Protestants « The Mex Files

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Paved with good intentions

1 February 2010 · 1 Comment

While I’m more than slightly dubious about the motives of Idaho-based “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission” led by personalshopper.com CEO Laura Silsby, I don’t think the group, from the Central Valley Baptist Church of Meridian, Idaho, had any peculiarly perverse plans in mind.

This Church, is traditionalist and ultra-conservative — as far as I can tell, it is part of the Southern Baptist Convention and lists the usual “Faith and Purpose” beliefs you’d expect to find — wives must submit to the husbands, life begins at conception, homosexuality is a sin and “academic freedom” doesn’t preclude Biblical inerrancy.

At first, I thought this might be a Christian Dominionist Church — a Protestant version of Taliban. If anything, the Church’s Faith and Purpose statement strongly supports separation of Church and State:

The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work…

Nor do I see simple racial supremacist thinking at work here, something we also often associate with Idaho. In the same place where homosexuality is condemned as a sin, so is racism. War is considered “unChristian” (“It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war.”

In short, the missionaries sound like fairly ordinary people from “the heartland” — which is, in some ways, more troubling than if they were baby-stealers secretly worshipping Baal.

Not to defame Baal — or Tlaloc for that matter — but human sacrifice is no longer an option for parents with too many children to feed, nor — as the Romans and Greeks did — is leaving newborns in the city dump when times are hard exactly in keeping with human values. Poor Haitians, and the poor everywhere, have popped their kids into orphanages, or sold them, or given them away when it is the only best of several bad options for family survival.

But, that said, what’s bothersome is that the conditions that make a sort of kinder, gentler human sacrifice seem necessary to families in places like Haiti are not questioned. There is plenty to be said (and has been said) about that elsewhere. From what I can tell, the Church was already planning to build an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, part of hits Evangelical mission. That alone is enough to strike some as interference and arrogant. Max Beauvoir, head of Haiti’s Voodoo Priest’s Association is quoted in the Idaho Statesman as saying:

There are many who come [to Haiti] with religious ideas that belong more in the time of the inquisition. These types of people believe they need to save our souls and our bodies from ourselves. We need compassion, not proselytizing now, and we need aid – not just aid going to people of the Christian faith.

The overwhelming majority of Haitians are Roman Catholics (who also resent this “soul snatching”), which has its theological differences with the Southern Baptists to be sure, but perhaps none of the Church’s spokespeople were available. Or — subconsciously or by design — quoting the Voodoo priest is less troubling than suggesting the Baptists were poaching their fellow Christians.

And, it’s the need for aid and compassion, not “saving our souls from ourselves” that is missing. What the Idaho Baptists did was no different from what the U.S. government has done. It attempted to take advantage of a natural disaster in order to shock others into acquiescence with control by powerful outsiders with their own preconceived notions of how the world works. And to harness the poor for their own ends.

Basically, what the Idahovians did was decide they’re rich, they have the power, and they can… therefore, they should be masters of others. They are, in the end, no different from an oil company or cruise line or the arrogant tourist who presumes their “right” to do what they want rests on their economic power and that others exist to preserve their dominance.

Categories: Catholic Church · Haiti · Parents and children · Protestants · Religion · Rich people behaving badly · Voodoo

God and Man (and Joe Stalin) in Chiapas

22 January 2010 · 4 Comments

Jason Dormandy (Secret History) writes on what is probably the most under-reported social issue in Mexico:

Demonstrators in San Cristobal de las Casas entered their seventh day of protest for expulsions and violence done to them by local Catholics in Chiapas since mid January and earlier. Some families have been expelled from communities while others have been detained for failure to participate in Catholic community festivals.

Such violence is not new – we’ve seen Catholic on Protestant expulsions for twenty years now as well as pro-government Protestant on Catholic violence since the Zapatista revolution started…

Jason is THE go-to guy when it comes to discussions of religious minorities in Latin America (Mexico in particular) and, while I’ve mentioned the religious persecutions in Chiapas, admit I completely missed the latest twist in an on-going story. This is a complex situation, and needs to receive more discussion, but outside of the Evangelical press, isn’t much talked about.

While I might not react as strongly as my former co-writer, Lyn, did to U.S. style Protestants, and their evangelizing in Central America, I agree that there has been a “hidden agenda” at work:

Evangelical missionary work is a “glorified” pyramid scheme that keeps on giving! Their real goal isn’t to “save souls”, it’s to build their army. The real “mission” is to put up high numbers in order to influence governments for their own self-interests. The end-game is world domination. It’s a lobbying movement to end all lobbying movements. The Catholic Church did it in Mexico centuries ago and now the Evangelicals, the Mormons, the Muslims etc, are back (in Mexico) to increase their own flocks…. full steam ahead.

Evangelism is unethical. It is dishonest and arrogant to impose ones beliefs on another culture by the use of trickery and deception. Whether they come with guitars, or candy, on skateboards or in caravans…. they bring trouble. Every man, woman or child, peasant or scholar has the right to his/her own spiritual beliefs and practices.

All true in a way, but cultures are going to change, and cannot be isolated against the outside world. It would have been no more possible to “save” Chiapas from Evangelism than it would be to save it from telenovelas and rock-n-roll… or the rural electrification that made such “corrupting influences” possible.

The issue isn’t much discussed outside the Evangelical press for a couple of reasons. First, many of us feel as Lyn2 does, that U.S. Evangelical organizations seem bent not just in selling the “American Way of God”, but an economic and cultural mindset that we abhor… and which we made a decision to leave behind when we moved abroad.

Secondly, what many of us see of U.S. Evangelical efforts in Mexico (and Central America) makes us suspicious of these groups as imperialist agents. It’s impossible not to note that U.S. based Evangelical organizations have tended to support the most reactionary regimes in the region (think of Guatemalan dictator, and murderous loon, Efrían Rios Montt’s support by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson — or the support given the coup in Honduras by “The Family”).

However, as Jason sort of takes for granted, and harder to wrap our minds around, is that the Evangelicals in Chiapas as “native” groups… or, rather, are local adaptions of imports to meet local needs. Sort of like the local variants on Roman Catholicism, or even the traditional religions of Chiapas. As it is, even the “traditional” Mayan religions of the pre-conquest included “foreign” — mostly Nahautl — influences. As to their political stance, if they have one, evangelicals in Mexico tend to be leftists… ironically, considering the politics of the better known (or noisy) U.S. groups, out of fear of the Mexican “traditional values” right-wing, which is Roman Catholic.

We tend to write off claims of “Christian persecution” in the United States as whining — and it usually boils down to complaints that the majority has to recognize the rights of minorities. In Mexico, the persecution is very real, and can’t be so airily dismissed. Of course, in the United States, we think support for, or at least tolerance of, minorities is a “leftist” or progressive value. But, in supporting minority rights, we ignore the rights of minorities within minorities.

This creates a real conundrum for the wannabe sympathetic foreigner. Most of the intelligent conversation about Mexico comes from the left (the exception was the now-defunct satirical “Surreal Oaxaca”), and in Chiapas, that tends to mean support for the indigenous COMMUNITIES in opposition to the state. And — to be honest about it — a good deal of romantic nonsense.

During the Oaxaca uprising, I was part of a “Yahoo Group” discussing the situation. I was appalled by some of the plain misinformation being disseminated by one regular poster (who was considered a reporter on a widely read Mexican alternative media source) and — correcting the information (specifically, referring to a private security guard as a state official, misleading readers into assuming state sanctioned violence in one incident) led to a ridiculous demand that I sign an “confession of good faith” supporting the APPO. I thought — but did not say — “fuck you”, limiting myself to telling the group that I only made confessions to my priest and dropping the group.

What I learned from that ridiculous situation is that foreigners writing about Chiapas and indigenous rebellion in the Mexican south have to be taken with a very large grain of salt (and an aspirin). The fact is, much of the writing from the region has either been co-opted by the myth of the noble savage … that a “return to nature” means peace and harmony for all … or, the commentators are simply propagandists for one of these groups, usually the Zapatistas. When I received my demand for confession, I joked that the Stalinists were sending me to Cyber-eria, but it wasn’t completely a joke. Like it or not, the Zapatista movement includes a fair share of Stalinism (Marcos, aka Rafael Gullien, being exhibit “A”) — an adaption of a foreign import to Mexican conditions, by the way — and even more of a forced imposition of “traditional values”.

I’m not going to get into a thesis on the Zapatistas (and why I consider them a reactionary, not progressive, movement), nor riff on the Mexican constitution and the contradiction between “communal” and individual rights. Nor, am I unconscious of the fact that within even a small group (whether a “Yahoo Group”, expats within a given geographical community or a small village in Chiapas) dissenters and non-conformists are always unpopular and vulnerable to acts of intolerance.

I suppose there might be some kind of defense for burning people’s houses down for not paying some local tax, but it’s rather extreme. But I haven’t seen any defense mentioned by anyone. Nor will I expect to. But that comment on situations that challenge our preconceptions and ideology about Mexico is so very rare … that is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

Categories: Chiapas · Crime and Punishment · Human Rights · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Mayans · Media · Non-Mexican writers/artists on Mexico · Oaxaca en luche (2006) · Politica (Mexicana) · Political bloggers · Protestants · Provincia · Real Mexico · Religion · Zapatistas · “Marcos” (Rafael Gullien)

Greater love has no man than he lay…

9 January 2010 · Leave a Comment

This is one of those weird stories you run across (ok… I run across) looking for something entirely unrelated… aided and abetted by next to non-existent Portuguese reading comprehension skills . That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

The problem with stereotypes is not that they’re universally wrong, or even that they’re necessarily negative, but that they overlook the complexities of human existence.

Consider Alexandre Senna, a pastor of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an evangelical denomination, who preaches the Gospel to the poor and the imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro. While an active and full-time pastor, he works a second job to allow his wife, Sibele Trindade, to fulfil the stereotypical role of the stay at home caregiver to their children. In other words, a stereotypical evangelical, traditional, family values kind of guy.

We hear “Traditional Family Values” and “Evangelical” and … and mentally add terms like “conformist” and “puritan” that might belong to our own culture, but not necessarily to Latin America.

“Traditional family values” in Latin America mean not so much having the traditional family (although the Sennas — a working dad, a stay at home mom and a couple of kids, — certainly fit OUR definition of one), but a tradition of suppressing personal desires in the interest of the family, of doing whatever is necessary to support the family, even when there is a contradiction with expected cultural norms.

While we are likely to see “ministering to the poor” suggesting the Rev. Senna is not some over-paid, over-hyped TV performer or political actor, our stereotype of the “Evangelical pastor” is of someone upholding the older, puritanical values of our past. Which is only possible by denying two more cherished stereotypes about Latin Americans — the hedonistic Latin, and the rebellious Latin.

First, Latin Americans in general, and certainty not Brazilians, have ever been known as puritanical. There aren’t that many puritanical values to uphold. And although evangelical faiths in both Latin America and the United States appeal to those who feel “left behind” by the cultural and political elites, the Latin evangelicals has no nostalgia for whatever it was they “left behind” . What I mean is that in the United States, the evangelicals tend to be cultural and political conservatives, uncomfortable with, or hostile to, social change. Latin American evangelicals are more likely to embrace it.

After all, Latin America is traditionally Roman Catholic. Protestantism, in opposition to the traditional Catholicism of Latin America, has always placed its emphasis on personal salvation. Catholicism speaks more of a community of believers and works well for mass movements, especially conservative ones, whereas Protestantism is the ideal religion for the poor and ambitious individual, seeking his or her personal salvation — economic as well as spiritual.

So, back to the Reverend Senna. Obviously, the poor and the imprisoned can’t toss much in the collection basket, and — being a good family man and all — the pastor needs to make a living if he is to minister to his flock. There is no shame among Latin Americans in doing a job that requires something other than one’s formal training and experience. Especially when it allows one to continue both one’s “calling” AND contibutes to the family’s welfare.

I only said he wasn’t a TV performer or political actor… not that he isn’t a performer and actor of some kind. Of the porn actor kind. Of the gay porn actor kind. Of the gay muscle-man porn actor kind to be precise.

Rev. Senna has had featured roles ina numerous films with titles like Sugar Cane Studs, Muscle Resort 3, and Brazilian Hot Truckers . He was the star of Gay Cops. There goes another stereotype!

Probably two. Cops and truckers might have the “macho” stereotype, the titles of Sennas’s oeuvre don’t sound like films dealing with “artistic sorts” or sissies. Our assumptions about Latin American assumptions about both machismo and gays need to be readjusted.

I’m sure Alexandre Senna knows I Corinthians 6:9. It’s a favorite with Evangelicals in the United States. But where the American Standard Bible uses the modern word “homosexual”, the classic Protestant Bible in Portuguese — the 1654 translation by João Ferreira de Almeida — says “effeminate” men. Just a guess, but Muscle Resort 3 and Sugar Cane Studs don’t sound like they have much to do with girly-men.

Besides, Sibele Trinidad says as long as he’s not with other women, and its only a movie, it isn’t adultery, and doesn’t impact her and the family. Alexandre Senna, macho gay porn star and “out” evangelical, may not compute to us, but makes perfect sense in a Latin way.

Brazil´s robust porn industry is itself a stereotype… exploiting lower cost natural resources for the foreign market … and based on stereotypes: of Brazilian beauty, of Latin hedonism, of machismo. It’s another stereotype of Latin America that people make use of what they have in creative and lucrative ways. Maybe these two — the creative exploitation of foreign markets and the creative use of what the Rev. no doubt considers God-given attributes, are the one that we should have focused on all along.

Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to be misled by our assumptions about “traditional values” and “evangelicals” and even “machismo” based — not on Latin stereotpes — but on our stereotyped response to stereotypes. As a good shepherd to his flock, a Christian and family man seeking to improve his financial condition … he’s a walking, breathing (heavily breathing?) stereotype … just not the stereotype we stereotypically expect.

Stereotyped Christian couples, north and south

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Brazil · Economy & Business · Gays · Movies and TV · Porn · Protestants · Religion · Sexualidad

Apocalypse now!

11 July 2009 · 9 Comments

The Guatemalan dictator in the early 1980s, Efraim Rios-Montt — a Pentecostal — said a “true Christian has a bible in one hand, and a machine gun in the other”. His regime launched a “scorched earth policy” against the Mayan community (the majority in Guatemala) meant to cure the Mayans of their “immaturity and illiteracy” that he claimed would make them easily swayed by “international Communism”. And, incidentally, kill off a lot of pesky Mayans, and labor leaders, and priests, and nuns, and…

Rios-Montt was an extreme example of “faith in action”, but his the mix of Evangelism and anti-communism is common in Central America. Here are two statement posted on that ex-pat gardening blog turned propaganda organ for the Honduran regime, not “comments” over which the poster might have no control, but posted by the owner to demonstrate support for the coup:

“We, as Americans, are in trouble. The US future is being written by some people that don’t have the interest of the common man and woman in mind. We are seeing the loss of two hundred years of hard won rights being sucked away from the individual. We are about to become the robots of a machine designed to have us all work day in and out just to support the few and their superior lifestyles. Our career politicians and the newly elected President are about to become the US ruling class.God help us all.

When the OAS, the UN, the BAFA and the UFO’s and A.L.I.EN.S are against a tiny country in Central America that is supporting his freedom against totalitarism and Marxism. When all of that happens, you will know that the end of this world is near, that the power of the USA is dwindling, like rome, when they put a barbarian as emperor, their empire started dwindling, they started moving their frontier backwards, and backwards, and more backwards, until those same barbarians who were afraid of them first became the ones to be feared. Beware that time. Beware for is it written it will come for a band of thugs leadered by Chavez is ready to take over the world as we know it.

Having to depend on missionaries and clerical sources for any information from Honduras (which has some of the lowest internet ownership rates in Latin America, and restrictions on the movement of ordinary citizens) may make me more aware of the religious rhetoric, but I have noticed that the Catholic Church sources are opposed to the coup (even though Michael O’Boyle reported for Reuters that Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga supported the coup. However:

He said those who accuse the church of siding with Honduras’ elite “are not listening”, Catholic News Service reports.

“An unemotional person would read the church’s message and would understand it,” he said.

… “Recently, I have observed something that did not previously exist in Honduras: class hatred,” the cardinal said in the interview. “”Recently, I have observed something that did not previously exist in Honduras: class hatred,” the cardinal said in the interview. “Zelaya had advisers in Venezuela, and stirring up class hatred was the strategy.”

The Cardinal, while blaming Mel Zelaya and Hugo Chavez for stirring up the “class hatred” doesn’t necessarily defend the rich, nor back the coup. Such distinctions are important, but — unfortunately — most of us who write about (or from) Latin America aren’t comfortable with the nuances of theology, nor is it something we consider of any importance. When writing Mexican history, I was fortunate to know a conservate Catholic blogger (and former newspaper editor) who wouldn’t be too put off by the messy anti-clericalism of Mexican history, and my book is better for it.

What I noted in my book, when writing about recent Catholic v. Protestant violence in the Mexican south was that:

Roman Catholicism, the traditional religion of Mexico, had always spoken of a community of believers. Evangelicals and other faiths talked more in terms of personal salvation, which made sense to poor people seeking their own individual economic or social betterment.

From “community of belivers” to “communism” is not a huge intellectual gap for those who see individualism as a value. While I found one Catholic missionary worker (connected with a group formed at Pat Roberson’s Regent University... not normally Catholic territory) supporting the coup, the only supporters I’ve found have been among the newer Evangelical communities. Jeremy Weber’s article on coup support in the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today is headlined “Honduras coup was ‘answer to prayer’ for many evangelicals”.

Evangelical support may not be entirely by accident, or simply a matter of differing theories of salvation. Most Evangelical sects in Central America are off-shoots of the conservative “Christian Right” sects known in the United States. I thought at first Pat Roberson (who is friends with Rios-Montt) was the connection, but I’m wondering if it doesn’t go deeper.

The few U.S. politicians who support the coup, outside of those Florida politicos who need the support of the Cuban exiles, are people like South Carolina’s Senator Jim De Mint.

Besides a history as a supporter of free-trade agreements in Central America and a backer of rightist regimes in the region, DeMint is active in “The Family”, a politically powerful Evangelical organziation that has been in the news lately for unrelated reasons. Two recent U.S. political sex scandals involve other “Family” members. While I’m not particularly interested in the prurient details of the sex scandals (the subject of this news report), Jeff Sharlet’s discussion of “Family values” is frightening:

Sharett wrote a long article on the group for Harper’s back in 2003 (prominently mentioning then Congressman DeMint) and later a full-length book: “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. It might be noted that Hillary Clinton is also connected with “The Family“, but has not lived in the facility mentioned in the newscast.

It might also be noted that Honduran officials (pre-Zelaya) were guests of “The Family” functions , and members of “The Family” have political ties to the political right in Central America. It would be foolish to claim a direct link between “The Family” and political upheavals in Latin America, but it is noteworthy that Evangelical organziations, with the tacit backing of the United States government, grew exponentially within Central America only in the latter part of the 20th century, and that the same themes — “free trade” with the United States, anti-communism and personal wealth creation — have been used to justify rightist coups and violence in Central America, usually by politicos connected with “The Family.”

Mexico has largely avoided the problem (and Evangelicals in Mexico are more likely to vote for the left, simply out of fear of Catholic domination by the rightist — and Catholic — PAN) perhaps accidentally, having restrictions on foreign missionary activities.

As far as I know, the Mexican organization, “la familia” (which also seeks to use Evangelical religion to extend its shadowy reach into the halls of power) is not a subsidiary organization. At least I hope not.

(Nicholas Kozloff also writes about The Family and their Central American poltical agenda on Counterpunch. I hadn’t seen his piece until after I posted mine. He includes several other “pro-coup” U.S. political figures among the “Family” members that I do).

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Catholic Church · Gringo(landia) · Guatemala · Honduras · Mexican History 1921+ · Protestants · Religion · Right Wing Idiots

Onward Christian Narcos, marching as to war…

8 June 2009 · 6 Comments

Add to suspicion that reactionary Christian fundamentism is tied up with recent terrorist activity in the United States (like the attack on a Lutheran Church service in Wichita Kansas recently) the eye-popping report from Mexican federal intelligence services that at least one narco gang is “inspired” by — and prostelytized for — these U.S. based movements.

There is something almost amusing about La Familia, with its study groups and retreats for meth dealers and hitmen, but that is precisely why the Federal Prosecutor considers La familia the most dangerous of the Mexican gangs… unlike the others, the Michoacan gangsters have an agenda beyond getting rich the old fashioned way … providing goods and services not available in the legal marketplace). They are pushing an alternative view of society and culture.

The weapons in their “culture war” — besides the dreary head-chopping and meth production and smuggling operations — are those of the “traditional values” groups in the United States: specifically literature and propaganda from the Colorada Springs based “Focus on the Family”. As Diego Enrique Osorno reported in Milenio Semenal last December, la Familia draws its inspiration from the works of “Christian” author John Eldredge of the Colorado Springs based organization, Focus on the Family.

Eldredge’s work celebrates and justifies a “manly man” version of Christianity… as Pastor Eldredge writes in his seminal work, “Wild at Heart”:

God designed men to be dangerous. Simply look at the dreams and desires written in the heart of every boy: To be a hero, to be a warrior, to live a life of adventure and risk. Sadly, most men abandon those dreams and desires – aided by a Christianity that feels like nothing more than pressure to be a nice guy. It is no wonder that many men avoid church, and those who go are often passive and bored to death.

jesus_gun Gangsterism certainly has its dangerous side, adventure and risk… and nice guys need not apply. But, it is hard to reconcile criminality with Christianity UNLESS one applies the logic of groups like Focus on the Family, where what’s done in God’s name (and in the defense of “traditional family values”) is morally right.

“La familia does not murder for money, it does not kill women or the innocent. Those who know these people recognize it is divine justice”

was the message left when the group threw five severed heads (kinda gross photo) on the floor of an Urapan disco.

La familia’s value system — eshewing alcohol and narcotics use (but not the manufacture, transportation or sale thereof), traditional marriage and the patriachical family structure — are not unique, but by pushing for these “traditional values”, has given the gangsters some legitimacy beyond the usual apologists for gangsters as jrural investors. It has sponsored workshops on Eldredge’s opus, as well as hired Mexican writers in the same vein (Carlos Cuauthémoc Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Cornejo) to give personal motivation courses in Morelia for the gang-bangers.

I’ve said before that Protestantism, which stresses individual salvation (and being “born again”) has its economic advantages over Roman Catholicism (where the theological discourse is more about civitas dei, and the community of believers) for the personally ambitious. The peculiar United States form of Evangelicalism — especially the fundamentalist sects that reject tolerance of the other, and define “community” only in the very narrow sense of those who follow exactly the line laid down by the clerical leader — is tailor-made for gangsters. And… because this dovetails nicely with the more reactionary clerics within the Roman Church, some Catholic clergymen have also defended la Familia.

Much was made of Santa Muerte, and it’s supposed ties to the Gulf Cartel. That Santa Muerte recongizes criminals as part of the human family does open it to conjectures about ties between believers and gangsters, and led to anti-Muerte activities in some northern communities. I am not the only one who thought the iconclasm had less to do with supposed anti-narcotics activity and more to do with the assumption that Santa Muerte believers are more likely socialists and PRD supporters and the local communities attempting to persecute its believers were PAN strongholds.

Not that Mexican Protestants — even the growing number of them who follow U.S. style Protestantism — are necessarily criminals, or even tolerant of criminality, but that “traditional values” — as presented by Focus on the Family — do not strengthen the community, nor provide for the common good, but quite the opposite. When you think about it, most terrorist organizations are conservative groups — Al Qaida isn’t seeking a post-modernist secular state, any more than the KKK is looking for a post-racial America, or anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue support the rights of women. All demand a state where their own peculiar and threatened values are upheld — and all dissent from those values is put down by violence. Focus on the Family may not actively aid and abet terrorism, but spinning a philosophical justification for holding the line against modernity and tolerance, they give “aid and comfort” to terrorists in the United States and gangsters in Mexico.

July Dogs has a series of four recent posts on la Familia, Focus on the Family and John Eldredge.

Categories: Crime and Punishment · Economy & Business · Evil-doers · Informal economy · La familia micoacana · Michoacán · Protestants · Religion · Right Wing Idiots · Terrorism

Deliver us from evil, but not the Sinaola Cartel?

22 April 2009 · Leave a Comment

I honestly don’t know what to make of this situation.

Even in the “reliably leftist” (and in Mexico, that means anti-clerical) media has been all over the story of threats against rural priests who preach on the sinfulness of narcotics trafficking, or — in the course of their pastoral duties — take a more proactive approach, helping farmers and others counter threats from local gangsters, much as the best of Colonial rural clerics protected their flock from brutal Spanish authorities. The PRD — given the severity of the threat — has suggested that priests receive federal protection.

Last week, the Archbishop of Durango, Héctor González Martínez, publically said that “Everyone knows where [#1 on the narco hit parade] Chapo Guzman is… except for the authorities.” His Eminence then specified the town.

However, when asked by the Federal Prosecutor to come in for an interview, González said, “I am deaf and dumb.” He further denied that he, or priests in his diocese, are under any threat.

The Mexican Bishops Conference, this week in Mexico City, issued a statement rejecting the idea of special protection, arguing that “all citizens must be protected, and priests are citizens, too. It is the Federal Government’s responsibility to protect everyone.”

While Renato Ascencio, Bishop of Ciudad Juarez, confessed (if that’s the right word) that one of his priests had to flee to Canada because of death threats, and Salvador Rangel, the new bishop of Huejuetla, Michoacán said a few priests have received threatening telephone calls, others were only willing to admit that preists — like other citizens — sometimes receive threats.

Most of the hierarchy seems to be taking the same line as Emilio Berlié, Archbishop of Yucatan, who claims narcotics traffickers “respect religious men and women, because we represent God.”

***

A couple of thoughts.

1. The bishops are, of course, correct, in stating that all citizens should expect their government to protect them, but there’s more to this than that. Priests (and nuns… and ministers and rabbis and imams and gurus and lamas… all clergy) are not “normal” citizens. There may be something unfair about clerical restrictions (mostly having to do with inheritance laws) these restrictions are mostly on the churches as organizations. Clerics — as representatives of their denomination — cannot take a political stance, and religious facilities cannot be used for political purposes. Given the overwhelming power of the Roman Catholic Church compared to other denominations, when the Bishops speak of clerical rights for citizens, they are usually demanding the right to use their power to shape public opinion. If this is true, it’s a smart (but … forgive me… devious) move to demand equal citizenship rights for the clergy.

2. PAN is, and always has been, the “Catholic Party”. The “piety wing” of the party can, in many ways, be compared to “Christian Conservative” movements within the U.S. Republican Party, but Mexico and the U.S. are very different countries. Anti-clericialism (or, rather, limiting the power of the Roman Catholic Church) is what made Benito Juarez a hero — and almost a saint — to Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and other religious minorities. Non-Catholic religious voters tend to back the left. PRD is, and always will be, the anti-PAN, which, by extension, means it receives support from the non-Catholic minority voters. The Bishops are not willing to turn the other cheek to the PRD. Whatever PRD proposes, the Bishops reject. And vice-versa.

3. There is a growing rumor in Mexico — mostly limited so far to chismosos and comments on internet sites — that the Sinaloa Cartel is in bed with PAN. What’s pointed to as evidence is that Chapo Guzman managed, very easily, to escape prison soon after Vicente Fox was elected President, and that the “war on drugs” has been a war on “some narcos”… the Beltran-Leyas, the Gulf Cartel and la Familia… not much on the Sinaloa Cartel. Conspiracy buffs also point out that Chapo Guzman’s alleged fortune is somewhere, but there seems to be almost no interest in the Federal Government into finding those assets — which have to be invested somewhere. The conspiracy theorists also notice that PAN claims of “naroc influence” in the other parties revolve around every gang BUT Chapo’s.

Adding to the PAN-Sinaola rumors is something interesting that Jason Dormady at “Secret Reflections” noticed. Jason, who teaches Latin American and Mexican history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas keeps a sharp eye on Mexican religious trends. He noticed that the recent anti-Santa Muerte “pogram” ignores another much better known alleged “narco-santo:

Santa Muerte appears to have upset a few folks in the Calderon admin…and I have to wonder if it doesn’t have to do with more than narcotics.

1) PAN Catholicism at the leadership level is NOT the folk Catholicism and syncretic Baroque worship of the Santa Muerte followers. Do we have some lingering Sinarquista influence among the PANistas? I’d say that is not a hard stretch.

2) Drug cartels also have leaders that give deep devotion to border saint Jesus Malverde… is the PAN going after him? I haven’t heard that they are…if they are, write in and let me know. If they aren’t, it seems to me that they may not be because Malverde is a Northern santo and to go after him would REALLY unsettle some northern PANistas. Then again, Malverde is also more popular amongst those crossing the border, unlike Santa Muerte who has deep followers in DF.

In other words, Santa Muerte followers tend to NOT be PAN supporters, but the Sinaloa Cartel (and PAN-controlled area voters) are likely devotees of Jesus Malverde.

And, when it comes to Chapo, the Archbishop — like Sergeant Schultz — sees nothink.

For what it’s worth, I know that conspiracy theories and talks of cabals are commonplace in Mexico, and only sometimes true. And I recognize that politics in Latin America is a contact sport. With Congressional elections coming up you expect politicos to spread the muck pretty thick. But, some conspiracies turn out to be true, and sometimes the mud sticks.

Categories: 2000 Mexican Presidential Election · 2006 Elections · Benito Juarez · Catholic Church · Chihuahua · Ciudad Juarez · Ciudad de México · Crime and Punishment · Drugs · Durango · Economy & Business · Evil-doers · Human Rights · Informal economy · Jesus Malverde · Los Zetas · Mexican History 1824-1910 · Mexican History 1921+ · Michoacán · Mormons · PAN · PRD · Policia · Politica (Mexicana) · Protestants · Provincia · Religion · Santa Muerte · Traditionalists · Vicente Fox · Yucatan

“Social cleansing” or Oliver Twisted

18 March 2009 · Leave a Comment

“Social cleansing” — limpieza social – is what El Universal recently called the “zero tolerance” policy (pushed by Rudolf Guiliani, who was hired to make recommendations to Mexico City’s police) that is forcing street children into prostitution.

I don’t want to romanticize the plight of the “children of the streets”, but I think they may have been better off living in the parks. It seemed, based on nothing but casual observation, that there was usually a food brigade, a laundry brigade and a “hanging out brigade” (the largest of all, naturally) that seemed to offer them some protection and structure.

I used to charge for doing some basic tourist assistance and research a basic fee of one set of kids’ clothes and a couple liters of milk. Recognizing that a middle-aged foreigner going to visit a homeless kids” encampment could be easily misunderstood, I’d bribe a nun to accompany me when I’d drop off my ill-got gains with the kids at my local park. The kids were, if nothing else, polite and better mannered than you’d expect from shoplifters, narcotics retailers, and glue sniffers.

I was hardly the only person doing this (and the nuns were happy to pitch in, even without a donation). Charity in Mexico is not — as in the northern countries — something you foist off with a check to someone else. It’s hands on. And… based in both the Indigenous cultures and in the Hispanic Islamic-Judaic-Christian tradition… the concept of charity as a benefit to the giver is strong. One gives a peso to a begger not because you think “give a man a fish today…” but because it earns you a blessing… or good karma. Yeah, you need to teach a man to fish, but before you do that, you have to get him a fishing line, a hook and a worm… and he’s got to have enough calories in his stomach to get to the river.

And fishing line, hooks, worms … and calories… require more than feeling the need for occasional good karma. The Federal District provided some basic services like medial attention, and offered some drop in social service clinics, but there isn’t a lot of money available. The Quakers and a few others — including the Brigada Callejara (which includes the Prostitutes’ Union, feminists and homeless advocacy organizations) — offered some ad hoc assistance. At one point, mostly to shame the government into action, dissident teachers organized an open air school at the Angel of Independence.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it beat the hell out of what’s happened as a result of “social cleansing”. At least living in the parks provided the younger kids with some kind of protection and a semblance of a “home life” that’s been lost when Guiliani recommended, and the Federal District adopted, anti-vagrancy statutes that made sleeping in the parks overnight a criminal offense.

Sure, it’s nice not to have to think about what image you might project walking though a park, but something important has been lost. Rather than find appropriate shelter for the kids, the city simply made vagrancy a crime. The kids… like other “irregularly housed” people have had to turn to hoteles del paso… the cheap bare-bones hotels that don’t provide keys — when you leave, you’re gone — meant for quickies, prostitution service centers and hideouts for socially unacceptable activities.

child-beggar They may be sleaze-bag hotels, but they cost money. The kids wouldn’t be living on the streets if they had the money for a place to live. So… glue sniffing and drug dealing and shoplifting not being a steady cash income, they are turning to prostitution. And, rather than being scattered throughout the city, are congregating in the areas where they can find the most affordable hotels.

Ironically, some of the hotels — rather up-front about what they really are — have the social conscience to at least post signs reading “no minors”… then renting to minors. What choice do they have?

The Guiliani recommendations can be blamed on the PRD, and Marcelio Ebrard who spearheaded the movement to hire Guilani’s group to consult on security issues. However, another childrens’ rights scandal is being blamed on either the indolent oversight or active collaboration, of those on the right. The “Iglesia Cristiana Restaurada” ran a chain of shelters… both for homeless kids and those in need of court-ordered supervision… that when not prostelyzing the kids, was prostituting them.

Several girls have simply vanished from the sect’s care; other children have filed complaints about abuse (sexual, physical and psychological). It appears children who came before juvenile courts, but were not homeless, were forced into the shelters, even when responsible adult supervision was available within the family.

While there will be political posturing and attempts to lay the blame for the situation(s) at the feet of their opponents, there is plenty of blame for a basic human rights failure. There are limits on what the State can do, of course.

The modern Mexican State was founded by any number of ad hoc Revolutionaries, some of whom had theories — socialist or communist or fascist or “liberal” — and is incomprehensible to outsiders, too. And, it works well enough. PEMEX, either a state agency that generates an income, or a oil company with a bloated payroll and some eccentric divisions also makes no sense to outsiders… but is still functioning. The Mexican genius is in creating a workable solution and then coming up with a name for whatever it is. The “Institutional Revolution”, the “paraestatal”.

The Mexicans are quite capable of resolving this crisis.

There are the resources, but it requires an incongruous cooprative effort between sex workers, the churches, the bureaucracies, the teachers and social workers, the Red Cross, possibly the Army (which provides health care workers and teachers’ aides in economically marginal areas now), the courts and the politicians. And people willing to trade a peso or two (or … for people like Carlos Slim, a few million) for the good karma.

DIF (the federal/state social services agency) which is supposed to safeguard persons in need, needs to be reformed. Lydia Cacho — who has written more on child abuse and prostitution than anyone — sees a serious problem in the organization’s structure, being normally under the control of the state governors’ spouse (when it was set up, no one thought that there would be women governors, nor that governors might be single).

What’s needed in the short run might be cobbled-together, unwieldy and — to outsiders — incomprehensible, but if the kids have a safe place to live, to learn and to be kids… who cares what we call it?

Categories: Brigadas Callejeras · Bureaucracy · Catholic Church · Charities · Children · Ciudad de México · Cruz Roja/Red Cross · Economy & Business · Education and educators · Health · Human Rights · Informal economy · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Legal system · Mexican Army · Mexican History 1910-20 (Revolution) · Military · Organized Labor (Sindicatos) · Parents and children · Politica (Mexicana) · Prostitution · Protestants · Quakers · Real Mexico · Religion · Sexualidad · Teenagers

Christians messing with our heads

14 January 2009 · 1 Comment

Oh ohh… another “gringo gone bad” story:

Twenty three Olmeca artifacts were “irretrivably damaged” this week by members of the “New Generation” church, who for some reason “annointed” the Olmeca objects — including the iconographic heads that are a symbol of Tabasco and the Olmec culture. Restoration and conservation costs (which will not completely restore the objects) is estimated at 300,000 Pesos.

Photo: EFE from El Universal

An oil-based mixure, including salt and grape juice, was smeared on the archeological objects, located at Parque Museo La Venta in Villahermosa. An un-named American citizen led the group, which the Mexican Pentacostal Church, Neuva Generacion Internacional (founded by a Colombian, and apparently headquarted in Miami claims has no connection with their church.

To appease the gods, the American woman was immediately sacrificed. OK, I made that up, but it’s not a bad idea. The gods are sad.

Categories: Clueless gringos in Mexico · Crack-pots · Crime and Punishment · Economy & Business · Mexican History -1524 (Pre-Conquest) · Olmeca · Protestants · Provincia · Religion · Tabasco (Estado de) · Tourism

Gilberto Rincón Gallardo y Meltis (15 de mayo de 1939 – 30 de agosto 2008) D.E.P.

2 September 2008 · 1 Comment

Gilberto Rincón Gallardo y Meltis never let the accidents of birth interfere with his full and useful life. His family’s wealth and social position (there were Marquises in the family tree) might have been a handicap to a future dissident, and his 32 separate arrests gave lie to the idea that a severe physical disability excused one from taking direct action in his country’s political affairs.

In 1958, after leaving UNAM without finishing his degree, he joined Chihuahua dissident and PAN leader Luis Alvarez’s quixotic presidential campaign . Returning to UNAM,Rincón obtained his law degree and made a name for himself as a backer of dissident unions. He served in the Chamber of Deputies throughout the 1970s and 80s, fiercely criticizing government repression, asking “inconvenient questions” and getting himself arrested time and time again. A Communist in the 70s, he served in various small socialist parties in the 1980s, until in 1989, he became one of the founding fathers of the PRD. In the early 1990s, he began to see doctrinaire Socialism as the problem, seeking first to found a broad party of the left, and eventually ending up in the small Social Democratic Party.

As the Presidential candidate for his party in 2000, Rincón openly appealed to the marginalized. Not just the physically disabled like himself, but gays, women, indigenous peoples and religious minorities. A tough minded realist, Rincón was willing to play “identity politics” and creative enough to recognize that even though the forms and rationales for discrimination were different, a wealthy man with a useless arm, a Mayan housewife, a gay kid in a rural Chihuahua village, a Jehovahs’ Witness wanting to be opt out of communal religious festivals … all deserved the right to respect and dignity.

Even when he finally did join the government in 2003, as President of the Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación (CONAPRED), he remained a thorn in the side of the establishment — never giving up and never giving in.

Jorge Fernández Menéndez, noting the dangers that a government organized drive for “law and order” poses to the values of tolerance and acceptance of the different, finds it appropriate that the same day Rincón — the man with the useless arm and the useful brain — died, Felipe Calderón fell off his bicycle, and will have a useless arm to contemplate for the next several weeks.

Categories: 1988 Presidential election · 2000 Mexican Presidential Election · Communism · Felipe Calderón · Gays · Gilberto Rincón Gallardo · Human Rights · Indigenous People(s) · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Mexican History 1921+ · Minor parties · PAN · PRD · Politica (Mexicana) · Protestants · Religion

There’s more to life (and death) than drugs

3 July 2008 · 2 Comments

One worry I’ve expressed again and again is that with the focus on drug export interdiction (and the millions of U.S. funding being poured into U.S. companies to provide services to Mexican law enforcement), there are two dangers. First, other legitimate security issues will be slighted; and second, that social conflicts will be treated as “drug war” fights, as they were and are in Colombia.

My first article, from the 1 July 2008 Jornada, has nothing to do with drugs. This has been a chronic problem in the Mayan communities: “usos y costumbres” vs. religious freedom. The second, from El Universal the same day (and sorry, I lost the link) involves an agrarian conflict that has already turned violent, and had U.S. reporters shaking their heads because it is NOT drugs — but cattlemen and loggers versus small farmers — that’s led to violence for years.

Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Catholic traditionalists cut water and electricial services to evangelical families in community of Ángel Albino Corzo, La Trinitaria municipio, for refusing to cooperate with religious festivities in the area.

According to a denunciation filed by twenty families who belong to the Pentacostal Church “Tiempo de Sembre”, they have been threated with expusion if they do not pay the Catholics two thousand pesos per family.

Oscar Moha, president of the Association of Christian Lawyers, said that since the beginning of the year, the Evangelical community in Ángel Albino Corzo, which borders Guatemala, have been persecuted and fear expulsion.

He affirmed that these families, totalling about a hundred persons, were pressured to pay first a hundred pesos, then four hundred per month per family, and now two thousand pesos, for the community festivals, in violation of their Constitutional rights.

The lawyer denounced the Catholic traditionalists for pressuring the evangelicals by cutting water services to their homes and shutting off street lights.

And from Chilpancingo, Guerrero:

Among the five dead and five wounded in an armed attack in Municipio Zapotitlán Tablas were several members of the Emiliano Zapata Southern Agrarian Revolutionary League ( Liga Agraria Revolucionaria del Sur “Emiliano Zapata” or LARSEZ), according to police sources.

Last Sunday’s incident, in Escalerilla Lagunas was originally reported to police as an automobile accident. Killed were Aurelio Sánchez, Francisca Sánchez Mendoza, Abigail Aurelio Sánchez, Domingo García Tapia, 18, 50, 11 and 14 years old respecively.

However, State Preventive Police in the mountain community repored finding .45 and 9mm shells at the scene, which had been fired at the grey Nissan double cab pickup truck.
The victims were identified by José Aguilar Mejía, who said he knew several of them as active in LARSEZ, a social organization in Zapotitlán Tablas, zona de La Montaña.

The vehicle was travelling on a country road between Aguaxocatlán and Zopilotepec, where it intersects of the state highway Tlatlauquitepec-Zapotitlán. Zopilotepec residents said the vehicle was cut off by another vehicle, which led to the gun battle.

Five persons were also injured when another driver, Tranquilino Aurelio Sánchez, lost control of his vehicle and went over an embankment, injuring Mario Tapia León, Leticia Sánchez Espinosa, Rosalinda Rodríguez Espinobarro and Pedro Tapia Aurelio, 18, 16, 12 and 12 years old, respecively.

Categories: Catholic Church · Chiapas · Crime and Punishment · Evil-doers · Guerrero (State) · Human Rights · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Policia · Politica (Mexicana) · Protestants · Provincia · Real Mexico · Religion · Traditionalists

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the thieves

8 January 2008 · Leave a Comment

Not all Mexican criminals are involved in drugs. There are “ordinary, decent” crooks as well., and some apparently even go to church. Though I’m betting the Restored Christian New Harvest Church uses a slightly different version of the Ten Commandments than I learned, the one with all the stuff about not coveting and not stealing. They should have had one that read Thou Shalt Not Rat Out Thine Pastor.

(My translation is from a Notimex article in last Sunday’s Jornada, which usually doesn’t run notas rotas, but probably couldn’t pass up the chance to tweak the pious — and yeah, in Mexico City, Unidades Habitacionales — apartment projects — you could have a street address like “Fifth Cul-de-sac off Avenue 565)

México City. Capital police detained two suspects involved in violent auto theft, one of whom allowed stolen cars to be hidden in a church, and the other who drove a taxi used as a “wall” during the robberies.

The action occurred in Delegation Gustavo A. Madero, where three suspects riding around in a coral-colored Pointer taxi, plate L-20888, blocked the street to Maria Guadalupe Leyva, 53, who was driving a red Jetta, plate number LYP-73-05.

At the corner of Loreto Fabela and the Fifth Cul-de-sac off Avenue 565 in Colonia Unidad Habitacional San Juan de Aragón, Second Section, two of the delinquents descended from the taxi, and accosted the woman with drawn pistols, relieving her of her car.

They immediately fled the scene, as the taxi driver made way for them and the victim sought help. Minutes later, her car was found at the corner of Loreto Fabela and Avenue 586, in the Third Section of the Colonia, as well as the taxi, which held both the driver and the two presumed delinquents.

Later, uniformed officers asked to see the drivers’ licence of taxi driver Ricardo Crux López, 20, who said he didn’t have it with him using the excuse that he had just started working.

In the course of their routine investigation, the capital police discovered a license in the name of Alberto Iván Irigoyen Vázquez, with a picture identified by the victim as one of the robbers, and whose photo matched Cruz Lopéz.

Ricardo Cruz confessed to having taken part in robberies, having been payed a thousand pesos by a subject called El Chapulín, to drive the taxi and block in victims.

He also declared that the robbed vehicles were stored at the Iglesia Cristiana en Restauración Remanente Nuevo (Restored Christian Church of the New Harvest), Peluqueros 71, Colonia Morelos, where the pastor, 47 year old Daniel Castañeda Alvarez permitted them to keep the said automobiles.

In the building, eight automobiles were encountered, which had been reported to judicial authorities as having been stolen, according to official communications.

At this time, the Federal District Secretariat of Public Security has stated that the deliquent, the taxi driver and the pastor of the church have confessed, and been put at the disposition of the 16^th Investigative Agency Ministerio Público.

See,

Categories: Ciudad de México · Crime and Punishment · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Legal system · Policia · Protestants · Real Mexico · Religion

A few stray threads in la raza cosmica

23 July 2007 · 4 Comments

Sean-Paul Kelle, who normally writes on economics for The Agonist, is in Taxco looking up his Anglo-Italio-Mexican family:

Shortly after the 1870 abandonment of Rome by the French Italy unified. The Nibbis–my mother’s Italian family–were ordered to leave the country. Dr. Orembello G. Nibbi and his English wife, Henrietta Parker-Nibbi (daughter of minor Midlands nobility) fled their Tuscan home for Mexico City. I don’t know much about their son except that he had a son who built a hotel here in Taxco-in the meantime the Nibbi family became entangled somehow with the Buckley family. Yes, that self-same Buckley family which derived a great deal of its wealth from oil interests in Mexico. Until the Mexicans took it back from them–for good reason if you ask me.

But back to my story. At some point in the early part of the twentieth century Carlos–the family knew him as “Gran Charlie”–built a hotel in Taxco–the family also had some extensive land holdings in the area and in Cuernavaca. In 1983 the only parcel of land still in the family was a pig farm outside of Taxco owned by Dario Nibbi’s wife (Dario died a few years before) and her children Carlos and Laura. No, I don’t know her name, neither does my mother for some strange reason–I wish I did.

There have been English (though most not from minor Midlands nobility) in Mexico since Colonial times. H.G. Ward, the first English Ambassador to Mexico, in Mexico in 1826, his report on investment opportunities in the new Republic, reports two important discoveries from his trip to Pachuca: baby bottles (he was traveling with a sixteen year old secretary, his wife, a baby and a nanny. The Mexican nanny bottle-fed the baby, something unknown — at least to Ward — in Britain) and TURNIPS.

Ward was rhapsodic over the fact that the climate in Pachuca permitted the English miners living there to “enjoy” turnips and rutabagas. And, as everyone knows, the Mexican pastie was the eventual result of turning British fare — the English pasty — into something edible. After 1828, when the Mexicans foolishly expelled Spaniards from the country, the English took over the mining industry, and were important in commercial activities. There is a famous legend about a Mexico City jeweler who makes a ring for his fiance, who dies but her ghost returns for the ring. What gives the story its piquancy is that the heart-broken jeweler returns to his cold island homeland.

Within Mexico city, there was a Church of England cathedral (in, what is now — logically — el barrio chino!) and at least one chapel in the late 19th century. The former cathedral is being restored as an Anglo-Mexican museum, and the chapel (next to the American military cemetery in Tacuba) is a cultural center now. The Iglesia Anglicana de México is a national church originally started as a mission by the U.S. Episcopal Church, which does cater to more recent English immigrants, as well as Roman Catholic converts. Once in a while you still run across an English, or hispanicized English, family name, but most come from West Indian or U.S. immigrants.

And, of course, British pirates and oil men were up and down the Veracruz coast. The pirates who didn’t were hanged, beheaded, or — if they could get away with it, burned at the stake as heretical Protestants. The ones that stayed went into other enterprises (though with what legality it’s best not to speculate). The British Navy depended on Mexico oil in World War I (Mexican oil provided up to 90% of their fuel, which is why the Germans took such an interest in the Mexican Revolution). And there was the remarkable Mrs. King — whose Cuernavaca hotel was occupied by both Huerta and Emiliano Zapata during the Revolution.

Italians have been around since Cortés. Bernardo Diaz, like many of the Conquistadors compared Tenotichtlan to Venice, a city they knew from previous military campaigns. Spain — or rather Castille — had Italian territories at the time, and a few of the soldiers were Italians. Italian officers, artisans and even a viceroy or two served in Nuevo Espagna.

Those Conquistadors may have thought of Venice, but a Venetians came in numbers in the late 1800s. On a website dedicated to all things Venetian, I found this from May 2004:

…[I]n 1882, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, sought European immigrants to colonize parts of the country so as to import new methods and ideas in agriculture and industry and to lift the living standards of the indigenous people. As a part of the recruitment effort, Mexican emissaries traveled to the countryside just outside of Venice. They managed to persuade around 500 or so residents of towns like Belluno, Segusino, and Feltre to relocate to a remote Mexican village called Chipilo, about 100 miles outside Mexico City, about as far from the land of sun-dried tomatoes and macchiati as you can get.

…

They had their reasons to uproot. The Piave river was running dry in those days. Agriculture was tough. The general economic conditions were dodgy in Northern Italy, overall. The Mexican envoys appealed to the people’s desperation and sense of adventure. It worked.

Things were tough at first, but ultimately the community flourished, mainly via agriculture and ranching. Chipolo also is famed for Segusino pine furniture, wonderful antique Mexican reproductions, said to be inspired by furniture found washed up on a beach by an emigree.

In the late 19th century, the Italy depended on remittances even more than Mexico depends on them today. And, the Italian government encouraged emigrants, assisting in sending mass immigrations to everywhere from Canada to Argentina (where Spanish is spoken with an Italian accent as a result). Surprisingly, most of the Italians who emigrated to Mexico came from the North (like the Venetians), rather than formerly Spanish-ruled regions like Naples and Sicily. Maybe they wanted a change of climate. They already had edible food.

A sizable Lombard community in Michoacán, centered around the avocado-growing center of Nueva Italia, was financed by Italian landowners. Some became hacienderos in their own right, like the Lomardo Toledano family, the scion of which, Vicente Lombardo Toledano turned his back on his class, to become an important Marxist theorist and Mexico’s best known labor leader of the post-Revolutionary era.

And, somewhere along the way, some minor English nobility and an Italian hotelier met and … down the labyrinthine ways of the raza cosmica produced gringo economists with Irish names.

Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Bartelemo de las Casas · Ciudad de México · Communism · Economy & Business · Emigrant labor/remittances · Food and Drink · Great Britain · Hernan Cortés · Italy · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Mexican History 1524-1575 (Spanish Conquest) · Mexican History 1575-1810 (Colonial Era) · Mexican History 1824-1910 · Mexican History 1910-20 (Revolution) · Mexican History 1921+ · Michoacán · Mining · Pasties · Politica (Mexicana) · Protestants · Provincia · Puebla · Real Mexico · Religion · Rosa King (Tempest Over Mexico) · Veracruz · Vicente Lombardo Toledano