Mexico’s Jan. 24 federal register notice laying out the 200 pollutants that factories now must report annually opens the curtain for the sun to shine after a nearly 20-year-long grassroots crusade to secure the public’s right to know about hazardous waste.
There are two tests of social change movements: endurance and regeneration. After two decades, Mexico’s Zapatista movement can now say it passed both.
Twenty years after the rebellion, against the current, the Zapatistas have maintained a peaceful struggle to create other forms of living and thinking. Today, they continue to defy a Mexican political system, which despite changes in the parties that hold power, conserves many elements of the authoritarianism that existed prior to 1994.
La Cámara de Diputados Congreso de la Unión ha abierto el debate sobre “el impacto de los insumos transgénicos en la producción de alimentos”, mes y medio después de que la justicia federal suspendió la autorización de permisos de siembra de maíz modificado genéticamente.
A federal court in Mexico City ordered the Mexican government “to suspend the issue of permits for experimental, pilot or commercial cultivation of genetically modified corn” on Oct. 10. This is the first victory in a class-action suit filed against the invasion of Monsanto corn in Mexico.
Una operación secreta para contrabandear armas a través de la frontera para los cárteles de la droga mexicanos –supervisada por agentes gubernamentales de EE.UU.– amenaza con convertirse en un gran escándalo para el gobierno de Obama. La operación, denominada “Rápido y furioso”, se dirigió desde la Oficina de Alcohol, Tabaco, Armas de Fuego y Explosivos (ATF), en Phoenix, Arizona. ATF aprobó la compra de armas en armerías estadounidenses y rastreó la ruta de contrabando hasta la frontera mexicana. Según las informaciones, más de 2.500 armas de fuego se vendieron a testaferros quienes luego entregaron las armas a contrabandistas bajo la nariz de la ATF.
A secret operation to run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels — overseen by U.S. government agents — threatens to become a major scandal for the Obama administration. The operation, called “Fast and Furious,” was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona. ATF sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.
In March 2005, the leaders of the three NAFTA countries, U.S. president George W. Bush, Mexican president Vicente Fox, and Canadian prime minister Paul Martin met in Waco, Texas, and launched a regional defense-based initiative called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The initiative, heralded as the next step in regional integration within the “NAFTA Plus” agenda, is described on its Web site (www.spp.gov) as “a White House–led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders—Canada and Mexico—to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation.” The official description of the SPP adds that it is “based on the principle that our prosperity is dependent on our security.”
“‘The inevitable’ has a name today: fragmented globalization…the end of history, the omnipresence and omnipotence of money, the substitution of politics for police, the present […]
The two events that shook Mexico and the world on January 1, 1994 seemed to have little to do with each other. The first had been carefully planned, laid out over two years by some of the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent. On that day, the historic North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the law of the land, setting in motion a series of foreseen and unforeseen changes throughout the country.
