Latin American Notes

Plan Mexico

Plan Mexico or the "Merida Initiative" has been signed into law by President Bush. It is an aid package of $400 million dollars, that could go up to $1.6 billion over three years. It goes to Mexico, Central American, and Caribbean countries for security aid to design and carry out counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security measures. Most of the money is going to the Mexican Armed Forces and Federal Police Force, with Customs, Immigration, and Communications receiving the remainder.

The Plan supports (or directs) Mexican President Felipe Calderon's militarization of the border initiative. Since taking office at the end of 2006, he has mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers to the northern border states in an effort to fight drug trafficking. However, so corrupt are the various police forces close to the border, and so infested with rival narco-traffic cartels/gangs are the border states and cities, that the result has been, not an interdiction of drugs, but an escalation of gang murders and kidnappings to unprecedented levels.

Mexican society, particularly at the border, has become more militarized than ever, obscuring the difference between organized narco-trafficking on both sides of the border and the migration of Mexicans and other Latin Americans in search of work. As an American Policies Program Special Report on Plan Mexico notes: "Plan Mexico intensifies border conflict by viewing immigration through the same military lens as terrorism and organized crime" (see http://americas.irc-online.org). Meanwhile, human rights protections that were supposed to be written into Plan Mexico were greatly weakened, thus turning a blind eye to Mexico's frequent repression of social protest at the federal, state and municipal levels.

Bolivia's referendum

In a complex referendum vote, Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, was reconfirmed in office with an approval of some 65%, surpassing his initial (December 2005) election vote of 53%. He won majorities in five of Bolivia's nine departments, including La Paz and Cochabamba, approximately 50% of the vote in two other departments, and lost two departments. Clearly, among the vast majority of Bolivia's ten million people the President has increased his support since the end of 2005.

However, the governors in five regions--who oppose Morales, seek control of revenues and oppose possible nationalization of industries, and the new Constitution that has been drafted--also won their individual recall elections. Thus, they retain political power within their own regions. This is particularly important in the wealthy Santa Cruz department, where Morales did not receive a majority vote and where Governor Ruben Costas, using racist ideology, was reconfirmed in office. Much economic power remains outside of Morales' control. Costas and his supporters continue to perpetuate a racist division of the country: Indigenous vs. white, which is class-based. It is their economic class power combined with racist ideology that threatens Bolivia's new beginning post-2005, even as a substantial majority of the population supports Morales. Where autonomy demands were originally raised as part of Indigenous demands for self-determination within Bolivia, the governors and the business class are attempting to use it to defy the will of the Bolivian masses.

How the issue of autonomy, together with approval and implementation of the new Constitution, plays out, remains a crucial question for Bolivia's immediate future.

--E.W.

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