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Overloaded

27 November 2009

Yes, I know the Honduran non-elections are this weekend, that Ruth Zavala is quitting the PRD (possibly defecting to PAN!) and that history marches on…

I am heading to Guadalajara next week for the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara and before I go have to rewrite Editorial Mazatlán’s website — which vanished for a few days and is now back on-line, but has never been updated from the first “good enough for now” site. And a book review I should have had done a couple of weeks ago, and editing another book that has to be out by early 2010, and… oh, yeah… pick up my laundry.

Turkeys aren’t completely stupid…

26 November 2009

Giving thanks for the kindness of strangers…

26 November 2009

“Thanks” to the draconian border security regulations in the United States what used to be temporary “undocumented workers” (who would return home after earning enough to start a business or build a house, or buy their mother a cow) cannot risk crossing back and forth between Mexico and the United States with any regularity.

And “thanks” to the collapse of Mexican agriculture post-NAFTA, many of these workers had no choice but to work in the United States.

While “thanks” to those two related situations, there is MORE, not less “illegal immigrants” in the United States (unable to see their families and adequately provide for them from a distance, the families have to move to the United States), there are millions of people cut off and isolated from their families and communities.

This is where “tiredandretired” comes in. We were neighbors at one point in Mexico City, but never met in person, knowing each other only by our “noms de internet” on expat and tourism message boards. “Tiredandretired” is living now in an unnamed, isolated Mexican community (he has a Mexican family, and happily settled here).

The subject in this particular thread was dangers to foreign travelers, but tiredandretired’s comments were meant to show that foreigners aren’t in any particular danger (which is true), but more importantly, they show there are a few of us out there who strive not to be “ugly Americans” and who — in their own way — and with respect for the Mexican peoples and cultures — give thanks for their two-nations identity. And should be thanked:

I have a strange hobby. I communicate with ‘workers’ in the north by Internet, and at times they ask me to take pictures of family here in small villages and send to them. And, most of the time they send me photos, which I get printed when I visit Sam’s Club in Tehuacan. All free.

One woman had not been home in 18 years, and no pictures had been exchanged in that time. Her mom had never seen a picture of her grandchildren.

Another… 13 years.

A man has three sons in Wisconsin, 15 years, and they have a 15 year old brother they had never seen a picture of. A friend told me they got really emotional when they saw that first picture.

Others are lesser times.

In the past, for my safety, my wife and cousin accompanied me on these expeditions. This spring, she went home, and he was busy, and I said to myself, “The Irish are supposed to die young! I am going by myself! Viva Mexico!”

I actually encountered far less resistance and fear alone than with Mexican companions. Even when I encountered women alone in fields, they approached the car with a smile.

The only explanation I can give is the grapevine has spread what I am doing, and like I am the only one in a 750 square mile area, so they may well know who I am by the fact I am North American.

I have 67 years of experience to know it is NOT my incredibly handsome face and form. Heh, heh.

Nah, people just know enough to give thanks for favors rendered.

Split the difference: Social Democrats, Dr. Simi and AMLO

26 November 2009

If there really is a drug dealing “family” seeking to control the Mexican state, it’s the one headed by Dr. Simi… the cartoon mascot of Farmacias Similares and Best Laboratories.

Victor Gonazles Torres and alter-ego

The hugely successful — and profitable — generic pharamceutical company, which pioneered the concept of walk-in medical clinics attached to pharmacies, is owned by the Gonzales family. CEO Victor Gonzales Torres has plowed much of the company’s profits into his own non-governmental organization, (Grupo Por Un País Mejor), which distributes a well-written nationwide newspaper (though the pharmacies) calling for generally non-controversial populist causes like anti-corruption measures in the legislature, environmental cleanup and … of course… cheaper prescription drugs.

Victor has been on the outs with his brother Jorge — founder and first party chair of PVEM — the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (Green Party). When Jorge resigned as party chair, and was replaced by his son Jorge Emiliano, and the party moved from its original position as an ally of Vicente Fox to a junior party of PRI (and Jorge Emiliano was caught soliciting bribes in return for Green support for yet another fly-by-night Cancun resort development) — and the party was eventually forced to change its statutes, Victor turned his interests towards his cousin, Patricia Mercado’s political organizations.

Mercado — a well known feminist — has a history of involvement in unsuccessful start-up parties. Partially financed by the Reagan Administration’s “Foundation for Democracy”, Mercado was a founder of Democracia Social in 1999. Led by Gilberto Rincon, the physically challenged ex-Communist human rights lawyer, DS would never receive enough votes to keep its party registration. However, as part of Vicente Fox’s “Alliance for Change” coalition in the 2000 election, as were the Greens, it gave credibility to Vicente Fox’s claims that a vote for him was a “useful vote” for political change.

Patricia Mercado

Although the Greens were never rewarded with cabinet positions (nor did Fox adequately address Green demands, leading to their defection to PRI partnership), DS was rewarded, with two of its most conservative members — Jorge Casteñeda and Xóchitl Gálvez being appointed to the cabinet (as Foreign Secretary and Secretary for Indigenous Affairs respectively). Rincon was eventually given a administrative position overseeing handicapped access programs.

The Greens — and Jorge — on the outs with Victor, “Dr. Simi” turned his attention to Patricia Mercado again. After her second failed attempt with a start-up party (Mèxico Posible, which tried to appeal to feminists, gays, Protestants, the physically handicapped and the indigenous ) failed to obtain enough votes to maintain registration and only captured one seat in the Federal District Assembly in the 2003 elections, she returned to the Social Democratic formula, the Partido Alternativa Socialdemócrata y Campesina. Recognizing that her two previous parties had little support outside of what one pundit sniffed were “Mexicans who read the New York Times”, Alternativa sought a broader coalition, appealing to rural workers and the urban working class. Both are groups who depend on, and appreciate, “Dr. Simi”

A drug dealer for president?

Victor, making the argument that he could self-finance his own presidential campaign, appealed to the “Campesina” (peasant) wing of the largely urban middle-class party for support for the presidential nomination. By-passed in favor of cousin Patricia, he mounted a independent campaign… even though votes for independent candidates are considered “null” votes by Mexican election officials.

Although Victor raised some serious issues (mostly in his pharmacy-distributed literature) about public health care, environmental issues, corruption and economic reform, he used the publicity mostly for a “merry prankster ad campaign for “Simi-condons” — his company having recently gone into the condom business, and selling them at about a third the price of “name brand” condoms.

As “Dr. Condon”, he attempted to force his way into the third (and last) nationally televised presidential debate, wearing a hat festonned with Simi-condons. and accompanied by scantily-clad female “campaign aides”.

He received a few votes (which, of course, were nullified) but Alternativa had slightly more success than DS or México Posible, managing to capture a few legislative seats, although its overall vote was too low for permanent party registration.

Which leads to the intriguing “what if?” question. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who was the target of much of Dr. Victor Gonzales Torres criticism was, of course, not elected by less than half a percentage of the total vote. How much of that vote was “drained off” by Dr. Simi (uncounted) and how much by Alternativa (1.6 percent of all Presidental votes) is an unanswerable question. Possibly more than half a percent.

Which leads to the big “Why now?”. With PAN discredited, and the PRI having no appealing candidate on the horizon for 2012, Lopez Obrador’s release of a “10 point program” (already under attack by the “mainstream media” which is just looking at bullet points, and not the details… much as they did his 50-point program for 2006) strongly suggest another leftist coalition run is in the offing.

He's baaaaaaack

So… up pops Patricia Mercado with ANOTHER party… or rather, Alternativa 2.0. The rump of the party changed their name to the simpler Partido Socialdemócrata (PSD) for their legislative group, and now is openly soliciting prominent PRD legislators and activists — who lost out in earlier interparty squabbles between the Lopezobradoristas and the “chucos” to jump ship.

The virulence of the early attacks on AMLO and a potential second run for the presidency indicate that he is taken seriously as a threat (Gancho, who doesn’t see Lopez Obrador as nearly important as I do, even finds the fear of one point — greater media access — a bit excessive). I haven’t really paid much attention to Dr. Simi (other than buying his products and sometimes reading his very written free paper), nor to the PSD up until now, nor had I considered the connections. Which may or may not be there, but make for an intriguing “drug connection” to the Mexican political class.

What if…

26 November 2009

You boot it, we’ll loot it

25 November 2009

Making the news rounds today is the American Chamber of Commerce’s (a Mexican business organization for U.S. owned or managed companies) study claiming close to 90 % of Mexicans buy pirated products.

I would have expected the figure to be closer to 100 percent. Mexico at one time restricted foreign music and film distribution on the pretext of protecting the national culture, but with NAFTA, the pent up demand for foreign pop culture exploded. With some weird results — like the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. being a staple at children’s parties and other age-inappropriate weirdness, like grannies into rap and teenagers happily singing along with old 1980s hair band staples.

At any rate, given that pop music distributors set the prices for their products at the U.S. rate, what are people to do except turn to the less expensive Mexican produced product. At prices commensurate with Mexican incomes. All hail the Tepito disk burners, and the twenty peso CDs. Yup, I buy em too.

And, as to software… as a Deloitte Touche executive once pointed out to me, if Mexicans can’t get foreign software, they’re not going to buy the foreign computers… and with the software priced as if it were sold in the United States, the only way to sell computers is to accept that a lot of the software is off-site unregistered backups.

Can’t trust those güeros…

HOWEVER, when it comes to books… of course you should pay Mexican publisher’s prices. And the bookshop, especially if you’re a tourist. I’m a bit flattered that some Australian was interested enough in my Gods, Gauchupines and Gringos (and, yes I know the website is down this morning) to steal it. But, really… the 395 peso cover price is a … um… steal. Especially compared to what it’ll cost him if the MEXICAN shop owner has him arrested and deported as an undesirable alien.

Or, since it cuts into my royalties, staked to an anthill… whichever comes first.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady: Making enemies wherever she goes

25 November 2009

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady is probably the only writer I’ll miss if the Journal, as owner Rupert Murdoch threatens, becomes unavailable on the internet without a subscription. Not that I think O’Grady is a good analyst… exactly the opposite. She’s even a better barometer of what Latin Americans are NOT going to do than the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer accepts as gospel whatever the Latin American right-wing says, but sometimes the rightist win elections. O’Grady makes shit up.

Her pernicious fictions about Honduras were accepted by the Obama Administration (or, at least, they were by South Carolina Senator Jim De Mint, and the Administration, for domestic policy reasons, was willing to sacrifice Honduran democracy in exchange for a rather unimportant vote on confirming state department appointees) but no one is buying her tales lately.

A recent O’Grady “analysis” of the upcoming Bolivian elections is described by El Gaviero as a

… factually challenged screed [which] fails on many levels, one being her deification of disgraced former Bolivian president Gonzalo “Goni the Gringo” Sánchez de Lozada (presently wanted in Bolivia for ordering the massacre of his countrymen and a defendant in the U.S. for said crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings).

Read his post. The humiliating deconstruction of O’Grady’s thesis by twenty United States, French and Bolivian academics is a masterpiece of invective.

You might expect ol’ hippies (er, young hippies) out in the jungle like Gav to excoriate capitalist tools (in the bad sense) like O’Grady — but good churchgoing mid-western Lutherans (aka “God’s Frozen People”) are supposed to be slow to anger… even by those circumnavigations about the periphery of veracity.

Tim’s El Salvador Blog is royally frosted by an 8 November 2009 O’Grady piece in which she claims that a split among congressional representatives of El Salvador’s far-right Arena party (the issue being investigation of fraud in an agricultural subsidy program) somehow is the work of Hugo Chavez.

You might have thought that this fear-mongering about El Salvador becoming a puppet state of Venezuela would have ended with the shut down of ARENA’s propaganda machine after the March elections, but not so for O’Grady. She consciously decides not to mention [Salvadorian President Mauricio] Funes 84% approval rating, the decidedly moderate measures taken by the government in the past 5 months, and the repeated statements by the FMLN leadership that they support Funes and have no difference in opinion with him. Sometimes when I see someone spouting such nonsense, I can’t resist responding.

When O’Grady writes about the Catholic Church in Honduras and the Church’s supposed support of the coup regime, there’s a tag team, made up of Tegacigulpa based Rhoades scholar and researcher, Daniel Altshueler, and Diocese of Copan assistant director of Caritas and lay brother “Hermano Juancito” to try bringing Ms. O’Grady’s musings back in line with the eighth and ninth commandments (not to mention journalistic ethics).

I’m not going to embarrass myself by trying to quote Virgil in the original (not that I’m a Latin scholar in any way, though I’ve picked up a few phrases here and there), but the Roman poet immortalized a lousy writer of his day as one “tolerated neither by the gods, nor by men or nor by book sellers”. Mary Anastasia O’Grady will be remembered — if at all — in Latin AMERICAN letters as one “tolerated neither by men of God, nor by scholars, nor by book-sellers.” And that’s giving her more credit than she’s worth.

Plan Merida: lose-lose for U.S. and Mexico

25 November 2009

Mexico is the United States’ closest Latin American neighbor and yet most U.S. citizens receive little reliable information about what is happening within the country. Instead, Mexico and Mexicans are often demonized in the U.S. press. The single biggest reason for this is the way that the entire binational relationship has been recast in terms of security over the past few years.

From a neighbor and a trade partner, Mexico has been portrayed as a threat to U.S. national security. Immigrants are no longer immigrants, but criminals, “removable aliens,” and even potential terrorists. Latinos, mostly Mexicans, are now the largest group of victims of hate crimes in the United States.

Although Mexico-bashing has been a favorite sport of the right for years, this terrible conversion of Mexico, from an ally to a “failed state” and narco-haven in the media and policy circles, began in earnest under the Bush administration and has only intensified since then. The Merida Initiative and the militarization of Mexico are the direct outgrowth of the national security framework imposed on bilateral relations.

So argues Laura Carlsen, as a twenty year veteran of Mexican political analysis, a writer and — most importantly — a Mexican mother. Carlsen notes, as many of us with less time as analysts have also noted, the the so called Plan Merida was neither a Mexican initiative, nor does it involve actually supporting Mexican anti-crime activities with direct funding.

… Plan Mexico—as it was first called—has its roots in the Security and Prosperity Partnership that grew out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. When the regional trade agreement was expanded into a security agreement, the Bush administration sought a means to extend its national security doctrine to its regional trade partners. This meant that both Canada and Mexico were to assume counter-terrorism activities (despite the absence of international terrorism threats in those nations)…

Although U.S. troops cannot operate by law in Mexican territory, the plan significantly increases the presence of U.S. agents and intelligence services, now estimated at 1,400, and of U.S. private security companies throughout Mexico.

The terms of the Merida Initiative sends the full $1.3 billion appropriated so far to U.S. defense, security, information technology and other private-sector firms, and the U.S. government. One hundred percent of the money stays in the United States since the plan prohibits cash payments to Mexico.

In other words, what it does is ensure an expanding market for defense and security contracts, in an undeclared war that has no exit strategy in sight.

Suggesting, as Ms. Carlsen does, that the Mexican drug war was mostly a way of propping up the dubious electoral legitimacy of the Calderón administration may be somewhat an over-simplification, but there is no denying that militarization has been a human rights and social disaster. Although she still puts faith in the Obama Administration’s willingness to reorient its policies towards Mexico and Latin America (which I tend to doubt will happen) she makes a couple salient points U.S. citizens and policymakers need to heed:

Militarization is not the way to deal with Mexico’s political crisis and infusing government money into industries based on blood is not the way to deal with the U.S. economic crisis.

Mexico should be a U.S. priority. But providing exclusively security-focused equipment and training to Mexico is like pouring gas on a fire.

Citizens in both countries stand to lose by viewing the complex binational relationship through the reductionist lens of national security. Critical issues have fallen from the agenda or receive merely lip service. Among them: trans-border livelihoods in the world’s most integrated borderlands, immigration, regional environmental threats, trade, and a sustainable energy future.

We must return the U.S.-Mexico relationship to the simple equation that a healthy neighbor equals better trade, security, and cultural relations.

Her entire article (which should be required reading for anyone living in Mexico, anyone concerned with Mexican issues, or paying taxes in the United States) , “Perils of Plan Mexico: Going Beyond Security to Strengthen U.S.-Mexico Relations“, is ~~at the Council for International Polciy Americas’ Program website~~. still on the web (as of 03-06-2012) at ZNet.

Shocked I tell you…

23 November 2009

Really, why is anyone surprised that the U.S. Democratic Party is any more reactionary than the Republican Party when it comes to Latin American policy?

Via Honduras Oye!:

– The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), organizations that receive funding from the U.S. State Department, are planning on sending delegations to observe the November 29 elections in Honduras, according to a statement issued by Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The IRI is a group that has supported the ouster of democratically elected presidents in Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. Both groups are apparently planning to assist with observation of the elections, despite the fact that the electoral process will be effectively controlled by thousands of military troops and police officers – the same forces who have committed innumerable human rights violations, including killings, rapes, beatings and thousands of detentions, since the June 28 coup d’etat.

“I am surprised to see NDI joining the International Republican Institute in its efforts to legitimize another coup,” Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “NDI has generally been less willing to support coups and anti-democratic regimes than has its Republican counterpart.”

It would get tedious to work out my thesis that both U.S. parties (and in any real sense, there are only two parties in the United States) are always going to have the same Latin American policy. Neither have an internationalist outlook, like Christian Democrats or Socialists. Both are based in 19th century “liberalism” (although the parties use the word in a different sense in the United States) and are more or less National Action parties (like the Gaulists in France, or PAN here) — more or less based in the idea that nationalism trumps ideology or economic theory, and the way things are is the way they should be.

Both U.S. parties have accepted the idea of exploiting the Americas going back to the Monroe Administration and it hasn’t changed any since then. Oh, the days of gunboat diplomacy are a bit passe, and maybe the CIA is a little more subtle about it, but the intended results are the same.

As Richard Nixon said, “no one gives a shit about the place” — and, at least among the political elite, that’s always been true. Consider that the Obama Administration nominated the disgraced former U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, to a post where he can do even more pernicious damage: Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (i.e., spy in chief). Consider that democracy in Honduras was sold out by the Obama Administration to satisfy domestic political needs — specifically that of Senator Jim De Mint of South Carolina, and to move a former Bush state department figure into a more economically important job as Ambassador to Brazil.

Or look at continued (and expanded) support for the Uribe regime in Colombia… including overt military support.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Obama administration has made the world a better place (if only in jump-starting some long overdue mild reforms to the United States’ bloated economic system and in being a little more subtle when it comes to bullying their fellow nations in the hemisphere), but”change we can believe in” ends at the Rio Grande River.

The skinny on fat

22 November 2009

It’s one of those great gross-out tales, supposedly only coming from the Heart of Darkness, i.e., Latin America:

Reuters (19-November-2009):

LIMA, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Peruvian police said on Thursday they had broken up a gang that allegedly killed dozens of people and sold their fat to buyers who used it to make cosmetics.

Four Peruvians were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, murder and trafficking in human fat.

The group stored the fat it collected in used soda and water bottles, which police showed reporters.

“We have people detained who have declared and stated how they murdered people with the aim being to extract their fat in rudimentary labs and sell it,” said Police Commander Angel Toldeo.

In addition to those taken into custody, police said they were searching for others who bought fat from the gang or might have worked with it.

Remains from some of the victims were found at a rural house in the region of Huanuco where the group worked, according police video.

Police said they were investigating 60 disappearances in the area that might be linked to the gang…

At first glance, it almost makes sense. After all, it feeds into two basic cliches. Either that those living in the jungle, or in Latin America, or the “third world” are savages who don’t have the same standards of decency WE do; or the decadent west are the ruthless exploiters and murders of the masses, all in the name of profit without honor.

Then… some doubts creep in. Why would one need “labs” — crude or otherwise — to render fat. You need a big pot, some water and a spoon. Secondly, who’d pay $15,000 U.S. dollars a liter for the stuff, as the killers claimed?

Dr. Julio Castro, the dean of Lima’s College of Medicine, is quoted as saying “Hundreds of liters of human fat are obtained every day at cosmetic clinics, and disposed of” . OK, I know enough basic economics to understand that the rarer the product, the higher the price, and there’s plenty of alternative sources of human fat. Maybe skinny Peruvian fat has some special ingredients we don’t know about. Is it marketing? Or just bullshit?

I don’t know the source of this map, but it shows the world’s countries proportional to daily caloric intake per person. Peru (and all South America) is underweight, and Mexico (supposedly the second fattest nation on earth) isn’t as chubby you think:

Ignorance is no excuse…

22 November 2009

In addition to various Spanish language sites, the Mexican newspapers, and a couple of on-line wonkish foreign policy publications. Mex Files subscribes (via RSS feeder) to about two dozen English-language blogs. Most are in Mexico, although that includes blogs from throughout the hemisphere. Some are seldom quoted, but read regularly, and — if if not directly related to what is written about here — a joy to read. Like Bob Mrotek’s wonderful and erudite “Mexico Bob Blogspot“. Mexico Bob knows his history, his Mexican culture and a good eye for detail. His posts are thoughtful and well researched — not something I can say about the two I’ve decided to drop from my RSS reader.

Borderlands Beat (not worth the link) is a cop site… all about the murder and mayhem of the “drug war”… and, so I’ve noticed, hopelessly inaccurate. A recent post on a police assassination in my state seemed to think the either the “Port of Mazatlan” — or the whole state — has a “mayor” named Mercedes Murillo de Esquer. There is such a person, the head of a non-governmental organization concerned with safety and security issues, in Cuiliacán, but she has no official role in the municipal governments of either the MUNICIPIO of Mazatlán, nor of Navolato, where the crime under discussion occurred. This is poor investigation for a cop, and even worse for a reporter, who at least should provide a readable narrative.

Less annoying perhaps, but also being dropped is one of those “My Life in Mexico” sites (that shall remain nameless and linkless to protect the innocent) that I had hope for. The author is a dependent of the United States Embassy, but apparently happy to remain a clueless tourist. At least, not knowing that Mexico is a major agricultural exporter, including fruit, she finds the fact that there is fruit fly control something to be tagged “only in Mexico”. Please!

I’ll keep reading “Crooks and Liars” (a U.S. based “progressive” site) even though it seems to think Telemundo is a MEXICAN television network*. Telemundo is a PUERTO RICAN corporation owned by the National Broadcasting System and MSN, both United States corporations. Last time I checked, Puerto Rico as still a Commonwealth of the United States, and geographically an island in the Caribbean, not part of Mexico.

Some of the programming (especially telenovelas) are Mexican produced, and Telemundo stations can be picked up in a few frontier towns, but nope, not Mexican. Maybe the “progressive” folks at Crooks and Liars can explain why they assume a woman speaking English with a Spanish-language accent is — ipso facto — Mexican, I’ll leave to smarter people than myself when it comes to the U.S. Latino experience.

Besides, while Mexican television news programs sometimes interview in English (Conservative journalist Sergio Sarmiento often interviews foreign newsmakers in English on his television program, La entrevista con Sarmiento) and there are a few English-language news broadcasts (notably Ana Maria Salazar’s radio program for Imagen Informativa, Mexican television has no interest in a washed up hack like Lou Dobbs. Mexican Americans, and Mexican immigrants to the United States, yes. But he’s irrelevant to Mexico, and there’s no reason for him to be interviewed by Mexican television.

Nor, apparently, to trust even “progressives” to get the facts right when they talk about Mexico. Their hearts may be in the right place, but their brains are stuck up their ass.

* They must read The Mex Files… at least they’ve changed the text to read “Spanish language network…” but letting the original error through a site that is, presumably edited, and written by David Niewart, who makes a name for himself as an expert on racism and the media, this was still boneheaded.

A Rumor of War

21 November 2009

Philip Caputo has been writing about war and the corruption of war since his Vietnam memoir, A Rumor of War, first appeared in 1977. As a Chicago Tribune reporter, that includes the generally bloodless — but highly corrupting — world of Chicago politics.

In the December 2009 The Atlantic Caputo turns his attention to the “War on Drugs” in Mexico.

I have a problem with the title — “The Fall of Mexico” — suggesting first that the Calderón-Bush-Obama Administrations “War” is central to the Republic (only to the present administration) or that the authoritarian streak in the present Mexican government is somehow a product of this war.

While Caputo, of course, is going to focus on the “drug warriors”, their victims and the “collateral damage” of this war, he — like most writers — only focuses on the Mexican side of the border region. He never seems to venture further south than Nuevo Casas Grandes, a couple of hours south of Columbus, New Mexico. At most, he’s talking about a frontier “war”. This isn’t to say that the people living along the border are not part of the “real Mexico”, but that the social conditions along the frontier are not necessarily those of the majority of Mexicans, nor that everyone along the border is affected with despair and hopelessness (Mexicans have a sense of black humor which accounts for some of the grafitti Caputo quotes as meaningful).

Caputo’s premise that the “War” is has created repression and corruption (or has allowed it to flourish), seem to put the cart before the horse. Although Calderón’s electoral victory is problematic, he did receive a little over a third of all votes in the 2006 Election, campaigning on an authoritarian “law and order” platform that presupposed state sanctioned violence. The border region strongly supported PAN, so there is no denying that there wasn’t already support for a heavy-handed “solution” in search of a problem.

While “corruption” has risen (at least by the standards of Transparency International) under this administration, the increase in perceived corruption may be independent of the “drug war” excesses.

Neither of which is to say that Caputo’s article is off-target. It isn’t. Consider WHO the casualties are in this “war”:

Statements by U.S. and Mexican government officials, repeated by a news media that prefers simple story lines, have fostered the impression in the United States that the conflict in Mexico is between Calderón’s white hats and the crime syndicates’ black hats. The reality is far more complicated, as suggested by this statistic: out of those 14,000 dead, fewer than 100 have been soldiers. Presumably, army casualties would be far higher if the war were as straightforward as it’s often made out to be.

And, I’d add, a good number of those military casualties have been the victims of “friendly fire”, plane and truck accidents and the like. Perhaps, the “war” should not be seen as “asymetical warfare” — or even a police operation gone amuck — but, as Caputo quotes Gustavo de la Rosa, the former Chihuahua state ombudsman for Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, as saying, as a creeping military coup:

… the president, elected in 2006 by a margin as thin as an ATM card, called out the army not merely to fight the cartels and eliminate a threat to national sovereignty but to consolidate his power and confer legitimacy on his presidency. “Calderón wants to show the Congress that the military is with him,” de la Rosa said. “And the military promised to support Calderón in exchange for being allowed out of the barracks, because the army wants to govern. Chihuahua is an experiment. What is happening here is in essence a military coup, a regional coup.” To support this contention, he cited a change he has had to make in his own work. Under normal circumstances, he would file complaints of abuse with the state governor, but now, he said, “the governor is ineffective, so I have to go to General Felipe de Jesús Espitia, the comandante of the 5th Military District.”

The militarization of Mexico is noticeable. Calderón is the first president to be regularly photographed in a military uniform since Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was a real Army General, and was the president during a declared war (the War against Nazifascism, as it’s styled here). Ávila Camacho also demilitarized the government (being the last general to serve as President) and — while the military certainly has been used for political repression since the Second World War — the generally high regard for the military in Mexican society rests largely on its apolitical and non-aggressive missions: resource and environmental protection and disaster relief.

And, give Vicente Fox his due… he overtly toned down militarism, going so far as to try canceling the annual Revolution Day parade in Mexico City — succeeding in at least making the patriotic (and impressive) exercise less a display of firepower and military might, as a celebration of sports and health. After all, we’re talking about a nation where the tanks and missiles and scarily-armed paratroopers are impressive, but the crowds cheer for the Army cooks, the navy nurses and the kids in the Servicio Militar Nacional carrying shovels and seedlings. And where the national service requirement crosses most 18-year olds minds as meaning clerking in a government office, or going door to door as a census taker or planting trees… not carrying a gun.

That anti-militarist strain is coming to the surface. It’s not so much weariness with the “war”, nor the occasional admissions that the Army is being used to repress not just some gangsters, but political and social dissent as well that is making people turn from the military solution. It is one factor in the rejection of PAN and President Calderón at the polling booth, and a likely factor in a return to the “corrupt” but more mainstream PRI (or a compromise left candidate) in the 2012 Presidential election.

What will not rein in the military are renewed U.S. “demands” for “human rights accountability” in the funding for the Merida Initiative. As I explained when the issue was first raised, the Mexican objection is that such strings would require Mexico to centralize its police — and major constitutional changes that would simply entrench the Federal government’s present attempts to reverse the trend toward wider democratic and citizen participation and leave it in the hands of “experts” in the Capital.

The U.S. financed “war” in Colombia has not improved human rights, nor spread democracy in that unhappy nation. While Colombia’s situation is complicated by a sixty-year old civil war that has gotten mixed in with that nation’s best known illegal export, “human rights provisions” have a way of corrupting the central power to create the illusion of “progress”… and to create their own upside down logic — making dissent, on paper if not reality, equal to criminality, to meet the demands that repression is progress in creating human rights.

The idea that the Merida Initiative was for Mexico’s benefit is nonsense. The money goes to business interests in the United States. The tools for repression fo to the present administration in Mexico and the rest of us live with the results.