From Xico

Lights Out in Mexico City

Just a quicky.  The World Wildlife Fund's effort to have cities around the world turn of some of their lights for an hour this past Saturday night resulted in the darkening of Mexico's most symbolic places. The world-wide effort was reported on the front page (at least online) of El Universal and that article is the third most read article in the paper.  The effort was reported in the New York/Regional section of the NYTimes.  It was recounted in a pretty anecdotal fashion. 

Of course Mexico has incredible environmental problems.  But they are on people's minds and manage to capture significant attention.  Here is a fairly big article in La Jornada about a small protest in Mexico City against the slaughter of baby seals in Canada.

You may not know it, but plastic bags of the supermarket sort are now illegal in Mexico City.  A bill is on its way through the Mexican Congress which is aimed to make them illegal nationally.

A couple of non-environmental notes.  Abortion is legal in Mexico City during the first trimester.  Gay civil unions are legal in Mexico City.

Mexico and Afghanistan

There's been concern expressed in Mexico, that because Carlos Pascual, the new ambassador-designate to Mexico, has experience with states that have had big problems, the US really does think that Mexico is broken. I think this may be the prevailing view in the Administration even if they deny it. I think the Administration is way too incurious about Mexico, let alone other countries.  The Obama  government seems content to get its information the same old sources  virtually all of whom, I would bet, have little or no direct experience with or much knowledge about Mexico.

On the other hand, I think, whether the Administration realizes it or not, Pascual may have quite a different perspective from theirs.  I heard an interesting radio interview with Jorge Casteñeda yesterday regarding the choice of Pascual.  Casteñeda foreign minister under Vicente Fox for three years, is a well-known Mexican politician, commentator and academic.  He is currently Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Caribbean and Latin American Studies at New York University.  Discussing his work at Brookings, Casteneda said that while Pascual worked within the establishment and had to express himself carefully, nonetheless his writings offered hope for a more enlightened approach to Mexico.  El Universal yesterday said the same.  Pascual, both pointed out, does not see military solutions as good ones and emphasizes the need to redevelop US foreign policy and foreign aid from cross-discipline and international perspectives with an emphasize on addressing poverty and global warming and on the US taking responsibility for damage it has wrought.  Not incidentally, Pascual spoke in 2008 to Congress as a very strong critic of the Iraq war.

I hope Pascual represents prevailing if unarticulated Administration views. But I am skeptical that he does.  Obama seems oddly tone-deaf to Latin America in general, not just to Mexico.  For instance, he doesn't seem to understand that Latin American countries are strengthening alliances among themselves and becoming increasingly independent and openly critical of the US.  He doesn't get that it is embracing Cuba.  American obliviousness was on view at the Summit of Progressive Leaders in Santiago, Chile held in anticipation of the upcoming G-20 meeting in London.According to La Jornada, Vice President Joe  Biden said there that Obama's government was not going to lift the Cuban embargo at this time and that Cuba was not at an immediate concern for the US or the hemisphere. He said this in spite of the fact that at the meeting of the Union of South American Nations two weeks earlier, some of those same nations, including Latin American power houses, stated that Washington should normalize relations with Cuba. In sounding so casual about Cuba, Biden and by implication the US government, seems insensitive at best to Latin American positions, and even worse, ignorant of the hardships the embargo continues to cause in Cuba.  Of course no one can doubt its failure as policy.  (At this same summit, President Lula of Brazil said, in reference to a discussion of causes for the economic crisis, "My dear Gordon Brown, My dear Biden, my Dear Zapatero [President of Spain], unfortunately you have the most responsibility for the crisis."]

I have the feeling (totally without any documentation) that Mexico is not completely tied to a military solution to the drug problem, that perhaps Calderón in his heart of hearts may believe he acted rashly, or at least that things aren't going as he had hoped; that he'd be interested in widening efforts to enhance the legal economies of drug-ridden areas, particularly addressing the needs of the poor; that he'd be interested in aid to schools; in police assistance; in money to pay cops enough to be honest. And Calderón is not Mexico. Calderón faces internal debate and discussion all the time.  US efforts to prop him  up may in fact do the opposite.  The following seem to me the consequences of US failure to know enough about Mexico. 

--The nature of US support for Calderón seems weird.  The Administration keeps bolstering him up in ways that may very well be counterproductive.  By not only not questioning them but by heaping praise on Calderón's military approaches, the US is blindly closing the door on other alternatives.

--If you ask  me, the US Administration is treating Calderón as if he is a shaky leader of a very shaky state, the way Bush treated Musharaff of Pakistan, the way Obama appears to be treating Karzai of Aghanistan.  But Calderón is not the shaky leader of a very shaky state.  His election was close enough to be challengeable, but he is clearly now (except in the eyes of a few) functioning as the legitimate leader of a legitimate government. The government survives because it is fairly sturdy, for all its problems.  It doesn't survive because the US props up Calderón.  The coddling may in fact create hostility not only to Calderón but to the US itself because it shows the US to be deaf to the nature of politics and political opposition in Mexico. 

--The US doesn't seem aware of the growing hostility to the Mexican army in areas where the army operates.  The military approach is not stabilizing these areas from the perspective of stabilizing the society.  It may be knocking off drug folks, but it is leaving other serious problems in its wake.  Here is an excellent article on the effects on Colombia of the drug war and the military with stark warnings for the US. It is very important reading.

--Although Hillary Clinton accepted the large responsibility of US drug use in the growth of the narco problem, Obama himself has brushed off suggestions that drug prohibition be lifted.  Here, from the COHA article, a statement on the IMmorality of drug prohibition, let alone the material consequences (you should read the whole article ). 

Legalization will be Messy, but Prohibition is Immoral
Prohibition has failed in Colombia, just as it has failed in the rest of the world. While the country has come a long way in reducing its levels of violence, its progress will always be limited as long as prohibition remains the international paradigm. Meanwhile the inherent violence of prohibition continues to spread across the continent, blighting an entire generation of young men in Mexico, El Salvador and Venezuela, to name just a few of the affected countries. And all this, because governments in developed countries have so little faith in their own societies that they can´t bear the thought of accepting the reality of drug consumption. Their prohibitionist arguments are fundamentally unjust and small minded.

Although it is rarely stated, the commitment of the developed world to the prohibition of cocaine and other drugs, and the enforcement of this policy via schemes like Plan Colombia imply a fundamental injustice: that the corruption, violence and impunity endured by drug producing and intermediary countries in the developing world, are prices worth paying to keep rich societies safe. If the prohibition-related violence wrought on Latin American societies was killing Americans or Europeans, cocaine and marijuana would have been legalized years ago. UN drug czar Antonio Maria Acosta claims that legalization would be an “emotional” reaction. He is wrong. As the Economist has claimed, legalization would not be a panacea and would be fraught with problems, but it would still be the most moral, rational response to the blind narrow mindedness of prohibition. Rightly, the debate should not be whether or not to legalize; rather, it should focus on the best way to do so.

Now why is the analogy to Afghanistan relevant?  Not because Afghanistan and Mexico are very similar, they aren't, though they are both entangled in narcotráfico (so are a growing number of other countries).  They have in common that they seem to suffer from US Administration blindness to points of view outside the US establishment, views which are wedded to military solutions where they are not very effective.

In both countries, the US doesn't seem to "get" the nature of the president or his position in his country.  For instance, they keep kind of acting like Karzai is The only person they should deal with.  Karzai is much less the main actor these days than Calderón.  The US doesn't seem to recognize that neither of them are their countries. Karzai, of course, has a great deal more to do with the problems in Afghanistan with drugs and corruption than does Calderón in Mexico.  Calderón hasn't been mixed up as a participant in the very business that the US thinks it is working to defeat. 

The US doesn't seem to "get" the nature of the countries.  Afghanistan is much more "tribal" than unified; Mexico is much more unified than broken into fiefdoms by the drug trade or anything else.

The US doesn't seem to "get" that its solutions may be praised by folks in the US, and on the surface by Mexicans and Afghanistanis to some extent, but that outside of the US and in Afghanistan and Mexico there is much criticism.  For instance, Obama seems to think he can talk to "moderate elements" in the Taliban.  In Afghanistan, this is seen as questionable.  In Mexico, it seems the US is supporting war against that amorphous group known as narcos without trying to deal with anyone involved in it.  In Mexico, you probably could talk to lower level people out of the narcobusiness if you could offer alternatives. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is composed of shall we say the ideologically committed.

In both countries, the army is not seen as an agent of peace and positive change. In both countries, it is regarded with hostility.  In Afghanistan, this means the US Army.  As Carlos Pascual himself points out, people sent in by the US as agents of change are in no way prepared to act as such.

In both places, as is the case in Colombia, the US advocates destroying drug crops.  Go read the COHA article on what a poor idea that is.  In Afghanistan, there has been an off again on again effort to replace drugs with wheat.  It hasn't been effective.  In Colombia, as in Mexico, there has been little effort at all to replace the drug crops with something that pays decently.  Furthermore, crop destruction causes damage to fields so they can't be used again and damage to the environment and damage to people who live in the areas.

In neither country can one find evidence that there are new ideas coming from the White House. Policies seem to be streamlined, silkier versions of the same old same old. Added to this, the White House still seems to overrate the reputation of the US in the world, and its authority. Without thorough self-examination and self-correction, the US diminishes its ability to act as a force for good.

Carlos Pascual: He may turn out to be just what Mexico wants. Or not.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I thought Carlos Pascual sounded like a very good appointment as ambassador to Mexico.  Then I had doubts.  At this point I have returned to thinking he is probably a good appointment, but more because of who he is than because of how the Obama Administration regards Mexico.  I think the Administration may have thought of him as experienced with military presences in chaotic states.  I think he himself is not a militarist at all.  Obama's government continues to disappoint.  It seems to confuse the need for military action with the need for stability; it seems to stress cooperation and inclusion of views that may be erroneous and worse for respect for people with different opinions.  If one has respect, one can disagree without insulting.  I remember learning, when I was in a position to make decisions, that I needed to listen to all views, involve myself in discussion of them, and then sometimes arrive at a decision that did conform to the ways of those who had been used to running the show.

More on Carlos Pascual to come.  He is indeed a very interesting man. 

Hillary and La Virgen and Obama's Mexico Policy and the NYTimes

You know, I keep hoping that SOMEBODY in the Administration knows SOMETHING about Mexico, but it appears they don't. Here's a piece that first appeared in frontera.inf about Hillary's visit.  I picked it up via Mex Files, and Mex Files picked it up via a blog called Maggie's Madness where you can find summaries of Tijuana news.

It seems Hillary knew nada about La Virgen de Guadalupe.  If she didn't know anything about La Virgen, she didn't know much at all about Mexico.  I'm starting to get the feeling the Obama crowd thinks too well of their smarts and has little curiosity about the world outside their own beliefs after all. They've shown little sensitivity to countries as unique societies (Afghanistan, Mexico, for example) that I'm aware of  and seem to be going at foreign policy with a one size fits all approach. 

Obama seems to be thinking it's enough to put a velvet glove on old approaches.  But militarization -- increasing militarization -- solves nothing in a way we'd want things solved: it doesn't solve underlying social problems, unequal distribution of wealth, increasing job losses due to the economic crisis, the terrible effects on local livelihoods of globalization, not just from NAFTA, but starting in the 1980s.  Militarization also kills and maims people and destroys families and jobs.  And creates anger among civilians affecte.  Militarization does nothing for  drug treatment.  For civilian law enforcement.  Militarization supports perhaps Calderón, but Calderón certainly isn't Mexico.  

If the US can commit millions, even billions to militarizing Mexico further, it can commit some money to teaching Americans, including the president, about Mexico.  And the teachers need to come from various places in Mexico, not from the State Department.  I wonder what images Obama and crew have in their minds of Mexico. 

I guess I hope that Calderón has success squashing the cartels, but I'm not at all sure the heavy hand of the US is what they want supporting them.

Plus, if I understood him correctly, Obama still doesn't get the connection between US drug prohibition and Mexican narco business. And they're backing off illegalizing assault weapons.  What kind of country makes it legal to have assault rifles in your house?  

Anyay, I'm wondering if my previous enthusiasm for Pascual as ambassador was misguided. By the way, La Jornada and El Universal report that indeed  Pascual has been nominated to be Ambassador to Mexico.  Now that there is no star-quality American government person traveling in Mexico, the NYTimes seems to think mentioning Mexican news of a nonviolent nature is so yesterday.  Not a word of Pascual's nomination in that august journal.

It seems maybe, dare I say it, that Obama's inexperience is showing and that instead of exploring new avenues, he's doing the same old shit.  See also the economy! By the way, The Baseline Scenario by Simon Johnson of MIT and friends is a very good resource for trying to figure out what's going on in that area.

Carlos Pascual for Ambassador to Mexico?

...and a great photo  of Hillary and about a hundred Mexican indigenous youth at a scholarship programpresentati.  Lifted from La Jornada of today.

En un encuentro montado en el Palacio de Bellas Artes, la secretaria de Estado, Hillary Rodham Clinton, entrevistó sobre sus experiencias en Estados Unidos a medio centenar de jóvenes indígenas mexicanos, ataviados con sus trajes típicos, que se congregaron en la sala Manuel M. Ponce. Ahí se presentó el programa de becas de la Comisión de Cultura y Educación de ambos países y de la USAID Foto Francisco Olvera

The caption says Clinton "interviewed" about her experiences in the middle of a hundred young indigenous Mexicans dressed in their typical garb...." Now I just have to say that when I first read it, I thought it said that Clinton was dressed in her typical garb.  Sure looks like it. Anyway, it is just a lovely picture because everyone looks truly happy and amused.
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Anyway, the picture below is of Carlos  Pascual whose name is being floated as possible US Ambassador to Mexico. This is stolen from El Universal.

Now the NY Times which is fast developing a reputation with me for muddying news from Mexico and sullying it and misleading its readership in nasty little ways has a comment about Pascual in an article this evening.  After quoting  a snippet from an article in El Universal (at least they refer to a Mexican source for once)saying
"... that Mr. Pascual’s specialty was in dealing with conflict-ridden states. He served as the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization in the State Department, a post that involved working with several agencies to develop strategies for broken countries like Afghanistan" the Times asserts that

"that could raise hackles among some Mexicans, who take umbrage at recent assertions by American analysts that drug related violence has so destabilized Mexico that it is danger of becoming a failed state."  [The underline is an artifact of a link in the Times article.  I couldn't remove it.]

But in fact this aspect of Mr. Pacual's work was not highlighted in the El Universal article. Here is what the article said, which seems drawn from public information at the Brookings Institute site.  Mr. Pascual is currently Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute.

"Carlos Pascual was born in Cuba but emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was three years old.

"He was US Ambassador to the Ukraine from 2000 to 2003. He then served as Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department.

"The diplomat, was educated at Stanford and at Harvard.  At Harvard, he received a masters degree in public policy.  He has also been coordinator for assistance to Europe and Eurasia; director of Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council, and and assistant administrator for Europe and newly Independent States for the US Agency for International Development.

"Pascual is presently the vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute, a center for advanced research in Washington.  Upon his appointment to this position in October, 2005, Strobe Talbott, the President of Brookings, said that Pascual has been an innovator and has been present for some of the most important challenges facing the US and the international community.

"Pascual's experience includes missions in Africa, Latin America and Europe as well as the former communist bloc.  According to Talbot, his experience is as much as an executive as on the ground, in matters of economic reform and policy in countries in transition, in combating terrorism an arms proliferation and in dealing with sources of instability.  As an expert he has also concentrated on stabilizing post-conflict scenarios."

You should look at his one page pdf biography at Brookings in addition to the other information available  and read some of his papers and positions.  This man is, as my father would say, one smart cookie. He is not stuck on military solutions, on the past, on keeping Cuba down.  In fact, he proposes a number of creative ways the US and Cuba could engage.  He is very outspoken about the US obligation to take responsibility for itself and its actions among the very interwoven world of nations.

My favorite quote from him (I have only brief acquaintance with his quotes) is his comment on the Iraq quagmire:
"Is there even a political strategy? Because right now the political strategy, in my view, has essentially been telling the Iraqis we’re in the middle of a war to fix themselves."  He presented an extraordinarily candid assessment of our failure in Iraq and how best to extract ourselves.

I think Mexico would be well-pleased to have him as Ambassador.  His intellect, experiences, and creative approaches would do honor to Mexico and probably -- hopefully -- be helpful to both the US and Mexico.  He is probably as sophisticated as anyone about the complex issues of drugs, crime, economic difficulties, and environmental issues weaving the hemisphere together.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood....

Jim and I sometimes just walk our dogs through the neighborhood, and then up some path or another into the country.  Here are some photos taken in our neighborhood.

This is Jim and el perro y las perras walking down the street, Benito Juarez, from our house.  There must be a million streets named Benito Juarez in Mexico.  It is a custom to name streets after famous Mexicans, often revolutionary leaders.

There has never been a time when I have not seen piles of grava y arena on the street for mixing concrete.  You can see some in this shot, on the left.  Here people are always modifying and adding to their houses, which are almost all concrete.  Or still building in them.  Generally, people don't go into debt to get it all done at once, but rather build bit by bit as they get enough money for the next step. Below is a picture in which the bottom of the house is pretty much finished, down to being painted  pink with a very pretty stencilling job around windows and doors which unfortunately is not clear in the photo.  The grandmother and two grandkids were watching streetwork out the window.  I asked if I could take their picture and they said sure, but they didn't want to be in it.  You can see they weren't.

Major street work is going on now in our neighborhood.  I think most of us would prefer the money be spent to bring our water system up to snuff:  we could use water more than half a day every other day*, but the street's important, too. The whole street is being torn up a block at a time where there are cave-ins and broken drainage pipes and other water problems to repair.  And we are getting nice sidewalks where there aren't any and below, you can see a hand-built retaining wall as well, on the right.

Here's a look at the construction from the other end of the block. There's been a lot of progress.  Tons and tons of concrete were torn up, literally, and there were huge gaping places.

Below is the house of the head of the Colonia. I kept calling him el presidente,  but that's not right and I've been told that the only presidente is the presidente of the Muncipio de Xico which our Colonia is part of.  I will have to find out what his title is.

As you can see, his house is also a work in process.  It's a very attractive house on the inside, roomy, with a lovely open dining and kitchen area lined with windows on one side, lots of bedrooms, etc.  Outsides can be quite deceiving.

Due to the street construction, the front yard is nothing but rubble at the moment.  You can see rebar sticking up from the house waiting for more work to be done.

From the not-the-president's house, we walk onto the main road, a U-shaped road, more or less.  If we turn right, we walk about 3/4 of a mile to the crucero, the intersection with the road to Teocelo, to Xico and into San Marcos.  If we go left, we can go two ways towards Coatepec. Down the road a bit we can turn right to go into the lower part of San Marcos and then left onto the main road to Coatepec.  This way, we cross the new bridge which replaced the one that collapsed last year. (Or was it the year before?)  If we stay on the road we're on, we go the way we detoured when the bridge was down and and miss all the traffic.  It has a cobblestone place which slows us down some, but it's much pleasanter.

Here's a picture of a a boy and his dad bicycing. And Jim y dos perros también. (You can learn a little Spanish on this blog.) I have the other two. AND am taking the pictures.

On the right are the cattle and milking shed I featured on a short blog post a few days ago.

This is a no-longer-operating beneficio, or coffee processing place.  It is now being used to transfer garbage from our colonia to trucks which take it Someplace Else.  I don't know where.  As in the US finding sanitary landfills is getting to be more and more of a problem.  However, they keep this area immaculate. And it never smells (unlike some of the drainage in our area). A truck is in the process of dumping, as you can see.  All the spillage will be picked up.

Below is a restaurant waiting to open.  It's owned by a woman from Xalapa.  She had a smaller, simpler completely unguarded restaurant, but it was only open sometimes.  One day when it hadn't been open for awhile, thieves decided it was fair game and took everything that could be moved, including toilets and a couple of thousand (she said) trout from their trout pond.  Now it is destined to be fancier and considerably more secure.  I suspect she is waiting to get some more money saved up before she can welcome the public.

And here you see the gate into a mysterious place called La Providencia.  It was once a beneficio, too.  Next to it are various fancy looking constructions: a swimming pool, what looks like a club house, a very pretty house.  People work on the beneficio part. They've unloaded a lot of dirt and leveled off an area, and are constantly doing structural stuff.  It seems some of them live in a little house on the right of this picture with their wives and kids.  We ask them what they are turning the place into, but no one seems to know for sure.

We cross the bridge right after this and head into the country.  That will be another post.

 

 

At least there's a tiny bit of good news. But a lot of bad stuff, too.

Plans to kill a cane plant called carrizo along the border with a herbicide called imazapyr (sp?) have been halted.  This post comes from a site called RedOrbit, a science site for all kinds of people that looks pretty interesting.

On the negative side, very negative, you can read a series of articles at the blog Border Lines, an outstanding site sponsored by the Transborder Project of the Center for International Policy, addressing the absolutely hideous nature of current treatment of undocumented workers in the US.  The conditions in standard prisons for people who have committed jailable offenses are terrible enough. And the fact that the US has five percent of the world's population and 25% of the worlds prisoners should tell you something. 

But for undocumented workers, it's a whole different level of horrible.  Somewhere below the mainstream radar, but not below the radar of immigrant-haters who celebrate it, a system has been created which resembles incarceration of the Japanese in the US during World War II and the ghettoization of Jews before the war started.  It is a shameful system of scapegoating thousands and thousands of people which appears to violate the most basic rights.  Joe Arpaio is the most visible symbol, but not the only persecutor.  And these crimes against humanity have become money makers for private prison contractors such as, with its publicity-saavy webpage,  Corrections Corporation of America  (a more critical look here) (actually there are a ton of critical articles) and GEO Group. (Here is a pretty revealing article about the GEO group.

You can read the articles at Border Lines here, here , here , here, here, here, and here for a very good overview of what's going on. 

Essentially all undocumented immigrants and many documented ones at well have been, by the creation of the Criminal Alien Program, redefined as criminal aliens and subject to arrest.

Can you imagine how many immigrants start with fear at unexpected knocks at their doors?

We cannot claim to be a democracy unless we bring these practices into the sunlight and eliminate them.

Sinister doings on the border.

IN the Houston Chronicle, herbicides for border control.

And much more from Mex Files here.

How about having people cut the cane?  Here in Mexico, one person can cut tons of sugar cane (literally) in a day.

Buying VERY locally -- milk, and probably organic at that.

I have started to buy milk at the local dairy.  Well, milking place. It is just down the road maybe a hundred feet from the entrance to the colonia.  The cows graze even closer.

Here is a picture of some bulls hanging around the milking shed. 
That's Jim to the left with Giaco and Cosi. 

The farmers breed their cattle right here.  We sometimes see calves.

Here is a picture of one of the farmers milking.  It is done obviously by hand. 

 

On the other side of the cow there's a trough where the farmers can give the cows supplemental food in dry times.  Often they chop up banana stalks which, after all, are also a form of grass.

A couple of weeks ago I asked if I could buy a liter. "Of course," said the farmer.  "I will deliver it to your house."

A boy brought it in a clean orange juice container.  It cost seven pesos, maybe fifty cents.

I read about how to be sure it was safe and proceeded accordingly. Lots of people in the colonia buy it.  They are careful to sterilize it. It was very creamy, very rich.  Jim put it in slow-cooking Cream of Wheat his brother John had brought for us from HEB in Texas. We can't find Cream of Wheat here.  Both Jim and I and John have a love of Cream of Wheat left over from our childhoods.

This  past Sunday we bought some more. Jim put it in more Cream of Wheat and I've been using it for coffee.  It is leche muy rica. 

And muy local.

And probably organic, or close to it.

Santoral for March 24

From El Universal:
Today we celebrate Saints Diego, Simón, Berta, Guillermo, Catalina, Segundo, Marco, Flavio, Latino, Epigmenio, Timoteo y Severo.

Who are in English (or Latin), where applicable or where I can figure or find out the equivalent:
Diego is an equivalent for James.  Simon, Bertha,  William, Mark, Flavius, Timothy and Severus.

Saint James of the Bible is not the San Diego, actually two San Diegos, whose day is marked today.

One of these is San Diego de Alcalá, the patron saint of Tuéjar in Spain in the province of Valencia.  This town has a very lively web site where you can learn about its Iglesia de San Diego.  Here is a photo of a statue of San Diego from the church taken from the web site.:

Our San Diego (1400?-1463), although he was apparently not "de Alcalá" but  apparently from a small town in Andalucia called San Nicolás del Puorto.  It still is a small town, very pretty, in the central southern part of Spain near some rugged terrain.  You can see some photos here.

San Diego was a wanderer.  As the author of one hagiography says, "In the dust of his sandles were mixed and glued the soil of innumerable walks through Spain, France and Italy.

He was a seeker after God, and finally in Arrizafa, near Córdoba, he became a lay brother among the Franciscans.  And then set forth as a missionary. And of course
"in his wake he left caring and miracles which still survive in the traditional local places in not a few of those pueblos."

His one very slender connection with Mexico is probably his missionary work in the Canary Islands in 1450. As you may or may not know, in the mid 1700s Canary Islanders settled in the San Antonio, Texas area to cement Spain's claim to the territory.  The first community of civilians there was known as San Fernando de Bexar. 

Descendents of those first Canary Islanders still live in the San Antonio area.  My boss, when I worked at UT Health Science Center as a research associate, was a descendent of Canary Islanders.  Her great grandfather (or was it great great?) fought as a Texan against the Mexicans at the Alamo.

After all his travels, San diego returned to Spain to finish out his life.

He figures in a surprising amount of art work.  Here is an image I stole from Wikipedia.  He looks to be an interesting man.