Posted on 05/21/2006 4:06:24 PM PDT by Larousse2
Mexico Voters Fear Nation on Edge of Chaos
By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer Wed May 17, 6:12 AM ET
Police enraged by the kidnapping of six officers club unarmed detainees. A bloody battle between steelworkers and police leaves two miners dead. Drug lords post the heads of decapitated police on a fence to show who's in charge.
Less than two months before Mexicans elect their next president, many fear the country is teetering on the edge of chaos — a perception that could hurt the ruling National Action Party's chances of keeping the presidency and benefit Mexico's once-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose candidate has been trailing badly.
Some blame President Vicente Fox for a weak government. Others say rivals are instigating the violence to create that impression, hoping to hurt National Action candidate Felipe Calderon, who has a slight lead in recent polls.
A poll published Friday in Excelsior newspaper found 50 percent of respondents feared the government was on the brink of losing control. The polling company Parametria conducted face-to-face interviews at 1,000 homes across Mexico. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The conflicts are "a warning sign," said Yamel Nares, Parametria's research director.
Security is the top concern for Mexicans, and Fox has struggled to reform Mexico's notoriously corrupt police. Meanwhile, drug-related bloodshed has accelerated, with some cities seeing killings almost daily.
In April, suspected drug lords posted the heads of two police officers on a wall outside a government building where four drug traffickers died in a Jan. 27 shootout with officers in the Pacific resort of Acapulco.
A sign nearby read: "So that you learn to respect."
Last week, Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos said Mexico was in a "state of rage," and warned that tensions were similar to those that preceded the Zapatistas' brief armed uprising in January 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas.
He said his group is committed to peace, but many fear his increased public profile — after years of hiding out in the jungle — could foreshadow greater polarization among Mexican voters.
The masked leader said a May 3 clash that left a teenager dead and scores injured in San Salvador Atenco, 15 miles northeast of Mexico City, is an example of the growing tensions.
Marcos has been leading nearly daily demonstrations in the town following the incident, which began when a radical group of townspeople kidnapped and beat six policemen in a dispute over unlicensed flower vendors. Police responded with rage the next day. Television crews captured officers repeatedly beating unarmed protesters, and several detained women alleged officers raped them.
The clash followed another bloody battle between steelworkers and police trying to break up an illegal strike at a plant in Lazaro Cardenas last month. Unions later threatened to shut down the country.
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary, said the violence reflects Fox's lack of leadership.
"The state has become much weaker under his watch," Grayson said.
Recent polls show Calderon has overtaken longtime presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whom opponents have portrayed as a leftist demagogue similar to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
But that could change if PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo can convince voters that Mexico was more stable under his party's 71-year reign, which ended with Fox's victory in 2000. Mexican law bars presidents from seeking re-election.
Madrazo has tried to paint himself as the law-and-order candidate — though so far his poll numbers have remained well behind those of Calderon and Lopez Obrador.
"It's not going to help Lopez Obrador who has been associated with the rabble rousers, but Madrazo can come out and say with his party at least Mexico had continued stability," Grayson said.
Gerardo Aranda, a tourism guide in Mexico City, said he won't go back to the PRI, but he doesn't know who he will vote for.
"No one really knows now what could happen next," he said. "All the candidates are bad. ... There is so much anger toward the government, everyone is against everything."
Oh boy, talking about Mexican politics. I have all sorts of theories regarding the political culture of Mexico. Let me put it this way: if it was going to be done....well, then it probably should have been done during the time of Winfield Scott. Back then, under those different conditions we could have had far more latitude to do what would have been necessary successfully integrate the two societies. It would need an all powerful American "Viceroy" similar to what MacArthur was in Japan immediately following WWII. But even there I don't know because Japan was already a modernized, fairly successful, literate, industrialized society. Something like 65% of all Mexican adults only have at best an eighth to ninth grade education level. In the 21st century, that is just not going to cut it.
One of the things that facilitated the PRI's seven decade stranglehold on power was that the PRI never really had a human face the way other despotic regimes in Latin America do. Even Presidents were essentially seen as little more than "caretakers", a glorified bureaucrat who did what was minimally required to keep the country running till his successor took over. This stemmed for the Mexico's strict one term only rule for Presidents. Part of the reason the instituted the one term rule was so that it would make any and all would be insurgents and revolutionaries less inclined to "take out the top guy". If they could just wait just a few years then the guy at the top would be out of office anyway, -never to return. In other Latin American despotic regimes everyone knows exactly who is personally in charge and responsible for everything. People can personally direct all of their anger, frustration, and focus on a single individual and makes galvanizing and unifying political opposition so much easier and effective. Think of the Perons in Argentina, Somoza & Ortega in Nicaragua, Chavez in Venezuela, Noriega in Panama and of course, Castro in Cuba. The PRI by contrast really lacked this kind of giant, colorful, larger than life character. The true power behind the PRI was never really revealed yet its existence and influence was all encompassing and felt everywhere. Psychologically it had a strange neutralizing effect on opposition efforts in Mexican politics. Most people in Mexico simply consigned themselves to basically living with the PRI as a fact of Mexican life. Prior to 2000, the vast majority of Mexicans had never experienced real democracy. For decades, if Mexicans wanted have a change politically speaking, the only real option was to migrate to the U.S. because they knew that they weren't going to get it at the ballot box.
And our president continues to import chaos, all to prop up a failing Mexican regime.
Whart Bush is importing here is a permanent Democrat, trending Marxist, corrupt majority. He is building Mexico in Washington.
NAFTA would be wonderful if, along with it, we kept Mexico and Mexicans south of the current border.
I have posted arguments in favor of annexation for a couple of years now. The way I would see it happening is that either individual Mexican states or the entire country can vote to become a US territory with the goal of eventual statehood. Because once a state enters the union, it is equal to all other states, the period of being a territory would be used to normalize the economy and legal framework with the US laws. People in the territories could move freely into any other state, and people in the states can move into the territories, own property, hire employees, etc. This would begin the normalization of the income and employment gap. After the incomes are higher in the territories, and the political framework is revised, then it can be admitted as a state, with full voting rights as a state, and for its citizens.
I don't actually think this will happen, because of the nationalism of the Mexicans, but I think this is the solution we should push for anyway. If it works, we can expand our size to be more comparable in size to China and India, and increase our economy greatly.
But even if it doesn't fly, it is great political leverage against the government of Mexico. Right now, immigration is a release valve for the politicians who cannot or will not raise the standard of living for all Mexicans. If we block illegal immigration with strict border control, and at the same time offer statehood to the Mexican citizens, the release valve is on the side of the citizens; it becomes the threat of voting in a pro-statehood government. The Mexican government will then be forced to improve their standard of living, or be replaced with a pro-statehood government by the unhappy Mexicans. This is leverage we Americans or the average Mexican doesn't currently have.
Not organized into militias we don't. All that is needed is to reach a tipping point in numbers and we have a Bagdad situation.
Robby, we've already got thousands of pistoleros on the streets of LA
...and San Antonio, and Dallas, and Houston, and Phoenix, and....
You need to reflect on what the border was like before 1920. Ponco Villa is just a movie character to most people today. Then he was an alternative government in Mexico, Then there were a relative handful of Mexicans on our side of the border. Such a leader today would have followers in Chicago.
I remember that movie... can't remember the name.
A good reason to not allow 30 million Mexicans into this country.
Yeah, but Ross was talking about the giant sucking sound of jobs going south of the border.
Turns out the giant sucking sound is Mexicans wading the Rio Grande to get those fine American jobs that Americans won't do.
Heritage foundation calculates 200 MILLION based on the senate immigration reform proposal.
I appreciate your insight. While I've lived in Texas most of my life, my trips to Mexico have been very brief. Most of what I know is from what I have heard, not from experience.
It just seems that there ought to be a better solution out there than a) let 'em all in or b) kick 'em all out. I keep thinking if we had more control over what happened on both sides of the border, we could find a solution that maintains some sovereignty without dividing families.
Living in Texas, I don't fear a Mexican "takeover". I don't feel a need to be afraid. I want everyone who is here, regardless of race, to respect this country, respect its laws and work to better themselves and their family. It seems like a fairly simply goal if we could just get everyone playing by the same rules.
Thanks again for your input.
Good to know, at least, mine wasn't an original thought. Like you, I don't think this has much chance of ever happening. I'd just like to see some outside-the-box thinking as opposed to the "sides" I see forming now. Thanks for your thoughts.
Can't really blame Fox. He has been on U.S. welfare for so long that he hasn't had to effect any changes.
Mexico is dysfunctional, and, oddly enough, I think it is the fact that it is being confronted by NAFTA, with its expectation of functional economies on all sides, that has made this apparent. Mexico has a state managed socialist economy which, like most such economies, has devolved into an oligarchy. The government there has given tiny socialist sops (such as primary health care) to the people and has protected the ruling socialist class (along with folks like Slim) from having to be part of a real economy, and now it's all collapsing.
We can't rebuild their economy - because they don't want it rebuilt. Some Mexicans are just fine with it as it is now (obviously, a tiny wealth minority). But we shouldn't let them hand off their problems, either, which is what our "run for it" border policy has permitted.
I have always thought Mexico should be billed, either literally or through trade penalties, for its failure to control its own border. This might make the wealthy there think twice before they pass off their dysfunctional economy on the US. They know that we're afraid of having a hostile country on our border, but they are actually already hostile and should be called on it.
BTW, if I were Mexican, I'd be fleeing, too. But the US should nail Mexico to the wall on this.
Maybe they will hang a "beware of dog" sign on it. Anyway, money spent for a barrier is well-spent. If people can't climb it, no need for a jillion agents.
ROTFLMAO!
(((((((((((((((((Thanks!)))))))))))))))))))))))
They need to clean their own house before invading ours.
I've have wasy too much SUGAR today.
Sorry.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.