Concept and produced by: Harry Bubbins, with voice by Anna McHugh (hoopergirl.com) and Erin Mc Hugh. Text and language thanks also to: Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy, and also to Witness for Peace.
Plan Mexico was hatched by Presidents Bush and Calderon without any consultation from the US or Mexican congresses. Officially known as the Merida Initiative, Plan Mexico,is immediately likened to the failures and violence of Plan Colombia that has led to an increase in human rights violatio
ns and cocaine production. Stopping Plan Mexico has been named by the Center for International Policy as one of the top three challenges to protect attempts to build more just and peaceful societies in Latin America. The United Steelworkers came out against it in November and issued a stateme
nt demanding public hearings about it after the police crackdowns on miners in Mexico last week. Plan Mexico would provide $1.5 billion in US Taxpayer monies and equipment to the Mexican military, police, and intelligence services. None of the aid contemplated in this first package of a propos
ed 3 year deal goes where it's most needed: addiction prevention and rehabilitation in America, and local development financing in mMxico. Sending equipment to the Mexican police and military in the context of unprosecuted human rights violations encourages impunity. Is this what Americans w
ant our government to do with our tax money? Increased surveillance, secret police and paramilitary activities endangers the civil liberties of the general population at risk, especially activists, union leaders, indigenous peoples. The invasion by U.S. military companies such as Blackwater, an
d direct U.S. involvement in Mexican military would lead to a client state relationship that compromises Mexican national sovereignty and would lead to increased U.S. interventionist and even imperial foreign policy. This "security" initiative is proposed in the context of opening up the Mexica
n economy to further privatization and exploitation by multinational corporations. Plan Mexico, emphasizes interdiction and as such expands the failed drug war in Colombia. Yet, a study conducted by the conservative RAND Drug Policy Research Center for the U.S. Army ... found that treatment is 1
0 times more cost effective than interdiction...". Plan Mexico imagines anti-terrorist measures to confront an international threat that does not exist in Mexico, and would reinterpret migration as organized crime. Mexico needs and deserves U.S. support, in the form of fair trade agreements w
hich prioritize labor, indigenous and other human rights & environmental protections; Instead our government sends jobs oversees where Mexican workers and farmers rights are abused under rapacious free trade that
reduces wages and decimates the environment. The proposal to expand militarization of Mexican society is a step in the wrong direction.
Plan Mexico is a dangerous ploy by the Bush administration to intervene in the affairs of Mexico for decades to come, while ignoring the need to create good paying jobs at home. Tell Congress to Stop Plan Mexico. (The above text is not the exact final version of the video clip.)

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