New Cardinals line-up includes two from borderlands
In naming a Cardinal for Houston-Galveston Texas and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, the Vatican seems to be placing an unusual emphasis on the borderlands. By elevating the Archbishop of Houston-Galveston in the United States and a representative of the “church of the poor” in Mexico, the Church may be shifting away from its traditional reactive role in the region, and taking on a new proactive one.
In response to the tremendous growth of the south and southwest, Houston-Galveston was only made an archdiocese recently. Archbishop Daniel Dinardo, who came from Sioux City Iowa (“Where I had the pleasure of shepherding almost 15,000 square miles of corn fields and that included 100,00 wonderful Catholics) to Houston only last year. The Houston-Galveston Archdiocese had about 1.3 million Catholics, with much of the recent growth coming from Mexican, Central American and African immigration. By naming Dinardo a Cardinal, observers believe the Papacy is recognizing the importance of the region to the Church as a whole.
Dinardo has issued pro-immigrant statements , but is not known as a progressive. Francisco Robles Ortega, the new Cardinal of Monterrey, is.
Dudley Althaus of the Houston Chronicle writes:
With Robles, the Vatican may aim to moderate the more conservative tendencies of the Mexican church, a leading analyst said.
“He is tied more to progressive sectors,” said anthropologist Elio Masferrer, an authority on the Mexican Catholic church.
… Mexico’s two other active cardinals — Norberto Rivera of Mexico City and Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara — are considered social conservatives.
Masferrer said Rivera is a cardinal with a “preference for the rich” and Sandoval is allied with the more traditional and conservative Catholicism.
As senior prelate in Monterrey, Mexico’s business capital, Robles presides over some of Mexico’s wealthiest and more conservative Roman Catholic clans.
Many of the city’s elite lobbied the Vatican for a more conservative bishop before Robles was appointed there nearly five years ago, Masferrer said.
A glance at his recent sermons suggests that Robles might give the rich a reason for indigestion.
“Ill-gotten and ill-used riches close our heart,” Robles said in a homily two Sundays ago. “We can pass our lives without even realizing the existence of the poor, the needy, the people who require our help.”
Antonio Argüello y Adriana Esthela Flores (Milenio) focus on Robles Ortega’s probable importance as a counterweight to the other two Mexican cardinals, especially Mexico City’s Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carerra. The same day as the Vatican announcement, a California court ruled that Rivera could not be forced to testify in that state’s courtrooms about his alleged role in protecting a pedophiliac priest who fled to Mexico and was the subject of a separate lawsuit in Mexican courts.
They also note that Robles Ortega is favorable to cooperation with other churches and supports a role for missionaries within Mexico. The latter is fairly controversial, Mexico having until recently forbidden foreign clerics to practice in the country. While there are only about 14,000 priests in Mexico, as in other countries, the priesthood is aging. New priests have tended to come from the ultra-reactionary Opus Dei or Legionarios de Cristo. Missionaries might not be such a bad thing under the circumstances.
An interesting sidelight is that Saltillo, is the seat of Bishop Raul Vega, a Liberation Theologian transferred from Chiapas at the request of conservatives in his former diocese. In Saltillo, Bishop Raul – whom among other innovations, has organized special parishes for gays, convicts and immigrants passing through to the United States – has been a behind-the-scenes player in Coahuila’s surprising emergence as one of the most progressive states in the Mexican Republic.
The importance of these two Cardinals lays in their relative youth (both are in the 50s). Only cardinals under 80 can vote for a new pope. Benedict XVI, a German and a conservative, is 80 now, and these new Cardinals will presumably select his successor. Even before the election of the Pole, John-Paul II, there has long been speculation that Latin Americans would come to dominate the Papacy.
Remember George W. Bush’s Magical Mystery Latin American Tour? The magical part was that he didn’t end up getting Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala and Mexico to declare war. The mystery was what he thought to accomplish.
Ah… the Bush Administration. Latin America’s best friend since… oh… Calvin Coolidge or maybe John Quincey Adams was in the White House.
¡Que bárbaro! (from “The Hill”, Washington)
Bush loss, Starbucks gain
By Daphne Retter
October 18, 2007
President Bush has long advocated for immigration reform to make this country more welcoming to Hispanics. But at a Rose Garden ceremony last Wednesday to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Bush ended up locking a group of foreign Hispanic leaders out on the street.
About a dozen ambassadors from Latin American countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru discovered to their shock and chagrin that though the White House had asked them to the annual event, they could not get past the door because their names were not on the invite list.
Could this be payback from Bush just two weeks after former Mexican President Vicente Fox released Revolution of Hope, a book that called Bush a “windshield cowboy” and the “cockiest guy I ever met”?
In a searing ritual familiar to those who have tried to enter a velvet-rope party wearing khakis or flip-flops, the Latin ambassadors were forced to stand around awkwardly and watch more favored guests stream right past them and into the event.
Eventually, the group of ambassadors decided to call it quits and crossed the street to have coffee at Starbucks instead.
“I think for about 15 minutes they waited and when they realized that the event had already started they decided to leave,” said Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Embassy of Mexico.
Daniel Fisk, senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council, later called Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán and other envoys to apologize for the snafu.
“Mr. Fisk reached out and made apologies to those in the diplomatic corps who were invited and affected,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Kate Starr. “No insult was intended and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
Our Prez at the diplomatic reception
Plan Mexico — what could possibly go wrong?
A few details about “Plan Mexico” are starting to come out. I missed it, but Proceso picked up some details. The translation was posted by the Center for International Policy :
“It is being discussed whether the DEA will be permitted to increase the number of its agents in Mexico, but not even that is defined yet,” he or she added.
The Mexican government tried to obtain its own concessions; for example, PGR (attorney-general’s office) access to the systems of the El Paso, Texas Intelligence Center (EPIC), where the DEA, FBI, CIA and other U.S. agencies process information.
Um… I thought the whole rationale for this was that the Calderón Administration claimed the cops couldn’t do the job and were corrupible. So, we’re giving Mexican cops access to U.S. intelligence networks. Okie-dokie.
Beyond the cost of the fast boats and equipment to effectively supervise all types of cargo that enters Mexico by sea, the rest of the U.S. support will be used to purchase military radars to monitor the border zone.
The intention is that Mexico might have equipment like that used by the Pentagon in the Afghanistan war since October 2001 and the Iraq invation in March 2003. With that technology, the Mexican government can locate narcotraffickers, drug-trafficking routes including tunnels, clandestine airstrips, narcotics processing laboratories, as well as cultivations of marijuana and opium poppy.
And, how well are we doing with controlling poppy cultivation in Afghanistan (or that war in general)?
Viruses Without Frontiers
This is National Health Week in Mexico. The goal is to immunize ALL children in the country — and it is a realistic goal. In the State of Chihuahua, 1,325 immunization stations have been set up.
Ronald Dumont of the El Paso Health Department, recognizing that “the Mexican immunization program is much better than anything in the United States,” has asked Chihuahua health authorities to also immunize “illegal” children in his county.
He told El Diario de El Paso that “25% of U.S. children do not have health coverage, and a program like [Chihuahua’s] is part of the solution to the problem.”
If an “illegal’s” kid gets sick, do you think your kid is gonna have some kind of immunity based on his passport? Or, it won’t affect you if your neighbor can’t afford insurance? Geeze, what’s wrong with US? W fight over whether a kid’s parents earn “too much” to deserve free medical care… somehow thinking if a kid gets sick, it’s his parent’s fault for not being poor… or rich.
What’s wrong with just jabbing the kids… and the adults?
English only?
My goodness… such language!
The cameraman is rather articulate, and relatively polite.
From LatinoInsurgent, via The CyberHacienda —
The useful idiot’s guide to useless idiots
Are there minutemen in your neighborhood? Kevin Carter at vdare.com (lead article today, “Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action Revisited”) has a nifty state-by-state guide to local chapters of America’s Amateur Stormtroopers.
Most of the state chapters don’t list addresses, so it may require a bit of digging. There usually are phone numbers and website though.
Have fun, kids.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch — or quinceañera
Lakshmi Chaudhry (Latina America Lavishly Comes of Age) in the Nation
With a self-described mission to chronicle “how our traditions are remade in the USA, repackaged and sold back to us at a higher price,” Julia Alvarez’s Once Upon a Quinceañera offers the expected critique of commercialization, but she also points to the complex, contradictory and often bewildering relationships among tradition, materialism and identity.
The quinceañera is a lavish fiesta that marks a Latina girl’s entry into womanhood, usually held on her fifteenth birthday. As with other such celebrations, these too have been supersized to epic proportions, with the average price tag running at $5,000 for a night of limousines, stylists, caterers and, of course, the overpriced, outsized princess dress.
The dollar amounts spent on the quinceañera are comparable to other sweet sixteen parties, but that kind of expense can represent a staggering financial burden for the average Latino family. Parents often save for years for this special night, sometimes dooming themselves to a lifetime of debt for one night of overindulgence. What can be dismissed as the cupidity of upper-middle-class wannabes on MTV looks like financial suicide for a typical working-class family in Queens.
But the extravagant quinceañera is about a lot more than keeping up with the Rodriguezes. “It’s just something that comes to us from the past, that we want to give our children because it’s something we never had,” says unemployed carpenter Manuel Ramos in Alvarez’s book, explaining his decision to spend $3,000-plus on his daughter Monica’s quinceañera.
Plan Mexico details emerge
From Earthwatch:
Washington – The United States on Tuesday unveiled a multi- billion dollar plan to combat the drug trade and organized crime in Mexico. The project would span over many years and include military equipment and grants of 1.5 billion dollars from Washington and 7 billion dollars from Mexico City, according to Stephen Johnson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the western hemisphere.
“Mexico is under siege,” he said, calling the plan “relatively new, unprecedented, historic.”
While the details and figures of the plan were not yet definitive, Johnson confirmed that US aid will include helicopters, scanners for border checkpoints, training and boats for Mexico’s coast guard and navy, but would not include US troops on the ground.
“We still have to see how it develops,” Johnson said. “We are still working with Mexico to try and define better what direction it is going to take.”
Johnson said the plan also involves Central America, though he would not specify exactly what role countries in the region are expected to play.
… Mexican authorities have been adamant that the plan not include US troops on Mexican soil, and have rejected its characterization as Plan Mexico because it could bring to mind the Plan Colombia, where US forces have been active on the ground in fighting the drug trade. Johnson said US assistance presented “a historic opportunity” for closer ties with Mexico and “support a sea of changes in law enforcement.”
A couple of questionable details. I don’t see any mention of efforts to stop money laundering and gun-running FROM the United States, but only money going TO Mexico.
Mexico is spending four and a half times what the U.S. is committing. The U.S., of course, has a lot more money, but the funding suggests this is a Mexican effort, not the “joint” one we were told about.
Seven billion dollars is a huge amount of money in the Mexican budget. This looks to be all military hardware — a huge buildup (and a huge amount of funding) for the Mexican military, which has never been a budget priority within the Republic. In “real pesos” the military budget has been shrinking since 1940 — even during World War II, the Mexican government managed to cut the military budget (professionalizing the army was an excuse to get rid of the bloated officers’ corp left over from Revolutionary armies). While I defended more spending for the soldiers, I still don’t see that Mexico needs a large military, nor do most Mexicans, as far as I can tell. This just looks like a rationale for increased military spending (and for the U.S. administration to sweeten the deal for Mexican purchases of U.S. equipment — and “trainers”).
The problem with a big military is that countries use them. I can’t see narcotics traffickers as more than a short-term problem, and it seems the money (and equipment) — if necessary — are better spent on law enforcement (police, judges, prisons) than on soldiers.
Other than buying a lot of hardware (sold by whom?), I also question how other countries are being brought into this. Of course, drug exporters are likely to move to other nations. But, again, this just looks at the supply and not the demand (and does nothing to cut off the resources — guns and money — provided by the consumer country) to control the narcotics industry.
Jeremy Schwartz, in Monday’s Austin (TX) American-Statesman, wrote about Mexican skeptics:
While the military’s involvement was initially meant to be temporary, the aid plan could give it a permanent role. According to published reports, 40 percent of the money in the aid package would go to the military, and the rest would go to police agencies.
Calderón’s decision after taking office late last year to step up the military’s involvement in drug enforcement initially caused an unprecedented surge in violence. Mexico averaged almost 100 drug-related killings a week earlier this year. Dozens of police and public officials were gunned down.
The violence decreased over the summer as the nation’s two major cartels reportedly entered into a truce. Supporters called the truce, which proved short-lived, proof that the military pressure worked.
Critics said the violence had more to do with the internal workings of the cartels than with anything that Calderón’s government did. Recently, violence has spiked again.
Human rights groups say the military has committed a host of atrocities during its battle with drug traffickers. Mexico’s human rights commissioner has recommended sending the military back to its barracks, citing numerous abuses.
The harder they come, the bigger they fall…
I was going to write about this, but Burro Hall beat me to it, and did a better job
The local politicos in Boca del Rio thought putting up a statue in honor of Vicente Fox was a nice idea. PRI politicos wanted an edgy performance art piece… and you can see the result.
PAN had a repeat performance of “raising Vicente” yesterday, this time joined by the aesthetes of PRD, who were quoted in the press as saying the statue — or maybe Don Chente himself — was in the worst possible taste.
Vincente — and the statue — are, I must admit, rather cursi.
Sinaloa preliminary election results
For Deputy (State Legislator): 24 seats open. PAN 6; PRI 18; PRD 0; PT 0; PVEM 0; Convergencia 0; Alternativa 0.
Presidente Municipal: 16 positions. PAN 2; PRI 14 (2 on fusion tickets with Convergencia).
I’ve been saying since last year’s Presidential elections that it was a mistake to assume PAN was a growing party. The PRD has never been particularly strong in Sinaloa, and wasn’t expected to win anything. If my math is right (and my understanding of Mexican election law), PRI will hold only 16 of its 18 presumed victories in the State legislature — my understanding being that no party can have more than 2/3rds. I’m not sure who will get those seats. PAN?
And, these results are very preliminary. PAN is complaining that PRI had an unfair advantage in campaign advertising (so what’s new?0 but only minor irregularities have been reported so far. Results were as of 23:46 (local time).
Another reason not to trust “Plan Mexico”
While we are being told that U.S. military personnel will not be sent to Mexico under “Plan Mexico“, there will be DEA agents and “contractors”, who — presumably — will also have a free pass.
This from Micheál Ó Tuathail in Colombia:
Local Colombian officials have accused two US soldiers, Michael J. Cohen and César Ruiz, of sexually assaulting a 12 year-old girl on Saturday August 25, 2007. The soldiers are stationed at the Tolemaida Airbase near Melgar, Tolima, as part of Plan Colombia.
According to witness statements collected by local authorities and published in El Tiempo, at 4am, the soldiers entered the base with a young girl they had met at the ‘Ibiza’ nightclub in Melgar earlier that evening. The girl claims that Ruiz assaulted her in the car on the way to the base and later lent his apartment to Cohen, who reportedly raped her.
The pair later left the girl in the central park in Melgar in front of several witnesses.
The case was reported to the authorities on 8 September 2007. According to Paula Rueda, a psychologist from the Comisaría de Familia in Melgar, “there was, without a doubt, sexual intercourse.”
Although the investigation is still underway, Cohen, using the diplomatic immunity granted him under Plan Colombia, has fled the country. The Colombia Support Network, an US-based Colombia solidarity organization, claims that Cohen’s flight was facilitated by the US government, an action which “appears to put US military personnel above the law [and] must be rescinded.”
While sexual assault of someone under the age of 14 carries a jail sentence of up to 30 years in prison, Colombian authorities are hesitant to seek Cohen’s extradition due to the special provisions provided US personnel under Plan Colombia and a 1974 bi-lateral agreement.
On the “reconquista”, 1914
Labor organizer and “Grandmother of all agitators” (as she was once called in the U.S. Senate, leading her to rejoinder, “I hope I live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators” — she did, living to the ripe old age of 93, after having killed a mugger at the age of 88) Mary Harris “Mother” Jones came to El Paso in January 1914 to address workers complaining about Mexicans “stealing” American jobs.
Old enough to remember the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, Jones replied:
mexfiles.net 