Signs and wonders… the grito
Back when there was a Soviet Union, foreign observers — having little else to go on… used to try to impose meaning on why stood where on the reviewing stand at the annual Moscow May Day parade… and, bizarrely, intelligence analysts took seriously every detail, for who was standing closest to the Premier to which officials were wearing hats (and what kind of hat they might be wearing).
In Mexico, while politicians play close to the vest, and aren’t always as transparent as one might like, but it is a bit easier to get a feel for who is in, who is out, what is on the president’s mind. But, still… even in the “4th Transformation” era of “transparency” Mexico watchers (let alone intelligence analysts) could do worse than interpreting where and what is done by the leadership overseeing Mexico’s great patriotic display for a sense of what might be in the offing.
The annual independence day grito is, of course, a ceremonial commemoration of Miguel Hidalgo y Costalla’S “Grito de Dolores” the night of 15.16 September 1810. The custom of ringing the bell and leading a shoutout to an independent Mexico was introduced by Emperor Maximiliano, who was just bright enough to know that whatever it was Hidalgo actually said had something to do with the perfidious French (Napoléon having installed his brother on the Spanish throne) and something about death to bad government… which Max was just smart enough to avoid bringing back into style. Even after the perfidious French and the bad government of Maxiliano (and Max himself) were dead and gone, the custom lived on, developing not just as a ritual exercise with strict protocols (although, being Mexico, once the short ceremony is completed, it turns into a giant block party) but as a rough guide to the administration’s ambitions.
The whole ritual takes under ten minutes, mostly out of sight of the public… an honor guard in dress uniform marches through the hallways of the National Palace, presents the flag to the waiting President, who is dressed in his sash of office, salutes, and the President steps out on the center balcony of the palace, to ring the bell hanging a above the balcony, waves the flag and starts a ritual shout and response … ending with three “Viva México!”
The President then wave to the crowd, normally surrounded by … spouse, children, cronies, party hacks, campaign contributors, the presumed heir-presumptive … to receive the public’s adulation. I said, “normally”. AMLO was accompanied on the balcony only by (not premera dama, merely wife) Doña Beatriz. Is this a sign that AMLO intends to “rule” without input from advisers, or that he is not beholden to the usual collection of cronies and hacks? Or, maybe he’s just cheap? In the past, the President usually hosted a big dinner party for the balcony guests … who sometimes appeared with their drinks still in their hands… but with a austerity budget meant to squeeze out of the government every centavo, the dinner party went by the wayside this year.
And, does it mean that the administration is pro-feminist that AMLO began the grito by reversing the gender order when starting the grito? The Spanish language, having gender, uses the male plural for mixed gender plural possessives. Until the Fox Administration, addressing the citizens, presidents said “Mexicanos”. Fox began saying “Mexicanos y Mexicanas…” but tonight, AMLO address the gathered throng, “Mexicanas y Mexicanos”… promoting women?
As a sop to women’s history, the last few years, along with shout-outs for the two fighting Padres, Hidalgo and Morelos, and the soldier Ignacio Allende, there is usually Josefa Domingez mentioned in there., though other than having sponsored the reading club that was the cover for the planned 1810 uprising (which didn’t go as planned anyway), didn’t play all that dramatic a role in the independence movement. AMLO added one for Leonora Viicaro.. the propagandist, gun-runner, spy and contributor to the “Sentiments of the Nation”, the Mexican version of the Declaration of Independence. Oh.. and a generic Viva! for the “”fathers and mothers” of independence, and for the “unknown heroes”.
There were no gritos for any specific programs, or policies, as in past years… for highway construction, or, as one might have expected, for something like the “4th Transformation” or “republican austerity” (both shorthand for cutting the budget overhead, and a more, theoretically egalitarian state), although there were specific shoutouts for the indigenous community and for “our culture”… as well as more generic human values: liberty, justice, democracy, national sovereignty, and universal peace.
It’s the last two… national sovereignty and universal peace… that may indicate policy. After bending over for the Trump Administration on immigration through Mexico, both in curtailing migrants coming across the southern border, and in not fighting all that hard against the “Stay in Mexico” policy the US Administration has tried to justify as a bureaucratic necessity to control the influx of asylum seekers, getting a crowd of 100 plus thousand citizens shouting “VIVA!” for the country defending it’s own interests and right is no small thing. Perhaps a warning?
Nor is it — as the nation seeks to undo 12 years of fratricide on behalf of the U.S. “war on (some) drugs” and continuing pressure to join some Quixotic crusade to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela and to support various imperialist adventures — simply a cliche to ask for, and receive, a hearty viva for universal peace.
¡VIVA MÉXICO!
¡VIVA MÉXICO!
¡VIVA MÉXICO!
Giving back to the community
And you though people like Warren Buffet were generous? Hell, he’s only giving away half his money, and taking a tax deduction as well. But….
Retired transportation executive Joaquin Guzmán Loera, former CEO of Sinaloa Cartel, has offered to donate 14 billion US dollars to the Mexican government for use in indigenous communities. The colorful Mexican entrepreneur, known for his ruthless management style, is reported less than pleased with his new accommodations in the United States following his forced early retirement.
Appealing to President Andres Manuel López Obrador through his attorneys, the 65 year old former billionaire made the offer with only two conditions: that the grant be managed by the Mexican government, and that none of the funds are offered to the United States government,and that he be permitted to return to Mexico for his retirement.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard is said to be aware of the offer, but has been negotiating with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over disposition of the generous offer.
Source: Reporte Indigo
(Less tongue in cheek, this is what restorative justice should look like. Chapo was always more a symbol of the fake US “war on drugs” and a convenient villain for the US that covered their failure to do a damn thing about their more than avid consumption of the Chapo’s products. The damage done was to Mexico, and 14 billion dollars won’t restore the damages done to Mexicans and Mexico “thanks” to US demands that this country “do something”, but it will go a long way in assisting rural communities in transitioning to another way of making a decent living besides selling opium poppies and marijuana).
Sinembargo: Alejandro Páez Varela*One of the most thankless tasks of these times must be to form an opposition. We have lived through periods in which the opponents of the current regime were persecuted, even with the armed forces; Or, in more recent times, they were crushed with all the tricks of the State, among them giving…
via Mexico Politics: The Old Opposition Is Defeated; Where is the New? — Mexico Voices
El Metro at 50
Today is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Mexico City Metro. Now with 12 lines (and looking to add one or two more) one of the busiest public transit systems in the world. I always remember meeting a Norwegian tour group standing gape-mouthed at the entry to the Bellas Artes station, incredulous that the trains carried, every day, more people than lived in their entire country. The station with the fewest users (Deportivo 18 de Marzo) “only” handies 618,350 commuters a year (a bit less than Oslo). Our busiest… Pantitlan, which includes the bus terminals for several suburbs, sees 42 million people a year pass through.
Thankfully, very few guys like the one who ran through Chabacano station a few years ago. Hopefully, he won’t be back:
( have no idea how they found so many white people in Mexico City for that scene).
Is it too much to ask that the U.S. Ambassador be… uh… diplomatic?
After two tries, given their enthusiasm for that US supported bloodbath known as the “War on Drugs” and foisting war-zone State Department hacks on Mexico, the Obama administration, in its closing days, finally sent an Ambassador to Mexico who ,… miracle of miracles… actually knew something about Mexico and Latin America, and — more to the point — was diplomatic in her relations with both the elites and the ordinary people. But, being a professional, with the lunatics at the State Department under the Trump Administration, there was no way Roberta Jacobson would have stayed on. So… while Trump was busy finding new and exciting ways to annoy Mexico, his administration sorta, kinda overlooked a Mexico, at a time when the country’s political and economic leadership is changing, and drawing away from asking, when the United States says “jump”, how high?
Christopher Landau’s “qualifications” for being Ambassador to Mexico seems to rest mostly on having written an undergraduate thesis on US-Venezuelan relations in the 1940s. Oh, and being a Republican Party partisan, speaking Spanish (his father was a US Ambassador to Paraguay) and being a corporate shark who practiced before the Supreme Court arguing against worker rights, etc.
In other words, a corporate tool. And… it appears… kinda thin skinned and clueless. I don’t know what’s more appalling in his latest public foray… his complete misunderstanding of Frida Kahlo (hardly the”iconic” figure for all Mexicans… sure, she’s well know and the tourists and expats love her work, though by no means the only Mexican artist, nor the favorite of most Mexican art connoisseurs… and, for that matter, a rather minor figure in Mexican feminist history). And, I suppose it’s to be expected that the United States Ambassador to a country in which tourism is one of the major industries, would say nice things about a tourist site. Like, wondering why she was a Commie?
And then he whines that he’s not taken as seriously as he’d like? What a tool!
My translation from Reporte Indigo (Embajador de EU en México cuestiona el “comunismo” de Frida Kahlo).
Through his Twitter account, Landau said he admired the free and bohemian spirit of the painter.
However, he added he could not understand Frida Kahlo’s passion for Marxism / Leninism / Stalinism, even wondering whether she had known the horrors of those ideologies. His tweet read:
In Frida Kahlo’s house. I admire his free and bohemian spirit, and he has rightly become the icon of Mexico in the whole world. What I do not understand is her obvious passion for Marxism / Leninism / Stalinism. Don’t you know about the horrors committed in the name of that ideology?
Additionally, Christopher Landau asked the Mexican tweeters for to help him because he had so few followers, nothing the US Ambassador to Greece has many more, although Greece has a smaller population than Mexico.
“Dear Mexican tweeting friends: this is a hit! Greece has a population of 10 mm, while Mexico of 130 mm. But the US ambassador to Greece, @USAmbPyatt, has almost 150 thousand followers, and I barely 40 thousand. How are we going to change it? Mexico has to be # 1! #reto, ”he added.
I hope he feels better, the number of those who follow Landau’s tweets (twits?) he now has more than 70 thousand followers.
Accurate scholarship can/ Unearth the whole offence
80 years ago today… perhaps it should be pointed out (this being a Mexican history site) that in Mexico, the fight against Fascism began back in 1935 when Mexico was the only nation in the League of Nations to condemn the Italian annexation of Ethiopia, followed by its open support for the Spanish Republic at a time when the so-called western democracies either dithered or supported Franco and the Fascists.
September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden – 1907-1973
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
1619
The 35 million or so African-Americans (and the rest of the United States, for that matter) owe their cultural heritage to 20 unfortunate Angolans … and English pirates. And the King of Spain. And Christopher Columbus.
Slavery had been an accepted in most of the world in one form or another… usually prisoners of war and their descendants. It was less “racial” in the modern sense than cultural: the Irish had English slaves, the English had Irish; in medieval Iberia, the Islamic communities had Christian slaves, the Christians held Islamic slaves. And both, sometimes had Jewish slaves. Even into the 19th century, defenders of the “peculiar institution” claimed to be bringing their slaves to the “true religion”, never mind that most slaves had adopted the religion of their owners.
Christopher Colombus not only “discovered” America, he discovered a whole new market opportunity… the wholesale capture of indigenous Americans, under the dubious claim that they were enemies, and shipping them off to the Peninsula to be sold to the highest bidder. His close acquaintance, Bartolomé de las Casas (who edited Colombus’ logbook for publication, by the way), before his surprising conversion to the cause of the Indigenous people, was himself an enthusiastic slaver. However, las Casas, in noting the massive death rate among slaves, in convincing Carlos I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, Carlos I of Castile and Aragon) to outlaw indigenous slavery (at least officially… it lingered into the late 20th century in some backwaters of Bolivia and apparently still exists in Brazil) miscalculated in suggesting that Africans might be better workers in the tropics. With the Portuguese expanding their hold in Africa, the “Colombian excuse” (overrunning communities and claiming the captured people were prisoners of war), coupled with the huge labor shortage in the Americas (also, thanks to Columbus, and the importation of old world pathogens) created a lucrative market for Spanish planters in the Americas.
At Carlos’ abdication in 1556 (one of the few monarch in history to simply decide to retire), he had left his Iberian possessions a single state, Spain. His son, Felipe II, though his mother, Isabella of Portugal, added Portugal to the family porfolio, although, like Aragon and Castile before Carlos, they remained separate nations. His son, Felipe II, was double-dipping into human misery … his Portuguese subjects invading Angola and taking “prisoners” to be sold as slaves (there was a Portuguese tax on the export of slaves) for resale in New Spain (where he’d get another cut from the sales tax).
Enter Portugal and Spain’s economic rival, England. The Virginia slaves were aboard the San Juan Bautista headed for Veracruz when they were attacked by British “privateers”. Just as the Portuguese and Spanish gave license to rape, plunder, and murder Africans under the guise of empire building, the English gave their seamen similar license to rape, plunder, and murder their fellow imperialists.
The crew of the White Lion, having “taken” the San Juan Bautista (killing the crewmen) sailed for the nearest English settlement in the Americas. Indigneous slavery was still accepted and legal in English settlements, but… like the more southern parts of North America, where Europeans had been longer settled, and their pathogens had already decimated the local population, the Virginian native peoples were dying off quicker than they could be enslaved.
And so, Royal Governor Sir George Yeardley, among others, purchased stolen people, stolen from their homes, and stolen from yet other thieves. We know almost everything about the kings, and much about the pirates and the royal governor. We know nothing of the histories of those stolen Angolans, before or after their voyage, and next to nothing about the 600,000 Africans stolen from their homes bound for English America, let alone the other 1.5 million bound for other parts of the “New World”. But, they survived… somehow… which is the real story.
It’s said History is written by the winners, but it is also said that the first “history” was that of Adam and Eve… and the original sin. 1619 was the Original Sin of the country some say they want to make great again. To recover their greatness, would it be so hard to confess their sin?
The founding mother
I’m somewhat surprised that no one has written an epic romance novel, or made abig budget film about Leona Vicario… María de la Soledad Leona Camila Vicario Fernández de San Salvador. to use her full name. In 1810, at the outbreak of the Mexican war of Independence started, she was a 21-year old heiress to a mining and mercantile fortune, and a ward of the wonderfully villainously named Pomposo Santiago. Extremely well educated for a young lady of quality, she naturally found herself less attracted to the various Spanish officers and aristocrats presented as suitors as she was to a penniless lawyer, Andres Quintana Roo. Quintana Roo”s day job might be toiling away at handling Pomposo’s legal affairs, but at night he was writing and reporting for the underground independence press.
Joining Los Guadalupes, the anti-Spanish underground movement, gave Leona a reason to at least attend those boring receptions in the Viceroy’s Palace, and put up with the aristocratic twits uncle Pomposo would drag home…pretending to not quite understand their talk of troop movements, but, “oh do tell me more”, Which, of course, was being passed on via Andres to the Insurgents.
Considering her next door neighbor was the Inquisition, when she expanded her activities to secretly selling off jewelry to buy weapons, and became an active distributor (and sometimes editor and printer) of insurgent propaganda, some inquisitive soul was bound to notice. Uncle Pomposo, of course!
Leona fled to the safety … relative safety… of Padre Morelos’ insurgent camp in Morelos, where she and Andres married, and she took an active role in drafting and writing the 1814 “Sentiments of the Nation”… Mexico’s “Declaration of Independence” and draft constitution, the first document to call for the complete elimination of legal racial discrimination.
As far as we know, it was a happy marriage, Andres going on to a career as one of the early Republic’s more competent leaders and having a state named for him while Leona’s merely graces a few municipalities and colonias around the country. However, as “Sweet Mother of the Nation” (Dulcísima Madre de la Patria) she was the first… and only (so far) Mexican woman to have a state funeral, 25 August 1842.
Mexico: President AMLO has a message for USA and Canadian mining companies (from IKN533) — IKN
Having seen this issue repeated erroneously on a few media channels today. This from The IKN Weekly IKN533, out last night. Cost creep comes to Mexico. Mexico: President AMLO has a message for USA and Canadian mining companies This weekend, while on a visit to the mining town of Concepción el Oro in Zacatecas State,…
via Mexico: President AMLO has a message for USA and Canadian mining companies (from IKN533) — IKN
International terrorism?
The national news this evening mentioned that the Federal Government here would appoint a special prosecutor to look into the shooting in El Paso, which the Mexican government has said was an act of “international terrorism”. Given that it was (and fits all the legal definitions the US imposed on other countries where it wanted to impose its solutions on the “perps”) Mexico certainly will get its due, and be privy to any US investigations. THis could have some interesting effects. Those in the US who have commented on it suggest it means Mexico could open various US arms makers and sellers to lawsuits, which I suppose it could, but even if they can’t (given the US law protecting arms makers from liability for misuse… or rather, intended use… of their products), it could have a major impact.
It’s irrelevant whether Mexican investigators are good, bad or indifferent. By demanding this be treated as international terrorism, Mexican authorities will have access to US findings… which can, in turn, be given to Mexicans and other victims (and their families) as discovery for the wazoos of lawsuits that can (and will) be filed against everyone from Walmart to the State of Texas and the Federal Government.
Furthermore, based on the findings, Mexico can slap sanctions on various businesses and individuals the Mexicans see as being at fault. No effect on the US? Let’s say Remington Arms is seen as contributing to the terrorist attack. Remington Arms is owned by Cerebus Capital Management, which has substantial investments in all kinds of US businesses. Getting a few other countries to agree to the Mexican sanctions (or just Mexico alone) would hugely impact US exports and investments.
Or, say it held the State of Texas responsible, and sanctioned the state and its officials. What would be the effect on the US economy (to say nothing of the US economy) if no Texas business could do any business in Mexico? Or, if to collect settlements, the Mexicans froze the assets of US businesses in the country? I bet the businesses, and the politicians would be begging their representatives to change the laws to those Mexicans (and every other relatively sane person in the world) would like to see when it comes to US firearms laws (or lack thereof).
More practically, the Mexicans want the US to at least crack down on its practically non-existent enforcement of laws against gun smuggling, and force certain US officials to watch their tongues.
If US people benefit, all the better.
Question of the day…
… será necesario contemplar preparativos para ofrecer refugio a estaduidenses que ya temen por sus vidas bajo esta régimen?
(Will it be necessary to consider offering refuge for US citizens who fear for their ives under this regime?)
David Brooks (not the NY TImes David Book), in today’s “American Curios” (Jornada, 5 August 2019).
… in just over 20 minutes.
mexfiles.net 