Juarez has been rocked by a wave of gangland-style killings for the last two years.. 50 people were killed last weekend alone (four of the victims were beheaded) and there have been more than 500 homicides since the beginning of 2010. All told, more than 19,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. Even American Diplomats have been directly targeted. Juarez is presently the most dangerous place in the world, worse than Baghdad or Kabul.
NAFTA once transformed Juarez into a manufacturing hub where assembly plants and electronics companies produced all types of goods shipped to the US tariff-free. In the last few years, however, corporations have exited Mexico en masse seeking cheaper labor costs in China. Since 2005, 10,600 businesses -- roughly 40 per cent of Juárez's businesses -- have closed their doors, according to the country's group representing local chambers of commerce. Free trade has left Juarez in ruins which has only added to the current troubles.
Plan Mexico is less about a fictitious war on drugs as it is about creating a business-friendly authoritarian regime that will crush any threat to state/corporate power. By throwing his support behind this policy, Obama is just picking up where G.W. Bush left off.
Calderon assumed the mantle of "provincial governor" charged with carrying out US security operations south of the border; a regular Mexican Karzai. He's turned the country to a free-fire zone as long as billions in US aid continues to roll in.
The real reason US powerbrokers want to militarize Mexico is to counter the leftist social movements which have sprouted up everywhere in Latin America. The administration wants to get a foot in the door so they can roll back the advances that have been made in health care, civil liberties, education, wealth redistribution and land reform. The US wants to quash the burgeoning unions, the indigenous communities, and pro-democracy groups which have taken root and replaced the kleptocratic regimes propped up by Washington. The Merida Initiative is an attempt to return to the dark days of oligarchy and torture, of death squads and "dirty wars". Clearly, Uncle Sam will not be easily deterred; it will take determined resistance from grassroots organizations and engaged citizens.
The media keep reiterating the same tedious refrain about the ongoing "drug war", but it's all baloney. The war in Juarez isn't about narcotics; it's about a foreign policy that supports proxy-armies to impose order through police-state repression and militarization. Extreme violence is the cornerstone upon which the entire policy rests.
The war on drugs, like the war on terror, is a propaganda device which creates a hospitable environment for resource extraction and corporate exploitation. And, they don't care how many people get killed in the process. That's why the death toll in Juarez will to continue to rise.
Excerpted from Mike Whitney @ Counterpunch
