Lat/Am Daily » Mexico

Wild-eyed theory of the week

Peter Krupa — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:07:13 +0000

This just had to be transcripted. From North Carolina Representative Sue Myrick:

Here we are with a pourous border, not really paying attention to who’s coming over, what’s happening with Iran and Hugo Chávez and Venezuela. We know that there are people going to Venezuela, learning Spanish, and then coming up through Mexico with fake documents, trying to cross the border. If they’re stopped they say, I’m Mexican. You know. Or Spanish. The point is, a border agent who really knows the difference in their language can tell that they aren’t Mexican, and so it’s very difficult if those agents aren’t really trained in linguistics to know that. And they get across.

Ah yes, the ol’ learn-Spanish-in-Venezuela-then-pretend-you’re-Mexican-or-Spanish trick. Really a shame the US public education system can’t get the next generation of border guards past the Me gusta el pollo stage.

How long, O Lord, until North Carolina sloughs off into the Atlantic?

NAFTA and Mexican maize

Peter Krupa — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:56:41 +0000

The Nation has a long, wonky, wonderful article on Mexican maize cultivation, the effects of NAFTA, and the dangers of genetically-modified seeds. Author Peter Canby backs up his excellent writing with piles and piles of meticulous research. Not to be missed. [link, via SM] (Image from Joel Penner.)

Money laundering (get it?)

Peter Krupa — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:45:06 +0000

If you read one story today, let it be Michael Smith’s very long and very interesting story in Bloomberg on how Mexican drug traffickers launder money through US banks like Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo) and Bank of America.

The piece is long and excellent enough to defy excerpting, but let’s give it a shot:

For years, federal authorities watched as the wife and daughter of Oscar Oropeza, a drug smuggler working for the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel, deposited stacks of cash at a Bank of America branch on Boca Chica Boulevard in Brownsville, Texas, less than 3 miles from the border.

…

The Oropeza case gives a new, literal meaning to the term money laundering. Oropeza’s wife, Tina Marie, and daughter Paulina Marie deposited stashes of $20 bills several times a day into Bank of America accounts, Salazar says. Bank employees got to know the Oropezas by the smell of their money.

“I asked the tellers what they were talking about, and they said the money had this sweet smell like Bounce, those sheets you throw into the dryer,” Salazar says. “They told me that when they opened the vault, the smell of Bounce just poured out.”

Yes, they were literally laundering money. I suppose to wash off the cocaine, or something.

The drug traffickers appear to be onto something obvious: In my personal, anecdotal, totally non-peer-reviewed experience, it is a hell of a lot easier to open bank accounts and move money in the United States than in Latin America.

Maybe someday soon, the war on drugs will also make it impossible to open a bank account in the US without presenting a copy of a university diploma.

Gubernatorial candidate assassinated

Peter Krupa — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:52:08 +0000

Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [link]

Log in the eye

Peter Krupa — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:23:47 +0000

Central American immigrants move north through Mexico via freight trains.

While Mexicans are justifiably outraged over a new law in Arizona that criminalizes illegal immigrants, this might be a good time to recall that they themselves aren’t too great at treating unwanted guests with decency and respect. Amnesty International recently released a hair-raising report on the gauntlet of rape, theft, and abuse that immigrants from Central America have to endure in Mexico on their way to the US of A. Here’s one incident from the 48-page report:

On 1 March 2008, a Salvadoran couple, Marta and Juan (not their real names), were passing near the INM post at Huixtla on the Tapachula-Arriaga road, Chiapas state. Three uniformed municipal policemen stopped them and stole their money. Then, three armed men arrived and took Marta away. One of the policemen told her husband to disappear, but he scoured the area looking for his wife until the following day, when he made his way to the shelter run by Father Solalinde in Ciudad Ixtepec, Oaxaca state. He filed a complaint with the PGJE in Tapachula. Father Solalinde told Amnesty International that later, when Marta was located in El Salvador, she confirmed that the armed men had blindfolded her and forced her to walk for a day before repeatedly raping her. After five days in captivity, Marta woke alone. Traumatized, she made her own way back to El Salvador, reluctant to pursue a criminal complaint against the perpetrators. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants raised the case with the Mexican government which offered to provide Marta with a visa to file a complaint, but she refused to return to Mexico. To Amnesty International’s knowledge, no further efforts were made to identify the perpetrators.

It’s estimated that six out of 10 migrant women passing through Mexico are sexually abused. Many other migrants are kidnapped or killed by criminal gangs, often with the complicity of the local police and municipal authorities. And pretty much none of the perpetrators are ever brought to justice: Illegal immigrants are afraid to go to the authorities because they themselves are breaking the law, making them sitting ducks for criminals.

Which, by the way, will be one of the nastier side-effects of the Arizona law.

This is not to say that two wrongs make a right, but that maybe Mexican civil society (which sounds like it does great work on this issue, by the way) could use the Arizona controversy as a teachable moment to whip up a little empathy and understanding for the plight of the migrant on Mexican soil.

(Original image courtesy wetape)

Car chase in Mexico

Peter Krupa — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:47:09 +0000

This video of a kidnapping and car chase in Mexico is notable mainly for the bad-assitude of the TV journalists who were on this like white on rice. Well done, gentlemen.

Mexico creates space agency

Peter Krupa — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:56:48 +0000

Mexico’s congress has passed a bill creating Agencias Especiales de Mexico, the Mexican Space Agency, or AEXA. The agency will be in charge of developing space exploration initiatives, as well as building a space base on the Yucatan Peninsula. [link]

Alamar

Peter Krupa — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:02:11 +0000

Alamar, a Mexican film about a father and son that is supposedly some kind of documentary/feature film hybrid, won best picture at the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente.

What a pretty-looking movie.

Women prisoners trafficked for prostitution

Peter Krupa — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:03:58 +0000

Guards, legal personnel, secretaries, and prisoners all allegedly participated in a prostitution ring in the Mexico City penal system that trafficked women prisoners from the female prisons to the male prisons for the enjoyment of “padrino” – or wealthy – prisoners there. [link]

Rolling southward

Peter Krupa — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:15:57 +0000

Last week I laughed when I read a comment from a Mexican health insurance executive blaming a 16% increase in the cost of health insurance last year on “people getting sick more.” Then my wife said, “Diet?” and I said, hm. And now I read this great post from Structurally Maladjusted on The NAFTA Diet.

Apparently Mexico is very fat, and has become so recently:

About 70 percent of Mexican adults are now overweight, according to government estimates, more than triple the number of three decades ago. Also, about a third of the country’s schoolchildren and teenagers are overweight, making Mexicans the second-heaviest people on the planet, gaining quickly on their American neighbors.

I don’t know of any easy way to figure out what proportion of food people eat is over-processed crap, and anyway, as SM points out, correlation is not causation. Common sense tells us, however, that a free trade agreement with a country whose government-subsidized food industry is killing its customers will not be good for you.

Indeed, living as I do in a country that recently ratified CAFTA and has for the last couple decades been rushing to adopt the American way of life, I’ve seen the food culture change in only the few years I’ve been here. Grocery stores have more (and cheaper) chips and crackers and string cheese and dips and all the other fun stuff you could nominally associate with a Super Bowl party.

Also, fast food is ever-cheaper and quickly becoming competitive with more traditional rice-and-beans-based options. Costa Ricans, like Mexicans, are putting on the pounds: Only 22% of men were overweight in 1982. Now, it’s 62%.

One thing countries like Costa Rica and Mexico do have going for them is healthier distrust of the companies whose terrible products make them fat. Just try unanimously passing a federal law in the US banning junk food from public schools and you’ll note the contrast.

Even so, I have no doubt that the globalization of the American diet will someday (if not already) be seen as one of the greatest cultural and public health travesties in history.

(Original image courtesy Enrico via Wikimedia Commons.)