As Mexico celebrates its bicentennial, 200 years since the famous “grito” for independence was heard, Mexico finds itself amidst another period of crisis. In the last year, there has been a 14 percent rise in kidnappings while, remittances, which are Mexico’s number two source of foreign income after oil exports, have plummeted 18 percent. Since 2006, more than 28,000 people have been assassinated due to the violence of organized crime. Since 2006, around 570 civil servants from institutions that deal with security and justice in Mexico have been detained for having ties to drug trafficking.
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As the U.S. economy plummets, the right-wing has launched a racist campaign against immigrants, particularly Latinos. This contradiction between U.S. prosperity, the result of extreme exploitation of Mexican and other low-wage worker, and the anti-immigrant campaign that scapegoats immigrant workers for the economic crisis, has led to a rising anti-U.S. sentiment in Mexico’s ardently nationalist ruling class that has not been seen for the last 20 years.
Even the corrupt Mexican “president” Felipe Calderon, who stole the elections in 2006 and has been a loyal “ally” in the U.S.-funded War on Drugs, has felt the need to raise concerns about the detrimental effect U.S. intervention is having on Mexico. Referring to the U.S. sale of arms to the drug cartels and to the Mexican military, he said:
“They provoke conflicts in poor and developing countries like Africa, which they are benefiting from, just like the situation the people of Mexico are living today. To them, it is a business to sell arms to criminals.”
This nationalist sentiment in Mexico was once the norm in a country with a rich history of revolution, popular uprisings and national pride.
Mexico’s history of revolutionary struggle
Three hundred years of control by Spain, from the 1500s-1800s led to the massacre of millions of Native people and an end to many of their civilizations in order to facilitate the extraction of resources. In 1807, Napoleon I’s invasion of Spain empowered both conservative bourgeois land-owners and liberal democratic forces in Mexico who wanted independence. Both agreed that Mexico should be a sovereign nation free from foreign intervention.
The movement for independence was led by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest, who declared Mexico’s independence from Spain in the town of Dolores on Sept. 16, 1810, now known as “Grito de Dolores”.
In 1823, an independent republic was established. The state experienced only a few years of peace before it faced intervention by its rising imperialist neighbor to the north. Slavery, which the expansion of U.S. territory, was the critical component in the war with Mexico 1846-1849. In 1846, the U.S. formally annexed Texas as a state, and the federal government sent in troops. The Mexican-American war led to the loss of Mexico’s vast territories to the north including the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
The great loss of territory along with other internal conflicts led to the the civil War of Reform from 1857 to 1861. In 1861, the first indigenous president of Mexico was elected, Presidente Benito Juarez. His policies removed the powerful Catholic Church from state power, confiscating their acquired properties. The conservative forces found this unacceptable and relied on French military intervention to oust Juarez and send him into exile. Not until 1867 were French forces defeated and Juarez reinstated.
The 1870’s gave rise to the 30 year rule of Porfirio Diaz as president. The “Porfiriato” as his rule is known, was characterized as being at the service of the foreign bourgeoisie, in addition to the national oligarchy. The great resources of Mexico, especially the oil and mines, were owned outright by the United States and Britian. Such a domestic ruling class that entirely serves the interests of outside imperialist forces is called a “comprador bourgeoisie.”
In 1910, Diaz was exiled by his political opponents leading to the Mexican Revolution.
The Revolution had several phases and lasted over 10 years. The struggle gave rise to famous revolutionaries like Pancho Villa in the North and Emiliano Zapata in the South. They raised popular militias which fought for the campesinos’ right to land. This right was established by the 1917 Constitution which included the famous “Article 27” which declared that all property is originally owned by the nation and can be expropriated for public utility.
In 1929, the National Mexican Party was formed at what is considered the “end” of the revolutionary period later becoming the Institutional Revolutionary Party ruling for the rest of the 20th century. In 1938, Mexico nationalized its oil reserves and expropriated the equipment of the foreign oil companies. Major land reform also took place, and social security was created. Over time, every major industry was nationalized, allowing for greater domestic economic development.
Mexico’s current economic crisis stems from that fact that despite having nationalized its oil, mines, railroads, national transportation, airlines, and so many other industries, Mexico was and still is a capitalist country, thus still subject to the crises of capitalism. In 1982, world oil market prices plunged from $32 a barrel to $13 causing Mexico’s foreign debt to more than double. Since 1982, when Mexico’s debt was restructured at a huge cost, its debt has multiplied many times over. With the debt restructuring the U.S. has been able to dictate political and economic demands on Mexico.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in office from 1988 to 1994, was responsible for the privatization of numerous national companies like the national telecommunication giant Telmex, and the national broadcasting network Imevisión. Additionally, he was responsible for signing NAFTA, the strategic economic agreement that amounted to a surrender of Mexico’s national economic independence.
Salinas left the country charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the government. The country fell into another crisis during the transfer of power to the new PRI president Ernesto Zedillo due to the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the open-air assassination of the popular presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, and the financial scare in December that led to the plummeting of investments in Mexico’s economy.
After years of fending off foreign control, Mexico found itself at the mercy of the new U.S. neoliberal economic model that left the country in the severely weakened condition it finds itself today. This withering of national sovereignty has not only left Mexico’s resources open to exploitation by U.S. capitalists, it has left its people open to exploitation by transnationals.
In the last few years, especially under Calderon, this absolute control by U.S. foreign policy is more and more resembling actual U.S. foreign intervention. At a recent meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, Hillary Clinton said that U.S. is prepared to widen the so-called War on Drugs into a Plan Colombia-style initiative for Mexico and Central America.
This arrogant imperialist view of occupying and invading a sovereign nation in order to “help it” should not be taken lightly. However, there is a split amongst the U.S. ruling class occurring behind closed doors as to how to deal with the rising instability in Mexico
Drug violence used to justify ‘Plan Mexico’
In an interview with the Real News Network, Bruce Livesy, an investigative journalist stated “Essentially the army has taken sides. They have sided with the Sinaloan drug cartel against the Juárez Cartel, and they are helping primarily the Sinaloans take out members of the Juárez Cartel.”
This trend to eliminate the drug trade conflict by physically eliminating the competition, instead of eliminating the market all together, demonstrates the hypocrisy and laughable “humanism” of U.S. imperialism
The drug war is an excuse for the U.S. to maintain an ever-increasing presence on the border in order to squash any form of civil uprising that might result from the rising poverty and drug violence. The U.S. government is not interested in ending the drug trade, but it does want to prevent it from leading to another revolution, one that might influence workers in its own borders.
In 2006, the fraud surrounding the elections was so overt (Calderon won only by a margin of .58 percent), that the most marginalized sectors of society immediately mobilized. They occupied the Zocalo and the surrounding boulevard, the Paseo de la Reforma, for several months and engrained in the minds of “capitalinos” (Mexico City residents) images of mass mobilizations, hunger strikes, and anti-authority occupations.
The solution to the daunting obstacles that the workers of Mexico and the world face can only be found through the revolutionary methods used by the masses in 1810 and 1910. The people were able to advance their social welfare by leaps and bounds, but the task was not completed. Only with a socialist revolution that emancipates the oppressed and puts the needs of the workers at the forefront, only then can we begin to unite against the same enemy that exploits us on both sides of the fence regardless of our immigration status, race or nationality—the enemy known as the capitalist class.
¡Viva México! ¡Viva La Revolución! y ¡Luchemos Juntos por una América Unida y Socialista!
