Having gone from THE Party for so many years, to the third party has been kind of hard on the PRI. Heir to the Revolutionary Party (defined by Álvaro Obregón as “everyone who fought for the Revolution”) they never had to pick any specific ideology. Technically, they’re a Socialist party, but ever since the party was founded in 1948 (Vicente Fox did not “end 70 years of one party’s rule… he ended 70 years of the coalition that came out of the Mexican Revolution), it’s been decidedly capitalist friendly.
It was more like the U.S. Democrats than anything else… including the unions and the business executives and fostering national development. Since the 80s, it’s been “technocratic” and didn’t even bother to define an ideology. Just preserving the Revolutionary institutions seemed enough.
But, after 1988, when the PRD became the “real left” and PAN managed to carve out a democratic role for itself by playing down its fascist roots, it’s been adrift ideologically.
Losing to PAN in 2000 was a shock. Losing to PAN and the PRD in 2006 was more than they bargained for. While PRI still holds most governorships, their strength is local parties. Nationally, they’re a mess.
PRD took over the left and, not being the wild-eyed radicals their rivals tried to paint them as, have attracted much of the middle class. I expect the “Social Democratic” Alternativa will eventually join with the larger Social Democratic Convergencia and the “Maoist” (in the sense that some early party wonks had read the Little Red Book, or maybe Che Guevarra’s “Motocycle Diaries” in college) Workers Party (PT) in the PRD-led Broad Progressive Front (FAP, in Spanish).
PAN presents itself as center-right, and when it moves further right (like its doing now), it loses grass-roots support. But for now, it’s just about evenly split with FAP, making it the largest party in the Legislature, but not the majority. It needs the PRI (and the Greens) if its going to pass anything.
Right now, PAN can count on Esther Elba’s Nuevo Alianza, but that party is more a reflection of her ego, and attempt to hold on to the Teachers’ Union than anything else. As a Senator, she led the PRI bloc that backed PAN, but — like the Greens — I expect the party will go wherever they can cut the best deal for themselves… or eventually become irrelevant (as did the openly fascist Democratic Party, which eventually became part of PAN, or the Communist Party, which was absorbed by PRD).
This gives PRI a lot more relevance than it otherwise would have. No legislation can pass without their support. But, with the Party unsure of what they stand for (and you know the old saying… “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything), the legislature may break up into blocs supporting one or another of the two main forces (PAN and FAP)… the way normal legislations work in multi-party countries.
Beatriz Parades, the new PRI leader, says she’s on the left, and she’s an intriguing political figure. She was the first woman to be an elected governor, and is as skillful an infighter as any PRI leader… and — strangly enough — has a reputation for honesty, something you don’t find often in PRI leaders. Given PRD’s domination of Mexico City, she was the best candidte PRI could run for Jefa de Gobernacion in 2006, and did a credible job with a hopeless task. She seems to be like the Texas politicans who say “Ya gotta dance with them that brung ya.” Her task is figuring out who brung her.
I’m sure there’s plenty of “spin” on what it all means (Kenneth Edmonds of the Mexico City Herald calls Parades “the most important politican in Mexico”), but natually, the Cuban press is looking at it from the left:
The fear of seeming too leftist is keeping Mexico s PRI (Institutional Revolutionary) party on tenterhooks, following this major Mexican political party’s extraordinary assembly this week
Reluctant to accept they are a progressive organization, several delegates decided on Thursday to remain “ideologically undefined,” rather than including that concept in their declaration of principles.
Social democracy, revolutionary nationalism, social justice, and republican democracy were some of the suggestions in the debate, which confronted followers and detractors of the ideological turn proposed by Beatriz Paredes, who was elected PRI president.
Paredes told local press she supported the leftist proposal, which she considers a step forward beyond the initial central left formulation.
The Mexican political system has changed and become multiparty with competitive conditions, and it is necessary to act according to our principles, whether in power or not, she warned..
Paredes considered it very important that the governors participate with their own dynamics and personality, but insisted that she will accept neither apathy, nor self-satisfaction.
Cuéntame cómo pasó
I heard Cuéntame cómo pasó — one of the great Spanish language songs, or of any language. on on a Radio Oye (98.6 FM) the on-line Mexican pop hits station, while I was surfing.
Cuéntame cóma pasó was the theme music for a Spanish TV “family drama/comedy” of the same name, that had a faithful following from the Alps to the Andes. While I’ve always said that Mexico is not Argentina or Spain and you can’t generalize, there is something common — besides the language — about family life. And, for anyone who grew up in the late 60s and early 70s could relate.
What kept it from being sappy, a “Wonder Years” was the location. Francisco Franco was a very real, and very scary reality. The draft (there was a funny episode when Toni, the teenaged slacker son, turns to Republican granny for assistance getting out of his military service — and something real about a smart kid who recognizes Fascism for the bullshit it is, still doing well as a soldier), the secret police, the exiled relations, bitterness from the civil war, the petty annoyances of a heavy-handed State (something we’d do well to learn about in the U.S.) can wear even on the most functional of families.
Even with the daily indignities and stupidity, a family like los Alcantára were as normal as they could be.
Nothing much to do with Mexico (though about 7 and a 1/2 minutes into the second clip, you’ll hear — and see — the effect Mexico has had on Hispanic culture), but something different for a Friday night.
The car theft, only peripherally involves the family. The son, Toni, is ALSO a white boy with an Afro… and it’ll get resolved (sort of), but this is not the world of Wally and the Beve:
Unhealthy politics
Comparing the low estimate of the number of HIV/AIDS infections in the United State given by the CDC (1,039,000 cases) against the Mexican estimate (40,000), and then multiplying the Mexican number by 4 because “some estimates” — with no documentation that I can find — estimate a number four times higher: 160,000. The Mexican population is slightly less than a third of that in the U.S., so I multiplied 160,000 by three: 480,000. That means for every one Mexican who MIGHT be HIV+, there are at least 2.16 people in the U.S. with the same disease.
That shouldn’t make sense, given that the Mexicans are younger and poorer than the people in the U.S. And HIV is primarily a disease of the young and poor. Or maybe it the low numbers do make sense.
The real “star” of the Fox administration was a guy almost no one’s heard about — Dr. Julio Frenk Mora — Fox’s Secretary of Health. The author of the Wikipedia article on Frenk, besides listing his many accomplishments and publications in the field of public health, mostly writes Frenk’s push to get the “morning after pill” on the market, despite his PANista (conservative) credentials. What impressed me about him was the way he stayed “above politics” and stuck to his guns when it came to public health.
The Wikipedia article suggests that Frenk’s decision to allow tobacco companies to make a sizable donation to the Mexican health system rather than face a tax increase on cigarettes cost him the top job at the World Health Organization. It probably played an important part, but Frenk had to withdraw from actively seeking the job when a Chiapas premature baby nusery was infected, and created a national scandal. There was a “rush to judgement” (the hospital administrator was briefly jailed for murder) but Frenk survived the scandal. This scandal arose just as the U.S. began attacking Bagdad, by the way. My students were struck by the cost of replacing the maternity hospital (about a million U.S. dollars) versus the cost of one rocket launched against Bagdad (also about a million bucks).
Good pre- and post-natal care has been a Mexican success story. As has birth control and comprehensive sex education. Arguing that prejudice leads to violence (and violence is a public health issue) and — more importantly for preventive medicine — that discrimination discourges people for using health facilities, or getting tested for things like HIV, Frenk also brought his considerable influence to bear on combatting homophobia.
One hold-over from the days when the government indirectly controlled the media through their advertising budget was that Cabinet Secretaries have huge ad budgets. Most put out lame commercials trying to convince you they’re relevent (it’s hard to make the Department of Public Accounting sexy, or sell the Treasury as friendly, but the ad agencies do their best). Arguing that getting people tested for AIDS and preventing violence were both public health issues, Frenk approved commercials designed to combat discrimination against minorities, including gays and lesbians. The anti-discrimination ads were expanded to include indigenous peoples, the handicapped and women. “Yo no discrimina” is a pretty good sales pitch. Naturally, the right-wingers went apeshit, but the Doctor stuck to his guns.
I’d hoped he’d stay on, or that he’d established a precedent for keeping the Department of Public Health out of politics. Nooooo. Calderón’s Secretary of Health, José Cordova Villalobos voted against distributing “morning after pill” when he was a Deputy, and sees neither condoms nor HIV testing as priorities. He has some decidedly strange ideas about public health:
He said that this government should not promote condom use so much, since in his view it promotes high-risk sexual practices, but instead should encourage sex education by the family itself, to be imparted on the basis of parents’ beliefs and values. He also declared that campaigns against homophobia foment homosexuality.
…
As his ministry’s director of legal affairs, Córdova appointed a former lawyer for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico, Bernardo Fernández, who defended Cardinal Norberto Ribera against charges of alleged complicity in cases of pederasty involving a priest.
Fernández, who has also spoken out against the sex education campaigns, is now responsible for ruling on the legality of any public health strategy or law that is proposed by the Health Ministry.
Another change that has made activists wary was the dismissal of Jorge Saavedra as director of the state National Centre for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS and his replacement by a person with no experience whatsoever in the field.
More of José Cordova’s opinions can be found here (en español).
Mexico had a fairly decent public health system. Like in other Latin American countries, there is the problem that the rich set up their parallel services (like hospitals and medical delivery systems) and are reluctant to pay taxes for extending those services to the rest of society. Even so, Mexico did — and continues to do — an amazing job. There aren’t enough public health facilities, but they do a good job, and the system has always stressed preventative health care.
Fred Reed, who doesn’t go in for pretentious bullshit (unpretentious bullshit, yeah, but that’s Fred) noticed (column #319) that even the poor have good teeth… meaning people are getting enough to eat and are farily healthy. At least Cordoba has some training in nutrition, and, although a surgeon and medical school lecturer, has more political than public health experience.
I guess he can drive you to the hospital…
Blogotitlan (a luche libre of a website… think Wonkette, tag-teaming with Rude Pundit and Atrios) recalls the stink PAN made when AMLO (remember him?) paid his chauffer as “chief of staff”. The chauffeur doubled (or tripled) as body-guard and appointments secretary and — given AMLO’s penchant for 6 AM press conferences, worked really, really long hours.
Anyway, the PANista Governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez is also putting his chauffer in a second job… as Secretary of Health!
Blogotitlan leaves out (but I looked up) the possibly interesting (and maybe relevant) factoid that González was originally a PDM activist. Partido Democratica Mexicana had a strange idea of democracy… synarchism, fascism with a roman collar (a la Francisco Franco). They were winning elections at one time in Jalisco, but disappeared in 1997 when they lost their party registration.
Does Hogwarts accept exchange students?
A slice of life en la frontera, courtesy of the McAllen Monitor:
Sara Perkins
March 1, 2007 – 10:02AMROMA — When high school teacher Jose A. Ramos kept two teenage girls in his classroom in October, he said he was protecting them from other students who thought the girls were witches.
School district police said the Spanish teacher resigned Wednesday, hours before a special school board meeting at which members were scheduled to discuss his termination.
Ramos had not been back to work since Oct. 20, 2006, when he was arrested for holding the 14- and 17-year-old cousins in his classroom throughout the school day.
The Spanish teacher told the girls, who police would not identify because both are minors, that they would be arrested for casting a spell on a fellow teacher if they left the room, according to school district police.
Ramos, who has been charged with two counts of unlawful restraint of a student, has been on paid administrative leave. His resignation will take effect at the end of the school year, said Ricky Perez, a spokesman for the school district.
According to Roma school district police, Ramos told the students that he had to protect them from the police and from other students who thought the two girls were witches.
“He was claiming he had them in there to protect them from other students because other students were mad at them,” Chief Noe Flores said.
The Monitor was unable to reach Ramos for comment Wednesday.
Ramos’ case is in the pretrial stage and a court date has not yet been set, District Attorney Heriberto Silva said.
According to Ramos’ staff page on the Roma High School Web site, he taught Advanced Placement Spanish language and literature and had worked for the school for 20 years.
Belief in brujeria, or witchcraft, is common among Roma’s population, according to Flores and others at the school.
Although police said Ramos never locked the door to the room — he kept the two students in the back while others freely entered and left, they said — the teacher falsely told them that an assistant principal had told him to keep them there, Flores said.
Since the incident, police and administrators have asked students to be more open with the administration about problems and concerns and have told them not to throw around allegations of witchcraft, Flores said.
Roma, by the way, is on the U.S. side. Maybe they really were brujas.And, as a friend of mine once pointed out, when puberty hits, girls turn evil (though, he also pointed out that when boys get hit with the hormones they get really, really tupid… and stay that way a long, long time!).
So much for “Mexico, siempre fiel”
… as Juan-Pablo II called the country.
Citius64 posted the original (from the paid-subscription only Reforma, 24-Feb-2007) on his website.
Less than ten percent of Catholics attend Sunday Mass, according to the Archdiocese of Mexico (City).
A notice on the Archdiocesan web page estimated that if all baptized Catholics attended Mass, there would not be enough churches, and priests would have to hold services outdoors.
“Unfortunately, the number of persons attending Sunday Mass fluctuates between six and nine percent of those baptized,” according to figures compiled by the Archdiocesan Office of Planning and Statistics.
The report went on “There are approximately 1,129 churches, serving an average of 8,000 people each. Every church would have to be equal in size to the Basilica of Guadalupe if that number of people attended every Sunday mass, at the same hour “.
Many priests admit they recognize that missing masses is something to worry about. “However,” said the report, “the baptized who are missing Mass should be a lot more worried.”
The reality is the nuns, tourists (and tour guides) usually outnumber the faithful, even in the Metropolitan Cathedral. This photo was taken by Dutch tourist:
Mexican stand-off (BOTH borders)
Mexico has it’s border crossing problems too, though it looks like its starting to get a handle on the “illegal alien” situation:
President Felipe Calderon hopes to accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt — not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants.
…
The Interior Department said it will soon reveal details of its Safe Southern Border Program to move against illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico.
What a concept! Meanwhile, the news on OUR on-going border has to do with what’s crossing… and more importantly, from where to where…
400+ people were arrested in what the media is calling a crackdown on MEXICAN drug smuggling. Yeah, the drugs are coming through Mexico:
Authorities said the cartel shipped or drove tons of the drugs from Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico. From there, they were taken over the south-west border and broken down in Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities before being distributed nationwide.
The drugs were distributed in Nevada, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington and Oregon.
In a minor story from WKRN, Nashville TN (announcing that Tennesee’s Governor was going to go see for himself what his National Guardsmen and women were expected to do along the Arizona border, I noticed these two paragraphs:
But a standoff between four Tennessee guardsmen and an unidenified group of armed men along the Mexican border in Arizona last month led to questions about the rules of engagement.
Six to eight gunmen _ possibly heading for Mexico with drug money _ approached the troops at an overnight observation post Jan. 3. No one fired a shot, and the confrontation ended when American troops withdrew to contact the Border Patrol. The gunmen then fled into Mexico.
Notice that the gunmen were not coming FROM Mexico, but headed TOWARDS Mexico. This has been buried in the news stories. This, and the later news report about a truckload of arms and explosives stopped just outside Matamoros don’t suggest that ICE isn’t checking what — or who — is leaving the country.
These stories are being buried by things like those drug arrests. It’s obvious what the SOURCE of the violence in northern Mexico related to the narcotics trade is though. As I’ve said so often, isn’t farmers looking for work (or even farmers whove gone into the methamphetimine business — and the domestic narcotics trade isn’t that huge to begin with) but the huge amounts of cash and weapons coming in from … obviously not Guatemala.
An impolite question. Who is protecting the arms and gun runners, that they seem to have no trouble getting across from the U.S. side?
Another Lou Dobbs’ head-popper…
By Susan Ferriss
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In a surprising new study with national implications, a University of California economist found that immigration boosted the average wages of the native-born worker in California by at least 4 percent between 1990 and 2004.
The boost in wages due to immigrants’ impact on the workplace is across the board, but higher for those with at least a high school diploma, according to the detailed analysis of 44 years of Census data on immigration and the workplace.
Native-born high school dropouts, who are assumed to have lost ground to immigrants in the workplace, have not suffered any wage losses as a group because of immigration, according to the study, which was produced by UC Davis associate professor Giovanni Peri for the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco.
“In fact, there has been a small up tick in their wages,” Peri said of native-born high school dropouts, who account for about 8 percent of the state’s native-born workers.
The gain in real wages for that group is less than 1 percent, Peri said, only 0.2 percent, “which is not much, but certainly not a negative.”
“These results,” Peri wrote in the report, “should certainly be taken into account by policy-makers as they consider immigration reform. The findings would seem to defuse one of the most inflammatory issues for those who advocate measures aimed at `protecting the livelihood of American citizens.'”
(full story: Kansas City Star)
Bum rap
updated 2-March-07, 5 am):
Be on the lookout for whoever produced the hot new video, Desmadre en Tepito (“Fucked up in Tepito”). Whoever “Producciones Ralf Energymen” might be, the police want to “dicuss” the matter with you.
Joel Ortega, Secretary of Public Security (Mexico City Police Commissioner) says the video, a reference to the recent “expropriation” of El Forteleza is an “apologia for violence.” (or… anyway, the rap says cops are jerks. About the same as any other rap anywhere else). So… he’s bustin’ heads and takin’ names. The police have been chasing Tepito’s pirate video salesmen with usual vigor the last few days. They… are…. pissed.
The 90 or so comments on the youtube posting are evenly split between the folks who can’t understand why people are upset that a gangster-run coop apartment (and… ok… crack house on crack? steroids?) was raided, and those who point out that people have to live somewhere, and make a living somehow.
I only lived on the edge (of living on the edge, I guess) — on calle Rep. de Bolivia for a couple of weeks (I was going back to the U.S. and had already moved out of my previous place), and wasn’t going out at night, so I can’t say I’m one of the gente. But El barrio bravo has been playing by its own rules since the Aztecs.
There’s an energy there, not necessarily good or bad, but its own. I’d compare to to Harlem, but it’s not a “minority” neighborhood. The locals use their own slang and inpenetrable patois, that mixes in Ñya-ñya (the Otomi language) with Spanish… I guess they’re Mexican cocknies. Whatever they are, they’ve got an outsized reputation for being very bad boys… it’s a hard working, hard-scrabble place where the finer things of life are hard to come by. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t an artistic and cultural side. and a few great Mexicans. They’ve bred a real poet in Cantinflas, and a saint — make that two saints. El Santo and Padre Sergio Gutierrez Benitez both were born here.
Besides, where else can you shop for used coffins (as someone I know claims she saw being sold there), heroin, shoes and stereos (sometimes somebody else’s stereo), wedding gowns and pirate versions of the newest Hollywood movies (usually before they’ve been released) within a few blocks?
Desmadre en Tepito couldn’t be reproduced even on Mexican mass media. There’s a relatively “mild” version — called “Tepito es mi barrio — featuring the usual fat guys rapping and the scantily clad chicas available from El Universal’s website.
Um… speaking of Mexicans abroad
Vicente Fox seems reluctant to return to Mexico. I saw where he was in Nigeria, writing for This Day (Lagos) about ex-presidents…
In Mexico , many of the presidents we have had in the 20th Century would finish their terms by taking away the furniture, the paintings and anything they could from the presidential residence. A number of them also finished their terms, appointed their successors and immediately leave the country to hide away.
I don’t know if anyone’s counted the silverware at Los Pinos, but where Don Chente’s has been popping up everywhere BUT Mexico. At a Junior League banquet in Ohio. Norman Oklahoma … now in Dallas, to complain that the ten legal charges pending against him are “slanders and lies.”
The charges involve election law violations — he owed his election to the reform that keeps sitting presidents from interfering in elections for his successor. Something he promptly forgot when AMLO looked like the odds on favorite.
Let us (not) pray… Baylor University prof re: immigration
Dr. Juan Hernandez, a Texas Republican Party activist, is consistently referred to in news articles and on cable TV news shows as “a former member of the Vicente Fox cabinet”.
Hernandez, a dual national, WAS head of something called the “Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad” (in other words, a special advisor to the President) for around for a year or so, until the office was abolished after came under investigation by the Mexican elections commission for having been a front to raise campaign contributions in the U.S. for PAN candidates. Foreign campaign contributions are illegal in Mexico.
Maybe it’s that whiff of electorial chincanery that makes Dr. Hernandez one of the few — make that the only — Mexican you’ll see on the same program with Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan. He’s no idiot and not a push-over, but comes across as sunny and positive… which may be the reason he’s never identified as a Texas Republican. He just doesn’t fit the image. But he is the conservatives favorite “go to guy” when they need a “clean and articulate” Mexican.
A friend of George W. Bush and “acceptable” to folks like Lou Dobbs, it’s a natural that Dr. Hernandez would be asked to speak at at a Southern Baptist institution like Waco’s Baylor University. And even in their chapel. He wasn’t smitten (smited? smote?), but something about Southern Baptists and Mexicans (ok, half-Mexicans) that make for an uncomfortable mix:
Juan Hernandez, former cabinet member for Mexican President Vicente Fox, visited Chapel Feb. 12. He began his speech by asking students to accompany him in his prayer for the illegal immigrants in danger. He said the United States is in need of 400,000 employees every year and about 320,000 immigrants cross the border from Mexico to work in the United States. Later Hernandez encouraged students to take out their cell phones and call Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to voice their opinions on immigration reform laws.
(Economics Professor John) Piscotti said it was inappropriate for Hernandez to speak and pray the way he did. He also said asking the students to pray for the mistreatment of illegal immigrants was “utterly absurd.”
Uhhh…. I think the Baylor Lariat meant Hernandez was praying for the immigrants who are mistreated, but… what’s so bad about praying? In chapel? Did he make a sign of the cross or something? I’ll never understand Southern Baptists, I guess. But, then Waco isn’t part of the normal universe, even by Texas standards.
If Lou Dobbs’ head explodes will anyone notice?
Benders’ Immigration Daily linked me up to a 20 page report from the Immigration Policy Center on criminality among “illegals”
…Beause many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the “rule of law,” thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked. This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath.
But anecdotal impression cannot substitute for scientific evidence. In fact, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population…
The problem of crime in the United States is not “caused” or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But the misperception that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby undermining the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration.
I don’t expect to see this picked up by Lou, or Fox news and I’ll betcha no one else does either. At most, they’ll try to play “gotcha” with the right-wingers. I’m more than a little annoyed by the “left blogosphere” for buying into the anti-immigration crap and the shallow analysis of Latin America (with too many examples to chose from… I just picked one at random from) .
Come to think of it, outside “el blogosphero” there isn’t much said about immigration by the “left” other than how it plays to the voters. For now, let’s see what they do with this report…
C’mon guys… I’m waiting….
chirp….
chirp…..
chirp….
mexfiles.net 
