Acuna, Rodolfo F <rudy.acuna@csun.
edu>
Remembering Ruben Jaramillo
A Recent History of Privatization
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña
Long before the Zapatistas revolt of January 1, 1994, Rubén Jaramillo
fought for the land reform in Mexico, guaranteed by the Mexican
Constitution of 1917. Born in Tlaquiltenango, Morelos, in 1900, Jaramillo at
15 joined Emiliano Zapata’s Liberation Army of the South and at 17 was a
captain. Under Jaramillo’s leadership in 1943 the Zacatepec sugar mill
workers went on strike. The state ordered Jaramillo’s arrest, forcing him to
take to the mountains. His insurrection ended when the government gave
him amnesty and promised reforms.
For the next nine years, Jaramillo worked within the electoral system,
founding el Partido Agrario Obrero Morelense, or PAOM that attracted
15,000 members. Jaramillo ran for governor of Morelos in 1946 and 1952.
The elections were disputed, so in 1953, Jaramillo again led an armed revolt
that lasted to 1958 when Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos promised
Jaramillo to support Morelos campesinos.
Rural Gentrification
Tongue in cheek I cynically call the movement of rancheros onto ejido lands
“rural gentrification”. Cattle ranchers with the tacit approval of the federal
government invaded peasant holdings. Jaramillo fought back, followed by
thousands of small farmers. Jaramillo wanted the government to live up to
the Mexican Constitution, when the government refused to enforce the law,
the campesinos again occupied the land (1962).
On May 23, 1962, Federal Judicial Police and soldiers raided
Jaramillo’s home, arresting him, his pregnant wife Epifanía, and their three
sons taking them to Xochicalco, Morelos, and brutally murdering them, only
his daughter survived. No one was charged with the murders.
Today the campesinos from Morelos and Guerrero en la tierra de
Zapata remember Rubén Jaramillo. Mexicans treasure their old songs and
memories.
The Legacy
A former DEA officer eloquently wrote to me: “With the
disappearance of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico delivered its message
loud and clear: a normalista education is dangerous for teachers and
students. The government is watching what students are learning, and if they
are learning to tell the truth about corruption in their communities, more
will disappear. Interestingly, killings of engaged citizens in Ayotzinapa goes
back to the days of Ruben Jaramillo and into the 1950s when citizens tried to
express their concerns for justice, especially when American business
interests are dominating the Mexican workforce. Sadly, the power is united
(both legal and illegal) against everyday Mexicans, and I think we will see it
played out again after this new trade agreement begins to take hold. It’s not
about drugs. It’s about resources. Drugs just give the U.S. excuse to flood
Mexico with billions of dollars to kill campesinos living on the wrong land.”
The death of the Jaramillos and disappearance of the normalistas are
efforts to erase memory.
Born to Fail
The easiest way to justify the theft of public enterprises and resources is to
allow them to become so corrupt and ineffective that they lose moral
authority. Another way is to bankrupt them like the U.S. Congress has
bankrupted the postal service. No one likes corruption or inefficiency, so
neoliberals have sold the public on the myth of the fabled efficiency of the
private sector.
Prior to 1970, the Mexican government could not choose whether to
privatize or not because it operated relatively few productive enterprises.
This changed with the influx of oil revenue during the 1970s when the
government bought hundreds of firms. By 1982 the Mexican government ran
1,155 businesses, along with scores of public enterprises.
Meanwhile, inflation ate away at Mexico’s economy, resulting in a
devaluation of the peso. The spiral began in 1976 when the exchange rate
jumped from 12.50 to 20.50 pesos per US dollar (64 percent currency
devaluation). The "boom" in oil prices justified spending in oil-related
projects. Oil was also used as collateral for additional borrowing. As a
consequence, debt levels doubled between 1976-1981causing a financial crisis
that preceded the bank nationalizations in 1982.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank forced Mexico
to adopt severe austerity measures. This almost wiped out public sector jobs
and services and the poor paid for the elites’ malfeasance.
The Final Solution
In 1985, de la Madrid announced state controlled businesses would be sold to
private buyers as part of the government's campaign to raise state revenues
and promote economic efficiency. The message was that the private sector
could do it better.
In 1988, U.S. involvement in Mexican economic policy became more
apparent. Under Salinas de Gortari, a new generation of US-trained
economists and policymakers implemented market-oriented strategies that
the United States promoted in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It laid
the groundwork for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—
a free trade agreement with the United States and Canada, reducing the role
of the public sector and eliminating social legislation. The myth was job
creation and job stability.
As in the case of Pinochet’s Chile, many high ranking Mexican
politicos went to Ivy League graduate schools. These universities played a
role similar to the U.S. Army’s center at Fort Benning, Ga., the School of the
Americas that trained 60,000 South and Central American soldiers.
To name a few technocrats: President Ernesto Zedillo (Yale, Ph.D.,
'78), Carlos Salinas de Gotari (Harvard, Ph.D., '78) and Miguel de la Madrid
(Harvard, master's, '65) as well as finance secretaries Jaime Serra Puche
(Yale, Ph. D., '79) and Guillermo Ortiz Martinez (Stanford, Ph. D., '77). The
Mexican alumni admired and emulated their mentors and professors at elite
U.S. Management Schools.
It was no surprise that privatization of state enterprises accelerated
under Harvard trained Salinas de Gortari who made it the cornerstone of his
structural adjustment program. By 1993, Salinas sold a total of 390 state
enterprises (63 percent of the firms held by Mexico in 1988). The outcome
was that privatization eliminated more than 400,000 jobs between 1983 and
1993.
Zedillo during 1995 awarded five concessions to joint ventures
between Mexican and foreign companies to operate ventures that included
long-distance telecommunications and the privatization of the secondary
petrochemicals operation Petróleos Mexicanos--Pemex, but the steamroller
met opposition.
The Molting of the Bandidos: The Age of the Billionaires
By the beginning of the 21st century it was clear that neoliberals had seized
control of both sides of the border. In 2000, George Bush was elected
president and Vicente Fox began his sexenio. Issues such as immigration and
the War on Drugs were used to strengthen the hegemony of the billionaires
as NAFTA and other policies created more billionaires. Supporters of
NAFTA had promised to increase the income of Mexican and American
workers, and in some instances the middle class did grow in Mexico;
however, the big winners were the ultra-rich.
“Privatization is a popular strategy for restructuring the national
economies of advanced and advancing countries.” This strategy promotes
the free market system, promising that changing ownership and management
systems would be safer and use less tax monies while improving services.
In order to accomplish this, a chaotic picture was constructed to
prepare the public for subversion of constitutional guarantees. This allowed
the transfer of state enterprises into the hands of friends and cronies of the
ruling elite, much like what happened in Russia in the 1990s. The priority
today in Mexico is oil; it is the Big Apple. When this and other ventures are
completed, los muertos de hambre will move on to other government
agencies to molt more Mexican billionaires, as in the United States. The
plums are state enterprises related to the land, water, prisons, the parks, and
education.
Memories had to be reconstructed or eliminated. That is what the war
on the Normalistas and the erasure of the memory of Rubén Jaramillo is all
about.
Corrido de Rubén Jaramillo,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZKQxULIac
Sources:
Rodolfo F. Acuña, “Impaction: What Goes around Comes Around,” La Prensa San Diego,
February 2015. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-3606121271.html . Acuña, “The Word
Neo is Not New: The Age of the Billionaires,” Counterpunch, Dec 27, 2013.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/27/the-age-of-the-billionaires/ . Mark Karlin, “The
School of the Americas, the CIA and the US-Condoned Cancer of Torture Continue to Spread in
Latin America, Including Mexico,” TruthOut, June 10, 2012, http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/9685-the-school-of-the-americas-the-cia-and-the-us-condoned-cancer-of-
torture-continues-to-spread-in-latin-america-including-mexico
SAM DILLON, “Mexico's Presidential Hopefuls Are All New Breed,” The New York Times, June
24, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/24/world/mexico-s-presidential-hopefuls-are-all-
new-breed.html
“Mexico Privatization: Who Controls the World,” http://www.country-data.com/cgi-
bin/query/r-8738.html. William C. Gruben and Robert McComb,
“Liberalization,Privatization,And Crash:Mexico’s Banking System in the 1990s,” FEDERAL
RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS, ECONOMIC REVIEW FIRST QUARTER,1997.
http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/er/1997/er9701c.pdf
Rodolfo Acuña, “The Age of the Billionaires,” Counterpunch, Dec 27, 2013.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/27/the-age-of-the-billionaires/. Bob Filner, “Mexico’s
US Problem,” The Nation, February 7, 2001, http://www.thenation.com/article/mexicos-us-
problem/
Shaker A. Zahra, Carol Dianne Hansen, (2000) "PRIVATIZATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND
GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS IN THE 21st CENTURY", Competitiveness Review: An International
Business Journal, Vol. 10 Iss: 1, pp.83 - 103
Linette Lopez, “How Russia's Billionaire Oligarchs Got So Very Rich,’ Business Insider,
Mar 24, 2013. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-russian-oligarch-2013-
3#ixzz3eqAUMSme
An important function of history is the control of the truth in history. Kost
Americans suffer from historical amnesia, many Angelenos, for
example, continue to view Latinos as foreigners. I have heard people
question the current Latino suit against the Los Angeles County Board of
Supervisors: why should "Mexicans" have representation on the board?
Whites and blacks both seem to think that civil rights is not a Latino issue.
Southern Californians must know that this area once belonged to Mexico
and before that to the Native Californian. . What they apparently don't know
is the history that draws a continuous link between what happened after the
United States took all of the Southwest from Mexico and today's shut out of
Latino Americans from the county Board of Supervisors. They are not
strangers.
Our schools regularly teach about the social injustices suffered by blacks in
the South and by European immigrants in the Eastern cities (as they should).
Few history courses mention unjust laws directed against Latinos, such as
the infamous "Greaser Act," a California anti-vagrancy law. El Clamor
Publico, a newspaper published here in the 1850s, is full of accounts of
lynchings and racial injustices toward Mexicans, but it is seldom seen in any
course of study, nor is editor Francisco Ramirez's call for a "Back to
Mexico" movement.
The flood of Easterners, brought by the railroads in the 1880s, seems to have
swept away all evidence of the Latino past. This is distressing. Los Angeles
was built by the labor of Mexicans who had to live segregated in enclaves,
attending separate schools and even separate churches. From the beginning,
they formed self-help groups, labor associations and libraries in an effort to
change this inequality. They gathered in the old plaza at Olvera Street,
organizing against injustices in Mexico and Los Angeles. They held this
political space in the face of incessant police sweeps, eventually forcing local
authorities to designate free-speech areas in the plaza.
Lost in L.A.'s history is the forced repatriation of more than 75,000
Mexicans, a majority of them U.S.-born children, during the Great
Depression. Or the fact that lawful school segregation was ended in
California in a 1946 suit (Mendez vs. Westminster School District) filed by
Mexicans in Orange County. (This amnesia resembles that of Germans
before and after the holocaust). The result is the view of Mexican and other
Latinos being illegal).
Because of Luis Valdez's play, some Angelenos know about the Sleepy
Lagoon murder case (1942) and the zoot-suit riots (1943). Fewer are familiar
with Latino contributions during the war years: Ysmael R. Villegas of the
Casablanca colonia of Riverside and David Gonzales of Pacoima were
posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Guy Louie Gabaldon, raised on
the Eastside, single-handedly captured over 1,000 Japanese soldiers on
Saipan. In the Korean War, the medal was awarded to Eugene A. Obregon
of Los Angeles (posthumously) and Joseph C. Rodriguez of San Bernardino.
In all, 17 Mexican Americans received this highest military honor for valor
during those wars while thousands more gave their lives in defense of a
country that saw them as foreigners.
The fertile ground for Houcasts is historical amnesia. My study of a massive
number of documents I have collected predicted the ideas and fascist motives
of Donald Trump. Documents are the instruments that ensure fair trials, in
other words justice.) I could give a thousand examples of the destruction or
documents. The recent proceedings against Trump. We learn the truth by
unraveling hundreds of items. From them we also learn principios (principles
values). That is why education is important, these principios mold us. They
teach us to make value judgments.
The American and Mexican Constitution guarantee a free public education.
They guarantee the continuation of the principles of the Mexican
Revolution. Principles make us look at words, look at meaning. History has
been important to me for as long as I can remember. As a child I loved
hearing my relatives tell stories about the past. However, it was not until I
was older that I realized that the stories meant something; they were key to
understanding the present; and why we are what we are. As my awareness
increased, I became serious about the past -- so serious that it often got me
into trouble.
Shortly after Occupied America was published in1972, I attended a
historians’ conference. In a session I was asked why I wrote with so much
emotion. I replied that I was not a prostitute; I did not make love without
emotion. How can a person write about lynching and injustices and not get
emotional? For me it was like a personal relationship, which should mean
something.
The past is about sacrifices that people who were at one time you. They made
it possible for you to have a better life. In a very real sense their sacrifices
were not just for individuals but for society. We are very lucky, we have the
opportunity to serve the people.
(Watch for Cultures in Conflict it is part of a never ending story).
