The Importance Of Being Ernesto (II)

This seems now like an annual ritual. I see a map like the one above. I write this essay or one like it. The hurricane projections seem to be pointed directly at my front door in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico. I didn't invite Ernesto, but here he is, threatening a visit. Doesn't he realize that he, Ernesto/Algernon, is supposed to decline this and all other invitations to visit his invalid friend, Bunbury, in the country? No? This storm has no lit cred. None at all.

So, once again, it's time to make offerings to Chac and Kukulkan, asking them to spare us, to turn the storm away from us. And it's time to note that indigenous architecture-- palapa roofs, windows without glass-- is the best way to deal with the tropics, and that huge, towering McMansions with glass sliding doors, windows, air conditioning, and tile roofs are just a bad idea. At least if you want to have a house after a big storm. With traditional buildings, after the storm, you just shovel out the sand. And maybe you replace a few palm leaves in the roof.

I've talked about exactly this at length in my novella, Tulum.

And of course, the turtle nests on our beaches will now have to be moved indoors, so that storm does not destroy them. The turtles are endangered. We do what we can despite the storm to keep them going.

But this isn't about commerce. Or the joys of Mayan architecture. Or what we have to do to protect endangered sea turtles. No. This is about something really big: the fact that this is a small planet, and that humans have raised its temperature, including, of course, the temperature of the Caribbean. And so tropical storms like Ernesto are far more likely. And those of us living on the coasts or near them know that despite whatever the deniers say, hurricane seasons like this one, with more intense storms, are our current reality. They are what we now expect. They are what we have to deal with.

More in the next few days, when it's clear whether Ernesto is coming ashore here.

Meanwhile, may all be safe, may they find shelter, and may all be well.

Amnesia And Election Fraud In Mexico

Yesterday, tens of thousands of Mexicans went into the streets of Mexico City to protest against fraud in the claimed election of Enrique Pena Nieto (EPN), the PRI candidate, as president of Mexico. MSNBC reports:

Tens of thousands of protesters, many holding hand-written placards, marched through the Mexican capital on Saturday against President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, accusing him of buying votes and paying off TV networks for support.

The demonstrators, including students, leftists, anarchists and union members, shouted slogans criticizing Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the electoral authority.
"Mexico without the PRI," "Mexico voted and Pena didn't win," and "If there is an imposition, there will be a revolution," chanted demonstrators, according to Spanish-language Mexican newspaper La Jornada....

Many carried signs reading, "Pena, how much did it cost to become president?" and "Mexico, you pawned your future for 500 pesos." ...

"The PRI threatens many people and buys others with a couple of tacos," said Manuel Ocegueda, a 43-year-old shop worker participating in the march....

Oops. Apparently, the Mexican electorate forgot about the PRI's extensive seven decade track record. Or it was seduced by PRI's assertion that it in its exile from national power it had found the Savior. Or it was overcome by desperation about the nearly 60,000 deaths in the PAN led War on Drugs. To me, it looks a lot like amnesia.

The PRI, the party of the institutional revolution, ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000. It maintained itself in power with outright violence, buying elections, repression, and pervasive corruption. PRI governments were involved in disappearances and torture. PRI governments shot unarmed civilian demonstrators. PRI was synonymous with impunity. EPN said he was "different." And that the "new" PRI was different. Many disputed this. Then, in the wake of the election, the videos demonstrating vote buying emerged on youtube. It appears there was a run on a Soriana Supermarket when a rumor started that the gift cards voters received in exchange for votes would be canceled. None of this is new. This is exactly what should have been expected. And many people did expect it. Just not enough.

In fact, more Mexicans voted against EPN than for him, but only Andrew Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will file a complaint about the election. So far, PAN, the incumbent party, seems willing to accept the results. It is extremely unlikely that EPN's election will not be sustained. In time the furor will die down. In time the haze of forgetfulness will obscure what happened in this election. In time there will be no more demonstrations. There will be only shrugs. And resignation.

Apparently, a remembrance of history is not something that plays an extremely vital role in Mexican (or for that matter, US) politics. Nor is accountability. Nor is a consciousness of the struggles of the past. Nor is preserving all of the myths of struggles for greater democratization. No. There is widespread amnesia. Only a few remember the past, fewer recount those events. And their audience? Their audience is oh so very distracted and entranced. Or asleep. Or for sale.

Yesterday, I was immersed in Paco Taibo II's memoir, "'68," a recounting of the 1968 Mexican student revolution and its murderous suppression by the PRI government of the time. I recommend reading it. It is a great memoir.

There is only one very minor point to be made here. It's about institutional amnesia. We're prone to forget the stories and the idealism and the struggles of the past, to permit them to be pushed out of our minds by time, distractions and outright repression. Look at the results of amnesia. Look at the results in Mexico even if we can't look at them in the US. This is what happens when people forget. This is what happens when people are asleep. Despierta ya!

Mexico Votes On Sunday: Will This End The Killing?

Yo Soy 132 demonstrators on May 1

Mexico goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a president.

It’s widely predicted that the PRI, swept out of office in 2000 after 71 years of rule, and its pretty boy candidate, Enriquie Pena Nieto (EPN), will win. This, despite opposition from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who nearly won the last election (some believe he actually did win) and who seems to have moved toward the center to capture more votes, and from Mexican students whose movement, Yo Soy #132, has brought thousands into the street in opposition to EPN, and from the presently ruling PAN party, whose candidate is trying mightily to distance herself from the Calderon presidency and its war on drugs that has killed more than 50,000 people by saying she's "different."

A description of the major candidates is here.

If it’s true, as Yo Soy 132 assert and the Guardian hints, that there has been a deal between the media and PRI that accounts for the opinion polls showing EPN far ahead, Sunday could be very interesting. Such a deal has great plausibility in Mexico. In the US such assertions are usually in the bailiwick of conspiracy theory. And there remains the question of whether Lopez Obrador, if he is told he lost, will accept that or will bring people into the streets to contest the election.

Most of us in Gringolandia don’t understand Mexico’s politics. At all. Or don’t care. But for those who want the quick, pre-election course, there’s William Finnegan’s a wonderful article in the New Yorker, Crime, Drugs, and Politics in Guadalajara.

Though he’s writing about the apparent contradictions between seeing Guadalajara as a cultural center and its being at the same time a city dominated by the narcos, his observations generally fit most of Mexico. In focusing on this contradiction and noting the pantallas (the screens) that shield motivations in Mexican government, politics, and crime, he joins in non-fiction the novels Los minutos negros (the Black Minutes) by Martin Solares and No habra final feliz (No Happy Ending) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. The takeaway: when institutions are corrupt, and they are clearly so in Mexico, it's scary, you never know who’s really in charge, you don’t know whose toes you may have stepped on, so you don’t know really why things are happening. In the worst case, bad things are happening to you or your family for reasons you don’t quite fathom. Or they happen and nobody knows why.

All of the candidates say that they will do something about the War on Drugs that has left so many dead. What they will do remains quite murky. Everyone agrees that things will have to change. How things will change remains a question without a firm answer.

Put another way, will the Government take the army off the street and just make a deal with the cartels that stops the killing? Or are the cartels at this point so much stronger than the Government that no acuerdo of this kind is possible?

The simplest, most important question about the election: will Sunday's vote move Mexico toward an end of the killing, or will it just fuel more of it?

Juarez, I Still Hear You Crying

(I've written about this before, here (fiction), here and here. I confess that I can't get this out of my head. I can't just forget about this and move on. So here is more.)

This is far too short to be an essay. But it's long enough to be the beginning of a epitaph. Unfortunately, though, it can't be personal, because there are far too many unidentified, dead women and parts of them in the graves in the desert. It's impossible to talk about any one person. And many of the graves still have not yet been found.

Juarez, I hear you crying.

And maybe The New York Times hears Juarez crying, too.

I hope you can hear it, as well:

Roughly 60 women and girls have been killed here so far this year; at least 100 have been reported missing over the past two years. And though the death toll for women so far this year is on track to fall below the high of 304 in 2010, state officials say there have already been more women killed in 2012 than in any year of the earlier so-called femicide era.

Juarez, I hear you crying.

Mexican authorities have made promises to prioritize cases like these for years, and in the wake of international pressure, prosecutors now argue that more of the killings are being solved. But arrests and convictions are exceedingly rare. For the victims found in the mass grave in the Juárez Valley, even the most basic details were still a mystery months later: forensic teams said they were not even sure how many women were buried there.

To many, these women are now part of what looks like a slaughter with peaks and valleys, but no end. In the state office opened a few years ago to investigate violence against women, desks are perpetually covered with stomach-turning case files.

Juarez, I hear you crying.

“Here, the only one who gives us justice and obedience to the law is God,” she said. “And there’s no escaping.”

Juarez, I hear you crying.

The Tone Of Political Discourse

A brief observation on the tone of political discourse in Mexico. In Mexico it's little bit sharper than in the US. Today's example:



It's all great, so long as it's somebody else's ox.

Today's Marches In Mexico: Crickets in the US Trad Media

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise.

I think I told you that something important was happening today in Mexico. I wrote about it yesterday, and I then rescued my own diary to tell you about it again today.

So here's the big question after all of that: did anything of note happen in Mexico today? Did it? Do you know? Funny you should ask.

First, let's try an experiment. If you are in the US, do a google news search for "yo soy 132 Mexico," and what do you see? Nada. Zilch. Cero. Bupkis, Nothing. Evidently, nothing happend according to the Trad Media^TM. No surprises there. If it did happen, and you will find no spoiler in this paragraph, why should it be reported in the US? Why indeed.

And then, you wander over to to CNN Mexico and see this, the lead story headlined "Miles de ciudadanos marchan contra Peña Nieto" (Thousands of Citizens March Against Pena Nieto):

Jóvenes de diversas escuelas y organizaciones sociales se reunieron este domingo en el Zócalo de la Ciudad de México, de donde partieron hacia el Ángel de la Independencia para realizar la que denominaron la segunda marcha anti-Peña Nieto.

Alrededor de 90,000 personas participaron en la manifestación, según cifras que la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal brindó a CNNMéxico. En la primera marcha, el 19 de mayo, asistieron unos 46,000 manifestantes.

Los contingentes gritaron consignas contra el aspirante presidencial de la coalición Compromiso por México, Enrique Peña Nieto, para iniciar su recorrido por Paseo de la Reforma. Peña Nieto es militante del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), que busca recuperar la presidencia que perdió en el 2000.

Oh yes. In English (pardon me for that and my rush translation):

Young people from various schools and social organizations gathered Sunday at the Zócalo in Mexico City, from where they left the Angel of Independence for the second march against Peña Nieto.

Around 90,000 people participated in the demonstration, according to figures the Ministry of Public Security of the Federal District provided to CNNMéxico. In first march on 19 May, some 46,000 protesters attended.

The contingents chanted slogans against the presidential candidate of the coalition Compromiso por Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, before starting their march on Paseo de la Reforma. Peña Nieto is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which seeks to regain the presidency it lost in 2000.

And then there's this small photo, too:



One of Yo Soy 132's main gripes is that the Trad Media^TM in Mexico are dominated by the PRI. That they don't report the news, that their polls are rigged, and that, of course, they keep saying that EPN will win the July 1 election. Why should all of that be reported in the US? I mean: we don't have that problem in the US, do we? I mean: in the US the Trad Media^TM aren't like the Mexican Media. Hell no. I mean: they tell it straight. And they report the facts. And they're not dominated by the major parties. What goes on south of the Rio Grande is utterly without significance here. Right?

No reason to report what's going on in Mexico. No, Sir. Why FFS none of that has any applicability here at all. It's obvious. Nothing to see in Mexico. Nada.

Yo Soy 132

The Election in Mexico is July 1, 2012. EPN is not inevitable. If you want it.

What's it mean? On May 11th an uncounted number of students jeered at Peña Nieto when he addressed them at the Ibero University in Mexico City. The Media tried to diminish the importance of their protest by reporting that there were only 131 students involved. There were many more than that… and so the students started to furiously spread the word: “I am # 132” The slogan appeared on T shirts, banners, placards Then a group of them made a You Tube video clip that went viral.

And, as if that weren't enough, one of my heroes, Paco Ignacio Taibo II applauds:

“The real miracle is that a complete generation that was condemned to apathy, to only observe, and to individualism, is once again making the nation’s destiny their own.”

Juarez, I Can Hear You Crying, Part 2

Mexico hates you, EPN

This LA Times Op-Ed doesn't pull any punches about Mexico's upcoming presidential election and the PRI's illustrious candidate for president:

The Mexican version of the old Soviet Politburo is poised to make a comeback, with potentially disastrous consequences for North America. In 2000, the world hailed the end of more than 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, as a sign of democratic transition. Today, the PRI's presidential candidate in the July 1 election, Enrique Peña Nieto, threatens to bring back the authoritarian ways of the past.

The PRI has not cleaned up its act or modernized over the last 12 years. To the contrary, it has deepened its networks of corruption and illegality in the territories it still controls. The 10 states where the PRI has never lost power are among the most violent, underdeveloped and corrupt in the country. In these states, democratic transition and accountability are exotic concepts and the local governors rule like despotic feudal lords.

For example, the state of Veracruz is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. Recently, four journalists were assassinated in a single week. In January, officials close to the governor were detained in an airport with a suitcase containing nearly $2 million in cash, supposedly for an advertising campaign.

What this isn't, is a surprise. Shocking perhaps. Business as usual, perhaps. But, sadly, no surprise at all. And you don't need to read deeply in Paco Igancio Taibo II or Martin Solares or the Mexican press to be reminded that it's been like this for quite some time. For a very, very long time. It's a tradition. A way of life.

And, of course, the Op Ed actually says it:

Peña Nieto is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He hides behind a telegenic smile and sharp attire, but he represents Mexico's old corrupt political class. Last week, for example, a high-ranking general apparently close to Peña Nieto and his group of politicians from Mexico state was arrested on organized-crime charges.

During his governorship, Peña Nieto allegedly spent tens of millions in public funds to illegally boost his image on national television. But he has few ideas of his own and questionable moral character. He fathered a son in an extramarital affair and has come under fire from the boy's mother for being an irresponsible parent.

When Peña Nieto was asked at a book fair to name three books he had read, he could only mention that he had gone over "parts" of the Bible. The late Carlos Fuentes, who died May 15, said that Peña Nieto's "ignorance" cast serious doubts on his ability to be a good president. No intellectual or independent journalist is willing to publicly endorse Peña Nieto's candidacy.

Well, your Bloguero can relate to all of this. Most Norteamericanos should be able to, also. After all, your Bloguero lives in a country that has "elected" the seeming Village Idiot in 2000 and, as if that weren't enough, again in 2004. So the piquant smell of opaque stooge-ism and favoritism and corruption and hypocrisy and plunder of the system by its supposed curators isn't at all unfamiliar. You could wish such things were only for Banana Republics. What a joke.

Meanwhile, the current Mexican administration, once the supposed antidote to PRI's pervasive corruption, is engaged in its own crazy, deathly War on Drugs that has left more than 50,000 people dead in its wake and has reduced cities like Juarez to places to escape from. Places where the army fights pitched battles with the cartels. Places where innocent people get killed. Or kidnapped. Or maimed. Places where going out at night is extremely dangerous. Where being in public places is a risk. Where speaking out or blogging or posting on FB leads to reprisals. Where riding public transportation may expose the commuter to a hail of random bullets. In sum, Juarez represents the dystopian narco-state at its most virulent and most dangerous.

And then there's this, lest one think that the PRI has the monopoly on corruption and that the War on Drugs has nothing to do with that:

President Felipe Calderon's reliance on the army in Mexico's war on drugs was shaken in the past days with the arrest of three generals and a lieutenant colonel on corruption charges.

With Mexico's presidential election just six weeks away and political campaigns in full swing, supporters allege that at least one of the arrests is politically motivated.

Most shocking was the detention of retired major general Tomas Angeles, a close aid to Defense Minister Guillermo Galvan and a soldier with a sterling reputation.

Angeles was the second highest-ranking officer in the ministry during the first two years of Calderon's administration and had been seen as a likely candidate for defense minister until his retirement in 2008.

Javier Sicilia may have a solution to all of this. But even if he does, it's going to take major upheaval and time to move the inert, corrupt narco-state in a direction away from corruption and toward peace. One thing is sure: EPN and Calderon both have no plan, no idea, nothing relevant to say that will end the killing. They continue to fill their pockets. And they attempt to shoulder their rivals away from the public trough.

All that means, I am sorry to note, that Juarez, City of Tears and Death and Displacement, your weeping is in vain. And your obvious, uncontrollable pain is not going to be swiftly abated.

Juarez, I Hear You Crying

Ciudad Juarez. 1.3 million souls across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The murder rate is supposedly down from a record of 30,000 in 2010.

I am waiting for the bus at a bus stop. I don’t have cash for a taxi. It is too far to walk. There are about 24 other resigned people here waiting. It’s after 6 pm, we’re tired, we all want to go home. This is routine here. When the bus comes, there may not be room for all of us. So we will push and shove and some of us will still be here waiting for the next bus. Eventually, we’ll all get home.

Since the narco wars started, going home has become more important. It’s the only real chance of being safe. Nobody goes out here in the evening. Ever. And nobody goes out for a walk. Going out is like asking to be shot or kidnapped. Going out to a bar for a drink and to watch the futbol game is like declaring that you’re a combatant on one of the four or fives sides of the War in Juarez. So getting home has some urgency. 60,000 people have already died in Mexico since the War on Drugs started. Nobody here wants to be in that statistic.

Years ago at this stop, the bus pulled in and there was a shooting. That was just at the start of the much greater wave of killings brought by the maquiladoras and the War on Drugs. When the door opened, a young man climbed up the steps to the driver to pay his fare, took out a small automatic machine gun, and shot the driver 16 times. I don’t know why. I can’t imagine why. Then as if the bullets had turned everyone to cement, the young man quickly made his getaway on foot. Later, nobody could provide any details at all about the shooter. Those shots were for me the opening fusillade in the War in Juarez.

I am waiting for the bus. I hope it comes soon. There is a small Toyota pickup parked across the street from the stop in the dark shade. There is something about it I don’t like. The driver has mirrored sunglasses. I can see that. And there is a big man, also with sunglasses, standing in the bed. I thought he might have a big gun, a machine gun of some kind, but I can’t see clearly from here what that is. What is he doing with a machine gun in daylight in Juarez? All I can see is that he’s got something big and heavy.

The bus comes. It is entirely too full of other passengers to take all of us. Those who are at the front of our disorderly, disorganized line struggle and get on, then there is no room for anyone else. There’s pushing and shoving, some cursing. The driver closes the door, and he leaves behind a cloud of dust and diesel exhaust and sweaty people, who will continue to wait for the bus.

At this, I look across the street. At the Toyota. The guy in the back clearly has a big machine gun. It is mounted on top of some kind of stand. It has long lines of bullets hanging from it. The truck pulls quickly out from the curb, makes a wide left turn so that it is now coming quickly toward the bus stop. At that, the man begins to shoot. I feel a bullet crush my right arm at the elbow. And in slow motion, I see the line of people to the right of me fall down one after the other. Blood is spattered everywhere, and there are pools of blood on the ground. And people are screaming and crying and dying.

There is nothing I can do. I have no idea why I have been shot. I sit on the corner of the bench, and I wait for an ambulance. Hopefully, it will come soon.

Santana, Willie Nelson, Taibo, and Me: They All Went To Mexico

First, the song. Willie Nelson with Santana:



Then, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, who writes in Four Hands (Cuatro manos)(1990):

There is a song by G. Brown on Havana Moon, a Santana record, that repeats the phrase in a country rhythm, "And they all went to Mexico," their friends went, their pals went, even their dogs went. I suppose that is part of the conjunction of two of the healthiest North American traditions: taking to the road (thank you, Woody Guthrie, Kerouac, Wyatt Earp, Bob Dylan, John Dos Passos, Calamity Jane, Spiderman, John Garfield, Ernest Hemingway) and crossing the boarder in search of the South (thank you, John Reed, Indiana Jones, James Taylor, Clint Eastwood, John Huston, Babe Ruth, Carleton Beals, Mike Gold, Burt Lancaster).

I suppose I'd gone south one time or another over the last few years, driven by those two national motivations. But it wasn't easy to go south. Every piece of knowledge brings a dose of guilt, equal in weight and importance to whoever acquires it. To be a U.S.-citizen-born-gringo in Latin America is a pastime for the unconscious, economic gangsters, commercial missionaries, radicals on the verge of jubilation, freaks, dreamers or crusaders. They all furnish the continent south of the border with their own demons. They travel with their ghosts. Then there are the others, us dreamers, those who believe there are no borders or countries, just landscapes and songs sometimes sung in unknown languages. Of all the monsters who travel south, we are the most dangerous because we believe we don't have the original sin that has to be forgiven; because we rationally think that we are not excessively different, that we can coexist with the natives on fair terms: You give to me, I give to you, you smile at me, I smile at you, even though at night we have nightmares in which half-naked, starving children, the live Latin American ghosts, point their fingers at us.

Going south is, as Malcolm Lowry and Joseph Conrad and Ambrose Bierce knew, a descent into hell itself. Leaving the deceptive North American Paradise, the true hell, the demons attack, they attempt to escape from the skin and gush forth. One knows it when traveling south, one knows the Martians who play Ping-Pong inside our heads. And in the end, one is grateful that it is so and not any other way. Anyone who doesn't have hells will be content to die kneeling in front of a television in a place as ludicrous as Indianapolis.

And then, there's me. I went to Mexico. My book Tulum, set in Mexico, is poised on a printers launch pad as I write this. I continue to be one of those dreamers who frequently crosses the border. Maybe that's why the song and PIT II's writing speak so directly and deeply to me. I know it's an essential step for me to go to Mexico. I suspect it's essential for others as well. I only wish everyone understood it as well as Taibo and Santana. And Willie Nelson. And I wish we could all work hard on learning that there are no borders or countries, just landscapes and songs sung in other languages. And that we would all do our part to assist the merging and blending of nations, peoples, languages, songs, and dreams.

Rain Haiku

1.
June rain in Tulum:
Shaking cocos, drops like grapes,
Sounds like a freight train.

2.
Windows left open
I awake to floor puddles.
Birds squawk my complaints.

Bahia Soliman, 26/6/11

Javier Sicilia's Speech At The Zocalo

Narco News provides the following translation of Javier Sicilia's Sunday Speech in Mexico City. Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español. I am producing it here because it is of such enormous importance. It marks an extremely important moment in this Hemisphere's drive toward real democracy.

We have arrived on foot, like the ancient Mexicans did, to this site where they gazed upon the lake, the eagle, the serpent, the cactus, and the stone for the very first time—this emblem which founded the nation, which has accompanied the Mexican people for centuries. We have come to the corner that Tenochtitlan once inhabited, the corner where the State and the Church settled upon the foundations of a past rich with lessons, and where the roads meet and diverge. We have come here to make the roots of our nation visible, for its nakedness accompanies the nakedness of the word, which is silence, and the painful nakedness of our dead are helping us light this path.

We have walked and come here like this, in silence, because our pain is so large and so deep, and the horror it brings is so immense, that there are already no words to describe it. It is also because through this silence we are saying to each other and to those who are responsible for the security of this country that we don’t want one more death caused by this growing confusion that only looks to asphyxiate us, as it asphyxiated the breath and life out of my son Juan Francisco, of Luis Antonio, of Julio César, of Gabo, of María del Socorro, of comandante Jaime, and of so many thousands of men, women, children and elderly murdered with a disdain and a vileness that belong in a world that we are not and will never be a part of. We are here to tell each other and to tell them that this pain in our souls and our bodies must not turn into hate or more violence, but rather be a lever to help us restore the love, peace, justice, dignity, and bustling democracy that we are losing, to tell each other and them that we think it is possible for the nation to be reborn again and to leave its ruins, to show these señores of death that we are on foot and will not relent in defending the lives of all our children in this country, that we still believe that it is possible to rescue and rebuild the social fabric of our towns, neighborhoods and cities.

If we don’t do this our children, our boys, our girls, will only inherit a house full of helplessness, of fear, of indolence, of cynicism, of brutality, and of deception, where the señores of death reign with their ambition, their excessive power, their complacency and their complicity with crime.

Everyday we hear terrible stories that pain us and make us wonder, “When and where did we lose our dignity?” The chiaroscuro is interspersed over time to warn us that this house where horror lives is not the house of our parents, but yes, it is. That it is not the Mexico that came from our maestros, but yes, it is. That it is not a part of those who offered the best of their lives to build a more just and democratic country, but yes, it is. This house where horror lives is not the Mexico of Salvador Nava, of Heberto Castillo, of Manuel Clouthier, the men and women from the southern mountains—from the Mayan people who set their language in this nation—and so many who have reminded us of dignity, but yes, it is. It is not the men and women that each morning get up and work honesty to support themselves and their families, but yes, it is. It is not a part of the poets, the musicians, the painters, the dancers, and all the other artists who reveal the human heart that moves us and unites us, but yes, it is. Our Mexico, our house, is shrouded in greatness, but there are also cracks and abysses that expand into the carelessness, complacency and complicity that have driven us to this hideous devastation.

These cracks, these open wounds, are not the nobilities in our house which have forced us to walk here, interlacing our silence with our pain in order to speak directly into the faces of those who have to learn to look around and listen, those who should name our dead. The wickedness of crime has killed them in three ways: by depriving them of life, criminalizing them, and by burying them in mass graves with an ominous silence that is not ours. We are saying to them that with our presence we are naming the infamous reality that they, the political class, the so-called powers that be and their sinister monopolies, the hierarchies of the economic and religious powers, the governments, the political forces, have denied and want to continue to deny. It is a reality where the criminals, in their dementia, look to establish us as allies through the omissions of those who hold some form of power.

We want to affirm here that we will not accept one more election before the political parties clean up their ranks of those who, masked as the law, are colluding with the crime and those who have the State, which is linked and co-opted to use the instruments of this to erode the public’s hope for change. Oh, where are the parties, the mayors, the governors, the federal authorities, the Army, the Navy, the Churches, the lawmakers, the businessmen? Where were all of them when the streets and highways of Tamaulipas become mortal traps for defenseless men and women, for our Central American immigrant brothers? Why is it that our authorities and parties have accepted that in Morelos and many other states in the country that governors publicly identified as accomplices of organized crime remain unpunished, continuing in their party’s ranks and sometimes government jobs? Why are the deputies in Congress organized to hide a fugitive from justice, who is accused of having links to organized crime and inserting it into a precinct that should be the most honorable in the country because it lies on the pluralist representation of the people, and yet they ended up giving him jurisdiction after accepting his crime in two shameful farces? Why has the president of the country been allowed to, and why has he decided to, bring the Army onto the streets in an absurd war that has cost 40,000 victims and left millions of Mexicans abandoned to fear and uncertainty? Why have they tried to pass a security law behind the public’s back that today demands more than ever a wide reflection, discussion and citizen consensus? The National Security law cannot be reduced to a military matter. It was assumed so and that will always be absurd. The public doesn’t have to keep paying the cost of the inertia and inaction of Congress and the times it has used administrative blackmail and banal political calculations. Why do the parties move away from their visions, stopping political reform and blocking the legal instruments that give the public a dignified and efficient representation that controls any kind of abuse? Why have they not included a recall mandate or a referendum?

These cases—there are hundreds of them even more severe—are evidence that the political parties, the PAN, the PRI, the PRD, the PT, Convergencia, Nueva Alianza, the Panal, and the Verde have become a “partyacracy” from whose ranks emerge the nation’s leaders. In all of them there are links to crime and the mafias across the entire nation. With out a real cleaning up of their ranks and a total commitment to an ethics policy the public will have to ask ourselves in the next elections, “For what cartel and for what power factor will be have to vote?” Do they not realize that they are piercing and humiliating the most sacred of our institutions,that they are destroying the popular will that for better or worse got them where they are today?

The political parties are undermining our institutions, rendering them vulnerable to organized crime and making them submissive to large monopolies; they have a modus vivendi impunity and make the citizens hostage to the prevailing violence.

Before the advance of the underworld linked to narco-trafficking, the executive branch assumed, joined by the majority of the so called political class, that there are only two forms of confronting a threat: administering it illegally as it used to be and is done in many places, or making a war with the army on the streets as it is today. They ignore that a drug is a historical phenomenon that has been decontextualized from its religious uses and now is managed by the market and its consumers. It was and should be treated as a problem of urban sociology and public health, and not as a criminal matter that must deal with violence. This adds more suffering to a society where success is celebrated, where money and power are absolute premises that should be conquered by any means and at any price.

This climate has been a fertile land for crime that has turned to flat rates, kidnappings, robberies, human trafficking, and into complex businesses that offend and appropriate an absurd economic model to always have more of an expense than everyone else.

To this, which is already terrible, US policy is added. It’s drug user market in the millions, its banks and businesses that launder money with the complicity of or own, its arms industry, which is more lethal and more forceful and expansive than drugs, with arms that come into our lands. They not only strengthen the growth of criminal groups, but they also provide them with a immense capacity to kill. The Untied States has designed a security policy where logic depends mainly on the country’s global interests, and where Mexico is trapped.

How do we restructure a reality that has put us in a state of national emergency? It is a more than a complex challenge. But Mexico cannot simply keep continuing, or at least allow that this deepen internal divisions further and fracture us until the heart beat of the nation is inaudible. That’s why we’re telling them it’s urgent that the public, the three layers of government, the political parties, the campesinos, the workers, the indigenous, the academics, the intellectuals, the artists, the Churches, the businessmen, and the civil organizations make a pact, that is to say, a fundamental commitment of peace with justice and dignity that will allow the nation to rebuild its land, a pact in which we recognize and assume our diverse responsibilities, a pact that allows our children to get their present and their future back, so that they stop being victims to the war or a reserved army of crime.

That’s why it is necessary that all of the governments and political forces in this country realize that they are losing the representation of a nation that emanates from the people, that is to say, from the citizens like the ones who are meeting today in the zócalo in Mexico City and other cities in the country.

If they don’t do it, and they insist on their blindness, not only will the institutions be empty of meaning and dignity, but the elections of 2012 will be a disgrace, a disgrace that will be deeper than the graves where the life of the country is buried in places like Tamaulipas and Durango.

We are therefore at a crossroads with no easy way out, because the land in which a nation flourishes and the fabric in which its soul is expressed are undone. This is why the pact that we are calling for, after collecting many proposals from civil society, and which Olga Reyes, who has suffered the murders of six family members, will read in a few moments, is a pact that contains six fundamental points that will allow civil society to timely monitor its compliance, and in the case of betrayal, to penalize those who are responsible for the treachery. This pact will be signed in the centro of Ciudad Juárez, the most visible face of the national destruction, a face of the names of the dead that shows a deep sense of what a dignified peace means.

Before it is known, we’re going to dedicate five minutes in memory of our dead, from a society closed by crime in an ignored state, and as a sign of the unity and the dignity from our hearts that calls for everyone to refound the nation. We are doing it this way because the silence is the place where the true word flows and is collected, it is a profound depth of meaning, it unites us amidst our pain, it is this common ground that nobody owns and that can, if we know how to listen, give birth to the words that will allow us once again to say with dignity and a just peace the name of our house: Mexico.

Futbol, Galeano, Mexico

Eduardo Galeano

A Scheherazade story by Eduardo Galeano in a 2009 Washington Post:

... a former member of the Mexican congress, Victor Quintana, told me the book saved his life. In the middle of 1997, he was kidnapped by contract killers, hired to punish him for exposing some nasty business.

They had him trussed up, face in the dirt, and were kicking him to death, when, just before finishing him off with a bullet, they started arguing about soccer. Victor, more dead than alive, put in his two cents. And he started telling stories from my book (Soccer In Sun And Shadow), trading minutes of life for every tale out of those pages. Time and stories came and went, and at last the murderers left him, beaten and broken, but alive.

"You're okay," they told him, and they took their bullets elsewhere.

Understanding this story at a minimum requires an appreciation of the culture of futbol (read: soccer). If the argument is about baseball or the NFL or WWE, the story is implausible because it can only happen in cultures in which there is futbol and an obsession with it. These cultures are primarily in this Hemisphere. That's why I could wear a Club America shirt to the Fruiteria and be told by the clerk, "That team is no good," in three languages. The response to this? Shrug and say in three languages, "Maybe this year. Just wait."

A (Possibly Premature) TS Karl Update

Bahia Soliman, QR, Mexico--Thanks for the comments and the kind words and the link repair. The weather event seems to have been excessively over-horribl-ized. Why am I not surprised? And why, I wonder, does this hysterical kind of reporting always... (please fill in the ellipses). If I contributed to the craziness, perdon.

I'm back at the barbecue Internet. The cell phone is out, but the Internet's on. Amazingly, there is electricity. Mexico's infrastructure works. And, the good news, the storm seems to have gone someplace else. Or not to have materialized in the utterly devastating form predicted by some. Yes, we have high winds (imagine the wind map here), and yes, we have marea alto (high tide) (imagine photo of rolling waves here), and yeah, we had some crazy horizontal rain (imagine...). But all now seems to be in order: no real damage (2 plates and a tray), nobody hurt or injured, ocean churned up (of course), and winds blowing hard now still, but as things go, simply excellent. Considering that the storm was supposed, according to some, to bring the end of Western Civilization with it. And, lest I forget, the sun is out and has been in and out for the past couple of hours (image photo of such on turquoise water, cumulus clouds, palm trees slightly shaking).

Three pelicans decided to ride out the storm on the bow of Moonstar's boat (imagine cute photo). I decided to ride the storm out on the beach in a plastic chair (no beer logo this time)(imagine photo of Sol beer commercial chair). The pelicans and I were there all morning (except when occasionally wind and rain drove me inside) until somebody decided to move the boat next to it. That got the pelicans to move. I have no idea why they are moving the boat now, since the storm is apparently about played out, but maybe these guys know something I don't. My consultations today with locals yielded this appraisal: no big deal, what's for lunch.

Somebody really should do a treatise (ok, a short blog) on the affect Katrina has had on weather reportage and how it has made WR intentionally even more hysterical that before. Is it the goal of this kind of WR to desensitize us to climate changes? Just asking.

Thanks for all the good wishes.

El Tri

This year's Mexican entry in the World Cup in South Africa is going to be really exciting. And the team's fan base in the US is enormous. It includes me.

Today's New York Times in an article called, "Most Popular Soccer Team In the U.S.: Mexico," writes:

Mexico’s trips to the United States, including Friday night’s sold-out exhibition against Ecuador at the new 75,000-seat stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, are big business.

Mexico will play Senegal at Soldier Field in Chicago on Monday and Angola at Reliant Stadium in Houston on Thursday. By the end of the tour, which is to prepare Mexico’s players for the World Cup, the team known as El Tricolor will have played six games in the United States in less than three months, almost all before capacity crowds.

When Mexico played New Zealand at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in March, the only game in which European-based players performed, 90,000 packed the Rose Bowl on a Wednesday night. It was easy to see what brings Mexico back.

Not just the sheer numbers of fans, many of whom paid more than $40 for tickets — about double what tickets would cost in Mexico — but also in the hours leading up to the game, the bustling fiesta that surrounded the stadium had the air of a carnival with face painting, lucha libre acts, bands and games.

Of course. What can be more fun than watching Mexico's first rate national team play other not so first rate national teams so close to home? I'm delighted that Mexico has started doing this. I hope they continue. I only wish I had a ticket for tonight's fiesta in New Jersey.

Chicharito Discovered

It's official. The New York Times has discovered Chicharito:

He is leading the resurgence of Chivas, one of the Mexican league’s most popular clubs. Hernandez has 10 goals in 12 games for Chivas, which leads the 18-team standings, and is bulling his way toward a berth on Mexico’s World Cup roster with four goals and an assist while playing in three recent exhibition games, including the winner in a 2-1 victory over North Korea....

One of Hernández’s recent goals, in which he rose high over a New Zealand defender and hung Jordanesque in the air before slamming a header into the net neatly mirrored the upward arc of his career. It also brought the 90,000 fans who packed the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., to their feet roaring, giving Hernández the chance to respond by throwing his arms wide, then kissing the crest on his jersey.

“Honestly, I’m just happy,” Hernández said recently through an interpreter in a phone interview from Guadalajara. “Being able to participate with the national team is a dream come true.”

I'm waiting for the World Cup. It's just a couple of months away, and I have high hopes for El Tri. Chicharito is just one of the reasons.

Feliz Dia de San Patricio!!

Listen to the classic “Canción Mixteca,” sung in Spanish by the Mexican supergroup Los Tigres del Norte, accompanied by [Irish] accordion, bajo sexto, tin whistle and uilleann pipes.

“How far I am from the land where I was born! Immense longing invades my thoughts, and when I see myself as alone and sad as a leaf in the wind, I want to cry. I want to die of sorrow.”

The New York Times writes:

What brings this juxtaposition to mind is “San Patricio,” a new album from Paddy Moloney of the great Irish traditionalist band the Chieftains. It commemorates a historical footnote: the San Patricio battalion of Irish-immigrant soldiers who deserted the United States Army and fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. They picked the losing side, were captured, executed or branded as traitors, and then forgotten, except by Mexicans.

Mr. Moloney, a musician of restless curiosity, saw it as a tale of tragedy and loss, but also a chance for creative collision. “If the Irish were there, there would most certainly have been music,” he says. The same goes for the Mexicans. He invited Irish, Mexican and American musicians to play and sing, to see what would happen.

What happened was not all dolorous lamentation, though there is some of that. The rest is joy, thoroughly Mexican yet utterly Irish, carried aloft by tin whistles, skin drums, pipes, harps, guitars and stomping feet. It’s a mix you’ve never heard, but eerily familiar. ...

Th[is] old song, woven into the Mexican soul, is as Irish as it gets. And it’s an American song, too. We are all people who have lost our land in one sad way and found another. Whether we lament and celebrate in a pub or cantina, whether our tricolor flag has a cactus on it or not, we are closer to one another than we remember.

So today we are all Irish. And Mexican. And everything else. Salud!

------------------------
simulposted at docuDharma and dailyKos

When Will The Killer Of Brad Will Be Brought To Justice?

The New York Times today reports that the person held by Oaxaca authorities-- a person who clearly was not involved in the crime-- for the murder of Brad Wills in 2006 has finally been released from custody. That means that the investigation of the murder will now go back to the AG's office. But is it too late, has too much time been wasted for the real murderer to be brought to justice? Has this distraction been the end of the "investigation"?

The Times reports:

The man accused of killing a New York City journalist as he videotaped street clashes in Oaxaca in 2006 was released from jail on Thursday after an appeals tribunal declared that there was no evidence against him.

The ruling was congruent with what the victim’s family and human rights groups have long asserted, that the journalist, Bradley Roland Will, was not shot at close range by an antigovernment protester as the government has maintained.

But the decision now leaves the case open, more than three years after Mr. Will was shot...

Under Mexican law, the investigation goes back to the attorney general’s office, said Miguel Ángel de los Santos, a Mexican lawyer for the Will family. “Until now there hasn’t been any proof,” he said. “What we hope is that they open other lines of investigation.”

The attorney general’s office said Thursday night that it had no comment on the release of the suspect or whether it would pursue further action in the case.

So who was it that the authorities held? And what, if anything, was his connection with the case? Or was he just somebody to hold so the real killers might remain hidden and any trail might grow cold?

The suspect, Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, a baker and an activist with the coalition opposed to Gov. Ulises Ruiz, was arrested 18 months ago and accused of shooting Mr. Will at close range.

But photos and video of the scene show armed men, believed to government-backed agents, firing into the crowd of demonstrators from a distance. That account has been confirmed by other journalists who were with Mr. Will when he was killed on Oct. 27, 2006. A review of the forensic evidence by Physicians for Human Rights also found that the bullet had probably not been fired at close range.

Although Mr. Martínez took part in the protests, there was no evidence placing him at the scene of the shooting, human rights groups said. Nor, they said, did the government explain why Mr. Martínez would want to kill Mr. Will, who was sympathetic to the protesters’ cause.

The way this murder investigation has been handled is just disgraceful.

Ooops. It's Ramon Ayala

In what hearkens back to parties given decades ago by Colombian cocaine traffickers, the New York Times reports that Ramon Ayala was at a party of alleged narcotraffickers when, ut oh, the policia arrived:

When soldiers raided a drug cartel's Christmas party south of Mexico City, they found 16 automatic rifles, $280,000 in cash -- and a Latin Grammy winner.

The presence of the Texas-based norteno singer Ramon Ayala at the gathering in a wealthy, gated-community and the lavish festivities showed the audacity of Mexico's drug cartels amid a government crackdown that has sent thousands of soldiers and police to track them down.

A spokesman for the federal Attorney General's Office said Monday that Ayala was released after being questioned because authorities found no grounds for charging him with a crime.

Mexican norteno bands often sing about drug trafficking and violence and many have been rumored to perform at drug traffickers' weddings and other parties, but few have been caught.

Ayala and his norteno band, Los Bravos del Norte, were performing in a gated community of mansions outside the mountain town of Tepoztlan when sailors raided the house and a shootout ensued before dawn Friday, said the official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

If I had the kind of money and power the traffickers had, I'd have Ramon at my Christmas Party, too. That would be really cool. And that's an idea that obviously didn't escape the alleged syndicate members at this gathering.

Honduras: How To Help Those Who Flee

Yesterday I asked for help. I was concerned because many poor people from Honduras have been fleeing the country, passing through Guatemala, and landing in shelters in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. These shelters are ill equipped to deal with a large influx of refugees. I wanted to help those who will help the refugees. I have now found two reliable organizations in Mexico that do just that.

The military coup in Honduras is providing an unexpected test of Mexico's immigration and refugee policies. On Friday, July 3, dozens of Honduran nationals arrived at a church-run migrant shelter in the southern state of Oaxaca seeking refugee status because of the political situation in their country.

Alejandro Solaline Guerra, spokesman for the Mexican Episcopal Conference, said a group of Hondurans sought assistance at the House of Mercy in Ciudad Ixtepec on the Tehuantepec Peninsula. The migrant advocate said the bishops' organization will contact the National Migration Institute to request refugee status for the Hondurans under international law.

"Migrants from a country in a state of war should not be denied refugee status," Solaline declared.

The Honduran political crisis could aggravate an already conflictive situation in Mexico's southern border region. Despite the international economic crisis, thousands of Central Americans and other Latin migrants continue to cross the country's southern border en route to the United States. Along the way, migrants remain a favorite target of corrupt Mexican officials and bands of organized criminals.

source.

I think that as the golpe de estado continues in Honduras and as the instability and repression grow, and the economy continues to be disrupted, more and more poor Hondurans will have to pick up and leave, fleeing across Guatemala and into Mexico. And I suspect that those who are running shelters all along the well traveled route from Honduras and across southern Mexico could help these refugees if they had money to do so.

The trip from Central America to the North has always been a difficult and dangerous one. The migrants often ride without shelter on the tops of trains.




(photos from migrantearriaga.org.mx)

This is extremely dangerous. Many are killed or maimed by falling off the train because of lack of sleep or by trying to re-board the train if they have left it. And the migrants are routinely preyed on as they travel by gangs like Mara Salvatrucha and Mara's many rivals, corrupt police, coyotes, and others who routinely abuse, assault or rape them and steal their meagre possessions.

The trip is difficult even when it's planned in advance. It's more difficult when people are forced to drop everyting and leave because of political instability, Honduras's isolation from other nations, the end of aid, repression, and the withdrawal of civil rights.

I've found two organizations that run shelters for those fleeing Honduras in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico. I believe both are reliable. Both are run by the Catholic Church and have been providing sanctuary services for many years.

I think it would be wonderful if we could send small donations to these two organizations. Large donations aren't necessary. Remember that this is the internet and that many people sending small donations will be extremely helpful to those now struggling to provide assistance to people fleeing Honduras.

Hogar de la Misericordia, "Home of Mercy" is in Chiapas. They explain what they do:

"I was a stranger and you gave me shelter" (Mt 25, 35) The Church has always seen, in the migrant, the image of Christ.

Due to the great need to support our Central American brothers and sisters that pass through the parish of The Sacred Heart of Jesus in Arriaga, Chiapas, Mexico, the Casa del Migrante "Home of Mercy," opened its doors on October 7, 2004. Migrants are given shelter, food, clothing, medical attention, spiritual support and information regarding the dangers of their journey, thus reducing their vulnerability. The Home of Mercy is supported financially by the Social Pastoral of this parish.

We must remember that extreme poverty is the reason for migration. Every person has the right to live and today there is an imperative for those who live in extreme poverty: Migrate or die! These individuals have the right to migrate so that they and their families a dignified life

The migrants, like any person, regardless of their migratory situation must have their human dignity respected. The immigrant experience is one of fear and loneliness, as migrants leave behind their families and their homelands. Here we can show that the Church is in solidarity with, the suffering.

COMI, Centro de Orientación del Migrante de Oaxaca (Center for Orientation of Migrants of Oaxaca), is in Oaxaca. It, too, has a difficult mission:

Our objective is to support our migrant brothers and sisters from Oaxaca and Central America who feel compelled to leave their homes in search of a better future for their families.

Embracing Christian values, we welcome each migrant with compassion and respect, offering them an orientation about the risks, consequences, rights and obligations associated with emigration from Central America, Mexico and Oaxaca....

The COMI Office and the Good Samaritan House offer migrants:

* Housing and meals for three days and nights;
* An orientation about the risks, consequences, rights and responsibilities associated with international migration;
* Medical assistance through a collaboration with The Clinic of the People (La Clínica del Pueblo);
* Telephone calls;
* Assistance collecting a money order.

Other Activities:

* COMI operates as a communications center between the family and the migrant in times of crisis, offering a network of contacts with other institutions in the case of a family member´s death or in legal cases.
* COMI presents workshops about migration in regions of high levels of emigration throughout the Antequera-Oaxaca Archdiocese.
* COMI offers presentations to individual visitors and immersion groups about the economic, social and political causes of migration.
* COMI is a member of the migrant support network in Mexico and collaborates with the Mexican Episcopal Commission for Human Migration.
* COMI annually celebrates the Day of the Migrant in January.

Both deserve our support.

To contribute to COMI go here and scroll down to "To Make a Financial Donation".

To contribute to Casa de la Misericordia go here.