U.S."Drug War" a Disaster in Northern Mexico

On the trail with the Zapatista Other Campaign, Dan Feder files a report from the lands of the Mexican North, plagued with negative side-effects of neoliberalism and the infamous U.S. "War on Drugs." For over two decades these policies have led to extreme corruption that has left the general public at the mercy of those who wield political-economic power.

Feder reports on the complaints of the common people to the Other Campaign, which plans to fight these problems, among many others, in their creation of an "Other Mexico."

Feder reports:

"...Over the last two decades or so, two big changes have been especially noticeable in northern Mexico. The first is la maquila: the simultaneous death of the small farms that once sustained much of the population and explosion of the maquiladora industry (maquiladora being a Spanish word probably best translated as "sweatshop"; maquiladoras are assembly plants making everything from clothes to car parts for foreign, mostly U.S. companies that take advantage of the minuscule wages and low standards for working conditions).

"The second is el narcotrafico: the drug trade. This is the land that gave us the 'House of Death' - a land where politicians, Mexican police and U.S. narcotics agents do the same dance year after year, making and breaking alliances, plugging up one leak while another two spring out, claiming to be fighting harder and harder at the same time that it becomes more and more difficult to tell the cops from the robbers.

"Since early October, Subcomandante Marcos, spokesman for the Zapatista Army of Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish initials), has been traveling through Mexico's northern states, listening to people from hundreds of communities tell of their own lives and struggles. They are struggles he and his allies in the 'Other Campaign' hope to unite in a national uprising to create an 'Other Mexico,' a country built up 'from below and to the left,' free of the corrupt rule of political parties, the rich and domination by the United States and other powerful foreign nations."

Read the complete report at The Narco News Bulletin:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue43/article2346.html

From somewhere in a country called América,
David Briones
Webmaster
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

ENDS

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