Plan Mexico: Uphill battle will continue against failed model

On June 26, after months of intense manoeuvering in Washington, the U.S. Senate passed the final version of the “Merida Initiative” and the President subsequently signed it into law.

The date will be remembered as a turning point in the U.S.-Mexico relationship, not just because it increases U.S. aid to Mexico ten-fold but because it militarizes the bilateral relationship just when sensitive issues had a chance to be worked out through political and diplomatic channels. Given the security paradigm of Plan Mexico—to the exclusion of other aspects of the bilateral relationship--, the State Department will take a backseat following presentation of a report that attests to Mexico’s efforts to obey its own laws, and the Pentagon will take the reins.

The human rights conditions that were first added by Congress and then mostly withdrawn when the Mexican government rejected them, sent up a smokescreen that prevented real analysis and debate on what is popularly known as Plan Mexico. That ultimately futile discussion also sidelined the voices of organizations that urged Congress to oppose the measure: the ten-million strong AFL-CIO and its 1.7 million-person Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, non-governmental organizations including CIP Americas Policy Program and Global Exchange, religious organizations including Witness for Peace, Tikkun and the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and grassroots activist organizations including the Latin American Solidarity Coalition, Alliance for Democracy, CISPES and Friends of Brad Will.

Much has been made of the $73.5 million appropriated for institutional reform of the justice and penal systems. This compares to $112 million allocated for 2008 under the original Bush proposal. But as I stated in the Primer on Plan Mexico, even this section raises serious questions of efficacy and appropriateness. Mexico doesn’t need U.S. training to increase “rule of law” so much as it needs political will and pressure from Mexican civil society. If Mexican grassroots leaders who have traditionally exercised this pressure feel threatened by repercussions from empowered security forces, instead of progress we will see regression.

Mexican legislators and jurists have a point in noting that the U.S. government has few credentials to establish it as the sole arbitrator of reform in Mexico. Laws are different and the United States faces serious problems with its own justice and penal systems, especially in the area of drug enforcement where racial discrimination and police extortion and brutality continue to be common. If the Plan had included an extension of sharing “best practices” between police forces based on actual experiences, this section might make sense. As it is, it imposes U.S. equipment and notions with no proven track record.

Part of the strategy for approving Plan Mexico was to portray it as merely a bilateral counter-narcotics plan. This was never the case. The Plan betrays its much more ambitious aims. Note the words of John Negroponte to the OAS General Assembly: “With full funding, the Merida Initiative will provide substantial support over several years to train and equip Mexican and Central American law enforcement. We are committed to this initiative because no country in the hemisphere can be safe from organized crime, gangs, and narco-terrorism unless we are all safe.”

The use of the phrase “narco-terrorism” is not surprising but it constitutes a bad omen for Mexico. When drug trafficking is considered synonymous with terrorism, it opens the door to suspension of civil liberties, pulls the country into the Bush counterterrorism strategy, and obscures the real nature and roots of the problem. Negroponte’s remarks also reflect the removal of the security locus from the national to the regional realm, where the United States calls the shots. In this context, fears of violation of national sovereignty are not exaggerated.

While accusing the opposition of being insensitive to drug-related violence, proponents of Plan Mexico paved the way for an aid package that will likely increase violence and bring it closer to home as the drug war extends to opposition targets like it did under Plan Colombia. It will also fail, just as other applications of the drug war model have failed.

I would like to be wrong on this, but the signs are already there—human rights violations have increased precipitously since President Calderon launched the militarization of Mexican society in response to the violence of the drug cartels. The Merida Initiative applauds this strategy and explicitly aims to reinforce and broaden security measures. It adds U.S. espionage equipment and firepower while providing no significant funding or role for civil society measures or protection of civil liberties. Violence fought with violence has led to nearly double the drug-related deaths this year alone and multiple attacks on grassroots leaders, unarmed civilians, Zapatista communities and women by security forces.

The media focused all of its attention on the counter-narcotics “shared responsibility” aspect of the plan. Most reporters apparently never bothered to read the entire plan and eagerly accepted the spoon-fed connection between the violence on the border they had been covering and the ostensibly benevolent response of the U.S. government embodied in Plan Mexico.

Since its passage, they have reacted with mixed messages and contradictions. The New York Times titled its May 28 article “U.S. Includes Rights Language in Mexico Anti-Drug Aid” as if the final military/police aid package were a major advance for human rights. The Washington Post noted just the opposite, sub-titling its article “U.S. Lawmakers responded to Counterparts’ Objections” and stating that “The U.S. Senate approved the aid--known as the Merida Initiative--late Thursday after stripping conditions that Mexican officials said would have infringed on their sovereignty, particularly on the issue of human rights.” The Mexican press nearly unanimously agreed that Mexico had “won” the conditions battle, with headlines like “Mexico Beats Back U.S. Congress” (El Universal, the largest daily). The El Universal article went on to quote Mexico’s ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan stating, “There is no type of explicit restriction or limitation on the transference of resources and military equipment.” (We’ll talk more about the controversial conditions in this blog tomorrow).

The task we have before is to monitor impact and stop the plan in the next appropriations round. Not condition it, not tweak it, but end it. There are many constructive ways in which an aid package to Mexico could be designed that would increase security and long-term development and human security. Many people were working on drafting legislation that responds to these needs from a civilian point of view until the process was so tragically detoured by Plan Mexico.

It will be an uphill battle to defeat later stages of Plan Mexico. The plan has no clear benchmarks for evaluation. In the case of Plan Colombia, even though studies demonstrate its failure in decreasing the production and flow of illegal drugs it continues to be funded. In both Mexico and Colombia, support has to do with creating a strong U.S. military presence in these countries—a misguided strategy for increasing U.S. influence in the context of Latin America’s widespread rejection of the Bush national security strategy and free trade agreements. Also, defense companies and information technology companies that benefit handsomely from the allocations will lobby heavily.

Moreover, at the recent meeting of Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP)—supposedly a “development and integration project”--President Calderon praised the Merida Initiative and announced he will work to “build mechanisms that broaden the aid to Central American and Caribbean nations…” Backed up by Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe, Calderon’s inclusion of Plan Mexico and the security agenda as the first point in his statement on the renewed PPP made it clear that the rightwing governments in the hemisphere have every intention of “securitizing” the hemispheric agenda, applying military models to public security problems with the generous help of U.S. taxpayer dollars. This path follows the evolution of NAFTA into a “White House-led” regional security plan under the Security and Prosperity Partnership. In its wake, the root problems facing Mexico—increased drug use, poverty, the fall of real wages, loss of rural livelihoods and emigration, corruption and erosion of the rule of law—have been pushed aside.

For more information:
Resource Page on Plan Mexico: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5118

Security vs. Prosperity?

It’s difficult to hold a discussion on NAFTA’s Security and Prosperity and Partnership (SPP) because everyone has a different point of entry to the subject. Add to the perspective problem, the fact that there is no document to analyze, no comprehensive set of rules and guidelines to critique. The result is a lack of coherent public policy focus that in itself reveals a lot about what’s wrong with the SPP.

Last week the University of the Americas in Puebla held a two-day conference called “Critical Perspectives on SPP: Comparisons Between Canada and Mexico.” The organizers have to be commended for taking on an issue that’s not in the news but has huge ramifications for both countries. And they did it by welcoming rather than avoiding the diversity of viewpoints.

That makes it a little hard to sum up the event or come up with conclusions. Here are a few reflections.

1. There is a conflict between the security and prosperity agendas within the SPP. This observation was echoed by most of the Mexican presenters. Alejandro Estevil of the Foreign Ministry emphasized the need for Mexico to move the focus of SPP from the security agenda to a prosperity agenda aimed at Mexico’s development needs and addressing social issues including immigration. Jose Luis Valdes noted an even stronger contradiction between the security and prosperity agenda, saying the former has been aimed at “unification of the security scheme based on the U.S. model” which has strained the Canada-Mexico relationship. Mexico’s lack of a national security plan has made it easy to impose the U.S. regional plan. Both Canada and Mexico have felt the contradiction in border measures that inhibit trade, and immigration dealt with as a security rather than integration issue. Valdes also pointed out that the central economic issues for Mexico—poverty and inequality—aren’t even on the “prosperity” agenda.

Strategies for dealing with this problem vary. The Foreign Ministry believes that accepting the U.S. security agenda will aid chances to push a stronger prosperity agenda in the future. Others believe that the way to gain attention to social issues is to include them in a broader definition of “human security.” Although there was considerable criticism of the limited nature of both security and prosperity paradigms, there was little sense of the way out.

2. Washington’s influence has hampered Canada and Mexico’s abilities to defend national interests in the SPP and to create a stronger alliance. Canada’s Ambassador Guillermo Rishchynski described North America as a sandwich, with Canada and Mexico as the bread and “the problem is the filling.” U.S. power and particularly its power to set the agenda in the SPP has clearly diminished the possibilities of an effective Canada-Mexico alliance or defense of issues central to those two countries.

3. The Bush government has set the security agenda while mostly U.S.-based transnational corporations lead the prosperity agenda. Whether related to the U.S. counter-terrorism agenda or the recent Merida Initiative, the Bush administration has defined the security focus in the SPP. On the economic side, the North American Competitiveness Council of the SPP has controlled the process from a business rather than public policy perspective.

Civil society’s role in all this has been first as a watchdog, trying to determine what is happening in the process and how it will affect the populations of the three countries. Groups have also tried to affect the trinational agenda, forming their own networks and setting their own agendas, with a special emphasis on the need to integrate immigration reform into the process.

For more information see our articles:

Dissecting the North American Summit Joint Statement: Bush's Last Stand
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5178

Time to Renegotiate NAFTA, Not Expand It
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5175

No Rest For the Working Poor

Globalization continues to break down its own myths, especially in developing countries. 

In Mexico, the promise of more jobs withered shortly after NAFTA went into effect, when it became clear that displacement outpaced job generation. Now, its twin promise--that globalization would create better jobs and improve standards of living--has finally committed public suicide as well.

Ford and General Motors changes in their operations in Mexico. Ford announced a major investment in Mexico of over $2 billion dollars this week. Alongside the self-congratulatory remarks of industry representatives and government officials, was an interesting tidbit of information. According to an AP report, at the Ford plant to be expanded in Cuautitlan--on the outskirts of Mexico City where the cost of living has been going up sharply-- workers' wages would be cut in half from their current level of $4.50 an hour. Mexican union leaders stated that this was necessary to compete with China.

The same week, General Motors announced a $1.3 billion dollar investment in its Coahuila, Mexico plant and the creation some 875 jobs (note the low job-to-investment ratio).  It also announced the eventual closure of plants in Janesville, Wisconsin and Morraine, Ohio. The Mexican press noted that the company first hinted at the closure of its plant in Toluca, which elicited an immediate promise from the union leadership to accept wage reductions. It soon after announced it will remain open but cut back on operations and lay off some of the workers. Although the new contract terms were unavailable at the time of this writing, the trend is written on the wall.

The companies justified further gouging into the fragile economy of working families by pointing the finger at global competition. As long as China offers wages of as little as $2.00 an hour, Mexico has no choice but to follow suit if it wants to attract investment. 

The only legal floor to this race to the bottom is Mexico's minimum wage of about $5 per day. And the same week, the Mexican government made it clear it has no plans for relief in that area. In classic patriarchal style, Sec. of Labor Javier Lozano explained that raising the minimum wage would trigger "a salaries-prices race and it would be an illusion for workers, it would be deceiving them, since while they might think they have more money to purchase goods, these (prices) would keep going up." 

The problem is that prices are already going up--the price of the basic food staple, the tortilla went up from 5 pesos at the end of 2006 to 12 pesos in some parts of Mexico today. That alone places Mexico in the growing camp of nations threatened by the global food crisis, where even full-time workers find it difficult to assure a basic diet. 

In a June 9 speech at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Lozano expounded on the perils of granting living wages to the working poor: "the legitimate aspiration of higher wages for workers should come about through increases in productivity and not artificial measures such as generalized price controls or emergency wage hikes." As Sec. of Labor, you'd think that Mr. Lozano might have seen just one of the dozens of studies that show that Mexican manufacturing has experienced a marked increase in productivity accompanied by a fall in real wages.  But the use of the word "artificial" belies his conviction that anything outside the dictums of the neoliberal market is "unnatural". So whatever reality serves up that contradicts these dictums continues to be treated as an inconvenient anomaly or ignored completely. 

Funny that raising substandard workers' salaries is presented as the villain in the crusade to control prices for the good of all, whereas other causes--such as monopoly market control--receive no mention whatsoever. Funny, but not in a laughable way. Mexican workers are being urged to resist their lower instincts of wanting to eat regularly and provide a future for their families, and to have faith in the same macroeconomic policies that have failed them for years. That's a tough order in a society where the cost of basic items rose 47% between December of 2006 and May of 2008 while wages went up a little over 4%. 

Human Rights Report Released Amid Growing Violence in Chiapas

The International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights delivered its Report on Human Rights at a press conference in San Cristobal de la Casas, Chiapas Sunday then presented the report in the Zapatista “Good Government Boards” that govern on a rotating basis in five regions. The report is the result of an intense fact-finding mission carried out from January 30 to February 20 of this year by a volunteer group of 50 people, including this writer, and the sixth visit of the Commission since it began its work following the Acteal massacre on Dec. 22, 1997.

The 484-page report documents serious human rights violations in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico. After conducting 275 interviews with over six hundred people--including victims of human rights violations, government officials and human rights groups--the Commission ratifies its conclusion that “the human rights situation in Mexico is extremely critical.” Moreover, it states, the pattern of violation and the lack of response from state and federal governments or the justice system constitutes “an authentic state policy.”

The report calls on the government to conform to international human rights agreements and actively prosecute violators that form part of the government and official security forces. In press conferences in Mexico City and Chiapas, human rights groups praised the report as a major contribution toward ending impunity. However, in its return visit, the Commission noted with concern that since the time of the report, not only has little progress been made on documented cases (with the exception of the release of some political prisoners in Chiapas and Oaxaca), new cases have been reported in Chiapas and Oaxaca. 

The five of us charged with presenting the report throughout the state have received documentation regarding military incursions, harassment from paramilitary groups, and arbitrary detentions in Zapatista base communities. Conflicts over land continue to be a common theme throughout the state, as legal structures to recognize post-insurrection occupations have been insufficient in granting clear rights and protections to Zapatista communities and competing groups have spearheaded offensives to gain control of Zapatista territory. 

Members of the group also met with Governor Juan Sabines, who announced that the state would purchase the land where the Morelia Caracol is located to defuse a conflict there. The Commission requested a review of the case of 16 political prisoners and visited two prisons where prisoner organizations have staged sit-ins and hunger strikes to protest torture, human rights violations and to call for a review of their cases.

While on the road between indigenous communities, we witnessed the heavy military presence as we passed truckloads of soldiers deployed in the area north of San Cristobal. The report mentions “A major strategy of the current government has been to reinforce the role of the Army in persecuting crimes of drug-trafficking, arms-running and border control. In Chiapas, these reasons have been used to justify its continued and disproportional presence at a time when the armed insurgency has long ceased to be a justification.” In some places, this has led to concrete violations of human rights and in others a source of harassment and intimidation.

To read the report and press releases of the Commission, go to http://cciodh.pangea.org. 

For the conclusions in English, see http://cciodh.pangea.org/?q=es/node/207 

People from all over the world have signed on to the conclusions to emphasize the urgency of the situation and call on the government to respond to the recommendations for prevention, investigations, prosecution and reparations to victims. 

To sign on to the conclusions, http://cciodh.pangea.org/firma_conclusiones_6_cciodh.htm
To contact the commission, cciodh@pangea.org
photo: SIPAZ

Jesus Leon Wins Goldman Prize

It's rare that we get a chance to celebrate in this line of work. It seems we spend most of our time warning of new threats or documenting the devastation of a system that converts human lives and the vast diversity of nature into business ventures for the few.

But April 15 was a time to celebrate. Jesus Leon Santos, our nominee for the Goldman Environmental Prize, became the 2008 prizewinner for the North America region. In a moving ceremony held at the San Francisco Opera House, Jesus received the prize with his characteristic humility and dedication. Thousands of activists, philanthropists and students listened as he spoke out strongly about the displacement of Mexican maize farmers following NAFTA, the threat of genetically modified corn imports, and the importance of restoring and preserving traditional farming methods.

Environmentalists have sometimes had a hard time viewing agriculture as an area for environmental activism. Agricultural activity is usually found on the other side of the fence--as a force that works against the environment, through the use of agrochemicals, depletion of water, deforestation. But Jesus's project in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca is a perfect example of how that can change.

The Americas Policy Program has been following CEDICAM in its project to “build a future” in a homeland where erosion strips away the soil and out-migration strips away the farmers. As global warming, pollution, desertification, erosion and changes in land-use threaten our food supply, small farmers are coming to be viewed not just as victims, which they often are, but also as our possible salvation. And it’s no wonder that indigenous farmers, like Jesus, lead the move to sustainable farming. Find out more about how, watch this video also:

The People's Summit - Parallel to SPP Meeting in New Orleans

Check out the response to the "three amigos" meeting next week in New Orleans. Behind closed doors they will make decisions about the future of North America, while the people's summit will take place both April 21st and 22nd, where there will be workshops in the morning and afternoon on Tuesday the 22nd. The three hour workshops will speak to the ways in which free trade and security policy affect everyday people, especially in relation to increased militarism, privatization, forced immigration and migration, and abuse of the environment.

For more information on the people's summit, check: www.summitneworleans.org

Background on the Security and Prosperity Partnership:
Extending NAFTA's Reach
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4497

April 17 is International Day of Peasant's Struggle

60 actions for Via Campesina's International Day of Peasant's Strugglee

International Peasant’s Struggle Day was established after the massacre of 19 landless peasants belonging to the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil on April 17, 1996 during the second conference of La Via Campesina in Tlaxcala Mexico.

For more information on specific events today, see their site at http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=502&Itemid=33

This video, also available in Spanish, does a good job of documenting the history of Via Campesina, a truly global organization: