Petra Manjarrez — the lost insurgent
And speaking of newswomen….
Although Sinaloa’s role in the struggle for Mexican independence was relatively minor, it too had it’s heroes… and heroines. The latter are nearly unknown, although historians Rina Cuellar and Giberto López Alanís hope to rescue one from obscurity. The two were interviewed by Graciela Gaxiola of El Debate (Culiacán, Sinaloa: 01/09/2010) about their preliminary research into a forgotten heroine, which I have shameless plundered for this post.
According to Cuellar, Miguel Hidalgo dispatched an aide –A priest native to El Rosario, Francisco de la Parra and a miner from Hermosillo, José María González. González’ compadre, José Fructo Romero joined the expedition, bringing along a printing press, and his new young bride, Petra Manjarrez.
Little is known about Petra. José was from Guadalajara, but Petra – who was probably 17 years old in 1810 – had family in Sinaloa, which may have been the reason the couple joined González and de la Parra. And, because José’s business was mining. He owned a press, but Petra was the printer and typesetter.
And, more importantly, the two scholars believe Petra was carrying – hidden in her petticoats – the revolutionary and highly illegal anti-royalist writings of Miguel Hidalgo for eventual dissemination in what would be the first independent newspaper in Sinaloa. Produced on the run, and appearing irregularly, “El Despertador Americano” was quite literally a “small press publication”. The pages were only 20 by 25 cm., perhaps having as much to do with the problems of obtaining paper for a clandestine operation as with needing to make the forbidden propaganda easy to hide.
Petra managed to print and distribute seven issues of El Despertador before she was arrested in 1811. The press was seized, and used to print royalist propaganda, but we know very little about what actually happened to Petra:
“…Manjarrez was put on trial, pursued as an insurgent newspaper editor, but even very prominent women’s lives were not well documented. What happened is that histories written in the 19th and the first part of the 20th century has neglected to record even the names of women involved in historical events,” said López , General Director of the State Historical Archives.
What we know is that after El Despertador Americano was suppressed, José moved to his native Guadalajara where he founded another newspaper, Correo Político Económico. Since his business was primarily mining, presumably this was Petra’s newspaper and — after José died in 1819 — she presumably stayed on as publisher.
Alas, with the lives and careers of women being even more anonymous than the anonymous-by-choice bloggers of the 21st century, we know little enough about our forefathers. and nothing about our foremothers, in the alternative media.
She’s back… YAY!!
Getting published in Mexico is no easy feat, especially for unknown writers: big publishers tend to focus on profit-reaping established authors.
I don’t know what’s different about Mexico from anywhere else on the planet in that respect (although I can recommend a small English-language Mexican publisher who has taken on several unknowns), but am happy to see Alexis Okeowo is back to reporting on Mexico. Okeowo always impressed me with her coverage of overlooked news from wherever she happens to find herself — writing on lesbians in Kampala. couch surfing in New York, or – in Newsweek — on the interest in the United States in Mexican women writers.
A bicentennial moment with Cardinal Sandoval
One reason for writing my own Mexican history in English was that “Mexicans take their history very seriously.” As I noted in my introduction, I had started to put the book together just as the United States was pressuring Mexico (then on the United Nations Security Council) to join its crusade against Iraq. Which the Mexicans refused to do
…for reasons going back ten, thrity-five, sixty, one hundred fifty and five hundred years… The arguments weren’t just raised by professors and professional historians. Mexicans don’t consider five hundred years that long a time, nor do they consider history as something belonging only in a classroom.
It is also the reason I adhered closely to the “official” history — which has been a “people’s history” from the time of the Revolution until recently. The new school curriculum which hasn’t proved popular (there were even history teacher protest marches when it was first suggested) tends to downplay the Revolution as a social upheaval in favor of a blander, political one, and give more space to the Colonial Era. Which, means, of course, more emphasis on the SPANISH Catholicism. It’s not likely to last, but it is, for now, comforting to those who want to build an intellectual foundation to confirm existing prejudices.
Guadalajara Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez just doesn’t know when to quit (I wonder sometimes if he isn’t modeling his political behavior on the north of the border “tea-baggers” who mix genuine grievances with rampant bigotry making themselves look ridiculous … and increasingly dangerous). In a signed editorial in his Diocesan newspaper, His Eminence — making note of the fact that the Supreme Court absolved the owners of criminal misconduct in the ABC nursery school fire that killed 47 children in Hermosillo (although they did note that the law needed change) — launched another… ahem… rear-guard attack on the gay adoption ruling. According to Sandoval,
If the Court is defending the right of adults, then, over time, adults may be entitled to claim any relationship with anyone, person or animal… not that we are equating so-called homosexual relationships with “relationships” — if they can be called such — with animals. Nor are we promoting rebellion…”
Which is Cardinal-speak for “Don’t blame me if there’s a riot… just because I’m proposing one.” If he get’s what he’s not promoting, he’s likely to come out on the losing end.
That new curriculum isn’t widespread and is being mightily resisted… not to mention that not only are more Mexicans are likely to have been educated under the old one… but that even with a new curriculum, there is no way to undo a long history of anti-clericalism. A commentator on the SDPNoticias story on the Cardinal’s latest assault on common sense dug out this gem from a pamphleteer — a low-tech early 19th century blogger — from the 5 December 1810 El Vengador de la patria:
Open your eyes, Mexicans! Do not let yourselves be seduced by our enemies, the Catholics of Spain, who are not Catholics, but call themselves such for the purpose of taking our money by threats, by oppression and by pillage. MEXICANS! Break these shameful chains of slavery to the Spanish “Catholics”. If we cease to fight among ourselves, then the battle is won. Mexicans! From today, the foreigners are our enemy – DEATH TO THE SPANIARDS AND THE SPANISH CHURCH!
Gringo, guns, Mexico
Energy to spare
Mexico’s electric power generation is among the cleanest in the world, but data shows that only 10.3% is sourced from hydroelectric power and 3.4% from renewable energy. The country stands behind in current global standards, which are set at an average of 18.6% for hydroelectric use and 5.3% for renewable energy. In the renewable energy sector, “modern renewables”, wind and solar, account for just 0.33%, when the global standard is set at 3.7%.
Despite these low figures of renewable energy use for electricity generation, Mexico has great potential for the wind and solar energy production. For example, the north-western region of the country is adequate for solar energy development since it has an average of 5 to 6 low peak sun hours (one of the highest in the world). The rest of the country has between 4 and 5.5. low sun peak hours, which also represents a high scale. Mexico also has optimal wind conditions in the north-west, north-east and south-east regions for wind energy development…
Baaaaaaaddddd!
Decapitations — not just for Arizona any more!
Over 300 goats decapitated.
Shepherds from various communities in Puebla State are frightened by the attacks to their herds. They suspect the presence of natural predator, a nahual (shapeshifter) or the Chupacabras. Authorities have combed the area.
Shepherds from Colonia San Martín, Los Reyes Metzontla and Cañada Ancha in Puebla State are frightened by the attacks on their flocks by either the Chupacabras, wild dogs or some other wild creature that they’ve been unable to hunt down, and which has caused the deaths of over 300 goats for some 50 days now.
Felix Martinez Hernández, president of Colonia San Martin, said that on August 14th at around 7:00 a.m., over 36 goats were found butchered in the Colonia San Martin strip, located 18 km south of the municipality. The presence of a predator, nahual or the Chupacabras is suspected.
People who live in the community explained that the phenomenon increased after the rains, and this led them to seek support from the authorities in dispelling the mystery, which has people frightened due to the cruel way in which the goats were dispatched…
Court etiquette
To a modern republican sensibility, one of the most ridiculous things about Maximilian’s short-lived Imperial Court was its elaborate etiquette, and to many historians, a sure sign of Maximilian’s superficiality his concern with such trivia as whose bench should be cushioned in velvet, what color stockings the lackeys should wear for a third-class dinner, & etc. Read the Reglamento y ceremonial de la Corte and I can guarantee some eye rolling and chuckles. But in context, the 1860s, when rigorous court etiquette was widely, from Austria to Spain to France and England, considered a crucial instrument to maintain the stability of the State– and this when the upheavals of 1848 were a fresh memory for so many— the Reglamento begins to look more sad than nonsensical.
Sad… perhaps if one has immersed ones’ self in the life of the Hapsburg puppet rulers of Mexico during the French intervention of the 1860s, and takes Maximiliano and Carlota as sympathetic figures. Mexico City writer C.M Mayo does. Her latest book “The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire“ is deservedly praised for bringing attention to the forgotten, and tragic story, of Augustín Iturbide y Green.
The grandson of the Napoleón wannabe, Augustín Iturbide — who had made himself Emperor of Mexico for several months after independence, but was forced to abdicate (and later shot) — Iturbide y Green’s mother was a U.S. citizen, making the boy’s “adoption” (more like a kidnapping) by Maximilano and Carlota in a desperate attempt to present a “Mexican heir” to their phantom throne more pathetic than anything. “Prince Iturbide”, as an adult served in the Mexican army, later becoming a professor of foreign languages at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he lived in a monastery until his marriage (at the age of 59) .
Mayo deserves high praise for her dedication to this minor footnote in Mexican history, but the very existence of “The Last Prince” is one reason I don’t take the Mexican Emperor and his courtiers seriously, and find them not so much nonsensical figures, but repellent ones.
I’ve mentioned before that it was the Maximiliano and Carlota story that first piqued my interest in Mexico (blame it on Bette Davis), and — considering how short a time they actually were in Mexico (they arrived in Veracruz on 21 May 1864. Carlota left for Europe in early 1866. Maximilano was overthrown on 15 May 1867, and was shot on 19 June 1867, meaning he was only in the country for a little less than three years… not even long enough to apply for a permanent residency today) — their story has fascinated scholars and moralists for the last 150 years.
I’ve certainly read my share of various studies of the royal couple. Most frankly annoyed me, with their willingness to forgive the royals their active support for, and participation in, mass murder, plunder, pillage and economic rape (Carlota, as their French military controller Achille Bazine later remarked, was the cold-blooded one, Max being something of an amiable fool — sort of the Dick Cheney and George W. Bush of Mexican historical pairs) with bland references to their “good intentions” (and isn’t that what the road to Hell is paved with). One reads endlessly of Max’s interest in the welfare of “the Indians”, and uses his friendship with Tómas Mejía as proof. Or, makes mention of “la India Bonita” (Max’s supposed indigenous mistress). Interestingly though, “la India’s” name is left out of most narriatives — she being “just an Indian”, not a human being. Nor, in most of the studies, are “the Mexicans” — with the exception of a few criollo courtiers and absolutely necessary people like General Mejía — considered more than a colorful native backdrop to a romantic tale in an exotic land.
When I read the late Jasper Ridley’s “Maximilan and Juarez” — considered one of the standards of Max-ology — I was incredulous that it was written in 1992, not 1892. Or even 1932 when Bertita Lorenz Harding’s “Phantom Crown” could, without self-conscious irony, write of “Indians” in terms of stereotypes like “stoic” and “humble”. Ridley spent his long career writing royal biographies, and perhaps he was a royalist. And he was a European. None of which means that his thesis that Benito Juarez was simply an “Indian” and therefore stubborn and unable to comprehend the subtle ways of the white man’s hereditary rulers, was somehow “racial”… not a political stance of a radical 19th century republican liberal.
For all that, I depended on Ridley (along with Joan Haslip’s 1971 “Crown of Mexico”) for much of what I wrote about the Second Empire in my own book. But, in the end, I didn’t find them “sad” so much as diabolical:
Foreigners often see the Imperial couple as a tragic, romantic pair. Mexicans see them as well-intentioned fools, or worse. By modern standards, they were white supremacists. Like the gachupines of the colonial era, they believed that Europeans were obviously superior to the Mexicans, and the warfare and destruction carried out in their name was justified. Unfortunately, this attitude pervades most foreign writing about the Hapsburgs. The legal concept of “crimes against humanity” did not exist in their day, but in the 21st century they could be tried and convicted of genocide and terrorism under Mexican, French, Belgian or Austrian laws for the atrocities committed by the soldiers serving in their name.
They were foolish and greedy people, not idealistic, misguided ones…
… The French occupation of México happened at the same time as the American Civil War. In both, white supremacy was one of the justifications for massive bloodshed and destruction. There is no more reason to defend the selfish, stupid, vain and cold-blooded Hapsburgs any more than there is to defend slaveholders.
Although I suspect that in a modern court of law, the royal pair could have been found not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease, the enormity of their crimes and the havoc they wreaked upon Mexico are mind-boggling. There is no way, except by looking at the individual victims of their short rampage through Mexico, of contemplating that. C.M. Mayo is to be commended for writing the story of perhaps the most innocent, and therefore, most tragic of their victims.
Ethel Stockton, D.E.P.
I had a customer in the bookshop here one time, who — looking for “local” books about Mazatlán — was thumbing though Ethel Stockton’s “Old” novels. The customer thought it was “cool” that a “little old lady” was writing novels. I had to correct her. Ethel Stockton was a lady. And she was old. But until a recent illness forced her to return to her native Seattle, nobody in Mazatlán would have thought of her as a “little old lady” — that sounds like Tweety Bird’s Gwanny!. Ethel Stockton was something much finer… a tough old broad living abroad.
Having written a couple of “how to” books prior to moving to Mexico in 2002, Stockton was, in some ways, following in the great tradition of Vasco de Quiroga. The 16th century Spanish jurist — like Stockton — came to Mexico mostly to live on a retirement income, but, living to an advanced age, built a new career based not only on his previous training and skills, but on his openness to what was new in the world, and in what the “New World” had to teach him. Quiroga would become Bishop of Michoacán in his late sixties, and spend the next thirty years working to re-invigorate Purépecha culture.
Stockton was a bit older than Quiroga when she came to Mexico, and her goals were more modest, but there was a re-invention and rejuvination:
Wow! I discovered there was Life after 80. I found a ME I had not known existed. It was the happy me, the laughing me, the loving me I had always wanted to be. When I arrived in Mexico, at age 86, to live alone, far from family and friends, with only myself to rely on, Life was there, waiting. It showed me the wonder of myself and my world. It taught me to be ME.
And, at the age of 92, to publish her first novel… “Old is a Four-Letter Word”. Followed by “Older Is Better”, “Not Too Old” and “Old Fashioned”, the novels follow the ups and downs of the life of Analiz Victoria Fallon, a “mature heroine” who could not have been imagined by a younger writer. Analiz, having fled a bad marriage for an independent life in Mazatlán in 1965 is in her 80s when we first meet her in “Old is a 4-Letter Word.” Like Quiroga, Analiz has opted not to be an outside neutral observer of the “other,” but to embrace her new home, and to embrace her aging self.
While full of humor, the Analiz novels do not shy away from the reality of aging or of Mexico. Analiz has a stroke in the course of the series, and — in the last (and as yet unpublished) book in the series — has a run-in with the local narcos.
As reviewer Norm Goldman wrote of “Old is a 4-Letter Word” –
“Old is like one of those nasty 4-letter words. It should be banned from the dictionary.” When she is scolded by her son-in-law for encouraging her seven- year old grandchild to follow his dreams of one day becoming a pilot or astronaut, she retorts that we seem to never get away from the term ‘old’ for when we are young we’re told that we are not old enough to do things and when we become old, we are warned not to do them as we are too old. Annaliz believes that most people’s lives are dull and flat without any fun. She underscores the idea that it is within everyone’s grasp to have some fun out of life- a message she endeavors to spread by presenting her book of options. It is up to the readers of this book to decide if they want to take the risks necessary to enjoy life to its fullest.
And she did.
Again, like Quiroga, Stockton was not one to eschew the new and modern (for Quiroga, not just opening himself to the new and daring ideas of Thomas More, but taking full advantage of the latest in communications technology of his time, the printing press). Having self-published her first two books, she took full advantage of both on-line and “print-on-demand” publishers (who were rather annoyed to find Stockton was quite willing to fight them to have her books printed for her peer group … in large print), as well as maintaining a website, communicating by e-mail and facebook.
Per her instructions, the following was posted on her facebook page:
“To my family and friends at my death:
Have no guilt feelings. My love will always be with you. I lived my life as I wanted to. You gave me everything you had to give while I was here. Let me go with loving thoughts.”
Just one look
Gary Denness was not the only one bothered by the big blue “Mex Files” in the middle of the header, but he was more bothered about it than I was. So, that mad dog of an Englishman stayed out of the midday sun of Santa María de la Ribera this afternoon, and redesigned it.
Good show! or as we say here, ¡Que buena onda!
Everybody dance now…
Idema redux — a “no comment” comment
A week ago, I posted on Jack Idema, a phony “counter-terrorism consultant” who, in addition to serving time after being convicted on 58 counts of wire fraud involving military supplies and later making the news for being sentenced to an Afghan prison for running his own private prison, and is wanted now in Mexico for spousal abuse at the very least. There were hints in the Mexican press of what the U.S. press called “lascivious details” involving forced participation in orgies, and spreading HIV virus to unsuspecting people.
I didn’t find the fact that there was a crazy con-man living in Mexico nearly as intriguing as the possibility that a self-proclaimed “counter-terrorism expert” was possibly a source of weapons for Zetas, or a U.S. “consultant” feeding at the trough of Plan Mérida funding.
Last night, I received a very long, detailed comment that — because of the extensive number of links — sent directly to my “spam” folder. Headed “DISTRIBUTION: ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND MEDIA” it alleges to detail Idema’s present activities in Bacalar, Quitano Roo, and provides email addresses (and often telephone numbers) of everyone from Idema himself to the state prosecutor to supposed co-conspirators in various shady enterprises. I decided not to print any of the information because the supposed sender used not their own website as a return “ISP”, but some gay porn site… and the person tried to claim the post was from one of Idema’s alleged victims. The author did include her “real” on-line name… “Cao” of Cao’s Blog — an extreme reactionary site given over to “soldier of fortune” type postings, and a lot of pro-Idema posts over the last couple of years.
Cao — who claims to be a “midwestern housewife” — seems to have a thing about gays being part of a communist plot (for real — “Homosexuality, in fact, is one of the things communists are pushing,” write Cao, apparently missing that real commies like Fidel Castro went out of their way to label gays “counterrevolutionary” and were hardly known for their sympathies to sexual minorities) AND Jack Idema (“to say that I’m a paid blogger for Jack Idema is stretching things considerably,” she writes).
Which makes it so weird that “Cao” — claiming to be a female victim of Jack Idema — details in her missive “TO ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND MEDIA” so many salacious details about Idema’s sexual activities (including dead links to supposed gay orgy houses for rent). In other words, the post doesn’t pass the smell test.
With that warning in mind, Cao also posted another Mexico story — one that feeds into my interest in the possible misuse of Plan Mérida funds (or, rather, perhaps the intended use being to prop up U.S. war industries and “consultants”) and/or organized gun runners from the United States.
With her purpose being to “clear Idema’s name” (which makes the comment I’m not posting even stranger) Cao writes:
Mexican police just admitted that American Jeffery Shippey, a former DYNCORP employee… was arrested fifteen days ago for impersonating a special agent of both the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. FBI.
I have no information on Shippey being arrested in Mexico, but I did find reference to him recruiting mercenaries for work in Iraq in Manta Ecuador, when the U.S. maintained an airbase there as part of “Plan Colombia” part of its overall “war on drugs” in an 26 April 2007 post by Cyril Mychalejko in Upsidedownworld:
Jeffrey Shippey, a former DynCorp International employee at Manta created a ghost company, Epi Security and Investigations, and recruited more than 1,000 Colombians and Ecuadorians to work in Iraq. The report noted that the company wasn’t registered in Quito nor with local provisional authorities. NGO’s told the Working Group that the company allegedly was using Chilean instructors and former Colombian military personnel.
Shippey wrote in an advertisement promoting his company at the Iraq Job Center Web Site … that, “These forces have been fighting terrorists for 41 years and have been trained by the U.S. Navy Seals and the U.S. DEA to conduct counter-drug/counter-terror ops in the jungles and rivers of Colombia.”
Whether Shippey was arrested in Mexico or not — and whether Idema is hanging with a “21 year old local transvestite prostitute who can be found working the highway,” doesn’t much interest me. As it is, the criminal investigation of Idema was for violence against a woman and there was no mention of transvestites or gays in any of the news articles regarding the denunciation.
What bothers me is that two known shady arms contractors are showing up in Mexico — and I’m sure there are many more. Who they are supplying, or who they are ripping off, and what they are doing here… THAT I’d want to learn about.
