Month: May 2014

L’archéologie des Pères: Playing for Pancho Villa, Défense & Illustration

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Parfois je m’allonge dans le lit entre la nuit et l’aube, en m’interrogeant sur la vérité de mes assertions sur la nature du monde. Je décris des images, mes personnages jouent une histoire—mais décrire l’intrigue de l’histoire est très différent de l’acte de narration. Celui-ci consiste en l’invention, la sculpture et le filage du conte, dans l’espoir qu’on puisse—par la manière de raconter l’histoire—suspendre l’incrédulité du lecteur; que le lecteur croie ce que je dis.

Une autre partie a quelque chose à voir avec mon propre besoin de croire—ce qui est plus facile si le livre sur un niveau plus profond explique quelque chose sur moi. Bien sûr qu’il le fait, mais comment il le fait n’est pas clair du tout. Le Frank Holloway inventé, qu’est ce qu’il veut me dire dans mon roman Playing for Pancho Villa? De quelle manière ses aventures sont aussi les miennes? Pourquoi penserais-je ou aurais-je le besoin d’écrire une telle histoire? Dans quelle mesure est-ce que je me révente?

Les images et séquences que je peins en distribuant les coups de pinceau—comment décide-je sur quelle couleur et sur où je les jette? Je n’ai pas beaucoup de réponses pour ces questions, sauf que cela a à voir avec tous les pères, grand-pères et arrière-grand-pères dont les existences s’étendent sur tout le chemin jusqu’au début de ma lignée. Les mères et les tantes n’étaient pas muettes, j’ai appris d’elles. Mais les pères se taisaient. Je veux savoir plus d’eux. Être qui je suis peut dependre d’eux. Mais puisque ils se ont tellement tu, à cause de ses dispositions ou de la mort, à qui dois-je demander?

Peut-être que c’est à moi. Raconter une histoire sur mon père— sur mon grand-père dans ce cas—est, suppose-je, ma manière de parler avec ceux qui sont restés silencieux. D’abord, en les reinventant—puisque à ma connaissance mon grand-père Frank n’a jamais franchi la frontière mexicaine sur la jument de son père.

Mon frère m’a récemment envoyé des archives généalogiques. Une entrée de douane montre qu’un Frank Bennett rentra Aux États Unis sur un bateau du Honduras. Est-ce qu’il était mon grand-père? Mon frére m’assure que non. Mais il n’existe aucune preuve dans un sens our un autre.

J’ai lu un article récent dans le New York Times sur des soldats disparus au combat au cours de la seconde guerre mondiale, dont les corps n’ont jamais été retrouvés et comment cela hante des membres de la famille, dont certains n’ont jamais connu le parent disparu.
C’est cela que sont les pères? Disparus au combat? Suis-je simplement un parent de plus qui les cherche, prenant la pelle, creusant où je crois qu’il sont allongés? Raconter une histoire, est-ce de cela qu’il s’agit?

Mexico on the Edge

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A Summary and Expansion: The leaking Ship of State.

May 12, the newspaper La Jornada; John Ackerman:

If there is not a radical change in the authoritarian structure of the State, polarization of citizens against the State may have reached the point of no return. Because of the self-defense groups and the discussions among citizens that have arisen, the State—rather than restore the Rule of Law—strikes at the self-defense groups and their leader in order to confuse the discussion, distract and stop the discussion itself.

The bribe: The State, represented by Federal Commissioner for Michoacán, delivered a few arms to a dubious self-defense group in that state and pronounced that, henceforth, responsibility for citizen safety was in their hands—pretty much all cynical theater relying on old authoritarian strategies like “silver or lead, the bribe or the bullet,” to which “theater” should be added, all of it bathed in baffling cynicism and criminal failure by the federal government to enforce the Rule of Law of its own accord.

The bullet: the former spokesperson for all the self-defense groups, Dr. José Mireles, a voice I find convincing, becomes the recipient of the Government’s bullet, i.e. efforts to undermine his authority by accepting denunciations of him by groups that have taken favors from the Government, like the group mentioned above and who may be betraying the self-defense movement. In an old tactic, to divide and conquer, federal authorities are accusing Mireles of murder simply on the say-so of men with questionable ties. Because of the lingering effects of Napoleonic Law, the accusation leaves Mireles obliged to prove his innocence, hence leaving him judicially tainted, neutralizing him and exposing him at the same time.

As in the telecommunication and energy “reforms,” the federal government refuses to hold public discussion with the citizenry. PRI pragmatism includes dangerous trickery, calumny, betrayal of citizens’ safety (Mireles), and generally simply not responding to citizens’ cries for help and justice.

John Ackerman, U.S. born, is a researcher in the Institute of Judicial Review at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Editorial Director of the Mexican Law Review. He writes for La Jornada and Proceso.

May 13, 2014, the newspaper La Jornada, Pedro Miguel:

Dr. Mireles separated himself from the dubious federal commissioner Castillo of Michoacán; and the Mexican Government has betrayed him. This has brought sympathy from the whole country. In order to undermine this sympathy, the State attacks Mireles and his sympathizers, calling the latter naïve, easy followers of another “caudillo,” strong man or boss—a man, the say, who may be mentally ill. Mireles was quoted as saying, “I didn’t know that Alfredo Castillo or Smurf—Estanislao Beltrán (the new government-recognized leader of the self-defense forces)—are specialists in psychiatry.”

The result has been that Dr. Mireles appears as a straight talker, the government as compulsively mendacious and manipulative, hence manifesting questionable mental health. All of which make Mireles more respected and admired for his stance against corruption at all levels, including the federal.

May 13, 2014, Aristequi Noticias (News); Carmen Aristegui:

This is the contradiction that gives off an odor: The government that goes after Mireles has not been able to arrest and prosecute countless murderers among the Templars and other criminal groups. They have gone after him because he symbolized—and surely still does—the independence of the self-defense idea.

May 13, 2014, the newspaper La Jornada, Luis Hernández Navarro

Shadow Theater, “to give the impression of movement.” Or to make it appear that the government has legitimized the self-defense groups, by exchanging the latter’s symbolic AK-47’s (guerrilla movement) for AR-15’s (the citizen’s assault rifle), lighter pickups for the heavier more independent ones and limited ammunition.

The new self-defense spokesperson Smurf, known as Papa Smurf, the government’s chosen self-defense leader, exclaims, “With this, we now have a commitment. We are the government.”

One can see Dr. Mireles raising his eyebrows in wonder at this language.

At the shadow theater presentation, Commissioner Castillo proclaimed, “The unheard of phenomenon of this armed social movement is that the people have not risen against the State, rather to ask for the State’s presence. And today those who represent the State are you!”

The inept, and probably complicit, State was understandably worried about the “against” part. Now, it hopes to have co-opted the self-defense movement by taking away their indepence.

Of all the shadow plays possible, the one offering any real security has not been staged.

May 13, 2014, Aristegui Noticias (News), Carmen Aristequi:

The language of co-option sounds like this. Commissioner Castillo, talking as if Commander Smurf’s group represented the entire case of citizens bearing arms: “The self-defense groups simply felt not taken into account in the doctor’s statement and ceased to feel represented. They made a decision (to dismiss him) and we respect them…they choose their spokespersons and we talk to them.”—translated by Reed Brundage, Mexico Voices.

May 13, 2014, MVS News, Carmen Aristegui

The government has succeeded in co-opting the self-defense groups in Michoacán. One should probably add that it was “one part” of the groups, and that that group was “turned.”

The government cannot tolerate independent, let alone armed movements.

It is a political decision to accuse someone. Anyone can be the target. Its ultimate purpose is to get rid of the self-defense groups.

It is an old practice, especially of the PRI (the party that exercised near dictatorial control over Mexico for 71 years). All energy goes into divide, co-opt and control, rather than into solving a problem.

The indifference of the State permitted the existence of The Templars; the State is deeply complicit in a complex web of connections.

Denise Dresser: Co-opting the self-defense forces is not going to solve the underlying problem in regard to public security. The State prosecutes Mireles but is incapable of investigating other deaths, let alone the huge mafia that has breathed in rhythm with state, municipal and federal authorities. Her repeated question: “Where is the State?” Why has it not been meeting its responsibilities? Why can it not enforce the rule of law?

Mr. Peña Nieto’s Wonderous Energy Reform

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Alfonso Cuarón, director and co-producer of “Gravity,” a space disaster film I haven’t seen, won Best Director at the 86th Academy Awards. He was also chosen as “Most Creative” on Forbes’s Mexico List in 2013. With these credentials that separate him from being a ninguneo, a nobody, the good citizen asked a Mexican president traditionally endowed with near imperial powers—in this case Mr. Peña Nieto—to answer ten questions on the Mexican energy reform that has probably been decided upon already, with Cheney-like disinterest in the opinion of citizens—which is to say, of those who are not in the Club or the upper 1%. One could also mention that Mr. Nieto is a member of the PRI, the political party that ruled Mexico for seventy-one years with near dictatorial powers.

Here are Cuarón’s ten questions—with my subtexts.

One: When will the price of natural gas, gasoline, diesel and electricity begin to fall? What other benefits can we expect from the reform? When can we expect them to occur? Subtext in my words, not Cuarón’s. The prices of things generally climb when they are privatized.

Two: What will the effects be for the environment in the face of massive oil extraction? What measures will be put in place to protect the environment and who will take responsibility in case of spill and other disaster? Subtext: No measures will be put into place. It is part of the local culture that no one takes responsibility for disasters.

Three: Hydrocarbons are non-renewable resources. Their impact on the environment, meaning on the whole globe, is massive. What plans are there for alternate energy? Subtext: There are no plans.

Four: Huge amounts of profits will be generated by this reform—in the billions. In a country where the rule of law is so weak, who will regulate these funds and protect them from corruption? Subtext: No one will regulate these funds. They will not be protected from corruption. Additionally, there will be none of the transparency that is necessary for any kind of accountability.

Five: Transnational companies in the world often wield as much power as many governments. What measures will be taken to protect our democracy from financial pressures by powerful international interests? Subtext: There will be some protections—just enough to protect the interests of those in the Club.

Six: What regulatory measures does the government have at its disposal to protect the country from the predatory pressures that private companies can exert on the energy sector? Subtext: The Club has a maze of maneuvers that it can employ to protect its own financial interests.

Seven: How can you assure that Pemex will show an increase in production if the government does not confront corruption in that is within Pemex and its union? Subtext: There will be no assurances. The union corruption will continue. The higher-level corruption—the taking more of the people’s profits—will flourish.

Eight: If Pemex, in the last seventy years, contributed to more than half of the country’s federal budget, including education and free health care, and if now the earnings of Pemex no longer flow directly to the country’s coffers, what will replace that half of the federal budget? Subtext: Any diminution would probably be called in IMF-ese a “structural adjustment,” whereby the people will have less and the Club more.

Nine: How will you assure us that the profits from the reform will not be channeled into bureaucratic expansion rather than to the original owners of the resources: the people of Mexico? Subtext: There will be plenty of assurances, but they will be mostly smoke. Bureaucratic expansion is a euphemism for the Club. Profits from the reform will be channeled to the Club.

A friend of mine wrote the following in reaction to what I am writing here. Since I don’t have his permission, I will not mention his name. But it gives another point of view: “Incidentally, foreign investment and foreign management rules saved the mining industry here making work safe for the miners (before that life expectancy was about 10 years or less in the mines!), improved efficiency (the 80% silver going to the “people” today is much more than the 100% before; and 100% gold still going to the Mexican Treasury), and rooted out the most egregious excesses of corruption (of course, it is still Mexico, in a way). No, I would LOVE to see a shake-up in PEMEX and the whole rotten oil structure. I SUPPORT REFORM, because it is needed and it is helpful to Mexico and its people!”

Ten: Two disastrous experiences remain in the minds of Mexicans. 1) The crash of 1982 that followed the waste, ineptitude, corruption that characterized the management of oil in the Seventies; and 2) the arbitrary, opaque and privatizing reforms under President Salinas de Gortari, that were good for the private hands but of dubious value for consumers. What guarantees are there that the social misery created then will not be repeated now? You and your party  carry the responsibility for these reforms. Do you really believe that Mexico can carry out these reforms efficiently, for the social good and with transparency? Subtext: There will be guarantees of benefits, but they will mean nothing. None of the parties will assume responsibility for what turns out to not be good for the country. The last question is aimed right at the heart of the matter. Mr. Peña Nieto and others in the Club say things they do not believe, or worse, that they do believe (see below); any efficiency will appear mainly in the acquisition of private profit; acting for the social good will remain a distant possibility, given the Club’s lack of a sense of social responsibility; there is little transparency at any level of Mexican government—thus, offering little possibility of citizen accountability. Without a free press there would be no hope at all.

Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, has responded with some vague reassurances that there will be commissions to study this and that. It is probably a good thing that the government has bothered to respond. But words are not actions.

Other voices have asked how an “upstart” like Cuarón would have the gall to presume to talk directly to the President of Mexico, Mr. Nieto.

Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, writing for Reforma, quotes journalist and political analyst Ricardo Raphael as saying that the elite are the central problem in Mexico. Silva-Herzog writes, “(that) one of the problems of our democracy is precisely the depth of the authoritarian convictions of those small and satisfied circles that thumb their nose at the country while happily looking at themselves in magazines. Convinced they are more knowledgeable than others, they think they are the only ones that can argue and, especially, decide. The autocratic persuasion of the elite shows in this notion that public discussion belongs exclusively to experts. Only we have the elements to discuss the energy reform, they tell us. Others have to shut up and vote when the day comes; and that that, and that alone, is democracy. We will give you clear options so you are capable of making a sensible decision (they say).

Therein lies the immense service provided by Alfonso Cuarón’s questions. To show that the technician’s arrogance cannot suppress the people.”

La Contrefaçon

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(Another attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that, if exposed, French cows would fall over dead.)

 

La Contrefaçon (Forgery)

J’espère que je ne vous induirai pas en erreur sur le sujet de votre recherche. Êtes-vous prêt à enregistrer? Alors, j’essaie de me rappeler quand cela a commencé. Probablement avec les choses habituelles, comme d’imiter la voix et le style de mon père dans une note au directeur de l’école, un document qui m’a excusé de la classe de gym, puis de l’arithmétique à cause de ma tumeur au cerveau et puis de la période du déjeuner, pour que je puisse aller derrière le grillage de baseball et de là me glisser dans la forêt, où je fumerais des cigarrettes Philip Morris et rencontrerais des filles trop hanidcapées mentalement pour aller à l’école.

Comment les ai-je persuadées d’y aller? En imitant l’ecriture du directeur sur des invitations à se joindre à une équipe de softball qui serait de manière égal composée des élèves de l’école élémentaire, sans souci du dévelopment mental.

Plus tard, alors que j’étais à l’école secondaire, j’étudierais, puis présenterais—sans adresse d’expéditeur—des oeuvres inconnues par Hemingway, Emily Dickenson et les soeurs Brontë. Je les ai soumises à des éditeurs, pretendant qu’elles avaient été découvertes dans telle ou telle archive, coin ou bibliothèque de livres rares.

Au début, il n’y eut que des rejets. Puis, progressivement, des experts ont commencé à leur accorder de l’attention. Une fois un conte, une autre fois un poème, et même un mince roman resté jusqu’ici inconnu. Revues littéraires et bibliothèques n’ont pas pu résister au fait que des oeuvres de valeur inestimable aient été découvertes, et elles ont commencé à les publier et à les attribuer aux les Brontë, Emily Dickenson et autres Ernest Hemingway.

J’ai étudié d’autres langues et j’ai avec les années reussi à placer des essais écrits par Camus et Thomas Mann imprimés dans un poussièreux caractère Courier. Mêne une fois une pièce pornographique par Richard Wagner. Les soumissions étaient toujours anonymes mais écrites avec une telle habileté—sur des pages blanches, déchirées de vieux livres—que des revues académiques se sont battues les unes avec les autres sur aquelle qui présenterait les meilleurs arguments pour leur authenticité. En même temps je travaillais comme discret bibliothécaire à Orange, New Jersey.

Avec le temps, je me suis ennuyé de ces manigances et j’ai commencé à soumettre mes propres oeuvres, après quoi j’ai été accusé de plagier, c’est-à-dire d’emprunter le style et le vocabulaire des auteurs bien connus.

J’ai eu quelques succès avec de petites revues littéraires, dont les gardiens—généralement sévèrement mâles—ont été tellement éduqués dans le mimétisme et où tant de leurs contributions étaient juvénilement naïves, que ma propre tromperie persistante est passait inaperçue.

Je me suis marié et j’ai eu une fille—une enfant qui avait les mêmes généreuses proportions de l’intelligence et du coeur. Quand elle allait en campement, je lui écrivais des nouvelles et des histoires que j’inventais. Au collège, elle a commencé à se plaindre à sa mère—nous n’étions plus ensemble—qu’elle ne me connaissais plus et—plus perturbant—qu’il y avait quelque chose d’inauthentique en moi.

Quand mon ex-épouse m’a dit celà, avec une expression qui balançait entre jubilation malveillante et reprimande, j’ai passé le reste de la journée à boire assez de whisky pour tuer un éléphant.

Je ne savais pas quoi faire. Je suis allé consulter un psychiatre, qui m’a dit d’explorer ma relation avec mes parents, dont les deux avaient passé leur carrière à convaincre d’autres personnes de leur faire confiance. Mon père, un conseiller financier, avait été averti par son enterprise sur des irrégularités. Ma mère avait été une peintre aux modestes talents, qui peignait ouvertement des copies de Breughel, Rembrandt et des Impressionistes pour des clients à Santa Monica, California, qui avaient les cheveux bleus et des chambres à décorer.

Après quelques années de traitement, j’ai rejoint un ashram pour apprendre à méditer et pour abandonner les besoins du monde matériel. J’ai passé du temps avec un certain nombre de belles apôtres de la vie spirituelle promise, en pratiquant les arts de la défense et de l’abandon. Alors que ma fille, toujours polie, s’éloignait de plus en plus de moi.

Quand ma petite-fille est née, ma fille s’est radoucie et m’a autorisé à jouer mon rôle de grand-père. Elle a même permis que je raconte à celle-ci des histoires du soir. Au fil du temps quelque chose s’est passé et j’ai commencé à raconter des histoires qui étaient différentes des précédentes et qui adhéraient plus aux questions que ma petite-fille m’a posées—si les ours pouvaient parler avec les enfants, et si j’avais jamais parlé avec un ours ou avec un éléphant.

Je ne voulais pas lui mentir, alors je lui ai dit que non. Elle avait deux ou trois ans, alors elle a suggéré que nous allions au zoo essayer de parler avec un ours et peut-être avec un éléphant.

Et donc, nous sommes allés au zoo. Une fois, une fois encore. Nous avons essayé d’autres animaux aussi. Aucun d’entre eux n’a parlé avec nous, mais nous avons inventé des histoires sur ce qu’ils nous ont dit et nous avons ri, parce que certaines de ces histoires étaien drôles. Et d’ailleurs, nous étions contents l’un de l’autre.

J’ai commencé à y retourner seul; et quand d’autres personnes n’étaient pas là, j’ai parlé aux animaux tout seul; alors quelque chose a changé et j’ai appris celà qui semble banal à dire, mais que je vais vous dire: il n’y a jamais aucune raison de dissimuler qui vous êtes. Ma petite-fille et les éléphants étaient ce qu’ils étaient et ne prétendaient être rien de plus.

Mon heure de quitter la terre est venue, comme vous pouvez voir par vous-même. À la dernière visite, ma charmante épouse m’a pris par la main et m’a dit que c’était dommage que nous n’ayons pas passé—a tous égards—plus de temps ensemble au cours des 20 ou 30 dernières années. Ma fille pleure de façon incontrôlable pendant ses visites. Et ma petite-fille—aujourd’hui une merveilleuse écrivaine âgé de 25 ans—s’assoit à côté de mon lit et me parle sur tous les tons de quels animaux je dois visiter et ce que je dois leur dire quand je les rejoindrai. Bon, c’est mon histoire sur la contrefaçon. Ce n’est peut-être pas ce que vous vouliez. Mais c’est comme ça.

Two Michoacáns

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We went to Michoacán to see M, a dear old friend. And her daughter N, another dear old friend. Up here in Guanajuato, we think of Michoacán as a conflicted zone, a Mexican state ruled by narcos and other manifestations of organized crime—a state patrolled by Army, in green; Federal Police troops dressed in black with balaclavas hiding their identity; and Marines dressed in shades of tan and wearing a reputation as the only branch of law enforcement that actually captures anyone.

Everyone seems to have a heavy pickup truck with a shielded, mounted machine gun manned by a trooper of some kind. The Army has Hummers, and also brandishes machine guns, shielded or unshielded depending on the testosterone level of the commanding officer, I suppose, who would not actually be the one standing behind the weapon. I don’t know what the Marines drive, since I’ve never seen a Mexican combat Marine.

I went to Michoacán, expecting to see trouble, such as I saw in the Eighties in El Salvador: the countryside set ablaze to deny the guerrillas ambush cover; swaggering, semi-psychotic US-trained soldiers ready to kill anyone; and frightened (mostly death-squad annihilated) women health workers that had been trained to teach women’s rights and hygiene, and Liberation Theology-preaching priests, who were also menaced with extinction.

Just now, we stayed with our friends in the old idyllic compound in Erongarícuaro, where we lived for the year 1997–98, on a rise that looks out over Lake Pátzcuaro at the storm-blue volcanoes in the distance—an area we were told to avoid.

The Michoacán I found had some similarities with El Salvador in the Seventies and Eighties: women teaching women about health care and making it available—but without the violent repression. Instead, the activity here was taking place in a setting full of beauty, peace and security. Families (men supporting their wives) sat waiting for their appointments on benches in the shade of an overhang partially obscured by curtain reddish-orange Passion Flowers. They looked out over a lawn sprinkled with fallen light-blue Jacaranda blossoms. And beyond, over cattle grazing far out on the lake’s plane, where the water has receded, then farther across the lake toward the volcanoes in the distance.

The Eronga compound has found a new life, after various incarnations. Now it is a non-profit women’s clinic called Mujeres Aliadas: Organización pro Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos de la Mujer—Allied Women: An organization for women’s sexual and reproductive rights. And our younger old friend N, who is not even thirty, is its director. You can Google them. You can look them up at http://www.mujeresaliadas.mx and talk to them at mujeresaliadas.ac@gmail.com. You can even see at least one YouTube clip on what they do.

Mujeres Aliadas is an impressive operation. The sixty-five foot living room (with a primitive kitchen at the far end), where we wrote and lived during our year there, is now the office and lecture hall for women’s workshops. The row of guest rooms—we stayed in one that year—that makes up another shed-like building is now a row of consulting and treatment rooms, all renovated, clean and staffed with two trained midwives and an all-woman staff. The bed my love and I slept on that year has since had at least fifty babies born on it.

The clinic has office hours three days a week, but a sign at the gate says there is care available 7/24 if you are in trouble—a notice I find extremely moving. Plus, you can receive consultation and treatment in Spanish or Purépecha. The little clinic has 1,500 regular clients and serves forty marginalized communities in the Lake Pátzcuaro basin. Here, clients can approach without fear of the centuries-old racism toward marginalized women, for being Indian, lacking education, being poor, being unmarried, being uncomfortable speaking Spanish, being different from the light-skinned Mexicans on TV and on billboards. For being a woman.

The clients, from adolescents to adults, receive instruction in anatomy, contraception, prenatal care, the politics of sexuality (how to say no) and in postpartum care—both physical and psychological. For forty pesos, a woman receives both treatment and the needed medicine—roughly three dollars. The center also offers training in midwifery and nursing. There are plans to gradually establish other centers, in order to reduce infant and female mortality, a condition that has risen something like 30% in the last ten years—probably keeping pace with Mexico’s rise in poverty.

At the present, funding comes from Finish Embassy, the MacArthur Foundation and DFW (Dining for Women). But these grants, like most grants, have time limits and will eventually dry up. I cannot think of a better place to send financial support. The link for donating is:
http://www.mujeresaliadas.org/donate/default.html

The center makes me think of the scene in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In the midst of an a war-like hunt against a great swirling outer group of sperm whales, in the middle of the chaos and deep below, “There a sleek, pure calm reigns…(and) far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes, as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in these watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales….”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing the women that visit the clinic to birthing whales, but I am saying that, for me, the clinic is sane, kind, luminescent center in a troubled sea. I had come to Michoacán hoping to see something of the autodefensas. What I mostly saw was the normal grinding poverty, the normal economic struggle, and the normal normal. In Uruapan, we did pass through a self-defense checkpoint, with two rows of rubber speed bumps laid across the road and a sandbag fort off to the right, with a tarp over it to keep off the sun. I was driving, so I could only glance. I could see that the men occupying the fort wore no uniforms, i.e. were not military, and I knew what that meant. I saw no AK-47’s, but those would have been held out of sight, so as not to provoke the police and military. My two companions—my love and my dear old friend—read the bed sheet banners hanging beside the fort and shouted, “Autodefensas!” That was what the banners were saying. But the clothing the men wore was too dark, the banner too much grafitti-like, I thought.

Since then, I have heard Dr. Mireles—the articulate and I think courageous spokesman for the self-defense groups— say Uruapan is yet to be liberated. I don’t know. There is a good chance the checkpoint was occupied by the Knights Templar or some other narco-criminal group.

None of which really interests me that much, now that I have seen Mujeres Aliadas—something positive and wonderful—something that serves as a metaphor for what Mexico can and does do in certain areas—behaving socially responsibly, meeting the people’s needs.

For more on the context in which the clinic exists and why it is so important in Mexico’s struggle for democracy, you can read two of my stories by writing their titles in the Search box in this blog’s front page. The two stories are “The Pátzcuaro Incision” and “Jorge and the Santa Muerte.” The Jorge of the latter story still stands at his place on the side of the road, not far from a church of Saint Death, up the road toward Pátzcuaro. He has grown up to be a quite handsome lad but is, like many parts of Mexico, still very much lost.

A Wealth of Photos of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

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https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=photo+Diego+and+Frida+union+of+artists+and+sculptors&client=firefox-a&hs=fwa&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9XZiU-D8F8KfyATk6ILADw&ved=0CDcQ7Ak&biw=993&bih=544#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=4Y5QkhhEhS4tdM%253A%3BAEKWjdDGiynMIM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%252F236x%252Fda%252F2f%252F4f%252Fda2f4f5e2791266cdf24359a733c6aa2.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.pinterest.com%252Fpalomalines%252Fhistorias-del-arte%252F%3B236%3B161

Swallowing Mexico’s Air Waves.

Posted on by sterlingbennett

A summary and expansion of an article that appeared in our local newspaper, by one of my favorite Mexican thinkers: Political Science Professor Denise Dresser—with a editorial dusting of changing and possibly gently mixed metaphors by me.

How do I put this? When the corporate world and its selected leader—President Peña Nieto of Mexico—talk about and push through a telecommunications reform, it means they’re not going to steal just one more pig, but rather all of them.

A few days ago, in Mexico City, protesters linked hands and created a human chain that reached from Los Pinos—the equivalent of the White House—all the way to the offices of Televisa, one the two communications monopolies in Mexico.

That corporate giant and TVAzteca are Mexico’s Charybdis and Scylla, out of Greek myth, the one a great whirlpool, the other a monster, each capable of swallowing up Mexico’s freedom of expression whole.

If you had watched the last presidential election, the PRI candidate Peña Nieto was everywhere and opposition candidate Lopez Obrador hardly seen at all; and when seen, always cleverly painted as a friend of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, i.e. as a populist crazy that would destroy our treasured Mexican democracy.

The so-called reform is part of a pattern of cementing corporate control, in partnership with the PRI, the party that held dictatorial control for 71 years and is now in power again, thanks to the absence of independent agencies that can regulate the two media giants. The latter speak seamlessly in favor of the oligarchy and show little interest in the public’s right to a meaningful public debate.

Neither Televisa nor TVAzteca, for example, bothered to cover the human chain between Los Pinos and Televisa’s offices.

As in the United States, the major news media ignore, for the most part, dissenting and independent political and social voices. And those who appear as experts and pundits have long since been suborned by the subsidies available to the media monsters and their political and financial allies. The interests of investors and the ruling political class eclipse those of the vulnerable and unrepresented: Indians, women, children, farmers, the under-employed, under-fed and public needs like meaningful education, security reform and state support for the Rule of Law.

In a disturbing development in the telecommunications reform, the President and the Secretary of the Interior will have the power to censor Internet communications, including email, Twitter, Facebook messaging and others.

In this trend, censorship poses as modernization; and dictatorial control, as democracy.

The PRI and the two media monopolies Televisa and TVAzteca—Charybdis and Scylla.

Postscript: In the meantime, Denise Dresser has received threats for the article this summary is based on.