Gerald Ford (14 de julio de 1913 – 26 de diciembre de 2006), D.E.P.
Hey, I manage to keep relevant somehow or another. A momentito of silence for the man who reassured gringos that Mexicanismo is indeed a mystery wrapped in an enigma… or at least a corn husk.
Popkin begins his well-regarded book on the subject, “The Reasoning Voter,” with an example from Gerald Ford’s primary campaign against Ronald Reagan in 1976. Visiting a Mexican-American community in Texas, Ford (never a gaffe-free politician) made the mistake of trying to eat a tamale with the corn husk, in which it is traditionally served, still on it. This ethnic misprision made the papers, and when he was asked, after losing to Jimmy Carter in the general election, what the lesson of his defeat was, Ford answered, “Always shuck your tamales.” Popkin argues that although familiarity with Mexican-American cuisine is not a prerequisite for favoring policies friendly to Mexican-Americans, Mexican-Americans were justified in concluding that a man who did not know how to eat a tamale was not a man predisposed to put their needs high on his list. The reasoning is illogical: Ford was not running for chef, and it was possible to extrapolate, from his positions, the real difference it would make for Mexican-Americans if he were President rather than Reagan or Carter. But Mexican-Americans, and their sympathizers, felt “in their gut” that Ford was not their man, and that was enough.
Louis Menand, “Critic at Large”, The New Yorker, August 30, 2004
Nacos unite… we have nothing to lose but las fresas
From Number of Rich is Growing Steadily (Herald, 27 December 2006)
According to the United Nations, wealth in Mexico continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few. The country´s richest 10 percent control 35 percent of the nation´s wealth, while the poorest 10 percent have 1.6 percent. That means wealth is more concentrated than in the United States, where the top 10 percent holds 30.5 percent of the wealth.
NACOS AND FRESAS
The result in Mexico is two competing world views, known as “naco” and “fresa.”
In a nutshell, fresas are usually preppy rich kids, more interested in U.S. culture than Mexican.
The naco stereotype is of a less educated and darker skinned person who likes Mexican wrestling and street tacos.
That division, more than economics or politics, may better describe the spiritual separation that emerged over the summer between followers of Calderón and López Obrador.
A popular online cartoon, Fresa y Naco, has become a hit on the YouTube Web site. It bitingly exposes the differences between the two Mexicos.
The character Fresa, which means strawberry in Spanish, has pale skin, peppers his speech with English phrases to sound cool and recoils when he hears Mexican regional music.
Describing the protest camps that López Obrador set up in Mexico City over the summer to dispute the election results, he is apoplectic. “I can´t drive my BMW to downtown,” he exclaims. “We should go camping in Colorado instead, at least there the nacos won´t be rebelling against us.”
Diplomatic end-runs… more from the book to be
I’m really not writing a diplomatic history of Mexico, but a generic one… but after posting on Joel Poinsett and HIS conspiracies, I couldn’t pass up posting this on another ambasadorial conspirator… hey, the bowl season is starting.
Obregón had risked his presidency to gain U.S. 
diplomatic recognition. Warren G. Harding sent James Rockwell Sheffield, who tried his best to work in the tradition of Joel Poinsett and Henry Lane Wilson. Poinsett had organized Masonic lodges among the political elite to gain control; Wilson had sponsored a bloody coup d’etat;
Sheffield organized football games.
Convinced “Soviet Mexico” (as he called it, especially after Mexico and the Soviet Union exchanged ambassadors in 1927) was doomed to Catholicism, Socialism and worse, likely take its ownership of oil resources seriously, unless they learned to play football. “Futbal” or soccer was only for Europeans – and, even worse, RUSSIANS. According to Sheffield, only an American style game could produce American style (or rather, pro-American) governments.
And so, with great secrecy, the Ambassador contacted universities throughout the United States. College students were recruited as secret agents – their mission (paid for by the United States government): infiltrate Mexican schools and recreation programs and teach the Mexicans the American Way of Life, and the lateral pass.
More seriously, the Ambassador listened to oilmen like William F. Buckley, who wanted the United States to militarily intervene to protect their investments. When the United States intervened in a Nicaraguan civil war in 1927 (to protect American investments in that country), Mexican soldiers were sent to help the opposing side. The two armies spent most of their time avoiding each other, while their governments issued inflammatory warnings.
President Coolidge (Harding died in office) said that Mexico was on “probation” and could be attacked if it didn’t withdraw its troops; President Calles responded that he would order the oil fields torched if American soldiers entered the country. More practically, Calles suggested both countries leave Nicaragua, and that the matter be turned over to the International Court in The Hague.
Meanwhile, the luckless Ambassador Sheffield who had to publicly deny there was any plan to invade, unwisely left papers outlining his suggestions for just such a plan in his office. The Mexican cleaning staff “expropriated” the Ambassador’s papers. President Coolidge had no choice but to cancel the invasion and the football program.
Anyone was bound to be an improvement, but Coolidge surprised the Mexicans, and himself, when he chose Wall Street banker Dwight Morrow to replace the disgraced and discredited Sheffield. Morrow’s task was to avoid at any cost a complete breakdown in relations. Oilmen and other American businessmen were willing to take advice from a professional business advisor. Morrow’s advice was simple – the Revolution was a fact, and if the American’s wanted to do business, they had to play by the new rules.
The United States government could help them learn the rules, but it couldn’t change them. Unlike his predecessors, Morrow – who had made his fortune listening to the experts who disagreed with him, and then advising wealthy investors on how to handle their money – did not arrive with preconceived notions of how Mexico should react. He was quite willing to listen to people like Lazaro Cardenás and the American radical, Frank Tannenbaum.
Morrow, being independently wealthy, was able to pursue his personal interests in collecting art. His home in Cuernavaca was filled with contemporary and pre-Columbian Mexican art[2]. At his own expense, the millionaire banker hired Communist Diego Rivera to paint the murals in the old Cortés Palace in that city. He entertained and financially supported artists and intellectuals.
Finally, aircraft – and aviators – fascinated Mexicans. It didn’t hurt Morrow’s popularity at all when his daughter married Charles Lindberg. Several minor diplomatic incidents were avoided when Mexican officials who might snub the foreign power for political reasons were not about to pass up the chance to meet the Ambassador’s heroic son-in-law.
[1] Mexicans have started playing, and watching American football in recent years, and several universities and high schools (especially in the North) play the sport. But this has more to do with recent Mexican migration to the
United States, and cable television than with adopting American values.
[2] The house is now a restaurant, La Bonita India, on calle Dwight Morrow. Mexican streets are named after almost everyone, but this is the only street ever named for a United States Ambassador.
Padre Pistoleros rides again…
Gun-toting priest sings for social causesI’m not sure I’m happy to see the Padre back in the news… but I bet no one ever falls asleep during his sermons
BY ALFREDO CORCHADO
El Universal
Martes 26 de diciembre de 2006
CHUCÁNDIRO, Mich. – This jolly 240-pound man isn´t dressed in red, and he doesn´t rely on reindeer to pull a sled. Instead, he drives a pickup and packs a .38 pistol as he delivers toys. And though he looks like a cowboy, he´s a man of the cloth.Meet Alfredo Gallegos Lara, the parish priest of tiny Chucándiro, in the central state of Michoacán, 200 miles west of Mexico City. Dubbed “Padre Pistolas” (Father Guns), the towering, singing priest will deliver toys to the neediest children this holiday season and bring smiles in a region torn apart by heavy migration to the United States and a violent turf war between drug traffickers.
“All that´s left for the people of this region is faith,” he said. “My job is to help them maintain, or restore their faith and hope.”
Padre Pistolas admits he´s unconventional. He sells CDs and DVDs of himself singing popular ranchera songs and uses some of the proceeds to fund good deeds and public works projects, which have earned him the praise of many locals. Among them is Blanca Nelly Calderón, a 23-year-old elementary school teacher and waitress.
“He can be full of himself,” Calderón said as Padre Pistolas dined on stew at her family´s restaurant. “But we judge for his actions, not for what he says, and he does more than any other priest, certainly more than the government.”
The padre praised the stew with a profanity-laced compliment.
“Ay, Padre,” Calderón said with a sigh.
In this traditional town, it´s his down-to-earth style, he said, that helps him connect with his parishioners year round, but especially during the Christmas season. He sees his job as ministering to those who sometimes end up on the wrong side of the border or the law.
…
The padre´s blunt style and gun-toting ways have brought him criticism from the Catholic Church hierarchy. His superiors have urged him to focus more on sermons than on being a showboat, said one church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Padre Pistolas downplays the criticism, saying that a little profanity hardly compares to the highly publicized cases of pedophile priests who have scandalized the church in recent years. On a recent Sunday, his use of profanity during the sermon made some parishioners cringe and others smile or chuckle.
“Sometimes he can get under your skin,” said Efraín Tapia, 51, a rancher, “and you always have to be prepared to put your hands over the children´s ears.”
“Yes, I know sometimes I get on my soap box and let out a few too many cuss words,” he said. “But the church has more pressing moral issues to deal with. Also, my parishioners want someone they can relate to, not someone who will just stand up in front of them and preach.”
Sometimes after Mass he puts on his cowboy hat, tight jeans and crocodile boots and hangs out with parishioners. He´ll pick up his guitar and belt out a few tunes. He´ll take a swig or two of tequila. And he´s never far from his shiny black revolver.
About a half-dozen of his close friends have been shot, he explained. His church has been broken into, and three of his trucks have been stolen. He carries the gun for protection, especially when he goes into remote villages to give last rites to drug traffickers or hear a widow´s confession.
“I´ve never used my gun, and I never plan to, but confronted with a bad situation, we have the right to defend ourselves,” he said. “These are very dangerous villages.”
It´s his willingness to minister to all those who need help that has earned him respect.
The pistol-packing priest is raising money to renovate a crumbling church and to improve schools. He hopes to build a road linking the isolated community to a highway, funded partly by donations from immigrants in the United States. He serves as a link between immigrant communities in the United States and their struggling homes in Mexico.
Take that thumb out of your mouth and assume the position…
A tip of the sombrero to the Unapologetic Mexican for alerting me to this:
Since it opened, T. Don Hutto Private Prison in Taylor has fought to stay relevant, having had financial problems from lack of enough prisoners in Texas.
Then the Department of Homeland Security stepped in with a new contract for T. Don Hutto – as a place to detain illegal immigrants waiting to be deported out of the United States.
This is the first official detainee facility for illegal immigrants. Entire families are bused there to wait for their processing back to their country of origin, which is most often Mexico.
I know a man who works there, a seasoned prison guard. I will call him Tommy, obviously not his real name. Tommy is a seasoned hard-ass prison guard, but a good man.
He described the incoming immigrant families holding screaming children in their arms. He described the guards taking their fingerprints, taking the fingerprints of the babies.
He said it was disturbing to the most hardened prison workers to see poor families being held like prisoners, the children behind bars, crying, all of them crying.
He said they were all poor and frightened. He has been around criminals for many years. These are not criminals. They are poor and desperate.
http://glenda0909.blogspot.com/2006_05_14_glenda0909_archive.html
Best line of the day (well, heck, writers did lead the thing)
Led by writers, choreographers, actors, thousands of university students marched down Paseo de la Reforma to the National Congress to protest budget cuts for education and the military budget.
Great slogan: ¡ARTE, SI! ¡ARMAS, NO! ¡
I’ll fess up — my life as an illegal alien
(I forgot who I originally wrote this for… it was about the time I was moving out to the wild west, and was probably in response to someone somewhere. Out here, I don’t bother with TV, but I assume Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Bill O’Reilly haven’t seen the light yet).
For the benefit of those boneheads on the right, who think it’s cute to pose the question, “What do you think would happen to me, if I went to Mexico illegally?” the answer is, “Probably nothing, really.”
No, I didn’t swim the backstroke across the Rio Bravo del Norte, though that sounds better. I became an illegal alien in Mexico the same way most Mexicans become illegal aliens in the U.S. I took a job while on a visitors’ visa and didn’t get a work permit, or go through the bureaucratic process (which in Mexico would have taken a couple of hours. Ask any “Green Card holder” how many visits to the INS and the U.S. embassay in their home country they made, and ask them to calculate the days spent in that task).
It’s a dirty little secret, but there are about a million “illegal Gringo aliens” at any time in Mexico, and no one gets too upset about it. In theory, I could have been deported, but it was highly unlikely. About the only gringos I ever heard of being deported were the usual suspects: narcotics addicts, kiddie pornographers and the like.
While unfortunately, Central Americans passing though Mexico are too often abused or deported, my fellow “illegals” from less wealthy nations (I had neighbors from Ethiopia, Congo, Brazil and Pakistan, all as illegal as I was) were largely left alone. Like all foreigner in Mexico (even tourists) Article 33 of the Mexican Constitution grants us the same civil rights enjoyed by citizens.
Other than not having to tax ID number to open a bank account and file for a tax refund, there were a few financial challanges. Mexico, like the U.S. withholds taxes from your paycheck. I have to assume my employers sent in the taxes. But, not having papers, I had no way to get a taxpayer ID number, or to file a return – and should have gotten a refund at least one of those years. And, of course, I paid the same sales taxes as everyone else. If people here want to complain that “illegals” aren’t paying taxes, their issue is with the employers and the IRS, not the workers.
Granted, most “illegal alien gringos” are fairly well-heeled or relatively well-paid. As a part-time English teacher and translator, I made less than many other “illegal gringos”, but that was partially by choice. I was single and could get by on less than someone supporting a family (or sending money home) and hadn’t moved to Mexico for the job opportunities (I may be eccentric, but I ain’t crazy. I lived in Mexico for the same reasons I now live in the TransPecos. Writing is no way to get rich. Single writers without extravagent vices can get by on less than full time employment if they have to.)
OK, I was relatively healthy (or, maybe just not concerned with my health) enough to overtax the local health care facilities like… illegal aliens? No health care facility I used ever asked my immigration status.
Mexico, like any civilized country, has affordable health care and public health services. With universal care payed with tax dollars, “illegals” are unlikely to “bankrupt the system.” Hospital administrators in any part of the country with a lot of uninsured patients are all talking about bankruptcy. It isn’t the “illegals” – it’s the uninsured, or, rather, the whole concept of private insurers — that are bankrupting public health care in the U.S. Illegals on both sides of the border are taxpayers.
Obtaining proper documentation, after overstaying my time, was a hassle I could have avoided, but nobody proposed any “leave the country, pay a huge fine and wait in line for thirty years”. As it was, I DID leave the country (Over a long weekend, I took a bus across the border into Texas, and returned with my working visa application in hand). It was cheaper than hiring a lawyer and paying an administrative fine. While a reasonable fine could be worked out for those “illegals” now in the U.S., there is no way NOT to disrupt business activities if thousands – or tens of thousands, or millions – of workers have to leave the country (or be replaced).
Outside of dictatorial regimes like North Korea – and the minds of some right-wingers – no sane person (which, of course, excludes the right wingers) would think of something so barbaric as making an immigration violation into a criminal offense – depriving dependent children (including U.S. born citizens) of parental support. Even if the milder suggestion of forcing the “illegals” to leave is followed, what happens to their kids, including those that are U.S. citizens? Do they depend on Social Services? Who is going to pay their medical and dental costs? Do they drop out of school without obtaining an education or trade that will make them productive citizens and taxpayers?
An “illegal alien” friend of mine in Mexico was was court ordered NOT to be deported. His all-but-officially-ex-wife was pissed (as ex-wives – officially and not quite — sometimes are) and turned him into the IMN. Uh, like any civilized country, child support comes before stupid things like proper documentation.
What do illegal aliens do? Work. Live. You don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself, and you try to stay on your best behavior. Yeah, my weird gringo ways probably annoyed some of my Mexican neighbors, but Mexicans don’t call the cops just because they’re slightly annoyed with you. And, I don’t think the Mexico City cops cared about my immigration status either.
I don’t recommend being an “illegal” alien in any country, but we’re going to exist. Mexico has about a million “illegal gringo aliens” and the U.S. supposedly has 12 to 15 million “illegals” from everywhere on the planet. Mexico is going to need English teachers for a while, and there are a lot of retirees who can’t make it at home on their pension and social security payments — and the U.S. is going to need workers of all kinds.
As I mentioned, this was a bureacratic matter, and eventually – grudgingly – I had to fess up and deal with the bureaucrats. Despite what Pat Buchanan and others have told you, it’s not a felony. There’s no such animal in Napoleonic Law anyway. Pat’s an idiot, but we already knew that. I don’t know if it’s just the tenuous grasp of the law most right wingers have, or the imperviousness to small things like factual accuracy that infects TV news bloviators like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly, but there’s nothing criminal about being “illegal.” Even in the U.S., it’s an administrative matter (which is why deportations go before an administrative law judge, not a federal criminal courts judge). And administrative regulations are often stretched (or just simply ignored) when necessary.
I don’t know whether to be amused or appalled that the same people (and websites) that rail regularly about bureaucratic overzealousness not only expect nitpicking, but want armed agents to back up those regulations, when it involves people with a better tan than they have, who speak a different language. I might have a little pity, instead of contempt, if these jokers just came out of the closet as racist dolts too lazy or stupid to try speaking another language, and too frightened to imagine living without the State regulating their every action.
They call migrants “pollos” because everyone plucks them
[my note — CNDH is a consitutionally mandated “autonomous organism” and part of the Federal Judiciary, but unlike other branches of the judiciary, it cannot issue arrest warrants, and has no enforcement powers. I translated “visadores generales” as “caseworkers”, but these CNDH officers are public prosecutors able to file denuncias in criminal and civil courts (for either citizens or mistreated foreigners, by the way). It has a good reputation for zealousness and ndependence, though – especially in the case of then Jalisco Governor, Francisco Ramírez Acuña refused to look into human rights abuses when anti-globalization protesters were roughed up by Guadalajara police. Ramírez Acuña is now Secretaría de gobernacíon, which should worry people concerned about Mexico. As usual, I’ve made a few changes from the original for clarity. The original story was a sidebar to another story, on celebrations in Tijuana, information I added to this article.]
VICTOR BALLINAS Correspondent (Jornada, 18 December 2006)
Tijuana, BC. They come from Puebla, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán and Zacatecas. All of them worked in the U.S. for several years. But, with their faces etched with fear and disoriention after having been deported to the frontier, they were in no mood to join in the posadas in this border city. They prefer to stay locked up in the Casa del Migrante rather than run the risks of the streets here.
“Out there, the cops are waiting to take everying we have. They’re worse than thieves. They take everything, even your shoes. Thieves at least sometimes give you a ride where you’re going.”
The Scalabrini shelter sees between 120 and 140 deportees from the United States daily. Here they rest and feel protected, at least temporarily. Out there, on the street, danger lucks. “We only have the dirty clothes we were deported in, and the police rob us or toss us in jail. We’re hunted, and they know when we go out,” the deportees charge.
Today, Luis Soberanes Fernández, President of the National Commission of Human Right (CNDH, for its initials in Spanish) came to observe conditions at the facility. Accompaied by the case worker [“visador general”] charged with overseeing these deportees, National Ombudsman Sarbanes met with several dozen people who had been deported only hours earlier.
The shelter’s occupants confessed to Ombudsman Sarbanes, “We’re afraid to go in the street. We don’t want to go out, even to the corer store, because the police are waiting for us.”
Tense, with fearful and anxiety-ridden faces, the deportees were reluctant at first to tell their stories. Only one-by-one did they begin to talk. One man said he was deported from the United States in a matter of hours, after working 16 years in that country.
The CNDH vistador assured the resident, “We are not the government, but we need to know what we cases are defending. No one, and certainly no Mexican official can detain and jail you simply for having been an immigrant. Tell us what happened. Will you denounce the people who robbed you. We’re here to listen. Help us, so that other migrants won’t go through the same things you’ve been through.”
“We’re here,” the migrants said, “because we’re afraid of the police. This Tijuna sons of bitches are the worst cops in Mexico. Yesterday, we were deported at dawn, loaded into a truck and driven to the border. The U.S. “migra” warned us, “be careful, don’t travel alone. Stay in groups so you can defend yourselves.’”
“And, as soon as we crossed the border, the police were waiting. Getting out of the [U.S.] truck only two of us got away from them. The rest of us were picked up. The cops grabbed us and tried to get us into their patrol cars. We ran and hid out in a store. The lady there told us to “calm down, the cops don’t come in here. It was hours before we could leave.”
The National Ombudsman shook his head. He became indignant, and loudly demanded to speak to the CNDH Director for Tijuana. “Where are the visdadores?” Told they were in their office downtown, Dr. Sarbanes said, “They’re needed here. They’re REQUIRED here. Now!” Sarbanes added “they need to take denunicas and to give these people security. They need to contact the Mexican consulates and find out what’s going on.”
A youth in a wheelchair, barely able to speak, related his story. “I was looking for work when la migra picked me up. I was delivering fish, but had to quit to have an operation for cancer. The doctor told me it’s heridary, runs in my family. I had to stop working. I was told I couldn’t work with fish. I made a claim in Illinois, and was making my monthly job search report, when I was picked up and deported.” “I’m afraid to leave. My friends here have talked about the police that take their money and clothes. A few of us are stuck here, others have gone to jail. I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I leave.”
Marcelino Buendía also told his story. “I’d been working in Denver for 20 years. I received a deportation order because I’d been convicted of driving without a licence, but there was no way for we to get one. So, I drove without one. I’m going to stay here a few days, and speak with my brother who can get me a few dollars to cross back. That’s my life, it’s all I know.”
Asked by the CNDH visador general when he was deported, Buendía said, “The police came to my house at five in the morning, and I was deported at daybreak the following day.”
Another temporary resident complained, “In Los Angeles, they grabbed a friend of mine who didn’t speak English, so they threw him in with the crazies, where a psychiatrist was passing out medication to make everyone sleep. He told me ‘These people are all crazy, and they’re driving me nuts. I’m only here becase I can’t speak English. Every day they’re giving me pills, but they’re not going to help me speak English, and I’ll stay locked up here. It’ll be weeks until I get deported.”
With their confidence restored somewhat, everyone was ready to tell their story. Everyone agreed, “Here, we’re afraid of the police. Lookl, they grab us and take everything in our pockets, and our identification papers. They take our money, when they don’t take us to jail. They take everything – money, watches, clothes and even shoes. They keep some, threaten the rest. It’s better for us to stay here.”
There were further complaints. “I called the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, but no one answered. I couldn’t talk to anyone who could help me. I would like to add that the Immigration officers who spoke both Englisha and Spanish mistreated us the most.”
Someone said that the U.S. migra treats the indocumendos better than Mexican police. But one man disagreed in part. “The Sheriff in Lancaster took $4500, my watch and my cell phone. If the
U.S. police treat us better, it’s just that they feed us and don’t beat us up. But as soon as we enter
Mexico, we have to fear the police.”
A whopping 64 people arrested. Who knows how many disappeared?
¡Para justicia y liberdad! manages to milk the worthless “illegal immigrant” raid on Swift Meat Packing (a whole 64 “illegals” out of over 1200 people “detained” were arrested.
These raids sound more and more like something done in the spirit of the late General Pinochet:
The Des Moines Register reported that workers arrested at Swift & Co. packing plants in Iowa and Nebraska were being held at Camp Dodge. 90 workers from the Swift plant in Marshalltown, and most of the 261 workers from the Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.
If you check out a map, the distance from Grand Island Nebraska to Marshalltown Iowa is about 350 miles. TPM Muckracker has more on the “disappearances”.
If, not being an “illegal alien”, you think none of this matters, I’ll let the inimitable XicanoPwr speak for himself:
Any person who really thinks they are free while their neighbor is not should, at best, consider their freedom temporary because in a whim it can be easily revoked; and, at worst, their freedom is just a mere illusion. Think of it this way: Blacks and Latinos are targets by xenophobic racists, along with homosexuals and women, for no other reason than those doing the oppressing are still figuring out a way to cull the working class whites from the herd. Unfortunately, the sort of people who are better off don’t have Jim Crow laws, lynching, voting disenfranchisement, miscegenation laws and other forms of institutional racism that were common in America for most of the 20th Century as part of their living memory.
“Homeland Security Chief” Michael Chertoff at his latest press conference
NOW that the Ex-Coca-cola President isn’t President…
A proposal to boost taxes on soft drinks in 2007 has caused divisions within the nation´s largest political parties – but on Sunday it appeared the lower house of Congress would approve the measure this week and send it on to the Senate. The bill was approved by a congressional commission on Saturday and also includes increased taxes on tobacco and cigarettes and reduces tax deductions for companies that purchase vehicles. These measures, along with the proposed 5 percent soft drink tax, have provoked protests in their respective industries.Manuel Espino, president of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), said the soft drink tax would unfairly punish the poor.
“In my personal views, I want to say that I would hope that this tax would be less or withdrawn,” Espino said at a press conference at his party´s headquarters in the capital. “I´m worried that soft drinks, while they aren´t an article of first necessity, are in fact an item that is widely consumed. A lot of people include it in their basic diet, and it wouldn´t be fair to them to raise soft drink prices through a tax hike.”
It was unclear whether Espino´s declaration would influence the vote of his party members.
REDUCING HEALTH RISKS
The proposal´s supporters argue that the sugary drinks contribute to Mexico´s rising levels of obesity and related illnesses, and could help improve citizens´ health.
If approved in the coming days by the full Chamber of Deputies, as expected, it is still unclear whether the Senate, which has the authority to modify the bill, would allow it to stand.
Sen. Rosalinda López Hernández of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said her bloc was still divided over the tax, while Sen. Carlos Lozano de la Torre of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said his faction would likely seek to repeal it, saying it would disproportionately hurt Mexico´s poor.
The proposed tobacco tax, which would gradually increment over the next three years, has wider support. Both the PRD and the PAN lawmakers in the lower house have voiced support for the provision. The PRI´s stance on the tax was still unclear on Sunday.
Instead of a tax on soft drinks, the PRI may call for mandatory warning labels on junk food and alcoholic beverages, warning of health risks.
Guerrillas in the mist…
The situation in Oaxaca took me by surprise. I honestly only expected the annual teachers’ strike to go on a bit longer… and get a bit rowdier… than usual and possibly piggy-back on discontent with the outcome of the national elections. I hadn’t expected the popular uprising against the corrupt (and obviously fraudulent) state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, nor that so many other grievances would surface. Given that the uprising was largely peaceful, and the only violence came from state repression, and until the very end, the Federal Government had the sense to stay out, I’d expected some sort of compromise settlement… I didn’t expect APPO would “win” necessarily, but given Mexican history since the 70s, I’d assumed the state would work out a face-saving solution that would at least meet some of the legitimate demands for reform.
With the only grudgingly accepted Calderón administration having decided to launch attacks on the left under the guise of “restoring order”, starting with – not gangsters, but political dissidents — I don’t see the emergence of groups like this as surprising.Calderón came into office with 2/3rds of the electorate against him (and that’s just counting voters, not those who responded to “la otra campaña” and refuse to vote, or just didn’t bother), clearly there is not going to be a “Presidential honeymoon”. I suggested in the post below that the administration is seeking to use the “mano dura” Calderón promised during his campaign, not against criminals and the corrupt, but against dissenters to the “neo-liberal” (pro-NAFTA, pro-big business, pro-US) model that has been a disaster for the Mexican campesino… and, for much of the working class as well. The guerrillas quite rightly see a reaction by the ultra-right (which made a comeback under Fox, who ironically came to power as a result of leftist pressure – and the very real possiblity of a guerilla uprising — after the 1988 elections were stolen by the PRI) as the greatest threat. If the far right tries to maintain the status quo, it could get very ugly, indeed. What is particularly interesting is you have the guerrillas justifying their action in the name of budgetary policy. I don’t think people understand how sacred a large education budget and a small military budget is to Mexicans… education might have been a better investment if Calderón wanted his “mano dura” to succeed against narcos. It’d have gained him support from the left. This is gonna bite him in the ass.
I question how real the threat of a guerrilla uprising is: the midnight press conference, the staged uprising in Reynosa, Oaxaca, the bombings (which were carefully set to cause only symbolic damage… I know the neighborhood where the bombs went off and, if the group really wanted to create havoc, they would have targeted the Wal-Mart next to the PRI headquarters), using the non-violent APPO as a model, the military salute at the end of the news conference – all suggest political theater. Serious theater, but not la revolution. I don’t take such “theater” lightly. The Black Panthers were “theater”too… and WERE a threat to the establishment. It took shock theater — with an all-star cast including Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and a cast of thousands in the role of “rioters” — before anyone decided basic racial equality was “normal”.
Manuel, José Arturo, Gertrudis and Javier seem to be in the same spirit as the Panthers, but with a lot better organization, and – given the amount of time I just spent plowing through dictionaries – much better educated, sophisticated people. Their goal of their “strategic partnership” seems to be to pressure the Calderón administration – and the Mexican establishment — into realizing that the neo-liberal economic model followed since Salinas de Goutari has not improved the lives of most Mexicans. While this is most clear in the south of Mexico, it has largely been ignored by the focus of U.S./Canadian reports on industry rather than agriculture, and the foreigner’s focus on the northern cities and the capital. The guerrillas claim they have support among the discontented norteños as well as among the various rural southerners.
Mexican papers don’t always use “AP style” in their writing, and the Jornada interview does ramble a bit. But, then, when I’m not writing for newspapers (and, even when I am, according to some of my editors), I’m all over the map myself. Translation errors are mine, and in a few places, I transposed sentences and paragraphs to conform a little more with “our” idea of news writing. I didn’t bother to translate “liberal” and “neoliberal”… even though readers in the United States are sometimes confused. Everywhere EXCEPT the U.S., it means a pro-big business “free trader”. The location and time of this interview was, of course, not given by Aranda. We can assume it was within the last week.
Social forces needed to counter state-sponsored violence
Bombings in DF should have been heeded as a warning of huge social discontent.By Jesus ArandaThe government’s repression of the Oaxaca popular movement was “an emblematic process”. The message being sent is that “all attempts to transform our society through peaceful means are condemned to failure.” What is needed is “to open new avenues of social change, not necessarily involving armed resistence.”
Interviewed by La Jornada, leaders of several armed resistance movements — Movimiento Revolucionario Lucio Cabañas Barrientos (MRLCB), Tendencia Democrática Revolucionaria-Ejército del Pueblo (TDR-EP), Brigada de Ajusticiamiento 2 de Diciembre (BA 2D), Organización Insurgente 1 de Mayo (OI 1M), Brigadas Populares de Liberación (BPL) and Unidad Popular Revolucionaria Magonista (UPRM)– admitted responsibility for the series of bombings in Mexico City on November 6.
The bombings, according to the resistance leaders generated a reaction that gave a “cover of legality” to recent crackdowns on protest movements.
However, “we believe that if you take a good look at the event, you’ll see it was a sign, a warning, an alarm raised against growing state repression. No one wants to repeat that unfortunate event, but “we believe it’s behind us, and we’re now ready to move forward.”
Announcing that the four groups were intergrating as a coordinated revolutionary and united” front under UPRM, the four isassociated themselves from armed movements of the past, but at this time are questioning the value of a merely electoral campaign.
Their faces covered with bandanas and guarded by six uniformed guards carrying high powered rifles the four — Manuel, José Arturo, Gertrudis and Javier – said they have come to the realization that the “so-called electoral left” is useless. The communique they read at their nighttime press conference, affirmed that their view that the social resistance represented by the “National Democratic Convention” (at which various groups refused to recognize Felipe Calderón as President of the Republic, and ratified the symbolic legitimacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador) “contributed to our understanding of class-based repression, and demonstrated that our political institutions are being used to undermine change. It affirms the need for a democratic transformation of those institutions and the need to reconquer our sovereignty.”
They will help the PRD ex-candidate (Lopez Obrador), “although he hasn’t proposed any profound social alternative to oppression and capitalist exploitation.”
In direct response to other questions, the four said they saw the ELZN’s “otra campaña” and the actions undertaken by the Asamblea Popular los de Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), as “extraordinarily important.”
On a national scale, they hope to foster an “ Asemblea Popular de los Pueblos de México” “undertaking the same process of resistance, armed struggle and development of a common front among revolutionary groups and organizations” in the fight against neoliberalism and capitalism.
Gertrudis, speaking for the collective leadership of the MRLB, took a clear position: “we weren’t fooled” into thinking an eventual triumph by Andrés Manuel López Obrador would resolve the country’s problems, but “given that a good part of the people put their confidence in him,” and if he was working to help those people, and if the PRD leads the legitimate fight against privatization of national resources and imperialism, “in those things, we can work together” .
Queried about their joint effort, the group stressed that the enemy was powerful, and they need to stick together. During the press conference, the uniformed guards stood around the speaker’s table, over which hung the national flag and the famous photo of Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata in the Palacio Nacional.
The directors of the armed groups said that events in Oaxaca were particularly important to their thinking. They recognized that the
Mexico City bombings were interpreted by many as a justification for repressing the APPO, or were thought to have been provoked by the government of Ulises Ruiz. On August 30, a dozen TDR-EP militants briefly appeared in Reynosa, near Santa Catarina Ixtepeji in Oaxaca State. Though wearing military uniforms, masks and carrying high-powered arms, the event was a staged propaganda event.
In response to repression by the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) and local police against the APPO, and in support of (Oaxaca PRI Governor) Ulixes Ruiz, the TRD-EP – which is a splinter group of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) – planted eight bombs in Mexico City, six of which exploded: two in the Plutarco Elías Calles auditorium at PRI national headquarters, two at the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF) headquarters and two more at various Scotia Bank branches.
Lessons from Oaxaca
José Arturo, of TDR-EP, said: “the repression in Oaxaca had had a profound impact on the people. It will take years to heal the wounds opened by what happened. The only thing the Federal Government accomplished was to harden discontent and intensify actions against powerful groups that have turned a deaf ear to the consequences of the neoliberal model.”
Gertrudis underscored that “they (the government) responded in
Oaxaca against the people with the expectation of facing armed organizations.”
He recognized that “certainly there are valid criticisms of our actions. Those criticisms were precisely the reason actions were halted on December first. The spiral of violence was not coming from the people, but violence would have been forthcoming.”
Ultra-rightist threats
Gertrudis has said that actions like those of the APPO are met by growing repression, but “what else can we expect from an ultra-rightist government which already uses violence to further its goals of giving foreigners concessions to the beaches, the oil, electrical energy and our water resources?
“We will need a stronger response. But for now, we have to act symbolically. Not in a spirit of revenge, but in a spirit of justice.
“Marcos (the ELZN’s “subcomandante Marcos”) said that Mexico is bleeding. We say that there has to be blows from all sides. The reality is that groups (like ours) are springing up in the north too, not just in the south.”
Questioned on the ethics of bombings, Gertrudis, consulting with the others, responded, “what was the ethics involved in running people off from indigenous communities? What is the ethical value of cutting the education budget?”
In this context, Manuel, of UPRM, the organization which formalized its role as coordinator of armed groups, defended the November 6 explosions in the Capital, as a legitimate response to what happened in Oaxaca.
Police actions in Oaxaca “Caused hatred and pain. What was a social movement was said to be an armed movement. Ulises Ruiz’ imposition opened the door to violence.”
Warning that the thinking in his organization leaned towards working on a parallel political and electoral struggle, including popular representation, “we aren’t about to ‘turn the other cheek’. If we need to, we’re willing to act on two fronts… political and military.”
There has been a change in the left’s thinking since taking up arms in the 60s and 70s, when those who sought electoral change were branded as “traitors”. Asked if this didn’t indicate a new stage in the struggle, or a “maturity” on the left, Manuel noted that he had the privilege of working in politics for several years. The 15 million votes for Lopez Obrador were “the cumulation of a national political struggle, and we need to assimilate the experience in our own effort.”
The growing agitation, he continued, “is not just a mobilization on behalf of Andrés Manuel López Obrador where you see rivers of people on all sides, and sit-ins. Demonstrations and street protests are part of the struggle, though there are other ways.
“We are searching for mechanisms to transcend this struggle, and we hope to capitalize on discontent, leading up to a national movement to that will allow me and my comrades to bring our proposals forward with more strength than at present.”
Asked about the ambiguity of their methods – speaking of a political solution while taking up arms, and suggesting that a peaceful option was closed off, Gertrudis responded, “Have we declared war here? ”
José Arturo expanded on the theme. “We neither want, nor think it’s desirable that the profound social changes needed in this country come through violence. Our actions are small signals – and warnings – to the neoliberal elite to step down the repression. It’s not us and our actions they need to worry about. They run the risk of a revolutionary social explosion if they continue their barbaric political practices.
“We’ve accepted the proposition that we cannot hope that this government will solve the basic problems Mexicans face in their everyday life, and we’re prepared. When we speak of opening new avenues, we’re not necessarily speaking of violence, but of promoting and organizing a new constituency .
“The point is, that although it seems there are different agendas among the various social movements and political players, we can permit these various forces to articulate their demands, discuss them, establish a new social pact, and it isn’t necessary to turn to violence.”
“There are possibilities of finding solutions within or outside of existing institutions, but during recent social movements, there has been serious repressive reactions in Sicartsa, Atenco and Oaxaca. Social and pacific movements have been obliged to protect themselves from federal and state repression.
“While these movements seek legality, it’s is necessary to defend their space. We believe we are neutralizing the violence of the powerful. These movements are only possible if they can contribute to the broad public.
“It’s a lie to claim that armed organizations are isolated from the people. No group could survive that way. We are a necessary part of social movements, the self-defense unit, the Mexican people themselves countering state violence. It was the revolutionary movements of the 60s and 70s that opened up the space for the social movements in the streets today.
“Today, we’re not discounting the push for change coming from the electoral left and we hope to make an effective contribution to their efforts.
“We believe that the concept of “reform or revolution,” “legal struggle or armed struggle” is a false dichotomy. It is necessary to articulate all forms of struggle, use different processes and movements if we care going to achieve a transformation and if it can be done without spilling a single drop of blood, then we’ve taken the right course.
“This is what seems ambiguous. We are armed groups that want to avoid violence. The ELZN said it much better: “we’re soldiers today, but we won’t be tomorrow.”
At the same time, the four leaders criticized Felipe Calderón’s attempt to increase the armed forces budget, while proposing reductions in funds for education and public health.
Gertrudis commented: “Lucio Cabañas said “soldiers are also the people”. Los zetas sell drugs and serve in the Army and Navy… and are “of the people” too. As are those fighting them, and their families. I’ve had friends in the military who were murdered. Thanks to some of our comrades in the army, we’re aware of paramilitary groups like “grupo Cataris,” in Jalisco and Michoacán, commanded by an Arginine and a retired Mexican Army captain, and are prepared for disappearances or infiltration. Aside from the Army, there is military intelligence, the police, CISEN (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional – the Mexican national intelligence agency), and various right wing paramilitary groups.
“That is why we’re asking honest soldiers and sailors – who mostly are of humble backgrounds themselves – to disobey criminal orders and avoid reprisals by military authorities. We’re asking them to desert repressive groups and join any of the diverse popular movements.
“The armed struggled, if it comes to one,” warns José Arturo , “would not lack assistance from people now serving in police and military units. Historically, during social movements, such people join with their social peers.
The news conference ended with a changing of the guard. While the olive-drab uniformed guards fired off a round during the ceremony, and remained alert during the conference, it was not seen as threatening by this reporter.
¡Tierra y libros!
Rosario Ibarra called the proposed Calderón budget, which cuts federal spending for culture and education while increasing the funds for military and police operations, “repressive.” “el_longhorn” (who regularly comments here, )said that unless Mexico cracked down on the narcos and unrest, it was liable to go the way of
Colombia, and that things like funding for the Ballet Folklorico weren’t priorities. I wrote fast, and didn’t give enough background on the Senadora’s concerns.
“El_longhorn” is a pro when it comes to sniffing out bullshit (he works for the Attorney General’s Office), and I can understand why a PRD leader’s comments would set off alarms, but Rosario Ibarra is no bullshitter. Just the opposite. It was her refusal to accept the official lies and “spin” on her son’s disappearance during Luis Echavarria’s “guerra sucio” that makes her a Mexican heroine. If anyone knows what “repression” means… she does. She’s been fighting it for thirty years, and knows her enemy. And, she’s got Mexican history on her side. She’s got Mexican history on her side.
While I’ve questioned whether a “war on drugs” is all that effective in the first place. The number one consumer nation is the one north of the Rio Bravo, and WE openly backed the pro-export candidate in the July elections. What other agricultural products are we importing without using NAFTA to skewer the market?.
I also noticed that the big flashy military/police operation is in Michoacán… which has always had a marijuana-growing and smuggling culture – and has made the news with some particularly nasty inter-family warfare among the gangsters. Michoacán is also a PRD stronghold and home to the Cardenás family. The new Secretaría de gobernacion, Francisco Ramírez Acuña, had APPO leaders from Oaxaca arrested (while coming to Mexico City for a “dialogue” with his office!). Ramírez Acuña (according to a reliable source with good social and professional connections to the Mexican political class), has ties to the narcos in his own Jalisco state.
While all that appeals to the conspiratorial sensibilities of my “inner Mexican”, I think Senadora Ibarra had something else in mind. It wasn’t the Ballet Folklorico – which is a tourist-dollar magnet – but public schools, libraries and universities that she is concerned about. James Wilkie wrote back in 1970 in his analysis of the federal budget from 1910 to 1960 (“The Mexican Revolution”, U of California Press):
In 1916 Manuel Gamio, one of Mexico’s most famous anthopologists, suggested that Mexico’s national well-being depended upon intergration of the huge mass of poverty-stricken, isolated, illiterate, and non-Spanish-speaking population into Mexican society. This population had no loyalty to the patria because the federal government had done nothing for it except perhaps to sanction the seizure of its ancient land holdings, levey taxes and search its villages for military conscripts. Gamio’s call was one of many for the integration of the Mexican nation...
Plutarco Elías Calles, who was no slouch when it came to military repression, but it was FOR, not against, education and culture. The repressive forces were fighting folks like Calderón’s por-clerical supporters’ grand-daddies, who opposed secular education – and things like Ballet (folklorico or otherwise). In the revolution, his unit fought under a banner promising not “land and liberty” but, the stepping stones to that revolutionary demand — “¡Tierra y libros!”. Calles was a schoolteacher, and the libros he had in mind were basic readers, algebra texts and geography books.
Frank Tannenbaum, who arrived during the Revolution and stayed, wrote “
Mexico: The Search for Land and Peace” about the “creative revolution” that transformed those backwards peasant communities into modern communities. I don’t have Tannenbaum’s book in front of me (NY: Alfred A Knopf, 1950) but remember his dramatic image of a line of Mayan women carrying over the mountains desks, chairs, books, blackboards… the basic essentials of the time for integrating their “povery-stricken, isolated and non-Spanish-speaking population into Mexican society.” Mexico’s first satellite transmissions were rural eductional programs (the Fox administration cut the funding, by the way… though it made a show of making the internet available to some of those communities). And, in case anyone has forgotten, it was complaints about misuse of education funding that brought about the troubles in
Oaxaca.
“el_longhorn” suggested that without increased military spending, Mexico will go the way of Colombia. That country isn’t a good comparison. It’s been at war with itself – or rather among the elites – since 1830 with a few short breaks for the usual repression of the rural, “poverty-sticken, isolated, etc.” population. The latest civil war has been going on since 1954, and the “narco-terrorism” is just a variation on the eternal search for “alternative financing”… the “official” federal budget for
Colombia has always been heavy on military spending, light on education and culture. The Mexican budget hasn’t. During the Juarez administration, and during the Revolution miltary spending was over half the national budget, but the Mexicanmilitary budget has been falling (as a portion of the total national budget) since 1917 …even in 1944 (when Mexico was a combattant in the “Guerra contra nazifascismo” the military budget was cut to free up money for important things – like education.
It’s ironic… it’s the “left” that pushes middle-class values. And it’s precisely the “alternative presidency’s” prescriptions (more rural business investment, infrastructure, schools and universities) that would have been more likely to defeat the narcos than the Army. If, indeed, it’s the narcos that are to be taken on. Calderón came to the Presidency with dubious support. There’s too many questions still to be answered about the election – and it was so very, very close – that I wonder whether we shouldn’t look at Carrenza (or even Santa Ana) for our historical precedents. For both, neutralizing opposition – the military option – was the only way to ensure legitimacy.
Calderón is no Santa Ana, however. He’s not foolish enough to think he has a mandate, nor can he ignore the very real opposition, so there may be an upside to all this. And, though they live very well, today’s generals are nothing like Santa Ana’s cronies for whom a military career was essential to playing a role in national affairs.
The military people themselves do not want to take on a larger role in Mexican society (another difference with Colombia is that the military in Mexico has very little interest in political control) and doesn’t really see themselves as policemen (something I did not get directly from military sources, but is a reasonable assumption, given what military people themselves say publically, and given their reaction to being put into policing jobs). The Army is unlikely to lobby the Senate, but perhaps the legislators will step up to the bat, and Mexicans will enjoy a more balanced government.
Increased military spending at the expense of everything else is just plain bone-headed. Mexico doesn’t need – or want – a large military. But, it was concentrating on the military that kept Mexican society from developing as a healthy and independent nation in the mid-nineteenth century. It was people like Benito Juarez, who was precisely one of those backwards, non-Spanish-speaking rural peasants who did get an education. Juarez (who started publishing the federal budget, and who did, I admit, spend most of it on military expenditures… but then, he had to put up with pests like Maximiliano and the French) – with his provincial bougeois values – who became the real Mexicans. Calderón is supposedly the conservative, and Rosario Ibarra the “leftist”… but it’s Ibarra defending the traditional values of the Mexican middle class. Go figure.
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