Re: RE: Your thoughts on a Fe
Reverend Blair said:
You don't get off that easy, Martin. You are putting yourself up there as an expert without giving your credentials. That makes your word worth slightly less than than the word of other experts who disagree with you.
Saying that you have been someplace is not the same as saying that you have studied the problems there or talked to a diverse group of people that have been in the area and dealt with those problems firsthand on an ongoing basis.
You say that the schools didn't exist, but my great aunt helped to set some of them up and taught in them. You complain about the lack of facitlites, but she thought those facilities were great. They were better than she had in rural Saskatchewan, after all.
Your assumption that I don't travel is laughable as well. I'm forty years old, something else that is noted on these boards someplace, and haven't been able to travel to your country for less than four years. That's one country for less than one tenth of my life.
Whether one travels or not though, the extensive information available in modern society does make it possible for one to learn what is happening in the world around them. You are just one voice among many and you are contradicting what so many others with at least as much experience as you have points to the fact that what you say is no more gospel, no more informed, than what others say.
I live in one of the most culturally diverse cities in Canada. The province I live in has a large Mennonite community and sees many Mennonite immigrants and temporary workers from Mexico every year. Their families used to be well-off in Mexico, but that has changed drastically over the last few years...since Fox came to power, mostly. In case you haven't checked, Fox is quite conservative and espouses many of the same ideas and ideals that you do.
My grandparents used to spend a lot of time in Guadalajara, back before it was a tourist destination. They travelled all over Mexico from there and, my grandfather being a farmer, they spent a lot of time with the rural people in Mexico.
Now you can sit there and tell me how experienced you are, but you've been dead wrong on some pertinent facts...wages in Mexico, whether schools and healthcare existed, the success of farmers being related to NAFTA, etc.
If all that matters is what you think you've seen with your own eyes then I would suggest that you open your eyes at least enough to realise that a great many people have seen things that contradict what you think you have seen.
You can call me pseudo-intellectual if you like, I really don't care. Don't get your facts wrong and then claim to be an expert though. Experts take the time to actually learn something.
I never called my self an "expert", just a person who has been to Mexico!
The basic message is this:
!. Mexico is a poor country, it has a Rich Class, Poor Class and a small Middle Class, do you agree? Mexico is a country of contrasts unlike the US and Canada, you might see a million dollar resort next to a slum! Canada, Europe and the US are basically First World Countries with good Infastructure!
2. Mexico has an expanding population which accounts for some of the pressures to emigrate, Agree? 72 million, 1990 census.
3. Your Aunt built some schools and taught, that is not unusual, the Catholic Church here in South Louisiana has sponsored several parishes in Mexico, our Sponsored Parish is in Coahila State outside Hermosilla the capital of the State. The Knights of Columbus was declared a "Terrorist Outlaws" in the 1920's because they didn;t let the government oversee their activities!
http://www.kofc.org/publications/columbia/detail.cfm?id=3775 The activities of elomasonary groups has been closely watched in Mexico and even today we are low key about our support of the relief activities of the Church! The Rich Landowners are not the least bit happy when you give the poor some help!
4. I would like to know more about the Mennonite Situation in Mexico, I know they have the most prospourous farms in Mexico but the Government has been trying to bring them into the ejido system. We too have Mexician "temporary" workers here too in Louisiana.
5. ejido [Span.,=common land], in Mexico, agricultural land expropriated from large private holdings and redistributed to communal farms. Communal ownership of land had been widely practiced by the Aztecs, but the institution was in decline before the Spanish arrived. The conquistadors instituted the encomienda, which was superseded by the repartimiento and finally, after independence (1821), by debt peonage. Although legally abolished by the constitution of 1917, which provided for the restoration of the ejido, peonage remained a general practice until the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. In the Laguna District in 1936, the ejido became fact on a large scale. The intent of the ejido system is to remedy the social injustice of the past and to increase production of subsistence foods. The land is owned by the government, and the ejido is financed by a special national bank which supplies the necessary capital for reclamation, improvement, initial seeding, and so forth. In effect, the bank has replaced the colonial encomendero, with this difference—the laborer is paid on the basis of unit work accomplished.
Since tha land is controlled and owned by the Government, the problem is that if you are not in with the powers to be, your plot can be "appropriated."
6. Corruption is widespread in Mexico and Latin America with the exception of Costa Rica, a very stable and prosperous country, it has no army, only a small National Police Force, a two party system and welcomes investment! Also very protective of its local industries!
The Mordida means:
THE MORDIDA:
MEXICO AND CORRUPTION
By: Christina J. Johns
I spent several years of my life writing a book about law in Ancient Mexico and while I was doing so, traveled widely throughout the country. I spent some more years of my life researching and writing a book about the war on drugs.
So, it was no surprise, when I read last week that an army general who headed Mexico's national drug agency was being detained and awaiting arrest on charges that he accepted huge payments from a Mexican drug baron.
The extent and pervasiveness of official corruption in Mexico is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't lived there. Corruption is everywhere and widely accepted as a fact of life.
Early on in my travels in Mexico I learned what the word "mordida" meant. Literally, it means "bite" but figuratively and the way it is most frequently used, it means a bribe.
For a lot of things you do in Mexico, especially if they involve a public official, you have to pay the "mordida", the bite.
Want your tourist card stamped? You pay the mordida. Want the dates on your tourist card extended? You pay the mordida. Want your car registered? You pay the mordida.
And, there's no point in protesting it. The question is not whether you'll pay. The question is how much.
During the time I was traveling in Mexico, I was married to a historian. We got so used to paying the "mordida" we worked out a routine which was pretty effective at getting the price down.
Whenever we were going into a situation where we knew we'd be asked to pay, we acted as if I couldn't speak Spanish. The inevitable request for money would be made to my husband, of course, and after a few seconds of feigned shock, he would translate for me.
I would then fly off into a tirade, peppering my shouting with generous repetitions of "No. No, absolutely not. No" which translates into any language.
Tom would shrug and try to look henpecked, and appeal to the official, his palms turned upward toward the heavens in supplication. The official, then, seeing what Tom was faced with, usually lowered the mordida a bit. Tom would translate the new amount and I would respond again with: "No, no, no. We'll go to Tourista (the government tourist office)." This little farce would go on and on and on until the mordida reached an acceptable level and we would pay.
I figured it worked for two reasons. First, they felt sorry for Tom this poor harassed man, cursed with what they saw as an out-of-control wife. Second, after a while, they just wanted to get rid of us because if there is anything a Latin American man hates, it's a highly verbal, angry and yelling gringa woman. I know this, by the way, because it almost got us shot by a police captain in Chiapas, but that's another story.
Our little routine decreased the amount of the mordida, the playacting was fun and it made paying the bribe a little less galling. But, we still had to pay the bribe.
We even had to pay a bribe in Mexico City to get a telephone installed. And, even with the mordida, it took so long to get a listing and a telephone that the Mexico City phone book was widely referred to as the "Book of the Dead."
Like I said, it's difficult to explain the pervasiveness of the corruption in Mexico and the degree to which the population takes it for granted. I'll give you a good example. A lot of people in Mexico just couldn't understand Watergate. We were in Mexico at the time and Mexican friends and colleagues would ask me: What is everybody so upset about? What do they think politicians do but lie and steal and cheat and break the law? That's why they become politicians - so they can lie and steal and cheat and break the law.
You have to admit, it's something to think about.
7. Socialism is and has been a failure in Mexico because when you give a Corrupt Politician control over the means of Production and the MONEY, he just can't help himself! In Europe, Canada and the US we have oversight to
some degree, but without the oversight, it becomes thievery and in the Third World where I have traveled, it isn't hard to see!
Sorry to bust your bubble, these are the FACTS!
