Coming to our census

I’m still on the road, sans laptop, so have to fall back on gathering the news the old fashioned way (dead tree versions, TV and gossiping with taxi drivers).

Three or four themes seem to be dominating the national news, but — for right now — no links or translations — til I can sit down and go through the internet for a couple of hours at a time.

In the on-going “drug war”, Universal (I caught the story in last Sunday’s Guadalajara Informador) is looking more like smoke than fire. National police recruits are complaining (and Universal has been looking into allegations) that the new national police, with their snazzy uniforms, new and improved hardware and decent salaries are a hollow force. Specifically, the recuits are claiming the new uniforms and weapons are only trotted out for public relations events, while they’re still using the older, and obsolete equipment. Worse, the recruits are claiming they aren’t receiving the salaries they were promised — which would allow police officers to support a family on just that one job, but have to take outside employment to make ends meet.

Low salaries are probably the greatest factor in so-called “police corruption” … the honest coppers have to take outside jobs as taxi drivers or laborers or delivery men or security guards to make ends meet… or work for narcos, who pay regularly.
The El Universal investigation relied on anonomous informants, who claim that superiors are cheating them, or forcing them to work overtime for no pay, or on outside work… and — if there are complaints, demoting the officer or filing an “administrative report” which will prevent the officer from taking the higher paying “operative” work (the officers are supposed to get a bonus for taking part in arrests, etc.)

Related to this are the headlines this morning (at least in the Mexico City dailies) — that I haven’t had time to look at in any depth — that the focus on the police and military budget is negatively affecting educational spending. Which isn’t really news.

The “slavery story” was the scandal of the week…. in Mexico City, several police officials were padding their own salaries with a rather nice scam of shipping mostly indigenous men, mostly working as porters in the Merced, off to a local “drug and alchohol rehab” that was forcing the guys to work for no pay and for really, really crappy food (one man described “black chicken soup with rotten carrots”) … and shaking down their families for the cost of their so-called “rehabilitation”.

Most of these guys were not drug addicts, nor alcholics, and the phrase “social cleansing” has been floated in regard to this story. There are more details — including allegations that the slaves were also forced to have sex with some very creepy (and, by all accounts, ugly) guy at the “rehab”… which was raided, and the slaves (who were making Christmas baskets for department stores!!!) rescued. Several returned to their families, a few have been put up at Federal District expense in hotels or shelters, and a few simply decided to leave under their own footpower after the raid. Televisa is, of course, trying to hang this on the Federal District’s left-leaning government, the left trying to pin it on Calderon’s rightist federal administration.

How many people are working in involuntary servitude, or underpaid, or in other less than adequate situations may remain a mystery. The Federal Government — having tried a few different ways to cheese-pare the budget without success (the plan to eliminate three cabinet posts is effectively dead), has decided they’ll drop fifteen questions from next years Federal Census. Lefties are suggesting that the rationale is not saving money, but access to information. If the feds don’t ask, they don’t have to tell the true sitution of the Mexican people, and can continue policies based on assumptions long outdated.

More later.