Sign up to receive SPP updates:
RSS feed.  |
ABOUT THE SPP | BACKGROUNDERS | MEDIA | VIDEO/AUDIO |
SPP resources SPP Summit - New Orleans SPP Summit - Montebello Teach-in |
Plan Mexico, SPP about “armouring NAFTA,” says Avi Lewis August 1, 2008 Journalist and human rights activist Avi Lewis, commented on Plan Mexico and the Security and Prosperity Partnership this week on U.S. radio program Democracy Now. As reported by Democracy Now’s Anjali Kamat: “Last month, the Bush administration and the Democratic-led Congress agreed on Plan Mexico, a $400 million program to fight Mexican drug trafficking. Much like its predecessor, Plan Colombia, the Mexico initiative has been criticized for emphasizing militarization and security rather than addressing social and economic causes. The bulk of the money will go to military contractors and Mexico’s armed forces. The final version of the bill also omits several key provisions that would have linked funding to human rights.” Lewis, who moderated the March 2007 Integrate This teach-in, tells Democracy Now that “more than half of [the U.S. money to Mexico] is going to hardware… eight Bell helicopters with night vision equipment that track people back and forth across the border as easy as drugs and a huge IT system for the Mexican Migration Institute, which has as its explicit goal to track the movement of Mexican citizens and Central Americans coming through Mexico. “So you have this kind of biometric immigration agenda, which is being swept in under cover of a war on drugs rhetoric. And when there’s this much bloodshed in the streets in Mexico, it’s very easy for the blood to hide the political agendas underneath.” Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy, then links Plan Mexico to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). “Essentially, the idea was to push the borders out of the United States and create a North American security perimeter that would include Canada and Mexico,” she says. “In this way, the Bush government, what it sought to do was to apply the radical national security doctrine to Mexican territory as well. This is a big problem for Mexico, because it not only violates national sovereignty, but it also imposes on Mexico the security priorities of the United States government at a time when those are very belligerent and aggressive priorities throughout the world.” Lewis adds that, in the words of State Department official Thomas Shannon, the SPP was about “armouring NAFTA.” “And I think when you look at the intersection of the economic agenda, the cover of the war on drugs, the immigration and border hysteria underneath it, Plan Mexico represents exactly that, the armoring of NAFTA,” says Lewis. To listen to the full broadcast, click here.
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
NACC
Workers
Water
Energy
Military
Safety & regulations
Transportation corridors
