All the reconquistqa that’s fit to print?
… Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú along with his family disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that they now own 9,100,000 Class A shares or 6.4% of the New York Times Co.
The New York Times declined to comment.
This makes the Slim family one of the company’s largest Class A shareholders along with Harbinger Capital Partners. Harbinger owns a 20% stake in the company and two seats on the board…
Slim has invested in all types of communications companies throughout the Americas, so there is nothing unusual in this. But, in the alternative universe of the American right-wing, this takes on all kinds of sinister overtones. Which is hilarious, given that they can’t decide which they want to attack more… Mexicans or the “Liberal Media” (they cheer every time a newspaper closes shop, forgetting that newspapers may be an old media, but the “arrogant liberal press” is here to stay).
The crazies at “Free Republic” speculate on the “why” (all quotes guaranteed genuine):
- Mexico is so poor, he needs to be certain that the New York Times will support unlimited amnesty.
- To promote la raza and open borders.
The family is mexican.
- My first guess…. Money laundering.
Most logical guess so far.
- This may be why Mexcan trucs were allowed on our roads, they sent one full of $5 bills with white powder on them to the NYT building to pay for the shares.
Gee, you think the cranks would be happy a capitalist is investing in the United States. Me, I just wish they could get SOME of their facts right about Latin America. At least once in a while.
Shock therapy
Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
(Milton Friedman).
Scott Henson’s Texas justice/penology blog, “Grits For Breakfast” wrote yesterday about a book called Governing Though Crime. Henson, and Jonathan Simon the book’s author, talk about the “carceral state” — the
“…new civil and political order structured around the problem of violent crime. In this new order, values like freedom and equality have been revised in ways that would have been shocking, if obviously unimaginable, in the late 1960s, and new forms of power institutionalized and embraced — all in the name of repressing seemingly endless waves of violent crime.” This new civil and political order is, following Simon, a modern era of “governing through crime,” making crime, and particularly the fear of it, the rationale for laws and policies which have resulted in mass incarceration.
From Henson — and Simon — the “carceral state” is specifically one that makes mass imprisonment — and the threat of imprisonment, and the administration of prisons and police — the main task of governance. Leaving aside the bizarre situation in the United States where turning over state functions to private enterprise includes prisons, the “carceral state” doesn’t sound all that different from what is called a police state: What is considered “violent crime” and is accepted as the type of thing that requires incarceration is gradually expanded to cover all kinds of anti-social behavior. Incarceration becomes the answer to everything from rape and murder to narcotics use to tax evasion to political protest.
Apparently, the only justification for not calling the United States a “police state” is that it has a functioning democratic system. Somebody legislates these punishments, and approves the budget for the state as punisher. But…
… to be for the people, legislators must be for the victims and law enforcement, and thus they must never be for (or capable of being portrayed as being for) criminals or prisoners as individuals or as a class.
It is also a convenient way of NOT using state resources to meet other goals, or to take on other tasks — public health, education, transportation, environmental protection, etc. — that neo-liberalism suggests should be transferred to the private sector. In other words, as the United States moved to a radical neo-liberal system under Ronald Reagan and his successors — governance in the United States has systematically shed what used to be state functions, focusing more and more on this one task (“crime control”) and turning over other tasks to non-governmental agencies (corporations in the United States).
From the time of Carlos Salinas onward, Mexico has also been shedding state functions. Although so far the state functions that have been de-nationalized have been those that in the United States never were government-run (the telephone company), or where the state could make the argument that the task was inessential to the state and could be run more efficiently by private companies (the railroads and toll-road system). Whether that is true is debatable, but the trend is continuing, with attempts to denationalize the oil industry and … what is troubling… to starve public services like education and health care where the private sector’s parallel institutions can (and do) serve to exacerbate existing class distinctions.
That is, the public schools and universities, and the public health care system, while not perfect, not to mention public services like the Mexico City Metro, mean that income levels haven’t kept the poor ignorant and unhealthy. Despite economic disparity Mexico remains a middle-income country, with relatively healthy, relatively educated people. Yes, the rich have it better (they can drive their kids to private schools and to private doctors), but overall, people are not bad off.
However, those “socialist” ideas are anathema to the neo-liberals, who narrowly hold power in Mexico. “Crime Control” — creating a situation where “legislators must be for the victims and law enforcement” — is a convenient excuse to shed other state responsiblities.
Turning the problem with narcotics sellers into a military/national security issue, which has led to a surge in crime, creates a situation ripe for the “carceral state”. Large-scale social movements that are unrelated to this issue are ignored. The media-driven “Light Up Mexico” marches on Saturday 30 August were the focus of international attention. Nothing was said (and almost nothing in the Mexican media) about the equally large September First march opposing PEMEX privatization, nor about the independent union marches, nor the 2 September marches and demonstrations sponsored by the independent union movement. Fred Rosen’s “Tale of Three Marches” in the not-widely distributed “NACLA Report” was probably the only English-language coverage of events that gave Calderon the excuse to break with tradition and avoid appearing before Congress to deliver his Informe in person.
If security and police reforms are a pressing national issue (and I don’t doubt that they are needed), then they have to be paid for. But 39 percent of the proposed national budget is for security. And, rather than raise taxes or borrow money for this, the Calderon budget calls for deep cuts in everything else.
We are determined, absolutely determined, to clean house, to put it in order and to recover the security of our parks and public spaces. It does not matter whether a crime is local or federal, we will collaborate on recovering public security in Mexico
he said, at the inauguration of a public health clinic!
By cutting the budget to meet this “crisis”, the Calderon Administration is doing two things. First, it seeks to undermine the opposition — the creative social programs that have made Mexico City’s PRD administration an attractive alternative to voters are financed largely by federal expenditures (there is no such thing as a local tax base in Mexico) and creates a secondary “budget crisis” where the Calderonista goals of denationalizing PEMEX and other state enterprises becomes a necessity. It takes pressure off the Administration to deal with essential issues like environmental degradation, loss of agricultural independence and demands for self-determination in places like Oaxaca.
All these are challenges to control by the only tenuously legitimate Calderon Administration. The second, and perhaps, more important result is that it allows for continual “shock therapy”. At best, labor violators or timber thieves would be incarcerated in the new police state, but it’s more likely to be the sick and uneducated. But, by creating a “carceral state” the adminstration can redefine the “crime crisis” as needed to fit the situation, and — as in the United States — even argue that “privatizing” this remaining state function would be sensible.
11- September… nunca mas
This date has a different significance in Latin America than in the United States. What is remembered is the violent 11 September 1973 coup that overthrew the elected Chilean government. It was not the first terrorist attack on democracy and human rights in Latin America, nor would it be the last. The collaborators with the foreign terrorists who raped, tortured, or “disappeared” (i.e., murdered without even the decency to inform survivors of their loved-one’s demise) are only slowly being brought to justice.
The terrorists who directed the operation will probably never face a court of law. Some, like Richard Nixon are dead. Others, like Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush, as well as later operatives who aided and abetted strikes against democracy, like Oliver North, Roger Noreiga, John Negroponte and Otto Reich are too well protected by their governments to bring them to justice.
The terrorists are still out there, and Latin America remains on edge. Thirty-five years later, almost to the day of the Chilean attack, Bolivia foiled one such attack, expelling United States Ambassador Philip Goldberg who was openly aiding and abetting fascists plotting to attack that country’s hard-won democratic government.
From Inca Kola News:
Evo Morales has done the right thing today by kicking out the US ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg. In his speech today, Evo kicked out the US diplo by saying, “We do not want separatists or divisionists who conspire against unity, we do not want people who attack democracy (here)”. He also told his people to go tell Goldberg immediately that he is on the next plane out..The root of all this (aside from the case of Fulbright scholars being recruited as spies by the US embassy in La Paz) is Goldberg’s recent secret meeting with Santa Cruz officialdom. Goldberg’s visit and 90 minute closed door conversation with Santa Cruz prefect and racist shit Ruben Costas (documented in this post) would never have come to light if local TV hadn’t caught Goldberg on candid camera.
(Updated at 19:40, 11- September)
And, with no reason given (other than the sometimes followed Vienna Convention allows it) , the United States has responded in a snit, the Bolivian Envoy to Washington, Gustavo Guzman, is being expelled.
Not completely unexpectedly (over a week ago, the Ambassador was warned he might be expelled), U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, was also declared “persona non grata” by that country’s President and given 72 hours to clear out. Venezuela is not waiting for their Ambassador to Washington to be declared persona non grata, and has recalled their representative, with President Chavez vowing not to send another envoy until the Bush Administration ends next January. AFP published a short notice. “Coarse expletives” should have been in the singular perhaps — Chavez called the Ambassador a shitty yanqui (“Yanqui de mierda“), but he did say it several times:
CARACAS (AFP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday ordered the US ambassador to leave the country within 72 hours, in an act of solidarity with Bolivia which also expelled its US envoy.
“Starting at this moment the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela,” Chavez said during a public event, referring to US ambassador Patrick Duddy.
He said it was “in solidarity” with Bolivia, which on Wednesday ordered the US ambassador to La Paz to leave. Washington in turn on Thursday expelled Bolivia’s ambassador to the United States.
Chavez then used coarse expletives to disparage the United States.
The Teachings of Don Sven: the Swedish way of fútbol
“Mexico has several national problems … one is social injustice, another is insecurity and the third is the lack of forwards.”
The Mex Files received a mention in The Guardian Sport Blog in an article written by Marcela Mora y Araujo on Sven-Goran Eriksson, the globe-trotting coach imported from England to correct that serious national deficit. Eriksson, a mediocre Swedish player who retired from the game in 1975 has been an outstandingly successful coach, leading Swedish, Portugese and Italian teams to international championships.
Not exactly a magician, his arrival nevertheless has connotations of the ethereal world evoked by Castaneda in his epic writings about the adventures of Don Juan. The Mexican press has come up with the moniker ‘Don Sven’ when, amid high expectations regarding preparations for the World Cup qualifiers this week – Mexico beat Jamaica 3-0 at the Azteca last Saturday and face Canada tonight
After a stint in Britain, he was hired to replace Hugo Sanchez, one of the best Mexican players of all time, but only a mediocre coach. The biggest complaint against Sanchez was that he overlooked fundamentals (like developing forwards) when worrying about inessentials, like uniform colors. Still he was an improvemnt over the irrasible Argentine Ricardo la Volpe, who once sent goons to rough up a TV photographer. And feuded with everyone, including the players.
Fútbol, like war, is too important to be left to the professionals. If Don Sven has one secret advantage over his predecessors, it is that he can’t speak a word of Spanish, and has no clue what the fans are yelling at him, or what the sports reporters are saying. So far, though, it’s all been good.
Not a bad start
I’ve had some questions about the proposal for a national police, but reading this translation from 9-September El Universal makes it sound more like the Federal Government is adopting the reforms that have been (slowly) transforming the Federal District’s police. Of course, General Garcia Luna said much the same thing over a year ago.
Mexico’s Federal Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, is seeking to create a single national standard model for police. He says the present problem does not lie so much with the individual police officer as with an inadequate police system. The present structure is corrupt, has no reach or scope and is continuing to deteriorate, he maintains. ”We are at the point of of introducing to Congress changes to the system, methodologies and the formation of a single model for police throughout the country,” he said. ”Police officers should have at least a high school level education. With such a standard, police could rise from municipal to federal levels,” he said. García maintains that the coming year will present the essential opportunity for transforming the system. ”In Mexico, recruitment of police was catching someone who had no job or education. The present operating system doesn’t work. Paying police wages less than necessary to actually survive doesn’t only lead to individual corruption, but department corruption. The fault is not the officer’s, it’s the system’s.”
Up, up and away (with gasoline prices)
I got in touch with my “inner wonk” the other night after reading a discussion on the Lonely Planet Message Board about this week’s PEMEX pump price rise (Diesel – $6.58 MXP per liter or approx. $2.44 USD per gallon; Magna (Regular) – $7.38 MXP per liter or approx. $2.74 USD per gallon; Premium – $9.21 MXP per liter or approx. $3.42 USD per gallon).
A lot of people just “assume” that because the price right now is lower than in the United States, and because Mexico has to import 40% of its refined gasoline that this is a “subsidy”.
“Mazgringo” gave the background on most obvious reason for importing gasoline:
There was a time, many years ago, when unleaded became the gasoline necessary, that México did have to import 100% of their unleaded gasoline from the U.S. because they had no refineries capable of desulphurizing the crude. Desulphurizing is necessary, as sulphur destroys catalytic converters just as quickly as lead.
However, all the Mexican refining capability has either been converted or is new enough to have desulphurizing built in now and México produces a little more than 60% of its needs right here in México.
Add that the Mexican administrations, from Salinas de Gortari (like his north of the border counterpart, Ronald Reagan) recognized that it’s politically advantageous in at least the short run to trumpet lower taxes… even at the risk of destroying the country’s infrastructure. In Mexico, this meant ignoring necessary capital improvements at PEMEX, and also using PEMEX profits to fill the treasury’s general funds without resorting to direct taxation.
The Mexican economy was doing relatively well (though, like in the U.S., some were getting much richer, much faster than others) up through the Fox Administration (as did the U.S. through the end of the Clinton Era).
Whiler there was some indirect taxation at the pump, making Mexican gasoline prices HIGHER than in the U.S. until 2004, Mexican auto sales did well. There was an expanding middle-class who could afford to buy cars. from about 90 auto owners per thousand people in 1994 to over 200 in 2004. More cars, more gas purchases.. less domestic supply from inadequate refineries, more imports.
However, the Federal treasury was dependent on PEMEX for most of its revenue, and only last year was the tax code changed to shift the burden to taxpayers. With Mexican bankers (and many others, to be sure) convinced inflation was a greater danger to the Mexican economy than continued dependence on exports to the United States, there has been pressure on the government to keep the gasoline prices low.
No matter what else changes at PEMEX, more refineries must be built and gasoline prices have to rise. Secretary of the Treasury Augustin Carstens has tried to soften the effect, merely moving the monthly price change to an 18 month schedule. However, this has not been enough. As of next Monday, price changes will be every week… Magna (Regular) gasoline should reach a price of between 8.50 and 9.00 pesos per liter (about 3.10 US a gallon) by the end of 2009. This will still be a significantly lower than U.S. prices, but then… Mexico is an oil producing country, and will still be refining some — but a lot less — of its gasoline in the United States.
And, using more alternatives fuels.
(Source: Jornada; Thorn Tree; OECD statistics)
We don’t need no stinkin’ badges… and what’s to eat?
I don’t know any more about this than what was reported from Cuilican in El Debate (my translation), but I’m not surprised. Under the rubric of stamping out narcotics traffickers, the Army is sent to “occupy” its own country. I’m guessing that no officers were overseeing this “operation” (at least I hope not), but using the Army as police is not good for the Army, the citizenry nor policing.
Yet another denunciation for robbery and damages has been filed aginst soldiers participating the Culiacán-Navolato joint operation.
Ana Lucía Gastélum, a retail clothier, returned home from a five day business trip at 12:30 at night to find military vehicles with their license plates covered over with duct tape and soldiers sitting in her bedroom. The house is located at calle Juan de la Barrera 2512, between Tamarindo and Anador Avenues in colonia Ignacio Allende.
The shaken retailer demanded to see the soldier’s orders to occupy her home, but they said they didn’t bring the authorization with them, and then left. The woman began checking for damages.
Neighbors said the soliders had entered the house from an adjoining roof, from which the jumped into Gastélum’s patio, jimmied the back door and destroyed the burglar alarm.
According to the complaintant, in addition to the property damange, the soldiers stole two computers, a DVD still in its case, two televisions, new clothing, wine, kitchen utensils and even food in the pantry.
Gastélum complained that the arbitrary nature of the military operation only served to violate human rights and allow soldiers to commit robberies.
It might have been been better if the Merida Plan funding went to buy the soldiers a decent meal (ok, and some TVs) rather than going to U.S. companies to provide more weapons.
All creatures great and small…
The question wouldn’t come up in Ecuador of whether “polar bears are more important than oil drilling” though there are similar issues facing that oil producing nation. And, when the new Constitution is submitted for referendum on 28 September Ecuadorians are expected to overwhelmingly answer — the bears!
Not only would the new constitution give nature the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution,” but if it is approved, communities, elected officials and even individuals would have legal standing to defend the rights of nature.
The concept that nature itself can possess rights runs counter to the classical liberal theories of government that hold sway throughout much of the West, which view rights as possessed only by individual human beings. But Ecuador is not the first country to propose granting rights to nonhuman entities: Many countries, including the United States, have long held that corporations possess many of the same rights – such as the rights to free expression and to due process – that human beings have.
If MobileExxon is a person before the law, why not Galapagos Sea Turtles?
Caribbean Huricane Relief
This post was written by Erwin C. for The Latin Americanist. I’ll make it a “sticky post” for the next week or so.
The recent rash of tropical storms through the Caribbean has left a trail of death in Haiti. Haitian officials have estimated at least 500 people dead and roughly a quarter million homeless; a figure likely to increase with the upcoming Hurricane Ike.
The images speak for themselves as is shown in the following slideshow from the American Red Cross of flood-ravaged Gonaives, Haiti:
Relief efforts are underway in Haiti despite security difficulties and a weak infrastructure. Nevertheless, we strongly urge you to donate and help those who could sorely use the aid. Here’s a brief list of organizations that you can donate to:
If you know of any other charitable groups or relief efforts to help those in the Caribbean please mention them in the comments to this post.
Sources- AmeriCares, American Red Cross, Direct Relief International, Oxfam America, NPR, YouTube, AFP, Reuters, BBC News
Too much to drink
A lot of dead cacti in Mexico are causing a headache for the maker of Southern Comfort and Jack Daniels.
The liquor company Brown-Forman said today that quarterly earnings fell 7.5 percent after the cost of dead or dying agave, the blue cactus-like plants that are the main raw material for tequila, erased $16 million of its profits. Its shares fell sharply as did that of a bigger giant in spirits, Diageo, which said that its earnings fell 8 percent in the second half.
Brown-Forman got its plants when it acquired Casa Herradura of Mexico, the maker of premium tequilas Herradura and El Jimador, for $876 million in 2006. As a result, the company has long-term contracts with growers of the agave.
“Most of these contracts require us to plant, maintain, and harvest the agave, plus compensate the owners based on specified percentages of the crop at the prevailing market price at the time of harvest,” the company said in regulatory filing.
About a quarter of its crop was unusable, and the company wrote down $22 million.
“The loss of agave plants has reduced our inventory, but we do not believe this will constrain our ability to build our tequila brands to their full potential,” said Paul Varga, Brown-Forman’s chief executive.
Aliza Rosenbaum on Breakingviews.com argues that this is a lesson for why distillers (and perhaps all food and drink producers) should choose to buy their primary ingredients rather than grow them. This is what Diageo does, for example.
“Granted, raw materials like grapes and barley remain subject to price fluctuations, but they [distillers] can avoid extra capital expenditures and focus on what they do best: producing and marketing,” she says.
An excellent point. Yet agave is a notoriously volatile crop. Remember the “tequila shortage” of 2000? No? Well, at the time there was widespread concern that not enough Mexican farmers were planting agave after a glut in the early 1990’s. That glut was quickly drunk off as consumption boomed even as Mexican production of tequila nearly doubled.
The agave takes eight years to mature, and bad weather, disease, and insects can do a lot of damage at that time. And now it faces another threat: ethanol, which is driving up prices for a rival crop, corn.
Many agave farmers are giving up agave and switching to growing corn, the Arizona Republic reported recently. White corn is selling for about 18 cents a pound in Mexico, while agave is selling for 2 cents a pound, the paper says.
To manage that kind of agricultural risk and price instabilitiy, it would seem to make sense for Brown-Forman to have some long-term control over a key commodity even with the danger of an occasional bad harvest.
by Jeffrey Cane
Our 9-11
Think about it for a minute. The “9-11” attacks in the United States were the perfect excuse for a conservative administration — with niggling popularity, and serious questions about its very legitimacy — to seize the national agenda, taking measures that radicalized social control, creating or expanding federal paramilitary units and curtailing normal civil rights in the name of “national security.” Not that I think there was some kind of conspiracy involved, but only that conservative states seek to preserve the status quo, and when there is popular clamor for an immediate response to a perceived threat (like “terrorism” in the United States and Great Britain; organized crime here and in Colombia) , the state seeks ways to stamp out not just the immediate problem, but any threat to the existing order of things.
Two unrelated foreign news items show why we need to take a deep breath before we plunge into this anti-crime crusade in Mexico:
From Great Britain (Telegraph) comes a report on novel uses for anti-terrorism laws:
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph found that three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year.
The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions. …
The RIPA was introduced to help fight terrorism and crime. But a series of extensions, first authorised by David Blunkett in 2003, mean that Britain’s 474 councils can use the law to tackle minor misdemeanours.
Councils are using the Act to tackle dog fouling, the unauthorised sale of pizzas and the abuse of the blue badge scheme [handicapped parking stickers] for disabled drivers.
The Los Angeles Times tut-tuts over human rights abuses in Colombia:
Although the Colombian military has long been plagued by criminality and corruption, its recent successes against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have diverted attention from its own wrongdoing. But according to a coalition of Colombian human rights groups, the military is killing civilians at an alarming pace — more than 300 in the last year. Worse, according to the New York-based Fellowship of Reconciliation, 47% of the extrajudicial killings were committed by army units that had been vetted by the U.S. State Department. Such troops are supposed to be the best trained and most sensitive to human rights, making them eligible for U.S. military aid, technology and training.
Collateral damage can be expected in any wide-scale military conflict…
The LA Times editorial (sombrero tip to “Bloggings By Boz”) was bemoaning the “misuse” of Plan Colombia funding, but both in Britain and in Colombia, we see the inevitable use of laws meant to cure great — but undefined — ills being used to resolve minor political and social frictions. While Britain is a country where people expect the state to maintain the status quo in the name of stability (and, in the process, becoming one of the most intrusive states on the planet), and in Colombia, the forty-plus years of civil war built up a tolerance for violent resolution to conflict, the power of the state isn’t much used in resolving interpersonal disputes, though it is used for political ones, or to stamp out social dissent.
As I wrote in a short booklet for Mexico City teachers a few years ago
Unlike the U.S. and Canada, you do not call the cops for minor annoyances (barking dogs, loud parties, etc.) or even for minor incidents. Neighbors will reason with the local drunk, threaten the local peeping tom. And sometimes the police are not even called after serious incidents. When an intoxicated suburban bus driver killed a child, the neighbors torched the bus – then took the drivers to jail themselves. In another bus accident, friends of the family injured by a bus didn’t go to court: they stole a few buses and only gave them back when the company agreed to pay medical bills and compensation to the injured family.
It isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t pretend that holding a bus as collateral is a good thing. It was justice (of a rough sort), and could be conceivably considered kidnapping. Recently, protest leaders at one particularly rough demonstration — between flower vendors and the local authorities (yes, I said flower vendors) — were given an additional 45 year sentence on top of their already excessive 67 years.
TECHNICALLY, there was a kidnapping — officials were threatened and it wasn’t acceptable behavior on the part of the protesters — but this was not really what people protested against recently. This was just the state using the law to ruthlessly wipe out a dissident movement. That of course is overkill, but any dissent or social movement — or unpopular person — could be targeted. One thinks of the anti-abortion protesters in the United States who were targeted under criminal laws meant to seize assets from organized criminals (“RICO” laws), or the continual stories you hear of kids having their autos siezed by local police under “drug profit forfeiture” laws.
If countries with very good, well-educated and generally civilized police (Great Britain) can use state power to resolve very minor problems like pooping pooches… and militarized ones will use state power to settle old scores (like in Colombia)… then we should worry when there are serious proposals — and likely to come to fruition — to nationalize the police.
Where the Atenco protesters did have the forces of both the State of Mexico and the Federal government against them, there was an extreme reaction. In Oaxaca, dissident teachers’ strikes escalated to the point where federal authorites were needed (not to resolve the dispute, but to squash the dissent). But, that, perhaps, was an anomoly. Normally, local dissent — like the situation at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (more on that later, but here is David Agren’s overview from The News) — is resolved locally. I won’t be solved to everyone’s satisfaction, but since it involves two equally matched factions within the local power elite, its unlikely to become a national issue.
Under a Colombia model, or — as in Britian and the United States where disputes are spun into issues involving “terrorism” — one faction or the other would appeal to the “higher power”, In disputes where the two sides are unequal … say farmers fighting over water rights, or in labor disputes like in Oaxaca, the dissenters are by definition the ones who don’t have the power of the state behind them. At a local level they have a chance to create change, or work out a compromise. Not if federal laws are brought against them. And, when a higher level of control is imposed, one can expect more “collateral damage”.
Certainly, police reforms and better security are politically popular right now, but does just bumping a series of local problems to a national level solve the problems, or does it just put power out of reach of the local citizens. I’d rather have the locals beat up a bad cop now and again to having federal cops shoot, or send to prison, the neighbors who resent getting pushed around. It bothers me that rather than deal with hunger, and look at why a 19 year old held up a grocery for milk and pampers (a local crime here a few months ago), the kid will be a federally charged kidnapper.
It’s a foreigner’s luxury to compare and contrast, but I would hate to see Mexico end up like the United States where concern about drug use led to a legal situation where very minor narcotics sellers clog the overcrowded prisons and create a huge convict population. And the streets are no safer as a result.
I’m hopeful about a lot of the proposed legal and court changes (especially the court changes, which I think are the single most important reform in the last 10 years) but I don’t want a society where the status quo is imposed from the outside, and people’s liberties are sold out and squashed in the name of “security.” That is not reform but repression.
Sunday Readings: 7 September 2008
The pursuit of happiness…
A little snarky, but Manuel Roig-Franzia’s report on Marcelo Ebrard’s campaign to bring a little fun into the lives of poor Mexicans is worth a read (Washington Post, 1 September 2008 — free subscription required):
Yes, the city has profound problems, he says, but he’s asking for everyone to “have some fun” while he embarks on a vast infrastructure rebuilding program, cleans up downtown and expands the sorely overburdened subway system.
“I know I’m infuriating some people who have the money to go to beaches or go somewhere it snows,” Ebrard says one recent afternoon over coffee at his dining room table. “We have a very classist tradition here.”
To Ebrard’s way of thinking, class divisions stifle the city, making it “old-fashioned,” “boring,” “depressing.”
“Do you realize half the young people in this city can’t afford to go to a disco or a club?” he says. “So I make these various symbols. Now people can go to a place where there is ice, and they can lie on the sand here in the city.”
“Let’s do something new,” he says over and over. “Something cool.”
And bringing a little Mexican energy north of the border…
Sachi Fujimori meets a traditioal Totanac healer… successfully cleansing the evil spirts around Clifton, New Jersey. (28 August 2008 North Jersey Herald-News):
Juarez, a compact man with dark, silver-flecked curly hair that bounces to his shoulders, belongs to the Totonac Indians, a Mesoamerican indigenous group. He descends from a long line of shamans, born in a mountain village in Mexico’s Puebla state. Like most Latin American shamans, he has a mythic story that explains his origins as a medium. When he was barely a year old, he became gravely ill. His mother consulted several shamans, who helped him recover. They told her they saw eagles in the infant’s spirit, a sign that he, too, someday would become a healer.
Juarez, 41, who has never married and has no children, settled in Clifton 16 years ago, seeking new opportunities and a better life. He hoped to take a break from practicing shamanism, and thought he’d be content working as landscaper. But old friends and acquaintances from Mexico who lived in the area kept calling him for healing services. “I couldn’t escape my destiny, what I am,” he said.
He says he wants a revolution, well you know…
I’m of the opinion that a series of two events (the 1810 Independence War and the 1910 Revolution) is … a series of two. However, from an unexpected source, the wonkish RGE (Roubini Global Economics) Monitor comes Walter Molano’s musings on the Mexican economy and the NEED for a 2010 revolt:
The Mexican economy is a sea of relative tranquility in a convulsed world. Economic activity grew about 3% y/y in second quarter, exceeding most forecasts. The budget surplus was $8.5 billion during the same period, and Mexico is slowly diversifying its exports away from its North American partner. Mexican industry is booming, despite the downturn north of the border. Higher shipping costs are reducing competitive pressures from Asia, and the problems in Detroit are breathing new life into the Maquila sector. North American automobile manufacturers are moving more of their operations to Mexico in order to avoid higher medical and environmental costs. Therefore, the economy appears sound. However, a closer look at the situation reveals several social impasses that need to be resolved if Mexico is ever going to move up the development ladder. Unfortunately, the only way to overcome these obstacles could be with revolutionary change.
There’s gold in them thar hills… and that’s the problem
Canadian mining giant Goldcorp faces off against Mayans in Guatemala. Nathan Einbinder in Upside Down World.
Not unlike the original conquistadores, in their fervent scramble for precious metals and disregard for Indigenous peoples, the new mining doctrine in Guatemala is just as much a threat to the Maya campesinos and their perpetual struggle for land and rights. Argued by critics as the next wave of land theft and imperialism, foreign controlled mining activity has increased from practically nothing ten years ago into massive concessions—equaling 10 percent or more of the entire country—giving nearly unlimited exploitative rights to the corporations.
Our expanding universe
Added links this week:
Caracas Chronicles, which is often wryly anti-Hugo Chavez, but generally steers clear of the most obvious propaganda and absurd claims of “dictatorship”. There have recently been a series of posts analyzing the opposition party websites.
Mexico Cooks: Christina has “eaten in 28 of Mexico’s 31 states (plus the Distrito Federal–Mexico City) and continue[s] to be a serious student of Mexico’s cuisines.” And concocts an elegant, well-presented website:
Papaya! Cut open to expose its sweet orange flesh, this papaya is ready to eat. Be sure to let your papaya ripen till the skin is nearly moldy. The fruit will be at its peak of ripeness.
Los 71 dias que sacudieron a Mexico : Archival photos and articles on the 40th anniversary of the 1968 massacre put together by El Universal.
I Married An Alien is a very down to earth blog (with links and resources) for bi-national couples. The post that sold me discussed the pros and cons, and the challenges, of raising bi-lingual children. Although written for couples in the United States, it appears to have a lot to recommend it to gringos who are the “alien” in the couple.
mexfiles.net 