House and Senate Pass New Military Aid to Mexico
By: Laura Carlsen
The House version of the supplemental passed this week delivers a whopping $470 million to Mexican security forces. Of that, $310 million goes directly to the Mexican armed forces. This comes on top of $700 million already provided for the Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, to fund Mexican police, military, intelligence agencies, and judicial reform in 2008 and 2009.
What is incomprehensible is that Congress has inserted this pork barrel funding at a time when the U.S. economy is reeling, while ignoring an unprecedented crisis in Mexico in the fundamental areas of poverty, healthcare, governance, and employment.
This crisis should be more than obvious to legislators. The swine flu epidemic shaved an additional 0.3-1% off of Mexico’s projected gross domestic product (GDP) for 2009. The Mexican Central Bank now estimates that the economy will shrink around 5%, with some private estimates running much higher.
USAID reports its funding for Mexico at a paltry $28.9 million annually. Development aid from the United States is practically non-existent, even though 43% of the Mexican population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank’s conservative estimates.
Yet Congress would continue down a narrow path of military support. This wrong-headed vision reduces an entire country and its people to the gangster duels being played out in its streets. Worse yet, it casts any real effort to build long-term security for the region under the cold shadow of expensive surveillance planes and fighter helicopters.
The State Department seems to have taken a backseat to the defense interests in both government and the private sector that plan to steer the new security-driven bilateral relationship.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment