May 3, 2013

LAT: "Obama's sunny speech in Mexico raises eyebrows"

From the Los Angeles Times:
Obama's sunny speech in Mexico raises eyebrows 
The president paints an optimistic portrait of a country rising from its troubles, but many who live with the nation's violence and poverty wonder 'what Mexico was he talking about?'

By Kathleen Hennessey and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times 
May 3, 2013, 6:08 p.m. 
MEXICO CITY — President Obama on Friday painted a sunny picture of a modern Mexico emerging from its past troubles, an attempt at rebranding that serves the political aims of both governments but clashes with the realities of a country beset by violence and poverty.  ...
The perception of a rising Mexico serves both Obama's and his counterpart's domestic agendas. Obama's push for immigration reform could be lifted by a perception that the causes of illegal immigration — poverty, violence and corrupt institutions — are easing under new Mexican leadership. 
Obama was not subtle in hitting this point, quoting an unnamed Mexican man as saying, "There's no reason to go abroad in search of a better life." The U.S. president expressed new confidence that his immigration push was on track, saying, "We are going to get it done this year. I'm absolutely convinced of it." 
Peña Nieto's reform agenda also could use a boost. After passing laws to overhaul education and telecommunications, he faces an uphill battle in opening up Mexico's energy sector, especially oil exploration, to foreign investment. Such a move has long been taboo here. 
Obama's audience responded with enthusiasm, frequently interrupting him with applause or cheers. But audience members didn't necessarily agree with his assessment. 
"How nice that he came to give inspiring speeches, but what's happening in Mexico is far from what he talked about today," said Jose Carlos Cruz, a 24-year-old graduate student in international relations who attended the speech. "A really good speech by President Obama, but what Mexico was he talking about?" 
The Mexican economy has begun to slow, and the decrease in illegal immigration is more likely a result of demographic changes, the sluggish U.S. economy and the severe dangers of crossing Mexico than of any improvements inside Mexico. 
In his speech, Obama praised a growing middle class to which the majority of Mexicans belong. Although it is true that Mexico has a strong manufacturing base that has allowed many Mexicans to prosper, economists say the middle class has been stagnant for years. The World Bank says 49% of the population lives in poverty. ...
Yet many among the several hundred people in attendance said he seemed too upbeat about their country. 
"Obama is fantastic, but I believe that today he was talking about another country, not ours," said Rosa Castro, 43, a college professor. "My question is: Who wrote Obama's speech? Enrique Peña Nieto's team?" 
Alberto Rios Lara, 26, who is studying to be an economist, said, "Obama is a great speaker; it's really impossible not to feel excited. However, the reality is different in Mexico. We need more action and fewer speeches." 

According to a recent Pew Research poll, 35% of all 116 million Mexicans would like to move to the U.S.

In a more reasonable world, as former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda pointed out in his 2011 book Manana Forever?, Americans would be moving to Mexico for pleasant retirements (my parents took a look at Lake Chapala in 1967). Castaneda offered a long list of reforms that Mexico should undertake to make Americans less adventurous than old war correspondent Fred Reed feel welcome. He felt that the single most important was that Mexicans should stop using the ethnic slur "gringo."

Something else I've noticed is that it's hard for most gringo politicians and pundits to remember that Mexico has gone through lots of economic upswings before.
In 1946, Jorge Pasquel offered Babe Ruth $1 million
to be President of the Mexican League
For example, Mexico did so well economically during WWII that the Pasquel Brothers spent a supposed $50 million in the mid-1940s attempting to build the Mexican League into a third major league baseball circuit. In early 1946, they paid 18 big league ballplayers, such as Mickey Owen, Sal Maglie, and Vern Stephens to jump their contracts for the big money of the Mexican League. This caused one of the bigger crises in baseball of that era, with the MLB playing hardball in response. The Commissioner threatened to ban for life players who disobeyed the legally dubious "reserve clause" in their contracts.

Today, 67 years later, it seems bizarre to think that the Mexican League once competed with the American League and the National League.

P.S. Most old Sports Illustrated articles are online, and they are often great. Here's Frank Graham Jr.'s "The Great Mexican War of 1946" from 1966:
[Jorge] Pasquel was 39 years old in 1946, when he and his dashing brothers (Bernardo, Mario and the twins, Gerardo and Alfonso) discovered the ramshackle Mexican League. His family had owned a prosperous cigar factory, but he made his own opportunities as a young man by marrying the daughter of Plutarco Elias Calles, President of Mexico, and having himself appointed a customs broker for the Mexican government. His career was tempestuous. He left his wife, killed a man with the pistol he always carried and made enemies as well as a fortune. 
"Pasquel liked baseball," Mickey Owen says, "and he liked being in the limelight. The league gave him a lot of publicity, and it was closely tied in with his pal Aleman's presidential campaign that spring. Raiding the big leagues was a way of showing up the yanquis." 
Pasquel became the league's president and its chief scout ...  Once, when a no-hitter was broken up in the sixth inning, Jorge summarily restored the prize to the pitcher by overruling the official scorer and calling the play an error. The crowd was as overcome by this gallant gesture as if Pasquel had redeemed a lady's chastity. It accorded him a standing ovation, while Jorge beamed in his private box.
... "When our league was struggling to get started," Pasquel said, "major league scouts came down here and stole our players. Why? Because they offered them more money. We're giving those people a dose of their own medicine." 
Pasquel stepped up his raids on the major leagues. ... Later Alfonso Pasquel visited Stan Musial in his hotel room. While Musial, who was making $13,500 a year with the Cardinals, watched in astonishment, Pasquel spread five cashier's checks, each for $10,000, on his bed. This, Pasquel told him, was merely a bonus. While Musial turned the offer over in his mind, Cardinal Manager Eddie Dyer (an old Rickey man) effectively intervened. 
"Stan, you've got two children," Dyer said. "Do you want them to hear someone say, 'There are the kids of a guy who broke a contract'?" 
Musial declined to go to Mexico, but the Pasquels scored their most dramatic coup by hijacking three other Cardinals, Pitchers Max Lanier and Fred Martin and Second Baseman Lou Klein. Lanier was the prize. Considered by some baseball men to be the best pitcher in the National League, he had a 6-0 record with St. Louis when he left for Mexico in June. ...
But the Mexican problem was beginning to solve itself. Attendance, after the novelty of new faces had run its course, quickly declined. There were heavy rains that summer. At critical moments during a night game the electricity would fail. ... Travel was arduous at best, and sometimes hazardous. Landing strips in a few towns were simply open pastures. "It was unnerving," Mickey Owen says. "Coming in for a landing we'd look out and see eight or 10 of those big black Mexican vultures waiting for us. That's one of the things I remember best about Mexico—those vultures." 
... Nor did the American players prove to be the superstars Pasquel thought he had bought. When Veracruz, which Pasquel had stocked with the best players because it was his favorite team, sank into fourth place, Jorge took matters into his own hands. He fired Owen as manager and named as Owen's successor—Jorge Pasquel! 
"It's quite possible I did a lousy job of managing," Mickey says. "But I think the main thing was that Jorge had a sneaky ambition to be the manager himself." 
Pasquel, in uniform, took his place in the third-base coaching box. When he waved his arms, which he did frequently, his 12-karat diamond ring glittered in the sun. The crowd roared its appreciation. Between innings Pasquel retired to the dugout, where a valet, a napkin draped over one arm, served him steaming cups of vegetable juices and platters of chicken or crabs. When he had finished eating, his valet produced a tooth brush, with which Jorge cleaned his teeth. At the end of 10 days, Veracruz still languished in fourth place, the cheers for its gallant leader were not so delirious, and Jorge stepped aside in favor of a man named Chili Lopez. 

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Weird: here was this American President promising the President of another country that he would see to it that the citizens of that other President would be able to become citizens of *his* country. Isn't that stealing citizens?



Anonymous said...

Someone needs to Walter Sobchak Obama and say, whenever he opens his mouth abroad, "Donny, you're out of your league!"

When he says that US demand for drugs is responsible for Mexican violence, I wonder why he also doesn't blame our banks for causing bank robberies. After all, they have all that money just lying around.

Sort of like the USA with section 8, EBT, and counties other goodies. It's not their fault we make lawbreaking so darn attractive...

Cail Corishev said...

Isn't that stealing citizens?

Yes, but as long as you steal the mostly unproductive ones he doesn't want to keep, and you dump cash on them through welfare and other programs so they have money to send back to his country, he'll be happy and everybody wins!

Well, except for your own working-class citizens, of course, but who gives a crap about them, the racists.

rob said...

Obama holds the mainstream view that
economic progress has three phases.

1) Moar Mexicans!
2) ?
3) Moar Economy!

Mexico has phase one in the bag. It is simply not possible to believe the Cathedral (lol, yeah that's totes the religion most accurately associated with the dominant ethnic faction) immigration position and think Mexico is not thriving.

Anonymous said...

Question for any readers who'd be in a position to know-- What's the south-of-the-border opinion of NAFTA-GATT matters these days? It seems like the proverbial 99% over there got the short end (I'd think a wider swath of their homegrown industries were directly disadvantaged compared to Canada/U.S.) yet except for the balaclava-enthusiasts in Chiapas I don't read mainline non-U.S. criticism of it in recent years. Is this due to the absence of a Michael Moore-esque union-lifer class in today's Mexico? In that Vice Youtube documentary about the Mormon colony in Chihuahua the interviewed are somewhat surprisingly negative on NAFTA but I assume that's because 1) they're already Mormons, why would they welcome new export competition; and 2) they associate with the new phase of Drug War insanity.

Hunsdon said...

"Stan, you've got two children," Dyer said. "Do you want them to hear someone say, 'There are the kids of a guy who broke a contract'?"

Different world back then, wasn't it?

Anonymous said...

Americans would be moving to Mexico for pleasant retirements (my parents took a look at Lake Chapala in 1967). Castaneda offered a long list of reforms that Mexico should undertake to make Americans less adventurous than old war correspondent Fred Reed feel welcome. He felt that the single most important was that Mexicans should stop using the ethnic slur What about the 3 to 4 million that Reagan legalized moving home in 10 to 20 years they are aging now and they should take their social security money and leave La to cheaper Mexico.

Anonymous said...

I believe Obama is also going to Costa Rica. Some years back there was a lot of publicity about Americans retiring to Costa Rica. HGTV's HouseHunters International features Costa Rica pretty often. House Hunters pushes "vacation homes" in Central American places.

We hired two Costa Rican fellows to do a lot of repairs necessitated by Hurricane Sandy. They have to come to the US to find work (they have a company with tax number so I guess they are here legally but who knows?) because Costa Rica is flooded with Nicaraguans who will work for cheaper wages. Costa Rica is a "low crime" place for Central America but they have to have high fences and barbed wire around houses in the cities. One of them told us that his aunt went to work and came home and found her house cleared out. The Nicaraguan maid's accomplices pulled up a truck and took whatever would fit.

An Ecuadoran plumber who was here told us that you cannot wear jewelry outside of the fenced, gated compounds where wealthier Ecuadorans live. A mover who had honeymooned in Mexico told us that he asked the people at the hotel why there were men with machine guns on the roofs and was told "Its so your wife isn't kidnapped."

Kind of like the problems of our own inner city ghetto areas and we don't know what to do to fix those problems. Not for lack of trying; not for lack of spending money.

Conatus said...

Funny, this weeks print edition(5/6-5/12) of Businessweek(publisher Bloomberg) has a very positive article titled "The Stranger Next Door" on p.8 which is all about re-branding Mexico.
Perhaps Obama's people talked to Bloomberg's people and we, The Ruck, are the beneficiaries of such collaboration.
It is for our own good.

Simon in London said...

"LAT: "Obama's sunny speech in Mexico raises eyebrows""

I saw the headline and naturally assumed he was talking about improving prospects in his own country, and the presumably-elite Mexican audience were politely sceptical. Perhaps he was angling for some high-skill immigration. That the President of the USA would go to Mexico to talk up the USM to help the US govt pass a law to encourage low-skill Mexican immigration, never occurred to me.

Anonymous said...

So, do young Mexicans praise Obama because his skin color isn't white? He gives a speech that is full of inaccuracies and improbabilities;in other words, he was blowing smoke up their asses as he does do audiences here...and they PRAISE him. Oh, yeah, I forgot; they do that here too, especially those who can least afford his idiotic policies.

Anonymous said...

The perception of a rising Mexico serves both Obama's and his counterpart's domestic agendas. Obama's push for immigration reform could be lifted by a perception that the causes of illegal immigration — poverty, violence and corrupt institutions — are easing under new Mexican leadership.

Steve, even if Mexico is rising and Mexicans themselves no longer want to come, which we know is not true, just plaster these photos of Mexico allowing Central Americans to ride hobo-style on their northbound trains and you will increase opposition to this push for reform.

Anonymous said...

Puerto Rico not Mexico is the real falure, high much tax credits does one get for Puerto Rico. If low taxes makes a country have a good economy then why is it that PR average income is even lower than MS or LA in the States.

Malone said...

The picture of Babe Ruth reminds me... Do you think Babe Ruth was part black? Spike Lee apparently thinks so.

mel belli said...

the legally dubious "reserve clause" in their contracts.

I think this is what you call "tendentious." Or maybe just presentism. In 1946 there was nothing "dubious" about the RC. Those were the days when, if a pop bottle exploded in your face, you couldn't recover in tort because you weren't in 'privity' with the mfg. In other words, American courts hadn't yet grokked the concept of basic fairness - everything was formalism. In fact, if it were up the courts the RC would still be in effect. It took Labor Arbitration, an extra-judicial system not reliant on legal formalisms, to junk it. And of course that wasn't until 1976.

Anonymous said...

If the idea of Mexican baseball competing with U.S. baseball in the 1940's sounds weird, dwell on this:

Mexico got the Summer Olympics (held in Mexico City!!) in 1968. Utterly impossible to imagine today.

countenance said...

Summary of what Obama said in Mexico City:


Everything here in Mexico is hunky dorey, always has been, always will be. Mexico is the world’s leading economic, scientific and technological superpower, and has a world renowned reputation for civil rights and civil liberties, and is the fount of political and electoral maturity. Sure, there might be a few drug gangs causing a little bit of trouble here and there, but that’s all my country’s fault, because the only things my country has are dope users and guns, and of course that’s the cause of Mexico’s drug gang problems. If only I could spend more money to convince my people that drugs and weed and CHOOM GANGS are bad for them, and get the backwards rednecks in my country to give up their guns, then Mexico would have no problems, and it would be a total utopia, a paradise on Earth. Hell, there’s nothing good about my country, it’s full of troglodyte bitter clingers that cling to everything bad. The only reason there’s some semblance of prosperity in my country at all is because some Mexicans have had the altruistic good graces to cross that anachronism that used to be called a “border,” and once they got here, they deployed their genius talents to start companies, find breakthrough discoveries, win all our wars and teach my backwards cracker a## gringos a thing or three about civil rights. And yet, to show you that no good deed goes unpunished, there are people in my country who want to deport Mexicans and build walls. Shame, shame, shame. After all, where would I be without Mexican voters? These racist cracker a## white honkey gringos would have never made me President — Thank ALLAH the Mexicans saved my bacon. It makes me wonder what I’m doing being the President of my own crummy country when I should stay here, where it’s so much better and so much more progressive, with all those Mexican windmills and solar panels and hybrids and electric cars and abortions and free contraceptives and tolerance for LGBTQMIAPDLOLPLPLTH and no sequesters and no war on women and no fiscal cliffs and free health care and child care, no enmity for the immigrant arrival, and most importantly of all, no fossil fuels.

Mexican basketball sucks, though.

Anonymous said...

Mexico has boomed over the past century. the problem is that their population positively exploded by comparison. Had they held mexico at even 50M(around triple their 1900 population), the country would be a paradise. Instead the country teeters on the edge of collapse, with 125M mexicans there, and another 20-30M here.

Anonymous said...


Mexico has boomed over the past century. the problem is that their population positively exploded by comparison. Had they held mexico at even 50M(around triple their 1900 population), the country would be a paradise. Instead the country teeters on the edge of collapse, with 125M mexicans there, and another 20-30M here.
5/4/13, 1:24 PM Birthrates didn't fall until recently, if Mexico was at 4 in 1960 and down to 3 in 1970 and 2 pluse in 1980, yeah it would be different.

Anonymous said...

Mexico is not bad compared to Central America or to Moldiva in Eastern Euorpe. There are poor white countries that people totally ignore. People compared it to the states too much. Mexicans are a new verison of Kentucky whites or West Virgnian Whites that both tend to not finish school and have higher than average poverty rates but the Mexicans are not as socially conservative as the Evangelical Hill white are.

Anonymous said...

Mexico is not bad compared to Central America or to Moldiva in Eastern Euorpe. There are poor white countries that people totally ignore. People compared it to the states too much. Mexicans are a new verison of Kentucky whites or West Virgnian Whites that both tend to not finish school and have higher than average poverty rates but the Mexicans are not as socially conservative as the Evangelical Hill white are.

The problem is numbers. There are more Mexicans in the USA ALONE than the COMBINED number of West Virginians, Kentuckians and Moldovans in the world.