All your bases belong to us
I’ll leave it to Franc Contraras (presently with CCTV-America, China) to lay out the situation
So, let’s see. The US has “given” Mexico 2.4 billion dollars to allegedly “fight drugs”. Not mentioned, most of that 2.4 billion is already spent in the United States, not including the half billion spent buying new Humvees for the Army. The cost of all those Blackhawk helicopers is not included.
US. consumers purchase somewhere around 600 billion dollars in “drugs” every year, which I suppose makes it sensible that the US might want to “fight drugs” just to protect its own domestic narcotics traders, but doesn’t explain why Mexico then would buy US equipment.
Supposedly, the Peña Nieto government was going to de-emphasize the “drug war” of the previous administration, and while the Peña Nieto administration hasn’t been able to keep its promises, that excuse wears thin.
I don’t like to frame everything in terms of the “drug war” (there are drugs, there are gangsters, there is not a “war”… except maybe on the poor in this country), and I think there is a simpler explanation for the massive purchases.
The U.S. is an expansionist, imperialist power, whose economy largely depends on military spending. Mexico has never been expansionist, and has been cutting its military budget consistently over the last eighty years. Even during the Second World War, the Mexican military budget dropped as a percentage of overall federal spending.
However, with the United States now “over-extended” throughout the world (with bases in 180 countries) and despite pro-military propaganda (both official and unofficial… Hollywood films, TV shows, etc.) is having trouble filling its ranks. The US military has openly coveted using Mexican troops to swell its own ranks and serve its needs.
Making the Mexican forces dependent on U.S. equipment, the U.S. accomplishes two key goals. Not only does it bind the Mexican military to the United States as its supplier, it also lets the United States accomplish a long-range goal (one it never has given up) of direct control of Mexico. The Mexican military always saw the United States as the most probable foreign invader and, in the supply department, those items it had to buy from abroad, it bought from a basket of countries… Sweden, Germany, Russia, France (and in the past, Belgium, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia) … none of which (except France) have ever had any territorial ambitions in Mexico, nor been in a position to subordinate the country.
Using the premise of the “drug war”, the United States is, without formally invading, “conquering” Mexico. Given that if the US did invade, they’d win no matter what, the best defense … besides unilaterally ending the “drug war” and investing more in human resources and jobs would be to lessen cultural and economic ties to the U.S.
Don Porfirio was right about that, never putting all the import/export eggs in one basket… in the economy or in military hardware. For that matter, Santa Anna was right, though buying second hand British weapons (left over from the Napoleonic Wars) was a mistake. I’ve suggested before that Barack Obama is another Woodrow Wilson (not a good thing to Latin Americans), but in this matter, his administration is another James Knox Polk.
What a gringo-card costs
I’ve posted on this before, but being a permanent resident (and on my way to just getting naturalized), I don’t pay much attention to the costs of temporary residency. From a post on Mexconnect, I got this:
…my total fees for the 3year RT [three year temporary residency… which can then be turned over into a permanent resident certificate] were MXN $7154.00. This price included $1,000 pesos for my lawyer, and $6154.00 for the Mexican Government including the fee for change of address. In today’s USD that would be about 476.00…
The price for APPLYING for a Green Card in the US is $1,078 (in today’s USD, this would be… $1,078), and the lawyers’ fees would run somewhere upwards of several thousand more on top of that.
Adios, la India María
Maria Elena Velasco, QEPD.
The comedian’s “la India María” was one of the most brilliant characters in Mexican film… creating the classic “country bumpkin”: the innocent rural “Indian” who outwits and triumphs over the elites and sophisticates through her natural goodness and tenaciousness. While there are those who saw her character as perpetuating a stereotype, it was by using the stereotype and stock situations that she gently, and effectively skewered our class and racial assumptions about Mexico, laughing with, and not at, the absurdity and sometimes surrealism of a country where contemporary values and customs co-exist with the traditional and timeless.
From one of my favorites, the “haunted house” parody “El Miedo No Anda En Burro”:
Never mind!
It looks now as if Mexico City will not become Mexico City. That is, while the Senate voted to allow for constitutional changes that would give the Federal District autonomy in its elections and budget, the Chamber of Deputies killed the bill, probably out of concern by the PRI and PVEM (the fake “Green” Party) that neither would win any elections here every again. Not that they do now.
Politics, the Mexican way…
Wannabe independent candidate for the Federal Chamber of Delegates Rafaela Romo Orozco was denied a place on the ballot for refusing to file her campaign expenditures report with the National Elections Institute (INE). I guess that makes her like Jesus, right?
(Emeequis)
Say goodbye to “Distrito Federal”…
… and hello to “Ciudad de México” … whatever the name, like Maldita Vencindad called it “un grande circo”:
In Baltimore, it was the spinal fracture that broke the camel’s back. Here, the people have endured much more:
Reuters/Emiliano Torres
Yesterday, as Baltimore restaged the intifada, protesters in Mexico, in Chilpancingo, the capital of the state of Guerrero, rammed a flaming truck into the glass-fronted congressional building, and set fire to at least six other vehicles. They had taken to the streets to mark the seven-month anniversary of the disappearances of the 43 students, who have come to represent the hundreds of thousands of dead as a result of US-Mexico’s drug, immigration, and trade policies (a number of the relatives of the disappeared are currently in New York, where they are appealing to the United Nations to end Washington’s so-called Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, which sends billions of dollars to Mexico to supposedly fight drugs but which the relatives of the 43 say goes to “suppress dissent”). [Greg Grandin in The Nation, 28 April 2015]
Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
It should have been perfectly obvious, though in the US (and here) it’s only when it happens to some other repressive society:
… while no one condones looting, on the other hand one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who’ve had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime
[Donald Rumsfeld, justifying looting in Bagdad, 4/11/2003]
Which of the two above had anywhere near the destructive power of this event?
Tlatelolco’s mole-men headed for Nepal
25 members of the Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlatelolco…the “mole-men” of Mexico … are on their way to Kathmandu. As always, these volunteers who… in the spirit of those skinny teenagers, construction workers, bureaucrats, doctors, housewives, office workers and others who risked their own lives after the 17 September 1985 earthquake tht brought down high-rises in their own neighborhood to find survivors and recover the dead… are willing to go at a moments notice, to the assistance of victims of natural disasters anywhere in the world.
The Topos are probably the most respected (and experienced) outfit of this kind in the world.
You know the drill: donations in any currency, via paypal: Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlatelolco
The wages of revolution are… 75 centavos a day
Bet you didn’t know this. The first minimum wage laws in the Americas was not the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was the Decreto sobre aumento de salarios signed by Venustiano Carranza on 26 April 1915, setting a minimum wage of 0.75 pesos a day, and forbidding employers from adding extra hours to the workday (on farms it was sunup to sundown).
This wasn’t totally done out the goodness of Carranza’s heart. At the time, the Constitutional Republic could only enforce the wage in the states controlled by Álvaro Obregón (Michoacán, Querétaro, Hidalgo y Guanajuato). Pushing Carranza to i
ssue his executive order, Obregón had a dual purpose. Coming in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Celaya (6-15 April), which crushed Pancho Villa’s army as a military force, Carranza (and Obregón) there was widespread opposition to the Constitutionalists among the populace, and Obregón — always known for his preference for buying off his opponents as an alternative to crushing them militarily — saw potential allies in the working class. And, remember that the Mexican economy had collapsed. With no real central government, or rather, with several competing governments, states and municipalities, as well as various revolutionary
1914 Constitutionalist Peso… “Death to Huerta” is catchier than “In God We Trust”
factions, had all issued their own money, which might or might not be considered real depending not just on whatever faction was in control in any given area, but how merchants and bankers valued the currency. While paying in Constitutionalist pesos in Constitutionalist areas would immediately make it the de facto, as well as legal tender, in those states, it also meant that the merchants knew that the currency was being regularly paid out, and could be counted on to hold its value, even if it circulated in regions outside Constituionalist control assuming it would eventually find its way into Constitutionalist territory . Given that they were winning, those 75 centavos a day, were doing as much to increase that territory as Obregón’s army was.
This sucks!
A U.S. Border Patrol agent who killed a teenager when he fired across the border from Texas into Mexico cannot be sued in U.S. courts by the Mexican teen’s family, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The unanimous ruling was issued by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing most of an earlier 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the court. The border agent’s lawyer said the opinion vindicated his client.
An attorney for the teen’s family said they haven’t decided whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
[…]
U.S. Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa Jr. shot 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca in June 2010. U.S. investigators said Mesa was trying to arrest immigrants who had illegally crossed into the country when he was attacked by people throwing rocks. Mesa fired his weapon across the Rio Grande, twice hitting Hernandez Guereca.
The shooting occurred near a bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua
Originally the family’s lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, where a judge ruled that they couldn’t sue in the U.S. because the shooting’s effects were “felt in Mexico.” The three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit later held that Mesa could be sued, but Friday’s decision by the full court overturned that finding and upheld the district judge.
The full court rejected the family’s contention that Mesa’s immunity from a civil suit was overcome by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the right of “the people to be secure in their persons,” or by Fifth Amendment protections against deprivation of life without due process of law.
I understand the legal reasoning, but it still sucks. The United States claims “universal jurisdiction” for crimes outside its own borders, but at the same time rejects the authority of international criminal courts to try its own citizens. I don’t see how Officer Mesa will ever face justice, but the Hernandez family deserves some. Short of calling the incident an act of war, it was an aggression against a sovereign nation by an armed agent of a foreign government. At a minimum, the Republic is owed a formal apology (I’d settle for the U.S. Ambassador abjectly handing over a hand-written apology by Barack Obama to Enrique Peña Neito… and Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca’s mother) AND the Hernandez family is owed a large cash settlement. AND… Officer Mesa should never be anywhere near the Juarez again.
A good idea whose time might come
Although it was shot down (for now, anyway) an interesting political reform that might pave the way to a post-party democracy has surfaced here. Basically under the excuse that its too close to the elections now to reform our legislative system, representatives from the 20 million indigenous Mexicans in 28 states have proposed that the indigenous communities could elect representatives to a sixth “conscription”.
Mexico’s electoral system was designed to prevent any one political PARTY from gaining complete control. It’s a complicated process, but in addition to the representatives elected by district or state, there are an addition batch of legislators chosen by the parties based on their relative vote within the five “conscriptions”… a multi-state regional area… based on complicated formulas that preclude any one party from having more than 2/3rds of the seats in any one house. Meant to assure that minority parties are guaranteed at least a seat in the legislature, the system has been endlessly tweaked, mostly to guarantee the hegemony of the three major parties, PRI, PAN and also-ran PRD.
This serves the party interests very well, if not guaranteeing some politicians a seat in the legislature, at least guaranteeing they will be candidates for one office or another. But does it serve the interests of their constituents?
I’m not convinced that living in the same general geographical area has much to do with whether a representative can speak for my interests (what does a yuppie in Guadalajara have in common with a Mixtec farmer, other than perhaps both living in the State of Jalisco?). Though we’re stuck with administration by geographical proximity, I’ve wondered whether representation by geographical proximity is even necessary. Maybe in the 18th century, it seemed like a good idea, just to make it easier to count ballots, there is no technical reason voting MUST be this way. One could vote, by say, economic or social interest.
Which makes the idea floated by the indigenous representatives so intriguing. Having common interests, but spread over 28 states (at least this group), they see common interests less tied to geography (where indigenous communities are often outnumbered by their neighbors) than ethnicity… or, in this instance, by the recognition in the Constitution of their right to adhere to “usos y costumbres”. That is, although separated by political boundaries within the country, they share enough common values to justify representation in a body supposedly representing the people as a whole.
I’m not sure ethnicity is the best way to select representatives (perhaps by “social sector”… labor, business, education, agriculture… or whatever fits the country’s population the best), and I don’t think we’ll ever completely dispense with the need for geographical representatives or with political parties, but extending proportional voting to meet the shared interests of larger constituencies sounds perfectly rational… and perfectly “do-able” to me — the technology certainly exists to control ballot access to voters within any given constituency now no matter where the voter is in the country (Mexico pioneered the software for the gold standard of voter identification procedures) and counting ballots over the whole country to determine seats in a legislature isn’t any more complex than counting national ballots as far as the computers are concerned.
With the idea of a new Constitution having been floated by both the left and by the Catholic Church, and the low regard for political parties (especially the traditional big three) right now, perhaps Mexico could rethink the political process, creating something new, and something suitable for the 21st century.
Georgina Saldierna, Indígenas exigen elegir a sus legisladores sin partidos, Jornada, 24 April 2015, page 10.
Our “show me the Green” party.
When Josefina M. was cold-called by the Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), she politely responded to their telephone survey, answering questions on crime, education, jobs and other issues.
She was careful not to give out her address or any other personal details, nor agree to further correspondence. A few days later, however, she was surprised to find an envelope hand-delivered to her Guadalajara home stamped with the tag, “For Green Party Affiliates.” Inside, she found a gift card in her name, containing the Green Party logo, along with a letter explaining how she could use it to obtain discounts in a variety of stores such as Sears, Chedraui and Farmacia del Ahorro.
The card is one of thousands distributed by the Green Party in the run up to the June 7 local and legislative elections, which will bring in 500 new federal deputies, nine governors, new state legislatures and
900…
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