Better to be on a bridge than behind a wall

 

It is a sad fact that we sometimes learn about the great achievements of a person’s life when we gather to mourn their death. This was certainly true of Anthony Wood, whom I had met only two or three years ago.

 

Over a lunch in our garden one day, Anthony told me two stories that exemplified his extraordinary life. He had been a jazz promoter and in 1998 had organized three concerts by Miles Davis, the great American trumpeter, bandleader and composer. Davis’ management was very demanding when it came to finance, and Anthony had little or no financial backing. Nothing daunted, Anthony somehow managed to meet Davis’ managers’ demands.This, I have learned was typical Anthony: he was not deterred by risks that might intimidate others, and enthusiasm trumped business sense. But his enthusiasm could produce extraordinary results. Not only did he pull off those three concerts, he arranged a rare interview on network television with Davis by Jools Holland.

 

Anthony’s other tale touched on another of his enthusiasms – riding his BMW motorbike. He had recently completed a feat known as the Iron Butt Challenge, which requires the biker to ride 1,000 miles in 24 hours without stopping (other than for essential bodily functions or fuel). Anthony had worked out that, if he drove to Berlin, and from there north to the top of Finland to see the Aurora Borealis, he could drive for 24 hours in daylight, which reduced the risks of the challenge. He had also begun plans to join a bikers’ ride in Jordan. He could not afford to ship his bike to the Middle East and he told me that one cannot hire motorbikes in Jordan. However, he had a plan: to hire a bike in Beirut, ride it to Petra, and there join the ride. Alas, Covid, the Beirut explosion and death frustrated Anthony’s plans.

 

Anthony the biker, August 2021

I learned from his obituaries and by “attending” his funeral online that Anthony was much more to the jazz and avant garde world than a man who had once organized three Miles Davis concerts against all financial odds. From early in his life Anthony developed an unbounded enthusiasm for music. He became a fan of Alexis Korner, “the founding father of British blues”, travelled widely to attend performances, and persuaded Korner to give a series of interviews at his home which Anthony recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

 

Anthony at an Actual Events concert at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1981

Anthony spent the little money he had on his collection of vinyl records and soon branched out into avant-garde jazz. One of the music musicians he met, in 1978, was the improvisation guitarist John Russell, who invited Anthony to stay in his home and encouraged him to become a music promoter. Anthony founded Actual Events to introduce the music of avant-garde British and international musicians to the British public. Audiences were sometimes very small, so this was a labour of love and certainly not a money-making exercise. Then in 1982 Anthony founded the seminal jazz magazine entitled The Wire: Jazz, Improvised Music and …”. In classic start-up style, Anthony financed the magazine, produced it from home, managed distribution and persuaded music friends to write for nothing. However, Anthony could not sustain the magazine without external finance and in 1984 he sold it to Naim Attallah’s Namara Group. Within the year Anthony had lost his magazine as a result of a boardroom coup. This setback and financial problems ended Anthony’s career in music promotion and publishing, but The Wire lived on to become an important part of the jazz scene.

 

An early issue of The Wire

Anthony now turned his enthusiasm to his other love – motorbikes. He joined long bike rides and wrote articles for biking magazines. He also had an interest, awakened during his family’s holidays, in Spain, and had made several friends there. Anthony was a regular at a biker’s café in London which had an affiliate in Barcelona. When terrorists attacked the city in 2017 Anthony got on his bike, contacted the biker’s café there, rode to Barcelona and organized a bikers’ ride into the city as an act of solidarity. Before they set out Anthony was invited to address the crowd and to ride at the head of the procession.

 

In his later years Anthony lived on the bank of the Thames in sheltered housing. He sat on committees to represent the interests of tenants and of social housing in general. He was never wealthy, but never daunted by adversity. He lived his life according to his great loves. He encountered many setbacks, which at times must have dispirited him, but they never quite extinguished his enthusiasm.

 

Anthony’s particular love of Spain made him a committed European. His friend and former colleague on The Wire Chrissie Murray quoted Anthony in the obituary she wrote: ‘There are too many walls being erected, physical ones by governments, physiological [sic: perhaps he meant ‘psychological’] ones by individuals, both trying to retain the illusion of perceived past greatness or racial purity. All intended to keep out either people or ideas. Bridges, on the other hand, close gaps, cross divides, bring people and ideas closer together. Despite the dangers of falling off, I would rather be on a bridge than behind a wall.’

 

I wish that I could have joined Anthony on his bridge earlier and that I had asked him more questions about his life and achievements.

 

For those curious to know more of Anthony his obituaries and memories of those who knew him can be found at:

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/larger-than-life-an-irrepressible-polymath-an-adventurer-memories-of-anthony-wood

 

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/anthony-wood-7-june-1948-15-september-2021

 

https://londonjazznews.com/2021/10/05/anthony-wood-a-tribute-by-chrissie-murray/comment-page-1/ 

https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2021/10/06/anthony-wood-free-jazz-flame/

Rescuing El Greco and Velázquez

 

It was 25 July 1936. In Madrid, Paco Ciutat, an officer of the General Staff of the army of the Spanish Republic was worried. The fascist forces of Francisco Franco had captured Oropesa, and were heading for Toledo, where El Greco had his studio and had produced many of his finest works. If the Republican government decided to defend Toledo, the damage to its cultural heritage, particularly its El Grecos, could be enormous.

 

Thus begins one of the many adventures of a young Spanish writer, María Teresa León, a writer and wife of the celebrated young poet Rafael Alberti. Her memoir, Memoria de la Melancolía (Memoir of Melancholy), was re-published in 2020 and was one of my lockdown reads.

 

María Teresa León in exile in Argentina after 1939

Paco spoke to María Teresa, who went straight to the monastery of the Descalzas Reales (Royal Discalced Order), the headquarters of the Junta de Incautación del Tesoro Artístico (Committee for the Appropriation of Artistic Treasures), formed only a week earlier to protect “all works … of artistic, architectural or bibliographic importance … that in its judgement are in danger of destruction, loss or damage.”

 

The committee instructed María Teresa to go to Toledo, so off she and Rafael went. They were directed to the office of the city’s mayor, who refused to give them keys to the building where an important El Greco was located on the grounds that the people of Toledo were excessively possessive of their treasures and did not want them to be removed. Nevertheless, the two writers went to the Hospital de Tavera, where they found El Greco’s portrait of Cardinal Juan Pardo de Tavera (oil on canvas, 103 cm x 82 cm, 1609), but they arrived too late to prevent the cardinal from being decapitated. An anticlerical militiaman had taken a pair of scissors and cut off the cleric’s head. Challenged, the soldier replied “María Teresa, don’t get so upset about a priest”.

 

El Greco, portrait of Cardinal Juan Pardo de Tavera

The next destination was the church of Santo Tomé to see The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (oil on canvas, 480 cm x 360 cm, 1586), an enormous work considered one of El Greco’s finest. But mayor de la Vega refused to allow the writers to remove the painting. Besides, he observed, how would they get such an enormous work through the door? A friend has pointed out to me that there was a simple answer to the mayor’s question. The painting was on canvas, so it could be removed from its frame and rolled up, but since María Teresa and Rafael were not conservators, they did not know this. The painting was later removed from the wall by a Hungarian conservator, laid on the floor and covered with sandbags.

 

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

 

At this point gunfire interrupted the cultural heritage rescue mission. The two writers sheltered in a nearby building until the fighting subsided. And then their mission changed. The fascists had captured Talavera de la Reina about 80kms from Toledo. The plan to stop their advance was to dynamite the bridge over the river Tagus. Instead of rescuing El Grecos from destruction the writers were now asked to lead a team of miners from Puertollano in Asturias to destroy the bridge, and thus prevent the hated Moors of Franco’s army from reaching Toledo. So, off they went in their little British Hillman car driven by Antonio, a former racing driver. When they reached the bridge, the miners explained that they did not have enough dynamite to destroy the bridge. As María Teresa writes, quoting Lope de Vega, this was a “night that manufactured tricks”. Then someone had an idea. “Let’s blow the railway line”.

 

María Teresa and Rafael left the miners to their work to return to their lodging at Puebla de Montalbán. The town’s civilians were fleeing the advance of the Moors, and the garrison had abandoned the rifles given to the Republicans by the Mexican government. The phone rang. The Ministry of War was calling. María Teresa was ordered to organize the defence of the town. She found a group of young men willing to fight and armed them with the Mexican guns, soon to be joined by the miners from Puertollano. At that moment, a bullet-proof train arrived and the officer in charge relieved the young writer of her command.

 

Later that year, María Teresa and Rafael were again rescuing paintings, this time with greater success. On 21 October, together with the essayist, playwright and poet José Bergamín, and his fellow poet Arturo Serrano Plaja, they removed works by El Greco, Velázquez, Van der Weyden, Tintoretto and Goya from the monastery of El Escorial to Madrid. Later María Teresa and her husband found themselves in charge of evacuating treasures from the Prado, including Velázquez’s large masterpiece, Las Meninas. The great painting was placed in a wooden crate and loaded on to a truck of the 5^th Motorized Division. When the soldiers reached the bridge of Arganda del Rey over the Jarama river, they discovered that the paintings were too tall to pass under the metal stanchions. The soldiers carried them across the bridge, loaded them back on to the trucks, and continued their journey to Valencia, where the paintings were stored for safekeeping in the Torres de Serranos, the remains of a Gothic fortress. As the fascists advanced, the paintings were moved again. Now they joined the human tide of Republicans, trudging, like the masterworks of Velázquez and Titian, into exile – in the case of the paintings in Geneva.

 

The Puente de Arganda

The Torres de Serranos, Valencia

The Mexican government of Lázaro Cárdenas (president 1934-1940), which had supplied the rifles used to defend Puebla de Montalbán,  provided practical and humanitarian support to the Spanish Republicans during the Civil War. As María Teresa tells the tale, a group of trainee officers from the Military Academy in Mexico City deserted to join the Republican ranks in Spain.  After the Republican defeat Mexico generously offered asylum to many exiled Spaniards.

 

María Teresa and Rafael were inveterate travellers and had visited Mexico, where they travelled by train from the Gulf port of Veracruz to Mexico City. There they met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, leading figures in the revolutionary artistic movement that covered the walls of public buildings with murals. Rivera was “fat, slow” and lived in a house “full of old stones [Mesoamerican sculptures]”. Kahlo always wore the typically Mexican skirt of the china poblana and lent the house “an air of acute intelligence.” Siqueiros carried himself with a proud grace, with the military bearing of a lieutenant, rather than of a colonel, holding his head high. Siqueiros, it seems, painted María Teresa’s portrait.

 

The artists had convened a public debate in the Palace of Fine Arts, a grand building covered in marble built in the late 19^th century during the dictatorship of Porfirio Dîaz. Violent disagreements were expected, so a neutral figure was required to chair the meeting. To her surprise, María Teresa was asked to do so. All went well until Siqueiros launched into a speech laden with Marxist dialectic. Some in the audience applauded, others shouted insults. María Teresa tried to “intervene with a little kindly oil” only to be greeted with yells of Mexican’s disparaging term for a Spaniard, gachupina. The chair of the meeting became truly concerned when a speaker walked to the podium, removed his gun from its holster and began to speak: “Comrades, painting today …”   

 

Federico García Lorca (left), María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti in Cuatro Caminos, Madrid, 1934

These two stories reveal María Teresa to have been a quite extraordinary woman. Her upbringing was traditional in the extreme. Her father was a military officer, trained like many other members of the family in Toledo. He sent his daughter to a school run by Catholic nuns, who required the girls to be escorted to school by a chaperone. She clearly loved her father dearly, but espoused views which must have alarmed a military man. Her memoir is a tale of absolute commitment to radical politics and action. Only when she flies to Algeria as the Republic was defeated did he surrender the pistol she carried during the Civil War. In her memoir we meet leading figures of Spanish letters of the first half of the 20^th century: “Federico [García Lorca], who died as the agony began; Antonio Machado, at its end [in exile in France]”; Pío Baroja, who like Alberti and María Teresa was exiled to Paris; Miguel de Unamuno, novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher, and grand old man of Spanish letters, who died in 1936, a few months after the start of the Civil War.

 

Antonio Machado

She also introduces us to the international literary scene. She visited Ernest Hemingway in his home in Cuba, accompanied by the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. María Teresa and Alberti invited the Russian-French writer Elsa Triolet and her surrealist husband Louis Aragon to join the Alliance of Intellectuals of Madrid in 1936. They renewed their friendship in exile in Paris where they found work in the Spanish language service of Radio Paris. Pablo Neruda, Chilean Consul in Paris, invited them to his home and arranged visas for them to live in Chile. But when they disembarked in Buenos Aires en route to Chile, they were met by an exiled Spanish publisher, Gonzalo Losada. Losada had worked for Espasa Calpe in Spain and founded his own publishing house, Editorial Losada, in Bueno Aires. Losada tells them he will be their publisher and will arrange residence papers for Argentina. And so they lived their exile in Argentina, eventually to return to Spain in 1977.

 

Pablo Neruda

María Teresa’s memoir is in one sense a panorama of the international literary scene of the 1920s and 1930s, and a very personal account of the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War. But above all, it is a moving lament for a lost cause, for friends who died in prison, who were executed, or who did not live to set foot in Spain again. María Teresa ends her account of her life and adventures thus:

 

“Pero, aún tengo la ilusión de que mi memoria del recuerdo no se extinga, y por eso escribo en letras grandes y esperanzadas: CONTINUARÁ.”

 

“But I still dream that my memoir of memories will not die, and for that reason I write in large letters full of hope: TO BE CONTINUED.”

Rafael Alberti (left) and María Teresa León on their return from exile 1977

 

Afghanistan Anecdotes

 

This picture will introduce my American friends to a character who may not be familiar to them. The earnest, determined-looking, businesslike man, gripping the arm of his chair, his face intent, as if giving somebody a good piece of his mind, is none other than our Secretary of State for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs. He is patriotically posed in front of the Union flag, but also, rather curiously, what appears to be the flag of the People’s Republic of China. His name is Dominic Raab. He does not usually strike such a fierce pose. Rather, he tends to give one the impression of a well-programmed, rather humourless robot. Why then this carefully posed forceful photo?

 

As provincial capitals in Afghanistan began to fall Raab was on holiday in Crete, while his boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was relaxing on holiday in the UK. As the débacle in Afghanistan moved closer to its disastrous outcome, Raab remained at his “luxury beach hotel”, although, as he later reassured voters, he remained in touch with his team. He finally returned to his desk after the fall of Kabul. It transpired that, while in Crete, his officials had advised him to call the Afghan Foreign Minister to request assistance in evacuating former Afghan interpreters who had worked for the British army. Raab refused to make the call – he explained later that he was busily making other phone calls – so the call to the Afghan minister was delegated to a junior minister, who, it turned out, did not manage to place the call.

 

Like Raab, never one to be hurried by a strategic disaster, our Prime Minister remained on holiday until after Kabul had fallen. Apparently, he has been to Afghanistan just once, when he was Foreign Secretary in the government of Theresa May. His motivation for making the trip was not to conduct any serious diplomatic business. Rather, he needed to avoid an awkward vote in the House of Commons. When Boris Johnson stood for election to the House of Commons, he promised his constituents, who live near Heathrow airport, that he would oppose a proposed new runway by lying down in front of the bulldozers. However, when he became Foreign Secretary the government’s policy was to approve the new runway, and a vote was scheduled in the House of Commons. As a member of the government, Johnson would be obliged to vote for approval. It seems that he was courageous enough to lay down in front of a bulldozer, but not in front of Theresa May

 

In the 2000s, I visited an anthropologist at a Boston university. He specialized in the study of Afghan tribal societies and told me he had been appointed as an adviser to the US army after the invasion of Afghanistan. One of his first pieces of advice was to explain that Afghans are not Arabs, so the Arab linguists the army had sent as interpreters would not be very useful. Apparently, the assumption was that, since the invasion was part of the War on Terror, and since are terrorists are Muslims, and since Muslims speak Arabic … He also gave a lecture to British officers at Sandhurst. According to the professor, the British officers had a greater awareness of Afghan society than their American counterparts, probably because they had been taught the history of the defeat of British occupying forces in our imperial heyday.

 

However, their political masters seem not to have taken the same history classes. But, as Mr Raab’s photo pointedly demonstrates, they do know how to make a phone call.

Is Prime Minister Johnson a Political Cousin of Viktor Orbán – or Worse Still Rodrigo Duterte?

I have never been a fan of Mr Johnson, but not long ago I would have considered this an absurd question. Now, I am not so sure.

 

While most media coverage and much political debate has focused on COVID-19 infection and death rates, vaccination, travel restrictions, proposals for vaccine passports and the like, the government has been introducing a number of measures with little scrutiny, and insufficient challenge, that threaten liberties.

 

Let’s start with the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Our current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, talks of the “threat” posed by refugees crossing the English Channel in unstable boats. She has at times referred to rapists and murderers when talking of refugees. One might think that an unprecedented flood of people seeking shelter in the UK threatens our borders and way of life. In fact, the numbers of people seeking asylum in our country peaked at over 80,000 in 2002. Since 2004, applications have been less than half that number. In the year ending March 2021, 26,903 people sought asylum. Nevertheless, Ms Patel describes our asylum system as “broken”. In fact, the only aspect of the system that is broken is the inefficient and inhumane way in which the Home Office processes applications. The bogus claims of Ms Patel and Mr Johnson are well summarized by a leaflet produced by the Refugee Council.

 

 

Still, one might argue that an inhumane and dishonest narrative about refugees does not in itself make Mr Johnson an authoritarian. However, let’s consider Ms Patel’s new Police and Crime bill. This gives the police the power to prohibit public protest if the police consider it too noisy, or judge that it is causing a nuisance. I imagine that many protests are noisy, and most will cause a nuisance to somebody. Moreover, Ms Patel and her colleagues have described Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter protests as a “threat” (she loves threats) to our society. These, it seems, are the targets of her noise/nuisance reduction policy, but in future any government could designate a protest it does not like as noisy or causing a nuisance. She has also included in the bill measures designed to appeal to the prejudices of supporters of the government, such as giving the police powers to confiscate the mobile homes of travellers and gypsies who do not park their homes at an official site, of which there are too few, which forces travellers to use unofficial sites.

 

Ms Patel is very busy passing new laws. An update to the Official Secrets Act removes the public interest defence against prosecution under the Act. This is a serious threat to liberty and a handy tool for any authoritarian ruler who wants to ensure that we citizens know nothing of government incompetence or malfeasance. For example, under current law if a citizen should disclose that the government has given contracts for public services to supporters of and donors to the Conservative Party without any due diligence or scrutiny, the person who had revealed this malpractice could claim that she/he revealed the truth in the public interest. If Ms Patel succeeds in passing this bill unamended, that defence will no longer be available. In practice, the government can declare anything it likes a state secret and suppress any attempts to reveal dishonest conduct.

 

Ms Patel is not the only minister who would like to silent inconvenient opinions. The government has characterized Black Lives Matter as an anti-capitalist organization and a threat to public order. Since BLM is associated with campaigns to remove statues, it is also guilty of wishing to “rewrite history”. BLM is thus a threat (the government loves to identify imaginary threats). Our glorious imperial history must be defended. The Secretary of State for Culture, Oliver Dowden, has issued an unprecedented instruction to museums and art galleries telling them that, since they receive public money, their exhibitions must represent the views of the public. A fundamental principle of museum operations has been curatorial independence. Exhibitions can explore new ideas and interpretations or present new data that challenges assumptions and preconceptions. It seems that Mr Dowden has decided that, if museums take the public shilling, they surrender curatorial independence.

 

The BBC is another organization that the government considers guilty of not reflecting the views of the people (meaning, of course, the views of the people as interpreted by the Conservative Party). It is not unusual for the Conservatives to threaten the existence of the BBC, since the party is supported by the majority of the private sector media, whose owners have long resented the competition of the BBC. But a naked requirement that the BBC should toe the government line is new. BBC news coverage has already begun to cower. Interviews of ministers tend not to challenge contentious statements; statements made by opponents of the government tend to be qualified by interviewers with comments such as “The government, of course, states that this is not the case.” Another independent media outlet owned by the state, Channel 4 TV, is another target. A “consultation” (whose outcome is probably pre-determined) is being held to decide whether to sell the channel to a private operator.

 

One of the skills of Mr Johnson is that he has been able to avoid scrutiny and to evade responsibility for actions and behaviour for which other politicians would be censured or sanctioned. He has now extended the evasion of responsibility to his government. In 2019, in order to force through his version of Brexit, Johnson prorogued Parliament. This action was challenged using a process known as judicial review. Judicial review is a mechanism which enables a citizen to challenge the legality of a government decision or action. In the Brexit case, the High Court ruled that the prorogation was unlawful. The reaction of the Johnson government was to declare its intention to restrict the use of judicial review – in short, to limit the ability of citizens to scrutinize the government’s behaviour. In short, if you are caught doing something unlawful, the solution is to change the law so that your unlawful conduct cannot be exposed.

 

But the Johnson government has greater ambitions to consolidate governmental power and to restrict the ability of citizens to challenge the government’s abuse of power. The Conservatives’ 2019 election manifesto stated: “After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people”. This would be done by setting up a ‘Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission’ to “come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates”. A foretaste of the government’s intentions is new legislation to require, for the first time in British history, that a voter produce a photo ID in order to vote. The stated aim is to prevent fraudulent voting (my American friends will recognize the Republican playbook here). Opponents (I am one) have pointed out that voter fraud hardly exists in this country. The government does not dispute this. Indeed, it agrees that voter fraud is not a problem, but claims that it needs to demonstrate that it could not become a problem in future. Since the most common forms of voter ID are a passport and a driver’s license, this new requirement will probably prevent minorities and the economically deprived (who are not natural supporters of the Conservative party) from voting.

 

The Conservative Party likes to consider itself a bastion of individual liberty. The so-called libertarian wing has raged against pandemic lockdowns, regulations requiring the wearing of face masks and the like, as intolerable infringements of individual liberties. But they have had very little to say about the multiple attacks on liberties that their party has embarked on.

 

Mr Johnson may not be a dictator, but he has autocratic tendencies and may be able to create tools which in future could turn our country into an autocracy or a dictatorship.

A Bull Fighting Bishop In the Mountains

 

Final Notice This will be the last item on my blog before 31 July when Google will stop sending you automatic notifications that something has been posted. If you have not yet done so, you can send me an email headed “blog notification” and I will email you when a new item is added. I have been posting less frequently lately because I am busy revising my book for publication, but will continue to post from time to time.

 

8 January 1611 was a big day in San Luis de los Yopes, a town situated on the lower slopes of the Sierra Madre del Sur as the mountains descend to the Pacific coast of Mexico, for the town had an important visitor. The visiting dignitary was the Dominican friar, Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, bishop of Tlaxcala, although rather confusingly his cathedral and residence was in the city of Puebla de los Ángeles, not Tlaxcala itself. Don Alonso was on a tour of parts of his diocese, which from 22 December 1610 to 6 February 1611 took him to 25 towns in 36 days in the rugged, dusty, hot mountains of the Costa Chica and Montaña of Guerrero. By the end of his visit, he had confirmed more than 5,750 adult faithful Indians. The largest number (902) in a single day was achieved in Olinalá, a town close to a silver mining district, which may have accounted for the large numbers, since the mines were worked by Indian labourers.

 

The bishop reported that the Indigenous people of San Luis grew cotton and cacao, were well-behaved and schooled in the faith. They also enjoyed a good party, as, it seems, did don Alonso, for they honoured him with a fiesta, at the climax of which the bishop struck the blow which killed a bull. Thus, in addition to reporting the number of Confirmations he was able to carry out, the bishop’s report provides snapshots of the state of evangelization, aspects of daily life in individual parishes, and the rather variable character of the priests. In Huamuxtitlán, for example, the parish priest obliged the Indians to supply his meals, which was not allowed, and did not speak Nahuatl, the lingua franca considered essential for successful ministry. The Indians rejoiced when the bishop told them they need not feed their priest. He replaced the incumbent with a Nahuatl speaker. In Mochitlán Fray Alonso confirmed 371 members of the faithful, but the Indians complained about their priest and asked for the return of a father Carreño. In Apango he confirmed 594 natives and admonished the priest for his relationship with “a certain woman concerning whom he has a bad reputation”. In Tixtla the priest was accused of overcharging. The bishop ordered the priest to repay the excess charges and gave the Indians the scale of fees. Such behaviour was by no means uncommon in other parts of Guerrero and of New Spain. While most priests seem to have been responsible and benevolent, others levied excessive charges, demanded payments or services to which they were not entitled or mistreated Indians. Such behaviour scandalized Indians, especially the nobility, since they expected priests to match the standards of personal propriety that had generally characterized the precontact priesthood. 

 

Things were better in Ayutla close to the hot tropical coast, where the priest set a good example and treated the Indians well. Here the bishop preached to Spaniards, mestizos and mulattos, as well as Indians, a sign of the demographic shift that resulted from the mass deaths of Indians on the coast, and, he recorded, “I confirmed 570 children of God [criaturas], of all colours”. In Olinalá, was another good priest. The Indians were “very admirable people and well dressed”. They produced a quantity of cochineal and jícaras (cups for drinking chocolate made from gourds) painted in many colours. Olinalá is still famed today for its lacquer work, a tradition dating back to well before the 16^th century.

 

San Luis Acatlán (270 confirmed) was governed by a well-respected cacique (the Spanish term for an indigenous ruler) who spoke Spanish, don Domingo de los Ángeles. Don Domingo may have adopted some Spanish manners, but he also observed some of the courtesies and social rituals of his prehispanic heritage. He treated the bishop very attentively “in the manner of the caciques of old”. With great modesty, he beseeched Fray Alonso not to offend him by refusing a humble gift of a cotton bed canopy sewn by his daughters and worth 15 pesos (a tidy sum) and a little ground cacao. The bishop reciprocated with a gift of a fine shirt, some conserves and five precious stones (cornelians). Don Domingo had welcomed with elaborate formality and modestly beseeched the friar to receive his gifts, much as his Postclassic predecessors might have welcomed a visiting dignitary or a group of migrants seeking a new home. The bishop encountered an equally courteous, but impoverished, cacique two days later in Sochitonala. This cacique was not to be outdone. He offered another bed canopy and a substantial quantity of cacao. The bishop thanked him, but explained that it would be cruel to accept such a generous gift from such poor people.

 

Not every visit went smoothly. In Zapotitlán de Tablas don Alonso confirmed not a single person. The Indians flatly refused to cooperate, even when told they need not bring candles, a significant concession since candles were expensive items. Similar blandishments – Confirmation without charge and candles – also failed dismally in Tlacoapa. In Tlapa don Alonso reported that the Indians were badly schooled in the faith and were notorious for idolatry. Worse still, the bishop received reports that the friar responsible for Tlapa, Fray Domingo de Tovar, procured young girls for an idolatrous, drunken Indian who spent the tribute (tax) he collected from his subjects on himself, rather than for the benefit of the community. The bishop also criticized the friars of Alcozauca and Totomixtlahuaca. In Chilapa, the site of a large monastery, the conduct of the prior was decidedly un-clerical, so much so that don Alonso refused to go there. However, the Augustinian friar of Quechultenango was so poor that the bishop declined to stay there to spare the father the expense of providing a meal.

 

Don Alonso’s account of his visit to eastern Guerrero is discussed in the book I am contracted to write for the University of New Mexico Press. One of the reviewers of my text questioned whether the bishop was baptizing people, but the term used in the report is confirmé (I confirmed) not bautizé (I baptized). This caused me to investigate, with the help of some Catholic friends[1], the sacrament of Confirmation. In the early church three sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, were celebrated by adults annually at Easter. “The catechumens [those joining the Church community] descended into a pool where they were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They ascended, were clothed with a white robe, and the bishop laid hands on them and anointed them with oil. They then proceeded to a place of honor among the community where they participated in the Eucharist for the first time. Initiation thus consisted of one event with several moments. The climax was the celebration of the Eucharist.”[2]

 

As the numbers of the faithful grew, there were too many faithful for the bishops of the Western Church to deal with all three sacraments. The bishops therefore delegated baptism to the priests, but continued to be responsible for Confirmation. The essentials of Confirmation consist of a number of elements. The sacrament begins with the presentation of the candidates by a priest, followed by a homily given by the bishop. The bishop then asks the catechumens a number of questions to renew the baptismal vows made on their behalf by their godparents. The bishop and the priest then extend their hands over them. The bishop says or sings a prayer and anoints each catechumen by making the sign of the Cross on the forehead with a specially consecrated olive oil (known as chrism). This is usually followed by Mass and the Eucharist.

 

Whether, in practice, Confirmation in New Spain was modified to take account of local conditions, I have not yet managed to find out. A helpful professor, Atria Larson at St Louis University (a Catholic institution responsible to the Vatican), who specializes in Medieval canon law, told me that canon law routinely recognized extenuating circumstances, provided the essentials of the sacrament (anointing with chrism and the bishop pronouncing the required words) were observed. Another scholar, Tom Izbicki, emeritus professor of Rutgers University, passed on a story about Hugh of Lincoln, a 12^th-century French monk and bishop of Lincoln, who refused to administer Confirmation from horseback.

 

Tom also mentioned that a late Medieval handbook for curates states that the Pope had to delegate authority for priests, rather than bishops, to confirm catechumens. The authority of bishops to administer Confirmation was clearly well-established in Mexico by 1610, as a heated debate in the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585 demonstrated. The first clergy to evangelize in New Spain were the friars of the religious orders, the Franciscans first of all, followed by the Augustinians and Dominicans, and later the Jesuits. The orders jealously guarded their independence. In the 1585 council the Franciscan Jerónimo de Mendieta argued that the religious orders had made a much better job of converting the Indians than the secular clergy (as ordinary priests were termed). Therefore, he declared, the bishops should have no authority over the friars unless they were very badly behaved, and should limit their activities in parishes for which the orders were responsible to Confirmation. The Franciscans claimed the authority of the King himself for this position. However, despite claiming royal backing the Franciscans did not dare trespass on the prerogative of bishops to carry out Confirmation.

 

Don Alonso was 64 years old, and had usually ridden on horse or mule back some 40km or so (occasionally more) in no great comfort. He described one journey over “seven deadly leagues of very bad road”, and recorded that in Sochitonala there were “infinite mosquitos”.  He must have been a determined and robust man. He was surely assisted by the local priest, perhaps a priest or two who travelled with him, and indigenous church assistants. We know from the reports of parish priests, who ministered to large parishes, that without their indigenous church officials they could not have performed their duties. Many, but by no means all, clerics spoke Nahuatl, and even a century after the defeat of the Aztecs only a minority of native Mexicans spoke Spanish. There were a good many Nahuatl speakers in the Costa Chica and the Montaña, but also many whose language was Mixtec, Tlapanec or Mixtec, so the clergy must have depended on bilingual assistants to muster and organize hundreds of Indians. And since some aspects of the sacrament had to be carried out by a bishop, don Alonso must have spent many hours confirming the local faithful, and then would be off the next day on another mountain track to his next destination.

 

I assume that he performed the sacrament in the robes of a bishop. We know that expensive silk vestments made in China were imported through Acapulco, but whether don Alonso risked his best outfit in the heat and dust of Guerrero’s mountains we do not know.

 

 

---

[1] Cecilia Bainton, Chris Contillo and Roger Woodham, to whom many thanks.

[2] https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/sacraments/confirmation/history-and-development-of-sacrament-of-confirmation/

Scenes of everyday life and politics in Mexico past and present

 

Another reminder: to continue to receive automatic notifications of blog posts On 31 July Google will no longer automatically send you emails to tell you there is something new to read on my blog. If you would like to continue to be alerted to new posts by email please send me a message headed “Notifications of blog” to: ianjacobsipswich@gmail.com

 

Our son Chris, who lives in a small town, San Vicente, Nayarit, just inland from the tourist beaches of the Pacific, remarked recently that he had been suffering from an unpleasant itch. A Neighbour suggested that he needed to have his tinaco cleaned. If you stand on the invariably flat roof of a house in any Mexican town, you cannot miss the hundreds of usually black plastic water tanks (tinacos) on every rooftop. The liquid pumped up from water mains, even in the wealthier districts of the principal cities, is not potable. Mexicans buy purified water in large plastic bottles called garrafones, delivered to their door. When we lived in Zamora, Michoacán, our apartment was on the third floor, so we paid the young man who delivered our garrafones a modest tip (20 pesos, about one US dollar) to carry the heavy bottles upstairs.

A delivery of garrafones

The man who arrived to clean Chris’ tinaco brought along his eleven-year-old son, who climbed inside the hot tank with a stiff bush and scrubbed it clean. Child labour is not legal, but nor is it uncommon in Mexico. In Zamora, for example, we would hang small plastic shopping bags of trash on a nail in a wooden telephone pole for daily collection. Young boys, of perhaps thirteen years, clinging to the back of a battered truck, would collect the bags, which would eventually end up on a gigantic pile of trash beside the road that leads to the Indigenous villages of the Tarascan meseta, high above the valley in which Zamora sits. A friend in Mexico City explained that in the capital the garbage trucks are the property of small-time entrepreneurs who make part of their profit by sifting the rubbish for anything that can be repurposed or recycled to earn a few pesos. As in Zamora, their workers are young men, often illiterate because they collect rubbish rather than going to school.

A tinaco on a roof

Our bus from Zamora to Mexico City would head north to La Piedad (‘Pity” or “Mercy”) a town, that in the 12^th century was known as Zula, or “quail territory”. In 1380 the Tarascans conquered the place and renamed it Aramutaro, or “place with caves”. An invading Spaniard, Antonio de Villarroel, renamed it San Sebastián de Aramutarillo (“Saint Sebastian of the little place with caves”). The town’s name changed yet again in 1692 in response to a miraculous phenomenon. A branch of a local tree bore a striking resemblance to the image of Christ on the cross, which led to the construction of the Templo del Señor de la Piedad (the “Church of our Lord of Mercy”), reputed to have the largest dome in all Mexico.

 

Templo del Señor de la Piedad, La Piedad, Michoacán, aerial view

Nowadays, as the bus makes its way from La Piedad across the great plain of the Bajío region, the traveller is not likely to see any quails, but rather large trucks packed full of hot, smelly pigs destined for the markets of the Valleys of Mexico and Toluca. This is possibly, the least picturesque road in all Mexico. Viewed from the bus, each town along the highway seems to consist of nothing but factories and great numbers of identical small cube-shaped houses.

Cube-shaped houses of the type seen on the road across the Bajío

Mexico was once famous for its innovative housing for working-class families. In Mexico City in the 1960s the architect Mario Pani designed the Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco, a huge complex of 102 apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shops and so on. In the 1970s two friends lived in a Tlatelolco apartment, which provided well-designed modern housing. The standardize cubes of the Bajío display not a trace of such innovative design.

The Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlateloloco from the roof of the Chihuahua building

I had not understood why the good design standards of Pani had given way to standardized white cubes, constructed en masse, often with no community facilities, until Chris suggested the answer. A week or so ago he and his colleagues were summoned to a meeting at their workplace. The gathering was about the Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores (National Housing Fund for Workers) or INFONAVIT, established in 1972 to implement the right to housing granted to workers by Mexico’s 1917 constitution. In the second half of the 20^th century Mexico’s population increased rapidly and at the same time large numbers of people moved from rural towns and villages to cities. Many settled in Mexico City, which soon became the megalopolis that dominates the country’s economy and politics. Infonavit was an attempt to answer the question, how to provide decent housing for a rapidly increasing low-income population with no access to credit?

 

The meeting that Chris attended was addressed, not by an official from Infonavit, but by a representative of a construction company. He explained to Chris and his colleagues that all employers in Mexico must deduct 5% of staff salaries, which is paid into an INFONAVIT fund for each worker. The fund can be used as part payment of an INFONAVIT house. Workers who buy a house pay an annual interest rate of 12% on the loan, and a further 13% for insurance. At these rates, many workers pay for their home two or three times over, but can never pay off the debt, which is eventually written off by INFONAVIT after 35 years. If the fund is not used to buy a home, INFONAVIT deducts 60% before converting it to a pension. You do not need to be a financial genius to work out that workers’ housing in Mexico is a big business. In 2019 Infonavit issued 351,461 mortgages for new and existing homes and 170,500 for improvements. The value of these loans was 157,046 million pesos (roughly £5,235 millions or US$7,330 millions). That’s why Chris’ meeting was addressed not by an INFONAVIT official or a financial adviser, but by a man from a construction company. Several constructoras have become very large enterprises by building enormous numbers of small, identical, frequently poorly constructed homes. I commented to Chris that in this respect the INFONAVIT scheme is not unlike our Conservative government’s programmes of subsidies for the purchase of first-time buyers’ new homes. Large amounts of government subsidies were directed to large construction firms whose profits soared. The management was paid bonuses for simply accepting government cash. Plus ça change, no cambia nada, one might say.

 

INFONAVIT homes were not always identical white boxes. In 1973 work began on the Itzacalco housing development to the east of Mexico City. The plan was to combine urban housing, recreational areas and shops with the natural environment of a lake which was home to ducks and fish. Eventually, 5,200 homes were built for 22,000 residents. Photographs suggest that the design and environmental objectives of the Itzacalco complex were achieved. However, in 1979 an earthquake cracked the lake bed and drained it in less than 24 hours. The dry lake was converted into a park. Lack of maintenance, mostly caused by corrupt diversions of public funds, has given the park a rather dilapidated appearance, but it still provides a space for play, parties, aerobics classes and the like.

The Itzacalco lake and apartment buildings

Chris rents an Infonavit white cube house in a development in San Vicente, Nayarit. His landlady, a member of a family of landowners, owns a number of houses, which suggests that not all the government-funded homes are owned by low-income workers. Facilities are basic, but adequate for a single person or young family: the ground floor is a large room, with a small kitchen area, toilet and wash basin, which the plumber forgot to connect to the water supply. The upper floor has two bedrooms and a shower/toilet room. There is a small concreted yard at the back with a washing machine, water heater, and a washing line. We had seen an almost identical house when we attended the wedding of one of Chris’ friends in Atlacomulco, Mexico State, several years ago. The newlyweds proudly showed us their brand-new home. Viewing the bedrooms required strong nerves, since the concrete staircase was narrow and lacked any banister to prevent an unsteady visitor, or parent carrying an unruly child, tumbling on to the concrete floor below.

 

Chris' street in San Vicente. His house is second right

Nevertheless, an INFONAVIT home can be a route to modest prosperity. Chris’ Chilean neighbour has added a third bedroom and a garage to his house and is selling it for the equivalent of £58,000/$81,000. That’s more than seven times the salary of a middle manager. Not a lot for a wealthy Mexican, but a considerable sum for a middle-class person. So, an INFONAVIT house can be the basis of a modest fortune.

 

This kind of state-sponsored programme to benefit the less well-off sectors of Mexican society (while, not entirely coincidentally, creating business opportunities for the wealthy) was a feature of the rule of the one-party governments of Mexico’s “managed democracy” from 1920 to 2000. Essentially, the regime maintained itself in office by distributing at least some benefits to various sectors. Officeholders, from humble town mayors to the President himself, were subject to little or no scrutiny by a compliant media. A period in office was an opportunity to make money. The presidente municipal (municipal president, or mayor) of Atlacomulco, in the State of Mexico, where Chris taught English to trainee school teachers, earns his rewards from the town’s gravel quarry. Higher up the pyramid, rewards were incomparably greater. Miguel Alemán Valdés, President from 1946-1952, selected Acapulco to be developed as a major tourist destination. He just happened to have acquired beforehand large tracts of land where hotels would be built. And so did many of his friends. Trade union leaders were expected to prevent their members causing the government any serious trouble, and were richly rewarded in return. They were known as charro leaders (a charro is a horse rider, dressed in an elaborately elegant suit and large sombrero, for the Mexican equivalent of rodeo). The most notorious charro was Fidel Velázquez Sánchez, leader from 1941 until his death in 1997 of the Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican workers) or CTM. Fidel, who died a wealthy man, was reputedly consulted by presidents about the best choice to be the next man to wear the sash of office. Furthermore, businessmen could benefit from good relations with politicians and union bosses like Fidel (at a price, which represented a cost of doing business in Mexico) – or they could find their businesses adversely affected if they did not cosy up to those who held political power in government or unions.

 

Fidel Velázquez (in dark glasses) with President Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964, speaking)

For all this corruption, the government took care, to varying degrees according to the ideology or whims of the President of the day, to make sure that some benefits reached the workers and rural small farmers for whom the Revoultion was fought, according to the official version of history. When I was a student in Mexico City in the 1970s, I would often walk past stores with the red logo of the Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (National Company of Popular Subsistence Foods), or CONASUPO. Founded in 1962, CONASUPO’s mission was to sell basic foodstuffs, especially maize, the staple of the Mexican diet at regulated prices. In fact, the range of goods was pretty much what one would find in any supermarket, including clothing. CONASUPO was closed in 1999, towards the end of the presidential term of the last President of the managed democracy era, the splendidly named Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.

A rural CONASUPO shop

CONASUPO advertising in the 1970s or 1980s. The goods advertised are chicken, cabbage, green pepper, chile poblano, apples, and children's clothing. Below, shopping for sardines in tomato sauce probably in the 1970s

 

A similar social programme, the Lechería Nacional, S. A. de C. V. (National Dairy Company plc) or LICONSA was founded in 1945. LICONSA, whose logo reads “abasto social de leche” (social supply of milk), sells milk fortified with iron, zinc, folic acid, vitamins A, C, D, Riboflavin and Cobalamin, at subsidized prices. The elements added to the milk are designed to combat the nutritional deficiencies most commonly suffered by the more deprived sectors of Mexican society, especially children and the elderly. Studies carried out by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (National Institute of Public Health) report that children who consume LICONSA’s fortified milk present lower levels of anaemia, malnourishment in general, are taller and develop more muscle mass than children who do not consume the milk. The children’s cognitive functions are also improved.

 

LICONSA's logo: the slogan reads "social supply of milk"

A happy LICONSA customer (from a government web site)

In the 1970s government ministries ran subsidized shops for government employees. My landlord Alfonso, an economist, worked for the Secretaría de Obras Públicas (SOP, Ministry of Public Works). He explained to me that at the end of the fifth year of a presidential term he hoped that his boss would be politically acute enough to back the candidate who would be chosen to be the next President. If his boss chose wisely, Alfonso had a job for another six years, perhaps even a promotion, but the wrong choice meant unemployment. The process of consultation and manoeuvring that resulted in the selection (in the terminology of the time, el dedazo, the pointing of the incumbent’s finger towards the chosen one, followed by el destape, the unveiling of the anointed one) was opaque and, for someone at Alfonso’s level, unpredictable. A job for another six years, Alfonso explained, brought with it the benefit of two salaries, one en la nómina (on the payroll), another fuera de la nómina (off the payroll), and subsidized shopping at the SOP shop. Together, these funded most of the cost of a pleasant home in a good neighbourhood (Colonia Condesa) of leafy streets, a car, and the expenses of a family of two children. The balance was paid for by taking in two lodgers.

Alfonso and his wife took me to the ministry shop only once. My landlady had explained to me, very shamefaced, that somebody had stolen my British underpants (which presumably were highly desirable in Mexico City) from the washing line. She would pay for replacements. I also needed to buy a joint of beef because I was to cook a British Sunday roast at the weekend. Once I had selected my new underpants, Alfonso told me to be sure to notice el carnicero bizco (the cross-eyed butcher). He was hard to miss, as he held a large piece of beef, raised his right holding a great cleaver and seemed certain to amputate his left hand.

 

Sometimes, Presidents simply handed out money and favours. The man in office when I lived in Mexico was Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976). Echeverría, a rather dull grey man, excessively fond of his own rhetoric, was notorious for doling out unbudgeted favours, large and small. He was said always to travel with a suitcase full of cash. An anecdote I was told seemed to confirm this. Towards the end of his term, Echeverría commissioned a history of the Mexican Revolution from the country’s leading historians of the Colegio de México. During his ceremonial visit to launch the project the President asked each professor if there was anything they needed. The Mexican academics replied, “no, Mr. President, we have all we need”, but a French professor spoke up. The college’s film club, he explained, had to borrow a projector and screen. Echeverría turned to a splendidly uniformed general carrying a large briefcase stuffed with cash. “Take the professor to the Palacio de Hierro (the Harrods of Mexico City) and buy him anything he wants".

 

In 2000 the era of governments of the PRI (Partido de la Revolución Institucional, Party of the Institutional Revolution) whose origins lay (however remotely) in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, came to an end. Two successive presidents representing the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) had other priorities. When the old ruling party returned to power in 2012, the newly elected president was the young and glamorous, but profoundly corrupt, Enrique Peña Nieto, from Atlacomulco, the town with the gravel pit. EPN, as he was known, cared little for the poor. He focused on projecting Mexico on the international scene as a future economic superpower. He changed laws to encourage international investment. He decided that the President of Mexico deserved a jet, much like Airforce One to the north. At an embassy reception, his ambassador in London proudly announced that the national airline, Aeroméxico, would replace its entire fleet with the latest Boeing jets. EPN was set to launch Mexico into a new league on the international scene, and to secure enough wealth for a playboy retirement.

EPN (left) aboard the presidential jet, giving the President of Uruguay, José Mujica, a lift to Montevideo. Uruguay presumably could not afford a jet

EPN’s term was a car crash of hubris and untrammelled corruption. His successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), obliterated the PRI and all other opposition in the 2018 elections. AMLO promised to end the corrupt rule of the conservative neoliberals and to govern for ordinary Mexicans.

 

This month has been mid-term election season. AMLO is half-way through his six-year single term, so he was not on the ballot paper. The big question has been whether his party would sustain its huge majorities in the national legislature and its control of many states. Chris’ workplace is located off a short multi-lane highway that was not completed before a state governor ended his term, so it comes to an end among fields of melons and vegetables, never, it seems, to go any further. Since the only traffic is employees of Pasitos de Luz, Chris’ charity, and the odd melon farmer, the highway is an ideal event space. As he drove home one day, Chris came across a dance on the empty highway organized by one of the parties running a candidate for state Governor, Levántate Nayarit (Stand up Nayarit). He commented that there was no evidence of political speeches, and no information about what the party stands for, just bands and plenty of people dancing and having a good time. It would be an exaggeration to state that Mexican politics lacks ideological content, but personality and personal contacts play a significant part in elections. Events such as the San Vicente dance, giveaways such as baseball caps, or perhaps a card to buy something in a supermarket, and other goodies are an indispensable part of a campaign. Walls are painted with logos and slogans; billboards are filled with smiling photos of candidates.

The candidate for governor of Levántate Nayarit

There were seven candidates to be Governor of Nayarit, four female, three male. Opinion polls predicted that MORENA and its three affiliated parties were the clear favourites to win the governorship. A distant second was the candidate of three parties that were once bitter rivals, the PRI, PAN and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). The PAN was for decades the perpetually defeated Catholic conservative opposition to the PRI. The PRI won every presidential election from the 1920s to 2000, but allowed the PAN occasionally to win an inconsequential election for the sake of appearances. The PRD was founded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of one of the most revered PRI presidents, Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940). Cuauhtémoc won the popular vote to become President in 1988, but the PRI was not yet ready to accept defeat and rigged the results. AMLO, as it happens, has been a member of the PRI and the PRD before founding his current party, the Movimiento de Renovación Nacional (MORENA). The opinion polls in Nayarit were accurate: MORENA won with 49.69% of the vote. PAN/PRI/PRD came a distant third with 16.82%. Levántate Nayarit was fourth with 4.61%. The dance events seem not to have worked too well.

 

The candidates for governor of Nayarit in the mid-term elections and the predicted results

Whether AMLO will succeed in improving the lives of poorer Mexicans is hard to judge. He has certainly done some things to benefit the most disadvantaged. He obliged employers of domestic servants to enrol them in the social security system so that they have access to state medical care (but did not increase the funding of an already under-funded system). He increased the state pension. He has instituted a. programme to provide work experience for unemployed young people (an effort to keep them from the clutches of organized crime). These are programmes that a PRI predecessor like Luis Echeverría might have sponsored. Reports of the results are mixed.

AMLO can also take positions that seem to contradict his commitment to help the underprivileged. For example, despite its corruption and hubris, EPN’s administration retained traces of the PRI’s instinct to at least do something to alleviate poverty. When we were in Michoacán in 2018, we noticed, as we were driven through Indigenous towns of the Meseta Tarasca, buildings on which signs read comedor comunitario (community dining room). These had been established as part of a programme to alleviate food poverty in 2013 by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL, Ministry of Social Development). SEDESOL equipped the rooms and supplied non-perishable foodstuffs. Diners paid a fee of between three and ten pesos (£0.10-£0.33/US$0.14-$0.46) with which volunteer cooks bought perishable foodstuffs. Alas, in 2019 the federal government eliminated the comedores from SEDESOL’s budget, so there are no more inexpensive meals in those Tarascan towns. This runs counter to efforts to assist the less fortunate, but is consistent with AMLO’s detestation of anything connected with EPN.

Serving lunch in a comedor comunitario in 2014. Below, diners in a comedor

Furthermore, like presidents of the PRI, where after all his political roots lie, AMLO has invested in pet projects. He cancelled the construction of a new airport for Mexico City initiated under his predecessor, and ordered the army to build a new one on another site. He has also put the army in charge of building the Tren Maya, a tourist railway in Yucatán. He has declared a policy of energy independence by ordering the national petroleum company PEMEX to build a new oil refinery. He shows no interest in renewable energy. He does not control the press as his PRI predecessors did for decades, but is dismissive of questions from media other than those who view him favourably.

 

AMLO may succeed in some of his aims, but power in Mexico does not grow from the vote of the poor and deprived. Mexico is a society in which wealth, personal contacts and economic and political power feed one another so that the privileged become ever more privileged. If the poor are lucky, they get subsidized milk or an INFONAVIT house.