From Xico

A Mexican Perspective on Mexico's Problems and a bit on the United States

I have translated sections of an editorial today in La Jornada written by Napoleón Gómez Urrutia. He is the head of Mexico's union of mine workers. After you read the editorial, you will find a bit of information about Gómez Urrutia. He is indeed an interesting person.

 

México y EU, Grandes desafíos
Napoleón Gómez Urrutia 
24 enero 2013
....Mexico and the government of Enriue Peña Nieto should maintain a "healthy distance" in collaborating [with the US and Canada] in 
some matters and in strengthening national sovereignty in others in order protect the natural riches and to provide justice, respect and dignity for Mexicans. Peña Nieto has to prove himself to be what Mexico needs 
and expects of him. He can´t improvise or commit serious errors which put into play the destiny of the nation. Sufficient accumulated problems exist because they were neglected for more than a decade....- 
Regarding the issue of migration, both Obama and Peña Nieto should move toward a true agreement which respects the dignity and the rights of the Mexican workers in the United States. This should be one of both presidents ’major reforms, and it has already been proposed by Obama. The president of the US ought to push to regularize the legal status of more than 11 million people who still find themselves in ambiguous circumstances. But it is also a grave responsibility for the government of Mexico. The government has the responsibility of creating worthwhile jobs to stem the flow of Mexicans toward the neighboring countries of North America. In fact, there already exist voices, especially in the unions of the US which are demanding that their government find a solution to this phenomenon....

We can't ignore the fact that Mexico has become more vulnerable. A natural catastrophe or some social or political conflict could put at grave risk the ...system of peace, security and tranquility 
which is [in any case] superficial. One ought not to be falsely optimistic. The risks are there and they derive from carelessness and complete neglect during the years of the previous administrations which further drags Mexico towards a potential crisis. The insecurity of 
unemployment, the world financial crisis, poverty and marginalization along with climate changes and unexpected meteorological phenomena, continue to simmer under the surface and time does not permit improvisation or the application of wrong policies which only serve to aggravate the situation.

Mexico can no longer wait, nor can the anxiety and incertainty of Mexicans continue [without consequences]. 

For this reason, Mexico's government, as a signatory along with the US and Canada of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ought to stop neglecting the subject of labor and instead meet the obligations of
the Complementary Labor Agreement is included in NAFTA. 
Canada and the US have sufficient power to revise NAFTA in this regard and to ensure that the government of Mexico ceases its repression and constant violation of labor and human rights of the working classes and of unions.

Today Peña Nieto has before him the responsibility of achieving national reconciliation and finding the new opportunities which the population wants and hopes for. Mexico's present model of development cannot continue to operate only for the benefit of the few.

This is the reality of a country like Mexico which has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in very vew hands. Mexico ought to have a social conscience which changes the high levels of exploitation of and injustice to the enormous majority of the population it exploits....

Obama said very clearly: "A country with extreme inequality has no future." We could add that a nation without freedom and justice neither can advance to greater levels of development. If a true state of law 
does not exist and the government is only used to benefit a small minority, then Mexico will be at permanent risk.  

History will be the witness.

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Napoleon Gómez Urrutia is the head of the miner's union in Mexico. He has been, according to El Proeceso, "self-exiled" in Canada since 2006 when ten (or eleven) accusations and warrants for his apprehension were issued against him for charges of fraud.. Ten (or eleven) have been resolved in his favor and there is apparently no current warrant for hi apprehension. However, not all miners support him, and yesterday some ordered that he be apprehended for the embezzlement of 55 milllion dollars.

He was re-elected to the union presidency in 2008 and actively leads it from his Canadian home.

In future posts I will address the issue of labor and social rights that indeed was included in NAFTA but which have sort of faded into the mist in the US as well as Mexico.

Trade, agricultural  and labor issues are very complex and fluid and important.  Things are not always what they seem. The same issues of inequality which exist in the US and which seem to be perpetuated by current systems exist in Mexico with greater consequences for more people.

‘Gospel of Intolerance’ - NYTimes.com

The llink is atWhat drives some US Christians to such extremely hateful views based on tiny and disputable parts of the Bible? What drives Ugandans to accept these beliefs? This is Christianism at its worst today. And indeed, although many say Christianism at least is not violent as is Islamism, here you see it can be. the bottom.

The English Language Book Exchange at Caftan Rojo, Xicoténcatl 44 on the corner of Zaragosa in Coatepec (in other words, maybe three blocks into Coatepec on the street you take when coming from Xalapa) is woefully unadvertised.  Especially for fiction lovers, it is a bountiful resource which can save big bucks on Kindle purchases.  Spanish speakers who would like to improve their English skills by reading will also find tons of choices here, from pretty easy to read mysteries to really convoluted classics.  UNFORTUNATELY, you'll have to wait till next week (maybe Wednesday) to be able to wander around the shelves because the room housing it all is being repainted and I think new shelves are being put up.  However, you can browse the stacks of books on tables in a nearby room if you promise not to knock any of them over.  The non-fiction is also in this room and is SHELVED.  

In addition to English language books, there is a pretty hefty selection of Spanish books now in boxes under the tables in the nearby room.  The Spanish books include classics, journals, fiction and poetry as well as translations from English of some popular mysteries.  Diving into PD James in Spanish helped my Spanish.  You haven't read an English mystery until you've read it in Spanish.

The guiding rule is supposed to be "Take a book, bring a book" meaning you can keep what you take it if you replace it with something else or return the original.  HOWEVER, there are now too many English language books so you can pretty well keep what you take.  

What started me on this post is the book I just added to the two piles of books sitting near my front door waiting to be returned.  The book I just finished, The Royal Physician's Visit by the Swedish writer Per Olov Enquist (I promise to return it) is one I never would have thought to look for if I hadn't been helping move the books to ready the library for painting. Or maybe I would have: you can browse the hundreds of books at your own pace and find any number of unexpected interest to delight you.

So The Royal Physician's Visit. Set in the late 18th century in Denmark, its seed is the reign of King Christian VII. This is an historical novel, but the history is invisible.  Enquist isn't interested (I don't think) in providing period details of ladies' finery or castles. Rather, he paints complicated and sensitive portraits of people who come to seem as vivid and real as people you know.  He writes in multiple styles, drifting from classic story-telling to something resembling journalism, then jumping to sudden, abrupt descriptions and short choppy sentences punctuated with multiple question marks and exclamation points. Sometimes he circles around and comes back to literally repeat himself after having taken us to a different place.  He weaves in ideas about madness, corruption, ambition, decency.  He asks, through his characters, whether indeed the ideals of the Enlightenment which are supposed to be the foundation of our own nation can survive in the real world.  Everything is turned upside down.  Is evil necessary for good, not to provoke good, but simply for good to exist?  

Well, enough.  Please make it a point to visit the Book Exchange, especially after it is back together again.  It'll sure save you some of the money  you might spend on Kindle books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Dark Materials: The Music of Depression - NYTimes.com

Depression is, to put it mildly and tritely, complex. I have learned that "fighting" it doesn't really work. I remember reading a Buddhist manual on treating depression years ago which suggested, more or less, "going" with it. In this article, you can see some of that. It makes sense if you aren't drowning. I have learned a lot from watching myself be depressed. The worst thing about serious depression I think is how self-centered it makes me, how self-absorbed. Yet somehow, watching, learning about other people, other lives, is connected with depression in a good way.

The link to the NY Times article is below.

 

It's Hard to Figure Out an Exciting Title for this JSTOR News that Affects Mexico

But it is exciting.  For anyone who has found herself banging against JSTOR's stone wall of "no access" at least without paying big bucks for a momentary (well it seems momentary) glimpse of an article --the ONLY article it seems -- dealing in depth with a subject you are researching, JSTOR is offering a way in.  If limited, it is still significant, and it is free.  To find out how to use this entrance, go to JSTOR.org and you will find the homepage reads, "A New Chapter Begins."  And indeed it does.  You can sign up to read three articles at a time, each with a limit of two weeks, for free.  Don't laugh!  It really is better than nothing.

Here are some of the journals you can now access (mostly in Spanish) that deal for the most part with Mexico:

Historia Mexicana  (El Colegio de Mexico)

Estudios Sociologicos (El Colegio de Mexico)

Revista de Historia de America (Pan American Insstitute of Geography and History)

Critica: Revista Hispanoamerica de Filosofia (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM)

Latin American Literary Review (Latin American Literary Review Press)

Revista Geografia (Pan American Institute of Geography and History)

Estudios Demograficos y Urbanos (El Colegio de Mexico)

Estudios de Africa y Asia (El Colegio de Mexico) (Just for a change of pace)

Estudios Economicos (El Colegio de Mexico)

 

There are 1200 journals available, obviously about a lot more than Mexico.  Enjoy!

 

 

Teller Magician Profile - Teller Interview - Esquire

The link is at the bottom.

Even if you are not a fan of magic, this is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Teller of Penn and Teller and magic itsel.

Bruce Springsteen as American Prophet from a Kind of Mexican Perspective

In Mexico's La Jornada, David Brooks (not THAT David Brooks) wrote a year end piece for his column "American Curios"which he began this way (my translation):

"You can finish the year by repeating again [the news about] political fights, killings, hurricanes, fiscal cliffs, unemployment and hunger, about useless and obscene wars, or maybe about all the disasters. But there are other sounds as important, or possibly even more so.  There are two such people this year of 2012.  They are not presidents or leaders; they are not the most successful, nor, by a long shot, the newest.  They are two masters who hurl the past towards the future with a fury, a collective fury which is always just under the surface (for good or for ill).  But they also insist on making order out of chaos, on loving, on facing their demons and finally on inviting everyone to join in song and dance together.

"The first of these masters is Bruce Springsteen, the expression of blue collar America's conscience in his recent album (the seventeenth) which, if you listen well and with care, you will hear how, as a 'nobody' he crystallizes the immediate moment  for the nobodies, from the nobodies.  Perhap no other expression summarizes so clearly the great crisis through which this country is living....[The second is Buddy Guy about whom Brook also writes movingly in the same column.  You can read that in Spanish by following the "American Curios" link above.]

"We Are Alive", on his latest CD Wrecking Ball deals with the sweat and the struggle of workers and civil right movements starting in the nineteenth century and includes the struggles of Mexican immigrants. As he sings, 'We are alive/and though our bodies lie alone here in the dark/our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark/to stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart/A voice cried out, I was killed in Maryland in 1877/When the railroad worker made thier stand/Well, I was killed in 1963 one Sunday morning in Birmingham/Well, I died last year crossing the southern desert/my children left  behind in San Pablo/Well, they have left our bodies here to rot/Ay, please let them know we are alive/Oh, and though we lie here alone in the dark/Our souls will rise to carry the fire and light the spark/to fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.' [Lyrics are from the Springteen original].

"Springsteen is 'the most influenctial musical voice in the United States," says Rolling Stone. It was for this reason that President Barack Obama called upon him for the final stage of the election (thus a confession that the person who had greater moral authority and criedibililty among workers and "common people" was not the Democratic candidate but rather The Boss).  And while he was doing this, he undertook a national television telethon to collect funds for the victims of Hurricane Sandy which had devastated the coast of his home state, New Jersey, and he began to organize a megaconcert with the same message that he brought to fruition this month in New York and that was transmitted to the entire world.  At sixty three, Springsteen, at the time, offered some of the best (and longest) concerts of his carreer.

"His musical explorations have brought him through history, through music he heard as a youngster, discovering heroes like Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seger, rebels of folk music, or more accurately, of common people. Some say that hs music is an exploration of the weave of American life, of pleasure and redemption, of its dreams and disasters, and hope in everything.

"he is also a pure rock-and-roller or, as he says, a pastor of the majesty, the mystery and the ministry of rock and roll....[He says] I can't promise eternal life, but I can promis you life right now."

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This may only have a brief reference to Mexicans, but it expresses much sympathy for the plight of migrants. I am happy that Springsteen is recognized in La Jornada.  He courses through the blood of a lot of Americans, and as an easterner, whenever I hear him, he brings me back, with passion, to my roots.  I believe he also speaks a language Mexicans are moved by: not only migrants, but workers, campesinos, crowds rushing through the cities who can hardly make ends meet.

Social Withdrawal and Violence — Newtown, Connecticut — NEJM

More on mental illness

Fixing Our Food Problem - NYTimes.com

Production of crops also affects all these issues. As readers of this blog (on which I now all too occasionally post) know these issues affect Mexico in spades.