Articles by: John Ross
Chiapas is threatened by "four horsemen" of development: tourism, biofuel production, oil drilling, and mining projects. As for the Zapatista movement, which recently turned 25, John Ross says it continues to "demonstrate the capabilities of collective action." Nonetheless, Ross claims that Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos' recent "public posture has been disastrous for the rebel cause."
Mexico's political metabolism seems to break out in insurgencies every 100 years on the 10th year of the century. In 1810, the country priest Miguel Hidalgo launched the struggle for independence from the Crown. In 1910, Francisco Madero ignited the fuse of the epoch Mexican revolution.
Writing a thesis paper is normally the arduous culmination of years of study for most graduate students. For Lucía Morett of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, it turned into a fiery nightmare. While studying popular song and theater in Latin American guerrilla movements, she barely survived Colombian jets' aerial bombing of the jungle camp where she was staying. Four of her fellow students weren't as lucky. This is her story.
The fiery recent plane crash that killed the Mexican government's top anti-drug officials is an apt metaphor for the current state of President Felipe Calderón's drug war, which, after an embarrassing round of high-level arrests of anti-narcotics officials, appears to be similarly going down in flames.
Fury at the billionaire bailout of the criminal class that has driven Wall Street into a disaster of 9/11 dimensions festers down at the bottom of the economic food chain on Main Street. It is a familiar syndrome south of the border in Mexico, which had it's own mega-bailout in the 1990s. Back then, it was poor Mexican farmers and urban workers who ended up with the short end of the deal: they were saddled with onerous debt, their tax pesos financed the bailout and, in return, the cash-strapped government cut public services. Just over a decade later, it's déjà vu all over again—and Mexico could be next.