Mixed messages from home
Here's a slice from a decades-long sausage of U.S. interference and bumbling diplomacy when it comes to Mexico, written in 1996. "Alas, poor Mexico", the saying goes, "so far from God and so close to the U.S.A." (Pictured are some teachers from the Huatulco area, demonstrating in front of the Statehouse in Oaxaca.) Photography by Diana Ricci
What the heck is going on, up there? Somebody better try to get the story straight, don't you think? Does the U.S. government REALLY want Mexico to survive the current crisis, or is all the solicitous attitude just a shuck?
I mean, just LOOK at some of what has come down the information chute in the last couple of months:
The Mexican Bolsa, and the Peso,took a three-hour rollercoaster ride because of a rumor started by a private investments advisor and international gadfly who, in the best tradition of Diamond Jim Brady and his robber baron friends. In apparent violation of the Securities Exchange Commission rules against deliberate stock manipulation by an insider for profit, the word was put out early one morning that the Mexican Army was poised for a military coup, and that the government of President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon was about to be replaced by a junta whose first priority was to wipe out all anti government forces in Chiapas and Guerrero, and to rescind permanently and retroactively all land reform. Unfortunately, this rumor was immediately reprinted as fact by the Wall Street Journal News Service and Reuters, thus causing great harm to the Mexican economy (and therefore to the Mexican people), as well as providing great windfalls of money for someone (among whom may or may not be the rumor's perpetrator). Worth noting: to this day, to my knowledge, no investigation has been conducted, and no-one has been prosecuted under the applicable statutes.
Then there is the DEA which, following in the footsteps of the late great Superpower Superagency, the CIA, stepped into the James Bond In Real Life mud hole right up to its' self-righteous kneecaps. Agents in Mexico were exposed in the newspapers as having been carrying on, over a protracted period of time, the surveillance of members of the Mexican government. And not just ANY official; oh, no! They were going after the big boys, in an attempt to get evidence of narcotics-induced corruption. In their madcap attempt, they put devices on the phones in the Procuraduria General de la Republica (PGR: the equivalent of our Attorney General's office); the Comision Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH: the organization that reports and prosecutes human rights violations); and Los Pinos, the White House of Mexico. These devices recorded the numbers called, and the numbers calling, for untold official telephones.
These are the same devices (known as Pen Registers) which the DEA regularly has installed (without the necessity of a court order, since they don't actually listen to any conversations - a theory of preservation of the right to privacy which in an earlier more rights-conscious judicial atmosphere might have run into constitutional problems) on telephones thought to be operated by possible drug dealers, or other opponents of their methods. I guess they just couldn't see the difference between the head of the Cali cartel and the head of the Mexican government. And while some might argue that the difference is sometimes mighty small, nonetheless it was a clear violation of national sovereignty.
Now comes the fun part: these were not just freelancing cowboys, but accredited diplomatic representatives of the U.S. government, down here as part of our "cooperative" efforts to stop the flow of drugs through Mexico to the veins and noses of some of our most prominent - and many of our most impoverished - citizens). In other words, great white father to north speak with forked tongue: on one fork, the appeal to our Congress, and the rest of us less privileged gringos, to send beaucoup bucks and equipment to Mexico to be used in the fight against drug traffic (or, some Mexicans insist, against anyone who opposes the current government); on the other fork the clear belief that drug trafficking is protected - and participated in - at the highest levels of our partner's law enforcement structure.
Finally, at least for now, the most capricious and contradictory move of all: the announcement, by the U.S. Department of State that it is advising all U.S. citizens against traveling to Mexico, most particularly to Mexico City, and most particularly specifically, to the 20 or so square BLOCKQUOTEs that occupy the space between the Alameda (a park) and the Zocalo (in front of the Government Palace), otherwise known as the Zona Centro Historico. The reason given: that there have been numerous clashes recently between the Forces of Order and the Ambulantes.
The Ambulantes, a Mexican institution since time immemorial, are the artisans, artists, and beggars that live in the "unofficial" economy populated by the structurally- and/or NAFTA- induced unemployed (recently estimated to include as much as 40% of the Capital City's economy).
Recently, after numerous complaints from the U.S. embassy about how INSISTENT (unwilling to mind their place) these people had become, the Mexican tourist bureau decided to oust them from the tourist-infested "historical zone". They did not go gently, especially after their spots began to be taken by others with permits that were previously unavailable. Crying "foul" and "nepotism" and "political favoritism", they came back to the center from the reservations to which they had been relegated, far from the tourist hordes. The "clashes", often pitting unarmed grandmothers against riot-battle-gear police "specials", were probably judged too distressing for milk-fed Midwesterners to watch. Thus our government in its' wisdom, decided to protect us from the results of its' own machinations. For which no-one gives much thanks.
Together with the recent last-minute unilateral suspension of the NAFTA accord allowing Mexican trucks access to U.S. border states, and the refusal to extradite Ruiz Massieu, one of the most notorious fleeing felons in recent Mexican history, the latest news suggests to many Mexicans a pattern of unfair and unwise inconsistencies in the U.S. position toward our southern neighbor. C'mon, Washington: is you is or is you ain't our buddy?
If you have comments or suggestions for Stan, you can contact him at:
http://www.realoaxaca.com/email-realoaxaca.html
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