Friday Night Video
Danzón N° 2 by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez Navarro, performed by the Venezuela’s Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar.
16 de Septiembre
Why Mexican History matters. From our friend, Bill Beezley, the dean of Latin American history academics:
Friday Nite Videos (yeah, they’re back)
I’ve usually heard El Cascabel performed by mariachis… but this is a choral version, sung by the Niños Cantores de Morelia and El Coro Infantil San Luis Gonzaga, two of the best known children’s choirs in the country:
11 September…
Ecuadorian E-money
Economist Bill Black on Ecuador’s implementation of a digital currency. Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as its own currency back in the early 1990s, which … while it brought stability to what at the time was an untenable economic situation… has some drawbacks, which economists (like President Rafael Correa) are right to consider.
As Black argues, there’s nothing particularly radical about the plan (which, despite the “Socialist” label hung on Ecuador, is dependent on the private market), and — despite some media reports — is Ecuador in any sort of economic trouble which would suggest this is either a plan born out of desperation. One of the sillier articles I’ve seen (by some guy named Paul Tullis, who apparently writes for the New York Times and National Public Radio, so presumably knows how to do a news story) quotes one Johns Hopkins economist… not mentioning his ties to the “libertarian” (i.e., neo-liberal) Cato Institute, who worries that having a currency NOT controlled by the United States might mean Ecuador could make economic decisions based on their own interests. Which would seem to be the point.
State’s Rights… or never let a disaster go to waste?
This is unprecedented (at least in the modern era)…
Sonora’s Governor, Guillermo Padres Elias, expelled three federal official from his state, and has demanded that the President fire them. Claiming that the local heads Conagua (the Federal Water Commission), Profepa (the Environmental Protection Agency) and SEMARNAT (the Department of Environment and Natural Resources) had failed to prevent the disaster in which Grupo Mexico released 40 million liters of sulfuric acid into the Sonora River Basin.
Federal officials laid the blame on Grupo Mexico two weeks ago, saying the mining company had hidden problems from the regulators, and were threatening not just fines, but probable jail terms for those involved, and even spoke openly of a federal takeover. The Governor is claiming the federal government should have foreseen the problem.
Sonora River, photo from Mexico News Daily
Padres claimed the trio not only failed to anticipate problems at the Buenavista del Cobre mine before the 6 August disaster, but claims that federal officials are dragging their feet in investigating the matter for political reasons. Padres is a PAN politician, the federal administration, of course, is PRI. While true that water resources are a federal matter (and rivers and other bodies of water are federal, not state, territory), Padres has been leading efforts to control water within his own state, notably in siding with Hermosillo over the Yaquí Nation in diverting water from the Yaquís to industrial users and — as reported by Carmen Aristegui and Reforma — had a dam built across the Río El Manzanal on his own property to capture four million cubic meters of water.
Sin Embargo, 9 September 2014, “Los delegados federales ‘no son bienvenidos en Sonora’, dice el Gobernador; expulsa a tres, y pide a EPN sus cabezas”
Aristegui Noticias, 9 September 2014, “Gobernador de Sonora construyó presa en su rancho”
Mexico News Daily, 27 August 2014, “Officials blame mine for ‘worst environmental disaster’ in Mexican mining”
You light up my life
WHOA… a metorite hit just outside Augustín Sandino airport (Managua, Nicaragua) on Saturday night. It left a 12 meter crater, but no damage reported to buildings or injuries to people. It was, however, a spectacular crash…
After rain
It’s rainy season here, which also means it’s mushroom season: Of the estimated 6,000 species of mushrooms in Mexico, only about five percent have been studied… at least by the people with degrees.
Taking a dump (metaphorically, that is)
As some of you know, I have been commuting between Mexico City and Mazatlán, both to try and get some writing and research done in the Capital, and to build relationships with other writers/editors/publishers to ensure a smooth transition in the future, when I expected I would have to take control of Editorial Wisemaz. In mid August, the majority owner suddenly decided to leave the business, which took me by complete surprise. Just working on the transfer of ownership, and handing the most immediate concerns (we have three books in process, and several overdue eBooks to get to press) has kept me in Mazatlán. Let’s put it this way… if Carlos Slim’s proposal for a 3-day, 11-hour work week was implemented, maybe I’d only be working two and a half jobs right now… none of which involve writing anything of my own, nor giving needed attention to the publishing company’s long-term needs… nor finding any serious time to write the Mexfiles.
While, once the legal transfer is completed (probably this coming week), Editorial Wisemaz will send out a press release. I expect I will be able to devote “SOME” time to things other than scrabbling for money, and dealing with contracts and printers and distributors. Like doing more than a massive “data dump” or just links on Mex Files.
But, here’s some of the stories and articles I would have written on, had I but world enough and time:
Mexico’s minimum wage… it’s the lowest in Latin America and, like miminum wages in all too many places, not in the least adequate to a maintaining a decent standard of living. Even the neo-liberal Economist admits this. As you’d expect, while grudgingly admitting it is much too low, The Christian Science Monitor sees the call for a higher wage as “leftist”.
The Middle Class: As Inca Kola News pointed out this last month, even those of us in Mexico making signficantly above the minimum wage, aren’t doing all that well in comparison with other Latin American nations. More on the Evolution of the Middle Class in Latin American from Argentina’s Universidad Nacional de La Plata in English.
The “Reforms“: But, whether it’s the middle class or the minimum wage worker, no one in Mexico, it seems, is happy Enrique Peña Nieto’s “reforms”. Pew Research (much to the consternation of the English-language mainstream media) discovered Peña Nieto is not seen as anything of a reformer, nor is EPN himself seen as an effective leader. As you would imagine, the voices on the left … Moreno (AMLO’s party)., columnist Martin Moreno in Sin Embargo and Javiar Sicilia all pile on. Sicilia’s article was translated into English for Mexico Voices. How much EPN’s seeming failures as a President have to do with lingering questions about his health ¿De qué está enfermo Peña Nieto? (Regeneración) is a question I’m not prepared to answer. Arturo Bris, writing in the Arizona Republic, argues the Reforms don’t go far enough.
VAMPIRES!... That’s what Rudofo Acuña calls those who profit from the “illegal immigrants”. And he doesn’t mean the coyotes, but the multinationals and the “system. Migration, as you can imagine, has been all over the news, and I’m not sure where to begin. While there is some good news in that the right-wing CNS was in high dudgeon because “the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Mexican government to allow Mexican Nationals – regardless of immigration status – to ‘exercise their workplace rights’,” and some supposedly fruitful talks (but just talk) between Enrique Peña Nieto and California Governor Jerry Brown, the news from the U.S. border gets weirder and weirder. Last month it was sending the Texas National Guard to the Border (to go hungry, and get bored, apparently), and the on-going calls to incarcerate minors… which was supposedly “lunatic fringe”… though it now appears that even the allegedly grown-up Obama Administration is looking at “family detention centers”… i.e., concentration camps run for profit.
More posts (and “bookmark dumps”) tomorrow.
Spicy?
U.S. advertising at it’s most culturally tone-deaf. Who would ever associate words like spicy and steamy with Sara García ?
As goes Coahuila… or let me not to marriage admit impediments
When Coahuila passed Mexico’s first “Civil Unions” legislation (allowing for same-gender couples to gain legal recognition for their union, but only in the state of Coahuila) in January 2007, the bill passed by only a small margin, and — despite official backing by the Bishop of Saltillo — was considered a radical step for a Latin American jurisdiction. Of course, the Bishop, Raul Vera, was considered something of a radical within the Church and within Mexican public life, but still….
When Federal District Assembly passing the country’s first same-sex marriage bill a few months later, conservatives attempted to profit from an expected backlash (polls at the time showing most Mexican opposed same-sex marriage) and from clerical objections (not every Bishop is as enlightened as Don Raul), in several states, politicians ran on a platform of supporting “one man-one woman” marriage laws. Those laws are slowly being undone both through federal lawsuits against the states (the Mexican Constitution precludes discrimination not just on the usual race, and gender and religion, but on “affectational preference” as well) and the simple recognition that creating a secondary class of marriage, whether like Coahuila’s “Civil Solidarity Pacts” or Colima’s “enlace conjugal” (Conjugal ties) was a bureaucratic solution creating its own set of difficulties. First of all, it means a whole different set of records, and secondly, defining what ones rights and benefits accrue to a couple solely at the state level. Is a surviving spouse in a Colima “Enlace Conjugal” entitled social security payments, if the late partner was a state employee? And what if the couple moved to Nayarit when they retired? With marriages in any part of the republic valid throughout the republic, it is simpler for all concerned being recognized at the federal level. And besides, as the conservatives — much to their consternation — have discovered, same-sex marriages didn’t create any social problems and basically, Mexicans still follow Benito Juarez’ advice in respecting the rights of others.
And so, almost without debate, yesterday, the Coahuila State Legislature — by a vote of 19 to 3 — changed the definition of marriage to “ la unión libre de dos personas sin importar su sexo” (“the union of two persons, without reference to their sex”). The new marriage law takes effect next Monday.
El Congreso de Coahuila aprueba por mayoría el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, Emeequis (01 September 2014)
Civil Unions bill passed in Coahuila… wow!, Mexfiles (11 January 2007)
Separate but not equal, Mexfiles (7 June 2014)
mexfiles.net 