The Betrayal

Washington’s project of increasingly openly controlling the Mexican territory has taken a step forward through Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit on March 25 and 26 and the announcement of the opening of a new joint office of Mexican and American agents in Mexico with the purpose of fighting the “war on drugs.”

The Mexican Constitution does not authorize even a de facto the Federal Executive to cede authorization of the Federal government to private individuals, much less to foreign governments. This is precisely what Felipe Calderon is doing from the presidency to which he exalted himself illegally. He is turning over function of the Mexican government to the United States upon accepting Washington’s investigation, now openly, of crimes committed by Mexicans in Mexican territory. Not only this, but he is also applying the so-called American law.

Mexico is in a scandalous situation with an unsuccessful government. It is a cowardly situation for survival, and it has accepted the artificial creation of a generalized violent scene to justify foreign intervention. In exchange, Washington maintains the government in power that has aroused repudiation by very diverse sectors signaling the vulgarity of this strategy well known in Latin America. Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, visiting in Jalapa, remembered the day before yesterday how the fight against narcotics has been a historical scheme of Washington for subjugating and controlling countries (La Jornada, March 26, 2009).

The current U.S. government has the same double speak as always. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton squandered two days smiling at Mexico, the disqualification of Calderon continued through different requests from American powers searching to subject him to even more. The last departure of almost $13 million to the Mexican armed forces was, according to the Department of Defense, an end to improve its capacity to “liberate territories” (El Universal, March 25, 2009). Not only do Mexican drugs threaten the security of the U.S. but “put at risk” even the government of Calderon, as Janet Napolitano said to Congress (La Jornada, March 26, 2009). And, to underscore the insecurity of Mexico, American officials were prohibited yesterday to travel to a meeting in Tamaulipas.

The reality is that Barack Obama’s government does not have any interest in combating drug trafficking, nor did any of his predecessors. While in Mexico, under the pretext of combating the cartels, a scene of violence and terror has been founded in many regions that deepen the national crisis. In the U.S. the scene is very different. American cartels continue being untouchable, the drug financial structures have not been so much as questioned, the Bush family businesses continue flourishing, and, as many have pointed out, Washington continues to sponsor planting narcotic seeds in the territory of Afghanistan – that the Taliban has prohibited – and in other regions of the world under its control.

Calderon’s escalated cowardice has attempted to provide the de facto government that he pretends to head with increasingly despotic legal means as they are demanded of him. This is why, after searching for the possibility to raid homes without a judicial order, he now wants to legalize the delivery of Mexican prisoners to the U.S. and give the federal government the ability to arbitrarily confiscate the goods of particular ill-gotten suspects by using the deviant Law of Forfeiture that is being discussed in the Legislature, attempting to complete the policy of abandoning defense of the nation’s interests, and of complicity with a foreign power in installing a shared office with American agents that fortifies their intervention.

The week of appeasement has been initiated with an offering of “up to 30 million” (of devalued pesos) made March 23 by the counterfeit government for whomever denounces the leaders of the cartels. This means right from the start that the PAN government is incapable of carrying out the constitutional function of investigating federal crimes and intends on society carrying it out and communicating it through an informer.

The invitation to denunciation, whatever their reasons might be, is not only evidence in the political plan of ineptitude by the authorities to complete their responsibilities, but also, from the ethical point of view, constitutes an invitation to commit one of the lowest acts that can be imagined. What Calderon’s corrupt government is asking, that the Mexicans corrupt themselves denouncing one another, resorts to an indignant practice, foreign to our legal system, that has already failed in the past for the simple reason that the possible accusers of these illicit acts, regardless how much protection the government offers them, know that they can end up being executed in retaliation for their felony.

The historic failure of this method in Mexico, existing in the American system, is due to not only its immoral character, written about admirably in the novel by Liam O’Flaherty, The Informer, and brought to the cinema by John Ford with Victor McLaglen in 1935, but also to its inevitability in the context of generalized violence imposed by the absurd government war.

The real national disaster is aggravated, however, by one act. The susceptibility of the PAN government to be corrupted, upon surrendering authority has failed to exert power over foreign nations, in a policy of open betrayal to Mexico, is being made possible by the complicity of the so called “political class” as a whole, and in particular by the members of the Senate of the Republic that have the high mission to act as a counterweight to the Executive in matters of foreign policy and are not completing their responsibility.

The current policies of appeasement are in all cases destined to fail. But the harm that is done to the nation is irreparable.