I attended the inauguration of the L.A. office of FIOB — Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Indigenous Front of Bi-national Organizations), which works to help Indians, mostly from Oaxaca, here in the U.S. and back home.
Before the inauguration, a brass band set off marching playing around the block. Very cool.
Click above for a video of a little of that, then let me know what you think.
Filed under California, Los Angeles, Mexico, Migrants, Southern California
I guess it was only a matter of time, but … Nazario Moreno, deceased leader of La Familia Michoacana, the narco-Catholic drug cartel now finding itself on hard times due to his death and that of others in the structure, has apparently been “canonized” as a folk saint.
Folk saints are nothing new to Mexico. Juan Soldado is the unofficial patron saint of migrants. Toribio Romo, a priest from Jalisco, holds a similar position. Jesus Malverde, who likely never lived at all, began as patron saint of the poor mountain folks in Sinaloa who became, in turn, the drug traffickers who made the state famous and turned Malverde into the patron saint of narcos.
Michoacan has also been fertile ground for strange religious movements — witness the community of New Jerusalem under excommunicated Padre Nabor in another part of the Tierra Caliente. (I wrote about New Jerusalem and Malverde in my first book, True Tales from Another Mexico.
Moreno, though, was particularly bloodthirsty, and considered a messiah by his followers. One of his nicknames was “El Mas Loco” — The Craziest One. Who knows? Maybe in Apatzingan, Michoacan — an area known for violence, heat, and dope — that’ll be what recommends him to the faithful.
One of the great arts events in all Mexico takes place this Saturday in Tijuana.
It is the Tijuana Opera Street Festival (Festival Opera en la Calle), now in its ninth year.
I wrote about the robust opera scene in Tijuana in my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream.
The street festival grew from that scene — which itself began germinating years ago when a guy imported an entire Russian orchestra (true story) from the crumbling Soviet empire straight to Tijuana. The musicians stayed, played, taught, shaped the first classical music conservatory in Baja California. A host of local underground opera aficionados were also pushing the whole gig along — among them Enrique Fuentes, who opened a Vienna-style opera cafe in the Colonia Libertad. (photo right)
The opera scene is the fruit of their DIY labor, though it remains a little like underground music (reminds me of punk rock, in spirit anyway) in TJ, which is a city not about harmony and discipline, but where the reigning ethic is about babble, chaos and commerce.
I loved telling this story because it was about Tijuana and its great complexity, yet had nothing about narcos, murder, maquiladoras or strip clubs. Also, it was all about people working toward something without much government help and for the pure love of it.
When my wife started crying after reading the story of Mercedes Quinonez (pictured above) and her lifelong attempt to be an opera singer while working at a hardware store, I figured I’d done well.
The festival takes place on 5th Street and Aquiles Serdan in Colonia Libertad (easy walking distance from the border crossing), a setting that cannot be matched for pure surrealness (surreality?). The neighborhood — the first to be built outside downtown Tijuana — is a crumpled wedding cake of a place, home to the city’s first boxers, gang members and mayors, as well as its plaster-statue industry. Two hundred yards away is the brown wall separating the city from the USA.
Just an amazing place to see people singing Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and the rest. Best time is later in the afternoon. Expect 7,000+ people. On this year’s bill are Carmina Burana, arias from Carmen, Cosi Fan Tutte, Turandot and Don Carlo.
Enjoy a bit of surreal border stuff — a very original creation by some very creative people.
I’ll be there. Can’t wait.
Twelve years after peacefully voting out in a clean election the party that had ruled it as a political monopoly for seven decades, Mexicans returned the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power the same way, with not only a president but what appears to be a majority in Congress (NB: It now appears the PRI will not have a congressional majority).
Enrique Pena Nieto won with an eight-point majority Sunday that was comfortable though much smaller than polls were indicating. The PRI also won governors’ posts in Jalisco, Hidalgo and Chiapas.
Pena Nieto takes office on December 1. Not many appear to know what he’ll do as president. (I’ll be discussing the elections this morning at 11:20 a.m. on KPCC –89.3- with host Larry Mantle and Mexicanist Andrew Selee. Here’s what Andrew Selee had to say about the election.)
EPN’s background, though, wouldn’t seem encouraging to anyone interested in the continuation of democratic reform in Mexico.
He is from Atlacomulco, a fascinating little town in the State of Mexico, the horseshoe-shaped state surrounding Mexico City that is its largest in population. (Five of Mexico’s largest cities are suburbs to Mexico City in the state of Mexico: Tlanepantla, Ecatepec, Naucalpan, Chimalhuacan, and Nezahualcoyotl.)
Some half dozen of the state’s governors have come from little Atlacomulco. The Grupo Atlacomulco is a kind of political clan. Its hallmarks through the decades of PRI hegemony were a combination of laissez-faire, some would say crony, capitalism combined with political authoritarianism and personal enrichment while in office.
In time, even the governors of the state who weren’t actually from Atlacomulco bought into the clan’s governing ideology of taking what you can get while you have the chance. One of its standard bearers, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, came up with the phrase, “Un politico pobre es un pobre politico” – a politician who is poor is a poor politician.
Hank was one of Mexico’s richest men when he died, without having spent a day working in the private sector.
His saying seemed PRI ideology, together with the preservation of its own power, for its decades as Mexico’s political monopoly.
Pena Nieto is the first from Atlacomulco to become president.
A lot has changed in Mexico that will prevent that PRI monopoly from reconstituting. There are political actors today who will counter-balance the PRI’s power. Political institutions such as the Federal Electoral Institute are no longer part of the PRI. The media is more independent.
The left seems recharged. The Yo Soy 132 movement, resembling the Occupy movement here last fall, seems at the moment to have a lot of energy, and made Pena Nieto its target.
However, EPN would appear beholden to the two television networks (Televisa and Azteca), who seem, from reporting, to have created his candidacy from nothing, and pushed it even though he seemed a candidate with severe personal drawbacks.
What of the major reforms to education, energy, labor law, and on so, that the most agree the country needs and were blocked, largely by PRI congressmen, during the years the center-right PAN had the presidency? The PRI now has the presidency and the Congress – so it can push these reforms if it wishes. Will it?
During its years of hegemony, the PRI-government made deals with drug traffickers, facilitating the trade. This is one reason small groups of narco-hillbillies over the years developed into the menacing, well-armed, bold cartels that today threaten the country’s national security.
What will EPN do? He hasn’t said.
I’m interested to see whether a party that formed without ideology can now shape one. What exactly does a Priista believe? What compass guides him? I can’t tell you. After all, this is a party that nationalized banks, then privatized them a decade later.
In the past, the party’s philosophy nationally was most brazenly expressed and practiced by the Grupo Atlacomulco in the state of Mexico.
He has said he won’t return to that past, that he’ll govern responsibly, democratically.
But will a man who comes from a political culture that is used to participating in the lucre of politics have what it takes to stand up to these forces?
I really don’t know.
Filed under Mexico
Once again, tuba thieves have struck. This time: Whittier High School. Four sousaphones.
Last time, Saturday Night Live did a Weekend Update bit on the phenomenon.
Lightheartedness aside, I find the topic interesting because tubas are the emblematic popular instrument of our time in Southern California — just like the electric guitar was in the 1970s.
A reporter could probably have fashioned a whole beat writing about the culture surrounding electric guitar during those years. (In Claremont, where I grew up, there were easily 20 guys in my high school class who played guitar, and, if memory serves, six guitar stores within a few-mile radius.)
I think the same is true today of tubas. Their popularity says a lot about the region and the time.
Filed under Culture, Los Angeles, Mexico, Migrants, Southern California
Years ago, I had a run-in with drug-smuggling Mennonites in the area around Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua in Mexico, and wrote about it, and the decay of traditional Mennonite communities there, in my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream.
A recent narcotics arrest in Canada is about that as well. The Mexican Old Colony Mennonites have been working with drug cartels, and been major importers of marijuana and cocaine to Canada and the U.S. themselves, for years.
They began in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and were able to use their ingenuity as mechanics and welders to fashion new hiding places for drugs in trucks and cars.
For my book, I found that the largest drug bust in the history of the state of Oklahoma up to that time was a Mennonite ring run out Cuauhtemoc. The main informant, now presumed dead, was himself Mennonite.
Used to be a Mennonite family crossing into El Paso would be waved through Customs. Now they get the full treatment — drug dogs, mirrors under the car, etc.
One man I spoke with said a common way to smuggle drugs was to strap them around a senile grandmother, wearing a long dress and a traditional bonnet and looking for all the world like a peasant for the 1800s.
This photo here is from an AA meeting I attended for Mennonites in the communities near Cuauhtemoc.
UCLA criminologists have published a study showing that most gang violence occurs where gang territories meet, and thus are where gangs are most likely to run into each other and be in competition — not, I would say, a surprising conclusion, but interesting to see the school take on the topic, nevertheless.
The authors draw their conclusions from studying LAPD’s Hollenbeck division, 563 gang shootings involving 13 gangs.
Meanwhile, Mexico scholar George Grayson has published an article on the Mexican presidential election and its effect on various Mexican governors’ races. Grayson is always interesting to read. Check it out
Filed under For The Record, Gangs, Mexico
Juan Gutierrez, Oaxacan baker in Santa Monica
Welcome to a new feature of my blog — podcast interviews — which I hope to do more of.
The first one is a conversation with Juan Gutierrez, a Zapotec Indian from Oaxaca. His Panaderia Antequera in Santa Monica is believed to be the first Oaxacan-owned business in the L.A. area, opening in the late 1980s.
The conversation is about his arrival here, working at Shakey’s, and opening his bakery — a piece of oral history of a people’s move north.
These last few years a mini-boom in Oaxacan owned businesses has been underway in L.A., spurred by several factors: the idea many have now that they’re not going to be returning home; the size of the Oaxacan immigrant consumer market in L.A.; and a general dispelling of the fear and intimidation with which many Oaxacans, formerly campesinos, viewed business.
The interview is in Spanish and runs about 24 minutes.
I’m hoping to talk to more folks like Mr. Gutierrez, pioneers, people with interesting stories — as well as authors of books that are relevant to the themes of this blog.
Feel free to suggest some.
Filed under Los Angeles, Mexico, Migrants, Podcast, Southern California
I’ll be talking about the Mexican presidential elections today on KPCC, with Larry Mantle, host of Air Talk, beginning at 11 a.m. Please tune in.
Meanwhile, an interesting column from academic Guillermo Trejo about the rise of the Occupy-like student movement, Yo Soy 132, and whether it can influence the Mexican presidential election next Sunday.
Polls showed that the movement drained frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, of the PRI, of a good part of his c0mmanding lead, while Andrew Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the left PRD, surged to within a few points of him in some surveys.
The movement has put the issue of the manipulation by the Mexican media conglomerates — Televisa and Television Azteca — to the forefront of the campaign, where it deserves to be.
Still, it’s unclear whether 132 has enough oomph to push AMLO ahead for good. Should be an interesting election.
More soon on Pena Nieto and his political forefathers.
Filed under Mexico
Today is the birthday of Hernan Hernandez, bass player and singer for Los Tigres del Norte.
I toured several times with the band to shows around Mexico, seeing parts of the country that I’d never have seen had it not been for their great generosity. I was already a huge fan by the time I met them, and knew the words to many of their songs.
They remain, I think, the best band out of Mexico — The Only Band That Matters, isn’t that what they used to say about The Clash. Same with Los Tigres. Great chroniclers, amazing reps of migrant Mexico, too. Here’s a story I did from those years on Los Tigres for LA Times Magazine. Always wanted to write a book about the band….
Anyway, one night, Hernan was sick from, I think, food poisoning. They took him to a doctor.I think he got some intravenous fluids, but was still sick.
They went to the show, in a town in Puebla. Got there late. The crowd was rowdy, throwing rocks. But then the band went on and played for four hours or so. Just an amazing show.
Hernan played the whole show, sweating, sick, faint, barely hanging on. Reminded me of Michael Jordan during that playoff game years ago. Never forget that night. A real pro….Happy Birthday, Hernan!
In Mexico, ace freelance photographer Keith Dannemiller has been traveling the presidential campaign trail.
He’s got many of the shots posted online. He paused long enough to add some comments on the job …
On the campaign: I have been covering these happenings for the last 24 years — this is my fifth time – as a photojournalist for various newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. I swore to myself that 2006 with Felipe Calderon (PAN), Andres Manuel López Obrador (PRD) and Roberto Madrazo (PRI) competing would be my swan song.
On weirdness: Just yesterday, ex-President Vicente Fox, he of the PAN, who so convincingly dethroned the PRI in 2000, says that he is backing the PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto for president.
Manuel Bartlett Diaz (then Secretary of the Interior and necessarily of the PRI), who infamously declared in 1988, that the vote tabulating computer system had crashed on election night, denying victory to the coalition that supported Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas for president, is now candidate for Senador in the state of Puebla from the left-center PRD party – the party of Mr. Cárdenas.
On Enrique Pena Nieto, candidate of once-ruling PRI: Everything during the trip to Queretero, three hours north of Mexico City was meticulously handled, just like it was in the good ole’ days of the PRI hegemony. Myself and the US reporter were picked up at the reporter’s Mexico City hotel and driven to the forum that Mr. Peña Nieto was leading on the aerospace industry in Mexico.
When the event was over we were led to a room by ourselves for an interview with the candidate. I was allowed to set up some small strobes with umbrellas and wander freely around the interview area. With a long lens, I could fill the frame with the candidate’s face and the images convey some of his emotional response to the questions. With the interview finished, to my surprise, Mr. Peña Nieto began to walk, surrounded by a couple of bodyguards, to his waiting SUV. I shot from the balcony of the building where we had just been and then moved down into the scrum. It took him an hour and a half to go about three hundred meters, and he was mobbed mostly by adoring female supporters, who were grabbing, kissing and posing for photos with the candidate.
On Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the leftist PRD: If I were a Mexican, I would vote for Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This has to do with my political and philosophical beliefs, but more importantly with his style. The man can be sardonic, ironic, funny and heartfelt all in the same speech. In a word he is more human, than any of the other candidates on the stump, and this, by a long shot. In my opinion, he leaves himself open to more revealing photos. He seems to have the ability to step outside himself, distance himself from his persona as a political candidate and look back in at the situation in which he finds himself.
Check out all Keith Dannemiller’s photographs.
Filed under Mexico
Those interested in Mexico and its transition away from a one-party state should be glad to hear that Jo Tuckman, a former colleague, has published a book on the topic
Mexico: Democracy Interrupted is just out. I found it in my mailbox an hour ago.
Should be quite worth reading, as Tuckman has been writing from Mexico for many years. Plus the topic couldn’t be more relevant: Describing what happened to the great democratic promise of Mexico two sexenios after the country opted, peacefully, to throw off the chains of 70+ years of PRI rule.
It now finds itself in the middle of a medieval drug war. Few of the deep reforms that were hoped for, and are necessary, to transform the country into something ready for the 21st Century global economy have been achieved.
Meanwhile, the country seems run by, and according to the interests of, the leaders of the top three political parties, who remain about as unaccountable as the president was under the PRI regime.
I’m reminded of Langston Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred.”
Congratulations, Jo!
Thursday’s poll in Reforma showing leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador within four points of front-running PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto continues to echo today.
The PRI has redirected its focus at AMLO, according to Animal Politico, even as they discount the poll’s importance. To be sure, other polls
Meanwhile, the party’s corrupt past is once again on display with the scandal surrounding former Tamaulipas governor Tomas Yarrington, suspected of laundering narco-money.
The peso fell in value and stocks were off late Thursday, in part due to the poll and the apparent fear among investors and the business class that a leftist would become president of Mexico — though the European economic crisis is also a big player in this.
More later on who Enrique Pena Nieto is and the political clan he represents.
Filed under Mexico
