The result was, as we could have predicted, an escalation in the violence. Conservative numbers now put the number of dead since 2006 or 2007, when this began, at more than 125,000 people. Something like 30,000 people have been forcibly disappeared. Their families don’t know where they are. The result is massive levels of violence and destruction in places where drug trafficking had been centered: in the north, in Sinaloa, in what we call the Tierra Caliente, where much of the marijuana and opium poppies are grown, in Veracruz, which is a port city on the eastern side of Mexico. [...]
The state is deeply implicated in this and the massacres that we have seen: the disappearance of these students at Ayotzinapa, the killing of twenty innocent civilians at Tlatlaya, another massacre in a town called Apatzingán. There have been multiple places where innocent civilians were killed at the hands of security forces in execution-style killings. We see the Mexican security forces implicated in this violence, in these killings and disappearances. [...]
These Central American migrants are themselves fleeing violence having to do with the destabilization of their societies, which goes back to the US-backed wars in Central America in the 1980s and more recently the overthrow of the Honduran government in 2009. The role of the US in creating the conditions of violence in Central America and then militarizing the southern border has created incredible opportunities for the criminal organizations, particularly a ferocious group known as Los Zetas who emerged from the Mexican special forces and recruited Guatemalan Kaibiles, Guatemalan special forces, and are deadly killers. [...]
One of the biggest problems in Mexico is impunity. Something like over 95 percent of crimes aren’t investigated. People don’t call the police because often the police are corrupt and on the payroll of cartel members. When a family member disappears, for instance, it’s difficult to know who can help you because often the security forces are on the payroll of the people you suspect may have disappeared your loved one. [...]
That’s something that has been pointed out by observers across the political spectrum to Donald Trump. Mexico could stop agreeing to cooperate with the US. They could decide that they do not want to be the proxy militarization of the southern border, for instance. They could decide they no longer want to prosecute a militarized drug war. They could stop cooperating with the US in any number of ways, and that would have incredible consequences for the US, particularly the opposite of what it is that Donald Trump thinks that he is here to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment