Requested Politica

Alright, about that other stuff;

the political stuff: At least one class believes that the whole Zapatistan movement was a wasted effort – that no intended social benefit arose from their struggle. I’m not sure if I believe them simply because of their status. Moreover, that assessment flies in the face of the research I did in school. Their opinion though falls right inline with what they told me about the teacher’s strike in Oaxaca. They said that, frankly, it was bullshit on the part of the teachers. They recognize that Oaxacenos are severely underprivileged and that for teachers to demand higher wages is improper considering. That is, everybody down there is paid tiddly winks, so teachers should expect the same treatment. Further, they said that the governor down there, Ruiz I think his name is, who they were trying to oust, paid-off the organizers of the teachers’ strike to encourage them to not make any waves. My students said that what happened was that many teachers found out about this kickback and decided that they wanted some for themselves, and went on strike in hopes to get some of that money. Cars were burned, shops were looted and a few teachers were shot, but I don’t know about the extent of their wounds. According to my students, the strike leaders are now in jail. But my roommate, Oaxacan, says that this isn’t true. My roommate also told me that there’s a teacher strike every year and last year’s happened to be the nastiest. Some suspect that their coverage was due in part to the political climate of the time: A presidential election.

I was also informed that Fox, the guy that was previously in place, was useless because he married some woman, Marta I think, who is somehow related to the former dictator of Chile.. I may be getting that totally wrong though – I forget. They all had very nice things to say about Calderon, so I suspect that they didn’t vote Obredor. But like the rest of the world they don’t like Bush. I thought it interesting that they refuse to believe that Calderon is Bush’s lapdog (thought I’m not prepared to substantiate that claim this very moment).

And speaking about US-Mexican relations, they don’t like Venezuela because Chavez openly criticizes Mexico for being US friendly. The larger reason that some Mexicans don’t like Venezuela is however because of its increasingly socialistic political environment. I find it shocking that more Mexicans don’t appeal to socialism – it may just be this part of the woods though. While watching the Super Bowl I saw on Caribbean league baseball – yeah, winter league, eh? – Mexico getting whooped by Venezuela. 9 to nothin’, at the bottom of the 6^th. Later, Mexico held onto some later inning with 5 behind, bases loaded, and one out. They fucked that up and probably lost. We joked that maybe Chaves called the manager and said that he’d nationalize their ass if they didn’t win. I don’t really have all the facts in to form an good opinion about Venezuela yet, though.

Oh, and corn. Mexicans are pissed about their corn. Through NAFTA, Canada and Mexico brokered a deal where the Mexican government cuts subsidies to corn growers so that Canada can sell their stock to Mexico. Canada, in exchange, is supposed to eliminate all their tariffs on their corn exports to Mexico. They haven’t done that, but Mexico has already cut their subsidies. The result is that corn and especially tortillas have shot up in price. Boy, I tell you what, they need their tortillas here.