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The day is over when
Americans can sit around and pretend that they do not have to
pay attention to other countries. There will be one country
that has consistently been a friend that will end that friendship.
U.S. ATTEMPT TO LINK OIL, IMMIGRATION IRKS MEXICO
The Associated Press - May 11, 2003
Mexico City - A move in the U. S. Congress to link immigration with
opening
up Mexico's state oil company to U.S. investment has outraged Mexicans,
and newspapers Saturday accused American lawmakers of arrogance and
blackmail.
The House International Relations Committee narrowly approved the
measure Thursday, saying that any accord on immigration issues with Mexico
should include and agreement to allow U.S. companies to invest in the state
oil company Pemex.
The measure is a nonbinding "sense of Congress" amendment
in a broad
State Department funding bill, and still must be approved by both houses of
Congress.
It went nearly unnoticed in the U.S. news media--but created a
storm in Mexico.
The 1938 nationalization of Pemex is celebrated as a symbol of
national pride and was written into the constitution.
"Blackmail in the US: Immigration Accord for Pemex," a leading
newspaper, El Universal, said in a front-page headline Saturday.
The resolution fed into some Mexicans' suspicions about U.S.
motives for invading Iraq, which was deeply unpopular in Mexico and was seen
by many as an attempt to get Iraqi oil.
The daily, El Sol, called it "the Halliburton Amendment,"
referring to the U.S. energy company headed by Vice President Dick Cheney
until August 2000. Halliburton has contracts to put out oil fires in Iraq
and help restart its oil industry....
Published in the The News Press, The
Americas, Page 2A, Tuesday, April 22, 2003
JUDAS EFFIGIES SET AFLAME IN MEXICAN TRADITION
Knight Ridder News Service, Distributed Easter Sunday, April 20,
2003
San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico.
Holy Week here peaked with burning
effigies of Judas, depicted as President Bush, Saddam Hussein and
Osama bin Laden, detonated withfirewords
before gleeful crowds. It's one of Mexico's most popular and ancient traditions,
dating
back to colonial Spain, a remembrance to condemn the apostle Judas'
betrayal
of Jesus Christ. Other countries burn the likeness of Judas
on Holy
Saturday, but no other nation does it quite like Mexico, which
pokes fun at
unpopular political figures.
This year, Bush topped other local,
national and international
figures as Mexico's favorite bad guy in celebrations here and
in other towns throughout Mexico. His
likeness was hanged and stuffed with
pyrotechnics,
rockets, sparklers and other fireworks that blew him to smithereens,
filling
the sky with fire and ashes.
In this colonial city in the highlands of Chiapas
state in sourthern Mexico, staunchly Catholic and mostly
Mayan, the
huge images of
Bush, crafted by artisans, ranged from the comical to the
monstrous and
grotesqu...
A trendy effigy depicted Bush as a giant,
four-legged bug--eyes
demoniacally ablaze--crunching a baby's leg and arm. "The
monster of war has
no heart in his soul," read the devilish dummy. Another
portrayal the president atop an oil rig, holding a bleeding
white dove in one hand and a machine gun on the other, "Bush:
Savage, Genocidal, Invader and Demented," read a sign.
Another image had the president, Saddam, bin Laden and former
Mexican President Carlos Salinas with horns, dubbed characters
from Victor
Hugo's "Les Miserables." Before they burned,
a toy plane crashed and blasted
them to bits.
"One by one, they have created a world of death and
destruction," read the desription of the four rogues.
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