Life hands you a limon, make limonada
“Ashes77”, ExpMexico.com:
Mexicans don’t like all the negative publicity – the drug war, the escalating violence, the collapsed state scenarios – in the end we all realize that it does help to keep the gringos out.
AG confirmed –Zombie Presidency not completely dead
Despite what I predicted back on 16 September, the Senate has approved Arturo Chávez Chávez’s appointment as Procurador General de la Republica (Attorney General).
In my 16 September post, I wrote:
There were some objections to Attorney-General Designate Arturo Chávez Chávez, mostly from women’s groups and human rights organizations, stemming from his previous job as Chihuahua State prosecutor. … the State Prosecutor’s office has continually been blamed for faulty or sloppy investigations [of the “feminicides” in Juarez] and a lack of any prosecutions in the 300 or so murders over the last 15 years.
While there have been chronic human rights abuses involving the Mexican police and army for years, the Administration’s use of soldiers in the anti-narcotics exporter fight has only exacerbated the problem. Chávez has also held some federal posts overseeing human rights protection within the Federal Prosecutor’s office, again with less than stellar results.
These are legitimate concerns, and should be raised, but normally, they would be brushed aside after a few Senators raised the objections, and the Administration made some pretense of responding to the objections… usually a matter of vague promises to review the situation.
Things have not changed as radically, or as rapidly as I thought, apparently. Chávez Chávez was confirmed with only 27 votes (all from the PRD) against his confirmation. I wasn’t completely off base, however… he made vague promises to make the Juarez killings his first priority… which he’ll probably handle as well as he did in his state job.
Pesky priests in Honduras
Hemano Juancito passes this along from the priests of the Diocese of Copan.
Here is the start of the good Brother’s quick translation:
1. The presbyterate [the priests] of the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, always faithful to the values of the Kingdom of God and to the people whom we have been entrusted to shepherd, illumined by the Word of God and the church Magisterium [teaching authority], we have analyzed the phenomenon of the coup d’état and after a mature examination we want to share our reflections about it.
2. We reject the coup d’état because it violates the constitution of the Republic, principally articles 3, 71, 72, 84, and 102, restricts constitutional guarantees, puts the Armed Forces and the National Police in opposition to the humble people, compels the people to insurrection (cf. Constitution article 3), causes instability and unrest in the citizenry, and has caused grief to many families because of homicides, and the wounded and beaten whose number increases every day.
3. The group of families, extremely enriched, with businesses which live from the projects financed by the State with the taxes that the citizenry pays and the money which comes from friendly countries, ought to tell the Honduran people the causes and reasons which brought them to give the coup d’état at the government of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales or discredit the usurper government (cfr. Constitution article 3)
4. We believe that no material good is worth the life of so many persons who by orders of Robert Micheletti Baín, head of the Joint Chief of Staffs General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, minister of security Jorge Alberto Rodas Gamero, advisor Billy Joya and bought about by evil agents of the National Police, and this has been done for the purpose of obstructing the people’s demonstrations.
5. We remind all the citizens that no one owes obedience to a usurper government and that no one ought to obey an order to kill persons. (Cfr. Constitution, Article 3)
6. We hold responsible Mr. Roberto Micheletti Baín, the current National Congress and the magistrates of the Supreme Court for all the damages which have come over the people and their possessions after the coup d’état.
Dumb and dumber on immigration
Dumb…
Texas Governor Rick Perry, he of the Teabag Nation, has a new fun trick to appeal to wingnuts this election season: Sending Elite Texas Rangers to the border to fight the hordes of Mexican illegals rustling cattle. There’s just one problem. Local lawmakers have no idea what he’s talking about. The incidence of illegal aliens being apprehended is down by double digits in the areas where Perry has dispatched his Rinches. (So-called by Tejanos back in the days when Texas Rangers used to lynch Mexicans for fun.)
And dumber…
In a chapter in his new book purporting to explain to “idiots” what “our Founding Fathers really intended,” [U.S. radio ranter and Fox News commentator] Glenn Beck praises an obsolete provision of the U.S. Constitution that prohibited Congress from outlawing the slave trade before 1808 and capped taxes on the slave trade at $10 per slave. In his explanation of the provision, Beck does not mention slavery, saying instead that the provision means that the Founders apparently “felt like there was a value to being able to live here” and lamenting: “Not anymore. These days we can’t ask anything of immigrants — including that they abide by our laws.”
Mr. Beck’s laughable assumption that Article One, Section Nine of the United States Constitution had something to do with immigration was stupid. Not knowing that immigration fees are are considerable hardship on would-be immigrants is stupidity squared. Erwin at Latin Americanist (a smart cubed guy) writes:
In 2007, fees for citizenship and other immigration paperwork were dramatically boosted; the cost of applying for citizenship was $400 but is currently $675. Yet the new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) said yesterday that fees may soon have to be raised again due to “financial challenges”. Alejandro Mayorkas blamed the economic slump and (ironically) the fee increase for a decrease in applicants and agency revenue.
Trivial pursuit of trivial people — nailed!
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Sort of like “Jeopardy”, my trivia question was in the form of an answer —
Princess Katherine Amelia of Holland and Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg share something in common with every Mexican president EXCEPT Vicente Fox.
“…” got it right: the two royals have Latin American born mothers (and Vicente Fox doesn’t).
I’ll be sending a $10 (US) donation in”…”‘s name to their favorite charity (and here’s hoping it’s not something bizarre like The Minutemen) OR — if it’s “…”‘s druthers — and they have a mailing address in the U.S. — I can send them a copy of Gods, Gachupines and Gringos from Barnes and Nobel (which just started listing the book, but isn’t going to post reviews until they have orders).
When I was hunting down the weird connection between Porfirio Diaz’ troublesome son-in-law and the Princes of Monaco, I ended up on a paper chase (er, pixel-chase) through Wikipedia.
Princess Katherine Amelia of Holland is the oldest child of the crown prince of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange-Nassau. Her job in life is to wait for her grandmother, Queen Beatrix to die, so she can sit around waiting for her dad to kick off.
Mrs. Prince Orange-Nassau is the former Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti, of Argentina. There was some controversy at the time of their marriage, Máxima’s dad having been a cabinet secretary during the Videla junta and was wanted for questioning in a case before the international court in The Hague (where the Dutch royal family happens to live)… which would have made walking his daughter down the aisle a bit awkward.
WhenGrand Duke Henri of Luxembourg goes to the big palace in the sky, Prince Guillume moves up from mere Duke to Grand Duke. His mom, the present Grand Duchess, was born in Cuba in 1956 as María Teresa Mestre y Batista-Falla was raised in New York and Switzerland after her family moved (rapidly) in 1959.
I’d already known about Elena Poniatowska (born Princess Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor in Paris in 1932). Royalty, but only sorta. The family produced most of the kings of Poland, but Poland had elected kings and it went out of the kingdom business when it was partitioned in 18th century. When Poland reappeared on the map after World War I, it was a Republic, and by that time there were passels of Poniatowkis had scattered around Europe. Her father was a Polish, however, the Republic’s Ambassador to France.
Poniatowska — on top or her descent from the Polish family — might squeak into the Euro-royal class (at least the minor leagues) on her Mexican mother’s side alone. She is a distant descendant of Augustín the first (and last) emperor of Mexico (the Empire of the self-proclaimed emperor, and his empire, only lasted from May 1822 until March 1823, but long enough to get his heirs into the royal club).
Despite those handicaps, she grew up to be a normal Mexican lefty intellectual … she may have royal blood, but as a Lopez Obradorista, she doesn’t have to wear a silly hat.
(Plain Elena Poniatowska, Grand Duchess Maria-Teresa, Princess Máxima)
A flood of fake Fridas: snark o’ the week
(Latin American Herald-Tribune):
Representatives of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust filed a criminal suit on Tuesday for the forgery of 1,200 Kahlo works of art that appear in two books recently published in Mexico and the United States.
“Most of them appear not to be by the artist, because connoisseurs of the artist’s works have said so,” attorney Jose Luis Perez Arredondo told reporters.
…
The complaint was filed at the Attorney General’s Office, where members of the press met with experts on the artist’s work and personnel of the Anahuacalli Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo museums.
Perez Arredondo said that the trust’s technical committee decided to file the complaint after hearing the opinion of several experts on the supposed work of Frida reproduced in the publications “Finding Frida Kahlo” and “El Laberinto de Frida: Muerte, Dolor y Ambivalencia” (Frida’s Labyrinth: Death, Pain and Ambivalence) containing illustrated letters, drawings and personal notes.
“We’re not making personal accusations nor are we judging conduct. That is the subject of the lawsuit,” the lawyer said.
At the end of last month, Mexican antique dealers Carlos Noloya and Leticia Fernandez presented the 1,200 works as authentic, while admitting that they were very different from other pictorial works left by the artist…
Kahlo’s works are — for reasons unfathomable to me — considered a national artistic monument (to Kitschitlacali, the God of Self-Indulgence?), and — if genuine — cannot be sold abroad. No problem. It’s easy enough to create fake Kahlos… just paint Kahlo’s face, toss in a few eccentric cultural reference… and gouge your eyes out…
(Trek Thunder Kelly, The Suicide of Frida Kahlo, 2004; acrylic on canvas; 72″ x 60)
In Mexico I felt like a human being
Although the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista considered himself “mulatto”, the country was — as an unofficial colony of the United States — largely segregated when it came to public accommodations. Although unofficial, Afro-Cubans were simply not admitted to the better establishments (except as employees) and frozen out of much of public life. Much of the social and political change after 1959 was the result of political and social pressure from Afro-Cuban writer, revolutionary and politician, Juan Alemieda Bosques.
A general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, and, at the time of his death, ice-President of the Cuban Council of State, Alemieda Bosques, together with Fidel and Raul Castro was one of the last survivors of the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks. Imprisoned until 1955, he was exiled to Mexico, returning with the Castros and Che Guevara on the Granma, when it sailed out of Tuxpan the night of 25 November 1956.
I felt for the first time, in Mexico, like a human being. I’m going to explain what that means. At that time, you remember how blacks lived here, in this country (Cuba). If you went to a bar, they turned it into a Club, so you couldn’t go in. All the limitations, the lessons, the relations, it was a tough situation. And in Mexico, honestly, in a group of compañeros and there in the Mexican capital, I felt as though I could move around like a human being, I went to the places I’d longed to go. It wasn’t like here, where you had to first think about where you were going and once you got there, whether they’d let me in. That was one of the best moments that I felt in my life.
Machetera posted a video interview (with an English transcript) of a 1976 interview with Alemieda Bosques who died 11 September at the age of 82.
Why Brazil?
Shamelessly stolen from Inca Kola, who lifted it from Al Giordino, who found it somewhere and used it in his excellent critique of foreign coverage of the Honduran coup in particular, and foreign news reporting in general:
… Brazil, like every other democracy on the planet, has a legitimate self interest in making sure that no military coup succeeds, especially in its own hemisphere.
Like the 2009 coup in Honduras, the 1964 putsch had a “civilian” gloss when Brazil’s vice president ascended to the presidency but under terms dictated by the military. (Much like the top Honduran military lawyer told the Miami Herald in July that “It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That’s impossible.” That was a smoking gun that demonstrated how the Honduras coup regime’s claims to be a “democracy” led by civilians are utter rubbish: When the Armed Forces dictate that the people can’t elect a government of the left, or it will always risk a violent coup – which is exactly what that military official said – they are dictating the terms. That’s where the word dictatorship comes from.)
Starving out the resistance in Honduras
Dr. Mark Weisbrot wrote the following for this morning’s The Guardian (U.K.):
Now that President Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government – after first denying that he was there – has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president. This is how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the first phase of this new repression last night in a press conference:
“I think that the government imposed a curfew, we just learned, to try to get people off the streets so that there couldn’t be unforeseen developments.”
But the developments that this dictatorship is trying to repress are very much foreseen. A completely peaceful crowd of thousands surrounded the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where Zelaya has taken refuge, to greet their president. The military then used the curfew as an excuse to tear-gas, beat, and arrest the crowd until there was nothing left. There are reports of scores wounded and three dead. The dictatorship has cut off electricity and water to the embassy, and cut electricity to what little is left of the independent media, as well as some neighborhoods. This is how the dictatorship has been operating. It has a very brutal but simple strategy.
The strategy goes like this: they control the national media, which has been deployed to convince about 30-40 percent of the population that their elected President is an agent of a foreign government and seeks to turn the country into a socialist prison. However, that still leaves the majority who have managed to find access to other information.
(entire article here)
Among those sources, Radio Globo has been on and off the air… mostly off, although those with internet access can go here (Frente Nacional de Resistencia) for access via video streaming.
The de facto government continues to impose curfews, cut electricity, harass journalists (while allowing free distribution of la Prensa, owned by coup supporters) and otherwise make a joke of the statement made by Roberto Micheletti (or published under his name) in Monday’s Washington Post:
Coups do not allow freedom of assembly, either. They do not guarantee freedom of the press, much less a respect for human rights. In Honduras, these freedoms remain intact and vibrant.
Meanwhile, information may not be the immediate need of those under what can only be called “nation arrest”*. Hermano Juancito (who is also the focus of a well-written report on the crisis by Catholic News Service, which is doing a better job in this crisis than most news services) writes (taking the time he is allowed free to leave home to visit an internet cafe):
I stopped by the Caritas office and was talking to two women on the support staff. We noted that the curfew really hurts the people who earn their daily bread each day – perhaps by selling vegetables and fruits on the street or making tortillas. They make a little each day so that their family can have something to eat the next day. Also, one woman noted, the people in this area are not accustomed to buy food for more than the day and so they did not have food stored up. This confirms what I have been thinking. The curfew hurts the poor!
* Although apparently, the tourists on the Bay Islands are allowed to roam free. When I said that cutting power in Honduras was the wrong way to keep people in their homes (no TV, no lights), a friend of mine added “no air conditioning”… which isn’t an issue for most Hondurans, but cutting the A/C might not be a bad way to get the attention of some of the more reactionary foreigners.
The Heroes of Balderas
The sensationalist stories we’re used to seeing from the United States about people who suddenly, and without apparent reason, shoot other people, have unfortunately arrived in Mexico. Originally we only saw that sort of thing within organized crime organizations.
What we witnessed last Friday, the man who assassinated two people at the Balderas Metro station in Mexico City, is something without precedent in our collective memory.
(José Antonio Lopez Sosa, The [Mexico City] News)
While most of the foreign press, and a number of Latin-watchers (and expat bloggers) note that we broke the record for yearly casualties in the Calderón Administration’s “War on (U.S. bound export) Narcotics” last week, the tragedy at Balderas Metro Station is the more disturbing event, and the one possibly more likely to leave lasting psychic scars on the Mexican people.
Luis Felipe Hernández Castillo was attempting to “tag” a wall (with an anti global warming message) Friday afternoon in the Balderas Metro Station (at one of the busiest times of the week in one of the busiest stations on one of the world’s busiest public transit systems).
When a subway officer, 28-year old Víctor Manuel Miranda, attempted to apprehend Hernández, the tagger pulled a gun and killed him. A 58 year old commuter, Esteban Cervantes Barrera, was leaving the train that had just pulled in, and tackled the killer, and continued to wrestle with him, even after being shot three times. Cervantes died at the scene, but prevented Hernández from not just escaping, but also from shooting others.
Lopez Sosa sees the tragedy as a result of harsh economic and social condtions:
We have the highest rate of unemployment in our history, our money is being devalued out of control, the government is planning to tax us on food and medicine, the political class squanders resources while the majority of people suffer “adjustments” to their personal economies. Public security is getting dangerously thin, the majority party in Congress (PRI) is predicting social unrest if their views are not shared.
…
What I’m trying to explain is that given the current conditions of our society, people who may already have mental unbalances are suffering many things that can aggravate their mental states, with the critical, chaotic state of the country.
Perhaps he’s right, and perhaps Daniel Hernandez (one of the few foreigners to comment so far) is correct when he says:
It’s as though the collective madness of right now has been turned up a few notches. In the U.S., the extreme narco violence in Mexico is often (and unfairly) characterized as a creeping contagion “spilling” into the North. There’s a flip-side to that. The U.S.-style violence of insanity, chaos, and senselessness is also being exported South. Along with everything else.
It is the random nature of the violence, and the stupidity of it that we don’t understand. Deaths (even the most gruesome of them) in the “drug war” are comprehensible, if reprehensible. People kill each other to settle disputes (familial, business, political) or for economic gain. But, even if we accept that it’s imperative to warn of the dangers of global warming, this makes absolutely no sense.
Daniel writes that Mexico has a “culture of violence,” which I take exception to. Violence exists, one doesn’t avert one’s eyes to it… but gives it meaning. Blood sports like boxing, and cock-fighting and tauromachia are rituals (as were the Aztec human sacrifices) and no one pretends violence and violent death are abstractions. Mexico has a bloody history, and doesn’t deny the reality of death, but Mexicans are genuine pacifists. Watch the police arrest a perp for a normal crime like tagging a subway station wall. The perp is told to get in the back of the police truck… and does. In my time here, I’ve only seen officers pull out their guns once… and that was a drug bust.
Watch Mexican television and movies. Mexican films and TV shows don’t resolve every dispute with a shoot-out. There are very few Mexican murder mysteries, and those that exist are more political thrillers or social satires than mass slaughters — there is no Mexican version of Robert Ludlam (let alone Agatha Christie, for whom murder is not a tragedy, but an intellectual puzzle for one’s enjoyment) and the Mexican directors who make violent films work in Hollywood, not at Churubusco.
I never felt unsafe riding the Metro with tree trimmers carrying machetes — it can be used to chop me up, but it was intended for trees, not me. In Mexico, guns are thought of the same way… as tools for a specific purpose — police officers, soldiers and gangsters have a use for the tool and no one is overly shocked when they use it for its purpose. Mexicans expect taggers to have the tools of their trade… cans of spray paint. But one no more expects a gangster to carry cans of spray paint than one expects a tagger to pack a pistol.
And… this is a society where Benito Juarez’ dictum — respect for others is peace — is a very real part of people’s thinking. While not always honored in the particular, the sense of shame people feel when they violate this taboo is very real. Hernández the killer’s uncle had a fatal heart attack after hearing the news of the shooting. His cousin committed suicide by jumping in front of a metro train.
In the immediate future there are plans to install metal detectors in metro stations. Police officers are doing random body searches now. The Federal District promises better training for officers, and — sadly — sees the need to start arming the officers in the Metro.
But what remains to be seen is whether — as López Sosa and Daniel Hernandez suggest — we are becoming an individualistic, selfish, my way or die way society with no sense of the rights of others, or of shame.
Here is a video from El Universal on Esteban Cervantes Barrera. He was just an ordinary low paid working guy from one of those suburbs usually described by the foreign press as the “teeming slums”. — just like Víctor Manuel Miranda. Both died defending the rights of others to go about their lives peaceably. Víctor Manuel Miranda and Esteban Cervantes Barrera are deservedly national heroes… there is serious consideration of renaming the station — “Balderas” is simply the street on which it’s located — “Heroes of Balderas Metro”.
The El Universal coverage of Cervantes’ funeral in Chalco includes some footage of the murder — taken from metro security cameras — and may not be suitable viewing for all.
D.O.A.: the 2 % anti-poverty solution
Elections have consequences. The new Chamber of Deputies is able to agree on some things… like opposing the PAN Administration.
The proposed two percent tax raise — spun as an anti-poverty measure — was an object of derision from its introduction by the Administration.
The entire left (PRI, PRD, Convergencia and PT), as well as the Greens and PAN’s quasi-ally, PANAL within the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the legislature) have stated their intentions to vote against the plan.
Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, the Secretary of Social Development (whose department manages federal welfare and anti-poverty programs) was criticised for overseeing a growth in the number of Mexicans in poverty during the Calderon Administration, as well as the department’s poor management
“It’s a shame that you are wasting resources, and condemning the children of this country to ersatz change and mediocrity,” PRI Deputy Cruz López Aguilar told the Secretary.
Speaking on behalf of his party, López complained that the anti-poverty funds were simply moved from employment and agricultural assistance programs.
Carlos Flores Rico, of the same party, added that the Calderon proposals did nothing to end poverty or social inequality, but were at most a palliative.
Lizbeth García Coronado (PRD) and Juan Carlos Natale López (PVEM, the Greens) both questioned whether — as these programs would be administered by political apppointees, would not be used to influence voters — “clientage” being an old, and discredited common form of political corruption in this country.
But it was Teresa Guadalupe Reyes, of the PT (Workers’ Party) who landed the most blows on the Secretary. She described the Department’s budget request as “a conglomeration of lovely phrases that no one believes in, with no critical evaluation.” She went on to describe the entire administration budget as “benefiting only a gang for political manipulation, but isn’t able to control their spending.”
I guess you can say, the Secretary’s appearance before the Chamber of Deputies did not go well.
Honduras tonight: there will be blood
From what I can put together there are colonias throughout Tegucigalpa and communities throughout the country that are “in resistance.” There are already reports of deaths throughout the country, and more violence is expected after dawn tomorrow.
The Michetti regime has apparently given up the ridiculous fiction that — being a junta run by civilians — they are not a coup government (um, Turkey, 1971 and 1997; Cuba, 1959; Peru 1992… and others, but those came to mind quickly), or having followed the letter of the constitution when it comes to succession (as in Mexico, 1913 and 1921 — both “constitutional” coups that put civilians into the Presidency by the way) the coup was not a coup, nor the regime a dictatorship.
Laughably (or tragically) the same day Micheletti’s ghost-written defense of his “government” appeared in the Washington Post, Mel Zelaya appeared in the Brazilian Embassy.
So, Micheletti and company have given up on the pretense, decided they are in a “state of exception” (i.e., operating outside the constitution) and — as of 5 PM this afternoon — giving themselves the “legal” basis to break into the Brazilian Embassy.
Brazil has asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, and it looks as if the Micheletti regime has backed away from making direct assaults on a foreign embassy. However, the army did attack the estimated several hundred people guarding the embassy (and may have killed some of them).
Soccer stadiums are being used — a la Pinochet — as temporary holding prisons, which is kind of strange, since under the curfew/state of exception, it appears Honduras has achieved the distinction of imprisoning its entire population.
Quotha.net posts a note that Red Cross buses are being used to ferry people to prison.
from Honduras Oye! (11 PM):
-Repression by police and military is increasing markedly. A 16 year-old kid was shot and killed in the neighborhood of Las Colinas late this afternoon after having yelled at the military “golpistas, traidores.”
This picture was taken on the streets of Tegucigalpa today. From the Mirada de Halcon website
http://miradadehalconhn.blogspot.com/
-Brazil has asked the US to convene a special meeting of the UN Security Council tomorrow during the annual meeting at UN Headquarters in NY to discuss the current situation in Honduras
-Dr. Juan Almanderes has written an open letter (in Spanish) to the President of the UN General Assembly regarding the situation in Honduras. You can read the letter at the Habla Honduras website.
-A few members of President Zelaya’s cabinet including Patricia Rodas were supposed to have held a press conference today in New York but I can’t find any confirmation that it took place. Here’s the press announcement that I found on the Honduran embassy (in Washington) blog.
Other reports (unconfirmed) have said that some business executives and military officers — expecting that the Micheletti regime has only a few days at most to run — have already left the country.
mexfiles.net 