I’m sorry, so sorry. I was such a fool…
… please accept my apology…
One thing that makes multi-party politics so confusing is that rival are allies, except when one of the allies supposed rivals is also a ally… and if that confuses you, you’re not alone.
The lefty PRD and righty PAN are allied in several states against the PRI. However, the PRD is also making noise about the PAN/PRI “agreement” that, in return for PRI support of a tax bill in the Chamber of Deputies, PAN would not mount a serious challenge to PRI for the governorship of the State of Mexico. This is important, because the sitting Governor, Enrique Peña Neito is presumed PRI choice for their presidential candidate in 2012. PRI party chair Beatriz Paredes and PAN chair Cesár Nava both issued denials that there was such a deal … which, of course, no one believes.
I’ve always been impressed with Paredes as a politician. A large woman given to wearing indigenous clothing she exudes the confidence of a woman who understands that she has to be twice as good to get half the respect of a man… and earns it the hard way. Of course, she’s going to play political games, and the disappointment that many felt when she supported restrictions on abortions in the states (in response to liberalization of abortion laws in the PRD-controlled Federal District) make sense if she’s playing power politics and making back room deals with PAN.
PAN’s Cesár Nava, by contrast, never has impressed me. I always think of him as the the nondescript baby-faced guy. Cartoonists usually draw him with a piggy nose. At any rate, after being comparing to well-known nasally endowed Pinocchio, or afraid his nose would grow if he and Paredes agreed to a lie detector test, as was suggested.
Paredes, was ballsy enough to just dismiss the idea as undignified. Nava caved. Of course, the political sin was not the backroom deal, but the discovery of the deal, and the complications for the proposed PRD-PAN alliance in state elections. So, with his job on the line, Nava was grovelling before the Senate yesterday, saying his mea culpas.
It’s early in the Mexican political cycle for manouvering and double-dealing to become campaign issues (unlike the U.S., there aren’t “permanent campaigns” and at this time in the last Presidential election cycle, Felipe Calderón wasn’t even thought of as a candidate for PAN, nor for that matter did it look as if PRI would be still be around after the election, let alone rebuild its traditional role as the country’s main party). Still, no one can afford mistakes, or to alienate potential voters in the upcoming state elections.
And, that PAN-PRD alliance is making some politicos very testy. Senator Oscar Levín Coppel, a PRI deputy from Sinaloa and his party’s deputy coordinator (basically, the party “whip” for the largest party in the Chamber) sneered that the PAN-PRI alliance was “almost as perverse as being gay.” Which went over like a lead balloon, coming the same day same-sex marriages started being performed — to no real opposition — in the Federal District.
Seeing his party is having to walk a very fine line between placating the PRD if it wants to avoid more embarassing questions about the backroom alliance, and at the same time keep it’s informal PRI-PAN agreements from falling apart completely, his own party wasn’t about to back him up publically.
And, of course, PAN — finding that opposition to same-gender marriage is not about to become a burning campaign issue (and needing PRD support in states like Sinaloa) wasn’t going to come to Levín Coppel’s rescue. ON top of which, the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination (CONEPRED, for its long acronym in Spanish) filed a legal complaint against the Deputy.
Levín Coppel must be studying U.S. politicians. He offered an apology to “the gay community” at large, saying his remarks “unfortunately acquired a offensive significance which was unintended. ” Sure.
In a spirit of kiss and make up, even PAN Deputy Eduardo Robles Medina even apologized to the Green Party (which makes no bones about being a PRI ally) for throwing coins at them. Tossing things is considered extremely rude in Mexican society, and was meant to suggest the Greens were just allied to PRI for monetary reasons.
After promising to “turn over a new leaf” regularly scheduled bickering and back-stabbing resumes today.
Get your war on…
I don’t think it’s within the realm of plausibility, but as Carlos Slim continues his march to dominate the means of communication north and south of the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande, maybe he can make room for some alternatives to the dull talking heads that dominate the North of the Border airwaves. I could make a suggestion:
Nezua, “The Unapologetic Mexican”, has been unapologetically waging a guerrilla war on bullshit though writings, artwork and videos for a number of years now. He was one of the early regulars at the original Mex Files, especially when it was located in the United States, and wrote more on immigration and border issues. We were both approached separately at one time about writing a joint column for a proposed new Mexico City paper (which never came off the presses), and — more somewhere in all that activity, he did the cover and inside art work for Gods, Gachupines and Gringos.
Caviar to the general… and other agricultural news
While agriculture is a huge part of the Latin American in general, and Mexican in specific, economy, we almost never read anything about agriculture except when it relates to narcotics.
A couple of agriculture and international policy issues that may have been missed in the internet chatter:
With depletion of sturgeon stocks in the Caspian sea, and the price of caviar at 3500 USD per kilo wholesale, where are the Russians and Iranians going to get their fix of luxury products in the future?
A Russian firm is looking at Argentina:
Esturiones & Caviar SA signed a 15-year concession contract with the government of La Rioja whereby it will operate the fish farming plant in the town of Anillaco, where it will raise sturgeon for their precious eggs – caviar – and create 25 local jobs.
With sturgeon eggs selling for a heck of a lot more than marijuana, or even unrefined refined coca leaves… sturgeon farming seem like an ideal alternative crop for replacing the income that Latin American farmers would lose if they . However, sturgeon require a relatively temperate climate (which eliminates the coca-growing regions of the lower Andean slopes) and recirculating water — water being something in short supply in Mexico. HOWEVER, in Sierra Madres on the Sinaloa/Durango border, (where marijuana and opium poppies are a highly lucrative crop), there is an ideal climate and there is a massive hydroelectic dam project in process… which means recirculating water.
Alas, setting up a fish farm requires a massive economic investment and it is several years before the sturgeon start producing eggs (although farm raised sturgeon is also sold as food itself). But, seeing we have local entrepreneurs with experience in local agriculture and foreign marketing of luxury items. One of them is on the Forbes list of filthy-rich people, too.
Speaking of alternative crops, it’s not just the Russians who are looking at investing in Latin America. The United States Department of Agriculture is looking at working with the Mexican government on several projects, dealing with sustainable agriculture.
… several specific production projects will be introduced, including projects promoting rainwater recycling and the use of biological fertilizer and improved seeds.
I’m dubious about the “improved” seed part of that. It could mean just making Mexican farmers more dependent than ever on U.S. corporate agriculture firms like Monsanto, so this may be worth keeping an eye on.
Also worth keeping an eye on have been developments (or lack thereof) in Honduras. Hilary Clinton and the International Monetary Fund are claiming things are “back to normal”, which means… abnormal land development and the “normal” exploitation and misuse of the land that is at the root of political instability and… ultimately, the need to go into the narcotics industry to survive in rural Latin America. And… for Hermano Juancito something far worse: a sin.
The town has about 90 families, but only about 20 own enough land for coffee growing. About 80% of the land in their area is owned by a few large coffee plantations and by cattle ranchers who use the land for grazing.
Since many people in the village have little land – one person with less than .4 acres), the group asked them about buying the land.
First of all the land would cost about 80,000 lempiras (about $4234) per manzana (1.68 acres.) That’s about $2574 per acre. I just checked Iowa farm land prices; in 2009 the average value per acre was $4371.
The prices are thus very high – especially for people who for the most part make less than $1200 a year – the average for that area.
But that’s only part of the story. Much of the land is owned by cattle ranchers who use it and they won’t sell to campesinos, the people who work on the land. They will sell to other cattle ranchers but unlikely to sell to the poor, even at these high prices.
…
As I thought this over I cam back to thinking about my previous post and decided that I needed to do a careful study of Catholic Social Teaching on land reform especially the 1997 statement of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, “Towards a Better Distribution of Land: The Challenge of Agrarian Reform.”
…
The social teaching of the Church is very clear on this point, stating that agrarian reform is one of the most urgent reforms and cannot be delayed: “In many situations radical and urgent changes are therefore needed in order to restore to agriculture — and to rural people — their just value as the basis for a healthy economy, within the social community’s development as a whole.”
Get used to it
Marcelo Ebrard and several other top elected and judicial officials stood in as witnesses for the first five same-gender marriages, conducted at the Antigua Palacio del Ayuntamiento, the former city hall still used for the most important ceremonial events, — like papal visits… or, in the words of Heigel Cortés, Director of the Civil Registrar’s Office, who officiated the weddings:
… an historic day for Mexico City because we leave behind the traditional concept of family and liberate people, regardless of their sex, to marry.
(Photo: Reuters)
We are looking for you/ to start up a fight
I guess by heavy metal, they mean 1500 riot police and four tanks… With only fifty arrests and five people hospitalized, it sounds like the Metalica concert last night in Bogatá was a smash success.
Video posted by Mexican metal-head “Maxqpig”:
You can always trust a politician… to lie
Perhaps to give a little more crediblity to PAN leader Cesar Nava’s claims that the PRI and PAN did not have an agreement to coordinate their actions in the Chamber of Deputies in return for a “non aggression pact” in future elections, a substitute was sitting in his assigned seat in the Chamber yesterday. Photo by Marco Peláez, la Jornada.
Greedy gringos going for the whole enchilada
Is no sector of the Mexican economy untouched by the gringos?
New York Times this morning:
Authorities say a U.S.-born hitman is fighting the brother of a deceased drug lord for control of the Beltran-Leyva cartel, marking what may be the first time an American has risen to the very top ranks of Mexican gangs.
The Times article is a AP wire report, which makes me wonder if the description of Édgar Valdez Villarreal, as “U.S.-born” instead of “U.S. citizen”, or even “American” isn’t intentional.
As it happens, Valdez’ nickname, La Barbie — is due as much to his gringo-tude as to his blond hair and blue eyes — something I picked up from a five year old Vanguardia (Chihuahua) article. La Barbie, as far as I can remember, has always been identified as a U.S. citizen here, and while I don’t have his birth certificate, there’s never been any question about the Laredo Texas born hitman’s citizenship.
I don’t mean that the Associated Press is involved in some conspiracy or conscious institutional bias against Mexican-Americans, but only that by using “U.S. born” the article is meant to distance itself from U.S. responsibility in the “drug war” and cast doubt on Valdez’ nationality.
The AP article mentions, after several paragraphs, Juan Garcia Abregu, a cocaine smuggler of the 1980s who claimed to have been born in the United States after he was arrested. As often is the case, the AP adds extraneous and irrelevant information, by design or accident, suggesting that U.S. citizens are not involved in the narcotics industry in Mexico. This is the flip side of those “AMERICANS KILLED IN MEXICO” stories that mix accidents or fights or robberies with those killed by their fellow gangsters.
Of course U.S. gangsters (and banksters, and policemen and politicians) are involved in the narco-biz. Malcolm Beith echoes my suggestion this morning, speculating on complete legalization of the narcotics production and export business. One benefit I hadn’t considered would be the effect of Mexican regulations on business ownership of Mexican companies. Even with NAFTA, a firm having real property in Mexico has a “Mexican jurisdictional persona” — in other words, agrees that as a business, it is subject to Mexican law. An above-the-board narcotics enterprise would have to make the percentage of foreign investment (and the investors) public knowledge, and — who knows — maybe bring back some of those supposed billions of dollars being earned by Mexican labor to Mexico.
And, while I have no opinion on the widely-held belief that the Calderón government “favors” Chapo Guzmán’s Sinaloa operation, I would point out that it, at least, and as far as I can tell, is 100 percent Mexican, whereas the others seem to have significant U.S. participation.
2009: The Year of Living Dangerously?
Arturo Herrera, an economist who worked for the Federal District during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tenure as Jefe de gobierno, published this in El País (Madrid), 7 March 2010 (my translation).
At a meeting in early December, President Felipe Calderón referred to 2009 as “The Year of Living Dangerously.” As some readers (at least those of a certain age) will recall, this was the title of a 1982 film by the extraordinary Australian director Peter Weir. I am thrilled to learn that our politicians are movie buffs, but I believe the Mexican president was at the wrong movie.
A few days ago the figures were released on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the last quarter of last year. This allows us to try to make an initial assessment of economic performance in 2009. Given the unflattering portrait of the Mexican economy, I’m not sure the concept of narrowly escaping danger is accurate.
GDP declined 6.5 percent last year, the steepest fall since 1932 when, amid the Great Depression, Mexican GDP contracted by almost 15%. To put “la crisis” in perspective one needs to remember the internal financial collapse of 1995, when GDP fell 6.2 percent, slightly less than the drop in 2009.
But if the collapse of GDP was dramatic, the effects on the rest of the economy were not minor. As everyone knows, if there is no production there are no jobs: the average unemployment rate increased from 4 percent to almost 5.5 percent in 2009, by far the highest figure since adopting a new methodology in 2000. Moreover, this indicator was shot up again in January of this year, when unemployment reached 5.87 percent, which is unfortunately a sign that the the crisis is far from dead.
Some economic sectors suffered worse than others. And there are still sectors that suffered most. As we know, the automotive industry in the United States was affected to such an extent that both Chrysler and General Motors had to declare bankruptcy (entering so-called “Chapter 11”) and it is not surprising that this sector in Mexico – particularly the auto parts and components suppliers – suffered to the same extent. According to figures from the Mexican Labor Secretariat, permanent jobs in the automotive processing industry fell ten percent (!) in 2009, a tragedy for that sector.
The U.S. crisis affected us in many ways, one of the most note-worthy being the aforementioned automotive industry, but another equally serious one was the fall in remittances from Mexicans abroad. Having dropped from 25.137 billion dollars in 2008 to 21.181 billion in 2009 alone, the issue is even more critical if one considers that remittances had dropped nearly five percent from 2007 levels in 2008.
This is yet another indicator that 2010 does not look necessarily like an improvement. The decrease in remittances has a major impact on the flow of dollars entering the country, but perhaps the more significant effect is that of the fall in money transfers to the families of migrants, many of whom are among the poorest people in the country.
One of the cruelest effects of a crisis is on poverty, particularly in the so-called food poverty — the measurement of the number of persons unable to purchase adequate food supplies. Last July CONEVAL (National Council for Social Policy Evaluation) reported that food poverty numbers rose from an affected 4.4 to 19.5 million people. This issue is even more disturbing when you consider that the 2009 figures are based on an income-expenditure survey from 2008, when the crisis has not yet peaked in Mexico.
Thus, almost every economic indicator shows a bleak picture. That’s why I was surprised by the Mexican President’s analogy to “The Year of Living Dangerously” – suggesting we had narrowly avoided a serious crises, or as if it had not yet affected Mexico. The only thing that makes sense of the President’s cinematic reference to the 2009 economic picture is that he sees himself as director Peter Weir, and Agustín Carstens, Finance Minister until December and central bank governor today, as Mel Gibson.
FeCal's Year of Dangerous Analogies
The film, of course, told the story of a naive observer (Gibson) of a massive crisis (the Indonesian Civil War of 1965) who makes an ethical compromise that and destroys others to protect himself.
By the way, the Administration is NOW claiming that the Mexican economy will grow four or five percent this year, while a Tec de Monterrey study shows 2,000,000 Mexicans have fallen below the poverty line since Calderón was installed in office. Of course, the Administration also claims it is “winning” a war against drug exporters.
Open late
Good news.. for taco vendors, if no one else: there is broad agreement within the Federal District legislature to restore the 5 A.M. closing time for bars and nightspots from the new, and unpopular 3 A.M. last call.
I understand the earlier closing time was meant to cut down on drunk driving and whatnot, but if one goes clubbing in Mexico City midnight is still very early, and nothing really gets interesting until at least 2. Not being a drinker (and being of an age where a pre-clubbing two-hour minimum siesta is a requirement for this sort of activity), I can’t deny that the bulk of club goers are still sober, or reasonably so, at 3 A.M.
However, while attendance at these facilities usually implies one is in search of Señor/ita Right (or — more likely — Right-now), the later closing time might have a more beneficial effect for one’s health and morals. My observation (and — not being young, pretty and/or rich — more limited than I’d prefer experience) is that the five A.M. closing works against making a hasty, and potentially disastrous, choice of partner. Instead, one can revel in a slowly building sense of expectation, while w several hours of frentic vertical activity on the dance-floor ultimately lead to physical exhaustion … to the realization that you have to take Abuela to Mass in a couple of hours. Safe sex, Chilango-style.
And, the 5 A.M. closing could mean safer streets. The Metro doesn’t open until 6 A.M… or 7 on Sunday morning: nothing like a bit of fresh air and a taco or two or four to bring you to your senses. And, even for the drinking crowd, it means someone else is driving.
Only half?
Patrick Corcoran (of Ganchoblog) has been garnering a lot of positive reaction for his article in Mexidata on Felipe Calderón’s failure as a strategist in the “war on drugs.” Patrick’s basic arguement is that Calderón doesn’t have a strategy.
It’s an excellent article and worth reading, even — as Patrick himself notes — that he should have written more about human rights abuses. I don’t agree with everything in the article, of course. Count me among those who ” focus on unprovable theses (Calderón’s strategy was motivated by a desire to legitimate himself after winning a closely contested election)” and — as Patrick commented on with regard to an Excelsior survey — one who shares the the belief of half of all Mexicans that the Calderón Administration is avoiding a confrontation with Chapo Guzmán.
While the survey was not broken down by state, I’d venture an umprovable thesis that here in Sinaloa, the belief that Chapo is untouchable (or purposely avoided) would probably poll closer to 80 or 90 percent of those asked.
I know I believe that, and I suspect that a lot of my neighbors either believe it, or hope it’s true. Chapo, like it or not, is something of a folk hero to many (even in my middle-class Mazatlán neighborhood, one hears corridos celebrating Chapo’s exploits) and — while his organization may be more brutal than, say, Starbucks or WalMart when it comes to driving competitors out of the market — people tend to side with locally owned and operated employers and investors over outsiders. Here in Mazatlán, not too many people regret the Arellano Felix brothers losing their sizable investments, although some realtors and developers would like to see some of those prime locations come onto the market rather than sit and deteriorate. Besides, this is a tourist resort… with a long history of smuggling and piracy. Where do you think a lot of investment funds are coming from?
And, not to put too fine a point on it, the tomato business isn’t all that hot, and narcotics, unlike gold and silver extraction, at least is run by local interests (and is less environmentally damaging).
It’s not that people are pro-narco even, but that they are realists. And it certainly appears to us as if the Administration is by-passing Chapo. The body count in the State as a whole is appalling, but everyone can see that it’s not Chapo’s guys who are taking a bullet, or Chapo’s organization that’s being targeted, but rather rivals and wannabe replacements like the Beltran Leyva clan… or, one suspects, those being murdered for other reasons, but chalked up to “drug war victims”. And, for many, the government agents are the bigger human rights abusers than the gangsters, whose human rights abuses (when it doesn’t involve dismembered corpses, anyway) are less likely the subject of media coverage.
I was hesitant about writing this post. This does not mean I, or my neighbors FAVOR the narcos, or are necessarily sympathetic to them. It does mean that I haven’t seen the government doing a good job of justifying it’s actions, or, in Chapo’s case, seeming lack of action (other than denying that there is a lack of action) and that it would be short-sighted to assume everyone supports the government’s actions, or that those who disbelieve the government’s claims are entirely illogical in their assumptions.
A woman’s place…
Today is International Women’s Day. As with International Workers’ Day (May first), it began as a commemoration of a labor tragedy in the United States, picked up initially by international socialists as a means to raise consciousness for organized labor groups, and eventually broadened to include society outside those working for wages.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. which led to changes in U.S. labor codes, and fire safety codes, as well as strengthening the then still suspect organized labor movement, was 25 March 1911, but the commemoration began being held the first Monday in March. Somehow March 8 became the standard day as International Womens Day became less and less about industrial worker safety, was de-radicalized and co-opted by governments around the world. Still, since wage workers are not the only women in the workforce, it’s worth a holiday.
A recent Reuters/IPSOS poll found that about a quarter of adults world-wide (and surprisingly a highter number than that among younger adults) believe that women should not work outside the home.
In Mexico, however, the attitude is certainly not held, with only nine percent of Mexicans believing this. Women have always worked outside the home in Mexico, and there are a few indigenous cultures (like the Zapotec) where it is women, not men, who dominate economic and political life. In some of these traditionalist communities, it is still not uncommon to see working men in drag… it’s not that they’re transvestites (although the Zapotec recognize a third gender) so much as that it’s that the assumption is that if you’re doing certain jobs, you dress a certain way… and that way means you wear a dress.
Women hold down important jobs throughout the country — as party chiefs, government secretaries (Rosaria Green was Foreign Secretary long before Madeline Albright became the first U.S. Secretary of State), Party bosses, large and small business owners, governors, union leaders, municipal presidents, doctors, lawyers, police chiefs and gangland bosses.
Probably the only sector of society where one still does not find working women is among combat soldiers — although women were soldiers during the Revolution, and among “informal” military groups like the Zapatistas (whose uprising was led by a woman) and the gangster hit squads are not open to women — and in los Pinos. Women have become president throughout Latin America (with Dilma Rousseff Linhares of Brazil likely to join the list next year) and it’s hardly unthinkable.
The weekly Desde la fé editorial (not available on line yet) claims the Federal District government is following “foreign patterns” in “promoting” abortion, same gender marriage and encouraging people to ride bicycles.
Accusations of foreign influence are regularly hurled at opponents as a way of delegitimizing the opponent’s issues, but usually such accusations come from the government… and this is the first time I’ve heard the Mexican regional branch office of an Italian-based multinational with a German CEO and Swiss security guards hurl such an accusation. I’m not sure even God knows what they were thinking.
SINNERS: same-sex married abortionists on bicycle*
*Note to witless: I have no idea of the actual sexual orientation or marital status of the people in the photo, nor of their trade or profession, if any. However, they aren’t Mexicans and they are riding a bicycle. And that’s shady enough.
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