Swiped from yesterday's Common Dreams:

WASHINGTON - A $465-million aid package aimed at countering terrorism and crippling the drug trade in Mexico and Central America was signed into law yesterday by U.S President George W. Bush, but critics warn that the “Merida Initiative,” also known as “Plan Mexico,” will be ineffective and could result in more human rights abuses.

More than $116 million is for training and equipping Mexican military and police forces, and will go directly into the pockets of U.S. defense contractors and defense technology firms, charges Americas Policy Program director Laura Carlsen.

More importantly, “Plan Mexico extends into Mexico the Bush administration’s failed ‘war on terrorism’ and ‘drug war’ models. These are policies that have militarized U.S. foreign policy, wasted taxpayers’ money, and caused the United States to lose standing in the world — notably in Latin America,” Carlsen warned after the Senate approved the package Friday.

Plan Colombia has cost the United States roughly 5 billion dollars since its inception, and has done virtually nothing to curb coca trafficking to the United States. Instead, it has been used as a pretext for funnelling counterinsurgency assistance and military aid to the Colombian government. This has been used to crack down on FARC and ELN, as well as protect transnational corporate interests based in the country.

One effect of the U.S.-Colombia war on FARC and its sympathizers has been to push the centers of drug production elsewhere -- namely Mexican cartels to the north, and Brazilian cartels to the south. (See the May/June 2008 NACLA Report on the Americas, p. 7). This is one of the reasons that we've seen increased drug-related violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. In Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, for instance, the Zetas (a drug cartel) have even started killing Mexican police and hanging banners to advertise they're hiring. Elsewhere, narcogangsters have decapitated bodies and left notes threatening the police.

In 2006, this publication (as the now-defunct Turning the Tide) questioned why new detention facilities were being constructed along the U.S-Mexio border:

In January [2006] ... Halliburton subsidiary KBR was awarded a 385 million dollar contract from the Department of Homeland Security to build “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” This has been done in order to augment existing detention facilities “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

The quotes are Halliburton’s own, but they don’t really say what these “new programs” entail. There’s some speculation, however, that they might be used in the future to implement martial law in much the same way that internment camps were used to hold Japanese-American citizens during WWII. Other companies that stand to benefit from militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border include Wackenhut, G.E.O., and Corrections Corporation of America. The implications of Washington inciting border wars to help defense contractors reap in enormous profits could not be more frightening.

(See "Border Wars", in the May/June 2006 back issue Turning the Tide.)

Now we know why: to detain Mexican nationals as they journey here to escape drug wars, rising food costs, and other crises fueled by their juggernaut neighbor to the north.