Ever since mexican President Felipe Calderón entered office in Los Pinos, the mexican equivalent of the White House, the mexican military has had more than its share of the limelight.
Before Calderón, the military was a topic of dubious temptation because many in mexican society decried the mexican military to be some kind of social panacea to the ills that ail the mexican nation. Mostly as a panacea to the ineptitudes of the judiciary system which has been, up to date, inefficient in combating all sorts of crime.
The military has now been in action since the inception of the Calderón presidency and as always, the military has had clashes with how society works. A cultural shock is in place as we speak. A deadly one might I add.
Add to that that today five military service men died at the hands of narco men then one begins to suspect that the panacea was less than the expected maná which was to quell the hunger for justice in the old Aztec nation.
In a nation with a tendency to undermine its democratic institutions like a Hong Kong under British rule one can scratch its head at will.
The military is in disarray and in need of direction.
This ultimately affects the US in one way or another. For in the long run the policy towards the South has been quite at odds with public discourse.
And this doesn’t bode well with the flow in the Potomac because there seems to be a flow against the current, and if a lowly citizen can detect that then the Powers to be have to explain a lot just exactly is it that is going on South of the Border.
I could scarcely believe my lying eyes when I landed on the article. ¡Ask a Mexican! By Gustavo Arellano in the Swedish press. I have known of this column since the blogsphere presented it to me some two odd years ago. I had reservations at first but somehow I still keep on reading it as many chances I get to read it. It’s funny, what can I say.
Mexicans in the Swedish press tend to be quite either the exotic beings with a rich cultural past or the more gringo traditional take on the mexican, a burden like a pest.
When Swedes speak of mexicans in the US its more like two birds of a feather flocking togehter, the Swedes, the US. Like Swedes saying we understand your dilemma. From a law perspective off course. The focus lies on the illegality of things.
One seldom sees an article explaining the phenomena or the causes of immigration in the nordic press but rather one hears through the Swedish language the ailing and wailing of the American conservative outcry (a phenomena that started out in the middle of the 80’s) that mexicans are running over the USA. Perhaps that is to change?
The present article brings the aforementioned forth adding that to its merit that is precisely what Ask a Mexican! does: pin point the absurd in gringo mentality by declaring some aspects of an equation in immigration as illegal [mexicans crossing illegal into the US] but never what other aspects contribute to the equation, in this case, that employers that hire illegal immigrants don’t get the notion of illegal either since it is illegal to hire illegal immigrants.
Source: Image in blog comes from a photo taken on Monday the 30th of April and the article thereby presented appears in the printed Sunday edition of the Swedish newspaper Svd on page 21 in the International section.
First and foremost I would like to point out that despite Sean Kelly’s bragging about his Spanish skills there’s still isn’t a México category in the topic section of the dairies. Though I guess one not ought to complain since the label Latin America ought to suffice for more than 22 countries that speak Spanish, including México in that lot.
Having let that grudge out of the chest we shall move forward with the business of extrapolating mexican politics in an very brief and concise manner. Though space is not an issue I must take into account for two factors in the exigency at hand, one, the short attention span of the blog reader who mostly out of happenstance clicks on the link and the other less likely these times, interest in the topic at hand.
Botched attempts at legitimatizing Calderón via the US media have resulted in awkward spells the sort that remind one of Macbeth. And at home the thing doesn’t get any better.
So beside the media blitzkrieg which has characterized the Calderón presidency thus far what is said beyond TV, and by it I mean the net, I am, after all, in Sweden, might I remind those not in the know, the Spanish written outlets paint a not so pretty picture for the current TV and Big Business sanctioned president of México.
First, allow us to remind ourselves that Calderón started his troubled presidency by trying to present an image of a tough man of the law. He brought out the army out of its barracks to fight lawlessness, created by none other than his predecessor, Vicente Fox. The idea was simple: since police enforcement was so corrupted that the federal government had to use its last credible institution to fight crime it had no choice but to enforce the law by means of military intervention.
It backfired.
By declaring war on crime many who entertained the idea that something was left of a powerful and centralized government received a shocking truth. They earnestly thought the government would quell bad boys and they praised the government for the initiative. Alas! the mexican army has not only exacerbated the situation in the 31 states that make a quasi highly centralized federation called México by staining the thin line between civil and military laws it has also exposed the men in green to the follies of a society which revolves around a corrupt spin in every event of its daily life. The military has put into question the very fabric of the federation and placed a thin rope on a Democles Sword above a fragile constituency. The Army is now stained with murder, corruption and above all, is acting as if they themselves are above the law.
Second, Calderón has made a series of blunders that inevitably will affect not only the nefarious NAFTA deal co-signed by the Salinas-Bush gang but the very fabric which has distinguished Canada, the USA and México in this lofty yet spurious accord. This no doubt in part with the USA’s aid. Now, I say the latter because the USA has a record of a Catholic priest on penance on Easter Sunday. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa can be heard every day in the US media, at home but abroad, the story is different. Abroad, these Utilitarian and old Methodist evangelical sons and daughters would give two rats about the very land they so dearly want to save for the Lord they purport to serve. Indeed, one can even give a stretch of the imagination and argue that if it weren’t for all those pesky mexicans which insist in being in México things might just be a tad smoother for all concerned.
Those blunders start with the very presidency he purports to represent, which Fort Knox springs to mind since Calderón can’t be seen around the people that elected him to the chair he so comfortably sits in because repudiation will sprout like a stubborn weed that just keeps coming back.
And oh yeah, then there are those pesky budgets which of lately are spilling the beans like wild grass in early spring. Yes, discrepancies about Vicente Fox’s use of taxpayer’s money are flourishing like flowers on a green meadow. He has lots to explain but don’t expect him to get caught by the amputated arm of the law in México. Nope. Now that would be akin to a wanker’s wet dream coming through.
The list goes on and the fight even more so. To the point that even the Catholic church has stepped to defend its favorite candidate this despite the fact that the mexican constitution prohibits the clergy from partaking in politics, but does the Catholic church care? Go read mexican papers to find out.
Well, I suppose that what I want to say is that México is on the verge of something, may it be 2010 or a real democracy unfolding south of the border I know not. But something is afoot, and that’s for sure.
I have always had trouble believing am a Xicano. No matter that the evidence points to the fact that I am just that.
This has become even more apparent for me here in Europe. the Nordic corner, isolated from Aztlán. Being away from the motherland has proven a sky that raineth a manna of ideas. I started out by declaring myself a prop. 187 exile. The first Xicano in exile driven away by Pete Wilson and his conservative tirade of this and that of the likes of me. Then I wrote. I wrote and I discovered the real Xicano in me through the written word. I did this both in Spanish and English.
This has proven quite productive because xicanismo is closely tied to language. I am fortunate to love language so in the process of peeling the core that I had in proper Aztlán, using language as a peeler, I discovered layers of myself that I figure I would not have otherwise managed to put in evidence to the naked eye of the I.
Through my language [read: English, Spanish, Spanglish, Espanglish, the southwest dialect] I learned who I really am. I found my roots. Being away from the American psycho identity dominatrix that usually sadomasochistic fellows like me tend to bed with gave airs of freedom unbeknownst. It was a breath of fresh air away from the stars and stripes which hangeth upon the xicano ens like a Democles sword.
We xicanos tend to prefer the gringo in us because it is just the gringo in us which makes us. And because some of us only understand that side, and use our mexican heritage like a mourning gown we never take of, we react defensively to anything that threatens this ’identity’. Though this theory is hardly embraced because it means that Aztlán lieth not in one nation but precisely in the being of two de facto lands. So don’t expect people to nick away in approval at the latter exposed idea.
Little is known about the degree of gringoness in each and one of us. We discuss this not because doing so would mean too much differentiation rendering atoms a mere metaphorical image. So while we spouse in all glory all México we seldom do so our American side. Yuck say some. Too pocho, too gabacho. Yet it is this very aspect that we tend to let radiate most in us.
We don mexican heritage like a perennial día de los muertos affair, in all earnest, we live a past and live the gringo present. Although some xicanos drape themselves in their mexicanness like a fashion gown, alas! their appearance or self image, shallow like a dead river bed. This gringo alienates us from one another because as gringo nature is we feel different. The kind of different that says am better than you. An am and you world which builds canyons the like of the Grand one. It is a fact which cannot be denied. Tis easy to lay claim to Aztec culture and ignore the rest. Tis easy to lay ink to flesh temples of the Maya when Geronimo, so close yet so far away from Quetzalcoátl, remains in the sands of the Sonora Desert surrounded by the silence of time.
I, for example, have been excluded from my so-called brethren from both sides. My brethren xicano infected by Manifest Destiny from Los, desperately trying to integrate to US society after more than 150 years of ’integration’ and by my xicano brethren infected by over 70 years of mexican nationalism who are yet to realize how xicanos they are because one tends to cease to be mexican once one ceases to be present in México or adopts strange customs. Never mind those customs have nothing to do with, say, Tijuana.
I feel the difference like a slight scent of garlic because am not fully Mexican and because am not fully American, that is, I lack the papers on the one side and I lack presence on the other. That is my most natural state. A state that perhaps ensued in me a quest for learning to command the whip which castigated me the most, language. So I learned to command what the land gave me as a birthright. And this difference became even more apparent. I went below the shallow.
I was born in Tijuana, raised in Southwestern traditions from the San Francisco Bay Area to San Diego County. Of recent I have reached a sort of compromise with myself. I say am a xicano tijuanense. Un xicano de este lado. That is, a Xicano which is not born in the US.
By adhering to this formula I allowed myself to become closer to my own surroundings. That is, I saw that which nurtured me whilst I breathed Geronimo’s sand through nostrils filled with muck from other lands. Santa Ana winds cleared the way and I now spouse the indigenous in me and do not let myself be fooled by common Chicano semiotics.
Off course it still irritates me to be xicano in the vicinity of my gringo cousins because though I speak english I am not a US citizen. Here in Sweden they a saying about Germans: there is a little Hitler in every German. I can say this about my gringo Xicano cousins: there is a little migra in every US born Xicano.
Híjole, we must be the only race in the world that is consumed by itself.
By Frank Jack Daniel
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A moth with a big appetite that once chomped its way through huge swaths of cacti in Australia has landed in Mexico, where the spiky plant is a favorite food stuff and major agricultural product.
Officials said on Friday a moth trapped close to the beach resort of Cancun this week could be the same species that destroyed some 50 million acres of cacti in Australia, opening the possibility the moth will spread to Mexico’s cactus farming regions.
The Cactoblastis cactorum moth landed on Mexico’s Caribbean island Isla Mujeres last year, sparking a major government pest control operation.
Pest control agents have set up hundreds of traps along the coastline and are searching hotels and private homes for further signs of the moth.
”This is war,” said Enrique Sanchez, head of plant and animal health in Mexico. ”If lots of them arrive we will try to destroy the largest number possible with pesticides.”
The edible cactus, or nopal, industry in Mexico is worth about $150 million each year. About 10,000 farmers cultivate the plant.
”Before the Chicano and the undocumented worker and the Mexican from the other side can come together, before the Chicano can have unity with Native Americans and other groups, we need to know the history of their struggle and they need to know ours. Our mothers, our sisters, and brothers, the guys who hang out on street corners, the children in the playgrounds, each of us must know our Indian lineage, our history of resistance.” – Gloria Anzaldua
Well, it seems that the gorge of buddy making in the so called blogostitlán is done and over with. Many of the bloggers that started out as a chain like minded club barely write anymore or stand out as islands these days with no direction in sight.
I did the rounds on the links I have and many wail that they don’t write anymore and there interests for things Aztlán is long gone. Long gone are also the questions that forced a label upon them and long gone are also the memories that usually permeated the posts of said bloggers.
Many failed to realize that Chicanos are too different from one another to really form any group and many failed to realize that their superordinate label ’American’ supercedes any notion of Chicanismo in their lives. What I mean by this is that the fear of being labeled alien is stronger than the fashionable chicano, we all love the stars and stripes but even more, we fear the questioning of our americanism.
Many also fell into the trap of racism accusing chicano culture of being essentially racist. Terms such as raza, gíüero, gringo and other terms raza uses to discuss the Other became a point of contention amongst some bloggers that just wanted to question us rather than explore the origins of said terms or why we used them at all. Many backed off quickly and began recoiling at the idea that their chicanismo was a sort of racism in disguise. They quickly forgot that chicanos embrace all forms of races in its ens.
Others just simply wanted out because blogging requires incredible amounts of energies to pursue its goal, to write on a frequent basis.
Then there is a point of contention being boiled as we speak, what is the Xicano blogsphere? I, for example, prefer a more militant form of xicano blogging that stands in direct verbal confrontation with the Other. I prefer cholo xicano and older more akin to the culture of xicanismo I grew up with.
Then there is a more pocho culture that embraces both cultures more openly which tends to cause friction with the latter above mentioned. Then there are the new arrivals to Aztlán which lack any form of direct contact with Aztlán which tends to cause friction with the latter two mentioned.
Be that as it may while the Xicano blogsphere seems to have dwindled somewhat in some corners though in other corners it blossoms. There are many sites and blogs that bespeak of xicanismo in all sorts of form. It is spreading out and the singularity factor that dominated the birth of the Xicano blogsphere. Even the kind of xicanismo that I spouse seems to be coming out.
Though I have nothing against the xicanismo which embraces Aztec and Maya semiotics, at the present time I give more time to my own kind of Xicanismo, desert related xicanismo which has been but forgotten.
Tijuana has for the past several years been a constant source of talk. If it’s not politics, police, music or arts Tijuana is doing what it tends to do best, get wasted.
Tijuana is a city which lies on the furthest northern area of México. It borders the USA and i’s neighbor is San Diego. It faces the Pacific Ocean. There is an incredible amount of business going on around Tijuana both legal and illegal but its usually the illegal sort of business that tends to attract the limelight. Specially the drug related kind which is so powerful that it tends to corrupt every form of institution on both sides of the countries, the US of A and México.
Native population of Tijuana is rather small. We are referred to as tijuanenses and tijuanenses tend to be bilingual, that is, we speak English and Spanish though this might be lopsided as there is an incredible amount of Mixtecos, people from Oaxaca, México, native to Tijuana too and whose own language is preserved so tijuanenses can be and are probably trilingual as well.
It has a population of about 2 million with a floating population of 500, 000 give or take.At the present time Tijuana is governed by a notorious person whose reputation is questionable, Jorge Hank. This man of politics belongs to one of México’s richest families and has several dark rumors always following him. It is rumored that he has mafia ties and that he is the intellectual mastermind behind the assassination of a journalist from Tijuana. May people dislike him and one can imagine he is getting a bad rap. He will soon leave office to run for governor of Baja California.
Tijuana recently became a bit of world wide news because the federal government in México ordered the military to take the town by storm, and that they did. They came and attacked the police! That’s right, when the federal government sent the men in green they didn’t go after the bad guys they went for the local police. They disarmed them, had them fingerprinted and left the city without a police corps for nearly a month. The police decided to ridicule the federal forces so they started to fight with rocks and slingshots …. Funny thing is that for a while not having the police armed proved to be a sort of blessing in disguise, crime went down and the city was calm. The federal police are still in Tijuana but the bad guys seem to have grown restless so everything is back to the same smut as always.
Tijuana has always been a little clandestine for puritan gíüeros from the US. Americans have been coming to Tijuana since the prohibition era to get shots of tequila down south and the stream of gringos hasn’t let up since then.
Tijuana, however, has also been getting loads of news from an unusual front, its arts.
As always, the cultural duality that permeates its citizens is the source of admiration both abroad and at home. There are writers whose lingo is well admired and a source of admiration for many. Many Chicanos hail from the city, Luis Alberto Urrea and Lalo ALcaraz are some of them. The tijuanenses which tend to embrace its mexicanness tend, however, to ignore its American side due to indoctrinated ideology of refusal for anything gringo. Spanish writers from Tijuana are the likes of Federico Campbell and Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. Yes, with last names like that they still insist in being an all mexican or nothing lot.
we’d like to proclaim the Mexican City of Tijuana as the new ”center of the art world”. Henceforth, we think that all trends in contemporary art should be set by those artists residing in Tijuana, and that international artists should trek to the city along the U.S./Mexico border in order to find inspiration, make connections (and of course sales), and study and work with some of the finest artists in the world.
There is Yonke Art as well.
Musicallywise there is world acclaimed Nortec, Julieta Venegas and a host of other people which escapes my mind now.
There is a blog culture as well but seems quite dormant these days.
