Romney - Keeping Close to His Mexican Roots (Sort Of...)

Ohio coal miners say they were forced to attend a Mitt Romney rally - without pay.  Come on, Mitt.  In Mexico - home of your forefathers and many of your cousins - the ruling PRI party had more class than that. When they would have employers bus in workers and force them to attend rallies the workers could count on being paid as well as a sandwich and a soda or beer.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/28/coal-miners-say-they-were-forced-to-attend-romney-event-and-donate/#.UDzUbVtgKh4.reddit

2012 Election - the PRI IS Back.

Reports of hormiga style vote stealing (a few hundred here, a few hundred there), armed robbery of ballot boxes, mis-counting, bribery, and an interesting hacking job by anonymous showing that AMLO won has the outcome of the 2012 election a little more up in the air than the pundits in New York and D.C. are reporting.  Hold on to your hats folks - if there is a shred of justice left in electoral politics in Mexico this SHOULD get interesting.

Quakes Shake More than Plates in Lat Am History

Looting is being reported in the press as Haiti grinds on into another day of paralysis. Campus Progress has a nice article on how the "looting" is being played up in Haiti and makes a great comparison to New Orleans after Katrina.

Still, should the folks in Haiti start getting a little grumpy about the paralysis of the central government in the face of a disaster, it wouldn't be the first time. Citizens are willing to put up with a lot if basic security is provided (security in Foucaltian sense of being the neutral response to incidents that harm the population). When that basic security is absent, things can get sticky. A reminder of the three biggees for Latin America: The San Juan quake of 1944 catapulted Juan Domingo Peron in to the spotlight in Argentina; the 1972 quake in Nicaragua highlighted for the world the limits and depravity of the Somoza regime; the 1985 quake in D.F. not only showcased the corruption, limitations, and callusness of the PRI but it also created a plethora of neighborhood organizations that helped propel the capital into the hands of the PRD in later years.

Is Haiti in for a lot more pain beyond the immediate effects of the quake? Possible. On the other hand, what would any sort of shake up yield but to put different people in charge of total poverty?

The Baby War (or fetus war, or embryo war, or sperm and egg war...)

This week the Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate Spanish politicians for their vote legalizing abortion in Spain up to 14 weeks. At the same time, back in Mexico the Archbishop of Acapulco, Felipe Aguirre Franco, has admitted to entering into agreements with the PRI to go after both abortion and contraception in Mexico.

Let's remember that just a generation ago under Echeverria the Catholic bishops tacitly supported the birth control option for the poor. Heck, the PRI even offered birth control in the CONASUPO subsidized markets for a time. For the nation that gave the world the birth control pill and pretty freely embraced it in the late '70s it is a real whiplash situation to see even the PRI working against contraception and abortion.

However, I was interested to see a study by a Columbia University public health professor (Jennifer Hirsch) in which she demonstrates that rural Mexican women (the group that was the most resistant or misinformed about contraception in the 1970s) is using contraception and finding that it meshes perfectly well for them and their Catholicism. If the PRI and the PAN are gunning to make this a big political issue in 2012 it may be more of a flop than a flyer if Hirsch's study holds true.

At any rate this seems like a full court push against contraception and abortion in Latin America, as one of my colleagues here in Texas got a full sermon on abortion and contraception in Mexico in his East Texas parish on Miguel Pro's feast day a couple weeks ago.

And Also With You, Legislature.

The Archdiocese of Mexico under Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera rebuked the legislature this last week, attacking what he sees as a real lack of accountability on the part of the legislature.

"...el Congreso es una de las instituciones menos sujeta al control de los ciudadanos y con menos rendición de cuentas sobre sus trabajos y responsabilidades, de tal forma que pueden realizar o no su tarea sin que sea posible un reclamo efectivo."

It is also one of the institutions "menos sujeta al control" of the PAN - and I have to wonder if that isn't what has El Cardinal in a "mood." I don't recall hearing this sort of talk when Fox had to deal with an unruly legislature - and no surprise that Fox was not a favorite of the Church PANistas and FCH is.

On the other hand, I like this "accountable to the people" talk coming out of Cardinal Rivera: keep it up for all legislatures - and their accompanying presidents.

La Luz Del Mundo - Giving the People What they Want

Considering La Luz Del Mundo church in Guadalajara, Mexico is engaged in its largest religious festival of the year, my entries on the group have doubled traffic to the blog. I thought I could contribute something to the discussion of the highly controversial group by at least creating a basic info entry (as long as you all promise to still buy the book - hahaha). Anyway, it boggles my mind how this powerful and fast-growing institution has essentially been flying under the radar of Mexicanists for decades. However, as Schmidt points out in Fragments of a Golden Age, Mexican historians have hardly given religion in the modern period much of a look - let alone non-Catholic or non-traditional practice.

Founder: Eusebio Joaquin Gonzales. Eusebio joined the Iglesia Cristiana Espiritual in 1924 in Torreon (following his wife) and later became a disciple of barefoot self-proclaimed prophets Saulo and Silas. During this period Eusebio claimed a vision from god in which his name was changed to Aaron and he was charged with starting a "new dispensation" of time marking a new pact between God and man - essetially a restoration of primitive Christianity.

Major Moments in early LLDM history:
1) Eusebio's arrival in Guadalajara on the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1926 and his dedicatory prayer for that city. It sets up LLDM as directly in competition for not only spirituality but also mexicanidad.
2) 1930 Aaron introduces heirarchy into the previously loosely associated pentecostal church. Begins taking on the more formal structures of similar neo-pentecostal groups.
3) 1931 Santa Cena introduced. A formal celebration of the body and blood of Christ. Today members of LLDM gather on August 14th on the birthday of Aaron (about 250,000) in the Hermosa Provincia neighborhood of Guadalajara to take the sacrament of the holy supper: Another challenge to the ceremony of Catholicism. They also have competing ceremonies for newborn babies and watching over the dead.
4) 1933/34. LLDM begins forming their first community of LLDM members on Calle 46 in Guadalajara.
5) 1939. Growth and outside pressure move the group to build their second somewhat exclusive neighborhood.
6) 1942/43. A major schism within LLDM splits away hundreds of members of the group in central Mexico, but also leaves Aaron firmly in charge. He baptizes himself and is proclaimed an apostle of Jesus Christ.
7) 1953/54. LLDM purchases a hacienda east of Guadalajara and obtains an exception from the municipio to turn it into a development. The neighborhood is the famous Hermosa Provincia (named after the reference to Zion of Psalms 48). It becomes closely associated with the PRI through the FOPJ, or neighborhood organization associations of the ruling party.
8) 1964. Aaron dies and his son Samuel is proclaimed the new apostle. The church enters into an expansive phase of growth.

Thos are just a hand full of early highlights. The church claims 1.5 million members in Mexico (though only a fraction of that indicate such a denomination on the census). It also claims 5 million members globally. It has followers in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania in addition to the Americas.

The group has been both highly praised for literacy and poverty campaigns as well as highly controversial for centralized control, allegations of child abuse, improper use of funds, and possible tight links to the PRI.

Technocrats vs. Dinosaurs - in the PRD

This morning's Excelsior has Jesus Ortega, head of the PRD, taking another step back from AMLO. "He has his plans, we have ours." Hmmm.... Well, it seems those plans will include wunderkind Marcelo Ebrard, of whom Ortega says:

“Marcelo ha hecho su mejor esfuerzo; está haciendo un gran trabajo y con buenos resultados, que ayudarán para la votación nacional.”

Well, Marcelo has a soap star wife, Mexico City in his pocket, and Calderon-Zedillo nerd chic going for him already, and it seems that the leadership of the PRD has found its attempted antidote to AMLO fever - already on the decline. Unlike Cardenas, however, I'm not sure we'll see a protracted period of public dormant reflection and back-room wrangling before bowing out - dollars to donuts AMLO makes a fight out of PRD nomination and attempts to make a (failed) third party stand. Of course, predictions are like the old saying "if grandma had different plumbing she'd be grandpa."

And a final note on that nerd chic ... my bet is that Mexicans might be more willing to climb in with the seminarian looking boy than the cacique (consider Labastida!). Then again, that doesn't explain Fox, who had bar room bad boy written all over his face like a set of M13 tattoos. So I'm making my calls early - 3 years in advance. Alberto Cardenas vs. Marcelo Ebrard, with Marcelo coming out on top if AMLO puts a lid on it. Tune in July of 2012 so you can make fun of how horribly wrong my early picks went.

Agriculture and Cardenas...Alberto, that is.

Sol de San Luis reports that the CNC is planning on organizing a large protest march on January 30th to demand more resources for Mexican agriculture. With Mexican agriculture continuing its growth during hard times (4.9% - better than the 1.8% growth the nation is showing) and a decline in ag exports from power house Argentina (Mexican grains and cattle?), Mexico may be in a position to help farmers - maybe. Secretary of Agriculture, Alberto Cardens Jimenez met last year at this time with Canadian minister Gerry Ritz and firmed up some resolve on the part of the Canadians to allow more Mexican products into Canada (there was a trade imbalance of about 200million CD). That might help him overcome the problem of importing US corn. Then again, he did go after US meat packers at the end of 2008, so he could certainly play the "I stood up to the US card if needed.

So, is the CNC move one that will allow Cardenas to swoop in, play the hero, and get set up for the 2012 race? Or, is the CNC move one that will work on the part of the PRI (which still has very strong ties to the union) to start picking off possible PAN replacements for Calderon? I lean toward the latter, but Beto was a shrewd player in Jalisco, and I'm betting that when all is said and done he'll still be the guy to watch in 2012. And since I'm not really convinced that Amlo is dead, the PAN may need as strong a rural candidate as it can get to balance the PRDista grip on DF.