José, Can you? ¡Si!
Maybe, as George W. says, “The National Anthem ought to be sung in English” … or maybe, having started as a tavern drinking song, George W. was looped to the gills on the many, many occasions he either attempted to sing it in Spanish, or sorta-kinda succeeded (like he sorta-kinda speaks Spanish).
At left is the OFFICIAL SPANISH VERSION OF THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, published in 1919 by the U.S. Bureau of Education.
The State Department, meanwhile, has four different versions of La Bandera de Estrellas on its official website.
Let’s all sing along with Incurious George:
Amanece: ¿no veis, a la luz de la aurora,
Lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer?
Sus estrellas, sus barras flotaban ayer
En el fiero combate en señal de victoria,
Fulgor de cohetes, de bombas estruendo,
Por la noche decían: “!Se va defendiendo!”
Coro:
!Oh, decid! ¿Despliega aún su hermosura estrellada,
Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?
George W. Bush’s “Immigrant’s Bill of Rights”
shamelessly stolen from whitehouse.org
George W. Bush — Idiot or Commie Agent? You decide…
Tomorrow (29 August) we’re having another mega-march, so I shopped today. I bought some very fresh organic coffee (50 pesos the kilo — $2/lb.) from a Tuxpam, Puebla farm family, who are losing their collective shirts, in town for the “do” tomorrow. Looking through the beads and trinkets stalls fronting the National Palace was a well-heeled gringo tourist couple. They commented on “those Russian things” around the Indigenous artesana. I’m assuming they meant the gold hammer and sickles on the bright red banners. Scary! These better-traveled, well-heeled compatriots are likely (Bush) voters. Those “noble red men” need every peso quaint customs and colorful handicrafts bring in. Oh well… if the touristas translated “Frente marxista-leninista”, they might sue. Who?
It’s the fashion among conservatives to mount dubious legal challenges to their opponents. Bill Clinton (a right-winger everywhere except the U.S.) lied about a fat girlfriend – grounds for impeachment. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (a devout Roman Catholic, not a Marxist) had the temerity to not only beat back an attempted U.S. sponsored coup d’etat, but also to spent Venezuelan oil revenues on frivolous sops for the voters like… schools and hospitals. Grounds for a recall. One of those “think tank” guys (who work hard daily to come up with plausible-sounding rationales for screwing the rest of us), said Chavez cheated by “pandering” to the voters (as opposed to, say, Ronald Reagan offering us middle-class folks tax cuts).Here in Mexico, the conservatives are trying to unseat our Jefe de Gobernación, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Cynical left-wing types say it’s because neither of the two big parties (Fox’s PAN and the PRI) have any possible candidates for the 2006 Presidential election with even half the support AMLO does. There’s no Monica Lewinsky – in Mexico sex scandals are only interesting when they involve bishops. AMLO (a recent widower and model of middle-class propriety) is unfit for public office because he didn’t open his mail.
Several years ago, the city expropriated an access road to the emergency room of a pricey private hospital in a wealthy neighborhood. Four or five different families claim the other guys all have forged deeds, and the wrong people were compensated. Once AMLO became a threat to the Foxistas, the fun began – one claimant (coincidentally, a PAN activist) mailed a court order to the Jefe de Gobernacíon. Not responding is a good enough reason for Congress to unseat the Jefe – making him ineligible to ever hold Federal office. Despite Marta Fox’s little financial irregularities (diverting money from the National Lottery to a “charity” she runs, which spend more on overhead that it collects), El Prez is a stickler for the law. He ordered PAN congressmen to vote against AMLO.AMLO’s party (PRD) is the smallest of the three major parties. Fox is hoping the PRI is more afraid of AMLO than they are of the conservatives. Fat chance. PRI and PAN both want to kill off AMLO (at least politically), but they see each other as the biggest danger to their survival. Every time Fox courts the PRI, his own party or the PRI splits into more factions – and AMLO becomes more credible. After Fox’s speech, the PRD, a good part of PRI and even some of PAN said el Presidente was thwarting democracy, so it’s time to go to the streets. The mega-march will be pure theater, but very smart theater.
Folks are starting to wonder how bright Fox is – it took the guy a year to realize George Bush II knows (or cares) nothing about Mexico or Latin-America in general. Did the moron in the White House really call those terrorists released by Panama “freedom fighters”? Well, just because Interpol and a half-dozen countries say so, maybe “terrorist” is a tad harsh. All they did was blow up a civilian airliner and murder a few dozen other folks. Only two were American citizens (blown up in Washington, DC – their own fault for riding in the same car as a Chilean exile). Any attempted murders only involved extraneous foreigners anyway – Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Geeze, how many Nobel Prize Winning Novelists does the world need anyway? The Pope? He’s old… and Polish, so that’s not such a big deal. And besides, those would have only been “collateral damage”. The big enchilada was Fidel Castro. Hey, planning to bump off the bearded one should have got these guys a free dinner in Miami, not life in a Panamanian prison. Right? But the mistake could be corrected … never mind that Panama only allows Presidential pardons for political crimes. These guys needed a Presidential pardon – now!Those pesky Panamanians swear in a lefty Pres next week. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panamá. Another Latin American country freely elects a left-wing leader. Hmm… I smell a plot. Fidel wants a leftist Latin America; the Bush family got rich the old fashioned way – kissing the butts of dictators and various baddies (Prescott Senior laundered money for Adolph Hitler, George I and Prescott Jr. have business ties to the Chinese Communist Party – and Saddam Hussein and the King of Saudi Arabia – as does George II, who also was in business with an obscure Saudi construction magnate named Osama bin Ladin). So Fidel, on behalf of dictators and baddies everywhere, cleared out the mental wards and prisons of Cuba, sending the cracked, the crazed and the criminal by the boatload to Florida back during the Carter Administration. The crazies helped elect Jeb Bush as Governor; Jeb did everything possible to disenfranchise anti-conservatives, and to swing his state’s presidential votes to big brother George W. in 2000. The un-elected President of the United States, in return, has done everything in his power to give capitalism and corporatism a really, really bad name. Pro-U.S., or pro-corporate Latin American leader look like fools. Fidel’s interest is a leftist Latin America: the conservatives are voted out and the people opt for the left. The Bush family’s interest is the Bush family. A win-win for both Fidel and George II.
Makes sense to me… but then I live in Latin America, where politics is simple and straightforward.
The Battle of Carrizal
(Gaspar Reza Heredia, La Jornada de en medio, 26 Junio de 2005)
During the so-called “Punitive Expedition” sent to our country to search for Francisco Villa in 1916-17, an almost unknown armed conflict resulted in a rare Mexican defeat of the forces of the United States.
Seeking vengeance on the United States which stopped selling him arms, Francisco Villa and 400 cavalrymen launched an early morning raid on 9 March 1916, entering the small town of Columbus, New Mexico with blood and fire. The rapid attack took the military garrison by surprise. Villa’s men inflicted numerous casualties and retired into Mexico with the same speed they attacked.
In the United States there was enormous indignation. This was the first time that foreign troops had invaded its soil and beaten its soldiers. The people demanded action against Mexico. President Woodrow Wilson obtained permission from Venustiano Carranza for troops to enter Chihuahua, capture Villa, and return him to the United States for trial.
On 20 July 1916 three Mexican soldiers stationed at Villa Ahumada, out searching for lost cattle, were detained by a U.S. military patrol. The GIs took the Mexicans prisoner, marched them to the U.S. camp, where they proceeded to insult the state of Mexican soldiers’, their arms… and their horses. The Mexicans escaped and returned to their unit.
Informed of the incident, the Chief of Operations in Cuidad Juarez ordered an immediate halt to the U.S. movement southward. General Félix Uresti Gómez, the Commander at Villa Ahumada, then contacted the invaders, and their commander, Captain Charles T. Boyd, passing on the order and his informing the Americans that he was instructed to resist any further advances. Captain Boyd responded “in a disdainful tone” that his instructions were to advance, and he didn’t care what the Mexicans thought. Given the state of things, General Gómez returned to his own unit.
The enemy troops advanced and opened fire on the Mexicans, killing General Gómez. Despite inferior arms and numbers, the Mexican resisted bravely, and – now led by Colonel Genovero Rivas Guillén, who assumed command when General Gómez was killed – counter-attacked. The U.S. troops were forced to withdraw. 50 men were dead (27 Mexican, 23 U.S. soldiers). 27 U.S. soldiers were taken prisoner, and the Mexicans captured 22 horses and a great quantity of arms and munitions.
Under the circumstances, it was fortunate that the incident did not lead to a declaration of war. The soldiers sent to Mexico were from segregated black units. In 1916, dead black soldiers were unlikely to have the same impact as dead white soldiers on public sensibilities in the U.S. Then too, both the wounded Lieutenant Moray and interpreter Leon Spillsbery, testified that Captain Boyd had been arrogant and exhibited poor judgment when he confronted General Gómez. Another factor was that the first shots came from the invaders.
And, with respect to those shots, the Mexican surgeon who treated the 29 wounded Mexican soldiers noted that the majority of the injuries were caused by expanding bullets: prohibited by international treaty for military use by any civilized nation at that time.
The “Punitive Expedition” left Mexico without further incident on 6 February 1917. It is surprising that the Carrizal episode has remains in the shadows, given the Mexican people’s celebration of their heroes. Perhaps Mexicans are reluctant to bother our good neighbors by making public an action in which their troops played so disgraceful a role. Still, it would only be basic justice to raise a national monument, and each year to hold a commemoration service, at the place where soldiers fought and died in defense of the national territory, as is done for those sailors who also died defending their country against the United States at Tampico and Veracruz in 1914.
What’s wrong with Mexico? Given the prevailing conservative orthodoxy, the economy should be growing, not stagnant. According to Professor Calva, the problem is with the orthodoxy. The old system – channeling government assistance to key sectors like agriculture led to more growth than the “neo-liberal” approach. I normally don’t read (let alone translate) wonky data studies from conservative newspapers, but two things struck me… that neo-liberalism loses more support every day, and that the dreaded change to a left-wing government is neither a radical nor anti-business change.
México and the Washington Consensus
José Luis Calva
(EL UNIVERSAL, 17 June 2005)
(My translation)
IN our country, we have weathered a decade of “structural reforms” and “macroeconomic disciplines” recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to developing nations. What John Williamson dubbed the “Washington Consensus” has shown poorer results here than anywhere else in Latin America (see UNIVERSAL 10/June/05). Not for lack of effort: Williamson himself notes that since the end of the 80s, Mexico’s neo-liberal governments have been quick to adapt, and outstanding executors of, prescriptions laid out by the Washington consensus.
What Williamson encountered in our country was precisely what was needed: a “robust budget surplus”; “extreme fiscal austerity”; reductions in the top income tax rates; an export-oriented economy; accelerated commercial opening; “impressive liberalization of foreign investment rules”; widespread privatization; a liberalized financial system beginning in 1988; and important measures of deregulation in economic activities. (See J. Williamson, The progress of policy reform in Latin America, for Institute International Economics, Washington, DC, 1990).
Of course, an attachment to the dogma of reducing the role of the State in favor of the market and an agreement with the “extreme fiscal austerity,” comes a drastic reduction in spending on programs to stimulate the economy in some sectors.
The unilateral and abrupt commercial opening constituted a spear-point of the new economic strategy based on the Washington Consensus. In agreement with orthodox theories, liberalizing the foreign trade and reducing internal debts (or even suppressing them) “distorting” governmental interventions to channel productive resources towards those branches of the Mexican economy where the country has a comparative advantages (mainly in labor intensive manual labor, accelerating real wages, gradually modifying the relative shortage of other factors), led at the time to a growth in direct foreign investment, and exposure to external competition which forced Mexican industrialists to introduce technological changes and to accelerate productivity, maximizing those modes of growth in national income and well-being.
The commercial opening was effected with amazing fervor and dynamism. During the epoch of the development stabilization (1958-1970), 57.2% of the imports in value were subject to import duties: 74.1% of imports in the decade 1971-1980 were subject to tariffs whereas in 1989 only 14.1% were. While in 1989 only 14.1% of imports were subject to licensing, the percentage was reduced to 4.7% by 2004. Meanwhile, the weighted tariff average in 1981 was 18.3%, which fell to 6.1% in 1988, and 3.7% in 2004.
Simultaneously, the government proceeded to dismantle the instruments it used to directly intervene in the economy, both in the general economy and in specific sectors. Federal investment was reduced of 10.4% of GNP in 1982 (down from 12.4% in 1981), to 4.9% in 1988 and to 3.1% in 2004; and public spending in the sectoral economy (promoting energy, agriculture and manufacturing) was reduced from 11.9% of GNP in 1982 to 8.7% in 1988 and 4.7% in 2004.
In the meantime, the economic policy reforms contemplated by the Washington Consensus were also applied, as Williamson noted with approval. From an historical perspective, this was a radical change to the strategies used to stimulate development in Mexico over the previous 50 years. From the 1930s, especially during the government of President Lazaro Cárdenas, development had involved intervention in the relevant markets (normally prudent, except during the 1970s). The State directly and actively promoted development, by means of regulations and investments in foreign trade and internal market in basic goods and services. It was a direct investor in strategic areas, and a promoter of social benefits though labor and agrarian laws, and through social institutions involving education, basic health and social services.
The economic and social ideology of the Mexican Revolution, as interpreted by the Social Contract of 1917, had assigned these functions to the State, rejecting the then prevailing ideology of laissez-faire, laissez-passer. By contrast, the new strategy of the Washington Consensus is based in transferring substantial economic to the market, gradually assigning to private agents those functions previously assigned to the State.
It was hoped that this new strategy would “restore sustained growth”. Appraising growth under the new assumptions, compared with growth under the old economic model would be “the proof of the success of economic reform” (Williamson, op. cit.).
Nevertheless, after more than two decades of conversion, making our country an enormous experimental laboratory of Washington Consensus dogmas, the Promised Land of elevated growth rates is glaringly absent. The real results of the neoliberal model contrast negatively with those observed under the discarded previous economic model.
Under the Keynsian-cepalin model, which can, without abuse, be used to describe the economic model of the Mexican Revolutionary era, the Gross National Product (GNP) grew 5.9 times (1,592.7%) during period 1935-1982, with an annual growth rate averaging 6.1% annually, implying a 348% per capita increase in the GNP averaging 3.2% annually.
By contrast, under the neoliberal model based on ten-years of Washington Consensus GNP has only grown 0.65 times (65.1%) in the period 1983-2004. The annual growth rate is 2.3%, an accumulated growth of only 12.1% per capita increase in GNP, an average rate of only 0.5% annually.
Consequently, the accumulation of investment capital in productive activity has been dramatically lower under the neoliberal model. During the Mexican Revolutionary years, strategic economic investment in fixed capital investments (machinery, equipment and constructions) incremented 1,067.5% in period 1941-1982, an annual growth rate of 6%.
In contrast, during the 22 year neoliberal experiment, gross investment by inhabitant in 2004 was only 5.9 percent greater than what it was in 1982, giving a average annual growth rate of barely 0.3%
Finally, under the model of the Mexican Revolution, the spending power of the minimum wage incremented 96.9% from 1935-1982; under the neoliberal model, however, the minimum wage lost 69.8% of its purchasing power. That is, wages have deteriorated by a third of their effective power since 1982.
Given the objective results of the Washington Consensus in Mexico, the big question for our country is whether to fanatically persevere in applying the ten-year “miracle program” or to make deep changes in our economic strategy, and to find our own way towards development, maintained with fairness.
José Luis Calva is a researcher at UNAM (National Autonomous University of México) Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas
Say it ain’t so… trouble in mariachilandia
City prepares crackdown on ‘pirate’ mariachis
Some unlicensed practitioners of the distinctly Mexican musical form are committing crimes, say officials.
BY RAFAEL CABRERA/EL UNIVERSAL May 09, 2005
Rising unemployment and a lack of areas in the city for performers of traditional music has given rise to “pirate” mariachi groups operating in the capital’s Garibaldi square, say authorities. And these illegal performers are not just competing with licensed musicians, say law enforcement officials: they are also engaging in carjackings and muggings.
So, to combat the problem, the city’s Secretary of Public Security (SSP) plans to launch a program called “Músico Seguro”¨or “Safe Music,” during the second half of the month. The aim of the program will be to decommission those mariachis operating without proper city accreditation.
According to José Luis Tamayo, SSP director in the historic center, there are some 1,700 fully licensed mariachis operating in the city.
But he says that these groups are being threatened by more than 800 mariachis from the surrounding states of Mexico, Puebla, Guanajuato, Morelos and Tlaxcala, who flood the city on weekends and holidays to compete for customers.
Tamayo says that those involved in criminal activities, such as carjackings, are often among those groups aggressively hailing passing cars along Reforma Avenue or near the Palace of Fine Arts.
He says that when a group of criminal mariachis is hired by a passing motorist, they climb aboard, and then shortly thereafter, invent an excuse for the driver to pull over. At that point, they either pull out a gun or assault the driver and make off with the vehicle.
Sergio Olvera of the Mexican Mariachi Union says that he is pleased with the plan for the Músico Seguro program. “The real musicians, we belong in the plaza. The outsiders, they hardly know how to play. But we are a family of musicians dedicated to the mariachi craft.”
Plaza Garibaldi has been Mexico City’s center for mariachi music since the 1920s, when the cantina Salón Tenampa opened on the square and began attracting performers of the traditional music.
Disafuero-mania around the world…
09-April (Europe)
The Parisians weigh in on the desafeuro… from today’s Jornada…
The Paris protest was mounted by Mexican students, but this stupid desafuero is going to put Mexico in the news world-wide. Forget Fox as a democratic leader… maybe they’ll stop referring to him as “Vincente Fox, whose election ended 71 years of one-party rule”… and refer to him as “Vincente Fox, who conned millions with his talk of democracy…”
10-April (Mexico)
While Mexico was basically a one-party state for 71 years, it wasn’t the same party for all those years, and governments shifted from left to right over the years. From the mid-1960s until 1988, THE Party (PRI) became more and more authoritarian, less and less open to change from within. Leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, putting together a coalition of old leftists and anti-PRI forces won the 1988 presidental election… but neither the U.S. nor the PRI would put up with a socialist Mexican president… so… as everyone knows… the electorial computers broke down, caught fire and Carlos Salinas de Goutari was seated. Cardenas and the old leftists (mostly military officers) could have provoked a civil war, but settled for democratic change. Vincente Fox, in 2000, benefitted from the democratic semi-revolution. He never caused it.
And Mexico looked like a democratic country until last Thursday. I still haven’t made up my mind what to make of the desafeuro… but Kelly Ann Garrett of the English-language Mexico City News tried to find a silver lining in all this (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/web_columnas_sup.detalle?var=20498).
ON THE OTHER HAND…
The streets are quiet (except for Orthodontist Street… where AMLOs apartment is surrounded by federal coppers waiting to deliver an arrest warrent… should one be issued… and well-wishers are surrounding the cops — THAT COULD GET UGLY), no one is taking to the hills… just yet and life goes on. On the surface, I expect it will. IF AMLO doesn’t run for President, expect a couple of non-entities to duke it out, and inherit a discredited office. At worst, we’ll have Santiago Creel blathering for the next six years. OR… PRI will turn on their PAN partners and — if they’re true to form — they’ll shoot themselves in the foot and “punish” Mexico City for voting PRD by starving the city of funds. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again. OR…
at any rate, the tourists can continue to come, and the city will still be safe for foreigners. This is a Mexican problem, and one the Mexicans will have to sort out. Heartbreaking to watch from the sidelines, but impossible to predict what’s going to happen next. Maybe nothing? Maybe everything?
12-April (north of the border)
Thanks to “lostsoul” of Alaska, a regular ingredient in “Political Stew” for passing along Justin Raimundo ‘s global perspective on the desafuero… and it’s serious reprecussions for the United States, the economy and democracy in general.
When a supposedly fixed election in distant Kyrgyzstan did not meet the “democratic” standards of either the U.S. government or the European Union, it was time for yet another color-coded Western-financed “revolution.” When Eduard Shevardnadze ceased to be useful to the U.S., a “Rose Revolution” bloomed in Georgia. In Ukraine, where electoral politics is subject to more manipulation than even Chicago or Brooklyn, the necessity of U.S. intervention – in the form of millions in grants to opposition groupings – was self-evident to U.S. government officials.
Mexico, however, is a different matter altogether. The “global democratic revolution” announced by President Bush in a 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy – and since reinforced by word and deed – apparently stops south of the U.S.-Mexican border. In a blatant move to disqualify Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from the presidential sweepstakes – he’s ahead in the polls by a wide margin – the Mexican Congress has voted to strip Lopez of his immunity from prosecution and arrest him on a minor procedural issue: an act that effectively kicks him off the ballot. Mexican law forbids anyone under indictment from seeking the presidency.
…
This brazen attempt to steal Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, from the man who, by all accounts, would win a free and fair election, proves that Fox is just another Third World autocrat, no less gangsterish than the losing faction in Ukraine, former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, or other alleged tyrants, such as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, all of whom have earned brickbats from the West. While none of these targets of our official ire is exactly an angel, at least they allow opposition candidates to run in elections: the deal concocted by Fox, the PAN, and the PRI to eliminate (and jail) the most popular candidate saves them the trouble of rigging the election.
From: Trouble South of the Border at antiwar.com
HOLY SHIT! What a friggin’ loon!
Back in 1915, when the Mexican Revolution was in full swing, and the U.S. wasn’t quite decided that we really wanted to make the Germans our enemies, the Japanese became William Randolf Hearst’s favorite boogie-man.
Hearst papers were full of rumors of saumari warriors wandering about Mexico, recruiting soldiers for a drive on California. Hearst even financed a Paulette Godard serial, in which Paulette, almost single-handedly fends off both greasy Mexicans and devious Japanese.
I thought the new, improved enemy were “terrorists” and the lunatic fringe was expecting them to come pouring across the Mexican border. Nope, it’s CHINESE COMMIES!
Another quiet week in Lake Texcocobegone…
What’s it take for Mexico to get noticed by the outside world? The C.I.A put out a report claiming the world’s 10th largest economic power (and #2 oil supplier to the United States) was going to have political and social upheavals… but… a late middle aged Englishman named Charles Windsor-Montbatten remarries, or an 84-year old Pole dies in Rome, or a dead woman dies in Florida… and the foreign press tends to forget about Mexico.Oh well, never mind. We haven’t had the riots in the streets we were promised (and to which APF seemed to be looking forward, having gone to the trouble of issuing gas masks to their reporters and cameramen). A few demonstrations, but nothing of note. The absurd attempt to stop the guy 70% of Mexicans want to be the next president from even running for the office looks to be fizzling out. The OTHER PARTIES have managed to vote to consider the issue, and there will be some street theatrics for a few days, but nothing’s going to happen. As I noted below, even Condeleeza Rice is resigned to a Socialist President here. And… weird enough… AMLO is supported by some of the folks at freerepublic.com (the people who STILL claim Hillary Clinton is a lesbian working in league with Satan – or Saddam or somebody – to rob us of our precious bodily fluids) seem to think the guy’s brilliant: after all, maybe somebody with a plan to do something for the poor will keep the poor from emigrating north. But, then what will the Minuteman types do with their spare time? Probably go back to dragging black men behind their pick-up trucks.So… it’s been a quiet week here in Lake Tezcoco-be-gone. We’re working out the billing challenges caused by the early Easter (the same week as Benito Juarez’ birthday) that put a kibosh on any attempt to hunt down errant billing clerks.
It’s good, that I’ve got so many “challenges” right now… we’re growing and need a few more “native English speaking” trainers. They’re a peso a dozen. The trick is finding ones with manageable personality quirks… i.e., not so alcoholic that they can’t work in the morning, or who confine their tastes in the young to those of legal age, or … you get the picture. Foreigners in Mexico are all half-cracked (including yours truly), but finding out which half is cracked isn’t something I’m always real good at.
I met someone who was looking for a job, had a good resume and … I don’t know why… preceded to regale me with tales of his sexual adventures in gay S&M bars. Interesting, but did he know how to conjugate verbs? I wasn’t real sure, so had him talk to someone else… who was regaled with a song-n-dance about the applicant’s family life, his children, yadda-yadda. Can you say “cognitive dissonance”? Well, “flake” is simpler and more Anglo-Saxon.
Finding SANE trainers isn’t nearly as piquant, but a challenge in its own way. We’ve found two new teachers – a Mexican grad student in Medieval literature and a peripatetic Gringo we had to import the whole way from Toluca. Toluca, being a 30-peso bus ride away, we’ll pay moving expenses. See, we do offer benefits!
I’m out of gas (again) this weekend. I’m half-convinced the gas company is only filling the bottles half-way. Either that or I’m taking a lot more showers than I know. Maybe the dogs are soaking in a hot tub while I’m gone. If they are, I wish the little one would use some soap… Iztaccíhuatl is a nice, cute little pooch, but white dogs get dirty awfully fast.
And that’s all the news from Lake Tezcoco-be-gone, where all the men are gasless, the women are strong and the foreigners are nuts!
Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz
… in other words… MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
In the United States, Juárez is usually compared with Abraham Lincoln. Both were country boys who overcame poverty, becoming shrewd lawyers. Both had the good fortune to marry wealthy women, surprisingly became President after mediocre political careers, and both lead their country through a Civil War.But Juárez has the more amazing personal history. A Zapotec, he was descended from people never been completely conquered by either the Aztecs, or the Spanish. The Aztecs were satisfied to control the Zapotec markets, and to collect taxes. When the Spanish first sent tax collectors, the Zapotecs sent back their heads — and complained that the Spaniards had been too skinny to make a decent meal! After that experience, the Spanish had to be satisfied with indirectly ruling them through Zapotec leaders. After monks converted the Zapotecs, the Spanish were able to gain more control of the area, but left these tough mountain people alone for the most part. An orphan at 3, Benito was sent to live with his uncle. He was a shepherd until he was 12. His uncle realized the boy was too bright to waste his life watching sheep. The nearest schools were in Oaxaca City. Never having been in a city or even worn shoes, and not knowing a word of Spanish, the boy hiked the 40 miles through the mountains to the big city, where his sister worked as a maid for a bookbinder. The bookbinder, a religious man, thought the serious little boy[1] might make a decent parish priest. The bookbinder put the 12 year old to work in the bookshop, and paid for his schooling. Earning his keep in the bindery and as a servant and waiter, Juárez graduated with a law degree in 1831. He was not a particularly successful as a lawyer, but he was one of the few that defended poor and indigenous clients. He was an Oaxaca City councilman, then mayor, and then Congressman by the time the United States invaded. Returning to Oaxaca, he was elected Governor. Although Juárez, like Ocampo, wanted to limit the Church’s power, he needed the Church to support his cause, education. He agreed to leave the clergy alone if they would support public education. Schools became an important part of the State budget (and the first public girl’s schools were opened during his tenure), Puerto Angel was developed for trade, and, amazingly, he cut the bureaucracy and paid down the State debt. When Santa Ana’s army collapsed, he had the prestige and power to call out the state militia and keep the fugitive president out of his state. Juarez hadn’t forgotten the President’s insults when he was a servant, and Santa Ana wouldn’t forgive the Governor’s insults.When Santa Ana returned to power, Juárez was arrested. Santa Ana never shot his enemies – he was satisfied to exile them. For Juárez, this meant joining Melchor Ocampo, thrown out to satisfy the Church conservatives, and other exiles in New Orleans. The exiles stuck together, running a small cigarette factory, and working out a new constitution for Mexico. Juárez, the dignified ex-governor, had a large family to support, so took on a second job, selling the cigarettes in the saloons[2].From their contacts in the saloons, the exiles found the gun dealers and smugglers they needed to further their aims in Mexico. There were always generals looking to overthrow the President, but Juan Alvarez was different. He welcomed advisors like Ignacio Comonfort, who had worked up the exile’s plans into a program, explaining what this latest coup hoped to accomplish. Professor Santos Degollado, who had replaced Ocampo as Governor of Michoacán, also joined the revolt. Civilian leaders throughout the country joined local army leaders. Santa Ana simply gave up and left the country in August 1855.Alvarado became president. As promised, he resigned in favor of his Comonfort, the civilian Vice-President. To the shock of the Conservatives, the new civilian government started to carry out exactly what they had promised. Justice Minister Juárez pushed through a law limiting church and military courts to strictly religious and military matters. Bishops with unlicensed butcher shops or soldiers who stole doughnuts would go before civilian courts like anyone else. The Reformers then turned their attention to the bloated, and ineffective, army with more officers than soldiers.To the inefficient, disgraced officer corps, this was an open insult. Worse yet, especially in the eyes of the Church, was the law Miguel Lerdo de Tejada wrote. The Liberals believed the problem in Mexico was that landowners were unproductive. Private enterprise and private ownership, they felt, would turn the economy around. Also, the government was, as always, broke, and taxes on land sales were a welcome addition to the treasury. The “Ley Lerdo” restricted corporations to properties connected with their business. The Church was the corporation the law had in mind –specifically the farms, factories and apartment houses the church owned, but had nothing to do with religion or charitable work. Unfortunately, the law was used throughout the rest of the century to take land from the indigenous “ejitals”, or communal farms[3]. The Church leaders protested, and threatened the new government with religious sanctions. Justice Minister Juárez responded in January 1857 with an even tougher law. Birth, death and adoption records became a government function. The Church couldn’t even collect those fees. To top things off, cemeteries were taken over by the Health Department.
The Church increased their pressure, threatening that any civil servant who enforced the new laws, or anyone who bought their old properties, would be excommunicated: they would lose their membership in the Church, and believers would be forbidden to help them, or even speak to them. In a nation where everyone was a member of the Church, this was a serious matter. Juárez and the rest of the cabinet pushed back even harder. Most of them were Yorkista Masons anyway[4]. Ocampo was an atheist. The “Ley Iglesisas” eliminated fees for most church services, and put the rest on a sliding scale. Since most people had little or no money, the practical result was the Church lost its last sources of income, outside of the collection plate.
If the Reformers hadn’t done enough, they wrote a new constitution in 1857. To help prevent coups, they eliminated the Vice-President’s post. They felt congress would be stronger if there was only one house, so they also eliminated the Senate. While the added a few things – a Bill of Rights[5]— they left one other thing out. Freedom of Religion is never mentioned. But neither is a State Religion. For the first time there was no official religion.
For some, this was just too much. The Conservatives and the Church officials thought another coup would resolve the issue, but the new government had performed a miracle – people actually respected it, and wanted the new rights. The disastrous invasion from the United States had one benefit. Mexicans recognized that their bad leaders had been a joke, and were only out for themselves. From now on, everyone was a Mexican. A Criollo soldier from Saltillo like Ignacio Zaragoza would loyally serve a Zapotec President; an indigenous general, Tomas Mejia, would die standing next to a Mexican Emperor.
President Comonfort tried to keep the Conservatives and Liberals together, but there was the invariable military coup. As usual, the president resigned in favor of the winning General. But there was a catch. The new Constitution didn’t allow for coups and generals. If the President resigned, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (an elected officer) was the temporary president until Congress could select a regular President. And the new Chief Justice was that stubborn Zapotec lawyer, Benito Juárez. If the Aztecs and the Spanish had never been able to conquer his ancestors, they were unlikely to conquer the temporary President. The general saw no real harm in letting the little Zapotec having the title for a few days. Congress was called into session, and did the unthinkable. They defied the coup leaders and elected Juárez President, also giving him the emergency powers to run the country until they could meet again. The Congressmen went home to organize resistance movements. Cosijoni, King of the Zapotecs had retreated to Guiengola Cave, and ran his country from his hideout above Tehuanatepec. His distant descendant, Benito Juárez ran his country out of lighthouses, haciendas, peasant huts, cantinas and horse-drawn buggies[6].Congress continued to meet now and again, mail service managed to function now and again, and the Republic survived, even when it’s territory was reduced to nothing more than the small town below El Paso Texas (modern Ciudad Juárez).
The Reform War was as much a “holy war” between the Church and the State, as a war over what kind of nation, and what kind of rulers the country would have. Even peons on the same hacienda were sometimes fighting each other. The brutality of that war was seen in Tacubaya, then a Mexico City suburb, where the students and faculty of the medical school went to set up a field hospital. The hospital was on the Reformer’s side of the battlefield. The winning Conservative general, Leonardo Marquez was universally despised and feared as the “Tiger of Tacubaya” when he had the patients, doctors and students shot.For the most part, the Conservatives had the same problems the old government had always had – too many Generals thought they should run the country, and too many Criollos really didn’t care. By 1861 the war was over, and the government could begin to implement its reforms. In March, Juárez was elected to a second term. After 30 years of mismanagement, foreign invasion and civil war, Mexico had exactly what it needed: a bankruptcy lawyer as President. The Church land sales hadn’t brought in nearly the funds needed — with the Reform War, the government had been forced to sell land for whatever it could get. Like any lawyer representing an honest debtor, Juárez sought to negotiate with his creditors for more time.The new government was willing to acknowledge the debts that it inherited from the past governments, but it was going to have to stop payments for the next two years. The United States was in the middle of its own Civil War – they were in no position to collect their debts, and could not afford an unfriendly nation on their border. Matias Romero, the Mexican Ambassador in Washington, did everything possible to maintain friendly relations … and then some. He was the first to note the similarities between his president and Abraham Lincoln. But, what really made Lincoln receptive to the Mexican diplomat was simple gratitude. Romero escorted the “difficult” Mrs. Lincoln (she was a “shopaholic” and mentally unstable) to the Washington fashion stores. Ulysses S. Grant another close friend. Moreover, Grant admired the Mexican culture and its people, the Juárez government and Lincoln. When the time came, he was one of the few gringos to assist Mexico without expecting anything in return. [1] Literally. Juárez was less than 4 foot, 6 inches tall as an adult.
[2] Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, all later admirers of the little Zapotec were also in New Orleans at about this time. Tempting as the thought is, there is no evidence that any of them ever met. I once received an indigant e-mail from one of General Grant’s descendants, denying that her illustrious ancestor ever spent any time at all in New Orleans taverns… something I find a bit implausible.
[3] The Mexican Liberals wanted to turn the country into a “modern” capitalist state. Replacing the ejitals with private property may not have been accidental.
[4] The main reason Masons are a “secret society” is that they were automatically excommunicated by the Catholic Church until the 1990s.
[5] The Bill of Rights included a few unusual rights, important to the Reformers: the right to an education (something Juárez thought was especially important) and the right to mail service.
[6] It sometimes seems that every historical museum in Mexico has Juárez’ buggy. French intelligence officers believed the rumor that Juárez didn’t know how to ride a horse, and once tried to capture him by carefully destroying every wagon and buggy in the area he was known to be. Juárez could indeed ride a horse and escaped. Juárez favored buggies because they were fast, and the only vehicle available in the 19th century with shock absorbers. They were stable enough to let the President continue working while fleeing his enemies.
[http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Benito_Juarez_and_U_S_Grant_the_unknown_story]
Mex-Biz 101: so real, it’s surreal…
It’s a little hard sometimes to explain what I do for a living… I thought I was selling fruit. It’s a long story, but to sell fruit, you need to buy fruit. And that takes money. Not having any when we started, and unable to borrow what we needed (not surprising: Mexico has weird banking laws – or rather the lending requirements seem to have been written for the U.S. In a country where 1000 dollars is a huge amount of money, nobody who has the collateral to get a loan needs one. It’s no wonder that only a quarter of Mexicans even use the banks) – we set out to earn it.English teachers are a peso a dozen in Mexico City, as are “language institutes.” We started with a couple of standard-issue foreign and Mexican adult English teachers, after looking at what other skills we had. What we ended up with was a “scalable business solution to English training needs”. That’s not just a slogan (ok, my slogan… I considered putting “Propaganda Minister” on my business cards). We aren’t academics… we’re selling a business tool. And, have been successful… in the Mexican way.
Start-up businesses are always weird, and Mexico has its own kind of weirdness… which makes the whole thing much more fun. For a short time we had posh offices, courtesy of our then one client. And a secretary who used to work for Fidel Castro (and you thought your old boss was a tyrant!). She seemed to think her job was to flirt with potential clients and run up huge lunch tabs. Which she did when she wasn’t running around getting visas to travel to exotic ports of call (we didn’t have any hopes for the Cuban connection, but she sold us her ties to Air Canada… her boyfriend – who charged her rent for the pleasure of living with him – worked for the perfidious Canucks). Unfortunately for all concerned, she was also an investor. And a fuck-up: besides making “Spanish” translations that make no sense in any known Romance Language, she forged a few time cards, which cost us our one client.
This creates more than just a personnel problem, or a management one. Mexico doesn’t have corporations, just partnerships. The partnership had to be dissolved, which meant the company no longer existed. People have to be paid by some entity that can collect withholding taxes … enter the doctors. Or, rather the doctora. For a few months, I provided personal services to a doctor, and was paid though her clinic. Perfectly legal and what exact personal services I provided never needed to be specified. Mostly it was coming up with something that would pay her back: scalable solutions to English training.
Losing Comrade Fidel’s girl Friday, and our posh office wasn’t such a bad thing. Our main investor (and the doctora’s almost-ex-husband) rented a garage apartment from our prestanombre (the Mexican citizen whose investment gives a company a Mexican ownership). So, we operated off a laptop computer on a kitchen table. It also meant almost no overhead. And an interesting psychological edge when it came to finding customers.
Mexican businesses only take foreigners seriously if they have a Mexican “secretary.” So, we just never mentioned that the Mexican woman who telephoned was OUR boss – or that a portable telephone was our major capital investment at the time… we needed a phone that we could carry up to the main house when people needed to make appointments.
We’ve grown enough that I don’t do any teaching… which is fine by me. However, I’ve got to ride herd on the foreigners, and am more or less the human resources guy by default. We offer those scalable solutions –meaning we have “trainers”, not “teachers”. Heck, even when I was teaching, I suspected that foreign teachers were flakes. Now I’m sure of it!
And not just foreigners. One of our early assets was one of those nice lady teachers that you’d still remember her fondly – if she taught you in kindergarten,. If you were an executive needing English for negotiating your budget for the next year, you’d want to strangle her. The kind of exec that posts signs in English reading “Free sarcasm given daily” doesn’t want to deal with the kind of person who needle-points the phonic alphabet and talks about Jesus. Ok, so sending the schoolmarm wasn’t the brightest idea… we couldn’t be so picky back then.
Our nice teacher’s son worked for those oh-so-nice people at the sleaziest corporation in the Americas — which shafted us for a 30,000 peso translation. She signed a contract agreeing to be paid when we were paid. Which will be when Hell freezes over. Even so, we finally decided to write off the bad debt and pay her out. Instead she threatened to sue us.
Lesson #2 of Mexican business. Unlike the U.S., you just don’t sue. If you really, really, really want to get back at a business rival, you might blacken their name, or file criminal charges against them (something we still might do with the sleazebags who run Abbott Laboratories here in Mexico) or maybe hire a thug to break the offender’s windshield on their new car (or their legs), but you just don’t sue. Lawyers are inefficient and YOU pay up front. So, let her threaten to sue. The money we WOULD have paid out was enough to remodel two more garage rooms into a real office and print some better literature… and feed us all for a while. We’re talking about less than 3000 dollars… a windfall in Mexico. (Just by way of explaination… I received an unexpected 1500 US dollars from a forgotten insurance policy that was found in my father’s safety deposit box. With the money, I paid the deposit and rent for an apartment in the part of town I wanted to live in, bought kitchen appliances and had enough left over to indulge in a washing machine).
So, more groups, more complications. About this time, we realized we couldn’t use the old model teachers, and started looking around. One guy who seemed perfect, despite his Nuyark accent (a Mexican raised in Brooklyn) just disappeared for a while, with some story about a matador uncle losing a round with a toro… and needing to give blood in Tijuana. It turned out to be true… Lesson #3 in Mexican business… the totally bizarre is normal.
Then… the American graduate student, beloved by his students, also disappeared on us. This was a guy I’d been paid by a California job recruiter to find work and housing for in Mexico City. Which I did. An excellent TEACHER, but unable to grasp the concept of little things like following the program the client bought, and recording information the client needs… and showing up when the client scheduled training sessions. He just went to the U.S: for a week, not bothering to tell us. That was the first time in my almost half-century I’ve ever had to decide someone should be fired. Lesson #4 — even in Mexico, nice guys have to be assholes in business.
And, we have the other younger gringo… my former housemate by the by… who we’ve also had to “let go.” NO… corporate trainers should not show up in computer company offices wearing a nose ring. And, NO… you’re paid to hold conversations, not to tell the fascinating details of your love-life. And, NO… we do not appreciate being told you are changing your schedule and dropping a group because you don’t like one guy… who incidentally is in charge of the people who write the check that pays your wages. Lesson #5… stick to old farts.
My human resource strategy by default is to get Mexican grad students to teach basic groups and geezers for the upper levels. This goes against the conventional wisdom of the English Language Institutes, who hire the young, naïve teachers on the theory that they’ve had ESL classes… and will work for peanuts. So will us geezers. And those who are here know that Mexican payment schedules are like second marriages… hope triumphing over experience.
Our pierced ex-“teacher”, after being given a loan at the beginning of the month, is DEMANDING we pay her now. It’s only the 18th. Yeah, payments to EMPLOYEES in Mexico are made on the 15th and last of the month. But hourly foreign workers (even those on proper papers) are usually what are called “ASOCIADOS” – they get paid all right (I’ve run out of food, or gas, or had my phone shut off because they’ve been paid ahead of me or there was only the cash to pay them), but not necessarily on the 15th.
I don’t like to use the word TEACHER. Teachers work at schools. And schools are in the business of providing teachers. We’re a business service, providing training and other products. The people who service the product are not the product itself. Another thing I like about Mexico… businesses don’t pretend “we’re in the people business”. Nah… we’re in the training business.
Which leads to Lesson #6: in any start-up, money and credit is ALWAYS a problem. In Mexico, there are uniquely Mexican problems. Monday is Benito Juarez’ birthday and the banks will be closed. Next Friday is Good Friday… not so much a religious holiday, as a Good Friday to head for Acapulco. Every EMPLOYEE in Mexico takes a few extra days when there’s a Monday, or Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday) holiday… and with two in one week, you can’t expect anything to really have been done since last Wednesday – including minor things like having paid invoices to small contractors (like those providing “scalable solutions…”). So, with one client having misplaced an invoice for a week, and another having had a huge company party on Tuesday (talk about synergy. The company misplacing the invoice sells tequila. The accountants at the second company consumed massive quantities of the same… and just didn’t show up for work Wednesday), we were in an “interesting condition”. Pregnant with outstanding invoices, but without a centavo to our names.Hey, it’s Mexico, no worries… Ms. Piercing will scream and yell, and we’ll say “manaña” and she’ll get paid her regular time. The National Pawnshop is holding some of our Mexican jefa’s jewelry and our New Zealander’s watch over the weekend, and I got one of this blog’s readers to pre-pay the pesos he’ll need for his 10 day trip to Mexico with a Western Union wire and… we’re doing ok. Actually, we’re doing extremely well… With is the final lesson – we may be a “Hispanic” business, but forget the “panic.” Banks are inconvenient, and holidays always screw up payment schedules, but we’re expanding and actually starting to show a profit.
So… anyone want a few tons of mangos?
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