Mexico 2009: The Year In Pictures

In its entirety:


Suspected member of the Gulf Cartel Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa, center, wearing a face mask as a precaution against swine flu ...after his arrest at federal police headquarters in Mexico City, Wednesday, April 29, 2009.

Poor Mexico.

Non-existent Cases of Swine Flu in Querétaro Approaching Triple Digits

Following up on the report below, Rotativo now tells us that Probable Cases of Influenza In Querétaro Rises to 93! (And also that 39 of them aren't flu at all, three of them are regular flu-flu, and there are so far "no cases of swine flu" blah, blah, blah.)

Developing...

730,000 People Could Possibly Get Swine Flu in Querétaro

Here's some local journalism at its finest. According to Rotativo, there are 50 Probable Cases of Flu in Querétaro! Except, in non-headline type, we see that 27 of the probably cases have been ruled out as not being flu, and three (3) cases are in fact flu, but flu virus Type A, also known as "non swine flu." So, with the jury still out on 20 of the 50 Probable Cases, an equally accurate headline would be "Still No Cases of Swine Flu in Querétaro."

Pardon Us While We Gloat

An unsolicited testimonial:

[Esti Lamonaca's] only fear about Mexico, she said, had been the drug wars that have torn apart parts of the country. But she and her friends stuck to tourist areas and saw no problems, she said.

Emphasis ours! Sure, Ms Lamonaca is now quarantined in her Queens, NY, bedroom and believed to be suffering from swine flu, but as she very clearly states, and we have been saying for a long time, drug cartel violence played no part in ruining her spring break! We love it when we're right...

Everybody Panic!

It doesn't have quite the same implication of mental impairment in Spanish as it does in English, but the headline in today's Diario is "Psychosis Over Flu," which basically means "everybody's panicking!" We didn't realize so many people in Querétaro followed Sanjay Gupta, but there you have it.

The truth is, we heartily endorse panic - not because we think there's more to fear than fear itself, but because panic, particularly on the part of the state's public officials, tends to get results. (If a pandemic is going to strike in Mexico, you really want it to strike in the middle of elections, as this one has.) People are buying masks, avoiding public gatherings - all of which have been canceled anyway - and, most importantly, keeping an eye on their own health. One thing that's sort of gotten lost in this is the fact (according to Querétaro's Secretary of Health) that, caught early, swine flu is "100% curable," and that the people who died waited too long to get treatment (or, just as likely, were misdiagnosed) because, well, there was no psicosis por influenza at the time.

The thing about using a sledgehammer to kill a fly is that it really does pound the shit out of that fly.

Burro Hall Gift Guide

If anyone you know happens to have two young cats and a dog named Jesús, this humorous t-shirt seems like it was practically custom-made for them, no?

¿Cui Bono?

Because we're all about the silver linings here.

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s peso sank to the lowest level in almost three weeks against the dollar on concern an outbreak of the deadly swine flu will deepen the country’s economic slump.

The peso depreciated as much as 3.5 percent, the steepest intraday slide since Nov. 5. It weakened 2.8 percent to 13.7153 per dollar at 7 a.m. in New York from 13.3405 on April 24, the biggest drop among 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

Look, if you could increase your net worth by 2.8% overnight just by taking a (as of this writing) 1-in-1.2 million chance of contracting a deadly virus, would you do it?

Great Moments in Keyword-Generated Ad Placement

From the beeb:

Another Record Year!

Speaking of loading up on guns...the burgeoning weaponry-exportation sector continues to be the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak American economy.

In 2008, a year when more than 7,000 Mexicans were killed in drug violence, a record number of weapons confiscated in Mexico were traced to U.S. retailers, the largest percentage of them in Texas, according to the latest available government data obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

The number of traced firearms — 12,073 — is more than double the previous two years combined, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported.

We're under no illusions that this will stop the NRA/Fox News from peddling their dubious "17 percent" nonsense - and indeed, the ATF report doesn't specifically address it - but,

ATF officials, including Webb, acknowledge that the 90 percent figure represents only weapons that were traced. But he said the number — judging by his own 33 years' experience and ATF agent visits inside Mexican vaults holding seized guns — tells him that a majority of the untraced weapons are from the U.S. Webb said he produced a 1991 report on Mexican crime guns that, after tracing those listed in Mexican record books, found that a large majority even then were from the U.S.

“You're not going to have containers of guns coming from a lot of other countries,” Webb said. “Right now, the U.S. is the easiest place and cheapest place for them to buy their guns, and because that's the case, we're their number one source.”

One reason more is not known about the untraced guns is that the Mexican military, which demands custody over all confiscated weapons, has, for reasons of sovereignty, largely refused the ATF access to gun vaults and is not trained enough to identify and pass along the four or five identifiers on each gun required for a successful trace. To compensate, last year the ATF gave Mexico its E-Trace database system and some training to conduct tracings on its own.

It's funny how certain political interests, who generally believe (not entirely without reason) that Mexico can do nothing right, are willing to assume that when it comes to crime scene investigations, Mexico is brilliant enough to have pinpointed every single US-purchased gun in the past five years. In fact, CSI: Mexico City would look a lot like a Keystone Cops film - except, being set in Mexico, there'd be nothing silent about it.

Load Up On Guns, Bring Your Friends

We'll be away in New Hampshire for most of the day, with four small children and a rambunctious puppy. (America Does Not Torture, you say?) But, seriously, we love New Hampshire; we've traveled enough to know that indoor plumbing is no indication of a people's kindness and generosity.

So we'll leave you with this fantastic video, which we love because it represents the pinnacle of four billion years of human evolution, and because we're certain that if it proves wildly popular with a certain younger-than-us demographic, Les Moonves will insist that CBS start broadcasting the news this way.

Customize Burro Hall

Not the website - but the actual adobe-and-plaster version!

Because we live in a socialist, liberty-loathing hellhole, workers from the city will be coming by in a few weeks to re-plaster and re-paint our entire house for free. The bastards! Can universal healthcare be far behind?

The catch - there's always a catch, isn't there - is that they will only paint the house in one of 45 ruling-junta-approved colors (famous American capitalist Martha Stewart offers paying customers a choice of over 350). Burro Hall, you see, was an historic edifice even before we started this site - it was standing before America even existed (and will be standing long after she's gone, the neighbors often tell us with a menacing grin) - and as part of the city's "Operation 'Oh, Shit, UNESCO's Coming!' 2009," they're trying to repaint the Centro in historically accurate colors. On the newly-plastered and white-washed wall of our next door neighbors' house is the neighborhood color chart.


So a couple of weeks ago our landlord dropped by for a surprise inspection, and we asked him which color he'd like us to have the house done in. "Oh, you decide," he says. How much do we love this guy! But of course no one moves to Mexico because they want to take on more responsibility and decision-making, so we're turning this over to the Great Unwashed Masses (that's you.) Vote for your favorite color in comments, or via email, and unless the landlord exercises his veto power, or we uncover evidence that ACORN has tampered with the election again, we'll abide by your decision. It's hard to tell exactly (we have to admit, several of these colors look identical to us), but we think the facade is currently A3.

Vote early and often.

Livin' In a Gangsta's Paradise

The Instituto Queretano de la Mujer just released a study revealing the somewhat embarrassing fact that Querétaro ranks a dismal 13th in violence against women among all Mexican states (go ahead, click the link, but it's a local news story, so of course they wouldn't think to list what the other 12 states are). But we rank #1, in all of Mexico, in incidents of workplace violence against women!

Numero friggin' uno!

¡Querétaro es mejor!

They'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden

Our first reaction upon seeing the headline "Mexico's Beloved Burros Being Put Out to Pasture," was to think, "You treacherous pendejos! A palace coup as soon as el jefe goes out of town for a few days!" So we picked up the phone and had a couple of goons sent over to the office to teach the interns a lesson (by which we mean break their thumbs). Turns out, it was all something of a misunderstanding, though to compensate the interns for their broken digits would be an intolerable display of weakness on the part of el jefe, and would make the office all but ungovernable upon our return. Anyway, what the story really was about was:

This shelter for unwanted donkeys would have once seemed a laughable idea in Mexico, where the hard-working burro is practically a national symbol. These beasts of burden carried settlers over the Sierra Madre, hauled gold from mines and pulled plows through Mexican fields for centuries.

But Mexico's donkeys are quickly being replaced by pickup trucks and tractors even in the poorest areas, prompting efforts to save unwanted animals and remind Mexicans how much their country owes to burros.

"People love them, but there's not as much work for them anymore," said Luis Huerta, a member of the Donkey Sanctuary of Mexico, a group of veterinarians who help the Burroland shelter.

Are you crying as hard as we are right now? Because we know what it is to have outlived your professional usefulness and been bypassed by technology, and left to seek sanctuary in the Mexican wilderness, okay? Okay?

"They're not even worth 500 pesos ($38) these days," said German Flores, manager of Burroland. "The people who have burros are peasants over age 60 who still value the animal's work. The newer generations prefer a pickup or a tractor to a burro."

The animal's fate has inspired some efforts to save them. Donkey Sanctuary has begun sending a mobile veterinary clinic around Mexico to treat donkeys for free because farmers no longer want to spend money caring for them.

...The shelter's residents have colorful histories. Roberto used to pull a cart for a junk collector in Mexico City until a bus hit him head-on, breaking both front legs. Apache, a white burro with brown spots, was rescued from a forest fire.

Well, we're certainly not crying any less right now. The article goes on to explain how most of the Misfit Unloved Burros wind up at the 5l@ughterh0u5e [Ed note: we banished this word in 2007 because it tends to attract certain overly-eager commentors] but the lucky ones wind up at this modest shelter about 150 miles from Querétaro, which supports itself by doubling as "Burroland," which, good intentions aside, is possibly the most pathetic theme park in all the Americas.

The place is not exactly scenic: The donkeys wander among rusting 1940s-era cars scattered around the dirt lot.

Visitors are given donkey ears and tails to wear as they visit a small museum, complete with papier-mache burros.

There are puppet shows and burro rides. Children can pose for pictures with staff members dressed like the donkey from "Shrek" or Eeyore from "Winnie the Pooh." Admission is free.

There are plans to add a snack bar, so we'll probably wait a bit before making the trip ourselves. Hopefully the long, ugly court battle we're planning to wage over the ownership of the word "Burroland" will be over by then.

[Gracias to Richard for sending this along...]

Misc. Pointless Rambling

For the next week or so we'll be living up to the blogger stereotype by posting in our pajamas from our childhood bedroom while Mom makes us lunch - though in the interest of brand continuity, the house in Swampscott is being re-christened as The Burro Hall USA Senior Assisted-Living Center, at least through the end of the month. Now, stay the fuck off our lawn.

One Mexico has going for it is that the lack of universal access to computers means they don't have Craigslist killers. On the other hand, Swampscott doesn't have those clacking anal-beads. Given the choice, we think we'll take the killer.

It's also weird to realize that, while Querétaro has a population of 730,000, and Boston's is over 600,000, yr. corresp. was the only person to have flown the QRO-BOS route yesterday (we have no data on BOS-QRO, but would be willing to wager). Hopefully our campaign to unite the two as Sister Cities - which we're totally gonna get around to soon - will change this.

Finally, it was nice to see this piece in the Times today on the growing interest in mezcal - its appearance in the Times means the trend will peter out by summertime, but anything that puts pesos in the pockets of Oaxacan artisans is okay by us. This kinda shocked us, though:

High-quality mezcal is not cheap, because it takes time to make. An agave plant produces fruit only after six to eight years, and then the plant dies.

Sombra retails for $47 a bottle; Los Amantes is $52 for the joven, which doesn’t receive any aging, and $57 for a reposado, which is lightly aged.

Jeebus. We recently paid about $15 for a very nice bottle at the liquor storne next to the dreaded WalMart. Remind us again why you haven't visited? (Oh yeah, the clacking ass-beads. Good call.)

Freeze!

More special pleading from the Failed State of Arizona yesterday:

PHOENIX, April 20 (Reuters) - Arizona's governor and two U.S. senators urged the federal government on Monday to send hundreds of additional troops to secure the porous Mexican border, along which ruthless drug cartels are waging bloody turf wars....

Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican defeated by the Democrat Obama in the November 2008 presidential election, also called on Washington to allocate additional resources including troops to the border.

"Additional federal action is urgently needed, and failure to do more puts at risk the security and safety of our citizens each and every day," McCain told the hearing.

Senator Jon Kyl, another Arizona Republican, said resources including Border Patrol check points on highways and greater resources for the justice system in the state were also needed. "It is a whole system that needs to be properly resourced," he told Reuters before the hearing.

And yet, just six short weeks ago, both these guys voted to freeze Federal spending in the middle of an huge recession. McCain, in fact, proposed it. So please shut the fuck up and enjoy your 2008-level border security, muchachos!

Good Boy

Barack Obama and the president of Mexico's family dog conclude their talks on cross-border arms and narcotics trafficking, Mexico City, April 16, 2009. (Whitehouse.gov.)

Querétaro: Home of Free Kittens!

Walking home from happy hour the other night, the perro pulled over to one of his favorite rest stops and literally peed on the head of this adorable little kitty-cat. If history were any indicator, we'd have taken him home and added him to the growing menagerie. But after toying very briefly with the idea - and figuring out just how quickly the other two cats would shred him, we decided to leave him to his fate, but with a small pile of cat food to get him through the night. (Given the violence with which the spare cat reacted to our taking away a fistful of his food, we were sure we were making the right decision.) By the time we walked back there, a pair of teenagers had scooped up the kitty and informally adopted him, and soon found themselves being lectured patronizingly by a middle-aged gringo on the responsibility of caring for a pet, which they endured with minimal eye-rolling before accepting a few ounces of cat chow and going on their way. So, happy ending.

The Oprah of Latin America

If we ever do write a book, we're gonna be sure to send a couple dozen review copies to Hugo Chavez.

Sales Soar of Book Chavez Gave Obama

Just after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a present this morning of a book that criticizes the role of the United States in Latin America -- "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano -- its Amazon sales rank was No. 54,295.

Just a few minutes ago it was No. 20.

Previously:

Chavez boosts Chomsky book sales

A book by left-wing US author Noam Chomsky has reached a bestsellers' list after Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez praised it at the UN last week.

A speech by Mr Chavez cited Chomsky's 2003 critique of US policy, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, as an "excellent book".

Vexation Without Representation

Man, will we be glad when election season is over. Between the IFE canvassers, the door-to-door propagandists, the flyers shoved through the window, through the mail slot and stuck to the windsheild, the radio ads, the TV ads and, as if this place weren't noisy enough to begin with, the roving roof-mounted loudspeakers and the heavily-amplified rallies in the Plaza (like the one happening right fucking now!) - well, we were about to say we'd find it all less annoying if we were actually able to vote, but now having seen this list written out on the screen, we're not even sure that's true.

These two gents are the PAN pre-candidates for the governor's seat being vacated by Paco "El Goofball" Garrido (there's a one-term limit for just about every office in Mexico, which is why none of the elected officials know jack-shit about their own jobs). And since PAN will almost certainly win here - the other parties are fielding candidates, but we think there just may be some rule requiring them to do so - whoever wins tomorrow's primary will most likely be the next governor of Querétaro. We think we're probably going to miss El Goofball.

Manuel Gonzalez Valle [left] is currently the mayor, and if the guy were any more Aryan-looking he could probably run for governor of Bavaria. We've seen him around town a few times, and he strikes us as a reasonably nice guy, but then that's what the killer's neighbors always tell the TV cameras while the police excavate the underground torture chamber.


Armando Rivera, on the other hand, looks about as oily as the Valdez coastline - the kind of guy who would steal soup from a soup kitchen if only his pants had rubber pockets. Rivera preceded Gonzalez as mayor, and someone explained to us that he's most likely to win because it's simply considered bad form to go directly from mayor to governor without a rest in between. We like the idea of him winning* because, while we have no idea whether he's actually more corrupt than Gonzalez, we think he'd be more cartoonishly obvious about it. We do have a blog to feed here.

The only mayoral candidate we've heard of is Guadalupe Murguía, who seems to get a lot of coverage focusing not on her platform or qualifications, but on the fact that she thinks she could be mayor despite having lady parts, which is apparently still a novel idea in this town.

*Not an endorsement.

Live From the Battlefield

We can't recommend highly enough Melissa Del Bosque's report in the current Texas Observer on life in El Paso, which has the distinction of being the most dangerous place in America with regard to "spillover" from the Mexcian drug war, and also....not that dangerous!

Consider this gem from former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now a consultant for ABC News, commenting on Juarez: “There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border, and it’s stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq.”

After weeks of hearing the war drums beat louder and louder, Sito Negron, editor of El Paso’s online daily news journal, Newspaper Tree, recently decided he’d had enough. An insurgency on both sides? he thought, listening to Clarke’s prime-time pronouncement. Are you kidding me?

According to the FBI, more than 1,600 people were killed by cartel violence in Juarez in 2008. El Paso, a city of 755,000, recorded just 18 murders last year. Laredo had 11; Brownsville and McAllen had three and nine, respectively. By comparison, Washington, D.C., with a population smaller than El Paso’s, had 186 homicides in 2008.

Go read the whole thing. There'll be a quiz.

This is the Morning Song That King David Sang

Big birthday greetings to our Dad up in Massachusetts today! At age 66, he's been officially retired for one year now! So of course we called him at work, and he was in some marathon meeting or something, and since it's already 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, we're not hanging around the Burro Hall editorial offices much longer (2-por-1 hora feliz cervezas don't drink themselves, you know). But to cover our asses, here's a rendition of "Las Mañanitas," which is the dirge Mexicans sing to each other on their birthdays because they love to feel melancholy.

Did you make it to the end without hanging yourselves? Sweet, weeping Jesus. The forced jollity of the party hats somehow made us even sadder. Anyway, because we take our educational mission seriously (insofar as it allows us tax-exempt status), these are the lyrics:

This is the morning song that King David sang
Because today is your saint's day we're singing it for you
Wake up, my dear, wake up, look it is already dawn
The birds are already singing and the moon has set

How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you
We all came with joy and pleasure to congratulate you
The morning is coming now, the sun is giving us its light
Get up in the morning, look it is already dawn

The day you were born all the flowers were born
On the baptismal font the nightingales sang
I would like to be the sunshine to enter through your window
to wish you good morning while you're lying in your bed

I would like to be a Saint John I would like to be a Saint Peter
To sing to you with the music of heaven
Of the stars in the sky I have to lower two for you
One with which to greet you and the other to wish you goodbye

This is actually a remarkably complicated song, considering little children are expected to sing it at birthday parties. American kids are going to have to ditch "Happy Birthday to You" if they want to stay competitive in the world.

Update: Our sister's birthday was yesterday, so please click "Play" one more time. Sorry. Thanks.

Guess We Can Take the Canadian Flag Off Our Backpacks Now

What a strange feeling - the president of the United States comes for a visit, and we didn't have to spend the day apologizing to the neighbors.

It was difficult to find Mexico's traditional anti-Americanism Thursday in the crowds straining to glimpse President Obama -- or even in the small protests staged to attract his attention.

"I love Obama!" gushed Arleth Cardenas, a 20-year-old student who joined scores of Mexicans in Chapultepec Park, near where the American president would be dining later. "He really does care about people's problems and is against the rich and in favor of the poor. I hope when he passes by he will stop and say hi."

Crowds pressed against the miles of metal fencing that authorities set up to keep the streets clear. More than 5,000 agents, including federal police and army soldiers dressed as civilians, fanned out through the tony Polanco neighborhood where Obama was staying.

"To meet Obama would be a dream come true," said Jose Antonio Torres Aldama, 20. "He is a real leader, and in Mexico at this time we do not have a real leader, someone like Obama who can inspire the masses."

In fairness, his predecessor - what was his name again? - also drew crowds back in March 2007.

Anything...For a Lady

We just though we'd give all the local ladies some time to hit the Stairmaster by announcing a few weeks in advance that the annual "talent" contest known as Miss Querétaro will be holding its first round of dream-crushing tryouts on May 11. In addition to being a single woman between 18 and 23, taller than 5'5", in good health and in possession of a beautiful face and body (that's what it says), the organizers have added a new requirement this year: "a basic familiarity with English."

We post this for two reasons: 1) Just to start trouble. Because if requiring Miss Querétaro to speak the yanqui tongue isn't at least as great an affront to national pride as a hamburger ad, then we really don't understand the Mexican soul.

And of course, 2) To offer our services. Any señoritas need help boning up on the yanqui tongue, pues, mi lengua es tu lengua.

Reliable Sources

In case you need another reason not to trust Wikipedia:

Profiles in Courage

The bar has been set consistently high in the "Dumbest Attempt at Making Mexico Appear Too Dangerous to Visit" sweepstakes, but we think USA Today just pole-vaulted over it!

Obama takes gamble on trip to Mexico City

Obama is plunging into Mexico City, a chaotic, crime-ridden metropolis of 20 million people where street protests snarl traffic nearly every day — the kind of place that gives headaches to Secret Service agents and motorcade drivers alike.

...The trip is a gamble, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston who is writing a book about presidential travel and speeches.

"This is a really potentially dangerous area, a place in a country that is fraught with these security problems," he said. "They're walking a very fine line."

Although there have been no attacks on foreign dignitaries in Mexico City, the capital has become a flashpoint in President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug cartels. Police recently captured two alleged kingpins, Vicente Carrillo Leyva of the Juarez Cartel and Vicente Zambada Niebla of the Sinaloa Cartel, in the city. Last year, drug gangs gunned down Mexico's federal police chief and a top intelligence official in the city.

Barack Obama, for those of you who may not know this, is the president of the United States, and so we're pretty sure he's not going to get robbed in the back of a VW Beetle taxi. Also, unless the cartel leaders have gone certifiably insane over the weekend, we're confident that their cost/benefit analysis would come down in favor of not assassinating the American president.

You know who Mexico City is dangerous for? The president of Mexico. And he lives and works there every day.

As Promised

Your non-apology apology:

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Burger King is saying "have it your way" after the Mexican government complained about an ad campaign featuring a diminutive wrestler dressed in a cape resembling a Mexican flag.

The company pledged Tuesday to pull the ads for its chili-flavored "Texican" hamburger, saying they were "not intended to offend anyone."

"BKC (Burger King Corp.) has made the decision to revise the Texican Whopper advertising creative out of respect for the Mexican culture and its people," the company said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

Burger King, which is known for its signature Whopper hamburger, said it would air redesigned ads "as soon as commercially possible."

"The revised campaign will focus solely on the Texican Whopper sandwich and will not feature any characters or the use of the Mexican flag," the company said.

..."It was our intention to promote a product whose culinary origin lies in both the American and Mexican cultures, and was meant to appeal to those who enjoy the flavors and ingredients that each country offers," the company said.

Oddly, the apology does not cover (nor does it change) the fact that the company is selling a burger "topped with delicious taco coated chilli [sic] con carne," which...c'mon, that's just fucking disgusting. Disgusting!

If you want to co-opt "Mexican culture and its people," may we suggest the BK Escamole Deluxe?

Me and a Gun

There's a book fair on the Jardin today, and since women reading books are a well-known target for Taliban terrorists, the Centro is obviously being patrolled by heavily armed military units in head-to-toe kevlar. As we were walking past there this morning we stopped to take a picture of a truck full of soldiers manning a roof-mounted machine gun - not for the gun so much as for the fact they were all clad in jungle camouflage, and thus easily visible against the yellow adobe walls. Suddenly, another soldier came up behind up as ordered us not to take pictures of the soldiers.

"Oh, we're sorry, we didn't see the soldiers there," we replied, smugly satisfied that the cammo joke had gone over his head. That's when we noticed the other truck full of soldiers behind him, with two of them pointing M16s right at us. Now this is the second time in six weeks that an under-trained farm boy has pointed a semiautomatic weapon at us with the safety switched off and, frankly, this does not become more amusing with repetition. It's fucking book fair, pendejos. Everybody calm the fuck down.

And more importantly: US Citizen; foreign soldier; loaded weapon...where was Obama?!

Update: We see he's hopping a plane here day after tomorrow. Oh, you boys are fucked now!

Careers We Didn't Realize Were Actual Careers

From the Times coverage of Obama's heroic hostage rescue:

Jamey Cummings, another former member of the Seals who is now an executive headhunter, said most Seal platoons of 16 had at least two snipers who were essential to the tactics of the group. “It’s a common misperception that Seals like to sneak up on people and use knives on them,” he said. “If you have to do that, the mission was probably not planned that way.”

We're wondering exactly what "executive headhunter" means here.

Hold The Pickles, Hold The Midget

The latest chapter in Mexico's epic, Ahab-esque quest to find things to be offended about is this ad for the new Burger King "Texican Whopper" currently running in Spain. Taken individually, Mexican food and Burger King food can both give you the runs. But together! My God, you'll never get off the toilet - United by Destiny indeed.

What immediately jumps out, of course, is the contrast. America is represented as a tall handsome Marlboro man whose chaps draw the eye towards his own Double Whopper, whereas Mexico is represented by, well, the other guy. This article quotes an outraged Mexcian tourist in Spain calling the ad "subliminal," though we'd suggest that a short, fat midget in a lucha libre mask, wearing the Mexican flag as a serape, could better be described as "liminal." Nothing "sub" about it.

But the problem - since many Mexicans are short and fat, and at least as many wear lucha masks as Americans wear chaps - is the use of the Mexican flag, which always gets you in trouble, and is in fact against the law. We'll bring you Burger King's public non-apology apology when it happens. But for now, we're on a quest to find the Texican here, if only to see whether Burger King's corporate ballsiness extends to trying to sell Mexican-ish food to Mexicans, literally wrapped in their own flag.

Update: there's video as well...

We'll call this "Brokeback Montaña."

Boyz N The Hoods

The Procession of Silence was Friday night.We always find it amusing because in Mexico, "silence" means drumming, the rattling of chains, screaming vendors and, of course, clacking anal-beads. But it's an impressive display nonetheless, one for which we always dispatch our corps of photographers, only to realize that it looks exactly the same every year. So you can see a few pictures here, here and here, without us having to post more.

What can you say about someone who would parade barefoot through the streets of a city, wearing a hood and a robe, dragging a chain behind them and carrying a 100-pound cross? We'd dare say these people are seriously religious - we'd probably seek to prevent them from signing up for flight school, actually, even though they worship the good god - but at the very least, they'd seem to be religious in a money-is-no-object kind of way. And yet participation in the Procession was down 25% this year, largely because "la crisis," as they call the global financial meltdown here, made the 350 peso fee too burdensome. (The money covers a two-day spiritual retreat beforehand; why the Church can't spring for this, we're not quite sure.) Three hundred and fifty pesos is about 27 dollars. Just a reminder that there are lot of people here for whom 27 bucks is a significant amount of money, even though failure to produce it risks incurring God's wrath.

Anyway, here's the perro, an animal with no sense of his own sinfulness, watching the Procession.

Cross to Bear

Organized by the Jesús el Buen Pastor Shelter in Tapachula, Chiapas, a group of two dozen people staged their own Via Crucis on Friday

Men, women, children and the elderly, in wheelchairs or on crutches, for two hours and under a blistering sun, took turns carrying a wooden cross, singing and praying, together with dozens of Catholic faithful.

Buen Pastor is a shelter primarily for Central American migrants who have lost a limb (or limbs) falling from (or under) the freight trains they hop to get to the United States. We like this story for a couple of reasons - first, it's a reminder that, for every Mexican who risks death trying to cross into the Failed State of Arizona, there's a Central or South American who risked death crossing the entire length of Mexico before risking death in Arizona. Call us soft, but it seems to us that if someone wants to wash dishes that badly, letting them in might be the Christian thing to do.

But also, it reminds us of one of the better arguments against the whole "God" meme: that while he's always "miraculously" healing people with cellular-level problems like tumors and blood diseases, there are, as we see here, plenty of pious, devoted and deserving Christian amputees out there. And yet not once, in the history of the world, has he ever restored one of their limbs. It strikes us as a strange and somewhat meanspirited omission, no?

Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To DIe

Ever wonder what would have happened if Jesus had escaped from the Romans and lived well into middle age? Well, assuming he was also Mexican (stick with us, we're going somewhere with this), he would probably have looked like José Luis Rodríguez Rodríguez, a paunchy, graying attorney from Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, who, at age 49, just played Jesus in the city's Via Crucis (he appears to have touched up the whiskers for the occasion, using a little "Just For Son of Man".) What's remarkable is that he's been doing this for 33 consecutive years. Yes, he's been playing the Messiah for as long as a certain Nazarene carpenter did.

Because nothing is more important to Mexico than world records, Rodríguez is demanding recognition from the Guinness Book for...well, it's not clear to our researchers, but he appears to believe he holds the world record for Most Consecutive Years Playing Jesus in the Ciudad Victoria Via Crusis. Only (again, this is all somewhat unclear) Guinness won't certify the record until he coughs up 1,000 euros which for some reason - despite being an attorney and, y'know, Jesus - he's been unable to come up with. This is the first we've ever heard of Guinness charging world record holders for their own records (we doubt Meme Uribe paid for the honor), but more importantly, Ciudad Victoria, population 300,000, doesn't have one other bearded guy in his early 30s willing to do this thing?

Okay, Taliban...You Win This Round

Bill O'Reilly could get a whole week of shows out of La Cañada.

The Longest Story Ever Told

Holy shit, we had no idea that something as simple as a crucifixion would involve so much standing around under the searing hot Mexican (semi)desert sun. But rather than just jumping into the part everyone came to see, the Via Crusis at La Cañada first acts out the entire last half of the New Testament, without omitting a single word or detail. We were worried Jesus was going to die of natural causes before the thing was over. Anyway, our staff photographer sent back these pictures.


Jesús was played this year in an unbilled performance by Luis Guzmán.


Music by the USC Trojans Marching Band (also unbilled - this has got to be some sort of union issue).


Driving the money changers from the temple was easy. The taco vendors, not so much.


Here, the Querétaro State Police watch as the centurions flog and torture Jesús. Because the Bible has something to teach everyone.

After about four hours of Passion Play - which, let us say here, is obviously the biggest, most expensive event of the year in La Cañada, and is actually very well done; the costumes are authentic, the actors can kinda sorta act - the scene shifts from the center of town to a parched, craggy hilltop about a mile away.


The crowd was appropriately reverent. The gentleman above almost left the house wearing his "I Choked Linda Lovelace" t-shirt, but at the last minute, thought better of it. During the actual crucifixion (and by 'actual,' we mean 'fake'; Mexicans are crazy, but not, like Filipino crazy [note: don't click that link]) the silence was broken several times by vendors crying "paletas-paletas-paletas..." of which the Fenway Park equivalent would be "heyICEcream heah..." Given the bread-and-circus culture that prevailed in the Roman Empire, this was probably an authentic touch, but jarring nonetheless.


Jesús thinks you're a jerk! Seriously, we've been standing on this god-forsaken rock for an hour and a half waiting to see a crucifixion, and when it happens, you open up a beach umbrella? Homeboy's dying for your sins, and you can't stand a little direct sunlight on the top of your pumpkin?

Anyway, this forced our photographer to move lightly to the left, allowing him to capture the one artsy image this no-talent hack managed to shoot for us.



He wanted to call it "Crown of Thorns," but our editor preferred "The Mexiah."

Update: What is it with Good Friday and Girls Gone Wild?

But You Don't Really Care For Music, Do You?

I've heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord... We're not sure what that chord was, but we don't think our least favorite neighbor manages to hit it here. He's sort of a neighborhood fixture, which means we probably ought to find him charming and eccentric but, really, he's just kind of a dildo.

We'd like to report that this captures his performance in its entirety, but he parked himself in front of the church down the street for another hour and a half. This was shot at 8:30 this morning.

You'll See It's All a Show / Keep 'em Laughing As You Go

Because we can, we're heading over to La Cañada to catch the crucifixion. Here's someone's video from last year (spoiler alert!):

That was last year. This year we're bustin' him out.

Unchain My Heart

From a police pamphlet dealing with Holy Week safety and security we find (in the section gently reminding us that things like carrying open containers of alcohol are in fact illegal) the Euphemism of the Month: it is against the law, dear reader, "to do physiological necessities in public."


Now, we're not completely obtuse - we know what they mean to say is "don't shit in the dancing fountains" - but, as written, it appears to be against the law for your heart to beat outside of your home, or for your kidneys to filter impurities from the bloodstream. We're not sure just how enforceable this is, but given the peacock-like display being put on by the QPD this week, it might make sense for us to stay indoors until at least Monday.

(The two previous items, "Committing moral failings" and "Causing scandal in a state of inebriation," are also the kind of things we can see ourselves running into trouble with - though at least they're more subjective than "breathing and circulating blood" [one man's scandal is another man's "mistakes were made"], so our attorneys would have something to work with. Basically, we'll just be glad when Semana Santa is over.)

Balanced Coverage

A two-part headline this morning from Reuters:

Mexico Troops Calm Border City;...

Great news! Anything else? (Wait for it....wait for it...)

...Mayhem Shifts

D'oh!

Heat

Somewhat embarrassingly, at the very moment we were typing up Monday's post about Semana Santa's security overkill, four assailants, including (awesome!) two women, were engaged in a six-hour running fire fight with police after trying to rob a pawn shop with a mini-arsenal that included an AK-47 and an AR-15. (Note to Fox News: seventeen'll get you ninety I can tell you where these came from.)

In what had to be an unplanned bit of fortunate timing, the robbers pulled their job while every cop in town was a mile and a half away at the Semana Santa photo-op. Unfortunately, this meant that when they did show up, literally the entire police force came at once. At which point our over-armed and under-trained officers, enjoying vast numerical and ballistic superiority, somehow managed to allow a simple armed robbery to turn into a six-hour running gun battle through the streets of a crowded city. Three people were injured, one of them seriously.

Update: Upon closer reading, we see that there were nine robbers involved, meaning that, with every cop in the city on scene, five of the robbers managed to get away. Nice. Also, one of the wounded was a tourist who got winged with a bullet while eating breakfast at a nearby hotel. Spring break of course, is still perfectly safe.

Animals Strike Curious Poses

We promise we're not trying to turn this into one of those cute-pet blogs, but this morning our executive editor walked into the office and thought the spare cat had been gunned down in a hit intended for one of us. In fact, this is just how he sleeps.

We don't understand the feline anatomy enough to know how this could possibly be comfortable.

Welcome to My Nightmare

They say it is better to try and to fail than to never try at all, but Sushi Dor, the new Japanese restaurant which opened two blocks down from us, offers us proof that, many times in life, it is simply better not to bother.

If there's one thing we'd like to see succeed in this town (beside an actual bar with a bartender who knows what the hell he's doing), it's a sushi place. Seriously, if you were a polar bear, and you saw us tearing into a jumbo platter after being away from the State for a few months you'd say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa...slow down! Chew!" And now there's a sushi place a hundred yards away.

Correction: a Mexican sushi place. Not only is everything made with cream cheese ("philadelphia"; note the philadelphia maki, which is cream cheese wrapped in cream cheese), but nothing - nothing! is made with fish. (Surimi doesn't count.) This bears repeating: on our street is a restaurant called Sushi Dor that offers a no fish, all cream cheese and avocado menu. They call their dishes "Makis Tradicionales," but we can't even begin to imagine what "tradition" they're referring to. Speaking of traditions, we wonder if the proprietors have ever heard of Seppuku.

(For what it's worth, we think cream cheese and surimi might be pretty good on a bagel. But let's not even talk about how unlikely that is.)

Spillover

This "border fence" idea may have some merit after all.

Mexico Arrests US Man Accused of Raping 19 Women

Texas man has been arrested for allegedly raping 19 women across the border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said Monday.

Jorge Alberto Mendez, 42, was arrested Saturday while trying to cross into Mexico from El Paso, Texas, where he lives, said regional Deputy Attorney General Alejandro Pariente.

Pariente said the investigation began in April 2008 with the rape of a 15-year-old girl. Similar cases were subsequently reported.

...In 2007, a New Mexico man was accused of repeatedly crossing into Ciudad Juarez and raping at least 13 women in their homes.

It's Not All About You

Mexico's political class (and a lot of her citizen) have a habit - frankly, endearing, if you ask us - of thinking that everything that happens in the world happens because of, or in reaction to, Mexico. So yesterday we get a major report released by a group of PRI congressmen announcing that "Gun sales in the US rose 10% in the first trimester of the year...owing to the great number of gun shops and gun shows in the cities and towns bordering Mexico."

Silly amigos, gun sales in the US are up because we elected a liberal black president! Seriously, arming your drug cartels is sort of an afterthought, not a national project.

Centurions

Semana Santa commemorates the week in which a long-haired, left-leaning out-of-towner was picked up by an overly-militarized police force on frankly bullshit charges, denounced by a howling, terrified mob, severely mistreated while in official custody, hauled before a marginally-functioning kangaroo court without a lawyer, found guilty and then executed without appeal.

In that spirit, the city of Querétaro this morning launched Operation Semana Santa 2009, which promises to turn this sleepy little burg into a quasi-military police state, just in case the Battle of Armageddon somehow takes place in the Bajio de Mexico some time in the next seven days. The entire heavily-armed police force was on display, along with all the students at the police academy, who will be drafted into service for the week despite not actually having, y'know, completed the police academy. Batons and riot shield were passed out to a smaller, presumably elite unit, and the rapid-response motorcycle squad lined the street, standing at attention and more than living up to their official acronym, GRIM.

At times like this it's worth reiterating that Querétaro is almost laughably safe, with the local newspapers running half-page stories about shoplifters. Cars that have had their radios ripped off tend to get front-page play. There have been four narco-related killings in the entire state (pop. a million and a half) this year, and even those were out-of-state victims who got dumped on this side of the state line. In short, it's not the kind of place where the Easter parade needs to be guarded by Kevlar-clad soldiers manning roof-mounted belt-fed machine guns.



We sure would hate to be a long-haired, left-leaning out-of-towner this week.

Bigger Than Jesús

This is an illusion of perspective, but only slightly. Thanks to a 4,000 calories-a-day diet, the spare cat is well on his way to becoming the largest domesticated animal on the premises. We're posting this for our young amigas Scarlett and Francesca, who tell us they'd like to see more pet pictures. Sorry girls, the main cat doesn't do interviews anymore.

Burro-Hauled

Luke 19:29-44. (Spanish translation ours):

And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a burro tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither.

And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.

And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them. And as they were loosing the burro, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the burro?

And they said, The Lord hath need of him.

And He mounted the burro, and rode triumphantly through the gates of Jerusalem. Whereupon, if we remember our Mel Gibson correctly, He got the holy living shit kicked out of Him.

Rideth not the burro, people.

So sayeth the Lord.

Withering Heights

We're back, and it's late, and we're turning the clocks ahead tonight (no, Mexico's not slow, the US just unilaterally decided to move it up a couple weeks and, hey, when the US decides to go it alone, what could possible go wrong?) So the pictures of adorable huapanguero kids will have to wait.

But pending review by the accountants and our outside legal counsel, we want to take this opportunity to announce the creation of our very own 501(c)3 charitable foundation, Burro Hall Cares, which will dedicate itself to raising money and establishing schools to teach the indigenous people of the Sierra Gorda how to build and operate their own aluminum extrusion plants so that they can assemble and install several hundred miles of motherfucking guardrails along their twisting, turning, high-altitude mountain roadways.

We'll be announcing a major celebrity spokesman some time in the next couple of weeks, but until then you can contribute via PayPal to the email on the right. Won't you give generously?

By The Time We Got to Woodstock

We'll be taking an hours-long death ride into the Sierra Gorda today to catch the last day of the San Joaquín Huapango Festival. Imagine Woodstock, but with a lineup consisting mostly of yodeling, violin-playing farm boys. It is, admittedly, an acquired taste. So let's work on that. Here's the Trío Misión Queretana playing their Huapango el queretano, here in Querétaro (this would be like CSN playing their version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" at Woodstock, we think).

Like heavy metal, huapango tends to be a guy thing, but girl groups aren't unheard of. So the Perlitas Queretanas would be the Runaways of the 'pango world.

Finally, here's a short video promoting San Joaquín as a tourist destination. Much in the way Borat promoted Kazakhstan:

Some Things Just Feel Rigth Together

We're not sure if this is an example of consolidation or diversification, but welcome to Billy's Tattoo Parlor & Escritorio Publico, a place where you can get yourself inked while you wait for your documents to be typed up.* One stop shopping, because Mexico's all about the customer service! We've been thinking of decorating a biceps with the official Burro Hall logo (a snorting, kicking donkey with enormous testicles wearing an Uncle Sam top hat), and maybe adding a codicil or two to our will.



* [An escritorio publico is a service where people who don't have computer or typewriter or (often) the ability to write can get documents typed up. Some official documents here, like our address registration, have to be typewritten. So despite owning four computers, we've used this escritorio publico on occasion - before it merged with the tattoo parlor.]

Update: Oh my God, this is so much worse than we thought. We took a spin through the Billy's Tattoos website because, well, you never know, and came upon their version of the Angelina Jolie special:



Needless to say, we're never getting any important documents typed up there again.

Spillover

Luckily, SUNY Binghamton's spring break starts today, so while most of the students weren't down here in Mexico, they at least were probably out of Binghamton.

Paved With Good Intentions

Our beautifully handcrafted artisanal sidewalks have a lot of hollow pockets in them - spaces used for piping and wiring and whatever other slapped-together infrastructure needs the city may have. It never seems to dawn on anyone that, being hollow, these parts of the sidewalk ought to be made stronger than the rest of it, the result being a great number of treacherous holes in the middle of the sidewalk where fat schoolchildren have broken though the pavement while on their way to buy two-liter bottles of Coke.

Fortunately, you can always count on some quick-thinking Good Samaritan to take an enormous rock and plunk it down on top of the hole in the middle of the sidewalk, thus eliminating the hazard and ensuring pedestrians' safety.


We took this picture after we managed to crawl back onto the sidewalk, having protected our camera by landing face-first. (Always keep your breakables in a backpack behind you, kids. That's just common sense.)

Stupid Like a Fox

The "free guns for everybody" crowd over at the NRA has been feeling a little heat lately on the whole issue of American guns being smuggled into Mexico, So apparently they walked down the hall to their public affairs office (operating under the name "Fox News") and put out a story titled "The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S." which promises to debunk the notion that 90 percent of the guns used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the US.

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.

By all accounts. If by "all," you mean "this one."

Fox points out, correctly, that the 90 percent number comes from the fact that "that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S." Indeed, this is an important distinction. Of all the guns whose origins can be figured out, more than 90 percent come from the US.

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

Note the subtle twist, ICE says not every gun has a serial number on it. Fox says this means "it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S." What markings? The scratched-off serial number?

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

By all accounts, that leaves 17 percent. If you simply assume that every gun that was, for whatever reason (Mexican cops being legendarily inept crime scene investigators), never submitted for tracing did not come from the US, and that every gun that, for whatever reason, could not be successfully traced did not come from the US, then one can, by all accounts, say that a mere 17 percent of the guns came from the United States.

Also, if you assume that every unreported and unsolved crime in the United States in the last ten years was committed by a Mexican carrying an non-American gun, then, by all accounts, Mexican guns flowing into the US are a much greater problem than US guns are in Mexico.

See how easy this is?

Update: The MexFiles makes/passes along and excellent point:



While Fox does get points for highlighting a secondary issue… that some of these guns are legal exports to Mexican police agencies and end up in the hands of gangsters, means those guns ALSO came from U.S. sources. It’s no secret that guns sent under State Department license end up in illegal arsenals. Bill Conroy, who has been following the “NarcoWars” for years writes in Narco News:



The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.



These “legal” purchases account for most of the Korean grenades , Israeli rocket launchers, old Soviet and other “foreign” weapons… which are legally (through State Department license) imported into the United States for resale to supposedly legitimate users. And, as it is, these exotic weapons only account for a fraction of the criminal arsenal … good old American 50-cals and AR-15s outnumber (I was gonna say “outgun”) the AKs and rocket launchers by a huge margin. I wish I could say that they only made 17% of the gangsters’ tool kit, but I doubt it’s even that high. Just that rocket launchers tend to get our attention, and get more press.

Walking Tall

Superstition Ain't The Way

One of the Spanish conquistadors' main objectives in Mexico (aside from looting the country's precious minerals and enslaving much of the population) was to convert the native savages to Christianity - to force them to abandon their silly superstitions in favor of the One True Faith. Thanks to the very effective government-sponsored "Convert or Die" program, this was largely successful. Which is why, five centuries later, when Hillary Clinton wonders aloud who painted the magnificently detailed portrait of the Virgen of Guadalupe that hangs in the Basilica, she manages to touch off an international scandal.

"God!" replied the Monsignor, in what's widely being reported as an "Oh, Snap!" kind of moment. Because, yeah, that's exactly how the image got there, silly girl! Now, admittedly, Madame Secretary could have been better briefed on the native superstitions by her staff, but we just see this as further proof that she gets most of her Mexico information from Burro Hall. We'll just point out that her predecessor didn't know how many political parties Mexico had, and that, really, as Secretary of State gaffes go, it's kinda hard to top this one, you know?

But Semana Santa is coming up, and right on cue, the "miraculous" Easter trees are blooming purple (apparently the official color of the Resurrection) all across Querétaro. We could try to explain that these miraculous jacaranda trees are, um, trees. And trees bloom in the Spring. Which is when Easter is. Etc. But for the sake of getting along with the neighbors, we'll just agree, for now, that God painted them.