What fools these mortals be
Setty’s notebook, after studying the wikileaks related to his part of the world (South America) and discovers what we’ve seen so far are:
…interesting tidbits that for whatever reason the nice U.S. embassy people had never seen fit to leak earlier. I’m impressed with their discretion — there are a lot of reports that make people look like fools, and many of those apparent fools are not best friends with the USA.
It’s amusing to get a peek at U.S. “intelligence gathering” — the official view of Bush’s fiasco of a visit to Latin America in March 2007 “was rather different from that of The Google. Like me, the Google remembers the visit as an utter fracas, with Bush being hounded by riots, while Chavez made a well attended speech nearby.”
And no wonder: Setty quotes El País in uncovering at least one way the U.S. State Department gathers the information it uses to make decisions that affect the rest of us not in a nuclear power with too much of the world’s money:
… the embassy had lookouts keep an eye on the line so they could help high-level people jump the queue, and then hit them up for info.
Those “high-level people” including relatives of cabinet ministers, which means the U.S. State Department is at least cognizant that family relationships play a much more important role in Latin America than they do in the United States, but how would they know someone standing in a line outside an Embassy is the niece of a oil minister unless they are engaged in wholesale spying. And, while I expect governments are like I am, pure as the driven slush, wouldn’t soliciting something of value (information) in return for favors (an expedited visa) be a form of bribery?
Nuestra Señora del Bronx
Glitter and auto body paint on aluminum by Manuel Cruz (2009).
Tatooist and air-brush artist Cruz (who says he’s “I not a great Catholic, but I believe in the Virgin”) is a leader of the Firma Ridaz, a low-rider bicycle club in the Bronx. The just over 16 minute documentary by Carlos Alvarez Montero follows the club’s “Virgin thing” of their pilgrimage from the Bronx to 14th street in Manhattan preserving Mexican tradition by an unlikely cultural preservation society in an unlikely (and chilly) setting.
Too long to post as a “youtube” video here, you can find (and download) “The Virgin of the Bronx” at Vimeo.com
Disappearing acts: El Chayo and Marcial Maciel
Two disappearances in the news today.
Not that it really matters if another gangster is dead, but it might be nice to have confirmation that he is dead. Nazario Moreno González, known as El Chayo or “the craziest” was no more an “indispensable man” than any of the other indispensable men who fill the world’s graveyards, but he was (or is) intriguing as “the ideologue of La Familia Michoacana and was a pastor who taught to the killers to respect to the population, but also ordered to eliminate his enemies ruthlessly”.
Having an ideological base beyond the nasty, brutish and short capitalism of Chapo Guzmán, La Familia — offering something beyond purely economic support to their communities and dependents (even Don Corelone did that) — was (or is) a genuine threat to the Mexican state. It is, of course, convenient for Chapo that El Chayo was eliminated and extremely convenient for the state that he disappears without coming to trial.
Of course, there are several groups who would like to stamp out El Chayo’s “alternative Christianity”. Certainly, the Sinaloa Cartel, to whom it is an economic threat, the Roman Catholic Church to whom it is a ideological alternative to be stamped out, and the State which could conceivably co-opt much of La Familia’s program without much trouble. While the present administration seems to have turned its back on the Revolutionary trends of the 20th century, La Familia’s communalism and disinterest in the affairs of others isn’t all that radical. La Familia’s acceptance was based on its providing services to the local communities that the outside state was unable (or unwilling) to provide, creating economic opportunities for rural areas and defending “traditional values”.
The fact that La Familia’s business source is meth production doesn’t really change anything. I’m not sure that the group’s business — meth production and distribution — is anti-Revolutionary or at odds with genericl Mexican Revolutionary ideals. As far as I can tell, Pancho Villa was the only Revolutionary leader to consider selling or producing exports (in Villa’s case, opium) a problem. PRODUCING cotton, henniquin, coffee, sugarcane.. not to mention minerals and oil … for export wasn’t anti-Revolutionary. What was Revolutionary was putting the production into Mexican hands, and returning the profits to Mexican producers and workers … something La Familia at least portrayed itself as doing.
But the religion? El Chayo, presuming he is dead, isn’t the first religious leader to die, and religious movements usually manage to survive their founders’ death (or disappearance, which has its value when it comes to a religion’s survival. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of the apeothesis of Nazario Moreno González — if nothing else rebranded as a bandit-hero in future corridos and popular iconography, like the possibly fictional Jesús Malverde).
Not that I think the faith of La Familia, based on the Gospel according to El Chayo (based on the equally wacko “Focus on the Family” ideology emanating from the United States) should be propagated, any more than the wacko Catholicism of Legionaires of Christ, based on the teachings of serial pedophile, drug addict and con-man Marcial Maciel (based on the equally pernicious ideology of Falangism, emanating from Francisco Franco’s Spain and the ultra-reactionary Catholicism of Mexican synarchism) should.
Although I can’t say I’ve ever seen conclusive evidence that the old rogue is dead, it’s a certainty Maciel did die in Houston Texas 30 January 2008. Like his fellow Mexican religious leader, Nazario Moreno González, Maciel died without creating the possible scandal a public trial would entail. The difference between the two being that La Familia is pretty much a geographically limited movement, with limited economic and political power. Marciel had world-wide ambitions and political ties, and — having been considered a “legitimate” enterprise for so long — the finances of what was basically a criminal enterprise is going to take years.
I doubt the Mexican state (or even Chapo Inc) will be able to force the faithful of la Familia to disappear their apostle completely, although the movement may be undergoing a forced restructuring, any more than the Roman Catholic Church, in the course of forceably restructuring the Legionaires, will lay to rest Maciel’s evil ghost, simply by ordering his disappearance from all Legioniaire propaganda and documents.
Arizany Arizona
How can Arizona legislature make itself any more odious? It can’t, so it’s going for stupid:
… The same people who brought you S.B. 1070 wanted to give Arizonans the toughest anti-Sharia protection in the country (.PDF). This nasty little item would have prohibited judges from enforcing “religious sectarian law,” defined as
ANY STATUTE, TENET OR BODY OF LAW EVOLVING WITHIN AND BINDING A SPECIFIC RELIGIOUS SECT OR TRIBE. RELIGIOUS SECTARIAN LAW INCLUDES SHARIA LAW, CANON LAW, HALACHA AND KARMA…
I always though Karma was a theological concept and not a legal code, but any way you spin it, the payback is gonna be a bitch.
It takes two to google
“Owl Eyed” Otto (Inca Kola News) noticed today’s Google logo —
It’s a nice little reminder that 11 December is the birthday of Carlos Gardel (1887 or 1890). It may take two to tango, or even to google, but it took the either French or Uruguayan born Gardel to make the tango worth memorializing on Google.
An Argentine immigrant, Gardel took up the disreputable job as a tango singer and performer. In 1915, the young Gardel was shot while performing in one Buenos Aires bar by Ernesto Guevara Lynch. Guevara Lynch would later father an Argentine recognized throughout the world. Gardel would also go on to father an Argentine export of world renown, performing throughout Latin America and Europe until his death (like so many other great musicians, he was killed in an airplane crash) in 1935 . It was he who made the tango an essential part of world music, and Google did well to remember.
What lasts
According to Gustavo Madero Delegacion officials, by 3 P.M. this afternoon, there were already 1.5 million pilgrims at the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. By tomorrow, the crowds are expected to grow to six million.
If there is a miracle, it is this: by the time the number of religious visitors — many of whom are seeking divine relief for physical or mental ailments — had reached 1.5 million, only 418 required medical attention, usually minor treatment for pre-existing conditions, or for abrasions to the knees.
The Church-run “Casa de Peligringo” is sheltering a few of the visitors … somewhere in the neighborhood of 14,000 persons and has managed to find parking space for 170 buses. Others (and there is only so much room at the inns… provided one can afford them) are camped or parked or holed up, throughout the neighborhood, the WalMart parking lot at Guadalupe and Henry Ford turning into probably one of the larger indigenous villages in the Americas for a few days.
Political parties, narcos, economic policies are transitory events, blips in time that aren’t meaningful in the long run. What matters is what endures, and in Mexico, what endures is the pilgrimage to Guadalupe.
Off with their heads!
NO more of this nonsense about Mexicans being barbaric, simply because sometimes our gangsters take … um… short-cuts when their interests collide with those of other gangsters. There’s nothing particularly Mexican about this particular form of conflict resolution, not just in situations where one is faced with physical peril (as with the gangsters), but where one’s economic and social opportunities are threatened as well.
Who you gonna call?
María de las Heras was Milenio’s pollster before resigning last March after accusing the media company of mixing her results with those of another pollster about whom she expressed “reservations about the quality and professionalism of his work”. Her polls are generally accurate, but there are questions about her methodology, specifically those based on her contention that telephone polls over-poll PAN voters (or likely voters) — based, it seems, on the relative scarcity of land-lines in less wealthy households (which are less likely to vote for PAN). Given that this poll was a telephone poll, the results are remarkable.
Based on a 4 December poll, she finds that 40% of Mexicans STILL believe fraud was involved in the 2006 Presidential elections. If you remember, much of the political negative advertising against the “Benefit of All” coalition candidate, Andres Manuel López Obrador, suggested (or came right out and said) AMLO was a “danger to Mexico”. Asked if AMLO was a danger to Mexico, only 36 percent of respondents thought so, 56 percent saying he wasn’t. Eight percent are unsure.
The surprise was when the same question was asked about Felipe Calderón. 41 percent of respondents think he is a danger to Mexico and fully a half of respondents are unsure.
If de las Heras’ numbers are correct, public opinion is about evenly divided as to whether the country would have been better off under an AMLO administration as opposed to the present one. Apparently (and again, with the proviso that de las Heras’ polls are accurate) support for a PRD candidate in 2012 is about the same as it was in 2006: around 35 percent.
However, perhaps reflecting the belief that fraud was a factor in the 2006 election, only about 15 percent of respondents think a PRD presidency is very likely, although 48 percent think it is possible, but not probable.
Of course, the report comes from SDPNoticias, which is overtly pro-AMLO (and often refers to Felipe Calderón in articles as “the former PAN Presidential candidate”), but I’ve suspected that there is more AMLO support out there than has been reported. I’ll have more to say on this, after digesting what Aguachile (who seems to have soured on AMLO) has to say about recent political manouvering.
Stop the squabbling
A mixed metaphor, but Calderón makes a good point. It’s too bad that his administration had gone with an “all or nothing” approach to a less serious problem like curbing narcotics exports, but curbing carbon emissions is something that doesn’t require “approval” from every state actor.
Evidence of a policy change foretold?
Mica Rosenberg and Anhi Rama (Reuters LIVE! via Montreal Gazette) don’t appear to be writing about possible social and political change in Mexico, but “Firms fleeing drug wars settle in Mexico City” — while valiantly attempting to paint a move by border businesses to the Capital as a temporary reprieve in the “drug war” — inadvertently confirm the Mex Files’ own reading of the so-called “drug war”.
… Some 5,000 business owners fled to Mexico City recently from states near the U.S.-Mexico border, said Juan de Dios Barba, head of the city’s business association Coparmex. Most were restaurants, shops or professional offices, which have less overhead to move than bigger companies, although larger investors have also fled the northern border regions.
“Many were threatened or are struggling to find clients because a lot of people are leaving the north. They come here looking for a better economic situation,” Barba said…
The Reuters article makes two assumption about people “fleeing” the borderlands: that they are fleeing the violence by narcotics dealers and that those leaving want to go to the United States. As has been said (more than once) on this site, borderland communities like Juarez were more “boom-towns” than settled communities. With collapsing economic prospects (NAFTA should have given preference to North American manufacturing, but the temptation to buy cheaper Chinese imports destroyed the economic based long before the “drug war” was thought of), limited resources (these communities are mostly in the middle of the desert) and indifferent local governance, people had been moving from the region for some time.
That criminals were able to exploit the borderlands is not all that surprising. Organized crime at least provided a steady income and a reason for the communities to prosper. With the chaos in that industry, it is, perhaps, the final straw for many, and does provide another reason for those without any deep ties to the area to leave.
An AFP article appearing in Prensa Libre (Guatemala) and translated into English by M3 Report begins:
Thousands of Mexicans who migrated in recent decades to Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in the country, have returned in recent months to their origins due to fear of crime. About 2,300 persons from Veracruz have returned on charter flights. They had gone to work in the factories (maquilas) in Northern Mexico after NAFTA was approved in 1994.
Again, the assumption is that the narcotics violence is driving the exodus, when it may just be the final straw. Places like Detroit and Cleveland, the U.S. “rust belt” also saw huge declines in their populations, among more settled families (who also walked away from homes and businesses) in the 1970s mostly for economic reasons, leaving communities prey to criminal organizations, which led to further declines. Many, if not most, of the “blue-plate Texans” (the large number of people who emigrated internally from Detroit — driving cars with blue Michigan license plates — to Dallas and Fort Worth in those years) also claimed it was crime that drove them out. And, of course, with an influx of new, unsettled residents, there was an unsurge in crime, even in already crime-ridden Texas, at the time).
In other words, the “drug violence” is as more a symptom of border problems than the cause. Still, it has to be said that the root of the violence is a badly designed, and flawed policy for dealing with the narcotics trade and with economic conditions in general.
Which is why Mexico City seems to have an edge. I notice in the Reuters story has to lead with crime:
… But even as the sprawling metropolis of 20 million people escapes the grizzliest drug murders and daytime shootouts, traffickers are moving into the city’s outskirts and threatening to encroach on the capital’s relative calm.
The Federal District— Mexico City proper — is about 8 million people. The “mayor”, (rather the Chief of Governance of the Federal District) recently made the news as the “world’s top mayor”. That may not give much more than bragging rights to Marcelo Ebrard, but the fact is that going back to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s tenure, the Federal District has been pursuing a policy that has been relatively successful in reducing crime through alterative methods. Although Reuters points to security cameras, things like old age pensions, social programs for “at risk youth” (including job creation programs), better street lighting and police patrols in economically distressed neighborhoods, training programs for the police, and even twice daily garbage pickup …. all of which were criticized when they started… also make the Federal District a better place to do business, and mean that residents have the money in their pockets to spend in those businesses that just couldn’t survive any longer in places like Juarez.
Those “outskirts” are governed by different administrations, which have not been as innovative in their policies, and some of which are terribly governed. The assumption from around the blogosphere (and elsewhere) is that State of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto will be the next president. I can’t find the link now, but his statement that he’d continue the policies of the present administration in fighting the narcotics industry seems to suggest that the United States will not object to a PRI victory, which is beginning to make me think he may indeed be the next President. HOWEVER, those “outskirts” are mostly State of Mexico communities, and with rapidly eroding support for the present policies, we may be seeing the first signs of a call for change that is very real, but not one that fits the mainstream narrative… yet.
(Sombrero tip to Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Mexico Institute and M3 Report).
OH?
The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
December 7, 2010
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday the Obama administration was considering using laws in addition to the U.S. Espionage Act to possibly prosecute the release of sensitive government information by WikiLeaks.
“That is certainly something that might play a role, but there are other statutes, other tools at our disposal,” Holder told reporters.
The Espionage Act dates back to 1917 and was focused on making it illegal to obtain national defense information for the purpose of harming the United States. Holder described the law as “pretty old” and lawmakers are considering updating it in the wake of the leak.
Jeremy Pelofsky
Reuters, 6 December 2010
“That was a stupid lie, easy to expose, not worthy of you… Is it possible, even conceivable, that you’ve confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on? That you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?”
George Sanders as Addison DeWitt in “All About Eve” (1950)
Who is not, but should be, in Cancún
Via the Spanish site, “Bajo el Signo de Libra” I’ve been introduced to the work of Peruvian economist and photographer Javier Silva-Meinel. Silva-Meinel has most recently been documenting the lives of indigenous people in Amazonia (the photo is from his Piel del Amazonas series), much as he had previously photographed the Andean world.
The scant news focus COP-16 (the 16th annual Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has received has been on political leaders and macro-economic issues like carbon credits and the more esoteric concerns like the games industrial countries play to avoid changing their profligate ways, and backroom deals. Forgotten in there is who is affected by climate change the most — It’s not as if an Amazonian fishermen can buy carbon credits, or cares much about the language used in some final draft. He… as much as Korean farmers, French pensioners, gringo bloggers, you… need to eat and are going to be impacted by what is or isn’t done in Cancún.
mexfiles.net 