Nobody like the boogeyman…
On the murder of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a lot has been said. Maria Anglin wrote this in this morning’s San Antonio Express-News
It’s no wonder hate crimes happen; nobody likes the boogeyman.
There are those who have made high-profile careers out of fueling fear, anger and disappointment; who dole out large doses of carefully crafted hate speech, gloomy forecasts and xenophobic fear of outsiders to millions of good people itching to blame someone for everything from the price of gasoline to salmonella outbreaks to every crack-cocaine death in America.
And if it’s true that immigrants, just by being in the country’s classrooms, restaurants and front yards, have the power to shift the nation’s values, it is also true that it doesn’t take much goading by some wise guy on TV — or a parent, relative, neighbor, family friend, teacher, mentor or politician — to tilt the balance of fear, anger and disappointment in teenagers learning to find their way in the world into the realm of full-blown hate.
Packs of angry boys can be dangerous; the mob mentality that takes over can turn even the harmless kid who eats paste into a hell of a lot of trouble. Add a little underage drinking and things can get ugly really fast.
But those who fan the flames of fear, anger and disappointment are much scarier.
Ooops… Sunday readings
… somehow got deleted. I put that post together over the week as I run across items that interest me (and maybe the reader) and set it to automatically post on Sunday morning. Damned if I know what happened. I’ve set a few short news items to post over the morning, and will be sleeping in.
Numbers
I’ve noticed that as “controlling illegal aliens” became more and more a political issue in the United States, the number of “illegals” kept creeping up. Back when it was only 11 million, I tried tracking down the source for the number, but it was self-referential. The numbers all went back to the same anti-immigration group, and were repeated again and again and again by the press. In other words, they didn’t have a clue, and just took the numbers they were given.
“Illegal aliens” is becoming less a mainstream cause and more a right-wing one, so the numbers get even fuzzier… now said to be 12 to 15 millions. And, when you read the comments section in right-wing websites, it seems there are 12 to 15 million MEXICANS in the United States living illegally, and millions (not thousands) crossing each year. Not likely. These number (from an AFP news story) appear a little more realistic.
A total of 290 Mexicans have died trying to cross the border into the United States in the first half of 2008, according to a lawmaker in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies.
The number compared to 520 Mexicans who died in the whole of 2007 as they sought to cross the Mexico-US border, said Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, secretary of the committee on population, border and immigration affairs.
“There is an increase in deaths of Mexicans on the northern border,” he said, adding it was a trend over six years.
With about 325,000 people trying to emigrate to US territory each year, “every minute a Mexican abandons his community and every minute a family disintegrates,” he said.
The opposition lawmaker did not say what were the causes of death for the illegal immigrants but human rights groups and media reports say most victims die from heat exposure in desolate desert terrain, drowning and accidents from train-hopping.
Relations between Mexico and the United States have been strained over US treatment of millions of illegal immigrants — including an estimated five million Mexicans — and efforts to build a wall along much of the two countries’ 3,000 kilometer (1,600 mile) border.
To repeat… thats a few hundred thousand people ATTEMPTING (not necessarily succeeding) in crossing the border, and only about five million Mexicans living in the United States, and many of them return home after a few years.
Is this 1938 or 2008? Un-fuckin’-believable!
ICE Director Julie Myers leaked the new federal effort on Univision this past Sunday at the end of an interview with Jorge Ramos, the anchor of the popular public affairs show “Al Punto” and in advance of an anticipated formal announcement next week.
Entitled “Operation Scheduled Departure,” the still-unannounced program would allow undocumented immigrants without criminal records to turn themselves in at Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices nationwide. In exchange for “self-deporting,” the immigrants would be processed and get a few weeks to pack their belongings and get their affairs in order before leaving the country — without being put in a detention facility.
Does this pogram program sound familiar ?i
Adolph Eichmann, the Jewish expert in the SD, was placed in command of the center. There were more than 180,000 Jews in Austria in 1938. Eichmann began deporting Jews as efficiently as possible and by September of 1939, there were only about 60,000 remaining in Austria. But there were still hundreds of thousands of Jews in Germany and in Austria.
But these days, you don’t get sent to Poland… just to Texas.
How not to deal with narcotics
Frontera NorSur (El Paso) has a long article on the growing narcotics CONSUMPTION problem within Mexico. I’ve never denied that consumption has increased, though I argue that the reason, ironically enough, is more border enforcement in the United States. Exporters had to find a domestic market, and narcotics are dirt-cheap in Mexico.
Others notice that consumption took off after Mexico started following the U.S. lead in treating narcotics as a criminal, rather than a public health, problem:
Current Mexican anti-drug policy mirrors that of the United States. Treatment programs are very limited, and control of illegal substances is viewed as a law enforcement issue. Increasingly, however, influential voices advocate other approaches. Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza recently suggested Mexico should debate decriminalizing certain drugs. A decriminalization law passed the Mexican Congress several years ago, but it was blocked by the Fox administration after Washington protested.
Writing in La Jornada, Jorge Carrillo Olea, a retired Mexican general and ex-governor of Morelos state, contended Mexico has lacked a long-term drug control strategy since at least 1992, opting to follow the path of Washington rather than pursuing “effective control over the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs.” During Carrillo’s governorship, drug cartels gained a big foothold in Morelos.
A recent socio-economic study of Ciudad Juarez, “The Social Reality of Ciudad Juarez,” could be an important contribution toward understanding and controlling the drug problem plaguing the border city and other parts of Mexico.
Published by the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez and partially funded by the Ford Foundation and the Chihuahua Business Sector Foundation, the study examined questions of economic growth, development, crime, and social services.
Although Ciudad Juarez has grown tremendously due to the expansion of the maquiladora export industry, the authors noted that many young people live in a state of anxiety in which there is no “certainty of the permanence of work, of the permanence of income.”
In such circumstances, the temptations of momentary, drug-induced bliss and easy money are everywhere.
“Holey” over-kill
The (Mexico City) News reports today that
A man believed to be the leader of a Santa Muerte cult was executed in his SUV early Thursday morning in Ecatepec, a sprawling suburb to the north of Mexico City.
Public security officials in the State of Mexico identified the victim as Padrino Endoque, or Father Endoque, who was reportedly the leader of Santa Muerte Internacional in the municipality of Tultitlán, State of Mexico.
No motive was given for the murder, but investigators said that his Cadillac Escalade was shot at more than 130 times.
That’s a bit excessive, but then the late “Padrino Endoque” ( better be translated “Godfather” … as in Don Corelone type god-father… than as “Father Endoque”) went in for excess. “Santa Muerte International” in Tultitlan, Estado de Mexico (Endoque’s group) made the news back in January, when they installed a 22 meter high statue of Santa Muerte in the center of town, and opened a church — without bothering with the things of this world like building permits. Endoque, aka Comandante Pantera, a radio psychic, was feuding not just with his neighbors and city hall, and the Roman Catholic Church (which called his organziation a satanic cult), but with the better known Santa Muerte organization headed by Archbishop David Romo Guillén, of the “Iglesia Católica, Apostólica, Tradicional Méx-USA”.
Being Mexico, things have to get weirder. For historical reasons, the constitution recognizes the right to relgious belief, but restricts the rights of organized bodies of belief. One thing that may confuse “News” readers is that “cult” in English is a value-laden word, but is the proper word in Mexico for any religious denomination. However, not all denominations are created equally.
Churches have to register with the Secretaria de Gobernacion as Asociaciones Religiosa (A.R.) which can only hold the property and assets needed to perform their spiritual functions. Other activities — schools and charities — are normally set up as outside not-for-profit agencies. Because of changes in the Roman Catholic Church, and the long history of folk-religion in Mexico which mixes pre-Colombian and Catholic beliefs, there are a number of “Catholic” church organizations not associated with Rome. Some, like the “Traditional Catholic Church of Mexico” exist to keep folk beliefs alive, especially where the Roman Catholic Church rejects the traditional practices that grew up over the centuries, or like the “Fidenciesta” church in Northern Mexico, where a local figure is venerated as a saint. Confusing things, most followers of these smaller churches consider themselves “Catholics.” “Iglesia Católica, etc.” was, supposedly, a throw-back to the beliefs of the Catholic Church before 1870.
Santa Muerte, according to scholars, was a survival of Aztec devotions to Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl — the Lord and Lady of Mictlan (the Aztec after-world — which the early Catholic missionaries interpeted as the Christian Hell). Although there were regular devotions to “Santa Muerte” by the mid 19th century, after about the 1940s, the Tepito-based sect was seen by the urban under-class — street and market vendors, day laborers, taxi drivers… but also prostitutes, thieves, gang-bangers, drug dealers, convicts, and — in the usual contradictions of Mexican life — police officers as meeting their own spirtual and psychological needs. And Santa Muerte’s popularity was growing.
I’m not sure how David Roma became a priest in the “Iglesia Católica, etc.” or how exactly the Santa Muerte churches came to be associated with this sect, but they did. Or, rather, they took over the sect. Whatever their exact theology was originally, the Santa Muerte group supports “the morning after pill”, has no problem with sexual diversity (it particularly is known for welcoming transvestites into the congregation) and does not see abortion as a sin. From what little I understand of their theology, Santa Muerte teachings on life and death promote sexual espression as a virtue, not a vice. In other words, an annoyance to the Roman Catholic Church. Having begun to attract well-to-do devotees, and taking on a quasi-political dimension, as a organized under-class group, it also annoyed the go
vernment.
Using the argument that the original registration for the church was as a “Tridentine Catholic” church (one rejecting post 1870s reforms), the Catholic hierarchy was able to convince the Fox Administration to decertify the Tepito group. Despite this, it continues to function — and grow — under Roma’s adminstration. In some ways, it made the Tepito group stronger. It’s not subject to the restrictins that would be placed on it as a A.R.
It’s sometimes startling to realize the political implications of it, but given PAN’s pro-Catholic bias, small outsider church members tend to be in the opposition. Although it’s widely seen as “satanic” (charges the Santa Muertes deny) it cooperates with other “opposition” religious groups. You’ll sometimes see semi-political gatherings in the paper, featuring Salvation Army Generals, Greek Orthodox, Mormon, Anglican and Methodist Bishops, Baptist Pastors … and the Santa Muerte Archbishop pushing for religious freedom, or other issues.
The Tultitlán group claims the Tepito group is a front for narcotics dealers. The Tepito group claims the same about the “heretical” “Santa Muerte Incorporated”. But, having a church leader styled “the Godfather” and his “clerical garb” being draped in gold neck chains isn’t the way to counter the impression. So who has rid us of the meddlesome Comandante Pantera? Neighbors tired of his tacky cathederal? The Catholics? The Iglesia Católica, Apostólica, Tradicional Méx-USA? Narcos? Or.. as El Universal (via Diario de Chihuahua) speculates, “Perhaps the ‘white girl’ (Santa Muerte) preferred to have him at her side.”
God knows!
Mexiko, Mexiko Über Alles! (Friday Night Video)
Eddie, at “Third World Shopkeeper” is complaining about the Bavarian sound of some Mexican music. Close, but probably more Hanseatic than Bavarian (not that I know the difference). German, definitely .. but not exactly music to invade Poland by… though maybe it would make a decent sound-track for the conquest of San Diego.
The music in question was born here in Mazatlán.
Mazatlán, which wasn’t really a port until after 1830, was heavily settled by German merchants, mostly from the north German port cities of Hamburg and Bremen. Making a fortune from the California 49-ers who either came overland from Veracruz and waited for a ship here, or from smuggling (opium to China, and silver to Europe), they could afford to indulge in a bit of nostalgia for the old country. Miguel Valadés Lejarza’s in “Origen de la banda sinaloense” (Revista Encuentras con la Historia, October 2003, Cuilican Sinaloa) claims Jorge and Enrique Melchors sponsored the first banda group by about 1860.
Mazatlán’s Afro-Indigeno-Hispano-Filipino-Hibero-Sino-German-Mexican community made a few adjustments to the basic Melchor plan, and have been every since. But it still has that Germanic weltshuung… a few of my neighbors were practicing the other afternoon down the street. Next to the Chinese restaurant. An hour later, they were hungry for the reconquista…
Lucky for Lou Dobbs, they weren’t in uniform. Now these guys…
Que te ruegen quien te quiera, Banda el Recodo (Univision Music)
Deportation and AIDS
With the International AIDS conference in Mexico City, scientistsand health-care workers have a rare chance to be heard by the public at large. Whether policy makers listen is another story.
This was published in U.S. News and World Report:
The odds of HIV infection increase fourfold for male injection drug users who were deported to Tijuana from the United States compared to non-deportees in the Mexican border city, a new study reports.
The findings, expected to be presented Aug. 5 at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, suggest further investigation is necessary into the risk factors of displacement and the need for programs that offer support to displaced persons on either side of the U.S./Mexico border….
“Deportation was significantly associated with HIV infection in males,” Steffanie A. Strathdee, chief of the division of international health and cross-cultural medicine at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine, said in news release issued by the university. “In addition, the prevalence of HIV infection and potential risk factors differed by gender. But a finding we didn’t anticipate is that living in Tijuana for longer periods was associated with lower HIV prevalence in men, which is the opposite of what we found in women. Among women, longer-term residents in Tijuana actually had a higher risk of HIV infection.”
While the researchers admit such causal implications are unclear, their paper suggests deportation might be indicative of higher risk-taking. This may suggest that mobility rather than deportation itself creates unstable social conditions leading a person to pursue risky behaviors that lead to HIV acquisition, Strathdee said.
It’s been noted for years that HIV/AIDS infections are highest among Mexicans who have lived and worked in the United States. The assumption has always been that living in the “decadent north” exposes one to more risks — both unprotected sex and intravenous drug use. Something I hadn’t thought about — but makes sense — is that the normal social controls in Mexico (your grandmother, your cousins and Jesus are all watching what you do) are absent when the workers go north. Emigrants are on their own, and are more likely to take stupid risks.
That might account for the drop in men’s infection rates the longer they live in Tijuana, but the women’s rate increase suggests something else is at work here. The implication in the article seems to be that women in Tijuana take more risks than others (which could be true… a lot of the women in Tijuana intended to cross the border, or are deportees also), or the State of Baja California isn’t doing a good job in early detection. My sense is that the women’s increase is among commercial sex workers, who run a much higher risk of infection in border communities (for several reasons) than others.
However, being stuck in a crappy job with no access to medical care, or information, may have a lot to do with it.
America! America!
This amazing photo was taken by Rabbi Brant Rosen, who blogs at Shalom Rav. Rabbi Rosen writes
I spent an incredible day … in Postville, Iowa, where an interfaith mobilization of nearly 1,500 people prayed, marched, sang and testified in solidarity with the 390 immigrant Agriprocessor workers arrested in the May 12 raid.
Some brief background for those who still need it: on May 12, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the Agriprocessors kosher meat packing plant. It was the largest single-site workplace raid in US history, resulting in the detainment of 390 employees (out of a total of 968). Ninety were subsequently released … – the remaining 300 have convicted as criminals on felony charges.
This is the first time that criminal charges were used as a deportation tactic in an immigrant raid. Most of the detained workers were sentenced to five months in prison for engaging in identity theft, in addition to being charged with committing a civil offense for living in the US illegally. According to the terms of their sentence, they are to be deported after serving their time. (Agriprocessors has not been charged, although there have been widespread and growing charges of worker abuse at the plant).
Among those attending the event were former Agriprocessor Maria Garcia (a native of Puebla, Mexico) and her son, Anthony. Maria’s accessories are courtesy of Homeland Security. When his mother is deported, what security is there (and what homeland) for Anthony?
The logic of violence — Tennessee and Mexico
I’ve said it before — violence in Mexico, horrifying as it might be, is logical. Mexico Trucker On-line goes into over-drive on the unemployed trucker who shot up a church in Tennesee because it was “too liberal”:
…I can’t think of one instance in Mexico, in recent history where a person have invaded a house of worship and opened fire indiscriminately. In the US, it is becoming common place.
How many school massacres have occurred in Mexico in recent memory? None!
How many families have been destroyed by domestic violence involving a firearm? Very few!
Mexico has stict gun control laws and they are enforced. That is not to say many families don’t keep firearms for personal protection, but they think many times before using them.
The cartels don’t enter into this discussion.
Who else can we pin the blame on since in American society today, it is easier to blame someone else rather than taking an intraspective look at ourselves?
The good misguided folks who lobby for immigration reform while in reality they don’t want any immigration should shoulder some of the blame for pushing their bullshit views on anyone who will listen. Usually the weak minded who need others to tell them what to think. Lou Dobbs, Willy Cunningham and others share the blame!
How about the Jerry Falwells, Joel Osteens and other who preach thinly disguised racism under the guise of religion? Certainly they share part of the blame.
And the rest of us? Let’s just blame it on the Mexicans and get on with our lives!
What’s really wrong with “Plan Mexico”
Inside USA‘s Avi Lewis recently sat down with Jorge Chabat, Laura Carlsen and John Gibler (on the radio broadcast) to discuss “Plan Mexico”… the transcript is available from Democracy Now!
Mexican support is falling for the military approach even before the funding (which is NOT going to Mexico, but to U.S. companies like Bell Helicopter and DynCorp and possibly Blackwater — something I’m putting together information on now, and hope to put up next week) becomes available. I think the U.S. is more interested in creating a market for the military contractors than “fighting drugs” and — this is the scary part — to use anti-narcotics efforts as a rationale for clamping down on all opposition to the present administration.
Highlights from the discussion:
… this is a movie we’ve seen before, and Plan Colombia is in the background of this whole conversation, because under the sort of, you know—under the story of a war on drugs, if you look at the details of Plan Mexico, $400 million in the first year, more than half of it is going to hardware that both—eight Bell helicopters with night vision equipment that track people back and forth across the border as easy as drugs and a huge IT system for the Mexican Migration Institute, which has as its explicit goal to track the movement of Mexican citizens and Central Americans coming through Mexico. So you have this kind of biometric immigration agenda, which is being swept in under cover of a war on drugs rhetoric.
….
And when there’s this much bloodshed in the streets in Mexico, it’s very easy for the blood to hide the political agendas underneath. already with the Mexican army in the streets, which is something that began as soon as Felipe Calderon became president and will be reinforced through Plan Mexico, what we’re seeing is attacks, basically, on social movements. Within Chiapas, this has been particularly seen in the Zapatista autonomous communities, where the army has gone in, often with the pretense of looking for drug production, which they’ve not found, but they’ve used it to harass those communities, in which major battles over natural resources and the right to autonomy have been taking place. So, indigenous peoples are one group that is at risk.
Another—and this is cases that we’ve seen in the northern state of Chihuahua—has to do with opposition leaders, in general. When Operation Chihuahua started, which is one of the major operations of the drug war, the army came in, and they immediately rounded up several social leaders that had been—had warrants out for their arrest since 2003 for blocking an international bridge in a protest over NAFTA. They were just routinely rounded up as part of these drug war operations.
…
Keep the modern day enemies at bay…
Tourism is here to stay, but where exactly the tourists stay is becoming a problem.
(NVTV, India):
Ancient ruins perched on steep cliffs overlooking Carrinbean coast make for a perfect location for the holidayers. But at the same time this scenic beauty is exposed to damage by unregulated tourism.
Mexico is tightening the belt on conserving its heritage. The civic authorities of Tulum have decided to shut numerous big and small hotels for they may pose a threat to the health of 800- year-old Mayan ruins.
Adriana Velasquez, Director of Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) says:”The archaeological site of Tulum-Tanka has an extension of 691 hectares which includes not only the fortified area and Tanka but also houses, factories and the residential area of the ancient Mayans. It is very important to protect this area.”
The plan is to boost tourism while protecting the Mexico’s history, culture and environment.
“For us is very clear that the growth must be done in the correct order so Tulum becomes a municipality with a lot of potential for growth but not losing its ecological ambience,” says Marciano Dzul Caamal, Mayan leader of Tulum.
Tulum is one of the most important sites of Maya culture in Mexico. The site served as a watchtower for the Mayans to keep sight of enemies approaching by sea.
The drive to clean up the region is part of Mexicos programme to involve the young generation to rescue their ancient ruins, and much like their ancestors, keep the modern-day enemies like builders at bay.
mexfiles.net 