Tragedy in Bolivia
Benjamin Dangle (Upsidedownworld.org) passes along very sad news:
El Alto-based hip-hop artist Abraham Bojorquez died early in the morning on Wednesday, May 20 in El Alto, Bolivia. He was killed when a bus hit him as he walking home.
Abraham, 26 years old, was a member of the popular hip-hop group Ukamau y Ké, and in recent years had become increasingly well known within Bolivia and internationally. His music blended ancient Andean folk styles and new hip-hop beats with lyrics about revolution and social change. Through his music, he demanded justice for those killed in the 2003 Gas War, spread political consciousness, spoke of the reality of life in El Alto, and criticized the lying corporate media. He also was a radio host at the cultural center Wayna Tambo in El Alto, and regularly traveled around Bolivia to prisons, rural and mining communities to offer classes on hip-hop to young rappers.
Abraham Bojorquez was one of the shining lights of a new spirit in Latin American indigenous culture, someone going beyond youthful rebellion and an impotent response to injustice to help guide his people, the Aymara, into the larger world in a way that allowed his (their) culture to reach into the world outside the Andes… with a maturity far beyond his chronological years to recognize the good and the bad of it.
Expect delays… 1 June 2009
Change one word, and Sarah Hubbard, of the Detroit Chamber of Commerce could have been speaking for the Chamber of Commerce of San Diego, Calexico, Nogales, Douglas, El Paso, Presidio, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo, Roma, McAllen or Brownsville.
“We have families living on both sides of the border. We have business partnerships on both sides of the border.
“We believe our community is unique because it is bi-national,” Ms. Hubbard added. “It’s seamless in many ways.”
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“We have many people who come from Canada and tell us they don’t feel welcome when they cross the border,” she said. “We talk about those complaints with our friends on the border, and they tell us their job is security, not customer service.”
Like there wasn’t outrage in Mexico, or in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas?
Given that the premise was to stop “terrorists” from crossing the border (which has happened at the U.S./Canadian border, not the U.S./Mexican one), there is at least some justification for the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which goes into effect on June First, and requires basically a passport* to enter the United States from anywhere… even for citizens* But, then, when the law was passed, it never was for it’s intended purpose, but meant as a sop to the anti-immigrant crowd. Too bad Homeland Security oberfuhrer, Janet Napolitano is taking the law at its face value. Inconvenient, that. The law is the law…even when it’s idiotic.
*Yes, yes, I know. People can get one of those “frequent crosser cards” which still cost a chunk of change … or show a few other “secure travel documents” (and get hassled in the process), but in addition to the cost and inconvenience, it sort of works against the whole “North American Free Trade” concept.
The (not-so) Great Escape
If the break-out of what’s described as 53 “Zetas” from Reclusorio Cienguillas was such a well-planned job, you think the masterminds might have thought about the security cameras? Nah!
The head of the Zacatecas State Security, Alejando Rojas Chalico, has resigned, and the warden and several guards were detained on suspicion that they were involved in the mass breakout, as politicos try to spin the story to fit their own agendas. PRD Governor Amelia Garcia blames the previous administration of Ricardo Monreal (formerly PRI, til he was thrown out on allegations of family ties to narcos, but elected governor on the PRD ticket and now a Senator from the Workers’ Party) for conditions at the prison. That a warehouse owned by Monreal’s family was recently found to contain 14.5 tons of marijuana Monreal lays to “dirty tricks” by Governor Garcia.
Everybody blames PAN… but then, in Zacatecas (one of the few northern states where the PRD is competitive with PAN and PRI) local politicos blame everything on PAN.
I think the prison problems have something to do with the unusual demographics of Zacatecas. Neither of the two traditional industries — mining and agriculture — are viable any more. The mines are worked out, and farming doesn’t pay anywhere, least of all in the desert. The state is the only one in Mexico to be losing population, mostly to emigration to the United States. It is not at all unusual to go into a small town in Zacatecas and find that there are no males between 16 and 60 living in the community. While this has created opportunities for women to take non-traditional roles (like the governor), it has meant that low-status jobs that require male workers are particularly difficult to fill.
Competent, skilled and educated men can find good work. What’s left for the rest — those who can’t find decent jobs, or have the gumption to emigrate — are the crap work. Gangsters probably pay better than the prison system, but even bringing in out of town talent, they seem to have trouble finding people who remember little things like covering the security cameras… good help is SO hard to find these days.
Shaving a few workers off unemployment
EFE, via Latin American Herald Tribune (Caracas):
MEXICO CITY – U.S. consumer products giant Procter & Gamble began construction of a $250 million plant for making Gillette razors and razor blades in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
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The company said that this complex, which will create 2,400 new jobs, will supply the Americas as well as some countries of Europe and Asia.
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He also said that the new Guanajuato complex will be able to win certification as a “green building.”
It will use water efficiently and will be fitted with rainwater collection techniques and devices for treating waste water, thus avoiding discharges into the sewer system.
It will also have a lighting system with mechanisms to use the greatest amount of solar energy possible.
P&G, which in 2008 had global revenues of $10.96 billion, has eight plants in Mexico.
I’d like to think I had a small (very, very small… as in cellular level small) in this good news. When this plant was in the negotiating stage, I was hired to tutored P&G’s Mexican legal representative in English conversation skills. Her biggest challenge was that she was a very proper Mexican lady, and needed to practice the technical terminology needed to discuss solar power and water recycling, which weren’t all that much of a challenge. What was… and what I like to think helped save those 4200 jobs, was the hard work she put into overcoming her natural Mexican good manners, and learning to swear back at gringo lawyers who didn’t quite understand the importance of a green plant in Mexico.
So, do your part for the Mexican economy… shave more often… god-dammit!
Take a good look at my face
It isn’t only the cubrabocas that are coming off. The Secretary of Defense has issued orders for the 9th Military Zone (which includes Sinaola) that soldiers on assignment will not be allowed to wear ski-masks (pasamontañas) or put duct-tape over their name badge while on duty.
Noé Sandoval Alcázar, the commander of the Sinaloa region, said that this was to avoid two problems. Gangsters have been known to use army surplus uniforms while committing crimes (and the quasi-military look favored by gangsters tends to create problems for both citizens and foreigners… as for example, when gangsters trying to cross the Rio Grande were reported as “Mexican soldiers” invading the United States a couple years ago) which does nothing for respect for the uniform by the citizenry, and… given that soldiers do sometimes abuse the citizens, it makes it a little harder for undisciplined soldiers to run amok, at least in uniform.
Given the military’s reluctance to take over police duties (the federal police can still wear masks), it is also sending a signal to the government that the miltiary does not appreciate its generally good public image being sullied with too close a connection with the lowly and often openly despised police.
The flu and diet
While hotels and other sectors of the tourism sector have also been hard-hit (including English language bookshops), with 2000 restaurants in Mexico going out of business as a result of the losses over the “sanitary contingency” period , there may be a long-term negative health consequence we won’t see for a while.
Most of the restaurants that are closing are cocinas economicas — mom-n-pops that the working poor (and lower middle class) and single people depend upon to get a decent, nutritious and healthy daily meal.
Your typical cocina economica isn’t a fancy place… there might, or might not be a posted daily menu with two or three entrees and sometimes two choices of soup, but for making one’s selection, you depend on the aroma wafting from the stove in front of the shop… with the seating (such as it was) behind. That, and whether the cook was jolly looking and well fed (or like whatever a mom who cooks might look like).
These were always marginal businesses — at least as far as cash flow and financial resources go — but being affordable, they meant Mexican workers could meet their nutritional needs while simultaneously meeting the expectations of employers who have to go to the “semana ingles” work schedule, which assumes people eat their main meal in the evening — and not in the mid afternoon (some of the more barbaric companies try to make their Mexican workers eat at the uncivilized hour of noon).
Some of these businesses are holding on by converting themselves into snack bars or selling a limited menu (like sandwiches), which may make economic sense, but over the long run means the working poor in Mexico (who — thanks to the pressure to conform to what the rest of the world thinks are “normal” working hours — can’t go home for the healthy, mid-day main meal) who ate at these places will be eating more like the working poor in the United States… not a decent meal, but junk food.
Musica regional Sinaloense: Friday night video
More proof, if its needed, that cultural synergy is alive and well in Mexico.
A “Chirrune’, uploaded to youtube by “pepeurrea” from his local Cuilican cantina.
The United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate have approved spending bills that are specifically for the U.S. wars against Afghanistan and Iraq… and — oh yeah — Mexico (er, Mexican suppliers of agricultural products the United States government would rather not enter the country). The two bills need to be reconciled before passage.
Two points. It’s not unusual for spending bills in the United States Congress to include issues not related to the main point, but including Mexican anti-narcotics spending in a bill related to two wars undercuts the loudly applauded (in the United States) that there is “light at the end of the tunnel” in the so-called “War on Drugs”. Iraq and Afganistan are, at least, countries that you can find on a map. Is this money for a “war” on drugs… or on Mexico?
The Senate version is up-front about using these funds to support U.S. industry:
The Senate bill would prohibit the use of U.S. funds to provide fuel or logistical support for aircraft Mexico has purchased with its own money. It would require that communications equipment provided to Mexico be compatible with equipment used by U.S. agencies.
Second point: It’s a contradiction for a bill that provides for lethal equipment to also insist on certain human rights concerns: it’s a given that if you sell someone a gun (or helicopters or “forensics and nonintrusive inspection equipment, computers, training and fixed and rotary wing aircraft”) they’re going to be used, against whomever the “enemy” is at the time. And I think the Mexicans — from all political persuasions — who initially objected to U.S. attempts to put strings on the military assistance under the guise of “human rights” on the grounds that it also compromised Mexican national security had a valid point.
Still, given that the United States is forcing this “war” on Mexico, it is not unreasonable to try to keep the equipment used by the Mexicans limited to the U.S. objective. While one could (but I won’t) point out this means the United States expects to use the Mexican forces as a contractor in its own now officially non-existent “war on drugs”, the Senate version specifically requires the Mexican government to “do something” about completely unrelated issues.
… it would require the State Department … to support a thorough, independent, and credible investigation of the murder of American citizen Bradley Roland Will.” Will, an independent journalist, was shot and killed while covering a crackdown on protests in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006.
While Will’s death (I hesitate to call it “murder” because it may have been — but probably wasn’t — an accident) should be investigated, pressure on the Federal government to investigate a state police action during a political demonstration has nothing to do with narcotics sales and distribution. It does, however, have everything to do with people in the United States DEMANDING the Mexican Federal Government over-ride its own legal and political system (modeled on the United States Constitution, by the way) and demanding special rights for U.S. citizens at the expense of Mexican civil rights.
I don’t doubt that the “Friends of Brad Will” have the best interests of Mexico in mind. I question whether convincing the United States Senate to include investigations into the demise of an unaccredited journalist who was illegally intruding in Mexican political affairs doesn’t also justify the same “special rights” for well-connected foreigners that was at the heart of that demonstration… and of a lot of other human rights abuses in Mexico.
Admit impediments
J.D. Lown isn’t the first guy to fall in love with a Mexican, nor the first to decide to be with the one you love, not love the one you (could be) with. Nor, is it all that unusual that this is a same sex relationship. But, having been only recently re-elected mayor of San Angelo Texas (pop: about 90,000) with a whopping 89 percent of the vote, his “defection” has been noteworthy.
I’ve written on the travails of cross-border romances before, though my May 2007 piece, “Amercian Exiles” was about the relatively less complicated issue of a married (as in legal in all 50 states type marriage) couple, and a woman engaged to a Mexican man. Glenn Greenwald, the respected Salon columnist and civil rights attorney, has written eloquently and passionately about the specific problem faced by same-sex couples when it comes to immigration.
Nearly all reports on Lown’s decision have been supportive (even — extremely suprisingly — from far right-wing sources like “Free Republic, though Freepers think gay guy’s leaving the U.S…. or at any rate, not bringing in Mexicans, is what’s positive about this) BUT…
… when even a gay, progressive writer, Pam Spaulding, headlines her post “TX: mayor resigns because of relationship with man here in the country illegally” there’s a problem. A big problem.
I can see — from the Matt Phinney’s article in the San Angelo Times-Record — how she got the impression that the unnamed Mexican partner is an “illegal” :
Lown said in a telephone call late Wednesday afternoon from Mexico that he has started a relationship with someone who does not have legal status in the United States.
Lown said he did not want to take the oath of office knowing he was “aiding and assisting” someone who was not a citizen.
“I made the final decision when I knew it was the right decision to make for me and my partner and our future — and for the community,” he said.
But nothing in Phinney’s article says the partner was “illegal”… only that he isn’t a United States citizen. Since Lown met his partner when the partner was a student at San Angelo State University, one presumes the Mexican was on a student visa*… and could have been in the United States on either a temporary visitor’s permit, or was facing the end of his student visa … or it crossed Lown’s mind to do something illegal, like convince his partner to stay without residency papers.
Ms. Spaulding is a writer I respect — she is an important voice in the blogsphere, not the gay blogosphere, nor the progressive blogosphere, but the whole kit n’ caboodle. What she says matters. And what’s disappointing is that even U.S. “progressives” have not been willing to look at immigration issues in general, and fall into the easy trap of confusing “Mexican” with “illegal” with no understanding of the difficulties and whimsical nature of the immigration process. That “progressive” writers feel comfortable using a term like “illegal” is bothersome enough. That they either don’t know — or don’t care — to study immigration issues is a huge disappointment, and doesn’t bode well for reform of what’s a massively complicated, ineffective government policy.
* Which appears to be the case, according to ggw59” who commented on Pam’s post and seems to know the (former?) mayor.
Anti-narcos are the bad guys?
The strange sage of Rogaciano Alba has taken another twist with the emergence of a guerrilla group’s claim that Alba in part of a larger conspiracy involving — among others — Chapo Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel, President Felipe Calderon AND his political enemies, the PRD.
Alba, whose two sons were pulled off a bus and gunned down in front of the other passengers and whose daughter was kidnapped, was the caique (rural politcal boss) of Petatlán, Guerrero and a powerful cattle baron. He had gone into hiding after a cattleman’s association meeting was attacked by masked men who opened fire on the assembly, apparently intending to kill Alba. The attack didn’t seem to “fit” the profile of a hit by rival narcotics gangs, Alba (from wherever he was hiding out) said he wasn’t involved in narcotics, and the attacks didn’t seem to fit the profile of typical gangster attacks. As I wrote a year ago, there was much more going on:
Alva’s cattle operations have dislodged a lot of local farmers, and he may be the kingpin of an illegal logging operation. Despite assurances from his successor as Mayor of Petatlán that “everybody knows everyone, and we all get along,” as a politician, and as a cattle baron — and as a timber smuggler — Alva was going to make a lot of enemies. Including environmentalists.
In rich countries like the U.S. and Canada, we think of environmentalists as middle-class people. And, in Mexico, there are the middle-class and urban environmentalist types too. But there are also the dirt farmers, for whom issues like over-logging and over-grazing are life and death issues. Guerrero is in the middle of a prolonged drought, and the small farmers, already threatened by NAFTA rules changes and transgenetic corn (at the same time that corn producers are feeling pressured to adopt a mongenetic strain, cattlemen are welcoming genetic variety), are in a double bind. The big cattlemen are a theat, as are the loggers.
Violent confrontations between Alba’s people and the farmer/environmentalists are nothing new. Alba remains a suspect in the dummied up suicide of Mexico City attorney Digna Ochoa, who represented several Guerrero farmers who were accused of murder. In 2004, several Guerrero farmers were imprisoned in connection with blockades to stop timber harvesting and the alleged murder of timbermen connected to Alba.
Which makes me wonder whether the release this week of Palemón Cabrera González, who was accused of murder, battery and cattle rustling back in May 2000 might be significant. The cattle were owned by, and the murder victims worked for, one of Alva’s “lieutenants,” according to Jornada.
Frontera Nor/Sur (via a translation in El Paso’s Newspaper Tree) reported on the group that could have been behind last year’s attacks on Alba:
Sometime last weekend and somewhere in the mountains of southern Guerrero state, a group of at least 20 armed men presenting themselves as a column of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) appeared before Mexican reporters.
Uniformed and armed with AK-47 rifles, the group was led by Comandante Ramiro, or Omar Guerrero Solis, one of the most wanted men in Mexico and an almost folkloric figure who escaped from a prison outside Acapulco more than six years ago and wasn’t publicly seen again until last weekend’s secret press conference.
In comments to reporters, Comandante Ramiro accused the Calderon administration of not only staging the fight against drug trafficking, but of also protecting the interests of alleged drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The masked guerrilla commander charged Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected with the backing of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and social sectors sympathetic with the guerrilla movement, with also protecting Chapo Guzman and an alleged associate, Rogaciano Alba.
There are questions about how serious a threat the ERPI is, or whether it really enjoys widespread support, but the group’s core purpose — fighting against the powerful agricultural intersts that threaten local livelihoods — suggests that I was right to speculate on a connection between powerful agri-business interests and the attacks on the Alba family. After all, the Sinaloa Cartel (and the other narcotics trafficking organizations) are just powerful multinational argicultural interests that use violence to maintain control and access to resources, too.
What gives the ERPI claims credibility is that military power is brought against them, though they too are fighting the cartels. As Frontera Nor/Sur notes:
… human rights abuses against Mexican soldiers mainly deployed in anti-drug operations soared 600 percent from 2006 to 2008, reaching 1,230 cases filed with the official National Human Rights Commission last year. In both Guerrero and neighboring Michoacan, complaints against soldiers are on the upswing in 2009.
Juan Alarcon, longtime president of the official Guerrero State Human Rights Commission, said his agency saw an unprecedented 85 complaints against soldiers from last December to the first three weeks of April. The majority of accusations, encompassing alleged violations of search and seizure, arrest and other laws, “have nothing to do with drug trafficking or organized crime,” Alarcon insisted.
Even if one accepts the premise of Erit Montufar, director of the Guerrero state ministerial police, that the ERPI are just cattle rustlers masquerading as a political movement, you have to remember that the same thing was said about Pancho Villa. Using the military against farmers’ movements tends to be counter-productive to stability in the long run.
An addition to la familia…
Break out the cigars and welcome the newest Latin American “international relations, politics, news, and culture” blog. Much like the Mex Files (and uses many of the same Spanish and English-language sources), although trying to look at all of the Americas south of the Rio Grande/Bravo del Norte, Marcin Maroszek’s Ameryka Łacińska appeals to a slightly different audience than I do… being that Mex Files is in English, and Ameryka Łacińska in Polish.
With recent posts on the Venezuelan political opposition, the Falklands/Malvinas controversy (back for another round), Mexico’s narcotics museum (and on-going narco-situation) … and, naturally, the flu, Ameryka Łacińska is providing Polish readers with at least the basic factual information that might not be easily obtained in the local media.
Besides, Mexico and Poland do have a lot in common, besides Elena Poniatowska. We’re both traditionally agrian Roman Catholic cultures dominated by an expansionist next-door neighbors who’ve grabbed big chunks of the country, and have been forced from time to time to depend on remittances from workers abroad.
And have unpronouncable names. How would Cuauhtemoc sound in Polish?
War is diplomacy by other means
So, the United States is no longer calling their “War on (some) drug (users)” a war. That’s fine and dandy, but as Michael Marizco hints at in this article from The [Mexico City] News, changing the name doesn’t mean the end of the “war”… it’s just means off-shoring the problem and doesn’t come creeping back:
Federal authorities in the United States are calling for an end to the bogged down thinking behind the War on Drugs.
It’s an ambitious idea with many immediate benefits, except that where the government wants to spend its anti-drug money these days suggests the Feds aren’t so much intent on ending the war on drugs as they are on moving the battlefield a little south.
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The newly confirmed head of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy told The Wall Street Journal that the phrase only served as a barrier to dealing with the profound challenges behind substance abuse and addiction.
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a `war on drugs’ or a `war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
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But what grabbed my attention was the last sentence of his carefully chosen words; seems as clear a qualifier as any I’ve ever read.
Apparently, we’re no longer at war with people “in this country.” Other countries have become an entirely different matter altogether.
Take a look at Page 3 of a U.S. Congress Appropriations Committee summary of its 2009 Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pandemic Flu.
The Feds would like to spend $470 million by supporting the Mexican government’s “war against organized crime and drug trafficking.”
The motivator is to stem violence along the Mexican frontier, a fantasy that the U.S. Congress seems fixated on, inspiring images of grenade attacks in El Paso and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán landing at San Francisco International with an escort of renegade FBI agents before he’s whisked off in an armored Suburban to the Bohemian Grove.
Most of the money would go toward arming the Mexican government with three Black Hawk helicopters as well as X-ray machines for inspection points and more anti-corruption training because Mexico hasn’t had enough of that.
Not part of the budget but equally interesting is the United States’ new usage of satellite spying technology to monitor the border. Recently, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, revealed that it has been tracking drug loads coming into the country.
However, it has stayed away from monitoring the U.S. side of the border and instead keeps an eye on the Mexican side. It’s a little schizophrenic how much effort goes into comforting one populace at the expense of another.
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Everyone has been cheering the “end” of the “war on drugs” but that doesn’t mean any end at all… all that is going on is an attempt to shift the downside of a dirty industry south of the border. Sticking Mexico with the social and political problems — the erosion of human rights, the appalling death toll (not as high as the death toll caused by the drug usage in the United States by any means… but here, it’s wholesale slaughter as opposed to retail mayhem), the political and social costs associated with corruption, the breakdown of rural services — is a lot like claiming one’s stopped taking toxic waste… only to export it to someone else.
In a twisted way, this is about protecting the U.S. job market … more business for the arms manufacturers, “police trainers” and high-tech surveillance suppliers… not to mention the “incarceration/industrial complex” (which can easily shift to “rehabilitation” without losing its “customer base”) and does nothing to change the situation.
Or, the Canadian market…
The 40-day blockade of the Trinidad mine in the Oaxacan community of San José del Progreso came to a sudden and violent halt on May 6. Mine representatives and municipal authorities called in a 700-strong police force that stormed into the community in anti-riot gear along with an arsenal of tear gas, dogs, assault rifles, and a helicopter.
The overwhelming show of force was in response to community residents’ demand that the Canadian company Fortuna Silver Mines immediately pack its bags and leave. The company is in the exploration phase of developing the Trinidad mine. The result was a brutal attack, with over 20 arrests and illegal searches of homes. Police seemed to be going after a heavily armed drug cartel, not a community protest.
This is one of the drug war’s dirty secrets: As Mexican security budgets inflate with U.S. aid – to combat the rising power of drug trafficking and organized crime – rights groups say these funds are increasingly being used to protect the interests of multinational corporations. According to a national network of human rights organizations known as the Red TDT, security forces are engaged in systematic repression of activists opposed to megaprojects financed by foreign firms such as Fortuna Silver Mines.
In Oaxaca and throughout southern Mexico these types of conflicts seem destined to increase. Defying the logic of the international financial crisis, Mexico remains the top destination in Latin America for foreign direct investment, particularly in extractive industries. In the last three years alone, multinational companies have received over 80 federal mining concessions in just Oaxaca, covering 1.5 million acres of land. Mining is only the tip of the iceberg: Other megaprojects include hydroelectric dam construction, tourism and infrastructure, energy generation projects, water privatization, and oil exploration.
Changing the rhetoric of the so-called war on drugs does nothing to change the demand from the wealthy countries for the resources of the less wealthy… nor lessen the violence the wealthy are willing to tolerate for control of resources… whether legal or otherwise.
When poor Mexican farmers show up in the United States after being driven off their land by other consumer demands from the north, it’s blamed on the Mexicans. Maybe Chapo showing up in the U.S. with some renegade FBI agents would be the best thing that could happen. Perhaps the consumer culture SHOULD deal with its own industrial (and human) waste products.
mexfiles.net 