Don't look now, but Mexico is collapsing

[bemildred]

---

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times ran an interactive map illustrating where most of the 7,337 drug murders since 2007 have taken place. Click on a region and you can see photos of the drug kingpins in that area, and a weekly tally of deaths. The Times points out that the death toll since President Felipe Calderon declared war on drugs last year is greater than the U.S. body count in Iraq. Calderon has 45,000 troops and 5,000 police fighting drug traffickers in 18 states.

Whether Mexico lasts long enough to finish the war is an issue, though. The government had to cancel a bond issue after it failed to find anyone willing to buy them. David Frum, writing at NewMajority.com, notes:

“Mexico’s near term future looks even grimmer. Petroleum revenues are declining. The flow of remittance dollars from north of the border will contract as migrants lose their jobs or return home. And the El Paso Times has its hands on a leak from U.S. Joint Forces Command that Mexico stands alongside Pakistan as one of the two countries to be monitored most closely for risk of sudden collapse into state failure.

"These concerns may explain why Congress has rebuffed suggestions to restrict stimulus-created employment to legal American workers only. They may think that Mexico needs remittance dollars even more than Americans need jobs."

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/15/don-t-look-now-but-mexico-is-collapsing.aspx

[mediaman007]

1. Sad state of affairs for their people. Perhaps the American companies doing

business in Mexico, might return home, where society is relatively peaceful.

I suppose that is another reason we are attractive to Central Americans. Life is stable here.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. David Frum?

:hurts:

[bemildred]

5. Yeah, and the NP, but it's an important subject.

:shrug:

[ixion]

3. what I find fascinating (in a disturbing way) is the way that

many people in the US are watching this train wreck, still under the delusion that it somehow won't apply to them.

Denial at its finest, IMO.

[SteveM]

6. It's applying in Phoenix as we speak (nt)

[izquierdista]

4. Maybe if they had their real President

AMLO, instead of the elite's lackey, Calderon, things would be different.

[WhiteTara]

15. I agree n/t

[rusty fender]

7. Something like 30 families control the wealth in Mexico.

It's official policy to encourage citiizens to go to the U.S. for jobs because the gov't. damn well knows that it can't/won't help or employ most of its citizens. What Mexico needs is a revolution. The people need to seize the thirty families' assets.

[FatDave]

13. How different is that from us?

Because we have 500* obscenely wealthy families instead of 30?

(* number pulled from ass)

[Jakes Progress]

14. Yeah. We're so much better.

We don't let rich elites run our media...whoops. I mean our energy and medicine.... whoops. I mean....

Truth is it is less than 500 families.

[Joanne98]

8. The drug war is an excuse. They are militarizing the state with US funding.

Protecting the tiny group of billionaires that hoard all the wealth.

[Lint Head]

9. Looks like the 'Shock Doctrine' is in effect there too.

:dem:

[santamargarita]

10. Didn't Bush help that asshole steal the election in Mexico?

Everything Republicans touch turns to shit and they love it.

[truedelphi]

11. From a fab novel by thriller author Elizabeth Lowell:

Paper back version pg 353

"Shutting down the smugglers would lead to the collapse of the Mexican banking system, the Mexican political system, and the Mexican economy. The dudes who run Washington DC understand macropolitics, and that is macropolitics to the third or fourth power."

<snip>"Think about the fact that the Clinton adminsitration shut down two different investigations that led straight into the heart of the Mexican laundering system. One was a banking and money-laundering investigation that implicated about a dozen of Mexico's biggest banks. The other was a long term effort to document the ties between Mexico's pwower elite and the drug lords."

"Mexico threatened to start shooting American investigators as invading terrorists unless the US..."

We are so screwn. Drugs stay illegal in large part because the money that comes about from that illegality finances a whole slew of political power. DO you think anyone on the Senate level has not taken money from durg money? Could well be that it happens unknowingly - if you get a check from the Bank of COmmerce, Phoenix AZ while you run for the Senate, do you know whether that bank is under the jurisdiction of some local Phoenix big whig or do you know that behind that person is a whole nother thing. Calderon's nephew or brother-in-law etc.

SO then the money can be a blackmail thing.

Anyway reading this novel is fun and educational at the same time.

[silverweb]

16. What's the book title?

I see she also writes romance novels, which aren't my cup of tea, but the thriller looks interesting.

[truedelphi]

21. The Wrong Hostage, is the title.

First of hers I have read, but won't be my last. (Just boxed it up to send out to another DU'er or it could have been yours.)

[silverweb]

22. Thanks!

That's sweet to say you would have sent it, but no worries. I have a favorite used bookstore in San Diego that may very well have it in stock and if not, can get it.

The Wrong Hostage is now officially on my book list. :hi:

[ananda]

12. Thank you NAFTA and..

.. corrupt corporate scum.

[a la izquierda]

17. I have a very odd perspective.

As I write, I'm sitting in an ancient hotel in the tiny capital city of Tepic. It is as if nothing odd, or out of the ordinary is occurring. The scene could be any Sunday in 2006: families strolling in the main plaza, music blasting from store fronts, restaurants packed, stores packed. But there is an undercurrent of fear and anger: things are getting out of control in terms of money. The peso was at 14.5 when I got here a few weeks ago: great for me, who is also broke, but very bad for your average Mexican family, because as the peso tanks against the dollar, prices have gone up. Weird things, like smokes, have gone up three pesos since I left in December and returned. A new tax, perhaps? I don't know. My landlord tells me veggies have skyrocketed. There have been protests daily, but where those are, I haven't a clue. I left Guadalajara yesterday for Tepic, and both places seem disturbingly peaceful, though I know for a fact that Guadalajara is not. They've found decapitated bodies around GDL...but have managed to keep it hush-hush (so much so, that I didn't hear about it 'til yesterday and it happened while I lived there last year).
I'm trying to get my research done as quickly as possible, because I don't want to be here when the shit hits the fan, if/when it does. Mexicans are good people and I have many friends here. I hate to think what is happening along the border. I hate to think of the the fear people live with daily. Calderon has done nothing but stir the hornet's nest...and what is happening now is the ugly result.

[barbtries]

19. thank you for sharing

your story. reading the OP and the number of murders is almost beyond belief. do finish your research and stay safe!

[okieinpain]

18. I always wondered what the companies that have move to other

countries would do if the violence level shot through the roof, run back home and claim how they've always been pro-usa. I guess the way this looks I'll get to find out soon.

[balantz]

20. Where will Mexico fall? Right into our military corporate arms? n/t