Latin America: Guerillas Step Up War

Resurgence of armed revolutionary groups underlines instability helping to drive immigration crisis for US

by Correspondents

The crisis of the immigration invasion from Mexico is driven by two major factors: the greed of US corporations and allied special interests, and the vast social inequality endemic within Mexico itself. Indeed, with the ongoing eradication of the middle class, the social system in the US is coming to resemble that of Mexico, where a small, wealthy elite dominates a huge underclass ground down by generational poverty with no hope of rising above near-subsistence.

Such a social arrangement has been in place in Latin America since the beginning, from the brutal Incas of Peru and Aztec warlords of Mexico to the long line of caudillos and juntas, all underpinned by systemic violence. This “class war from above” has been mirrored by an equally-long tradition of guerilla resistance, from Túpac Amaru, beheaded by the Spaniards in Cuzco in 1571, to Simón Bolívar (who drove the Spaniards out of much of the Western Hemisphere), Pancho Villa (1878-1923) and Che Guevara (1928-1967). Often the guerillas were worse than their comprador enemies, offering few if any realistic alternatives except an inversion of the organized violence of the former rulers and the erection of new, equally kleptocratic regimes, as recently seen in Sandinista Nicaragua and continuing in Castro’s Cuba.The new social orders set up in the wake of successful uprisings have had culture-wide influence. The current leftist and populist movement of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez calls itself Bolvarian in homage to Venezuelan-born Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), and the intellectual circles around Chavez have been heavily influenced by the legacy of Argentina’s great caudillo, Juan Perón (1895-1974). And of course Fidel Castro, one of the most successful revolutionaries of Latin America, has long exported his brand of jungle Marxism across Ibero-America, with waxing and waning success.

It is a well-known fact of political science that unstable nations present serious potential problems for the neighbors, and this is currently the case with Mexico. Often stressed elites attempt to whip up nationalist fervor to take attention off of domestic problems, as seen in Argentina in 1982, where an unending insurgency and hyper-inflation goaded the junta into invading the Falkland Islands. Similarly, the kleptocracy in Mexico City is using the United States as a safety valve for domestic crises that have no end in sight. In fact, the US is Mexico’s welfare system, siphoning off the very poorest of the restless peasant population, who in turn aid their original communities with subsidies sent home, with the help of banks and other shylock operations.

The endemic problems Latin America faces have broken out into violence once again, with implications for the United States. In July (2007), guerillas of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR or Popular Revolutionary Army) blew up valuable oil and natural gas pipelines belonging to the government PEMEX oil monopoly in the poor states of Queretaro and Guanajuato. Included in the sabotage were key shutoff valves, expensive equipment that might have lessened the loss. The sophistication of the attacks shows the seriousness of the insurgents and may indicate links with Columbian guerillas, who use similar tactics.

Worringly, Mexico is the second largest supplier of oil to the United States.

The attacks were openly nationalistic, aimed at US domination of the regions, with the EPR claiming to target the “neo-liberal [globalist policies of this government and even the complicity of some who say they belong to the left.”

The EPR attack was a more serious version of a peasant uprising in Oaxaca months earlier, where enraged peons took over whole areas. The unrest was sparked in part by the “election” of Bush clone Felipe Calderon in an election widely seen as stolen from populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an event that led to widespread upheaval. Mexico also still has a small, quiet insurgency going on among Indians in Chiapas as well.

While the recent unrest has implications for America, more seriously for the United States internally is the rise of the narco-Marxist Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) gang. Born from the remnants of the long civil war in El Salvador, Mara Salvatrucha was founded by veteran leftist insurgents and has a nationwide presence in the United States among “refugees” and their recruits. With ready access to drugs, military grade weapons and international links, Mara Salvatrucha is seen by the US government as a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1251, as analyzed by a recently-discovered US Army report.

America’s flirtation with globalism, which includes an open border with Latin America, is sowing the seeds of violence both here and in Latin America itself.[subsub text[/sub

2007-07-27