A kiss is just a kiss
Alfredo, aka “Citius64” watched TV Thursday night and wasn’t happy with what he didn’t see:
Last night, on Channel 5, Televisa showed Alfonso Cuarón’s Cuarón Y tu mamá también… and censored over 25 seconds from near the ending.
It was after 11 at night, and the station permitted the racy dialog in the scene where Maribel Verdú feels around Gael Garía’s pelvis, but censured the 30 seconds in which Diego Luna and Gael García tenderly kiss.
It’s common to see on this network’s serials, shootings, blood, explosions, murders… but now they censor a kiss. What happened to all Televisa’s talk of morals? Don’t they believe it? Violence is good, but love between two men is bad. Don’t they say they are a “morally responsible” business? Not only did they censor an award-winning director, but they reinforce negative values like violence, homophobia and hatred in a country where these negative actions are all too common.
If your tender morals are offended, don’t watch the youtube video of the offending scene. Or switch to Canal Onze, the Polytechnical University Channel, or to Channel 22, the arts and culture channel, and see much more. They don’t cut their films, which tend to be semi-obscure European and South American films, but they include complete sex scenes — gay and straight. What, only foreigners do this?
This was only a kiss.
Ritmo: something rotten in the State of Texas
If I had all the time and resources in the world, I’d still not be infallible. Bob, in his comment below, pointed out that the management of this facility changed hands. I’ve had to do a quick and dirty rewrite. Originally, I had Geo Group still managing the facility. Run by George C. Zoley who received $3,685,054 in compensation for 2004, they’re probably scumbags, but they’re not the scumbags who presently manage Willacy. Much thanks to Bob for pointing me towards the more deserving villains.
The late Marvin Zindler died too soon. Slime in the ice machine? That’s nothing… how about maggots in the baby food!
KGBT-TV4 in Harlingen reported last night on the food service at Texas’ favorite gulag, Willacy County Detention Center, affectionately known to the Mex Files as Ritmo:
This story involving some detainees and security guards at the Willacy County detention center who are speaking out about life for two-thousand immigrants.
We have obtained internal documentation from the Willacy detention center where not only detainees complain about the conditions inside, but also security guards have recorded in their logbooks dozens of undocumented immigrants that have found maggots in their food.
The federal detention center located in Raymondville which houses two-thousand undocumented immigrants has received criticism for allegedly feeding detainees contaminated or rotten food.
An action 4 News investigation reveals that in one instance, over 30 detainees reported that the quantity and quality of food are deplorable, an allegation confirmed by at least two security guards.
One of those anonymous guards says: “the reason it gets contaminated it’s because of the storage facility, they don’t have the storage facility. They were trying to blame the companies that supposedly the food is coming in spoiled which is not true.”
By the way, Ritmo houses families, including babies and small children.
The facility is managed by the Management and Training Corporation, and is expanding under a contract with the Immigrations and Customs Service Inter-governmental Service Agreement (IGSA) with Willacy County. In some ways, that’s even more appalling than being run by Geo Group. Geo makes no secret of being in the prison biz. MTC started as a job training service provider, and claims it “brings new solutions to inmate needs.” Serving rotten food hardly seems new, though.
MTC’s corporate headquarters are in Centerville Utah:
500 N. Marketplace Drive
Centerville, UT 84014-1708
801 693-2600
Fax 801 693-2900
Their listed officers keep a low profile. I can find no links or information about Chairman of the Board Robert Marquardt, CEO R. Scott Marquart. Treasurer Lyle J. Parry is listed also as the treasurer of the Management and Training Corporation Political Action Committee (same address as MTC) which isn’t the biggest political spender on the block (but, then, if they can’t serve their “guests” decent food, why would you expect them to spend much on legal bribery?
And, by the way, this isn’t the first time MTC — which stays under the radar — has had management problems at their facilities in Canada and the United States.
One factor overlooked by Willacy County’s 45 million dollar expansion project is that a 1000 more “guests” mean a thousand more people taking a shit (and with rotten food, that may work out to a lot more than 1000 daily constitutionals): add a few million to the country’s tab for expanding their sewage system.
.
Friday Night Video: Dejate Caer
I don’t understand it, but Cafe Tacuba has bypassed the Railroad Blues in Alpine, Texas. Their successful (and sold out) U.S. tour ends this weekend at Lollipalooza in Chicago.
This video (uploaded on youtube by “PacoBkrynDJ”) is from the July 14 concert in New York’s Central Park :
PRI and pre-Campaign Coverage
State elections are this Sunday in Oaxaca, Baja California and Aguascalientes.
While any win in Oaxaca is going to be suspect (and even some within the party expect to do badly), the winners in these states may be PRI. The PRD-led coalition is the main opposition force in Oaxaca (in elective politics, that is).
In Baja California, the colorful (or notorious or sinister, depending on your attitude) Carlos Hank Rhon could very well win the Governorship. Widely beleived to have oganized crime ties, and the prime suspect in several unsolved murders, including that of pesky investigative reporters, Hank is naturally running as a “law and order” candidate. James McKinney’s excellent profile (subscription required) in Wednesday’s New York Times, makes me think of Hank as a Mexican version of Lousiana’s Eddy Edwards. When Edwards ran for Governor against white supremacist David Duke, Edwards supporters made bumper stickers reading “Vote Edwards. A scoundrel, but not a Nazi”.
The PRI, in a fusion ticket with the Greens and a state party, may have the edge, though PAN might hold on to their legislative majority. PRI-istas were caught recently distributing food bank rations in poor neighborhoods, leading the Archdiocese of Tijuana to remind the faithful that buying or selling a vote is equally sinful. But, then again, the PRI is traditionally an anti-clerical party, and there was no word on whether the food donations includes loaves and fishes.
I really pay very little attention to Aguascalientes, and haven’t a clue what to expect there. PAN has done well there every since sweeping on on Vicente Fox’s coattails in 2000. Like in some U.S. states, where Republicans swept into office on Ronald Reagan’s coattails, the religious conservatives thought they had a mandate in Aguascalientes, like they thought they had in places like Kansas or Iowa.
In Kansas, it was ridicule over attempts to teach “creationism” in the schools that did in the Republicans. In Aguacalientes it may be gays and swear words. In 2001, the PAN city council in Aguascalientes had signs posted in the city parks reading “No dogs or gays.” Widely reported and internationally ridiculed, even those who supported PAN’s conservative economic policies were less than thrilled with the Party. People just laughed when the city council last year tried to enforce a law against swearing in public. Fuck it, they said.
Aguascalientes has been relatively prosperous, and this is the center of PAN country, but people may be ready for a change. PRD has very little presence in the state, making PRI the only real alternative.
Complicating things, the PRI leaders are meeting this weekend in Durango to discuss the party’s future direction. Having ceded it’s ideological traditions (it is still a member party of Socialist International) to the PRD, and unable to mount sucessful national campaigns (PAN seems to have the edge in dubious electoral victories now), it seems to have no national focus, and is a dramatically different party depending on what state you are in. The PRI sponsored abortion reforms in the Federal District, while opposing them in Puebla. What happens in the states will play an important part in determining whether the party redefines itself, or continue letting internal disputes allow opponents to peel off segments of its core support, as with Esther Elba Gordilla, who pulled out of the party to form her own minor party, which sides with PAN, except in Oaxaca, where Gordilla (the head of the official teacher’s union) backs Ulises Ruiz and PRI over her own dissidentteachers.
Party chair Beatriz Paredes is an oddball PRI leader — the honest ones are usually incompetent and the competent ones are crooks, but she’s both honest and competent — has her work cut out for her.
Texans doing the job Mexicans won’t
Farmers’ Branch Gold just doesn’t have the same cachet as the real thing, and I bet they need to bring in illegal aliens for the harvest:
DALLAS — Federal drug officials here suspect increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border has led traffickers to turn to large-scale marijuana growing in North Texas and other places around the nation where major pot fields have been rare. Authorities have busted three large pot groves in the Dallas area over the past month, including an 8-acre plot containing 10,600 plants, many more than 6 feet tall.
The busted weed was so heavy and bushy, agents used a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter to haul bundled loads of it out of the densely vegetated bottomlands where it was being cultivated.
“What we are getting from arrests and informants is that people are having a tough time getting dope across the border,” said Jimmy Capra, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dallas regional office.
(via San Antonio Express-News)
Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers…
… now we know how they undersell local merchants. They stiff their bagboys.
In a country where nearly half of the population scrapes by on less than $4 a day, any income source is welcome in millions of households, even if it hinges on the goodwill of a tipping customer. And Wal-Mart did not invent the bagger program that, as a written statement from the company notes, pre-dates the firm’s arrival in Mexico, nor is it alone within the country’s retail sector in benefiting from the toil of unpaid adolescents. But in Mexico City, for example, the 4,300 teenagers who work in Wal-Mart’s retail stores free of charge dwarf similar numbers laboring unpaid for Mexican competitors like Comercial Mexicana (715) and Gigante (427). Although Wal-Mart’s worldwide code of ethics expressly forbids any “associate” from working without compensation, the company’s Mexican subsidiary asserts that the grocery baggers “cannot be considered workers.”
I won’t say it’s an organized “plot”, but there are comments in every posting to this story to the effect that “it gives the children a safe environment and an exposure to the working world that they wouldn’t get otherwise…” or a variation on the same, usually from someone who knows because “I live 3 months of the year in Puerto Vallerta and…”.
There are couple of problems with the happy rationales. Where you do have kids working for tips, it’s where the kid is part of the ownership circle — the son or nephew or cousin of the small merchant running an entrepreneural enterprise.
Usually, in neighborhood markets, that are owned by chains, the bagger is the check-out clerks kid, who gets the change, or at least a few pesos. Often the bagger is the checker’s kid, who is doing his homework or goofing off with the stock-boy when not bagging.
Secondly, if the kid is old enough to legally work, he or she is supposed to be paid. It doesn’t matter if they’re “associates” or not… if WalMart expects them to be at a certain place, they are at “asociados” under Mexican labor law, and have to receive the daily minimum (about 5 dollars), even if they only work an hour or two. I had a student who was the head of the law department of a major Mexican bank, who wanted me to come in and help out on some on-going translation, but we made other arrangements because of this regulation.
And, my observation is that WalMart does consider the baggers to be employees. They were always wearing the WalMart red vest and had a regular station within the store.
I think WalMart is bad in the long run for a lot of reasons (mom n’ pop stores clean the street every morning and act as the neighborhood watch — because they are part of the neighborhood; WalMarts don’t — they have employees, not people investing in the community), but this is just low.
WalMart and the rationalizers (must just be coincidence they all have the same story) are confusing baggers with beggars. And the bag boys I’ve seen in WalMart aren’t slugs… goofy teenagers, sure, but ones who know what a sindicato is… or have an uncle who is a labor lawyer, or an aunt whose comadre is active in the PRD, or….
BAGBOYS UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT — ah hell, if WalMart claims they’re not “associates” and doesn’t pay them squat now, they just have nothing to lose.
“Revolutionary tourists” in Oaxaca…
My friends at Surreal Oaxaca have a lot of fun with the folks at the Oaxaca Action Study Group, seeing the latter as “dirty hippies” (though isn’t that a tautology… isn’t dirtiness the natural state of hippidom?) and Che wannabes (nah, they just see them as deluded and silly people who prefer hostels to decent hotels, and want a little chaos to liven up their otherwise drab existence). Oaxaca has been attracting misfits, eccentrics and plain cranks. And, at least since the 19th century, when French soldiers deserted Maximiliano and became “White Zapotecs”, there have been foreigners who end up siding with the locals and going native.
Oaxaca, even in the best of times attracts a lot of dirty hippies. And, where in Mexico do you NOT run into foreigners who turn every minor inconvenience into some grand tale of surviving danger and overcoming Mexican intransigence.
I once sat on the Zocalo and between the visitors loudly wondering why the police didn’t just shoot the annual normal summer protesters and the local queens going on… and on… and on… about the great and glorious struggle to … get their eggs the way they wanted them at Sanborns, I’ve started staying with the hippies and weirdos when I go to Oaxaca too. They’re not boring, but think I am, so leave me alone.
Anyway, the tourist message boards are full of whines from what I suspect are the same kinds of people who a few years ago tried to sue the English Language Library in Oaxaca over about 80 pesos missing from the petty cash account, or who — like one notorious poster (also the guy who once called a former employer of mine here in Alpine fishing for personal information one me. Geeze, I’m in the phone directory) — simply can’t get over the fact that THEIR Oaxaca isn’t the one people are interested in… and it must be a plot by outsiders.
According to this mind-set, Oaxacans aren’t protesting. It’s bored foreigners. Yeah, right. One long time foreign resident of Oaxaca responded well:
… can you explain why all the 40-odd detained 2 weeks ago according to an official list that has been published in the local press print edition with addresses and photos included (Noticias, where I saw it and probably Imparcial) shows that all of them were local faces and all had local addresses in a variety of Oaxaca city (often poor) colonias and surrounding villages.
This same list was read on local state-run television (with addresses) and republished on some protest pages (the only place where observers from out of town might see it and possibly assume it is an invented list by left-wingers). But, oh, I forgot, those of us who live here, don´t understand this situation and can only report tiny perspectives that confuse rather than add to the grand picture, because the national Mexican and global media knows and explains everything!
The same thing happened late 2006 where the list of over a hundred detained … included only a few from out of state (and don´t forget that Mexico City has more Oaxacans resident than Oaxaca City) and … 3 foreigners (one French, one Costa Rican and one Cuban…all longer term Mexican residents as far as I remember). Yes there was foreign sympathy, yes there were revolution tourists hanging around to see some action, and yes Latin American protesters borrow terminology and ideas from (sometimes outdated) worldwide struggles, but why the insistence on assuming that locals can´t have local grievances and are unable to form their own struggles or revolutions – isn´t that a touch patronizing?
The New York Times finally notices that those cheap Chinese goods transshipped through Mexico have a downside, and the Mexicans have a reason for worry:
But the irruption of Mr. Ye Gon into Mexican drug trafficking is also emblematic of much broader changes as Mexico adapts to China’s emergence in the global economy.
For at least a century, successive Mexican governments have been wary of China. Chinese immigration to northern Mexico in the earlier part of last century was often met with violence. In 1911, troops loyal to general Francisco Villa massacred 250 Chinese in Torreón. In 1921, president Alvaro Obregón passed a law barring future immigration of Chinese workers. In 1931, thousands of Chinese were expelled from the country. Until recently, Mexico’s economic ties to China were tenuous, at best. A decade ago, Mexico imported merely $1 billion worth of Chinese products.
Yet the bilateral links have grown. Last year, Mexico imported $24.4 billion in Chinese goods. Fears of competition from China, and its enormous and inexpensive labor force, have grown apace. Reports in recent years that some of the maquiladora plants along Mexico’s northern border have decamped to China have sent Mexicans into paroxysms of economic anxiety.
The saga of Mr. Ye Gon suggests that this rivalry is now extending into the most insatiable consumer market in the world.
The Chinese have been the exception to the rule when it comes to Mexican tolerance. While a good deal of the anti-Chinese pograms lay in Villa and Obregón’s anti-gringo biases (the Chinese were mostly railway workers, hired as U.S. labor at a higher, foreign rate). In the 1930s, it was the Depression: not an excuse, but these kinds of anti-foreign acts weren’t limited to Mexico, either.
For the most part the Chinese-Mexicans have assimilated into the broader culture. Other than an occasional Wong or Chew in a family name, you won’t recognize most Chinese-Mexicans by sight. I was at a Chinese New Year celebration at the Basilica (even Chinese-Mexicans honor la Virgin), and the folks throwing firecrackers and carrying the dragon didn’t look all that different than most Mexicans (except maybe the blonde, blue-eyed Chinese-Mexican family — ah the mysteries of genetics!).
Mexico City’s Chinatown — which had been around since the 1580s — has mostly disappeared under the new foreign ministry complex and new office towers. About the only “Chinese” building left is the Palacio Chino movie theater, and it has to compete with the Cinemex multiplex a few blocks away. Other than a few more Chinese restaurants, you don’t even realize it is Chinatown. You don’t find ethnic neighborhoods in Mexico, outside of maybe “gringo ghettos” and a few immigrant enclaves (with a mix of everything — Russians, Brazilians and Koreans all clumped together in the Mexican way).
People like Zhenli Ye Gon are only accidentally Mexican. There are troubling questions about how he obtained his citizenship, but what’s troubling to me — and to the New York Times — is that we want “globalization” in the economy, but we don’t want a global management. And, we’re embarrassed by what our wants are… so blame the country the seller had on his passport.
Mario y yo
Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post meets a fellow journalist in suburban Monterrey:
Tinny salsa downbeats jangled out of the flashing cellphone. Mario Salas pressed hard on the clutch, jammed the gearshift into second and wedged the phone between his right ear and shoulder.
“Dime,” he said — “Tell me.”
“Si,” he said. “Si. A bad accident? A really bad one? I’m on my way.”
It was 5:15 p.m. in this moneyed suburb of Monterrey — time for Salas to transform. When the call came in, Salas was a taxi driver, prowling the streets for fares in a dented, bright green Ford sedan. But the phone call hurled him into his other identity — hustling TV cameraman.
Salas is a Mexican archetype. In this country, where wages are painfully low, almost everyone, it seems, has a second gig, or a third, or a fourth. Moonlighting isn’t a luxury; for many, it is a necessity.
Salas juggles three jobs. He is a taxi driver, a newspaper reporter and a TV cameraman. Sometimes, he’s all three at once.
At least in Monterrey, people pay for gory accident photos, and the occasional shot of a deceased gangster. I don’t print mangled body photos, but I know there are people who look at the Mex Files at least once a week. Thanks to those whom I’ve mentioned before, and to chicanopwr and Frank from Queretaro over the last few days, I’ve managed to keep the lights and phone on for another week or so.
By no means is the Mex Files out of the woods, and the August bills will be higher, since I could barely afford to keep the utilities from being turned off. Like Mario, I’m reporting on what goes on in my town (though we don’t find many dead gangsters out here in Alpine). Though, unlike Mario’s career, researching and writing the Mex Files doesn’t quite mesh with hauling people around.
I suppose in the old days Mexican journalists had it better, since at least bribery kept them eating. Other than some free tamales, bacon and eggs and biscuits and gravy courtesy of our local Democratic Party last Saturday, local reporting barely covers food and rent. The Mex Files is STILL dependent on donations — and the neighbor who ended up with a freezer full of venison she can’t eat (venison, rice, beans and frozen vegetables mixed together aren’t all that tasty, but with some salsa, they’re edible).
Although I didn’t really study for it, in compliance with “Federal Motor Carrier Regulation 49 CFR 391.41-391.49” I took — and passed — a urine test so I can start hauling railroad engineers around the desert from one depot to another.
The pay isn’t very much, and it means time away from research and writing, but without at least a thousand dollars a month (about $30 per regular reader per year), there’s no other way to survive even out here. And that doesn’t count necessities like a new(er) computer to replace the duct-taped together Dell. Or dental work, or….
If you prefer to support the Mex Files by check, or some in-kind donation (I like venison, but enoughs’ enough!), please write me at “richmx2” AT “excite” DOT “com” and include “MEX FILES” in the subject line.
….. or something like that
An Iraq war veteran who grew up in the United States says the country he fought for now wants to send him back to Mexico.
He went to war a soldier but somehow returned as an illegal immigrant.
But the soldier says he is not going down without a fight.
By all accounts, Orlando Castaneda is an American hero.
He says “I loved the GI Joes i just wanted to be a GI Joe.”
He spent 12 months in Iraq fighting for our freedom but then, just a few months after returning home, Castaneda received this deportation letter.
His wife, Annette, says “it’s frustrating, it’s frustrating when you see somebody give so much and get nothing in return.”
His parents brought him to the United States from Mexico illegally when Orlando was just three years old.
He filled out all the required paperwork and was even told his military service would put his application for citizenship on the fast track.
But somewhere along the line, immigration officials speculate there was a mixup or burp in the system leaving him and his American family in a state of limbo.
Orlando says “I believe I am an American I don’t just say you know I’m an American. I believe it in my heart.”
Annette says “he went and he did what most Americans aren’t willing to do, he went and fought for this country.”
Orlando says “I’m about to maybe lose my home, where I can’t buy food or cant pay my utilities because of a piece of paper that says I’m not an American.”
Mexico’s economy going south? Is that good?
From the International Herald Tribune:
Mexico and Argentina said Monday they are negotiating a free trade accord for vehicles and car parts that would make foreign car companies with factories in those countries more efficient.
“It’s an agreement we know will benefit both countries enormously,” President Felipe Calderon said in a news conference with Argentina’s leader, Nestor Kirchner. “We could have a huge potential for growth in this area.”
We don’t think about how important the Mexican auto industry is to the United States, but an agreement on auto parts isn’t likely to get people interested. When the Argentine President said that the proposed Great Wall of the Rio Grande is an affront to all Latin Americas the usual suspects commented (and, no I’m not going to bother linking all over the place to every anti-immigration “fuck you Argies” site). It’s a standard AP article on Latin America. Except for one overlooked phrase:
Kirchner also said he would personally help Mexico improve relations with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that Mexico has an open invitation to join the South American trade bloc Mercosur.
Some negative reference to Hugo Chavez is de rigur in AP-landia these days, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Mexico is being openly courted to get out of NAFTA and join Latin America. THAT IS IMPORTANT…
We don’t hear much in the U.S. about Mercosur (hell, we don’t hear much about Latin America in general), though it is likely to be extremely important to the futures of all the Americas. Mercosur is still feeling its way around (but then, the European Community took 50 years to develop, and Mercosur has only been around for the last ten), and – if we hear anything – it’s only that Venezuela hasn’t quite joined yet. Or, as the U.S. press puts it, Hugo Chavez hasn’t joined – much to our relief. WE (and Canada) were counting on a U.S. led “Free Trade Area of the Americas”, and blame Chavez for killing OUR plan – and instead opting for the existing (though far from united at this point) Mercosur.
The Mercosur countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay) and the “associate states” (Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru) and semi-member Venezuela (there’s a diplomatic spat holding up Venezuelan membership) have been paying down their debts to the big foreign lenders like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Interamerican Development Bank. Hugo Chavez has his own ideas about development, but is in agreement, and likely to work with, what Mercosur itself has been organizing – Banco del Sur, a self-financed development bank.
The Global Policy Forum describes the problem with just one of the existing development banks this way:
The World Bank, based in Washington, is a multilateral institution that lends money to governments and government agencies for development projects. For more than twenty years, the Bank has imposed stringent conditions, known as “Structural Adjustment Programs,” on recipient countries, forcing them to adopt reforms such as deregulation of capital markets, privatization of state companies, and downsizing of public programs for social welfare. Privatization of water supplies, fees for public schools and hospitals, and privatization of public pensions are among the most controversial Bank reforms. While the Bank insists that “fighting poverty” is its first priority, many critics believe instead that it is responsible for rising poverty. Many also criticize its cozy relationship with Wall Street and the United States Treasury Department. The stormy resignation of World Bank Vice President and Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz in late 1999, and his subsequent public comments, suggest that the Bank is not as benign as it claims to be.
Yeah. There were riots in Argentina over privatizing water systems (and the country went through a couple of presidents in a couple of months), Bolivia nearly had a coup and Mexico is roiled over “suggestions” that various public utilities be privatized. Even the most conservative proposals for Banco del Sur will take into account peasant economies and state services. Right now, Banco del Sur is mostly Brazilian and Argentine money. Their economies are recovering from the tender mercies of IMF and World Bank concern (fun fact – every Latin American country with a president or treasury secretary with a graduate degree from the U.S. universities that turn out the bankers who run the development funds over the 40 years went broke, or had to restructure their currency).
And this is where Mexico comes in. Mexico has been losing ground economically since joining NAFTA. Mercosur requires single membership (in other words, countries like Bolivia would have to pull out of the Andean Pact to join, though the two trade groups may merge, or Mercosur may make special rules for Bolivia). NAFTA was originally pushed by PRI President Carlos Salinas de Goutari, though PRI has lost much of its original enthusiasm for the trading bloc since then. The PRD and the smaller left-wing parties never liked it, and have been pushing for more pan-Latin economic intergration. ONLY PAN, and only the wing of the party to which Calderón belongs, have been cheerleaders for the status quo development plans.
Although the announced agreements between Mexico and Argentina only cover auto parts, Mexico has expressed real interest in Banco del Sur. The country won’t be pulling out of NAFTA any time soon, but under pressure from the “left”, it has been considering renegotiation of the treaty, and it would not have to join Mercosur (where it is already an “observer”) to become a member of Banco del Sur. Once Venezuela works out it’s differences with Brazil, that’s going to change the whole pan-Latin development picture… and our economic ties to Mexico.
I’m not an economist, nor a banker. Nancy Davis, at Narco News isn’t either. She writes about the existing development project in Mexico (Plan Puebla-Panama). Even skipping over the Marxo-academic phrasing, it sounds as if the locals are getting screwed. They’d probably still get screwed by developments funded by Banco del Sur, though there’s a better chance of their being included in the plans.
The Canadian economics website, Angus Reed Report, blames Mercosur for killing the “Free Trade Area of the Americas” (which would benefit Canada), but notes that “free trade” conceptually is salable to the Latin American voter:
Investors’ Business Daily wonders whether “WE will clear Latin America for Takeoff” and misses the point that the Latin Americans may not give a shit what we think about it.
In January 2006, Laura Carlsen speculated in an article for the Center for International Policy on Mexican participation in Mercosur. At the time, she saw the Fox Aministration as likely to act as a “trojan horse” for their northern neighbors, but that appears to be changing now.
The Bank Information Center sees Banco del Sur as “direct challenge to the Northern based IFIs [International Financial Institutions] struggling to remain relevant to the region.”
I was able to get into subscription only “The Banker” for an in-house look at the effects of Banco del Sur on international lending. At the time the article was published (in May) Hugo Chavez was the big worry. The link may or may not get you in, so I’ll try posting my copy somewhere accessible.
Pricks in Zacatecas
Mexico always had more Asian influence than people realize. We forget that the Philippines were part of Mexico for a time and that there have been Chinese living in Mexico City since the late 1500s. There are sizable Chinese, Japanese and Korean communities (the latter is split between the Mexican-Koreans who are just Mexicans and the Korean-Koreans, who aren’t exactly popular). But this is the first I’ve heard of “the special relationship Viet Nam shares with Mexico”.
About the only Vietnamese influence I’ve run into in Mexico City anyway are a few aging U.S. war resisters who received political asylum way back and the “Clínica de la Acupuntura Ho Chi Minh” in n Colonia San Rafael.
Can Phở Poblano be far behind?
HA NOI — Viet Nam and Mexico inked an agreement in Ha Noi yesterday to develop acupuncture education and exchange between the two countries.
The plan, which will see Viet Nam help train Mexican doctors in acupuncture and set up a drug rehabilitation centre in Zacatecas, was signed by Director of the National Hospital of Acupuncture Nghiem Huu Thanh and Rector of the Zacatecas Autonomous University, Mexico Alfredo Femat Banuelo.
Also on the agenda is an international conference aimed at bringing acupuncture to a wider audience and discussing techniques. The conference will be held for the first time in Zacatecas this November with the support of Viet Nam Acupuncture Association and the National Hospital of Acupuncture.
The contributions of the Viet Nam Acupuncture Centre in the Zacatecas Autonomous University pointed to the special relationship Viet Nam shares with Mexico, rector Banuelo said at the signing ceremony.
According to statistics from the National Hospital of Acupuncture, nearly 50 Vietnamese doctors have come to work in Mexico, providing acupuncture treatment for 12,000 Mexican patients so far. With the support of Vietnamese experts, 17 Mexican masters in acupuncture have been trained at Zacatecas University.
mexfiles.net 
