"Dear Assfuckers..."

Here's something that's hard to figure out about the drug cartels. They've got enough high-tech firepower to fight the Mexican Army to a standstill, state-of-the-art cellular and satellite communications, a fleet of cargo planes, a sizable chunk of the press, police and elected officialdom in their pockets and, oh, several-dozen billions of dollars cash money, but when they want to communicate with each other (usually to challenge, taunt, or otherwise talk smack) their medium of choice tends to be a spray-painted bedsheet hung from a highway overpass. (Seriously. They're called narcomantas - "narco-blankets.")

So yesterday the Carrillo Fuentes group talked a little trash at Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman up in Ciudad Juarez, which was dutifully reported by our national media, including our local rag. Because these murderous drug lords' many crimes against society include the use of salty language (this one begins "Welcome, assfuckers,") the paper censored the text in the caption: Bienvenidos, pin...cu...,. And why not? There's no place in a family newspaper for that kind of filth.

Of course, the caption ran under a clearly legible, quarter-page color photograph of the sign.

Life in a Patriarchal Society Update: We were double-checking that the word manta meant "blanket" - as opposed to another sheet-like piece of fabric - and learned that, as in English, "blanket" can mean "a covering" - "a banket of snow," for instance. Or, to put it in in Latin American terms:

manta

1 blanket
2 fam (gran cantidad) le dio una manta de sopapos, he gave her a beating

Dude had his reasons, we're sure.