Thread: Negative stats show Mexico ripe for revolution

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/dec/26 ... ripe-revo/ -

Kent Paterson: Negative stats show Mexico is ripe for revolution
Kent Paterson

Tuesday, Dec 26, 2006

Amid protests, Felipe Calderon took office Dec. 1 as Mexico's new president. Calderon inherits a country where class polarization, political conflict and escalating criminal violence define the landscape.

Six years after former Mexican President Vicente Fox pledged an immigration accord with the United States, millions of new jobs and a promised educational revolution, Mexico's social and political indicators are in the negatives.

Both the United Nations Development Program and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development chide Mexico for continued high poverty rates. Some reports compare sections of the Mexican countryside to Mali or the Sudan. Public high schools and universities are unable to serve all aspirants, who are frequently funneled into private schools of dubious quality and purpose.

With the minimum wage of less than $5 per day buying less than it did 30 years ago, it's no mystery why as many as 4 million Mexicans crossed into the United States during the Fox presidency.

As a parting gift from the Fox administration, Mexicans began paying more for gasoline, milk, tortillas and other goods beginning Dec. 1.

According to Mexico's National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics, many rural towns became ghost towns during the Fox years. Millions of Mexicans only get by because of remittances sent by relatives in the United States - a money flow which the Bank of Mexico estimates will reach a record $20 billion to $25 billion in 2006.

A different story prevails at the top. During the Fox years, modest billionaires such as Carlos Slim became super-tycoons, which, in Slim's case, meant achieving the status of the world's third-richest man, with a fortune of $30 billion, according to Forbes magazine. A handful of companies control the transportation, entertainment, media, beverage, food and communications sectors. Close to 90 percent of bank stock is controlled by foreign companies and investors.

To be fair, Fox might be credited with fulfilling one of his campaign goals of 2000: creating economic development. In the last six years, the illegal narcotics economy has boomed - transformed from a mainly export trade oriented to the United States to an industry with an important domestic market as well.

The drug cartels are in an all-out war for the spoils, tossing grenades and firing off bazookas in their battles, while leaving decapitated bodies on the streets as gruesome warnings to rivals. Executions and grenade attacks take place within the eyesight and earshot of tourists in resorts such as Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

By the end of 2006, somewhere around 2,000 people - most of them young - will have been killed in this year's bout of narco-violence. Few suspects are detained for such crimes, and honest government officials admit they are overwhelmed by the power of organized crime.

As the Nov. 25 narco-tainted slaying of Mexican pop star Valentin Elizalde in Reynosa highlighted, Mexico now has on its hands a "lost generation" of youths who are sucked into a cycle of easy money, addiction and violence.

Driving this social disaster is the implosion of the free-market economic model formalized in the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact Washington refuses to renegotiate despite the growing clamor in Mexico to revisit the deal.

Scratch the surface of street protests - whether over the presidential election or misrule by the governor of Oaxaca - and economic and justice grievances stemming from a teetering political economy rise to the fore.

How will Calderon address Mexico's crisis? So far, all the evidence suggests that he will stay the course. Calderon's new Cabinet, whose members range from recycled Fox administration officials to U.S.- and British-educated technocrats, portends more of the same.

More than a few Mexican analysts see historical parallels between the current setup and the 30-year Porfiriato of the late 1800s and early 1900s, the era when dictator Porfirio Diaz kept wages low and the population in line for foreign corporations.

Some observers note the tendency for Mexico to explode in revolution every century. The 100th anniversary of the last upheaval, 1910, is just around the corner.

Driving this social disaster is the implosion of the free-market economic model formalized in the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact Washington refuses to renegotiate despite the growing clamor in Mexico to revisit the deal.

Really? Who wants to revisit it the People or the government?

Hum, Mexico is ripe for revolt, you know, I think America might just be right behind them esp if this amnesty goes through, what do you think?

That was my thought when I read this too Nitty.

Originally Posted by nittygritty

Hum, Mexico is ripe for revolt, you know, I think America might just be right behind them esp if this amnesty goes through, what do you think?

I think you are right Nitty. If G.W. Bush, McCain, Kennedy and others of the same mind set have their way with the Amnesty they are so eager to give.
I don't think anything was learned from the Reagan Amnesty. Any one been to Miami lately??
We are in for chaos in this country if this Amnesty is allowed to go through. We think Illegals do not respect America or our laws now...What happens if they are given Amnesty.
Just maybe, in the couple of months we have before they try to push through this Amnesty...More of the American People will Wake Up and realize what we are in for.
Where is the Outrage in our country???