There is nothing strange in the Catholic Church categorically opposing the social expressions and legal standards of the obvious, constant and increasing secularization of Mexican society. It is necessary to say that opposition is an expected and natural reaction from conservative organizations, including Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox or Protestant religions, toward change.
But religious hierarchies’ beliefs are at odds with societies’ behavior. Society’s ideology can be religious, sometimes very religious, but exhibits a secularized behavior, which is evident around the world, and it’s distant from the dogmas of metaphysical beliefs.
This is the case with divorce. The Catholic Church does not accept it or allow it. But annulment of marriage is a current phenomenon and happens in every society, specially western societies. What can the Church do against divorce among Catholic Mexicans?
And the same thing happens with extramarital sexual intercourse. Aren’t millions of Mexicans practicing it? What can the Church do to keep single, married, young and old Mexicans from having sex?
It is also the case with abortion. Ever since science made it possible, safe, simple and cheap, thus available for everyone, Mexicans have decided to make it their own inalienable right. It is true that abortion rates have decreased, not due to moral and legal prohibitions, but to the generalized use and increasing creation of modern chemical contraceptives, which have an efficiency rate of nearly 100 percent.
The invention-discovery of modern chemical contraceptives represented a social revolution equivalent to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Jenner, Pasteur and Fleming: they changed forever the behavior of human society. These scientific breakthroughs contributed to creating new societies.
Chemical contraception also changed, forever and for good, the sexual and social behavior of individuals. It is considered the most efficient, simple and economic way of avoiding conception, and it was just a matter of time for society made it its own, regardless of the Church or other creeds’ positions or opinions.
Divorce, extramarital sex, abortion (criminalized or not), contraception and free, public and legalized gay marriage are evident secular expressions of modern societies. Religious dogmas and rules have lost the value they had over hundreds of years. Or, in the words of Gabriel García Márquez, “since electricity was invented, ghosts disappeared.”
The inevitable return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the presidency was certain around July and August 2009. These conclusions were the outcome of several factors, but mainly the awful management of Calderón’s government.
There have been bad results in the country’s economy, worse ones in the administration and catastrophic results in terms of insecurity and crime. There is a horrible toll of almost 30,000 deaths and drug cartels have overwhelming political and economic power.
Twelve or thirteen months later, there is no certainty that the PRI will return to the presidency. What happened in the past few months that created such a radical change in the nation’s perception of its future? The answer is not in the improvement of Calderón’s government because things are getting worse each day.
The answer is in politics. Once the National Action Party (PAN) became aware of its unfavorable situation, it decided to form electoral alliances with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), which have proven to be a solid obstacle for the PRI. Those alliances and everything else that happens from now on will be a rehearsal for 2012 presidential elections.
In Mexico, however, votes have never counted and 2012 will not be an exception. The goal of the PAN-PRD alliances is to create a body that will ensure another PAN victory at Los Pinos. With the help of old and new players, the PAN and PRD will administer the same medicine of 2000 and 2006 to the PRI. The new player will be the PAN-PRD alliance. Some of the old players will be the immensely powerful presidencial institution and the highly-discredited Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).
National and foreign historical facts, old and new, show that once the rightmost wing seizes power, it never lets it go peacefully and democratically. Those same facts also show that only a political and electoral scheme will make believable and justifiable the continuing victory of the right wing.
The PAN has begun its task and the IFE is not making things difficult. It does not even need a front man like José Woldenberg or Luis Carlos Ugalde, as Leonardo Valdés Zurita has made the path a lot easier. It is only a matter of letting IFE’s president, advisors and officials continue making multimillion-peso negotiations.
This plan of the right wing explains why no institution has addressed the corruption complaints against the IFE. Valdés has been given a rope to hang himself when right the time comes. With pockets full and with the imminent intervention of the Attorney’s General Office, who will refuse the requests of power? As general Obregón once said “nobody resists a 50,000-peso cannon shot.”
On June 6 2010, the “El Nuevo Herald” (The New Herald) newspaper, a symbol of the Cuban counter-revolution in Miami, published a text, under the name of the reporter Juan O. Tamayo, which states that “two federal congressmen gave $15 million to finance programs in favor of democracy in Cuba.”
“It is expected – the text says – that the U.S. State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will distribute, within the next few months, funds among Cuban civil society groups to purchase computers and medicines, and support families of incarcerated dissidents.”
The U.S. Congress allocated $20 million in “Aid for Democracy in Cuba” funds during the fiscal year ending in Sept., but the resources were not released. The process of allocation stopped when “on Dec. 3rd, Cuban authorities arrested Alan P. Gross, a USAID subcontractor from Potomac, Maryland, who was in charge of providing satellite phone services to individuals and groups” which, as is well known, is an act in favor of overthrowing the Cuban government.
So, the terrorist counter-revolution spokesperson in Miami informs us that the U.S. government finances, with public funds, activities that seek to overthrow the island’s government. This U.S. financing provided material and economic resources to a sadly famous group of 75 self-called dissidents. The cash flow for this USAID agents only stopped when they were arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated.
And even if most of them are already free and living in Spain, none of them will ever enjoy that substantial salary again. Once outside the island, they are no longer useful to the aggressive and unsettling purposes of the USAID.
But the fact that these released Washington agents do not longer receive the USAID money doesn’t imply that the cash flow for this agency of espionage and intervention is cancelled or concluded. The salary, which is earned by dirty tricks against their home country, will go to other candidates.
Some USAID agents have fallen out of favor, but this agency will recruit new ones. And, as an eternal ritornello, they will conspire against their country, will receive their U.S. economic reward and, in the end, will be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated. Once they are behind bars or abroad, the economic allocations will find other ambitious hands that are not ashamed of receiving money for betrail, then they will end up as their predecessors, in jail.
Of course, USAID would like to see the Cuban government overthrown. But facing the absolute impossibility of the task, it insists on the manufacturing of incarcerated agents. They are an excuse for lying media campaigns against Cuba. They also help U.S. and Europe to justify the economic block and low war against the island.
U.S. troops are to begin withdrawing from Iraq on August 31. However, 50,000 will remain until the end of 2011, who will stay to train and support Iraqi security forces and support U.S. diplomats.
These statements are two sides of the same coin — the undeniable defeat of the invasion and the intent of military occupation in Iraq. The U.S. was unable to impose a colonial government capable of asserting control over the occupied territory. And now the military has to leave, because the U.S. cannot do what it wants totally and indefinitely. The invasion and occupation have no future.
The invasion is certainly allowing Washington and its oil companies access to massive petroleum reserves in Iraq. But they already had that with Saddam Hussein. Ten years of war and destruction have produced nothing. Except, of course, the never-ending prosperity of the U.S. military industry and the Pentagon’s political preeminence.
The lesson is clear. A military invasion can topple, as in Serbia or Panama, an inconvenient person. Likewise, it can prosper weapons manufacturers and vendors. It can also guarantee and increase military influence in a supposed civil democracy. But it cannot rectify a two-centuries old colonial situation. The defeat, as in Vietnam, is obvious, although not officially acknowledged.
As a tearful Madeleine Albright said: What’s the point in having and using the most powerful military force in the world if, at the end of the day, it does no good? If it was useless in Vietnam, Somalia or Iraq, then what’s the point of having a military presence in Iran? The same is true for Israel. What has the latter won, with Tel Aviv and its armed forces against the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Hamas? Just eternal chaos for the Israeli people themselves. Purely economic, financial or trade measures would have worked better: buy up land rather than occupy it.
An attack against Iran is, as Fidel Castro says, possible and maybe even imminent. But what’s the point? In Iraq, a hostile but more or less secular regime was toppled, to be replaced it with another that was just as hostile, but also fundamentalist. The U.S. defeated Saddam, but it hasn’t been able to, nor will it be able, to dominate the Iraqi people. Iraq isn’t just a U.S. error, but one of the U.N. as well, which approved the invasion upon accepting the absurd story that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The U.N. is now deafly and blindly searching for a way to justify an attack against Iran on the absurd premises that its nuclear weapons are a risk to the rest of the world.
Some powerful armed forces which were truly “good for something” drove the Napoleonic and Hitler regimes to their own destruction.
A nuclear attack against Iran probably wouldn’t cause the dominant plutocratic U.S. regime to destroy itself, but nobody can guarantee the same regarding the theocratic Israeli regime. Washington and Tel Aviv ought to think carefully about this not impossible final result.
The mass gathering at the Zócalo on July 25 confirmed what everybody knew but was unwilling to acknowledge: the powerful social and political influence of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s movement. All the efforts of the National Action Party (PAN) over the past three years to control the media and erase or diminish the political influence of the “Tabasqueño” and his resistance movement were to no avail.
But López Obrador knows perfectly well that being the leader of a popular social movement and winning a presidential election are not enough to secure his place in Los Pinos. That’s what happened in 2006. Consequently, it’s logical that AMLO is well aware that it is useless to win the elections if his movement is unable to prevent another electoral fraud. The electoral system is corrupt.
The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) and the Federal Electoral Court (TEPJF) are in the pocket of the PAN and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The main task of both institutions is to close in on any other party that threatens to end the autocratic system. The electoral system is controlled by the right wing and the rightmost wing. How, then, is it possible that a leftist party can win the elections? Since their creation, the IFE and the TEPJF have been institutional tools aiming to perpetuate the status quo. Usually, both institutions don’t need to use electoral fraud. Money, the State and the oligarchy tend to impose a person that will guarantee nothing will ever change.
Sometimes, however, the traditional methods are thwarted by citizen uprisings, as it happened in 1988 with Cárdenas and in 2006 with López Obrador. In that case, it is necessary to twist the electoral will and to declare as winner he who will guarantee a continuity of autocracy.
López Obrador and his followers know all of this. They also know something else is needed to get to Los Pinos, but what exactly is that “something else” that was missing in 1988 and 2006? It has to be something pacifist and constitutional.
Something like the social mobilization of Evo Morales in Bolivia or the one that put an end to the neoliberal and chaotic government of Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina. At the moment, nobody can guarantee that there will be a similar social movement capable of such success in Mexico. But it is undeniable that the increasing deterioration of the oligarchic system has brought chaos to Mexico.
After being freed from prison and recently having arrived to Madrid, Cuban Julio César Gálvez told the press: “We had signed (he and other ex-convicts) in front of a Spanish Embassy official in La Habana some promises, two minutes before boarding the plane, in which the Spanish government would offer information and social guidance and legal counseling, as well as...economic aid for food and housing.”
With such resources, anyone can emigrate. It doesn’t matter from which country, developed or developing, or to which country, industrialized or Third World. Wherever one goes, the most important thing is to have income to pay for food, clothing, housing, healthcare and medicine, even if minimal. But for this to happen, one needs to work, and not just pretend to work.
And this man, Julio César Gálvez, and his companions, did not work in Cuba. They only simulated working, which consisted of telling others that they were freelance journalists. And where, then, did they receive their income to pay for food, utility bills, clothing, shoes, a few drinks, cigarettes, candy and money for a the occasional relaxation?
Why of course, that money came from the Office of the United States’ Interests in La Habana! They pretended to be journalists opposed to the regime, and that Office paid them a salary – in dollars, no less. They didn’t work in an office, a factory, a workshop, a market, a gas station or drive a bus; these men lived off and enjoyed the pleasures that hard cash offers.
That’s why these types of people are poorly viewed in Cuba – and also in Spain. And there are already angry Spaniards protesting because these people who are not working and who do not want to work are getting paid. It’s OK if they were actually persecuted and were not impostors.
The ex-convicts lived better in Cuba. They earned dollars without working, just pretending to be part of a non-existing internal opposition. Everything was going well until they were accused of being alibis to the successive and endless agressions of the U.S. government. In jail, there’s no salary, and inmates are even put to work.
But prison was temporary. Now in Spain (or in Miami, where they would like to finally end up), they will be able to earn money again without working. They’ll even have free housing, just as long as they give the occasional interview in which they talk about the tough but dignified daily lives of Cubans. They left their lives behind in order to be at the service of the historic enemy of their country. And if for Enrique IV, Paris was well worth a mass, it appears that for Gálvez, Madrid is well worth being a traitor, mercenary, fraud, impostor and parasite.
There are many reasons to assume that with the decision to release the 52 United States prisoners, the Cuban revolution is scoring another victory in the dangerous chess game against the imperial power. Here are some of those reasons.
First, the release was the result of a respectful request made by Cuban Catholics, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, to be exact. He and his bishops did not demand what they politically and legally could not demand. It is clear that a demand wouldn’t have had the positive result obtained by a humble request for mercy to the mercenaries in the service of Cuba’s historical enemy.
Second, the release was also possible thanks to the respectful and self-restrained participation of the Spanish government, which offered to welcome the former prisoners as immigrants, not political refugees. This distinction is of the utmost political importance because Spain made it clear that it does not consider those 52 people as prisoners or politically persecuted. That way, the Cuban criteria prevailed: common prisoners are granted mercy and are allowed to travel abroad as long as another country is willing to welcome them.
Third, those 52 traitors will not be able to damage Cubans any further. By living abroad they have stopped being useful to the White House. In Spain, they won’t be able to get paid as counterrevolutionary agents. They will actually have to work and it is not easy to go from a parasite to a worker. Fourth, an element that encourages the criteria of the revolutionary triumph is the explicit and public desire of the mercenaries to live in the US, specifically in Miami.
They think that in Florida they will be able to live without working, aided by the terrorist and anti-Cuban mafia. But that won’t be easy either. Miami’s mafia pays for jobs done. And with their exit from Cuba, the 52 former prisoners cannot fulfill their job: to destabilize Cuba from within, not from Madrid, Miami, Prague or London.
Fifth, there was an evident agreement between the government of President Raúl Castro and the Moncloa Palace. Even though we don’t know what Rodríguez Zapatero and Ortega agreed to, there is no doubt that Raúl’s gesture will be answered with similar gestures that will benefit the Cubans and their revolution.
With the decision of the government of President Castro, Miami, Washington and the rightmost European and Spanish wings have run out of material for their campaigns full of calumnies, pressure and blackmailing. Therefore, the most recent proof of Cuba’s subversive hostility toward the US has maximized its benefits and has minimized the costs. Just as it has done for the past 50 years.
Now the nation can sleep calmly, because according to the indescribable president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Leonardo Valdés Zurita, after having reviewed the electoral process of 2009, no evidence suggesting illicit financing has been proven.
With this, Valdés Zurita has erased, with the stroke of a pen, all public suspicion, as well as certainty, and public evidence and clues leading to illegal funds in political campaigns (with a large amount coming from drug cartels). Thanks to this epicurean character, who took over the IFE’s presidency in the nick of time, we now know that political campaigns are not illegally funded. And we now know that magnates, state and federal officials, drug dealers, and/or other members of organized crime aren’t shoveling money into political campaigns.
Is it true that Zurita didn’t find any evidence whatsoever of illegal funding in the 2009 election campaigns? Not even a tiny bit? Would it be then, that all of those rumors about funds provided by drug cartels are nothing but “a great myth,” as Pedro Aspe Armella stated? If there aren’t any illegal funds, then that means, of course, that there aren’t any criminals to chase. It’s perfectly clear then that the electoral system is completely honorable, trustworthy, and free of corruption, in charge of assuring honesty and transparency in the nation’s elections. Despite its public reputation as a completely decadent and corrupt institution! One shouldn’t be puzzled though. Because the IFE is a rotten institution, created to guarantee a permanent dictatorship, to change very little, so that in the end nothing changes. It wasn’t the IFE that announced the supposed victory of Vicente Fox, it was the IFE’s real boss who did: the nation’s president.
And it was the IFE, under the direction of Carlos Ugalde, that was in charge of legalizing the fraud that was committed in the 2006 presidential elections.
Fortunately, the words of somebody like Zurita aren’t worth much. And not only because of his bad reputation, but also because the IFE nowadays is only seen by the public as a prostitute, which little by little, began earning the nation’s distrust, and afterwards, the repugnance of all society. But one should ask oneself the real reason why Zurita and his accomplices, despite what the public may think, fervently deny the idea of any dirty money involved in political campaigns.
Why deny the evidence? Why try to convince everyone about something we all know isn’t true? What lies behind the IFE president’s throne? Doesn’t it all seem to be complicity with political parties and candidates touched by illegal money?
In 1854, there was a cholera outbreak in London that killed more than 500 people in 10 days. The cause of the flagellum was unknown, as it commonly happened with all epidemics of that time. Then, a doctor and eminent scientist came into the picture: doctor John Snow.
He thought about marking with a cross the homes of those who had died from cholera. He realized that all the houses belonged to one neighborhood and discovered that the potable water of that neighborhood came from a section of the Thames River. The doctor suggested changing the site of water extraction. It was done and the epidemic was over.
The mortal cause of the outbreak was that the water of that section of the river had been contaminated by feces due to a crack in the sewage. Due to historical and scientific development obstacles, doctor Snow was unable to know that cholera is caused by a microorganism: the bacteria Vibrio chlorae. He was also unaware that the bacteria could be eliminated by simply boiling the water.
Today we know that cholera can be prevented through a vaccination and that infected people can be cured with antibiotics.
One century later, in 1950, barely 70 years ago, the total food production in the world was not enough to feed the 2 billion inhabitants of the globe back then. There was a permanent food deficit and, consequently, millions of individuals were destined to live with hunger and malnutrition.
In those times, an extraordinary man of science, an agricultural and phytopathology scholar named Norman E. Borlaug appeared.
Borlaug, who was born in the United States in 1914 and died in 2009, developed new and better wheat, corn and rice seeds, which yielded more product per hectare than traditional seeds and were much more resistant, and sometimes immune, to plagues and weather variations.
Borlaug also developed new agricultural techniques, such as the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. With the combination of new seeds and innovative agricultural techniques, Borlaug significantly increased the world production of those three cereals. This new and superior productivity was called the green revolution. And, according to reliable sources, it prevented the death of one million humans during its first years.
From 1950 to 2009, the world population multiplied by three while the green revolution increased the world’s food production 12 times. Today, in comparison to six decades ago, world hunger remains not because of lack of food but because of dreadful and unjust food distribution.
Six decades ago, in 1950, life expectancy in Mexico was forty-seven years. In 2010, this significant socio-demographic datum has increased to seventy-five years. Sixty years ago, the main causes of mortality were generally infectious diseases, including the flu, pneumonia, infant diseases like diarrea, malaria, whooping cough, bronchitis, typhoid, measles, dysentery and pregnancy, delivery or puerperium complications. In other words, people were dying from what we call “poverty diseases.”
Today, in 2010, the main causes of mortality are generally pathologies linked to wealth, or more exactly, pathologies peculiar to rich nations: diabetes, heart diseases, cerebro-vascular diseases, high blood pressure, cirrhosis, liver or lung cancer, and malign trachea tumor. As the reader can notice, none of the 1950 causes of mortality are listed among today’s ones.
It is obvious that the huge improvement in Mexicans’ life conditions is the product of a deliberate and efficient public health policy. Three institutions deserve credit for this noticeable social improvement: the Health Secretariat, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and the Institute of Social Security Services for Public Officials and Personnel (ISSSTE).
And the efforts of these three institutions in improving public health and in extending life expectancy for Mexicans continue. After eradicating poverty diseases, they are now working at reducing child’s mortality with so-called “wealth pathologies.” Because of my professional experience, I know about the work conducted by the ISSSTE quite well. I have been witness to the services provided by the Institute to affiliated beneficiaries.
It goes more or less like this: the beneficiary, who usually is in their sixties, must present themselves to the Institute every six months in order to sign a life certificate. Or to say it differently, they must prove every six months that they are still alive, because in the case of death, their pension will be suspended.
During the meeting, the beneficiary is asked five questions and is subject to a simple medical check-up in order to detect any pre-pathological condition, particularly wealth pathologies, including diabetes or arterial hypertension. If necessary, senior beneficiaries will receive preventive treatment. Early detection of these types of suffering enables the meeting of two important objectives.
The first and most important one is to extend good health and life conditions for retired people. The second one, key to the Institute’s finances, is to prevent as much as possible, the high costs of medical treatment for advanced wealth diseases. It does not cost the same to treat high blood pressure than embolism. And someone with high blood pressure suffers much less than someone who already has had a cerebro-vascular accident.
In recent years, two phenomena have emerged on the journalism scene, foreshadowing the future of the media business worldwide: online journalism and free newspapers. Indisputable data have already proven the growth of journalism on the web.
Accordingly, the influence of online journalism has increased amongst readers as it has become increasingly rooted in their daily lives. There are also subtle signs that can prove the massive development of online news media: the significant, sustained fall in traditional newspaper circulation, which was worsened, to a great extent at least, by the preceding drop in advertising space sales.
And although there is no reason to expect, neither soon or later, the disappearance of newspapers, it is obvious that the gap between online and traditional newspapers is widening more and more, ultimately benefiting electronic journalism. Free newspapers may become the press?s last resort solution. Little by little, without any rush or rest, free newspapers are expanding their readership, influence and circulation. Interestingly enough, this new type of journalism seems to attract more advertisers; the same advertisers who decided to reduce or simply remove their ads from traditional newspapers.
Reflecting the good old days of traditional journalism, advertisement in free newspapers overshadows information and opinion. In fact, as is often said, free newspapers use information and opinion to fill in the free spaces left out by adverting.
The price of the two new forms of journalism is the guarantee of their upcoming planetary domination. Free is the key. However, one should properly distinguish between online journalism and free newspapers in view of censorship. Both types of journalism thrive on private and public publicity; and there is plenty of empirical evidence to consider it a fact that advertisers do not advertise in ideologically and politically oriented newspapers that question the system or the establishment.
This dependency is putting free newspapers and press freedom at risk, undermining the chances to develop democratic, critical and, why not, revolutionary journalism. For this reason, free newspapers are very distinct from digital journalism: on the web, free and freedom of speech are admirably combined. It is still possible, however, that the free journalism model manages to expand itself without depending too much on the advertising industry.
Universities, unions, NGOs, cooperatives and other institutions have been able to pay for the production of free newspapers with their own resources. Regardless, one thing is clear enough: we have entered a new era of journalism in which digital, free and uncensored journalism will be increasingly dominant, although free newspapers will always be at risk of censoring their content in order to please concerned advertisers.
Like any non-renewable resource, black gold will be gone some day. But that extinction is only an abstract possibility. Today, petroleum sources are calculated to last about a century. This depends on many factors: consumption, prices, technology, the invention of oil substitutes (whether completely or partially), the discovery of new wells and greater capacity for exploration and exploitation, etc.
There’s no doubt that the most important factor in prolonged oil supply is the unstoppable scientific and technological advances characteristic of our time. It’s likely that oil will be around for the next 300 to 400 years. What’s more: as an effect of the increasing awareness of the use of fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change, it’s probable that humanity stops using oil long before its supplies are exhausted.
But for those who prefer practical evidence to theories, one example of oil’s long-term availability is seen in the imperialist countries’ oil companies’ ferocious fights, through colonial wars and coups in some cases, to appropriate oil wells in the Middle East and in other developing countries.
Does anyone believe that the U.S. government would be spending billions and billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and preparations for military aggressions against Iran and Venezuela if it weren’t absolutely convinced that their huge trusts would earn big profits over many decades to pay for the expenses of appropriating other countries’ oil?
On the other hand, there is enough evidence about science’s historical capacity to replace oil as a source of energy. More than 50 years ago, the great economist Paul Baran informed us in his celebrated The Political Economy of Growth that businesses such as General Electric were spending more to stop scientific and technological alternatives to petroleum than developing them.
Clearly, if today petroleum is the most ample and most heavily used energy source, this is due to the perverse scientific effort to prolong their consumption, instead of using more efficient, cleaner and cheaper replacements.
Despite such obstacles, it has been widely known for the past 30 years that ethanol- or cane sugar-based fuels are a viable alternative. In Brazil, for example, ethanol is added to gasoline. The petroleum superpotential produces 14 billion liters of ethanol each year, allowing it to reduce its crude importation by 40 percent.
With all of this in mind, does anyone have any questions about the possibility of sharply reducing oil use and consequently prolonging its duration for generations to come?
In just a few years, medical science has made several remarkable achievements. It has turned once chronic, terminal diseases and into treatable conditions that, with medication, allow people to live longer lives.
Such is the case with heart attacks. These have been reduced largely thanks to the treatment of their two causes: hypertension and high cholesterol. We are witnessing advances that increase lifespan and reduce the number of heart attacks.
It’s not all rosy, however. There are some unfavorable signs in our physical and mental health that do not equate to longer lives. New causes of death among relatively young people are appearing.
Demographers attribute these to certain lifestyles. One is the fearful pairing of alcoholism and car accidents. Suicides are another growing cause of death. One must also add murders to this list. Without a doubt, however, tobacco addiction is ranked as the first cause of modern mortality.
We are witnessing an addiction that is becoming increasingly common in younger ages, for which medical science has yet to discover the necessary therapy. Tobacco addiction isn’t an illness but is the cause of several grave ailments: bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema, lung, throat and bladder cancer, cardiovascular disease and strokes. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was the most recent pathology to be added to the list.
This is now one of the most common diseases of the lungs, and is characterized by difficulty in breathing. Without treatment, it can lead to suffocating. The easiest way to avoid COPD is by not smoking.
But tobacco use is such a powerful addiction that even the bluntest demonstrations of its damages and risks are useless in getting some people to stop this mortal habit.
It hasn’t always been like this. If smoking has been around for hundreds of years, it hasn’t always been a plague like it is today. The historical authenticity of tobacco use allows us to be optimistic about possible reduction and even its eradication.
What didn’t always exist doesn’t have to exist forever. It’s something, as the phrase goes, of breaking stones. Of insisting on fighting the habit.
Nobody is born an addict to tobacco. Nobody is impermeable to education. And nobody has to die from breathing smoke.
According to experts’ opinion, there are thousands of people in Mexico infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The number of people infected totals approximately 50,000.
There are six or seven men infected for every woman. It is known that among men, the most common way to catch the virus is by having sexual relations. It is also known that other ways to become infected is by using contaminated needles, by receiving a transfusion of infected blood, or when a woman with HIV gives birth and breast-feeds her child. Lastly, and most importantly, the ways to prevent this disease are known, which include avoiding the circumstances previously mentioned, particularly having sex without the protection of condoms.
Considering people’s awareness of the simple ways to stop the spread of the virus, it is greatly surprising that there are new cases of HIV-AIDS infection. It can even be said that there should not be a single new case of this disease.
For a person with minimum education and information about the disease and who avoids putting him/herself in risky situations, contracting AIDS is virtually impossible.
It cannot be denied that for some years information about the ways to protect oneself from AIDS has been widely spread and is well-known. Why, then, discarding lack of information, is it that every day there are new cases of this disease in Mexico? Indolence? Irresponsibility? The common belief that “it will not happen to me.”
Regardless of the reason, it is evident that the AIDS epidemic will not be controlled or eradicated until a vaccine is created, which is the only solution to the inexplicable ongoing practice of risky actions. Without being an unfounded optimistic, it is likely that in a short time, medical and biological sciences will create the long-awaited vaccine against AIDS. Consequently, this pathology may follow the steps of other eradicated diseases, such as smallpox or poliomyelitis.
In the meantime, Mexican society faces a huge task. For instance, continuing informative campaigns about ways to prevent infections. By carrying out this task, families, schools, the media, civil organizations, unions, national companies and the government are acting responsibly.
Also, the infected people should not be neglected and they must be provided with the appropriate attention, without arguing that there is lack of financial and medical resources. The task consists of different stages: information, prevention, research and attention to those infected. That is the overwhelming size of the unavoidable task.
Any Spanish-language dictionary will define secularism as the doctrine that advocates or promotes the independence of the individual, society and the State from any religion and, consequently, organization, group, or church, that acts on behalf of those religions or represents them. In other words, secularism is not, as often thought, the separation between church and state, but precisely the “independence of the individual, society and the State from any religious or ecclesiastical influence.”
A secular state and society cannot and should not allow churches to have the means to maintain or increase their influence on society. It is inexplicable why the State allows religious entities to own schools or produce media, or for religious leaders to publicly publish texts. There’s no shortage of outdated ideologies that say democracy is at odds with these exclusions. But the truth is quite the opposite.
Democracy, political and legal regimes born in the heat of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, embody the secular state. In other words, Western democracy is the other name of the secular state.
Thus, in a consistent, non-hypocritical or soon-to-be secular state, religious leaders should not vote or be voted for, because voting is a means to maintain the influence of religion on individuals, society and the state itself. The struggle for secularism or secularization is the struggle for democracy, justice and equality. And any attempt which undermines Mexican secularism is in fact an undemocratic act.
The powerful influence of religions and churches is expressed in the disqualification and the fight against scientific education and the promotion of the ideological theory of creationism. And all of these features in U.S. society are objective, clear and concrete to Mexican religious leaders.
Secularism is clearly the defense against such excesses and aberrations. It is not only the separation of church and state, but also the strength and independence of individuals, society and the State regarding the influence of churches and denominations.
Even President Felipe Calderón and Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont have been saying that police, legal and military strategies to fight narco-trafficking don’t work. Certainly, they haven’t said that it is a complete and absolute failure. Rather, it’s a question of style. Faced with tricky acknowledgements, it’s always better to use euphemisms, circumlocution and images.
It’s understood that they don’t want to be clear and sincere. It isn’t easy to publicly recognize that the program is a failure that has made the country, above all in the north and west, a true mess. Their stubbornness is understandable. They know that their strategy is headed nowhere. But they don’t know what to do.
Their tendency for slow learning keeps them from seeing any solutions. They don’t understand that the core of the problem isn’t in the production and sale of drugs, but rather in the consumption. As long as there is the demand, production and sales are inevitable.
The strategy would have to be to take legal action against consumers. And this is impossible for two reasons. One, the Constitution doesn’t prohibit drug use and, therefore, guarantees every citizen the right to consume drugs if they desire. And two, if the government were to amend the Constitution, it would have to imprison millions of people, including minors. If combatting the production and sale of drugs leads nowhere, and if legally combatting consumption is impossible, the matter becomes an intricate labyrinth.
Many European countries have already found a way out of the labyrinth. They have acknowledged that it’s impossible to stop drug use by punishment; in fact, consumption is growing every day.
Decriminalizing the production and sale of drugs would be the direct path out of the labyrinth. But those countries have found an indirect exit, somewhat hypocritical, but effective. The path has been made thanks to governments’ turning a blind eye: fighting drugs on paper and only with saliva.
Fighting narcos with rivers of blood and mountains of bodies, as Mexico has been doing for three years, doesn’t work. This type of strategy hasn’t worked for 5,000 years. In Spain, for example, marijuana and other drugs are offered to passersby in broad daylight and with great casualness. In Mexico, this act is fearful and done in the dark, as if no one knew what everyone knows.
One could say that the alternative for Calderón and Gómez is to persist in this error or try the successful European model. A question of understanding and rejection of stubbornness. Blood or saliva?
From the early nineties in the 20th century it was known or suspected that the Labor Party (PT) was a creation of the perverse intelligence of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The certainties or the suspicions were result of the obvious influence in that organization of Raúl, brother of the usurper.
In the face of public criticism of the character of the parastatal party, political activists and leaders said that, in fact, there was a parastatal movement within the PT, but there was also a democratic, nationalist and even revolutionary faction. It may have been like this at the beginning.
However, after some time, and after the Salinas brothers were disgraced, the PT started gradually abandoning its parastatal nature to turn into an opportunist organization.
With this opportunist character, the PT has participated in social movements and electoral processes using populist, anti-imperialist, and anti-neoliberal rhetoric, but it is always suspected of weird and unexplainable affiliations.
What has been said about the PT can also be said about the Convergence party, but without the leftist flags that adorned the PT. This party leads a life of permanent oscillation between open parastatalism and shameless opportunism. Almost the same can be said about the Green Party (PVEM): parastatalism and opportunism with an environmentalist banner but marked by the most vulgar mercantilism. In the end, more than a party, it is a letterhead rentable to the best bidder.
The New Alliance Party (PANAL) cannot be qualified, like the other parties, as opportunist or a merchant. It merely is, in a strict sense, a parastatal party: a government agency that serves government ends, regardless of what they are, during electoral processes. To this foursome of parastatal, opportunist or mercantile parties, a fifth element has been added: the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). The PRD has abandoned its original principles and has turned into a rightist parastatal party.
This is a bitter pill to swallow for Mexican progressive political forces. The social leftist force has been left without a party to represent it. The feared divorce between the social movement “lopezobradorista” and its historical party, the PRD, is a sad reality.
With the conversion of the PRD into a rightist organization, the elections have stopped having a meaning for millions of citizens. Voting for the PRD is the same as voting for the PRI or the PAN. There is no leftist electoral option anymore. We will see what the leftist social movement will do if there is no electoral option. The future, always uncertain, today is even more uncertain.
As result of the dreadful negotiations by the PAN, particularly in the past three years, it has become common to assume the imminent return of the PRI to “Los Pinos.” It is even considered certain that Enrique Peña Nieto will become president in Dec. 2012.
But history, as Lenin said, is full of surprises. The rightmost party is preparing a surprise for the PRI. The strategy is underway in Oaxaca and Puebla.
The plan consists in creating an alliance against the PRI between, almost, all political parties: PAN, PRD, PANAL, Convergence, Green, and, if possible, PT. The key in this anti-PRI alliance is the PRD. As we are currently witnessing in Oaxaca and Puebla, the matter is pretty simple because the PRD is lead by the opportunist and corrupted faction headed by Jesús Ortega.
There are some naïves who would say that the alliance between those parties still has to pass the ballot test, meaning, to win against the PRI in the elections in July 2012. But this is precisely naiveté.
In Mexico, votes have never counted. The votes of “Los Pinos,” the IFE, the Electoral Court, and oligarchies, would undoubtedly support the anti-PRI alliance. The PRI, of course, would claim fraud. But the other five (or six) parties would argue that the election was clean.
Oaxaca and Puebla will be, within the next few days, scenarios of a rehearsal for 2012. If everything goes according to the plan of the PAN, and the anti-PRI alliances impose themselves on the PRI, the belief in the goodness and efficiency of these types of alliances, to stop the PRI from returning to the maximum power, will be established.
Is it necessary to recall the classic saying that the doors of “Los Pinos” are opened from the inside? That is what Calderón is doing, with the invaluable help of the usual braggarts and their new acquisition: a warped, commercialized and parastatal PRD.
According to Reyes Heroles, first comes the program, then the man. The program, the alliance, is ready. The man could be any man, but he would have to be blue. A blue head would ensure the dominance of the PAN in this alliance.
It is hard to believe that this master stroke and excellent strategy came from the PAN, which lacks lucid minds. Never mind that, though. What matters is that the alliance of the PAN, as master, and Ortega, as vassal, guarantees the annihilation of López Obrador and the PRI, which believes it will return to “Los Pinos.”
On October 16 2009, the election of the Advisory Council of the National Broadcasting Chamber took place. There were two candidates. One was Rafael Borbón Ramos and the other, Gustavo Rentería. In the fight, Rafael won, and therefore, he became the new president of the Advisory Council.
But the result did not satisfy many broadcasters in the country, because in the election there were, to put it delicately, many irregularities. A blunt statement would talk about a cynical and insolent electoral fraud, but, fortunately, not unpunished. Because in the face of many documented evidences of electoral fraud, the aggravated broadcasters decided to report the incident to the proper authorities, namely, the Economy Secretariat.
And the Secretariat ordered a repeat of the process, something that has never happened since the foundation of the Council, in 1941, almost 70 years ago. Legally, nothing can stop Rafael Barbón Ramos to run again as candidate to the presidency of the Advisory Council. But it is not the same politically. How can he run again in a new election while having engraved on his forehead, the stigma of defrauder of his own colleagues?
Beyond the people, however, what is momentous in this matter is that the fraud victims decided to not be quiet in face of the barbaric abuse. And they have set a democratic precedent in a business organization that is used to “doing its dirty laundry at home,” a strange conduct for people and businesses whose job is, precisely, public broadcasting and the transmission of ideas.
I would not be saying anything new if I stated that electoral fraud is common for Mexicans. And it would not be new to state that the culture of fraud finds support in conformism, commodity and lack of willingness to meddle with the affairs of deceit and manipulation of victims. But in the concrete case of broadcasting organizations, everything has now been different in regards to the victims and the authorities, whom have not validated an evident and well-documented fraud.
There will be, however, political and economic forces within the Chamber that would prefer a fight, imposition and even a new electoral fraud. But the task seems impossible. The new election will be under the public spotlight and that of the authorities. Insisting on dominating by force the seemingly weaker opponents might be suicidal. Particularly if these, as they have already proved, are not willing to be dominated.
The etymology of cataclysm (noun which means catastrophe, disaster, ruin) is kataklysmos, meaning inundation. And for millennia, the catastrophe par excellence was flooding. Floods caused many more deaths and damages than any other natural disaster: earthquakes, washouts or fires, for example.
That is why any type of disaster, whether or not it is a flood, can be called a cataclysm: a great misfortune in the life of a person, group or community.
And, literally, a cataclysm is what occurred in Valle de Chalco, Mexico State, and in El Arenal neighborhood in the capital’s Venustiano Carranca Borough. True catastrophes that have left thousands of families without property or loved ones.
But the cataclysm in both cases has a horrendous peculiarity: wastewater flooded due to the forces of nature — intense and atypical rain — combined with human negligence. What happened in Chalco and El Arenal, and in other metro areas, shouldn’t have happened. It was perfectly avoidable. A similar event occurred just a few months ago in Valle Dorado, Mexico State. If this type of disaster has multiple precedents in this state in recent years and decades, it’s undeniable that in this administration it has become an everyday fact of life.
In the National Water Commission (Conagua), Calderón selected as its head a man without a head: José Luis Luege Tamargo, a friend of Calderón who has given plenty of public proof of his incompetence, frivolity, ignorance and lack of talent. Not just during his current position, but in his history as a public official.
The magnitude of this disaster and the damage to thousands of families, would merit them, in another type of government, an exhaustive investigation from all of those involved and an exemplary punishment for those responsible. But there’s no doubt that in such an investigation, the director of Conagua would have a privileged place.
And if Luege were a man of honor and self respect, he would have already resigned from his undeserved position. Not just to avoid hindering investigations, but also out of professional and personal shame.
Calderón, of course, would have to think of the evident inexperience of his friend and collaborator. And upon relieving him (I’m not saying to sanction him, because I don’t think Calderón would dare), naming a professionally qualified person to the charge, even if it’s not a friend or fellow panista. Because, as he knows, as does even the most novice civil engineer, water and excrement are not to be meddled with.
The favorite to succeed President Lázaro Cárdenas was Gen. Francisco J. Múgica. But Cárdenas’ successor was Manuel Ávila Camacho. Javier Rojo Gómez was considered a shoe-in, but Miguel Alemán followed Ávila. Alemán was expected to be replaced by his cousin, Fernando Casas Alemán, but the successor ended up being Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. Then, Gilberto Flores Muñoz was considered to be the inevitable successor, but instead Adolfo López Mateos became the next president.
Presidential Secretary Donato Miranda Fonseca was thought to replace López Mateos, but the next Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and president was López Mateos’ Interior Secretary, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, an old anti-communist from the Ávila Camacho “cacique” camp. Emilio Martínez was widely believed to replace Díaz Ordaz, but Luis Echeverría Álvarez took the following “sexenio.”
After Echeverría, Mario Moya Palencia was the favorite, but it was José López Portillo’s turn to occupy Los Pinos. “Jolopo,” as he was nicknamed, was expected to be replaced by Jorge de la Vega Domínguez, but the next tricolor candidate was Miguel de la Madrid. After de la Madrid, Alfredo del Mazo was the favorite, but Carlos Salinas won the candidacy and presidency.
To replace Salinas, Manuel Camacho was a serious contender, but Luis Colosio became the candidate, and after his assassination, Ernesto Zedillo was to become the next, and last, PRI president. Zedillo’s favored successor, Francisco Labastida, lost to Vicente Fox, the first opposition president in more than 70 years. And Santiago Creel was expected to carry on the National Action Party’s (PAN) ruling, but Felipe Calderón was chosen as the candidate.
This perhaps tedious relation of historical events can lead us to an obvious conclusion: the favorite or leading man never became president. This historical constant continued with the case of Andrés Manuel López Obrador: he was the favored successor during nearly all of Fox’s term, and even though millions of Mexicans still think he was robbed of the election, the end result was the strength of a constant.
As 2012 nears, the absolute favorite candidate is Mexico State Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto. But if history is any sign, the PRI candidate could end up being Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, Beatriz Paredes Rangel or anybody else. Will the priistas consider, knowing, as it is known, that the favorite candidate for succession never becomes the president?
In a highly-expected move from an ultra-right government, the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is appealing same-gender marriage and adoption in the Federal District before the Supreme Court (SCJN). It isn’t easy to determine which federal institution is the most corrupt and the least credible. Nor is it easy to know which of these is the most reactionary and the most submissive to the executive branch.
The similarity in conditions of corruption and obedience to Los Pinos and conservatism allows one to conclude that the Court could uphold the PGR’s reasoning and thereby discard the Mexico City law.
But it’s also possible, despite its putrid character, that the Court will side with those who are in favor of same-gender marriages and adoption. The Court’s most discredited members perfectly understand that overturning reforms made by the Federal District’s Legislative Assembly (ALDF) would imply a conflict between powers: between the federation and the capital. And the Supreme Court, the central organism of the Mexican status quo, will think twice before conspiring against this same status quo with a debate that would have no end and nothing good would come from it. Beyond the Court’s determination, however, is a clear fact.
One thing would be to legally declare the invalidity these types of marriages and another, very different move would be to stop same-gender people from getting married. If the Court upholds the DF’s reforms, it would bring about the divorce of law and reality. And reality, as Lenin would say, is very stubborn.
In other words, same-gender unions will continue existing. Even if they are declared illegal, marriage and adoptions will continue. Let’s say that a malicious call from the high court would provoke and bring about informality, darkness, silence and a lack of control over social, demographic, cultural and health phenomena of the utmost importance.
If the Court favors the PGR’s appeal, it would be a triumph with no substance. It would be a formal, but not a real, victory. In reality, a new, historic defeat against the right and conservatism. What truly worries religious groups and conservatives is the public expression and acceptance of homosexuality. They prefer that homosexuals to stay in the closet, and are socially and publicly condemned. And for that to happen today is impossible.
A 21st century secularized Mexican society does not share the same medieval criteria as religious groups and conservatives. Abortion, divorce, the rejection of religious and civil marriage, occasional sexual partners, sexual promiscuity, successive or simultaneous sexual partners, homosexual and bisexual relationships are all general and even universal features of modern Mexican society. They are, regardless of laws in favor or laws against.
We Mexicans have a lot of experience with earthquakes. We know, by experience, that a 7.0-plus magnitude quake doesn't destroy well-built buildings. Mexico City's Torre Latinoamericana has resisted both the 1957 and 1985 disasters without the slightest hint of damage.
We know that modern civil engineering has the technical and scientific knowledge to build buildings and structures that resist earthquakes such as the one Haiti experienced last week. And we know that such constructions are designed to resist earthquakes with greater magnitudes than the one that has destroyed Port-au-Prince. This knowledge, therefore, obliges one to search for an explanation as to why Haiti's situation is so immense. After the 1985 tragedy, we knew that public and private buildings that fell, for example, were built with thick wire instead of metal rods, and that many of those were built without complying with construction regulations.
It's important to remember that the majority of large buildings that fell or were damaged were public: the Tlatelolco housing complex, a National College of Technical and Professional Education school, the Health Secretariat's Juárez Hospital. And if its true that the strongest-hit zone was the downtown area, there were, and are, very tall buildings that weren't affected. The lack of building compliances during that time was the reason for such an immense tragedy. And this non-compliance has no explanation other than corruption and complacency between construction companies and public officials.
Shoddy construction is on par with selling 900 grams of something when the customer pays for a kilogram. Both classic cases of fraud and deceit. In Port-au-Prince's case, all fingers point to corruption. Aggravated and inherent corruption in the neo-colony. One mustn't forget that Haiti is a neo-colony of the United States. A Yankee neo-colony occupied by the military, even though these forces hide their original imperial image under the mask of the United Nations flag. It's well-known that colonies and neo-colonies are fertile ground for lucrative business. Buy them cheap and sell them more expensive. Sell people things they don't need but sell them indispensable items, like food and medicine, at the price of gold. Who can challenge these practices? A government installed by its colonial master? A proconsul that represents the metropolis and not the subjugated country? And having already taken advantage of the fraudulent construction business (even the UN building), perhaps the most profitable business to rebuild the city is what's next.
On Thursday, Jan. 7, the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba in Mexico distributed to media and foreign and national journalists a press release of great interest to the public, the importance of which deserves widespread knowledge.
The embassy says that the United States government recently strengthened security measures at airports, which includes stricter controls on travelers from 14 countries. Cuba is one of them, and Washington accuses it of “supporting terrorism.”
Cuba, however, called its inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism absolutely unjustified and arbitrary. Washington has no proof of Cuba's supposed involvement in terrorist activities, nor that it funds, supports or has ties to terrorism. The Cuban government has never promoted, organized, financed or executed terrorist activities against the U.S. or any other country, and it has never allowed terrorism to be planned from its territory.
On the contrary, as is well known, Cuba has been the victim of organized terrorist actions, financed and carried out by the CIA, as well as organizations of Cuban origin residing in the U.S. These include criminals such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who have not been properly tried, despite having confessed to being the masterminds of terrorist acts against Cubans, among them, the 1976 bombing of the Cuban Aviation Company airliner that killed all 73 people aboard. Paradoxically, for the past 11 years, five Cubans have been unfairly imprisoned in the U.S., the Cuban Embassy says. Their only crime was to infiltrate Cuban-origin terrorism organizations that operate in total impunity in Florida, in order to obtain information that would prevent further attacks on Cuba.
The embassy reminds us that along with the U.S.' pretense to fight terrorism, it maintains imperial wars, in which thousands of civilians have been killed (women and children among them), which in turn creates more terrorist and insecurity in the world and even among U.S. citizens. Both the Cuban people and government refuse to acknowledge any moral authority in the U.S. government's move to include the island nation in the terrorism category. The only reason the current U.S. administration has in keeping Cuba on this infamous list is to justify its persistence in the failed, aggressive policy toward Cuba, and likewise, its failed obsession with demonizing and isolating it from the international community, the embassy says.
With these types of actions, President Barack Obama's rhetoric and promises for change continue to be further from reality, the embassy concludes. And how much truth, I ask, is there in this statement?
Crime has always existed. But each period of time has had its own particular forms of crime, along with mechanisms to defend society: laws, police forces, judges, prisons, gallows. But throughout the ages and across the world, the most efficient factor to avoid crime from taking place has been prevention.
The story of Medieval merchants is classic and well known. In order to avoid being robbed during their journeys, they stored their money in an early version of banks, carrying with them the certified receipts of deposit. This was a predecessor to checking, credit cards and electronic transfers, which prevent us from being robbed outright of our possessions.
The rules to avoid being a crime victim are, in reality, very basic. But they require a certain amount of learning, willingness and discipline to put them into practice and continue to follow them.
One must take these rules into account when it comes to people, cars, public transit and passersby. More people should learn not to place valuable or valuable-looking objects in view. Places that are dangerous, unknown, scarcely lit or without security should be avoided. And it´s always better to walk in a group or, at least, in pairs.
At home, there are useful mechanisms that discourage crime, such as locks, door and window grating, alarm systems, neighborhood watch organizations and police and security forces.
With cars, it´s always recommended to use parking lots and not park in public areas. Nearly all vehicle thefts occur on the streets.
History and judicial-police theories teach us only too well that the majority of crimes committed have to do with property and material possessions.
This is the case with simple theft, pickpocketing, armed robbery, vehicle theft, burglary and fraud. And for all of these types of crime, there are ways to avoid them from happening.
The criminal, however, always relies on the involuntary aid of the victim. With fraud, for example, that aid tends to b involuntary complacency. While the fraudster uses deceit, he depends on the ignorance, ambition and greed of his victims.
Just as one learns to use locks, he must also learn to control profoundly human impulses that make a person believe that the impossible is possible, such as buying a car at half its value, or getting an extremely low interest rate on a loan as offered by certain financial institutions. As the popular Mexican phrase goes, nobody trades pesos for centavos.
For the past 35 years, Article 4 of the Constitution has established that men and women are equal before the law. But legal or formal equality doesn´t always imply realistic equality.
Even so, there are many areas in society where equality between men and women is an absolute reality. This is the case, for example, with education, from kindergarten to university.
Health is another similarity. Men and women receive identical medical and hospital attention. This is also true in politics: men and women have and exercise the same rights.
If it´s true that women don´t occupy directorial positions in the same proportion as men, this phenomenon can´t be attributed to deliberate politics. Rather, it´s the result of a patriarcal culture that is being chipped away at every day, but has yet to crumble all together.
Having arrived at these levels of equality, or if you prefer, at these low levels of inequality, has implied a decades-long effort in education.
One could say that the route to equality began when all girls had access to school.
But there´s no doubt that the possibilities of equality between men and women grew exponentially at the exact moment of the technologic-scientific revolution, putting the greatest tool for personal and familiar liberation in their hands: modern contraceptive methods.
Today the woman is, for the first time in history, decider of her own destiny. She is no longer chained to inevitable maternity.
Previously, unwanted pregnancy closed the doors to university, paid employment, a career and social mobility. Today, women have voluntary pregnancy in their hands.
On this long and rough path, in which education and contraception have played important roles, it´s necessary to take another step forward.
The search for complete gender equality passes, necessarily, through the control of voluntary motherhood. And this control can only be achieved when no law impedes a woman from deciding about her own motherhood. That right to decide is already a reality in many countries, as well as in Mexico City.
But it hasn´t been a free concession from governments and institutions. It has been the fruits of fighting, decisive, brave, consequential and tireless fighting, from feminist movements and perceptive, revolutionary masculine minds.
One could say, then, that the levels of equality achieved for women are mostly the product of the best women´s and men´s efforts.
It´s up to the next generation of women who know, are able and want to fight for their rights, along with the best men.
During the past few decades, Mexico’s private universities have grown slowly but steadily. Studies show that private institutions account for one third of total enrollment.
Whit this information, one must ask oneself what the reasons are behind this notorious growth of these for-pay universities. And the question becomes even more pertinent taking into account the human tendency to abide by the fundamental economic principal that teaches us to obtain maximum results with the least mount of money of effort.
According to this philosophic principal, the sensible thing would be for more people to choose free education versus its costly counterpart. Beyond philosophy, in everyday practice, the resistance of human beings to choose a free degree instead of a burdensome one is evident.
A good start to understand this phenomenon is to consider that many factors come into play. If the economic factor always takes prominence, then there are powerful non-economic motives; most notably, quality.
Is it true that private universities provide better education? Not necessarily. Nearly all private institutions fall into the “pseudo-university” category, in which students shell out a certain amount of pesos to buy their degrees.
Quality private universities aside, the knowledge that most private schools are of poor quality leads us to ask ourselves why public schools’ competitors are growing.
One of these factors is due to the documented decline in the offering of public universities.
Everyone knows of the staggeringly competitive and low admittance rate at government-funded public universities, namely at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the National Polytechnic Institute and the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).
If these rationales are valid, and subject to analyzing the presence of other possible factor of growing enrollment at public universities, it’s useful to think that maybe the main reason for this expansion is a corresponding fall in public universities’ academic offerings.
Mexico City, also called the Federal District, has always been the leader of the economic, cultural, social and political development of the Republic. The largest and most important educational institutions of the nation are found In the Federal District. It is the home of the federal authority and the most influential and public-reaching media.
Consistent with that leadership, in 1974, Mexico City was the scene of a crucial and decisive change in the social, cultural and political life of the Republic: the constitutional establishment of full legal equality of men and women.
And now, before the conclusion of the first decade of the new century, Mexico City is at the forefront again by becoming the country´s leader in social progress, enabling the voluntary, legal and free termination of pregnancy before twelve gestation weeks. It is also the first to define the provisions of divorce without grounds and only by the will of one spouse.
It is easy to observe, that the crux of these advances is the recognition by the State of the will of the citizen to decide the course of his or her own life.
In the case of female citizens, the freedom to decide their own motherhood and in the case of men and women, the freedom to continue or discontinue a relationship.
So it is a little surprising that there are people and institutions that wish to involve state participation in the establishment of couples of same sex.
It is surprising, because no one, at least in Mexico City, is opposed to two people of the same sex sharing their life, living together and supporting each other.
Living in this way means the exercise of free citizenship at the fullest, the fullest freedom of adult men and women to decide how to live their lives without interference from the State and religious organizations.
Why, one wonders, should the State have to sanction what two citizens have freely chosen of their own intimate and free-will?
The modern, secular notion of freedom implies the diminishing of state intervention in the personal lives of citizens. Does not the Constitution say, for example, that the home and mail are inviolable?
And does not our Constitution say that no one may be bothered in his personal life, unless the law was violated?
The Letter of Queretaro states categorically that everyone can live as they please, with or without partner or spouse. And neither the Constitution nor any law in the Republic establishes the ban on married life of two adults of the same sex.
Why demand state intervention and legal sanction of something that does not violate any law and is the exclusive preservation of the most intimate personal freedom?
My dear friend Gustavo Rentería, knowing my interest in the theme, recently forwarded me an e-mail that he and other well-known journalists received.
The crux of the message, which was sent anonymously, was this: "Has polio been eradicated? It's a belief that floats around. If I didn't personally investigate on the Internet, I would not have realized that in reality, polio is very far from being eradicated".
Up to this point, the author of the message has some validity. Because, really, poliomyelitis, or polio, has not been completely eradicated from the planet, but it is very close to eradication.
In Mexico, for example, the last case was in Tomatlán, Jalisco, in 1990. And according to international health protocol, when five years pass after the last case reported in a country or region, the illness is declared eradicated. So in 1995, the Panamerican Health Organization declared Mexico free of polio.
Polio persists only in some countries in Subsaharan Africa, which is the most exploited, poor and underdeveloped region in the world.
However, if there is some reason in the paragraph I cite above, the second paragraph is absurd, misinformed, and categorically slanderous: "Far from eradicating poliomyelitis in the world, it has been recognized that the polio vaccination itself brings the risk of extending the disease, which has been confirmed many times. The number of cases of acute paralysis in infants has skyrocketed in countries where the entire population receives the vaccine."
Where did the anonymous slanderer get the information that "paralysis in infants has skyrocketed" where populations are vaccinated? Where did the letter-writer get this information, and with what evidence? And what health authority in the world has "recognized that the polio vaccination itself" constitutes an increased risk of extending the disease?
The Internet is certainly a wonderful source of information, education, and culture. But like all means of communication, the Internet serves both to inform and misinform.
The Internet directs and misdirects, it sheds light and it obscures facts. Clearly the anonymous letter-writer uses the Internet to misinform, misdirect, and obscure this matter, the delicate issue of contagious diseases.
Since the end of the 18th century, when William Jenner created the vaccine for smallpox, vaccination has prevented and almost eradicated 12 serious diseases. That is a scientific truth. And science is absolutely incompatible with charlatanry, which is present on the Internet.
There are many well known photographs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. president from 1933 to 1945. Perhaps the most universally known are the ones that were taken in February 1945 with his British counterpart Winston Churchill and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, during the Yalta Conference held on the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, in the south of the former USSR.
In all those photos Roosevelt is sitting. He appears seated in the presidential office, in a car, in press conferences and radio booths.
In some photos, of course, he is standing. But those are images of him as a child or young man, always under 39 years old. There is a picture of Roosevelt standing in the company of his mother, Sara, but he is leaning against a small fence.
He never appeared standing in public because he was paralyzed. In 1921, at 39 years old, he contracted polio, a dreaded disease that left him immobile from the waist down.
Never letting himself be seen by the public in a wheelchair or using the heavy leg harnesses that most victims of polio used was a strategy to become a candidate for the US presidency.
Having been a victim of the severe effects this disease causes, Roosevelt was one of the first people to initiate research on polio, which was conducted between 1955 and 1957. This research led to the creation of the vaccine by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin.
Thanks to this vaccine, polio has almost been abolished. The last case in Mexico was in Tomatlán, Jalisco, in 1990. According to international health protocols, after five years have passed from the last case in a country or region, the disease is declared eradicated. So, in 1995 the Pan American Health Organization (OPS) declared Mexico polio-free.
In 2008 there were only 1,651 cases of polio worldwide. Absolute eradication is within reach, but depends solely on the continuity of vaccinations. There have been some Subsaharan countries in Africa that have let their guard down and polio has sprung up again.
This has happened because, taking advantage of ignorance present in these societies, a powerful current of criminal quackery has accused the vaccination of being responsible for new cases of the disease.
A similar thing happened with smallpox. But in this case, vaccinations were not suspended and now smallpox doesn’t exist.
Just when Mexicans were expecting the government to create economic measures that would help the country get out of the economic crisis, the government does exactly the opposite. It enacts economic policies that will aggravate, deepen, and prolong the crisis. Tax increases will do exactly that. Even people who don't really understand economics know that an increase in taxes equals a decrease in the size of their own pocketbook, and less purchasing power. A decrease in personal income for millions of people would not only imply the impoverishment of those people; it also means a fall in national consumer spending, and therefore a fall in sales.
A fall in sales means a fall in production. And a fall in production leads to more unemployment. More unemployment means, again, lower consumer spending. And lower consumption leads to lower production, and so goes the deepening of the crisis.
Increasing the IVA from 15 to 16 percent will not increase the amount of tax collected, as government officials naively believe. What we can expect instead is a huge increase in the informal economy.
Producers and consumers have their own economic logic, a logic very different from the technocrats who think they know how to increase the government's resources. Consumers' logic will propel a great majority of people to avoid paying the IVA.
The informal economy is already people's daily bread and butter, and to avoid the IVA, every day the number of informal transactions will grow.
But among many mistakes in the economic package, perhaps the biggest is the 3 percent tax on cash deposits. This absurd tax is an invitation to escape official financial institutions and engage in clandestine banking. It would increase the risks associated with trade and production. The only thing left to do is ask what happened to the economic and social sensibility of certain officials and legislators.
The word utopia means a place that doesn't exist. It comes from the Greek word ou, which means no, and topos, meaning place. It's an imaginary perfect society where there are no rich and no poor, where justice and fraternity rule. Utopia, by definition, is an impossible proposition.
Thomas More wrote a book called "Utopia in 1516 that describes an imaginary state. And Tommaso Campanella published "The City of the Sun" a century later, another description of an ideal, perfect society. In the 19th century, Charles Fourier imagined a system of phalanxes, places of camaraderie and voluntary work, which could provide well-being and happiness to their members. Novelists and film directors have also presented visions of the opposite of utopia, societies of the future where chaos, destruction, calamity, and the extinction of humankind are the themes that reign. These types of fictions are called dystopias.
Remember the 1973 film Soylent Green, which painted an apocalyptic scenario as a result of nonstop population growth? Now, almost forty years later, we know that population increase has stopped being a problem. Just as utopian fictions seek to activate people's hopes, dystopian scenarios aim to terrorize society with apocalyptic visions.
Ebola, SARS, the avian flu, AIDS, pollution, cloning, artificial human reproduction, vaccines and medicines, and the new swine flu have been the topics of dystopian fictions.
But the current state of those topics proves the impossibility of the apocalyptic futures. The best example is AIDS, which has evolved from being a terminal illness when it was discovered in the 1980s, to a chronic illness treatable with retroviral medicines that prolong the life of the patient. We also now know it is preventable, because the methods of transmission are known. Dystopian visions are certainly attractive thematic devices for works of fiction, but in the end, are just works of fantasy.
Anyone who has followed the case of the Cuban Five prisoners in the United States knows that international pressure on Washington to stop this monstrous injustice is immense, constant, and growing. But until now, the White House has tried to distance itself from the issue, arguing that since it is a judicial matter, the executive branch should not intervene. However, it's clear in the eyes of the international community that this is not a judicial matter, but rather strictly political.
This conviction of international observers has translated into heavy pressure on the Obama administration, which in turn, is acting like it's trying to get rid of a rock in its shoe. But it's not only that. Obama, the Democrat, has echoed the sentiments of Jimmy Carter, another Democrat, in saying he wants to normalize relations with Cuba. But he knows that normalization can't occur while the Cuban Five are still in jail. This is the unwavering position of Fidel, Raúl, and the entire Cuban population.
Cuba, of course, is also interested in normalizing relations with the U.S. As a gesture toward that goal, Raúl has offered the liberation and expatriation of the 50-some U.S. agents imprisoned on the island. "A gesture for a gesture," said Raúl when offering the freedom of the American agents, in exchange for the release of the five Cubans from American prisons.
Is such an exchange possible? Yes, says lawyer Jose Pertierra. There is an historical precedent Pertierra explained to me. In March 1954, four Puerto Rican independence fighters opened fire in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC, wounding five legislators. They received sentences of between 50 and 75 years, and served for 25 years, until President Carter released them in 1979, citing executive clemency. It was Fidel Castro who petitioned for the Puerto Ricans' freedom, and shortly thereafter, Fidel liberated a group of U.S. agents who were imprisoned in Cuba. Such an exchange could be repeated now with the Cuban Five. Their release in exchange for the liberty of the 50 U.S. agents imprisoned in Cuba.
With the exchange, Obama would free himself from international pressure, and both countries could begin to normalize their relations.
Over the past sixty years in Mexico, diabetes has become the leading cause of death. Millions of people of all ages suffer from it and what is even worse: every year the number of sick grows unstoppably.
Diabetes, clearly, is not a problem exclusive to Mexicans. The scourge is spreading to all nooks of the planet. Perhaps the only people safe from this disease are starving.
Medical science, of course, offers relief for severe cases, but prevention and control of this disease requires kicking a bad habit we have developed over the past 60 years: overeating.
Only six decades ago, mid-twentieth century, the overeating that exists today was unimaginable. So was the universal suffering of diabetes.
In 1950, the world population was 2 billion. Now it is 6 billion. In that time the population has tripled, but in the same period, food production around the world has multiplied by twelve. So today, in the early twenty-first century, there is four times as much food per person than sixty years ago.
It is perfectly reasonable to establish a statistical correlation between the universal food abundance that characterizes the world today and the increase of diabetes worldwide.
Perhaps that is why prevention and treatment of diabetes is so hard. How do you ask generations that only knew of shortages, misery and famine to eat less now that they can eat whatever they want. Why submit to a diet of 2,500 calories a day, when it's possible (and enjoyable) to eat 5,000? Ah, the pleasure of eating!
It’s well known that one of the largest supporters of the coup against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, was a Cuban [ex-patriate] multi-millionaire named Rafael Hernández Nodarse; more commonly know by his alias “Ralph H. Nodarse.” He is the owner of San Pedro Sula’s most popular TV station, Channel 6, which has played a decisive role in the justification of the coup and in the campaign to support Micheleti and the other insurrectionists.
Perhaps slightly less well known is that, before the coup, Ralph Nodarse was an active participant in assassination attempts against president Zelaya. And it may not be common knowledge, outside of Honduras, that his name came to light in a bombing attempt against former Honduran president Carlos Roberto Reina.
Outside of Honduras people probably don’t know about the meetings Nodarse held in his San Pedro Sula house with members of the Miami mafia to plan action against President Zelaya and his chancellor, Patricia Rodas, for their pro- Cuba posture in the meetings in Trinidad and Tobago in April; two months before Micheleti’s coup in June.
Nodarse’s links to the Miami mafia are nothing new, its just old friendly ties and political acquaintances. After Luis Posada Carriles (a CIA trained anti-Cuban terrorist) was released from a Panamanian prison in1994, pardoned in the middle of the night by president Mireya Moscoso hours before the end of his term, Nodarse took him in. Four years before in 1990, Posada was shot while leading a Death Squad in Guatemala and went right to San Pedro Sula.
Nodarse has a very long trajectory in Miami mafia circles that do not act only against Cuba, but also against Central America, most recently Honduras. None is safe from the long murderous arm of the counterrevolutionary Cubans of Miami. The fragile democratic institutions of Central America will serve as easy targets for Posada and Nodarse. One can assume that President of the United States Barak Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton know about these public travesties, but still allow Nodarse and his family onto U.S. soil.
This doesn’t prove that Obama or Clinton are patrons or accomplices in the coup or to these terrorist circles, but it does show their hypocrisy and double standards concerning their public condemnation of terrorism. A few US visas to known international terrorists say more than a million words.
