Day of the Dead

A marigold hangs on crosses hung at the U.S.-Mexico border wall as part of the Day of the Dead celebrations in Tijuana, in Mexico, Friday, Oct. 30, 2009. Volunteers from the Pro-migrant Defense Coalition hung 5,100 wooden crosses in honor of 5,100 migrants who have died crossing to the US since 1995, according to their statistics. Day of the Dead is celebrated on Nov. 2, with celebrations beginning late Nov. 1. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

This Is Where the Octavio Paz "Mexican Masks" Reference Would Go If This Were That Kind of a Blog, Which It's Not.

We love Halloween because it's the time of year when the grossly insensitive collide with the preciously oversensitive - a win-win situation as long as you don't belong to either camp. So on the one hand, complaints about this "Mexican Man" costume cause us to roll our eyes all the way back in our heads (which is itself a pretty good, scary costume for those on a budget). On the other hand,

The character reflected in the costume above has, historically, been characterized as lazy, unintelligent, alcoholic and untrustworthy in mainstream media and entertainment. Dressing up as, say, a mariachi, wouldn’t hold the same social or historical currency.

We think there's enough empirical proof to stand behind the "alcoholic" slur, but that's another matter. So we took a quick tour through the intertubes to see what comes up when we search for "Mexican Halloween Costume." We don't think many of these will be applauded by the oversensitives.

Burros are big this year, though after three-and-a-half years we can still count on our fingers the number of people we've seen actually riding donkeys around here. At first glance, the guy below appears to be fucking it*, but that's just an illusion. Most costumes have overly literal descriptive names, but since "Mexican Fucking Burro" was probably deemed to offensive, this one is just called Hey, Amigo! For some reason, that's just so much worse.


Meanwhile, the Inflatable Donkey Boy doesn't so much offend as baffle. We'd love to see a closeup of the neck-hole, since it seems to coincide with the donkey's anus. Where are the testicles? Where is Child Protective Services when a parent is forcing their child's head through a blow-up donkey's asshole? And why does this crop up when we search for "Mexican"?


At some point when we weren't paying attention, Halloween morphed into "Dress Like a Porn Star" Day, so why be a bullfighter, or even a female bullfighter, when you can be a Sexy Bullfighter! What's funny about this one is that, when you get right down to it, real-life male bullfighters don't wear very much more than this when facing down a 1200-pound toro.


In a similar vein, though borderland she-devils actually look like this in real life, the Sexy Border Babe puts the wet back in wetback, if you knowwhatimsayin'...


Finally, we submit this last one without comment - except to say that actually slaughtering your pug and selling the meat to a taco vendor would be a kinder thing to do to him.

*[Given the number of people who find this site via the search term "donkey fucking," we kind of curious what sort of riffraff this post drags in.]

Deadline: Mañana

Well, we hope you've enjoyed "National Hispanic Media Week" as much as we have. What's that you say? You didn't know it was National Hispanic Media Week? Um, neither did we, frankly. It's had something of a low-key rollout. And in another sign that the Republican Party is determined to reduce itself to a hardcore fringe of angry white teabaggers, not a single GOP senator is willing to extend even a symbolic felicitaciones to our ink-stained Latino brethren:

For the past week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office has been looking for a Republican co-sponsor for an utterly non-controversial resolution honoring the legacy and role of Hispanic media.

None came, his office confirms. On Tuesday, Reid introduced and passed a resolution designating October 25 through October 31, 2009, the "National Hispanic Media Week" in honor of the Latino Media of America. The Nevada Democrat was joined by Sens. Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Mark Udall (Colorado) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) -- all of whom are Democrats.

It's probably worth mentioning here that a lot of Hispanic-American journos cover the country directly to our south, also known as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a reporter, so a quick "Hey, thanks for risking your life to keep the rest us well-informed" doesn't seem a lot to ask, even from people who think universal healthcare would make the Baby Jesus cry. But instead, we'll focus on the fact that the resolution proclaiming Oct. 25 - 31 as National Hispanic Media Week wasn't even introduced until Oct. 27, at which point National Hispanic Media Week was nearly half over. Which, when you think about it, is pretty um, hispanic.

Live by the Vitriol, Die by the Vitriol

There was a heated discussion about this at this morning's editorial meeting, but in the end we decided that we're more or less cool with it.

Police Investigating Shot Fired at Lou Dobbs' Home

On his radio show this week, Lou Dobbs told his listeners that someone fired a shot at his remote New Jersey home earlier this month, while his wife was standing outside.

"My house has been shot and hit... This shot was fired, with my wife not 15 feet away," said Dobbs. "It's part of life. The anger, the hate, the vitriol."

Somehow the story turned to "little fools like Geraldo Rivera."

There is no comment from CNN on the security scare.

Update: To be clear, we’re not endorsing actually shooting Lou Dobbs, but merely shooting at him. Nevertheless, we’re also calling bullshit on the whole episode.

An investigation revealed the bullet bounced off the siding near the roof, and dropped to the ground, [Sgt.] Jones said.

It is believed to be a rifle round, and there are “indications it was fired from a long distance away” because it did not penetrate the siding, Jones said.

Police conducted a search in the area around the home and interviewed neighbors and people in the area, which Jones said did not reveal any leads.

Jones declined to speculate on whether the shooter was targeting the home or whether it was a hunter’s misfire, but said “it is not uncommon this time of year, toward hunting season, to have bullets shot at houses in rural areas.”

Because Dobbs is a middle-class man of the people, the incident took place on his 300 acre farm and was witnessed by his chauffeur. Amusingly, his farmhouse is clad in vinyl siding. We’re not sure how slowly a bullet has to be traveling for it to fail to penetrate vinyl siding, but we’re pretty sure we could at least make a dent if we tossed one overhand. Dobbs of course declared the incident “part of an assault against anyone who opposes leniency toward illegal immigrants.”

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

SEMARNAT, Mexico's equivalent of the Interior Dept., has just handed out a bunch of awards to the Cleanest Cities in Mexico:

The "Ciudades Mas Limpias de Mexico" contest targets municipal governments throughout Mexico, as well as delegation offices in Mexico City to promote best practices for cleaning streets, beaches, parks and forests, with gold medal prizes awarded to Izamal, Yucatan; Benito Juarez, Quintana Roo; Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes and Culiacan, Sinaloa.

Silver medal recipients were: Chihuahua, Chihuahua; Tulum, Quintana Roo; Tulancingo, Hidalgo; Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas; Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas; Morelia, Michoacan; Acajete, Puebla; Queretaro, Queretaro; and Colima, Colima.

We don't mean to be ungracious, but fucking silver? Seriously? If Querétaro has one thing going for it (a debatable point, yes) it's that it's possibly the cleanest place in the world not controlled by the Walt Disney Company. You could build microchips on the streets in the Centro Historico. Every day, from dawn until dusk, and army of orange-jacketed women with sweep the streets and the sidewalks multiple times with handmade brooms. A couple times a month those same streets are hosed down by high-pressure water trucks, despite the region's chronic water shortage. If we ever needed surgery, we'd be comfortable having it done on the sidewalk outside Burro Hall.

Needless to say, we'll be dispatching the interns to Izamal, Benito Juarez, Aguascalientes and Culiacan, and then challenging these results in court.

Update: Exhibit A.

Culiacán "no es limpio," residents say

We Wanna Tenkiu

We've been doing a lot of work with Bobby DeNiro lately, part of our initiative to strengthen Brooklyn's presence in Mexico. We'll be unveiling a few collaborative projects in the coming months, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, we're happy to see him zipping into Mexico City for the day to cut the ribbon on the newest Nobu, which might actually cause us to want to eat raw fish within the DF city limits.

Mostly, though we're posting this purely to highlight the line in the story in which DeNiro, responding to a greeting from the reporter, takes the guy's hand, smiles and says "muchos thank yous" - which the writer renders as "muchouuus tenkiuuus." It's the first time we've seen "thank you" transliterated into Spanish as "tenkiu," but a quick trip through the Googles indicates that it's sorta common. So we're passing it along as a service to the orthographers, etymologists and lexicographers out there. (It's the kind of thing we have to do if we want to maintain our tax-exempt status.)

Great Moments in Rhetorical Questioning

This AP piece about some knucklehead hotel owner in New Mexico who made all his employees from Old Mexico whiten up their names, instituted an "English Only" policy and, not surprisingly, set off something of a backlash, contains this priceless gem of a quotation:

Whitten grew subdued as a two-hour interview with The Associated Press progressed. He said he was sorry for the misunderstanding and insisted he has never been against any culture.

"What kind of fool or idiot or poor businessman would I be to orchestrate this whole crazy thing that's costed me a lot of time, money and aggravation?" Whitten said.

Well, you shoulda thinked of that before you doned it.

O, Canada...

Several months ago the Canadian government started requiring Mexicans to apply for visas if they wanted to visit the country, setting off what could modestly be referred to as a "furor" down south. As bent out of shape as many of our amigos were, we could sorta see Canada's point, insofar as thousands of Mexican "tourists" were arriving each year and never leaving.

Still, this is pretty friggin' boneheaded.

OTTAWA–A Mexican Supreme Court judge says he was initially denied a travel visa to visit Canada with his family this summer because an official didn't believe he had enough money to make the trip.

Gonzalez-Salas, his wife and daughter applied for single entry visas, which cost 905 Mexican pesos ($75 Cdn) each, on July 13 after hearing Canada was about to bring the new restriction into force the next day. They had to fill out forms with detailed information about their family members and educational and employment history. Gonzalez-Salas said he also had to include a letter from work stating his seniority and wages as well as bank statements.

Gonzalez-Salas said he received a rejection letter the day before his family was scheduled to fly to Canada.

"The visas were denied on the basis of me not having enough stability in my job and that my finances were not enough to make the trip," said Gonzalez-Salas, who did not keep a copy of the letter.

Why anyone would want to visit Canada remains something of a mystery to us, but our real concern here is that Mexico, in retaliation, will tighten up the "financial stability" requirements for foreigners seeking Mexican visas. Right now, "marginally-employed freelance tv producer" still makes the cut. If they make it so that "Supreme Court Justice" isn't a sure thing, we imagine we'll be posting from El Salvador by year's end.

In Veracruz That's Just the Way Things Go

Another day, another animal you wouldn't expect to see running loose in Mexico running loose in Mexico.

A 2,200-pound hippopotamus that escaped from a private zoo has been shot to death after more than a month on the run in the countryside of southeastern Mexico.

An official with Mexico's animal protection agency said Thursday the hippo was shot at least twice the previous day near a river outside the town of Alamo in Veracruz state. Witnesses told reporters that police fired the shots while trying to capture it.

Why local police would think that pumping hot lead into a fleeing hippopotamus would be a productive way to go about capturing it is beyond us, but we're savoring the imaginary version of the scene that's playing in our heads right now.

Another Record Year

In case you're scoring at home, Mexico's drug-war deaths passed the 6,000 mark yesterday, with a little less than 20% of the year still to go. Special recognition has to go to our peeps up in Ciudad Juárez, who just cleaned up after their record-breaking 1,968th murder this year.

And of course, drugs are now completely unavailable here in the States, so the whole thing is just a smashing success.

Raiders of the Lost Art

Quite some time ago, in response to a rumor (apparently incorrect) that a certain piece of artwork had been pilfered from our former office at CBS and relocated to the executive producer's lair, we offered a handmade Zapatista doll to the first person to send us a current picture of the new installation.

Three years, two months and one deceased tv legend later, we have a winner!

After yesterday's memorial service of 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt, our friend and former co-worker Bob Dean ventured back to the CBS offices, where he spotted this diptych masterpiece on the wall of the broadcast's new director, Rob Klug:


The director, whom we've never met, has apparently been under the impression the couple in the photos are Mr and Mrs Ed Herlihy, the famous newsreel announcer. In fact, their true identities are lost to history, as would their faces have been, had they not been rescued from a Mississippi thrift shop by our Weekend-Overnight Sports Editor and his wife a decade ago.

It may take another three years, but Bob's Zapatista doll is on the way.

Where the Riled Things Are

The insane clown posse in the anti-immigration crowd has been tying themselves in knots over the past few days over the biggest, most important immigration-related issue of our times: basically, some dumb Halloween costume got pulled from some store, or something. But since then, our inbox has been burning with white-hot missives of white rage (we’re Facebook friends with the head of Americans for Legal Immigration, which should stand as a cautionary tale about accepting friend requests while drunk).

As we've been able to piece together (caught up, as we were, in the Continuing Adventures of Balloon Boy & Family), Target apparently yanked this really clever costume of an "illegal alien" which is basically a space alien in a prison uniform. This strikes us as harmlessly stupid - about as clever as one can reasonably expect from this crowd (the "illegal alien" is holding a green card, which in Non-Bizarro World means he's, um, legal), but certainly less offensive than this Mexican-looking one. And if you really, really wanted one, you could go get one anywhere except Target.

Somehow, though, a retailer's decision not to stock a specific item suddenly became "censorship," and a dire threat to our wholesome, Christian, American way of life. Yesterday morning, they swung into action!

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC's President William Gheen is offering to conduct interviews next week, while wearing the controversial illegal alien costume recently banned by Target at the request of a few pro-illegal immigrant groups.

"The illegal alien supporting groups in America are attacking free speech once again," said Gheen. "These are the same types of people that are trying to ban Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck from television. They want to control what people can see, hear, say, or even wear for Halloween in pursuit of their open borders agenda."

Gheen has ordered his costume through Amazon.com and is encouraging others to do the same to help protect the businesses that created and still distribute the costume.

Businesses that value the freedoms and protections of American citizens should be rewarded, while businesses like Target that quickly cave to radical pro-illegal alien political groups should be rebuked.

Gheen hopes this controversy will backfire on the illegal immigrant supporters, and that demand for the illegal alien costumes will rise and quickly lead to sold out inventories. The illegal alien costumes now qualify as collector items.

And it worked! A few hours later, ALIPAC announced that the costumes had sold out nationwide. This was a huge victory for the forces of freedom! Earlier that morning, the costume could not be purchased at Target. Now, they cannot be purchased anywhere! Take that, La Raza!

But freedom's just another word for how to make a buck, so Gheen, having created a scarcity of "illegal alien" costumes, planned to sell his on eBay - a get rich quick scheme that would have worked, if it wasn't for those meddling kids:

Update 2:00pm Eastern

BREAKING NEWS! Ebay, Google, and Forum Novelties Censor illegal alien costume!

"So much for free markets, free speech, or free political expression in America!" William Gheen, President of ALIPAC.

So now they'll have to sell it through some vehicle other than eBay, just like they did in Nazi Germany!

We'll keep you updated on these incredibly important developments as they happen. Unless The Man tries to censor this, too.

If You Got Bad News, Wanna Kick Them Blues...

She don't lie, she don't lie she don't lie...cocaine.

Cocaine use doubled in Mexico in the six years to 2008, the health minister said Friday, arguing that tougher border controls on smuggling has pushed more of the drug into the domestic market.

Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova blamed the rise in cocaine use -- from 1.2 to 2.4 percent among 12 to 65 year olds -- on "changing trafficking routes and increased security on the country's northern and southern borders, which increases access to (illegal) substances inside" the country.

This is another example of how, no matter what happens in the "war on drugs," Mexico winds up the loser. Shut down the smuggling routes through the Caribbean? The drug trade comes roaring into Mexico! Make it nearly impossible to manufacture meth in the US? La Familia in Michoacan will pick up the slack! Tighten up the border so the coke can't get to its American customers? It gets pumped back up Mexican noses! Of course Mexico, being Mexico, doesn't have nearly the number of treatment and rehab facilities required to handle a rising drug abuse problem - and the ones they do have, well....

So far from God, so close to the United States.

Truckin'

Via Laura Martinez, another plank in the Mexico-Brooklyn Bridge we've been painstakingly constructing here at Burro Hall.

Our advance food-tasting team had alerted us to this truck months ago, but Red Hook is a little farther than we wanted to go for Mexican food, but now that they've been proclaimed the Best Street Vendors in New York City, well, everyone loves a winner, don't they?

Don't Hate Tha Playa...

Hate his employa!

CNN is declining to carry a national advertisement, purchased by two progressive groups, which attacks its host Lou Dobbs for his controversial views on immigration.

On Thursday, the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters, along with the organization America's Voice announced a new ad attacking Dobbs and CNN for airing "60 minutes of anti-immigrant hate." And in a deft touch of political messaging, the groups announced that they had their ad buyer place the spot on CNN itself, during the network's "Latino in America" series.

Here's the ad the liberal media doesn't want you to see...

That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Fatter

Mexico has been huffing and puffing - but gaining steadily - in its quest to unseat America as the fattest nation in the world. But this looks like a game-changer:

In Mexico and Canada people who are obese are having a difficult time with the H1N1 swine flu virus, and are having rapidly worsened breathing problems. The death rate for the obese with H1N1 swine flu is higher than other people inflicted with the virus, and the recovery was more difficult.

Ruh-roh! Now, admittedly, we haven't sent the interns down to the JAMA offices to examine the original data (we assume they'll allow this as a professional courtesy), but it seems like swine flu may knock a few points off Mexico's overall Body Mass Index - culling the herd, as it were, like hyenas taking down a slow, clumsy wildebeest.

America, which has been much, much fatter over far, far longer period of time, has presumably built up the necessary immunities among our morbidly obese community, and will show none of the weakness and vulnerability of los gorditos down south.

Great Moments in Graphic Composition

New York is saturated with ads for the state's newest lottery game, Sweet Million. We would have thought that, in the current economic climate, one could sell million-dollar lottery tickets without the aid of Madison Avenue, but even our black, crunchy hearts are warmed by pictures of puppies hugging bunny-rabbits.


That said, we're not sure we'd want even an adorable little puppy to shit a million bucks into our hands.


Hey, you never know...

Update: Because whoever handles advertising in the Borough Hall subway station has got a great sense of humor, this was new this morning...

Dead-Man Gawking

Detroit has an unemployment rate of nearly 30 percent - three times the national average - the highest murder rate of any large city in America, and just last month Time Magazine devoted almost an entire issue to the death of that once-great city. But if you're like us, you're thinking, hey, I know just what that town needs: a few dozen dessicated Mexican corpses!

Thirty-six mummies on loan from Guanajuato's Museo de las Momias (Museum of the Mummies) go on public display Saturday at the Detroit Science Center as part of the "Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato" traveling exhibit.

The roughly $2 million project marks the first time the mummies have been shown in the U.S.

We hope the people of Detroit find hope and inspiration in the exhibit. Like Detroit, Guanajuato was once an economic powerhouse - during the colonial period, silver mining made it one of the wealthiest cities in the world - but has since fallen on hard times. (How hard, you ask? They still can't stop talking about Tim Burton's visit there in 2007. That's how hard.) But play your cards right, Detroit, and 200 years from now the preserved cadavers of your citizenry may be on display in some failed capital of the future. Shanghai, perhaps!

Loyal readers may recall that Chicago originally had first dibs on this exhibit, but decided to dis the Mexicans by moving the show to Cicero - a crappy neighborhood full of, well, Mexicans. It made sense at the time, really. When you're a shoo-in to get the 2016 Olympics, who gives a shit about a bunch of dried out Mexicanos? Well, Chicagoans, now's your chance to gas up your Japanese-made cars and drive the two and a half hours to the Detroit Science Center. Keep the doors locked, of course.

Apocalypto

The AP has a long article here debating whether or not the world will end 38 months from now - and apparently, like everything else that goes wrong in North America, it's all Mexico's fault.

Anyway, we managed to see the trailer for "2012," the movie that shows us all how it's gonna go down, and all we can say is that the Apocalypse looks friggin' awesome!

Interesting side note: One way you could always tell if a movie was set in the future was that the president of the US was usually black. This holds true in "2012," though for some reason he's played by Danny Glover, who bears no resemblance to the actual black president of the US in 2012. Weird. But also, he gets crushed by an aircraft carrier, which just totally rocks.

Spillover

Mike Bloomberg, the CEO of New York, just released a report showing how out-of-state gun shows help decent, God-fearing felons exercise the Second Amendment rights that would otherwise be denied them for being, um, felons.

The reason Hizzoner hates freedom and liberty so much is that a lot of those illegal guns find their way into his city (which has much stricter gun laws), where they are often used to kill registered voters.

In keeping with our mission to strengthen ties between Brooklyn and Mexico, we note that the exact same loophole the mayor is pissed about is what helps keep Mexico awash in weaponry.

Corrupt customs officials help smuggle weapons into Mexico, earning as much as $1 million for large shipments, police here say. The weapons are often bought legally at gun shows in Arizona and other border states where loopholes allow criminals to stock up without background checks.

The arms traffickers have left Mexico awash in AK-47s, pistols, telescope sighting devices, grenades, grenade launchers and high-powered ammunition, such as the so-called cop-killer bullets believed to be able to penetrate bulletproof vests.
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"You're looking at the same firepower here on the border that our soldiers are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan," Thomas Mangan, a spokesman in Phoenix for the ATF, said in an interview.

"After Visting Mexico Twice, Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize"

Just trying to imagine the Mexican headlines...

The Bad News Bearers

Our amiga Joy drew our attention to this superlative essay in the Columbia Journalism Review: The Most Misreported Country. With only 195 possible candidates, do you even need to ask who the winner was?

When it comes to Mexico, U.S. journalists seem interested in only four things: drugs, traffickers, violence, and corruption (with an occasional nod toward immigration). Journalists peddle a sort of drug-war pornography, salaciously and insatiably dwelling on the most lurid aspects of the trade: narcos, gangs, smugglers, pipelines, cells, mass graves, severed heads, torture chambers, dirty cops. Journalists promiscuously quote DEA agents, eagerly accompany undercover cops on ride-alongs, descend daringly into drug-infested neighborhoods, and intrepidly interview members of the drug trade.

The author, Michael Massing, has written extensively about the War on Drugs, and zeroes in on the most glaring problem with the coverage of Mexico:

Over the last thirty years, the U.S. has sent billions of dollars to countries like Mexico and Colombia, dispatched legions of agents to the region, dispatched helicopters, fumigation squads, eradication teams, and justice advisers, yet heroin, cocaine, and marijuana continue to flood our country. And the reason is clear: Americans continue to crave the stuff. We are the ones who sustain the drug trade; we are the ones who in the end are mostly responsible for the drug violence that periodically erupts in Mexico. You’ll almost never see a journalist explore this, however. It isn’t sexy. What is sexy are the cartels, and so the pretense about their lethal impact on the United States must be maintained.

...Doing so, however, might undermine the presumption—unquestioningly accepted by journalists—that Mexico is a pusher nation forcing drugs on unsuspecting Americans. For the U.S. press, the fault is never in ourselves, but always south of the border.

But because Burro Hall don't play dat, here's a little something the US media doesn't want you to know: the World's Largest Mural (specifically, “made by a painter,” though we don’t understand exactly what other kinds of mural there are) will soon be completed in Mazatlán - Mazatlán, Mexico!

(For our friends in the US media: That means the mural will be in Sinaloa Cartel territory.)

Thanks For Coming!

Here's a little statistic that should be sobering to the folks who would seal the US border shut: Of the first nine winners of the Nobel Prizes this year, eight are Americans. But of those eight, five were born elsewhere and emigrated to the US. As natural-born Americans ourselves, our math skills are pretty weak, but even we know that five out of eight is more than half.

Nobel Justice

It's Nobel Prize season again. As gringo arrivistes, we suppose we can be forgiven for only just now learning that a queretana woman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago. This is, of course, like being nominated for a Pulitzer - anyone can do it; George Bush has been nominated repeatedly, and Kissinger actually won the damn thing. Still, Querétaro's a small state, so we'll bask in her reflected glory.

Macedonia Blas Flores was nominated in 2005 for working to end violence and discrimination against indigenous Otomi women. But apparently, not all Otomi women want to be helped, and in 2003, she was savagely attacked in her home (allegedly) by two Otomi women, Ana Santiago Calixta and Alejandra García Santiago, who beat her, threw her to the floor, tore off her clothes and...oh, we'll just leave this part untranslated: introdujeron en los genitales una salsa preparada con diversos chiles. We can tell you from experience that the chile salsas here can be pretty picante - and that's just in your mouth.

Anyway, the point of this treacherous story is that the two assailants have been on the lam for about six years now...until Sunday, that is, when they were apprehended and taken into custody in San Juan del Rio. Indigenous women like Blas Flores don't get a lot of justice in Querétaro, so we're glad to see someone actually taking the law seriously for a change. And of course, we heartily endorse making the punishment fitting the crime.

Taken for Granite

The latest bit of handout-mooching from the Failed State of Arizona:

A prototype granite statue honoring American troops fighting overseas will soon make a 2,700 mile journey to Lake Havasu City after the Freedom Bridge Foundation beat about 300 applicants for the statue.

Millbury, Massachusetts-based Fireplace Mantels Etc. co-owners Mark and Debra Blain created the statue, which depicts an American soldier in uniform standing in front of a stone U.S.A. and waving an American flag. The couple decided to donate the statue after watching the film “Taking Chance,” in which Kevin Bacon plays a U.S. Marine bringing a fallen comrade home from battle.

“That movie moved us so much that after the movie we said let’s give it away to a deserving town or organization that would proudly display it,” Debra Blain said.

After a local town declined the gift, the Blains decided to invite cities across the country to apply for it.

The "local town" that rejected the sculpture for reasons of good taste? Swampscott, Massachusetts.

You're welcome, Arizona.

Update: Turns out, this bit of American cheese was made - wait for it - in China.

Adventures in Advertising

The award-winning Querétaro tourism office just published 10-page advertising insert titled Destination Querétaro [pdf], which is running in some of your finer travel-porn glossies in the US this month. It's wrong-headed in a number of ways: Coca-cola is not a "regional product," amigos, it's just bottled here; and for the love of Pancho Villa, people, why are you promoting this city as a "retirement destination"? (San Miguel is just 50 miles away, and much nicer, retirees!) But what really made us toss our copy of National Geographic Traveler across the bar is that there are sections labeled "Cultural Centers," "Top 5 Attractions," "Renowned Artists," and "Regional Brands," and yet somehow the words "Burro Hall" fail to appear under any of them. Hideth not your light under a basket, Querétaro tourism office! God said that.

But DQ does note correctly that beers are a buck-eighty. That should be enough, but we understand the need to pad it out for another 9.9 pages.

Spillover

Thanks, Texas!

High-powered guns purchased at Houston-area stores by a Gulf Cartel cell and smuggled across the border for the syndicate's bloody warfare have been traced to at least 55 killings in Mexico, including the deaths of police officers, civilians and gangsters, federal agents said Thursday.

The recent tracking of firearms is the result of a four-month anti-cartel operation focused largely on Houston, which the federal government contends is the No. 1 spot in the United States for buying guns that later are used in underworld massacres and other crimes in Mexico.

Homage to Catalonia

We're pleased to see the hometown paper continuing to leave bullfighting coverage in the hands of its chief art critic rather than a sportswriter. The José Tomás slideshow is worth a look, too.