Mexico’s Drug War Wreaks Havoc on Workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2011/01/mexico%E2%80%99s-drug-war-wreaks-havoc-workers

by Dan La Botz | Mon, 01/03/2011 - 12:00pm

Dozens of doctors at Hospital 66 of Mexico’s public health system in Juárez, on the Texas border, struck for 24 hours on December 13. The doctors said many of their colleagues had fled their jobs because they were afraid for their lives. Eleven had been kidnapped, and the administration has been unable to find replacements because “nobody wants to live in Juárez.”

President Felipe Calderón’s drug war—with a total of 31,000 deaths since December 2006—has wreaked havoc on Mexican workers, their communities, and even their workplaces. While the victims are principally drug dealers, police, and soldiers, others include farmers, factory workers, migrant workers, teachers, doctors, and reporters.

The drug business combined with the economic crisis has laid the basis for an expansion of criminal behavior, so that there are now more criminals and more targets at every level. Kidnappers and extortionists no longer target only the wealthy. Many of the shootings and kidnappings go unreported to avoid stigmatizing the victims, since any victim is often thought to be involved in the drug business, or to prevent retaliation from gangs for reporting the incident.

Not only is the government unable to protect workers, but government officials, police, and soldiers are often involved in crimes against them.

Under Siege

In an email interview, an official of one of Mexico’s democratic unions said, “In the areas of greatest violence in the north of the country, the everyday work of working class organizations is impeded. This is the case, for example, in Gómez Palacio, where the members of the unions of transport workers, street vendors, bar workers, musicians, photographers, and others have lost their jobs” because they were unable to pay protection money.

A reporter interviewed a Mexican woman in one northern town: “Everything’s stopped,” said María Luz Hopkins, a 69-year-old retiree in Tubutama, south of the Arizona border city of Nogales. “There’s no construction. Nobody is working the fields because they don’t have gasoline or diesel. The people that used to bring gasoline, they don’t come. How can people work?”

FULL story at link.