The Macro-Economics of Murder in Mexico

My friend @teyaochihuani sent me this article he translated by Norberto Emmerich on the ongoing dirty war in Mexico and he is kindly allowing me to reprint it here so enjoy.

The Crisis of Human Rights in Mexico and the Macroeconomic Indicators” by Norberto Emmerich via @Revolucion3_0 translated by @teyaochihuani http://revoluciontrespuntocero.com/la­crisis­de­derechos­humanos­en­mexico­y­los­indicadores­ macroeconomicos/
On December 31, 2015, in its report titled "The situation of human rights in Mexico", the Inter­American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) stated that in Mexico the administration of justice is a "simulation" and that while the Mexican State itself reported 26,798 people "not located" or missing nationwide, there were only issued six sentences at the federal level for the crime of forced disappearance. Regarding the 43 missing of Ayotzinapa the report argues that it is "an emblematic example of the apparent collusion between state agents and members of organized crime," adding that "the practice of torture is alarming."

In short, the Commission states "Mexico has been experiencing a serious crisis of violence and security for several years," a "serious human rights crisis (which) was observed on the ground and is characterized by an extreme situation of insecurity and violence".

Beyond the overwhelming data on violations of human rights that the Mexican state systematically implements (although the Commission is unaware that the security crisis and human rights crisis are not the same thing and are not processes that should necessarily be related) it’s important to know there is a material basis that systemically "justifies" both crises.
As in Colombia in the 80s it was asserted that capitalist development was based on a system of "profits through blood and fire," it remains to be seen if in Mexico there is a similar less generic and more specific correlative to explain the "human rights crisis" underway.

Mexican GDP growth for 2016 is expected to be 2.4%, after the IMF corrected downwards its forecast of January 2016, which in turn corrected downward forecasts of October 2015. While the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are impacted by the global decline in oil prices, "the exhibition of the Mexican economy to oil exports is not as big." On the other hand foreign direct investment (FDI), which was US$24.837 billion in 2015, will be US$28.695 billion in 2016. The World Bank says that GDP growth in the LAC region is completely stagnated in 2015, but since Mexico grew less than the rest in the boom period, it’s picking up rapidly under rising consumption in the United States.

Although the global economy continues to recover, it does so at an increasingly fragile slower pace and where the downward scenarios are more likely to materialize. In a regional context of widespread falls (­3.5 Brazil, Argentina ­1.0; ­8.0 Venezuela, Ecuador ­4.5) only Colombia (2.7), USA (2.6) and Mexico (2.4) contradict the current. Meanwhile on a global level Russia falls 1.0 and China continues to decrease in rate of growth (6.9 in 2015, 6.3 in 2016).

How are the security crisis and these good macroeconomic indicators related?, a question that addresses the overlap between the legal and illegal economy. One example is drug money
laundering by financial institutions such as HSBC, Citigroup and Santander, denounced for allowing money laundering through their accounts. Another is the relationship between drug cartels in Michoacán that control the exploitation of iron and transnationals like Ternium, Arcelor Mittal and Endeavour Silver.

More specifically the murder of Bernardo Mendez, for opposing the Fortuna Silver Mines in Oaxaca, those of Ismael Solorio and Manuela Solís, against mining company MAG Silver in Sonora, or Betty Cariño, against mining company New Gold in San Luis Potosí, show a wide diffusion of the boundary between legal and illegal, what is usually referred to as primitive accumulation of capital.

Frequent attacks against various Indigenous communities respond to the need to implement projects that extend the extractive and agribusiness border or for the construction of major infrastructure. The conflict of the Yaquis by the Independence Aqueduct shows this matrix.
To a large extent the human rights crisis is the result of the current economic development model in Mexico. In the first place this model sharpens the limitations involving large collective farmers, indigenous and urban populations. The privatization of strategic natural resources, trade pacts that deregulate the land, the closure of access to sources of water supply, extractive pressures on forests and woodlands, aggravated by the energy reform and the Mining Law, signify a needed concatenation between development and violation of rights. Secondly, economic growth that comes from the very large investments, carries with it the rules of entrepreneurship of the global economy itself, with one­sided contracts, special legislation, flattening of wages, deunionization of labor and flexibility all along the line.


This systematic violation of human rights is necessary, not only convenient for the current success of the model of economic development in Mexico. Mexican development does not arise spontaneously with the sole requirement of the "invisible hand "and self­regulation of market laws. A strong state interventionism arbitrates between dissonant actors, furious localism and scarce resources, where everything, especially geography conspires against.


Given the geopolitical conditioning itself of a country surrounded by deserts to the north, jungle to the south and mountains to the east and west, without any navigable river in its territory, where the areas of production and consumption are far from each other and it is also neighbor of US, the strategic maintenance of an average growth rate of 2.5% (slightly surpassing the American rate) can only take place in a context of regional recession and weak global growth by exercising extreme pressure on the country’s productive substratum: geography and population.
In addition, although 46% poverty softens the dispute over participation in national income, the existence of a sclerotic party system does not allow processing and channeling of demands, quickly turning them unconstitutional. That the poverty rate in Veracruz is 58% (17% in extreme poverty) helps to understand one aspect of the crisis of human rights there. The other aspect has to do with the millionaire investments that are destined to the port authority and the need to
regiment the riotous participation in a growing income, a more urgent task there than anywhere else.
The relative welfare and progressivism in which millions of people live Mexico City sits atop the cruelty of a ruling class that understands (correctly) that to grow is to prey and repress.