Mexico’s Unwanted Poor

Posted on by Laughingnomad

One migrant advocate that has recently been deported from the U.S. has said that “Mexico could not economically or socially absorb an estimated six million Mexicans who face deportation from the US.” She is probably right. More than a million undocumented Mexicans will be deported from the US this year, according to the Institute for Mexicans in the Exterior (IME). There are 5 million children living in the US with at least one undocumented parent, and more than 500,000 will be separated from their parents this year, the result of roundups at worksites and deportations, according to the National Council of the Raza.

Oaxaca, one of the two poorest states in Mexico, sends a huge percentage of it’s people North to work. Villages in the mountains I visited last year were virtually emptied of it’s men…and many women. There are no jobs. Education sucks. Children who only speak their native dialect are taught by inexperienced Spanish-speaking teachers in “schools” with dirt floors and no equipment or materials. I could go on and on. Wages from 4-5 months work in the U.S. can support an entire pueblo for a year. NAFTA has helped only a few northern towns and has penalized others. The price of corn, the staple food of Oaxaca, has skyrocketed.

However, absorbing illegal immigrants in the U.S. isn’t going well either…either for the U.S. or for the migrants. While living in Oaxaca last year I and other expats found ourselves on more than one occasion trying to talk Oaxacans out of migrating illegally. 400 migrants have died already this year trying to cross the border, according to Coalition in Defense of Migrants, and the total is likely to exceed 500 for the year due to increased border security. Working with migrants in the U.S. for 20 years has shown me the problems that result when Mexicans, cut off from their families, their language and culture, try to live an illegal life in the shadows. It’s not pretty. I could go on and on about that too.

Pressure is building on both sides of the issue. American views of both sides of this issue has been amplified in the media. This article describes the prevalent current view in Mexico:

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Visit From Son Doug

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son Doug arrived in Salem from Thailand on Friday November 9th and hit the ground running…cleaning up the farm for the sale and tying up his loose ends in the area before he goes back to his wife on Koh Samui…all with the help of his personal assistant, of course…me! So I’ve been off the radar for awhile. I can tell. I am getting email from friends again asking me where I am now! Nice to have supporters trying to keep track of me!

For his part, Doug says he is mourning the sale of the farm. After all, his childhood was spent there…helping grampa feed the cows and eating grandmas fried chicken, fry bread and apple pies.

I’m getting a break this weekend. Doug flew down to Las Vegas yesterday to have brother time with Greg. We left Salem at 4:30pm and after nearly three hours in bumper to bumper traffic finally arrived at the airport at 7:25 for a 7:30 flight. Upside of flight delays. He surprisingly made it on the plane in time. But the packed freeways in the valley were a big surprise for me after being out of the country for the better part of the last six years!

On The Other Hand: Altruism?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Salon.com again by Gordy Slack: “New proof of “mirror neurons” explains why we experience the grief and joy of others, and maybe why humans are altruistic.

Nov. 5, 2007 | A young woman sat on the subway and sobbed. Her mascara-stained cheeks were wet and blotchy. Her eyes were red. Her shoulders shook. She was hopeless, completely forlorn. When I got off the train, I stood on the platform, paralyzed by emotions. Hers. I’d taken them with me. I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks. But I had no death in the family. No breakup. No terminal diagnosis. And I didn’t even know her or why she cried. But the emotional pain, her pain, now my pain, was as real as day.

Recent research in neurobiology would explain my response as the automatic reaction of a kind of brain cells known as mirror neurons. On Nov. 4, neuroscientists announced that mirror neurons had for the first time been directly identified in humans. Previously their existence had only been inferred from primate research and the observation of human brains through fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging).

Enthusiasm among scientists has been spreading as growing evidence suggests that “mirrors” may explain the roots of human empathy and altruism as well as provide insight into such disorders as autism and even schizophrenia. But that’s not all. In the past few years, dozens of studies have linked mirror neurons to the emergence of language, abstract reasoning and even self-awareness or consciousness. “The self and the other are just two sides of the same coin. To understand myself, I must recognize myself in other people,” says Marco Iacoboni. [Maybe this is why gossip is so fascinating for us!]
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Alastair Says It For Us

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A 25 year old Brit, Alastair Humphreys, spent more than four years bicycling through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia. This is what he says he learned:

“That the world is a good place filled with nice, normal people. It’s not all filled with the terrible events we see on the news. I learned to trust more. I saw my strengths and weaknesses highlighted in the good and bad times: loneliness, self-pity, determination, an openness to get on and communicate with whatever kind of person I’m with, a stubbornness not to quit, a fear of failure. I came to really appreciate my friends, family, country, and good fortune.”

The Devil Wore J.Crew

Posted on by Laughingnomad

There is an excellent reprint of a review in Salon.com of a book published in 2005 by Martha Stout Ph.D. called “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us.”

I have had at least one co-worker, and a few others, not many, but a few others in my life who have absolutely left me befuddled. Sometimes they made me question myself. Some made me very angry and defensive. Some have charmed my socks off leaving me to realize I’d been had. And maybe you have too. Maybe this is why.

The Devil Wore J. Crew
Salon.com
By Sara Eckel

“A new book says that sociopaths aren’t just Scott Peterson and BTK. They are your neighbors, bosses — even therapists.

Mar 22, 2005 | It sounds like a treatment for a creepy psychological thriller: a world in which one in every 25 people walks through life without a drop of human compassion. On the outside, these creatures appear perfectly normal. They get married, buy homes, hold down jobs. But on the inside, they’re morally bankrupt and completely unrestricted by conscience. They can do absolutely anything — lie, steal, sabotage — without feeling a shred of guilt or remorse.

Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., says this is not science fiction. In her controversial new book, “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us,” Stout claims that 4 percent of the population are sociopaths who have no capacity to love or empathize. Using composites pooled from her research to illustrate her points, Stout details the havoc sociopaths wreak on unsuspecting individuals — marrying for money, backstabbing co-workers, or simply messing with people for the fun of it. The fact that most of us never suspect our friends and neighbors of sociopathy only makes the transgressions easier to pull off.

Stout, who is also the author of “The Myth of Sanity,” an analysis of forgotten childhood trauma and dissociated mental states, spoke to Salon from her home in Rockport, Mass., about serial killers, bad boyfriends and how to know if your boss is a sociopath or just a jerk.

This idea of ordinary people with no conscience is pretty radical and kind of terrifying. Why are so few of us aware of it?
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Assigning Of Teachers In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Here’s Jill Friedberg again with some insights on the teaching of indigenous children in Oaxaca:

“The demand for rezonification, one of the demands by the teachers during the strike in 2006, was not about where teachers are sent to teach. The rezonification was essentially a cost-of-living demand that would change the salary “zone” for Oaxaca, so that teachers salaries would catch up to the increasing cost of living. [Note: Teachers in Oaxaca City are also living in a city where foreigners have driven up the cost of living]

The assigning of teachers to teaching positions is very complicated in Oaxaca. The Section 22 of the teachers union has a say in who teaches where. And the section 22 has a certain amount of control over IEEPO (the state department of education). That said, not all decisions about who teaches where are decided by the Section 22.

It seems to me that it used to be that teachers were more likely to be assigned to communities where they spoke the same language as the community. But why that has changed may or may not have to do with a state attempt to reduce the ability of teachers and communities to build alliances, by sending teachers to communities where they don’t speak the language. I think it has more to do with the hardships of teaching in rural communities.
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Teacher Strike Complicated In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

An email from Jill Friedberg…filmmaker and frequent visitor to Oaxaca…on some of the inner workings of the 2006 teacher strike until now:

When there are plantons (encampments), marches, etc. each delegation and sector within the Seccion 22 of the teacher’s union does something that looks a lot like role call (all teachers within that delegation or sector are on a list…those present get their names checked off the list, those not present do not). Over time, the amount of time that individual teachers spend at marches, plantons, etc. adds up in what the teachers refer to as “puntos,” (points) and the more puntos you have accumulated, the better your chances of getting the teaching job in the city that you want, or of getting promoted. A lot of teachers within the Seccion 22 are very critical of this puntos system, for multiple reasons:

1) it’s not fair, because a lot of teachers (especially single mothers) have legitimate reasons for not being able to attend marches and plantons
2) it’s a “lefty” version of the corruption that existed before the seccion 22 “democratized” the union
3) if people are down with the struggle, they shouldn’t have to be coerced into participating.

On the other hand, some teachers argue that it’s not a lot different than the kind of mechanisms that some US unions use, when they go out on strike, to make sure that members aren’t scabbing. If you are assigned to a picket line, you need to be there with the rest of the union members. Going out on strike isn’t about getting the day (or week, or month) off, it’s about participating in the strike / struggle. In other words, if the Seccion 22 goes out on strike and holds a planton, it’s not fair that some teachers are sleeping in the streets, while others are relaxing at home, when the gains of that strike go to everyone. That’s the argument in favor of the puntos (point) system.
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Oaxaca Neglects Indigenous Education

Posted on by Laughingnomad

You can read a discussion of the sad state of affairs in Oaxaca on the Yahoo Oaxaca Study Action Group discussion site:

An American expat in Oaxaca reports on the failure of the government to address the needs of indigenous peoples…a majority of the population:

“The Second National Congress on Indigenous and Intercultural Education was held in Oaxaca this week, with a colorful array of men clad in the short pants of Chiapas authorities moving among women in jeans or long skirts or crowned with beribboned braids. Lots of kids were present in the outdoor events like the sample classes held in Carmen Alto plazuela (never mind that the governor is once again renovating, the found space). I have photos which I will get around to archiving on the OSAG site.

Led by the Coalition of Indigenous Teachers and Promoters of Oaxaca (CMPIO, by its Spanish initials.) it’s been a long process of self-definition for preservation, and equal rights and justice. The front page of Noticias on Sunday /today, Oct 28) emphasizes their demand for equal rights.

Oaxaca is a state with 16 different language groups, many of them on the verge of disappearing when CMPIO stepped forward to promote bilingual education. Last July 30 I visited a workshop for teachers which focused on how grandmothers can renew their vanishing languages with their grandchildren: the in-between generation of parents were mono-lingualized by the state education system. Fernando Soberanes, present at that CMPIO event, said that the range of languages and experiences in all of Mexico is mind-boggling.
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An Argument For Travel

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Neuroscience researchers have concluded that “we can pretend we are free of bias, and avoid thinking about how to deal with our own deeply ingrained tendency to discriminate. Or we can take a lesson from neuroscience, and even from dumb computer agents, which can switch from noncooperation to cooperation if they learn that it is in their best interests.”

“Unconscious biased responses (amygdala activation),” they say, “can be significantly reduced by experience and familiarity.”

Oct. 31, 2007
Robert Burton
Salon.com

We’re Prejudiced, Now What?

Scientists now tell us bias toward others may be innate. But that doesn’t mean we have to behave like Bill O’Reilly.
|
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They
— Rudyard Kipling

I am stuck in rush-hour traffic. Maybe I can find a decent radio program to distract myself from the blasting horns, angry looks and cussing behind rolled-up windows. But the radio is worse than the traffic. On NPR, a Washington think tank guru is arguing that “my 30-plus years of studying the Middle East has convinced me that democracy is more appropriate for some cultures than others.” A second NPR station is airing a debate on the medical rights of “illegal aliens.” On Fox, Bill O’Reilly is talking about a recent dinner in Harlem, N.Y., with Al Sharpton: “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks.”

Everywhere I turn, someone is honking at the other guy. Once upon a time, when psychology was king of the behavioral hill, I thought that prejudice could be explained by upbringing, cultural influences, socioeconomic disparities and plain old wrong thinking. Despite any hard evidence from soft sciences, I nursed the vaguely optimistic belief that education and the teaching of tolerance might make a dent in the bigotry and racism of “others.” And yet sitting in stalled traffic, I cannot shake the irrational feeling that “those in the other cars” are different from “us in our car.” If my mind seems intent upon making such ludicrous and meaningless distinctions, is there more here than meets the purely psychological I?
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One View Of “Plan Mexico”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

June 18, 2007
From the Folks Who Brought You Plan Colombia
The Annexation of Mexico
By JOHN ROSS
Mexico City.

Plan Colombia, the $5,000,000,000 drug war boondoggle cooked up in 1999 by Bill Clinton and then-Colombian president Andres Pastrana and subsequently transmographied into a War on Terror adjunct by George Bush and Alvaro Uribe brought U.S. troops, fleets of helicopter gun ships, spray planes spewing poisons, and a vast array of human rights abuses to that troubled Latin American country. It also made Colombia the third largest recipient of Washington’s foreign aid and the number one repository of U.S. military aid in the western hemisphere.

But Plan Colombia failed to stem the flood of cocaine pouring across U.S. borders nor has it even eradicated much Colombian coca acreage – 144,000 hectares continue to thrive under coca cultivation in Colombia concedes the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Narcotics Enforcement in its 2006 annual report, and while spraying massive doses of glysophate did force some farmers out of business, production simply moved south, spreading throughout the Andean region.

Indeed, the price of cocaine on U.S. streets dipped slightly last year and supply and quality remained constant, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. For the first time in five years, the DEA registered an increase in first time users. 90% of the cocaine confiscated in the U.S. last year continues to be Colombian-based.

Despite the abysmal results, the U.S. Congress has again budgeted $367,000,000 for Plan Colombia in 2008 although some congressional reps appear to be tiring of fighting this losing war and are beginning to call for an exit strategy. With the Democrats in titular control of both houses, doubts about Plan Colombia forced consideration of a bi-lateral free trade agreement to be shelved this spring. President Uribe, in Washington to lobby for the pact, complained to the press that he was being treated as “a pariah.”

Despite Plan Colombia’s fading allure, the Bush administration is about to debut a sequel: Plan Mexico, an interdiction strategy to confront the increasing “Colombian-ization” of Mexico by bi-national (Colombian and Mexican) drug cartels who have managed to spread their brand of mayhem into every nook and cranny of this distant neighbor nation.

The finishing touches for a Plan Colombia-like joint venture were worked out at the early June G-8 summit in Germany during a meeting between Bush and Mexico’s freshman president Felipe Calderon, a special guest at the conclave. According to insiders in both camps as reported in the U.S. and Mexican media, Calderon will make a formal application for increased anti-drug assistance from Washington come August. Mexico currently receives $40,000,000 in drug moneys from the White House.

If you liked Plan Colombia, you are going to love Plan Mexico.
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