We all have plenty of faith, even narco-traficantes

"There is no such thing as a lack of faith. We all have plenty of faith, it's just that we have faith in the wrong things. We have faith in what can't be done rather than what can be done. We have faith in lack rather than abundance but there is no lack of faith. Faith is a law." (Eric Butterworth)

They are back, my friend reports. She's recently traveled by car from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey. The roadside chapels built by families of a victim of a roadside car accident are back up after being demolished for the visit to the region last year by Hilary Clinton. The shrines were destroyed because they are an embarrassing and frightening reminder of the cultural changes happening in Mexico.

The roadside chapels used to contain plaster cast icons of the accident victim's saint (the saint on whose day the person was born), images of Jesus, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and others, and rows of candles. You would pull off the road on your way to the main highway to Monterrey to light a candle and pray for your safe journey. It was always smoky from the candles, and always warm. There was a place to kneel and pause to pray before your trip. It always felt like a gift from the family who built it in their loved one's memory.

New roadside shrines similar to the old ones but dedicated to a new deity, the cult of death, started being built along the roadways about ten years ago. Inside are statues of a death skeleton dressed in robes like the religious statues, also surrounded by images and candles.

We stopped to see one when we were last in Mexico in December, 2008 between Bustamante and the Colombia bridge outside of Nuevo Laredo. Inside the ramshackle windswept shelter I started to feel sick. It felt like the earth had suddenly begun spinning backwards and I nearly lost my balance, everything seemed upside down in a Mexico that venerated death instead of life. There were broken bottles and such a sadness in the statues crept over me I had to get out. I quickly took some photos to prove to myself this was real and not a nightmare. We drove on to the border without speaking. I wondered what causes the veneration of the dead? What causes someone to abandon faith in eternal life for faith in a short life ending in violence? Was it the desire for power? Is this new, or have there always been those that trade their souls for the short-term? These shrines are a testament to their coming out of the shadows.

In an excellent New Yorker article, Days of the Dead, Alma Guillermoprieto writes about the cult of death and narco-culture of Mexico in a way that illuminates and helps to explains these questions. The section on the cult of death is on page four.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_guillermoprieto?currentPage=4

I will add that these new shrines are good in one important way. They force the discussion about the shadow side of faith in Mexico's terrible struggle with poverty, corruption and maintaining against the odds the values that define its cultural trust: supporting and keeping its families together, healthy and strong, for long productive lives rather than short journeys ending in tragedy.

Top Reasons for Celebrating Cinco De Mayo

1. Simpler Times.
Mexico defeats France at Puebla. Mexico wins its freedom from French colonial domination. Today, in contrast, it's hard to discern who are wearing the white hats in the crowd of old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

2. Enchiladas Suizas.
French cooking is a great addition that has enriched Mexico's cuisine. Merci boucoup.

3. Half-price lunches at participating locations.
Chamber maids, gardeners and farm-workers temporarily held while traveling to their jobsites in the U.S. receive half-price on their happy meals at all Homeland Security holding station cafeterias (while supplies last).

4. Actors portraying Mexicans.
The U.S. commemorates Latinos' contributions to the magnificent mosaic of American cultures with remembrance of American film actors who have valiantly portrayed Mexicans in American cinema: Marlon Brando. Gracias, Marlon.

5. U.S. Brings End to Mexican Corn Market
The staple of Mexican agriculture, corn, lost its market value when U.S. subsidized corn flooded the market south of the border with cheap corn. Thousands of Mexicans lost their farms and work on farms and were forced to move to cities to find work, including cities in the U.S. No worries. Taco Bell bravely stepped into the Mexican fast-food business to provide the remaining masses with their daily "wraps". The corn goddess Tonantzin is not pleased.

6. Gated-Tourism
Flying in for rays and virgin beaches at heavily guarded Cabo San Lucas and Cozumel is still safe-vacationing for tourists. On the American consulate's no-travel zone: Acapulco, Mazatlan, Mexico City, all points interior (including San Miguel de Allende) and the border, where 5,000 people have died each year on average in drug-traffic related violence.

7. Daily bread vs. Ideology
The terrorism link to Mexican seasonal farm-workers, construction laborers and others coming to the U.S. to work at jobs Americans refuse to do has finally been disproven by the arrests of numerous would be-terrorists from other parts of the world, who only resemble, but are not Latino. Mexican workers leave their homes to earn a living, not for ideological reasons.

8. Legalized Pot.
Mexico's gift to American pharmacology is now being grown and sold legally in parts of the U.S. This is a significant step forward in drying up demand for its supply from old-government-sponsored-drug-thugs, new, anti-government-drug thugs, new-turn-coat soldiers-aligned with anti-government-drug-thugs, spin-off anti-government drug thugs, etc.

Follow Up to Post on Nva. Ciudad Guerrero

We traveled to the border this past weekend for the funeral of my sister in law Mary's only brother, Larry Hernandez. Our cousins from Guerrero, Martita and Maricela, and their mother, my Aunt Marta attended the rosary and family gathering after the rosary. They informed me that the schools and church are still closed in Guerrero, after a month of violence such as machine guns going off at night. The government has sent in sailors from the Mexican Navy to try and keep the peace in this tiny border town. My cousin's 8th grade girl is going to move to Nuevo Laredo to try and finish out the school year in Nuevo Laredo. They say they have gotten so tired of the violence, but have learned to simply hit the floor when they hear the sounds of gunfire. What a horrible contrast to the peace that once permeated this little patch of hardscrabble country along the Rio Salado where my mother's ancestors settled to ranch and bring up their children.

Our Mkt=Drug Profits/5,000 deaths per year

My grandmother's town, Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaulipas, was built in the 1950's to replace the 250 year old original town where Mom's family lived and where she and my dad were married. Old Guerrero was buried beneath the Rio Grande when citrus growers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley lobbied for a dam to manage the river so their groves would have a steady source of water.

The original Spanish settlement was abandoned to its watery grave, along with its church, two story Hotel Flores, its market, plaza and the many homes built of cut sandstone, with rock corrals adjacent to the homes, for cattle were gathered at night from their grazing in the commons. A way of life was ended for another to prosper.

75 years later, the orange groves of the Valley now lie untended, their fruit on the ground, abandoned as developers trade the properties in shifting economies, speculating for future housing developments. One man's policy becomes another's destiny.

My cousin, Martita, lives in Laredo, 90 miles from New Guerrero. She keeps in touch with her only sister, Maricela, a teacher in New Guerrero, by phone conversations that have become more frequent lately. Martita says New Guerrero has swollen in size with arrivals from the interior looking for work. It's not the quiet town that time and progress seemed to have forgotten when we girls spent weeks there each summer, playing in the streets, flirting with the teenage boys driving by in their father's clanking ranch trucks. At night, there were no TVs to watch. We cousins played loteria wagering bottle caps with Nana's neighbors, the only AM radio station we could pick up in the desert drifted in and out on distant signals from far away Monterrey. We slept in the backyard beside Nana's sugar cane patch on wide canvas cots whispering about the handsome boys we were meeting at the plaza, in the same way our mothers met our fathers. The still night summer air was cooled by the breezes from the reservoir.

Today in Nana's town, my cousin tells me that whether it's night or day, the sounds of gunfire shock the stillness with a frightening regularity. Schools, including where my cousin Maricela teaches, are now closed, and masses at the church are cancelled because of gunfights that break out in New Guerrero's streets.

The gun-battles among competing groups of drug smugglers and murderers keep "gente decente" (decent folk) locked inside the safety of their homes, where their news media is gagged into silence of any news reports about the violence. Residents recount their news about how their town is changing when they venture to neighbors homes, or speak on the phone.

"Gente decente" don't send their kids to school, or take them to church, nor can they shop for groceries, or travel to relative's homes to visit or help the sick or elderly. The hidden network of family -- the safety net that Mexicans have depended on for decades--dissolves as surely as the underwater sandstones of Old Guerrero in the wake of the violence that has claimed 15,000 lives in the past 5 years.

When thugs rule, "gente decente" suffer.