Mexico in Focus

A black screen, black omen for Mexico's journalism

Something unusual happened yesterday on Mexican television.

For one hour Thursday night, the screen went black during a prime-time national program called “Punto de Partida,” a news analysis program anchored by journalist Denise Maerker.  Televisa, the largest media company in Mexico and the second-largest company in Latin America, produces the news show.

This was not a technical problem. On the contrary, it was the result of a well-thought and conscious decision to not transmit a signal to protest the recent kidnapping of four journalists in the northern state of Durango.

Three of the journalists have been missing since July 26, when they were kidnapped (levantados in Spanish) while reporting in an area known as la Comarca Lagunera, where drug trafficking and organized crime has imposed its own rules.  A fourth journalist was released yesterday.

As long as I can remember, this is the first time that an aggression against journalists provoked a reaction such as the one displayed yesterday by Maerker.  And it is the first time that Televisa, usually very supportive of the government, has backed up a protest in its programming.

Another anchor, Ciro Gómez Leyva, also suspended his news presentation on Milenio Television to protest the kidnappings. He complained that journalism has become a hostage of organized crime.

He is right. In fact, journalism has become another victim of the war against drugs. This year, 10 journalists have been killed in different parts of Mexico. Last year, the number of journalists killed was 12.  Many were tortured before being shot.

In many states and cities where organized crime reigns –Tamaulipas, Torreón, Durango and Sinaloa to mention a few– journalists have been silenced with threats. Many journalists ask themselves if it is worth it to risk their lives to cover an issue that involves politics, corruption and money.

Many have responded that they do not think it is worth the risk, and we must respect their decisions. But other journalists still believe that information is one of the most valuable assets of a democracy, and that giving up the right to inform and to be informed is equivalent to giving up democracy.

In her statement yesterday, Maerker said that journalists are not more important than the rest of Mexico’s citizens, but they have a mission to inform. “Under the current circumstances, they can’t do their jobs,” she said.

Maerker went on to ask authorities to take responsibility for the current situation. “We can’t pretend that nothing is happening. It is happening,” Maerker said.

The broadcast of a black screen yesterday was a symbol of protest, but it also can be seen as a bad omen of what could happen to freedom of expression if journalism is taken hostage.

After Arizona... It is time for immigration reform?

Those of you who have been following the debate on immigration were probably not surprised by federal Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling on the Arizona immigration law.

As has happened with many other municipal and state attempts to enact laws on immigration, the judge imposed a temporary restraining order on several of the most controversial issues of the SB-1070 law.

And as has happened in those places, Arizona’s authorities announced that they will appeal Bolton’s ruling. After that, as recent history has shown us, the state will be involved in a long and expensive legal process before the law could be implemented in the way that it was approved.

The most recent example of a situation like this is perhaps the HB1804 immigration law in Oklahoma, which in spite of having been approved in 2007, has not been implemented because of a judge’s injunction as well.

The judge’s decision in that case halted provisions that would have required private employers contracting with the state to use the federal "Basic Pilot Program" to electronically verify the immigration status and work eligibility of potential employees. The judge’s rule also halted measures that would have imposed tax penalties on businesses that don't verify the status of independent contractors.

There are also several cases at the municipal level. The most representative are perhaps the cases of Fremont, Neb., Halzelton, Pa., and Farmers Branch in Texas.

In Fremont, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits against an immigration law that would prohibit the hiring of or renting of housing to illegal immigrants in the city.  Yesterday, Fremont’s city council decided to suspend the ban until the lawsuits are settled, but the issue is still debated in courts.

In Hazelton, a U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction against an ordinance aimed to punish landlords, who might rent to undocumented immigrants, revoke the business license of any employer who would hire them, and declare English as the town’s official language.

And in Farmers Branch, the situation was similar. After four years of legal battles, a federal court decision in March of this year forbids the city from ever enforcing an ordinance that prohibits landlords from renting housing to undocumented immigrants. The city is appealing the court’s decision.

For any of these cities, the legal battles have had an extraordinary cost. According to news reports, since 2006, the city of Farmers Branch has paid out $3.3 million in legal fees. It potentially owes another $1.7 million to opposing lawyers. If divided up, the city's legal fees would cost every Farmers Branch citizen more than $160.

There is one constant argument in all of the cities’ attempts to regulate immigration: the federal government is not doing its job in regulating the flow of undocumented immigrants to this country.  And there is also a constant argument in all of the court’s decisions in any of these cases: Immigration is a federal issue and cities or states don’t have the authority to regulate it. 

If cities and states are putting all of this money and effort into an issue that won’t go into effect, it is because Congress has not had the determination to address immigration reform that could provide a solution for the estimated 12-million undocumented people living in this country, and regulating the flow of immigrants and enforcing border security.

Hopefully, all the heated debate created by the Arizona law could push congressmen to address this complicated and always controversial issue. For sure, it will not happen before the November elections.

Lipstick, nail polish... and women in Juárez.

Last week M-A-C Cosmetics and the fashion label Rodarte were in the middle of a controversy after announcing a new line of products inspired by young women working night-shifts in maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez.

M-A-C even announced the name of some of these new products:  “Juarez” and “Factory” for nail polishes and “Sleepwalker” and “Ghost Town” for lipsticks. None of the products or the marketing campaign alluded to the violent situation that has affected women in Cd. Juarez for almost two decades.

In fact, Cd. Juarez became infamous since 1993, when the killing of young women began to make headlines at the national and international levels.  It is estimated that more than 500 women (this is the most conservative figure) have been raped, tortured and killed from that year to date in the border city.

Whether it was ignorance, naivety or lack of sensitivity, it is obvious that M-A-C and Rodarte committed a mistake, and women organizations, activists and bloggers made both companies to reconsider their decision.  

After a wave of criticism and comments in the blogosphere, the company recognized that its M-A-C Rodarte collection offended consumers and fans. The company apologized and announced that it will give a portion –$100,000– of the proceeds from that collection to a non-profit organization with a successful track record of helping women in need in Juarez.  They also informed that the products of this collection would be renamed.

But the author of Healing Beauty, a blog dedicated to beauty, is promoting an interesting initiative. She is asking the company to donate all profits -not just a portion– from this collection to appropriate non-profit organizations, but also to keep the names of the products in order to raise awareness of the situation in Ciudad Juarez.  She also is proposing to include in their marketing and advertising materials for this launch a message to educate the public, globally, on the exploitation and killing of women in Juárez.

I think her idea is brilliant because companies that make profits thanks to millions and millions of women around the globe are obliged to do something to help women in difficult and extraordinary situations. And the women in Cd. Juárez are just in that category.

Could you imagine Lorea'l, Revlon, Lancome, Cover Girl and many other companies educating the public about violence against woman and specifically about the women situation in Cd.Juárez. That would be revolutionary!

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IN OTHER THINGS…

My previous entry in this blog was about Cayetano Cabrera and his hunger strike in front of Palacio Nacional.  

I’m glad that he didn’t die. After 89 days of camping in the main square of Mexico City’s downtown, he and his 15 co-workers also in a hunger strike were taken to a hospital, while the government finally accepted to start negotiations with the workers affiliated to the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas. In the next days we’ll know if they already get their jobs back.

Giving up your life for workers’ rights. Is it worth it?

There is a possibility that while you are reading this blog, a person named Cayetano Cabrera could have already died in front of Palacio Nacional in Mexico City.

If –hopefully–he is still alive, he will complete the 88^th day of his hunger strike this Thursday. He is one of the 40,000 workers who lost their jobs when the government disbanded the Companía de Luz y Fuerza del Centro, a state-owned electric company, last October.

Cayetano and 16,000 other workers affiliated to the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) didn’t accept the government’s decision and decided to fight to get their jobs back. After many street protests, marches and attempts to dialogue with authorities, 96 workers decided to take an extreme measure–a hunger strike.

Not all of them were able to sustain their fast. Up to now, 15 workers are fasting in the main square of downtown Mexico City. Besides Cayetano, another worker, Miguel Angel Ibarra, has completed 84 days without eating anything.

Every time that I read or hear about a hunger strike I ask myself: What can be more worthy than your own life?

In an radio interview last week, Cayetano explained in plain and simple words the reasons why he is risking his life:  "I'll give my life for my comrades in resistance, as long as we get back our work and respect for our rights."

I was in Mexico City last week, and I spoke to one of the workers, who was not fasting, but supports the efforts of his co-workers. “My grandfather, my father and me worked in the company. We are electricians. We were proud of our company, of our union, of our collective contract,” said Marco Antonio Vazquez, as he stood outside of the improvised tents where the strikers were encamped.  “We have to defend our rights as workers. If we don’t do it, what kind of example are we giving to our children?”

The problem between the government and the workers affiliated to the SME is not black and white. It involves many legal and political issues that make it difficult to find an acceptable solution for all parties.

The SME is one of the oldest, independent and combative unions in Mexico. When the government disbanded the company, it also eliminated one of the most beneficial collective labor contracts achieved by unionized workers in 96 years of Mexico’s history. The government offered them a new job with the company that replaced the Companía de Luz y Fuerza del Centro, but it would not recognize their seniority, their union, nor the collective labor contract.

For that reason, the workers did not accept the government’s decision. For that reason, Cayetano and 15 other workers are putting their lives on the line. For that reason, the union  may have a martyr soon.

In a way, the government-SME conflict shows clearly the faces of two ideologies that have confronted Mexico for a long time. The one of that tries to be more business oriented by eliminating workers’ rights and getting rid of unions and collective labor contracts, and the one represented by thousands of workers who are left unprotected and vulnerable to the employers and the job market.

Dialogue and negotiations are not always the most effective tools in Mexico. Many times, when a decision is made from the top, the workers don’t have many choices and they have to go to extremes. It has always been like that. Mexico ‘s government seems to be indifferent to the spectacle of people dying in front of Palacio Nacional. 

And that is an extremely painful image

Hopefully Cayetano and his co-workers won’t die.  

Vulnerable citizens in the middle of the drug war

 

In the last three years, Mexicans have learned to live with fear. That is especially true for the people of Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Durango, Coahuila and other states where organized crime has planted the seeds of terror.

In many of the cities of these states, people have gotten used to shootings, executions and extortion. They have seen their neighbors being killed, kidnapped or simply disappearing. They know first-hand the risks of walking on a street at any hour of the day. They have learned “to document” the violence using social media.  With just a small amount of probing on the Internet, anybody can see the six-minute video of a shooting in Tamaulipas, or the destruction left after confrontations between police forces and drug cartels.

In some ways, these citizen reporters are ahead of the rest of the population in managing the impact of the violence on their lives. Until recently, in many other areas of the country, such as Mexico City, the extreme violence associated with drug trafficking was seen as something happening very far away, “in the north of Mexico.”

But after the car bomb explosion in Ciudad Juárez last Thursday, all Mexicans–in the entire country–are aware about their vulnerability.

In every conversation that I had with friends and ordinary people in Mexico City last week, the talk about narcoterrorism was almost unavoidable. “There’s not going to be long time before the bubble in which we have lived (in Mexico City) will break”, a friend told me. “We used to think that that mess (the violence) was not going to come, but after the car bomb everything could happen. I’m very afraid now,” she said. 

Like my friend, many other people in Mexico feel that the government is not doing enough to protect citizens. They feel that the authority is clueless and unable to fight the bad guys.  With a joke, another friend summarized her feelings: “The only organized thing in this country is organized crime…The rest of it is a desmadre (a mess)”

And that is exactly the aim of terrorism, to create an atmosphere of terror, while weakening the government in front of citizens, who then feel unprotected and exposed to violence at any point and at any moment. In the long term, terrorist acts undermine citizens’ trust and confidence in the authority.

In the case of Mexico, the situation looks even more complicated, because even before the car bomb blast in Juárez, a big segment of the population was already living in terror and the credibility of the government is in fact at a very low point.

You just have to ask any person in the middle of a street about what he/she thinks about the authorities’ strategy to fight crime. The answers would be more or less something like this: “the government doesn’t know what to do with the problem,” “the president (Calderon) looks desperate,” “the government is losing the war,” “everybody is corrupt and involved in the drug business,” etc., etc.

The problem, however, is that this new stage of the drug war (with narco-terrorist attacks) has the potential to take the country downward into a dangerous spiral where the authorities will try to thwart terrorist acts with extraordinary measures that could result in human and constitutional rights violations. If there are already complaints against  military and police force abuses, we can only expect an increase. 

There is no question that Mexico is facing one of the most critical moments in its recent history and its also evident that the government doesn’t know how to react to the new threat of narco-terrorist attacks.

Until last Thursday, the number of people dead as a result of the three-year-long drug war was 24,825 for the entire country. The number of course doesn’t include the 16 people dead in confrontations between the army and hit men in Nuevo Laredo last Friday, or the 18 people killed in a single act in Torreon during the weekend and the 17 executed in Sinaloa also in the weekend.

After the car bomb in Cd. Juarez, the only thing that we know for sure is that the bloodshed will continue for long time and that we, as citizens, will be in the middle of an stupid war without any, any hope of being protected.

Colombia, Ciudad Juárez, narco-terror....

Historically, Colombians experienced the worst era of narco-terror during the ‘80s, when car bombs exploded everywhere in different cities, from police headquarters to public buildings and public streets.

The strategy was widely used by Pablo Escobar Gaviria, head of the Cartel de Medellin, after Colombia’s government announced that it would extradite the powerful drug lords to the United States. The rejection of Colombian narcos to extradition was summarized in the famous phrase “Better a tomb in Colombia than a jail in the U.S.”

One of the most deadly attacks occurred in 1989, when a car bomb with more than 500 kilos of dynamite destroyed the facilities of the DAS, the agency in charge of national security. The attack left more than 100 people dead and more than 600 injured.

That same year, a car bomb attack destroyed the facilities of El Espectador, one of the most influential newspapers in Bogota. An estimated of 75 people were injured as result of the blast.

The people of Colombia, to this day, still have to live with the threat and reality of car bombs. Drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitary have used them as an instrument to create terror. Just recently, in March of this year, nine people died and 33 were injured in a car bomb attack in the city of Buenaventura. According to a BBC story, the attack was attributed to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, a guerrilla group.

This Thursday, Ciudad Juárez was shocked by an unusual attack against its police forces in the downtown area. The Procuraduría General de la Republica (PGR) has not determined yet if it was a car bomb or a grenade attack, but whatever is the case, there’s no question that this is an escalation of violence, an atrocious attack that is leading the drug war in more dangerous direction.

Mexico has never had to deal with the threat of car bombs, although it has faced violent massive attacks.  The worst of them occurred in Morelia, Michoacán in 2008, when several grenades explode during the Independence celebration in Sept. 15, killing eight people and leaving more than 100 injured.

What happened yesterday in Cd. Juárez shows clearly that the violence has reached an extreme level. We can only hope that this is not the beginning of the narco-terrorism era in Mexico. We can only hope that we are not going to be living a  similar situation as the one Colombians have lived for many years…  But probably that is a naïve hope.

Art against violence. A worth graphic design exhibit

A group of graphic designers have put together an exhibition called “Peace of Art. Design for change".

The exhibit, organized by designer Sandra Salas, brought together professional and student designers from UTEP and the University of Ciudad Juárez (UACJ) with the idea of creating awareness of the violent situation in Juárez.  The exhibit also aims to raise funds to help the victims of violence through the Frontera Women’s Foundation.

The exhibit features more than 90 posters and 52 drawings from children. The children were tasked with creating art that centered on the topic of peace. The unifying element of the posters was the idea of doing something to stop the violence. “Every poster proposes something,” said Saulo Favela, coordinator of the graphic design program from UACJ.

The idea of being more proactive than reactive is expressed in some posters with phrases such as: “Don’t just ask for peace. Do something to get it” and one that invites people to look at not just the numbers, but also at the pain left by violence.

Two people that I met at the opening reception had suffered personally the violence in Juárez. One of them was UTEP student, Alejandro Carmona, who also produced a poster entitled “Noble Truths.”

He said that he decided to participate in the exhibit for several reasons, among them, because he is from Juarez, and because he feels the need to express what he feels and thinks about the violence.

“I was assaulted in Cd. Juárez, I had a gun pressed at my back. I know what it feels like. After that I appreciate life more,” he said. “Visual art has the power to make people to look at certain situations…sometimes it can be more expressive than words and because of that, these types of exhibits are very important.”

“Peace of Art. Design for change” is an invitation to think about what we can do from our individual situation to change Juarez.  It is not going to stop violence, of course, but it can help us to look at the situation with a different perspective. It is well worth your while to visit it.

The exhibit will be on display until July 22 at 3233 N. Mesa St., Ste 204. After that, it will go to different Mexican universities, among them the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and finally at the UACJ.

 

 

S.O.S. for Nuevo León, Coahuila and Tamaulipas

For somebody who knows well the city of Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León, to see the images of the city completely devastated is more than shocking.

Monterrey, and more than 50 municipalities in the northern states of Nuevo León, Coahuila and Tamaulipas were severely affected by Hurricane Alex, which destroyed highways, streets, schools, houses, government offices, industries and everything possible on its way last week. Just to get you an idea of its strength, Monterrey received in three days more than the total amount of rain that would have receive normally in one year. The images -sent by people through Internet- speak by themselves

Surprisingly, just 15 people (as today) have been reported dead in the three states as result of the intense rain, but more than 80,000 are reported homeless, while several areas are still without power and potable water.  The damages to the states’ infrastructure are estimated in more than $800 million, and an insurance company estimated the amount of damages suffered by private corporations in more than $100 million.

While watching the images of destruction I couldn’t avoid thinking of Hurricane Gilbert, which hit the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in September of 1988, killing more than 300 people, the majority of them in Monterrey.

When Gilbert hit Mexico, the “disaster preparedness culture” was almost non-existent in the country. It was 1988, just three years after the 8.1 earthquake that struck Mexico City leaving more than 10,000 dead.

The earthquake left so many lessons for Mexicans, among them, the value of solidarity and prevention. Although nobody can predict when exactly there will be an earthquake, people have learnt how to react when the earth’s movements begin. And the same can be said about hurricanes. Many years ago, people wouldn’t attend the authorities’ call to evacuate an area on the eve of a natural disaster, but little by little, people have understand that it is more worthy to prevent than to regret.

The people from Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Coahuila will need a lot of help to restore the normality of their lives. In spite of that, they can feel fortunate of having survived the strength of Alex and the destruction that it left.

However, the three states will face a hard time to completely recover from this disaster, but let’s not forget that Alex was the first Atlantic storm for the 2010 Hurricane season. Bonnie, the second hurricane of the season, will hit Mexico this Wednesday, while Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona and 20 more hurricanes are still waiting for they turn to show up and to make us feel the immense power of nature.

Stop promising, it is time to work

There were no surprises in the July 4th election.

As it was anticipated by many polls, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) won in nine of the 12 states in which a new governor was elected. For many, this is a sign of what could happen in the 2012 presidential election, where the PRI could take back the presidency.  However, it is too early to predict that.

Because it was so predictable, the most interesting thing in the election was not the victory of the PRI’s candidates, but the triumph of candidates that ran under the umbrella of coalitions integrated with left-wing and right-wing political forces.  The victories of these candidates in Sinaloa, Oaxaca and Puebla should be analyzed carefully by the PRI, because it could set an interesting precedent for the 2012 election.

But let’s go back to the July 4th election. 

When candidates campaign, they promise everything and criticize everything. But once they win, reality imposes its own rules. The promises are replaced by negotiation and agreements made under the table. It happens everywhere, here in the US, in Africa or European countries and, of course, in Mexico.

But there are some states in Mexico in which the newly elected governors will really have to keep their promises and make radical changes if they want to be recognized by history as good governors. That would be the case of Cesar Duarte in Chihuahua and Edigio Torre Cantú in Tamaulipas, who took on the promises made by his slain brother, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. 

Chihuahua and Tamaulipas are two states where organized crime has undermined the authority and the credibility of the government, where bullets have imposed their own laws and where the corruption that characterizes the judicial system is seen in all of its severity. For these two new elected officials, the challenges ahead are enormous and because of that, citizens should write a list to remind them every day of each one of them: To recover the economy, to bring business back to life, to promote investment, to create educational and job opportunities for children, teenagers and young adults, to fight impunity, to bring justice to the thousands of people killed in the last few years, and to guarantee the safety of all citizens. And you can add more, but for now, they have to demonstrate with real action and clear results that they are capable of governing and solving the problems that their states face.

It is interesting to mention that according to official results, the turnout for the election in Chihuahua was of 35.9 percent, which means that just half a million people from a total of 2.6 million registered voters, cast their ballots.  In Tamaulipas–where the election was overshadowed not only by the assassination of the PRI’s candidate for governor, Rodolfo Torre Cantu, but also by the destruction left by Hurricane Alex–the turnout was 40 percent.  In other states, where organized crime is not so evident, the turnout reached an average of 55 - 60 percent.

The low level of participation in Chihuahua and Tamaulipas could be explained by fear, but also for the citizens’ lack of trust in the credibility of politicians, and this is something that the victorious candidates shouldn’t forget. They must recover the populace’s confidence with results, not just empty promises. And citizens must make them accountable. If we, as a society, don’t demand that they do their job, nothing will change. 

Violence overshadows elections

 

Mexicans will cast their vote this coming Sunday to elect more than 1,500 officials in 14 states. The electoral process has been overshadowed by the assassination of Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate for governor in the state of Tamaulipas last Monday.

As President Felipe Calderon said, the killing of the PRI candidate has made evident that organized crime wants to interfere in the decisions of citizens and in the electoral processes.

In light of this statement, now more than ever it is absolutely necessary to guarantee the safety of citizens during the electoral journey.  In some states as Chihuahua, the state electoral institute has determined that the federal police forces and the Army should remain in their headquarters during the journey, which means that just the municipal forces will respond to any possible problems. According to news reports today, the Army will watch the electoral process in eight municipalities considered in high risk of violence.  As part of this decision, police won't patrol those areas in which polling booths will be installed.

As weird as it sounds, the reason behind that decision is that the federal police forces have been targeted by organized crime and because of that, their presence during the electoral journey could inhibit people for waiting in line to cast their votes. 

Unlike Chihuahua, in other states the candidates and their political parties are asking the federal government to deploy federal police forces to guarantee the security of the elections.The recent violent events in Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Michoacan and many other states, have intensified the concerns about the impact that violence could have in the electoral process. 

According to some political analysts the fear factor will play a big role in these elections. Before the killing of Torre Cantu, analysts were considering a turnout for the local elections (in the 14 states) of around 50 percent, but after that incident, they are estimating that the real turnout would be around 30 percent.

What this means is that just three out of 10 citizens register to vote will chose the new officials and without exercising their right to vote, the rest of the citizens wouldn’t  have any other choice than to accept the results of this sui generis, fear-marked elections.

It is very sad that instead of giving steps to advance our democracy, Mexicans are now feeling afraid of casting their vote. Bad, bad, bad.