Is another Egypt brewing in Mexico?

President Barack Obama and Mexico’s illegitimate President Felipe Calderón met March 3 at the White House and announced plans to work further together.

Specifically, the two presidents, according to the New York Times, announced a “breakthrough on a festering trade dispute” about Mexican trucks operating on U.S. soil. After a long-standing dispute, one where the Teamsters union fought against the use of Mexican trucks on U.S. highways, Obama said a plan for cross-border trucking would begin.

Of more significance, Obama commended Calderón’s efforts on the drug war that makes U.S. news almost every day.

Since Calderón stole the presidential election in 2006, Mexico’s drug war has cost over 35,000 Mexican lives. It has become a war against the people, not a war to stop drugs.

Mexico has ominously become ever more militarized and protest has become increasingly “criminalized.” Innocent lives have been lost. The Mexican government has used the drug industry to terrorize the people, attack political activists and has attempted to instill fear and terror among the masses.

Yet President Obama said not a word about the actual situation gripping Mexico. Instead, he authorized the handover of more money — stolen from the people of this country — to the Mexican government under the Merida Initiative, an accord that is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA.

For example, Obama announced that the U.S. would now expedite the delivery of military equipment as well as training that Washington had promised Mexico under the Merida Initiative.

Drug war part of intense imperialist design

U.S. media coverage of the March 3 meeting referred to tensions between the two countries. This characterization is misleading and distorts reality: Calderón is totally in the hands of U.S. imperialism.

Any publicity of a rift between the two governments is meant to mask U.S. imperialism’s increasing attempt to dominate Mexico. It is also meant to pay lip-service to the Mexican people’s centuries-old resistance to U.S. control.

The U.S.-Calderón plan to use the so-called drug war to facilitate U.S. control of Mexico is growing more ominous. James Cockcroft, the author of several books on Mexico and Latin America, takes this complicity between imperialism and the Mexican bourgeoisie even further. Cockcroft writes:

“Some describe Calderón as the ‘most visible figure of the mafia’ who is trying to create a military police state. This includes the participation of the capos [drug leaders] in the administration of society, not as a parallel state or a state within the state but as an integral part of the state. As Calderón himself has recognized, in some parts of Mexico narco kingpins charge taxes, impose laws and curfews, and build public support with their neighborhood social service projects.”

This glaringly highlights the militarization of Mexico. Whether it is by legal or extralegal means, U.S. imperialism and the Mexican puppets who do their bidding are militarizing the country in preparation for further domination and a total assault on the Mexican people.

Cockcroft states: “Calderón is throwing away national sovereignty by integrating Mexico with the United States.”

According to Mexican researcher, political scientist and activist Gilberto López y Rivas, who writes in Contralinea.mx, an investigative publication, “Calderón is on a path to completely sell out Mexico’s autonomy.”

López, a member of Paz Con Democracia (Peace with Democracy), reveals the dangerous “Plan Mexico 2030: Project of Great Vision,” which, according to López, totally violates the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and guarantees “the future integral occupation” of Mexico by the U.S., which will finish off the Mexican state.

The plan lays out a program for the “privatization of the energy sector, biosphere reserves, education, social security for state employees, and other public sectors” and calls for repression of political movements.

Obviously the plan is already under way. Harassment and jailing of activists continues unabated. Clearly this plan was behind events in 2009 to privatize Mexico’s public electrical company and eliminate 40,000 jobs, laying off electrical workers who are members of the SME union.

At that time Calderón used Mexican army troops to seize the power plants from the electrical workers, ushering in a wave of righteous struggle against this attack on unions. That struggle continues to this day.

Despite U.S.-Mexican plans to sell out Mexico’s sovereignty, take over Mexico’s natural resources and repress the Mexican people, a righteous fightback is sweeping the country on the southern U.S. border.

After decades of imperialist exploitation, conditions there are leading to momentous developments exactly like the world witnessed in Egypt. After decades of a cruel dictatorship, the Egyptian people’s mass struggle brought down General Mubarak, a total U.S. puppet.

From Egypt to Mexico, from Tahrir Square to Zocalo Square to the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, these developments demonstrate that it is the masses who are the agents of change.