OPENING MEXICO
The Making of a Democracy.
By Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon.
WHEN the Aztec earth mother Coatlicue told her 401 children -- the stars and moon -- that she was pregnant with the sun, they cut off her head in a jealous rage to keep their brother from being born. The Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli emerged nevertheless, fully grown at birth, armor clad and vengeful. He decapitated the moon, banishing her head and the stars to the night sky.
''Opening Mexico,'' Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon's sweeping account of a nation's struggle for democracy, takes this tale as emblematic of power in Mexico, ''of jealous violence countered by vengeance; of mob insurrection quelled by the ascent of a single awesome ruler, more feared than loved.'' Herein lies the deepest challenge to the opening of Mexico to political and economic change: the fear that without an authoritarian leader, an unruly populace will destroy the nation.
This fear explains the grip that the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, held over Mexico for seven decades of essentially one-party rule. The party was created in 1929 after two decades of chaos prompted by the overthrow of the dictator Porfirio Díaz and the failed presidency of the gentle Francisco Madero. In his quixotic attempt at democracy, Madero made the fatal error of failing to shoot his enemies before they shot him.
''Opening Mexico'' is equal in ambition and scope to ''Distant Neighbors,'' the monumental 1985 account by Alan Riding, like Preston and Dillon a former Mexico correspondent for The New York Times. Riding wrote in broad strokes, organizing his material thematically. By contrast, Preston and Dillon have filled in the spaces with the raw, vibrant details of the lives of contemporary Mexicans. At times, readers might wish for a bit -- though not too much -- more analytical elaboration of the type that Riding doled out so generously. Yet Preston and Dillon more than make up for this minor shortcoming with their classic, nuanced storytelling.
Indeed, the difference in styles mirrors the times: Riding described the Miguel de la Madrid administration, when Mexico still seemed unable to break out of a closed system. Preston and Dillon have taken on a Mexico bursting at the seams, where many previously hidden realities are now out in the open.
In 2000, Mexicans elected Vicente Fox by a landslide, kicking out the PRI. This extraordinary event took place as Latin America was losing faith in democracy. According to the Chilean research firm Latinobarometro, the number of Latin Americans believing that democracy is the best form of government fell from over 60 percent in the late 1990's to just 48 percent in 2001. Mexico was one of the few countries where support for democracy rose.
The stakes were high for Fox, an outspoken former Coca-Cola executive from the National Action Party, or PAN. So were expectations, despite the odds: the new president faced entrenched corruption, a bureaucracy filled with PRI stalwarts, a justice system undermined by drug traffickers and institutions so dependent on the PRI that the lower legislative house had no procedures for apportioning committees when the PRI did not hold a majority.
Given these obstacles, Mexicans soon became disillusioned with their new government. A recent Latinobarometro poll has shown that more Mexicans approved of their ''democracy'' in 1996 -- under the PRI -- than in 2003. By Preston and Dillon's account of how Mexico got here, any other result would have been a surprise, for the biggest obstacle to a democratic future for Mexico remains its authoritarian past. The authors cite the Mexican intellectual Carlos Fuentes, who has said that the present is merely the accumulation of frustrated goals of the past: ''There is no single time: all of our times are alive, all of our pasts are present.''
Perhaps Mexico's most powerful collective memory is of the Oct. 2, 1968, massacre, when government troops fired on a crowd of citizens protesting the policies of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. The massacre took place, fittingly, at a plaza commemorating the Tlatelolco battle in which the Spanish conquistadores defeated the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc. Preston and Dillon are particularly good at showing how the events of Tlatelolco became a living presence in Mexico's struggle for democracy over the following three decades.
Aztec mythology held that the world was created and destroyed four times before its current incarnation, which an earthquake would destroy in turn. In a sense, the 1985 earthquake that devastated Mexico City did destroy a world -- that of a government many Mexicans believed could never be cracked open. The quake literally uncovered evidence of Mexico's repressive past, seven corpses that medical examiners found to have been tortured. Buildings near the 1968 massacre site trembled, and when one of them collapsed, neighborhood residents created a citywide citizens' movement to protest the government's failure to help them.
Similar movements brought about change on a larger scale. In 1988, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas -- named for the last Aztec king and the son of the ruling party's first leader -- embodied the opposition's hopes in the closest presidential election ever. When the PRI declared its candidate the winner after huge and obvious fraud, Cárdenas responded with calm rather than violence. His decision, as Preston and Dillon show, would play a pivotal role in breaking a cycle of destruction and despair.
President Carlos Salinas liberalized the economy and made gestures toward political opening. Yet he relied unabashedly on autocratic methods that eventually destroyed his legacy. When opposition parties amassed evidence of fraud in state elections, for example, Salinas appointed ''compromise'' candidates, pretending to support democracy while handpicking 60 percent of Mexico's governors.
In 1994, the presidency passed to the PRI technocrat Ernesto Zedillo. He courageously set about to reform Mexico, despite growing opposition from the party dinosaurs who mocked him as a weakling. Zedillo's first challenge -- a hangover from Salinas -- was an economic crisis; foreign reserves were fleeing the country, which forced him to make a humiliating devaluation. He then arrested his own drug czar, Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, for colluding with narcotraffickers, just nine weeks after the United States' antidrug chief had heralded Gutiérrez as ''a guy of unquestioned integrity.''
Preston and Dillon give Zedillo ample and well-deserved credit for being the architect of many of the political reforms that led to the dramatic opening that swept Fox into power. Yet their portrait of the mild-mannered, Clark Kentish president is oddly contradictory -- or not so oddly, considering that one of Latin America's enduring mysteries is its ability to accommodate opposing realities simultaneously. ''Zedillo, in his self-imposed remove, had little understanding of how dysfunctional the PRI system had become,'' they write, even as they document his herculean efforts to change it. They take him to task for being a reformer of institutions, not of individuals, even as they present the struggles of many courageous individuals inside and outside the government who pushed to change the institutions.
Indeed, Preston and Dillon's central explanation of why Mexico finally cracked open lies in the momentum created by such individuals, both mighty and meek, who took on a system that was decaying from within. And this is where ''Opening Mexico'' truly shines.
Intellectuals -- Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Enrique Krauze -- repeatedly called for reform. Josefina Ricaño, the wife of a wealthy businessman whose son was kidnapped and murdered, channeled her grief and rage into a citizens movement that in 1997 united Mexicans across class and color lines to protest crime. On the border, the labor leader Julia Quiñónez fought for the rights of workers in American-owned factories. In 1999, the grandson of a general involved in the Tlatelolco massacre agreed to publish his late grandfather's memoirs uncovering the truth.
These stories are Mexico's present and future. For if there is despair in a long history of tragedy, there is also great reason for hope in the lives of the many Mexicans chronicled here who have uncovered secrets and forced change, defying the legend of Huitzilopochtli.
Yakima border agent standing firm Kent Lundgren wants us to pay more. He thinks there should be higher prices on our produce, on new roofs for our houses, on motel rooms. All of that, the Yakima resident says, will cost us less in terms of societal ills. Why? Because it will help curb unlawful immigration, Lundgren maintains. "And illegal immigration is having a pernicious effect on the body politic," he says. As may be obvious, Lundgren is not a gray zone kind of guy. His philosophy was honed by more than 30 years of working for the U.S. Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, agencies that were absorbed into Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Interestingly, Lundgren was also influenced by a man who saved his life -- a man who had probably crossed the Mexican border illegally. But that incident, while it left him eternally grateful to the Latino man, has not altered his views on unsanctioned immigration. According to those who know Lundgren, such as Alfonso Pineda, the resident agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE Investigations office in Yakima, "he's very bright and very committed as a citizen." And, notes Buck Brandemuehl of Temple, Texas, who headed the U.S. Border Patrol for six years, "Kent is a straight shooter; what you see is what you get." Lundgren, 62, began as a 22-year-old border agent in El Paso, Texas, in 1968. A dangerous job then, it's far worse now, he says. And busier. In that era, if agents apprehended 1,000 people a month trying to enter the United States illegally, it was considered a deluge. "Now, it's a thousand during a shift," he says. Lundgren also served as an agent or investigator in Miami, Alaska, Michigan, Colorado, Seattle and Puerto Rico. Eventually, his career path led to Yakima, where he headed the INS office from 1985 to 1992. After Lundgren retired, he and his wife, Sherrie, moved back to Yakima in 2006 because it was the first place that felt like home. After years of patrolling borders and investigating crimes, he's developed a deep-felt position about U.S. immigration policies. And he doesn't like what he sees. "The unregulated immigration that's been permitted for three decades is a bigger threat to the country than illegal drugs," he asserts. That's a particularly vehement statement considering his belief that illegal drugs are eminently destructive. According to Lundgren, the country's borders, north and south, must be secured because we simply don't know who is crossing them. But that can't happen until economic factors are resolved, he says. That means decreasing what he calls an oversupply of labor in the United States. Wages are depressed because too many people will work too cheaply, he says. Lundgren argues there are some 14 million underemployed Americans who would take jobs that undocumented workers are reportedly doing now if they were paid more. But agriculture industry insiders don't buy it. Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League, says Lundgren is well-meaning but unrealistic. "When he asserts that American citizens are available in sufficient numbers to do agricultural field work, he bases his solution on wholesale changes in unemployment and welfare systems which are much, much bigger issues that just raising wages." It would take a boost to at least $20 an hour, Gempler guesses, to interest citizens working seasonally and more for permanent ones. "There's a price, but I think it's very, very high," Gempler says. It irritates Lundgren when people argue that Americans won't do agricultural jobs or work as hotel housekeepers. "That's a contemptible statement that sets my teeth on edge. Americans have always done that work," he says. Lundgren mentions two acquaintances who do construction work in Seattle. Five years ago they were earning $17-$18 an hour; now it's about $11. That's due to too many workers flooding across the border from Mexico, he says. But, if an employee could earn $15 an hour, plus benefits, picking fruit, he thinks farmers would have no trouble finding documented workers. "There are Americans out there desperate for jobs, and we're cheating them," Lundgren argues. Nor would there be a deleterious effect on prices, he predicts. He cites a 2004 study by a University of California-Davis professor, Philip Martin, demonstrating that a 40 percent increase in agricultural wages would take $9 a year out of the average family's food budget. Likewise, from his research, Lundgren has calculated that a 50 percent increase in housekeeping wages at a hotel would raise the price of the room about 1 percent. One benefit of employing people who live in the country legally is "the money stays here," he says, noting $25 billion a year in wages are sent to Mexico. "I'm not trying to penalize Mexico," Lundgren says. "I just want to make sure everyone here is taken care of first." He admits that U.S. businesses are not going to embrace his ideas about increasing wages with open arms, but he emphasizes that employers need to be part of the solution. "There'll be a lot of screaming and squalling from employers, but we'll develop a new paradigm -- I hate to use this word -- for employment here." Lundgren is also critical of the Mexican government for not developing its economy. "I would submit that these are the very people (the undocumented workers here) who should go back because Mexico needs them to build their economy." Not surprisingly, he's no fan of amnesty or giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. They should return home, he says, but he wouldn't order them to leave in 30 days ("This is America, we're not going to do that") nor would he round people up and herd them into buses. If jobs, benefits and credit disappear, people will, too, he believes. Acknowledging that many people would be returning to impoverished nations, he remains undeterred. "Is it our responsibility to be a safety valve?" Still, he has poignant memories from his years patrolling the border that put a human face on the immigration issue. The incident that most profoundly affected him occurred in 1971 when he spotted a young man hanging onto a railroad car leaving El Paso. Lundgren was suspicious that the man had slipped illegally across the border and was catching a train ride north. Lundgren jumped on the train himself, grabbing the running irons on a grain hopper car. But his feet slipped, and he was left dangling by his hands with no leverage. As the train picked up speed, the man edged toward him. "I reached for my gun because I figured he was going to push me off, so I'd better kill him before he killed me," Lundgren recalls. But the man didn't. He smiled, clamped his hands over the agent and pulled him up onto the car and safety. "He could have killed me, and no one would have ever known," says Lundgren. It was a moment of humanity he's never forgotten. He let the man go without pursuing him. "I said 'Thank you, and have a good life.'" Even though he's carried that memory with him for decades, and knows he owes his life to the man, he separates the incident from what he sees as the larger issue of unchecked immigration. For instance, although sympathetic with undocumented workers here who have American-born children, he wouldn't offer them amnesty. Lundgren insists we can't make exceptions. "Otherwise, millions would stay. Every case can be made appealing." Immigration laws were enacted to protect national security, public health and safety and the domestic labor market, he explains. "Yet we ignore them at our peril and we pay the price." Although not a member, he thinks the Minuteman group -- that watches for people slipping across the border -- is doing valuable work. "They do have some nut cases, but most aren't racist by any means," Lundgren believes. Because he feels deeply that the country has slipped into a morass due to unenforced immigration laws, he founded and is current chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers. The group, formed two years ago, is dedicated to educating the nation's leaders and citizens about immigration laws. Fellow member Brandemuehl, who was chief of the U.S. Border Patrol from 1980-86, says that Lundgren performs an important service by giving former agents a forum to be heard. "Like most of us, he sees what's happening with immigration, and he's not sure people see the full magnitude of it." "We all admire him," Brandemuehl adds. "He's quite a patriot and his integrity is above reproach." When Lundgren first came to Yakima in 1985, he expected to focus on pursuing undocumented workers in agriculture. Instead, he discovered that the Valley had become a hub for cocaine, heroin and marijuana distribution. "My highest priority here became drugs. We put a lot of people in jail," he recalls. "My two bosses in Spokane and Seattle leaned on me to go out to the packing houses, but I stared them down. As long as people were selling drugs here, that's what we were going to follow." Pineda, now head of ICE Investigations in Yakima, worked here for Lundgren from 1988-1992 and remembers, "We absolutely had success against drug traffickers when Kent was here." Pineda echoed many of Brandemuehl's comments about the retired agent's group, noting it reflects what Lundgren believes is right. "He has no personal agenda, and there's no money in it for him," Pineda explains. "It shows that he loves his country." Lundgren is acutely aware that many people will fiercely disagree with his views. And that's fine with him. "If someone wants to argue with me, I'll argue all day long," he says. "I'm a liberal when it comes to freedom of speech."
Ex-border agent says America must stand firm against illegal immigration
GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic Kent Lundgren, a former border patrol agent and current president of a national organization of retired agents, believes that American jobs should go to Americans and not undocumented workers. If wages for agriculture work such as fruit picking were boosted Americans would be willing to do that work, he says.
One Hidalgo County community won't escape border fence
LOS EBANOS, Texas — From a rocking chair on her back porch Aleida Flores Garcia traced the path government border fence surveyors took last week across the park she and her husband carved out of the scrub behind their stucco home.
A month ago, it sounded as though Los Ebanos and every other Hidalgo County community along the Rio Grande could breathe easy. There was a compromise that would modify levees to double as border walls making fencing on private property unnecessary.
"You won't have any kind of fencing in Hidalgo County," County Judge J.D. Salinas said on Feb. 8, when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the plan.
Garcia, 48, was relieved. "I said, 'oh great, I'd rather have a levee than a fence.'"
Then she realized there were no levees on this small fist of land surrounded on three sides by the Rio Grande. She knew the fence would some day come to Los Ebanos.
Salinas came to the same realization weeks later.
"Nobody really talked about Los Ebanos," Salinas said this week as several Los Ebanos property owners appeared in federal court to fight condemnation lawsuits. "I guess everybody was kind of surprised."
The Rio Grande is Los Ebanos' identity. The unincorporated community of about 400 residents is best known for having the only hand-pulled ferry crossing any U.S. border.
There is a post office, a pink community center, St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church and houses — some appearing more inhabited than others — lining streets that run at odd angles.
The Rio Grande is the only reason anyone goes to Los Ebanos, to cross it three cars at a time or to barbecue on its banks.
On Easter weekend families spend the day at the river, returning to land passed down through the generations.
Garcia expected a good turnout at La Paloma Ranch, which bears her father's nickname and means "dove," this weekend. She hoped it wouldn't be the last Easter families can reach the river through the land passed down by her grandmother, where she was born and raised.
Garcia strongly opposes the border fence. Its intermittent segments will not stop or deter illegal immigrants as Washington hopes, she said. The money would be better spent on more border agents.
She eventually signed a waiver allowing surveyors temporary access to her property, but made it clear she was not giving permission for fence construction.
Garcia, who works for the school district, thought of retiring at the end of the year to work full time on the ranch. She envisions families barbecuing in the park she can see from her porch, spiking over the volleyball net, riding the seesaw.
Bit by bit over seven years, she and her husband, Jorge Garcia, have been clearing land. There is a dirt track through heavy scrub and cactus to the river. At a clearing, is an unfinished boat ramp Jorge Garcia is building in his spare time.
The Garcias imagine a large palapa, or thatched-roof pavilion, nearby that would some day host country bands and fishing tournaments. There are already some benches along the river where people have camped.
"That land is mine, but it's actually going to belong to the Mexican side," Garcia said. Her uncle's land next door could all end up on the other side of the fence.
Fence planners have said there will be access gates in the segments so that property owners can reach land on the other side, but where those gates will go remains unknown.
Barry Morrissey, a spokesman with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that a fence is still planned at Los Ebanos. "That was not included when the county approached us" about modifying the levees, he said, adding that the historic Los Ebanos ferry should not be affected.
Congress has mandated that there be 670 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing across the border with Mexico by the end of the year. South Texas property owners have been the most resistant. While a federal judge handling the cases in the Rio Grande Valley has listened to property owners concerns and urged the government to work with them, he has made it clear that the government has the authority to take the land.
One of America's Most Important Issues
Secure The Border
1. Border Fence and National Guard: Secure the border, including completing construction of the 700 mile southern border fence required by the Secure Fence Act, construct more miles if needed, and keep the National Guard on the border until it is secured.
2. Border Prosecutions: Deter illegal entry by expanding the already successful Zero Tolerance Prosecution Policy (Operation Streamline) from 3 to all 20 border sectors, and support statutory mandatory minimums for the crimes of illegal entry, reentry, and reentry after deportation for any felony
3. Control Visa Overstays: Give our immigration system integrity by completing the 10-year past due exit portion of The USVISIT (Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) system and eliminate other weaknesses in the system so that future visa overstays can be identified
End The Magnet At The Workplace
4. Enforceable Employer Verification System: End the jobs magnet by requiring all employers to use the electronic verification system to check the legal status of all employees, reduce fraud by decreasing the number of documents employers must accept to prove legal status, and offer cooperating employers a safe harbor
5. Biometric ID Card For All Non-Citizens: Require a biometric (fingerprint encoded) identification card for all aliens authorized to work
6. Eliminate Identity Theft: Increase security for legal workers by requiring social security earnings statements to list all employers reporting wages under an individual's social security number so that fraudulent use of that number can be spotted and continue using "no match notices" as evidence that employers knew they were employing an illegal alien under a social security number issued to someone else
State and Local Law Enforcement
7. Form Effective Partnerships: Form effective immigration enforcement partnerships with state and local law enforcement by clarifying their authority to enforce federal immigration laws, deputize state and local officers in every state (through the 287(g) program), offer a basic training course for all state and local officers, and compensate state and local entities for immigration enforcement related expenses
8. Federal Response To State And Local Arrests: Promptly evaluate the 27% of prisoners that are non-citizens so that illegal alien criminals can be processed and deported at the end of their sentences, and implement a mandatory federal response to state and local law enforcement when they apprehend an illegal alien for a DUI, child abuse crime, or any felony
9. End Catch and Release: Put an end to the existing policy that allows illegal aliens caught inside our country to be released on bail after their arrest while they await their initial court appearance
10. List Illegal Aliens In the NCIC: Immediately expand the National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) Immigration Violators File to include: (A) aliens against whom a final order of removal has been issued; (B) aliens who have signed a voluntary departure agreement; (C) aliens who have overstayed their authorized period of stay; and (D) aliens whose visas have been revoked
Discourage Sanctuaries
11. Deny Federal Funds: Encourage compliance with Federal law by implementing a reduction of at least 10% of discretionary federal grants and highway funds to cities, states, universities, and other entities that undermine Federal law by implementing sanctuary policies, issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens, or offering education benefits to illegal aliens (such as in-state tuition) that are not available to all legal residents and citizens
12. Close Financial Loopholes: Rewrite the Treasury regulations to close the loophole that allows illegal aliens to open U.S. based bank accounts
Improve The Legal Immigration Process
13. Replace Visa Lottery and Chain Migration with Merit Based Immigration System: Eliminate the visa lottery program and change current preference categories that guarantee automatic entry for aging parents and extended family members and replace it with a system that fairly and objectively evaluates at least 50% of applicants based on characteristics such as education, skills, English ability, and age?
14. Pathway to Citizenship: Take a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens off the table
15. Seek Necessary Authority: Ask Congress for necessary laws or funds to execute these commitments
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