Tijuana Playmate

Raquel Pomplun from Chula Vista, California, was announced as Playboy’s new Playmate of the Year on Thursday.

In keeping with tradition, the 25-year-old, who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico, and studied biochemistry at Southwestern College, was awarded $100,000 in prize money as well as a one-year lease on a 2014 Jaguar F-TYPE.

What’s more, the model, who is also classically trained as a ballerina, proudly made history as the first-ever Mexican-American woman to be given the honor.

The model, Raquel Pomplun, 24, gave an interview published Wednesday to Diez4 magazine in Tijuana in which she described how she ended up on the cover with Bruno Mars.

“I don’t believe it! I have to pinch myself,” she told the magazine of appearing in Playboy.

She said she answered a casting call last May by submitting some file photos. Then she got a phone call from Playboy letting her know that they were interested in her. That was followed by tests, interviews and finally a test shoot.

“(Hugh) Heffner approves all Playmates that will be on the cover and he picked me,” she said.

Pomplun said she started modeling when she was 13 years old but that the Playboy assignment was the first time she posed nude.

Although she was born in San Diego, Pomplun considers herself a “tijuanense” because she always lived in Playas de Tijuana.

“I always boast that I’m from Tijuana wherever I go,” she said.

The model said she was the first model from Tijuana to appear in a Playboy cover.

She recently moved to Los Angeles but plans to return to San Diego after her two-year commitment with the magazine ends and go to college.

Pomplun plans to use funds from her stint at Playboy to attend UCSD, where she wants to study biochemical engineering.

In the meantime, she said she was going to take advantage of her exposure.

“I’m going to model until I’m too old to do it.”

daily mail article

Border Birthers

UT San Diego

San Diego Fire and Rescue crews were called to the San Ysidro border crossing for nearly 160 childbirth emergencies in 2012 — one almost every other day.

Such calls continued in 2013, with 15 childbirth emergency calls to the gateway into Tijuana in January, eight in February and 17 in March, according to city records obtained by U-T Watchdog.

There are no statistics on how many of the moms being rushed by emergency crews to local hospitals are U.S. citizens, as federal laws prohibit emergency crews and hospital teams from asking. Babies born under the circumstances are U.S. citizens as a birthright.

“Our crews view the situation as patients needing medical attention,” Fire and Rescue spokesman Maurice Luque said. “We leave enforcement of immigration laws to the appropriate authorities.”

Dr. Jim Dunford, the medical director of the city of San Diego, says that emergency crews and hospitals largely direct expecting moms to labor and delivery wings. It’s only the most urgent cases where babies are delivered in the emergency room.

The numbers concern some activists in the immigration debate.

“We have people who are coming here to give birth, who want to give birth in the United States,” said Ted Hilton with Taxpayer Revolution, who has been studying immigration issues for years and championing stricter border controls.

“Once someone gives birth in the United States, they’re eligible to apply for food stamps, medical care, public housing and other benefits for that child because that child is automatically guaranteed U.S. citizenship,” he said.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, looked at the pregnancy/childbirth emergency numbers and thought they seemed quite minimal.

“At first glance it seems these numbers are really nothing to worry about,” Rios said. “They are an extremely low percentage compared to the number of people who cross on a daily basis, especially through San Ysidro, the world’s most-crossed port of entry.”

Indeed, more than 300,000 cross that port of entry each day.

Rios also said that when Mexican nationals cross illegally, it’s not for nefarious reasons.

“I think that the problem is that people need to survive,” Rios said. “And people need to find ways to make ends meet. And so migration into the U.S. from Mexico has been taking place for many years and for many different reasons, whether it’s for family reunification or because farmers are being displaced in Mexico or because there might be better care in the U.S.”

The federal Medicaid program has $2 billion per year set aside to help pay for the medical costs of unauthorized immigrants, most of which goes to pay for delivering babies in emergency rooms, Kaiser Health News reported this year. Half of that money is being spent in California.

A Pew Research Hispanic Center study released this year counted 4.5 million U.S.-born children whose parents were unauthorized.

Día del Trabajo

It wasn’t until 1913, when Labor Day was held for the first time in Mexico, as part of a “global day for eight hours of work”, just a few months after the coup d’état of Victoriano Huerta.  In 1923 Álvaro Obregón as President of Mexico agreed to officially establish May 1^st as the celebration day of the Mexican workers’ struggle, and in 1925, President Plutarco Elias Calles, decided to set it as the official date for “labor day”.  source

Most of the world marks Labor Day on May 1 with parades and rallies. Americans celebrate it in early September, by heading to the beach or firing up the grill. Why the discrepancy? Here’s a hint: The answer would have been a great disappointment to Frederick Engels.

Engels, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, had high hopes for May Day, which originated in the United States. When the socialist-dominated organization known as the Second International jumped on the American bandwagon and adopted May 1 as International Labor Day, Engels confidently expected the proletariats of Europe and America to merge into one mighty labor movement and sweep capitalism into the dustbin of history.

Things didn’t work out that way, of course, and the divergent Labor Day celebrations are part of the story.

In Pictures: A History Of Labor Day

May Day’s origins can be traced to Chicago, where the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, under its leader Samuel Gompers, mounted a general strike on May 1, 1886, as part of its push for an eight-hour work day. On May 4, during a related labor rally in Haymarket Square, someone threw a bomb, which killed a policeman and touched off a deadly mêlée. As a result, four radical labor leaders were eventually hanged on dubious charges.

In 1888, Gompers’s union reorganized itself as the American Federation of Labor, and revived its push for the eight-hour day. Gompers laid plans for a strike to begin on May 1, 1890–the fourth anniversary of the walkout that had led to the Haymarket affair. Meanwhile, in Paris, a group of labor leaders were meeting to establish the Second International. To these Europeans, the executed Chicago radicals were revered martyrs. In an act of solidarity, the Second International set May 1, 1890, as a day of protest.

Engels was thrilled. “As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is organized for the first time as one army,” he wrote on the first May Day. “The spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!”

The first May Day was deemed a success, so the Second International adopted it as an annual event. And for a few years, it seemed as though May 1 might be on the way to becoming a rallying point for socialists in America, as it was elsewhere. The Panic of 1893 touched off a national wave of bankruptcies that plunged the nation into a deep depression–and depressions generally push workers toward radical solutions. Things came to a boil with the Pullman Strike, which erupted in Chicago in May 1894. The striking Pullman Palace Car Co. workers quickly won the support of the American Railway Union, led by Gompers’s rival Eugene V. Debs. Railroad traffic in much of the country was paralyzed.

President Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, was determined to squash the strike. But he did not want to alienate the American Federation of Labor, which was not yet involved in the Pullman dispute. Moreover, 1894 was a midterm election year, and the Democratic Party could ill afford to be seen as an enemy of labor. Cleveland and the Democrats hit upon a possible solution: They would proclaim a national Labor Day to honor the worker. But not on May 1–that date was tainted by its association with socialists and anarchists. Fortunately, an alternative was at hand.

Back in September 1882, certain unions had begun to celebrate a Labor Day in New York City. By 1894, this event was an annual late-summer tradition in New York and had been adopted by numerous states, but it was not a national holiday. Nor was it associated with the radicals who ran the Second International, and who liked to run riot on May Day.

On the contrary, the September date was closely associated with Gompers, who was campaigning to have it declared a national holiday. Gompers opposed the socialists and was guiding the AFL toward a narrower and less-radical agenda. Gratefully, Cleveland seized upon the relatively innocuous September holiday as a way to reward labor without endorsing radicalism. On June 28, 1894, he signed an act of Congress establishing Labor Day as a federal holiday on the first Monday of September. (He made a point of sending the signing pen to Gompers as a souvenir.) Less than a week later, the president sent federal troops to Chicago. Gompers refused to support the strike, which soon collapsed.

With his union in ruins, Debs went into politics, but his Socialist Party ultimately failed to catch on as America’s party of the left. Organized labor did not regain its momentum until the 1930s–and by that point, Gompers’s September holiday had been institutionalized as America’s Labor Day. May Day, meanwhile, had become the occasion for big annual parades in Moscow’s Red Square, which did not improve that holiday’s reputation in the United States.

 Forbes article

Strong Mexican Peso

Mexico’s Peso Slides From 20-Month High on U.S. Retail Decline

By Jonathan Levin – Apr 12, 2013 6:43 AM PT

Mexico’s peso fell from a 20-month high after U.S. retail sales dropped last month, damping prospects for the Latin American nation’s biggest export market.

The peso weakened 0.3 percent to 12.0745 per U.S. dollar at 8:30 a.m. in Mexico City, after yesterday touching 12.0194 per dollar in intraday trading, the strongest level since August 2011. The peso has rallied 6.5 percent this year, the most among the dollar’s 16 major counterparts tracked by Bloomberg. It has advanced 0.9 percent for the week.

Retail sales in the U.S. fell 0.4 percent in March, the most in nine months, Commerce Department figures showed today. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an unchanged reading. Mexico sends about 80 percent of its exports to the U.S.

“After the U.S. data, it weakened a bit,” Ramon Cordova, a trader at Banco Base SA in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mexico, said in a telephone interview. “At the 12 level, there are going to be a lot of barriers.”

Some traders have orders to sell the peso automatically once it gets close to 12 per dollar, a psychologically significant level for many investors, according to Cordova.

Yields on peso bonds due in 2024 fell one basis point, or 0.01 percentage point, to 4.74 percent today, set for a record low close, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price rose 0.08 centavo to 147.11 centavos per peso.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Levin in Mexico City at jlevin20@bloomberg.net

SAN YSIDRO CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE

Editor’s note: Mexico’s “El Chaparral” entry point at Tijuana, opened Nov 1 2012, has proved to be a much improved and efficient entry into Mexico.  The USA side of the project is on a much bigger scale, but, we’ll still give them a solid “B’ grade on keeping the border crossing moving during construction. 

U.S. General Services Administration Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini announced Wednesday that the GSA is requesting $226 million this year for the third phase of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. It would create a new southbound connection to Mexico from Interstate 5 and would “provide 17 additional northbound primary inspection booths.”

In a conference call with journalists, Tangherlini later said a start and end date on finishing the project will depend on if and when Congress approves funding Phase 3.  He said the current facility, built in 1973, no longer is adequate.

He said Phase 3 would leapfrog Phase 2 of the project, which would then be completed later. “We’re going to switch Phase 3 with Phase 2, so we should probably name them differently,” he said.

He said funding the $226 million for Phase 3 still would leave Phase 2 unfunded, and that the entire project would still would need about $250 million in funding to be completed.

He said this would put the total estimated cost of the project at $731 million.

A GSA media release said the following:
Investing in Border Infrastructure and Modernization:
The Budget includes two border crossing and inspection projects that will promote economic growth and national security. This includes a $226 million request for work on Phase 3 of the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Southern California, the busiest border crossing in the world.  Phase 3 creates a new southbound connection to Mexico with inspection facilities and will provide 17 additional northbound primary inspection booths.
GSA is also requesting $61 million to expand and modernize the U.S. Land Port of Entry facilities at the Port of Laredo in Laredo, Texas. These investments will increase efficiency, create economic growth, and improve safety and security for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
These are critical investments in infrastructure that will create significant savings by preventing costly emergency repairs in the future and build upon our progress.
*****

Construction and the changes at the port are continuing. They have necessitated changing the Sentri fast-pass lanes this week (Story, Frontera, PDF). A construction break that opened 23 lanes to traffic this past weekend instead of 17 greatly reduced wait times; officials are hopeful that such reduced times will be permanent once all the work is finished on the project in the next few years. Story, U-T San Diego.

complete article

Mexico Wages

(Reuters) – Mexico’s hourly wages are about a fifth lower than China’s, a huge turnaround from just 10 years ago when they were nearly three times higher, according to new research by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Stagnant salaries in Mexico, fueled by strong population growth, will give Latin America’s second-biggest economy an edge over China in the U.S. market, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Carlos Capistran said on Thursday.

Average hourly wages are now 19.6 percent lower in Mexico than China whereas in 2003 they were 188 percent more costly, according to the Bank of America study.

Mexico can maintain that competitive advantage for at least five years, thanks to a growing labor market that puts downward pressure on wages, Capistran said.

The demographic bonus from its young population will help boost Mexican growth to 4 percent this year, he added, and is even more important to juicing the economy than a raft of reforms proposed by centrist President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in December.

“Today people are excited about Mexico because of the reforms, et cetera. But when I ask myself ‘what is the most important thing that Mexico has today in terms of growth,’ it’s the demographic bonus,” Capistran said.

Pena Nieto’s government has already passed major education and labor reforms, while an ambitious plan to boost competitiveness in the phone industry, where tycoon Carlos Slim holds sway, is winding its way through Congress.

According to forecasts by the International Labor Organization, Mexico’s economically active population will grow by 20 percent from 2010 to 2020, compared to a 2.9 percent increase in China over the same period.

Lower transportation costs and projected productivity gains in manufacturing will also bolster Mexico’s competitiveness, Bank of America said. That, in turn, can help compensate for the currency’s rapid rise, which tends to hurt exporters.

Optimism about Mexico’s reforms has helped the peso gain more than 4 percent this year, prompting the central bank to cut interest rates to a historic low, in a bid to tame the appeal of the currency and peso-denominated debt.

Mexico’s wages as a proportion of economic output are lower than those in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Hungary, Poland and Brazil, where labor costs have risen dramatically.

The wage restraint has allowed Mexico to increase its U.S. market share at a faster pace than China over the past six years.

However, China still had the bigger share at the close of 2012: China accounted for 17.5 percent of U.S. imports that year while Mexico accounted for 12.4 percent over the same period, according to Bank of America.

Editor’s note: “Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar” = “Vader”…who are these comedy writers who come up with these names and acronyms?

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau, LA Times article

WASHINGTON — A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in Afghanistan has found a new use along the U.S. border with Mexico, where it has revealed gaps in security.

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.

The number of “gotaways,” as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.

RELATED: Is the border secure?

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The new tally of unlawful border crossings could complicate White House efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform after Congress returns from recess next week.

The Obama administration contends America’s borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico in early May, and efforts to maintain rigorous border security — to stop economic migrants moving north and American-made weapons flowing south — are likely to be among his priorities in discussions with Mexico’s newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The new system is called Vader, for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar. It was borrowed from the Army‘s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has been deployed in Arizona since March 2012.

PHOTOS: Securing the border with Mexico

Michael Friel, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Vader remained in a “preliminary testing phase.” He also said the method used in the agency’s internal reports to compare apprehensions to arrests was flawed because it didn’t include people who were detained after the airborne radar had left the area.

Officials warn that the radar would not work well near border towns and areas where migrants and smugglers can quickly load into a car and blend into highway traffic.

“There is no silver bullet in border technology,” Friel said.

The tests have gone well enough that the agency has asked Congress to allocate money to purchase two more Vader systems. Each system costs about $5 million per year to maintain and operate.

Easter Bunny

Editor’s note: Easter does not visit my home, but, I enjoy the religious scolds’ stern warning of the true reason for whatever season they are celebrating.  It is a beautiful spring day and it appears that all of the spring breakers on the beach below me have been practicing their fertility rituals.  Cheers.

by David C. Pack(complete article)

Here is further proof of the origin of Easter eggs and rabbits. It demonstrates how no one has ever been able to connect the Easter bunny to anything Christian, let alone to the Bible: “The Easter bunny is not a true Christian symbol” (John Bradner, Symbols of Church Seasons and Days, p. 52), and “Although adopted in a number of Christian cultures, the Easter bunny has never received any specific Christian interpretation” (Mirsea Eliade, The Encyclopaedia of Religion, p. 558).

None of this will stop scores of millions of professing Christians from decorating their lawns and houses with Easter bunnies each spring.

Consider this last quote: “The hare, the symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt, a symbol that was kept later in Europe…Its place has been taken by the Easter rabbit” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991 ed., Vol. 4, p. 333).

Even in modern times, rabbits have remained common symbols of fertility. While their rapid rate of reproduction is well known, another problem arises with rabbits—they do not lay eggs! While both are clearly fertility symbols, there is no logical way to connect them. In a world filled with pagan tradition, truth and logic can be lost. Merging these symbols with Christianity makes an already idolatrous practice worse.

There is nothing Christian about any of these symbols. The true history of these fertility symbols, rabbits and eggs, is completely unknown to all the unsuspecting children who have been led by adults to think them so special.

The entire concept that these are Christian is a lie foisted on innocent children who will believe that “the moon is made of cheese” just because someone tells them so. While these are shocking facts, they are true nonetheless.

Dollar Sign Origin

editor’s note: reader of this blog asked about the “$” symbol being used in reference to Mexican Pesos.  Well, “$” is used for many world currencies.  But, here is the special relationships between U.S. greenbacks, Spain and Mexico…

Although the $ sign has been around over two hundred years, few Americans know how it
originated and evolved. The dollar symbol originated during the American Revolution when
the Continental Congress, in the midst of all its other problems, was struggling to adopt a
currency.

In 1775 the Continental Congress, on a proposal by Thomas Jefferson, rejected the
British Sterling and adopted the Spanish Milled Dollar as its basic monetary unit.
Oliver Pollock, the New Orleans merchant who acted as an intermediary between the
American government and General Bernardo de Gálvez, is accredited with originating the
symbol. Through his efforts, great amounts of money, arms, ammunition, and military supplies
were acquired from Spain and funneled into the American colonies. The “S” alludes to Spain,
and the two vertical marks “||” allude to the Pillars of Hercules.

Shown above is a Spanish milled dollar, or peso, that was minted in Mexico City in 1781, the year

that Gálvez’s forces fought and won the Battle of Pensacola. On the obverse, or front side, is an image of King
Carlos III. On the reverse is the image of the royal coat of arms flanked by the Pillars of
Hercules, which adorned most Spanish coins of the period.

Oliver Pollock, the New Orleans merchant who acted as an intermediary between the
American government and General Bernardo de Gálvez, is accredited with originating
the symbol. Through his efforts, great amounts of money, arms, ammunition, and
military supplies were acquired from Spain and funneled into the American colonies.

The “S” alludes to Spain, and the two vertical marks “||” allude to the Pillars of
Hercules. Shown below is a Spanish milled dollar, or peso, that was minted in Mexico
City in 1781, the year that Gálvez’s forces fought and won the Battle of Pensacola. On
the obverse, or front side, is an image of King Carlos III. On the reverse is the image
of the royal coat of arms flanked by the Pillars of Hercules, which adorned most Spanish
coins of the period.

The origin and significance of the dollar ($) sign is yet another part of our wonderful
Spanish heritage in America that has somehow been lost, forgotten, or obscured.
REFERENCES
James Alton James, Oliver Pollock: The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot (Books
for
Libraries Press, Freeport, New York, first published 1937, reprinted 1970). See,
especially, APPENDIX II: “Oliver Pollock and the Development of the $ Mark,” pp.
356-359.
Carlos M. Fernández-Shaw, The Hispanic Presence in North America from 1492 to
Today, (Facts on File, Inc., New York, NY, 1987 and 1991), pp. 41-43.
For a brief and concise account of the vital role of Spain during the American War of
Independence, see Robert H. Thonhoff, The Vital Contribution of Spain in the Winning
of the American Revolution: An Essay on a Forgotten Chapter in the History of the
American Revolution (privately published by Robert H. Thonhoff, Karnes City, Texas,
2000). This essay has a good, basic listing of references for supporting and additional
information for those interested in learning more about the subject.
Granaderos Electronic Publications

 

Mexico Spring Break 2013

“Spring Break in Mexico 2013: Security Risks and Travel Tips is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

Violence between competing criminal organizations in Mexico has been ongoing for more than two decades. In the last decade, this violence has escalated nearly every year. According to Mexico’s National System of Public Security, 2006 saw 11,806 murders. Subsequently, there were 10,253 murders in 2007, 13,155 in 2008, 16,118 in 2009, 20,681 in 2010, 22,480 in 2011, and 20,560 in 2012.

The core of the conflict centers on the most valuable routes for trafficking drugs through Mexico. Several groups are waging a violent campaign for control of these corridors. Meanwhile, the Mexican government is using the military to combat drug traffickers, adding an additional actor to the conflict. No part of the country, whether on a trafficking route or not, has been immune to the effects of organized crime, particularly as cartel-related violence has increasingly spread to competition over local criminal enterprises such as retail drug sales, kidnapping, extortion and prostitution, among other activities.

While cartels typically direct their violence toward rival groups, outside parties often wind up in the crossfire. For example, Los Zetas tried to burn down the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, on Aug. 25, 2011, allegedly to send a message to the casino’s owner. The attackers were undeterred by the presence of innocent bystanders, and more than 50 individuals died in the blaze.

If travel to Mexico is planned or necessary, visitors should keep in mind the following:

• Do not drive at night.
• Use only pre-arranged transportation between the airport and the resort or hotel.
• If at a resort, plan on staying there; refrain from going into town, particularly at night.
• If you do go into town (or anywhere off the resort property), do not accept a ride from unknown persons, do not go into suspicious-looking or run-down bars, do not wander away from brightly lit public places and do not wander on the beach at night.
• Stop at all roadblocks.
• Do not bring anything with you that you are not willing to have taken from you.
• If confronted by an armed individual who demands the possessions on your person, give them up.
• Do not bring ATM cards linked to your bank account (among other things, an ATM card can facilitate an express kidnapping.)
• Do not get irresponsibly intoxicated.
• Do not accept a drink from a stranger, regardless of your sex.
• Do not make yourself a tempting target by wearing expensive clothing or jewelry.
• Do not venture out alone, but bear in mind that being part of a group does not guarantee safety.

Read more: Spring Break in Mexico 2013: Security Risks and Travel Tips | Stratfor

editor’s note: with this advice, howtheheck can you have any fun in Mexico?  Either my friends and I have been extremely lucky or the Ensenada area is simply a more pleasant spot than most outsiders understand.   If my octogenarian mother and I can walk downtown Ensenada at night, how about you?