CLACS Blog

Mexico City – Un saludo desde México. There are a host of problems in Latin America, ranging from governance and democracy to market functionality and development. However, one statistic best captures the essence of the problem. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 80% of Latin American leaders overwhelmingly say that private (de facto) economic groups exercise too much power in Latin America, which “limits the capacity of governments to respond to the demands of their citizens.” In other words, there is a crisis of governability provoked by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. Where transparency and accountability do not exist, impunity reigns and de facto powers fill the void. In Mexico, for example, The Global Integrity Report ranks anti-corruption measures and the rule of law as very weak. In order to understand why and how Mexico suffers in these and other similar categories – in other words, the crisis of governability – I have followed the logic of the UNDP and others in an attempt to track the origins (origin?) of Mexico’s de facto powers.

Mexico’s most influential group of business leaders, the Consejo Mexicano de Hombes de Negocio (Mexican Council of Businessmen, CMHN) originated in 1962 during the peak of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (P.R.I.) 71-year reign over Mexican politics and government. Unlike the country’s many cámaras, or business associations, which were originally encouraged by the Mexican government during the country’s post-revolutionary political and economic consolidation of the 1920s to promote broad economic and industrial growth, the CMHN was founded four decades later, initially as an informal mouthpiece for Mexico’s economic élite. However, the organization, comprised of the upper crust of Mexico’s richest and most successful families, soon found its legs as a powerful albeit nearly invisible political and economic broker largely credited with shaping and promoting the P.R.I.’s centralized, undemocratic, and corporativist stranglehold on the Mexican presidency. Throughout the years, the CMHN has consistently promoted and financed the country’s political and economic consolidation in the hands of an oligarchy, tending toward centralized power and economic monopoly versus a legitimate democracy and the free market. However, the CMHN has historically encouraged the Mexican government and businesses to seek international financing for economic stability and expansion, willing to encourage foreign investment as long as the Mexican élite continues to control the country’s government and economy.

Since its inception, the CMHN evolved from its informal roots to become an organized, conservative, and influential power behind the scenes of the Mexican government, though it later created the subservient Business Coordinating Council (CCE) to relate with other business and political sectors. The organization rarely participated in or consulted with other business associations, preferring to meet with and influence the president and heads of state directly. Following a period of particular tension during the presidencies of Luis Echevarría Álvarez (1970-76) and José López Portillo (1976-82), when the government invested public capital and nationalized certain industries, the CMHN achieved a permanent consultative status with Mexican presidents in the 1980s, particularly Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-94), who used neoliberal privatization schemes to clearly benefit Mexico’s ruling élite. The CMHN habitually dealt exclusively with the Mexican president until 1994, ignoring other important actors such as the Mexican congress and judiciary. As the P.R.I.’s power began to decline, the CMHN sought to influence and impose upon the national leadership of the conservative National Action Party (P.A.N.) and ultimately deal directly with presidents Vicente Fox de Quesada (2000-06) and Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-12).

The CMHN was founded on September 13, 1962, by 12 business leaders led by Bruno Pagliai, a wealthy Italian-American iron industrialist and close confidant of former president Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946-52). The group’s other founders included, among others, Jorge Larrea, President of Construcciones Jorge Larrea; Agustín Legorreta, Director of the Banco Nacional de México; Rómulo O’Farril, Chairman of the Board of Televisa; Bernardo Quintana, President of Ingenieros Civiles Asociados (ICA); and Juan Sánchez Navarro, Director of Cervecería Modelo. In the decade following its inception, the CMHN incorporated 15 more members, including Prudencio López, president of Gases Mexicanos, and Rolando Vega, director of Banco de Industria y Comercio. These particular families and their businesses are still intimately connected today. Could it be that the origins of Mexico’s de facto powers lie with the CMHN? Hasta la próxima vez . . .

Greetings from Santo Domingo! For the past weeks I have been in the Dominican Republic researching the constitutional reform that proposes to change the definition of Article 11 in the current constitution to state that the children of undocumented immigrants born in the Dominican Republic would not be considered Dominican nationals.

Currently, the majority of undocumented immigrants are Haitian and for many civil society groups this amendment to the constitution is just the last of many attempts to create laws that would legally exclude a population that has been historically marginalized. With this proposed reform the children of undocumented immigrants will never be considered Dominicans and never have the opportunity to exercise their rights as full citizens. This would mean limited access to basic services and a sense of belonging nowhere; in sum, statelessness.

I’ve been looking for answers to many questions over the past few weeks and I feel that those questions have generated even more questions. The fact of the matter is that while there are undocumented immigrants coming from countries other than Haiti, the data on these groups is non-existent making it difficult to see how these laws and constitutional changes are affecting groups other than Dominicans of Haitian descent. It is also public knowledge that many opinion leaders have explicitly stated that Dominicans of Haitian descent are just as Haitian as their parents. In a country where politics are so entrenched in the daily lives of all, the opinion of these individuals does matter and can effectively influence.

My interviews with several non-governmental organizations have revealed that their struggle for inclusiveness and the right to a name and nationality for Dominicans of Haitian descent has been an uphill battle and at times they have felt as if all of their recourses had been exhausted. However, there have been victories such as Yean y Bosico vs Republica Dominicana in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanded that two young Dominican girls of Haitian descent be granted their birth certificates and publicly acknowledge and apologize. The Dominican Republic continues to reject this ruling and in many ways have negatively responded to the international attention this case received.

In a country where economic development has not directly translated into human development it is concerning to see how large sectors of the Dominican population are being excluded. I must add that citizenship rights are not only limited to Dominicans of Haitian descent but to many poor Dominicans who are not of Haitian descent that do not have access to their birth certificates. In a country where birth certificates equal Dominican nationality it remains to be seen how those who cannot prove their nationality can define the imagined nation.

Mexico City – Un último saludo defeño. Few families are as enigmatic as the Larreas. While Mexico’s most wealthy individual, Carlos Slim Helú, and quite possibly other well-known captains of industry and oligarchs are public and often polemical figures, the same cannot be said of the Larrea family. Comfortably placed in slot #4 behind Slim, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, and Alberto Bailléres González in the rankings of Mexico’s richest families, Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco and family, as well as their companies, are certainly not household names. However, upon closer inspection, a pattern develops similar to that of the development of other Mexican family fortunes. The growth of the Larreas’ financial success from a small construction company in Mexico City to one of the world’s largest mining companies and the country’s largest railroad enterprise can be traced alongside the emergence of perhaps Mexico’s most influential group of business leaders, the Consejo Mexicano de Hombres de Negocio (see my last two blogs). Just as the Mexican Council of Businessmen (CMHN) evolved to become economically and politically dominant within Mexico while thriving on its own insularity and even secrecy, the Larrea family has applied the same model to itself, operating behind large, faceless holding companies while using proxies to tend to its affairs and grease the wheels of Mexico’s political and corporate hierarchy.

Germán’s father, Jorge Larrea Ortega (b. 1912, d. 1999), began his business career in Mexico City during the presidency of Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946-52) by starting his own construction company, Construcciones Jorge Larrea, which would later become México Constructora Industrial, S.A. de C.V. Subsequently, Larrea Ortega met and gained the confidence of Bruno Pagliai, an Italian-American businessman and perhaps Mexico’s wealthiest individual at the time, becoming the industrialist’s legal proxy in matters concerning his seamless tube business in Veracruz, Tubos de Acero de México, S.A. de C.V. (TAMSA). Through this relationship, Larrea Ortega became a shareholder of TAMSA and began his rise in the steel and metallurgic sector. Around this same time, Pagliai introduced Larrea Ortega to what would become a lifelong passion, horses and racing. Pagliai had recently constructed Mexico City’s only horserace track, Hipódromo de las Américas, at the insistence of former presidents Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-46) and Alemán Valdés. Later, in 1962, 12 business leaders, including Pagliai and Larrea Ortega, founded the CMHN, which historically has included members of Mexico’s wealthiest families.

In 1965, Larrea Ortega guided a group of investors through a partial acquisition of the American Smelting and Refining Company’s (ASARCO) Mexican properties and a partial acquisition of the La Caridad copper mine, after changes in mining laws favored Mexican-controlled companies. He later added more mining construction, financial, and railway interests to his group, while expanding from the mining and refining of copper into wire and other copper products. However, Larrea Ortega became truly wealthy during the Salinas de Gortari presidency (1988-94) after Larrea’s mining company, which would later become Grupo México, bought out the Mexican government’s share of the bankrupt La Caridad mine in 1988 for an exceptionally low US$680 million and won a privatization bid for Cananea, Mexico’s largest copper mine, paying only US$475 million in 1990, again well below market value. In 1994, Larrea Ortega ceded control of his holdings to his eldest son, Germán, while remaining Grupo México’s honorary president. Throughout his career, Larrea Ortega invested in numerous businesses and sat on various corporate boards, many controlled by other founding members of the CMHN. Additionally, many of them also sat on the Grupo México board of directors.

In 1981, Larrea Ortega named Germán to the Grupo México board of directors, later naming him Executive Vice-Chairman of the Board of Minera México and Grupo México. Upon his father’s death in 1999, Germán Larrea was ceded the family’s professional responsibilities and today is Grupo México’s largest individual shareholder. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Board, President, and C.E.O. of Grupo México. Larrea is also Chairman of the Board of Americas Mining Corporation; Chairman of the Board of Southern Copper Corporation; and Chairman of the Board of Grupo Ferroviario Mexicano, S.A. de C.V. Previously, Larrea was Chairman of the Board and C.E.O. of ASARCO. Germán Larrea also owns several other companies with significant investments in or business interests tied to Grupo México. Among these, Larrea is Chairman of the Board and C.E.O. of Empresarios Industriales de México (a holding company which is Grupo México’s largest shareholder) and chairman and C.E.O. of Compañía Perforadora México (drilling company) and Fondo Inmobiliario (real-estate company). He also founded a printing and publishing company in 1978, Grupo Impresa, where he remained President and C.E.O. until it was sold in 1989.

In addition to Grupo México and his separate business interests, Germán Larrea is a board member of several corporations and institutions linked to the CMHN, including: the Mexican Council of Businessmen, Mexican Stock Exchange, Grupo Bursatil Mexicano, Grupo Televisa, Grupo Financiero Banamex-Accival (owned by Grupo Financiero Citigroup), Banco Nacional de México, and Grupo Comercial America (owned by ING). He has also been linked as an investor to Grupo TMM and ScotiabankInverlat. And given his passion for horses and racing, which he shares with his father, he has long been rumored to frequent the Hipódromo de las Ámericas, where it is rumored that he is also an investor. Additionally, the Larreas, through Germán’s mother, Sara Mota Velasco, own Desarrollo Punta Bruja, a real-estate company.

According to the Mexican on-line financial daily Sentido Común, Germán Larrea’s net worth is nearly US$3.5 billion. The Larrea family owns approximately 47% of Grupo Mexico’s shares, including individual and business shares. Germán Larrea is married and has two children, a son and a daughter. He reportedly spends more time at his castle in Tuscany, Italy, among his grape vineyards and far from his family and business interests, than he does at his homes in Mexico City and Acapulco and for that matter his own corporate headquarters. Given the intimate linkages between the Larreas, their businesses, and other members of the CMHN – relationships that date back to at least the 1960s – it would seem that the origins of Mexico’s de facto powers do indeed lie with the CMHN. Volviendo a los archivos, los deja . . .

Director Eliana Monteiro and assistant director Maria Emilia work with actor Bruna Freitag during a Teatro da Vertigem rehearsal

During one of my final weeks in Brazil, I was able to accompany Teatro da Vertigem to the Festival de Arte Serrinha, an arts festival in the interior of São Paulo state. Four company members led a workshop in developing theatrical pieces. They tried to condense their years-long processes into one week to teach students some techniques for collaboratively creating and presenting site-specific works.

The first day, company members discussed the history of Teatro da Vertigem with students. Though I had read about the group’s productions, this was a wonderful opportunity for me to hear them describe the processes of each piece and their personal experiences rehearsing and performing them. They traced how each piece had evolved from a theme and concept to a performance. To mirror this, they chose the themes of waiting and skin for the workshop in Serrinha. For each piece in Vertigem’s repertoire, they explained how each performance space had been selected. They emphasized the importance of a space’s history—the ghosts that stay in the walls of a room and how the space “contaminates” the actors, the play, and even the spectators. For example, during performances of O Livro de Jó (The Book of Job), which took place in a disused hospital, spectators would occasionally faint and comment on the smell of ether. However, company members explained that the space no longer had the smell of ether; it was the spectators’ associations with hospitals combined with performance that made them sensorially experience the memory of a smell as real. The company members’ use of the image of contamination to describe a particular kind of relationship between the internal space of the actors’ and spectators’ bodies and the external space surrounding them fascinates me. It emphasizes the porousness of the border between these two areas and stresses the dynamic exchange between interior and exterior of the body in Vertigem’s work.

In January 2009, led by a coalition of trade unions and community groups, a Lyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (Alliance Against Profiteering) began a general strike in Guadeloupe. Over 44 days they convened large community demonstrations, shut down schools and businesses, and brought activities on the island to a near halt. They were protesting la vie chère, or the high cost of goods and services that make life in Guadeloupe, a non-independent island of the French Caribbean, increasingly difficult for ordinarily people. Martinique shares the same political status as Guadeloupe, and the bone that strikers had to pick with the French state (and equally important, for Martinicans, with the white minority béké class that continues to control most of the commerce on their island) was shared by Martinican citizens. On 5 February that island, too, went on strike. Over 38 days cars were burned, businesses shuttered, and mobilized groups (both organized and not) clashed with the police in downtown Fort de France.

The unrest that rocked this island all of those months ago has left its traces both on the landscape and in the narratives that people tell me now, in the lull of this place’s summer quiet. In the streets of the city signs of political mobilization are everywhere visible: graffiti on the side of French mega-department store Galéries Lafayette calls for jistis kolonial (colonial justice); there are burn marks in the roads- traces of February’s garbage cans, cars, and barricades in flames; some businesses never re-opened their doors after incurring the losses of that time, and their windows remain broken and boarded up. Everyone I talk to is eager to tell me about the grève (strike)- about what they did during that time, about the iconic events and their conflicting experiences of them. Even corporate marketing bears the traces- billboards for a local supermarket sport a new tag line: Solidaires, Contre la Vie Chère! (In solidarity, against the expensive life).

Coming back to Martinique at this moment has left me thinking about the economic crisis and where my own work on sexual politics fits in this field. The café that has served as a haven for young gay men in Fort de France was hit hard during the strikes (windows broken, stock looted, closed for weeks), but its proprietors are still working to maintain their presence, however quiet, in the community. A number of my lesbian and gay interlocutors were involved in the political mobilizations- either as supporters of the strikers or detractors interested more in public order- and seem to be thinking much more seriously about their own political work these days. In anthropology, there are traditional ways to think about political economy and sexuality- by focusing on sex work, kinship networks, and neo/liberal family policy- but this trip is pushing me to think through other ways that these fields intersect, both in people’s lives and in the theories that we develop to understand them.

This post comes nearly two weeks after my return to the United States from Montevideo, Uruguay. As I could have predicted, my last couple weeks in Uruguay were conducted at a feverish pace as I struggled to fit last-minute interviews, museum and archive visits, events, and political marches into my last days in the field. I think my efforts paid off, and I’m happy to report that I was able to interview over forty subjects about the Ley de Caducidad (Expiry Law), each representing a wide range of political, ideological, and social perspectives on the law. Highlights of my last two weeks in Uruguay include interviews with the former president of Uruguay, Julio Maria Sanguinetti, presidential candidate Pedro Bordaberry, Senator Rafael Michelini, and other members of the Uruguayan government who were astonishingly easy to gain access to, despite my somewhat questionable status as a graduate student with no real press credentials (yet!). I was struck by the receptiveness of all my subjects, and could literally walk into Colorado Party headquarters off the street, ask for the phone numbers of the list of politicians I’d written down, and immediately receive a detailed list of work, home, and cell phone numbers. One party secretary scheduled an interview for me on the spot with the former Defense Minister, who received me in his home in Carrasco. While I’ve never enjoyed this level of access in the United States, it also created problems I hadn’t anticipated. Looking back, I regret not beginning the process sooner during my research – I may have been able to interview Tabaré Vazquez, the president of Uruguay and an important subject since he initially withheld his public support of the referendum on the Expiry Law and his party, the Frente Amplio, never attempted to repeal the law despite holding a majority of seats in Parliament. I’m sure it would be difficult to achieve the same level of access as in any other country as a student, but conducting interviews in Uruguay, “el país de las cercanías”, was an incredibly rewarding and fascinating experience.

I also spent several days at the Punta Carretas Shopping (my other topic of research), observing visitors to the mall in Punta Carretas, formerly a prison. I conducted a series of brief oral interviews with shoppers of all ages and was surprised that my original assumption that most visitors to the mall would be members of the middle and upper-middle class from the most affluent neighborhoods of the city was mistaken. In fact, a number of people I spoke to came from very far away (the neighboring province of Canelones, and I even spoke to two Paraguayan immigrants) and several of the shoppers were from working-class neighborhoods. My sample size was too small to make any sweeping generalizations about the kind of people who shop at Punta Carretas or how they feel about memorializing the prison that once existed there, but it was a very interesting journalistic and sociological exercise since I’d never done an oral survey before. Again, I regret not beginning the process sooner (if I had done this twice a week during my entire time in the country, my findings would be more conclusive). I was surprised that anyone would talk to me at all, but the fact that I was affiliated with a foreign university helped me more than I could ever have anticipated.

My last full day in Montevideo coincided with the kick-off of the campaign for the “papeleta rosada”, named for the pink color of the ballot that Uruguayans voting to repeal the Ley de Caducidad will put in their voting envelopes in the October 25th national elections. This event was the perfect conclusion to a summer spent interviewing former political prisoners and human rights activists, and I saw many familiar faces in the paraninfo of the University of the Republic of Uruguay, the same auditorium where Che Guevara came to speak to the Uruguayan public in 1961. Seated at the front of the auditorium were members of the Coordinadora para la Anulación de la Ley de Caducidad, several of whom I had interviewed, and other important cultural figures in Uruguay including writer Eduardo Galeano and popular musician Daniel Viglietti, whose emotional performance at the end of the night brought everyone in the audience (and the overflow crowd watching outside) to their feet. I realized then that for every person in the audience I had interviewed this summer, there were at least twenty people I hadn’t, and I know that my project can only really scratch the surface of over twenty years of struggle, frustration, and preserverance for every Uruguayan committed to bringing human rights violators to justice. This popular movement is at once twenty years in the making and only just beginning – the campaign to repeal the Ley de Caducidad started in earnest the day I left Uruguay, but the struggle for “memoria, justicia, y nunca más” will continue long after Uruguayan voters make their decision on October 25th.

Cheers from Brazil! Two weeks ago I arrived in São Paulo to collect the data for my research on police corruption at the Police Ombudsman Office (Ouvidoria). Though I’ve lived 8 years in this city prior moving to NYC, it feels that coming here after exactly 1 year away has a different “taste”: maybe my experiences in NYC have exacerbated my critical look towards the city.

This exercise of alteridade begun right before my plane landed: the Brazilian air plane company I was flying with screened a promotional video about Sao Paulo emphasizing it’s multiculturalism, it’s dynamism and it’s “inner character” for both entertainment and business. Images of “the city that can never stop” were edited in accordance to this idea of movement and velocity. For a moment, it felt like we had returned to JFK! I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the next couple of weeks – it seems that Sao Paulo sees (and sells) itself as a sort of Brazilian New York; actually, more specifically as Manhattan.

Ironically, the next week I saw two exhibitions at MASP – the MoMA of Sao Paulo (?) – that brought again those thoughts in my mind. The first one, entitled To Look and Be Seen, was about modern portraits and had the following explanatory sentence: “(…) however the great similarity between the portrait and the portraited (…) they do not reveal themselves entirely, do not expose themselves. What is seen is the persona, the mask the subjects wear to let themselves be seen (when not to see their own selves). In a way, this is an attribute of most portraits if not of all”. The second exhibit was about myth, art and reality, which also had an interesting phrase that caught my attention: “(…) Man is an animal that tells himself stories, this is what distinguishes him from all other species. And myth is one of the first stories, of the first forms of meaning that man gave himself. Jacob Bryant, mentioned by Edgar A. Poe in his famous novel about the stolen letter, wrote that we keep forgetting that we do not believe in fables but keep acting according to them as if they were existing realities”. In this sense, was that video a sort of portrait of a paulista mythology? Anyhow, what exactly all these thoughts have to do with my own research? I still have no idea… but it will definitely remind me about the importance of always paying attention to the correlations of three processes whatever my object of research is: how one sees himself, how one portraits himself and what one hides about himself!

Uno de los objetivos de mi viaje era seguir el rastro de los archivos de los procesos judiciales de reforma agraria que se llevaron a cabo después de 1953 en los departamentos de Cochabamba y La Paz, pues para mi tesis estoy interesada en estudiar los procesos de afectación y redistribución de tierras después de la reforma.

Para La Paz
Sabia de antemano que esa información no estaba en el Archivo histórico del Departamento de La Paz y tampoco se encontraba en el Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria. Uno de los retos de este viaje era encontrar donde había quedado esa información.

Encontré que los juicios de afectación de haciendas estaban guardados en el Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA) a nivel departamental. El INRA departamental no es propiamente un archivo histórico sino más bien un archivo judicial que esta en el centro de la ciudad y al que deben asistir alrededor de 100 personas en promedio cada día. Es una oficina con gran afluencia de abogados, miembros de las comunidades campesinas y comunidades indígenas, dirigentes de cooperativas demandando a los mas o menos 5 abogados, y alrededor de 10 o 15 auxiliares que ahí trabajan copias de algunos de los documentos que requieren para proseguir algún trámite judicial (tales como consolidación de su títulos de propiedad a nivel personal o comunal, etc). No hablamos pues de un espacio apto para historiadores sino para abogados donde los litigios, enojos y estreses están a la orden del día.

De hecho, creo que un tema de investigación fascinante seria analizar por ejemplo los encuentros y desencuentros cotidianos de la ciudadanía con el Estado. Es decir, si nos alejáramos brevemente del propio material del archivo, resultaría igualmente fascinante concentrarse en las interacciones de la ciudadanía con los funcionarios estatales. Mas allá de la norma, mas allá de los derechos que esos demandantes puedan tener; la posibilidad de conseguir y hacer valer esos derechos depende de con quien se habla, en que momento se habla, quien demanda, etc. Genero, etnicidad, nivel de educación, idioma, etc todas son variables que juegan un rol trascendental en las respuestas que uno puede obtener del estado.

Como se imaginaran lo último que se espera ver en una oficina de estas características es un historiador. Es así que mi entrada tuvo que estar mediada por cartas, permisos.

Una vez logrado mi ingreso al archivo me dedique centralmente a trata de mapear la información organizada en cajas de distintos colores para cada provincia. Para la provincia de Omasuyos - que es la que me interesa trabajar - existen 103 cajas que contienen alrededor de 500 expedientes.

Como disponía de escaso tiempo el propósito de esta primera entrada era claramente garantizar acceso al archivo y verificar que era posible disponer de esa información para la realización de mi tesis. En las semanas programadas para trabajar este archivo intente extraer líneas generales que me permitirán en el futuro hacer efectiva la investigación de un archivo tan voluminoso. Decidí revisar en detalle pocos expedientes lo que me permitiría, por una parte, tener una primera idea de cuánto tiempo se requiere para revisar cada caso y, por otra parte, cual es el tipo de información que me puede ofrecer estos procesos judiciales

Revise para el caso de La Paz alrededor de 17 cajas. Cada caja contiene entre dos a tres procesos judiciales diferentes. Se trata de expedientes voluminosos y por ello al principio no estaba segura si deberia tomar notas, fotografiarlos, o que. Decidi en los primeros casos empezar a tomar notas, que aunque tarda mucho tiempo uno tiene a su favor que uno tiene la posibilidad de explorar un caso en detalle y ver las multiples posiblidades que puede ofrecer un caso. Despues del tercer expediente decidi que era mejor revisar el caso, marcar los folios mas importantes y fotografiarlos. Usando este ultimo metodo es que pude revisar 17 cajas es decir alrededor de 50 expedientes. De lo contrario hubiera tomado mucho mas tiempo.