How Long For A Hematoma To Dissolve

The lack of opportunities for young people are leaving Mexico with an immobile social structure
Definition


Interpret recent social developments in Mexico as a process that shares features with the European Middle Ages is a proposal that has support both in official figures, for example, income distribution, as in what any attentive observer may realize: the country is heading toward a kind of stiffness or freeze social structure.

To better understand the meaning of the above statement must start with the definition. In what sense is the Mexico of century, immersed in the maelstrom of globalization, it might be medieval? Luis Weckmann long embarked on a great undertaking: to discover the heritage of the Middle Ages to the English conquest brought to Mexico in the sixteenth century (The medieval heritage of Mexico [1984]). But that's not the point here but another very contemporary. In the world of medieval social structure was, at least in principle, immobile. Father born pastor who remained as such the rest of his life and the same fate awaited all his descendants were more able to perform well in other activities. Similarly, who was born noble, noble stayed forever and so their children and children their children, no matter if they were real jerks, his destiny was to own and receive the homage and service of the vassals, to be leaders regardless of their ability to control, hence the frequent "idiot prince" because the latter does not end removed first. In this world only if the Church represented, to a few holders of luck and a remarkable intelligence, the only means by which they could escape a mediocre destination. Certainly the church knew how to do this peculiarity of the world around one of the sources of its undoubted strength in the period. Breaking



New Spain was not exactly a model of social mobility, although had it. And in that colonial capitalism successful a conqueror or a merchant could end up with a title of nobility, but for the vast majority were born and race destination. However, Independence brought significant changes, opened opportunities, and the best example of social promotion we have in Benito Juárez, a character who literally broke all the social and cultural barriers. Without having to go through the path shifted from indigenous church and pastor to student, lawyer, governor, minister and finally to president. Obviously, Juarez was a rare case of social leap, in the mixed world examples were more numerous and General Porfirio Diaz was a good example of this. However, the same Porfiriato, maturing as an oligarchic and authoritarian order, led to significantly reduce social mobility.

The Mexican Revolution was, among other things, that swirl "Alevante" many-especially the small rural middle class, and Obregon, Calles and Cardenas, and sent the dark social and economic policy and even good number of those still in September 1910 had seen the carefully staged "centennial celebrations" from the boxes of the elite. Jose Iturriaga's thesis in his classic (social and cultural structure of Mexico [1951]) was nothing to show grand opening figures meant the Mexican Revolution and the administrator of his legacy, the PRI-to allow people of the soil swelled the middle sector of society.

The post-revolution with no re-election, with its mass party, with its educational programs, with a highly efficient public sector and not very honest but very active (state-owned enterprises, development banks, infrastructure programs, etc.) remained relatively open the door to social mobility, especially when compared with conditions in other Latin American countries. Ernesto Zedillo is a good example of how in 1960 and 1970 was still possible, through public education programs scholarships, moving from a lower middle class to the high official technocrats and even becoming president. Well, all this began to change quickly and dramatically with the advent of neoliberalism and its inability to maintain the dynamism of the economy (the average real GDP growth since 1982 has fluctuated between 0.5 and 1 per cent) and escalated from the PAN took over what was left of political power.

New Age Media

Today social mobility in Mexico has been reduced significantly, as remarkable as it has increased the concentration of income and wealth. The alleged Mexican political democracy has gone hand in hand with inequality and social closure.

The upper echelons of the government structure are dominated less by those who were admitted on merit and competitive basis, the famous civil service, and more for the PAN, which also have been assigned an income outside all proportion to the value of the alleged "services" they provide to society (today, three dozen staff members earn more than 3.5 million dollars annually [El Universal, Sept. 18]). However, since the public sector is the heart of the economic system but now is clearly the private sector, the large corporation, which marks the beat-to the extent that there are time-of the economy. And again, as in the Porfirio Diaz, Mexico is an oligarchy dominated by proprietary, rapacious but completely unable to grow the country, has proved remarkably adept at capturing the government and that way maintain monopolies. This, only by exception, lets an "outsider" to the exclusive circle of iron-on "Artemio Cruz" by Carlos Fuentes thought is no longer possible, "because you agree to marriages within the small and privileged world of names to ensure accumulation of wealth to the point that a Mexico that has barely grown since 1982 is home to some of the largest family fortunes in the world.

The reverse of the medal is a society where the vast majority of its citizens have the right to vote but your choice is mediated by a handful of games that do not represent their interests, they must live with utilities between bad and terrible, in the midst of insecurity and unprotected private. And the worst is the lack of jobs and opportunity for young people from almost all social classes.

Today, Mexico is living that has been called the "demographic dividend", the last time the abundance of young-age before the dominant note is the aging of the bulk of the population, but may not use lack of employment opportunities for those who may already be creating wealth allowing them in the future to retire with dignity. Young people, whether they have school or have just worked to get a college degree or even a graduate, simply have nowhere to put to good use his energy and knowledge. Therefore, they are seeing opportunities disappear, let alone social mobility, but if they come from the middle classes, just to stay in the area from which emerged, as the remuneration of their work, should be found, gives no more than to get by. For most of them, the best option is to leave Mexico, undocumented work-ability has declined due to economic depression United States-or, with preparation and luck, to work in a foreign firm. In any case, the country will lose the investment made in them.

If in the Middle Ages few could be ambitious and intelligent attempt to escape his fate by way of the ecclesiastical profession, now an outlet for young people with similar characteristics is in its entry into the world of organized crime. In the climate of impunity, corruption prevalent in the worst case, which the young man who becomes a hit man can lose is the continuation of a life of poverty, humiliation and no horizons, but at best, to live with intensity that weapons and money plentiful. After throughout El Chapo Guzman has already shared a place with Carlos Slim in international magazines such as Fortune and Time.

Reaching the "celebration" of the bicentennial and the centennial of two movements that broke down social structures with very little social mobility in a similar or worse situation economically Mexico was not stuck in 1810 or 1910 - is no less ironic and dangerous .

Best Beginner Youth Tennis Rackets

Medieval Mexican Democracy with many adjectives

actually existing democracy in Mexico is untenable. If not try the "flight forward" regression will lead to the worst of all possible worlds


Democracy violated
Prior to 2000, and just to avoid creating unnecessary divisions between right center or left, was politically and morally acceptable among critics of the political system who was then Mexico simply demand "democracy without adjectives" (Enrique Krauze, 1986). However, since then it has flowed under the bridge a lot of water policy, and what it is today is just to know what kind of democracy is that we really have as a step to arrive at which we really need and deserve. Today, a democracy without adjectives would shun the diagnosis, because what is needed are adjectives, as many as be useful to know how we can leave the undeniable political crisis in which we live. In any case, it is clear that all the adjectives today can be used to identify the nature of democracy that actually exists in Mexico are not what we imagine the past nine years.

Just published a book of Alberto Aziz Nassif and Jorge Alonso, researchers at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, entitled Mexico, violated democracy (CIESAS-Porrua, 2009). Here we already have a first adjective to our democracy, violated, ie damaged. However, during the reading of the work in question appear other epithets such as, emerging democracy, democracy in trouble, without including democracy, democracy that is not consolidated or collapsed, democracy signs of exhaustion, unsatisfactory democracy, democracy deteriorated and eventually democracy irrelevant. The heartbreaking, and alarming, is that every one of the terms of this list of negative characteristics of the Mexican situation is fully justified by the analysis.

The guards who did not keep

Aziz and Alonso do, among other things, a description of the origins and evolution of the institutional guardians of our democracy-IFE, TEPJF and IFAI, which leads to the conclusion that although in the early these guardians, the IFE in particular, fell short of the circumstances, it has long ceased to be the case, especially regarding the effects of behavior in the 2006 presidential election. Parties, institutions where the interests of its leaders were imposed oligarchies values, according to their platforms, were screened-captured and perverted the guards without being responsible for preserving the independence of these institutions resisted the contrary, cooperated with comfortable in this degradation since the interest overcame institutional staff. However, the central problem of our democracy, if it still qualifies as such-is not only in the low professional and moral quality of the Mexican political class but also in our social structure and the dominant political culture. Include or

not included, that is the question

The fundamental difference between the PRI's authoritarian regime and other authoritarian regimes in Latin America appeared in the same time was that ours was relatively inclusive and other remarkably exclusive. This ability to co-opt the PRI had the same thing to a conservative Catholic Marxist and quasi-fascist, and the whole range of ideologies or attitudes that can be found between these ideological extremes, is what largely explains the flexibility and adaptability of the system created by the Mexican Revolution. In contrast, the supposedly democratic system that has formed after the departure of the PRI's "The Pines" has proved very exclusive.

A central part of the work of Aziz and Alonso is dedicated to exploring a point of great theoretical and practical solution very difficult: to what extent can a democratic society where the majority or a substantial part of its members lack the material and cultural means to live and develop as citizens and that, in practice, are excluded from citizenship in a substantive sense.

According to the latest official figures published by-the-Coneval, poverty in Mexico reached a high point just before the end of the PRI regime in 1996, but thereafter began to decrease a little. However, in 2006 there was a turning point and for 2008 and would rise again. The latest figures show they are living in food poverty and 18.2 percent of the population in poverty of 25.1 percent capacity in poverty and 47.4 percent equity.

Is it really possible and viable democracy without inclusion? The authors endorse the position of Amartya Sen, Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, an expert on the subject and defines poverty as "capability deprivation." From this perspective, the poor, which in our case are almost half the population are simply not in a position to fully exercise that citizenship that, in principle, today offered political democracy. So what good are half of Mexico to topics in this book are fully discussed, as are the party system, Congress, electoral reforms, elections, the IFE, TEPJF and other acronyms that are supposed to be the heart of the network institutions of our democracy?

A weak citizenship

The authors dig into a number of indicators to measure the strength, power, citizenship, ie that factor is, at the same time, origin and rationale of democracy . These are the voting rates of participation in associations, the willingness to protest, and so on. The problem is that all these indicators point to the fact that citizenship in Mexico is weak, only a minority behaves fully as citizens. A minority is now not so small as he found the historian Francois-Xavier Guerra in the Porfiriato, but not as big as it should be to prevent Mexico from experience in the foreseeable future a regression in democracy. Obviously, the weakness of civic participation is directly correlated with poverty and exclusion described above and with the absence of the rule of law and a pervasive public corruption.

The 2006 or the key moment

Choice in 2000 led to a peaceful electoral victory, and above all, legitimate, but with a very similar institutional framework, that of 2006 ended with one that, so different was its opposite, conflicting and polarizing and that left the victor, and the system itself, a legitimate question, which ultimately proved an obstacle to governance.

Aziz and Alonso for the election of 2006-an electoral tie between left and right, turned out to be the turning point of contemporary Mexican political process, that instead of leading to democratic consolidation and stability eventually lead to a Deadlock or almost. And the crisis situation which requires that the changes were not made when it was relatively easy to make-in the Fox government will have to try now, with a minority government, questioned and a distressing financial situation.

The current situation is characterized by a tension between tendencies and inertia. "The first can have a democratizing and second profile [only] have a future in a restoration." But is it possible to restore? The work does not address their own assumptions. The Mexico that gave rise to the PRI and its long and for a while semilegítima "soft dictatorship" and vanished. An attempt to restore the old century XXI not lead to the "authoritarian stability" of the past but something highly dysfunctional and terribly unsatisfactory. The Mexico policy Salinas Streets or even just not possible, try to restore what was, the result would be worse than we had then or now. Alonso

Aziz and develop a scholarly discussion about the nature of contemporary democracy. Identified two major paradigms. One is the minimalist style of Joseph Schumpeter, where democracy is basically "a method of institutional arrangement to achieve applicable administrative policy decisions." Another is the maximalist, the Thomas Marshall, for whom the reason for democracy is its commitment to civil rights, political and social. In Mexico today the least we can ask is democracy that aspires to the maximum.

Note: The author of this column are going away for a few weeks and will not appear Citizen Agenda.

Black Men And Triglycerides

The (bad) influence Seen from Washington

In Mexico, the real war on crime should be given in the field of education, but that the enemy is within the government itself

Basically, there was no error

If someone has dyslexia or does not all their attention on the text you are reading, can make the mistake that Professor Elba Esther Gordillo, national president of the National Union Education Workers (SNTE) on Monday August 24 at the ceremonial start of the school and at the time to sue a vaccine against a pandemic that it is wrong, saying instead influence of influenza virus A virus AHLNL H1N1.

But perhaps there was no error and Mexico, indeed, has long had his teachers not to vaccinate against influenza, but against the influence of an old virus, corrupt and authoritarian corporatism, which is largely responsible for Today the teachers be more effective as political structure and interest group as a transmitter of knowledge needed by students of primary and secondary schools to participate urgently success in a highly competitive global market.

few decades ago, South Korea, devastated by war, was in a situation of economic and political underdevelopment similar to Mexico, but today that Korea is a country with a per capita GDP more than double than ours and large extent, its success is due to the excellence of its educational system. In the comparative figures published in 2006 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on the results of the test designed by the Program for Student Assessment, or PISA, for its acronym in English, Korea was in first place among 56 countries as regards the capacity reading of students aged 15 and fourth in regard to the domain of mathematics, however, Mexico was in places 43 and 48 respectively.

The economic importance of education

In its edition of 10 to 17 August this year, Newsweek devotes a section to examine the problem of global education. The central thesis is striking: the negative economic effects of poor education are worse than the recession or economic downturn now plaguing the world. And the outstanding example is the United States. According to estimates published in a report by McKinsey April this year, the annual cost to the U.S. economy that secondary education does not have the quality that is the Korean equivalent to 9 percent and 16 percent of its GDP. And if that is the cost to our northern neighbor, whose average education is better than ours, what is for Mexico? How much is this the value of what was lost by the poor quality of education? Not only would any organization or party interested in Mexican education reform do you charge to McKinsey calculation to see if there is the incentive we need to start changing.



strategic investment that the government now intends to make cuts in public spending as a result of fiscal crisis, the rector of the UNAM has spoken out against any reduction in the budgets of public universities as their long-term economic consequences will be higher than the alleged savings, and rightly so. However, what the study published by Newsweek found is that if investment in education in general is good business for any country, the investment made to correct the quality of elementary education is actually better, but of all social investments optimum will be made in the education of marginalized sectors and areas, those who currently have the worst public education for all those available. Mexico

dedicated to educating more than 5 percent of GDP and international figures taking 2005 is that this is an even greater than that spent on the oft South Korea, then why is get results so different? Part of the answer is that, in dollar terms, spending is double that Korean Mexican but the real answer, in substance, is the quality of teachers.

was signed in 2008 between the federal government and the SNTE Alliance for Quality Education. But where to get the quality? Which teachers? Not long ago we learned that after application National Review of Knowledge and Skills Teachers to 123 000 856 applicants, of whom 35 percent are teachers in the 74.9-percent simply did not approve it and pass it to reach a score did not require excessively high. According to reports, among those tested was 6 000 552 teachers who were already over 20 years of service but wanted to regularize their status. Well, in that classroom full of veterans of the 4000 plane 913 are not redeemable or must "train" to achieve the minimum acceptable level (La Jornada, August 24). This means that those who had made a career of teaching and were evaluated, by coincidence, also 2 / 3 parts were not suitable for the job. Of course you can not extrapolate the numbers of failures to the entire universe from which those over 6 000 teachers who have been two decades educating children and youth have the right skills for it, but the numbers do not cease to be a indicator, and very revealing of what is behind the failure of the assessments made by the PISA.

From 'drug war' a war against ignorance

The Newsweek article quoted one conclusion stands out: a high quality education is not only good business but also one of the best ways to "create citizenship "and to combat crime early.

From the standpoint of immediate political gain, it is understood that just arrived at "Los Pinos" Felipe Calderon's military dress and a spectacular launch "drug war"-the right always has a weakness for the strong hand imposed law and order "to secure legitimacy pinned after unclear how that is supposed to win in 2006. However, a somewhat less spectacular but more effective to deal with crime and social deterioration in general, have been declaring war on poor primary and secondary education have started a real revolution in education to route to Mexico the Korean way. Clear that a "war on poor education" only show visible results in the long term, ie one's own business is a statesman and not a mere politician, but it would have had much legitimacy among parents, keenly aware of children living disaster.

A fight to the poor quality of education in primary and secondary levels would give the government immediate profits but would have a cost: the confrontation with the SNTE, ie, it would challenge the "influence" of one of the political forces made possible the kind of electoral victory that brought Calderón to the presidency. However, we must recall that it once was in Mexico a political movement major who tried, quite successfully, to cement its legitimacy, or at least a part of it, by transforming the formal education system. It was with the government of General Alvaro Obregon (1920-1924) and under the intellectual and political leadership of José Vasconcelos, the Mexican Revolution began truly constructive stage. The battle for education proved to be one of the ways in which those revolutionaries were presented as genuine social transformers.

The obvious solution as impossible

All specialists are aware of the enormous economic and social benefits that can bring a well-directed investment in the field education. However, almost everywhere, not just in Mexico, the vested interests, including unions, make it very difficult to change the inertia that reward and punish bureaucratic spirit innovative.

In theory, the best teachers should provide their services in the elite schools but in areas of human development indices lower. Unfortunately that has been achieved only in extraordinary moments, revolutionary, and for a time not too long, when in the name of a major national sacrifice appeals to young people and the best, and when the leaders set the example. Today, in Mexico, this spirit is simply impossible. The dominant social and political logic is powerful mix of corruption and market. De Vasconcelos only the memory remains in the best.