this week, the annual congressional hand-wringing about Mexican corruption reaches a whole new level, when — as appears almost certain — the House of Representatives votes to decertify Mexico as a drug-fighting partner in good standing. If decertification is supported by the Senate and survives a possible Presidential veto, Clinton could still waive mandated economic sanctions in the “national interest.” Still, the message from Congress would be clear: America’s neighbor to the south and fellow member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is no better than pariah states like Iran, Afghanistan and Burma.
Mexico, according to Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., the measure’s sponsor, represents America’s “greatest threat,” because it “stands idly by while drugs flow into our nation and into the hands of our children.” In a Senate debate Thursday, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., seemed to be calling for the overthrow of the Mexican government: “The only way that I know of having the correct friends is to provoke a crisis there, because until you get rid of the PRI (the ruling party), until you get democracy, you’ll never get rid of the corruption.”
Well, duh. To say the Mexican regime is corrupt is like saying grass is green. Corruption has been the basis on which the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has governed Mexico for 68 straight years. But the righteous indignation emanating from Washington is consummately hypocritical. It ignores the role the U.S. has played in propping up a corrupt regime — not to mention the fact that the Mexican drug trade exists to fill America’s needs.
Successive Mexican governments have enjoyed the unblinking support of both the U.S. president and Congress despite their lack of basic democracy. These were governments based less on popular will than on purchased loyalties. That mattered less to the U.S. than the fact that the PRI ensured stability — even when it used violence, as in 1968. Beyond that, no one in the U.S. government paid too much attention to what happened down here.
Now Mexico is harvesting the fruits of that tolerance. In the middle of a frightening drug war, Mexico finds itself both institutionally and economically unarmed. Thanks to a willful neglect of basic governmental structures, Mexico has neither a military nor a federal police force willing or able to match the power of the drug traffickers. Decades of purchasing loyalties have left the government bankrupt. It’s the narco barons, not the PRI, who have the money to buy people.
Indeed, a true “narcoculture” has developed, especially in parts of northern Mexico, where smugglers are revered as macho free-traders, satisfying the gringos’ unquenchable demand for dope, while the government is scorned as corrupt, capricious and unjust.
The U.S. caused itself further grief by making marijuana — a substance of debatable danger — such a central target in its “war on drugs.” It was marijuana, not cocaine or heroin, that gave the Mexican drug cartels their start in the 1960s — in much the same way that Prohibition spurred the growth of America’s Mafia in the 1920s. Most narcotrafficantes got their first leg up with marijuana — so plentiful and easy to grow here. They took over whole villages in Sinaloa, Sonora and Chihuahua, often making life miserable for the local residents.
With the money and connections from the marijuana trade, they moved on to heroin, cocaine and, lately, methamphetamine. Their networks have become vast. In some regions, they have formed a shadow government; in others, a shadow economy. Their reach and power has further crippled already weak Mexican government institutions, from the smallest town government in Durango to the attorney general’s office in Mexico City. They have perverted legitimate businesses, from border truck dealerships to nationwide banks.
And it is well to remember how the traffickers bought off their first cops — with the profits from a plant that American states like California and Arizona now recognize may do as much good as harm. It would also help, as Mexicans point out, if Americans took a long, hard look at themselves and went on a drug-reduced diet.
But given which way the finger is pointing in Washington, that day looks a long way off.
MEXICO CITY
the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron
saint and its oldest, most indigenous religious symbol,
has slipped via cyberspace from the 16th century to the
21st.
Interlupe, a web site dedicated to the Virgin, was
unveiled publicly at the 21st National Guadalupan Congress
here last week.
“Almost 500 years ago, the Virgin of Guadalupe came from
heaven to help evangelize the people [of Mexico],” said
Monsignor Enrique Salazar, director of the Center of
Guadalupan Studies in Mexico City, which is sponsoring the
site. “Now she returns to the skies to evangelize the
entire world.”
According to legend, the Virgin of Guadalupe first appeared to Juan
Diego, an Indian peasant, on Dec. 12, 1531, near the spot where Aztec Indians
had once worshipped Tonantzin, the mother of all gods.
A dark-skinned, Mexican version of the Virgin Mary, Guadalupe’s reported appearance
helped convert Mexico’s millions of Indians to Catholicism.
Historians have called the cult surrounding her the
closest thing the country has to a nationally binding philosophy. While the country’s politics have been steeped in anti-clericalism, the “Dark Virgin,” as she is known, remains a source of intense faith especially among the Mexican poor.
Even those who say they are not Catholic profess belief in her miraculous powers.
The place where Juan Diego was originally visited by her, north of what is now Mexico
City, has been converted into a shrine to which millions
of pilgrims come each year. Every Dec. 12, altars in the Dark Virgin’s
honor adorn poor barrios across the country. The Vatican, meanwhile, is in the process of making Juan Diego a saint.
Interlupe, a cybershrine of sorts, is the work of Homero
Hernandez, the 25-year-old owner of a firm that specializes in multi-media for architects.”She’s the center of my
faith,” Hernandez says. “She’s always there supporting me.”
The Web site is divided into two parts. The first, in Spanish (an English-language version is presently “under construction”), contains studies, discussions and sermons on various aspects of the Guadalupan phenomenon. Here, surfers can find descriptions of the Virgin’s original appearance; Juan Diego’s life; Guadalupan-inspired art, architecture and sculpture; and an area devoted to the “Nican Mopohua,” the book which relates the story of the five appearances the Virgin made to Juan Diego.
Interlupe also gets into more esoteric parts of the
phenomenon: for example, the stars on the Virgin’s cloak, which supposedly match exactly the alignment of the stars the night she appeared. Her eyes get another whole section. In the early 1980s, researchers studying paintings of Guadalupe claimed that they discovered in her eyes
pictures
of human beings, later found to be, among others, Juan
Diego and Juan de Zumarraga, the humanistic 16th century Franciscan
friar known as “Protector of the Indians.”
The second part of the site is devoted to e-mail, receiving and responding to
messages, comments, questions and announcements related to
the Virgin from across the world. Centro researchers monitor the site daily, selecting
appropriate themes and answering e-mail questions.
“We wanted to clear up all the concerns that people
had,” Salazar said. “There’s so much that’s said out there
that has no basis in historical fact.”
Interlupe’s's web site address is: http://spin.com.mx/~msalazar
The e-mail address is: hohernan@infosel.net.mx
Quote of the day
All lit up
“Pull all these out I look like a Christmas tree.”
Mother Teresa, telling her doctors to disconnect the tubes and cables transmitting medication and oxygen to her after her angioplasty operation (From an Associated Press report on Mother Teresa, who was in “critical condition” on Monday.)
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, MEXICO –
The men fall silent when they walk through the gates of Zona Galactica. Hundreds of them slink, tense and nervous, through the streets lined with squat pink, beige and yellow buildings. Eyes are averted. Everyone knows what’s on everyone else’s mind. After all, there’s only one reason to come here.
Zona Galactica, just outside Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state.
is a city-sponsored, city-built, city-monitored and city-protected bordello. Established in 1992, it was this city’s response to out-of-control street prostitution and the violence, disease and exploitation that accompanied it. “The people demanded it,” says Dr. Gabriel Esquinca, who runs the city’s health clinic at Galactica. “People were marching against street prostitution and clandestine bordellos.”
On any given day, 160 women and 1,000 men can be found here. Gates open at 9 a.m., though that’s a bit early for most clients.
Above the gates is a large sign reading “Zona de Tolerancia,” accompanied by an ad for Coca-Cola. Men pay two pesos to enter (used by the city to defray costs) and are given a condom, purchased in bulk through a city contract. They’re searched by the city police, checked for inebriation and off they go.
Although the government built the Zone and regulates its conditions, inside the free market is king. Madams and ex-prostitutes rent out the rooms. Two privately owned nightclubs — Gitano and King Kong, sell alcohol and present late-night striptease acts. The sexual favors of the women who work in the clubs are also available — for a higher price. “We don’t regulate the fees,” says Dr. Samuel Hernandez, the city’s health director. “The only thing we do is regulate the health of the women. If they’re healthy, they can work.”
The Zone has its own health clinic, run by city doctors and nurses. Each week, the women are checked for venereal diseases. No one has ever showed up with AIDS — Chiapas has had fewer than 400 cases since the fatal epidemic started — but the women are tested for it every two months anyway. Any woman with a sexual disease is suspended from working until city-supplied medication clears up the matter.
Few of the women match Hollywood’s notion of what prostitutes look like. Some are well into their 40s, and bear a worn, leathery look. What they lack in looks, they make up for in price. Fifty pesos ($6.50) is at the high end of the Zona Galactica range. Many of the younger women are supporting infants and toddlers. Maria, 25, has been hooking for about a year to support herself and her baby. The baby’s father lives in Tabasco. The 150 to 200 pesos she earns on a good day is seven to nine times Mexico’s daily minimum wage. “I just do this because I have to,” says Maria.
Zona Galactica is really just two streets, lined by 16 modules. Each module contains ten individual rooms with steel doors plastered with fluorescent colored bumper stickers reading: “Zona Galactica, the best way to protect your family. Only with a condom.” Occasionally the women step into their doorways. Most spend the day lying on a twin mattress slotted on a concrete block built into one side of their eight-by-ten-foot room. Some read celebrity gossip magazines. Others polish their nails and watch soap operas.
Business picks up in the late afternoon, mostly teenagers in T-shirts, tennis shoes and baseball caps, a few campesinos in sandals and straw cowboy hats, and some, judging by their haircuts, soldiers from the local garrison. They’re the ones most likely to give police trouble by arriving drunk, or by refusing to pay the women.
By 7 p.m., businessmen show up, carrying briefcases they’re afraid to leave in their cars. Two women have been murdered since Zona Galactica opened and occasionally fights break out. But the crime rate here is far lower than on the streets of downtown Tuxtla, which is one of the poorest areas of the entire country.
For all its efforts, Zona Galactica has barely made a dent in the number of female prostitutes still on Tuxtla’s streets. There are far too many desperate women in this crushingly poor region willing to sell sex for a few precious pesos. Meanwhile, the city is turning its attention to the problem of male transvestite prostitutes, who, as in other large Mexican cities, often look classier, charge higher prices and have more clients than women. In Tuxtla, not even a notorious unsolved serial murder case, in which a number of transvestites were shot to death with high-caliber weapons between 1991 and 1993, has dissuaded them from working.
“This is our problem, too: where to put the homosexual prostitutes,” Hernandez says. “They don’t want to come to Zona Galactica and the women don’t want them here. A transvestite charges 250 to 300 pesos. The women here charge 25 to 50. Plus, the transvestites are usually quite aggressive.” Building a separate zone for men is out of the question. “It wouldn’t be fair, in an area where so many people have no running water, electricity or pavement, that we build all those things into a new zone for prostitutes,” he says.
So the city is going to expand Zona Galactica later this year, using private money. “I prefer that we have them all here, under control, than to have them going around all over town,” Hernandez says.
Quotes of the day
The trouble with women
“She’s not a nut, she’s not extreme, and she speaks in real language. She will paint a picture of the convention, of Republicans, of Bob Dole, that will be comforting to a lot of people, but particularly to suburban Republican women, professionals, mothers, moderates. Those are our troublesome groups.”
– Republican consultant Eddie Mahe on Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), chosen to give the keynote speech at the GOP convention. (From “Designated Keynoter Is Besieged, Happily,” in Wednesday’s
New York Times.
“They call me a feminist and a baby-killer. What an ugly image for our party to project. No wonder women are turned off.”
– Fran Berg, 38, former treasurer of the Jefferson County, KY., GOP, until she was thrown out of the local party, along with other Republicans who support abortion rights, by anti-abortion GOP militants. (From “GOP Faces Dissent of Women Who Are Moderate, Affluent,” in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.)
