Published 2 days ago in La Jornada Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico: Ayotzinapa - State Terror La Jornada: Carlos Fazio The Mexican State is going through a profound crisis. As a result of the grave events in Iguala, once again, the violence of a terrorist State embedded in a chain of corruption-impunity-simulation has been shown. With its system of smokescreens and its pseudo-democratic facade, the political classs pact of impunity blew up in the face of Enrique Peña Nieto, statesman of the year. The humanitarian catastrophe of the Calderón administration, which has deepened during Peña Nietos tenure, has forced the Executive Branch to conduct damage control operations. Objective? Evade responsibility for crimes of State and crimes against humanity formed after the extrajudicial killings of six people, and the torture and forced disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students in Iguala. By action or neglect, the responsibility of the federal Executive is inescapable. According to the 2014-2018 National Security Program, published in the Official Journal of the Federation on April 30, the Armed Forces, by their nature (i.e., training, discipline, intelligence, logistics, esprit de corps, mobility, ability to respond and firepower), are the entity necessary and indispensable for reducing violence and ensuring social peace in Mexico. Starting at 9:00 p.m. on September 26, the National Security Cabinet received reports and communications about what was happening in Iguala. The arrest and disappearance of the 43 normal school students occurred with the real-time knowledge of agents from the Attorney Generals Office and the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN/SEGOB), and of commanders in the Secretariat of National Defense [SEDENA]. One can neither argue intelligence failures, nor doubt the mobility and capacity to respond of the 27th Infantry Battalion stationed in Iguala since the 1970s. It is a foregone conclusion that someone might have informed the head of the chain of command and Supreme Commander, the President of the Republic. Peña Nieto changed the narrative, but neither the repressive nature of the State nor of his government. Needless to say, the concept of forced disappearance, as a tool and repressive form of institutional authority, is not an excess performed by out-of-control groups, but a repressive technology adopted rationally and centrally. One that, among other things, seeks to spread terror. The terrorist State embodies a philosophy that appears when the public norms self-imposed by those in charge are unable either to defend the capitalist social order or counteract with necessary effectiveness the opposition of those from below. Consequently, terror should be incorporated into a permanent, parallel activity of the State through a two-sided activity with its coercive apparatus: one public and subject to the laws (which in Mexico is not fulfilled); another clandestine, at the margin of any formal legality. It is a model of a public and secret State. Like a two-faced Janus. With a dual field of action that takes on a secret structural nature and incorporates unconventional (or irregular) forms of struggle. Terror is a key tool of the secret State. Crime and terror. It is an arbitrary, but not absurd, concept. It responds to an urgent need of both imperialism and the ruling classes. It appears when the discretionary control of coercion and subordination of civil society is no longer effective. When the traditional control model is exhausted and the system needs restructuring. It has nothing to do with dark forces entrenched in the basements of the old authoritarian system. Nor does it have to do with uncontrolled groups or a few bad apples inside the Army or the police. Fundamentally, it has to do with restructuring the model of the concentration of monopoly capital and imposing policies for transforming the productive apparatus according to the new international division of labor. It has to do with imposing the package of neoliberal reforms, which includes the appropriation of land by large landowners and multinational corporations that will deepen the plunder of the nations geo-strategic resources. But State terror is also a response to the rise of political protest and demands by the popular masses; to the protest from below, such as that by the normal school students from the Federation of Peasant Socialist Students in Mexico. Faced with this resistance and challenge, the countrys bosses need a modification of the repressive State. Terror then appears as a deterrent force. The other, secret face of the State. That resorts to paramilitary forces. To death squads. To groups for social cleansing and to the gunmen. To the Dirty War. To those faceless specters who carry out covert operations for the States intelligence services. To anonymous forces that enjoy unrestricted actual and legal impunity. The other face appears, the face of a State that builds its power by militarizing and dismantling society through fear and horror. It appears selectively or en masse, according to circumstances. But always with spillover effects, making the entire society feel that this terror can reach them. Iguala shows the dark face of a State that makes systematic, calculated and rational use of violence, according to a conception and ideology taught in military academies as part of the counter-insurgency doctrine. From the psychological war that the U.S. tried out in Vietnam when Operation Black Eye was put into practice by covert squads using the formula: Counter-Guerrilla = Demagoguery + Terror. In this context, the words of Secretary of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos, remain for reflection and interpretation. Speaking before Peña Nieto at Military Camp Number One, General Cienfuegos said: One cannot fight lawlessness with lawlessness. The armed forces cannot commit acts typical of the criminals themselves. *Carlos Fazio is considered one of the most prestigious analysts in political-strategic, military and religious affairs of Latin America. He is a professor on the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), has been a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities in the U.S. and Europe and is the author of dozens of books and papers. Voices of Mexico, by Jane Brundage jornada.unam.mx/2014/10/27/index.php?section=opinion&article=023a1pol&partner=rss
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:59:43 +0000
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