New Mexico Mercury

The Coconut Massacre

Mexico’s long bout of violence has introduced many new words into the popular vernacular. Among the linguistic additions is the word “youthcide,’ meaning the systematic, mass killing of young people. A recent slaughter in the southern state of Guerrero could be a textbook example of the ongoing loss of young lives from violence.

On Friday, July 5, an estimated 200-250 people buried seven young boys and men in Coyuca de Benitez, a rural municipality located about a half hour’s drive from Acapulco in the Costa Grande region. The victims were all found shot to death in a local coconut orchard the previous day...

Luminous Women of New Mexico History: Dolores “Lola” Chavez de Armijo

The scant descriptions of Doña Dolores Elizabeth “Lola” Chávez de Armijo are so packed with action and activism that they read like a feminist poem cast on a landmark plaque. She was a leading librarian, gender discrimination nonsense-ender, anti-cronyism success story and, as if that wasn’t enough, she has a seven-part name flowing behind her like a cape...

A kerfuffalo revisited

Thank you to all my many kind readers who have sent extravagant gifts and money orders to my secret offshore post office box in the wan hopes that I not write about you, which brings up UNM Psych. Prof Geoff Miller who posted the immortal tweet, “Dear obese PhD. (sic) applicant…”

Remember him? He was conducting research, when he twitterooed that fat slobs need not apply. The University was disturbed because Geoff was not following procedures and getting the appropriate prior approvals for his research.

Turns out the tweet was not the giant kerfuffalo I feared, but another minor academic tremor...

As I walk through La Plaza Vieja

As I walk through la plaza vieja,
Albuquerque, New Mexico,
I remember all the plazas
I’ve seen in Mexico and Spain.
This time I stroll back
through the ephemeral light
of history bent by time,
and cross busy Lomas,
New York Avenue
as it was called back then.

It was a dirt road.  Buried
voices push up through earth,
pavement, and concrete.
The ghosts of homes
linger in the silent walls
of shops and restaurants
where tourists enjoy
a sense of the distant past.
On the back streets
you will still find old timers
who live and work here...

Dr. Feather and too many pina coladas

During prancercise this morning I happened to be thinking obsessively about former New Mexico senator-to-be Dr. Feather Wilson. Dr. Feather plays a rather tepid banjo.

During her candidacy she aired a TV spot that appeared every fifteen minutes for three months.  Dr. Feather was seen strumming about two chords after which the camera panned in on her big folksy smile, so the viewer knew-- Dr. Feather is not just an expert in schmoozology and international hoi palloi, she’s a bona fide country fried human being...

What’s in a picture

The photo that appears at the beginning of this piece was taken in the rubble left after the April 24th 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in Savar, Bangladesh where a number of sweatshops housed clothing workers in abysmally unsafe working conditions. The day before that tragedy, the building had briefly been evacuated when cracks were noticed in its walls. But people were forced back to work; the unceasing fever of profit had to be maintained.

Industrial disasters are all too common in a world greedy for profit...

Heather Wilson: Caught in the revolving door

It’s been about a month since the news broke that federal inspectors had sanctioned Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs for their no-bid, no-deliverables contracts with former Congresswoman Heather Wilson. The Santa Fe Reporter has done an admirable job reporting on the story even providing a link to the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s Report.  USA Today, the Washington Post and the independent watchdog group, POGO (Project on Government Oversight) have run national stories. But aside from one front page Albuquerque Journal story on June 12, we have not seen much from the local media here in her former congressional district. There’s been no follow up, no commentary or investigation of a scandal that raises questions about the ethics of former representatives (yes, even those considered saints)  profiting from their prior public service...

Border surge misses real security threat in Transborder West

New U.S. initiatives associated with immigration reform proposals aim to seal the U.S.-Mexico border with more hulking fences, high-tech surveillance, sensors, and drones -- all to “secure the border” against a dramatically diminishing flow (lowest in four decades) of south-north immigrants, and costing at least $30 billion in additional border security funding.

Generally unnoticed in this border security buildup is the rapid onset of a new transborder security threat. Not immigrants, not terrorists, not drugs, not spillover violence. Rather frightening changes in the deserts, in the mountain flora, in the surface water flows, in the falling levels of reservoirs, and in the disappearing aquifers and underground water basins...

Mexico’s rich flourish

A Great Recession? Not for Mexico’s rich. In fact, the number of people in the Mexican Republic defined as wealthy by the corporate research outfit WealthInsight grew by almost a third between  late 2007 and late 2012, a time when high unemployment and hard times had most people scrambling to make ends meet.

According to WealthInsight, the total number of Mexican residents who held wealth valued at than one million dollars (minus their principal home) reached 145,000 at the end of last year. Of this group, 2,450 people were classified as multi-millionaires...

Steve Pearce tells us what to do!

Pilgrim, if you want to contact New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce from a zip code in northern New Mexico, forget it. Steve does not want to hear from you and he will block your e-mail from ever getting through on his pristine web site. You probably voted for someone else anyway. Steve does, however, have some brilliant fatherly, patronish-type advice for you, especially if you work for the federal government.

“Get yourselves efficient,” the coherent and persuasive Pearce intones. Steve is encouraging people here in good old drypocket NM to “lead by example"...