Enough! Mexico Is Ready to Explode … Mexico has been profoundly shaken by atrocities and high-level corruption in Guerrero. The earthquake's epicenter is Iguala, the state's third largest city. Fifty thousand marchers thronged Mexico City's main avenues last Wednesday, and demonstrations took place all over the country. More than 80 delegates to the Inter-University Assembly have called for a nationwide halt to all educational activities on Nov. 5, and are asking other social groups to join them. Protesters set fire to state headquarters in Chilpancingo, Guerrero's capital, and are sacking supermarkets and shopping centers. – Huffington Post
Dominant Social Theme: Mexico has been badly run for centuries. But things will surely improve over time …
Free-Market Analysis: Or not. We have a provocative question regarding Mexico: Is there a larger sociopolitical plan to destabilize this great country?
We've suggested this before, but the footsteps seem louder now. Perhaps the stage is being set for a collapse into chaos.
And what will be the ultimate result? We suggest that one option is a de facto merger with the US – the beginning of the long-rumored North American Union.
Certainly, factors generating the appropriate chaos seem to be slipping into place and perhaps conveniently so:
Here are the events that sparked the earthquake:
On Sept. 26, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of Iguala's Mayor José Luis Abarca, of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, was in the main square giving a speech about her accomplishments as head of the municipal social services agency, and it was rumored that she would announce her candidacy to succeed her husband as mayor in next June's election, since she is also a state PRD official.
Just as she was beginning, two busloads of students from the notoriously radical rural teachers' college in nearby Ayotzinapa, who had come to town to raise money to supplement their meager 50 peso daily allowance, headed for Iguala's central square. According to the Federal Attorney General's Office, the mayor ordered the local police chief to stop them. After a minor clash with police the students "borrowed" three buses from the local bus station to return to Ayotzinapa and later travel to this year's march in Mexico City commemorating the October 2, 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco, and were driving out of town when they were sprayed with machine gun fire by police and gunmen from the Guerrero Unidos (United Warriors) cartel.
Three students died, as well as a soccer player in a bus bringing a third division team to town that was also fired on, a taxi driver and his female passenger. One student who panicked and ran off when his classmates were rounded up by police and gang members was later found dead, his eyes gouged out and face flensed with a box cutter, in an act of gratuitous violence. Forty-three students were bundled into police cars and have disappeared.
… Official statements that the 38 bodies found so far in 10 makeshift mass graves are not the students have exacerbated rather than calmed public anger, as now the other question is, who are these trussed up, tortured, headless or charred corpses? Will there be an investigation to find the perpetrators?
Public anger has been ignited in part because there are so many grievances regarding corruption on the political front. Only a little spark was needed, the article continues, and then summarizes additional combustible elements.
The article goes on to mention the collapse of the Mexican political party PRD in Guerrero.
Governor Angel Aguirre, it turns out, has taken an involuntary and indefinite leave of absence due to corruption charges.
Meanwhile, there are accusations of multi-million dollar irregularities regarding a new subway line in Mexico City administered by former PRD mayor Marcelo Ebrar. The PRD-governed state of Morelos is overwhelmed by terrorist kidnappings and executions from drug cartels.
Though little reported in the North, the National Action Party, or PAN, under the six-year term of president Felipe Calderon gained a terrible reputation as a result of its war on drugs that reportedly took more than 120,000 lives and left 30,000 persons missing.
President Enrique Peña Nieto's term in office began with a Pact for Mexico but has rapidly devolved into fears that private sector expropriations will be leveraged by unscrupulous government officials and others for purposes of oil and gas exploration. Literally millions of citizens are said to be up in arms as courts begin deliberating the issue.
These are only some of the issues tearing Mexico apart currently, but anyone who has been following Mexican politics knows that Mexico is in many ways a troubled society that contains a good many impoverished – and increasingly frustrated – citizens.
There is no doubt, either, that Mexico's neighbor to the North has exacerbated Mexican difficulties with well-publicized gun running episodes that have flooded Mexico with weapons. Additionally, the so-called war on drugs is very obviously a US import.
In other words, the US could not do much more to destabilize Mexico if it were trying to do so, and perhaps it is. Out of chaos order … and if highly placed US politicians and business leaders, among others, have in mind combining Mexico, Canada and the US into one North American Union, then destabilizing Mexico might be a good place to start.
Additionally, as we observe various US events and preoccupations, we find they have a good deal of bearing on Mexico. Certain liberal economists are obsessed with income equality these days. Constant bashing of Wall Street (deservedly, to be sure) adds to populist fervor.
But surprisingly, the bashing of President Barack Obama and his wife as well is increasingly tolerated in the mainstream press.
Episodes like the recent Ebola outbreak and what amounts to Fedgov-Homeland Security support for police violence against peaceful citizens add to the perspective that the US, like Mexico, is spinning out of control.
Most of this sort of current and incipient chaos encourages us to mention that asset protection has never been more important. Whether you are trying to acquire a second passport, a small farm or second home in another country or merely trying to export or otherwise secure a portion of your precious metals holdings and other wealth, it is wise to continue to work hard toward these goals.
It could be that the ongoing Mexican destabilization is going to be restricted to that increasingly failing state. But somehow we don't think so. We see too many similarities between what's going on Mexico and what's taking place in the US.
If we are correct, the same kinds of scenarios now playing themselves out in Mexico will expand in the US as well, and for the same reasons. When the pain and chaos are bad enough, people will be willing to consider almost anything that promises cessation …
Even a North American Union, far-fetched as that may sound today.