Bring Out Your Dead... Bring Out Your Dead...

According to the Wall Street Journal

The End of Bolivian Democracy
Elections scheduled for December 6 will mark the official end of the Bolivian democracy.

A dictatorship that fosters the production and distribution of cocaine is not apt to enjoy a positive international image. But when that same government cloaks itself in the language of social justice, with a special emphasis on the enfranchisement of indigenous people, it wins world-wide acclaim.

This is Bolivia, which in two weeks will hold elections for president and both houses of congress. The government of President Evo Morales will spin the event as a great moment in South American democracy. In fact, it will mark the official end of what's left of Bolivian liberty after four years of Morales rule. Read more here.

With talk like this coming out of the world of business, Evo Morales is probably thanking his lucky stars every day for Afghanistan and Iraq. In the pre-9/11 world an article like that combined with lobbying and an unoccupied military would have spelled an invasion or at least a CIA supported coup. I suppose folks don't like it when the indigenous fight back.

At any rate, the Wall Street Journal reminds me of that scene in Holy Grail where they are trying to throw away the living man just by saying he is dead, then they crack him on the skull so that he really is dead.

Oaxaca and the Origin of God (?)

It turns out that anthropologists have found the origin of God in Oaxaca, and they say his name is gene. So says the NY Times:

In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion.

The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state

For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community. Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it, and genes that prompted the mind toward ritual would eventually have become universal.

Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.

And, in what seems to be one of the great understaments of the season, the NY Times says:

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

Read the whole thing. Pray that there is no French connection (rim shot).

18th Century Erotica? *sigh*

The San Antonio Current is covering an exhibit on Mission art from the norther frontier of the colonial period, of which the publication says: (Oh, use caution, there is erotic imagery that follows the quote.)

The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain: 1600-1821, installed in the museum’s forbiddingly dark special exhibitions space, is claustrophobic and oppressive — beginning as it does with lifesize paintings of wounded and bleeding missionaries, moving quickly into virgins, babes, and vicously mauled Jesuses, circling back to sainted martyrs, and ending with a sort of reification of submission — but also tragically beautiful and occasionally strangely erotic.
Read more of this new artsy twist on the black legend here.

Well, I can't imagine why the Spanish colonial period and Mexican national period are so ignored as part of American history. Violence and erotica? Sounds like a week at the movies to me, or even some presidencies.

Marijuana: $30 gram; Wholesale: $3000 pound; Having a Marijuana Debit Card: Priceless

There are some things you can't buy legally, but for everything else, there is the Medical Marijuana Debit Card.

The Credit Union Times reports that Commerce Online is launching a debit card that can be used at medical marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado.

"Being an established player within the merchant services sector and aligning ourselves with the strongest banking and technology partners within the space, we believe Commerce Online is uniquely positioned to offer the most reliable pre-paid debit and identification card to the medical marijuana industry, and roll out our pilot program immediately. Presently, most of these operations only accept cash, as well as pay cash to suppliers to the collectives, subjecting operators and collective members to theft, unregulated and potential criminal activity. There is no doubt that with new legislation for the operation of these facilities and potential legalization in select states, there will be tighter safeguards put into place by federal, state and local governments,” said Kyle Gotshalk, CEO of Commerce Online. Read More

With conservative Mormon, PANista, and FORMER assistant secretary of agriculture in Mexico Jeffrey Jones using the narcotics industry as an economic model for Mexican farmers and the US banking industry now using a legitimate debit card (excluding the illegal laundering done by banks), we might be looking at a new industry in the New World.

Continuity Over Time

I embrace a theory of history that includes a focus on continuity and change over time. The above tourist spot is interesting to me for the sort of continuity visible in the tourism of the Aleman years (post '46) and today. It appears that Miguel Aleman and his legacy of tourism may make him the fourth most important president of the "post" Revolution (in terms of income).
1) Calles (and the northern governors) for nursing along the early narcotics industry.
2) Avila Camacho for the Bracero program.
3) Cardenas for oil.
4) Aleman for his marketing of Mexico as a tourist destination.

And in terms of the over-the-top video, I have nothing beyond the obvious say about the skewed focus on who is and is not shown in the video. For the most part it is beautifully shot, and the colors are marvelous.

At any rate, pick up a copy of Dina Berger's Development of the Mexican Tourist Industry for some good details. (Palgrave, 2006)

All the below images are from 1950 to 1970. Some times the images are just pretty doggone overt in their message. Some times, like the last picture of the concha and machete, they are pretty Freudian.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

While the Hispanic Blogosphere rejoices at the resignation of Lou Dobbs, I'm fairly unhappy about the action. Why? A Dobbs quote as reported by the NY Times is why:

Sitting before an image of an American flag on his studio set, he said “some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day.”

Great. So, while on the leash of third-place ratings on a fairly moderate CNN Dobbs was predictable and controllable. Now the dog is off the leash, so to speak, and free to run the neighborhood of talk radio or, heaven help us, politics. Hispanics in America should probably put down the champagne until we see how far this old dog will run.

You Fire 16 Teachers And Whadya' Get...

... another day older and with a new teacher's union in the state of Mexico.

Back in 2006/07 teachers in EdoMex tried to organize a new teacher's union called Sindicato Unificado de Maestros y Académicos del Estado de México (SUMAEM). For their trouble scores of teachers were harassed and 16 of the organizers were fired. Now the education supervisory panel in Cholula, Puebla has reinstated the teachers and they are back at work with the added bonus that an EdoMex reconciliation panel has forced the Secretary of Education to recognize the new 900-strong union. See the Sol de Toluca story.

While Mexico's teacher's certainly need unions that are not co-opted by the parties, looking at the SUMAEM site doesn't seem to hold out much hope. The organization seems to be dripping with functionaries, and despite the snazzy web site and incredibly long fight song (here), there seems to be little in the way of specifics and documents offered by the group. Same himno, second verse, a whole lot longer, and probably just as poorly administered as many other Mexican labor unions.

For more, see here.