Burro Hall Car Seat Giveway Madness!!

The last time we brought up the issue of child car seats, we have to say we were somewhat taken aback by the strength of the anti-car seat sentiment out there. Arguments ran the gamut from child car seats are expensive, to raising children to adulthood is a lot more expensive than hosing them out of the wreckage at an early age, which, we must confess, we're still unable to counter. It would be wrong to say that these arguments put a price tag on a child's life, but they do at least give us a range - the bottom end of which would seem to be about 200 US dollars.

Still, because the internets were sort of tailor-made for lonely cranks, we're going to continue our no-time-limit offer to buy child car seats for anyone whose photograph gets printed here, and who contacts us with a letter of apology for endangering the life of their child.


If this week's winner, for lack of a better word, seems a little big for a car seat, that's an optical illusion, because Dad is driving a Mini Cooper (owned by BMW, starting price US$23,900). Our little man is not completely unprotected, as you can see from the state-of-the-art glass and plastic angel hanging from the rearview, but we still believe that a seat belt would not be too much to ask. We're sympathetic to the argument that the Mini Cooper is such an insanely bad choice for driving in Mexico - why not just put your family on roller skates? - that a child seat is sort of superfluous, but if you're shelling out for top-of the line Bavarian engineering (hey, is that a fully-retractable sunroof?) we strongly believe you can afford a car seat from Wal-Mart. Burro Hall operators are standing by.

The Man in the Mirror

Remember that old Simpsons episode about a big, fat, psychiatric patient who thought he was Michael Jackson (voiced, of course, by Michael Jackson)? We were reminded of it when perusing the YouTube Channel of "Estefan Jackson," who we've seen named in a number of news stories as "Mexico's top Michael Jackson impersonator." We're quite certain Estefan started his career as "Mexico's top late-period Elvis impersonator," before deciding to branch out.

12 More Deaths Overshadowed by Michael Jackson's

Querétaro is generally pretty insulated from the drug war crap, but every now and then it feels like the craziness is closing in. To whit, today's news out of Apaseo El Alto, which is about an hour from here.

State and federal security forces killed 12 presumed gangsters Friday morning in a small Central Mexico village as the government’s crackdown on organized crime intensifies.

The battle in Apaseo El Alto, about 150 miles north of Mexico City and an hour’s drive from the popular resort town of San Miguel Allende, began when gunmen tried to repel officers who came to arrest them. Soldiers as well as federal and Guanajuato state police returned fire, authorities said.

Three police officers were injured, one of them seriously, officials said.

Police had stepped up operations in the area after the recent arrests of Apaseo El Alto’s two top police officials on suspicion of working for La Familia, a violent drug syndicate based in neighboring Michoacan state, Guanajuato Gov. Juan Manuel Oliva said Friday.

When the top police officials have been removed under suspicion of drug ties, and then the cops and the cartels start gunning each other down, it;s hard to know who to cheer for. As for Apaseo, we spent a delightful afternoon there about a year and a half ago, though as we wrote at the time, "a lot of people looked as if they might have personal knowledge of a hidden airstrip somewhere in the valley."

Miguel Jackson

Hard to decide which is tackier: our old hometown Boston Herald making the Worst Pun Ever, or Ultimas Noticias (Santiago, Chile) flipping the very much alive Michael Jackson on his side to look dead (an illusion somewhat undercut by the upright figures reflected in his glasses).


As often happens to middle-aged gringos, things started to unravel for Jackson in Mexico, where he wrapped up the 1993 Dangerous Tour and amid accusations of, well, you know. A contemporaneous account of MJ's Mex City sojourn from People:

What is known of Michael Jackson's final days on tour in Mexico City does not support the view that he was incapacitated by drugs, though as usual the star was moody and unpredictable. From Oct. 24 to Nov. 11, he and his 170-person entourage stayed at the Hotel President México, where Jackson occupied the palatial eight-room presidential suite on the 42nd floor. "He wasn't very animated," says a hotel employee. "He was sad—always wearing sunglasses." Though he had scheduled an appearance on Oct. 28 at El Nuevo Reino Aventura amusement park—home to Keiko, the Free Willy whale—he never showed. Instead, he bought tickets for 5,000 underprivileged children to visit the park.

One evening, Jackson, clad in black pants and jacket and a black fedora, arrived unannounced, with three young boys who looked to be between 8 and 13 years old, at the Mixup record store in the upscale Pabellón Polanco shopping mall. During the hour-long visit, Jackson signed autographs and bought about S4,000 worth of laser discs and CDs (Jackson's own Thriller and Bad CDs were in a bin of marked-down goods) and danced and moonwalked in the back of the store with his young companions, two of whom wore outfits nearly identical to his own. "They behaved real well," says store clerk Jose Angel Hernandez. "There was a lot of communication between them and Michael."

Jackson did reschedule three of his five concerts because of dental problems. A source in the Jackson camp confirms that the star had an abscessed molar pulled—under general anesthesia—at the ABC Hospital in Mexico City. This source says he saw no signs that the star was suffering from drug addiction. "He's a nice, mellow guy," said the source. "He was calm and relaxed." A local observer, however, thought it odd that Jackson did not fly home for the surgery, especially in light of the fact that many wealthy Mexicans themselves go to Houston or Miami for medical treatment.

Most significant, perhaps, is that by the end of his stay, Jackson's mechanical shows and general eccentricity had made him something of a laughingstock. Local newspapers ran cartoons mocking him (one showing his face melting under the spotlights, another picturing him purchasing 45 bottles of Clearasil), and reviewers called his concerts monotonous and complained about the long wait between songs. Madonna's concerts on Nov. 10, 11 and 13 generated more excitement, and radio ads urged fans to "Come see Madonna. Her teeth don't hurt." Michael was treated as a has-been. ...

Jackson himself has provided few clear answers. Instead, he simply disappeared, making an escape as smoothly choreographed as one of his shows. Liz Taylor and her husband joined the singer in Mexico City on Nov. 9, and after his Nov. 11 concert, the three never returned to the El Presidente hotel. Late that night, they boarded an MGM Grand 727, which touched down to refuel near Toronto, stopped briefly in Iceland, then landed on Saturday morning at London's Luton Airport, where a figure thought to be Jackson was seen emerging wrapped in a blanket.

You can watch what was salvaged of the 1993 Mexico City tour here.

Our own personal recollection of Jackson would be the time we visited with him in Paris back in 2002, to discuss combining the Beatles and Burro Hall back catalogs under a single offshore holding company. He ignored us most of the afternoon, instead spent the day down on all fours playing with le chien. Things started to get out of hand, and when he playfully dangled the little dumpling over the edge of the balcony, we decided to take our leave.

Spillover

More Mexican violence spilling over into the peaceful, God-fearing city of Houston:

The stakes are clear in Houston, as the city is considered by the ATF to be the number one point of origin for military-style weapons traced from Mexican organized crime scenes to U.S. sales counters.

“Those people who buy the guns in Houston have just as much blood on their hands as the people who pulled the trigger down in Mexico,” J. Dewey Webb, chief of the ATF’s Houston field division, said Wednesday.

Dozens of guns purchased in Houston have been traced to kidnappings and murders in Mexico.

In one recent federal investigation of 70 weapons bought here by arms traffickers, 36 were used in homicides. The dead include 19 cartel members and 17 civilians or law officers.

Houston is appealing to gunrunners because there are so many stores that those seeking to exploit the system believe they can go unnoticed and find what they want, authorities said.

The "Firearms for Everyone!" crowd, through its mouthpiece organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the 'sport' part comes from the fact that the victims are often running away when they're being shot at) is taking a bold step to crack down on the gun show free for all: throwing up some billboards and public service announcements, in the event that transnational gun-runners don't realize that what they're doing is illegal.

Anyone know how that border wall coming along?

Guess Who's Running to Dinner

There's a road race here on Sunday - specifically, at 8AM on Sunday so, no, we won't be participating it in, thank you - but the posters are stuck onto every phone pole in town. Here's a fun exercise: can you spot the two guys not from Querétaro in this picture?



Related: Can you guess the first and second place finishers from last year's event?

Ruh-roh!

"Women With Manuel Gonzalez Valle!"

With just eleven days to go before the election, the PAN gubernatorial candidate (and current mayor) Manny G appears to be in the middle of an unfolding sex scandal involving two or more women. (We haven't read the article, but mujeres is plural. Could be talking Berlusconi numbers, for all we know.) We can't help but admire the way he had the presence of mind to flash the "victory" sign as the DQ's photographer surprised him in his love nest. A guy with those political reflexes just might survive this thing.

"Liberación"

Exclusive Video: South Carolina governor Mark Sanford hiking Argentina's Appalachian Trail.

Pledge Week

Some welcome news from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority:

Selling the name of a subway station has been a goal of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for nearly five years. But interest has been low, even for a piece of real estate so recognizable to the public....

If a $4 million deal is approved on Wednesday, the nexus of subway stops at Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn will add an additional name to its already lengthy title: Barclays.

A question, dear readers: Do we ever ask you for anything? No? All right, then, just this one time, we're asking you for $4 million (we're pretty sure we can pull it off for three, but in case the city wants to play hardball, we should have a cushion) so we can have the Borough Hall subway station renamed.


As you can see, it's really just a matter of tweaking the existing signage, which is why we think we can bring it in under 3 mil. The goal would be to cut the ribbon on the Mexican Bicentennial, Sept. 16, 2010.

PayPal donations accepted. Sorry, US dollars only.

Cash on the Barrelhead

It's easy to poke fun at Mexico's "justice system" - we do it all the time; for instance, using scare quotes around the worlds justice system, or pointing out that neither word really applies to the way the accused are handled here. But, Christ weeping Jesus, what the hell is wrong with the US Justice Department prosecutors? Fresh off dropping all the charges against one of the most crooked men ever to earn the title "Senator," the same team, up in front of the same judge, is trying to drop all the charges against Zhenli Ye Gon.

Gon, who was born in Shanghai, lived in Mexico and ran a large pharmaceuticals company. Authorities allege that the company was a front that supplied Mexican drug cartels with massive quantities of a chemical used to make the street drug methamphetamine. Gon has expressed concerns about being tried in Mexico and accused authorities of planting "fraudulently fabricated evidence" at his mansion.

By "evidence," Gon means more than $207 million in cash found in his Mexico City mansion. Really, we can see the cops dropping a bag of coke or even a loaded handgun into the guy's closet, but $207 million cash? This sorta seems like a slam-dunk case. Unless, of course, prosecutors decided to break the rules for no apparent reason, thus handing the defense a get-out-of-jail-free card. Oh, look:

At a recent hearing, [Judge] Sullivan expressed irritation with prosecutors for not turning over evidence quickly to Gon's defense lawyers about a key witness who had recanted earlier statements.

In court papers filed yesterday, prosecutors cited the recantation and another witness who has "expressed an unwillingness to testify" as reasons for seeking the dismissal of Gon's charges.

At a brief hearing yesterday, Sullivan again scolded prosecutors for not telling him or defense lawyers earlier about the witness problems, which the Justice Department learned about months ago.

Sullivan ordered Justice Department officials to file court papers by Wednesday explaining why it took them so long to disclose the information. The judge indicated that he would grant the government's dismissal request but hadn't decided whether to toss the case "with prejudice," meaning the Justice Department could not bring it again.

After a private conference at his bench with prosecutors and defense lawyers, Sullivan said he was "not pleased at all by anything I've heard from the government."

Sullivan later said government prosecutors "ought to resign" if they did not think they had to comply with rules requiring such evidence to be turned over to defense lawyers. "I want to know why the government is failing to abide by" its obligations to turn over such material, the judge said.

The plan is to send him back to Mexico, where it'll be up to the "justice system" to take care of him.

Burro Hall - Now Available on Computers!

In part to foster a sense of community here, and in part because, having been "amigo'd" in recent days by my mother; teenage goddaughter; a former boss; and one of America's more virulent anti-immigrant crusaders; we figure we might as well just throw the doors wide open, Burro Hall readers are welcome to come friend us on Facebook. You can still comment here anonymously, of course. And we promise never to start using Twitter. All we ask in exchange is that you never inform us of the results of the quiz you just took. Fair?

It Is What It Is

We were just sitting around at the Monday editorial meeting, and the lunchroom lady brought up an ice chest full of Diet Cokes - "Coca Cola Light," in the local parlance - which got us thinking about sodium cyclamate, testicle shrinkage, etc. So we decided to glance at the label, just to be sure, and were surprised to learn that the main ingredient in Diet Coke, after carbonated water, is "Diet Coke."


We'll admit to not knowing the letter of the labeling law here, but we're guessing this probably runs contrary to the spirit of it.

We Will, We Will Mock You

With two weeks to go until the elections, we're getting the impression that a lot of kids in Querétaro grow up thinking, "Gee, I'd really like to be involved in machine politics some day!' The result is a constant back-and forth between the two major candidates to see who can have the loudest, best-attended "Up With People!"-type rally. These coming two weeks are shaping up to be the longest of our adult lives.

It would be unfair if we were to give the impression that the PRI kids are dorkier, cheesier, and even less rhythmic than their PAN counterparts - they're not, not by a long shot - It's just that the PAN kids didn't think to put produce a video like this one and upload it to the intertubes:

Pepe Calzada may not win the election, but he's got an excellent career as a wedding DJ ahead of him.

Crime and...Well, Just Crime

The day care center fire in Sonora that left 44 children dead has been headline news here for weeks now, and has prompted a good deal of outraged commentary and apportioning of blame, with a series of public figures practically elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to promise a swift and thorough investigation (this, in spite of the fact that the owners of the day care center are well-connected, to say the least.)

A year ago today, nine teenagers and three police officers were killed at a Mexico City club called New's Divine, when the police, having taken care of all the other problems facing the capital city, decided to break up a party of under-aged revelers celebrating the end of the school year, setting off a panicked stampede for the doors - which the police had ingeniously bolted shut, resulting in a The-Who-plays-Cincinnati-style tragedy. This event was headline news here for weeks, and prompted a good deal of outraged commentary and apportioning of blame, with a series of public figures practically elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to promise a swift and thorough investigation (this, despite the fact the chief culprits - high-ranking police officers and public security officials - are, by definition, well-connected.)

We can't help but wonder what the grieving families in Sonora thought while watching the New's Divine families on tv today lamenting the fact that, a year later, the only person sitting in jail is the owner of the club, for the crime of selling alcohol to minors. We imagine they were probably taking notes, so they'll know what to say on tv 11 months from now.

Where the Streets Have Cool Names

We've always assumed that our life-long, near total ignorance of the fact that the US and Mexico fought a war in the 1840s could be blamed on the inadequacies of the Swampscott school system (though we'll concede, their field trips are considerably more awesome now than when we were in school). But our informal polling of the American-educated community, and anecdotal evidence such as the fact that the Strand Bookstore, whose military history section takes up about a quarter of an acre, does not have a "Mexican War" shelf, and that what books we have been able to find on the war usually open with an introduction explaining why nobody remembers it, are leading us to believe it's a national, not a local problem.

So we were pleased to learn via Robert Reid's excellent Reid on Travel site, that there's an entire neighborhood in Pittsburgh called The Mexican War Streets historic district. We heartily second Robert's declaration of it as the best-named neighborhood in the US, and strongly urge Swampscott High School to consider a field trip during the 2009-10 academic year. Which we'll offer to chaperone in exchange for our usual, non-negotiable per diem.

What's Another English Word for "Pirate Treasure"?

We were just catching up on the day's headlines over at the Huffington Post, and spotted this provocative-looking "video," which, when we clicked it (because you knew we were going to click on it), takes us to the website for the Inglés Sin Barreras English language course.


We realize that online advertising is all about grabbing eyeballs, but we imagine that if we were a young Mexicano looking to see what that "video" was all about and got presented with a bunch of English textbooks, we'd want to beat somebody down.

Querétaro Literary Society

We don't usually plug books written by people who have not bought us drinks in the past or hinted they might in the future, but if you're looking for a slim, highly-readable volume about the War of Independence to help get you ready for next year's Bicentennial, we're very much enjoying The Mexican Wars for Independence by Timothy J. Henderson.

Especially eye-opening was the portrait he paints of Father Miguel Hidalgo, who's sort of considered both the George Washington and Thomas Jefferson of Mexico despite spending ten of the war's eleven years with his severed head hanging from the corner of a Spanish fort in Guanajuato. Aside from his personal dickishness - he had a fondness for summary executions and saw raping and pillaging as a legitimate way to maintain troop morale - Henderson suggests that Hidalgo's Rumsfeldian collection of tactical, strategical and political blunders made the revolution a lot longer and bloodier than it ever needed to be.

And the fact that the independence plotters disguised themselves as a book club will give your own book club something to think about between sipping white wine and gossiping about the members who didn't show up this month.

Also new on our bookshelf - or, more accurately, on the counter in the bathroom where all the best reading material is kept - is Mexico: In Statistics, which is exactly what the title implies. A reference-geek's dream! And given the lack of good statistical data in this country, it's valuable as well. (That's not entirely accurate - the Mexican bureaucracy is meticulous to a fault about collecting data, just not so good about aggregating and disseminating it.) It's not quite a good as our favorite book of all time, the Statistical Abstract of the United States ("Percentage of Americans age 75 and older who visited amusement parks in 2002: 9.6"), but that's a lot of ask of such a young country.

1-800-ESPANOL

Are you looking to brush up on your Spanish, but don't want to study in Mexico because you're afraid you'll be kidnapped by a drug gang and stuffed in the trunk of a car with another hostage suffering from swine flu, and that the car will get rear-ended by a crazy Mexican truck driver hopped up on amphetamines? Also, you don't like spicy food? All perfectly reasonable fears, of course, but still no excuse! Go check out Spanish Skype, from our friends at Querétaro Language School, and see what we mean.

How to Lower the Infant Mortality Rate

The World Health Organization released a report this week about the world's ninth-leading cause of death, which you may be surprised to learn is not swine flu, but traffic accidents. We expected Mexico to be named the worst country in the world for this, but it's not even close (Mexico might consider sending most of Africa a thank-you note). Still, it's given us an excuse to write about something we've mentioned before: that this is a country full of people who seem pretty smart, love their children, but drive like maniacs and yet for some reason have an aversion to child car seats that we think can only be ascribed to superstition.

Seriously, amigos, we love you, but failure to use a child seat in this day and age is proof that you're a horrible, unfit parent and your children should be taken away from you and put up for adoption.

The report gives Mexico points for actually having a nationwide child seat law (something even the US doesn't have), but goes on to give the country a 1, on a scale of 0-to-10, for enforcement. We see this every single day, babies on the passenger's lap. Babies on the driver's lap. Small children standing up on the back seat. Leaning between the front bucket seats. Sticking their heads out the sunroof. Never have we seen anyone pulled over for this. We have no idea what a country has to do to earn a zero, but it probably involves deliberately smashing children's skulls against the dashboard.

Given how common this insanely bad parenting is here, it's actually pretty hard to document with a camera. (There's a reason they're called moving violations.) But we're going to start making more of an effort, and we'll be posting the results periodically. Is this because we're a bunch of self-righteous assholes looking to shame people out of behavior we disapprove of? Yeah, sure, that's part of it (duh!) But we're also going to put our money where these kids' fractured mandibles and maxillas are: If any parent of any child whose picture we publish writes us a letter acknowledging the error of their ways, Burro Hall Enterprises will buy that family a child car seat and help them to install it.

So let the shaming begin. This one's from Querétaro Centro just a few moments ago:


Lovely girl - be a shame if she went through the windshield, no? She seems healthy and well-cared for, and the folks are driving a Ford minivan, so they can probably scrape up a hundred bucks or so for a car seat. They just choose not to, for some reason. But notice there's a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Memo to Mexican parents: a set of rosary beads is not a child safety device - it's a choking hazard!

Unnecessity Is the Mother of Invention

Because you can never have enough megaphone-announcement-delivery modes. You just know that in some garage somewhere there's a guy with a skateboard, 12 feet of speaker-wire, and a crazy, crazy dream.


On the plus side, the lack of peripheral vision practically guarantees this thing'll get plastered by a cement truck.

Training Day

The pickings are pretty slim in the off-season, but we went over to the bullring yesterday to take in an exhibition of the up-and-coming talent from Querétaro's bullfighting school (which does not accept new students over the age of 40, regardless of their willingness to slip a little something extra into the tuition envelope.) As bullfighting goes, it was pretty awful, but fascinating all the same. We don't know how old the little tyke in the picture is, but we're guessing single digits. (For the record, he didn't kill the little baby lamb - though the older kids, fighting older [but still far from full-grown] bulls, did.) Anyway, we learned some stuff:

With the exception of Chinese gymnasts, children under the age of 12 don't do anything very gracefully.

Even very, very small fighting bulls weigh a lot more than we do.

For a beginning bullfighter, one of the hardest things seems to be preventing the bull from stepping on your cape.

Okay, maybe not the hardest thing. A good bullfighter tends to plant his feet in one location and force the bull to move around him. This second part is apparently much, much harder than they make it look. One boy, who looked about 13, got trampled by the bull the second it entered the ring, and the fight went downhill from there. The poor kid spent more time on his back than Nancy Davis when she was under contract at MGM.

There's probably no more reviled figure in all of sports than the picador. A fat, unkempt presence atop a silly-looking horse, the picador has one job - to lance the bull's shoulders - which he inevitably fails to do correctly, and is furiously booed by the crowd. So it was amusing to see that aspiring child picadors are all fat and incompetent, and that the crowd goes after them just as viciously as they would an adult. At one point the announcer had to gently remind the crowd that the picadors were students, too, which got them just a smattering of unenthusiastic applause. We're still trying to imagine the conversation where a young boy tells his mom and dad he wants to be a picador.

The Sunday Puzzle

A poster in the Centro, from the World Boxing Council. "Be Careful With Drugs!!!"


The idea being that drugs and boxing will kill you. Or drugs will kill boxers. Or boxing will protect you from drugs, unless you're a skeleton. Or, if you're going to do drugs, wear headgear. Or...shit, we're stumped.

Spillover

News from the failed state of Arizona:

An outspoken anti-immigration activist from Everett has been arrested in Arizona in connection to a deadly home invasion robbery.

Shawna Forde, the executive director of the Minutemen American Defense, is one of three accused in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, at their home in Arivaca, Ariz., a town 10 miles north of the Mexican border.

...The mission of Forde's group is to secure U.S. borders and coastal boundaries from unlawful entry, as well as to "increase the awareness of the devastation caused by illegal immigration to our state and country," according to the group's Web site.

MAD sends volunteers to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona for the purpose of "gathering exclusive footage of drug cartel drug smuggling and humane trafficking (sic)," Forde wrote on the site.

Shawna Forde keeping your babies safe back in fatter, happier times:


(Also, nice tat.)

If Not For You

And the award for Most Half-Hearted Display of Civic Pride goes to the PRI's Jaime Escobedo, running for congressman from Querétaro:

"I was born here. For you, I'm staying."

Because, y'know, otherwise....So long, Stinktown!

Like Icarus Rising From the Ashes

We thought we'd see if Aviacsa had had any fiery crashes since the airline got a court order allowing it to fly despite being shut down by the government for maintenance violations. So it was a relief to open the paper this morning and see this:

Mexico has re-grounded Aviacsa airlines after winning a court order in an ongoing legal fight with the airline over safety concerns.

The Transportation and Communications Department initially grounded the Mexican airline last week after officials reported irregularities in the maintenance of 25 planes. But Aviacsa resumed flights four days later after a judge overturned the government's order.

A federal appeals court reinstated the government order Thursday and the airline was immediately ordered grounded until it fixes the safety problems

Whew! But y'know, stranger things have happened, so maybe let's just check the newswires a little later in the day, just in case - D'oh!

Mexican airline Aviacsa is flying again after a second suspension by the Communications and Transport Ministry was lifted...

After the SCT suspended Aviacsa again, the airline obtained a definitive injunction, which Cung said should protect it from future suspensions for the causes involved in the current dispute.

"Aviacsa: The Best Damn Legal Team Flying Today!"

A Ballsy Move

This just in from the socialist hellhole of Venezuela:

Venezuela bans Coke Zero, cites "danger to health"

CARACAS (Reuters) - The Venezuelan government of U.S.-critic President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday ordered Coca-Cola Co to withdraw its Coke Zero beverage from the South American nation, citing unspecified dangers to health.

...[Health Minister Jesus] Mantilla did not say what health risks Coke Zero, which contains artificial sweeteners, posed to the population.

Neither Coca-Cola nor the bottler responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Perhaps the Reuters Latin America desk should keep this page bookmarked - that way, they'd know that, wherever the market is made up of Spanish-speaking people, Coke Zero contains sodium cyclamate, a substance banned in Coke's home country 40 years ago because it causes bladder cancer and "testicular atrophy."

Say what you will about Hugo Chavez, he cares enough not to allow foreign multinationals to shrink his countrymen's nuts.

Update: "Venezuela's Health Ministry said Friday it banned sales of Coca-Cola Zero because the company failed to declare that the no-calorie soft drink uses an artificial sweetener allegedly harmful to health.

"Health officials said tests show the cola contains sodium cyclamate. Coca-Cola Co. disputes that, saying the product sold in Venezuela uses different artificial sweeteners, Acesulfame-K and Aspartame."

The Family That Hangs Together

A couple of days ago, 56-year-old Aureliano Carrizales González hanged himself at his home in Ciudad Victoria. We're not sure why, but he was probably depressed about something. Maybe about the fact that his son Isaías hanged himself last August 17. Or that, a month later, on September 20, his son Erick hanged himself. Or possibly it was because his third son, Gilberto, hanged himself on October 1.

Four weeks after Gilberto's suicide, the family's next door neighbor hanged himself. Around that time, a newspaper reporter went out to Ciudad Victoria and knocked on the Carrizales's door to ask, you know, what the fuck? Aureliano wouldn't come to the door, but his daughter, Gladys, told the reporter that, "none of us ever imagined that all this would happen," which seems to us something of an understatement.

Gladys hanged herself on December 13.

Three years ago, when we moved our offices south of the border to take advantage of the low wages and lax regulation offered by NAFTA, we spent our first night in Mexico in Ciudad Victoria, so we understand the urge to hang oneself there. But still! We're not familiar with the literature, and Google wasn't much help, but it's surely possible that Carrizales family holds the world record for Greatest Number of Individual Suicides in a Family - which, given Mexico's obsession with the Guinness Book, just might explain the whole thing.

Burro Hall for Kidz!

Pivoting effortlessly from incinerated babies to cuddly kittens (are you taking notes, J-Schoolers?), we bring you the latest additions to Mexico's Zacango Zoo: three black leopard cubs born in captivity on February 11. We get the impression that their parents are supposed to eat them or something, because the fact that they're still alive is pretty big news.




As you know, Burro Hall is generally restricted to readers age 18 and over (exceptionally precocious 16- and 17-year-olds can be granted access on a case-by-case basis). But since many of you have children of your own, and you're trying to keep them busy during summer vacation we're passing on the details of the zoo's "Name the Leopard Cubs" contest (in conjunction with El Universal).

It's open to kids ages 6-12.

Name all three cubs (two boys and a girl) and explain why you picked the names.

Include your full name, age, phone number, email and address. (There's nothing in the rules that says you have to be Mexico or live in Mexico, kids!)

Send your entries to df@eluniversal.com.mx or by fax, (011-52) 5512-0202 or 5518-6975, by June 20.

Winners receive a "Zacango Zoo gift pack" which, regrettably, is not likely to include a black leopard cub.

The Horror

If you were looking for a horrifying, Bruegel-esque image to start your morning off, we'd probably point you towards this account of frantic, terrified parents repeatedly smashing their cars into the walls of a burning day care center in Sonora, in a futile effort to rescue their children:

Neighbors described parents arriving at the day care center completely desperate on Friday, seeing it engulfed in flames and knowing there was no way to get the children out. The building had two doors, one of which was padlocked shut, and windows were too high for the children to reach, officials said.

Some parents rammed their vehicles into the building to try to free the trapped children, witnesses told CNN.

"When we went out and ran towards the nursery, teachers already had many children outside, those who could walk properly," said one man at the scene, who did not give his name. "A pickup truck broke down the walls. The dad of one of the kids broke down one of the walls with his car driving in reverse, and that helped us a bit."

The death toll is now at 44, but likely to rise. There was only one working exit (the other having been padlocked), and if there were any sprinklers or smoke detectors, they failed to work. Also, there are 1,500 other similar facilities across the country. The government "investigation" ought to be interesting, as one of the day care center's owners is the finance chief for the PRI in Sonora (and a close pal of the governor there) and another is either an aunt or a cousin (news reports vary) of the First Lady of Mexico. Our money is on a hefty fine being levied, which will be paid out of some slush find somewhere.

The Immunity Challenge

We've been pretty reflexive in our defense of Mexico as a safe destination for tourists and other visitors, though we have to concede that incidents like this weekend's shoot-out in Acapulco aren't making our job any easier.

The seaside shootout, which left 16 of the suspects and two of the soldiers dead, forced local residents and budget-minded tourists staying in the area to run for cover, local press reported. The scene was warlike, with the armed men lobbing dozens of grenades at the advancing soldiers and exchanging thousands of rounds with them. Three bystanders were among the nine people wounded in the fight, the authorities said.

“It was like something out of Rambo,” a man who lives near the shootout told Reforma newspaper.

Without getting into the relative merits of Acapulco as a destination in the first place, all we can say is, please, Mexico...help us to help you.

But then the writer has to go and add that the shootout "made clear that Acapulco has a dark side and that no part of Mexico is immune to the drug war."

This is a statement that manages to be numbingly stupid and absolutely true at the same time, just as the killing of Dr George Tiller in a Wichita church last week makes clear that no part of America is immune to anti-abortion violence. That it to say, some crazy-eyed drifter with a firearm could walk up and shoot you just about anywhere in the US. Likewise, we suppose a drug war gunfight could indeed break out anywhere at any time here. But is it likely? We rather suppose not. In fact, we'd venture to say that if you were to unfurl a map of Mexico in front of us, we could mark about 95% of the land mass as highly unlikely to play host to a shoot out. But if there were anyplace in Mexico or on Earth that could be considered "immune" to violence, we'd be interested in purchasing a time share.

Housekeeping Note

Apropos of this recent post about our soccer team, we'd like to welcome all the new readers who are finding this site by Googling the phrase burro cocks, and to apologize for what we assume is your crushing disappointment at the content. We assure you, you're not alone.

Judicial Activism

This inspired in us just a tiny bit of confidence in the regulatory system here:

Mexico has temporarily grounded almost all of Aviacsa Airlines' aircraft after officials reported irregularities in the maintenance of 25 of them.

A statement issued by the Mexican Communications and Transport Ministry today said the irregularities could endanger air safety, cargo and passengers. The ministry added the suspension applies to 25 planes, and "doesn't imply the total suspension of its operations." However, Aviacsa has only 26 planes in its fleet, all Boeing 737s serving 17 Mexican cities and Las Vegas.

... The government maintains the current problems put passengers at risk.

This, on the other hand, is somewhat less inspiring:

Grounded Mexican airline Aviacsa has obtained an order from a federal judge that will likely force the government to lift a three-day-old suspension on its fleet, company officials said Friday.

The carrier will be allowed to begin operating "the moment they inform us that they'll comply with the order," Chief Executive Eduardo Morales said outside the offices of Mexico's civil aviation regulator, where Aviacsa employees were protesting.

Morales said he expected the suspension, which was put into effect late Tuesday due to irregularities the government said threatened safety, to be lifted "in a matter of hours."

So there you have it - problem solved! Step right up and buy your tickets here!

The Oddest Story Ever Told

If you're planning to come to Querétaro to proselytize to the locals, here's a helpful tool for you: the story of Christ's resurrection narrated in the Otomi language.

We found the non-believers falling into the fiery pits of Hell at the end to be an especially nice touch. We're not sure how useful this is, since its a fair bet that any indigenous people here who can't understand Spanish probably don't spend a lot of time cruising YouTube on their wireless laptops. Still, it's worth it just to hear what Otomi sounds like. We recognize a few Spanish words in there - donde and cuando, for instance. Is it really possible that Otomi had no words for "where" and "when" before the Spaniards arrived?

This comes from an outfit called Global Recordings Network, which, God only knows why, "has recorded gospel messages and/or basic Bible teaching in 5700 of the world's spoken languages." In case you ever need to bring the Good News to eskimos.

Postscript: We just noticed that the image above shows what would later be known as the Shroud of Turin (our current pseudo-scientific obsession), and the Sudarium of Oviedo (the Holy Pillowcase of the Lord) which you can read about in pseudo-literary format here.

Because All Slightly Slanty-Eyed Non-White People Really Do Look Alike

We have no idea what to make of the cover the latest National Review (the house organ for the 18 percent of Americans who answer "strongly approve" when polled about Dick Cheney), so we've decided to go with out default position, which as you probably realize would be ridicule.


We definitely agree with National Review that a female Tibetan Buddhist monk would make a very bad associate justice of the Supreme Court - though they're probably more concerned about Buddhist attitudes towards material possessions vis-a-vis Kelo, whereas we're worried about the effect on church/state separation and, of course, Roe. It's kind of moot, though, since Obama actually nominated a Catholic Latina chick from the Bronx, so we're unclear on why NR would over-slant her eyes, lighten up her skin (sort of a reverse-O.J.) and set her under a tree in the Himalayas surrounded by lotus blossoms, though if we similarly slant up our own eyes and fall into a trance-like state, we can sort of see Frida Kahlo. Sorta.

Which brings us to our other what the fuck Sotomayor illustration for the week, from The Oklahoman:


We get it, we get it - the Rethuglicans are going to take turns whacking the uppity chola like a piñata! But can we just state the obvious here? That, piñata and sombrero aside, Puerto Ricans are not Mexicans? In fact - apropos of convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy's remark equating all Spanish-speakers with illegal aliens - Puerto Ricans aren't even immigrants...they're Americans. This might explain why the Sotomayor nomination is a non-story here (something we admit kind of surprised us). As far as we're aware, the only Mexican-American under serious consideration for a Supreme Court seat in recent years has been this guy - in which case we'd totally take our chances with the Tibetan monk.

Update: National Review offers a thoughtful and nuanced rebuttal here.

Barbie On Board

Speaking of virgins, the Virgen del Pubelito arrived at Templo Merced yesterday, just a few doors down from our offices. The Virgen is not a real person, of course, but more like a super-accessorized Barbie doll - and, seriously, not much larger. Anyway, given the extreme Holy-ocity of this thing (we can look forward to several more weeks of fireworks before she finally leaves town) we were surprised to see that they haul her around town in the back of a red Chrysler Town and Country minivan.


[Also, even we know it's "del," not "de el." C'mon, people.]

Hot Fun in the Summertime

On the left are sliced carrots. On the right, sliced habañero chilies. Or, wait, maybe the carrots are on the right. We're not sure. The point is, one is sweet, delicious and harmless, and one burns hotter than the core of the sun, and we think Mexican restaurateurs and farmers are deliberately breeding the two vegetables to look alike, just to fuck with the gringos.


Burro Hall simultaneously salutes the deviousness and scale of the practical joke, and swears furious and merciless vengeance.

He Wants You To Want Him

Here's a little Wednesday night love song from one of Mexico's two actors, Gael Garcia (Diego Luna is the other). It's from the movie Rudo y Cursi, which we haven't seen, but it's about two hillbilly soccer playing brothers (Gael Garcia and - wait for it... Diego Luna) who hit the big time. Gael branches out into music. Hilarity ensues. Students looking to master the subjunctive tense are encouraged to take notes.

Thirty years ago, at a summer party on Boston Common sponsored by WRKO-AM, we successfully threw a Frisbee through a hula hoop 50 feet away and took home the first thing we'd ever won in our lives, a copy of Cheap Trick at Budokan, which is why we probably find this clip a lot funnier than you do.

Can't Get Enough of That Wonderful Duff

There used to be a restaurant up at the end of the block, but it closed a while back because - or presumably because - it was always empty. We don't just mean business was slow. Never did we ever see them seating a single customer. But of course rather than simply closing the place, the owners had decided that what the place really needed was to recast itself as a trendy supper club, so it reopened almost exactly as it was before, with the exception of a blue neon-lit bar and a throbbing disco soundtrack. Its lifetime customer count remains stuck at zero, but the forced jollity has pushed the sadness factor off the charts. Needless to say, we've never been tempted to go inside.

Until today, that is, when we saw this banner outside announcing that the place now proudly serves Duff Beer, the official beverage of The Simpsons. Thanks to a guy from Guadalajara who, as far as we're able to tell, simply stole the name and logo design, Duff Beer is a real, if difficult to find, beer in Mexico.

Seriously, though, the bar looks like Death's waiting room. We're not sure even the chance of sampling what Homer once called "the beer that makes the days fly by" is enough to get us in there.

Honk If You Love the White Cocks

The Querétaro White Cocks earned their way back into the Premier League this weekend, sort of the soccer equivalent of going from AAA to The Show (though, if that were to happen to, say, the Brooklyn Cyclones, we're pretty sure the Red Sox would beat them 58-0 in their first meeting). This occasioned a spontaneous parade of automotive honking through the streets of Querétaro on Saturday, which, because the game was played about 700 miles away in Mérida, meant Cocks fans had to turn off their TVs, get into their cars, and and head for the center of town - which, since it's basically just a bunch of paved-over horse paths from the 1500s, is pretty much a 24-hour traffic jam even without a couple of thousand Cocks enthusiasts. We avoid driving in the Centro except in emergencies, something that's difficult because our offices are located there. So we admire the fanaticism that would make someone voluntarily drive here. Still, the celebratory nature of a honking procession loses a lot of its majesty when the traffic grinds to a standstill. We sat at a cafe on the plaza watching four guys in a blue Toyota honking and hooting and waving the team colors as, over the course of 15 minutes, they progressed from one end of our table almost all the way to the other.

Another problem was that election season is in full swing here, and apparently the way Mexican politicians go about securing votes is to dispatch a fleet of cars and trucks with loudspeakers, flags and the candidate's likeness, and make as much noise as possible, all day, every day, until the public surrenders and declares one of them mayor. And what politician in his right mind would be caught not celebrating a local sports team's important victory? Thus were the streets of Querétaro choked, not just with Cocks aficionados, but with the processions of a half-dozen politicos, each with their own slogans, cheers, flags, and rhythmic honks. (We may have mentioned this before, but Mexicans are incapable of hearing sounds over a certain decibel level, which is why no one but us found this to be painful.)

Probably the king of the queretano horn-honkers would be a local character known as Ánimo, who got his nickname from his habit of spending a few hours every day driving around in his beat-up old car, sticking his head out the window, and screaming "ánimo!!" - which sort of means, "Let's Go!" or "Wooooo!" - at anything that moves. (We'll confess that our first encounter with him, as he pulled up beside us on a morning run and suddenly screeched "ánimo!!" at the top of his lungs, scared the ever-lovin' shit out of us. Since then, we've decided to find him charming.) Ánimo, whose real name is Pedro Gonzáles Quiroz, lost his family in the 1985 Mexico City quake, moved to Querétaro, and fell into a deep, dark, if completely understandable depression, from which he suddenly roused himself one day and decided his mission in life was to go around screaming "ánimo!!" at everyone. ("Ánimo" can also mean "cheer up!") That was 20 years ago.

Anyway, we brought that up only because, as if things weren't chaotic enough, there was Ánimo, honking his horn along with everyone else, his car plastered with the face of PRI gubernatorial candidate Pepe Calzada. This is bad news for PAN's Manuel Gonzalez Valle (the current mayor), and probably explains why he's been wearing a White Cocks jersey nonstop for three days now.