Perry Mason v Alberto Gonzales: legal reform in Mexico
There are things to like about the whimsical version of the Code Napoleon used in Mexico. “Corporations” aren’t persons, per se, like they are in the U.S. The people in charge are… and tossing them in the slammer for ignoring safety regulations that lead to fatal industrial accidents seems quite reasonable to me.
But, given that you can be jailed on reasonable suspicion after a denunciacion, and that granting amparos (basically, a restraining order against the police and prosecutor) is hit-or-miss (or…alas… often a question of money and connections), too many people sit in jial for stupid crimes that could be settled out of court.
The Supreme Court recently upheld the right of judges to impose “community service in lieu of fines” for most crimes. Given the slow progress of criminal trials (mostly by written testimony, and often prepared on manual typewriters), this might cause a jump in the conviction rate… but lower the incarceration rate.
“Mark in Mexico” made a good point (for once) about jail overcrowding in Mexico City. The Federal District has been doing a fairly decent job of getting people to report crimes, and prosecuting. Which means more people sitting in jails, often for petty things like shoplifting or small-time narcotics sales or… in a friend of mine’s case… taking the neighbor’s old lawn furniture (it was on the street and he thought it was trash. The neighbor thought otherwise). If people can just plead out and spend a day or two cleaning the street or scubbing toilets in the Delegacion, it beats the hell out of sitting around el reclusio for weeks… or months, waiting for the judge to get around to reading the testimony.
One reform, that’s been implemented in several states, is admitting oral testimony. One reason courtroom dramas are usually set in Britain or the U.S. is that trials feature the accused and the accusers all telling their story. Not very often in Napoleonic code trials. Sometimes the lawyers get histronic (in Latin America) or poetic (in France) or pedantic (in Scandinavia) or operatic (in Italy)… but you usually don’t hear from the witnesses or accused. That’s all been written down off-stage.
And, in Mexican courts, reflecting the informality that came out of the Revolution, the trials can be very, very dull. The accused MIGHT see a court stenographer in the jail hallway. Even the oral trials are often this way… I’ve seen films of U.S. sailors held in Tijuana on drunk and disorderly charges (hey… doing what sailors are supposed to do in Tijuana) too hung over to realize they’re on trial. They expect a judge to wear a robe… or at least a tie. Conjugal vistors aside, nobody dresses up to spend an afternoon in a smelly jailhouse — not even the judge.
Nobody’s particularly happy with the way things are now, and there has been a push for reform. The Fox administration proposed (and failed, like it usually did) to push through a new Federal code … though Fox (again typically) also wanted to adopt a version of the U.S. system… which, of course, the opposition rejected.
Calderón is going a step further.
The judicial changes sought by President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, which he claims will reform the security system and judicial process in the country, are receiving a mixed review from noted criminal attorneys. The proposed changes would extend the legal authority of Federal Prosecutors (Procuraduría General de la República or PRG for its initials in Spanish) to in install telephone taps, detain suspects and initiate investigations into organized crime without a judge’s authorization.
Four of seven lawyers Jornada consulted yesterday disapproved of the constitutional initiative, describing the reforms as “dangerous for Mexican democracy” since they would grant unlimited powers to District Attorneys ( Ministerio Público, MP ) to “assign blame” and “punish” opponents of the regime.
However, three of the penal law specialists said that Calderón’s proposal did not implicitly threaten human rights violations. The Federal Judiciary, they said, would act as overseer, and the reforms would merely reduce the “bureacratic-legal” nature of investigations, which make it difficult to look into drug trafficking.
Heraclio Bonilla, who defended ex- president Luis Echeverria Alvarez [on genocide charges realting to the 1972 student massacre in Mexico City], worries about the tendency to adapt the U.S. penal system in criminal prosecution and sentencing, in Latin America. In Mexico, this would create a PGR with unlimited powers.
The problem is based, he warns, in differences between the U.S. and Mexican theories of governemtn. Here, there is no “balance of powers,” but would grant powers to the PGR, which is submissive to the Presidency. The intent is to create an “all-powerful” state mechanism: “It’s simple. Blame enemies of the regime for being involved in organized crime. Once you law the foundation, you have the seeds to grow the evidence of any crime you want, even if one’s not been committed.”
(Alfredo Mendez Ortiz, in Jornada, 12-Marzo-2007. My translation)
In Italy, the change to oral testimony came about in the early 1960s thanks to legal reformer Ramond Burr. Nah… but wathcing Perry Mason dubbed into Italian did have a lot to do with it.
Felipe Calderón should watch more old American TV shows, and less Alberto Gonzales news conferences.
The good, the bad and the annoying
The good…
I try to be nice to everyone (and to those who have contributed, be patient … I’ll catch up my thank you notes as soon as I can). So far, I’ve paid off half the electic bill and half the phone bill, so we’re making progress.
The $200 back utility bills, the auto repairs and insurance, the hardware and software that needs replaced still need to be considered (I’m operating off free-ware word processing, which was well-worth what I paid for it, but lacks a decent spell checker and can’t switch back and forth between Spanish and English, like the commercial products. And, this old Millenium operating system crashes regularly, sometimes meaning I take 4 hours to do something that should only take me 45 minutes tops). If there’s anything left over, I might splurge (I’ll admit it) and go to the dentist to get a filling replaced.
Anyway, I hope I can stop pestering people by the end of the month. Only 800 bucks to go.
The bad…
Not complaining, but I put in a heck of a lot of hours now… and try to take at least half a day off now and again. I think most people understand that… but not everyone apparently:
In my thread on the “Minutemen” and their associated racist chums, I received a comment from “poncho@earthlink.com” (IP # 71.116.182.225 – that’s Verizon out of Reston, VA, which could be anyone anywhere), which I felt deserved some kind of response.
“Poncho” is in regular (Times Roman) typeface. My edited responses are in Tahoma:
The Mexican ruling class that is made up of almost exclusively White Elitist Castilian Spaniards who hate the brown peasants, and will do anything to drive them out of Mexico.
- HUH? Do you ever actually read this site. Or Mexican history? Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. Ambassador insisted the Spanish be thrown out of Mexico, and they were in 1838. There were Castillian immigrants during the Franco era in Spain, but most of them are pretty old by now. If you mean there are rich people in Mexico and poor people, yeah, but there’s also a sizable middle class.
They, “the White elitists”, have succeeded in driving approximately 10 percent of Mexico’s population out of their own country and into the Unites States of America.
As noted, the “White elitists” thing applies more to the United States or Canada … or even Cuba… than to Mexico. Poor people leave because the U.S. trade policy since NAFTA kicked in has exacerbated a bad agricultural system, leaving Mexican farmers broke. Are you sure you’ve read this site?
Help end Mexico’s Apartheid government.
Thanks for your interest, but you don’t know jack shit about what you’re talking about. Ah well… read on, hopefully, you’re teachable
And the damned annoying…
“Poncho” wrote back… THREE FUGGIN TIMES!
The first time, he added on to his “apartheid” post some reference to Cesar Chavez:
César Chávez was one of our last honest and incorruptible leaders, and was vehemently opposed to illegal immigration because he understood supply and demand economics. He knew that illegal immigration is a tool of Big Business used to drive the workingman’s wages down, and that it is allowed by the US government because it benefits Big Business, and Big Business gives big campaign contributions.
I didn’t bother with the Chavéz business, since it’s factually true… and repeated ad nasuem on the anti-immigration sites. Chavéz, of course, was a union organizer, and his concern back in the late 60s was with scab labor. He wasn’t anti-immigrant, he was anti-scab. And, I don’t think any of what I’ve said supports exploiting labor. Just recognizing that labor exploitation exists.
Besides, how much time was I supposed to waste on a troll? I questioned why he was using the name for a raincoat, instead of the short form of Francisco, and figured that was the end of it.
WordPress automatically holds as probably spam anything with more than one link. And, wouldn’t you know it? This time, up pops “PONCHO” as “pancho@earthlink.com” (and still at IP# 71.116.182.255). He sent another post at 11:04 pm March 10. C’mon… Sunday is a day of rest, and I spend way too much time keeping this site going as it is.
Geeze. When I didn’t bother with the newly christened “Pancho” by the end of the day, the dickhead resent the exact same post… this time calling himself “coward@earthlink.net” (and, yes, the IP was… you got it… 71.116.182.225
I’d thought it might be fun to turn that post over to the always witty Nezua, the hardest workin’ hombre in blog-biz, but even he deserves a day off.
Poncho, aka Pancho aka Coward was yakking on about the “Castillian apartheid”… again. How tedious. What’s funny was the examples he gave (and the links that threw him into el purgatorio of commentdom) were to Carlos Slim and Maria Felix: the son of a Palestinian, and a woman proud of her Yaquí heritage (“Coward”… er… Pancho… or whoever the fuck he is) provided a quote from a Maria Felix fan club site (http://www.mariafelix.com.mx/vida.html) that said this… but I don’t think the born-again… and again… and again… PONCHO understood what he read. It was in Spanish after all.
I’m not a Mexican… but I respect Mexicans. I respect their good manners, their contempt for cowards (that includes people who sign themselves as such), and share their dislike for demanding gringos. Besides, it’s my site… “WordPress doesn’t block IP addresses… however, it does let me mark them as spam. Life’s too short to waste on stupid people.
One small step for immigration reform…
There’s no “perfect” solution for the emigration issue in Mexico. I’ve said before that remittances are not necessarily bad for either the host or beneficiary country’s economy. And, while Canadian and U.S. protectionist policies – especially in agriculture – are driving most emigration from Mexico and Central America, they’re not going to end tomorrow. In both Canada and the U.S. are going to need foreign farm — and other — labor for the foreseeable future.
It’s no secret I abjure Bush and all his works. However, to give the Devil his due, some kind of guest worker/bracero program is better than the other idiotic proposals floating around (“close the borders” and then fix the situation seems popular in Springfield, Missouri — and it’s not racist — honest!).
The big issue with border closing is that workers like these farm workers then cannot return home, and care for their families. Under those conditions, they have no choice but to bring their families north. And, absent some huge change in the economic system (and the end of subsidies for agribusiness in the U.S. and Canada), there is going to be a need for seasonal workers in both northern countries.
A labor contract, and working papers are better than nothing. This isn’t perfect, but it beats all the alternatives. The Canadian program (small as it is) looks to be moving in the right direction:
At least seventy campesinos from various places in the State of Mexico will leave for Canada in the next few days, under contracts as part of the Federal “Temporary Migrant Workers” program.
Yesterday, the campesinos received economica assistance for various moving expenses from the office of the Secretaría of Labor and Social Planning.
The workers will stay legally in Canada for several months, with salaries of about $8.00 per hour, filling various jobs in rural area.
The waiting list for the program has more than a thousand willing farm workers, but the government is only able to offer less than 100 spaces at this time.
Planned for Flexibility
For her country’s part, Canadian Vice-Minister of International Commerce, Marie-Lucie Morin, said that the Canadian government is creating a mechanism a temporary mobile labor force. y.
Morin said it is important to create flexible policies, which will provide more job opportunities for a temporary, mobile work force in her country. She called on the governments of the three NAFTA countries to identify opportunity areas for private investment in the labor pool.
(my translation: el Universal, 08 Marzo 2007)
Papí!
I found this photo on “Country Scribe” a weblog written by Minnesota author Eric Bergeson. There are some fine Mexico City photos from his trip in February 2005. I liked this one.
Bergeson asks “How often in this country would you see a father and his sons walking down the street arm in arm? In Mexico, it isn’t rare at all.”
I’ve seen some pretty involved Mexican fathers — I wrote in 2003
Surprisingly, machos – and Mexican men in general – have always been attentive fathers and take their share of responsibility in child rearing. Pancho Villa’s surviving children all remember the archetypical Mexican macho as a loving and involved father. It’s normal today to see small children at their father’s worksite, or fathers caring for babies.
… but not everyone is Pancho Villa. We can all use a little help:
México, DF. Saying it’s about time men in Mexico City assumed some of the work done by women, Federal District Chief Executive Marcelo Ebrard said the local administration will offer courses and workshops on domestic chores for men.
In the inauguration of the International Woman’s Day Fair on the city’s main plaze, he said that men need to change their thinking and share functions and responsibilities in housework and child-rearing. Marcelo Ebrard said that his daughters are grown now, but when they were small, he was active in their education.
Accompanied by his wife Mariagna Prats, Ebrard stated that the Federal District government must assist the people in making the necessary changes, and will begin offering child-care classes to men. The classes and workshops are expected to start within the next two weeks, offered in public facilities and schools through the Federal District’s Institute for Women and the Secretariat of Education.
The things I do for research! Hopefully, this will be the ONLY time I have to deal with this.
I look at what searches people run to get to this site. I try to not let it affect what I write about, but it’s instructive to see what’s on the minds of folks who visit The Mex Files.
Some I assume are from dunks with a computer (“Aztec warriors attack Montreal bar punk rock” was my favorite… though I’m not sure how that particular google search ended up here. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Montreal).
For a while, there were bunches of hits every couple of days from people looking up the Salm-Salm family or Princess Alice zu Salm-Salm. She was an interesting footnote in Mexican history, but I don’t know what made her suddenly so popular. Maybe she showed up in a Women’s Studies syllabus. I don’t know.
And some, I’ve just gotta check out. I’ve learned a few things from what others are looking for, or realized they are issues for people interested in Mexico. I’ve had three or four in the past few days from people typing in “Alejandro Fernandez gay” , and I get a couple of hits a month from people trying to track down the Tijuana donkey dens.
So… hoping to deal with both requests… here’s my first (and last) post on those two subjects.
The gerbil in the mariachi
Years ago, I went to the trouble of checking out the back issues of the Journal of Forensic Pathology in the course of writing a an article on a right-wing student group at the University of Iowa mounting a “Straights for Gerbil Rights” demonstration (they didn’t have “illegal” immigrants to pick on in those days). I found the alleged “proof” the group claimed was the scientific confirmation of that nasty little urban legend.
The pathologist who wrote the article (Clyde Snow, a famous pathologist of the time) had heard the stories too, and — ahem — bent over backwards to figure out the mechanics of such behavior, and went to the trouble to figure out what the indications would be if there were such an incident. He couldn’t come up with any way it could happen.
None of which prevents the story from remaining popular. There’s a variation, in which a handsome movie star is in OUR hospital and you won’t believe what they found shoved up his butt… and you won’t believe it, but the guy was.. well, in the published version from Snopes.com, it’s Richard Gere, but I’ve heard Tom Cruise and Errol Flynn (from much older people) among many others.
It seems that legend now has a Mexican variant. After pop star Christian Chavez came out on his group’s website, there’ve been a rash of gay Mexican star sightings. On a website for foreign tourists, I picked up the emergency protology report from Guadalajara… this time, the “exposed” star is singer Alejandro Fernandez.
I’m kind of disappointed that press reports on Christian said he was “outed after compromising photos appeared” which weren’t compromising at all… they were his wedding pictures in Canada. And geeze, coming out from a singer in a telenovela about a band at a private school who dyes his hair pink and otherwise is supposed to be a flaming youth is no shocker (though, being the first Latin American pop star to come out, I guess it’s noteworthy). Chavez fits the gay stereotype in Latin America… but Alejandro Fernandez?
Why not? He’s a good looking guy (and these stories seem to be based as much on jealousy as anything – “anybody that good looking can’t be straight”) and he did play Emiliano Zapata (who was also a handsome guy rumored to be gay). Funny the rumors have never attached to Spanish actor Antonio Bandaras, who has played gay characters in several movies, though. Maybe it’s the way Alejandro dresses… that hat!
I think a lot of it has to do with the differences between U.S. (and that includes Mexican-American) and Mexican attitudes. Fernandez – and his father – have defined macho for two generations, but they are Mexican machos. They show affection. Abrazos are part of everyday life. They’re flamboyant and showy. They kiss close relations on the lips. It’s all normal.
I ran across this on VivarLatina
Don’t go calling him gay. Apparently “El Potrillo” Alejandro Fernández has been the target of criticism and speculation lately regarding his sexual orientation because he and his father engage in kisses on the mouth as a show of affection. Alejandro counters:
“Esta es una costumbre familiar y no nos interesan las críticas. Yo a mis hijos también los beso en la boca, tal y como me lo enseñó mi padre, y eso no significa nada sobre nuestras tendencias sexuales, por el contrario, somos muy hombrecitos”, expresó el artista en rueda de prensa.
“It’s pretty lame that he’s basically saying he’s a “real man” as opposed to a “gay man”, who aren’t considered “hombres”.
Lame because I liked him and thought he’d be beyond the typical of Mexican machismo BS of gay men are “locas”. I guess guys who kiss their dad on the mouth…we’ll, they’re just chest-beating machos who can do that.As for the speculation, how ridiculous is it to think that a man is gay because he kisses his dad? I mean do gay men make out with their fathers? Ugh.
Getting some ass in Boy’s Town Searching for donkey shows, I’ve found a college radio show called “Tijuana Donkey Show”, a bar in Denver (the object of some protests back in early 2005), a cocktail (tequila, ginger beer and fresh lime), a lot of salacious talk, and … some bad jokes.
Wikipedia says “It is common knowledge in the area that Tijuana and Juarez cab drivers will offer to take tourists to “donkey shows,” and instead take them to a location where they are robbed,” but the footnoted source (from a message board for guys looking for cheap whores) only says the poster thought “it [the alleged sex show] was bullshit”.
Every claim I’ve ever seen or heard or read beings “this was 20 years ago, but…” In other words… “A friend of a friends’ cousin once…” Snopes.com — the best source for tracking urban legends — has a thread on Donkey shows. But, other than an unreliable reference from reformed porn star Linda Lovelace and references to alleged shows in Europe, nothing relating to Mexico.
Someone named “Gator” wrote a review of Nuevo Laredo’s “Boy’s Town” for a skin mag back in 2003 that has a picture of two donkeys, and gives the same of a bar where this supposedly occurs. Of course, this “e-zine” also has a feature claiming George W. Bush was involved in a Matamoros Satanic cult (and, bad as I think “el pendejo” is, I don’t think I’ll put too much stock in that particular tale (which also has John Kerry sacrificing 2 year olds)… or in anything printed by “Gator”.
Of course you can (if you turn off “safe search”, haven’t eaten and aren’t easily grossed out) find pictures of just about any depraved act. There is one photo (too gross to link to) that every single souce claiming the story is true (and that the act is “common”) uses. The exact same photo. The only indication that the photo was taken in Tijuana, or anywhere in Mexico for that matter, is that you can see a can of Tecate on a table. And a fat lady. And a donkey (which might be stuffed donkey, as far as anyone can tell).
My sense is that because we come from a puritanical country where the law has tried to regulate sexual acts, we think anything NOT illegal is common, or at least easy to find, in Mexico. We project all kinds of imaginable (or theoretically possible — I never though of donkeys and sex together, let alone researching the question) dubious activities go on in Mexico.
When I wrote my guide book for foreign teachers, I had to deal with the issue of pedophilic teachers… I was suprised at the number of people who told me THAT particular perversion was legal, too. It ain’t. The “proof” was a mistaken entry in a website dealing with age of consent laws… where a Sonoran judge had dropped charges in a case involving two minors, which someone thought established precedent (not in Napoleonic Law, where things not specifically covered in the code are decided case by case… nor would a lower court ruling be binding on anyone, in any legal system).
So.. if you’re coming here looking for the truth about the fat lady and the Tijuana donkey… here it is:
Photo:© Copyright 2000–2006 Worldwide
(Christian Chavez photo, Univision; Alejandro Fernandez, VivarLatina)
Supply and demand… up to you, George
George W. is trying to sell the glories of “free trade”, so maybe he’ll listen to Felipe Calderón… he sure hasn’t listened to me… or Vicente Fox. Maybe Don Felipe can it though his thick coke-addled skull…
Growing demand by drug consumers in the United States is responsible for drug trafficking in Mexico, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa said Saturday, adding that it was up to the authorities in that country to increase efforts to control the trade.
“We are the ones paying with our lives (to combat organized crime) and the United States must do more than make symbolic gestures, much more”, Calderón said in an interview on the presidential airplane only two days before a scheduled meeting with his American colleague in the state of Yucatan.
The chief executive affirmed that he will raise the necessity of the United States undertaking more aggressive strategies to combat drug trafficking when he meets with Bush on Tuesday.
“He must do much more work to reduce consumption, much more work to stop his own narcotics traffickers on his side, “ Calderón emphasized.
Calerón asserted that Mexico has been doing its part, as exemplified by the 20,000 soldiers who took part in operations within several states where violence related to drug trafficking has reached unprecedented levels.
Mexico cannot diminish the drug supply, if the United States does not reduce their demand. That’s a basic equation, said the Chief Executive, who took office last December with a promise to attack drug trafficking head-on.
Friday night video
In Latin America, black shirts are a fashion — not a fascist –statement. The only connection between Benito Mussolini’s black shirts and Mexico is that Mussolini was the only European politican ever named for a Mexican…
Juanes — like this week’s birthday boy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez –is a Colombian artist of more than just Latin American appeal.
Tengo la camisa negra,
hoy mi amor está de luto;
hoy tengo en el alma una pena
y es por culpa de tu embrujo.
Yo sé que tú ya no me quieres,
y eso es lo que mas me hiere;
que tengo la camisa negra
y una pena que me duele.
Mal parece que solo me quedé,
y fue pura todita tu mentira;
qué maldita mala suerte la mía
que aquel día te encontré.
Por beber del veneno malévolo de tu amor,
yo quedé moribundo y lleno de dolor;
respiré de ese humo amargo de tu adios,
y desde que tú te fuiste, yo sólo tengo…
Tengo la camisa negra
porque negra tengo el alma;
yo por ti perdí la calma
y casi pierdo hasta mi cama.
C’mon c’mon c’mon baby,
te digo con disimulo,
que tengo la camisa negra
y debajo tengo el difunto.
(¡Pa’ enterrártelo cuando quieras mamita!)
(Así como lo oye, mija)
Tengo la camisa negra,
ya tu amor no me interesa;
lo que ayer me supo a gloria
hoy me sabe a pura…
Miércoles por la tarde y tú que no llegas,
nisiquiera muestras señas;
y yo con la camisa negra
y tus maletas en la puerta.
Mal parece que solo me quedé,
y fue pura todita tu mentira;
qué maldita mala suerte la mía
que aquel día te encontré.
Por beber del veneno malévolo de tu amor,
yo quedé moribundo y lleno de dolor;
respiré de ese humo amargo de tu adios,
y desde que tú te fuiste, yo sólo tengo…
Tengo la camisa negra
porque negra tengo el alma;
yo por ti perdí la calma
y casi pierdo hasta mi cama.
C’mon c’mon c’mon baby,
te digo con disimulo,
que tengo la camisa negra
y debajo tengo el difunto.
Tengo la camisa negra
porque negra tengo el alma;
yo por ti perdí la calma
y casi pierdo hasta mi cama.
C’mon c’mon c’mon baby,
te digo con disimulo,
que tengo la camisa negra
y debajo tengo el difunto.
Mix Mex
Wiser men than I and unapologetic Mexicans have grappled with the spiritual and esthetic and cultural dimensions of mestizaje — Mexico’s brilliant and simple solution to avoiding racial strife (“Make love, not war”). Genetically, the Mexican solution presents its own uniquely Mexican challenges and opportunities.
The National Institute of Genomic Medicine has finished mapping the human genome of the Mexicans, after two years of investigation, which will allow for a paradigm shift in medical practice, opening the door to individual predictive and preventative care.
An advance study, shown to El Universal, concluded that the Mexican population is a mixture of 35 ethnic groups, quite different from populations in Europe, Asia or Africa.
Doctor Gerald Jiménez-Sanchez, General Director of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine Institute, said the study revealed that 65% of the genetic component of the Mexicans are uniquely “Amerind.”
“Previously, when dealing with a Mexican patient, the doctor could only rely on medications which might not be effective, or might not alleviate symptions, having been designed with other genome populations in mind.” Jiménez-Sanchez said that the drugs that are created in Europe or the United States are not always suitable for Mexicans.
The most common Mexican ailments impacted by the study are cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and some types of cancer (breast, thyroid, infantile leukemia and prostate).
The multi-million Peso research project, which was financed by both private and public funds, will be made public later this year. It shows that the Mexican Republic’s people are of mixed races, and that there are significant genetic differences between people in different states.
The human genome is the total number of chromosomes in the human body.
In June of 2005, 20 experts from the National Institutute of Genomic Medicine Institute began investigating the “Genomic Structure and Map of Haplotides of the Mexican Population,” in order to better understand genetic particularities in the Republic.
The specialists collected blood samples of 140 racially mixed people — 50% women and 50% men in seven states: Sonora, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Yucatan, Veracruz, Guerrero and Tamaulipas.
Jiménez-Sanchez predicted a significant saving in the public health care costs as a result of the study, because doctors will be able to recomment life-style modifications to delay the onset of common diseases within the population.
(original: Lilliana Alcántara, © 2005, El Universal) My translation)
Evil spirits expected in Mayan country…
JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer
GUATEMALA CITY – Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
Bush‘s seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.
Bush‘s trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.
Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.
Geeze, does he have to come to Merida?
Thank you all. (Applause.) Please be seated — siéntese. Buenas tardes. Gracias por la bienvenida. For those of you not from Texas, that means, good afternoon….*
In too many places in the Americas, a government official is seen as someone who serves himself at the expense of the public good, or serves only the rich and the well-connected. No free society can function this way. Social justice begins with social trust. So we’re working with our partners to change old patterns and ensure that government serves all its citizens.
Como… tu, Jorge?
Can’t he just go to Paraguay to stay?
(* For those of you FROM Texas it means “Did I say that right Alberto? Ok, you spicks! Lissen up! I don’t wanna have to say this twice.”)
“The orneriest white guys in the West…”
… are anti-immigrant “border watchers” Chris Simcox and Glen Spencer. Ornery, yeah… and scary, too.
Simcox, “a baby-faced 42-year-old who previously taught kindergarten in Los Angeles at a “very high-end, wealthy private school ” moved to Tombstone Arizona after being accused of child molesting in California. He ended up running the “Tombstone Tumbleweed,” in the tourist town, founding the Minuteman Civil Defence Corps” in 2003.
Glen Spencer, who the Wall Street Journal once called “anti-American”, because of his extremist views and ties to white supremacist groups, also moved from Los Angeles to southern Arizona in 2002. His America Border Patrol — which sells the notion of “reconquista” (which takes as a military or political goal, the notion that Mexicans plan to “reconquer” the territories ceded to the United States in 1848. The term “Reconquista” has been used by a small California Mexican-American neo-fascist group in this senese, but it is usually used to describe survival — and growth — of a Mexican-American culture in these regions), and claims his group is “saving” the United States from invasion.
Spencer’s “American Border Patrol” includes a “tactical operations” unit which is not much spoken of publically. There are persistent rumors (and some evidence) that the Tac-Ops has tortured, and possibly killed, immigrants.
Scarier still, former Nicaraguan Contra fighter, Jack Foote, showed up in the same area in October 2003. Caroline Ovington of Australia’s “The Age” wrote about him n 2003:
Jack Foote says he isn’t hunting humans, but it looks like he’s hunting something. He wears combat fatigues and his private army has weapons out of a Terminator movie: AK-47s and A5-15s with 520 rounds of ammunition, 40-centimetre knives and side-arms powerful enough to blow a person’s brains out.
Foote’s private army — “Ranch Rescue” — according to SPLC included “Tim Meyer, a former U.S. Customs inspector and current “private investigator”; Rusty Rossey, an ex-Marine who ran with the contras in Nicaragua and counter-insurgents in Guatemala and now runs a sniper range in Alabama; a former U.S. Special Forces soldier; and two Canadian light infantry soldiers.”
That list of known associates made he sit up and pay attention. XP’s ¡Para justicia y liberdad! pointed me to the 2003 SPLC report where I got the information above (and the lazy-researcher’s friend, Wikipedia) …
SPLC has documented anti-immigration vigilante acts — from beatings to shootings to threatened castrations — going back to the 1970s. And there have been several disappearances in the area, usually chalked up to “mysteries of the desert.” But, given Spenser’s “TacOps” unit and the very scary “Ranch Rescue” guys background, I see no reason NOT to believe there are death squads running around.
While the better known Minutemen and American Border Patrol have come in for criticism as racist and xenophobic, it’s Ranch Rescue that goes in for the claims that the Mexican farmers and workers coming across are some part of a “Marxist” plot. Given the background of the Ranch Rescue members who’ve been identified (a former mercenary from the Croatian Army also seems to be invovled with at least planning opertations) it wouldn’t be far-fetched to expect this group to include some spanish-speaking and “Hispanic looking” members. There are plenty of left over Contras and Guatemalan rightists already in the United States. And Cuban-American terrorists have a history in the United States going back to the early 1960s.
The 2003 article mentioned an attack on unarmed immigrants, by “men in uniforms” that local authorities were loathe to blame on either of the two paramilitary groups, but which look to have been their handiwork. At the time, the attackers were officially presumed to be “coyotes” or in the pay of Mexican gangsters.
Just like now. And it deeply worries me. Not from some altruistic interest in immigrant welfare (though there is that), but for purely selfish reasons as well… like surival and a peaceful, quiet life.
The border here is relatively peaceful, for the simple reason that we’re so isolated… on both sides of the river/border and it’s extremely rugged country. There’s huge chunks of wilderness and mountains along the Rio Grande/del Bravo and there are bears (and mountain lions, and even a few ocelots) in them thar hills.
The migrants coming across to send home remittances (which aren’t necessarily bad for an economy) are going to keep coming even if Mexico and the U.S. restructure — the changes aren’t going to happen overnight. But, for political reasons, we’ve pushed the migrant crossing away from populated areas… and the desert is easier to cross than the desert, mountains and wilderness here.
We’ve had the Minutemen come down our way, but they didn’t stay. There is a business coming to stay that is in the arms business, supposedly making custom target rifles, but with a more practical military application (ok, sniper rifles and mag fed 20 mm rifles… which you could use for hunting, I suppose, but would turn an elk into fajitas at a half mile). We’re a little too close to the border to NOT ask “why here?”, but it could very well just be because we’re the knd of folks who leave each other alone (and there aren’t a heck of a lot of us to complain). Military weapons on a border are usually a recipe for shooting across the border… especially by less-controlled forces like smugglers and self-syled “Ranch Rescuers”… or death squads.
With our tiny tax base (unless the recruit likes big game hunting or is an amateur geologist, our local sheriff is always going to have problems finding deputies), we can’t afford to investigate murders as it is. Or much in the way of accidents. A few extra dead bodies a year are gonna cost us.
And a lot of us live here because we are kinda weird eccentrics. While quite a few of us are are armed to the teeth, we really don’t have a huge number of crazies. Gun collectors and hunters and even the kind of people who like shooting off cannons are as much part of the “live and let live (and stay the hell out of my way)” culture here as the river rafters, the hippies, the artists, the retired spies and the cowboys.
And that’s the Anglo minority. We have survivalists, but I haven’t run across any white supremacists here. The idea seems laughable. But then, it did in Tucson and Tombstone until recently, too.
Meet the Volks…
I’m always surprised that the Germans are considered the best tourists in the world (Americans and Italians vie for #2… the British are at the bottom) … Maybe they just enjoy getting away from a country where the buses run on a schedule timed to the second, or where the unwritten rule is “what is not explicitly allowed is forbidden.” And, they like going to museums, and looking at “weird exotic foodstuffs” and well… seeing what’s NOT German.
And, having spent the first half of the last century behaving in spectacularly bad fashion while in other countries, they tend to be on their best, politest behavior.
I suppose it’s no surprise then, that the #1 preferred vacation destination for Germans is … Mexico.
The German Tourism Barometer shows Mexico first choice among German vacationers, ahead of such destinations as Italy and the Dominican Republic.
The Mayan Riviera, on the east coast, and Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific are the first preferences, according to the report.
The results of the Barometer, compiled by the German travel magazine, “Travel One” were announced this Thursday at the Berlin International Tourism Exhibition, one of the largest in the world of its type.
Interest in Mexico is being reinforced by an exhibition of Mayan Art which opens for a year long showing in Germany the 28th of this month, says José Ramírez, director of the Mexican tourism office in Germany.
The main attraction of the exhibition are a collection of Mayan pre-Hispanic Calakmul pieces which have never been seen outside the southeastern state of Campeche. The show is being mounted in Rosenheim and Hildeshem.
Exhibition curator Inés de Castro, estimates at least 200,000 Germans will view the exhibit.
Also, a delegation headed by Francisco López Mena, director of the Consejo Mexicano de Promoción spoke with, among others, representatives of TUI, Thomas Cook and TUI, the leading German tour operators.
The Consejo Mexicano director said tour promoters are seeking more information on Mexican destinations, which in turn will bring more German tourists to Mexico. López Mena worked the Mexican pavilion at the convention, along with representatives of 100 other Latin American tour business promoters.
The Tourist Barometer shows Italy, Bulgaria and the Dominican Republic come after Mexico among the favored locations for Germans. “Travel One” this year highlighted Puerto Vallarta, in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, as a seaside destination enjoying good air connections with Germany, though Lufthansa connections in Mexico City. e
Ramírez announced that West Indian based Martin Air, a partner of KLM, would be offering direct flights to Puerto Vallerta.
Ramírez said that Mexican tourism were a good opportunity for German vacationers to find the combination of sun, beach and cultural riches they seek.
Notimex
Who’d a thunk it?
mexfiles.net 
