Mexican lawmakers oppose Mérida Initiative rights conditions
At the 47th US-Mexico Interparliamentary Commission, held June 6 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexican politicians from all of the three leading parties protested the imposition of human rights conditions on aid recently approved by Washington under the Mérida Initiative, popularly known as "Plan Mexico." Ruth Zavaleta of the left-opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), president of the Chamber of Deputies, joined with Sen. Santiago Creel Miranda of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN) in decrying the conditions as patronizing and hypocritical. They were joined by Nuevo León Gov. José Natividad González Parás of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also spoke out against construction of the border fence. (El Universal, Mexico, June 7)
See our last posts on Mexico, narco war, the Mérida Initiative and the struggle for the border.
I don't see anything wrong
I don't see anything wrong with putting conditions on money that is ours. I also think it is obvious that Calderon's government isn't being fully honest and that is why they don't accept the conditions. They know that they are committing human rights abuses and that the money won't be used properly and they are using the excuse that it is U.S. meddling as a way to hide the truth and try to convince us to take off the conditions.If this weren't the case then why would they refuse? I say we should continue with the conditions and if they don't like it then tough luck. They can go somewhere else begging for the money.
We view it a bit differently
Mexico is not exactly "begging for the money." Calderón's request was strictly pro forma. The Mérida Initiative was designed by the Bush administration. Calderón is more Bush's proxy than supplicant. The human rights conditions are the sugar coating for the liberals on the Hill—and they do come across as hypocritical in light of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. Both Mexico and the US are human rights abusers, and we should oppose the Mérida Initiative outright.
Here is a link to show you
Here is a link to show you all the great job Mexico is doing with their military. The news link is in spanish, but I'll give you guys an overview. The Mexican military had set up a checkpoint and 3 people in a car had mechanical problems and could not stop. The soldiers then fired upon the vehicle and killed all 3 people. When the police arrived the soldiers did not allow them to investigate. Furthermore, the soldiers surrounded the vehicle to prevent onlookers to see what occurred. The people in the car were not drug dealers and they had no possesion of drugs either. I think the soldiers were hiding something. Here is the link
http://mx.reuters.com/article
/topNews/idMXN0928029320080609
That's about the size of it.
One of the dead was in a second vehicle, and killed by stray bullets. It happened yesterday, June 9, in Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua. Look, there is certainly a grave human rights crisis in Mexico. We just don't think the gringos are in much of a position to judge...
I agree that maybe the US
I agree that maybe the US isn't any better in respect to human rights, but that does not mean that the US or its people should support the Merida initiative or that just because the US commits human rights violations the US should allow it to happen even more in countries like Mexico. Actually both countries need to improve their human rights issues.
Another reason I think the whole Merida initiative should be stopped is because programs which simply dump monatary and military resources into the drug war simply don't work. Here is another new link showing that these types of programs don't work. it is titled "shock rise in colombian coca production" and it came out today.
Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25242986/
We said...
"...we should oppose the Mérida Initiative outright."
'K?
Thanks for the link. We'll use it.