By John Ballard
Yesterday morning I heard the best seven minutes of radio journalism I have heard recently.
Charles Bowden in an impressive voice describes in plain language the bloody, escalating crisis in Mexico about which Dave posted last week.
Here is the story link.
My advice is to take a few minutes to listen to this man's voice.
KELLY: And the interesting thing is, Juarez was not always this way. You write in your book about how there were the good old days when there was murder and violence in Juarez, but things made sense. What was happening then? What changed?
Mr. BOWDEN: Well, what changed was that, among other things, that in December of 2006 a new president of Mexico took over, Felipe Calderon, and unleashed the Mexican army in what he announced as an effort to attack the drug industry. Since that moment, 19,000 Mexicans have been slaughtered. The other thing that happened was that Juarez rolled along for years, merrily, building factories that paid wages you literally can't live on.
And I think eventually, among other things, the chickens come home to roost. And this drug war, which is the frosting on the cake - maybe it's what they call a tipping point. All I know is, in 2007, there were 307 murders in Juarez; in 2008, there were 1,600; in 2009, there were 2,600; and this year the murder rate's higher than 2009.
KELLY: Juarez, we mentioned, is right across the border from the U.S. The U.S., obviously, has a big stake in trying to stop the spiral of violence in Juarez. Last week, we saw this very senior U.S. delegation - the secretary of state, secretary of defense, etc. - go down and send the message the U.S. is serious; we want to help Mexico solve this. Do you see any potential there? Can the U.S. have much impact on the situation in Juarez?
Mr. BOWDEN: Yes. They can make it worse, and they're doing everything they know how to make it worse. We have an alleged war that's going on - 36 months now, the violence has spread all over the country, and the U.S. delegation said they will persist in the policies that produced this result and give the Mexicans even more guns to work with.
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If you're in the mood for multimedia, I have two additional links to recommend, both of which will take more than seven minutes of your day.
?Yesterday Digby posted in three parts a Dave Letterman interview with Pam Stout, a 66 year old Idaho woman who from the Tea Party. I know a few people who would be very comfortable with all she said and Letterman deserves credit for not trying to get off any mean-spirited cheap shots at her expense. Thanks, too, to Digby for recognizing the essential goodness of this woman. Her comments were appropriate and charitable.
We characterize the Tea Party at our peril when we paint the entire phenomenon with a broad brush. Enough about that.
?Somewhat related (and appropriate for Holy Week) I plan to take over an hour to watch a FORA video that came up this morning, Land of the Believers: Evangelical America.
Gina Welch talks about In the Land of the Believers: A Journey to the Heart of Evangelical America. Welch, a young secular Jew from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. Over the course of nearly two years, Welch immersed herself in the life of the devout: she learned to interpret the world like an evangelical.
Bowden sounds a bit like Lewis Laphman to me - New York nee California apr�50 years of smokes both filtered & non and lots of coffee. I'm just guessing of course. Tom Russell wrote a great piece last September on the mess: Where God and the Devil Wheel Like Vultures
ReplyDeleteThe piece Bowden read from his book sounds like a similar style to Russell's article. Other than as grist for the writing I suspect little or no change for the better in this newest fiasco related to insane drug & gun policies.
I'd forgotten, if I ever knew some of the cultural significances of Juarez:
"I [Russell writing] irrigate my fruit trees from the Rio Grande and think of the days when Sinatra and Nat King Cole and the Kingston Trio played down river in Juarez. The days of the �quickie divorce� Burt Bacharach wrote about. Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller in Juarez, then strolled down to the Kentucky Club and bought the house a round of Margaritas. Hell, the Margarita was invented in Juarez in the late 1940s. Gypsy Rose Lee stripped at The Palace Club and Manolete fought in the bull ring. Steve McQueen died over there in a clinic. This is a place to write and to absorb the history."
Colm McNaughton, an Australian reporter, has also recently done a piece on the Juarez, NAFTA, South US, mess. He alludes to bankers on both side of the border being involved in cleaning up the approximate $40 billion in drugs profits from Mexican trade. No facts thought. We here, under the Harper thuggery, have imposed visa requirements on Mexicans that want to visit this god-for-saken formerly half decent place to the North of you. It seems our minority federal gov't thought there were just too too many Mexicans applying and getting refugee status here which looked somewhat strange given our partnership with Mexico in NAFTA.
I should have added the link to Bowden's interview on Democracy Now from last summer, I'd forgotten about it, getting old I guess:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/11/charles_bowden_on_mexicos_dirty_war
Excellent links. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAs I watched and listened images from the past flashed in my memory. Something in the narrative evoked memories of the Southern white view of Black people in the Fifties, an odd blend of sympathy, amusement, and condescension as seen in minstrel shows. It's an imperfect analogy, but the parallels are striking.
Bowden's understanding and observations are powerful. And you are correct, Tom Russell's stories echo the same themes, if somewhat too romanticized for my taste. Again, the minstrel show plays in the background.
It's a serious political, social and economic dilemma with no good options. I think it was in the McNaughton interview the word "symbiosis" came up. Narcotecture symbolizes the ultimate contradiction. The bigger the enterprises get the more money they plow back into the economy for ordinary services and products, from skilled workers to erect extravagant real estate to grounds people, security guards, and others on whom they depend for everyday needs... meals, clothing, transportation, etc.
As he said, imagine trying to get rid of gambling in Las Vegas. For starters, no one wants to.
A toxic, co-dependent symbiotic relationship is at the core of many social and economic problems, not the least of which I have learned about in the last six or so years, the insidious way that non-profits in the private corporate sector of our own economy serve as a kind of money/profit-laundering scheme for their for-profit corporate cousins. I'm thinking here of so-called "not-for-profit" hospital and health care systems of multiple hospitals and clinics at the core of urban clusters of very-much-for-profit private medical practices selling everything from medical equipment and supplies to drugs and cancer treatments.
It's easy to point a blaming finger elsewhere while maintaining plausible deniability.