Memin Pinguin

Last week, the Mexican postal service issued a stamp series commemorating "Memin Pinguin," a comic book character from the 1940s.

Black activists in the U.S., such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who were already sore at Mexico's government after President Fox made an insensitive remark about U.S. blacks last month, have condemned the stamps as racist and offensive. The White House also issued a statement condemning the stamps, and activists in the small black community on southern Mexico have expressed indignation as well.

The Mexican government and media, on the other hand, have leapt to the defense of the stamps. "Memin Penguin is part of our culture," is the basic argument, and so, since the stamps are merely celebrating a part of Mexican history and culture, they are acceptable. The Mexican people seem to agree, and have flocked to buy the stamps. They sold out in two days.

While you certainly have to question the wisdom of a government that would issue a stamp that clearly was going to cause a controversy, one thing this government is very adept at is exploiting disagreements with the United States. So this week, we saw Foreign Minister Luis Derbez, Presidential Spokesman Ruben Aguilar, and even President Fox, speaking passionately in defense of poor little Memin Pinguin. Complaints against the stamp from the U.S. are blatant attacks on our culture, they told the Mexican public.

For a government that has offered little to the Mexican people and, as a result, doesn't have a heck of a lot of support here, resentment against the U.S. is always rich material for rallying the common man to their cause. And in the week leading up to an event celebrating the 5-year celebration of Fox's election, what better way to get people on your side than to lash out at attacks from the U.S.? The "cultural " angle is a very good one as well, for as Mexicans find their country more and more overwhelmed with U.S. fast food restaurants, Wal-Mart stores and Hollywood movies, they are very sensitive to issues of cultural imperialism from the north.

But unfortunately, as the government and the Mexican media (which often tends toward sensationalism) have turned the controversy into a purely cultural conflict, the issue as to whether the stamp might actually be offensive to black people has been essentially ignored. People have been so quick to dig in their heels to defend Memin Penguin and their culture, they seem entirely unwilling to even consider that the image, while acceptable in the 1940s, is offensive to many in 2005. Even Elena Poniatowska, one of the nation's most acclaimed authors and left-leaning intellectuals, spoke out in defense of the stamp. I saw a quote from her this week saying that images like Memin and a popular folk song called something like "Little Black Watermelon Boy," are, in fact, demonstrations of the affection that Mexicans feel for black people. The only public condemnation I have seen of the stamps came from the leftist newspaper La Jornada, but they were criticizing the Fox government for causing an unnecessary diplomatic row rather than criticizing the wisdom of reproducing and celebrating outdated and insensitive imagery.

When I have talked to people I know about the stamp, the responses I get are: "Memin Pinguin is part of our culture," "He was created in the 1940s, and so he reflects the norms of that period," "Memin is an adorable character, not a villain in any way, so how is he offensive to blacks?" and, "Who are Americans to criticize us when they're the ones whose culture is racist?"

I've also seen a couple of TV news reports where they've interviewed people on the street or in line at the post office about the stamp controversy. "Of course the stamp isn't racist, Memin Pinguin is an adorable character that all Mexicans love," is the usual comment. Funny that I haven't seen any news reporters venturing into the black Mexican communities in Veracruz, Oaxaca or Guerrero to get their perspective.

And that's the argument I keep hearing here: "Memin Penguin doesn't offend me, so therefore he's not offensive. You who are offended are at fault for your misinterpretation." In fact, that's essentially the argument Fox made last month after his comment that Mexicans in the U.S. "do the jobs that not even blacks will do." No, said Fox, the statement was not racist, and it's really too bad that the African-American community interpreted it as such.

Mexicans laugh at Americans sometimes for their ultra-sensitivity. And yeah, extreme PC-ism deserves to made fun of. But I'm not sure if a total lack of concern for sensitivity -- like calling overweight people "fatty" or referring to handicapped people as "minusvalidos," or "less valids" -- is any better. Seems like there should be a happy medium out there somewhere.

And yeah, I can understand why Mexicans would get a kick out of something that winds up the gringos so much. But at the same time, they should remember that it's not just the U.S. that is viewing these stamps; the rest of the world is seeing them now thanks to this controversy. And I don't think that Memin Pinguin is going to do much to improve the world's view of Mexico.

paying the bills and carlos slim

Much like when I was living in the States, here in Mexico, I'm regularly confronted with a pile of bills to pay. I've got my electric bill, my water bill, my phone bill; basically the only difference is that here I have no heating bill (like my bro in the east).

But there is also a difference in how I pay my bills here. In the States, I'd sit down each month, write out a separate check to each entity, put a stamp on each envelope, and drop them all in the mail. Here in Mexico, it's actually a bit simpler. Instead of writing checks and mailing my bills individually, I can pay them all at once at the bank. So when I go to deposit my paycheck at the bank, I grab whatever fistful of bills I have outstanding at the moment and pay them at the same time. It's a suprisingly easy and efficient way of doing things.

Of course, part of the reason for this efficient system of bill paying may be that the postal service is so unreliable. If you were to try to mail a check to the phone company here, it might not get there for weeks. In fact, it might not get there at all. And timeliness in paying your bills is crucial here -- you don't get the same grace period you do in the U.S. I was slow to pay my phone bill last month, and so one morning when I picked up my phone to call a friend, instead of a dial tone I got a recording from Telmex telling me: "Your service has been suspended until you pay your bill." Honestly, it had only been a few weeks since the bill had been issued. These guys don't mess around.

A funny thing I also found out recently about my water bill is that it has a statute of limitations for payment. I had temporarily misplaced the most recent water bill, then re-discovered it and brought it to the bank yesterday. The teller was trying to process it for me when she noted that the payment deadline had been May 31. "You can't pay this bill," she said. "It expired May 31 and today is June 3." I asked her what to do, and she said just to wait, that they'd probably send another one or something. But unlike the phone company, in the meantime they haven't turned off my water. Seems like they just should have let me pay the bill.

One somewhat creepy thing about the bill-paying system here is that in addition to banks, you can also pay most of your bills at Sanborn's restaurants. See, Sanborn's is owned by Carlos Slim, the world's fourth-richest man and the owner of just about everything in Mexico, it would seem. Since most of your money just ends up in his pocket anyway, he's developed his own bill payment network that allows you to pay him directly with no middleman. It's almost like we've got this one-man shadow oligarchy in Mexico, which is why, even though I know most of my money goes right to Carlos Slim, I feel a little bit more comfortable paying my bills at the bank rather than Sanborns.

psschitt gel!

I've been seeing them now for eight or nine months, but the t.v. ads for Psschitt! Gel on Azteca 7 still crack me up every time. The product is a Mexican brand of hair-styling gel, but with the Spanish pronunciation, the woman announcer seems to be imploring you to spray some "pssschit" onto your head. There's nothing better for control, apparently.

reefer madness

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, has new book out called Reefer Madness; a collection of three essays on the American underground. The topics covered are pot, illegal migrant labor, and porno. Most interesting to me was the essay on illegal labor in the strawberry farms of California, where the bulk of the illegals are Mixtec Indians from western Oaxaca (where I lived last year). Schlosser calls the Mixtecs "some of the poorest and most exploited people in the Western Hemisphere," and after reading about their treatment by the strawberry growers, it was easy to understand why the Mixtecs didn't seem to be all that crazy about Americans.

Some of my students at UTM once gave a presentation on NAFTA in which they claimed that 85% of Mixtecan men between the ages of 18 and 40 had worked at one time picking fruit in the states. I had thought that the number sounded high, but maybe they were right after all. Gives me second thoughts now on having flunked them on the presentation. (just kidding!)

mexico barbaro

This is a quote out of a book that I am reading about Mexico in the early 1900s (this is my rough translation)

"The real Mexico I found to be a country with a written constitution and written laws in general almost as fair and democratic as our own, but with neither constitution nor laws in operation. Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1910

The following excerpt is from the Oaxaca News from last week:

"In the Southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca, most people agree that the Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's term as governor will be even worse than the already repressive and corrupt regime of his predecessor, José Murat Casab, both members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a group that has ruled Oaxaca for eighty years. After just three tortured months of his reign, Ulises' government has been internationally condemned for its acts of political revenge; for its violent suppression of protests; for its imprisonment and murder of dissidents; for its attacks upon the press; for its manipulation of votes; for its miscarriages of justice; and for the numerous ways it has abused human rights, immiserating and terrorizing its indigenous population to serve the interests of foreign capital and PRI political bosses."

drug lords

There has been a recent wave of drug lords executing each other in Mexico. Just yesterday, 12 were found dead yesterday across the country. As I previously mentioned in my comment on Mexico Barbaro, I feel that Mexico's crime is increasing. The stats in the following articles note the increase of crime in Mexico, with respect to crime related to drugs.

On the one hand, it is horrible to see an increase in the rise of violence in Mexico, however on the other, they are killing each other off, people who would other wise be increasing the production of drugs.

News link on drug-related killings (English)
News link on drug-related killings(Spanish)

giant chain stores

I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately about the amount of business I’ve been doing with a couple of American chain stores here: Blockbuster and Starbucks.

Now, I realize that as far as giant chains go, Starbucks really isn’t all that evil: I’m told that they treat their workers well, they support good social causes, and that they buy a lot of Free Trade coffee. But they still use the unfair advantage of massive corporate strength to overwhelm and eliminate locally owned coffee shops, so I’ve always preferred to buy coffee from the little guy.

Here in Mexico, however, what draws me to Starbucks (other than the fact that it’s right down the street from my place of work) is that it’s one of the few places where I can get a cup of coffee just the way I like it: brewed and with milk added. You can order a ‘café americano’ just about anywhere, but it’s usually just an espresso shot with hot water, which has a slightly different taste than the brewed coffee that I’m used to. Starbucks not only serves brewed coffee, it’s just about the only place I’ve found that sets out pitchers of milk and half and half. When I ask for a ‘café Americano con leche’ at other coffee shops, I usually end up with a cappuchino, and when I try to explain to the clerk that I would like them to pour some plain-old cold milk into my coffee, they often look at me like I’ve just asked them to spit in it.

So yeah, I’m an ugly American when it comes to demanding my coffee be just-so. But old habits are hard to break, I guess.

Now let me try to justify Blockbuster.

Part of the reason that I’ve ended up with a Blockbuster membership is because they seem to be the only game in town. In Oaxaca and Queretaro, where I lived previously, there were plenty of small mom and pop video rental shops as well as a Mexican chain, Videocentro.

Another reason I do business with Blockbuster is that they rent Zone 1-formatted DVDs. See, movie distribution companies format DVDs differently for the various regions of the world, I suppose to make it difficult for people in a country like Mexico to watch a movie that hasn’t yet been officially released here. So for that reason, DVD players sold in each region of the world are set to play DVDs for that particular region. I watch DVDs on my laptop, which I bought in the States and is therefore formatted for Zone 1. Mexico is Zone 4 so most video shops here rent Zone 4-formatted discs. With a laptop, you can change your DVD zone preference, but only up to 4 or 5 times before it’s locked permanently. Since I have a fair collection of my own DVDs that I bought in the U.S., after a couple of changes I would have to choose between watching locally rented movies or those in my own collection. Since Blockbuster rents Zone 1 DVDs, I don’t have to make that choice. Seems like a giant corporate conspiracy, doesn’t it?


Also, Walmart is another huge chain in Mexico that has generated quite a big uproar with their decision to build near Tenochitlan, outside of Mexico City.