“Grab ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow” (Devious bastard, Lyndon Baines Johnson)
Or, in the NAFTA trucking dispute, grab ’em by the nuts…
… for those who mistakenly assume Mexican businessmen are stupid, A Mexican official confirmed Wednesday that pressuring specific U.S. politicians was one consideration in picking products from certain states for tariffs. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying Mexican officials don’t want to inflame the dispute further. The same Mexican official confirmed his government chose the $2.4 billion worth of products partly to target states with powerful Democratic politicians.
“The intention is to let the constituents know that it’s important the United States respects and abides by its international obligations,” the Mexican official said.
I was mistaken when I wrote yesterday (17-March) that I expected the new tariffs to target agricultural products (which might benefit small farmers here), though U.S. nuts are among those items facing a twenty-percent retaliatory tariff in response to the Obama Administration’s bone-headed decision to stop cross-border trucking.
I’m not sure the tariffs were aimed solely at Democratic Party politicians, though California agricultural products (wines, fruit juices, nuts, iceberg lettuce) are among those products subject to the new rates. The list of products subject to the punitive tariff was designed to economically affect 40 of the 50 states in the United States.
So the list is a hodge-podge, including things like nail polish, deodorants, kitchen appliances, carpeting, toothpaste, dental floss, sunglasses, drapery rods and dog food. None of these are essential to the Mexican economy, Mexican-made brands being already available (the U.S. brands competed because of heavy advertising and sales at U.S. owned supermarkets).
Except for the “juniors” who think U.S. made products are automatically superior, and the silly gringos who can’t imagine buying a LG refrigerator as opposed to a Sears Kenmore, or feed their pooch Iambs or Science Diet there’s not going to be any noticeable effects on anyone.
The only quasi-essential on the list are copier paper, since Mexico does not produce much paper, but Canadian and Russian paper products are available. I’m wondering if Office Max or International Paper pissed off someone down here… the tariff also applies to ball point pens, post-it notes, and pencils. And, if the tariffs last until December, Mexicans can go back to putting up a naciameinto at Christmas instead of a tree (the 20% tariff on Christmas Tree tariff is aimed at Oregon politicos), we grow them here, for EXPORT, but can always sell them locally.
Ho, ho, ho…
The official decreto authorizing the tariffs and listing the rates has been published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, which is the final step in making this legal.
“Social cleansing” or Oliver Twisted
I don’t want to romanticize the plight of the “children of the streets”, but I think they may have been better off living in the parks. It seemed, based on nothing but casual observation, that there was usually a food brigade, a laundry brigade and a “hanging out brigade” (the largest of all, naturally) that seemed to offer them some protection and structure.
I used to charge for doing some basic tourist assistance and research a basic fee of one set of kids’ clothes and a couple liters of milk. Recognizing that a middle-aged foreigner going to visit a homeless kids” encampment could be easily misunderstood, I’d bribe a nun to accompany me when I’d drop off my ill-got gains with the kids at my local park. The kids were, if nothing else, polite and better mannered than you’d expect from shoplifters, narcotics retailers, and glue sniffers.
I was hardly the only person doing this (and the nuns were happy to pitch in, even without a donation). Charity in Mexico is not — as in the northern countries — something you foist off with a check to someone else. It’s hands on. And… based in both the Indigenous cultures and in the Hispanic Islamic-Judaic-Christian tradition… the concept of charity as a benefit to the giver is strong. One gives a peso to a begger not because you think “give a man a fish today…” but because it earns you a blessing… or good karma. Yeah, you need to teach a man to fish, but before you do that, you have to get him a fishing line, a hook and a worm… and he’s got to have enough calories in his stomach to get to the river.
And fishing line, hooks, worms … and calories… require more than feeling the need for occasional good karma. The Federal District provided some basic services like medial attention, and offered some drop in social service clinics, but there isn’t a lot of money available. The Quakers and a few others — including the Brigada Callejara (which includes the Prostitutes’ Union, feminists and homeless advocacy organizations) — offered some ad hoc assistance. At one point, mostly to shame the government into action, dissident teachers organized an open air school at the Angel of Independence.
It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it beat the hell out of what’s happened as a result of “social cleansing”. At least living in the parks provided the younger kids with some kind of protection and a semblance of a “home life” that’s been lost when Guiliani recommended, and the Federal District adopted, anti-vagrancy statutes that made sleeping in the parks overnight a criminal offense.
Sure, it’s nice not to have to think about what image you might project walking though a park, but something important has been lost. Rather than find appropriate shelter for the kids, the city simply made vagrancy a crime. The kids… like other “irregularly housed” people have had to turn to hoteles del paso… the cheap bare-bones hotels that don’t provide keys — when you leave, you’re gone — meant for quickies, prostitution service centers and hideouts for socially unacceptable activities.
They may be sleaze-bag hotels, but they cost money. The kids wouldn’t be living on the streets if they had the money for a place to live. So… glue sniffing and drug dealing and shoplifting not being a steady cash income, they are turning to prostitution. And, rather than being scattered throughout the city, are congregating in the areas where they can find the most affordable hotels.
Ironically, some of the hotels — rather up-front about what they really are — have the social conscience to at least post signs reading “no minors”… then renting to minors. What choice do they have?
The Guiliani recommendations can be blamed on the PRD, and Marcelio Ebrard who spearheaded the movement to hire Guilani’s group to consult on security issues. However, another childrens’ rights scandal is being blamed on either the indolent oversight or active collaboration, of those on the right. The “Iglesia Cristiana Restaurada” ran a chain of shelters… both for homeless kids and those in need of court-ordered supervision… that when not prostelyzing the kids, was prostituting them.
Several girls have simply vanished from the sect’s care; other children have filed complaints about abuse (sexual, physical and psychological). It appears children who came before juvenile courts, but were not homeless, were forced into the shelters, even when responsible adult supervision was available within the family.
While there will be political posturing and attempts to lay the blame for the situation(s) at the feet of their opponents, there is plenty of blame for a basic human rights failure. There are limits on what the State can do, of course.
The modern Mexican State was founded by any number of ad hoc Revolutionaries, some of whom had theories — socialist or communist or fascist or “liberal” — and is incomprehensible to outsiders, too. And, it works well enough. PEMEX, either a state agency that generates an income, or a oil company with a bloated payroll and some eccentric divisions also makes no sense to outsiders… but is still functioning. The Mexican genius is in creating a workable solution and then coming up with a name for whatever it is. The “Institutional Revolution”, the “paraestatal”.
The Mexicans are quite capable of resolving this crisis.
There are the resources, but it requires an incongruous cooprative effort between sex workers, the churches, the bureaucracies, the teachers and social workers, the Red Cross, possibly the Army (which provides health care workers and teachers’ aides in economically marginal areas now), the courts and the politicians. And people willing to trade a peso or two (or … for people like Carlos Slim, a few million) for the good karma.
DIF (the federal/state social services agency) which is supposed to safeguard persons in need, needs to be reformed. Lydia Cacho — who has written more on child abuse and prostitution than anyone — sees a serious problem in the organization’s structure, being normally under the control of the state governors’ spouse (when it was set up, no one thought that there would be women governors, nor that governors might be single).
What’s needed in the short run might be cobbled-together, unwieldy and — to outsiders — incomprehensible, but if the kids have a safe place to live, to learn and to be kids… who cares what we call it?
Truck YOU!
From The (Mexico City) News:
The government announced Monday it will increase tariffs on about 90 U.S. products in retaliation for last week’s decision to cancel a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods within the United States.
Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said the U.S. decision violates a provision of NAFTA that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking years ago.
The measure will affect about $2.4 billion in trade and includes 90 agricultural and industrial products from 40 U.S. states.
The secretariat did not name the products or specify the amount by which import tariffs will increase.
U.S. wheat, beef, rice and bean exports to Mexico are likely targets of the retaliatory duties, Republican lawmakers said on Monday according to Reuters.
“Because Congress has terminated the pilot program in violation of our NAFTA obligations, Mexico has announced that it will retaliate against us, as it is entitled to do, by increasing duties on $2.4 billion of U.S. exports of key commodities like wheat, beans, beef, and rice,” Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, said in statement…
As Porter Corn, at Mexico Trucker (much more than a trucker’s website, and essential reading for anyone dealing with cross-border trade issues) has been pointing out for a very long time, this has absolutely nothing to do with safety or reliability (the big rigs on U.S. roads are built in Mexico and Mexican truckers face stricter safty regulations than in their counterparts in the U.S.), English-language proficiency (Mexican drivers have to take an English-comprehension test, U.S. drivers don’t), or any of the other rationales used to get around the U.S. NAFTA obligations to promote free commerce. All this program said was that Mexican drivers did not have to “dead-head” back to Mexico. In other words, if they drove steel from Monterrey to Kansas City, they could bring something back, not wasting energy, time and money driving an empty rig.
The extreme, lunatic right wing tried to claim this created pockets of Mexican sovereignty in the United States or allow Mexican truckers to travel wherever they wanted in the U.S. (wrong… it’s an application of the same Cabotage Laws that have existed since the end of the Napoleonic Wars for ships sailing into foreign ports applied to trucks crossing land borders) or … whispering that it was a secret plot to infiltrate foreigners into the U.S. (though, if noticed, a lot of U.S. truckers are immigrants, and U.S. trucking companies recruit immigrants).
The weird mixture of right-wing racism and populism, coupled with the Teamsters’ Union’s ham-handed attempts to protect jobs are going to seriously damage U.S. agriculture, making a bad economic situation north of the border worse. If there is any “silver lining” in all this, it is that Mexican farmers will get a little breathing room for this season, as Mexican food processors are forced to cancel contracts from corporate agricultural suppliers.
More… and less… a murder in PV
While busing it from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara a few weeks ago, I was told… in no uncertain terms… by foreigners…. that foreigners were being stabbed on the streets in the resort city. The people insisted their sources were impeccable — “people who live there”. I’m dubious, but I said I’d check, and I did.
A foreign national homeowner in PV was stabbed a few weeks ago when he walked in on a burglary, which doesn’t sound like it was “on the streets” and there was a second stabbing, in a hotel room, of a client-tourist who refused to pay a prostitute. The first is so mundane as to not make much waves, and even the U.S. Embassy didn’t raise a stink about that one. The second did make the papers, only because the situation was slightly irregular. The client being male-to-female transgender activist from Wisconsin and the prostitute — who was caught in the act, and arrested — being male.
My only purpose in posting is that I had a lot of several hits from people using the search engine term “gay murder Puerto Vallarta”. I don’t see this as particularly gay murder, and obviously, there are no random stabbings going on in Puerto Vallarta, but tourists do need to be reminded that walking in on a burgled apartment has never been safe. And, while prostitution isn’t strictly illegal in Mexico, there are no regulations, nor consumer protection acts covering the trade, and one should negotiate the price up front to avoid confrontations.
Me and the devil, were walking side by side…
Yaquí is an energetic pup, and I have to take her out at night to let her run around… and hang with Guerita, her canine comadre… at the little park a couple of blocks from here in a “fraccionamento”… which, unlike a “colonia” in which I live, is a privately developed neighborhood, which can set its own rules, and its own restrictive covenants. In other words, just like any north-of-the border subdevelopment.
Good with children and gangsters
The houses in my colonia were mostly built by the owners… and depending on the owner’s financial condition and needs are a mixed bag, running from a three story apartment house to your standard grocery with family home upstairs to half-lot three room “shotgun houses” to a one room “efficiency house” (with the interior walls being the exterior brick). At least one lot has three small houses on it, with a shared bathroom (probably they’re actually meant to be separate rooms, whenever the owner raises the cash to build a connecting wall and create a front room that will tie the rest of the place together. My house stands out having a sloping roof (I rent the second floor), but normal in that the landlady is related by blood or marriage to about half the families on the street.
In the fraccionamento, the houses were built by the devloper, there is only one house per lot and they have standarized trash cans , the local church fits the architectural scheme and amenities include a semi-private park and playground. The park has a vigilante (which isn’t a guy ready to string you up, but a geezer with one good eye who walks around the park at night to check on the teenagers out necking when they should be home doing their school work. Guerita, more or less a poodle, doubles as guard-dog, keeping stray cats at bay).
Obviously, not a threatening aream not that I’m particularly worried about walking though almost any neighborhood anywhere in the Mexican Republic any hour of the day or night. There’s usually a few people around at night, besides the teenagers (who are… ah… wrapped up in each other) and the vigilante. I usually see a few guys hanging out, and they’re always pleasant enough.
Being that it’s a wealthier neighborhood than mine, I expect the nice people I’ve met of an evening, and who are always nice to Yaquí, might have a few accroutrements I lack … like a couple AK-47s, a Barrett 50-cal machine gun, 35,000 rounds of ammo, a dozen hand-grenades, two bullet-proof SUVs and 15 kilos of marijuana.
Am I shocked to discover there were hoods in the hood? Of course not… though I am a little suprised that no body questioned why three policemen were living in a posh neighborhood. Even on three cop’s salaries, it had to be kind of pricy. Of course, they were moonlighting for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, one of the Sinaloa Cartel faction leaders.
This is the thing people who worry about going to Mexico don’t seem to understand — it’s not like living near gangsters means there’s any particular danger, or even inconvenience, in your daily life. By no means am I in the middle, or even the periphery of a war zone. The thing the U.S. and foreign media overlooks is that even in Sinaloa we’re not running for cover, or locking our doors… a “drug zone” doesn’t mean scary junkies who might attack you. It means an area where a significant part of the economy is based on exports that are uncontrolled substances. And where people walk their dogs, and at least say “buenos noches” to people walking their dogs, no matter what they happen to do for a living. It’s normal.
The cartels are a big business, and pay fairly well. And, not everyone involved in the … ahem… transport business… is a thug. Well, these guys probably were, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to go around acting like jerks and annoying people out walking their pooch.
I happened to be out of town when the guys got taken out (of their abode, not out of their earthly existence) by the Army. The army surrounding a house might bother me a bit… as would a confrontation between various competing factions within the Sinaloa “transport” industry, but c’mon. If you’re making a decent income you will want to live in a nice house, not one of three mini-houses where you get wet when you go to the bathroom during rainy season.
And, given the nature of that business, the security guys are going to be paid fairly well. Much better than a policeman, even if they’re only working part time. The narcotics supply industry is “corrupting”, I’ll grant that, but as the best paying industry in this part of Mexico (and most of our industry does involve exports to the United States, or meeting the needs of U.S. residents in some fashion — i.e., the tourism industry), you just assume you know people who work for the narcos.
When I read that something like 450,000 people are employed by the cartels, I have to ask who all they include. I know people who know they do business with the gangsters. They aren’t gangsters themselves, but have to make a living, and meet their house payments. I’m wondering if those 450,000 include the plumbers who fix gangster toilets, as well as those who knowingly transport or grow or package or refine the product. Or, if those who do transport, grow, package, refine, etc. are really “corrupted” by taking a decent paying job.
Their homes are not perhaps as grand as those in Fraccionamento Alameda (which is only comfortably middle class, but not ostentatiously rich), but asking people to be noble and live in shacks is absurd. And, as long as they’re nice to me and pet the dog… and don’t stick their guns in my face… I’m not going to get too worked up about it.
Worst person in the… UNIVERSE!
José Luis Romo Trujano, 22, doesn’t have a prayer. Being pulled over for a breathalizer test in Mexico City, Romo sped away, hitting (and killing) 44-year old police officer, Luis Fernando Corona Mercado.
Romo managed to speed another kilometer when he was stopped by a statue of Pope John-Paul II. The fire that erupted from Romo’s crashed VW may have been a a sign of further punishment going beyond the murder charges filed by the Public Minister’s office.
Sombrero tip to Burro Hall
And another one down, hey-hey…
Add El Salvador to the growing list of nations that are electing anti-“free trade” presidents. As I write this, all media are reporting a sizable win for FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes. U.S. attempts to “not” influence the election included last week’s threat by U.S. House of Representative Republicans to introduce legislation that would allow for the deportation of Salvadorians displaced during that country’s long, bloody civil war who had been admitted to the United States as refugees.
The House Republicans were apparently worried that ARENA, the quasi-fascist political party supported by the Reagan Administration under the rubric that at least they weren’t communists (never mind they tended to murder Cardinals, Irish nuns and Spanish priests) and which has been re-branded as a pro-“free trade” conservative party might lose. Which they did.
Tim’s El Salvador Blog reports several incidents of attempted fraud, by… no surprise… ARENA supporters not anxious to see the end of their long-running control (since the Civil War) that saw emigration rates skyrocket to the highest in the Americas and a murder rate that makes much larger Mexico’s 6000 casualties of the drug war seem almost as peaceful as some U.S. cities.
More stupidity from the Associated Press
I hope Mark Stevenson can blame this on copy editors:
An editorial posted on the Archdiocese of Mexico’s Web site did not mention the Institutional Revolutionary Party by its full name, but cited legislators describing the “‘revolutionary’ party as an obstacle to taking stronger measures to combat drug cartels.”
No other major party has “revolutionary” in its name.
The guy’s been an reporter in Mexico for several years, and supposedly lives in Mexico City. You know, where the Democratic Revolutionary Party controls the local government.
Of course, he also writes for Associated Press, which seems to require only a tentative relationship to the facts.
Give ’em an inch, they’ll take California, Arizona …
The United States Embassy, at the corner of Reforma and Rio Danubo ALWAYS has a line snaking around the block. People just wanting to visit the United States and trying to do so legally have to patiently queue up starting at about 4 AM for an “interview” interrogation and just not being in line could cost them their right to EVER cross the border. And, there’s no guarantee that going to the interrogation will result in a visa. So… there’s that long ruly (whatever the opposite is of “unruly”) line that blocks Rio Danubo, but the Embassy more or less controlled the flow, at least putting up traffic barriers along the street.
I never thought a lot about it, not having much reason to go to the Embassy, and not having any business or social events that required being in the area. There’s a market behind the Embassy, but it’s no different than any other market in the City (except catering to a wealthier clientele, this being a posh neighborhood). However, after the start of the War Against Iraq, when the 99 percent of Mexicans who opposed that war (the Mexicans feeling some sympathy for the Iraqis, also having a lot of oil and a crappy army… and recognized they were a lot closer to the United States to begin with), the Embassy started to look like a fortress… the outside lanes of Reforma were blocked off (including the sidewalk) as steel mesh barriers went up to keep Mexicans from tossing rocks at the building … and Embassy guards were posted in the fenced off area.
I’m sure this had the tacit support of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (he probably got tired of getting demands for payment for window replacement), but… there’s a kicker. The Embassy never sought a permit to block a public street. And, Mexicans have this thing about gringos taking over their land.
Mexican law… and the Federal District’s charter… grant citizens the right of free access to public property (like sidewalks and city streets). The neighbors, who were already annoyed about not being able to park on Rio Danubo, and one of the minor parties (PANAL) filed a complaint. Of course, given whose embassy is occupying Mexican territory, you betcha this is being raised in Congress.
Whether or not this is raised when the U.S. Secretary of State arrives in Mexico City later this month, it would pay the Embassy (and the Secretary) to at least learn a little Mexican history and avoid what is going to be a major diplomatic headache.
Where the air is clear
It’s always been considered more than ironic that the most important novel about Mexico City takes its title from an 18th century poem celebrating the intellectual and artistic freedom to be found in the city… specifically THE City.
Certainly, since Carlos Fuentes’ 1954 novel was first published, The air has NOT been particularly clear in Mexico City. At one time, the city on a normal day was as polluted as Los Angeles or Houston on a bad one (though not nearly the urban dystopia some would have you believe… I remember one tour book claiming that “half the trees in Mexico City died from air pollution.” No… half the Australian Eucalypti planted in Chapultepec Park died prematurely, both because they had a shorter life span at the altitude and climate found in Mexico City… and, because the air pollution probably stressed them out — however it is that plants are stressed).
Mexico City’s unique geography, combined with the concentration of heavy industry around the city, did create special problems, which called for special solutions. Mexico was extremely fortunate that Mario Molino — who discovered the ozone hole (and received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995) has been a particularly civic-minded, and creative, native son.
It was Molino and his researchers who realized that Mexico City’s air quality problems are a combination of circumstances… and by changing the combination, one could break the chain, and clear the air — at least partially. One geographic factor in Mexico City is that the city is surrounded by mountains, and a stew of different pollutants sit in the atmosphere, combining in ways that make what would be a serious, but manageable problem, into a potential disaster. Recognizing that a bit of wind in the upper atmosphere would create a huge difference, at one point Molino proposed (and the Federal District actually considered) drilling big holes in the mountain-tops and installing fans.
How seriously the administration considered the idea is questionable. My feeling (and I have no proof for this) is that Molino and associates proposed the giant fan approach only to make their other suggestions more reasonable. Certainly they were radical, and certainly, they have worked.
Almost alone among American cities, the Federal District has fostered public transportation over the private automobile. That’s quite a feat in a major auto-producing country. The Metro (still only two pesos a ticket!), the Metrobus, the three suburban trains are continually expanding. Through a “carrot and stick” policy (inefficient engines pay higher user fees, and the city tunderwrites the down paymenfinances replacement vehicles) private buses and taxis are more energy efficient and lower-polluting every year (one reason the VW sedan stayed in production in Mexico much later than anywhere else was their use for Mexico City taxis guaranteed an acceptable sales level, until larger Tsuru and Chevrolet four-door cars could be built to match the “bug’s” efficiency).
AND… “HOY NO CIRCULA” … is the first thing any Mexico City driver learns. Based on your plate number, you can’t drive your private auto one week day, and one Saturday a month. Limiting private auto traffic (try THAT in the U.S.) has worked so well, the Federal District has been able to relax the rules. But, only because other steps have also been taken.
The incentive to find energy-efficient cars (and, for those who insist on driving every day, the cost of maintaining two cars) and — a rather perverse (for Socialists), but effective, policy makes owning a big car somewhat un-hip: parking spaces are a limited commodity, and the free market sets the rates. A friend of mine who had an old Cadillac stopped showing the thing off, when he discovered he spent more on gas driving around looking for a lot that would let him park… and charged him at least double for taking up too much space.
This was brought home to me when I saw the new ads for the Workers’ Party, which shows a Hummer driving by a taco stand. While obviously a dig at Esther Elba Gordilla, who bought Hummers for her union’s top people, it plays on the popular perception of oversized vehicles being the property of gangsters and other unsavory types. You don’t see an SUV and think “suburban housewife” here. You think “narco”.
The rich and hip drive Mini-Coopers. The rest of take the Metro, or a taxi, or… now, the newest short-run transit system: the cyclotaxi:
Replacing bicycle-taxis, the more stable, safer cyclotaxi's muscle-powered electic engine increases the service area beyond the bici-taxi's Centro Historico
Who said “Crime doesn’t pay?”
So, let’s see. Soon to be ex-billionaire Bernie Madoff is off to the Federal Penitentiary, probably for the rest of his life, and Chapo Guzman has been listed by Forbes as one of the world’s richest people.
Madoff’s financial shenanigans probably cost more people their jobs in the last year than anyone (with the exception of George W. Bush, of course). I’m probably not alone is wondering if Madoff’s reluctance to fight the charges against him might have something to do with Chapo.
Madoff created no product, delivered no goods. He simply took in money, and… on paper… created more money. Chapo at least transfers goods from one place to another. His industry being “cash and carry” takes in a lot of money… which went somewhere. And, in Chapo’s industry, if you don’t honor your contracts, there is a rather severe penalty. If Madoff was investing (i.e. stealing) from Chapo, the U.S. financier might feel he was safer in a Federal Prison than anywhere else.
Be that as it may, Chapo has been a success in a business that employs, according to the United States, upwards of 400,000 people in Mexico alone. Mexican officials have been falling all over themselves to distance themselves from the Forbes listing… which, I have to admit is based on dubious sourcing. A Forbes spokesperson on Televisa this evening said, in English, “Well, we have a reporter who speaks Spanish…” – but I wouldn’t doubt that Guzman’s fortune is the estimated billion and a half dollars reported in the magazine.
Jornada’s “Dinero” columnist, Enrique Galvan Ochoa, notes that Chapo is unique among the Forbes billionaires in another way. While all the Mexican on the list of the world’s richest people, all either inherited wealth, or made their vast fortunes under the old semi-one-party state, Guzman is not only a “self-made man”, but he is the first PAN billionaire. Specifically, he earned his shipping fortune since escaping from prison right at the start of the Fox Administration.
Elsewhere in yesterday’s Jornada is a discussion of the recent “narco-manifestiones” along the border. The Government’s contention that the narcos paid protesters with cash and school supplies does seem plausible.
Taken together – Chapo’s business success, the narco job creation numbers and the “incentive program” for protests – and there’s a problem. The rich countries are starting to come around to the idea that they should legalize the drug trade. Fine and dandy, but that only resolves their problems. Not ours. The narcotics trade isn’t a threat because it invests in politics (name a business that doesn’t), nor that as an unregulated industry there are no labor protections for its workers (though, admittedly, narcotics industry bosses are probably marginally worse than Colombian union-busters), nor even the obvious problem that it’s a criminal enterprise.
The real problem is that under the PAN administrations, the narcotics trade has become a viable rural enterprise, and that the narcos are the only effective financial resource within marginal areas. The Mexican State is not a “failed state”, but the Fox and Calderon Administrations have failed to break out of a dependency on the United States finananical sphere, and they have failed in creating any real economic hope for the countryside.
What do they offer to compete with meth labs or marijuana farming in the way of creating rural employment? What opportunities are there for rural Mexicans (and poor ones in border communities) to compete with the corporately-controlled agricultural giants of the North. The question isn’t who paid the protesters, but why the state has failed to provide school children in poor neighborhoods with backpacks and t-squares and pencil boxes. And their older brothers and sisters, and parents, with decent jobs.
Let me tell you a story, ’bout a man named Gonzalo…
A Mexican friend of mine… who learned his English watching American television … was trying to come up with Mexican equivalents of some of the classics. While it’s easy to imagine a Mexican Simpsons, or Lucy and Ricky as Mexicans (ok… Ricky would still be Cuban), we couldn’t see Jed Clampett as a Mexican… for the simple reason that if Jed did strike oil, his land would have been nationalized.
Well… maybe there will be the Lomas de Chapultepec Hillbillies in the not to distant future.
All his life elderly Mexican farmer Gonzalo Cardenas has planted a stalky weed that grows wild in southern Mexico to form a sturdy live fence around his tropical fruit trees.
Now it turns out the weed, jatropha, could be used to fuel jet planes and the Mexican government wants farmers to grow entire fields of it to turn into biodiesel.
Known locally as “pinon,” jatropha is a hearty shrub that grows with no special care. Its oil-rich seeds are being eyed as an attractive feed stock for biofuel since the poisonous plant does not compete with food crops.
Jatropa is a native American plant, though it grows (as a weed) throughout the world in subtropical climates. Its only agricultural value — until recently — was that livestock wouldn’t eat it. For farmers like Gonzalo Cardenas, it was a cheap, easy way to keep the cows out of the garden. Now, with biofuels being all the rage, its great value is that Jatropa does not compete for land use with food crops like corn, and processing jatropa seed does not end up using more energy than the resulting fuel delivers (another problem with corn).
It’s biggest drawback is that production is not controlled by any of the agri-business giants, and almost no attention has been paid to jatropa by the major financial presses. However, the airlines — which have found jatropa-based fuel more efficient for airplanes than petroleum based jet fuel, is very, very interested. Indian farmers are already supplying jatropa to the airlines, and the Indian government is prodding farmers to commercially grow the until now worthless weed.
Mexico is in an unusual position of being a major oil producer, which can also produce energy from any number of alternative sources. Countries with a lot of volcanoes are naturals for geothermal power, and high deserts in the tropics (which describes most of Mexico) is the ideal site for solar power production. Wind turbines in Oaxaca are commercially viable (enough to attract complaints from the Zapatistas, mostly because the turbines were built by Spanish corporate interests) and at least two energy-efficient biofuels — from sugar cane and jatropa — could make at least some agricultural products viable again.
mexfiles.net 