Mexico

[Arab Nights (imported)]

For some reason Mexico seemed to be the epicenter of my work this past year, plus some work in other times. Here is a collage of thoughts and observations

Mexico has this incredible heritage from the colonial era. If you go to – for example - Guanajuato, the architecture and arts will just blow you away. One time I was hiking thru the boonies there and came across this diversion dam made of carved stone. It was one of those little things where you can stand there and just appreciate the craftsmanship. I asked my helper when it was made and he said a long time ago because people did not do that anymore. Guanajuato supplied a large percentage of the world’s silver for centuries. I was amused that the Spanish built castle walls around mines, all made of shaped stones. One wall is even in the form of a king’s crown. Now that is decorative stonework! The Spanish response to wealth was to install a system of intricate record keeping. They put up walls and kept detailed account of the people and things that went in and the people and things who went out. I think that culture has carried over to today. I needed an alarm clock. I was taken to large department store and ended up in the section with alarm clocks. I explained what I wanted and the salesman showed me a glass case with the alarm clocks inside. I asked if he could not show me one and he explained that he was not allowed to take the clocks out of the case. What he did was write up the order on a slip of paper and told me to take it to a window, which I did and paid. They entered the information in their system and gave me another document to take to another window. I went to that window, which was like the inventory control window. They entered the data, I paid and they told me to go to another window. At that window they gave me the alarm clock. Then when I left I had to stop and show the old security guard the clock so he could enter the serial numbers in his dog eared book of what went out the door. That whole system is being challenged by Wal-Mart where you have to put your stuff in a locker as you enter, get what you want, pay and collect your stuff from the locker as you leave.

Mexico has turned into a mining country. Mining has now surpassed agriculture in economic value. How that happened is an interesting story.

A few decades ago Mexico was looked at as a land of old colonial silver mines. It had been well prospeced (the old time Mexicans were really good prospectors. If it stuck out of the ground and you could make money working it, they probably found it). There is a quote from an American engineer/mining executive in the past who, in the opinionated style of engineers, stated absolutely that there was no gold in Mexico. The reality is that little gold had been found by politicized establishment and lumbering corporate behemoths organized in the style of the department store where I bought the alarm clock.

All of that was absolute bullshit and was a product of the political system and certain educated mentalities and not of reality. Take a look at this graph. You might have to cut and paste the URL.

http://www.24hgold.com/english/stat_cou ... 0of%20gold %20production&pays=Mexico&deid=24470B1670

Notice that 1990 is a good point to pin a major change. What happened is that Mexico changed its mining law. Before it required that a Mexican national own 51% of everything. That pretty much condemned Mexico mining to be in the hands of old bureaucratic companies. The 1990 change allowed foreign ownership of mineral resources. That opened the country to every wild assed Canadian promoter who wanted to be the first millionaire from Moose Jaw. Mexico does have certain advantages. It shares the same time zones as Canada and it is not that far away (both Vancouver, British Columbia and Bogota, Colombia are about the same distance from Toronto). As the graph shows, the change from encouraging new ideas and using new technologies has been astounding. Mexico now annually produces tons of gold, no matter what that opinionated American manager/engineer thought. The same thing has happened with other metals like copper and silver. Note that foreign ownership does not mean not paying taxes. The last number I saw showed companies paying close to a billion dollars annually in taxes.

This has, of course, translated to jobs. One of the more interesting vignettes for me personally was at the historical mining town of Concepcion del Oro. It is like going to Virginia City, Nevada or Deadwood, South Dakota. There is still a functioning town there. At the time of day that we start work, there is only one restaurant open which was like a northern Nevada Basque restaurant, but for breakfast. Thankfully one of the old lady waitresses fell for me at first sight to everyone’s amusement, so we always got a good breakfast. Concepcion del Oro was one of those old incredibly productive gold mining areas which have now been mined out. Except it has not been. Everything that sticks out of the ground has been followed and mined out. And then came the wild assed Canadians with new techniques wondering what did not stick out of the ground. Suffice it to say that there is now work there. We gave a ride to three guys hitchhiking to get there and look for work. One of the guys in my crowd made the comment that he had seen that before. You get an old historic town with people living there, you rejuvenate it and not many of the locals apply for work. The workers come from other places. They are the type to move for work as opposed to the type who will not apply when work is in front of them.

This also translates into kids having a model for a different life than being a rural paisano and living life in the same village. I worked for a bit out of a village of about 500 people in the Sierra Madre. In the last five years there have been four students from that village who watched mining develop around them and wanted something different. They are poor, brown and speak Spanish, but they are no different than I was as a teenager in a small Idaho farming town. I wanted out and they did also. There is no high school in the village, so they had to stay with relatives in a town 2.5 hours away. Then they had to go further away to college, which they are doing and are now getting ready to graduate and be professionals. Four kids out of a village of 500. I just keep being impressed in the world that the poor and unwashed can surprise you with their ambition and intelligence if you can show them some kind of path to a different life.

By the way, there is so much marijuana in that part of Mexico that it self-seeds on bulldozed roads and pads. I have not been there during the harvest season, but I have heard that the towns are full of serious armed men purchasing the harvest. That pot is to fill American and Canadian demand. When you stop and think about the sheer volume coming across the border, you have to ask how that is possible.

The obvious negative in Mexico is the violence. Most of it is tied to the drug trade. I can think of several examples working there where you could take the right fork and have no problems, but the left fork was asking for it. Some Mexicans I worked with were talking about driving down a highway and there was a control point. Law enforcement in Latin America is more in the form of control points and less in the form of patrol cars. Anyway, they stopped and it was not law enforcement. It was a drug ring which had established a control point on a public highway. They did not bother anyone on regular business, but were there to keep other cartels out.

One thing I always really enjoyed in Mexico is the evening life. The day in Mexico starts later than ours. I have been in small towns where the streets at deader at 8 am than where I live at 5 am. But once they get going, they keep going. Dinner often is after dark. I always enjoyed dinner in Mexican restaurants, especially those where you dine on the street and people watch. There are some places like downtown Durango which are Disneyland-like magical. That has not stopped, but people generally don’t stay out after 9 to avoid problems. They love their fiestas and dances. But now that has been scaled back. I have been in small towns who quit their weekly dances because of gunmen who terrorize the town. Now you do not leave town before 7 or 8 am and try to be back by 5 pm to avoid problems.

I like stopping at a chain called OXXO (like Circle K or 7-11) for coffee. We were coming back from one place and my usual OXXO had been torched. Rumor was that the owner did not pay protection. The problems for individuals are that you can get caught in the crossfire (which happened to one guy I know) and there are a lot of two bit assholes taking advantage of the breakdown in society to rob and terrorize. One of the saddest stories was of this little town in northern Mexico where they loaded up their best students in the school to take them to an awards ceremony. They had the kids in the back of a pickup and some asshole threw a hand grenade and killed all the students.

On the other hand, the pistoleros (pistol packing hoods) can be useful from the individual’s standpoint. One Mexican I enjoyed working with took me to his home to introduce his wife and kids. We stopped to see a neighbor, who is a pistolero. It was explained to me that you can take your complaints to the police and courts, but nothing much will happen. You can pay a pistolero and something will happen. I know a lady where I live who is illegal, but who never stops working and pays her bills. In fact, she even was able to save money and hire a pistolero to beat up her husband (who had beaten her) when he was in Mexico. When he called her and wanted to come back to the US, she told him to come on. Then she called the Border Patrol to tell them when and where to pick him up for spouse abuse. He is in prison now. Tell that story to a Mexican and they will crack up.

I did see two interesting changes from the Mexico that always has been.

One is that I started to see that the highways were not lined with trash. I asked about that and was told that there now is a push in the media not to litter. Sort of a ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ kind of thing. It must be working.

There other is that I find it is fairly common that somebody will recognize you as being from the US and come up to talk because they had been there (usually illegally). In chatting with those people, for the first time in my life I have found people who now figure that they have a better chance for a good life in Mexico than in the United States. Their economy is growing a lot more than ours and their system is changing to allow opportunities to people of ability instead of solely people of birth. I am kind of leaning towards believing the new reality that illegal immigration will drop a lot, not just because of the anemic American economy, but because people see a better future being legal in Mexico than in the shadows illegally in the US. That is providing the violence comes under control.

It is interesting talking with them about how they got in the US. Things obviously have tightened up, but they still get thru. Some took this really long two day – one night hike across remote desert. Others found a guide who took them parallel to the highway. They say they could look down on the border control points as they walked along. It kind of surprises me, but they can pay $5 – 7,000 cash for a coyote guide, end up someplace in the US and work for minimum wage and live 6 or 8 in a rented apartment and still come out ahead after two years with money regularly sent home. They live on cash earned, not credit cards. The coyotes have even gotten to the point of doing marketing and going back to the hometown of guys they safely deliver and selling themselves based on safely delivering a neighbor.

The ones I talk to in Mexico obviously are the types who come to the US for a couple of years, return to Mexico, return to the US etc. etc. What I see when I am home are the types who do manual labor. They might or might not return to Mexico. But they are the image I have of Mexicans when I am home. When I am in Mexico, I work with college educated people who are pretty much the equal of college educated people in the US as best I can tell. Whereas in the US I might go to mass and see a roughhewn Mexican with his daughter in his lap, in Mexico I can walk into a room and see a bunch of Mexicans tapping away on their laptops. Obviously there is no one such thing as a Mexican just as there is no one such thing as an American.

The one personality type that exists in Mexico that I have not seen so much in other countries is the joker. The guy who goes thru life cracking jokes. One of the most productive and enjoyable days in my life was working with two Mexicans and one was a joker. We busted ass thru the day while the joker made a running commentary about how the other guy should launch a career in politics. He laid out a life plan for him thru the day, which was based on working for the party that he did not like. Another joker at another project made the comment once that our cook, a young large woman, was a chuleta (pork chop – a lot of meat and a little bone). I came back and started calling my wife Chuletita (little pork chop) which cracked her up. She accused me of talking like a Mexican – which was true in this case.

Northern Mexico had a terrible drought this year. I really hated seeing some guy in Durango state herding a couple of cattle out across the land and watch them, ribs clearly showing, trying to get to the few shoots of grass that poke out of the ground between the cacti. At the end of one day as we drove in to town, we passed a pasture with vultures covering two bloated cattle carcasses. The mayor works for us and made a joke about the vultures having a banquet, but the sight still put me in a really black mood. As we drove by, a pickup went the other way with the cab and bed full of people and piñatas obviously heading for a party. The thought crossed my mind that the perfect picture of Mexico would be a pickup full of people heading for a party with cattle carcasses in the background covered by vultures.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Just wait until our Canadian friends from Moose Jaw see this.

River

[moi621 (imported)]

Mexico, like Russia

has come so close to "getting it right" and

lost it.

I am a Zapataista. For years with my Populist, Progressive attitudes.

Villa was just Mexican mafia (see the image of the car he was gunned down)

Emiliano Zapata was the last great leader of the Mexican people.

"My" Mexicans tell me Commander (?) Marco claims to be descended from Zapata.

Viva Zapata

Viva La Revolution

Viva la tierra redistribution!

Moi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYOWJUT5BNs

[devi (imported)]

Mexico, Mexico, Mexico...

Always puts out the very worst movies ever. I've NEVER seen or heard of a good Mexican movie. A lot of old people liked Cantiflas, as to why, I'd never know.

And yet they continually put out the best telenovelas (soap operas) ever.

And that my friend explains Mexico in a nutshell. They stink. They can really stink. But yet, they can be the best, truly the best.

Cumbias originated from Columbia (actually French West Africa if you want to be technical) but nobody does them better than Mexico. And yet so many Mexicans I know of listen to constant Um-pah music (polkas). -Drives me NUTS!!!

[Arab Nights (imported)]

I have been doing some work in west Africa. Guess where the soap operas are from? Yup.Mexico. Dubbed in English.

[devi (imported)]

So far I've only missed three episodes "Amor Bravío" of 90 something. It's already over in Mexico. We're behind. They've already had the grand finale, not just there but other areas of the world. Sometimes I get hints of what's going to happen later on but I try not to cheat or read too much about it over the web. -Spoils the fun. It has been one of the better telenovelas so far. Perhaps, I don't need to know Spanish but... -Ah yes, but I do. -In order to watch novelas!!!

[Sweetpickle (imported)]

Mexico is government by the 1%