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alex .

Dec 13, 2004, 8:07 AM

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So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Your thoughts on Indian rights and such?
Alex

gpk

Dec 13, 2004, 8:13 AM

Post #2 of 15 (1746 views)

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Re: [alex .] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Are we gringos allowed to express ourselves publically about this while in Mexico?

Kip

Dec 13, 2004, 8:39 AM

Post #3 of 15 (1737 views)

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Re: [gpk] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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When is doubt you could always PM.

Kip
kip

raferguson

Dec 13, 2004, 1:58 PM

Post #4 of 15 (1669 views)

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Re: [alex .] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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The indians have had the short end of the stick in Mexico for 500 years or so. The rich and powerful in Mexico have always been white folks, just watch TV and see who are the actors, actresses, hosts, etc. The white people on stage do not look much like the mixture of races in the audience. Benito Juarez is almost the only exception, in terms of a powerful indian in Mexico, during the last 500 years or so. As far as I know, Mexico still does not have strong laws barring racial discrimination. (I think a weak law was passed a few years ago). The Mexican human rights center Miguel Augustine Pro says that Mexico has serious racial problems, even though they are minimized, hidden, or simply denied. The discrepancies in the statistics for indians are pretty extreme, whether you want to look at what percentage of the population has dirt floors, or any other index.

Marcos is yet another leftist trying to achieve political power from the barrel of a gun. He latched onto the indian cause as one that would attract more sympathy that a simple leftist call for revolution. He was fashionable for a while, but he had more or less fallen from view. He is now working on writing something with the well known leftist writer, Paco Ignacio Taibo. This project will give him another 15 minutes of fame. He is just another leftover revolutionary socialist who has not taken a hard look at the results of revolutionary socialism in the 20th century.

Esteban is right that violence generally begets more violence, and that the oppressed are more likely to succeed with nonviolence than violence. Socialism, communism and other utopian ideas have wreaked havoc in the 20th century, resulting in genocide, war, and the deaths of million and millions of people, rather that the hoped for utopia of the working classes. (Hitler's national socialism, Stalin's killing of millions, Communism in Cambodia, etc.) We are all fortunate that communism is essentially past tense.

Since I am not a resident of Mexico, I can speak freely.

Sorry for the rant. If the moderator needs to censor me for any reason, so be it.

Richard

http://www.fergusonsculpture.com

Jerry@Ajijic

Dec 13, 2004, 8:33 PM

Post #5 of 15 (1617 views)

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Re: [raferguson] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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I agree that violence will never solve things. One question I do have is the native populations do get the short end but as in Mexico are we talking about the Incas, the Aztec, the Maya, the Toltek. Violence is not good but it sure does seem that the strongest winds up being right. In Florida we had Seminoles who were pushed out of North Carolina by the Cherokee who had been pushed south by another tribe, etc.

raferguson

Dec 14, 2004, 8:34 AM

Post #6 of 15 (1555 views)

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Re: [Jerry@Ajijic] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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There is a funny story about somebody who said that he did not want to speak Spanish because that was the language of the conquerers, he wanted to speak Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Of course, the joke was that the Aztecs were conquerers also.

One of the reasons that Cortez succeeded in conquering the Aztecs with a handful of men is because the Tlaxcalans sided with Cortez. The Tlaxcalans did not like how they were treated by the Aztecs. I have read that the Spainards treated the Tlaxcalan Indians better than other tribes for this reason, and that there are still effects of that observable in the state of Tlaxcala.

Richard

http://www.fergusonsculpture.com

Bubba

Dec 14, 2004, 9:59 AM

Post #7 of 15 (1538 views)

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Re: [raferguson] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Richard:

Your story about the guy who preferred Nahuatl over Spanish reminded me of the movement in the 1970s to change the name of the mostly African American community of East Palo Alto, California to Nairobi. There could not be a more blatant symbol of British colonialism and exploitation of Africans than Nairobi which is a relatively young city founded by the British as a colonial capital and railhead.

We do get confused, don't we?

tonyburton / Moderator

Dec 14, 2004, 12:09 PM

Post #8 of 15 (1513 views)

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Re: [Texwheel] but violence DOES solve problems

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As moderator, I have to admit I'm still wondering about the relevance of some of the posts on this thread to Living, Working, Retiring in Mexico... so, can I please urge participants to try and keep on track? Thanks! Tony

Adrian

Dec 14, 2004, 6:18 PM

Post #9 of 15 (1450 views)

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Re: [alex .] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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In Reply To

Your thoughts on Indian rights and such?
Alex

My dos centavos...

'Indians' (howsoever they may be defined) are citizens of The United Mexican States, are they not? Does not the Constitution of 1917 guarantee certain rights to 'all citizens'? Hence, do 'Indians' not have the same rights as all other citizens? By this logic, ant talk of 'Indian rights' is redundant.

Whatever one may say about whether certain groups appear to be disadvantaged, there is the old adage of being able to help only those who help themselves. Positing 'Indians' as a victim class, collectively, is not going to help.

Incidentally, 'Sub-Commandante Marcos' is a local boy from right here in Tampico - son of very wealthy parents and, perhaps, seeking to expiate for such percieved advantage?

Adrian

esperanza

Dec 14, 2004, 6:40 PM

Post #10 of 15 (1445 views)

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Re: [Adrian] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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That's an interesting point, Adrian. Whether or not "Indian rights" are guaranteed under the Constitution of 1917, the fact is that many (if not most) indigenous people in Mexico do not have access to the same rights as other Mexicans, constitution or no constitution. This isn't about victimization, it's about access to goods, services, and representative government.

The same is true in the USA. The Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that some people in the USA are treated differently from others, as if in fact they were not created equal. Why, if we just start with the word 'men', you can see that we are in trouble from the git-go. All men and women are not treated equally--think of the pay differential--equal pay for equal work is in large part a myth. And Native American rights in the USA? Hmmm...created equally, but...

http://www.mexicocooks.typepad.com

Adrian

Dec 14, 2004, 9:21 PM

Post #11 of 15 (1428 views)

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Re: [esperanza] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Esperanza

Please forgive me, I am not American, but I thought that the US Constitution dealt with the relationship between the governed and the governing. Hence, things such as unequal pay, access to goods and services etc are, as such, private matters and not within the realm of the government unless the government is controlling the pay and/or access.

For example, properly speaking, if I insisted on my shop staff only speaking Mixtec to my customers (when 99.9% of them speak only Spanish) it is my right as a business owner. The fact that I would then very quickly go out of business due the the paucity of Mixtec comprehension in Tampico is entirely my business and has nothing to do with any rights enshrined in a Constitution.

I do believe that, like many folk, you are confusing the constitutional right of equality before the law with the percieved right to equality of outcome. Although I have no knowledge of any biased or discriminatory treatment against the 'indigenous' peoples of this country, I do believe that, isolated cases notwithstanding, they are granted the same basic rights (such as: freedom of movement; freedom of religion; freedom to vote; freedom to own property; freedom to assemble; freedom to speak publicly etc etc.) by dint of being born here.

Again, attempting to make a collective victim class called 'Indian' is not going to help anyone. You can whine all you like about how the 'whites' hold the political and economic power in Mexico, the fact remains, defining 'rights' and their allocation by the specious formula of 'indian-ness' smacks of Nazism and the the Nuremburg Laws.

And that's probably more than 2 cents worth but, pooooor favoooor! The gachipines have been here for many hundreds of years and the locals should have gotten with the program by now!

Adrian

thfarrell

Dec 15, 2004, 5:39 PM

Post #12 of 15 (1286 views)

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Re: [alex .] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Hi...

A good guy.

Tom
---
"Beauty is in the i of the Beholder"
(Julia Mandelbrot)

Gary Anderson

Dec 16, 2004, 8:15 AM

Post #13 of 15 (1235 views)

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Re: [thfarrell] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Allow me to relate a recent experience that I hope is at least somewhat on point.

A few weeks ago, two friends from the USA came to the Lake Chapala area to visit. One of them had been here several times before; for the other, it was his first visit. One evening we were all sitting in a locally popular watering hole at a table with several other people, two of whom were Mexicanas. At the next table were two women from Guadalajara, both, judging from their appearance, of Spanish descent, and both of whom spoke loudly and disparagingly of the women at our table and their obviously indio ancestry. To their credit, both of the women at our table shrugged off these remarks, saying they were used to it, but the companion of one of them turned to the adjacent table, smiled, and told the ladies en Espanol how pleased he was to have the priveledge of meeting two people of such obvious importance and high breeding that they were able to speak so poorly of people whom they had never even met. I won't relate the Guadalajara ladies' response verbatim, but forms of the word "jod**se" were prominently featured. Need I add that the first time visitor was, to say the least, not impressed by their attitude?

The point being that prejudice and racism and bigotry and ignorance exist everywhere in the world, even here in paradise.

On another note, I, like one of the posters above, am also a veteran, and as such have seen my share of politically sponsored violence. Let me tell you, folks, that to my way of thinking, zooming around the sky dropping napalm onto other human beings really, realy sucks, and anyone who believes otherwise really, really needs to take a good, long, hard look in the nearest mirror. Simply killing everyone you don't like isn't the answer; in the long run, such actions come back to haunt us. But perhaps I have read too much into the aforementioned post.

I will now dismount from my soapbox.
GA
____________________________________________________________
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22 . . . ." - Joseph Heller

(This post was edited by Gary Anderson on Dec 16, 2004, 8:49 AM)

BrentB

Dec 19, 2004, 3:38 PM

Post #14 of 15 (1114 views)

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Re: [alex .] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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As far as SubComandante Marcos, he is good and a hero to the downtrodden,and a symbol far outside of Mexico, kind of a Robin Hood, if you will. To "The Establishment" he is a rabble rousing revolutionary, and a thorn in their side.

As far as treatment of the indigenous, be it in The USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and other parts of Central America, and parts of South America, it is poor at best. The populations have been subjected to discrimination, or worse, genocide and attempts to wipe out their culture.

As mentioned, the "stars" of TV and movies, ads, and almost all of the top jobs go to light skinned ladinos, in Latin America, as also in the USA and Canada.

The mention of the Tapatia ladies and their superior attitudes reflects something common in the Americas.

The only answer, in my opinion is education,. by studying other cultures, I don't think people can continue in their discriminating ways.

Thanks,

Brent

Jerry@Ajijic

Dec 19, 2004, 5:17 PM

Post #15 of 15 (1090 views)

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Re: [BrentB] So is SubComandante Marcos a good guy or a bad guy ?

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Brent if you will look at history you will find that the winner or ruling class always has treated the losers or minorities in discriminating ways.. It is not right but it is human nature.