The corn is as high…
Nancy Davis translated the highlights of a startling report by Matilde Peréz U. that appeared in this morning’s Jornada. I’d expected almost immediate fallout from the end of farm subsidies in Mexico, but nothing this dramatic.
In spite of the fact that in the country there is sufficient corn for human consumption, grain imports of corn from the United States in January went up 384% in comparison with the past year …
The elimination of customs charges [on imported grain] is harmful for the campesinos, since the objective of the great businesses is to maintain a depressed internal price, contrary to the international markets’ tendency…
The only way to avoid the price speculation by the great businesses is for the government to establish a mechanism for administrating imports and exports of white corn and order the creation of a national coen reserve for national consumption..
Kathy Kohlstedt, a program associate at the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, has written on the broader political and policy implications of the NAFTA deregulations:
As part of a broadened alliance of civil society groups demanding the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexicans from all parts of the country occupied Mexico City’s Zocalo and surroundings on January 31. In a display of unity, in solidarity with their country’s agricultural producers, and the spirit that “without corn, there is no Mexico,” Mexican farmers and others seem to be coming together. Mexico’s movements appear to be united in a sort of “buy Mexican” campaign. This is not necessarily so.
Unthinkable in the Americas?
.
Maria Esthella Martinez de Peron, Argentina (1974-79)
Lidia Gueler Tejada, Bolivia (1979-1980)
Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, Nicaragua (1999-1997)
Mireya Moscosa Rodríguez de Aria, Panama (1999-2004)
Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Chile (2006-)
Christia Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina (2007-)
USA (2008)
Downsizing the police
From Vivarlatino:
In Aguascalientes, Mexico, cops have a problem. It’s not low pay, or even violence, but rather big old panzas. That’s why the city is providing the policias with an attractive incentive: lose weight and get paid.
A city spokesperson for Aguascalientes said that 35% of the 3000 police officers in the city are an average of 20 kilos [44 lbs.] overweight.
They will pay 100 pesos (about $10) for each kilogram that they lose, which means that will be able to receive 2000 pesos (200 dollars) once they manage to eliminate the excess weight,” said the source.
The city is concerned that obese cops have a really hard time participating in chases, and to that end, want officers to stop eating the “T” diet: tortillas, tamales and tortas.
In other police news, Mexico City (which has been weeding out fat coppers for the last couple of years) dedicated a new building today that probably won’t be on anyone’s tourist itinerary: a state of the art CSI lab and morgue. The 157.5 million peso facility — besides all the cool CSI stuff and a genetics lab — has space for 150 guests at a time. In a pinch, there is storage space for up to 250 cadavers … as long as they aren’t fat cops from Aguascalientes, I suppose.
Ooops!
Brenda Norrell at Narconews reports on two wee problems with el Muro Grande…
Residents here (Nogales, Sonora)say the U.S. border wall construction has intruded twenty meters onto Mexico’s land …
It’s a meandering article (who am I to talk?), but then, she has to quote bureaucrats, and they do tend to wander about the suburbs of veracity…
Although recent reports said the border spy towers are now functioning, those reports were not accurate.
Homeland Security Department has determined that it needs to develop better software and perform additional tests on the initial 28-mile segment of the SBInet border surveillance system, a department spokeswoman said.
“The additional round of testing is the most recent glitch in getting the potentially $30 billion U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border surveillance system up and running. Boeing was awarded the prime contract in September 2006 and began work on the $20 million initial task order for Project 28, installing towers, cameras, sensors and communications equipment,” Lipowicz.
”On Monday, Secretary Michael Chertoff said he is requesting $775 million for SBInet in fiscal 2009.
“The department also recently awarded a $64 million task order to Boeing to develop a common operational picture for SBInet. A common operational picture is a single, relevant display of information that can be used by more than one group.”
Now, wouldn’t it be interesting if the builders of this idiotic project were arrested by the Mexicans for illegal entry? Too bad that 775 million dollar spy system apparently won’t be capturing it for posterity. Maybe someone can just upload it to youtube.
Don’t shop for me, organize
As goes Los Cabos, so goes… Lake Chapala, San Miguel …?
The cost-of-living for Mexican workers in the gringo ghettos is significantly higher than in other places, especially in relatively isolated places like Los Cabos. When the teachers were on strike there a few years ago, the tourist websites included comments from people in Los Cabos that they couldn’t understand it… a beer was only a dollar. Gee, nice, but how much was milk and toilet paper and cooking gas (and what housing was available for locals?).
From Reuters:
Mexico City, Feb. 7 – Wal-Mart de Mexico (Walmex), the country’s biggest retailer, suffered its first-ever strike this week when 300 workers from two stores and a restaurant
Jaime Camacho, a top official from a grass-roots workers movement that backed the strike action, told Reuters that black and red strike flags were hung at the entrance of the stores and restaurant in the beach resort of Los Cabos at midday on Wednesday, closing down the establishments.
“We lifted the flags today at 9 a.m. local time (1700 GMT). The strike has ended,” Camacho said on Thursday. The units affected were a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Sam’s membership store and a Vips restaurant, he said.
Walmex was not immediately available for comment.
Walmex employs over 150,000 people across Mexico and is considered the country’s biggest private sector employer. Workers are not unionized.
Workers at the Los Cabos stores and restaurant held their strike action with the backing of Mexico’s Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants, or CROC, a union-style organization that defends workers’ rights.
Camacho said the Walmex workers had complained about bad treatment from managers and that they were not being paid overtime or given benefit packages similar to those awarded by other Walmex stores in the country.
The company agreed to grant some of the workers’ demands and signed a new labor contract on Thursday, Camacho said.
Media reported that in December of last year, protesters picketed outside a Walmex story in the Mexican capital to show support for employees who tried to form a union.
Another reason to flee Texas…
Thank goodness for small favors. I live in far west Texas. Dead-eye Dick Cheney is back at Kenedy County’s Armstrong Ranch, hunting quail (and whatever else it is he shoots). Says ranch owner, Anne Armstrong, “He is a fabulous shot”…
Iraqi illegal aliens in Mexico! Oh my!
Notimex is reporting on an Iraqi couple who were detained in Monterrey, headed for the United States on false Bulgarian passports.
OK, before my lunatic fringe right-wing readers get a hard-on, I better give ’em the “rest of the story.”
The 25 year old Iraqi man and 21 year old woman were just two more of the 28 Iraqi Christians who’ve been detained in Mexico while attempting to make it to the “mother of (some) exiles” north of the border. Plenty of Iraqi Christians have already gone — especially to Detroit and San Antonio (helped by U.S. servicemen with Mexican family connections).
Note to Iraqi Christian would-be exiles. You might be better off staying in Mexico, where you can — like other Iraqis — make a valuable contribution to your adopted country. Except for a few things like people trying to kill you, and bombs going off, and foreign troops in the streets, Mexico isn’t all that alien a place to Iraqis.
But, if your heart is set on going on to the United States, do not — like this couple — claim that you just flew in from Madrid for a two day vacation. And, if you’re using forged Bulgarian passports, try to learn a little Bulgarian.
Maybe they should, like other illegal aliens, claim “we are from France…”
I’m kind of surprised that Mexican immigration in Monterrey had someone who knew Bulgarian available.
Stupid parents = stupid kids
From “South Texas Chisme“:
While the rest of her fifth-grade class was taking Spanish classes mandated by the Grapevine-Colleyville school district curriculum, Ashleigh Allison sat in the Timberline Elementary School library writing a report about France.
Ashleigh and her mother, Leigh Allison, say teaching elementary school Spanish only makes life easier for Hispanic immigrants in the community who do not learn or speak English. And Ashleigh shouldn’t be forced to conform, they say.
“She wants to be that one voice that forces them to learn English,” Allison said. “We’re not going to turn America into a bilingual country to accommodate you.”
I’m all in favor of non-conformity, but come on… this is moronic. Even the “English First” idiots don’t go this far. STC picked up their post from a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
“…we’re all for teaching foreign languages,” said K.C. McAlpin, executive director of Virginia-based ProEnglish, which works to preserve English as the common language of the U.S.
Texas’ curriculum requires a school district to offer, “to the extent possible, languages other than English” for elementary- and middle school-age children.
Most districts offer some level of language instruction, said Monica Martinez, curriculum director with the Texas Education Agency. And for most, Spanish is the language of choice. It’s easier to learn and speak than many other languages, and school districts can hire more experienced Spanish teachers than teachers of other languages.
“But it could be French. It could be American Sign Language,” Martinez said. “It’s left to local district discretion to determine what they offer.”
Texas, having a Spanish-speaking minority as long as it’s been a part of the United States, still has German, French and even Sorbia-speaking communities. Not to mention Vietnamese, Arabic, Comanche and a host of others.
English is still the first language of 82 percent of the United States (and that’s an all-time historic high). Spanish is the second most common language (spoken by about nine percent of the United States), followed by French, German, Italian, Chinese and Navajo.
German at one time was spoken by about 15 or 20 percent of the United States.
The United States is still the sixth or seventh largest Spanish-speaking nation (depending on who is counting, and how they count Spanish-speakers), the kid isn’t going to learn a whole lot of Spanish.
…Grapevine-Colleyville elementary students must take Spanish two days a week in nine-week rotations with art classes.
I can’t say two days a week is going to make a kid fluent, and it sure isn’t going to make her forget her English. Unless the kid is writing her report in French, I can’t see how her “independent study” fits the language requirement.
“One more empty desk…” in Terlingua
Maybe in larger communities, it’s easier to turn a blind eye to Homeland Security. You “big city folks” have more uniformed types walking around, and the green-shirts don’t stand out like they do in our small communities down along the border.
Unlike many, I don’t think they’re the Gestapo… the Gestapo were secret police, and there’s nothing secretive about the Border Patrol. Think more SS — the guys who ran the concentration camps (and doled out the contracts… the old fascist corporate state thing, or, as we like to call it in the U.S., making it somehow sound different, “the military-industrial complex.”).
The Border Patrol is not just bureaucrats with guns — high-falutin’ traffic cops — but a full-fledged paramilitary organization. Go into any small town along the border, and they’re impossible to miss (one morning I counted 12 BP vehicles at the Fort Hancock — pop. 2550) Shell Station) and the newest edifice in every town (or, rather — perhaps by design — the edge of town) is the Border Patrol station.
You can’t overlook them in a place like Alpine. The new houses out where I live all have Border Patrol Tahoes parked in the driveway. Who else in moving here with money to spend?
Alpine has about 5500 people. Imagine what it’s like in my county’s third largest “Census Designated Place” — a couple of tiny communities so spread out that just managing a central school district is about as close as you get to some kind of local government.
The whole community is only about 275 people (mas o menos), but does size matter when it comes to basic civil rights? How many miles from the border (or from a big city) does one go before becoming a second-class citizen? Am I, living 90 miles from the border, in a community of 5500 entitled to more rights? Or, maybe, more rights because my native language is English, and I’m paler than some of my neighbors?
Martha Stafford’s original Letter to the Editor appeared in the 1 February 2008 Alpine (TX) Avalanche:
“The men in uniforms stood outside the house without knocking. She could see the doorknob turning. Thank God my aunt had locked the door or they could have just walked in! She took the baby and hid in the other room. She was afraid the baby would cry and they would hear. She stayed there hiding until she heard them drive away.”
A new thriller? A Holocaust story? Lesson on the evils of communism?
Wrong. Personal narrative, Terlingua, Texas, January 2008.
Yes, most of the rumors circulating through the Big Bend area are true.
The Terlingua-Study Butte-Lajitas communities have been targeted by the Department of Homeland Security. Our Hispanic community is being watched, followed, questioned, harassed, detained and picked up. Unofficial counts show that at least a dozen Hispanic children are being denied an education because their productive, grocery-buying, gas-using, sales-tax-paying families – which have been here for decades – are now living in exile in Mexico because of the fear of being separated.
Our most vulnerable and valuable resource – our children – are the first casualties of our country’s attempt to secure our borders and make our citizens safe. When a child is unable to secure a quality education, what choices will he or she have as adult? Are we going to have judges, artists, doctors, realtors, teachers, journalists and physicists as our closest neighbors to the south? Or will we have what we fear the most – the impoverished, the desperate, the resentful?
Solutions? I have none but desperately seek. But I do have a voice, a pen and a vote. And so do you. Meanwhile, I have one more empty desk, one more vacant spot on the basketball team, one more unopened science book, one more math problem unsolved, one less shy smile, one less giggle, one less book recommended and one less question. And so do you. Thank you. — Martha Stafford, Terlingua
Dang, the Border Patrol DID find a terrorist
You’d think that when the Border Patrol manages to find a real, live terrorist, you’d read and hear all about it from the lunatic “seal the border” crowd. Nah…
The BBC was vaguely interested, but then again, it’s their old news, not ours
Paul Brennan was arrested by officers at a border checkpoint in southern Texas on Monday night.
The US Border Patrol said Brennan was now in custody and was awaiting deportation.
It said he had been serving a 23-year prison sentence in Northern Ireland on charges of possessing a bomb and a firearm.Brennan is understood to have produced an out-of-date immigration document at the Sarita checkpoint near Brownsville.
He was identified through fingerprinting after a search of his background through the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Interpol.
“The subject was arrested and is pending deportation proceedings back to his country of origin,” said the US Border Patrol.
That’s not from the U.S. press, but from the BBC. Seems Paul Brennan was released from a Northern Irish prison several years ago, under a peace accord between the British occupation government and the Irish insurgents, and moved to the United States. The British dropped extradition efforts in 2000, but he was still wanted in connection with a 1983 jailbreak.
And Sarita Texas is not exactly on the border. Being the only inhabited spot in Kenedy County, Texas (400 and some law abiding citizens, last heard of when Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face), it is — by default — the inland border checkpoint on US 77 coming north from Brownsville/Harlingen (you know, Padre Island).
People here along the border are getting used to (not that we like it) these damn security checks (mostly because you’re crusing along at 75 or 80 miles per hour, and then have to stop at what’s basically a big toll-booth in the middle of nowhere and answer questions from armed bureaucrats). How much this costs us taxpayers I can’t say. A shitload.
Anyway, nabbing a guy whose been in the U.S. (and may not have been in Mexico) for several years apparently makes those “show us ze papers” stops all worthwhile… right?
Ronald D. Vitiello, chief patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley Sector, said: “The primary purpose of checkpoint operations is to support enhanced national security efforts that deter, detect and prevent the threat of further terrorist attacks against the United States.
So… if this is such a great idea, why not random checkpoints everywhere? What do we have to lose. And, hey, we might stumble across a possible ex-baddie from some other country now and again.
Fascist pervert Marcial Maciel dies. Good.
Maciel, born in Michoacán 10 March 1920, was the founder of the Legions of Christ and Regnum Christi. The Legion is a religious congregation, Regnum Christi includes both priests and laymen. Both inculcate absolute, unquestioning fidelity to the ultimate leader (aka, Marcial Maciel) and to rat out any internal critics… sort of like Scientologists, or fascists.
The fascist tendencies in Marciel’s movements is reflected in their support for Franco’s Falangist Spain, and their later support for Mexican synarchism (and, the “confessional wing” of PAN). It’s no accident that Eric Prince, of Blackwater infamy, is one of the groups more enthusiastic backers
Several Roman Catholic Bishops in the United States have thrown the Legion — and Regnum Christi out of their dioceses, mostly because they see the two Marciel organizations as a “parallel church” which discourages its members from contact with “normal” Catholics. Several bishops — and not just in the United States — have also been bothered by overt elitism in these groups, an attitude seen as reactionary to modern church leaders.
Marciel encouraged his followers to target the well-heeled and well-connected (again, like the Scientologists) — with the goal of influencing public policy. With their strict obedience to superiors, these “elites” were the natural allies of people like Franco and Pinochet, and — with their unquestioning fidelity to their Fuhrer, were perfect servants to the Fascists. In Mexico, the Regnum Christi movement took a very sinister turn a few years ago, turning into youth gangs that beat up minorities (indigenous peoples, Protestants, gays) in PANista strongholds like Aguascalientes.
Marciel a favorite of Augustin Pinochet and Imelda Marcos was … alas poor Mexico… coddled by Pope John-Paul II. The late pope brought Marciel along on his three Mexican tours, permitted the two groups expansion and… apparently… turned a blind eye to what exactly Marciel’s “unquestioning fidelity” meant.
Marcial Maciel, was guilty of the sexual abuse of his seminarians, that he was/is addicted to a form of morphine called Dolantin (demerol, meperidine, isonipecaine, dolantol), and that he did indeed abuse his power to control all those beneath him in order to carry out his plans.
There is a whole counter-Legion movement, ReGAIN, for “recovering legionaries.” Their site, and Mexican (and Spanish, and Chilean) court documents detail the charges against Marciel, predatory sexual abuse of his seminarians being the most serious.
Former Hitler Youth Pope Benedict XVI — who one assumes knows a Fascist pervert when he sees one — stripped Marciel of his position, and order his retirement into a monastery to reflect on his past. I guess the Vatican doesn’t have suitable dungeons any more.
Marciel died yesterday. According to Catholic theology, one can’t say for certain that any sinner hasn’t been forgiven, but it’s a good bet Marcial Maciel Degollado hasn’t gone to eternal rest.
mexfiles.net 