… Some of the context is depressingly familiar -- police brutality and racist harassment, massive unemployment, child poverty, lack of social mobility and blatant economic inequality. Many have been keen to paint the recent disorder as mere criminality, unrelated to any political issues or demands…
(British philosopher Nina Powers, writing on her country’s riots in Salon.com)
While the sparks that lit the fire might be slightly different, recent uprisings by immigrants in France, workers and the middle-class in North Africa and the Middle-East, the unemployed (and under-employed) in Spain and Greece, by students in Britain last December and in Chile now, and again now in Britain, are, as Powers said, “depressingly familiar”.
Although racial issues seem to be more important in former colonial powers like Britain and France, the “context” — police brutality, unemployment, poverty, lack of social mobility, economic inequality — are the same. Young adults are turning on societies and leaders who by political or economic policy have thwarted any hope they may have for economic or social progress.
Here in Mexico, holding demonstrations is an art form (Mexico City morning drive time radio reports not just freeway accidents and construction delays, but what streets will probably be blocked by demonstrators), but we have so far been spared the more violent outburst of youthful rage… or have we?
To go by foreign reports, our social problems are completely explained by issues surrounding the export of certain agricultural products willingly purchased by our neighbors to the north while they simultaneously insist we stamp out the trade. When there are protests against “police brutality and racist harassment, massive unemployment, child poverty, lack of social mobility and blatant economic inequality” the media — if it deigns to notice at all — reports them in the context of an unraveling social fabric resulting from the “drug war”. They are not totally wrong, but Mexico’s social fabric has been unraveling since the imposition of neo-liberal “free trade” policies in the late 1980s.
Although Mexicans have been primarily urbanites since the 1950s, there was still a sizable and relatively stable rural community, which — if not prosperous — was at least able to maintain itself, thanks to both subsidies for subsistence agriculture and the custom of sending young adults to work temporarily in the cities or in the United States who could send back remittances to be invested in enterprises that would provide for the worker and family’s future. “Free trade” blighted any prospects of a secure future for many rural Mexican, forcing even relatively successful independent farmers and their middle class service providers to give up… either emigrating (mostly internally, to the Mexican cities, or to the United States).
Those that stayed on the farm have largely lost their independence, becoming either employees of commercial agricultural enterprises, or — lacking access to the financing required for commercial agriculture — have turned to the few exports in high demand that do not require massive outside financing: marijuana and opium poppies. And, while it is dangerous work, for under-educated rural youth without other economic prospects, and no chance at a decent financial future, the narcotics export trade at least provides employment within a local social system.
The rural youth who move to the cities, as well as the urban youth, are facing a similar set of challenges as “neo-liberalism” became not just a favored economic theory, but a fact of life. One notable change within urban Mexico has been the growth of chain “convenience stores”. While the changaras (hole in the wall “mom-n-pop” general stores) were unlikely to provide anything close to a middle-class income, I would argue that these small businesses created a middle-class mindset. The owners of these tiny businesses had a stake in their own community’s development — if nothing else, they would not only sweep their own sidewalk, but make it known if their neighbors failed to sweep theirs. More importantly, perhaps, the corner shop was a familial affair. A corner shop-keeper might not be the most attractive option for a young person’s future, but the shop-keeper’s daughter or son at least had the sense that they would have some economic control over their lives. While the new convenience stores may provide employment, and may even provide employment in their neighborhood, the management and financing is coming from elsewhere. And the profits, as well: the neighborhood changara, especially the more successful ones, could (and did) offer credit to customers, and provide informal financing to other local entrepreneurs. As go the shops, so go the other small service providers.
Of course, we were never a nation of just shop-keepers and farmers, but almost any trade or business one can name — from auto mechanics to artists — have increasingly required education and capital… both of which are increasingly denied to rural and urban youths. Even for those who can get through the over-burdened educational system, there are few economic or social opportunities. It is no wonder that “ni-nis” — youths with “ni trabajo, ni escuela” … neither work nor school … are a growing segment of the Mexican population. As in Britain, a much wealthier nation with a higher levels of consumption than here, and a much longer history of “free trade” (the British invented the idea), the “ni-nis” are viewed as a social “problem”.
In Britain, things are more complicated by its long history as an insular society that, although it has tried mightily, has never come to grips with its peculiar social caste system, and with the "race" issues self-created by its own colonial policies have yet to be completely resolved. France, too, has its problems in this regard, and the French also went though a wave of social violence mostly fomented by conflict between the state and the children of immigrants locked out of the mainstream social system.
The British disturbances, at least from media reports (which one assumes are biased towards the concerns of the "haves"), were at first seen as purely "racial", and the uprising seen as an present the uprising as an orgy of consumerism... basically, a looting spree gone viral. But, in a society where consumer goods are the ticket to acceptance as a member in good standing of the mainstream, I suppose that's to be expected. Interestingly, what was also seen as a "racial" conflict is being accepted more and more as a class conflict, but only after more images began to appear of English rioters who were obviously not of colonial heritage (i.e., white guys).
Our racial barriers are more subtle, although it’s a safe bet that youths who were traditionally the have-nots, the Indigenous peoples, are even further from economic and social fulfillment, Mexicans as a whole are getting poorer. Young Mexicans without other prospects, unlike the young Brits, are not immune to the lure of consumption. But, at least some are willing to find jobs of some sort — even in a deplorable trade like narcotics exporting — which I’m not sure is all that worse than a “looting spree gone viral”. One perhaps shouldn’t think of narcotics violence as a social protest spun out of control, but — with peaceful protests against police (and military) brutality having not quite yet “gone viral” into protests against other social problems — unemployment, poverty, lack of social mobility, economic inequality — perhaps there is still time to rethink priorities. Paris, Tunis, Cairo, London, Santiago, Damascus, Athens, Madrid… why not Culiacán, Torreón, San Cristobal, Mexico City? The young are sending the message that the economic and social policies that created the situation need to be changed… or else.