Hop on the bus, Gus. Make a new plan, Stan…
Among the fifty ways to clear the air in Mexico City is this new regulation (The [Mexico City] News):
Mexico City launched an anti-traffic and emissions program Tuesday that requires students from primary through high school to take a bus to school.
Only students with disabilities, or those who can prove that they walk, bike, or take a form of public transport to school are exempt, the city program says. The program will go into effect at the start of the next school year.
Since this is a pragmatic way of handling a twice daily traffic problem (actually three times a day, given that schools run in two shifts) coming from a PRD administration, you can almost guarantee that PAN is already looking for some parent somewhere to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about … oh… anything. And, Televisa will be running a lot of exclusives on the dangers of school buses.
When the Federal District replaced the little Rutas running up and down Insurgentes with the Metrobus — running on dedicated inside lanes, and with stations every couple of blocks — PAN managed to find someone who claimed she was mugged walking the extra block to her house, and did its best to claim that her human rights were violated by not having a ruta that stopped exactly at her corner. Televisa ran story after story about the crowded conditions on the Metrobus (it was free for the first month… and anyone who could conceivably change their commute to traveling Insurgentes did so, to save the two pesos in Metro fare) and blamed the bus for the idiot drivers who got themselves stuck in the dedicated lanes.
The school bus requirement includes prep schools and private academies (which aren’t always exclusively rich kids, though it will be good to get some of those “juniors” out of their Passants and Seats). The thrice-daily traffic jams in front of private schools has been a problem for years — about five years ago a guy who couldn’t get down his street finally went Postal and ran over a couple of kids waiting for “Mami” to pick them up. And… I’ve run into a lot of otherwise normal Chilangos who grew up never having been on public transit, and not knowing how to behave — so consider the school buses a civics lesson (and a sneaky way of breaking the over-dependence so many Mexicans develop on their mothers… mamites — “mommy-ism” … is probably a more serious public health problem than we like to admit).
What “failed state”?
Mexico Trucker — one of the best websites on Mexico ever (and a heck of a lot slicker than this one) — looks at what the real experts (as opposed to the Fox News reporters who was “embedded in Tijuana” — sounds like he was holed up in a whorehouse, doesn’t it?) say. A nice selection of thoughts from the left, right and center about the blather over a “failed state”
Yann Kerevel writes at Allterdestiny;
If anyone has been following headline’s in the U.S. press about Mexico in the last month or two, you might have noticed a lot of alarmist and sensationalist garbage being thrown around suggesting that Mexico is coming close to collapse, is a “failed state” or a “narco state.” Fox news has been spreading this message, along with a number of political commentators on the Sunday morning talk shows, and even Rolling Stone.
The violence in Mexico is worrying, and cause for concern, but the rhetoric seems to lead the uninformed to think Mexico is more like Somalia. It is definitely not.
…Stephen Haber, who is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University…. states in part,
Mexico — which is most decidedly not a failing state — there has been a quiet but substantial movement toward the creation of societies that are characterized by increased economic opportunity, social mobility and political democracy.
… There are no foreign troops on Mexican soil. There is no martial law. Garbage is picked up, streets are swept and children go to school. Middle-class couples take weekend getaways, and drive there on highways as good as those in the United States. After falling for a decade, Mexico’s homicide rate increased in 2008, because the Calderón government courageously decided to take on the drug traffickers. If it keeps rising, it may soon be as high as that of…Louisiana.
From the Foreign Policy Blog, we’re seeing similar analysis;
1.The narcogangs still seem to be largely focused on fighting each other, not on bringing down the Mexican state. They have stepped up attacks on Mexican officials, police, and the army, but more out of necessity because Calderon has taken the war to them. …
2. The gangs have no political agenda; their main goal remains selling dope. They are not providing basic services to Mexico’s citizens, nor are they trying to create a parallel system of political order to rival the Mexican state and erode its legitimacy in the eyes of the people. In fact, even if most Mexicans think the gangs are winning, they by all accounts still hate them and what they are doing to the country.
Economic stimulus… or stimulant?
This Reuters story by Boris Groendahl (International Herald Tribune) hasn’t been receiving much distribution (or comment) — which makes me wonder whether or not anyone really wants to know how much of our Sinaola agricultural commodities market funds are in the U.S. banks (it’s too much cash to be socked away in mattresses here, or even invested in gold chains, Hummers and high-maintenance girlfriends and has to be somewhere). If “drug money” is, by definition, “corrupting”… then its not some cop on the take in Fulanotitlan that should be of concern, but the people whose economic decisions affect everyone in the United States (and the rest of the planet as well) that should make people nervous.
Vienna: The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.
“In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that “interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities,” Costa was quoted as saying. There were “signs that some banks were rescued in that way.”
Profil said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money …
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004, quoted by in “Who benefits from the Afghan Opium Trade?, Global Research). Oil and narcotics are major Mexican exports. If one or the other were to dry up, would the U.S. economy completely fall apart? Or is the U.S. (also the major source of arms to Mexico) also propping up the narcotics industry… and should it ask for a bailout from the U.S. Treasury Department?
If the cop on the take in Fulanotitlan is supposedly a national security threat, what kind of threat is it when the banks are also corrupted (if this is counted as corruption). I don’t know… given the bankers’ bling binge paid for by U.S. taxpayers… some heads need ot roll on Wall Street .
I have neighbors here in Sinaloa who are the go-to guys for that.
Seeds of change
I didn’t realize this is the centennial of one of the great precursors of the Mexican Revolution.
Ray Acosta at the Yahoo Group MexRevResearchers has been diligently preparing a month-by-month calendar of the Mexican Revolution. February is the month that not only marks the birthday of the multi-faceted Álvaro Obregón Salido (19-Feb-1880), but February 1909 was the… uh… seed of Obregón’s brilliant military and political career. And the start of a revolution not just in Mexico, but in military strategy, and — incidentally helped save Europe from starvation, and — peripherally — led to a complete change in the economic and political structure of the United States.
Obregón was phenomenally gifted… an orphan from Alamos, Sonora, his photographic memory, keen eyesight and linguistic abilities had made him a valued and respected member of the Yaquí and Mayo communities while still a boy being raised by his schoolteacher older siblings. At thirteen, he’d started a small cigarette factory, and in his mid-teens, learned poker well enough to be a professional gambler. His poker playing skills were good enough that local businessmen paid him NOT to play — preferring he not take their workers for their paychecks at those back-room games.
With the “grants” from local businesses, he went into business as a shoe and sewing machine salesman, free-lance mechanic and farmer, buying a small piece of property he named — with ironic wit — “the poor farm”. He did quite well attending to his garbanzos.. then… in February 1909 … came the seminal event….
Dearth of a sales job
The Foreign Policy Association Blog reported that at least six senior Mexican officials (President Calderon, Finance Minister Carstens, Foreign Minister Espinosa, Energy Minister Kessel, Communications and Transport Minister Téllez and the President of the Banco de Mexico, Guillermo Ortiz) all went to Davos this year. A commentator noted that it costs $40,000 (U.S.) per person to attend this event, and the “top guns” of course brought their aides and assorted minions. Since we Mexican taxpayers are footing the tab for what’s basically a convention for the international banking biz, it might be nice to know what we’re getting for our investment.
Other than trying to counter the negative image Mexico has received in alarmist U.S. and other foreign media, the Calderon Administration seems to be selling slightly shop-worn economic ideas. Said Calderon:
“It’s of key importance for Mexico that it is known, precisely in this forum, what we have achieved in the country, the reforms that have been promoted by the Mexican Government and approved by the Mexican Congress, the progress we have made, the changes that have been made in the fiscal structure of the government on pensions and energy, so that it allows [us] to provide a more objective and clear overview of the economic transformation we are undertaking in the country,”
Just what these “economic transformations” include is questionable. Here in Mexico, the Administration has been forced this week to make concessions to the left, freezing deisel prices in the face of popular discontent.
At the same time, and just as the world financial order has come crashing down due to unregulated markets in the United States, Guillermo Ortiz, the central bank president, is pleading for less state regulation and more “self-regulation” in the banking industry. While at least one of Ortiz’ suggestions (that executive compensation be tied to long-term, not short-term returns on investments) makes perfect sense, he seems to be arguing that the very regulations which so far have cushioned the Mexican economy from the world-wide credit disaster need to be relaxed.
Laura Carlsen, in a perceptive article on the 2007 Davos Conference, wrote of Calderon:
In Davos, Calderón presented a series of facile dichotomies: past and future; democracy or “dictatorial regimes”; free markets or closed economies. By doing so, he caricatured Latin American politics today, ridiculed many of its leaders, and dismissed the views of the millions of Mexicans who voted against him and for a very different economic project.
The opposition to the PAN candidate grew out of a deep disenchantment with the economic model. Much of Mexico’s population, especially its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, believes it is not represented by the Calderón government. But instead of attempts at reconciliation, in Davos the new president reaffirmed his commitment to ensure that Mexico remains a poster child for the status quo. By carrying an ideological platform of economic orthodoxy into the international arena,Calderón rubbed salt in wounds still fresh from the post-electoral conflict.
Although there have been some important changes since 2007 — notable the new tax code and changes in the PEMEX management structure — most of these were only achieved by jettisoning the radical “free market” orthodoxies originally proposed by the Administration in return for Congressional support by the left. Things have not changed all that much. What’s different this year is that, having bought into the Merida Plan anti-narcotics funding, and pursuing a what’s perceived abroad as a “war” and a “failed state” — the “powers that be” have to resell the same product all over again.
(Carmen) Miranda Warning: a Friday Night Video
Latin American literature is often considered “magical realism”. I don’t know what’s uniquely Latin about the style, except maybe as a way of comparing it to Hollywood’s “magical surrealism”. What other description is there for Busby Berkley number that mix Sigmund (“sometimes a banana is just a banana”) Freud, drag queen anthems (“Some people say/I dress too gay,/but when I’m gay/I dress this way…”) and choreographed monkeys? Latin America produces a fine assortment of organic hallucinogens, which might possibly explain the way Hollywood dealt with Latin Americans — Carmen Miranda — “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” from the 1943 musical, “The Gangs All Here” :
“The freedom to write doesn’t exist in Mexico”
The quote is from Emilio Gutierrez Soto, formerly a Chihuahua reporter who was released after being held for seven months by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “service” after he fled death threats following his reports on military abuses connected with the so-called “war on drugs” in his state. Guiterrez crossed into Texas with his son, asked for political asylum and was locked up longer than some drug dealers are.
Or that’s the story as reported by the Los Angles Times. I’m not familiar with the background on this in incident, and the Times story says Guiterrez was working for El Diario Noroeste. I don’t know a paper by that name. El Diario is a chain of several newspapers, and they seem to be referrring to the Juarez paper, although they could mean the Cuilican based Noroeste. Writing for either of those papers on the military could be hazardous to one’s health … and freedom.
I don’t know which is more bothersome … that a reporter is imprisoned for seeking political asylum, or that he felt the need to flee because of the military response to the “drug war.” ICE abuses should be better covered in the United States, but the major papers seem to be indifferent to that, and what coverage those abuses receive is spotty at best, or tends to be dismissed.
The incident that caused problems for Gutierrez, at least the one the Times highlighted, was a “2005 story for El Diario del Noroeste [which] claimed that drunken soldiers raided a hotel in northern Chihuahua state.” This was followed by military-organized raids on the reporter’s own home, allegedly to search for weapons and/or narcotics. And death threats.
Incidents where soldiers have invaded the wrong houses, or looted private businesses, have been reported here locally. Soldiers are not policemen, and a military operation requires a different mind-set than a police investigation. A military is designed to take total control of a situation, and anything or anyone who interferes with the goal is the “enemy” and has to be eliminated or neutralized.
And an army is a bureaucracy, and no bureaucracy graciously deals with criticism. Especially when an otherwise respected institution like the Army is tasked with jobs traditionally done begrudgingly by underpaid, otherwise unemployable locals. Granted, the police in this country need better training, and we need better policemen, but simply throwing the army — mostly teenagers with guns — at the problem is likely to create a new set of problems.
Reporters are going to investigate, and there are going to be incidents that need investigation. And, one way or another, reporters are going to report. I know reporters who have been murdered, and I don’t just write this off Guiterrez’ experience as an anomaly. Writers have always been highly respected in Mexico, and there is a long tradition of free expression… outside the news.
The highly unpopular, non-majority administration (when you come down to it, Calderon only received about 20 percent of the vote in the last election, counting those who took the Zapatistas’ advise and refused to vote) seems to have glommed on to the “War on Drug (Dealers)” as a way of creating legitimacy. But, crude attempts at censorship are not going to work. Writers will figure out some way of getting out the news:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind --
Born to run…
I’m afraid I can’t speak about the mood in the United States right now, though I just was there… for something under three hours — one of which was spent in WalMart.
I’ve been working for my publisher, as Gestor de proyectos (“Project Developer”) which supposedly means looking for new authors and titles, but includes a lot of “other duties as required”. Editorial Mazatlan is a very small publisher, and until now, we’ve been only printing and selling books by mail order or for the local market. Gods, Gachupines and Gringos being the first “major” book, we’ve had to patch the international distribution system together as we go. Small businesses are screwed by NAFTA, and the on-again, off-again regulations on cross-border trucking make it maddening — or prohibitively expensive — to send anything larger than an overnight delivery package, and smaller than a semi-trailer load by “normal” means.
So… if you wonder why books are expensive in Mexico (besides the fact that a country that’s mostly desert doesn’t have the water or trees to support large-scale paper-making) consider this. To take delivery on an initial 500 copies for Mexican distribution (most are being distributed from the U.S. or via Amazon, etc.) we drive minivan the 1200 Km. to Nogales, Arizona… meet a shipment from Albuquerque… load the books into the van, take them to a customs broker’s warehouse on the Arizona side … unload the books for inspection.. reload the books in the brokers’ truck… drive the minivan back into Nogales, Sonora… meet the brokers’ truck at a convenience store parking lot on the Mexican side of what’s laughingly called “the free trade zone” (21 Km from the border)… re-load the minivan… and drive the 1200 Km back to Mazatlan. So I can hop on the bus, and start doing an author’s tour slash publishers’ representative trip slash manuscript hunting expedition slash Mexican adventure tour.
I hadn’t expected to be back until Friday, but things went smoothly… considering. I don’t think I committed any major or minor unpunished crimes in Mexico or the United States in the process other than a few speeding violations . Driving across Sinaloa and Sonora at night is not all that scary, or even difficult (though it was cuatos — toll roads — the whole way). Nope, in Cuilican, I didn’t see any shootouts or head-chopping, and the only livestock I saw on the road were a gang of goats who wanted to play in traffic — not on the highway, but — in the middle of Los Mochis, where we’d stopped for lunch Thursday afternoon. Army and police checkpoints slightly outnumber fruit and vegetable checkpoints, but that’s the price we pay for being a major agricultural exporter (though, for some reason, I suspect the Army was not worried about fruit-flies).
I can’t tell you a thing about Nogales, Arizona… I’d never been there before, but it has a WalMart Super Store within a mile or two of the border, which I did tour. It looked a lot like …. WalMart.
I did discover the best bookstore in Sonora (one of two bookstores in Sonora): Libros y Mas in Ciudad Obregón. Cd. Obregón is different than what one thinks of as a “typical” Mexican city. Although there were several Yaqui communities in the immediate region, Obregón didn’t come into being until 1910 (the same year the Mexican Revolution started), as a railhead for the Southern Pacific Railroad, dubbed Cajame. Having grown into a city only since the 1930s, Obregón is worth visiting to see how Mexico interpreted the modernist architectural style (the Palacio Municipal is worth a look) and as a reminder that there are “many Mexicos” … including wealthy agricultural and academic centers.
And, it’s the “big city” for several resort and “gringo ghetto” towns in the area… notably Alamos and Guaymas… and because Libros y Mas (Miguel Aleman 124 Sur, Ciudad Obregon Centro
Tel: 644.413-4709) carries — in addition to a huge collection of new Spanish-language books as well as having a wonderfully sunny upstairs cafe (with wifi!)– Gods, Gachupines and Gringos in stock.
Casa Xochiquetzal
In the 17th century, a Spanish nobleman, as penance for his wicked ways, endowed a refuge for reformed prostitutes under the supervision of the Archbishop of Mexico City. It did not turn out well:
The archbishop assigned three young priests to fill the Belem. Preaching sermons around Mexico City advertising the new facility didn’t bring in any customers, but it amused the prostitutes (and a lot of others) in the congregation. When sermons failed to bring in the Belem clients, the priests turned to kidnapping. Prostitutes fought back – one priest, who was handsome and well built, was a special target. Called to a deathbed confession by a dying madam, the “dying” woman jumped naked from the bed, bolted the door and began to strip the priest. He jumped out the window.
What started as a refuge ended as a prison… the Belem became a dumping ground for all kinds of inconvenient women: prostitutes, delinquents, criminals and the insane.
(Gods, Gachupines and Gringos: A Peoples History of Mexico
© 2008, Richard Grabman)
We live in a world where we now regcognize the humanity, and the dignity of most “inconvenient women” — the mentally ill, the criminal, the delinquent. Given our attitudes towards sex — and even among progressives who treat prostitution as victims of opression, and not persons capable of making decisions for themselves, Casa Xochiquetzal is an eye-opener.
It’s a shame that we focus on what they did for a living, and not on their struggle to survive, and the price they paid as humans for their survival. Their story has to be told as part of something called “The Vice Guide to World Sex” when sex is really not part of the story, and there is nothing salacious or giggly about these women. The residents are not “reformed” prostitutes, nor do they need “rehabilitation”.
Certainly, the residents of Casa Xochiquetzal have been … or are … prostitutes, but there’s something wonderful and a society that that seeks to maintain the dignity and independence of los al abajo.
The three-part videos copyright ©2008, VBS ITV LLC). I ran across them thanks to Leon Guanajuanto webista and blogero, Abraham Paz.
The ¡ayes! of Texas
Cortesía de AjajaX (I s’pose in Texan, that’s a tip of the ol’ stetson to AjajaX):
“As a service to the community, we offer the following list of Texas phrases, with their correct translation. If you happen to be visiting our old lands, and someone tells you to “Remember the Alamo!” , you’ll have an equivalent response.
Hold your horses! -> Perate tantito.
Howdy –> ¿Qué onda?
Waka-waka –> Diagonal invertida (¡esta me costó trabajo!)
The engine’s runnin’ but ain’t nobody driving –> Ése cuate está medio menso.
This ain’t my first rodeo –> Ya sé de que se trata.
They ate supper before they said grace –> Se comieron la torta antes del recreo.
Coke –> Cualquier refresco, pero por default es Coca.
Mountain Dew (Pero dicen como en francés “Mon Dieu”) –> Otro pinche refresco
Stuff –> Lo que sea, Bato
The other campaign….
… no, not the Zapatistas, but the crucial Constitutional Referendum in Bolivia, being voted on today.
Expected to pass by about 2/3rds of the voters (although it only needs fifty percent plus one to be ratified), the campaign has been — if nothing else — problematic. In common with other recent Latin American constitutions, the Bolivian constitution will give more power to the Presidency, affirm the state’s control over natural resources, and strengthen individual rights as well as attempting to shift political power to marginalized groups. In something of an “affirmative action” move, the consistion will codify set-asides in the National Assembly for the indigenous majority and minorities like the Afro-Bolivians.
Of course, the “powers that be” — in control of gas and agricultural products — have opposed the new constitution, with United States support. Abiding in Bolivia has been providing extensive documentation on the consititutional referendum, and the opposition. While not quite as weird as our (“us”, being the U.S.) Ambassador’s ham-handed attempts to foment a fascist coup to prevent the consitution from being passed nor as baroque as our military attache’s adventures in a Santa Cruz whorehouse, they haven’t given up completely.
Jim Schultz’ “Blog from Bolivia” reports on the political ad campaign:
One ad, seeking a No vote, touts a bloody fetus and declares that the new constitution would legalize abortion. It doesn’t, nor does it come close to doing so. Another ad shows two men kissing, beckons voters to “not be a part of the sin” and urges a No vote. The new constitution includes vague language about discriminatation based on sexual orientation. The best ad of the bunch features side-by-side images of President Evo Morales, the constitution’s main promoter, with Jesus Christ (who to my knowledge has remained neutral so far). Declaring that the new constitution eliminates religious rights (another, ‘it doesn’t’) the ad asks voters, “Whose side are you on?”
Jesus, who has not run for public office in Bolivia, is a popular figure here.
Morales and his MAS party aren’t staying out of the exaggeration Olympics in all this either. Their ads proudly proclaim that the new constitution would put the nation’s natural resources into the hands of the people. But the actual articles, especially after the huge compromises made in October, leave things a good deal mushier than that.
Worth reading all this week will be Abiding in Bolivia, Bolivia Blog as well as the Peruvian site Inca Kola News and Canadian/Venezuelan News of the Restless. One to add to your links is El Gaviero, based in Santa Cruz (the hotbed of opposition to the new Constitution) which is not so much a new website, but a new and improved “Down South” — M. Grace’s fine site on Bolivian and Latin American politics in a new (and copyrighted, please note) wordpress format.
Poco y poco…
If you think YOUR research project took some time, or you never finished your degree, there’s still time. UNAM last week granted a doctorate in biological sciences to Concepción Torres Villarreal after successfully defending her dissertation, La enseñanza de la biología en el nivel medio superior (bachillerato) [Teaching high school biology].
You want it fast, or you want it right? Photo of Dra. Torres UNAM, published in La Jornada
What’s remarkable is the amount of field research (and, in a very dangerous environment) that was required. Doctora Torres graduated with a biology teachers’ cerificate in 1949, then began her research… teaching biology at the Escula National Prepatoria until 1976 when she took her pension… but continued her research for another 18 years (until 1995) at the Colegio de Bachilleres — and then finally sat down to do put the research notes and documents into order, read the literature, write the thesis… and she’s only 88.
mexfiles.net 