From Xico

Juan Cole Talks about Rick Warren

Juan Cole, a Professor of History at the University of Michigan, is a well-known spokesman on the Middle-East, of liberal bent, a person who believes in inclusion rather than exclusion.  Yesterday he attended the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council with, of all people, Rick Warren and Melissa Etheridge, who is gay. 

He came away from the conference not only liking Rick Warren, but looking up to him, admiring him.  It is worth reading Cole's post about the meeting here.  Actually it's worth reading Cole's blog, Informed Comment, on a regular basis.

Living outside the US, I see it on a smaller screen, and on the screen, both left and right can seem equally shrill.  I wonder, for instance, how many on the left have ever actually listened to Rick Warren or learned anything about him.  I had seen and paid little attention to his book, The Purpose Driven Life, when an Episcopal priest, a pretty liberal one,  mentioned to me that he thought the book was quite good, worth reading, worth heeding.

I didn't get the book, though after Juan Cole's endorsement and with the expensive miracle of always-available books that the Amazon Kindle offers, I think I may. (I do suspect Kindle enables book addiction.)  But the priest's mention of his admiration for Warren softened my outlook a bit and I found myself paying attention when Warren made the news.  And I think he did quite a credible job interviewing Obama and McCain at his church.  Not many of my friends in the Northeast agreed with me.

As maybe Jimmy Breslin said, we don't have to literally "love" our neighbors in the sense of thinking we have to be best friends, we have to get along with them.  We have to learn to be a little flexible, and figure if for some reason we can't agree with EVERYTHING they say, we inevitably have some things in common with them.  So maybe we can learn that Rick Warren is leading a purpose-driven life that is doing more good for more people than, say, your average liberal.

Certainly those of us who don't do all that much for the world with our time and resources could adjust our perspective and our judgment to allow that we shouldn't be excluding from consideration of decency people who come from what at first seem like radically different perspectives.

And Melissa Etheridge, whose marriage plans were destroyed by the approval of Proposition 8 appeared on the same stage with Warren.  Warren is an Etheridge fan, apparently.

And don't forget, American Muslims were the hosts for all of them.

Not to sound gloomy, but.....

Here is a link to James Fallows' blog in The Atlantic Monthly.  As they say, read it and weep.  Follow the links in the post, too. 

I remember when my then-husband and I came home from the Peace Corps in 1969 after having spent two years in Uganda.  Along with a lot of other returning PCVs we found the world of the US pretty strange.  I've never gotten over feeling that we had, as a country, decided to head down a very wrong path (or freeway, if you wish). 

Now it seems, our perceptions that efficiency as a goal onto itself was wrong, that our blind loyalty to The Economy was wrong, that the notion that spending endlessly on consumer stuff should be our main leisure activity, was wrong, etc. etc. etc. were in fact accurate perceptions.

I moved to Mexico in large part because there were still shreds of community left where we live, efficiency is admired as a means to some ends but is not an end to itself, and people still have time to be polite (even if they aren't always kind, gentle, etc. etc.), and there is still color on the streets. 

These are smallish things, I suppose.  Of course Mexico, as a poor country attached almost by an economic umbilical cord to the US, has huge problems, and poverty here will increase due to this global meltdown. 

Mostly I worry about our kids and grandkids and wish we were nearer to them. I am not at all sure the solution is to move back to the US.

Four Latin Presidents: Chavez, Castro, Calderon and Bachelet

I have missed doing this and will have to continue on a light schedule a causa de la gripa y demasiado trabajo por dinero.

But I thought those of you in the US might get a kick out of this picture:

Here you have, top row, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuala
Second Row, Raúl Castro, President of Cuba, Felipe Calderón, President of Mexico
Bottom Row, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, President of Brasil and Michelle Bachelet,    President of Chile.

They are meeting in Brasil to work towards establishing a strong Latin presence in the world, independent of the United States which was not invited.

They look like they all get along, don't they?  I don't know that they actually do, but I like the photo which is from the AP.

And here, courtesy EFE, is a photo of Raúl and Felipe:

Don't Be a Crime Victim in Mexico or Anywhere Else

I guess I got a little too hmmm grouchy with my neighbor and fellow blogger John Calypso regarding his post on safety in Mexican bus stations.  I thought he sounded rather excessive, though OF COURSE I think being careful is very important.  But not just in Mexican bus stations.  Or even especially in Mexican bus stations: I think street smarts are essential anywhere you happen to be, especially if it is a somewhat crowded public place if you don't want to lose your possessions.

But one thing which I learned long ago -- and it may be urban legend -- is that by looking nervous you attract unwanted attention.

Anyway, here's my short list of things to be careful about.

Never leave anything valuable visible or hinted at in your car. This includes having a sound system of some sort. Don't think a car alarm will protect it.  We've had friends have their car broken into on the road to El Trianon. We stupidly left our car unlocked in Nuevo Laredo and I had a backpack, fortunately with nothing much in it, snatched.  In our quiet suburban St. Louis neighborhood, my stepson and I had the whatever it is -- the main part of a stereo stolen out of our cars, mine right in front of my house. We both hadn't bothered to take the whatever it is in with us.  Actually, I have friends who just leave their older cars UNlocked to prevent breakins.

Never carry all your valuables in one easily-removed-from-you bag.  A handbag even over your chest can be pulled away if it has a thin strap or a weak hook linking it to the bag.  A bag over your shoulder is even easier.

Don't wear expensive stuff.  It signals that you may have additonal expensive stuff in your handbag and/or suitcases.  Don't have fancy suitcases, for that matter.

If you want to fall asleep in waiting areas, see if you can't hook straps around your feet or at least rest your feet on top of a suitcase.  If someone tries to snatch something, yell.

Mainly, spread your essential valuables around.  Even in your shoes. 

Which reminds me.....I don't know the percentage, but a WHOLE lot of pickpockets and snatchers are good at what they do and don't look like that's what they are. 

So this is how Jim got his pocket picked in Barcelona. Well..first, before we left our son's apartment, our son said, Dad, don't take your wallet.  Jim said, I'll be careful.  Dave said, but these guys are good.  So Jim compromised and took most of his money, cards, etc. out of the wallet, but still took the wallet.

We were walking along a lovely, tree-lined non-touristy street in Barcelona when a man tapped Jim on the shoulder and said, "Oh, sir, it looks like a bird got you."  This was a very nice looking man.  Jim turned, and sure enough, there was gunk on the back of his pants leg.  "Here, let me help you," said the man.  "I have some Kleenex."  And he handed Jim one and bent over himself to help Jim get the stuff off. "It'll probably take some dry cleaning, but it'll be okay," said the man, or something to that effect.  And he nodded and smiled and was off.

And then Jim realized his wallet was gone.  Wise David!

So this scam happens to be known in Xalapa.  One day we were ambling through the sort-of mall in El Centro where they sell books.  A man tapped him and said, "Oh, sir, it looks like a bird got you....." and proceeded to offer tissues.  But this time, Jim slapped his hand on his pocket and I moved in next to him and the man ran. 

By the way, it is never good to have any significant amount of money visible when you open your wallet.

I don't know why we didn't shout "robero" or something, but we didn't.  NOISE is a big help, by the way.  Shout, scream, yell.  Thieves of this sort don't like attention.  This is also true in bus stations and airports and busy stores and malls ALL OVER THE WORLD.

And in case you didn't know it, there are online scams here, too.  A guy in Coatepec was scammed into sending money to someone in the US, for one thing. 

Otherwise, be cool.  Danger lurks.  The Shadow knows.

New York Times, Forbes, Practice Yellow Journalism vs. Mexico

Scapegoating is an easy way for governments and powerful people to divert attention from problems at home, as I suspect is the case with Mexico.

Mexico has a LOT of problems.  But this article in Forbes, titled "The Next Disaster"  is really provocative and nasty.  It's not the only one.  The New York Times has a fondness for sensationalism when it comes to Mexico, as it shows in this article titled, "Hospitals a Theater in Mexico's Drug War" from today's paper.

I'm not writing this post to say Mexico isn't so bad or the US is worse: I'm writing this to say we don't solve problems by demonizing and scaring.  Most people in Mexico still do go about their business. The problems exist on both sides of the border and beyond; solutions which are not easy to come up with will have to be found on both sides of the border and beyond.

What to do?  NOT more guns from the US, that's for sure.  One Mexican official pointed out that most non-Americans think the availability of automatic weapons bor legal purchase in quantity by ordinary people is nuts.  Thousands of guns daily are bought and transported this way across the border.  Not more walling off Mexico.  That just exacerbates hatred for the US, and isn't successful at preventing clever criminals from making their way in.  And expansion of our drug war with MORE guns and MORE helicopters from the US would be laughable if not so serious.  The US war on drugs has been a disaster. Spreading it into Mexico would just spread the disaster.

Perspective is important.  While violence and crime  are a big problem in some parts of Mexico, notably cities in Baja California and Chihuaha and Michoacán  some specific sections of those parts, it is important that people know that we don't live in a war zone. This is the same as reminding people that because there have been horrendous shoot-outs in some schools in the US, not every school is a war zone.

Interestingly, the Mexican government works with other governments besides the US as well as with UN agencies and Interpol in looking for solutions. The US could also internationalize its perspective.

In all parts of the world, globalization in the sense of more people exposed to more information about the rest of the world as well as fewer people having jobs and work in rural areas leads to more violence.  There are increasing numbers of unemployed young men particularly wandering around large cities with nothing worth doing available.  They lack not only legal funds, but human attachment. Some long range solutions lie in providing these.  Also, to get the criminals, as they say, follow the money.  Look at some of the very rich and their ties not just in Mexico, but in the US and in the rest of the world.

Examples of flagrantly provocative writing:

From the NY Times:

Hit men pursuing rivals into intensive care units and emergency rooms. Shootouts in lobbies and corridors. Doctors kidnapped and held for ransom, or threatened with death if a wounded gunman dies under their care. With alarming speed, Mexico’s violent drug war is finding its way into the seeming sanctuary of the nation’s hospitals, shaking the health care system and leaving workers fearing for their lives while trying to save the lives of others.

This really refers to maybe four or five instances in twenty months involving narcotraficantes, two in Ciudad Juarez, two in Tijuana, cities with much-deserved reputations for violence.  Much of the rest elaborates on peoples fear and anxiety.  Don't get me wrong, these things are not trivial. But feeding terror with articles like this is a form a terrorism against Mexico, if one thinks of terrorism as a crime which is done to create fear as much as to harm innocents. 

Here's Forbes, again feeding on rumor and fear:

Hours after the [plane crash killing two top Mexican officials], rumors shot across the capital city like the discharge of automatic weapons: The crash was the work of drug traffickers showing who was boss in this nation of 110 million souls. A preliminary report found no evidence of explosives and strongly suggested pilot error in turbulent conditions. Still, says Larry N. Holifield, former head of the Mexico City office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, "people won't believe it was an accident. They think everything down there is a conspiracy because half the time it really is." One witness to the crash believes the worst. "A plane just doesn't fall out of the sky," says Guadalupe Rodríguez, 42, a law firm assistant. "The narcos are saying, 'Here we are--and nobody's going to get rid of us.'"

This is not news: it's fearmongering.  It leads to panicked and violent responses. 

Comments, anyone?

Laptops available, internet connection not

Here is an ad from Amazon.com.uk.  It is for the program "One Laptop per Child."
The laptops cost $199.00 and you get a second one free.  As you know, in Mexico, internet access  -- reasonable internet access -- is not only not cheap, but it is not available in many areas.  How to paralyze your budding work force!  Some people and some communities who don't have Telmex's DSL have satellite access.  This is apparently in a grey area of legality.  And it is also very expensive.  The laptops are not, especially with donors providing them.

Here is a picture of the one laptop per child laptop from Amazon.com:

 

Groan. New Format

I was simply trying to lighten the background on the text portion of the blog, but the banner disappeared.  I have no idea how to center this new image and I can't find the old one.  This will have to do for a bit.

Thanksgiving in Veracruz with Art and Fish Part II:

Our second stop on Thanksgiving was at the fototeca barely off the main square in the historic district.  The fototeca* in Veracruz is a library for photos of Veracruz: an archive, really, for rescuing and conserving photographs both historical and modern.  It also has extensive galleries for photo exhibits and a jam-packed bookstore. As usual in Mexico, the bookstore contains everything from tourist guides and souvenirs and children's books to the classics and scholarly historical works and everything in between.

We saw an exhibit of photos by Pedro Meyer, a Mexican known for his use of digital techniques, among other things.  His work veers from very classic-looking black and white portraiture to fantasy.  Here is a link to his web site where you can learn a great deal about him in English. 

The exhibit we saw is called Herejias, or Heresies.  It is being shown in over twenty galleries around the world simultaneously.  We were captivated.  Below is a sampling of his work.  And please remember, the process of transferring the works from the one hanging on the wall to the little one on my website really does damage.  So this is just for a bit of flavor.

Below are a series of snapshots of Meyer's photos that we saw at Fototeca de Veracruz.

 

This is a portrait of Alicia Alonso, a great Cuban ballerina.  When I was a child in the 1950s I saw her dance as a guest with the American Ballet Theater with which she had also received training.  Her story is moving.  She is a gallant woman as well as a great dancer and a passionate devotée of both ballet and Cuba.  Here is a good mini-biography from Wikipedia.

 

This is called Fumando Aire, Smoking Air.  It looks to me more or less like Pedro Meyer, so it may be a self-portrait.

 

La Pierna de Godzilla -- Godzilla's Leg.  I don't know if Meyer knew Godzilla was a gorilla and was playing with the name, or what.

 

La Plantación.  This picture was taken in California.

 

El Consejo de Finanzas -- The Financial Advisor.  This was taken in New York City in the 1980s.  It seems quite appropriate for today.

 

Tiempos Bíblicos -- Biblical Times.  This was also taken in New York City and it also seems a good photo for the times we are living in.

 

Vermeer en La Habana -- Vermeer in Havana.

 

La Llegada del Hombre Blanco -- The Arrival of the White Man.  This was taken in Oaxaca.

* There are several fototecas in Mexico and Spain. Fototeca is related to biblioteca, the Spanish word for library.

The Wages of NAFTA

Did you know that Carlos Slim, arguably the richest man in the world, bought TELMEX (when he was not the richest man in the world) in 1990 when the then-president, Carlos Salinas Gortari, put the country's phone system up for privatization?  He and a group of investors bought it with a consortium of investors including Southwestern Bell.  Today TELMEX controls 90% of the land lines in Mexico, TELCEL owns almost 80% of cell phones and the majority (I can't remember the percentage) of broadband internet access.  Incidentally, Ed Whittaker, head of SBC, now once again AT&T) invested 1 billion in the 1990 purchase; it is now worth 10 billion.  Slim owns América Móvil, the company which has been spreading its tentacles through the communications industry of Latin America.  And a lot of other stuff.

 

Señor Slim (Wikipedia)

Slim and a lot of other rich Americans and Mexicans are the beneficiaries of gaping exceptions in NAFTA which you can read about here and in a lot of other places.  Free trade you think?

Forbes reports that he owns his 64 billion dollar fortune in a country where the average annual income is under $7000 (dollars).  It adds that if he lived in the US, to reflect the disparity between his worth and the income of an average American, he would have to be worth 684 billion dollars. Yikes.  In Mexico, his worth is greater than that of the lowest 45% of the country's population combined. There are about 109 million Mexicans, for reference.

Meanwhile, in our colonia, I would imagine well over 50% of the inhabitants can't afford phones; cell phones don't work here.  The colonia's schools don't have internet access.  I connect via a shaky TELMEX broadband connection.  I was told we can't get anything better here because it wouldn't be profitable for the company to provide the swatch of settlement we live in with it. Can you imagine?  I wonder how much it would cost Slim to wire the whole country for broadband access.

Finally, according to Wikipedia, On 10 September 2008 Slim announced that he had purchased a 6.4% common-stock stake in The New York Times Company, making him the largest shareholder not related to the company's owners, the Sulzberger family. And you had your eye on Rupert Murdoch.

Right to Die Legislation in Mexico

From World Politics Review:

MEXICO RIGHT-TO-DIE LEGISLATION MOVES FORWARD -- Both houses of the Mexican legislature have signed off on a law that would allow terminally ill patients to refuse invasive or extraordinary measures to prolong their lives. The bill now heads to President Felipe Calderón for final approval.

Mercy killings and assisted suicides are not considered legal under the legislation. In order to qualify under provisions of the new law, a patient must have an incurable disease, have an expected lifespan of less than six months and be willing to sign a written petition in front of witnesses.

The right to die on one's own terms has been the subject of fierce debate for decades around the globe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Thailand and a handful of U.S. states legally allow euthanasia in some form.

Earlier this month, a 13-year-old British girl won a legal case to refuse a heart transplant, even though the refusal will cost her her life. Hannah Jones has undergone multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, and has been in and out of the hospital, since she was diagnosed with leukemia at age 4. When she developed heart disease, doctors recommended a transplant even though the operation itself could kill her, and despite the fact that she would likely need additional multiple surgeries afterwards. Hannah decided she would rather spend the time she has left at home, with her family and friends. British judges agreed.