http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/04/522621303/with-murders-on-the-rise-2017-on-track-to-be-one-of-mexicos-deadliest-years Murder is on the rise in Mexico. Ten years after the government launched its war on drugs and sent the military to combat cartels, homicides are at levels not seen since the height of that offensive. The violence is widespread, but it remains most prevalent in a few hard-hit towns and cities.
Hugo del Angel says his city, Ecatepec, a sprawling, struggling suburb of nearly 2 million outside Mexico City, is definitely high on that list. "It's probably one of the three most problematic in the whole country," he says. Del Angel isn't that far off. According to new government figures, nearly half of all homicides in the country occur in just 50 cities; Ecatepec is near the top. The past two years have seen a jump in violence in cities throughout Mexico. In January alone, 1,938 people were killed, according to Mexico's executive secretary for the National Public Security System, putting 2017 on track to be one of the deadliest years in a decade. As his employees unlock the chains around bar stools and high tables, del Angel opens his small pizza parlor in the food court of one of the city's largest shopping centers. Late last year, he says, five men came into the restaurant and demanded service. "One of the guys says, 'If you're not going to serve us, we're going to take everything you have,' " del Angel recalls. The man pulled a bat from under his shirt. Before del Angel knew it, they were beating him and his young employees. Del Angel recovered, but he says the shopping mall hasn't. Crime has done it in. Last year, the movie theaters left, and dozens of stores shut down. The second floor is practically abandoned. The management stopped running the escalators and most of the lights. "I can see the city's violent situation reflected in the total abandonment of the mall," says del Angel. Many blame last year's capture of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman for the spike. Rival gangs, especially the upstart New Generation Jalisco cartel, are making a play for El Chapo's territory and unleashing feuds between smaller groups, which branch off into extortion and robbery for funds — especially in places like Ecatepec, the state of Mexico's most problematic city. "The state of Mexico has always been very violent, and has been the problem child for this administration," says Ana Maria Salazar, a security expert and analyst in Mexico City. With just one year left in his term, President Enrique Peña Nieto hasn't been able to calm the violence in the state of Mexico — or elsewhere in the country. Last fall, though, he launched a plan to combat violence in the 50 most violent cities. New technology, interagency coordination and a countrywide emergency phone service are all key to his plan. In Ecatepec, the emergency calls are fielded by an operator at a brand-new police center in the city, where a floor-to-ceiling bank of monitors plays real-time images captured by the city's 10,000 new cameras. Dozens of agents watch, while others, like Damian Flores, pore over recordings from the day before, looking for suspicious activity. Flores plays back a recording of a kidnapping. "You see four guys get out of a Ram pickup truck and run into this small grocery shop," says Flores. Seconds later, they come out and shove a person into the vehicle, which takes off. No one, Flores says, reported the crime and no one at the grocery shop would talk to officers, highlighting a distrust of police that even the highest technology and coordination can't overcome. Peña Nieto's 50-city plan is not doing too well. A review by the Mexican investigative website Animal Politico shows that homicides in nearly three-quarters of the cities rose in the past six months, some at alarmingly high rates. In Ecatepec, there were 200 in the past six months, no change over the same period in the year before. Pizza owner del Angel says he still feels unsafe. "Earlier this year," he says, "we got a call demanding 10,000 pesos" — about $500 — a month. "If I didn't pay, they said they would burn my place down." Del Angel says he's hoping they don't make good on the threat. He didn't pay.
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/31/522151936/venezuela-in-political-crisis-after-supreme-court-takes-over-legislature
Venezuela's Supreme Court has taken over the legislature in what opposition leaders say is President Maduro establishing a dictatorship. David Greene talks with Hannah Dreier of The Associated Press.
Let's turn to a country where the very survival of democracy is at stake, Venezuela. That country's supreme court, which is loyal to President Nicolas Maduro, issued a ruling that in effect seized power from the country's elected legislature. This comes as the economy of this oil-rich country is in near collapse and the regime is jailing political opponents. NPR and other news organizations have been denied entry to Venezuela for recent months. But we have Hannah Dreier of The Associated Press on the line from Caracas. Hannah, good morning. HANNAH DREIER: Hi. Good to be with you. GREENE: So let me get this straight - these are elected lawmakers who have basically been stripped of their power by a court. What's going on? DREIER: That's right. So Maduro has been basically ruling by decree for the past year. Congress hasn't been able to get many laws through. But this is a big departure because now the supreme court is saying, not only is the government going to ignore Congress, Congress can't even write the laws anymore. So it's essentially a body with no function anymore in this country. GREENE: I mean, I know Latin America was once known for coups and dictators. But, I mean, democracy has kind of become the norm. Is that changing here? DREIER: Yeah, well, that's what everybody is talking about right now down here. They're asking - has Venezuela become the second country in Latin America that's not a full democracy? And it's not clear. When does a democracy become a dictatorship? But a lot of people are saying, when you abolish a branch of power, that's a pretty good sign. GREENE: Is Cuba the other country you're talking about, I would imagine? DREIER: Cuba would be the other country. GREENE: OK. Well - so opponents of President Maduro effectively saying he's a dictator and that this is a huge deal. I suppose that when you see powerful, authoritarian leaders, sometimes they are popular because they're actually getting things done. I mean, is he doing anything to restore the economy, to restore stability in this country? DREIER: Yeah, one thing that you hear a lot down here is that Maduro's become kind of like a wounded dog. Like, he's not popular. Things are going very badly. His popularity ratings have sunk below 20 percent. People's lives have become a daily struggle just to get food and medicine. And as he loses popularity, he's becoming more authoritarian. So as the administration becomes less stable, we're seeing more things like them shutting down newspapers; kicking out NPR, as you mentioned; arresting opponents and just moving toward a dictatorship. GREENE: And so what does that mean for people who live in Venezuela? I mean, is life going on? Is life miserable? DREIER: Yeah, the strange thing is that even though everybody was talking about this move yesterday, you're not seeing protests in the street. Today what you see is people waiting in food lines, people just trying to get clean water, fix their cars, things that have become very, very hard and time consuming. And the opposition is calling for protests later today. But people have been very reluctant to abandon the daily tasks of life and take to the streets because the administration hasn't shown any sensitivity to that. GREENE: And so what's next? I mean, is there effectively any opposition at all to Maduro? DREIER: Well, the opposition was trying to effect change through Congress. And now Congress has been basically abolished. So... (LAUGHTER) GREENE: That's not going to work anymore at the moment. DREIER: Yeah, they're kind of scrambling for a new strategy. And we're going to have a big protest probably on Saturday. But I was talking to a girl whose brother was killed in protests a few years ago - killed protesting the government. And she said she's not going to go to that protest because, for her, her brother basically died in vain. There's no use. GREENE: Oh, wow. All right. We've been speaking to Hannah Dreier of The Associated Press. She was talking to us via Skype from Caracas, Venezuela. Hannah, thanks. DREIER: Thank you. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/17/520498625/more-than-250-bodies-found-in-mass-grave-in-mexico Authorities in Mexico say they have found more than 250 bodies in what may be the largest mass grave site in the country. It's located in a dusty abandoned lot just outside the port city of Veracruz.
Authorities were led to the graves by a group of mothers who've spent months digging there in search of their loved ones. Of the 252 bodies found in the mass grave, only two have been identified: Pedro Huesca, a young state investigator, and his personal secretary. "My son thought he was going to clean the country of these bad people," says Griselda Barradas, Pedro's mother. "But no, instead they got rid of him." Church bells rang out last night in the family's small town about 40 miles outside Veracruz. Nine days of mourning came to an end with a mass. The pews were full with mothers and relatives of Veracruz's missing — many feared buried in the mass grave. "Finally Pedro is at peace, and his mommy has a place where she can now visit him," says Rosalia Castro Toss. Castro has been searching for her son for more than five years. Frustrated with authorities unwillingness to investigate his disappearance she and other grieving relatives started digging on their own. "This work that we are doing," Castro says, "The authorities should be doing." Veracruz has been marred by violence for more than a decade as warring drug gangs battle for control of the state and its lucrative port. Its past governor, now a fugitive, has been accused of sacking state coffers of millions of dollars, and long suspected of colluding with the cartels. Speaking to reporters at the mass grave site yesterday, Jorge Winckler, Veracruz's new head prosecutor, says it's impossible that this happened without complicity of the state government. Griselda Barradas says she just hopes more mothers find their sons. "Finally Pedro is where he should be," she says, "Resting in peace not tossed in that mass grave like an animal." In recent years, Spain has had a devastating economic crash, an influx of migrants and corruption scandals that left people fed up with politicians. All these factors might make Spain fertile ground for the sort of right-wing, anti-immigrant political parties gaining ground in other parts of Europe. But unlike much of the continent, Spain has no such far-right movement.
Why? The answer lies in places like San Cristóbal de los Ángeles, about a half-hour train ride south of Madrid's grand boulevards. It's a warren of drab concrete apartment blocks, with women wearing Muslim headscarves and Africans playing cards in the street. The Madrid suburb is about half-immigrant. Most residents are either retired, unemployed or in the country illegally. In a bar, white, native-born Spaniards bemoan their barrio's decline. The only local industry was construction, and that collapsed when the crisis hit in 2008. Immigrants have filled cheap, half-built homes. We used to feel like neighbors. But day by day, I feel like we're strangers," says Carmen Acero Rodriguez, 82, who's lived in San Cristóbal ever since she got married 57 years ago. "So many new people have moved in. The barrio doesn't feel safe anymore."Acero Rodriguez says she was recently robbed by a Moroccan immigrant she'd hired to clean her house — though she quickly adds the culprit could just as easily have been Spanish. And it would never occur to her to look to the right wing for solutions or to feel safer. "I'm a lifelong socialist!" Acero Rodriguez says proudly. "Why on earth would any working-class person vote for the right wing?" In Spain, some of the feelings and frustrations that help feed support to right-wing and populist parties elsewhere in Europe are the same. But the political reaction here is very different. Picking up her kids from school in San Cristóbal, Maria Ascensión, 42, calls herself "unemployed and angry." But she won't take that out on immigrants, she says. Many of Ascensión's own relatives emigrated from Spain to countries in northern Europe, fleeing the dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 till his death in 1975. "We had nearly 40 years of a repressive, right-wing dictator. That's why we don't have far-right parties like that of [Marine] Le Pen in France," Ascensión says. "We have nothing so radical." Only on the left have radical new political parties flourished in Spain. In last year's national election, the new left-wing party Podemos, led by a 38-year-old former communist with a ponytail, won more than 21 percent of the vote. Spain is where many Arab and African migrants land when they journey by boat across the Mediterranean to Europe. More than 13,000 migrants arrived in Spain last year — the majority by sea. Yet the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of foreigners in recent years has not provoked a rise in xenophobic or anti-Muslim feelings, says Carmen González-Enriquez, a social scientist who recently published a research paper for Madrid's Elcano think tank entitled "The Spanish Exception." Spaniards tend to empathize with immigrants because most newcomers, until recently, have come from Latin America or Romania and integrated easily in terms of language, religion and race, Gonzalez-Enriquez says. And, Ascensión points out, many Spaniards have also been immigrants themselves. Madrid's City Hall is draped in a "Refugees Welcome" banner. And last month, Spain's second city, Barcelona, filled with tens of thousands of demonstrators — marching in favor of accepting even more refugees. Nobody complains about immigrants being on welfare in Spain, because Spanish government benefits are pretty scant. Unlike in the U.K., for example, there is no housing benefit, child benefit or long-term unemployment benefit in Spain. Instead, Spaniards value the benefits of EU membership, and they're among the most pro-EU on the continent. "The Franco dictatorship left Spain isolated and underdeveloped," González-Enriquez says. "Spaniards felt inferior to the rest of Europe and wanted to join the club — for economic reasons, but also to recover national pride." While fear of Islamist terror attacks has become fodder for far-right political parties elsewhere in Europe, seeking to turn people against Muslim immigrants, Spain had a different experience, González-Enriquez says. The country's Basque separatist group, ETA, killed more than 800 people in Spain from the late 1960s until it declared a cease-fire in 2011. But in all those years, Spaniards never feared or racially profiled all Basques for the actions of a few radicals. Similarly, they're less inclined to turn against Muslim immigrants now, González-Enriquez believes.In Spain, regional identity — featuring distinct regional languages, holidays and culture — tends to be stronger than nationalist sentiment. Case in point: When NPR approached 82-year-old Acero Rodriguez in San Cristóbal, she introduced herself as a "Castilian" — from central Spain — rather than as Spanish. That kind of regional self-identification helps protect against far-right groups stirring up nationalism across the country, González-Enriquez says. There is one tiny far-right party in Spain. It was founded about three years ago and is called Vox. It's a Catholic faction that favors a ban on abortion, harsher penalties for ETA terrorists and more centralized power, with less autonomy for the Spanish regions. In the San Cristóbal bar, NPR asked Acero Rodriguez about it. After all, the elderly are this party's target demographic. But she said she'd never heard of it — and neither had her husband or a handful of neighbors in the bar. That may be because in last year's election, Spain's only far-right party got 0.2 percent of the vote. thoughts? http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/10/519587231/35-girls-killed-after-fire-in-a-locked-room-in-guatemala-youth-shelter At least 35 girls were killed after a fire broke out in a state-run home for children in Guatemala. They reportedly had been locked inside and were unable to escape.
"The girls were in a section of the rural shelter on lockdown," NPR's Carrie Kahn reports. "According to authorities, many had tried to escape on Tuesday night and were returned to the dormitories and locked in. On Wednesday morning, a mattress was lit on fire and the blaze quickly engulfed the wing holding the girls." Parents of the girls have been desperately trying to locate their children. Authorities say some of the bodies were so badly burned they can be identified only through DNA testing. Nineteen girls died in the fire at the Virgin of the Assumption Safe House and 17 others died as a result of injuries, according to The Associated Press. Many others were still hospitalized. The facility near Guatemala City is meant to house only 500 youths — but authorities said at least 800 were living there at the time of the fire, Carrie reports. She adds, "Many of the children at the shelter are abuse victims held as wards of the state while others are teens with criminal records. Allegations of abuse at the shelter were widespread." Maria Antonia Garcia, the grandmother of one of the victims, told the AP that her 14-year-old granddaughter said girls were beaten at the facility. Geovany Castillo, a father of a 15-year-old girl who survived, told the news service that his daughter "said the girls told her that they had been raped and in protest they escaped, and that later, to protest, to get attention, they set fire to the mattresses." "The staff left the girls in an extremely reduced space, a 4-meter by 4-meter room, for 52 teenage girls," the country's deputy ombudsman for human rights, Claudia Lopez, told Reuters. "It was a terribly thought out decision." An employee of the Assumption Safe House told Reuters that many of the facility's problems were due to inadequate staffing, not enough funding and judges sending too many young offenders to the home: " 'We had 15-19 new arrivals a day, every carer had 34 children to look after, and we were on one day on, one day off shifts of 24 hours because there were not enough staff,' the employee said, adding she faced death threats and verbal abuse from her wards." Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales told reporters that government youth facilities are a "rigid system that has become insensitive" and that "our system must be thoroughly and decisively reformed." He said there are 1,500 children in government facilities in Guatemala. A worker walks past the Carrier plant in Santa Catarina, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico. One of Donald Trump's campaign promises was to prevent further Indiana-based Carrier jobs from moving to Mexico. Driving down the highway in Mexico’s industrial hub — the metro area of Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León — you see factory after factory, many with American names: John Deere, Whirlpool, Carrier That last one, Carrier, is the Indiana heating and cooling company that President Donald Trump repeatedly bashed on the campaign trail for its plans to relocate more jobs to Mexico. In November, then President-elect Trump helped persuade Carrier to keep 800 jobs in Indiana through a combination of pressure and tax incentives. One Mexican taxi driver in Monterrey, Gerardo Lucio, is worried about what Trump will do next. Lucio says American companies are very important for the local economy. According to Nuevo León's authorities, 1,600 American-based companies operate in the state. President Trump often says the country's neighbors to the south have been ripping off the US, stealing its jobs. And the president has repeatedly vowed to bring those jobs back to the United States. Lucio says many people in the area are worried and stressed about their jobs, and people are taking Trump’s threats seriously. As for Mexican public officials? Many say they're not worried about Trump. They’re irritated. “It was annoying to wake up in the morning and see that before he went to take his morning piss, he already had written a Twitter against Mexico,” says Fernando Turner, Nuevo León's secretary of economic development and labor. “What’s the fixation?” Turner asks: Why isn’t Trump similarly obsessed with, say, Germany? “Germany has the same surplus that Mexico has with the United States, so it was annoying,” says Turner. Trump has threatened to impose a 35-percent tax on Mexican imports. And he often vows to renegotiate or simply rip up NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has governed the rules of trade between the US, Mexico and Canada since 1994. But while many Mexican officials want Trump to stop attacking their country, many also see silver linings in the president's rhetoric. “It’s a great opportunity for Mexico,” says Julio Aguilar, the director of job training with the state government of Nuevo León. “With my friends, I say thank God Trump is in the US,” says Aguilar. “Why? Because we are in a big dream with the US as our only partner. No! There are other countries. They want our labor, our money, our natural resources and we can make other big deals with China, with Russia, with Korea, Brazil.” Aguilar isn’t the only one thinking like this. Hector Castillo, the mayor of Santa Catarina — a city of about 300,000 next door to Monterrey — says President Trump doesn’t really know what’s going on in his city. In November, just as Trump was announcing 800 jobs staying in Indiana, Castillo was at another press event: this one at Carrier’s Mexican plant in Santa Catarina, touting more than 1,000 other Indiana jobs bound for the Mexican city. Castillo says Mexicans work hard. And his city is well situated, a 2 1/2-hour drive south of Texas, with a modern economy, good roads and three airports. He says that’s why American firms come here. The other reason, of course, is that American companies can pay Mexican workers less. The average Mexican employee at Carrier earns about $6,000 a year, according to Castillo. Castillo says when Trump started talking about Carrier, it was free publicity for his city, and he started getting calls from across the globe, including from South Korea, the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan. I asked Castillo: If the president were to send out a tweet tomorrow saying Santa Catarina is stealing American jobs, would you want him to do that? Castillo’s response: “Yes.” Keep in mind though, Castillo is a politician. It’s his job to stand up to Trump. Many American companies with a presence in Mexico seem afraid to do that. I reached out to several, but none agreed to an interview. I did speak with Mariano Montero, an executive with FEMSA, a major Coca-Cola bottler in Mexico. Montero says business leaders, on both sides of the border, are concerned about Trump’s rhetoric regarding US-Mexican relations. “Of course it concerns us,” says Montero. “But business decisions are not made for four years or eight years. If the region wants to be competitive, you need to plan even for further integration.” Montero says with Mexico’s labor market and the US knowledge economy, it just makes business sense for the two countries to grow together. Perhaps. But that’s not a message that’s selling well in America’s manufacturing heartland. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/10/514528702/mexicos-government-warns-its-citizens-of-new-reality-in-u-s The sudden deportation Thursday of an Arizona woman who had regularly checked in with U.S. immigration authorities for years has prompted a stark warning from Mexico's government. Mexican nationals in the U.S. now face a "new reality," authorities warned in a statement.
"The case of Mrs. [Guadalupe] Garcia de Rayos illustrates the new reality that the Mexican community faces in the United States due to the more severe application of immigration control measures," the statement reads. "For this reason, the entire Mexican community should take precautions and keep in touch with the nearest consulate, to obtain the necessary help to face this kind of situation." Mexico is urging its citizens in the U.S. to "familiarize themselves with the different scenarios they may face and know where to go to receive updated guidance and know all their rights." Garcia de Rayos, 35, had lived in the U.S. for more than two decades and her two children are both U.S. citizens. The Two-Way has reported on the details of her case: "In 2008, Garcia de Rayos was arrested while she was working at a water park, during a raid carried out by then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Arpaio's workplace raids have been challenged in court as unconstitutional; the case is ongoing.) In 2009, she was convicted of possessing false papers. In 2013, ICE says, an order for her deportation was finalized." But Garcia de Rayos was allowed to continue to live in Arizona, under supervision and with regular check-ins with ICE, as member station KJZZ reports. That changed when she appeared for a check-in on Wednesday, as activists and supporters rallied outside the ICE office. The next day, she was deported to Nogales, Mexico. Her deportation is seen as a sign of President Trump's more aggressive deportation priorities compared with Barack Obama. The former president had prioritized the deportation of people who were convicted of crimes such as aggravated felonies, terrorism or activity in a criminal street gang. Immigration-related offenses were deemed lower priority. But Trump's executive order on immigration, issued on Jan. 25, significantly broadens the government's deportation priorities. It includes people in the U.S. illegally who "have been convicted of any criminal offense," "have been charged with any criminal offense," "have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense" or "are subject to a final order of removal," among other criteria. "So certainly the scope of the executive order, if interpreted broadly, would be large enough to encompass most if not all of the unauthorized population," Randy Capps of the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute tells NPR's Adrian Florido. Immigration advocates like Marisa Franco from the advocacy group Mijente fear that this is the start of a pattern. "The battle lines have been drawn. We know that this case will be replicated in many places across the country," Franco told reporters on a conference call. "And we think it's critically important for communities to take a stand." Lawyers and activists say Garcia de Rayos' deportation could make others in her position scared to speak with immigration authorities. In fact, her attorney Ray Ybarra Maldonado told Adrian that he will advise clients in the same position to seek sanctuary in a church. "Or if you do show up, this is what's going happen to you. But that's gotta be the advice, because it's no fun walking someone to the slaughter," he said. Garcia de Rayos, flanked by her children, spoke to reporters in Nogales late Thursday. "I'm doing this for my kids so they have a better life. I will keep fighting so they can keep studying in their home country," she said, according to The Associated Press. "We're a united family. We're a family who goes to church on Sundays, we work in advocacy. We're active." "It's a nightmare having your mother taken away from you," her son Angel tells Fronteras. "The person who is always there for you. Seeing her taken away in a bunch of vans like she was a huge criminal. It feels like a dream. But it's reality and we have to face it. We have to keep on fighting for what we want. And yeah, we're going to support our community and our mother. We're going to keep on fighting." President Trump had several phone calls with foreign leaders this week. NPR's Scott Simon speaks with former Ambassador Thomas Pickering about how those calls are affecting U.S. foreign policy.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST: And also this week, President Trump announced new sanctions on Iran following that country's test of a ballistic missile. And the president of the United States lashed out at the president - at the prime minister of Australia - Australia - which has supported the U.S. on every foreign policy issue since World War II, including sending troops to Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. To talk about President Trump's emerging foreign policy, we turn now to Thomas Pickering. He was the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, Nigeria, El Salvador, Israel, the United Nations, India, Russia - you missed Iceland, didn't you, Mr. Ambassador? THOMAS PICKERING: I did, Scott, and I'm really lamenting this because it's a great place. I have friends there. SIMON: Well, it's not too late. He's now co-chair of the International Crisis Group. Thanks so much for being with us. PICKERING: Thank you, Scott. SIMON: These new sanctions on Iran - 25 people and companies connected to Iran's ballistic missile program. Is this essentially a continuation of U.S. policy under the Obama administration? PICKERING: That's how I would read it. And the public statement in connection with it or at least the White House backups indicated they did not want to take steps that, in their view, would be violations of the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, the treaty with or the deal with Iran over its nuclear program. SIMON: So is this seen rechewing (ph)? PICKERING: I think it's seen as a mark of - put it this way - some sensitivity and maybe even sensibility in the connection with Iran, which I think is important because tearing up the agreement puts everything back at zero. Iran's free to do its own nuclear program again - all the things that that long and very hard and very difficult and I think quite successful negotiation made impossible for Iran. SIMON: The Trump administration also said this week that while it doesn't consider Israeli settlements on the West Bank an impediment to peace, they think that more settlements are a bad idea. Does this - yeah, go ahead. PICKERING: I think the phrasing was a little different. From what I heard, they said they weren't going to take a statement or make a statement on settlements. They hadn't solved their policy decision problem yet on that, but they did think the expansion was not a good idea in connection with finding peace. SIMON: Does this represent either a shift in U.S. policy or in what the Trump administration indicated U.S. policy would be? PICKERING: I think it's a shift in perhaps what people felt the policy might become - if I could put it that way - on the basis of public statements. We found that those are not really reliable campaign public statements one way or another in where things are going. We're in a period of uncertainty on this issue. I think most who follow this - this particular issue very closely would welcome the notion that expansion of settlements is a problem in connection with peace but perhaps even would welcome more the notion that the settlements themselves constitute that same difficulty. And one would hope for that, but I don't think one has a chance yet of expecting it. SIMON: And let me ask you about the president's diplomatic style. According to reports, he cut short a conversation with Prime Minister Turnbull of Australia over the U.S. taking 1,200 refugees mostly from the Middle East from camps in Australia over a year's period. And in a tweet, he called it a dumb deal. Let me put it this bluntly - was that a dumb thing for President Trump to say? PICKERING: Well, I mean, those are your words. I think it was entirely... SIMON: His words, his words - he put them in my mind, yeah. PICKERING: Well, maybe (laughter) OK, put them in your line (ph). I would agree with him on that. It was a dumb thing to do, with respect to Australia, a close and very important and very helpful ally in a world perhaps where it's beginning to diminish. And it's, I think, very significant that we should treat Australians with the same dignity and respect that they've constantly treated us with, wars in and wars out, for a very long period of time. And gratuitously doing that doesn't make any sense. But it appears as if the style - at least in the phone calls, which we hear just a little about, both with Mexico and with Australia - was, to put it this way - I'm going to be diplomatic - up the ante on the phone call to see if you can use that as a way to pressurize toward a conclusion that you would like to reach on a bilateral transactional basis and I'm - that may work in business. But my experience in diplomacy, it doesn't work very well in diplomacy. And it does produce a lot of side effects that are certainly unforeseen consequences of such action and you have to take that into account, and that's not good. SIMON: Thank you, Thomas Pickering. Thoughts? http://www.npr.org/2017/01/26/511851759/mexicos-president-cancels-planned-meeting-with-trump President Trump said if Mexico won't pay for the wall, Mexico's president shouldn't bother coming to Washington, D.C., next week. So Mexico's president cancelled his trip. Mexicans are outraged by Trump and support their president's decision.
A meeting in Washington next week between President Trump and his Mexican counterpart has been called off. Mexico's president said in a tweet he is the one who canceled it. Trump had suggested the idea of canceling in an earlier tweet. This tweet-for-tat is the latest sign of rising tensions between the U.S. and Mexico. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Mexico City where people are stunned and indignant. Early this morning, Trump tweeted, if Mexico isn't willing to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. The tweet seemed to double down on pronouncements Trump made in a televised interview insisting that one way or another, Mexico will pay for the wall. That left little room for president Enrique Pena Nieto, who as late as last night, despite pressure from lawmakers here at home, had said he hadn't decided whether to go to Washington or not. But today, he said enough is enough. Vanessa Rubio Martes, an administration official, told reporters that he had canceled the visit and continuing to insist that Mexico pay for the wall is absurd. "Mexico will doggedly defend its sovereignty because the sovereignty of Mexico is not up for negotiation." Not long after that comment, Trump told Republican leaders gathering in Pennsylvania that both he and Pena Nieto canceled the meeting and that unless Mexico is going to treat the United States fairly with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless. End quote, "I want to go a different route," said Trump. Reaction in Mexico was swift and angry. "We cannot cower before this dude even if he is a white guy, a strong man," said former President Vicente Fox, one of Trump's loudest critics and ferocious Twitter trolls. During what was a 12-minute rant on a national television program, Fox called Trump's threats a declaration of war. "This is not the way you treat your neighbors." Historian and Mexican writer Enrique Krauze compared the rapid deterioration of U.S.-Mexican relations to a time when the two countries were at war. "I don't remember a crisis so acute, so serious as this one in 170 years." Both men and lawmakers are urging Pena Nieto to make stronger pronouncements against Trump. Former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. Aruturo Sarukhan says the U.S. is not looking at the big picture. Speaking on CNN today, he says Mexico may not be as mighty as the U.S., but it does have cards to play. And he insinuated that it could decide not to be so cooperative in issues as important to the U.S. as immigration and security. With a relationship as complex, as rich with so many moving parts as this one, if you try and apply a chainsaw to it, you're going to end up cutting off your own foot.That threat doesn't seem to be resonating with Trump. Later today, his spokesman said the administration is considering calling for a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports as a way to pay for the border wall. www.pri.org/stories/2017-01-11/mexico-struggles-down-economy-and-corruption-protesters-take-streets A mask with fake blood depicting Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is seen during a protest against a fuel price hike in Mexico City, Mexico January 9, 2017. Protesters are taking to the streets throughout Mexico to express their outrage over an increase in gas prices, corruption scandals plaguing the country, and the plummeting peso, which hit record lows last week. Meanwhile, the popularity of President Enrique Peña Nieto continues to sink, with his approval ratings dropping below 25 percent. Elisabeth Malkin, Mexico correspondent for The New York Times, says demonstrations are growing throughout the country.“On Saturday for example, there was a protest in Mexico City, and a much bigger one in Mexico’s second city of Guadalajara,” she says. “There was another protest again [in Mexico City] [Monday], and there are protests on the border. It’s really been quite widespread.” Though people are taking to the streets and to social media with the hashtag #Gasolinazo to protest a 20 percent increase in gas prices, Malkin says the fuel demonstrations have actually come to symbolize a myriad of issues. “People are being asked to sacrifice, but there’s a sense that politicians have continued in their corrupt ways,” she says. “Mexico has seen a number of corruption scandals that have cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. People are saying, ‘Wait a minute. We’re being asked to sacrifice and the prices of our ordinary lives are going up, and yet the government seems to be unwilling to do anything about all of the money that’s been stolen?’” On Monday, Peña Nieto announced an agreement to ease the fiscal burden on ordinary families, but the plan lacked concrete details, Malkin says. On top of all this is the question of President-elect Donald Trump. The Trump Administration plans to put more economic pressure on Mexico and build a wall along the southern US border, something that could make the situation in Mexico worse. “There’s a great deal of anxiety here about the Trump presidency,” says Malkin. “The question is really how far will he go in keeping his campaign promises, because if he does, that will have a huge impact on Mexico, especially renegotiating or even tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has brought a lot of investment to Mexico and has created jobs.” Though he hasn’t officially taken office yet, Trump’s influence has already reached south of the border. “Last week, we saw an announcement that Ford would cancel a planned new assembly plant here,” Malkin says. “Now, it’s unclear really how much President-elect Trump’s threats and bullying on Twitter was the reason for that, it also has to do with the market for small cars — Mexico’s really become a center for producing small cars. But if we see more of that, that’s of great, great to Mexicans.” Carrie Fisher's death has revived the history behind her famed character's iconic hairstyle. A lot of us have been thinking about the late Carrie Fisher and the movie role that made her famous: Princess Leia, the tough Star Wars fighter who helped save the Empire. And there’s that iconic hairdo: two giant buns pressed against the sides of her head. But for Alexandra de la Rocha, a big Star Wars fan, Princess Leia’s look doesn’t just take her back to a distant planet, but a distant relative: a fighter in the Mexican Revolution, part of the group of real-life revolutionaries who inspired those famous coiled buns. The woman is Clara de la Rocha, a noted colonel in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), a movement against the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. She is one of Alexandra de la Rocha’s ancestors — her dad’s distant cousin. She died in 1970 and, in the photo, is standing next to her father, General Herculano de la Rocha. She is known for a key 1911 battle in Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. "She actually crossed a river on horseback ... and was able to take out a power station in order to allow the rebel forces to attack during night without being seen," says the younger De la Rocha. "She was a grizzled woman, as her father was. They were mountain people, and were actually miners and owned a lot of land. They were business people." De la Rocha says her relatives became revolutionaries to fight "for their homeland and for their people." After Fisher's death, De la Rocha spotted the photo of her relative in a public Facebook post by Eric Tang, a University of Texas associate professor. He posted it after checking out an exhibit recently at the Denver Art Museum, titled “Rebel, Jedi, Princess, Queen: Star Wars and the Power of Costume.” It’s part of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit that goes deep into the Star Wars films’ designs. It was this battle-worn, historical rebel that director George Lucas had in mind when he created Princess Leia for the first Star Wars film, released in 1977. In 2002, Lucas told Time magazine that he was “working very hard to create something different that wasn't fashion.” Inspiration came, as Lucas put it, from a "turn-of-the-century Mexico" and “kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look.” The soldaderas were considered an important part of Mexico’s rebel force. A famous ballad from that time in Mexican history pays homage to them. It’s called “La Adelita”: Looking at the photo, De la Rocha remembers going with her mom to see one of the Star Wars films near her home in San Jose, California. "My mom actually did my hair in buns just like Princess Leia," she says. The connection between the hairstyle and her own family has motivated De la Rocha to dig deeper into her family's genealogy. "I recently just did the DNA test with Ancestry.com, hoping to find out a little more about my DNA," she says. "And it definitely made me reconnect with my uncle, who knows a lot more about the folklore." But some historians point out that Mexico’s soldaderas were not the only ones to sport the 'do. Look to the women of the Hopi tribe of northeastern Arizona. That’s what Kendra Van Cleave of Frock Flicks, a website that reviews Hollywood historical costuming, told the BBC. She, along with others, points to how some young Hopi women wore a "squash blossom" hairstyle. Like this: But whether from Mexico or the Hopi tribe, the visual similarities with Princess Leia's buns motivated one artist to create his own image, blending history with Hollywood. Oklahoma-based artist and filmmaker Steven Paul Judd created this piece, titled "My Great Great Grandmother Was A Hopi Indian Princess." After Fisher died, Judd posted on Facebook: "If you look in the sky tonight and see a star shining extra bright in the Milky Way, you know she made it home. Carrie Fisher Oct. 21, 1956 - Dec. 27, 2016."
Camilo Jené, 51, watches as his daughter Clara, 14, does her homework at their dining table. She refuses to do homework on weekends now. On a typical weekday evening, 14-year-old Clara Jené spreads out her homework across the dining table in her family's apartment in a leafy northern suburb of Madrid. She gets about three hours of homework a night — and more than twice that on weekends. "Often we're sitting down to dinner, and I have to tell her to put away the books," says Clara's father, Camilo Jené, a 51-year-old architect. "It's cutting into our family time." Keep in mind that Spaniards sit down to dinner around 10 p.m. Clara often resumes her homework after that, staying up as late as 1 a.m. A recent World Health Organization study found 64 percent of 15-year-old girls and 59 percent of boys the same age in Spain said they feel "pressured by schoolwork." Twenty-seven percent of Spanish 11-year-old girls and 38 percent of boys said the same. In comparison, 54 percent of 15-year-old American girls and 42 percent of 15-year-old boys said the same. So last month, Spanish students went on strike. Clara is among millions of kids in primary and secondary schools across the country who've been refusing to do any assignments on Saturdays or Sundays. "Last weekend, I spent time with my family. One day we went to visit my grandparents at our relatives' house in the mountains," Clara says. "I learned how to build a campfire outdoors." Normally, she would have spend that time studying. Lots of children around the world want to do less homework. But in Spain, parents and even some teachers are backing the kids up. Clara's father — a member of a national parents' association — is the one who suggested that she participate in the strike. "It's complicated," Jené says, "because we all want our children to succeed." He acknowledges that Clara's grades may not be as good as those of classmates who completed all their assignments. But the Jené family wants Spain's education system to change. They say it relies too much on busywork and rote memorization. Spanish teenagers get more homework than the average for about three dozen developed countries surveyed annually by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD found that the average homework load for Spanish students of all ages is 18.5 hours a week. But that doesn't translate into higher scores on standardized tests. Spain consistently ranks below average in the OECD's rankings for student performance in reading, math and science. "We think the reason is that our educational system is ancient. It dedicates a lot of time to memorization rather than participatory learning," says Marius Fullana, an astrophysicist, father of two and spokesman for the parents' association in 12,000 Spanish school systems, which called the homework strike. Finland, in contrast, boasts some of the highest student performances in Europe — and some of the highest teacher salaries — but teachers there assign less homework than almost anywhere else in the world. Fullana estimates that about half of public school students across Spain took part in the strike in November. It was supposed to finish at the end of that month. But it received so much attention — and in some cases, resulted in less assigned homework — that many students plan to continue the strike through the end of 2016, he says. While many were docked points on their grades for failing to do November weekend assignments, they're demanding not to be penalized in December. That will be up to individual teachers and school principals. Some teachers have complained about the strike, saying it unfairly targets their profession and puts them in an adversarial relationship with their students, the parents' association says. But many other teachers have been sympathetic. Some stopped assigning weekend homework altogether. Fullana says he hopes that becomes the norm. In Spain, education policy is made by local governments in 17 autonomous regions across the country. A spokesman for the Department of Education in the Madrid region told reporters that there is no government mandate for homework on weekends. It's up to the discretion of individual teachers and school principals, he said. Some experts say this homework strike has exposed a larger problem in Spanish society. "It's much broader than just homework. Why? Because of working schedules. They're really not family-friendly," says Catherine L'Ecuyer, author of a bestselling book in Spain called The Wonder Approach to Learning. L'Ecuyer, a French-Canadian education researcher and consultant who has lived in Spain for several years, says to change Spanish children's homework load, you first have to change their parents' workload. "The basic work schedule in Spain, for instance, is not 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., as it is in other countries. It's 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. — and for professionals, it's 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.!" she says. "So what do you do with your child when he comes home at 4 p.m., after school?" The child does homework — for hours and hours. It fills a gap for Spanish families. But experts like L'Ecuyer say data show those hours of homework never actually benefit the kids themselves. "Some educators, they tend to consider education as 'more is better' — more activities, more homework, more hours of school — more everything. And it's not true," L'Ecuyer says. "What we have to look at is quality." So for now, parents and caregivers arrive at schoolyards across Spain on Fridays to pick up their children — many of whom will spend the weekend playing, rather battling their way through hours of homework. Cuba's President Fidel Castro, right, talks to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in this file photo taken on March 12, 2007 in Havana, Cuba.
There are a lot of great opening lines in literature. But this one by the late Gabriel Garcia-Marquez is among the best: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." That's the way he starts the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude." The novel is a masterpiece of magical realism, a world where magical elements blend into reality. It's what Garcia-Marquez is known for. But few realize that Fidel Castro played a part in those books. Not as a character or inspiration, but as an editor. “Many people say that Fidel was an eager reader,” says Stephanie Panichelli-Batalla. “He would read all the time. You would give him a book one night and the next day he would have read it and have excellent comments on the book and great constructive feedback on it. And so, he even became one of the first reviews sometimes of Gabo’s books.” Panichelli-Batalla wrote about this and more in her own book, "Fidel and Gabo." She says that "Gabo," as Garcia-Marquez is known to many, would give Fidel a book of his to read before he went to the publisher. And Fidel would come back with corrections. “It became a friendship that was not just political,” she says. Apparently, Castro didn’t really influence the book's themes or character development. Panichelli-Batalla says Fidel was more about details. “For example, if the characters in the books would use a gun for a certain scene or something like that. And Fidel would say, ‘Well, no. That’s impossible because that type of gun wouldn’t be used in that way. You couldn’t use it with that specific bullet.’ It was this eye for detail that Fidel really had and he would relay those corrections to Gabo.” So what does this say about Castro? Panichelli-Batalla believes it confirms what many people who met Fidel have said: He’s brilliant. “You know, he might have done whatever he did in Cuba with his government and his people and his society. But he was without any doubt a very smart person. And so he was definitely very reliable for this type of reviews.” Fidel Castro. Line editor. Garcia-Marquez caught quite of bit of flack for his support of his friend. But Panichelli-Batalla believes the friendship with the Cuban dictator doesn’t impact the way people read the Nobel prize-winning author’s book. Essentially, there’s a difference between his politics and his art, she says. There’s also another fact. “His literature has never been directly linked to Cuba,” she says. “So in some way you can easily separate one from the other.” Haz clic aquí para editar. Haz clic aquí para editar. Gustavo Canduri (r) owned a small business back in Venezuela. Now he's working at a barbershop in Bogotá owned by Camila Rincón (l). The first thing you notice is the restaurants. Gustavo Cruz, a Venezuelan who runs a restaurant with his father in the Colombian capital Bogotá, says there’s a boom of Venezuelan areperas in the city.Areperas are the folks who make and sell arepas, corn flatbreads popular in both Colombia and Venezuela, but prepared differently in each country. And now Bogotá is awash in Venezuelan areperas — a testament to the recent influx of Venezuelan migrants and their visibility in the city’s public life. “Ten years ago there was only one arepera. Now, they are everywhere,” Cruz says. Gustavo, a Venezuelan, runs a restaurant in Bogota. “Ten years ago there was only one [Venezuelan] arepera[in Bogota]. Now, they are everywhere,” Cruz says.
Cruz says Venezuelan immigration to Colombia has increased a lot in recent years. According to official figures, between 2010 and 2015, the number grew by 40 percent. And that figure only accounts for those entering the country with legal papers; many more Venezuelans cross the porous border and stay.It used to be the other way around. In the 1970s and '80s, many Colombians fled violence and economic stagnation and headed to Venezuela, which was experiencing an oil boom. Up to 4 million Colombians made the move during that time. Now, that population flow has reversed. Gustavo Canduri is a Venezuelan who arrived in Bogotá less than a year ago and got a job at a barbershop. He says his family had to leave their country. Canduri’s wife had a pregnancy complication and the hospitals in their home of Maracaibo were not equipped to treat her. “There was no medicine because of the shortages Venezuela is going through,” Canduri says. Doctors told them that they could not guarantee his wife’s or the baby’s life. Once in Colombia, his wife was able to get the medical treatment she needed, and their son was born healthy in a Bogotá hospital last March. Canduri says he owned a small business back in Venezuela, but it’s hard to start all over. But many Venezuelans are doing what he’s done. “My country is going through a very sad time,” he says. “The government is killing us with hunger.” Overall, he says, Colombians have been kind, and he’s grateful. Camila Rincón owns the barbershop where Canduri works. “I have no problem hiring Venezuelans,” she says. “I think they come to do honest work.” Rincón says it’s hard to read in the news about what’s happening in Venezuela these days. But she’s happy to help out her neighbors. “And that’s life. You never know how it’s going to turn out. Today we do it for them, tomorrow they might do it for us," Rincón says. She says she thinks most Colombians feel the same way about the new wave of migrants from next door — at least for now. “Maybe if too many come, problems like unemployment might get worse, maybe crime will go up, and things could get more complicated. But we can’t generalize,” she says. Juan Camilo Díaz, an Uber driver in Bogotá, says Colombia has been “invaded” by Venezuelans. But he’s OK with that. “I think it’s time for us to return the favor,” he says. “When they had a solid economy they received people from everywhere and they helped many Colombians get ahead.” When asked what if more Venezuelans start driving Uber cars and become his competition, he said they have their own families to feed. “It would be mean and inhumane to not let them be my competitors,” he says. “They have a right to work and eat.” |
AutorSeñora Bennett. Profesor de Español. Habitación 701. Archivos
Marzo 2017
Categorías |