Day of the Disappeared
30 August is “International Day of the Disappeared”. Via Memory in Latin America is this reminder of a unresolved problem here in Mexico:
Mexico, where eight journalists have disappeared since the year 2000, is the country most affected by this plague. Mauricio Estrada Zamora, journalist on the regional daily La Opinión de Apatzingán, has been missing since 12 February 2008 in Michoacan state in the south-west of the country, an area notorious for crime and the illegal drugs trade. The management of his newspaper said that three weeks before he went missing he wrote an article that enraged an agent of the Federal Investigation Agency. Also in Michoacan, the editor of the weekly Ecos de la Cuenca, José Antonio García Apac, went missing on 20 November 2006 after he keeping an appointment after he received a phone call at 7.15pm. His son got a call from his father at 7.30pm which was interrupted by voices telling him to switch off his mobile phone and to identify himself. Nothing more has been heard of him since.
Smokey the em-Bear-assed
Sombrero tip to LA Eastside. From the Los Angeles Times:
An advocate for Latino rights says she was appalled to learn that the U.S. Forest Service is warning the public that campers who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music could be armed marijuana growers.
Nah… armed marijuna growers listen to the Greatful Dead and drink Bud. ILLEGAL ALIENS — and a lot of others (maybe including a few armed marijuana growers) eat tortillas and drink Tecate. Though I don’t know who would be listening to Spanish music. Armed Spaniards maybe?
High on biomass (weekly snark report)
The The State of Chiapas has invested over 57 million pesos in the construction of the Center of Research and Biofuel Production Technology. The 10 thousand hectares of crops (none food crops) available for biomass
None of the ten thousand hectares in crops available for biomass fuel production are food crops, but what exactly they are is a good question. The technology is Colombian, and is the fruit of some unspecified agreement between Felipe Calderon and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. Still, one shouldn`t be snarky. There are those who claim cocaine is fuel, and a marijuana based biodiesel would provide an alternative for Mexican farmers.
Death squads III
At least 36 youths and young adults (between the ages of 14 and 24), mostly with no criminal record, were murdered in Culiacán over the last five months — allegedly in ¨revenge” for crimes like auto theft or assault. As in Quintana Roo and Juarez, where petty criminals have also been turning up dead recently — I don’t think it’s paranoia to note that these kinds of “revenge killings” are going on in places where the Army has been put into the position of overseeing local security. I am not ready to suggest that the Army is running death squads, but I am going to suggest that with focus solely on one crime (drug trafficking) to the detriment of improving security and justice in any wholesale fashion, somebody (or a lot of sombodys) are taking advantage of the situation to extract revenge.
Out of sight, out of mind?
PatrickCorcoran, at Ganchoblog, has been commenting on the ¨disappearance” of Felipe Calderón since managing to become the first true “lame duck” president. Never having been accepted as a legitimate president by a significant portion of the electorate — and the Congress), for the first three years of his sexenial Calderón at least had enough of a plurality within Congress to at least … with major compromises … to at least govern. However, from the start of his term on the first of December 2006, when PRD and allied deputies and senators prevented his being sworn in (as is cusomary) in the Chamber, Calderón has been reluctant to face elected opponents on their own turf.
In some ways it’s understandable. The end of the PRI`s “perfect dictatorship” was forshadowed when a really tall PAN back-bencher named Vicente Fox paraded around with boxes tied over his ears in protest of the bullshit emanating from the podium. Zedillo and Fox’s informes — constitutionally mandated “Reports to the Congress and the Nation” speeches every First of September — if not memorable for their rhetoric — were at least great theater. And a chance for the elected deputies and Senators to at least let their constituents see that their representatives were at least trying to make their concerns known. My favorite is still the Yucateca deputy who presented Fox with a funeral wreath as he mouthed platitudes about indigenous affairs.
Calderón — who cannot, as he did in Oaxaca, send in the army to quash dissenters in the name of public security — faced enough trouble with a congress in which at least his party was in control. He faced a mini-revolt when the PRD and the FAP alliance sought to delay legislation by holding a congressional sit-in (and had his party respond by moving the Senate temporarily to a theater in order to eke out a quorum which still didn´t pass the legislation he demanded). But, at the time, Calderón at least had the support (grudgingly, at least) of a good portion of the PRI, and could pull though.
His party made the fatal mistep of mistaking their narrow majority for a mandate, coupled with investing too much effort into discrediting the PRD, while ignorning the PRI’s remarkable ability to develop a working concensus at the national level AND alienating the PRI leadership which — aside from resentment over allegations from PAN leaders of corruption — recognized the increasing unpopularity of certain Calderón iniatives they had formerly backed (like de-nationalization of key economic sectors and neo-liberal monetary policies) and were willing to consider ideas formerly rejected for the simple reason that those ideas had been proposed by the PRD. And — thanks to the vissitudes of national life (a flu epidemic, the collapse of the U.S. boom, the incresaing quagmire of the “war on drugs”) Calderón no longer even faces a divided opposition, but one in which a single opposition party contols both the chamber and the Senate.
Luckily for him, he was able to push through a “reform” last year to article 69 of the Constitution. That had required the President to appear for the Informe in person. He’ll be sending in a written report (can’t get around that) and MAYBE meeting with the legislators later … at his convenience… at his place, not theirs.
Call and response
On MexConnect.com, there was a link to the akwardly named (and anonymous) blog,
Reasons not to live in Mexico permanently (for those thinking about moving to Mexico). Apparently, rather than send an e-mail to his friends, he set out his half-dozen reasons for not living in Mexico (the Mexicans don´t treat animals the way he thinks they should, they make too much noise, don’t drive the way he thinks theyshould, drink more than he thinks they should, enjoy sex more than he thinks they should and don`t do business the way he thinks they should).
Which led me to think I should respond.
Why I live in Mexico:
1) Treatment of humans. This situation is changing for the worse, with the imposition of the U.S. backed “war on drugs”, but for the most part, “Respect for the rights of others,” is more than a dusty phrase from history. From the euphemistic name for penitentiaries (“Centers for Social Readaption”) to workers’ cooperative savings institutions like the tandas, the Mexicans treat their fellow man (and woman) as fully functional human beings, worthy of respect and expecting them to uphold the honor and dignity of their fellow persons.
2) A joyful Noise. Mexico is, without question, a noisy country, though less so than many. People accept the rights of their neighbors to enjoy their lives, and unlike the United States, do no consider it an assault that others are happy, singing or playing cards late a night.
3) Being a pedestrian. One does not need an automobile, and the commercial culture is built on a human scale. When a foreign (U.S.) builder developed a housing subdivision outside Mexico City a few years ago, the lack of commercial and social activities nearly destroyed the development. Go into any colonia anywhere in Mexico, and you find not only private businesses, but a church and schools. This is planning for the human, not the car.
4) Sexual honesty. One needs to mention that the Mexican constitution guarantees equality before the law regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Sexism and homophobia certainly exist, but as a social contract, it’s much further than the United States can muster. One’s sexuality is largely one’s own affair (“the rights of others,” again) and — given the lip service paid to “fidelity” in the United States — land of serial monogamy — at least no one is pretending. In the United States we pretend porn is not one of the nation’s largest industries. In Mexico, you can buy porn in front of the Palacio Nacional at any newsstand, and no one says boo about it.
5) Driving. On my way down to Mazatlan from west Texas, my old Volvo started to die. Outside Ojinaga, a guy named Chito stopped in his “held together with baling wire and spit” Toyota pickup… couldn’t figure out the problem, went home, got his brother’s big truck, came back, towed me into Ojinaga, then took me to a motel… and the next morning came to get me, took me to his mom’s house for breakfast, then to his cousin Martin’s who had made a part out of an old Ford truck to get the car running again… for about 30 USD. The Volvo has since “disappeared” — by my choice — and I travel by bus. Something neither shameful nor unusual in this country, nor the hellish experience it is in the United States when one must leave the driving to someone else.
6) Reliability. I can rely on walking into a shop, market, restaurant and not being shot by a crazed junkie. I can walk down almost any street in Mexico, day or night, and — if this 50+ year old middle-class guy sees a bunch of teenage boys hanging out — has no need to cross the street. I can rely on a polite and respectful “buenos noches, Senor”, not a whap up the side of the head. I can rely on alternatives being found for inconveniences. I can rely — if I remember my manners — on people remembering their, and treating me with respect and dignity.
It`s always something…
Being only coherent for a few hours at a time over the last few days, I´d bookmarked several recent items on Mexican politics, the economy, history, to explore. But… wouldn´t you know it, my computer’s power supply seems to have given up the ghost during a lightning storm last night, and I’ve turned the thing over to the Aztechnicians who´ll rip out its heart… and maybe get it back to me, maybe not.
In the meantime, a few other reads worth looking at:
Anthony Wright (MexConnect.com) on sports and art in Mexico City:
Art and sport seem rarely intertwined. There is the American cliché of the muscle-bound football jock bursting with idiotic energy, indulging his time off the field to torment the nerdy, isolated artist (who invariably exacts his revenge by growing up to become a Hollywood screenwriter and perpetuating the cliché in teen flicks — wherein the nerd heroically wins at the end of the day, even though we all know he never does).
Soccer, the European version of football, may generate its own cliché of a more athletically-styled player, and a more intelligent, subtle form of play. Yet the sports brain (like the song) remains the same, and it is not a brain normally associated with an appreciation of culture. There are also those who feel that graffiti art does not count as “culture” anyway, so it is perhaps apt that Mexico City’s largest sports stadium has allowed the “low art” of graffiti murals to adorn its many outer walls, entrance gates and car park enclosures.
Increasingly here in Mexico’s capital, the graffiti mural is coming to represent what some local experts feel is a new movement in mural art in the great tradition of early 20th century Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros…
Sabina Becker on a new breed of military hero:
… Antonio Benavides Torres, … a colonel in the Venezuelan national guard… kept the public peace. He played the music of Venezuela’s most popular folk singer, the late Alí Primera, to counteract the ugly crap being blasted at the recent oppo demo. And when the oppos tried to provoke the national guard and the metropolitan Caracas police into starting a riot, the colonel wasn’t having any of it. He grabbed a mike and told his troops not to fall into the trap…
I´d written a while back on the hilariously overblown threat of Bolivia´s Muslim community (all thousand or so of them). Benjamin Dangle went to the trouble of following up and talking with Mahmud Amer Abusharar, who manages the Santa Cruz Islamic Center, which includes several people who — like most Bolivians –aren´t particularly thrilled with recent U.S. policy in that country, or elsewhere for that matter.
“It is not the Muslims who are the problem of the United States in Bolivia. It seems that our government is the problem and they are looking for motives to threaten our government or looking for reasons why they have bad relations with Bolivia.”
The government of Evo Morales which has initiated pro-indigenous and socialist reforms has butted heads with the United States in recent years. Contentious issues include expelled US diplomat Philip Goldberg and other US agencies links to violent rightwing opposition, the nationalization of natural gas exploitation, and supposed setbacks in Bolivian anti-narcotics measures following the expulsion of the DEA for alleged political activity. Evo Morales described the recent suspension of Bolivia from the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act as based on “false accusations of the Obama administration against the Bolivian government to suspend the tariff preferences and in a political program of open interference by the United States government against the Bolivian people.”
Kung fu-tball
Bolivian soccer has gone viral on the web, thanks to Blooming defensive forward Sergio Jáuregui — who received a three year suspension for knocking Leonardo Medina, forward for Uruguay’s Medio Petroleo team senseless.
Hey, it’s soccer — no fists:
Sombrero tip to Abiding in Bolivia and Guanabee.
Trade barriers
Sombrero tip to Burro Hall:
TIJUANA, Mexico — Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal.
Holes in the border fence once were more commonly made by migrant smugglers, but fewer people are trying to cross because of a weak U.S. economy and a crackdown on immigration.
The Tijuana police department says the suspects intended to sell the steel sheeting as scrap.
The good news is the Mexicans are finding some economic value in the great wall… the bad news is they’re still over dependent on U.S. trade, and have yet to explore the alterntive useless wall market. I suppose they could build a wall around the wall.
They got me
If my posts aren’t quite up to snuff the next few days, blame Aedis Aegypti.
It’s a dengue nuisance being sick, and sweaty and too tired to do much more than drink a couple of liters of juice a day, read paperbacks and sleep a lot.
The memory hole
Secretary of Public Education Alonso Lujambio is right when he says that “no textbook is written in blood, and none is the word of God,” but much of Mexican history — which is written in blood and often did involve the word of God (or the gods).
Three hundred years of Mexican history — which is a century longer than the Republic existed — have been removed from grade school texts, specifically the period from the Conquest through Independence. Somehow, Mexico went from a nation dominated by the Nahuatl-speaking worshippers of Huitzapotchli to one run by Spanish speaking Roman Catholics through a process one must wait until high school to discover.
Mexico’s culture (or cultures) is a result of syncretic processes over the course of centuries, and — without writing a whole dissertation on the subject (there’s five years of posts here, if you want to read through), it’s impossible to talk about contemporary Mexico, or any part of Mexican history after 1810, or, for that matter, any particular aspect of Mexican political and cultural life, without at least paying attention to those three hundred years of Spanish domination.
Of course Santayana’s “Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it” comes to mind. Without indulging in too much rhetoric, it looks as if the attempt is to impose a forgetting of history, in order to doom people to repeat the lesson of long-term foreign domination. And, the Secretary of Public Instruction has forgotten the lessons of the colonial era himself — people, like the Viceroys did when they wished to ignore the King’s dictates, may “hear but not obey”.
Which also comes to mind is Marx (Karl, not Groucho): “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Attempts to undo the Mexican experience have led, over the past few years, to tragedies large and small: Tlatelolco, Acteal, Oaxaca… all rooted in attempts to override the people’s history and create a Mexico without a past.
School reform was a popular issue with the people, and most have been in favor of radical changes. The farce is that these unacceptable textbooks — and the mockery they are already drawing (one day into their distribution) — not the cuts in the education budget (to support the “war on drugs” for the benefit of the latest colonial power the leadership would like to pretend doesn’t exist) is likely to do more to undermine the credibility of that leadership than almost anything else.
mexfiles.net 