Shrinking money supply
With local bus fare now 5.60, I’m carrying a lot more ten centavos these days. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s my money, and I try to hang on it it — or would if I could find it!
That’s the new 10 centavo in the middle, between the old version and a U.S. ten cent piece.
Oh brother, can you find a dime?
¿Ovidado en el otro lado?
Laura Martinez, the maven of Latino advertising, is taken with the new series of Corona Extra commercials. Though I’m not sure that drinking Corona will undo the damage of prolonged northern exposure, there are a few valuable Latin 101 lessons in the ad series.
I hope the Arizona cops don’t figure this out… they might try to nab immigrants by their balls!
Another Bicentennial moment, begorra
Mexico is the sixth largest Irish community in the world for good reason. Not just that both the Irish and the Mexicans are famed for their tenors, bantam weight boxers, appearances of the Virgin, economic migrants and … at least in the movies… are usually drinkers of note, but both had to put up with annoying English-speaking Protestant neighbors who moved in and kept a third of their countries.
They also both had confusing revolutions in the early 20th century, ending in a compromise that — while overlooked by the doctrinaire types who believe a revolution has to follow some particular formula — worked for them.
And, yup, the Lord Mayor is the woman with the serious bling. I was thrown by the title, too. Joe Costello is her husband, and a member of the Irish parliament. I guess making politics a family business is something else Mexicans and Irish share.
¿Adios, Beto Fife?
While U.S. police departments are proliferating to a sometimes absurd level — there are 2500 separate police agencies in Texas alone compared to 2300 or so in all of Mexico (Grits for Breakfast asked the question “Do community college police really need a SWAT team“… when maybe a better question would be “Do community colleges need their own police department?”) — the Administration is now pushing to combine all local police agencies into a single agency, at least at the state level. That is, the state would be hiring and paying for our local coppers.
In a way, that’s very good. While I have no problem with Mazatlán police, and the municipio has made some progress in combining the various units, the traffic police and security police and preventative police (and the beach police and tourism police) into just “The Police” there is an overwhelming problem here. The municipio doesn’t have any real taxing authority, and depends on the state for its resources. The security budget has been running at a deficit for years, and — with a combined police force, there’s a need for some new uniforms, paint jobs for police cars, and whatnot, on top of salaries and pensions (and, alas… funeral expenses and survivor’s benefits) that have to be met.
Mazatlán — being a seaport and beach resort among other things (like a major exporter of marijuana and opium products) — probably has better policing than many places. One problem highlighted, and used to sell this proposal, has been the extremely low pay for officers and the appallingly low educational standards. According to Genaro García Luna, the Federal Secretary of Public Security, 70 percent of police officers have only a “basic education” and only 4.5 percent have a degree of some kind. But then, a lot of these departments can get by with hiring Beto Fife, or he may be the only candidate for the job.
García Luna claims (and I’ve no reason to doubt him) that 17 percent of local governments have no police department, and 88.5 percent of all police departments have less than 100 people. Presumably, that includes administrative personnel. Just combining administrative functions make this a good proposal on its face, and — recognizing the educational problem, as well as the pay problem (some officers — I’m presuming rural officers working part time — earn less than a thousand pesos a month. Those guys NEED the bribes: be generous!)
Off the top of my head, my only objection is that rural areas (with less voters) are likely to get stinted by a state police, and there is always the danger that police protection will be used as a political football, as it was in the Federal District (where the police chief is a presidential appointee) which has a local government overwhelmingly opposed to the Administration. And, with Judicial and Preventative police having different roles, and answering to different branches of government (Judicial police, as the name suggests, work for the judiciary and carry out court orders, while Preventative police are controlled by the executive branch of government), who and how a unitary state police will be structured and under whose authority, are considerations. My understanding is that State Police would be under the State Governor’s authority, which may be one reason state governors are lining up behind this initiative.
O
ne thing that needs to be understood. Policemen has never been held in high esteem here. With the exception of Jorge Rivero (where the story line had less to do with police work, and more to do with getting Rivero’s shirt off, and showing off his muscles), there aren’t heroic cops in Mexican films or TV shows. Sometimes there are honest cops in the movies, but usually, they depend on the derring-do of El Santo or Lola la Truckero or even La India Maria to catch the baddies. Cops, if they aren’t crooks, or bullies, or the agents of repression, are usually seen as Barney Fife figures… pathetic, inept and naive. Changing public perception is going to require much more than changing an organizational chart.
Just firing cops is not a good plan, so I’d like to see more on what’s being proposed in the way of training (and not just in things like firearms use or the law, but in how to act like a decent citizen — which pays off both in officer morale and in public perception of the police. The Nezahuacoatl police, after reading Don Quixote and taking art appreciation classes (and getting a raise) themselves demanded honest administrators.
But, I don’t see a bureaucratic shuffle as particularly useful as a tool in creating honest coppers. If anything, it would seem more cost effective — if I was Señor Rico Criminale — to bribe one honcho in the state police bureaucracy, than to run around spreading bribes among a bunch of municipal honchitos.
North of the border — and to a large extent here — the concept is being sold that state-wide combined police departments are somehow less corruptible than local police. In the sense that lousy pay and the generally low esteem in which police are held here may have a lot to do with corruption, giving officers a decent wage and state civil service benefits might be a step in the right direction.
Justice reforms probably go hand-in-hand with police reforms: simply shuffling law enforcement from the municipal to the state level is not going to resolve a much bigger, more intractable issue… how does the state restore the people’s belief in their ability to honestly, transparently and impartially serve justice?
A sucker born every minute
Saturdays are usually very slow, but when I checked some stats (ok… I was bored), I was intrigued that I had several hits coming from the same source:
I sort of vaguely recalled the name “Tom O’Malley”, and thought I might have written something about somebody by that name at some point… and I had. Several — “The Myth of the Gringo Immigrant” , a subsequent follow-up on that post, the first in May, the second in June… 2006. “Tom O’Malley” (who never existed) was supposedly a executive at the Mexico City offices at 
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company who was giving the skinny on the Mexican immigration system. The same e-mail was showing up all over the U.S. right-wing web (which I used to read regularly, seeing it as something of a better guide to misunderstanding and misinformation about Latin America than most sources). According to “Tom O’Malley,” to apply for his Fm-3, he had to submit (horrors of horrors!), his birth certificate and several other documents most of which were not then, and are not now, required: a high school transcript, college certification, etc. (which maybe his employer required, but not the Mexican government) and… my favorite, “A letter from The ST. Louis Chief of Police indicating I had no arrest record in the US and no outstanding warrants and was “a citizen in good standing.”
A version of the same letter, including the sentence about the St. Louis Chief of Police, had to write a recommendation appeared in an article (under a different name) in a white supremacist magazine in June, 2009 (the link is to my comments, not to the magazine). Interestingly enough, this one came out almost a full year after there were substantial changes to Mexican immigration law that made both of the complaints in these emails moot anyway. And, the white supremacist magazine was probably an outlier…from a publication of out and out liars.
But, when I looked at where these hits were coming from, I can’t say I was bemused (more like confused) to see the exact same original “Tom O’Malley” e-mail is again making the rounds… completely unchanged, in the last week. This in spite of the radical liberalization of Mexican immigration law in August 2008, and the visa system was revamped on the first of May of this year.
I wrote a couple of comments on these sites, all of which seem to supportive of more restrictive U.S. immigration laws. One site administrator (who was quite gracious when I had to send an email because of a posting problem) “defended” the post, but was complaining about non-immigration issues (specifically, some third-party’s problems in setting up a business of some sort), based on the always popular specious rationale that other people do something unacceptable, therefore MY unacceptable actions are not unjust. Or, as someone might put it, “the lesser people do it,” and being superior, we do it too, because we’re better.
I don’t follow the logic of that either.
Like the phony Zetas attack dam story earlier this week, I’m assuming these are fueled by a desire to justify an anti-Mexican political position in an election year. I don’t expect political propaganda to be always fair and balanced, appeal to logic, or even be rational. But, if one is going to reuse and recycle garbage, one should at least clean it up first.
Really, really bad timing
SDPNoticias (my translation):
The Supreme Court refused to lift an injunction against Esteva Mercantil Mexicana y Asociados, which sought to exploit oil in the Gulf of Mexico, La Jornada reported in its on-line edition.
The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court held that “natural resources found on the continental shelf belong to the direct control of the nation,” in resolving a review of the injunction requested by Esteva Mercantil which sought a fifty-year concession to extract oil from under the sea bed in the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico’s exclusive economic zone.
!Arizoname! in Arizona
You know what the problem is with this elementary school mural ?
It’s in Arizona, obviously. Prescott, Arizona, to be exact. Where City Councilman and morning talk radio guy Steve Blair has some “reasonable suspicion” that the mural “depicts an agenda, an indoctrination of public school children”. That or the kid is suspiciously, you know… brown.
Instead of removing it, the school principal asked the artists to lighten the faces of the children in the picture. This request follows harassment of those same artists by drive-by wingers flinging racial epithets at them while they were painting it. Welcome to Arizona.
I guess this means a Mexican cartoon is driving the right-wing agenda… or something like that. To quote Abuelo… er…. better not. I’ll quote Freddy Mercury instead:
Best rumor by a dam site!
I wasn’t planning to say anything about the story floating around, courtesy of the Houston Chronicle, detailing
An alleged plot by a Mexican drug cartel to blow up a dam along the Texas border — and unleash billions of gallons of water into a region with millions of civilians — sent American police, federal agents and disaster officials secretly scrambling last month to thwart such an attack, authorities confirmed Wednesday.
One or two of the usual suspects on the expat message boards chimed in on this one, and even Bloggings by Boz, the “inside the beltway” commentator on Latin American and military affairs, took the story seriously. Even Wikipedia (at least for today) takes the story seriously. It sounded a little implausible, then, once I thought about it for ten seconds, absolutely ridiculous.
The dam in question — Falcon Dam — sits between the grand metropoli of Nuevo Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas (I’d never heard of the place either: the original Ciudad Guerrero was drowned by Falcon Lake, when the dam was built) and Falcon Heights, Texas. The only thing the dam is known for are a couple small power plants and a fishing lake. When there was another story in the news recently about a couple of guys getting robbed at gunpoint out on the lake being conflated into PIRATE ATTACKS!!!, I was reminded that it’s an election year in Texas, AND, and the right-wingers are again floating the usual nonsense about “terrorists” on the Mexican border.
Last election time Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson learned from Fox News that he supposedly was holding an Al Qaida terrorist in his jail cell — damned if he knew where that came from. And Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores was supposedly a #1 target of the Zetas. Which, combined with his guest appearances on the afternoon U.S. cable talking head shows, like Lou Dobbs — might have helped him eke out his 133 vote win over his opponent, but still got him fired by the county commissioners last year.
But, given how dirt-poor those border counties are, it’s all good P.R. and the political push for more funding for their local law enforcement creates a few jobs, and pays the county for their gasoline and snazzy new SUVs.
At any rate — and good advice for anyone who is going to comment on these “international incidents” — especially when they seen too bad to be true, is check the calendar and check in with the local media. The McAllen Monitor is one of the best small town newspapers in south Texas, and Jared Taylor and Jeremy Roebuck may not have the audience that Fox News or the Houston Chronicle has, but they’re good solid local reporters… are a lot more reliable when it comes to what’s going on in the Rio Grande Valley.
FALCON HEIGHTS — Authorities have debunked threats last month that a Mexican drug cartel was plotting to blow up the Falcon Dam, sending billions of gallons of water flooding across the Rio Grande Valley.
Rumors that the Zetas drug cartel was plotting to use dynamite to blow up the five-mile span west of Roma spread quickly among local, state and federal law enforcement in late April, authorities said.
But while U.S. officials boosted patrols and surveillance across the area in response to the threat, they said this week that there was no credible evidence that such a plot was ever in the works.
We’re #2! We’re #2!
Mexico has replaced China as the #2 foreign trading partner of the United States… where it normally has been for the last century.
I’ve said that Mexico’s overly-close economic (and geographic) relationship to the U.S. has been the source of most of the nation’s woes over the last 200 years, and that Mexico needs to expand trade outside of NAFTA, so whether this is good news or not, I can’t say.
The blob
Yikes!
Disclaimer and all, this looks like a disaster not just for the United States, but for Mexico and Cuba — and the smaller nations of the Caribbean — as well. Not to mention the rest of the planet.
One of many reasons I’ve objected to the militarization of the anti-narcotics trafficking “crusade” is that it has over-extended the Mexican military, which takes its missions of environmental protection and disaster relief seriously (and generally does a good job). We’re going to need the Navy, and — as to the economic disaster — B.P. has significant investment in Mexico, although Mexican diplomatic protocol now is to go after the deep pockets, and hire attorneys in the United States to pursue damages in U.S. courts whenever possible. Which I imagine is already being discussed.
As to comparing the U.S. response with what would have theoretically happened with a PEMEX disaster, at least with a State oil company, there’s no dithering about using federal resources when a state company screws up.
¡Arizoname!
Abuelo may have thought it was a stupid idea, but Noruego’s “Arizona-me” kit has been a hit with fans of La Familia del Barrio — who have been busy creating their own Arizona make overs:
Though… some people never will “pass” for a Zonie…
We now return to our regularly scheduled program
Three short pieces below, trying to update recent news-type items, this morning. There is only so much time to write for this site and I have other commitments.
I’m buried in tracking down information on the 18th century explorer and writer Pedro Alonso O’Crouley y O’Donnell and the Mexican military hero John Riley (gee, you’d never guess these are for an Irish organization, would you?), so I haven’t had the time to comment on a few items that have appeared in the last week or so related to more recent Latin American history.
Adrianne Pine (Quotha) on the background and on-going dissolution of Honduras (and Haiti) in “Foosball with the Devil”.
Inca Kola, Abiding in Bolivia and others have all talked about the recently declassified documents that prove the United States played a major role in the 1971 coup in Bolivia that brought right-wing dictator Hugo Banzar to power.
Rita Pomade (Mexconnect) writes of Leonora Carrington and the swinging (as in police-baton swinging) sixties in Mexico City.
Marisa Treviño (LatinaLista) on how the historical Latin concepts of “race” affect the U.S. census today.
Alan Cowell (New York Times) on Dame Margot Fonteyn’s pas-de-folie when she fell flat on her face in 1959, clumsily dragging herself, Fidel Castro and John Wayne (yup, that John Wayne) into an attempted coup in Panama. Dame Margot’s later picked herself up, and was a bit quicker on her feet in her next foray into the world of international intrigue, involving a Soviet defector:
mexfiles.net 