Mexican Senate battles teacher union corruption, votes for education reform

Mexican teachers attack political party offices
Salon.com Apr 24, 2013
A protestor runs past office furniture set to fire by teachers in an attack of a Secretary of Education office, in protest against Mexican President Pena Nieto's education reform project... (AP Photo/Alejandrino Gonzalez)(Credit: AP)


See all posts re education reform in Mexico, teacher strikes and demonstrations.


Mexican Senate passes major education reform
Associated Press
MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
September 4, 2013

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's Senate overwhelmingly passed a sweeping reform of the notoriously dysfunctional public school system early Wednesday, handing President Enrique Pena Nieto an important victory in his push to remake some of his country's worst-run institutions.

The Senate voted 102-22 in favor of a standardized system of test-based hiring and promotion that would give the government the tools to break teachers unions' near-total control of school staffing.

That control includes the corrupt sale and inheritance of teaching jobs, and it has been widely blamed for much of the poor performance of Mexican schools, which have higher relative costs and worse results than any other in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"The inheritance and sale of jobs has ended," Education Secretary Emilio Chuayffet said on Twitter. "Merit is the ideal means of access to, and progress in, a teaching career."

The late-night vote clears a path for Pena Nieto to move forward with a series of even more controversial reforms, including a measure that would violate one of modern Mexico's longest-standing taboos by allowing private investment in the state-run oil company.

But there is potential trouble ahead.

Education advocates say a series of concessions to the smaller of the two main teachers unions undermined the reform's ability to create true change in the national education system.

And despite those concessions, the smaller teachers union continued days of debilitating demonstrations in Mexico City, sending tens of thousands of supporters to shut down the capital's main boulevard and protest outside key government building Wednesday. Thousands attended smaller protests in cities around the country. The union also pledged to throw its support behind a weekend protest against the oil reform by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

"When Congress is rendered void, the only thing that remains is the streets," leftist Sen. Mario Delgado said as a series of his Democratic Revolution Party's objections to specific measures of the reform were rejected in relatively narrow votes.

The education reform initially pitted Pena Nieto against the country's main teachers union — Latin America's largest union and once one of the most important allies of his Institutional Revolutionary Party. The union, known by the Spanish acronym SNTE, fell into line after its head, Elba Esther Gordillo, was arrested on corruption charges in February. She remains jailed pending trial.

A smaller, dissident union known as the National Education Workers' Coordinating Committee, or CNTE, continued protesting and eventually rallied thousands of teachers from poor southern states, paralyzing large sections of the capital for more than a week.

In the end, the CNTE won a series of concessions that help protect its members. Reform advocates called the law an important first step but said much more remained to be done in order to change the system.

"It's not everything we would have hoped for but it's an historic change," said David Calderon, director of the education reform advocacy group Mexicans First. "Of course it's just a change in the rules that still has to be turned into reality."

Much of Mexico's educational dysfunction is attributed to the relationship formed more than a half-century ago between the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the teachers unions, which gained increasing control of the education system in exchange for throwing their strength behind the government in the voting box and on the streets.

Over the years the unions developed a virtual lock on teacher hiring and promotion. Almost every new teacher must go through a union to gain a school assignment, a practice that has spawned notorious levels of corruption, including the sale and inheritance of teaching positions.

Particularly in states with schools controlled by the CNTE, critics say, union influence has transformed schools from educational institutions into mechanisms for extracting funds from the state. The CNTE has become notorious for threatening elected officials with debilitating strikes and marches in order to maintain and increase benefits that make teaching one of the primary sources of legal income in much of rural Mexico.

Mexico today spends a greater share of its budget on education than any other member of the OECD except New Zealand. Out of that budget, the country spends more than 90 percent on staff compensation, again higher than any other member of the OECD. That spending doesn't translate into better results or smaller class sizes, however. Only 47 percent of Mexican children graduate from the equivalent of high school and Mexico also has the OECD's highest student-to-teacher ratio — 25 pupils to every teacher, on average.

Among the benefits ended by the educational reform are payments of more than $100 million a year by some estimates to thousands of teachers who work full-time as union organizers and rarely, if ever, set foot inside a classroom. Education reform groups have found some union representatives earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per semester.

The rest of the reform focuses on reasserting government control by awarding teaching jobs to the highest scorers on a standardized test instead of funneling them through a teachers union, a measure weakened by a series of back-room compromises with the CNTE.

The law maintains union control over the current crop of teaching students by delaying purely test-based hiring for two years. Serving teachers will have three chances to pass an annual performance test. If they fail all three, they will be moved to an administrative job or given the chance to retire instead of being fired. In another compromise, failing teachers can appeal transfers to local labor law magistrates, a measure that reduces federal control in favor of local officials more easily influenced by the unions.

The law was also weakened by a measure that classifies individual teachers' test results as private, personal information, angering reform advocates who said that broached a key promise to empower parents by giving them more information about their children's schooling.

"Obstacles that kept us from having qualified teachers have been removed, but that's not enough to move the positive part forward," said Calderon, the head of Mexicans First. "That requires new study plans, it requires the involvement of universities in teacher training, it requires parents participating more and demanding more."

With the education reform headed to Pena Nieto's desk, still pending are the oil reform; detailed reform of the country's weak tax laws; and strengthening of its telecommunications regulations, which have allowed two families to control most of the multi-billion dollar market while charging prices, particularly for phone service, that are well above global norms.

Here's a plan to resolve the violent teacher standoff at the Zocalo in Mexico City

I agree with the indigenous teachers from the poverty-stricken south of Mexico that they should not be systematically replaced with richer, whiter native-Spanish-speakers who received better educations, nor should they be replaced for political reasons.

My plan for effectively utilizing all teachers, originally designed for the US, would be perfect for Mexico. See bottom of this post.


Reforma Avenue, Mexico City, Aug. 22, 2013 Photo by Marco Ugarte/AP

In Mexico, teachers fight tooth and nail against reforms familiar to those north of the border
Members of the National Workers of Education Coordinator (CNTE, for its initials in Spanish) protest violently against the educational reforms in the street across from Congress...
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post
August 28, 2013

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government is trying to overhaul the nation’s public schools in a way that might ring familiar in the United States: changing how teachers are hired, fired and evaluated.

But if American teachers unions were resistant to the idea, some in Mexico are openly hostile.

Hundreds of ski-mask-wearing, rock-throwing, stick-wielding teachers have smashed windows and set fire to the offices of the major political party in the southern state of Guerrero, and thousands are flooding Mexico City, blocking national TV networks, subway lines and, on Wednesday, swarming the roads around Los Pinos, the official residence of the president.

In what has become a fairly common event here, at least 8,000 teachers have set up camp under a sea of nylon tents in Mexico City’s central Zocalo square, where Gumaro Cruz Lopez, an elementary school director from the southern state of Oaxaca, explained his fear that the changes will turn kids into globalized robots at the expense of indigenous culture, free thought and possibly homemade tacos.

“They want to create one prototype of individual for the sole service of the global socioeconomic system,” said Lopez, 51. “They say private companies like Coke, Pepsi and Bimbo” — one of the world’s largest baking companies —“can help to better our schools, but soon they’ll start bringing all their sodas and snacks and all the little pastries of Bimbo!”

The angry invoking of trans­national soda and snack-food companies has to do with the fact that Coca-Cola has built model schools in Mexico, as corporate giants such as Microsoft have gotten involved in U.S. education reform. Union leaders have turned that into a symbol for their fear that some distant authority will soon be telling them how and what to teach.

Political analysts say the fierce resistance also has to do with the fact that the changes directly challenge long-standing union power over jobs.

The overhaul that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is pursuing keeps with ideas championed in recent years by former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and others who argue that raising teacher standards is the key to fixing failing schools.

In February, Peña Nieto signed into law the framework for his plan, which would shift the power to hire, fire and evaluate teachers to the federal government and away from Mexico’s main teachers union, which has been accused of rampant corruption and presiding over a system of awarding jobs in ways that have little to do with merit.

A new system of periodic teacher evaluations is intended to identify incompetent teachers, reward good ones and set professional standards, with the hope that Mexican students will become more globally competitive.

“In principle, the reforms have a positive spirit,” said Miguel Szekely, director of the Institute for Education Innovation. “They are going in the right direction, but implementing them will take time.”

Additional legislation is required to spell out how the system will work. And that is what the massive teacher protests here have stalled, along with traffic.

The emphasis on union corruption — almost universally acknowledged as a huge problem — has to some extent obscured other concerns of the teachers who traveled to Mexico City from some of the poorest states in the southern part of the country. The union that holds sway there is not the one directly targeted by the new education law, but a smaller one that controls jobs and state education budgets and is among the most radical in Mexico.

Rosalia Alonzo, a director of an elementary school in Oaxaca, said any new measures should recognize the disparities between the poorest schools of the south and wealthier ones elsewhere.

“A lot of schools don’t have power or technology, or even books,” she said. “The people who come up with these reforms, their kids go to Harvard. They don’t know what it’s like for us.”

Pilar Palma, a teacher at the protest, said she suspects that evaluations will be used unfairly. “I agree I should be evaluated,” she said. “But give me the tools and the ways to get better.”

Lopez, the elementary school director, noted that many students and teachers in his area speak native languages in addition to Spanish. He worries that such particularities will be obliterated by standards handed down from Mexico City.

“Those languages are close to our own customs, to our own environment,” Lopez said. “They want to make our children useful as labor for the future of the private sector — to teach them only to work and obey and not to reflect, not to liberate their minds.”

It was early afternoon Tuesday, and thousands of teachers were heading from the plaza to protest a national TV network they said has been unfairly describing them as a nuisance. The station broadcast interviews with Mexico City residents fed up with the road blockages, people who described the teachers as “dirty” and “those Indians,” a reference to their native background. “We are going to block Televisa!” Lopez said, undeterred. “We will be here until the authorities answer us.” (END)




Romualdo Gutierrez, Oaxaca

Maura Larkin's Plan--A great teacher for every child without firing anyone

This research indicates that the average teacher salary in Mexico is $20,000. I imagine the number is significantly lower in southern Mexico, but this figure will serve to demonstrate my point. My plan (see Idea Tournament article below) would offer a pathway to much higher earnings for many teachers--and students!--while allowing weaker teachers to keep their jobs and have an opportunity to become master teachers.

Here's what the chart in the article below would look like for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands) in Mexico:

Currently: $20 + $20 + $20 + $20 + $20 = $100

New plan: $32 + $17 + $17 + $17 + $17 = $100 (minus exorbitant cost of education vendors)



All Kids Can Have Great Teachers (Without Firing Any Teachers)
By: Maura Larkins
Voice of San Diego
September 7, 2012

No one really knows what’s going on in individual public school classrooms. Observations by principals tend to be fleeting and few. We don’t need to fire anybody, but we do need to use highly-skilled teachers and ordinary teachers where they can do the optimal good.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don’t happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary teacher can handle lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading, etc.

The best teachers should be able to rise far above average teachers on the salary scale — and they should have far more responsibility. In my plan, each classroom would have a full-time regular teacher. Several classrooms would share a master teacher, who would be responsible for student progress, teaching lessons part-time and guiding the regular teacher. Gifted regular teachers would be eligible to become master teachers. Instead of bringing in vendors selling the latest gimmick for tens of thousands of dollars, master teachers would do all necessary training.

Here’s the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300 (minus exorbitant cost of education vendors)

If we add more money, we could have more master teachers. Meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, who would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics at bay. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to pick up new ideas.

See more of my plan in the yellow column on the right of this page.



Profesores se manifestaron este viernes afuera de la Secretaría de Gobernación en protesta por las leyes secundarias de la reforma educativa (Cuartoscuro).

El diálogo entre legisladores y docentes de la CNTE, en un punto crítico
Las negociaciones estuvieron cerca de romperse debido a que el PRI señaló que la evaluación docente podría votarse la próxima semana
Por Mauricio Torres
CNN Mexico
30 de agosto de 2013

El encuentro de este viernes entre legisladores y docentes terminó sin avances
Los líderes de la CNTE se molestaron por declaraciones del coordinador de los diputados priistas
Beltrones dijo que es posible que se vote la Ley del Servicio Profesional Docente el martes
Los legisladores y los docentes se reunirán de nuevo este sábado

"A nosotros nos parece altamente preocupante que por un lado tengamos esta mesa acá, que se hablé de diálogo, y por la otra, en otro carril, estén declarando en la Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de Diputados que a más tardar el próximo martes se presentará la Ley del Servicio Profesional Docente. Este nos parece que es un doble juego."
--Francisco Bravo, líder de la Sección 9 de la CNTE

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNNMéxico) — El diálogo entre legisladores y la Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) estuvo cerca de romperse, debido a la molestia de los docentes por los señalamientos del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) en el sentido de que la ley que contempla la evaluación magisterial podría votarse en los próximos días.

El encuentro de este viernes —el cuarto de la semana— entró en receso cuando tenía una hora de haber comenzado, luego de que los líderes de la CNTE expresaran su molestia por las declaraciones del coordinador de los diputados priistas, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, que por la mañana dijo que es posible votar la iniciativa de Ley del Servicio Profesional Docente el martes, aun cuando la CNTE pide suspender el proceso.

Los dirigentes dejaron la reunión privada para analizar si se mantendrían en las negociaciones o no, informó la diputada Nelly Vargas, del partido de izquierda Movimiento Ciudadano, que en las mesas ha exigido atender las propuestas de la CNTE.

"Los compañeros de la CNTE están declarando un receso en la mesa bicameral que tenemos montada. (...) La percepción que tenemos es que a los compañeros los están engañando", dijo Vargas a medios.

Alrededor de 30 minutos después, los líderes de la CNTE volvieron al encuentro argumentando que seguían con "disposición" a dialogar y plantear sus demandas. Más tarde, al término de la reunión, informaron que sus exigencias inmediatas son que los legisladores garanticen que la iniciativa de ley no se votará próximamente y que sus planteamientos en la materia serán escuchados.

La respuesta a esos puntos tendrá que producirse en el encuentro programado para las 16:00 horas (local) de este sábado, según los dirigentes Rubén Nuñez, de la Sección 22 (Oaxaca); Juan José Ortega, de la 18 (Michoacán), y Francisco Bravo, de la 9 (Distrito Federal).

"El gran desencuentro, el problema que hoy se planteó fue el carácter de la mesa. A nosotros nos parece altamente preocupante que por un lado tengamos esta mesa acá, que se hablé de diálogo, y por la otra, en otro carril, estén declarando en la Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de Diputados que a más tardar el próximo martes se presentará la Ley del Servicio Profesional Docente. Este nos parece que es un doble juego", dijo Bravo a medios.

En otro encuentro con la prensa, los diputados priistas que acudieron a la reunión señalaron que ellos no pueden tomar esa decisión y que plantearán la solicitud a los líderes parlamentarios de la Cámara baja.

"No hay en este momento un día señalado. Lo que sí queda claro es que tenemos una gran comunicación, acuerdos entre las principales fuerzas políticas (...) de que es necesario que concluya el proceso legislativo de la reforma educativa", dijo el priista Arnoldo Ochoa.

La del Servicio Profesional Docente es la única de tres leyes reglamentarias que falta por aprobar en el Congreso para que la reforma pueda funcionar.

El documento causa polémica entre los docentes porque establece que aquellos que no aprueben evaluaciones obligatorias serán cesados, lo que la CNTE considera lesivo de los derechos laborales del magisterio.

Los diputados priistas dijeron este viernes que la CNTE apenas presentó propuestas concretas de redacción, aunque sólo de forma verbal. Según esa versión, los profesores pidieron cambios al artículo 75 de la legislación para especificar en qué casos un maestro será sujeto de sanciones.

El dirigente magisterial Rubén Núñez tachó de "mentira" esa declaración y aseguró que entregaron a los legisladores un escrito con sus planteamientos.

"Si el gobierno ignora nuestra posición, no hace caso, será su responsabilidad", dijo Bravo.

Los líderes de la CNTE han advertido que realizarán más movilizaciones en la capital mexicana durante los próximos días, como lo han hecho desde hace más de una semana: bloqueando sedes legislativas, televisoras, edificios gubernamentales y algunas de las principales avenidas de la ciudad. Hasta ahora, no han detallado qué acciones tomarán.

Este viernes, los docentes mantuvieron un plantón de ocho horas frente a la Secretaría de Gobernación (Segob), en demanda de que su titular y funcionarios de las secretarías de Educación Pública (SEP) y de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP) se sumen a las negociaciones con legisladores.

Teachers union head Elba Gordillo, who made big bucks fighting teacher accountability in Mexico, has been arrested

Teachers union leader Elba Esther Gordillo fought against assessments for teachers in Mexico. I guess she figured that's what teachers pay dues for. American teacher union leaders seem to feel the same way.

Mexican union boss arrest sounds warning to reform foes
The arrest of Mexico's best-known trade union leader on fraud charges has thrown down the gauntlet to powerful interests standing between President Enrique Pena Nieto and his plans to shake up Latin America's second-biggest economy.
By Dave Graham
MEXICO CITY
Feb 28, 2013
(Reuters)

The arrest of Mexico's best-known trade union leader on fraud charges has thrown down the gauntlet to powerful interests standing between President Enrique Pena Nieto and his plans to shake up Latin America's second-biggest economy.

For a generation, even presidents shied away from taking on teachers' union boss Elba Esther Gordillo, making her Mexico's most prominent female politician and a formidable enemy to those who accused her of fostering corruption rather than education.

Pena Nieto, who has been in office for less than three months, crossed that line on Tuesday when police arrested Gordillo and three other people with her at Toluca airport near Mexico City.

Mexican television showed Gordillo, 68, wearing a prison uniform and standing behind bars as a state prosecutor formally charged her with embezzling around $200 million from union coffers and using the money to pay for U.S. property, luxury goods, designer clothes, works of art and plastic surgery.

She is not allowed to apply for bail under the charges.

Gordillo, who deferred comment to her lawyers, faces a maximum jail sentence of 30 years, though prisoners can apply to be moved to house arrest at age 70.

"It is clearly a criminal case," Attorney General Jesus Murillo said in a television interview. "The case is very solid."

A former grandee of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Gordillo has denied accusations of corruption.

She was snared a day after Pena Nieto signed a law aimed at improving education standards that she had opposed because it would weaken her union's clout.


Mexico union leader Elba Esther Gordillo arrested
BBC
26 February 2013

Union head Elba Esther Gordillo, known as Mexico's most powerful woman, has been arrested on corruption charges.

Ms Gordillo, who runs the 1.5 million-member Mexican teachers' union, is alleged to have diverted about $200m from union funds to personal accounts.

No-one from her legal team has responded to the allegations, but in the past she has denied any wrongdoing in handling the funds.

The arrest came after major reforms to the education system on Monday.

President Enrique Pena Nieto signed the sweeping reforms, which seek to change a system dominated by Ms Gordillo in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said.

His office alleges Ms Gordillo, 68, spent the funds on plastic surgery and a luxury home.

Real influence

The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City says that Ms Gordillo is one of the highest profile figures in Mexican political life, known simply as "la maestra" or "the teacher".

For more than 20 years she has led the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).

With an estimated 1.5 million members, Ms Gordillo has held real influence over governments and individual presidents by persuading her union members to vote as a single bloc, our correspondent says.

The teachers were also responsible for manning polling stations on election day.

Her union is also very wealthy, and can count on an annual budget of tens of millions of dollars.

It is on claims that she mishandled those funds, allegedly diverting money intended for the union's coffers to her personal accounts, that she has now been arrested.

The reforms appeared set to weaken the powerful teachers' union, which has largely controlled access to the profession.

The union has argued that reforms could lead to massive lay-offs.

Critics also say the changes could signal the start of the privatisation of education in Mexico.

Mexico's education system currently ranks bottom in a list of members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The reforms will require teachers to undergo regular assessments, something that has previously never taken place inside Mexico's primary and secondary schools.

Many teachers in Mexico are said to have a very low standard of education themselves, with some only having graduated from high school.

Another change is intended to tackle the problem of absent or even deceased teachers receiving wages.

Ms Gordillo has been an outspoken critic of the current education minister and his approach to the reforms.

Rumor about Mitt Romney's birth in a Mormon colony in Mexico is ridiculous

I believe that our political discourse would be far more civil and reasonable if our schools offered better educations.

An example of our unreasonable discourse is the foolish rumor that presidential candidate Mitt Romney's mother returned to land of her husband's birth when she was pregnant. She must have known that her own country offered far better hospitals. The rumor that Mitt Romney was born in a Mormon colony in Mexico is just as ridiculous as the rumor that Barack Obama's mother went to the land of her husband's birth when she was pregnant.

Just because her husband was born in a foreign country doesn't mean that an American woman is going to risk her life and her child's life to give birth in an undeveloped country. Why would she do that? The hospitals in Mexico might have been better 65 years ago than the hospitals in Kenya were 50 years ago, but they weren't as good as the ones in the United States.

Mitt's father, George Romney, was born in Mexico, the descendant of American Mormons who had fled bigamy laws in the US.

Then, in July 1912, the Romney family fled the Mexican Revolution and returned to the United States. The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas for a few months before moving to Los Angeles, California, where George's father worked as a carpenter.

In kindergarten, other children mocked [George] Romney's national origin by calling him "Mex".

But that doesn't make George Romney's American-born son a Mexican citizen. He's a natural-born American citizen, every bit as much as Barack Obama.

Get a grip, birthers. ALL the birther rumors are silly.

You thought it was hard to fire a teacher in the US? A drug lord who hasn't worked in years is collected his paycheck in Mexico

Mexico keeps reputed drug lord on education payroll
By Nick Miroff
August 5m 2011

MEXICO CITY — Mexican security forces would like very much to capture, or even kill, reputed crime boss Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, leader of the cultlike Knights Templar drug gang.

But getting Mexico’s Education Ministry to stop sending Gomez paychecks may prove a much bigger challenge.

According to Mexico’s El Universal newspaper, the former schoolteacher is still on the ministry’s payroll, even though federal prosecutors are offering millions in reward money for his capture — and despite the fact that he hasn’t set foot in a classroom in more than a decade.

What’s worse, Gomez was issued checks totaling more than $2,000 in the first three months of 2011, although the paper first reported the unseemly payments in December. Mexican lawmakers opened an investigation this week, demanding to know why Gomez — who was also indicted for drug trafficking by a New York federal court in 2009 — hasn’t been fired.

Given the relatively small amounts of money involved, it seems unlikely that the payments are a case of direct corruption. Instead, experts say, they appear to be something possibly more embarrassing — a galling reminder of the immense power of Mexico’s teachers union and the difficulty of dismissing bad teachers, even if they are notorious drug lords.

“Firing a teacher is nearly impossible here, a true bureaucratic labyrinth,” said Otto Granados, a professor of public policy at Mexico’s Tecnologico de Monterrey university. “This kind of thing happens all the time,” he said, citing a recent study that found that more than 100,000 Mexican teachers were drawing salaries despite not showing up for work.

The country’s main teachers union — the largest in Latin America — is a political juggernaut so powerful that it assigns jobs through an extensive system of patronage, Granados said. Only teachers who have been convicted of a crime can be fired, and since Gomez remains at large, he apparently can’t be taken off the payroll...

"We cannot ask of the North, what we are not doing in the South"

Racism is a problem in Mexico as well as in the United States, as anyone who has flipped through the TV channels and come across a Mexican news program knows. (The anchors tend to be lily-white. You're much more likely to see American reporters with brown or black skin.)

Years ago, researchers sent Mexican Indians to ask for rooms in Mexico City hotels. If they were wearing western clothing, they got rooms. If they were wearing Indian clothing (which, ironically, is worth more than the average western outfit, due to the extensive embroidery on the women's huipiles), they were usually denied a room.

Enrique Morones of Border Angels writes that he's "...Teaching tolerance at High Tech and will also continue organizing with USC...Then head to Chiapas "we cannot ask of the North, what we are not doing in the South" will be joined by fellow National Human Rights Winner Olga Sanchez..."

I'm glad to hear it. I've often wondered why Mexican-Americans so rarely take an interest in fixing the elitist system that controls Mexico and its government. It's appropriate to work to change the oppressive system that forces so many individuals to leave home in order to obtain the basic necessities of life.

Rally in San Diego regarding Arizona law requiring police to arrest undocumented migrants

Photos by Pedro Rios, American Friends Service Committee


KUSI has a video of the April 26, 2010 rally at the San Diego federal building. After the video was recorded, the crowd at the rally grew larger, to about 200 people.

My guess is that Arizona police won't arrest many migrants, but that there will be enough havoc created to cause costly lawsuits. It seems to me to be a foolhardy law that won't really change anything. Congress needs to create immigration reform.



Here's a video of another recent rally about immigration:
Stand on the Side of Love
On February 28th 2010, interfaith leaders and community members gathered in front of the San Diego Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building to call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.



Diario San Diego covered the April 26, 2010 rally:
"Arizona no está sola", exclaman manifestantes
Por Alexandra Mendoza
Abr 26 2010



Fox News has a nicely-edited video of the April 26, 2010 rally:
San Diegans protest Arizona immigration bill
Opponents call for boycott of neighboring state
By Jennifer Musa FOX 5 San Diego Reporter
April 27, 2010
About 150 loud but peaceful demonstrators gathered in front of the Federal Courthouse in downtown San Diego to protest an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigrants.
The new law, Senate Bill 1070, makes it a crime not to carry immigration documents or proof of citizenship in the state and requires police to question people about their immigration status if they suspect they are there illegally.
Opponents of the law chanted, "Shame on Arizona," during the 90 minute rally...

Arizonans are willing to bankrupt themselves to put undocumented migrants in jail

We created a system that encourages and relies on illegal immigration. Why not just give documents to enough workers to fill the jobs we need filled?


U.S.’s Toughest Immigration Law Is Signed in Arizona
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
The New York Times
April 23, 2010

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country on Friday, aimed at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants. The governor’s move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally.

President Obama at the naturalization ceremony for 24 active duty service members at the White House on Friday.

Even before Governor Brewer signed the law at a 4:30 p.m. news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws — an overhaul that Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon...




Spar & Bernstein's Law Link
IPC: How Much Will Arizona’s Immigration Bill (SB1070) Cost?
by mgeffner
April 21, 2010

Source: Immigration Policy Center

Washington, D.C.- Frustrated by Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, states across the country continue considering legislation that relies heavily on punitive, enforcement-only measures which not only fail to end unauthorized immigration but also have the potential to dig their state’s finances deeper into a hole.

The latest example of this kind of policy nose dive is in Arizona...



Implementation Costs of SB 1070 to One Arizona County
April 23, 2010
Immigration Policy Center

Today, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer may sign into law a bill that has the potential to sink her state much deeper into the red than it already is...

In Arizona, when a bill is introduced in the state legislature, a "fiscal note" is attached which lays out the cost of implementation. In the case of SB 1070, the accompanying fiscal note is shockingly lacking in detail, concluding that "the fiscal impact of this bill cannot be determined with certainty...

In the absence of any current fiscal data on the cost of SB 1070's implementation, some Arizonans are pointing to a fact sheet produced by Yuma County Sheriff Ralph E. Ogden in response to similar legislation proposed in 2006. Yuma County is one of Arizona's 15 counties, with a population of about 200,000.

The 2006 fact sheet estimates the costs of a bill which would have authorized the police to arrest illegal immigrants on trespassing charges if they were simply present in the state (the bill was eventually vetoed by then Governor Janet Napolitano). The Yuma County Sherriff's fact sheet shows a staggering potential cost to Yuma County law-enforcement agencies. The Sherriff estimated:

* Law-enforcement agencies would spend between $775,880 and $1,163,820 in processing expenses;
* Jail costs would be between $21,195,600 and $96,086,720;
* Attorney and staff fees would be $810,067-$1,620,134;
* Additional detention facilities would have to be built at unknown costs.


Furthermore, in an email between Yuma County Attorney Jon Smith ... noted that his county was already struggling with a budget deficit by furloughing employees and forcing days off without pay. He wrote:

"It was also noted that the Superior Court, Justice Courts and Municipal Courts would also realize increased costs if that legislation passed..."

Billionaire Among Us: How Mexicans See Carlos Slim

Billionaire Among Us: How Mexicans See Carlos Slim
Emily Schmall
AOL News
March 13, 2010

How does a country battered by a lethal drug war and the worst recession since the 1930s react when one of its own, Carlos Slim Helu, is deemed by Forbes magazine to be the world's richest person?

In a word, mixed.

"There's no way for a country with so many poor to have the world's richest man without something being awry," said Pedro Dominguez, a mechanic from Puebla. "The problem is, most Mexican people have no way to attain this kind of wealth."

"He has my respect," countered Rafael Contreras Martinez, a housepainter from Izucar de Matamoros, on his way to a job. "I'm not going to speak ill of a man who has worked and struggled."
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim walks before a meeting in Cozumel, Mexico in 2009.
Luis Acosta, AFP / Getty Images
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim uses public transportation and lives in the same Mexico City house he purchased with his wife Soumaya 40 years ago. Here, he heads to a meeting in Cozumel, Mexico, last summer.

Slim, a 70-year-old son of a Lebanese immigrant, built a fortune Forbes pegs at $53.5 billion on the privatization of Mexico's telecommunications. The bulk of that wealth consists of holdings in his companies, which carry an enormous weight in the economic life of Mexico...