Friday Night Video for men (and women) with balls
Cindy Casares at Guanabee digs below the surface of my short post on Los Topos, uncovering the story of the men and women who — as original Topo Hector “el Chino” Mendez says — have the “balls to enter where no one else wants to” . Cindy excavated this video from a May 2007 you-tube upload:
Corruption is in the eye of the beholder
I’ve pretty much stopped reading about U.S. political campaigns because it’s all about which candidate has raised the most money, not about which candidate is supporting what position, or is allied with which faction or is pushing what idea. How much money the position, faction or idea is worth to the candidate… that’s what you read about.
Foreign campaign contributions are illegal in this country, “corporations” tehncially don’t exist, and above all, are not people and most bribery is penny-ante stuff. Not that Mexico is a hotbed of rampant honesty, but at least we have the good manners and common sense to refer to cash given to politicians in return for future favors as “corruption”, and don’t try and doll it up with some legalistic interpretation used by the totally corrupt regimes around the Hemisphere in giving legal blessing to criminality.
In today’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as “natural persons”, i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President.
The ruling, which junks federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers, will not, as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that’s already happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and “bundling” of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers.
The Court’s decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.
I’m losing sleep over the millions — or billions — of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation’s U.S. unit; or from the maker of “New Order” fashions, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.
Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC’s federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.
But under today’s Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.
Jail the messenger?
Sure.
A new proposal by Mexico’s ruling party could result in musicians being sent to prison for performing songs that glorify drug trafficking.
The proposed legislation would mean sentences of up to three years for people performing or producing songs or films that glamorise criminals.
“Society sees drug ballads as nice, pleasant, inconsequential and harmless – but they are the opposite,” Oscar Martin Arce, a National Action party MP, told the Associated Press.
The ballads – known as narcocorridos – often describe drug trafficking and violence and are popular among some norteño bands.
After some killings, gangs pipe narcocorridos and threatening messages into police radio scanners.
Martin said his party’s proposal, presented to congress on Wednesday, was also intended to combat low-budget films praising druglords. It remained unclear when it would be voted on.
“We cannot accept it as normal. We cannot exalt these people because they themselves are distributing these materials among youths to lead them into a lifestyle where the bad guy wins,” Martin said.
He added that the proposal’s intention was not to limit free expression but to stop such performances from inciting crimes, claiming one alleged murderer had told police he became involved in crime because he liked narcocorridos…
And playing Country-Western backwards makes your wife faithful and your dog come home.
Well, this is interesting
From Hemispheric Brief:
… [Honduras]’s de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti, said he too is moving out of the presidential palace this week—a place he’s called home since the June 28 coup. Micheletti made sure to emphasize that he is not technically “stepping down,” just removing himself from the spotlight temporarily in order to pave the way for president-elect Lobo. “In the coming days I will adopt a lower public profile and step aside, so the new government has more room to act,” the coup leader told Channel 5 TV in Honduras. Micheletti’s cabinet will apparently be assuming presidential responsibilities for the next few days, ahead of the Jan. 27 inauguration.
In other words, having made the claim that he was protecting the Honduran Constitution when he became “president” because the President had left his post (never mind that he was in his PJs and forced out at bayonet point), Micheletti is now abandoning the job, and letting the Cabinet run things… something decidedly NOT in the Honduran Constitution.
Can’t wait for the crazy expats who all got their knickers in a twist claiming the coup wasn’t a coup because the Constitution was followed (as it is — according the letter — in most coups) still isn’t a coup since the Constitution isn’t being followed. This is gonna be fun.
God and Man (and Joe Stalin) in Chiapas
Jason Dormandy (Secret History) writes on what is probably the most under-reported social issue in Mexico:
Demonstrators in San Cristobal de las Casas entered their seventh day of protest for expulsions and violence done to them by local Catholics in Chiapas since mid January and earlier. Some families have been expelled from communities while others have been detained for failure to participate in Catholic community festivals.
Such violence is not new – we’ve seen Catholic on Protestant expulsions for twenty years now as well as pro-government Protestant on Catholic violence since the Zapatista revolution started…
Jason is THE go-to guy when it comes to discussions of religious minorities in Latin America (Mexico in particular) and, while I’ve mentioned the religious persecutions in Chiapas, admit I completely missed the latest twist in an on-going story. This is a complex situation, and needs to receive more discussion, but outside of the Evangelical press, isn’t much talked about.
While I might not react as strongly as my former co-writer, Lyn, did to U.S. style Protestants, and their evangelizing in Central America, I agree that there has been a “hidden agenda” at work:
Evangelical missionary work is a “glorified” pyramid scheme that keeps on giving! Their real goal isn’t to “save souls”, it’s to build their army. The real “mission” is to put up high numbers in order to influence governments for their own self-interests. The end-game is world domination. It’s a lobbying movement to end all lobbying movements. The Catholic Church did it in Mexico centuries ago and now the Evangelicals, the Mormons, the Muslims etc, are back (in Mexico) to increase their own flocks…. full steam ahead.
Evangelism is unethical. It is dishonest and arrogant to impose ones beliefs on another culture by the use of trickery and deception. Whether they come with guitars, or candy, on skateboards or in caravans…. they bring trouble. Every man, woman or child, peasant or scholar has the right to his/her own spiritual beliefs and practices.
All true in a way, but cultures are going to change, and cannot be isolated against the outside world. It would have been no more possible to “save” Chiapas from Evangelism than it would be to save it from telenovelas and rock-n-roll… or the rural electrification that made such “corrupting influences” possible.
The issue isn’t much discussed outside the Evangelical press for a couple of reasons. First, many of us feel as Lyn2 does, that U.S. Evangelical organizations seem bent not just in selling the “American Way of God”, but an economic and cultural mindset that we abhor… and which we made a decision to leave behind when we moved abroad.
Secondly, what many of us see of U.S. Evangelical efforts in Mexico (and Central America) makes us suspicious of these groups as imperialist agents. It’s impossible not to note that U.S. based Evangelical organizations have tended to support the most reactionary regimes in the region (think of Guatemalan dictator, and murderous loon, Efrían Rios Montt’s support by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson — or the support given the coup in Honduras by “The Family”).
However, as Jason sort of takes for granted, and harder to wrap our minds around, is that the Evangelicals in Chiapas as “native” groups… or, rather, are local adaptions of imports to meet local needs. Sort of like the local variants on Roman Catholicism, or even the traditional religions of Chiapas. As it is, even the “traditional” Mayan religions of the pre-conquest included “foreign” — mostly Nahautl — influences. As to their political stance, if they have one, evangelicals in Mexico tend to be leftists… ironically, considering the politics of the better known (or noisy) U.S. groups, out of fear of the Mexican “traditional values” right-wing, which is Roman Catholic.
We tend to write off claims of “Christian persecution” in the United States as whining — and it usually boils down to complaints that the majority has to recognize the rights of minorities. In Mexico, the persecution is very real, and can’t be so airily dismissed. Of course, in the United States, we think support for, or at least tolerance of, minorities is a “leftist” or progressive value. But, in supporting minority rights, we ignore the rights of minorities within minorities.
This creates a real conundrum for the wannabe sympathetic foreigner. Most of the intelligent conversation about Mexico comes from the left (the exception was the now-defunct satirical “Surreal Oaxaca”), and in Chiapas, that tends to mean support for the indigenous COMMUNITIES in opposition to the state. And — to be honest about it — a good deal of romantic nonsense.
During the Oaxaca uprising, I was part of a “Yahoo Group” discussing the situation. I was appalled by some of the plain misinformation being disseminated by one regular poster (who was considered a reporter on a widely read Mexican alternative media source) and — correcting the information (specifically, referring to a private security guard as a state official, misleading readers into assuming state sanctioned violence in one incident) led to a ridiculous demand that I sign an “confession of good faith” supporting the APPO. I thought — but did not say — “fuck you”, limiting myself to telling the group that I only made confessions to my priest and dropping the group.
What I learned from that ridiculous situation is that foreigners writing about Chiapas and indigenous rebellion in the Mexican south have to be taken with a very large grain of salt (and an aspirin). The fact is, much of the writing from the region has either been co-opted by the myth of the noble savage … that a “return to nature” means peace and harmony for all … or, the commentators are simply propagandists for one of these groups, usually the Zapatistas. When I received my demand for confession, I joked that the Stalinists were sending me to Cyber-eria, but it wasn’t completely a joke. Like it or not, the Zapatista movement includes a fair share of Stalinism (Marcos, aka Rafael Gullien, being exhibit “A”) — an adaption of a foreign import to Mexican conditions, by the way — and even more of a forced imposition of “traditional values”.
I’m not going to get into a thesis on the Zapatistas (and why I consider them a reactionary, not progressive, movement), nor riff on the Mexican constitution and the contradiction between “communal” and individual rights. Nor, am I unconscious of the fact that within even a small group (whether a “Yahoo Group”, expats within a given geographical community or a small village in Chiapas) dissenters and non-conformists are always unpopular and vulnerable to acts of intolerance.
I suppose there might be some kind of defense for burning people’s houses down for not paying some local tax, but it’s rather extreme. But I haven’t seen any defense mentioned by anyone. Nor will I expect to. But that comment on situations that challenge our preconceptions and ideology about Mexico is so very rare … that is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
Any census in asking?
With the plausible excuse that a shorter census form means less expense, and the government needs to save money, INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography, for its initials in Spanish) has shorted the 79 question 2000 census form to a mere 29 questions.
There is some speculation that the present administration would just as not know about some information which would force them to rethink some social policies. By not asking questions about family nutrition and food supply (asked in previous censuses), there is some question of how serious this administration is about farm policy, for example.
The choices given for “Religion” (Catholic, none or other) appear designed to skew answers towards the first of those choices. This reinforces the assumption that “Mexico is a Catholic country” which — while probably true in that the majority of people identify themselves as “Catholic” it tells us nothing about their beliefs, practices or true self-identity. However, it does make it easier for the present PAN administration to ignore minority concerns and have some rationale for continuing to promote “traditional (Catholic) values”.
The form does include typically “Mexican” — and socially useful — questions like what kind of roof is on one’s home (cardboard and palm-leafs are among the possible responses), whether one has an indoor privy, and what type, if any, of health insurance plan one is covered under. We have a couple of different national health plans, none of which are completely universal.
Mexico does not recognize “race” in any legal sense, and the question would never be raised. People who tell you — and tell you with complete sincerity — that this country is some percentage European, some percentage “mestizo” and some percentage “indigenous” are full of shit. Any numbers they claim to have seen are pure guesswork at best. Mexico does consider CULTURAL identity, which is largely self-defined. If Nahuatl twins both marry the daughters of Spanish immigrants, and one twin moves to Mexico City, where his children speak Spanish, and live a modern, urban lifetyle, those children are probably not indigenous, where the children of the twin who stays in his village, and speak Nahautl, probably are. Bloodlines have nothing to do with it.
There is only an indirect method of determining this, and the only question that relates to culture seems skewed to under-counting minorities. There is a question asking if a person speaks a “lingua o dialecto indigena“, otherwise, nothing about minority cultures. The Secretariat of Public Education, in Catàlogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales (Diario Official de la Federación, 14 de enero de 2008) specifies that there is no such thing as a “dialecto” — only “variantes” (seeing there is no way to decide which of the eight different forms of of Zoque, there, logically can’t be one that is “standard” making the other seven mere “dialects” that can be safely ignored by educators).
The United States Census Bureau, which — reflecting U.S. culture and history — obsesses over “race” and racial identity is in something of a pickle this year regarding those Mexican immigrants (and children of immigrants) who self-identify in the Mexican sense as “indigenous” but may also, in the U.S. sense, be considered “Native Americans.” While there are some people, like Apaches, that have always lived in both countries (or, like the Yaquì, have been long established in the United States), there are those like recent Mixtec immigrants… who speak a number of related “native American” languages, but are not historically indigenous to the United States.
As it is, the Mexican census will give an incomplete picture of national minorities, completely ignoring the unofficial, but widely spoken, European languages. Working for a publisher in one of those minority languages (English, German — including Platdeutch, Italian, French, Basque and Catalan are spoken in various parts of Mexico) I’d like to know how many of us there really are.
Hard times
Rolly Brook (in MexConnect) on the economic crisis:
The head of the Lerdo health department has reported a noticeable decline in the number of registered sex workers. He says the tight money situation has driven these ladies to work for the maquiladoras. It’s a sure sign of bad times when the ladies of the night give up their night jobs.
They sing of thee
How come nobody sings about Carlos Slim?
Right now he’s seeking to merge his three phone companies and expand into the lucrative cable and data business, and depending on the federal government to “liquidate” potential competitors, the biggest having been SME, the Mexico City area electrical utility, which controlled access to data cables.
Think he’d be at least as song-worthy to Sinaloa’s best known captain of industry (ok, pirate-chief of industry) who has also been depending on the federal government to liquidate HIS rivals. But, then, Carlos hasn’t escaped from the slammer and headed for the hills, the way Chapo did on 19 January 2001, turning him into song-worthy material.
Perverse and unnatural unions
It seems the Church isn’t the only organization in Mexico that wants to decide what is, and what isn’t, “natural” when it comes to associations.
PRI Senate leader Mario Fabio Beltrones sneers that such unions are “unnatural” , and presidential hopeful, State of Mexico Governor, Enrique Peña Nieto called them “perverse. Not THAT — although even the party’s General Secretary hasn’t a clue what the party line is, but the proposed PAN-PRD fusion tickets in the PRI controlled states of Hidalgo, Durango and Oaxaca in this years gubernatorial elections. Other than a PAN’s inistance (which is probably negotiable) that PRD recognize Felipe Calderón as the “legitimate president” of Mexico (which may be negotiable demand), the union would be no more perverse than any other marriage of convenience and could produce off-spring.
Going back to Mexican independence (when Criollo landowners, the church and peasant leaders agreed on a single formula for independence), compromise and mutual interests have always been the way politics works in this country. Historically, the PRI was an outgrowth of Plutarco Elías Calles’ Mexican Revolutionary Party, which united the “Revolutionary Family” of anarchists, peasant traditionalists, nationalists, proto-fascists, communists, socialists, democrats, syndicalists … and opportunists … into a single political machine. With so many moving parts, the machine didn’t always function as well as it should, but gave years of service. Last time I checked, PRI was ostensibly socialist, although with its pure “neo-liberal” and pro-capitalist stances over the last few years, hard to say.
While PAN has always adhered to a fairly “pure” ideology, the intermural squabbles of the last few years (and its disastrous showing in the 2009 Congressional elections) are largely the result of attempting to stay “pure”… the “Catholic” party line never did resonate with large sectors of the electorate, and PAN’s adherence to U.S. style economic theory doesn’t play well outside the north. People tend to forget that Vicente Fox, PAN candidate, did not win the 2000 Presidential Election. Vicente Fox, PAN-Green-Social Democracy “Alliance for Change” candidate captured Los Pinos by appealing for a “useful vote” against PRI that, he argued, would be wasted voting for any of the other opposition candidates (including Cuautémoc Cardenás, running for the “pure” PRD).
PRD — despite the best efforts of Cuauhtémoc Cardenás — never was “pure”. It was, after all, a fusion of minor parties to begin with, and Cardenás’ insistence that the party not compromise with the PRI limited its ability to compete against the machine. Andres Manuel López Obrador — love him or hate him — masterminded the party (and his own political machine)’s spectacular growth, both by emulating Lazaro Cardenas (bringing untapped interest groups into the party, in PRD’s case, street vendors, prostitutes, indigenous migrants to the Mexico city and “persons of the third age” — i.e., old people) AND though strategic alliances with dissatisfied PRI factions and politicians, as well as PAN and minor parties to run candidates under the PRD label.
And, it’s not like these left-right fusions are new. It was only by breaking the “old” PRI that the opposition parties were able to carve out a meaningful political presence. In 1993, the PRD-PAN alliance ran PRD candidate Salvador Nava for governor of San Luis Potosí, and as a way of breaking the “caique” control of Salvador Santos. Dr. Nava, unfortunately was already dying when he ran for office, but his election did seriously weaken the machine. In 1999, PAN candidates ran fro the governorships of both Tamaulipas and Coahuila.
These last two candidates lost, as did Gabino Cué Monteagudo — a PRI operative who lost out in an internal power struggle and joined Convergenica, was the PRD-PRI fusion candidate (along with Convergencia) in Oaxaca in 2004. This time, with PT, which was the only one of the national opposition parties to not join the anti-PRI coalition will be part of the fusion ticket. Cué has a reasonable chance this year, especially given the ambivalence of the national PRI towards the state’s party, and their present governor, the odious Ulises Ruiz, opposed within the party itself as a “dinasaurio” — seen as opportunists avid for money and power, and an embarrassment to the PRI, whatever ideology its espousing today.
Mole Men forced out by U.N.!
From Daily Grail (which I think is based in New Zealand) “Red Pill Junkie” on the forced pull-out (not by their choice) of la Brigada Internacional de Rescate Tlaltelolco-Azteca, the Mole Men of Tlaltelolco.
… after just 72 hours into the rescue mission, they are ordered to suspend all rescue operations.
The order came from the UN. Not only did they think it was unlikely to find any more survivors, but they also feared the rising escalation of vandalism and pillaging unleashed by the frantic survivors —it is for this reason that all rescue efforts had to be suspended after night-fall. They lacked enough soldiers to guarantee the protection of the brigades.
But in reality, the order uncovers an uglier truth: a complete lack of leadership & control in the chain of command; as usual, the UN is not up to the task.
… In an interview given to Reforma on Jan 18th, Carlos Morales, chief of the group —the Top Mole, as it were— disclosed his frustration:
“There is no control whatsoever, there’s an awful lack of organization, we already took out 6 live persons from the University & now they are ordering us to return to base over a few gun shots.”
“Right now we were in the process of rescuing the father of the First Lady. We left him serum to survive, but they forced us to pull back” he regrets.
The veteran rescuer of 60-something years old (working alongside his 24-year-old daughter, courage seems to run in the family) showed his disagreement with the UN’s concern over the welfare of the rescuers:
“The people protect you because they know we’re here to help them, but the UN is blocking the rescues.”
Forced to leave a man to die? A people to die? For what?
I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
Is it a trend?
I see the State of Massachusetts has elected a new Senator, know as a supporter of naked capitalism, naked racism and… well… being naked.
Meanwhile, in Bolivia, showing a little more class (and a bit less skin), comes the next Governor of Beni, Miss Bolivia 2006*, Jessica Jordan Burton.
…In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them. Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country.
The best I can figure, voters in Massachusetts had a choice between a dumb, pretty guy and a dumb, not-so-pretty woman. And went for pretty.
Ms. Not-Naked Gobernadora-to-be says:
Beni no longer wants to have bosses, Beni is now ready for the struggle. We are going to struggle with faith and hope for the women and children, for dignity, for the elderly, for the indigenous, for the campesino, for all, because it is the hour of struggle for truth and justice.
Running on the MAS ticket — which holds over 60 percent of the Bolivian Senate (sort of like the not-so-pretty Massachusetts candidate’s party did until now) and is the party of President Evo Morales, recently re-elected with over 60 percent of the vote — it’s not certain Ms. Jordan Burton is a complete shoe-in for the job.
Brown, like prospective opponents to Ms. Jordan Burton, will be backed by the same rightist elements found both in Massachusetts and Beni. The problem for the Bolivian “tea-baggers”, or as they are called in Spanish, fascistas, is two-fold. First, they’re going to have difficulty finding a competing pretty … ah, er, ummm… face. And secondly, Jessican Jordan Burton has a brain.
I guess this is what is meant by full disclosure.
* As in the “real” Miss Bolivia, from the “Miss Universe” circuit, as opposed to the “Promociones Gloria” contests, that granted the Mr. Bolivia title to the son of fugitive slave holder Ronald Larsen, and the “Reina Hispanamerica” crown to gun-runner and gangster moll, Laura Zúñiga Huizar<>p>
Splish, splash, I was taking a bath…
The lift-chain on my toilet broke, which isn’t a big deal… and one tries to save water where one can… and, with a natural propensity to procrastinate, I figured I can live for a day or two by the golden rule of water conservation: when it’s yellow, let it mellow; when it’s brown, flush it down. Besides, I forgot to stop at Home Depot.
And, anyway, now I’ve got an excuse. “Peace is the respect of the rights of others,”as Benito Juarez said. The gecko that lives in my bathroom has a right to privacy when he’s using the facilities.
mexfiles.net 