A Primer on Plan Mexico
By LAURA CARLSEN
Counterpunch
May 8, 2008

On Oct. 22, 2007 President Bush announced the $1.4 billion dollar "Merida Initiative," security aid package to Mexico and Central America. The initiative has fatal flaws in its strategy; instead of leading to a stable binational relationship and peaceful border communities, its military approach will escalate drug-related violence and human rights abuses.

Mexico and the United States face a joint challenge in decreasing transnational organized crime and they must cooperate to strengthen the rule of law and stop illegal drug and arms trafficking over the border. This misguided policy will result in an inability to achieve its own goals and will waste taxpayers' money. It will also seriously undermine the U.S.-Mexico relationship and Mexican stability.

Franco Ordonez | Mexico City | April 23

McClatchy - The price of oil is reaching record levels worldwide, but Mexico, long considered an oil power, is failing to reap the rewards because its state-owned oil company hasn't developed many of the areas known to be rich in petroleum.

President Felipe Calderon this month proposed allowing the ailing state oil company to contract with international companies to help drill deeper in those areas. But leftist lawmakers have blocked the legislation to allow that, claiming that Calderon's proposal amounts to privatizing a national treasure.

José Can You See? Bush’s Trojan Taco
By Greg Palast
Monday, April 21, 2008
(For TomPaine.com)
(Listen to the Podcast here)

Psst! George Bush has a secret

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

Pablo Bachelet | Washington | April 19

McClatchy - An empowered Democratic Party has taken command of U.S. policy toward Latin America, stalling a free-trade agreement and taking aim at military aid programs for Colombia and Mexico.

This assertiveness began after Democrats took control of Congress in early 2007, but it took a dramatic turn in recent weeks, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derailing an effort by President Bush to force a vote on a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Beyond taking aim at military aid, Democrats say they want a new approach toward Latin America.

Dodd proposed a new ''strategic partnership'' based on broader public security and rule of law, poverty and inequality and energy integration.

He said changing the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba would help Washington reengage with Latin America.

Miguel Garcia Tinoco | Uruapan, Mexico | April 18

Reuters - A Mexican army helicopter crashed during anti-narcotics operations in western Mexico on Friday, killing 11 soldiers, local authorities said.

The helicopter went down at around midday in a rural area in Michoacan state, a major front in the government's army-led war against drug cartels, Michoacan's state attorney general's office said, without giving the cause of the crash.

"There are 11 men dead, including a colonel, and one soldier was injured. We do not yet know the cause," a spokesman said.

The helicopter wreckage lay on the ground in several chunks, surrounded by dozens of police. A child at the scene told Reuters he saw it plummet out of the sky and hit a tree.

April 17

BBC - A sit-in protest by leftist politicians over energy reform plans has forced Mexico's Congress to relocate for the first time in almost 20 years.

Lawmakers had to cram into conference rooms to press ahead with routine business on Tuesday.

Leftist MPs seized the podiums of both houses last week in protest at plans to ease limits on private involvement in the state oil giant, Pemex.

The government says Pemex needs outside investment to boost falling production.

Congress has only been forced out of its chamber a handful of times in Mexican history - the last time was in 1989 when the lower house had to evacuate because of a fire.

Mexico City | April 11

UPI - Mexican lawmakers rushed the speakers' podiums of both houses of Congress in opposition to a proposed energy reform bill, said Mexican officials.

The opposition leaders from both the House and Senate were denouncing President Felipe Calderon's energy reform proposal, which would allow outside energy firms to invest in Mexico's state-owned energy company PEMEX, El Universal reported Thursday.

Critics of the bill contend the reform would dilute profits from PEMEX, which is the major source of federal revenue for Mexico's budget.

10 Reasons to Look Critically at Dissolving Mexico-U.S.-Canada Borders
By Manuel Pérez Rocha and Sarah Anderson,
AlterNet. Posted April 9, 2008

Hint: Xenophobic right-wing conspiracy theories about a mythical North American Union are not among them.

This month, President Bush will host the leaders of Canada and Mexico to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a project Lou Dobbs has predicted will "end the United States as we know it."

Lou sounds downright blasé, though, compared to all the online ranting and raving on this subject. And while there are plenty of reasons for progressives to be up in arms over this effort to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement, the xenophobes have clearly cornered the market.

In their paranoid fantasies, the three North American executive powers are secretly plotting to surrender everything they hold dear about the good ol' USA. The U.S. borders, the flag, and even the almighty American dollar would disappear as the country is submerged into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.

By Franco Ordonez | Ciudad Juarez | April 6

McClatchy - The gunmen caught their target on his way home.

Police Cmdr. Juan Manuel Flores had just finished his shift on Easter and was pulling onto a dirt road in his quiet neighborhood of run-down adobe homes. Out of nowhere, two SUVs darted out and cut him off, forcing him to drive his car into a palm tree on the sidewalk.

Neighbors scattered for cover as masked men stepped out of the vehicles and for six minutes fired a barrage of AK-47 fire into the officer's blue 1998 Dodge Neon, police and witnesses said. One of the masked men then walked to Flores' battered car and fired a final shot to ensure that the officer was dead.

"He never had a chance to reach for his pistol," said Jaime Torres, a spokesman for the police department.

The killing March 23 was the eighth assassination of a police officer this year in this border town across from El Paso, Texas. Several days later, the Mexican government sent in the army.

Mexico City | April 3

Reuters - Mexico City on Thursday banned cigarette smoking in all public places, from bars to office buildings, to reduce the amount of carcinogens inhaled by residents of the smog-filled capital.

The city, home to some 18 million people in the metropolitan area, is the latest large city around the world to pass a smoking ban to improve public health and protect nonsmokers from secondary smoke.

But not all Mexicans are happy about the prospect of smoke-free cantinas where tequila and cigarettes are traditionally enjoyed hand-in-hand.

"Right now I'm fine, but later tonight -- after a couple of drinks -- I'm going to really want one," said 26-year-old Rodrigo Nunez, a smoker and government office worker playing a game of pool in a bar in the fashionable Condesa neighborhood on his lunch break.

Franco Ordonez | Mexico City | March 29

McClatchy - Nearly 1,000 Mexican troops arrived at the Ciudad Juarez airport Friday to deal with a surge in drug war violence that's sent tremors throughout the country, local media reported.

Mexican authorities said they're part of the more than 2,000 soldiers and federal policemen involved in "Operation Joint Chihuahua" who are being dispatched to combat narcotrafficking operations that have terrorized much of the state of Chihuahua, particularly Ciudad Juarez, Palomas and the city of Chihuahua, the state capital.

More than 200 people have been killed in the area, which borders El Paso, Texas, since the beginning of the year, according to local media reports. Thirty were killed over the Easter weekend.

London | March 21

BBC - European colonisation of South America resulted in a dramatic shift from a native American population to a largely mixed one, a genetic study has shown.

It suggests male European settlers mated with native and African women, and slaughtered the men.

Farmers in Mexico protest it, blue collar workers blame it, and Democratic presidential candidates scapegoat it. It put Canada through an industrial readjustment, it forced Mexican farmers into industrial shantytowns, and it spurred protectionist talk in America. But for all the negative press NAFTA receives, it's important we note the advantages it's provided.

Now, some of these alleged advantages are suspect, because they cherry-pick numbers to create an economic argument that goes over most of our heads. But there is one positive consequence of NAFTA that requires no background in economic theory whatsoever; it played an integral role in the reformation of Mexican politics.

Economics often lights the political touchpaper, prompting wars, riots, revolutions, and, sometimes, a transition to democracy. That's exactly what it did in Mexico.

Marla Dickerson & Richard Marosi | Mexico City | March 15

LAT - Authorities in Ciudad Juarez said Friday that they had uncovered the remains of 33 people buried in the yard of an abandoned property, a mass grave believed to be linked to the city's violent drug trade.

The grisly discovery surfaced as part of a recent government crackdown on narcotics traffickers in this city across the border from El Paso that has been gripped by a spasm of drug-related killing unseen in years. Authorities said the Juarez drug cartel might be involved in the deaths.

Havana | March 15

M&C - Mexico and Cuba have ended their years of frozen relations and declared not only are they 'fully normalized' but they also plan close bilateral and international cooperation.

Cuban President Raul Castro has invited his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, to visit Cuba, the foreign ministers of both countries said Thursday night at the end of their meeting in Havana.

Calderon has worked since his inauguration in December 2006 to normalize relations, which have historically been warm between the two nations but turned chilly under his predecessor Vicente Fox, who criticized former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

'Relations between Mexico and Cuba are fully normalized,' Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said ahead of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque's visit to Mexico in September, when he is to formally present Cuba's invitation to Calderon.

Perez Roque announced that Cuba would support Mexico's bid to take up one of the 10 rotating seats on the 15-member UN Security Council at the next UN General Assembly meeting.

MARK STEVENSON | PALENQUE, Mexico | March 11

AP - North American Indians assembled in the shadow of ancient Mayan pyramids Monday discussed how their tradition wisdom could help save the planet, and were told that even indigenous cultures have struggled with environmental abuse.

More than 200 leaders from 71 American Indian nations in Mexico, the United States and Canada came together in this Mexican jungle to find indigenous solutions to pollution and ecological problems threatening the planet.

"Our Mother Earth is being polluted at an alarming rate, and our elders say that she is dying," said Raymond Sensmeier, a Tlingit leader from Yakutat, Alaska. "The way the weather is around the world ... a cleansing is needed."

Christopher Sherman | Hidalgo | March 2

AP - Some are dented, scratched and rusty. Others rattle and belch under faded paint jobs. But the "'98" soaped onto their windshields and a surprise change in Mexican import rules have turned a single year's worth of used cars into pick of the used-car lot.

Beginning Monday, only cars built in 1998 -- none older and none newer -- can be legally imported into Mexico. Car dealers were given notice only a month ago.

Until now, used cars 10 to 15 years old were scooped up at auction by South Texas used car dealers and rapidly sold to Mexicans hungry for affordable transportation and "la novedad" -- or novelty -- of unfamiliar makes and models.

Mark Stevenson | Santa Maria Quiegolani, Mexico | January 27

LA Times - Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of Oaxaca rise each morning at 4 a.m. to gather firewood, grind corn, prepare the day's food, care for the children and clean the house.

But they aren't allowed to vote in local elections, because -- the men say -- they don't do enough work.

It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor -- despite the fact that women aren't allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office.

The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn't a "citizen" of the town. "That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women," said Valeriano Lopez, the town's deputy mayor.

James C. McKinley | Morella, Mexico | December 18

NYT - Mexico’s country music stars are being killed at an alarming rate — 13 in the past year and a half, three already in December — in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here.

None of the cases have been solved. All have borne the signs of Mexican underworld executions, sending a chill through the ranks of other grupero musicians, who sing to a country beat about love, violence and drugs in modern Mexico.

One of the most shocking attacks was the kidnapping of Sergio Gómez, the founder and lead singer of K-Paz de la Sierra, who was seized as he left a concert in his home state of Michoacán early on the morning of Dec. 2.

Jo Tuckman | Mexico City | Dec 6

· Death of two singers takes toll into double figures
· No obvious links to the nation's drug cartels

The Guardian - Mexican musicians are trying to close ranks after assassins killed two singers in the space of a few hours - following a year in which at least eight others in the profession have died violently.

Sergio Gómez, the leader of the hugely popular K-Paz de la Sierra group, was kidnapped after playing a stadium in the central state of Michoacán on Saturday night. His battered, burned, and strangled body was found dumped on a roadside on Monday. Kayda Peña survived a bullet in the back during an assault on her hotel in the border city of Matamoros on Saturday only to be killed by gunmen later with two shots to the face while being treated in hospital. A female friend and a hotel employee had already died in the initial attack.

With the ongoing debate about our immigration policy and lack of enforcement of current immigration laws, one thing has been made painfully clear in all the rhetoric and hub-bub. It is all the Mexicans fault and if they would just go back to Mexico and quit jumping the border America would be alright. This is the current solution to the immigration problem being bandied about by the Republicans. Basically we need to build a giant wall like in Israel and shoot anybody that tries to cross it. It’s amazing but since 9/11 illegal immigrants have now all been branded with the terrorists iron, so now not only are they taking the jobs of hard working Americans they are also planning some subversive activities.

Sara Miller Llana | Villahermosa, Mexico | Nov 5

CSM - Flooding leaves some 1 million people homeless in the southern oil state of Tabasco.

As water rose to the roof of his home – nearly covering it as it has covered 80 percent of the Mexican state of Tabasco – Oscar Durango says there was nothing else to do but pitch in.

"I lost everything," he says, standing in the hangar at the airport of Tabasco's state capital, Villahermosa, before loading baby food and bottles of water into military helicopters for the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans displaced by the nation's worst flooding in 50 years. Mr. Durango is surrounded by a dozen other volunteers. All have lost their homes. "The only thing you can do is help others," he shrugs.

It's estimated that half of the 2.2 million residents of this southern, oil-rich state have been turned out by the floods. From the air, the state looks like a single lake with roofs and treetops poking out of the brackish water like islands. Most of the capital is submerged, and tens of thousands of Mexicans are still stranded, a scene suggestive of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Military officials say they're trying to rescue some 300,000 Mexicans still left stranded in their homes, including many on their rooftops.

How to help after the jump

Jo Tuckman | Mexico City | Nov 1

The Guardian - Tens of thousands of people have fled to shelters in south-eastern Mexico after the worst floods in living memory in the area destroyed their homes and harvests. The authorities say the floods are expected to get worse.

Rooftops peeked above the water yesterday in the city of Villahermosa, capital of the state of Tabasco, which has been the worst hit by the catastrophe. Vast swaths of agricultural land throughout the state were under water. Some of the giant nine-metre stone heads carved by America's first great civilisation, the Olmecs, were only half visible at the La Venta archaeological site.

"In 48 hours the state has been devastated," the state's governor, Andres Granier, said. He stressed the particularly difficult situation of the capital. "Villahermosa is in a hole, below the level of the rivers," he told a news programme as he appealed for help from the army. "We are just like New Orleans in 2005. All the water that comes in has to be pumped out."

Héctor Tobar | Tenosique, Mexico | Oct 26

LA Times -
The Chiapas-Mayab Railroad in Mexico gave U.S.-bound migrants a shortcut; its closure has left few options.

A freight train once ran through this town near the Guatemalan border. It carried cattle feed, cement and steel. Every day, a hundred or more men and women jumped on its rattletrap cars and hitched a free ride northward.

Few locals miss the train, which stopped operating in July. But for the Central American immigrants who pass through southern Mexico on a desperate, 1,200-mile odyssey to the United States, the line's closure is a disaster of epic proportions.

Small groups of men and women now walk for days along the tracks, carried forward by the false hope that the trains might be running at the next station. A few stop only after walking 100 miles or more. Many more from Central America continue to arrive in Tenosique and other border towns believing that the railroad will soon restart.

The absence of the train has led to a local boom in immigrant smuggling. On Thursday, a boat with 26 illegal immigrants, most of them Salvadorans, sank in the Pacific off Oaxaca. By Sunday, 15 bodies had washed up and two survivors had been rescued.

For a generation of Central American migrants, the Chiapas-Mayab Railroad was an essential shortcut on the long journey north to the U.S. border.

Adam Thomson | San José, Costa Rica | Oct 7

FT - The US intends to supply Mexico with a $1bn aid package to help combat an increasingly costly and violent war against drugs, according to a top Mexican diplomat.

The agreement, which some experts have dubbed ”Plan Mexico” after the controversial multi-billion-dollar anti-narcotics package the US established with Colombia in 2000, would be spread out over two years and include the supply of intelligence, training and equipment such as helicopters and boats.

However, Carlos Rico, Mexico’s undersecretary for North American affairs, said the plan would not resemble the aid package with Colombia. In particular, he said, no US troops would be allowed to operate on Mexican soil, thus sidestepping the particularly sensitive issue of Mexican sovereignty.