because my mum works 40 and 40+ hours a week shifts yet was getting paid significantly less than my stepfather while he was receiving unemployment benefits.
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Manuel, 19, Mexican, southside safarian; loves jellyfish, hip-hop, juice boxes, bicis and in rainbows.
Contact me: mnlgrr91@gmail.com
Contact me: mnlgrr91@gmail.com
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Reflections on screening and discussion of Murder Capital of the World
The film Murder Capital of the World brings together personal stories and behind-the scenes interviews to help the viewer witness and analyze the effects and causes of the Mexican Drug War in the border city of Juarez. Charlie Minn’s purpose for making the movie was to bring light to what he calls “the greatest human rights disaster today”, although I thought the movie worked best for those who already had some background information on the Mexican drug war and would be able to engage in a more in depth discussion of what’s occurring in Mexico. The movie did an excellent job of introducing me to critical commentaries and analyses which I had been previously unexposed to and which have given me new forms of observing and thinking about the Mexican drug war. I was most taken in by the views introduced in the film regarding the motives behind the drug war and what path the Drug War might take after the Mexican and United States presidential elections.
My friends and me have often discussed what’s going on in Mexico but haven’t really explored the topic together too deeply. During our discussions we have come to the conclusion that how the Drug War turns out will lie largely on what course of action the next president of Mexico decides to take. In our eyes Felipe Calderon is going after drug cartels under honest motives. While not explicitly said in the movie, the movie hints that President Felipe Calderon is not acting out of pure motives. During the discussion Charlie Minn shared with us his thoughts that Felipe Calderon may already be collaborating with the drug cartels. Minn questions how hard President Felipe Calderon is actually going after the drug cartels and why violence and the number of deaths have increased in the areas where President Calderon has sent out the federal police and the military. Minn’s views on President Calderon have not completely convinced me, but they have made me look at the President and military’s actions from a more critical standpoint.
An alarming fact that was brought up in the movie was how much money the U.S. is allocating towards the Mexican military. Minn mentions that the U.S. could be “secretly trying to control Mexico by buying the military”. This is a cause for concern when observing past cases where the U.S. has funded militaries in Latin American countries - Argentina, Chile and Guatemala to name a few. Minn brings up that the way the military has suffered little loss of life, compared to the rest of the country, is reminiscent of fascist countries undergoing social cleansing of their population. What group of people is the Mexican government trying to wipe out though? The poor and the young come to mind but I am unaware of the demographics of those who have lost their lives due to the war. I would be hesitant to describe Mexico under Felipe Calderon as a fascist state. However, I would be very interested in learning more about whether Minn’s comment holds up under further research and analysis.
When talking about the Drug War in class we have often discussed that Mexico might be heading towards a failed state but what would come if and after the state collapses is something that we haven’t explored too much. During the discussion a question that came up was whether Mexico is headed towards an authoritative state? At the moment the Mexican people, as demonstrated in the movie, are living in a state of constant fear. This state of fear certainly opens up the possibilities for an oppressive regime to come to power. However, since the Porfiriatio the Mexican government has tried very hard to upkeep an image of a democratic and legitimate government. This makes me doubt that a military dictatorship could come to power in Mexico although, of course, that isn’t the only way under which authoritative regimes operate.
At this point, I think Mexican people are ready for violence to leave their communities. Most people in this situation would be likely follow those people or parties who they believe are most likely to return peace and bring an end to the violence surrounding them. If Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI come back to power after the presidential elections would they be able to return peace to the country as they promise? Under the discussion we came to the conclusion that the PRI would yield zero deaths but would bring a return to authoritarianism and allow the Cartels to renew themselves. Personally, I’m not sure if violence in Mexico would stop if the PRI wins the presidency as from my understanding the drug cartels seem to be as much in war with the government as amongst themselves. If Peña Nieto does win the presidency, I’m almost certain that there would be a heavy increase in corruption and a blow would be given to Mexico’s democratic process for years to come.
Murder Capital of the World ends with a quote, which Director Charlie Minn asked one of his interviewers to say, that concludes that nothing will change until money and weapons stop coming into Mexico and drugs into the United States. The films conclusion provides a space where Americans can participate in helping end the violence in Mexico. As it stands, U.S. drug use is directly funding the drug cartels. A reform of current drug laws and decriminalization of small amounts of drugs in the United States would go a long way in helping bring down the power of the Drug Cartels. While various states have attempted to reform their state’s drug laws, federal reforms have not seriously come into discussion within Congress. Minn challenged the viewers of the film to become active in spreading information about the Drug War in the United States as a way to influence the actions that the U.S is taking in regards to the Mexican Drug War. Through collective activism from Americans I belief some change is possible. Spreading knowledge to a wider and caring audience, as Minn is attempting to do, seems like an appropriate first step. Performance-activism like that showcased by students in El Paso is another great way to bring this issue into public consciousness.
As a Mexican living in the United States I find it really hard to figure out what would be best for Mexico without knowing about the personal realities of those actually living through this war. I really appreciated that Murder Capital of the World did a very good job of introducing me to some personal stories of the victims of the war but I was still left in a state confusion about what’s really happening in Mexico. I keep asking myself “ Is the Drug War a good cause? Is it worth fighting at all? How long is this war going to go on for? Is there a possible resolution for this conflict?” but am still unable to come up with adequate answers. Murder Capital of the World may not have had clear answers to my questions but it has helped guide me in viewing the Mexican Drug War from new and more critical standpoints and has introduced me to various perspectives that I had not previously considered.
Here’s a link to a preview of the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyX1BlA4qGY
If you’re rolling up a blunt or doing cheap drugs in general just remember that U.S. drug users are funding the killings of innocent Mexican people.
I had my first nutritionist meeting today. Currently I weight 185 pounds with a 26 bmi. Before coming to college I used to weigh around 140-50 and had a bmi of around 19-20. So yeah…
I feel depressed at the moment.
I have to keep a food diary for the rest of the week and agreed to exercise for 45 minutes and then I’m going to meet with my nutritionist again next week.
My goals are probably to get back down towards a healthy bmi and lose a couple of dress sizes. Right now I’m in between a 34 and a 36 but I would like to get down to 32-33 primarily because I can’t afford to buy a whole new set of clothes and I’m tired of wearing the same remaining clothes that still fit me.
sigh :(
I had a really disappointing meeting with the head of the history department today. Everyone before her had told me that it’d be a great idea to double major in history and spanish… The head of the department’s views were completely different, but she did have some merit to what she was saying. Primarily, that the single most important thing to get into grad school was to write a thesis. However, as she so keenly emphasized a spanish thesis was unlikely to impress a history department. This had been my main fear in only majoring in spanish all along, but I’m at a point where it’s too late to double major in something else. Right now I still have a few options.
1. Double major in history and spanish and write a spanish thesis (I won’t have time to fulfill all the required courses to write a thesis in history).
2. Only major in Spanish and continue doing the Latin American/Latino Studies certificate while also writing a thesis.
3. Major in spanish and write an interdisciplinary thesis on Latino studies informed by the courses I’ve taken from my certificate.
The third option sounds like the best idea. I think something good came out of my disappointing meeting, as it has really reaffirmed my interest in pursuing Latino/a Studies in Grad school. Getting there isn’t going to be easy but now I know where I have to place all my efforts. I still feel unsatisfied with not being able to double major but I am increasingly more unsatisfied in not having gone to a College with more varied academic departments. I don’t think there’s been one semester here where I’ve really liked all the courses I’m taking. I’ve always gotten stuck in one course each semester that I end up taking just because this school didn’t have any better classes to choose from that would fit into my schedule.
As for possible thesis options, I was thinking that I could write about Latino/as who leave the “ethnic enclave”. What is it like to be a Latino/a in college in a completely different setting than you’re used to, eating foods you don’t like, surrounded with people you can’t, no matter how hard you try, feel at ease with? How does this feeling of being alone or being different affect one socially/academically/psychologically? Does being away from other Latino/as make you want to assimiliate into an identity more aligned with ones college peers or does this have the completely opposite effect? My sociology teacher last semester gave the example that you only feel Mexican when you’re not surrounded by Mexicans. I would be incorporating a lot of borderland theory and Du Bois double consciousness but would also be really interested in exploring aspects of Latina Feminism and the ways in which forms of Latino/a political consciousness are developed within contexts removed from ethnic enclaves.
This all clearly needs more refinement but it’s something that I’m definitely going to start thinking about more seriously.
The difference between “a gender perspective” [perspectiva de genero], “a focus on gender”[enfoque de genero] and “gender equity.”
The concept of “gender equity” sought to construct an imaginary wherein the roles assigned by patriarchy to women and men could some day be equal. But this is exactly what isn’t possible, precisely due to the critique that gender makes: the masculine gender is such because it signifies “more, better and superior to the feminine gender.” To take an everyday example, when a woman due to the roles assigned to women has skills and know-how developed in the kitchen, she is called a cook; when a man enters the kitchen to cook, he becomes a “chef” and immediately is socially positioned as the star of the kitchen, the big expert, whose cooking is distinctive and better than women’s.
Or, when a woman works hard to become an engineer and succeeds she is seen as a second class engineer, not to be trusted with a job, to the point that she will be asked to serve the coffee in a meeting of colleagues. These two examples show how gender works—whatever he does, a man will be considered superior to a woman; whatever she does, a woman will be considered inferior to a man. That is the meaning of gender.
To understand this explanation better compare the political use of the category of gender to that of class. Gender has the same political significance as class: there will never be class equity (equality) because social classes are founded, originate, in the injustice of exploitation of one class by another; the bourgeoisie are the bourgeoisie because they exploit the proletariat. Class equity signifies either that the bourgeois as bourgeois and the proletarian as proletarian have what they deserve; or if “equity” means “equality” it’s like saying that one day there is going to be class equality, exactly what is impossible! If there were class equality, “class” would cease to exist, that would be the day when social classes come to an end, it would be the moment in which the struggle against the injustice of the bourgeoisie’s appropriation of the labor of the proletariat ceased.
Class as a revolutionary concept denounces exploitation and proposes the overcoming of class, understood as an unjust historical reality; and the inauguration of a stage of humanity in which there will not be exploited nor exploiters, exactly what is meant by the end of class.
The same is true of gender. There is never going to be gender equity or equality because the masculine gender is created at the cost of the feminine, which is why the struggle consists in the overcoming of gender as an unjust historical reality. Said differently, we’re speaking of the transcendence of gender as a historical and cultural construction and the beginning of a new way of raising and socializing children without the limits of gender (sin generos). What this means from a feminist perspective is that there will no longer be feminine or masculine. We want to do away with the relations of power constructed on the basis of gender, not preserve gender in a counterrevolutionary “equity.”
What Kafka’s stories have, rather, is a grotesque and gorgeous and thoroughly modern complexity. Kafka’s humor not only not neurotic but anti-neurotic, heroically sane — is, finally, a religious humor, but religious in the manner of Kierkegaard and Rilke and the Psalms, a harrowing spirituality against which even Ms. O’Connor’s bloody grace seems a little bit easy, the souls at stake pre-made.
And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance.[2] It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get — the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke — that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens…and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.
This fucking paper has made me reconsider my life way too many times and I’m not even close to finishing it. I feel like I’m going to get a worse grade on my rewrite than on the first version I turned in (a 70 btw). At this point though I don’t give a fuck. I just never want to hear about Bolivar, ever again, even though I do because I love Latin American history. I’m tired of my life being one essay after another.
De aquel amor
De musíca ligera
Nada nos libra
Nada mas queda
