The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
4 Sep 2010
The discovery of 72 murdered migrants in Mexico last week has directed international attention to a country in the grip of a violent war between competing drug cartels.
The Real News Network speaks to investigative journalist, Bruce Livesey, who recently returned from Mexico.
Livesey says that the reasons behind the violence in Mexico are complicated. But among them he highlights the role of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which fueled the drug trade in two ways.
Firstly, NAFTA increased trade between America and Mexico, also increasing the number of trucks that passed through the Mexican/American border, making it much easier for drug cartels to smuggle drugs to the US.
Most of the drugs entering the US come through Mexico and drug cartels got very strong in the post-2000 era when the Mexican state removed itself from a tangled web of corrupt drug relations by relinquishing its role of referee between the drug cartels. This resulted in the cartels openly declaring war on each other as they competed for market share.
It’s a war that still continues today and is at the heart of the violence in Mexico, which also claims many innocent victims.
However, the second thing that NAFTA did was to limit the livelihood choices of poor Mexican farmers. NAFTA allowed fresh food produce from America into the Mexican market. This wiped out the Mexican agricultural sector to a great extent. Small farmers found themselves out of work and during the 1990’s, many migrated to the cities of the North, such as the city of Juarez where much of the violence takes place today, to work in factories that had been set up to exploit low wage Mexican labour in export processing zones (EPZs).
But these EPZs collapsed in recent years when the capitalists moved their manufacturing businesses to China and Indian -- leading to more joblessness in Mexico. But this displaced population in Mexico could not go back to the land, as they could not compete with the fresh produce from American farmers -- driving many of them into the drug trade.
Increasingly, the only economic option for poor Mexicans has become the drug trade. So now, a significant proportion of the Mexican population is either directly or indirectly employed in the trade. It is the second biggest export industry in Mexico after oil production.
Watch part two of this interview, to find out how the violence escalated when Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, sent the army into the northern region to combat the drug trade. According to Livesey, his effort has failed spectacularly because the army is corrupt and has chosen to support one of the cartels in the drug war.
There is evidence to suggest that the army is doing nothing to prevent murders committed by the cartel they support. They arrive after the murders have been committed, says Livesay.
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