Drug War Capitalism

Militarization under the pretext of the drug war, says journalist Dawn Paley, is essential to capitalist expansion. Opening new spaces for capital in countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia, using massacres to terrorize the population, notes Paley, leads to the destruction of communal and social ties that give strength to grassroots movements. This war against lifeways contrary to US/IMF/World Bank dictates, she observes, requires intense repression by market capitalism. To counter this reality, Paley says, media in the US and its client states characterizes the massacred and disappeared as insurgents, leading oblivious Americans to believe the state-centric, market-oriented drug war narrative.