This is Not a Shitty Blog

You remember a couple of months ago when some random dude at the Pentagon wrote a report suggesting that if Mexico didn't get a handle on its shit, the US might wind up having to invade it? You don't? No, of course you don't, because you probably never heard about it in the first place and, if you're American, you know that ain't ever happening. But Mexico, as we predicted, has been in full-scale freak-out mode ever since, with an endless parade of public officials - most recently the attorney general and the president himself - repeating the mantra that Mexico is "not a failed state" and that, y'know, even if it were, there's no reason to get all invasion-y about it.

Amigos, seriously, settle down. You ran out of silver and gold a long time ago, and we're already buying our way back into your oil company, so why would we bother to invade? But more importantly, when guys in suits stand up in front of a chemical plant and repeatedly tell us that the drinking water is safe, we generally assume that water to be full of baby-killing carcinogens. We realize this makes us cynics, but we're hardly unique in this respect. So ease back on the "we're not a failed state!" stuff, okay? Because that's exactly the kind of thing the leaders of a failed state would say.

Nice Try

"About fifty semi-naked, blood-covered people protested in the Zócalo, against the possibility that the Plaza de Toros México might be declared a national artistic and cultural landmark."



Semi-naked. Yeah, that'll work. Look, call us when you're ready to get serious, okay?

Cheap Thrill

USA Today offers the recession-conscious vacationer Six Secret Mexican Gems for the Budget Traveler, with S.M.G.#2 being one of the most expensive cities in Mexico:

Querétaro

At once one of Mexico's most modern cities and a colonial gem, Queretaro offers visitors both the chance to immerse themselves in the city's fascinating 475-year history and enjoy a sophisticated dining and nightlife scene. Queretaro is often overlooked by tourists who come to the region to visit the more popular nearby town of San Miguel de Allende, but it's well worth a few days' exploration, and is generally easier on the wallet.

They say "overlooked by tourists" like this is a bad thing. But we were hoping the article would elaborate a bit on this "sophisticated dining and nightlife scene," since in two-and-a-half years of living here, we've somehow managed to miss it. It doesn't.

Worst Animal Rights Activist Ever

We're not even sure where to begin commenting on this:

"Masked men ... opened the door to my apartment and killed my dogs," said Javier Cervantes, who kept 50 rescued dogs and 20 cats at the housing complex in the lower-middle-class community of Jaltenco, outside Mexico City.

Cervantes, who was not home at the time, said sympathetic neighbors told him the assailants used "machetes and steel pipes" to hack and bludgeon the animals to death.

Cervantes said he found 15 of the dogs and 10 of the cats dead.

Oh dear, that is horrible. But Cervantes, apparently a very committed animal-rescuer and also, basically, insane, was keeping these 70-plus animals in his 600 square foot apartment, which among other problems had a somewhat negative effect on his neighbors' property values.

"There have been citizen complaints since 2006 ... about the noise and disgusting smell from having so many animals locked up," [Jaltenco city council secretary Jorge] Ramirez said. "Just imagine, this is an apartment building."

He said some residents of the four-story building complained of respiratory difficulties.

"The problem continued and got worse, and the people organized — I imagine in secret, in the darkness of night — and they knocked down the door and the animals began to escape," said Ramirez. "There were in terrible condition, and hungry."

And, in many cases, already dead.

When police arrived, they found a bloodstained apartment with scattered animal corpses and a patio floor covered with years' worth of accumulated feces. Ramirez said dogs were found stuffed in a refrigerator, and police were investigating whether Cervantes intended to sell them for meat — an allegation Cervantes denied.

Animal rights activist Antemio Maya of the organization Pro-Perro, or "Pro-Dog," said Cervantes was a recognized animal-rescue activist. However, he also criticized the conditions in which Cervantes held the strays.

"The love for animals leads you to extreme measures, to doing things that aren't right even for the animals," Maya said.

For what it's worth, this sort of thing would never happen if the government were being run by known animal lovers.

[Paid for by Narcotraficante Para Presidente 2012]

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People

#3. Revising Your Text: It's never too late to make changes.

And the World Will Live As One

With all the weird tensions between Koreans and Mexicans both here and abroad, we're happy to see that, in the City of Angels at least, brothers gonna work it out:

As the sun begins to sink behind the Santa Monica Mountains and the northbound traffic thickens on the 405 freeway, the hungry refresh their browsers.

After obsessively checking the Twitter postings of the Korean taco maker to see where the truck will park next, they begin lining up — throngs of college students, club habitués, couples on dates and guys having conversations about spec scripts.

And they wait, sometimes well beyond an hour, all for the pleasure of spicy bites of pork, chicken or tofu soaked in red chili flake vinaigrette, short ribs doused in sesame-chili salsa roja or perhaps a blood sausage sautéed with kimchi, all of it wrapped in a soft taco shell.

The food at Kogi Korean BBQ-To-Go, the taco vendor that has overtaken Los Angeles, does not fit into any known culinary category. One man overheard on his cellphone as he waited in line on a recent night said it best: “It’s like this Korean Mexican fusion thing of crazy deliciousness.”

...The idea, Mr. Choi said, was to bring his ethnic background together with the sensibility and geography of Los Angeles, where Koreatown abuts Latino-dominated neighborhoods in midcity and where food cultures have long merged. Former Mexican restaurants, now Korean, serve burritos, and Mexican workers populate the kitchens of Korean restaurants.

“We tried to marry two cultures,” Mr. Choi said, “with this crazy idea of putting Korean barbecue meat inside a tortilla. We have never tried to make it any more pretentious or different from that, and we wanted to be very simple but delicious.”

Um, can we maybe work out a trade here?

Fat Tuesday

With Mexico fast closing in on the USA's "Fattest Nation on Earth" title - and Querétaro pulling its weight (if you will) more than most states - we note with pride a recent study by the Autonomous University of Querétaro showing 41% of the city's children to be either "overweight" (21%) or "obese" (20%). A mere 2 percent - small enough to be within the survey's margin or error - are classified as "underweight."

Are you listening, Mississippi?

The Information

It's informe time here in Querétaro, the time when every elected official from the governor to the mayor to the dog catcher gives their State of the State / City / Dog Pound Address. We don't follow any of this very carefully, but it's been funny to open the papers and see page after page of quarter- and half-page ads like "Sanchez Cement Company extends its heartfelt congratulations to Mayor Manuel González Valle on the occasion of your Second Informe," usually followed by a few lines about how great the mayor is and a bit of patriotic sloganeering. We don't really understand the Kremlinology behind this, but since every business in the entire city seems to have taken out an ad, we can only assume someone is keeping a list of all the businesses that haven't.

With that in mind, Burro Hall extends its heartfelt, etc, etc.

It was also interesting to read the State Public Security chief bragging about the mayor's promise to have "all 300 video surveillance cameras up and running by the end of the month," because up until now the number has always been 100. So Hizzoner has actually tripled the city's dystopian qualities in just nine months! (Burro Hall extends its heartfelt, etc...)

It was also interesting to read this because apparently only 120 of the 300 are working right now, and "the end of the month" is Saturday. Please folks, no wagering.

Seems Like the Least They Could Do

US Airways to Resume Free Drinks

US Airways will resume offering free beverages on flights starting March 1, the company’s chief executive, W. Douglas Parker, said on Sunday in a memo to employees.

Goldenguy

We'll be settling in for a long night listening to a badly overdubbed Academy Awards ceremony. Our initial fear was that the local networks would cut away to a soccer match or old Chesprito reruns after the Best Makeup Oscar is awarded to Mexico's Mike Elizade, but luckily, because this country loves basking in reflected glory, they'll probably stick with it to see if Milk takes the big prize, since it co-starred one of Mexico's two actors, Diego Luna. Also, given cinematographer Wally Pfister's connections to Burro Hall, there'll probably be some Mexican bragging rights if he or The Joker grab gold.

With this much local talent on display, it's a wonder they don't just hold the Oscars in Queretaro. If they did, the red carpet would go something like this.

Joan Rivers: Who are you wearing tonight?

George Clooney: Smokings d'Aldo!




Brad and Leo [in unison]: Mundo del Traje.




Russel Crowe: La Moda Elegante.




We'll of course be wearing Valentino, as usual.

It Was Still Better Than "Benjamin Button"

Querétaro has many cultural options available, so of course the one we gravitated to last night was the lucha libre. Since we're really not the most sophisticated connoisseurs of the luchistic arts, we tend not to read the fine print very carefully, which is how we wound up at an event called "Total Ultraviolent Disaster," which is to the lucha libre what cockfighting is to coq au vin. Think The Wrestler, but without the glamor or the prospect of Marisa Tomei in a g-string. (One guy even brandished a staple gun, like in the movie.) Of course, as you can see in this photo, that doesn't mean it's not considered family entertainment by local standards.

(Credit where it's due, though: we can't believe that in nearly 1,600 blog posts, we never thought up the name "Querétarock." Muchos saludos, amigos!)

The highlight, if that's the word, was a fight called "the battle of chairs and lightbulbs," in which the contestants clobbered each other with metal folding chairs and eight-foot long fluorescent light bulbs. This we loved for the sheer Mexican-ness of it - not that there's anything traditionally Mexican about hitting a man with a fluorescent light bulb, but there can't be too many other places where this would be done with such blatant disregard for the safety of the audience. If you've ever dropped one by accident, you know that fluorescent bulbs tend to explode on impact, with tiny shards of glass and toxic dust flying in all directions. On a related note, it was to our great regret that we decided to splurge 130 pesos on a front-row seat.

You can catch a brief glimpse of the carnage below. Sharp-eyed viewers may be able to spot yr. corresp., having safely moved back to the fifth row, here

M for Murder

Another reason why we like the idea of a narcotraficante president: these guys aren't content to just rest on past performance. They're always asking, "Can I - can Mexico - do better?" Take the piling-up-1000-dead-bodies test. When we first arrived back in 2006, the annual "deaths from organized crime" tally (meaning all drug war-related murders, good guys and bad guys) didn't hit 1,000 until July 1, 181 days into the year.

In 2007, the 1,000th victim died on May 14, the 134th day of the year.

In 2008, it was April 22 - day 113.

Yesterday, February 20 - the 51st day of the year - organized crime took a look in the mirror and said to itself, "Sí, se puede!" and stacked up another 30 corpses to bring 2009's total-to-date to 1,003.

Increased Productivity. Record Results. Proven Leadership. This message paid for by Narcotraficante para Presidente 2012.

Crosstown Traffic

Querétaro has been named as one of ten best cities for Information Technology in the Americas, and just last week inaugurated free wireless internet in eight of the biggest public plazas in the city. So it's kind of amazing to us that they can't quite figure out the humble orange traffic cone around here.

As the flaming piranha-filled moat project expands throughout the Centro, more and more streets are being temporarily closed. This is chaotic enough in a city whose basic layout hasn't changed much in 300 years, but the bigger problem is this: for some reason there's no system to alert motorists that the street up ahead is closed. And by "system," we just mean "something blocking the street, like maybe a fuckin' orange cone or something." To put it in New York terms, if 8th Avenue is closed, you block off 57th St at 7th Ave so that cars don't come roaring down 57th, discover 8th is closed, and then have to reverse back to 7th. This sort of information technology has yet to trickle down to Querétaro, so while half the streets in the Centro are closed, the other half are filled with drivers trying to back up up away from the streets they didn't know were closed, and of course running into oncoming traffic because the people behind them don't know why they're backing the wrong way up a one-way street. It's the traffic equivalent of the Cocoanut Grove fire.*

[* Note to queretanos unfamiliar with the Cocoanut Grove: if you're stuck in traffic near one of the plazas, you can access the internet on your iPhone and read about it here.]

Say Hello To My Li'l President!

Awww. It just fills us with pride when we see our Mexican brethren following America's example. Like the way we tend to make up absurdly scary scenarios to justify bad policy.

We happen to believe the War on Drugs - which Mexico is interpreting in the literal sense of sending the army to fight drug gangs - has been somewhat lacking in its conception, execution and results. Though because we're bloggers we can say that sort of thing without having to come up with a better idea. But yesterday the country's Economic Secretary, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, explained that if the government hadn't undertaken this ridiculous uphill battle, the country would literally be run by a drug cartel in 2012.

Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, said in Paris there was a risk that the next president of Mexico would be a drug dealer if the current government had not directly confronted the cartels.

"It is a serious problem, so serious that we had to confront it. It would have been it was easier to just leave the status quo, as many people said, but I can assure you that if we did that, the next president would be a narcotraficante."

Let's aside for now the question of whether this would even be the first drug-trafficker to win the Mexican presidency. While you can't go broke overestimating political corruption here, for a cartel kingpin to become president, he'd first have to be nominated by one of the major parties (admittedly, there's a lot of room for mischief there) and then run for office in a general election. While US-style negative campaigning is somewhat new here, we're pretty sure a good adman could make something of the fact that his candidate's opponent is a murderous cocaine-trafficking drug lord.

Still, Burro Hall applauds Sr. Ruiz's audacious use of the Apocalyptic Hypothetical Future - an advanced rhetorical device rarely employed in such a young democracy!

Update: Just to be clear, we don't think a cartel boss would necessarily make a bad president. These guys have executive experience managing businesses larger than GM or Microsoft, and the past year has shown that they've got an excellent sense of military strategy and tactics. You can bet that Presidente Narcotraficante would make upgrading the nation's transportation infrastructure a priority, and would have a soft spot in his heart for the farming and agricultural sector. The arts would be generously patronized, and while there would likely be an immediate and spectacular spike in violence (assuming he doesn't stock his cabinet with officials from rival cartels, there's bound to be some "taking care of unfinished business"up front), street crime would drop to zero after about a year, because, you wanna fuckin' piece of me? Plus, how fast would the US and Canada race to re-open NAFTA? There would probably be less emphasis on human rights and the rule of law, of course, but that implies you're impressed with the way things are today under our non--drug-lord regime.

The Chronic

We love a good poorly-written headline here, and were about to link to "Deaths in Juarez Contribute to High Rate of Killings in Mexico" with a snarky aside along the lines of, yes, we rather suppose they do. Then we clicked through to discover that it's follow-up to the Houston Chronicle's earlier report on how dangerous (or, to put it more accurately, "safe") Mexico is.

In fact, the number of homicides is likely higher, because many victims die after being taken to hospitals across the border and — along with other killings — often go unreported to the U.S. Department of State, Ed McKeon, Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs in Mexico told the Houston Chronicle.

“I’m convinced the total number of deaths is very much under-reported,” he said.

Well, if Ed's convinced, who are we to question?

Meanwhile, in other Houston news: Waller official orders inquest after infant’s death; 5 accused of fatally beating teen; Man gets 20 years on child molestation conviction; and Police seek killer who targeted Houston woman at home.

Hating Andy Gay

With Oscar night fast approaching and a pile of movies as-yet unviewed, we hunkered down with a bootleg DVD of Milk. To our great disappointment, it had not been re-titled as "Leche,", but the subtitling was generally as bad as we've come to expect. Memo to our friends in the bootlegging community: "The Haight" is a neighborhood in San Francisco, not a human emotion. Also, Mexican viewers could be forgiven for believing the film's antagonist is an unseen villain named Andy Gay, as in, "they just passed another Andy Gay initiative in Portland."

Stimulus

The flaming piranha-filled moat should be finished in a few weeks, the pace having picked up slightly after someone discovered that a hydraulic jackhammer is more efficient digging tool than a pickaxe. Welcome to our noisy, dusty hellhole.

Dressed to Kill

We've commented endlessly on the level of paranoia here in Queretaro - where the vast majority of the residents think the city is perfectly safe, where the statiststics show they're right, and yet where 86 percent believe that there should be even more security controls, and the elected officials (today, the governor) pander to this demand at every opportunity, turning the city, inch by inch, into a police state - and a heavily armed one at that.

64 9mm Beretta pistols; 65 semi-automatic Heckler&Koch 9mm pistols; 73 5.56mm x 45mm rifles; and 40 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns

...just to mention one recent upgrade - which would be great if there had been any mention of firearms training.

One thing to keep in mind about Queretaro is that it's not narco territory - drugs don't even pass through here on their way to someplace else. But a couple of days ago someone with a badge got word that a truckload of either arms or drugs was on the move here, and within minutes hundreds of local, state and federal police officers, AFI [FBI] agents, PGJ [justice dept] agents and Mexican Army troops from the 17th Zona Militar had mobilized and swarmed after the suspect vehicle like the final chase scene in The Blues Brothers, ran him off the road, seized the terrified drivers, and saved the populace from....450 packages of used clothing, much of which lacked the proper customs and taxation documents.

Since we're feeling benevolent today, we'll congratulate them on the fact that nobody was killed, but it's this sort of balls-to-the-wall over-reaction that makes us very uncomfortable when we see a cop directing traffic with a machine gun slung over his shoulder. Our favorite detail is that, of the eight people arrested, three were charged with trying to bribe a police officer, which just perfectly encapsulates the way people view the cops around here: hundreds of officers from about a dozen agencies haul these guys in, and almost half the arrestees think it's perfectly plausible that they might buy their way out jail with a handful of pesos. And we're giving these guys body armor and rocket launchers.

Slaughterhouse Jive

We do our best not to get too wrapped up in local politics, particularly public demonstrations, of which there seem to be dozens each month, most of them pointless. But when we saw this article announcing that on Monday, disgruntled dairy farmers planned to march eight cows into the city's central garden and sacrifice them...well, okay, the first thing we did was run to the dictionaries to see if perhaps sacrificar had some less-bloody meaning we weren't picking up on, but no - they really were going to butcher eight cows in this charming public square. (The idea being that it's cheaper to kill their cows than to sell their milk at two cents a liter.) So of course - as a service to you, dear reader - we sent a team of correspondents to cover it.

Long story short, the farmers pussed out. The jardin was crawling with riot police, at least 100 by our count, and by two hours past the appointed time it became obvious that, even accounting for traditional Mexican tardiness, these boys weren't coming. Instead, they just snuck over the the Economic Secretary's office and dumped 70 liters of spoiled milk on the ground. We'll leave it to the political scientists to debate the efficacy of using rancid milk on a hot day to try and sway public opinion, but we just wanted to take a minute here to register our supreme disappointment with the lecheros. We thought you were made of sterner stuff, amigos.

You Can Leave Your Hat Off

We didn't make it to the bullfights in Mexico City this weekend, but that's okay, because Tommy Lasorda went in our place. Seriously. He's in town in his capacity as some sort of Ambassador-at-Large for the World Baseball Classic, and is actually a very big hero here for no other reason than having managed Fernando Valenzuela in Los Angeles. So big, in fact, that the Mexican bullfighter Fermin Spínola did Lasorda the honor of dedicating the first bull to him - signified by bullfighter giving the person his hat to hold - upon which Lasorda committed a horrific breach of protocol by putting the hat on, earning himself a round of whistles and boos from the crowd.


As Irwin Fletcher once said, "I hate Tommy Lasorda."

Búfalos de la Noche

The latest in our ongoing coverage of wild animals that have no business wandering around Mexican cities

Police say residents of a [Mexico City] neighborhood called to report buffaloes standing in the street, saying they didn't know what to do.

Two officers were dispatched to the scene Monday, and used a flashlight to herd the animals back to a pen from which they appeared to have escaped.

A man showed up at the pen saying he was in charge of the buffaloes and thanked the policemen for returning them, but police say they will investigate whether the animals are being properly held there.

[Spoiler Alert!] They are most likely not being properly held there.

"The President's Neck is Missing!"

There's a famous quotation from Benito Juárez, which he said after the French forces were sent packing in 1867: Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz, which means "Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace." It doesn't sound all that profound, but since Mexico had up to that point been operating on a "he who has the most guns wins" system, it was a pretty important declaration. It's even chiseled into the base of this enormous statue here in Queretaro. So we were pleased to discover this sign on the garage door of a house on the next street over, which updates the Juárez Doctrine to say that "Respect for the rights of others means don't block my driveway." Because, hey, stay classy!

We post this in honor of Presidents Day, when Americans join together and solemnly pledge not to pay a lot for this muffler. And speaking of cheapening the holiday, interested readers can tune in to the History Channel tonight at 9PM to learn the hideous tale of Abraham Lincoln's corpse. Word on the street is that it's a ghoulish, bizzare, gruesome, macabre, lurid, preposterous, unsavory freak-show approach at history -- clearly pandering to those who wouldn't sit through a musty documentary - a 19th-century version of "Weekend at Bernie's." In other words, must-see tee-vee.

For Mexican viewers, History Channel Español will be offering Biografía: Farrah Fawcett, El Ángel de América.

La vida de la hermosa tejana que llegó a ser el principal símbolo sexual de los Estados Unidos en la década de 1970 gracias a su papel en el éxito televisivo Los Ángeles de Charlie; pasó a la actuación seria en los años 80, pero vio derrumbarse su mundo en los 90, cuando se separó de Ryan O'Neal, posó con el torso desnudo para Playboy a los 50 años de edad, y sufrió una golpiza a manos de su nuevo novio.

Because, hey, stay classy!

Hair Lip

We don't know much about marketing, and an exotic, French-sounding name probably does carry some cachet, but for now we're going to file this chain of Querétaro beauty salons under "unfortunate."

With My Mind On My Money and My Money On My Mind

Looks like we're gonna need some more trash bags:

A landmark intervention by the Mexican central bank to defend the battered peso is slowing its decline, but the currency is seen weakening further as Mexico slides into recession.

The bank startled markets last week by making direct U.S. dollar sales to brokers for the first time in more than a decade to prop up the sickly peso after it hit a historic low of 14.70 to the dollar...

“All the factors that justify a depreciation of the peso are operating,” said JP Morgan's chief Mexico economist Alfredo Thorne, who expects the peso to soon break past 15 per dollar.

As great as all this is for the gringos, a major slump in the peso will create real hardships for tens of millions of Mexicans. A year and a half ago, when the price of tortillas rose by about three stinkin' pesos per kilo, there was revolution in the air. If that ever happens (and we do believe we're due, no?) we'd hate to be a gringo sitting on a half-dozen trash bags full of cash, know what we mean?

The Hand of God?

Querétaro is loaded with Christian bookstores, which we have long made the mistake of referring to as "Catholic" bookstores, since around here "Christian" and "Catholic" are pretty interchangeable. But at least one bookstore nearby, the Libreria Cristiana del Rey, is not only not Catholic, but it sells some of the most virulent anti-Catholic propaganda available (mostly from this publisher). Needless to say, it's become our favorite place to browse - not because we have anything against Catholics, but because we just admire the sheer ballsiness of running an openly anti-Catholic bookstore in the middle of Querétaro.

One comic book that caught our eye recently was this one, which tells the story of Charles Chiniquy, who claims that back in the 1850s he was framed by the Jesuits because he'd figured out that Catholicism was all bullshit [we're paraphrasing], but he managed to get off by hiring a young country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. A decade later the Jesuits, who never forget a slight, then arranged to start the United States Civil War in order to kill Lincoln and, when that failed, simply shot him in the head one night at Ford's Theater.

We didn't remember learning it quite that way (but then, we attended a Jesuit university, so what do you expect?) Though the part about Chiniquy hiring A. Lincoln, attorney-at-law, in 1856 is true, literally none of the other details are (though who's to say, really, on the question of the Jesuits being behind it all?)

Just to be on the safe side, of course, we went back watched the Lincoln Zapruder film a few more times. To the untrained eye, this looks like John Wilkes Booth's hand, but it's the spitting image of Pius IX:

Odd

The new simultaneous kissing world record: 39,897 people.

The Kiss Army

Well, it's El Día del Amor y la Amistad which, like every other day in Mexico, means there's a flimsy excuse to try and break some non-existent world record - in this case, the World's Largest Simultaneous Kiss. The Mexico City government thinks 32,000 or so people ought to do it, and the Guinness people - who are clearly being plied with cocaine so they'll keep coming back to Mexico - seem inclined to agree. We're not sure what constitutes a "simultaneous kiss," but we're guessing that far more than 32,000 people kiss each other in Times Square on New Years Eve, or at one of those Moonie mega-weddings, just to pick a couple examples off the tops of our heads. What we really wish, of course, was that they had tried to go for the kissing record at the same time they were breaking the naked-people-standing-around record. Probably would have broken records in a few other categories as the morning wore on.

This is a non-rhetorical question for whatever Guinness Book officials may be reading this: how many world records have been set in the Zócalo in Mexico City, and is it possible that it may hold the world record for most world records?

Great Moments in Presidential Speeches

Blogger April Winchell makes the awesome discovery that, before he was the President of the United States, President of the United States Barack Obama read the audio version of his profanity-laced memoir Dreams From My Father. Why these are not available as ringtones is simply incomprehensible to us.

[Links open an mp3 file.]

There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you.

That guy ain't shit. Sorry ass motherfucker got nuthin' on me.

Sure, you can have my number, baby.

You ain't my bitch, nigga - buy your own damn fries!

Waiting for the Sun

Speaking of doors in Mexico, The Doors (or at least a couple of them) are playing in the bullring in Mexico City tonight, having finally re-scheduled a show that got canceled 40 years ago, shortly after the government decided it would be a good idea to shoot hundreds of students to death in the streets

"The powers that be said, 'No way are we going to let 60,000 hippies in the Plaza de Toros,'" the bull ring where the Doors were scheduled to perform in 1969, Manzarek said. "We were very unhappy about not being able to play for the students."

Manzarek said the band ended up performing at an upscale private dinner club, where people ate steaks as the now-deceased front man Jim Morrison crooned songs such as "The End," which includes lyrics about incest and parricide.

It almost goes without saying that seeing the Doors in a Mexican supper club in 1969 is just exponentially cooler than seeing Ray Manzarek in Plaza Mexico in 2009, but you have to admire the way they kept their commitment.

Break On Through

As part of Operation "Oh, Shit - UNESCO's Coming!," the city is offering free facelifts to the houses in the Centro. So for the past two days a crew of workers have been bashing our next door neighbor's house with sledgehammmers (the preferred tool around here, regardless of the task), and have uncovered a previously-unknown doorway on the side of the house. We're not sure if it leads to a mass grave or Moctezuma's gold, but since the neighbors have enormous German Shepard whose barking disturbs our already-too-neurotic little perro, we're going to see if we can't get INAH to spend the next couple years excavating the place, just in case.

Sports Talk

Surprisingly, today's sports page is devoid of military hardware, bellicose language or allusions to Pancho Villa. In fact, today's headline is "United States Maintains Paternalism [paternalidad] Over Mexico by Winning 2-0." We're not sure exactly how to read this, but we assume it's an attempt to answer the rhetorical question, "Who's your Daddy?"

Also, if you were wondering how to say the opposite of Obama's Spanish campaign slogan - Sí, se puede, "Yes, we can" - it's no se pudo.



[Ed note: We will now stop pretending to give a shit about soccer.]

Goodbye, Columbus

If you're in the United States right now, you probably have no idea that there's a US-Mexico soccer match later this evening. Whereas, in Mexico, you'd be hard pressed to avoid this knowledge. The sports pages have been counting down to this all week, and as you can see here, the rhetoric has gotten a bit martial. (Those are Mexican Navy jets, but we're pretty sure they don't actually have tanks like this.) The "Mexican Invasion" article at bottom is just about fans going to the match - we wanted to clarify this so as to not inflame the nativists.

There was a pull-out section in El Universal today [sorry, no link] that finally made the connection we'd been hoping for: that the match is being held in Columbus, Ohio, which has the same name as Columbus, New Mexico, which was invaded in 1916 by none other than Pancho Villa. The writer sought to use this example to rally the troops, but Mexicans tend to forget how the raid turned out:

Villa divided his troops and attacked Columbus from the southwest at approximately 4:20 am. This attack caught the entire town, as well as the army camp, by surprise.

The Villistas concerned themselves more with raiding than killing, otherwise the town might have been erased. That morning majority of the destruction of the town came from the burning and pillaging of the business district. Surprisingly, the army camp and stables received little damage, even though the horses and armaments must have been attractive to the raiders. Alerted by the gunfire and burning buildings, many Columbus residents fled to the desert, or sought refuge in the school house, the Hoover Hotel, or private homes. The noise and fire sealed the fate of the raiding Mexican Army. U.S. Army officers and soldiers, awakened by the commotion, set up a Benet-Mercier machine gun in front of the Hoover Hotel and produced a murderous rain of bullets. Another machine gun set up on East Boundary Street fired north and caught anyone in the intersection of Broadway and East Boundary in a deadly crossfire. The raid lasted until dawn, or approximately one and a half hours. By this time, the death toll totaled 70 to 75 Villistas. In addition, during the attack on Columbus, eighteen Americans, mostly civilians, died.

Now, sure, the US went on to make an ass of itself trying to catch Villa in the Mexican desert, but we think the moral of the story here is that Columbus analogies tend not work out in Mexico's favor.

Update: US-2, Mexico-0. Presumably the voodoo dolls can be returned to Blockbuster without paying a late fee.

Greetings from 20 35' 34.34" N / 100 23' 12.86" W

Our I.T. staff just loaded up the latest edition of Google Earth which, among other upgrades, features a much more detailed view of Querétaro than in earlier versions. (You have to search for "Santiago de Querétaro," or it'll take you to some tiny town in Baja California for some reason.) We've always had our qualms about subathing naked on the roof, mostly because of the elementary school across the street, but this seals it. From now on, it's strictly man-thongs.

Soccer Balls

We quite frankly couldn't give a shit who wins the Mexico-US soccer game tomorrow, and the whole voodoo-doll controversy really doesn't bother us, but it's kind of dismaying to see how easy it's been for the dolls to pick up American corporate sponsorship

After Radioshack dropped out, a Mexican newspaper has found a new U.S. corporate sponsor to help put a voodoo hex on the U.S. national soccer team — and end Mexico's decade-long losing streak.

Blockbuster stores in Mexico City began trading Record newspaper coupons for voodoo-doll likenesses of U.S. soccer players Friday. The back of the dolls' jersey reads, "Gringos."...

"Hold a needle firmly between your thumb and index finger and prick slowly the part of the doll where you want to affect the opponent," the instructions say.

Dallas-based Blockbuster was until recently owned by Viacom. Just like us.

If You Can Read This, You Haven't Been Murdered By Mexicans Yet

The Houston Chronicle has for some odd reason decided to expend valuable investigative reporting resources in an effort to prove that a vanishingly tiny percentage of American visitors to Mexico - less than one-thousandth of one percent - come back to Uncle Sam in a pine box. Or, to put it in more inflammatory terms, Caught in the Chaos: More than 200 U.S. Citizens Killed in Mexico Since '04!!!!

More than 200 U.S. citizens have been slain in Mexico’s escalating wave of violence since 2004 — an average of nearly one killing a week, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation into the deaths....

More U.S. citizens suffered unnatural deaths in Mexico than in any other foreign country — excluding military killed in combat zones — from 2004 to 2007, State Department statistics show.

The Chronicle even includes this helpful map of the Mexican Killing Fields. It's probably unsporting to point out that the closer you get to the United States, the better chance you have of turning up dead. (Those of you contemplating a visit should be aware that Querétaro is in that vast, bloodless land mass denoted "rest of Mexico.")

We thought we'd debunked this nonsense last year, but we suppose some people have trouble using the Google. Mexico is the most popular destination for Americans, so it's not surprising that a greater number of Americans would die here than anywhere else, nor is it especially surprising that, with 60 million visitors in a four-year period, 200 wouldn't make it out alive. (We realize that many of those 60 million visits are made by the same people - statistics isn't our strong suit here. But still, c'mon.) And further down in the article, the Chronicle makes a very valid point:

The Chronicle analysis showed some American homicide victims were involved in organized crime. The dead include at least two dozen victims labeled hitmen, drug dealers, human smugglers or gang members, based on published investigators’ accusations. Others were drug users or wanted for crimes in the United States.

While the Burro Hall editorial board does not officially condone the slaughter of douchebags, neither are we convinced that hitmen and human smugglers should be afforded the same degree of pity as a vacationing pensioner. The Chronicle doesn't come right out and put a number on it, but it would seem that, of the 200 U.S Citizens Slain!!!, 130 of them simply didn't draw their own weapons fast enough. Because

in at least 70 other cases, U.S. citizens appear to have been killed while in Mexico for innocent reasons: visiting family, taking a vacation, or simply living or working there.

Seventy murders in four years, during which time Americans made 60 million visits to Mexico, which has a population of about 120 million. For the record, that's ten percent fewer murders than took place in Houston, population 2 million, in the first three months of 2008.

HPD officials say that the City of Houston has recorded the fewest numbers of murders for the first quarter of this year since 2005.

The unofficial numbers show 78 murders were recorded through the first three months of this year.

There were 88 murders for the same period in 2007. That’s an 11.3 percent decrease.

In case it's not clear, they're proud of this. And in fact, they should be. Because in 2007, Houston had the second-highest urban homicide rate in the country.

In Houston, the number of murders increased to 379 last year from 334 in 2005, a jump officials blamed in part on hurricane evacuees.

..."The homicide rate has been much higher in years past, especially the 1980s," HPD Capt. Dwayne Ready told the Chronicle in October. "Even if the number ... for 2006 hits 400 it's not a bleak picture for Houston."

If 400 people a year get gunned down in Houston, the Houston Police Dept. doesn't think it's a "bleak picture." Fifty a year (including douchebags) south of the border, and it's "Chaos." Nevertheless, if it scares fat-assed Houstonians out of coming to Mexico, we think it could be a good thing.

Bad to the Bone

This is a polite way of saying we beat his photographer into a coma:

Frank Koughan, the producer of "Stealing Lincoln's Body," could not be reached for comment last week.

We think the ground rules were pretty simple: First the check clears, then we spit out a half-dozen quotes that could have been written by the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce. Why anyone would think the deal includes stationing a photographer outside our favorite table dance club is a mystery to us.

Speaking of Lancaster, we mentioned a while back that when we rented a train there, it came with a young engineer by the name of Hambone. One of the perks (okay, the only perk) of being the producer is that we were able to give him an on-screen credit, along with a some of the finest Lincoln scholars in the nation. Because we're all about the little guy.

Orange Crush

So yesterday we spent about eight hours in a car driving through Michoacán - "America's Meth Basket," according to its license plates. This is what most of the drive looks like - winding, death defying mountain roads on which you're stuck behind a double-trailer which may or may not be filled with some kind of explosive liquid, followed by stretches of open highway on which we'd get it up to about 90, only to have five or six cars bunched up behind up trying to pass on the right. Every few hundred meters along Highway 15 there were women and children selling handwoven baskets and fresh strawberries, undeterred by the fact that Highway 15 is a six-lane shoulderless superhighway about as busy as Interstate 70.

Eventually we lose the regularly-paved roads altogether and, after another bone-jarring hour, arrive at the El Rosario Monarch Sanctuary. After paying the absurdly modest $2.50 admission fee, we run a half mile-long gauntlet of butterfly-kitsch peddlers before beginning a long, near vertical climb that started at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet. For the record, yr humble corresp. is a long way from 19, and has been known to sweat all the way through his jeans on occasion. And for the first hour or so of this uphill death march, we saw literally dozens of butterflies. After a couple of phone calls home to the main office to chew out and then fire the intern who arranged the trip, we decided we would keep going in order to get our two dollars worth, and hope that some of the souvenir hawkers sold beer on the way down.

One of the great things about being right the vast majority of the time is that, on the rare occasion when you're wrong, one has the luxury of being able to admit it, so...holy fucking shit, were we ever wrong. This was without a doubt one of the more amazing things we've ever witnessed. The higher you climb, the thicker the cloud of butterflies becomes. And while the place is probably a photographer's dream, we'd sent our staff cameraman off on assignment, so you'll have to content yourselves with our modest amateur efforts.


This attempt at a close-up ended badly for one anonymous mariposa who, in his excitement over the prospect of appearing in Burro Hall, flew directly into yr corresp's mouth, only to be expelled quickly and, regrettably, without wings. In case you're curious, butterfly wings taste like dust. We're not going to say any more here because killing a monarch butterfly is probably a federal offense.






After a while, it starts to feel like a snowglobe full of butterflies, or one of those Jacques Cousteau films where the school of orange fish come swarming towards the camera. The noise of the wings flapping is loud enough to be creepy in a Hitchcock sort of way. (And, to be clear: if they were ever to evolve teeth and claws, these creatures would kill you and everybody you love. You've heard of the Butterfly Effect? Well, multiply that one little butterfly by 20 million...)








It's sort of hard to tell in this last picture, but basically, the trees themselves are bright forest green. The reasons the leaves look like they're dead is they are in fact caked with butterflies.


If you still have your doubts...the souvenir vendors do sell beer.

Dog & Butterfly

We're secure enough in our masculinity to admit that we plan to spend the day looking at butterflies. Specifically, monarch butterflies in the state of Michoacán, about a four hour drive from here, much of it treacherous. Why are we doing this? Excellent question, and one we've been wondering ourselves! Apparently, if you've been in Mexico for a couple of years and haven't seen the butterflies, your commitment to the whole Mexico thing becomes suspect, or something like that. So it's off to see the winged caterpillars, which we understand are closely related to moths, of which there are plenty right here at home.

Here's a picture of the perro sunning himself in San Miguel a couple of weeks ago, to keep you warm until we [hopefully] make it back in one piece.

Now That's a Bargain!

One of the neat consequences of the country's Jewish History and Holocaust Museum being almost completely inaccessible to the public is that you can still pick up a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the street for like six bucks.

Big Money

This probably sounds like good news, right?

The Mexican peso, one of the world's weakest currencies since the global economic meltdown began in September, is nearing the 15-to-the-dollar mark -- a stunning loss of value in just six months.

The peso has fallen nearly 32% against the buck since August. That’s a boon for U.S. tourists heading south, but it’s devastating for Mexican consumers’ purchasing power: They have to shell out significantly more pesos for the same dollar.

Okay, so it sucks for Mexicans, but if all your money is in US dollars in a US bank account, then one day you wake up and discover that you're 32 percent richer. Unfortunately, the only way to really take advantage of this is to keep withdrawing cash from the ATM. Every time the peso drops a little more, we run down to the ATM and fill up the wheelbarrow like a scene out of Weimar Germany. It sounds like a good deal, but the house is starting to look like Tony Montana's rec room. Bales of money everywhere! We're propping up an uneven table leg with a stack of 200s, and lining the litter box with 50s. We've got more cash in the freezer than a Louisiana congressman.

Thank god someone's trying to stop the madness.

Mexico's central bank surprised investors with an intervention to boost the peso on Wednesday, selling U.S. dollars directly to market players after the peso was battered to a record low on fears the U.S. downturn is driving Mexico into recession.

It's about time. The poor perro was almost crushed to death under a landlside of 100s this morning.

Rough First Day on the Job

Christ. He probably didn't even have time to enroll in the 401(k).

A recently retired Mexican army general whose bullet-riddled body was found Tuesday near Cancun had taken over as the area's top antidrug official less than 24 hours earlier, officials said.

Retired Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñonez, his aide and a driver were tortured before being killed...

"The general was the most mistreated," Rodriguez said at a Tuesday night news conference. "He had burns on his skin and bones in his hands and wrists were broken."

Tello also suffered broken knees and was shot 11 times.

Going forward, we're guessing this is going to be a very hard position to fill. Even the street urchins might be reluctant.

America: You Want Mustard With That?

According to data from the mayor's office, there are 9,000 foreigners living in Querétaro. This means (a) we're outnumbered 99-to-1, and (b) someone is counting us. We thought of this number the other day when we went to the Greek restaurant down the street and saw that it was closed so they could attend the three-day Foreign Community Exposition. We were unaware that there was a "community" of foreigners here, but apparently it's inclusive enough to count the Mexican owners of the Greek restaurant among its members.

The Expo - which was basically a food fair / entertainment / crafts market / tourism promotion event - seemed to be staffed mostly by Mexicans of foreign descent (though it's possible that the various Central American booths were manned by the genuine article; we still can't tell). Of the 9,000 foreigners here, 8,950 either had other plans or weren't invited. Still, if you were sick of Mexican food, it was worth the trip, and most countries made a pretty decent effort to show a little national pride. Here's Germany, Syria and Bolivia, for example:









Ah, but what about the United States of America, you ask - a country many may remember from such historical events as the Apollo moon landing, the polio vaccine, and the crushing defeat of the Nazi war machine? Here below, in a Burro Hall exclusive, is, we kid you not, the entire United States of America pavilion:

Yes, that's a steam tray full of hot dogs and a half-dozen flyers reading "New Orleans Jazz City * U.S.A." tacked to the wall. Unable to contain our pride, we tried to lead them in a sing-among of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," but, being Mexican, they were unfamiliar with the lyrics.

How High Is The Rubble, Mama?

Five feet high and risin'...

Good Luck With That

Over at Photoshop Disasters we find this illustration from an Argentine newspaper article about Tuesday the 13th - which is Latin Americans celebrate Friday the 13th, because they like to be contrary. While Tuesday the 13th is considered unlucky, you can apparently protect yourself if you have seven fingers.

Urchins Wanted

Finally, some good news on the economic front. Jobs may be disappearing at a record rate on both sides of the border, but here in Mexico, opportunities for children who want to work have never been greater!

Gerardo Sauri, director of the Network for Children's Rights, warned of a possible increase in the rate of child labor in the current context of economic crisis in the country, while the Ministry of Labor and Social Security asked the Congress reform legislation to increase fines on employers who hire child labor.

According to the first national survey of Child Labor by the Department of Labor and INEGI, released a couple of months ago, there are 3,600,000 working children in Mexico under the age of 18.

The article doesn't explain what's wrong with someone under 18 having a job (we did), but of the 3.6 million working kids, 230,000 are under the age of nine, and 883,000 are between 10 and 13, which ought to be (and, in fact, is) illegal. More amazingly, 1,647,000 of them don't get paid, which at least helps us understand why it might have been difficult to find adults to fill these jobs.