Arizona, Democracy, Plutocracy

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that police have the right to ask for immigration papers from anyone breaking any law or regulation. Any infraction can be an excuse for demanding the documentation. As most immigrants in Arizona are Mexican, the police will tend to intimidate with greater frequency people who look Hispanic, whether or not they are undocumented immigrants. The new law means that, with all likelihood, the tensions between Mexicans and Anglos will increase.

What can be done about this, from Mexico? Of course, the Mexican government will have to observe how things develop and promote trials, complaints and media campaigns as a means of putting on pressure. But the general public will also have to think about and discuss the current situation of U.S. democracy in order to support the progressive forces of that country as much as possible.

Every democracy depends on a minimum level of well-being for its citizens, and, above all, that social inequality is not so abysmal as to inevitably lead to plutocracy. During much of its history, the United States was a country with a strong middle class. Today, that is not the case. Its levels of inequality have consistently increased since 1980, and its fiscal policy favors the speculators above the salaried, especially since the reforms introduced during the Bush presidency. Only through this can you explain how Mitt Romney, whose father was the owner of American Motors, paid a tax rate of barely 15 percent on his property last year, while most wage-workers paid around 25 percent.

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences winner, Joseph Stiglitz, recently wrote that the United States is quickly ceasing to be the land of opportunity. More frequently, opportunities are being inherited. The system rewards financial speculation over work: On average, engineers, inventors, designers, technologists, doctors, creators and scientists only earn a fraction of what any finance brat makes, even when their contribution to the economy has been to drown some company or destroy a pension fund.

On a political level, this increase in inequality is creating a system that resembles a plutocracy. The right has a majority in the Supreme Court and that has led to reforms in electoral laws that now allow corporations to operate in the electoral arena as if they were individuals. That offers enormous advantages to the candidates that have corporate backing, as was seen during the recent Republican primary, where the winning candidate, though more sane and presentable than his adversaries, was also much less popular.

Finally, one has to understand that there is a link between the foreign abuses of human rights and the internal processes of social exclusion. The legalization of torture in Guantanamo was, in that sense, a great defeat for all of the U.S. population, given that the support for that type of extreme measure helped justify the loss of legal entitlements, the toughening of criminalization, and multiplication of prisons and of detention centers for immigrants. To all of this you have to add today’s decision, giving the Arizona police force a new instrument to oppress the Hispanic-looking population, whether or not they are legal citizens.

Traditionally, the way of hiding similar measures is to place citizens of Latino background in the police force so they themselves have to do the dirty work of discrimination. But those tactics only work for a limited period of time. Soon there will appear statistics discussing the increasing exclusion of Latinos in Arizona.

The severity against immigrants — including the symbolic toughness communicated through such gestures as the fence along the border — legitimizes a cruel prison policy in the U.S. interior, benefitting, once again, the poorly-named “security” industry. California spends practically double on prisons than on higher education. And a few days ago, when the representatives from urban areas of New York state wanted to pass a bill that would decrease the penalties for marijuana possession, the representatives from the rich suburban areas blocked the bill.

To summarize: the U.S. democracy is going through a delicate period. It would be useful for the democratic process in the country to be strengthened and in that way support the immigrant and Latino residents. It would also be useful because the anti-drug policies and gun markets in the U.S. are hostage to the interests of the plutocracy.

What to do from Mexico? First, publicly discuss the erosion of the U.S. democracy, with strict adherence to facts — without exaggerations or lies, which end up being counterproductive. Second, a Ghandian strategy could be explored, and preferably with a Latino touch: that is to say, a peaceful but consistent protest, using a sense of humor and the ridiculousness as a weapon. In any case, it is crucial that there is a reaction from the public to the likes of the recent Arizona laws.