Paper of COMECOM public forum. February 18, 2011.
Militarization, a false solution to the economic and social problems in our country.
The militarization process that we live in Mexico is not recent, it started in the last six years or with alternating party in the federal government. However, we identified an intensification of this phenomenon in recent years that it is extremely worrying and requires reflection and organization society. We assume that the deterioration of the process of militarization is caused by the import of the security agenda of the United States through the logistical and financial support comes from the Merida Initiative, NAFTA military complement. As is known, the pair of free trade agreements, the United States promotes binational security agreements (such as Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative itself) or regional (Central America and Caribbean Basin). These agreements, in addition to explicit objectives of the policies promoted by the United States (fighting organized crime, war on terror, war on drugs) are used to harass and eliminate opponents of the States that sign at the same time provide a highly effective mechanism of social control.
Based on the above, we start by noting that the process of militarization that we are living in Mexico in recent years has meant a de facto state of siege that has left totally defenseless inhabitants of regions and cities as Juárez, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Guerrero, Nuevo León, etc. As a result of the siege, we have witnessed a social setting in which human rights violations committed by the armed forces not only widespread, but occur with impunity. In parallel with the Mexican government has seized on the rhetoric of war, which was previously not expressed publicly, which undoubtedly contributes not only to more violence, but also promotes and justifies a military culture that is spreading among the population and especially among youth.
The arguments for this move towards the militarization and authoritarianism justification focused on expanding the so-called organized crime, particularly drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. However, there is talk of conditions, economic and social factors that have resulted in a greater percentage of society is incorporated in these activities
Participants at the Metropolitan Coordinating Militarization and State Violence consider it necessary to set aside the speeches that promote fear and posed the problem in terms of good against evil, and that, so far, the result of this way of posing the problem by the Mexican government has covered up a situation that must be described as a humanitarian crisis, in which various sectors, among them women, youth and migrants, are a perennial target of different types of violence, especially that which comes from the state itself.
is important to say that what happens in Mexico is the materialization of a historical process which has promoted massive impoverishment of the population, job insecurity, reduced government spending on education, health and pension systems. However, when the mass media, government officials or "specialists" in the subject, speak of the "terrible climate of insecurity" in which we live, they fail to explain that this uncertainty comes from the attack on social guarantees, the destruction and the future expectations of millions of children and youth and atomization society that promotes the culture of individualism.
Breach of the obligation of the State to ensure, promote and monitor human rights of all people, and the lack of punishment for those guilty of human rights violations lead to uncertainty, but this uncertainty is channeled by the fear of crime that promote, the media, big corporations and the ruling elites of the country. In his
against insecurity has also omitted the fact that another aspect of the militarization process has nothing to do with prosecuting or punishing drug dealers and kidnappers, but was directed against poor and social activists. Through the policy of creating "internal enemies", the state criminalizes poverty, social protest and dissent. Thus, the discourse of "security" is appropriate when used to contain the effects of neoliberal disaster, both socioeconomic, whose example is the proliferation of survival strategies that are at the margins of legality, as the effects of legal and legitimate resistance to the looting, the looting and the systematic attack on the living conditions of the working class and the general population.
In this regard we note that the policy of militarization also activated when placed at risk gain most powerful businessmen of the country or abroad. As an example we can refer to cases in which indigenous and peasant communities defend their territory and the ways that are ancestrally related to it. In all these cases the repressive forces that are created, professionalized and which is for large portions of public funds are used to ensure the exploitation of strategic resources such as minerals, access to biodiversity, water or any other element that is market appeal. This is what actually happens in different parts of the country where mining threatens to break into the territory polluting the environment. The same applies in the territories in dispute because they offer substantial gains as happens now in Lomas de Poleo, Ciudad Juárez, or as happened in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico State. Nor should we ignore
that militarization is an indispensable resource for governments illegitimate and lacking political offers genuine content: Strong Hand, surveillance cameras, zero tolerance and safe backpack programs, is all that the political class is willing to offer. Why huge sums of money in their propaganda of fear, for it promotes distrust, betrayal, the tearing of tissue social.
The Mexican State and the mass media are determined to raise the issue because it crudely, like the white movement against crime, they argue it is vital that we conduct ourselves in an apolitical, just ask for solutions do not solve social inequalities, which paves the way to authoritarianism and practices that violate human rights. We know this is false, that the problems of insecurity and violence in the state are highly political issues because they are the result of government policies, which reflect the need to build enemies to legitimize a political system degraded and corrupt, which operates with the complicity of the state enterprises and to facilitate market intervention in each area of \u200b\u200bthe country that will be profitable.
death figures.
The numbers are compelling, since the beginning of the administration of President Felipe Calderon at the end of 2010, have died in the words of the technical secretary of the National Security Council, Alejandro Poire 33 797 people in the context of today call "fight against drug trafficking." [1]
for us even to separate the number of deaths among the fighting caused by "drug cartels" and those caused by act of the armed forces, both have the same structural origin, as the posters would not exist without the series of government policies that have been developed for at least 30 years in the country, its existence is a result of violence that the State implements its policies by cutting social spending.
"In Ciudad Juárez were 191 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, confirming the city as the most violent in the world." [2] This is another result of the strategy of fear and social control that the government has implemented. Another terrible example of deaths is shown in a study released last month by Network for the Rights of the Child. In Mexico, "nine out of 100 000 adolescents (15 to 17 years) being killed, but in Chihuahua ... the number is 45." The study of the network ensures that it remains Baja California Chihuahua with a rate of of 23.7 homicides per 100 thousand [3] ,
is evident that the structural conditions of work expectations deny thousands of young people and throw them into situations that facilitate their enrollment in the drug cartels that confirms one's SEDENA in a report published by electronic means:
"For the government of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón (December 2000 to December 2009), 326 thousand children have lost their lives in the so-called war against organized crime. Of the total, 600 have died in gunfights between drug traffickers and suspected criminals and authorities, the other 726, ranging in age from 15 to 17 years old, were killed by gunmen or narcomenudistas be revealed control of the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) "... In the first period December 2006 to February 2010 (management of Felipe Calderón), the Department of Defense has recorded 600 deaths of children, who allegedly participated as retail drug dealers or killers. 40 percent of cases occurred in April 2009 to 28 February this year, by adding 173 cases " [4] .
These data are significant because they prove once again that one of the sectors of the population being beaten more strongly by the federal government's strategy is the youth, that which, as we said, are feeling the brunt of state violence that ensures a dignified way of life and faces a hypocritical society in which, on the one hand, it rewards the accumulation of money, regardless of the means to obtain, but, on the other hand, he decries the drug. Another figure
unfortunate is the number of women murdered: 1.080, from 2006 to 2010 according to Documents SEDENA, this number increases as we approach the present, as only 427 cases in 2010 occurred.
The above figures allow us to assert that the Mexican government has decided to intensify, in the last four years, the implementation of a war that deeply affect us and that aims at the imposition of an unjust economic model and speed up the absolute control society, eliminating all dissent.
Human Rights Violations.
The war imposed on us by the Mexican government aggravates the already critical situation with respect to the violation of human rights of the population. A poverty that affecting 80 million Mexicans in 2008 and involves the permanent and systematic violation of other human rights including the right to gainful employment, to education, health, recreation, housing etc. [5] we add the violation of the rights of the population that has decided to organize and protest against these conditions and against the State takes decisions without consulting them.
As the above examples we can cite the repression that occurred in May 2006 against the movement of San Salvador Atenco, and had, among other results, two people dead, hundreds of prisoners more tortured and sexually assaulted 20 women, the repression of the Oaxacan social movement that reached its peak in October and November 2006 and produced more than 20 extra-judicially executed hundreds of prisoners and torture, and repression the Morelos teachers' movement that occurred in 2008, which showed figures of dozens of prisoners and tortured.
In all previous cases were violated rights to life, physical and moral integrity, the organization, to free expression of ideas, expression, free transit, to due process, among others. But we also have more recent examples of acts that constitute gross violations of human rights: extrajudicial execution of eleven social activists in 2010 [6] , among which are Josefina Reyes Salazar, who fought against military abuses in Ciudad Juárez and was executed on January 3, Marisela Ortiz Escobar, who struggled for justice for their murdered daughter in Cd, Juarez and was executed on December 16, and the arrest and disappearance of seven social activists during the same year.
The arrest and disappearance has come to be a mechanism of political repression as in the years of so-called dirty war, and now also a mechanism of social control. The right not to be detained-disappeared is another right that is not respected in Mexico and no government official has been punished for his role in the crime for which the level of impunity is 100%.
However, not only organized groups have been victims of gross violations of human rights, yet these cases have tried to be hidden or minimized as the many rights violations suffered by the civilian victim of the war or struggle "that the Mexican government has deepened against the internal enemy that he built: the drug trade.
In this context, we have restricted by way of the facts, basic human rights. Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua is an example showing that the State does not comply, does not guarantee or promote the right to life, physical and emotional integrity, justice, the organization, the manifestation, freedom of expression, to free movement, due process, just to see the numbers of femicide, of children killed at checkpoints or in clashes and massacres of young unrelated crime. These figures show that the Mexican state has systematically violated the human rights of millions of compatriots on commission, by omission and by acquiescence.
addition to this, there is another means by which our human rights are restricted: the amendment of laws that criminalize social protest, which only give two examples: the federal law against organized crime and the definition of the crime of terrorism. The first of these has been questioned as a result of the UPR that is submitted by Mexico to the UN in 2009, because the definition of organized crime is so open that does not conform to the criteria of international law in this matter. This means that any social activist be accused, at any time of the offense, just a judge and not necessarily gather evidence to open full test judicial process, so that evidence might have heard someone else say that the defendant was involved in a criminal organization or a declaration of a protected witness by the authorities and the accused does not know.
The crime of terrorism under the new definition also includes "anyone who in any other violent means ..." press "the authority to make a determination." According to Article 139 of the Penal Code. Therefore, if the authorities consider a strike, picket or march on a road are a means used by violent protesters to put pressure on an authority, and also cause "alarm, fear or terror in the population or group or segment thereof, in conformity with its law the crime of terrorism apply to social activists and if more than three is possible that they apply federal law against crime organized. Thus
social activists and the general population, we see our human rights restricted, by means of facts and changes to the laws we pass to be at the discretion of the authorities at any time, dangerous members organized crime or "collateral damage" of it. Conclusions
The militarization process our country has increased in the last four years as an instrument to ensure the implementation of market deregulation measures, which result in the strangulation of the rights to education, employment and health and therefore the closure the expectation of a decent life for thousands of workers in this country. This means for the leading groups in this process, the creation of legal and media campaigns to criminalize any person or group that disagrees with your vision.
Another point to note is that the militarization of the country necessarily involves a structured policy to cause fear and terror among the population, with the intention that the country's inhabitants legitimize the presence of the military in the streets: on the one hand, enhances the figure of the military and police, as well as the institutions responsible for public safety while on the other side , is exploited by the media, the family trauma involved in being a victim of structural violence to which we have referred, this creates a precedent in society by cultivating the fear of reality, life and the organization as an option for social transformation.
That fear took hold of our lives is only the first time in the course of the normalization of violence, the primary interest our government as a psychological strategy, if people begin to see how an everyday the number of deaths and the increasing violence, no question why these facts, only let it pass, and although not actively legitimize yes we will be allowing its implementation to do nothing.
This process of militarization will only stop if openly denounce the federal strategy disregards human life and desensitize us to violence.
The Metropolitan Coordinating against militarization and violence requires the State to see that social responsibility is with the entire population by giving a percentage override greater security to the so-called social expenditure items, with the aim of creating good paying jobs that enable decent living conditions.
demand that the Army does not comply with police functions and that the police do not militarize
demand trial and punishment of those responsible for human rights violations against the civilian population, social activists and human rights defenders.
Finally we call for efforts to increase information and awareness on the issue of militarism and state violence, to strengthen the organization to call for end to impunity and to demand justice. We must prevent the majority of the population considers the militarization and war of this government as the only possible solutions to the economic and social problems that we live in today.
against militarism and state violence.
[1] AP. " In 2010 drug-related murders rose by 63%" in http://www.oem.com.mx/laprensa/notas/n1922281.htm , accessed on February 3, 2011.
[2] Ruth Rodriguez. "900 children killed by Suman fight anti-narco " in http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/685930.html , accessed on February 3, 2011.
[3] Expreso Chiapas, "Mexico ... alarming rate of violent deaths among 15 to 17" in http://www.expresochiapas.com/noticias/estatal/16430-en-mexicoalarmante-indice de-violent death-of-young-to-15-a- 17.html, accessed on February 3, 2011.
[4] The Polvorin, "These are figures from the Ministry of Defence, began during the administration of Fox, but most have occurred during the administration of Calderon" in http://elpolvorin.over-blog.es/article -more-of-1-300-less-dead-and-more-of-thousand-women-dead-in-the-war-against-the-drug-47645641.html , accessed on February 3, 2011.
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