A photo of the despicable, Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president leaving office on December 1st, has been symbolically splattered in a protest giving this butcher the contemptuous send-off he deserves. Actually, spitting fake blood at his photo isn’t retribution enough for this criminal; his crimes warrant arrest, prosecution, incarceration. In his 6-year tenure, an estimated 60,000 Mexican civilians have been murdered in the US-bankrolled war on drug trafficking; thousands of Central American immigrants have been raped, kidnapped, disappeared, murdered, & had their dismembered bodies dumped. Meanwhile, in his tenure, marijuana production has grown by 35% & Mexico has become the second largest opium producer in the world--& the 45,000 troops deployed by Calderon can’t find the fields!? They can’t find the drug traffickers either since only 20 are reported arrested in the past 6 years.
Since there is no question the Mexican elites like Calderon organize, control, & profit from drug trafficking (& US banks launder the dough), the so-called war on drugs has more nefarious purpose. The military & paramilitary violence is deployed not to stop drug trafficking but to deter immigration to the US by making passage through Mexico a living hell. But it is also a war on the Mexican people who have endured the predations of NAFTA & the imposition of neoliberal agricultural models; it is to prevent the emergence of political resistance among Mexican working people.
We join our Mexican brothers & sisters in giving a kick in the ass to Calderon on his way out the door, though his policies, in collusion with the US, are likely to remain intact under the new regime. Mexico has a rich heritage of social protest despite political repression & we stand with them also in solidarity with their struggles for social transformation. (Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP)
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