My New Blog...

I have decided that 1.  I need to start blogging again. So much around me, so much in me...this amazing journey I call my life can't go without being recorded...for the least posterity.  Hopefully my struggles, battles and daily experiences give light to someone else.  I don't know. But I can't do it anymore in seperate spheres....emotional blog, political blog, family blog...I am all that in one.....so my blog needs to be that...one. :)
Check it out....http://livinrealcuerna.blogspot.com/
I promise I will be better at posting....more then when I am in the mist of some crisis. :)

Drug Violence in Cuerna

from thenews.com.mx

Several spots hit by violence nationwide

EFE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The head of the organized crime unit in the Morelos Attorney General's Office and his two bodyguards were murdered in what appears to have been a drug-related contract killing, authorities said Friday.

Assailants traveling in two SUVs intercepted prosecutor Andrés Dimitriadis in his vehicle on a street in Cuernavaca, the state capital, and fired at least 110 shots, killing the official and bodyguards Mario Ovalle and Jaime Guzmán.

The attack occurred Thursday night, some 300 meters from the local headquarters of the federal police.

Sources in the Morelos branch of the federal Attorney General's Office, or PGR, told Efe that preliminary investigations indicated the murder was ordered by one of two feuding drug cartels.

The Juárez cartel and the cartel headed led by the Beltrán Leyva brothers - formerly of the Sinaloa cartel - are apparently battling for control of the illegal trade in Morelos, the sources said. A reward of 5 million pesos has been offered for information leading to the killers' capture.

Elsewhere in the country, three more human heads were also found Friday.

A police official in Cuautitlán, State of Mexico, said one head turned up in a box left in the parking lot of the station.

It was accompanied by a message warning that federal police and members of the drug group La Familia will be beheaded, said the official, who was not authorized to give his name.

State prosecutors in Michoacán, where La Familia is based, said another head was discovered Friday in an ice chest in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas. Tape covered the eyes and an attached message read: "From the Gulf cartel."

Prosecutors in Baja California said police in Tijuana also found another decapitated head in a plastic bag near the victim's body.

They also reported that two adults were killed Friday when assailants riddled their pickup truck with bullets on a Tijuana street. A 1-year-old girl riding with them was hit by rounds from an assault rifle and was in critical condition.

Police also found nine people shot to death in Playas de Rosarito, just south of Tijuana.

The drug war....

Not a new topic.  Something that we have been living with as a "reality" for the past couple of years.  I remember when planning a weekend getaway to Aca a couple of years ago that decapitated heads rolling up on shore was just "slightly alarming".  I think it was one of the first contacts I had with the reality of the war.  Nothing happened while i was there, it was disturbing to see so many soldiers.  But in the end...didn´t think much about it.  Until I wanted to travel to the border by bus, which was vetoed for being "too dangerous" and the possibility of being caught in the cross fire.  

Christmas last year...military patrols in my neighborhood.  Offically, who knows why.  All the neighborhood abuzz that a drug lord was hiding out "alle por los campos".  It is a constant reality, it is constantly present.  But part of your mind (well mine at least) assimulates it as something that happenes in the North or in the campos.  Something that won´t or can´t bother me because well..I am a good person.  I am not involved in "the shady side of life". I am protected from those sort of problems. 

While the latest assassination doesn´t change much, it made me realize that it can happen anywhere.  The "street in Cuernavaca" was Diana.  Which is minutes from the school.  It is a "nice, safe, quiet neighborhood".  110 bullet in the middle of the street.  That couldn´t have been pretty.

The drug war perplexes me.  The drug war at times disgusts me...I don´t understand how human nature can turn so demonic...for illegal trading routes.  But most of all the drug war needs a solution.  I understand the President's stance, but at the same time I wonder if it is getting results.  It is an on-going debate in my mind.  But I wanted to share this.  It is real, it is scary.  But this is not a domestic problem.  It is an international problem that is being played out on Mexican soil.  

Maybe the solution needs be international.

A McCain moment

  
  Just a bit off of my normal topics of ranting and raving but this did catch my eye the other day in the newspaper.  McCain going for the Guadalupian vote?  then I saw another take...the hunting approach is more like it.  And I don´t take hunting to mean...vote hunting...it is fall and well it is that time a year no?

Reflecting on the events...

I think I am going to let the photos speak for themselves. 

The past couple weeks have been bittersweet in a way.  The streets have been regained.  But at what price?  Just as easy as it is to proclaim radical ideas without ever living the consequences, is to clamour for government intervention.  I can´t forget the pyschological desperate days of the past month.  Of wondering...will I get through town?  How will we get home?  Is there going to be money?  

I refuse to accept that the teachers have a valid fight.  But it is now bigger than that.  It has become an avalanche for every anti-government organization.For every radical and revolutionary post.  Is Morelos the best staging ground?  I don´t think so, but then again my assessment might be askewed since I am a resident of the city.  

Every voice does have the right to be heard, federal force is just as awful and brutal as some of the elements it is used against.  Who´s fight is this?  What are they fighting for?  It is now a sea of anti government protests with no general goal.  Octavio Paz was quoted as saying that Mexico is like a teenager who refuses to grow up.  He held that Mexico was intent on denying its true heritage, that its evolution was retarded by repeated cycles of conquest, violation, and revolution.  Over the past 10 years we have focused on the fact that maybe...just maybe Mexico can move from its adolesence to true democratic adulthood.  The events of the past months has made me wonder if the analysis was realistic or just wishful thinking.  Was the acceptance of the PAN the first step toward true and open democracy...or just another phase of the cycle.  Era after era of Mexican history supports Paz's claim.  What sort of history am I living?  I don´t know.  Everytime my mind tries to form a path to justify one of the arguments, immediately the strenght of the other pops up.  As I asked my students....where is Mexico's path to the future?  Does it go with the pack and strive to be a developed nation following capitalistic development?  Or is it necessary to blaze a new and unique path...that fits the unique character that Mexican citizens and residents live as a daily reality.  In this case I lean toward the second.  Mexican social, political, and economic reality is neither truly developed or developing.  Will this country ever realize its full potential?  At this moment, sadly I doubt it.  Unless the society goes through a phase of soul searching, and honest reflection it will never find its strengths and weakness.  The beauty of Mexico is its uniqueness.  The strength of Mexico is found in the core of its unique blend of characters.  But instead of re-evaluating to find this strength, I worry that the country is in .nothing more than cyclic stagnation

One More....

So this is a you tube video with the cruxifications....The curtain call?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxPZUBzPAs&feature=user

This has made me change my stripes...no that is wrong....it has pissed me off that these hijos de puta think that they are true revolutionaries.  They don´t know what the real revolutions were about.  Looking at this page brought a quote from Lenin into my mind.  In the first chapter of "State and Revolution" he says "Attemps are made after their (the revolutionaries) deaths to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to speak, and to confer a certain prestige on their names so as to 'console' the oppressed classes by emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching". 

This made me realize that these idiots who claim they are revolutionaries (http://movimientomagisterialmor.blogspot.com/) really are not.  They are followers of the "emasculated essense of the teaching".  What have they suffered?  What have they given up?  They have homes, nice cars, food on the table.  What part of that is suffering?  Other than being given bad seafood....come on now.  When you realize the conditions that the real historic revolutionaries have faced (and modernly keep facing), you see why movement toward revolution has been logical and necessary.  Is this the same?

  

Start with the American and French revolutions and move forward in history.  Start with Jesus if you will, he was a revolutionary.  The conditions they faced are shocking and incomprehensible, especially in the comfort of our century on the backs of THEIR sacrifices.  How will the sales of plazas benefit society?  What advancement comes from their "lucha"...nothing...it is personal greed. 

And then these faux revolutionaries show up thinking they are hijos de Che, or that Zapata's spirt guides their way...why?  Because this is the land of Zapata?  What did he say?  The land should be returned to those who WORK it.  Hmmmm..... 

  

Read history people.  18th Century Paris ("Let them eat cake....") 19th Century Russia (starving and serfdom).  Want to see real strive and need for change, a situation that needs revolutaries...check Becky's page (http://rebekahmenning.blogspot.com/2008/10/six-of-many-martyrs.html).  It kills me to know that my nation made that happen.  It strenghtens my belief that more people have to work toward social justice.  Revolution for positive ends?  Could it be possible?  

All in all...Make your own comparisions.  Draw your own conclusions.  I have drawn mine and learned a few very important lessons in this journey.  1.  Revolution is needed when the conditions call for it, but false revolution based on political barriencies or personal greed leads to societal destruction and strive.  2.  Maybe I am not a true Revolutionary, but I have respect for them and what they have done so we can live in a better and more balanced world.

Teaching Posts...

So yesterday we had a friendly visit from out sweet and lovely zone supervisor (aka lazy ass who is only back to work because the government refused to pay the strikers).  Anyway there is a famous switch happening at the school...I am going to be listed as the offical history and geography teacher.  Right, okay...well god permitting.

So our friendly neighborhood supervisor, who doesn´t know me from Eve, was talking with the indicated person about our staffing changes.  And I quote, when he got to my papers "how can a foreigner teach Mexican history?  It is obvious she will support the US when teaching the Mexican-American War.  How can she know the importance of the Niños Heroes?"  

Yet another example of why education does not work in this country.  I would LOVE to sit a compentancy exam for Mexican history.  Sadly I do believe I would probably do better than 90% of teachers that are currently "approved" Mexican history teachers.  First of all I didn´t know that part of being a social scientist/historian means you are automatically a nationalist.  And if Nationalism had to come into play...doesn´t logic tell you.  I work in Mexico, I should teach things from the Mexican point of view.  

I love a dosis of racism in the morning.  The best part of the story...I was sitting right behind him listening to it all.  It just made me believe less in the system.  If I thought being Mexican would make me a more apt teacher, if I could see the logic in the argument...okay.  But I fit the famous profile other than one little fact...I was born north of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande in the US)...ironically I don´t say Rio Grande in my classes....hmmm how can that be since I am American????  Dumb asses.

Those Who Yell....

Cannot muzzle those who oppose them.  

Today was the infamous mega march.  As each day passes I am more and more convinced that these ignormemous cannot be educators.  This picture was taken at just one of the entrance points to the city.  Thankfully it wasn´t as bad as we thought it was going to be.  The rumors were only rumors.  But it made me realize, this is a psychological war.  Half of my students didn't come to schooland half of those who made it left early.  Parents were terrified that something was going to happen.  I know I was.  

When I left work and I realized that things were calm, I went to the centro (walking of course, because bus service is slow due to the streets being closed) to have lunch with my husband.  I first of all avoided the plaza de armas..thinking "No, why put myself in the middle of the storm?"  The had 5 teachers symbolically cruxified...it was too much for me.  Walking down another side street they pushed and went through the streets like 16th century kings.  One pushed me so hard I flew against a wall.  These are educators?  And the sarcastic type that I am couldn´t let it go without a snide "compromiso".  Is it because I am clearly foreign?  Is it because I walked straight and didn´t jump to the side as the came (I refuse to get ran over by a bus for them) These f'ers are not revolutionaries...they are ignornant puppets.  

Then the highlight (really low point) of my day.  A group of concerned citizens put a banner across Blvd Juarez right before Palacio Cortes denouncing the movement, demanding resolution, and asking for peace.  As I was standing with my husband and a few of his friends talking, a teacher walked up.  and tore it down.  I was so angry.  If you DEMAND (not even ask) people to listen to your political discontent, you must respect that other people, other CITIZENS have the same right to voice their opinion.  That is the basis of a free society, that is the basis of freedom of speech.  I refuse to support a group that not only holds a city hostage but that doesn´t understand the basic philosphical underpinnings of what they are doing.  

For the "we" of society to advance, "I" is not a valid arguement.  It really saddened me to see the utter lack of civic respect today.  Those who speak against them are automatically "agents of the PAN", they are government puppets.  Maybe the teachers are puppets but I know I am not. Day by day, I feel that my voice and voices like mine need to be louder and need to be heard.  We cannot let their movement win.  We cannot let them hold back progress and better education.  We cannot let them hold us hostage because they are unhappy with THEIR working conditions.  

Like the sign I saw today....pobre país.  I am making it my personal duty...every future voter I educate (even if has to be one by one) I am teaching them that it is their DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY to raise their voice, and not let the apathy that is so rampent in this country take over.  If other teachers thought the same way, we could end this apathetic anaracial cycle we are in.  

What are we waiting for?  Why can´t we learn from history?