over natural resources, including water, and causing mining pollution. These plans, financed by billions of U.S. dollars, have made Mexico a security priority for the U.S. ruling class. They serve to “justify” the sending of U.S. personnel into Mexico to take part in intelligence operations to tighten control over the populations of both nations.


Mexico faces a dangerous and complex situation. Obama’s government has beefed up budgets for sending down agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with personnel to train Mexicans in the so-called wars against narcotraffic and terrorism, wars against “the Evil.” Obama calls it that, and righteous citizens applaud him or demand even stronger measures. Obama’s government has created a new “special force” made up of armed people from police and intelligence agencies that operate in the border zones.

The FBI and the DEA have offices in several Mexican cities. In February 2010, spokespeople for de facto president Calderón admitted that U.S. agents were active in Ciudad Juárez. The number of U.S. military contractors sent to Mexico has increased during Calderón’s administration. There are videos of contractors who have trained Mexican police taking part in the torture of prisoners. In 2008, U.S. involvement in Mexico took the form of that business enterprise called Blackwater. Exposed for its crimes against humanity in Iraq, it has changed its name to Xe Services. It came to “help” Calderón in his supposed war against the narcotraffic. He is fighting “the Evil,” and many churchgoing Mexicans thank him for saving their children from that horrible “narcotic,” cannabis.

They don’t know that this war is an excuse for militarizing the nation. Only 2 percent of Mexicans read a newspaper, and only 4 percent ever buy a book. Everyone has television, and the two TV monopolies, Televisa and TV Azteca, known as the media “duopoly,” are under the iron control of two of the billionaires topping Mexico’s wealthy elite. The TV duopoly, a powerful propaganda machine, is a key player on the neoliberal stage saluting Calderón’s war, spewing ultraconservative pap, and warning about “the danger to Mexico” posed by such honest political figures as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the real winner of the stolen 2006 presidential elections.

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Businessman Calderón’s popularity is sputtering like a bonfire in a hailstorm. Under the hail of bullets from shootouts, public opinion is beginning to snarl on all sides. When el Presidente walked into an auditorium in Torreón in early 2010 he was deafened by a crowd of booing citizens. The TV duopoly covering his appearance barely snuffed the sound in time.

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In February 2010, General Guillermo Galván, Secretary of Defense, called for the armed forces to support a political reform proposal sent to Congress by Calderón. The reform gives the army the right to enter homes without warrants and arrest anyone on suspicion. Soldiers who shoot civilians “by mistake” cannot be tried in civilian courts. Bloodied civilian corpses are stacked high: they are “collateral damage” in the so-called “war against drugs.” General Galván’s publicly backing the political reform was an indication that the formation of a civilian-military dictator- ship might be in process.

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Yes, the situation has brought endless failure. But haven’t the repressive campaigns really succeeded? They enrich (mainly U.S.) bankers through secret arrangements to launder drug money, while recycling phenomenal amounts of dirty money into many sectors of the legitimate economy. They also keep up huge profits in the international drug market for the exporting countries and their governments, a large part of which is recycled into the international arms market for the benefit of arms manufacturers. The United States sells more weapons than all the other arms-producing countries put together. It is the world’s arsenal of death.


The “failures” of the campaigns against the narcotraffic help to justify war, state violence, and massive repression. The “war against drugs” sponsored by Washington and its allies has nothing to do with national security or ending the drug traffic and everything to do with profits. It involves the forging of strategic alliances against democratic anti-imperialist governments like those in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The key alliance for the United States in Latin America is the chain of neoliberal governments on the Pacific Coast: Chile, Peru, Colombia, all of Central America except Nicaragua (where Washington is fomenting a “failed state”)—and, of course, Mexico. The chain is made of iron: each government is an enemy of its people.


There are legal proposals cooking in the Mexican Congress that permit foreign troops to enter national territory. The United States has already set up seven new military bases in Colombia, and there is a bilateral agreement to build five more in Panama. There are U.S. bases in almost all of Latin America and the Caribbean. There are bases on Aruba and Curacao, island nations once colonized by the Dutch, near Venezuela’s oil fields. There are plans for creating a “multinational, multifunctional military base” with Brazil in Rio de Janeiro “in order to patrol the drug traffic of the region.” Official documents of the U.S. Air Force have proclaimed that the new military bases “expand the capacity for expeditionary war . . . [guarantee] the opportunity for conducting complete spectrum operations in all South America . . . [to combat] the anti-American governments in the region.”


In the last week of March 2010, top government officials from Mexico and Washington met in Mexico City to discuss the terrifying violence in Ciudad Juárez and to work out a strategy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that the U.S. demand for drugs and the arms smuggled into Mexico from the United States were feeding the violence of the cartels, so both governments proclaimed a “new stage” in the war on drugs: “Plan Juarez.” Supposed social programs and more military aid make up the public part of this glitzy new plan, which will stuff the pockets of the Mexican government with $300 million. It aims to strengthen the Merida Initiative/Plan Mexico and the Northern Command’s control over Mexico. The new U.S. ambassador to Brazil has called this military integration “armoring NAFTA” and so, in effect, acknowledges that behind the “war on drugs” is the aim of protecting the economic interests of big capital in the era of neoliberalism.


After this meeting, during a TV interview for Televisa, U.S. ambassador Pascual boasted about Calderón’s military strategy, saying “we designed it together.” The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, admitted that at Calderón’s “request” members of the U.S. Army work in Mexico in a “limited” way as military intelligence personnel. Calderón is throwing away national sovereignty by integrating Mexico with the United States.