WWGD? (What would Geronimo do?)
Date: Nov 16, 2007 5:54 AM
I wish I was writing under better circumstances, but I must be fast
and direct.
My mother and elders of El Calaboz, since July have been the targets
of numerous threats and harrassments by the Border Patrol, Army Corps
of Engineers, NSA, and the U.S. related to the proposed building of a
fence on their levee.
Since July, they have been the targets of numerous telephone calls,
unexpected and uninvited visits on their lands, informing them that
they will have to relinquish parts of their land grant holdings to the
border fence buildup. The NSA demands that elders give up their lands
to build the levee, and further, that they travel a distance of 3
miles, to go through checkpoints, to walk, recreate, and to farm and
herd goats and cattle, ON THEIR OWN LANDS.
This threat against indigenous people, life ways and lands has been
very very serious and stress inducing to local leaders, such as Dr.
Eloisa Garcia Tamez, who has been in isolation from the larger
indigenous rights community due to the invisibility of indigenous
people of South Texas and Northern Tamaulipas to the larger social
justice conversation regarding the border issues.
However recent events, of the last 5 days cause us to feel that we are
in urgent need of immediate human rights observers in the area,
deployed by all who can help as soon as possible–immediate relief.
My mother informed me, as I got back into cell range out of Redford,
TX, on Monday, November 13, that Army Corps of Engineers, Border
Patrol and National Security Agency teams have been going house to
house, and calling on her personal office phone, her cell phone and in
other venues, tracking down and enclosing upon the people and telling
them that they have no other choice in this matter. They are telling
elders and other vulnerable people that “the wall is going on these
lands whether you like it or not, and you have to sell your land to
the U.S.”
My mother, Eloisa Garcia Tamez, Lipan Apache and descendent of
Chiricahua descent elder, Aniceto Garcia, (passed away) who gave her
traditional indigenous birth welcoming ceremony and the lightning
ceremony, is resisting the occupation firmly. She has already had two
major confrontations with NSA on the telephone since July–one in her
office at the University of Texas at Brownsville, where she is the
Director of a Nursing Program and where she conducts research on diabetes.
She reports that some folks have already signed over their lands, due
to their ongoing state of impoverishement and exploitation in the area
under colonization, corporatism, NAFTA and militarization.
This is an outrage, but more, this is a significant violation of
United Nations Declaration on rights of Indigenous People, recently
ratified and accepted. Furthermore, it is a violation of the United
Nations CERD, Committee on Racism and Discrimination.
My mother is under great stress and crisis, unknowing if the Army
soldiers and the NSA agents will be demanding that she sign documents.
She has firmly told them not to call her anymore, nor to call her at
all hours of the night and day, nor to call on the weekends any further.
She asked them to meet with her in a public space and to tell their
supervisors to come.
They refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to harrass and intimidate.
At this time, due to the great stress the elders are currently under,
communicated to me, because they are being demanded to relinquish
indigenous lands, I feel that I MUST call upon my relatives, friends,
colleagues, associates in Texas, involved in indigenous rights issues,
to come forth and aid us.
Please! Please help indigenous women land title holders! Please do not
hesitate!
My phone number is: 509-595-4445
My office number is: 509-335-7268
Call anytime!
Margo Tamez
(Jumano Apache West Texas-Chihuahua & Lipan Apache South
Texas-Tamaulipas, Apacheria Nuevo Santander Land Grant–Basque Colonia)
http://www.nativewiki.org/Margo_Tamez
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1795.htm
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1479.htm
__._,
Answer: when you live on the border.
Kat Smutz, the very good (but grossly underpaid) reporter of all work for the (Presidio Texas) International/El Internacional — a newspaper unfortunately not available on the Internet, yet — reports on the front page of their 15 November 2007 issue:
Air ambulance service may be in Presidio’s future
Clay Dixon, regional drector of Air Ambulance State, proposed a plan to the Presidio City Council before a packed house at their regular meeting last Thursday.
Dixon, along with company owner Denny O’Hara, laid out a plan that would provide the community with a service that has long been discussed, but never implemented.
Air Ambulance State, based in Amarillo, provides emergency air services to communities all along the border. The service works in conjunction with local Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to more quickly transport patients, who meet medical necessity, to the nearest medical facility.
Its that last phrase — “nearest medical facility” that grabbed my attention. Life out here in far-west Texas can be pretty tough, and it may be a long, long way to the “nearest medical facility”, but Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine (90 miles by road — bout an hour by air) is NOT the nearest medical facility. From Alpine, patients are regularly taken by heliocopter to Midland-Odesssa. (about 170 miles… a total of 260 miles) or El Paso (220 miles… making the total trip 310 miles).
To Hospital Intergal de Ojinaga at Calle Cuautemoc and 6a is 2.5 miles by road (The Rio Grande/Bravo is 1885 miles long, not wide) — but… “Medicaid pays a much higher amount for air transport cases” than it does for transporting people by ambulance, and we wouldn’t want some pregnant lady to throw an “anchor baby” on the Mexican taxpayers now, would we?
Wonder why health care costs are going up? Look at jet fuel… and if you’re wondering why we rural people have such crappy health care, look at Homeland Stupidity.
Isn’t one of the Aztec gods named “Chutzpah”?
Good plan, poor planning…
(Amanda Harris, Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, TX)
Two more Willacy County immigration detention center officers, both from Harlingen, are facing charges in connection with transporting illegal immigrants, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
…
The four men worked as detention officers for the Utah-based Management Training Corp., which provides security services for the Willacy County Detention Center in Raymondville, according to the release.
Officials allege that Treviño recruited Vasquez, Garcia and Sanchez to pick up and transport immigrants who were smuggled into the country through locations near Harlingen past the Sarita checkpoint using MTC company vehicles, according to the news release.
The 28 illegal immigrants who were transported Thursday were not being held at the Willacy County Detention Center, Angela Dodge, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said.
The illegal immigrants had been picked up at various locations, including a canal and a soccer field, the release states.
Garcia and Sanchez were wearing MTC uniforms and officials found a loaded .357 magnum pistol in the center console of the van when they attempted to drive the MTC F-450 van past the checkpoint Thursday, according to the release.
Customs and Border Protection agents at the checkpoint became suspicious because the van was overcrowded, some passengers were sitting on the vehicle floor, none were shackled and many had luggage, the release states.
What Mex-Files readers know…
According to the not very scientific Blog Readability Test YOU are a genius!
Of course, it may just mean you have to be a genius to decipher my hit or miss self-editing and tendency towards convoluted sentence structures… or it may mean you are ahead of the curve… Two of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008, “an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country’s major national news media” were covered by the Mex Files.
# 13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with cheap subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in deep unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers north in order to feed their families…
# 18 Mexico’s Stolen Election
Overwhelming evidence reveals massive fraud in the 2006 Mexican presidential election between “president-elect” Felipe Calderón of the conservative PAN party and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the more liberal PRD. In an election riddled with “arithmetic mistakes,” a partial recount uncovered evidence of abundant stuffing and stealing of ballots that favored the PAN victory…
Congratulations to reader — whether they agreed or disagreed with me, or my spin — on at least making themselves aware of these two issues (and being smart enough to read the Mex Files… but if you’re so smart, how come I’m still poor?)
No soy marinero
I live in a desert, and cruise ships just don’t appeal much to me, so this has been rather academic, but there was a discussion on one of the tourism boards a couple of days ago about the five dollar per head landing tax charged cruise ship passengers by various Mexican ports.
I guess it is a fairly contentious issue, as Kent Patterson’s The Battle of Zihuatanejo on the Center for International Policy America’s Program site details.
I’ve never complained about the visitor’s visa fee – the twenty bucks or so that you pay for your tourist visa … somebody’s got to pick up the tab for the extra coppers, soldiers (and forensic examiners when we foreigners walk in front of taxis drunk off our asses) required when we enter the country. And, charging a higher one-day fee for day trippers doesn’t sound all that outrageous to me. Besides, I live in the desert and the only cruise I was ever on was across the Gulf of Newfoundland… not exactly a tropical voyage. As Patterson notes about the once hippy-hideout at Zijua, the cruise ships create some extra costs other tourists don’t rack up:
infrastructure outlays for piers, terminals, and roads, the government has to shell out for salaries for soldiers, marines, local police, and security personnel to comply with post 9-11 anti-terrorist regulations.
Five bucks a head seems perfectly reasonable to me, but the Thorntree Message Board quotes several articles suggesting this will hurt the industry, and – more ominiously – opens the door to higher fees in the future. How much the cruise ship passengers bring in to the economy (as opposed to other tourists) is questionable:
Economically, the significance of the cruise ship industry is very small in Zihuatanejo. While providing some jobs, the money typically goes to select sectors: day-tour companies, taxis, dolphin swimming tanks, industry-certified stores, some restaurants, and the curio sellers near the municipal pier.
The Guerrero State Tourism Ministry reports that $1.763 billion of tourist dollars flowed through Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo during 2006. According to a report in El Sur, spending by 76,500 cruise ship passengers and 8,500 crew members, together with docking fees and taxes, netted about $7 million, or less than 0.5% of the resort’s overall tourist income. Based on the official numbers, even tripling the number of cruise ships docking in Zihuatanejo would bring the percentage of local tourist income earned by the industry to only about 1.5% of total tourist dollars. What’s more, the money stream only trickles during cruise ship season—between the months of October and May.
Leaving behind $60-75 on average, cruise ship passengers spend far less money in Zihuatanejo than other tourists. If cruise passengers take advantage of the federal government’s offer to refund sales taxes upon departure, the wider economic benefit of this type of tourism to Mexico becomes even more questionable.
Patterson’s article goes on to talk about the social and political fallout, but I’ve got a simpler question – what about the sewage? Wherever it is these tour boats empty their bilge, it can’t enhance the tourist experience of coming to “pristine” waters… and it seems reasonable to pay to keep pristine bays clean. That takes money, and I’m not sure the fees are at all unreasonable. Even if a tour boat stops at three or four Mexican ports, it doesn’t add all that much to the overhead of the cruise cost, and could easily be built into the tour costs. What is the overhead on a cruise ship tour anyway?
Whatever…
Lou Dobbs is a moron, but I’ve said that many times already. Fourteen times to be exact. Tom Tancredo is a raving loon, but I’ve said that a few times, too (only three, but then, Tancredo isn’t to be taken seriously). Apparently though, I don’t say it enough. Well, that’s some guy named Jon Garrido’s opinion anyway.
I never heard of him either, but a quick google search turned up page after page after page of hits — written by Jon Garrido, about Jon Garrido. I found one mention of him in a San Diego Union-Tribune news story… about Lou Dobbs.
Garrido’s got a thing about Lou Dobbs.
I got a thing about history… and about checking sources.
I received an e-mail this morning from one of the groups I belong to, forwarding an article about Tancredo’s latest wacky anti-immigrant bill — the only thing really new being that dim-bulb North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler co-sponsored it. Yeah, it’s a bad bill, and the author has serious questions about it, but it purported to be from the Washington Correspondent of something called “Hispanic News” (one of about a dozen websites run by Jon Garrido) that claims to be “number 1 Hispanic website on the Internet”.
I never heard of “Hispanic News” or Jon Garrido — which seem to be one and the same, but I guess if I can be “Mex Files”, he can be a dozen or so websites if he wants… and even have “Washington Correspondents.” However, when a news story on a Congressional bill starts out — not by talking about the congressmen, or the bill, but about the author’s family, I wonder what’s going on. This bit of family history caught my attention:
Dad … helped establish one of the first Catholic Masses and Churches in Michigan.
Being a snarky historian (I’ve only spent the last couple of months finishing up a history of Mexico — and corresponding with Catholic Church historians about Vatican II’s impact on Latin American political culture), and the e-mail being irrelevant to our group (which deals with the proposed border fence) I sent the person who’d forwarded it to me a note —
I’m not sure how much credibility to give [the “Hispanic News” writer]. She claims her father started one of the first Catholic Churches in Michigan. Uh… there have been Catholic Churches in Michigan since about 1670 . Michigan Territory’s Congressional Representative was a Jesuit priest, and the French, Irish, German, Polish, etc. immigrants have been there for a long long time.
She’s probably correct in her details about the Tancredo-Shuler bill, but I’m not sure it’s going to go anywhere. Tancredo is already on his way out, and Shuler is managing to alienate all his democratic party colleagues his first term.
Which my recipient sent on to the prolific Jon Garrido. Who sent me THIS (reproduced in it’s full glory… only the other recipient’s name and email address has been redacted)…
Date: Tue Nov 13 18:38:26 2007
From: The Jon Garrido Network <Jon@JonGarrido.com>
To: ‘Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.’ <jay@villadelrio.com>, <richmx2@excite.com>
Subject:RE: [noborderwall] A new problem for the border…
Dolores is proud of her heritage and her father. The French were Catholic (I know first hand for I once live in Paris, France) and their missionaries probably were first in Michigan. Dolores simply omitted ?Hispanic Catholic churches?????.?
This has nothing to do with her creditability. I too, told Dolores, that Shuler?s bill would not make it out of committee.
With the all the anti-Hispanic bashing being done daily, I published her article to energize American Hispanics to support migrants more so because everyone with a brown face is suspect.
If you want belittle someone?s creditability, get off your pompous ass and holier than thou attitude and write an editorial blasting Lou Dobbs.
I resent your accusations directed at Dolores. As for me, I welcome her to Hispanic News. She has the balls to tell the world what is happening all across America. Much more than any of you are doing.
And do not reply back with some lame justification. You have pissed me off and any reply from you, I will share with my entire email list what assholes all of you are which will include all of your email addresses.
Jon Garrido
602.244.1000
What man is a man who does not make the world better? ? ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’
Holiness is in right action. ?’The Kingdom of Heaven’
In 2006: 13% of all Hispanics voted, 27% of all blacks voted, and 39% of all whites voted. So long as Hispanics do not care to exercise our freedom to vote, those who wish to tyrannize us will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping Hispanics. ? Jon Garrido/Voltaire
So, if I understand this right, Mr. Garrido is publishing a news article about something that isn’t going to happen, and doesn’t bother to edit even simple facts on the theory that it will “energize” people (to do what?). And then links himself — at the very end — to Voltaire?
And I’m an asshole?
Head-bangers and mash for Oaxaca
Sheffield Anarchist Federation | 12.11.2007 14:55 Following a successful benefit gig in a derelict factory, Sheffield AF and pals are pleased to announce all procceeds have gone to the anarchist resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico. Given that the gig was shut down by the riot squad after only a few hours, this is not a bad achievement…
I’m sure the Mexican anarchists (or, rather, anarchist — specifically a “Mexican comrade who has been working in the region in the Allianza Magonista Zapatista”) appreciates the £300 they raised… and, as the Sheffield Anarchist Federation assures us, he’ll be able to dine out for the next year on their proceeds.
Inquiring minds want to know…but we never do find out why the cops were called.
Mañana… Tabasco and New Orleans
From Mexico Today:
++ Speaking in Villahermosa, President Felipe Calderón called on residents of Tabasco not to despair… Calderón, who was visiting Tabasco for the sixth time after tragedy struck, announced the start of a program to repair and replace homes damaged by heavy floods in the state.
George W. Bush’s FOURTH visit to New Orleans after the September 2005 hurricane/flood was in January 2006. On that occasion, “Bush touted tax breaks intended to create incentives to invest in the devastated region as an important tool in rebuilding.”
Meanwhile, the Ejido Juan de Grijalva, Chiapas — wiped out by what the press called a “fresh-water tsunami” (and the survivors suspect was a “controlled release” from upstream privately-owned dams) has been offered new land and resettlement terms have already been worked out.
.How long is it going to take to resettle displaced New Orleans folks? There are problems, of course, in Villahermosa, but restoration and resettlement work are continuing. It’s a whole ten days later, and a lot of people are still in shelters. As opposed to… oh… the five days it took to rescue people from the Superdome
B-b-bbut… Canadians are so nice (and fluffy white)
Sombrero doff to South Texas Chisme.
McClatchy Washington Bureau reports on where the real security threat is. Homeland Security, my ass!
A 2006 report from the Nixon Center, a Washington, D.C., policy institute, quoted a senior FBI official as saying that Canada is the most worrisome terrorist point of entry and that al Qaida training manuals advise terrorists to enter the United States from Canada.
The report concluded that “despite widespread alarms raised over terrorist infiltration from Mexico, we found no terrorist presence in Mexico and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the United States.”
And as security is ratcheted up along the nation’s southern border with Mexico, law enforcement officials up north fear that the bad guys — terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal aliens — may increasingly be headed their way.
“It’s a safe assumption,” said Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo, whose jurisdiction includes more than 100 miles of rugged and remote border stretching east from Blaine.
Even senior Border Patrol officials concede that the heightened security on the Mexican border could spur new pressures up north.
“It’s logical they will look elsewhere,” said Ron Colburn, the deputy chief of Customs and Border Protection, of those trying to clandestinely enter the United States.
Nearly 12,000 federal agents patrol the U.S.-Mexican border, along with National Guard troops. Of the 6,000 agents expected to be added to the Border Patrol in the next year, most will be assigned to the southern border.
Chupacabra-mania!
For the believers among you, chupacabra is mysterious creature said to attack and suck the blood out of goats and other farm animals.
Descriptions have varied greatly ever since the first reported sighting almost 20 years ago in Puerto Rico.
They have since been reported in parts of Latin America, Mexico, the United States, even Russia and, now, maybe, in Albuquerque, too.
A mysterious animal has been lurking the streets of a northwest Albuquerque subdivision, and it’s been very hard for people living there to figure out what it is.
…
Nope, it ain’t a chupacabra. Ugly critter, but nothing strange about it. Besides, we all know the REAL chupacabra has been sighted before… and looks nothing like those sweet (but really butt-ugly) doggies…
Speaking of things that suck… the telephone bill, the electric bill, the rent… MexFiles only survives on donations (and not on attacking chickens and goats)…
Livin’ la vida loca a little longer…
Jorge Ramon Perez, in El Universal reports (my translation):. Of course, it was published on Dia de los Muertos…
Life expectancy in Mexico over the last two decades has lengthened by 7.6 years, according the the National Population Council ( Consejo Nacional de Población, Conapo).
Mortality rates in general for the Mexico Republic augmented the life expectancy from 67 years in 1980 to 74.6 years in 2005.
According to a Conapo study done in 1980, 31.8 percent of 429,000 registered deaths in the country were caused by transmittable diseases; 45.7 percent by non-transmittable diseases; 15.8 percent as the result of accidents or injuries; and 6.7 percent from undefined causes.
In 2005, the 484,000 registered deaths showed only 13.2 percent caused from transmittable disease; 74.1 percent from non-transmittable diseases; 10.7 percent from accident or injury; while only 2.0 percent were from unknown or unregistered causes.
In 1980, 57.2 percent of all recorded deaths were male (42.8 percent female). There was a slight change in the 2005 ratio of male to female deaths – 55..1 percent male, 44.9 percent female.
Infant mortality declined from 21.9 percent in 1980 to 6.8 percent in 2005 throughout the country. An analysis of the data shows that Guerrero and Chiapas have the highest death rate among children under one year of age. Perinatal defects, infectious diseases and parasites – in that order – are the most common causes of death.
According to Conapo projections, 209,000 people will die in 2007, equivalent to a death rate of 4.8 per thousand, while the infant mortality rate (for children under one year of age) will be about 15.7 per thousand live births.
The marrying kind…
Back to some more edits on my book. It was only a footnote, but I had to mention that hints about a recent Mexican president’s exta-marital adventures were positive spin.
The Mexicans (and, for that matter, much of the human race) found the recent Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky thing amusing, but confusing. We’re the ones with the weird hangups. When Vicente Fox first became President, I was always amused to hear Marta Sahugun introduced — quite formally — as the president’s “concubina”. (It’s not quite as kinky as it sounds — they weren’t suggesting the guy had a bevy of babes stashed somewhere, but only that Ms. Sahugun and the President were … as the old-fashioned phrase has it… “shacking up” in the very nice shack of Los Pinos).
The brilliant — and underrated “tiredandretired” who regularly posts on the Lonely Planet Thorntree Message Board (in a thread having to do with traffic police, of all things) tried to explain the difference between US and them when it comes to sex and marriage. He did a hell of a lot better job than I could:
In the US we hold our system of marriage, where you apply for a marriage license, then have the marriage recorded, as somehow morally superior, though with at least 40% divorces, it isn’t much of a system of marriage. Here in Mexico, a couple simply announces they are married, and unlike most shack-ups in the US, claim they are married. After their parents stop throwing rocks, they are accepted by all, except the courts, as married. If some of you expats know married Mexicans, you might be surprised how often they aren’t married by the law. Here in our little village, a cousin who really did marry by the law wanted to baptise his little daughter. They finally had to import a young virgin cousin from Mexico City as sponsor. Neither grandparents were married both legally and in the church, and no other family members, in a very large family, were married legally in both law and church, and in most cases, neither.
When they decide they are divorced, they hold themselves out as divorced. No judge, no lawyers.
In the US, we tend to view this as immoral. I did at first. But, now I realize what the Mexicans realize. Marriage is between two people, and is not really the government’s business, except for property rights for those who are marrying for those reasons. Ditto for divorce.
The key to marriage is not some piece of paper in a government office, but the fact that a man and a woman believe they are married, and so do their friends and family. I have read the Gypsies married by holding hands and jumping over a broom in front of witnesses. I think that is a valid marriage.
So, now I think the Mexican system is actually better. However, in any case, I think it is correct for Mexico.
mexfiles.net 
