Tropic of Chaos (43 page)

39
Gilly,
The Mexican Revolution
, 338.

40
Dumont, “Mexico.”

41
Remonda Bensabat Kleinberg, “Strategic Alliances: State-Business Relations in Mexico Under Neo-Liberalism and Crisis,”
Bulletin of Latin American Research
18, no. 1 (January 1999): 71–87: 72.

42
Kleinberg, “Strategic Alliances.”

43
Terry McKinley and Diana Alarcon, “Mexican Bank Nationalization,”
Latin American Perspectives
20, no. 3 (summer 1993): 80–82: 80.

44
Priestley, “The Contemporary Program of Nationalization in Mexico,” 66.

45
Priestley, “The Contemporary Program,” 62.

46
Of course, as one academic reminds us, the postrevolutionary Mexico “never operated along purely corporatist lines, and some sectors of society were tied to these arrangements much more closely than others.” James G. Samstad, “Corporatism and Democratic Transition: State and Labor During the Salinas and Zedillo Administrations,”
Latin American Politics and Society
44, no. 4 (winter 2002): 1–28: 3. See Gilly's classic radical history
The Mexican Revolution
.

47
For a good overview of the changing relationship between the state and capital in Mexico, see Kleinberg, “Strategic Alliances,” 72.

48
As Leo Panitch described it in a classic essay, corporatism is “a political structure within advanced capitalism which integrates organized socioeconomic producer groups through a system of representation and cooperative mutual interaction at the leadership level and mobilization and social control at the mass level.” Leo Panitch, “Recent Theorizations of Corporatism: Reflections on a Growth Industry,”
British Journal of Sociology
31 (1980): 159–187: 173. For more on the subject and its links to authoritarian states, see David Collier, ed.,
The New Authoritarianism in Latin America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).

49
George Philip,
Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); George W. Grayson,
Oil and Mexican Foreign Policy
(Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988). It was during this crisis of nationalization that the current ruling party, the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), was formed from a coalition of right-wing groups, including bankers, industrial capitalists, landowners, religious elements, and even members of the Union Nacional Sinarquista, a Catholic and cryptofascist party on the model of the Falange. Michelle Dion, “The Political Origins of Social Security in Mexico During the Cárdenas and Ávila Camacho Administrations,”
Mexican Studies
/
Estudios Mexicanos
21, no. 1 (winter 2005): 59–95.

50
Kleinberg, “Strategic Alliances,” 72.

51
George W. Grayson, “Oil and U.S.-Mexican Relations,”
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs
21, no. 4 (November 1979): 427–456: 428; Arthur Howe, “OPEC'S Grip on Oil Markets Slipping Away,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, December 7, 1983.

52
On the guerilla movements of Mexico, see O'Neill Blacker, “Cold War in the Countryside: Conflict in Guerrero, Mexico,”
The Americas
66, no. 2 (October 2009): 181–210; on labor, see Dale A. Hathaway,
Allies Across the Border: Mexico's “Authentic Labor Front” and Global Solidarity
(Boston: South End Press, 2000).

53
Adam David Morton, “Structural Change and Neoliberalism in Mexico : ‘Passive Revolution' in the Global Political Economy,”
Third World Quarterly
24, no. 4 (August 2003): 631–653.

54
William Chislett, “Black Gold Fuels Economic Turnaround,”
Globe and Mail
, May 26, 1980. In 1978, it looked as though the shah of Iran's regime might collapse, and if Iran tipped into chaos, oil would spike. Just as prices were rising, Pemex Mexico found another enormous petroleum patch. By the end of 1976, Mexico was producing eight hundred thousand barrels daily and exporting about ninety-four thousand barrels each day. By 1980 production was approaching 2.2 million barrels a day, and exports had increased ninefold, to 850,000 barrels a day. This was the fastest increase in oil production in world history.

55
John Crewdson and Vincent J. Schodolski, “Price of Reform Cripples Mexico,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 23, 1986.

56
Chislett, “Black Gold Fuels Economic Turnaround.”

57
Alan Ridding, “Taming Mexico's Passion for More,”
New York Times
, September 12, 1982.

58
Michael Kevane, “Commodities in Crisis: The Commodity Crisis of the 1980s and the Political Economy of International Commodity Policies, by Alfred Maizels,”
Economic Development and Cultural Change
45, no. 1 (October 1996): 205–208.

59
James Thompson and Sean O'Grady, “Commodity Crisis Sparks Fear of Food Inflation on High Street,”
The Independent
(UK), August 10, 2010. For a historical chart of commodity prices, see the Index Mundi website (
www.indexmundi.com
). The IMF's Commodity Price Index is found at
www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=commodity-price-index&months=300
.

60
Walden Below,
Dark Victory: The United States and Global Poverty
(Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 1999).

61
Oakland Ross, “Dropping Oil Prices Leave Mexico in Economic Limbo,”
Globe and Mail
, August 6, 1982.

62
Michael Vaply, “Today's Catastrophe,”
Globe and Mail
, August 20, 1982.

63
Marlise Simons, “Mexican Peso Devalued for Second Time in 6 Months,”
New York Times
, August 7, 1982.

64
Alan Riding, “Mexico Devalues Peso 30%,”
New York Times
, February 19, 1982; Alan Riding, “Worry Spreads After Peso Curbs,”
New York Times
, August 14, 1982.

65
Robert A. Bennett, “Mexico Seeking Postponement of Part of Debt,”
New York Times
, August 20, 1982.

66
Richard J. Meislin, “Mexico Is Selling Stock Held by Seized Banks,”
New York Times
, May 22, 1984.

67
“Mexican Peso Plunges in Value,”
Globe and Mail
, August 20, 1982; Robert Bennett, “Bankers Pressured to Assist Mexico,”
New York Times
, August 21, 1982.

68
“Mexico Plans 106 Closings,”
New York Times
, November 17, 1982; on Ocean Garden Products, see Young, “State Intervention and Abuse of the Commons,” 288.

69
Katherine Ellison, “Mexico Sheds Its Assets,”
San Jose Mercury News
, October 22, 1989.

70
Alan Riding, “Bankers Cheer Mexico's Austerity Plan,”
New York Times
, December 3, 1982.

71
Crewdson and Schodolski, “Price of Reform Cripples Mexico.”

72
Penny Lernoux, “Rescue Missions Impossible: Lessons of the Mexican Bailout,”
The Nation
, October 6, 1984.

73
Steven Zahniser and Zachary Crago, “NAFTA at 15: Building on Free Trade,” Outlook Report No. WRS-09-03, March 2009.

74
Noam Chomsky,
Profit over People
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).

75
Elisabeth Malkin, “Nafta's Promise, Unfulfilled,”
New York Times,
March 23, 2009.

76
Timothy Wise, “Fields of Free Trade: Mexico's Small Farmers in a Global Economy,”
Dollars & Sense
, December 2003.

77
Malkin, “Nafta's Promise.”

78
Malkin, “Nafta's Promise.”

79
Wise, “Fields of Free Trade.”

80
George Dyer-Leal and Antonio Yúnez-Naude, “NAFTA and Conservation of Maize Diversity in Mexico,” Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America, 2003,
www.cec.org/Page.asp?PageID=1180&ContentID=&SiteNodeID=472
.

81
Matilde Pérez, “En materia alimentaria para México, el TLCAN está reprobado: Oxfam.”
La Jornada
, January 2, 2010,
www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/01/02/index.php?section=politica&article=008n2pol
.

82
Chomsky,
Profit over People
.

83
Dyer-Leal and Yúnez-Naude, “NAFTA and Conservation of Maize Diversity.”

84
Olivier Pavón, “Afrontar ‘con mucho corazón' apertura total del TLC, aconseja Alberto Cárdenas,”
La Crónica de Hoy,
December 20, 2007,
www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=338675
.

85
Gilly,
The Mexican Revolution
, 337.

86
Rural Poverty in Mexico,
vol. 4 of
Mexico: Income Generation and Social Protection for the Poor
, Report No. 32867MX (World Bank: Washington DC, 2005), 170. The CIA's World Factbook lists poverty rates as “18.2% using food-based definition of poverty; asset based poverty amounted to more than 47% (2006).”

87
Mark Smith, “Serial Murders a Source of Fear and Mystery/New Spate of Killings Baffle Police, Who Hold a Suspect,”
Houston Chronicle
, March 31, 1996; Sam Dillon, “Rape and Murder Stalk Women in Northern Mexico,”
New York Times
, April 18, 1998; Jodi Bizar, “9 Held in Juarez Slayings 6 Teen-Agers Among Serial Killing Suspects,”
San Antonio Express-News,
May 7, 1998.

88
Charles Bowden,
Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
(New York: Nation Books, 2010), xiii.

89
Bowden,
Murder City
, 104–105.

90
Jen Phillips, “The Cartels Next Door,”
Mother Jones Magazine
, July/August 2009.

91
Warren Richey, “Drug Runners Shift Routes As U.S. Steps Up Pressure,”
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
, November 24, 1989; Jole Williams, “U.S. Border's War on Drugs Shifts to Texas,”
Denver Rocky Mountain News
, October 15, 1989; William Overend, “Adventures in the Drug Trade,”
Los Angeles Times Magazine
, May 7, 1989.

92
“Columbia Drug Smugglers Using ‘Mexican Pipeline,'”
San Francisco Chronicle
, January 1, 1988.

93
Astian Rotel, “Barons of a Bloody Turf War,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 4, 1993.

94
James Brooke, “A Drug Lord Is Buried As a Folk Hero,”
New York Times
, December 4, 1993; “Cali Cocaine Cartel Leaders Offer Surrender Deal,” Agence France-Presse, December 17, 1993.

95
Ken Dermota, “Snow Business: Drugs and the Spirit of Capitalism,”
World Policy Journal
16, no. 4 (winter 1999–2000): 15–24: 15.

96
Anita Snow, “Mexican Drug Smugglers Get Sophisticated,”
Contra Costa Times
, September 17, 1995.

97
Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1996,” US Department of State,
www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html
.

98
Jorge Chabat, “Mexico's War on Drugs: No Margin for Maneuver,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
582 (July 2002): 134–148: 136.

99
Tracey Eaton, “NAFTA Tied to Drug Traffic: U.S. Task Force Says Smugglers Exploit Rising Cross-Border Trade,”
Dallas Morning News
, May 11, 1998.

100
Dermota, “Snow Business,” 16.

101
Robert Collier, “Mexico's New Emperor of Narcotics,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, February 26, 1996.

102
Nick Reding,
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

103
Mark Fineman, “Vast Mexican Drug Empire Up for Grabs,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 29, 1997.

104
Jorge G. Castañeda, “What's Spanish for Quagmire?”
Foreign Policy
177 (January 1, 2010).

105
Quoted in “Mexicans Wince at U.S. Jab on Corruption, but Admit It's Accurate,” EFE World News Service, June 15, 2005.

106
David Luhnow and Jose De Cordoba, “Mexico Detains Former Top Drug Cop,”
Wall Street Journal,
November 22, 2008.

107
The sequence of statements is laid out by Jorge Castañeda, “The Danger Across the Border,”
Newsweek
(International Edition), February 2, 2009. US Joint Forces Command,
The Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force
(Suffolk, VA: US Joint Forces Command, Center for Joint Futures, December 2008), 36.

108
Jens Erik Gould, “Calderon Rejects ‘Absurd' Reports on Mexico Drug War,”
Bloomberg.com
, March 12, 2009,
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=axUjKcbAt82w
.

109
Castañeda, “The Danger Across the Border.”

110
“¿Qué quieren de nosotros?”
El Diario
(Ciudad Juarez), September 19, 2010.

1
Oli Brown,
Migration and Climate Change
(Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2008), 10.

2
Sam Knight, “Human Tsunami,”
Financial Times
, June 19, 2009.

3
Andrew Ross, “Greenwashing Nativism,”
The Nation
, July 29, 2010.