No more cookies for you!
Our poor Senators. What a sacrifice… for the good of the country in a difficult time, they’re taking a pay cut… a whole 7 dollars a month (from 117,600 pesos down to 117,500 pesos). I hope none have to resign for economic reasons, or because they’re going to limit the amount of free snacks and cookies passed out at meetings. Wanna bet PRI hogs the cookies, and only will share them with PAN, sometimes?
They knew! More details on the Ayotzinapa “disappearances”
Milenio — a generally pro-government newpaper — has unearthed military records that indicate the Army was aware of the events in Iguala the night of 26 September, but either failed to act, or… though negligence or design, released students to be taken by the police and gangsters.
Meant to justify the 27th Battalion’s claims that it was not involved, the photos obtained by Milenio show 25 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school in a hospital waiting room, one with bullet wounds to his face.
What is left unexplained… is why the 27th Battalion then failed to either round up the other students themselves (they were supposedly in Iguala to act as police and peacekeepers), or to rescue them from what the government claims is their murder and later cremation.
Milenio did the Army, and the Army did itself, no favors in releasing the photos, making the official stor(ies) even less credible, or at the very least, questioning the veracity and competence of the military command… and the rationale for using the military as a police force.
Just what we need… armed gringos
Via Aristigui Noticias:
President Enrique Peña Nieto sent an initiative to the Senate that would reform the Federal Law on Firearms and Explosives and allow customs officials, bodyguards and immigration agents from foreign countries to carry firearms.
The proposal would allow foreign agents to carry weapons within national territory, and high-level visitors to enter the country with their own security people.
The truth shall piss you off…
It used to be said of Mexico’s relations with the Vatican that “The State is blind and the Church is deaf,” meaning that as long as the two power centers in the country didn’t openly confront each other, they were basically free to pretend the other didn’t exist. Times have changed. Starting with Vatican II, when the Church accepted its responsibility to take a activist role in social policy, and with the Mexican State’s tolerance (or acquiescence) to the power of the Roman Catholic Church going back to constitutional changes in the 1990s, even the PRI … formerly a stalwart anti-clerical party, has become keenly attuned to whatever emanates from Rome.
Or at least when it fits their own agenda.
With Francis… not just a Pope, but an ARGENTINE… having dissed the Mexican government with his warning to an Argentine anti-drug addiction group about the dangers of “Mexicanization” in his own country (meaning, one supposes, making narcotics dealers unofficial partners in governance), the PRI — which everyone in Mexico believes to have made narcotics dealers unofficial partners in governance … along with PAN and the PRD — has been rather put out.
Seeing the widespread perception of the Mexican government being in cahoots with narcos (newly minted cardinal Alberto Suárez Inda basically said, “everybody in Europe, including the Pope, sees it that way”), the administration forgot to just close its eyes, and complained that the Church was too loud. Calling in the Papal Nuncio the Foreign Secretary sent off the dreaded diplomatic “stiffly worded note” to His Holiness.
Who, in essence, said, “yeah, right, whatever”.
Blaxicans
I never knew there was a name for this particular sub-group. African-Americans have been emigrating to Mexico as long as Mexico existed, before U.S. emancipation mostly because slavery did not exist in Mexico (it was the first country to abolish the peculiar institution), and afterwards, because the racial climate in the United States made African-Americans feel their economic and social prospects were better south of the border.
With a few isolated exceptions, most Afro-Mexicans were assimilated into the general population, although more recent “afro-descendientes”… mostly from the Caribbean or Central America… maintain their racial identity. Another small group are African-Americans who like previous generations of African-Americans, saw Mexico as a place where “race” mattered less, but who wish to maintain their U.S. identity.
Angela Kocherga reported on Blaxicans for KVIA (El Paso):
“The people in Mexico have the biggest hearts I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Jimmy Young, 65, a Vietnam veteran. He discovered Juarez when he was a teenager stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso.
“I said, ‘Oh, yeah, when I get out of the military, that’s where I’m going to be,'” Young recalled.
He made the decision to move to Mexico 49 years ago.
“I consider myself a ‘Blaxican.’ I’m into the culture. I’m into people. I read Spanish. I write Spanish,” Young said.
He met and married his wife in Mexico, and became part of a large extended family – like other African-Americans who migrated south.
“Many had families in Mexico, were married to Mexican women, and essentially, they had embraced Mexico,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas.
Campbell has spent decades researching the migration trend. Some of his findings will appear in a paper “Escaping Identity” that will be published by the Royal Anthropological Institute this summer.
“There were certainly a lot of people who moved to Mexico just because it was cheaper,” he said. “But the main impetus: They moved to Juarez because they loved Mexico; they loved Mexican culture.”
And many chose to live on the border because they could straddle two worlds.
To coup or not to coup?
Was there an attempted coup in Venezuela, or is it, as the US media is hinting (when not saying out loud) simply a crackdown on dissidents?
Counterpunch publishes two views, by Gloria la Riva and Chris Gilbert, both countering the “official” (U.S.) story. La Riva (“The Foiling of a Coup Plot in Venezuela“) comes across as an apologist for the present administration in Caracas, accepting the government story. Gilbert (“The Coup d’Etat Attempt in Venezuela“) is somewhat skeptical of the official spin, but does conclude there was a coup plot, and that while some of the more prominent right-wing dissidents may not have been involved in the actual planning, all the signs are the government was right to suspect them of complicity.
While I don’t see the present administration in Caracas as particularly skilled, and Nicolas Maduro is no Hugo Chavez (but then, who is?), it is the legitimate government, and not particularly “authoritarian” other than it tends to limit the scope of the rich to exploit the poor, as opposed to “libertarian” governments that simply deny the poor their human rights. And, when you come down to it, when was “authoritarianism” ever a rationale for foreign intervention, or subverting the democratic process, anyway.
From Gilbert:
If there were not a coup d’etat underway, someone would have to invent one to rally the masses. That may be the case for the Venezuelan government today, which is beset with so many problems, and it is one of the reasons that some people are incredulous about the latest claim of President Nicolás Maduro to be victim of a planned coup attempt. Nevertheless, there was real evidence presented two weeks ago of a conspiracy in the ranks of the Venezuelan Air Force. In fact, there are three important elements: real evidence, real informers and, fortunately, real arrests.
[…]
What about the U.S. government’s possible hand in this recently discovered plot? It should be remembered that many coups against popular, left-leaning regimes are not conceived in CIA laboratories but are rather supported opportunistically by the U.S. government and its agencies
[…]
The possibility of a military coup followed by hurried elections – a two-stage overthrow – could be what is behind the U.S. driven media campaign against Venezuela that has unfolded in recent weeks and involves extravagant claims about government figures running an international drug trafficking ring. Such a plan was also pointed to in words that recently escaped from Julio Borges of the opposition party Primero Justicia. When asked on Unión Radio how he would respond to a coup, Borges responded that, instead of working to restore the constitutional order, his party would “immediately call for elections.” This brings to mind the Honduras transition of 2009 in which a coup d’etat that installed a brief and unpopular military government was followed by the fraudulent election of Porfirio Lobo.
Rolly Brook, DEP
Rolly Brook… one of the best foreign spokesmen for Mexico, who spent his last years (even when confined to his home by illness) sharing his vast knowledge, kindness and personal concern to his many friends, foreigners and Mexicans alike, passed away earlier today.
He will be sorely missed by those who knew him personally, and by the many thousands of those who never met him in person, but were the grateful recipients of his vast knowledge of Mexico, which he shared across the internet.
Depending on how (or when last) his beard was trimmed, he looked like Santa Claus, Karl Marx, or Walter Huston in the role of Howard, the happy “prisoner” of a Mexican community… and embodied something of all three to his adopted Mexican family and community in Lerdo.
If he died with any regrets, the only one I can think of is that he never acquired his Mexican citizenship.
Trump the chump
Ok, so Donald Trump is rather displeased that a Mexican director was chosen by a U.S. film industry society to receive that statuette of Indio Fernandez rather than Clint Eastwood. Leading to the usual Trump-eting of all things Trumpy. Including this:
The only Mexican lawsuit I can find that Trump “won” was against his partners in the never completed Trump Ocean Resort Baja … a planned condominium development in Punta Bandara, Tijuana… in which (mostly US) investors claimed they lost 32 million dollars and Trump (who further claimed he was only a “spokesman” for the development… even though he and his daughter both made public claims that they were the developers), claiming he lost 40 million dollars, also sued the developer. The developer, for their part, went into bankruptcy.
Mexican and California courts both heard suits, the Mexican settlement favoring small investors, as did the U.S. settlement. In the U.S., the developer came up with 7.25 million dollars — not nearly enough to cover the losses to small investors, let alone Trump. If he can’t collect, it has nothing to do with Mexican “corruption”, unless he means whoever signed off on this project in the first place.
As it is, Trump should be liable for the environmental cleanup and restoration of the land … and removal of that ugly sign that still disgraces the landscape.
El Universal 13 March 2009 (“Trump Oceans Resorts Baja México defrauda 200 personas“)
Cracked.com 24 July 2011 (“10 Stories About Donald Trump You Won’t Believe Are True“)
My kind of people
Look at you all!
I don’t pay that much attention to it, but I look at the statistics on my site now and again. I though the number of visits was dropping, but what I hadn’t paid much attention to was how many people are “followers”… either on wordpress.com or via email notification when I post. I’m about to hit 400 … so, the 300th wordpress “follower” and the 100th email follower … and whoever is the 400th follower… will each receive a free copy of Gods, Gachupines and Gringos (the first edition… work barely started on the second), or the Montezuma Books title of their choice.
Do you know this person?
Wow! Jo Tuckman’s article on “Life After Chapo: kingpin’s arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war” (The Guardian, 20 February 2015) elicited the usual “Well, if WE (i.e., the United States) just legalized marijuana the “problem” would be solved” missing the point Tuckman made that the Sinaloan … ahem… export industry… is flexible, switching to heroin and meth, and that with the retirement of Chapo (supposedly, he’s in prison, but I have my personal doubts) has led to unease among the rank and file.
It was better coverage of Sinaloa than I usually see, but it didn’t sit well with one Guardian commentator, who calls him (or her?)self “gangoffour”.
I really, really would like to hear from this person … damn straight I’d jump at the chance to publish something on “normal” life in the so-called “Golden Triangle” that wasn’t sensationalized or hopelessly academic, but simply a look at “company towns” exploiting Latin American labor for the benefit of US consumers:
Typical clueless gringo writings that are at least 25 years behind the curve. I live in a Sinaloa neighborhood. It has been for decades. The ‘Golden Triangle’ is little more than a maquiladora that supplies the ever flexible and redundant logistics networks embedded in their principal operations hub: southern California. Tens of thousands of Mexicans, legal or not, make their living this way. Millions of red gringos are available at the drop of a sombrero to fight for their rights to practice capitalism according to their now traditional cultural mores. Generically, they’re good neighbors who care about their kids and administer justicia without all the intentional inefficiencies of the US legal system. Chapo Guzman’s wife and girlfriends are well known. You don’t look for trouble with them and they don’t look for trouble with you. We proudly show off our firearms to each other. They are far more proactive and responsive than the draconian local and state governments who tax with impunity but cannot educate the kids, pave the roads, keep the power on or keep the police for creating more problems than they solve. The Sinaloan cartel isn’t remotely cost competitive in the pot biz and encourages your patronage of the local Armenian dispensary if that’s your thing: all locally grown and organic. And unless you’re interested in doing business at the kilo level in heroin or meth, it’s not really in their interest to do business with you. The closest business analogy is to the populous suburban business district that surrounds Bentonville, AR/Wal Mart’s headquarters.
Whip it, whip it good!
In the spirit of the old-fashioned corrido singers, Los Tres Triste Tigres comment on the news and events of the day in song.
Fifty Shades of Gray…
“I am very sorry for what happened … BUT…”
Juan Carlos Miranda, writing in La Jornada on a celebration of a “pact” between the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (Business Leaders’ Council) and the country’s military leaders to “establish […] joint mechanisms for the promoting a culture of civil protection, job sfor retired military personnel, detection of security “hot spots”, among other goals”, quotes the chairman of the National Chamber of Tourism and Service Industries as rejecting the demands of families of the missing normal school students to be allowed access to military installations in their search for the disappeared 43:
“I am very sorry for what happened but we will open all the country’s barracks just so they can see if those boys are there or not. This goes to the bowels of Mexican society, and an intimate part of our being. We cannot accept opening the barracks to anyone other than the military.”
If it’s not scary enough that the head of a TOURISM chamber uses the “we” to mean him and the military (and not the parents of other citizens), then consider what Gerardo Gutierrez Candiani, President of the Business Leaders’ Council had to say:
… human rights are fundamental, but what is more important is that we are doing nothing more than defending criminals. It often seems as if there is no one defending the people who just get by day to day. Sometimes it seems there are very few standing up for the victims, and people working every day to defend the victimizers.
I can think of at least one political system in which the industrialists and military are working hand-in-glove, and in which any civilian oversight of the military is to be discouraged. Didn’t Mexico fight a war against those guy in the early 1940s?
mexfiles.net 