Mexico in Focus 2nd Edition: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture (Latin America in Focus) - Softcover

Ross, John; Gransden, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1899365508 ISBN 13: 9781899365500

Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Mexico is a land torn between Latin America and the US, between its Indian and revolutionary past and the modern trappings of skyscrapers, cell phones, and factories. It is also one of the biggest tourist destinations in Latin America for the UK market. Mexico is now the key country in Latin American debates about trade integration, neo-liberalism, and the fight of indigenous people for autonomy and self-governance, best characterised by the Zapatista movement. A new updated edition of Mexico in Focus gives the insider's view - the 'story the guidebooks don't tell you' - in accessible, lively and accurate prose. It offers a fresh and contemporary perspective on the Zapatista rebellion and indigenous issues, as well as the July 2000 election of Vicente Fox, the "cowboy president" whose controversial policy suggestions have included free movement of labour and unrestricted immigration within NAFTA and the legalisation of drugs. This completely rewritten and updated text also touches on the economy, the new relationship under George W Bush, literature and culture, as well as a completely new section on Mexican popular culture forms and music, including telenovelas, comic books, and "lucha libre", or popular wrestling. Mexico in Focus is published complete with new illustrations, updated maps and facts and figures, and an extended Where to Go and What to See Section - expert tips on how to get the most out of your visit.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Ross is based in Mexico City and is the author of Rebellion from the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chiapas (Common Courage Press, 1994) which won an American Book Award, and The War Against Oblivion-Zapatista Chronicles 1994-2000 (Common Courage Press,2000). His journalism appears regularly in L.A. Weekly and Noticias Aliadas (Lima).

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Mexico In Focus

A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

By John Ross

Practical Action Publishing

Copyright © 2018 John Ross
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-899365-50-0

Contents

Introduction, 4, 
1 The Land, 6, 
Borders, 6, 
The North, 9, 
Central Mexico, 11, 
Mexico's South, 12, 
The Capital, 14, 
2 People and their History, 18, 
¡Viva Mexico!, 18, 
Indigenous Mexico, 20, 
From the Ruins, 22, 
Conquest and Colony, 25, 
Liberators, Presidents, Emperors, and Dictators, 28, 
The Mexican Revolution, 31, 
3 Society, 36, 
Institutionalizing the Revolution, 36, 
The PRI: The Limits of Longevity, 38, 
The American-Style Presidency, 40, 
Political Opposition in Mexico, 41, 
The Political Parties, 46, 
Keeping the Peace, 49, 
The Criminal Police, 56, 
The Dysfunctional Courts, 57, 
"So Far from God", 58, 
Farm and Factory, 62, 
Old-Style Unions Persevere, 64, 
4 Economy, 67, 
Mexican Miracles, Booms and Busts, 67, 
NAFTA and the New World Order, 69, 
Engines of the Economy, 72, 
5 Art and Culture, 78, 
High and Low Art, 78, 
Urban Pop Culture, 80, 
The Word, 83, 
"So Close to the United States", 87, 
Where to Go, What to See, 89, 
Further Reading and Selected Weblinks, 93, 
Facts and Figures, 96, 

CHAPTER 1

THE LAND

Borders

Under cover of darkness, undocumented workers slip into the river water and strike out for the other side. The scene is repeated every night on both Mexico's southern and northern borders.

The southern border with Guatemala and Belize snakes through the sparsely populated jungles and swamps of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Quintana Roo. By contrast, the 1,964-mile northern frontier is heavily patrolled by US immigration agents. Mexico's northern border constitutes the longest – and perhaps the only – land border between the first and the third world.

These two frontiers define a geopolitical quandary that dogs Mexican history. Is it the northernmost nation of Latin America or the most southern outpost of the North American mainland?

The busiest crossings on the southern border are along the Suchiate River, south of Tapachula, Chiapas. While long lines of trucks queue up at Tecun Uman, Guatemalans and other Central Americans illegally cross the river on inflated tire inner tubes. Some are escaping tyranny farther south (but Chinese and east Indians utilize this jumping off point too). Many are economic refugees seeking a better life farther north. Some will stay in Mexico but most will try to continue north into the United States. About 400,000 legal and undocumented Central Americans live in Mexico, 45 percent of them Guatemalan, including 50,000 contract coffee pickers and a diminishing population of recognized political refugees.

Undocumented workers from the south move carefully through Mexico. Immigration and police agents are notorious for extorting pay-offs as the newcomers pass through highway checkpoints and big city bus terminals.

An unwritten agreement forged between former presidents George Bush and Carlos Salinas to shut down Mexico as a conduit for Central Americans heading toward the US, resulted in a crackdown by Mexico's own Immigration Service – over I 00,000 Central Americans are now returned from Mexico to their countries of origin each year.

As Central Americans travel from border to border, they join a great stream of Mexicans seeking to reach el otro lado (the other side). Mexicans have been going north to make their fortune or escape political persecution since California and Texas were part of their country (they were gobbled up by the US in 1848).

The number of Mexicans heading for el norte peaks whenever political and economic upheaval troubles the republic. Mexican-American (chicano) communities in the US southwest were established by refugees fleeing the 1910-1917 revolution; the 1982 debt crisis is thought to have pushed a million Mexican citizens into the United States. By 2001, some 3 million of the 8.5 million Mexican-born people living in the United States are illegal residents.

The presence of the US Border Patrol (Ia migra) makes the northern border a flashpoint between the two countries. Since 1994, when the Clinton administration launched Operation Gatekeeper to staunch the flow, parts of the border have been marked by steel fences, lights, and ground sensors. But the main effect of Clinton's beefed-up border surveillance has been to re-direct the flow of migrants through less settled and thus more dangerous crossing points, where they are more vulnerable to death from exposure.

In 2000, the migra made 1.6 million apprehensions – many would-be border jumpers were apprehended several times, often aided by coyotes (smugglers). Once dominated by small-time operators who worked independently, migrant smuggling has become a multi-billion dollar industry dominated by large, well-organized crime syndicates – rather like the drug business – using the tools of high technology and an infrastructure that includes drop houses where immigrants can be kept against their will until they pay off smugglers' fees. Increasingly, non-Mexicans are also using the Mexican border to enter the United States illegally. Thousands of Russians, Syrians, Chinese, and Poles are among those apprehended by the migra every year.

Mexicologists characterize the flow of undocumented workers into the US as a "safety valve" that permits Mexico to prevent the social frustrations of young Mexicans unable to find work from becoming a volatile challenge to their government. For decades of PRI rule, the Mexican government turned a blind eye to their plight – the deaths of migrants from drowning, exposure, and vigilante attacks on the US border; the harassment and extortion of returning migrants by corrupt Mexican border officials; and the high transaction costs paid by migrants sending home remittances to their families in Mexico, worth $8 billion a year. Indeed, these paisanos (countrymen) were often stigmatized by the Mexican state for supposed lack of patriotism for having left their homeland.

In contrast, the Fox government has actively courted the Mexican diaspora, promising them dual citizenship and setting up the country's first cabinet-level agency to represent their interests, the Office for Migrants Living Abroad. One of its most controversial proposals is to provide a survival kit- known informally as a cajita feliz, or "happy meal" – to each illegal migrant, in order to reduce the risk of death from exposure and thirst.

Anti-Mexican sentiment ebbed and flowed on the US side of the border in accordance with the need for low-wage Mexican labor. Mexicans were deported from California during the 1930s depression but were welcomed back in the 1940s to replace US workers who had gone off to war. The 1990s saw a resurgence of anti-Mexican feeling, reaching a zenith with the 1994 campaign for Proposition 187, the anti-illegal-immigrant ballot initiative in California.

But the election of George W. Bush in 2000 brought into office a strongly pro-Mexico US leader who had befriended Fox when both were still state governors. Even conservative Republicans in Congress were rushing to embrace the new Mexican president, promising initiatives to open the border to a freer flow of guest workers to the United States and a partial amnesty for illegals...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1899365508
• ISBN 13: 9781899365500
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 102
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland