From Xico

Trump, the border and migrants

It occurred to a friend of ours that Trump is benefitting with his base from these terrible migration issues, both the numbers of migrants he can demonize and with the idea of buildling a wall and with the horrible boiling over pot he can keep stirring.  Anyone else notice this!?

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?

Mexico in North America: A Sort of Correction and a Major Correction*

Yesterday I said without qualification that Mexico was in North America because it lay on the North American Plate--the plates constituting the hard crust of the earth.  Jim, mi esposo, said he wouldn't say that: plate tectonics didn't exist when Mexico was first considered part of North America.  And when was that?  Hmmmm....Long before plate tectonics were theorized about and studied.

So how did Mexico come to be part of North America?  This is a nice, messy topic to research by shuffling through google.

By the way, North America is not just Mexico, Canada and the US.  It is also Greenland, Bermuda,  Clipperton Island,  and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Huh? 

Anyway, Mexico is shall we say geographically part of North America because it is mostly on the North American plate.  Apparently some geographers consider the part of Mexico below the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to be in Central America.  The Isthmus is the narrowest part of Mexico. 

Certainly above the Isthmus, Mexico just looks like part of North America (although many Europeans do, in fact, consider it part of Central America):

(map from The Encyclopedia Britannica)

"People" tend to want to lump Mexico with Central America because Spanish is the dominant language in both, and, except for the giant exception of Brazil, in South America.  But as was pointed out here, that's kind of stereotyping. though calling Mexico along with the other countries of Central and South America Latin countries isn't.  French, Portuguese and Spanish, spoken in Latin America, are all Latin languages. (So maybe Quebec should be in Latin America as well as those two French islands).

I have another idea about why Mexico is in North America.  And started there even before the US did.  Here is a map of the part of New Spain which lay in North America at the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1810:

You can see, even excluding Central America, that New Spain on the eve of its becoming Mexico occupied more of North America than did the United States.

The map below makes this even clearer (You have to include Mexico in your mind here):

The US as STATES in 1810 was the orange part.  The blue part included territories and the green part was the Louisiana Purchase.  (Don't forget to include Mexico -- or New Spain -- south of the current US in your mind.)

Independent Mexico in 1824 was no different:

The first big change (and everything Texas is big) came as the result of the Texas War for Independence from Mexico fought in 1835-1836, resulting in the Republic of Texas.  While I'm not going to go into it here, this was no simple thing.  *Santa Ana´s defeat of the Texans at the Alamo seems to have  been a catalyst leading a sufficient number of men to join the Texans for them to finally defeat the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto. Of the original defenders of the Alamo, 13 1 were native-born Texans [Texians] with, according to Wikipedia, 11 of  those being of Mexican descent.  One of them at least, Juan Seguín, still has descendants in San Antonio including my former boss at the University of Texas Health Science Center who was quite clear that he wasn´tof Mexican descent (except insofar as the area had become Mexican) but of Spanish descent, one of the people who came from the Canary Islands.  You might also like to know that at least until the 1990s -- maybe no longer-- there were Mexican descendants of the owners of what became the King Ranch still in court trying to reclaim their land.  Slavery was banned in Mexico, and when Texas gained its independence from Mexico, it legalized slavery.

Mexico and the US disputed the border of the State of Texas with Mexico claiming that it was the Nueces River, the US claiming it was the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo in Mexico).

In the map below you can see that the Nueces River cuts the lower bump from Texas, more or less.

The dark green section (Texas today) is divided from the light green section (Mexico today) by the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo).

As a result of US insistence that the Rio Bravo be the boundary, Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the US.  And this pretty much marks the beginning of the First War of United States Intervention in Mexico, or as the US says, the Mexican American War. 

The two countries have noticeably different ideas about this war, and it is really worth learnig about them.  A short piece in English talking about the Mexican version can be found here.  In fact the PBS site covering the US-Mexico war is very good and has quite a number of Mexican and Mexican American authorities as well as a good list of resources.  It is really worth looking this stuff up and unlearning some of the history at least I was taught.

The result of the First US Intervention in Mexico (you have to know the US also directly invaded Mexican territory, including Mexico City) is that Mexico lost about 55 percent of its territory and ended up in the shape it is today.  This was not only a result of the battles, but of the US rewriting, on its own, the treaty the two countries had agreed on.  The map below shows the negotiations over the Mexican border from 1845-1848.

The last little bit, between the red line and the dotted-dashed line to the south, representes the Gadsden purchase of an area called La Mesilla.  The US bought it for ten million dollars, threatening Mexico with more war if it wouldn't sell it.

Obviously, the Mexican-US war is another topic on which I could go on forever.  For the purposes of the original discussion, however, which was over why Mexico was in North America, as you can see that it only was reduced to its current size in 1848.  So it was part of North America in its combined role as Mexico and part of New Spain, established in the 16th century, for longer than the United States was even the British colonies.

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. 

Hugo Chavez, Role Model

Now that Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, has died, it has finally become respectable in at least some quarters of the US to print favorable articles about him.  This opinion piece by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former president of Brasil is one of them.  Another excellent article by Jon Lee Anderson appeared in the New Yorker.  Both described the genuine warmth and caring that Chavez embodied, his strengths as a leader for the very poor in his country, his real achievements and his dreams for Latin America.  He was instrumental in bringing together countries of the continent.

In the US (and I might add also among some PAN people in Mexico) he was viewed with, at best, hostility.  Often a bogeyman for US policies, the US really has no one to blame but itself for his turning on our country.  What a shame.  As has been pointed out elsewhere, the US has supported and supports far more villainous and far less humane leaders than Chavez.  I don't know if our country is capable of opening its eyes by itself. Certainly Obama has not provided the hoped-for leadership in enlightening Americans, at least as far as Latin America is concerned.  As a Latin American pointed out not long ago, Obama's neglectful attitude towards the south may turn out to be a blessing.

Obama and Latin America: Response to Grabman Comment

I pretty much agree with Richard Grabman's analysis of Obama in Latin America. He said:

I don't know what inspired this post  [in which I said I thought Obama was doing fine], but from some of the e-mail I get from my readers/viewers, I can guess. While my Labrador Retriever would have been an improvement over the previous White House resident, Obama has done a better job than expected... EXCEPT in Latin American policy. And, those of use, like Esther, who write from Latin America can't be expected to overlook what is, in some ways, a reactionary and dangerous start to his presidency.

  BUT I guess I think that, given the realities of Obama's situation, I don't think we can expect more at this moment. I don't think Obama has contact with anyone knowledgeable about Latin America in his administration that isn't a reactionary type. The Clinton connections are terrible, and they seem to be the main democratic input. His plate is overflowing with all kinds of rot. God only knows why he even wanted to be President, BUT the guy finds himself working with a right-wing, bloated, corporate-dominated octopus with its tentacles wrapped around stuff all over the world, not to mention the nuts on the right which have penetrated to the core of the government. He also probably finds himself with far less power than we think he has. He is, after all, a politician who learned how to operate in Chicago and is probably good at figuring out his odds for political survival and making changes -- and sees that as more important than idealism.

The Mexican connection....it seems on autopilot. Probably better than actively ramping stuff up, not good as any kind of positive activity.

I translated an interview for Americas Program between Laura Carlsen and Carlos Álvarez, the head of Mercosur conducted in April of this year. Carlsen asked if Álvarez expected any change under Obama in Latin American policy. Älvarez was not optimistic. He said, in fact, that he thought Latin America would do best if the US ignored it. (Here is a link ot Americas Program -- can't find article link right now: http://americas.irc-online.org )
So I guess this is all to say that I think Obama is doing fine, all things considered. I think our job is to find a way to hook into somebody in the administration with some new information.

Carlos Pascual Not to Head USAID

Here is info on the nominee, Rajiv Shah, announced today.  Shah appears to have plenty of good administrative experience at least in running large aid organizations and projects.  I'm glad it's not Pascual.   I wanted to keep watching him as Ambassador to Mexico.

Flu in Mexico: The Tip of the Iceberg

An excellent and very important piece of investigative journalism by Laura Carlsen here at Americas MexicoBlog 

Among the points:

• FINALLY Fidel Herrera Beltrán, governor of the State of Veracruz, says he will order an independent investigation of the possible connection of the flu outbreak in La Gloria and Granjas Carroll.  Carlsen got this information from, of all places, Al Jazeera English, not a Mexican or US news source.
• Carlsen describes international failure, not just Mexican, to deal with early signs of a significant problem.
• She addresses in detail the terrible potential of factory farms to spread disease, especially by means of uncovered lagoons and contaminaation of local  water sources.
• She describes how the priorities were geared to protect the corporation of Las Granjas Carroll, owned jointly by Smithfield Foods and Agroindustrias Unidas de Mexico, before the well-being of the people of La Gloria, or indeed of Mexico and the world.
• She describes the inadequacies of Mexico's public health system and reveals that Mexico, in response to  the economic aspects of the crisis is planning to CUT funding to IMSS, the major provider of healthcare in the country.
• She shows how research continues to be geared to showing that Granjas Carroll is "innocent," not to answering the question, how did this epidemic start?
• She talks about the swine-human connection and how critical it is.
• She reveals that the vaccine production racket is already in gear, and that the first company at the starting gate is one that is under investigation in a number of countries.
• She discusses (what I and many others know) how difficult it is to get any real information on the subject in Mexico, particularly as it relates to agroinustrial practices.
• She addresses the failure of oversight on all international levels.
• She raises critical issues relating to NAFTA and "the centrality of foreign investment in Mexico [which] creates a climate where transnational corporations with large investments can exercise coercive power over government agencies on all levels."
• She condemns the Obama administration for its dreadful narrow focus on  police/military/hardware assistance to Mexico in place of the actions which really might mitigate the control of organized crime AND the public health threats.  
• She describes the damage that a profit-driven system of medicine and vaccine production essentially ignores public health interests.

You need to read the article.

I would like to add that as in the case of global warming, in which the problem is undeniably real, but attention to which blinds us to other very serious environmental problem, the agroindustry-disease connection is very real, but it shouldn't blind us to other very serious problems presented by these companies, from dangerous overuse of antibiotics to loss of jobs to pollution of soil, air and water, to hideous mistreatment of animals to loss of income for local areas.