The second surprising thing is that support for the prostitutes comes not from some "libertarian" group (the big-L "Libertarian" political party is unknown in Mexico, and, if known at all, is seen as a cranky bunch of right-wing anararchists, or an oddball offshoot of Fascist movements like the Synarchists), but from the labor-left parties. And the feminists. Jesusa Rodriguez, the actress and feminist organizer, has been quite active working with prostitutes, and was the go-between when the sex workers pushed the Lopez Obrador administration to provide some social services to their workers.

Besides, every women in the world owes a tremendous debt to Mexico City's prostitutes. Before the clinical trials of "the pill" -- which changed every woman's life, and did more to improve women's health in the 20th century than anything else -- were scheduled in Puerto Rico, Russell Marker could not get funding from the pharmaceutical companies, and to test the wonder formula (based on a Huastaca folk remedy for avoiding unwanted pregnancy), turned to the City's working girls.

Drug companies still do depend on the city's prostitutes to test birth control devices and pharmaceutals, AIDS prevention strategies and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases. I knew the Mexican Human Resources director at one of the large European pharamceutical companies. Working out an agreement every year with the sex worker's union was just part of the job... the workers mostly got medical and dental care through the company in exchange for their cooperation.

The big problem for the sex workers now is that while prostitution itself is not illegal, the workers are a target for police looking to make an easy arrest (or solicit ... a bribe) since the nature of their work forces them to skirt the laws in other ways. Or, they are abused by pimps, and work in dangerous conditions, without much recourse to the normal (and minimal) protections other Mexican workers enjoy.

So... it's no surprise the sex workers have been lobbying for better legal protections, and are likely to get it. My translation is from an article by Luis Velázquez in the 24 June 2008 Milenio:

The PRD plans to re-introduce a bill aimed at ending exploitation or extortion of sex workers by pimps and police officer to the Federal District Legislative Assembly during the extraordinary July session.

However, the joint commissions do not expect enactment of new regulations before the next ordinary session begins in September, since they have yet to hear from the Assembly's Public Safety Commission.

Juan Bustos, president of the Human Rights Commission, and Daniel Ordóñez, of the Legal Affairs Commission (both PRD) said that regularizing prostitution is an urgent priority. According to UNAM researchers, there are approximately 200,000 commercial sex workers in the Federal District, and four and a half million clients for their services.

At a meeting of the Federal District's Council for the Prevention and Erradication of Discrimination, the PRD members promised to bring a bill to the floor the next few weeks, and to bring the matter up for a vote within the Extraordinary July session. .

A bill to regularize prostitution in the Federal District had been formally presented to the District Assembly at the end of October 2007 by Juan Bustos and PRD leader and Governance Commmission chair Víctor Hugo Círigo. However, due to inter-party difference, the matter was never brought to a vote.

Since then, sex worker organizations have intensely lobbied their local legislators to make the bill a priority.

Within the Assembly, PAN opposes the bill on the grounds that it legalizes street walking.

Carmen Segura, local PAN deputy, and president of the Public Security Commission, however, is meeting with various local government officials about the proposed legislation, and is compiling data on the issue.

Mexico’s peso closed at its strongest level against the dollar in five years Friday after the Bank of Mexico raised its benchmark interest rate, citing higher inflation. The currency was quoted in Mexico City closing at 10.275 pesos to the dollar, compared with 10.3185 at the open and Thursday’s close of 10.3120. The Bank of Mexico raised the overnight rate to 7.75 percent, from 7.5 percent, in its first monetary policy move since last October.

(Dow Jones, 21-June-2008 )

This was a surprise to the U.S. forecasters, but was a possible scenario, according to the “Latin American Regional Report” Mexico and Nafta June 2008 newsletter (subscription only – around 1200 POUNDS a year… something the Mex Files doesn’t have access to very often… but then the Mex Files only asks … nicely… for 36 DOLLARS a year):

The Banco de México noted at the beginning of June that inflationary expectations are rising. The consensus forecast for annual inflation in 2008 is now 4.39%, the highest projection in 28 months. More worryingly for policymakers, inflation is now running above the level of wage increases.

The danger is that inflationary expectations, which the central bank compiles from around 30 independent economic forecasters, will come in above 5% in May or June. Such a rise may prompt trade unions to demand higher wages.

The big question for the Banco de México is whether it will follow the lead of central banks in South America, which have raised interest rates to head off inflation, or whether it will follow the US Federal Reserve Board, which has ignored the rise in inflation in US. The US Fed has been clear that its policy priority is to avoid a domestic economic slump. Only when it is sure that the US economy has avoided a slump will it turn to dealing with inflation.

For the government the issue is slightly different. It will only face problems if the central bank fails to act and trade unions start to demand big wage increases in 2009. For the past eight years, Mexican employers have been able to increase wages in real terms. Figures from the Secretaría del Trabajo show that from 2000 to 2007 wages rose by 42.4% but inflation over the period was 34.5%. Wages in 2008, however, are likely to fall in real terms, for the first time since 1996.

The fall in real wages is unlikely to be as dramatic as it was in 1980s or in the last great economic crisis in Mexico in 1995. This year the decline is likely to be 0.5% -1%.  Nonetheless, a decline in purchasing power, coupled with the government’s problems in fighting the drug trade, will complicate the government’s prospects in next year’s mid-term congressional elections. The government’s big card, however, is its strong fiscal position. Unusually this is not a result of the surge in oil prices but of a highly successful fiscal reform.

The Banco de México has already increased its 2008 inflation forecast by 0.5 of a percentage point. It now does not expect inflation to fall below 4.25% at any point this year. For the next two quarters the central bank expects annual inflation to range between 4.5%- 5%. Only in the final quarter of 2008 will there be an improvement, when the range falls to 4.25%-4.75%. In the 12 months to 15 April, the annual inflation rate was 4.53%.

The central bank governor, Guillermo Ortiz, said that higher international food prices were largely to blame, while higher steel and cement prices were also contributing.

The Banco de México only expects inflation to start to fall significantly in 2009. It forecasts a rate of 3.75%-4.25% in the first quarter of 2009 and then 3.5%-4% in the second quarter, before the rate settles, conveniently back on target, at between 3% -3.5% in the second half of 2009.

What the central bank inflation forecasts imply is that there will be little monetary policy stimulus (in the form of interest rate cuts) for the foreseeable future. On the other hand the government’s strong and improving fiscal position suggests that the government may ratchet up spending, especially if there are clearer signs of any economic slowdown in the US having an effect on Mexico.

In following the South American central banks’ leads, the Mexican administration is echoing Lopez Obrador’s program in the last election. That called for loosening ties with the U.S. economy and creating closer ones with the South American countries, especially Mercosur.

A second point, also raised by Lopez Obrador, was that Mexico should concentrate on growing the domestic market rather than depending on exports. This too seems to be what Banco de Mexico is trying to do. Certainly the downturn in the U.S. economy is going to have a huge effect here, but by staving off the worst of it, even if it means slower growth, should minimize those effects.

From elsewhere in the same newsletter, there is this:

President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa sells himself to the US and the Mexican business community as a staunch free marketer and the complete opposite of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftwing populist Calderón defeated in the 2006 elections. Calderón’s taste for subsidies, however, belies his reputation.

Calderón first revealed this tendency in 2007 when he fixed the price of tortillas and then retreated from a plan to increase fuel taxes. These policies have expanded since then. Fuel subsidies on petrol and diesel will now cost the government M$200bn (US$19.2bn) this year. Food subsidies (designed to check inflation) will add another M$4.5bn to government spending in 2008.

“Latin American Regional Report” sees this as a political move, but the promise not to raise lower the gasoline subsidy, which would mean higher gasoline prices, may also be an attempt to hold down inflation, even if it retards economic growth.

The problem is that the subsidies are economically inefficient and unsustainable. They benefit the big users, who are almost by definition, the rich. Essentially, Calderón is using the proceeds from a non-renewable asset, oil exports, which in theory belongs to all Mexicans, to subsidise the rich. Oil export revenues are booming, providing the government with the fiscal resources to buy off protests.

The subsidy sums are enormous by Mexican standards. The M$200bn fuel subsidy is greater than the annual federal education budget and four times what the welfare ministry, Sedesol, was budgeted to spend this year. As one leading political commentator, Sergio Sarmiento, puts it, to spend all this money, which could be invested productively, is absurd and unsustainable.

I tend to agree with the conservative Sarmiento. Mexico is going to need more – and better paying – jobs over the next several years, especially as the percentage of university graduates (which have trouble finding work now) increases. Still, slow growth is better than no growth, but we all could use a cost of living raise down here.

Strike in Zocalo Oaxaca:

I wish I was there to give you my own firsthand account. But, for now, here is a post from libcom.org.

Oaxaca in revolt again: the Zócalo reoccupied, motorway tollbooths “liberated”, roads blockaded
May 22nd, 2008 by Alan
A 21 day series of strikes and occupations by the radical Sección 22 in Oaxaca of the Mexican teachers’ union Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores en la Educación kicked off in earnest on Tuesday. As of Thursday, the strike appears to be spreading - with popular support, solidarity and an increasing volume of activity.<!--

The teachers' strike has various demands, although it's mostly calling for the freedom for all political prisoners, an end to the arrest orders and ongoing intimidation by the judicial authorities against the movement, new elections within the SNTE, and the handing over of all Oaxacan schools controlled by the pro-government Sección 59.

Tortilla Inflation:

From a blog at the Wall Street Journal:

More Tortilla Inflation?

Posted by David Gaffen

Annelena Lobb has this report on how rising corn costs continue to affect Mexico.

As the price of food staples continues to rise around the world, some in Mexico are worrying about another flare-up of the tortilla wars.

Corn prices, which impact the price of tortillas, have been rising.

Earlier this week, a tortilla industry group warned of looming price increases for the maize tortilla. The rising price of corn worldwide has fueled inflation in Mexico, causing the central bank to maintain high interest rates in an effort to head off a wage-price spiral in other goods and services.

Less than 24 hours after President Bush met with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom at the White House on Monday, a worker from a union that filed a trade complaint with Washington against the Guatemalan government was murdered.

Carlos Enrique Cruz Hernández, a banana worker, was assassinated while working at a farm owned by a subsidiary of Del Monte. Cruz Hernández's Union of Izabal Banana Workers (SITRABI), was one of six Guatemalan unions who, along with the AFL-CIO, filed a complaint allowed through labor provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) on April 23, charging that the Guatemalan government was not upholding its labor laws and was failing to investigate and prosecute crimes against union members–which include rape and murder. The complaint states that violence against trade unionists has increased over the past two years (since CAFTA was ratified) and that the Guatemalan government may be responsible for some of the violence. The violence from this year alone includes 8 murders, 1 attempted murder, 2 drive-by shootings, and the kidnapping and gang rape of a top union official's daughter who was targeted because of her father's union work.

(Full article, "Bullets and Bananas: The Violence of Free Trade in Guatemala" by Cyril Mychalejko at Upsidedownworld.org)

He's under Elba Esther Gordillo's make-up. The scary ex-kindergarten teacher is STILL the head of the Teachers' Union. In her latest inaugural address she said she wants to give the union a "new face of modernity". A new face would be a good start.

(Photo by Yazmín Ortega, Jornada)

In spite of the fact that in the country there is sufficient corn for human consumption, grain imports of corn from the United States in January went up 384% in comparison with the past year ...

The elimination of customs charges [on imported grain] is harmful for the campesinos, since the objective of the great businesses is to maintain a depressed internal price, contrary to the international markets' tendency...

The only way to avoid the price speculation by the great businesses is for the government to establish a mechanism for administrating imports and exports of white corn and order the creation of a national coen reserve for national consumption..

Kathy Kohlstedt, a program associate at the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City, has written on the broader political and policy implications of the NAFTA deregulations:

As part of a broadened alliance of civil society groups demanding the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexicans from all parts of the country occupied Mexico City's Zocalo and surroundings on January 31. In a display of unity, in solidarity with their country's agricultural producers, and the spirit that "without corn, there is no Mexico," Mexican farmers and others seem to be coming together. Mexico's movements appear to be united in a sort of "buy Mexican" campaign. This is not necessarily so.

The cost-of-living for Mexican workers in the gringo ghettos is significantly higher than in other places, especially in relatively isolated places like Los Cabos.  When the teachers were on strike there a few years ago, the tourist websites included comments from people in Los Cabos that they couldn't understand it... a beer was only a dollar.  Gee, nice, but how much was milk and toilet paper and cooking gas (and what housing was available for locals?).

From Reuters:

Mexico City, Feb. 7 - Wal-Mart de Mexico (Walmex), the country's biggest retailer, suffered its first-ever strike this week when 300 workers from two stores and a restaurant

Jaime Camacho, a top official from a grass-roots workers movement that backed the strike action, told Reuters that black and red strike flags were hung at the entrance of the stores and restaurant in the beach resort of Los Cabos at midday on Wednesday, closing down the establishments.

"We lifted the flags today at 9 a.m. local time (1700 GMT). The strike has ended," Camacho said on Thursday. The units affected were a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Sam's membership store and a Vips restaurant, he said.

Walmex was not immediately available for comment.

Walmex employs over 150,000 people across Mexico and is considered the country's biggest private sector employer. Workers are not unionized.

Workers at the Los Cabos stores and restaurant held their strike action with the backing of Mexico's Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants, or CROC, a union-style organization that defends workers' rights.

Camacho said the Walmex workers had complained about bad treatment from managers and that they were not being paid overtime or given benefit packages similar to those awarded by other Walmex stores in the country.

The company agreed to grant some of the workers' demands and signed a new labor contract on Thursday, Camacho said.

Media reported that in December of last year, protesters picketed outside a Walmex story in the Mexican capital to show support for employees who tried to form a union.

50,000 farmers say otherwise...

A CNC (Confederacion Nacional de Campesinas, the Farmers' Union) sponsored megamarch brought out 50,000 (by government estimates) to 130,000 (by CNC estimates) protesters into the streets.  The 10-lane (with a center mall and two pedestrian walkways on either side)  Paseo de la Reforma was completely blocked off by protesters, who also torched a tractor at Monumento de la Revolucíon.

The farmers -- some of whom walked to Mexico City from as far away as northern Chihuahua and Sonora -- are protesting the end of tarriffs on Canadian and U.S. imports, especially of corn and milk.

Sugar tariffs  also ended January 1 under the NAFTA agreement.

The 5-million member CNC is looking for renegotiations to NAFTA, claiming that "government subsidies their counterparts in Canada and United States receive are unfair. CNC said farmers get some 20,000 dollars in annual subsidies in the United States compared to only 700 dollars in Mexico."

Benitez explained the economics of tomato harvesting this way:

Tomato plants are picked three or four time, Lucas explained. “the first time there is a low yield, and filling a basket is dificult. Other times go faster, and it takes five to eight minues to fill one. During the last harvest, you can pick 20 to 30 baskets per day.

After the agreement [with Yoda Brands], the harvesters receive 45 cents for every 32 pound, which presently sell for 77 cents.

This means the workers see an extra 18 or 40 dollars a month... almost enough to take their families to ... oh... Burger Kind?

Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, published this in today's New York Times.  I would recommend eating at Taco Bell (and I can't believe I just said that) if Burger King doesn't change their ways. .

THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Florida’s tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce operating costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low as possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.

In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April, McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny — and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.

This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”

Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla. — has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.

Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.” It has not explained how that extra penny would break those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are perfectly legal.

The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit,” a Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.

Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.

Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its Burger King investment within three years.

Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.

(LA Times, "U.S. lets in more immigrants for farms" 8-October-2007)

In the absence of any real immigration policy, I guess  making the rules up as we go along is what we can expect. But I'd point out that this is even less than a "neo-bracero program" -- there's no mention of even minimal protections for these farmworkers (I've suggested letting farm worker unions handle hiring through contracts within Mexico.  I recognize that there are a lot of scumbags in the contract labor business, but between "word of mouth" among workers and complaints by the companies contracting the labor, the worst won't last very long -- and at least the workers would have some kind of contract that could be enforced.  If not legally, then extralegally -- shall we say pressure could be applied by an aggrieved laborer's nearest and dearest in some creative way?)

Make no mistake.  This is not going to benefit old McDonald, either.  Our subsidized corporate agriculture  is what is driving Mexican immigration (if Mexican farmers can't make a living, they're going to go somewhere -- and a good percentage are going to go North).

I suppose the political bloggers will all hope this blows up in Bush and company's face (which it likely will).  I'm more concerned about the effect on the workers.  Want to bet there's "exemptions" next for food and commercial workers... construction workers... lawn maintenance and janitorial service workers?

BushCo want the workers -- but it don't want workers with rights.  So, keeping them in a semi-illegal status -- or rather on a visa program they claim doesn't really work very well -- is the next best thing to peonage there is.

I'll try to revise these thoughts later.  But at 3:45 in the A.M. and working 7 days a week (I haven't had a full day off since 19 September AND am working on my book), I just can't always do much more than write some notes.

Arturo Cano, the U.S. reporter for Jornada, interviewd Benitez in last Friday's Jornada. 

Two days after graduating from Junior High School, Lucas Benitez left his homehown and headed for the Rio Bravo.  He knew no one.  Fourteen years later, he directs an organization of tomato pickers which has won victories over the giants of fast food, like Taco Bell and McDonalds.

“We've set a precedent:  never before has a large corporation given money directly to the to the workers at the bottom.  Now, we're going for Burger King,” says the Coalition of Immokalee Workers director. 

When he arrived in Immokalee, in the heart of south Florida's agricultural zone, Lucas was floored: “It was a city without law.  The bosses carried pistols in their belts, would make like they were shooting you with their fingers and lie on their mother's grave.  The people took the low salaries and mistreatment as normal. 

"Well, I'd come to this country for a better life, and ran into this... I know, I know.  Why wasn't there a strike?"

 A first meeting, at a local parish house in 1993 only attracting four workers.  The organization faced a problem.  Most of the Immokalee workers were temporary.  They picked tomatos in Florida before moving on to tobacco in North Carolina and apples in New York. 

For the first two years, the coalition was off the radar.  But in 1994, one of the larger compaines decided to reduce salaries below the minimum wage, from 4.25 dollars per hour to 3.85, arguing that farm workers would equal or surpass the minimum based on the amount of tomatos they picked. 

“We could eat crow and keep working, or go out,” Lucas recalled.  “We walked out.”It was the coalition's first strike. 

Three thousand workers walked off the harvest.  The company recalculated the wage structure, to proved between 4.50 and 4.75 an hour.  In the coalition's offices today, there is a relic of what happened next:  a bloody shirt.  A Guatemalan laborer had asked permission to get a drink of water, and the boss said no.  When he disobeyed the boss, he was hit in the face.One hundred seventy workers surrounded the boss' house, shouting “Hit one, and you hit all.” 

“That was the start of our first boycott, in 1996.  The next morning, like all days, the farmers showed up in their trucks to find workers.  No one got in.” 

In the closing days of 1997 and the start of 1998, six coalition members staged a hunger strike to demand the farmers sit down and negotiate.  “We thought that being so close to Christmas, we might reach the hearts of the farmers – but nada.” 

The local bishop, other religious leaders and ex-president James Carter gave support. 

“Out of repect for them, we ended the strike after 30 days, but it helped us raise the bar of our local action.”  This was followed by a 370 kilometer march, and various labor actions on the farms that would not accept contracts.  “Those that said they had no interest in guarding their image didn't have one to protect anway,” Lucas said. 

While this was going on,  Benítez read an article in a specialty journal that was called to his attention.  Taco Bell announced that they had signed a contract with two of the largest growers in the area to sell tomatos at below market prices.  “We knew what price they were paying.”

The Immokalee workers (half Mexican, 30 per cent Guatemalan, 10 percent Haitian and the rest from other countries) then launched a boycott against Taco Bell.  Along the way, they obtained help form students, churches, film stars and politicans. 

At first, the company would not budge.  Taco Bell is part of Yum! Brands Inc, one of the 500 largest corporations in the world, according to Fortune magazine, with almost 900,000 employees in 100 countries.  Among other restaurant chains, it owns KFC, Long John Silver's, All American Food and Pizza Hut. 

It took nearly four years for Taco Bell to feel the effects on its image as a “philanthropic” and “socially responsible” company.  “They agreed to pay an extra cent for each pound of tomatoes, and to pay that penny directly to the workers.” 

Two other achievements were by no means minor.  The company and CIW developed a “Code of Conduct” which in essense obligated Taco Bell to encourage farmers to repect labor rights for their workers.  Furthermore, the company promised to stop buying from those farmers who had committed “extreme violations” of these rights, such as forcing workers into involuntary servitude or slavery.  

Filling the baskets

Tomato plants are picked three or four time, Lucas explained.  “the first time there is a low yield, and filling a basket is dificult.  Other times go faster, and it takes five to eight minues to fill one.  During the last harvest, you can pick 20 to 30 baskets per day. 

After the agreement, the harvesters receive 45 cents for every 32 pound, which presently sell for 77 cents.  Now, every week Taco Bell sends the coalition a list of those workers who picked tomatos for their restaurants.  They receive one check from the farmer and another for the corporation, for amounts between 18 and 40 dollars. 

Following this triumph, the coalition directed its guns at another powerful mulinational.  The victory over McDonald's only took half as long, two years.  This past April 9, the corporation accepted the same conditions as their competiors at Yum! Brands.  In retrospect, Lucas says, “six of the largest food chains in the world now work with us.” 

From wetback to prizewinner

Lucas Benítez is certain that if he had stayed in Mexico he would have ended up as a “impoverished campesino or a delinquent.”  In the United States, however, he has become a multi-prize winning personality.  

In 1998, CIW received a prize from the Episopal Conference of the United States for their work in eliminating poverty and injustice.  In 1999, they were awared a grant sponsored by Rolling Stone magazine. In 2003, together with two of his co-workers, Benítez was awarded a prize named for Robert Kennedy for their human rights work. 

On the latter occasion, in the U.S. Capitol, Lucas said, “It's a strange thing:  life is like a dream.  Two days ago my compadres were protesting the Free Trade of the Americas in Florida, and we faced three thousand police.  Now, I'm in Washington receiving a prize.  Lucas and his co-workers were being recognized for their assistance in liberating more than a thousand agricultural workers kept by force in camps in Florida and South Carolina. 

These days, he is invited to dinner at the Kennedy mansion.  “I never had eaten a meal like that.  When Ethel said to start eating, I said to her 'you first' because I didn't know where to start,” he said smiling.  This anecdote recalled another, about his first time in the United States.  He had gone to a town north of Immokalee (“our house” in the Seminole language).  He didn't know a word of English, but was hungry.  Standing in line at the restaurant, he didn't know how to ask for the food.  The peson ahead of him ordered several items, so he said “give me the same.”  For 15 days, the only thing I ate was  'give me the same!'"“

Guest Workers” = legal slavery  

Married to a Mexican from Chalco, Estado de Mexico, Lucas Benítez has only been back three times to his native Arcelia, Guerrero since he left at the age of 14.  His life, and his battle on el otro lado has kept him busy, and nearly all his family have moved near by since then. 

Based on his experience, and his long struggle for agricultural workers, he is conviced that a guest worker program is not a solution to immigration problems.  “It's bracerismo – legalized slavery.  Employers can complain to Immigration, and have you black listed.  There's no way to change jobs, or move somewhere where the pay and conditions are better. 

"There is talk of a treaty, but in practice, Mexico is selling cheap manual labor for the worst paid jobs in the United States, in agriculture.”  

Who?

Sondergaard was a big-time Hollywood star of the 1930s and 40s, mostly forgotten now, though she's instantantly recognizable. Her “exotic” looks (though, in reality, she was a Minnesota farm girl) were the basis for the wicked queen in Walt Disney's Snow White – and no wonder. As the one biographer put it, “Swift, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister, these were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures.”

Sondergaard figures into my own interest in Mexico, in an extremely round-about way. I'd had a slight interest in Latin America, both because I had a neighbor who wrote a biography on the esoteric subject of 19^th century U.S.-Brazilian relations and because in graduate school, I'd done extensive research on Elizabeth Bishop, the Canadian-born U.S. poet who also wrote extensively about Brazil, where she spent most of her adult life.

And, when I was 14, I played tennis for a local city league. It didn't dawn on me at the time, but there was a girl on our team who was chronologically a few years older, but had some developmental challenges that matched her with us early adolescents. She mentioned that she lived in a local residential school and that her mother was a movie actress. It only dawned on me a few years later that the movie actress was Bette Davis.

I'd already developed a guilty pleasure in Davis movies, and hung out with the kind of people where a REAL connection to a STAR – if nothing else – at least opened up some... uhhhh.... conversational possiblities. Bette Davis and Gayle Sondergaard were in two movies together. In The Letter, Sondergaard never says a word on-screen, but still manages the nearly impossible feat of dominating Davis in their scenes together (she pays the Chinese widow who blackmails – and later murders – Davis in revenge for killing her English husband). In the 1939 MGM costume drame Juarez, she plays Emperess Eugenia of France to Davis' Carlotta.

Bette Davis... Juarez... a vague interest in Latin America. That's where it all started.

So, how does Gayle Sondergaard fit into that? Other than costaring in a Zorro movie, once doing a turn as the reactionary and sinister Empress who propelled Maximiliano and Carlota on their destructive couse in Mexico isn't a likely background for fostering U.S.-Mexican understanding. Sondergaard's career came to a crashing halt in 1948 because she was a loyal wife. Her husband, director Herbert Biberman had been a Communist, and – in the late 1940s – we went through a particuarly nasty reactionary period, where even the wives of suspected disloyal Americans were smeared. Sondergaard stood by her man, and was blacklisted, along with several others. Actors, directors, cameramen, technicians – anyone who'd had any ties to left-wing movements in the 1930s (when it was perfectly respectable to do so) was unemployable. Many, incdentally, went to Mexico, where they could work during the golden age of Mexican cinema and where they helped launch Churubosco Studios, and later Televisa.

Up until 1948, Sondergaard had been a big star, and had earned a hefty paycheck. I guess it was the old Marxist saw, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” that led Sondergaard to put up the funds for one of the strangest – and best – films every made about Mexicans in the U.S. and about the border. Salt of the Earth, based on a real 1951 miners' strike in Arizona. Will Geer (who in his 80s found new respectability as Grandpa Walton), with two stikes against him – he'd been blacklisted as a Communist, and thrown out of the Communist Party because he was gay – at least got a paycheck, and Biberman had a movie to direct.

Salt of the Earth is shameless propaganda, but very good propaganda. The story centers on the growing class consciousness of Esperanza Quintero, a humble Mexican immigrant housewife who has to take a lead role in the strike when the workers are legally enjoined from picketing. What made the film the classic it later became was that it dealt with the border realistically. Anglos and Latinos misunderstand each other, and have different cultural needs. Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans have their own subtily differing perspectives and wants. And – very unusual in any American film – people speak their own language. As far as I know, this is the first film to use English, Spanish and Spanglish.

I've had my phone cut off. Salt of the Earth had their star deported. While the major Anglo roles were played by blacklisted Hollywood actors, and the supporting cast was made up of United Mine Workers' members (several acting out their own words and actions taken during the actual 1951 strike), taking on the part of the housewife turned leader requried hiring a real pro.

Originally Sondergaard herself was going to play Esparanza, but even her loyal husband realized the glamourous dragon lady wasn't right for the role. Neither were any of the few Mexican actresses working in Hollywood – not that Katy Jurado (who might have carried it off) or Delores del Rio (definitely wrong for the part) would have taken the risk of working for known “subversives.” Rosario Revueltas, who had performed in a number of earthy roles, had her only U.S. performance in Salt of the Earth.

The vaguaries of Microsoft Millenium (and a duct-taped old Dell system), and utility bills aside, the worst the Mex Files has to endure is the occasional spam attack, and a few snotty “comments” (by the way, I'm more bemused than bothered by the guy who signed himself “grumpy” and complained that asking for money indicated there was no market for something he obviously reads regularly... meaning, he's unwilling to contribute, not unable to do so).

During filming, Salt of the Earth was attacked by the film industry publications, denounced on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and shots were fired at the set. A little harder to take was Revultas' arrest and deportation (she had a legitimate work permit) allegedly for being a “Communist sympathizer” (in those days, the Taft-Hartley Act – not rescinded until the Clinton presidency – allowed the State Department to deport “dangerous” -- which including left-wing political sympathies). Revultas, who later did work in Communist East Germany and later in Cuba, but was never a Communist, later wrote:

[Since the U.S. authorities] had no evidence to present of my "subversive" character, I can only conclude that I was "dangerous" because I had been playing a role that gave status and dignity to the character of a Mexican-American woman.

Somehow, the film was finished (and processed secretly), opening in New York in 1954 – and then disappearing from American theaters. Despite showings in union halls across the southwest, and winning awards in Europe, the U.S. government actually banned the film after it had opened in all of twelve theaters. Sondergaard – and this is why I appreciate her – went bankrupt attempting what seems impossible: bringing Mexico and Mexicanismo to an Anglo audience.

The Mex Files tries in its own small way to work in the spirt of Salt of the Earth. Sondergaard and Bieberman did it was grace and style. The film is now recognized as the classic it is (and shown regularly on Mexican television, as well as to American labor, feminist and student groups). Money ain't everything, but it sure makes work easier.

Ignore the grumps and give if you can. The phone (and internet service) can't go back on until the nearly $400 in back charges are caught up.

In a country where nearly half of the population scrapes by on less than $4 a day, any income source is welcome in millions of households, even if it hinges on the goodwill of a tipping customer. And Wal-Mart did not invent the bagger program that, as a written statement from the company notes, pre-dates the firm’s arrival in Mexico, nor is it alone within the country’s retail sector in benefiting from the toil of unpaid adolescents. But in Mexico City, for example, the 4,300 teenagers who work in Wal-Mart’s retail stores free of charge dwarf similar numbers laboring unpaid for Mexican competitors like Comercial Mexicana (715) and Gigante (427). Although Wal-Mart’s worldwide code of ethics expressly forbids any “associate” from working without compensation, the company’s Mexican subsidiary asserts that the grocery baggers “cannot be considered workers.”

I won't say it's an organized "plot", but there are comments in every posting to this story to the effect that "it gives the children a safe environment and an exposure to the working world that they wouldn't get otherwise..." or a variation on the same, usually from someone who knows because "I live 3 months of the year in Puerto Vallerta and...".

There are couple of problems with the happy rationales. Where you do have kids working for tips, it's where the kid is part of the ownership circle -- the son or nephew or cousin of the small merchant running an entrepreneural enterprise.

Usually, in neighborhood markets, that are owned by chains, the bagger is the check-out clerks kid, who gets the change, or at least a few pesos. Often the bagger is the checker's kid, who is doing his homework or goofing off with the stock-boy when not bagging.

Secondly, if the kid is old enough to legally work, he or she is supposed to be paid. It doesn't matter if they're "associates" or not... if WalMart expects them to be at a certain place, they are at "asociados" under Mexican labor law, and have to receive the daily minimum (about 5 dollars), even if they only work an hour or two. I had a student who was the head of the law department of a major Mexican bank, who wanted me to come in and help out on some on-going translation, but we made other arrangements because of this regulation.

And, my observation is that WalMart does consider the baggers to be employees. They were always wearing the WalMart red vest and had a regular station within the store.

I think WalMart is bad in the long run for a lot of reasons (mom n' pop stores clean the street every morning and act as the neighborhood watch -- because they are part of the neighborhood; WalMarts don't -- they have employees, not people investing in the community), but this is just low.

WalMart and the rationalizers (must just be coincidence they all have the same story) are confusing baggers with beggars. And the bag boys I've seen in WalMart aren't slugs... goofy teenagers, sure, but ones who know what a sindicato is... or have an uncle who is a labor lawyer, or an aunt whose comadre is active in the PRD, or....

BAGBOYS UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT --- ah hell, if WalMart claims they're not "associates" and doesn't pay them squat now, they just have nothing to lose.

Even the “cold hard facts” about Oaxaca are open to interpretation. There was a confrontation between citizens and police, rocks were thrown (some reports say the police were throwing rocks, other that A policeman was throwing A rock), people were injured, one person may have been killed by the police and an undetermined number of people were “detained.”

AP reports

MEXICO CITY: The government of southern Oaxaca state vowed to host a popular Mexican folk festival despite violent protests in which about 19 people were injured and 40 arrested.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission also said Tuesday it would open an investigation into the previous day's clash in Oaxaca city, where angry crowds and police exchanged volleys of rocks and tear gas and protesters burned buses and cars.

Police were trying to keep the demonstrators from reaching a stadium where the Guelaguetza festival, which draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, is scheduled to be held July 23-30. The Guelaguetza was canceled last year due to protests by the same groups that clashed with police Monday.

Jeremy Schwartz, of the Austin (TX) American-Statesman, has an excellent -- even-handed -- report on the confrontation. Much of the rest of the press coverage, naturally, depends on who is doing the reporting, or rather, who is editing. The Times of India is reporting "Leftists Riot" while People's Daily says "Protests, Police Clash".

Within Mexico, El Universal is blaming Governor Ruiz for the violence, Cronica de Hoy is quoting PRD officials doing the same, and reports that the APPO is studying the situation, and does not want a confrontation. Nuevo Excelsior has the most extensive coverage (of the little I've been able to look at today) reporting that the police are combing the hospitals looking for people who might have been injured in the disturbance. They also report that the APPO and Seccion 22 are considering a boycott of the "official" Guelaguetza, but that for now everything is calm. If, for no other reason, than it's raining.

Everyone agrees that what is at issue, as it was last year, is the continued resistance to Ulises Ruiz' state government by the APPO and others, and the still unresolved issues surrounding Seccion 22 of the Teachers' Union. Last year's crackdown on dissent did nothing but stop the protests and, at the time, only covered over the appearance of dissent .

Tourists and foreign residents are – in a way – part of the local culture. Over the last several decades there haven't been any problems with dealing with the foreigners, who come to enjoy the region and sample its culture, and to sometimes become another piece in the mosaic. Historically, it has been multi-cultural and multi-ethnic for centuries and people have a “do your own thing” attitude. However, Guelaguetza is a symbol of the state goverment's cynical exploitation of the local culture on behalf of outside interests. What had been an authentic local custom – and very popular with the tourists – was taken over by corporate interests (sort of like Mardi Gras was in New Orleans), and the people themselves (or, maybe just the APPO) objected.

According to an APPO press statement released today, the police launched “a broad offense” against the people of Oaxaca who were celebrating their alternative and popular guelaguetza (an annual Oaxacan cultural festival) in the Guelaguetza auditorium. The APPO announced two days previous that it would hold an alternative cultural festival in the main Guelaguetza auditorium, located in the Fortin Mountain outside of the city.

Federal Preventive Police and State police surrounded the perimeter of the Guelaguetza auditorium in order to prevent people from entering the festival. A caravan heading to the festival, tailed by 10,000 people, arrived to the auditorium, and in that moment the police attacked the crowd with tear gas, rocks, sticks, whatever they had in their hands, as well as with unidentified explosive projectiles. People retreated, and the police advanced, beating and arresting people. Three photographers were reported to have been beaten. Countless others were tossed into the back of police pick up trucks with serious injuries.

For the moment the state and the municipal police continue a citywide operation in the streets of Oaxaca City, detaining people in the open. The military are reported to have surrounded the city on the highways.

Last year, the “official” Guelaguetza venue was burned down. This year, the APPO wanted a “people's Guelaguetza” which was stopped... another example of the Calderón Administration's willingness to use force to create “stability”. And, incidententally, to keep a competitor for the tourism pesos out of the market.

It's unfortunate, but it takes something like this to focus people on Oaxaca. While many have commented on the role of outsiders in the continued protests, or want to blame the problem on outsiders, I think the “real story” is the less reported exploitation by foreigners and others.

Guelaguetza is only a show.

The 1988 election held another lesson for AMLO. That year too, a leftist coalition candidate either lost (or had the election stolen, which is more probable, and confirmed by those involved in stealing it). Cardenas backers were likely to rebel, and only systematic changes in the political and social system prevented overt violence. However, PRD (the party that came out of Cardenas' coalition) members were killed, and there were serious frauds until it was able to make itself part of the political mainstream.

I hadn't expected much from AMLO's shadow government beyond a "think tank" (like Clouthier intended) and some legislative action. Cardenas made a tactical mistake by allying with the Zapatistas, who were anti-PRI, but -- as traditionalists, have more in common with PAN, and generally work against democratic leftists like PRD. By avoiding the anti-democratic groups, and by focusing on party-building and realistic political change, the out-of-the-spotlight AMLO may surprise us yet again.

I'll give AMLO this, too. He was locked out of the "mainstream media" for the last year, but he seems to have captured the geek vote... he's all over the internet... how much "real" support he has is hard to gauge, though I suspect his urban support is much higher than thought, especially outside of the North. Unlike the Zapatistas, he's not making a foreign appeal, so has been ignored by even the U.S. "progressives." But, given the undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Calderón regime, from peasant groups, the poor and organized labor, and not much reported problems in places like Puebla (where the Governor is about to be impeached), there may be more support outside Mexico City than we think.

I somewhat changed the article to fit U.S. style reporting for my translation of Rogelio Hernández López interview with the CND's Rafael Hernandez Estrada in today's Milenio.

Less than two weeks from now, we will mark the first anniversary of the Federal Elections. In the Capital, at Monterrey 50, headquarters of the Broad Progressive Front (FAP, for its initials in Spanish), Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador is presiding at a series of meetings with federal and local legislators, party leaders and civil servants. The “legitimate president” is accompanied by members of his cabinet and leaders of the National Democratic Convention (CND in Spanish), taking in and recording testimonies of electorial fruad, the general health of the movement and “doing everything possible to bring more people to the Zocalo on July 1 than showed up March 25”.

Does it mean anything? Rafael Hernandez Estrada, general coordinator of the CND thinks it does:

“In short, this will prove that the movement is not failing.” He is not in the least disturbed by criticism of the movement, listening between sips of coffee:

The insurgency did not force Felipe Calderón to resign; state coalitions were not organized; the FAP has not coalesced into a formal aliance; State and Municipal CND chapters have not been created; the “legitimate president's” cabinet has not so much been a people's government as a leadership forum for the die-hards in the parties; the citizen networks have all but disappeared; and resent polls and elections indicate a disasterous fall from the coalition of July 2. Are the hard-liners the only remaining force? not become nor consolidated the electoral alliance of Progressive the Extended front; state and municipal structures of the CND were not created either; the credencializados ones of the "legitimate government" are not people who outside other people's to the policy, but in fact are such militant of the allied parties and some others of their hard vote; the citizen networks instead of growing disappeared; the recent surveys and elections indicate a vertiginous fall of the preferences of votes that obtained the 2 of July... They are remaining only with the duros?

Rafael Hernandez is non-plussed. As in the CND meetings, he does not take notes, but considers each question separately.

“Look, in all the internal meetings which I have attended, Andrés Manuel has insisted on a balanced representation – the CND, the FAP, the legitimate cabinet and the PRD. Hernandez Estrada himself is also a leader in the PRD's New Left faction.

"Andrés concluded this year, after meetings with tens of thousands of people in more than 500 municipalities that the decicision we made last July 2 was correct.

"First, never before in the history of Mexico have so many women and men expressed their desire to change the political system, and mobilized to do so. That is extraordinary.

"Secondly, Andrés Manuel emphasizes that under the circumstance, confirmation of the electorial frauds could lead to of generalized violence and the possibilities of virulent confrontations. The movement would have been at risk if we had succumbed to the temptation, and had to be channeled into other activities.

"Thirdly, as we all know, the way we chose to channel the people's dissatisfaction was to create a permanent people's front. The Broad Progressive Front has been consolidated in the legislature, and a growing coalition of unions, farmers and social organizations are contributing to the agenda for legal change. What we have to accept, though, is that we haven't organized everywhere. It's very difficult to establish an electorial coalition, as several of the Parties in the Front have found. But, for the most part, there is a common agenda within the Congress. The FAP will be making announcements in August regarding State organizations. That will be extremely important. W

"In fourth place , we have begun to construct a wide base for a Democratic National Convention. Starting September 16, when the civil resistence began, it provides a permanent structure for those who do not recognize Felipe Calderón as President, instead seeing Andrés Manuel as the legitimate president.. We have surveys from the capital and several important cities where 70 percent of people describe Calderón as “illegitimate.”

"Out of the CND, we have been making progress in forming operating committees in all 32 States, and in 800 munipalities.

"Fifth, the legitimate cabinet continues to fulfill it's minimum expectations: generating public policy and alternative proposals; working with the FAP to coordinate legal strategies. There have been real gains from the close collaboration between the CND, the FAP and the legitimate government. To convert the movement into a national shift to the left, we will continue to function as a shadow government, systematically questioning the legimacy and governability of the de facto regime, and bringing up the proposals such as those Andres Manuel proposed for assisting senior citizens... fighting the sales tax on food and medicine for example. “

Asked how much weight we should still give to AMLO as the leader of the “movement”, and whether the movement won't shrink to just the die-hards as people accept the electorial results, Hernández responds to the first, “quite a bit. Much,”

“The press has been suggesting that AMLO is imposing decisions on the left. I'd argue that his persistence and vision has been the essential factor in what the movement has accomplished so far. He is the leader. All we know it. And if he were as negative as many write, many already would have gone away. There have been no desertions by those who began this struggle, nor of any of the parties or organizations. We'll see if it's just the die-hards after we desseminate the data and testimony about the frauds, and when the people come to the Zocalo on the 31^st.

Hardy Brown, the publisher of Black Voice News On-Line (Riverside, California), picked up a deeper, more serious, undercurrent to the dissing of Ms. Smith, one I never really thought about until I read his excellent editorial on the event.

This booing of Miss Universe has not sit well with many Blacks who have called and voiced outrage against the booing as well as the illegal immigration issue currently before congress. Some have expressed opinions like if that is the way some feel then we should finish the "Berlin Wall" on the Mexico border. Some have said if they feel this way about Black people now what do you think they will feel once they become a citizen. Some expressed reservations that many Black have expressed in the past and that is many Mexicans want to vote and only for their own. Some voiced concerns over the fact that many of the Black elected officials have remained silent on this issue and believe Blacks will suffer greatly from this legalization of between 12 and 20 million illegal citizens.

Brown is the dean of black newspaper publishers, and knows a hell of a lot more American race issues than I do, so I've got to give his words serious consideration. I didn't pay much attention to the contest anyway, other than noticing that the out-going (abdicating?) Miss Universe rode a bike with Mexico City's mayor one morning to publicize the city's alternative transportation campaign.

Until I read his Brown's editorial, it never crossed my mind that the Panamanian born Ms. Smith was presented as a black contestant. Nor am I certain that the Mexican audience saw her as one. The Miss Universe on a bike, Zuleika Rivera is Puerto Rican. It's a given folks from the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America are at least of some African ancestry, and no one really thinks much about it. An African-American teacher working in Merida once told me she was more often taken for Brazilian, or assumed to be from Veracruz (until they heard her gringo accent).

Mexicans don't seem particularly bothered by African ancestry, and I've written before on some Afro-Mexican heroes: Morelos, Alvarez and Vicente Guerrero. The "go to guy" on Afro-Mexicans, Ted Vincent, has written extensively on others, including Lazaro Cardenas, whose grandson, Lazaro Cardenas Batel -- the present governor of Michoacán -- is married to Mayra Coffigny, an Afro-Cuban.

When Cardenas Batel was a candidate for Governor in 2002, his PAN opponent tried to make an issue of Coffingy, who took an unusually activist role in her spouse's campaign. Not because she is black (though the New York Times reported it as "racism") but because she had been a member of the Cuban Communist Party and -- the PANista appealing to the conservative Catholic vote -- because Cubans have strange and unMexican religious practices. He may very well have been ham-handedly trying to use a code phrase for "black", but it didn't play out very well, and only the U.S. press saw it that way. In the Mexican press, the guy was a joke. And lost overwhelmingly -- running against a Cardenas in Michoacán is like running against a Kennedy in Massachusetts.

An Ecuadorian I knew -- being an extremely handsome guy -- was used to receiving a lot of attention from foreigners in the gay friendly Zona Rosa cafe where he worked. He found it highly amusing that a would be gringo admirer tried wooing him with tales of his love of ... and admiration for ... Haitian! By color he was "negro," though his face was Indigenous and his build the classic Greco-Roman European ideal... but to some silly gringo, all black, non-English speakers must be Haitians. To himself, and to his clients, his "raza" was Ecudoriano (and, if it matters, his sexual orientation was "straight").

Our English-speaking, Protestant culture makes racial distinctions that are unnatural to "la raza" (which I dearly wish right-wing commentators would look up in a decent Spanish dictionary. It means "peoples," and not "race."). Mexican-American racism is an unfortunate by-product of assimilating to OUR ways and attitudes, at least partially.

None of which means that Mexicans -- or Latin Americans in general -- are totally and blissfully unawares of "race", just that its not seen the same way it is in English-speaking countries.

Certainly, in places where there is a clear color difference, like Venezuela, or Cuba, race matters, though it's only a part of class consciousness. The darker people tend to be the poorer people, and -- according to the bigots, the deservedly poorer. Opposition propaganda in Venezuela makes no bones about suggesting Hugo Chavez -- because he is black -- is subhuman. And I've criticized the Cuban government for having a nearly all-white leadership. But, then again, the folks who were on top tend to stay on top, and it's still a huge deal in this country when a non-white person -- Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Condaleeza Rice -- reaches a responsible leadership position.

In Mexico, for historical reasons, there are very few identifiably "black" Mexicans. Some, like in Veracruz or Tabasco State are blacker than others, but outside of a small community in Guerrero State, and more recent immigrants from the Caribbean or Brazil (or Africa... I'll come to that in a minute), nobody you can say is black in our understanding of the term. The Guerrero Afro-Mexicans do claim discrimination, and do make a good case, but the discrimination is based more on their being an isolated, rural, under-served community with the same complaints of similar isolated pockets of rural indigenous communities (which the Mexican statistician consider the Guerrero community... who are said to be descended from runaway slaves during the War of Independence).

Of course, I can't say that persons of African descent are immune to discrimination. I lived in a Mexico City neighborhood that has always attracted foreign immigrants. Spanish refugees from Franco, Jews fleeing Hitler, Argentines and Chileans during the 70s and now, Brazilians, Jamaicans, Cubans, Russians (!), Congolese, Kenyans and even a few Ethiopians. One of my neighbors made a few remarks to me about the "bad Negroes" in the area, but to this day I'm not sure if he was talking about the Jamaicans who rented my apartment before I did, or blacks in general. He'd had a problem with the Jamaicans who apparently were unkind to his little dogs, and got a bad reputation in the neighborhood for hanging out on the street smoking marijuana and drinking beer (respectable Mexicans smoke marijuana inside or at the park!). His dislike did extend to the Congolese guy who ran the Internet cafe down the street, but if I heard anything about the Africans, it had to do with their relative exoticism.

When Mexicans are using racist language, you're more likely to hear references to Indians than anything. I've told the story many times of hearing a very European looking drunk called "indio sucio" by very Aztec looking people expressing disgust not with his "race", but with his filthy, low-class ways (Basically, the term was used the way people in the U.S. use "white trash"... declasse, in-bred, stupid people).

I once tried following up the story of a British doctor who claimed she was pulled off a bus in the Yucatan because she is black. She very well could have been pulled off a bus, but it may have been that she was taken for Belizian or Honduran, and suspected of being either a smuggler or an illegal alien. And, I had serious doubts about the doctor when she started making claims about the same treatment in Atlanta and California. They could be true, but I had nothing to go on.

Black foreigners working in Mexico have told me they thought they were more likely to be questioned by immigration than I was, but those of us with mostly European features just don't stand out from the crowd the way an Ethiopian or Kenyan does.

But, Hardy is responding to not Latin American, but North American concerns. His readers raises serious, and important concerns about African-Americans and Mexican-Americans.

Race certainly matters in the United States. Though writing about his more common "Indian" heritage than multi-racialism, Californian Richard Rodriguez catches the essential difference between Mexican and U.S. concepts of race when he writes in Days of Obligation (1992, Penguin):

In New England the European and the Indian drew apart to regard each other with suspicion over centuries. Miscegenation was a sin against Protestant individualism. In Mexico the European and Indian consorted. The ravishment of fabulous Tenochtitlán ended in a marriage of blood -- a "cosmic race," the Mexico philosopher José Vasconcelos has called it.

I always feel obliged add a "footnote" about Vasconcelos. He ended his career as an apologist for Hitler and was a thoroughgoing anti-Semite. In Raza cosmica, though, Vasconcelos was speaking of the spiritual value of Latin American "race mixing" in general, and not just the majority Euro-Indigenous Mex-Mix.

Our culture... and the Black Voice News readers... values racial identity. When Hardy reports that his readers worry that "many Mexicans want to vote and only for their own," I'm wondering if this is any different than ethnic politics as it's been played out in American elections forever.

And certainly, our sense of racial identity is used to divide people who otherwise share class interests... keeping poor blacks and poor whites from voting for their common interests in the former Confederacy for example.

I speculated elsewhere (privately) that African-American fears of Mexican immigrants (and Mexican fears of African-Americans) are manipulated for economic reasons. The infamous Memín Pinguín incident was more than a little convenient for the Bush Administration, seeking to head off a possible "black-brown" opposition.

T here's no getting around the fact that Memín is offensive to African-Americans. The NAACP was understandably outraged when it a Mexican domestic postage stamp featured the popular cartoon character (a Cuban boy with the exaggerated features common in 1930s African-American cartoon characters) was brought to their attention.

The Mexican Ambassador at the time couldn't understand the issue, pointing out that Speedy Gonzales is thoroughly enjoyed by Mexicans. Mexican-Americans may find him an offensive stereotype, but Mexicans love el raton rapido. I was on a long bus ride where the driver was asked to replace the video he'd popped in (a really awful low-budget cop movie, with a lot of gore and sex) because there were children on the bus. He replaced the video with one of old cartoons... everybody likes Bugs Bunny and Pepe le Pew, but the whole bus started cheering and applauding when Speedy came on.

The upshot of the Memín affair was that Jesse Jackson DEMANDED a meeting with President Fox -- and got one. Jackson is no fool, but I think he was used. To the U.S., it was presented as a righteous response to racism. To Mexicans, it played as another gringo interfering in Mexican affairs, and -- perhaps worse -- another in a long line of meddling puritanical northerners. Not standing up to demands from a private citizen of the U.S. was the start of Fox's skid in Mexican opinion polls.

For the Bush administration, it was an easy victory: Under assault for its own racial and class insensitivities -- and faced with the very real prospect of an organized push by civil rights organizations and labor unions to organize multi-racial class-based actions, presidential press comments to the press, and demands for a response from the Mexican government, and expressed outrage from a U.S. Ambassador who'd never shown any interest in his career in African-American issues is disinguenous.

The irony is that the people who booed Rachel Smith were wealthy, well-educated people, unlikely to emigrate. They have probably read Vasconcelos, but still treat their dark-skinned maid as a lesser being. It's the dark-skinned maids relations, who probably read Mimín who leave.

The tragedy is that they go to a country where race matters very much, and where sophisticated, thoughtful people feel a need to react to the symptoms and not the disease -- racism, inequality and poverty. And puritanism.

From Delhi News Agency:

NEW DELHI: India and Mexico are all set to sign a bilateral investment protection agreement (BIPA) on Monday that will enable India Inc to access North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)- a trading block comprising of Mexico, the US and Canada.

The agreement, for which the Union Cabinet gave its approval on May 18, is expected to be signed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram and the visiting Mexican Finance Minister M Eduardo Sojo Garza-Aldape, sources said.

Mexico, being part of Nafta and having a large number of important partners including the EU, offers good opportunity to Indian companies and enhanced market access through investments and joint ventures, said an official source.

NAFTA, created in 1994, has become a powerful trade body with strong trading relations with European, African and Latin American markets.

Over the years, India has maintained good relations with Mexico. Bilateral trade between the two countries has increased to USD 1.5 billion from USD 251 million in 1999.

Among others, Indian exports to Mexico are engineering goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, gems and jewellery, and textiles, while Mexican exports to India are dominated by crude and petrochemicals.

Mexico's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated at USD 768 billion and per capita is around USD 8,000.

Investors of Indian origin have pumped in over USD 1.6 billion over 60 business ventures in Mexico, apart from recent joint ventures in pharmaceuticals and IT sectors by Indian companies.

This looks like a win-win. The Mexican economy is still dependent on that one huge northern market. And can't compete on labor. The U.S. and Canada continue to prefer doing business with the People's Republic of China, with it's non-existent labor laws and "captive" work force. And, for political reasons, the U.S. is trying everything it can to make it difficult to use Mexican labor in their own country.

In agriculture, the hugely subsidized corporate exports from the U.S. and genetically modified crops from the U.S. have both been contentious. To the shock of U.S. agricultural negotiators, Mexico signed an agreement with Pakistan, which wasn't on anyone's radar.

I hadn't heard before this about an Indian deal, but it makes sense. India has become a major supplier of off-shore services to the U.S. and Canada, but hasn't been doing much in the way of goods. Coming in through Mexico, like the Chinese goods come in through the U.S., will give them the NAFTA market.

And, there has always been some Mexico-India trade (not a lot but some -- where do you think the Indians got their chilies from anyway?).

Both have a middle-class without the money to spend on the accouterments who want and need goods that aren't quite the same as those sold in the richer countries. I can see a good market for things other than Mexican petrochemicals ahead, or in Mexico, for Indian built goods.

India has the advantage of being an English-speaking community, but until now has not been able to sell in the largest and richest English speaking market. By working through Mexico, it will have access.

India and Mexico are both highly dependent on remittances, and here, I think is the real advantage. The Indians have turned the "brain drain" to their advantage, sending abroad doctors and engineers, or offering the services of well-educated people at home. Everyone knows about the Indian telephone services. Mexico, being Spanish-speaking really can't compete for telemarketing (though it is the preferred location for Spanish-speaking markets, their only competitor being Argentina, and no one like Argentine accents). However, Mexican accountants and data crunchers and programmers have no need to use English particularly, and learning to use well-educated emigres... or invest in "off-shore" services could be a valuable new industry for the Mexicans.

Nothing was heard from the workers, who were whisked off to the Texas concentration camps ("Ritmo" and T. Don Hutto ).

WHO-TV, Channel 13 Des Moines reporter Kerry Kavanaugh and photojournalist Brad Argo, managed to track down some of the deportees, most of whom were from Villachuato, Estado de Mexico.

...many believe there are more people from Villachuato in Marshalltown, than here in Villachuato.

"Well there are a lot of places we could go, Marshalltown is one of the places that has a lot of people from Villachuato," Alvico says.

Alvico recounts the day of the raid, "Everyone felt really bad because they were leaving their families there and everything they had earned. I left my home, my things."

...

We wanted to see who is working. We traveled just outside of Villachuato to "el campo" or the fields. That's where we find 16-year-old Fermin Laguna picking strawberries. Laguna says he dropped out of school to work full time in "el campo." Laguna says his reason is simple, "...so that I can give my family food, and support my family."

On this day in "el campo", about a dozen people are picking strawberries. You might consider *them the lucky ones. Today they have a job. Laguna says he gets paid based on how many boxes of strawberries he fills. On a good day, he makes 120 pesos, or $12. On a slow day he makes 60 pesos, or $6 for an entire days' work.

"It's not worth it, but there's nothing else," Laguna says.

All of the people we met say "nothing" leaves them with one alternative.

"We're planning on going back," says Leticia Cabrera-Rodriguez. In fact, most people we talked to in Mexico say they want to return to the United States someday, with or without papers.

The two part series is on the TV channel's website.

decades between Disney and a beverage maker that copied the hot-headed cartoon character for its logo in 1940.

Pascual Boing, known in Mexico for tropical fruit drinks like mango and guayaba, is ditching its old logo based on Walt Disney Co.'s sailor-suited duck in favor of a rapper-style duck with spiky feathers and a blue baseball cap worn backward.

The updated character still will be known as Pato Pascual (Pascual Duck) and the beverage cooperative already has printed the new logo on some of its packaging. Alfonso Sanchez, No. 2 on the Pascual Boing board, said the company was replacing logos on its trucks and staff uniforms with the new design.

“The dispute hasn't been decided one way or the other but we wanted to bring this face, which is years old, up to date,” he said. “The new one is similar but younger.

(San Diego Union Tribune)

Pascual isn't your average soft-drink company. Started as a bottled water company, Refrescos Pascuals first CEO, Rafael Jimenéz, gave the finger to gringos when he ripped off Betty Boop and Donald Duck in 1940 to use as logos on his very Mexican soft drinks... in flavors you won't find outside the Mexican aisle of your supermarket... guava, mango, tamarindo, mandarino... Betty, radically modified into “Lulu” still graces bottles, but maybe the new wise-guy duck fits.

Pascual was part of Mexico's push for import substitution. If a product was available in the United States, then it was national policy to try to provide a similar product (even if lesser quality) in Mexico. Sometimes, this meant there was only one brand of something like canned soup (Herdez), but at least the Mexican consumer had the same kind of stuff available.

It also meant that Mexican products were available in packaged form. Maybe now in a few supermarkets catering t