La contratista de paramilitares que hizo fortunas en Iraq mira al sur
Latinoamérica, ¿el nuevo campo de los mercenarios de Estados Unidos?
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=67091
Efe
Blackwater, la empresa privada de Estados Unidos que ha hecho fortuna prestando servicios paramilitares en Irak, tiene la vista puesta en Latinoamérica como mercado de futuro, según sostiene el periodista estadounidense Jeremy Scahill, autor de un libro sobre "el ejército mercenario más poderoso del mundo".
Scahill presentó ayer en España esta historia no autorizada sobre el imparable ascenso de Blackwater desde los atentados del 11 de setiembre de 2001 en Estados Unidos y sobre su conversión en uno de los poderes fácticos más influyentes del complejo militar-industrial estadounidense.
En declaraciones a EFE, este periodista de 32 años que escribe en el semanario The Nation, comenta que Blackwater consiguió beneficios récord en los últimos dos trimestres, pero que su objetivo es diversificar el negocio para adaptarse a nuevas realidades y que eso pasa por América latina.
"Blackwater podría terminar en América latina", dice Scahill, quien destaca que el Pentágono instó a la compañía que preside Erik Prince, un ex militar rico y muy conservador, a optar por un plan contra la droga, para México y Colombia, con un presupuesto de 15 mil millones de dólares.
Es a través de estas "empresas privadas" como Washington quiere garantizar su presencia en la región "sin dejar una huella militar", explica el periodista, quien sostiene que los miles de millones de dólares que Estados Unidos ha invertido en los últimos 15 años en la lucha antidroga en la región han sido para "la lucha contrainsurgente".
Según el autor de Blackwater. El auge del ejército mercenario más poderoso del mundo, un ejemplo es Colombia, que recibe de Estados Unidos 630 millones de dólares anuales, de los cuales Bogotá destina buena parte a pagar los servicios de empresas de las mismas características que Blackwater, como DynCorp.
"El futuro pasa por el entrenamiento y la preparación de militares latinoamericanos, con el objetivo de tener pequeños equipos paramilitares trabajando para estas compañías en América latina. Veremos un incremento de la presencia de estas empresas que deciden radicarse en la región", pronostica Scahill.
La lógica es la del negocio y la del mercado libre, la misma que llevó a Blackwater y otras empresas que contratan mercenarios a fijarse en la "mano de obra barata" que ofrecían países como Chile, Honduras, El Salvador, Perú y Bolivia.
Frente a los 10 mil dólares al mes que puede cobrar un mercenario estadounidense o de otro país del Primer Mundo por prestar sus servicios en Irak, los latinoamericanos aceptan el mismo riesgo, ofreciendo la misma preparación, por sueldos de mil dólares.
Se trata de militares que se formaron en las décadas de los ´80 y los ´90, en el marco de las "guerras sucias" instigadas por Washington, y que ya han tenido experiencia en técnicas de contrainsurgencia, tiro de precisión, guerra de comandos, espionaje e interrogatorio.
Cerca de mil chilenos fueron enviados a Irak por gestión de José Miguel Pizarro Ovalle, a quien el autor describe como "un admirador de Pinochet, que trabajó como traductor para el ejército estadounidense antes de convertirse en enlace entre más de 12 gobiernos latinoamericanos y fabricantes de armas de Estados Unidos".
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5/8/08
The Militarization of Mexican Society
The Militarization of Mexican Society
A Primer on Plan Mexico
By LAURA CARLSEN
On Oct. 22, 2007 President Bush announced the $1.4 billion dollar "Merida Initiative," security aid package to Mexico and Central America. The initiative has fatal flaws in its strategy; instead of leading to a stable binational relationship and peaceful border communities, its military approach will escalate drug-related violence and human rights abuses.
Mexico and the United States face a joint challenge in decreasing transnational organized crime and they must cooperate to strengthen the rule of law and stop illegal drug and arms trafficking over the border. This misguided policy will result in an inability to achieve its own goals and will waste taxpayers' money. It will also seriously undermine the U.S.-Mexico relationship and Mexican stability.
Soon the U.S. Congress will vote on the Initiative, popularly referred to as "Plan Mexico." The little-known appropriations request has been tagged on to the multi-billion dollar Iraq supplemental bill and has been presented as an unprecedented effort to fight burgeoning drug trafficking and violence related to organized crime in Mexico. But the "regional security cooperation initiative" goes far beyond cooperation in stopping the flow of illegal drugs. It would fundamentally restructure the U.S.-Mexico binational relationship, recast economic and social problems as security issues, and militarize Mexican society.
Over half of the packet would go to Mexican military and police forces accused of documented and yet legally unresolved human rights violations. At the same time, no money is allotted for drug treatment and harm reduction in either country, and the colossal "cooperation" package completely ignores the serious problems that exist within the United States, including the entry of illegal drugs, widespread sale and consumption, crossborder gun-running, and money laundering.
This aid packet would place the United States' binational relationship with one of its closet and most sensitive allies in the realm of vaguely defined security issues. While mandating a huge increase in aid to Mexico, it includes no funds to finally address the poverty gap and development needs of our southern neighbor.
To begin a public debate on the dangers inherent in Plan Mexico, first it is important to understand what it is.
What is Plan Mexico?
Plan Mexico, or the Merida Initiative, was presented after months of anticipation and hermetic negotiations as a three-year, $1.4 billion "Regional Security Cooperation Initiative." Members of the U.S. Congress immediately complained that the Bush administration provided no information to congressional committee members until the deal was done.
The request for fiscal year 2008 for $550 million has been attached to the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill, to be voted on in Congress in the coming weeks. Fifty million dollars are earmarked for Central America, while the remaining half-billion goes to Mexico, primarily for military and police equipment and training.
Although the proposal has not been presented to the public in the United States or Mexico, leaked documents(1) reveal the military logic and nature of "Plan Mexico."
Under the rubric of "Counter Narcotics, Counter Terrorism, and Border Security" the initiative would allocate $205.5 million for the Mexican Armed Forces. Over 40% of the entire packet goes to defense companies for the purchase of eight Bell helicopters (at $13 million each, with training, maintenance, and special equipment) for the Mexican Army and two CASA 235 maritime patrol planes (at $50 million each, with maintenance) for the country's Navy.
Most of the $132.5 million allocated to Mexican law enforcement agencies also lines the pockets of defense companies for purchase of surveillance, inspection, and security equipment, and training. The Mexican Federal Police Force receives most of this funding, with Customs, Immigration, and Communications receiving the remainder.
The rest of the 2008 appropriations request is comprised of $112 million in the "Rule of Law" category for the Mexican Attorney General's Office and the criminal justice system. This money is earmarked for software and training in case-tracking and centralizing data. The initiative would also give $12.9 million to the infamous Mexican Intelligence Service (CISEN) for investigations, forensics equipment, counterterrorism work, and to other agencies including the Migration Institute for establishment of a database on immigrants. The U.S. government allots $37 million of the packet to itself for administrative costs.
The proposed 2009 budget of a reported $450 million to Mexico is much the same, with a larger share going to the police, assuming that by then the notorious corruption among those agencies will have been at least partially remedied—a dubious assumption at best ($120 million to the armed forces and $252 million to the police and other law enforcement agencies).
All of these programs are directed to the goals of supply interdiction, enforcement, and surveillance—including domestic spying—according to the "war on drugs" model developed in the United States in the early 70s under then-President Richard Nixon.2 This military model has proved historically ineffective in achieving the goals of eliminating the illegal drug trade and decreasing organized crime, and closely related to an increase in violence, instability, and authoritarian presidential powers.
The NAFTA Connection
The "Merida Initiative" received its name from a meeting between Presidents Bush and Calderon in Merida, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, in March 2007. The official story is that President Calderon, already committed to a "war on drugs" that relies heavily on the use of the army in supply interdiction, requested U.S. assistance at the Merida meeting and, after negotiations on the details, the U.S. government acceded.
With the emphasis on counter-narcotics efforts, in the lead-up to the October announcement of the package, both governments marshaled studies and statistics to support the contradictory thesis that drug-trafficking and related violence in Mexico had reached a crisis point, and that Calderon's offensive against the drug cartels was working.
This is not the real story of the Plan's origins. The Bush administration's concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) as an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).3
When the three North American leaders met in Waco, Texas in March of 2005, they put into motion a secretive process of negotiations between members of the executive branches and representatives of large corporations to facilitate cross-border business and create a shared security perimeter. Subsequent meetings including the April 2008 trilateral summit in New Orleans4 extended these goals amid mounting criticism.
Through the SPP, the Bush administration has sought to push its North American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats, promoting and protecting the free-trade economic model, and bolstering U.S. global control, especially in Latin America where the State Department sees a growing threat due to the election of center-left governments. While international cooperation to confront terrorism is a laudable and necessary aim, the Bush national security strategy5 entails serious violations of national sovereignty for its partner countries, increased risk of being targeted as U.S. military allies, and threats to civil liberties for citizens in all three countries. Moreover the counterterrorism model, exemplified by the invasion of Iraq, has by all accounts created a rise in instability and terrorist activity worldwide.
Extending the concept of North American economic integration into national security matters through the closed-door SPP process raises grave questions about how security is defined and who does the defining.
Thomas Shannon, sub-secretary of Western Hemisphere affairs for the State Department put it bluntly in a speech on April 8, saying that the SPP "understands North America as a shared economic space and that as a shared economic space we need to protect it, and that we need to understand that we don't protect this economic space only at our frontiers, that it has to be protected more broadly throughout North America. And as we have worked through the Security and Prosperity Partnership to improve our commercial and trading relationship, we have also worked to improve our security cooperation. To a certain extent, we're armoring NAFTA."6
The SPP effort seeks to lock in policies that do not have consensus and have not been debated among the public and within Congress. Citizen groups in all three countries have called for a halt to SPP talks due to the lack of representation of labor, environmental, and civilian representation, and transparency to the public. On the security front, the Bush administration's concept of military-based rather than diplomacy- and social policy-based security is strongly questioned in the United States and outright rejected among the vast majority of Mexicans and Canadians.
In this context, instead of reviewing polices and opening them up to public debate, the Bush administration has launched its boldest advance yet within the SPP context—Plan Mexico. Speculation was that the Plan would be announced at the Montebello SPP meeting in August of 2007, but perhaps because of the presence of SPP protestors at that meeting President Bush delayed the official unveiling of the "Merida Initiative" several months. However, the last two SPP meetings have included discussions of Plan Mexico and the State Department has been clear about the link.
It is important to understand the roots of Plan Mexico in the Bush administration's deep integration agenda. The Plan implies much more than a temporary aid program for fighting drug cartels. It structurally revamps the basis of the binational relationship in ways meant to permanently emphasize military aspects over much-needed development aid and modifications in trade and investment policy. The scope of the Regional Security Cooperation Initiative demonstrates that it goes far beyond a joint war on drugs and cements into place failed policies on immigration enforcement, militarization of the border, economic integration policies, counterterrorism attacks on civil liberties, and the intromission of security forces into social policy and international diplomacy. To do this, the outgoing Bush administration has relied on the support of two economically dependent allies to try to assure that its policies will be irreversible under a Democratic presidency in the United States.7
What's Wrong with Plan Mexico?
Plan Mexico embodies a logic of confrontation that can be criticized on the following ten points:
The "war on drugs" model doesn't work.
Mexico has a serious problem with illegal drug trafficking and drug-related violence. But there is more than one way to go about solving it.
The Merida Initiative departs from the mistaken logic that interdiction, enforcement, and prosecution will eventually stem illegal crossborder drug-trafficking. Studies have shown that treatment and rehabilitation are 20 times more effective in decreasing the illegal drug trade.8 Yet the Merida Initiative contains not one penny9 for treatment or rehabilitation in either country. Contrary to the stated goal of decreasing the binational drug trade, the Bush administration recently cut back funds for domestic treatment and prevention programs. This approach moves in the wrong direction.
The supply-side model fails for one obvious reason: where there's a buyer there will be a seller. And since it's a black market, the seller must be a member of organized crime and stands to make an enormous, tax-free profit.
The experience of Plan Colombia reveals the pitfalls of the Plan Mexico now before Congress. Plan Colombia is a similar U.S. military aid package designed to fight the drug war. Since its inception in 2000, it has contributed to entrenched violence and corruption in that South American country while failing to reduce drug flows to the United States.
Over the past seven years of Plan Colombia the United States government has spent some $6 billion dollars supposedly to fight the war on drugs; 76% of that has gone to the Colombian military. The results are well known: Colombia remains the primary source of cocaine on the U.S. market, the price has gone down, and the purity has risen. Despite environmentally devastating fumigation campaigns, numerous studies show that the surface area planted in coca has increased or remained constant.
As a result of crackdowns, drug cartels have adopted more sophisticated equipment and forms of organization—and closer relations with Mexican cartels. In a balloon effect, a new route opens up when an old one is closed off and new drug lords rise up through the ranks when existing leaders are imprisoned or killed.
In addition to its failure to detain drug production, processing, and transit of cocaine, Plan Colombia has spread into aid for the Colombian rightwing government in its war against leftwing guerrilla insurgents. The U.S. government's involvement in counter-insurgency efforts was authorized by Congress in 2003, when it agreed to formally broaden the scope of Plan Colombia to authorize the use of military aid beyond counternarcotics activities and lift previous restrictions. As a result, investigative journalist Frank Smyth wrote that by 2001 Colombia had surpassed El Salvador as the largest counterinsurgency effort of the United States since Vietnam.10
With the arrival of arms and money for the Colombian armed forces, the violation of human rights, the displacement of entire communities, and assassination of civilians has become so widespread as to be alarming even to proponents of Plan Colombia. In the recent authorization of new funds for the plan, the House of Representatives approved a version that cuts military aid, reduces fumigation, and conditions aid to more stringent human rights requirements. The total aid to Colombia's government continues to be huge and largely military, but along with the likely rejection of the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia due to human and labor rights concerns, it marks a minimal recognition in Congress that the drug war model in that nation is simply not working as intended.
The upshot today is that a drug user has equal if not greater access to cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and it's cheaper and more potent than ever.11 Colombia continues to be the number one source of cocaine to the U.S. market. Over 300,000 people have been displaced from their communities, paramilitary groups responsible for 80% of human rights violations run rampant, and Colombia is a militarized society trapped in internecine violence.
This experience should be carefully analyzed before replicating a failed model with heavy collateral damage to the social fabric of an allied nation. Although Mexico is a very different country—there is no civil war or widespread guerrilla activity—many of the lessons of Plan Colombia are worth taking into consideration on the eve of Plan Mexico. The failure of the drug war model in Colombia, and Afghanistan, would seem to warrant at the very least a cautious attitude toward applying it in other countries—especially one as geographically and economically close as Mexico.
Providing equipment and resources to Mexican security forces in the current context of corruption and impunity will deepen the problems, reduce civil society's role in reform, and inhibit construction of democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, Mexican security forces are presently often more part of the problem than the solution. The State Department 2007 report on human rights12 in Mexico notes, "Corruption continued to be a problem, as many police were involved in kidnapping, extortion, or providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of organized crime and drug traffickers. Impunity was pervasive to an extent that victims often refused to file complaints."
Ranking members of Mexican security forces on local and national levels maintain close links to drug traffickers, working for them directly in many parts of the country. The army has traditionally been more independent of this dynamic, but its deployment within the country in the drug war is increasing its involvement and leading to human rights violations. Many armed forces deserters, that totaled 17,000 last year alone, receive counternarcotics training and then pass it along in service to high-paying drug cartels. The infamous Zetas (a drug trafficking network comprised of former law enforcement and military agents) illustrate the lethal capacity of military-trained groups that operate with drug cartels.
Military equipment also ends up in the hands of the cartels. The U.S. Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports that 90% of arms decommissioned from organized crime in Mexico came from the United States, many registered to the U.S. Army.13 Senator Alfonso Sanchez Anaya reported to the Mexican Congress that 15 million arms circulate illegally in Mexico.14 In Iraq an investigation revealed the existence of thousands of "missing" arms thought to be in the hands of insurgents and delinquents. The black market in arms is booming. Given this situation, the likelihood that U.S. military equipment ends up in the wrong hands is more like an inevitability.
By excluding community prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation programs, neighborhood watch initiatives, and other measures that create a more active role for civil society, the initiative tends to convert the citizenry into a protectorate of the armed forces. The redefinition of crime as a national security threat also removes it from the community realm.
The point is not to vilify the Mexican armed forces, police, and government. Many honest and brave individuals can be found among their ranks and some have given their lives fighting corruption. Extreme statements like that of Tom Tancredo on Nov. 8, 2007 who said, "The degree of corruption inside the government and the military is so great that it's hard to see where the government ends and where the cartels begin," respond more to a Mexico-bashing mentality than a serious concern for the real challenges Mexico faces.
But this is the reality of the situation and the challenge for U.S. binational policy is to support effective measures to clean up the corruption and end the impunity while developing mechanisms of cooperation in combating transnational crime.
Giving arms, military equipment, spy and surveillance capacity, and training to security forces with a history of abuses that the justice system is unable or unwilling to check is like pouring gas on a fire. Ignoring root causes of criminal activity and market demand makes it very likely that military aid will empower delinquency and feed corruption.
Plan Mexico promotes the militarization of Mexican society with few legal or social controls.
The model of confronting the trafficking, sale, and consumption of drugs with military means increases violence and weakens democratic institutions. In countries where these are already weak it can create serious obstacles to a transition to democracy.
Former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Louise Arbour warned of using the army in the streets on her last visit to Mexico. "I understand there are those who say that at times you have to turn to a more powerful force such as the army, but it seems to me that in the long term it is frankly dangerous," Arbour told television network Televisa. "The army should not be doing the job of the police."15
General José Francisco Gallardo, the major proponent of human rights guarantees within the Mexican Army and a constitutional scholar who was imprisoned for his efforts states, "Here what should be done is to form a national police force that carries out these functions and is not under the military ... The presence of the Army in matters that are not under their jurisdiction displaces the constitutional faculties of the civil, federal, state, and municipal authority and goes against Art. 21 of the constitution."16
When asked if the Calderon strategy of militarizing the drug war could lead to a return to the "dirty war" of the 70s, Gallardo—as a young soldier, one of the few members of the armed forces to protest the torture and assassination that marked that period—told the author, "We are already experiencing a return to the dirty war."17 He cited the widespread practice of torture and arbitrary detentions as proof of systematic human rights violations in contemporary Mexico.
The 2007 report of the Mexican National Commission on Human Rights18 recommended the gradual withdrawal of the army from the internal drug war. Militarizing society by involving the army in internal functions beyond its constitutional mandate constitutes a threat to democracy. As is well known in Latin America, the Cold War militarization of society and ideology paved the way for military dictatorships that murdered civilians and set back progress toward democracy by decades. Human rights violations are expected to rise.
The corollary to increased military support in internal matters is the rise of uncontrolled paramilitary forces as has happened in Colombia. In Mexico, the use of paramilitaries has been largely confined to attacks on Zapatista communities in the southern state of Chiapas.19 Since 2006, paramilitary organizations have been used in the state of Oaxaca to repress social and indigenous movements there. It is likely that an increase in militarization of Mexican society will lead to an increase in the scope and activity of these groups.
Both governments have been quick to defend the Plan stating that no U.S. troops will be deployed on Mexican soil. An important difference between the domestic version of the war on drugs and that which the U.S. government has applied in other countries is the use of the Army. When the war on drugs model began, military over-extension in Vietnam, an unpopular draft system, and drug addiction among soldiers, as well as constitutional prohibitions, ruled out use of the Army. The version for export has included both U.S. and home country armies. Plan Colombia dispatched U.S. troops to Colombia but Congress has maintained a troop cap. Today a similar situation of military over-extension, now due to the war in Iraq, places practical restrictions on the use of U.S. troops.
However, the deployment of U.S. troops cannot be the sole measure of militarization to evaluate the regional security cooperation initiative. The war on drugs in Latin America is fought more by private-sector mercenaries and national armies trained by the U.S. military. Plan Mexico follows this strategy, for the above reasons and particularly to avoid riling Mexican sensitivities regarding national sovereignty. Militarization through building up national armies to fight within their own borders and sending in private companies such as Blackwater can be even more dangerous for Mexico than U.S. troop presence. Accountability mechanisms are weak or non-existent.
Unless checks and balances appear that have so far not been revealed, Plan Mexico could contribute to the creation of a police state in Mexico. This poses a particular threat to women. Already in addition to what happened in San Salvador Atenco (May 2006), security forces have been involved in rapes and sexual torture in cases in Oaxaca, Zongolica, and Coahuila.
The Initiative broadens Mexico's presidential powers, skewing a weak balance of powers.
The war on drugs model has always had this as an unspoken objective: to strengthen the executive power without effective counterbalances or transparency, subtracting powers from other levels of government and restricting citizen rights.20 In Mexico, barely emerging from decades of presidential authoritarianism, moving in this direction could erase years of building a more effective balance of powers.
Since his hotly contested election by half a percentage point in 2006 and accusations of irregularities upheld in part by the electoral institutions, President Calderon faces a challenge to consolidate his rule. U.S. policies should encourage a process of political reconciliation, not reliance on the armed forces to bolster presidential powers.
After taking office Calderon rapidly built an image of strength in arms. He dispatched over 24,000 army troops to Mexican cities and villages, and created an elite corps of special forces under his direct supervision.
The message of a weak presidency bolstered by a strong alliance with the military has not been lost on Mexican citizens. While some believe this is the only way to attack public insecurity, others have criticized(21) the repressive undertones, the danger of returning to presidentialism, increasing human rights violations, constitutional questions, and threats to civil democratic institutions.
For the Bush administration the war on drugs model serves to lock in pro-corporate economic policies and U.S. military influence in the region. When the United States exports its "war on drugs" it becomes a powerful tool for intervention and pressuring other nations to assume U.S. national security interests as their own. This global policeman role creates dependency on the U.S. military and intelligence services and militarizes diplomacy. The Pentagon takes the lead in international policy, while relegating international law and diplomacy to a distant second place.
The war on drugs model invariably extends into repression of political opposition in countries where it has been applied, blurring the lines between the war on drugs, against terrorism, and against political opposition.
A 2004 report documents the impact of increased U.S. military aid in Latin America and concludes that "Too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists, labor organizers, or opposition political-party leaders."22
Persecution of dissidents has been well-documented for many periods of Mexican history including present day. The International Civil Commission on Human Rights writes in its preliminary conclusions from a fact-finding tour in February 2008: "There have been widespread arbitrary arrests of members of social movements and, on occasion, of members of their families merely for being related to them. It is normal for those who are arrested to be subjected to torture and physical abuse. To justify the arrests false evidence is used ..."23
Journalists who report on state or drug-cartel related violence also become victims of selective silencing. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Mexico 10th in the world on its "Impunity Index." Colombia, after nearly a decade of Plan Colombia's prescriptions for increasing rule of law, ranks fourth in the index for the unpunished assassination of journalists.24
The Merida Initiative indiscriminately replicates the Bush counter-terrorism model, placing at risk democratic institutions and civil and human rights in Mexico where the threat of international terrorism is practically non-existent.
Counter-terrorism measures included in Plan Mexico ignore the fact that the threat to the United States and the threat to Mexico are not equivalent in size or nature, nor are the political contexts. Mexico is emerging from authoritarian rule, with many non-democratic institutions and practices still intact and increasing signs of a return to impunity and rule by political bosses.
Obliging Mexico to adopt emergency counter-terrorism measures including domestic surveillance, phone tapping, warrantless searches—the "Gestapo law" (which is how the Mexican news media refers to it) proposed by the Calderon government that was defeated by popular outcry—and definitions of social protest as a criminal activity could damage fragile civil liberties protections and democratic institutions. The Merida Initiative includes funding for espionage systems directed at national citizenry, and surveillance equipment. Reforms dictated under the SPP have authorized house arrest and other measures considered a violation of rights but common in the United States now under the Patriot Act.
Since the U.S. government's definition of "terrorism" is so broad and ambiguous, the counterterrorism model has led to mission creep and attacks on internal dissidence. The regional security cooperation initiative provides a dangerous stepping stone in that process.
The Merida Initiative intensifies border conflict by viewing immigration through the same military lens as terrorism and organized crime.
By including "border security" and explicitly targeting "flows of illicit goods and persons," the Initiative equates migrant workers with illegal contraband and terrorist threats. This ignores both the root causes of Mexican out-migration and the real demand for immigrant labor in the United States.25
The Merida Initiative Joint Statement(26) reads, "Our shared goal is to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to fight criminal organizations—so as to disrupt drug-trafficking (including precursor chemicals), weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking."
The millions of dollars allocated to the immigration institute are focused on tightening Mexico's southern border through monitoring, bio-data collection, and a Guatemalan guest-worker program and border control. Mexico has a history of offering refuge to Central Americans and accepting them into its society. That has been changing as the U.S. government has pressured Mexico to intercept Central American migrants before they make it to the northern border.
Plan Mexico advances that process and increases Mexican participation in stopping its own migrants at the northern border too. Putting immigration in the same basket as terrorist threats has already served to promote the U.S. government strategy of militarizing the northern border. The U.S.-Mexico border provides a case study in how U.S. counter-terrorism programs lead to militarization, loss of national sovereignty, and violations of human rights and even death of migrants. For Mexican workers thrown out of a job by the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, being snagged as criminals by their own government at the border is a cruel irony.
The problem of illegal immigration can never be resolved under this paradigm. Resulting expenditures, loss of local labor, and increased hate and violence erodes communities and local economies, especially on the border.
A better policy would recognize immigration as a result of economic integration and adjust trade, investment, and community development programs accordingly in both countries. Job generation, local infrastructure development, programs aimed at regulating migratory flows and preventing conflict would go much farther to enhance border security in the short and long term.
Reforming the Mexican justice and prison systems requires political will in Mexico, not U.S. taxpayers' money.
The $112 million allocated for 2008 in the "rule of law" portion of the Merida Initiative to the Attorney General's Office and other criminal justice agencies includes mostly information technology systems for centralizing data collection, forensics labs, and training for the court system and law enforcement personnel. Although viewed by some as the "soft" part of the initiative, these programs raise serious questions as to their efficacy and appropriateness.
First, to increase the "rule of law" what Mexico really needs is the political will—not additional resources—for reform to work. To give an example: the murder of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez has become an internationally known case and received millions of dollars from the Mexican government and international agencies to resolve the crimes. Numerous commissions have been formed and faded away without delivering results.27 A state-of-the-art forensics team called in to analyze the evidence that hadn't already been destroyed wrote up a report. Although they concluded their investigation, the report has not been released. Human rights activists close to the cases believe that they could implicate economically and politically powerful individuals.
Second, the Mexican laws and legal system are not the same as the U.S. system. While police departments and other agencies have long-standing agreements for training and cooperation, a grand plan for the U.S. government to train and reform the Mexican legal system is viewed as negative intervention by many Mexican jurists. Mexican judges from the Supreme Court and lower courts have publicly stated objections to U.S. funds for the court system. For years, members of the judicial system have resisted attempts by international financial institutions to impose governance programs mandating reforms in the Mexican judicial system, not because the country doesn't need to improve in this area (the justice system is notoriously bad) but because only Mexico can revamp its judicial system. Plan Mexico would break through that resistance and mandate U.S. plans and training in both the judicial and prison systems.
The U.S. government would do better to improve its own legal system in the joint effort to control the illegal drug trade and organized crime. The fact that the United States is the largest market for illegal drugs indicates a dismal record in control of illegal drug retailing, distribution, and consumption. Moreover, measures such as mandatory drug sentencing have been proven to discriminate racially and economically; consider that African-Americans make up 13% of drug uses and 59% of those convicted.28 Drug convictions, usually for users rather than dealers and leaders of organized crime, have led to over-crowding in U.S. prisons. Although this method has not proven to be the most effective in dealing with the problem, the privatized U.S. prison system creates market incentives for imprisoning casual drug users and migrants—both of which form part of the Merida initiative. This diverts resources and attention from going after leaders of organized crime and, given Mexico's already dangerously over-crowded prisons, could lead to violent riots.
The Merida Initiative does not represent real binational cooperation.
Several members of Congress have heralded the Merida Initiative as an unprecedented step toward binational cooperation. They argue that the United States government implicitly recognizes U.S. responsibility for the transnational drug trade by offering the aid packet to Mexico to combat organized crime.
In fact, the Plan places the onus of the drug war on Mexico and includes no counterpart measures to reduce the U.S. market, improve customs control on the northern side of the border, reduce retailing and distribution, eliminate illegal arms traffic, and prosecute money-laundering—all problems located firmly within the United States.
Moreover, although President Calderon has heralded the measure as an example that the U.S. government is willing to assume its part in fighting the illegal drug trade and rise in organized crime, the bulk of the budget for the initiative will never make it to Mexico. In addition to the 40% that will be spent on the military helicopters and surveillance planes, most of the rest of the budget goes to defense contractors and Information Technology (IT) firms in the form of outlays for intelligence equipment, software and hardware, and training. A huge part of this budget goes directly to U.S. private sector defense and IT companies and the U.S. government, not to Mexican security and government agencies.
As some attack the Plan for the resources destined to an "undeserving" Mexico, Plan Mexico could well end up being another defense company pork barrel.
Threat to Mexican sovereignty.
Plan Mexico includes training of Mexican police and armed forces using U.S. techniques, technology, and priorities. Few nations would accept this arrangement in the vital area of national security. As the network of U.S. anti-narcotics and customs agents and training units in Mexico grows, the ability of the country to apply policies based on its own national needs and priorities decreases proportionally.
Mexicans have always been protective of Mexican sovereignty. U.S. government officials often regard Mexico's reticence to engage in joint military and police actions with the United States as if it were a hyper-nationalist flashback, but Mexico has guarded its neutrality in foreign affairs and public opinion views with skepticism of U.S. foreign policy, especially since the invasion of Iraq, with the majority preferring a degree of autonomy from U.S. security interests.
The U.S. public would reject Plan Mexico if the roles were reversed. Imagine the following news story in the morning paper:
"Plan United States, completely funded by the Mexican government, will place Mexican drug enforcement agents in border customs offices and key points in the interior, including Laredo, Kansas City, Miami, and New York. A new wiretapping system, produced by SPY-MEX and supervised by Mexican intelligence officers, will monitor private communications of U.S. citizens suspected of involvement with organized crime, while Mexican-made planes overfly communities thought to be located along drug trafficking routes. The U.S. army, recently deployed to cities across the nation to fight the drug war, will receive arms and training from Mexico."
Newspapers and blogs would explode with cries of a Mexican re-conquest and the sacrifice of U.S. sovereignty. Yet there is virtually nothing in this scenario that is not already on the table for Mexico.
When in her testimony before Mexican Senate committees, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa mentioned the counter-terrorism activities "to detect terrorists(29) who might try to attack our neighbor," her comments drew fire from legislators as proof that the U.S. seeks to impose its own counterterrorism agenda.
Although U.S. troop presence in Mexico has been ruled out, Mexican civil society has begun to react to what they see as excessive U.S. intromission. U.S. military training under Plan Mexico has raised concerns on both sides of the border.
The role of private contractors in implementing the package remains unclear and a source of dismay. One security source says Blackwater will likely be the major beneficiary, despite its tarnished reputation following its shooting of Iraqi civilians. Corruption in contracts related to both training and equipment purchase seems a certainty given recent experience in Iraq.30
It also doesn't help that it was tacked on to the Iraq supplementary funding request. Any linkage between Plan Mexico and the Bush U.S. security doctrine as applied in Iraq increases suspicions among Mexican politicians and public.
The Plan Furthers a Divisive Geopolitical Strategy
For the Bush administration, Plan Mexico has an explicit role to play in its overall geopolitical strategy in the hemisphere. Mexico is one of only two far-right governments among the major countries in the hemisphere. The other, Colombia, has received billons of dollars of U.S. military aid, also originally as part of a "war on drugs" that soon broadened into an overall military alliance. President Bush's insistence on pressuring the Democrats to pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in the context of the New Orleans North American Trilateral Summit unveils the administration's underlying geopolitical aims in Latin America. Under the Bush National Security Doctrine, this kind of alliance requires adhering to the premises of that doctrine including pre-emptive attacks, unilateral action, and disdain for international law.
The Bush administration has developed a with-us-or-against-us policy toward U.S. neighbors in Latin America. To varying degrees, it views the wave of center-left governments (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay) as a threat to its strategic interests. Moves to modify international market economies, increase state involvement in redistribution of wealth and public control of natural resources and basic services, and constitutional reforms to recognize rights of indigenous peoples are generally considered counter to U.S. interests.
The administration and the rightwing think tanks that have developed the strategy explicitly formulate hemispheric security policy in terms of U.S. hegemony. The American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Donnelly calls the Western Hemisphere "America's third border"31 and argues that "American hegemony in the hemisphere is crucial to U.S. national security."
Stephen Johnson, 32 deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Defense Department, recently made the connection between Plan Mexico and Washington's bid to recover its influence in a slipping geopolitical context.
"While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador. For now, Venezuela and Cuba are clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy, markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors."
Plan Mexico is seen as an historic opportunity for the United States to gain military influence in Mexico and use it as a platform in the ideological battle with Venezuela and Cuba et al. This is a dangerous and wrong-headed strategy for international relations in the hemisphere, where mutual respect and self-determination should be the guiding principles for lasting peace. It also compromises Mexico's relations with its southern neighbors.
Strong international relations should be based on mechanisms of cooperation between nations that have each established national security polices based on their own needs. What has legislators and civil society worried on both sides of the border is the reach of Plan Mexico in recasting the binational relationship, to create what the Bush administration calls "a new paradigm for security cooperation."
Opposition to Plan Mexico
Despite a lack of public information, many organizations have come out against the Merida initiative. In addition to doubts about the efficacy of the war on drugs model for eliminating traffic in illegal drugs, one of the strongest and most frequent criticisms relates to the poor human rights record and corruption of the Mexican security forces that would directly receive the aid. Numerous human rights organizations on both sides of the border base their opposition to the plan on cases of blatant violations that have never been investigated or prosecuted in Mexico. A few examples suffice to illustrate their concerns.
In an April 30, 2008 letter to William Delahunt of the International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight Sub-Committee of the House of Representatives, the AFL-CIO stated its opposition to the Merida Initiative, citing "systematic and often violent violations of core labor rights" and specifically naming two cases. The first is the assassination of the leader of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Mexico, Santiago Rafael Cruz, with no follow-up on the part of authorities on evidence indicating a link between his union activities and his murder. The second involves "a full-scale attack on the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers" by the Calderon administration and the mining company Grupo Mexico, in which three union members have been murdered with no investigations or prosecutions, and the lack of follow-up on the company's responsibility in the death of 65 miners in an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine in February 2006.33
The letter states, "Without significant and concrete improvements in institutional mechanisms to weed out criminals, provide training in human rights, and establish effective civilian oversight, additional funding to these security forces is likely to worsen corruption and violence."
In 2006 protests by citizens of the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca—including unionized teachers, students, indigenous peoples, and city-dwellers—were forcibly put down by state and federal security forces. Paramilitary groups and snipers for hire also participated in an orchestrated effort to defeat the movement to remove the state governor accused of fraud and violence, and improve working conditions for teachers and living conditions in the communities in which they work. Human rights organizations documented the murder of 23 persons, as well as numerous cases of abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, and wrongful imprisonment. The murder of movement leaders has continued to date and brought the death toll to 62, according to the International Civil Commission on Human Rights.34 Among the dead was U.S. journalist Brad Will whose assassins were caught on film. Despite evidence, the state has refused to seriously investigate or prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes and the Federal Attorney General's office closed the case. U.S. groups oppose appropriations to Mexican security forces on the basis of this unresolved case.
Other high-profile cases include the Ciudad Juarez murders; the murders, and torture and rape of protestors in police custody in the farming community of San Salvador Atenco35 in 2006; and journalist Lydia Cacho, who was arrested and threatened after writing a book that revealed the involvement of major industrialists and politicians in a pedophile ring.
Since being dispatched to wage the war on drugs, the Mexican Army has accumulated an alarming number of complaints of violations of human rights, including several incidents of fatal shootings at checkpoints, rapes, and brutality. The 2007 Mexico Human rights Report of the U.S. State Department36 notes reports of security forces involvement in "unlawful killings by security forces; kidnappings, including by police; physical abuse; poor and overcrowded prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency in the judicial system; confessions coerced through physical abuse permitted as evidence in trials; ... corruption at all levels of government; ... violence, including killings, against women ..."
In February and March of 2008 the International Civil Commission on Human Rights investigated the status of human rights violations in the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Atenco. The commission carried out over 650 interviews with victims of abuses. It concluded: "The CCIODH holds that the cases of Atenco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas exemplify a more widespread situation characterized by a pattern of continued and commonplace behavior on the part of different federal, state, and, in some cases, local authorities. This model of behavior can clearly be understood as the politics of the state."
The argument of groups opposing Plan Mexico is not that, given the deplorable state of its judicial and law enforcement systems, Mexico does not deserve the U.S. aid package, as if this were a type of reward for good behavior. The problem is the type of aid envisioned in Plan Mexico. Empowering (and enriching) corrupt and abusive institutions beforereforming them empowers abusers, and potentially deepens and consolidates corruption.
One of Mexico's foremost human rights groups, the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center states, "The Merida Initiative is characterized by a lack of a human rights perspective, a human security approach that mistakes the security of states for the security of human beings ... It is time for the international community to stop supporting short-sighted policies such as this one."
The Need for a Different Plan
Mexico is at a critical juncture. Its weak democratic institutions have been shaken and discredited by their inadequate response to electoral polarization and to vast social inequality that destines millions to poverty or out-migration. Human rights abuses still characterize much of law enforcement agencies. The justice system remains bound to powerful interests, and lacks independence from the federal government and state and local governments.
Mexico can either take up the challenge to strengthen democratic institutions, or it can fall back into rule by force and authoritarianism.
At this critical juncture, the Merida Initiative would be a potentially devastating step backwards.
Despite the gravity of Mexico's condition it still lacks a careful diagnosis.
Faced with a real problem—the strength of drug cartels in Mexico and the United States—Plan Mexico proposes solutions that replicate the logic of force and patriarchal control that the drug cartels rely on. Then it applies these solutions not only to a bloody frontal battle with drug traffickers, but to a multitude of complex security threats with roots deep in Mexican society.
Before putting the army in the streets—with all the legal, political, and practical risks that entails—the dramatic increase in drug use should be treated as a health epidemic and addressed at once through education, options for young people, and rehabilitation. Calderon's war on drugs includes construction of treatment centers but focuses on supply and enforcement, and Plan Mexico proposes exclusively enforcement actions.
The main result so far has been to unleash violence in most regions of the country. The death, arrest, or extradition of ringleaders has set off battles for succession and renewed turf wars. Meanwhile, it's not clear that the price and availability of illegal drugs have been affected on U.S. or Mexican markets.
Both the United States and Mexico should reject appropriations that place the emphasis on a military solution to their shared drug dependency. Ironically, the one part of Nixon's drug policy that actually worked—expansion of treatment services—is the one part that has been the least emulated. The military-police arm of the "war on drugs" has proved to be not only a failure but a threat to the same social values it claims to defend.
The priority should be to develop national plans and mechanisms of binational coordination that work, and whose side effects—like militarization, human rights abuses, and the sophistication of criminal elements—do not cancel out the benefits. If anything is known about arming conflict, it's that no matter which side you arm—and the guns invariably end up on both sides—it escalates violence.
The sheer scope of the Merida Initiative reflects the Bush administration's military/police focus in international security issues, just when those strategies have hit a low point in popularity within the United States. Any incoming administration should have the freedom to develop new and more effective polices with one of its closest neighbors, instead of being locked into failed and unpopular policies by the outgoing administration.
Major human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States have already come out against the Merida Initiative . It will soon be voted on in the U.S. Congress. To avoid the pitfalls of this policy, a more effective binational plan would address root causes, develop mechanisms of binational coordination, and assume U.S. responsibilities and obligations.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
A Primer on Plan Mexico
By LAURA CARLSEN
On Oct. 22, 2007 President Bush announced the $1.4 billion dollar "Merida Initiative," security aid package to Mexico and Central America. The initiative has fatal flaws in its strategy; instead of leading to a stable binational relationship and peaceful border communities, its military approach will escalate drug-related violence and human rights abuses.
Mexico and the United States face a joint challenge in decreasing transnational organized crime and they must cooperate to strengthen the rule of law and stop illegal drug and arms trafficking over the border. This misguided policy will result in an inability to achieve its own goals and will waste taxpayers' money. It will also seriously undermine the U.S.-Mexico relationship and Mexican stability.
Soon the U.S. Congress will vote on the Initiative, popularly referred to as "Plan Mexico." The little-known appropriations request has been tagged on to the multi-billion dollar Iraq supplemental bill and has been presented as an unprecedented effort to fight burgeoning drug trafficking and violence related to organized crime in Mexico. But the "regional security cooperation initiative" goes far beyond cooperation in stopping the flow of illegal drugs. It would fundamentally restructure the U.S.-Mexico binational relationship, recast economic and social problems as security issues, and militarize Mexican society.
Over half of the packet would go to Mexican military and police forces accused of documented and yet legally unresolved human rights violations. At the same time, no money is allotted for drug treatment and harm reduction in either country, and the colossal "cooperation" package completely ignores the serious problems that exist within the United States, including the entry of illegal drugs, widespread sale and consumption, crossborder gun-running, and money laundering.
This aid packet would place the United States' binational relationship with one of its closet and most sensitive allies in the realm of vaguely defined security issues. While mandating a huge increase in aid to Mexico, it includes no funds to finally address the poverty gap and development needs of our southern neighbor.
To begin a public debate on the dangers inherent in Plan Mexico, first it is important to understand what it is.
What is Plan Mexico?
Plan Mexico, or the Merida Initiative, was presented after months of anticipation and hermetic negotiations as a three-year, $1.4 billion "Regional Security Cooperation Initiative." Members of the U.S. Congress immediately complained that the Bush administration provided no information to congressional committee members until the deal was done.
The request for fiscal year 2008 for $550 million has been attached to the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill, to be voted on in Congress in the coming weeks. Fifty million dollars are earmarked for Central America, while the remaining half-billion goes to Mexico, primarily for military and police equipment and training.
Although the proposal has not been presented to the public in the United States or Mexico, leaked documents(1) reveal the military logic and nature of "Plan Mexico."
Under the rubric of "Counter Narcotics, Counter Terrorism, and Border Security" the initiative would allocate $205.5 million for the Mexican Armed Forces. Over 40% of the entire packet goes to defense companies for the purchase of eight Bell helicopters (at $13 million each, with training, maintenance, and special equipment) for the Mexican Army and two CASA 235 maritime patrol planes (at $50 million each, with maintenance) for the country's Navy.
Most of the $132.5 million allocated to Mexican law enforcement agencies also lines the pockets of defense companies for purchase of surveillance, inspection, and security equipment, and training. The Mexican Federal Police Force receives most of this funding, with Customs, Immigration, and Communications receiving the remainder.
The rest of the 2008 appropriations request is comprised of $112 million in the "Rule of Law" category for the Mexican Attorney General's Office and the criminal justice system. This money is earmarked for software and training in case-tracking and centralizing data. The initiative would also give $12.9 million to the infamous Mexican Intelligence Service (CISEN) for investigations, forensics equipment, counterterrorism work, and to other agencies including the Migration Institute for establishment of a database on immigrants. The U.S. government allots $37 million of the packet to itself for administrative costs.
The proposed 2009 budget of a reported $450 million to Mexico is much the same, with a larger share going to the police, assuming that by then the notorious corruption among those agencies will have been at least partially remedied—a dubious assumption at best ($120 million to the armed forces and $252 million to the police and other law enforcement agencies).
All of these programs are directed to the goals of supply interdiction, enforcement, and surveillance—including domestic spying—according to the "war on drugs" model developed in the United States in the early 70s under then-President Richard Nixon.2 This military model has proved historically ineffective in achieving the goals of eliminating the illegal drug trade and decreasing organized crime, and closely related to an increase in violence, instability, and authoritarian presidential powers.
The NAFTA Connection
The "Merida Initiative" received its name from a meeting between Presidents Bush and Calderon in Merida, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, in March 2007. The official story is that President Calderon, already committed to a "war on drugs" that relies heavily on the use of the army in supply interdiction, requested U.S. assistance at the Merida meeting and, after negotiations on the details, the U.S. government acceded.
With the emphasis on counter-narcotics efforts, in the lead-up to the October announcement of the package, both governments marshaled studies and statistics to support the contradictory thesis that drug-trafficking and related violence in Mexico had reached a crisis point, and that Calderon's offensive against the drug cartels was working.
This is not the real story of the Plan's origins. The Bush administration's concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) as an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).3
When the three North American leaders met in Waco, Texas in March of 2005, they put into motion a secretive process of negotiations between members of the executive branches and representatives of large corporations to facilitate cross-border business and create a shared security perimeter. Subsequent meetings including the April 2008 trilateral summit in New Orleans4 extended these goals amid mounting criticism.
Through the SPP, the Bush administration has sought to push its North American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats, promoting and protecting the free-trade economic model, and bolstering U.S. global control, especially in Latin America where the State Department sees a growing threat due to the election of center-left governments. While international cooperation to confront terrorism is a laudable and necessary aim, the Bush national security strategy5 entails serious violations of national sovereignty for its partner countries, increased risk of being targeted as U.S. military allies, and threats to civil liberties for citizens in all three countries. Moreover the counterterrorism model, exemplified by the invasion of Iraq, has by all accounts created a rise in instability and terrorist activity worldwide.
Extending the concept of North American economic integration into national security matters through the closed-door SPP process raises grave questions about how security is defined and who does the defining.
Thomas Shannon, sub-secretary of Western Hemisphere affairs for the State Department put it bluntly in a speech on April 8, saying that the SPP "understands North America as a shared economic space and that as a shared economic space we need to protect it, and that we need to understand that we don't protect this economic space only at our frontiers, that it has to be protected more broadly throughout North America. And as we have worked through the Security and Prosperity Partnership to improve our commercial and trading relationship, we have also worked to improve our security cooperation. To a certain extent, we're armoring NAFTA."6
The SPP effort seeks to lock in policies that do not have consensus and have not been debated among the public and within Congress. Citizen groups in all three countries have called for a halt to SPP talks due to the lack of representation of labor, environmental, and civilian representation, and transparency to the public. On the security front, the Bush administration's concept of military-based rather than diplomacy- and social policy-based security is strongly questioned in the United States and outright rejected among the vast majority of Mexicans and Canadians.
In this context, instead of reviewing polices and opening them up to public debate, the Bush administration has launched its boldest advance yet within the SPP context—Plan Mexico. Speculation was that the Plan would be announced at the Montebello SPP meeting in August of 2007, but perhaps because of the presence of SPP protestors at that meeting President Bush delayed the official unveiling of the "Merida Initiative" several months. However, the last two SPP meetings have included discussions of Plan Mexico and the State Department has been clear about the link.
It is important to understand the roots of Plan Mexico in the Bush administration's deep integration agenda. The Plan implies much more than a temporary aid program for fighting drug cartels. It structurally revamps the basis of the binational relationship in ways meant to permanently emphasize military aspects over much-needed development aid and modifications in trade and investment policy. The scope of the Regional Security Cooperation Initiative demonstrates that it goes far beyond a joint war on drugs and cements into place failed policies on immigration enforcement, militarization of the border, economic integration policies, counterterrorism attacks on civil liberties, and the intromission of security forces into social policy and international diplomacy. To do this, the outgoing Bush administration has relied on the support of two economically dependent allies to try to assure that its policies will be irreversible under a Democratic presidency in the United States.7
What's Wrong with Plan Mexico?
Plan Mexico embodies a logic of confrontation that can be criticized on the following ten points:
The "war on drugs" model doesn't work.
Mexico has a serious problem with illegal drug trafficking and drug-related violence. But there is more than one way to go about solving it.
The Merida Initiative departs from the mistaken logic that interdiction, enforcement, and prosecution will eventually stem illegal crossborder drug-trafficking. Studies have shown that treatment and rehabilitation are 20 times more effective in decreasing the illegal drug trade.8 Yet the Merida Initiative contains not one penny9 for treatment or rehabilitation in either country. Contrary to the stated goal of decreasing the binational drug trade, the Bush administration recently cut back funds for domestic treatment and prevention programs. This approach moves in the wrong direction.
The supply-side model fails for one obvious reason: where there's a buyer there will be a seller. And since it's a black market, the seller must be a member of organized crime and stands to make an enormous, tax-free profit.
The experience of Plan Colombia reveals the pitfalls of the Plan Mexico now before Congress. Plan Colombia is a similar U.S. military aid package designed to fight the drug war. Since its inception in 2000, it has contributed to entrenched violence and corruption in that South American country while failing to reduce drug flows to the United States.
Over the past seven years of Plan Colombia the United States government has spent some $6 billion dollars supposedly to fight the war on drugs; 76% of that has gone to the Colombian military. The results are well known: Colombia remains the primary source of cocaine on the U.S. market, the price has gone down, and the purity has risen. Despite environmentally devastating fumigation campaigns, numerous studies show that the surface area planted in coca has increased or remained constant.
As a result of crackdowns, drug cartels have adopted more sophisticated equipment and forms of organization—and closer relations with Mexican cartels. In a balloon effect, a new route opens up when an old one is closed off and new drug lords rise up through the ranks when existing leaders are imprisoned or killed.
In addition to its failure to detain drug production, processing, and transit of cocaine, Plan Colombia has spread into aid for the Colombian rightwing government in its war against leftwing guerrilla insurgents. The U.S. government's involvement in counter-insurgency efforts was authorized by Congress in 2003, when it agreed to formally broaden the scope of Plan Colombia to authorize the use of military aid beyond counternarcotics activities and lift previous restrictions. As a result, investigative journalist Frank Smyth wrote that by 2001 Colombia had surpassed El Salvador as the largest counterinsurgency effort of the United States since Vietnam.10
With the arrival of arms and money for the Colombian armed forces, the violation of human rights, the displacement of entire communities, and assassination of civilians has become so widespread as to be alarming even to proponents of Plan Colombia. In the recent authorization of new funds for the plan, the House of Representatives approved a version that cuts military aid, reduces fumigation, and conditions aid to more stringent human rights requirements. The total aid to Colombia's government continues to be huge and largely military, but along with the likely rejection of the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia due to human and labor rights concerns, it marks a minimal recognition in Congress that the drug war model in that nation is simply not working as intended.
The upshot today is that a drug user has equal if not greater access to cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and it's cheaper and more potent than ever.11 Colombia continues to be the number one source of cocaine to the U.S. market. Over 300,000 people have been displaced from their communities, paramilitary groups responsible for 80% of human rights violations run rampant, and Colombia is a militarized society trapped in internecine violence.
This experience should be carefully analyzed before replicating a failed model with heavy collateral damage to the social fabric of an allied nation. Although Mexico is a very different country—there is no civil war or widespread guerrilla activity—many of the lessons of Plan Colombia are worth taking into consideration on the eve of Plan Mexico. The failure of the drug war model in Colombia, and Afghanistan, would seem to warrant at the very least a cautious attitude toward applying it in other countries—especially one as geographically and economically close as Mexico.
Providing equipment and resources to Mexican security forces in the current context of corruption and impunity will deepen the problems, reduce civil society's role in reform, and inhibit construction of democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, Mexican security forces are presently often more part of the problem than the solution. The State Department 2007 report on human rights12 in Mexico notes, "Corruption continued to be a problem, as many police were involved in kidnapping, extortion, or providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of organized crime and drug traffickers. Impunity was pervasive to an extent that victims often refused to file complaints."
Ranking members of Mexican security forces on local and national levels maintain close links to drug traffickers, working for them directly in many parts of the country. The army has traditionally been more independent of this dynamic, but its deployment within the country in the drug war is increasing its involvement and leading to human rights violations. Many armed forces deserters, that totaled 17,000 last year alone, receive counternarcotics training and then pass it along in service to high-paying drug cartels. The infamous Zetas (a drug trafficking network comprised of former law enforcement and military agents) illustrate the lethal capacity of military-trained groups that operate with drug cartels.
Military equipment also ends up in the hands of the cartels. The U.S. Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reports that 90% of arms decommissioned from organized crime in Mexico came from the United States, many registered to the U.S. Army.13 Senator Alfonso Sanchez Anaya reported to the Mexican Congress that 15 million arms circulate illegally in Mexico.14 In Iraq an investigation revealed the existence of thousands of "missing" arms thought to be in the hands of insurgents and delinquents. The black market in arms is booming. Given this situation, the likelihood that U.S. military equipment ends up in the wrong hands is more like an inevitability.
By excluding community prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation programs, neighborhood watch initiatives, and other measures that create a more active role for civil society, the initiative tends to convert the citizenry into a protectorate of the armed forces. The redefinition of crime as a national security threat also removes it from the community realm.
The point is not to vilify the Mexican armed forces, police, and government. Many honest and brave individuals can be found among their ranks and some have given their lives fighting corruption. Extreme statements like that of Tom Tancredo on Nov. 8, 2007 who said, "The degree of corruption inside the government and the military is so great that it's hard to see where the government ends and where the cartels begin," respond more to a Mexico-bashing mentality than a serious concern for the real challenges Mexico faces.
But this is the reality of the situation and the challenge for U.S. binational policy is to support effective measures to clean up the corruption and end the impunity while developing mechanisms of cooperation in combating transnational crime.
Giving arms, military equipment, spy and surveillance capacity, and training to security forces with a history of abuses that the justice system is unable or unwilling to check is like pouring gas on a fire. Ignoring root causes of criminal activity and market demand makes it very likely that military aid will empower delinquency and feed corruption.
Plan Mexico promotes the militarization of Mexican society with few legal or social controls.
The model of confronting the trafficking, sale, and consumption of drugs with military means increases violence and weakens democratic institutions. In countries where these are already weak it can create serious obstacles to a transition to democracy.
Former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Louise Arbour warned of using the army in the streets on her last visit to Mexico. "I understand there are those who say that at times you have to turn to a more powerful force such as the army, but it seems to me that in the long term it is frankly dangerous," Arbour told television network Televisa. "The army should not be doing the job of the police."15
General José Francisco Gallardo, the major proponent of human rights guarantees within the Mexican Army and a constitutional scholar who was imprisoned for his efforts states, "Here what should be done is to form a national police force that carries out these functions and is not under the military ... The presence of the Army in matters that are not under their jurisdiction displaces the constitutional faculties of the civil, federal, state, and municipal authority and goes against Art. 21 of the constitution."16
When asked if the Calderon strategy of militarizing the drug war could lead to a return to the "dirty war" of the 70s, Gallardo—as a young soldier, one of the few members of the armed forces to protest the torture and assassination that marked that period—told the author, "We are already experiencing a return to the dirty war."17 He cited the widespread practice of torture and arbitrary detentions as proof of systematic human rights violations in contemporary Mexico.
The 2007 report of the Mexican National Commission on Human Rights18 recommended the gradual withdrawal of the army from the internal drug war. Militarizing society by involving the army in internal functions beyond its constitutional mandate constitutes a threat to democracy. As is well known in Latin America, the Cold War militarization of society and ideology paved the way for military dictatorships that murdered civilians and set back progress toward democracy by decades. Human rights violations are expected to rise.
The corollary to increased military support in internal matters is the rise of uncontrolled paramilitary forces as has happened in Colombia. In Mexico, the use of paramilitaries has been largely confined to attacks on Zapatista communities in the southern state of Chiapas.19 Since 2006, paramilitary organizations have been used in the state of Oaxaca to repress social and indigenous movements there. It is likely that an increase in militarization of Mexican society will lead to an increase in the scope and activity of these groups.
Both governments have been quick to defend the Plan stating that no U.S. troops will be deployed on Mexican soil. An important difference between the domestic version of the war on drugs and that which the U.S. government has applied in other countries is the use of the Army. When the war on drugs model began, military over-extension in Vietnam, an unpopular draft system, and drug addiction among soldiers, as well as constitutional prohibitions, ruled out use of the Army. The version for export has included both U.S. and home country armies. Plan Colombia dispatched U.S. troops to Colombia but Congress has maintained a troop cap. Today a similar situation of military over-extension, now due to the war in Iraq, places practical restrictions on the use of U.S. troops.
However, the deployment of U.S. troops cannot be the sole measure of militarization to evaluate the regional security cooperation initiative. The war on drugs in Latin America is fought more by private-sector mercenaries and national armies trained by the U.S. military. Plan Mexico follows this strategy, for the above reasons and particularly to avoid riling Mexican sensitivities regarding national sovereignty. Militarization through building up national armies to fight within their own borders and sending in private companies such as Blackwater can be even more dangerous for Mexico than U.S. troop presence. Accountability mechanisms are weak or non-existent.
Unless checks and balances appear that have so far not been revealed, Plan Mexico could contribute to the creation of a police state in Mexico. This poses a particular threat to women. Already in addition to what happened in San Salvador Atenco (May 2006), security forces have been involved in rapes and sexual torture in cases in Oaxaca, Zongolica, and Coahuila.
The Initiative broadens Mexico's presidential powers, skewing a weak balance of powers.
The war on drugs model has always had this as an unspoken objective: to strengthen the executive power without effective counterbalances or transparency, subtracting powers from other levels of government and restricting citizen rights.20 In Mexico, barely emerging from decades of presidential authoritarianism, moving in this direction could erase years of building a more effective balance of powers.
Since his hotly contested election by half a percentage point in 2006 and accusations of irregularities upheld in part by the electoral institutions, President Calderon faces a challenge to consolidate his rule. U.S. policies should encourage a process of political reconciliation, not reliance on the armed forces to bolster presidential powers.
After taking office Calderon rapidly built an image of strength in arms. He dispatched over 24,000 army troops to Mexican cities and villages, and created an elite corps of special forces under his direct supervision.
The message of a weak presidency bolstered by a strong alliance with the military has not been lost on Mexican citizens. While some believe this is the only way to attack public insecurity, others have criticized(21) the repressive undertones, the danger of returning to presidentialism, increasing human rights violations, constitutional questions, and threats to civil democratic institutions.
For the Bush administration the war on drugs model serves to lock in pro-corporate economic policies and U.S. military influence in the region. When the United States exports its "war on drugs" it becomes a powerful tool for intervention and pressuring other nations to assume U.S. national security interests as their own. This global policeman role creates dependency on the U.S. military and intelligence services and militarizes diplomacy. The Pentagon takes the lead in international policy, while relegating international law and diplomacy to a distant second place.
The war on drugs model invariably extends into repression of political opposition in countries where it has been applied, blurring the lines between the war on drugs, against terrorism, and against political opposition.
A 2004 report documents the impact of increased U.S. military aid in Latin America and concludes that "Too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power, even those working within the political system such as activists, independent journalists, labor organizers, or opposition political-party leaders."22
Persecution of dissidents has been well-documented for many periods of Mexican history including present day. The International Civil Commission on Human Rights writes in its preliminary conclusions from a fact-finding tour in February 2008: "There have been widespread arbitrary arrests of members of social movements and, on occasion, of members of their families merely for being related to them. It is normal for those who are arrested to be subjected to torture and physical abuse. To justify the arrests false evidence is used ..."23
Journalists who report on state or drug-cartel related violence also become victims of selective silencing. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Mexico 10th in the world on its "Impunity Index." Colombia, after nearly a decade of Plan Colombia's prescriptions for increasing rule of law, ranks fourth in the index for the unpunished assassination of journalists.24
The Merida Initiative indiscriminately replicates the Bush counter-terrorism model, placing at risk democratic institutions and civil and human rights in Mexico where the threat of international terrorism is practically non-existent.
Counter-terrorism measures included in Plan Mexico ignore the fact that the threat to the United States and the threat to Mexico are not equivalent in size or nature, nor are the political contexts. Mexico is emerging from authoritarian rule, with many non-democratic institutions and practices still intact and increasing signs of a return to impunity and rule by political bosses.
Obliging Mexico to adopt emergency counter-terrorism measures including domestic surveillance, phone tapping, warrantless searches—the "Gestapo law" (which is how the Mexican news media refers to it) proposed by the Calderon government that was defeated by popular outcry—and definitions of social protest as a criminal activity could damage fragile civil liberties protections and democratic institutions. The Merida Initiative includes funding for espionage systems directed at national citizenry, and surveillance equipment. Reforms dictated under the SPP have authorized house arrest and other measures considered a violation of rights but common in the United States now under the Patriot Act.
Since the U.S. government's definition of "terrorism" is so broad and ambiguous, the counterterrorism model has led to mission creep and attacks on internal dissidence. The regional security cooperation initiative provides a dangerous stepping stone in that process.
The Merida Initiative intensifies border conflict by viewing immigration through the same military lens as terrorism and organized crime.
By including "border security" and explicitly targeting "flows of illicit goods and persons," the Initiative equates migrant workers with illegal contraband and terrorist threats. This ignores both the root causes of Mexican out-migration and the real demand for immigrant labor in the United States.25
The Merida Initiative Joint Statement(26) reads, "Our shared goal is to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to fight criminal organizations—so as to disrupt drug-trafficking (including precursor chemicals), weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking."
The millions of dollars allocated to the immigration institute are focused on tightening Mexico's southern border through monitoring, bio-data collection, and a Guatemalan guest-worker program and border control. Mexico has a history of offering refuge to Central Americans and accepting them into its society. That has been changing as the U.S. government has pressured Mexico to intercept Central American migrants before they make it to the northern border.
Plan Mexico advances that process and increases Mexican participation in stopping its own migrants at the northern border too. Putting immigration in the same basket as terrorist threats has already served to promote the U.S. government strategy of militarizing the northern border. The U.S.-Mexico border provides a case study in how U.S. counter-terrorism programs lead to militarization, loss of national sovereignty, and violations of human rights and even death of migrants. For Mexican workers thrown out of a job by the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, being snagged as criminals by their own government at the border is a cruel irony.
The problem of illegal immigration can never be resolved under this paradigm. Resulting expenditures, loss of local labor, and increased hate and violence erodes communities and local economies, especially on the border.
A better policy would recognize immigration as a result of economic integration and adjust trade, investment, and community development programs accordingly in both countries. Job generation, local infrastructure development, programs aimed at regulating migratory flows and preventing conflict would go much farther to enhance border security in the short and long term.
Reforming the Mexican justice and prison systems requires political will in Mexico, not U.S. taxpayers' money.
The $112 million allocated for 2008 in the "rule of law" portion of the Merida Initiative to the Attorney General's Office and other criminal justice agencies includes mostly information technology systems for centralizing data collection, forensics labs, and training for the court system and law enforcement personnel. Although viewed by some as the "soft" part of the initiative, these programs raise serious questions as to their efficacy and appropriateness.
First, to increase the "rule of law" what Mexico really needs is the political will—not additional resources—for reform to work. To give an example: the murder of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez has become an internationally known case and received millions of dollars from the Mexican government and international agencies to resolve the crimes. Numerous commissions have been formed and faded away without delivering results.27 A state-of-the-art forensics team called in to analyze the evidence that hadn't already been destroyed wrote up a report. Although they concluded their investigation, the report has not been released. Human rights activists close to the cases believe that they could implicate economically and politically powerful individuals.
Second, the Mexican laws and legal system are not the same as the U.S. system. While police departments and other agencies have long-standing agreements for training and cooperation, a grand plan for the U.S. government to train and reform the Mexican legal system is viewed as negative intervention by many Mexican jurists. Mexican judges from the Supreme Court and lower courts have publicly stated objections to U.S. funds for the court system. For years, members of the judicial system have resisted attempts by international financial institutions to impose governance programs mandating reforms in the Mexican judicial system, not because the country doesn't need to improve in this area (the justice system is notoriously bad) but because only Mexico can revamp its judicial system. Plan Mexico would break through that resistance and mandate U.S. plans and training in both the judicial and prison systems.
The U.S. government would do better to improve its own legal system in the joint effort to control the illegal drug trade and organized crime. The fact that the United States is the largest market for illegal drugs indicates a dismal record in control of illegal drug retailing, distribution, and consumption. Moreover, measures such as mandatory drug sentencing have been proven to discriminate racially and economically; consider that African-Americans make up 13% of drug uses and 59% of those convicted.28 Drug convictions, usually for users rather than dealers and leaders of organized crime, have led to over-crowding in U.S. prisons. Although this method has not proven to be the most effective in dealing with the problem, the privatized U.S. prison system creates market incentives for imprisoning casual drug users and migrants—both of which form part of the Merida initiative. This diverts resources and attention from going after leaders of organized crime and, given Mexico's already dangerously over-crowded prisons, could lead to violent riots.
The Merida Initiative does not represent real binational cooperation.
Several members of Congress have heralded the Merida Initiative as an unprecedented step toward binational cooperation. They argue that the United States government implicitly recognizes U.S. responsibility for the transnational drug trade by offering the aid packet to Mexico to combat organized crime.
In fact, the Plan places the onus of the drug war on Mexico and includes no counterpart measures to reduce the U.S. market, improve customs control on the northern side of the border, reduce retailing and distribution, eliminate illegal arms traffic, and prosecute money-laundering—all problems located firmly within the United States.
Moreover, although President Calderon has heralded the measure as an example that the U.S. government is willing to assume its part in fighting the illegal drug trade and rise in organized crime, the bulk of the budget for the initiative will never make it to Mexico. In addition to the 40% that will be spent on the military helicopters and surveillance planes, most of the rest of the budget goes to defense contractors and Information Technology (IT) firms in the form of outlays for intelligence equipment, software and hardware, and training. A huge part of this budget goes directly to U.S. private sector defense and IT companies and the U.S. government, not to Mexican security and government agencies.
As some attack the Plan for the resources destined to an "undeserving" Mexico, Plan Mexico could well end up being another defense company pork barrel.
Threat to Mexican sovereignty.
Plan Mexico includes training of Mexican police and armed forces using U.S. techniques, technology, and priorities. Few nations would accept this arrangement in the vital area of national security. As the network of U.S. anti-narcotics and customs agents and training units in Mexico grows, the ability of the country to apply policies based on its own national needs and priorities decreases proportionally.
Mexicans have always been protective of Mexican sovereignty. U.S. government officials often regard Mexico's reticence to engage in joint military and police actions with the United States as if it were a hyper-nationalist flashback, but Mexico has guarded its neutrality in foreign affairs and public opinion views with skepticism of U.S. foreign policy, especially since the invasion of Iraq, with the majority preferring a degree of autonomy from U.S. security interests.
The U.S. public would reject Plan Mexico if the roles were reversed. Imagine the following news story in the morning paper:
"Plan United States, completely funded by the Mexican government, will place Mexican drug enforcement agents in border customs offices and key points in the interior, including Laredo, Kansas City, Miami, and New York. A new wiretapping system, produced by SPY-MEX and supervised by Mexican intelligence officers, will monitor private communications of U.S. citizens suspected of involvement with organized crime, while Mexican-made planes overfly communities thought to be located along drug trafficking routes. The U.S. army, recently deployed to cities across the nation to fight the drug war, will receive arms and training from Mexico."
Newspapers and blogs would explode with cries of a Mexican re-conquest and the sacrifice of U.S. sovereignty. Yet there is virtually nothing in this scenario that is not already on the table for Mexico.
When in her testimony before Mexican Senate committees, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa mentioned the counter-terrorism activities "to detect terrorists(29) who might try to attack our neighbor," her comments drew fire from legislators as proof that the U.S. seeks to impose its own counterterrorism agenda.
Although U.S. troop presence in Mexico has been ruled out, Mexican civil society has begun to react to what they see as excessive U.S. intromission. U.S. military training under Plan Mexico has raised concerns on both sides of the border.
The role of private contractors in implementing the package remains unclear and a source of dismay. One security source says Blackwater will likely be the major beneficiary, despite its tarnished reputation following its shooting of Iraqi civilians. Corruption in contracts related to both training and equipment purchase seems a certainty given recent experience in Iraq.30
It also doesn't help that it was tacked on to the Iraq supplementary funding request. Any linkage between Plan Mexico and the Bush U.S. security doctrine as applied in Iraq increases suspicions among Mexican politicians and public.
The Plan Furthers a Divisive Geopolitical Strategy
For the Bush administration, Plan Mexico has an explicit role to play in its overall geopolitical strategy in the hemisphere. Mexico is one of only two far-right governments among the major countries in the hemisphere. The other, Colombia, has received billons of dollars of U.S. military aid, also originally as part of a "war on drugs" that soon broadened into an overall military alliance. President Bush's insistence on pressuring the Democrats to pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in the context of the New Orleans North American Trilateral Summit unveils the administration's underlying geopolitical aims in Latin America. Under the Bush National Security Doctrine, this kind of alliance requires adhering to the premises of that doctrine including pre-emptive attacks, unilateral action, and disdain for international law.
The Bush administration has developed a with-us-or-against-us policy toward U.S. neighbors in Latin America. To varying degrees, it views the wave of center-left governments (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay) as a threat to its strategic interests. Moves to modify international market economies, increase state involvement in redistribution of wealth and public control of natural resources and basic services, and constitutional reforms to recognize rights of indigenous peoples are generally considered counter to U.S. interests.
The administration and the rightwing think tanks that have developed the strategy explicitly formulate hemispheric security policy in terms of U.S. hegemony. The American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Donnelly calls the Western Hemisphere "America's third border"31 and argues that "American hegemony in the hemisphere is crucial to U.S. national security."
Stephen Johnson, 32 deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Defense Department, recently made the connection between Plan Mexico and Washington's bid to recover its influence in a slipping geopolitical context.
"While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador. For now, Venezuela and Cuba are clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy, markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors."
Plan Mexico is seen as an historic opportunity for the United States to gain military influence in Mexico and use it as a platform in the ideological battle with Venezuela and Cuba et al. This is a dangerous and wrong-headed strategy for international relations in the hemisphere, where mutual respect and self-determination should be the guiding principles for lasting peace. It also compromises Mexico's relations with its southern neighbors.
Strong international relations should be based on mechanisms of cooperation between nations that have each established national security polices based on their own needs. What has legislators and civil society worried on both sides of the border is the reach of Plan Mexico in recasting the binational relationship, to create what the Bush administration calls "a new paradigm for security cooperation."
Opposition to Plan Mexico
Despite a lack of public information, many organizations have come out against the Merida initiative. In addition to doubts about the efficacy of the war on drugs model for eliminating traffic in illegal drugs, one of the strongest and most frequent criticisms relates to the poor human rights record and corruption of the Mexican security forces that would directly receive the aid. Numerous human rights organizations on both sides of the border base their opposition to the plan on cases of blatant violations that have never been investigated or prosecuted in Mexico. A few examples suffice to illustrate their concerns.
In an April 30, 2008 letter to William Delahunt of the International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight Sub-Committee of the House of Representatives, the AFL-CIO stated its opposition to the Merida Initiative, citing "systematic and often violent violations of core labor rights" and specifically naming two cases. The first is the assassination of the leader of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Mexico, Santiago Rafael Cruz, with no follow-up on the part of authorities on evidence indicating a link between his union activities and his murder. The second involves "a full-scale attack on the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers" by the Calderon administration and the mining company Grupo Mexico, in which three union members have been murdered with no investigations or prosecutions, and the lack of follow-up on the company's responsibility in the death of 65 miners in an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos mine in February 2006.33
The letter states, "Without significant and concrete improvements in institutional mechanisms to weed out criminals, provide training in human rights, and establish effective civilian oversight, additional funding to these security forces is likely to worsen corruption and violence."
In 2006 protests by citizens of the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca—including unionized teachers, students, indigenous peoples, and city-dwellers—were forcibly put down by state and federal security forces. Paramilitary groups and snipers for hire also participated in an orchestrated effort to defeat the movement to remove the state governor accused of fraud and violence, and improve working conditions for teachers and living conditions in the communities in which they work. Human rights organizations documented the murder of 23 persons, as well as numerous cases of abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, and wrongful imprisonment. The murder of movement leaders has continued to date and brought the death toll to 62, according to the International Civil Commission on Human Rights.34 Among the dead was U.S. journalist Brad Will whose assassins were caught on film. Despite evidence, the state has refused to seriously investigate or prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes and the Federal Attorney General's office closed the case. U.S. groups oppose appropriations to Mexican security forces on the basis of this unresolved case.
Other high-profile cases include the Ciudad Juarez murders; the murders, and torture and rape of protestors in police custody in the farming community of San Salvador Atenco35 in 2006; and journalist Lydia Cacho, who was arrested and threatened after writing a book that revealed the involvement of major industrialists and politicians in a pedophile ring.
Since being dispatched to wage the war on drugs, the Mexican Army has accumulated an alarming number of complaints of violations of human rights, including several incidents of fatal shootings at checkpoints, rapes, and brutality. The 2007 Mexico Human rights Report of the U.S. State Department36 notes reports of security forces involvement in "unlawful killings by security forces; kidnappings, including by police; physical abuse; poor and overcrowded prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency in the judicial system; confessions coerced through physical abuse permitted as evidence in trials; ... corruption at all levels of government; ... violence, including killings, against women ..."
In February and March of 2008 the International Civil Commission on Human Rights investigated the status of human rights violations in the southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Atenco. The commission carried out over 650 interviews with victims of abuses. It concluded: "The CCIODH holds that the cases of Atenco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas exemplify a more widespread situation characterized by a pattern of continued and commonplace behavior on the part of different federal, state, and, in some cases, local authorities. This model of behavior can clearly be understood as the politics of the state."
The argument of groups opposing Plan Mexico is not that, given the deplorable state of its judicial and law enforcement systems, Mexico does not deserve the U.S. aid package, as if this were a type of reward for good behavior. The problem is the type of aid envisioned in Plan Mexico. Empowering (and enriching) corrupt and abusive institutions beforereforming them empowers abusers, and potentially deepens and consolidates corruption.
One of Mexico's foremost human rights groups, the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center states, "The Merida Initiative is characterized by a lack of a human rights perspective, a human security approach that mistakes the security of states for the security of human beings ... It is time for the international community to stop supporting short-sighted policies such as this one."
The Need for a Different Plan
Mexico is at a critical juncture. Its weak democratic institutions have been shaken and discredited by their inadequate response to electoral polarization and to vast social inequality that destines millions to poverty or out-migration. Human rights abuses still characterize much of law enforcement agencies. The justice system remains bound to powerful interests, and lacks independence from the federal government and state and local governments.
Mexico can either take up the challenge to strengthen democratic institutions, or it can fall back into rule by force and authoritarianism.
At this critical juncture, the Merida Initiative would be a potentially devastating step backwards.
Despite the gravity of Mexico's condition it still lacks a careful diagnosis.
Faced with a real problem—the strength of drug cartels in Mexico and the United States—Plan Mexico proposes solutions that replicate the logic of force and patriarchal control that the drug cartels rely on. Then it applies these solutions not only to a bloody frontal battle with drug traffickers, but to a multitude of complex security threats with roots deep in Mexican society.
Before putting the army in the streets—with all the legal, political, and practical risks that entails—the dramatic increase in drug use should be treated as a health epidemic and addressed at once through education, options for young people, and rehabilitation. Calderon's war on drugs includes construction of treatment centers but focuses on supply and enforcement, and Plan Mexico proposes exclusively enforcement actions.
The main result so far has been to unleash violence in most regions of the country. The death, arrest, or extradition of ringleaders has set off battles for succession and renewed turf wars. Meanwhile, it's not clear that the price and availability of illegal drugs have been affected on U.S. or Mexican markets.
Both the United States and Mexico should reject appropriations that place the emphasis on a military solution to their shared drug dependency. Ironically, the one part of Nixon's drug policy that actually worked—expansion of treatment services—is the one part that has been the least emulated. The military-police arm of the "war on drugs" has proved to be not only a failure but a threat to the same social values it claims to defend.
The priority should be to develop national plans and mechanisms of binational coordination that work, and whose side effects—like militarization, human rights abuses, and the sophistication of criminal elements—do not cancel out the benefits. If anything is known about arming conflict, it's that no matter which side you arm—and the guns invariably end up on both sides—it escalates violence.
The sheer scope of the Merida Initiative reflects the Bush administration's military/police focus in international security issues, just when those strategies have hit a low point in popularity within the United States. Any incoming administration should have the freedom to develop new and more effective polices with one of its closest neighbors, instead of being locked into failed and unpopular policies by the outgoing administration.
Major human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States have already come out against the Merida Initiative . It will soon be voted on in the U.S. Congress. To avoid the pitfalls of this policy, a more effective binational plan would address root causes, develop mechanisms of binational coordination, and assume U.S. responsibilities and obligations.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
ICE Targeting Children
Are Immigration Authorities Going After School Children Now?
By Amanda Martinez, New American Media
Posted on May 8, 2008, Printed on May 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84718/
Editor's Note: Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.
He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.
Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7: 30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.
Parent liaison Isela Barbosa said she was swamped with phone calls all day. "Parents were so afraid to come to the school, they called family members and neighbors, whoever had papers, to pick up their children."
A community member contacted Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District's public information officer to tell him that a Latino family from South Berkley had been detained at a house near Russell Street, and that neighbors had spotted ICE vehicles near school areas.
By noon, the district had received so many calls from concerned parents that they set up an automated voice message system, assuring parents that that there was no way they would allow ICE officers to pick up students from school campuses. These messages were sent out both in English and in Spanish.
At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school.
OUSD officials said they were hesitant to communicate with parents, so instead sent out e-mails to all school district staff about what was happening and reminding them that the school district's commitment was to educate all students, documented or otherwise. The e-mail also advised staff not to facilitate any immigration enforcement actions.
As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.
Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."
He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said.
"As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect."
Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives.
She confirmed that on the morning of May 6, ICE officers arrested four immigration violators who were from Mexico, and were living at a residence in Berkeley. A fifth person was arrested at a residence in Oakland, she said, noting that all five have been released, pending immigration hearings.
Sara Nuno of the Family and Community Office of the OUSD dismissed ICE's assertion that there was no targeting of any schools. "They are targeting schools and we are watching them do it," she asserted.
Ellen Murry, who had come to the school to pick up her grandnephew, said that she believed these types of government actions hurt all students, not just the undocumented ones. She said that if students stayed away from school out of fear, it could impact the school district's income, the bulk of which comes from student attendance.
Troy Flint, communications officer of OUSD, pointed out that such raids distracted students who were taking the state standardized test. He assured students that the OUSD would do everything it could to allow them to finish taking the tests.
Parents and local groups, including the Alameda Labor Council, sent out more than 900 e-mails letting parents know of what was taking place.
One parent liaison, who helped to make phone calls throughout the day to concerned parents, said he thought the fear of deportation was serious. If parents sought his advice, he said, he would tell them to keep their chidren at home, even though the OUSD has assured them that the students would be protected.
NAM reporter Pete Micek contributed to this report.
© 2008 New American Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/84718/
By Amanda Martinez, New American Media
Posted on May 8, 2008, Printed on May 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84718/
Editor's Note: Immigration raids near schools in Berkeley and Oakland have sent waves of panic in the communities and may keep undocumented students from attending class, writes NAM education reporter Amanda Martinez.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.
He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.
Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7: 30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.
Parent liaison Isela Barbosa said she was swamped with phone calls all day. "Parents were so afraid to come to the school, they called family members and neighbors, whoever had papers, to pick up their children."
A community member contacted Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District's public information officer to tell him that a Latino family from South Berkley had been detained at a house near Russell Street, and that neighbors had spotted ICE vehicles near school areas.
By noon, the district had received so many calls from concerned parents that they set up an automated voice message system, assuring parents that that there was no way they would allow ICE officers to pick up students from school campuses. These messages were sent out both in English and in Spanish.
At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school.
OUSD officials said they were hesitant to communicate with parents, so instead sent out e-mails to all school district staff about what was happening and reminding them that the school district's commitment was to educate all students, documented or otherwise. The e-mail also advised staff not to facilitate any immigration enforcement actions.
As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.
Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."
He labeled the ICE actions "inappropriate and unnecessary" and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. "There should be no raids in Oakland," he said.
"As a sanctuary city," Dellums said, "we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect."
Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. "ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. "The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up."
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives.
She confirmed that on the morning of May 6, ICE officers arrested four immigration violators who were from Mexico, and were living at a residence in Berkeley. A fifth person was arrested at a residence in Oakland, she said, noting that all five have been released, pending immigration hearings.
Sara Nuno of the Family and Community Office of the OUSD dismissed ICE's assertion that there was no targeting of any schools. "They are targeting schools and we are watching them do it," she asserted.
Ellen Murry, who had come to the school to pick up her grandnephew, said that she believed these types of government actions hurt all students, not just the undocumented ones. She said that if students stayed away from school out of fear, it could impact the school district's income, the bulk of which comes from student attendance.
Troy Flint, communications officer of OUSD, pointed out that such raids distracted students who were taking the state standardized test. He assured students that the OUSD would do everything it could to allow them to finish taking the tests.
Parents and local groups, including the Alameda Labor Council, sent out more than 900 e-mails letting parents know of what was taking place.
One parent liaison, who helped to make phone calls throughout the day to concerned parents, said he thought the fear of deportation was serious. If parents sought his advice, he said, he would tell them to keep their chidren at home, even though the OUSD has assured them that the students would be protected.
NAM reporter Pete Micek contributed to this report.
© 2008 New American Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/84718/
5/5/08
Saqueo, explotación y despojo de los recursos naturales del ejido Acamilpa
Saqueo, explotación y despojo de los recursos naturales del ejido Acamilpa, en el municipio de Tlaltizapán, Morelos.
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/denuncias/930/
El problema inició en 1980 cuando un ejidatario de nombre Basilio Salgado, apoyado por la CCI, comenzó a explotar los recursos no renovables del ejido de Acamilpa sin autorización del mismo. Se realizó una asamblea para regularizar la situación y así el ejido pudiera obtener recursos, ya que se trataba de tierras con tenencia ejidal. En esa época se acordó que se iban a dar $6 al ejido y $3 al ejidatario sin que hubiera problema por lo que el ejidatario estaba recibiendo.
Durante el sexenio de Carlos Salinas cambio el artículo 27 y todo se viene abajo, porque el ejidatario ya podía hacer “lo que quisiera” con sus tierras. Esto hizo que personas de fuera compraran e hicieran negocios, provocando que el ejido ya no recibiera más recursos. Roque Pacheco Fernández, quien es ajeno a la comunidad, es hoy propietario de la mina de arena y principal saqueador de esas tierras, quien en complicidad con autoridades policíacas y de gobierno ha hostigado y demandado a los pobladores de esa comunidad…
Ha despojado al ejido parte de su territorio y utilizado las tierras de cultivo para la explotación de la arena sin haber notificado el cambio de uso de suelo apoyado por la procuraduría agraria y el registro agrario nacional (RAN) que han dado el poder y los títulos para explotar los recursos no renovables de dichas tierras pasando por encima de la asamblea, además convirtiendo lo que era originalmente un camino de saca en vía de transporte de la arena, el gobierno reconoce ilegalmente a ésta como carretera federal. Rafael Martínez Flores, secretario de gobernación, ha usado a la policía estatal y municipal de Tlaltizapán apoyados por la policía federal para proteger el transporte de arena ordenando detener y enviar directo a Atlacholoaya a quien intente detener el paso de los camiones, esto por solicitud directa de Roque Pacheco, ya que ha habido varios intentos de los pobladores de bloquear la salida de los camiones protestando contra el saqueo, explotación y despojo de los recursos naturales.
Los pobladores que viven a un lado del camino han sufrido importantes riesgos a la salud en especial de las vías respiratorias a causa del polvo excesivo que producen los camiones…
“Filo”, quien es ejidatario de Acamilpa, ha sido victima de denuncias, amenazas de muerte y golpes por parte de Roque Pacheco, quien también ha demandado a dos señoras de 80 años de edad, Margarita Zamora Baldura y Petra López Rodríguez acusándolas de supuesto robo e invasión de propiedad privada. Los pobladores aseguran que no se trata ya de una persona: “no estamos peleando con la persona, estamos peleando contra la corrupción… no se puede hacer justicia si ellos son los principales en no practicarla… por la vía legal no hemos podido hacer nada”.
Por medio de esta denuncia responsabilizamos a Roque Pacheco Fernández y al gobierno federal, estatal y municipal por la integridad física de todos nuestros compañeros, ya que él, coludido con las autoridades, ha hostigado, golpeado y amenazado de muerte a los que nos hemos atrevido a levantar la voz denunciando sus atropellos.
Denunciamos ante los medios de comunicación y las organizaciones hermanas nacionales e internacionales que lo ocurrido en el pueblo de Acamilpa, Morelos, no es hecho aislado sino parte de una estrategia de estado que pretende despojar a los pueblos de sus recursos naturales en beneficio de unas cuantas persona.
¡¡ALTO AL DESPOJO INDISCRIMINADO DE NUESTROS RECURSOS NATURALES!!
¡¡ALTO A LAS AGRESIONES EN CONTRA DE LOS EJIDATARIOS DE ACAMILPA!!
Bloque Popular Revolucionario
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/denuncias/930/
El problema inició en 1980 cuando un ejidatario de nombre Basilio Salgado, apoyado por la CCI, comenzó a explotar los recursos no renovables del ejido de Acamilpa sin autorización del mismo. Se realizó una asamblea para regularizar la situación y así el ejido pudiera obtener recursos, ya que se trataba de tierras con tenencia ejidal. En esa época se acordó que se iban a dar $6 al ejido y $3 al ejidatario sin que hubiera problema por lo que el ejidatario estaba recibiendo.
Durante el sexenio de Carlos Salinas cambio el artículo 27 y todo se viene abajo, porque el ejidatario ya podía hacer “lo que quisiera” con sus tierras. Esto hizo que personas de fuera compraran e hicieran negocios, provocando que el ejido ya no recibiera más recursos. Roque Pacheco Fernández, quien es ajeno a la comunidad, es hoy propietario de la mina de arena y principal saqueador de esas tierras, quien en complicidad con autoridades policíacas y de gobierno ha hostigado y demandado a los pobladores de esa comunidad…
Ha despojado al ejido parte de su territorio y utilizado las tierras de cultivo para la explotación de la arena sin haber notificado el cambio de uso de suelo apoyado por la procuraduría agraria y el registro agrario nacional (RAN) que han dado el poder y los títulos para explotar los recursos no renovables de dichas tierras pasando por encima de la asamblea, además convirtiendo lo que era originalmente un camino de saca en vía de transporte de la arena, el gobierno reconoce ilegalmente a ésta como carretera federal. Rafael Martínez Flores, secretario de gobernación, ha usado a la policía estatal y municipal de Tlaltizapán apoyados por la policía federal para proteger el transporte de arena ordenando detener y enviar directo a Atlacholoaya a quien intente detener el paso de los camiones, esto por solicitud directa de Roque Pacheco, ya que ha habido varios intentos de los pobladores de bloquear la salida de los camiones protestando contra el saqueo, explotación y despojo de los recursos naturales.
Los pobladores que viven a un lado del camino han sufrido importantes riesgos a la salud en especial de las vías respiratorias a causa del polvo excesivo que producen los camiones…
“Filo”, quien es ejidatario de Acamilpa, ha sido victima de denuncias, amenazas de muerte y golpes por parte de Roque Pacheco, quien también ha demandado a dos señoras de 80 años de edad, Margarita Zamora Baldura y Petra López Rodríguez acusándolas de supuesto robo e invasión de propiedad privada. Los pobladores aseguran que no se trata ya de una persona: “no estamos peleando con la persona, estamos peleando contra la corrupción… no se puede hacer justicia si ellos son los principales en no practicarla… por la vía legal no hemos podido hacer nada”.
Por medio de esta denuncia responsabilizamos a Roque Pacheco Fernández y al gobierno federal, estatal y municipal por la integridad física de todos nuestros compañeros, ya que él, coludido con las autoridades, ha hostigado, golpeado y amenazado de muerte a los que nos hemos atrevido a levantar la voz denunciando sus atropellos.
Denunciamos ante los medios de comunicación y las organizaciones hermanas nacionales e internacionales que lo ocurrido en el pueblo de Acamilpa, Morelos, no es hecho aislado sino parte de una estrategia de estado que pretende despojar a los pueblos de sus recursos naturales en beneficio de unas cuantas persona.
¡¡ALTO AL DESPOJO INDISCRIMINADO DE NUESTROS RECURSOS NATURALES!!
¡¡ALTO A LAS AGRESIONES EN CONTRA DE LOS EJIDATARIOS DE ACAMILPA!!
Bloque Popular Revolucionario
Vine Deloria Jr
Vine Deloria Jr.'s legacy continues to inspire
© Indian Country Today May 05, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 05, 2008
by: Carol Berry
DENVER - Views of the late Vine Deloria Jr., prominent Native scholar, theologian and activist, underscored discussions of Native lands and sacred sites at a recent conference attended by more than 400 scholars from the U.S. and around the globe.
Deloria emphasized the ''power of unique places that tell people who are paying attention that we are in a world full of life,'' said Daniel Wildcat, of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan.
Wildcat headed the American Indian studies portion of the Western Social Science Association's 50th annual conference April 23 - 26, a key venue for contemporary Native studies.
''The problem is we no longer seem to have the time or the interest in paying attention to this world around us - the power,'' Wildcat said. ''Deloria was talking about, 'How can we live in a life-enhancing manner?'''
Knowledge is not abstract in Deloria's world, he said, using as an example climate change studies that show global warming in contrast to the day-to-day experience of circumpolar Inuit who ''know it experientially.''
Tom Hoffman, of the St. Mary's University faculty, San Antonio, Texas, and a panel moderator on Deloria's legacy, said, ''According to Vine Deloria Jr., experiencing the holy, rather than belief, is what characterizes the American Indian experience.''
Deloria, Yanktonai of the Standing Rock Reservation, ascribed to Native belief a universal awareness of a power that is inherent in the land and its features, he said.
George ''Tink'' Tinker, of the faculty of Iliff School of Theology, Denver, said that current sacred sites issues build directly on Deloria's work.
''The problem is that the word 'sacred' doesn't exist in any Indian language; and if they are not 'sacred,' what are they?'' he said, referring to Bear Butte and Wind Cave, in South Dakota, Devils Tower in Wyoming and Nanih Waiyah in Mississippi, among others.
''The problem is that we're dealing with such deep incompatibility between Indian culture and the colonizer's culture, and its categories of 'sacred,' 'good,' and so on.''
''Bear Butte has special energy that has made itself accessible to human beings in the past,'' he said, asserting that power inheres in special places.
When places like Mount Graham in Arizona, sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe, undergo development - in this case, a large observatory - ''spiritual energy doesn't go away; it retreats into the mountain and is not available to human beings,'' he said.
The San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, sacred to some 13 tribal nations, were cited by another panelist as an issue between cultures. The Peaks were ruled off-limits to a ski resort seeking - with Forest Service approval - to use treated effluent on its slopes, but the ruling is under appeal in federal court.
Although the Forest Service said Natives would still be allowed to enter the area, it would be ''physically or spiritually contaminated, or both,'' said Kira Bauer, of Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff.
Scientific discourse often does not ''reflect the complexity that comprises the natural world,'' she said. ''How do we incorporate non-quantifiable values into institutional processes?''
No monetary value can be placed on the environmental well-being of the Peaks, she said, and multiple-use measures often give priority to institutional and economic values.
Deloria's emphasis on the land and its value may be incorporated in a land-based school described in ''A Ts'ilhqot'in Vision for a School in the Mountains,'' prepared by Russell Ross, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and distributed at the convention.
''Deloria Jr. challenges indigenous people to reclaim their responsibility to honor the relationships on the land; in similar respects, developing a School in the Mountains seeks to honor the teachings as a way of life and provide a safe environment to cultivate learning from where we belong and where we come from as indigenous people: the land,'' he states.
Deloria Jr. (March 26, 1933 - Nov. 13, 2005) was the author of ''Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto'' (1969); ''We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf'' (1970); ''Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence'' (1974); ''Red Earth, White Lies'' (1999); and ''The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men'' (2006), among other works.
Steve Pavlik, of the Northwest Indian College faculty, Bellingham, Wash., said Deloria regularly attended the Western Social Science Association convention in his lifetime. The convention draws scholars and others from across the U.S. as well as from Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Northwest Indian College will be the site of a Vine Deloria Jr. Indigenous Studies Symposium in July 2008. The keynote speaker will be Hank Adams, Assiniboine/Sioux, president of the Survival of American Indians Association and a longtime Native rights activist.
© Indian Country Today May 05, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 05, 2008
by: Carol Berry
DENVER - Views of the late Vine Deloria Jr., prominent Native scholar, theologian and activist, underscored discussions of Native lands and sacred sites at a recent conference attended by more than 400 scholars from the U.S. and around the globe.
Deloria emphasized the ''power of unique places that tell people who are paying attention that we are in a world full of life,'' said Daniel Wildcat, of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan.
Wildcat headed the American Indian studies portion of the Western Social Science Association's 50th annual conference April 23 - 26, a key venue for contemporary Native studies.
''The problem is we no longer seem to have the time or the interest in paying attention to this world around us - the power,'' Wildcat said. ''Deloria was talking about, 'How can we live in a life-enhancing manner?'''
Knowledge is not abstract in Deloria's world, he said, using as an example climate change studies that show global warming in contrast to the day-to-day experience of circumpolar Inuit who ''know it experientially.''
Tom Hoffman, of the St. Mary's University faculty, San Antonio, Texas, and a panel moderator on Deloria's legacy, said, ''According to Vine Deloria Jr., experiencing the holy, rather than belief, is what characterizes the American Indian experience.''
Deloria, Yanktonai of the Standing Rock Reservation, ascribed to Native belief a universal awareness of a power that is inherent in the land and its features, he said.
George ''Tink'' Tinker, of the faculty of Iliff School of Theology, Denver, said that current sacred sites issues build directly on Deloria's work.
''The problem is that the word 'sacred' doesn't exist in any Indian language; and if they are not 'sacred,' what are they?'' he said, referring to Bear Butte and Wind Cave, in South Dakota, Devils Tower in Wyoming and Nanih Waiyah in Mississippi, among others.
''The problem is that we're dealing with such deep incompatibility between Indian culture and the colonizer's culture, and its categories of 'sacred,' 'good,' and so on.''
''Bear Butte has special energy that has made itself accessible to human beings in the past,'' he said, asserting that power inheres in special places.
When places like Mount Graham in Arizona, sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe, undergo development - in this case, a large observatory - ''spiritual energy doesn't go away; it retreats into the mountain and is not available to human beings,'' he said.
The San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, sacred to some 13 tribal nations, were cited by another panelist as an issue between cultures. The Peaks were ruled off-limits to a ski resort seeking - with Forest Service approval - to use treated effluent on its slopes, but the ruling is under appeal in federal court.
Although the Forest Service said Natives would still be allowed to enter the area, it would be ''physically or spiritually contaminated, or both,'' said Kira Bauer, of Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff.
Scientific discourse often does not ''reflect the complexity that comprises the natural world,'' she said. ''How do we incorporate non-quantifiable values into institutional processes?''
No monetary value can be placed on the environmental well-being of the Peaks, she said, and multiple-use measures often give priority to institutional and economic values.
Deloria's emphasis on the land and its value may be incorporated in a land-based school described in ''A Ts'ilhqot'in Vision for a School in the Mountains,'' prepared by Russell Ross, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and distributed at the convention.
''Deloria Jr. challenges indigenous people to reclaim their responsibility to honor the relationships on the land; in similar respects, developing a School in the Mountains seeks to honor the teachings as a way of life and provide a safe environment to cultivate learning from where we belong and where we come from as indigenous people: the land,'' he states.
Deloria Jr. (March 26, 1933 - Nov. 13, 2005) was the author of ''Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto'' (1969); ''We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf'' (1970); ''Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence'' (1974); ''Red Earth, White Lies'' (1999); and ''The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men'' (2006), among other works.
Steve Pavlik, of the Northwest Indian College faculty, Bellingham, Wash., said Deloria regularly attended the Western Social Science Association convention in his lifetime. The convention draws scholars and others from across the U.S. as well as from Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Northwest Indian College will be the site of a Vine Deloria Jr. Indigenous Studies Symposium in July 2008. The keynote speaker will be Hank Adams, Assiniboine/Sioux, president of the Survival of American Indians Association and a longtime Native rights activist.
Notes on the Conjuncture: Mexico, 2008
Notes on the Conjuncture: Mexico, 2008
Notes for a Presentation to the Oaxaca After the Barricades Conference, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, April 28, 2008
By Fred Rosen
Senior Analyist, North American Congress on Latin America
May 2, 2008
http://www.narconews.com/Issue52/article3083.html
Since the debt crisis of the early 1980s, Mexico has lived through the slow disintegration of the corporate state created and controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), its gradual replacement by a multi-party, neoliberal state, and the emergence of new sources of governance and power: private and public, transnational and national, criminal and legal. The country has also lived through the simultaneous opening of political and economic life and the erosion of a set of social expectations and mutual obligations — weak and ambiguous as they may have been under the PRI’s control — that constituted a social compact between state and society, and among citizens themselves.
The experience of the past quarter century has created a disquieting political moment in Mexico, the most dramatic components of which are the privatization (we might say feudalization) of governance at the state and municipal level through the re-emergence of local strongmen with independent bases of power; the ceding of de-facto state power to private cartels and corporations (both licit and otherwise); the rise of violence and repression in the settling of political and economic disputes; the consequent growth of the murder-for-hire (“sicario”) industry; the increasingly contentious (though not-yet paralyzing) relationships within all the major parties; the growing social misery abetted by the disappearing social compact; and the various forms of struggle to re-invent such a compact, and/or to create a new social economy.
The self-identified “left” in Mexico, since the Revolutionary dawn of the twentieth century, has seen one of its principal struggles to be the creation and defense of a social compact, or pacto social among all citizens and between the citizenry and the state. Such a compact would entail a set of fair and just reciprocal obligations among all Mexicans, a sense that the good society was based on social solidarity, that people freed from the bonds of slavery and serfdom nonetheless had social and political obligations to one another, that these obligations should be built on a basis of liberty and equality, that they could not be overridden by despotic powers from within of from without.
In Mexico, as elsewhere, this social compact has been repeatedly challenged on three fronts: It has been challenged by impunity (the rule or contention for power by forces that place themselves above any democratic accountability); imperialism (the various ways in which foreign powers have denied the right of sovereignty to Mexico); and the more savage, unregulated forms of capitalism, now known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism stands out because it alone, in its purest form, denies the possibility of a social compact in a world of autonomous individuals (or autonomous families), all “freely” pursuing their own self-interest. In any case, impunity, intervention and neoliberalism are frequently intertwined, and the struggles against them naturally emerge from the struggle for a compact of social solidarity.
Beyond its philosophical underpinnings, neoliberalism in Mexico (as elsewhere) has presented itself as both a secular and cyclical phenomenon. As a secular phenomenon it has accelerated the rise of agribusiness and the consequent destruction of small-scale farming, offering no buffers or alternatives to displaced subsistence farmers, short of migration to the United States. This has engendered fierce opposition from rural organizations and their political allies (both in the center-left PRD and the corporatist PRI) under the banner “el campo no aguanta más” (the countryside can’t take it anymore). These groups have demanded government supports for small-scale agriculture and a renegotiation of the agricultural chapters of NAFTA.
As a cyclical phenomenon neoliberalism has promoted “labor flexibility” and cuts in social spending in order to discipline the working population, cheapen the costs of production and attract more foreign capital to the country. Not unexpectedly, opposition to this aspect of neoliberalism is rooted in the country’s independent (non-corporatist) trade unions and working class neighborhood organizations. Just as the two dimensions of neoliberal policies have come together in a unified policy package, supported by the country’s currently dominant political class, opposition to these policies has united in a coherent movement with links to various segments of the political-party structure and groups within civil society.
Flexible employment is not just about the conditions of work, but about a significant change in the culture of social obligations and expectations. Every individual is now expected to be responsible for his or her own destiny, and to expect nothing from society as a whole. Ideologically, flexible labor is accompanied by the belief that this individualist state of affairs is right, natural and unavoidable, that any sort of “compact” between the state and its citizens is, however well intentioned, an artificial construction doomed to failure.
Flexible labor and in-country remittances have a long history in Mexico, without having implied a breakdown of the formal social order. Members of rural families have long sought temporary work in nearby cities, men typically in construction, women as live-in domestic servants, in order to supplement always-precarious rural incomes. Money earned in urban employment usually allowed for modest savings to be regularly sent home, and for generations, until the breakdown of small-scale agriculture, this system was stable.
And working-class women have long been members of the informal economy, engaging in housework, childrearing, and participating in the non-market “culture of care.” But a generation ago, this informality did not imply social exclusion. The problem now is that the proliferation of low-wage, no-benefits employment has created an economic condition in which everyone needs to have a job. A lack of multiple earners combined with a lack of formal benefits has pushed many families into poverty.
The dominance of neoliberal logic, of course, is old news, but it is becoming critical as it reaches into new corners of social relations, like, for example, the structures of public violence in Mexico.
There is a growing use of violence in Mexico to settle political and economic conflicts and, more to the point, a growing privatization of political force. Because the Mexican state contracts out a significant part of this violence, we are not talking here about a “failed state,” but rather a weakened, demoralized and cynical state (in both local and national settings) that has become one client among many of a variety of paramilitary and assassination-for-hire organizations.
The apparent hiring of private provocateurs to exacerbate the political conflict in Oaxaca (to justify the further use of state repression) is a historically familiar example of this kind of outsourcing of violence, especially on a local level. The hiring of professional Guatemalan paramilitaries (the Kaibiles) to train members of the Mexican military in counterinsurgency and drug-war techniques during the 1990s has had graver and more disquieting consequences. Many of those who were trained by the Kaibiles have left the military to form profitable assassination/enforcement squads for hire. The group called the Zetas, current paramilitary retainers of one of the country’s most powerful drug-trafficking groups (the Gulf Cartel) is simply the most notorious. The Kaibiles themselves seem to be in second place.
Mexico suffers from a long and resilient tradition of impunity. It entails the historical use of violence to settle political and economic conflicts as well as the historical “privatization” of political force: the personalization of student repression in the 1960s and 70s by Presidents Díaz Ordaz and Echeverría, and the subsequent contracting out of state violence to youth gangs in that period; the tyrannical rule of local strongmen like the current governor of the state of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, and his use of private enforcers; the tyranny of the official disregard, verging on compliance, with the serial killings of young women in Ciudad Juárez. And, on a less violent, but still worrisome plane, the use of force and manipulation to settle internal disputes in Mexico’s political parties — across the spectrum.
So the current situation has domestic and global roots. It emerges from a repressive national history that we have to deal with honestly and seriously. But it also emerges from Mexico’s significant and profitable role in the illicit global trade in drugs (mostly trans-shipment, not production), small arms and human beings, all combined with sharpening inequality and a powerful “enrich thyself” ethic espoused by the promoters of neoliberal globalization.
When more and more relationships are privatized and made “flexible,” when there are fewer enforceable social rights and obligations, there are no guarantees that even the most basic of public goods — like public security — will continue to be provided. Further, as illicit, private, informal economic activity grows in scope and importance, it requires private means of regulation since, by definition, it cannot call upon state regulators. Hence we see the privatization of market regulation and enforcement-oriented violence.
Notes for a Presentation to the Oaxaca After the Barricades Conference, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, April 28, 2008
By Fred Rosen
Senior Analyist, North American Congress on Latin America
May 2, 2008
http://www.narconews.com/Issue52/article3083.html
Since the debt crisis of the early 1980s, Mexico has lived through the slow disintegration of the corporate state created and controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), its gradual replacement by a multi-party, neoliberal state, and the emergence of new sources of governance and power: private and public, transnational and national, criminal and legal. The country has also lived through the simultaneous opening of political and economic life and the erosion of a set of social expectations and mutual obligations — weak and ambiguous as they may have been under the PRI’s control — that constituted a social compact between state and society, and among citizens themselves.
The experience of the past quarter century has created a disquieting political moment in Mexico, the most dramatic components of which are the privatization (we might say feudalization) of governance at the state and municipal level through the re-emergence of local strongmen with independent bases of power; the ceding of de-facto state power to private cartels and corporations (both licit and otherwise); the rise of violence and repression in the settling of political and economic disputes; the consequent growth of the murder-for-hire (“sicario”) industry; the increasingly contentious (though not-yet paralyzing) relationships within all the major parties; the growing social misery abetted by the disappearing social compact; and the various forms of struggle to re-invent such a compact, and/or to create a new social economy.
The self-identified “left” in Mexico, since the Revolutionary dawn of the twentieth century, has seen one of its principal struggles to be the creation and defense of a social compact, or pacto social among all citizens and between the citizenry and the state. Such a compact would entail a set of fair and just reciprocal obligations among all Mexicans, a sense that the good society was based on social solidarity, that people freed from the bonds of slavery and serfdom nonetheless had social and political obligations to one another, that these obligations should be built on a basis of liberty and equality, that they could not be overridden by despotic powers from within of from without.
In Mexico, as elsewhere, this social compact has been repeatedly challenged on three fronts: It has been challenged by impunity (the rule or contention for power by forces that place themselves above any democratic accountability); imperialism (the various ways in which foreign powers have denied the right of sovereignty to Mexico); and the more savage, unregulated forms of capitalism, now known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism stands out because it alone, in its purest form, denies the possibility of a social compact in a world of autonomous individuals (or autonomous families), all “freely” pursuing their own self-interest. In any case, impunity, intervention and neoliberalism are frequently intertwined, and the struggles against them naturally emerge from the struggle for a compact of social solidarity.
Beyond its philosophical underpinnings, neoliberalism in Mexico (as elsewhere) has presented itself as both a secular and cyclical phenomenon. As a secular phenomenon it has accelerated the rise of agribusiness and the consequent destruction of small-scale farming, offering no buffers or alternatives to displaced subsistence farmers, short of migration to the United States. This has engendered fierce opposition from rural organizations and their political allies (both in the center-left PRD and the corporatist PRI) under the banner “el campo no aguanta más” (the countryside can’t take it anymore). These groups have demanded government supports for small-scale agriculture and a renegotiation of the agricultural chapters of NAFTA.
As a cyclical phenomenon neoliberalism has promoted “labor flexibility” and cuts in social spending in order to discipline the working population, cheapen the costs of production and attract more foreign capital to the country. Not unexpectedly, opposition to this aspect of neoliberalism is rooted in the country’s independent (non-corporatist) trade unions and working class neighborhood organizations. Just as the two dimensions of neoliberal policies have come together in a unified policy package, supported by the country’s currently dominant political class, opposition to these policies has united in a coherent movement with links to various segments of the political-party structure and groups within civil society.
Flexible employment is not just about the conditions of work, but about a significant change in the culture of social obligations and expectations. Every individual is now expected to be responsible for his or her own destiny, and to expect nothing from society as a whole. Ideologically, flexible labor is accompanied by the belief that this individualist state of affairs is right, natural and unavoidable, that any sort of “compact” between the state and its citizens is, however well intentioned, an artificial construction doomed to failure.
Flexible labor and in-country remittances have a long history in Mexico, without having implied a breakdown of the formal social order. Members of rural families have long sought temporary work in nearby cities, men typically in construction, women as live-in domestic servants, in order to supplement always-precarious rural incomes. Money earned in urban employment usually allowed for modest savings to be regularly sent home, and for generations, until the breakdown of small-scale agriculture, this system was stable.
And working-class women have long been members of the informal economy, engaging in housework, childrearing, and participating in the non-market “culture of care.” But a generation ago, this informality did not imply social exclusion. The problem now is that the proliferation of low-wage, no-benefits employment has created an economic condition in which everyone needs to have a job. A lack of multiple earners combined with a lack of formal benefits has pushed many families into poverty.
The dominance of neoliberal logic, of course, is old news, but it is becoming critical as it reaches into new corners of social relations, like, for example, the structures of public violence in Mexico.
There is a growing use of violence in Mexico to settle political and economic conflicts and, more to the point, a growing privatization of political force. Because the Mexican state contracts out a significant part of this violence, we are not talking here about a “failed state,” but rather a weakened, demoralized and cynical state (in both local and national settings) that has become one client among many of a variety of paramilitary and assassination-for-hire organizations.
The apparent hiring of private provocateurs to exacerbate the political conflict in Oaxaca (to justify the further use of state repression) is a historically familiar example of this kind of outsourcing of violence, especially on a local level. The hiring of professional Guatemalan paramilitaries (the Kaibiles) to train members of the Mexican military in counterinsurgency and drug-war techniques during the 1990s has had graver and more disquieting consequences. Many of those who were trained by the Kaibiles have left the military to form profitable assassination/enforcement squads for hire. The group called the Zetas, current paramilitary retainers of one of the country’s most powerful drug-trafficking groups (the Gulf Cartel) is simply the most notorious. The Kaibiles themselves seem to be in second place.
Mexico suffers from a long and resilient tradition of impunity. It entails the historical use of violence to settle political and economic conflicts as well as the historical “privatization” of political force: the personalization of student repression in the 1960s and 70s by Presidents Díaz Ordaz and Echeverría, and the subsequent contracting out of state violence to youth gangs in that period; the tyrannical rule of local strongmen like the current governor of the state of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, and his use of private enforcers; the tyranny of the official disregard, verging on compliance, with the serial killings of young women in Ciudad Juárez. And, on a less violent, but still worrisome plane, the use of force and manipulation to settle internal disputes in Mexico’s political parties — across the spectrum.
So the current situation has domestic and global roots. It emerges from a repressive national history that we have to deal with honestly and seriously. But it also emerges from Mexico’s significant and profitable role in the illicit global trade in drugs (mostly trans-shipment, not production), small arms and human beings, all combined with sharpening inequality and a powerful “enrich thyself” ethic espoused by the promoters of neoliberal globalization.
When more and more relationships are privatized and made “flexible,” when there are fewer enforceable social rights and obligations, there are no guarantees that even the most basic of public goods — like public security — will continue to be provided. Further, as illicit, private, informal economic activity grows in scope and importance, it requires private means of regulation since, by definition, it cannot call upon state regulators. Hence we see the privatization of market regulation and enforcement-oriented violence.
Indigenous journalists murdered in Mexico
Indigenous journalists murdered in Mexico
© Indian Country Today April 28, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: April 28, 2008
by: Rick Kearns / Indian Country Today
OAXACA, Mexico - On April 7, two indigenous radio journalists were shot to death near Oaxaca in an ambush that also wounded two adults and their two young children. Human rights and reporters' advocates are calling the incident an assassination; they are also asserting that it was not an isolated incident.
Mexican authorities have confirmed that two Triqui broadcast journalists - Teresa Bautista Merino and Felicitas Martinez Sanchez, who worked at The Voice that Breaks the Silence community radio station - were killed on their way to the city of Oaxaca, where they were slated to participate in the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of the People of Oaxaca. The driver of the vehicle, Faustino Vazquez Martinez, along with his wife, Cristina, and their children, Gustavo, 3, and Jaciel, 2, were wounded and taken to a hospital near the city.
As of press time, none of the survivors had issued public statements about the attack, but speculation about the reasons behind it has made national and international headlines.
Activists from various regional and international groups are calling the murders political assassination by the state, and demanding a full investigation by federal prosecutors. A government spokesman claimed that the real target was one of the other adults, and that it was part of a regional political feud.
The slain journalists worked for a community radio station that dealt with political, social and cultural issues affecting the mostly indigenous town of San Juan Copala, which is also an autonomous municipality. The Voice that Breaks the Silence radio show had been running for three months before the attack; journalists Merino and Sanchez, as well as some of their colleagues, had publicly criticized several political officials, including the controversial governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz. According to San Juan Copala officials, Ruiz is the person who had Merino and Sanchez killed.
''People from the government of Ulises Ruiz contacted them to threaten them,'' asserted Jorge Albino, communications director for San Juan Copala, at a local press conference the week after the shootings.
''They were told that if they spoke out they would be in danger; if they kept their mouths shut, they would receive resources,'' Albino said. Mexican officials at the state and federal levels did not respond to Albino's accusations, but one spokesman did comment on the crime.
Evencio Martinez Rodriguez, a representative of the federal attorney general's office, said that the intended target of the assault was the driver of the vehicle, who works for the regions Civil Registry office. He did not give further details on his assertion.
While not directly accusing the Ruiz administration of complicity in the crime, other human rights and reporters rights groups have joined the campaign to seek justice for the indigenous journalists.
Organizations such as the Indigenous Communities Union of the Northern Zone, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, Article 19 (an international human rights agency devoted to freedom of expression issues), Oaxaca Human Rights Commission, the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights' Mexico office, and Reporters Without Borders have all issued calls for full investigations and for quick prosecution. Each of the organizations has also recommended special protections for the surviving witnesses.
''It is more than an act of harassment and aggression against the Triqui people's struggle for autonomy,'' said Carlos Beas Torres of the Indigenous Communities Union. ''It is a sign of the brutal repression in Oaxaca, with the complacency of the federal and state governments.''
Other regional activists, such as Omar Esparza of the Community Support Center (known as CACTUS in Spanish), explained that a local political group was deeply involved in the repression and that it has been going on for years. Esparza said that the Popular Unity Party maintains ''heavily armed groups'' that attack the communities and had ''already dismantled'' various radio stations of the Indigenous Community Network of Radio and Television.
In their combined press release in reaction to the crime, the WACB, Article 19 and Reporters Without Borders echoed some of the local activists' complaints. Among other items they called for was ''an end to the climate of impunity that is allowing such acts of aggression, disappearances and murders to continue to be committed against members of community media, as well as journalists and media outlets in general, which is making Mexico the continent's most dangerous country in which to work as a journalist.''
''It is important to recall that it is not the first time when Oaxaca community radios operated by indigenous communities suffer aggressions,'' the statement continued. ''In 2006, the personnel of Radio Nandia, a licensed radio from Mazatlan Villa de Flores, was violently expelled from the installations. Radio Cadena personnel, broadcasting from San Antonio de Castillo Velasco, were attacked by bullets.''
Mexican authorities have stated that they had recovered more than 20 shell casings from the crime scene that are linked to AK-47 assault rifles, but as of late April no arrests had been made in the case of the Triqui broadcast journalists.
The Voice that Breaks the Silence radio show is still off the air.
© Indian Country Today April 28, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: April 28, 2008
by: Rick Kearns / Indian Country Today
OAXACA, Mexico - On April 7, two indigenous radio journalists were shot to death near Oaxaca in an ambush that also wounded two adults and their two young children. Human rights and reporters' advocates are calling the incident an assassination; they are also asserting that it was not an isolated incident.
Mexican authorities have confirmed that two Triqui broadcast journalists - Teresa Bautista Merino and Felicitas Martinez Sanchez, who worked at The Voice that Breaks the Silence community radio station - were killed on their way to the city of Oaxaca, where they were slated to participate in the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of the People of Oaxaca. The driver of the vehicle, Faustino Vazquez Martinez, along with his wife, Cristina, and their children, Gustavo, 3, and Jaciel, 2, were wounded and taken to a hospital near the city.
As of press time, none of the survivors had issued public statements about the attack, but speculation about the reasons behind it has made national and international headlines.
Activists from various regional and international groups are calling the murders political assassination by the state, and demanding a full investigation by federal prosecutors. A government spokesman claimed that the real target was one of the other adults, and that it was part of a regional political feud.
The slain journalists worked for a community radio station that dealt with political, social and cultural issues affecting the mostly indigenous town of San Juan Copala, which is also an autonomous municipality. The Voice that Breaks the Silence radio show had been running for three months before the attack; journalists Merino and Sanchez, as well as some of their colleagues, had publicly criticized several political officials, including the controversial governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz. According to San Juan Copala officials, Ruiz is the person who had Merino and Sanchez killed.
''People from the government of Ulises Ruiz contacted them to threaten them,'' asserted Jorge Albino, communications director for San Juan Copala, at a local press conference the week after the shootings.
''They were told that if they spoke out they would be in danger; if they kept their mouths shut, they would receive resources,'' Albino said. Mexican officials at the state and federal levels did not respond to Albino's accusations, but one spokesman did comment on the crime.
Evencio Martinez Rodriguez, a representative of the federal attorney general's office, said that the intended target of the assault was the driver of the vehicle, who works for the regions Civil Registry office. He did not give further details on his assertion.
While not directly accusing the Ruiz administration of complicity in the crime, other human rights and reporters rights groups have joined the campaign to seek justice for the indigenous journalists.
Organizations such as the Indigenous Communities Union of the Northern Zone, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, Article 19 (an international human rights agency devoted to freedom of expression issues), Oaxaca Human Rights Commission, the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights' Mexico office, and Reporters Without Borders have all issued calls for full investigations and for quick prosecution. Each of the organizations has also recommended special protections for the surviving witnesses.
''It is more than an act of harassment and aggression against the Triqui people's struggle for autonomy,'' said Carlos Beas Torres of the Indigenous Communities Union. ''It is a sign of the brutal repression in Oaxaca, with the complacency of the federal and state governments.''
Other regional activists, such as Omar Esparza of the Community Support Center (known as CACTUS in Spanish), explained that a local political group was deeply involved in the repression and that it has been going on for years. Esparza said that the Popular Unity Party maintains ''heavily armed groups'' that attack the communities and had ''already dismantled'' various radio stations of the Indigenous Community Network of Radio and Television.
In their combined press release in reaction to the crime, the WACB, Article 19 and Reporters Without Borders echoed some of the local activists' complaints. Among other items they called for was ''an end to the climate of impunity that is allowing such acts of aggression, disappearances and murders to continue to be committed against members of community media, as well as journalists and media outlets in general, which is making Mexico the continent's most dangerous country in which to work as a journalist.''
''It is important to recall that it is not the first time when Oaxaca community radios operated by indigenous communities suffer aggressions,'' the statement continued. ''In 2006, the personnel of Radio Nandia, a licensed radio from Mazatlan Villa de Flores, was violently expelled from the installations. Radio Cadena personnel, broadcasting from San Antonio de Castillo Velasco, were attacked by bullets.''
Mexican authorities have stated that they had recovered more than 20 shell casings from the crime scene that are linked to AK-47 assault rifles, but as of late April no arrests had been made in the case of the Triqui broadcast journalists.
The Voice that Breaks the Silence radio show is still off the air.
Historia de la familia Bush
Historia de la familia Bush
Carlos Rivero Collado
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=66929&titular=historia-de-la-familia-bush-
Nota del autor:
Este escrito es el análisis subjetivo de este autor, pero tiene como fuente las investigaciones que sobre esta familia han hecho escritores y periodistas de prestigio, en Estados Unidos. En la red hay una amplía relación de tales estudios, que debe ser consultada por quienes crean que no se ajusta a la verdad esta historia de sexo macabro, esclavitud laboral, nazismo, magnicidio, narcotráfico, genocidio, avaricia, explotación, fraude inmenso, latrocinio, drogadicción, alcoholismo, autoagresión, tortura y terrorismo. Por su-puesto que en la red, junto a muchos escritos serios y decentes, aparecen otros que no lo son, dedicados a mentir y calumniar. Cualquiera inventa un nombre, invierte una pequeña cantidad de dinero, escribe lo que le viene en ganas, sea verdad o mentira, elogio o anatema, excelencia o excrecencia, y lo cuelga en la red, y nadie entiende por qué no se le aplican a este medio de comunicación mundial las mismas leyes que a la prensa escrita, radial y televisada. Por eso es que el lector de la red tiene que distinguir entre libelistas y analistas, y éstos abundan más que aquéllos. Nadie vea en esta dura crítica el ataque personal a una familia, aunque sí al sistema político, social y económico que la hizo como es. Este autor ha vivido en Estados Unidos por más de cuarenta años y ha llegado a querer, admirar y, sobre todo, compadecer a su pueblo y le duele, como en carne propia, el inmenso daño que esta familia le ha hecho por más de noventa años. Sea este análisis, que integra uno de los capítulos de mi libro "Imperio del terror", inédito aún, un modesto homenaje a la paciencia de ese pueblo.
1-. El abuelo.
Prescott Sheldon Bush estudiaba en Yale University, en New Haven, Connecticut, allá por los años de la Primera Guerra Mundial y pertenecía a una fraternidad estudiantil llamada "Skull and Bones Society" (Sociedad del Esqueleto y los Huesos) cuya ceremonia de iniciación era un reflejo leal del violento corrupto imperio: los estudiantes se reunían en un sótano, no siempre de la universidad, el novato se acostaba desnudo en un ataúd, se cubría con huesos humanos que habían sido sacados de las tumbas profanadas de New Haven y, mientras se masturbaba delante de todos, contaba en alta voz sus experiencias sexuales. Este culto al sexo y la muerte se vería más generalizado unos años después en muchos otros lugares, entre ellos Abu Ghraib, adonde el sadismo y la obscenidad llegó a límites que no se han visto jamás en la historia de la humanidad y algunas de cuyas fotos se han de ver en este análisis.
En 1917, Prescott y otros estudiantes de Yale profanaron la tumba de Gerónimo, el héroe Apache, y se robaron sus huesos, que utilizarían, también, en sus novatadas de féretro, aplausos y esperma.
A fines de los años 30, Prescott dirigió la Union Banking Corporation, que ayudó a financiar la tiranía de Adolfo Hitler. Al entrar este país en guerra, el gobierno confiscó el banco por comerciar con el enemigo ("Trading with the Enemy Act", 1942). Otras de sus empresas posteriores se beneficiaron con los productos que creaban los prisioneros en los campos de concentración nazis.
Después de la guerra, Prescott mantuvo sus negocios con los aún seguían siendo nazis, a través de Fritz Thyssen, hasta 1952, en que, quizás como un premio a sus hazañas, fue electo Senador federal, por Connecticut.
2-. El padre.
Hay muchos libros serios escritos sobre George Herbert Walker Bush, que perteneció a la misma fraternidad macabra y realizó las propias novatadas en Yale casi treinta años después, que lo señalan como el gran padrino de la droga a nivel mundial desde que, como súper operativo de la CIA, llegó a Beirut, en 1956, para controlar el tráfico de hashish y heroína que llegaba al Líbano desde el Oriente y, después, alcanzaba Europa y Estados Unidos.
Su trayectoria en este sentido incluye su participación secreta en la creación, en los años 70, del mayor centro productor de heroína del mundo, en Chiang Mai, Tailandia; en la formación original de "La Mafia Cruceña", en Bolivia, que llegó a ser el mayor productor de pasta de coca del mundo (el famoso "Cocaine Coup", dirigido por el coronel Luis Arce Gómez, en julio de 1980, fue perpetrado en complicidad con este Bush, única vez en la historia que se ha dado un golpe de Estado para aumentar la producción de cocaína); en la creación de "La Compañía", en Antioquia, Colombia, con la familia Ochoa, que llegó a ser el mayor productor de clorhidrato de cocaína del mundo; el escándalo Irán-Contra, en que se traicionó al supuesto aliado, Irak, para venderle armas a su enemigo, Irán, en los momentos en que miles de seres humanos morían, de ambos bandos, en aquella guerra de los años 80. El desenlace de este escándalo fue la participación de los contra nicaragüenses para introducir en Estados Unidos, desde Colombia, veintisiete toneladas de cocaína pura –con un valor en la calle, o street value, de miles de millones de dólares- a través de una finca en Costa Rica, propiedad de un estadounidense que era operativo de la CIA, próxima a la frontera nicaragüense. De allí se traía la droga a dos aeropuertos, uno en Fort Lauderdale, Florida, y otro en Mena, Arkansas. Se cree, además, que Bill Clinton, gobernador entonces de Arkansas, fue cómplice de Bush, entonces Vicepresidente, en esta operación, y que utilizó para ello a su medio hermano Roger Clinton y a su cuñado Tony Rodham.
Al Viejo Bush, como se le conoce hoy, se le señala, además, como el enlace entre Allen Dulles, Richard Helms y David Attle Phillips con Howard Hunt en el asesinato de Kennedy. Hunt fue el hombre que vino a Miami y formó el grupo que, según se cree, conspiró para matar a Kennedy: Macho Barker, Frank Sturgis -Frank Fiorini-, Yito del Valle, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo, Herminio Díaz, Eugenio Rolando Martínez y otros. Se cree que Díaz y Martínez fueron los que le dispararon a Kennedy desde el "grassy knoll", la pequeña loma que se hallaba cerca de la limosina presidencial, en el centro de Dallas, cubierta de altos arbustos.
Los mayores crímenes del Viejo Bush no fueron, sin embargo, los mencionados, sino la invasión a Panamá, en diciembre del 89, y la agresión a Irak (Guerra del Golfo), trece meses después. En el primero, cientos de personas pobres, entre ellas decenas de niños pequeños, fueron asesinadas, de madrugada, en sus propios hogares, en el corregimiento Chorrillo, cercano al centro de mando del general Noriega. En el segundo, el imperio asesinó a más de cien mil iraquíes
sólo porque el gobierno de Saddam Hussein tuvo el justo valor de recuperar Kuwait, una parte integral de Mesopotamia desde hace nueve mil años, que los imperialistas británicos, maestros del imperio yanki, le arrancaron, a fines del siglo 18, cuando era dos zurreinatos del Imperio Otomano, en complicidad con los tatarabuelos de los actuales emires kuwaitíes. Cabe señalar que la diferencia de todo tipo que pueda haber entre un kuwaití y un iraquí es similar a la que hay entre un pinareño y un habanero o un cordobés y un sevillano, suponiendo que, en este último caso, ambos sean del mismo origen ibero o el mismo árabe.
¿Por qué la CIA controla el negocio de la droga? Pues por dinero –enormes cantidades de dinero- y para controlar mental-mente a millones de ciudadanos que, inmersos en el alucinante mundo de la droga, no se ocupan de atentar ni conspirar ni dañar ni siquiera intervenir en la vida pública, o sea como una forma de desinteresar a la población de los problemas políticos nacionales para que la pequeña élite misteriosa que dirige en secreto a este país pueda realizar su labor sin conflictos ni interferencias. Ejemplo: las elecciones presidenciales del 2004 en Estados Unidos, y casi todas las anteriores, en que ni siquiera votó la mitad del electorado. Parte esencial de esta conspiración son los múltiples programas asquerosos de la "television basura" –trash TV-; la lucha libre, repleta de fingido salvajismo y obscenidades reales; la pornografía, incluyendo la de padres teniendo relaciones sexuales con sus hijos y madres con sus hijas, que se divulga hasta por la Internet, a la que pueden tener acceso muchos niños; las películas ultraviolentas que salen de Hollywood; el fanatismo excesivo en los deportes; la educación mediocre en todos los niveles; la música epiléptica y estruendosa … y muchas cosas más. Detrás de todo esto, está la élite misteriosa que gobierna en secreto a este país, y su instrumento, la CIA, y ahora el Homeland Security Department, síntesis de las SS y la Gestapo de la era nazista en Alemania. En todo esto, el hombre clave, desde 1956, ha sido G.H.W. Bush.
Pero, se preguntarán algunos: "¿cómo pudo este señor cometer tantos y tan graves crímenes sin ser procesado jamás?". Otros dirán: "¡No, qué va, nada de eso puede ser cierto, un solo hombre no puede cometer tantos delitos!". Mi sugerencia a estas personas, y a muchas otras que pueden tener dudas similares, es que se conecten en la red con el sitio "George Herbert Walker Bush" y encontrarán muchos escritos serios, o sea verídicos, sobre este polifacético y fecundo delincuente. Tiene casi noventa años y aún anda por ahí por los aires lanzándose en paracaídas, exponiendo una vida muy distinta a la que le quitó a tantos inocentes.
3-. La madre.
Bárbara, fue, durante varios años, mientras su esposo era Vicepresidente y Presidente, la CEO –Chief Executive Officer o Jefe Ejecutivo- de Unicor, una compañía privada que se dedica a explotar el trabajo esclavo de los presos federales, que son mas de 150 mil en todo el país; y es posible que aún lo siga siendo a través de su actual jefe ejecutivo Kenneth Rocks. Es decir, la nuera imita al suegro, pero no esclavizando a los presos de los nazis sino a su propio pueblo, porque no es cuestión de ideología ni guerra, sino dinero. Los presos ganan de 35 centavos a $1.15 la hora, o sea mucho menos del salario mínimo -$6.15 la hora-, y crean productos que se venden a precios de mercado.
Unicor es una de las diversas compañías que tienen el monopolio de esta infamia. Algunas de ellas explotan, también, el trabajo esclavo de los presos estatales, que son más de dos millones en el país.
Quizás esta anciana señora no tenga una culpa directa en algo tan infame como la explotación del trabajo esclavo. Se sabe que el dueño real de Unicor ha sido su esposo y que ella es sólo una fachada, un front. En su juventud, cuando conoció al que después iba a ser su esposo, esta señora era maestra, lo cual prueba en ella cierta sensibilidad, cierta nobleza. Si hubiera seguido siendo maestra no se hubiera involucrado en algo tan vil... pero se casó.
¿Se imagina el lector que, por ejemplo, Sun Yat-sen de China, Azaña de España, Cárdenas de Méjico, Nehru de India, Perón de Argentina, De Gaulle de Francia, Nasser de Egipto, Goulart de Brazil o muchos otros jefes de Estado, hubieran sido, asimismo, mientras ejercían el poder, dueños una de las compañías que explotaban el trabajo esclavo de los prisioneros de sus respectivos países? ¡El escándalo hubiera sido gigantesco, habrían tenido que renunciar a sus cargos llenos de infamia, habrían sido colgados del poste más cercano! Bueno, pues eso mismo sucedió aquí en Estados Unidos... y no pasó nada.
(Véase en la red: Barbara Bush y Unicor; puede verse, además, Wackenhut y Corrections Corporation of America, CCA –de esta última compañía, Jorge Mas Canosa y sus herederos han sido, y quizás sigan siendo, accionistas mayores)
4-. Los hermanos.
Neil y Jeb le robaron al pueblo estadounidense decenas de millones de dólares, hace casi veinte años, cuando el Viejo era Vicepresidente, en el escándalo de los "Savings and Loans Associations". Se ha dicho que éste es "el robo más grande de la historia de Estados Unidos", pues le ha costado a sus contribuyentes –taxpayers-, hasta ahora, 1.4 trillones de dólares -o billones, en la medida española-, pues el gobierno federal tuvo que cubrir todas las pérdidas de los millones de ciudadanos que invirtieron en esas instituciones financieras. Teniendo en cuenta el dinero que se robaron y el que ha tenido que pagar el Estado, o sea el pueblo, Neil, Jeb y sus socios son los más grandes ladrones de la historia, ante los cuales Caco y los cuarenta ladrones del cuento de Alí Baba eran tiernos bebitos (véase en la red S&L Scandal)
7-. El emperador.
¿Cuál es la historia de este otro Bush?
Nada dirá este autor de su niñez privilegiada ni de su adolescencia inútil ni de su juventud, en la que se negó a ir a una guerra de la que su padre era uno de sus promotores, ni realizó estudios serios, ni tuvo un empleo sostenido, y en la que usó drogas y abusó del alcohol. No. Nada dirá de nada de eso.
Cuando tenía ya más de cuarenta años y era Gobernador de Texas -Tejas: territorio mejicano ocupado, ilegal y vergonzosamente, por el imperio desde 1845- se ejecutó en ese Estado más personas que en ningún otro del país en toda su historia y que en ningún otro país del mundo en la misma época, en su mayoría de origen latino o africano. Jamás el Gobernador concedió una sola conmutación de pena, por lo que hay que deducir que su aficción por la sangre no le surgió en la Casa Blanca.
¿Qué ha hecho este señor desde su llegada al poder imperial?
Veamos:
A) La antidemocracia: George W. Bush fue "electo" en noviembre del 2000 por un evidente pucherazo -fraude electoral-, y por la flagrante violación de las leyes electorales de Florida y la Consti-tución de Estados Unidos. Para que esto pueda ser entendido por quienes no conocen el sistema electoral de este país, es preciso explicarlo en forma simple.
El Colegio Electoral elige al Presidente sin que cuente para ello, directamente, la voluntad mayoritaria del pueblo. Voto popular es el que emite cada ciudadano con derecho al voto; voto electoral es el que representa a cada Estado, no a cada persona, y en su conjunto forma el Colegio Electoral. Cada Estado tiene un número determinado de votos electorales de acuerdo al total de sus habitantes; por ejemplo, por el estimado de población de julio del 2007, California tiene 55 votos electorales –que representan dos Senadores y 53 Representantes a la Cámara- y Dakota del Sur, sólo 3 votos electorales, que vienen a ser dos Senadores y un solo Representante a la Cámara. Esto, ya de entrada, es absurdo, pues éste es el único país del mundo, y de la historia, en que una provincia, Estado, región o departamento tiene o ha tenido más Senadores que Representantes.
El Colegio Electoral está integrado por 538 Electores que viene a ser el número total de Senadores, o sea 100 (dos por cada Estado, sin tener en cuenta su población) y Representantes, o sea 438, que son electos de acuerdo a un número determinado de habitantes, que no es el mismo en cada Estado –usando el mismo ejemplo: cada 690,000 en California, y cada 796,000 en Dakota del Sur-.
Es una aberración política y una negación de la democracia, o sea de la voluntad del pueblo, que California, que, de acuerdo al propio estimado poblacional del año pasado, tiene 36.553,000 habitantes, tenga el mismo número de Senadores que Dakota del Sur, que sólo tiene 640,000 habitantes, porque, en este caso, o casi 36 millones de californianos no están representados debidamente en el Senado o los habitantes de Dakota del Sur están representados en el propio cuerpo legislativo 57 veces más de lo debido.
Es la mayoría de votos del Colegio Electoral la que elige al Presidente, no la mayoría del pueblo. Si hay dos candidatos a Presidente, como suele ocurrir, ya que sólo hay dos grandes partidos políticos, el candidato vencedor es el que obtiene la mitad más uno de los 538 votos electorales, o sea 270; si hay más de dos candidatos y ninguno gana la mitad más uno de los votos electorales hay que ir a una segunda vuelta entre los dos candidatos que más votos electorales hayan tenido en la primera vuelta hasta que uno de ellos obtenga los 270 votos electorales necesarios para ganar.
De acuerdo a este antidemocrático sistema electoral, un candí-dato puede ser electo por la minoría del pueblo ya que quien tenga mayor número de votos populares en un Estado se lleva todos los votos electorales de ese Estado. Por ejemplo: el candidato presidencial #1, llamémosle John, saca en California, digamos 6.500, 000 votos y el candidato presidencial #2, llamémosle Peter, saca 6.495,000 votos populares. Aparte de que en este caso se ve, como siempre, la baja concurrencia a las urnas, pues no llega ni al 45%, la diferencia popular entre John y Peter es mínima, sólo de cinco mil votos; pero los 55 votos electorales de California van íntegramente a John y ni uno solo a Peter. En la misma elección, John saca, por ejemplo, en Dakota del Sur, 20,000 votos, pero Peter obtiene 180,000, o sea 160,000 más que John. Este triunfo sólo le da a Peter 3 votos electorales. O sea que, sumando conjuntamente el voto popular y el electoral, Peter tiene 155,000 votos populares más que John; pero éste tiene 52 votos electorales más que aquél. Si esta diferencia entre el voto popular y el electoral se mantiene proporcional en el resto del país, John sería electo Presidente porque ha ganado el colegio electoral, a pesar de que el perdedor Peter tendría varios millones de votos populares más que el ganador John.
John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison y George W. Bush fueron electos presidentes, a pesar de que la mayoría del pueblo estadounidense votó por el candidato que perdió la elección.
Si eso es democracia, Clístenes era vendedor de frutas en el Pireo y Rousseau, coime de billar en Ginebra.
Aclarado esto, volvamos a la familia Bush.
La elección presidencial de noviembre del 2000 estaba muy reñida en todo el país en cuanto a votos electorales, a pesar de que Al Gore tenía medio millón de votos populares más que Bush. Estaban casi empatados en cuanto a votos electorales en todo el país y la elección en Florida aún no se había decidido, pues la diferencia era de unos pocos cientos de votos populares. Quien ganara Florida llegaba a los 270 votos electorales y era elegido Presidente. De acuerdo al código electoral de Florida, si la diferencia entre los dos candidatos es menor al 1%, hay que ir a un recuento general de votos en todo el Estado o a una nueva elección, a no ser que el candidato que sacara menos votos en esa diferencia mínima aceptara su derrota antes del recuento. Al día siguiente de la elección, se informó que Bush tenía unos 400 ó 500 votos más que Gore, o sea apenas un 0.01% de la votación total o la décima parte del 1% requerido para un conteo general en el Estado o una nueva elección; pero no se hizo ni lo uno ni lo otro.
Katherine Harris, Secretaria de Estado de la Florida, y dirigente de la campaña estatal para elegir a Bush, nombrada para ambos cargos por el gobernador Jeb Bush, hermano menor de George, certificó que en la votación del Estado, Bush había obtenido 539 votos más que Gore y, en una decisión posterior, la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Estados Unidos, cuya mayoría de sus magistrados era de miembros del propio partido de Bush, decidió que la certificación de Harris era correcta y tenía que ser aceptada. Con lo cual Bush ganaba la elección que, de acuerdo a la voluntad supuestamente soberana del pueblo, había perdido.
Otros hechos aun más ilegales y vergonzosos salieron a relucir unos días después. En los vecinos condados Broward, cuyo centro es Fort Lauderdale, y Dade, cuyo centro es Miami, que cuentan con la mayor concentración poblacional del Estado, miles de votos fueron anulados, sobre todo de votantes afroestadounidenses. Varios de los funcionarios de estos centros de votación eran estadounidenses de origen cubano, defensores fanáticos de todo lo que sea reacción, o sea del Partido Republicano de Bush. Se cree que más de veinte mil votos de afroestadounidenses, en especial en esos dos condados, fueron anulados sin motivo alguno, y que en más de un 90% eran votos de Gore. Unos mercenarios de origen cubano, pagados por la mafia ultraderechista de Miami, amenazaron a varios miembros de algunos centros de votación en que se estaba llevando a cabo un recuento provisional de votos. La policía no intervino, a pesar del palpable delito, y el conteo fue suspendido.
En toda democracia moderna, sea capitalista, comunista, socialista, socialdemócrata, popular o de cualquier otro matiz o mezcla de matices, el primer poder del Estado es el legislativo, no el ejecutivo ni el judicial. En el 2000, se desconoció este principio clásico de toda democracia y se le dio a la Corte Suprema de Justicia el poder que sólo pertenece al Congreso, con lo cual se violó la Constitución del país, por primera vez, en este sentido, en la historia de Estados Unidos.
George W. Bush fue, en efecto, al menos en su primer período, un Presidente inconstitucional, un golpista. No todos los golpes son como los de Batista, Pérez Jiménez, Rojas Pinillas ni Pinochet; aunque, a veces, el uso brutal de la ley es tan bestial como la brutalidad de la fuerza.
¿Por qué Al Gore aceptó un fraude tan evidente? ¿Por qué no acudió al Congreso, como determinaba la Constitución? ¿Por qué no convocó a la protesta popular que hubiera sido vibrante y multitudinaria en todo el país? ¿Por qué, simplemente, se calló? ¿Cómo es posible que un hombre enérgico actúe como un tímido adolescente? ¿Por qué no exigió, al día siguiente de la elección, que se hiciera un recuento general de votos o una nueva elección en Florida, lo que hubiera atraído toda la atención de la prensa y la opinión pública, dificultando un nuevo fraude? ¿Por qué no lo hizo? Aun más... ¿por qué no hizo nada? Varios analistas sugirieron, entonces, que Al Gore fue amenazado de muerte por agentes secretos del complejo militar-industrial que constituye el poder real del imperio, pues éste necesitaba que Bush fuera Presidente para que no se malograra todo lo que vino después: el Once de Septiembre y sus tres retoños, la guerra de Afganistán, la guerra de Irak y el Acta Patriótica –Patriot Act- que ha tratado de convertir al país en una dictadura.
B)
El Once de Septiembre: ¿es cierto, como afirman muchas personas en el mundo, que George W. Bush fue autor o cómplice o tenía conocimiento previo de los terribles atentados terroristas perpetrados el 11 de septiembre de 2001, en los que murieron miles de seres humanos? ¿Es posible esta monstruosidad? ¿Pudo ordenar la muerte de miles de sus compatriotas o conspirar para que esto ocurra o permitirlo pasivamente a sabiendas de que iba a suceder? ¿Fue, en fin, el 11 de septiembre una autoagresión del imperio?
-¡No, de ninguna manera! –exclaman, llenos de ira, sus defensores-.
-Es probable... ya que el imperio lo había hecho antes –sugieren, con cierta ironía, sin emoción ni furia, sus detractores-.
-¿Cómo que ya lo había hecho antes? –indagan, arqueando las cejas, aunque no del todo incrédulos, los neutrales-.
Este autor no se va a lanzar, como es su costumbre, al abismo desvaneciente del pasado para evocar probables autoagresiones ni actitudes sospechosas del imperio. Por eso es que nada dirá de Andrew Jackson ni la "agresión" de los Seminoles, del Incidente Duncan ni Las Malvinas, de Sam Houston ni El Alamo, de James Polk ni Méjico, de Ulises Grant ni Alaska, de Sanford Dole ni Hawaii, del acorazado Maine ni McKinley, de Victoriano Huerta ni el embajador Wilson, del Lusitania ni el presidente Wilson, de Pearl Harbor ni Roosevelt, del Golfo de Tonkín ni Johnson. No. Nada dirá de las que hay fuertes sospechas de haber sido autoagresiones. Se va a situar sólo en el presente, en aquel día del verano tardío o el incipiente otoño: el 11 de septiembre. Y lo va a hacer con muchas preguntas quizás no del todo ingenuas, esperando que quienes las lean recuerden, más menos, lo que sucedió aquel día, o lo que el gobierno y la prensa corporativa dicen que sucedió aquel día, o lo que muchos dudan de lo que dicen que sucedió aquel día, o lo que quizás ni siquiera sucedió aquel día... hace seis años y medio:
a) ¿Por qué los Vuelos 11 y 175, que después impactarían las torres gemelas, no atacaron las plantas nucleares de Indian Point, situadas a unas cuarenta millas al norte de Nueva York, a orillas del Hudson, sobre las que volaron unos minutos antes del ataque? ¿Qué clase de terroristas eran aquéllos que iban a morir para herir al imperio y le salvaban la vida, pues de haber atacado a Indian Point habrían muerto varios millones de personas, y se habría devastado por siglos el Corredor Nordeste de Estados Unidos, que va de Boston a Washington, la zona más importante del país, lo que habría sido el golpe de muerte al imperio?
b) ¿Por qué el FBI desechó los múltiples informes de que podían producirse ataques terroristas usando como proyectiles o bombas los aviones de pasajeros?
c) ¿Por qué varios generales del Pentágono suspendieron el 9 y 10 de septiembre los viajes que iban a hacer en avión el 11?
d) ¿Por qué Donald Rumsfeld, Secretario de Defensa –debía llamarse Secretario del Ataque- le comentó a un ayudante que algo grande iba a suceder ese día media hora antes de que sucediera?
e) ¿Cómo se entiende que varios de los diecinueve supuestos secuestradores obtuvieran visas de entrada y salida de EU y se entrenaran en varias escuelas de aviación, y que, al mismo tiempo, el FBI suspendiera una investigación que ya había iniciado sobre los mismos, lo que hubiera evitado los ataques? ¿Quién ordenó la suspensión de tan importante pesquisa?
f) ¿Por qué varios testigos claves, como controladores aéreos, bomberos, policías de Nueva York y agentes del FBI, han sido amenazados si revelan detalles sobre el derrumbe de las torres?
g) ¿Cómo se entiende que la Administración Federal de Aviación, (Federal Aviation Administration, FAA) y el Comando de la Defensa Aérea de América del Norte (North American Air Defense Command, NORAD), dos agencias que, por muchos años y hasta hoy, han actuado con admirable eficiencia, fueran tan negligentes... sólo aquella mañana?
h) ¿Cómo se explica que los dos aviones F-15 que, finalmente, salieron de la Base Aérea Otis, de la Guardia Nacional de Massachussetts, para interceptar las naves secuestradas, no lo pudieran hacer porque volaron a un promedio de 450 millas por hora, que es menos de la cuarta parte de su velocidad máxima de 1,875 millas por hora?
i) ¿Por qué los aviones impactaron los pisos superiores de ambas torres cuando pudieron haberlo hecho veinte o treinta pisos más abajo provocando la muerte de muchas más personas? ¿Acaso Mohammed Atta, piloto del Vuelo 11, que impactaría la torre norte, y jefe directo de toda la operación, le dijo a Marwan al Shehhi, piloto del Vuelo 175, que impactaría la torre sur: "Mira, Marwan, los hijueputas están en los pisos de arriba, los de abajo son buena gente"?
j) ¿Por qué el gobierno imperial de Bush insiste aún, a seis años y medio de los atentados, en que las torres cayeron porque el intenso calor provocado por el incendio del combustible de los aviones debilitó la estructura metálica que sostenía los 110 pisos, a pesar de que ya todo el mundo, sobre todo los ingenieros, asegura que sólo una explosión masiva interna pudo provocar el derrumbe hacia dentro, o implosión, de las torres? ¿No es lógico deducir que si ambas torres cayeron por implosión, como prueban las evidencias, las enormes cargas explosivas tuvieron que haber sido colocadas antes del impacto... no después?
k) Si todo esto fue producto, como sugiere la lógica, de una inmensa conspiración.... ¿quiénes tenían el poder necesario para mover en secreto todos los hilos de esa diabólica trama, sino las más altas figuras del gobierno, las fuerzas armadas y los cuerpos de inteligencia y seguridad de Estados Unidos?
l) Se dice que Osama bin Laden fue el autor intelectual del Once de Septiembre y él lo reconoce. Pero... ¿quién es y ha sido Osama? ¿Acaso su padre no era el socio del Viejo Bush en la compañía petrolera Zapata Oil en los años 50? ¿Acaso no actuó Osama como operativo de la Mossad -la Inteligencia más sionista que israelí-, y después de la CIA, antes y durante la guerra que los mujadines le hicieron al gobierno de Afganistán? ¿Fue cierto que rompió con el imperio yanki después que miles de sus soldados osaran hollar el sagrado, para él, suelo saudita durante y después de la Guerra del Golfo? ¿Acaso no sabía que los soldados del imperio yanki han hollado todas las tierras que han podido hollar, desde hace dos siglos, en todos los continentes, incluyendo la Antártica? ¿Acaso el imperio no había asesinado ya a millones de civiles inocentes mucho antes de su "cambio"? ¿Se había unido al imperio que ya había perpetrado tantos crímenes, desde el bombardeo a Trípoli, en 1801, y aun antes –el imperio yanki es anterior a Estados Unidos, tema que abordaré en otro análisis-, hasta la Guerra del Golfo, dos siglos después, y se separaba de él porque unos soldados ignorantes se reían en Riad y La Meca de las pobres mujeres de rostros invisibles y largos vestidos de perenne luto? ¿No es evidente que si el imperio hubiera querido derrotarlo y apresarlo y llevarlo a juicio por lo del 11 de septiembre, ya lo hubiera hecho? ¿Aplastó a uno de los imperios más poderosos de la historia, Japón, y no puede apresar a un fugitivo al que todo el mundo conoce? ¿Fue uno de los tres grandes poderes que vencieron al ejército más formidable de la historia, el de Hitler, y no puede apresar a quien sólo tiene una fuerza de cientos de hombres? ¿Detuvo el avance de cientos de miles de norcoreanos y los hizo retroceder hasta la frontera china y no puede vencer a un hombre que anda por ahí montando a caballo y durmiendo en cuevas? ¿Asesinó a Madero, Sandino, Mossadegh, Trujillo, Lumumba, Kennedy, Qasim, Diem, Che, King, Allende, Roldós, Torrijos y otros grandes líderes y no puede ni siquiera darle un puntapié a quien no tiene el apoyo de ningún gobierno? ¿Derrocó al gobierno de los talibanes en Afganistán y al de Saddam Hussein en Irak, que tenía el quinto ejército más poderoso del mundo, y no puede apresar a quien no tiene ni un techo que lo cubra? ¿Por qué? ¿Cuál es el misterio?
C) La guerra de Afganistán: si las evidencias mencionadas no fueran reales y, efectivamente, Osama bin Laden era un enemigo del imperio que preparó los atentados del 11 de septiembre, entonces estaba justificado que el imperio tratara de apresarlo en Afganistán, pero no que asesinara a cientos de miles de civiles inocentes con los bombardeos indiscriminados a los que sometió al pueblo afgano, en los que murieron familias en sus hogares, niños en sus escuelas, enfermos en sus hospitales, ancianos en sus asilos, obreros en sus talleres, campesinos en sus siembras. Más de trescientos mil seres humanos han muerto en estos seis años y medio de guerra continua y el único éxito que ha logrado el imperio en ese país es convertirlo, otra vez, en el primer productor mundial de amapola, con el 90% de la producción mundial. ¿Estará el Viejo Bush detrás de este reno-vado y multibillonario negocio de heroína? ¿Se seguirá reuniendo, en secreto, con los grandes señores que controlan la producción de amapola en las tierras afganas, como lo hacía con los libaneses en Beirut, los tailandeses en Chiang Mai, los bolivianos en Santa Cruz y los colombianos en Antioquia? Este autor duda que este señor esté reviviendo sus mocedades, cuando, como superagente y después director de la CIA, era el capo di tutti capi del hashish, la heroína, la marihuana y la cocaína en el mundo. Sus discípulos de la Agencia deben estar ocupándose ahora de esos negocios.
D) La guerra de Irak
Cuando Osama estaba rodeado en las montañas del sur de Afganistán y podía ser apresado por las tropas del imperio, Bush decidió invadir a Irak usando, en parte, a los soldados que estaban asediándolo. Hasta un niño de cuatro años al que se le dijera esto exclamaría: "¡Qué extraño, eh!".
¿Tenía Irak armas de destrucción masiva –Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD— como dijo Bush para justificar la invasión? Ha pasado cinco años del inicio de la guerra y no se ha encontrado ni el menor indicio de que existan o hayan existido las armas de las que Estados Unidos es el principal arsenal del mundo, pues tiene más de ellas que el resto del mundo junto.
¿Fue Saddam Hussein cómplice del Once de Septiembre? Sólo si fue Bush el autor de este crimen pudo Hussein ser su cómplice, pues se sabe que, como aliado del imperio, le hizo la guerra a Irán para que los agentes de los Ayatollas no hicieran en los años ochenta lo que dicen que Osama hizo en el 2001. Si Bush no lo fue y sí un Osama antiyanki, no hay nada que pueda vincular a Hussein con Osama ni el Once de Septiembre.
Ha transcurrido cinco años del inicio de esta guerra, quizás la más injustificada e inmoral de todas las guerras de la era moderna. Se cree que por sus acciones directas y consecuencias indirectas, ha muerto de medio millón a un millón de iraquíes, y más de cuatro mil soldados del imperio.
Irak, la milenaria Mesopotamia, cuna de la civilización, tierra gloriosa en la que surgieron las ciencias, las artes y las letras –casi nada-, está envuelta en otra enorme tragedia, la guerra civil, pero no entre los que apoyaban a Hussein y los que se le oponían, sino entre las dos grandes facciones musulmanas del país, Chiíta y Sunita, y aun entre Chiítas y Chiitas y Sunitas y Sunitas, y todos contra la invasión imperialista que es la causa primaria de lo que está sucediendo hoy en el país, desde la catástrofe humana y los grandes bombardeos hasta los combatientes que se convierten en bombas y se inmolan y matan a diestra y siniestra, protestando con mas cólera que locura por la violación y el martirio de su patria.
E) Abu Ghraib.
El mundo entero recuerda, con espanto supremo, las fotos de Abu Ghraib, en las que unos soldados del imperio invasor someten a varios prisioneros iraquíes, en esa cárcel cercana a Bagdad, en su propia patria, a las más hirientes y degradantes torturas que recuerda la memoria humana, y, después, contemplan, sonrientes, alborozados, a los que les han arrancado los ojos y han sido mordidos por perros feroces y se apilan desnudos unos sobre otros y son obligados a tener relaciones sexuales y son suspendidos por largas horas con los brazos en alto y la cara cubierta por una capucha y han sido golpeados con gruesos bastones y han dejado en el piso pequeños lagos de sangre y materia que quizás sean de órganos sexuales
(...)
Bush y los principales dirigentes del imperio, entre ellos el vice, Dick Cheney; el Secretario de Defensa, Donald Rumsfeld; la Secretaria de Estado, Condoleeza Rice; el Secretario de Justicia, John Ashcroft, y el Director de la CIA, George Tenet, han tratado de desentenderse de aquel hecho abominable, pero estudios recientes señalan que ellos sabían que, en las prisiones de Irak, Guantánamo y otras que aún se mantienen secretas, los prisioneros estaban siendo torturados.
Un editorial de The New York Times, el periódico más prestigioso de Estados Unidos, publicado este 20 de abril y titulado The torture sessions –Las sesiones de tortura-, dice, entre otras cosas: "Con el conocimiento y el apoyo del presidente Bush, algunos de los más altos funcionarios del país no sólo aprobaron el abuso de los prisioneros, sino que participaron en el plan detallado de los crueles interrogatorios y ayudaron a que se creara la estructura legal para proteger de la justicia a los que recibían las ordenes". Además: "Hemos leído los memorandums del Secretario de Justicia redefiniendo la tortura y aduciendo que, en este sentido, Bush no tenía que cumplir la ley".
¿Conocía Bush lo que estaba sucediendo en Abu Ghraib? El editorial del Times no lo aclara, pero, conociendo los otros crímenes cometidos por él y su familia, no es difícil suponer que lo sabía. Tampoco menciona el editorial las torturas a que eran sometidos los prisioneros en Guantánamo. Hace algún tiempo, un prisionero de esta base naval que el imperio mantiene a la fuerza, violando el tratado de arrendamiento que vencía en el 2001 y burlándose de la protesta de todo el pueblo cubano, se fue arrancando el cabello y dándose golpes en la cabeza durante toda una noche. Lo encontraron muerto por la mañana en su celda. En el piso estaba todo su cabello.
Las torturas de Abu Ghraib fueron conocidas por las fotos publicadas, pero... ¿cuántas torturas aun peores no habrá hecho el imperio de las que no hay constancia, en cárceles de las que ni siquiera se sabe que existen? ¡Prisiones secretas no tuvieron Assurbanípal ni Atila ni Gengis Khan ni Tamerlán ni Torquemada ni Robespierre ni Hitler ni Trujillo ni Pinochet ni Fujimori! En este sentido... George W. Bush ha roto todos los moldes históricos.
Algunos de los soldados que participaron en aquello, y los oficiales que lo permitieron, fueron llevados a juicio militar. Unos fueron declarados inocentes, otros recibieron leves sentencias, como la de la joven soldado que mira sonriente a la cámara junto a un hombre sin ojos y a un hombre sin falo, levantando el pulgar de una mano en señal de triunfo. Casi todos ya están en libertad. ¿Acaso Nixon no indultó al teniente Calley, el monstruo de My Lai? Un ejército de honor los hubiera fusilado.
F) El pueblo.
Mientras el imperio gasta y debe gastar más de un trillón de dólares en esas guerras, el pueblo de Estados Unidos paga las consecuencias. Jamás desde la Gran Depresión que comenzó con el crash bancario de 1929, un gobierno ha sido más enemigo del pueblo, ni más hostil al trabajador, ni más amigo del que explota el trabajo. Se han eliminado programas sociales que existían desde la época de Franklyn Delano Roosevelt que han afectado la salud, la educación, la familia, las artes, las investigaciones científicas, el cuidado de los niños, y se están gastando los fondos del Seguro Social, con lo que se pone en peligro el retiro de los que hoy aún trabajan y de los que ya lo disfrutan después de haber trabajado toda una vida. Los salarios se han mantenido fijos por muchos años, pero los precios de todo se han duplicado y triplicado –comida, medicina, alquiler, ropa, gasolina, seguros obligatorios, transporte, diversiones, etc.-, por lo que, en rigor, el salario es la mitad o la tercera parte de lo que era hace unos años. Cientos de miles de personas han perdido sus casas, que financiaban con el banco, y otros tantos las viviendas que alquilaban, por lo que la población desamparada –homeless- ha llegado a límites históricos. El delito, violento o no, ha aumentado en forma alarmante. Los jueces, fiscales y abogados defensores no dan abasto. Las cárceles están repletas. La inseguridad en las calles es la peor desde la era de Al Capone. Graves secuestros y asaltos bestiales suceden ahora todos los días. La policía de varias ciudades ha amenazado con irse a la huelga porque sus miembros están trabajando muchas horas, de día y de noche, y tienen que hacerlo con sueño... con el sueño americano.
G) La economía.
John Stiglitz, Premio Nóbel de Economía y expresidente del Banco Mundial, acaba de declarar en la telemisora CNBC: "Estados Unidos se acerca a la peor crisis económica desde los años 30" (se refiere, por supuesto, a la Gran Depresión, ya mencionada) Basta con esta opinión tan autorizada para que se entienda el estado en que este Bush deja la economía casi al final de su mandato.
H) En fin.
En menos de diez meses, el 20 de enero del año que viene, George W. Bush abandonará el cetro imperial. Quiere dejar en el trono a un Caín al que llaman McCain, pero el pueblo de Estados Unidos no puede ser tan fatal. Este Caín no mató a su hermano Abel, pero, a fines de 1967, después de haber bombardeado... ¡veintidós veces! ... las ciudades de Vietnam del Norte como piloto naval, su avión fue derribado en su vigésima tercera misión y él logró saltar antes en paracaídas. Herido, fue hecho prisionero. ¿Cuántas toneladas de bombas lanzó este señor sobre Vietnam? ¿Sesenta, doscientas, tres mil? Nadie lo sabe. ¡¿Cuántos niños, cuántos ancianos, cuántas mujeres, cuantos hombres habrá matado este señor en sus veintitrés misiones terroristas sobre ese martirizado país?! ¿Trescientos, ochocientos, once mil? Nadie lo sabe, pero sí sabe el mundo entero que el imperio asesinó a más dos millones de seres humanos en esa gloriosa patria, de los cuales más de la mitad fueron víctimas de su aviación.
Después de cinco años y medio como prisionero de guerra, Caín recobró su libertad en 1973, al lograrse el tratado de paz. Algunos años después dijo que había sido torturado en prisión por militares del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba. Es un dato bastante curioso que un piloto naval del imperio que, desde su guerra contra el pueblo filipino en 1901, se hizo famoso por sus sistemáticas torturas, diga que fue torturado por oficiales de un gobierno del que nadie tiene ni el menor indicio de haber torturado a nadie.
El pueblo de Estados Unidos votará por la oposición que, por mala que sea, si lo fuese, no puede serlo tanto como aquello a lo que se opone. Se cree que el candidato será Barack Obama y que llegará a la Casa Blanca. Ojalá que este negro pueda blanquear de verdad a una casa que tantos blancos ennegrecieron.
(Este autor emplaza a cualquiera a que pruebe que una sola frase de este análisis no se ajusta a la verdad)
(*) Vivo en esta ardiente y húmeda tumba del espíritu a la que llaman Miami, soy cubano, tengo 68 años, me gradué en Ciencias Políticas en Columbia University en 1967, he sido profesor de historia en Nueva York y Miami. Hoy estoy retirado de la vida académica y he dedicado los últimos 43 años a luchar contra el imperialismo yanki, brazo armado del capitalismo mundializado. Por mis orígenes familiares y sociales no siempre pensé igual. Salí de mi patria el mismo día que triunfó la Revolución -1 de enero de 1959-, con 19 años de edad, porque mi padre -Andrés Rivero Agüero- era en ese momento el Presidente-electo de Cuba que debía sustituir a Batista en febrero de ese año.
Como dirigente del Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano participé, en abril del 61, en la invasión a Playa Girón -Bahía de Cochinos- quizás no tanto una contradicción si se tiene en cuenta que lo hacíamos para evitar que los esbirros del imperio controlaran todo el poder si aquella invasión triunfaba. Por suerte para todos, fracasamos. A partir de entonces fui amalgamando las ideas nacionalistas y socialistas, proceso que explico ampliamente en mi libro "Los sobrinos del Tío Sam", una de cuyas ediciones internacionales fue hecha en España en 1976. Regresé a Cuba en 1974 y volví a salir en 1977, viviendo en este país desde entonces. He escrito otros libros. Ahora acabo de escribir "Danilo" y reescribir "Chapultepec", novelas políticas que estoy tratando de publicar en La Habana y en Méjico. Mi madre es salmantina y llegó a Cuba con once años de edad, por eso es que siempre he considerado a España también mi patria, por la sangre y la enorme admiración que siento por su extraordinaria cultura. Estuve en vuestra ciudad, la milenaria Egara (Terrassa), en noviembre de 1958 y mayo de 1971, admirando su historia, su arte, su industria, su escenario, su cálida gente. Comparto plenamente vuestra posición de combatir al capitalismo mundializado desde una posición de izquierda plural. O desaparece el capitalismo o su maldito engendro, el calentamiento global, hace desaparecer la civilización en este planeta.
Yo escribía asiduamente en El Nuevo Herald en el 2000 y 2001 cuando el director era David Lawrence y el coordinador editorial, Ramón Mestre. Era gente moderada. Después llegaron los incondicionales del imperio y todo cambió. Le tienen miedo a la mafia contrarrevolucionaria que controla la vida económica de esta ciudad. Es hoy la ultraderecha".
Carlos Rivero Collado
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=66929&titular=historia-de-la-familia-bush-
Nota del autor:
Este escrito es el análisis subjetivo de este autor, pero tiene como fuente las investigaciones que sobre esta familia han hecho escritores y periodistas de prestigio, en Estados Unidos. En la red hay una amplía relación de tales estudios, que debe ser consultada por quienes crean que no se ajusta a la verdad esta historia de sexo macabro, esclavitud laboral, nazismo, magnicidio, narcotráfico, genocidio, avaricia, explotación, fraude inmenso, latrocinio, drogadicción, alcoholismo, autoagresión, tortura y terrorismo. Por su-puesto que en la red, junto a muchos escritos serios y decentes, aparecen otros que no lo son, dedicados a mentir y calumniar. Cualquiera inventa un nombre, invierte una pequeña cantidad de dinero, escribe lo que le viene en ganas, sea verdad o mentira, elogio o anatema, excelencia o excrecencia, y lo cuelga en la red, y nadie entiende por qué no se le aplican a este medio de comunicación mundial las mismas leyes que a la prensa escrita, radial y televisada. Por eso es que el lector de la red tiene que distinguir entre libelistas y analistas, y éstos abundan más que aquéllos. Nadie vea en esta dura crítica el ataque personal a una familia, aunque sí al sistema político, social y económico que la hizo como es. Este autor ha vivido en Estados Unidos por más de cuarenta años y ha llegado a querer, admirar y, sobre todo, compadecer a su pueblo y le duele, como en carne propia, el inmenso daño que esta familia le ha hecho por más de noventa años. Sea este análisis, que integra uno de los capítulos de mi libro "Imperio del terror", inédito aún, un modesto homenaje a la paciencia de ese pueblo.
1-. El abuelo.
Prescott Sheldon Bush estudiaba en Yale University, en New Haven, Connecticut, allá por los años de la Primera Guerra Mundial y pertenecía a una fraternidad estudiantil llamada "Skull and Bones Society" (Sociedad del Esqueleto y los Huesos) cuya ceremonia de iniciación era un reflejo leal del violento corrupto imperio: los estudiantes se reunían en un sótano, no siempre de la universidad, el novato se acostaba desnudo en un ataúd, se cubría con huesos humanos que habían sido sacados de las tumbas profanadas de New Haven y, mientras se masturbaba delante de todos, contaba en alta voz sus experiencias sexuales. Este culto al sexo y la muerte se vería más generalizado unos años después en muchos otros lugares, entre ellos Abu Ghraib, adonde el sadismo y la obscenidad llegó a límites que no se han visto jamás en la historia de la humanidad y algunas de cuyas fotos se han de ver en este análisis.
En 1917, Prescott y otros estudiantes de Yale profanaron la tumba de Gerónimo, el héroe Apache, y se robaron sus huesos, que utilizarían, también, en sus novatadas de féretro, aplausos y esperma.
A fines de los años 30, Prescott dirigió la Union Banking Corporation, que ayudó a financiar la tiranía de Adolfo Hitler. Al entrar este país en guerra, el gobierno confiscó el banco por comerciar con el enemigo ("Trading with the Enemy Act", 1942). Otras de sus empresas posteriores se beneficiaron con los productos que creaban los prisioneros en los campos de concentración nazis.
Después de la guerra, Prescott mantuvo sus negocios con los aún seguían siendo nazis, a través de Fritz Thyssen, hasta 1952, en que, quizás como un premio a sus hazañas, fue electo Senador federal, por Connecticut.
2-. El padre.
Hay muchos libros serios escritos sobre George Herbert Walker Bush, que perteneció a la misma fraternidad macabra y realizó las propias novatadas en Yale casi treinta años después, que lo señalan como el gran padrino de la droga a nivel mundial desde que, como súper operativo de la CIA, llegó a Beirut, en 1956, para controlar el tráfico de hashish y heroína que llegaba al Líbano desde el Oriente y, después, alcanzaba Europa y Estados Unidos.
Su trayectoria en este sentido incluye su participación secreta en la creación, en los años 70, del mayor centro productor de heroína del mundo, en Chiang Mai, Tailandia; en la formación original de "La Mafia Cruceña", en Bolivia, que llegó a ser el mayor productor de pasta de coca del mundo (el famoso "Cocaine Coup", dirigido por el coronel Luis Arce Gómez, en julio de 1980, fue perpetrado en complicidad con este Bush, única vez en la historia que se ha dado un golpe de Estado para aumentar la producción de cocaína); en la creación de "La Compañía", en Antioquia, Colombia, con la familia Ochoa, que llegó a ser el mayor productor de clorhidrato de cocaína del mundo; el escándalo Irán-Contra, en que se traicionó al supuesto aliado, Irak, para venderle armas a su enemigo, Irán, en los momentos en que miles de seres humanos morían, de ambos bandos, en aquella guerra de los años 80. El desenlace de este escándalo fue la participación de los contra nicaragüenses para introducir en Estados Unidos, desde Colombia, veintisiete toneladas de cocaína pura –con un valor en la calle, o street value, de miles de millones de dólares- a través de una finca en Costa Rica, propiedad de un estadounidense que era operativo de la CIA, próxima a la frontera nicaragüense. De allí se traía la droga a dos aeropuertos, uno en Fort Lauderdale, Florida, y otro en Mena, Arkansas. Se cree, además, que Bill Clinton, gobernador entonces de Arkansas, fue cómplice de Bush, entonces Vicepresidente, en esta operación, y que utilizó para ello a su medio hermano Roger Clinton y a su cuñado Tony Rodham.
Al Viejo Bush, como se le conoce hoy, se le señala, además, como el enlace entre Allen Dulles, Richard Helms y David Attle Phillips con Howard Hunt en el asesinato de Kennedy. Hunt fue el hombre que vino a Miami y formó el grupo que, según se cree, conspiró para matar a Kennedy: Macho Barker, Frank Sturgis -Frank Fiorini-, Yito del Valle, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo, Herminio Díaz, Eugenio Rolando Martínez y otros. Se cree que Díaz y Martínez fueron los que le dispararon a Kennedy desde el "grassy knoll", la pequeña loma que se hallaba cerca de la limosina presidencial, en el centro de Dallas, cubierta de altos arbustos.
Los mayores crímenes del Viejo Bush no fueron, sin embargo, los mencionados, sino la invasión a Panamá, en diciembre del 89, y la agresión a Irak (Guerra del Golfo), trece meses después. En el primero, cientos de personas pobres, entre ellas decenas de niños pequeños, fueron asesinadas, de madrugada, en sus propios hogares, en el corregimiento Chorrillo, cercano al centro de mando del general Noriega. En el segundo, el imperio asesinó a más de cien mil iraquíes
sólo porque el gobierno de Saddam Hussein tuvo el justo valor de recuperar Kuwait, una parte integral de Mesopotamia desde hace nueve mil años, que los imperialistas británicos, maestros del imperio yanki, le arrancaron, a fines del siglo 18, cuando era dos zurreinatos del Imperio Otomano, en complicidad con los tatarabuelos de los actuales emires kuwaitíes. Cabe señalar que la diferencia de todo tipo que pueda haber entre un kuwaití y un iraquí es similar a la que hay entre un pinareño y un habanero o un cordobés y un sevillano, suponiendo que, en este último caso, ambos sean del mismo origen ibero o el mismo árabe.
¿Por qué la CIA controla el negocio de la droga? Pues por dinero –enormes cantidades de dinero- y para controlar mental-mente a millones de ciudadanos que, inmersos en el alucinante mundo de la droga, no se ocupan de atentar ni conspirar ni dañar ni siquiera intervenir en la vida pública, o sea como una forma de desinteresar a la población de los problemas políticos nacionales para que la pequeña élite misteriosa que dirige en secreto a este país pueda realizar su labor sin conflictos ni interferencias. Ejemplo: las elecciones presidenciales del 2004 en Estados Unidos, y casi todas las anteriores, en que ni siquiera votó la mitad del electorado. Parte esencial de esta conspiración son los múltiples programas asquerosos de la "television basura" –trash TV-; la lucha libre, repleta de fingido salvajismo y obscenidades reales; la pornografía, incluyendo la de padres teniendo relaciones sexuales con sus hijos y madres con sus hijas, que se divulga hasta por la Internet, a la que pueden tener acceso muchos niños; las películas ultraviolentas que salen de Hollywood; el fanatismo excesivo en los deportes; la educación mediocre en todos los niveles; la música epiléptica y estruendosa … y muchas cosas más. Detrás de todo esto, está la élite misteriosa que gobierna en secreto a este país, y su instrumento, la CIA, y ahora el Homeland Security Department, síntesis de las SS y la Gestapo de la era nazista en Alemania. En todo esto, el hombre clave, desde 1956, ha sido G.H.W. Bush.
Pero, se preguntarán algunos: "¿cómo pudo este señor cometer tantos y tan graves crímenes sin ser procesado jamás?". Otros dirán: "¡No, qué va, nada de eso puede ser cierto, un solo hombre no puede cometer tantos delitos!". Mi sugerencia a estas personas, y a muchas otras que pueden tener dudas similares, es que se conecten en la red con el sitio "George Herbert Walker Bush" y encontrarán muchos escritos serios, o sea verídicos, sobre este polifacético y fecundo delincuente. Tiene casi noventa años y aún anda por ahí por los aires lanzándose en paracaídas, exponiendo una vida muy distinta a la que le quitó a tantos inocentes.
3-. La madre.
Bárbara, fue, durante varios años, mientras su esposo era Vicepresidente y Presidente, la CEO –Chief Executive Officer o Jefe Ejecutivo- de Unicor, una compañía privada que se dedica a explotar el trabajo esclavo de los presos federales, que son mas de 150 mil en todo el país; y es posible que aún lo siga siendo a través de su actual jefe ejecutivo Kenneth Rocks. Es decir, la nuera imita al suegro, pero no esclavizando a los presos de los nazis sino a su propio pueblo, porque no es cuestión de ideología ni guerra, sino dinero. Los presos ganan de 35 centavos a $1.15 la hora, o sea mucho menos del salario mínimo -$6.15 la hora-, y crean productos que se venden a precios de mercado.
Unicor es una de las diversas compañías que tienen el monopolio de esta infamia. Algunas de ellas explotan, también, el trabajo esclavo de los presos estatales, que son más de dos millones en el país.
Quizás esta anciana señora no tenga una culpa directa en algo tan infame como la explotación del trabajo esclavo. Se sabe que el dueño real de Unicor ha sido su esposo y que ella es sólo una fachada, un front. En su juventud, cuando conoció al que después iba a ser su esposo, esta señora era maestra, lo cual prueba en ella cierta sensibilidad, cierta nobleza. Si hubiera seguido siendo maestra no se hubiera involucrado en algo tan vil... pero se casó.
¿Se imagina el lector que, por ejemplo, Sun Yat-sen de China, Azaña de España, Cárdenas de Méjico, Nehru de India, Perón de Argentina, De Gaulle de Francia, Nasser de Egipto, Goulart de Brazil o muchos otros jefes de Estado, hubieran sido, asimismo, mientras ejercían el poder, dueños una de las compañías que explotaban el trabajo esclavo de los prisioneros de sus respectivos países? ¡El escándalo hubiera sido gigantesco, habrían tenido que renunciar a sus cargos llenos de infamia, habrían sido colgados del poste más cercano! Bueno, pues eso mismo sucedió aquí en Estados Unidos... y no pasó nada.
(Véase en la red: Barbara Bush y Unicor; puede verse, además, Wackenhut y Corrections Corporation of America, CCA –de esta última compañía, Jorge Mas Canosa y sus herederos han sido, y quizás sigan siendo, accionistas mayores)
4-. Los hermanos.
Neil y Jeb le robaron al pueblo estadounidense decenas de millones de dólares, hace casi veinte años, cuando el Viejo era Vicepresidente, en el escándalo de los "Savings and Loans Associations". Se ha dicho que éste es "el robo más grande de la historia de Estados Unidos", pues le ha costado a sus contribuyentes –taxpayers-, hasta ahora, 1.4 trillones de dólares -o billones, en la medida española-, pues el gobierno federal tuvo que cubrir todas las pérdidas de los millones de ciudadanos que invirtieron en esas instituciones financieras. Teniendo en cuenta el dinero que se robaron y el que ha tenido que pagar el Estado, o sea el pueblo, Neil, Jeb y sus socios son los más grandes ladrones de la historia, ante los cuales Caco y los cuarenta ladrones del cuento de Alí Baba eran tiernos bebitos (véase en la red S&L Scandal)
7-. El emperador.
¿Cuál es la historia de este otro Bush?
Nada dirá este autor de su niñez privilegiada ni de su adolescencia inútil ni de su juventud, en la que se negó a ir a una guerra de la que su padre era uno de sus promotores, ni realizó estudios serios, ni tuvo un empleo sostenido, y en la que usó drogas y abusó del alcohol. No. Nada dirá de nada de eso.
Cuando tenía ya más de cuarenta años y era Gobernador de Texas -Tejas: territorio mejicano ocupado, ilegal y vergonzosamente, por el imperio desde 1845- se ejecutó en ese Estado más personas que en ningún otro del país en toda su historia y que en ningún otro país del mundo en la misma época, en su mayoría de origen latino o africano. Jamás el Gobernador concedió una sola conmutación de pena, por lo que hay que deducir que su aficción por la sangre no le surgió en la Casa Blanca.
¿Qué ha hecho este señor desde su llegada al poder imperial?
Veamos:
A) La antidemocracia: George W. Bush fue "electo" en noviembre del 2000 por un evidente pucherazo -fraude electoral-, y por la flagrante violación de las leyes electorales de Florida y la Consti-tución de Estados Unidos. Para que esto pueda ser entendido por quienes no conocen el sistema electoral de este país, es preciso explicarlo en forma simple.
El Colegio Electoral elige al Presidente sin que cuente para ello, directamente, la voluntad mayoritaria del pueblo. Voto popular es el que emite cada ciudadano con derecho al voto; voto electoral es el que representa a cada Estado, no a cada persona, y en su conjunto forma el Colegio Electoral. Cada Estado tiene un número determinado de votos electorales de acuerdo al total de sus habitantes; por ejemplo, por el estimado de población de julio del 2007, California tiene 55 votos electorales –que representan dos Senadores y 53 Representantes a la Cámara- y Dakota del Sur, sólo 3 votos electorales, que vienen a ser dos Senadores y un solo Representante a la Cámara. Esto, ya de entrada, es absurdo, pues éste es el único país del mundo, y de la historia, en que una provincia, Estado, región o departamento tiene o ha tenido más Senadores que Representantes.
El Colegio Electoral está integrado por 538 Electores que viene a ser el número total de Senadores, o sea 100 (dos por cada Estado, sin tener en cuenta su población) y Representantes, o sea 438, que son electos de acuerdo a un número determinado de habitantes, que no es el mismo en cada Estado –usando el mismo ejemplo: cada 690,000 en California, y cada 796,000 en Dakota del Sur-.
Es una aberración política y una negación de la democracia, o sea de la voluntad del pueblo, que California, que, de acuerdo al propio estimado poblacional del año pasado, tiene 36.553,000 habitantes, tenga el mismo número de Senadores que Dakota del Sur, que sólo tiene 640,000 habitantes, porque, en este caso, o casi 36 millones de californianos no están representados debidamente en el Senado o los habitantes de Dakota del Sur están representados en el propio cuerpo legislativo 57 veces más de lo debido.
Es la mayoría de votos del Colegio Electoral la que elige al Presidente, no la mayoría del pueblo. Si hay dos candidatos a Presidente, como suele ocurrir, ya que sólo hay dos grandes partidos políticos, el candidato vencedor es el que obtiene la mitad más uno de los 538 votos electorales, o sea 270; si hay más de dos candidatos y ninguno gana la mitad más uno de los votos electorales hay que ir a una segunda vuelta entre los dos candidatos que más votos electorales hayan tenido en la primera vuelta hasta que uno de ellos obtenga los 270 votos electorales necesarios para ganar.
De acuerdo a este antidemocrático sistema electoral, un candí-dato puede ser electo por la minoría del pueblo ya que quien tenga mayor número de votos populares en un Estado se lleva todos los votos electorales de ese Estado. Por ejemplo: el candidato presidencial #1, llamémosle John, saca en California, digamos 6.500, 000 votos y el candidato presidencial #2, llamémosle Peter, saca 6.495,000 votos populares. Aparte de que en este caso se ve, como siempre, la baja concurrencia a las urnas, pues no llega ni al 45%, la diferencia popular entre John y Peter es mínima, sólo de cinco mil votos; pero los 55 votos electorales de California van íntegramente a John y ni uno solo a Peter. En la misma elección, John saca, por ejemplo, en Dakota del Sur, 20,000 votos, pero Peter obtiene 180,000, o sea 160,000 más que John. Este triunfo sólo le da a Peter 3 votos electorales. O sea que, sumando conjuntamente el voto popular y el electoral, Peter tiene 155,000 votos populares más que John; pero éste tiene 52 votos electorales más que aquél. Si esta diferencia entre el voto popular y el electoral se mantiene proporcional en el resto del país, John sería electo Presidente porque ha ganado el colegio electoral, a pesar de que el perdedor Peter tendría varios millones de votos populares más que el ganador John.
John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison y George W. Bush fueron electos presidentes, a pesar de que la mayoría del pueblo estadounidense votó por el candidato que perdió la elección.
Si eso es democracia, Clístenes era vendedor de frutas en el Pireo y Rousseau, coime de billar en Ginebra.
Aclarado esto, volvamos a la familia Bush.
La elección presidencial de noviembre del 2000 estaba muy reñida en todo el país en cuanto a votos electorales, a pesar de que Al Gore tenía medio millón de votos populares más que Bush. Estaban casi empatados en cuanto a votos electorales en todo el país y la elección en Florida aún no se había decidido, pues la diferencia era de unos pocos cientos de votos populares. Quien ganara Florida llegaba a los 270 votos electorales y era elegido Presidente. De acuerdo al código electoral de Florida, si la diferencia entre los dos candidatos es menor al 1%, hay que ir a un recuento general de votos en todo el Estado o a una nueva elección, a no ser que el candidato que sacara menos votos en esa diferencia mínima aceptara su derrota antes del recuento. Al día siguiente de la elección, se informó que Bush tenía unos 400 ó 500 votos más que Gore, o sea apenas un 0.01% de la votación total o la décima parte del 1% requerido para un conteo general en el Estado o una nueva elección; pero no se hizo ni lo uno ni lo otro.
Katherine Harris, Secretaria de Estado de la Florida, y dirigente de la campaña estatal para elegir a Bush, nombrada para ambos cargos por el gobernador Jeb Bush, hermano menor de George, certificó que en la votación del Estado, Bush había obtenido 539 votos más que Gore y, en una decisión posterior, la Corte Suprema de Justicia de Estados Unidos, cuya mayoría de sus magistrados era de miembros del propio partido de Bush, decidió que la certificación de Harris era correcta y tenía que ser aceptada. Con lo cual Bush ganaba la elección que, de acuerdo a la voluntad supuestamente soberana del pueblo, había perdido.
Otros hechos aun más ilegales y vergonzosos salieron a relucir unos días después. En los vecinos condados Broward, cuyo centro es Fort Lauderdale, y Dade, cuyo centro es Miami, que cuentan con la mayor concentración poblacional del Estado, miles de votos fueron anulados, sobre todo de votantes afroestadounidenses. Varios de los funcionarios de estos centros de votación eran estadounidenses de origen cubano, defensores fanáticos de todo lo que sea reacción, o sea del Partido Republicano de Bush. Se cree que más de veinte mil votos de afroestadounidenses, en especial en esos dos condados, fueron anulados sin motivo alguno, y que en más de un 90% eran votos de Gore. Unos mercenarios de origen cubano, pagados por la mafia ultraderechista de Miami, amenazaron a varios miembros de algunos centros de votación en que se estaba llevando a cabo un recuento provisional de votos. La policía no intervino, a pesar del palpable delito, y el conteo fue suspendido.
En toda democracia moderna, sea capitalista, comunista, socialista, socialdemócrata, popular o de cualquier otro matiz o mezcla de matices, el primer poder del Estado es el legislativo, no el ejecutivo ni el judicial. En el 2000, se desconoció este principio clásico de toda democracia y se le dio a la Corte Suprema de Justicia el poder que sólo pertenece al Congreso, con lo cual se violó la Constitución del país, por primera vez, en este sentido, en la historia de Estados Unidos.
George W. Bush fue, en efecto, al menos en su primer período, un Presidente inconstitucional, un golpista. No todos los golpes son como los de Batista, Pérez Jiménez, Rojas Pinillas ni Pinochet; aunque, a veces, el uso brutal de la ley es tan bestial como la brutalidad de la fuerza.
¿Por qué Al Gore aceptó un fraude tan evidente? ¿Por qué no acudió al Congreso, como determinaba la Constitución? ¿Por qué no convocó a la protesta popular que hubiera sido vibrante y multitudinaria en todo el país? ¿Por qué, simplemente, se calló? ¿Cómo es posible que un hombre enérgico actúe como un tímido adolescente? ¿Por qué no exigió, al día siguiente de la elección, que se hiciera un recuento general de votos o una nueva elección en Florida, lo que hubiera atraído toda la atención de la prensa y la opinión pública, dificultando un nuevo fraude? ¿Por qué no lo hizo? Aun más... ¿por qué no hizo nada? Varios analistas sugirieron, entonces, que Al Gore fue amenazado de muerte por agentes secretos del complejo militar-industrial que constituye el poder real del imperio, pues éste necesitaba que Bush fuera Presidente para que no se malograra todo lo que vino después: el Once de Septiembre y sus tres retoños, la guerra de Afganistán, la guerra de Irak y el Acta Patriótica –Patriot Act- que ha tratado de convertir al país en una dictadura.
B)
El Once de Septiembre: ¿es cierto, como afirman muchas personas en el mundo, que George W. Bush fue autor o cómplice o tenía conocimiento previo de los terribles atentados terroristas perpetrados el 11 de septiembre de 2001, en los que murieron miles de seres humanos? ¿Es posible esta monstruosidad? ¿Pudo ordenar la muerte de miles de sus compatriotas o conspirar para que esto ocurra o permitirlo pasivamente a sabiendas de que iba a suceder? ¿Fue, en fin, el 11 de septiembre una autoagresión del imperio?
-¡No, de ninguna manera! –exclaman, llenos de ira, sus defensores-.
-Es probable... ya que el imperio lo había hecho antes –sugieren, con cierta ironía, sin emoción ni furia, sus detractores-.
-¿Cómo que ya lo había hecho antes? –indagan, arqueando las cejas, aunque no del todo incrédulos, los neutrales-.
Este autor no se va a lanzar, como es su costumbre, al abismo desvaneciente del pasado para evocar probables autoagresiones ni actitudes sospechosas del imperio. Por eso es que nada dirá de Andrew Jackson ni la "agresión" de los Seminoles, del Incidente Duncan ni Las Malvinas, de Sam Houston ni El Alamo, de James Polk ni Méjico, de Ulises Grant ni Alaska, de Sanford Dole ni Hawaii, del acorazado Maine ni McKinley, de Victoriano Huerta ni el embajador Wilson, del Lusitania ni el presidente Wilson, de Pearl Harbor ni Roosevelt, del Golfo de Tonkín ni Johnson. No. Nada dirá de las que hay fuertes sospechas de haber sido autoagresiones. Se va a situar sólo en el presente, en aquel día del verano tardío o el incipiente otoño: el 11 de septiembre. Y lo va a hacer con muchas preguntas quizás no del todo ingenuas, esperando que quienes las lean recuerden, más menos, lo que sucedió aquel día, o lo que el gobierno y la prensa corporativa dicen que sucedió aquel día, o lo que muchos dudan de lo que dicen que sucedió aquel día, o lo que quizás ni siquiera sucedió aquel día... hace seis años y medio:
a) ¿Por qué los Vuelos 11 y 175, que después impactarían las torres gemelas, no atacaron las plantas nucleares de Indian Point, situadas a unas cuarenta millas al norte de Nueva York, a orillas del Hudson, sobre las que volaron unos minutos antes del ataque? ¿Qué clase de terroristas eran aquéllos que iban a morir para herir al imperio y le salvaban la vida, pues de haber atacado a Indian Point habrían muerto varios millones de personas, y se habría devastado por siglos el Corredor Nordeste de Estados Unidos, que va de Boston a Washington, la zona más importante del país, lo que habría sido el golpe de muerte al imperio?
b) ¿Por qué el FBI desechó los múltiples informes de que podían producirse ataques terroristas usando como proyectiles o bombas los aviones de pasajeros?
c) ¿Por qué varios generales del Pentágono suspendieron el 9 y 10 de septiembre los viajes que iban a hacer en avión el 11?
d) ¿Por qué Donald Rumsfeld, Secretario de Defensa –debía llamarse Secretario del Ataque- le comentó a un ayudante que algo grande iba a suceder ese día media hora antes de que sucediera?
e) ¿Cómo se entiende que varios de los diecinueve supuestos secuestradores obtuvieran visas de entrada y salida de EU y se entrenaran en varias escuelas de aviación, y que, al mismo tiempo, el FBI suspendiera una investigación que ya había iniciado sobre los mismos, lo que hubiera evitado los ataques? ¿Quién ordenó la suspensión de tan importante pesquisa?
f) ¿Por qué varios testigos claves, como controladores aéreos, bomberos, policías de Nueva York y agentes del FBI, han sido amenazados si revelan detalles sobre el derrumbe de las torres?
g) ¿Cómo se entiende que la Administración Federal de Aviación, (Federal Aviation Administration, FAA) y el Comando de la Defensa Aérea de América del Norte (North American Air Defense Command, NORAD), dos agencias que, por muchos años y hasta hoy, han actuado con admirable eficiencia, fueran tan negligentes... sólo aquella mañana?
h) ¿Cómo se explica que los dos aviones F-15 que, finalmente, salieron de la Base Aérea Otis, de la Guardia Nacional de Massachussetts, para interceptar las naves secuestradas, no lo pudieran hacer porque volaron a un promedio de 450 millas por hora, que es menos de la cuarta parte de su velocidad máxima de 1,875 millas por hora?
i) ¿Por qué los aviones impactaron los pisos superiores de ambas torres cuando pudieron haberlo hecho veinte o treinta pisos más abajo provocando la muerte de muchas más personas? ¿Acaso Mohammed Atta, piloto del Vuelo 11, que impactaría la torre norte, y jefe directo de toda la operación, le dijo a Marwan al Shehhi, piloto del Vuelo 175, que impactaría la torre sur: "Mira, Marwan, los hijueputas están en los pisos de arriba, los de abajo son buena gente"?
j) ¿Por qué el gobierno imperial de Bush insiste aún, a seis años y medio de los atentados, en que las torres cayeron porque el intenso calor provocado por el incendio del combustible de los aviones debilitó la estructura metálica que sostenía los 110 pisos, a pesar de que ya todo el mundo, sobre todo los ingenieros, asegura que sólo una explosión masiva interna pudo provocar el derrumbe hacia dentro, o implosión, de las torres? ¿No es lógico deducir que si ambas torres cayeron por implosión, como prueban las evidencias, las enormes cargas explosivas tuvieron que haber sido colocadas antes del impacto... no después?
k) Si todo esto fue producto, como sugiere la lógica, de una inmensa conspiración.... ¿quiénes tenían el poder necesario para mover en secreto todos los hilos de esa diabólica trama, sino las más altas figuras del gobierno, las fuerzas armadas y los cuerpos de inteligencia y seguridad de Estados Unidos?
l) Se dice que Osama bin Laden fue el autor intelectual del Once de Septiembre y él lo reconoce. Pero... ¿quién es y ha sido Osama? ¿Acaso su padre no era el socio del Viejo Bush en la compañía petrolera Zapata Oil en los años 50? ¿Acaso no actuó Osama como operativo de la Mossad -la Inteligencia más sionista que israelí-, y después de la CIA, antes y durante la guerra que los mujadines le hicieron al gobierno de Afganistán? ¿Fue cierto que rompió con el imperio yanki después que miles de sus soldados osaran hollar el sagrado, para él, suelo saudita durante y después de la Guerra del Golfo? ¿Acaso no sabía que los soldados del imperio yanki han hollado todas las tierras que han podido hollar, desde hace dos siglos, en todos los continentes, incluyendo la Antártica? ¿Acaso el imperio no había asesinado ya a millones de civiles inocentes mucho antes de su "cambio"? ¿Se había unido al imperio que ya había perpetrado tantos crímenes, desde el bombardeo a Trípoli, en 1801, y aun antes –el imperio yanki es anterior a Estados Unidos, tema que abordaré en otro análisis-, hasta la Guerra del Golfo, dos siglos después, y se separaba de él porque unos soldados ignorantes se reían en Riad y La Meca de las pobres mujeres de rostros invisibles y largos vestidos de perenne luto? ¿No es evidente que si el imperio hubiera querido derrotarlo y apresarlo y llevarlo a juicio por lo del 11 de septiembre, ya lo hubiera hecho? ¿Aplastó a uno de los imperios más poderosos de la historia, Japón, y no puede apresar a un fugitivo al que todo el mundo conoce? ¿Fue uno de los tres grandes poderes que vencieron al ejército más formidable de la historia, el de Hitler, y no puede apresar a quien sólo tiene una fuerza de cientos de hombres? ¿Detuvo el avance de cientos de miles de norcoreanos y los hizo retroceder hasta la frontera china y no puede vencer a un hombre que anda por ahí montando a caballo y durmiendo en cuevas? ¿Asesinó a Madero, Sandino, Mossadegh, Trujillo, Lumumba, Kennedy, Qasim, Diem, Che, King, Allende, Roldós, Torrijos y otros grandes líderes y no puede ni siquiera darle un puntapié a quien no tiene el apoyo de ningún gobierno? ¿Derrocó al gobierno de los talibanes en Afganistán y al de Saddam Hussein en Irak, que tenía el quinto ejército más poderoso del mundo, y no puede apresar a quien no tiene ni un techo que lo cubra? ¿Por qué? ¿Cuál es el misterio?
C) La guerra de Afganistán: si las evidencias mencionadas no fueran reales y, efectivamente, Osama bin Laden era un enemigo del imperio que preparó los atentados del 11 de septiembre, entonces estaba justificado que el imperio tratara de apresarlo en Afganistán, pero no que asesinara a cientos de miles de civiles inocentes con los bombardeos indiscriminados a los que sometió al pueblo afgano, en los que murieron familias en sus hogares, niños en sus escuelas, enfermos en sus hospitales, ancianos en sus asilos, obreros en sus talleres, campesinos en sus siembras. Más de trescientos mil seres humanos han muerto en estos seis años y medio de guerra continua y el único éxito que ha logrado el imperio en ese país es convertirlo, otra vez, en el primer productor mundial de amapola, con el 90% de la producción mundial. ¿Estará el Viejo Bush detrás de este reno-vado y multibillonario negocio de heroína? ¿Se seguirá reuniendo, en secreto, con los grandes señores que controlan la producción de amapola en las tierras afganas, como lo hacía con los libaneses en Beirut, los tailandeses en Chiang Mai, los bolivianos en Santa Cruz y los colombianos en Antioquia? Este autor duda que este señor esté reviviendo sus mocedades, cuando, como superagente y después director de la CIA, era el capo di tutti capi del hashish, la heroína, la marihuana y la cocaína en el mundo. Sus discípulos de la Agencia deben estar ocupándose ahora de esos negocios.
D) La guerra de Irak
Cuando Osama estaba rodeado en las montañas del sur de Afganistán y podía ser apresado por las tropas del imperio, Bush decidió invadir a Irak usando, en parte, a los soldados que estaban asediándolo. Hasta un niño de cuatro años al que se le dijera esto exclamaría: "¡Qué extraño, eh!".
¿Tenía Irak armas de destrucción masiva –Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD— como dijo Bush para justificar la invasión? Ha pasado cinco años del inicio de la guerra y no se ha encontrado ni el menor indicio de que existan o hayan existido las armas de las que Estados Unidos es el principal arsenal del mundo, pues tiene más de ellas que el resto del mundo junto.
¿Fue Saddam Hussein cómplice del Once de Septiembre? Sólo si fue Bush el autor de este crimen pudo Hussein ser su cómplice, pues se sabe que, como aliado del imperio, le hizo la guerra a Irán para que los agentes de los Ayatollas no hicieran en los años ochenta lo que dicen que Osama hizo en el 2001. Si Bush no lo fue y sí un Osama antiyanki, no hay nada que pueda vincular a Hussein con Osama ni el Once de Septiembre.
Ha transcurrido cinco años del inicio de esta guerra, quizás la más injustificada e inmoral de todas las guerras de la era moderna. Se cree que por sus acciones directas y consecuencias indirectas, ha muerto de medio millón a un millón de iraquíes, y más de cuatro mil soldados del imperio.
Irak, la milenaria Mesopotamia, cuna de la civilización, tierra gloriosa en la que surgieron las ciencias, las artes y las letras –casi nada-, está envuelta en otra enorme tragedia, la guerra civil, pero no entre los que apoyaban a Hussein y los que se le oponían, sino entre las dos grandes facciones musulmanas del país, Chiíta y Sunita, y aun entre Chiítas y Chiitas y Sunitas y Sunitas, y todos contra la invasión imperialista que es la causa primaria de lo que está sucediendo hoy en el país, desde la catástrofe humana y los grandes bombardeos hasta los combatientes que se convierten en bombas y se inmolan y matan a diestra y siniestra, protestando con mas cólera que locura por la violación y el martirio de su patria.
E) Abu Ghraib.
El mundo entero recuerda, con espanto supremo, las fotos de Abu Ghraib, en las que unos soldados del imperio invasor someten a varios prisioneros iraquíes, en esa cárcel cercana a Bagdad, en su propia patria, a las más hirientes y degradantes torturas que recuerda la memoria humana, y, después, contemplan, sonrientes, alborozados, a los que les han arrancado los ojos y han sido mordidos por perros feroces y se apilan desnudos unos sobre otros y son obligados a tener relaciones sexuales y son suspendidos por largas horas con los brazos en alto y la cara cubierta por una capucha y han sido golpeados con gruesos bastones y han dejado en el piso pequeños lagos de sangre y materia que quizás sean de órganos sexuales
(...)
Bush y los principales dirigentes del imperio, entre ellos el vice, Dick Cheney; el Secretario de Defensa, Donald Rumsfeld; la Secretaria de Estado, Condoleeza Rice; el Secretario de Justicia, John Ashcroft, y el Director de la CIA, George Tenet, han tratado de desentenderse de aquel hecho abominable, pero estudios recientes señalan que ellos sabían que, en las prisiones de Irak, Guantánamo y otras que aún se mantienen secretas, los prisioneros estaban siendo torturados.
Un editorial de The New York Times, el periódico más prestigioso de Estados Unidos, publicado este 20 de abril y titulado The torture sessions –Las sesiones de tortura-, dice, entre otras cosas: "Con el conocimiento y el apoyo del presidente Bush, algunos de los más altos funcionarios del país no sólo aprobaron el abuso de los prisioneros, sino que participaron en el plan detallado de los crueles interrogatorios y ayudaron a que se creara la estructura legal para proteger de la justicia a los que recibían las ordenes". Además: "Hemos leído los memorandums del Secretario de Justicia redefiniendo la tortura y aduciendo que, en este sentido, Bush no tenía que cumplir la ley".
¿Conocía Bush lo que estaba sucediendo en Abu Ghraib? El editorial del Times no lo aclara, pero, conociendo los otros crímenes cometidos por él y su familia, no es difícil suponer que lo sabía. Tampoco menciona el editorial las torturas a que eran sometidos los prisioneros en Guantánamo. Hace algún tiempo, un prisionero de esta base naval que el imperio mantiene a la fuerza, violando el tratado de arrendamiento que vencía en el 2001 y burlándose de la protesta de todo el pueblo cubano, se fue arrancando el cabello y dándose golpes en la cabeza durante toda una noche. Lo encontraron muerto por la mañana en su celda. En el piso estaba todo su cabello.
Las torturas de Abu Ghraib fueron conocidas por las fotos publicadas, pero... ¿cuántas torturas aun peores no habrá hecho el imperio de las que no hay constancia, en cárceles de las que ni siquiera se sabe que existen? ¡Prisiones secretas no tuvieron Assurbanípal ni Atila ni Gengis Khan ni Tamerlán ni Torquemada ni Robespierre ni Hitler ni Trujillo ni Pinochet ni Fujimori! En este sentido... George W. Bush ha roto todos los moldes históricos.
Algunos de los soldados que participaron en aquello, y los oficiales que lo permitieron, fueron llevados a juicio militar. Unos fueron declarados inocentes, otros recibieron leves sentencias, como la de la joven soldado que mira sonriente a la cámara junto a un hombre sin ojos y a un hombre sin falo, levantando el pulgar de una mano en señal de triunfo. Casi todos ya están en libertad. ¿Acaso Nixon no indultó al teniente Calley, el monstruo de My Lai? Un ejército de honor los hubiera fusilado.
F) El pueblo.
Mientras el imperio gasta y debe gastar más de un trillón de dólares en esas guerras, el pueblo de Estados Unidos paga las consecuencias. Jamás desde la Gran Depresión que comenzó con el crash bancario de 1929, un gobierno ha sido más enemigo del pueblo, ni más hostil al trabajador, ni más amigo del que explota el trabajo. Se han eliminado programas sociales que existían desde la época de Franklyn Delano Roosevelt que han afectado la salud, la educación, la familia, las artes, las investigaciones científicas, el cuidado de los niños, y se están gastando los fondos del Seguro Social, con lo que se pone en peligro el retiro de los que hoy aún trabajan y de los que ya lo disfrutan después de haber trabajado toda una vida. Los salarios se han mantenido fijos por muchos años, pero los precios de todo se han duplicado y triplicado –comida, medicina, alquiler, ropa, gasolina, seguros obligatorios, transporte, diversiones, etc.-, por lo que, en rigor, el salario es la mitad o la tercera parte de lo que era hace unos años. Cientos de miles de personas han perdido sus casas, que financiaban con el banco, y otros tantos las viviendas que alquilaban, por lo que la población desamparada –homeless- ha llegado a límites históricos. El delito, violento o no, ha aumentado en forma alarmante. Los jueces, fiscales y abogados defensores no dan abasto. Las cárceles están repletas. La inseguridad en las calles es la peor desde la era de Al Capone. Graves secuestros y asaltos bestiales suceden ahora todos los días. La policía de varias ciudades ha amenazado con irse a la huelga porque sus miembros están trabajando muchas horas, de día y de noche, y tienen que hacerlo con sueño... con el sueño americano.
G) La economía.
John Stiglitz, Premio Nóbel de Economía y expresidente del Banco Mundial, acaba de declarar en la telemisora CNBC: "Estados Unidos se acerca a la peor crisis económica desde los años 30" (se refiere, por supuesto, a la Gran Depresión, ya mencionada) Basta con esta opinión tan autorizada para que se entienda el estado en que este Bush deja la economía casi al final de su mandato.
H) En fin.
En menos de diez meses, el 20 de enero del año que viene, George W. Bush abandonará el cetro imperial. Quiere dejar en el trono a un Caín al que llaman McCain, pero el pueblo de Estados Unidos no puede ser tan fatal. Este Caín no mató a su hermano Abel, pero, a fines de 1967, después de haber bombardeado... ¡veintidós veces! ... las ciudades de Vietnam del Norte como piloto naval, su avión fue derribado en su vigésima tercera misión y él logró saltar antes en paracaídas. Herido, fue hecho prisionero. ¿Cuántas toneladas de bombas lanzó este señor sobre Vietnam? ¿Sesenta, doscientas, tres mil? Nadie lo sabe. ¡¿Cuántos niños, cuántos ancianos, cuántas mujeres, cuantos hombres habrá matado este señor en sus veintitrés misiones terroristas sobre ese martirizado país?! ¿Trescientos, ochocientos, once mil? Nadie lo sabe, pero sí sabe el mundo entero que el imperio asesinó a más dos millones de seres humanos en esa gloriosa patria, de los cuales más de la mitad fueron víctimas de su aviación.
Después de cinco años y medio como prisionero de guerra, Caín recobró su libertad en 1973, al lograrse el tratado de paz. Algunos años después dijo que había sido torturado en prisión por militares del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba. Es un dato bastante curioso que un piloto naval del imperio que, desde su guerra contra el pueblo filipino en 1901, se hizo famoso por sus sistemáticas torturas, diga que fue torturado por oficiales de un gobierno del que nadie tiene ni el menor indicio de haber torturado a nadie.
El pueblo de Estados Unidos votará por la oposición que, por mala que sea, si lo fuese, no puede serlo tanto como aquello a lo que se opone. Se cree que el candidato será Barack Obama y que llegará a la Casa Blanca. Ojalá que este negro pueda blanquear de verdad a una casa que tantos blancos ennegrecieron.
(Este autor emplaza a cualquiera a que pruebe que una sola frase de este análisis no se ajusta a la verdad)
(*) Vivo en esta ardiente y húmeda tumba del espíritu a la que llaman Miami, soy cubano, tengo 68 años, me gradué en Ciencias Políticas en Columbia University en 1967, he sido profesor de historia en Nueva York y Miami. Hoy estoy retirado de la vida académica y he dedicado los últimos 43 años a luchar contra el imperialismo yanki, brazo armado del capitalismo mundializado. Por mis orígenes familiares y sociales no siempre pensé igual. Salí de mi patria el mismo día que triunfó la Revolución -1 de enero de 1959-, con 19 años de edad, porque mi padre -Andrés Rivero Agüero- era en ese momento el Presidente-electo de Cuba que debía sustituir a Batista en febrero de ese año.
Como dirigente del Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano participé, en abril del 61, en la invasión a Playa Girón -Bahía de Cochinos- quizás no tanto una contradicción si se tiene en cuenta que lo hacíamos para evitar que los esbirros del imperio controlaran todo el poder si aquella invasión triunfaba. Por suerte para todos, fracasamos. A partir de entonces fui amalgamando las ideas nacionalistas y socialistas, proceso que explico ampliamente en mi libro "Los sobrinos del Tío Sam", una de cuyas ediciones internacionales fue hecha en España en 1976. Regresé a Cuba en 1974 y volví a salir en 1977, viviendo en este país desde entonces. He escrito otros libros. Ahora acabo de escribir "Danilo" y reescribir "Chapultepec", novelas políticas que estoy tratando de publicar en La Habana y en Méjico. Mi madre es salmantina y llegó a Cuba con once años de edad, por eso es que siempre he considerado a España también mi patria, por la sangre y la enorme admiración que siento por su extraordinaria cultura. Estuve en vuestra ciudad, la milenaria Egara (Terrassa), en noviembre de 1958 y mayo de 1971, admirando su historia, su arte, su industria, su escenario, su cálida gente. Comparto plenamente vuestra posición de combatir al capitalismo mundializado desde una posición de izquierda plural. O desaparece el capitalismo o su maldito engendro, el calentamiento global, hace desaparecer la civilización en este planeta.
Yo escribía asiduamente en El Nuevo Herald en el 2000 y 2001 cuando el director era David Lawrence y el coordinador editorial, Ramón Mestre. Era gente moderada. Después llegaron los incondicionales del imperio y todo cambió. Le tienen miedo a la mafia contrarrevolucionaria que controla la vida económica de esta ciudad. Es hoy la ultraderecha".
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