The Mexican American Border | From War to Wall

this video is part three of a three part series if you want to get a more in-depth understanding of the topic you will find the links to the first two videos in the description but before we start i would like to thank the folks over at surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video surfshark is the vpn that i use when browsing the internet you can download the app onto your desktop to use it or just download the chrome extension like you can see here on my laptop with a simple click you browse the internet from a location of your own choosing and discretion which is nice it helps protect your identity and since your data will be encrypted not even your provider will be able to see what you are doing if you live in a country that implements internet restrictions banning you from certain sites you can use surfsharkvpn to browse these sites anyway or you can use it to gain access to foreign sites presentations and services that are well simply better for example i have been using surfsharkvpn to watch the european championship on foreign channels since austrian broadcasters are always a minute behind and my friends keep spoiling the game results if i don't you can do the same thing with for example netflix just use surfsharkvpn to pretend to be canadian american or english to gain access to shows only available for canadians americans and brits and as a nice bonus perk surfsharkvpn also blocks out malicious ads and malware if you are interested and you also want to support this channel click the link in the description or go to surfshark.deals crowd or use the code crowd to get 83 percent off a two-year plan and free extra months for free that's surfshark.deals crowd or just use the code crowd at checkout there's also a 30-day money payback guarantee if you want to convince yourself of this product first many thanks again to the folks over at surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video and now let's get into this video in the city of nogales sonora you will find that the largest employers are american companies and you will find those in the machiladore manufacturing industry park within its premises there are u.s companies that produce anything from musical instruments to hospital clothing to suitcases to sunglasses to garage doors this practice of american business moving into mexico to acquire its cheap labor started over a hundred years ago and nogales neighboring county of canadia is one of the first places where that began canadia has some of the richest copper ore deposits in the region today these mines are owned by the state-owned mining corporation grupo mexico and by the richest man in mexico and formerly richest man in the world the billionaire carlos slim however that is not how mining started here the industrial monopoly economy of mexico the dias had established was unable to tap many resources of the country the monopoly owners were preoccupied with their own little parcels of the economy and since mexican capital was restricted within the oligarchy and not widely available many economic sectors were neglected the result was an economic underdevelopment of many parts of the country that the elites just simply didn't care about and one of these places was the north however american prospectors bankers and entrepreneurs could take credits and loans from banks in the united states where capital was available to everyone to then buy the licenses from the mexican government this angered sections of the mexican public who would have preferred to do so themselves having access to american industry meant that these americans began building textile and other industries in central mexico as well while the mexican oligarchs didn't bother and just kept sitting on their established plantations by 1900 over 90 percent of all industry in mexico was owned by foreigners and 70 of these foreigners were americans the ultimate result of the porfiriato was one that replicated itself in many latin american countries the corrupt rule of caudelio oligarchs who limited the economic freedoms of their citizens with exclusionary economic institutions resulted in foreigners with foreign capital and foreign machinery and foreign innovations taking over large swaths of national economies that the kleptocratic local governments were too incompetent to develop or just disinterested in while the general public could do nothing but watch the legacies of this precarious socio-economic development reverberate throughout latin america to this very day one of the american entrepreneurs was william green a wisconsin rancher who had the capital and american credit that decades of decentralized and open economic development had made available in the united states with that capital which was inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of mexicans within their own exclusionary mexican economy he was able to buy a grant from the mexican government in 1899 to open copper mines in canadia due to the corruption of the mexican state he was also able to bribe himself into extraordinary positions of power green throughout his career had spent a substantial time doing business in the american frontier even murdering a man in tombstone arizona he wasn't the type of person who liked government oversight and was therefore able within the isolated and often lawless lands of northern mexico to build almost his own little fiefdom around the town of canania just like the patrons however the resentment amongst the local montana population that he hired started to spread when he imported american miners who earned five paces a day for the same work that earned the mexican worker only two pesos a day meanwhile in central mexico a crisis in the textile industry caused a third of its workers to lose their jobs this resulted in strikes and the consequent brutal crackdown by the mexican military which gained increasing popularity for the opposition politician francisco matiero in panic diaz suspended the already fraudulent elections and had mandarin exiled to the united states this became the starting shot of the mexican revolution of 1910 and the consequent civil war the mexican revolution is unique it is an extremely complex and a very convoluted story of betrayals and political maneuvering but it has always had a special place in the hearts and minds of many historians but also especially in the hearts and minds of revolutionaries the reason for this is that revolutions are often romanticized as uprisings of the impoverished and poor but that is largely a romantic myth in reality the vast majority of revolutions were led by educated middle and upper class peoples often revolutions happen to preserve a status quo and not to abolish it but not so here the mexican revolution is an exception to what is largely a romantic myth the mexican revolution of 1910 genuinely was a spontaneous uprising of the disenfranchised and impoverished masses against those who had exploited them it was also the first revolution of the 20th century followed by the chinese revolution and the russian revolution within it you will find the themes of all revolutions of the 20th century rebellion against oppressive government against economic exploitation and against foreign influence and invaders and the struggle for social reform and justice revolutionary mexico was also the first 20th century society to engage in revolutionary social experimentation from nationalism to anarchism to socialism indigenous liberation to liberal democracy it had famous and charismatic leaders such as emiliana zapata and his sabatistas who fought for indigenous lands to be taken from large land owners and made communal land again pancho villa who although pragmatic mainly fought for what he saw as a struggle of the mexican working class to have their land returned francisco madero who wanted a legalist liberal democracy with land return to peasants as their private property and one of the main reasons why the popular romantic image of this revolution endures to this very day is that unlike most other 20th century revolutions this revolution succeeded and technically it is still with us the bay yang republic is gone the spanish republic is but a nostalgic memory the soviet union is no more but the mexican republic it still stands the revolution first flared up in the north with striking miners and instantly spread south to plantation labourers sensing the danger to themselves in this situation the cowdelius participated in this initial uprising and a new government was put in place under francisco madeiro however that government kept the power structures of the previous government and even some of the same people it negotiated land reform but did so tacitly at best handing out largely worthless scraps of desert to plantation laborers the land reform also included a scam that redistributed large swaths of land to already wealthy landowners this worked because the government promised to return land that was illegally seized during the rule of deers however very little land was technically illegally seized since diaz had just legalized the land seizures of his allies and business partners additionally the government didn't reform and kept the hated mexican army the mexican army had come to be one of the most hated institutions of the country ruthlessly used as a brutal and blunt tool to crush civil discontent brutalize the public and dispossess farmers by seizing their lands so revolution flared up again or more precisely several revolutions counter revolutions and more a rebellion in the north that sought to overthrow the government the government crushed that rebellion but what the government could not get control over were the zapatistas and the anarchists there's a good reason for this the issue of land land reform was and to an extent still is one of the most important and divisive political issues in mexico and large parts of latin america in the united states land had often been handed out for free to settlers over the centuries and property ownership became common and widespread in mexico land had been owned by a transplant spanish aristocracy a social structure reinforced by post-colonial oligarchs and then by the perfiriato millions of acres of farmland were in the hands of an extremely small minority while millions of small peasants lived in poverty without property the resolution of this inequality would be the main economic and political challenge mexico faced throughout the 20th century and to a degree still today the zapatistas offered a solution to the disenfranchised peasantry communal land ownership in collective farms farmland had been owned communally by native american communities before the perfiriato and the zapatistas demanded a return to that system and that was a very attractive proposition to the largely mestizo and horribly disenfranchised and exploited mexican peasantry who joined the zapatistas and mass while the government was able to crush initial counter-revolutionary uprisings by army officers and members of the old elite it was unable to find and implement any meaningful solutions for the issues that had caused the revolution in the first place it had negotiated an alliance with the socialists and the anarchists but those started to openly mock the weak government and its ineffectiveness the zapatistas started forming their communal farms rebelled and seized control of the country's sugar plantations and the richest state morelos and the socialists went on strikes in cities while the government increasingly started falling apart madero was an idealist a man with good intentions he wanted to establish american democracy in mexico he dreamt of a mexico that would become a free republic with the same standard of living and socio-political structure and constitutional liberties as the united states but ideals alone cannot build a functioning state or a former society his idealism blinded him and his government through the fundamental flaws and realities of the mexican state they had inherited the united states was a country of small property owners government accountability separation of powers and an independent judiciary with freely available capital none of these institutions existed in mexico building an american-style republic on the disheveled monstrosity that was the pofuriato was simply an impossibility what madero didn't realize was that the entire socio-economic order of the porfiriato was doomed to failure at the root cause of the revolution itself it would have to go for any change to even be possible throughout the revolution american industrialists had fled mexico and when madero started negotiating with socialist workers in the cities the us ambassador conspired with a nephew of dears to organize a coup that ended with the assassination of madero and the end of the first revolutionary government the new counter-revolutionary regime led by victoriano juarta immediately marched south to try and crush the zapatistas and failed miserably the counter-revolutionary regime got bogged down in an unwinnable gorilla war in the rugged mountains and jungles of the south the army engaged in a vicious scorched earth campaign burning towns and villages and conducting mass executions and massacres on its way south it also massacred the liberal government of cernavasa the result of this indiscriminate brutality in particular since it was often directed against civilians and people who were not even zapatistas was that thousands went to join the zapatistas and while failing in the south in the north the nail in the coffin of the regime came to rise a loose set of rebels revolutionaries anarchists socialists smugglers cowboys deserted soldiers lumberjacks small farmers and many more stretching from sonora to chikuwawa to kuahila united and led by the famous pancho villa within a year day seized control of the north west managed to build a functioning war economy redistributed land and even established a central bank to finance their reforms and even though the united states supported the regime the army of panchavilla just bought modern american military equipment not from the american government but from american companies remington colt and dupont in el paso and austin they even bought fuel from texas oil barons with little to no resistance the army of pancho villa known as the division del norte ended up being better equipped than the government at the most effective fighting force of the revolution it became especially known for its cavalry cowboys and horseback packed with bandoliers and modern mauser rifles who quickly and efficiently caused havoc among enemy forces in 1914 that army marched south and took zarategas with that pancho villa controlled much of the north with the exception of the northeast which was controlled by different rebels and the governor carranza and general obregon who had been loyal to madero and therefore rebelled against huetta as constitutionalists the huatta regime was now boxed in between pancho villa carranza and the zapatistas but this is where someone else moved into the picture the army of panchavilla had committed several atrocious war crimes such as mass executions of surrendered soldiers and in the far north it started to increasingly lose control along the border the trees started to increase but not significantly enough to actually harm the united states but as an excuse it was enough for them under the pretense of intervening against banditry the american army started to intervene in 1914 the actual intention was to guide the revolution into a government in their favor and to secure the mexican assets of american industrialists the americans landed in veracruz and occupied it but the occupation ended up being a disaster mexican civilians started shooting at the americans the american navy consequently bombarded the city indiscriminately and eventually had to pull out although the americans would conduct several incursions into northern mexico they had to increasingly come to terms with the fact that they would not be guiding the outcome of this revolution the main effect the intervention had in the end was that the zapatistas constitutionalists and the army of panchavilla formed an alliance against the regime and shortly after pancho villa inflicted a crushing defeat against the huetta government at the battle of torreon after which the mexican army an institution that was feared and hated by the mexican people basically fell apart querter resigned and fled to the united states where he was imprisoned and probably murdered and this started a rush on the capital and obrigon was the first to arrive the constitutionalists promised concessions to factory workers and the freedom for all workers to organize in labor unions while pancho villa and zapata launched an appeal to the rural peasants at this point in the revolution with all counter-revolutionary forces defeated or in shambles the conflict that arose was between left-wing forces the constitutionalist labour movement of the progressive socialist general opregon and the more conservative carranza controlled the cities the zapatistas and army of pancho villa with the anarchist farming communes and demands for land reform held power in the countryside the americans were shocked by what they perceived as widespread radicalism they offered support to the constitutionalists in return for american control of mexican oil and were angrily rebuffed they finally realized at this point that a regime that continued the perfiriation status quo was impossible and would only lead to more uprisings so they begrudgingly decided to throw their support behind the constitutionalists who although they demanded massive redistribution of land and wealth at least wanted such redistributed as private property the constitutionalists announced an enormous land reform package every single mexican was eligible for the program and would essentially divide up the large majority of mexican farmland among the poor peasantry as private property pancho villa and zapata who had advocated for collectivized communal farms were outraged and called on their supporters to revolt but they gravely underestimated their opponents within weeks the constitutionalists recruited amongst the workers of the cities what became known as the red battalions soldiers sworn to establish a socialist workers republic ready and eager to face the zapatistas in battle the first world war had drawn in the help of german military advisors for the constitutionalists who as a result employed the tactics of barbed wire funneling enemies into machine gun nests tactics that were at the same time being used across the ocean in the fields of flanders pancho villa's famous cavalry was torn up by machine guns and barbed wire just as the english cavalry had been torn up in belgium the constitutionalist army took the north but the revolution which had by this point turned into a civil war grinded out into a brutal gurija war however the constitutional army was by no means a united force it was a large coalition of socialist workers middle class citizens and the upper classes who had begrudgingly thrown their weight in with the constitutionalists out of pragmatism they disagreed on what the economy and society of the new mexico should be many among the upper classes also demanded a limitation on democracy many of the workers had aspirations of ending the industrial economic order and returning to a pre-industrial but socialist artisan economy others dreamt of carrying the revolution out of mexico into the united states and launched a global revolution of industrial workers some were even urban anarchist syndicalists demanding the organization of cities into worker syndicates many came together in the kaza movement a labour union movement that was set on the course of confrontation with the other elements of the constitutionalist movement by 1916 that confrontation came with nationwide strikes the government reacted by implementing martial law and disbanding the red battalions the constitutionalist movement was again weakened while in the south sabata declared the abolition of private property to rally more peasants to the anarchist cause and then the north pancho villa rebuilt his strength for a final showdown of the constitutionalists in sonora the americans wanted villa to lose so they moved artillery into sonora which helped the constitutionalists win pancho villa consequently decided to invade the united states the first and so far last invasion of america since the war of 1812. he raided and briefly occupied parts of new mexico and then retreated back across the border and this is where the americans made a big mistake they invaded northern mexico in pursuit of pancho villa and that together with villa's previous daring raid across the border elevated panchavilla to a status of national hero in mexico the guy who took the fight to the gringos the constitutionalist government had to embarrassingly declare defensive line against the americans which the american army blundered into and lost a fight the americans realized far too late that pancho villa had just baited them into mexico so he could kick them around on his own home turf and elevate his own national status as a defender from foreign invaders the americans had to retreat out of mexico empty-handed all they had accomplished were pro-villa uprisings that helped panchavilla re-establish power over large parts of the north in this situation the constitutional president carranza gave in to the demands by the progressive general obregon to write a new mexican constitution it enshrined the shorelines frontiers and natural resources of mexico as non-violatible property of the people as a community personified through the state and shrining thereby into law national industries and a clear boundary that the americans could not cross a democratic system under a centralized government a right to universal free education to health care to the formation of labor unions a right to rural communities to own their local land and a right to strike this constitution the most progressive at the time would form the foundation for an enormous transformation of the mexican economy and society and would undo the economic order of the perfiriato it settled the internal disputes of the constitutionalist movement but the civil war was not yet over it grinded on into a long protracted slog of the guria war and counter-insurgency warfare between the warring camps but as it slogged on over the years the reforms of the constitutionalist government took hold land was redistributed a national oil industry created that in turn created jobs and provided funds for public services as life improved the zapatistas and pancho villa started losing more and more support in 1920 carranza made the mistake of having emilio zapata assassinated it led to the collapse of the armed resistance of the zapatistas but made him a martyr for future revolutionaries in the north pancho villa's forces started to act with increasing brutality not just against the government but against civilians pancho villa ended up being seen as nothing but abandoned and was widely hated carranza though slacked behind in agricultural reform and the redistribution of land to appease his wealthier supporters in the mexican elite so by 1920 his once ally the progressive socialist obregon staged a coup and had him murdered obregon then made peace with pancho villa in exchange for a large hacienda the revolutionary in the end ended up as a plantation owner like the very people he had once rebelled against at the end of this game of thrones-esque series of events that would make a great tv series or video game one of the few occasions where a history book reads like a shakespeare play or a thriller alvaro obregon was the last man standing elected president in 1920 and began a project of building a leftist mexican republic the republic born from this revolution was a famously leftist and often romanticized republic the republic that gave trotsky refuge redistributed land condemned and opposed nazi germany before anyone else did and sent weapons at volunteers to help the spanish republic in its war against fascism in its initial years it was very decentralized and many social reforms came through the efforts of state governments the governments of veracruz michoacan yucatan japas and other states encouraged the creation of agrarian leagues and farmer labor unions which came together as the national peasant league the government of yucatan also was the first to introduce women suffrage legalized divorce and encouraged the election of women into office resulting in the founding of the national feminist league and the government of tabasco implemented radical cultural reforms to cut down on the power of the catholic church of a society and economy separating church and state for the first time in 1924 obregon could not run for president again and plutarco calles became president five years later founding the partido revolo scenario institutional or party of the institutionalized revolution this political party would have an enormous impact on mexico and resulted in mexico going a decidedly separate path from other latin american states remember how the mexican army had fallen apart after its defeat to pancho villa the mexican army would be rebuilt after the revolution but under the pri government became a different institution it was stripped of any political powers or influence and placed in its entirety under civilian control this may be normal where you live but it is very special in a latin american context in no other latin american country did that process take place until very recently armies remained political institutions of power from chile to argentina to venezuela to colombia to guatemala and in these countries their armies would abuse that political power to severely traumatize and harm their societies and mexico avoided these traumas of military dictatorship civilian control over the army is probably the biggest and most important accomplishment of the pri additionally all these decentralized movements and institutions that had sprung up across the country to advance social progress were united under national umbrella organizations the intention behind this was to turn the revolution into a state and continue it a national bank was founded that provided credit for impoverished farm owners to take over the old haciendas and plantations to build massive collectively owned cooperative farms nationalizations across the country created national industries a welfare state was established to provide free healthcare and other services education which had been declared a constitutional right was made widely available to all for free all of it was managed by a centralized state under the pri mobile teachers an enormous program of building schools throughout even the hardest to reach corners of the country the end of illiteracy the building of hospitals in all corners of the country the emancipation of women jobs housing and so much more the economic structures of the porfiriato were completely dismantled post-revolutionary mexico was one of the most advanced societies of its time in many of its social reforms and programs it was even decades ahead of other countries this however inevitably leads to one question what went wrong the americans did not undermine this new state even though they may have initially wanted to during the first world war a request by germany to mexico to join the war against america and annex its former territory further fueled american distrust of mexico even though mexico declined the german proposal and was well in no position to even fight any war against america because you know it was kind of fighting itself already fear-mongering politicians in washington rambled about soviet mexico and when mexico nationalized its oil industry even demanded military intervention to overturn the republic during the revolution relations between the two had severely deteriorated a once unguarded border was now tightly guarded and patrolled the popular image of mexico and the american imagination changed drastically mexicans started to be depicted and seen as devious gangsters bandits and dangerous political radicals but over time the americans came to terms with their neighbors by the 1930s american politicians even advocated for copying some mexican educational reforms the poffiriato may have also been dead but let us ask this how much different truly was this new republic the new mexico was a state controlled by a centralized government which had enormous control over the economy the pri and its institutions came to dominate many aspects of people's lives if you wanted a farm job you had to be part of the farm laborers union wanted a job in the judiciary might it be best to be a party member jobs and prospects with engineering mining and many other sectors became also a tightly controlled domain of an enormous state apparatus controlled by the pri mexico became a one-party state political upheaval and pluralism got choked out by that state apparatus not through force not through censorship oppression or brutality but for institutions through bureaucracy the pri created a system in which political participation was meant to be conducted through the institutions of the pri party-controlled institutions that became the state but rather than forming political discourse a process vital for the advancement of reform change in power and the resolution of political conflict and disagreement it merely created a process of scheming for positions of power within a single party system many political movements emerged to oppose the pri but neither had access to these large institutions and therefore all of them failed or became subsumed by the pri much of the legal framework of pre-revolutionary mexico had simply been adopted by the pri and continued and in many ways the political structures were very similar there were no more sugar barons and enormous plantation owners like in the porfiriato but you had a lot of bureaucrats who controlled large economic and social institutions the ability to do business in mexico was no longer dependent upon the approval of a sugar baron like in the pofferyato but it was still dependent on the approval of a state bureaucrat the ability to engage in politics was no longer dependent of the approval of a cardelia like under the perfiriato but it now was dependent on the approval of the pri if you were a mexican farmer during the 1920s your life was probably better than that of an american farmer throughout the 1920s the economy of small farmers in the united states collapsed many of them migrated into california the small farms were bought up by corporate farms who brought in their tractors and mechanized agriculture to transform american agriculture into a billion dollar mass production industry during that time john steinbeck described the new mechanized american farm laborer in that book you should have read in high school if you are american but let's be honest you probably didn't read it he loved the land no more than the bank loved the land he could admire the tractor its machined surfaces its surge of power the roar of detonating cylinders but it was not his tractor behind the tractor rolled the shining discs cutting the earth with blades not plowing but surgery pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row cut it and pushed it to the left slicing blades shining polished by the cut earth and pulled behind the discs the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth but behind the harrows the long cedars twelve curved iron peens erected in foundry orgasms set by gears raping methodically raping without passion the driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will proud of the tractor he did not own or love proud of the power he could not control and when that crop grew and was harvested no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips no man had touched the seed or lusted for the growth men ate what they had not raised had no connection with the bread the land bore under iron and under iron gradually died for it was not loved or hated it had no prayers or curses in contrast the mexican farmer received land or became part of a cooperative farm he joined a farmer's union that guaranteed his wages he received access to healthcare and education he learned to read and write he received a roof over his head he no longer had to worry over how to provide for his family in fact he could rest assured that his children may be the first in his family to go to college the economic reforms combined with social reforms made the lives of average mexicans a lot easier comfortable and prosperous but as clear-cut as these contrasts may be mexico actually took an enormous step backward creative destruction is an economic concept described by the austrian economist joseph schumpeter it describes the process by which capital and the means of production are continually destroyed by creative forces of capital to create new capital and new means of production the industries that evolved around the caring and feeding of horses were destroyed by the car but generated new industries around the maintenance of the car champetta was a marxist he believed that creative destruction was a force that would eventually lead to the collapse of capitalism that of course did not happen nevertheless the simple observation holds true that innovation drives the creation and reinvigoration of new economic sectors at the expense of old as such it became widely accepted as a concept among more serious economists the death of the american small farm was a process of creative destruction industrialized agriculture with its tractors and machines produced more at less of a cost the small american farmer died the big american farmer lived there are no more smiths producing horseshoes for horses to plow the fields of oklahoma but there are engineers maintaining detractors that do this process was not dictated by governments but came to be through a process of free competition within the market system of the united states a process that did not exist in mexico during the perfiriato the plantation owners had not bothered innovating because they sat comfortably in an unchallenged position of wealth and power with no competition and now in pri mexico the cooperative farmer had no need to innovate and no need to upscale or improve the means of production throughout mexico in fact the system of nationalized economic sectors stifled entrepreneurship and innovation mexican engineers didn't innovate cars consumer goods fridges food preservatives electric ovens home heating systems radios tvs or any of the other things that american open economies produced in the coming decades it stagnated it produced raw materials and foodstuffs for foreign and domestic markets just as the perferiato had and by the 1940s the system of governance established started to show what would become one of its biggest weaknesses and ultimately cause its demise smaller private hacienda earners started receiving ever increasing grants american corporations received land grants land redistribution to small farmers dropped by 50 in 1943. mexican industrialists created business associations tied within and connected to the pri as mentioned before the political process of dialogue discussion public participation and reform had been replaced by scheming within the state apparatus of the pri the political and economic power structure consequently remained closed off to public participation where once there were mining oligarchs with political power there now were bureaucrats in a national oil industry with political power where once there were industrial monopolists there now was a state business federation the general public could themselves only participate in politics or business through the pri the economic structure of mexico therefore remained exclusionary and the political system also remained exclusionary in many ways the socio-political structures of colonial spain that had adapted into an independent mexico and then adapted into an industrialized mexico now continued within a socialist [Music] republic [Music] in 1947 the mexican economist daniel carcio villegas wrote and published a scathing attack against the mexican state in his words the revolution had exterminated an entire generation of men and entire groups and institutions it completely wiped out the army and the perfirian bureaucracy it ended with the strongest and richest class the large and medium-sized farmers thus disappearing all the upper bourgeoisie and much of the small many of the best sources of national wealth transportation the sugar industry or livestock and more languish to the very brink of extinction even large professional groups university teachers for example saw their ranks so diminished that their cadres properly ceased to exist the revolution in short created an enormous wealth vacuum and indeed the social and economic hierarchy carved out for almost half a century to him the revolution had been driven by socialism liberalism and nationalism but the revolution had failed to find a compromise between rival political forces to bring them to a table and establish a means of governance that gave a voice to all instead these forces ended up in a civil war against each other all the revolution had done in the end was destroy it had burnt the old mexico to cinders but not created any compromise or any institutions in its place that could sufficiently address the issues that had plagued the country since its inception the revolution had destroyed the dictatorship but it had not created a democracy the revolution had destroyed the large landowners cardelias and their enormous plantations and haciendas but it had not created a framework for an efficient agriculture and economy in its stead the revolution had failed to alleviate inequality and poverty it had failed to even create political participation by the public to him the mexican congress was also one of the most suffocating institutions that existed in it just as the caudillos before them there was no debate in this house even though it was now a chamber of a republic no discourse no exchange of opinions no debates no discussions no wrestling over votes no public representation no nothing the pri representatives met up sworn off and then schemed within the structures of a one-party state for villegas this state was doomed if the pri would not radically change course the state it had built would merely repeat the old habits and mistakes of the failed states that had preceded it but villegas was ignored because the 1940s brought an economic boom however not through the efforts or innovations of mexicans but due to the entanglements of its neighbor the second world war had created a huge labor shortage throughout the united states additionally many other allied nations relied heavily on the labor force of latin american nations to produce for the war effort mexican laborers began migrating back and forth across the border to work on farms and in factories a process that in a way continues to this very day the mexican government at the time believed that the only way to modernize the mexican economy was through foreign investment and innovation it consequently opened the country and its cheap labor force increasingly for foreign companies what however is in retrospect frequently overlooked is how incredibly corrupt the mexican government at the time was and continued to be miguel aleman valgus the 53rd president amassed a fortune during his time in office that a public servant should have never been able to acquire it was also valdes who shaped and cemented the political institutions of mexico for the latter half of the 20th century he bribed political opponents into not challenging him he bribed party officials to remain loyal to him he created a system of patronage and loyalty through appointments grants for his wealthy friends in business a bribery that spread through and was copied throughout many institutions of the state and economy government corruption in any way shape and form is always poison to any state or economy if you have to pay bribes to remain in business it creates an unfair system of advantage that renders the wider economy uncompetitive and stifles innovation small businesses start dying off and i eventually barely even started up as the pofferyato showed us it also invited exceeding foreign business and political influence and it also does nothing to share the fruits of any economic growth among the wider population valdes also ended the secularization process of the republic permitting the catholic church to regain much of its pre-revolutionary influence he subtly limited the power of the labour unions to have them subdued under the control of the party and state bureaucrats who were able to strip them of powers when in need of appeasing private interests and most cynical of all he instituted a subtle system of state repression when we think of state repression the images we conjure up are often those of tanks rolling over people a secret police whisking people away to dark unknown dungeons or camps where those the state deems undesirable are exterminated this to an extent was what state oppression looked like in many latin american military dictatorships but the system of state repression implemented in pri mexico was far more insidious and subtle people critical of the government like narcisso basils were just put on the state surveillance harassed and their career and job prospects ruined they were barred from public life had defamatory articles published about them and were simply gradually discredited and unpersoned besides the beginning of mexican migrant labor into the united states during the 1940s there would be another very significant development along the border one that would have disastrous consequences but had its origins not in mexico but in the united states where during the 1920s the americans prohibited the production sale and consumption of alcohol and opium throughout the hills of sinaloa mexican farmers had always grown poppies for local production of morphine for medical use the wife of a petty mexican crook and mariana smuggler by the name of ignacia yasso sees this as an opportunity and like her husband she quickly discovered the enormous economic potential of the region she organized a massacre of the chinese gangsters that ran the morphium trade in the region and started buying sinaloa and opium which she had manufactured into heroin for further sale the base of her operation was the small border town of ciudad juarez where she would become known as la nacha whatever the americans who were going through a socio-political phase of moral puritanism criminalized and banned she ended up providing cidal juarez became stuffed with bars distilleries brothels and opium dents which americans could access by simply crossing the border from el paso texas this is where a story that would deeply hurt injure and traumatize mexico began through murdering competitors and building alliances she ended up building an empire of bars brothels opium dents heroin labs and smuggling roots for liquor heroin cocaine mariana and women that stretched across the border earning her the nickname queen of the border in 1930 business exploded when she bribed and murdered her way into becoming the main supplier of marijuana for americans and by the 1940s the main supplier of hemp for rope production to the united states armed forces she cemented her power by another means that would end up becoming a local practice she simply bribed mexican government officials to ignore her criminal network her network wouldn't end until american pressure forced her arrest after the second world war and after that she became largely forgotten she doesn't even have her own wikipedia entry and many don't even know that the first of the notorious mexican drug cartels was founded by a woman her organization would divide up into the cartels of juarez sonora and sinaloa and the way that northern mexican society had been structured furthered this socio-economic development since the days of the first spanish communities of settlers the north had been tough to govern and to assert the authority of the state over these communities of majority white hispanics became self-sufficient autonomous and independent with governance mostly being local and organized around the wealthiest member of the community the patron when you boil everything down to basics a criminal organization is an out-of-state and non-state actor an entity of its own norms and customs outside of the society of law that can exist either in competition leeching off or in cooperation with state entities it is therefore not surprising that when the illegal drug trade emerged at the beginning of the 20th century with the criminalization of narcotics that it was out of state and non-state entities that took over that market from the tribes of northern burma to the hill people of afghanistan to the goons and gangs that had controlled italian cities to the semi-autonomous patrons who had power over the hard-to-reach and neglected parts of colombia and mexico being a stateless entity doesn't make you a narco-trafficker however having the convenience of the location and economic structure does borders are when you boil it down mostly not natural things only a few countries have natural borders most borders represent the limitations of a social construct namely the economy of scale the extent to which a society and its institutions can reach and exert its authority this means that cross-border interaction be it in form of commerce to culture to marriages will always and have always been a thing show me a bourdain i will show you a population overlap walk through vienna and you will notice how many people speak hungarian and when an economy or scale exerts restrictions and limitations on trade and commerce the primary beneficiary of such are those who border that economy of scale something not available in place a can be made available by place b even if illegal in place a the simplistic sounding solution of just ban what is desired because of reason x often causes more harm than it does any good you also don't have to use this obvious example of the mexican-american war on drugs to show why this is white clay a town of 14 people in the state of nebraska going through white clay is highway 87 which leads to south dakota and into pine ridge or more precisely the pine ridge indian reservation owned by the oglala lakota the pine ridge reservation has been plagued with widespread alcoholism due to the widespread poverty and limited means of the community they could not provide extensive services for rehabilitation and the kind of healthcare institutions that would help people with addiction problems therefore prohibition of alcohol was enacted across the community instead but in white clay which is outside of pinewood and the state of south dakota alcohol remained legal the result was that this community with a population of 14 ended up having half a dozen liquor stores selling millions of cans and bottles of booze and beer to lakota indians who often on foot trekked down highway 87 from pine wood into white clay to buy alcohol and then drunk or while drinking staggered back into pinewood on highway 87. this infamously resulted in this small stretch of highway having the highest numbers of fatalities in vehicular to person traffic accidents across the united states white clay sucked the lifeblood out of the lakota people until the state of nebraska shut it down by refusing to renew the white clay liquor licenses two economies of scale where one took advantage of the other one community became rich at the cost of the other which wallowed further into poverty and despair the rigorous prohibition enforced especially on drugs would end up being something that the cartels of northern mexico would take advantage of the united states border patrol was initially founded in 1924 to try and clamp down on the smuggling of alcohol across the mexican border a task at which it failed meanwhile immigration into the united states increased as tens of thousands of mexican laborers came to work on farms and other industries some of those stayed in the united states even after the war but those with the most significant impact for mexico itself were those who returned with capital and skills that they had acquired during their stay in the united states and a different socio-political shift also impacted the united states internally mexican-americans and latinos in general within the united states started to re-emerge in the wider cultural and political framework the historian juan gonzalez divides this process up into four periods the integration period from 1950 to 1964 when mexican americans started increasingly participating within the politics of the united states as voters this was particularly pushed by the large mexican community of california and texas and it had its greatest triumph in 1960 when kennedy was elected with 85 percent of the mexican-american vote making it very clear that mexican-americans were now part and parcel of american electoral politics the radical nationalist period from 1965 to 1974 when latinos in america organized in political radical protest movements such as the brown berets and took part in the wider protest movements of the civil rights movement and the anti-vietnam war movement less concerned with integration in the political process and appearing to be respectable to the anglo-majority population it helped reshape and determine a distinctive latino culture and identity within the united states its greatest legacies are mexican-american common legal defense funds labor unions such as the one led by cesar chavez and voting rights activism groups which leads us into the voting rights period from 1975 to 1984. at the end of the nixon era the involvement in radical and revolutionary movements amongst mexican americans sharply declined instead a generation of young latino lawyers and political activists started using the institutions founded by radicals to tie more latinos into the american political process through voter registration legal defense funds political campaigns running for office and acquiring institutional and electoral power within the united states a process which increased with the anti-immigration policies under nixon to protect mexican americans from deportation and discrimination these efforts were extremely successful and led to the third force period from 1985 to today the american presidential senate and congressional elections of 1984 1986 1988 and 1990 are often overlooked but incredibly important in the development of the current american political framework during the presidential elections reagan was consistently re-elected as democratic voters lost an increasing share of white anglo-voters but at the same time the share of latino and african-american voters kept continuously chewing away at those gains additionally more and more latino and african-american senators and members of congress started to get elected by the early 1990s the latino minority of the united states had firmly established themselves as an important political force with institutional and electoral power within the united states it made it close to impossible to win elections in states like california texas new york new mexico florida and arizona without appealing to latino voters or some extensive gerrymandering latinos became the third force in american electoral politics of the white americans and african americans by the year 2000 and 2004 the republican president george bush had to launch both his election and re-election efforts with an appeal to latina voters to succeed which includes the last time a republican won the popular vote the living standards of mexican americans started to rise prominent political leaders emerged the united states increasingly became a place where citizens of mexican ancestry could build a life a community and prosper the california investment banker dan pena was one of the first wealthy mexican american businessmen to emerge from this socio-economic development but the story of dan penner as well as the stories of other successful and wealthy mexican americans be they hollywood actors businessmen innovators social media influencers and more or other upper middle class mexican americans be they lawyers scientists doctors engineers small business owners and more they also tell us a different story there are a hundred thousand wealthy mexican americans in the united states with an annual income of more than fifty thousand dollars this means that there are more wealthy mexican americans than there are wealthy mexicans if you lived in nogales sonora from 1950 to the year 2000 you were able to watch nogales arizona and notice a gradual process in which the standard of living and average wealth of mexican americans increased while mexicans became poorer the improvement of mexican-american living standards coincided with a deterioration of the mexican living conditions between 1950 and 1952 the mexican state had cracked down with riot police against strikes by city taxi drivers student protests and protests by indigenous peoples against the kleptocracy of the mexican state where once the army was used as a tool of repression an increasingly corrupt police force was now used to clamp down against those who protested the state or the economic interests of an ever smaller group of wealthy mexicans well connected within the one party system the pri won 98 of all mayoral elections between 1940 and 1980. it won all post-war gubernatorial elections until the 1990s one of the most brazen examples of how complete and all-encompassing and authoritarian the pri state had become was when dr salvador nava ran for the office of mir in san luis potosi in 1958 his election rallies were marred by violence and agitators the pri forged the election results and sent the mexican army to beat up students who had protested those results a general strike occurred that forced the pri to acknowledge the real election results but when nava ran for governor in 1961 the pri cracked down hard hundreds of supporters and campaign activists ended up in jail charged with dubious crimes with dubious evidence under dubious circumstances nava was arrested and tortured by the police and in the end the election results were simply forged again throughout the world many praised mexico as latin america's only functioning democracy but at least by 1954 the mexican revolutionary republic was at best a sham democracy it was members of the pri who became the governors of states the heads of police and the executives of large state industries and those members of the pri came to increasingly resemble the cow delias that they claimed to replace if you wanted to do private business and get concessions for such you increasingly needed to bribe your local pri boss for the privilege if you were a very rich businessman you sought out the friendship and alliance of powerful pri members to secure those interests through bribery state industry sectors and factories opened up in parts of the country not because they were in any way economically viable but because they were agreed to be built in a certain location through some backdoor deal made between the businessman or the federal government and the governor of the location to secure alliances and favors amongst an increasingly sealed off and inaccessible political and economic elite foreign influence increasingly returned into the mexican economy although the law demanded that 51 of any business in mexico had to be owned by mexicans numerous loopholes were created to bypass this so american capital could bring industry to mexico the pri was never able to envision or provide structures that gave ordinary mexicans the ability to do business even the economic booms of the 40s 50s and 60s were largely carried on the backs of mexican migrant laborers in the united states and the american capital that they brought with them back to mexico through their wages but the pri instead of reforming which would have meant decreasing their power and giving average mexicans more power and the ability to do business the pri merely backed increasing american investment in mexico hoping that the americans would develop industrialize and modernize mexico that however did not happen whatever wages the increasing american presence paid out to average mexican workers those were not able to effectively use their capital in their own ventures as much of it went lost in an increasingly corrupt state if you had an idea an innovation or an education that would have allowed you to open a business doing so was exceedingly difficult you had to sift through the enormous bureaucracy that the pri had created in the end it became just easier and consequently the custom to find the right friends or to bribe your way into business or just leave for the united states that consequently stifled innovation economic modernization and concentrated economic power and capital even more within an increasingly small elite even worse the gangsters who ran the ever-growing illegal drug trade made backroom deals with the ministry of the interior to keep the drug trade running organized criminal groups started taking control over many hard-to-reach parts of the country and large parts of the north through protection rackets they stifled most locals from engaging in economic activity and dominated much of the local society the mexican government claimed to be fighting a war against drugs since the 1970s but in reality right up to the year 2000 it only pretended to be fighting the drug cartels in reality some of the most highest ranking government officials right up into the interior ministry had deals with the various drug cartels allowing them to do business and take control over parts of the country in exchange for a fee to the ministry this would be catastrophic for mexico the pi effectively surrendered sovereignty over parts of the country to organized crime in exchange for cash starting in the 1950s and mexico is still struggling to regain control over these regions to this very day as much as the new state may have professed progress and social justice through its reforms and appearance at its core the institutions of the state remained outdated broken and favorable for the establishment of a corrupt oligarchy the state tried to brandish an image of progress through mass events such as hosting the olympics and two world cups but one only had to peek beneath the glittering facade to see the true monster when african-american athletes protested racial segregation at the mexico city olympics the pri state used a law that enabled the deportation of foreigners for ensuring demographic stability to swiftly deport them to the united states the mexico world cup was marred by protests by working-class mexicans against the enormous costs which were brutally cracked down upon by the state state industries did not fare much better just as previous oligarchs had secured their interests in their mining and plantation sectors the pri executives who came to run the national oil and mining companies schemed with the central government to keep control power and profit of their institutions the new cooperative aido farms were excellent for those who worked on them growing corn for mainly domestic markets it meant that receiving a job on such meant generational security and income however these farms limited in markets to mexico where through the fact that they were cut off from wider global markets they became increasingly uncompetitive the farmers didn't innovate didn't try to improve their work system they found the standard by which to work and supply the domestic market and stuck by it this made these farms extremely vulnerable within the state-owned industries executive positions and often even other jobs were increasingly not handed out on the basis of skill and achievement but on the basis of who your friends family and their connections were some services though worked better than others even though the state structures remained broken the mexican institute for social security established in 1959 has been plagued by many corruption scandals but it is the reason why when you cross the border from one nogales into the other nogales that the healthcare in mexican nogales is better than the healthcare in american nogales however the reason why nothing else functions in nogales as it should is the mexican state that the pri created that state was powerful in its institutions but built to limit that power within the hands of the pri it furthered corruption embezzlement and negligence a phony leviathan that increasingly started to lose control over decades corrupt governors corrupt police chiefs and gangsters increasingly seized control over parts of the country and were allowed to do so under the protective shield of the pri mexico again became the kind of state where the governor of a state had a brother who became the police chief of the state his uncle ran the mining complex of the state and his son-in-law became the head of the local cooperative farm even though that son-in-law didn't even know what farming was the pri was less of a democratic party and more of a pr campaign a pr campaign that managed to successfully create an illusion of democracy separation of powers and individual rights and liberties it could be right-wing it could be left-wing it could be populist it could be elitist it could be whatever it needed to present itself to be to the mexican public and the wider world it became mexico's politics party the party of all politics and therefore no politics during the 1950s it branded itself as a socialist party then as the party of business in the late 50s the anti-corruption party in the 60s the people's party in the 70s the neo-liberal free market party in the 1980s and sometimes it presented itself as everything at once a complete cluster fudge of contradictory policies in a massive pr campaign meant to hide just how self-serving and incompetent a den of corrupt bureaucrats the pri actually was a state with very limited space for citizens to politically participate or change anything that engaged in brutal massacres of protesters and the violent suppression of native american communities a place where journalists lived in danger and where corrupt officials and gangsters acted in complete impunity and yet the pri state remained widely praised and acknowledged around the world as a supposed beacon of democracy for latin america then the facade collapsed with the trend of increasingly open global and free markets growing internationally during the 1980s the pri jumped on boards to increasingly present itself as the party of business and global markets in mexico the problem though was that the pri was everything except that it was a party built around securing the assets of a select few at the expense of excluding the masses from economic and political participation it was the pri which would take mexico into that modern global era through nafta a free trade agreement between the united states canada and mexico and because it was the pri with its flaws and problems mexico became part of a global economy with those flaws and problems carlos slim is one of the richest men in the world he used to be the richest and is as of now still the richest man in mexico and latin america how did he get there jeff bezos and bill gates are amongst the richest men in america they got their wealth by innovating and selling something a means to buy products easily through an online service and a computer operating system as disliked as the super rich may be by some the truth of the matter and bottom line is that the united states provides a level playing field and economic structure where anyone who has an innovation with enough potential can fully exploit the potential of that innovation for their own financial benefit patent laws anti-monopoly regulations and co provide the means to build and prosper in private industry in contrast carlos slim didn't invent anything he made his fortunes when the pri rebranded as a free market party and started privatizing mexico's national industries when the pri conducted its privatizations it didn't put the state-owned companies up for sale to the public but sold the shares mostly to cronies crooks politicians and executives close to the government in backroom deals sometimes the same crooked executives who had run these sectors as public officials ended up owning them privately in many cases the means and ways public companies became private is dubious at best carlos slim bought up a majority of shares in the mexican telecom but the deal he made to get those shares is curious to say the least he didn't buy the shares with any capital instead he made a weird deal in which he ended up owning the majority shares and by that extent the telecommunications networks of mexico while the profits made by the shares would gradually over years paid the original selling price of the shares while the company grew in value one can only imagine the greasy pools climbed or background deals made for this arrangement to have even been made possible in the first place a transaction that in the united states would almost certainly be considered as illegal but nonetheless this is how carlos slim ended up owning the mexican telecom which he expanded into a total monopoly over phone providers in mexico when the internet burst onto the stage he further expanded his economic power then he moved business into central america and monopolized phone and internet providers there and right now he is expanding all across latin america attempting to be the sole phone provider of an entire continent and cultural lingual sphere of the planet encompassing 650 million people in 20 countries he managed to shut down investigations into his dealings by invoking the recurs of the amparo old laws that had somehow made it into the law books of the new revolutionary mexican republic of the pri and into the new mexico of the globalized economy complete control over an entire sector of the economy as a monopoly protected by law with close ties and allies in the nation's ruling elite almost like a sugar baron of old only far more powerful carlos slim attempted to expand his empire in the united states by similar tactics with which he built his latin american empire he violated various anti-monopoly laws in doing so was taken to an american court where he tried to invoke a recursive amparo only to find no such thing existed in the united states and was fined 300 million dollars the way one does business in the united states simply doesn't work in mexico and the way one does business in mexico simply doesn't work in the united states the way this was made possible was through the pri rather than opening up the mexican economy through the nafta agreement many within the political and economic elite of mexico saw nafta as an opportunity for an enormous cash-in they opened mexico to international business but they didn't open the mexican economy for ordinary mexicans instead dividing it up as spoils amongst themselves the socio-economic structure of colonial spain which had evolved to adapt into an independent mexican oligarchy and then had again adapted to fit and be part of an industrialized mexican state and then evolved again to adapt into being part of the socialist mexican republic evolved yet again to adapt into being part of a modern globalized neoliberal mexico the consequences for ordinary mexicans were disastrous one of the first things to happen with the opening of nafta was that american agriculture which throughout the last century had modernized and mechanized into a large-scale production industrial complex flooded mexico with cheap produce causing the bankruptcy of small farmers and the farming collectives and cooperatives the now redundant mexican farmers in return flooded across the border to work in whatever capacity they could throughout the united states it may have dawned on you by now that the mexican nagalas never even really stood a chance that centuries of neglect and corruption led to this current state but it is important to remind yourself that it didn't have to be like this the opening of global markets around the world during the early 1990s created middle classes and wealth it created industry education and innovation in many places throughout the world but in particular in post-soviet eastern europe so why did it work in europe and not in mexico where you can see why by looking at the biggest loser of the eastward expansion of the european market hungary the clue being that hungary is the most corrupt and kleptocratic of eastern european countries in mexico the existing industries were divided up amongst oligarchs rather than creating new industries there was no innovation and no capital or security for the creation of new industry by entrepreneurs thereby creating no new jobs american competition ruined sectors of the mexican economy resulting in more unemployment whatever american investment came south tended to mostly sink into the pockets of the elites that had divided the mexican economy up amongst themselves or it just disappeared in a swamp of corruption and mismanagement rather than create skills expertise and innovation from which an economy could be built those who gained skills and education often packed and left for the border because they saw no opportunity to live or profit from their skills and education in mexico in hungary any european investment disappeared into the pockets of kleptocratic and corrupt politicians or into their useless vanity projects like enormous stadiums and if you are a european viewer you probably notice the increasing number of hungarian doctors nurses scientists and engineers working throughout europe who came here after finding that there was no future in hungary for them even with their skills and education during the 1990s the increasing productivity and inflow of capital was seen as a sign of growth and increasing wealth but mexico in the end just became a great example again for how a country's gdp could grow without the country actually becoming any wealthier as that wealth accumulated almost entirely around the singular circle of people who had no interest in creating the kind of institutions that would help the wider mexican public accumulate capital or create capital a small business and political elite who had monopolized capital and industry for whom it made sense to open to america and get american money but who stubbornly refused to open mexico to mexicans so they could have the opportunity to prosper since that would turn those ordinary mexicans into competitors and challenges to their power and wealth mexico's economic and political institutions were stuck in a previous century in no way shape or form was it able to compete or even just take part in a free market with the united states or canada yet in a rush motivated out of a mix of idealism and greed a group of people ignored that signed mexico into nafta impoverished average mexicans and we now live with the consequences [Music] four years before nafta the turn of the decade had been a year of enormous optimism the decade the tyranny seemed to end communism collapsed into itself in eastern europe and the last fascist dictatorships of latin america fell apart some proclaimed that the end of history had finally arrived in mexico long praised as a beacon of light and democracy for the latin american world a conference was held invited were the leading intellectuals of the world to discuss what seemed to be a bright and free and democratic future for latin america mexico a country often praised as latin america's leader in democracy was deliberately chosen to host for this reason and amongst the many guests was the peruvian novelist vargas yossa who took the podium spoke and caused a scandal i hope not to appear as unpleasant in saying what i have to say i don't believe mexico can be separated from the tradition of latin american dictatorships i believe that mexico whose current democratization i'm amongst the first to welcome as all of us who believe in democracy with nuances fits firmly into this tradition as a compromising factor mexico is the perfect dictatorship the perfect dictatorship is not communism the perfect dictatorship is not the soviet union it is not fidel castro the perfect dictatorship is mexico because it is the disguised dictatorship it has one of the key factors of a dictatorship the persistence not of a man but of a party and a party that is unchangeable i do not believe that in all of latin america there has ever been a system of dictatorship that is so efficiently recruited amongst the intellectual community and bribed them in such a subtle way it is a sui generous dictatorship which many throughout latin america attempted to copy the mexican dictatorship is what every single latin american dictatorship that i can remember attempted to be the pri almost reflecting the written words by daniel cosio of villegas half a century before this today somewhat forgotten speech caused considerable controversy leading intellectuals such as the novelist gabriel garcia marquez had embraced mexico and the pri not as perfect but as something that latin america should strive to copy for a brighter and better future in the end though vargas was proven completely right the cracks in the pri facade had started to show long before in 1985 a massive earthquake flattened large parts of mexico city and the pri government completely failed at providing relief to those in need all the bankrupted farmers all the unemployment the increasing callousness with which the elites of the pri didn't even bother hiding their corruption at one point it was simply enough in 1988 the mexican presidential elections were so obviously fraudulent that it could barely be hidden anymore and with nafta it all got worse everything we talked about the dirty backroom deals the corruption the state repression and violence all of it gradually came to light and in the year 2000 in what many historians consider to be the first fair and honest elections in mexican history the pri lost the presidency for the first time ending almost 80 years of pri rule with new leaders in power it was for the first time fully exposed to the public just how rotten to the core this state truly was and the result was chaos much of the corruption was exposed even worse it was revealed to the public that the pri had a secret deal with the drug cartels and had only pretended to fight them with the new government no longer backing the cartel deal the mexican drug were flared up into the barbaric and brutal confrontation between the state and the cartels an almost total collapse of most state institutions in particular in regions where the pri had deals with the cartel the shredding of any remaining trust that the mexican public may have once had in the institutions of the state a collapse in economic and state cohesion and what separates this from the united states is a border [Music] today there exists two completely different economic institutions in the two naganas and between the united states and mexico in general and an incredible economic disparity this is best illustrated by looking at the famous graphs displaying distribution of wealth these in politics are frequently used to show that one percent of the population supposedly earns 90 of the american wealth but there is far more to it than simply that there's a difference between wealth and income when we divide the american population up into quintiles we receive a highest quintile with 52 percent of the national wealth an upper quintile with 23 percent amid quintile with 14 of the wealth a second to bottom quintile with eight percent of the wealth and a bottom quintile with only three percent of the wealth of note is that the top five percent within the highest quintile which owns 23 percent of the wealth what matters the most in any wealth distribution statistic however are the bottom percent those who have an annual income of under ten thousand dollars or under thirty five thousand dollars what one should keep an eye out for rather than just the top percent is how much that bottom percentage of the population increases and chews away on the middle percentages the bottom percentage is a far more important number than the top percentage a small top percentage is a sign of inequality but a large and growing bottom percentage is a sign of a collapsing society overall the stats show that the united states is a very unequal society with a poverty problem that it ought to concern itself more with but still a society with a middle class however society with decreasing upward social mobility nonetheless that social mobility still exists and must be protected now let's take a look at the mexican wealth distribution there isn't even a top one percent in mexico it's a top 0.0003 basically two dozen mexican families own 90 percent of mexico's wealth carlos slims empire alone accounts for almost 10 percent of mexico's gdp there's a 20 high income class while an enormous 42 percent of the population live in poverty however these 42 percent are people that the mexican state defines as moderately poor meaning that they can still afford basic commodities like drinking water food and the refrigerator they would be considered poor by american standards but by mexican standards they are defined as a sort of upper poor because six percent of the mexican population live in extreme poverty which is defined as a living condition under constant food insecurity meaning can barely afford to eat on a daily basis the mexican-american border is a place of one of the starkest contrasts in the world it is comparable to the borders between haiti and the dominican republic poland and belarus or iraq and kuwait in few places in the world will you find such an enormous difference in wealth and political structure separated merely with a line in the sand and what even is a border in the first place we answered a lot of questions in this video so far we showed how one nogales became two nogales and we explained why one legalist is in a much worse situation than the other we detailed the long journey the two countries took to arrive at the place where they are so close yet still so distant but what we didn't talk about so far is why nogales is not improving to be more like nogales and what may be done to change nogales into being more like nogales for many americans a priority in their political discourse is to keep nogales out on the way from nogales and by that extent the rest of the country but how do you secure a border how do you keep a society that resides on the other side of the border out the first border wall along the mexican-american border came to be as a result of the vietnam war during that war the americans used large flat steel plates that could be placed on grass plains to be used as temporary airfields after the war there was no more use for them so nixon started and reagan continued lining them up along the mexican border but those steel plates were not built for this they started rasting through and were stolen by mexicans who sold them as scrap metal yes that is not a joke border security outside of partisan politics mudslinging in geopolitical conversations are more a source of involuntary comedy than anything else the croatians for example in what they probably thought of as a very smart move mined their border with serbia however when the border rivers flooded they washed those mines into croatian towns and villages the arab gulf states spent billions on a high-tech board defense of razor wire traps and motion sensors along the saudi-iraqi border to keep the poor arabs away from the rich arabs however the rich arabs seem to have forgotten that they live in a desert with shifting sand tunes that attach to structures and consequently buried the multi-billion dollars worth of fence so if you are a viewer wondering what will happen to the recently built segments of wall along the mexican-american border well basically you just need to wait for the price of scrap metal to go up again it's even built in nice steel rails easy to just cut down with a blowtorch and transport to any scrap metal dealer south of nogales for mexicans the border wall is just free at the border but why do these ridiculous failures keep happening why do states keep making the same border mistakes over and over again because we think of borders in wrong terms namely in military terms in military terms the united states has great borders invade from the west and you are forced to cross the world's largest ocean the next best staging and support ground is still a six-hour flight from the united states invade from the east and you will have to cross the second largest ocean in the world with no staging ground anywhere in that ocean invade from the north and you will have to undergo the logistical challenge of crossing the great lakes or go through the mid and far west where the americans can just do a russia retreat burn the earth and wait for the winter to freeze you invade from the south and you will have to march through miles of deserts with inhabitants known to be hostile to outsiders only to have to then cross the rockies or get stuck in the midwest and freeze again or end up in a swamp with inhabitants known to be hostile to outsiders in military terms these are great borders that protect the american industrial and infrastructure core but what makes borders great in a military sense doesn't always make them great in a migration control sense britain has crappy military borders namely with staging grounds for potential invasion being very close to fight off any potential invader britain has therefore always needed to be ahead in numbers and technology in its air force but especially in its navy bully all those who are building a larger navy and dominate the seas in reverse though britain's borders are militarily also great for invasion by the british as an island staging ground britain can conduct military interventions easily across european coastlines and beyond however from a non-military point of view britain's borders and the borders of all island nations are great in limiting and controlling immigration technically island nations are capable of controlling any and all immigration more than any other country with land borders the reason we often overlook this is again a distorted view of immigration namely that it is framed as an invasion however there are fundamental differences between an invading army and a migration of people an invading army needs a logistical backing of fuel food munitions spare parts and other supplies building such a long extended supply chain across desert swamp or flat terrain over several miles long is extraordinarily difficult while also having to ensure fighting conditions for the invading troops building it up on the staging place not far from where you intend to invade and only having to cross ocean is however not as difficult migrants however do not need military logistics and planning migrants come in small units of families groups or individuals they require and only have access to the logistics of traveling families groups and individuals what might be a tough challenge to an invading army requires merely the logistics of provisions and sleeping bags for a migrant group after overcoming that challenge the migrant also simply melts into society rather than having to enforce their order through occupation upon it this is why trekking across the sierra madre is far easier for a small group of migrants than it would be for an invading army and why crossing the english channel is far more difficult for a group of migrants than it would be for an invading army a war might be a great means of protecting yourself from a second century war band of highland celts but a wall will not work to keep migrants out something the american government learned by the early 2000s and as the former head of u.s homeland security janet napolitano put it show me a 50 foot high wall and i will show you a 51 foot long ladder additionally a wall along that border is simply a geographic legal and financial impossibility the border is 3145 kilometers or 2 000 miles long that's the length of the communist iron curtain excluding the soviet finnish border maintenance of the central european iron curtain contributed substantially to bankrupting eastern bloc states and unlike europe the u.s mexican border doesn't run through construction-friendly flat grasslands like the berlin wall did it runs through mountains deserts and rivers often miles from any settlements that could function as guard outposts occasionally on terrain that a wall can't even be physically built on the rugged outcrops of the mexican plateau and the sierra madre de occidental and also the marshlands of the rio grande which both mexico and the united states agreed in 1970 to be environmentally protected lands across the border drainage of these marches and swamps to build a wall would be an unparalleled ecological disaster in short if americans would listen to geographers there would be no more demands for a border wall as they would know that the wall is literally a physical impossibility alas few people listen to geographers the wall is also a financial impossibility or at the very least a heavy burden you can't just build a wall and hope the mexicans won't climb over it or more likely just steal it to sell for scrap metal no you will have to guard it you will have to hire government employed security details with vehicles and the required training the required legal backing and building infrastructure to guard such a vast wall not to mention that the estimates of the costs of the wall alone for building it lie at 40 billion dollars the bush administration was the first to realize this it realized that the most efficient means of border security was to instead arrest migrants after they cross the border and reach the towns they try to settle in the logistics of merely seeking out migrants drewing the process as they try to melt into society is far more cost efficient than most border security measures involving walls and patrols and since the 2000s this has consequently been the preferred mechanism of migration control however there is also a fundamental problem in itself with the idea of border separation borders are almost never clear-cut limits between languages cultures and ethnic groups compare border maps with language and ethnic maps and you will almost always see overlap and this is even more the case here than anywhere else you can't just draw a line and assume that cultures on both sides will not mingle trade and mix a bottom line is that hispanic culture is part of the united states there are hispanic populations that have been in the united states since the 1500s nutenor culture in particular has been around for a very long time mexican migrant populations also vary significantly in culture those that arrived between the 1940s and 1960s are mostly mexican not tenors who themselves settled into and became part of nathano cultures in the united states while mexican migrants who arrived throughout the 1990s and 2000s are often southern mexicans that settled in urban centers such as los angeles new york and chicago and formed a new hispanic mexican-american urban culture that is also in itself very different from urban hispanic puerto rican culture in new york or urban cuban culture in miami politically mexican-american populations also do not form a unified entity anymore urban populations tend to vote democratic while not tenors tend to vote republican but as you have probably realized throughout the last hour of this video you can't simply separate american and mexican culture the two evolved separately but still together as much as some of them may dislike the other or be separated from the other they can't ignore the fact that they still are tied together as said before they may be distant in some ways yet they are still so close the assumption that the clear line of cultural separation exists is simply mistaken and we so far didn't even mention the fact that a wall would cut right through the lands of the tohono odorham who already made it clear that they would oppose a wall on their sovereign land in economic terms the impossibility of this becomes even more obvious when you look at the shared economic zones one of the main reasons why the idea of a tightly controlled border is so ridiculous in the state of texas alone you will find several car manufacturing plants which techs and politicians will claim are there because texas is so business friendly that's true but it's not because of texas in particular but because of the texas border the so-called texas mexico automotive supercluster region stretches from north texas to san luis potosi and is one of the largest economic cooperative zones in the world established in 2008 it includes 27 car manufacturing plants 230 suppliers 15 research concerts 21 airports 19 ports five railroads several major international corporations from seven countries stretching across one american and four mexican states and in total employs 17 million people this is one of the most developed and well-functioning economic zones in the world and it is very one-sided in how it functions the production of heavy equipment heavy equipment parts and automotive parts happens almost completely in mexico from where these are shipped into texas for further assembly in automotive commercial speciality and military vehicles there's a cross-dependence here that goes both ways there are about 5 million jobs in the united states economy which are dependent on trade with mexico the total value of this to the united states lies at 548.7 billion dollars with texas california michigan and illinois getting the largest share of the pie but the pie overall being fairly evenly shared amongst states no matter if they are red states blue state contested state southern state northern state midwest state or western state the least dependent state is hawaii with only 11 million dollars worth and 24 000 jobs dependent on trade with mexico what the united states exports to mexico is diverse and ranges from oklahoma chemicals washington apples mississippi poultry wyoming liquid propane minnesota soy virginia pork massachusetts computer parts south carolina tires montana lumber and oregon potatoes the portfolio of what the united states exports to mexico is 30 machines and machine parts 8 chemicals 16 petroleum and raw materials 10 vehicle and vehicle parts 8 metals nine percent plastic and polymer materials two percent agricultural produce and overall very balanced and evenly spread out across the various sectors of the us economy in total us exports to mexico make up sixteen percent of overall exports let's compare this though to mexico mexican exports to the united states have a total value of 340 billion slightly more than half the value of american exports to mexico however make up a majority 77 percent of mexico's foreign exports 82 if you add america's hat the vast majority of those exports are machine parts worth 136 billion at 40 of exports and vehicle parts at a value of 95 billion at 28 of exports the first specialized sector to export in numbers are medical devices that make up only five percent of exports and mexican food exports that make up 3.5 percent which however make up 60 percent of mexico's overall food exports and of those food exports 33 percent are beer 13 are liquor 11 are baked goods 6 percent of sugar and 8 are sodas and fruit juices while mexico itself imports vegetables from the united states meaning mexican migrant farm laborers literally illegally cross the border to earn money by working on vegetable farms to den upon returning to mexico spent that money buying the very products that they earned their wages harvesting it is hard to pin down how many mexican jobs are dependent on mexican exports to the united states but the number must be in the tens of millions a table comparing percentage changes in professionally educated mexican workers between 1992 and 2010 will show you that although education levels have grown amongst professionals they have not grown substantially and mostly only between four percent to 15 this means that despite the opening of trade between the two the main benefactor is still the united states but one of the most crucial numbers in all of this is 350 million that is the number of legal border crossings yes legal with work or tourist visas the single most cross-border in human history which goes to underline even more that the means of regulating and limiting the flow of people money and goods is extremely limited these are market forces that in total have a value of up to a trillion dollars as one particular market shows it is often completely impossible to rein in on the simple laws of supply and demand many measures of limitation often end up being counterproductive guarding the border more heavily ironically had the effect of there being more illegal residents within the united states that is because in particular farm and construction laborers frequently overstayed their work visa this is merely an inherent part of the work process itself farming seasons as well as construction plans can often extend over periods of time that are longer than expected or anticipated a construction boss or farmer may ask laborers to stay on for additional weeks or even months who consequently overstay their visas this means however that from then on they reside in the united states illegally which makes returning to mexico harder as they can no longer cross the border back without being registered or arrested as an illegal and thereby cancelling out the prospect of a future legal return consequently when the border is strictly guarded migrant laborers inside the united states often simply choose to stay to earn more than risk being legally barred from returning these immigration measures have created weird social phenomena within the united states such as a decline in armed robberies of liquor stores now you may ask how that is connected to mexican migrant labor well it has to do with financial regulations and something called dark numbers someone designated as an illegal cannot open a bank account in the united states or by any other means transfer money back to mexico a result of this is that migrant laborers especially those without visas often hold on to their earnings in cash a migrant laborer can hold up to ten thousand dollars of cash on himself after half a year of work in the united states and at some point criminals in the united states noticed that if they rob a migrant they can get more money than by robbing a liquor store at less risk the migrant doesn't have the legal means to defend himself and the migrant cannot call the police since he would risk getting deported this resulted in something called a dark number a dark number is when the actual number in a statistic is expected to be larger than officially declared a well-known example of a dark number is domestic violence where official numbers are always higher than actual incidents because many incidents are not reported in the specific case of robberies committed against migrant laborers it is possible for this to happen because of what is called a legal vacuum such an environment is not the warrer which hobbes wrote about in leviathan it is when within a functioning state with a legal system through political neglect and legal uncertainty spaces and environments are created in which laws do not apply or cannot be enforced a labor migrant designated and illegal by law falls into such a legal vacuum by being unable to access any legal protections or rights the law creates communities which by their very existence are outside of the law and as awful as all of this sounds this is a sustainable and not an unsustainable status quo you will never see business owners who hire mexican migrant labor face legal consequences for doing so the state of texas may have a lot of politicians who deal in loud anti-immigration and anti-migrant labor rhetoric but those same politicians will then openly promote the state itself as a location to business owners with brochures that detail the economic structure built on the vicinity and access to cheap labor in sociocultural and political terms the wall is more of a symbol of the vicious partisan political divisions within the united states than of what separates america from mexico there's no agreement within the united states on how to confront an existing problem there only is an agreement upon the fact that there is a problem the united states the largest accumulation of wealth in human history borders an impoverished country with a semi-failed state and throughout the last century this has created a status quo in which cheap labor and basic materials cross the border in exchange for consumer goods in a way the truth of the matter is that this status quo has in many ways shapes and forms existed since the spanish empire mexican economic institutions were built around the enriching of a small elite through shipping its resources abroad and neglecting domestic development as well as limiting the political freedoms of the mexican public and in whatever direction the sometimes vicious partisan political debate within the us may be going be it for a closed border with strict immigration laws or more open border with easy routes to citizenship neither ever challenged the root cause of the problem the remnants and legacy of failed political and economic institutions in mexico itself the troubling truth is that the united states policies proposed towards mexico by both parties have been policies that would further a continuation of the status quo a stricter closed border immigration approach will very simply not stop the market forces created by the disparity of wealth mexicans will keep coming as long as they are poor and as long as they see no future in mexico and as long as their state remains dysfunctional no wall will change that and without changing the cause of the wealth disparity between mexico and the united states an open border immigration policy would continuously siphon mexico's most valuable visas out of it namely its people without changing why mexicans leave mexico in the first place basically turning the united states into a parasitic entity profiteering out of mexico's misery let's go to another continent for an example of how borders can be managed differently the southern half of the border between sweden and finland is shaped by the river torn at its southernmost tip where the river flows into the baltic lie the finnish city of tornia and the swedish city of happaranda happaranda was just a fishing village 200 years ago and right across the river in finland was tornier which already was a city at that time sweden which at the time ruled finland decided to join the napoleonic wars against russia and lost as a consequence they had to give up finland to russia and with it the city of toronto sweden however wanted a major city at the tan into the baltic so it consequently decided to build happaranda into a city today these two are twin cities separated just by a river that happens to be a border like all borders there's cultural overlap in finland northern finland is populated by a swedish minority and many regions are bilingual in sweden the north has a finnish minority and regions are bilingual the administrations of tornia and haparanda are aware of this and therefore decided to engage in a unique cooperative governance both cities are in official languages of administration culture and commerce bilingual in finnish and swedish but also to share costs in infrastructure and services such as public baths sewage system management schools water management waste disposal recycling police ambulance and fire emergency services and a common tourism information and guideboard the cities even share two common logos and names tourneo heparanda and habaranda tornia this corporation and sharing and services saves both cities a lot of work and money to be invested elsewhere so how come that nogales doesn't work with nogales why is there no nogales nogales technically speaking this is done within the united states itself with minneapolis and saint paul across minnesota and wisconsin along the american border with canada you will find numerous examples of cross-border cooperation mainly done by towns irrespective of their state and federal government in particular along the border between alaska and british columbia where some alaskan towns are so isolated they depend on cooperation with their canadian neighbours for commerce or even just basic supplies and schools but as you probably guessed canada is also not a failed state or poor and to a degree this type of cooperation already happens in mexico just very one-sided the destitute state of the mexican schooling system results in many mexican border communities signing their children up for high schools in the united states many in border communities seek out employment across the border this is cooperation however on an unofficial level because on an official level the simple fact remains that local mexican governments and authorities remain too corrupt and incompetent to facilitate any such thing additionally mexico the united states and canada has so far been unable to negotiate and agree on a common immigration and visa agreement you may or may not know for example that the republican party has frequently stated that any such agreement would require all countries to adopt mexican immigration laws as a common standard that may confuse you as to why republicans would want mexican immigration laws and well it's because mexico has the strictest immigration laws in all of the americas being in mexico illegally can be punished with up to 10 years in prison and even more astounding mexican immigration law states that it is the duty of the state to protect the demographic balance of the nation yes this means that you could technically be deported from mexico for being black attempts to find agreements in cooperation between the three countries have so far simply not borne any fruit the irony of this however is that if these three could cooperate in matters of border security the common border would be much easier to protect namely the mexican border with guatemala which is only 500 miles long more compact and runs through terrain that is more easily guarded and this is where we reach a weird point because despite there not being a structured official agreement on cooperation in laws services and infrastructure measures towards such happen anyway the americans are aware that most migrants coming to the united states increasingly come from central america and increasingly pay the mexicans to guard their southern border more strictly there's also another social and economic development that is overlooked when the mexican-american border is presented it is often presented from the american perspective on the american side and predominantly what is shown are the demographic changes along the border within the u.s there's even conspiracy talk about how mexicans are supposedly gradually taking over the southern united states to turn it into mexico and reclaim it but this is very misleading american borderlands from texas to california are firmly integrated within the u.s states and the wider united states they are a firm part of the us legal economic cultural political and social framework you get a far better insight when you look at the u.s mexican border on the mexican side in particular when you look at the maps of roads and highways for decades mexican governments neglected northern mexico resulting in highways and other infrastructure being sub-par or at the very least badly connected to the center of administration within mexico city mexico's economy of scale doesn't fully reach over northern mexico however when you look closer you will notice that the existing highways and roads of northern mexico are better tied into the united states highway system than they are into mexico because despite the lack of agreements in cooperation the economic forces at play are gradually developing northern mexico into an american sphere of influence nogales is better tied into tucson than it is into mexico city baja california is better integrated into california than into the rest of mexico and for all intents and purposes austin texas may as well be the capital of northern mexico the often repeated conspiracy of a mexican takeover of the southern united states is not only untrue the opposite is the case northern mexico disconnected from the mexican centers of authority and administration left to itself is increasingly becoming more american as mexico disintegrates america integrates what mexico increasingly loses control over not through government action but through commerce and culture there's not much tying northern mexico into southern mexico culturally they now have more in common with the mexican americans north of the border the american state also provides a larger market and more services than southern mexico i'm due to the continuing integration into the american economy northern mexico is now three times wealthier than the mexican average if the mexican government were to introduce protective legislation against increasing american economic influence it would face considerable backlash from northern mexico as the economist juan henriquez pointed out the northern states of mexico would much rather prefer a european union-style relationship with the united states than being deeper tied into mexico city and other historians have pointed out that it is far more likely for the mexican states of baja california nuevo leon guajilla chihuahua and sonora to break away and form their own independent country should the mexican state further disintegrate or to even join the united states as much as it may seem from an american perspective that american border states are becoming more mexican the often overlooked but very obvious reality is that america is the more powerful and influential entity and that the exact opposite is in fact happening northern mexico is becoming more american a large part in this process is done by something called trans-re-immigration this is when immigrant communities retain a strong connection to their place of origin and consequently imports social cultural and political structures from the country they emigrated to back to the country of origin an example is how portuguese migrant laborers to france from the 1950s to 1970s took part and learned from french labor unions how to politically organize and participate within the political structures of the french republic these portuguese migrant laborers kept ties into or even returned to their portuguese homeland where they used what they had learned in france to help them overthrow the fascist salazar regime and established a modern portuguese republic similarly many mexican immigrants and migrant laborers import cultural and economic structures from the united states back into mexico although many draw parallels between how texas became part of the united states through american migration to texas and conclude that mexican immigration is leading to a slow reverse reconquista of sorts the reality is in fact the opposite remember how texas gradually became part of the united states just how during the 1840s mexican texas was economically and for infrastructure better integrated into the united states than into the rest of mexico sonora bayer california and guajilla are today better integrated in infrastructure into the united states than into the rest of mexico you may chuckle out or not even be aware of the occasional article written by mexican journalists arguing to have places like baja california become part of american california and form a massive super states dominating the pacific coastline but the truth is as ridiculous as it may sound the more destabilized the mexican state becomes the less it can manage to integrate its regions into a mexican economy of scale and the more american influence integrates northern mexico into the united states and so the more likely it actually becomes [Music] when americans discuss the issue of the southern border they do so very one-sidedly they never take a moment to look at mexico itself and ask why this is an issue in the first place you can turn on fox news and hear someone ramble about the supposedly impending mestizopocalypse or msnbc about how the border should be completely open bottom line remains that all solution proposed in the american political circus are still quite insufficient neither challenged the status quo but only suggests solutions that prolong and in either financial or electoral ways profit from the status quo the status quo being a fundamentally broken socio-political system and an economic dependency americans in their culture war dominated politics very rarely have serious discussions on how to resolve the issues that caused their border problems in the first place many americans don't even know how significant the year 2000 was for mexico when the pri state collapsed and that the current violence and disorder is the result of a collapsed state structure that mexico itself has for the past 20 years been undergoing a process of asking itself where it should go now what solutions it should try to take to improve the lives of mexicans that multi-party democracy is something new to mexico barely a generation old mexican democracy is only 20 years old and should be protected as much as possible since 2000 mexicans for the first time have the ability to determine the path their country takes themselves rather than having it dictated to them by an unelected authoritarian elite so what would resolve the issue at hand for the root cause of the problem to be addressed the open and democratic political institutions in mexico being gradually built after the year 2000 must be strengthened public accountability and an independent judiciary being chief amongst them the ability for mexicans to openly and impactfully take part in the political process and laws that apply equally to all the old ways of doing things in which elitist cliques form to enrich themselves while holding the rest of the country down must be removed in their entirety the mexican state must provide the freedom for its citizens to participate in the economy on their own terms within a level playing field without obstruction and to make the innovations and labor count for themselves furthering a mexican economy that can provide for mexicans would mean supporting mexican business and entrepreneurship by mexicans in mexico the state must be made to provide law and order and security for all the war on drugs must come to an end for the stranglehold the cartels hold on large parts of the country to be finally broken and addressing these issues is more urgent than you may think at first if the trends in chinese wages are going to continue as they do right now then mexican labor might soon be cheaper than chinese labor all those factories making phones and other consumer goods for american markets might soon be cheaper to operate in mexico within a decade in fact by 2030 your phone might be made in mexico and when that happens it will be important to know who this benefits will it help create a stable mexican middle class as mexican entrepreneurs will run these factories and mexican laborers will have the guaranteed security to work live and prosper from their own labor or will such an industry be run by a kleptocratic oligarchy again resulting in the socio-economic structures of colonial spain which adapted into an independent oligarchy then adapted into an industrialized dictatorship then adapted into a socialist republic and then adapted into a neoliberal market economy to then adapt again to continue into the 21st century ultimately the answer to this will have to come from mexicans themselves but for americans it might be time to adjust their political culture to stop framing mexico as either an immigration threat or immigration benefit and to start debating what kind of neighbours they want to be and what role they want to play in the continuing democratization of mexico at the end of my videos i usually announce what the next video will be about but things are little different this time because it takes me two to three months to make these long one hour to two hour long videos youtube seems to be punishing me in the algorithm by listing my channel as inactive and even unsubscribing people without their knowledge i am therefore going to make shorter 10 to 30 minute long videos for the rest of this year that will be uploaded on a monthly basis and in march 2022 i will then work on a big four hour long series again now if you need another long format series of videos there's a friend of mine who can help you out and hello there this is nomadstar you might know me from my contributions to kraut's videos throughout this last year well i have been inspired by this work style we have and i decided to start making videos of my own i am currently making a long format bowling ball documentary series on the nation building and history of quebec the first episode of three is currently available on my channel if you have an hour more to burn after this information bath you can go check it out on the link in the description kraut also contributed to this first episode with his artwork as well as another amazing artist you might be interested in finding out about and hey if you do watch it you will also be supporting the build up of the mexican economy so see you there those of you who know mexican history probably noticed that i didn't cover the cristero war in this video and there's a reason for this it is because nomad will be making a video discussing it so if you would like to see that in the future there's another reason for you to subscribe to nova's youtube channel if you enjoyed this video do not forget to leave a like share it on twitter facebook reddit or with your friends subscribe and maybe even leave a comment if you want to support this channel to keep it running you can become a patron or make a donation via paypal if you want to discuss this video possibly even with myself please join my discord server and subscribe to my twitch because i will use discord to host debates about the videos on my twitch after the video is premiered i would like to thank the artists who contributed artwork to this video many thanks to the korean artist teabag who has drawn quite a lot of artwork throughout the mexican-american border trilogy in fact some of the best pieces if you wish to see more of his art you should follow him on social media the turkish artist turkbat who has been around for two years as well and mainly works on very detailed large images as well as the thumbnails he is also open for commission so if you want to hire him you will find his social media in the description hi i'm echo and i'm one of the artists that helped make the video you just watched kraut's giving me the chance to briefly plug some of my things i have a twitter echo is too short where i post drawings and some memes by the time you're watching this i also opened up three commission slots for people to buy in cooperation with the release of mexico 3. i also have a twitch twitch.tv echo was too short was taken where i stream games art making and a new project made by me and a few of my friends i'll be streaming a lot in the next few months so make sure to come by and check it out anyways thanks for listening and i hope to see you soon the norwegian artist pile of trash who also makes highly detailed and amazing artwork the german artist tanet who also makes highly detailed frames the brazilian artist felipe who is also open for commissions the izakaya artist pogban who is also open for commissions the artist axolotls the american artist five dollar note the american artist carl delaney and the swedish artist calypso i would also like to thank the mexican economist solaris who throughout the production of this series has been proofreading the scripts for each single episode to make sure that everything is factual and that as few mistakes as possible are made he has well overdue a mention you will find links to all of their social media in the description and i highly recommend you check them out i would like to also thank friends of mine from youtube and twitch who read lines for this video one species the right opinion stardust and matt jabo that's it i hope to see you all soon again with the next video

Channel: Kraut

Views: 1,560,752

Keywords: Kraut, Countryball, Polandball, Documentary, History, Mexico, Mexican, Revolution, 1911, PRI, Zapata, Pancho Villa, Zapatistas, Caranza, Obregon, immigration, migrants, border, wall, security, economics, exports, USA, America, Politics, Policy, inequality, poverty, Mexicans, Americans, election, border security, border policy, Mexican-American, Latino

Id: Uek04Jw15kY

Length: 123min 17sec (7397 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021