From Xico

PLEASE READ THIS! Health care coverage issues clarified very well

(It will be a bit slow on the blog for the next couple of weeks-- too many jobs, too little time.)

The health care coverage issue has taken on characteristics of insanity.  I thought people in the US were supposed to be PRACTICAL, CAN-DO types. At  this point, the mess is incredible: wingnuts on the right and their very happy supporters in the insurance, big pharma and private hospital business are managing to blur the vision of ordinary folks to the extent that they can no longer separate the wheat from the chaff.

Instead of being helpful educators and clear thinkers and speakers, the Democrats, from the Blue to the Leftish have caved, pretty much.  Of course a bunch of them get big bucks from big medical lobbies....whoda guessed?

Meanwhile, the best approaches are drowning.  I favor single-payer.  Let's say that's too abrupt...okay, let's find some combination which at least favors the people of the country for now and head for single payer.

Just so you can understand how propaganda is smothering common sense, here is an excellent artice in the New England Journal of Medicine that explains how manipulated language is deceiving us all: Download 440.  The author points out that assumptions about "American values" really have nothing to do with the practical issues of efficient health care coverage for Americans.  He demonstrates how under single payer systems we'd actually have MORE choice, not less, than we do now, and why.  He points out that we are a diverse country and that the people who dealt in the propaganda of the right in fact lost the elections in 2009.

I wish DEMOCRATS would remember that.

Paul Krugman has pointed out that the six senators (Blue Dog Democrats) most responsible for decimating health care legislation come from states which altogether have a population less than the state of New Jersey.  He also describes the errors in understanding the financing of health care...it won't cost more to us taxpayers than the mess we have now.  Here is a link to Krugman's blog.  Here's a link to his column in today's NY Times.

If you think the New England Journal of Medicine and Paul Krugman and the NY Times are somehow agents of dangerous, lurking commies or something, you need to learn how to evaluate evidence and think critically about issues which exist in the real world and which should be discussed from the point of view of what's practical. The only ideological components should be: 1. Will it efficiently cover me and my family?  2. Will it cover everyone, at least for the basics of decent treatment for serious illnesses? 

So You Think Mexico is Corrupt.....

Gail Collins in the New York Times on politicians in New York, New Jersey, California and Nevada, for just a start.  And this is just very recent news. It's funny on the one hand, on the other, among many, many other things, the once-stellar  California system of education and its once stellar University of California are being decimated.  

And they didn't even mention Texas, home of the Tea Parties and good ole boy Rick Perry.

Little old ladies must love this shot of Rick:

I bet Sarah Palin does, too.

Anyway, the Tea Parties are connected to Rick's being champion of Texas sovereignty and turning down stimulus money for it.

A good blog for good ole Texas gossip is South Texas Chisme.  My friend Escotito de New Orleans says Louisiana is awful.  I imagine it is.  Which actually gets us back to DC and the fact that Mississippi is swimming in money for post-Katrina repairs (good ole Republican guv, good ole Republican Senators) while Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, is not.

Hey, folks, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Mexican Church Does Facebook, etc.

Mexican Catholicism is many-faceted, many-splendored, maddeningly obtuse and incredibly progressive. It can unite communities for good and for ill. It can be a force of love, or bitterly harsh. It can be completed and comfortably melded with the indigenous beliefs of tiny communities or as papist as the church in Rome.It can be and do all these things, or some of them, or none of them, depending on where you are and whom you are talking with. It is embedded in the being of most Mexicans.  Sometimes things Catholic in Mexico can move me to tears, as standing in the Iglesia de Maria Magdalena did in Xico last weekend.

Today the Conference of Mexican Bishops announced that it was "launching an interactive projective for cell telephones through which they would download interactive materials like prayers and rosaries to attract the faithful and to capture new followers."

According to the article in El Universal by Noemí Gutiérrez, "This effort is going to be part of the use of new technologies as part of the campaign called, 'Family, I know what you are' which will begin this Sunday on a national level.  The program will not judge who makes up the families.

"Oscar Sotelo [Church spokesman] said that it is a social reality that families have changed and all kinds of different kinds can be found which are headed by a grandmother, an uncle or s0me other family member....

"When asked  how the church and program would support families in which the members are homosexuals, he made clear that the catholic Church does not discriminate nor reject.  'We will not judge those who make up the family.'

"Sotelo and Cardona recognized that the Catholic Church arrived late in the era of technology and now there are few dioceses which have multimedia equipment like the archdocese of Mexico which has its own internet page (Siamae) and a weekly information newsletter, "From the Faith."

"Father Omar Sotelo further said that during the next meeting of the CEM in November,....a proposal to create an Episcopal Pastoral commission of Information to promote the use of these technolgies.

"At the beginning, he explained, they would use networks like Twitter and Facebook in the short term, and they envision the prompt creation of a network for the church itself."

----

So you can check out promotional announcements of the program here or here if you are curious to learn more.

Xico Fiesta 2009 -- Maria Magdalena and her church

The church interior is breathtakingly lovely for Fiesta.  My pictures only give you poor shadows.

Here is a view looking down the main aisle to the altar. All the flowers are fresh. People work for days and days to bring this to fruition.

Wall hanging along side.

Side chapel

Maria in one of her Fiesta dresses (more below).  People come and touch her skirt and then kiss their hands.  This is the Maria that is carried in the daily processions.

Looking towards the Maria that is always on the altar.  You can not see Christ on the crucifix in this picture, but he is there above her. The women in the front were working on decorating the church.

Maria close up.

Maria of the Fiesta has a place of honor to the right of the altar.  I don't have a photo of it.  But I do have photos of some of the hundreds of dresses she has worn over the years.  Each year, dresses are made for each day of the fiesta.  Leading families in the community are appointed to make them.  They I don't think have a choice in the matter, but they do regard it as an honor.  The dresses are extravagant and made with great care.

There is a museum behind the church in which the dresses are exhibited.  There are so many, that only a few can be shown to their advantage at a time.

Below is the museum.

Here is one of the four or five aisles packed with clothes.  Some are kept in cases on the left.

Here is a gown from 1910

One from 1936

And one from 2004

At the front of the museum, you find a model of a clown which says 

Dancing Xiqueño, Dance of the Clowns. Danzante actually signifies someone dancing in a procession.

Here is a model in the museum of a bull cart which I mentioned in the previous post.  It is surrounded by a lot of flowers -- these are artificial -- so it is a bit hard to see.

And finally, two pictures of Maria Magdalena hung on house fronts.

The first, quite simple:

The one below, quite fancy:

Xico Fiesta 2009: La Alfombra and a bit of Xico history (Updated with running of the bulls information-- see Note)

Xico is in the midst of celebrating its Fiesta de Santa Maria Magdalena which runs from July 18 to July 26  It is a big, extravagant, noisy affair with everything from deeply religious ceremonies and processions and rituals to a bull run, bull fights, endless food and drink, dancing, firecrackers, carny rides, and a sawdust carpet running the entire length of the main street thrown in. It is Xico's "honey season,"* the time when the order and control and work of every day are cast aside for eight days at least, and to some extent for the whole month of July. 

This year, we took some friends from the US to see the carpet, the alfombra, on July 19, the day it was being made.  This day tends towards the more sedate as Xiqueños work on complicated designs and people watch.  The finished alfombra is deliberately destroyed by the procession bearing Maria Magdalena up to the church.

Designs on each section of the rug make reference to Xiqueño themes.  Some are church-y or at least reflect a formal Spanish-influence which can be seen in the main church of Xico, devoted to Maria Magdalena:

Maria Magdalena appears in some -- this is the version of her which this year adorns many doorways, framed by designs made by the inhabitants of the houses.

In this one, Maria Magdalena is seen in procession up to the church on the carpet. You can also see a rendering of the Texolo waterfall just outside Xico.

 

The bulls get their picture in in the form of a bull tossing a human participant in the running of the bulls. See NOTE below for update.

The processions always include many groups of people dancing along with a fake bull in a cage which one or more of the dancers carry on his shoulders.  The cages are armed with cohetes, rockets, which go off very noisily during processions and all kinds of other random-seeming times. You can see one in the carpet, too. The dancers wear cowbells and often wave branches.

Clowns show up in a number of places, including in la alfombra:

Clown and clown masks:

In these designs above, it might seem that the colonial heritage dominates, but it is not really so.  Xico's past is long indeed. Below are a couple of representations from it.

I don't know the exact origin of these particular drawings, but I do know that they definitely relate to Xico's prehispanic past, which was quite extensive.

The area in which the present Xico and the original Xico, now Xico Viejo are found was first inhabited something like 800 years before the common era (BC).  From then till about 100 common era (AD), the inhabitants developed pottery, black with white borders, black and dark red of the era called late preclassical and early classical. Between the years 600 and 1250 CE, the area reached its height of development before it was invaded.  The people who lived there were Totonaca, and their traditions were those of the Totonaca who lived in the flatlands and mountains of the southern Gulf Coast Their pottery got to be pretty fancy.

By 1300, various groups were invading the area, especially Toltecs and Mexica, or people popularly called Aztecs.  Perhaps in response to these invasions, the original people built a significant structure on the top of one of the surrounding hills  It was a platform enclosed by retaining walls, with access ramps and maybe living quarters on the terraces. They managed to repel the Aztecs so by the time the Spanish arrived, they were independent of domination by the Triple Alliance.  The Spanish reported finding a well-defended area in which some five or six thousand farmers could be converted into warriors.

The Spanish were led to Xico by the Totonaca of Cempoala near the coast.  They were following a series of stops on a route from the coast to the Valley of Mexico which included Xico and which were held by allies who opposed the Aztecs. This route led the Spanish through a mountainous area riddled with canyons and then south of Cofre de Perote and through the broad dry valley between it and Pico de Orizaba.  This seems a somewhat unintuitive way to go, but it is likely due to the fact that their guides wanted to avoid areas where the Aztecs held sway. It's also possible they chose the route south of Cofre because it was easier in the rainy season.  Or maybe for both reasons.

In any event, long before there existed the Fiesta of Maria Magdalena, the area was populated and engaged in trade and wars with neighbors and folks pretty far afield There is archaeological and historical work going on in the area today, mostly, I think by scholars at Universidad Veracruzana.  

There's also an interesting archaeological project involving primary school children in Xico Viejo (Xico Viejo is the original site of Xico and is about 7 kilometers from the current Xico.  More about that in the next history lesson.)  There were thousands of people in the original Xico before the Spanish came and moved it.  Today there are only a few hundred.  The children go to primary school in the village but have to walk an hour to get to secondary school.  A Mexican educational organizaton called SEPiensa has written about its involvement in a project in which the elementary school children are involved collecting, asking their families about, drawing and writing about archaeological artifacts which they and other people in the community find on a regular basis.  They would like to establish a small archaeological museum to show and explain these things.  This is a delightful article, and another worthy cause for anyone interested in donating money.  It is in Spanish, but you can just about figure it out without knowing very much.  Here is the link.

More articles on the Xico Fiesta, Maria Magdalena, Xico history and other stuff to follow.

*"honey season" was a term I learned many years ago in graduate school.  The anthropologist writing about a group livingin the rainforests of western Uganda described a time of year when for a brief few days or weeks, enough food had been gathered for survival, and the group cut loose with fermented honey, throwing caution and normal restraints to the wind.  I remember that we learned that many societies, especially those that have to depend on strict discipline and careful use of their resources most of the year,have periods like this.  Until the recent crisis, it seemed that for some in the US the honey season was never ending.

NOTE:  A friend got some excellent shots of the bull-running and has written some good commentary on it and his experiences here.  Scroll through the most recent three blogs.  He mentions that some people were injured.  They were taken by helicopter to Xalapa.  The helicopters flew over our house. We were glad to hear they were ambulance 'copters.

 

Starry Starry Night in Xalapa

July 29 marks the 119th anniversary of Vincent Van Gogh's death.  Here are snippets of the article talking about Van Gogh (1853-1890) that appeared today in the online version of El Diario de Xalapa, with a front page notice. It is by Isabel Serrano, art critic and historian.  The translation is mine. I've interspersed some images of Van Gogh's work.

Vincent's life was solitary, and he came to feel sad and abandoned.  At every turn, he sensed the rejection of a society which treated him indifferently. Perhaps because of the uncaring attitude it showed, and, among other things, because of its incomprehension of his work, during his life, he sold only one or two of his paintings.  He was an uncommunicative man who passed by silently, but this did not keep him from making extroardinary paintings and drawings of landscapes, still-lifes, campesinos, portraits, self portraits, and aspects of everyday life.

From childhood, Vincent revealed an intense temperament and a very difficult personality, which meant that he failed in many of the activities he undertook; however, he succeeded in his work as a missionary among underground miners, whose pain and great weariness he understood.  These experiences he brought to some of his most famous paintings.

Today we contemplate his work and we clearly see that in the midst of his internal torment, he had a pressing need to convey strong emotions.... [The resulting] would pass, unbeknownst to him, with great success to posterity.

....Van Gogh was tireless, and he knew how to capture the dusks, the streets, the valleys and the wheatfields of the region where he lived.He painted in a different manner from those who had come before him.  His paintings are distingished by a loose, sinuous brushstroke, conveing great emotion; thick black lines which enclose warm colors and an intense ligiht which bathes every scene with splendor.

His interest, almost an obsession, with sunflowers inspired him to create various works in which they occupied the place of protagonist.  The sunflower is different from all other flowers, with its center turning towards the sun and with its great size.  In his paintings, it apears to us as if the flowers were turning towards Vincent.  Vincent knew these characteristics very well. He had devoted hours to studying sunflowers, he observed them thoroughly and drew them over and over again, puttting them in the right position with relation to the sun.  Throughout his life, he finished many works with yellow sunflowers which sometimes appeared over neutral backgrounds, others in the midst of exceptionally brilliant tones.

On one occasion, Vincent decided to paint fourteen sunflowers in a round clay container.  When he finished, he hung it on the wall and spent the whole night gazing passionately at it.  At that moment, he could not imagine that with the passage of two years, it would become one of the most famous works of art in history, a work admired by all of us ho have seen it, a work which came from the very hands of that misunderstood man who dedicated his days and nights to painting without rest.

....

You of course recognize that the colors online do not do justice to the real thing. Even more, the paintings are more or less flattened, when in fact, Van Gogh's paintstrokes seem still to live.  I was lucky enough to grow up in New York City.  A Starry Night hung in the Museum of Modern Art.  I could just go and stand there and get lost in it.

Plan Merida: Does the US economy need the War on Drugs?

Groan.  Richard Grabman over at Mex Files is the real blogger in English on Mexican topics. Once again, he has posted on the topic du jour with more information and ahead of me. This time, he captured the news from Reuters on the bidding for the contracts to provide the hardware for Plan Mérida, the joint program for the US to supply technical and arms equipment to Mexico in the struggle with narcos and organized crime.  You knew of course that Plan Mérida was in reality just another means of providing income to US arms producers.  To sum up a few points in case you're not up to following the links:

• Private US security firms will get most of the $1.4 billion dollars pledged.
• Some of the equipment thus far provided is pretty useful, including armoring police cars.  (Those of you who live here are accustomed to seeing police riding in the back of open pick-up trucks).
• The militarization of the drug conflict has led to increased violence. 
• Very little of the stuff has reached Mexico (not that it necesarily should) 
• There are concerns in the US (at least on the part of one US congresswoman) about the involvement of US contractors rather than US government people: contractors are harder to monitor (see Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan). 
• In Mexico, there is fear of becoming like Colombia and Iraq.   

(Here is a link to the Primer on Merida at CIP Americas Program for more information on the particulars.  The posting is a year old, and there have been some changes, implementations, and lack thereof, but the Primer still provides a huge amount of information.) Anyway, with the PRI victory in the recent elections for the House of Deputies which brings the PRI to dominate the legislature, there is likely to be some shift in the execution of the narco wars.

  

Today in La Jornada, there is a sharply critical editorial on Plan Merida, and so you can get a feel for how at least the leftish press feels about it, I translate it below.

Plan Mérida represents, it seems, much more than a simple security and cooperation agreement  between the Mexican and US governments which addresses the fight against narcotráfico and the fight against terrorism. It also constitutes, as today's edition of the paper informs us, a splendid opportunity for dozens of our neighboring country's businesses: some 40 US military-industrial corporations are hoping to receive a substantial share of the hundreds of millions of dollars remaining (after a substantial reduction) in the mountain of aid that Washington is giving the Mexican authorities.  Among the companies can be found Dyncorp, Northrop Grumman, NOC and Blackwater [now Xe], firms which in the various military conflicts undertaken by the US throughout the world have turned war, destruction and human suffering into bulging profits for their stockholders.

This initiative was criticised before it was signed because of, among other things, its unilateral, militaristic and simplistic focus on the problems of criminality and security, because of its similarities to Plan Colombia --which injected that South American country into the existing counterinsurgency activity--, because of the sacrifice in matters of sovereignty which it entails, and because it plunges Mexico to causes which, besides being outdated, are not its problems, like the war against terrorism undertaken by the last US administration.

Newly available information adds a new negative aspect, and one that is particularly alarming, to the agreement signed by President Felipe Calderón and then-U.S. President George W. Bush: The contracts dedicated by the US Congress to help Mexico are actually a subsidy for the voracious military industry of the US which is desperate for new war scenarios -- that is to say new markets -- following the announcement of the exit of the US troops occupying Iraq.

There is a perverse cycle which links the military-industrial complex of the superpower to geo-strategic decisions of the US government: on numerous occasions, the decision to involve itself in armed conflicts or to generate them has been economically motivated precisely to create business opportunities for the war industry.  The concerns expressed about democracy, liberty, seucrity and peace were generally just rhetoric added to justify the action, which includes subordinating geopolitical calculations to the goal of business's selling arms and military technology.

With these facts in mind, one can't ignore the risk that the military-industrial interests of our neighboring country pressure it to exaggerate, prolong or extend threats real or imagined in Mexican territories for the purpose of perpetuating themselves.  What started as a police problem of public security can be escalated, in this perverse logic, with unpredictable consequences, certainly undesirable ones for Mexico.  For now, it is logical to suppose that the arms and defense equipment factories have undertaken  to present the worst possible scenarios of Mexico's current situation to the government in Washington.

Everything mentioned above confirms, one more time, the central mistake of the anti-crime strategy formulated and put into place by the current Mexican government.  The battle agaisnt drug traffic and organized crime in general ought to be re-planted, in a radical fashion, on a different foundation.

As Richard notes in his post, Read Me! (where you should also follow his link to the Nation article, also given in my previous post) the drug thuggery is really woven into a much more extensive and grave set of problems which exist between the US and Mexico and which in fact are the results of the ruthlessness of neoliberal economics. Of course, the military-industrial corporate complex in the US has no interest in dealing with these bigger problems.

"Read This!" at Mex Files

This being a very good and pithy summation of everything wrong in US-Mexican relations and some reasons we both have big problems..

Mujeres con huevos -- indeed

Means....women with eggs, yes indeed.  And it is the name of a women's cooperative in our area now with branches in several small communities. In a shared area, community members with some volunteer help build chicken coops for maybe forty or fifty gallinas who also have a fair amount of open space in which to hunt and peck as chickens do.  The eggs produced are not truly organic because among other things the chickens are vaccinated against disease and the land is not certified organic, a process which makes it impossible for many small-scale producers to become organic producers.  The hens are called criollos: they are varied breeds but proven to be survivors in our area. They are grown without hormones or other additives and they eat wheat, corn, grass, leaves and bugs -- some of which they find as they hunt and peck.  No industrial feed is used. The eggs are quite delicious and are now sold in a large number of stores from here to Mexico City.

The latest project is in Matlalapa, the next-to-the-last town on one of the roads going up the slopes of Perote. I've posted about it before here and here. Below you can see Matlalapa towards the upper left hand corner on the map.  You can see where we live in the lower right corner.  The distance between our house to Matlalapa is maybe ten miles or twelve miles. Very roughly.

Our instructions were to find a woman named Doña Lucia who could show us the way to the project. 

Below is a picture of sheep on the road to her house which is behind the shed whose roof you can see.

We walked down to her house where she welcomed us warmly and then accompanied us with her granddaughter, who was about ten, the rest of the way.  Somewhere in a previous post I think I mentioned that Kayeko, a Japanese volunteer who lived with our friend Doña Gloria in Xico commuted daily by bus from Xico to Matlalapa.  We had the vague notion that she labored in a couple of small greenhouses in which people were experimenting with growing tomatoes.  I imagined her the only Japanese person in Matlalapa.   But we were wrong.  Matlalapa is the site of an extensive but unobtrusive community development project sponsored by Japan. which has brought a new elementary school staffed in part by the Japanese and a bunch of community education projects, including a computer literacy project for women, in addition to the nursery for growing tomatoes which are big round ones, not the normal pseudo-romano tomatoes which are the norm in markets and supermarkets alike (tomatoes are another whole topic).   The first time we drove up to Matlalapa a number of years ago, I had the feeling we were the first foreigners people had seen. This time we were hardly noticed.

Doña Lucia's granddaughter knew Kayeko and had had her as a teacher for a number of subjects.  She liked Kayeko and enjoyed having someone so different to learn from.  She didn't have a clear idea about where Japan was, so I explained what I knew.  She shook her head at the idea that a whole country could fit on an island.  

The Mujeres con Huevos project is actually in Cruz Blanca, just past Matlalapa, but the members of the group are from both towns.  It's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, in fact.  

The site is on the main road next to the government-sponsored community store. These stores, always white blue and dark pink, sell basic food products like beans at reduced prices in small communities.  They also sell basic medicines.  The proprietors can add some other products as well, including popcorn, which we bought here in Ursulo Galván at our local community store.

The construction of the chicken coop is under the watchful eye of a volunteer from a Baha'i group who lives in Coatepec.  She brought some other Baha'i with her, but the main work is in the hands of the people from Matlalapa. Below you see construction under way.  

The idea is to keep everything simple and easy to maintain. With roosts, this little house apparently will have room for forty gallinas.

Since school is out, people bring their kids with them.  Doña Lucia's granddaughter had been designated the unofficial teacher, and here you can see her with a a few boys who are drawing.

We were invited to eat with everyone in the building immediately behind the community store.  We had chicken soup with big pieces of chicken, tortillas and orange drink.  

Everything had been cooked on the stove you see in the picture below.  It is a simple and inexpensive one which is very good because it has a chimney to eliminate smoke and it gets warm enough all over to warm the room in the winter.  The woman who cooked said they had become common in the area.  I don't know if it consumes a lot of wood or not.

Mujeres con huevos is a wonderful project and still growing. We would really like to get a project started here in Colonia Ursulo Galván.  My neighbor is soliciting names of women who might be interested.  Of course, help is always needed, especially for things like tools and nails and materials to get individual efforts off the ground.

Fake Tequila and Charles Darwin

More on the fake tequila story from this morning's Diario de Xalapa (my translation):

The product [fake tequila], made from distilled alcohol, was seized a month ago and laboratory tests [chromatographic analysis] proved that it was a false product which didn't compy with the requirements for being a genuine product made from agave.

As part of the destruction protocol, the false tequila was thrown in the receptacles at the plant in the northern zone of Veracruz which treats residual waters whr ee it was mixedwith discharges of black water to be incorporated in the cleaning process after which it would all go into the sea (Gulf of Mexico).

...
En Jalisco, [Ramón González Figueroa, director of the Tequila Regulatory Council] emphasized that in Jalisco [state which is the origin of much if not most agave used in tequila] the number of people wanting to sell fake tequila is declining. Recently four people were detained for this practice which damages the tequila industry.

"Attempts to export fake tequila are occuring with less frequency, but it is [in Jalisco] that the problem which discredits the image of Mexican tequila in international markets occurs.  The good thing is that there is a federal government infrastructure to monitor the product and to ensure its authenticity," he emphasized.

He said that at present the falsification of labels and elaboration of false tequila is a serious crime and that a permanent operative functions under the  Procurador General's Office [I think more or less like the Justice Department in the US] together with the Office of Consumer Protection and the Secretary of the Economy.

In the last five years, he stressed, there have been strong  measures taken against fake tequila at customs in Nuevo Léon, Tijuana and Veracruz, which have led to the capture of more than 150,000 liters of fake tequila. Also there have been efforts to combat its use  in countries where it is consumed, such as Uruguay and Spain.

**************

And now: Mexico has drawn a much clearer and bolder line between religion and government than has the United States.  This is very evident in the schools.  There is no issue with teaching. evolution in them.  Aspects of the theory of evolution exist not only in the schools but on them: