Columns

A lot of Mexicans on both sides of the border have a new spring in their stride.  And after a multitude of threats and an avalanche of vilification that increased as the United States’ presidential election neared its culmination, they are beaming with unabashed self-confidence.  The rap on Mexican American voters has long been: They may have fervent political views, but they don’t vote.  Even though a vote might begin to ease their problems.  But their voting record showed an indifference that bruised their cause.

Most Mexicans were pleased – and puzzled – with the results of the United States election.  The seemingly growing acceptance of the legalization of marijuana gave them nightmares about the increasing power of drug cartels.  Almost every Mexican friend has relatives living, legally or illegally, north of the border.  The disaffinity for Hispanics, relentlessly declared during the seemingly endless Republican primary campaign process, all of it repeated again during the general election, put them energetically in Obama’s camp.  Relatives here wrote to family members in the States urging them to vote for the president.  Shyly, Mexicans here would ask U.S. citizens they knew well who they favored.

It is akin to something akin to universal law: During times of peace a government’s need for money (often no matter what its real value) is merely chronic; during a revolution the need is bottomless.  Throughout history as the turbulent winds of revolution raged across Mexico, countless state, municipal and national governments were rearranged.  With each shift of rebellious wind, the more temporary of the affected governments were barely able to keep city and pueblo shops open.  The more canny (and sometimes shifty) businesses lasted long enough to come to shrewd grips of their dilemma and began, quite literally, making money – of their own.

“Hearing Things? Seeing Things? Many of Us Do?” was an Oliver Sacks’ article in the New York Times this week helping launch his book, “Hallucinations.”  It points out that such phenomena are experienced by nearly all of us at some time in our lives – though we tend to keep that secret.  Sacks is the much-acclaimed author, practitioner and professor of neurology and psychiatry, who has written 12 books regarding patients’ experiences with neurological disorders.  His most well-known books: “Awakening” (made into a Oscar-nominated film, starring Robert de Niro and Robin Williams),  “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” and “The Last Hippie,” also made into a film.   He presently serves as both clinical professor of neurology and consulting neurologist at the center of the epilepsy at the New York University School of Medicine.

By Monday, the prolonged temporada de lluvias (rainy season) that was still blessing his chayote field had given Nando Flores a near-permanent grin. Nando is a campesino whose livelihood depends to good extent on a variety of agricultural pursuits. Though the year’s hefty corn harvest was finished early in October, a number of farmers and ranchers had planted chayote, a late rainy season crop that thrives on, but recently has seldom received, late October moisture. Still, vine-climbing chayote demands a lot of work: an elementary short-posted two- or three-wire support, plus a lot of irrigating. And because of current low prices, many campo families were reluctant to plant chayote this year. But those who did got an unexpected late-season gift of nourishing rains.

Canada’s government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper will spend 28 million dollars over three years to call what many Canadians term “surprising attention” to the bicentennial of the 1812 war between a young United States and the British Empire. That war was carried out primarily in Britain’s “North American northern frontier” as it is identified by Jim Guy, professor emeritus of political science and international law at Cape Breton University.  (Note for non-Canadian readers: The word Canada comes from the Iroquois word “Kanata,” meaning “village.”  A Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, transcribed the word as “Canada,” applied first to the village of Stadacona, then to the whole region of New France.  After the British conquest of New France, the colony was renamed the Province of Quebec.  Following the American revolution, New France was split into two parts, Upper and Lower Canada, often being collectively, but not officially, known as “the Canadas.”   The national title  “Canada,” was decided on July 1, 1867, at a conference in London, in which 17 other names were offered, but Canada was unanimously adopted.)