September 2010

There were 16 posts published in September (this is page 5 of 6).

Countdown to Mexico’s Bi-Centennial: “Viva Mexico! Let’s Go Kill Some Gachupines!”

By JOHN ROSS

The clocks are literally ticking as Mexico starts the final leg of the countdown to the 200th anniversary of its independence from Spain. Dozens of huge, solar-powered timepieces have been installed in this monster city’s great Zocalo plaza and 31 state capitols to mark the minutes until the bi-centennial celebration kicks in this September 15th-16th. At 2.8 million pesos each, the price of the clocks is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what President Felipe Calderon is lavishing on the actual festivities.

Mexico has budgeted 3,000,000,000 pesos for the nation’s birthday fete but costs will surely exceed that modest allocation. In a country where 70% of the population lives in and around the poverty line, 50% of Mexican families cannot afford the basic food basket, and 13 million children go to bed without supper each night, Bi-Centennial bread and circuses will not staunch the hunger that stalks the land

How much of this multi-billion peso boodle will be pilfered, embezzled, subcontracted out to dubious friends of the house, or otherwise flushed down the drain, remains to be calculated.

Mexico is one of eight Latin American republics that will celebrate the 200th anniversary of their separation from a debilitated Spain back in 1810 this year – but it is the only country on the continent that will also commemorate the centennial of a landmark revolution that toppled an entrenched oligarchy.

The numerical coincidences between the catastrophic conflict that began in 1810 (500,000 were dead before the war of liberation was concluded in 1821) and the revolution of 1910 (a million killed) have given rise to the thesis that every hundred years, on the tenth year of the century, this distant neighbor nation explodes in lethal social upheaval. In Mexico 2010, with an economy in freefall, unemployment at record levels, and 28,000 citizens slaughtered in Calderon’s uncalled-for war on the drug cartels, this timetable for renewed revolution is not an unlikely projection.

But aside from revolutionary numerology, there is an historical connection that explains the re-occurrence of social rebellion here in 1810 and 1910. 1910 was an election year and the dictator Porfirio Diaz, who had governed the country with an iron fist for 34 years, stealing election after election, was determined to maintain power despite his increasing unpopularity. Clapping his chief rival, the liberal Francisco Madero, in jail weeks before the balloting, the 83 year-old Don Porfirio once again crowned himself topdog – like Diaz, current president Felipe Calderon is often accused of having stolen the 2006 election.

Then as now in 2010, deep recession was on the land and Porfirio Diaz quashed social discontent by calling out the army to restore order (Calderon has 50,000 troops in the field.) Faced with disintegrating governability, the dictator moved to soothe the restive masses by throwing a big party to celebrate the centennial of the nation’s independence. Monuments and statues were erected throughout the capitol, most prominently the gilded Angel of Independence that still rises above the Paseo de La Reforma, the city’s most traveled thoroughfare. Indeed, the dictator invested millions in refurbishing the avenue and transforming it into a sort of Mexican Champs D’Elysie.

Borrowing a page from Don Porfi’s playbook, Calderon last spring laid the cornerstone for a multi-million-peso “Bi-centennial Tower of Light” at the foot of Reforma Boulevard. Cost overruns on the monument have already doubled and the Tower will not be open for business until late 2011, if ever, due to engineering snafus.

A hundred years ago, amongst other Centennial projects, Porfirio Diaz cut the ribbon at the site of a new headquarters for the Congress of the country but two months later, revolution washed over the land and the dome-like structure was left unfinished – after the conclusion of hostilities, the dome was converted into the Monument of the Revolution.

Similarly, Calderon’s list of Bi-centennial projects includes new quarters for the Mexican Senate – weeks before the big fiesta that building too remains unfinished.

100 years ago, commemorative events and glittering banquets and balls filled the dictator’s days and nights. Showers of fireworks lit up the skies. New pants were distributed to the poor although they were discouraged from attending the festivities. As is standard operating procedure in this ultra-centralized nation, the fiesta was confined to the capitol and the provincials uninvited, further ratcheting up tensions between the countryside and the big city. When word got out that the dictator had spent Mexico’s entire social budget on the Centennial of Independence – there was no money left over to even pay the wages of teachers – all hell broke lose. On November 20th, 1910 the Mexican revolution erupted and Diaz was overthrown.

Felipe Calderon has been faithful to Don Porfi’s scenario. Aside from the Bi-centennial Arch and the new Senate chambers, he has inaugurated a multi-billion peso extravaganza, the “Expo Bi-Centenario”, in Guanajuato (see sidebar); streets and schools all over the country have been renamed for the “Heroes who gave us a Fatherland”, and a Bicentennial park in the north of Mexico City, constructed on the site of an abandoned refinery that befouled the air of this megalopolis for decades, is open for business. Toxicity levels are said to be still so high that just sitting on the grass can be dangerous to one’s health.

Calderon’s management of the Bicentennial has been haphazard. Five coordinators, starting with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the son of a beloved president, have signed on and then abruptly quit in the past six years, most recently when Juan Manuel Villalpando, a right-wing historian, turned over the reigns of the operation to Secretary of Public Education Alfonso Lujambio, often cited as Calderon’s successor in 2012.

With less than a month until the big birthday party, public buildings like the National Palace, the Palace of Bellas Artes, and the Supreme Court are being scrubbed down for the event. Miles of red, white, and green bunting – the colors of the Mexican flag – are being draped over downtown skyscrapers such as the 84-story Torre Mayor, the tallest building in the nation.

The Bicentennial cultural calendar is packed. A magnum exposition of patriotic icons, including the polished skull of Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the profligate priest who first gave voice to the struggle for Independence, and the mixed bones of either 12 or 14 other martyrs (it has not yet been determined whose bones are whose) will be displayed in the National Palace which the citizenry is cordially encouraged to visit (the Palace is usually locked down and sealed by the military.)

Other commemorative offerings include the publication of a re-edited official edition of “The History of Mexico” issued by Lujambio’s Public Education Secretariat. The volume has been heavily critiqued by academics because Calderon and his PAN party have imposed a right-wing spin on the nation’s biography. Much of the revised text appears to be the work of the discredited Enrique Krauze, house historian for Televisa, the senior partner in Mexico’s two-headed television monopoly and a bosom buddy of Juan Manual Villalpando. The volume tilts towards a conservative interpretation of historical events and tends to gloss over darker moments in the national narrative – there is no mention of slavery and yet a third of the population at liberation was Afro-Mexican. The sugarcoated treatment of Antonio Lopez y Santana, an arch-villain who ceded half of Mexico’s national territory to Washington, is remarkable. The 1968 massacre of 300 striking students by the Mexican military is described as “a large demonstration that was repressed” with no attribution as to the repressors.

In a recent Proceso magazine interview, historian Victor Diaz Archiniaba disses the revised “History of Mexico” as a history of the country’s politicos and not its people. The right-wing PAN, posits the popular Autonomous Metropolitan University professor, is uncomfortable with lionizing personages such as Hidalgo, his successor Jose Maria Morelos, and revolutionary apostles Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa who defied the Catholic Church, rose up against repressive regimes, and overthrew conservative governments.

The Calderon government’s plans for the twin centennials have favored the 200th anniversary of Independence over the 100th year centennial of the Mexican Revolution, an uprising of the poor with which the PANistas have never been sympathetic.

Capitalism has bought up the franchise for the “Buy Centennial”- as some unpatriotic wags have dubbed the upcoming festivities. As every year during September, “the patriotic month”, venders push handcarts through the city streets laden with “tricolor” flags, plastic “coronetas”- a sort of Mexican vuvuzela whose braying bleats add to the urban din – and tons of patriotic tchotchkes. To honor the Bicentennial, the mugs of Padre Hidalgo and his co-conspirators invite consumers to buy tee shirts, kids clothes, cigarette lighters, milk cartons, and cans of beans, phone cards, and lottery tickets.

A cartoon version of the struggle for Independence, “True Heroes”, is about to roll. Creator Carlos Kuri concedes his film is a “lite” version of Mexico’s oft-violent history. Hidalgo, Morelos et al more resemble “Batman, Spiderman, and Indiana Jones” than their original role models, he says – Morelos’s voiceover was dubbed by “Brozo”, the green-haired “scary clown” AKA Victor Trujillo, a Televisa warhorse. “True Heroes” action figures are being heavily marketed.

Other Buy Centennial specials include a Bicentennial lottery (“Bicentenario”), a Bicentennial bike race (“Bicenton”), a time capsule to be opened a hundred years hence if in fact Mexico survives until then, the issuance of various postage stamps, a youth parliament, a racquetball championship, an international regatta, and an NBA exhibition game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Although the list of international dignitaries who are invited to the Bicentennial hijinks is closely held, the buzz is that Spain’s Prince Felipe and his princesa Dona Leticia will be on hand when Calderon pronounces the immortal “Grito de Independencia” from the presidential balcony overlooking the Zocalo on September 15th. Given the presence of the royals, the “Grito”, as first sounded by Father Hidalgo – “Viva Mexico! Let’s Go Kill Some Gachupines” (Spaniards) – will have to be modified for the occasion.

Calderon’s September 15th “Grito” will be preceded and followed by multiple military parades – foreign contingents, including one from the United States whose troops have invaded Mexico five times, will pad out the processions. Nearly half the Mexican army is currently in the field waging the President’s bloody drug war.

To top off the fiesta, the heavens over Mexico City will be illuminated by world-class pyrotechnics organized by Australian Ric Burch whose SpecTak Productions staged the opening pageant at the Beijing Olympics. Burch, who will be paid a million Yanqui dollars for the fireworks display, has promised to learn Spanish for the Bicentennial.

September 15th, traditionally “La Noche Mexicana” when the natives don floppy sombreros, tank up on rotgut tequila, yowl nostalgic mariachi tunes, and shoot off their pistolas like “real Mexicanos”, is always a blast but this year should be a lollapalooza. In 2008, purported narcos tossed a bomb into a crowd celebrating “La Noche Mexicana” in Morelia Michoacan, killing eight partygoers and tens of thousands of Mexico City and federal police will be assigned to the Zocalo to keep the crowds from killing each other.

After an all-night fandango, Calderon will be helicoptered to Dolores Guanajuato where Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a survivor of a failed conspiracy to overthrow the Spanish rulers, uttered the original “Grito”, the one about killing the Gachupines. As legend has it, once the good padre had bellowed his murderous oath, he strode across the town plaza and threw open the doors of the local jailhouse. Hundreds of Indians and Afro-Mexicans who had been forced to slave in the silver mines (Mexico produced a third of the world’s currency in 1810) surged out, picked up machetes and torches, and marched on the nearby silver capitol of Guanajuato City where they rounded up the white elites in the grain house or Alhondiga and set it ablaze. The fire is said to have been ignited by a disaffected miner whose nickname “El Pipila” now graces taco stands and other purveyors of roasting meats throughout Mexico.

On the morning of September 16th to conclude Bicentennial activities in Guanajuato, Felipe Calderon will host a gala breakfast for local elites at the Alhondiga, a structure from which the captured Padre Hidalgo’s head once swung.

Given the repression, economic devastation, hunger, corruption, and violence that blankets the land in this centennial year, many Mexicans are wondering if, much as in Porfirio Diaz’s day, a new revolution can be far behind?

John Ross is the author of El Monstruo. You can consult him on particulars at johnross@igc.org

Birthright Citizenship, “Anchor Babies” and the 14th Amendment

By JULIA NISSEN

Recently, the somewhat repugnant term “anchor babies” has entered the immigration debate, as certain conservatives call for a reassessment of the 14th Amendment, claiming it wrongly protects the children of undocumented immigrants. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on Fox News on July 28th explaining a new tactic dubbed “drop and leave,” in which undocumented mothers come to the U.S. explicitly to have a child. As a result of this process, the baby would be granted American citizenship, thus providing an “anchor” with which the parents could later use to gain legal residence themselves.

Sen. Graham, along with former presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), was once a Republican promoter of comprehensive immigration reform who sought to provide undocumented residents with legal pathways towards citizenship. Now both, together with other prominent conservatives such as Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have taken a leap to the far right in attacking the citizenship clause of the Constitution.

Many anti-immigration activists have claimed that the United States is outdated in providing birthright citizenship. Glenn Beck of Fox News and Bob Dane of FAIR have claimed, respectively, that the U.S. is “the only country in the world” or at least the only “western country” where birthright guarantees citizenship. Neither is true: the U.S. is among 33 other countries—including Canada—that practice jus soli (grant birthright citizenship). “Anchor babies” have been mentioned ominously in connection not only to illegal immigrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, but also to affluent “birth tourists” and supposed terrorist organizations.

The suggestion that the U.S. revise the 14th amendment is merely a ploy by conservatives to further anger the American public regarding immigration that conveniently comes just in time for the midterm elections, and has little chance of being seriously considered. Although undocumented immigrants do have children in the U.S.—which now account for 8 per cent of all births in the U.S.—this idea of “drop and leave” is overt fear-mongering. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly dealt with the wording of the 14th Amendment that conservatives are questioning, meaning that in order for the U.S. to effect a change in birthright citizenship policy, the amendment must be changed or past Supreme Court decisions must be overturned; both are extremely unlikely. However, this new discussion about “anchor babies” illustrates, as Julia Preston of The New York Times states, a “rightward shift in the immigration debate.”

The 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment was promulgated in 1868 to ensure the rights of minority groups, specifically those of the thousands of African-Americans that had been freed from slavery during and after the Civil War. The Amendment includes multiple clauses such as the right to equal protection, due process, and the now-debated citizenship clause. This provision states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The clause was created shortly after the 1866 Civil Rights Act to ensure that birthright citizenship was constitutionally protected. Since 1868, the Amendment has been questioned in multiple Supreme Court cases that have clarified doubts regarding the wording of the clause.

In the late 1800s, xenophobia toward immigrants of Chinese descent swept through the United States, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law prohibited any Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Wong Kim Ark, a child of Chinese immigrants, was born in California in 1873. He traveled to China, but upon return to the United States was barred from entering. Ark objected, and the case was taken to the Supreme Court in 1898. In a 6-2 decision, Ark was declared a U.S. citizen by the 14th Amendment, and thus exempt from the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Similar cases such as Perkins v. Elg in 1939, and Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967 have dealt with the specific rights of the citizenship clause, and the Court has consistently declared that any child born within the precincts of the U.S. is a legal citizen. In the recent debate, many conservatives have questioned the intent of the words “within the jurisdiction of,” arguing that this does not apply to the children of undocumented immigrants who have entered the country illegally. But 1982’s Plyer v. Doe stated that the undocumented immigrants who reside in a specific state are “within the jurisdiction” of that state. In addition, the majority opinion stated, “no plausible distinction with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

Some conservatives argue that the world today is vastly different from what it was in 1868. They contend that the framers could not have foretold the unprecedented immigration seen in the 21st century, and thus the 14th Amendment is not suited to adequately address contemporary issues. While it is true the United States has greatly changed since the end of the 19th century, at the time the Amendment was passed there was certainly substantial immigration, and the clause was not solely aimed at freed slaves. In “Citizenship Matters,” an article by J.M. Mancini and Graham Finlay that compares the Irish Citizenship Referendum to American birthright citizenship, the authors refer to the work of Gerald Neuman and point out that “before Reconstruction, the U.S. did not have ‘open borders’: state and federal law restricted the immigration of paupers, the physically infirm, convicts, and, after 1808, illegally imported slaves. Nonetheless, the framers of the 14th Amendment did not seek to exclude from citizenship anyone who descended from these ‘illegal’ entrants.”

“Anchor Babies”

Recently, conservatives have criticized the 14th Amendment, claiming that it has been interpreted to give unearned citizenship to the children of undocumented residents, providing an “anchor” for the parents to also earn legal status. But many other scholars have remarked on the difficulty of attaining legal residency for the parents in these situations. Not only does the child have to be over 21 before he or she can pursue citizenship for the parents, but the parents also must return to their home country for at least 10 years before their papers can be processed. Thus, as Roberto Suro, a communications and journalism professor at University of Southern California, has stated, “It is a hell of a lot of deferred gratification at best.”

The only short term benefits of giving birth to a child in the U.S. are that in some cases, legal children can help the parents avoid deportation, the children can enroll in Medicaid, and there are some programs that will aid pregnant or nursing mothers regardless of status. The statistics show that the frequency of immigration is largely a function of the job market, and not contingent upon any ulterior motive of reaping birthright citizenship benefits. Suro explains, “All the data suggests that people come here to work…especially Mexicans, and especially illegal Mexicans. If people came here because they were looking for work, you would expect to see the flow fluctuate with employment opportunities—and that’s what the data shows. If people came here to have babies, the flows would be pretty constant, and they are not.” As he notes, undocumented immigrants are much more likely to be men. If there were, in fact, this supposed trend of “drop and leave,” statistics would show a higher percentage of women immigrants.

Douglas Massey of the Mexican Migration Project draws the same conclusions. On May 20th, 2009, in a testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Douglas stated, “data clearly indicate[s] that Mexican immigration is not and has never been out of control. It rises and falls with labor demand and if legitimate avenues for entry are available, migrants enter legally.” On April 14, 2010, an ABC article raised the issue of “birth tourism,” a trend in which wealthy foreigners come to have children in special American-based resorts so that their children will gain American citizenship. The article questions the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment in light of these trends, but has received criticism due to its misrepresentation of certain facts. Birth tourism made up about two-tenths of 1 per cent of all births in 2006. Furthermore, these affluent non-natives have little in common with the undocumented immigrants primarily targeted by attacks on the 14th Amendment.

As a Washington Post article stated in July, “most [parents who come to the U.S. through ‘birth tourism’] say they do not intend to live in the United States themselves.” Rather, they pay vast amounts of money to give their children the opportunity of a future in the United States later in life. According to some commentators, another threat raised by the 14th Amendment is the potential for terrorism.

On June 24th, 2010, Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) stated on the House floor that terrorist cells overseas have “figured out how stupid we are being in this country to allow our enemies to get into our system, hurt our economy, get set up in a position to destroy our way of life, and we won’t do anything about it…[and] we’ll sue a state that tries to do anything about it.” He claims that terrorist organizations will send pregnant women to the United States to reap the benefits of birthright citizenship, then train these children as militant extremists who will return to the country thanks to their legal status.

No data have been made public to support these claims. When Gohmert said, “we’ll sue a state that tries to do anything about it,” he was referring to the Obama Administration’s recent decision to take the state of Arizona to court over immigration bill SB1070. However, the idea that SB1070 would be able to “do anything about” terrorism is extremely doubtful. As Douglas Massey of the Mexican Migration Project stated in a testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “the 1990s War on Immigrants was followed by the post-9/11 War on Terror, which was quickly conflated with immigration and identified with the Mexico-US border, despite the fact that none of the 9/11 hijackers entered from Mexico, that [Mexico] has no Islamic terrorist cells, has no significant Muslim population, and by that point had a declining rate of undocumented migration.”

Gohmert’s connection of terrorism with the border and “anchor babies” could be seen as largely a political ploy. Sam Fulwood III of the Center for American Progress stated in an interview with COHA, “In effect, those who advocate for changing the Constitution are throwing the kitchen sink into their arguments, conflating every possible combination of birthright citizenship to raise the ire of American voters to their cause…The facts of the matter in birthright citizenship isn’t what conservatives are using, rather they’re making highly charged emotional cases—with questionable facts and logic—to garner support among the public.”

What This Means for the Immigration Debate

As Elizabeth Wydra from the Constitutional Accountability Center has stated, the 14th Amendment was meant to “place the conditions of citizenship above the politics and prejudice of the day.” This year, the immigration debate has adopted a racially oriented tone, and this new attack on the Constitution is an example of this trend. The chances of passing any constitutional changes are slim to none. Amendments must be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and ratified by three-fourths of the states, an incredibly long and difficult process, especially for something that has so little Republican, much less bipartisan, support.

But certain conservatives claim that the issue of birthright citizenship—when applied to the children of undocumented residents—does not need an amendment, simply a clarification. Unfortunately for these conservatives, this has been clarified multiple times through various Supreme Court cases.

Julia Nissen is a research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Source: CounterPunch