Mexico in Focus

What will Mexico say to its orphans?

Rosa Isela Escajeda Galindo, 24, and Rosalía Esther Vázquez Holguín, 28, were killed this Thursday after gunmen opened fire on two buses that were transporting maquiladora workers that had finished their shift. An unidentified man also was killed in the attack.

According to testimonies offered by their relatives to El Diario, Escajeda and Vazquez Holguin were mothers of three children each.

The weekend before, on Friday night, Martina Arteaga Acereres, 30, was killed during a birthday party that she had organized for one of her children. She left six motherless children. Another 13 people were killed at the same event that night, among them two women, who left three children each. These 18 children in less than a week are just a few of the dozens of motherless children that the drug war is leaving behind.

According to an extensive story written by Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, the drug war has left more than 10,000 orphans just in Ciudad Juárez in three years, but according to human rights activist Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, the number of orphans in the entire country could be more than 50,000.

Imagine any of these orphans in 10 years. Imagine how she/he will try to make sense of the brutal and unjustified death of her/his mother. Try to imagine his/her voice in the near future...

My mother was killed in a country in which there was no respect for human life… a country in which laws were made to be broken because there was no punishment for anybody… a country in which you were always afraid of the police, the military, the narcos, the gunmen, because sometimes they would seem to be the same… a country in which there was no justice for the poor… a country in which children were not allowed to go to parks because they could be shot or kidnapped or recruited by criminals… a country in which mothers had to work two shifts at the maquilas in order to make a decent salary, just enough to feed their children, no more… a country in which a police officer could be caught robbing a convenience store and yet keep his job … a country in which politicians–right-wing, center and leftist–were not public servants, but greedy people, sick for power… a country in which educational opportunities were scarce and expensive for young people… a country in which there were daily massacres, grenades explosions in public places, executions, beheadings, kidnappings, extortion, disappearances and many other crimes, but only once in a while a criminal was arrested...My mother was killed because nobody really cared about the lives of poor people in Ciudad Juarez, Monterrey, Tampico, Sinaloa, Durango, Acapulco, Michoacan, Laredo, Torreón, Cuernavaca, Veracruz and all around the country… My mother was killed because the country remained silent while we were all dying every time a person was killed on the streets, in the schools, in their businesses, on their way back home…

 

 

Mexico's drug war, time to change strategies

The most recent massacres of young people in Ciudad Juárez (Friday) and at a rehabilitation center in Tijuana Sunday night must be a troubling sign for the Mexican government.

These despicable acts are a clear indication that the government’s strategy to fight organized crime has not done anything to the structures of criminal organizations. The flow of drugs continues, the “capos” are still free and the violence has spilled everywhere. 

If the country were a company, the CEO’s would have already fired the administrators because of their failure to meet their goals. But a country is not a company, and it is much more complicated to fire the politicians in charge.

One would think that after the new tragedies of Juárez and Tijuana, it is time to review the government’s strategy and take it in another direction.

What choices do government officials have? Probably not many, but at least two extreme, complicated and controversial possibilities come to mind. One is to negotiate with the cartels and the other one is the legalization of drugs.

Negotiation:  Several studies done in the U.S. and in Mexico have shown the increasing role that the drug trade is having in Mexico’s economy.

Stratfor, an intelligence-consulting company, produced a report called “Mexico and the failed state revisited,” which concluded that while drugs have reshaped Mexico’s institutions dramatically, they have also benefited Mexico’s economy in a significant way. The report also indicates that the amount of money pouring into Mexico annually due to the drug trade is stunning. It is estimated to be from $35 billion to $40 billion each year.

"On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested oversea, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession". the report stated.

The influx of drug-related money into the Mexican economy is not a new phenomenon. It has been this way since the time of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 70 years until 2000, when the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) won the presidential election. The drug cartels were not born with Felipe Calderon’s administration. They have been in Mexico for a long time, but the country did not experience this kind of bloodshed because there were tacit agreements between the cartels and the government.

As much as it hurts, the reality is that cartels are not going to disappear as a result of Calderon’s war and the money coming from drugs will continue flowing into Mexican economy. What would the country lose if its authorities sat down and negotiated new terms for the drug trade?

Legalization:  There is no way that the U.S.’s appetite for drugs is going to end soon.  The U.S. is still the world’s main consumer of drugs and Mexico is its main supplier. Legalization would change the patterns of supply and consumption and in theory it would order a market that operates under its own violent rules. However, if the U.S. doesn’t move into the legalization direction, Mexico won’t do it either.  This is something that both countries should do together.

The people of California will decide on Proposition 19 on Nov. 2, which if approved would authorize cities and counties to produce and sell marijuana for recreational use. The idea behind the proposal is that the legalization of drugs will bring the cost down and will reduce the incentive to smuggle the drug. It will also create a regulated market for consumers.

California’s decision during the election will be a test for the U.S. on that particular issue and, depending on its outcome, it could create a political challenge to the rest of the states.

I understand that these two choices have endless complications that would be difficult if not impossible to implement. But with the state of despair that many Mexicans–myself included–find themselves in, it is better to propose something, just about anything, than remain silent when we see more and more people being brutally killed every single day.

 

 

¡Si no pueden, que renuncien!

 Residents of Ciudad Juárez woke up today with news of another massacre of young people.

At least 13 people are dead and 16 more were injured after an armed group shot at the people at a party  in a private home Friday night. According to police reports, seven of the people killed were between 16 and 25 years old. Among the injured people, there was a 9-year-old child.  As of today, no one has been arrested.

This latest deadly attack occurred two weeks after the new mayor of Cd. Juárez, Hector Murguia, took office and nine days after President Felipe Calderon’s last visit to Juarez to evaluate the progress of the so-called “Todos Somos Juárez” plan.

During his visit, Calderon heard citizens’ complaints about the increase of violence and he vowed to continue working to bring security to Cd. Juárez. This new massacre is a slap to his and the citizens’ faces.

After the incident, Calderon sent his condolences to the families through Twitter, something that shows lack of sensitivity with the victims’ families. Does he think that everybody follow his Twitter?

It is evident that the federal government’s strategy to fight organized crime has failed. It is evident that the government is incapable of bringing security to the city and to the country. What is most obvious is that fact that people cannot be safe, even in their homes—teenagers cannot celebrate and party, people cannot walk outside their homes without the fear of being shot.

The massacre of 16 young people during a party in the neighborhood of Villas de Salvarcar Jan 31 is still fresh in the memory of many Juarenses.  What else can be said after a repeat of this type of events?

How much pain do parents, sisters, brothers and friends have to suffer before the bloodshed is stopped?

Alejandro Marti, a powerful business man whose 14-year-old son was kidnapped and murdered in 2008, coined a famous phrase that made waves in the political and social arena. After his son was killed, he went on television and said, “¡Si no pueden, que renuncien!”, which means  if the authorities cannot control the criminals, they should resign.

Today, his phrase is more appropriate than ever. If they cannot control what is happening in Juárez, how do they think they will be able to control what is happening in the rest of the country?  

 

Making the Mexican Army accountable

If the Mexican Senate approves the most recent bill introduced by President Felipe Calderon, military members could be tried in civilian courts.

On Tuesday, the Senate received the president’s bill to exclude from military jurisdiction crimes such as torture, rape and forced disappearance.

The bill represents a serious attempt to make the army accountable for crimes or human rights violations against ordinary citizens. Under the bill, if an army member were accused of rape, torture or forced disappearance he/she would be judged in federal courts. During and after the trial, the military suspect would remain in custody in a military prison to avoid their being recruited by organized crime.

Calderon said the bill complies with the 2009 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ symbolic sentence that condemned the Mexican government for the disappearance in 1974 of Rosendo Radilla, a political activist from the state of Guerrero. Padilla disappeared during the Dirty War period, in which the army fought guerrillas and leftist groups around the country. The army took an active role in the disappearance, torture or killing of many of them.

In its ruling, the IACDH recommended the government to pay reparation to Radilla’s family and to investigate, prosecute and punish the people responsible for his disappearance. It also asked the government to amend its military and criminal code to make it compatible with international laws.

In a 2009 report, Amnesty International, documented several recent cases of human rights violations committed by the Mexican Army.

“The new cases of this report illustrate a pattern of serious human rights violations perpetrated by member of the armed forces…Among the abuses reported are forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture and arbitrary detention. Information published by the Secretary of Defense and by the national and state’s human rights commissions indicate that the trend has increased significantly in the last two years.”

The IACDH has also analyzed and condemned the Mexican government in the cases of several indigenous women raped by military men.

Considering this situation, Calderon’s bill is a good sign and it shows a willingness to address a problem that has affected the lives of thousands of people and has also damaged the reputation and credibility of the armed forces.

It would have been desirable that the initiative included a wider variety of crimes, such as arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial executions, all of which were denounced by Amnesty International in its reports. 

However, the legislators still have an opportunity to improve the bill, making it more complete and to guarantee that the abuses committed by the armed forces could be punished now and not 30 years later as it happened in the case of Radilla and hundred of other recent cases.

 

It's Mexico, but just don't say it!

According to a news story published by Mexico’s national newspaper Reforma, some tourism officials and entrepreneurs want to get rid of the name Mexico in their campaigns to promote tourism of the country.

The reason is simple: They want to eliminate the association between the words Mexico and violence.

What they apparently want to do is to promote tourist destinations such as Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca as desired places to visit in a country whose name is unmentionable. 

It is ironic that one of the promoters of this idea is Pablo Azcárraga, vice president of Grupo Posadas, a touristic consortium that operates more than 100 resorts and hotels in Mexico and Latin America. His company also owned 30 percent of the now defunct airline Mexicana, which for years and years benefited from associating the word Mexico to its brand.

The idea is absurd and it seems to be founded in what these officials and entrepreneurs apparently think about tourists—that they are ignorant.

They think that when they go to Florence, they don’t know that it is in Italy, or maybe that when they go to Vancouver, they think they are heading to the U.S. Most likely, they think that tourists don’t give a damn about the countries where they are going.

Are they that naïve to think that just because a marketing promotion doesn’t include the name of Mexico that  will inspire tourists to jump at the chance to visit all these destinations without doing any basic research about the place?  Do they really think that erasing Mexico from their campaigns will change the perception of the country abroad?

I don’t know, but Mexican politicians and entrepreneurs are always surprising me with their dimwitted remarks and ideas! But this one, by far, takes the cake.

 

The Chilean example for the world

The entire world was able to follow, minute-by-minute, the rescue of the 33 miners who were trapped underground in copper mine for 69 days in Copiapo, Chile.

The unparalleled efforts to free the miners, headed by Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, was covered non-stop for two days by national and international news channels, radio stations, print media and websites around the world.

It was an emotional operation, not just because of the moving images of the miners reuniting with their families and friends, but also because the sight of a nation’s president leading the effort and supporting the rescuers was a clear indication of his leadership and the unity of his country.

Tragedies in mines are not rare. The most recent one before the Chilean incident occurred on May 8 in Russia, when an explosion in the largest coal mine in the country left 60 miners dead. Before that, 29 miners died in an explosion at a West Virginia mine on April 5. And in China, where these kinds of tragedies are common, 33 miners died on March 2 after a mine flooded.

The worst mining tragedy in Mexico occurred on Feb. 19, 2006 in the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in the northern state of Coahuila. As a result of an explosion, 65 miners died inside the mine. Just two bodies were ever recovered.

The government and the company owners suspended the efforts to rescue the miners just a few days after the tragedy with the argument that the conditions inside the mine were dangerous and rescuers would be exposed to toxic gasses. They also argued that the toxicity of those gasses made it almost impossible that anyone could have survived.

Even if that were true, what makes the Chilean incident so different is the behavior of Mexico’s president at that time. Vicente Fox never set a foot in the mine, and while his closest collaborators did show up to support Grupo Mexico, the owners of the mine, they did not show any sympathy or support for the families of the victims.

Besides the fact that the president did not deign to even visit Pasta de Conchos, the tragedy made clear the conditions in which the miners were working and the company’s failure to follow safety and health regulations.

Did the death of the Pasta de Conchos’ miners provoke any changes in those conditions? Of course not. The miners in Mexico, as in many other countries in the world, face harsh working conditions. Their salaries are pretty low and they are exposed to multiple dangers, from explosions and flooding to exposure to harmful gasses and lung and heart diseases.

After the rescue of 33^rd miner, President Piñera said that his government will review the working conditions and safety regulations for the Chilean mine industry. He vowed to make sure that an accident like the one in Copiapo would not happen again.

The Chilean miners were an example of courage, determination, hope, faith and unity. They have showed the world what a country can do for its people.  They have set an incredible example of solidarity.

I hope world's politicians have also learned from what happened in Chile.

 

Will Cleaning House Help?

In his visit to the state of Chihuahua today, President Felipe Calderon got the support of nine governors to create a unified police force and to implement several measures aimed at reducing crime and eliminating impunity.

Calderon had a meeting with the recent elected governors of nine states, who signed the Acuerdo por Chihuahua, a political compromise that establishes deadlines to create anti-kidnapping units in their states and to implement an accountability system for the police forces.

Calderon is putting a lot of effort in the creation of the new unified police. One of the arguments behind the proposal is the need to purge corruption from the police forces. He has said that the beginning of a new administration is the best opportunity to make radical changes in the security and judicial system.

In the following weeks, the Mexican Congress will be analyzing the proposal. In fact, next Monday Calderon will meet with Senate members to discuss several issues, among them police system reform.

I have yet to read or hear of an explanation about how this purging of the current police forces will be done. What is going to happen with the dozens or hundreds of police members who are not going to be qualified to be part of the new unified police? What kind of monitoring system will be implemented to have a follow up of officials who have received police training?

In the past we have heard countless stories of former policemen being actively involved in crimes such as kidnapping, extortion or even drug trafficking. If, let’s say, the purging affects 10 out of 100 policemen, who will follow those 10 who have been fired?  Who will make sure –if this would even be possible–that they are not going to use this training to become a part of organized crime?

I don’t have the answer yet, but I’ll try to find out. In the meantime, it sounds pretty scary doesn’t it?

 

 

Vargas Llosa, an invitation to read

Peruvian and prolific writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature.

It has been more than two decades since the prestigious award was given to a Latin American writer. Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez received the award in 1982, while Mexican writer Octavio Paz received it in 1990.

Vargas Llosa is one of the most acclaimed writers in the Spanish-speaking world. His vast work includes 15 novels, dozens of short stories, memoirs, non-fiction stories and political and literary essays. Without question, his literary work has influenced and will be influencing several generations of people and writers.

I recently read one of his most famous novels, “Conversations in the Cathedral,” and I was amazed at his ability to build a multilayered narrative anchored in several characters, voices and different times. It is a wonderful novel that exposes the brutality and corruption of Manuel Odría’s dictatorship in Peru.

Also, a few months ago I read “The Feast of the Goat,” another novel that narrates the violence, abuses and oppression that characterized Rafael L. Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic until his assassination by a group of insurgents. As with “Conversations in the Cathedral,” this novel is also multilayered, using different points of view and going back and forth between past and present.

Two more of my favorites Vargas Llosa’s novels are “The Green House” and “The War of the End of the World,” which is set in Brazil in the 19^th Century.

Vargas Llosa has written thousands of pages in his 74 years and most of them are worth reading. He is probably one of the most admired writers in Latin America and his books have been translated to more than 33 languages.

If you have not read any of his books, now is the time to do so. I guess all the bookstores around the globe–including Barnes & Noble here in El Paso–will put his novels at the front of the store. So, there’s no excuse. If you love reading good literature, go and buy one of his books. I can assure that you won’t regret it.

 

Chihuahua's test

Chihuahua has a new governor and with it many promises to be fulfilled.

As part of his political campaign first, and now as the governor of Chihuahua, Cesar Duarte has vowed to bring back peace  to his state.

During the swearing-in ceremony Monday, he announced a new program named “Chihuahua Vive” or Chihuahua is Alive, which will promote security, social development and justice. He said that in coordination with the federal government, Chihuahua will defeat organized crime and he also added that his government would not tolerate corruption.

It all sounds fantastic -in all the meanings of the word-. Fantastic, as something remote from reality, and fantastic as something extraordinarly good if he gets to do it. Hopefully it will be the second meaning. I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Duarte repeated an interesting phrase in his inauguration speech: “The fate of the Nation is being decided in Chihuahua”, he said twice.

While the phrase may seem exaggerated and sensational at first moment, but once that you start thinking about it, it becomes more and more meaningful.

Duarte, as some of the other governors elected in July, will receive an administration severely affected by the actions of organized crime. The new governors of Sinaloa, Durango and Tamaulipas will also face a similar situation.

Ciudad Juarez, which is internationally known as the capital of murder, represents and condenses the enormous challenges that the new governor of Chihuahua will face, among them, generalized corruption and impunity, lack of trust in the judicial and political system, poverty, insufficiency of social opportunities, unemployment, fear, despair and others.

What happens in Cd. Juárez is an extreme situation, but more than a dozen of cities in Chihuahua and in other states in Mexico are getting close to the same scenario, one in which the authorities don’t represent anything. The big challenge then is to grasp  the reins of the state and to recover the credibility of the government institutions.

It doesn’t look and easy task though.

Duarte is the first governor to launch a unified police force with the goal of centralizing security functions and avoiding the dispersion of efforts. It also attempts to professionalize the police fprce and to fight corruption. He said that the unified police would be fully operating in one year.

As you probably remember, the federal government is also working on the goal of creating a national unified police with similar objectives. In that sense, the success or failure of the Chihuahua’s new police force would set an important precedent for the federal government.

Chihuahua and its emblematic Ciudad Juárez represent today the worst black eye of the drug war. If the new government -at the state and municipal level- are able to change the balance of forces in the current war they could certainly influence the future of the country. If they fail, their downfall will also be a national defeat. But hopefully it won’t be like that.