The Mex Files

Entries categorized as ‘Oaxaca en luche (2006)’

Southern Exposure

18 November 2009 · 1 Comment

The Woodrow Wilson Institute for International Scholars Mexico site picked up an article from El Universal that has captured what I think is one of Mexico’s greatest challenges… facing north when it should be looking south:

Mexico was once boasted as a leader in Latin America, but is now an observer of the development of other nations. Academics and specialists confirm that the country has found itself stuck in several areas stymieing its competitiveness.

The majority agree: the country wasted its potential, never looked south to reassert itself as a leader, and squandered the advantage of oil resources and neglected science.

(Original article in El Universal 16-November 2009)

I’ve talked before about the disadvantages of Mexico’s too-close ties to the United States economy, which has worked to discourage trade with the rest of Latin America and other parts of the world.  At the same time, despite my continual carping on the lack of attention the United States pays to Latin America, Mexico does receive attention… just not the kind that allows for creative and independent policy-making.

Narrow concerns with “stability”, coupled with the unfortunate co-incidence of the timing of the last presidential campaign during the United State’s own bout with extremist political and economic attitudes probably did have more to do with with the questionable outcome of that election than it should.  Not that a López Obradór administration would have necessarily have been more successful than the Calderón administration, but AMLO was more interested in pan-Latin initiatives, and his program was more focused on the basics — like educational and agricultural reform — than the incumbent is.

Secondly, Mexico’s willingness to fight the United State’s “war on drugs” — or rather, the Calderón administration’s willingness to use the “mano duro” against “instability” (which includes not just the narcotics exporters, but political and social dissent as well).  Basic judicial reforms, as well as social programs which would have ameliorated the need for so much dissent (as well as the need to make a living working in the narcotics industry) have been put on the back burner.

Third, while the PAN people are not incompetent per se, they are ideologically bound to the wrong issues.  This wouldn’t have been a problem had the U.S. economic house of cards stood up a few more years, but it didn’t.  While the United States could make some mild reforms thanks to an election at the right time, Mexico is stuck with the same mindset when it comes to economic responses as the Bush Administration in the U.S.  I thought it a good sign when Augustín Carstens was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, although — today — an orthodox World Bank type is exactly wrong.

And, of course, shit happens.  Mexico isn’t “exotic” — or exciting enough to rate the pres that Brazil does right now.  And, our stability may be working against us.  People like Felipe Calderón are kind of dull… even AMLO, or Beatriz Parades just don’t have the star appeal of other Latin American politicos like Bolivia’s Evo Morales or Ecuador’s Rafael Correa,  And, outside the “drug war” and quasi-crises like the flu epidemic, there hasn’t been any “change to believe in” that really captures one’s attention since the Oaxaca protests.

While it looks, on the surface, that nothing is going on… there are signs that something will give.  The cynical dismemberment of Luz y Fuero del Centro (and the union) hasn’t quite sunk in yet, nor has the Calderón administration’s coddling of the corrupt union boss, Esther Elba Gordilla… nor the seeming lack of ideas from the administration on how to respond to the economic situation.  There will be national elections in 2012… and although it appears for now that the likely winner is a Carlos Salinas protege, nothing is ever for certain in Mexico.  As Porfirio Dias said, just before everything changed, “Nothing changes in Mexico… until it changes.”

 

Categories: 2006 Elections · AMLO · Agriculture · Agustín Carstens · Alternative Presidency · Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Bolivia · Brazil · Crime and Punishment · Drugs · Economy & Business · Ecuador · Education and educators · Ester Elba Gordillo · Evo Morales · Felipe Calderón · George W. Bush · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · Mexican History 1921+ · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · PAN · Politica (Mexicana) · Rafael Correa · Trade agreements and issues · World Bank

Human rights — slightly better

16 October 2009 · Leave a Comment

[P]rove one case, one single case in which the authorities have not acted, in which human rights have been violated, in which the relevant authorities haven’t responded to punish those who have abused their legal powers: whether they are police, soldiers, or any other authority.

Felipe Calderón

Where to start? Amnesty International, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and The Committee To Protect Journalists have all weighed in at various times… but have been dismissed as foreign meddling. Now, the Supreme Court of Justice has responded — taking the unusual step of not only ruling on a “single case in which the authorities have not acted, in which human rights have been violated,” but also informing probable or potential human rights abusers what exactly they are doing wrong.

Last Wednesday (14 October), the ministers issued a finding that specifically named Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz as the authority that violated human rights during the 2006 teachers’ protests that escalated into full scale rebellion.  Three ministers (Juan N. Silva Meza, José de Jesús Gudiño Pelayo y José Ramón Cossío) issued what in the U.S. system would be a concurrent opinion, naming Vicente Fox, then Secretary of Public Security Eduardo Molina Mora and then Secretaría de Gobernacíon, the late Carlos Abascal, as equally responsible.

In addition, two police officials were also named in the report as culpable for criminal violations.

The Supreme Court of Justice cannot order prosecutions, and for political reasons it is unlikely that Ruiz will face charges (both the State and Federal legislatures are controlled by the PRI, Ruiz’ own party, which is loathe to open up a can of worms, and Ruiz’ support was crucial in electing [if he was elected] Felipe Calderón to the Presidency).  Ruiz’ term expires in December 2010, with elections scheduled for next July.  The most likely immediate result is a united front to break the PRI hold on state government.  The last attempt, which included only the left failed — depending on who you chose to believe — because of election fraud on the part of PRI, because the PRI was able to take advantage of the large Zapatista constituency within the state (the Zapatistas rejecting electoral politics) and the failure to bring PAN into the equation.  The Zapatistas are going to do their own thing, no matter what, and with the National PAN now seeing the PRI as a bigger threat to hanging on to the Presidency than the PRD-led coalition it faced in 2006, a united opposition is a viable, and probable, option.

The unusual step taken by the Supreme Court in sending their findings to all State governors, puts them on notice that “any authority” — at least at the state level — who violates human rights is fair game for ambitious public ministers.  A couple obvious candidates for scrutiny — Enrique Peña Nieto (the odds-on favorite for PRI Presidential candidate in 2010) for state action during the Atenco situation and former Jalisco Governor, Francisco Ramírez Acuña (a hard-right PANista, who served as Calderón’s first Sec. de Gobernacion) for having anti-globalization protesters arrested and tortured during a May 2004 summit meeting).  Mario Marín Torres, the “gober preciosa” accused of  having Lydia Cacho kidnapped, jailed and raped for uncovering his connection to an international kiddy-porn ring, may not be off the hook, although an earlier court ruling said he was not personally liable for the particular incident involving Cacho’s phony arrest.

Undoing all “impunity”, especially that enjoyed by federal officials is going to take a little more time.  At least the President can no longer blithely dismiss claims of abuse.  Just the admission that attention must be paid to human rights is a huge step forward.

Categories: 2006 Elections · Courts · Crime and Punishment · FAP (PRD-PT-Convergencia) · Felipe Calderón · Human Rights · Jalisco · Legal system · Mexico (Estado de) · Oaxaca · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · PAN · Politica (Mexicana) · Provincia · Puebla · Ulises Ruiz Ortiz

Cabinet shuffle to fends off zombies

8 September 2009 · 2 Comments

ZombiesAheadWhere in English, we might refer to the Calderon Administration as a “lame duck presidency”, one Mexican analyst has started using the phrase “presidencia zombi”… dead prez walking.

Perhaps, but by making key concessions in the first week of the new PRI Legislature, the Administration appears to be willing to submit to radical surgery that may leave it weakened, and maimed, but still viable.

PAN, like the Republican Party north of the border, has come to rely heavily on a religious right “base” to turn out the vote.  As happened in the United States, this has ended up costing the party in general elections, but unlike the Republicans, PAN is showing signs of being willing to jettison the narrow interests of that base in return for a chance to maintain more than a regional dominance.  Eduardo Medina-Moro Icaza — a stalwart in the piety wing of the party, and said to have close ties to the shadowy Catholic fascist group, El Yunque, is out as Procuador General (Attorney General).

As is common in Latin America, disgraced officials who still have political clout are often given diplomatic posts.  Medina-Moro is being transferred to the foreign service:  where he is assigned will be an indication of how far out of power he — and el Yunque — are.  A posting as consul in Presidio Texas or Ambassador to Paraguay would mean something very different than, say, a posting to the OAS or the United Nations.

His probable replacement (Ana Maria Salazar remembers that this is one of the few cabinet posts requiring Senate approval) by Arturo Chávez Chávez, who served as undersecretary of human rights in the Secretaria de Gobernacion and was the Fox Administration’s negotiator during the 2006 Oaxaca crisis indicates that the Administration is being forced to reconsider its “mano duro” (hard hand) policies.

Long time PEMEX director Jesús Reyes Heroles is also being replaced, by Juan José Suárez Coppel. As the maternal apellado indicates, he is a member of the old Mazatlán mercantile family. His own background is as a corporate executive with a number of large Mexican businesses (Banamex, Televisa, Groupo Modelo) before moving to PEMEX as Finance Director.  This may indicate further attempts to turn the paraestatal into a straight business operation.

Alberto Cardenás Jimenez, the Secretary of Agriculture, is also leaving.  Another ultra-rightist, Cardenás — like Calderón — was another Fox cabinet member, and again like Calderón was a PAN primary candidate for the Presidential election in 2006.  Cardenás´replacement is the Fox cabinet’s last Agriculture Secretary, Francisco Javier Mayorga Castañeda .  Unlike Cardenás, whose background is in party politics, Mayorga has spent his entire life working in agriculture — his father was a rancher, and the secretary designate´s own career has been as an agricultural economist and bureaucrat within state and federal agricultural agencies.

Cardenás was widely derided for once suggesting “Pan Bimbo” (white bread, specifically that made by Bimbo) was an acceptable alternative to tortillas and for his seeming indifference to rural affairs.  However, it was the Procampo scandal, in which federal loans and grants for small farmers were going instead to wealthy farms (and even narcotics kingpins) that made his survival in the cabinet unlikely.

There is nothing unusual about major cabinet changes at the three year mark (after the mid-term congressional elections), but given the need to avoid becoming a zombie presidency, I expect that hacking off the far right extremities may only be the first cuts to be made.

Categories: 2006 Elections · Bureaucracy · Felipe Calderón · Human Rights · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · PAN · Politica (Mexicana) · Right Wing Idiots · Vicente Fox · Yunque

One thousand guilty…

19 August 2009 · 2 Comments

Judeo-Spanish legal theorist Moses Maimonides… argues [in the 290th "Negative Commandment"] that …”the Exalted One has shut this door”  against the use of presumptive evidence, for “it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent man to death once in a way.”

“n Guilty Men”, Alexander Volokh

Via “Under the Volcano: Notes on Mexican Politics“:

The Supreme Court voted 4-1 to free 20 men imprisoned for more than 11 years for a massacre in the village of Acteal, Chiapas in 1997.  Another 30 are expected to be freed soon. Citing severe misconduct by the prosecutors and lower court judges, including the fabrication of evidence and testimony, the Court ruled that the accused were denied the constitutional rights of due process and an adequate defense. The killing of 45 Tzotzil Indians, mostly women and children, by assailants from a rival community and the railroaded prosecutions by the Zedillo government during the Zapatista rebellion has long been an open wound.  The Court pointedly did not declare the innocence of those freed…

Although the ruling has been criticized by those who are disappointed that the Mexican Supreme Court did its job and looked at how justice was dispensed, rather than attempting the impossible and re-opening this case, the ruling is a victory for legal reform. And, as in so many Mexican news items, is rooted in events centuries old, and has implications well in other aspects of Mexican life today — the so-called ‘drug war’ among them.

The Mayan peoples have been divided for the last millennium and more not just by language and custom, but within their own communities, by clan.  In recent years,  these divisions have been complicated, starting with religious difference in the 1950s, and taking on a more intransigent political identity since the 1990s.

Those killed in the  22 December 1997 massacre were members of Las abejas, a pacifist organization supported by the Liberationist “wing” within the Roman Catholic Church, although the group also includes Evangelicals and other Protestants, and mixes traditionalist Mayan.  However, at the same time, Las abejas threaten some traditions — both eschewing alcohol and allowing women to hold leadership roles.  As such, they are seen by many of the traditionalists as a threat to their own community value system.

Las abejas identify God with the Queen bee, and see themselves as the worker bees.  The “worker bee” identity echoes the synarchist (Mexican fascist) philosophy, which — under the more benign guise of “usos y costumbres” — means  no dissent is allowed among enforced communal political positions.   While I’ve seen no evidence of violence within Las abejas (who remind me of the Quakers), the usos y costumbres and enforced community standards within traditional communities have led to violence and internecine warfare within the larger community — the Tzotzil community as a whole.  As religious communists, Las abejas are politically allied with other communal-oriented groups like the ELZN.

The proximate cause to the massacre was an ungoing dispute over inheritance of a  120 hectare plot.  There was some question as to whether or not the plot was communal or private property, and adjucation by the Agrarian Land court was at a standstill.  The strongest claimant, a PRI supporter, gave half the land to his supporters, while a nephew — who also stood to inherit if the property was private and not communal — offered his claim to the commune.  This split the local local Tzotil into several factions, with different political and social groups backing different claimants.

As so often in family feuds — especially when land is at stake — violence ensued.  The nephew, and several of his supporters were gunned down in 1992.  Dissatisfaction with medical treatment after the gun fight led to founding Las Abejas by one group supporting the communal land claimants.  Adding fuel to the fire, in 1996, the Zapatista uprising brought the Army into what was already a tense community.

Las Abajos — and the ELZN — claim the Army knew in advance that the attack on the church service was in the works, but did nothing to stop it.  At the very least, they suggest that the Army covered up the incident, for the benefit of the PRI. Interestingly, the ELZN had an English-language press release about this the day after the attack.

International outcry over the massacre of women and children was immediate.  With the ELZN seen as innocent peasants fighting the entrenched powers of the state,  the Zedillo administration had to order an immediate investigation and there was a rush to judgement — leading to several arrests and convictions.

Although the actual number of killers is probably closer to ten than to the sometimes estimated hundred, there was prosecutorial misconduct in the trials that followed, scapegoating those who were simply supporters of the private claim over the communal claim.  It was the trials — not the rightness or wrongness of the cause — that the Supreme Court considered.

What seems important is not that a mistake has been rectified after eleven years, but that the Supreme Court has recognized that justice — and no one claims the 45 victims have received justice — rushed is justice denied.  Especially when the rush to judgement is clouded by political considerations.

In Michoacan and elsewhere, where rural property ownership, religion, party politics and communal rights also lead to violence, and where international attention simplifies the situation (in our day, to a “war on drugs”) there is also a tendency to short-circuit the legal process.

The present administration made a good start in reforming the courts, but has focused on the unwinnable “war on drugs” — and applied military force in a civilian legal matter — which not only exacerbates the violence, but creates a whimsical justice system.

Categories: Acteal massacre · Brad Will murder · Chiapas · Courts · Crime and Punishment · Death squads · Drugs · Ernesto Zedillo · Evil-doers · Human Rights · Indigenous People(s) · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Legal system · Manifestaciones · Mayans · Mexican Army · Mexican History 1921+ · Michoacán · Military · PRI · Policia · Politica (Mexicana) · Prisons · Provincia · Real Mexico · Tzotzil · Zapatistas

Military madness …

10 July 2009 · 6 Comments

Kick ‘em when they’re up, kick ‘em when they’re down.

With the recent Human Rights Watch report (“Uniform Impunity:  Mexico’s Misuse of Military Justice to Prosecute Abuses in Counternarcotics and Public Security Operations“, pdf only) seeming to give the U.S. media outlets carte blanche to suddenly discover that using military forces in police operations leads to human rights abuses.

While some articles, such as Charles Bowden’s piece in Mother Jones — as Ganchoblog lightly put it — “seemed to want to make up for the narrowness of his facts with broad, poorly supported accusations” — most are simply confirming the same thing the Mex Files has been saying — over and over and over and over and over and over again (just in the last year) the using the military as police would have a negative impact, both on the military and on civilian life.

The U.S. press is suddenly waking up to what Mexican voters have known (and was a major factor in the poor showing by PAN in the election) … MILITARY UNITS ARE NOT CIVILIAN POLICE. I know I’m supposed to be (as one recent commentator put it) an “Obamazombie” — which I suppose means I tend more to the left than the right (though I don’t see the Obama connection –  as I’ve written, while an improvement over the last U.S. administration, Obama’s Mexico policy is uncomfortably reminiscent of the worst U.S. administration in Mexican  history and like others, think the State Department’s dealings with Latin America are ham-handed at best).  Which should make me — being a lefty kind of guy and all — a knee-jerk anti-miliary type.  Which I’m not.

Like Mexicans in general, I have a lot of respect for the Mexican military.  It does its core mission well… there are no serious external threats to the nation, no particularly looming miliary dangers.  Strategic national interests (the oil wells, roads, ports, waterways) are relatively safe.  And, in natural disasters, the Army is extremely quick to respond, and responds competently.

Which is about all one can expect one of the smallest military forces in the world (per capita) to do.  And, although surveys consistenly show that Mexicans respect the military as an institution, it is not a popular career choice.  The respect is for people doing a necessary job for very little reward.  Pay sucks, even for the officer corps.  Most of the soldiers are draftees.   While all Mexican men have to perform national service, very few opt for the Army, Navy or Air Force… most middle-class kids find a low-level task in a government or academic office that will satisfy the requirements … filing papers, teacher’s aides, door to door public health workers, etc.

Others do Servicio Nacional Militar,  before they turn 18, and exempts them from the draft .  This is especially popular with city kids — kind of a big sleepover/scout camp (most of their activity is planting trees along watersheds).  And, even draftees may not be doing “military type” activities … anything from clerking in the military bank to … as a friend of mine did, working on his doctoral dissertation in sex and gender studies.

Juan Soldado (the basic G.I.) is generally poorer, less educated, more “country” and has fewer life prospects than the average Mexican youth.   Most are not bad kids but, of course, you’re going to get some who don’t turn out well in later life.  Every U.S. newspaper, when talking about Mexican gangsters seems to add “xx number of the gangsters were ex-soldiers”…which doesn’t mean anything.  Even the feared Zetas, while probably they were orignally trained by special forces guys, are unlikely to be Rambo.  For one thing, there are very, very few “special forces” guys in the Mexican military, and there are a lot of Zetas.  Maybe.

I have my doubts about the strength of the Zetas and the other gangs, wondering if the need to keep justifying an increasingly unpopular program hasn’t led the government to label all gangsters as members of some supposedly ferocious super-gang.  Or, whether the simple fact that using the military against the people (and one forgets narcotics smuggling is one of the few lucrative industries in rural Mexico, meaning it’s one of the larger employers in much of the country) hasn’t created informal (or formal) ties between what would otherwise be small time baddies (or even “corner cutting”) groups… i.e.,  it’s better for your local car thief to become a “Zeta” than to go free-lance when the Army’s hanging around.

The point is that the Calderon Administration decided to use the military for this task, to the detriment of other — more traditional tasks that the military does well.  I think it’s a shame, given that progress was being made in watershed and forest protection (and protecting natural resources comes under the heading of “national security” so forest protection is a military occupation).

The results have been too much for the military to handle, and a decline in military morale (and civilian respect for the institution).  Although  Calderon increased the military budget (though I thought the soldiers and sailors and marines certainly deserved better pay and benefits, usually military expenditures are one of the smaller budget items in Mexico), went shopping for more weapons, and sent the military out to chase drug exporters…  he was anxious to use the military before he was even sworn into office (or it was even clear he would be), against not any particular threat to Mexican security or the nation’s resources, but against “insecurity” in Oaxaca.  That ended, he needed to find some other “security threat.”  Gangsters.

What’s interesting … and what I think the U.S. media types miss (and many of the commentators here in Mexico as well) is that the sudden spike in “Mexican Miltiary Misdeeds” stories are surfacing at the same time that it’s becoming clear the Administration here will not be able to continue it’s “war on (some) drug (exporters which keeps the United States from having to deal with its out of control drug addiction problem)” and the United States is discovering that the “Plan Merida” funding — like other Bush Administration funding programs — was mostly smoke and mirrors.  One wonders if the U.S. isn’t — as it’s prone to do — seek to blame outsiders for its drug addiction problem … and having failed in it’s own “war on drugs” seeks to now blame the Mexican military for pursuing it either too harshly, or not harshly enough.

Had the Merida funding really been for police training and upgrade (things that will take years to pay off) and not about selling hardware (and “services”) it might have been worthwhile.  As it is, PRI — after being accused of being in cahoots with the gangsters — is going to have to clean up the mess.  With what I expect will be some “human rights concerns” that give the U.S. a plausible way to back out of the Merida Iniative, Mexican taxpayers will have to pay the price… and that could bounce back on the party as it rebuilds.   Not that I care much about the PRI’s prospects, but I don’t want my taxes to go up.

There is a bright spot in all this.  The Mexican Supreme Court has agreed to consider the military justice code.  President Fox — who was suprisingly anti-militarist (going so far as to try to make the Revolution Day parade a celebration of sports and physical fitness programs) — made some changes to the Military Code of Justice here.  He never complained when the Supreme Court gave HIV positive soldiers the right to remain in the service (and receive care in military health facilities), nor when a military tribunal was broadcast live on national televison (three Generals were court-martialed for corruption).  And Fox, without any protest, commuted all the death sentences handed down by the miltiary tribunals (which still have a death sentence, though no one has been executed in several years).

There is a real possiblity, that — as in Argentina — military courts will be abolished, and misbehaving soldiers will face the same courts any other miscreant does.  This is also, as Lilly pointed out when Argentina made the change, a victory for the common soldier, who will receive the same civil rights as any other citizen.

Which, once the soldiers are off the streets, should improve for all of us.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Argentina · Barack Obama · Bureaucracy · Clandestine logging · Courts · Crime and Punishment · Drugs · Economy & Business · Environment · Felipe Calderón · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · Informal economy · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Legal system · Los Zetas · Marines (Mexican) · Media · Mexican Air Force · Mexican Army · Mexican History 1921+ · Military · Military budget · Navy · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · PAN · PRI · Plan Merida · Politica (Mexicana) · Real Mexico · Vicente Fox

Peru: Yanqui stay home!

8 June 2009 · 1 Comment

Benjamin Dangle was at the Puno, Peru “Indigenous People’s Summit” which ended this week:

At that gathering we heard from representatives, including Alberto Pizango, elected representative of the Peruvian Amazonian peoples, about the ongoing protests they were waging, and the repression faced as a result, from their opposition to some of the plans the Peruvian government has for ‘developing’ the Amazon region and opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation, on the homelands of many Indigenous communities. In response, there have been over 50 days of continuous protest, shutting down parts of the Amazon and the Andes.

The violent confrontation on the fifth of June (the twentieth anniversary of another infamously violent crackdown on citizens by their own government) were NOT — as foreign reports try to make it — either an isolated incident involving purely minor local issues, nor was the state response merely a defensive action.

This morning, the situation took a turn for the worst. The government reacted by sending in police to violently remove the protesters, with different reports claiming as many as 20, 30, or more lives lost in the violent fight that erupted. The protesters had been sleeping at a roadblock maintained over the past few weeks when helicopters arrived and shot at people below, according to witnesses and local journalists. The government has also put out an arrest warrant for Pizango, who spoke today in Lima, for instigating the violence, as if to pretend the intense anger and frustration isn’t coming out of the communities themselves…

The government has recently signed a number of free trade agreements, including with the US and Canada, and has been seeking to change their domestic laws to encourage foreign investment in the Amazonian region, for the benefit of those companies and the central government in Lima. Many of those new laws have been ruled unconstitutional, and have been in violation of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, as well as participation in decision making, rights affirmed by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Dangle is correct in analyzing the root causes (and in seeing justice on the side of the protesters), but there may be (and probably are) local issues involved as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if (as in Oaxaca) competing factions among the protesters use the disturbances to settle scores and compete for support for any number of local caiques.

This uprising is beginning to garner international support, as did the Zapatistas and Oaxaca uprisings here.  Foreign involvement has been counterproductive in both those Mexican disputes.   Not so much that foreigners will end up dead, a la Brad Will (although the outcry for Will justified the Federal Government’s crackdown on the protesters, effectively “winning” the battle for the very people the “Friend of Brad Will” were opposing), but that foreign persons taking an active role in protests are more easily understood to be foreign interference than are foreign entities like corporations or abstract notions like “foreign business interests.”   Foreign activists will be used by opponents to delegitimize the protest movement.

Secondly, as happened with the Zapatistas,  foreign support might aid the cause the foreigner supports, but it also aids the other goals of the movement, which may or may not be a moral imperative.  I’m not sure to this day why Italian socialists and north American Quakers back a movement in Chiapas that also fostered violence against Jehovahs Witnesses and Protestants, encouraged people to boycott elections (and assured a conservative majority in the federal government) and land invasions into national parks and protected ecological zones.  What was good for Chiapas (or, rather, for the Zapatistas) was not necessarily good for Mexico… or Latin America, or the planet.

In short,  we need to think globally and act locally.  Think of the global consequences of “free trade” and multinational corportions on the world, but work on those issues at home.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Clueless gringos in Mexico · Economy & Business · Environment · Human Rights · Indigenous People(s) · Manifestaciones · Mining · Multinationals · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Peru · Zapatistas

Amazonia burning

6 June 2009 · 2 Comments

Once again Peruvian society has failed. The death of Peruvian citizens in confrontations that could have been avoided is a symptom of our failure. Moreover, the indifference and even the justification by many commentators and bloggers, who are able to accept these deaths as necessary to maintain order and development means that we are still very far from being a country that can progress.

(“Amazilia Alba” at Peru Apartheid.  My translation)

The massacre in Bagua (Amazonas Department), Peru has proven nearly impossible for the Peruvian government to “spin” outside of the country’s small elite.

Despite the tenor of stories (like this one from the BBC) that suggest “tribesmen” attacked military units, it’s pretty clear from both photographers in Bagua and from Peruvian television (both with real, not simulated, graphic violence) show it  was the other way around.

IncaKolaNews gives an overview of the very real horror-show, with links to reports from around the country. The number of deaths officially acknowledged as I write this is 31 — 9 police officers and 22 protesters.  One Amazonian on-line report (Red Ucayali) claims the death toll is much higher, and police are burning the bodies to hide the evidence of a widespread massacre.

Far from “tribesmen” (and one feels obliged to ask if the BBC would describe rural protesters in Scotland with such patronizing language), the protests by Amazonian residents — organized by the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association — have been on-going for at least a year.

Simon Romero of the New York Times (usually the favorite whipping-boy of everyone who claims the U.S. press is hapless and hopelessly biased when it comes to Latin American coverage) captures what is at the heart of Amazonian protests, and of government repression:

…  protests by indigenous groups over plans to open vast tracts of rain forest to oil drilling, logging and hydroelectric dams.

…

The protests are part of an increasingly well-orchestrated campaign by indigenous groups that have been inspired in part by similar movements in Bolivia and Ecuador.

Angered by the government’s failure to involve them in the plans, the indigenous groups in Peru have surprised the authorities with their sudden strength and organization and are now threatening to blunt President Alan García’s efforts to lure foreign investment to the region.

“The president thought we would be docile in accepting plans that could completely change the way we hunt for food and raise crops, and we are not,” said Juan Agustín, 41, a … leader of …  an umbrella group here representing more than 300,000 people from dozens of indigenous groups.

Exploitation of natural resources in Amazonia is the key issue in this uprising.  There there have been violent clashes between the national government and the local peoples over development issues throughout Latin America.  While we have seen uprising like that in Oaxaca  (which was complicated by other issues like a union strike, allegations of voter fraud and purely local political issues that foreigners failed to comprehend*)  rooted in the same conflict of interests, the Mexican uprisings have not led to the same level of violence.

Although I have noted problems with the Constitutional guarantee of communal rights to indigenous communities, and it’s foolish to pretend that indigenous people are not discriminated against in society at large,  for the most part indigenous people are treated the same as other citizens… badly at times.   On the other hand, “indigenous” is not automatically lower-class in Mexico, nor does this country have a “Criollo” class (and hasn’t since the 19th century in any real sense).  Discrimination usually runs more along social class lines than “racial” ones, though of course the traditional indigenous are the bottom of the rung.  The Peruvian protesters in the videos and photographs would not be considered particularly “indigenous”, nor treated as such, outside a bloodline obsessed nation like Peru.

“Local needs v national development needs” protests have usually centered on fair price for development (as in the Atenco protests, set off when the Fox Administration tried to seize an ejido for a new Mexico City airport without fair compensation for land and lost income) or… over conflicting uses of natural resources:  water for farms, vs. water for cities.  Here in Sinaloa, both compensation and resource use are the issues in protests against a proposed hydroelectric dam project).

At least one of Romero’s sources “blames” the massacre on the usual “outside agitators” in Peru:  Ecuadorians and Venezuelans.  In a way, that’s true.  Foreigners looking at the uprising in Oaxaca, mostly assumed “foreign interests” meant the tourism industry.  Both those sympathetic to the protesters, and those vehemently opposed, talked about the effect on hotels and restaurants.  They were unwilling to look at where the real opposition was (and where there was real violence) — in the countryside, where foreign developers were the mining and energy sectors.  In Ecuador and Venezuela, the governments themselves are largely trying to get control of those foreign developers — and, in both countries, the governments are more responsive to the needs and expectations of these affected citizens.

In Peru, no.   Romero quotes the Paul McAuley, a Christian Brothers lay-worker, as saying “Now we have a government resorting to using military force to spearhead development of the Amazon.  This cannot be a strategy that is sustainable.”  To which, the response from President Garcia (quoted by Inca Kola) is:

“They (Amazon indigenous) are not first class citizens.”



* I’m still a little rankled about the foreign commentators who  simplify conflicts like that in Oaxaca to fit their own notions…   — often as not a mish-mash of  half-baked romantic Marxism and the noble savage myth.  I was exiled to “cyber-ia” by one Oaxaca interest group when I pointed out that a regular contributer was claiming (and later claimed in a well-read on-line publication) that she mistook the owner of a security company for a police official, and claims to the contrary, not all anti-government groups in Oaxaca were non-violent.  I don’t know enough about Peruvian politics, nor the players involved in this conflict, to pretend that I’m doing anything more than pointing MexFiles readers to Peruvians who either I know,  or I have no reason to doubt,  are reliable.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Atenco · Environment · Evil-doers · Human Rights · Manifestaciones · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Peru

“As an American”…

25 May 2009 · 13 Comments

I’ve received several  comments on a recent post of mine in which I questioned the motives behind a bill in the United States Senate that  included a demand on the Mexican Federal government that it investigate Brad Will’s death as a condition of receiving financial assistance with narcotics interdiction.

While I think Will was over his head in Oaxaca, and of course I don’t think the state’s investigation into the death was anything other than a whitewash, I objected to including this demand for several reasons — not the least of which was the assumption that the Mexican Federal government should intervene in a state matter (Mexico, like it’s neighbor to the north, is a federal republic.

There is no particular reason for the Federal courts to step in to a murder investigation, either in the United States or in Mexico, but the assumption was that the Federal government SHOULD, in return for an unrelated benefit.  Describing Will as an “unaccredited journalist who was illegally intruding in Mexican political affairs” resulted in some negative feed-back, as well as this comment by Leslie  Beyerstein:

Just to play devil’s advocate here… As an American, I want non-citizen residents of the U.S. to participate in our domestic politics. If they live here, they’re part of our community, and their opinions on internal issues are important. So, I have a hard time buying the argument that a non-Mexican, ipso facto, has nothing to say about Mexico’s domestic politics.

Ms. Beyerstein is not just “an American” — she is a well-known respected on-line journalist and photographer, whose “Majikthise” site “provides daily coverage of local, national, and international politics from a left liberal perspective.”  I usually don’t receive comments from writers of Beyerstein’s reputation: our cordial exchange of e-mails probably doesn’t explain my whole response to her comment.

As an American

Were I a citizen of Canada, Cuba, Chile, Chile, Colombia or for that matter, Mexico, I’d register the usual complaint about estadounidenses who assume the name for anyone in the hemisphere for residents of one country… and leave the impression that citizens of one of the  47 nationalities speak for all of us.  But, I’m anestadounidense, and accept what for my neighbors grates on their sensibilities.

That was not Ms. Beyerstein’s intention, but the suggestion is that “we do things thus in the United States, therefore it is good.”

…their opinions on internal issues are important.

Of course, not everyone in the United States is as enlightened as Ms. Beyerstein. U.S. courts and legislatures that have ignored the Mexican government when it presses for legally mandated rights (such as consular consultation for criminal defendants) for its own citizens. And, the number of yahoos who claimed immigrant protests in the United States SHOULD be illegal is legion. I’m afraid Ms. Beyerstein’s opinion is a minority one.

Be that as it may, the United States — for whatever reason — chooses to allow political participation by foreign residents. Mexico does not. Ms. Beyerstein — “as an American” — is making the assumption her country’s way is “right” and Mexico’s “wrong.”

I have a hard time buying the argument that a non-Mexican… has nothing to say…

It’s a cliche of Latin critiques of the United States that it’s people use commercial metaphors for everything.  As Oscar Wilde said of cynics, “they know the price of everything, but not the value.”  No one was making that “argument” anyway.  And nothing to buy or sell…  I did not write Capitulo III, articlo 33 of the Constitución Política De Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos — but I understand the reasoning behind it.

As a practical matter, and this is what Ms. Beyerstein and I discussed, given Mexican historical thinking, and the touchiness about foreign criticism (especially from estadounidenses), foreign involvement in political matters is counterproductive. It is not viewed as an offer to “sell” even the finest of products, but an unwarranted intrusion. If not by the persons supporting any given movement, then by their opponents… who will “sell” the foreign presence as such.

Certainly, a foreign blogger can comment obliquely (and maybe directly — though I chose not to do so) on day to day issues.  He or she cannot, however, state that Mexican voters MUST vote for this or that candidate or party, or that the legislature MUST pass a given bill… or that the Federal Government MUST intervene in a state police matter.

I don’t want to “sell” an argument… but I do want to sell books (either through my publisher), or in the United States through Amazon.com or Jackson Street Books.

“As an American” you’re free to buy or not buy any conclusions, but understanding the Mexican way of thinking about foreign intervention is vital to writing and thinking about their culture and their politics, you need to buy the book.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Brad Will murder · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Manifestaciones · Media · Plan Merida · Politica (Mexicana) · Political bloggers · Real Mexico

Details, details… or where there’s a way, there’s a Will

22 May 2009 · 6 Comments

The United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate have approved spending bills that are specifically for the U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq… and — oh yeah — Mexico (er, Mexican suppliers of agricultural products the United States government would rather not enter the country). The two bills need to be reconciled before passage.

Two points. It’s not unusual for spending bills in the United States Congress to include issues not related to the main point, but including Mexican anti-narcotics spending in a bill related to two wars undercuts the loudly applauded (in the United States) that there is “light at the end of the tunnel” in the so-called “War on Drugs”. Iraq and Afganistan are, at least, countries that you can find on a map. Is this money for a “war” on drugs… or on Mexico?

The Senate version is up-front about using these funds to support U.S. industry:

The Senate bill would prohibit the use of U.S. funds to provide fuel or logistical support for aircraft Mexico has purchased with its own money. It would require that communications equipment provided to Mexico be compatible with equipment used by U.S. agencies.

Second point: It’s a contradiction for a bill that provides for lethal equipment to also insist on certain human rights concerns: it’s a given that if you sell someone a gun (or helicopters or “forensics and nonintrusive inspection equipment, computers, training and fixed and rotary wing aircraft”) they’re going to be used, against whomever the “enemy” is at the time. And I think the Mexicans — from all political persuasions — who initially objected to U.S. attempts to put strings on the military assistance under the guise of “human rights” on the grounds that it also compromised Mexican national security had a valid point.

Still, given that the United States is forcing this “war” on Mexico, it is not unreasonable to try to keep the equipment used by the Mexicans limited to the U.S. objective. While one could (but I won’t) point out this means the United States expects to use the Mexican forces as a contractor in its own now officially non-existent “war on drugs”, the Senate version specifically requires the Mexican government to “do something” about completely unrelated issues.

… it would require the State Department … to support a thorough, independent, and credible investigation of the murder of American citizen Bradley Roland Will.” Will, an independent journalist, was shot and killed while covering a crackdown on protests in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006.

While Will’s death (I hesitate to call it “murder” because it may have been — but probably wasn’t — an accident) should be investigated, pressure on the Federal government to investigate a state police action during a political demonstration has nothing to do with narcotics sales and distribution. It does, however, have everything to do with people in the United States DEMANDING the Mexican Federal Government over-ride its own legal and political system (modeled on the United States Constitution, by the way) and demanding special rights for U.S. citizens at the expense of Mexican civil rights.

I don’t doubt that the “Friends of Brad Will” have the best interests of Mexico in mind.  I question whether convincing the United States Senate to include investigations into the demise of an unaccredited journalist who was illegally intruding in Mexican political affairs doesn’t also justify the same “special rights” for well-connected foreigners that was at the heart of that demonstration… and of a lot of other human rights abuses in Mexico.

Categories: Brad Will murder · Crime and Punishment · Drugs · Economy & Business · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · Legal system · Military · Military budget · Multinationals · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Policia

Our 9-11

8 September 2008 · 1 Comment

Think about it for a minute.  The “9-11″ attacks in the United States were the perfect excuse for a conservative administration — with niggling popularity, and serious questions about its very legitimacy — to seize the national agenda, taking measures that radicalized social control, creating or expanding federal paramilitary units and curtailing normal civil rights in the name of “national security.”  Not that I think there was some kind of conspiracy involved, but only that conservative states seek to preserve the status quo, and when there is popular clamor for an immediate response to a perceived threat (like “terrorism” in the United States and Great Britain; organized crime here and in Colombia) , the state seeks ways to stamp out not just the immediate problem, but any threat to the existing order of things.

Two unrelated foreign news items show why we need to take a deep breath before we plunge into this anti-crime crusade in Mexico:

From Great Britain (Telegraph) comes a report on novel uses for anti-terrorism laws:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph found that three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year.

The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions. …

The RIPA was introduced to help fight terrorism and crime. But a series of extensions, first authorised by David Blunkett in 2003, mean that Britain’s 474 councils can use the law to tackle minor misdemeanours.

Councils are using the Act to tackle dog fouling, the unauthorised sale of pizzas and the abuse of the blue badge scheme [handicapped parking stickers] for disabled drivers.

The Los Angeles Times tut-tuts over human rights abuses in Colombia:

Although the Colombian military has long been plagued by criminality and corruption, its recent successes against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have diverted attention from its own wrongdoing. But according to a coalition of Colombian human rights groups, the military is killing civilians at an alarming pace — more than 300 in the last year. Worse, according to the New York-based Fellowship of Reconciliation, 47% of the extrajudicial killings were committed by army units that had been vetted by the U.S. State Department. Such troops are supposed to be the best trained and most sensitive to human rights, making them eligible for U.S. military aid, technology and training.

Collateral damage can be expected in any wide-scale military conflict…

The LA Times editorial (sombrero tip to “Bloggings By Boz”) was bemoaning the “misuse” of Plan Colombia funding, but both in Britain and in Colombia, we see the inevitable use of laws meant to cure great — but undefined — ills being used to resolve minor political and social frictions. While Britain is a country where people expect the state to maintain the status quo in the name of stability (and, in the process, becoming one of the most intrusive states on the planet), and in Colombia, the forty-plus years of civil war built up a tolerance for violent resolution to conflict, the power of the state isn’t much used in resolving interpersonal disputes, though it is used for political ones, or to stamp out social dissent.

As I wrote in a short booklet for Mexico City teachers a few years ago

Unlike the U.S. and Canada, you do not call the cops for minor annoyances (barking dogs, loud parties, etc.) or even for minor incidents. Neighbors will reason with the local drunk, threaten the local peeping tom. And sometimes the police are not even called after serious incidents. When an intoxicated suburban bus driver killed a child, the neighbors torched the bus – then took the drivers to jail themselves. In another bus accident, friends of the family injured by a bus didn’t go to court: they stole a few buses and only gave them back when the company agreed to pay medical bills and compensation to the injured family.

It isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t pretend that holding a bus as collateral is a good thing. It was justice (of a rough sort), and could be conceivably considered kidnapping. Recently, protest leaders at one particularly rough demonstration — between flower vendors and the local authorities (yes, I said flower vendors) — were given an additional 45 year sentence on top of their already excessive 67 years.

TECHNICALLY, there was a kidnapping — officials were threatened and it wasn’t acceptable behavior on the part of the protesters — but this was not really what people protested against recently.  This was just the state using the law to ruthlessly wipe out a dissident movement.  That of course is overkill, but any dissent or social movement — or unpopular person — could be targeted.  One thinks of the anti-abortion protesters in the United States who were targeted under criminal laws meant to seize assets from organized criminals (“RICO” laws), or the continual stories you hear of kids having their autos siezed by local police under “drug profit forfeiture” laws.

If countries with very good, well-educated and generally civilized police (Great Britain) can use state power to resolve very minor problems like pooping pooches… and militarized ones will use state power to settle old scores (like in Colombia)… then we should worry when there are serious proposals — and likely to come to fruition — to nationalize the police.

Where the Atenco protesters did have the forces of both the State of Mexico and the Federal government against them, there was an extreme reaction.  In Oaxaca, dissident teachers’ strikes escalated to the point where federal authorites were needed (not to resolve the dispute, but to squash the dissent).  But, that, perhaps, was an anomoly.  Normally, local dissent — like the situation at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (more on that later, but here is David Agren’s overview from The News) — is resolved locally.  I won’t be solved to everyone’s satisfaction, but since it involves two equally matched factions within the local power elite, its unlikely to become a national issue.

Under a Colombia model, or — as in Britian and the United States where disputes are spun into issues involving “terrorism” — one faction or the other would appeal to the “higher power”,  In disputes where the two sides are unequal … say farmers fighting over water rights, or in labor disputes like in Oaxaca, the dissenters are by definition the ones who don’t have the power of the state behind them.  At a local level they have a chance to create change, or work out a compromise.  Not if federal laws are brought against them.  And,  when a higher level of control is imposed, one can expect more “collateral damage”.

Certainly, police reforms and better security are politically popular right now, but does just bumping a series of local problems to a national level solve the problems, or does it just put power out of reach of the local citizens.  I’d rather have the locals beat up a bad cop now and again to having federal cops shoot, or send to prison, the neighbors who resent getting pushed around.  It bothers me that rather than deal with hunger, and look at why a 19 year old held up a grocery for milk and pampers (a local crime here a few months ago), the kid will be a federally charged kidnapper.

It’s a foreigner’s luxury to compare and contrast, but I would hate to see Mexico end up like the United States where concern about drug use led to a legal situation where very minor narcotics sellers clog the overcrowded prisons and create a huge convict population.  And the streets are no safer as a result.

I’m hopeful about a lot of the proposed legal and court changes (especially the court changes, which I think are the single most important reform in the last 10 years) but I don’t want a society where the status quo is imposed from the outside, and people’s liberties are sold out and squashed in the name of “security.”  That is not reform but repression.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Atenco · Ciudad de México · Clandestine logging · Colombia · Courts · Crime and Punishment · Drugs · Economy & Business · Great Britain · Gringo(landia) · Human Rights · Legal system · Manifestaciones · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Policia · Prisons · Terrorism · World (outside the Americas)

Fight for the right to party!

21 July 2008 · 1 Comment

(Dissident teachers at the start of the Alternative Guelaguetza,in Oaxaca. Notimex photo by Hugo Alberto Velasco, printed in The News)

It’s that time again.  The annual running of the protesters in Oaxaca always cumulates in the now traditional duelling traditional Guelaguetzas.  What had been since the 17th century a religious fiesta and market was always running away from the authorities, as the locals had their own ideas of what they expected from the Oaxaca-wide swap meet and party.  In the early 1930s, to satisfy the people’s needs, and at the same time satisfy restrictions on religious processions in public,  Guelaguetza was given a new identity as a “folk festival.”  That was fine until the State, in the 1980s and 90s decided to make the event a tourist attraction.  While the State invested in facilities and brought in “acts” to perform for the tourists.  The chronic political and social unrest within the State, as tourism and other foreign investments (especially in mining) left people feeling more and more alienated from the State government, cumulated in violent uprising in 2006.

One “victim” of the violence was the offical Guelaguetza — dissidents burned down the “traditional” site (in use since the 1930s).  Since “the show must go on” (and the last thing anyone wanted were tour groups cancelling their reservations), the Guelaguetza went on in a heavily guarded compound, while an ad hoc alternative Guelaguetza took place in the streets, sponsored by the dissident unions and other groups.

This year’s events are being held both at the official site (Cerro Fortin) and at the State University Stadium.  The problem in Oaxaca, according to some, was that the state was run by a single political party.  Maybe this doesn’t change the politics, but it’s a step in the right direction to set up a “two party” system.

Categories: Economy & Business · Folklore/customs · Guelaguetza · Human Rights · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Mining · Oaxaca · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Politica (Mexicana) · Provincia · Real Mexico · Tourism

Oaxaca… “Totally partial” — say what?

15 June 2008 · 1 Comment

I know some people assume the source (Al Jazeera) would be de facto unreliable, but I’m not sure why a news organization owned by Arab oil money would be any more biased than one owned by any other corporatation.  Besides, not having a dog in this hunt, I can’t see why they’d want to spin anything.  Anyway… the U.S. press seems to have forgotten about Oaxaca, even though protests still go on.

Tens of thousands of protesters have converged on the southern city of Oaxaca in Mexico to protest against the regional government.

The protests on Saturday also mark the second anniversary of a violent crackdown on a teachers’ protest, that left more than two dozens dead.

Florentino Lopex Martinez, a protester, said: “This is a policy of oppression, the most fascist type of oppression in the whole of Oaxaca’s history. The methods of repression have worsened considerably.”

In 2006, protesting teachers had siezed the main plaza demanding better working conditions.

They complained that Ortiz was corrupt and came to office through a stolen election.

The protest developed into a broad demonstration against social and economic conditions in the poor Mexican state.

Violent crackdown

State and federal police violently cracked down on the protest leaving at least 27 people dead.

Witnesses claim gunmen supporting the governor fired into a crowd. There have been no convictions for the killings as yet.

His opponents say Ortiz uses violence to suppress his political opponents.

Amnesty International has said that his administration has been behind the murders of dozens of opposition members.

National and international human rights organisations say most of the violence now takes place in remote villages of Oaxaca.

Talking to Al Jazeera, Ortiz said: “There is no documentation to implicate any government official. Amnesty International’s report is totally partial.”

Ortiz’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has ruled Oaxaca for nearly 80 consecutive years.

Categories: Human Rights · Manifestaciones · Oaxaca · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · PRI · Politica (Mexicana) · Provincia · Ulises Ruiz Ortiz