Must the show go on in Oaxaca?
For the “show to go on” with the Mex Files, I really do have to ask for support. Thanks to Jonathan, David, Adrian, Thoma, Brett and Tim, I almost have enough to pay the electric bill (which has to be done by tomorrow), but still need to get the rent caught up and look at the long term needs. Yeah, this is serious.
Even the “cold hard facts” about Oaxaca are open to interpretation. There was a confrontation between citizens and police, rocks were thrown (some reports say the police were throwing rocks, other that A policeman was throwing A rock), people were injured, one person may have been killed by the police and an undetermined number of people were “detained.”
MEXICO CITY: The government of southern Oaxaca state vowed to host a popular Mexican folk festival despite violent protests in which about 19 people were injured and 40 arrested.
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission also said Tuesday it would open an investigation into the previous day’s clash in Oaxaca city, where angry crowds and police exchanged volleys of rocks and tear gas and protesters burned buses and cars.
Police were trying to keep the demonstrators from reaching a stadium where the Guelaguetza festival, which draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, is scheduled to be held July 23-30. The Guelaguetza was canceled last year due to protests by the same groups that clashed with police Monday.
Jeremy Schwartz, of the Austin (TX) American-Statesman, has an excellent — even-handed — report on the confrontation. Much of the rest of the press coverage, naturally, depends on who is doing the reporting, or rather, who is editing. The Times of India is reporting “Leftists Riot” while People’s Daily says “Protests, Police Clash”.
Within Mexico, El Universal is blaming Governor Ruiz for the violence, Cronica de Hoy is quoting PRD officials doing the same, and reports that the APPO is studying the situation, and does not want a confrontation. Nuevo Excelsior has the most extensive coverage (of the little I’ve been able to look at today) reporting that the police are combing the hospitals looking for people who might have been injured in the disturbance. They also report that the APPO and Seccion 22 are considering a boycott of the “official” Guelaguetza, but that for now everything is calm. If, for no other reason, than it’s raining.
Everyone agrees that what is at issue, as it was last year, is the continued resistance to Ulises Ruiz’ state government by the APPO and others, and the still unresolved issues surrounding Seccion 22 of the Teachers’ Union. Last year’s crackdown on dissent did nothing but stop the protests and, at the time, only covered over the appearance of dissent .
Tourists and foreign residents are – in a way – part of the local culture. Over the last several decades there haven’t been any problems with dealing with the foreigners, who come to enjoy the region and sample its culture, and to sometimes become another piece in the mosaic. Historically, it has been multi-cultural and multi-ethnic for centuries and people have a “do your own thing” attitude. However, Guelaguetza is a symbol of the state goverment’s cynical exploitation of the local culture on behalf of outside interests. What had been an authentic local custom – and very popular with the tourists – was taken over by corporate interests (sort of like Mardi Gras was in New Orleans), and the people themselves (or, maybe just the APPO) objected.
According to an APPO press statement released today, the police launched “a broad offense” against the people of Oaxaca who were celebrating their alternative and popular guelaguetza (an annual Oaxacan cultural festival) in the Guelaguetza auditorium. The APPO announced two days previous that it would hold an alternative cultural festival in the main Guelaguetza auditorium, located in the Fortin Mountain outside of the city.
Federal Preventive Police and State police surrounded the perimeter of the Guelaguetza auditorium in order to prevent people from entering the festival. A caravan heading to the festival, tailed by 10,000 people, arrived to the auditorium, and in that moment the police attacked the crowd with tear gas, rocks, sticks, whatever they had in their hands, as well as with unidentified explosive projectiles. People retreated, and the police advanced, beating and arresting people. Three photographers were reported to have been beaten. Countless others were tossed into the back of police pick up trucks with serious injuries.
For the moment the state and the municipal police continue a citywide operation in the streets of Oaxaca City, detaining people in the open. The military are reported to have surrounded the city on the highways.
Last year, the “official” Guelaguetza venue was burned down. This year, the APPO wanted a “people’s Guelaguetza” which was stopped… another example of the Calderón Administration’s willingness to use force to create “stability”. And, incidententally, to keep a competitor for the tourism pesos out of the market.
It’s unfortunate, but it takes something like this to focus people on Oaxaca. While many have commented on the role of outsiders in the continued protests, or want to blame the problem on outsiders, I think the “real story” is the less reported exploitation by foreigners and others.
Guelaguetza is only a show.
So, who needs health care?
I do, but first I need to pay the electric bill ($200) and $300 in rent. And eat for the next month or so…
It’d be nice not to have to be so blunt about it, but I’m waiting to take a “regular job” (this is a small town and the doc who does the pee test is on vacation) which is going to cut into the work I can do here, and push the startup on my commercial site further behind, but I can’t go living on faith and partial payments indefinitely.
I saw Sicko (in a semi-official pirate version found by Burro Hall). Seeing I’m not the only uninsured person in the United States, I’m SOOOOO glad the President of the United States is working on health care in all the Americas.
The “White House Conference on the Americas” came and went last week. There was almost no mention in the press. The Miami Herald had a little bit:
The White House rolled out the red carpet and its biggest names Monday to tell the world that it really does care about Latin America and that it’s doing more for the region than most people believe.
President Bush and no fewer than five Cabinet secretaries touted U.S. initiatives before a group of 150 Latin American community groups and 70 U.S.-based organizations, many flown in at U.S. taxpayer expense.
At a luncheon speech, Laura Bush announced that the United States would work with Mexico, Costa Rica and Brazil to combat breast cancer in the Americas.
But more than big announcements, the White House Conference on the Americas was an exercise in public relations and regional networking.
If it was even about public relations, there wasn’t much accomplished. The biggest story out of the Canadian press was that some Canadian octet performed; the Stabroek News of Guyana reported two Guyanese doctors were going to Washington (it was a slow news week in Guyana) and a few social work newsletters mentioned various invites.
The ONLY coverage in the U.S. has been about who wasn’t there:
HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday scoffed at Bush administration efforts to ease social problems in Latin America, boasting his poor country could run circles around the United States in health and education aid.
“Bush will discover that the empire’s political and economic system can’t compete in the area of vital services such as education and health with Cuba, assaulted and blockaded for almost 50 years,” Castro wrote in an editorial published by the official newspaper Rebel Youth.
Mexico, by the way, has a low infant mortality rate and does offer free mamograms, though of course, it could do more. One reason I live on the border is cheap health care across the border…It ain’t perfect, but:
“The Mexican health reform has been a global laboratory for proving how to give access to a range of vital services to the entire population,” said Dr. Richard Horton, a physician and editor of The Lancet, an international medical journal. “It is a model even rich nations can learn from.”
If we really wanted to assist Latin American health care, we could begin at home…
Another consequence of the lack of healthcare for the poor in the United States is that OUR immigrant labor is sending home more than money. Mexico’s low AIDS rate is growing, due to our neglect of public health.
Marc Lacey in the International Herald Tribune:
Migrant workers … go to the United States with dreams of new prosperity, hoping to bring back dollars. But they are bringing back something else as well, HIV and AIDS, and they are spreading them in the rural parts of Mexico least prepared to handle the epidemic.
As immigration reform founders in the United States, the expanding AIDS crisis among the migrants goes virtually unaddressed on both sides of the border. Particularly in Mexico, AIDS is still shrouded by stigma and denial. In the United States, it is often assumed that immigrants bring diseases into the country, not take them away.
But AIDS is spreading quickly in rural Mexican states with the highest migration rates to the United States, researchers say. The greatest risk of contracting AIDS that rural Mexican women face is in having sex with their migrant husbands, a new study found, a problem that is compounded by the women’s inability to insist that their husbands use condoms.
The AIDS rate in Mexico is relatively low, especially in rural areas. According the the International AIDS/HIV Alliance, “It is still largely concentrated among men who have sex with men, but there has been a gradual shift towards injecting drug users and women becoming more affected.”
I remember the guy from Chiapas who chose to die in front of the Palacio Nacional as a protest against the lack of treatment in rural communities. That was in late 2001, before Julio Frenk’s reforms at the Secretaria de Salud were implemented. Frenk did a lot of make sure more treatment was available, fought for anti-discrimination laws and better sex education. What’s frightening now is that his successor seeks to undo much of what has worked in the past.
At least in the Capital, there is treatment (though the tight public health budget can only go so far, and the drugs are hugely expensive. Military personnel who contract AIDS cannot be booted out of the service, but have the right to treatment in military clinics and hospitals.
There have been creative campaigns — Farmacias Similares sells their own brand of discount condoms, and their owner ran a somewhat factitious campaign for President of the Republic to push low-cost heath care, free condoms and (of course) his own brand name. The Federal District has regular health fairs. I was at one where a stentorian-voiced drag queen (she must have a day job as a tout in Tepito) was demonstrating proper condom use to the teenage sons of traditional (white pajamas and all) campesinos.
And — much to the chagrin of the Bishops — Mexican education includes comprehensive sex education. But none of this is reaching the rural adults who are likely to emigrate.
Our anti-immigration folks like to whine that immigrants use the public health facilities here (which may be more anecdotal than anything. POOR PEOPLE use public health facilities in the U.S. UNINSURED people use public health facilities), but you won’t hear boo out of them about this.
I expect we MAY hear more about this though, as we get closer to the 2008 International AIDS Conference which will be held in Mexico City.
I’ve gotta ask — again (sorry)
The Mex Files is a weird sort of beast. In theory, a Mexican-based blog written in English, the Mex Files is able to focus on Mexico and Mexican culture, politics, history and lifestyles, but that creates a problem. It doesn’t fall easily into any particular niche, nor is it formally part of any blogger community. Not being written by Latinos, it’s not a Latino blog; not being focused on U.S. politics, it’s not a progressive blog.
The only “community” that the Mex Files can turn for to support is its own regulars (though outside assistance is welcome).
Last time I asked for money, I tried being “cute”, and low key. Others were raising money at the same time, and I figured my needs weren’t quite as pressing — at least I’m single and could get away with ignoring things I shouldn’t (like my health) for a few months. And, with some income from free-lancing for local newspapers, I had SOMETHING coming in.
The free-lancing has pretty much dried up, trying to get a commercial site up and running is “on-hold” while I take care of immediate needs and call me a sucker, but when you live in a small community, you are obliged to help your neighbors.
Unfortunately, the neighbor stuck me with bad checks (I’d get her groceries and whatnot for her) which caused my checks to bounce (and run up charges). The neighbor is apparently incompetent, and there is no way to collect, though her family — after some misunderstanding — paid back some of the funds.
Last time I asked, several generous people responded. Thanks so far this time to Thomas, David, Adrian and Jonathan for kick-starting things over the weekend, but having gotten by this long by making minimum payments, the late fees and bills are still overwhelming .
My debts are around $1500, and, while I’ve been getting by (not well) on less than I should, I can get by on about $1000 a month. If the regulars ponied up about $30 a year, that would cover everything. I know some people can’t and understand… but, hey, folks think I’m a commie anyway, so “from each according to his ability…”
You can click the “paypal” button if you have a credit card and are donating with U.S. dollars. Or you can write me (“richmx2-AT-excite-DOT-com” with MEX FILES in the subject line for a mailing address and check information.
The Mormons built Teotihuacan?
Having grown up 2 blocks from the hoity-toity High Church Episcopalian Hobart and William Smith Colleges campus in Geneva, New York, summers always meant the invasion of the Mormons. The … literally … cast of thousands for the Mormon Pageant stayed in the dorms, which brought in a chunk of dough.
Unless you ran a tavern (and in those days, Geneva, pop. 17,000 .. being half blue-collar and half college town had at least about 50 of ’em) Mormons are sort of the ideal tourists. They spend money and you never see em. We’d all be at Cosies’, or Pinky’s, or the Twin Oaks, or the Kashong Inn, or the Knights of Columbus,
or …
I’ve seen the Pageant a few times, but I was very little at the time, so other than there were a bunch of colorful “Indian” rituals (followed by the appearance of Jesus), I don’t remember much. But hey… you don’t get too many spectaculars coming though small upstate New York towns, and the drive to Palmayra for a free show sure beat the drive to Syracuse or Rochester for some third-string “Holiday on Roller Skates” or whaterver was offered to us upstate yahoos.
So, while Burro Hall gets snarky what the hey… it’s more yankee dollars:
PHOENIX (AP)- In a corner of ancient ruins, not far from the towering Pyramid of the Sun, a small group of Mormons sat among the milling tourists in Teotihuacan, Mexico, and gazed across what they believe to be their holy land.
“This is just what it says in the Book of Mormon about the Jaredites,” Bill Welsh of Provo, Utah, said excitedly as an archaeologist described how internal strife sped the downfall of Teotihuacan.
For the world’s 13 million Mormons, the ruins of Mexico and Central America are hallowed ground, a place where Old Testament tribes settled after traveling across the ocean and where Jesus came to preach after his Resurrection. Although archaeologists say there is scant evidence to back up such beliefs, a growing number of travelers are paying thousands of dollars to search for connections on Mormon-themed tours and cruises.
…
Mormons believe that three groups of people – the Jaredites, the Mulekites and the family of a Hebrew merchant named Lehi – sailed from the Middle East and settled in the Americas hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.
The descendants of Lehi split into two camps, the Nephites and the Lamanites, and were visited by Jesus after his Resurrection around A.D. 34, Mormons believe. The Nephites kept records of their history on gold plates.
The Nephites were destroyed by rival tribes around A.D. 385, the church says. One of the last surviving Nephites wandered through the Americas and eventually buried the plates in New York.
Hugo de Groot, may have been a great 17th century thinker and humanist, but he had his eccentric opinions. The best of them was that there are rules to warfare (he was responsible for the first interantional laws, which centuries later George W. Bush and company were so eager to break). The oddest, based on his conversations with a Dutch rabbi who had somehow been in Peru, was that because the Incas were circumcised, it followed that the Native peoples of the Americas were the lost tribe of Israel.
The Aztec legends of having wandered in the desert for several years (though Huitzilopochtli wasn’t quite the same as a “pillar of smoke by day, and of fire by night”) led a few Spanish priests down the primrose path as well. Joseph Smith wasn’t the first to develop the idea.
And, besides, what’s a few thousand Mormon religious pilgrims? I lived within a couple of blocks of the Basilica of Guadalupe, which gets more visitors than any other religious site in the Americas, and more than even Saint Peter’s in Rome. 14 million or so a year, and it may be chump change, but it’s not a bad business to be in.
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” I’m sure, but I wish I could afford to keep giving you the Mex Files. I’m $1500 in debt, and have been running this site on hit-or-miss free-lance writing which isn’t paying the bills.
I’m not counting on a miracle, but I have faith that people are willing to keep the Mex Files alive.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the border
Ryan Holeywell in Saturday’s McAllen Monitor
ROMA — About 100 people came out Saturday to the scenic bluffs overlooking the Rio Grande to demonstrate their opposition to the border fence, arguing it will ultimately be ineffective at addressing immigration and only cause grave harm to animal habitats along the river’s shores.
The event was highlighted by a trip some 40 rowers in kayaks and canoes took along the river from nearby Fronton to Roma.
The rowers’ 5-mile journey was meant to symbolize that people in the Rio Grande Valley don’t want a barrier that could interfere with the river since so many people use it for recreation and it is important to the local environment, said Betty Perez, one of the event’s organizers. A similar event was held Saturday evening in Brownsville.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to build 270 miles of fence and 200 miles of vehicle barriers along the border by the end of next year. Of the 125 miles of fencing planned for Texas, most would be in the Valley, according to a map recently leaked to the media.
“The Valley is really united on this,” Perez said of opposition to the fence. “Nobody wants it for different reasons. We understand how stupid putting up a wall is.”
As boaters arrived in Roma, protesters carried signs with slogans such as “Say No to the Wall of Shame” and “WMDs — Walls of Mass Destruction.” They chanted “No wall!” from their perch on the bluffs, which overlook Mexico’s Ciudad Miguel Alemán.
Wenche Garcia of Roma was among those who showed up to greet the rowers.
As an amateur archaeologist, he said he worries that constructing a fence in the area could destroy artifacts of indigenous people.
Like many who oppose construction of the fence, John Martin said he instead supports establishing a so-called “virtual fence” that relies on technology and personnel to detect illegal aliens.
Martin said he understands that something needs to be done to address the threat of terrorism, but a virtual fence would be more effective than the current plan.
“This (fence) is a stone-age solution to a 21st century problem,” he said.
Nancy Brown of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it’s hard for her to have a definitive opinion on the fence since some details are unknown, but a barrier could harm animal habitats, affect their migration patterns and interfere with their genetics by splitting populations in two.
“If you’re a tortoise and you run into eight miles of fence, you have a problem,” Brown said.
Animals don’t adapt to great environmental change quickly enough to survive the changes a fence would cause, said Martin Hagne of the Valley Nature Center in Weslaco.
But some organizations say the border as it stands now is a security risk, and fences are a part of protecting the country and enforcing immigration laws.
Jonathan Reed, a spokesperson for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which opposes illegal immigration, said environmentalists should understand that the government would be able to evaluate and control the effect a fence would have on the environment.
“The amount of actual impact on the environment is much less than the hordes of migrants that come across and leave tons of trash everywhere,” Reed said.
The routes people take look like dumps.”
Wanna bet Mr. Reed ain’t from around Roma/Cd. Alemán?
No Border Wall is a coalition of those who oppose the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border because of the wide-ranging social, environmental, economic, and psychological destruction such a barrier will cause.
Round up the (un)usual suspects
(slightly updated 15-July… I made a stupid translation error — taking “junque” for “yoke” instead of “anvil”. It surprised me to discover that this shadowy Francoist organization was written about in today’s Dallas Morning News, so I added a link to my discussion of this particular suspect)
I’ve had my doubts about who bombed the oil ducts in Guanajuanto. It’s obvious that the Calderón Administration is the beneficiary, and there are too many good reasons to doubt the ERP was behind this (Citius64 comes up with one I hadn’t thought of: besides being too small and never having been a significant guerrilla organziation, the ERP communiques talk about socialism — bombing the one major socialist state enterprise makes absolutely no logical sense).
The “official story” and the communiques are too suspicious NOT to ask” cui bono?”. Basically, PAN’s knee-jerk association of all leftists with AMLO and the FAP hasn’t sold. ERP, if they are still functional, wouldn’t have used a phrase like “illegitimate presidency” since they think the state is illegitimate. And that’s gotten people thinking…
Some of the latest suspects:
With the information that gangster Zenli Ye Gon was an informant for the United States, and his stories about stashing cash for PAN and PRI aren’t that far-fetched. This is becoming a HUGE embarrassment for Calderón administration, and is a potential one for the U.S. U.S. intelligence agencies can never be ruled out.
Right-wing paramilitaries? There aren’t any left-wing ones in Mexico, and conditions in Mexico just don’t favor leftist guerrilla actions. Paras have staged these types of attacks on government installations in the Philipines and Colombia to justify military attacks on their enemies.
Foreign business interests, or people within PEMEX itself? Why not? The Fox Administration seems to have wanted PEMEX mismanged so that there was a rationale to privatize it. That didn’t work, so why some structural damage that doesn’t really lower the sales price?
Religious right-wingers? El Junque (from the Spanish Falangist’s “Yoke and Arrows”, symbolizing the Royalist and Catholic wing of the party) is blamed for everything that the CIA and foreign business interests aren’t. But they are real, and what had only been whispered about in Mexico before (or confined to the left-wing press) is openly discussed. El Yunque — a Francoist group going back to the 1950s — has the money and power to pull off attacks, and is active in the states where the explosions occurred, which the ERP is not.
And my favorite… DICK MORRIS! Yup, the former Clinton advisor turned Fox News analyst and sometime PAN advisor. Marcelio Ebrard has floated this one, which nicely ties China-gate and the explosion together. I said earlier there was no Mexican Dick Cheney, but there is a Mexican Dick Morris… Dick himself. He was up to his eyeballs in the anti-AMLO campaign — feeding misinformation to the press (Morris was the one who pushed the AMLO=Hugo Chavez spin so popular with U.S. talking heads) and this is right up his alley.
Please, please, please let it be true 🙂
Free Checking… or else!
During my stint as an illegal alien in Mexico, about the only difficulty I ever encountered was opening a checking account. I had one in the U.S., so could draw on that for cash from Tarjeros Automaticos (not “ATM”… which is slang for “way cool”). I didn’t feel particularly alone in keeping cash around my apartment, though I did recommend to foreigners moving to Mexico City to think of better places to stash the cash than under the mattress.
This is a good move… Mexico’s banking system has been antiquated and frustrating for years (I once heard a Mexican banker saying that reforms in the 90s moved the banking system boldly into the 16th century). It’s weird, that in theory Mexican banks are even safer than U.S. banks (by law, Mexican banks cannot go broke, and depositors are completely covered. If a bank goes under, it is taken over by the government and sold), but people avoid using them.
The Bloomberg reporter says its the high fees keeping people from using banks, but it goes much deeper than that. People don’t trust banks. They’re bastions of the oligarchy, and there was some support for José Lopez Portillo when he nationalized them in 1982.
Lopez Portillo was barking mad — for unknown reasons he signed an executive order outlawing the teaching of cursive writing in Mexican schools (since rescinded) and vowed to protect the peso like a dog. For the rest of his life, the poor guy couldn’t enjoy a meal in a restaurant without everyone going “woof! woof! woof!”.
His successor, Miguel de la Madrid was a banker. He started the privatization of the Mexican economy, but it was Salinas de Goutari — widely considered a crook — who oversaw the restructuring and privatization of the banks. Most ended up in foreign hands (including, eventually Banco de Mexico, which is owned by Chase). And, everything started to go to hell.
Many blamed the spectacular hyperinflation of the time (between 1975 and the 1992 revaluation, the peso went from 12.5 to the U.S. dollar to about 3500 to the dollar) on the bankers. And there were a series of bank failures involving embezzlements and mismanagement (as there were in the U.S. Savings and Loan collapse during the Reagan administration — which had also sought to loosen government control over the banks).
Though the Mexican banks are secure, the biggest headache for small businesses and consumers is that to be profitable, they have to operate by rules developed for wealthier countries. You just can’t get a small business loan for, say 10,000 pesos, let alone for a very small business loan like 2000 pesos to buy a bicycle for your delivery business, or a washing machine to do the neighbors’ laundry.
Capitalists and socialists unite! Attacking the bankers was a good political move for people like AMLO — who made an international reputation for himself by, of all things, pushing through tighter bank security regulations. Not financial security, but physical security. The rules were modeled on Italian laws and those from the City of Chicago and dealt with things like bulletproof glass and teller’s cages. The bankers, used to free city police protection and egged on by the Fox Administration’s search for some way to pick a fight with AMLO, came out the eventual losers. Meaning, the banks are safer than ever.
But, for a few thousand pesos, why bother. This is where the capitalists come in. Bloomberg mentions WalMart’s banking, but WalMart is a Juanito come lately to the business. Monte Piedad has been offering small loans since the 18th century and the pawnbrokers fill an essential gap (at my company, we once had to pawn a watch to meet payroll, which wasn’t at all unusual for any small business in a country where there’s no good way to borrow against receivables), but pawn shops aren’t exactly modern banking.
Department stores like Electra realized how much they could earn from small loans and — without any altruistic motives — went into giving credit for very small purchases indeed (you can buy a steam iron on credit at Electra). Brazilian store chains had the same idea, and a Banco Azteca teller cage in the back of an Electra store is a lot less intimidating than walking into HCSB for a few hundred pesos.
One other point. The country desperately needs to reform its tax laws. With even small businesses doing mostly a cash business, there’s no way to trace income and create a workable system. A friend of mine talked about “forcing” people to open bank accounts, but Mexicans are geniuses when it comes to subverting anything they are forced to do… seduction might work, but force, no.
It sounds, from the Bloomberg article, like the big guys (Banamex, HSBC, Sandander, Scotiabank — owned by U.S., British, Spanish and Canadian companies respectively) — are the ones who need forced to do business in Mexico the Mexican way.
Mexico to Require Lenders to Offer Free Accounts
By Adriana Arai
July 13 (Bloomberg) — Mexico’s central bank will require lenders to offer free accounts to low- and middle-income consumers to reduce service fees, which authorities say are keeping many Mexicans out of the financial system.
Under new regulations to be published July 16, commercial banks will have 180 days to offer accounts that don’t charge fees for automated-teller machine withdrawals, balance inquiries, debit cards and maintenance, the central bank said today on its Web site.
The requirement will make it easier for millions of Mexicans to open a bank account for the first time while forcing lenders to become more efficient, said Pascual O’Dogherty, head of financial system research at Mexico’s central bank.
“Many people don’t open an account because they’re afraid of the fees,” he said in an interview from Mexico City.
Mexico is stepping up efforts to increase competition in an industry where six banks control almost 90 percent of banking assets. Most of the country’s population of 105 million have no access to financial services. The government last year gave Wal- Mart Stores Inc.’s local unit, Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, a commercial-banking license just as a similar request was denied by U.S. regulators.
Central Bank Governor Guillermo Ortiz, for his part, has made competition a priority since winning a second term in 2003. Ortiz has since required the banks to cut credit- and debit-card fees by $200 million annually and disclose all levies built into loans, among other measures.
The biggest banks in Mexico are units of Bilbao, Spain- based Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, New York-based Citigroup Inc. and Banco Santander SA. HSBC Holdings Plc’s unit is the fourth largest. Enrique Castillo, president of the Association of Mexican Banks, wasn’t available today to comment on the new regulations, according to his office in Mexico City.
The new rules apply to any account where individuals deposit as much as 165 times the daily minimum wage per month — about 8,000 pesos ($743) — and to any payroll account, O’Dogherty said. Such threshold covers most of Mexico’s population, he said. The central bank doesn’t have an estimate for how many accounts would benefit or how many people may enter the banking system for the first time, he said.
Just a fifth of Mexico’s 25.8 million households use financial services, according to a 2004 survey by the government’s statistics agency, the latest available.
A Mexican 9-11?
“As the classic says, ‘war is politics by other means.'”
(ERP 2nd Communique)
As we’ve seen in the U.S. with the “war on terror” and the “war on immigrants”, for a shaky electorial minority presidency there’s nothing like a crisis to rally the people. Laura Carlsen’s “
Militarizing Mexico: The New War on Drugs (Foreign Policy in Focus, 12 July 2007) was written before the explosions.
Calderon seeks to expand the powers of a weak presidency and consolidate an image of a strong leader in the context of a deeply polarized society. In March, he presented a list of constitutional reforms that would eliminate the need for a court order for phone taps, detentions, and searches in the case of organized crime. Barbara Zamora, a prominent lawyer and human rights defender, stated that the proposed constitutional reforms “would create a Patriot Law ala mexicana, where constitutional rights and civil liberties are annulled.”
Other measures that form part of the Mexican offensive include military operations that have resulted in daily deaths both from confrontations between the army and the drug traffickers, and battles between drug cartels seeking to re-establish control over territory and leadership. Mandatory drug testing is now taking place in the schools. Scores of drug traffickers have been extradited to the United States. In May, Calderon announced the formation of the Special Corps of Federal Support Forces of the Mexican Army and Air Force, under the direct command of the presidency.
But with the “drug war” going so badly, there is a need to use those “special forces” for something.
Hector Tobar mentions (in passing) in an article for the LA Times (13 July 2006) about the business impact of the temporary gas shortage:
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched a new 5,000-strong elite military unit to guard strategic sites, including oil refineries and hydroelectric dams, in the wake of guerrilla attacks on pipelines operated by the national oil and gas company, Pemex, according to news reports Thursday.
…
The attacks shook a government already facing challenges on several fronts: drug traffickers who outgun the police in several areas, a stalled immigration reform bill in the United States, and declining output from Pemex, the country’s main source of foreign exchange.
“All we Mexican men and women of good will categorically reject violence because we wish to live in liberty and peace,” Calderon said Wednesday in his only reference to the attacks this week.
He is dispatching the Corps of Federal Support Forces, an elite army unit created in May for the government’s war against drug trafficking, the newspaper El Universal reported Thursday. Mexican officials confirmed the presence of troops at the oil facilities but did not say which units were sent.
While intelligent people disagree about who (if anyone) was behind the gas line explosions, all agree the “War on Drugs” has been a spectacular failure. Carlos Montemayor, who has written extensively on guerrilla movements in Mexico, believes ERP was capable of pulling off an attack, and did so. AMLO, who everyone thought was nuts for claiming attacks on him were a government plot – and then turned out to be correct – thinks the explosions were an inside job (Cronica de hoy, 13 July 2007)
AMLO (and others) believe the “guerrilla attacks” were staged to divert attention from the rather messy fallout to the spectacular cash seizure earlier this year from Zhenli Ye Gon’s meth operation. Ye Gon’s charges that the cash was illegal campaign funds for PAN seemed crazy, but there’s meat to his story. ( ) If nothing else is suspicious, Ye Gon is walking around perfectly free in New York, and he had a PRI Senate floor pass on him which has never been explained (Mexican drug dealers aren’t simple banditos, but modern business executives. Maybe they have their own lobbyists).
If you’ve read the ERP communiques, they mention that military abuses – recent ones by soldiers fighting the drug war – was one of the rationales for their sabotage. If ERP was indeed involved, their reaction may be misguided, but their unease at the military presence is not radical. Among foreigners, it’s not just us crazy lefties with our human rights concerns who worry either. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs and military analysts have also been concerned about the effect on the military itself.
While the claims that the “9-11” attacks in New York and Washington were an “inside job” are considered the property of a lunatic fringe, there is no denying the events were a godsend to the Bush administration, which was still considered illegitimate by at least a quarter of the people. In Mexico, more than a quarter consider the Calderón administration illegitimate, and there’s every indication that the gas duct explosions are going to be used to attempt to rally the people. However, as with the “war on the cartels” they may fail. Thankfully, so far as I know, there is no Mexican version of Dick Cheney.
Ritmo permanent solution in search of a problem
Allen Essex writes in the The Valley Morning Star that a 1000 “bed” (should that be “convict”) expansion is planned for Ritmo:
RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County officials have taken preliminary steps to build a 1,000-bed expansion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
Planning for three permanent buildings is in the works, rather than additional Kevlar dome tent-type structures that are being used now, Sheriff Larry Spence said.
“They’ve been having meetings with Homeland Security and ICE,” the sheriff said. “They’re wanting to expand. They’re waiting (for federal approval). At least they’re laying the groundwork for it.”
…
When the first phase of the federal detention enter was opened in August 2006, federal officials said it was designed to hold 500 illegal immigrants.
Carl Stuart, spokesman for Management and Training Corp., the company that operates the Willacy detention center under a contract with ICE, said he could not comment on future plans at the center without clearance from federal officials.
Great… so the “temporary” facility at Raymondville is now a permanent institution. Of course, now there’s an economic incentive to maintain a steady supply… i.e., keep “illegals” illegal, so there’s a reason to lock em up.
“Identity Theft” seems to be the newest one. Stace Medellín (Dos Centavos) wonders
Who stole the identities? They’re going around accusing people who just want to work of “ID theft,” but one has to realize that all they did was purchase the documents. The document sellers are the ones that actually stole the identities. ICE is going after the wrong people, yet, again! It’s like the drug trade–we go after users, instead of the source. And instead of providing help to users, we punish them. So goes with the immigrant community: Instead of ensuring a path to legalization without a backlog at CIS, we simply accuse them of something and knock them off the line.
What brought the question to Stace’s mind, was another immigrant roundup at Swift Meat Packing plants. With a nice, permanent facility, we can’t do that… not enough units of flesh to fill the beds that need to be rented out.
Incidentally, and I don’t know if it is related, but Swift has been sold to the Brazilian firm JBS S.A. So, meat packing, the U.S. innovation that built the Middle West, and has been the traditional employer of immigrants since the beginning (remember “The Jungle“?) is now dominated by the Brazilians. Geeze, the ultimate beneficiaries of the exploited labor won’t even be in the U.S.
I wonder if the meat-packing executives got nervous about the nativist calls for prosecuting the employers of “illegal immigrants.”
Not a good faith proposal
For some reason the “theme of the week” seems to be bombings and religion (and I managed to combine the two last Tuesday). Enough about bombs for a while (and even “Touch of Evil”, now that I think about it starts with a car bombing). Though one hopes this idea bombs… or that the Calderón administration wants to drop one:
In the next several days, the Catholic Church in Mexico will present to Congress a package of constitutional reforms in order to attain “a true religious freedom, without leaving behind the secular state,” said Armando Martínez Gómez, legal representative of the Archdiocese of Mexico City at a July 8 press conference.
Two days later, the Mexican Bishops’ Conference issued a statement supporting the initiative. “When the Church demands religious freedom, it is not asking for a gift, a privilege or a license depending on contingent political situations or on the authorities’ will, but is demanding effective recognition of an inalienable right,” says the bishops’ communiqué. (California Catholic Daily)
Some might disagree. What the Church wants is “to give the clergy “total” freedom of expression in political affairs and to let public schools offer religious education.” (A.P, via Forbes).
This is not just a minor change. After backing a series of coups and foreign invasions (the hierarchy welcomed both Winfield Scott and Maxmiliano de Hapsburgo into the country) and backing two civil wars (the Reforma of the 1850s, and the Cristero War of the 1920s) there is a good reason the State wants to keep the Church out of governmental affairs.
And, notice I say THE Church. While about 3/4th of Mexicans claim allegiance to the Catholic Church, they don’t necessarily mean the “One True Catholic And Apostolic Church” of Roman… they could mean any of a dozen Mexican Catholic Churches, or they could be simply using “Catholic” to mean their culture. I’ve said before that Mexico is a “Catholic country” the same way Slovakia or France are.
Besides appealing to the most reactionary elements in society, it’s not just what in the U.S. is called the “secular agenda” — gay rights, , legalized abortion and birth control — that are threatened, but also the rights of minorities, an historical injustice in religious states, and one that sometimes happens in the secular one.
The strictest clerical restrictions in the 1917 Constitution were amended in the 1990s making CLERGY (not Churches) equal to other citizens. As CLERGY they cannot make political statements, but Rev. Jose Lopez can write as Citizen Jose Lopez. And, like Durango Archbishop Hector Garcia Martinez, they do try to influence political decisions from the pulpit now without interference.
Churches are Religious Associations — having a different purpose than other corporations, but not particularly onerous. I got a few laughs out of clerical restrictions when I went to apply for my work permit wearing black pants, a white shirt and a gray sweater and was in line just behind two Dominican nuns. Since Mexican clerics don’t usually wear “obvious” clothing, I got sent to the wrong line, and ended up with the wrong form. Ah well, that’s bureacracy, not religious discrimination.
But what THE Church (the only “true Church,” we’re told) wants is access to public schools, and the right — as a Church — to take a role in politics. In the schools, this would mean violating the rights of other citizens (the right to any belief — or NO belief — is in the Constitution). And make no mistake about it. THE Church has a political party: PAN.
Unlike the conservative Evangelicals in the U.S. Republican Party, this is ONE denomination trying to set the political and social agenda, and control the state. Even with a pluralistic society where no one denomination is dominant (as it is in Mexico), one can understand very quickly why this is a bad idea by looking at this tape from people who supposedly are sworn to uphold freedom of religion.
The last honest cop in Mexico…
TJ Shroat (In The Pink Texas) FINALLY got around to seeing “A Touch of Evil” the 1957 classic thriller set in the good old days of drug smuggling, when we had, as “Mike” Vargas puts it “1400 miles without a machine gun emplacement. I suppose that all sounds very corny to you.”
The film noir classic, which I watched for the first time last week, is great at times and head-scratchingly awful at others. Mostly, I came away wondering how the participants and the movie itself ever came together almost fifty years ago, and delighted by the ironic resonance of border relations between then and now.
…
Charlton Heston … plays Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas, the last good, uncorrupted Mexican cop to appear in cinema until Benicio Del Toro in Traffic. Yes, that’s right. Charlton Heston plays a Mexicoan. If nothing else about Touch of Evil sounds appealing to you, at least view it for the chance to see Heston in Latinoface. Heavy Latinoface.
…
In the climatic scene of the movie, Vargas escapes to Mexico after parting the Rio Grande, then closing it on the pursuing Quinlan. He then notices the head of the Statue of Liberty, buried in the sand. Vargas: “¡Tú maniacos! ¡Lo soplaste para arriba! ¡Amperio hora, maldición tú! ¡Maldición del dios tú todo al infierno!”
Uh, T.J., ¿Fumaba un poquito mota ?
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