The Mex Files

The corporations are free of pesky union regulations, and can trade off basic human rights for profits…

Less than 24 hours after President Bush met with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom at the White House on Monday, a worker from a union that filed a trade complaint with Washington against the Guatemalan government was murdered.

Carlos Enrique Cruz Hernández, a banana worker, was assassinated while working at a farm owned by a subsidiary of Del Monte. Cruz Hernández’s Union of Izabal Banana Workers (SITRABI), was one of six Guatemalan unions who, along with the AFL-CIO, filed a complaint allowed through labor provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) on April 23, charging that the Guatemalan government was not upholding its labor laws and was failing to investigate and prosecute crimes against union members–which include rape and murder. The complaint states that violence against trade unionists has increased over the past two years (since CAFTA was ratified) and that the Guatemalan government may be responsible for some of the violence. The violence from this year alone includes 8 murders, 1 attempted murder, 2 drive-by shootings, and the kidnapping and gang rape of a top union official’s daughter who was targeted because of her father’s union work.

(Full article, “Bullets and Bananas: The Violence of Free Trade in Guatemala” by Cyril Mychalejko at Upsidedownworld.org)

I expect we’ll be hearing some more about the Bush famil y’s 98,000 acre spread in Paraguay in the coming months. Neil Bush (last month) and First Drunk Daughter Jenna (in October 2006) both made mysterious trips to the otherwise forgotten country in recent months.

Down With Tyranny has been one of the few widely read news blogs to follow the story, and actually went to Paraguay to investigate:

…I was hoping to track down the humongous Bush estate in the most remote part of Latin America’s least known country. I never did manage to get anywhere near the Bush estate– it was meant to be remote for a reason and the only way to get there is by private plane and then you need permission to land on their airstrip– but I did take note of a certain backwardness that might make it very alluring not just to Bush but to many of the potential war crimes defendants from his regime. They were actually selling Nazi memorabilia on the streets of Asuncion.

Well, Paraguay is in the news this morning– and not in a way likely to please the Bushes. The fascistic-oriented ruling party was deposed yesterday. Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic Bishop– the “bishop of the poor”– and the leader of a left-of-center coalition of unions, Indians and poor farmers, beat Blanca Ovelar, who headed the very corrupt far right Colorado Party, widely considered to be in Bush’s pocket.

President-Elect Lugo, and his party, are promising to redistribute land in the last country in Latin America (like the United States, most agricultural land is held by corporate interests. Unlike the U.S., most Paraguayans are farmers). The Bush family lands are said to be investments in soya (Paraguay’s largest legal export) though there are rumors the Bush’s were interested in capturing water drilling rights in expectation that neo-liberal policies in the Southern Cone would lead to privatizing water distribution within those countries. However, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay have all elected social democratic leaders who have rejected neo-liberalism, leaving Paraguay as the last hope for making a fortune from these privatized natural resources.

Then again, maybe some of the more sinister suggestions about the Bush compound are true, and water isn’t their main concern. Paraguay was, of course, best known as the refuge of Nazi war criminals and other nasty types. There are those who believe the Bushs are planning for their eventual exile somewhere beyond the jurisdiction of the United States and international courts. If even slightly true, the Bushs may have to start asking “Is it safe?” before they pack their bags.

Fernando Lugo’s election in Paraguay is also more proof, if any is needed, of my own hare-brained theory that the Bush family are working for Castro... think of it. Since Chinese Commie lovin’ George W. Bush was “elected” — with the help of Cubans in Florida (where his brother was conveniently Governor), Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, ,Panama ,Nicaragua, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay, have all moved to the left. the fractured Mexican left united — and Bush’s handler, Fidel Castro, having achieved his goal of a leftist Latin America, could finally retire.

In case anyone is keeping score, since George W. Bush was “elected” in 2000, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname, Uruguary, and Venezuela have all elected leftist or social-democratic leaders. Add Guatemala to the list.

Alvaro Colom, a social-democrat, was elected on the UNE ticket, seems to offer a program similar to that offered by Mexico’s not-elected (by 0.05 percent) Andres Manuel López Obradór: expanded social spending and integration with Latin America, and attacking crime by going after the root causes — poverty and corruption — rather than the approach favored by both Colom and AMLO’s main rivals — the hard hand.

Colom is an intriguing figure. His uncle was the martyred mayor of Guatamala City, Manuel Colom, who was one of a spate of left-leaning democrats murdered after Guatelemala supposedly returned to Democracy. The new president’s background as a business executive and social services administrator (the big scandal in the election involved supposedly diverted funds from his campaign going to social services — even if true better than the other way around) is about what you’d expect for the president of a small country. One other interesting piece of trivia: those a “ladino” (a Guatemalan of non-indigenous ancestry) he is a Mayan priest.

Other than bananas (and workers) Guatemala doesn’t have much in the way of resources — no oil to make the election caputure the attention of the U.S. It has already signed on to CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) which hopes to repeat the mistakes of NAFTA over a wider area.

Under the Spanish, Guatemala was a “vice-viceroyalty” of Nueva España, and until the 1820s, its history is Mexican history. Chiapas was once part of Guatemala and is a slightly better-off version of conditions in Guatemala. The Revolution never having reached Guatemala, it’s indigenous population has never had the advantages of legal equality.

Though, both in Mexico and Guatemala, Mayans have been treated as less than human, and often denied their civil rights, Mexican Mayans could at least get an education, vote and a wider economic and social sphere than their relations across the border. In 1954, Jacabo Arbenz, a rare democratically elected president, was overthrown in a bloody coup. His “crime” was attempting to nationalize the banana industry, and reform agriculture, modeled on Lazaro Cardenás’ nationalizations in 1930s Mexico. Unfortunately, the foreign entity controlling Guatemalan bananas was the United Fruit Company. One of the directors of United Fruit was Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA.

Arbenz was painted as a “Communist” (much as Venezuela’s elected left-wing leader, Hugo Chavez, is) and overthrown in a not-very-covert — though very bloody — coup. Guatemala remained under military dictatorships until the 1980s, democracy sacrificed for bananas . The bat-shit crazy Guatemalan dictator of the 80s, Efríam Rios Montt, was …well… bananas.

With no legitimate route to change, Guatemala had been in the middle of an on-and-off civil war since Arbenz was tossed out. Rios Montt launched a “scorched earth” campaign against his own people — or rather, the Mayans. Allegedly putting down Communists, Rios Montt was of the theory that he should “kill em all and let the Lord sort ‘em out.” Like Colom, Rios Montt was also a minister… though in his case, it was a California-based Fundamentalist Christian sect that won his allegiance.

A Mexican brokered peace agreement ended the “official” civil war in 1996. While largely a forgotten step-child of Mexico, foreign reaction to Guatemalan events influences Mexican actions. After the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup, Mexico foreign policy turned conservative and did not seek to challenge the United States. The “socialist” PRI began repressing leftist challenges where before Mexican leaders coopted them, or made space for them within the system.

Rios Montt and the odious right-wing dictatorships that were only slightly better sent waves of Guatemalan refugees into Mexico… When the United States began withdrawing its support for the Guatemalan dictators, Mexico began making space within the system for indigenous groups and paying more attention to indigenous affairs. In many ways the latest in a long string of Mayan uprisings (the Zapatista movement) was a indirect result of the Guatemalan situation. The Mexican Army would not have been in a confrontation with the Mayans had it not been for the refugees, nor would there have been a push to identify Mayan dissent with the left if it hadn’t been for the U.S.-backed regimes in Guatemala.

And, while you are already starting to hear rumbles on the right that Guatemala may be “going left” (well, it is… but “going commie” has lost its cachet and now countries “fall under the sphere of influence of Hugo Chavez”) I’d expect Mexico is going to recognize that the U.S. is losing its hegonomy in the region, or — at least — is starting to recognize that social democrats are not a threat.

( A bit off topic, but I don’t know how to insert a footnote when writing directly on “wordpress”: Paraguay is also likely to join the left-list — and, there too, it is likely to elect a clergyman as president. Though Fernando Lugo Méndez is more what you expect a Latin American clergyman/leader to be: he is — or was — a Roman Catholic bishop).

Richard Nixon may have said that about Latin America, but some people care very much.  Australian film-maker John Pilger’s “The War on Democracy” (sombrero tip to Roman Cotera, the “Amazing Mexican” ) doesn’t have much specifically to do with Mexico, but well worth watching — and I seriously doubt it will be showing on U.S. TV stations any time soon .  Pilger is one of the few “Western” journalists who supported Hugo Chavez’ administration’s decision to cancel the license of Radio Caracas Televisión, arguing that any television station that overtly called to overthorw any government would expect to have their broadcast license pulled.

Even if you’re not sold on Hugo, you’ll want to watch this — unless, of course, you’re a Dick.

Remember George W. Bush’s Magical Mystery Latin American Tour?  The magical part was that he didn’t end up getting Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala and Mexico to declare war.  The mystery was what he thought to accomplish.

Ah… the Bush Administration.  Latin America’s best friend since… oh… Calvin Coolidge or maybe John Quincey Adams was in the White House.

¡Que bárbaro! (from “The Hill”, Washington)

Bush loss, Starbucks gain

By Daphne Retter

October 18, 2007

President Bush has long advocated for immigration reform to make this country more welcoming to Hispanics. But at a Rose Garden ceremony last Wednesday to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Bush ended up locking a group of foreign Hispanic leaders out on the street.

“Mr. Fisk reached out and made apologies to those in the diplomatic corps who were invited and affected,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Kate Starr. “No insult was intended and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”

 Our Prez at the diplomatic reception

Lorena Diaz de Leon sends along her thoughts from Chicago –

Little Kangaroos

There is a growing trend of young, Central-American children crossing the border into Mexico. Many of these children are unaccompanied and leave their home country in hopes of either staying in Mexico to find meager employment or continue their trip to cross into the US. These children not only face the obstacles of having to survive the treacherous conditions of passing borders illegally, but once they have settled, they must struggle to find jobs such as selling gums and cigarettes on the streets. These “little kangaroos”–they are called this for they carry their tray of goods for sale across their fronts– are children that are either escaping worse circumstances at home or are attempting to reunite with their relatives. A majority of these youths are boys.

These children often stay in the border towns they cross into and the Mexican public has contrasting views on their stay for they feel that these children contribute to crime in the area. According to a study from the Catholic Relief Services, as many as 5,000 children crossed into Mexico, a dramatic rise from 2004 where only about 1,000 children migrated. These “little kangaroos” suffer deeply. They hunger for a better life yet to gain this they are exposed to the perils of a journey replete with exhaustion and abuse.

If I type in “sports” in a google search” I get 756,000,000 hits. “Politics” gets me 237,000,000.

The huge majority of the political sites deal with their own country or local issues… not many of us are willing to take on another nation — from their own perspective, let alone the world’s many perspectives.

One reason I keep this site going is that there is a need for these “foreign” sites, even when the “foreign” country is the next-door neighbor (or, maybe because the foreign country is next-door). Unfortunately, without donations, the Mex Files won’t be able to continue unless immediate expenses are caught up.

The longer term financing is a chronic worry, and every donation now, above the immediate needs, goes to ensuring long-range survival

It’s understandable — most of us only look at the world from our own perspective, and miss not only how the rest of the world sees the same event, and ignore the “real life” that affects political decisions.

The only site I know of takes on sports AS international politics is “The Global Game“. They have their work cut out for them, but manage with elegance, style and amazing scholarship to explain the world situation through the one sport most countries share. Neo-liberal economics, and the effects on the U.S. economy a little too dry? Not if you consider what David Beckham is getting paid to play in the U.S.

Alas, in the U.S. we match our unilateral diplomatic and military policies with a unilateral sports fanship. Soccer fans in the U.S. are as eccentric as political writers on … oh… Mexico. No wonder our foreign policy is so out of synch with the rest of the world. Maybe the State Department should make Global Game required reading.

I’ve written before about the Mayans, about commercial sex workers, class issues, and human rights. ¡¡¡GOOOOOOOOL!!! — the Global Game’s combines all three in their learned essay on the “Railroad All Stars” of Guatemala:

Of football documentaries that favor the human element there is no shortage of late. One of the most recent is Estrellas de la Línea, screened at English-language film festivals as The Railroad All-Stars, about Guatemala City sex workers who in 2004 organized themselves as a football team.

…

Filmmakers and Las Estrellas themselves do not hide that their grab for attention began as just that. Frustrated at efforts to gain respect for their plight through the political process, the women seized on a suggestion to organize a team in a Saturday amateur women’s league, the domestic Campeonato Femenino (see 30 Nov 04). Las Estrellas’ first match in Sept ’04 came against the girls’ team from Colegio Americano, the elite American School of Guatemala, and almost immediately publicity flowed.

This background of male control and delineation of female space makes Las Estrellas’ choice of fútbol as their agent of self-expression all the more logical—and potentially volatile. Susy Sica—43, illiterate, Mayan, single mother of seven—identifies the game’s potential for self-actualization when she says, “When I’m on the field practicing, even though I’m only a few blocks away from the tracks, I forget I work there. I feel like I’m someone else” (Catherine Elton, “Prostitutes Win Respect with Soccer,” Miami Herald, 31 Oct 04).

Sica’s Mayan background also points directly to the heritage of ur-football among the Maya in the highlands to the west of Guatemala City and throughout Mesoamerica. Sica, whether consciously or not, taps these cosmic sources of identity preserved in the ancient ball courts, artifacts and literary relics of Mayan culture. More than 1,500 ball courts have been unearthed in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras as well as other evidence of ball playing among the Olmec, Maya and Aztec civilizations.

The Mayan ball games, writes Yale art historian Mary Miller, enacted foundational tales of life and death from the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation narrative and anthology of etiological tales incorporating the first four human beings and their contests and other interactions with gods of the underworld. The four beings, hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque along with forefathers Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, play ball games with the gods. Through guile and artifice, the twins ultimately prevail and exhume their father’s and uncle’s bodies from the ball court of Xibalba; the corpses are placed in the sky to become sun and moon.

The fanciful tales were enacted on the ball courts of life, with the story of the life cycle of maize and the resurrection of the Maize God, who is identical to Hun Hunahpu, at the center of the ritual. The game as played by the Mayans employed hands only to put the ball in play. Otherwise, players propelled the rubber ball off surrounding walls using upper arms, hips and thighs, attempting to send the ball through elevated stone rings. Hips and knees were padded. Surviving artifacts show players wearing headdresses and long hipcloths. “[T]he balls themselves,” Miller writes, “were dangerous: heavy and sometimes moving at great speed, such a ball could break a bone, if not a neck, or damage internal organs” (81). At one point in the final encounter between the twins and the Xibalban lords, Xbalanque receives the ball, “the ball was stopped by his [waist] yoke, then he hit it hard and it took off, the ball passed straight out of the court, bouncing just once, just twice, and stopping among the ball bags.”

The ball court, now replaced by the fútbol field, was central to the Mesoamerican belief system and perhaps remains so. Presbyterian missionary Ellen Harris Dozier writes in correspondence of 2004 that women with whom she works in San Felipe, Guatemala, when asked to draw maps of their villages, customarily depict the soccer pitch at or near the center. Yet the ball game that “provided the physical and symbolic fulcrum of an entire continental culture” (10), in the words of David Goldblatt, has in its modern form been largely closed to women. Hence we imagine Las Estrellas boldly reclaiming this preserve in order to cast their own tales of death and renewal.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

Manuel Roig-Franzia writes in the Washington Post (buried on page A-18):

…

In an editorial published Friday, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal said it is “highly hypocritical that the United States admits migrants as peasants, but does not accept them as citizens. A state that sends troops to the Middle East to try to implant democracy and respect for human rights does not practice such supreme values in its own territory.”

But the paper also ascribed blame to Mexico, saying the country is itself guilty of hypocrisy for not creating enough employment to entice Mexicans to stay at home.

…

Reaction to the immigration bill’s failure might have been even more intense if not for concerns here that it put too heavy an emphasis on border security and involved overly complex provisions on granting citizenship to undocumented migrants, said Dan Lund, a Mexico City pollster.

Despite some heated comments from Mexican leaders, it appears the Calderón administration has adopted the philosophy that “no bill is better than a bad bill,” Lund said in an interview.

“Life goes on,” Lund said. “Here this is a hothouse issue for a few in the media and policy wonks, but everyone else will do what they have to do to get across the border.”

…

In Guatemala, the newspaper Prensa Libre described the Senate vote as “deplorable” in an editorial headlined “12 Million Victims.” The vote, the paper said, showed that the United States is “a country hostile toward immigrants.”

Prensa Libre predicted that the decision would hurt the economies of the United States and Guatemala by restricting the flow of people between the countries. But, the paper noted, there could be a subtler, even more damaging effect.

“Little by little, the number of people who lose their appreciation of [the United States] will grow,” the paper said. “With what happened yesterday, everyone loses, sooner rather than later, and there are fewer possibilities of healing that wound.”

Of course it was buried… the only thing that matters in the U.S. is how it plays as domestic politics. Who really cares what happens to those of us who live on the border, our civil rights, or the people who immigrate here?

There were two important futbol games last night played in the U.S. last night:  Mexico bested Ecuador (4-2) at McAufee Coliseum in Oakland CA, before a sell-out crowd of 47,416.

The United States tied Guatemala (0-0) at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, TX… a much smaller stadium, with a crowd of about 10,000.

Grahame Jones, who covered the Mexico-Ecuador game for the Los Angles Times noted: 

All the tickets were snapped up two weeks before the opening kickoff, and organizers said they could easily have sold twice as many.

It was the third consecutive sellout for Mexico on American soil this year, following the 62,462 that saw the Tricolores lose to the U.S. in Phoenix and the 63,328 that watched them defeat Venezuela in San Diego.

I had to go through three screens on the Dallas Morning News webpage (starting from the Sports page), before I found — buried down below high school reports — “U.S. Coach Upset With Tie in Frisco“.   It was the only report from Dallas I could find. 

Geeze, even the local paper didn’t much cover the game.  Goal.com — from INDIA — has some coverage, though they weren’t very nice:  

The U.S. and Guatemala played to a boring nil-nil draw at Pizza Hut Park. Both teams were clearly more interested in the post-game spread than the game at hand.

Michael David Smith weighed in at AOL Sports:  

It says a lot about the state of soccer fandom in this country that the Mexican team always draws many more fans than the American team. …

Major League Soccer thinks its signing of David Beckham is the way to gain a foothold in the United States, but I just don’t see it…. If [soccer] really wants to become popular in this country, it needs to reach the passionate fans who fill the stadiums to watch the Mexican national team, not the people who know Beckham because his name was in a movie title and his wife is a Spice Girl.

And, face it, the Mexican play better soccer.  So do the Guatemalans… and even the English (but they’re so uncivilized!). 

The U.S. plays in some rinky-dink suburban Dallas stadium trying to market to suburbanites who might remember the Spice Girl’s name (I don’t… and whatever happened to the Spice Girls anyway?).  And nobody in the U.S. really likes the British. 

For Mexicans, FUTBOL — and the insanity surrounding futbol — IS life. Who would you rather go watch   The team supported by the Virgin of Guadalupe … and 100,000,000 lesser beings, or one that gets (and maybe merits) about the same media coverage as Junior High School Girl’s Volleyball?  

JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer

GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

Bush‘s seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Bush‘s trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.