Family Values Sunday… 28-September-2008

Family visits

In San Diego, families separated by the border still get together for Sunday picnics, but not for long.  HTMLLeslie Berestein in the 24-September-2008 San Diego Union:

This binational social scene, as it exists now, is unique along the southern border of the United States. Soon, it will be a memory.

The federal government’s effort to slam the door on illegal immigration, drug smuggling and the threat of terrorism means a new secondary fence will be built in the park, creating a 90-foot-wide no-man’s land of patrol roads and security lights that extends to the sea.

Construction is to begin next month. The barrier will not be solid, but it will block most access to the primary fence, which is composed chiefly of loosely spaced metal pilings on the beach and mesh on the bluff above.

What does Homeland Security have against families?

The royal family

From a discontinued series on deposed monarchies, that ran in Lawyers, Guns and Money as their “Sunday readings” for several years. Originally posted 18-March-2007:

Mexican monarchists had previously entertained the idea of offering the crown to Maximilian, but he turned down an offer in 1859 because he suspected popular support for the monarchy was insufficient. Maximilian’s father was a Habsburg and his mother a Wittelsbach, giving him a suitably impressive bloodline for his stint as Emperor of Mexico. Sadly, Maximilian had been misled about the extent of royalist sentiment in Mexico. Although he adopted the grandsons of Agustin de Iturbide as his heirs, he was unable to win the support of Mexican liberals, and irritated conservatives through his efforts to win republican support. In 1866 France withdrew its troops at the behest of the United States, and Republican forces began to prevail. Captured in May 1867 after the fall of Queretaro, Maximilian was court martialed and, to the horror of the crowned heads of Europe, executed by firing squad.

Agustin and Salvador de Iturbide, the appointed heirs of Maximilian, continued to press their claims to the Mexican throne, although without success. Agustin died in exile in the United States, and Salvador died of appendicitis in Venice. Salvador’s daughter Maria Joseph then became head of the Imperial House, dying in 1949 after being interned by the Rumanian Communist government after World War II. The current claimant to the throne of Mexico is Maximilian von Götzen-Iturbide, who presumably will become Maximilian II if his claim is recognized. Born in 1944, Maximiliano has demonstrated little interest in pressing his claim, perhaps because of the rather grim fates of his two predecessors.

I’ve been tempted to call Maximilian II (I knew about where he lives, and just checked in the phone directory.  There’s only one listing with one of the family names) but can’t see bothing a guy who probably doesn’t have much interest in Mexico anyway.

Call your mother

Evelyn Larrubia, in the Los Angeles Times on a Rhode Island family’s expensive search for the remains of their wannabe narco-kingpin son.

Linda LaPorte stood in the kitchen of her home in Pascoag, R.I., holding her cellphone. Her son’s Thai girlfriend was calling from San Diego, speaking a mile a minute in fractured English.

“What she was trying to convey to me didn’t make sense,” Linda recalled.

Dozens of American citizens have been kidnapped and killed in Mexico in the last year. They are a small fraction of the 2,500 people, the vast majority of them Mexicans, who have been slain gangland-style. Countless others have been kidnapped for ransom.

Officials on both sides of the border say the American victims are rarely unlucky tourists.

Long-lost cousins?

(Sean-Paul Kelley’s “Thoughts on Malaysia”,  24-September-2008, The Agonist):

Thus far Malaysia really reminds me of Mexico. … the people, the Malays, not the Chinese or the Indians, are very laid back about life. To them life seems more about living than working. I like that attitude.

All very superficial observations, no doubt, but the people here are splendid, helpful, no too curious, but curious enough to lead into an interesting conversation.

Funny story. This morning I stopped at a small store to buy a lighter. “How much,” I asked?

“One ringgitt,” he replied, adding, “where you from?”

“America,” I said. “Oh, then two ringgitt! What state?”

“Texas,” I said. He shot back, “oh, now three ringgitt,” with a smile. Then an interesting conversation about George Bush ensued. I explained Bush was not born in Texas, in Connecticut actually, and was only a make-believe ‘cowboy.’

“Well, in that case,” he said, “for you only one ringgitt. Next time I meet someone from Connecticut I will charge them ten ringgitt!”

And… of course… la Familia

From a new (and unknown) blog, “Visions of the Hosiery” (in rather bad form, the article appears to be a reprint from another source, with no attribution.  If anyone knows the original source, I’ll be more than happy to change the link — and give credit where credit is due) comes a short history of the Michoacan gang originally fingered by the Federal Government for the Morelia attacks, “la Familia.”  The gang, like Colombian gangster Pablo Escobar, has garnered some support for themselves — and generated positive press — by supporting social projects and functioning as a “good guy” vigilante group on occasion… killing kidnappers and warning off those who would sell narcotics to locals (More on that later this week):

… on Sept. 6 [2004], another note appeared, this time accompanied by five heads.

“La Familia doesn’t kill for money, doesn’t kill women, doesn’t kill innocent people. It only kills those who deserve to die. Everyone should know this: Divine justice.”

The note on a piece of large card, as well as the human heads, had been dumped on the dance floor of the Sol y Sombra nightclub in Uruapan, in the midst of a night of revelry. Those in the bar and the local community – not to mention the national and foreign press – went into a frenzy.

Who is La Familia? A new drug cartel, a group of thugs, or hit men looking to take the region’s drug war to a new level?

All born and raised in Michoacán, La Familia’s 4,000 male members each earn between $1,500 and $2,000 a month, according to Michoacán’s foremost authority on the drug war, Proceso correspondent and analyst Ricardo Ravelo. The federal Attorney General’s Office, or PGR, says La Familia has “relations,” or links, with civil servants in almost all of the state’s 113 municipalities.

Some michoacanos say La Familia, ostensibly based out of the state capital of Morelia, operates like Italy’s Cosa Nostra, instilling an appealing sense of order and respect at a time when the nation’s cartels are duking it out Wild West-style like the cowboys of old. This family is a God-fearing one, too. Its members regularly attend church, walk around carrying Bibles, and distribute the Good Book in local government offices, according to residents and local reporters.

…

“What began as a small group of armed men on the prowl to protect their kids from [meth] has turned into a first-rate criminal outfit … that is just as well-armed and organized as any top-tier drug smuggling organization in Mexico”, said George W. Grayson, a long-time Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

And, meeting the neighbors

This week, my new neighbor is Banama Republic — all the snarky news you need on the Panamanian Republic. The writers need to muster a lot of snark if they are to adequately a nation that makes Mexico look like Sweden when it comes to clean politics and financial transparency by comparison.