¡Tierra y libros!

Rosario Ibarra called the proposed Calderón budget, which cuts federal spending for culture and education while increasing the funds for military and police operations, “repressive.” “el_longhorn”  (who regularly comments here, )said that unless Mexico cracked down on the narcos and unrest, it was liable to go the way of
Colombia, and that  things like funding for the Ballet Folklorico weren’t priorities.  I wrote fast, and didn’t give enough background on the Senadora’s concerns.  

“El_longhorn” is a pro when it comes to sniffing out bullshit (he works for the Attorney General’s Office), and I can understand why a PRD leader’s comments would set off alarms, but Rosario Ibarra is no bullshitter.  Just the opposite.  It was her refusal to accept the official lies and “spin” on her son’s disappearance during Luis Echavarria’s “guerra sucio” that makes her a Mexican heroine.  If anyone knows what “repression” means… she does.  She’s been fighting it for thirty years, and knows her enemy.  And, she’s got Mexican history on her side.   She’s got Mexican history on her side.     

While I’ve questioned whether a “war on drugs” is all that effective in the first place. The number one consumer nation is the one north of the Rio Bravo, and WE openly backed the pro-export candidate in the July elections.  What other agricultural products are we importing without using NAFTA to skewer the market?.  

I also noticed that the big flashy military/police operation is in Michoacán… which has always had a marijuana-growing and smuggling culture – and has made the news with some particularly nasty inter-family warfare among the gangsters.  Michoacán is also a PRD stronghold and home to the Cardenás family.  The new Secretaría de gobernacion, Francisco Ramírez Acuña, had APPO leaders from Oaxaca arrested (while coming to Mexico City for a “dialogue” with his office!).  Ramírez Acuña (according to  a reliable source with good social and professional connections to the Mexican political class), has ties to the narcos in his own Jalisco state. 

While all that appeals to the conspiratorial sensibilities of my “inner Mexican”, I think Senadora Ibarra had something else in mind.  It wasn’t the Ballet Folklorico – which is a tourist-dollar magnet – but public schools, libraries and universities that she is concerned about.   James Wilkie wrote back in 1970 in his analysis of the federal budget from 1910 to 1960 (“The Mexican Revolution”, U of California Press):   

In 1916 Manuel Gamio, one of Mexico’s most famous anthopologists, suggested that Mexico’s national well-being depended upon intergration of the huge mass of poverty-stricken, isolated, illiterate, and non-Spanish-speaking population into Mexican society.  This population had no loyalty to the patria because the federal government had done nothing for it except perhaps to sanction the seizure of its ancient land holdings, levey taxes and search its villages for military conscripts.  Gamio’s call was one of many for the integration of the Mexican nation... 

Plutarco Elías Calles, who was no slouch when it came to military repression, but it was FOR, not against, education and culture.  The repressive forces were fighting  folks like Calderón’s por-clerical supporters’ grand-daddies, who opposed secular education – and things like Ballet (folklorico or otherwise).  In the revolution, his unit fought under a  banner promising not “land and liberty” but, the stepping stones to that revolutionary demand — “¡Tierra y libros!”.  Calles was a schoolteacher, and the libros he had in mind were basic readers, algebra texts and geography books.   

Frank Tannenbaum, who arrived during the Revolution and stayed, wrote “
Mexico: The Search for Land and Peace” about the “creative revolution” that transformed those backwards peasant communities into modern communities.  I don’t have Tannenbaum’s book in front of me (NY: Alfred A Knopf, 1950) but remember his dramatic image of a line of Mayan women carrying over the mountains desks, chairs, books, blackboards… the basic essentials of the time for integrating their “povery-stricken, isolated and non-Spanish-speaking population into Mexican society.” Mexico’s first satellite transmissions were rural eductional programs (the Fox administration cut the funding, by the way… though it made a show of making the internet available to some of those communities).  And, in case anyone has forgotten, it was complaints about misuse of education funding that brought about the troubles in
Oaxaca.   

“el_longhorn” suggested that without increased military spending, Mexico will go the way of Colombia.  That country isn’t a good comparison.  It’s been at war with itself – or rather among the elites – since 1830 with a few short breaks for the usual repression of the rural, “poverty-sticken, isolated, etc.” population.  The latest civil war has been going on since 1954, and the “narco-terrorism” is just a variation on the eternal search for “alternative financing”… the “official” federal budget for
Colombia has always been heavy on military spending, light on education and culture.  The Mexican budget hasn’t.  During the Juarez administration, and during the Revolution miltary spending was over half the national budget, but the Mexicanmilitary budget has been falling (as a portion of the total national budget) since 1917 …even in 1944 (when Mexico was a combattant in the “Guerra contra nazifascismo” the military budget was cut to free up money for important things – like education.   

It’s ironic… it’s the “left” that pushes middle-class values. And it’s precisely the “alternative presidency’s” prescriptions (more rural business investment, infrastructure, schools and universities) that would have been more likely to defeat the narcos than the Army.  If, indeed, it’s the narcos that are to be taken on.  Calderón came to the Presidency with dubious support.  There’s too many questions still to be answered about the election – and it was so very, very close – that I wonder whether we shouldn’t look at Carrenza (or even Santa Ana) for our historical precedents.  For both, neutralizing opposition – the military option – was the only way to ensure legitimacy. 

Calderón is no Santa Ana, however.  He’s not foolish enough to think he has a mandate, nor can he ignore the very real opposition, so there may be an upside to all this.  And, though they live very well, today’s generals are nothing like Santa Ana’s cronies for whom a military career was essential to playing a role in national affairs. 

The military people themselves do not want to take on a larger role in Mexican society (another difference with Colombia is that the military in Mexico has very little interest in political control) and doesn’t really see themselves as policemen (something I did not get directly from military sources, but is a reasonable assumption, given what military people themselves say publically, and given their reaction to being put into policing jobs).   The Army is unlikely to lobby the Senate, but perhaps the legislators will step up to the bat, and Mexicans will enjoy a more balanced government.  

Increased military spending at the expense of everything else is just plain bone-headed.  Mexico doesn’t need – or want – a large military.  But, it was concentrating on the military that kept Mexican society from developing as a healthy and independent nation in the mid-nineteenth century.  It was people like Benito Juarez, who was precisely one of those backwards, non-Spanish-speaking rural peasants who did get an education.  Juarez (who started publishing the federal budget, and who did, I admit, spend most of it on military expenditures… but then, he had to put up with pests like Maximiliano and the French) – with his provincial bougeois values – who became the real Mexicans.  Calderón is supposedly the conservative, and Rosario Ibarra the “leftist”… but it’s Ibarra defending the traditional values of the Mexican middle class.  Go figure.