“We cannot separate the economic crisis from the violence and criminal crisis that we live day by day.”
Forget 2012. As far as many Mexicans are concerned, the ancient Mayaswere being generous: the sky’s actually going to fall next year. Why?Because it’s 2010, Mexico’sbicentennial, and Mexican history has an eerie way of repeating itself.Mexico’s 1910 centennial, after all, saw the start of the bloody,decade-long Mexican Revolution,which killed more than a million people. And that cataclysm wasprecisely a century after the start of Mexico’s bloody, decade-long War of Independence in 1810.
You get the picture. As a result, there’s been no shortage of talklately about possible unrest, especially in the form of armed rebelgroups, erupting south of the border in 2010. But is there really abasis for concern? None as apparent as the popular grievances thatexisted in 1809 or 1909. But this is still Mexico; and while Spanish colonizers no longer oppress the country, and dictators like Porfirio Diazaren’t brutalizing campesinos, the country nonetheless is reeling fromthe worst criminal violence in its history and one of its hardesteconomic slumps.
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At the same time, political observers like Denise Maerker, a prominent columnist for the Mexico City daily El Universal,fear that provincial governments in places like Chiapas, where theweapons were found, are using 2010 fears as a pretext for cracking downon social activists. “They’re drawing questionable links betweenadvocates for the poor and armed groups,” says Maerker, who addsthere’s little evidence that Hernandez is an EPR boss.