Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough

As if 13,000 chilangos doing the "Thriller" dance in the Zocalo wasn't quite Mexican enough for you, it seems that just a few miles away, at the Ángel de la Independencia, over 3,000 people were doing the "Beat It" dance. It's kind of like the Sharks and the Jets, we suppose. No word yet whether there was a "Beat It" Dance World Record at stake. Needless to say, we're dispatching a team of roving choreographer/ correspondents to the scene, an will be bringing you word of any large group of Mexicans dancing to "Billie Jean," "Bad," or "The Way You Make Me Feel," as soon as we have it.

Meanwhile, in a textbook case of the conquistador getting whaled on by the conquistado, Barcelona held its own mass-"Thriller" dance yesterday. That is, if you consider a mere 700 people to be "mass."

They seemed to have a bigger wardrobe budget. Though it is Barcelona.

You Can Leave Your Hat On

And the new world record for the Least Surprising Holder of the New World Record for Largest Mariachi Band goes to...Mexico!

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Ay, ay, ay, ay! Guadalajara finally boasts the world's biggest mariachi band.

A total of 549 musicians got together to win the record for the birthplace of mariachi Sunday, playing several songs in just over 10 minutes, closing with favorites "Cielito Lindo" and "Guadalajara."

A representative of the Guinness Book of World Records, Stuart Claxton, made it official at the International Mariachi Festival.

Somewhat amazingly, the old record of 520 was held by the United States. Even we think that's a scandal.

Dance Fever

There's not a lot we can add to this:

Wait! Yes there is: Although 12,937 people showed up and danced, which would seem to have edged them ahead of the previous record for the Largest Mass Thriller Dance (yes, there was one) by a comfy 12,705, or roughly 5000%, the record is still not official.

Hildago claimed 12,937 people danced Saturday in front of Mexico City's Monument of the Revolution, led by a Michael Jackson impersonator wearing a red-and-gold sequined jacket.

But Guinness must certify whether all those people really performed the entire, intricate routine. The impersonator, who goes by the name Hector Jackson, and most of those in front of a huge crowd of onlookers certainly looked pretty good.

We can recommend highly enough that the Guinness boys just shut up and say yes.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

Today appears to be Mexican-American Food Day here at Burro Hall, so we'll bring you the news that the Los Angeles City Attorney's office, having all but eradicated crime there, has turned its sights towards the the great menace coming up from South of the Border. We're referring, of course, to cheese.

On Thursday the L.A. city attorney's office announced the filing of misdemeanor charges against three businesses and their owners, in addition to a store manager, for allegedly selling illegal cheese. Garcia, president of Expresion Oaxaquena Market Inc., was one of them.

Prosecutors said they are going after businesses that sell unpasteurized, unlicensed and often unlabeled cheeses that could contain harmful bacteria. Quesillo is just one that authorities say is often sold or served illegally.

"We're looking at this as a public health risk," said Don Kass, a deputy city attorney. "This kind of cheese can cause a serious illness when pathogens are present."

Health officials say some of it is spirited into the country in suitcases and is then sold door to door to residents or restaurants and at open air markets out of coolers. In other cases, the cheese is made locally in bathtubs. Many consumers don't know that what they are eating is not regulated, he said.

"The risk of bacteria is worrisome," said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture. "This is something our agency works on year around. We believe it's a significant problem."...

Kass, the deputy city attorney, said Garcia and the three others charged with the sale of illegal unpasteurized cheese -- Faviola Martinez Garcia, Sabrina Aguilar and Maria Justo -- faced thousands of dollars in fines. They could also get up to 100 days of jail time, but he said that was unlikely. "We're trying to deter others," Kass said.

Hey, why not just cut off their feet? That would be an effective deterrent, wouldn't it? Because California authorities brought similar charges against illegal cheesemakers two years ago, and that effectively ended the illegal cheese trade. And the Great Mocajete Crackdown on 2008 was a total game-changer.

At least the LA Times takes care to point out the obvious thing about queso oaxaca - it's fucking awesome!

And many people know its provenance is illegal but think it tastes better. Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning L.A. Weekly food critic, said he prefers it.

"I will admit that there are some groceries . . . where you do kind of buy cheese under the table, and it tastes better," Gold said. "If you're the sort of person who believes milk has a soul to it, which I guess I am, then pasteurizing is taking something away." As for the potential danger posed by unpasteurized cheese, Gold added: "Life is filled with risks."

Wahake

Speaking of food, we noticed a new taco place on Brooklyn's Smith Street called Oaxaca - though, according to the sign, they pronounce it "Wa-ha-ke" rather than "Wa-ha-ka." (Reviewed here.)


Our Mexican amigos will be amused to learn that those prices translate into 41 pesos per taco, which is why we haven't actually tried this place yet.

Beware of Dog

This is a couple of days old, but it's nice to see the Times getting back to serious investigative reporting, as they try to discern the roots of Mexican hot dogs, which are like American hot dogs except, being Mexican, they come wrapped in bacon and slathered with "a kitchen sink of taco truck condiments."

A Mexican-American take on the hot dog aesthetic was relatively late to arrive. In 1940s Arizona, tamales were known, at least among speakers of colloquial English, as Mexican hot dogs. By the 1950s, true tamales were gaining mainstream status stateside, and American hot dogs had, more than likely, jumped the gate into Sonora and Baja and elsewhere.

The date at which bacon-wrapped hot dogs became known as Mexican hot dogs is unclear. The mystery deepens when you factor in that Sonora, one of the states most often cited as ground zero for bacon-wrapped hot dogs, is a locus for cattle ranching, not pig farming.

From the southern side of the border, numerous Mexico City origin tales emanate, some tied to feeding crowds at wrestling matches in the 1950s, others to feeding skyscraper construction workers during the same decade. (Daniel Contreras, owner of El Güero Canelo, cites a similar time frame, and tells just as plausible a story, but sets the action in his home state of Sonora, where a man he knew as Don Pancho worked the streets.)

But of course since anything good can only have originated in America, the conclusion is that this 1953 Oscar Mayer advertisement is the Mexican hot dog's Book of Genesis.


We really have no opinion on this. Just wanted to do a post so we could pass along the excellent factoid that these are called "danger dogs" in LA.

Police Blotter

We take back what we've said before about the border wall being useless:

TIJUANA, Mexico — Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal.

Holes in the border fence once were more commonly made by migrant smugglers, but fewer people are trying to cross because of a weak U.S. economy and a crackdown on immigration.

The Tijuana police department says the suspects intended to sell the steel sheeting as scrap.

Apparently, with the US economy lying wounded in a ditch, there's not a lot of need for a wall to keep out job-seekers. Might as well derive some benefit from it, then.

You'll Have Nothing and Like It

We told you a couple of weeks ago about the PAN’s last-ditch attempt to rewrite the state constitution to enshrine the “life begins at conception” myth, and that the issue was so contentious that the congressional committee on constitutional amendments was holding an unusual, week-long public comment period, so the people of the state could have their say. Demand was so great that it was extended another week. One hundred sixty four people got up and spoke – 54 in favor of changing the law, 110 opposed. And then the committee did exactly what you might expect, which was to immediately and unanimously vote in favor of rewriting the constitution. At left, please welcome the Gallos Blancos newest aficionadito!

News reports are, as usual, deeply contradictory, so either there’s no penalty for the mother, or she goes to jail for three years. And there may or may not be an exception for rape, incest or health of the mother. With abortion already being illegal here, there probably won’t be any real change – we’ll still lead the nation in unwed mothers, and 30 percent of new moms will continue to be underage! The real effect is that a more liberal law like the one in Mexico City can’t be passed here unless the constitution is again rewritten.

One of the best things about the Querétaro Centro, with its adobe buildings and colonial architecture, comically unreliable infrastructure, and cobblestone streets swept clean by old women with handmade brooms, is that it seems frozen in time. Take a walk in the morning before the cars start clogging the road, and you can easily imagine that it's the 19th Century, and the world has been untouched by progress and modernity. Or, if you're not the walking type, you could just pick up the paper and read the results of yesterday's vote.

A Filthy, Plague-Ridden Hellhole

When it comes to being at risk of contracting swine flu, there are far worse places one could be than in Mexico. The United States, for example.

Swine Flu Could Infect Half of U.S.

Swine flu could infect half the U.S. population this fall and winter, hospitalizing up to 1.8 million people and causing as many as 90,000 deaths -- more than double the number that occur in an average flu season, according to an estimate from a presidential panel released Monday.

Although most of the cases probably would be mild, up to 300,000 people could require intensive care, which could tie up all those beds in some parts of the country at the peak of the outbreak, the council said.

"This is going to be fairly serious," said Harold E. Varmus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York

Having let most of our epidemiology staff go a few weeks ago, we're not really in a position to assess the panel's prediction. But we'll happily put some good money down on this one: America's tourism industry will not be decimated by this report, and you won't see Sanjy friggin' Gutpa standing outside Walter Reed wearing a surgical mask.

Discuss.

Now It Can Be Told

The secret of Don Hewitt's success, as revealed on last night's 60 Minutes:

Can't-Miss Miss

Ever since the cable's been cut off, we lost track of the fact that the Miss Universe pageant is tonight. Will Miss Mexico, Karla Carrillo, bring home the gold...or whatever it is Miss Universe brings home? Odds are, maybe!

One of the more popular betting scenarios at BetUS.com is seeing a ton of action these days. Fans from all over the globe are pledging their loyalty and laying their money down on their picks to win Miss Universe 2009. The analysts and oddsmakers at the largest most successful sportsbook on the web, BetUS.com have posted the odds, and action is rolling in.

Analysts at BetUS.com posted the following odds on Miss Universe 2009:

Miss Australia 7/1
Miss Mexico 9/1
Miss Dominican Republic 9/1
Miss Czech Republic 10/1
Miss Ireland 10/1
Miss Netherlands 12/1
Miss USA 14/1
Miss Puerto Rico 14/1
Miss Costa Rica 18/1
Miss Honduras 18/1

Not too shabby! We do think that this year's "traditional outfit" [below] shows considerably less, um, inventiveness than in years past, in fact, it's kinda screams "Plaza Garibaldi," but lack of controversy is probably a good thing in the judges' eyes.



[Update: Politics, man. Pure pinche politics.]

Amusing Things We Find on the Google

Lest you think we just sit around the office Googling ourselves all day, let us explain that the Blogger "search" function in the upper left corner sucks major ass, and so whenever we want to find something in the archives, we have to do a Google search (Blogger is owned by Google, which is why this makes no sense to us). But...where were we? Oh, so we were searching for the Hillary Clinton entry referenced below, and came across this AOL Bulletin Board discussion about how the crazy libtards are crying "racism" over those "socialist joker" posters. (Which we don't find to be racist at all...nor even particularly funny, since The Joker was an anarchist, not a socialist ["Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"]. We do admire the Photoshop skillz, though.) Anyway, an astute commenter named RhodaRyder notes:

It has also been acceptable to put a joker face on Sarah Palin and George Bush. It seems to me I saw a joker face put on Hillary Clinton's face. In response to calling the Uncle Sam the fattest nation on earth, the Burro Hall Nutrition Research Institute sent a cartoon of a fat Mararichi [sic] to Coahuila. Jews, Hispanics and whites are more confident in themselves and are not afraid of adverse cartoons that depict them in unflattering ways. Putting the joker face on Obama, however, is called racist.

Right on, sister! We're pretty sure the BHNRI did no such thing, but we plan to ask them about this when they present their annual report on Sept. 30. Nor are we really sure what it has to do with....well, anything, but we're glad for the shout-out because every little bit of recognition helps when applying for grant money. We do know that a Blogger search of this site for "Coahuila" or "Nutrition Research Institute" turns up nothing, so we had to go to Google to find our own three-week-old link.

Mother of All travel Alerts

Hmmm. Calderón disses a Michoacán drug lord's mamá, and suddenly the US State Department is advising American travelers to steer clear of the area:

U.S. State Department’s latest Mexico alert urges travelers to delay trips to parts of Michoacan and Chihuahua states.

The alert, issued Thursday, advises U.S. citizens to delay unnecessary travel to those areas and to exercise “extreme caution” if a visit is necessary.

The alert notes the abduction and killing of two resident U.S. citizens in Chihuahua in July. It gives no details from Michoacan (which includes the city of Morelia and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, which draws many visitors), and a spokesman said he was not immediately able to supply more than was in the posted alert.

One of the big raps on Foggy Bottom is that the Latin America desk doesn't really understand Latin America very well. Secretary Clinton may have muffed the whole Virgin of Guadalupe thing, but clearly someone on the staff knows what they're talking about. They're even smart enough to keep mum [pun intentional] about the actual reasoning.

Y Tu Mamá También

This strikes us as a very, very bad idea.

The reputed head of the La Familia cartel, an increasingly notorious drug trafficking organization in Mexico, did not mince words in his threat: "If anybody attacks my father, my mother, my brothers, they're going to have to deal with me," Servando Gomez warned the government on local television last month.

But instead of backing down, the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who has deployed 45,000 troops throughout Mexico to clamp down on traffickers, responded this week by detaining not just Mr. Gomez's brother, but his mother too.

Ho. Lee. Shit. Has Felipe Calderón ever been to Mexico? We, with our less-than-stellar Spanish, live in mortal fear of accidentally slighting someone's mother, never mind hauling her away in leg irons and tossing her ass in the slammer. And if you're doing it to the mother of the head of La Familia - which means "The Family," in case it's not clear where Gomez's priorities lay - well, you better be damn sure you've got the goods on her.

Gomez's mother... was released Wednesday, two days after her arrest, for "lack of evidence."

Ho. Lee. Shit. We're going to steer clear of Michoacán until Sra. Gomez dies of natural causes - and actually, we may wait a year or two after that to allow her son to calm down a bit. We've got 500 pesos that says even the butterflies won't come back this year.

I'd Hit That

We been saying for years that what America really needs is a Mexican restaurant co-owned by Renee Zellweger and Jon Bon Jovi. And sometimes God answers your prayers with something other than 'fuck you.'

Here's the proprietress whacking a guacamole-filled piñata on Letterman.

Travel Advisory

Given its shockingly high tolerance for gun-toting, and the potential for an outbreak of airborne lead poisoning, travel guru Arthur Frommer is suggesting that tourists think twice before venturing into the failed state of Arizona:

For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.

According to the Phoenix, Arizona, police, people with guns including assault rifles do not need permits in Arizona, but can simply carry such weapons with them, openly and brazenly, when they gather to protest a speaker at a public event.

We do wish DHS would hurry up and finish that containment wall along the border.

Mexican Ingenuity

With the obvious caveat about our revulsion at the savage cruelty of man's inhumanity to man, etc - as practical jokes go, we thought this showed a fair amount of imagination:

Mexican Farmers Find Novel Way to Exploit Workers

Hundreds of farm workers in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur are being exploited by employers who trick them into believing they are in the United States and keep them in line with threats of deportation, the state’s official Human Rights Commission said.

Commission chairman Jordan Arrazola told capital daily Milenio in an interview published Friday that the recruiters involved in the scam are members of the CTM, one of Mexico’s most powerful labor unions.

“They make them (the workers) believe they are in the United States and don’t let them go out, they practically have them locked up,” Arrazola said.

“The foremen threaten to report them to ‘la migra’ (U.S. immigration authorities) to get them deported,” the official said.

Implicit in this, of course, is that being treated like chattel slaves is perfectly in keeping with their expectations of life in the USA.

We remember hearing a similar story once in Haiti, about a gang who charged people thousands of dollars to flee the country in a boat. They took them in circles around the island for a few days, and then dropped them off near the Port-au-Prince Club Med, telling them to enjoy Miami. Everyone could pretty much walk home from there, poorer, wiser, and even more dejected than when they left.

The Healing Waters of La Gloria

We told you a few months ago about the town of La Gloria's attempt to turn itself into a tourist destination based on it being the home of the swine flu epidemic's [alleged] "Patient Zero," a five-year-old bag of germs named Édgar Hernández Hernández, in whose honor a life-sized statue has been erected in the center of town.

At the time, we scoffed at the notion that anyone would want to visit a town specifically because it's the center of a deadly and contagious disease outbreak, but clearly we underestimated the pure batshit craziness of some people:

"Édgar Hernández is healthier than ever, and even when he goes to the bathroom, many people follow him there because the hope to be cured by his urine," said Governor Fidel Herrera Beltrán, who attended the unveiling of the statue.

Drink that in for a moment (if you will): not only do people go out of their way to visit this town, but they vie for the opportunity to drink the piss of a five-year-old, swine flu-infected child. And the governor of the state brags about this in a family newspaper. Even just writing that sentence ought to get us exiled to Scandinavia.

Another Reason Michael Jackson Is Lucky to Be Dead

The latest chapter in Mexico's ongoing quest to break the Guinness World Record for Most Guinness World Records Broken by a Single Country:

Mexico City's Michael Jackson fans got together Tuesday morning to practice the recently deceased singer's famous "Thriller" dance in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes downtown.

Led by Mexican Jackson impersonator "Héctor Jackson" [Note: not to be confused with Mexican Jackson impersonator Estefan Jackson] and choreographer Adolfo Chávez, the group was preparing for an Aug. 29 event in which an estimated 11,000 people in Mexico City will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest mass "Thriller" dance. Jackson would have turned 51 on that date.

The Envelope, Please

El Universal ran a poll recently asking Mexicans to name their favorite Mexican actor of all time, and the runaway winner, unsurprisingly, was Pedro Infante, with 27% of the vote - Cantinflas and "no one" tied for second place with 8%. Five of the top eight actors are dead, and with Diego Luna failing to make the list, this is the first time we've ever seen Gael Garcia's name in print without him. Among the favorite Mexican actresses of all time, "no response" and "no one" cruised to a 1-2 victory, with Silvia Pinal (not dead) coming in a close third.


When asked to name the best actor of all time, regardless of nationality, the answers were pretty much what you'd find anywhere else in the world: Brad Pitt is the greatest actor who has ever lived, followed closely by Pedro Infante and Johnny "Pancho Villa" Depp, with Robert DeNiro and Vin Diesel bringing up the rear.

Good Articles About Things We Don't Care About

Yeah, we know that "We don't care about soccer" is the kind of thing you'd expect someone to say after their national team just got spanked (twice) by Mexico, be really... we just don't give a shit about soccer, though if we had pre-teenage daughters and a minivan we'd probably feel differently.

Still, we thought Bill Simmons's report on ESPN.com was thoroughly enjoyable. Here he describes the scene at Azteca Stadium:

Opponents never feel safe. Inside the bowels of the stadium, the players walk down a concrete tunnel that feels like it was built in 1362. Emerge from the tunnel, and Mexican fans are suddenly right there, wearing green jerseys, yelling obscenities and pounding the fence in front of them. The venom starts immediately -- booing and hissing, horn blowing, various "Meh-hee-CO! Meh-hee CO!" chants -- and never really stops. The Mexican fans had no problem drowning out "The Star-Spangled Banner" with jeers. They tossed drinks and debris at the U.S. bench for most of the second half ... which didn't matter because Azteca's opposing bench has an impenetrable plexiglass roof, but still. During a corner kick in extra time, they showered Landon Donovan with such a staggering amount of debris that he briefly staggered back toward the field in disbelief, shrugging his hands as if to say, "How could anyone act like this?"

You can't even call it just a hostile environment; it's more primal than anything. I have only attended two other games in which the crowd's collective loathing was palpable -- Game 6 of the 1986 NBA Finals (Boston fans heaping hatred on Ralph Sampson, who had punched two Celtics in the previous game) and Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern finals (the same treatment for Bill Laimbeer, who had decked Larry Bird the previous game) -- and neither approached USA-Mexico. Michael Vick could crash a PETA rally and get a friendlier reception than the Americans did at Azteca.

That seems about right to us, as does the description of the aftermath of Mexico's winning goal.

That's not what I will remember. I will remember the reaction afterward: Complete and utter delirium. Everyone just threw whatever drink they had as far as they could. It was like watching a new Pixar movie called "A Snowstorm of Drinks" crossed with a full-fledged prison riot. Then and only then did we realize exactly how much that game meant to the Mexicans. As Hopper said right after the final whistle (Mexico 2, USA 1), "I guess the upside is that we're going to live."

Arc of Triumph

We noticed this Pat Oliphant cartoon today. We're not sure we get the joke - Oliphant seems to believe that Obama, rather than the Congress, is writing health care legislation, or something like that.


But even more baffling to us is why Obama, et al, are marching across the top of Querétaro's aqueduct. That thing's been standing since 1738. It's going to take more than universal health care to knock it down.

Meet the Beatles

Sunday being a day of worship, we thought it would be the perfect time to direct you to this article about The Beatles: Rock Band, which we gather is some sort of board game, written by our friend Daniel Radosh. From time to time over the last couple of years, the phone service in our neighborhood would be disrupted, or the electricity would stutter and dim, causing the hospital to be evacuated, and we'd discover it was because Radosh.net had linked to something on this blog, and the crush of humanity had overheated the Centro's fragile infrastructure. (Being the Most Powerful English-Language Blog in Central Mexico is only sightly more competitive than being the best curry house.) So we're returning the favor and leaving the New York Times tech team to figure out why they're experiencing a denial-of-service attack from Querétaro, Mexico.

Our favorite part of the article is the line, "Paul McCartney said much the same thing when I spoke with him in June," which, since John and George are dead, is probably the coolest thing one could say in relation to the Beatles, and maybe the second-coolest thing in rock and roll, behind, "And then Keith said to me, 'No, man, I think you should play the solo.'"

Daniel's joining the staff of the Daily Show in a few weeks, alongside Burro Hall Editor Emeritus Jim Margolis, and it'll be interesting to see which of them does a better job getting us tickets to the show when we're in town. Jim's currently leading 1-0, but he's got an eight-year head start.

Here's Grupo Help! - which bills itself as Mexico's top 'Beatlemania tribute,' meaning it's a tribute, not to the Beatles, but to Beatlemania - gigging at a Mexico City shopping mall.

Even In a Recession, Some Jobs Are Hard to Fill

We'd love to see the "help wanted" ad for this:

Mexico: Official Fired as a Precaution

A prison director in northern Mexico was relieved of duty for his own safety after gunmen attacked a vehicle he was riding in, killing three of his bodyguards and wounding two others. The director, Gerardo Hernández, who had been on the job since June, was not harmed in the Tuesday attack, but Víctor Valencia, public safety secretary for Chihuahua State, told The Associated Press that he would be replaced as a precaution.

Qualified candidates can send their resume to: Lic. Víctor Valencia, Secretaria de Seguridad Publica Estatal, Calle Ojinaga #309 P.B., Col. Centro, Chihuahua, Ch.; Tel. (011-52 614) 439-00-10 ext. 23008 / fax. 23091.

The OVNIvore's Dilemma

Laura Castellanos, a Mexican journalist who recently published a book-length interview with our Lacandon Jungle bureau chief, has turned her sights towards a somewhat less confounding topic in her latest book, UFOs: History and Passion of Sightings in Mexico, which is on our reading list, but near the bottom and the list is pretty long. But we figured we'd take the opportunity to link once again to Inexplicata, the Journal of Hispanic UFOlogy. These folks do love them some flyin' saucer! "Mexico UFO" turns up 2800 videos on YouTube, including this five-part History Channel documentary that we plan to watch as soon as we finish reading the book.

The truth is out there.

[Overexplaining the Joke Update: "UFO" is "OVNI" (Objeto Volador No Identificado) in Mexican. Never mind. Look, you don't pay to read this site, do you? Okay then.]

Perspective

Tag at the end of the New York Times report on the US-Mexico soccer game:

A version of this article appeared in print on August 13, 2009, on page B-11 of the New York edition.

B-11! That's probably behind the harness-racing results. It's worth noting that New York has a Mexican population bigger than a lot of cities and towns in Mexico

Static

Well, for three years now the wide-screen, flat-panel HDTV in our boardroom has been connected to the outside world via Cablecom at a cost of...well, we don't know how much it costs, because the never sent a bill. One time, about a year ago, they sent a guy to collect all the money we owed, and we explained that we never got a bill, to which he replied that he'd straighten it all out and be back the next day, and was never heard from again.

Then a couple of days ago, we turned on the tv to discover nothing but static. Going up to the roof and following the line of the blue Cablecom cable to the electrical pole across the street, we can clearly see our wire hanging loose. We talked our way onto the neighbor's roof to try and reconnect it, but those little dark cylinders hanging down are some sort of devilish childproof puzzle-lock to prevent us from doing what we were trying to do.



Make no mistake, that infernal talking box has caused us nothing but trouble over the years, and we're not sorry to see it go. But it's still a little weird that they would make no attempt to collect before cutting us off. Viva Mexico!

Bhaji

While "Best Indian Restaurant in Querétaro" may indeed be faint praise (there is no second-best Indian restaurant here), we can assure you that the curry at Bhaji is the real deal. And now, like a prayer being answered by some many-armed, half-elephant god-man or whatever the hell they worship, Bhaji have moved from their rather inconvenient old location to the heart of the Centro Historico - Independencia 72, between Pasteur and Rio de la Loza - so close to the Burro Hall offices that the perro's fur smells faintly of vindaloo.

We'll be holding our regular Tuesday evening staff meeting there tonight, so come on by and say hello. We hear the naan bread is especially delicious.

The Mouthpiece

For years, the go-to mouthpiece for drug traffickers and, sometimes, those who were merely accused of being drug traffickers was Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, It was a job that had a number of built-in hazards.

She now has bodyguards and protective glass on the office window next to her oversize desk. Still, Mexico’s most prominent “narco abogada,” or lawyer to the drug lords, continues to receive threats, which she, a religious woman with a serious demeanor, deflects with prayer, a lighted candle in her office and, on the walls, scores of crosses and images of Jesus Christ.

“I can presume that God wants me to continue working in what I’ve always done,” she said. “I’m a lawyer for people who really need one.”

...Ms. Raquenel can rattle off the exact dates of the various attempts on her life as though they were holidays. There was May 13, 1998, when an explosive went off at the front door of her office. And March 23, 2000, when she was hit by gunfire when entering a Mexico City hotel with her client, a police commander charged with working for traffickers on the side. Then came Aug. 31, 2000, when someone stormed into her office and shot her eight times, and Nov. 13, 2001, when someone fired at her on the courthouse steps in Monterrey.

“Some people would have left the country,” she said. “Not me. God has put me in the eye of the hurricane. The people I defend could be the worst of the worst or they could be innocent.”

Pretty much the definition of bad-ass, this lady. She's so gangsta, in fact, that she's had at least six "narcorridos" written about her.

The last seven years have been uneventful when it comes to actual violence against her, but threats have still come in. Being a target has not turned her into a nervous wreck though. She is fatalistic about when and where her end will come, and she vows to continue her aggressive advocacy of any client she chooses to defend.

As a single mother, though, it clearly does bother her that her teenage daughter might be orphaned one day, and that has made her turn down clients, she said, that she might otherwise have represented.

You've probably guessed how this one ends, haven't you? The moral of story is that you should never let your bodyguards drop several paces behind you in a crowded mercado, because you never know who's carrying an AR-15. Luckily, her teenage daughter got to see the whole thing.

The Burro Effect

Since we mentioned the local radio online "best street food" poll and told you to vote early and often for Tacos Francia, she's pulled from a distant fourth to a narrow first place. Further proof that you - you, dear reader, you - are a force to be reckoned with.

Flex your muscles here. Fly, my monkeys! FLY!!

Street Fair Fare

We took the spare cat down to the plaza to have his portrait drawn by one of the street artists there. She seemed like a nice enough lady, though a little crazy - and, oh, what an ego! So she hands us our drawing, and sure, the spare cat's there, but it's really just a big self-portrait of her. And we have no idea what's up with that monkey.


Still a bargain at 150 pesos, though.

¡Z!

Happy 130th birthday, Emiliano Zapata! For those unfamiliar, here's a completely comprehensive three minute summary of his life:

¡Viva!

Speak Out!

In Querétaro, which leads the nation in unwed mothers, where one-third of the babies are born to girls 17 and under, and which has - and we're sure this is completely a coincidence - about 365 churches, abortion is, like everywhere else in Mexico except Mexico City, illegal. That's apparently not destructive enough for PAN, the political arm of the Catholic Church here, so with just 50 days to go before they lose control of the state government (PRI beat them in last month's elections), a uterus-free legislator named Fernando Urbiola Ledesma [right] is trying to ram though an amendment to the local constitution that would obligate the state to "defend life from the moment of conception." Because every sperm is sacred.

The Legislature is opening itself up to a public comment period next week, August 10-14, from 10:00AM to 2:00PM (Casa Legislativa, Madero 71, Centro, in the "Salón Venustiano Carranza"), where concerned citizens (which we are not) and organizations can come in and speak out. We're not certain of this, but we think you have to sign up in advance, as opposed to just showing up and expecting to talk.

This has been a public service announcement from Burro Hall.

José Easter-House

The cast of Basic Instinct seems to be in the news more than usual lately - Sharon Stone celebrating her 50th birthday by posing topless on the cover of Paris Match; Michael Douglas standing behind his (alleged) meth kingpin son. We thought this last item was enough of a Mexico tie-in to post something, but then our Sonoma, California bureau chief called our attention to the latest project from Joe Eszterhas, who wrote Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and the only movie we walked out of after paying full price for a ticket, Sliver. Joe wrote hard, lived hard, made millions and then got all Jesusy and wrote a memoir called Crossbearer. And now he's hard at work writing a film about everyone's favorite bird poop apparition, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Eszterhas will write the screenplay about the virgin of Guadalupe, a vision that appeared to the Aztec peasant Juan Diego in 1531. While some scholars question Diego's existence, the event is credited with helping to spread Catholicism at a time of economic and social turmoil in the country. Earlier this decade, Diego was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic church.

Eszterhas, sounding like someone other than the man who gave the world hard-R potboilers like "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls," noted that the Guadalupe project was a "labor of love" and that he had been "hoping for some time to write a film that is both entertaining and inspiring.

The jokes pretty much write themselves, so we'll go with the visual pun, which, we have to confess, we don't feel particularly good about.



Feel free to leave casting suggestions in comments. Assuming the Virgen doesn't have a lot of lines, we like Traci Lords as a brunette.

¡Buen Apetito!

This photo from Midwesterner In Mexico pretty accurately captures the food transportation system here (with the exception of course of the ice - she obviously lives in a much tonier neighborhood than we do). And it reminded us of this article in Dia Siete [.pdf] about street food in New York. Having lived in New York for 16 years, the one thing we were certain of is that eating off a street cart was the fastest way to contract hepatitis. Yet here in Mexico, where health and sanitation regulations are, shall we say, a bit more lax (see photo of chickens shoveled into back of dirty pickup truck [right]), we'll eat pretty much anything not actually lying on the pavement. The Dia Siete piece interviews Mexican immigrants working food stalls in NYC, and compares their (heavily regulated) experience favorably to the sale of street food in Mexico. (One major difference is that street vendors in NY are not subject to shakedowns by political bosses, which is seen to be a bigger deal than the fact that their stalls have to be clean and free of infectious diseases.)

Last night's editorial meeting was held at our favorite street vendor, Tacos Francia. One of the local radio stations is running a "vote for your favorite street food" poll, and Francia would like everyone to vote early and often, so go do it (she's currently 4th). We admit we also threw in a vote for Tacos on the Zaragoza Ave Extension Across the Corner from Bancomer and Behind the Car Wash, because that's just an awesome name.

The Bufferfly Effect

There seems to be some sort of mass butterfly migration running through Querétaro at the moment, which is unusual here in the Centro since most of the trees seem to have been cut down by the Conquistadors. For the gatitos, it's like it's raining cat treats. We spent approximately seven seconds doing some online research to find out what sort of rare and delicate creatures they were munching on, only to discover that Mexico has more varieties of butterflies than it does indigenous languages. This site would be much improved by thumbnail pictures on the main page, but it's still a pretty comprehensive listing of the Mexican mariposa community.

August is the Cruelest Month

Awesome! Dengue fever - also known as "bonebreak fever" for reasons we'd prefer not to contemplate - has moved from the Yucatán to the center of the country!

In Querétaro, the state secretary of health, Rafael Ascencio, confirmed three cases of dengue, one of them in the capital city.

This should totally take the pressure off the swine, anyway.

No Jacket Required

Here's the latest photo-op from governor-elect Pepe Calzada [left], as he visits a local university. This is the most recent of several post-election photos we've seen in which he appears guayabera-less.


This is not change we can believe in. Was the red guayabera just a campaign gimmick? The politician-media honeymoon is a precious thing, Gov. Calzada. Do not make us turn on you before you even take office.

Blowback

It's nice to see the US getting serious about stopping the flow of deadly weaponry across the border with Mexico. Of course, that probably has something to do with the fact that we're talking about weapons - specifically grenades - moving north:

The Mexican government says 1,600 grenades were seized in Mexico last year, a 170 percent increase from 594 in 2007. Already, 950 grenades have been recovered this year.

And there is evidence that those grenades are making their way north.

...The ATF feels so strongly about the threat grenades pose to the United States that they have sent bomb technicians to Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador to train authorities there to identify and track grenades.

Grenades. Man, that's some savage shit. But stop us if you saw this part coming...

The United States and South Korea rank as the top two producers of the grenades seized in Mexico, according to the ATF.

Test-Mex

From Staring at Strangers, we find the latest version of the Mexican Citizenship Test study guide [pdf, and in Spanish], in case anyone wants to test their knowledge of Mex-arcana. We romped on history and geography, but crashed hard on arts and literature. There's no answer key, but we think we scored 88% (we counted guesses - even good ones - as wrong answers, but gave ourselves a point for choosing George Washington on #26, since the question doesn't specify which country you're to name the father of).

Fat of the Land

Apropos of Mexico's never-ending quest to unseat Uncle Sam as the Fattest Nation on Earth, the Burro Hall Nutrition Research Institute would like to send a big fat shout-out to the state of Coahuila (that's the one nestled into the "armpit" of Texas) which has once again been named the most obese state in Mexico! Roughly seventy-seven percent (that's not a typo) of the adult population is obese, and a staggering 26.7 percent of the state's residents suffer from diabetes, hypertension or chronic renal insufficiency. Thirty percent of the state's public health budget goes to treating obesity-related ailments.

Apparently, in Coahuila, the way to rebel against authority is to not be an enormous fatass, which is why a mere 40 percent of teenagers - and an embarrassing 17 percent of children under the age of four - are obese. Don't worry, parents....they'll come around.

The fattest town in the fattest state in the second-fattest nation in the world is Nueva Rosita, which edged out Piedras Negras (the two finished second and first, respectively, last year). Piedras Negras means "black stones," which is probably a pretty accurate description of the inhabitants' kidneys. That Piedras Negras sits on the US-Mexico border, across from Eagle Pass, TX (where the childhood obesity rate is twice the US national average) would seem to indicate that a lot of people are sneaking across the border, gorging themselves on America's unhealthy diet, and waddling back home. If Mexico wants to compete for the title of World's Fattest Nation, it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask that they do so honorably. American calories belong to America, and they should stay in America. Burro Hall once again calls on the Department of Homeland Security to finish building that border wall.

Querétaro, a state whose commitment to obesity excellence has always been suspect, recently announced an 8 million peso investment in a public health program called "Active and Healthy Lifestyle!" It's not entirely clear to us what the program does, but one thing it doesn't do is make the United States #2.