The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón has issued a formal request to the US Congress for a huge increase in military aid to combat narco-gangs. The request came in a recent US-Mexico Inter-Parliamentary Meeting held in Austin, TX, and was revealed to the Mexican daily La Jornada by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), leader of the House Intelligence Committee. La Jornada called the request a "Plan Colombia" for Mexico, although without an actual US military troop presence. (La Jornada, June 8)

The revelation comes amid growing concern about the militarization of Mexico since Calderón took office late last year. Miguel Alessio Robles, Gobernación Sub-secretary for Human Rights, accused Amnesty International of "exaggerating" in a new report about the lack of basic guarantees in Mexico, saying the situation is "ten times better than in any other period in the country." (La Jornada, June 5)

In Tepic, Nayarit, Zapatista Subcommander Marcos, continuing his tour of the country, said that under Calderón, everyone "is in the military machine's sights." Marcos warned that "the country is on the path to a social explosion and in the face of that four alternatives present themselves: 1) Calderón's, which is the use of indiscriminate force, the alternative of massive repression; 2) gradual control and demobilizing, in other words that of the forces that point towards 2012 for an orderly change and a change without rupture; 3) that of chaos and civil war; and, finally, 4) that of an organized alternative, anti-capitalist and to the left, by the organizations, groups, collectives, families and individuals of the Other Campaign." (La Jornada, May 29, trans. by De Tod@s Para Tod@s)

See our last posts on Mexico, the narco crisis, and the Zapatistas.