Over-drive
Yes, Mexican streets and highways are more crowded. According to the Secretariat of Agrian, Regional and Urban Development (SEDATU, for its Spanish acronym) there are now 40 motor vehicles for every urban dweller in Mexico… and the number of motocycles — the smallest of the motor vehicles crowding the streets — has risen from 1.3 million in 2011 to 5.9 million in 2021… a 500% increase in just a decade!
In 10 years motorcycle use increased four times, going from 1.3 million in 2011 to 5.9 million in 2021
In the country’s urban areas there are more and more automobiles, Daniel Fajardo, undersecretary of Urban Development and Housing of the Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU for its Spanish acronym) estimates there are 4 motor vehicles of some kind for every 10 inhabitants in the country, although “there are enormous differences between regions and cities”. The result of all those motor vehicles is not only that Mexicans spend “an average of 118 hours per month due to congested roads” but that road accidents are becoming a crisis:
Mexico ranks 7th worldwide in traffic accident deaths. “380 thousand traffic accidents were registered that left 126 thousand victims; On average, 15,000 people die a year and the financial cost of these traffic accidents oscillates between “1.8 and 3.5 points of gross domestic product,” he specified, citing World Health Organization statistics.
Although SEDATU has adopted a program which aims to reduce the number of deaths by fifty percent by 2030, to have any chance of success depend on the political will of the local governments. Which is even more of a challenge when you consider that , as Fajardo points out, “”74 percent of the financial resources” allocated by the federal, state, and municipal governments go to “infrastructure for motorized vehicles; that is, avenues, streets, bridges, overpasses and very little to bicycle paths and to widen sidewalks” and “when it turns out that more than 60 percent of people walk,” but “30 percent of the streets in the country have nowhere to walk.
Source:
Carolina Gómez Mena, “Suman 400 vehículos por cada mil habitantes en zonas urbanas: Sedatu” Jornada, 23 June 2023
And… they’re off!
Franc Contresas, as usual, does a much better job at CGTN (China Global Television Network) than the US media when it comes to English language TV reports from Mexico.
The electoral season is starting much earlier than usual… and a few “explanations” might be useful:
- Morena is a relatively new party, only formed (and sometimes carved out) of a few older minor parties. It’s much easier in Mexico to form a new party than in the United States. That it has become the majority party in just a few years, forcing the “traditional” parties to form an “all oppositin coalition” is itself remarkable.
- While it is a constitutional requirement that a president not have held elected public office for (I think it’s six months) before their election, Morena’s party rule is that a candidate for the “primary” (more on that in a second) not hold a public office (or a presidential appointment) during this time. Recently resigned Foreign Minister Ebrard, and the unmentioned — though serious contender — Interior Minister Aden Adrian Lopez — as well as the other Morena candidate, Ricardo Monteal who was “majority leader” in the Chamber of Deputies have resigned their offices, as have the two “external candidates” from coalition party parties… the Green and the Workers’ Parties.
- The “primary” is something of an experiment, and looks like a promising way for parties to select a candidate more likely to present the voters with what they want than the US system with its messy state primaries, or countries where some party central committee choses the candidate (or, the old Mexican “dedazo” (roughly… “the finger”… as in one’s index finger, not the middle one) where the President just named his successor and the party central committee agreed.
The four Morena, and two coalition partner candidates will make their pitches on the main issues, followed by polls conducted by outside firms of party memer’s preference among the candidates. Six polls will be taken over the next several moths, with the candidate chosen on the basis of the results (with some input by the central committee). - At some point… the PRI, PAN, PRD… and possibly Citizen Movement (MC) will either pick their own candidate, work out a coalition candidate (among the 20 or so declared hopefuls) acceptable — if reluctantly — by most of them. Or, one or two parties will get in a snit and run their own person… hoping not so much to win the presidency, as to at least gain enough votes to keep their registration or to be eligible for a bigger share of proportional representation seats in the legislature.
In short… while anything can happen (and, as Porfirio Diaz supposedly said, “Nothing happens in Mexico… until it happens”)… it very much looks like Claudia Sheinbaum will be the next Mexican President, and maybe for a change, the US media will focus on something else… the “novelty” of a woman (and a scientist, and of Jewish extraction) as president of a country they generally only think of in terms of drugs, migrants, and cheap labor.
Mexicans fighting in Ukraine?
I sometimes watch “HistoryLegends”… featuring a guy named Alexandre (with some sort of European accent) who only claims his “dedication to history and facts is unmatched”. He seems about as legitimate as any outside commentator, though I give him credit for not taking any statement by any of the parties involved at face value. Whether he leans towards the Russians, or it’s just that he has assumed they aregoing to eventually prevail (to what end?) I’m not sure. Like anything by anyone that’s said about this conflict, even the guy who doesn’t take what information he has at face value, probably can’t be taken as gospel either.
That said,, in a very short “update” he claims that 3% of Mexican volunteer soldiers in the conflict have been killed. In another video, he discusses the thorny question of how foreign volunteers are counted, how many there actually are, and whether or not the numbers are not inflated by both Ukraine and Russia for different reasons (Ukraine to bolster the claim of massive foreign support for them; Russia, to downplay some embarassing battlefield setbacks).
My first question is the obvious one… 3% of how many? One out of 33, or 30 out of a thousand… or …? Alexandre noted there are no clear numbers on foreign fighters, there is even less (or less I can find in a not very intensive google search) of any Mexicans… other than the mention of one in a New York Times article (“Why Some Foreign Volunteers Are Joining the Military in Ukraine“), and that from 4 April 2022. The few other scattered references (all from early 2022) either mention the same Mexican, or just claim there are Mexicans among the various foreign volunteers. And, for what it’s worth, the Secrtariat of Foreign Affairs … in reference to a claim in the Kyiv Independent that Mexicans are among the foreign troops… that they are unaware of any. That too early 2022.
I wouldn’t doubt there are a few… there were Mexicans who have joined the US military in recent conflicts for various reaons… adventure seekers, or… like Luis in the New York Times article … a former Mexican miliary who never fought in a foreign war (Mexican’s last … and the only one outside the country ending in 1945), having found some moral calling to join the fray… or — and this I can easily see — far right wing Mexicans, atrracted by the claims by some Ukrainian nationalists, that they are fighting to defend “western, Christian values”. Gangsters and wannabe terrorists have also been known to seek combat training in order to hone skills useful to less than honorable activites than defending a homeland or some national values, and I can imagine any war is going to attract a few of those kind.
But how many? With Mexico staying strictly neutral and other than opening its doors to war refugees and offering to negotiate, or support a negotiated settlement… there is no incentive for any official supprt to either side in the conflict.
Mexico another BRICS in the wall?
Very little, if anything, has been appearing in Mexican media (or, anywhere substantial, with a few exceptions back in March) about Mexican inclusion in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) bloc. Given that nearly all discussions have either been superficial or from websites as obscure as this one. At most, a passing mention of “possible” membership in the group, or simply a recap of what possible advantages there might be, should Mexico be included.
Not that there wouldn’t be… trade with China (or China-based) businees has greatly increased, and cheaper Russian fertilizer would certainly be welcome. Not being tied to the US dollar for these imports and a more balanced export market aren’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, the world is changing:
The year 2020 marked parity between the total GDP of the G7 (the U.S. plus allies) and the total GDP of the BRICS group (China plus allies). Since then, the BRICS economies grew faster than the G7 economies. Now a third of total world output comes from the BRICS countries while the G7 accounts for below 30 percent. Beyond the obvious symbolism, this difference entails real political, cultural, and economic consequences. Bringing Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to Hiroshima to address the G7 recently failed to distract the G7’s attention from the huge global issue: what is growing in the world economy vs. what is declining.
Richard D. Wolfe, “The World Economy Is Changing—the People Know, But Their Leaders Don’t” Clunterpunch, 7 June 2023.
Given Mexico’s economic ties to the United States (with something like 75% of its exports depending on the US market); a presidential election; a growing (and also under-reported) trade dispute over GM corn imports; the perennial complaints from the US about “drug cartels”, a massive pushback from the United States were Mexico to seriously consider allying openly with China and Russia… one can’t imagine it being allowed to happen.
That is, as it stands right now, the US still has more influence … and something of a veto … over Mexicn policies. That is, while the US limits itself to rhetorical rejection (or, ignores) Mexican policy towards countries unfriendly to itself (Venezuela, Cuba, Boliva), it’s well understood by those countries that in bodies like the United Nations, Mexico cannot outright support them, at the best abstaining when the US and its allies vote in opposition to something favored by those countries (and often the rest of the world).
Whether US “sanctions” (under one or another justification) against Mexican businesses and individuals, more demands for “arbitration” over trade issues under “NAFTA 2.0” (The US, Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement), building yet more walls and other barriers to cross-border movement, or even more repressive measures (say, labeling “cartels” as “terrorists”) might follow.
It could happen… but I’m not holding my breath.
sources:
Astrid Prange De Oliveira, “Los países BRICS se redefinen por oposición al G7“, DW, 26 March 2023.
“More than 30 countries want to join the BRICS“, moderndiplomacy, 24 may 2023.
“BRICS nations offer a new world order as alternative to the West“, DW, via The Hindu, 27 March 2023.
Richard D. Wolfe, “The World Economy Is Changing—the People Know, But Their Leaders Don’t“, Counterpunch 7 June 2023.
“Mexico seals BRICS Decision: Joining #BRICS Alliance! How Will It Impact the World?” Video, LineFlux,
Trees… yearning to breathe free.
Gotta love my city.
From “Ante inacción de la Benito Juárez, vecinos liberan
raíces de árboles“, Elba Monica Bravo for Jornada.
With picks, shovels, crowbars, hammers and mallets, residents of the Benito Juárez borough mayor’s office “freed the roots” in the San José Insurgentes neighborhood, to allow them to receive water, and to create more green space.
Palms, rubber trees, poplars, pines and cypresses growing on Mercaderes, Saturnino Herrán, Lorenzo Rodríguez and Diego Becerra streets were rescued from “drowning in cement” and some additinal trees.. two ashes and a year and a half old were planted by Narvarte resident Andrés Parra, who volunteed to assist in the operation.
Sebastián López, another Narvate resident, lamented that Borough mayor Santiago Taboada “is not interested in the environment and only makes speeches about his pet security program.” Lopez criticized the local administration for the 2,000 trees lost to poor pruning,
“They are drowned in cement, torturted to death as they age or dying without being replaced by an adminstration with a reforestation plan”. At the corner of Yácatas and Eje 5 Sur, they allowed a butcher shop to remove a jacaranda tree to expand access to the parking lot, and between Real de Mayorazgo and Mayorazgo de la Higuera there are dozens of planters without trees or plants, and even left some with just stumps in them.
Carmen Contreras, from the neighborhood Participation Council, criticized the mayor’s office for responding to the requirements to prune or rescue trees that they claim the species does not exist and terminated the application for action, despite having presented photographs and electronic locations.
Councilor Enrique Tamayo said that the actions were carried out as part of World Environment Day, dedicated to raising awareness among neighbors to protect trees. “The only thing left is for the mayor’s office to attend to our request to collect the sacks of concrete and gravel that were left to one side of those liberated trees”
Photo: María Luisa Severiano
The long way round?
Reports that an alleged “Cartel member” was filmed carrying what looked like a Javalin missile (video by Milenio TV here) have lead to speculation (perhaps fed by Russia Today) that “suplused” (i.e. stolen) black market US military supplies are being diverted from Ukraine to … Mexico?
I can well believe that US weaponry for Ukrainians are being diverted to criminal organizations (likely with the connivance of Ukrainian officials, and/or those foreign “volunteers” ), although one would assume there are plenty of other criminal enterprises much closer to the eastern edge of Europe with willing buyers.
Likely, the “javalin” (if it is, indeed, a javalin) came the same way most criminal firepower comes into this country… from the United States. Military grade weapons thefts have been a concern for several years (story from 2021 here) and, with the lax controls on the transfers of weapons to the Ukraine, I can easily imagine some being diverted for off-the-books sales closer to home.
The reason this IS a story, though, prbably has less to do with what the weapon is, but what it represents… Mexico has always been loathe to get itself tangled up in US foreign policies, especially those involving military adventures. Between that, some nostagia for the old Soviet Union as a counterweight to the “colossus of the north”, and genuine anger over not just recent statements by irresponsible US politicans about sending US troops (and, obviously, weapons) to Mexico to fight the kind of guys who are carrying javilines (or alleged javilines), the US has been rightly criticized (and it’s a criticism heard more and more) for “demanding” Mexican halt it’s northward narcotics trade, while defending (or failing to do much of anything) about its own sothbound arms exports.
The American invasion, and what remains…
Luis Antonio Rojas for The Washington Post
My neighborhood is considered the “old city” althogh old is a relative concept, having been platted in 1890, almost yesterday in a city going back about 650 years. Along the way Cortés and company marched down the main street (and ran back up the street when angy Aztecs chased them out the first of July in 1520. The the regret of the Aztecs, he said, “I’ll be back”… and was.
So too, were the gringos, in 1846. from a couple different directions on 11 -12 Septermber 1847. Not a major engagment up at the Garita de San Cosme (although among the combattants was a young Lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant) but … what was important at the time, is that there was a Protestant Church there.. which included a Protestant churchyard. which is why so many of the US casualties were buried in what was then the edge of town.
Given growth in the 20th century, a central ring road built in the early 1960s, and a major theater taking about half the original space, the graves were moved to niches along the walls of a one-acre plot… most victims of the “Unjust Invasion”, but also a number of later arrivals, including a couple deluded Confederate generals who somehow thought they could carry on the “great cause” under the Emmperor Maximiliano
Visiting it is somewhat hit or miss. It was opened for US Memorial Day, and if the caretaker is around, he can let you in.
I started to write this the other day, but we had a power outage, and I just never got back to this.
Hey, Jude…
Badiraguarto, Sinaloa isn’t a place on most tourists’ bucket-list… unless, that is, unless you have an hankering to visit the hometowns of Horatio Alger type stories of the poor boy from the small town who by pluck and luck works his way up from humble fruit vendor to one of the world’s most famous transportation and logistics experts, overseeing at its height, a multi-billion (some say trillion) dollar industry.. but never forgot his home town, and was always good to his mother. I mean, of course, local hero(?9 Joaquin Guzman Loera.
It’s most important local industry being, shall we say, a bit on the dangerous side, and for which the local producion is desperately sought… perhaps it’s no surprise that the patron saint of the desperate and those in danger… Saint Jude… Judas Taddeo in Spanish… might be called upon to watch over the affairs of the small (population, about 7000) community buried in the Sierra Madres.
Watch over it, he will… an 18 meter (60 feet for the metrically challenged) statue… by Cuilican scuptor Fidel Chaidez…. after a year of work was delivered yesterday in two long flatbed trucks. The instrallation will tower over the community, perhaps bringing in a few religious tourists, or at least, one hopes…will take a bad town and make it better… better… BETTER, .
Photo of sculpture in progress (Euro EsEuro).
(Noreste)
It takes a thief… or two or three
If the British Museum has the world’s best collection of stolen goods in the world, it’s kinda of a jumble. Perhaps the National Library of France thought it too messy, and decided to specialize in one kind of pilfered possessions… obviously written documents.
Like the Tonalamatl (roughtly a Nahuatl “Book of Revelations”).
I can’t read it either… but a Monsieur Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin… bopping around Mexico back in the late 1830s on a looting expediton (er.. doing archeolgical research back in the day when European empires figured everybody else’s history was fair game) though it worthwhile to nab the only known copy in 1840, out of the collection of the 18th century Spanish collector and historian Lorenzo Boturini Where exactly Botuini acquired it during his research into the Virgin of Guadalupe story, part of his planned history of “Septronial”.. north-ish… America”, and apparently annoyed somebody in the colonial administration. He had him deported in 1743, much of his (presumably pilfered in the first place) research documents seized, and turned over the the Viceroy.
Which in tern were seized by the Republic, and housed in what passed for the national archives of the time, when Aubin walked in one day in 1840, stuck the tonalamatl codex (the Aztec style book) under his coat, and simply walked out. Along with several trunks of loot Aubin acquired in the course of his own investigations, he high-tailed it back to Paris.
Aubin would return to Mexico during the reign of Emperor Maximilian, but… well… things didn’t go so well for the French and their puppets, and he soon found himself headed home, and drifting into paranoia. Guilty conscience or Aztec curse? You decide.
While still considered an expert and scholar of his field, his “collection” was acquired by the Biblioteque Nacional… where it sat undisturbed until the 19th of June, 1982. That morning, a Mexican lawyer and newspaper owner, José Luis Castañeda, having asked to see the codex, pulled a reverse Autin move of 1840, sticking the fragile amate scroll under HIS coat, headed to the airport, and caught a flight to Madrid.
The perps: Botorini, Aubin, Casteñeda
With the Sûreté and Interpol chased Casteñeda around the globe…. from Madrid, to Cairo, to New York, to Cancún, where the found the errant document sitting in Casteñada’s desk drawer. He claimed.. and would a newpsper man lie? Would a lawyer? (Don’t answer that!)… that he had done the deed for the honor of Mexico. Alas, it appears he had met with rare book dealers (er… fences) in New York, but it did put a strain on Franco-Mexico diplomatic relations. The French… having once had the Mona Lisa spirited out of the Louve by a patriotic Italian … were loathe to admit they were themselves cultural theives… after all, the French claim they “own” culture, n’est-ce pas? And the Mexicans, while not quite willing to accept that one of their own would be so base as to do what has been done for centuries (i.e. selling off national treasures to foreigners, and perfidious gringos in New York at that) not willing to extradite or even charge Casteñada, a cultural cold war persisted for several years.
The Biblioteque Nacional denied entry to Mexican passport holders, and French cultural programs in Mexico were curtailed. A face-saving truce was finally reached in 1990, when the French “permanently loaned” the Tomlamatl de Aubin to INAH (the National Institute for Anthropology and History)… keeping it safely locked away, although it’s easily availabe (if you happen to read Nahuatl glyphs) on-line here.
Sources:
“El mexicano que robó a Francia un códice azteca para devolverlo a México”, Mexico Disconosido
“Tonalamatl Aubin”, Mediateca INAH
“Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin”, Puebloas Originarios
Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci: apuntes biográficos”. Códice Boturini
The revolting behavior of some women!
History remembers the revolutionary leaders Zapata, Villa, and other he-men. The women, who lived in silence, went on to oblivion.
A few women warriors refused to be erased:
Juana Ramona, “la Tigresa,” who took several cities by assault;
Carmen Vélez, “la Generala,” who commanded three hundred men;
Ángela Jiménez, master dynamiter, who called herself Angel Jiménez;
Encarnación Mares, who cut her braids and reached the rank of second lieutenant hiding under the brim of her big sombrero, “so they won’t see my woman’s eyes”;
Amelia Robles, who had to become Amelio and who reached the rank of colonel;
Petra Ruiz, who became Pedro and did more shooting than anyone else to force open the gates of Mexico City;
Rosa Bobadilla, a woman who refused to be a man and in her own name fought more than a hundred battles;
and María Quinteras, who made a pact with the Devil and lost not a single battle. Men obeyed her orders. Among them, her husband.
Eduardo Galeano, “Childen of the Days”
The can-openers.
It used to be said that Mexico was a democracy… every day EXCEPT Election Day. From Calles in the 1920s to Ernesto Zedillo in the 1990s, even with changes in party label and ideology…the winner in the presidential election was a foregone conclusion… whomever the outgoing administration decided was their guy for the next administration. There was some suspense in trying to figure out who exactly the president, in the waning days of his administration would select.. the most likely being called “corchaladas”… can-openers… as in the CANdidate waiting to be”opened” by the president.
The 2000 election… although Vicente Fox was a terrible president… did mean a change in the system. Not that the PAN candidate’s ideology would be all that different from his PRI rival (or his PRI predecesor) but that he was unable to coronate his sucessor. Fox’s preferences were ignored, and… while his party continued to hold the presidency and the neo-liberal path, Felipe Calderón sold himself to the party faithful as an opponent of Fox and his backers.
Never mind that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador … running on a coalition of his own Mexico City based PRD and a few smaller, leftist parties… probably won the election. Making the “error” of contesting the results, he was quickly written off by the pundit-class as a has-been. Perhaps, but AMLO tried again, with the same coalition (and the same results… a likely stolen election) in the 2012 election, this time with Calderon’s chosen sucessor rejected for what promised to be a “new” face, the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto.
Peña Nieto’s term was a disaster, but did accomplish one thing. It melded the rival mainstream parties into a broad neo-liberal coalition, which … in large part thanks to the President’s ineptitude and open corruption… left open the way for a broad front of the dissident, the dissatisfied, the disenfranchized: MORENA (National Movement for Regeneration) While it had been around, less as a party than as a “social movement” since 2011, after the 2012 election it registered as a party and by 2018 was the majority party, having united Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, the poor, union workers, environmentalists, Indigenous, Afro-Mexican and LGBTQ communities, “good government” types… and even some Evangelicals (although he professes to be Roman Cathoic, it’s well known that AMLO is rather abstentious, reads the Bible, and has attended Evangelical and Pentacostal services).
All of which… without going into the relative sucessess of his adminstration, has put AMLO back in the position of those presidents of the past whose chosen sucessor could be assumed to be the next president. Yes there is that opposition… though the PRI-PAN-PRD coalition (contempuously referred to as “PRIAND”) doesn’t seem to have any viable candidate, and the only other party outside the MORENA and friends (Workers Party and the Greens) … the Citizens’ Movement… at best could run a candidate simply to garner enough votes to qualify it to maintain its national registration.
So… who will AMLO choose? He claims no one… that it will be decided by polling the party members. If so, and given the four most likely … and all but officially declared candidates for MORENA’s nomination, we may already have the answer:
None of these candidates have quite the pizazzz as AMLO, and his “coattails” only go so far… absent the entire opposition able to field a single viable candidate. and able to capitalize on anti-Semitism, sexism, and (not to be discounted) US interferance (my sense is that IF the US accepts that MORENA is the only real choice, they’d rather have Ebrard, the present foreign minister, being more used to his style, and just more familiar with him)… then maybe it’s time to get used to Presidenta Sheinbaum:
Higher ambitions for Vicente Fox?
Former President Vicente Fox — whose “autobiography” (likely written by Rob Allyn, or his PR team) “Revolution of Hope” (which I bought used for 10 pesos and can’t locate now) takes care to paint him as a simple son f the soil… er, one whose haciend-owning family was on the wrong side of the Revolution, butt humble and hard-working for all that simple farmers shipping their produce north of the border — might return to the agricultural sector. In a higher capacity.
Carrots and onions never go out of style, .. but there are other crops that offer a better return, and marijuana continues to enjoy thriving sales. Although being in the … uh… unregulated … agricultural export sector, it might be unseemly for a former president t be openly hawking his wares in public. Centrainly, Fox has pushed to chnage the legal situation. He severs, or has served, on the board of directors of both High Times magazine, and a Canadian “medical cannibis” firm. He also… it appears, snagged 25 of the 62 licenses to legally produce medical cannibis in expectation that Congress will eventually get around to writing the regulatory guidelines. FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE END OF THE PEÑA NIETO ADMINISTRATION!
Of course, Fox denies this, thoough… uhhh-uhhh.. donno man… yeah, maybe.
El Pais, “López Obrador afirma que Cofepris dio licencias a empresas vinculadas a Vicente Fox para vender derivados del cannabis” (11 April 2023)
Contralinea, “Multinacional Khiron, vínculo de Fox con permisos sobre marihuana” (12 April 2023)
López-Doriga Digital, “Reprobable e inmoral que Fox se dedique al negocio de cannabis: AMLO” (13 April 2023)
mexfiles.net 