Paying Workers: Bad For Buisness in Honduras

A year after minimum wage hikes in Honduras, owners of maquiladoras are making their case for "more incentives" to bring back the nearly 16,000 jobs they say they have lost to El Salvador and Nicaragua where wages are lower. Says La Prensa, business leaders are appealing to the state for various mechanisms to help them weather salary adjustments. Minister of Labor, Felicito Avila, said the most important thing Honduras has to offer business is a nation of law and order (unless you are a democratically elected president). I would point out that back in December the maquila organizations were trumpeting their ability to create 20,000 new jobs for 2011 in Honduras. Looks like the only folks that have been able to tell the future here are the activists that started saying back in the late 1980s that maquilas / Free Trade Zones would create a dog-eat-dog situation in Central America where wages spiraled into a downward trend.

Check out the National Labour Committee's look at "slavery" in Central America. The twenty-four cent per hour DROP in wages in Honduras is telling (from .57 to .33).

From the Mouths of Babes (or Ants)

I am pretty convinced that Roberto Blancarte's prediction of the demise of Catholicism in Mexico is a bit on the "jumping the gun" side, considering the incredibly strong youth movement in the country. As David Espinosa demonstrated with his work on Jesuit education and Mexico's youth, the construction of powerful networks are built that later reinforce Catholic power. Add that to Roderic Camp's research on the strength of Mexican camarillas (political families), and I am pretty sure that the enthusiasm of Mexico's Catholic youth will work to maintain Catholic power in the country.

This is not a simple game of numbers, as the Charismatic movement within Catholicism successfully lures back the converts as well as maintains the attention of the youth. Even the use of technology is an effective arrow in the quiver of the Roman Catholic Church and their youth. For example, last summer I was doing research in Tepalcingo, Morelos - as remote a municipio as it gets in Morelos. What kept the youth organized? Facebook. Conversion to Protestantism (and to no religion at all) may be growing in Mexico, but the idea that Catholicism will dip below a majority in the country is unthinkable.

Check out this clip of youth who describe themselves as the "escuadron hormiga of the army of Maria" (the ant squadron from Maria's Army) from the media operation out of Guadalajara Radio Maria.





The ant reference is interesting. Those in tune with modern Mexican politics should immediately catch the use of hormiga as similar to that being used by Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN: the "small" folks working together can accomplish incredible tasks - so watch out. Considering the grassroots politics mobilizing across ever since 1985 and the Mexico City earthquake, I certainly think Mexico has something to teach us about the power of the ants - from every political and religious persuasion.

Tazed by ICE - And Now In A Coma

The LA Weekly carries the story of long-time LA resident, sound engineer, father, and band singer Jose Gutierrez who was recently deported to Mexico (where he has no family). Upon trying to return to the US through a checkpoint he was tazed and "hit his head," placing him in a coma in a Phoenix hospital. And, ICE says his family in LA - the one that they claim was not enough reason for him to stay in the US - gets to cover his medical bills.

Read the whole story here.

Dear Gringos: Declutter the Other

I've mentioned before the idea that Latin America can serve as something of a model neighbor for the United States. The region has much to teach the northern neighbors, from community cohesion and family values to an amazing entrepreneurial spirit and ingenious creativity. The folks over at the 2backpackers.com (blog?) might mention another reason to pay attention to Latin America (of course, after you take a look at their quote, I will be problematizing the situation). At any rate, this is what they had to say about returning to the states after their massive Central / South America backpacking trip:

After retrieving only a few of our 10 or so Rubbermaid bins from storage at my brother’s attic, it quickly became apparent that we have too much stuff. This is after selling half our stuff at yard sales and on eBay prior to leaving on our trip. During our travels over the last year we have lived out of large backpacks, nothing more. The experience made us realize we don’t need all this stuff and it’s rather frustrating to own it now. We admit, we wouldn’t have realized how little we really needed if we didn’t spend the last year backpacking.

True enough. And this is their final philosophical reflection:

We aren’t shocked, but we are more aware of the culture in the United States and it’s quite different from those living in Central and South America. We are grateful for the opportunities this country has given us, but we aren’t so proud of the way we live in it. Now is the time to change and live with a little less, actually much less. Less stuff and less stress, we believe.

But let's "unpack" this for a moment (my students hate me when I say that). These folks have been living out of a backpack for months. Is their new conversion to simplicity to be found suddenly in the magic of the lives of Latin Americans? I would pretty much argue that their conversion comes from their own lifestyle, and not from some perception of Latin America as the pristine native-child, a land of noble savages and Chief Seattle's waiting for daily communion with Gaia. Backpack across the Unites States and Canada and you're going to make that conversion to simplicity as well.

Admiring the genius of Latin Americans that do a lot with a little and create miracles under difficult circumstances is an understandable approach. I would urge some caution, however, if the next stop on that train is to say that the wealthy and the leadership in Latin America don't need to undertake any sort of reforms for the general welfare of the population. Sure, you might say, Hugo Chavez can run around wasting the petroleum wealth of his country on strange schemes while the urban poor experience massive housing shortages in Caracas - because those Latin Americans just don't need that much. Hallelujah for Calderon for his money-pit war on narcotics in Mexico, because focusing on the welfare issues of citizens that DON'T directly affect the suburban youth of the United States is a waste of time - those Mexicans can do so much with so little. I once had a conversation with a retired norte americano that had stables as part of his sprawling complex. He sure would like to pay the stable hands more, he said, but to do so would just drive the cost of living up for the workers because then they would expect more out of life. "They are so good at doing without - I'd hate to ruin that for them." That, and his other retired friends would lynch him for driving up the cost of labor. It is an interesting dynamic. It reminds me of Gilbert Osofsky's arguments about the Harlem Renaissance: there was no need to carry out reforms in Harlem or improve the lives of working class African Americans because, after all, they were a "singin' race" - they could just sing and dance their cares away.

In sum, emulating the resourceful creativity to do more with less of the working, middle, and poor classes of Latin America is a good idea, but don't lose track of the point that if a family could stop using their chest of drawers (found in a local dump) as a baby bed, a dinner table, and a work bench that they would do it in a heart beat.

Protections on Private Property

During the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration the technocrats and the president rushed to amend the 1917 Constitution to "protect" private property ownership from the threat of expropriation of land. Communal property - ejidos - were out of control according to the technocrats and their US counterparts in business, and that stripping the state of the power to seize private property was a way to guarantee US investment in Mexico. In the United States, they argued, private property is sacrosanct. Well, unless...

Oil companies blazing a trail across the mid-western United States to build an oil pipeline are threatening private land owners with eminent domain to force the sale of land. And who is doing the bullying? TransCanada - the Canadian oil giant that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas. Caray. Up the road in Montana the legislature is trying to pry federal land out of the hands of the US government so that they can offer the property up for the use of mining and oil companies. I suppose that during this 100 year celebration of the Mexican Revolution that US land owners get a firsthand exposure to the bullying that brought about the rebellion of their southern neighbors.

The stripping of community land as well as private land from the hands of small agriculturalists and the public is no new story. I suggest to readers in Montana and Nebraska the fine titles of Thread of Blood, by Ana Maria Alonso, We Come to Object by Arturo Warman, and David Correia in the Radical History Review on the Gorras Blancas of New Mexico and the loss of land in that state (Issue 108, Fall 2010). I guess they'll have something to read after they've been kicked off their farms - well, during that fifteen minute break at the Motel 6 where they'll work making beds for the pipeline workers passing through town.

Mary and Her Disgusting Blogging

Mary Scriver over at the Prairie Mary blog has a great essay this week about the complexity of race and indigenous identity in relation to ideas of "disgust" and "disgusting." Well connected to the Piegan of the Rocky Mountain front of Montana in towns like Heart Butte and Browning, Mary is a great observer of how Indians are portrayed and "dealt with" by the local white population. You can't help but read Mary's thoughts and think of the treatment of the Tarahumara in Chihuahua or the poor indigenous beggars in Mexico's cities. Says Mary of the ways people use to talk about "dirty Indians":

Today’s civilized people do not use such words. They come from hierarchal [sic] assumptions based on the European empires, particularly the English, who used stigma to control their subject countries. But contemporary Native American people must still emphasize their professional, educated, and meticulously conventional qualities in order to get respect. Even the school children respond to the advertising-driven obsession with cleanliness, not smelling, “proper” clothes and other appearance markers that are meant to prevent disgust.

I like Mary's blog because it does a great job of reminding me of the similarities between Latin America and the United States. And while the ideas are there, you get a bit of Foucault in Mary's post without having to put up with his language - a real bonus! At any rate, the following passage certainly reminds me of the situation for the indigenous in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas:

In the practical world, a stigmatized person is thought to deserve punishment for the original sin of being dark-skinned or poor. A couple of decades ago an enrolled Blackfeet drunk (oh, disgusting!) pestered around a bar until the bar owner simply shot him dead. The tribal people started out being indignant but pretty soon they drifted back to the bar, saying that the drunk asked for it with his disgusting behavior. Times have changed. Not long ago three brothers who liked violence picked out what they thought was a likely victim in the parking lot of a bar at quitting time: a drunk Indian ranch hand. But in the middle of their melee, another Indian -- a tribal council member and his wife -- tried to stop it, so the fun-lovers turned their fists and boots on them. The interveners were not powerless. They knew how to use the law. The brothers are serving jail time. But even the tribal council member was accused of the disgusting practice of hanging around in a bar until closing time.

I blogged about this incident of Mexican brothers beating Montana Indians and using the phrase "dirty Indian" while doing it in 2009.

Mennonite Move Blasts Chihuahua Economy

As if the tough times in Ciudad Juarez weren't enough of a strain on the economy of the state of Chihuahua, MX, over a thousand ultra-conservative Altkolonier Mennonites near Cuauhtémoc have announced they are headed to Quintana Roo. The group repersents about 40,000 kilograms of daily cheese production as well as livestock, equipment, and cash valued at, according to the Heraldo de Chihuahua, between six-hundred million and a billion pesos in value - hundreds of millions of US dollars. The paper cites internal divisions as well as problems with access to water and health care within the communities.

Much of the infrastructure currently in place in northern Chihuahua was put in place originally by Mennonites who donated thousands of dollars and labor for the construction of roads, schools, water, etc., after their 1921 arrival. The Plaza of Cuauhtémoc, the largest seat of the Mennonites in Mexico, contains not only the standard array of the busts of Mexican heroes like Benito Juarez or Ignacio Allende, but also busts of Mennonite settlers and Chinese Chihuahuans. In short, it is a town that recognizes the truly international construction of this agro-industrial border region.

Never fear, however, that this exodus of the Altkolonier marks a departure of Mennonites from the area in general. Since the 1940s the Mennonites have been gradually modernizing in the area, and the vast plantations of wheat and apples in the area - fed on the illegally punched wells deep into the aquifers of the altiplano - are owned by Mennonites that use electricity and drive motorized vehicles. While the departure of the Altkolonier is a strain, I think we'll see a number of ejidal groups that abut their property make a play for the ground as well as moves by the liberal Mennonites to buy up the property - if the Altkolonier will well to them. The division between the two groups is fairly ugly (the conservatives are convinced that a drug re-hab facility owned by modernists is a brainwashing facility), with the liberals making the following statement about the conservatives:

"Ellos por ignorancia no aceptan muchas cosas, como la luz y los carros, pero tampoco permiten que sus hijos menores de 12 años acudan a misa, no utilizan métodos anticonceptivos y no les enseñan español a sus hijos como una manera de evitar que salgan de su comunidad y se relacionen con otras personas"

(Because of ignorance those people don't accept a number of things, like light and motorized vehicles, and they even deny children under twelve the right to attend church meetings, they don't use contraception, and they don't teach their children Spanish as a way to avoid leaving the community and forming relationships with other people.)

The above photo is one of Larry Towell's on the Mennonites. Buy his book.