An Analysis of how the Whack-a-mole Drug War, Globalization and Militarization Go Together: Interview: Dr. William I. Robinson on Power, Domination and Conflicts in Mexico

***An extensive interview from the blog, Upside Down World, ("covering activism and politics in Latin America") with Dr. William I. Robinson, a professor at the University of California – Santa Barbara, who is author of books including Promoting Polyarchy: Globlization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony, and Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change and Globalization. 


"Robinson’s work challenges ... students of sociology and politics to think outside of 20th century notions of imperialism. He introduces new possibilities through which to understand power, including transnational theory and a theory of global capitalism, which are not bound to nation-centred understandings of power but instead reflect more accurately upon the world today."

Interview: Dr. William I. Robinson on Power, Domination and Conflicts in Mexico: "“There’s a number of levels to analyze what’s going on in Mexico. “One level of course is in an age of global capitalism, and unbridled inequalities, and massive polarization between the rich and the poor, between the haves and the have nots, the social fabric breaks down and the state can no longer try and juggle multiple interests, it can’t even attempt to do so.

“So you have a breakdown of social order, and the breakdown of social order is more general, worldwide we’re seeing that, whole pockets and whole countries where social order and the ability of political authorities to manage these contradictions generated by massive inequalities and by global capitalism is breaking down. And so in part that’s what’s going on in Mexico, the central state really can’t hold the system together. ...

“The other thing going on in Mexico, and again you can generalize this in other countries, but specifically in Mexico, is that the social explosion is immanent. Mexico is so full of social movements and community movements and resistance and rebellion, every single corner, the problem is… you wouldn’t know that by going to Acapulco or just reading the headlines about the narcotrafico, I mean you wouldn’t see it in the larger context, but it’s a country with massive resistance, massive social movements, at every single level, you know of women, of peasants fighting for their land, of workers, of students, of immigrants, I mean at every single level.

“They’re not united, there’s a big problem in Mexico, all these social movements are not united. But the thing is the inequality and the emisseration of the majority of Mexicans has reached such a point that everyone who’s following closely, you know, critical, radical thinking in Mexico, is predicting that there’s an imminent social explosion. People even talk about 100 years since the Mexican revolution and its time for another revolution. ...

“And at that point, what’s the Mexican state and the Mexican elites going to do? “They’re going to need military force to suppress it… I don’t want to downplay that the drug trafficking is real and I don’t want to down play the other factor I gave you, that its become so infest at the local level as an expression of the social and economic crisis.

“But half the Mexican army has already been deployed throughout the territory. And Calderón, the President of Mexico, has already announced that he’s going to deploy or he’s in the process of deploying the other half, so the entire Mexican army is going to be deployed to every corner of the country, and in part I am suggesting, and not just myself, it is the thinking of many of us, is that that is a move to put the Mexican army in place so that when there is a massive uprising, all the instruments are there, the forces there to suppress that uprising, and its going to be legitimated, in the name not just of stability and keeping order, but in the name of drug trafficking." Dec. 7, 2010