Police in the U.S. and Mexico have been militarized by the U.S. government. In the 2007 Mérida Initiative the U.S. and Mexico agreed the U.S. would supply the Mexican government with weapons, allegedly to fight drug cartels. But, when parents of the 43 students taken from Ayotzinapa recently toured the U.S., the father of one student who survived the September 2014 massacre stated that U.S. aid to Mexico is “being used to kill ordinary people.”
As of April 2015, more than $1.3 billion of Mérida Initiative assistance had been delivered to Mexico. Within the U.S. the Department of Defense’s 1033 program transferred military-grade weaponry to state and local police departments, free of charge. This was a source of the military vehicles that rolled into Ferguson MO in November 2014.
The 43 student teachers were attacked, many believe, by police or the army, in Mexico in Aytozinapa in September 2014. The people of both countries find themselves under assault by their governments with high tech weaponry supplied by the U.S..
Although some Mérida funds go toward reforming Mexico’s corrupt justice system, most of the money is for military training and hardware. By law, all of the funds must be spent by the U.S. government, in the U.S., on U.S. suppliers and contractors. There are beneficiaries of the Mérida Initiative—weapons manufacturers within the U.S..
Both the U.S. and Mexico are in chaos as both economies leap from industrial production to a new electronic society in which the economy no longer needs workers. The capitalists in both countries respond the same way to the chaos of this leap–by militarizing the police to fight their own citizens who are now seen as the enemy.
