Burro Hall

Slightly belated birthday wishes to me Deal Ol' Mudder, courtesy of the grandkids.*

*Clarification: These are not my children. Mine would lack rhythm and the ability to carry a tune.

The Brooklyn Bridge turns 125 years old this weekend, which the city commemorated last night by detonating thousands of pounds of explosives near its crumbing stone towers.

(Note to our Mexican neighbors: As you can see, you can have a perfectly nice fireworks display after 6:30am.)

Posting will be light over the next 14 days while The Man extracts his pound of flesh, but we'll try to fill the space as much as we can with pictures and video, no matter how much of a stretch it might be. So for anyone with a highspeed connection, an hour to kill, and a deep and abiding interest in farm legislation, here's an hour we did for Frontline back in the Dark Ages, which will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Department of Agriculture.

If that's not enticement enough for ya, at around 19:00 into Part 1 you can watch your humble correspondent being taken into protective custody by the Garden City, KS, sheriff's department. In the days before al-Qaeda, real men covered wheat farmers.

It's that time of year again: time renew all our official documents, starting with the visas that allow us to live here. Renewing an FM3 visa costs, for some odd reason, exactly 1,172 pesos, and of course, you don't just walk in and hand them $1,172. Instead you go to the bank, fill out some forms, pay the bank $1,172 and then bring your receipt to the Immigration office. The reason for this, presumably, is that there is an enormous body of evidence to indicate that no Mexican public employee should ever be entrusted with money in any form, or any amount, ever.

This year, in the interest of streamlining the process a bit, the bank-related paperwork is considerably less onerous. After waiting 45 minutes at Immigration, we got a pre-printed form, already filled out, that we were to take to the bank. Printed very clearly on the top of the form was the instruction to "bring this form to the teller window."

It didn't seem to matter what bank we went to, so I picked HSBC, since we have an account there. The "HS" stands for "Hongkong-Shanghai," but in terms of efficiency and customer service, oh, it's Mexico, baby! Just because 26 people are standing in line, that's no reason to open up a second teller's window, right? So after almost an hour, I get to the front of the line, hand the teller my form, and he proceeds to stare at it as if he had never seen such a thing before. Which, of course, he had not. After conferring with the manager, he tells me that I want the customer service desk, not the teller window. So I go stand in the customer service desk line. After a relatively zippy 35 minutes, I sit down at the desk, hand the guy my form, and wait while he rubber stamps the thing about 10 times. The whole thing took maybe 30 seconds.

"Now just take this over to the teller's window and pay," he says with smile. "But the teller sent me over here!" I said. "Yes, but you can't pay here, you have to pay at the teller's window." I looked at the snaking, Disney-style line. "Well that's a pretty fucked-up system, isn't it?" I asked. He handed me back the form.

All of this is in service of a renewal process that takes 5-10 business days despite the fact that (a) all they do is stamp a new date on your visa and (b) there is no chance that we'll be denied. In other words, there's nothing that needs to be reviewed or approved. The actual "renewal" takes as long as it takes to ink up the stamp and pound it on the paper. Needless to say, Immigration failed to get this done in time for me to leave for NY tomorrow, so I had to go through a whole separate "Permission to Travel" process. This actually does require official review and approval, and generating a new and unique document. So of course that gets done in a matter of hours.

I'm heading back to El Norte tomorrow for a couple of weeks, finish up selling out to The Man. But at least I'm not the only handsome young man from Querétaro heading overseas to earn a living. Octavio "El Payo" García is over in Madrid this week plying his trade at the Feria de San Isidro. This is one of the premier bullfighting events in the world, and the locals here are following his progress the way Marshalltown, Iowa, cheered on Jean Seberg 50 years ago.

I'm pretty sure El Payo's getting paid more than me, but as you can see, he's working a lot harder for it.

Video here. Coronada is at 3:18.

Today's top story: Queretanos are suffering 31% more cases of diarrhea than they did last year. This is nicely juxtaposed with an enormous picture of our smiling governor, Paco Garrido.

Mission Accomplished!

On Saturday afternoon in the nearby town of Tequisquiapan, 68-year-old Feliciano Valencia went out to gather firewood to cook dinner. Since Querétaro is a city with every modern convenience imaginable, it's easy to forget that just 45 minutes away there are people who have to forage for kindling whenever they want a hot meal. But if 68 years of hardscrabble existence weren't punishment enough, Sr. Valencia, having not returned home after several hours, was found prostrate on the ground covered head to toe in africanized bees. He died a few hours later from, as the local paper exquisitely put it, "his advanced age, and the thousands of bee stings covering his body." Kinda the way Moe Syzlak quit boxing because of "politics, and getting knocked out 40 times in a row."

This little blurb about a Canadian tourist getting shot in Cabo San Lucas reminded us that it's been a while since we checked in with our amigos over at MexicoVactionAwareness.com. They didn't appear to have anything to say about the shooting, though prominent play is given to the guy who was eaten by a shark last week, even though the shark was not in any technical, legal, or zoological sense Mexican. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good horror story?

Or data, for that matter. To substantiate its claim that Mexico is an absolute killing field, MVA now directs readers to no less an authority than the US State Department:

As you will read by clicking on the U.S. Department of State link, “Death of U.S. citizen’s abroad from non-natural causes” there are hundreds of victims. Appallingly, thirty percent of all “non-natural” deaths of U.S. citizens throughout the world occur in Mexico.

[ominous music fades up....]

It's a little less appalling when you consider that Mexico accounts for about 30% of Americans' international travel, but okay, yeah, 669 Americans died "non-natural deaths" in Mexico in the three years between Jan '05 and Dec '07. That's out of 45 million visitors, which means the survival rate for Americans in Mexico is a mere 99.9986% ("Please use the information on this website to assist you in making an educated decision about whether Mexico, in its current state, is a good vacation choice," says MVA. We heartily endorse this suggestion.)

Breaking that State Department's numbers down a little further, though, we see that 58 percent (389) of these "non-natural deaths" were from accidents - car, plane, boat or "other." Eighty-five of them drowned here in this national full of beach resorts. Fifteen died of drug overdoses and 61 Americans - nine percent of the total - committed suicide! Presumably most of them were long-time residents attempting to renew their FM3 visas (about which we'll have more later).

The number of Americans who decided Mexico would be a great place to kill themselves was nearly half the number of those who had that decision made for them. According to the State Dept, a grand total of 126 Americans were murdered in Mexico during those three years - just slightly less than the 45,000 killed north of the border during the same period. So while your chances of not dying here may only be 99.9986%, your chances of not being murdered here are 99.9997%! But then, some people are more risk-adverse than others.

And you know, it has been a few days since I've heard from our pal Josh...

"The bar is very high in terms of what celebrity pieces we do" - 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager, April 26, 2008

Tonight, on 60 Minutes:

Querétaro's got more fountains than a semi-arid city facing chronic water shortages really ought to have, but it's kind of charming so we don't complain. For the past several weeks, two of the fountains, at Plaza Mariano de las Casas [far right] and Plaza Constitucion [the other one,] have been boarded up and under construction. We figured they were pulling hairballs out of the pipes or something.

Ah, but no. According to the Municipal Planning Institute, these two plazas are soon to be home to Querétaro's new fuentes danzarinas - dancing fountains! These will be "programmed to 'dance' to 15 classic melodies in 40 minute intervals." Just what, exactly, the phrase "classic melodies" means in the Mexican context is not explained. Later in the article, it mentions that the program will last about 40 minutes, which would seem to mean - again, this isn't clear - that every 40 minutes it will begin a 40-minute program, or in other words, the same 15 classic melodies will play nonstop on an endless loop until global warming raises the level of the oceans 5,950 feet and drowns the city. The only things that are clear are that Querétaro couldn't think of a better way to spend $1.1 million dollars, and that this cacophony will begin some time in late July, which is starting to look like an excellent time to kill ourselves.

Here's what it won't be like:

There's an old story about the Chevy Nova selling poorly in Latin America because none of the marketing geniuses in Detroit realized that "no va" means "it does not go" in Spanish. Literally to good to be true, as it turns out. But this used car dealership in Querétaro is our nominee for Worst Use of English In an Attempt to Give Your Business International Cachet.

With revenues from this site stagnating at $0.00 a year, we've taken a page from the great entrepreneurs - Diddy, Russell Simmons, Kate Jackson - have spent the past 8 months collaborating with some young Mexican designers and are proud to introduce our new clothing line: Burro Jeans. You see, some designers are content just to put their name on your behind. That's not the way we roll here at Burro Hall. Instead, we put my ass in your jeans. Designed with the use of a patented laser imaging device and a proprietary system of superelastic polymers, Burro Jeans lift, separate and mold the buttocks to create an exact replica of your humble correspondent's trasero. If you want to live the dream of being marginally employed and sitting your - excuse me, my - ass in a Mexican cantina all day, you need Burro Jeans. One size fits all.

Another day, another holiday. This one doesn't really have a name that we're aware of, but you could call it Maximilian Surrenders Day. On May 15, 1867, Max the Hapless Hapsburg threw in the towel right here in Querétaro, ending the civil war that had been fought off and on for five years. The exact spot of the surrender is marked by a very ugly obelisk sitting in the middle of a dusty public health clinic parking area. Behold, Mexico's equivalent of the Appomattox Courthouse.

Frequent commenter and in-house gourmand Josh and his lovely wife arrived in-country yesterday, and headed straight for the “Shark Beach” section of the Maya Riviera, which I believe is the farthest one can be from Querétaro while still being in Mexico. Sure, we got some nice stuff to look at up here, but we don’t have an all-inclusive nudist resort, so I can understand the decision. Actually, it’s a part of the country we’ve never been to, so hopefully he’ll grace us with a trip report later on. Any man who routs himself through Miami because he’s heard good things about a particular airport Cuban sandwich stand is a man with opinions that need to be heard.

If you've always thought that the real heart and soul of Creedence Clearwater Revival was its rhythm section, and that the Fogerty brothers could be replaced by any random pair of bar-band musicians and no one would be able to tell the difference, then you're fortunate, son! Tomorrow, for one night only, in the Plaza de Toros de Querétaro, and with a name that testifies to the greatness of the American legal-arbitration system, it's Creedence Clearwater Revi....sited!

This is just the latest in what we might call the Querétaro Remnants of Once Popular Bands Festival. Just this year we've had A Couple of the Doors, and Some of the Guys from Toto. If the keyboard player from Styx is reading this, shoot me an email, dawg! I'd like to talk to you about the t-shirt concession.

The maid came today, which brought to my attention something I hadn't been fully aware of: that since I got back last week, I've more or less been able to find all my stuff, despite the fact that she had been here at least 18 times in my absence. So I think we've finally hit on a theorem: Since there are only so many possible permutations (you can't, for example, move the refrigerator into the bathroom), the number of times she can rearrange everything in the house before it all winds up back where it was in the first place would appear to be 18.

Mexico divulges another of her many mysteries.

It's probably no secret that I'm a pretty ardent supporter of immigrants' rights, both the documented and undocumented kind, a position I held even before I became one myself. One of the counterarguments used against white, middle-class liberals like myself is that it's an easy to take a pro-immigrant stand when you're in no danger of losing your own job to an illegal Mexican. Fair enough. Producing TV news isn't exactly brain surgery, but yeah, there was very little chance that I'd show up to work one day and find my boss handing my Lexis/Nexis password to a recent arrival from Puebla.

Turns out, that might not have been a bad idea...

On most nights here [in Los Angeles], the most timely, serious and civic-minded local news is not available on the Internet, the radio or any of the half-dozen English-language stations that broadcast nightly shows that purport to be newscasts. At 11 p.m. each night here, the best newscasts in the market appear on two Spanish-language channels, Univision's flagship KMEX and Telemundo affiliate KVEA....If immigrants took Schwarzenegger's advice and flipped off Spanish stations in favor of English-language news, they wouldn't have nearly as good an idea of what was happening in their adopted city, state and country....

Take a recent night, after a typical day of Los Angeles news. English-language TV led with the weather (it was raining, which is not as unusual as you might think during an L.A. winter), then moved into splashy reports with dramatic footage of a gang shootout and possible hostage situation in a city neighborhood. Less than eight minutes into the newscast, trivia took over. The CBS affiliate's third piece involved new questions about the death of Marilyn Monroe. The NBC affiliate dwelled on a hepatitis scare at a party for celebrities and swimsuit models, then attempted a brief consumer-oriented investigation about people's need to replace their tires more frequently. The ABC affiliate gave five minutes to movies and entertainment, from an Oscar preview to a sit-down interview with Jon Stewart.

In Spanish, viewers got fewer soft features and more deeply reported, longer pieces. KMEX mentioned the gang shootout but provided far more context, interviewing local residents about recent crime and about how local businesses and schools were affected by an hours-long neighborhood lockdown as police searched for a suspect. KMEX also aired a detailed report on a major beef recall from a local firm, a couple of pieces on local politics (including a roundup of what city and county leaders had done that day) and a four-minute examination of key policy issues in the presidential campaign. The Oscars went unmentioned. KVEA's half-hour newscast, " En Contexto" (which means what it sounds like), was even more substantive. It gave a thorough review of local political and government news, then delved deeply into nearly 20 minutes of explanation of rising home foreclosures and mortgage problems. (Yes, Spanish-language viewers were callously left to figure out that it was raining all by themselves.)

This was no fluke. The next night, KMEX broke the news that the LAPD had more Latino officers than white officers, and KVEA ran a piece on the pay and working conditions of security guards. Meanwhile, their English-language rival KABC was finishing another Oscar preview and beginning a heartwarming story involving dogs.

We're just going to ignore the swipe at heartwarming dog stories, and we're unsure if the reference to KVEA's "En Contexto" as being "30-minute Spanish 60 Minutes" is intended as a compliment or not. But with Katie Couric's reign of error coming to an end soon, CBS could apparently do worse than to send a headhunter down to the north bank of the Rio Grande. Surely they could find a talented journalist willing to anchor the broadcast for a mere $11 million a year.

On Saturday afternoon, in the Corregidora neighborhood of Querétaro, José González González [left] walked down Halcones Street with a .45 in his belt and a .357 Magnum in his hand.

Oye, José , said the neighbors. Where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

I'm goin' down to shoot my ol' lady, he said. You know I caught her messin' 'round with another man. Huh! And that ain't too cool.

Hours later, police found the body of Rosa María García Martínez, wife of José González González, dead of multiple gunshot wounds in the doorway of their house. The body of her lover, Osvaldo Pantaleón Mancilla Rubio, lay on the ground outside, also dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Rosa María García Martínez was 16 weeks pregnant, though it is not immediately known who the father was.

José González González, a man of his word, shot his woman down, he shot her down to the ground. Yeah!

Yes, I did, I shot her, he thought to himself. You know I caught her messin' 'round, messin' 'round town. José González González dropped the gun and fled. Yes I did, I shot her. You know I caught my old lady messin' 'round town. And I gave her the gun -- I shot her!

[Accordion solo]

Oye, José, yelled the neighbors, Where you goin' to run to now? Where you, where you gonna go?

Well, dig! he yelled with a grin. I'm goin' way down south, way down where I can be free! Ain't no one gonna find me babe! I'm goin' way down south... His smile began to fade. ...way down south to Mexico way... Tragically, José González González realized that he was already in Mexico, and was wanted by the Federales for killing two unarmed people, one of them the mother of his two children.

But like many of his countrymen, José González González was an optimist, and he when he remembered that Mexico had long ago abolished capital punishment, he smiled once again. Ain't no hangman gonna, he ain't gonna put a rope around me! You better believe it right now!

It's not unusual for there to be annoyingly loud music here on a Sunday morning at 4:30AM, generally a hymn of praise for Jesus Christ, his mom, or some Barbie-doll representation of one of the many lesser Virgins about town. This morning, though, the music had more of a rave/electronica feel than usual. Finally, around 5:30, when it became apparent that this racket was not going to die down any time soon, I got up, took a walk, and located the source of the noise: a dozen or so drunk, obnoxious, ostentatiously wealthy young guys from Mexico City (juniors they're called, unaffectionately) who had set up a pair of DJ-sized speakers in the doorway of a nearby house, turned the volume up to about 11, and were drinking, dancing and - God only knows why - hollering at the tops of their lungs in the street.

Because I'm not a complete fucking idiot, I opted not to start a fight with them, and instead came home and, for the first time not only in Mexico but in my entire adult life, called the cops. Or tried to.

The first call to 066 (that's Mexican for "911") went smoothly, with the operator taking down the details in the extremely polite manner of Mexican officialdom (¿Con quien tengo gusto? - "And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?" - she asked as she was taking my name.) In the end, she promised to "make a report," which I took to be her formal way of saying she'll get someone right on it.

No, apparently it just meant that she would make a report. After almost half an hour with no response - and, understand, there is absolutely nothing else that the Querétaro Police could be doing at 6:00AM on a Sunday - and during which time the party had progressed to the "drunken fighting in the street" phase, I called back and made another complaint. Again, I was promised that a report would be made.

"Yes, but will the police come?"

"Well, the only thing the officers can do is ask them to turn down the music," she explained. It was not really clear to me why the cops should be constrained in this way - what if these guys turned out to have a house full of child prostitutes? - but since all I wanted was for the music to be turned down, I told her that this would be considered a result most satisfactory. (That florid formality thing is kind of contagious.)

Of course, she was speaking hypothetically, since no police ever arrived to ask anyone to do anything. I called back yet again, and she referred me to another number - I got a bit lost in the conversation, but this new number appeared to be the number you call if you actually want something done, whereas 066 was simply for the making of reports. So I called and found myself on the phone with the Juzgada Civica in Desarrollo San Pablo, a neighborhood about five miles away. The very nice woman on the phone assured me that action would be taken, as long as I called back Mon-Fri between 8AM and 4PM.

"I imagine the party will have quieted down by then," I said, though I wasn't entirely convinced this was true. She explained that I was not talking to the police, per se, but the office with which one files administrative complaints. If I were to call back during proper business hours, a report would be made immediately.

By now - 7:30AM, the problem had more or less resolved itself, since the juniors have a prodigious appetite for alcohol but very, very little tolerance for it, and had presumably passed out after the CD ended. We'll take a nap this afternoon and all will be well again, but we still can't help wondering who you're supposed to call around here if a knife-wielding rapist is coming through the window.

Today is El Dia del Mujer a Comparacion con Quien Mi Esposa Siempre Será Inferior, also known as Mexican Mother's Day. We don't have much to say about this since neither of our mothers are Mexican, but please enjoy this video of John McCain bantering with the ghost of Lilian Carter: