Is Free Trade a Pyramid Scheme?

Yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer featured a horrifying story about the attempt by Wal-Mart to despoil Mexico's ancient architectural heritage:

SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico - A Wal-Mart store rising near the 2,000-year-old pyramids of the Teotihuacan Empire has ignited the wrath of Mexican conservationists and nationalists who say the U.S. retailer is destroying their culture at the foot of one of Mexico's greatest treasures.

Since news broke in May of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s plan to construct a 71,902-square-foot store near the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, the entryway of the primordial city has turned into a carnival of demonstrators, most protesting the plans though some welcoming the 180 jobs the store will bring.

Demonstrators wearing long feathered headdresses, bright indigenous costumes, and loincloths dance around fires spewing incense and implore gods and the government to halt construction. Signs shout "Yankee Imperialism," "Foreign Invasion, Get Out!" and "We'll Be Here Until Victory."

The store, with 236 parking spots, is to open any day, but protests are snowballing and its future is uncertain.

On Wednesday, protesters blocked the entrance of the National Institute for Archaeology and History in Mexico City because it gave Wal-Mart its permit. They remained there Thursday, preventing employees from reporting for work.

The same article appears (with a different headline) at the Common Dreams website. It's a war -- a war of symbols:
Last week, 63 prestigious artists and intellectuals, in a letter published in Mexican newspapers, asked President Vicente Fox to stop the structure. They see it as a battle pitting Mexico's heritage against encroaching U.S. influence. Wal-Mart is already Mexico's largest retailer, with 664 stores in 66 cities, with sales of $12 billion.

"The struggle for Teotihuacan is a war of symbols," they wrote. "The symbol of ancient Mexico against the symbol of transnational commerce; genetically modified corn against the Feathered Serpent (the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan in Mayan) and Mexico's traditional foods; the Day of the Dead against Halloween; skeletons against jack-o-lanterns."

Mysteriously abandoned around 700 A.D., Teotihuacan was called "the place where the gods were created" by the Aztecs, who re-encountered the city in 1300. The ethnicity of the builders is unknown.

"Don't small towns have the right to have access to the same level of quality goods that Mexicans have in larger cities?" Wal-Mart said in a statement late Wednesday. "Today, residents of Teotihuacan have to travel 15 miles to get to the closest department store."

Opponents see Wal-Mart's modern capitalism as an assault on native culture.

"Wal-Mart's aim is to destroy our identity, replace our symbols with the dollar sign," said Jaime Lagunez, 44, a molecular biologist. "The construction at Teotihuacan was made by the people who built their homes and temples with dignity."

That last statement intrigued me, because, I wondered, if archaeologists are without a clue as to who built the pyramids at Teotihuacan (they don't even know the original name), then how can a molecular biologist claim them as part of his identity? How can he know that these unknown people built the pyramids "with dignity?" How can he be so certain that they weren't built by slave labor? (While the Aztecs came later, they were hardly noted for kindness towards their slaves and captives.....)

Has the molecular biologist read recent archaeological reports like this?

Fifty miles north of modern Mexico City stands the ancient site of Teotihuacan. Built more than 2,000 years ago, the city’s colossal pyramids of the sun and moon are the largest pre-Columbian monuments in the New World. But who built and lived in these metropolis held sacred by the later Aztecs, and what are we to make of the recently discovered remains of 200 bound and sacrificed prisoners of war? Today, archaeologists believe that this ancient site may have been the seat of a violent militaristic cult whose rampages were determined by the position of the planet Venus.
Violent militaristic cult? Ye gods! Did they have a killer deity named Bushtilopochtli? (And considering that women are from Venus, might we need to reassess our traditional -- dare I say classical? -- biases?)

But why quibble over history when symbology is at stake?

In any case, the plan to build a Wal-Mart at the foot of the pyramids sounded awful when I read about it -- and the point was emphasized by the Inquirer's accompanying cartoon showing the tacky new Wal-Mart sitting atop the Pyramid of the Sun.

PyrPressure.jpg

Still, I wanted more information about the exact location of the store, because I enjoy gathering as many facts as I can before I write. I found a Google cache of this article, which includes these additional facts:

The warehouse-style store is located near the ancient citadel, within the limits of San Juan Teotihuacan, a town that has grown steadily over the past 20 years, to its current population of more than 45,000.

A recent report by the Mexican chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an adviser to UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), states that the Wal-Mart store meets the requirements outlined by international treaties.

But, the report adds, local authorities should take a close look at urban planning in the area, where it says there are already "serious alterations" of the landscape due to urban sprawl.

Wal-Mart won municipal permits and authorisation from Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History to build the new discount store.

In response to demonstrations and protests by local residents, which included the occupation of the construction site by activists in August to try to bring work to a halt, the government of Vicente Fox and local municipal officials agreed to review the permits -- and endorsed them.

Within the limits of a town of more than 45,000, located a mile away from the pyramid?

Why didn't the Inquirer tell its readers that the Wal-Mart is being built in a town of 45,000 plus people? Or that many of the locals want it?

Are symbols more important than facts?

UPDATE: Commenter Bill Peschel's good faith attempt to correct me about a "fact" raises a disturbing question which only highlights my point.

He accurately cited this news report, for the proposition that the Wal-Mart is actually "a half-mile" away from the pyramids.

But was that report accurate itself?

I try to research these things but alas! There's a conflict in the reports over which I have no control.

I'd read that the distance was 1.6 kilometers (which I rounded off to a mile), but Bill Peschel's correction led me to look for something more precise. I found this:

The store will be located some 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the Pyramid of the Moon and 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the Pyramid of the Sun and, according to authorities, "abides" by regulations and the law.

I may have understated the distance, if anything (although my point remains the same). Has news reporting become so untrustworthy that bloggers will have to travel to described places and take accurate measurements of distance?

Are laws of physics and math to be suspended in the name of symbology?

Regardless of bias, you'd think they'd at least get things like distances between places right.

Sheesh!

NOTE: The above quote comes from a supposedly reliable, nonpartisan source, which describes itself thusly:

CountryWatch.com is an information provider for schools, universities, libraries and individuals who need up-to-date information and news on the countries of the world and for the public and private sector organizations with global operations and interests. The management of CountryWatch.com has extensive international business and academic experience and, using this experience, has created, in a concise and useful form, a key set of political, economic, and business information, daily news and data for its clients in the form of Country ReviewsTM, the Country WireTM and CountryWatch Data.
Honestly, I no longer know what to believe.

(And I thought I was cynical about news reports before I started blogging.....)

MORE: I think I should stress that the distance involved here is hardly a minor "detail" -- as the reporters might claim in their own defense. The proximity to the pyramids goes to the very essence of the controversy! The cartoon which the Inquirer displayed showing a Wal-Mart on top of the pyramid illustrates graphically that distance is the very heart of the story -- and that exaggeration of distance is a vital part of the protesters' claims. So why did the Inquirer fail to even report the actual distance? Why would another "report" claim it's a half-mile?

Forgive me for saying this, but if I didn't know any better, I'd almost think the demonstrators themselves were writing the news accounts.

UPDATE: It should be noted that reporter Susana Hayward (who wrote the above story) is not strictly an Inquirer reporter, but is Knight-Ridder's Mexico Correspondent. I point this out because I realize that the Inquirer editors themselves may have no editorial control over the content of her stories. It may be that no one does. If that's the case, considering the number of readers whose view of the world is formed and shaped by the Knight-Ridder chain, it's understandable why so many people keep raising questions about media accountability and power. Why is Ms. Hayward in charge of telling millions of busy Americans what to think? The reason I think this is important is that had I been too busy to check the facts yesterday, I'd have been as outraged as I was over the Iraqi Museum looting story -- which turned out to be false. If Knight-Ridder's reports from Mexico are questionable, what are the implications for reports about Iraq?

posted by Eric on 10.24.04 at 12:27 PM





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Comments

The Associated Press ran an article on it last month. The store is actually a half-mile away from the pyramid:

http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=33481

The rest of the story is worth reading. A member of the group opposing the store had to admit that, well, the poor locals want the store, and that it doesn't stand out:

"And while the store is visible from atop the pyramid, so are many other modern businesses and houses.

"Underlining his group's lack of support, D'Herrera said probably 70 percent of the town's mostly poor residents support the new store because it will offer lower prices than the area's small shops.

"The housewives want to go shopping with credit cards ... and the teenagers want to go skateboarding in the parking lot, like in the United States," he said.

And despite the drawing, the store won't even say Wal-Mart:

"The low-to-the-ground sign won't even say Wal-Mart. The U.S. company -- now Mexico's biggest retailer after buying up numerous Mexican store chains in recent years -- is putting in one of its Bodega Aurrera outlets, which offer cheaper merchandise than a Wal-Mart-branded store."

Bill Peschel   ·  October 24, 2004 11:30 PM

The town might officially have 45,000 residents in its municipal borders, but there are many, many more living in the area. Teotihuacán is potentially a bigger tourist attraction than it is now - and now the place has tacky tourist stuff around it anyway. (The pyramid site itself is very much worth visiting.) This protest against Wal-Mart is more lefty silliness. What the complainers want - no development at all that is linked to the evil capitalists from the north - would assure that Mexico remains a trashy, under-developed, dusty place, with great food, nice people, etc., etc. – more guilty NPR gringo crap. By the way, the local "Wal-Marts" and associates and imitators are as important in Mexico as it is in the US - and consumers (most of modest incomes) have won big due to their growth.

down south   ·  October 24, 2004 11:44 PM

While the ancient Aztec and Mayan ritual of human sacrifice would certainly be classified by Yochelson and Samenow as unlawful criminal premeditated homocide, and justifiably so, I must say that I have always loved the unique _style_ of the Aztecs and Mayas, their languages and costumes, their styles of art and of architecture, their astronomy and their mythology, their Gods and Goddesses. The Spanish Catholics who conquered them sublimated the human sacrifice into the symbolic devouring of the body and blood of the Christ, but they wiped out or drastically diminished the high polytheistic _style_ of that ancient high culture as well, and I have never forgiven them for that.

Speaking of the Christ, the God of the Feathered Serpent, Kukulcan, Viracocha, was a Christ-like Deity, His worship seems to have spread through both of the New World continents.

The Left? Hmmm.... The Aztecs seem to have had a different symbolism, as their God of War and of the Sun, Huitzilopochtli, was the Hummingbird of the Left. But on J. A. Laponce's spectrum, He would clearly be on the Right. That today's Leftists profess to admire the Aztecs shows their incoherency, for obviously the kings, priests, and warriors of that ancient civilization would have had no sympathy whatsoever for the ideals of the French Revolution. The Aztecs were obviously on the Far, Far Right. Not "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" but "Throne and Altar".

Was gonna correct that name till I saw the second post.

Mick   ·  October 25, 2004 02:41 AM

Thanks for the comments. Great sacrifice stuff, Steven!

Bill, thanks for the "correction." (You accurately cited a report, but was that report accurate itself?) Anyway, I did more research, and updated the main post accordingly.

Thanks all!

Eric Scheie   ·  October 25, 2004 09:19 AM


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