From Xico

It's getting worse for immigrants

I mentioned a few posts ago that a friend speculated that all the chaos migrants endure might, just might benefit Trump and that there might, just might be a connection.  I didn't post it, but recently read a story about a company making money from license reading technology at the border.  Here, now, is an article describing the horror of the current rules and regulations.  Here is another, even more distressing link from The Texas Observer about mothers and babies. Sometimes I read posts from people that we ought to look after homeless psople in the US first.  To this I say, we are rich enough to devise humane systems and conditions for them all, and we are all human beings.  All God's children.

More rocks, stones, tear gas. We need, rather, more understanding.

If you are a compulsive NY Times reader as I am, you will have seen articles talking about how tech is taking over our lives. We'll all be living in tech-run hives before we know it wi}th AI opening our refrigerators and scolding us for eating too much cake.  

But when I look past that, I still see a world largely ignored by tech, billions of small houses often made of concrete or mud with straw rooves or lamina rooves, inhabited by large numbers of parents and kids who barely have enough, who often don't have enough, through no choice of their own, but through the luck of the draw.  And in the Americas, Central America, for instance, their lives are riddled by gang violence, government corruption, no work, no chance to even farm.  Some of these problems, at least, can be laid at the feet of the United States.  Remember United Fruit.

So today in ye famous NY Times I find this in an article by Alan Yuhas.

American border officers sent tear gas into Mexico early Tuesday to drive away about 150 migrants trying to cross the border into the United States, the authorities said.

In a statement, the Customs and Border Protection agency said that the migrants tried to climb over and crawl under the border fence near San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico — the same area where American officers fired tear gas across the border late last year and where Mexico is struggling to handle thousands of migrants who have fled violence and poverty in Central America.

Early Tuesday, as migrants gathered at the border fence there, several teenagers with heavy jackets, blankets and rubber mats tried to cross or cover concertina wire at the barrier. Others began throwing rocks over the fence at the American officers, according to the statement.

    *******

In the December 3, 2018 of the New York Review of Books, Pramila Jayapal, herself an immigrant  and now

... a Congresswoman, representing Washington’s 7th district, and the elected chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Previously, she was a state senator in Washington, a civil rights activist in Seattle, and the executive director of OneAmerica, Washington state’s largest immigrant advocacy organization. 

wrote an article that was reasoned and calm about the need for immigration reform and the absolute lack of a need for a wall.  It is a longish article.  I have outlined it for you so you can read it in a shorter amount of time.  Please do if you are still not clear about where progressives stand on immigration.  We absolutely must learn how to return to respecting each other and especially suffering human beings.

From:  A New Moral Imagination on Immigration, Pramila Jayapal, Dec 3, 2018

Immigrants as central to national identity.

Historical background

1. 19^th and early 20^th century labor demand so great almost anyone allowed in who passed a physical exam
   1. Immigration exclusions before 1921: Chinese, most Asians, prostitutes, people with “dangerous and loathsome contagious diseases”, and the insane.
   2. 1921, 1924 quotas based on race, nationality and favored people from western Europe.
   3. BUT few laws and little bureaucratic control so undocumented immigration was the norm.
   4. 1929 Registry Act allowed “honest, law-abiding aliens…” without papers who’d been here a certain no. of years to stay.
   5. 1965: admission on basis of immediate family or employer relations permitted. No national quotas
   6. 1990: increase in employment-based visas.
2. Two contradictory immigration traditions defined approach
   1. Bigotry
   2. Spirit of generosity and renewal of country always shaped by immigrants.
   3. Battle has occurred in every generation.
3. Under Trump and his remake of Republican Party
   1. Political calculation to appeal to fear and racism. Refers to immigration as “invasion” and “infestation” in supposed implicitly white, Christian America. otros
   2. Trump made unconstitutional threat to revoke citizenship of those born here.
   3. Provoked and used fear of supposed horde to send wave of troops to border.
   4. , etc., etc.,
   5. Propaganda narrative: current laws work; undocumented immigrants prefer to live in shadow, game the system; benefit from generosity of taxpayers.
   6. These beliefs are absolutely false.
4. Current immigration system
   1. Immigrants are currently held in expensive private prisons – majority because of undocumented status or waiting to see a judge.
   2. A militarized and hardened southern border has led to large surges of undocumented immigrants becau
   3. In past there was a “circular flow” of migration: workers moved back and forth across the border more easily.
   4. Laws protecting workers, however, weak.
5. Good immigration laws would…
   1. Allow immigrants to move back and forth from their homes to US and back again depending on work. Most immigrants would prefer to maintain their south of the border homes if they could by only

coming to the US to work.

1. Encourage family immigration which laws did in the past.
   1. Can fill jobs at different levels with different family members.
   2. Essential support for immigrants to integrate and become self-sufficient: e.g. grandparents taking care of grandchildren, children taking care of parents, etc.
2. Update system regularly
   1. To prioritize industries growing rapidly, needing workers.
   2. Address problems of declining economic conditions for both American-born and foreign workers.
   3. Retraining initiatives, investment programs for displaced workers.
3. Resources for helping immigrants integrate will lead to economic and civic benefits.
   1. Learn English while preserving own languages
   2. Training for skills needed to realize their talents.
4. National interest in reforming immigration law
   1. Now is a blunt tool of a militaristic foreign policy.
   2. Should reflect interest in development, diplomacy, protection of human rights internationally.
   3. US (and other countries) should invest in countries that send most immigrants to encourage people to stay at home (most people when surveyed want to stay at home) instead of making “perilous journeys”.
5. Sensible, humane system of immigration is best for everyone to address the following;
   1. Immigrants needed to replenish US work force as baby-boomers age.
   2. Fast-growing industries of domestic care, home health, nursing assistants, personal care aides, immigrants make up “vast” majority of workers.
   3. of visas for nonagricultural e.g. construction, housekeeper, forest, health care) workers: 66,000 last year, BUT THE ECONOMY requires “millions”.
   4. Last year, 3.9 million US citizens and permanent residents had legally applied for closest family members: parents, spouses, kids, siblings—these are the only members eligible (Trump´s chain migration” is a lie) Thet are in processing “backlog” that could take decades to clear. There are many huge backlogs in US immigration.
6. S. moral and legal obligations (under US and international law) to take refugees and asylum seekers from around the world.
   1. Often fleeing horrible political situations.
   2. In some cases, US has been complicit in political, economic situations leading to need to become refugees.
   3. Submitting millions to refugee camps with little freedom, dire living conditions, no say in their futures is a moral question for all nations.
   4. US ranks only 50^th in the world for welcoming refugees.
   5. Leaders of all faiths (including evangelicals) emphasize need to strengthen and humanize refugee resettlement program.
7. Currently no orderly, functioning US immigration process
   1. Temporary fixes under Reagan and Bush but no underlying reform.
   2. Simplistic narratives by anti-immigrant groups have led to billions of dollars poured into mass deportations, vast labyrinth of private prisons costing millions (maybe billions).
   3. Trump, unlike all previous presidents of the past several decades, has followed rigidly restrictionist agenda of anti-immigrant zealots.
   4. Inhumane policies: separating children from families, imprisoning them, shackling pregnant women; slashing all legal migration; vilifying immigrants.
8. Progressives must (and most do recognize that nation has the right to control who comes in and out. Democrats who wants to fix the system in humane way do not believe in “open Borders”.
9. Enforcement against employers and employees who break law vital, but in a system that actually works.
   1. Vast majority of imprisoned immigrants in expensive private prisons for undocumented status or waiting to see a judge.
   2. Effective reform would mean they wouldn´t be held in prison.
   3. Immigration courts could again function efficiently.
10. Evidence shows:
    1. A more militarized and harden southern border has led to enormous surge of undocumented immigrants because of the breakdown of “circular flow”.
    2. Family immigration is the best.
    3. Have spent over 20 billion on border security with no underlying solutions.
    4. 2/3 of those surveyed opposed detaining families with children who want asylum.
    5. ¾ support humane forms of enforcement such as providing with case management and aid to get into compliance.
11. Goals should be
    1. Laws that work
    2. Knowing who is in the country
    3. Immigrant wouldn´t have to hide.
    4. “…a fair and forward-looking immigration system must be at the heart of America´s moral imagination.

 

 

 

 

Dear President Obama, About Aid to Central America

Dear President Obama,

I read a couple of days ago that you were going to seek a billion dollars in non-military aid to Central America in projects designed to reduce the need for people to emigrate.  Although it sounds more humane than sending military aid, aid in the guise of economic and social assistance can backfire pretty seriously. The unfortunate tendancy of diplomats and politicians and the like is to associate in other countries with their counterparts. I suspect at least in some ways, these officials have more in common with each other than with the rest of the people in a country.  Mr. President, you seem to have a real liking for President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and have offered him support without having any real understanding of his position in his own country.  What you really should do in the case of not only Mexico but Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras is first learn about the country away from the leadership.  A bridge to that knowledge could be Peace Corps Volunteers.  I think the Peace Corps was pulled out of Honduras a couple of years ago, but there remain blogs by some PCVs on the web.  Just look up Peace Corps Honduras.  Guatemala still has Peace Corps, and the web provides some good entries into its experience there.  Same with El Salvador.  I was quite surprised to find out there were Peace Corps Volunteers in Mexico, where my husband and I have lived for eight years.  Having been in the Peace Corps way back in the 1960s, we both would vouch for the fact that at least some of the PCVs have clear-eyed views of the countries they are serving and could even help people from Washington find their way around away from the diplomatic circle. Find some in a variety of situations.

Another thing to understand is that you can't really just suddenly understand the political situation.You might  talk to Carlos Slim about the politics in Mexico.  He's an interesting, odd man who is also very rich. Sometimes he tops Forbes's list of the richest people in the world.  He also owns 17% of the New York Times where there have been some interesting developments regarding Mexico recently. In Mexico, where too many journalists are killed, some nDonetheless remain who would provide excellent insights into power and corruption here. You could start with Carmen Aristegui and Denise Dresser and Roger Ackerman, among others. I translate articles once a week for a site called Mexico Voces: Where Democracy and the Drug War Collide. You can Google the address.  I think journalists in Guatemala, etc. might do the same.

What you also have to understand is that NGOs often have great limitations.  They come in with a vision of what they want to do and all too often trample over local people who understand quite well how things are going.  The local people also often have very good knowledge of what their needs are:  ask them to help you decide what to do.

American economic beliefs are harmful to a lot of people here in Mexico and Central America.  Yes they need education and jobs, but most of all they need to belong to their communities and to be interested in helping them and their families.  I don't think it is good to just lambast the present, but indeed, jobs which uproot people and make them leave for distant places where jobs in Mexico exist in large factories or cut out local potential and cause people to feel they must migrate don't provide good aid.  An example of this is I think farming.  Mexico used to be self-sufficient in corn at least, but the competition from NAFTA products has made it too difficult to earn a living farming corn in Mexico for many people.  Industrial pig raising in our state has put local pig farmers out of business.  The waste from these plants has sullied local water supplies.  Good economic aid might be pilot agricultural projects that exist in a local community that has good resources for farming: good soil and water, for instance.  You might want to get in touch with Robert Hunter Manson at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Veracruz, for instance. His email address is [email protected].

Then there is the problem of crime.  It isn't just going to go away if you rip out people's crops or enlarge the police force, and certainly it isn't if you bolster the military.  I don't have any contacts in this area, but I'm sure you could find some.  It is absolutely critical to understand at least a little of how crime has poisoned the wells.  

I could go on and on and on, obviously, but this is a start.  I want you to know that I deeply love Mexico.  It is a wonderful country, full of cultures and art and history, and a lot of other stuff. It has not benefitted from the US helping greatly to militarize the problems caused by drug gangs.

As my grandmother would have said, "Don't go throwing good money after bad."  And I know you are extremely intelligent, in fact intellectual.  We very smart people often misjudge a situation because we draw connections before we really have some of the important facts.

Most sincerely yours,

Esther Buddenhagen

Colonia Ursulo Galván

Xico 91240, Mexico

 

Obama and Peña Nieto sure look like buddies.

It's been announced that Obama and Peña Nieto will meet in Washington on January 6 "with the aim of continuing to strengthen the strategic alliance between the United States and Mexico and to continue to advance their mutual objectives,"  according to Josh Earnest, Obama's press secretary.

Obama appears to really, really like Peña Nieto.  He just looks SO relaxed and smiling in photos of them together.  If you click on the link you'll come to the page with even more photos. 

You can scroll down the images page of Google for not just straightforward photos, but for cartoons like the one below.  You can probably figure out a lot of them even if you don't know Spanish

Below you see Obama and Peña Nieto planting pine trees in China in what was called a "luxury park".  It was a photo op to show the forum for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation supporting reforestation efforts.   

 

It actually seems to me that Obama is more taken with Peña Nieto than vice versa.  The Administration has not seen any reason to associate the murder of the Ayotzinapa students in Mexico with failure on the part of Peña Nieto's administration although finally  he and Secretary of State John Kerry have said the crime has "no place in civilized society." The Administration has in a kind of friendly, condescending way  offered US aid "to get to the bottom of exactly what happened" to the students.  Obama went on to say, "we've got to make sure we strengthen the criminal justice system, the investigative capacities....Mexico is our friend and neighbor.  We want them to thrive." As if the US on its own came up with how to define the problem and how to solve it.  

Enrirque C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa have rightly brought up the fairly obvious fact that the roots of a  lot of the problems of both Mexico and the US have to do "with corporate-driven economic transformations and policies such as NAFTA...."  Mexico has the second most unequal and the US the 4th most unequal income distribution among the 34 members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. 

And Obama continues to see solutions in terms of justice systems and policing which now receive aid where social services, schools, health, etc. don't. Guns, NOT butter.  If this is the best the US can do, they should just leave Mexico alone.

It appears that Obama is perfectly satisfied with his own ideas about Mexico and Mexico's president. And it never occurs to him not to condescend to Mexico, to see his own country's status as a failing democracy.  Who is he to preach?

How Mexico and the US are similar

Right now, Mexico and the US are faced with what can be termed police brutality.  Having lived here for awhile now, I think the violence in Mexico has been fed by the US , not only because of the purchase from Mexico of drugs and the sale to narcos of weapons. The US has armed Mexico's police, egged on the "War on Drugs," and Obama has treated Peña Nieto as a "friend."  The Administration in the US appears to know nothing about Mexico, nothing outside what EPN and buddies want it to know.  So when the 43 students were massacred, it was outside the US area of interest.  You hardly saw it discussed in the NYTimes.  

These 43 students were probably killed much more coldly than Michael Brown was.  They were seen, it seems, as a group that had found itself in a position inconvenient for the mayor's wife who was planning to give a speech that night.  The students were turned over to members of a narco gang who presumably were told to get rid of them.  The terrible thoughlessness that went into their massacre is blinding: they ended up as ashes in garbage bags.  In Guerrero, the state where this took place, the mayor and his wife have been imprisoned and the governor of the state has resigned.  But the US has really said nothing to change anything, let alone rescind some of the funds which pay for the violence.  In an article in Foreign Policy, Roger Ackerman has described this situation in more detail in an article called Why America is to Blame for Mexico's Carnage and Corruption.

In the United States, the Grand Jury finally emerged to say that it didn't have enough evidence to call for a trial for Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Michael Brown.  There is a tangled history for this.  The prosecutor who many have said acted more like a defense attorney for Darren Wilson is the son of a police officer killed by a black man.  Could he be fair?  As in Mexico, and even more so, when we see police now we often see them fully armed in military-style geer riding in armored vehicles.  I can't imagine that they don't see the crowds they are approaching as The Enemy, not people they are supposed to serve.  In the US the Michael Brown killling is not an isolated event.  Police violence flares all over the place.  And the President of the US says that we are a nation of laws so that we must respect the Grand Jury's statement.  Yet corruption has been eating at the structure of our country for as long as we've been a country.  It's getting worse, thoughand many people have come to assume the worst.  In an article in The Guardian, Gary Young wrote, "The trouble is that the United States, for far longer than it has been a 'nation of laws,' has been a nation of injustice. And in the absence of basic justice such laws can amount to little more than codified tyranny. When a white cop, Darren Wilson, shoots an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, dead and then is not indicted, the contradiction is glaring. For a world where it is not only legal for people to shoot you dead while you walk down the street, but where they can do so in the name of the law, is one in which some feel they have nothing to lose. And, in the words of James Baldwin: 'There is nothing so dangerous as a man who has nothing to lose. You do not need 10 men. Only one will do.'"  This situation undermines respect for the law because the law for blacks more than white comes down on them like an offensive weapon against which they have little defense.  The whole article can be found here.

In both Mexico and the US, there has been an outpouring of support from people from one side of each country to the other.  In both countries, there is a fear of lawlessness by those who are supposed to protect society.  In both countries, a single event seems the catalyst for change.  In both, it is possible that nothing much will change yet.

 

Enrique Peña Nieto Scolds States besides California on Immigration

From La Jornada 26 Agosto 2014

"Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto esta currently en Los Angeles where he met with a variety of Mexican groups.   He told them that other states in the US, "unlike California...have not evolved and still skimp on recognizing, and even worse, the rights of migrants."

"This, he added, with the imposicion of discriminatory measures which affect bilateral ties is ethically reprehensible and and distance the principles, the US and Mexico, from shared responsiblity and from being good neighbors.

"In front of some 500 representatives of clubs and other Mexican organizations, Peña Nieto did not cite specific cases of this mistreatment of nationals, but insisted that he only has one thing to say to those who support exclusion, discrimination or opposition to diversity: the future will show them their ethical error, time will show us right.'

"He also spoke of the debate about migratory reform in the United States and said that the position of Mexico is very clear:  'We want to be a factor of cohesion, not of division, with full respect for the sovereignty of the United States.

"He also said that this migratory reform ought to become reality because it deals with a question of justice for those who support development of this [US?] society.

"In addition to delivering scholarships for Dreamers (youth of Mexican origin studying in the US and whom he congratulated for their fight to push the migration debate) President Peña also annunced some measures to simplify consular bureaucracy." My translation.

And then there's energy reform....

 

Mexicans and the Gaza Conflict

To read that in the US somewhere between 51 and 57% of Americans support Israel in this current onslaught of violence in the Gaza strip, and even worse, only 14% "sympathize with the Palestinians is pretty shocking as I sit here in Xico, in our colonia.  I haven't spoken directly to my neighbors about this, but I am pretty sure the most of the sympathy lies with the Palestinians. The support is not strident. In newspapers horror at the terrible destruction of lives and landscape dominates, and not just in La Jornada.   This is a link from today's Jornada of an Israeli attack that hit a street where two ambulances had arrived to rescue victims.  It is very graphic.  Maybe you all should watch it, but beware, nothing is hidden from you.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Henry Ford (1863-1947)

In 1931, Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist, accepted a commission to make frescoes for the Detroit Institute of Art.  It seems at first glance to have been an unlikely commission. He was a communist, and the funding for this project was provided by the Ford motor company, Capitalist, big C. 

We were walking down Madison Avenue in NYC, my mom and I, looking in art gallery windows here and there. I was maybe twelve. It would have been the mid-1950. In one window, there was a detail print of a mural. I can’t remember whether it was from a work by Larry Rivers or Diego Rivera. My mother was intensely interested in modern art. She thought I should be interested in it, too.  She had had just enough luck in her efforts to fan my interest  to launch into a lesson on murals. My mother wasn’t impressed with Rivers’ one mural effort by that time, George Washington Crossing the Delaware. She said she did rather enjoy Rivera's murals.  I don't remember why because she was critical of their conscious appeal to “popular sensibilities" and thought they were too political. In her mind, art should be neither popular or political, a view held by many Americans who wanted to cast their lots with intellectuals.  This shunning of the popular and the political in art has left a legacy that is still with us, I would say unfortunately.

So Rivera's mural in Rockefeller Center fit into this lesson.  In 1933 when Rivera hadn't quite finished it, Nelson Rockefeller, the benefactor of the mural, got wind of the fact that Lenin had a prominent place in it and ordered work stopped and essentially fired Rivera.  The mural sat behind cloth sheets for awhile, and some seven months later, Rockefeller ordered it destroyed.  And it was.

 My mother thought it was an example of the problems of mixing art and politics. She managed to plant a seed of interest in my mind with this story, but not because I agreed with her.  politics in art did interest me much more than what seemed to me the hyper-intellectualism of art critics and my mother.

The seed lay almost dormant for years and years although I recognized some of his work decorating posters and doctors offices and the like. Even after my then- husband and I visited Rivera's hometown of Guanajuato in the 1990s visit, he remained no more than a small part of the clutter in my brain.

My interest in Rivera burst into full bloom quite unexpectedly. I was reading the NY Times online one morning not long ago a (it becomes a way to avoid more serious projects)  and came upon a story about Detroit's bankruptcy which  told of the possibility that the bankruptcy might make it necessary for the Detroit Art Institute to sell its collection to pay city workers’ pensions. Among the top four or five works most likely to bring in large sums was Rivera’s mural called Detroit Industry.  Huh?  Who knew he’d done a mural in Detroit of all places?  I poked around a little and found a number of sites with photos of the mural.  They were incredible. For the first time in my life I wanted to go to Detroit, if only to see this mural.

I started to read, first about Rivera, then about Detroit at the time of the creation of the mural, then about Mexico at that time and earlier, and about Henry and Edsel Ford and about actual conditions at Ford plants, about the effects of the Depression, about other actors in the story of the Detroit murals: Henry and Edsel Ford, Valentiner, Frida Kahlo, and other Mexican muralists and on and on. How could I stop? It’s a growing tapestry I'm not ready to disentangle myself from.

At first,  when I thought of Rivera, I imagines him  as short, fat, and homely. I knew considerably more about Frida Kahlo, as many USAers do.  I wasn’t alone wondering how Kahlo could find Rivera attractive, which indeed she did.

 

I fit what I saw into  these preconceptions.You can see both  Rivera and Kahlo in this mural Diego painted called ”Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park”.

I didn’t realize that Diego had pictured himself as a boy in this central panel (he is standing in front of Kahlo and next to a calavera). I know, I know.  How many men would wear striped socks? Preconceived notions, etc.

As I started rummaging through material I found that Rivera was indeed an attractive man for all that people (including him) described him as having odd and ugly-sounding features.  But he wasn't short at all.  In fact, he was quite tall, over six feet. And though at his heaviest, he was just plain fat, his height balanced his weight somewhat so that in no way did he appear like the very round dwarf  I'd imagined.

In the photo at left, you can get some idea of his size. In the next posts on Rivera, I’ll show you some photos and paintings of Diego and some quotes from him and others so you can perhaps build up an idea of what he was like.

 

 

Mexico and Detroit, Diego Rivera and the Fords

In an effort to deal with bankruptcy, it had been proposed that Detroit sell its fabulous art collection to meet city pension fund obligations of roughly 800 million dollars.  I wrote about this here  and provided an update link here. More recently, at the end of January, private funds and government sources had come up with pledges that come close to the 800 million dollars needed for the pension fund so that it would not be necessary to sell the art.  A BBC article provides vivid reminder of just what not having a pension fund would mean.  This would be a cruel bind, a killing blow to the city’s retired workers. It would be hard to justify keeping the art if it turned retired city workers into paupers.  

Part of the plan would turn the museum over to a private not-for-proft organization instead of continuing as city property, thus, hopefully, saving it from being a pawn in future municipal budget difficulties. None of this is certain yet.  But it is a promising start.  If it succeeds, I hope the Institute will expand its reach into Detroit communities, so that it becomes a living presence which all kinds of citizens can be part of. 

I knew nothing about the Institute until I realized that among its most valuable treasures was a huge mural created by Diego Rivera the famous Mexican muralist, called Detroit Industry.  Far from being hoity toity art, this mural is a passionate and beautiful portrayal of working Detroit. I haven’t seen the original, but even online it is impossible that it not draw you in.

Today’s economic situation in Detroit is not altogether different from what it was during The Great Depression when Diego Rivera created the mural.  And the mural reveals roots of today’s crisis.  In some subsequent posts, I’ll talk about this as well as about Mexican connections and about how art and our lives really do go together.       

   

 

PEMEX: Energy Reform in Mexico and yes, it matters to you

I believe every gas station in Mexico is a Pemex.

And most of them look pretty much like this.

Pemex is Mexico's state-owned petroleum company.

Pemex is the second biggest producer in the western hemisphere following the US.  Canada is third.

The US imports 72% of its crude oil from Canada, Saudi Arabia, MEXICO, Venezuela and Iraq, in that order. These are the largest providers of crude to the US.

Mexico is the fourth largest crude oil producer in the world; the 11th biggest integrated oil company, 11th in crude oil reserves, 13th in refining capacity and 15th in natural gas production.

Mexico has a triple B (stable) rating from Fitch and S&P and a Baa1 (whatever that means) from Moody's,

Until 2006 it was the biggest company in Latin America.

Its production, reserves (including known, probable and possible), and its sales have been sliding in recent years.

This is of concern to US energy interests because they would like to increase their use of Mexican petroleum in order to lessen dependence on Venezuela and Iraq and other countries considered unstable. American energy companies would also like to get their claws into Mexican oil production like they used to be.

La Torre Ejecutiva de Pemex in Mexico City

Here I would like to insert a personal note.  Very little of what I say below has to do with environmental issues which are a huge concern when thinking about global warming and other environmental concerns.  Mexico does seem to have a better stance on global warming, expanding alternative energy sources, etc. etc. than the US does, but I do not know how this will play out in the future.

Why is Pemex slipping?

Problems with corruption, inefficiency, and holding on to too much staff; equipment and infrastructure that is sometimes old and not well-maintained, resulting in some large, destructive explosions, leakage and other environmental damage, and lack of certain technical expertise and materials seem to be among the main causes.

When I was getting my Masters in Social Work at Washington University, I had a surprising and excellent course on the life of organizations.  I wish I could still remember the professor's name.  He was very interested in breaking down false dichotomies: private vs. public, for instance.  A BIG for instance.  I'm not going to try to summarize the course, but simply want to say that among his points were that size and age could lead to decay and that all organizations needed to have infusions of new people and new ideas from time to time to keep them going. From this perspective, private vs. public does not seem to be issue.  However, some nations have constitutions which still undergird their existence and which try at least to direct governments to take into account the good of society. Companies, as far as I know, don't.  Anyway...

If you have read anything about Pemex in the US press recently, you will have seen Pemex referred to as something almost sacrosanct in Mexico.  A little more glibly, someone referred to it in the same breath as tortillas and mole, as if the Mexicans simply dragged around some stuff with which they identified their culture.  But Pemex is a state-owned organization not least because one president in 1938 put his people's interests above corporate interests.The notion of returning any control of Pemex to the hands of the likes of Exxon or BP or Shell is indeed threatening in light of the past.

I think Mexicans are aware of this because they have much more of a sense of their past(s) than most of their neighbors in the United States. But the role of petroleum in their history will (should) be of interest to people in the US as well.

Before it was Mexico, Mexico was part of New Spain in that part of the Spanish empire which had its origins when Hernán Cortés, his conquistadors and some local groups hostile to the Aztecs, finally, after some rough challenges, defeated Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan (later Mexico City) in about 1521.  

In 1783  the Spanish crown claimed all "riches extracted from underground" pertained to the Crown, including oil, though oil wasn't much on the radar until the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.Spain reserved to itself the right to own or assign ownership of Mexican precious metals, oil, and even land.  The crown's exploitation of silver kept the empire going.  (This wasn't the case in the Thirteen Colonies where people, not the British Crown, laid claim to their mining finds.) As a result, only the Crown had the right to exploit oil or give permission for others to do it.

The Mexican war of Independence lasted from 1810 to roughly 1824.  In 1892 the the independent Mexican government passed a law allowing owners of property to freely exploit "combustible minerals" as long as they had paid their federal taxes.  This was during the Porfiriato.  Porfirio Díaz, the dictator who so dominated Mexico from 1884 to 1919 that the period is named after him, was a leader whom all capitalists in the 1% loved and would still.  He practically gave away Mexico's primary resources and land to Yankees and other foreigners and to some rich Mexicans, including leaders of the Catholic Church. These foreigners plunged in (and plundered), developing  infrastructure and exploiting natural resources, but to very little benefit for ordinary Mexicans.  So much could be said about this era, but here I will only give you this link to a pretty graphic short summary and this link in Spanish which is an excellent longer summary.

Diaz was the one who first exploited oil, admitting foreign companies to develop the resource.  In 1911, Mexican Eagle Petroleum, a British company began to export it. English and American companies came to dominate oil production.  

In 1910, the Mexican Revolution erupted and led to Diaz's overthrow. It wasn't an easy or a short revolution, persisting in various forms until the early 1920s.  But as factions and presidents rose and fell,  the oil industry was relatively unaffected. This is in part because Mexico was afraid of US power.  As you can imagine, US businesses had a lot invested in Mexico.  The US followed its still-current policy of supporting those who supported US interests and opposing those who didn't. Thus, feeling threatened, the US administration invaded Mexico, first in Veracruz in 1914 and then again from the north 1916-1917, experiences which made Mexicans leery of provoking their more powerful neighbor and its business interests. This is an oversimplification, but I'll let it stand.

Mexico's new Constitution came into effect in 1917.  That Constitution, with amendments, is still current today.  It contains Article 27 which, along with Article 28, are the articles you hear about when people argue about whether or not Pemex should be opened to private investment. These articles essentially guarantee that the resources of the nation will be managed and used in the public interest. In answer to the passage of Article 27, a number of oil companies formed The Association of Petroleum Producers in Mexico. 

Large foreign concerns continued to control Mexican oil throughout the 1920s and 1930s.  It wasn't such a profitable business in those years, with early finds showing signs of petering out.  Among the companies involved were El Aguilar (Mexican  Eagle), Penn-Mex, Mexican Petroleum and South Penn. Royal Dutch Shell gained a controlling interest in El Aguilar in 1919; Amoco (Standard Oil of Indiana) bought Mexican Petroleum in 1932 and sold it as part of a package to Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon) in 1935, and Sinclair gained control of a smaller company, South Penn in 1932.

The 20s and 30s were a time of sliding oil prices not just in Mexico, but internationally as well.  The one exception, in Mexico at least, was the discovery of an abundance of oil along the coast of Veracruz in Poza Rica by El Aguilar. 

[Poza Rica is below Tuxpan on this map of the State of Veracruz.]

 

Labor disputes were the immediate cause of expropriation.  They occured frequently from 1915 onward until 1938. In 1935 el Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros de la República Mexicana, the oil workers union, was formed.  The companies were reluctant, for the most part, to even compromise with the unions for a number of reasons, including not wishing to set an example for their holdings in other countries, especially Venezuela where an abundance of oil had recently been discovered.  The companies also disputed the figures Mexican government gave for oil company finances saying they couldn't afford to meet labor's demands.  They shut down production in places rather than negotiate. you might be interested to know that in 1934 wages in the oil industry in Mexico were about 16 cents an hour (US).  I couldn't find (didn't have time to keep searching)wages for oil workers in the US, but mining, manufacturing and construction workers were earning roughly between 49 cents a an hour and 58 cents an hour. In the 1930s the US was in the midst of The Great Depression.  I'm not sure how this would affect hourly wages, but it certainly affected employment in general. The disparity between Mexican wages and US wages continues.  US and multinational corporations often charge the same or similar prices in Mexico for their products and pay much lower wages than they do in the US.  At any rate, apparently, their refusal to negotiate with labor in Mexico paid off for the companies in Venezuela and in other countries. 

In 1937 and 1938 the workers and the companies parried with each other, or I should say, "fought." The Supreme Court of Mexico ultimately supported the workers.  The companies refused to concede and closed plants. On March 8, 1938, President Cárdenas declared that the oil industries were expropriated so that petroleum riches which were exploited by foreign companies would be returned to the Mexican Nation.  

Mexico ultimately paid more than a fair price for the expropriated assets.  The nation did not immediately find itself flush with money because of them.  But the act was very popular among Mexicans because it threw out of the country what were seen as elements of empire which had for so long controlled their destiny.

Although  today the United States is the empire, the workers within the United States are in a relationship with companies that is not dissimilar to that of Mexican workers vs. oil companies.  If Ronald Reagan had sided with the air traffic controllers in their strike, or if Obama had decided banks were not "too big to fail" or had sided with homeowners or had interfered with corporate layoffs when companies were making big profits or against Monsanto, whatever, he could have been compared to Lázaro Cárdenas.

Initially Mexico had trouble with oil production and struggled to learn what it needed to know to run Pemex.  It managed to find the intellectual resources within the country.  The US led a boycott of all Mexican products as a result of the expropriation.  The truth is that Mexican exports then went to Germany and Japan.  But more important is that in place of exports, Pemex developed its domestic market. The boycott ended in 1942 when the US found that Mexican oil would be useful  in the war effort. And I have to add here that Franklin Roosevelt was not unsympathetic to Mexico, though others in the US were.

Pemex has overall been more successful than not.  In spite of critics' clamoring (especially those in favor of foreign intervention), it is not in danger of failing. It is no more corrupt than giant US corporations, possibly less so than some. I think the overall consensus is that, as my old professor would say, it is definitely in need of new voices and new ideas: a housecleaning and remodelling. To discuss this aspect in depth is too much for me right now, but I would like to see Mexico consider very carefully whether or not and how to permit enhanced foreign participation in its oil industry.  In 1938 Cárdenas put the interests of Mexican citizens in front of those of corporations.  I know peso (and dollar) signs are glittering in front of the eyes of some current Mexican politicians (as well as some multinational oilmen).  But Mexico, in the long run as well as the short, would do better distancing herself from the international corporate circus.  

A very good resource for the history of the petroleum industry in Mexico from 1915 to 1938 and a bit beyond  is 

The Empire Struck Back: Sanctions and 
Compensation in the Mexican Oil 
Expropriation of 1938 
NOELMAURER