The Mex Files

“Out of sight, out of mind” seems to be the modus operandi when it comes to locking people up in the United States.  Rural Texas is dotted with “rent-a-prisons” (I regularly pass Hudpeth County — pop. 3,350, 0.7 persons per square mile — which has a very large county jail, privately managed, and housing mostly State of Idaho prisoners) which, while providing a boost for local economies in these isolated communities, are the devil’s own bargain.

The Texas Youth Facility in Pyote (pop. 131) was — and is — the largest employer in town.   For the last year, the Texas Youth Commission has been the center of a huge scandal, “thanks” to the local prosecutor’s failure to investigate sexual abuse of the boys at the center.   This last week, the “acting director” (brought in to try and clean up the scandal) of the TYC was forced to resign.

The TYC scandals involved Texans abusing U.S. citizens.  There is even less oversight of what goes on in immigrant detention facilities.  In Nixon (a relatively large community of 2,300 people near San Antonio):

Nine immigrant children were repeatedly sexually molested and beaten last year while housed in a government-operated youth detention center near San Antonio, and their cries for help were covered up by administrators and state and federal officials, according to a lawsuit filed Friday. Texas Sheltered Care in Nixon was among about three dozen facilities across the country run by private firms under government contract to temporarily house unaccompanied immigrant minors caught trying to cross the border.

This particular scandal only came to light accidentally — and it’s a mess.  Even if you are of the mindset that accepts unthinkingly the phrase “illegal alien” (is the dog I didn’t get a license for an “illegal dog”, was my car an “illegal car” when I was a month late getting it registered because I couldn’t find a rear taillight lens cap in Alpine, and had to order one by mail?), that doesn’t excuse mistreating minors:

…  several of the children — identified only by their initials because they’re minors — were repeatedly fondled … while others were forced to grope her and perform oral sex on her.

The suit accused two other guards … of beating the minors. On one occasion, according to the suit, García in a drunken rage attacked a boy, throwing him against a door and walls.

Although the FBI investigated, the case was — as these things are — turned over to the local prosecutor.  As a result, nothing was investigated.  On the contrary:

The suit cites a 16-year-old Honduran as the “whistleblower” in the case. After rejecting Leal’s sexual advances, the boy reported her to the center’s top administrators, the suit says.

But instead of supporting him, the administrators retaliated, causing him to attempt suicide before he was transferred to more restrictive youth centers in other states while his deportation case played out in immigration court.

…  Other Nixon children also said they endured similar wrath for trying to report abuse, including being kept without food and forced to sleep on the floor, the lawsuit says. One also said he was kept in an adult immigration detention center, though he was 15, before being sent to Nixon.

All the minors said that, even after asking, they were deprived of mental, medical and dental care after their complaints. Also, they alleged, in many cases officials purposely cut communication with their lawyers, who complained about the transfer of their clients to centers in other states, such as Michigan, without notice.

This particularly abuse center was run by a well-respected not for profit organization (Lutheran Childrens’ Service).  Another “shelter”, run by Baptist  Child and Protective Services, is also located in Nixon.  The church-sponsored charities are not named in the suit –

administrators at Nixon and HHS officials in Washington and South Texas, the suit accuses state officials of negligence. Specifically named are Carey Cockerell, Dianna Spiser and Joyce James, the top bosses at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

As the licensing agent, TDFPS didn’t appropriately monitor the Nixon center and failed to properly investigate and act on the abuse allegations, such as revoking its license, the lawsuit says.

It says the level of disregard also put the center in violation of the Flores Agreement, a long-standing court settlement under which the government committed to maintain certain detention standards for immigrant minors.

This is a perfect storm of what is wrong with Texas “justice”, the way we deal with “illegal immigrants” and treating incarceration as a profitable enterprise. Texas makes crime pay — there are 2,323 felonies on the books in Texas, which keeps our prisons full.  On top of that, our insatiable demand for low-wage workers, coupled with the collapse of agriculture in Mexico and Central America (again, thanks to our economic policies and system) create a situation where unescorted minors are coming into the U.S.  And, rather than treat them as children, we treat them as criminals.

We put our criminals (and those of other states — Hudspeth Couny has a huge jail, mostly to house State of Idaho prisoners) in jails and prisons and youth facilities… then subcontract the job to rural areas (as rural development).  Prisons, being brutal places, attract brutal people — or brutalize them.  Rural prosecutors are loathe to indict their neighbors for sleazy things like sexual abuse, and — besides — we’re talking about outsiders here.  No one wants to say that the people we go to church with, or see at the Chew-n-Chat, or who live down the road are forcing 15 year old Honduran boys to blow them… but people do that, and the prosecutor’s turn away.

Who knows what’s going on with adult detainees at the “family” facilities at Ritmo and Taylor … and why are we locking up children in the first place?

I was semi-amused, and semi-appalled when the anti-immigration folks hit on Iraqi “illegals” as a convenient way of lumping “terrorists” and “illegal aliens” together. They turned out to be Chaldeans (somewhat protected by the equal opportunity dictator Saddam Hussein and persecuted as a result of our “crusade) headed for Detroit and a future saying “Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger. Pepsi, no Coke.” You know, model illegals.

It worked out OK for those particular guys (a Mexican law from the 1930s gives automatic refugee status to people fleeing Fascist regimes, and Saddam’s regime fit the definition… plus Carlos Slim — of Lebanese Catholic heritage — picked up the tab for a few good lawyers). And, yeah, a lot of Arabs fleeing crappy conditions at home are coming to Mexico. Some are moving on to the United States, and not always on proper documentation. Try getting a green card in Egypt or Syria.

Back in the early 20th century, when the U.S. started restricting immigration to northern Europeans, people getting the hell out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire were not completely S.O.L. “Coming to America” didn’t always means the United States of. The Central American states and Argentina were favored destinations for middle-easterners, though a good number (especially Iraqis and Lebanese) ended up in Mexico. And prospered.

Cindy Casares, at Guanabee (”media, pop culture and entertainment for the spicy Latino in you” — and for the not so boring academic in you as well), notes that one particular Mexican-Iraqi had a huge impact on Mexican culture:

Here’s something those of you who enjoy tacos de trompo are not going to believe. Tacos de trompo or tacos arabes as they’re called in Mexico, (where taco filling is shaved off a beehive shaped lump of meat), were invented by an Iraqi immigrant in Mexico in the 1930’s! Says The Big Apple:

The dish was supposedly first served in the city of Puebla, Mexico, in the 1930s, when an Iraqi immigrant named Jorge Tabe opened an eatery that advertised both “tacos arabes” and “tacos estilo Doneraky.” However, the term “al pastor (shepherd style) [the term used in Texas] pre-dates the 1930s.

“Doneraky” somehow translates to döner kebab which comes from Turkey, another country that’s currently housing a lot of our service people. Can you tell the difference in these pictures? That’s döner kebab on the left. Trompo on the right.

We forget how much “Hispanic” culture and “Arab” culture have in common. The Spanish only showed up in the New World because they were bored after driving the Moors off the Iberian peninsula.

And, in case you haven’t noticed, a disproportionate number of U.S. soldiers have names like Gonzales and Ortega, AND, U.S. culture is slowing assimilating Latin culture. Cindy’s complete “Guide To Latino Cultural Survival in Iraq” puts it all together, and throws in a little salsa — and merangue, and cumbia….

A e-mail sent to the Oaxaca Study Action Group about the U.S. funded expansion of the “War on Drugs” — the so-called “Plan Mexico” now being marketed under the more palatable name of “Plan Mérida” reads:

Plan Mexico has its roots in a pre-NAFTA concept born in rightwing think tanks. …
The concept dates back to Reagan’s time. Basically it was focused on economic concept coming out of Harvard. After years of conquest based on the theory of “Control the politics and you control the economy” of 18th and 19th century expansion the Harvardians turned the theory around: “Control the economy and you control the politics,”

The grand idea was to create a U.S. hemisphere with economic control from Alaska to Tierra de Fuego. NAFTA was advertised as a trade agreement but it was more than that: It was a measure to gain economic control over Latin America by indebting them to the U.S. through loans,extracting raw materials, creating a cheap labor pool and making the economies of the Latin American countries totally dependent. It worked with Mexico but along the way South America pulled out, Brazil and Argentina refusing to stay debt dependent and Venezuela developing a booming oil economy.

Plan Puebla-Panama fits into this plan of economic domination. So does the woeful condition of Pemex, which has to have outside investment just to maintain its equipment. (Thirty years of failing to put any money in infrastructure has totally depleted its capacity to continue to produce.) The U.S. already controls the banking system and through NAFTA both retail and commercial markets. (WalMart, McDonalds, etc.).

In 2006, shortly before the July presidential elections, I attended a forum in La Paz at which Davidow, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, was the featuredspeaker. I commented to the guy sitting next to me (suit and tie, shaved so closely his chin gleamed) that things might not work out the way Davidow was saying if López Obrador won the election.

He smiled and told me, very quietly, “The U.S. will never permit López Obrador to become president of Mexico.”

Plan Mexico gives Calderón a few millions bucks worth of equipment to repress leftists like APPO, of course. The U.S. government will pay U.S. manufacturers for all of the goodies they produce and send.

True or not, I’ve always felt that the very narrow (and statistically improbable) Calderón “victory” was a little too much like some of our “improbable” election results lately (Bush-Gore; Bush-Kerry) to be dismiss U.S. involvement entirely. And — given that I was loudly complaining about Republican Party operatives working for the Calderón campaign, it isn’t just a paranoid fantasy to suggest — as the PRD has maintained — that “they wuz robbed” .

I’ve also been suggesting (hell… I’ve been saying) that Calderón’s own “War on Drugs” was more a way of establishing his credibility than any real attempt to put down the narcotics trade. And, like the OSAG poster, I’ve wondered if the military actions weren’t ALSO designed to intimidate the opposition.

I happen to agree with the writers’ analysis of what has happened to the Mexican economy, though I’m less likely than he is to credit (or blame) some Harvard professors and right-wing think tank papers. Right and left, all country’s elites largely bought off on the globalization fad of the last few years.

While even some of the authors of globalization (like Joseph Steiglitz) have come to recognize ithe very real shortfalls of — oh — “neo-internationalism” or “neo-liberalism” (especially in middle-class countries like Mexico and Brazil), the Bush Administration seems to still be enamored of what’s more and more seen as a “retro” theory, and one that didn’t take into account OTHER factos like climate change, limits to growth and growing class disparaty in the wealthy nations (like the United States).

That’s what worries me most about “Plan Mérida”… not that a couple of billion U.S. dollars are going to the Mexican military to purchase U.S. made goods and equipment, but that it opens the door to some even more retro ideas. John Negroponte was in Mexico City the other day to talk to Felipe Calderón about “Plan Mérida”.

But what does anti-narcotics military/legal action have to do with “the economy and immigration”, which were the subject of these talks. Negroponte, speaking of fascists, scares the hell out of me. Besides the mess he made as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, his record in Latin America is fightening

As ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte played a key role in US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez in Honduras. Between 1980 and 1994 U.S. military aid to Honduras jumped from $3.9 million to $77.4 million. Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army’s loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America.

…According to the New York Times, Negroponte was responsible for “carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua.”

…n early 1984, two American mercenaries, Thomas Posey and Dana Parker, contacted Negroponte, stating they wanted to supply arms to the Contras after the U.S. Congress had banned further military aid. Documents show that Negroponte brought the two with a contact in the Honduran armed forces.

The operation was exposed nine months later, at which point the Reagan administration denied any US involvement, despite Negroponte’s participation in the scheme. Other documents uncovered a plan of Negroponte and then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to funnel Contra aid money through the Honduran government.

The son of a Greek-British shipping magnate, John Negroponte attended Philips Exeter Academy and Yale University, attaching himself to William H.T. Bush (Bush I’s brother, and Bush II’s uncle). I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but there is more than a whiff of cronyism about Negroponte and the Bush clan. Given his record in Honduras (he was later U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (Unsourced in Wikipedia’s biography is the statement “During Negroponte’s tour as US Ambassador to Mexico (1989-1993), he officiated at the block-long, fortified embassy and directed, among other things, U.S. intelligence services to assist the war against the Zapatista rebels of Chiapas.” — probably true, but unproven).

Carlos Salinas de Gortari (with a Harvard PhD in Economics) was President of Mexico during Negroponte’s tenure at the corner of Reforma and Danubo. This was precisely the time when NAFTA was developed — and when “neo-liberalism” became state policy in Mexico (and when the PEMEX collapse started… and when McDonalds and WalMart first made their appearance in the Republic)… and when the narcotics trade became economically and politically important.

I draw no conclusions at this point, but connecting the dots doesn’t paint a pretty picture.