Quote:"The self-styled Criollos or Creoles were local elites who presided over racially mixed colonial societies of Indians, blacks, and Castas (mixed bloods). Creoles felt entitled to rule over these racially and culturally heterogeneous societies, as part of a loosely held Catholic composite monarchy whose center was back in Madrid. By and large they succeeded in their efforts to obtain autonomy vis-à-vis Spain..." (Esguerra, 423)

Quote:The Creole project was aimed at establishing an orderly polity composed of hierarchical social orders in nested subordination. Spanish America was indeed a society built on corporate privileges and social estates that overlapped with additional racial hierarchies. Although Castas grew in the interstices of the original three-tier system of Spaniards, Indians, and Africans and, therefore, blurred the colonial boundaries of class and race, Spanish America was a society obsessed with identifying and enforcing racial hierarchies..." (Esguerra, 424)

Quote:"It was in the language of vecindad and naturaleza that the ideological struggles of the so-called Wars of Independence (1810–24) were fought. Creoles sought to include Indians, mestizos and blacks as naturales of creolized Spanish American kingdoms, part of a larger Spanish commonwealth. Fearful of being outnumbered and of losing control of the commonwealth, Peninsulares** balked and sought to limit the franchise..." The Independence of Spanish America (1998).

(09-15-2011 10:53 PM)1871 Wrote:  Who is Mexico under colonisation by? Spain? Spaniards in Spain? Mexicans of Spanish descent who constitute a ruling class ?

(09-16-2011 12:48 AM)Killuminati Wrote:  Who do you think? Even after the war, there was still a ruling class in Mexico - most of which were made up of Criollos. The fact that they gathered support to back the war didn't mean shit after they signed the Treaty of Cordoba. Afterward, you know how wealth and power is inherited through bloodlines.

Quote:Another thing, this happened a lot during the first years of colonialism, something I forgot to mention in my post. When a terceron (Mix between white/black, more white than black) reproduced and had children with a white woman, because there was black in the terceron, sometimes the child would turn out fully black as opposed to more white because of the black in the terceron. Even then, this wasn't enough to deny the child his right to be treated like royalty, or to be denied his land, or more importantly his respect! So, like I said, power and wealth are passed through bloodlines. This is why you would see black slaves owning other black slaves (much like in Haiti).

Quote:Mexican Democracy, Even Under Siege
By MARC LACEY
Published: July 5, 2010
.MEXICO CITY — Campaign offices had been bombed, candidates had been threatened and killed, and dead bodies were even hung from bridges on the morning of the polling.

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Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
Workers counted votes during local elections in Ciudad Victoria in Mexico on Sunday.
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Times Topic: Mexico

Jorge Valenzuela/Reuters
A federal police officer stood guard on Sunday outside a polling station in Durango, in northern Mexico. Many defied drug violence to cast a ballot.
But Mexico’s voters still turned out in relatively large numbers to choose new governors, mayors and state representatives over the weekend and managed to send an inspiring message amid all the violence: Mexico’s democracy, flawed as it may be, endures.

One of the nation’s most powerful factions — the country’s drug lords — had attempted to hijack the process. Through bloodshed, they managed to keep voter turnout down in some states and scare off many poll workers, prompting one former president of the Federal Election Institute, Luis Carlos Ugalde, to lament that this was the first Mexican election in which drug dealers played a visible role in interrupting the process.

But the polling went on and the results were accepted, with voters appearing to steer away from candidates with perceived links to traffickers. In the border state of Tamaulipas, the populace seemed particularly intent on declaring that drug lords should not decide elections, voting in the brother of a candidate who was murdered less than a week before Election Day.

Political analysts had predicted a huge victory for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the P.R.I., which ruled Mexico for 71 years before voters broke its grip on the country’s politics a decade ago. And the P.R.I. did take 9 of the 12 governorships that were up for grabs on Sunday, including in Tamaulipas.

But the clearest messages that voters seemed to send were that no one party rules Mexico anymore and that entrenched party machines no longer have a lock on power. Voters were clearly frustrated with the violence Mexico has experienced, interviews showed, and the fact that they turned out at all in some particularly dangerous areas was noteworthy.

“I’m voting with hope, but also fear,” said Christian Licona, an unemployed high school graduate voting for the first time in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas. His brother, though, decided it was too risky and stayed home, even though soldiers guarded many polling places to keep the drug traffickers from interfering any more than they already had.

The P.R.I. — a party that represented autocratic rule and is attempting to remake itself as an efficient pragmatic one — hung onto six states and gained three more from the National Action Party, known as P.A.N., of President Felipe Calderón, and the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party, or P.R.D.

Zacatecas, which had been in the left’s column for 12 years, is now a P.R.I. state. So is Aguascalientes, which had a dozen years of rule under Mr. Calderón’s party, and Tlaxcala, which the P.A.N. and P.R.D. have traded back and forth since 1998.

But the P.R.I. was also handed its hat in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa, where its rule has been as sure a thing as the market opening for business and the tortilla makers opening their stands.

Some considered the results a stalemate. “The results don’t display a victory or a strengthening in positions,” a Mexican political analyst, Fernando Dworak, told Reuters. “We are being reserved on the outlook for 2012, as many things could still come into play.”

But others saw the process as the victor. “Perhaps the greatest takeaway from Sunday’s elections is that democracy is surprisingly healthy in Mexico,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

It took an unusual coalition of P.A.N. and P.R.D. candidates, ideological opposites if ever there were any, to knock the P.R.I. off its pedestal. The two parties fought an electoral battle for the presidency in 2006 that was so vicious that both still claim to have rightly won.

It is unlikely, analysts say, that they will join forces to field a single candidate in the run-up to 2012, when the P.R.I. will attempt to move back into Los Pinos, the Mexican White House.

Each state in this election had a different dynamic, Mr. Selee noted, with voters in Oaxaca and Puebla appearing to rebel against P.R.I. governors who were considered corrupt and authoritarian. In Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug dealing, the people withheld their support for a candidate perceived to have links to organized crime, he said.

“Mexico remains an imperfect democracy, like all, but there do appear to be some mechanisms of accountability at work that allowed these elections to be meaningful referenda on local political performance,” Mr. Selee said.

Given how deeply drug traffickers infiltrate many of Mexico’s institutions, it is not unlikely that a candidate was probably elected somewhere in the country on Sunday who has links to them. It might have been a small-town mayor or a local representative. If it was a governor, it would not have been the first time.

Still, analysts said, that corrupt leader is now more likely to know that the people are watching.


David Agren contributed reporting from Ciudad Victoria, Mexico

Quote:had to laugh at that reference to cartels not being the biggest problem.

Quote:The best way to overcome this is not to focus on the 'what they did to us in the past' schtick
because - however much we want to you aint gonna change the past. You just have to campaign for change somehow - get elected - achieve more.

(09-17-2011 03:50 PM)1871 Wrote:  ^
Wow. Terceron. That sounds fucked up. Where I come from we dont make distinctions like that because everyone has fucked everyone else though there are still white middle class males in top positions of power but less and less each year.

No I've never been to Mexico. I'd like to go there one day for sure. I did hear that Mexico has a fucked up attitude to race tho'.

(09-17-2011 03:50 PM)1871 Wrote:  so - if I understand you correctly here you mean 'familial bloodlines' rather than colour?
Right?

(09-17-2011 03:50 PM)1871 Wrote:  And you havent changed such a situation since the 16th Century ?

Doesnt say a lot for your country or your people.

(09-17-2011 03:50 PM)1871 Wrote:  Btw - Mexicans born in Mexico from whatever parentage arent European. They are Mexicans. They may be descended from Europeans but Europeans are descended from Africans.

The best way to overcome this is not to focus on the 'what they did to us in the past' schtick because - however much we want to you aint gonna change the past. You just have to campaign for change somehow - get elected - achieve more.

(09-17-2011 06:37 PM)Chino Wrote:  ok. so you want change eh? kill , should we tell him about what happened when a Mexican president candidate wanted change and got a bullet to the head?

Quote:Yes sir. I hate to post this online, but not too long ago I learned that my great great grandfather on my mother's side was a very wealthy man in Mexico, and when he passed the greediest of his children inherited his lands and riches. My grandmother got nothing since she's one of the younger siblings in her family. That's how shit's passed down my friend. As far as my great great grandfather and how he attained all that wealth, I don't know but I want to find out.

Quote:Brother, the racism and class-ism in Latin America is way worse than in the U.S.

Quote:The wealthiest 10 per cent own 44 per cent of the country’s personal assets and were nearly five times more wealthy than the bottom half. This top layer has over half of the country’s financial assets and pension wealth, the most unequally held assets. The disparity in wealth across the nation far outstrips that of income, for which detailed figures have been available for many years.

Quote:After years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were given the right to directly elect the Head of Government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by popular vote in 1997. Ever since, the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has controlled both of them.[19] In recent years, the local government has passed a wave of liberal policies, such as abortion on request to any woman up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage.