For the past couple of years, Oaxaca has witnessed some of the bloodiest repressions unleashed against the campesinos, students, and opposition organizations there. Only months after URO took power in December 2004, 250 police surrounded a community in Santiago Xanica during a communal workday and attempted to massacre the peasants by opening fire on 80 people.
This is part of the problem with any gathering of peaceful protest and how the government deals with it.
If this had been a smaller town the old government would have called them all "armed rebels" and nobody would be alive to say otherwise.
As modern as Mexico is the government has always gained power from support of the drug mob and the currant new governments push to attack the corrupt police and drug mobs may be in a very large part to just "get rid of the competition" so to speak.
In my own lifetime I can remember 3 changes of government in Mexico that took place because some "General" had more of the army on his side than the people in government!
If you live in a large city in Mexico you are a world apart from the rest of the country.
This is one reason that California has a "estimated" 6 million illeagles here in this state alone.
Most of these people just want a better life for themselfs and their children...often as basic of a human need as to not die of starvation. Some ARE criminals in the drug mobs and it is these who cause the crimes by the "illegals" other than the crime of being illeagle.
Mexico's economy took a dive in the 80's when the US stooped buying oil from them due to the high sulfur content.
In just over one year the Peso went from 8.5 per US dollar to 5,000/1.
Things had already been bad for the common person before that and now starvation became an even larger issue.
After a new Paso was made and many factory's with electronics and cars things slowly improved...yet even today a LUCKY person in a Volkswagen or electronic plant earns what comes to about $12 USD a week.
This is a factory workers life.
The problem with most of the buying power and raising prices around the world is due allot to the fact that almost no country uses gold or silver to back up it's money anylonger.
When the US was still on silver standard I can recall being able to buy 5 Big Mac's for just $1.
These are just part of the reasons my sig is what it is and in the next 30-50 years you may expect things world wide to change dramatically...and for most people not for the best:
*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*