Abortion: no news is good news
I ran across an excellent source of Mexican reporting, out of Minneapolis, of all places. Johnny Hazard (that can’t be a real name) writes for the Pulse of the Twin Cities. Contrarary to the “big protests” reported in the “mainstream press,” the real news is that there is very little debate in Mexico over decriminalizing abortion:
A proposal to legalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy has the support of five of the seven parties represented in the legislative assembly of Mexico City and will likely pass on April 24.
The proposal comes from legislators of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) and Partido de la Revolución Institucional (PRI) and has the support of three smaller center-left parties. There has been little grassroots feminist organizing to promote the change, but even less protest from the usual suspects. The Catholic hierarchy promoted, with free publicity from most of the compliant news media, a march on Sunday, March 25 that only drew about 4,000 people. (The second installment of the National Convention for Democracy, an outgrowth of the movement that centers around Andrés Manuel López Obrador, against electoral fraud and its related vices, drew around 300,000 people the same day. Guess which event got more media coverage?
…
The Catholic Church still wields economic and political power, but has much less influence over personal lives. Eighty- five percent of Mexicans continue to call themselves Catholics—down from 90 percent. (The figure is probably much lower in Mexico City.) But only 6 percent attend church once a week or more. The history of anticlerical reforms in Mexico goes back to the mid-19th century, when the constitution of 1857 stripped religious weddings of legal validity—many people now have a religious and a civil ceremony—and seized the riches of the church.
Hazard is the one of the few foreign reporter I’ve seen who’s caught on that Mexico is a “normal” country, no more “Catholic” than other overwhelmingly Catholic nations like France or the Czech Republic.
Every AP (and Reuters and even AFP) story repeats “Mexico is 90% Catholic” with the same mindlessness they used to call Vicente Fox “Vicente Fox, whose election ended 70 years of one-party rule” (a fine point, but the PRI didn’t exist befor 1948, which made a hash of the arithmatic. The “one party” was a coalition of the Revolutionary winners, and included several parties for many years. The only thing unique about the PRI was that it was able to win– by hook or by crook — about 70% of the vote over the years. There were always minority parties in Congress, and in state and municipal offices).
I think the word I’m looking for is “meme.” Which I guess means “easy explanation by way of a phrase”. And, the “easy explanation” is usually wrong, or incomplete. Not that Johnny Hazard … or I… or anyone else has the entire story. I write about Mexico because it is so complex, and there is more than even an underemployed obsessive can handle.
I’ve had to go through some pretty odd sources… everything from provincial newspapers and conversations with ambulantes or people on the ruta or read through neo-fascist websites, and look through “solidarity with the third world” position papers or look at what the tourist sites say. And read everything and talk to everybody. And still sometimes I miss what’s NOT there.
Johnny Hazard, whoever he is, should be better known than he is. I guess I’ve got to add Minnesota alternative press publications to my regular reading list.
Fashion Miss-take
EEEEEWWWW!
From the Miss Universe Pageant:
Miss Mexico, Rosa Maria Ojeda, presented the dress March 29, showing off the billowing, hoop skirt adorned with sketches of Catholic rebels hanging from posts. Rosaries and scapulars hung from the bullet-studded, bandolier belt; a large crucifix necklace, black halter top and wide-brimmed sombrero completed the outfit.
¡Qué barbáro!
The dress was thought to be “politically incorrect,” given the present drug violence in Mexico, and the abortion issue. Yeah, there’s that, but current events in Mexico are always discussed in historical terms.
The dress reflects the “reactionary” view of the the “Cristero War”, of the 1920s. Yes, maybe the dress has something to do with abortion or drug violence, but it has a hell of a lot more to do with support for the extreme right in contemporary Mexico.
Yes, indeed, Catholics were hanged — and a few became “martyrs for the faith”. According to the reactionary wing of PAN (which is descended from the Mexican fascist movement, “sinarchismo” that was taken up by the unreconstructed hristeros), the Christeros were the victims of the secular state.
It’s more the other way around. The “Cristeros” were blowing up civilians, assassinating leaders (including Álvaro Obregón) and killing schoolteachers. There were some genuine injustices in the state’s response (a few probably innocent men like the Pro Suarez brothers are recognized as “saints and martyrs” by the Catholic Church). But, it’s not OUR interest in a change in Mexican abortion law that makes the dress outrageous. It’s the not-so-subtle attempt to justify terrorism. In U.S. terms it would be like Miss Georgia wearing a dress showing the burning of Atlanta, and having the press assume it had something to do with 9-11, instead of what it would be… nostalgia for a reactionary past.
Besides which, as Vivarlatina mentions, the dress is just plain ugly. Or at least really naco.
Eat the rich…
Global warming isn’t just for polar icecaps. It’s going to have a profound effect on those of us along the border, especially in the Chihuahua Desert, which always has been a kind of unforgiving climate, even in the best of times.
Those cranks living out in the hills around here (and the Mennonite farmers on the other side of the river) may have the right ideas, but how long they’ll be able to hold out when the water dries up (or … more likely… it becomes another exploitable resource) is questionable. At least we don’t have a lot of people out here on the Texas/Chihuahua border. On the other hand…
Mike Davis, Global Warming Hits Southwest (The Nation, 16-April 2007)
As water becomes more expensive, the burden of adjustment to the new climatic and hydrological regime will fall on subaltern groups like farmworkers (jobs threatened by water transfers), the urban poor (who could easily see water charges soar by $100 to $200 per month), hardscrabble ranchers (including many Native Americans) and, especially, the imperiled rural populations of Northern Mexico.
Indeed, the ending of the age of cheap water in the Southwest — especially as it may coincide with the end of cheap energy — will accentuate the region’s already high levels of class and racial inequality as well as drive more emigrants to gamble with death in dangerous crossings of the border deserts. (It takes little imagination, moreover, to guess the Minutemen’s future slogan: “They are coming to steal our water!”)
Conservative politics in Arizona and Texas will become even more envenomed and ethnically charged, if that is possible. The Southwest is already sown everywhere with violent nativism and what can only be described as proto-fascism: In the droughts to come, they may be the only seeds to germinate.
As Jared Diamond points out in his recent bestseller Collapse, the ancient Anasazi did not succumb simply to drought but rather to the impact of unexpected aridity upon an over-exploited landscape inhabited by people little prepared to make sacrifices in their “expensive lifestyle.” In the last instance, they preferred to eat one another.
Sopa Azteca, anyone?
“Clash of civilizations” in Chiapas village
The Mexican Constitution seems to be a progressive document. Articulo I grants personal rights regardless of national or ethnic origin, gender, age, financial status, sexual orientation, physicial condition, religion, personal opinion or marital status (and, adds for good measure… “any attribute used to depreciate or discriminate against personal dignity”).
On the other hand, in August 2001, the Fox Administration pushed through a change in the constitution at the behest of the Zapatistas. Article II, Secc. A gives indigenous COMMUNITIES the right to self-determination. This “settled”, at least temporarily, the Zapatista uprising. It was part of a negotiated settlement, brokered mostly by Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas. And, it illustrates the two currents that have run through Mexican though for at least the last 200 years: modernity and tradition. Respecting the rights of the individual is modern. Community control is traditional.
Modernity is not necessarily progressive – peonage and neo-colonialism were the result of Porfirio Diaz’ “cientifico” modernization program, and the economic disaster of the 1990s was the result of applying “modern” solutions to perceived problems. The traditionalists may not be reactionary: Lopez Obradór was calling for a return to the traditions of the Revolution… which were, for the most part “modernist” ideas drawn from the anarchists and socialists of the early 20th century.
I’ve said before that my problem with the Zapatistas is that they are “traditionalists” and, by definition, are repressing individual rights. I’d like to believe that the right-on liberal ELZN directives to accept women as equals and to not discriminate against sexual minorities would apply to all Mexican, they don’t. By insisting on the rights of COMMUNITIES to determine their own “usos y costumbres,” the Zapatistas (and the conservatives that supported the constitutional amendment) are permitting communities to discriminate and abuse non-conformists… or drive them out of their homes.
We like to simplify the situation in Chiapas as just something involving “poor Indians” fighting outsiders who ride roughshod over local traditions. But, sometimes the local traditions are repressive (like childhood marriage) or the “poor Indian” is a non-conformist. But, by law, “usos and traditiones” are the law in Indigenous communities. Which leaves the minorites where?
The Mexican press reported yesterday on an attack on an Evangelical church in San Juan Chmula, Chiapas . The Tzotzil community is overwhelmingly Catholic Traditionalist (which is an independent organization from the Roman Catholic Church). According to the article in Jornada, the Traditionalists made a decision at a Saturday meeting to drive the Evangelicals out – and attacked the Iglesia Evangélica Pentecostés Independiente Tzotzil with machetes, bats and picks. The building was destroyed and two people were arrested. The news reports do not say which of the two congregations the arestees belonged to.
Iglesia Evangélica Pentecostés Independiente Tzotzil is affiliated with the Alas de Aguila sect. The American evangelical news service, Compass Direct News, has more details of ongoing persecution of the sect’s members:
Juan Mendez Mendez became a Christian in a village outside of this city in Chiapas state on April 7, and two days later local authorities put him in jail – for leaving their religious blend of Roman Catholicism and native custom.
A catechist or doctrinal instructor in the “traditionalist Catholic” church in the village of Pasté (pahs-TEH), the 25-year-old Mendez was released on Tuesday (April 10) after spending the night in jail. The previous Easter Sunday, political bosses in the Tzotzil Maya village noticed him missing from a church festival involving what Mendez considered to be idolatrous rites; they summoned him that evening.
…
The town leaders threatened to jail Mendez, and the following day they summoned him again after consulting with villagers, including other catechists. Mendez verified to them that he had heard the gospel in another community and now wanted to become part of an Alas de Aguila (Eagle’s Wings) church in Pasté, he said.
The report goes on to cover Pastor Antonio Vasquez’ history with the larger Tzotil community:
Vasquez, whose church has grown to 60 to 80 mainly Tzotzil- or Tzeltal-speaking people since he began it in 1996, is no stranger to area persecution from traditionalist Catholics.
In 1998, local political bosses (caciques) put him in jail for 24 hours without food. In 2000, he was released from jail only after the intervention of Chiapas Religious Affairs officials – who promptly demanded that he contribute to and participate in the traditionalist Catholic religious festivals, which the pastor said amounted to a denial of his faith.
“An attorney from the government told me, ‘You know what? I’m a Christian, but you have to do what we say,’” Pastor Vasquez recalled. “And I told her, ‘As an authority you cannot obligate me to deny my faith, because, as you know very well, that goes against the constitution. Secondly, as a Christian, you cannot obligate me to deny my faith and all the things that my faith requires.’ So she was left something ashamed.”
The state religious affairs ministry had more success forcing his congregation to commit to participating in the traditionalist Catholic rites, which bring caciques not only festival fees but alcohol sales income. The congregation subsequently abandoned him, Pastor Vasquez said.
“They said to me, ‘You like to get into trouble, and we don’t want trouble, so we’ve signed the agreement with the government,’” Pastor Vasquez said. He was going to leave the area, but he said God told him two things: “Cowards flee,” and “Cowards have no part in me.”
Hence he signed the government agreement, which allowed him to continue preaching as long as he contributed to and participated in the traditionalist Catholic festivals – something “very painful,” he said. The church grew so much, however, that by August 20, 2000, the caciques again jailed him, his father and his two brothers – and burned down his house.
Lyn, back when she was writing here (COME BACK, LYN!), criticized Evangelical missionaries for “stirring shit up” in Mexican traditional communities. I agree, and add that Catholicism, for all its faults, made more sense. Evangelicals, after all, believe in personal salvation… and that carries over into the sense of economic and political “salvation”. Catholics, since Saint Augustine, have talked about community, Civitas Dei (the City of God). The traditionalists rejected much of the Catholic reforms of the 1960s, and adapted others to their own community’s traditions.
This is a particularly sensitive issue in Chiapas, where about a third of the people are Evangelicals or Pentacostals. I have no statistics to back me up, but my sense is that the Evangelicals, being more attuned to personalism, are the most likely to emigrate. And I’ve met Traditionalists selling religious objects in Mexico City who were part of a Stalinist collective (a political community, and one that incidentally is about as opposed to Roman Catholic hegenomy as one can get).
I can’t just pick a side… this isn’t my fight (and none of my business, really). I’m too much a modernist and cranky gringo to ever think that the community has a right to tell me what to think or believe. On the other hand, the Evangelicals are the outsiders who threaten community cohesion. The only thing I can do is note that the troubles in Chiapas are never as simple, nor as black-and-white “good guys v bad guys” as we would like.
A little sympathy for the illegal (gringos) aliens
Jacob G. Hornberger originally wrote this for la Prensa (San Diego). It was reprinted in New American Media:
SAN DIEGO — There is a big immigration problem that has been growing year after year. An increasing number of American citizens are moving to Mexico, and some of them are even becoming undocumented workers. Even worse, they are refusing to assimilate and are even insisting on retaining their U.S. citizenship.
Six years ago… Americans in Ajijic were organizing gardening classes and Sunday morning walking clubs. The Lake Chapala Society had a library containing 20,000 books — in English — and an English-language theater. The Super Lake market carried rye bread and every type of Betty Crocker cake mix. Restaurant menus in town were changing from enchiladas to waffles for breakfast. Most of the people at Donas Donuts were Americans, discussing U.S. political issues, presumably in English.
Since then the problem has only intensified. That 2001 article reported that the U.S. Embassy estimated that 600,000 Americans were living in Mexico. Today, Wikipedia puts the number at one million.
The assimilation problem hasn’t gotten any better either. In a recent article entitled “Illegal Gringos,” the Los Angeles Times reported that San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has many retired baby boomers moving into town, a number of whom are performing work without a permit or license.
…
I say, leave those Americans alone. Why shouldn’t they be free to live in Mexico any way they want? If they want to associate only with other Americans, why shouldn’t they be free to do so? Why should they be required to give up their American citizenship just because they’re living in Mexico? Sure, it might be a good idea for them to learn Spanish, but shouldn’t this be left up to them? And yes, some of them are working illegally, but who cares? Aren’t they providing services that people are willing to pay for and that are improving people’s lives? And so what if they’re still flying the American flag, singing the Star Spangled Banner, and celebrating the Fourth of July? Who are they hurting? And does it really matter that they’re rooting for American sports teams instead of Mexican ones?
Leave Americans in Mexico be. Let them pursue happiness in their own way. Isn’t that what freedom is all about?
Hutto… reforms on ICE
I admit it. I missed this story from last Tuesday’s Houston Chronicle. There’s only one of me right now, and Mexico is a huge enough country to try and keep up with, let alone the whole field of immigration. And, yes, I do have a semi-life, and also need to earn a living, pittance that it is…
This is semi-good news, but I still don’t think the detainees prisoners are receiving even the inadequate minimums of schooling required in the State of Texas. And that’s just for starters.
No word yet on the other immigration scandal here. There have been on-going scandals over sexual abuse at Texas Youth facilities, which were so bad, they’ve been put under a special master. Youths whose sentences were extended are being released early, for starts, and indictments are expected soon.
The press had a difficult time with this one… they had to go through all kinds of convolutions to basically say the jailers were forcing boys to blow them regularly, under threats of having their sentences extended or otherwise punished (it’s called rape) and that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Immigrant Youth facility run by the Lutheran Church (which has a good record for running facilities) was supposedly housing “unescorted minor” boys awaiting deportation. Thare are allegations of sexual abuse here as well, but being a federal contract facility, other than closing it down and moving out the boys, we’re not hearing anything more about it. I don’t know where the boys have been transferred, or if they’ve been deported, or put into regular jails or what. Hopefully, not in the Texas Youth Commission facilities.
But, the semi-good news from the Chron:
A federal judge called the continued detention of immigrant children in “substandard conditions” at a controversial center in Texas an “urgent problem,” but declined to release them from custody pending trial.
U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks raised concerns about the treatment of children in the Don T. Hutto Family Residential Center in Taylor in an order setting trial for August.
In March, attorneys for 10 immigrant children sued the federal government, saying the detainees were subject to psychological abuse from guards, received poor medical care and inadequate nutrition at the center, one of only two in the nation that houses immigrant families.
Sparks found the attorneys for the immigrant families were “highly likely” to prevail in arguments that immigration officials had violated legal standards for treatment of immigrant children. The guidelines for treatment of children in federal immigration detention were outlined in a class action settlement in 1997, often called the Flores settlement.
In the ruling, the judge ordered officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to allow detainees involved in the case “reasonable access” to their lawyers and to make available their medical and other records before trial.
The judge also noted that ICE recently has taken steps to improve the conditions at Hutto but found concerns about the licensing of the facility and overall living conditions, according to the order released Monday.
ICE officials issued a statement saying: “ICE is committed to the humane treatment of minors in our care and will continue to work with Williamson County, Texas, to ensure improvements are made as warranted.”
ICE officials opened the Hutto facility, a former medium-security prison, in May 2006 as part of a push to end the controversial “catch and release” policy.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most families arrested for entering the country illegally or overstaying visas were released because of a shortage of space in detention centers. The relatively few families detained were split up, separating the children from the parents.
Sparks wrote that ordering the release of the children and their families would essentially require ICE to bring back “catch and release” for immigrant families accused of being in the U.S. illegally. The judge wrote that he was “reluctant” to make such a decision based on a preliminary hearing.
Lisa Graybill, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said in a statement that attorneys for the detainees are “gratified that after reviewing evidence of the conditions at Hutto, Judge Sparks finds it likely that the government has been violating its obligations.”
ICE officials argued they have taken steps to make the center more family friendly, including improving the quality of the food, increasing classroom time for children and loosening visitation rules.
xx
Sunday was the 50th anniversary of Pedro Infante’s death (in a plane crash in Merida). Cardinal Norberto Rivera had a full house for a change … at least 2000 to hear morning mass, with a sermon built around the theme of “Compassion and Christian Love… and the films of Pedro Infante”. The sermon was carried live via radio, television and internet in Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica, Italy, Germany, Poland and parts of the United States.
Burrohall, who managed to move to Mexico without knowing who Pedro Infante was (how did he get residency… I’m sure it was on the test), nicely summarizes his appeal in gringo terms:
Infante was the most beloved singing movie cowboy of the black-and-white era. Sort of the Mexican Gene Autry, though his iconic stats is more like the Mexican Elvis Presley. Exactly 50 years ago (as of 11:12 this morning), he became the Mexican Buddy Holly.
Burrohall forgot one — the Mexican Rocky (Pepe el Toro). Or maybe Rocky was a Americanized version of Pepe. The Sonora-born self-taught crooner proved he was more than just a singing cowboy with his his performance as a Tepito boxer supporting his family, in the 1953 classic.
Mexico in the 50s was conscious of its move from a rural to an urban culutre, and Pedro Infante’s personal story (the young ambitious provincial who moves to Mexico City and works his way up the social ladder), carried over into his films. He was often typecast as a charro, mostly because of his Norteño accent, but Mexicans saw themselves in Infante’s characters… or the best of themselves: well-intentioned, not always playing by the rules, but within the bounds of tradition. And open to their emotions and experiences.
The posthumously released Tizoc, considered his finest film, cast him as far from a Norteño charro as he could get… as a traditional Indian. Tizoc is a tragedy, the story of a poor, simple indigenous man who falls in love with the visitor from the wider, complicated world, Maria Felix. Felix is clueless that her acts are cultural signs of love, and is unable — or unwilling — to respond.
I don’t think a guy who had three of his children by a woman not his wife (shocking!) is a candidate for “official” sainthood, but the saint of hoods. Elvis and Jesus both are painted on velvet, and both said to have been seen after their death. Rumors that Infante survived the plane crash surface from time to time, and — while there is a Church of Elvis — I don’t think you’ll find Elvis’ image in any Catholic Church… or even semi-Catholic one. However, there is a “saint” (though not approved by the Church) especially dear to Infante’s fellow norteños, Jesus Malverde. While best known as the “narco saint” Malverde is revered by the poor and downtrodden, the Tizocs and Pepes of our time.
Jesus Malverde, probably not being a real person (he was allegedly a bandit in the late 19th century), wasn’t particularly saintly, and nobody knows what he looked like. But, we know what a charro and Mexican hero SHOULD look like.
Tortilla Wars — Cargill and the (not so free) market
Until 1994 (NAFTA D-day), Consupra controlled corn prices. Though widely viewed as corrupt, it bought and stored white corn to dump on the market when consumer prices rose, and provided a base income for farmers. The farmers were happy, the consumers were happy. Cargill, and the other major agri-business mulitnationals were not happy. Under the new regime, Cargill is very happy indeed.
This article appeared only in Spanish in both IRC and Upsidedownworld. Luis Hernández Navarro is the opinion editor of Jornada, where parts of the original appeared.
The new tortilla war
Luis Hernández Navarro (4-April-2007)
Why has the price of tortillas gone up in Mexico? Three basic reasons: first, and most importantly, because of hording and speculation in white corn by agrobusiness monopolies; seconldy, because of the increase in the basic costs of fuel used in the production, transportation and processing of the gain – diesel, electricity and gasoline; third, the rising pricve of maize in the world market as a result of its use in ethanol production.
Mexico is the fourth largest corn producer in the world. Last hear, it harvested 22 million tons, mostly – although not exclusively – white conn. The volume is much lower than the United States: 280 million tons in 2005, though most is yellow corn. That county controls 70% of the world market.
One difference between the other major producers and Mexico, which is important in Latin America, is that Mexican corn is grown for human consumption. We are a culture born from corn.
The fall of Mexican corn
For decades Conasupo ( Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares ) played a fundamental role in regulating the national market, stockpiling, importing and distributing grain. As a result of signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the program was terminated.
Between 1994 and 1998, Conasupo was the seller of last resort. In 1998, Eresto Zedillo said that the major corporate sellers (Maseca, connected with ADM; MINSA, associated with Corn Products International, Arancia and Cargill, and merged with Continental) were in charge of the national market. The former state monopoly,which despite corruption functioned reasonably well, was transferred to private monopolies which had the objective of making rapid returns on their investments.
Dismantling Conasupo was an essential step in privatizing the corn and tortilla market. Other government measures were freeing the price of tortillas in 1999 and closing down Fidelist, a a subsidy program which provided food for 1.2 million families in poor urban areas. c
Another major change in production was to modify the form in which corn was processed. For many years, tortillas were made though a process of nixtamalization [mixing “cal” — limestone, which frees essential amino acids in the corn – in with the grain] which was an key process in milling producing tortillas. This started to change during Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s administration (1988-1994), when tortillas made with processed wheat flour were substituted for nixtamal.
Changing the method of production provoked a strong conflict between the economic actors involved, and was known as “the tortilla war.” Legal battles drastically reduced the importance of the mill and tortilleria owners. In 2003, 49% of tortillas were produced by the major industrial producer. Grupo Maseca had control of 70% of this market. An alliance of the major producers has, in the last five years, grown their market share significantly.
From a national to international price
Commercial producers in Mexico were simultaneously storing local grain and importing it. My controlling inventory, they could demand that prices be lowered or raised according to their needs. They acquired a substantial part of the spring and fall Sinaloa harvest (by far the most important in the Republic, accounting for almost 10 tons in the last spring and fall cycle) at a price of $350 pesos ($30 US Dollars) per ton per ton. They could already count on having nearly a million tons of corn, enough on hand to get into speculation, hold back supplies to articificially raise the prise. Those same ten tons from Sinaloa, sold for 3,500 pesos a ton (US$320) in Mexico City: 2,150 pesos (US$197) over what was paid.
True, the price of corn in the world market had risen in recent months, as a result of the use of corn for distillng ethanol But those increases had no relation to the price of corn in Mexico. On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, bids reached almost US$ 144 a ton, but this is less than half the price corn was sold for in Mexcico City.
The costs of diesel, gasoline and electricity, the overhead costs for transport and processing, rose during the last months of the Vicente Fox administration. This affected the consumer price of tortillas, but overhead only accounts for 30% of the cost of production.
There was absolutely no justification for the jump in the price of tortillas. Neither rising energy costs, nor the jump in prices on the international market justified the consumer price. The central problem was speculation by the elevator owners.
Speculation is the favored market model of those that believe in fully bringing in the NAFTA regulations, dismantling the state development agencies and businesses though savage privatization. The result is a clearly inefficient market, for all intents and purposes, a speculative monopoly. Thanks to politicians like Luis Téllez y Santiago Levy, the Mexican government has cut off its hands when it comes to intervening to create order in the market.
Cargill can’t lose in México
When the price of tortillas goes sky-high, the multinational Carill wins. IF they import corn from the United States, they benefit. If, on the other hand, they export to other countries, they receive subsidies. When they seek approval for the use and explotation of grain terminals in ports, they maintain their profit margin.
Cargill, a 140 year old company, is the second largest privat ecompany in the world, and has 149,000 employees in 72 countries. Fortune magazine lists it as the 20th most important company on the planet. It buys, processes and distributes grain and other agricultural products, describing itself in its literature as: “the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt in your la harina en su pan, el trigo en sus tallarines, la flavor in your food. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the additives in your gasoline. We are the oil in your salad dressing, and the meat, pork or chicken you have at dinner. We are the cotton in your clothes, the stuffing in your sofa and the fertilizer in your field.”
The multinational has had a presence in Mexico for more than 80 years, beginning with forestry operations in the Northeast. In 1972 it opened it’s first office in the country with six employees. When NAFTA came in and after Conasupo ceased operations, there was a huge gap in the Mexican market, which the international giant was poised to fill. It’s presence in Mexican agriculture is overwhelming.
Under NAFTA, corn imports from the United States were subject to yearly caps, with imports over the yearly amount subject to tariffs. However, the Mexican government unilaterally eliminated this protection, permitting any amount of grain to come in without penalties. Between 1994 and 2001, the import quota rose to nearly 13 million tons. The two major agricultural corporations, Cargill and ADM sold most of the U.S. corn sold in Mexico, and benefited enormously from the end of tariffs. In addition, they also benefited from the indirect subsidy they received from Washington in the form of export credits.
Recources under the export credit program were for shareholder costs, storage, handling, transport and cabotage * for transporting Sinaloa grain, as permitted under the regulations of the time, were generous to Cargill. When, as it happened in 2006, the multinational exported hundreds of thousands of tons of grain to other countries, it received export subsidies from the government.
Commercial white corn producers in this country receive what is called an “objective price”. For most of the internatinonal market, the “indifferent price” is used, calculated on the international market by reference to the costs of storage and transport from grain elevators in New Orleans to the ultimate Mexican consumer. The difference between the “objective” and “indifferent” p[rice can fluctuate between 450 and 500 pesos (US$ 40-45) per ton, which is paid by the government, and not by the commercial enterprise, which only receives the “indifferent” price. Cargill, as one of the most important grain elevator operators, receives an important indirect subsidy this way.
En 2002 the Comisión Federal de Competencia [Mexican equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission] authorized Cargill to develop, use and exploit a private port in Guaymas, Sonora, together with Grupo Contri, whose main activity is buying, storing and selling other grains – mostly wheat, corn and sorghum. The giant company also controls the principal grain port in Veracruz.
Cargill was little known of in Mexico until in 2001 Congress approved a special tax on the production and importation of fructose, a corn-based sweetener. The multinational imports around 385,000 tons annually. The affair was a disaster in international commercial courts. Mexico lost their case for the tax.
Cargill is considered responsible for the rise in tortilla prices, having bought and stored 600,000 tones of Sinoloa corn for 650 pesos a ton (US$60) which it turned around months later at 3,500 pesos per ton (US$320). The response was to lift import caps on cereal grains, which is supposed to lower prices and bring benefits. Lorenzo Mejía, president of the Unión Nacional de Industriales de Molinos y Tortillerías (Milling and Tortilla Industrial Union) says, “the millers cannot import grain and use Cargill’s services:
The company has rejected the indignant wave of accusations it has faced. It denies being “the corn in your tortillas” – as it says in its consumer brochures – and, in a press release, claimed, like consumers, masa-produers and tortilla vendors, to be worried by the high price of corn. Cargill blames the price rise on the free market and tells the Mexican public that the rise is due to purchasing by pork producers.
La quiebra de un modelo
The rise in the price of tortillas has demonstrated the weakness of the Mexican state against the monopolies. They control the marketing and production of corn, and can set off a round of inflation without impunity. The Executive has no arms to fight this war.
The federal government’s response to the rise has been pathetic. It closed a few tortillerías, and made a media show of the offensive against abuse and blamed the vendors. It announced no measures to control the price of production, or to alter the basic rules. While the producers approve of the government’s response, claiming they are not responsible for the price jump.
The President has announced that it will allow white corn to be imported without tariffs. But those acquiring the cereal are the same ones responsible for the price increases, and who already control the inventory. And these imports are a blow to Mexican farmers, worried about the country being flooded with bad quality grain, likely to contaminate their seed with transgenetic varieties or seed infected with aflatoxina.
Of course, the Calderón administration has buried the information on the speculators. ASERCA 1 has a detailed report detailed. The present system, in which the federal government subsidizes commercial storage and sale of corn, requires accurate reporting and the ability to control reserves. In spite of this, we only hear of the governments inability to inject itself into the market. The President is not interested in the crisis, except that it gives his government a opening to project legitimacy to the poor. Or, to appear decisive if he steps in to control inflation.
Since the start of NAFTA in January 1994, tortilla prices have risen by 738%. The result has been less consumption, of worse quality.
Mexican food supply now depends much more on the United States. Native seeds have been infected with imported transgenetic varieties. Rural migration has left many rural communites deserted except for the old, woman and children. A substantial part of the cereal production region is at risk, or could be turned to other crops. These other crops will also face a price drop as corn fields are converted to more profitable harvests.
Today we are living through a new tortilla war, different than that in the 90s when different businesses faced off. Now, it is the big argo-businesses against the poor. In this war, the government of Felipe Calderón has clearly sided with the monopolies who helped him gain the Presidency.
Translators’ Note: Cabotage
Cabotage is the same word in English and Spanish, but is a rare word. It is a term from admiralty law, meaning that a foreign carrier can enter a country’s ports, but that goods are transferred to domestic carriers. If Mexican trucks enter the United States, they will not be allowed to drive to your local WalMart, but only to a shipping terminal, where U.S. trucks will carry the goods to WalMart’s warehouses, for example.
Notes
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En www.infoascerca.gob.mx, por SAGARPA (Secretaria de Agricultura, Ganaderia, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación).
Luis Hernández Navarro es Coordinador de Opinión en el periódico La Jornada de México, donde partes del presente texto fueron publicados. Es colaborador con el IRC Programa de las Américas, www.ircamericas.org.
Further Reading
Hernández Navarro, Luis. Tortilla: la quiebra de un modelo
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/01/16/index.php?section=opinion&article=021a1pol (16/01/2007)
Hernández Navarro, Luis. La nueva guerra de la tortilla
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/01/30/index.php?section=opinion&article=021a1pol (30/01/2007)
Hernández Navarro, Luis. Cargill: “El maíz de sus tortillas”
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/01/30/index.php?section=opinion&article=021a1pol (30/01/2007)
Who exploits Oaxaca, eh?
I’d hinted that Canadian mining interests might be a factor in the on-going Oaxaca situation recently. What I wrote then was that we’re all focusing on the protests against the pillagers in the state capital, while the pillaging goes on out in the campo. Mandeep Dhillon, writing for Upside Down World looks at the role the vested interest his country’s business and government have in continued violence and ingovernability in Oaxaca in “Made in Canada Violence: Mining in Mexico“:
Canadian mining corporations in Oaxaca and Chiapas are not just witnesses to the violence that is occurring there but rely on that violence to protect their profits. Businesses and governments have identified one of NAFTA’s short-comings as the failure of its benefits reaching Mexico’s southern states rather than an increase in poverty and inequality caused by NAFTA itself. In more recent business reports and talks between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico focused on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the opening up of Mexico’s energy resources – in particular to Canadian corporations – has been accorded prime importance. (So has the further development of energy sources in Canada.) According to the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, which has been identified as one of the major business think-tanks behind the SPP, “improvements in human capital and physical infrastructure in Mexico, particularly in the center and south of the country, would knit these regions more firmly into the North American economy and are in the economic and security interest of all three countries”. It comes as no surprise that the same corporate and government bodies are calling for expansions of Canada’s exploitative agricultural guest-worker program which they cite as an example of bi-lateral success. For Canadian and Mexican governments and business, such guest-worker programs are a win-win situation as they provide a means to control forced migration caused by corporate and military displacement while reaping the economic benefits of a moveable, exploitable labor force in Canada and through remittances sent to Mexico. According to a Mexican government official who ran the program for two years in one of the southern states, these programs also allow for the Mexican government to weaken social movement building by intermittently removing thousands of its poorest citizens. Canadian complicity in increasing displacement both at home and in Mexico is to be anticipated.
The perception of Canada as the U.S.’ junior partner often comes with a lack of clarity on Canadian responsibility in the history of violence and displacement within and beyond its national borders. Often, language around Canada-based solidarity work with the struggles of Indigenous communities, campesino and labor movements in Mexico distorts the responsibility of Canadian governmental and corporate players in the violence which has engendered those movements. Canadian mining corporations are but one example of how Canadians are complicit beyond just silence on the issues but through a very active process.
The buzz in Nuevo Leon
This was too weird not to pass on. Once again, when a foreigner (or even a Mexican living abroad) is killed, it’s rare enough to make the papers. The original story was in El Universal (14-April-2007) written by Adriana Ochoa.
SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, SLP.- A swarm of africanized bees attacked 17 people at a funeral in Doctor Arroyo, Neuvo León. A Mexican resident of the United States died of bee stings.
Serapio Sánchez Alvizo, Civil Defence coordinator for Doctor Arroyo Municipality, said that a bee swarm in Ranco Largo attacked the graveside mourners, including 35-year old Severo García Martínez, who had returned from the United States for the services.
Several witnesses said that a herd of goats had disturbed a metal monument, where the bees had their hive.
I guess we can expect a warning from the state department to avoid goats at funerals.
But she has a nice personality…
Half the Unknown Universe discovers Xoloitzcuintlis, which have a much nicer personality than their well-known descendants, the Chihuahuas.
The Mexico City Zoo has a pack, not because they’re a wild animal, but because they were practically wiped out as a breed, and because so many Mexicans had never seen them. Though originally just a Mexican housedog, they also served as a guide and companion in Mixtlan, the afterlife. The little terra-cotta doggie statues you see sold around ruins are copies of a common grave offering.
And in a society without a lot of tasty domestic animals beyond turkeys (which are very low in fat), added a little flavor to the soup.
Lately, they’ve become fashionable, under the name “Raza Azteca”, which means a lot of the ones you see are as neurotic as the fresas that own them. Quade, at Half the Unknown Universe, interviewed a breeder whose puppies start at about 10,000 pesos.
You can see why they nearly disappeared as a breed. You can get a generic dog for free in Mexico. I had two nice, normal dogs — Eva Perra (like her namesake, a blonde of uncertain parentage — cocker and sheltie and and who knows — a friend to all, but always looking out for her own advantage) and Iztaccihuatl, a poodle pup I found one night huddled in an abandoned doorway, so named because I had to give her a bath before I realized the little brown boy was a “white lady.” They were typical Mexican dogs… hung out, begged for snacks at the local comida economia (the Señora was very kind to them, and rather tolerant of the little mooches) and… shed everywhere and full time flea markets.
But the price was right. Xoloitzcuintlis are a nice apartment sized dog …about the same size and weight of Eva Perra, around 25 pounds (10 kg) and maybe 15 inches high (0.4 m) , not real fussy, intellegent, affectionate and bark only when necessary (hard to believe they degenerated into Chihuahaua!).
As an added bonus, they keep your feet warm at night without getting doggie hair all over your bed. Or give the fleas anywhere to hide out. Ok, they do look kinda weird, but hey, they’re a dog.. they don’t care.
Keep the Mex Files in kibbles, and I won’t have to cook the dog…
mexfiles.net 
