A Community Visit by Mexican President Calderon

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is seen here addressing the public at CET in San Jose

On Saturday, June 11th, Mexican President Felipe Calderon made a rare appearance in the San Francisco Bay Area at a special town hall “Encuentro con la comunidad mexicana” with nearly 600 immigrant laborers, grassroots organizers, farm workers and other non-political compatriots from six Monterey and Bay Area counties.

The meeting took place at the nationally-recognized Center for Employment Training (CET) in San José; an organization that has specialized in vocational training for farm workers for over forty years and sponsors one of the most successful local Consul General’s Spanish educational programs for co-nationals.

Calderon was expected to be the keynote speaker the next day at the Stanford University 150th graduation ceremonies in Palo Alto; but Saturday’s event was kept very quiet and few knew it was being planned.

Last minute changes and the guest list were completed literally after the midnight hour and security was exceptionally tight. Clearance for the guests and media to enter that morning took nearly three hours while they waited quietly in a line outside the building.

President Calderon addressed four main topics; the socio-economic condition of Mexican nationals living in the U.S.; jobs and the economy inside Mexico; immigration; and the drug cartels and corruption.

The speech was extemporaneous and ranged from humorous and charming, to powerful and accusatory.

Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior

A welcome was given by Candido Morales, first President of the I.M.E. (Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior); a position he was appointed to in 2002 by past Mexican President Fox to represent the interests and needs of immigrants in the United States to the Mexican Foreign Ministry, the equivalency of the U.S. State Department.

Morales, a dual citizen, came to California at the age of 8 to reunite with his father, a Mixtec Indian from Oaxaca.

He eventually earned a degree from Sonoma State University and later became Director of Communications with the California Human Development Corporation (CHDC), a farm worker service agency.

He gave an overview of the Mexican consulates and workers in the U.S. and of their programs and progress.

He expounded on the many accomplishments of the host agency CET and its CEO, Hermelinda Sapien; and she later was graciously invited by Calderon to share the head table with him, Patricia Espinosa, Foreign Relations Secretary and his wife.

Morales used his own life story to exemplify the struggles of migrant workers in California and to urge Mexico’s continued support.

Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena

Speaking next was Mariano Alvarez, leader of the Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena; an organization that unites over three thousand California migrants who are indigenous people from the Mixteca Region of Oaxaca State in Southern Mexico.

“We want the President to know that we are very preoccupied with our youth – their education and how they are quickly losing our language and traditions,” Alvarez said as he was waiting for his complete delegation of Triquis to arrive before the event began.

They were later seated mostly in the front row, visibly uncomfortable and standing out in bright red, hand-woven huipil dresses and gavanes characteristic of their ethnic group.

Alvarez began in his native Triquis language, a gesture of respect to his ancestors he explained later, and also welcomed the President to San José.

In an emotional admission that brought many in the audience to tears, Alvarez quietly and haltingly spoke about his difficult first years in California, attending school in Sonoma in absolute isolation; not able to speak Spanish or English.

He spoke of the daily discrimination; of the humiliating taunts and joking that came from both English-speakers and Mexicans alike. He spoke about the back-breaking work that never ended and of the loneliness.

His was a poignant testimonial to the immigrant struggle to work to provide food, shelter and clothing for families here and in Mexico; and it was the perfect lead into President Calderon’s address.

Recognizing the struggles

It was not a surprise that President Calderon chose to begin his talk on the economic downturn impacting Mexico and all of the Americas.

He declared that U.S. law makers could continue to defer real immigration reform while they continue passing increasingly punitive and impractical anti-immigrant laws specifically designed to devastate hardworking people; but it would not deter poor individuals from leaving Mexico in search of work.

“Mexico is rich with laborers who need work and the United States is rich with businesses that need workers,” he proclaimed. “We’re like two shoes in a pair. If either foot is missing its shoe it’s much more difficult to walk.”

He acknowledged the historic role Mexican labor had in the prosperity of the United States and of a time when the U.S. openly created a visiting labor initiative whose workers became known as Braceros (those who work with their arms). Two were present in the audience and were given the microphone to speak to the President.

Calderon explained to the 89 and 90-year old men that he was the first Mexican president to begin paying back the debt owed to these workers who primarily came to the U.S. in the 1940’s and the 1950’s. He further promised to pay them all in full before the end of his last year in office.

The murder of thousands

The President spoke of the drug cartels and the impressive number of kingpins arrested or killed during his tenure. He spoke of making headway from a number of fronts, but that there were two daunting facts that continued to devastate significant progress.

The first was the sales of weapons in the U.S., and the second was the consumption of drugs in the U.S.

In the last four years, over 104,000 weapons, more than half of which were assault weapons, were confiscated from members of the cartels during Mexican police actions, he said. More than 85% were sold in the United States.

His tone became more heated as he went on to declare that these U.S. paramilitary arms, sold in initially legal transactions, were not going into the hands of law-abiding Americans, but into the hands of criminals and ending up killing Mexicans.

Probably the strongest statement made that morning was the reiteration of comments Calderon made to the U.S. Congress during a visit in May, 2010.

“Why is this allowed to continue?” he demanded. “Why? For profit, of course!!” This is not about the American Constitution, he declared, of which “I have the upmost respect. It is about those who continue to make huge profits off of sales... and I accuse these profiteering gun companies of murdering thousands of Mexican lives!” He shouted passionately into an audience that already knew the answer.

It may not be a small coincidence that drug-related violence began to escalate the year after the U.S. allowed an inter-American cooperative agreement against the illicit manufacture and trafficking in firearms, ammunition and explosives (CIFTA Treaty) to expire at the end of 2004. The American Congress has not been able to bring a similar act to the floor since then, even though President Obama declared it as one of his goals in 2009.

Insecurity and corruption

Calderon also spoke sadly about the insecurity emerging in communities where corruption has eroded the quality of daily life. He is deeply affected by the growing criminal element that menaces citizens, blackmails businesses, and abducts relatives to intimidate people into paying bribes for security and spoke personally about the current situation in his home town of Morelia, Michoacan.

Every year there are a million babies born in Mexico, he said, and the economic downturn and cartel-culture are leaving too many youth to become educated “in the streets; growing up without families, without education, and without values.”

Besides fighting crime we must also work to change society. Without trusted law officials, addressing corruption in public institutions will remain insurmountable.

“The day that 32 Federal Justice Authorities are staffed with authorities who are clean, decent, and dedicated to a safe Mexico – then our country will move past this criminal wave,” he concluded and followed by confiding that he already ordered the evaluations of law enforcement officials with a complete set of tests: socio-economic and psychological exams, drug-testing, and polygraph testing.

“We must remember that the ladder has two directions: up and down,” he quipped. So he decided to start the evaluation process at the highest levels of Federal policing authorities, beginning with the Secretariats. It started in January.

Calderon believes that although the socio-economic test may seem like an odd type of character exam, it is a practical one. “Imagine telling an official while he is wired to a polygraph: You make a certain annual salary, yet you own multiple properties, expensive cars, and other possessions well beyond your means. Explain.”

With just one year left in his six-year administration, President Felipe Calderon remains ambitious. Why not? There is everything to gain.