From Xico

Migration: Crimes of the Trump Administration

Standing on the road's dividing line are a father, a mother, a little girl of seven or eight and a baby, maybe 8 months old, in the father's arms.  They are not Mexicans. They are asking for a handout and I give them some money. Once when I asked a family not unlike this one where they came from, the father said Honduras.  Now, in order to avoid US sanctions, people from Honduras, Guatemala and Honduras can be held in Mexico.  I can't remember for sure, but I think they are supposed to be able still to apply for hearings in the US, but they can't enter. I don't know how these refugees are living, but somehow they are.  Compared to some horror stories, I suppose they are lucky.

Trumps alleged efforts to push the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden seem like small potatoes given his administration's treatment of refugees.  I am not talking about letting everyone come in to the US who wants to. I'm talking about providing humane treatment.  The only reason people born in the US are allowed to stay is because they had the luck to be born there.  Where we come from is really not a matter of choice.

For one account of migrants, read this story in the New Yorker of ICE coming to Morton, Mississippi:

About one in ten of the city’s residents was jailed or fired after raids at local chicken plants. But, for most, Morton is still home.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/after-ice-came-to-morton-mississippi

For one about children, read this one:

From The New York Times:

Detentions of Child Migrants at the U.S. Border Has Surged to Record Levels

Detentions have surged as the Trump administration’s aggressive policy toward migrants has collided with an exodus of children fleeing Central America.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/world/americas/unaccompanied-minors-border-crossing.html

Or this one about detention camps from The Atlantic Monthly:

The Trump administration’s commitment to deterring immigration through cruelty has made horrifying conditions in detention facilities inevitable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-facilities/593239/?utm_source=atl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share

 

These are just three stories I found over the past several days.  Obviously there are many more.

This is one set of horrendous abouses Trump should be impeached for, and those perpetrating these policies should, at the very least, be fired.

As I said I am not advocating open borders through which anyone and everyone can run.  But there are many, many other possibilities not motivated by irrational hatred and racism.

IF YOU HAVE A CONSCIENCE, A SOUL, A HEART, YOU WILL WANT TO STOP TRUMP'S RACIST WALL

I wish we could all opérate with the knowledge that we are all very closely related under the skin.  Or even in the skin.  But we are also all humans and subject to human weaknesses. Fear jerks us around with practically no effort.  There is an article in the New York Times about how trauma and frightening situations cause us to misremember.  Leaders can stoke up fear and then feed you images that you file under "DANGEROUS".  From the beginning of his campaign, Trump has done this with immigrants.  He's been pounding at these awful lies about immigrants for two years and more now.  There are dangerous people in every culture.  Mexico itself has regiones where I wouldn't feel happy by myself.  But even in countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala where ordinary people are terrified by violent, lawless men, most people are not criminals, not rapists, not murderers. We have lived in Mexico for almost thirteen years.  We live in MEXICO, not an American settlement in Mexico.  our colonia, our village, has no other Americans.  An Englishman, now a Mexican citizen, farms outside the colonia.  We are as safe as in most places in the US which is to say pretty safe.  In the US, I experienced personally more crime than I have here by a long shot.

We have neighbors who have gone to the US and come back here to Mexico, their home.   Their stories are varied, but none of them are people to fear.  Most of the people who want to enter the US had situations to fear in their Central American home countries. Some have had situations to fear in Mexico. They would not have made their incredibly difficult journeys if they didn't. Sometimes they cannot make a living at home, so they try to get to the US.  It is, in a way, the fault of Americans for advertising the country as a land of plenty where anyone who makes the effort can succeed.  If you wanted to feed your family and you heard that myth over and over, wouldn't you want to go to the US?  And the US advertises itself as welcoming.  Remember "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"  This, of course is what greets us at the Statue of Liberty.

I am posting three links to articles, one by a former border agent remembering his experiences, one by that agent about a friend of his who now finds himself unable to return to his home and family in the US, and one by a Mexican angry at the unrelieved stereotypes Americans see in the media, on TV and in movies.  They are all worth reading, and of course I hope you do.  Please awaken to the horror that is Trump's border wall and the horrible racism he is stirring against people from south of the border.  I will be happy to discuss this, to provide information, whatever.  Just write comments.

The first is called "Has Any of Us Wept?"  and it can be found here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/01/17/has-any-one-of-us-wept/

The second is called "Confessions of a Former Border Patrol Agent.  It can be found here: https://www.gq.com/story/confessions-of-a-border-patrol-agent

The third is called Hollywood's Obsession with Cartels and it can be found here" https://nyti.ms/2H5AZT4

The first two are by Francisco Cantu, the third by Hector Tobar.

 

 

 

Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador Make Plans to Lessen Immigration

On Saturday, Jim and I watched part of the inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as President of Mexico.  Dare I say it was relaxing?  I supported AMLO pretty strongly.  No one can predict the future, but this is a man who seems determined to do good for the country.  And, yes, he is a socialist.

Among his many concerns,of course, is immigration.  Immigrants clustering around border cities are hard on Mexico and on the immigrants, more so than on the US which has created a mess for itself as well as a disastrous mess for many immigrants.  AMLO and those around him are proposing various approaches.  One of them is targeted aid to the three countries sending the most people: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  Below is my translation of an article on this subject in today's La Jornada by Alma E, Muñoz, Rosa Elvira Vargas and Nestor Jimenez.

You´ll notice there is no mention of the USA or of Trump.

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

Mexico City, 1 December -- The president fo Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, agreed with the governments of El Salvador, Guateala and Honduras to establish the bases of understanding for constructing a Plan of Integral Development which would propel the development and opportunities of the region, contributing to the prevention of the migration phenomenon and attacking its structural causes simultaneously.  [During the meal] which López Obrador offered his international guests in the National Palace, the document was signed by the presidents of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales Cabrera and of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado as well as by the Vice President of El Salvador, Óscar Samuel Ortiz Ascencio.

"El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are grateful for the initiative of the president of the United Mexican States at developing new resources and contributing with his own experience to this joint effort," the signed agreement said.

The agreement contemplates working on the creation of a fund, with the basic objective of implementing the Plan of Integral Development which includes program, projects and specific actions to bring about jobs and to combat poverty.

With this agreement, the government of Mexico emphasizes that it is committed to the region of the Northern Triangle to strengthen social development and combat in an integrated manner the causes of the migratory phenomenon.

The presidents told their respective ministries that they would work with the support of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL in the Spanish) to coordinate in the first trimester of 2019 the identification and unification of areas of existing opportunity, in accordance with the Plan of Integral Development and its future implementation  with the Objectives of Sustainable Development and the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations and the World Pact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.

 

Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador Make Plans to Lessen Immigration

On Saturday, Jim and I watched part of the inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as President of Mexico.  Dare I say it was relaxing?  I supported AMLO pretty strongly.  No one can predict the future, but this is a man who seems determined to do good for the country.  And, yes, he is a socialist.

Among his many concerns,of course, is immigration.  Immigrants clustering around border cities are hard on Mexico and on the immigrants, more so than on the US which has created a mess for itself as well as a disastrous mess for many immigrants.  AMLO and those around him are proposing various approaches.  One of them is targeted aid to the three countries sending the most people: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  Below is my translation of an article on this subject in today's La Jornada by Alma E, Muñoz, Rosa Elvira Vargas and Nestor Jimenez.

You´ll notice there is no mention of the USA or of Trump.

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

Mexico City, 1 December -- The president fo Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, agreed with the governments of El Salvador, Guateala and Honduras to establish the bases of understanding for constructing a Plan of Integral Development which would propel the development and opportunities of the region, contributing to the prevention of the migration phenomenon and attacking its structural causes simultaneously.  [During the meal] which López Obrador offered his international guests in the National Palace, the document was signed by the presidents of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales Cabrera and of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado as well as by the Vice President of El Salvador, Óscar Samuel Ortiz Ascencio.

"El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are grateful for the initiative of the president of the United Mexican States at developing new resources and contributing with his own experience to this joint effort," the signed agreement said.

The agreement contemplates working on the creation of a fund, with the basic objective of implementing the Plan of Integral Development which includes program, projects and specific actions to bring about jobs and to combat poverty.

With this agreement, the government of Mexico emphasizes that it is committed to the region of the Northern Triangle to strengthen social development and combat in an integrated manner the causes of the migratory phenomenon.

The presidents told their respective ministries that they would work with the support of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL in the Spanish) to coordinate in the first trimester of 2019 the identification and unification of areas of existing opportunity, in accordance with the Plan of Integral Development and its future implementation  with the Objectives of Sustainable Development and the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations and the World Pact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.

 

Good Guys and Bad Guys

Amurricans (or as a NY Times blogger called them/us, Amerks) exercising their rights:

  Foto Ap

Go Rick Perry Go!

Below you can find my translation of pieces of an article by several news agencies: Notimex, ap and Reuters which appears in today's La Jornada.

First a slight Rick Perry detour. 

Here is a photo of Rick Perry in glasses.

Perry may or may not need them,  but I suspect this pair is purely cosmetic.  There is no evidence of lense distortion of the eyes. Not even a tiny bit. They don't even magnify his eyes a bit the way glasses for presbyopia (older people's trouble seeing close--he surely needs some at 64. But he wouldn't want to wear THOSE in public). And you'll notice they are the um trendiest sort, the kind EVERYONE on TV is wearing.  Maybe he got the idea from Sarah Palin. 

On Sunday, Perry attended church at Clear Lake Evangelical Church in Iowa.  Notice the church is in Iowa.  In 2012 Perry soared and then crashed in Iowa.  At this church, according to the Washington Post, "He came for redemption.  . . . .  Rick perry held his arms across his torso and swayed as the choir sang. . . . He bowed his head while the pastor preached about 'God's perfect plan of salvation.'"

The Washington Post says that the border crisis "gives Perry an animating issue placing him at the forefront of Republican politics." The article goes on, "After church. . . Perry spoke about the influx of young immigrants in front of about 100 conservative activists who sat rapt inside a hot and steamy airplane hangar here.    When the governor said the words ´'securing the border,' he clenched his left fist, flexed his bicep and leaned his body forward. He paced side to side with a wireless microphone and no notes, bending his knees for emphasis. He looked like a Texas A&M football coach giving the aggies a pep talk.

.  .  .  .

"'I will tell you this,' he added, his voice growing louder.  'If the federal government does not do its constitutional duty to secure the southern border of the United States, the state of Texas will do it!'"  

"The activists rose to their feet and cheered.  Perry had scored a touchdown."

This is one of those situations where if I didn't laugh I'd cry.

 As I said, the following story is from a joint effort by news agencies in La Jornada. The translation is mine.

"Yesterday Rick Perry announced the deployment of a thousand soldiers in the National Gard on the frontier with Mexico to reinforce the security in the midst of a human crisis without precedent, in the face of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors, the majority coming from Central America.

"The governor, a possible aspirant [I wish this were a joke.  Maybe a running character on Saturday Night Live if it still exists] for the Republican nomination for president, said that in recent months the security measures on the border had been seen to be overwhelmed by the arrival of some 57 thousand unaccompanied child migrants crossing into the US between October and June.

"The governor maintained that cartels and criminal gans were exploiting this situation in order to engage in trafficking in people and drugs.  

"Perry said that the National Guard troups would work together with state agents from the Department of Public Security to guarantee security to all residents.

"The soldiers will also help to combat the drug cartels and to dissuade the foreign criminals from entering.

. . . .

"Perry, critical of the White House response to this crisis, said that the State has the responsibility to act in the face of 'the vain words and empty promises' of the federal government. 

Democratic legislators accused Perry of militarizing the frontier.  'Militarization is the wrong reponse to the arrival of these children,' said Joaquín Castro, a Congressional representative [from San Antonio]I continue to hope that our state  can give a measured more useful response than to send armed soldiers to welcome the children seeking refuge from the violence," he said.

The chief of police of Cameron County [the southeastern most county of Texas, across the border from Matamoros.  It includes Brownsville] Omar Lucio said that he didn't know if the troops would arrive at that part of the border and asked what benefits it would bring in case it did.  'These people are trained for war, not for police work,' he asserted. . . 'I think the money would be better spent if it were given to agencies in charge of enforcing the law near the frontier.'

"More than 3 thousand agents of the Border Patrol operate in south Texas.  Perry has asked Obama on many occasions to send the National Guard to the border. "

+ + + + + +

And just so you can get further acquainted with this man Rick Perry who is governor of Texas and apparently still hoping to run for President, listen to him at athe Conservative Political Action Conference  of the United States this year in Washington DC.  

  

Good grief.  I hope you recognize what a fantasyland this man lives in with his followers.

 

And here are some pictures taken from La Jornada of kids.

 

 

A child at a demonstration in California. (Reuters)

 

An immigrant minor rests under a train in Arriaga, Chiapas, on his way to the US frontier (Foto: Alfredo Dominguez)

 

A child in a processing center in Texas. (foto AP)

 

Two small Central Americans play in a refuge in Tapachula [Mexico, I think.] (foto: Alfredo Dominguez)

These kids could be anyone's kids.  They don't need a system that batters and bruises them.

More on migrant children

So you can continue feeling loose and amused, a piece from the Colbert report:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

 

So you can know that not all Americans are anti-immigrant children, my old home state of Texas isn't all bad.

And here are some letter writers to the NY Times, the paper of choice in my home town.

La Jornada has been covering this migration story pretty extensively.  Below you can find my translation of parts of La Jornada's David Brooks' column in La Jornada yesterday (July 19).  This isn't so amusing or uplifting, but it is important reading.

"The influential comic Jon Stewart on his . . .show 'The Daily Show' gave examples of  an almost obscene fear which could be seen in the political debate over the crisis of the exodus of migrant children.  In the face of the question so many politicians were asking,'Why you couldn't just deport them,' he responded, "What the fuck is going on with them?  We are talking about children.'  And in response to the repeated rhetorical phrase of many politicians that "this is a nation of immigrants," he said, yes, "We have always been a nation of immigrants who hate the most recent immigrants."

"Washington, so as not to [seem inconsistent], continues to be overwhelmed by a debate which does not offer a solution to what  everyone now calls a "humanitarian Crisis", let alone to its root causes. Meanwhile community service organizations, immigrant rights groups, lawyers, immigrant activists, religious groups and civil rights groups continue to help and defend the tens of thousands of childrn from Mexico and other nations of Central America who now find themselves distributed not only along the frontier, but in diverse places across the country.

. . . .

¨But although they are offered medical checkups and other urgent services at the beginning, the children can't count on long term assistance including treatment for trauma-caused conditions which many suffer, and it is here that organizations dedicated to bringing services to migrant communities find themselves burdened with the recently arrived.  Although not all the communities where new shelters are being considered offer the migrants a welcome, others are opening their arms.

"In the city of New York where almost half of the city is made up of immigrants, the municipal authorities and social organizations are collaborating to develop a strategy to bring support to the more than three thousand minors who have arrived there and in other parts of the state (it is expected that another seven thousand  will arrive in the next months).  At the national level, there are approximately 100 shelters under federal government supervision.

"Although the government of Barack Obama promises that "the rights" of the minors will be respected, even if the rate of deportation [cases] is successfully accelerated, as [who? the President?]  desires, this [increase in availability of lawyers?]has not happened, lawyers and civil rights activists say.*

"The immigration lawyer José Pertierra affirms that you can't guarantee the legal rights of migrants without a lawyer. He explained to La Jornada that at this time the children don't have a right to a lawyer.  The problem is that a violation of immigrant law is a civil matter, not a criminal matter and as such there is no automatic right to a lawyer. . . . Furthermore, by law, a minor does not have the capacity to represent himself before a court.

"Pertierra offers the example of a Honduran girl of eight appearing before a judge who did all he could not to scare the child while he explained the process to which she would be submitted, that she would be subject to deportation and would have to present herself on a certain date to argue her case, none of which she understood.  Having just arrived, after crossing Mexico, she was brought to the immigration authorities, was transferred to a center and from there to the outskirts of Washington.  Then an unknown man in an unknown land explained the law to her.  These scenes are repeated thousands of times around the country.

"Even worse, in some cases in which lawyers are presented to represent the minors, the federal government has tried to deny access to them.

"Because of this, the demand before a federal court presented recently by the ACLU and the National Center of Immigration Law  to oblige the government to guarantee legal representation to these children is among 'the most important steps in practical terms at this point' says Pertierra.

"'It is incredible that the government has been categorically denying to children in custody in Nogales who are fleeing violence, access to lawyers,' says Jennifer Chang Newell, of the migrant project of the ACLU, shortly after a judge ruled that the federal government had to permit a group of Salvadoren children to be able to consult with their lawyers.  However, the ruling is not so extensive for all minors in this exodus.

 . . . . The religious activist Juan Carlos Ruiz of the group Nuevo Santuario declared in an action in front of Federal Government offices in New York, 'today the children of Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador -- like those of Gaza -- shout for protection and defense from all of us.'"

Brooks finishes by asking whether Obama who has done more to fortify the border than any president before him and who has deported more than any president before him will be remembered as "The Deporter in Chief" or whether he will have the courage "to face the anti-imigrant forces that have prevailed in recent years."

 * This paragraph puzzles me.  In Spanish it reads, Aundque el govierno de Barack Obama promete que "los derechos" de los menores serán respetados, aun si se lograr acelerar como desea, el proceso para facilitar su deportacion, en los hechos esto no ha ocurrido, denuncian abogados y defensores de derechos civiles. 

 

Related articles

The Surprising David Brooks

People, This is Not Just Nuts, It's a Plague upon Our House

The punitive immigration bill is about as hostile a bill as I can think of is.  And the so-called "Border Surge" especially so.  Our history is littered, and I mean LITTERED with actions provoked by race and ethnic hatred.  And generally this hatred has been stirred up by people with their own often economic or power-hungry interests at heart. As Americans, we certainly haven't taken the words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to heart:

            Give me your tired, your poor

            Your huddled masses

            Yearning to breathe free,

            The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

            Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

            I lift my lamp beside te golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, an American Jew and a woman, wrote them in 1886 as an entry in a contest for a poem for the base of the Statue, part of a benefit auction for the pedestal.  It wasn't put on until 1903, and it was after it was that the statue became a welcoming symbol for immigrants.

Lazarus herself was inspired to claim a more active role as a Jew following pogroms in Russia.  Of course Jews in the US have and continue to suffer from prejudice.  Catholics have and do, too.  And of course there are Muslims to bait.  Which brings us to ethnic groups. In the US, prejudice has thrived against European immigrant groups, especially Irish and Italians and probably Eastern Europeans.  I'm not mentioning the Germans in and after the Second World War.  The Japanese aren't Europeans, but they were our enemy during the World War II.  Japanese who had lived their lives in the US were put in concentration camps on US soil. Of course, the worst and most brutal prejudice, racism, has been against blacks, Indians and Latinos/as.  Perhaps the only group not subject to prejudice, or at least a prejudice which has hurt it, has been that made up of white Protestants males, especially white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males who for much of our history filled the halls of wealth and power.  This is not to say that these various groups don't have prejudices against each other, because they do.  And among the most progressive of us, unexamined, often harmful prejudices linger.

As I indicated, the Immigration Reform bill currently before Congress is a remarkably harsh bill. Here I am interested in the section on border security part.  The whole thing is called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (gimme a break).  Recently amended to include what its authors, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota call a "border surge"  it would DOUBLE the number of border patrol agents to almost 40,000, add 700 miles of fencing and include infrared ground sensors, thermal imaging cameras and a fleet of, you guessed it, DRONES.  All this at a cost of (gulp) 40 BILLION DOLLARS.  Various writers have pointed out that we are living in financially tight times and that there are a LOT of things that could benefit from 40 billion dollars.  Lindsay Crouse in the NY Times says the nation's infrastructure could be one beneficiary.  He mentions that te American Society of Civil Engineers says it will cost $20 billion a year to repair our nation's bridges.

I have often suspected that the increase in funding for border security has more to do with keeping defense contractors happy since we don't have Iraq and Afghanistan to splurge on anymore.  I'm not in anyway alone.  See this article on the ABC/Univision site, for instance. 

There is no pretext anymore that this "border security" is for the purpose of catching terrorists. (And none so far as I know have been captured at the border, but I may be wrong.)This because a vociferous group of US citizens want to keep Mexicans and others from Latin America OUT and politicians are fanning their desires. This hostility to people crossing the border without papers is crazy.  If you are one of those who supports this immigration bill with its "border surge" and says, "I'm not really prejudiced but...", ask yourselves what it is you are so afraid of.  Perhaps the ghosts of Indians and blacks slaughtered by whites have inhabited the bodies of Mexicans?

This, too, Is México

This is a link to a captivating post on a museum in the midst of what is now desert between Chihuahua City and Cuahtémoc in northwestern México.  Linda, Eric and families in New Mexico, you really, really ought to go see it.  It is MUCH closer to you than to us.  I was surprised to read that the Mennonite farmers in the area (who are leaving now in sizeable numbers) are not organic or near-organic farmers and that they do not work to conserve water.  As my brother-in-law Ivan says, when water-table water is gone, it's pretty much gone.

But, but...this is NOT a gloomy article: it is joyful. Enjoy it, the pictures, and Elizabeth and Eliseo, and celebrate two original and resilient human beings.

 

 

Obama in México

After his press conference with Mexican president Jorge Peña Nieto yesterday, I thought President Obama had blown his trip to Mexico.  The coverage we watched on CNN was horrible: Gloria Borges whose name to me has an unpleasant onomatopoaeic sound to it and Wolf Blitzer blathered over everything Peña Nieto said. One would have thought that there would have been a simultaneous translation of the Mexican president's comments instead. When it was Obama's turn, the first question was of all things about Syria, and then when he finally got to Mexico, the President wandered around in a thicket of cliches which seemed to show he didn't even know he was in Mexico. Of course he dwelled on themes of security first, whereas Peña Nieto did so last. And his suit was too small.  Borges and Blitzer should have blathered over what Obama said.

Today, the president seemed to redeem himself somewhat with a speech at the magnificent National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. At times, the Mexican audience, made up of oustanding students, government officials and academics and analysts including Denise Dresser and Jorge Castañeda and Arlos Heredia, even reacted with enthusiasm at times. He talked of "better bilateral collaboration" (and here you have to forgive me because I'm translating from Spanish back to English. We got the speech on CNN en español.  It was not available on CNN in the US) and stressed themes of joint partership, trying hard to move from traditional US arrogance. He said he had come to Mexico because "[t]his is the time to put aside old ways of thinking, to recognize new realities, including the impressive progress of Mexico today."  He acknowledged that the US shared responsibility for the problems with crime, incuding for the arms traffic and drug use.  

He talked of the undeniable need to combat climate change with the use of clean energies and emphasized Mexico´s leaderhip in this area and the aid it has given other countries for establishing greener economies.

He also said he would see an exchange of 100000 students from Latin America and Mexico with US students.

He talked of the fact that he would not be president without the support of Hispanic immigrants and went on to describe the enrichment of the US by Mexican immigrants, which he had experienced in his home town of Chicago.

It's all very tricky, this.  There is a fine line between Mexico (and the US for that matter) being able to move ahead in a way that truly enhances Mexican (and US) lives and that veers from enviromental destruction and finding itself drawn further into the dark morass of globalization.  Thereare also continuing and profound problems of massive un- and underemployment and great poverty and hunger and ill-health and community crumbling and whether these issues will end up undermining everything.

SEE NEXT Pacto de Mexico

 

Obama and Peña Nieto in México: What They SHOULD Talk About

To Barry has written an excellent essay on not just US-México relations, but on the regional issues confronting the US, México AND Canada.   It is MUST reading.  Here is the link.  Please take the time for it and pass it on.  Also look at NACLA, the North America Congress on Latin America at https://nacla.org.  Our world is depending on informed people.