interviewer from the first thing i remember was living with my mother about six miles from crossing american about the year 1866. i know it was 1866 week as it is the year surrender of the surrender was 1865. at appomattox persistent memory of many say is it was in turn presence of the commemorative calendar of the free people. surrender day festivities began in southern virginia as early as they can 66. blacks and the north carolina border commemorated april 9 because they saw it if they had never been beaten emancipation proclamation would have been to no avail. african-american soldiers pivotal role as agents of liberation would long remain a point of pride within black communities. george washington williams himself a veteran of the appomattox came came noted in his landmark history published in 1883 at appomattox in the last arab slaveholders rebellion

the brilliant fighting of black troops have ensured the salvation of the union. the fact that african-american soldiers had defeated lee lent additional symbolic meaning to the surrender for me and his army of northern virginia typified the ice of the u.s. ct slaveholding elites and its racial superiority. thomas morris chester confederate capitulation was especially sweet cousins are reviewed to the first families of virginia who he do after the virginians. in short, men such as williams and chester made and sustained the bold claim that defeat u.s. army african-american troops have dealt a death blow to all that army stood for, including favorite old. they insisted not only the union armies at jury emanated from superior virtue of the black troops in particular exemplified by virtue. most important, african-american soldiers interpretations of the surrender of described the civil rights message into the mud animist terms of the sprecher,

emphasizing the promise of appomattox, depicted the free people and black soldiers in particular as agents of national healing. the williams 1880 history of the troops in the war of the rebellion praised like soldiers for treating the confederates with quiet dignity and christian humility. those were his words. hero, after the confederate army had been paroled, the troops cheerfully and cordially divided rations of the late enemy and welcomed them at their campfires of march 2 st. petersburg. forgiveness is expressed in the attacks rebel soldiers who freely mingled with the plakon verse. as a spectacle of magnanimity never before witnessed. lien sought, african-american magnanimity at appomattox is the exercise of moral authority come a conscious effort as purposeful as grandson act of clemency to leave to break the cycle of violence the slaveholders had so long perpetuated.

in the year after the surrender, each of the interpretations about the income emphasis on restoration from a vindication of liberation aquinas and others came to incorporate an argument about the last promise of appomattox. adherents of each interpretation argued their political opponents had betrayed the true spirit of green's magnanimity. everyone embraces magnanimity, but they invest with different meanings. for lee and his followers from the radical republicans for the arch betrayers that the appomattox covenant for imposing a regime and black suffrage in political representation that contravene the promise and parole terms of southerners would not be disturbed. for granted and his followers coming into johnson was the arch betrayers were capitulating to these ideas that the piece must bring the restoration of power to southerners. confronted with the foolhardiness of the far too lenient johnson and planets of the southern people to their own

interest, grant had adapted. he would write, i gradually worked up to the point where i see the immediate enfranchisement for african-americans. this is the only way to dispel the confederates pretension they would be able to control the nation and were entitled to do so as he put it. grant was deeply disappointed by lee's refusal to give that the cursor do. in a may 1866 interview, cryptically to pass, saintly was he hating badly. setting an example of source acquiesces so grudging and pernicious in its effect as to hardly be realized. representative lee for denigrating the union victory is a mere show of force and encouraging confederates to resist changing the name of restoration. grant learned after appomattox said he would need to enter the political arena to finish the work he began in april 191865. hindi has african-americans, not only those who rejected black citizenship of right, but those who during the long retreat from

reconstruction would give up the fight for it, all of these people at the moment of promise at the appomattox moment state unfulfilled. however compelling and comforting the image of the surrender is a gentleman's agreement if he doesn't begin to capture the complex legacy of appomattox peer deep into the 19 century, appomattox is at the heart of the politics of race reunion and that's why it's so important people come here and walk the national park to visit the museum and try to understand its artifacts that we can recover and appreciate that this moment meant in that turbulent era of the civil war. thank you. [applause] >> dear sometime? >> yeah, sure. i'm happy to take any questions people have.

>> i knew i could count on you. yes, sir. [inaudible] >> in your view, what changed in what didn't change because of lincoln's assassination? >> is a great question anyone who knows civil war literature does the assassination when we get the impression of books on shelves of libraries and bookstores, the assassination eclipses the surrender. scores of books on the assassination of very few on the surrender. there's been an assumption that's gone on with the notion the assassination surrender but at that moment the northern impulse to magnanimity evaporates under his calls for vengeance. the drowning of the imposter's magnanimity. i found something quite different. northerners are absolutely embittered by the assassination and we do see calls for

vengeance against those who perpetrated it. but we see a calling response. we see some northerners say we have been too lenient. lincoln would've been too lenient. grant was too lenient. now johnson, they initially believe is going to be an enforcer of richard duchenne inventions. johnson is the right man to correct our course. but we see just as many people saying, upholding the notion of magnanimity and the idea of magnanimity confers moral authority and is an emblem of its moral superiority. we see just as many sticking with the argument but let's not make of these people. let's stick with what lincoln wanted, bp is characterized by lenient than the union are the best rates one of lincoln's memory is to uphold the spirit of the magnanimity. i find this interpretive lines hold. there's a sort of moment of uncertainty.

to a surprising degree, they hold. the other thing i found is we know john wilkes booth was in the audience when lincoln gives his less famous speech in which he gestures he made it back black suffrage and modern day say well, booth at this moment since i'm going to run lincoln through and this is a lashing out against the possibility of black civil rights. all of that's true, but americans at the time is they receive the news of lincoln's assassination didn't know about the details. so what they assumed was the assassination was a response to the surrender. who's had been infuriated by the south's defeat and he was lashing out against lincoln to rob lincoln of the fruits of his victory. what happened here at appomattox is the context for the assassination in the eyes of almost all northerners. if a site of that. the connection between the surrender of the assassination.

they believe booth was trying to undo the union victory at that moment. any other questions? comments? >> knowing there's talented leaders in the room. would you want to revive that in some way? something that would fit on a billboard? >> i mean, i think again the myth that the gentleman's agreement between grant and lee is a compelling one and not one that doesn't have merit. it was a great achievement for these two men to end the war. i would like to say parent radically, sometimes people these days we'll talk about a long civil war and appomattox didn't win the war. effectively, appomattox ends the civil war. there are surrenders to come. yes armies in the field, but what happened after appomattox is not going to revive hopes were confederate independence.

they die here at appomattox. it is the effective end of the civil war and a great achievement to end the war. this notion of a narrative about a gentleman's agreement exists from the very start and even some of these editors like really who were arguing about the terms. there's an air self-congratulation that america ended at civil war and away no country is ever done so before. the gentleman's agreement is rooted in american exceptionalism, how remarkable we are able to end our war without massive executions and reprisals. across the spectrum that impulse to self-congratulation says president, even among people who than express will argue about what the terms really meant. my argument here is nothing that will set clearly on a billboard. i don't think one has to throw out the old billboard so much as remember that the surrender was

controversial. how could it not be? 700,000 men have lost their lives. the road to true reconciliation was a very, very difficult one. i think to appreciate the meaning of the surrender who lived at this time, we have to remember they let j-juliett grant, the most prestigious men in the country aside from lincoln and after lincoln dies, the two most prestigious men. southerners in northerners look to these meant to represent their respective causes from which so many people lay down their lives in pieces they had in war. they didn't expect these meant to be ends in defeat. they sell them as clients and assumed that's what they would continue to be. part of my argument is land-grant our enemies. how could it be otherwise? it doesn't detract from the achievement of having brought the worst we close. but reminds us these terms down to the cause we don't want to be disturbed and if you disturb us come you broken the covenant.

these terms are controversial. i think again sometimes some people are trying to debunk the myth, they tell you something you thought was of greater importance is not as greater importance he thought. my purpose is opposite to say it's even more important to say what happens here says the terms for an unfolding debate that we have appreciated. yeah. [inaudible] >> yes, yes. [inaudible] >> i think that's right. really for me, the most surprising discovery of all was et al., with web relish the anti-republican democrats, those copperheads just adopted the

confederate bob things. it just shows you how the instant impulse to politicize this. my argument if there is never a moment in which northerners and not celebrate grants victory and not very moment when confederates en masse are southerners lament please defeat. it's political from the very start. this has to do them part with the price. what did the traces his followers and here come the campaign, meeting of the clean house from promulgation of the farewell address. i show what happens in the news hits the wires and lands in northern cities and communities and lands in southern cities in the impulse to spin the news is instantaneous for political rivals to try to use it to political advantage. it happens instantly and shows divisions within a society, not just between them.

[inaudible] what you are saying is a great, robbery between the usct and everyone sending -- [inaudible] begin with each other -- >> that is not. and that was a quote from a postwar race history by george washington williams. the context for these -- african-americans clinked the idea that the surrender is a special moment for them. a moment which they are in the thick terser old in which they are dispensing magnanimity. the context for that is a very long-standing charge that goes back as far as we can trace debates about slavery but if you have emancipation come you're going to have chaos and reprisals and for williams to highlight, i think his account there is somewhat wishful. but it served a political purpose to highlight the

possibility of racial record deletion and say that appomattox could symbolize racial reconciliation with an answer to all those who sent us this freedom in the victory, there's going to be social chaos, resource the one. williams wanted to allow himself with the forces of progress and civilization and to have decided to magnanimity of african-american at that moment was to do that and offer counter narrative to a dystopian discourse about what would happen if you had read in the union to jury. yes. [inaudible] >> yep, that's right. i don't have a figure they are. really, this is a moment at

which they're essentially, you know, the way it's described by sherry dan and others is that we and his men thought the might have achieved a breakthrough moment by scattering the union calvary. when they see the infantry en masse in en masse in those woods committee realize their hopes were breakthrough failed. so is the presence of the african-american troops in the sight of union reinforcements that causes the way flex to start going out. indeed, it would be in at the grant and an african-american postwar discourse that black troops fired the shot at lee's army. that is technically not true. but again, it served a purpose in it served a purpose to say we are within the thick or circle and we hope to bring to shield this army that symbolized everything, that symbolizes the very regime that slavery and of the elite.

again, to get back to john's question, part of what i'm arguing is that literally happened here is fascinating. i talk about the campaign in a lot of detail, but i'm trying to argue appomattox is a much richer symbols and we've realize. it wasn't just a symbol of victory and defeat in vindication of restoration and liberation. functioning on office many levels. [inaudible] >> it was 116, the 27, the 145th. it's all in the book. you got it, good. [inaudible] >> yeah, and one of the regiment waited in the waiting. as one of the marchers and discoveries for me is how many

of the men in those armies, not the officers and leaders of the army and later became prominent in referred back to the service very proudly. george washington williams is the most important african-american intellectual of this postwar period and he he was there and he considered it very, very important, sort of a key moment in his life, as dissidents and others who would become prominent political leaders. so that's the story. in a way, this is what got me to the project. i've been interested in only ingrained for a long time, but i was asked to music or to give a talk in philadelphia on the subject of juneteenth, the emancipation moment taxes for union forces arrived and announced they are free. in the course of doing research, which was something i knew little about, i kept running across references to appomattox is a freedom day for african-americans. references that dated to the 1930s.

the symbolic importance of the place for african-americans persist a really, really long time. sometimes it took the form from chris this out maddux, covering the spectrum of african-american military service is eventually does lease for the world wars of the one. but it really lingers as a moment of symbolic importance. it goes beyond things that casualties in who in fact fired glass shards. [inaudible] >> thank you very much. >> my pleasure. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [laughter]

>> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> kara newman looks at how the commodities market influences what we eat and what we pay for. she says the markets have shaped culinary trends for hundreds of years. ms. newman spoke at the world bank in washington d.c. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you and thank you to the world bank for hosting me today. i do appreciate it. i do feel the need to start by saying i am not an economist, i'm a food writer, i'm a culinary historian. just to explain a little bit about how the book came about, when i first started my career, i wrote about financial topics. i worked with a small consulting

company that was then acquired by a much langer on -- larger conglomerate, and i was tasked with creating content about equities market, and then the one that completely changed my life, the commodities market. so how did that change my life? when i started learning about commodities, of course, i realized that there are certain products such as oil and gold, but there are also products that fall into the agricultural commodities segment, and those include products like cattle, soybeans, coffee, cocoa. and to me, it read like a menu. and maybe this was a sign that one day i was going to be a food writer, but everything really came together for me when i read the financial news weekly barron's and investment expert jim rogers was quoted as saying buy breakfast. so what did he mean by this? he was advising people to purchase frozen orange juice

futures and pork belly futures which no longer trade now. but he was essentially saying buy orange juice and buy bacon. buy breakfast. and right there that just solidified for me what the book concept was going to be, a mash-up of food and finance. and what i love about food is that it really does allow you to tell stories about people, about history, and in this case, about finance to a degree. and one of the things i found as i went along was the history of america's commodity exchanges really runs a parallel course with the history of industrialization and technology in america. and by this i mean the telegraph. that really helped to sync up prices around the country and around the world. you weren't just talking to your neighbor and saying, well, i think this commodity should be priced at this. you were able to find out what it was priced at if in chicago and in hamburg, in london and,

of course, we have the telephone, we have computers and the electronic media now. every good trader has a smartphone in their pocket. we're also talking about improvements in canals and later the railroad system. that played a really important part in getting product from the center of the country where they were largely produced to the east coast where most of the people were located. and, of course, the floors of those financial markets really have changed considerably over time. we'll show you some of those shortly. but you no longer see the chalkboards and the whiteboards, everything now is completely digitized. you no longer have these ankle-deep thickets of trading tickets. in some cases, you know -- you no longer have trading floors, and it's just a completely different world now. so we have my be lovely hamburger. i thought it would be fun, i mean, it's a lunchtime event, so

instead of just talking completely in generalities, i thought it would be fun to talk about some of the specifics. in this case, the hamburger. so just for a minute i'll explain what a commodities contract is. of it's, essentially, a contract between a buyer and a seller. it's a promise between a buyer and a seller to buy or sell a specific quantity of of a specific good, let's say cattle, beef at a specified point in the future. so the futures market. and what isn't spelled out in that contract is the price. that really goes back and forth. be and the more often that contract trades and the greater the spread between those trades, the more money can be made. so talking about our lovely hamburger here, just some of the products that you see in there. of course, we have the hamburger patty, the beef. we have cattle futures. obviously, you want your

hamburger on a bun, so we're talking about grain futures. you want a sesame seed bun, we're talking about sesame seeds. those trade this asia also. you want a cheeseburger instead of just a burger, cheese also trades in blocks and in barrels. it trades a lot less frequently than beef futures, but it does, indeed, trade. ask some of those other -- and some of those other items there either don't trade or no longer trade. i'm not aware of lettuce ever having traded. onions, on the other hand, they used to trade in the u.s. they were once a tremendously speculative market, and there's a huge scandal associated with onions. and if you want to hear more about it, ask during the q&a. again, we're still talking about cattle, and it really has a very long history, intertwining with finance. you can even see it in words like pecuniary and capital and, of course, the bull market. this image, this is a british

livestock painting. and i show it to you because i don't think people realize the extent to which the british have really played a very important part in the beef that we eat today. not just that we eat so much of it, but the type of beef as well. and this livestock portrait, this sort of thing was found across many an upper class british drawing room. the presence of beef in the picture satisfied affluence and comfort. and as america built up through the 1800s, an anthrax epidemic on the european continent spread to ireland and to britain, and as a result, it made british beef very expensive and very scarce. so what did the brits do? they love their beef. they turned to america where we have plenty of beefment and we started -- beef. and we started to ship salted beef and live cattle across the atlanticment this image --

atlantic. this image here is the chicago stockyards in 1941, and if you peer in the background, you might recognize a couple of names, armor and swift, some current meat processers that also existed at the time. so, again, we have the anthrax epidemic, we have the brits coming to us for beef, and at the same time america itself is pushing westward. we're grazing cattle in the midwest, and the big question became how to connect those, how to connect the midwest where the beef was grown and processed and get it back to the east where more people lived and beyond, across the atlantic to the brits who wanted it. so what happened was those british cattle barrens played an -- barons played an enormous part in the financing of the railroads. as those were built up in the 1870s and 1880s, the brits were involved, and what was really exciting was the advent of railway cars because it meant

that no longer did you have to ship live cattle who often didn't make the journey, or they weren't in very good shape once the journey was complete. and you were able to ship more animal carcasses or dressed beef as it's very delicately called. so by the late 19th century, america was responsible for 90% of the beef imported to england. now, sounds great, right? one more little wrinkle. the beef -- the british like their beef very well fatted, very well marbled, and the way the cattle was raised here they were very happy cattle raised this the midwest, grazing on grasses and that yielded a very lean beef. so solution: the british cattle barons and the farmers hit on the solution of finishing or fattening cows with corn. and that worked.

the cattle got fatter. it also created this symbiotic relationship between cattle and corn that exists to this day. it's still a very common hedge to trade cattle futures and corn futures together. and so you've got the happy brits, you've got the happy farmers selling a lot more corn. who wasn't happy? the americans. today weren't really accustomed to this fatty beef. but over time our tastes have adjusted, and it's even to the point where it's been codified into the usda. the highest level now satisfybe signifies that -- signifies that it is very well marbled among other things, and we're only just now getting back to this tradition of grass-fed beef. you sometimes see it on restaurant hen yous -- menus, within certain farms grass-fed beef is considered to be a very desirable quality right now. and a lot of people don't realize that what we're doing is

we're going back to our roots. so i am going to present five secrets about our food. some of these are not necessarily well-kept secrets, but nevertheless. so this photo here, this is the chicago mercantile. these are egg traders circa 1949, and some people may be saying we traded eggs? yeah, we did. and there was a time when there was a very active and very speculative market. in fact, there were multiple egg contracts that traded. and i've mentioned this because one of the secrets to what trades and what doesn't trade is volatility. like i said before, the more often something trades, the better it is for making money. and when something no longer makes money, it no longer trades. so eggs are a good, a good proxy for this. so even just to walk you through, we have fresh eggs, still have fresh eggs, but there was a time when eggs were iley

seasonal. -- highly seasonal. the hens would lay in spring, babe in summer, and in the winter months you didn't have eggs. they were very hard to get. so some very smart people figured out how to create storage eggs. and that involved taking fresh eggs and coating them with a thin layer of vegetable oil and putting them into cold storage. we're talking pre-refrigeration here. and when the hens were no longer lay, those very same smart people would take those eggs out of cold storage and sell them at a premium to restaurants, to hotels, to all the people who could afford to pay higher prices for those storage eggs. taking that a step further, we also had frozennen eggs. -- frozen eggs. and those were sold primarily to baking companies, they were used in making mayonnaise and later that was displaced by powdered eggs. and eventually as we had

increases, advances in technology, in animal husbandry we now have eggs year round. there's no longer any kind of volatility in eggs. you want eggs, you can look to your supermarket, get eggs anytime you want, as many as you want. and over time frozen egg contracts were phased out, storage egg contracts were phased out. we no longer have egg contracts trading at all. and same thing also applies to pork belly futures. again, advances in agriculture and in refrigeration technology, pork bellies stopped trading last year after a 50-year run. cattle futures, those still trade. i believe that it has a lot to do with not only the fact that there's this tie-in to corn, but there are also other factors that influence volatility in cattle, things like mad cow disease and other diseases.

and, of course, the impact of consumer demand really can't be understated. so secret number two, this photo. this is the opening day of the live hog contract at the chicago mercantile exchange, 1966. and you can see the chalkboard there. again with, a relic of the past. let's talk a little bit about how farmers use commodity prices to make decisions. i had a conversation in the course of researching the book with chad hart, he's assistant professor at iowa state university, and he's a grain market specialist. and just to read to you his comment, as a farmer i can decide whether to plant soybeans or corn. which will provide a better price for me at harvest, or i can decide the amount to grow. futures provide a signal. is it necessarily an accurate signal? no, but it's the best signal we

have. people are actually willing to put up contracts and make trades. it represents an actual transaction that will occur. so as a farmer, you have to make that decision should i plant soybeans or should i plant corn? should i use that same space on the farm, a finite space, to raise cattle or to grow something else? this i mean, these are really important decisions when you're trying to figure out what to plant. so secret number two, food prices can influence what gets planted. okay. be number three, any guesses on which product is the most traded in america? i heard someone say corn. yes, corn's number one. number two? any guesses? soybeans, okay, it is a smart group. okay. and the reason isn't necessarily that we eat so much corn or eat so many soybeans ourselves, but it's also because livestock

consumes these same products. corn is consumed by us, sure, but it's also consumed by cattle, by pigs. it's also made into corn syrup, it's made into corn oil, it's made into ethanol and other non-edible products and soybeans. same thing. soybeans are consumed a lot by poultry. now, poultry no longer trades. there has been a point in time when chicken futures traded and turkey futures traded -- just if time for thanksgiving. but poultry is the number one consumer of soybeans. and at the same time, also dairy cows also consume soybean oil to aid milk production. and just like we have that corn and cattle hedge, there are also experts who recommend putting together soybean futures against publicly-traded companies that specialize in poultry production like tyson. that's also another classic

trade. and, again, they're also used for non-edible products. it's very -- it's important. i mean, traders bet on what you eat and what your food eats too. okay. secret number four, four of five. okay. think for a moment about how incredibly maddening it would be if you went to the supermarket and the prices of coffee bounce up and town the same way they do -- down the same way that do on the commodities market every day. up and down. you wouldn't know what to pay, you wouldn't know how to budget, it would probably drive the people at the supermarket crazy, the people at starbucks crazy. you wouldn't know what price to set. so it's good that the commodities market helps to smooth out those prices over time and that they don't really get factored into supermarket pricing. at least they don't get factored in right away. there tends to be a lag of about a year to a year and a half if

there's a sustained trajectory. you'll eventually see prices going higher or going lower, but it'll take a good year, year and a half. so this kind of pricing information is useful for manufacturers as a predictive tool. they use it to help decide what the market will bear for their product when they bring something finally to market. it's a process called price discovery. it also helps restaurants and manufacturers manage costs and profits. i -- also for the book i talked with commodities expert bill latt who has a really interesting job. he works with companies to, restaurant companies and food manufacturers to help them manage food costs. and he uses the commodities market as a very important tool. so say if we're talking about hamburgers again, just imagine what the impact of a 25% spike in cattle prices would be if

you're the owner of a hamburger chain. gives you a couple of options if you can look into the future and understand where prices are likely to go, even if it's as simple as higher or lower, let alone higher by how much or lower by how much. you can think about raising menu prices assuming that it's not going to scare your customers away. you can think about making changes to the product. will they be smaller hamburger patties? you can think about picking substitutions. instead of having hamburgers, maybe you'll have turkey burgers. maybe you'll change the entire concept of your restaurant. instead of a hamburger chain, maybe you'll have one of those fast casual salad chains. kind of an interesting side note, i recently went to a conference called star chefs and sat in on a really interesting presentation, learned how to make the ultimate fried chicken. and the chef who was doing the

demo explained that he was about to start a fried chicken restaurant because he said i just can't handle the way beef prices and pork prices bounce up and down. poultry prices are a lot more stable. and he made the prediction right then and there that we're going to be seeing a lot more poultry-only restaurant concepts opening up because the price of chicken is so much more stable compared to other proteins. so, i mean, interesting on a much smaller scale how commodities prices are impacting him. it's going to impact what i'm going to be eating when i go home to new york. so also when it comes to packaged foods, there's also an impact. and it varies depending on what the product is. you're talking about a hamburger, i mean, a hamburger is beef. it's a very important input. when you're talking about things like a box of cereal, it might be a very small input. and, in fact, and this fact comes from the usda, when you

buy packaged goods like a box of corn flakes, only 15-20 cents of every dollar actually goes to that raw mod bety. so any thoughts -- commodity. so any thoughts on where else the money goes? [inaudible conversations] >> i'm hearing advertising, paneling. processing. labor. real estate. fuel. all very important inputs that go into this. when you get down to it, you spend more on packaging than you do on the raw commodities in your box of corn flakes. something to think about. secret number five, although i don't personally take a stance on whether the commodities market is good or bad, there are people who want to cut the middleman out altogether, and they want to opt out of buying commodity foods. and, i mean, it -- again, if you want to, secret's out there. you can. buy direct from your green market, buy direct from farmers,

work with small artisans. there are a lot of things you can do to cut the middleman out of the process. join the csa. again, that's onlyyou want to opt out of finish if you want to opt occupant of buying commodities. it's good to know the option is there if you want it. so with that, i'm happy to take questions. >> thank you very much, kara. i think you've kept your presentation within 30 minutes, thank you very much. and before we start with the q&a, i'd like to say that the info shop has told me that you can buy these books today after the seminar if you're interested. so with that, let's open it up. any questions? go ahead. and, please, go to the mic. if you have questions, please go to either mic on the right or left. and maybe we'll take a couple and then bundle it and then go back to kara.

and please introduce yourself before -- >> ladies and gentlemen, my name is rosemary, i'm the president for -- [inaudible] my company's in the district, and i forecast on consulting and commodity; oil and everything. so thank you for your wonderful presentation on food. looking at your presentation, what would you -- you talked much about it and the commodity, that was a wonderful presentation. i come from kenya. what would you advise us say on commodity, you talked about britain and the united states. what would be the best commodity for africa looking at african growth, development and the -- [inaudible] what do you think? we have cough tee in kenya, we have tea and other products. what would you advise the best commodity to be traded in the united states and around the world? thank you.

>> good afternoon. my name is jill marie -- [inaudible] with new rules for global finance, and i'm curious, um, we've heard of commodities as a way to diversify your investments, but then we are also aeroing a lot from developing country folks that as commodities are used as a tool for investment, it's making price, prices on food and fuel much higher in importing countries and much more volatile. and i'm wondering if you have a comment on that. thank you. >> great. why don't i start with the first one about commodities to trade in africa or kenya. again, i'm going to preface this by saying i'm not an economist,

i'm a food writer. but i can tell you this. in the course of my research, i found that ca salve v.a. is a product that apparently is available in quite a number of countries as a staple. it's a starchy root that doesn't yet trade here but, apparently, is in good standing to potentially become a commodity in the future. apparently, it's rather nutritious, grows well and might have implications for being a potato-like substitute or grain-like substitute. so that might be number one with a bullet in my mind. i'm sure that coffee, cocoa also probably -- if it grows, if there's a market for it, if there's demand for it, if there's some sort of volatility, i think it's a potential candidate. and then the second question, we'll see if i'm getting this right, the question was about

volatility. i'm not sure if i'm getting this right. be. >> [inaudible] >> okay. okay. so how commodities markets contribute to volatility. um, i think that there's certainly a correlation between commodity prices and volatility. what we've seen -- i think i may be repeating myself, but what we've seen is that over the long term it helps to smooth out volatility. we don't have the same intermittent ups and downs when it comes to the actual products we see on the shelves. i certainly would can't that we'll continue to -- expect that we'll continue to see volatility day-to-day this commodities markets. i don't see that ever going away. i think if it did, the commodities markets themselves would go away, because there would be fewer opportunities to make profits. and with that, i'm happy to take

more questions. >> any more questions? in -- from the audience? >> hi, my name's carey green, i'm a food and beverage lawyer with a law firm in town here and got my start in the wine business actually. >> all right. >> so my question actually starts with wine which is, you know, the grape market is a very complex market. sales of bulk wine are, obviously, also a very complex market, international issues. it's obviously not the commodities market. so how do the two relate to each other, i guess, is part of my question. >> hi. my name is -- [inaudible] fish or seafood caught in the wild, they have huge volatility. i didn't see those, i don't see those in the markets. do you have any comments on that? >> okay.

wine, awesome topic, thank you. there is not an actual wine commodity that's traded in our futures markets. however, there is such a thing as a wine futures market, and there are investment firms that specialize in wine futures. and you probably know this even better than i do, that bordeaux has a very active futures market. it's not quite the same thing as cattle trades, but there are actual funds that exist to put together opportunities to predict what -- i feel i should back up for a .for the non-wine folks in the room. the way wine is made and sold, especially for products like bordeaux, it's harvested, it's created, it's made into wine, and then it's put into barrels, and it's put away for a really long time. so that creates a really

effective futures market. you know you have this product. you don't know at the time this fan tsa -- if it's fantastic or not until much later on when it comes out of those barrels and it's put into bottles and then you have either a fabulous vintage or maybe a mediocre vintagement and that create -- vintage. and that creates tremendous opportunities for betting. will it be good? will it be not so is good? what will the prices be like? and where i was going with this is there are actual investment funds that put together groups of investors who want to buy a barrel or palette together and bet that in the future this is going to be an amazing vintage or not. be there are really great opportunities for betting on -- i should stop saying betting, for investing in wine as a future product. and it wouldn't surprise me to see it go the next step and actually become a proper commodities contract in the not too distant future.

and then the next question was about fish or seafood, and that's very astute to notice that, no, we don't really have any fish futures trading right now. there are shrimp futures that trade in some of the asian markets. we have had in the past also shrimp markets here. they didn't do very well. i think frozen shrimp is what was traded here in the '60s. we haven't had fresh fish -- i me thatted tuna has been -- thatted tuna has been proposed. as a ruleed products don't do well -- canned products don't do well. i suspect someone tried to bring back canned tuna, same thing.

all of the sustainability issues around fish, i think there certainly could be a market. i could see salmon futures, for one, being particularly fertile ground. >> so we have a tax -- food and beverage lawyer. i didn't even know there was a subcategory, so we're learning so much today. okay. i see one more question there. go ahead. >> i'm judy newton, and i'm not employed by the world bank, i'm a food writer, and i'm also a market runner for the only farmer's market. so by question is you touched very briefly on non-commodity foods, and i wonder if you have any sense of how the local movement, the so-called specialty farmers which is to say non-corn and soybean producers, are affecting this, the markets now. do they have any kind of effect at all? do you think they might in the future? >> thank you.

just dive into that one. okay. so the impact of non-commodity items on commodity items. um, certainly there's an impact, absolutely. i don't think that so much seen in in the pricing data day as much as it's seen -- day-to-day as much as it's seen in terms of consumer demand. there is so much that happens off market that drives food trends to an enormous degree. i think that going back even to grass-fed beef for a moment, the fact that there is this swelling current of demand for grass-fed beef, it's starting small, it's starting with small, conscientious consumers and farm-to-table restaurants. and while it may just be a fraction of the market now, i think the larger the impact, the louder the voices get. it will eventually be felt in

terms of demand, and it'll eventually drive prices down for corn-fed beef. and i think also another important driver of demand, some of the restaurant chains. and, of course, the consumers that make their voices to the restaurant chains. i read i believe it was either this week or the previous week chipotle came out and announced that they were no longer going to have any kind of gmo products in their offerings at their restaurants. and that's huge. i heene, they're an enormous company. they don't have to do this. and it's because they're listening to consumers. because otherwise, you know, you don't listen to consumers, you're not going to sell so much. it's important. we need to make our voices heard as consumers. >> hi. i wanted to know what was your analysis on the 2008 crisis in

asia which had dramatic impact on some people who struggled to, you know, to find rice and to be able to pay for rice. and if you think that such a crisis could happen again given how the commodity market functions at the moment. >> okay. the short answer for that is i do not have an analysis on the 2008 rice price crisis. it is something i've been watching with interest. it, i mean, it's incredible what goes on. >> yeah. be. >> but other than that as to a prediction as to whether it would happen again, that i leave to uri and other economists in the room. >> i ask a question? >> no. [laughter] >> i don't know either. i work a lot on nutrition in the agriculture department at the

bank, and hearing your presentation i can understand sort of the economic advantages of having an organized commodity market, you know, towards risk management, towards on stabilizing prices. but i was wondering if you had any thoughts on sort of the health implications. and i think you were kind of going there with the grass-fed beef issues. but one of the things that i have been told from the nutrition side is the importance of diversity in a diet. and that goes very much against how the agriculture sector has been sort of taught to think that we are really sort of gearing more for the commodities because it shows scale, it shows profitability. and then we have the nutritionists saying that's all fine, you're producing these grains with higher yields, but you have to -- every person has to eat a balanced diet.

do you have any thoughts on, um, how commodity markets or this kind of risk management tool could potentially be, have any positive health implications? >> that's a really interesting question. i teal you probably know -- i feel you probably know a lot more about this than i do. um, i think one way to frame this discussion is to think about not just -- i don't think that health implications are factored into commodities prices, but when i look back at what's gone on throughout the years, the decades, the centuries, what comes to mind for me is that the health issues really have been left out of it altogether. it really hasn't factor toed in. it's been strictly about pricing. i think that some of the most interesting discussions when it comes to commodities has to do

with the scandals. i think that there are just some crazy scandals out there, and i could devote an entire talk just to those, but they don't come back to health issues necessarily. >> any other questions? please, go ahead with. >> i'm -- [inaudible] i'm with the bank. and just speaking of scandals, would you mind telling us about the great onion scandal? [laughter] >> i knew someone was going to take the bait, thank you. i can tell you about a couple of different scandals. i mean, the onion scandal -- and they're outlined in the book this greater detail, but the onion scandal took place in the 950s -- 1950s. and it almost served to tank the entire chicago mercantile exchange. there was a saying at the time that as traders were getting together and they were starting to corner the market on onions,

that the prices were sinking so rapidly that the bags, the netting bags that the onions came this were worth more than the onions themselves. and what happened eventually was the merc had such a terrible reputation as a result of, first, the speculative egg market which was slowly going away and then the speculative onion market which was also eventually outlawed. it is still, i believe, a federal misdemeanor to trade onion futures in the united states. but as a result, the chicago mercantile had to completely switch direction and eventually became the center for trading livestock, for trading pork bellies and for trading cattle. and you had this enormous divide between these two commodities markets. you had the grain traders on one side of chicago, and they were in general the white glove traders, they were patrician, you know, today wouldn't get their -- they wouldn't get their

hands dirty. ask on the other side of town, you had the livestock traders, and these were more immigrant groups, more hard scrabble and lots of italians and irish, and that was really -- but it was known for this divide between the two commodities markets, what they traded and who did the trading. really fascinating. one of the other scandals that really fascinates me -- and we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of it, so it's kind of fun to talk about -- there was the great soybean oil scandal which has been almost completely dwarfed by the headlines around jfk's assassination. i mean, as it should be. that was a pretty big deal as these things go. [laughter] arguably one of the biggest deals. but there was a trader named tino deangeles who called himself the salad oil king. calls himself the salad oil king. and he traded cotton seed futures and soybean oil futures.

and he created this incredible cloak and dagger scheme out in his warehouse in new jersey. and i'm greatly condensing this. but he would have inspectors out to his, out to his warehouse in new jersey. they would come to inspect these enormous tanks which were allegedly full of salad oil, and they would be about in this full of water -- this full of water and that full of oil which float on top of water, obviously. and he had all sorts of schemes. he would do things like the inspectors would come to check the tanks, and they'd check one tank which would be full of oil, they'd take the inspectors out to lunch, and while they were out to lunch, they would funnel it across to another tank, and then they'd come back and when it blew up, oh, it blew up big time. twenty different brokage firms were put out of business including a unit of american express, and people lost millions and millions of dollars.

and it was, honestly, one of the biggest scandals of its time. and it's been almost or forgotten to history, again, because it happened at the same time as jfk's assassination. i'm going to stop rambling now. >> wonderful. the onion scandal and the -- >> there are others. [laughter] i'm pulling back. >> any other questions? you can ask kara about her cocktail recipe too, if you like. [laughter] maybe we'll take that offline. >> okay. >> any other questions? okay. if not, i think i'd like to have you all thank me -- or join me in thanking kara for a very stimulating discussion on the secret financial life of food. thank you. >> thank you. [applause]

>> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. .. >> next, from 18 to help texas book festival in austin, discussion went off there is ricardo ainslie and alfredo corchado on mexico. this is about 45 minutes. >> good afternoon. thank you for coming tonight. we are happy to be here at the texas book will. they asked me to tell everyone, please turn off cell phones to rejoin her of the conversations. with that, let me get dirty. i am shannon o'neil. i work at the council on foreign month americay focused on next

i had the distinct pleasure tonight talking with two wonderful gentlemen but to have written incredible books, really impressive books about mexico. the first one here on the right is ricardo ainslie. his book is called "the fight to save juárez." this book tells the story of this border city which many of you know has had the unfortunate distinction in recent years of being not only the most violent place in mexico but by some accounts the most violent city in the world. and he tells the story of this descent into darkness of this border city through the eyes and through the stories of many people in juárez, but particularly for people. it is the mayor of juárez from 2007-2010. it is a newspaper photographer who patrols the streets and shows up at the thousands of crime scenes. it is a mistress of a mid-level

cartel operator, and it is finally a human rights activist that's thrown into this freight trying to make sense of it and protect the people and whereas from people on the criminal side but also those who might be breaking the law from the government side. >> and in this book which is a highly readable book. i recommend to all of you, he really brings out the complexity of the situation there. and particularly in a city that usually all you see are very broad and damning brush strokes. so this is ricardo's book. the of the book we will discuss your demand is called "midnight in mexico." the author is alfredo corchado. and this is actually his own story. this is more of a memoir, and it's a start of a man who was born in mexico who spent his childhood in the vegetable and fruit fields of california, and who then as an adult returned to

mexico as what became a very respected and well-known foreign correspondent. and in this role he ended up explaining his first homeland, mexico, to his second homeland here in the united states as a longtime correspondent for the dallas morning news. and in his 20 plus years working as a reporter, he covered mexico's political opening. he covered its economics ups and downs. he covered the movement of people, the migration of people from mexico to united states and what that meant on both sides of the border. he has also covered increasingly mexico's drug war and a result of that final part of his portfolio, he's received several death threats for his deep and investigative reporting, for trying his dedication to this story. this is such a compelling book that i will tell all of you that the movie rights of it have been

bought. so i encourage you to buy it now and read it now before the movie comes out so you can compare which one you like better. so now on that let me turn to my two authors, and let me start us off with a more personal question before we get into the real meat and the history's and the stories in mexico. let me start off, and i will start with you, in rico, why did you write this book with why did you write this book about juárez? >> thank you, shannon. you know, i'm from mexico. i came to the united states when i was 17, and it has been just witnessing what has happened in mexico over the last decade or so has been really so unsettling, so deeply troubling. 10, 15 years ago, no one would've imagined that mexico would be living what it's living

today. and so that was really the impetus. it was sort of a heartfelt wish to sort of, partly to really just understand what was going on in mexico. i think it's difficult what cuts through the headlines to get a three-dimensional picture of the reality of what's taking place in communities like, cities like juárez and many other cities along the border. so mostly it was a bad. i wanted to understand what was taking place. i wanted to kind of make sense of it, and in some ways also shed some light on the aspects of this story that include not only a very dark aspect of human nature, but also include people who are really trying to do the right thing. i think it's easy, especially from the side of the border, to sort of put a gloss on everybody

in mexico as being somehow either corrupted or colluding or, you know, not really involved in their communities in a constructive manner, and really that's not accurate. partly my interest was to explore a portrait of a city where yes, there's plenty of people taking place, but there are also good people trying to do good things for their community and for the nation. so that was really the essence of it. >> alfredo, why did you decide to write your story? >> worst of all, thank you for being here. i was at the texas book festival two years ago just walking around and i thought while now, if i ever write this book -- i didn't think of the time i would ever write this book. i had no idea how to write a book. but i thought wouldn't it be great to be back someday, so thank you for being here and it's good to be at the texas book festival. i wrote this book because i've

had the privilege, front-row seat for the "dallas morning news" for the last 20 years as a correspondent for them. and watching probably some of the most turbulent times in mexico since the revolution. i wasn't around for the revolution but in contemporary mexico these have been very defining times. last week, we released a book in mexico, and someone jokingly said, you know, you are probably the forrest gump of mexico. [laughter] because i've been at some of the most important times, whether it was -- my father was a guest worker, and so i lived that there where we left for the united states, grew up in california, san joaquin valley as jenna mentioned. my parents worked for the sasser chavez union. later by choice when i used to work for "the wall street journal" i would always try to

find a vacation around some big event in mexico. sars able to cover, help cover the 1980 presidential election. arrived in mexico right at the federal crash and then later had the first interview in 2000. so when penguin contacted me, they said would like for you to write a book about mexico in the last 50 years. and it was, i thought of it as a journalistic narrative but they really wanted much more of a personal narrative. it took a while for me to kind of get comfortable with that era. and i guess the last real big event was the return of the once powerful revolutionary party that came back to office last year. so it all kind of came together, watching mexican descent into this darkness because of the drug war and trying to figure what happened to the whole thing

in mexico. what happened -- was supposed to go into the first world. in me was when this book i was also kind of therapy, trying to explain to myself why my mother was supposed to me going back to mexico to returning to mexico. so is trying to understand both sides of the border, understand my mother's opposition and understand more than anything my homeland, what happened to mexico. >> if you read his book ulysses while it looks broadly at the history of the ciudad juárez, it focuses on 2007 through 2010. these are the years when the city is unraveling with the violence. he talks about the events of course and he also talked about the people who are affected by and were trying to stop it at all different levels. but it games in 2010 and the fact the last chapter leaving the a blog aside is that mayor who struggle with it and tried

to stop the violence. him literally getting in his car after stepping down and having across the border to el paso to live presumably the rest of his life. it leaves a question about whether the next mayor who has a much more year history, and some would say at least aloud if not actively enable some of the bad things that happened in juárez, him coming back as the mayor. i be interested in tom you have to go buy the book to find out what happened in those three years, so do that, but in the content of the book looking for over the last three years what has or hasn't happened in juárez? where is it today we stopped your narrative? >> first of all we need to think about the character of -- the dimensions of the violence in juárez. over the course of six years you have over 11,000 people killed in a city about the size of --

well, 1.3 million people or so. that's a tremendous number of deaths. so you have it as the epicenter of the drug were in mexico. you've got about 20% of the national fatalities related to the drug were taking place in this one city. in the mexican government has deployed about 20% of its forces to this city. it was sort of a testing ground for the mexican governments strategy. the mayor of juárez who leaves office in 2010 really leaves in the context which are still a tremendous amount of violence. he is replaced by a man who had been raised as the predecessor as mayor also. he was mayor and then he won reelection and became mayor

again. during his first tenure, the man that he appointed number two man for the police department for the juárez municipal police department, was by all accounts, had close ties to the juárez cartel. and, in fact, within six months of him leaving office, this number two man in the juárez police department is arrested in el paso having attempted to bring a ton of marijuana across the river. so this gives you a sense for -- and he was appointed, so that's one of the telling points about his administration. we have another crisis that's taking place in juárez at the same time that this terrible eruption of violence. and that is an economic crisis of enormous magnitude your because juárez, 50% of the

economy is assembly plants. most of those assembly plants produced for the u.s. auto industry. so in 2008, 2009, 2010 we have an auto industry that's morphing. these companies are all on the verge of bankruptcy. in mexico and in juárez in particular this leads to catastrophic economic crisis. you have 80,000 people lose their jobs in one year in juárez 2010. so you have the violence and you have this economic crisis. in 2012, almost 800 people are killed in juárez, and that's a huge drop. in 2010 and 11 u.s. 2500, over 3000 people killed a year. so 800 people and are as, people think it's such a relief. at the same time you also -- so the question is what happens? what accounts for that?

and then if you ask people in juárez, you know, after six or seven years of this kind of unrelenting violence where there's tremendous amount of cynicism about any kind of authority, what some people take, what happened in juárez is the cartel one and that's why we have a drop in the violence in this community. other people will say, look, 11,000 people killed? a profile of the average victim is 15-25, and men. if you've lost that many young men in your community, that may affect the character. other people say it's the change in the economics, the uptake with this economy picking up that's brought them back. the one thing that is a really talk about which i think is really an important point is that in 2010 the mexican government, with some foreign

aid, it put about almost a quarter of a billion dollars into social infrastructure in a city that had been so neglected for so long, that many communities, no schools, no paved roads, no electricity. i think that's another variable in the drop in the crime. own it's probably some combination of all those elements but the fact is that juárez has seen the worst of the violence. 800 people killed to you will come and to most people, places would be still, i'm in san antonio had 100 people killed in 2012. and that's a city with a lot of poverty and a lot of street gangs and so on. so there still a lot of violence, but in juárez that comes as a relief almost. and tax revenues are up, people are -- real estate markets are a. so that's an indication the

community is on a rebound. so i think all of those variables probably have a role in that. >> alfredo, let me turn to you. if juárez is a microcosm, mexico itself has had big changes in the years since you finished your book, or when your book ends. one of the biggest is that it has a new government. so you mentioned in your remarks the party that ruled mexico for 70 years, was finally kicked out in the late '90s, but was elected and what everyone pretty much everyone deemed free and fair election was elected back into mexico's white house. so could you give us a sense of how you as an other, someone who follows mexico as in mexican and an american but also as a reporter in your role in the "dallas morning news" how do you see this back? what has or has not have? >> i guess more than anything as a foreign correspondent it's

meant a real effort on the part of the new government to try to change the narrative, to try to change the storyline from just violence to other aspects of mexico which i think is very, very. mexico also some very prosperous sides. there some prosperous regions like central mexico where he have the growth of an aerospace industry. one thing that's interesting i think i will always find interesting, someone who covers immigration and to see the big ties between texas and mexico. the number of times i talk to mexicans these days who are somewhat linked to the one labor market in north texas they say i'll ask, i said you plan to emigrate to the kind of like your grandparents or like her father's comments out of? they will say yes, but more out of curiosity than necessity. that makes you kind of think

about the long-term immigration trend. whether americans will some day, especially texans, whether someday they will miss mexicans. so in that sense for the government to try to change the narrative, i think it's there. i think we should try to report about other aspects of mexico. i don't think it should mean one or the other. i don't see how you can change the storyline that 100,000 people died or disappeared in mexico. i think that's still a very, very important story that we must never forget. and so it's been kind of trying to balance the two. and we goes point is a great point. shannon, if juárez is in the medic of the rest of the country i think in some ways it is but i think if we look at juárez today, is it -- if see juárez come to visit places like

laredo, texas, if we see them as patients, is the patient in remission or is it recovering? and i would say it's still in remission. a lot of the same years -- factors are still there. whether it's poverty, whether it's inequality. whether it's more than anything the conviction rate is still very low. so i'm guardedly optimistic that things will continue to get better. i do agree with rico that the community has also change. i think civil society has changed in places like ciudad juárez. use it much more active come and get civil society, people who are much more interested in trying to change their authorities for their incompetence. i think the role of social media has been incredibly important over the last few or three years. the other thing i think has changed is the mexico

relationship with the united states. the u.s.-mexico intra-agency relationship. i mean, there was a thinker and 12 years of the opposition, the national action party, there was a much more closer tied between agent to agent. and i think when the pri came back there was a sense that maybe the americans had come into the kitchen and they were not just helping with the food, you know, if you want to take -- but they had essentially become a chef. so there was a way to try to politely tell them, thank you for your service, thank you for your help, but it's time for us to take over. both sides are still trying to find their footing. >> let me pick up on that, and especially the relationship with the united states. u2 were both born in mexico, lived in mexico. you feel a close tie to. here in texas there's much more back and forth, but if you were

going to talk to americans more broadly. i grew up in ohio. i live in your. what would you say to someone in ohio or new york or south dakota or other places, why this mexico matter so much? why should they be reading your books? why should they care about this country to our south? >> i think there's so many reasons why we need to care, we need to be concerned and we need to be thoughtful about what's going on. first of all, the obvious is that we share a 2000-mile border. secondly, most people think that china is the second leading trade partner for the united states. actually if you look at this in terms of who buys america's products, mexico is the second most important trading partner, not china. those are the reasons, and then you have the cultural reasons. everybody knows that there's been a tremendous migration in the united states over the last couple of decades. so you have these cultural and

familial linkages. so there's all kinds of reasons why this is an important relationship and it needs to be thought about. but also picking up on alfredo's point, in thinking about a comment that the current mexican ambassador to the united states said, he made this statement in may i think. he was at the wilson center. he said, you know, in terms of the definition of the relationship between u.s. and mexico, he said it is no longer our top priority to fight the war on drugs. and he said, we do not control all of the variables that are involved in that war. and i think that was really a very clear signal, basically saying, here in the united states, we have to deal with the role of our consumption, in the

problems that mexico is having. and if we don't deal with that it doesn't matter how many document you cite, ma how many people you send to mexico to consult with law enforcement or the military, whoever you want, you are not going to solve this. because at the end of the day this is not a law enforcement problem. and i think that's another reason why we should care. because we are part of a relationship that has created this problem and that has allowed this problem to endure. it's not going to end until we deal with that fact. >> so when you're pitching her editorial board, why should the mexican story that you so well researched be on the front page? >> is not that difficult if you live in texas. i mean, we did have a bureau at one point, more than 12 people -- 12 people in the bureau. we are down to one and you're looking at him.

i met the texas book festival in austin, not in mexico city. but i challenge all of you to think of what of the country interaction more on a daily basis and mexico. whether it's food, i mean, culture, music, bloodlines, politics. i can think of another country. sometimes when you ask mexicans are when you're talking to them, they say i don't get why we are not that important to the united states. is it that we don't have a bomb like to go in the middle east? i don't know how to answer that. but i would be remiss -- i want to go back to being a journalist here for a second. we also have one of the premier experts on u.s.-mexico here with shannon o'neil, her book, two nations individual. i would like to ask shannon, why should mexico matter so much to the united states? >> i think i'm asking the questions today last night i would say this. in researching and writing my

book and looking very closely at the united states but also in mexico, that there's just no other country that affects us as much on a day-to-day basis. so from the food that is honor tables to the parts and the cars to the gasoline in our tank to the consumers for our products, to the drugs on our street. mexico is part of our day-to-day lives where ever you live in the united states. that is a reality that you may recognize here in texas i don't think the other 49 states see it quite that way. and that's one i hope with more and more books and more and more people talking about it, more people would realize that. so taking back my will as moderator i want to ask you one last question. i want to return to the personal side and then i want to open it up to all of you for your questions, so be ready for those. my final question, i turn to you, ricardo confers. having gone through this myself. not about the book as much but more about you.

so how has writing this book, how has it changed you? >> that's really an excellent question, shannon. you know, i think for me almost two years that i spen spent goio juárez to research this book and really seeing firsthand not reading accounts even though the many excellent accounts in the papers and so on, but seeing firsthand what can happen to a society, to the community, to a city that descends into this kind of chaos. you just can't imagine living in a city where there is no one to turn to. there is no authority. there are no police that you can turn to. you are at the mercy of the forces that are around you. some of those forces are official and some of them are organized crime forces.

it doesn't matter. nobody feels protected. nobody feels that they have a voice. by seeing the day-to-day you know rs, -- juárez. i hung out with a lot of juárez a journalist. so that meant that i had the opportunity to visit a lot of crime scenes with them. because these guys all traveled with police scanners in the cars and they are at the crime scene even before the forensic people show up half of the time. but just to see the character of that violence and impact of the violence, it's sort of like tearing off the veneer that we have. we think this sort of life that we lead, we take it for granted a we think it's stable, it's reliable. i can guarantee you that 10 years ago, no one in juárez could have imagined that their

city would evolve into this kind of chaos. so i think that's the thing that changed me the most, this sort of peering into this abyss firsthand. i've never seen anything like it, and it was extremely powerful personally because this is a mexico that i love. i still have friends and family, and this is absolutely heartbreaking. so i think to me that was the most profound and impactful aspect of this work. >> i think more than anything it changed me in helping me embrace my fears. in many ways the book is kind of the investigating this death threat that was made, and that's kind of the block -- backdrop of the book. it was understanding, embracing of your. it was appreciating i think the courage of many of my colleagues in mexico, people who don't have the protection.

my colleague, if you think i'm brave, imagine being a tv reporter and going into the border towns and just take out -- you stick out like a sore thumb. but i think the thing that changed me the most was really understanding that in many ways this focus about death, it's about life. it's about hope. it's about the universal search for home, and it's coming to this realization that in the end you are seeing some of the darkest moments in mexico. but i also walked away seeing the best of mexicans, seeing this incredible resilient spirit that is there. and understanding that we are there. we are still standing and we are changing, as some other settled over the past few years, we are building a team unity with the blood of our children. i think in the end, it made me understand just the importance

of the resilience spirit. one last thing, it also, you know, you are looking for homes throughout the cell process. where is home? the united states or mexico? it made me appreciate both countries. i don't think i would have written this book had i lived in mexico. it made me understand the importance of living in the united states and taking advantage of the opportunities that my parents sacrificed for me. >> let me open it up now to your questions. please use the microphone here, and let me please ask y'all to ask questions. we have these wonderful authors here who you can turn to. >> i'm from austin, texas. i've been in before it was texas. i want to point something out and ask you what you feel about it. i think that texas book festival is a good example of people not thinking of mexico or mexican-americans as very

important. there are very, very few latinos are at the book festival and i don't think there are any latinos on the staff, the board, advisory, et cetera for the festival. what do you feel, seems like there's an attitude after in general that latinos don't read. so what do you feel about that, the lack of latinos here at the texas book festival? >> well, latinos don't only read, they write. [laughter] [applause] >> we talked about the changing narrative from the mexican administration towards the war, but have we seen a shift in strategy? is there still a continuity between the previous administration, that of president and yet?

if you're still relying on the army, you know. >> i mean, i spent some of last week and last month in d.c., spenspent some time in mexico cy asking that very question. how has the strategy changed? people keep telling me, give it a year, maybe a little more. so to be fair to the administration, we are skeptical but i think maybe we should wait. i personally haven't seen much of a change in strategy. it's kind of the same thing. i do see them less information, may be coming out the administration about the violence. i know the violence in general has leveled off. there are places where people tell you things about it, not perfect, but i think in ways case, more significantly better than laredo. as far as an official strategy,

i don't think we've seen that big of a change. shannon, you're a big expert on that. >> when you look at what president calderón did come you can criticize him for not doing enough are not prioritizing or not doing it fast enough or in the right order, and many of the basic things he did are really the blueprint for how you improve security in mexico. so you invest in clean up your police forces and professionalizing your police. you begin to reform the justice system so you can clean up your courts. you do what they did and juárez which is invest millions of dollars in socioeconomic programs to help youth at risk to try to keep people from going down that path in the first place. while the campaign was about changing what you're going to do on the security because people were about violence come you get into office, what can you do to make mexico safer. a lot of the things have been tried so there may be different emphasis under this government but i don't see it being a real sea change because there aren't a lot of other options out

there. >> i would only add that i think there are conflicting messages, and probably it is a matter of time. for example, the interior minister talked about pulling back from security collaborations, and some of the intelligence fusion centers they used to have a lot of american participation. i think it stopped that and still as of now, they started that in february. so that's one message, but on the other hand, when they took down one of the top leaders of the zetas cartel, that involve close work with the american drunkard to help track this guy. i think there are very mixed messages. >> i've read recently that some of the emphasis from the standpoint of the cartels or other underground forces have

switched from maybe carrying the drugs the kidnapping, and threatening people, kind of like the mafia did, or does, with extortion. i've heard that's really a growing problem and i have friends in mexico. well, my question is, can you speak to that? do you know what's going on in that realm? >> i think one of the things we've learned over the last few years is, i think it's kind of inaccurate to call them drug trafficking organizations because it's really organized crime. i think the paramilitary group, that's been the big lesson from them. they are into piracy, prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, controlling the

immigration routes in regions of mexico. they operate right along i-35, san antonio right here in austin, dallas. he came of age as a criminal in north texas, but i think the zetas change the whole dynamic of simply saying they are moving drugs. is really organized crime. >> but is increasing? >> i would only add that i don't think it's instead of the drug-related operations. it's just that have diversified their business plan. the other source of income, and they now extort people and kidnap people, et cetera, et cetera. that's become one source of revenue for them. that's why i think it is really better to think more i could you think of it as organized crime rather than drug cartel. >> you mentioned of the

importance of -- just how important it is to really have a memory of the things that have happened in mexico. your book, especially yours, they are all very much informational. my question is in regards to the arts, in the words of playwrights, the works of musicians, poets, fiction writers who eventually capture the heart or the madness in a more artistic way, which works you consider to be more representative of these terrible years that you have narrated? >> that's a great question spent for some going to say, the new movie coming out about alfredo corchado's book will be one of them. i'll let you all comment. >> you know, i don't know that i can cite specific works but i

can tell you a moment that i think really speaks to what you are addressing. i happened to be in juárez when this program was launched, and there was a complication. calderón and his cabinet had come in to hear the reports and affairs committees. they go through that there is committees and they're about to wrap up, and this man stands up, it's like when someone jumps into the bull ring and tries to bite the bull. this guy jumps up and he says, mr. president, and calderón or whoever says, okay, let the man have the word. and he said i represent the arts and ciudad juárez. in all of these committees and all of these groups, may be very important, but without the arts you don't have spirit. you don't have hope. you don't have a future. the place was just captured by this man.

and so i think that you are speaking to something essential, vital, without that no society can function, carried. >> -- no society can function, carried. >> i didn't enjoy this you're the television series the bridge, which if some of you haven't seen it, it's about a certain a killer operating literally on the border between el paso and juárez, and a juarez detected and an el paso cop team up. i was wondering if you've seen it and if you like it and if it adequate conveys some of what's going on in your book's? >> i haven't seen it. >> i haven't seen it either. [laughter] i've been wanting to see it but i haven't seen it. >> you guys should see. it portrays latinos in a very interesting way but i think you would enjoy it. >> i also haven't seen breaking bad either. >> we will tweet our responses.

[laughter] >> like you said, it's organized crime. it's not just drug trafficking. i would just like to know, helped topple, first of all, i don't think is the one running it but at the same time when you find a soviet submarine in the gulf of mexico. so what i'm saying is how are we supposed to control somebody who has so much money and so much influence that they've spread to other countries? >> so what is the reach? what do you think the reach and influence of these organized crime groups are or are not? i think that's an interesting question. >> i think you have tremendous reach. people are paying busted in spain, and friends, you know, south america and so when. and i think that the amount of money, even though nobody can really get a fix on just what that you amount of money is that's been generated and where

it's being, you know, managed, et cetera. it's a very murky reality but i think there's no question there's a tremendous amount of money in it, and that that fact complicates any effort to address it. because come you know, billions of dollars are a very sweet thing. >> its global. i was in west africa about a year ago and they took me out to show me where planes were landing from columbia with the help of mexicans. i think it's important to understand just the depth of corruption that there is in places like mexico. government correction, how they work hand-in-hand time to time with the to time with regard to the that such as every american -- mexican is corrupt. corruption is such, collusion between organized crime, and

some members of the government sites that help you understand explain why this stuff is transnational. stuff doesn't just magically appear in austin or dallas. it's a vast network that extends all over the world. >> let me add on to that, the worries we have for the global reach but they're here in the united states. we have the biggest drug market. the most money is here, but we don't have the crime problems that you see in rico's book. so i don't think all these people are invincible. we found a way to have this kind, to have these drugs, but not have it affect citizens or the vast, vast majority of citizens on a day-to-day basis in a way it doesn't other places. there are lessons. if we have these markets we may never get rid of organized crime or smugglers or whatever you want to call them but there's also ways to make it so you can live a safe and prosperous life alongside having a legal market.

>> thank you. >> this is the last question. >> i have a question about perception. as a texan, trying to learn and understand more about mexico i think it's two different places, the border and everywhere else. i wanted to know if you think that's a legitimate distinction or not, and within mexico there's also that distinction there may be by mexican citizens about the dichotomy, or not? >> well, i think him and i'm sure alfredo can speak to this better than i can, first of all the other areas of mexico that are profoundly affected. that area, the archbishop recently just said our state is ungovernable. that's after years of this effort. so there's that but also to our broad swaths of the country that

are for all intents and purposes no different than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. so i think that's really important to recognize. things shift in terms of where the focus of the issues are. so i mean, i think the violence is one part of a narrative in mexico and, unfortunately, it overshadows other narratives that are equally important, equally true and reflecting what people are really living. spink i'll try to answer that more from a mexico city perspective. that's why live in mexico city. when i first started covering this, 2003, 2004, there's always a perception from mexico city, like that'll happen is on the border. that's their problem. it's been going on for years and years and years. i think if you see, if you talk to people today that perception

has changed. it's no longer just on the border. it's moving, used to be throughout juárez. now it's things are moving more and more into mexico city. by also i'm aware i'm here in texas. i want to make it clear that when i buy the book called "midnight in mexico" i'm not trying to scare the be jesus out of people and not going to mexico. [laughter] there are still many vices and mexico that are safe. i think it's a matter of having common sense and knowing when to take a drive here or there. but the perception is that everything in mexico is up in flames and it's not. in fact, "midnight in mexico" is really about believing in the promise of a new day. >> well, thank you. i wanted to ask all of you as we later to remember that makes it is right now transforming. there are many good changes. it's becoming more democratic. it's economy is starting to grow

again. it has a rising middle class but also has these incredible problems. one of the biggest are being security in the rule of law. i would like to ask you all to join me in two things. and i will say the second one first. please join us all in the book can or will be signing our books. and the first one is please join me in thanking our two panelists for all their comments. [applause] >> you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays feature live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watched key public policy events. every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website, and you can join in on the conversation on social media sites. >> gerard magliocca recounts the life of lawyer and ohio congressman john bingham responsible for drafting section one of the 14th enemy of the constitution. it guarantees equal treatment to all americans. this is about one hour.

>> hello, everyone. so good to see you, and welcome to the second installment of this months new series of coffee and conversation about the constitution. i am the new president and ceo of this wonderful center. we are the only institution in the country chartered by congress to disseminate information on a nonpartisan basis. to achieve that goal we have three aims to we are the museum of we the people, center for civic education and america's town hall, the place where people can, and get the best arguments on all sides of the constitutional questions and make up their own mind. i am so thrilled today to introduce you to our author, gerard magliocca. he has written a definitive biography of james madison of

the 14th amendment. and in the course of our conversation you will come to appreciate how centrally important john bingham, the man who drafted the 14th amendment which is the central a member that protects american liberties and applies the bill of rights, this man had no definitive biography of him written before and gerard has done a riveting job. i may get riveted by constitutional law more than same people, but you will be riveted by the book and the discussion will have will eliminate so much and help us understand the origins of our liberties. so i will briefly introduce our author and then we'll begin the conversation. he is the samuel rosen professor at indiana university. no relation. i don't think i've any relatives out there but it's an honorable man and the blood your professor

names theirs. that's indiana university school of law. you've written over 20 articles on constitutional and intellectual property to give an active blogger. before joining indiana university he spent two years as a lawyer at covington, one year -- u.s. court of appeals. we shared a teacher at yale law school. i think it's something to do with your reasons for in this book in first place. why don't you tell me why you chose to write about john bingham. >> well, i encountered a john bingham in law school. is always a brief mention that he is the author of the equal protection clause of the constitution that guarantees equality for all americans. and then i had defenses, most notably, who emphasize bingham's role in writing this language

and no changing the constitution fundamentally from what it had been in 1787. and so i was interested in looking for a biography of the man, and i didn't find much. what i did find was disappointing. so i thought to myself, isn't that a shame that someone who did so much hasn't had a biographical treatment? somebody should do it. and about 10 years later i decided that i should be want to do it, and that's what the book comes from. >> spectacular. and you call being a user lincoln was a graders constitutional poet but bingham was a man who turned the poetry into at home. what you mean by that speaks people are familiar with the gettysburg address and see that as a representation of the change in the constitution from one that was focused on more state centered view of national life and one that was a proslavery constitution in some respects.

and a change of course occurred to a different constitution during the period of the civil war. however, the store usually stopped with lincoln's death. you saw a movie recently, right? and basically the war ends, lincoln is killed and that's it. but, in fact, that was only just beginning for the constitutional debate about what the civil war meant, and was up to people like bingham and not just been of course there were others who are discussed in the book, really had to take those words and translate them into law. and that's where we get the 14th amendment. to some extent it's can you get sick it's the work of lawyers, but it's work that was necessary and has had tremendous impact ever since. >> we are going to talk a lot about the 14th amendment and out came to be an bingham's role in it but why don't i just beginning.

let's just read the 14th amendment and then i'll ask you what bingham was trying to cheat when he wrote it. we're going to be section one which was the part i gather that being contributed the most to. did he write all of it? >> he wrote the second sentence of section one which is the one that we use the most, the famous cases your for my with from the supreme court. >> so the second since i will be. pay close attention. no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the united states, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. there is a lot we know.

tell our audience in essence why does that make bingham the most important constitutional philosopher since lincoln? what was he trying to achieve with that sends? >> there are several things who's trying to achieve. the first was to guarantee fundamental rights to all americans, black and white. he like to say in the years leading up to the civil war when he was a member of congress that the word wide is not in the constitution, and -- white. what were those fundamental rights he wanted to guarantee other than the abolition of slavery? well, being in few, if you saw it at this time in this respect, was that the entire bill of rights should apply to all americans against the actions of the federal government and state governments. at the time the bill of rights of course did not apply to all americans and also did not apply to the actions of state governments.

so, for example, the state of virginia could censor speech. and that was perfectly okay. so his position on that is one that took a long time to actually he adopted by the supreme court, and we think of it as sort of obvious today to say the bill of rights should apply to states as well as the federal government. but he's the one he really contributed bad idea in a most sort of significant way. now than also he wanted to guarantee equal treatment under the law for all people. now, it's a little less clear exactly what he meant by that the weekend of course slavery and sort of ending it was a big part of that story, but clearly he felt that the government should be taking steps to ensure that there was equal enforcement of a law, especially in the south, but elsewhere as well, with respect to fundamental rights and civil liberties.

>> beautifully said, and as you put it, many of the most important controversies involving civil liberties and civil rights today, litigated not under the original bill of rights but under these more protection clause and due process clauses of the 14th amendment because they involve the rest. ding them though belief -- bingham ovulated states have no power to infringe basic human rights including the rights of african-americans even before the 14th amendment was fast and he had a very that you call the ellipses theory, that the original constitution actually prevented the states -- tell us about that and why it was necessary to pass despite the fact bingham thought states were already constrained? >> they argued the original constitution protected the fundamental rights for all

americans. now, note nobody can make that argument though they had to basically we read a portion of the constitutional text that guarantee the privileges and immunities of citizens to say that it included national privileges and immunities rather than the way most people understood it at the time, which was that basically one state couldn't discriminate against someone coming in from another state. now, to do this he sort of said, well, there are some words that are clearly supposed to be in there to make it make sense that would protect fundamental rights. they are just not there, but at one point he said it's common sense to say that those words should be read into this. of course that was putting it a little stronger and there were many people who did not find that to be common sense at all. so part of the reason for having the 14th amend was to sort of rectify this by clearly stating

that there were national privileges and immunities, and that they were covered by the constitution in a broadway. so that was one of the reasons for writing the 14th amendment and the language he did. >> wonderful. i learned from this book one of the main people who coined the phrase the bill of rights. starting next year i'm thrilled to share with you we here at the national constitution center will display one of the 12 original copies of the bill of rights. it's been in new york for one of jews and new york has generously agreed to share it with us and we will build a magnificent new gallery to display it. that phrase, the bill of rights, was not introduced until the 20th century yet i learned from you that bingham used it in 1866 when he produced a pamphlet called one country, one constitution and one people, speech of john bingham in support of the 14th amendment.

but he coined the phrase? >> he didn't coin the phrase but it was not a common phrase in the way that we understand it. a supreme court never referred to the first set of the memos as the bill of rights. so sometime in the 1890s. now i can, sometime if you're very far at the time and to do things that become commonplace later, it's easy to sort of thing, really what was this contribution that this person was making? of course everybody knows it's the first set of amendments is the bill of rights and it's important but these are things that he contributed and sort of persuaded everyone so thoroughly that now it's kind of like, well, what have you done for us lately? and so he was one of the few who really emphasized that in congress, after the civil war ended, speech after speech he talked about the fact that the bill of rights was essential part of the constitution, that it should apply to all americans. now, he wasn't perhaps as successfully persuading his colleagues as might have been

the case that this was true and this is one of the reasons why it took a long time for the supreme court to accept the position he was talking about. .. position he was talking about but the most prominent person using that phrase a lot. >> host: but the original intentions that they should have to obeyed the bill of rights but it took almost 100 years for the supreme court to come around. how was it possible soon after it was adopted the slaughterhouse cases were thnored and refused to apply today in the provisio ban the po finally be vindicated? >> there is a funny story in that there is a trip that he took while he was in congress with a supreme court justice who ended up writing the s