April 22, 2008
Brenda Martin Sentenced to Five Years
The Canadian woman I wrote about earlier for being held in a Mexican prison for two years without being given a trial has been found guilty of accepting illicit funds and sentenced to five years.
No further explanation was given by the judge in his oral statement as to why he reached a verdict of guilty.
A few days ago, news sources were reporting that Canada had cut a deal with Mexico to immediately be extradite her if she were found guilty, but accounts subsequent to the verdict contradict this, citing a Mexican law that convicted prisoners must wait for a five-day appeal period before initiating an appeal or transfer process. Other stories report that the judge's entire 109-page verdict must be translated to English before she is taken to Canada because Correctional Services will have to determine how it will treat her. The reality, it seems, is that it will be between several weeks and several months before she could be released for transfer to Canada.
According to an article in The Windsor Star,
A source within the Mexican justice system told Canwest News Service that the judge's ruling was completed last Thursday, but was held for release until Tuesday afternoon. The ruling came down roughly two hours after Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrapped up high-profile trade talks in Mexico with presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Felipe Calderon of Mexico.
We wouldn't want some pesky civil rights case to sully trade talks, now would we?
Posted by crispy at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2008
Mayors Office Trying to Relocate Gay Clubs?
An article at pridesource.com reports that the Guadalajara mayor's office is trying to relocate the many gay bars that are in the historic downtown area before the Pan American Games in 2011. The claim is backed up in an article from the University of Guadalajara's online Gaceta Universitaria.
Their source is Carlos Oceguera, the owner of a couple of clubs in downtown Guadalajara. In the pridesource.com article, he states:
"They claim that our lifestyle is offensive to the clean conscience of the citizens of Guadalajara and that we have to sacrifice our personal economic interests to the good citizens of Guadalajara," Oceguera said. "In order for us to have a presentable face to visitors, homosexuals have to go out of the center."
This is going to be a big deal in the city with the greatest number of gays per-capita in the country, no matter how they try to pass it off as something other than discrimination against gays. In the article in the Gaceta Universitaria, the director de padrón y licencias is quoted as saying in an interview on University of Guadalajara Radio:
"Mis acciones o las acciones que ha emprendido el presidente municipal para regular las condiciones de convivencia en el centro de la ciudad, no son un acto de homofobia."
...or in English:
"My actions or the actions that the municipal president has undertaken to regulate the conditions of coexistence in the city center, are not an act of homophobia."
Huh. It's interesting that 'coexistence' in this case requires one group of people to clear out.
We'll see if the rule they're using to try to "clean up" the downtown is equally applied to the many bars and clubs in the area that are not specifically gay. If not, they're going to have a hard time justifying how it is not an act of homophobia.
Posted by crispy at 06:43 PM | Comments (1)
March 14, 2008
Hacienda Wants Your Opinion!
Megan Smith brought the following to our attention this week in the print edition of the Guadalajara Reporter:
Mexico's Ministry of Finance (Hacienda) is inviting all U.S. and Canadian citizens living in Mexico to speak out about problems they've encountered during the process of moving to the country and after they settled.
The online "Survey of U.S. and Canadian Citizens Living in Mexico" is a simple, multiple-choice poll that asks foreigners to rate the difficulty they've had contracting everything from telephone service to a business permit.
To reach the survey, after going to the page for La Oficina de Relación con Inversionistas, click on the box to the right that says, "Survey of U.S. and Canadian Citizens Living in Mexico."
The deadline for using the online survey is Thursday, 20 March.
The survey requires only 5 minutes to complete and provides a place for open-ended comments, in case there is anything you want to address that was not covered by the survey.
Anyone with concerns about the survey can contact Rodrigo García Verdu at rodrigo_garciav@hacienda.gob.mx or call (55) 3688-1118.
Posted by crispy at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2008
The Other Side of the Coin: Brenda Martin
I have railed against the United States on multiple occasions in the past for their ongoing human rights violations (mostly through their use of torture with detainees), crowing about how Mexico seems to be improving its rights record. Yet Mexico's justice system is not without its faults.
I bring to your attention the case of Brenda Martin, a 51-year-old Canadian who has been held in a Mexican prison without trial for over two years. For 10 months, she was the cook for a man convicted of operating an Internet fraud in Puerto Vallarta. Five years after his arrest, she was picked up and thrown in jail; Mexican authorities have claimed that her severance package from the cooking job was a money laundering operation for the Internet fraud, but they have failed to provide any evidence of this by bringing the case to trial. The man convicted of the fraud has provided a sworn affidavit stating that Martin had no knowledge of his criminal activity, but that has not aided in her release.
Martin was promised a decision on a request by her lawyers to have all the charges thrown out because her legal and human rights were breached. Friday came and went, and no decision was handed down because the courts were apparently closed here. She had been placed on suicide watch last week, but was sedated and hospitalized on Saturday in an effort to keep her from killing herself.
Learn more at the Save Brenda Fund web site.
Posted by crispy at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2007
The FM3 Process Begins
Today I went to the federal building downtown to start the process of getting an FM3, the non-resident alien visa that would allow me to live in Mexico for more than 6 months.
There are a few different types of visas for traveling and living in Mexico. As an American, you do not need one to travel into Mexico's border towns, but if you plan to go 18 miles (30 kilometers) or farther into Mexico, you need to have an FMT, also known as a "tourist card." That lets the visitor stay in Mexico (or make repeated entries and exits, for that matter) for up to 180 days. If you fly into Mexico, the fee (about USD $20) is included in your ticket price. If you cross by land, you have to pay this fee either to the agent at the border (in Tijuana, for example) or at a bank, once you are in the country.
The FM3 visa allows one to stay for one year, and it can be easily renewed each year for five years (after which one must re-apply). One can apply for an FM3 while one is in the United States, or he can 'upgrade' from the FMT to an FM3 after arrival in Mexico. The requirements for the application differ between doing it in the United States and doing it in Mexico, and interpretation of the requirements may differ from consulate to consulate.
Only those readers considering living long-term in Mexico will be interested in what follows, but for those folks, I hope it might give them a better idea of what is really required for an FM3 application (in the Guadalajara immigration office, at least, in September of 2007). When I looked things up online, the answers about the prerequisites only seemed to raise more questions, but I have now been to the immigration office and have found out exactly what they want. It should be noted that this is only half of the process. Officially, I have only submitted a request to apply for an FM3 visa, which means I have submitted all the paperwork, it will be reviewed for compliance with the regulations, and in about 10 days, they will inform me what I need to do to have the application processed and approved.
I will list what the instruction document says (typos and errors in grammar included) first, then I will relate what that actually means.
Fill out the application form, correctly and signed by applicant.
There is a form that one must get from the immigration authority (here in Guadalajara, it's the immigration office in the federal building downtown). It asks very basic questions, like the applicant's age, his address in Mexico, and country of origin. I filled this out while I was in the office waiting for my turn at the counter.
Original of the unexpired Migratory Document of the foreigner.
For me, this was the FMT that I got the last time I entered the country (in this case, flying into Mexico City as we returned from Buenos Aires). For nearly everyone applying for an FM3 within the country of Mexico, it will be the FMT that they got when they entered.
Original valid passport and submit a photocopy of each page, even if the pages are in blank. (You should submit BOTH the original and the photocopy to compare them)
Before going to the immigration office, I went to a papelería (paper store - these almost always can make copies for a fee) and had a copy of every single page of my passport made, including the cover. Yes, most pages were blank, and I had a big stack of copies as a result, but they will require it. You must not skip any pages or they will send you off to the papelería to try again. Bring along your passport to the office when you submit your paperwork, so they can verify that the copies turned in match the genuine article. After verification by the agent (while you wait at the counter), the passport will be returned to you.
Original and three photocopies of the receipt of immigration taxes payment of the corresponding fee of $444.00 per foreigner, for the concept of revision, exam, and study of the procedure, this payment shall be made with the form, key number 400001. Must be payable in Mexican pesos at any Financial Institute in Mexico.
(See how this can be confusing?)
There is an processing fee of MXN $444 for the application (distinct from the fee to be paid when one actually gets the FM3) that must be paid at a bank. It cannot be paid at the immigration office. We went to the bank with the form, filled out the form (again, just name and address stuff) at the counter, paid the 444 pesos and got a receipt of that payment. We were lucky in that the immigration office in Guadalajara has a copy center. We didn't have to stop somewhere else to get the three copies of the receipt, we did it as we waited to be called to the counter. They keep the original and two copies, and they let you keep one copy as your receipt of paying the fee.
NOTE. If your procedure is authorized, you must pay the correspondent fee.
This just means that if the request for an FM3 is granted, there is another fee. The aforementioned fee is only for processing the application.
Letter in Spanish addressed to the proper immigration authorities, the body of the letter must include your full name, current address, a request to change your immigration status and the reasons you decide it.
This is where it starts to get weird. Luckily, the woman at the counter told us verbatim what to write. I provide my letter here merely as an example; other applicants in other places at other times might have to write something completely different. It is advised that you ask someone in immigration what the letter has to say, and they will probably be very helpful.
I transcribed the following down by hand on a blank sheet of paper as the agent dictated it (and Larry and Charles repeated it as necessary). I turned it in just like that. It did not need to be typed.
Instituto Nacional de Migración
A quien corresponda:
Por medio de la presente me dirijo a ustedes, yo John Christopher Coen con domicilio en Avenida Cubilete [specifics deleted], Colonia Chapalita Sur, Zapopan, Jalisco 45050, de nacionalidad estadounidense, requiero mi cambio de características de turista a no inmigrante visitante rentista.
John Christopher Coen
19 septiembre 2007
Note there are really no reasons stated as to why I am applying. Perhaps that would be different if I were involved in a business. Then I might have to state the name of the business or the nature of the work I would be doing.
Proof of monthly income. The minimum total monthly needed is the equivalent of 250 times of the actual minimum daily wage in Mexico City.
Yeah. I don't know exactly how one would go about finding the current minimum daily wage in Mexico City [note: see link in comments below], but I'm presuming that 250 times that would be under USD $1500. Several sources I've seen cite this as the figure in dollars that foreigners have to have, although they never show their math. I suspect that the immigration office agents could tell you what this figure needs to be, but USD $1500 should cover it for the time being.
I took in printouts of the PDF files I download from the Wells Fargo site each month that are the only monthly statements I receive from them. It seems this is now very common - people apply with only computer printouts of their financial records - as the agent asked us (in Spanish, of course), "These are from the Internet?" They are obviously not statements mailed out from a bank; they are on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of unfolded plain white paper, but those are the only statements I can get. Banks in the United States are not going to mail their account holders in another country. I'm not sure they even still send out print statements when their customers are in the United States.
There's a little note that says that if you own property in Mexico, you only have to have 1/2 of that amount monthly, but then you have to turn in notarized copies of the deed or trust. I don't own property here, so I can't say anything more about that.
There is also a section at this point that talks about the requirements if someone else is acting on behalf of the foreigner applying for the FM3. More or less, the representative has to have identification and power of attorney. Again, I don't know about that stuff because I did it myself (with a fair bit of help from Larry and Charles, of course).
You must present a photocopy of valid proof of address of the foreigner, such as Gas bills, telephone bills, water bills or electricity bills. (No more than 90 days old)
Long-time readers may remember my writing about how the electric bill is used for all kinds of identification and validation purposes in Mexico. Here it is being used to verify that I live where I claim to live. Nevermind that the electric bill is not in my name (it is in the name of some person that lived here before us, and not even the last person to live here before us). The fact that I have the electric bill in my posession is proof enough that I live at the address stated on the bill. Otherwise, how would I have access to it? (At least, that is the thinking behind it.)
I went with both a photocopy and the original, again for verification purposes, and they returned the original to me before I left.
The agent reviewed all my materials and upon noting that they appeared to be complete, she gave me a document that replaces the FMT she took from me. It is more or less just a letter, albeit a very official one, stating that I am in the process of applying for a visa, and this is why, should any official stop me and ask for my FMT, I do not have one. It also says that I am to return to the immigration office a week from Friday, on the 28th of September, when I will be given further instructions.
My understanding is, on that day, I will be told whether or not I will be getting an FM3, and what I need to do to finalize the procedure. This will include getting photographs of a specific size (similar to, but different dimensions from passport photos) and paying the fee for the visa itself.
The fee for the visa itself is rather high - on the order of a couple of hundred bucks, if I remember correctly. Even so, it's cheaper than airfare in and out of the country twice a year.
Posted by crispy at 08:23 PM | Comments (2)
September 16, 2007
La bandera nacional
Poemas Patrioticos Mexicanos, 1953
In honor of Independence Day, I bring you a patriotic poem from the book, Poemas Patrioticos Mexicanos, put out in 1953 by Editorial Olimpo, D.F.
LA BANDERA NACIONAL
¡Altanera
la bandera
la bandera tricolor,
nos inflama
con la llama
sacrosanta del valor!
De victoria
luz de gloria
de sus pliegues despidio;
y sus lampos
en los campos
de batalla reflejó!
¡Cuán hermosa
y orgullosa
en el mástil al flotar,
la admiramos
y aclamamos
en la tierra y en el mar!
¡Cuán divina
la ilumina
refulgente claridad:
que es doquiera
la bandera
de la santa libertad!
(Anonymous)
I bought the book when Tara was here at the used bookstore on Avenida Juárez, a block or two from the Madoka. It cost me MXN $20, which is a bit steep, considering the fact that all the pages are yellow, brittle sheets and many are cracked in half. Still, it was so chock-full o' emotional, nationalistic propaganda, I had to buy it.
After I got it home and started going through it, I discovered a few delightful treasures the previous owner had left behind. The first was this set of hand-crafted paper sheep.
Paper Sheep
The others were these photos of George Sewell and David Cassidy.
Photographs of George Sewell & David Cassidy
Posted by crispy at 03:05 PM | Comments (1)
April 18, 2007
AP: Miss Mexico modifies pageant dress depicting hangings, belted by bullets
Mark Allen, our friend and editor of the Olney Daily Mail, brought our attention to this story from the Associated Press:
MEXICO CITY: Miss Mexico is redesigning her Miss Universe pageant dress — not because it is too slinky or low-cut, but because it is too violent.The floor-length dress, belted by bullets and accented by sketches of hangings during Mexico's Roman Catholic uprising in the 1920s, outraged Mexicans who said it was in poor taste and inappropriate for the world's most important beauty contest.
Read the full story at the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by crispy at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2007
Farm Week: Ethanol not to blame
A reader of this blog submits the following recent article from "Farm Week," which addresses the issue of rising tortilla costs in Mexico. The links are my doing and not in any way an endorsement of anything by Farm Week.
FarmWeek
Page 12
Monday, February 5, 2007Ethanol not to blame
Mexico dealing with spike in tortilla pricesBY DANIEL GRANT
FarmWeekThose who will travel to Mexico Feb. 12-20 as part of an Illinois Farm Bureau Market Study Tour will discuss a variety of agricultural and trade issues with their neighbors south of the border.
One issue that likely will corne up is the rising cost of corn flour and its effect on the price of tortillas - a staple of the Mexican diet.
While estimates of the price increase have varied, Mike Doherty, IFB senior economist and policy analyst, said Mexicans probably are paying close to 30 to 40 percent more this year for tortillas.
"There has been some concern about high corn prices and increases in corn flour prices and their relationship to the overall Mexican tortilla price," said one industry analyst who works with U.S. companies that produce tortillas.
Doherty agreed higher corn prices are at the root of the spike in tortilla prices. But he said it's a "stretch" to lay the blame on the U.S. ethanol industry.
The hike is due in large part to a shortfall of white corn used for tortilla production Doherty said. U. S. ethanol is produced from yellow corn, so the two industries don't directly compete.
"Last year (Mexico) had a deficit of 6.8 million metric tons (about 267 million bushels) of all corn, so you've got to import (to make up for) that," Doherty said.
"Then, when (the Mexicans) place a high tariff on white corn, they're setting themselves up that if they have a shortfall of crop, they're going to see some pretty dramatic price increases."
Mexico, which currently has a 54 percent tariff on white corn imported from the U.S., slashed its imports in recent years. Meanwhile, Doherty believes Mexican farmers may have shifted acres from white corn to yellow corn to feed a livestock industry that is "growing rapidly."
Pork production in Mexico increased a reported 23 percent from 1995 to 2005.
Meanwhile, labor and processing costs for tortilla production also have increased in both Mexico and the U.s., according to both analysts.
"It's likely that half the cost of tortillas is not even the cost of white corn," Doherty added.
Therefore, until Mexico increases its white corn production and/ or removes or lowers tariffs to reduce the cost of imported white corn, tortilla prices in that country likely will remain high.
[NAFTA Notes: While this article mentions high Mexican tariffs on white corn, (1) yellow and white corn are treated as the same commodity, and (2) that although NAFTA provided for a 15-year phase-out of Mexican tariffs on imported corn, the Mexican government removed nearly all tariffs on corn imports within three years of the ratification of the treaty. http://www.tradeobservatory.org/headlines.cfm?refID=19304]
Posted by crispy at 09:17 AM | Comments (1)
February 01, 2007
Tortilla Inflation
As reported in this BBC article, Mexico is having a severe crisis with inflation in the cost of tortillas. You heard all this hoopla over the summer about the election crisis, but this issue with the cost of tortillas going up 400% is a very serious problem.
Mexico has a lot of poor people. According to the World Bank, in 2002, 50% of Mexico's population was living in poverty and 20% was living in extreme poverty. The bottom 40% share only 11% of the wealth in the country, yet of the 793 billionaires in the world in 2006, 10 were Mexicans: numbers 3 (Carlos Slim Helú), 135 (Jeronimo Arango), 221 (Ricardo Salinas Pliego & family, 245 (Alberto Bailleres), 382 (María Asunción Aramburuzabala & family, tie), 382 (Roberto Hernández Ramírez, tie), 428 (Lorenzo Zambrano & family), 451 (Emilio Azcárraga Jean), 562 (Alfredo Harp Helú), and 562 (Isaac Saba Raffoul & family). The schizm between the very rich and the very poor in this country is huge, although people see the increase of the middle class in Mexico over the past few years as a sign that the country has "turned the corner."
Indeed, things are really looking up in Mexico, a lot for some people and some for a lot of people. General inflation is down to around 3-4%, and interest rates on mortgages have dropped from 18% to 8%. These are serious improvements that make the economy more stable and increase the standard of living for many. The federal government has established a special prosecutor's office to address violations of human rights (although the fledgling program has had limited success). Over the past several years, federal law has been augmented with several new laws aiming to stop discrimination against minorities based on a wide range of things from sexual orientation to spoken language. A sharp increase in the cost of tortillas is not going to destroy the progress that has been made in those areas, at least not overnight.
Yet unfortunately, a rise in the cost of this elemental food does have a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable segment of society. A large part of the population is facing a severe reduction in their already very low standard of living, and that creates a potential mob with nothing to lose. History has shown us time and time again that people in such a situation can be dangerous and violent when given no alternatives for bettering their situation. For this reason (and because in hopes that he could shore up the popular support he lacked in the election, new president Felipe Calderón promised to make the issues of the poor a top priority) the federal government has pledged to take steps to ameliorate the tortilla inflation situation. Unfortunately, the steps they have taken - namely, signing an agreement with relevant businesses to cap the price of tortillas at MXN $8.5 pesos (USD $0.77) per kilogram - have been ignored because there is no legal penalty behind violating the agreement. He has also promised to release corn stocks at well below market price, but the effect that will have remains to be seen.
This is a very tricky issue, coming at a very crucial time for Calderón, with both domestic and international importance. On the world scene, Mexico is trying desperately to improve its image and attract crucial investments from first-world businesses looking for places with an economically attractive labor market, a stable government and expanding infrastructure to facilitate the production and distribution of their products to worldwide markets. Calderón has recently returned from a six-day tour of Europe, where he tried to pitch Mexico as that kind of place. Investors know that Mexico has a good labor market, but the country's track record on economic and political stability has kept such folks wary of Mexico and preferring countries like India, which despite great diversity and overwhelming poverty, has that crucial element: stability.
In the past, with such issues as the value of the peso or the cost of a crucial commodity, Mexican presidents have achieved stability with measures like devaluating the currency or establishing direct control of prices. This would immediately bring down the price of tortillas, but it would also spook foreign investors who are flighty about an economy where such drastic measures might be called for. Such tactics are reminiscent of actions like the nationalization of foreign-owned property, and no company wants to pour their money into a foreign country only to have it be declared the property of the government. Since Calderón is trying to attract international investment to Mexico, he must do a delicate balancing act between appearing like a safe bet abroad and keeping people happy at home. He must decide how much intervention he can get away with to make things more fair for the large number of poor at home while making sure that such intervention doesn't seem like interference in free trade.
Meanwhile, some federal officials are trying to emphasize that inflation in-general is in check while others downplay the idea that there is a tortilla crisis. While that may be true from an academic or economic perspective, the fact that inflation in one commodity is just a statistical outlier will not excuse the government from taking action when it's the main source of sustenance for the poor. The bottom line remains that no matter how good the economy looks on paper, the millions of people living in poverty in Mexico can't eat great lending rates.
Posted by crispy at 12:18 AM | Comments (4)
November 09, 2006
Mexico City Legislature Approves Civil Unions
The Legislature of Mexico City voted on Thursday to legally recognize civil unions and the mayor is expected to sign it.
Read the Associated Press story in the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by crispy at 09:49 PM | Comments (1)
September 10, 2006
Independence Day
Although in the United States, 5 de mayo is more celebrated among Mexican-Americans than 16 de septiembre, it is the latter which is Independence Day for Mexico and is the one that gets celebrated.
The facts behind it are this.
In 1810, the same year that King George III was found to be insane and Frédéric Chopin was born, a priest named Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla Mandarte Villaseñor y Lomelí (but called Don Miguel Hidalgo for short) lived in the town of Dolores, near Guanajuato. Shortly before dawn on the morning of 16 September, he rang the bell of the church, calling both indigenous and mestizos to mass. When they arrived, he made a passionate argument for a revolt against the Spanish who had been exploiting Mexicans for more than 200 years. This call to arrest or force from Mexico all Spaniards became known as the Grito de Dolores ("Shout from Dolores"), which ended with "Mexicanos, ¡viva México!"
Hidalgo raised an army that was very successful at first in ousting the Spanish, and they even got to the edge of Mexico City within a year. However, he retreated for reasons that still today are unknown, and was eventually captured by the Spanish and executed. For several years, his severed head hung in a cage from the granary in Guanajuato, put there by the Spanish as a warning to others who might get uppity.
For those that are interested in history, it should be noted that the situation was much more complex than stated above, involving criollos, gachupines, Ferdinand VII and Napoleon. If you want to read about such nuances, see this article at MEXonline.com.
In practice, the celebration is one of the major celebrations in Mexico where people party down for the whole week before the actual holiday. This past Saturday, one week before the 16th, fireworks (and I mean serious fireworks, not just bottle rockets and firecrackers) were going off all over town, all night long. People have started selling homemade flags on the streets from little carts; Shawn bartered a vendor down from $300 MXN to $200 MXN to buy me one that's probably about 5' x 3' and on a nifty stick that has been whittled to have a point on the end that you can stick into something so it will stand up. I was delighted with it. It's tied to the stick with three cloth strips, one red, one white and one green.
Shawn also scored us an invitation to the party being given by our downstairs neighbors next Friday night thought being the charming social butterfly that he is. I don't know what is typical at such events, but I'm going to be researching to find out if we should bring something in particular, if there are any customary rituals or if you're supposed to wear anything specific. It will be the first party that we've been to in our apartment building, so I want to be sure that we make a good impression.
Posted by crispy at 10:33 PM | Comments (3)
September 08, 2006
Yay, Torture!
Although there is a lot that goes on that I'd like to post here to make sure people reading this blog know it's going on, I usually don't. This is a blog about Mexico and our Mexico experience, and I try to keep it focused on that positive stuff.
However, this story caught my eye and made me think, "man, I'm sure glad I'm out of the United States." It's from an article in the New York Times, but you can read about it all over the place. I'm sure most people in the United States are not, though.
Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush's Support
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 8, 2006Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.
The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions.
But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.
That the executive branch wants to give themselves more flexibility in violating human rights does not surprise me. What really gets me down is the continuing chorus of Americans that keep spouting meaningless jingoistic clichés and vague doublespeak to convince themselves and other Americans that our long-valued concept of due process is simply outdated and worthless.
John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former Justice Department official who helped develop the administration's early legal response to the terrorist threat, said the bill would provide people on the front lines with important tools.
“When you're fighting a new kind of war against an enemy we haven't faced before,” Professor Yoo said, “our system needs to give flexibility to people to respond to those challenges.”
In June, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the Geneva Conventions concerning the humane treatment of prisoners applied to all aspects of the conflict with Al Qaeda. The new bill would keep the courts from that kind of meddling, Professor Yoo said.
Heh. "Meddling."
Do none of the rest of you find that creepy?
Posted by crispy at 11:15 PM | Comments (4)
August 09, 2006
Respeta nuestras leyes.
This past Saturday, the Instituto Federal Electoral, the electoral panel deciding whether or not to issue a full recount of the Mexican presidential election ballots, announced that only around 9% of the votes will be recounted. This is a serious setback for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate for the Partido de la Revolución Democrática, who hoped a full recount would show him to be the winner of the elections held 2 July.
Mexico has a long history of unfair elections under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI, which ruled the country for 71 straight years, but the elections of 2000 were almost universally considered to be clean. However, members of the PRD are calling the Partido Acción Nacional, the party whose candidate, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, was declared the victor, the PRI of the new millenium.
Of course, this is to imply that the PAN, now having gained a foothold in ruling La Republica will disregard the electoral process and the will of the people just as the PRI did for seven decades. Signs already indicate that even if they stole the election, they are much wiser in how they go about it.
Also on Saturday, we began to see public service announcements on Mexican television channels that showed relatively high-budget footage of various electoral accoutrement - ballot boxes, paper envelopes, election volunteers - with a voiceover talking about how all the election watchdogs declared the recent election to be fair and that none reported any evidence of tampering. At the end, text comes up on the screen while the words are spoken aloud: Respeta nuestras leyes. Respetamos nuestro voto. ("Respect our laws. We respect our vote.")
I have seen this spot three times in three days. I am unsure if Mexican law requires that the sponsor of a broadcast message be identified, and while in the back of my mind I think the spot is associated with the Instituto Federal Electoral, in all honesty, I cannot say that I am certain about this.
It could be argued that if it is sponsored on television by the IFE, it is really being brought to you by the PAN, since they are the current ruling party (since the IFE is a federal government office). That would mean that the PAN is putting out televised propaganda telling people to relax and not be troublesome, which is handy since they are the ones that were declared the winners in the presidential election.
Perhaps it's not surprisingly subtle if it is true. Perhaps the PAN did manage to steal the election as the PRD is claiming, but if they did, they managed to do it while getting the certification of various international observers as clean and fair. Some sources claim the United States could learn a thing or two from how well Mexico handles its elections nowadays.
If the PAN stole the election, they did it with much more subtlety and style than the PRI ever did. I am currently reading a book that shows a photograph of armed yet unmasked men working for the PRI, stealing a ballot box from a polling place. This was routine practice for the PRI, and they were hardly careful to do it without anyone noticing. They would drive in busloads of people to vote for their candidate at various polling locations, then they'd drive them to another one to vote again. They'd arrest competing candidates and hold them in jail indefinitely. During the 1988 election, the PRI announced the electoral computers had "gone silent," just as opposition leader Cuauhtémoc Cardenas of the Frente Democrático Nacional was leading the count. When they got the system working again, surprise! The PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gotari was declared the winner.
At this point, I believe that the vote was fair, and that the complaints from the PRD are unfounded paranoia. I admit, some notable celebrities have expressed their doubts about the fairness of the election, but without presenting some proof, I don't think they have much of an argument. If the slick, high-budget PSAs being run right now telling people to accept the decision of IFE are any indication of the manipulative skill the PAN has at its disposal, they'll have a hard time finding anything.
Posted by crispy at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2006
Mexicanos, al grito de guerra
I have not discussed the national anthem of Mexico, or as it's called here, El Himno Nacional Mexicano. It's got a perky melody and there is an interesting story behind it, but the words are ridiculously militaristic for modern-day Mexico.
It makes sense at first, considering the words were written in 1853, shortly after the war with the United States (1846–1848). Mexico lost over 500,000 square miles of their territory in this war (Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, and sections of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming), which was nearly half of the country.
At the time, Antonio López de Santa Anna was president of Mexico. Beyond his famous victory at the Alamo
He was a hero on numerous occasions, but his popularity was always short-lived. Every time he did something that made people like him, he did something that made people hate him. After the the Alamo, at the Battle of San Jacinto, his troops were ambushed by Sam Houston's troops and thoroughly trounced. Six hundred of the surprised soldiers were killed and over seven hundred taken prisoner in just twenty minutes. Santa Ana was not even present at the battle, but was captured the following day, and shortly thereafter signed the Treaties of Velasco which gave the Texas territory away but spared his life. Mexicans were not happy about this, declaring that Santa Anna was no longer president and therefore the treaties he signed were not valid.
He regained popularity through his bravery in the Pastry War, and was asked to again take the reigns of the country after President Anastasio Bustamante was deposed. The country was bankrupt at this point, having endured two wars and facing internal rebellion. He raised taxes, declared publication of materials critical of his regime to be illegal and threw dissenters in jail. In what was considered his ultimate betrayal of his country, he sold nearly half the territory of the country off to the United States. This is the notorious act for which he is remembered in Mexico today.
He delighted in his status as a great Mexican hero, and was always doing whatever it took to maintain his perception as the modest defender of the nation. In one of his efforts to gain favor with the Mexican public, he announced a contest in November of 1853 for a patriotic composition that would become the Mexican national anthem.
Francisco González Bocanegra didn't have any interest in entering, but penned an entry after his fiancée locked him in a bedroom and refused to let him out until he completed one. It won by unanimous vote and was set to a composition by Spanish-born composer Jaime Nunó entitled "Díos y libertad."
The entire song, accepted as official on 16 September (Mexico's Independence Day) of 1854, consists of 10 stanzas, all overwrought with nationalistic sentimentality, and at times, violence and gore. In 1943, President Manuel Ávila Camacho signed an order making the official version consist of only the chorus, first stanza, fifth stanza, sixth stanza and tenth stanza. Most often when you hear it, it has been reduced even further to be the chorus, first stanza, the chorus, tenth stanza and the chorus (or, at sporting events, only the chorus, first stanza and the chorus).
The last war in which Mexico was involved was World War II. Because corrupt, violent and authoritarian governments (as well as several corrupt, violent and authoritarian rebel movements) have plagued Latin American countries, the general sentiment of the people is that the shedding of blood for patriotic ideals is ultimately a pointless waste of life. Movements are afoot in several countries to hold governments and politicians accountable for their "disappearing" thousands of political dissidents, so the idea that "heaven has given [the state] a soldier in every son" is a bit out of date.
There are some unusual laws surrounding the Himno Nacional also. Like you can be fined for singing it incorrectly.
The law dealing with the proper use of the Mexican national anthem is Chapter 5 of the Ley sobre el Escudo, la Bandera y el Himno Nacionales. It sets forth that the anthem must be played at the beginning and end of any broadcast day for radio and television, and when played on television, the flag must also be shown at the same time. Yet there are more interesting provisions, such as those that state that the anthem cannot be sung for commercial or promotional use, that it can only be used at acts of an official, civic, cultural, scholastic or sporting nature, that it can only be played once within the same ceremony, and that if the anthem is played outside of Mexico, the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores must grant permission for its use and ensure that it's not being played for commercial purposes.
It took the government until 2005 to officially permit the anthem to be translated into some of the indigenous languages of Mexico, such as Mixteco, Maya and Nahuatl.
Below follows the entire set of lyrics in Spanish, and then the translation into English of the current official version.
Pick a version in MP3 format and sing along! Just don't do it in public where it could be considered a performance.
Coro
Mexicanos al grito de guerra
el acero aprestad y el bridón.
Y retiemble en su centro la tierra,
al sonoro rugir del cañón.Estrofa I
Ciña ¡oh Patria! tus sienes de oliva
de la paz el arcángel divino,
que en el cielo tu eterno destino
por el dedo de Dios se escribió.
Mas si osare un extraño enemigo
profanar con sus plantas tu suelo,
piensa ¡oh Patria querida! que el cielo
un soldado en cada hijo te dio.Estrofa II
En sangrientos combates los viste
por tu amor palpitando sus senos,
arrostrar la metralla serenos,
y la muerte o la gloria buscar.
Si el recuerdo de antiguas hazañas
de tus hijos inflama la mente,
los recuerdos del triunfo tu frente,
volverán inmortales a ornar.Estrofa III
Como al golpe del rayo la encina,
se derrumba hasta el hondo torrente,
la discordia vencida, impotente,
a los pies del arcángel cayó.
Ya no más, de tus hijos la sangre,
se derrame en contienda de hermanos;
sólo encuentre el acero en sus manos
quien tu nombre sagrado insultó.Estrofa IV
Del guerrero inmortal de Zempoala
te defiende la espada terrible,
y sostiene su brazo invencible,
tu sagrado pendón tricolor.
Él será del feliz mexicano
en la paz y en la guerra el caudillo,
porque él supo sus armas de brillo
circundar en los campos de honor.Estrofa V
Guerra, guerra sin tregua al que intente
de la Patria manchar los blasones,
Guerra, guerra, los patrios pendones
en las olas de sangre empapad.
Guerra, guerra. En el monte, en el valle,
los cañones horrísonos truenen,
y los ecos sonoros resuenen
con las voces de ¡Unión! ¡Libertad!Estrofa VI
Antes, Patria, que inermes tus hijos,
bajo el yugo su cuello dobleguen,
tus campiñas con sangre se rieguen,
sobre sangre se estampe su pie.
Y los templos, palacios y torres
se derrumben con hórrido estruendo,
y sus ruinas existan diciendo:
De mil héroes la Patria aquí fue.Estrofa VII
Si a la lid contra hueste enemiga,
nos convoca la trompa guerrera,
de Iturbide la sacra bandera,
mexicanos, valientes seguid.
Y a los fieles bridones les sirvan
las vencidas enseñas de alfombra;
los laureles del triunfo den sombra
a la frente del Bravo Adalid.Estrofa VIII
Vuelva altivo a los patrios hogares,
el guerrero a cantar su victoria,
ostentando las palmas de gloria
que supiera en la lid conquistar.
Tornaránse sus lauros sangrientos
en guirnaldas de mirtos y rosas,
que el amor de las hijas y esposas,
también sabe a los bravos premiar.Estrofa IX
Y el que al golpe de ardiente metralla,
de la Patria en las aras sucumba,
obtendrá en recompensa una tumba
donde brille, de gloria, la luz.
Y, de Iguala, la enseña querida
a su espada sangrienta enlazada,
de laurel inmortal coronada,
formará de su fosa una cruz.Estrofa X
¡Patria, Patria! tus hijos te juran
exhalar en tus aras su aliento,
si el clarín, con su bélico acento,
los convoca a lidiar con valor.
¡Para ti las guirnaldas de oliva!
¡Un recuerdo para ellos de gloria!
¡Un laurel para ti de victoria!
¡Un sepulcro para ellos de honor!==
Chorus
Mexicans, at the cry of war,
prepare the steel and the steed,
and may the earth shake at its core
to the resounding roar of the cannon.Stanza I
Gird, oh country, your brow with olive
the divine archangel of peace,
for your eternal destiny was written
in the heavens by the hand of God.
But if some strange enemy should dare
to profane your ground with his step,
think, oh beloved country, that heaven
has given you a soldier in every son.Stanza V
War, war without truce to any who dare
to tarnish the country's coat-of-arms!
War, war! Take the national pennants
and soak them in waves of blood.
War, war! In the mountain, in the valley,
the cannons thunder in horrid unison
and the resonant echoes
cry out union, liberty!Stanza VI
Oh country, ere your children
defenseless bend their neck to the yoke,
may your fields be watered with blood,
may they trod upon blood.
And may your temples, palaces and towers
collapse with horrid clamor,
and their ruins live on to say:
This land belonged to a thousand heroes.Stanza X
Oh, country, country, your children swear
to breathe their last in your honor,
if the trumpet with warlike accent
should call them to fight with courage.
For you the olive branches!
A memory for them of glory!
A laurel of victory for you!
For them a tomb with honor!
Posted by crispy at 12:02 AM | Comments (2)
July 05, 2006
CNN Suggests Violence May Result From Election Uncertainty
I'm watching the CNN program, Situation Room on Wednesday, 5 July 2006 and they just ran a story on the Mexican presidential vote count that is still going on here in Mexico. They said that violence might possibly break out, depending on the outcome.
While I admit that I'm relatively isolated here in Guadalajara, the idea that violence is going to break out seems ridiculous here on the ground. Sure, people are anxious and they want their candidate to win. There also is a long tradition of corrupt politics in Mexico. However, the idea that people are going to get violent about the presidential election results is really stretching to make the story more sensational.
The piece cut footage from an interview with expert Doctor Octavio Pescador of UCLA, who cited areas in Mexico where violence has recently occured. Yet these situations were not related to the selection of the future president of the country. The local media are not talking about the possibility of violence.
CNN is making an incredible leap in reasoning.
Posted by crispy at 05:42 PM | Comments (4)
July 03, 2006
Outcome of Mexican Elections Uncertain
As of midnight after the elections, the presidential elections are too close to call in Mexico. Both the conservative PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) and the liberal PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) are claiming victory. When the last of all the ballots from the 300 electoral districts come in on Wednesday and are counted, it is expected that the winner will squeak by with less than one-tenth of a percent (0.01%) over the loser.
People have been asking my opinion on this, as to whom I want to win. The problem is, as is the case in the United States, neither side is worth a damn. The PAN, while doing some great things for Mexico over the past six years under the leadership of Vicente Fox, sucks up to the United States and a very limited range of business interests, and that benefits only a very small segment of the country. The PRD candidate is proposing a short-sighted plan to help the poor (simply handing out money and not changing any of the root causes of poverty) that will consume 50% of the national budget. One side is effective but cowardly. The other is gutsy but irresponsible.
We'll just have to wait until Wednesday to know who will win out.
Posted by crispy at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
Like Mexico 40 Years Ago
In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that evidence can be used against a defendant, even if police failed to knock before entering to execute a search warrant. In California's special election, some volunteer poll workers kept the voting machines at their houses for up to two weeks with no supervision.
We hear it said often that Mexico is about 50 years behind the United States. In some cases it seems that the United States is starting to become like the Mexico of several decades ago.
Posted by crispy at 02:35 AM | Comments (5)
May 17, 2006
Biblioteca Vasconcelos
Mexico City's new "central library," the Biblioteca Vasconcelos opened Monday amid some controversy. It has the capacity for 2 million books, sports 750 computer stations with Internet access and is surrounded by 26-square km of gardens. It is open from 8 am to 9 pm daily.
Posted by crispy at 04:23 PM | Comments (1)
April 27, 2006
Recuerden, nada gringo el 1° de mayo.
Tomorrow, Monday, May 1st, a coordinated boycott of American products and services being called "Nada Gringo" will take place in Mexico and Central America to show support for immigrant labor in the United States. On that side of the border a similar protest, called "A Day Without Immigrants," will be taking place in which immigrants and their supporters will stay home from work and school.
Just how smart it is to boycott American products and services is highly questionable, since many of those manufacturers employ immigrants or have factories in Mexico and Central America that produce the supply that is available locally. Emails circulating on the Internet advise protestors to boycott such places as Sears and Wal-Mart, although Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican businessman of Lebanese descent and the 3rd wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, owns the Mexican branches of both these retailers. Even less understandable is the idea of not going to work if you're an immigrant in the United States, since you would be disrupting work for an employer that employs immigrants.
Yet the general idea is to demonstrate how important immigrant labor is in the United States, and on this side of the border, how important foreign markets are to United States businesses.
Both of those factors are difficult to ignore, if only because of the numbers involved. Recently, The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University compared a total employment change of 4.8 million jobs between 2000 and 2005 to estimated figures saying the country had gained 4.1 million new immigrant workers during that same time. Their conclusions indicate that 85% of the increase in the U.S. labor force was from foreign-born labor.
On the consumption side, Mexico is the largest per-person consumer of Coca-Cola® products in the world: 459 eight-ounce bottles per person, per year. Mexican sales account for 10% of the volume of all Coca-Cola® all sales worldwide. This is not surprising when you consider that the majority of Mexicans believe that foreign products are necessarily más rico than the Mexican ones, but it also doesn't hurt sales when Coca-Cola® pressures retailers to stop selling other brands. Nowadays, Mexican-brand sodas such as Topo Chico and Jarritos are very difficult, if not impossible, to find in Guadalajara. (It's much easier to find them in Denver, believe it or not.)
One of the Mexican states that consumes the most Coca-Cola® is Chiapas, despite claims by locals that the local bottler is consuming a disproportionate amount of communities' water supplies, dumping toxins, displacing natives and engaging in gross human rights abuses, including torture and murder. To be fair, this kind of behavior by the world's favorite soft drink manufacturer is not limited to Mexico, but enough noise has been made worldwide to bring it to the attention of Coca-Cola's® corporate heads. In response, they have created a website called cokefacts.org to put a positive spin on their business practices around the world.
These complaints are valid reasons for which Mexicans should boycott certain American companies, but they are neither the proclaimed reason nor the real reason that will motivate many of them to not buy American on Monday.
The boycott demonstrates the hypocrisy that exists here in Mexico (and in many places around the world) in its love/hate relationship with the United States. Many people here loathe the domination that the imperialist neighbor to the north has in products, the media and certain aspects of culture, yet at the same time, they love to drink Coca-Cola®, spend their pesos on Hollywood blockbuster crap, and watch NFL® football games.
A lot of Mexicans have a deeply ingrained sense that anything Mexican is inferior, and conversely, things that are not Mexican are superior. Shawn has repeatedly been told that he has a greater advantage over a Mexican national in being hired as a teacher, even if the national has years of experience and is perfectly fluent in English, all because Shawn's a white guy from the US. He's also seen people be jealous of his students because they see them talking to the American. Our neighbors think that we're crazy because we try to buy things manufactured by Mexican companies. Living here, one sees a lot of self-effacing behavior that is motivated by trying to be polite. However, it seems at times that it goes beyond simple etiquette, revealing an internalization of the prejudice directed at Mexicans from other, "more advanced" countries.
All the same, even if one thinks of himself as inferior, that does not mean that he likes to have others calling him inferior. Choosing to buy imported products or to spend money to see a foreign film is a decision one can make on her own. However, being criminalized as a felon in a neighboring country, a country that makes plenty of money from her compatriots' labor and their shopping habits, is a slap in the face.
Advertising that constantly bombards Mexicans tells them that they should spend their money to buy into the American dream, and 30% of their labor force works for American companies that have relocated to Mexico so that they can pay less to their employees. They demand that these employees conform to the needs of American customers, requiring them to be fluent in English and not allowing them to take Mexican holidays off. Americans can take advantage of Mexican markets and Mexican labor, but Mexicans should simply be happy to be working, no matter what the conditions. They should not even think of trying to improve their lives through our system. They exist to serve it. It doesn't exist to benefit them.
Mexicans see this inequity and arrogance every day. Indeed, perhaps they have internalized a lot of it. Perhaps that is how they reconcile the fact that they are so intwined in the economy of the United States by paying into it and working for it but are otherwise so unwelcome to participate in it. They love the United States and many things about it. They like a lot of products that come from there. Many have relatives that have become Americans. Many worked there and returned to Mexico, and people they met there still number among their friends. Now they see Americans on television burning Mexican flags and marching with signs that tell them they're not welcome there.
Many will participate in the "Nada Gringo" one-day boycott, a sadly misguided crusade that will accomplish very little. It will penalize the producers of products they like, many of which employ Mexicans, either at home or in the US. Yet it gives participants the opportunity to vent and feel like they have a little self-determination in a world that is so overwhelmingly dominated by US interests, even if they truly do not.
Although he's not participating, our neighbor from across the hall says that he has several friends who will, but they're going out over the weekend to buy things in advance so they do not have to buy them on Monday.
I will be participating in the boycott to see how easy it is to go a day in Mexico without buying anything with American ties. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty difficult.
[Coca-Cola® sales statistics taken from Lloyd Mexico Economic Report (July 2001)]
Posted by crispy at 01:19 PM | Comments (5)
October 04, 2005
Record Number of Deaths in Border Crossing Attempts
U.S. Customs has released figures that show at least 464 people have died between 1 January and 30 September of this year attempting to cross the border from Mexico to the United States. This record number, a 43% increase over the previous year, is suspected to be due to extremely high temperatures in June and July, but a new, more accurate reporting system along the Arizona section of the border is also believed to have raised the numbers from last year.
Posted by crispy at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2005
What the Oaxaca?!
For the fifth week in a row, 31 employees at Noticias, a newspaper in Oaxaca, remain locked inside their offices to work in spite of a strike called by a union which they claim has ties to the government. The journalists insist that the strike is a sham, instigated by the government and intended only to stop publication of the paper, which has been critical of the government in the past.
Ericel Gomez Nucamendi, the newspaper's owner, claims that the strike is part of a campaign against Noticias by state governor Ulises Ruíz, a priísta. The head of the union, la Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos, David Aguilar Robles, is also a priísta, but he claims that the workers requested the union's assistance in negotiating a contract. Yet workers say that they already agreed to a 6% pay increase, and refuse to go along with the union in demanding a 25% increase.
To read more about this story in English, see the Los Angeles Times article, Newspaper Office Standoff Persists.
Para leer más sobre este asunto en español, vea el artículo de La Opinión, Publican diario pese a bloqueo.
Posted by crispy at 04:17 PM | Comments (1)
July 04, 2005
Indicating Political Party Affiliation
For the three major parties in Mexico:
- el Partido Acción Nacional, PAN: panista
- el Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD: perredista
- el Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI: priísta
Posted by crispy at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2005
Zapatistas Announce Plan to Begin Peaceful Leftist Alliance
The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) announced on Thursday, 30 June that it will enter a new peaceful era of negotiations by joining forces with the leftist political groups of Mexico. They claim that they will not focus on electoral politics, since they believe all candidates to be neo-liberal, instead concentrating their efforts on getting a new constitution for Mexico.
Read the article in English at the San Diego Tribune.
Posted by crispy at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
EZLN Issues "Red Alert"
The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional in Chiapas has issued a "red alert" in response to recent military movements in the state. President Fox claims that nothing is out of the ordinary.
Read the alert notice, or the story in English from IPS News.
Posted by crispy at 02:56 AM | Comments (1)
June 04, 2005
Mexicans Run Americans Out of Cities!
According to an article by Frosty Wooldridge, Mexicans have taken over Los Angeles. His proof? A billboard advertisement for a local Univision affiliate.
Actually, Wooldridge is not the only one to get worked up about the billboard. It has raised the blood pressure of many white folks who seem to have nothing more to do than complain about illegal immigrants 'invading' their country.
The arguments of such modern-day critics need never reflect on the fact that their country gained most of the land in question by what can at best be called an exploitation of a cash-strapped Mexico after the Mexican-American War, or that before that it was taken from the Native Americans by force. Nor will you ever hear outrage over the fact that many Mexican-American citizens lost their lands during the 1850s to mostly Anglo squatters thanks to a law that required the legitimate owners to validate their land grants in direct contradiction to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In reality, what's done is done. There is no way to undo past unfairness, even if such events were found to violate the law in our contemporary courts. There are probably better battles out there than the ones history has already decided and about which time has erased the details. But let's not make out like whitey has always been so noble.
There is one central focus in the argument of these folks: Mexicans are invading the country. Yet Wooldridge sees their destruction ranging far beyond the mere loss of low-paying jobs. He also claims illegal immigrants from Mexico have:
- run Americans out of countless cities and communities
- "trashed" school systems
- bankrupted 86 hospitals
- trashed the park systems
- defied laws by not carrying car insurance
- failed to obtain driver’s licenses
- neglected paying taxes by working off the books
- "brutalized" American schools with their language
- spread drugs
- spread tuberculosis and hepatitis into Los Angeles
He goes on to note that 800,000 Californians left the state last year, and implies that they all left for places like Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, South Dakota, Colorado and Nevada in an attempt to outrun the invading horde.
Imagine Americans fleeing to safer places in their own country because of a foreign nation’s citizens invading our country!
Wooldridge works very hard to avoid being called a racist. He does not blame la raza for these problems. He blames immigration. Illegal immigration. The fact is, the most salient group of illegal immigrants in the country today consists of Mexicans. There is no avoiding that fact.
After the litany of aforementioned grievances, the article continues to cite examples of murders and rape committed by "illegals," and shows that even politicians are complicit in this "Mexicanization of America." Here he raises an important point, but fails to follow through: the politicians do nothing to stem illegal immigration. But why is that?
Politicians know what's up. They know that illegal immigration provides cheap labor to a variety of employers that can pay minimum wage (or less) without fear of complaint, that even illegal immigrants pay sales taxes and that if the American public doesn't make the connection, it will continue to subsidize all the costs associated, not so much with illegal immigration, but with simply having more people in your country using entitlements who are not contributing their fair share to the pot.
Don't blame Mexicans for that though. Only legal workers pay certain infrastructure taxes, and the government isn't handing out enough green cards to meet the demand. Not the demand of Mexicans, but the demand of business. That way politicians can claim to be trying to protect American jobs, but by turning a blind eye to illegal labor, they can continue to allow businesses to avoid meeting the requirements we have in place to protect legal workers.
And still the idea persists that if people are granted citizenship they suddenly get more expensive. But if illegal immigrants are already getting free health care and education, getting away with driving uninsured and filling up American job openings, the "real" Americans are paying for that. It would be in our best interest if we admit that illegal immigration has big economic implications that don't jive with our current legal schema. Only then can we approach it openly and deal with it effectively. But that would raise very sticky moral issues that we'd have to figure out and it would weaken the effectiveness of a certain social scapegoat.
You see, as Wooldridge puts it, "Over 10 million illegal Mexicans overwhelm us, kills us, rape us, rape our welfare and hospitals, steal jobs from our poorest Americans and destroy our schools with their language which they refuse to relinquish. "
Yeah, sure. But bear in mind that the FBI statistics show that 59.7 percent of all violent crime arrestees are white, with blacks comprising 38.0 percent, and other races, 2.3 percent. And there are a few other things that some people refuse to give up that are costing this country a lot more than people speaking Spanish.
Posted by crispy at 08:56 PM | Comments (1)
May 26, 2005
Amnesty International Says Mexico Still Has Human Rights Issues
In its annual report issued Wednesday, Amnesty International indicated that torture and illegal arrests continue to plague Mexico despite extensive government efforts to improve human rights in the country.
[Read more about the Amnesty International report in this San Diego Union Tribune article.]
This news comes as politicians from various Mexican political parties are jumping on the bandwagon to decry the ongoing violence in Mexico. Of particular concern are the attacks on women in Ciudad Juárez, where nearly 400 women have been murdered in the past ten years. The Amnesty report suggests that the problem persists because of resistance to punishing officials implicated in human rights abuses.
That politicians can simultaneously speak out against something while sweeping their own culpability under the rug is no surprise to anyone on either side of the border or political aisle. Bill Clinton proclaimed himself a defender of traditional marriage signing the Defense of Marriage Act yet his own actions with that woman went a little beyond the traditional. George W. Bush argued against affirmative action being used to guide college admissions, but didn't seem to mind when it helped him get into Yale.
The American public didn't seem to care too much about these cases, perhaps because they only further document something we all know: that politicians can be pandering hypocrites. That isn't big news, but we should all note when it happens. There's a good chance that if your elected politicians sell out people you don't care about, they're likely to sell you out too. Just ask conservatives who benefitted from Bush's being elected on moral issues only to end up frustrated by his ignoring economic matters. But that should come as no surprise to them; it's easy to whip up hysteria about the other; it's harder to tackle real problems.
All the hot air rising in Mexico isn't going to solve their dire environmental problems, strip away the camouflage that continues to shelter the corruption that lives on post-perfect dictatorship nor stop the violence and kidnappings that are frightening away tourists and their wallets. They've made a good start in cleaning out some of their closets, but if reform continues to lag by 30 years in Mexico, they'll never solve the underlying problem.
And in the United States? While constantly talking about "Democracy on the march," our current leadership is undermining America's credibility as one of the good guys by abusing human rights abroad in the name of fighting terrorism. We need to hold true to our ideals because they are right. And if they're right, they're right in all cases, not just in the ones where it's easy to act in accordance with them. Selling out for political expediency or in the name of security has proven historically to be a bad idea.
As for me, I'm choosing Mexico. At least there, the people seem willing to admit that their government is full of crap.
Posted by crispy at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2005
¡Di no a las drogas!
La journada relates that a "secret" report by the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, in conjunction with our own CIA and DEA, says Mexican drug cartels, far from being put out of business by the War on Drugs, are consolidating their operations. The article states that there are at least 100 drug rings in Mexico, and surprise! Eighty-five percent operate along the border with the United States, serving the American demand.
Pretty much anyone that knows me knows how I feel about this ridiculous War on Drugs that the United States keep propagating throughout Latin America. It's ineffective at stopping the problems associated with drug use, and it's certainly not decreasing the demand. Abroad, it's wiping out local economies and fueling civil wars. In the US, it's making criminals out of regular folks and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.
And this is bipartisan folly. It's a rare politician that doesn't want to jump on the bandwagon and claim that she's being "hard on crime," and it seems most US citizens eat that stuff right up.
Why is it that Americans raise such a stink when they find a few thousand dollars going to pay for a woman to roll around naked on a mat while being covered in honey, but any outrage about throwing away billions on ineffective programs never gets any traction? Why?
Okay, I must admit. A naked woman rolling around in honey is much more novel than government corruption.
But my limited experience in Mexico so far has shown that their sucking up to the United States and our drug policies has decreased neither demand nor availability. And the majority of people there see the whole thing as an American problem, because that's where the demand is. Honestly, Mexicans have much bigger problems to deal with in their daily lives. Yet it's Mexican citizens that have to get off their cross-country busses every time they pass into another state so that the military can rummage through their bags.
Posted by crispy at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005
Last Thursday, 12 May 2005, Senators McCain and Kennedy, and Representatives Kolbe, Flake and Gutierrez, joined by Senators Brownback and Lieberman, introduced The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005. This bicameral and bipartisan legislation is being touted by its sponsors as a way to curb illegal immigration and tighten border security while offering better protection for documented workers. The full text of the legislation can be found through http://thomas.loc.gov/.
According to a brief summary provided by the staff of the legislation's key congressional sponsors, several different problems with the current immigration situation will be addressed.
Border security will be enhanced by better coordination of border authorities and the development of multilateral partnerships to provide a "North American security perimiter."
A new temporary visa program will be developed, which will include the H-A5 visa for jobs that require few or no technical skills. Applicants must pay a $500 fee, prove that they have a job waiting in the United States and clear various checks. The H-A5 will be valid for three years and can be renewed once for a total of six years, at which time the worker must return home or be in the pipeline for a green card. The H-B5 visa is for undocumented immigrants already in the United States, who can apply on the date of introduction for a legal, temporary six-year stay. Their spouses and children will also be eligible.
The legislation recognizes and hopes to promote circular migration patterns, wherein the temporary workers are encouraged to return home after their stay. An important part of this includes "encouragement" of the United States government to work with Mexico to promote economic opportunity and better healthcare services within Mexico, in order to reduce pressure for workers to migrate to the United States.
Current law is extended to fund medical coverage for the new visa type holders at medical facilities that provide emergency care to undocumented immigrants, but the authors of the bill are very quick to point out that no new benefits are extended to immigrants through this program.
The bill has been passed on for review to the Judiciary, Homeland Security, International Relations, Energy and Commerce, and Education and the Workforce committees.
Posted by crispy at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
President Fox Accused of Racism
La opinión, the Spanish-language newspaper out of Los Angeles, reports today that Mexican president Vicente Fox is scurrying to recover from racist remarks he said to a group of Texas businessmen that were meeting in Mexico. He said that Mexican immigrants to the United States were willing to take jobs "that not even Blacks want to do in the United States."
It is a poor choice of words by the president, who is a member of the conservative political party in Mexico, the Partido Acción Nacional or PAN, whose election in 2000 marked the end of a 76-year rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI in Mexico. Fox has tread carefully during his presidency, keeping his personal convictions at bay: he is against abortion and secular education, he's anti-gay and many women's rights groups in Mexico consider him to be a misogynist. However, as a smart politician, he has used this to his advantage within his party while presenting a different face to the Mexican public, claiming in one speech that he is committed to maintaining the liberty, diversity and pluralism of Mexican society. After PAN ran a homophobic ad that they subsequently pulled, they issed another ad in newspapers that stated that under a Fox administration, people could live in Mexico "without masks."
So one would think that Fox would be smart enough to avoid singling out any particular minority as the one with the people expected to take crappy jobs in the United States. Perhaps Texas' reputation of being a state full of bigots extends in all directions? Maybe he thought that in talking to a group of Texan business leaders, it was like talking to his fellow PAN members behind closed doors? In any case, it doesn't seem very politically adept for Fox to put forth the idea that "brown is the new black" in modern-day America, no matter which side of the border he's on. Blacks are outraged and rightfully so, since the truth of the matter is that Mexicans are taking jobs that nobody particularly wants. What American of any race is thrilled about being a busboy, a maid or the person cleaning Wal-Mart after hours? Mexican immigrants to the United States are taking these jobs because they are better than the jobs they can get within Mexico, pure and simple. They are not fulfilling some noble duty by taking on the undesirable jobs that need to be done but nobody else wants.
Immigration is a complex economic issue with a long history. The American economy has long depended on transient labor whenever the need arises. Once dependence on it lessens, we tend to repatriate Mexicans or raise a stink about how they are "stealing" American jobs. This is the source of the love-hate relationship we have with Mexico and the immigrant labor issue, and by dancing around it in an effort to play nice with the United States, Fox is doing a disservice to both countries. By saying that Blacks are the ones that should be taking these low-paying jobs in America, he has thoroughly confused the issue and obscured any legitimacy that he has in speaking about the real inequities that exist in the labor policies of the United States.
To read more about this story in English, see the Washington Post article.
Posted by crispy at 12:28 PM | Comments (3)