Category: ~ Mexico’s Struggle for Democracy

The Cockroach Effect

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I can remember my most significant cockroach experiences. One was in Greece, on the Peloponnesus—in a bathroom. In desperation, we had knocked on the door of a fine stone house in a coastal town to ask for information about local lodging. An ancient, educated-looking woman opened the door. She said yes she herself rented rooms but none were available at the moment. I remember lingering, on the cultural theory that people often say no at first then change their minds when they begin to feel more confident about you. Finally, we went back down the stone steps that had led up to her door.

“Wait!” she said. “I will give you my room. Come back in a quarter of an hour, I can sleep on a couch.”

We were very tired, still we protested, looking up at her. But she insisted and, still apologizing, we returned about twenty minutes and brought in our bags.

She showed us the bathroom, to be reached by going outside, crossing a short open breezeway to a small separate room—which I visited soon enough. While seated inside, contemplating a Greek generosity that may have been older than Homer, I looked down at the floor and saw the largest cockroach I have every seen in my life, with ancestors, I have read since, from the tribe of βλάττη (bláttē), going back 295–354 million years.

I don’t remember whether this prehistorica hexapod was dead or alive. Many cultures now use a brew of disinfectant and insecticide to clean around toilets, and so it is very likely this particular descendant would have his or her genetic line cut short.

The second time was in Guanajuato, Mexico, in the same type of location—in all respects—a bug the length of my middle finger, which would be three and three-quarters inches. Since I tend to exaggerate size of fish and other things, let us cut that length in half, and still have a cucaracha that exceeds anything listed by Wiki-whatever. In my own defense, I should add that just the sight of one of these creatures physically increases its size, and so I shall revise upward to two inches, as my final figure. Maybe two and a half.

I believe this chestnut-colored blattoid was also fairly dead. Vital statistics are not critical in these matters. When you see one of these creepy-crawler forward scouts, the reaction is visceral and must have been hard-wired into our sensibilities when we first stood up on our hind legs to gain some perspective. Time and place are of little importance, a cockroach can appear anywhere, dead or alive, but when it does, we fear (or welcome) that the abnormal (indifference, cruelty and violence) can become the normal, and we suffer from what Jeffrey Alan Lockwood refers to as the “infested mind.”

People refer to the cockroach effect during the current crisis of governability in the Mexican state of Michoacán, where now citizen self-defense group carry forbidden AK47’s and AR-15’s, military grade assault rifles. These are citizens that are no longer willing to put up with the years of extortion, kidnapping, rape, disappearance and murder.

Police use cucaracha efecto to describe the relocation of criminals when the authorities put pressure on them—when the criminals slip away and take up their activities in other areas and out of sight of the pickup-mounted machineguns of the Federal Police and the truckloads of Army soldiers.

In a second way, the Mexican government uses the term to confuse the public by equating the self-defense groups with the armed drug cartels, thereby de-glorifying the former and continuing to ignore the latter. There is evidence that the self-defense idea is spreading. A large portion of the citizenry is willing to turn to vigilantism if the government, at all levels, is too weak, incompetent, indolent and corrupt to defend them from devastating criminal activity.

I would add a third meaning—the irruption of something abhorrent, predatory and relatively indestructible (cockroaches can live several days after having their heads cut off; instead of starving, they eat each other), that lacks all conscience or empathy—something like a man, worst of all an adolescent, with an AK47 assault rifle, a weapon capable of shooting through the walls of two houses and still kill you—with indifference.

I shall add a fourth meaning: Cockroaches don’t like to be seen, they come out at night, they live right under our noses but flee when we turn on a light. In fact, they can serve as a two-edged metaphor for 1) corruption, breath-taking graft—but also 2) at the same time, in Mexican folklore, for opposition to colonialism.

Think of colonialism as the extraction practiced by drug cartel rule (extortion, kidnapping, taking women and girls) and State rule (skimming the people’s resources, funneling profits toward the rich).

Think of the cucaracha as 2) citizen opposition to the political structures and attitudes that permit that extraction, that extortion, that skimming.

There is a difference, though, and that is that the self-defense cucarachas do not hide when you turn on the light.

Independence Movement or Just More Disorder?

Posted on by sterlingbennett

In which I try to make sense of what’s happening in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

~ Today I met with my writing partner, a kind, intelligent Mexican businessman and writer, who is concerned about the self-defense groups that have taken up arms in the state of Michoacán—one state away. They are called Autodefensas comunitarias—citizen defense groups.

“Where do you think the weapons are coming from?” I ask.

We’re talking about a lot of AK47’s—in civilian hands, presumably non-narco hands—people that have grown tired of losing their children to rape, kidnapping and murder.

“And who is paying for them?” he asks. And then we talk about it for at least an hour, trying to figure it out, excluding no one, not even the CIA or other external forces.

I mention that the narcos have had no trouble getting weapons—assault rifles, grenades, and even RPG’s—rocket propelled grenades. Weapons smugglers, I say, are probably indifferent to who is buying, as long as there are sales—all of which are supplied by some 1,200 U.S. gun shops and fairs along the U.S. border. The other part of the equation is the insatiable appetite for narcotics in the U.S.—which drives the whole mess.

~ From La Jornada, Jan. 27, 2014. Journalist Salvador Díaz Sánchez asks questions as well.

He thinks it’s about independence from the State, and not a civil war. The State considers either possibility as unacceptable—except, ironically, when it applies to the criminal networks and their long de-facto rule of Michoacán.

Dr. José Manuel Mireles Valverde is spokesperson for el Consejo General de Autodefensas y Comunitarios de Michoacán—the General Council of Community Defenders. They call him Papá Pitufo, and the authorities, or some other group, say he has a criminal record. (When I listened to an interview with him, I thought he made a lot of sense.)

For years, small businesses, taxi companies, grocery stores, furniture shops, restaurants, artisans, cattlemen, growers, miners, businessmen, for years they have been victims of robbery, extortion, kidnapping, rapes, killings, extortion, and land use fees (to use their’s own land). It therefore seems logical that the money to finance AK47’s and other assault rifles comes from these businessmen in this area—which is called the Tierra Caliente, the Hot Country, south and west of Morelia.

As if it were a military campaign, the movement of self-defense has been spreading across the state to Nueva Italia, La Huacana, Tomatlán, Carrillo Puerto, Aquila, Aguililla, Antúnez, Parácuaro, Tancítaro, Acahuato, Buenavista, La Ruana and Churumuco. This is the cucaracha efecto, the cockroach effect, that alarms the federal government.

The formation of auto defense groups is, to some extent, imitative of older groups, like those in Cherán, Nahuátzen Cherato, Cheratillo, Urapicho, Zicuicho, Oruscato, and Ocumitzo, where for years the authorities have done little to protect the citizens, in fact were often in collusion with the criminal forces also armed with assault weapons.

Now, the more recent citizen forces have decided to move on to Apatzingán, a center of commerce and important crossroads. This was the deciding moment for the federal government. To them it smelled of insurrection, and the present, incapacitated and ailing governor of Michoacán, referred to as La Momia—The Mummy—appealed to the president of Mexico for help.

And so the federal Army entered Atúnez and on the governor’s instructions ended up shooting down four citizens, one an eleven-year old boy, in a confrontation with people shouting they would not disarm—according to their leader Estanislao Beltrán—until all the leaders of organized crime were arrested, in this case the organization called Caballeros Templarios.

The self-defense groups actually started earlier in another part of Michoacán, in a town called Cherán, where villages took up arms to defend their forests from illegal, narco-connected loggers.

But in the present case, the newspapers quickly filled with speculation. What would happen if the base—those citizens with the weapons—began to ignore the instruction from their financial backers and began to say no to Mexico’s political parties and instead proposed  independence? As in earlier Cherán.

Others said the federal and state government, at all levels, would prefer dealing with the Caballeros Templarios, the reigning, in-place cartel, to a democratic group with middle class supporters, and that the government feared a metamorphosis from self-defense groups to community assemblies. And so, what was the government to do? As if the question of control had not come up all the time the Templarios held free reign.

At first, it appeared that the federal government supported the self-defense movement, having been lobbied by the middle class backers of these groups who wanted to protect their economic interests. But now there was the cockroach effect, and the cry went up that the self-defense groups must adhere strictly to the law, that no citizen might own an assault weapon—as if that was not what the Templarios had in spades for years and years.

In one of the poorest states in Mexico, Guerrero, another similar model has been in place for 18 years. There are no leaders, the structure is horizontal, sustainable development is the goal—including citizen protection, since the government has not care to do it.

To date, in Guerrero, there are twenty-four community police groups that belong to the Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias, CRAC, the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities. CRAC tries avoid any connection with the government(s). Other groups are closer to the government(s), like the the UPOEG, la Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero—the Union of Peoples and Organization of the State of Guerro—who have also formed to combat cartel and non-cartel robbery, kidnapping, killings and the highest incidence of poverty in Mexico.

The CRAC rejects names like “self-defense groups.” Their system embraces wider, community-based projects. Local “law” recognizes the legitimacy of their police. They call themselves institutions and decisions are made in community assemblies, not in meetings with the government(s). (This is what the government(s), federal and state, fear in Michoacán.)

The State (Michoacán/Mexico) tolerated, somewhat, the new self-defense groups, as long as they didn’t invade what the government perceives as its areas of power. Local, effective self-governance alarms the ineffective, uninterested, probably cartel-compromised state and federal government. The latter says it will not try to disarm the self-defense groups, as long as they stay in their “boxes,” in their municipalities and towns.

What appears to be true is that the Attorney General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam is concerned about the cucaracha effect, and little else. Journalists feel this man really has no ideas about how to bring law and justice to the region (to all of Mexico?)—since he and his political class appear to have tolerated cartel-controlled mayhem in Michoacán at a time when there was no such governmental insistence that the Templarios with AK47’s adhere to the rule of law and turn in their weapons or follow other restrictions.

Restrictions, it would seem, are reserved for the “good” citizens.

~ Summarized from the weekly Mexican magazine Proceso comes the following:

The first victim of a war is the truth. What we are left with is often confusion, speculation and disinformation.

What appears to be known is:

1. Michoacán is swamped with narcos from Morelia to Lázaro Cárdenas and from Zitácuaro to La Piedad—(a town about an hour from us.)

2. The federal government admits there are as many as 15,000 auto defense participants.

3. One is justified using the word “paramilitary” when referring to the self-defense groups.

4. Although self-defense groups are in at least 11 towns, they don’t necessarily control that area and they do not control their own funding or political alliances.

5. No one controls Michoacán. If anyone, it’s still the narcos that are in control.

6. There is a lot of money in the Tierra Caliente—narco and commercial. Self-defense leaders are middle class, with connections to the U.S. and financial backing there—possibly.

7. The armed citizens are locals, not outsiders.

8. This is an old problem brought about by the narcos and the indolence and stupidity of government at all levels.

9. Michoacán was always a social pressure cooker. One can assume that a lot of hotheads will join the self-defense movement. That is what the practical, if ineffective, federal government fears. (This same dynamic existed in the Mexican Revolution and the Christero War).

10. For the last ten years, locals have been giving the government intelligence on the identity and location of the narcos. But the government has not arrested them. Nor has government resolved 95% of the 990 murders committed in Michoacán in 2013. Not to mention those committed in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and before. Impunity fuels the conflict.

11. Citizens have pointed out and reported the involvement of government functionaries and their families with the cartels—with little results. Response to their complaints is essential to solving the problem.

12. With no action taken by the government, everything just goes on as before.

13. There is no indication that the special federally appointed commissioner, who is to solved everything—Alfredo Castillo, has either the knowledge or the capacity to resolve any of it. His job appears to be as spinner who is charged with lessening the damage done by the conflict to President Peña Nieto’s image—and it is important to view his pronouncements with skepticism.

14. The government at the state and federal level are in conflict. President of the Republic Enrique Peña Nieto and his Secretary of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong support the self-defense groups—or at least say they do. They want to make them into police. The ailing governor of the state opposes that.

What is not clear:

1. Whether the self-defense numbers will reach 45,000 members as predicted by the bishop of the cathedral in Apatzingán, Gregorio López.

2. No one knows what roll former governors Lázaro Cárdenas Batel and Leonel Godoy and their people had in empowering the narcos in the state of Michoacán. There is, for example, still no resolution of the grenade attack on the night of the Grito—the Cry of Independence—in 2008, in the historical center of Morelia.

3. A huge amount of debt was taken on in Leonel Godoy’s state governorship. It is naive to think that the narco economy was not involved in the disappearance of that enormous sum of money.

4. Unclear is the involvement of the neighboring cartel called the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG)—Jalisco New Generation—which is allied with the Cártel de Sinaloa and is at war with Los Templarios. It’s important to mention that the CJNG in Guerrero allied itself there with local auto defense groups that were fighting Los Templarios. One can assume the CJNG is not just standing by doing nothing, i.e. El Chapo Guzmán is probably involved, except one doesn’t know how, nor to what extent he holds the puppet strings. (One has to suspect that the narcos—highly skilled—are involved with any group.)

5. One of the most opaque aspects is the origin of the weapons. The self-defense people say they are hunting guns, supplied by concerned U.S. Mexicans, or taken from enemy casualties, of which there have been no more than 100. The 10,000 assault rifles estimated to be in the hands of the auto-defense groups must have cost something like 50,000,000 pesos—roughly four million dollars.

6. The big mysteries: a) The connection with Michoacán businessmen exiled to the U.S. (driven out by narcos or fear of them) that are presumably paying for the weapons, and B) the type of relationship they have with Peña Nieto’s administration.
Every government wants a group that can do its dirty work for them and in order to avoid direct responsibility while they inflict a mortal wound on the narcos.

7. It’s not clear who Dr. José Manuel Mireles is, the spokesman of the auto-defense groups. He seems to have a criminal record, although that may be nothing more than disinformation.

8. The ex-governor of the state Jesús Reyna has not explained why he attended a funeral of the father of a former chief of La Familia Michoacana.

~ Recent Developments, from the newspaper La Jornada, 28. January 2014: by Arturo Cano, summarized:

The government(s) suddenly jumps to life and holds a meeting in Tepalcatepec, where a few self-defense leaders signed an accord with the federal government (without consensus of the base), whereby the self-defense groups are to be converted into “defense rurales,” echoing the name given to the National Rural Police under Juárez and Porfirio Díaz.

The community defense groups are to be directed by the Mexican Army and are to register themselves and their weapons. They are to be temporary. In return, they get communication equipment from the Army. (Which seems like a bargain with the Devil. Did the Army ever make the same demands of the narcos with all their weapons?)

While various government officials speak official-speak, members of the audience shout out comments:

“You’ve come to sign an agreement? For what, if there are no doctors, no medicine, no education. Cowards! White-collared criminals! Investigate the murders of our young people!”

A woman bureaucrat speaks for the government.

“You have to trust in the government again,” she counsels.

The audience boos, and shouts “Get out!”

She perseveres, with her “Colgate smile.” She says if the Government doesn’t follow through, she will join the self-defense groups.

A man shouts, “We’re where we are right now because of people like this woman!”

One of the leaders, Martín Barragán, takes the floor and says, “We should give the Government a vote of confidence.” Having dispensed with this courtesy, he continues, “They (the government) proposed a treaty that we don’t advance until we have registered and become legal. We don’t want to just clean up the townships where we are already. We want to clean up the whole state of Michoacán.”

The state and federal authorities don’t move a muscle. This is precisely what they don’t want to hear.

He continues, “Don’t give us any more fictitious reports of narcos shot down.” He is referring to Nazario Moreno, whom Felipe Calderón, the former President of the Republic, said they had killed and who later has turned up alive.

More government-speak continues. The president’s special commissioner charged with bringing the rule of law—that was missing for a very long time before—says the self-defense groups can show even more courage by doing the brave thing by registering themselves and their weapons with the Army. (Again, a bargain with the Devil, who himself is known to be compromised by narco connections.)

He talks about their common purpose and how together they should repair the “social fabric” and Mexico’s “institutions.”

Another auto-defense leader says the government should recompense the families of slain auto defense fighters.

Another leader reproaches the government because the narco leaders go their merry way through the countryside and townships. The crowd shouts in agreement and call out, “We want heads!”

The Commissioner of the Federal Police takes a moment to announce the—miraculous and coincidental—capture of a narco leader (who shall remain unnamed) and the apprehension of 182 others.

This important narco leader had already been declared dead once before.

“Where is the El Muerto—the Dead Man?” someone cries out, as if that were his nickname.

Only the special commissioner and a general quartered in Apatzingán have escaped booing. But an old man gets up and slowly explains, “They delivered some sicarios—killers—to this general and the next day he let them go.”

Finally, another leader explains, “Sooner or later we’ll take the whole state.”

~ In Conclusion, I have to say that if the self-defense groups are anything like my barrio, there will be all kinds of internal conflicts, irrational behavior and potential violence—while the rest of us stand by and try to decide which way to jump.

An Invitation to Meet My Cats

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Serkalem Fasil
℅ The Individuals at Risk Program
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20003
U.S.A.

Dear Eskinder Nega, via your wife Serkalem Fasil,

I hope this letter finds you reasonably well, given that you have been imprisoned by your government. What has happened to you could happen to any citizen in the world, if individual protections of free speech are not written into the law and enforced by strong and just courts, and supported by humane governments. It is too bad that governments do not realize that they are stronger—not weaker—when they protect these basic rights of free speech for all citizens.

I am an American who has been dwelling in Mexico for some years, where I live and write (sometimes paint, as well) with my partner Dianne. If it would reach you, I would send you a copy of my novel Playing for Pancho Villa, which people say is a good yarn, albeit both sweet and sad—a love story set in 1916 revolutionary Mexico.

It is hard for me to imagine how your government, or any government, can justify putting you in prison—for voicing your opinions about it.

I hope that you are released soon, along with any of your countrymen who have also been imprisoned for voicing dissent. And that you can get up in the morning, have your coffee, talk to your cat, and hold your wife’s hand and watch the sun come up together—with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I hope I get to meet you when you leave prison. Maybe you will come to Mexico and give a talk in my small colonial city Guanajuato, and have some Mexican food with us, at our house, with your wife, and talk to my two cats—who I am sure would be very interested to meet a writer from Ethiopia. As I would.

Best Wishes,

Sterling Bennett

Sniffing Out a Possible Third Novel

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If you write two historical novels—spaced sixteen years apart, then you have to write a third one, so you’ll have a trilogy. Which I suppose is something like a triptych – a painting with three panels, an idea—in writing at least—originating with the Greeks themselves.

Because of the spacing between the first two novels—1900 and 1916 in the history of Mexico, and following the rules of compulsion, mixed with a little obsession, the third novel should be either sixteen years earlier, 1884, or sixteen years later, 1936.

Right away I see trouble with 1936. It is too close to my birth date of 1937. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that historic date, even though I was born in Morristown, New Jersey and not in Erongaricuaro, Michoacán. A better date would be 1884, when Porfirio Díaz was beginning the second part of his thirty-year reign, though he had really never given up power during the interregnum when others seemed to take over, Juan Méndez and Manuel González. In all, the old devil served seven terms as president of Mexico. Surely, that must provide a good deal more material.

But what about elements of Novel One and Novel Two? Why not the grandson of One coming together with the daughter of Two? Of course, some mathematics would be involved to get them together in a plausible time and place. The there would have to be a plot that was somehow related to the two earlier plots—suppression of the Yaquis in the first, and a glimpse of the Mexican Revolution in the second. Perhaps—looking forward again—something to do with Lázaro Cárdenas’s land distribution or his nationalization of foreign oil companies, specifically of American and British-Dutch oil companies.

We know this happened, but we don’t know why those countries didn’t react by invading Mexico in order to set this right, since there is a long precedent for this kind of behavior. This is the first of the questions that come up. And so we begin to speculate, so that we will know what we don’t know. The answer lies in this direction. Porfirio Díaz had seen to it that the Americans and British had built a system of railroads. From then until 1936, Mexico had imported a lot of weapons and studied enough warfare in order to know how to leave one million of their own dead in the Revolution. Perhaps there was a certain parity in weaponry at that time. The losses to the U.S. and Britain would have been considerable. Not to mention again to Mexico.

Plus, the Depression was still making itself felt in the U.S., and Germany and Japan were rearming. The U.S. and Britain had to do the same. Perhaps they made a deal with Cárdenas, that Mexico would keep selling the oil and agree to pay for the expropriations. Until that agreement was reached, there must have been some skullduggery. And since I like skullduggery—at a distance, it seems as if this period could be a fruitful time for the Third Novel.

I have arrived at this point without doing any research. Guided only by the Mexican saying: Te conozco, Mosco, por tu zumbidito – I know you, Fly, by the way you buzz. Which is as much to say, I know enough about Mexican-American history to be able to predict certain patterns. Up to this point, I have been sniffing only.

I have read a little since.

There was a strong Mexican Petroleum Workers Union—the formation of which the outsiders had tried to block, sometimes by illegal tactics (hopefully a source of skullduggery); the foreign petroleum companies were making much higher profits Mexico than in the U.S; a strike ensued with popular support; the Mexican Supreme Court sided with the strikers, as did the president of Mexico; the Court ordered the foreign companies to pay 26,000,000 pesos in back wages; the companies resisted; a boycott of Mexican goods and products ensued; the U.S. press vilified Mexico; in the U.S. State Department, a war was underway between friends of Mexico and potential enemies of Mexico—the latter fearing a Bolshevik-communist adversary, or a Fascist one at their border; in order to survive the boycott and embargo, Mexico had to trade oil for money and machinery with European fascist countries; a political faction inside Mexico, in disagreement with Cárdenas’s nationalizing, threatened internal revolt; Josephus Daniels, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico liked president Cárdenas, and vice versa; Roosevelt listened to Daniels and saw a kindred soul Cárdenas; and so there was no invasion of Mexico; Cárdenas went to the conservative Catholic bishops of Mexico and asked for help in raising the cash to pay compensation for the nationalized oil companies; the bishops ordered the word spread throughout Mexico by dint of his priests’ sermons; thousands of women responded by assembling in front of the Palacio de Belles Artes, Mexico City, on April 12, 1938 with donations—from chickens to jewelry—to pay off the foreign debt; on June 7, 1938 President Cárdenas issued the decree that created Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), “with exclusive rights over exploration, extraction, refining and commercialization of oil in Mexico.”

Is there material enough in this saga of Mexicanization? I think so. But I have more research to do, I think, in order to find a yarn to spin.

Cause and Effect

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I can lie in my bed at 6 am and hear the traffic cop that stands in front of the Compañia blowing his whistle. In my city this is a special art. It is not the usual kind of where the cop lets first one flow of traffic go ahead, then the other. No, in my little colonial city, it’s as if the cars don’t run on fuel, and the only reason they move at all is because the traffic policeman is blowing his whistle. He never raises his hand to signal “Stop!” or “Now it’s your turn!” He simply blows his whistle, as if it were he alone—with his whistle—that made it all happen. He is the perfect example of cause and effect. It is even possible he has read Aristotle. How else would he know to use his whistle in this way? He has clearly chosen one of the philosopher’s four elements. Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

His choice was Air, which rises from where it is—to where it is going. And, in the process, because the idea is so strong, the traffic is also carried along, from where it is, to where it is going.

Of course, there could be another explanation. That would have to do with the concept of Authority, which is strong in Mexico. Which is also mixed with strong Belief. My cop commands with his whistle. The traffic, all together, obeys and keeps on moving. None of it has anything to do with maximizing traffic flow. It has everything to do with Authority. The cars would not know to move forward without his hectoring whistle. They are not whistled forward, rather they are commanded forward.

Of course, there is another possibility, and it deserves to be mentioned along with the others. It is the doctrine of Hope, which is strong in Mexico. It exists in a context of belief that thing will not get better. Hence, the usefulness of Hope—the brave persistence in thinking things will change for the better, even though you know they won’t.

I do not understand this pessimism, but there it is. As a result, Mexicans have developed a manner of cooperation that, in my limited experience, is rare in other countries. And that is the concept of uno a uno—one car from this flow of traffic, then one car from the other. I find that Mexicans take great pains to observe uno a uno—except when they don’t want to. In which case it is best to let the other car go first. But generally it works. (My Mexican friend apoplectically disputes my last short sentence.)

And so, I can lie in my bed and enjoy what I know is the perfect arrangement. The whistle blows, moving the cars forward—even though it is uno a uno, in spite of all the Air moving from where it is—in the traffic cop’s lungs—to where it is going—a few centimeters beyond the whistle’s whistle opening. Resignation, Hope, Authority and Cooperation all function at the same time. Keeping the world moving even as I lie snug in my bed, safe for the time being from almost all cause and effect. Unless, of course, my cat Lilus, a local Authority, arrives and has decided that I should meet my Duty and stroke her ears for the effect she demands.

The Killing

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With great frequency, climbing the two hundred and three stairs to our house in Guanajuato, I see young A. sitting with his friend on the stairs just outside his very modest house—crude stone walls with dirt for mortar, metal laminate roof. A. is young and shy. Over the years, I have engaged him by asking him questions about mathematics. It started out as two and two, then two and two and two; then, more complicated additions. We used to call him The Accountant, and he seemed to like that. He’s a bright kid. Maybe six or seven now.

His sister I. used to sit a little higher on the stairs with her next door neighbor M. At first, they just tittered when we spoke to them. I used to say, “I’m hearing what you’re saying,” because their heads were always very close together, as they chatted, and their eyes gleamed with pre-teen secrecy. Of course, I couldn’t hear; they knew that; but just being addressed sent them into a pre-teen tizzy. Especially by an old guy who was a gringo at that. Then, abruptly, I. had a boyfriend and M. sat alone on the steps, looking abandoned. The boy was older. I. needed the attention. She had probably just turned thirteen. Many girls are pregnant at that age, giving in to the pressure of an older boy. Now I notice she is no longer around. I don’t know what has become of her.

The Accountant and I. are brother and sister, I think. I am not sure. Their father’s name I never quite learned. When I went off in the morning to write at the Café Antik, I used to see him returning from the mine—I’ve never learned which one. He was on the night shift. And then he had his accident. Something fell on his head, and chances are it was part of the mine. He seemed different afterward. He drank more, he made less sense when he talked and he began asking for handouts. He was out of work a lot, I am told because he went on binges, and perhaps because the mine wanted sober miners who were not a danger to other miners in the sense of not being able to carry out basic responsibilities.

He began hanging out with the Usual Suspects, in the privada—side alley—just down the steps from us. We are currently traveling, and so I do not know exactly what happened, except that two days ago—according to the police—he was attacked in broad daylight (noon) by someone coming out of the privada. The person came up behind him and I suppose struck him—possibly on the spot where the mine had struck him earlier.

And now he is dead.

I have not used the word murdered. If someone killed him, I am fairly sure it was not premeditated. In one previous incident, which I have already written about—the incident of the brick fight, one of my first posts on the neighborhood—I was standing six feet from a neighbor when Q. walked up to him—minutes after the brick fight—and struck him on the head four times with a light metal pipe. In another incident, much later, I saw T. come up behind his drunk father, who had climbed up from the privada to rail against a public neighborhood organizing meeting. T. stood behind his father holding a good-sized rock, poised, it seemed, to bash him on the head, if there was no other way to control him. A very curious behavior for an otherwise obedient son. So in our barrio, bashing someone on the head is not an unusual recourse for punctuating disputes.

The Police—through their own connections—have a recording of the attack, from the surveillance cameras. There is not much more I can say at this distance, or want to say. Whoever attacked the victim must have been high on the usual substances: paint thinner, MagicMarker, airplane glue, etc. The effect of those chemicals is that you are aggressive and have very poor judgment—such as carrying out the act right in front of the cameras.

The neighbors are lying low, because now we enter the period when the privada realizes they’re in trouble again—with the police—and they are sending out their aunts, mothers and wives to find out who knows what. Of course, no one is saying very much—including, at this point, myself.

Greeting Josefina and Remembering Mateo

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I stopped by the church steps today and greeted Josefina, who sat in her usual place on the bottom step. She replied, “Mande?”—”Yes?” with like a school child afraid she has is being called to account for some mistake. “How are you?” I asked. “Fine,” she said.

I can see a kind of generalized confusion in her face when she addresses me. I hate the term mental illness. But I don’t think she’s all there. Then, of course, who of us is “all there”? She does what she does. I have no idea where she goes when she’s not at the steps.

There was another “beggar” that wandered up and down the side of the canyon that is Guanajuato. His name was Mateo. Most of his front teeth were missing, but his smile was always very much in tact. I usually could not understand what he was saying when I dropped 10 pesos onto his very dirty palm. I am embarrassed to say that. It’s like talking about an animal, but I also think twice before petting a dog that clearly has all kinds of problems.

Mateo suffered from some kind of mental problem, too. And I would think, from loneliness, as well. I know people were maintaining him. Once in a while he would appear washed and in warm new clothes. I think that is very typical of Mexico, and probably of most places in the world. People feed and clothe people like Josefina and Mateo.

There seems otherwise to be no solution for “saving” them. In Mexico, to the best of my knowledge, there are no agencies that sweep them up, wash them, feed them psychiatric drugs, dress them and give them a new life. I have no idea whether their families still exist or whether their families, still there, have given up on them. Recently, I have concluded that Mateo may be dead. He no longer shows up. On walks around the ring road on the side of the canyon, I look down into various vacant, overgrown pieces of land that have not been build on—looking for Mateo, or for what may be left of him. An old coat, a pair of worn shoes—still connected to Mateo.

Looking for San Marcos

Posted on by sterlingbennett

IMG_0491IMG_0481With some trepidation, I left the main highway at Magdalena, part way between Tepic and Guadalajara—in search of the railhead that a hundred years ago was the site of Mexico’s own little Auschwitz.

I tend to think of Mexican cuotas—toll roads—as an additional layer of security for a driver. But I drove south over narrow country roads in bad repair and away from the cuota. Everything said agriculture, and nothing said narco. By that I mean that everything I saw had to do with farming, work, and time moving in sync with the growing seasons. No big pickups that had shiny chrome bumpers and were over-all too clean. No big guys with bellies, dressed casually and wearing gold necklaces. I had my map book Guía Roji, and I had gas. I had money, and I had a cell phone. And I had a goal.

I was looking for San Marcos and a certain building just before it. I had no idea whether I would actually be able to approach the building, or whether it would even still be there. I had looked down on it from Google Earth, but I had no idea how old the satellite photo was. I could tell it was the building, because I could still see traces of the railroad that had run past it. I had also seen the great eucalyptus grove that stood beside it and is said to have grown over mass graves of Yaqui Indians (and others: Mayos, political dissidents) who 1906-1910 were captured—as many as 15,000 of them—in the state of Sonora, brought by train (boxcars) from Hermosillo to Guaymas, put on ships, disembarked in San Blas, then force-marched with little food and water roughly 300 kilometers for 15 to 20 days over the mountains from San Blas at the coast to San Marcos, the closest rail head at that time, 80 kilometers west of Guadalajara.

Many of the prisoners were women and children. Men of fighting age were either still in the mountains east of Guaymas, the Bacatete, killed in battle, or executed as enemies of the state. For hundreds of years they had been defending their rich tribal lands and water against first the Spanish, then against Mexican hacendados with enormous, ever-increasing land holdings—while American money owned the mines, built the railroad right into the Yaqui lands, and needed cheap labor in the henequen fields of the Yucatan—where many of the Yaquis were sent to work and perish quickly as forced labor.

Already in the 1870s, henequen growers in the Yucatan were in debt to North American rope manufacturers who needed the henequen fiber called sisal and whose backers (Hearst, Guggenheim Rockefeller, I have read) provided the finances to keep the farms operating. (http://www.saudicaves.com/mx/yaquis/). The cheap labor that they got included Mayans from the Yucatan, Korean indentured workers, Chinese, Mexican political dissidents, Yaqui deportees, and many other groups. By the 1870s, Mexico was supplying 90% of the world’s sisal, mainly for rope and burlap—the time of capitalism and empire, when the dominant nations had to have massive hawsers for their merchant- and warship fleets.

Everyone got a cut from the sale of Yaquis—the Governor of the State, the “labor agents,” anyone with immediate control over the prisoners. I have read conflicting figures: 2.50 pesos at San Marcos, per head; or, 25 centavos, per head. Families were split up and sold (women and girls sold separately) in different directions at San Marcos.

There is a long history of Indian children being given to white families around Hermosillo and Guaymas (before deporting their parents) so that they could grow up to be “civilized,” as opposed to “barbarian,” terms used freely in the times.

There are few if any records. There is some recorded oral history: I highly recommend Raquel Padilla Ramos’s “Los partes fragmentados narrativos de la guerra y la deportación Yaquis” and John Kenneth Turner’s book “Barbarous Mexico” (1910), which exposed the genocide against the Yaquis. You can download it from Amazon.

I could see the eucalyptus grove first. It towered over the rest of landscape. Then I saw the building. I wondered about access. I passed up the first left, barely a track. Then I saw a well-used second left, a dirt road leading into the north end of the station. I was able to drive right up to the station on my left and the grove on my right.

As soon as I stepped out of my car, a small black dog began to hector me, begging to be fed and cared for—a more contemporary example of abandonment. I entered the building, with the dog on my heels. It was exactly the way I had seen it in photos: dirt floor, fairly intact corrugated roof and, everywhere, graffiti. There was no plaque, no sign, no reference anywhere to state or local protection, nothing of the history of the place. I wondered why it was still standing, still there. A hundred years had passed. Who owned the land, the building, and the grove? Why wasn’t the old station either torn down or used for something else?

I walked into a few side rooms. Living in a country with so many buildings still carrying signs of history, I looked for clues. On the outside wall, where the trains would have stood, there are bullet holes in the wall. I found about fifty of them, some very low, meaning that the shots had been directed at people sitting or lying. At Buchenwald, out side of Weimar, there are bullet holes in the floor of a fairly small room with a drain in the middle. A sign said that Russian prisoners of war were executed in that room. They had been sitting or lying when they were shot. Two hundred feet to the west, there was a ruin of a few standing walls. The back wall had a great many bullet holes in it at various heights. That place seemed as if it was a more intentional execution site. For a while I had thought the impact patterns were also evidence of automatic fire that pointed to a later time; but now I am not so sure.

Some of the train rails are still embedded in concrete near the station. There is a ramp up to the train level. The roof overhangs the platform on both sides of the station. There had been another two people taking dirt from a pile near the grove. They departed. That left me and the little black dog, that continued to whimper—placing me in the curious and ironic dilemma of offering my empathy to those who had suffered in this place a hundred years ago, while denying it to a creature who needed immediate help and might or might not ever receive it.

Why did I seek this place out, and why am I writing about it now? Because I think it is important not to forget what we are capable of—murdering each other, enslaving each other for whatever purpose. That is why the Germans and Poles have preserved the concentration camps in those countries.

Somebody appears to be protecting the San Marcos site, but also not wanting to advertise that fact—perhaps because the State or the Republic will not permit it. It is some kind of informal arrangement—and a mystery I cannot explain. I am not sure what percentage of its visitors have any idea what happened there. They come as picnickers or graffiti artists. But I suspect that some of them are also the descendants of the people who perished there or farther down the line—and I suspect some of them are Yaquis.

M. Evades a Future

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Awake at 2 AM, listening to whoops in the callejones, the alleys that cross in front of our house. Someone had taken one of the usual inhalants and was acting out in the usual way, roaring at the neighbors, as if they were responsible for all his pains. I watched on the camera monitor for a while. Unfortunately, by mistake, we had hit the wrong buttons somewhere along the line, and the picture keeps changing from camera 1 to camera 2 to 3 to 4, so you can’t studying the situation or track someone’s movement. Delinquent behavior was occurring, but I could only catch snatches of it.

Only that morning, I had reprimanded young M, whom no one washes, for not being at the art workshop being offered at S’s tienda–store–two blocks up the stairs. I yelled up at his sister, whose head I could see above the half-wall on their roof.

“Where’s M?” I called up. “He not at the workshop.”

She looked down with a kind of shrug-of-the-shoulders expression.

“Where’s M?” I asked again, not letting myself be put off.

M appeared at an open window one story lower. His face was as blank as his sister’s.

“Why aren’t you at the workshop?” I ask. His eyes shifted around, as he looked for an answer. Everything about his face told me that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t going.

“It’s just that I have to hold tools for someone,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” I replied. “A lot of people have worked really hard to set this up for you. Why aren’t you going?”

He disappeared, then appeared around the corner, on my level, in the callejón.

M is a practiced con-artist, best at trying to get money out of you with the most outlandish stories of why he has to have it. D has told him there will be no more money until she has talked with his teacher and his parent figures (the father is not interested in him) present a financial report of money-in and money-out. They seem to have a record of complicity in M’s stories and reasons. The children come saying there is no food to eat. It is hard to say no. We have given food, but we no longer give money.

He was beginning up the steps with me. He looked back, as if he was worried about pressure coming from somewhere else: his mother. I suspected she had told him he didn’t have to go.

“You have a commitment,” I told him, as we climbed toward S’s tienda and the workshop. I used the word commitment because M always seems to be sliding in the other direction—no commitment toward anyone including himself and any kind of future.

“You know, I’m disappointed in you, M. A lot of people are coming together to offer you something worthwhile—the history of Mexican art—and you can’t be bothered to get your ass off your chair and up the hill.”

He brought up his duty to hand someone tools. I told him he didn’t have that duty. He had a duty to attend what M and others had worked hard to organize.

“Do you want to become a pandillero–a thug?” I asked him. I knew there was a constant suck on him in that direction.

He looked at me, shocked that I could think such a thing. I thought of my own father’s gruff guidance as I marched M toward something worthwhile. Are you going to do the right thing, or not?

We entered S’s tienda. S was at the front, selling tacos with fresh goat meat. I had met the animal earlier. Various parts of him had been stewing since the night before. M was delaying. He said he had to throw his plastic cup away. I took it out of his hand. I would throw it a way. S was watching me. I rolled my eyes. S gave a little nod. He knew the story. M had to buy a candy bar. A, S’s wife, sold it to him. He opened it and casually took a bite. In that moment, he was a tough guy that had important things to do in his life—besides attending workshops.

I mounted the stairs behind him. I got him a chair and planted him across from A, the young volunteer teacher—a theater major from the university, coming from the young citizen’s group called 473, which is our area code in Mexico. I drew up a chair and sat behind M—like a sprawled goatherd dog keeping tabs on one of his goats—a goat boy that possibly still had a future if he felt that anybody at all gave a damn about him.

Between 1 and 2 AM, the local losers—D disapproves of dehumanizing terms—had a rock fight with another gang a few houses down from us, broke the streetlight in front of our house, smashed open the steel door to the vacant lot and knocked out one of the adjoining metal panels, and terrified the neighborhood with their bellowing. Various young women fluttered around one of them (I caught glimpses of this on the always changing cameras), trying to return him to the privada–the side alley–before the police arrived in their knee guards, plastic shields, and metal clubs. Apparently, each neighbor thought the other would call the police—and no one did. The police did not arrive, and the boys-without-futures had one more spell of violence and chaos.

The Police Throw Rocks

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I heard rocks crashing against the house at three a.m. I went to the front door to listen. Rocks were landing on the alley in front of us, some against the little tienda—store—twelve paces away. Even though there had been a half dozen events like this, I had never heard anything with such intensity. I checked the monitor. Somehow, I had screwed up the program so the images of the four cameras that were still left shifted too quickly to study the situation. I did see, however, that the rock throwers at our upper end of the alley were police.

In shorts and T-shirt, I climbed our iron spiral staircase to the azotea—the roof—so I could look down on the battle.

It took a moment to understand. With lethal force, the rocks, some the width of my hand and a few inches thick—cheap flat floor tiles, actually—were slamming against the tienda, the sidewalk, and the walls of our house. Some of the gangbangers occupied the unfinished building across the alley, across from our house, and threw at the police from thirty feet away. And so, in a sense, it was sort of a house-to-house combat, as well.

I had never seen the police return fire—that is, throwing rocks back at the rock throwers. In this moment, they were no different from the Chief Suspects, except that they threw with even more fury—so taken with the battle that they never looked up at me standing above them. The police—ten of them—had the advantage in that they threw from the upper end of the alley, with the aid of gravity.

My response was inner head shaking. What in god’s name was the point of all this? The stupid gang bangers, high on paint thinner or glue; the police high on permission to at last be able to fire back. Still, though it was very dangerous for both sides, at least the Mexican police are not allowed to use their side arms. In the States, I believe, police would have been discharging weapons of really lethal force.

There are multiple reports of U.S. Border Patrol firing across the border at juvenile rock throwers and killing some of them. There, international law and the border itself (a river) prevent hot pursuit—except for bullets, also fired in anger, or at least intolerance of rock throwing.

Here law prevents police from entering a rock thrower’s house or using bullets—except, apparently, for rocks.

While the battle raged, I could hear the most violent of the gangbangers growling from down the alley. I recognized this sound because he’s used it with us instead of speech to express his displeasure at being greeted with a “Buenos Días” at close quarters.

During the Mexican Revolution, there were often women present as soldaderas—fighters—or as wives and lovers, carrying and cooking food for their men, or carrying bedding and doing wash. During a contemporary Mexican rock fight, there are often mothers or aunts just behind the battlefield, ready to intervene if the police can actually catch one of the rock throwers.

We have actually witnessed this happening to Growler, also referred to as Q in these reports. The police grabbed him perhaps an hour after a rock throwing incident when he thought it was okay to stumble home. They forced him down onto the pavement in the little crossroads in front of our house. He went limp. His mother wormed her way in and knelt over him as if the police had murdered him.

I suppose the relationship between a Mexican boy or man and his mother is sacred in some way. The police stand back confused. Law enforcement is suspended. I suspect, in the States, she would have received a warning and then arrested for interfering in an arrest. Soon they walked away. It is true Q would have to have been caught en flagrante with a weapon or drugs, in order to be retained. If it had been in the heat of battle (rocks), they probably would have beat him up and taken him away.

At 4:45 a.m. I woke again. The gangbangers were crowing and whooping their victory cries, in defiance of all us sleeping citizens who do not sniff paint thinner and throw rocks at the police. I watched them (through the cameras) going down the alley past our garden wall. And I muttered to my mate, “Where in god’s name are they going now at 4:45 in the morning?” Looking for a fight, cars to burgle, or to mug an unwary tourist or student returning home too late? Or to party with more paint thinner, glue, or mota—marijuana.

For me, it’s growing old, and I find myself thinking these lads and their mothers—and their behavior—are stupid and irrelevant. More and more, we know, the rest of the neighborhood feels the same way. A larger mural project is going to start in the neighborhood (with our involvement), and I believe that will have a far greater social impact than anything the gang bangers and the police can throw at each other.

The next morning, I saw three police standing outside our door. Three simply meant there wasn’t going to be a battle. Plus, the brave gang bangers sleep way past noon in the protection of their mother’s homes. The difference was these three policemen carried, for the first time, long metal night sticks with perpendicular side handle. A sign, I think, of another police escalation. They walked down to the offenders’ side alley, looked in for a while, then continued down the alley toward the Old Center. Before they turned away, they waved back up at me.