Mexicans suffered the third massive crime of the United States in history: invasion and appropriation of half of its country at the point of guns and cannons. And since then Mexicans have witnessed the remaining half of their country occupied and exploited by the American world of business, with the cooperation of Mexico's wealthy and managed elections. (The first being the enslavement and murder of Africans, the second, the murderous subjugation and theft of the lands of the Native nations of America.)
Quoting from a study made by a distinguished Mexican writer and journalist, Gustavo Esteva:
"For some time now the social fabric and soul of Mexico has been torn away. One third of Mexicans are actually living outside of the country --one of the greatest migrations in history. Since the signing of the NAFTA agreement, 20 million Mexican citizens have emigrated, the majority of them, to the United States and Canada, but some to countries as distant as Japan. Most of them are trying to escape from unbearable conditions in their place of origin or to support their families and communities from abroad. (The amount of remittances to Mexico, 22 billion dollars per year, is the second most important source of foreign income for Mexico, after oil).
Mexico no longer operates under a state of law. The violation of human rights, especially rights of some fifty ethnic groups, is a constant. There is also continual persecution of human rights activists, environmentalists, journalists, and particularly, those struggling for social change. There is a regression of democracy, a structural "deviation of power," and the co-optation of the law by distinct corporatist factions. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights defined this as "the use of the powers of the State to persecute and hinder the civil rights of the people." ... According to Amnesty International, the torture practiced by Mexican security forces is a "generalized and systematic" practice that in recent years has "reached scandalous levels." Impunity for these sadistic acts of violence, or human rights violations is practically absolute.
Policies that interfere the internal production of corn deteriorate the economy directly in the indigenous communities, and can be seen as one of the main factors determining migration. The attack on ancestral peasant farming systems, introduction of genetically altered variants and privatization of commons so crucial to native seeds devastates rural life and weakens communities. For the invasion of peasant and indigenous territory for mega projects, mining operations, privatization of water, monoculture plantations, deforestation, and the expropriation of territory via programs for the mercantilization of nature, agro-ecological balance is lost;
The government through dispossession is trying to "clear" people off their communal lands, already given in 50-years concessions to private corporations. These lands occupy more than 30% of Mexico. The owners of the lands, mainly indigenous people are resisting. The Zapatistas poetically embody this resistance.
The pace of environmental destruction is unprecedented. Corrupt deregulation initiatives and massive land concessions handed over to private interests have greatly accelerated the environmental devastation, which in some cases, has resulted in irreversible damage. The air, water, soil/sub-soil, forests, beaches, rivers, lakes, and oceans, all have been subject to rape and degradation through the commodification of nature by corporations.
In short, since the 1990's, Mexico has adopted, in a systemic and institutionalized way, policies and strategies that have produced a progressive decline in the living conditions of the Mexican people and in their possibility to access legal protection when their rights are violated. The government alienates its citizens and marginalizes the rights of the people in the name of macro-economic stability and in order to serve corporate or private interests in larger part those of American speculative investment banking."
Yours truly has many dear Mexican friends that describe this fearfulness of life in Mexico.
Convictions like that of RÃ os Montt will help unmask the Washington-Wall Street domination of elections and hold over unscrupulous politicians not only to the degree of mass homicide, but a slower and greater genocide in Mexico and the many nations to its South.
Good people in general and activists in particular throughout the hemisphere recognize the economic occupation and terrorism by Uncle Sam and are calling for its prosecution as a crime against humanity. Cuba fought for, and got its freedom from economic occupation and slow genocide. Today Cubans enjoy a longevity even a bit higher than that in the US and a lower infant mortality rate than in US.
Americans of good conscience must condemn their nations economic occupation and economic terror in neighboring Mexico and elsewhere.
[see Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now] click here
Forty-seven years ago Martin Luther King Jr. cried out, "Look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the country. This is a role our nation has taken, " refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. This is not just." ... The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government." King said "purveyor" not cause, for he held America, Americans, in anguish including himself, responsible, because the American people are capable of making their economic and military criminal aggression no longer acceptable and inoperable through non-participation, non-support, non-acquiescence and conscientious objection. [see King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign]http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/
End Notes
1
United Fruit owned only some 42 percent of the land, but also railroads, a port, and with other US companies, the Guatemala's utilities.
2
The Somoza family, who ruled Nicaragua as a family dictatorship from 1936 to 1979. Although they only held the presidency for 30 of those 43 years, they were the power behind the other presidents of the time through their control of the National Guard, created by the occupying US Marine Force. Their regime was overthrown by the Sandinista National Liberation Front during the Nicaraguan Revolution. Three of the Somozas served as President of Guatemala.
3
Letter to Colonel Ed House (21 November 1933); as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliot Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373.
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