Living Outside the Grasp of the State

It seems to me that Mexico’s very poor and Mexico’s very rich live beyond the reaches of its struggling government.

I first thought about this when I took a taxi to a market outside of town in a desert area; it wasn’t the market of our imaginary Mexico (with ceramics and silver and turquoise jewelry), it was the selling grounds of the hand-me-downs of the first world. There, in the vacant field, people shuffled through plastic bags full of unwanted American clothing. JC Penny’s line from last year, clothes from Target and K-Mart and I bought a swimsuit I recognized from my high school trips to Old Navy. I saw where our clothes go to die, or maybe to get a second life…

Either way, these clothes leave the regulated market when they reach Mexico’s poor. There are no taxes on them, I don’t know who is making a profit (is it the guy in the plastic chair whom I paid $1.50 for the swimsuit?).

I do know that it’s the end of their line.

And then, last weekend, I saw the other end of the spectrum of detachment from the government…

Two friends of mine came to San Miguel de Allende for the weekend; a Mexican art student, Rafa, I met one summer in Rio de Janeiro and his girlfriend Mariana – we had a wonderful time.

On the first day of their visit, we took a day trip to Pozos, an old silver and gold mining town that was deserted years ago and now stands as a dusty memorial to Mexico’s working days past.

Gigantic vacant warehouses filled with street dogs, rolling hills with wildflowers and big cacti (Mexico’s national plant and, I have found out, quite tasty in a burrito); I loved this town.

We went down an abandoned silver mine, several hundred feet beneath the grown and several levels beyond my comfort zone.

On the way home, we past the military police.

“Ojo, militares.”

“Why are they here?”

“These guys are in a war with the drug lords. These guys, the militares, are the worst. Rapists, thieves, whatever. Last week, we got stopped for speeding and they drove us to an ATM and told us to take out 5,000 pesos or they would confiscate our car. We couldn’t do that, though, because our laptops were in the car and they’re valuable so we had to give the money…”

Their disdain for Mexico’s national guard of sorts is only one aspect of my friend’s detachment from their nation and its government. When I talk with them about the future, their plans have little to do with Mexico: “It’s just too dangerous here. And people don’t make enough money, in any profession…”

Rafa wants to make art and Mariana is getting a degree in psychology. Of course Mexicans like these have a national advantage because they are educated; with this education, though, comes a link to the global network of internet, media, and travel, and through this network, Mexicans like my friends get another education: they learn that their work is of more (monetary) value elsewhere and they learn that opportunities abroad often surpass those within Mexico. They know too much to stay…

The Migra

I feel like I have begun to find my footing in Guanajuato—by chance I found a local maternity and reproductive health center called CASA, where I am now volunteering part-time. It began as a midwifery school and now includes sexual and reproductive education, early-childhood care and domestic violence prevention – all on a need-based pay scale.

(http://www.casa.org.mx/hospital_esp.html)

So far CASA seems well-organized and locally important: the organization teaches women about reproductive health and also trains many of the same women to become community health practicioners themselves, so that the impact, at least in theory, grows exponentially.

I am excited to work with CASA because I think it’s a great place to see first-hand how emigration has affected the lives of women in Guanajuato.

On Monday I went out in “the field” with an educator named Beatrice. A Kombi dropped us off at a small town in the middle of the desert…

We spoke with two groups of people: first, with fourteen and fifteen year old kids in public school and later, with a group of single mothers.

Beatrice greeted the school-room class and said that today we would be having a lesson on female sexuality. She opened a diagram of female anatomy and proceeded to explain the functions of various reproductive organs. I was stunned at first and found myself blushing, but then realized that most of the kids were listening quite attentively and I should probably pull myself together. The presentation was interesting and quite progressive: Beatrice said that CASA is the only group offering sexual education to these public schools and I was surprised when she told me that her best guess was that 75% of the fourteen and fifteen year olds with whom we spoke were sexually active…

During Beatrice’s presentation, I took a look around the room. There were two posters geared at English vocabulary, one was the days of the week in English and the other was a handwritten poster with select English vocabulary words: palabras extranjeras.

If you look carefully at the poster, you’ll see a word that you may not immediately recognize: migra. When I first saw the poster I was confused about why what seems like a Spanish word was on this English-language poster. Beatrice told me that it is short for inmigracion and migra is the Spanish word used to signify any government entity that enforces immigration laws.

Is the word migra on the poster because of mere association with the United States? Is it there because the teacher of this classroom thinks that it is an English word? Is emigration just that ubiquitious?

Later, Beatrice and I moved on to the mothers. Beatrice told me that the only work in this town is farming goats and sheep or scavenging the nearby dump for plastic to sell to the state for a recycling refund. Indeed, I saw sheep, goats, pigs and cows in the streets and women hauling carts of plastic garbage in the town…

Beatrice made the immediate logical jump from the shortage of work to the abundance of single mothers, explaining that there are the most instances of single-parent households in areas devoid of local work.

Ghost Town

I have arrived in San Miguel de Allende, a relatively small city in the Southern state of Guanajuato. It’s been known a Snowbird getaway and art haven, but tourism has dropped 85% in the past two years, so it’s feels like a bit of a ghost town. Restaurants have closed and the sighting of a gringo is surprisingly rare. I am the sole occupant of my hotel.

I have talked to restaurant and hotel owners about this phenomenon. A few people named the famous Mexico City outbreak of the Swine Flu as the impetus of the Gringo-flight, but most point to the violence of the drug wars. But to say that the violence of the drug wars has scared tourists off would be an over-simplification. It has much to do with the American media tradition of sensationalizing the violence of the “other” and our particular coverage of Mexico as lawless and bloody.

Dianne, the owner of the hotel where I am staying, held up her copy of the New Yorker when I asked her about the hotel’s emptiness.

“See this? This is actually a good story and it is still very bad for me.”

I knew exactly what she was referencing—William Finnegan’s piece in May 31st’s issue, Silver or Lead. I recognized the article right away because the magazine had been splayed open at my seat at the table at a dinner so that I wouldn’t miss Finnegan’s harrowing tale of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia Michoacana.

Dianne’s right: Finnegan’s is certainly good reporting. I generally trust the New Yorker and don’t regard their reporting as sensationalist, so the violence depicted in the article hit me hard. Finnegan’s piece is also different because it’s not about border trouble: Michoacan, the state where the drug cartel appears to have taken over, is in the south of the country.

(Here’s link to the article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/31/100531fa_fact_finnegan)

When speaking with locals, I feel embarrassed to tell them that I’m here to record stories of immigration and emigration. These topics are ubiquitous realities here – Guanajuato is one of the Mexican states with the highest rates of emigration –but the stories of broken families and cultural violence remain so personal.

I suppose my embarrassment comes from the inherent meaning of my presence here: I can cross borders for vacation or work or study, or whatever, really. The cost of my plane ticket only one small aspect of what it means to be mobile in our globalized world…

But sometimes I take a chance and tell why I am here. Yesterday, I was sitting at a bar watching the USA-England game (how about the sheer luck of that ‘merican goal?) and I began to speak to the guy next to me. He was in his thirties and from the northeastern state of Tamaulpias—I told him about my project and he told me that he had things to share.

He told me that his state has been overrun by the drug war and is currently in the hands of the Gulf Cartel, one of the country’s four big drug operations. He kept saying that his uncle had lost so much power to the drug lords, that his uncle had had so many people bought off by the cartel – it took me a minute to realize that his uncle has been the governor of the state.

He then told me about his own kidnapping.

Part of me didn’t actually believe him until I went back to my room and verified the names he mentioned; I believe him now. He told me he was in a room for seven days, that he was fed and that there was a small television. He told me his parents paid $100,000 for his release. I didn’t ask more details because after he outlined the story, he got quiet about the whole thing.

From this and the other conversations I’ve had in my brief time here, I’ve gathered that the violence of the drug wars is a reality that stings far below the border. After my talk with the guy at the bar, I’ve decided that I have to become more open about my project – one never knows who has a story…

Border Crossing

Hello!

My name is Hannah Olson, a senior graduating in Comparative Literature (Portuguese) and Development Studies. I am from Minnetonka, Minnesota by way of Munich and Cleveland.

We’ve read a lot about Mexico in the news recently: Arizona’s new law geared at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants and politicians talking about whether or not they support this measure.

The pictures showing us what Mexico is like depict the country, especially along the border, as a violent and dehumanized place.

Photo from Intel Hug Blog

Photo from Huffington Post

I am traveling to Mexico this summer to look behind the pictures and the reports at some of the root causes of Mexican emmigration. My interest in the Mexican border has been a long one, though its place in thew news as of late has been particularly provocative–pundits have labeled it a “Pakistan to the South” and the violence caused by battling drug cartels and police interventions has dominated the portrayal of the border.

So when I decided to go to the border, it raised some eyebrows. I got quite a few emails from friends and family that said things like:

“I would proceed with considerable caution.”

“i’m not super hot on you going to juarez…”

“The Mexican border metropolis of Ciudad Juarez now has a higher murder rate than Baghdad as drug cartels battle for turf.”

I did not take these warnings too seriously (I am someone who is never too worried about safety and we’re all invincible at 22, right?) but I did decide to contact some people who I thought may have a better idea about Mexico than my worried mother and best friend.

I wrote to Luis Alberto Urrea, the author of “Devil’s Highway: A True Story,” a book about life and death on the Rio Grande as people struggle toward the United States. He wrote back and very kindly gave me the names of a few contacts on the United States but told me (in all caps): STAY OUT OF JUAREZ

I then wrote to the authors of “The People’s Guide to Mexico.” Carl Franz and Lorena Haven. Carl replied saying, “First of all, Lorena and I definitely think that making a film in the border region is not a good idea. The drug war there is extremely violent right now and the risks to your safety would be quite real.”

Hearing the cautions of experts made me, for the first time, think quite seriously about the violence.

I went camping in Baja two years ago, and pitched my tent in the sand in the desert without worry, but the drug violence has apparently escalated since then. I started to think about the violence and immigration and the Arizona law and all of this thinking just generates more questions: What are people in Mexico thinking about the border? What is the media coverage of the border like in Mexico? Has the Arizona law changed how people see the prospect of emmigration from Mexico? What happens to the towns vacant of men? Do these towns even exist? What about the women, the families? Cultural preservation?

I’ll spend the next few months thinking about these questions and documenting my search for answers.

I head south on June 10…