Intersections

Caught on video, Mexico 'gentleman' faces charges in beating

** Originally published at World Now: 

 

A wealthy businessman surrendered this week to a municipal prison to face charges that he beat and violently berated an employee in his building for not obeying him.

The case of Miguel Sacal Smeke is the second scandal in recent months involving the release of video footage that captures what social-media users decried as acts of classist rage.

A judge denied bail for Sacal, a textile businessman.

He faces assault-with-injuries charges after a video emerged of him knocking out the teeth of a lobby employee in his upscale apartment building. The worker, Hugo Enrique Vega, had declined to fetch a car jack and change a tire for him.

In August, two women -- a beauty queen and a reality-television personality -- were filmed slapping and pushing a uniformed traffic officer on a swanky street in Mexico City's Polanco district over a parking dispute. The media dubbed them the "Ladies de Polanco."

Sacal's incident happened in July, before the "Ladies de Polanco" scandal, but the footage emerged on YouTube only in early January.

Disgust at the video of the two women spread for months in Mexico. Some said the "Ladies de Polanco" clip proved that race and class discrimination persist in Mexican society. Others said the video showed the lack of respect for uniformed authorities in Mexico, and the inability of authorities to enforce the law no matter anyone's class standing.

The "ladies," Azalia Ojeda and Vanesa Polo Cajica, still face charges for the August incident and had a court date on Wednesday in which they had their last interview with the judge. They are free on bail.

Sacal earned the nickname the "Gentleman de Las Lomas" (for the super-rich Las Lomas district) after the footage of his incident surfaced. In a television interview afterward, worker Vega was eloquent and even gracious when asked what he thought of Sacal's actions.

"I am not a businessman. I am simply a worker, I receive a salary, but at the end of the day, I offer services," Vega told Milenio TV. "We can't let ourselves be taken by the economic standing of each person. What's important here is to see us all as human beings."

From behind bars at the Reclusorio Oriente, a large city prison, Sacal apologized "to society" for attacking Vega, in a letter read by his lawyer Thursday. If convicted and sentenced, he faces between three and eight years in prison.

* Photo: Mexico City businessman Miguel Sacal in a mug shot distributed to reporters. Credit: Attorney general's office of Mexico City

A face among Mexico's 14 million informal workers

** Originally published at World Now:

She sits on a plastic stool patting blue-green corn between her palms in front of a portable charcoal grill on a street corner in this city’s dense and noisy downtown.

Lilia Dorantes, who sells the stuffed maize patties known as tlacoyos, works around the corner from a newspaper vendor, a fruit vendor, a pirated-DVD vendor and a vendor who sells dolls dressed as Mexican marines and federal police.

The street vendors belong to an army of off-the-book workers who now make up a record 14 million Mexicans pumping money into the informal economy, the national statistics institute reported last  week.

The number of informal workers in Mexico has increased by 1.6 million since 2010, the statistics agency reported. Overall, informal laborers make up nearly a third of all those employed in Mexico.

Although the informal market, drug money-laundering and remittances from Mexican workers in the United States all help keep the economy afloat, Mexico lost an average of $50 billion in the last decade to what are called illicit financial outflows — money circulating through Mexico but in theory not going toward infrastructure, healthcare or education, according to a January report by Global Financial Integrity.

"That is money that the Mexican government could have used to improve the lifestyle and quality of living for the average Mexican," said economist Sarah Freitas at the Washington-based group.

But informal workers have little to no safety nets to fall back on in case of emergencies and can remain off the books their entire lives.

"What happens when I get sick? Well, with whatever I have saved up...," Dorantes said, trailing off and swatting away at her charcoal so that it would keep burning.

Dorantes, 39, said she makes about 300 pesos a day, or about $23, sharing the approximation of her profits hesitantly. In Mexico City, the information can be tempting to would-be robbers or burglars.

Vendors are believed to pay a daily or weekly tax to powerful street "leaders" who overseeindependent vendor associations or neighborhood groups with revolutionary-sounding names.

Dorantes said she pays about $10 a week to her leader to operate on a downtown sidewalk. Her mother sold tlacoyos for about 20 years in Mexico City's Chinatown, she said. In 2007, after Mayor Marcelo Ebrard's administration negotiated with vendor groups to remove them from the streets of the historic center, Dorantes and her tlacoyo operation simply picked up and moved a few blocks away.

Dorantes said she's growing tired of her four-hour round-trip daily commute from a pueblo just outside Toluca, the capital of the neighboring state. She has a small daughter and a daughter entering high school and would like to be nearer to them, maybe by setting up a tlacoyo stand outside her door.

"I would like to have a legal place," she said, patting more maize together. "The difference here is, no one bosses me around."

Asian couple eating sushi at Pyramid of the Sun

Here's how to do Teotihuacan in style: This Japanese couple chose a perch atop the Pyramid of the Sun earlier this month to sit down for a sushi picnic.

* Previously, "Spring equinox at Teotihuacan."

Mariachis in Mexico struggle despite U.N. heritage nod

** Never got around to posting this here! Originally published at World Now (months ago):

Like most of the mariachi musicians milling about Plaza Garibaldi this early morning waiting for work, Juan Ramon Ramirez had his hands in his pockets, not on the strings of his vihuela.

It was cold, and there weren't many customers out looking for a song. Not even just a few days after Mexico's most well-known musical tradition got a dose of good news.

Mariachi music -- who hasn't ever heard that spirited strumming? -- now belongs to the world's list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," as declared this week by the United Nations.

Ramirez, 62, had heard about the U.N. designation and it sounded good to him.

"I hope it turns into more work," he said, not appearing very hopeful. "Well, it could turn into more work."

Minutes passed, and no one approached to commission a ringing rendition of "Cielito Lindo" or "El Rey."

"Let's hope this gets fixed," the musician said.

UNESCO, the U.N. educational and cultural agency, added mariachi and 18 other demonstrations of intangible world heritage to its list during a meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The additions include Chinese shadow puppetry and French horseback riding, which is intangibly vital for the world because it "emphasizes harmonious relations between humans and horses," the agency said.

UNESCO also added 11 demonstrations of intangible world heritage that, in its phrasing, are in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. These include Yaokwa, the "Enawene Nawe people's ritual for the maintenance of social and cosmic order," in the Brazilian Amazon, and a "circular breathing" singing technique from Mongolia.

But was mariachi placed on the wrong list? Could it be considered in Need of Urgent Safeguarding?

You might think so after a night at Plaza Garibaldi, or any plaza, it might seem, where mariachis traditionally gather and busk for work. Mariachis everywhere are having a tough time.

In Los Angeles, home to the world's second largest population of Mexicans, mariachis are feeling pushed out of the traditional Mariachi Plaza east of downtown due to the looming threat of development and gentrification.

In Guadalajara, the historic birthplace of mariachi, the musicians at the Plaza de los Mariachis complain of a declining clientele due to security fears and a lack of support from the local government.

The city is the capital of Jalisco state in western Mexico, and it means business when it often proclaims itself the "cradle" of Mexican culture. Tequila, the highly tangible alcoholic spirit, is also from there.

Here in Mexico City, Plaza Garibaldi north of downtown has been completely remodeled in the last two years, with a new plaza floor and a new tequila museum. Local mariachis, however, say the imposing museum structure is unwelcoming and "doesn't have a point." The remodeling also kept customers away for months at a time, and since the project was finished, they haven't quite come back.

That's how mariachi David Figueroa put it. The 66-year-old guitar player said the fixes to the plaza are largely cosmetic. He's played in Plaza Garibaldi, he said, since 1957. His workload suffered once the city started cleaning up the area, and it hasn't fully recovered since. 

Attempts at integrating mariachis into established unions have also produced poor results for the musicians, Figueroa added.

"What we really need is a good restaurant with good food where you can go listen to good music," Figueroa said. "They don't help us at all."

Indeed, mariachi's addition to the UNESCO list will probably mean little to the musicians who gather at places like Garibaldi. (The full-band price for a song, 150 pesos or about $11, has not changed since the Sunday news of the UNESCO list, several musicians acknowledged.)

Here, drunken revelers show up to hire bands or trios for whatever song they might want, in just about any genre. Few make much of a distinction between the traditional mariachis -- with their form-fitting suits and wide-brimmed sombreros -- and newer additions to the plaza who play popular nortenos from Mexico's north or jarocho from the tropical eastern coast.

"Now they think they own the plaza!" Figueroa huffed. "But here, the tradition of Plaza Garibaldi has always been mariachi. It's not norteno, not jarocho, not trio, it's mariachi."

A song wafted over the chilly night air from nearby. The men shivered.

"Hopefully the patrimony [list] will mean people will respect mariachis more," said viola player Antonio Hernandez, 55. "We only charge what you're supposed to charge."

* Photo: Mariachis perform in 2009. Credit: UNESCO

Left, right, or center? Understanding the brand-names of Mexican politics

** Originally published at World Now:

A leading political party in Mexico this week chose a woman as its candidate for the presidency, a first in the country's history. More interesting, the party that did it is the ruling bastion of Mexican conservatism, the National Action Party, or PAN.

As the July presidential election nears, watchers of world news are sure to be hearing much more about the PAN, its candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota, and her main rivals, Enrique Peña Nieto of the party known as PRI, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD.

These three main parties are sometimes described in easy categories of left (PRD), right (PAN) and center (PRI), but the reality is far more complex. Here's a primer on how to understand the top political name brands in Mexico heading into the July vote.

Institutional Revolutionary Party

There is easily no more loaded term in Mexican politics than the three letters that make up the acronym of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. And perhaps no greater oxymoron, some might quip.

It emerged as a consolidating force after the tumult of the Mexican Revolution. Over time, the PRI practically invented brand-name politics. Its name, ideology and even brand colors (same as the national flag) are directly linked to the very concept of the Mexican republic. For many years, the party was the country, and the country was the party.

The PRI developed a patronage system that virtually ensured electoral victory year after year. It soon became synonymous with corruption, disastrous financial mismanagement and violent repression of dissent, as typified by the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968.

In the 1988 presidential election, the PRI was accused of electoral fraud that some claim robbed the outcome from dissident candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of a revered former president, when PRI-controlled election authorities announced the vote-counting system "went silent."

When the system returned, the PRI's candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was declared the winner. Salinas went on to lead Mexico through the worst of the PRI's decadence, and by 2000, exasperated Mexicans finally booted their longtime political overlords from power with the election of Vicente Fox of the PAN.

Ever since, the PRI has been mounting its comeback, leading the pack by substantial margins incurrent polls. Claiming it is a "new" PRI, the party has yet to state in a clear fashion that it would govern much differently than before.

Candidate: Enrique Peña Nieto

Campaign color: Red

National Action Party

National Action is the party that unites Catholics and capitalists in Mexico. It is free-market, conservative on social issues and friendly to foreign interests. It casts itself as efficient and effective, but it now faces the same kinds of accusations of corruption and waste as the PRI did in its heyday.

The PAN's roots are also found in the post-Revolutionary period, after the Cristero War, a bloody conflict in which Roman Catholics were persecuted in a wave of anti-clerical sentiments and laws. Counter-revolutionary leaders seeking religious freedom organized themselves in 1939 into a political group, which included some factions that were sympathetic to European fascism.

To this day, the PAN remains the political home for Mexico's devout Catholics.

For decades, PAN survived as the minor opposition to the PRI behemoth, but by the 1980s, growing disillusionment with the PRI made the PAN an attractive alternative.

The first PAN governor was elected in Baja California in 1989, reflecting its early foothold in the more industrial, more "American" north of the country. Today, PAN governs nine states (including several multi-party coalitions) and holds about a third of seats in Congress.

Despite disaffection with two consecutive PAN administrations under Fox and current President Felipe Calderon, the party is hoping a buzz-worthy female candidate could help keep it in power for six more years.

Candidate: Josefina Vazquez Mota

Campaign color: Blue

 

Party of the Democratic Revolution

After the repression of 1968 and the ensuing Dirty War, a generation of political thinkers lost trust in the dominant party for good, and rumblings began for the creation of a new wing of progressive politics. In the aftermath of 1988, the progressives formed the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. Cardenas was its presidential candidate in 1994 and 2000, finishing third each time.

The PRD gradually built its political base in the populous capital, where it has governed without interruption since 1997. Cardenas remains the "moral leader" of the party, but its figurehead is now Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City.

Lopez Obrador is a polarizing figure. In 2004, he was subjected to a legal attack from the Fox administration, which sought to disqualify him as a future national candidate. The attack failed andbolstered Lopez Obrador's popularity.

But the PRD's goal of finally capturing the 2006 presidency would not be. The PAN campaign under Calderon smeared Lopez Obrador as a "danger to Mexico" and a would-be Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's hard-line leftist president. On election night, authorities said the result was too close to call.

What followed was a wild political drama that saw a partial recount, an early Occupy-style sit-in by the dissatisfied PRD, and an official result of less than 1 percentage point difference between Calderon, the declared winner, and Lopez Obrador, who also declared himself the winner and the "legitimate president."

Lopez Obrador was badly damaged by his decision to shut down the city center and his refusal to accept the official results. For now, the PRD trails in polls behind the PAN and PRI. But two internal factors that worked against the leftist in 2006 are not in his way this time.

First, a minor socialist party that offered a likeable woman candidate in 2006, Patricia Mercado, has since lost its registration and disbanded. (Mercado won nearly 3% of the vote in 2006.)

Second, Cardenas did not publicly support Lopez Obrador's campaign in 2006, a gaping absence rooted in personal differences between the two men. On Monday, a day after Vazquez Mota won the PAN primary, the old PRD leader came out and endorsed Lopez Obrador for president in a show of symbolic leftist unity heading into the 2012 vote.

Candidate: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador

Campaign color: Yellow

* Photo: Supporters of a PRI gubernatorial candidate, Eruviel Avila, rally in Toluca, Mexico state, in June 2011. Credit: Alexandre Meneghini / Associated Press

The radical landscape paintings of Mexico's Dr. Atl

** Originally published at World Now:

He was a muralist, an educator and a civic activist who once helped save a colonial-era convent from demolition by moving in and living there. He published books, invented paints and signed his works "Dr. Atl," an imaginary honorific using the Nahuatl-language word for water.

Born Gerardo Murillo in Guadalajara in 1875, Dr. Atl is one of the most accomplished and enigmatic figures from the golden period of modern art in Mexico.

His unmistakably forceful landscapes are familiar to average Mexicans as sort of visual footnotes to an era that saw Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco flourish internationally as muralists. Yet Dr. Atl's greatest pieces have resided mostly in private collections, making them rarely available for viewing to the public.

PHOTOS: The radical landscapes of Dr. Atl

That changes with "Dr. Atl: Masterpieces," on view at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolcojust north of downtown Mexico City. It is the first retrospective on Dr. Atl in Mexico in 27 years, meaning a generation of art lovers could get to know his work in depth for the first time.

The show is organized by the Blaisten Collection, a private museum founded by collector Andres Blaisten that sits inside the renovated university complex at Tlatelolco. It features more than 190 works, many of which are privately owned and not usually shown to the public.

The exhibit charts Dr. Atl's progression from early, more conventional landscapes through his adoption of the curvilinear perspective -- as the eye sees, he argued -- in rendering innovative and sweeping views of the Valley of Mexico.

The artist clearly was fixated on Mexico's volcanoes as both subjects to paint and sources of inspiration, particularly as he sought to push the very boundaries of the landscape form beginning in 1922.

By the end of his career, Dr. Atl wanted to radicalize landscape painting entirely with his theory ofaereopaisajes, or aero-landscapes, in which artists would go up in planes, helicopters and eventually into space to create landscapes of infinity, of "supreme ascension." 

Several of the most arresting paintings in the exhibit depict volcanoes at night, in a slanting perspective from high above. Glowing in aquas and purples, the paintings come close to creating a vertigo effect in the viewer, suggesting a peaceful eternal space.

Dr. Atl, who died in 1964 at the age of 88, worked in the classical method, hiking his way to peaks near the twin volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl to make swift sketches of the mountains and valley below (until he later lost his right leg). Then he would transform the quick sketches into brilliant paintings using oil and mixed wax-resin paints he made, calling them "Atl Colors."

It is a happy historical triumph that Dr. Atl was alive in 1943, when the Paricutin volcano began to poke out from the middle of a cornfield in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.

The artist recorded the rise of Paricutin as perhaps no other figure could, with dozens of sketches and paintings that showed the fiery and violent process of a once-in-a-lifetime geological phenomenon.

"For him it was important to walk among the volcanoes. He studied them from all angles," said Vannesa Bohorquez, director of the Blaisten Collection museum, during a recent visit to the show.

"If you didn't know the artist, you'd think these were done by a young [painter]," Bohorquez added. "You need a physical strength to do this, and this was a very old man who had lost a leg."

The artist was also a committed educator and activist, founding an open-air art school and living for an undetermined amount of years in the Convent of La Merced in the historic center of Mexico City in an effort to prevent its demolition. The building still stands.

"Dr. Atl: Masterpieces" is on view until April.

* Photo: "La sombra del Popo," or "Popo's Shadow," a 1942 painting by Dr. Atl on view at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco in Mexico City. Credit: Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times