22 August 1940: The Mexican lifeline
How to handle a refugee crisis, Mexican style
(translated and adapted from José M. Murià, “80 años de aquel acuerdo salvador” , Jornada, 22 August 2020)
The defeat in early 1939 of the legitimately constituted republican government in Spain resulted in almost half a million people crossing the French border in order to save their lives. The grand reception, as is known, was not always cordial, although it must be admitted that the French never expected so many refugees.
And, there were quite a few French who who sympathized with the Spanish fascists. “Nous somme de la part de Franco“, they often snapped at the peninsulares.
However, in France, there weren’t in immediate danger of losing their lives.
It is well known that the Mexican government had provided immeasurable help from the very beginning of the refugee crisis, but the volume of the unfortunate was enormous. Several ships had already sailed to Mexico stuffed with refugees and many others, who could afford to do so, had fled on their own.
Some of the Spaniards had managed to make new lives in France, while others were being encouraged to return home. In any case, there were still over 150,000 Spanish refugees in France by mid 1940, when the Germans invaded.
These refugees were in serious trouble. Francoist police were able to pursue them in France, and the Nazis began rounding them up for forced labor battalions.
With the instructions and blessing of President Lazaro Cardenas, the Mexican Ambassador, Luis I. Rodríguez obtained from Vichy puppet president, Philippe Petain, a commitment to sign a document that any foreign refugee — Spanish, Lebanese, Jews, even Germans and Italians seeking transit to Mexico would be under the protection of the neutral government of Mexico.
Luis I Rodriguez, about 1950
Negotiations between Rodríguez and the Vichy government lasted a month , being signed on 22, August 1940. It saved about 150,000 from either certain death, or, at the very least, transportation to the Nazi or Spanish concentration camps.
It is not a small thing! However, it was not smooth sailing. Many French authorities claimed to be ignorant of the agreement, requiring copies and more copies of required documents, or… at least something that sounded plausible to the French authorities. Over 80,000 certificates of transit were created one by one as the Mexican consulates had typists working around the clock.
It is worth noting that both the German and Italian governments endorsed the agreement… not out of kindness or out of fear of the Mexican military. More likely they needed our oil, which had only recently (and fortunately) been nationalized.
Although the wholesale deportations to Germany ended and some refugees already sent off to Germany were able to leave, the project was not a total success. However, there are few cases in human history of a rescue of this magnitude and quality. It is a shame that in today’s Spain, with so much nostalgia for the fascist regime, there is no formal recognition or homage to Mexico and its greatest president.
Emilio Lozoya and the 40 (plus or minus) thieves
This wasn’t a leak… this was a tsunami.
In what’s basically a plea bargain deal, the fugitive former CEO of PEMEX, extradited from Spain to answer for charges that he handled bribes for Odebrecht (the Brazilian construction firm whose bribery of public officials from Angola to Ecuador, including Mexico, in return for state contracts) has been busy writing up his “denunciacion”. Although neither Lozoya nor the Federal Prosecutor will claim credit or blame for it, the 63 page document (nicely broken down into chapters) made its way to the media earlier this week, fingering three ex-presidents, five former cabinet secretaries, two sitting governors, another former PEMEX CEO, the former head of the government housing credit bureau (INFONOVIT), and at least one journalist for “acts possibly constituting a crime.”
Dated 11 August, the document details which public servants were paid off, and how much each received over the last 12 years. Although Lozano never quite establishes any of the allegations amount to “treason” (the only criminal charge that can be brought against a sitting or former President) he makes the case that by allowing a foreign company to determine the nation’s energy policy he, and others, “subjugated [Mexico] to foreign individuals and groups”.
In addition, during Felipe Calderón’s administration, Lozoya’s “denunciacion” details how Odebrect’s subsidary, Braskem, was given a sweetheart deal, allowing it to buy ethane at “an inexplicable discount” resulting millions of dollar losses for the federal treasury. Former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari figures in, having used his influence (and Odebrect money) to “block” investments in a state owned ammonia plant, which was then sold to a private corporation at a fraction of its real value at the insistence of President Peña Nietro and his Secretary of the Treasury.
Lozoya also names Videgaray as a bag-man, handling distribution of bribes given to him directly by the Brazilian company’s CEO, Marcelo Odebrecht.
The names named are a “who’s who” of the PRI and PAN establishment, including 2018 presidential candidates Ricardo Anaya and José Antonio Meade. The two sitting governors, both from PAN, Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca of Tamaulipas, and Francisco Domínguez Servién of Querétaro, stand out as, in Lozoya’s confessions, as “extortionists”… as Senators, conditioning their support of energy “reforms” on multi-million pesos bribes… to which, it appears, Odebrect paid. Amusingly, a video was also leaked, showing Governor Dominguez’ personal secretary counting out bags of cash said to have been received by his boss.
In the document, Emilio Lozoya compares the coordinated (alleged) participation in corruption to organized crime, writing:
“… there was an agreement to implement an organized apparatus of power that, from the highest levels of the regime, implemented what was necessary, including the Legislative Power, to obtain benefits that affected the sovereignty of Mexico, subjecting it to national and foreign individuals and groups.”
In other words, “treason”.
The only one who seems to have been bought cheaply was journalist Lourdes Mendoza, who was paid to write flattering stories about Luis Videgaray. Her price was about a thousand US dollars worth of Chanel beauty products and he kid’s tuition at a private school.
Play Ball! (Post COVID)
The municipal government of Texcoco has budgeted 70 million pesos (about 175.000 US$) for the first national baseball academy, though Probeis, a program that has the personal support of President (and second baseman) Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The facility has a capacity to house up to 60 people, with a kitchen, bedrooms and gym; in addition there are fully equipped profession and two semi-professional fields, as well as a children’s field.
Mayor Sandra Luz Falcón (MORENA) said classes for persons age six to 21 will begin as soon as sanitary conditions allow it, where they will also receive a comprehensive education endorsed by the Ministry of Public Education, in addition to training o the field.
The plan is aimed at developing high-performance athletes, who will try their luck in professional teams in Mexico and the United States, and making them eligible to try out for sports scholarships in the United States.
Although the first generation had young students who will only come from Texcoco and the Valley of Mexico, in the long term it is expected to draw talent from throughout the republic; this being only the first of a chain of regional baseball schools throughout Mexico.
(via Forbes Mexico)
Lies, damned lies, and COVID statistics
As the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. has skyrocketed, the nation’s case-fatality rate has indeed gone down, to just 3.8 percent, but that number is still higher than in dozens of other countries. It is also essentially meaningless, since nations are testing at different rates and researchers warn that the case-fatality rate is unknowable until after a pandemic ends, when the full death toll is known. In the meantime, it is a misleading way of measuring the lethality of a disease unless an entire population has been tested for it. (Robert Mackey, The Intercept)
The “top of the fold” headline in today’s La Jornada was “Trump: vean a México, en lugar de EU sobre el coronavirus” (Trump: look at Mexico instead of the US on the coronavirus). He apparently has reverted to his old campaign theme of “dirty Mexicans, bringing their diseases, etc.” when.. for all its ills and missteps, the story is that it’s much more probable that the pandemic reached Mexico via the United States, and that Mexico’s infection and mortality rate… alarming as they are… is lower than that in the United States.
An interviewer for the US network, Fox News, was incredulous about the President’s claims that the US was less affected by the virus than most of the world, causing Trump to call for a chart meant to “prove” what he was saying was somehow within the bounds of reason. What he showed was the “observed case-fatality” rate, which (I use the Johns Hopkins database) shows Mexico only behind Great Britain in fatalities per 1000 IDENTIFIED Covid patients, not the fatality rate in the population as a whole. As of this morning, the fatality rate per 100,000 in the US is 42.22 per 100,000, whereas it is 31.05 in Mexico.
The differences in the “observed case-fatality rate” have a lot to do with testing processes. Mexico has been criticized for its limited testing… only a percentage of those already showing symptoms… and only meant to provide public health officials with an estimate of the necessary facilities that would be needed. Whether it has been the best practice, or even effective in its modest purpose, is debatable, although Mexico has not seen the complete breakdown in its public health system we’ve seen in other parts of Latin America, nor is there (overall) any major shortage of intensive care units. On the other hand, it does mean that the likelihood of persons being treated are those who are already very ill, and have a higher likelihood of dying.
But, if you look at overall mortality rates, Only Chile and the United Kingdom are losing more of their people than the United States. The mortality rate per 100,000 in the US is 42.25 while in Mexico it is 31.05.
To echo Tolsti, every pandemic stricken country is stricken in its own way, and comparing the two countries is probably not all that instructive. I don’t know of any statistics comparing mortality among persons with the same economic and social levels (although, everywhere, it’s the poor who die the most): if it is the poor who are most likely to die, one would expect Mexico’s rate to be much higher than the US (at least, if we believe poverty in the US is not as endemic as we’re told).
The media, here and there, has been full of stories lamenting the inability of the Mexicans to “shelter in place” for financial reasons. But, if that is true, why is Mexico’s mortality rate still lower than the US? Age? Mexico has a younger population, but one with more risk factors, like diabetes and obesity? Masks? 85% of Mexicans are wearing masks in public, compared to 67% of people in the US… or so it’s claimed.
This isn’t to say the Mexican “butcher’s bill” won’t rise to the appalling figures seen north of the border, but only that when it comes to statistics and basic science, politicians are not the best source of information.
A needed break from politics and viruses
Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional in lockdown…
BTW, even the pricey seats at Bellas Artes for symphony concerts is only 160 pesos (80 for seniors, students, and the handicapped): about 8 US$.
Matachines: body and soul
Dax D. Thomas (Blacktop Photo Collective) published this photo at a protest demanding police reforms in El Paso, Texas. There is much more here to unpack than simply noting, as some have, that even in “costume”, the protesters are wearing the face masks we’ve all been expected to wear during the pandemic.
The protesters are “matachines“. Rather than wearing a costume … suggesting a disguise… perhaps we should say they are in their vestments, religious regalia. In a sense, this is no different than a priest in his or her ritual garb wearing a face mask when conducting a service, although… a religious service in the middle of a protest is something that tends to catch a photographer’s attention.
It’s not all that surprising that various cultural practices and beliefs were incorporated into Catholicism (beginning with the Romans, making it hard sometimes to say where the Roman ends and the Catholic begins… the priest’s vestments being echos of the Roman toga for a start) only surprising us when we witness non-European practices … adapted into what most of assume is the “mainstream”. But, with the matachines, we have not just an indigenous American custom (most indigenous American cultures included dance in religious rituals or the dance WAS the ritual) incorporated into a European religion, but an indigenous American ritual practice taking over a European arguably non-religious practice, and remaking it as a purely American and religious one.
The matachines grew out of a Spanish Carnival traditions .. the “blow out” held just before Ash Wednesday, when European Christians would parade in their finery and, yes… wear costumes or disguises… to celebrate the ways of all flesh before turning their thoughts to the things of the spirit and the more gloomy mysteries of the Lenten season. In other words, the Spanish matachines were out to party. Whatever misgivings various churchmen might have had about Carnival, it was always tolerated.
In New Spain, among several indigenous communities, dancing was never about just blowing off steam, but had ritual meaning. To the Spanish, if “los indios” danced in front of the former temples rebuilt as churches, and at “rebaptized” sacred sites (like Tepayac, former home of Tonantzin, mother of the gods, reborn as the Mother of God), it may have seen as simply a version of their own (Spanish) traditions… something tolerated, but not integral to the religion itself.
In Spain, a mattachine was just a complicated dance routine, a work-out, but something done for fun. In Mexico, and other places in Spanish America, it was a worship service, a spiritual as well as physical exercise. While up into the 1960s the Catholic Church has always tried to stamp a pan-European style on their worship services, the indigenous Americans have resisted being absorbed completely, or have slyly subverted European customs to their own ends. Combined with the emigration of Latin Americans into Ango-dominated regions, matachines, or their equivalent, have found acceptance in other North American indigenous congregations.
Not just a pretty picture, not just a colorful scene. Dax Thomas isn’t showing us some fancy dress dance troupe joining a protest… rather, it is “real Americans”. in solidarity with other Black Lives Matter protesters calling on protectors much more powerful and much more benign than the cops, together in a time of social isolation.
Good Mexican Rifles
“Antifa” postcard from 1936. Issued by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) to commemorate the 2 million dollars (about 3 US billion dollars today) Mexico gave to the Spanish Republic to fight the fascist revolt. What Ernest Hemingway called “good Mexican rifles” weren’t necessarily made in Mexico, but were bought with Mexican financial and logistical assistance in evading British and French arms blockades.
They’re baaaaaack…
One point of ire for the big business community is the AMLO administration’s efforts to force businesses to pay their current and back taxes, in order to provide much-needed government revenue.
The old Mexican fascist families (the Abascals), right-wing journalists, anti-Semites, Legionaries of Christ, the Washington Post (!!!– Carlos Loret de Mola), your handy dandy guide to the “Frente Anti-AMLO” … claiming 2 million members (which works out to about 1.66% of the Mexican populace). Unfortunately, it’s the one (point six) percenters who benefit the most from the old regime, and have most of the money.
Meet the far-right oligarchs working to topple Mexico’s progressive President AMLO
A Trump-like Mexican oligarch, Gilberto Lozano, is leading a coalition of corporate leaders and far-right fanatics called FRENA to try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
By José Guadalupe Argüello III and Ben NortonAndrés Manuel López Obrador’s victory in Mexico’s 2018 presidential election marked a historic feat, promising a respite from a roughly 40-year period of continuous neoliberal rule over the country.
López Obrador, better known as AMLO, is taking Mexico down a new route toward greater national autonomy. Under a revolutionary process that he calls the Fourth Transformation, he is fighting systemic corruption and rampant theft of public resources, while boosting social benefits for the poor.
Give this man a statue
With statues of slave holders being pulled down throughout the United States, and replacements being sought, maybe Nathaniel Jackson might be a good replacement. Who?
Jackson had grown up the son of an Alabama plantation owner. Common at the time, the children of the massa were allowed to play with the slave children, up until the slaves were big enough to send off to the fields. Nathaniel’s favorite playmate was Matilda Hicks, and… playing together when they were about five years old … promised to marry her when he grew up. Which, surprisingly enough, he did at some point in the 1850s. Or at least, openly lived with her, buying her (and her three children from unknown fathers) emancipation.
Upon inheriting the plantation in 1857, he liberated his slaves, sold the land, and… with Matilda, her kid, their kids, a few other “mixed families” and whatever former slaves wanted to come, headed west, intending to establish a free colony in northern Mexico. That none of the party spoke Spanish, and Nathaniel was a committed Protestant… as much as cheap land… was probably responsible for them settling on the banks of the Rio Grande /Bravo del Norte. The isolated Jackson Ranch was both a destination where escaped slaves could either take their chances and “pass” as freemen with some assurance that their neighbors could fend off slave hunters, or … with the assistance of Jackson’s Tejano neighbors… get some lessons in Spanish and Mexican customs before crossing the river.
It’s estimated that about 4000 people self-liberated themselves by way of the Jackson Ranch, although how many stayed in Mexico, how many assimilated into the Mexican population and how many returned after the American Civil War is unknown.
Carrizal: 21 June 1916
The last battle between the United States and Mexico had global implications far beyond the embarrasment of the professional US Army’s loss to a patched together Mexican Army.
AMLO: live long and prosper
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, and it lacks the soaring goals of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”speech, but AMLO’s “Decalogue for exiting the coronavirus and confronting the new reality” (if it becomes even a minor classic, it needs a snappier name) presents an idealistic though perhaps at least somewhat realistic path towards the future.
(adapted from a report by Alma E. Muñoz in today’s Jornada)
In presenting a “Decalogue for exiting the coronavirus and confronting the new reality,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for “the meaning of life to be fully restored,” to go out safely and optimistically to return to the streets; “carry out our usual activities and live without fear or fear”. He called for the people to stay informed of sanitary provisions, seek a path of spirituality and “defend the right to enjoy the sky, the sun, the fresh air, flora, fauna, and all of nature.”
… he proposed turning our back on selfishness, “being more caring and humane”, loosing our racist, classist, discriminatory or sexist attitudes; moving away from consumerism and leaving materialism behind; not consuming “junk food”, eating organic products, losing weight, exercising and living without stress. And, “If you have an addiction to tobacco and alcohol, seek treatment to eliminate them.”
After praising the populace for “without authoritarianism, in a very disciplined and even stoic manner, [most people ] obeyed the instructions of the political and health authorities; staying at home, keeping a healthy distance and apply personal hygiene measures like never before. ” He added that the measures adopted and generally accepted have been essential to “preventing an exponential growth in infections, not saturating the hospitals and saving as many lives as medically and humanly possible.”
But added a call for serenity and self-confidence, and a few health tips: “Stand up, don’t sit for so long, walk, run, stretch, meditate; apply everything you consider to be good for your body, for your body.
In presenting a “decalogue to get out of the coronavirus and face the new reality,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for “the meaning of life to be fully restored,” to go out safely and optimistically on the street; “carry out our usual activities and live without fear or fear”. He called to stay informed of sanitary provisions, seek a path of spirituality and “defend the right to enjoy the sky, the sun, the fresh air, flora, fauna, and all of nature.”
13 days after the new normality, he proposed turning his back on selfishness, “being more caring and humane”, not having racist, classist, discriminatory or sexist attitudes; move away from consumerism and leave materialism behind; not consume “junk food”, eat organic products, lose weight, exercise and live without stress. “If you have an addiction to tobacco and alcohol, seek treatment to eliminate them.”
After “long, painful and uncertain days due to the Covid-19 pandemic”, the head of the Executive considered that “we have already had enough time to familiarize ourselves with the medical recommendations and the sanitary provisions. Now is the time to put them into practice following our own criteria “, with independence and responsibility. The best medicine in the face of the danger of contagion and disease, he added, is prevention.
In a video broadcast on social networks, he stressed yesterday that “without authoritarianism,” most people, “in a very disciplined and even stoic manner, have obeyed the instructions of the political and health authorities; they stay at home, they keep their healthy distance and personal hygiene measures are applied like never before. “
López Obrador added that this “has been essential to prevent an exponential growth in infections, not to saturate hospitals and to save as many lives as has been medically and humanly possible.”
He called for serenity and self-confidence. “There can be no problems that make us ill or have no solution. Everything can be solved without anguish, without suffering stress, anxiety,” he said from the National Palace. “Stand up, don’t sit for so long, walk, run, stretch, meditate; apply everything you consider to be good for your body, for your body.”
He proposed to reinforce cultural values and regardless of having a religion, “whether you are a believer or not, look for a path of spirituality, an ideal, a utopia, a dream, a purpose in life; something that strengthens you internally, in your self-esteem and to keep you active, enthusiastic, happy, fighting, working and loving loved ones, your neighbor, nature and the country. “
And.. drink more water, eat your vegetables, and watch your weight. He cited corn, beans, seasonal fruits, vegetables, fish, particularly tuna because it has a low price. He added that it was ok to eat meat, after “ensuring that they are from the yard and pasture, not fattened with hormones.”
He also invited to share if you have more than what is needed. “Let us not harden our hearts,” he added.
What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is negotiable.
The Mexican tax service (SAT, Servicio de Administración Tributaria) has estimated that the Canadian mining firm, First Majestic, owes AT THE VERY LEAST 180 million, 3000 US dollars (about 4.12 US billion pesos) in back taxes. Not counting fines for unpaid taxes from 2010 to 2018, and the final bill, including taxes on unreported transfers to third parties, is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 42.8 US billion pesos (about 2.6 billion Canadian dollars, or 1.9 billion US$).
Naturally, First Magestic is trying to weasel out, insisting on arbitration under the terms of the NAFTA treaty, which was in force during that period. So far, Mexico is only trying to convince the Canadian government to “persuade” First Majestic not to try wiggling out of their obligations, but to pony up, but to sit down with SAT and maybe find a few legitimate deductions. Walmart did, bringing down their 10 billion (thousand million to everyone not in the US) peso bill to a measly 8 billion.
First Majestic isn’t by any means the only mining company (overwhelmingly Canadian owned) that haven’t been paying their taxes. As Jornada’s economy and business writer Carlos Fernández-Vega writes in his influential México S.A. column:
>a good portion of the juicy businesses and the abundant profits that transnational companies make and obtain in Mexico come from the privileged fiscal treatment… that the neoliberals granted them. In return, whoever was in Los Pinos [the former Mexican presidential compound] boasted that this foreign direct investment was a sign of the “trust and respect” that these consortia had in their government.
Pure blah, blah, blah because foreign capital is invested in the country where it earns the greatest profit and there is the least responsibility, be it fiscal, labor, ecological or legal (rather all of the above)….
But now that the party is over, transnational companies do not want to pay the taxes that by law they owe. And, as always, they resort to blackmail, threatening to leave the country and / or resort to international courts, citing past “agreements”, although – it is supposed – when they settled in Mexico, they accepted that if necessary, the only legal authority would be the Mexican one.
Need one point out that this has been the law (constitutionally, if you want to get technical) that all foreigners, including corporations, are subject to Mexican law. And that the minerals belong to the Mexican state, not the company that extracts them (though, though concessions, they can profit — and they do quite handsomely — from the extraction of said mineral), and that the state always has the right to cancel the concession, or to, if they need, expropriate the business? Cheaper by far for First Majestic to pony up, and for the other mining firms to fall in line, rather than try and rely on the defunct NAFTA treaty and some other unrelated treaty with Luxembourg.
Carbajal, Braulio. “Reclama el SAT a la minera First Majestic al menos 180.3 mdd“, Jornada, 11 June 2020
“First Majestic initiates arbitration over tax dispute in Mexico.” Mining Journal, 14 May 2020
Fernández-Vega, Carlos. “Mexico SA: Mineras canadienses, una vez más // Evasoras del fisco y chantajistas” Jornada, 11 June 2020
Jamasmie, Cecilia. “First Majestic takes Mexico tax dispute to arbitration” Mining.com, 14 may 2020
mexfiles.net 