Sunday readings — 15 June 2008

How is the Monroe Doctrine like a vampire? (it’s undead).

Losing Latin America, Greg Grandin (Mother Jones):

Most interestingly, in [the Ecuadorian-Colombian] conflict, an overwhelming majority of Latin American and Caribbean countries sided with Venezuela and Ecuador, categorically condemning the Colombian raid and reaffirming the sovereignty of individual nations recognized by Franklin Roosevelt long ago. Not Obama, however. He essentially endorsed the Bush administration’s drive to transform Colombia’s relations with its Andean neighbors into the one Israel has with most of the Middle East. In his Miami speech, he swore that he would “support Colombia’s right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders.”

Equally troublesome has been Obama’s endorsement of the controversial Merida Initiative, which human rights groups like Amnesty International have condemned as an application of the “Colombian solution” to Mexico and Central America, providing their militaries and police with a massive infusion of money to combat drugs and gangs. Crime is indeed a serious problem in these countries, and deserves considered attention. It’s chilling, however, to have Colombia—where death-squads now have infiltrated every level of government, and where union and other political activists are executed on a regular basis—held up as a model for other parts of Latin America.

Obama, however, not only supports the initiative, but wants to expand it beyond Mexico and Central America. “We must press further south as well,” he said in Miami.

James Joyce in Oaxaca?

Anti-Ulises: A Day In the Life of a Simmering City, Ramor Ryan (Upside Down World):

Walking away from the sanitized Zocalo, we chance upon a moribund vista. Shuffling around in the half shadows of a street corner, about a hundred tooled-up riot cops loiter with menace – as if itching for something to happen. The phalanx of troops, an ominous dark mass of helmets, riot shields and shiny black boots, clank their long metal sticks on the somewhat medieval flagstones. It is an incongruous sight at this time of night, amidst this placid ambiance, without the slightest disturbance to be ascertained of any kind anywhere.

Paradoxically, their presence signifies a welcome sign – where there are riot police there is generally trouble, and trouble in the Oaxaca context, means…resistance.

I have followed the movements of police riot squads with close interest for many years. So I approach the last cop in the line – a young indigenous man clad in state-of-the-art modern armor – and with all the sweet innocence of a visiting tourist ask him as to why they are here.

“Is there a problem, officer?” I ask.

He tenses up, grips his metal baton and stares at the distant wall, not at me.

“We are here for your protection” he says sternly – and somewhat comically.

We have heard that one before. Back in the day, during the war in Ireland, this is how the occupying British troops behaved – nervous, uncertain and trigger-happy. So this is it – as people had forewarned – this tremulous peace in the city is one overseen by riot cops lingering in the shadows. Oaxaca is a city under stealthy occupation.

Neighborhood clean-up projects can be a bit more complicated when the neighbors are on both sides of an international border. Enrique Gili on neighborhood projects in the Tijuana River Valley, writes for IPS News:

Pollution doesn’t respect the border. Each time it rains, a portion of Tijuana’s waste flows through the estuary and into the Pacific Ocean, shutting down local beaches for days at a time and affecting the quality of life for residents. Local residents are seeking common ground to combat the problem.

“To comprehensively deal with the Tijuana River, we need to involve everyone impacted from ranchers to surfers to boarder patrol agents,” said Paloma Aguirre, president of the Tijuana River Citizens Council.

Postcard pretty wetlands hide hidden trash. Beneath beds of wildflowers and lush vegetation, the preserve is a catchall for all manner of debris, tires, bottles, and plastic. By mid-morning, volunteers have accumulated enough garbage to fill a shipping container to haul to the municipal dump.

Even as clean-up efforts get underway, certain border realities are difficult to ignore or downplay. Border patrol agents are actively pursuing migrants hiding in the vegetation, leading more than one volunteer to quip it’s doubtful “illegals” are slipping across the border to pick up trash.

Hold the celebrations… those new auto plants may not be such a great deal for Mexico.

Laura Carlsen on the downside of globalization (Americas Mexico Blog):

General Motors announced a $1.3 billion dollar investment in its Coahuila, Mexico plant and the creation some 875 jobs (note the low job-to-investment ratio). It also announced the eventual closure of plants in Janesville, Wisconsin and Morraine, Ohio. The Mexican press noted that the company first hinted at the closure of its plant in Toluca, which elicited an immediate promise from the union leadership to accept wage reductions. It soon after announced it will remain open but cut back on operations and lay off some of the workers. Although the new contract terms were unavailable at the time of this writing, the trend is written on the wall.

The companies justified further gouging into the fragile economy of working families by pointing the finger at global competition. As long as China offers wages of as little as $2.00 an hour, Mexico has no choice but to follow suit if it wants to attract investment.

It seems the same conspiracy theory is once again making those rounds again. One of the approaches xenophobic conservative pundits use to stir up fear so people are willing to support tough immigration policies is race baiting. Given the history of race relations in the US, history has shown repeatedly that this nation is willingly to act aggressively in punishing minorities.

The same right-wing populist fears that fueled the Cold War anti-communism, rallied against the Civil Rights Movement and brought about the armed citizens militia movement in the 1990s have reappeared with an elaborate conspiracy theory about the reconquering of America – La Reconquista – the idea that Mexicans are invading America to reclaim it for Mexico.

When World War I began, the republics of Latin America as well as the United States hoped to stay out of it and to leave Canada as the only American nation involved on either side. In Aug-1914 most of those nations cut off international cable messages in either code or cipher and declared their neutrality. Wars disrupt trade and regular international financial transactions and this was the case for several of these countries – Brazil lost a British loan opportunity, Chilean industries were hard hit and unemployment rose, Bolivia had to borrow from an American bank to ride out the rupture of trade and all of Central America experienced trade losses. As time went on these nations began to benefit from the war. It is macabre but true that great wars in distant places can be good for business and these nations had resources which were now in demand by the belligerents.

…

In Jun-1918 a number of Mexican editors visited the United States and were met by President Wilson. The President assured them that the U.S. had no intention of intervening in Mexican internal affairs and that the Monroe Doctrine, long seen by Latin Americans as a blank check for Yanqui intervention, was meant to protect rather than exploit Latin America. This was cooly received by Carranza who issued a statement that as long as the Covenant of the League of Nations contained a recognition of the Monroe Doctrine, Mexico would never sign it. Under another President, Mexico eventually joined the League in 1922.

Carranza was not so much pro-German as he was an anti-U.S. Mexican nationalist. Another was Argentina’s President Hipolyto Irigoyen. Irigoyen detested the Anglophile cattle barons and the Francophile intellectuals and despised the many Argentines who looked to Italy as their mother country. He saw no reason to have his country do anything but profit from the sale of her war materials, which she was doing on an enormous scale, without bothering about the balance of power or international moral issues of questionable validity. German submarines and poison gas did not strike him as particularly odious. Probably the majority of the population supported him but there were great pressures on him to join the Allies. To Irigoyen, the entrance of the United States into the war was merely another good reason for Argentina to stay out.