The flames lick ever closer

John Ross is an experienced observer of Mexico. While I suspect that there’s just a bit of wishful thinking in this, there’s no doubt the odds of an explosion in Mexico have been rising ever since the stolen election of 2006. But his allegation that the goal of US immigration policy is to force Mexico to privatize PEMEX and hand over its security to the US are sobering. If so, it shows what a disastrous turn our foreign policy is taking. We cannot provide real security for tens of millions of Americans… but we want to handle it for all Mexicans? Insane.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And you spoke about the Mexican Revolution a hundred years ago. A hundred years before that, 1810, the war of liberation from Spain.

JOHN ROSS: Right.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Every hundred years—what’s in store for 2010?

JOHN ROSS: Well, it seems that the Mexican metabolism kind of explodes into social conflict on the tenth year of the century—1810, 1910, 2010. Will the revolution come again? I’m not the only one concerned with this. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on January 15th asking the same question. Their sense was that it wasn’t going to happen.

Objectively, at this moment, Mexico is overripe for social upheaval. The best social economists are telling us that four out of every ten workers who had a job don’t have a job now. That’s 40 percent unemployment in the formal sector. And millions of Mexicans have never had a job. They’ve always just sold in the street.

The situation in the countryside, I think, is very dangerous. … [US dumping of corn] put 1.8 million farmers off their land. They could no longer compete in the internal economy. Each farmer has five in his family, so we’re talking about ten million people no longer on the land. And these are figures from 2004.

And generally, the movement has been to the north, to come to El Norte and cross the border and find work. Well, you can’t cross the border now…..that safety valve, which has traditionally been the way that younger Mexicans have been able to get out of this very difficult situation, is now closed down. …

Whether there are subjective forces to move in 2010 against the government is another question. And it takes, I think, a pretty deep analysis to figure out who’s out there and who’s not. Armed groups are generally not very demonstrative of what they have until they’re ready to move.

AMY GOODMAN: John Ross…the effects of the immigration laws and the war on drugs?

JOHN ROSS: Well, certainly, I always assume—these are hot-button issues in the US press—immigration and drugs. Washington uses these issues to pressure Mexico, to win concessions, and they’re not necessarily concessions in terms of the drug war or immigration at all. They look at security, and they look at economy, and basically energy, you know? Washington wants to see Mexico privatize its oil industry, PEMEX. And so, they utilize this pressure that comes from immigration, comes from the drug war, in order to win those concessions.

Washington wants greater control over Mexico’s security apparatus, so they use things like the ASPAN, the security and prosperity agreement, to be able to—which would integrate security forces throughout the entire continent under Washington’s control. They use things like the North Command, which now penetrates Mexico’s airspace, because Mexico has been declared the southern security perimeter of the United States.

So those are the two aims of Washington at this point: to gain control over the Mexican security apparatus and the privatization of PEMEX. And all of this Mexico bashing that comes out of immigration and comes out of the drug war is really directed at that. And that’s how the White House has operated in Mexico as long as I’ve been there and much longer than I’ve been there. (emphasis added)