Re: moving targets…
Brazilian President President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — who is right more than he’s wrong about most things — signed a bill last Thursday that “regularizes” the situation of the estimated 200,000 undocumented immigrants in his country.
Naturalization, his press spokesman said, improves “the situation of thousands of foreigners who are in the country without documents and are the target of traffickers in people or drugs, among other criminal organizations.”
Besides making undocumented immigrants a less tempting target for criminals, it has an added effect of cutting into the criminal labor pool. Not that undocumented people are more likely to be criminals, but in the United States, where one must fill out an I-9 form for any legitimate job, the undocumented often have no choice but to take an illegitimate one.
And, people are generally rational about risks. Crime really doesn’t pay and the risks are much higher. Remove the risk from taking a legitimate job, and there’s almost no upside to working for gangsters.
Electoral Update III.. over and out
This could be the face of Mexico’s next President.
If there was any clear winner in the mid-term election, it was PRI chair Beatriz Paredes. Having rebuilt the party, pushed back the worst of the dinosaurios (though she hasn’t seen fit to purge anyone yet) and brought what was thought to be the party of the old, nostagic and crooked back from what seemed to be an expected long decline into irrelevance, Paredes has to be on any short list for the 2012 Presidential election.
PREP figures give PRI about 36 percent of the overall vote to PAN’s 27 percent and PRD’s 12.3 percent. PRD fared worse than I expected (I’d guessed they’d capture somewhere around their normal 15 percent), but not as badly as some feared or hoped.
PRI managed to hold on to Veracruz (where the governor is widely despised as a crook, and blamed by many for the swine flu outbreak), as well as Sonora, where the governor was blamed for the Hermosillo day care fire (though, PRI shot back that one of the day care center’s owners was a cousin of the first lady).
PRI won every one of the five “Circunscripciones” which will increase the number of seats in the Chamber and Senate dramatically. The country is divided into five roughly equal super-distircts (Circunscripciones) of several states, where proportional representatives are awarded based on relative party strength within the region.
The Greens (which are partners with PRI) also did relatively well, which will add to PRI’s ability to control the agenda for the next three years… and beyond.
It looks like the two Lopez Obrador parties — PT and Convergencia will both hold on to their national registration (requiring a minimum of 2.5 percent of the vote) and will probably rejoin their alliance with the PRD, for their mutual survival, if nothing else. Unless, of course, Paredes does the impossible, and convinces PRD to join with PRI in a center/left of center coalition.
The Social Democrats will be losing their registration, which… as I said earlier… they do regularly. They’ll be back under a different name by 2012.
NOBODY beat the Social Democrats though (and the PT and Convergencia too)… gaining about six percent of the overall vote. There is support for the “voto nulo” concept (and Calderon mentioned supporting it tonight on television), but how well the concept fares in a PRI legislature is hard to say. The party was opposed to the concept, with what support it had from the political class coming from PAN, which doesn’t get the make the rules for now.
More later this week.
The case of the missing elector
Be on the lookout for Félix Rodolfo Rodríguez, the 20 year old Presidente of polling station #872, District 91 in Nuevo Leon was last seen leaving his home in Linares this morning to take up his post.
I’m hoping Félix just blew off the job, which is highly likely. Poll watchers and vote counters are not volunteers or party functionaries like in the U.S., but are draftees. I guess the best analogy is to getting picked for jury duty. The election board picks a letter out of a hat and starts drafting voters based on their last name. This year it was the “Rs” turn to watch the polls.
As with jurors in the U.S., they have a legal excuse to miss work, get paid for the day, and a free lunch.
There are a lot of Rodríguez’ at the polling stations today (along with Ramirez’ and Romos and Reveillgigios and Rosenbergs), and probably more than one Félix Rodríguez, but if you run across the one in Linares, he’s got some ‘spainin’ to do.
Election Results II
The U.S. press was saying this election hinged on narcotics-export related violence and the economy (or rather, the Calderon Administration’s response to these issues). One test of the Administration’s strength would be Chihuahua, where PAN normally does well. However, in the state as a whole, PAN is only receiving 28.6 percent of the vote, to PRI’s 37.6. PRI’s junior partner, the Greens, are receiving 12 percent.
Within Juarez… “ground zero” of the “drug war”… PAN is only ahead in one of the four districts, and only by 500 votes with 26 percent of the preliminary count done. Absention (which may indicate a pox on all your houses…. or just giving up on political change) is very high, running a hair under 68 percent statewide.
Null votes (7.8 percent) outpoll all the PRD, PT, SD and Convergencia COMBINED. The left doesn’t do well in Chihuahua at any time.
In Baja California (the other “ground zero” for narcos), PAN is doing well… just about the reverse of the national figures — PAN: 38.1; PRI: 26.8. Here, as in Chihuahua, the turnout is very low — under 30%, and the null vote is almost 7 percent.
In the Federal District, where the PRD rules, PAN usually manages to capture a seat or two. Right now, PAN is leading (overwhelmingly) in Benito Juarez (the Zona Rosa, Chapultepec, etc) and one district in Gustavo A. Madero, also one of the wealthier neighborhoods. Although, in something of an upset, it looks like Demetrio Soldi (running for PAN) will defeat Ana Gabriela Guevara (PRD)… who finished second at the Olympics, but was expected to do well in this race.
I kind of like Demetrio… who looks like Buddy Ebsen and isn’t all that conservative. He jumped to PAN from PRD, mostly because PAN couldn’t find a viable candidate to run for Jefe de Gobierno in the Federal District against AMLO way back when.
In the 4th Itzapalapa District, where the PRD and PT came to blows over a AMLO supported candidate (the PT candidate getting AMLO’s nod), the PT candidate is far ahead, proving AMLO still has a base in the urban working class neighborhoods.
In Jalisco,whee the PAN governor, and an ultra-rightist Catholic movement would seem to favor the President’s Party, PRI is also leading (except in Tequila, where PAN has a slight edge… there’s gotta be a joke in there somwhere, but I can’t think of it).
Turnout in the Federal District and Jalisco is about average… 43 to 45 percent.
Election Results I
These are preliminary figures and I’ll update later this evening, and try to make sense of it either tonight or sometime in the next day (as much sense as possible, anyway).
PREP (Programa de Resultos Electorales Preliminares) are “official” in that these figures come from IFE (the elections institute), based on stastical data, and not by any means based on a full ballot count. And, not all polling stations have reported, so the numbers will probably change.
As of 21:15 (Mexico City time):
PAN 26.8
PRI 35.0
PRD 12.1
PVEM (Greens) 7.3
PT (Workers Party) 4.2
Convergenia 2.3
Nueva Alianza 3.6
Social Democrats 1.2
PRI/Green fusion 0.4
PT/Convergencia fusion 0.3
Null vote 6.4
The Greens were a Green party once upon a time, but have become more or less the yuppie wing of the PRI… they only run a fusion ticket in a few districts, maintaining enough strength in a few districts to be a relatively good sized minor party.
PT/Convergencia were the junior partners in the Lopez Obrador coalition of 2006, and are the rump of the Lopez Obrador movement.
Social Democrats tend to do ok in a few districts, more or less as a party for what in the U.S. would be the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — pro-feminist, pro-gay rights, pro-decriminization of drugs, etc., and an extension of social programs. They usually manage to at least bring up these issues, but it doesn’t look like they’ll have the votes to maintain their status as a national party.
Convergencia, which is also supposedly a Social Democratic party, is also likely to lose its registration.
Politics… the oldest profession
The first reports on the election are just coming in, and it looks like Esther Elba Gordilla’s “Nueva Aliaza” has the support I’d expect…. Real headline and subhead from El Universal:
Disputa 2009 Inicia flujo de cifras en el PREP
A las 20:00 horas, el PAN tenía 27 por ciento, PRI 35 por ciento, PRD 11 puntos porcentuales, PVEM 7 por ciento, Partido del Trabajo 4%, Convergencia 2 por ciento, Nueva Alianza 3 putos, PSD 1 punto porcentual y los votos nulos sumaban 7 por ciento.
Watchful waiting (with updates)
Like Woodrow Wilson, at the start of the Mexico Revolution, the policy for today is “watchful waiting”. Two major events, neither of which are totally predictable are on the agenda today:
The Mexican Elections… via Ana Maria Salazar, CNN’s election forecast is for not much to change, although their assumption (that PAN will fare well) isn’t borne out by other commentators, who expect PRI to gain substantially. Voters are largely turned off by the election, with turnout expected to be extremely low, and a large number of voters opting to mark their ballots for no one. A few districts (including Sinaloa’s 8th district, Mazaltan) are completely up in the air as far as projected winners, but
The response to the flu scare, and the recent Hermosillo day care fire, as well as attempts to claim the opposition is riddled with narcotics-influenced corruption may or may not help PAN, but PRI is still expected to gain the most seats, which — coupled with the abstention — does indicate a rejection of the Calderon Administration’s policies.
Manuel Zelaya is expected to return to Honduras today… or not … with or without an escort from Rafael Correa and other Latin American leaders (looks like it’s gonna happen, now*). Given the very real possibility of violence upon Zelaya’s return, this is a high-risk (as in physical, not just political) for Correa, who may not be in attendence, according to an unsources report in the Miami Herald (via “Two Weeks Notice“).
Hermano Juancito, writing last night, noticed something I also have about the pro-coup protests. They’re just too slick:
… They [the protesters] all wore white shirts. Many had white shirts emblazoned “peace and liberty” with “I {heart} Honduras” on the back. (I saw no one selling them and so I guess the sponsors were providing people with them.)
As I walked toward the demonstration, I ran into a former politician I vaguely know. He’s one person whom I would call nearly incorruptible who has bravely stood up for his stance. He’s no fan of deposed President Mel Zelaya – nor of the interim president Roberto Micheletti. He mentioned that he wasn’t going to the demonstration; he believed that many had come with good will, but he was concerned that these demonstrations were being used by the right wing. A neighbor also told me she stayed away for the same reason.
“Honduras Frente al Golpe de Estado” published a e-mail that — if genuine — does show the marches were underwritten by corporate sponsors. And counter-demonstrators are … shall we say… being discouraged:
Juancito points out that the Church hierarchy is backing the legal justification for the coup, but not the particulars, nor the continuing “situation of social injustice.” Much of the support for the coup, as Juancito and others note, is also based in simple nationalism. With the whole world having rejected the coup’s leadership, it’s being spun as rejection of Honduras (much as widespread rejection of the U.S. policies in Iraq led to “pro-America” rallies in the U.S.).
Key business leaders have apparently broken with the coup leaders. According to Radio Globo (Tegucigalpa), at a 5 AM business meeting, at least two important Honduran industrialists decided to pull their support from the coup, because it had failed to obtain support from outside. By 5 PM (Eastern U.S. Time) Reuters was reporting that “de facto government”was seeking a compromise with the O.A.S. (to which it doesn’t belong).
[THERE MAY BE A DISASTER IN THE MAKING]. Venezuelan TV (Telesur) is reporting that police and military units have fired on the crowd awaiting Zelaya’s arrival. Tear gas — according to CNN en Espanol. I don’t know if everyone is having the same problem, but getting Telesur to load is impossible today. 16:40 Mazatlan time]… AP reports at least one dead, AFP has one dead, three wounded by bullets. CNN-Chile says 2 dead.
Here’s CNN’s video:
* In a press conference that got underway at OAS headquarters a few minutes ago at 11:55 a.m. ET (9:55 a.m. in Tegucigalpa), Honduran President Miguel Zelaya announced that two planes will be heading south today.
…
The first airplane will head from Washington DC directly to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, and it will carry President Zelaya and Miguel D’Escoto, president of the United Nations General Assembly.
The second airplane will head first to San Salvador, carrying Presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Kristina Kirchner of Argentina, and OAS chairman Jose Miguel Insulza, “to begin the process… of assuring that the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States is complied with” in Honduras.
Low friends in high places…
Patrick Corcoran, at Gancho Blog, is worried about a report from Excelsior over “the Interior Secretary’s conclusion that 16 of the candidates for federal deputy have been financed by drug money.”
My God! The Chamber of Deputies might become a cesspool of respectability. Considering there are 500 posts up for election, and many of the 300 direct electoral district posts have anywhere from three to seven candidates, the odds of all 16 being elected are pretty slim. And… even if that were to happen, it might mean a whopping three percent of the Chamber was part of the narco-caucus.
And there’s no guarantee they narco-deputies would be, as Simon Cameron, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, said:
An honest politician … one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
The White Man’s Burden
Not exactly diplomatic, these guys…
Enrique Ortez Colindres and wife, Patricia D’Arcy (photo: NetoRivas)
According to the Argentine newspaper El Clarín, the new “chancellor” [Foreign Minister of Honduras], Enrique Ortez Colindres, … [referred to] President Barack Obama of The United States as “that little black man who doesn’t know anything”.
(via La Pagina [El Salvador], translation by Inca Kola News)
The translator adds that the “Chancellor’s” exact words were “Ese negrito que no sabe nada de nada” which Otto politely refrains from tranlating as “That nigger don’t know nothin’.”
Honduras’ ethnic composition — according to the C.I.A. World Fact Book — is 90% mixed race (mostly Amerind and European), 7 percent Amerind, 2 percent black and 1 percent “white.” The Chancellor appears to be a member of the last of the aforementioned groups.
Ortiz Colindres wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the 1823-1840 Central American Republic and a second book on international law and Central American cooperation .
A post on the (extreme right-wing) “Infidel Bloggers” by Carlos Echevarria, refers to
… our dear family friend, whom had just met with my father on Thursday in Tegucigalpa, has been named Foreign Minister of Honduras, Dr. Enrique Ortez Colindres.
He is a career, senior level Ambassador with long tenures in France, under different administrations, and at the United Nations. A staunch anti-communist and pro-American to boot! (of course not Barry’s Amerika)
Echevarria speaks of himself (and his connection to Honduras) thusly:
For the record my father was a “company” man for many years and conducted a plethora of activities in Latin America, especially Honduras during the Contras period in the ’80’s.
He has, moreover, been engaging in business in that Central American nation for well over 40 years…I know all aspects of Honduras quite well.
If “the company” to which Echeverria is referring is “THE COMPANY” … and the de facto foreign minister was holding meetings with representatives of that organization that is intriguing information. I know nothing about Carlos Echeverria, other than he has a website called “Let’s Get It Right” — which quotes mostly rightist opinion pieces, when it isn’t pumping Sarah Palin as a presidential candidate or other odd extremist causes.
I hit what may be paydirt — Patty D’Arcy is the niece of, and a commentator for, whomever runs NetoRivas.Net. I just found this while looking for a photo of the “chancellor” and haven’t had time to read through, digest and translate.
Give ’em an inch, they’ll take a meter
(CNN) — The metric system is the kind of thing that you can expect from the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority Democrats now have in the United States Senate.
After the Watergate scandal in 1974, Democrats trounced Republicans in the mid-term elections, getting 61 seats in the Senate and 291 in the House.
In the Senate, they adjusted the rules to make it harder for Republicans to filibuster (reducing the magic number from 67 to 60 to invoke cloture, which ends debate). In the House, they passed all kinds of reforms to take power away from senior members and give it to junior members. And Congress mandated that the American people embrace the metric system.
The metric system idea never really caught on…
The Watergate scandal led to screwing up the U.S. entry into a rational system of weights and measurements? OR… a disputed election (and recount) in the State of Minnesota somehow means the United States will finally do something the rest of the planet finds good enough, smart enough and gosh-darn it like it …
Today is the U.S. national holiday when people in the United States celebrate their unique usos y costubres, like a screwy system of weights and measurements no one else understands. Here in Mexico (which receives the most U.S. visitors and has the largest number of U.S. residents) there’s actually a monument to the adoption of the metric system (in Veracruz, where this particular reform is among several memorialized in an impressive, block long Benito Juarez memorial complex). But, being Mexico, land of a million gringos, there are sometimes problems.
The temperature right now here in Mazatlan is 28°… which someone in the U.S. I was speaking to on the phone wanted to know what that was in “real” temperature. Uh… 28 degrees… warm and sunny… would it be hotter if it was 29 degrees, and does it make all that much difference if it’s 82.4° Fahrenheit?
Close enough… and that’s the “problem” for people in the U.S. When joining the rest of the planet and adopting the metric system was first proposed in the U.S., academics were the ones excited by it. I realized why no one else thought it was a good idea when I saw a sign on a university campus reading “15 MPH/ 24.14 KmH” — No shit!
That’s the problem… we expect everything to be exact… which just ain’t the way things work here. If answering a personal ad (and I’m mature… not dead!) I say I’m 1.77 m tall. Except for the gringos, who think 5’10” (requiring two different calculations) is my height (and actually adds a couple of millimeters). C’mon… nobody’s that anal (and if they are, I don’t think I’d be interested in meeting anyway), but I’m still surprised how many people move to Mexico (or anywhere else) and find this a problem.
My simple rules for snowbirds and other measurement challenged folks.
- A half kilo is about a pound.
- A liter is a quart and some.
- A kilometer is about 2/3rds a mile
- I’m not short.
- I’m not tall either.
- Mazatlan is hot.
That’s all you need to know. And the 4th of July is for fireworks and drinking beer (except in those jurisdictions where the ley seco is in effect the day before election day, too).
I don’t think one Senator from Minnesota (even a known math whiz) is going to change the Republic… and even if people in the U.S. never do figure out how to divide and multiply by 10… there are still be some things the U.S. gets mostly right:
From the 2002 Fourth of July celebrations in Washington DC.
Mexico’s Masked Midget Murder Mystery
Last Monday there was a double tragedy in the world of Luche Libre. As Kris Zelner posted on “Pro Wrestling Insider“:
Alberto & Alejandro Jimenez also known as the original La Parkita & Espectrito II respectively were found dead on Monday in room #52 at Hotel Moderna just blocks away from Arena Coliseo after being drugged & robbed by two prostitutes.
The officers said that the men were found unharmed [other than dead!] and all of their belongings were gone and after talking to the hotel clerk who said that they checked in at 6:00 AM on Monday and that the women left some 12 hours later alone. The bodies were transferred to a forensic specialist where the autopsies will be done to determine the true cause of death but the initial belief is that the women put something in the men’s drinks and it killed them according to Enrique Humberto Pliego who is a prosecutor in Cuauhtemoc.
The mini wrestlers were 35-years-old and professionals for around 18 years working all around the country for the various promotions with their older brother being the original Espectrito.
The speculation was that La Parkita and Espectrito II deaths were the unintended results of the old “dope-a-mope” scam, in which ladies of the evening entice their clients to take a doctored drink (belladonna — used for eye diseases — has been used for this for the last couple of centuries) that will put them out for a few hours while the victim is robbed. It’s a pretty common crime (and the source of a great urban legend ) … but even with large sized people, the amount of belladonna need to put a guy under can be fatal (allegedly, it’s what Macbeth used to off Duncan). Smaller people, presumably, are more susceptible to a drug overdose. Too easy.
Being Mexico City… a simple crime is never simple. It turns out that the hotel security tape turned over to the Federal District Prosecutor was “intentionally edited, with the purpose of removing certain sequences of the recording.” Specifically, the prosecutor’s office said they think images of certain individuals entering and leaving the hotel were edited out of the tape.
Add to the weirdness that the two brothers made their living dressed as skeletons, and that La Parkita recently got out of prison after doing time for credit card fraud … and I fully expect this story to get stranger. If it doesn’t make a good novel, it’ll at least make a good short story…. or a mini-series.
Animal Planet… Mexican edition
The new “Soil Conservation Brigade” of Mexico City’s Environmental Police was introduced to the public this week. From the photo, it looks like they’ll also be providing free organic fertilizer:
Photo by Ricardo Castelan (cuartoscuro.com)
Rare babies…
Two Scimitar oryx calves were born at Chapultepec Zoo last month. Extinct in the wild, there is an international effort to return oryx to their native north Africa, although the success of efforts in Morocco and Tunisia depend on captive breeding programs like that at Chapultepec, which has one of the most active breeding programs for rare and endangered animals in the world.
mexfiles.net 