Dubious Claim

Eduardo Medina Mora says that Mexico is more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. That may well be true (I remember reading last year that Mexico in 2008 was still better than Mexico in 1999), although it's odd that no one in Calderon's government thought to use that piece of info until today. The measurement he used to make the claim is that the murder rate was 18 per 100,000 people in 1994, compared to 10.7 in 2008.

That last figure is the slippery one. I'm not sure where Medina Mora's numbers come from, but the UN figure of 10.8 is the lowest I'd seen. The problem is, the UN figure is from 2007. There were almost 4,000 more drug murders in 2008 than 2007, which would work out to about 3.5 more per 100,000 residents than in 2007. In other words, assuming the non-drug murders remained constant, and using the UN figure from 2007 as your baseline, you should come up with about 14 murders per 100,000 residents in 2008. That is still significantly less than 18 (not to mention the 75 in Colombia in the 1990s, or the 40-plus in El Salvador today), and it doesn't make Medina Mora's point any less valid, so why monkey with the stats?

It's a bit off topic, but this stat is impressive (in a bad way): Mexico has seized more than 52,000 firearms in the past two years, and more than 10,000 AR-15 or AK-47 assault rifles, or enough for a small infantry division, in 2009 alone.

An Urban Legend Come True

I always used to hear something like this in college, but I always assumed it was malarkey: according to a study presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, 90 percent of American bills have traces of cocaine on them. The figure jumps to 93 percent in cities like Baltimore and Boston. The corresponding statistic in Japan and China is less than 20 percent. 

Acteal Polling

Excélsior pollster BGC asked Mexicans about their reaction to Supreme Court direction to the PGR to release the 40 Chiapas residents who'd been erroneously jailed for eleven years following a massacre in Acteal, Chiapas. Oddly, while 65 percent of respondents labeled the ruling a good thing, 72 percent said it was only a minor event, because those responsible for the massacre are still free. Another 69 percent expressed little or no confidence that the Supreme Court's ruling will help prevent future massacres. The finding did result in a spike in esteem for the Court itself; only 13 percent expressed a negative opinion of the institution, compared to 20 percent in February. 

Bill Simmons from Azteca

This was a nice Monday surprise. Oddly, Simmons refers to Cuauhtémoc Blanco as simply Blanco, either confusing him with a Brazilian or not wanting to deal with any Aztec names. His characterization of Blanco's on-field agility is hilarious: "he moves like the "South Park" guys are animating him."

Also, for fans of Simmons' uniquely exuberant brand of hyperbole, this piece has a doozy: 

But if you don't think the next five years of Jozy's career could potentially swing the future of soccer, you're insane.

I'm not sure exactly what he means, but the players who have alone swung the future of soccer in any measurable way are really quite few. If he's talking about reaching a level of historic greatness and thus carrying the US to world-power status, wow, that's a lot of pressure. I sure as hell wouldn't take anything close to even money that Altidore will reach the Messi/Ronaldo/Torres stratum (to say nothing of the immortals like Maradona or Pele), which isn't a knock on Altidore. Should he fail to get there, that doesn't mean Jozy will have fallen short of his potential. 

For the record, no, I'm not insane. 

Bowden in Nexos

As some of you probably deduced from the title, Charles Bowden has a new piece profiling a hit man in Juárez in the Mexican magazine Nexos. I've only skimmed it thus far, but this quote leapt out at me:

I received orders from two people. They managed me. I never knew which cartel I worked for. In those days Vicente Carrillo was at war with El Chapo Guzmán. But I never met any boss, so when the war started in 2006, I didn't know who I was killing for. And the orders could be from one or the other. I lived in a cell and simply took orders. In Juárez 30 minutes are enough for 60 armed and trained guys to gather in 30 cars and drive out in the streets to show their power.

Later, we began to receive orders to kill people among our own group.

No one should ever accuse Mexico's drug problem of being simple.

Teachers' Tests

Mexico's teachers union yesterday applied its entry exam for aspirants seeking a tenured position, or plaza, in one of the nation's public schools. Around 123,000 were applying for 31,000 slots, which of course means that 75 percent of those tested are out of luck. These tests continue the institutionalization of new teachers standards first laid out by the Alliance for Quality in Education, the agreement hammered out last year by Josefina Vázquez and Elba Esther Gordillo.

Back-to-School Poverty

Mexico's economic problems are making it hard to outfit the youngsters with their school gear: 81 percent of respondents to an El Universal poll said that they have had to alter their school expenses because of the crisis. The biggest blocs in the poll said they reduced their expenses in school supplies and tuition.

More Cops

Mexico has doubled the number of customs officers at ports-of-entry around the nation. Seven hundred officers whose contracts were not renewed are to be replaced by almost 1,500 new officers. The officers will be charged with searching for contraband at the dozens of ports of entry around the nation, presumably starting with the 31 along the northern border.

Update: Excélsior says that the number of fired agents is 1,400, which, if true, would mean the upgrade is only a matter of quality rather than quantity.

More on the Jailhouse Riot in Gómez Palacio

I heard an interview with Secretary of Public Security in the state of Durango last night in which he said that there were brawls resulting in injuries and deaths last month in the same local prison where 19 inmates were killed two days ago. Furthermore, there was an escape in March that led to the arrest of the warden and 11 employees. The fact that within weeks of the most recent events the same inmates could stash an arsenal big enough to mount a firefight is a pretty clear reflection of the problems in Mexico's penal system. I mean, it's not like officials should have been taken by surprise by this.

The same secretary (Jorge Torres Castillo, for those of you scoring at home) said that of the more than 1,000 inmates at the facility, almost 400 are federal convicts siphoned into the local jail because of over-crowding. Building more jails isn't going to solve Mexico's security ills, but it seems like increasing the number of beds in federal and state prisons by 50 percent would be a pretty good way to get a lot of people working, as well as reduce the danger of inmates running wild. Of course, with the recent cuts in public building projects this isn't going to happen.

The Family in WPR

Malcolm Beith has a piece on the rise of La Familia and how it took Mexican officials by surprise on WPR. Beith also had a good one on the same topic for The News last year if I remember correctly, but it's nowhere to be found on the paper's website. No good drug story would be complete without an overstatement from the DEA. Here's this article's, with Beith's response: 

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration heralded the arrest of Berraza Villa and one of his associates as glowing proof of "the leadership and resolve of President Calderon and the Government of Mexico."

Perhaps, but the rapid, stealthy rise of La Familia is also proof that even if there is the will, there may not be a way. The war on drugs is failing.

If No One Else Can...

José Antonio Crespo makes a compelling case that although the Supreme Court is not the first line of defense in criminal justice, we should welcome its growing activism:

The principal reason that some of the cases that most aggravate Mexican society have arrived to the highest court via the constitutional article 97, is that the institutions that dole out justice and thoroughly investigate some of those ultrajes coming from the powerful simply don’t do so.

One group of justices, who normally take conservative positions, hold that the court shouldn’t immerse itself in cases that should first be investigated and punished by other institutions, established exactly for those purposes. Technically they are correct, but precisely for the reason that such institutions don’t work (or they work very badly, owing to the traditional inefficiency or because of political considerations) the court can contribute to moving a machinery atrophied because of lack of use. The conservative position is based on the premise that we live in a normal democracy, in which investigative and criminal justice institutions function reasonably well and, as a result, the intervention of the court doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Put evidently we don’t live in that normal democracy, but rather in a country of impunity (which is to say, the exact opposite of democracy).

Well argued. I hasten to point out that Mexico's system clearly is not the "exact opposite" of democracy, it's just an imperfect democracy. He makes a country that, for all its defects, has made substantial progress over the past two decades sound like the Stalinist USSR. For all his insight, Crespo regularly displays a tendency to overstate the degree of Mexico's political shortcomings. Take the finale to the previous column:

We also shouldn’t go overboard with our optimism and wrongly believe that in the country of impunity it will be possible to hold to account the truly responsible parties, who are located at the cusp of state or federal power. That would be too much to ask.

I realize that he was probably writing with his tongue placed squarely in his cheek, but why such cynicism? A little skepticism is of course warranted in Mexico, but the blind anti-faith that the truly guilty will never be found is both destructive and thoughtless. If that were the case, why bother writing?

US-Mexico Aftermath

1) Landon Donovan has the disease formerly known as the swine flu. In fact, he had it before the Mexico City qualifier on Wednesday, but wasn't diagnosed until he returned to LA. There was speculation on ESPN last night that he was infected by a couple of Galaxy employees. I'm not a big fan of political conspiracy theories, but I love those that have to do with sports, so if I may: I heard that the two Galaxy employees are Tri enthusiasts who infected Donovan on purpose. (I didn't really.) Whatever the case, although there is no US player whom Gancho enjoys ragging on more than Donovan, we hope for his speedy recovery.

2) Also on ESPN: Fútbol Picante capped off a lengthy discussion of Nery Castillo's erratic play, aggressive behavior with the press, and perhaps unethical arrival at el Tri (there is speculation that his father negotiated a fee to play for Mexico instead of Greece or Uruguay, for whose national teams he was also eligible) with a simple conclusion: Nery is a "pobre idiota".

3) Also, Gio dos Santos has really had a topsy-turvy 10 months. First he is caught on film being carried out of a bar last December. He fails to shine in any of the games with el Tri with Sven-Goran. He is then demoted from Tottenham to second-division non-power Ipswich in March, and, though young, his career prospects look a bit bleak.

Then Aguirre replaces Sven-Goran, and, in a friendly against Venezuela, dos Santos suddenly looks like the prospect we fell in love with in 2005. He then starts dating Belinda, an up-and-coming songstress. Gio carries that into the Gold Cup, where he was Mexico's best player and earned the MVP trophy. He shines in the qualifier against the US in Azteca, one of Mexico's pressure-packed wins of the decade. He is then caught making out with Belinda. Now, after the victory over the US, Mouriño wants him at Inter, and Guardado is putting in a good word for him at la Coruña.

Lastly, click here or here for an eyewitness account of the atmosphere in Azteca. It's the next best thing to being there.

Navy Life

The NY Times ran an op-ed piece today from the wife of a Mexican navy officer, who focuses on the low quality of life for the Mexican military, despite recent pay increases. Malfunctioning M-16s, cockroach infested houses, stove-less kitchens...it all makes me very glad to have grown up (for a time, anyway) an American navy brat rather than a Mexican one.

I wish op-ed pages would publish more of this kind of thing. With the explosion of blogs, the marginal gain of reading an op-ed columnist is generally pretty small. You just don't see much information or opinion entirely new. Tracking down more stuff like this could be a way for op-ed pages to reestablish some of their singularity.

Madness in La Laguna

Nineteen people were killed yesterday in the Gómez Palacio jail, thanks to competing mafias fighting (with guns) for control of the jail.

Excuses and Predictions

A very busy workweek is all I can point to as a reason for the lack of blogging over the past three days. But that's all behind me; expect more next week. 

Before I take off for the weekend, let's get the predictions out of the way. Nonito Donaire continues his audition for the pound-for-pound top 5 with a knockout of Rafael Concepción on Saturday night. On the undercard, Steve Luevano wins a decision over Bernabe Concepción. From Biloxi, I like Roy Jones by decision over Jeff Lacy, Danny Green with a knockout of Julio César Domínguez, and B.J. Flores by knockout over Epifanio Mendoza. (Part-time ESPN commentator Flores' decision to fight a ten-rounder against a blown-up super middleweight with all the big names at cruiser makes you wonder if he's interested in ever making the leap.) In tonight's action, I'll take Vivian Harris by decision over Noé Bolaños.

Cutting Costs

Felipe Calderón's $40 billion stimulus plan is now without "an engine", with around $6 billion in public spending having been cut because of a lack of financing. Much of the reporting is focusing on the $1 billion cut for the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, which promises the suspension of dozens of infrastructure projects.

Fodder for the Coen Brothers' Mexican Flick

Among the Juárez organized crime figures killed recently José Daniel González, who was shot to death in May. Turns out both he and his alleged assassin were informants for the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Read more about the tale here. Then maybe grab a pen and paper, start writing, and beat Joel and Ethan to punch with an Oscar-winning script. And then cut Gancho a small check for finding your inspiration.

Mexico's Foreign Policy

Ezra Shabot yesterday had a rather odd analysis of Mexico's foreign policy and its impact on North American relations:

Although the expressions generated in the framework of the North American Leaders Summit suggests coordinated action by the three parties, the truth is that the differences in every arena between Canada and the United States compared to Mexico situate us a long way from our commercial partners.

The absurd imposition of visas for Mexicans from Canada, an attempt to line itself up with Washington's policy, only distances our nation from the possibility of turning into the political partner of the two other powerful states of North America. It's a symbolic expression that reflects cultural, social, and political distance among these countries.

Another example is Mexico's attempted rapprochement with Havana and Caracas and the unconditional support to Manuel Zelaya, the president who tried to set up a coup to reelect himself a la Chávez and who then received a dose of the same medicine from the Honduran Congress, judiciary, and army, which represents a return to the era of "uncritical Latin American solidarity", in which military dictatorships in the Southern cone were denounced by Castro was legitimized in Cuba.

There are three flaws that basically sink this argument. 1) I don't think Washington has ever been critical of Calderón for improving Mexico's ties with Venezuela and Cuba, at least never seriously. Indeed, insofar as it gives the US a back channel to each of the regimes, American officials probably welcome it. Furthermore, US-Mexico ties are stronger under Calderón than they were under Fox, precisely as the attitude toward Cuba and Venezuela softened. 2) I don't believe that's an accurate description of the reaction to the Honduras coup. The US isn't exactly at odds with the rest of Latin America over Honduras; it's just not being as aggressive as some would like in demanding Zelaya's return. Furthermore, thanks to comments from Zelaya that seemed to support AMLO while he was in Mexico, I imagine that the Obama administration will wind up being more vocally pro-Zelaya than Calderón. Whatever the case, I don't see any evidence of a serious US-Mexico gap because of Honduras. 3) Since when has Canada leapt to align its foreign policy with the US? I understand that Mexicans wouldn't be happy about the visa imposition, but isn't there a better explanation than kowtowing to the empire?

Odd Dude

I generally like Jack Shafer's column in Slate, and indeed I liked this one, but this comment was odd: 

...I'm actually not a fan of any kind of humor. The very essence of humor is aggression. The point of most jokes is to inflict psychological suffering and pain—to transgress and make someone the butt. This is why I've declared my journalism, my office, my home, and the subway line I commute to work on absolutely comedy free.

Although I avoid making jokes—lest I hurt someone's feelings...

A) That premise is untrue. Billions of us around the globe regularly manage to laugh without any aggression being involved. People often respond to something shocking and non-threatening with laughter, regardless of whether or not someone is put down. 

B) Even if that were true, would protecting people from humor-induced (as opposed to, say, trauma-induced) psychological suffering be a reasonable tradeoff for a world without laughter? I think not.

Not the Supreme Court's Job

Jorge Luis Sierra, one of Mexico's most informed analysts on military issues, says that the Supreme Court shouldn't take on the issue of the armed forces' fuero. Instead, he says that Congress should address the impunity deriving from the Code of Military Justice, which was passed in 1933 by decree of President Abelardo Rodríguez (Congress had been dissolved). According to Sierra, the Code's provision that soldiers who commit violations against Mexicans during domestic security operations be tried by military courts is unconstitutional, and Congress should have changed it long ago.

I Hate Meetings

If there were a constitutional amendment barring meetings lasting more than one hour in the workplace, I am convinced productivity would soar. The meeting is like lip-synching in church; it's the way to appear like you're doing something useful when by and large you're not actually doing anything.

My hatred for meetings is now at an all-time high, thanks to one today lasting from 10 to 7, including, inconveniently, the hours from 3 to 5 p.m., when the US national team will be taking on Mexico's eleven (plus another 100,000 fans or so). My suggestions to make the lunch hour coincide with the game were brushed off without serious consideration. For what it's worth, the Americans seemed calm and collected in the coverage I've seen, while el Tri seems a bit jumpy. But maybe that's a product of pressure; if Mexico loses today, a three-spot in Concacaf qualifying will be very tough to snag. If the US loses, first place might be unlikely, but they are still going to South Africa.

More on Politicians and Abuse

Excélsior's front page today hails Obama's statement that drug runners are the ones that violate human rights, with the implication being that all the hubbub over the military abuses is much ado about just a little. In a sense, Obama's comment (and others like it from Calderón) is indisputable; the drug runners who killed some 6,000 Mexicans last year are greater violators than the army and the police. I personally don't know anyone who voices fear of the army, but I know lots of people whose lives have changed (in some cases, quite drastically) thanks to the rash of kidnappings and murders in Mexico. Obama's argument is useful to keep in mind when people imply that the army and the police are the greatest threat to the population; they aren't.

But that's the wrong way to approach the problem of abuse. Yes, drug gangs are a bigger threat, but abusing suspects (and non-suspects, it would seem) doesn't make Mexico's security agencies more effective. Or, from another point of view, the fact that organized crime is the worst thing in town doesn't make military abuse and a failure to address it any less bad. They are two separate issues. Furthermore, insofar as it would instill discipline in the ranks and inspire confidence among a population who in many places isn't convinced that the government is on their side, dealing with abuse would not be an impediment, but would make attacking organized crime easier.

PRD Leaders

Alejandro Encinas and Guadalupe Acosta are set to fight it out for the PRD coordinator position in Chamber of Deputies. According to the article, the Chuchos have reversed their position and are supporting Acosta, not Encinas, as was mentioned by Alfonso Zárate last week. Encinas presumably has the support of AMLO's bunch, as well as Ebrard loyalists.

Update: It's Encinas, unanimously.