Roads of Michoacan
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
From the perspective of some neoliberal geographers, part of the explanation of poverty in Mexico is related to dispersion. The conclusion of this perspective on development prescribes simple situations, although many times impossible to carry out.
In the south of the country, this strategy developed under technocratic and authoritarian impulses, distinguishes concepts such as Rural-Cities, Smart Cities or Cluster Cities.
At a sufficient distance to interpret the results, the only thing that can be evidenced is the neo-extractivism and gentrification behind these projects, in addition to the accompaniment of organized crime, sometimes foreign mercenary, as well as totalizing government corruption.
Chiapas, one of the starting points of post-neoliberal neo-extractivism, is dangerously close to situations of ungovernability and very serious regional conflicts. The conflict is generated to promote the displacement of human groups to the cities, the central and northern states; or, the United States of North America, where the subjects become cheap labor, cannon fodder for organized crime or a floating consumerist population.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation has been an example of self-defense, social identity, defense of the territory, and even a postmodern revolution, as Alain Touraine pointed out. Zapatista militants, like the Navi in Avatar, fight to save the world of life, isolate themselves from the contradictions of capitalism, modernity and even progress. And the cost for the EZLN has been a peculiar conflict with the Mexican State and with the mercenary forces of imperialism and internal colonialism.
The EZLN's war has spread to many regions of Mexico, such as Michoacán. US imperialism is not only looking for lemons, avocados or drugs. The Zeigeist of the time marks lithium, gold, copper, water, tin, etc. And it has mercenaries –like Blackwater- in many pivotal areas to sow terror and appropriate territories, landscapes, entire worlds of life.
The American technocrats, like the Nazi technocrats who recruited and ended up training them, do not stop thinking of the world as their East Indies and disposable subjects.
The war against drug trafficking in Mexico covers up the process of neo-extractivism that is advancing relentlessly. People are forced through the mercenary terrorism of organized crime to migrate, to leave their territories and resources to US economic interests.
As in the case of the EZLN, the Latin American governments and the Mexican one in particular, observe the massacre and torture in a stoic, but tragic way; with few possibilities of confronting the terrorist force and trying to resort to resistance measures that work less and less.
Mexico faces a hybrid war by the United States on various sides, the drug war is the most visible channel of this conflict; but, without a doubt, US imperialism intervenes wherever it wants, for example the Broad Opposition Front. It is necessary to avoid denial to understand the perspective of Yankee interests on the Mexican political system.
Even when neoliberalism came to power, neoextractivism does not stop or become human; On the contrary, Michoacán, like the country, is tangible proof of the neo-extractivist war that we are experiencing. Multilateralism, national resistance, the ability to react to US imperialism even if it is in a symbolic way, the denunciation of what is really happening, is the only resource left. The United States is going to destroy the world, but first it will destroy Michoacán and Mexico.