02/10/2012

More on border wait times

I got some interesting reaction from my comment the other day on wait times at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing. Sometimes it's a huge wait; other times not so bad.

I received a tweet from "a 27-year-old Tijuana native" who said: "indeed there's no logic in border crossing times; you can make an approximate by dates, hours and/or gate... And random chance.

Then I got the following from someone who clearly battles the lines on a regular basis:

The reason the wait-time going South is limited only by rush hour traffic flow is that the Mexicans treat everyone equal, and only pull over about one in twenty cars for a cursory exam (fewer at rush hour). I have never had a document check. The Mexicans have NO economic or social interest in slowing things down. 

On the other hand, it is in the economic interest of the US Customs and Border Patrol (as individuals) to go as slow as possible in order to require MORE agents. You have to remember, with mandated overtime the typical right-out-of-training new hire is "earning" about $100K a year for a 45 hour work week (35 hour straight time, 10 hour overtime), with full Federal Benefits.  It is the IDEAL double dip for ex-military, who have priority hiring.

Because I had been active in the Anti-Vietnam War movement (these many years ago) I was on a "terrorist watch list" . Every time I crossed, I was pulled over for "secondary inspection".  That lasted from 5 minutes (after a while the "officers" all knew me and some were cool) to two hours. I cross 2-4 times a week (depending on US family needs), so I could really see why the huge lines develop. When there are meal breaks, count on an EXTRA 20-30 minute delay (over and above the length of the break) while everyone gossips and jokes. Same with the shift changes. Then there are things like the whiz-bang vehicle x-ray machine. Almost EVERY vehicle that goes through has to be pulled over for a complete "secondary" inspection. The post x-ray inspections is even more intrusive than a normal inspection , because "the machine said there's something there".  With me, the one time I was x-rayed there was a spot in the right rear trunk area. They took two different drug dogs to sniff in the trunk and crawl in my back seat to sniff (and they don't wipe the dog paws) before they'd released me. 

The interesting thing is that a few weeks ago their computer finally decided I wasn't a terrorist and I have not since been pulled over to secondary. 

The "national security state" is simply training the population to accept more and more inconvenience in the name of fraudulent national security requirements.  Try to fly on an airplane recently?  With two huge lobbies  ("war on terrorism" and "War on drugs") who employ hundreds of thousands of gun toting thugs to enforce inane regulations the north-bound border wait times are the least of our problems. 

Ah well, I get to spend most of my time in the "land of the free", Mexico. I only have to subject myself to the national security state when I visit my aging mother. When she goes, I'll only have to go there for Christmas.  

02/08/2012

When politicians' daughters tweet '$#*!'

You know that U.S. network show titled “$#%! My Dad Says”?

Well, this blog post is a variant on that. Only this is about the “$#%!” that daughters of politicians post on the internet. In several instances in recent months, politicians in the region have gotten into hot water by what their offspring posted on social media.

First came the daughter of leading Mexican politician Enrique Pena Nieto who rose to her father’s defense in December after he attended a book fair in Guadalajara and was asked at a press conference to name his favorite books. Pena Nieto couldn’t name a single one accurately except the Bible. 

Paulina Pena came to her father’s defense, retweeting a post from her boyfriend’s account on Twitter: “Greetings to the bunch of a---oles that form the prole[tariat] and only complain about those who they envy!”

The ridicule that piled up on the daughter was almost as great as that heaped on the father. “I am a Prole!” became a trending topic, and the daughter issued an apology and closed her account.

Then a few weeks ago, Hugo Chavez’s 14-year-old daughter Rosines posted a photo of herself holding up a wad of U.S. dollars. Chavez could not have been happy with his daughter holding a symbol of The Empire, which he loves to malign. His ex-wife took to Twitter and explained of the daughter: "I told her that her mistake wasn't to take the picture, but rather posting it on a medium where there are ignorant people who don't respect others."

Yes, that is the problem. Ignorant people.

Now comes an incident in Panama, which is roiling from clashes between indigenous people and police over mining concessions. The clashes have caused at least two deaths and some 40 injuries. Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino is under fire. He’s acknowledged that he ordered cell phone service shut down in the region, perhaps indicative of the kinds of methods he feels appropriate in dealing with the Ngobe-Bugle indigenous community and a blockage of the highway leading to Chiriqui province.

This is the recent slangy Tweet of the daughter, Veronica: “If an Indian blocks me from getting to the beach, I’d kick him out of the way #cosaseria No one threatens my beach weekend! #bringiton”

This is stirring up some indignation in Panama. The daughter's Twitter account has been shut down. 

All I gotta say is, politicians, it’s time for you to have a talk with your daughters about social media. The public might start to think that the true attitudes at home are what comes out of the daughters’ mouths (or finger tips).

02/07/2012

The tunnels of Gaza and Tijuana

There are two places in the world where an international border is undermined by a series of tunnels used by smugglers.

I’m at one of them now, the border between southern California and the Tijuana area of Mexico.

In the past four years, U.S. authorities have discovered at least 75 tunnels along the length of the 1,950-mile border, many around Tijuana.  

After several days along the border, I am struck by the proximity of buildings on the Mexican side to the warehouses on the U.S. side. The nearest buildings are probably the length of two football fields from each other across the border. Drug smugglers don't have to toil too hard to build their tunnels.

If that is too close, well, part of the reason is thriving legitimate cross-border trade. The United States and Mexico are joined at the hip, as it were. Two-way trade amounts to more than $1 billion a day. Six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico, or one in about every 24 U.S. workers, according to this recent study. Those warehouses on the U.S. side are a hive of activity.

My visit to Tijuana has brought up memories of a visit I made a decade ago to Rafah and the far southern end of the Gaza Strip. Scores of tunnels have been burrowed across the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, used to bring in food and cigarettes _ and weapons. The day I was in Rafah, I saw piles of rubbles left by Israeli bulldozers that had razed houses to clear open space near the border. If anyone were to build a tunnel from their home, it would have to be a longer tunnel. 

The Israelis were asking no questions. They just cranked up the bulldozers and tore down Palestinian homes. They saw it as a national security imperative.

No one is getting on bulldozers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

And for all the talk of a border fence, a few moments at the San Ysidro border crossing to Tijuana reveal a different aspect of the story. It is the busiest international border crossing in the world. Thirty million vehicles cross there each year. The U.S. and Mexico are busy expanding the northbound lanes from 11 to 22. 

It could hardly come to soon. Waiting times now range from an hour to two and a half hours, and the lines can snake back into Tijuana  more than two miles.

Speaking of waiting times, I can’t figure them out. They seem to have no rhyme nor reason. When I crossed at the Otay Mesa crossing into the U.S. on Sunday, trying to get to a hotel in time for the Super Bowl kickoff, I didn’t make it. I spent three hours in line. But when I came back to Tijuana this afternoon through San Ysidro, there was no line at all. Indeed, no one stopped me to check my passport or anything.

02/05/2012

A woman gets the presidential nod

Josefina Vazquez Mota won a primary contest Sunday to become the presidential candidate of the ruling National Action Party (PAN) for July 1 elections -- and a chance to become Mexico's first woman president.

Both of the men who battled Vazquez Mota for the nomination conceded to her, and she immediately called on the party to set its sights on Enrique Pena Nieto, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which ruled Mexico for 71 years before losing power in 2000. Pena Nieto has a sizable lead in most polls, a huge bank roll and the support of the dominant Televisa network.

The primary provided lots of drama, in part because President Felipe Calderon's favorite, Ernesto Cordero, could not build traction after a colorless campaign. Calderon has a chilly relationship with Vazquez Mota, by most accounts, and reportedly fears that she might send him adrift were she to win the presidency. See this story I wrote a few weeks ago about Calderon's legitimate fears about what travails the post presidential period may bring him.

Even so, Calderon's office sent public support for Vazquez Mota a few minutes ago, saying in a statement that he'd "communicated with Ms. Vazquez Mota to congratulate her on the triumph attained in this internal (party) process."

Bullying journalists in Ciudad Juarez

The municipal police in the border city of Juarez are increasingly taking to bullying reporters. Unlike some border towns (Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros), Juarez has a fairly thriving press with a corps of brave and feisty journalists. But the police seem to have been given a green light to begin pushing journalists around. The move recent case came Friday night. According to an account in El Diario, reporter Joel Gonzalez arrived at a street sign where police had stopped a Hummer with Texas license plates and detained a woman who was driving.

When Gonzalez approached police and began asking questions, they arrested him and accused him of interfering. The El Diario story quoted Gonzalez on what happened next:

"The cop said to me: 'I'm going to teach you to respect this badge, so that you know who we are; we are the Municipal Police. Do you think it would be a big deal for me to just kill you? I would kill you if I wanted to. And I said to him: 'You can't do anything to me because I haven't committed any crime.' And then he said to me: 'As far as I'mconcerned you are just a f---ing criminal, the minute I bring you here in the patrol car, you are nothing but a f---ing criminal," said Gonzalez.

Gonzalez was finally freed but only after being required to pay 320 pesos, or about $25.

El Diario cites several other cases of police bullying of journalists in the city. The most recent case before Gonzalez occurred last Tuesday. When Proceso Magazine photographer Raymundo Ruiz arrived at a house where police were arresting three people, the newspaper said Ruiz was hit in the face, leaving him bleeding from the mouth and nose.

Just two days earlier, two reporters from the Norte newspaper found themselves on the unfriendly end of police weapons. Police ordered one at gunpoint to erase images that he'd taken of them.

Homicides have fallen sharply in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, but it's coming at some cost.

'Put yourself in their shoes'

Some 30 Mexican actors and actresses came together to create a campaign demanding greater action from society on cases of human rights abuses. The actors and actresses play the roles of real victims who have lost sons, wives, parents and other loved ones. At the end of the video are the silent faces of the real grieving parents. Even if you don't understand Spanish, it is worth watching, partly for the faces and bearing of these famous actors. The group calls itself the Loudest Shout Collective and the tenor of the video is for Mexicans to end their silence and place themselves in the shoes of those who are suffering.

02/03/2012

'I don't speak English,' and so what?

Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) made light of his inability to speak English at a campaign event today.

“I don’t speak English but I also don’t pretend to speak English, pronouncing it badly and giving people something to talk about,” Lopez Obrador said. It was a direct dig at Enrique Pena Nieto, the leading presidential candidate.

The Televisa story about Lopez Obrador’s remarks said they were in reference to Pena Nieto’s trip a week ago to Davos, Switzerland, where he took part in the World Economic Forum. I wasn’t aware that Pena Nieto had delivered some remarks in English there. But a few months ago, a video of Pena Nieto struggling through a speech in English got posted to YouTube. Click here to hear it if you dare.

No presidential candidate should feel ashamed of not speaking English, AMLO said.

“Mexico’s greatest presidents didn’t speak English. That’s what translators are for. They help one politically because (the translation) gives one time to think of an answer,” he said.

02/01/2012

Relief for the Tarahumara Indians

The famine that is reportedly afflicting the Tarahumara Indians in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Chihuahua state has really gotten the attention of federal officials.

My inbox is chock full of press releases from government ministries and the Mexican marines about how much aid is now flowing into Tarahumara hamlets. These two photos were just sent out by the Marines PR office. It says two helicopters delivered 11 tons of relief supplies yesterday and today. The supplies were among 90 tons that have been collected at Marines HQ since news of the famine first broke about two weeks ago.

If the Secretariat of Social Development is working as hard in delivering supplies to the Tarahumara as its PR department is working at touting the aid, then everything will turn out tip-tip. The latest release says the secretariat has mobilized 300 people, 50 vehicles and two helicopters to deliver aid to 107 hamlets. 

Far as I can tell, social media has driven this huge response to a crisis, partly triggered by false reports of mass suicides among the Tarahumara. Postings on the internet and Twitter led to calls for citizens to deliver relief supplies to the main squares of Mexico City and Monterrey. In an election year, officials had to step up to the plate.

Who the heck is 'Vicente Calderon'?

It wasn’t another “Rick Perry” moment. Not exactly. But it was embarrassing.

On Tuesday night, the three contenders for the presidential nomination of the National Action Party (PAN) held a debate. One of the contenders is Ernesto Cordero, who is widely seen as the favorite of President Felipe Calderon.

So it was rather odd that at one point in the debate, Cordero made a slip, referring to his patron as “Vicente Calderon.” It seemed that he was mixing up former President Vicente Fox with Felipe Calderon.

Immediately, “Vicente Cordero” became a trending topic in Twitter. Three people set up phony accounts under that name and sent out bogus tweets.

Luckily, Cordero has a sense of humor. He went on the radio this morning to joke about the slip and he sent out this mash-up photo of Fox, Calderon and Cordero. Good way to get over a speed bump and possible derailment. Still, Cordero is trailing badly in the polls. He’ll find out as soon as Sunday if he’ll be the PAN candidate.

Some amusement with #badenglish

One of the perennial topics on Twitter among people I follow can be summed up with the hashtag #badenglish. In short, some Mexicans who don’t speak English well translate idiomatic expressions literally into English. To say it doesn’t work is an understatement. I culled some of the following examples from the Twitter account of Ana Maria Salazar, an acquaintance who has a radio show in Mexico and is an avid user of Twitter. The mangled English comes first, then the original Spanish. In parentheses, I’ve put what the Spanish speaker was probably trying to say.

To want is to can -- querer es poder (where there’s a will, there’s a way)

Are you going to can or what? -- ey tu, vas a poder o que? (which is it? Can you or not?)

Desmother -- desmadre (what a mess!)

What a good wave -- que buena onda (how fun! Or cool!)

I´m going to give you for your bubblegum -- Te voy a dar pa´ tus chicles (I’m going to hit you)

Let's measure the water to the sweet potatoes -- vamos midiendole el agua a los camotes (Let’s see how the situation develops)

I have no more wool – Ya no tengo lana (I’m broke)

Don't Rub! -- No frieguen! (Don’t hassle me!)

Grab your goats! -- Agarra tus chivas! (take your things and git)

I am up to my Mother! -- Estoy hasta la madre! (I’ve had it!)

Make me a stoppage -- hazme un paro (help me)

I'm going to fornicate a little coyote -- Me voy a echar un coyotito (I’m going to take a nap)

From the plate to the mouth the soup throws away? -- del plato a la boca se cae la sopa? (‘Twixt cup and lip there is many a slip)

Waters! -- Aguas! (Careful!)

It falls of mothers -- me cae de madres (This is great! Or I’m sure it will work out)

You fell me fat -- me caes gordo (I don’t like you)

Like the dog with two Mexican Sandwiches -- Como el Perro de Dos Tortas (If you take too much time to decide which of two things you want, you won’t get either)