Brief History of Mexico
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
Created on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 14:37
The graph that appears in this article has been published with data provided by INEGI and contains the official figures for murders committed on Mexican soil per 100,000 population from 1930 to 2014, with and without the intentional homicide of organized crime.
From the graph it is clear that post-revolutionary killings continued until 1950 with figures ranging from 70 to 50 homicides per 100,000 population. And thereafter the number began to decline reaching a low of 10 homicides per 100,000 population in 1968. Then the figure remained at between 15 and 20 homicides until 1992 and it began to fall until it reached 10 in 2006 which was when organized crime surfaced in Mexico. In the graph it can be seen that without counting the murders of organized crime, the average for homicides per 100,000 population remains at 10.
The biggest spike in killings by organized crime occurred between 2006 and 2010 when the then president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, totally at the service of the United States, declared a frontal war on organized crime that has caused the biggest massacre in the history of modern Mexico. When Buscaglia was at the forefront of the fight against drugs in the United States it became public knowledge that all the money generated by the sale of drugs in the United States was controlled by a department at the exclusive service of the incumbent president, without other authorities having access to that huge source of income. It was also noted that the legislature and senior Pentagon officials had decided that fighting the drug cartels should be done outside US territory because past experience had shown them that the political and financial costs were exorbitant.
This has caused both the DEA and the CIA to establish themselves in Mexico with all kinds of facilities and staff at their service, without the Mexican authorities and top business elites having hinted at the slightest desire to control them and even less to throw them out of the country. There is continuing mockery of the Merida Initiative which is nothing but an American institution that finances all the espionage and the management of drugs in Mexico and Central America, since Colombia has its own control office and the same applies to most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean under their control. In the meantime the situation worsened with the coups sponsored by Washington in Brazil and Argentina.
There is no doubt that Mexico has been under the total control of the United States since the early fifties and only made some progress in the decades between the fifties and seventies, because US companies were established in Mexico creating a significant middle class, but it all came to an end starting in the eighties when neoliberalism emerged throughout the Western world and the Washington Consensus dictated global economic and financial policy, which was particularly fatal to its nearest colonies, as is the case with Mexico.
Given this reality, exposed very clearly in the INEGI graph, and in the face of the imminent continuation of this process of control, all that is left is to try to avoid a violent revolution and think about possible scenarios that will reduce the suffering of the Mexican popular classes by providing new sources of employment to the large portion of the population living in temporary working conditions or at a level of poverty so high that it barely allows them to survive, without access to health, basic education and even to the most minimal levels of fundamental human rights, health and safety.
If one adds to the national tragedy published by the INEGI on homicide rates in Mexico the data from that same agency that signal the growth of the population living in poverty, which, according CONEVAL, has already reached 52 million, there is no other option but to immediately find jobs for the working class, so that at least half of the currently unemployed workforce will be hired, and to multiplying faster than for those with sufficient income to live with dignity.
The inability of an elite consisting of children of the rich and politicians to lead a country of poor people has been so high in recent years that the number of employees covering fiscal, labor and social needs in Mexico barely reaches 17 million in a universe of almost 90 million Mexicans over age 15 and able to work. Fortunately the unexpected development of the automotive industry, the tourism industry and the numerous activities in craft manufacturing which are reopening with the sharp decline of China, can change Mexico’s immediate future, as long as our political leaders do not obstruct those paths by following the fiscal, financial and labor practices imposed on them by Washington.
Addendum: The provisions of Washington that could block the immediate development of Mexico include the secret and forced signing of the Transpacific Partnership agreement (TPP) which gives large Western transnational companies the right to establish trade and financial policies in all nations along the Pacific coastline. The use of tax havens in the United States and the Caribbean to control working capital and the persistence of the dollar as global currency.