Telenovelas: educational television?
I leave it to Ganchoblog and Aguachile to keep track of the score or so of politicos who all have announced that they’re running for President. For PRD it looks like either Marcelo Ebrard or Andres Manuel López Obrador; for PRI, Enrique Peña Nieto (or somebody else) and for PAN… any number of second-string politicos who want to be the sacrificial goat for the discredited Calderón Administration.
At this point, none of the PAN candidates worth taking too seriously, although one of them, Alonso Lujambio, the Secretary of Public Education, made an interesting observation that sounds laughable, but might not be such a bad idea. Probably desperate, as all PAN and PRI candidates seem to be, to get support from Televisa (or at least some recognition that candidates other than Enrique Peña Neito exist) Lujambio recommended telenovelas as an educational tool.
While it needs to be noted that El Universal and Televisa are two of the largest media organizations behind “Initiativa Mexico” which many believe is more designed to align the major “mainstream” media with the government (in return for certain legal concessions to these financially powerful media groups), it is interesting to note that this is not really a new idea.
As J. Fabián Arellano and Nayeli Durand wrote in Friday’s El Universal, telenovelas were used to sell government projects (including education) in the past, and social issues are still woven into telenovela plots… with the enthusiastic support of the “telenovelarati.” My translation:
In the late 70’s, Miguel Sabido took a gamble, when he produced Ven comigo, the first “educational telenovel.”
Sabido claims that thanks to his melodrama, nearly a million people enrolled in the federal adult literacy program, Plan Nacional de Educacíon de Adultos.
Secretary of Public Education Alonso Lujambio’s statement that the soaps could be a “powerful tool” in fighting illiteracy, has some basis in the experiences of Sabido, who produced four “social entertainments”: telenovelas integrating Mexican social development project into the plot.
The director and playwright says, for example, that the second of these efforts, Acompáñame, played an integral role in the so-called “Mexican population miracle,” the successful effort to promote family planning.
But that was back in the 1980’s. At this time, Sabalo believes “Television should balance cultural identity programming and entertainment.”
Another figure in the development of the educational telenovela was filmmaker Jorge Fons, who directed El que sabe, sabe, produced by the Department of Public Education (SEP for its initials in Spanish). “Although the plot revolved around small town intrigue, the characters all meet in the house of a woman who conducts literacy classes. The story also was an education in how to conduct these classes.”
Fons is now working on Juan Osorio’s Una familia con suerte. He is convinced that “Television can and must improve. We have to assume that people are intelligent and observant of what they watch on television. We must work to make better products. It’s not easy, but we need to take on the challenge.” Telenovela producers and actors agree that “social entertainment” needs to return to the small screen, although they indicate a belief that this is the responsibility of the government and the networks to foster such programming.
Carla Estrada, creator of hits such as Pasión and Alborada, says she is willing to collaborate on a project of this kind: “As long as you can include the message in a playful manner. That is, not losing the entertainment value, and putting the message in a way people can take it without too much difficulty.
Ultimately, education is not the media’s concern, but is crucially that of the family.”
Daniela Romo started in the telenovela business about the time Miguel Sabido first introduced his ideas to Televisa. “Those programs stirred things up, but they worked somehow. The statement by the Secretary (of Public Education) is good and necessary, but today, the messages are different, as we face new challenges,” she commented.
Ana Martin, another witness to the birth of the educational telenovela said, “The idea is perfect, and I’ve want to sell one idea: people want to see characters than can admire, doing positive things. I support the concept and am ready to help.”
Producer Rosy Ocampo, who has included health and prevention messages in her stories, includes heath and prevention messages in her stories. “If they want to do something in this regard, and they designate the person in charge of the project, I would sit down with people who would enable me to produce a worthy product that would be really useful.”
Pedro Damián also tries to portray social issues in his melodramas, but without sacrificing “story profitability.
“The important thing to keep in mind is that an marketable and entertaining product doesn’t have to lack a conscience. The successful youth-oriented telenovelas are an ideal market for these kind of messages. If the companies coordinate with the government, we could be as successful as the master, Sabido.”
One needs to recognize that during the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Mexican government was a (generally) benign authoritarian state. While not directly censored, television programming was a state monopoly at the time, and, it was only with the relaxation of state control (and the democratic opening of the 1990s) that telenovelas could safely include sub-plots that indirectly criticized the state.
Ernesto Alonzo, the father of the telenovela, modeled the form on the 19th century serial novels of Balzac and Dickens. Really, Oliver Twist is no more “over-the-top” than say, La Loba: Fagan, though in a different social class, is no less fascinatingly villainous and manipulative than Doña Prudencia (Regina Torné, channeling Joan Crawford… and the Bride of Frankenstein). Colorful villains and twisted plots involving unrecognized heirs, don’t prevent telenovelas (or serial novels) from sneaking in didactic material… although that material is usually not in the form of state propaganda. In my book, Gods, Gachupines and Gringos, I wrote that:
The simple plot line (poor girl overcomes obstacles to get rich boy) could obliquely criticize society and the government, for example: the villain is a corrupt politician in one. Or it might highlight social problems: a housing shortage in Mexico City in the late 1990s had one telenovela heroine searching not just for love but for an affordable apartment for her mother.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with building into the plot a story-line about finding adult education classes or housing assistance, but I am concerned that what the Secretary is proposing is that the telenovelas, in part, substitute for serious education and — more seriously — that telenovelas should uncritically present government objectives. That is not entertainment… that is propaganda.
¿Por qué?
¿Por qué le pedimos al gobierno (de México) que detenga el flujo de drogas?, ¿por qué no lo detiene aquí el presidente (Barack) Obama?
(Why do we ask the government of Mexico to stop the flow of drugs? Why not ask President Barack Obama to stop it here?)
— Vicente Fox, speaking yesterday in San Diego, California
Much as I liked to make fun of Don Chente’s often blunt (and sometimes gaffe-prone) public pronouncements, the question he raises is one heard more and more in Mexico. I admit, I get rather snippy (especially when reading and writing late at night, for posting the next morning) when I read remarks like a comment on F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller’s statement to the U.S. Congress that “there is an ‘unprecedented’ level of violence in Mexico linked to the country’s drug wars” to the effect that Mexico could solve the problem by “just legalizing drugs”. Sorry… that’s been done, but the violence still continues, and I’m afraid my response is that it’s U.S. drug users (including those casual users who aren’t likely to be imprisoned unlike the poor, the less educated, the less-than-white) are the ones who bear responsibility for the senseless slaughter of men, women and children in this country.
Certainly, as Javier Sicilia’s cri-de-coeur (published in Proceso and elsewhere) rightly points out, the government in this country — executive, legislative and judiciary — at the Federal, State and Municipal levels, bear as much responsibility as the gangsters for the situation. Sins of Commission on the part of the gangsters, of Omission on the part of the government.
This is not a failed state, but two seemingly contradictory policies have created a situation in which the government is not able to act appropriately (or, when it does act, act badly) in this one area.
On the one hand, there is no way it can control the consumer nations from its seemingly endless need for Mexican narcotics (or, for narcotics passing though Mexico), and this country does not have the resources to match the economic power of the exporters. With the United States unwilling (and/or unable) to control its narcotics use, and not even willing to discuss it’s role in bankrolling the narcos, I don’t see what the Mexican government (at any level) is expected to do about it. The United States throws a hissy-fit when some U.S. concern is inconvenienced, or a tourist is inconvenienced, or when Mexicans attempt to prevent a U.S. business from muscling in on the Mexican market… yet when its largest institutions are directly involved financially in the killing business, it simply shrugs the matter off.
And, let us not forget, “private enterprise” in the United States supplies the weaponry that keeps the whole shootin’ match going. That’s not just the weapons used by gangsters, but resources for the government forces as well — and for free-lancers who take advantage of the situation to settle who knows what private issues.
Whatever the reason, Mexico (or, rather the present Administration) was sucked into a situation where, as Vicente Fox rightly said, it is expected to “control” another country’s problem… and that country expects Mexico to pay what Ulysses S. Grant used to call “the butcher’s bill”.
On the other hand, the government’s willingness to make gangsterism a centerpiece of state policy has sucked the life out of other legitimate functions to a degree where “traditional” political processes are increasingly meaningless.
I don’t write much about the ins and outs of the various parties right now, even though there will be a Presidential election next year, and a very important governor’s race in the State of Mexico in a couple of months. We should be arguing over the future of the oil industry, new taxation plans, energy use, climate change legislation, gay rights, transportation, the cost of corn (and everything else) … not about a foreign imposed “war”.
Sicilia’s open letter has ignited something that until now has been largely ignored (again, perhaps by design) in the Mexican and foreign press: people want to get on with their lives, and find the narcotics issue as much a distraction as a threat. Politics isn’t just about political parties and elections, and what’s been going on in this country out of sight (or rather, hidden behind the fog of war) has been the real political issue.
AMLO is still running around, and there probably is more support for his economic and political policies than the media (and media commentators) realize. The Zapatistas and other alternative political groups likewise have their support. People like Sicilia and other intellectuals are demanding direct action. The Catholic Church is also weighing in and demanding change.
And, given the increasingly bellicose statements by U.S. officials, as well as remarks by Mexican officials that don’t go over well (Such as claims from an administration that will be gone in less than two years that they need another seven years of violence to resolve the violence they unleashed four years ago), more and more people are coming around to the conclusion that the present political system is designed (or perhaps doomed) to creating a repressive culture that deserves to be rejected. The existing political system, perhaps, can only exist in a militarized, quasi-terrorist, quasi-economic colony of the United States, like Colombia, where the “drug war” also consumed the political system.
I don’t see much point in even writing about the nuances of a leadup to a future election, when we don’t have a clue at this point what the real issues are going to be… or the candidates… or even know whether the candidates and parties will much matter. Political events outside the ballot box (strikes, demonstrations, pressure by media or “special interest groups” are legitimate political activities and always have been) may change the whole equation… and it looks to be about to change.
As Don Porfirio said, nothing happens in Mexico until it happens. And, I think, it is happening now.
The measure of man
According to the “World Map of Penis Size (worldwide)” data chart, Ecuadorian men (Ecuadorians?) have the largest average penis size in the hemisphere, followed by Colombians, Venezuelans and Bolivians. Despite a popular myth 
that mestizo and indigenous men just don’t… ahem… measure up to more northern European types, the data chart shows Mexican and Guatemalans both outdistancing the gringos by a full inch (6.2 inches in Mexico, 6.1 in Guatemala).
The people that are usually considered the biggest dicks in the hemisphere are those from the United States, Canada and Argentina — and, in precisely the same order, their men have the least to brag about (5.1 inches for the U.S; 5.5 inches in Canada; and 5.8 inches in Argentina). This either has some deep significance overlooked hitherto by the experts in foreign relations… or opens up the possibilities for some rather unusual pick-up lines: “Did you know I’m part Ecuadorian?”
Shake and bake
Yikes… yesterday’s 6.5 – 6.7 Richter scale earthquake in Veracruz State (felt throughout the southern and eastern parts of the country, but certainly not here on the northwest coast) did only “minor” damage to Mexico’s one and only nuclear power plant… or so we’re being told.
Laguna Verde is “only” twenty plus years old, and has supposedly been being upgraded the last few years. Officially it has a good safety record, although, just over a week ago, Emily Godoy (IPS) wrote about heath and safety concerns near the plant:
The power plant has not been free of controversy. An audit carried out in 1999 by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) found there had been a high number of safe shutdowns of the reactor that weakened the operating systems, as well as inadequate personnel training, lack of proper management and organisation of the work, and obsolete equipment.
In 2009 the London-based WANO, founded in 1989 by the world’s nuclear operators, carried out another evaluation, the results of which have not been disclosed by the CFE.
“We want an independent assessment,” Claudia Gutiérrez de Vivanco, one of the founders in 1987 of the Veracruz Mothers Anti-Nuclear Group, told IPS. “They know that there is a health impact, but they refuse to monitor it.”
State and CFE authorities have dismissed any connection between health problems in the area and the Laguna Verde power plant, and have stated that the plant is working well, although they have not provided hard data like the number of incidents at the plant in 2010, or details of the days the reactors were shut down, and the reasons why.
But women like Georgina López and Guadalupe Hernández, a homemaker whose father was first diagnosed with brain cancer in 2003, would have greater peace of mind if they were not surrounded by radioactive risks.
“They say it has no effect, but who’s to know?” Hernández remarked to IPS. “We are afraid of the nuclear power plant. The authorities have never said that it does not affect our health. Only the people who work there really know.”
I sure hope there isn’t any damage… the only thing worse than oily Gulf seafood is radioactive oily Gulf seafood.
We distort, you decide
Even though it has “Latino” in the masthead, Fox News Latino still Fox News…
Latin America is divided into two distinct economic blocs after the global recession, finds a survey released by the Inter-American Development Bank (BID) last week.
The commercial goods and services of Central America and the Caribbean are narrowly tied to Mexico, and are relatively dependent on the economies of advanced industrialized countries like United States and Japan which are still recovering from recession, according to the survey.
A second, much faster growing group of countries is led by Brazil and includes South American countries such as Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela…
The BID says that the economy of the Brazilian-led group could grow up to 4.4 percent in 2011, while the group led by Mexico will only grow 2.2 percent.
…
One advantage Mexico has over Brazil, according to economists is that it has an open economy. “The policy of economic openness and macro-economic responsibility have helped Mexico over the years,” said Andrei Gromberg, a Professor of Economics at the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology in Mexico City.
So, am I right that there’s an advantage in showing only half as much growth as that of the more overtly socialist economies, or at least not tied to the United States? Or does “advantage” have some special meaning in academic economic circles that I’m not aware of?
Silly me… this is Fox, not facts.
Fashion crime?
It was probably a typical press release from Sedena (Secretariat of Defense) that made the McAllen Monitor, but I have to wonder about some of the loot seized from the baddies.
Besides the usual — 37 tons of pot, 2.8 tons of cocaine and about 175 grams of crack cocaine, 113 guns, 43 handguns, 12,167 cartridges, 391 magazines, two magazine carriers and two gun telescopes, three grenade launchers, 77 grenades, one rocket launcher, a rocket, a crossbow and two tripods — there were the following:
Twelve camisoles, 27 pants, two overalls, two camouflaged hats, two pairs of boots, a sombrero and six masks were also found during the reported incidents.
Ok, I know those guys are kinky, but masks, sombrero and lady’s underwear? Sounds like these guys are a lot more twisted than I though.
Colombian free trade?
Somebody has a good caption for this… somebody?
The god that failed
Of all the news reports (most quoting the same people) written about the authenticity of a polychrome stucco figure said to date from the Mayan Classical Period (550-950 AD) by the Paris auction house Bincohe et Giquello, focus on figure paid for the item (2.9 million Euros) and much less has been said about the politics behind the controversy.
The French auctioneers are sniffing that the Mexican anthropologists at INAH are incapable of dis-authenticating (if that’s the right word) the piece from just a catalog photo, but as Berkeley anthropologist Rosemay Joyce writes in Berkeley Blog, just about every Mayan expert who has seen the photo has the same question: why is a Mayan wearing Roman sandals?
Joyce is primarily concerned with explaining the difference between the standards scientists use for authenticating a work (and the scientists, not just those at INAH, are pretty much in agreement that whatever the piece is, it’s not Mayan, or even pre-Colombian), and those used by collectors.
The argument used by the art dealer to support the authenticity of the piece uses a completely different logic: it comes from the collection of a well-known art collector; it was exhibited and published in catalogues, and never has been questioned before. It’s authenticity is thus “indisputable”.
Exhibited by a reputable museum… not quite with the reputation of the British Museum perhaps, but reputable. The British Museum up until 2005 exhibited an “Aztec” crystal skull, acquired from a highly reputable source at the time: Eugene Boban, a French collector of pre-Columbian artifacts, and formerly archaeologist to the court of Maximilian.
Experts widely believe that Boban may well have had a part in the forgery itself, let alone the deception of the British Museum in relation to their ‘Aztec’ rock crystal skull which was proven to be a fake after it was sold to them by Tiffany’s in 1897 and another at Paris’ Musée de l’Homme also suspect.
An investigation carried out by archivist, Jane Walsh at the Smithsonian in 1992, alleged that documents she unearthed reveal that it was Boban who had acquired the skull that were eventually sold to Tiffany’s in 1897. She also uncovered evidence that it was Boban who some years earlier tried to sell the same skull to the Smithsonian themselves and that it was Boban himself who sold a similar crystal skull to a collector who later donated it to the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.
It is believed that Boban likely acquired the skulls from sources in Germany where large quantities of Brazilian quartz crystal were shipped in the early nineteenth century.
As it is, according to Caslon Analytics (an Australian legal research site), forged antiquities are more the rule than the exception:
In 2005 an art fraud conference organised by the UK Fraud Advisory Panel was told by Paul Craddock of the British Museum that most antiquities on sale in Britain are either stolen or fake.
The amount of legitimate material on the market is very, very small. Most antiquities on the market nowadays are either stolen or forgeries.
In 2000 the London Metropolitan Police alone seized £22m of stolen or faked antiquities. It is claimed that half the antiquities brought for sale at Sotheby’s in a year are fake and that around 25,000 forged antiquities enter the market each year. In 2006 the Met claimed that forged antiquities from Iraq and Afghanistan were being sold on internet auction sites and UK market stalls for up to £3,000 each UK to fund terrorism.
Binoche et Giquello suggests a sort of “terrorism” is behind the Mexican claims that the work is a fake. The French, doing what they do best, are in a national snit over what the Mexicans do best… screwing up a simple criminal investigation. Florence Cassez, a French national, was arrested the night of 8 December 2005 as a member of a notorious kidnapping gang led by her boy-friend. Wanting to shore up public support for the police, Cassez was moved the next morning to the boy-friend’s house for a re-arrest in front of TV cameras.
While the “made for TV” arrest was certainly questionable police work (there’s a lot of that here), the French seem to be under the impression that the Emperor Maximilian is still on the throne and that they deserve “special rights” in Mexican courts. Nope. And, while they have every right to treat lady kidnappers any way they want in France, Mexicans are not fond of kidnappers, regardless of race, nationality or gender. Here, they are basically considered… terrorists.
The French think it’s just terrible that we think a French woman is a terrorist and, rather than sending her back to France to serve twenty years in France[1]rather than her (well deserved) sixty year sentence, packed her off to Santa Marta women’s prison. Which the Sakorzy administration, trying to distract the French populace from the country’s financial and social problems, has taken up as a cause celebre.
Coupled with the French government’s decision to cancel the scheduled “Year of Mexico” and the major Mexican cultural exhibits (including, one might add, authenticated Mayan art), and more than a hint of elitism (a spokesman for Bincohe et Giquello sniffed that the Mexican archeologists are trying to limit the market for irregularly acquired… i.e. stolen … Mexican antiquities!), there’s a certain Cartesian logic to the whole thing — though personally, given the “mayan” footware, I’d go with Roman folk wisdom: caveat emptor.
[1] Thanks, Rafael (see comments) for pointing out the sentencing disparity between France and Mexico.
Danger, excitement… paperwork
This photo, by Terry Ketron (Rombic Sky Images), was published in the Nogales International last Friday.
Border Patrol Officers, when you come right down to it, are just bureaucrats with guns. Ketron’s photo captured something we often forget, but which actually speaks well of U.S. police forces, and suggests what is sorely lacking in the rush to “reform” police forces, or create any sense of trust in the police in this country.
From the note accompanying the photo, the men on the ground were being detained for unauthorized entry into the United States. Of course, on this side of the border, that isn’t a legal reason to detain a person, but that’s another issue. This is the important part — although there are horror stories of illegal detentions and bureaucratic errors (and rampant abuses) by the Border Patrol, and they are a paramilitary unit — they document what happens and there is a way to check.
Short-circuiting procedures, and sloppy record keeping, more than anything else, seems to be at the heart of the problems with Mexican (and U.S.) policing. Throwing more policemen and more weapons (and more and more paramilitary police forces) or integrating local police into state police doesn’t mean much if there is no record of the actions undertaken.
As we saw in “Presunto cupable” one can’t rely on a policeman’s memory, nor should we. In that instance, it’s clear the investigating officer lied, and the judge erred in not regarding a witnesses’ oral testimony (in which a witness recanted his previous testimony), but simply relied on an unreliable report.
Or, as in the murder of Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega, without proper investigation, there’s a tendency to rush a high profile crime to a conclusion, whether the conclusion is logical or not.
And, as Gancho mentioned this weekend, the number of disappearances in this country is startling. I tend to agree with Gancho that the figures may be high (a good number of disappearances may be from people who want to disappear for one reason or another, or the numbers may be just wrong) , but without good record keeping, there is no way to check.
Rather than bring in soldiers, or hiring hard-ass “shoot first and ask questions later” ex-generals as police chiefs, or giving drug tests, or anything else, maybe the first step in creating confidence in the justice system is the simplest. Show policemen how to keep records of what they do. Records that can be checked.
Of course, that means educating police officers… not just showing them how to fire a gun, or upping the numbers by drafting unemployed youngsters as cannon fodder, and hoping that the sheer number of forces will somehow create a just and peaceful society. This means teaching police officers that their job is more than just chasing bad guys, but also working with stressed out civilians… it means treating them as educated civil servants… and paying them as such.
Not that rounding up undocumented entrants is necessarily justice… but justice unrecorded is justice denied.
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness
In the beginning are the words, and in Mexico the words dwell among us: our poets are more than ethereal figures shuffled off to ivory towers; their words, even if locked in slim volumes, are those of the people who shift the culture, and who in a very real way, affect the course of our lives. It is no accident that even in our most mundane activity, commerce, we carry Nezahuacoatl and Sor Juana with us.
The poetry of Javier Sicilia is not likely to be found in every Mexican home, and a taste for the hermetic tradition going back to Santa Teresa and San Juan de la Cruz is not common currency, but we are in a culture in which, when a poet speaks, those that fancy themselves our leaders (including the political kind) feel obliged to listen. Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega, was buried yesterday. Juan Francisco, and seven others, were found strangled and left in an abandoned car near Cuernavaca.
Felipe Calderón called the poet (who was in the Philipines at the time of the murder) to offer condolences and said “he personally was going to press for the (investigation) to be taken all the way.” At which point, the state prosecutor’s office attempted to dismiss the significance of the murder by suggesting the victims were involved in narcotics smuggling, or were military informants (or that Juan Francisco was with “the wrong crowd”) or…
Does it matter? Institutionalized violence is “destroying the best of our people, the youth”, the poet said. The state institutions — the political parties — do nothing, while the “war” continues to rack up a body count of men, women, children…
Rather than treat criminals as criminals, the state launched a “war”, and the results have been that the institutions are “rotten”, with victims — men, women, children — forgotten, and the State unwilling, or unable, to render any accounting.
“This isn’t about candidates, it’s about us, the citizens. It’s our job to hold them accountable. If we do not work together as citizens, nothing will happen.”
In reference to his own grief, he noted that many of the young victims are innocent of any wrong-doing. The government should be providing the public with the truth, and the identities of the victims. Otherwise, the stigma presented by the government (and the media) will stick to them, and the true culprits will go unpunished.
Specifically, he condemned Chihuahua governor, Cesár Duarte Jaquez, who suggested simply drafting “ni-nis” (young adults neither in school or working) into the army. “The urgent task is to provide opportunities for young people, not use them for cannon-fodder” simply adding to the “stupidity” of a situation in which the guilty go free for too long, and the innocent are victims.
Those, of course, were the words of a grieving father… a father more eloquent than most, and one more likely to be quoted in the press… and in his role as a journalist and essayist. At his son’s funderal, Javier Sicilia, the poet, spoke the following words:
El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra
Nos la ahogaron adentro
Como te (asfixiaron),
Como te desgarraron a ti los pulmones
Y el dolor no se me aparta
sólo queda un mundo
Por el silencio de los justos
Sólo por tu silencio y por mi silencio, Juanelo
The world no longer merits the word
It has been choked out of us,
As you strangled,
As you had it torn your lungs.
And, for the pain I cannot escape
there is nothing. But for the world:
the silence of the just,
your silence, and my silence, Juanelo.
What more can he say? As a poet, and as a poet in a nation where poets matter, where the state has traditionally craved the legitimacy given by support from poets like Salvador Novo and Octavio Paz, comes the most damning indictment of the futility and stupidity of this “war” yet:
“This is my last poem, I cannot write any more. Poetry no longer exists for me.”
What’s a weekend without yibel jme’tik banamil?
Well-known (ok, well-known in parts of Chiapas) group Yibel jme’tik banamil is the subject of the first ever rock-n-roll Tsotsil (or Tzotzil) language documentary.
The 30-minute film (oddly enough, with a Spanish-language title, “Voces de Hoy”) — produced under the auspices of the Programa Apoyo a Proyectos de Comunicación Indígena of the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas — includes interviews with the three Chamula musicians (Valeriano Gómez, Delfino and Mateo Heredia) who work with two from Zinacantán, (Fredy Vicente and Juan Javier Pérez) to create a musical experience that preserves the traditions of both communities, while seeking to reinvigorate the tsosil traditions.
One factor that has allowed Mayan communities to endure has been their ability to incorporate “foreign” influences without losing their communal identity. Much as their ancestors incorporated harps and guitars, as well as the 17th century Spanish peasant clothing into the tsosil culture, electric guitars, drums and light-shows are being indigenized… on tsosil terms
Tales of Terror
The Mexican Army and Navy … are determined to respect human rights during their operations, and have been eager to gain insights from our own hard-earned lessons in this area.
Admiral James Winnefeld, USN Commander, United States Northern Command
Sort of, like, you know, the insights the U.S. Army seems to have learned from… oh…maybe… Chapo Guzmán y Asociados, Sociedad (in)Civil?
A sign – handwritten on cardboard fashioned from a discarded box of rations – hangs around the dead men’s necks. It reads: TALIBAN ARE DEAD. According to a source in Bravo Company, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the men were killed by soldiers from another platoon, which has not yet been implicated in the scandal. “Those were some innocent farmers that got killed,” the source says. “Their standard operating procedure after killing dudes was to drag them up to the side of the highway.”
(Rolling Stone, “The Kill Team Photos” [photo slightly modified not to gross anyone out]
Sorry to be so snarky, and I hope I didn’t ruin anyone’s breakfast with the photo (which, really shouldn’t be all that shocking to anyone who reads the Latin American press), but I don’t think people realize how serious the threat of U.S. intervention is in Mexico.
I’m rather disappointed in Bloggings by Boz for giving any sort of credence to Texas Congressman Mike McCaul’s legislative proposal to label Mexican drug transit groups, “terrorists”, but absolutely appalled that Boz supports the idea. Perhaps he’s unaware that McCaul has been trying to make a name for himself by claiming the Mexican narcotics deals are “terror-ed up” with… take your pick… Iranians, Al Qaida, Venezuelans (no doubt bent on selling oil), Fidel Castro… for years. His “dog and pony show*” Congressional “investigation” back in 2006 (“A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border“) brought him to my attention back when I wrote for the short-lived Alpine Texas “Border Hotline News”. Oh course, it wasn’t “terrorists” as defined in the law at the time, but “illegal immigrants” that could be terrorists that had McCaul’s panties in a twist.
McCaul is usually dismissed as a flake, and a xenophobe when it comes to immigration and border issues, although his district is far from the border, and has a much smaller percentage of minority residents (including “Hispanics”) than most of Texas. McCaul is identified as an “Austin” congressman, which is true… The 10th district includes a couple of square blocks within the Austin city limits, but stretches out to the north and east … being gerrymandered to create a safe seat for conservative Republicans in the 2005 Texas redistricting. He is an open supporter of the Minutemen and similar vigilante-type groups (openly referred to as “terrorists” in 2005… by FOX news, no less!)
It’s bizarre enough that McCaul is taken seriously, but this — together with the Admiral’s remarks (and the “Kill Team” revelations) might mean we have to take this seriously. Of course, anyone who reads this site knows the “drug war” has been a handy rationale for militarizing the government, and a means of preventing legitimate dissent — at the cost of consuming more government resources and activity than it deserves, but then, so has the U.S. “war on terror”. Neither has been particularly productive… except maybe to military suppliers, and their supporters.
What the Admiral is saying is that the Mexican military SHOULD, or will, be subsumed into his “Northern Command” (the U.S. military structure with responsibility, whether they like it or not, for Canada and Mexico as well as the United States) and could learn from the U.S. experience in the “war on terror”.
Boz’ argument is that “Mexican criminal organizations should be placed on the list because they use terrorism as a tactic and it would give investigators and prosecutors additional tools to fight them.” The United States Army obviously uses the same tactics, but I don’t think Boz (or anyone else) would seriously propose calling them a “terrorist organization”… .. even if their tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq (and… coming soon… Libya… include blackmail, shootouts with rivals that endanger civilians, kidnapping, leaving banners on dead bodies (as above) and … oh yeah… narcotics production. The Minuemen can be labeled “terrorists” with equal justice, but then, any group that uses criminal tactics could be. While this is a problem with a loosey-goosey ill-defined term like “terrorism” it is also an open invitation to increased miltarization in this country, even less oversight on the military and undermining what progress has been made in legal reform. Not to mention even further consuming the Mexican governance in one issue more a symptom than a cause of the nation’s present difficulties.
(On the other hand, there is something of poetic justice in the proposition that IF McCaul’s nutty idea was implemented, U.S. gun dealers would be in a heap of trouble under the PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrrorism statutes).
* The description of McCaul’s roving investigation of “terrorism” is a direct quote from Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia (at the time a Houston City Councilman) who testified at the hearing.
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