Revolutionary Worker #1192, March 23 , 2003, posted at http://rwor.org
We received the following article from the A World to Win News Service
10 March 2003. A World to Win News Service. Consider the position of Mexico. At least until recently Mexico's Vincente Fox bragged about being closer to Bush than any other Latin American president. His foreign minister's stance at the UN Security Council has been a pathetic display of wiggling and position avoidance. But that hasn't been enough for Bush. According to the weekly Economist , an American diplomat threatened that if Mexico didn't vote for the resolution, it could "stir up feelings" against Mexicans in the U.S. He referred to the internment of people of Japanese descent in American concentration camps during World War 2 as an example of what he meant.
Bush himself, interviewed on 3 March, instead of disavowing those remarks, simply said, "I don't expect there to be significant retribution from the government" against Mexicans in the streets of America, adding a pointed remark about what he called "the interesting phenomenon taking place here in America about the French," what he called a "backlash against the French not stirred up by anybody except the people"-- an atmosphere of insults, harassment and intimidation of ordinary French citizens in the U.S. because of France's opposition to the U.S. People in Mexico rightly took this as a thinly veiled threat to unleash violent mobs, serious pogroms against anyone who looks Mexican. The campaign against the French has in fact been directly fanned by powerful forces in U.S. ruling circles, as well as the reactionary media.
Like so many of Bush's moves, this one backfired, creating outrage throughout Mexico that has made it all the harder for the Mexican government to do its master's bidding, because to do so would be a frank admission that the country's president is an American flunky.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
rwor.org
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497