On October 4th, 2001,
UNAM Professor Adolfo Gilly participated in the panel discussion, "Historical
Perspectives on Contemporary Mexico," with Professor Alan
Knight of Oxford and Professor Alicia Hernandez Chavez of Colegio
de Mexico. The panel took place at the Center for Latin
American Studies and was moderated by UC Berkeley Professor
of History Margaret Chowning. Below is a summary transcript,
translated from Spanish to English, of Gilly's remarks.
 |
| Prof.
Adolfo Gilly (left), Prof. Alan
Knight (center), Prof.
Alicia Hernández
Chávez (right) |
The
Punitive Expedition of President Bush
The events that have
followed from September 11th are the unforeseen and nevertheless
logical result of what has been denominated "globalization," a
process whereby the vertiginous increase of exchanges is
the other face of the growing disappearance of legal regulations
and the dismantling of individual and societal rights.
Horror and tragedy fell
side by side this September 11th from New York and Washington. This
instantaneous worldwide repercussion of the criminal attacks,
included in the design of the terrorists, appeared as another
of the faces of the actual state of things in the world. The
war, as happened in the 20th century, threatens in the 21st
century to be the new rising and ineludible step of globalization.
In other words, the irreversible
process of globalization assumes this perverse characteristic. There
is intention, long before it culminates in a single world
economic system (and we are far from that, if we consider
the thousands of millions of human beings marginalized or
detached from "the markets" as we have understood
them), to establish a single world order and a supporting
unification of military force. It is not possible or
desirable to oppose globalization and commercial, technological,
and cultural exchanges. Is it possible to avoid the
violence and war that accompanies them like their shadow?
The government of the
United States proclaims, as its right and its duty, the enforcement
of law at a worldwide scale. From there would follow
its right to the interpretation of law and definition of
justice. Consequently, its attributes would be military
power, financial power, judicial power, and punitive power. An
army, a law, a justice, and a right to castigate as a legitimate
universal monopoly of the United States are, in effect, the
tendency and project contained in the words and deeds of
President Bush's government as of September 11th and, in
particular, in Bush's September 20th discussion. This
is the present form of existence in world reality reached
due to globalization. If we review past history of
the constitution of world systems, we observe that this warring
ending, under this form or another, was almost inevitable,
although in the way one can affirm once success is assured.
A singular feature of
this conflict of modernity is that the two opposing military
organizations, Al Quaeda and the Pentagon, don't invoke as
legitimization of their actions interests or rights, whose
always relative character would permit them to be included
and settled within the legal marks of the United Nations. Each
one invokes two premodern absolutes: the Good and the Bad,
God and Allah, Satan and the Unfaithful. Once in this
terrain, the only feasible departure is the annihilation
of the Other and its allies. Among the many victims
of the perverse form taken by globalization is also human
reason.
March 9th, 1916, a column
of the forces of Pancho Villa crossed the border, attacked
the small city of Columbus, New Mexico, and withdrew after
suffering significant losses before the local garrison. It
was the first? and until this 11th of September
the only? foreign attack over U.S. territory. President
Wilson launched the Punitive Expedition in persecution of
Villa. Five thousand men headed by General Pershing
penetrated Mexican territory March 16th of this year, in
search of the unfindable Guerilla. At the outset of
February 1917, on the eve of the entrance of the U.S. in
the world war, the Punitive Expedition withdrew from Mexico
without having succeeded in capturing Pancho Villa, but having
notably augmented the popularity of this among the Mexicans.
When President Bush said
that this world crisis is "the first war of the 21st
Century" perhaps he exaggerated to denote "war" what
has until now appeared more as a Punitive Expedition of these
global and extremely technological times. But he was
perfectly right in foreseeing new wars, unpredictable and
incommensurable, in the coming decades.
It took a good part of
the nineteenth century, and all of the twentieth, to win
the rights, regulations, and law which protected human beings
and their work in all its forms in many countries, and to
have what used to be Welfare States. It took two world
wars and many revolutions and rebellions to reach the balances
expressed in the United Nations and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Those balances are a thing of the
past, and the Pentagon has a lot to do with their destruction. During
the 90s, they were demolished in almost one fell swoop, like
the Twin Towers. In their place is left this world
without public law and social rights in front of the faceless
dictatorship of the markets.
You cannot discuss with "the
markets." It is not possible to organize to bargain
with them. Nor is it possible to sue them or bring
them to justice. They aren't there, they don't tangibly
exist, and no one represents them. They are an invisible
spectre, omniscient and all-powerful, before which no action
appears possible. This is the state of the globalized
world and of the unbearable poverty and distress in most
of the countries of this planet. The present is a crisis
of the organization of the world. As U.S.A. southern
neighbor and as member of NAFTA, the current world crisis
places Mexico at a historical crossroads.
From the end of the war
of 1847 until the last decade of the 20th century, Mexico
has maintained a friendly and respectful distance with relation
to the United States--even when seventy to eighty per cent
of our external commerce throughout the 20th century took
place over the northern border. Breaking diplomatic
relations with Cuba, during times that the internal politics
of Mexico's government were almost the opposite of Cuba's,
is a good example of this conduct, rooted in national, historical,
and geopolitical reasons.
Whatever its political
regime, Mexico is obligated to preserve this distance for
the sake of national independence, political autonomy, internal
democracy, and historical protection of its territorial integrity. If
it wants to govern for itself its national affairs (one of
the necessary attributes of any democratic regime), Mexico
is obligated to be friendly but cautious towards the international
politics of its powerful partner.
Since President Porfirio
Diaz and during almost all of the 20th century, Mexico followed
this line of external policy. It maintained a cautious
equilibrium between the United States, its neighbor and principal
commercial partner; Europe, decisive fountain of culture
and judicial principles; and Latin America, where stronger
are the historical and linguistic bonds (and a common language
is truly a powerful bond).
This equilibrium has
been broken. Since the meeting between President Fox
and President Bush in February of 2001 and especially as
of September 11th, it is the intent of the Mexican government
to break this trajectory and to establish with the United
States a privileged relationship, the strongest and closest
of all, not only in commerce and economy, but also in politics,
culture, war, and legal fundamentals of the State.
With the support of the
Mexican government to the declaration of war of President
Bush on September 20th, this relationship could convert into
a political subordination, dangerous for Mexico and for the
preservation of good relations between both countries.
This policy threatens
to break a historical equilibrium with the motive of an uncertain
and not clearly defined opportunity. A rupture like
this could yield an improvisation without immediate benefit
for anyone that, with inevitable costs, subsequent history
will be in charge of correcting. In times of crisis
and conflict Mexico, if it acts as a nation-friend, should
behave as a force of restraint, peace, and independent moral
support to the U.S.A. as a nation, not as a blind follower
of the current revenge mood of the American establishment.
It is up to Mexico to
decide. Whatever the decision, it will be fateful.
*
The United States today
has demands over Mexico: especially petroleum, energy, and
territory (above all the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and control
of the southern border). These are not economic but
geopolitical demands. The United States needs to close
the new border of Fortress America, from Alaska to Panama,
including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, the Mare
Nostrum of the Empire, and assure the control of petroleum
below this continental platform.
Mexico doesn't have to
give in to these demands, much less to the compelling conclusions
in which they are today planned. For Mexico, to take
a position that is strong and without generalities against
terror, violence, and terrorism in the world means to cast
away its historical and political weight, as a nation and
as a State, for the construction of a globalization policy
in which rights precede and determine the contents of economy
and technology.
If we want for globalization
to be not destined to bring with it new wars like those the
present crisis announces, an international policy of social
globalization will be necessary. If we don't want the
violences of terror, weapons, misery, and hunger to keep
growing, we will need a new international legality, a renovated
Universal Declaration of Human Rights validated across national
borders whose nucleus should be a Bill of Social Rights for
the 21st century.
Article Five of NATO
says that an attack of one of its nations will be considered
an attack of all of them. This is a pact of military
solidarity between a group of nations and their armies. A
globalization of human measurement, on the contrary, should
be based on the old formula of the solidarity between workers
and human beings--the motto of the Industrial Workers of
the World in the United States at the beginning of the last
century: an injury to one is an injury to all.
We can commence by establishing
this rule in our common territory, North America, in the
manner like the IWW in the United States and Mexico proposed
for a century: organizing work under all its forms on equal
footing and with the same rights in our three countries of
NAFTA. This organization could have an influence as
universal as the one had by the economy of North America
today in its conjunction or the military force of the United
States in particular.
Terror nourishes from
misery, exploitation, hunger, sickness, the negation of rights,
and the everyday and unending humiliation of millions and
millions of human beings. The answer to terror is not
repression or war. It is the autonomous and democratic
organization of society to get to everyone the rights for
everyone. The answer is not vengeance but justice. Without
rights for everyone, we will not have peace for anyone.
