Americas Quarterly

Links to my articles published by Americas Quarterly

López Obrador Shifts Gears at Monterrey Speech

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “López Obrador Shifts Gears at Monterrey Speech
” , published on Oct 12th, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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In an unlikely stop in his pre-campaign trail, Andrés Manuel López Obrador made a quick visit to the industrial, private sector-intensive city of Monterrey last week. This is hostile territory for López, since the state of Nuevo León has not traditionally sympathized with the leftists parties with which he has associated (PRD, PT, Convergencia). His visit gathered around 1,200 middle- and upper-class listeners. Some were supporters, but most were just curious as I gathered from the low intensity of response to applause moments during the event.

His message was somewhat different from his usual populist rhetoric. The radio and TV spots, as well as his speech in Monterrey have all toned down. Wearing a slick suit and tie (as opposed to his usual more down to earth Guayaberas) and talking to the business community, López portrayed himself as a modern leftist, blaming the media for showcasing him as an “enemy of the wealthy.” One of his new soundbites states “I am not against businessmen. I am against wrongfully accumulated wealth.” López is not clear about what he means when he says that wealth is wrongfully accumulated, but he did mention a couple of specific targets as culprits: large media corporations Televisa, Telmex and TV Azteca and the PRI and PAN bureaucrats.

 López accused Televisa and TV Azteca of controlling the news, limiting his exposure and pushing PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto as their candidate in order to maintain control of Mexico. In his words, Peña Nieto is “the candidate of the power monopoly.”

While López is definitely right in saying that mainstream media in Mexico is biased, this bias holds true for both media that love and loath him. In this sense, he is no more a victim of the media than any other politician. He’s just become less effective at wooing most of them. You don’t see him complaining about all the media coverage he used to get when he headed Mexico City’s executive and knew how to play the media’s game.

Moreover, he really can’t blame newspapers and TV for having a tarnished image. Because it wasn’t the media that blocked Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma or kidnapped Mexico City’s Zocalo (Main Square) to install the famous National Democratic Convention after López decided that a majority vote against him meant that someone had stolen the election. At the time he called this “peaceful civil resistance” and in all fairness, he did send out messages to his followers asking them not to fall into any type of provocation that would lead to violence… but creating chaos and blocking business? No problem!

López’ post-2006 election antics were undoubtedly a political mistake. In a poll by EL UNIVERSAL 71 percent of Mexicans disagreed with López and the PRD’s attempt at blocking Calderón from accepting the presidency in the Mexican Congress. Nobody likes a sore loser and everybody hates a sore loser who gets in their way and paralyzes a city. And yes, most people disagree with López creating a fantasy “legitimate government” and taking a monthly paycheck from obscure sources over six years in order to keep campaigning for 2012, making him an intricate part of that “putrid system” he so vocally opposes.

During the recent event in Monterrey, López cynically defended taking a city hostage as a means to control the rage of supporters after “Calderón stole the election.” His pitch is that millions of people were ready to take arms to defend his “legitimate government” so he had to do something. I guess walking away and accepting facts was not in the cards. When did organizing blockades of banks and other businesses—costing a city millions of pesos in damages and commercial transactions lost—and causing chaos in highways and main streets become an appeasement tactic? Fact: in 2006, López showed his rabble-rouser face and most of Mexico didn’t like it, so now he’s changing up his game and telling a different story.

In Monterrey he attacked Televisa, TV Azteca and Telmex of wrongfully accumulating wealth, but he went on to say that they should be allowed to accumulate more of it by letting Telmex enter the TV business and Televisa explore going into VoIP, because “that promotes open competition.” He also said that if he reaches the presidency, he “will not expropriate anything or anybody. What we will have, is more competition.” This is an unlikely sales pitch from somebody who within the first five minutes of his speech called neoliberalism “a policy of greed.”

It is obvious that López is once again trying to reach out to non-hard line supporters and undecided voters from the center-left, center and center-right ideologies, as he claims that the “MoReNa movement” he heads is inclusive and welcomes all schools of thought and creed. During his speech he also called for more efficiency and competitiveness in the energy sector. That’s a real hard sell coming from him. López cannot be the appeasement, open market and competitiveness candidate and at the same time attack economic liberalism and support the legally extinct but still combative SME (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas), one of the main sources of incompetence in the energy sector. Mr. López, you can’t have it both ways.

In his closing remarks, López’ proposals included putting young people to work, combating corruption, better coordination between military and police forces, better coordination between federal and state authorities, and alleviating poverty. All important issues, yes, but do enough people believe that López is the one who would actually solve them? Within the political left, Marcelo Ebrard seems a more likely candidate. And even in the unlikely event of him regaining the people’s trust, López is a little late in the game to shift gears. Plus, his clunker might have taken too big of a beating in 2006 to catch up.

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AmericasQuarterly.org. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.

Mexico’s Macroeconomic Strength Improves its Competitiveness

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Mexico’s Macroeconomic Strength Improves its Competitiveness” , published on Sep 16th, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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Mexico received some excellent news recently when the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its Global Competitiveness Report, calling attention to the fac that the country has made significant progress in improving its relative position in the world competitiveness rankings.
From last year to the 2011-2012 ranking, Mexico moved from 66to 58 place, an eight-spot improvement. Only seven other countries had a larger jump in the list. As competitiveness expert Beñat Bilbao explains, “(this variation) is very relevant. Fluctuations from year to year tend to be very low.”

Besides drops suffered by other countries closely competing with Mexico, such as the Russian Federation, Jordan and the Slovak Republic, Mexico’s improvement in the ranking results from progress made in efforts to boost competition and facilitate entrepreneurship by reducing the number of procedures and the time it takes to start a business. The report also mentions Mexico’s large internal market size, sound macroeconomic policies, technological adoption, and a decent transport infrastructure as helping it to move up in the WEF Report.

This is no doubt a great triumph for President Calderón. He has continuously boasted over TV messages and radio spots that his administration has invested more resources than previous governments into improving federal bridges and highways in Mexico. Calderón has also been vocal about an open market economy and sound financial policies as key ways to face the global economic crisis. According to WEF, he’s on the right track.

However, WEF also reports that Mexico’s largest shortcomings continue to hinder its capacity to compete with the strongest service economies in the world in terms of efficiency.

The obvious elephant in the room is security and the concerns it raises with regard to the ability to conduct business. As the Casino Royale tragedy in Monterrey and a number of cases in Reynosa, Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana have shown, extortion and protection quotas paid to organized crime (and presumably colluded municipal law enforcement officials) have reached a point where they have become disincentives for business and job creation in many Mexican urban areas.

Failure to comply with criminals has resulted in a number of arson attacks that have in the best cases end up in total loss for the business owner and in the worst ones, in horrific scenes with multiple civilian causalities. One newspaper in Ciudad Juárez reports that as many as 90 percent of businesses in this city to have fallen victim to protection quota extortion. The business community and government need to urgently work together to find a practical solution to this matter.

The rest of the weaknesses include an urgent need of reforms to improve education and innovation systems. From 149 countries listed in the WEF Competitiveness Index report, Mexico ranks 107th in terms of quality of education. As I mentioned in “Mexico Lowers the Bar on Education” this has less to do with budget issues and more with the system in itself. Professionalization of teachers is urgent. Addressing how the teacher’s union led by Elba Esther Gordillo (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, or SNTE) has become an obstacle for the effectiveness of the education system is a tough issue to tackle, but clearly a must.

On innovation, if Mexico is to improve its competitive position and continue migrating to a service economy, private enterprise also needs to do its part. Companies and private universities need to risk more and invest in R&D in order to improve the country’s inventive capacity. Obviously, government can help by providing research and development incentives and funding academic investigation in the public university, but historical global experience has proven that the largest breakthroughs come from the hands of private institutions, even in cases when they were government contractors. The business community needs to spearhead innovation development.

Now, while macroeconomic indicators show progress another important issue for Mexico’s long-term competitive position is definitely wealth distribution. At a current 48/100 score in the GINI index, some advancement has been made in the past 20 years but inequality remains a real and relevant issue.

The open market economy has been insufficiently capable of trickling down the wealth to the lower socioeconomic levels of society. As a result, the informal sector and organized crime’s participation in it continue to grow, feeding into impunity in a vicious circle. Raising taxes to the very few captive taxpayers (some studies indicate that only 10 percent of Mexicans pay their taxes) is not the answer. Formalizing the informal sector, thus broadening the taxation base and hence having a larger amount of government resources to development of social assistance programs, unpopular as it may be, is a sounder policy.

One last reflection: if Mexico’s competitiveness is advancing in spite of its current challenges, imagine where the country would be if it was able to effectively address and overcome them.

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AmericasQuarterly.org. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.

Mexico mourns after Casino Royale massacre

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Dear readers,

Though originally the plan was to wait for AQBlog to publish this piece, I suspect they are dealing with Hurricane Irene in the NYC offices and might have already evacuated. For that reason and that reason alone, I am publishing this article on my personal blog (here) first. I’ll let you know when it goes online at AQBlog.

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“Mexico mourns after Casino Royale massacre”

Yesterday Mexico suffered the criminal attack with most civilian casualties in its recent history, as a group of 10-12 armed men entered the two-story ‘Casino Royale’ in the city of Monterrey, doused it with a flammable liquid and threw Molotov cocktails in the first floor. Details are still sketchy as I write these words and the death toll has not yet been established but unofficially the number is above 50, most of them women. The motive behind the attack will probably never be determined, but the local media’s investigative reports point towards non-compliance with a criminal gang that had demanded a cut of the business’ profits in exchange for ‘protection.’

Gruesome as the attack itself was, the reason for the elevated number of victims sadly has more to do with institutionalized corruption than with the criminal act itself. Survivors to this tragedy have testified that other than the main entrance to the establishment (which was blocked by the attackers), four non-labelled service doors were locked and the only supposed emergency exit to the place was fake and had a concrete wall behind it. The amount of suffering and emotions the victims must have felt when they thought they would be able to escape the fire and faced a wall in front of them, is horribly unimaginable.

Casino Royale received its license to operate as a restaurant and betting house in 2007, during the administration of Mayor Adalberto Madero, who in 2011 was officially kicked out of the PAN party for corruption charges and tainting the party’s image (he was later reinstated due to a technicality). Ironically enough, Rodrigo, José Francisco and Ramón Agustín Madero (Adalberto’s cousins) are members of the Administrative Board of the company that owns Casino Royale.

The matter becomes worse when we learn that during 2011 the establishment had already been subject to two other criminal attacks and during neither of the follow-up investigations was the fact that the venue was obviously not up to code, enough to shut it down permanently.

Today, a city and a whole country mourn. Frustration is at an all-time high and is manifesting itself in different ways. On Twitter users heightened their continued demands for Governor Rodrigo Medina to resign. Others called for the two local soccer teams to hold a friendly match in the name of peace and/or for people to wear white in the next match on Saturday. Peace rallies are the current talk of the town and surely at least one march will take place in the near future.

Well-intentioned as these efforts may be, the sad truth is that they will do little to solve the problem. And going after the criminals with guns is a must, but that is fighting the manifestations of the ailment and not the root causes. Calderon’s war on organized crime is palliative at best. The worst criminals behind massacres like Casino Royale do not carry an AK-47. They wear suits, sit behind desks at government buildings and are a part of institutionalized corruption. And we keep them there.

While I can certainly understand the plight for Medina to leave office, the person is only part of a larger system-level problem and changing a system does not occur with one single action, and it does not occur overnight.

The prescription for a real cure seems like a utopian list we’ve heard over and over again: better education, more viable job opportunities, strengthened law enforcement, rule of law, actively combating impunity and corruption, etc. But if we really want to act on our current frustration, I believe there are individual actions that each of us can take in order to start moving in the right direction. I for one, plan to do my part.

On January 5th, I wrote “A New Year’s Resolution for Mexico” for Americas Quarterly. Back then I called for our new year’s resolution as Mexicans to be not exercising any form of corruption. I proposed that we no longer bribe public officials to avoid a speeding ticket. No more tax evasion, no more purchasing pirate products which we now know are part of organized crime’s value chain. No more negligence in our duty to monitor and demand effectiveness from our elected officials and government bureaucrats and no more questionable practices in the companies we work for.

Little by little, with each permissible act of corruption, we have collectively allowed for this tragedy to happen. My new year’s resolution is even more relevant today than it was when it was originally published and I firmly believe it is a small but decisive step toward the system change we need to instil.

My heartfelt condolences for the victims of the Casino Royale tragedy and their families.

Rogue Group Attacks Nanotechnology in Mexico

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Rogue Group Attacks Nanotechnology in Mexico” , published on Aug 10th, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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The anarchist group known as ITS (Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje or “Individual actions bordering on being savage” as it would roughly translate in English) gained notoriety in Mexico on Monday (August 8th) when they claimed responsibility for a home-made explosive device that detonated in the hands of Tec de Monterrey Estado de México professor Armando Herrera Corral on the first day of school of this semester. A second device was found in another university (Instituto Politécnico Nacional) the next day; luckily authorities were able to remove and defuse it.

Through its blog “Liberación Total” ITS claims that it is an organization against all forms of domination. Radical language against the neoliberal model is of course included, with the usual blurb about the United States dominating the world, cultural and economic imperialism, etc. ITS states that nanotechnology will lead to the downfall of mankind and paints a fatalist picture of the future where artificial intelligence will take over and control mankind. Tempting as it may seem, we really shouldn’t blame Arnold Schwarzenegger and those Terminator movies for the existence of this group.

In the communiqué where they claim responsibility for the attack at Tec de Monterrey, ITS denounces universities in Mexico, claiming they “aim to prepare minds that don’t only want a piece of paper that credits their studies, but to graduate people who truly contribute to scientific knowledge and development of nanobiotechnology, in order to obtain what the system ultimately wants: total domination of everything which is potentially free.” They go on to say that scientists who claim to be investigating benefits for all of mankind are lying to us and that their true intentions are purely based on self-indulgence. The cherry on top is an isolated line in between paragraphs : “No matter what they say, Ted Kaczynski was right.”

I normally try to respect other ideologies, no matter how much they differ from my own. I believe that is the key to social understanding. However, as with other forms of fanaticism, you lose all respect when your methods for promoting that ideology involve harming other human beings, especially when it is so evident that you don’t have your facts straight. The data provided by the “Liberación Total” blog in different sections is biased and questionable at best. Here are some clear examples:

At one point they quote Nobel laureate Harold Kroto saying “if we turn back the clock to 1910 and avoided investigating in chemistry during the twentieth century, we would not have napalm or the atomic bomb.” This quote is taken out of context and cut in order to use Kroto’s title and present him as somebody against nanotechnology. When Kroto mentioned this he was actually making a case for nanotechnology investigation; his last statement is that without science we would “also not have computers, mobile phones or many other appliances.” In fact, according to Enriquez Cabot, Kroto’s work on nanotechnology will allow for the creation of “a molecular motor [with which] you can power machines that float (literally) on a speck of dust.”

ITS then pinpoints Tec de Monterrey University and Tec Professor Laura Palomares, “who in 2009 was recognized by the Academy of Mexican Science for using nanomaterials in developing an artificial virus which would cure certain sicknesses.” What’s wrong with this? According to ITS and their extensive scientific knowledge, “in any given moment it has been proven that this could create more sicknesses as a reaction to the substance.” Fact: today nanotechnology is being tested for (among many other medical applications) the effective drug delivery without harming healthy cells, with a very positive outlook. That is, nanotechnology could open the door to a definitive cure of cancer among many other ailments.

One last example of skewed ITS arguments: in their communiqué they quote Dr. Gary Small saying that excessive use of the internet causes “damages to the functioning of the brain and reducing personal skills to establish face to face conversations.” Once again, they fail to include the part where Small praises the digital era and mentions that thanks to the Internet we are “heightening skills like multi-tasking, complex reasoning and decision making.”

If anything, Mexico’s investment in technological development and innovation is late at best. In a world where capacity to compete will be based more and more in knowledge and less on natural resources, ITS would propose abandonment of the little effort being made to catch up.

How far behind is Mexico? Ownership of knowledge and the result of research and development can easily be measured by the amount of patents registered in the U.S. and Europe Patent Offices. In 2010, the U.S. registered 107,792 patents and South Korea held 11,671. Mexico? 101. Fact: the U.S. state of North Dakota holds more patents than the whole of Mexico.

And isn’t it ironic that the only way ITS is able to effectively coordinate their attacks and link with other anarchist groups in the world, is through the use of the Internet? They mention that through the Tec bombing, their intention was to gain notoriety. In that effect, they’ve been very successful. They are now famously ridiculous.

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AQ Online. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Mexico’s Supreme Court Versus the Military

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Mexico’s Supreme Court Versus the Military” , published on Jul 21st, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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Last week, Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) ruled that military personnel accused of human rights abuses will no longer be court-martialed and will now face a civil trial. Though the decision might seem like a triumph for human rights activists, a much larger problem looms behind this smoke screen.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war against drug cartels has increasingly involved the use of Mexico’s military. In hot spots like Nuevo Laredo, the military police has virtually assumed all of the law enforcement responsibilities, after 900 local transit and police officers were suspended pending toxicology exams and criminal investigations. And it doesn’t end there. Soldiers are posted in virtually all conflict-ridden areas in the country, cracking down on drug cartels in order to pursue a safer country where local law enforcement has proven ineffective.

This is all the more intriguing because in Mexico, ensuring domestic civil security is not part of the military’s responsibility. They have filled this gap due to their sworn allegiance to the President—one that they have not threatened to overrun since they committed to Mexico’s first post-revolution civilian government under Miguel Alemán in 1946.

The legislature and the SCJ have argued that since the military has essentially taken over control of policing local conflict areas in Mexico, military personnel should not be exempt from civil law and “protected” by military proceedings. It is unfortunate, however, that those in the lawmaking and justice system apparently have no knowledge of regional history or applied comparative politics.

Mexico’s armed forces have become, by default, the only trustworthy entity to which civil society has given the authorized monopoly to use violence. State and municipal law enforcement police bodies are plagued with cases of coercion, corruption, involvement in illicit activity, and ties to organized crime. While the military should be applauded for combating the war on organized crime, the very need for its involvement evinces the precarious state of civilian rule. This brings a possibility of a military coup into the picture—a fatalist option, of course, but the end result of analysis that has explained virtually all military seizures of power in Latin America for the last 100 years.

Comparative politics expert Martin C. Needler developed a framework comprised of five variables which if present, heighten the possibility of a military coup: (1) loss of military hierarchy; (2) loss of military prestige/status; (3) imposition of military budget restrictions; (4) internal order disrupted; and (5) national stability endangered. Needler has successfully applied his analysis to explain Pinochet’s Chile, the military junta in Ecuador, the unwillingness of the armed forces to protect Árbenz’ Guatemala from Honduras’ invasion, the removal of Villeda Morales in Honduras, the overthrowing of Arnulfo Arias in Panama and Víctor Paz in Bolivia—just to name some examples.

Few people would argue against the fact that Mexico faces unstable circumstances and that the ongoing conflict with drug cartels has spun into internal order disruption. We can already check two of Needler’s boxes.

Further, the Supreme Court’s decision second-guesses court-martial proceedings and undermines the very military legal system that military personnel honors and swears by every day. The SCJ ruling places Mexico’s soldiers at risk of becoming victims of the same failed justice system. The verdict hangs the military out to dry by placing them in the hands of easily corruptible judges and magistrates, some of which are on the payroll of the drug cartels. Clearly, this move affects the military’s position with regards to both hierarchy and status.

At least President Calderón is pouring funds into the military budget, so that excludes one of the variables in Needler’s model (Mexico’s current defense expenditures account for 0.5 percent of its GDP, third place in all of Latin America behind Brazil and Chile). Still, we end up having four out of five motivators for seizure of power. The least this should do is raise a few eyebrows in the highest levels of the three branches in Mexico’s government.

This is not just a question of who is in power. I firmly believe that the SCJ decision puts Mexicans at risk by placing hurdles in front of the forces asked to protect the citizenry. When a soldier pulls a trigger, the only thing going through his or her head should be the objective at hand—not the possibility of being considered a civil criminal. Mexico’s soldiers are trained to make those judgment calls, and if this needs improving then the system should work on training them better instead of tying their hands down.

Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AQ Online. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Great response to “Twitter saves lives in Mexico”

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After 16 days of being published, my article “Twitter saves lives in Mexico” continues to be within the Top 5 “Most popular articles” on Americas Quarterly. Read the article here.

Thanks to each and every one of you who’ve made this possible by forwarding, sharing, retweeting, etc. the article to your friends and colleagues. I am humbled by the great response and it makes me a lot more accountable for future articles. I do hope you continue reading my posts on my AQBlog feed at http://americasquarterly.org/user/2149

Thanks for checking them out! Here’s a quick list of my participations on Americas Quarterly (from last to first):

Cool.

 

Mexico Lowers the Bar on Education

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Mexico Lowers the Bar on Education” http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2606 , published on Jun 23rd, 2011.

Please feel free to visit and comment.

Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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It’s a common challenge in all of Latin America: run-down public school systems are insufficient, inadequate and outdated. Specifically in Mexico, negligence regarding education has widened the divide between the nation’s poorest and richest, leaving little hope for children graduating from public schools actually making a name for themselves and growing out of poverty. Mexico spends a larger portion of its GDP (about 5 percent) than countries like Uruguay, Chile and China, but it’s not about the amount of money spent. It’s the quality of education provided.

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education (SEP) continues taking one step forward and two steps back in this regard, mainly hindered by its inability to negotiate with the ever-combatant teacher’s union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, or SNTE) which has become a mob of ramblers who’ve taken education hostage. 

The most recent news regarding the eroding quality of our school system is an agreement reached by the SEP and SNTE on filling new teaching positions. This year the Ministry of Education and the SNTE (led by Elba Esther Gordillo) declared that candidates will be eligible to become teachers if they pass a meager 30 percent of questions on the Examen Nacional de Habilidades y Conocimientos Docentes (National Test on Teaching Skills and Knowledge).

Ironically students in Mexico need to get 70 percent or higher to pass each subject. This, however, does not seem to bother José García, a member of the Comisión Rectora de la Alianza por la Calidad de la Educación (Guiding Commission of the Alliance for the Quality of Education) of the SNTE, who blatantly defends the policies. “It’s the students who need to show they know to subject matter, not the teachers,” he says. Crazy as this may sound.

As if having a 30 percent pass grade for teachers wasn’t enough, candidates now receive a set of guidebooks to help them prepare for the test. The fact that this information is readily available online, allowed me to dig deeper into the subject and find matters to be even worse.

On the one hand, candidates are not screened from criminal records. The only documentation requested for eligibility is their university title or proof of having taken a final professional exam (depending on the grade they aspire to teach), their voter card, the CURP (a registry number), and completion of a couple of forms.  These are people who are going to have unsupervised access to our children with a lasting effect on their development. You’d think somebody would want to look into their backgrounds, right?

Moreover, it is practically impossible to fail the National Test. To cite a specific example, a high school math teacher’s exam consists of 80 questions, 20 of which are actually about math. The exam is divided into four sections: curricular content (actual subject matter), scholastic competencies, logic, and ethics. It is understandable that you would want to evaluate skills to teach, think and have a moral conscience. However, the way the exam is now set up (only requiring the candidate to have the right answer on 24 of the 80 questions) a candidate to a math teaching position could score zero on subject matter and still have a very good chance of being eligible to teach it. 

Add criminal deviance and a skewed view on ethics into the mix and guess what? He can still make it if he has logical thinking and just a little bit of scholastic skills!

Each question in the exam is followed by four possible answers, one of which is correct. Does it take a genius to point out that just based on simple probability candidates are going to get 25 percent of the answers right? It seems all we’re asking our future teachers to contribute is an additional 5 percent of brilliance (or luck).

It is no wonder that regardless of the amount of money being poured into education (and seeped through corruption into the unions), our students are less and less prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.   

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AQ Online. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.

“Twitter saves lives in Mexico” aftershock

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 Yesterday morning, Americas Quarterly published my article “Twitter saves lives in Mexico”. Apparently the story hit home to a lot of people because it has since gone viral being republished and shared on social networks and the internet at a massive scale (at least I think so anyways).

 I’m glad so many people have found this story interesting. Here is part of the aftershock:

  1. Within a couple of hours, the piece had gone to #1 Most popular on AQ Online.
  2. NBC San Antonio is going to run a report on it sometime next week.
  3. The story was referenced by Hispanic Tips – Hispanic and Latino News Redefined.
  4. NotiSensor translated it into Spanish and republished it here.
  5. Pakistan Voices discussed and linked the story here.
  6. Global Voices promoted the article via Twitter and their website here.
  7. Silobreaker.com talked about the article here.
  8. BuzzBox caught the story and linked it through its Twitter account and via its website.
  9. BuzzTracker also found its way to it and promoted it here.
  10. Twitter users have retweeted the story with impacts over 200,000 just on the first day.  

 The most important thing to remember: the story is only possible due to the fact that we have people behind user accounts like @TrackMty, @SPSeguro and @MAGS_SP helping others be safe. Once again, thanks to them.

Twitter saves lives in Mexico

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Twitter saves lives in Mexico ”

http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2576  , published on Jun 10th, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment.

Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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The situation of widespread violence in our border states stemming from drug cartel wars and the federal government’s attempt to combat them is well known.  But I would like to share a story of success that truly symbolizes the strength we can find in social unity when coping with the present state of instability.

The people of Monterrey (located in the northeastern part of Mexico) used to consider the southern part of Texas both their playground and their place for shopping. Even after NAFTA made most consumer products readily available within Mexico, the custom of taking a weekend trip to the Rio Grande Valley or destinations such as San Antonio, Austin or Corpus Christi remained.

That is, until people became too afraid to travel on the Mexican highways near the border. The past couple of years have seen a sharp decline in tourists willing to risk their lives to pass through towns like Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Río Bravo, and Matamoros—all overrun by the cartels. In Monterrey, too, people are less willing to be out on the town after hours. They are afraid of being caught in the middle of a fight between rivaling cartels or criminals and authorities.

However, due to the proliferation of new social media (specifically Twitter) people are now better equipped to cope with their fears. Local anonymous heroes have emerged and created accounts such as @TrackMty, @SPSeguro and @MAGS_SP that are used to warn people about risk zones and specific attacks in real time. Each citizen who follows these users becomes a non-official reporter. And with the widespread popular response to these new accounts, the result is eyes and ears everywhere of people willing to invest a couple of minutes to warn others of danger and lessen the possibilities of innocent people being caught in the crossfire.

Here’s how it works. The person witnessing an attack tweets it to one of these accounts, which is then re-published to a massive audience.  Thanks to this non-paid service we have been able to avoid a number of risky situations by rerouting our course while going from point A to point B. For example, in a matter of seconds, a warning shared by @TrackMty reaches a 40,000-person audience.

The local newspaper EL NORTE, spearheaded a similar strategy for securing highway travel during holiday seasons by promoting the use of a series of hashtags (keywords) on Twitter such as #carreteralaredo and #carreterareynosa (the highways to Laredo and to Reynosa) for reporting incidents on these main roads going to major border towns.

I have witnessed this Twitter warning system firsthand. In traveling through Laredo with my family recently I felt a bit more protected every time a notification came in from a traveler a few miles in front of me noting that there was no danger ahead. With no hidden agenda and nothing to earn from it, users I have never met such as @Gabsinelli, @labellayellibro and @lacandanosa kept me and my family safe during the trip. All I can do is publicly thank them for it. Following suit, I repaid the favor and used the appropriate hashtags to provide similar information for the benefit of those traveling behind me.

The social media boom has sparked revolutions in some countries. In Mexico, it brings us together and provides an opportunity to show solidarity in our common challenge facing urban violence. When credibility in state and municipal law enforcement is as tarnished as it is in Mexico, civil society finds new ways to try to secure itself.  

To all of those who selflessly participate in this chain of collaboration and communication for the better good, thank you.

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AQ Online. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.

Bilateral Cooperation Needed in the Crime Fight But U.S. Homeland Security and DOJ Opt Out

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Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Bilateral Cooperation Needed in the Crime Fight But U.S. Homeland Security and DOJ Opt Out ”

http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2560 , published on May 31st, 2011. Please feel free to visit and comment.

Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.

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Despite efforts from various U.S. congressmen to convince their peers that Mexican drug cartels should be classified as terrorist organizations operating within the United States, the U.S. Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) recently decided against it. In doing so, the U.S. administration missed out on yet another opportunity to show resolve in the fight against binational drug-related crime and violence.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón continues a full frontal assault against the cartels, recently deploying a larger contingent of soldiers to border towns, but the U.S. government apparently has other priorities and/or larger problems to deal with.

The Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego writes in its most recent Justice in Mexico report that according to DHS Office of Anti-terrorism Director Grayling Williams, “the mechanisms and laws already in place in the U.S. to deal with drug trafficking are sufficient and the proposed terrorist classification would be unnecessary.”

Although there is no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism, the key message behind this decision has less to do with defining the term and more to do with how the government agencies are willing to deal with this growing problem. Classifying Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations would set a clear agenda on fighting the drug trade. It would also open up a series of procurement processes for projects combating the issue both within Mexico and the United States.

Such a qualification would also send a clear message to the State Department and the U.S.  Agency for International Development on where to focus assistance funding and contract projects. Equally important, it would show that the U.S. is as serious about eliminating this threat as they were when they decided to add Colombia’s FARC to their terrorist list. It also would set the record straight that providing weapons to these organized crime groups is punishable in the same way that it  is to establish business transactions with terrorists.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management—who introduced legislation to Congress on March 30 calling for the government to label six Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations—stated that the decision to keep the cartels off the list is a sign of shortsightedness. His response: “The drug cartels are here. The Department of Homeland Security reports that they operate in 276 cities inside the U.S. Only after the murder of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent Jaime Zapata were 450 cartel members arrested in this country.” The cartel’s transactions are simple: they sell the drugs to U.S. users and buy the weapons to bring back into Mexico and service their bloody exchanges with Mexican federal and state police/military forces.

A reliable source from the intelligence community in Mexico, who requested to remain anonymous for security reasons, volunteered that even after Calderón’s attempts to strengthen military presence at the border, more than 10,000 artillery pieces (automatic weapons and grenades mostly) make their way into Mexico from the U.S. every day. The result? Our forces keep trading bullets with the cartels but the U.S. consumers continue to provide them cash flow and the gun sellers operating in the United States continue to arm them.

Nearly a year ago, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed President Calderón, who then said we needed joint, committed efforts to deal with the drug trafficking issue. Mexico has shown it is ready today but with elections coming in 2012, the resolve shown by Calderón might not remain after the dust has settled.

The window of opportunity could be closing and it’s time for our partner to the north to act, for both our sakes.

*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AQ Online. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.