Strike one.. strike two…
Despite relatively high polling numbers, Felipe Calderon’s administration is in trouble. Two different Cabinet secretaries yesterday admitted that administration initiatives are no-gos.
Secretary de Gobernacion (Interior Minister or “Home Secretary”) Juan Camillo Mouriño, rejected the so-called “Mérida Plan” as “unacceptable”. The original plan, sold to the Mexican public, would have given Mexico five billion dollars in U.S. assistance to be used to prevent narcotics dealers from continuing to sell their products to the country to the north. The plan that emerged from Congress would have required Mexico to allow U.S. oversight of its national security apparatus and personnel, as well as restructuring its courts — which might not be a bad thing, but no country can rewrite its military justice code and willy-nilly start moving state court matters to the federal courts overnight — and certainly not for a vague promise of foreign military assistance.
While Mouriño is placing blame on the United States Congress — which cut the original funding amount and added restrictions on the plan that were impossible to comply with — the failure has to be seen as a humiliation for the Calderon administration. Like Vicente Fox, who trusted George W. Bush to push an immigration package through congress at the beginning of the last Mexican president’s term — Calderon looks naive at best. And… as with Fox … he risks being seen as an “entriguista” — a sell-out or sucker for the slick gringos. And a fool for falling for a gringo like George W. Bush who has a track record of making unfulfilled promises.
Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel Martínez is trying for a soft landing on the other failure of the day. She is now admitting that it is “possible” for the Mexican government to raise revenue, and for the Mexican economy to grow without privatizing PEMEX. In effect, she is admitting that the opposition has been right all along. While Kessel is sort of bowing to the inevitable (the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate are not going to go along with any privatization plan, nor can the Administration sell its contention that there is a constitutionally valid basis for doing so), she is also admitting that the PRD argument — that PEMEX probably has the money it needs, but is mismanaged. She said the company, with a more transparent accounting system, and cost controls, and some better contracting procedures could avoid privatization.
This isn’t to say the Calderon Administration has been a failure. Almost unnoticed have been the changes in the court system… adopting oral trials in federal cases doesn’t sound flashy, and isn’t going to make a noticeable difference for some time. Still, with evidence having to be presented in public, criminal and civil cases should be speedier and there is less chance of covering up judicial abuse or neglect.
And, what was probably the greatest success — and a real accomplishment of the Administration (the court changes came from the judiciary, not executive, branch) — has been shepherding pension and tax code changes through the legislature. Again, nothing flashy, but then, Calderon isn’t AMLO. He’s a bureaucrat, not a rabble-rousing union leader. Supposedly, that’s what the voters wanted… if he believes he is who the voters wanted.
I get the impression sometimes (and have nothing to back it with) that Calderon is a bit insecure. Given his irregular — and still dubious — election over a rival who knew how to spin issues into mass popular movements — Don Felipe needs to create a sense of urgency. AMLO’s “Alternative Presidency” is still out there. Although you don’t hear much about AMLO right now (he passed through Mazatlan last week, and I didn’t even know about it until he’d left) sometimes is seems Calderon still is on the campaign trail.
And campaigning on the wrong issues. If he’d taken credit for real successes (even if he wasn’t completely responsible for them) like the new Ford plants and the Chinese auto makers who are setting up shop here, and great ideas like the billion tree program, he’d be an effective, but boring president
Instead, he’s trying to pass some test. But what might have been the right answer on a back at Harvard, asked the wrong question. It has never a “true/false question of “should a nationalized industry bring in foreign capital if its revenues are dropping?,” but rather an essay question: “How can a nationalized industry generate operating capital?”.
PEMEX never had to be privatized, and it probably doesn’t really need to open itself to corporate capital sources. There have always been other options. Calderon’s tax reforms lessened the need to PEMEX for federal revenues anyway. He should have taken some satisfaction in that, but instead, pumped out (by the barrel?) apocalyptic visions of a bankrupt nation if the people didn’t buy into privatization.
And now the “drug war”. The same polls that suggest a high popularity (and actually, they just show a Mexican by and large accept the job his administration is doing so far) also say people think the state is losing the “drug war.” Another lousy sales job. I’m not sure “war” is the right metaphor for an anti-crime push anyway. The way it’s playing out, with a rising death toll being sold as a success, it sounds as if the Calderon Administration is using the Bush Administration’s Iraq “surge” as a model.
Police reforms are starting to take effect across the Republic. There’s a lot that needs to be done. Juarez, for example, cannot hire enough officers, and can’t begin to pay officers enough to recruit minimally qualified honest cops. It takes time. Maybe the military is necessary in the short run, but by turning the narcos into an “insurgent force” — fighting Al Capones as if they were Al Qaidas — gives them a certain legitimacy and makes controlling them all that more difficult (and deadly). But, it does give Calderon an emergency, and make him look as if he’s doing something.
The danger for his administration is, just doing something may not translate into something the public will accept.
Exploiting immigrants not kosher
Wow!
It’s rare enough to see people put their neck out for people who really have nothing in common with them. Rarer still when they do so at more than a little convenience to themselves.
Uri I’tzedek, an Orthodox Jewish social justice group, is boycotting AgriPro meat products over their treatment of Guatemalan and other Latin American “indocumentados.” AgroPro supplies “60 percent of the beef and 40 percent of the chicken provided to the kosher marketplace in America,” and is a generous donor to Orthodox causes.
It’s not like people who eat kosher have a lot of alternatives. But they’re calling for a boycott against the largest supplier of the food they eat. Uri I’tzedek reminds the company that they expect them to :
uphold the halakhic requirements, both ritual and ethical, of the food we eat. We believe you have failed, and we are deeply troubled.:
- We are deeply troubled that you have demonstrated a pattern of knowingly exploiting undocumented workers, to paying them less than market wages and treating them poorly.
- We are deeply troubled that according to many experts, the wages you pay your workers are the lowest of any slaughterhouse in the nation.
- We are deeply troubled that, despite years of public inquiry and concern over worker conditions at your plant, AgriProcessors was cited for 39 new health and safety violations in March 2008. It pains us to hear that examinations of Agriprocessor’s OSHA logs reveal amputations, broken bones, eye injuries and hearing loss that occurred at your plant.
- We are deeply troubled that animals have been abused against the laws of tzaar baalei chaim, causing needless pain to animals.
- We are deeply troubled that among the hundreds of workers who were arrested by federal officials on May 12, eighteen were children between ages 13 and 17.
- We are deeply troubled to read reports of various criminal operations taking place at the Postville plant, the account of a Jewish floor supervisor who severely abused a Guatemalan worker in the most reprehensible conditions, and allegations of sexual assault and verbal abuse.
Rock and roll is the fountain of eternal youth, that’s why I recommend everyone to never stop taking their rock and roll pills three times a day because it truly is the fountain of eternal youth and besides, it’s a meal that will never give you indigestion!
Alex Lora (el Tri)
Bo Diddley, 30 Dec. 1928 – 2 June 2008 D.E.R. (Descanse en Rocnrol)
Brazil has finally won it’s case in a trade dispute with the United States over cotton subsidies. No real surprise, but the World Trade Organization appeals panel found that on the whole the U.S. payments breach global commerce agreements.
In other words, Brazil has every legal right to slap trade sanctions on the U.S. to recover the damages inflicted on their own farmers. They probably won’t, but they would have every legal right to break U.S. patents on pharmaceuticals for example, produce their own, and recover the billions they are owed through a different industry. More likely, they’ll slap huge import duties on U.S. made goods like steel and airplanes, or give subsidies to their own cotton farmers.
Mexican farmers have made a good case that they are harmed by U.S. subsidies in a number of areas. Specifically, export credits for grain. I don’t know if there is a similar mechanism for working out disputes within NAFTA, but the Mexicans now have a legal precedent if they chose to pursue it.
A day without gringos
John Negroponte, the Reagan Administration U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, who ignored civilian massacres by that country’s armed forces as long as they continued to buy U.S. arms and allow U.S. “advisors” on their territory… the same one who
At the UN he led the Bush administration’s drive for war, and tried to persuade the Mexican and Chilean governments to recall their UN ambassadors when they did not agree to support the planned invasion. According to news reports, Negroponte authorized wiretaps and other audio surveillance of both allies and critics at the UN in the run-up to the Security Council vote and the invasion,
now wants Mexico and the Central American states to accept “help” from the United States in fighting narcotics traffickers. The same help, he claims, the U.S. has provided to Colombia — what, there’s a problem with Colombia?
Negroponte was speaking to the 38th General Assembly of the Organization of American States, something the U.S. press doesn’t seem interested in. Maybe that’s reasonable. Negroponte is kind of reduced to trying to claim the Bush Administration has been relevant to Latin America.
Meanwhile, another Bush Administration hack who isn’t taken too seriously — U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza — stymied that no one in Mexico can come up with a good reason to accept U.S. “assistance” via ‘Plan Merida” is reduced to the “Mommy, they’re doing it too” defense.
The punchlines write themselves
Sombrero-tip to South Texas Chisme for finding this in the Valley Morning Star:
Can the U.S. border fence be built on deadline without the help of foreign laborers?
With 670 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border fence slated for completion by year’s end, construction companies in Texas are questioning the feasibility of completing such a project without immigrant labor.
…
“Is it possible to construct a wall without undocumented workers?” asked Perry Vaughn, executive director of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America. “It’s probably borderline impossible to be honest with you.”
…
In the late 1990s, the Golden State Fence Co., a fence-building company in Southern California, hired undocumented immigrants to build millions of dollars’ worth of fencing between San Diego and Mexico.
The company received several warnings, but federal agents found undocumented workers still on the job in 2005.
In 2006, the company agreed to pay $5 million and its executives pleaded guilty to hiring undocumented immigrants.
(Late) Sunday readings
Hullabaloo on the death of one immigrant, and health care in the For-Profit Concentration Camps Detention Centers :
Unlike federal and state prisons, immigrant detention centers, many of which are run by private contractors, are not legally mandated to abide by any healthcare standards when it comes to treating sick immigrants. Civil and immigrant rights groups have filed suit in New York to force federal officials to issue such rules, but the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction in the matter, has yet to produce them.
Mexico Trucker On-Line explains “NAFTA for Dummies”:
Mexicans disapprove of NAFTA by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a recent poll. That finding reflects disappointment that NAFTA hasn’t brought widespread prosperity to Mexico. “Executives and high-skilled workers have found opportunities,” says consultant Gonzalez. “But for most workers things have not improved.” Forty percent of Mexicans still live in poverty, and small farmers have been especially hard-hit; many went under after they were unable to compete with cheaper agricultural imports from the U.S. and Canada. NAFTA has been more popular in Canada. The U.S. has always provided a ready market for Canadian natural resources—the U.S. imports more oil from Canada than from any other country. But since NAFTA, Canadian exports of goods other than natural resources have tripled. Yet some Canadians fear that competitive pressures will force them to dismantle their European-style social safety net in favor of the harsher American model.
Upside Down World focus on the havoc of Canadian mining operations throughout Latin America, focusing on Goldcorp:
… mining companies, the mainstream media, the Canadian government, International Finance Institutions and bought off NGOs” …[are]…working “hard to keep the reality of large-scale, open pit mines out of picture, keep[ing] community resistance marginalized, and no matter what, to keep talking about ‘development’.”
The American Prospect on “The Perils of Privatization”:
If adequate water for drinking and sanitation is essential for life, shouldn’t we consider water a human right? Not everyone thinks so. In February, the United Nations Human Rights Council missed a critical opportunity to recognize a human right to water. As a result of lobbying by the United States and Canada, the council derailed a European-backed declaration, accepting instead a weaker resolution that actually protects a corporation’s right to sell water.
AFP on Indiana Jones and the Pile of Caca… what’s a Mayan temple (let alone Pancho Villa) doing in Peru?
And… in U.S. political news, Chris Kelly finds the perfect Vice-Presidential candidate:
Obama just needs a running mate who’s old, Hispanic, southern, female and enjoys state-sponsored violence, especially war.
Famous for fifteen minutes… at work in 30
Cleaning woman Gabriela Castro Cervantes had her name in all the national newspapers this morning, being the first paying passenger on the new Tren Suburbano, which runs from Buenavista (near the corner of Insurgentes and Puente d’Alvarado) to Lecheria, on the far north side. Living in Ecatepec (State of Mexico) and working near Pino Suarez Metro Station, Castro’s formerly three-hour commute now takes 30 minutes.
Projected ridership on the new Tren Suburbano line is expected to be about 320,000 passengers per day. Eventually, the line will be expanded to Pachucha, Hidalgo State. Mexicans, like other North Americans, want to live out in the ‘burbs. Ford Motor Company has noted the trend… and is investing three billion U.S. dollars in new production lines. The Cuautitlan plant (outside Mexico City) which has been building F-series pickups for the U.S. market, is being retooled to produce Festivas for the Mexican and Latin American market. Even though Mexican pay much less for gasoline than north of the border (the equivalent of around $2.75 US per gallon), commuting by auto will not be a viable option for most workers. And, with the rising costs of fuel, not to mention Mexico City’s struggle to control pollutants, the challenges are the same as those north of the border… but… having crept up on Mexico later than in the U.S. and Canada… there is a chance to control the change.
This is only one step, but given that Mexicans are driving more, those “sophisticated” northerners might want to take a look at how “backwards” Mexico is ahead of the curve when it comes to meeting the demands of consumers and the needs of urban inhabitants.
(Photo: Notimex)
Sometimes I miss Texas
(Sean Gaffney, in the McAllen Monitor)
NEAR ALTON — A man walked into an illegal cockfight here and opened fire on the crowd Saturday evening, shooting two men in the chest and a woman through the wrist, according to authorities.
Several people in the crowd also pulled guns and exchanged fire with the man, who had been ejected from the cockfight sometime earlier for acting unruly, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.
“The only reason we found out about it is because people showed up at the hospital with the bullet wounds,” Treviño said. “The owner of the place obviously didn’t call the cops.
Uh… maybe he chickened out?
Enrique Quintero Medina, of San Quintín, Baja California, is one of the estimated several thousand Mexicans who have never received a birth certificate. Most, like Don Enrique, are indigenous farm workers and about half were live in Baja California.
While this creates problems — without a birth certificate, there is no way to register for school, or obtain a voter ID, or — well, prove you exist — Don Enrique has been managing to get by somehow… for some time now.
Having turned 111 last month, Quintero doesn’t think it’s such a big deal finally having proof that he was born 15 April 1897 in Badiraguato, Sinaloa. “What’s this for?,” he asked.
An official birth certificate will make it possible to enroll Don Enrique for some social services and health benefits… which unfortunately do not include what he really cares about — his daily tequila and cigarettes.
Art imitates life — unfortunately
Sombrero tip to Marie-Theresa Hernández, Dream Act-Texas
SAN DIEGO — The smuggler in the public service announcement sat handcuffed in prison garb, full of bravado and shrugging off the danger of bringing illegal immigrants across the border.“Sometimes they die in the desert, or the cars crash, or they drown,” he said. “But it’s not my fault.”
The smuggler in the commercial, produced by the Mexican government several years ago, was played by an American named Raul Villarreal, who at the time was a United States Border Patrol agent and a spokesman for the agency here.
Now, federal investigators are asking: Was he really acting?
Full story at New York Times.
The April 3 raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) by Texas authorities — ostensibly because of complaints about child and spousal abuse — have raised some uncomfortable questions about religious and person freedoms in the United States that echo issues Mexico has been trying to deal with for years… if not the last century and a half.
Outside of a few brave souls like Scott Henson at “Grits for Breakfast” there isn’t much sympathy for the FLDS. Henson’s defense is grounded in the right of even weird, backwards people to religious freedom:
Most Americans today, whether religious or not, take it as gospel that a young women should have a range of options and the ability to choose among them. At the same time, everyone think some options are better than others.
Although the state didn’t find many young pregnant teens at the YFZ Ranch, the outcry over FLDS practices has been widespread. The revulsion of 21st century sensibilities to what are essentially 19th century values, attitudes, and practices was painstakingly expressed recently in three posts on Orcinus: Secret Lives of Saints, Are FLDS Women Brainwashed?, and What We’re Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS.
That baseline, essentially “feminist” position, though, errs when it fails to understand that liberation may come in many different forms, and that a life of service to family and faith may be as liberating, for some, as breaking glass ceilings and workplace barriers are for others. None of us possess any sure-fire recipe for happiness in this short life, and in the absence of such a formula, many still turn to God for advice on topic, as they understand Him, or whatever texts they believe represent God’s views.
Also, as Henson and others have pointed out, the claims of abuse were over-blown, and that the State of Texas has not been particularly interested in pursuing child or spousal abuse cases that involve more “mainstream” sectarians — Roman Catholic priests, or the scandals at church-run youth homes, to name two recent examples.
The biggest argument FOR the State’s intervention has been that expressed by David Niewart at “Orcinus”... basically that the FLDS — as a subculture — is unacceptable:
… the church’s young women have been systemically sexually abused by the men of the group; and that this abuse is not just rare, but rather an inherent and accepted feature of the group’s social order.
Probably true, but the same thing is said about other minority groups. Especially when you are talking about unpopular minorities.
Modernity seems to be the real issue. What’s interesting is that polygamy is not the issue… age is. The child-abuse charges in Texas turned out to be largely bogus, but the Chihuahua sect apparently wants to avoid any suggestion that they tolerate under-age marriages. It’s odd, that many in the “Progressive” community defend sexism and under-age marriage when practiced by other Mexican minorities
OR, so I started to write back in late April. The legal situation has changed. The Texas polygamists have “half-won” their rights to their “usos y costumbres”, but at this point are enjoined from leaving the jurisdiction of the court.
The case has only drawn minor attention here. There are polygamous Mormonsin Mexico , following their own “usos y costumbres” peacefully for over a century. Of course, Mexico has laws against polygamy too, but as long as the legal norms are followed (the Mormon polygamists simply don’t officially register their second, third… sixth… marriages) no one is going to assume that an irregular household is de facto a threat to children or women.
And, when you come down to it, polygamy is fairly normal in this society — or at least tolerated — “thanks” in part to the United States Border Patrol. You certainly can’t expect men to live apart from their families for years, and remain celibate. Some probably do, but talk to any group of Mexican expats, and you’ll hear them mention “mi esposa” (their legal wife in Mexico) and “my common law wife” (the women they live with as man and wife in the United States). The wife and family in Mexico may or may not accept this, but it’s fairly common. If the people in the U.S. were really bothered by polygamy, then they should let Mexican workers get home and back to work more easily. They’re lucky to get home once a year if that.
Those Mexican men who do want their families to join them are somehow seen as creating a “illegal alien crisis”. But, if polygamy is a moral issue, and needs to be stopped in the U.S., then the answer is making it easier for Mexican workers to commute home regularly.
After I started writing this, I ran across a review of a new book by the grand-daughter of Mexico’s best known polygamist, Pancho Villa. Rosa Helia Villa’s Itinerario de una pasión. Los amores de mi General Villa. Helia confirms what I wrote in my own book about Villa’s family life:
He loved women…all too much. The stories of him raping rich men’s daughters and wives are exaggerated, but he was sexually hyperactive. He married again and again and again. He went to the trouble to obtain marriage certificates for at least twenty-three wives, making him one of the champion bigamists of all times. None of his wives ever spoke of him as anything but loving and gentle. His many children, both by his wives, by several girlfriends and by the one-night stands, all remember a particularly fond and doting father.
Nowhere is it written that polygamists have to be bad parents, or endanger their children.
What I never thought about was Villa’s “Mormon connection”. I should have. Smokey Kolsch — who has been researching the religious connections of some of the northern revolutionaries, found
… an oral history interview of an elderly woman named Nellie S. Hatch, who was born in 1877 in Mesa, Arizona and who had been a Mormon colonist living in Colonia Juarez in Mexico during the Revolution. She was 100 years old when she was interviewed for the Institute of Oral History, U. of Texas/El Paso by Richard Estrada. A transcript of the interview is held in the Special Collections at the UTEP library as Interview No. 422. Here I will quote an excerpt from that interview, which was held on November 7 and 9, 1977: [p.25]
H…it should go down in history that Pancho Villa never harmed a Mormon…He was friends to them. And he proved it once, by taking Bishop Bently and Burt Whitten, George Sloan into captivity when he was feeding his men on parched corn in a town from which the people had fled. And he had a wagonload of food he was taking to the missionaries in that section of the country. He never allowed a man to touch a bit of that food.
E: Why do you think Villa was so friendly to the Mormons?
H: Well as soon as Felipe Angeles and Burt Whitten got together, they were very sociable and began talking. And Burt was quite a missionary, and he began telling him about the gospel, our gospel. And he became so interested that he couldn’t stop, because so many questions he had to ask.
E: Who was asking questions?
H: Felipe Angeles was asking the questions and Burt was explaning everything. It all seemed so wonderful to him that he said, “Pancho, come in here and listen to this, what this man is saying.” Saya, “He’s trying to do with words what you’re trying to do with guns.” And he says, “I know all about the Mormons. But,” he said, “I don’t think they should be doing missionary work now. They ought to be home, taking care of their property.” And he let them go. And they got into the town where the people had fled to from Pancho Villa…because they were afraid, everybody in Mexico was afraid of Pancho Villa. [When they got into the town], they said Pancho Villa had given them a pass, and they showed the pass that he had given them. [They were] to be protected, you know, and allowed to return to their home. And thay said, “Well that’s a lie.” Says, “He never let Americans through his hands alive.” And they kept those men there for nine days. And they didn’t dare touch anything, either, because he had offered protection. At the end of the nine days, they said, “I guess he is friendly to you.” So he let them go home. Now that proved to us that one place where he favored us, where he protected us, in a way.
E: Did he ever do anything harmful to the Mormons?
H: Not a thing, not a thing. He came into our section of the country, but all he did was run every red flagger out of the country. He chased that Orozco, he just got behind him and he never stopped until he was across the line in the United States.
Ms. Hatch wrote essentially the same story in her Colonia Juarez: an intimate account of a Mormon village. (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company, 1954) and — with all due respect — I wonder how much of Pancho’s protection for the Mormons was due to a genuine interest in the belief system, and how much due to a recognition that the Mormon colonists were not so much gringos (or gringos only in the sense that they had some common traits, but spoke a foreign language) as anti-gringos. And, while the Mormon’s own radical beliefs on polygamy would have resonated with Villa on a personal level, on a revolutionary one he may have seen the Mormons as people forced to flee the United States for their beliefs, and had been able — in Mexico — to pursue their “usos y costumbres.”
mexfiles.net 