Get out of jail free.

The Catholic Church just announced on Friday it will reopen the cases of at least two heroes who were excommunicated for their actions against Spain during Mexico’s war for independence that began on September 16^th, 1810. The two principle figures in question are Padre Miguel Hidalgo, who is considered the “Father of Mexican Independence”, and one of his closest followers and a former student of his, Padre José Maria Morelos. The primary leader, Miguel Hidalgo, was captured in 1811 and executed by the Spaniards. After they killed him they chopped off his head and hung it high up on a wall in the City of Guanajuato, where the fighting of the rebellion began. It hung there until 1821 when Spain finally capitulated and withdrew from Mexico after 300 years of colonial rule. You can still see the iron hook in the wall where his head hung in a wire cage.

It is worthy to note that Spain and the Catholic Church walked hand in glove in those days and whoever became the enemy of one also became the enemy of the other. Now that Mexico is approaching its bicentennial in 2010 the current powers that be want to tidy up a bit. The Church in Mexico was a bit corrupt in the days of Hidalgo (to say the least) and after Mexico won independence the Mexican people never forgot that the Church took the side of Spain. The political struggle between church and state continued for many years until liberals like Benito Juárez and others began to severely limit the church in anything but purely spiritual matters. There was even a war between elements of the church and the state called the “Cristero War” that began in 1926 during which many people died. There is still a struggle between church and state that is seething underneath the surface and I think that this sudden impulse for forgiveness on the part of the Church is an attempt to cool the flames a bit.

This whole affair makes me wonder what Hidalgo and Morelos think about all this. After all, if the church excommunicated them they must be sitting in Hell, right? Then what happens now if the church has a bureaucratic change of heart? Does the Devil suddenly fling open their cell doors and say, “Okay you two, you’re free to go”? How to you go to Heaven after 200 years in Hell? Whatever the case, I’ll bet it will feel great. Personally I think that Miguel Hidalgo was a great guy and you will have to look pretty hard to find a man more dedicated and determined than José Maria Morelos. I have studied the histories of both in detail and to me they are both heroes. I sincerely hope that they do end up in Heaven and that I do too. I would really like to shake hands with them. It shouldn’t be hard to recognize them. They will probably have a “singed” look about them.

Now I get it!

In yesterday’s blog I wrote about the current U.S. federal administration plans to enforce the laws against hiring undocumented foreign farm workers just when the winter vegetable crop is ready for harvest. I noted that this would especially affect the state of Arizona because of their especially tough new state restrictions against employers who hire undocumented Mexican workers. As it turns out, however, I shouldn’t have worried so much about Arizona because I learned today that many of the Arizona producers are planning to move their operations across the border to Mexico where there is an adequate legal supply of cheap farm labor. After all is said and done, the growing conditions are about the same in Northern Mexico as they are in Southern Arizona. I guess that is fine for the big producers but I don’t know what that does for the rest of the Arizona agro industry. Also, what about the revenue from the things that the farm workers used to buy in Arizona and what about the sales tax revenue from those items? Is it all really worth the trouble to move everything south? How do the average people of Arizona benefit?

In any case I guess that I should feel glad that Arizona has figured out how they are going to produce the goods. Now I will just have to worry about how the tomato and onion farmers from New Jersey are going to move their operations to Mexico. Oh, yes, and what about the cranberry growers from Maine, the apple growers from the state of Washington, and the dairy farmers from New York State and Wisconsin. How are they going to move their farming operations to Mexico. Won’t the dairy farmers have to move their cows too?

I think Arizona should take their right wing nut case religious fanatic state legislature to task before the “wide open spaces” of Arizona are empty of everything but bigotry. Everybody should do what they are good at. The farms workers should work on the farms under living wages and fair labor practices and the fruit, vegetable, and dairy producers should do what they do best and that is producing food. Working together in English or in Spanish they can guarantee a brighter future and a stronger America.

Shot in the foot.

Just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays the harvest begins next month for much of the nation's winter vegetable crops. The big question is, who will be doing the job of getting the food from the fields to the Thanksgiving and Christmas tables? Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff with his wonderful sense of timing has decided to send letters to 140,000 employers informing them that they have people on their payrolls with incorrect Social Security numbers and that they will be heavily fined if they don’t fire them. Nice going Mr. Chertoff . Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot as a tribute to truth, justice , and the American way. There are already crops starting to rot in the fields because there is not enough farm labor to pick them and you want to either deport the undocumented Mexican farm workers or scare them even further underground.

Arizona is already waking up to the fact that they may have made a grave error with their tough new employer sanctions law. Where are they going to get workers to replace the 30,000 that they need every day to pick winter vegetable crops? What will all this mean to the average American? It is bound to mean shortages and higher prices. This is seasonal work in remote rural locations and there is no way that they are going to find American workers to fill the empty slots. I think that George Bush already knows that he is potentially in big trouble because of this and when the American housewives finally begin to clamor for their veggies he will find himself in a big pickle…er, ummm, no pun intended :)

Pepenadores

Irapuato, the city in Mexico where I live, is a city of approximately one half million people. It seems much smaller than that because it is very compact and the majority of the population don't earn enough to own an automobile. They either walk or take a bus or taxi or ride a bicycle. Nevertheless, the city generates about four hundred tons of trash per day from all sources. That is about a pound and a half of trash per day per person. About forty tons of that four hundred tons consists of recyclable material of all types but mainly cardboard, paper, aluminum, and plastic. Of that forty tons per day of recyclable material, about four tons per day or 10 percent consists of plastic containers. Some of this material is High Density Polyethylene or HDPE which comes from things like plastic milk bottles but a large part of the recyclable plastic is what normal people call "PET". Why? Because only nerds like me can remember "Poly Ethylene Terephthalate". Most clear plastic bottles such as soft drink bottles are made from PET. In order to help reduce its land fill requirements and also to let the poor earn some type of living the City of Irapuato lets people pick recyclables from the land fill. The trash pickers are called "pepenadores". The word “pepenador” means “gleaner” or “scavenger”. Some people collect paper, some collect cardboard, some collect aluminum, and some collect PET. The work is very competitive. When the trash trucks arrive the pepenadores climb all over the trash like vultures poking and picking through it like they are looking for treasure.

At the present time the scrap dealers are paying one peso per kilo (2.2 pounds) for PET and 58 of the popular 600ml (20oz.) soft drink bottles weigh one kilo. So, in order to earn the equivalent of three U.S. dollars per DAY from collecting plastic bottles they need to collect about 2000 bottles. This is very difficult because there are so many pepenadores. It is even worse in Guatemala where there might be one thousand people living at the trash dump in huts made of cardboard and plastic and little children scramble for trash right alongside their elders. It is my understanding that Mexico City has about 15,000 pepenadores in total. They live in little neighborhoods of huts that surround the dumps. People are born, live, have children and grandchildren, and then die as pepenadores.

Now, here is the kicker! What happens to the PET that the pepenadores collect? It goes to China where they turn it into polyester cloth and also use it to make the fill for many insulated winter coats and jackets and to make carpets and other stuff that you (and me) buy at Walmart. Some of the people who pick plastic bottles from the trash in Mexico formerly made huaraches for a living. Huaraches are sandals made of leather that have a piece of tire tread for a sole. I have a pair and they are very comfortable. They cost about 50 pesos ($4.50) per pair. People don't make them very much any more, however, because they can't sell them. Why not? Because the shops are flooded with cheap plastic sandals that come from China and cost only half as much. And where does the plastic come from to make the sandals? You guessed it! It comes from the plastic bottles that the Mexicans and the Guatemalans collect from the trash dumps. What a nightmare!

In all fairness to other poor people in the world, there are millions of people in Africa, China, and India who would give anything to be able to pick trash in the Irapuato trash dump. It would be a big leap forward for them. Millions and millions of people in live on about one dollar a day or LESS. They don't need millions of dollars to be comfortable and happy either. They could do very well for themselves with just a little practical help and something to hope for. I remember the old political slogan, "A chicken in every pot". For people who live on nothing more than tortillas, beans, and chili peppers, even a scrawny chicken would seem like Thanksgiving dinner. Trashpicking...it’s a sorry business. That’s about all I can say except…"there but for the grace of God go I".

Is nothing sacred?

Today I heard on the news that Taco Bell is going to open one of their restaurants in Monterrey, Mexico and then other Mexican cities. Has the world gone insane? The last thing that Mexico needs is more tacos, especially the fast food crap that Taco Bell calls a taco. I can’t imagine what they are thinking. I don’t believe that it is going to go over well either. Apparently they tried this before and in 1992 and it was a flop. They have a new motto this time…"Taco Bell is something else." Yeah, right!

Weather & Foreign Policy

First, a little story that a friend sent to me the other day:

It was October and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a chief in a modern society he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared. But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the national weather service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the national weather service again. "Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at national weather service again replied, "It's going to be a very cold winter." The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find. Two weeks later the chief called the national weather service again. Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever." "How can you be so sure?" the chief asked. The weatherman replied, "Because the Indians are collecting firewood like crazy!"

It struck me that this story illustrates in a way how U.S. foreign policy is often carried out. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and as more and more historical documents are brought to light in both Russia and the United States it seems to me that more foreign policy decisions were made by reason of intuition, rumor, false claims, and paranoia than anything else. It also looks like this same pattern is repeating itself over and over in foreign policy matters involving Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Burma etcetera. In the end I think that personal visits, dialog, and face to face negotiation work better than sifting through rumors collected by the FBI and CIA. We need to call in the “weatherman” as it were and find out just where he is getting his information.

Tighten your belt.

Well, I got an eyeful this morning. For various and sundry reasons the world’s grains in reserve level has fallen to a 57 day supply. That is the lowest level in 34 years. There is not enough of a grain surplus to meet the needs of the world’s poor in the event of an emergency and even wealthy people will be paying considerably more for food in 2008. There has already been signs of panic buying in places like India where a food shortage of any kind would bring chaos. The demand for biofuels is exacerbating the problem and as large populations in places like India and China grow more affluent they demand more meat. More meat means a greater need for animal feed. In the United States, people can expect to pay 10 percent more for chicken, 14 percent more for milk and 21 percent more for eggs and the price of bread is expected to rise by 50 percent. To make matters even worse, most developing countries, where the bulk of the world's poor live, will be hit the hardest by crop damage related to climate change.

Closer to home, the Secretary of Social Development of Mexico recently announced that 44,700,000 Mexicans are now living in poverty, more than 14 million of which live in conditions that can only be described as extreme. I can tell you as a witness that when they are talking about extreme poverty they mean very extreme. I have been to places where the people eat only one real meal a day and that is nothing more than some tortillas, some chilies, and perhaps a handful of beans or rice. It used to be that you could buy a kilo of tortillas for 5 pesos or about half a dollar. That is 2.2 pounds, enough for a meager daily needs of four people…two adults and two children if that is all they eat. If you are making two dollars a day or less, that kilo of tortillas would cost you twenty five percent of your daily income. When you add in the current rise in the price of corn and subsequently a rise in the price of tortillas to six, seven, or eight pesos per kilo the extremely poor really suffer, especially the children. The rest of the poor people don’t fare much better either. If you are making three dollars a day and that lifts you out of the “extreme” bracket…well whoop-ti-doo! You are still probably going to bed hungry quite often, not counting the fact that you already wear cast off clothing, your teeth are falling out, you wear plastic flip-flop shoes and you live in a cardboard and pallet wood shack with no electricity, no running water, and no sewer.

I am sad to say it folks but I think we are all in for a rude awakening. I hope everyone has a nice Christmas this year because after that I am afraid we are in for some pretty tough sledding.

The Great Flip-Flop

The Great Flip-Flop

In my younger days I did a lot of fishing in the waters of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota and in the late autumn of every year we experienced a phenomenon on the lakes that the fishermen call “turnover”. The autumn days are still warm but the nights get colder and colder and the water on the top of the lakes becomes colder than the water on the bottom until one day the lakes “turn over”. The cold water sinks to the bottom and the warmer water down below rises to the top and for a few days the fishing is pretty good while the fish go crazy looking for that last meal before the water finally cools off enough for ice to form. You could call this turnover phenomenon a flip-flop.

There is another flip-flop going on. The real estate market in the United States is starting to slow down while the real estate market in Mexico is improving. As the baby Boomers begin to retire many of them choose to move to Mexico where the cost of living is cheaper and nice homes are a bargain. Why are there many nice homes for sale in Mexico and why are they a bargain? Well, for one thing there are quite a few Mexican people who immigrated to the U.S. who have done very well for themselves. Many of them were sending money back to Mexico to construct nice big houses for their families in pleasant locations and they were planning on returning to Mexico to live in their new houses. All of a sudden, however, their children have grown and become “Americanized” and they have too and their families have begun sinking roots in America. The are now thinking and talking and planning like Americans and Mexico does not seem to have the pull on them that it once had. A lot of them will never go back to Mexico no matter what the U.S. government tries to do. What will happen to the nice houses they have built in Mexico? The Baby Boomers will be delighted to buy them and retire in Mexico to live like gentry on their U.S. Social Security checks and whatever meager savings they have. So, there you have it…the Great Flip-Flop. In the end everything will even out. Patience is the key.

Sputnik & St. Francis

Today, October 4^th, is the 50^th anniversary of the launching of the first man made satellite in history. The U.S.S.R. (Soviet Union) launched it in 1957 when I was ten years old. It was called “Sputnik” by the Russians which in Russian is written "Спутник". The word Sputnik means "co-traveler" or "traveling companion". Ironically, October 4^th is also the feast day of Francesco Bernardone who is better known as St. Francis of Assisi, one of the best loved of the Christian saints. The day gives me mixed feelings because I love St. Francis but I hate Sputnik…a lot. The United States and the Soviet Union were deeply engaged in the so called “Cold War” in those days and we were at the height of the communist scare. Nikita Khrushchev, The First Secretary of the Communist party of the U.S.S.R, was telling us that they would bury us and we were always afraid that the Russians would bomb us with nuclear bombs just about any day.

As a ten year old I was terrified to have Sputnik flying over our heads going “beep, beep, beep”. The Catholic nuns who taught me didn’t help my fears one bit because they were always talking about dying with sins on your soul and going straight to hell and burning in unquenchable fires for ever and ever. I don’t even know which was worse, the Russians or the nuns. Even the priests got into the act. Our priest would shout at us from the pulpit on Sunday, “If the Russians manage to drop the atomic bomb on this parish tonight, fifty percent of you are going to wake up in Hell”. I can still hear his voice and it gives me the shivers. The terrible scare wouldn’t seem to go away and the Sputnik signals continued for 22 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on October 26^th. That wasn’t the end of it however. It got worse. On November 3, Sputnik II was launched, carrying a much heavier payload which this time included a dog named Laika who was never returned to Earth. This showed us how cruel the Russians were and because they were atheistic communists that they didn’t care about life. We had a family dog at the time that looked very much like Laika. We called her “Cindy” (short for Cinderella). We would never even think of leaving Cindy up in space like that. This was just about too much for a 10 year old boy to comprehend.

The paranoia went on for several months until January 31, 1958, when the United States successfully launched Explorer I. This made me feel a lot better because I knew that our American satellite could probably kick the Russian Satellite’s ass. Years later, while visiting the United nations complex in New York City with my daughter Angela, I discovered that there was a replica of Sputnik I hanging from the ceiling. Immediately my heart started pounding and I could feel my face flush red and all of the feelings of fear and hate that I had as a child came back to me. In all, there were actually 41 sputniks launched during the Soviet space program but none of the latter had the impact on me that the first two had. The world has changed quite a bit since then and Russia is now merely a rival and not an enemy. I hope that it stays that way. Young people today have enough o worry about without another “Beep, beep, beep”.

Immigration Issues

On May 6, 1882 the U.S Congress passed a federal law called the Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States. It was the first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history and it remained in effect for 60 years. Many Chinese had immigrated to the U.S. during the California gold rush of 1849 and they were generally well received, especially when they helped build the Transcontinental Railroad. When the good times tapered off, however, white organized labor groups were jealous of whatever gold was left in “them thar hills” and an anti-foreigner atmosphere ensued. After being forcibly driven from the mines, the Chinese who were already in California settled in Chinese enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco and Oakland, and took up low end wage jobs such as restaurant and laundry work.

The Chinese Exclusion Act didn’t keep Chinese from still trying to get in, however, and Asian workers crossing into U.S. territory from Mexico became a big problem. In 1904 the U.S. established the first border patrol whose agents were responsible for a section of the border that ran from El Paso, Texas, to California. At that time Mexicans were moving rather freely back and forth across the border for work related purposes with no problem. In fact, in 1910 at the beginning of the Mexican revolution, many Mexicans fled north and settled permanently in the American southwest.

In 1921 the U.S. Congress passed an immigration act that established the first quota system for European immigrants. They attempted to include Mexicans in the restrictions but were blocked by the U.S. farm sector who relied heavily on Mexicans as farm laborers. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexico started the “Bracero” program to bring in temporary workers from Mexico to supplement an acute shortage of labor due to the demands of World War II. The Bracero program didn’t end until 1964. There are people whom I know in Mexico who have talked to me about how well received Mexican workers were during World war II. They tell me that entire trains would pull up at the local station and the word would go out that anyone who wanted to go to the United States to work should get on the train. To make a long story short, the United States has relied upon Mexico as a source for cheap labor for well over one hundred years at the very least. Just as Mexico has been a significant source for labor in the past and in the present it will continue to be a source in the future, especially when the seventy-six million American “Baby Boomers” start to retire in a few short years.

Many Americans are afraid of the current influx and want to build a wall. The former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, reminded me recently that the Great Wall of China didn’t prevent barbarians from getting through and the Berlin Wall did not prevent the arrival of Freedom and Democracy to East Germany. One of these days the American people are going to realize that utilizing all the available labor and resources of North America is the only way that they are going to be able to compete with China and India. It is extremely important that we develop a comprehensive plan for temporary workers., because Mexico is definitely a friend and not an enemy.