Mexico

Speaking at a Mexico City event to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, President Calderon addressed what he called Mexico’s “culture of machismo,” acknowledging that millions of women face abuse and workplace discrimination despite the passage of laws targeting gender inequities and violence against women.

Earlier this year, Mexico enacted a law obligating authorities to prevent, punish, and eradicate violence against women, but only a handful of states have formally adopted the measure thus far. This week, Calderon signed an additional law aimed at preventing and punishing the trafficking and enslavement of women and children.

Violence against women in Mexico has gained international attention with the largely unsolved murders and disappearances of several hundred young women in Juarez and Chihuahua over the past ten years.

*This article has been posted by Rich Basas both on FPA’s Migration Blog as well as the Mexico Blog this week.
Illegal immigration may be one of the hot button issues for the next Presidential election and will favor neither party in the process. In the Democratic party debates televised widely among American networks this past weekend, two things were made clear. First, immigration will likely be a key issue in the next election, and second, no one has a clear idea on how to handle the situation as there is no clear solution to the problem. This has lead to many candidates being seen as slightly differing on the issue in insignificant amounts with the exception of Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo whose recent campaign commercials make reference “that Islamic terrorists roam free in the United States because of an unsecured border”. 

Read the full article on FPA’s Migration blog here.

 Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA’s Migration blog:

An often unknown issue outside of the local society in any country is the linguistic heritage of the indigenous people of the region. In Latin America these ancient tribal languages take on an added dimension, as many Latin American nations were formed early as independent nations compared to other colonial nations, as well much of the nationalism created at the time and existing today is a mixture of European societies interchanged with reverence with the local ancient civilizations which gives roots to much of the modern heritage of the nations in Latin America.

Unique to the Americas, Mexico’s original inhabitants were made of more than Aztecs and Mayans. In Mexico today much of the population can trace their roots back to one region, and many have parents and grandparents that speak languages that are for the most part unrecognised in the rest of the world and even in much of Mexico. With so few people speaking these local languages, often many are close to becoming extinct. Today, 20 Mexican languages are seen as being threatened.

According to a BBC report this week, one language has all but been abandoned. The “Zoque” language of Ayapan in Mexico has been prematurely abandoned, as the two last speakers of the language have simply decided to no longer speak to each other for personal reasons. This ancient Olmeca language has dialects which are spoken by many in the south of Mexico in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Vercruz states, but all are becoming threatened by extinction.

With more than 350 different languages spoken in Mexico, there is a hope that new speakers of these languages will arise from their families and endure the slow extinction of culture and language associated with the diversity in Mexico. A mostly unknown situation outside of the country as well as in between different Mexican states, the world would do well to preserve as best as possible one of the most ancient civilizations and its linguistic heritage.

 Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA’s Migration Blog:

The Mexican regions of Tabasco and Chiapas this past weekend suffered from yet another global environmental shock with severe flooding causing major evacuations of nearly 28,000 people from Villahermosa and surrounding cities in the Southern regions of Mexico leaving 800,000 homeless. Local and national police and military assisted in the evacuation and provided medical support during the weekend tragedy. While well-coordinated with their best efforts, people were still stranded on rooftops as a common scene from New Orleans now taking place in Southern Mexico. Despite the horrific nature of the natural events, the coordination of Mexican services in aiding their citizenry was commendable and despite the massive evacuations in the region, only one victim was noted in Tabasco and many others in the poorer region of Chiapas.

This past year has seen more than flooding in Mexico. The newly elected President Felipe Calderon has met many environmental challenges since taking office in 2007. The Mexican petroleum sector, one of Mexico’s main sources of revenue, took many environmental hits with two hurricanes passing through the area of the Gulf of Mexico this past summer where much of Mexico’s oil and gas reserves reside. During the first hurricane nearly eight oil workers were killed, and learning from that incident, preparations were made well in advance of hurricanes that followed in the summer of 2007. Fires in Southern California also threatened Mexico two weeks ago where affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles and San Diego were set ablaze.

With the traditional role for the new Presidents of Mexico since the 80’s being the stabilization of the economy, curbing corruption, reducing the drug trade and exporting Mexico’s manufactured goods, the environment has become an unwelcome problem which is dominating much of the attention of the media this year in Mexico and abroad. While pollution and the environment has always plagued Mexico and its cities, it never swallowed up whole municipalities or destroyed Mexico’s oil production and tourist resources. Not since the earthquake in 1985 has a Mexican city seen so much destruction. The only saving grace is that the authorities seem fairly well prepared to deal with such a disaster, or at least better prepared than the Bush Administration during Hurricane Katrina in the U.S.