Bombing Pemex–Or Not?

Did Guerrillas Strike at the Heart of Mexico’s Oil Industry?

…Although the Mexican government refrained from using the T-word, it was definitely in the air. “EPR ALLIANCE WITH AL QAEDA!” whooped the headlines on newspapers hanging from the kiosks. Indeed, a purported Al Qaeda document emerged in 2006 encouraging attacks against U.S. allies that supply Washington with oil – Mexico exports 1.6 million barrels of petroleum to the U.S. daily, without which George Bush would be hard pressed to wage war in Iraq.

With the terrorist alert heating up to hot orange, President Calderon convoked an emergency meeting of his security cabinet. The military has 30,000 troops in the field fighting Washington’s drug war and elite units had to be re-deployed to protect strategic installations. Machine-gun nests blossomed outside PEMEX gates, along energy pipelines, at dams, and electricity generating facilities. Navy patrols around offshore platforms in the Caribbean were stepped up.


Washington has a proprietary interest in the Mexican oil flow and news of the bombings furrowed brows in the U.S. capital. As a signatory to the euphemistically named North American Agreement for Security and Prosperity (ASPAN), Mexico is designated as the U.S.’s southern security perimeter, potentially invoking military action by the United States North Command housed in Colorado should terrorist activity be detected in the neighborhood. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security regards Mexico as a potential terrorist staging area.

The EPR bombings were the first here since last November when a previously unknown guerrilla formation – the Army of the Insurgent Popular Revolution (ERIP) – took credit for taking out the nation’s top electoral tribunal, a bank, and the national headquarters of the once-ruling PRI party.

The Popular Revolutionary Army’s successful July jamboree shut down more than 90 manufacturing plants in central Mexican cities, sending tens of thousands of workers at such transnationals as Nissan, Honda, Vitro (Mexican owned), Kellogg, and Ideal Standard, the world’s largest toilet maker, home for the day.

CounterPunch