Violence in Cd. Juárez:  Do the Killers Mask Up?  

Labor Market for Assassins Not Apparently Affected by Covid-19 in 2020

The biggest killer in Juárez in 2020 was not the leader of the Azteca gang, or CJNG, or La Linea. It was Covid-19.  While statistics about Covid-19 in Juárez are a genre of pulp fiction, given the deliberate failure of local, state, and federal authorities to record what was happening--in a city of 1.5 million with only 4 ventilators in 16 total ICU units in all the hospitals in March of 2020--even the official team of fiction writers in Juarez show 2510 deaths from coronavirus during 2020, about what you would expect, adjusted for population, in New Mexico, which was not, overall, hard-hit by coronavirus in 2020.  Deaths from sicarios amounted to 1637 in 2020, compared with 1509 in 2019.  Overall in Mexico, however, the sicario death toll is down, about half a percent, to 34,515.

Do they mask up, or do they mask you up?  In the state of Guerrero, Mexico, two weeks ago the local sicario gang announced they would give ten "belts" (reatazos) to anyone found not wearing a coronavirus mask, and published a U Tube video of a gunman, masked of course, stopping a bus and telling passengers he would whip (with a rope) anyone not wearing a mask.

Mayor Miyagishima:  could we test-run that one here in Las Cruces for a couple of weeks? Random stops, say, at Telshor and Lohman?

 Latin Americans Have A Name for What Happened on January 6:  "Conato"

As Confucius said, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.  What happened on January 6 at the US Capitol was so un-American at its core, so contemptuous of the political compact among us, and so daring in its ambition, that when it was over we citizens, still shocked, defaulted largely to the habitual algorithms of our ideological thinking rather than to our more composed, truth-seeking inclinations.  We have not yet found a language robust enough to encompass all that happened.  Here is a small contribution to that vocabulary.

In Latin American political discourse one common term for what happened here on January 6 is a "conato."  According to the online dictionary of the Real Academia Española a conato is "an illegal action that was initiated but was not consummated." (my translation) This word is commonly used by the political class to refer to a failed action intended to interrupt constitutional rule, as in the case of January 6, the official certification of a presidential election.  Latin America's political experience includes many efforts, failed or successful, to interrupt constitutional norms, and the vocabulary that stems from that experience is rich and instructive.

I was in downtown Santiago, Chile, on the morning of June 29, 1973, when a conato took place.  Lt. Col. Roberto Souper, commander of the 2nd Armored Regiment, acting, by his account on his own, ordered six Sherman tanks and dozens of troops into the streets.  They stopped at traffic lights, calmly surrounded the Moneda Palace, the seat of presidential power, and began pumping bullets at it.  About two dozen people were killed.  I witnessed the dead body of photo-journalist Leonardo Heinrichsen being lifted into an ambulance and carried off.  I knew he was dead because a woman at the scene pointed out to me a piece of his brain splattered on the wall of the building ten feet above the spot where he was shot.  Later I saw a film he took of soldiers killing him.  As his body falls, the camera loses its target--the soldier shooting at him--and the video falters and goes dead--a case of dueling targets.

The Commander of the Army, General Carlos Prats, immediately called troop commanders around the city, brought in artillery, and personally confronted those in the tanks, who surrendered.  The exact intent of the action (a probing operation directed by others to see what the reaction by pro-Allende sectors of the population might be?  A rallying cry for other troop commanders to join in? Had he been goaded into this by civilian interests?) is still a matter of controversy in Chile.  The moment passed but the conato was a prelude to more decisive military action later on. On September 11 of that year the armed forces, acting in unison, would overthrow Allende, who was killed in the attack on the same Moneda Palace.  Souper ended his military career about twenty years ago as the head of a symbolic cavalry unit.  He was indicted with others in 2012 for homicide in the death of the famous singer/songwriter Victor Jara at the Coliseum of Santiago in October1973.  The conato has gone down in Chilean history as the tanquetazo (the tank attempt), a more specific reference than the generic term conato.

Just as the exact motives of the tanquetazo remain obscure, the true motives of President Trump in inviting his supporters to the Capitol are not quite clear.  Consider this scenario for a moment.  Had Vice President Pence been killed (we've all seen the video of his rushing out moments before the rioters broke into his office) that day, what might have happened next?  Would this act have prompted the President to declare martial law and command the National Guard to restore law and order?  With the Vice President dead, the nation in shock, and generalized confusion, might the President have postponed the certification of Biden's presidency that day?  Might he have postponed the January 20 swearing-in ceremony?  Might he have remained President after January 20?  One can imagine many possibilities stemming from the scenario of a dead vice president.

While all of this is far too iffy to amount to any theory, these questions underscore the vulnerabilities present in the official timelines and details of our "orderly transition of power," and the great fluidity of possibilities in the conjuncture of political forces present in early January of this year.  What was on President Trump's mind as he told his followers for months that the only way he might not win was through a stolen election?  We may never know.  The term conato highlights not only the failure of a given political action, and the daring of an actor to intrude illegally into a given political scenario, but it also invites us to inquire about its intent.  It invites us to ask which actors, serving which interests, and for what purposes, were willing to interrupt the constitutional order, and to wonder what might lie ahead.

Generous Fourth Floor Pay Hikes Handed Out

While NM State Employees Struggle to Get By on Peanuts

 The Candle and Joe Monahan each write this morning about huge pay raises doled out to the Governor's personal staff members on the Fourth Floor--this at a moment when discussions are under way to cut back on the 4% pay raise promised by the Governor to state employees, many of whom earn less than $15.00 per hour.  According to the Candle one of the Governor's "policy advisors," Diego Arencon, has received $45,000 in pay raises--more than most teachers earn in a year.  Ironically, Arencon had been head of the Albuquerque Firefighters Union, and was tasked by the Governor to serve as a liaison with the labor community.  Talk about a credibility gap, Diego:  can you document for us just how effective you were for the laboring classes while picking up an extra $4000 per month for yourself?  That's a challenge:  if you have the goods, Diego, put pen on paper.

The State of the State of New Mexico 2021: Government and Politics

The state of the state address, read into a camera with the aid of a teleprompter, sounded oddly irrelevant to me, written by public relations specialists, more of a soporific check list of good-sounding deeds than a frank discussion about what we as citizens might actually be thinking about, or what creative possibilities state government and citizens might work out together as the multiple crises afflicting us unfold.  There were echoes to Joe Biden in the speech, congratulating us for having the strength to overcome grief--the word grief was prominent--and urging unity, without specifying toward what end.  None of it sounded like the moment we are in.  It was more like a ritual prayer before lunch at a Rotary meeting, with a wink at passing wanna-have legislation and the re-election campaign which seems, at least at this moment, like a perfunctory exercise requiring little more than poll-tested talking points and expensive TV ads.  This, by the way, is exactly where Susana was six years ago, no competition, and the consequences for serious government were predictably unfortunate.

What might we be thinking about today?

Well, the relationship between our failing democracy in Washington and the state of our political system in New Mexico, for one.  From the looks of it most Republicans in Congress are so responsive to the anger of the January mob they are willing, in fact desperate, to ignore the need for adherence to the rule of law, at least for themselves and the mob.  What became of the party of law and order?  "We are angry and our anger is protected by the Constitution, leaving us free--free I tell you--to not wear a mask and to violate the Constitution and the will of the voters, when told to do so," seems to be the narcissistic, oxymoronic, logic.

One of our New Mexico county commissioners announces he is packing guns and joining the mob in Washington. One of our NM congresswomen, barely out from under a mob attack aimed at killing a vice president and speaker of the house for complying with Constitutional provisions, votes, on the grounds of states rights (!?) that Georgia and Pennsylvania election officials have "disenfranchised" her NM voters (!?).  She then votes against impeachment of the President not on the merits but on the grounds--laughable in the context of the calculated disunity sparked by Republicans over the past decades--we need more "unity," disingenuously echoing Joe Biden.  

Where does Washington end and New Mexico begin?  They are inter-mingling in both major parties, in my view needlessly, and in ways that are damaging to the unity of purpose citizens crave.

The New Mexican Republican Party, according to observers who know what they are talking about, is hopelessly split, not over how to handle state-level problems in New Mexico (something they might want to spend more time on) but over loyalty to a former President who groveled at the knees of a gloating Putin; who with cold calculation separated children from their parents at the border here, in New Mexico; who botched a pandemic at the cost of hundreds of thousands of needless deaths; and who tried to normalize the telling of lies that made his followers--some of them white supremacists and domestic terrorists--feel good, a prelude to broadcasting lies about the outcome of an election.  In a two-party system good government depends on vibrant, healthy parties.  The mess in the NM Republican party (see the NM Political Journal) is in, is bad for New Mexico.  Will a leader who still believes in democracy step up to the plate?  New Mexico needs you.  Don't be afraid.  This is a rare opportunity to make a difference.

The Democratic Party in New Mexico, as far as I can tell, is doing little more than asking us to contribute more money, well, just because...and gloating about removing some of our most outstanding legislative leaders with the kind of primary electioneering tricks that radicalized most Republican senators and congresspeople during the Trump presidency.  Why would the Democratic Party assist in this?  Call it Operation Just Because.  It was an anti-democratic move shredding the Party's credibility as a defender of democratic norms just as these are under serious assault and in need of support. Yes, Democratic Party leaders, tell us again how shocked you are, shocked, that Republicans in Washington would actually threaten to primary moderate Republican senators who exhibit anything less than blind obedience?  

In the middle of a series of political and governing crises the Democratic Party of New Mexico today seems to be more focused on the mischief of gerrymandering and disciplining legislators loyal to their constituents, than in standing up for democratic values in action as well as in word.  In truth, most legislators view the Democratic Party as a small nuisance, a geriatric, small lobby group, requiring occasional stoking.  Its power (the recent primary-ing of moderates notwithstanding) is largely confined by design to statewide races--due to the pre-primary, which often makes a difference--and it uses this power mainly to try to weed out all but the most establishment-sounding candidates.  Local or statewide, the Party appears to have lost its imagination and zest, essential ingredients in a crisis.

Liberal Democracy is in flames in many parts of the world, a process that began over thirty years ago and, like climate change, is just now beginning to show palpable threats to the political stability of many countries.  Many Republicans have opted, at least for the moment and without saying so out loud, against Liberal Democracy, without giving us a vision of an attractive alternative to replace it--because they don't have one.  They seem to exist solely, defiantly, to make government fail.

I spent most of my career as a political scientist observing countries in Latin America that were going down the tubes.  Believe me, New Mexicans, you don't want to be in the shoes of citizens in, say, Peru in 1990, or El Salvador in 1979, or Chile in 1973, or Mexico in 1968 or 1971 or 1994 or today; or Argentina in 1976, or Paraguay in 1986, or Venezuela in 1989 or 1999, or Nicaragua or Guatemala since the 1950s or Bolivia from 2003-2005, or Brazil from 1967-1979 or Colombia from the time of Bolivar until now.  I've been in each of these countries and witnessed first hand the cascade of wreckage left behind.  Go to Wikipedia and look up the origins of those crises.  You will find echoes there of what we see in US politics today.  We are not immune.

Not a peep from the Governor about any of this.  I voted for Michelle--the alternative was unthinkable--and I wish her administration well. But she was elected eons ago, so to speak, in this fast-moving moment.  She appears so far to be incapable of grasping the moment, embracing it with ganas, responding to it.  It is a moment, Michelle, that historians of New Mexico will write about one hundred years from now, some of it about you.  I think you have the ganas in you, don't be afraid.  Throw away the teleprompter and fire every one of your spinners.  Forget the 2022 re-election campaign. Meet the moment with the exuberant energy you used to have, and speak to us from your heart.  I expect more than a ritual recitation of your brag sheet and shopping list when the flames are lapping at the door.