Is it time for Revolution in Mexico?

[Karmadillo]

Should the poor continue to tolerate the current system on the grounds it might one day work to their benefit? Or should they consider Revolution on the theory the PAN/PRI block will continue to serve a narrow ruling elite at the expense of the rest of the country?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/mexi-a21.shtml

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In 1994, the top 10 percent of families received over 41 percent of the country’s income, while the bottom 10 percent received 1.01 percent, one of most unequal distributions of income in Latin America. (In 1982, those figures were 32.8 percent and 1.72 percent). <8>

Between 1984 and 1992, the bottom 80 percent of households saw their share of income drop from 50.5 to 45.6 percent of total income. More recent statistics indicate that conditions have worsened.

Poverty levels, particularly in the southern states of Mexico, increased brutally between 1992, and 1996. <9> Twenty percent of the population is in extreme poverty, unable to obtain the 2,100 calories that are required to meet minimal nutritional standards; 40 percent is below the official poverty line. During the first two years of Fox’s administration, the number of poor increased by 2 million (from 14.8 to 16.8 million), a growth rate five times the rate of population growth. <10>

The 524,000 jobs created each year since 1993 are less than one third the number of new jobs Mexico needs to keep up with the increase in the labor force. Each year, over one million entrants into the labor market find no positions.

These figures add up to an economic catastrophe, especially in rural areas of the southern states—a crisis that every year forces thousands of unemployed young people to seek work in Mexico City or the United States.

Far from addressing this social emergency, the PRI and PAN have formed a bloc in the Mexican congress to eliminate social security and privatize public health services.