Tag Archives: mexico

2020

Badass Women of Mexico

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By Renee Biernacki

The status of women in Mexico has changed dramatically over time. As long as Mexico was an overwhelmingly rural country, economic and social opportunities were not possible for women. Today, there are many awe-inspiring Mexican women who have made daily sacrifices for human rights, meaningful art, and charitable contributions. Here are four of the badass women you should know.

Hermilda Galinda, a journalist and Mexican feminist who advocated for women’s rights, is considered the Mother of the Mexican feminist movement. In the early 20th century, she used her writing as a weapon against patriarchy and to initiate a movement to transform Mexico’s sexist (“macho”) way of thinking. She created La Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman), a magazine that discussed the Catholic church and its views and methods of control. She challenged social norms that expected women to remain in the home. Her radical views were especially dangerous, but did not stop her from spreading her message. In 1917, she spoke at Mexico’s very first Feminist Congress. Hermilda was greatly criticized and condemned for her beliefs on education for women, sex education in schools, divorce, and birth control. Today this revolutionary feminist is celebrated for making her mark towards a modern and more equal Mexico. Total badass.

Matilde Montoya played an important role in the history of medicine as the first female physician in Mexico. She was ridiculed and described as a reckless and dangerous woman for trying to become a doctor. She began her career as the first official female midwife at the age of 16. In 1882, at the age of 24, she entered the National Medical School in Mexico City, graduating in 1887 at the age of 29 – Mexico’s first female doctor. Later, she got her doctorate in medicine in 1887. Later, she became a surgeon and obstetrician.

Matilde made history that forever changed the course of medicine for women. This was a significant opening of the door for all women interested in studying medicine. By overcoming opposition, Montoya also aided in the social establishment of women’s rights and the movement toward unbiased opportunities in education and employment. Super badass.

Elvia Carrillo Puerto was a Mexican socialist politician and feminist activist. She is credited with starting many feminist leagues focused on numerous tasks promoting women’s rights. Starting in Merida in 1912, her organization led a campaign against prostitution, alcoholism, superstition, fanaticism, and the use of drugs. Elvia aided in the founding of the American Birth Control League now known as Planned Parenthood. After women were permitted the right to vote and hold office, she was elected in 1923 as a member of the state legislature in the Yucatan, the first woman to hold a position of this nature in Mexico. Her tireless dedication to the women’s movement earned her the nickname La Monja Roja (The Red Nun). To honor her contributions to Mexican government, she was officially decorated as a Veteran of the Revolution. Extreme badass.

Norma Romero Vasquez is a founding member of a women’s group in Veracruz called Las Patronas (Patron Saints). Norma, her sisters, and other local women have been helping feed migrants since 1995. The train known as La Bestia (The Beast) passes through a small community in Veracruz at a very high speeds. While passing through, the migrants would yell “Madre, we’re hungry!” Norma decided to devise a plan. As an instinctive act of kindess and charity, she suggested making 30 simple ration packs consisting of rice, beans, and corn tortillas. Daily they would toss the donations to the migrants escaping from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua while heading to the U.S. border atop the train. Now, twice daily, 365 days a year, Las Patronas hands out hundreds of packets of food and water on this very dangerous beast of a train. In 2013, these women were awarded the National Human Rights Prize for their humanity through an act of grace and generosity. Mega badass.

These remarkable women have positively influenced and enriched society. Through their hard work, undeniable courage, dedication, and passion they have led many Mexican women to move forward into a better Mexico.

 

 

2020

What Became of the Yaquis?

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By Brooke Gazer

A tall and athletically built people who valued their autonomy, the Yaquis were never totally subdued by the Spanish. After a peace treaty was agreed upon in 1610, the Yaquis relinquished part of their land in exchange for a guarantee, signed by the King of Spain, acknowledging their ownership of their remaining territory in southern Sonora. At that time, they numbered between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Every Mexican government respected this treaty until Porfirio Díaz came to power.

Coveting their fertile lands, the state of Sonora harassed them, sending soldiers and surveyors into their territory, confiscating bank accounts, and burning the home of their leader. In 1894, the federal government confiscated their best land, giving it to General Lorenzo Torres, head of the Sonoran army.

Over the next few years, thousands of soldiers and ten thousand Yaquis died in battle. In 1898, government troops acquired new improved Mauser rifles, which critically overmatched the poorly armed Yaquis; surrender was imminent. Yaqui leaders were executed, and the remaining Yaquis relocated to a region that was barren desert. Without water it was uninhabitable, causing most families to scatter as wage earners in mines, on railroads, and farms. These people became solid citizens and were considered the best workers in Mexico. The remaining four or five thousand formed bands of fierce rebels who took to the hills. They were hunted down like vermin and soldiers received $100 for the ears of a Yaqui guerilla.

The army’s failure to secure the surrender of “a handful of renegades” prompted an extreme government action and in 1908, notices appeared in American and Mexican newspapers. President Díaz had issued a sweeping order that every Yaqui, man, woman and child, should be gathered up by the War Department and deported to the Yucatán. This was not limited to rebels – it included every living Yaqui, young and old alike.

After John Kenneth Turner heard rumors about the fate of these people, he traveled south to investigate and what he learned was not pretty.

Without warning, soldiers rounded up families and herded them to the port of Guaymas, Sonora, where an exhausting journey over land and sea began. They were stuffed into boxcars or the stinking holds of ships; they were marched over two hundred miles of Mexico’s roughest mountains. Between ten and twenty percent died of exhaustion or starvation along the way. The survivors were sold like livestock. Husbands and wives were torn apart, and children ripped away from their mothers.

On board a ship, Turner learned that over fifteen thousand Yaquis had been transported on that vessel. Speaking first-hand with Yaquis, he heard them lament that they had pled to their employers, unsuccessfully, for their release. He listened as they grieved for wives and children who dropped in the dust and died during the arduous trek across the mountains. He felt helpless when they beseeched him to intervene for their freedom.

The new arrivals were put to work on henequén plantations, where thousands of Mayans had already been enslaved. Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829, but when Turner arrived in the Yucatan in 1908, it was an integral part of the economy.

Semantically, the Mayans were not slaves, they were “debtors.” Professional money lenders lured poverty-stricken Mayans into debt; sometimes the debt included the entire family. They were forced to work under unbearably harsh conditions on large plantations that fueled the rich economy of the region. Once declared a debtor, no one could never buy his or her freedom – the debt continued to grow, and was passed on to future generations.

The masters never considered that they were buying or selling a person, rather they were transferring the debt and the man went with it. However, the amount the man originally owed was irrelevant, and the debt had a market price, just like machinery or cattle.

The government transferred Yaquis to landowners the same way, but at discount prices, and one owner told Turner, “We don’t allow the Yaquis to get in debt to us.” The owner received a photograph and identification papers with each individual; if one ran away, the papers were sufficient for the authorities to return the runaway. The desert terrain of the Yucatan made escape impossible.

This was a miserable existence for both Mayans and Yaquis alike. Both received equally brutal treatment; they were underfed, overworked, and brutally beaten. But It was far worse for the Yaquis; exhausted and starved upon arrival, two thirds died within the first year. The Mayans could at least maintain a semblance of home and family ties. Yaquis were exiled far from home; thrust into a hot, unfamiliar climate; and separated from family and loved ones.

For the newly arrived Yaqui women, life became especially insufferable. The worst barbarity imposed upon each wretched female, who had just been separated from her husband, was to compel her to marry and live with a man of Chinese origin. Chinese men were brought to Mexico as porters, and laborers to build the railroad. It was often a one-way ticket and later, when they fell into debt, they were also enslaved.

The Yaquis had an advanced culture that did not mix with other people, even other indigenous groups. Their religious beliefs combined Roman Catholic teachings with traditional indigenous practices; family and conjugal fidelity were integral parts of their value system. These women did not know the fates of their husbands, but hoped and prayed they had survived. In their minds, they were still married. To take a second husband was repugnant to them, as was mating with men outside their own tribe.

Yaqui women were housed separately from Yaqui men, with a dozen or more in each tiny hut. Fed meager rations, they were locked inside under pitiful conditions. Each week they took the women out, demanding they choose husbands from among the Chinese men. After several refusals, one was chosen for them. Those who resisted were severely lashed.

Many women perished from starvation and beatings, but those who survived and continued their resistance were put into the henequén fields, forced to do the same backbreaking labor as any man. This entailed harvesting two thousand henequén leaves per day and failure to achieve the daily quota resulted in 15 lashes administered by the overseer.

It seems as if the purpose of this atrocity was not only to punish the Yaqui, but to annihilate them altogether. Why else would they separate women from their husbands and force them to mate with men of a different cultural and ethnic background?

Some Yaquis did flee Sonora and avoid capture. They went north to the USA or to other parts of Mexico, and a few continued their resistance in the hills of Sonora. In 1937, President Lázaro Cárdenas granted the surviving Yaquis their own territory with access to irrigation from a newly constructed dam. Mexico’s 2000 census counted 12,467 Yaquis in Sonora plus some in Baja California and Sinaloa. In 1964, those in the USA received a smaller allocation of land and by 2008, they counted 11,324. This may be a sadly reduced number, but in spite of everything, their culture survived.

Much of this information was taken from a book titled Barbarous Mexico (1910), by John Kenneth Turner. This Los Angeles Express Reporter traveled south, posing as a potential land investor, to investigate rumors he had heard about Mexicans being enslaved in the Yucatán. You can read the entire book online with this link:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barbarous_Mexico.

Brooke Gazer operates Agua Azul la Villa,
an oceanview B&B in Huatulco (www.bbaguaazul.com).

2020

Women’s Rights in North America: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

While this issue covers several high-achieving Mexican women, that might create a somewhat misleading portrait about how all women in Mexico are doing. But is the picture of Mexican women that includes femicide, rampant domestic violence, and lives of crushing poverty any more accurate?

Where IS the world on women’s rights?
Women’s rights are human rights – or so say most organizations working on gender equality. Mao ZeDong famously said that women “hold up half the sky,” as he maneuvered his political agenda to maximize their potential in modernizing China. On average, women in Mexico, the United States, and Canada hold up 51% of the sky, but North American women certainly have not achieved anything like an equal share of life’s benefits. We have a long way to go before North American women are working for human, rather than women’s, rights.

Political Rights
The Right to Vote. Without political power, women will still have to petition for rights as if they were privileges to be granted by men. Perhaps the most fundamental political right is the right to vote. Although the Mexican Constitution of 1917, created about two-thirds of the way through the Mexican Revolution, recognized the equality of men and women, women were not granted “full citizenship” until 1937, and the right to vote was not granted until 1953. Canada, due to its relationship with the British Commonwealth, did not have its own constitution until 1982, but most women over 21 who were citizens (i.e., not aboriginal women or women of color) received the right to vote in 1919; most Québécois women achieved the right to vote in 1940, and aboriginal women got the vote in 1960. In 1920, the U.S. granted women the right to vote with the 19th Amendment to its Constitution.

The Right to Hold Office. Perhaps the most important place to achieve equal representation is in a country’s legislature – the place where laws are repealed or enacted. In 2014, after several failed attempts to increase the representation of women, Mexico amended its Constitution to require equal representation in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, making it fourth in the world for women’s legislative power – women hold 51% of the seats in the Senate and 49% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies (numbers 1 – 3 are Rwanda, Cuba, and Bolivia). Without such laws, Canada ranks 61st in the world with women holding about 47% of its Senate seats and about 27% of the seats in the House of Commons. The United States has no quotas either, and is in a three-way tie for 76th place, with women elected to 25% of the Senate seats and about 24% of the seats in the House of Representatives.

Personal Rights
Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has stood for “equal rights for men and women,” but official language was not enough. In 1981, after thirty years of work on the status of women around the world, the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) took effect. Mexico and Canada signed the Convention immediately (July 17, 1980); the United States, however, joined Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Palau, and Tonga, plus the non-state entity of the Vatican, in NOT signing the Convention. (The United States has also failed to amend its Constitution to acknowledge equal rights for women, despite nearly a hundred years of trying.)

CEDAW explicitly identifies a wide range of women’s rights, from bodily integrity to property rights. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international body that tracks how the world is doing on issues of international concern, has identified the three issues most critical to achieving gender equity. The first two involve a woman’s ability to create a sustainable life: inequality of education and employment, and of wages and salaries once she has entered the labor market. The third issue is violence against women.

Education, Employment, and Pay
Perhaps the most telling indicator of gender equality is paid employment in a good quality job that offers the possibility of increasing income and responsibility. Conversely, when a country’s economy depends on low wages, iffy jobs, and unpaid labor in the home to prop itself up, women – and their children – are usually trapped in dead-end, often abusive, situations with little or no hope of escape. The OECD ranks Mexico as having the lowest productivity level in the world, in large part because of the low skill levels of its people (the high school graduation rate is 67%; in Canada, it’s 77%; in the U.S. it’s 85%).

In Mexico, women lag behind men in paid employment – over 80% of Mexican men have paid work, while less than half of women do. The U.S. is about average in terms of women’s paid work, while Canada is above average.

Women’s pay lags 17% behind men’s in Mexico, higher than the international average; both the U.S. and Canada lag further behind (women make 20% less than men).

Unfortunately, over half of the Mexican women who work for pay are working in the informal economy – i.e., off the books, self-employed, or in jobs that probably come and go, so no secure source of income. Although more than half of Mexican men and women work in the informal economy, the negative aspects of insecure employment – unreliable income, hours too short or too long, no social benefits – affect women more than men.

The future does not look rosy for young women – the great majority of whom are single teen mothers; 35% of women aged 15 to 24 are “NEET” (Neither Employed nor participating in any
Education or Training that could lead to paid work). This is nearly double the international average. The chances of lowering the NEET rate for young women is limited by Mexico’s teen pregnancy rate, which is the highest in the world.

Violence Against Women
Violence against Women includes all forms of violence and abuse – physical, psychological, sexual, economic, harassment, trafficking, child marriage, genital mutilation – directed at women because they are women. Obviously, such violence severely constrains a woman’s opportunities for a decent life for herself and her children.

Unfortunately, collecting data on gender-based violence has not yet been standardized, especially in Canada, so we can’t make all comparisons and all numbers are estimates. According to MacLean’s online magazine, Canadian women suffer from domestic violence and femicide, and the rate is going up, but because Canada does not have specific criminal laws separating crimes against women, statistics on violence against women are not collected systematically. Moreover, domestic violence, up to and including rape, is seriously underreported, most sharply so in Canada – data from domestic violence hotlines indicate that only 1 in 5 victims made any kind of police report.

In 2017, almost half (47%) of ALL Mexican women suffered some sort of domestic violence from an intimate partner or family member. Another 39% of ALL Mexican women suffer violence at the hands of strangers. In the United States, over a third of ALL women (36%) experienced domestic violence. OECD estimates that non-indigenous Canadian Police reporting for Canada indicates that indigenous women suffer domestic violence at three times the rate of non-indigenous women. Given the problems in tracking violence against women, the takeaway here is that violence against women is far more prevalent in Mexico than in the countries to the north.

Femicide. The most extreme form of violence against women – femicide, or “mysogynistic murder” – occurs when women are killed because they are women. Various explanations have been offered for femicide in Mexico – the drug cartels don’t want women to resist their inroads, NAFTA changed the relationships between men and women when more women were hired in the maquiladores (factories) built on the Mexican side of the border, men’s attitudes towards women in Mexico make murder all too easy.

In all countries, determining whether the murder of a woman is “femicide” – she was killed because she was a woman – is problematic. Of the 3,142 women murdered in Mexico in 2019, only 795 are being investigated as femicides – activists believe this is way too low. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in its study on gender-related homicides (2019) classified 75% of the murders as femicide.

Starting in 2007, Mexico has had a system of alerts about gender-specific violence; since 2015, alerts have been issued for 18 of Mexico’s 32 states (an area equal to 56% of Mexico). However, there seems to be no common reason for the violence, which makes it seem as if the explanation for femicide is complex and deeply rooted in Mexican culture. Unfortunately, issuing such an alert has not reduced violence against women in general or femicide in particular in the states of Veracruz, Morelos, Mexico, Puebla, Guerrero, or Colima.

2020

Women and Mezcal: Division of Labour between the Sexes

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

It is inaccurate to suggest that mezcal production in Oaxaca is by and large a man’s job or trade and that there are very few palenqueras, that is, artisanal mezcal distillers who are women. The female of the species makes mezcal. Women’s involvement in the process is essentially determined by the same criteria used to understand sex roles in other vocations in rural Oaxaca: strength and stamina, traditional child-rearing, and other household responsibilities.

Palenqueros (using the more generic term for male and female producers of the spirit) typically do not read books or watch YouTube videos to learn how to make the iconic Mexican spirit. They learn from their fathers, their uncles and their grandfathers, just as their relatives before them, over generations. Young girls, just as young boys, begin learning the trade virtually from infancy; watching, helping, and fantasizing their futures as palenqueros while in the course of interacting with their friends and siblings. I frequently witness this acquisition of knowledge.

Customarily women raise families, dating to the hunter and gatherer division of labor in humankind. Mothers remained close to home with the children, gathering fruits, nuts, berries, etc., and preparing meals, while their male partners were off on extended hunting expeditions, requiring that they be fleet of foot, and at times requiring more physical fortitude than women can muster.

With mezcal production, often the fields of agave under cultivation are far from home, and if wild maguey is sought, the palenquero is frequently required to walk a couple of hours into the hills before encountering his bounty. The same holds true for sourcing firewood to fuel ovens and stills. Furthermore, lifting the piñas (heart of the succulent used in production) can require more strength than women exhibit. Although the palenquero will sometimes cut the pinas into smaller pieces while still in the field, whether whole or halved they can weigh hundreds of pounds and must be lifted into trucks or onto donkeys or mules.

Once back at the palenque (the artisanal mezcal distillery), which often adjoins the homestead, women’s work making mezcal begins in earnest, although still subject to their priority obligation of preparing meals and tending to the children. Women are often an integral part of the baking, crushing, fermenting and distilling processes, working alongside and even directing men.

Back at the palenque, the task of cutting the agave into appropriately sized pieces for baking usually falls to men, once again for reasons relating to stamina and strength. Splitting logs and loading the oven with large, heavy tree trunks is typically men’s work as well. But when it comes to filling the oven with stones, wet bagazo (waste fiber from distillation), piñas, tarpaulins and earth, women participate as equals to men.

Even in the face of whatever remnants persist of the perceived macho mexicano, once the rocks in the oven have been sufficiently heated, it is important to second as many helpers both male and female to get the work of filling and sealing the oven so it is airtight.

Women as well as men remove the piñas from the oven once the carbohydrates have been converted to sugars, or caramelized. Later on, in preparation for a subsequent bake, once again individuals of both sexes empty the chamber. The women are the daughters, daughters-in-law, mothers, partners, nieces and granddaughters. I regularly see them all participating. They are as much a part of the process as their male counterparts, including being charged with decision-making.

When crushing the baked agave is done by hand, then yes, almost exclusively it is men who attend to this most arduous task. But the remaining tasks are often shared equally: working the horse; determining when the pieces of maguey have been sufficiently pulverized; loading the receptacles for fermenting, whether they be wooden slat tanks, in-ground lined pits, bovine skins, or something else; and distilling. Women can decide upon the optimum ABV (alcohol by volume) and how to achieve the best possible flavor.

But let’s assume that the palenquera is also charged with typical household chores. including family meal preparation and raising the children, including attending to their health, education and general welfare. She cannot, of course, be reasonably expected to look after all this, as well as partner with her husband in directing and attending to all of the tasks required in mezcal production. However upon hearing the shout or receiving the phone call from her male partner, cousin, son or father, she’s there, as needed.

In addition, she is the one remaining at home in charge of sales. She typically also prepares comida for the men, and in fact it is customary, when the home is not alongside the palenque, for women to bring food and drink for those (men) who are at some stage of producing the spirit.

Economic necessity on occasion dictates that a woman, to almost the complete exclusion of men, might become a palenquera. She plants, tends, cuts and harvests maguey; splits logs’ and crushes by hand. In one case a husband/palenquero died suddenly in a car accident, leaving his wife and four young children. She became a palenquera in the traditional sense, doing everything previously done by her late husband, in addition to raising the children.

In another case a single mother’s two children left home for the US in their late teens, leaving her and her mother as the householders. She had learned mezcal production from her grandfather. Currently she has a reputation for being one of the very few palenqueras who does it all, producing one of the finest mezcals in Oaxaca. She directs her underlings, that is, male cousins and neighbors, as to how to produce mezcal based on her exacting recipe. The foregoing are two exceptions to the tradition of both men and women working together, cooperatively with members of their families and communities.

A shift in paradigm is both warranted and strongly suggested when it comes to our perception of the industry being mainly within the purview of men. Women deserve to have their proper and important place acknowledged in the world of Oaxacan mezcal production.

Alvin Starkman operates Mezcal Educational Excursions of Oaxaca (www.mezcaleducationaltours.com).

2020

What Happened with NAFTA?

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By Jan Chaiken and Marcia Chaiken

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994 and effectively made the US, Mexico, and Canada into a single trading zone without tariffs for many products, or lower tariffs than applied to other trading partners. While the treaty was originally envisioned as a mechanism for creating new employment opportunities and enhancing working conditions and standards, its main impacts were an enormous increase in the amount of goods traded among the three nations and a sudden spurt of Mexican nationals moving to the US for employment (a migration that ended after a few years but left a large residue of Mexican citizens living and working in the US). NAFTA also stimulated the creation of entirely new methods of production between the US and Mexico. US companies export intermediate components to manufacturing companies in Mexico, which assemble the finished product and export it back to the US. As a result, now over 40% of the content of goods imported into the US from Mexico is of US origin. This form of cooperation has helped make US businesses more globally competitive,

Even before he was elected president, Donald Trump declared NAFTA to be the worst trade deal ever made, and after he took office, he initiated renegotiation of the treaty. A revised treaty was signed by the presidents of the US and Mexico and the prime minister of Canada on November 30, 2018, a date chosen specifically because the next president of Mexico, an outspoken opponent of NAFTA, took office the following day. In addition, the Democratic party had already been elected to a majority in the US House of Representatives, but the new members had not yet assumed power to assert their objections to the treaty. This effort by the signers to nail down a new treaty in the face of obvious forthcoming impediments did not succeed, and eventually the trade negotiators returned to the bargaining table. The revised version of the new treaty was ratified by the Senate of Mexico in December 2019 and by the US Congress and President by the end of January 2020. Canada waited for the other parties to act on revisions, and now the ratification process has begun in Canada but may take several months more. The new treaty will take effect 90 days after all three countries have ratified it.
The renegotiated treaty is called USMCA in the United States and T-MEC in Mexico. (The government of Mexico always invents more pronounceable acronyms!.) All told, what are the changes? Despite the bombast and rhetoric that arose from interested parties, the new treaty is remarkably similar to NAFTA. The main effect of enacting a new treaty is to end uncertainty as to whether there will be any treaty at all going into the future – if NAFTA had been simply terminated, the normal operations of many companies would have been thrown into substantial chaos.

Among its changes are a requirement that more components for vehicles be produced in the three countries in order to avoid tariffs, and a provision that 40% of each vehicle must eventually be produced by workers who earn at least $16 US per hour (about 3 times as much as is currently paid to the average Mexican factory worker). Trump has touted this provision as necessarily returning more automobile production to the United States and a subsequent increase in jobs for Americans. But if average wages for Mexican auto workers go up by increasing the salaries of industry administrators, low paid jobs will remain in Mexico and prices for U.S. cars and trucks will noticeably rise.

The treaty also gives US dairy farmers access to a larger proportion of the Canadian dairy market than in the past. In particular, more American cheese, milk and butter can be sold in Canada. Correspondingly US consumers will have access to more Canadian dairy products. Canadian sugar can also be marketed in the U.S.

Perhaps ironically, the most sweeping changes in the new NAFTA were proposed, not by the Trump administration but by Democrats in the US Congress. These included provisions related to new labor laws in Mexico that will allow Mexican workers to form independent unions, prevent forced labor, and have increased control of their contracts. The final USMCA treaty includes benchmarks and inspection protocols that will allow enforcement of the labor provisions. Other late changes to the treaty protect the environment by preventing outsourcing of pollution and related jobs to Mexico, but no specific benchmarks for controlling climate change were included in the renegotiated treaty. The Democrats also won a concession from Trump with a provision change that prevents large drug companies from retaining the rights to a class of extremely expensive pharmaceuticals for ten years and from obstructing the sale of equally effective generic forms of the drugs.

One of Mexico’s main original goals in negotiating a new trade agreement was to update and modernize the list of products so as to include ones that didn’t exist when NAFTA went into effect or that had changed substantially in their nomenclature or mode of manufacture or distribution since 1994. The text of the new treaty covers a variety of digital products and intellectual property rights that were not previously included.

Although the ratification of the new NAFTA provides more certainty in the Mexican, American, and Canadian markets, true to his style of governing by chaos, Trump inserted a sunset provision in the treaty. Any one of the three partner countries can pull out of the treaty six years after all have signed and, after a substantial delay, leave the trading partnership. But, by then, the Trump administration will be over, gone; it is hoped that North America and the rest of the world will be back on track to improving global prosperity rather than serving strictly corporate interests.

2020

The Zapatista Women

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By Jan Chaiken and Marcia Chaiken

The Zapatistas are an organized activist group in the Mexican state of Chiapas, east of the state of Oaxaca and bordering on Guatemala. They perhaps are best remembered for their military occupation of numerous towns in Chiapas and hostile takeover of city squares in 1994 during their march to demand changes from the federal government in Mexico City. Currently, however, they are a peaceable, grassroots leftist movement that works in cooperation with the federal government of Mexico and the state of Chiapas.

The Zapatistas are recognized for developing successful local structures for political, economic, and cultural autonomy. Their adherents are mostly indigenous people (primarily Mayan), although the leader of the movement from the beginning (then known as Subcomandante Marcos) is not indigenous Maya. The Zapatistas went public and began taking control of territory in Chiapas on the day that NAFTA went into effect in 1994, as a symbolic way of emphasizing their opposition to globalization and their anticipation that NAFTA would have deleterious effects on rural and indigenous communities – an assessment which turned out to be basically correct.

From their founding in 1983 until they went public in 1994, the Zapatistas gradually built their membership, organizational structure, and laws that would govern their operations. In December 1993 they enacted their “Revolutionary Law of Women,” which was the foundation for the role of women in their movement. This 1993 law provided that women, without regard to their race, creed, or political affiliation, could hold positions in battle or leadership according to their desire and ability. The law stated that women would have equal pay, access to employment and land; could decide how many children to have; had first preference (along with their children) for medical attention; could select their partners; were not obligated to marry; and were protected by legal provisions against assault and maltreatment.

Although these idealistic assertions seem forward-looking even today, they were in marked contrast with the actual status of indigenous women elsewhere and represent continuing aspirations for activist Zapatista women in their own communities. Elsewhere in Chiapas and many other Mexican states, indigenous women are normally prevented from owning or inheriting land. They are typically forced into arranged marriages at young ages and often have 10 or more children.

Still, at the turn of the millennium, over half of indigenous women had no knowledge of contraception and a larger proportion had no access to contraceptives. Obtaining an abortion was very difficult and, if done, often fatal. As among many other indigenous groups in North America, domestic violence was widespread and the disappearance of many women without explanation was relatively commonplace.

According to historians, the participation of women as Zapatista guerrillas far exceeded their role in any other revolutionary or political movement in Latin America. Two women, Comandanta Ramona and Comandanta Susana, were top-ranking and well-known figures in communicating between the armed forces and the pueblos being run by the Zapatistas. By 2004, women constituted a third of the armed forces of the Zapatistas, and half of the support personnel. The influence of a handful of women in key leadership roles transformed the lives of women in the movement. Working within the Zapatista structure enabled the women to free themselves from the misery of their previous ways of living, to take on a wide range of responsible occupations, to select when and whom they marry, to have 2 to 4 children, and to fight for better conditions of health, literacy, education and justice for their communities, particularly women.

Initially the focus of women’s participation was to support the revolution, but gradually the Zapatistas took on a statewide and national mission of ending economic gender inequality, dismantling patriarchy, fighting violence against women, and investigating the disappearance of women. At the national level in Mexico, the Zapatistas have taken an unwavering anti-capitalist stance and are committed to local solutions to problems. For example, alcohol is prohibited in Zapatista-controlled villages — a measure that has reportedly substantially reduced domestic violence.

Beginning in 2018, the women Zapatistas have expanded their horizons by sponsoring international “gatherings of women who struggle.” Their invitation to participate in the 2019 gathering stated, “We fight against discrimination at home, in the street, at school, at work, on public transportation, against both those people we know and those who are strangers. . . . [Some] want to tell us we’re asking for it, that we are at fault for dying. No, we aren’t simply dying, we are being raped, murdered, cut up and disappeared. Anybody who faults us is sexist, and even women can demonstrate sexist thinking.” They are highlighting and addressing a problem that persists not only in Chiapas, not only in Mexico, but among indigenous women in numerous countries. Activists have established the social media hashtag #MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women) to bring attention to this violence.

In the run up to the 2019 international gathering in Chiapas, the US president issued an executive order to establish a task force on missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives. It stated that there is an ongoing and serious problem of missing and murdered indigenous people in the US, especially women and girls. Federal studies in the US have shown that native women are killed at a rate 10 times the national average. Other studies have made clear that men who rape, assault and murder indigenous women in the US are more likely to be white than Indian. Simply convening a task force to talk about these statistics is unlikely to bring about any change.

Twenty years ago pioneering collaborations between US city police, county sheriffs, tribal police, tribal councils and victim service organizations were making progress toward establishing networks that endangered women could access and escape violence. The amount of federal funds needed to foster these local collaborations was minimal and served primarily to validate and bolster these services. When the US federal administration changed, the funds and focus were withdrawn. It is about time that, heeding the cry of the Zapatista and other indigenous women, federal, state and local governments collaborate to provide access to services so desperately needed to save lives.

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9 Ways to Save the Ocean

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1) Learn all you can. Did you know state and local governments issue seafood contamination warnings and beach closure warnings? Read labels and signs and ask questions. By learning why a beach was closed or why certain seafood is contaminated, you may also learn how to prevent it from happening again. Learn more about the ocean and conservation by reading, watching films, attending lectures, or visiting aquariums and museums. Continue reading 9 Ways to Save the Ocean →