Ritmo: filling the jail cells Americans can’t
With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. holds a quarter of the world’s prisoners. And within the United States, the champion imprisoner by far is the State of Texas. Since 1990, Texas has lead the nation’s 50 states with an annual average growth rate of 11.8%, about twice the annual average growth rate of other state prison systems (6.1%). Even more important to the national context, since 1990, nearly one in five new prisoners added to the nation’s prisons (18%) was in Texas (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).
That’s not counting the Federal prisoners, the out of state prisoners housed in Texas jails and prisons, the Texas Youth Commission homes and the growing number of private prisons.
It’s a good business:
Private prison companies control about 20% of federal prison and detention beds, up from 3% in 2001, according to George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group. ‘That’s a remarkable turnaround,’ he told analysts in a 2006 conference call. Zoley attributed the boom to the federal government’s appetite for locking up immigrants.
But even with warrants out for one out of every ten Texans, there’s only so many customers to go around. Why not lock up “illegal aliens”?
Detaining families is the logical, if extreme, result of U.S. immigration policy. While attention has been directed toward hard-line enforcement strategies – the deployment of National Guard troops to the southwestern border, ICE’s sensationalistic raids on undocumented workers, and the vigilantism of groups like the Minutemen – a vast network of immigrant jails has emerged to facilitate this crackdown. Hutto is but the latest example.
The number of beds reserved by ICE for noncitizens has exploded, from fewer than 7,500 in 1994 to 26,500 today. Sometime this year the number is expected to reach 32,000. The private prison industry has absorbed almost all of the growth in new detention beds, as the federal government has moved away from managing its own facilities. Just in the past year, GEO Group opened a 1,900-bed ICE facility in Pearsall, Texas; CCA unveiled the 1,524-bed Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia; and Management and Training Corporation built a 2,000-bed tent city in Raymondville, Texas. In January 2006, Homeland Security awarded KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, a contract worth up to $385 million to build temporary immigrant detention facilities in case of an ’emergency influx of immigrants,’ according to a KBR press release.
And Ritmo, aka Willacy County Detention Facility in Raymondville, has even had to expand to meet “consumer demand”. It doesn’t get the attention of Correction Corporation of America’s T. Don Hutto facility in Tyler, but then Ritmo is out in the middle of nowhere. And, hey, rural Texas deserves it’s slice of the boom economy. Or does it? Growth costs money. As the AP reported today:
RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A South Texas detention center that was hastily built for a crackdown on illegal immigration will undergo a significant expansion, officials said.
Willacy County Judge Eliseo Barnhart said Tuesday the county will enter into a $45 million contract to expand the existing 2,000-bed detention center by 1,000 beds.
Barnhart said the expansion would bring needed jobs and income to the cash-strapped county.
How many jobs are going to be created? Willacy County’s entire population is only 10,000 people, and besides the $45 million going in now, Fernando del Valle reports in the Valley Morning Star that’s there’s a small bill that’s been overlooked:
The county has fallen behind in repaying $60 million it borrowed to build the 2,000-bed immigrant detention tent complex as a result of a shortfall in the number of illegal immigrants sent there, another official said.
So, the county owes about $10,000 for every man, woman and child who lives in the county, which it’s going to recoup by locking up men, women and children who might otherwise be paying taxes or buying stuff or doing something else economically useful.
I wonder if the county falls behind whether or not a warrant would be issued to arrest Judge Eliseo Barnhart.
Are Carlos Slim and Frida Kahlo Mexico’s Curse?
Jose de la Isla, writing for Scripps-Howard’s “Hispanic Link” believes so. I don’t completely agree with his conclusion (that Mexico needs to emulate Ireland or Singapore) but he lays out an interesting argument:
A controversy broke out earlier this month after the Mexican online business publication Sentido Comun announced that Carlos Slim Helu was the richest man in the world.
…
Ordinarily, these rankings are not enough kindling for a hot controversy, with maybe one exception. The United States cannot boast being No. 1. Gates is not the richest person in the world. For some people, the Forbes rankings are like the Olympics of wealth.
Some disconcerted commentators weighed in, objecting to what appears to be resplendent, even obscene, personal wealth in the face of poverty in Mexico. I heard others vainly argue that regions of Mexico are very progressive, where incremental change and economic innovation are evident.
The underlying dispute, I think, centers on confusion about personal wealth and social prosperity. Personal wealth is a function of initiative, opportunity and luck. Social prosperity comes from initiative, opportunity and good public policy.
The ascent of Carlos Slim Helu to No. 1 is misread and little understood.
Earlier this month, commentator Luis Gonzalez de Alba, writing in Mexico City’s Milenio, said he was upset by the debut of the opera “Frida.” …
To Gonzalez, the entire Diego-Frida epoch represents a folkloric past. It influences public thinking to this day by idealizing paternalistic government (bad public policy) as opposed to a futuristic one that creates opportunities for the masses. The image and ideology of the Frida cult only instills notions of an exploited Mexico and outsiders who rob the country blind of natural resources and keep labor wages down.
In the presidential elections of a year ago, that scenario was played out. The opposition leader, Manuel Lopez Obrador, was the populist, promising 1930s-style measures that originally got Mexico in the economic predicament it is still in.
The ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN), after a failed presidency under Vicente Fox, proposed measured, controlled growth and some further privatization. Felipe Calderon, of that party, won but just barely, with a .06 percent margin.
The results suggest Mexico is right in the middle. Looked at another way, neither alternative is really acceptable to a firm majority of the population.
…
Just do it
“Money is important in life. It does not give you happiness, we all know, but it sure calms the nerves.”
(Maria Félix, 1914-2002)
I haven’t had to panic in the last couple of days, thanks to those who have given so far. There are still very pressing bills out there… and running from day to day with no guarantee the phone will be on after the first of August, which is worrisome.
The Mex Files still desperately in need of funds to pay the essentials (phone and electricity) and to “calm the nerves” (or at least assure that the essentials will be met over the next year).
I have $600 in overdue bills that need to be cleaned up and on-going expenses of 800 to 1000 a month from the Mex Files.
If you prefer to send a check, money order or make other arrangements, please write me at “richmx2 -AT- excite -DOT- com” and include “Mex Files” in the subject line.
SUPER Ligas!
Maybe the U.S. is starting to join the rest of the human race…or at least NAFTA. Heck, we already import Mexican players and the Mexican teams bring a better turnout than the U.S. ones do…
The SuperLiga, which starts on Tuesday, is an eight-team tournament featuring four MLS sides from the U.S. and four clubs from the Mexican first division.
…
‘It is part of our ongoing quest together to turn this region of North America into a region that can be competitive with Europe, that can be competitive with Africa and other dominating soccer or football regions around the world.’
…
‘We have seen tremendous success with the Mexican national team games that have been produced in large stadiums across our country. We sold out three NFL stadiums in the off-season and that is not something one would ever expect to happen.
…
The MLS teams aiming for the highest winner’s purse in North American club history are Los Angeles Galaxy, D.C. United, Houston Dynamo and FC Dallas.
The Mexican challenge is provided by Chivas de Guadalajara, Pachuca, Club America and Monarcas Morelia.
In Tuesday’s opening group matches, Dallas host Monarcas Morelia at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco and the Galaxy take on Pachuca at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.
Oh well, so I won’t get to see MY team — los Pumas — up here, but then, I guess that’s what I get for hanging around Chilangos and reading Jornada. If you spend any time in Mexico, you MUST pick a team (it’s in the Constitution) and there are class and political overtones. Naturally, the teams in the Super Liga are those favored by the people who emigrate to the U.S.: conservatives tend to follow Chivas, the working class Club America and Morelia and Pachuca are provincials. Me, I’m a Pumas guy, but then, I hung out with the wrong crowd (the kind of folks who read Jornada) and are hopelessly Chilango.
A very good question indeed
The U.S. Senate voted 89-1 (I don’t know who the 10 non-voting Senators were, nor the lone holdout) to spend 3 billion dollars on border security.
Fine, but they might want to look a little closer at port security :
MEXICO CITY: Chinese and U.S. authorities are investigating whether a breakdown in security at their ports allowed an illegal shipment reportedly carrying more than 19 tons of a chemical intended for methamphetamine cartels to reach Mexico, the Mexican attorney general said Thursday.
The shipment led to what has been touted as the world’s largest seizure of drug money and the arrest of Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon, who is accused in the United States and Mexico of supplying pseudoephedrine to Mexican cartels who then used the drug to make methamphetamines.
In March, authorities found more than US$205 million (euro149 million) hidden inside Ye Gon’s Mexico City mansion.
Ye Gon was arrested Monday by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a suburban Washington restaurant. He faces charges he conspired to smuggle drugs into the United States and laundered millions of dollars (euros) from illegal drug sales at Las Vegas casinos and elsewhere, the U.S. government said in a criminal complaint Tuesday.
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told a news conference Thursday that investigators want to know how the shipment arrived in Mexico with false paperwork after passing through Chinese and U.S. ports.
(AP, via Internatioal Herald Tribune)
Meanwhile, Zenli Ye Gon was finally arrested in the U.S. and the Mexicans have gotten the loot back — a third each going to the Federal Prosecutors, the Courts and the Secretariat of Health for drug abuse programs. The DEA gets will get exactly what they deserve — diddly-squat.
Questions remain on how exactly Ye Gon obtained Mexican citizenship anyway, and how he was transferring so much cash around Mexican banks without paying taxes.
‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky… and then puke
Ever since the Torre Latinoamericana opened in 1956 on its giant waterbed (it floated nicely in the 1957 earthquake and rocked and rolled — but stood up — in the 8.1 Richter 1985 quake), Mexico City got over its fear of tall buildings. The Latinoamerica is only 45 stories, which isn’t tall by skyscraper standards, but it was the tallest building in Latin America until 1972, when Mexico City’s World Trade Center tower opened (and is still standing). That’s the building on Insurgentes Sur with the Siqueiros diorama in the revolving restaurant on top. Siqueiros also designed the fence around the parking lot, but did not do the statue of Elvis across the street.
Santa Fe has the best modern buildings — there was land and space there for some whimsical buildings like the giant washing machine (no, it’s not for money laundering, though it is for Coca Cola) and the giant Tequila bottle (with a worm scupture in the foyer). Naturally, the latter was built for José Cuervo. And perched on a bluff are the “Giant Pair of Pants” building. You always expect to see George Jetson arriving at about the 40th floor.
My favorite office tower is Torre Mayor, at 55 stories Mexico’s tallest building. I watched it go up: the steel frame isn’t made of I-beams, but of giant shock absorbers. In THEORY, it’ll stand up to an 8.5 Richter earthquake, though I’ll bet owner George Soros wouldn’t want to be on the top floor if that happened.
Some friends of mine were on the 26th floor when we had a 7.1 Richter shake in 2003, right after the building opened. I was giving English lessons at the time to a very nervous banker down the street, whose employer had invested heavily 
in the building’s construction. He was out in the street with his binoculars — literally watching his investments.
One secret I discovered when working in Torre Mayor. The upper floor North Men’s Rooms have a really great view. I have no idea if architect Paul Reichmann planned it this way, but the urinals are are in a sight line with a glass panel running up the whole side of the building. On a clear day, you can take a pee and contemplate the Basilica.
Yes, there are some cool buildings in Mexico City. Torre Bicententario is NOT one of them. If it is built, the 70 story edifice will loom 1000 meters over Chapultepec Park. By the way, it’s in a neighborhood where the height restriction on buildings is 3 meters. And to build it, the historic 1948 Vladimir Kaspé house, a classic of modernist home architecture (and part of the National Patrimony) will have to be demolished. And the well-heeled neighbors have taken to the streets in protest.
And did I mention it would also be on the approach path to Benito Juarez Airport? And that it’s only a few meters from Los Pinos and that even in Mexico, it’s considered a security risk?
And — by the way — it’s fucking ugly.
Architect Rem Koolhaus says it was inspired by Chichén Itza. Bullshit. This is Albrecht Speer thinking inside the box …
Citius64 has lots to say about Torre Bicentenario… none of it good.
Naked frauds
While I have to I ask for contributions (donations, subscriptions… whatever you want to call them) to keep the Mex Files up and running, I do earn a small income as a stringer for one of the local papers (all weeklies out where I live). I go to a lot of City Council meetings, and some County ones. They have their differences, and some City Council meetings can get a bit tense, but it’s mostly routine.
(The stringer work helps, but I’m by no means out of the woods yet. The most pressing bills are down to about $200. There is also another $600 in overdue bills that need to be cleaned up and on-going expenses.
If you prefer to send a check, money order or make other arrangements, please write me at “richmx2 -AT- excite -DOT- com” and include “Mex Files” in the subject line.)
I’m kind of jealous of Reynado Bracamontes, who seems to have a lot more interesting local politics to cover for Noticias de Oaxaca.
Local budgets in Mexico come from the State or directly from the Federal Government. They don’t retain local taxes. A Municipio is more or less equivalent to a county in the U.S. Mapaches (“racoons”) are those essential workers in a political machine who buy votes, steal ballot boxes, and intimidate potential opposition voters. You know, what we call “Young Republicans.”
A sombrero tip to the confidential source in Oaxaca who forwarded the original, and who made a small donation to the Mex Files.
Daniel Martìnez Dolores, President of the People’s Government of San Juan Lalana, warned yesterday that the local assembly voted to have anyone from the PRI or PAN who entered the community to bribe voters stripped naked in the public plaza and left in the hands of the community.
Offering cement, work tools or past-date food products [common offering by political parties in rural communities] “offends the intelligence of the Indigenous people of San Juan Lalana, the official said, warning would-be PRI “mapaches” to stay out of the upcoming August 5 elections.
“It’s best PRI activists not risk it,” he added.
He also Municipal President Silvano Calderón Sánchez not to pressure citizens to vote for PRI candidates for state legislative seats.
“If there’s a confrontation between the PRI government and the citizens of San Juan Lalana, that individual will be held responsible, .
At the same time, Martìnez complained about the lack of public works in the community, and the discretionary funds given to the Municipio. The Assembly met to demand an accounting from the Federal Accounting Office (Auditoría Superior de la Federación).
The community authorized Daniel Martinez to go to the Municipal Palace. He said that the community doesn’t receive a centavo from the municipio, an act of vengence by the State Government.
“Silvano Calderón always is in the city of Oaxaca, monopolizes the revenues and spends them at his discretion. That’s why there are no public works in the entire Municipio.” He noted that several communities in the Municipio are cut off from the outside world, the State public works department neglecting local roads.
Some healthy anger…
So far, people have been as generous as they can, and I’ve ALMOST gotten through the present emergency (my small tax refund also came in, which helped). I’m still overdrawn at the bank, it’s the end of the month and I have to start thinking about next months bills (and catching up the last three months worth of underpaid bills).
If the Mex Files is to survive at all, let alone continue to stay healthy (never mind me), the financial support has to be there.
If you prefer to send a check, money order or make other arrangements, please write me at “richmx2 -AT- excite -DOT- com” and include “Mex Files” in the subject line.
This bus happens to be from Peru, but the same basic model will be rolling on the streets of Mexico City soon. It’s such a great idea that the Federal Government is also buying these buses… though they’ll be painted PAN blue (subtle, subtle).
It’s only a bus, so what’s the big deal? They’re mobile medical clinics with a doc or clinical nurse and small lab for EKGs and prostate examinations.
As one of the 45 million uninsured U.S. citizens, and am doing without even basic diagnostic tests, I have to wonder why politicians feel obligated to yack and yack and “promise” something so basic. What a bunch of clowns! Heck, I’m not even talking about end-stage care or hip replacements. Just preventative medicine. It’s not that hard to figure out.
Mexican health care isn’t the best, but it’s better than none. Even Peruvian health care is better than absurdities like the one Megan Wilde writes on in this week’s Marfa (TX) Big Bend Sentinel:
More than 100 low-income, immigrant women in the area may soon have to travel to Odessa or El Paso for family planning services.
For more than 25 years, low-income women have been able to get free birth control, annual gynecological exams, pap smears and prenatal care at local Texas Department of State Health Services clinics. But DSHS is notifying local clinics to stop providing these services after August 31. Brewster and Presidio county clients are being referred to other local doctors for free family planning and women’s wellness services, but for non-U.S. citizens, these services may only be available in El Paso and Midland-Odessa.
… undocumented immigrants, or legal immigrants who entered the U.S. after August 1996, won’t qualify for the new Medicaid Women’s Health Program.
Until now, local clinics provided family planning and wellness services to these women through a federal funding program called Title V. But local clinics will soon stop receiving this type of funding, and these clients must be referred to the nearest Title V providers, which are in El Paso and Midland-Odessa.
Local clinic staff estimated more than 80 Presidio women, 20 Marfa women, and 50 Brewster County women won’t qualify for the new Medicaid Women’s Health Program.
…
Alpine clinic nurse Susan Bell serves women throughout Brewster County, but the majority of her Title V clients are in Terlingua and Lajitas.“We’ve been providing this service for years and years,” she said. “There are a lot of these people that we’re their safety net; we’re the ones they can rely on. They won’t have that anymore.”
For south Brewster County women, and women in Presidio, making a 500-mile roundtrip to Odessa or El Paso would be a hardship.
Local clinics will still be able to provide condoms through the HIV/STD program, as long as funding is available for that program.
But clinic staff predict that more women will get pregnant if they have to go to Odessa or El Paso for family planning services. And if these women do get pregnant, the local clinics will no longer be providing prenatal care.
“It’s a vicious circle getting ready to form…”
100 women may not sound like a lot, but the two counties combined are a little over 15,000 people in total (and a lot of them are retirees who presumably don’t need pre-natal care and birth control). Brewster County is “wealthy” by comparison to Presidio. Brewster only has a 20% poverty rate; Presidio’s is close to 50%.
Poor U.S. citizens can go across the border to Ojinaga for their health care. Who will pick up the funding if the state cuts back is probably… us? Ironically, if a poor Mexican resident of the U.S. uses the Mexican health care system, they may never be allowed back in the country where they work, and where their children are citizens. I can at least drive the 90 miles to Mexico for a prostate exam.
It’s closer to 700 miles round-trip from Marfa to Midland than 500. The least expensive gas I’ve seen is in Alpine, $3.14 a gallon.
Guelaguetza’s Revenge
I can’t say I’m completely in agreement with Hermann Bellinghausen’s op/ed piece in today’s Jornada (a very minor disagreement is over Abelardo Rodriguez. The interim president may have been a scoundrel and a puppet, but I think he was legitimate).
On the other hand, I lack Dr. Bellinghausen’s erudition and breadth of knowledge. His writing style is a challenge (I thought I wrote complex sentences!) and I did have to make a few minor changes — and resort to footnotes (oh well, it was a Jornada article, the only newspaper I’ve ever read that regularly has footnotes and bibliography attached to editorials).
What brought it to my attention was a post on the Oaxaca Study Action Group, which I finally decided to join. I have absolutely no interest in their internal disputes (I shit-can sniping at each other’s right to participate. I expect to study the action, not take sides in some sterile dispute over adherence to some theory). Ironically, the post that mentioned this article seemed to miss that Bellinghausen is pointing out that rejection of the “official Guelaguetza” is based in tradition, not revolution.
A physician, as well as a poet and journalist, Hermann Bellinghausen writes about indigenous affairs and leftist movements from his home in Chiapas.
Not that it matters much, but Guelaguetza is a relatively new invention. It owes its birth in 1932 to Governor Francisco López Cortés and the support of then president Abelardo Rodriguez*. Meant to “render racial homage” to the humblest (and most humbled) of the Oxaqueños, it was yoked together out of tradition, racism and a humanitarian gesture – a way to raise funds to attempt to ameliorate some of the damages caused by the 1931 earthquake. The 76 year old Guelaguetza, born of an earthquake, is shaking Oaxaca once again.
Today, it still functions to remind us of the shameful illegitimacy of a government, that can only maintain a semblance of permance through violence and delinquency. Like that of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The “dispute” over the Guelaguetza shakes up the symbolism in a painfully real landscape.
Originally a traditional festival in the mostly Zapotec central valley, Spanish missionaries turned it into a fiesta in honor of the Virgin of Carmen. It has always been a popular celebration involving communal cooperation and resource sharing.
Based in the legend of the tragic love between the Zapotec Princess Donají (daughter of the Christianized Lord of Zaachila) and the enemy Mixteco soldier Nucano [a Oaxacaño “Romeo and Juliet”), it served the missionaries as a ritual submission by the Zapotec and Mixteco communities to the new overlords. Since then, the dances and the celebration have been syncretic, as are most surviving native traditions. The fact is Guelaguetza is a grand celebration of who holds the political and economic powers of Oaxaca, disguised by the hypocracy of typical Creole racism. The Indian is the colorful background in a celebration of the master. The bourgeois conservatives of 21st Century Oaxaca have all the characteristics of their 17th century ancestors. The only difference is that now we enter the grounds through Ticketmaster or American Express.
The post-revolucionary State sought to attract disaffected Mixes, Isthmus Zapotecs, Huaves, Mazatecos. Integration? Identification? Control? Today, the 16 pueblos — don’t call them “ethnic groups’! — are not celebrating their integration, their union, but merely seek to dazzle us. Over the years, the Guelaguetza has become a great tourist attraction, supporting hotel, restaurants, travel agencies, craft shops, jewelry shops, and services. The people in the pueblos get the tips. That is if they dance, are folkloric and shut up.
To develop an even “better” spectacular. the venue was transferred to the more scenic Cerro del Fortín and was killed stone by stone. Under Jose Murat** the perversion of the original was nearly completel: the Indians left offerings — live turkeys, fruit, bread, and flowers — at the feet of the “Lords”. Another innovation: the “Lord’s” daughters got to be colorful too — dancing in and out between the Indians. Ulises Ruiz never imagined that changing the traditions of Guelaguetza would seal his fate: with a second year of repression and crisis, he is building his own political tomb.
We attended this latest version of the Guelaguetza, but others persist in the many pueblos of the Oaxacan plateau. The APPO is seen as recovering their tradition, and the undercurrent of the struggle that seems to have been forgotten by the social movements throughout the state, and not just in the Capital city. This fight did not begin yesterday, and the people have found anew ways to say “¡BASTA!”.
With the EPR back in the headlines, there is money to be made in writing off as conspiracies the discontent in Oaxaca as “provocation” or “plots by radical groups”. But, the repression exposes the limits on power, and the international scandal makes the situation less and less “managable” as we say in the mass media.
The oaxaqueños capitalists are desperate. The tourist booty they earn sucking the life out of the Indians is drying up. “They want to take over OUR Guelaguetza”, is the latest eruption*** by the defenders of “Oaxacan Identity”, threatened by forces that surely come from Pluto demanding that “all the weight of the law’ be brought against them. It doesn’t seem to matter that these forces are the most criminal elements in Oaxaca – the Executive, Legislative, Judicial branches, and the police. Who else can be responsible for the “lessons” taught Emeterio Merino Cruz?
So, now there is a People’s Guelaguetza that wants the site, and which the administrators of the supervised celebration are determined to stamp out with repressive fury. Very possibly, Ruiz Ortiz is the last “Lord” of the Guelaguetza chants. The show can’t go on without a police cordon and military guards along the highways leading to the dance — that “celebration” of Indians decked in feathers for the amusement of the children of the rich, disguised in their own costumes as well as the Indians, before governors who act more and more like the overseers on a hacienda.
Who would have thought that a tradition turned spectacular would stir up such public discontent? Burdened by symbol and myth, Guelaguetza bit back, and stripped naked the power that gave it reality.
*Rodriguez, appointed to fill out the last year and a half of Pascual Ortiz Rubio’s term. In November 1929, President-Elect Alvaro Obregón was assassinated. Outgoing President Plutarco Elias Calles – in the opinion of many (including Bellinghausen) manipulated the situation, arranging for Emilio Portes Gil to serve as acting president until the 1931 election. Ortiz Rubio was forced to resign, according to Bellinghausen and others because he refused to be Calles’ puppet. Abelardo Rodriguez, according to this view, was an illegitimate president forced on the people.
**Ruiz Ortiz’ predecessor, also considered corrupt and authoritarian. He is widely suspected of manipulating the State election in favor of Ruiz Ortiz.
***DOCTOR Bellinghausen uses the word “hilillo”, which is more like the eruption of a boil – or popping a zit.
A few stray threads in la raza cosmica
Shortly after the 1870 abandonment of Rome by the French Italy unified. The Nibbis–my mother’s Italian family–were ordered to leave the country. Dr. Orembello G. Nibbi and his English wife, Henrietta Parker-Nibbi (daughter of minor Midlands nobility) fled their Tuscan home for Mexico City. I don’t know much about their son except that he had a son who built a hotel here in Taxco-in the meantime the Nibbi family became entangled somehow with the Buckley family. Yes, that self-same Buckley family which derived a great deal of its wealth from oil interests in Mexico. Until the Mexicans took it back from them–for good reason if you ask me.
But back to my story. At some point in the early part of the twentieth century Carlos–the family knew him as “Gran Charlie”–built a hotel in Taxco–the family also had some extensive land holdings in the area and in Cuernavaca. In 1983 the only parcel of land still in the family was a pig farm outside of Taxco owned by Dario Nibbi’s wife (Dario died a few years before) and her children Carlos and Laura. No, I don’t know her name, neither does my mother for some strange reason–I wish I did.
There have been English (though most not from minor Midlands nobility) in Mexico since Colonial times. H.G. Ward, the first English Ambassador to Mexico, in Mexico in 1826, his report on investment opportunities in the new Republic, reports two important discoveries from his trip to Pachuca: baby bottles (he was traveling with a sixteen year old secretary, his wife, a baby and a nanny. The Mexican nanny bottle-fed the baby, something unknown — at least to Ward — in Britain) and TURNIPS.
Ward was rhapsodic over the fact that the climate in Pachuca permitted the English miners living there to “enjoy” turnips and rutabagas. And, as everyone knows, the Mexican pastie was the eventual result of turning British fare — the English pasty — into something edible. After 1828, when the Mexicans foolishly expelled Spaniards from the country, the English took over the mining industry, and were important in commercial activities. There is a famous legend about a Mexico City jeweler who makes a ring for his fiance, who dies but her ghost returns for the ring. What gives the story its piquancy is that the heart-broken jeweler returns to his cold island homeland.
Within Mexico city, there was a Church of England cathedral (in, what is now — logically — el barrio chino!) and at least one chapel in the late 19th century. The former cathedral is being restored as an Anglo-Mexican museum, and the chapel (next to the American military cemetery in Tacuba) is a cultural center now. The Iglesia Anglicana de México is a national church originally started as a mission by the U.S. Episcopal Church, which does cater to more recent English immigrants, as well as Roman Catholic converts. Once in a while you still run across an English, or hispanicized English, family name, but most come from West Indian or U.S. immigrants.
And, of course, British pirates and oil men were up and down the Veracruz coast. The pirates who didn’t were hanged, beheaded, or — if they could get away with it, burned at the stake as heretical Protestants. The ones that stayed went into other enterprises (though with what legality it’s best not to speculate). The British Navy depended on Mexico oil in World War I (Mexican oil provided up to 90% of their fuel, which is why the Germans took such an interest in the Mexican Revolution). And there was the remarkable Mrs. King — whose Cuernavaca hotel was occupied by both Huerta and Emiliano Zapata during the Revolution.
Italians have been around since Cortés. Bernardo Diaz, like many of the Conquistadors compared Tenotichtlan to Venice, a city they knew from previous military campaigns. Spain — or rather Castille — had Italian territories at the time, and a few of the soldiers were Italians. Italian officers, artisans and even a viceroy or two served in Nuevo Espagna.
Those Conquistadors may have thought of Venice, but a Venetians came in numbers in the late 1800s. On a website dedicated to all things Venetian, I found this from May 2004:
…[I]n 1882, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, sought European immigrants to colonize parts of the country so as to import new methods and ideas in agriculture and industry and to lift the living standards of the indigenous people. As a part of the recruitment effort, Mexican emissaries traveled to the countryside just outside of Venice. They managed to persuade around 500 or so residents of towns like Belluno, Segusino, and Feltre to relocate to a remote Mexican village called Chipilo, about 100 miles outside Mexico City, about as far from the land of sun-dried tomatoes and macchiati as you can get.
…
They had their reasons to uproot. The Piave river was running dry in those days. Agriculture was tough. The general economic conditions were dodgy in Northern Italy, overall. The Mexican envoys appealed to the people’s desperation and sense of adventure. It worked.
Things were tough at first, but ultimately the community flourished, mainly via agriculture and ranching. Chipolo also is famed for Segusino pine furniture, wonderful antique Mexican reproductions, said to be inspired by furniture found washed up on a beach by an emigree.
In the late 19th century, the Italy depended on remittances even more than Mexico depends on them today. And, the Italian government encouraged emigrants, assisting in sending mass immigrations to everywhere from Canada to Argentina (where Spanish is spoken with an Italian accent as a result). Surprisingly, most of the Italians who emigrated to Mexico came from the North (like the Venetians), rather than formerly Spanish-ruled regions like Naples and Sicily. Maybe they wanted a change of climate. They already had edible food.
A sizable Lombard community in Michoacán, centered around the avocado-growing center of Nueva Italia, was financed by Italian landowners. Some became hacienderos in their own right, like the Lomardo Toledano family, the scion of which, Vicente Lombardo Toledano turned his back on his class, to become an important Marxist theorist and Mexico’s best known labor leader of the post-Revolutionary era.
And, somewhere along the way, some minor English nobility and an Italian hotelier met and … down the labyrinthine ways of the raza cosmica produced gringo economists with Irish names.
Traditional (Criminal) Values
Not MY lust for gold though I can understand people taking some radical steps to raise cash. Around here, the mines gave out years ago (and a bentonite robbery just doesn’t have the same cachet) juThe Mex Files is written from a very rural, isolated corner of the U.S./Mexican border (the Texas Big Bend) where there aren’t a lot of outside economic opportunities. I do a little free-lancing for the local papers, and live modestly. But, my own bills — compounded by the problems caused by a mentally ill neighbor I helped out who wrote me several large bad checks to cover her expenses — mean I’ll have to discontinue the Mex Files unless more financial support is available.
I need to raise a few hundred dollars immediately, and about 12,000 over the year. That’s only $30 a reader, given 400 “regulars” — and maybe some from people reading this…
If you prefer to send a check, money order or make other arrangements, please write me at “richmx2 -AT- excite -DOT- com” and include “Mex Files” in the subject line.
Sonora really is the wild west…
Back on June 6, Sierra Minerals (a Canadian company, as are most of the big mining operations in Mexico) sent out a press release:
TORONTO, ONTARIO–(CCNMatthews – June 6, 2007) – Sierra Minerals Inc. today reported an armed robbery at its Cerro Colorado Gold Mine in Sonora, Mexico. Three gold bars (roughly 750 oz gold) worth approximately US$502,000 in aggregate were stolen from the secured gold room on the project hours before the armoured truck was due to arrive to transport the bars to a U.S. based refinery. …
The gold bars that were stolen represent 14 days’ worth of production, at the current annualized production rate of roughly 18,000 gold ounces per annum. This is the first time since the inception of mining operations at Cerro Colorado in 2004 that an incidence of armed robbery has occurred, and the Company is taking the following steps to further tighten security at the mine and to prevent any repeat occurrences of this nature…
Gary Cooper being unavailable, the mine owner was looking at a U.S. security consultant and high-tech solutions. (Geeze, guys, stop trying to make Mexico into Canada). The banditos, not being sporting I guess, didn’t wait for the consultants.
Last Wednesday, they were back, this time making off with 33 kilos of refined gold, worth about $650 thousand.
Although the item in El Universal called them “Commandos”, these were just old-fashioned gold mine robbers. Nothing to do with politics or weird conspiracies involving international financing or even anti-Canadian plots (though, if you want to hold up a gold mine in Mexico, you have to rob Canadians)… ordinary decent criminals.
Fashions change over the years, but Mexico keeps it’s traditions. The banditos weren’t wearing the traditional bandana over the face and waving six-shooters (they were in cammies and ski-masks and carried R-15s), but it’s nice to see that Mexico hasn’t gotten so decadent that there are 24-hour cable networks breaking in with breathless stories about every detail and worried talking heads yabbering about “terrorists”.
(Woe) Begone Ye Gon
I know regulars hate seeing this — and I hate writing these “reminders” — but I still need to raise a couple of hundred dollars by the end of the month in immediate expenses to keep Mex Files going.
To keep the Mex Files operational for the next year requires about $1000 a month (that doesn’t pay any kind of “salary” but keeps the lights and phone turned on, and pays some basic day-to-day expenses). For 400 “subscribers” at $30 a year, that’s a little over 8¢ per day. No paper in the world can match that deal.
For those who prefer to underwrite, donate or make grants some way other than via pay-pal, I can be reached by writing to “richmx2 -AT- excite -DOT- com. Please put “Mex Files” in the subject line.
This is a complicated case – Ye Gon claims he was just a bagman for the Calderón campaign, which is within the realm of possibility, but the Calderón administration says is bullshit. And, given that they do want to extradite the high profile figure, it makes Ye Gon’s story less plausible. Still, given that the Mexicans transferred the loot taken from Ye Gon’s house (205 million dollars in U.S. currency) to an American bank, and that the U.S. DEA is claiming they get a cut, and that Ye Gon is walking around free in New York, SOMETHING is going on.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mexico said on Wednesday it will investigate whether its federal agents protected a Chinese-Mexican businessman tied to the largest seizure of drug cash in world history, while the businessman’s lawyers told a Washington news conference they fear for their client’s life if he is returned to Mexico.
Zhenli Ye Gon and his lawyers said about $150 million of the more than $205 million found hidden at Ye Gon’s Mexico City mansion in March was actually a political slush fund for the 2006 presidential campaign of President Felipe Calderon, who narrowly won. But they released no evidence to support that claim.
His U.S. lawyer, Martin F. McMahon, said he would ask that Ye Gon be given asylum in the United States and called for U.S. congressional hearings into his client’s claims. Ye Gon’s lawyers also said that they offered to have him submit to an interview by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration but that U.S. officials haven’t responded.
…
Ye Gon is charged in Mexico with drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession for allegedly importing 19 tons of a pseudoephedrine compound used to make methamphetamine – charges he denies.
Although Mexico has requested Ye Gon’s extradition, U.S. officials have not detained him.
We are always wanting Mexico to extradite criminals wanted here – or whine when “extraordinary renditions” by private citizens … ahem… go to the dogs – so, why isn’t Ye Gon in custody, or on a plane back to Mexico?
mexfiles.net 