Tag Archives: November 2023

Huatulco

Who Was That Woman in the Dinosaur Suit?

Leave a comment

By Deborah Van Hoewyk

In December 2022, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) tried to get a constitutional amendment through the Mexican Congress. The amendment would have overhauled the country’s electoral process in such a way that, among many other things, AMLO could have stayed in office after his term ended. (Mexico’s presidents serve a single six-year term.) While AMLO’s constitutional amendment failed, his party, MORENA, continued the effort to reform elections through legislation. (See Randy Jackson’s article elsewhere in this issue on Mexican political parties and coalitions.)

Enter the Opposition

During discussions of the proposed legislation, a lime-green, eight-foot dinosaur took the speaker’s podium in the senate chamber: “Today we introduce the ‘Jurassic Plan,’ … a plan that would bring back ‘the dinosaurs’ of the PRI.” The Institutional Revolutionary Party held unilateral power in Mexico from 1929 to 2000 – at least occasionally through elections deemed fraudulent. The green monster implied that supporters of changing Mexico’s electoral process were out of date, out of touch, and just possibly corrupt.

Inside the dinosaur suit? Senator Bertha Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, now 60, who was elected to the Senate in 2018 through proportional representation for the PAN party (National Action Party), and re-elected for the PRD party (Party of the Democratic Revolution). (Three-quarters of Mexico’s senators represent a particular place, one-quarter of the senators proportionally represent the political parties).

There are TWO women running for president in Mexico, and Senator Gálvez is the “other woman” – an article on the better-known candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, appears elsewhere in this issue. Gálvez is the candidate of the opposition coalition Frente Amplio por México (Broad Front for Mexico), which comprises the PAN, the PRD, AND THE PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). Sheinbaum is AMLO’s protégé, and is the candidate of the ruling coalition, Juntos Hacemos Historia (Together We Make History), made up of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM).

Who Is Xóchitl Gálvez?

Born in Tepatepec, Hidalgo, Gálvez is mostly Otomi – her father was Otomi, and her mother was part Otomi (the Otomi were the earliest indigenous people to appear in the Mexican highlands, around 8000 BCE). Reportedly, she grew up poor, selling tamales in the street or Gelatina de Tres Leches, a “Mexican Jello” dessert, in the market – depending on who’s telling the story. More to the point, her education and work history focus on digital technology.

Gálvez studied computer engineering at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and worked as a computer help tech at a call center before returning to UNAM as a research assistant. She finally earned her degree in Computer Engineering in 2010, at the age of 47. In the meantime, she was a programmer and then a systems analyst at INEGI (Mexico’s census bureau); she also served as director of telecommunications at Mexico’s World Trade Center.

In 1992, she set up High Tech Services, a company that developed projects that deployed digital technology to design intelligent buildings, increase energy savings, automate processes, and support security and telecommunications installations. In 1998, she founded Operation and Maintenance for Intelligent Buildings (OMEI). She was named one of the 100 Global Leaders of the World’s Future at Davos in 1999; in 2000, one of the 25 Latin America’s Business Elite by Business Week.

Interviewed by Bloomberg.com news service in 1998, Gálvez said that, amid rapid growth of young entrepreneurial companies, including her own, inequality became an issue for her. “I realized we were creating two Mexicos – one for people with dollars, and one in which people had nothing. The have-nots weren’t going to progress at all if they didn’t have proper nutrition.”

She set up the Foundation for the Future (Fundación Porvenir), which distributes food supplements to indigenous children suffering from malnutrition and works on supporting women in indigenous communities. Gálvez believes that the private sector should work to lessen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

In her late thirties, Gálvez became interested in politics as another way to strengthen Mexican society. Under President Vicente Fox – the 2000 candidate who overturned the PRI’s unbroken hold on the presidency – she headed up the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI). In 2010, she was the runner-up for governor of Hidalgo; in 2015, she was the PAN candidate for mayor of Hidalgo, and won. She had served for nearly three years when she ran for the Senate.

Can She Win the Presidency?

Probably not. Apparently, though, the dinosaur stunt stuck in AMLO’s craw. He has definitely increased her name recognition. Mexican presidents are not allowed to comment on candidates for office, particularly when they are running to succeed that president.

In late Spring of 2023, when it became apparent that Gálvez was the likely presidential candidate of the Broad Front coalition, AMLO began castigating her in his daily mañaneras (two-hour press conferences – what national president has time to gab with the press for two hours a day?). According to CNN online (July 23, 2023), he’s called her a “wimp,” a “puppet,” and “employee of the oligarchy.” He has said she didn’t grow up poor; he has released private financial information on her businesses and said their contracts are corrupt. (Gálvez has pointed out that some of those contracts are with the Mexican government.)

The National Election Institute (INE) has ordered AMLO to stop attacking Gálvez; the order has not taken effect, and you should note that the INE is also under attack by AMLO. El Financiero, Mexico’s Wall Street Journal, has said “AMLO is obsessed with Senator Gálvez,” and other commentators have joked that AMLO is the Senator’s campaign manager.

There is no doubt that AMLO’s ill-founded attacks have raised her profile to within striking distance of Sheinbaum. It’s not clear whether that’s enough, but it has definitely put her on the national stage for some time to come. Remember, it took AMLO himself three tries to get elected.

Huatulco

COTTON: Politics and Production in Mexico

Leave a comment

By Julie Etra

Did the Mexican Revolution start with a prohibition on “underwear”?

Cotton, Coercion, Morality, and Modernization

Porfirio Díaz, the 33rd president of Mexico, was a complicated and controversial character; by the end of his seventh (and last) term, many considered him a dictator whose policies led directly to the Mexican Revolution. His successive administrations focused on modernization, economic development, and trying to “Europeanize” Mexico.

In the late 19th century, Díaz prohibited men from wearing the traditional white cotton clothing known as calzón de manta. This very Mexican clothing originated in pre-Hispanic times, particularly in the warmer regions of Mexico. It consists of loose-fitting, long-sleeved white shirts and pants, woven from 100% cotton and often tied with a colorful red or blue belt. The design promoted cooling airflow next to the body, and Porfirian administrators saw it as peasant underwear – immoral and definitely not modern.

Calzón de manta was worn particularly by campesinos (rural farmers), and Díaz associated these clothes with the backward, uneducated, and unrefined lower classes; from his perspective, calzón de manta symbolized a Mexico that prevented social and economic growth. Some urban communities, including Guadalajara, required that men arriving from the countryside remove their calzon de manta and rent more appropriate pants, including a type of denim, before entering the city.

Historian Florencia Gutiérrez, Ph.D., of the Colegio de México, ties the prohibition on calzón de manta to the Porfiriato’s concern with eliminating alcoholism and improving personal hygiene; as for calzado (footwear), huaraches were bad, too.

All about Cotton

But cotton, it turns out, is not just a peasant fabric despised by 19th-century elites. Cotton is called algodón in Spanish; the word is ultimately derived from the Arabic name al-qutun. Cotton is known as ixcaxíhuitl in Náhuatl, and taman, piits’ in Mayan.

The scientific name for the species cultivated in the western hemisphere is Gossypium hirsutum; its origin and evolution may be parallel to that of Gossypium barbadense, a cotton that emerged near eastern Sudan in the Middle Nile Basin around 5000 BCE.

The first cultivated cotton fabric of the species G. barbadense appeared around 3000 BCE in the Indus River Valley (present-day Pakistan). Around 2500 BCE, Chinese, Egyptian and South American civilizations begin weaving cotton fabrics. Although Mexico claims to be the origin in the western hemisphere, the oldest cotton fabric was found in Huaca Prieta, an archeological site in Peru, and dated to about 6000 BCE. It is hypothesized that Huaca Preita is the western hemiphere’s site of domestication; cotton seeds and rope dating to about 2500 BCE have also been found in Peru.

Some of the oldest cotton bolls (the mature flower) were discovered in a cave in the Tehuacán Valley in Puebla, Mexico, dating to about 5500 BCE. By 3000 BCE, cotton was being grown and processed in Mexico and the southern United States (the town of Algodones on the Arizona-Mexico border is currently dedicated to dental tourism). In the 1700s, cotton was grown in the Keres and Tiwa native American pueblos in southern Arizona, then sold to other pueblos. Drought and lack of arable land, combined with raids by the Apache led to the demise of cotton cultivation in the area.

Columbus found cotton growing in the Bahama Islands in 1492, and by 1500, cotton was known generally throughout the world. In the United States cotton is said to have been planted in Florida in 1556 and in Virginia in 1607. By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia.

Cotton’s Cousin – the Lovely Hibiscus

Cotton is closely related to hibiscus and they both reside in the mallow family, Malvaceae, which also includes the common hollyhock (Alcea rosea), globe mallows (Sphaeralcea), and checker mallows (Sidalcea).

Hibiscus plants are tropical ornamental shrubs, common around Huatulco, and one of my favorites, given all its varieties and showy flowers. Hibiscus is not native to Mexico, with India and Africa the disputed origins. However, we do have a beautiful native with sealed petals, Malvaviscus arboreus, found along trails and the forest edge. According to a 2007 article in the Boletín de la Sociedad Botánica de México (Bulletin of the Botanical Society of Mexico), the Malvaceae family comprises 2.7% of all species in the Huatulco National Park, with 11 genera and 18 species. (You can learn more from Diagnóstico de los Recursos Naturales de la Bahía y Micro-cuenca de Cacaluta (Assessment of the Natural Resources of the Bay and Micro-Basin of the Cacaluta River), available at the UMAR bookstore for 258 pesos).

The Malvaceae family also includes Hibiscus sabdariffa, aka flor de jamaica, whose fragrant and sticky calices are steeped to make the delicious beverage, agua de jamaica; this plant, however, is native to Africa, having found its way through trade routes to the West Indies and on to the tropics of Mexico and Central America.

Much to my irritation, hibiscus is also a favorite food of iguanas, and in my stubbornness, I continue to replant them and try to protect the younger plants, usually to no avail. I sometimes catch the athletic reptiles devouring the flowers and tender shoots. Our friend Juan just laughs at me, gestures, and points at his stomach, indicating that they make a fine stew and medicinal soup, at least the black and white iguanas.

Mexican Cotton Today

Today, all cotton is obtained from four domesticated species; of these, the Mexican highland cotton (G. hirsutum) comprises 90% of world production. Countless traditional Mexican clothes – way more than calzon de manta – and fabrics are woven from cotton. It is also used in the production of rope/twine, paper, banknotes, cooking oil, packaging, cosmetics, hammocks, and even livestock feed.

Cotton production in Mexico occurs primarily in the border states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and the centrally located Durango. Cotton requires both water and some fertilizer, along with a warm climate and full sun – these northern Mexico states provide ideal growing conditions. In 2021 approximately 164,000 hectares were under production, with the primary market being the U.S., followed by El Salvador.

In terms of world production, India and China vie for producing the most cotton worldwide, with India in the lead for the moment, followed by the U.S., Brazil, and Australia. In the 2018-19 growing season, Mexico was the world’s 9th-largest producer, but as Mexico has outlawed genetically modified (GM) cotton seed and the herbicide glyphosate, it has dropped back to 13th in worldwide cotton production. Press reports indicate that some Chihuahuan cotton farmers are looking for alternative crops, because non-GM cotton seeds don’t produce well enough to be profitable.

Mexican Cotton for Your Home

For excellent quality hand-woven cotton tablecloths, napkins, bedspreads, etc., you can look in any number of weaving shops in La Crucecita, mostly in the south end of town – for example, Casa Textil Escobar is located on the corner of Cocotillo and Bugambilia, while Textil Arte Huatulco is closer to the central square, at Flamboyan 116.