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Hits, Blows and Coffins

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By Kary Vannice

There has been much talk in the news over the last year about the financial “hit” many Mexicans have suffered as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown and economic downturn. Countless businesses took a “blow” as they were forced to close their doors. And for many, that put the final nail in the coffin of their business.

However, there is another equally important story, not making headlines, also connected to the Coronavirus outbreak. This story too is full of hits, blows and coffins. But, in this story, they are not financial, they are physical.

Less than a month after social distancing measures took effect in Mexico, domestic-violence-related 911 calls increased by 60% and federal authorities estimated that violence against women and girls had gone up between 30% to 100%. And that was in just the first three weeks of the pandemic.

Now, nearly a year later, the statistics on violence against women in Mexico during the pandemic are gruesome and, in all likelihood, don’t even come close to telling the full story, as many women are too afraid to file an official report and the ones who try often report that authorities urge them not to.

Even if a report is filed, odds are it will never result in a conviction. According to the government’s own data, 93% of all crimes in Mexico went unsolved in 2018; according to U.S. researchers, 98% of violent crimes go unsolved – which is a very sad reality for the families of the thousands of women who are killed in Mexico each year.

On average, 10 women a day are murdered in Mexico. In the early months of the pandemic, that number rose by more than 20%. Ten women a day might not sound like many in a country 127 million, but multiply that by 30 days and you have 300 women a month and multiply that by 12 months and you have 3,600 women murdered each year.

And for every one woman or girl murdered, there are countless others that suffer physical violence. Statistics report that two-thirds of all women in Mexico have experienced some form of violence, 44% of which is at the hands of a domestic partner.

Domestic violence is now referred to as the “shadow pandemic” in Mexico and throughout Latin America. One civil rights group said, “The so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ is characterized by a lack of information, incomplete data, and a culture of silence. How are national governments and support services supposed to respond to such an intimate and private, but also urgent, issue?”

Well, here in Mexico, quite poorly, as it turns out. When asked at a press conference about the startling numbers of domestic violence reports in the early days of the pandemic, Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador replied, “90% of calls to domestic abuse hotlines are fake.” But neither he nor his administration could provide any evidence that this statement was true. His failure to substantiate these literal cries for help as factual does nothing to change the culture of oppression and control over women’s bodies in Mexico.

A few weeks later, perhaps as damage control, the administration unveiled a new public service campaign aimed at addressing the rising domestic violence problem. The campaign depicted men and boys starting to get angry with women and girls in the home and advised them to “Take a breath and count to 10.” It then showed them smiling and waving a white flag of peace and surrender.

However, that same month, the AP reported that the Mexican government proposed cutting funding to women’s counselling centers in rural and indigenous areas, at a time when they knew they were needed more than ever.

It is unlikely that simply counting to 10 is going to change a deeply machismo culture, especially when the country’s own president “blames violence against women on the neoliberal policies of his right-wing predecessors and dismissed Mexico’s growing feminist movement as a plot orchestrated by his right-wing opposition,” as one news outlet reported.

Where does this leave Mexico’s women?

Well, unfortunately, we are back to the hits, blows and coffins. With the Coronavirus pandemic still ongoing, victims of domestic abuse have fewer support resources available to them than ever before and they are less likely to report their abuse due to the fact that they have to queue up outside of civil offices in full view of community members and potentially their own aggressors.

The Coronavirus has contributed to a spike in domestic violence in Mexico but is by no means its root cause. The root of it is a deeply misogynistic culture, which Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne defines as, the “policing of women’s subordination” in patriarchal societies, or the way people condemn women who don’t adhere to social expectations.

Until social expectations evolve in Mexico so women are seen as having rights equal to those of men, domestic violence and femicide will continue. Many, many more women and girls will suffer the consequences, as they continue to go unprotected in their own homes and often unaccounted for when they disappear.

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¡HEY COMPADRE!

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By Alvin Starkman M.A., J.D.

It doesn’t matter whether you live in Oaxaca or vacation here on a regular basis. Whether it’s Puerto Escondido, Huatulco, the state capital or elsewhere, if you’ve at all begun to integrate into the local community, eventually you’ll be asked to be a padrino or madrina (godparent) to an ahijado or ahijada (godchild). So you’d better familiarize yourself with compadrazgo, or co-godparenthood. Even if you’ve never been asked, it’s important to learn about compadres, the cornerstone of compadrazgo. You’ll hear the word spoken frequently. Compadres are different from friends, by a long stretch.

Compadrazgo is a web of mutual rights and obligations of monumental importance throughout Mexico (and elsewhere), both in urban centers and rural communities. It permeates virtually all socio-economic strata. It’s more important in Oaxaca than in many other states, in part because of both economics and the strength of interpersonal relationships. One chooses who will be his or her lifetime compadres.

If someone is asked to be a padrino of a child upon baptism, it creates a new bond between two families, solidified by the creation of compadres. The parents and grandparents of the child become compadres to the padrinos. While family members are frequently asked to be padrinos, often friends, neighbors and business acquaintances are selected, as a means of strengthening existing ties. Academic writings, confirmed in my personal experiences here in Oaxaca over the past quarter century, suggest that while as a godparent you have lifelong obligations to your godchild, which may never be called upon, it’s the ties between compadres that can come into play on a regular basis.

Let’s examine occasions aside from baptism when you might find yourself asked to be a godparent, obligations which may fall upon you, and finally how your new status as a compadre manifests itself and keeps on ticking. Why you and not someone else? To understand we must look at the pool of prospective choices from which you may be selected. My perspective may appear cynical, but, using a functionalism model, is fact based and proven.

Godparents are selected for both religious and secular rites of passage, for godchildren ranging from infant to adult. In Oaxaca the most common events where custom dictates godparents be chosen are marriages, school graduations, a girl’s 15th-birthday celebrations (fiesta de quince años), confirmations, first communions and baptisms. Sometimes but not always, there may be a financial commitment involved, where for example as padrinos of a wedding or quiñce anos, a couple may be asked or simply volunteer to contribute to the cost of the affair. But don’t worry, financial obligations may be shared amongst several godparents.

A case in point involved my wife and me. When asked to be godparents at the wedding of the son of then mere acquaintances, our mouths dropped, whereupon after a pregnant pause the request was concluded with “of the rings.” This meant that we were responsible for buying the wedding bands, whereas another couple was being honored with being the primary padrinos of the newlyweds. In fact you can be asked to be godparents of (for purchasing) the cake, liquor, flowers, party favors, and the list goes on, often depending upon the financial ability of the people throwing the function. In the case of individuals with resources, they typically simply want to bestow a special honor to an existing relationship.

You may be asked to make a speech, give a blessing, dance with the bride/groom or quinceañera, almost always being an active participant depending on circumstances. If you’re not Catholic and don’t take communion or kneel, let your soon-to-be compadres know, even if it appears there won’t be a religious component to the proceedings. There will likely be a priest involved. For example, on occasion one finds padrinos chosen within the context of the opening of a new business. As part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the man-of-the-cloth may be in attendance to give and direct blessings. Personally, as a Jew, I don’t object to having a little holy water splashed on me by the padre…as long as it’s as a result of inadvertence.

Padrinos are almost always selected from people of the same or a higher socio-economic class. For example, a factory worker may select the supervisor of her department to be her daughter’s padrino at a baptism, but the supervisor would rarely select a worker. A maker of handicrafts in a small Oaxacan village may ask a wealthy patron or shop-owner from Mexico City to be godmother to her daughter and future son-in-law at their wedding, but the opposite would likely be out of the question. And you may be similarly asked, by a Mexican friend/neighbor, a perhaps perceived equal, but for different reasons. Functions regarding the foregoing three examples? Bonds of friendship are acknowledged and strengthened for future utility; a patron-customer relationship is affirmed with comfort in now knowing that it will continue ad infinitum; and there will be the perception that a boss won’t fire a compadre.

Your status as a compadre begins immediately, and you may never again be referred to by your name, but rather compadre. You’ll experience the metamorphosis of your status, and will be treated differently. Otherwise an extranjero, or foreigner, you may feel as though you’ve come of age in your new hometown. Compadres give and receive more invitations to events. Favors may be asked of you more readily, and of a different type. There’s an expectation of compliance, if not the most careful consideration: borrowing your truck, lending money, housing a relative temporarily, providing counsel in trying times. By the end of our first year of permanent residency in Oaxaca, all the foregoing requests had been made of us. But remember, requests for assistance can go the other way as well, so keep that in mind.

In Western society the number of kinship ties you have is relatively finite, and usually beyond your control. In contrast, with compadrazgo, for as many life stages and changes as may arise, one’s immediate family has the opportunity to extend non-relative or “fictive” kinship ties through deliberate selection. One is able to build and nurture through mutual requests and compliance innumerable economic and social alliances.

Here in Mexico no one ever utters the adage “You can pick your friends but not your family.” The strategies and decision-making processes involved in determining who would make appropriate compadres for a family, and why, are absolutely fascinating. I’ve touched upon only some of the dynamics. The internet and traditional anthropological literature are exhaustive, and should be consulted by those interested in or thrust into the system.

A permanent resident of Oaxaca, Alvin Starkman operates Mezcal Educational Excursions of Oaxaca (www.mezcaleducationaltours.com).

Huatulco

An Extraordinary Collection: The Pre-Raphaelite Paintingsof Mexican Billionaire Juan Antonio Pérez Simón

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk—

In 1946, a five-year-old Spanish kid moved to Mexico. He didn’t come from money, but Juan Antonio Pérez Simón would end up with quite a lot of it. His dad had a middle-class job in the beverage business, and Juan Antonio taught himself finance, starting his career in accounting. As a young man, his path crossed that of Carlos Slim Helú, whose business talents eventually made him the richest man in Mexico, and at times, the richest man in the world.

When they were both 25, Pérez Simón joined Slim as a partner in starting the investment banking company Inversora Bursátil. By the time they were 35, Slim had started the Carso group (“Car” for “Carlos,” “So” for his wife “Soumaya”); Pérez Simón held a 30% minority stake, but through Carso, he would become head of the interests and entities we foreigners call “Telmex” (Teléfonos de México), thus joining the global business class of Mexico and getting really, really rich.

And what did he do with his money? He bought art. He was a collector from his early teens; he and his wife, according to one assessment of the collection, could only afford reproductions and “cheap Mexican landscape paintings” when they started out. Current assessments reveal that Pérez Simón owns important, some very well-known, paintings from the 14th century on, although he finds “modern” (i.e., past maybe 1970) art of little interest – too devoid of emotions, too intellectual.

His collection contains any number of notable paintings, including paintings we might consider classically modern (e.g., American Abstract Expressionism). Among the works that arrived in New York City for a 2018 exhibition at Di Donna Galleries, “A Passion for Collecting: Modern Works from the Pérez Simón Collection,” were two he purchased from Christie’s in New York at the equivalent of a fire sale during the 2008 financial meltdown. Of course, for Pérez Simón, “fire sale” means $1,142,500 for Magritte’s Exercices Spirituels and $962,500 for Joan Miro’s Femmes devant la lune.

Less attention is usually paid to Pérez Simón’s collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, except when, in 2014, he sent 52 Victorian-era paintings to Europe. The exhibition started in Paris, went to Rome, then Madrid, and finally England to be exhibited in the London house of Frederic, Lord Leighton, now the Leighton House Museum.

A Victorian Obsession: The Pérez Simón Collection,included five of Leighton’s own works, four of them painted at the Leighton House studio. Named head of the Royal Academy in 1878, Leighton was a social and political success; he was the only artist ever elevated to the House of Lords – unfortunately, he died at home the afternoon of the next day.

Lord Leighton knew and entertained most of the Pre-Raphaelites and the closely allied Victorian classicist painters; his own work falls more on the classicist side. The exhibit was most lauded for its unique combination of Leighton House – a monument to the wealth, status, and eccentric tastes of a successful Victorian artist – with the sensuous, romanticized paintings, which on closer examination, often showed a dark underbelly. One of the most famous paintings of the era, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadena’s The Roses of Heliogabulus, was painted in 1888, when Victorians saw themselves as heirs to the Roman Empire (remember “The sun never sets on the British Empire”?). The painting shows Emperor Heliogabulus (218-22 CE) indulging in his usual debauchery, amidst a deliciously pink shower of rose petals (history says Heliogabulus used cherry blossoms). Only thing is, the rose petals are smothering the guests, every last one of them, to death. Word has it that the painting, the last as you wended your way through Leighton House, was surrounded by the “scent of seven of the world’s most exquisite roses.”

That was enough to set off reviewer Waldemar Januszczak, who blogged that “Droopy damsels in distress take centre stage in A Victorian Expression.” Pointing out that Leighton was only a year older than Manet, who was busy founding French impressionism, Januszczak condemns Leighton and his contemporaries for engaging in “demented escapism.”

While he makes fun of the Mexican billionaire for collecting this particular movement in art, Januszczak makes no mention of the extraordinary breadth of the Pérez Simón collection as a whole.

We all know Carlos Slim is just as dedicated as his longtime friend Pérez Simón in collecting art – don’t worry, they apparently confer in advance so they avoid bidding against each other.