Trends and cycles: How important are long- and short-run restictions? The case of Mexico

The document presents a test for the existence of binding long- and short-run (common trend-common cycle) restrictions in the dynamics of a set of Mexican macroeconomic variables. These restrictions are imposed in a VAR to decompose the series into their permanent and transitory components. The analysis shows that the magnitude of transitory (nominal) shocks is underestimated when such restrictions are not considered. In addition, we find that the timing and duration of recession and expansion periods are more accurately estimated when the trend-cycle decomposition is conducted with the imposition of cointegrating (long-run) and common feature (short-run) restrictions.

Mexico as Seen Through American Eyes: The Evolution of U.S. News Media Coverage

The traditional Mexican view of the U.S. news media\u27s treatment of Mexico and Mexicans is that those media have been mired in prejudice, owing to what Octavia Paz has called the twin sisters ignorance and arrogance. Mexicans of all social levels have held to this view for many decades, denouncing the obsession of American journalists with drug trafficking, illegal migration, and governmental corruption, and for forming or reinforcing in generations of Americans a vague, exotic, touristy, sometimes downright surreal vision of Mexico. This view, however, began to shift very markedly during the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994). Especially during the NAFTA negotiations (1990-1993), and after the Gulf War ended in 1991, the demise of the Soviet Union fed a growing interest in free-market issues and approaches, and the U.S. news media rushed to tie these to Salinas\u27s new\u27\u27 Mexico. Soon, the old images were being supplanted by images of: two nations moving toward many of the same goals and sharing much the same outlook; a Mexico now deeply immersed in a process of modernization; and a visionary Mexican president guiding his nation into full-fledged membership in the First World. However, this new view of Mexico suffered a severe setback in 1994 with the Zapatista uprising in the southern state of Chiapas in January, the assassination of Salinas\u27s hand-picked successor, Luis D. Colosio, in March, and especially with the peso devaluation in December, just a few days after Emesto Zedillo\u27s inauguration

The Transitional Museum as Urban Parasitism

In a recent talk at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, I presented to the public an initial approach to the concept of the Transitional Museum, one that I have developed over time in collaboration with Mauricio Rodriguez-Anza and Vivianne Falco. This concept grew out of our efforts at defining the main features and goals of the new Anza Falco Museum of Art and Design, and particularly out of our struggle with the word alternative as an all-embracing, defining category with the necessary components to project to the world a unique and interdisciplinary style both in its architectural form and its artistic and educational content. Indeed, alternative has become a catchy and trendy word not only in architecture and art but also in academia and even in politics. So we hear that this is an alternative musician or artist or intellectual, but we never really hear a coherent explanation of why she, he or it is alternative. Alternative to what or to whom? The problem is that the word alternative -- like such other words as globalization, development and democracy -- have become empty signifiers, that is, words that can be filled with almost any content. So if we state that the Anza Falco Museum of Art and Design will be alternative, we should explain why

The Vote on Bilingual Education and Latino Identity in Massachusetts

In November 2002, the Massachusetts electorate voted overwhelmingly to pass Referendum Ballot Question 2 (Q. 2), sponsored by California millionaire Ron Unz. The passage of this initiative by close to 70% of the voters effectively ended bilingual education in the state as it had been known for thirty years. Exit polling done at selected cities in Massachusetts by the Mauricio Gaston Institute and UMass Poll revealed, however, that out of a total 1,491 Latinos polled, a vast majority of them, around 93%, had voted in favor of rejecting Q. 2 and keeping bilingual education in place. Indeed, Q. 2 became a rallying point for the Latino communities of Massachusetts. By promoting the maintenance of bilingual education programs, Latino leaders and bilingual education activists we re able to raise voter awareness and to mount voter - registration campaigns throughout the state. As a result, Latino identity became directly linked to their rejection of Q. 2, and their support of Shannon O’Brien for governor

Challenges to Multiculturalism

An anti-bilingual education referendum was offered to citizens of Massachusetts in November of 2002. The referendum read, in part, “The current state law providing for transitional bilingual education in public schools will be replaced with a law requiring that, with limited exceptions, all public school children must be taught English by being taught all subjects in English and being placed in English language classrooms.” The University of Massachusetts Gaston Institute analyzed the results of that referendum, here reported on by Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Venezuela in the Times of Chavez: A Study on Media, Charisma, and Social Polarization

My main objective in this study is to deepen the reader\u27s understanding of Venezuela\u27s ongoing socio-political conflict by focusing on the struggle for control over one of the key agents of mobilization and politicization in the country: the media outlets, and particularly television. My methodology strives to interweave the chronological record of events with analysis of the equally relevant theoretical, institutional, political, economic, and cultural components that helped to create those events. Central to my presentation is its analysis of the decline of Venezuela\u27s two traditional parties and the emergence of a charismatic and populist form of leadership

Consistent discretizations: the Gowdy spacetimes

We apply the consistent discretization scheme to general relativity particularized to the Gowdy space-times. This is the first time the framework has been applied in detail in a non-linear generally-covariant gravitational situation with local degrees of freedom. We show that the scheme can be correctly used to numerically evolve the space-times. We show that the resulting numerical schemes are convergent and preserve approximately the constraints as expected.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Foucault, Marxism and the Cuban Revolution: Historical and Contemporary Reflections

This article relates central themes of Marxist and Foucauldian thought to the intellectual and political legacy of the Cuban Revolution. Against the backdrop of a reading of Foucault’s relationship to the revolutionary left, it is argued that Marxist theoretical discourse on guerrilla struggle (as articulated by Mao, Guevara and others) provide an intriguing case for bio-political struggle. In the case of the Cuban revolution, an ethics of self-transformation appears in which new ways of living and practicing life are cultivated in opposition to sedimentations of state power. Moreover, in addition to this historical case, a discussion is offered of the reception of Foucault’s work in contemporary Cuba, through an analysis of the published proceedings of a conference on Foucault held at the University of Havana in 1999. Here, Foucault’s thought is appropriated as part of an effort to revitalize Cuban socialism itself

Defect Analysis and Detection of Cutting Regions in CFRP Machining Using AWJM

The use of composite materials with a polymeric matrix, concretely carbon fiber reinforced polymer, is undergoing further development owing to the maturity reached by the forming processes and their excellent relationship in terms of specific properties. This means that they can be implemented more easily in di erent industrial sectors at a lower cost. However, when the components manufactured demand high dimensional and geometric requirements, they must be subjected to machining processes that cause damage to the material. As a result, alternative methods to conventional machining are increasingly being proposed. In this article, the abrasive waterjet machining process is proposed because of its advantages in terms of high production rates, absence of thermal damage and respect for the environment. In this way, it was possible to select parameters (stand-o distance, traverse feed rate, and abrasive mass flow rate) that minimize the characteristic defects of the process such as taper angle or the identification of di erent surface quality regions in order to eliminate striations caused by jet deviation. For this purpose, taper angle and roughness evaluations were carried out in three di erent zones: initial or jet inlet, intermediate, and final or jet outlet. In this way, it was possible to characterize di erent cutting regions with scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and to distinguish the statistical significance of the parameters and their e ects on the cut through an analysis of variance (ANOVA). This analysis has made it possible to distinguish the optimal parameters for the process

Immigration, Ethnicity, and Marginalization: The Maya K’iche of New Bedford

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007, more than 300 armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 361 presumed undocumented immigrant workers at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. More than half of the workers detained were from Guatemala, the majority belonging to the Maya K’iche (we will use K’iche) community, an ethnic group originally from the mountains of western Guatemala whose members began arriving in the New Bedford area from Providence, Rhode Island, where there is an older K’iche community, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of a violent confrontation in Guatemala between an increasingly militarized state and predominantly Mayan guerrillas and civilians. Once a number of male K’iche became established in New Bedford, the immigration flow began to include women and children. Poor and unskilled immigrants have few options but to take lowwage jobs and settle in declining urban areas. In the case of the K’iche, as it became clear in our fieldwork, their undocumented status in addition to a lack of formal education compounded their marginal status and led to their acceptance of poor working conditions and dead-end jobs in the fish-packing and apparel industries (the Michael Bianco factory being an example) that have survived a prolonged economic decline in New Bedford