There are lots of losers coming out of last week's Baja California gubernatorial election.
One is the foreign press, who can no longer punch up their prose courtesy of a billionaire gambling tycoon with questionable ties, an apparent history of exotic-animal smuggling, an unmistakable stench of corruption, and a penchant for quaffing liquid blends of animal members, rattlesnakes, scorpions and other protein sources.
Another is Jorge Hank Rhon himself, scion of a once-feared political clan whose patriarch, the late Carlos Hank González, famously summarized seven decades of PRI rule with the immortal words: "A politician who is poor is a poor politician." Jorge Hank managed to ride his own wealth, abundant connections and intimidating presence to the top of Tijuana's municipal government, but fell a full 7 percentage points short of the Baja California governorship on August 5.
A third loser is Roberto Madrazo, the Godfather-voiced PRI dinosaur whose personal political career ended on July 2, 2006 with his party's disastrous election performance. Madrazo was singularly responsible for the calamity, first as party head and then as presidential candidate. Now even a behind-the-scenes role seems out of his reach, given that his gallo, Jorge Hank, with whom the fatherless Madrazo literally grew up, has gone down.
Even before the 2006 debacle, Madrazo had promoted Jorge's brother Carlos Hank for the PRI candidacy in the 2005 State of Mexico governor's race. He struck out there as well when outgoing governor Arturo Montiel managed to secure the nomination for his protégé Enrique Peña Nieto. Thanks to an embarrassingly incompetent campaign by PAN candidate Rubén Mendoza Ayala, and an unseemly personal smearing of the PRD's Yeidckol Palevnsky, Peña Nieto won handily. His name frequently comes up now as a likely presidential candidate in 2012, an election that the PRI, despite everything, may be in a very good position to win.
Yet another loser: The good people of Baja California, who were subjected to another idea-free farce of an election. Hank used his residual control of the Tijuana police department to prevent PAN get-out-the-voters from operating in that largest of BC cities, while the PAN, in the words of one prominent public opinion analyst, waged a campaign that "was heavy-handed enough to have possibly crossed some electoral law lines."
Governor-elect José Guadalupe Osuna Millán was also able to use the preferred PAN technique of emphasizing security and his rival's threat to it. Unlike the Calderón 2006 presidential campaign, however, he didn't have to resort to lies about his opponent in order to stoke the fear. All he had to do was let Hank be Hank.
The big winner? No contest. It's Elba Esther Gordillo, the Dragon Lady of caricatures and head of the huge teachers union who recently had herself appointed leader for life (or, as later "clarified" under pressure, until 2012, whichever comes first). After splitting from the PRI over a nasty feud with Madrazo, Gordillo threw her weight behind Calderón in 2006. Given his miniscule margin of victory, hers was no small contribution, and she hasn't been shy about calling in her chits with the new president ever since.
Gordillo worked behind the scenes for Osuna in Baja California, inspired perhaps not just by her new pro-PAN leanings but also by another chance to hurt Madrazo, via Hank. In the final days of the campaign, when it looked likely that Osuna would win, Gordillo flexed her muscles and went off on Calderón's education secretary, Josefina Vázquez Mota. "Josefina doesn't know anything about education," Gordillo told El Universal. "The only one who knows is me."
That sounded for all the world like an open challenge, implying that Gordillo expects to be Calderón's top education adviser, officially or unofficially. The irony behind the gambit is that the quality of Mexican public education is notoriously poor not because of finances (per capita education spending in Mexico is well above the Latin American average) but precisely because of the attitude of the union-controlled teachers.
"Time and again they oppose new textbooks, different content, program changes, or pedagogic innovations," writes Sara Sefchovich, an author and sociologist. "The union and the bureaucracy are the principal obstacle to improving education in this country."
Elba Esther's bold, unelected claim to power doesn't make Calderón look good. It's one thing for him to be seen as beholden to the nation's big business interests; he is, after all, ideologically pledged to support them. But to appear in thrall to an openly manipulative union boss is retro at best, and threatens to confirm many of the accusations of Calderón's political enemies. The president would do well to tell Gordillo where to get off, but don't count on it happening. For my money Vázquez Mota herself is more likely to do it than he is.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Arts & Minds: Unreal Catorce
José Cruz has been writing and singing powerfully subtle lyrics for the group Real de Catorce for more than two decades, setting them to music at once familiar for its bluesiness yet strikingly original. He's a co-equal member of the latter-day triumvirate of exceptionally talented Mexican urban poets who deliver their goods from a blues base, a folk tradition, and a rock 'n' roll soul. The other two are Jaime López (who at age fiftysomething seems to be exploring ever more fruitful territory, sounding better than ever in the process), and Rodrigo González (who died tragically in the 1985 earthquake).
But something is wrong. It was evident a year ago when Real de Catorce opened a Mexico City Jazz Festival evening at the Metropolitan Theater for Buddy Guy, one of the last remaining electric blues masters from the old school. Cruz looked distracted, didn't sing well, and never really connected with the crowd. Worse, the current bassist and lead guitarist (the line-up behind Cruz, save for drummer Fernando Abrego, has shifted over the years) hopped around and rockstar-postured like the commercial pop band Real de Catorce had spent 22 years not being. Guitarist Julio Zea took over much of the between-song banter in embarrassing "Hello, Mexico City! We love you!" style. (To be fair, he didn't actually use that cliché, only appropriated its spirit. But he did go out of his way to praise the corporate sponsor of the event, something Cruz would never do.)
It turns out Cruz, at age 52, has multiple sclerosis. He appears in a wheelchair in recent newspaper photos (of which there are not many, since Real de Catorce has always performed below the mainstream media radar). It also turns out that Cruz and the band parted ways not long after that ill fated May 2006 concert, and far from amicably. Cruz now refers to his former musicians as "my ex-friends" and the band members themselves have posted on the Real de Catorce web site (from which Cruz has been banned) a lengthy manifesto accusing him of manipulative behavior, among many other things.
The situation is sad, for Cruz and his loved ones personally, and for the rest of us musically. A 22-year-run of exceptional music that most of the world was never aware of appears to be at an end. Cruz has made some solo appearances, and he's also authored a book of poetry (the translated title would be "From the Alcohol Texts"). But what kind of new career he can put together in his condition is unclear.
Incredibly, the other band members have taken over the name Real de Catorce, and promote themselves as such. This is not unlike Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg and the rest of the E Street Band separating from the Boss and calling themselves "Bruce Springsteen." Real de Catorce is José Cruz and vice versa. Zea, Abrego and bassist Neftalí López Nava have every right to carry on, and they'll no doubt put together something very good. But they need to do the right thing by forging their own identity and coming up with their own name. How about Real de Quince?
Meanwhile, Cruz and the cumulative membership of Real de Catorce have left us about a dozen CDs, some more compelling than others, but all superb. For the uninitiated, I suggest finding Voces Interiores (1992) as your introduction, for no better reason than it's my personal favorite. It includes "Pago mi renta con un poco de blues," a talking blues with an unexpected chorus, which along with "Azul" (a mournful slow blues with the honor of being the first cut on the first, self-named 1987 album) is the closest thing Real de Catorce ever had to a hit.
But something is wrong. It was evident a year ago when Real de Catorce opened a Mexico City Jazz Festival evening at the Metropolitan Theater for Buddy Guy, one of the last remaining electric blues masters from the old school. Cruz looked distracted, didn't sing well, and never really connected with the crowd. Worse, the current bassist and lead guitarist (the line-up behind Cruz, save for drummer Fernando Abrego, has shifted over the years) hopped around and rockstar-postured like the commercial pop band Real de Catorce had spent 22 years not being. Guitarist Julio Zea took over much of the between-song banter in embarrassing "Hello, Mexico City! We love you!" style. (To be fair, he didn't actually use that cliché, only appropriated its spirit. But he did go out of his way to praise the corporate sponsor of the event, something Cruz would never do.)
It turns out Cruz, at age 52, has multiple sclerosis. He appears in a wheelchair in recent newspaper photos (of which there are not many, since Real de Catorce has always performed below the mainstream media radar). It also turns out that Cruz and the band parted ways not long after that ill fated May 2006 concert, and far from amicably. Cruz now refers to his former musicians as "my ex-friends" and the band members themselves have posted on the Real de Catorce web site (from which Cruz has been banned) a lengthy manifesto accusing him of manipulative behavior, among many other things.
The situation is sad, for Cruz and his loved ones personally, and for the rest of us musically. A 22-year-run of exceptional music that most of the world was never aware of appears to be at an end. Cruz has made some solo appearances, and he's also authored a book of poetry (the translated title would be "From the Alcohol Texts"). But what kind of new career he can put together in his condition is unclear.
Incredibly, the other band members have taken over the name Real de Catorce, and promote themselves as such. This is not unlike Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg and the rest of the E Street Band separating from the Boss and calling themselves "Bruce Springsteen." Real de Catorce is José Cruz and vice versa. Zea, Abrego and bassist Neftalí López Nava have every right to carry on, and they'll no doubt put together something very good. But they need to do the right thing by forging their own identity and coming up with their own name. How about Real de Quince?
Meanwhile, Cruz and the cumulative membership of Real de Catorce have left us about a dozen CDs, some more compelling than others, but all superb. For the uninitiated, I suggest finding Voces Interiores (1992) as your introduction, for no better reason than it's my personal favorite. It includes "Pago mi renta con un poco de blues," a talking blues with an unexpected chorus, which along with "Azul" (a mournful slow blues with the honor of being the first cut on the first, self-named 1987 album) is the closest thing Real de Catorce ever had to a hit.
Between Us: The (very) local News
Extended vacations energize, they say, returning you to the real world with a renewed sense of purpose. But it's a rough transition for journalist-types. Spend a few weeks focusing on flora and fauna, music and painting, roads and sidewalks, people and places, and somehow making sense of the vagaries of the political class and the media that feeds off it doesn't feel like such a noble pursuit. But somebody has to do it, so onward. Starting with . . .
WHO'LL GET IT? We've all been assuming that the new incarnation of The News, as of now slated for a September resurrection, will serve readers of English across the nation. All indications, though, point to a strictly Mexico City circulation. Remember, the new News won't have Novedades to piggyback on for distribution. But the non-national availability, if that turns out to be the case, may also reflect a business bias I've heard often over the years. The bias, essentially, is that bringing a capital-based English-language paper to the provinces is a waste of time and effort. San Miguel residents, the thinking goes, are bohemians who don't buy much. Anglophones in Oaxaca are a bunch of hippies who buy even less. Expats in Ajijic and Lake Chapala are isolationists who don't want to read about current events, and those in Los Cabos or Cancún might as well be living on Jupiter. That this thinking is neither true nor wise can be confirmed by actually talking to people. But that's not usually a priority with the bottom-line types . . .
SPEAKING OF ENGLISH. A recent Mitofsky poll tells us that 9% of Mexicans speak a second language, which in 86% of the cases is English. That translates to more than 8 million additional potential readers of a quality English-language newspaper in Mexico, should one ever emerge. (French, by the way, is second, spoken by 2% of the 9% who have two languages, which doesn't work out to be a heck of a lot of people.) Of those who speak English as a second language, 4% say they speak or read it well, and 7% "regular." Even those low figures may be inflated, since they depend on the word of the subjects. People tend to exaggerate their proficiency in languages other than their own. "I speak a little English" or, from the other side, "I speak a little Spanish," is akin to "The check is in the mail" on the accuracy meter, unless you interpret "a little" much more literally than the speaker wants you to. The poll seems to define second language as something other than Spanish. Thus the word "Náhuatl" doesn't turn up in a search of the study document. But we know there are hundreds of thousands of speakers of indigenous languages who also speak Spanish — as a second language.
WHO'LL GET IT? We've all been assuming that the new incarnation of The News, as of now slated for a September resurrection, will serve readers of English across the nation. All indications, though, point to a strictly Mexico City circulation. Remember, the new News won't have Novedades to piggyback on for distribution. But the non-national availability, if that turns out to be the case, may also reflect a business bias I've heard often over the years. The bias, essentially, is that bringing a capital-based English-language paper to the provinces is a waste of time and effort. San Miguel residents, the thinking goes, are bohemians who don't buy much. Anglophones in Oaxaca are a bunch of hippies who buy even less. Expats in Ajijic and Lake Chapala are isolationists who don't want to read about current events, and those in Los Cabos or Cancún might as well be living on Jupiter. That this thinking is neither true nor wise can be confirmed by actually talking to people. But that's not usually a priority with the bottom-line types . . .
SPEAKING OF ENGLISH. A recent Mitofsky poll tells us that 9% of Mexicans speak a second language, which in 86% of the cases is English. That translates to more than 8 million additional potential readers of a quality English-language newspaper in Mexico, should one ever emerge. (French, by the way, is second, spoken by 2% of the 9% who have two languages, which doesn't work out to be a heck of a lot of people.) Of those who speak English as a second language, 4% say they speak or read it well, and 7% "regular." Even those low figures may be inflated, since they depend on the word of the subjects. People tend to exaggerate their proficiency in languages other than their own. "I speak a little English" or, from the other side, "I speak a little Spanish," is akin to "The check is in the mail" on the accuracy meter, unless you interpret "a little" much more literally than the speaker wants you to. The poll seems to define second language as something other than Spanish. Thus the word "Náhuatl" doesn't turn up in a search of the study document. But we know there are hundreds of thousands of speakers of indigenous languages who also speak Spanish — as a second language.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Random Readings Redux: Bulldozing
Still on vacation, but here's a ditty from last year that might help you win a few bar bets. For example, which country -- Mexico or the United States -- has a higher percentage of illegals living in the other? And which is more intolerant of foreigners working within its boundaries?
Almanaque México-Estados Unidos
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Fondo de Cultura Económica (2005)
A U.S.-Mexico almanac that sets a few records straight
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
As almanacs go, Sergio Aguayo’s one-man effort runs a few hundred agate-type pages behind the CIA World Fact Book, and falls as many witticisms shy of Poor Richard’s. But as a corrective to the ignorance-driven nonsense that dominates so much casual conversation about the United States and Mexico, “Almanaque México Estados Unidos” is nothing short of heroic. Aguayo has put together 310 pages of facts and data about both countries, much of it presented in comparative terms and all of it communicated in an easy-to-follow format.
Its aim is noble: a better cross-border understanding.
Readers of this almanac (and, yes, you really can “read” this one, the cumulative effect of the binational information serving as something like a story arc with character development) will find themselves not just learning what they didn’t know, but also unlearning what they thought they knew.
To wit: Mexico can claim two Nobel Prizes — Octavio Paz in 1990 for literature. And the other? No, it’s not Mario Molina for chemistry in 1995; he accepted the award with his U.S. passport, Aguayo tells us on page 15. In 1982, Alfonso García Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament.
The longest river in Mexico, it turns out, is also one of the longest in the United States — the Rio Bravo/Grande (pg. 12). And in the United States? The Missouri, at 4,087 kilometers. (Admit it, you thought it was the Mississippi. So did I.)
Aguayo, a weekly EL UNIVERSAL columnist and frequent television commentator, teaches foreign relations at Mexico City’s Colegio de México. As a prominent pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, he was one of the first to see the merits in accepting the solidarity of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations, at a time when they were still mostly seen as buttinskis. He is, most agree, one of the good guys.
Hence this book. Aguayo begins his introduction with a banal truism — “The relationship between Mexico and the United States has a vital importance for both countries” — and follows up with an understatement: “In spite of that, myths and stereotypes proliferate that must be fought with reliable facts.”
I’m not sure that facts alone will get the job done; they seldom seem to get in the way of a confirmed bigot or know-it-all. But they’re a good starting point, and Aguayo seems to have selected many of his facts for their ability to upset apple carts.
An early section of the almanac consists of polling information on Mexican and U.S. attitudes about themselves and each other. While national newspapers here tell us that the United States is populated almost exclusively of xenophobes who resent the presence of Mexican workers in their country, the information on page 22 of the almanac tells us something else.
While 80 percent of Mexicans believe that scarce Mexican jobs should go to nationals rather than immigrants, less than half (49 percent) of Americans believe that. As Aguayo puts it in one of the short explanatory commentaries he scatters throughout the book, “In Mexico, anti-foreigner sentiment imbues society with intolerance. Americans, on the other hand, are more open to diversity.”
Stereotypes are bulldozed down by facts throughout the book.
Example: Mexico spends not that much less on education as a percentage of GDP as does the United States (5.9 to 7.3) though with considerably inferior results, as Aguayo points out (pg. 263). Another example: The two populations place virtually equal importance on the family with 95 percent of Americans saying it’s “very important” compared to 97 percent of Mexicans (pg. 31).
Aguayo also sees stereotype-busting in what he calls “surprising” figures revealing much more emphasis on the importance of hard work in Mexico than in the United States (pg. 33). “These numbers go against the myth of the Mexican with his sombrero and serape dozing as he leans against a nopal cactus,” he writes.
Actually, that particular stereotype strikes me as too outdated to need busting. In the United States, at least, all but the most off-the-wall extremists seem to recognize the Mexican’s capacity for hard work.
More revealing to me was the data on attitudes toward work itself. Workers in both countries care most about good pay, but it’s only the U.S. side of the ledger that ranks high in importance such job aspects as potential for “achievement” and “interesting work.” Demanding a rewarding, self-fulfilling job, it seems, is a luxury of the richer nations.
Some of the revelations are curious. The percentage of Mexicans who “profess a religion” is higher than the percentage of Mexicans who consider themselves religious (pg. 34), which probably tells us something about the power of a dominant, even if unofficial, Church. And speaking of religion, in the Voltaire-lived-in-vain category we find that a full three quarters of folks in both countries believe there’s a hell. And they’re not referring to the Periférico in the early evening.
The sections on the economies, the militaries, and education are studies in inequality. The Harvard University library, for example, has more than three times the volumes as the top 10 Mexican higher education institutions combined. But it’s worth knowing that the collection at Aguayo’s Colegio de Mexico, a relatively small public university, has one of the best collections in Latin America, with 780,000 volumes (pg. 267).
Shall we talk about the difference in military spending? No need to, but we can assume this is an area where Mexico is proud to lag far behind.
Some of the eye-popping differences between the two nations are less related to the well-known economic disparity. Child-raising is one. In the U.S. independence is considered desirable in children, but not in Mexico (pg. 36). Mexicans, however, value obedience in their children twice as much as Americans. (This is a good time to point out, though Aguayo doesn’t, that this kind of poll information by nature homogenizes varying points of view. Don’t hold anybody in either country to what surveys say they think.)
A shocking instance of cross-border inequality is the prison population. In 2000, there were 633 U.S. citizens in Mexican jails. At about the same time, there were more than 34,000 Mexicans in U.S. jails. Even given the 10-1 difference in immigrant population, that proportion is out of whack by some 600 percent. What’s going on? Here I wish Aguayo’s commentary were expanded. The relatively tiny number of U.S. prisoners in Mexico is due, he writes, “to the efforts that Washington makes to bring its citizens home to carry out their sentences in U.S. prisons.” I can’t help thinking there’s more to the disparity than that.
Any hope of clearing up the ongoing mystery of exactly (or even approximately) how many U.S. citizens live in Mexico is dashed on page 188. “The number is unknown,” Aguayo writes bluntly. We get a U.S. State Department figure of 1,036,300 U.S. citizens “in” Mexico in 2002. INEGI, the Mexican government’s statistics bureau, puts the number at 342,000. But the National Migration Institute issues only a few hundred declarations of landed immigrant status to Americans each year.
The implication is all too obvious. “(U.S. citizens) stay here to live without obtaining the migratory status called for by Mexican laws,” writes Aguayo. “In other words, we’re looking at undocumented U.S. citizens living in Mexico.”
Keep that little tidbit handy for your next discussion of the “crisis” of illegal immigrants.
The almanac isn’t available in English, but even if your Spanish is limited you’ll get plenty out of it. Most of the book consists of names and numbers anyway. Plus you get so much contact information — phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web sites for hundreds of government and non-government organizations in both countries — that it’s worth the 250 or so pesos for the instant rolodex alone.
Almanaque México-Estados Unidos
By Sergio Aguayo Quezada
Fondo de Cultura Económica (2005)
A U.S.-Mexico almanac that sets a few records straight
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
As almanacs go, Sergio Aguayo’s one-man effort runs a few hundred agate-type pages behind the CIA World Fact Book, and falls as many witticisms shy of Poor Richard’s. But as a corrective to the ignorance-driven nonsense that dominates so much casual conversation about the United States and Mexico, “Almanaque México Estados Unidos” is nothing short of heroic. Aguayo has put together 310 pages of facts and data about both countries, much of it presented in comparative terms and all of it communicated in an easy-to-follow format.
Its aim is noble: a better cross-border understanding.
Readers of this almanac (and, yes, you really can “read” this one, the cumulative effect of the binational information serving as something like a story arc with character development) will find themselves not just learning what they didn’t know, but also unlearning what they thought they knew.
To wit: Mexico can claim two Nobel Prizes — Octavio Paz in 1990 for literature. And the other? No, it’s not Mario Molina for chemistry in 1995; he accepted the award with his U.S. passport, Aguayo tells us on page 15. In 1982, Alfonso García Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament.
The longest river in Mexico, it turns out, is also one of the longest in the United States — the Rio Bravo/Grande (pg. 12). And in the United States? The Missouri, at 4,087 kilometers. (Admit it, you thought it was the Mississippi. So did I.)
Aguayo, a weekly EL UNIVERSAL columnist and frequent television commentator, teaches foreign relations at Mexico City’s Colegio de México. As a prominent pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, he was one of the first to see the merits in accepting the solidarity of U.S. and other foreign non-governmental organizations, at a time when they were still mostly seen as buttinskis. He is, most agree, one of the good guys.
Hence this book. Aguayo begins his introduction with a banal truism — “The relationship between Mexico and the United States has a vital importance for both countries” — and follows up with an understatement: “In spite of that, myths and stereotypes proliferate that must be fought with reliable facts.”
I’m not sure that facts alone will get the job done; they seldom seem to get in the way of a confirmed bigot or know-it-all. But they’re a good starting point, and Aguayo seems to have selected many of his facts for their ability to upset apple carts.
An early section of the almanac consists of polling information on Mexican and U.S. attitudes about themselves and each other. While national newspapers here tell us that the United States is populated almost exclusively of xenophobes who resent the presence of Mexican workers in their country, the information on page 22 of the almanac tells us something else.
While 80 percent of Mexicans believe that scarce Mexican jobs should go to nationals rather than immigrants, less than half (49 percent) of Americans believe that. As Aguayo puts it in one of the short explanatory commentaries he scatters throughout the book, “In Mexico, anti-foreigner sentiment imbues society with intolerance. Americans, on the other hand, are more open to diversity.”
Stereotypes are bulldozed down by facts throughout the book.
Example: Mexico spends not that much less on education as a percentage of GDP as does the United States (5.9 to 7.3) though with considerably inferior results, as Aguayo points out (pg. 263). Another example: The two populations place virtually equal importance on the family with 95 percent of Americans saying it’s “very important” compared to 97 percent of Mexicans (pg. 31).
Aguayo also sees stereotype-busting in what he calls “surprising” figures revealing much more emphasis on the importance of hard work in Mexico than in the United States (pg. 33). “These numbers go against the myth of the Mexican with his sombrero and serape dozing as he leans against a nopal cactus,” he writes.
Actually, that particular stereotype strikes me as too outdated to need busting. In the United States, at least, all but the most off-the-wall extremists seem to recognize the Mexican’s capacity for hard work.
More revealing to me was the data on attitudes toward work itself. Workers in both countries care most about good pay, but it’s only the U.S. side of the ledger that ranks high in importance such job aspects as potential for “achievement” and “interesting work.” Demanding a rewarding, self-fulfilling job, it seems, is a luxury of the richer nations.
Some of the revelations are curious. The percentage of Mexicans who “profess a religion” is higher than the percentage of Mexicans who consider themselves religious (pg. 34), which probably tells us something about the power of a dominant, even if unofficial, Church. And speaking of religion, in the Voltaire-lived-in-vain category we find that a full three quarters of folks in both countries believe there’s a hell. And they’re not referring to the Periférico in the early evening.
The sections on the economies, the militaries, and education are studies in inequality. The Harvard University library, for example, has more than three times the volumes as the top 10 Mexican higher education institutions combined. But it’s worth knowing that the collection at Aguayo’s Colegio de Mexico, a relatively small public university, has one of the best collections in Latin America, with 780,000 volumes (pg. 267).
Shall we talk about the difference in military spending? No need to, but we can assume this is an area where Mexico is proud to lag far behind.
Some of the eye-popping differences between the two nations are less related to the well-known economic disparity. Child-raising is one. In the U.S. independence is considered desirable in children, but not in Mexico (pg. 36). Mexicans, however, value obedience in their children twice as much as Americans. (This is a good time to point out, though Aguayo doesn’t, that this kind of poll information by nature homogenizes varying points of view. Don’t hold anybody in either country to what surveys say they think.)
A shocking instance of cross-border inequality is the prison population. In 2000, there were 633 U.S. citizens in Mexican jails. At about the same time, there were more than 34,000 Mexicans in U.S. jails. Even given the 10-1 difference in immigrant population, that proportion is out of whack by some 600 percent. What’s going on? Here I wish Aguayo’s commentary were expanded. The relatively tiny number of U.S. prisoners in Mexico is due, he writes, “to the efforts that Washington makes to bring its citizens home to carry out their sentences in U.S. prisons.” I can’t help thinking there’s more to the disparity than that.
Any hope of clearing up the ongoing mystery of exactly (or even approximately) how many U.S. citizens live in Mexico is dashed on page 188. “The number is unknown,” Aguayo writes bluntly. We get a U.S. State Department figure of 1,036,300 U.S. citizens “in” Mexico in 2002. INEGI, the Mexican government’s statistics bureau, puts the number at 342,000. But the National Migration Institute issues only a few hundred declarations of landed immigrant status to Americans each year.
The implication is all too obvious. “(U.S. citizens) stay here to live without obtaining the migratory status called for by Mexican laws,” writes Aguayo. “In other words, we’re looking at undocumented U.S. citizens living in Mexico.”
Keep that little tidbit handy for your next discussion of the “crisis” of illegal immigrants.
The almanac isn’t available in English, but even if your Spanish is limited you’ll get plenty out of it. Most of the book consists of names and numbers anyway. Plus you get so much contact information — phone numbers, e-mail addresses and web sites for hundreds of government and non-government organizations in both countries — that it’s worth the 250 or so pesos for the instant rolodex alone.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Not The News: Counting crows
Andrés Manuel López Obrador attracted "hundreds of thousands" to the capital's Zócalo Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the disputed 2006 presidential election.
Or perhaps he only attracted "more than 100,000." Or maybe just "80,000." Or was it "tens of thousands"?
Depends on who's counting. The estimates above are from the Associated Press, La Jornada, New York Times and Reuters, respectively.
Which is right? I've covered dozens of these things, and my best conclusion is that nobody has ever had the slightest idea how many people are there.
I recognize three crowd sizes. A rally either a) fills the Zócalo, b) doesn't fill the Zócalo, or c) overfills the Zócalo, flooding the side streets.
Sometimes, though, the figures do tell you something. I'm thinking of the anti-desafuero event in 2005. Federal District (i.e. PRD) cops put the total at 1.3 million. The feds (i.e. PAN) officially said something like 130,000.
Other than the futility of counting, what did Sunday's event reveal?
It revealed that López Obrador wants to "make sure voters don't forget the election" (Chicago Tribune). It revealed that he is seeking to "reinvigorate his flagging anti-establishment movement" (New York Times). Or it revealed that he is trying "to light (a) fire under (his) movement" (AP).
Those could be three ways of saying the same thing. But Reuters, one of the more consistently AMLO-phobic foreign news services during the campaign, had a different take.
Under the headline "A year after defeat, Mexican leftist fades away," Reuters interprets the rally as indicating that AMLO was "reduced to political artifact Sunday." We know this, the Reuters writer tells us, because "ordinary Mexicans say the leftist former indigenous rights activist has dropped off the political map."
That would come as a surprise to the "one quarter of the population" from which "his movement draws support" (AP). But the press — including the Mexican press — pays attention to celebrity, not disaffected human beings, and especally not disaffected human beings who apparently are not "ordinary."
As news judgment has it, AMLO's no longer hot. President Calderón, on the other hand, has a 65 percent approval rating. Pretty much all the English-language papers pointed out that fab fact as part of their take on Sunday's story as an AMLO-vs-Calderón popularity contest.
None mentioned that a 65 percent approval rating for a Mexican president doesn't mean much. If memory serves, a typical approval rating used to be 100 percent.
Even Vicente Fox, a failed president if there ever was one, consistently polled 65 percent or higher — even during the last pathetic twitches of his sexenio last August.
And come to think of it, how many people came to Calderón's celebration Sunday of his big victory’s first birthday? Here all agree on the attendance figure — zero. Neither the president nor the PAN dared hold one.
But if the story from Sunday really is AMLO's reduction in rank to something less than a deuteragonist, as most of the press chose to play it, then it becomes interesting that in a non-national-election year a non-candidate who holds no office not of his own invention can fill the main square of the capital. Not bad for a has-been.
Could Al Gore have attracted tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) to any rally a year after his 2000 election defeat? He'd have been grateful if Tipper showed up, even though he had a stronger case than López Obrador — or at least a more widely accepted one — for having been robbed of the presidency.
AMLO isn't in the headlines because he isn't the president, no matter what he calls himself. He can't use the army to boost his ratings, or rush through pre-ordained pension legislation before the affected workers know what's going on.
You can call him an artifact. You can be turned off by his tactics. You can join a lot of PRD supporters who'd like to see the party take a different approach. But the part of Mexico that he represents — or used to represent, if you prefer — isn't going away.
The real story Sunday was about them, not him. Problem is, unless they block a street somewhere, they're under-covered news.
Or perhaps he only attracted "more than 100,000." Or maybe just "80,000." Or was it "tens of thousands"?
Depends on who's counting. The estimates above are from the Associated Press, La Jornada, New York Times and Reuters, respectively.
Which is right? I've covered dozens of these things, and my best conclusion is that nobody has ever had the slightest idea how many people are there.
I recognize three crowd sizes. A rally either a) fills the Zócalo, b) doesn't fill the Zócalo, or c) overfills the Zócalo, flooding the side streets.
Sometimes, though, the figures do tell you something. I'm thinking of the anti-desafuero event in 2005. Federal District (i.e. PRD) cops put the total at 1.3 million. The feds (i.e. PAN) officially said something like 130,000.
Other than the futility of counting, what did Sunday's event reveal?
It revealed that López Obrador wants to "make sure voters don't forget the election" (Chicago Tribune). It revealed that he is seeking to "reinvigorate his flagging anti-establishment movement" (New York Times). Or it revealed that he is trying "to light (a) fire under (his) movement" (AP).
Those could be three ways of saying the same thing. But Reuters, one of the more consistently AMLO-phobic foreign news services during the campaign, had a different take.
Under the headline "A year after defeat, Mexican leftist fades away," Reuters interprets the rally as indicating that AMLO was "reduced to political artifact Sunday." We know this, the Reuters writer tells us, because "ordinary Mexicans say the leftist former indigenous rights activist has dropped off the political map."
That would come as a surprise to the "one quarter of the population" from which "his movement draws support" (AP). But the press — including the Mexican press — pays attention to celebrity, not disaffected human beings, and especally not disaffected human beings who apparently are not "ordinary."
As news judgment has it, AMLO's no longer hot. President Calderón, on the other hand, has a 65 percent approval rating. Pretty much all the English-language papers pointed out that fab fact as part of their take on Sunday's story as an AMLO-vs-Calderón popularity contest.
None mentioned that a 65 percent approval rating for a Mexican president doesn't mean much. If memory serves, a typical approval rating used to be 100 percent.
Even Vicente Fox, a failed president if there ever was one, consistently polled 65 percent or higher — even during the last pathetic twitches of his sexenio last August.
And come to think of it, how many people came to Calderón's celebration Sunday of his big victory’s first birthday? Here all agree on the attendance figure — zero. Neither the president nor the PAN dared hold one.
But if the story from Sunday really is AMLO's reduction in rank to something less than a deuteragonist, as most of the press chose to play it, then it becomes interesting that in a non-national-election year a non-candidate who holds no office not of his own invention can fill the main square of the capital. Not bad for a has-been.
Could Al Gore have attracted tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) to any rally a year after his 2000 election defeat? He'd have been grateful if Tipper showed up, even though he had a stronger case than López Obrador — or at least a more widely accepted one — for having been robbed of the presidency.
AMLO isn't in the headlines because he isn't the president, no matter what he calls himself. He can't use the army to boost his ratings, or rush through pre-ordained pension legislation before the affected workers know what's going on.
You can call him an artifact. You can be turned off by his tactics. You can join a lot of PRD supporters who'd like to see the party take a different approach. But the part of Mexico that he represents — or used to represent, if you prefer — isn't going away.
The real story Sunday was about them, not him. Problem is, unless they block a street somewhere, they're under-covered news.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Random Readings Redux: Faux fiesta
Here's a review that ran well over a year ago in the Herald Mexico. It deals with how Americans perceive Mexico and Mexicans. Much of the way the two populations see each other is demonstrably misguided, of course, but much of the false perception is not just the result of ignorance but also the heritage of consciously constructed myths. This is a look at how the newly installed Anglo leaders of Los Angeles re-created the city's Mexican past (more often called the Spanish past) in order to prevent Mexicans and their descendants from having a role in the city's future.
Whitewashed Adobe:
The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past
By WIlliam Deverell
University of California Press (2004)
Romanced to Death
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
That U.S. expansionism in the 1840s cost Mexico half its territory is something Mexican commentators need no coaxing to bring up. Outsiders, in fact, are struck by how often they do bring it up. Regrettable as the Treaty of Guadalupe obviously was from the Mexican point of view, why the need to repeatedly remind the world of it more than a century and a half later?
“Whitewashed Adobe,” California historian William Deverell’s relentless examination of Mexicans’ fate under U.S. rule, suggests some answers. The book details how, starting in the post-war 1850s, the new Anglo-Los Angeles elite socially engineered the conquered Mexican population right out of the city’s future.
What we also see, however, is how the strategies for doing that — especially the one-two punch of discrimination and romanticization — allowed the dominant society to effectively freeze Mexicans in time and space. Such “cultural cryogenics” (Deverell’s phrase) made it easy to ascribe to all Mexicans general character traits, and Deverell’s list of the historical stereotypes sounds as up-to-date as a weather report: “childlike, simple, quick to anger, close to nature, primitive, hard-working, lazy, superstitious, possibly criminal.”
In other words, relegating the Mexican population in California to a colorful, sleepy “Spanish” past not only marginalized the longtime area inhabitants as the rest of Los Angeles grew, but also created what Deverell calls “an Anglo cultural stance toward Mexicans.” That harmful stance persists today, complicating L.A.’s transition to a multicultural metropolis. It also continues to trouble U.S-Mexico interactions.
Most Mexicans today understand on one level or another that Americans’ self-serving vision of them — the ongoing “cultural stance” — is in a large part an inheritance of the U.S.-Mexican war and its aftermath. So one explanation of the still burning obsession with the consequences of that war might be that it’s still doing damage.
Another explanation is that the U.S.-Mexico war didn’t end with the takeover of California and other former Mexican lands in 1848. Though Anglo settlers in the past had acknowledged and even adopted the ways of the old Californios, once in charge they would have none of it. Eliminating Mexican rule was not the whole battle. Mexican influence, Mexican culture, and as far as possible the Mexican presence itself, all had to go too.
Terror and violence were the initial methods of choice. The Mexican-American war morphed into a war against Mexican-Americans. “The bloody 1850s sent Los Angeles spinning with such ethnic hatred that it has yet to fully recover,” Deverell tells us. The strategy, combined with Anglo in-migration, worked well. L.A.’s population went from 80 percent Mexican to 20 percent in one generation.
After the newly arrived railroads converted Los Angeles into an 1880s boomtown, the city boosters turned to subtler tactics for keeping ethnic Mexicans down while simultaneously disguising southern California’s violent recent past. They chose obliteration through appropriation, a clever plan that has colored U.S. perceptions of ethnic Mexicans for more than a century. It was the remaking of a Mexican past that the book’s subtitle alludes to, and Deverell’s penetrating analysis of the phenomenon is what makes “Whitewashed Adobe” so fascinating for anybody who cares about the overlapping story of Mexico and California.
Essentially, the Mexican presence was turned into a historical pageant, a nostalgic fiction drenched in the romance of missions, rodeos, dances and festivals. The notion was wildly popular among the city’s transplanted residents; it gave them an unthreatening regional identity free of any effect on their day-to-day lives.
At the same time, it allowed the elite to contrast Anglo progress with pleasant but sleepy Spanish and Mexican periods. With things Mexican safely relegated to a long-gone past, flesh and blood Mexicans were now relics, virtual non-entities assigned to unsanitary barrios near the flood-prone Los Angeles River and to low-wage manual labor.
Deverell explains developments not through generalities but by looking into specific manifestations of the whitewashing of the region’s Mexican-ness. Two fascinating examples — the “typical” La Fiesta de Los Angeles in the 1890s and the quaint, sentimental Mission Play starting in 1912 — are described in intricate detail, perhaps too much detail for many readers. But we get the picture: “From the vantage of a century later, La Fiesta looks like the party white Los Angeles threw to celebrate the triumph of Manifest Destiny in the Far West.”
Deverell isn’t of the school that requires history to read like a novel. He has a point to make, and he eschews entertainment in favor of countless contemporary source citations to bring it home. But he does have a deft touch for passing along, without comment, particularly telling quotes by the beneficiaries of the whitewashing.
In a chapter on the L.A. area’s biggest brickyard, where the all-Mexican and Mexican-American workforce was confined to company housing and starvation wages, Deverell quotes a newspaper reporter attending the annual brickyard Christmas party for the workers’ children: “To see those merry-faced, brown-skinned youngsters carrying off their treasures ... is to get a new light on the melting pot of America.”
“Whitewashed Adobe” stops at the onset of World War II, after which the stirrings of Chicano political activism began to change the equation. But the U.S. “cultural stance” continues, played out on a broader, NAFTA-era stage.
As I read “Whitewashed Adobe,” I kept thinking about two movies. Mexican director Paul Leduc’s subtle and political biopic of Frida Kahlo screened for the Motion Picture Academy of America as a Best Foreign Picture hopeful in 1985. The huge theater nearly emptied by the time it was half over.
In contrast, some two decades later, the Hollywood version was a box-office success. The Mexican movie was infinitely better, not to mention more accurate. But the Hollywood movie delivered the Mexico that plays best stateside: bright colors, romance and pretty people speaking in charmingly accented English. It reflected a U.S. cultural stance 150 years in the making.
Whitewashed Adobe:
The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of its Mexican Past
By WIlliam Deverell
University of California Press (2004)
Romanced to Death
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
That U.S. expansionism in the 1840s cost Mexico half its territory is something Mexican commentators need no coaxing to bring up. Outsiders, in fact, are struck by how often they do bring it up. Regrettable as the Treaty of Guadalupe obviously was from the Mexican point of view, why the need to repeatedly remind the world of it more than a century and a half later?
“Whitewashed Adobe,” California historian William Deverell’s relentless examination of Mexicans’ fate under U.S. rule, suggests some answers. The book details how, starting in the post-war 1850s, the new Anglo-Los Angeles elite socially engineered the conquered Mexican population right out of the city’s future.
What we also see, however, is how the strategies for doing that — especially the one-two punch of discrimination and romanticization — allowed the dominant society to effectively freeze Mexicans in time and space. Such “cultural cryogenics” (Deverell’s phrase) made it easy to ascribe to all Mexicans general character traits, and Deverell’s list of the historical stereotypes sounds as up-to-date as a weather report: “childlike, simple, quick to anger, close to nature, primitive, hard-working, lazy, superstitious, possibly criminal.”
In other words, relegating the Mexican population in California to a colorful, sleepy “Spanish” past not only marginalized the longtime area inhabitants as the rest of Los Angeles grew, but also created what Deverell calls “an Anglo cultural stance toward Mexicans.” That harmful stance persists today, complicating L.A.’s transition to a multicultural metropolis. It also continues to trouble U.S-Mexico interactions.
Most Mexicans today understand on one level or another that Americans’ self-serving vision of them — the ongoing “cultural stance” — is in a large part an inheritance of the U.S.-Mexican war and its aftermath. So one explanation of the still burning obsession with the consequences of that war might be that it’s still doing damage.
Another explanation is that the U.S.-Mexico war didn’t end with the takeover of California and other former Mexican lands in 1848. Though Anglo settlers in the past had acknowledged and even adopted the ways of the old Californios, once in charge they would have none of it. Eliminating Mexican rule was not the whole battle. Mexican influence, Mexican culture, and as far as possible the Mexican presence itself, all had to go too.
Terror and violence were the initial methods of choice. The Mexican-American war morphed into a war against Mexican-Americans. “The bloody 1850s sent Los Angeles spinning with such ethnic hatred that it has yet to fully recover,” Deverell tells us. The strategy, combined with Anglo in-migration, worked well. L.A.’s population went from 80 percent Mexican to 20 percent in one generation.
After the newly arrived railroads converted Los Angeles into an 1880s boomtown, the city boosters turned to subtler tactics for keeping ethnic Mexicans down while simultaneously disguising southern California’s violent recent past. They chose obliteration through appropriation, a clever plan that has colored U.S. perceptions of ethnic Mexicans for more than a century. It was the remaking of a Mexican past that the book’s subtitle alludes to, and Deverell’s penetrating analysis of the phenomenon is what makes “Whitewashed Adobe” so fascinating for anybody who cares about the overlapping story of Mexico and California.
Essentially, the Mexican presence was turned into a historical pageant, a nostalgic fiction drenched in the romance of missions, rodeos, dances and festivals. The notion was wildly popular among the city’s transplanted residents; it gave them an unthreatening regional identity free of any effect on their day-to-day lives.
At the same time, it allowed the elite to contrast Anglo progress with pleasant but sleepy Spanish and Mexican periods. With things Mexican safely relegated to a long-gone past, flesh and blood Mexicans were now relics, virtual non-entities assigned to unsanitary barrios near the flood-prone Los Angeles River and to low-wage manual labor.
Deverell explains developments not through generalities but by looking into specific manifestations of the whitewashing of the region’s Mexican-ness. Two fascinating examples — the “typical” La Fiesta de Los Angeles in the 1890s and the quaint, sentimental Mission Play starting in 1912 — are described in intricate detail, perhaps too much detail for many readers. But we get the picture: “From the vantage of a century later, La Fiesta looks like the party white Los Angeles threw to celebrate the triumph of Manifest Destiny in the Far West.”
Deverell isn’t of the school that requires history to read like a novel. He has a point to make, and he eschews entertainment in favor of countless contemporary source citations to bring it home. But he does have a deft touch for passing along, without comment, particularly telling quotes by the beneficiaries of the whitewashing.
In a chapter on the L.A. area’s biggest brickyard, where the all-Mexican and Mexican-American workforce was confined to company housing and starvation wages, Deverell quotes a newspaper reporter attending the annual brickyard Christmas party for the workers’ children: “To see those merry-faced, brown-skinned youngsters carrying off their treasures ... is to get a new light on the melting pot of America.”
“Whitewashed Adobe” stops at the onset of World War II, after which the stirrings of Chicano political activism began to change the equation. But the U.S. “cultural stance” continues, played out on a broader, NAFTA-era stage.
As I read “Whitewashed Adobe,” I kept thinking about two movies. Mexican director Paul Leduc’s subtle and political biopic of Frida Kahlo screened for the Motion Picture Academy of America as a Best Foreign Picture hopeful in 1985. The huge theater nearly emptied by the time it was half over.
In contrast, some two decades later, the Hollywood version was a box-office success. The Mexican movie was infinitely better, not to mention more accurate. But the Hollywood movie delivered the Mexico that plays best stateside: bright colors, romance and pretty people speaking in charmingly accented English. It reflected a U.S. cultural stance 150 years in the making.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Commentary: Lay, government, lay
With religious leaders feeling their oats and a pro-Church party in power, the push for injecting religion into government isn't letting up. The following lightly abridged opinion piece could have been written yesterday, but it appeared in the Herald Mexico on February 19, 2006. At the time, Vicente Fox was president and Carlos Abascal was Interior (Gobernación) secretary. Abascal, along with Fox and lame-duck PAN party leader Manuel Espino, is still a key figure in the PAN's religious-right faction.
Have Faith, Will Govern
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
Not many of social and cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis’s observations over the decades have had more impact than his January 31 warning about new fissures in Mexico’s already-cracked wall between church and state. Red flags about this have been going up with increasing frequency since Vicente Fox and the National Action Party (PAN) re-introduced religion as a governing posture, if not tool. But Monsivais’s speech marked a turning point in the escalating battle.
One reason Monsiváis’s own red flag is getting more attention than others’ is because it was raised rather unexpectedly as the major theme of his acceptance speech after receiving one of the few literary prizes he hadn’t already claimed, the National Award for Literature. What’s more, the speech was delivered at Los Pinos during a gala awards ceremony attended by President Fox himself (who showed his own knack for barbed rejoinders by closing the festivities with, “God bless you”).
Another reason is that Monsiváis named names. The name he spent the most time on was none other then Carlos Abascal, the former labor secretary whom Fox selected to close out the sexenio as Interior (Gobernación) Secretary after Santiago Creel resigned to run for president.
Monsiváis indicted Abascal not so much based on his (and many other panistas’) activism on specific issues like the morning-after pill, but on his more far-reaching philosophical statements that reveal a decidedly theological approach to organizing the state.
Monsiváis also has cited Abascal’s contributing role in his father’s 1997 book skewering Benito Juárez as the original cause of such atrocities as civil marriage, tolerance of protestant sects, and the advent of public lay schools (or in the senior Abascal’s words, the “terrorism” of “atheist education”).
In his Los Pinos speech, Monsiváis focused on Abascal’s statement a few days earlier at something called the World Ethical Forum. Abascal’s words, translated: “It is necessary to reclaim ... religion as the space for promoting the link between the human being and his transcendent destiny, in order to give meaning to the ethical values that comprise his daily life.”
Not without good reason, Monsiváis finds it disturbing that a high government official considers it “necessary” to promote religion as the basis for deciding what’s ethically appropriate. Of course, many people do base their ethical judgments exclusively on religion, or think they do. But they’re not in charge of the internal policies of a constitutionally secular government. Abascal is.
Abascal’s substantive defense was that he was misunderstood: “What I said is that in the ethical formation of its citizens, it’s important for the state to turn to all its sources of strength — the family, the schools, business, political leaders, and the churches.” In interviews, the secretary stressed that he had no intention of undermining the nation’s traditional church-state separation, and that indeed he’d done plenty to ensure that the clergy stays out of politics.
Monsiváis wasn’t buying it. “He cites what he didn’t say to respond to criticism of what he did say,” he said. “What he said is that only religion gives meaning to ethical values.”
Abascal’s political defense was less conciliatory: “I respect those fundamentalists who accuse me of fundamentalism.”
The implication was that Monsiváis, in criticizing Abascal, was being intolerant — if not of religion itself, then of those who hold views about it differing from his. The Catholic Church leadership, in one of its publications, quickly backed up Abascal, accusing Monsiváis of “trying to lock the clergy back in the cloister.”
Monsiváis clearly meant no such thing, but the counterattack was still an effective move, right out of the Karl Rove playbook. Turn the tables on your opponent by attacking his strength with a catchy soundbite. It doesn’t matter if the accusation is ludicrous, such as putting a “fundamentalist” label on a defender of religious freedom. What matters is changing the terms of the debate.
But Monsiváis seems to be less interested in winning small political battles as he is in re-energizing respect for what a secular state really means. It’s not a mere negative, the absence of religious establishment. Rather, it’s a positive statement of a people’s commitment to free inquiry, individual rights, religious freedom, and democratic government.
In his acceptance speech, Monsiváis paid homage to that commitment, and those from previous generations who “bequeathed us their faith in reason, their exercise of freedom of expression and belief, their extraordinary creative powers, their love of culture, art and science, and their humanistic and democratic impulses.”
Some wonder if Monsiváis and others aren’t overreacting. Mexico’s laicismo wasn’t decreed by founding fathers; it was fought for over several bloody decades. That high price helped establish it all the more firmly in Mexico’s political tradition, and it’s doubtful that a minority of politicians could succeed it toppling it.
Perhaps. But turn on CNN. The world is hardly racing in the right direction. And here in Mexico there’s no doubt that some people in high places see no harm and much benefit in squeezing religion into the halls of government. That, Monsiváis is saying, is a threat, even if they ultimately fail.
For Mexico to advance, secular government can’t just survive. It needs to thrive.
Have Faith, Will Govern
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
Not many of social and cultural critic Carlos Monsiváis’s observations over the decades have had more impact than his January 31 warning about new fissures in Mexico’s already-cracked wall between church and state. Red flags about this have been going up with increasing frequency since Vicente Fox and the National Action Party (PAN) re-introduced religion as a governing posture, if not tool. But Monsivais’s speech marked a turning point in the escalating battle.
One reason Monsiváis’s own red flag is getting more attention than others’ is because it was raised rather unexpectedly as the major theme of his acceptance speech after receiving one of the few literary prizes he hadn’t already claimed, the National Award for Literature. What’s more, the speech was delivered at Los Pinos during a gala awards ceremony attended by President Fox himself (who showed his own knack for barbed rejoinders by closing the festivities with, “God bless you”).
Another reason is that Monsiváis named names. The name he spent the most time on was none other then Carlos Abascal, the former labor secretary whom Fox selected to close out the sexenio as Interior (Gobernación) Secretary after Santiago Creel resigned to run for president.
Monsiváis indicted Abascal not so much based on his (and many other panistas’) activism on specific issues like the morning-after pill, but on his more far-reaching philosophical statements that reveal a decidedly theological approach to organizing the state.
Monsiváis also has cited Abascal’s contributing role in his father’s 1997 book skewering Benito Juárez as the original cause of such atrocities as civil marriage, tolerance of protestant sects, and the advent of public lay schools (or in the senior Abascal’s words, the “terrorism” of “atheist education”).
In his Los Pinos speech, Monsiváis focused on Abascal’s statement a few days earlier at something called the World Ethical Forum. Abascal’s words, translated: “It is necessary to reclaim ... religion as the space for promoting the link between the human being and his transcendent destiny, in order to give meaning to the ethical values that comprise his daily life.”
Not without good reason, Monsiváis finds it disturbing that a high government official considers it “necessary” to promote religion as the basis for deciding what’s ethically appropriate. Of course, many people do base their ethical judgments exclusively on religion, or think they do. But they’re not in charge of the internal policies of a constitutionally secular government. Abascal is.
Abascal’s substantive defense was that he was misunderstood: “What I said is that in the ethical formation of its citizens, it’s important for the state to turn to all its sources of strength — the family, the schools, business, political leaders, and the churches.” In interviews, the secretary stressed that he had no intention of undermining the nation’s traditional church-state separation, and that indeed he’d done plenty to ensure that the clergy stays out of politics.
Monsiváis wasn’t buying it. “He cites what he didn’t say to respond to criticism of what he did say,” he said. “What he said is that only religion gives meaning to ethical values.”
Abascal’s political defense was less conciliatory: “I respect those fundamentalists who accuse me of fundamentalism.”
The implication was that Monsiváis, in criticizing Abascal, was being intolerant — if not of religion itself, then of those who hold views about it differing from his. The Catholic Church leadership, in one of its publications, quickly backed up Abascal, accusing Monsiváis of “trying to lock the clergy back in the cloister.”
Monsiváis clearly meant no such thing, but the counterattack was still an effective move, right out of the Karl Rove playbook. Turn the tables on your opponent by attacking his strength with a catchy soundbite. It doesn’t matter if the accusation is ludicrous, such as putting a “fundamentalist” label on a defender of religious freedom. What matters is changing the terms of the debate.
But Monsiváis seems to be less interested in winning small political battles as he is in re-energizing respect for what a secular state really means. It’s not a mere negative, the absence of religious establishment. Rather, it’s a positive statement of a people’s commitment to free inquiry, individual rights, religious freedom, and democratic government.
In his acceptance speech, Monsiváis paid homage to that commitment, and those from previous generations who “bequeathed us their faith in reason, their exercise of freedom of expression and belief, their extraordinary creative powers, their love of culture, art and science, and their humanistic and democratic impulses.”
Some wonder if Monsiváis and others aren’t overreacting. Mexico’s laicismo wasn’t decreed by founding fathers; it was fought for over several bloody decades. That high price helped establish it all the more firmly in Mexico’s political tradition, and it’s doubtful that a minority of politicians could succeed it toppling it.
Perhaps. But turn on CNN. The world is hardly racing in the right direction. And here in Mexico there’s no doubt that some people in high places see no harm and much benefit in squeezing religion into the halls of government. That, Monsiváis is saying, is a threat, even if they ultimately fail.
For Mexico to advance, secular government can’t just survive. It needs to thrive.
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