mexico part 1 (w. pictures)

Who wants a dissertation on Mexico?  Great.  I'll write one to myself.

I just got back from Mexicali - for all you gringos, that's literally two minutes across the US border in Baja California. 

and this is a pic from there

these people, lots of them, live in places called Colonias (colonies).  Often they work for something like 1.20 an hour, for , GUESS WHO, our great American hero companies like Coca Cola, who moved their plant right across the border to exploit mexican labor.  Go capitalism, go.

See, Mexico actually runs and owns their own gas stations, nationally.  Meaning that every gas station in MExico is called PEMEX and is run by the national government.  Why? You might ask.  Well, because back in the early to mid 1900s, America basically tried to come in and take over Mexico commercially.  Mexico has a lot of their own oil, but the US corporations wanted to come in and tax the country on their own oil - bringing in Exxon and Mobil and Texaco to sweep the would-be Mexican profits into capitalist american pockets.  So the Mexican government nationalized its gas distribution to protect itself.  And now faces heat and pressure from the big US corporations to open itself up for capitalism under seeming accusations of communist practices.

We worked with a mexican indian family, up from the south of mexico who had moved up north for a better opportunity.  This woman had like at least 5 kids and her husband had run off and it was just this poor woman.  She worked 10 hours a day for 5 days a week, 50 hours a week for like 60 bucks a week.  She has to leave her children at home in a bad neighborhood (we're talking like 10 yr olds babysitting 2 yr olds here) while she works.  her kids dont go to school because she doesnt yet have the money to pay to buy them the uniforms to send them to school.

We moved another indian family from that previous picture to this place here.  This lady had her husband still and they had 5 kids.  in the previous shanty, they had a neighbor next door who was a perverted guy who was commenting to the 13 yr old and 11 yr old girls about how he was going to violate them sometime when their parents werent home.  He went so far as to come over with a giant stick and wield it around and demand the girls for sex.  The 11 year old was pretty much traumatized...

The family are christians, and that was pretty much all the hope they had.  They'd try and sing hymns in their house and the landlords would come over and forbid them from having visitors or from singing praise to God.  When they left, the landlords screwed them out of their 500 pesos (50 dollar) deposit.

these are the two youngest kids from that family.  the boys.  beautiful kids, man.  they were playing on a random dirty mattress in front of their new house.

we came in and spoke at a few different rehabilitation centers.  We also visited two different orphanages where these kids were just incredible.  many of their parents could no longer afford to feed or clothe their children and turned them over to privately funded orphanages.  by privately funded meaning, funded almost entirely by either small mexican churches or american missionaries.  Say what you will about the church- but tarot cards, healing crystals, psychiatrists, psychologists, neurology, scientology, buddhism, catholicism, atheism, hinduism, etc ARE typically NOT the ones keeping starving people alive in 3rd world countries.  By and large, it is the christian church - and down in Mexico we saw this literally at work.   Children literally on the verge of starvation, two minutes across the US border.

Meanwhile, back here in LA we could probably feed that entire city of like 1 million people for 5 years based on what we throw away in LA in one day.  it was such a good eye opening experience for us.  sad as hell, but so good.