Mexico, The Burro That Might Kick Back

The Joint Forces Command recently concluded an assessment holding that Pakistan and Mexico were both "failing"states. Other, supposedly well informed, observers have joined the chorus warning of Mexico's potential collapse under the pressures of narco-trafficking violence and economic contraction.

There is no doubt about it: Mexico is in a bad way. The Geek has written a number of posts on the subject over the past year. There is a possibility that Mexico will collapse in a welter of blood and guts not unlike that which happened roughly a century ago following the deposing of Diaz. Should this happen the cause will not be the violence of the drug smuggling gangs. It will not be the result of gun-running from the Estados Unidos.

It will not even be the result of tightened enforcement of the various immigration laws.

Should Mexico come apart it will be due to a loss of faith on the part of the long suffering Mexican majority. A collapse of the Mexican state will be caused by the final collapse of the majority's belief in the capacity of the state, the political system, the paternalism of the indigenous elite, to assure that life is moderately safe, the future at least no worse than the present and the possibility for improvement of the quality of one's life not beyond the reach of realistic hope.

If the preponderance of Mexico's 105 million people, the peasants, the laborers, the wretched searching the reeking and smoking trash heaps in the Valley of Mexico finally lose hope, forsake faith, and turn their backs on the elite and the government which has so long and so well served its own interests at the expense of the majority, then and only then will the state fail.

When the passions of a long misused people finally boil over in that uniquely Mexican combination of fatalism and bloodshed which marked the long decades of the internal wars of the early 20th Century, the state of Mexico will collapse with a seismic sound which will echo throughout the United States. A seismic shock which may well cause aftershocks throughout Central America.

At that point it will be too late to ascribe responsibility. There will only be time enough to collect the casualties and contain the damage. The time to assign responsibility for the (possible but not inevitable) collapse of Mexico is now. Now, while there is still time and ideas enough to prevent any chance of Mexico becoming a failed state.

Quite unsurprisingly, members of the Mexican elite--both politicians and members of the intelligentsia--are laying the blame at the door of the US. From their point of view it the Yanqis who are responsible not only for the blood and gore along the border (more than eighty KIA in Juarez so far this month) but the economic catastrophe looming over the country as well.

From the perspective of Mexico City all that is needed to insure peace, tranquility and prosperity in Mexico is for the US to end all internal demand for illegal drugs, halt all smuggling of guns south across the border and lower all barriers to "internal migration." If the US can't do all three then, at the very least, it must admit all those Mexicans who wish to work here.

The Mexican elite has always been cushioned from the effects of its own misrule, its own exploitative practices, its own corruption, its own misguided economic nationalism by the presence of the US. The northern border of Mexico for decades has served the function of the old western frontier in American history. The border has been the safety valve. Crossing the line into the US has always been the refuge of the ambitious, the excess, those in economic need.

The money sent home by illegal workers in the US has assured that the Mexican elite has not had to reach into its own collective pocket to meet either the social and educational needs of the majority or engage in the necessary internal investments which would give more Mexicans more of a chance to have a better future living and working in the land of their birth.

In short, the safety valve represented by the United States has allowed the Mexican elite to be selfish, short-sighted, and contemptuous of those Mexicans born to less fortunate families. It has allowed the elite to kick and exploit without risk to its power.

If and only if the Mexican elite can bring its self to get a grip on the reality of its conduct over the long sweep of Mexican history and quit trying to foist responsibility onto the US can Mexican social, political and economic stability be assured in the long run. If and only if the Mexican elite can do the nearly impossible--recognise what it has been doing and change course, can there be utter certainty that Mexico will not collapse.

Absent that, the best that can be hoped for is that the ever-so-patient and long enduring Mexican peasant and his urban cousin will keep on bearing the burden of death, fear, poverty and general nastiness without (armed) complaint. The Geek has heard members of the Mexican elite (military and police officers of higher rank) compare the Mexican majority with burros.

One day the Geek watched as a man beat a burro. The burro was staggering under a pile of firewood so its head and rump could barely be seen (or beaten.) The burro driver cursed and whacked. Finally the burro kicked.

The man lived. Barely. His face will never be presentable.