Weird or ironic?
An U.S. anti-kidnapping expert, Felix Batista, was kidnapped himself last Wednesday (10 December) in Saltillo, Coahuila… and only reported today. Before the polemical spin machine goes to work on this one, I’d like to know the answer to a few questions.
- If Batista was an expert, how did he get himself kidnapped?
- Batista was an employee of a Houston Texas “security consulting” firm called ASI Global. He reportedly was in Saltillo on personal business, but who was he working for?
- Is ASI Global one of the U.S. companies receiving funding for “Plan Merida”… and what does this say about the competence of the trainers?
The last U.S. training firm down here — “Risks International” and the San Diego Police Department SWAT team were conducting “Torture 101” classes. Assuming there really was a kidnapping (and I’ll assume there really was… though given Batista’s interesting past — he’s a Miami Cuban who claims to have been involved in Colombian hostage negotiations, and his company — for now — is denying reports he’d worked for the FBI or another U.S. government agency.
Global Response lists Batista as their Latin American “Regional Consultant”, but has scrubbed the Latin American page, which defaults to your generic “Google search” page. Or my Google search, anyway. Somthing strange is going on there. Mark Stevenson (in the Huffington Post) writes:
The site said Batista was a former U.S. Army major who is “known for conducting in-depth threat assessments, the successful resolution of nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases (many on behalf of major insurance carriers) and investigations.”
The company denied local media reports that Batista was a former FBI agent, and warned those reports could put his life at risk.
By the way, since ATI Global’s business is hostage negotiation, etc. services for Travellers’ Insurance, which makes me wonder if Batista has kidnapping insurance himself. Batista, according to his employer had his own business — and was reportedly giving seminars to local police and business groups. Or something else we’re not being told. ATI Global did tell the media that the FBI was involved… but, if this is a Mexican kidnapping, I’ll want to know why the FBI has anything to do with this.
The whole thing sounds too much like a bad movie of a few years ago (set in Mexico, but the usual Hollywood “Mexico” story, though based on a not-so-bad French movie) and is too weird to be true, or too weird NOT to be true.
Either way, I’d be reluctant to hire Mr. Batista (or his firm, if he turns out to be the late Mr. Batista) as a security expert after this. Which makes me suspect they were involved in Plan Merida work… only the Bush administration could be involved in something this incompetent.
Et tu, AMLO?
David Agren, writing in the World Politics Review, asks “What’s Next for Andrés Manuel López Obrador?” . He comes not to praise AMLO, but to bury him:
… López Obrador unveiled a new theme for winning support during the upcoming third year of his running campaign of opposition: Rescuing the slumping “family economy,” and railing against the small band of business elites and the “political mafia” that he says control the country and which he blames for rigging the 2006 election.
The message went largely unheard, however. Fewer than 40,000 adherents marched through central Mexico City that day, a far cry from the estimated 300,000 that witnessed his coronation as the nation’s self-proclaimed “legitimate president” two years ago. And few from the PRD attended. Some marchers carried acerbic signs lampooning the new PRD leadership. Many others sported colors of the smaller Convergence and Labor parties, two left-wing parties that ran in a 2006 coalition with the PRD and have been unwavering in their support for López Obrador. Press coverage was scant.
López Obrador is seeking to remain relevant in 2009 by capitalizing on new crises, like the deteriorating economic situation that has sent the peso tumbling and prices soaring. But his constant protests and admonishments to eschew working with President Felipe Calderón are splitting the Mexican left and driving away potential supporters.
Agren is not one of AMLO’s supporters (and that’s ok), but I wouldn’t write the guy off so quickly, or dismiss him lightly. Besides, given the economic downturn that’s facing Mexico (and the rest of the planet), there’s that annoying fact that the guy was basically correct:
… according to Federico Estévez, political science professor at ITAM in Mexico City.
“He was betting that the Mexican economy would sink, and now it turns out that it may sink because of the world,” Estévez said. “It’s no longer an untenable strategic position.”
First, I’m not sure that a drop in attendance at rallies is any indication that the guy’s lost his relevance…. not when at least 10,000 voters have switched parties because of AMLO.
Secondly, with AMLO mostly cut off by the “mainstream media” — and what coverage he receives mostly limited to internet (which tends to reach a wealthier audience than the working class and poor who make up the bulk of his supporters) — and the daily pressures of making a living in this country, people are going to go on with their lives, and aren’t going to obsess over politics. At most, they’ll make a cynical joke and get on with supporting their family.
Third… I’m not so sure the political split in the leftist coalition is a bad thing. As I mentioned to David yesterday, the PRI has been moving back to it’s leftist roots under Beatriz Parades Rangel. With the PRD in a less confrontational position without AMLO, this may let the PRI and PRD work together on at least broad economic policy. And, while the PRD has always been the smallest of the major parties (and a fractious circular firing squad at that), it has dominated the Federal District much as the PRI once dominated the country. That is, it’s a very broad coalition, and only appears united at the highest level. On the street, there’s any number of squabbling factions.
For right now, this doesn’t seem probable, given new party chair Delores Padeirna’s decision that the PRD will NOT form coalitions. Ana Maria Salazar suggested on her Imagen radio program that she thinks this makes PRD appear more democratic, but — on a national level — it also means the party would be too small to effectively control legislation without a coalition partner. Right now the betting is that the small Social Democratic Party will eventually join PRD (they had been in talks about a possible merger before Padeirna’s announcement), but — depending on how well the PRD does in the 2009 congressional elections, I wouldn’t rule out a PRD-PRI center-left front in 2012.
For now, the PRD OWNS the Federal District. The other parties — even PAN, which has a smaller ideological spread to cover, and is very well organized and disciplined, cannot compete except in a few delegaciones. PRI is hapless and hopeless. This probably hasn’t been good for the PRD — or the voters — who are going to vote for a leftist party, but could use a little more democratic choice. By making Convergencia the “alternative leftist” party, at least in the Federal District, the parties will be forced to pay more attention to the candidates for local office, and — one hopes — give voters a genuine alternative and more attractive (politically and socially) choices. Or at least the option of selecting the lesser of two evils.
‘
Sunday Readings: 14 December 2008
Life (such as it is):
Despite what many believe, Costa Rica isn’t all that different from anywhere else in Latin America, as a Canadian family discovered to their chagrin:
(“A Shakedown With A Smile” Beating the Boom):
There are two things that are proving inevitable in Costa Rica — sunburn and corruption.
The first can be soothed but there is little that can be done to quell the fury of being shaken down by the cops.
In the four months we’ve lived in this Central American country
we’ve heard countless tales from other expats about the chronic problem
of corruption and theft.
We listened with some skepticism and aside from the odd ripoff by a
taxi driver never once experienced the kind of problems people spoke
of. I might not have actually believed that police and other public
officials still readily accepted bribes had it not actually occurred.
Stuck behind a slow-moving truck through the mountains, we relented
to the growing cacophony of horns behind us and grabbed an opportunity
to pass, crossing over a double yellow line. Of course, passing when
there’s the double yellow means the same thing here as it does back
home (that is if you do it and manage to avoid a head-on crash) and it
just so happened that a pair of traffic officers were waiting at the
bottom of the hill.
…
Liberty
“Xeni” writes from rural Guatemala in “The Seditionist” about the reaction of her Mayan neighbors to the amazing election in the United States:
… despite many years visiting their homes and sharing their difficult
life experiences, we were surprised by their reaction to the Obama
election. It was of great symbolic importance. That sudden jolt of
aspiration felt around the world? It struck here. Hard. It meant hope.
It meant a renewed belief in change, for a people who have survived
natural disasters, racism, and 36 years of civil war that many describe
as the Mayan genocide. If a black man can enter the Casa Blanca, they are saying, maybe a Mayan person can one day become president of Guatemala. Maybe we will live to see a true democracy here,
the thinking goes—a government that represents the rights of
Guatemala’s First People, instead of representing their destruction.
… and the pursuit of happiness
Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel wonder if life for all of might not be better as a result of the U.S. economic melt-down (Yes! Magazine, posted in Alternet)
Somehow, in the exuberance of the economic bubbles
of the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s, we lost track of something. Money exists
to serve us as a tool, not the other way around. Our lives and society
do not have to be turned over to the rulers of high finance and their
hired representatives in Washington, D.C. We the people can reject the
economic orthodoxy that has served us so poorly, and rebuild our
economy on a different foundation.
…
What
sort of society do we want to rebuild? What will expand our life,
liberty, and pursuit of happiness without diminishing the chances for
other people, now and in the future, to have the same?
And death shall have no dominion
The same (Mexico City) News that was fuminates about “populism” whenever the local PRD-controlled administration tries to impliment an innovation backed by the voters, comes out in favor of it, when the proposal is from their own favored conservative wing of the PRI. In an already de-linked editorial in yesterday’s The News, Ken Edmunds complained that although polls indicated massive support for a death penalty in Mexico (as proposed by Coahuila Governor, Humberto Moreira, has supposedly massive support. Edmunds was complaining that the editorial writers and media commentators throughout the political spectrum have rejected the idea.
Even those that “philosophically” can fathom a death penalty reject it on the grounds that the Mexican judicial system is whimsical at best, or that death penalties have only marginal effects on crime rates. Or — with a little bow to xenophobia, note that the only major nations that regularly execute convicts are the despised People’s Republic of China and the barbarians to the north … the United States of America. And, imposing the death penalty is, constitutionally, a Federal matter… and for a State to change it’s criminal code would require a Constitutional amendment.
Other than this one wing of the PRI, and — surprisingly, the Green Party (which sometimes seems to be more interested in maintaining some kind of relevance with the voters than in being “green”) — there really isn’t much political support for reinstating the death penalty (which was outlawed officially in 1975, although the last judicial hanging was in 1961).
… the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón, his National Action Party (PAN) and the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) have all made it clear that they are opposed to the proposed amendment.
The PRI, on the other hand, argues that the initiative merits debate because it represents the viewpoint of a majority of the population.
Moreira’s proposal to adopt the death penalty for the most egregious crimes and hardened criminals, which is supported by the Coahuila state legislature, where the PRI holds sway, is “opportunistic and aimed at political gain, and is sure to be voted down,” human rights analyst Fabián Sánchez told IPS.
Spokespersons for the Catholic Church and local human rights groups, and the representative of the local branch of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Alberto Brunori, expressed similar views.
“Putting the debate on the table is definitely negative,” said Brunori, who clarified, however, that “for the time being, there is no chance that capital punishment will be reestablished in Mexico.”
The PRD’s rejection is fairly simple to fathom… the Marxists (as in Groucho — “Whatever it is, I’m against it….”) — are going to oppose anything PRI supports, at least initially. When the PRI proposal (such as this one) has only shallow support and isn’t likely to ever come to fruition, it’s a no-brainer to oppose it. And, of course, the PRD include most of the intellectuals and what passes for a “civil rights lobby”. While there are “human rights advocates” in all the parties who think the idea — whether in Governor Moreira’s words, we’re talking about “shooting them, cutting their throats or hanging them, or something more ‘light’ like lethal injection” — is barbaric, it’s PAN’s rejection that is going to put the kibosh on the proposal.
PAN, like PRD, can be expected to initially reject PRI proposals, too. But, there is a “human rights wing” within the conservative movement too. It’s sometimes hard to explain to outsiders, but PAN’s religious conservative wing is Roman Catholic, not Evangelical. While Evangelicals and Roman Catholics agree about abortion, which creates more noise and light north of the border, less known in the United States is the Church’s anti-death penalty stance, stemming from the same “right to life” ethic. Vicente Fox, who came from the “business wing” of his party, but was influenced by (and had to court) the “piety wing” received no criticism from the party, or from the opposition, when he pardoned the few prisoners on death row in the military prison (the Military Code still included hanging for a few offenses like fragging officers).
In some sense, the PRI backing for the death penalty (mostly in the north) is simply the old norteño anti-clericalism updated for the 21st century: the Church opposes X, therefore PRI must support X.
Of course, given the mahem created by organized crime (or, perhaps, by the government drive against organized crime) and the popular revulsion against the violence could force parties to take “bold stands” that probably won’t really resolve anything, but give the perception of progress.
Amalia Solórzano, D.E.P.
Doña Amalia Solórzano Viuda de Cárdenas, matriarch of the Mexican left, passed away Friday at the age of 97. She was Mexico’s Rose Kennedy AND Eleanor Roosevelt.
Doña Amalia, born in Michoacan in 1911, and educated in a convent school, married General Lazaro Cárdenas — then state Governor — in 1932. Despite her family’s objections, she and the General refused to add a church ceremonial wedding to the legal civil one.
Amalia Alejandra Solórzano Bravo, viuda de Cárdenas (1911 - 2008)
Although women of her time and social background were expected to spend their time playing bridge and shopping for shoes, as Primera Dama after her husband’s election to the Presidency in 1934, Doña Amalia made a point of dressing plainly (though she did like hats) and when not caring for her son Cuauhtemoc (likewise, the state’s governor, as well as the first elected Jefe de Gobierno of the Federal District, and very likely the winner in the 1988 Presidential elecction and “moral leader” of the PRD), she was active in social service and political work.
She was the “front woman” and devoted countless hours to the Mexican resettlement program for Spanish Civil War orphans and displaced persons. Like her counterpart north of the border, Eleanor Roosevelt — using her limited “decorative” activities (women did not get the vote in Mexico until 1954) to bolster support for her husband’s political goals. She, with her husband’s support and encouragement, sometimes “out-Eleanored” Eleanor, being photographed on a picket line and bringing social issues raised by her large number of correspondents to the President’s personal attention.
Never particularly fond of jewelry, Doña Amalia’s very public donation of what jewels she owned — including her wedding ring — to the state funds being collected to pay for the oil expropriation in 1938 was not only a personal gesture, it was a not-so-subtle hint to the wealthy that they too were expected to support the revolutionary action.
Even after leaving Los Pinos (the Cardenas family were the first to live there, eschewing the fancier digs at Chaupultepec where the children — not just Lazaro and Cuauhtemoc, but the war orphans the family reared and those of the servants who Doña Amalia took care of, and expected to play around the Presidential compound), Doña Amalia continued to represent her husband on his various projects as Secretary of War during the “War Against Nazi-Fascist Aggression” and afterwords, when he was involved in various large scale state development projects. In addition, as “Ex-First Lady Cardenas” she represented the Mexican government at various international functions.
Doña Amalia also appeared regularly at political events, supporting the continued social role of the Party, and — after her family’s split with the PRI — was a regular on PRD platforms, as well as participating in public forums, and intellectual round-table discussions.
Despite the Cardenas family break with the PRI, Party chair Beatriz Paredes Rangel was among the pall-bearers, as were UNAM Rector José Narro Robles and Cuauthemoc Cardenas, Carlos Slim and Diego Rivera’s daughter, Guadalupe Marín. Parades eulogized Solórzano as a brilliant, intelligent woman and a patriot.
Notably absent was President Felipe Calderon.
(His) panic attack in Oklahoma
Marisa Treviño on some of the less effective Republican Party efforts to woo Latino/Latina voters:
…soon to be governed by a first-ever Republican-controlled legislature, Oklahoma is also home to a sizable Hispanic population.
In 2004, the Democratic-led legislature created the Advancement of Hispanic Students in Higher Education Task Force to study and make recommendations on how to recruit and ensure that more Latino students graduated with Bachelor’s degrees.
In July of next year, authorization of the task force is up for renewal and members are in a panic about changing the name.
The reason? “Hispanic” is seen as too much of a “lightning-rod-type-word” for Republican legislators who might not want to refund the task force because of it.
One Republican legislator suggested that the task force change “Hispanic” to “international students.” A ridiculous and insulting suggestion since international students automatically insinuates those students from other countries who need no help, financial or otherwise, to stay in school.
Also, the suggestion of using “international students” completely discounts that the task force was set up specifically for Hispanic students and that Hispanic students belong here by virtue of their citizenship or having grown up in this country.
You may have already won
Tomorrow’s the day judging starts for the “Most Useless Bureaucratic Form” contest sponsored by the Federal Comptroller’s Office here in Mexico.
20,600 various Federal, State and Municipal government forms were submitted for consideration. Exciting cash and prizes — totalling nearly 500,000 pesos — await the lucky winners who found the most useless and unnecessary forms… but they’ll have to fill out the paperwork to claim their prize.
Bimbo lays out some bread…
Despite the general credit crunch, Grupo Bimbo managed to come up with the $2.4 billion (thousand million) U.S. dollars needed to buy out the Canadian-owned George Wesson, Ltd. According to Milenio, the purchase will make make Bimbo about twice the size (in annual sales) as the next largest baked goods seller, Kraft Foods.
The debt is financed through six different banks, and one third is payable in Mexican Pesos, the rest in U.S. dollars. Mexican companies that have run into trouble lately (like Comercial Mexicana) had financed their growth solely on dollar-denominated lending. It’s still a lot of dough (sorry… had to say it). Probably the only impact on Mexican consumers will be a label change on some products. “Pan Bimbo” is already slang for “white bread” (as in boring, as well as … white bread), even though Bimbo bought out Continental Baking several years ago, and the packages often say “Wonder Bread”.
The other thing to notice is that successful Mexican companies which have a world presence, like Bimbo or Cemex, stick to basics… food (Bimbo), cement (Cemex) or telephones (TelMex). While the Slim family controlled Carso Group operates in a number of unrelated sectors (banking, telecommunications, retail stores, hotels), the companies under Carso ownership keep their separate identity and Carso stays out of the day to day operations of the firm. What’s making the Mexican companies so successful is the weird idea that wealth is measured in goods and services… not just stock prices.
Hard times in Havana…
Last night, after the early Mass for the patron of our local parish church, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, there was a small fiesta, featuring a banda group. I recognized the tune, but it took me a minute or two to realize what the guys were playing — “In heaven there is no beer…”. That explains why the Virgin came to Earth, I guess.
Nor, it seems, is there beer in more temporal paradises:
Homeland Security begins at home… or not
Spenser Hsu in the 11 December 2008 Washington Post (subscription may be required):
Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees for a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation’s top immigration official.
The company’s owner says the workers sailed through the checks — although some of them turned out to be illegal immigrants.
Now, owner James D. Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding. In October, he was fined $22,880 after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators said he failed to check identification and work documents and fill out required I-9 verification forms for employees, five of whom he said were part of crews sent to Chertoff’s home and whom ICE told him to fire because they were undocumented.
“Our people need to know,” said the Montgomery County businessman. “Our Homeland Security can’t police their own home. How can they police our borders?”
Reid admits he made mistakes but called the fine so excessive that it may put him out of business. Several of his workers moved after ICE agents showed up at their homes, he said.
Raising a common objection among employers as ICE cracks down on illegal hirings across the country, Reid said it is unreasonable to expect businesspeople to distinguish between fake and real driver’s licenses and Social Security cards.
Immigration laws are unevenly enforced, he added, allowing big companies to stay in business while crushing small-business owners and workers. He said the rules punish “scapegoats” such as him while inviting people at every level — customers, subcontractors and contractors — to look the other way while benefiting economically from cheaper labor.
Aliens in Homeland Security. That explains a lot:
(Legal sombrero tip to the Cyber Hacienda)
Labor abuse — not just U.S. …
I’ve had a somewhat favorable view of the Canadian temporary foreign worker program, which is supposed to hire workers through hiring halls in the worker’s country, and give the worker clear contractual rights within the hiring country, as well as a guaranteed minimal standard of health and housing care. But, as posted on Migrant Canada (News about migrants in agriculture in Canada // Nouvelles sur les travailleurs agricoles migrants):
CAMPBELLVILLE, ONTARIO – Dec. 6, 2008 — More than 70 Mexican and Jamaican agriculture workers at a mushroom grow house facility outside of Guelph were fired without notice on December 6, by Rol-Land Farms, a $50 million-a-year, privately owned industrial agricultural corporation that operates a number of mushroom growing operations across Canada. No reason was given for the firings…
“No company should have the right to treat human beings like disposable farm tools,” explained Chris Ramsaroop of Justicia for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group that works with migrant workers across Canada. He added, “these workers have lost everything over night: their jobs, their housing and even their ability to stay and work in Canada. Rol-Land Farms didn’t even issue notices to their employees.”
What has been presented as a workable agricutural worker program looks more and more like the discredited Bracero Program, which — especially after World War II — was perverted in the United States to benefit employers and exploit the workers:
Wayne Hanley, the National President of UFCW Canada stated, “the Temporary Foreign Workers program has been designed to allow an employer to have complete power over a worker. In this case Rol-Land Farms was not only the employer but also the landlord and de facto deportation agent.”
Meanwhile… south of the border (the Canadian border that is), the Bush Administration is proposing to treat foreign workers exactly as “disposable farm tools”..
Before leaving office, the Bush Administration is leaving one parting “gift” to our nation’s farmworkers. …
These will be the most far-reaching changes in the laws regulating agricultural guestworker programs since 1942. They will return us to an era of agricultural labor exploitation that many thought ended decades ago.
The changes cut wage rates and wage protections for both domestic and foreign workers, minimize recruitment obligations inside the U.S. and curtail or eliminate much of the government oversight that is supposed to deter and remedy illegal employer conduct.
mexfiles.net 