US-Mexico Border Militarization (Berlin Wall?)

On the Border...

The Southwest Organizing Tour of the Peoples Movements Assembly (PMA) visited the US-Mexico border in the California-Baja California state lines last week as part of the tour that took off from San Antonio, Texas at the beginning of June.

The US-Mexico border has been highly militarized beginning in 1924 with the establishment of the armed federal military border police called ‘Border Patrol’. Since 1924 militarization of the US-Mexico border has been the policy of the federal government through several administrations. Today, sadly enough the construction of a border ‘wall of death’ that now extends the 3,000 miles of the border leaving openings in the wall in areas of dangerous and treacherous deserts, mountains or rivers that results in more than 5,000 migrant deaths per year. Militarization of the US-Mexico border is not only the Border Wall of Death but also 25,000 border patrol agents that have plane, horse, jeep, helicopter patrols going day and night. Today militarization includes more that 23 drone aircrafts flying over the border day and night, as well as anchored zeppelins and other aircrafts. Thousands of National Guard are also on duty in various tasks on the US-Mexico borders.

Since the approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the penetration of the maquiladora industry in Mexico, there is a growing criminalization of social movements fighting for justice. Hundreds of organizing leaders have been killed, tortured and disappeared. Violence has escalated disproportionately to the tune of 34,000 people assassinated in 2010 in the so-called drug war. It is now a known fact that the United States has been funneling military armament to the Zetas and other organized criminal and the government military under the Plan Merida. The Plan Merida promises money and military equipment for Mexico to wage a war against the drug cartels. Just in CD. Juarez alone more than 500 young women have been assassinated and mutilated without any justice, as the perpetrators have never been brought before justice. CD Juarez has been turned into the deadliest city in the world by the Mexican government, the army and the US interference in Mexico’s affairs. The present US-Mexico border was imposed by a war of the US against Mexico in 1845 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that set the present border. The US took half of the Mexican northern territories.

NO to the Border Wall of Death!
No Border Militarization!
STOP the violence NOW!