As they do every year, the Diocese of Querétaro has insisted that the city's faithful not participate in "the occult celebrations, invocations of witchcraft and satanic pacts" known as Halloween. (And when we say "insisted," we mean they actually threw a press conference.) In an especially cynical touch, the spokespriest pointed to the "wave of violence" in the country as a reason to remain vigilant against costumed children asking for candy.
Then padre Juan Manuel Pérez took the microphone and explained, "When I was an exorcist..." which we're pretty sure is the worst possible way to start to an anti-Halloween lecture. Padre Pérez would have us believe that every Halloween he was called upon to deal with cases of genuine satanic possession of people who'd taken part in graveyard rituals, "which are a door to the occult that comes from the United States." Apparently, the assembled press corps made no efforts to have the poor man committed, or at least confined to bed rest for a few days.
* Twelve years ago, journalist Alejandro Suversa interviewed 75 Sinaloa schoolkids about their dreams for the future. The answers were unremarkable: they wanted to be doctors, nurses, pilots, cops, etc. This month he went back to visit with the now young adults. All the men work in the drug trade. All but two of the women are housewives caring for children fathered by men working in the drug trade.
* US elections - which our polling division tells us will mark a shift back to the failed policies of the Bush Administration - fall rather appropriately on the Day of the Dead this year. In Massachusetts, ALIPAC endorses Jeff Perry for his tough stance against immigrants, who will no longer be able to hide in 14-year-old girls' vaginas if Perry is elected.
* In Nevada, Tea Party Princess Sharron Angle, who would never say a bad thing about Messicans, would nevertheless like you to know that Harry Reid [hearts] Messicans, which is obviously a reason to vote him out of office.
* And then there's the Failed State of Arizona, where a law intended to keep illegal immigrants from voting succeeded only in disenfranchising 30,000 US citizens. Republican Jesse Kelly is sounding the alarm about busloads of Mexicans being carted over the border to vote, which is taking place only in his failed imagination. Meanwhile, the state's failing, erosion-based economy is hoping to revive itself by building lots of prisons to house illegal Messicans, thus increasing the Failed State's dependency on the hated brown people from the south.
* Continental Airlines will finally have some competition on its Querétaro-USA route, which we hope will discourage them from continuing to charge 250 dollars to let us carry-on the perro.
* Snuff film aficionados will find a lot to like at El Blog del Narco.
* If you like the idea of combining iconic Mayan images and Disney characters, Carmen Cantabella's "Year of the Jaguar" exhibit at Galeria DRT is worth seeing.
Our favorite government official, Sandra Albarrán de Calzada, president of DIF and, by the most amazing coincidence, wife of the governor of Querétaro, is interviewed this month is the glossy glamor magazine Caras:
It took just a few minutes for her to compliment the Caras team on the elegance, poise and good taste of the clothes and accessories they chose for her wardrobe. She greeted us at her home in Querétaro, in one of the most exclusive areas of the city, where, friendly and relaxed, she posed for our cameras.
What is your life like now that you are in charge of DIF?
Very busy, but full of satisfaction. I always say that I have the best job in the world, because it allows to be near the people, the families of Querétaro, to understand their needs and do my bit to try to improve their quality of life.
How is it being the First Lady of the state?
It is a great responsibility. Now we must take care of every person and every family with whom we were so close during the campaign. Our goal is to be with people, only then you understand their needs...
Dah-ling! But sometimes, we suppose, it's hard to see people when you're up so damn close to them. So in an effort to do our bit, we thought we'd step back a little and offer Sra. de Calzada a wide shot of one of those hard-to-find little people in need.
You can click here to see dozens of pictures of the First Lady enjoying the best job in the world.
Once again, the lack of a impenetrable border fence between Mexico and the Failed State of Arizona has allowed the criminal element to leech through and make a home for itself among decent, God-fearing people. This week's example is Rebecca Parrett, convicted in 2008 of securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud case, who fled her home in (this is true) Carefree, AZ, to lay low for a couple of years in the Lake Chapala region of Jalisco, until she was picked up by La Migra earlier this week. We assumed she'd be paraded around in pink underwear and forced to live in a tent city in the desert for a while, but apparently she's being delivered back to the US by the Marshals Service.
And in a well-needed shot in the arm for Mexican tourism, the US government has nothing but nice things to say about the quality of life here in Mexico!
“She was living in the lap of luxury,” [Deputy US Marshal Brian] Babtist said in a telephone interview from Columbus. “She was having fun...I’ve heard that she liked to go out dancing,” Babtist said...."For somebody who’s on the run, it was pretty good.”
Just about the only dark cloud for Mexico here is that its bogus-medicine industry comes out looking pretty ineffective.
Parrett, 62, a skilled ballroom dancer and took professional lessons before she fled, enjoyed dancing in Ajijic, underwent anti-aging treatments and could have easily blended in, according to Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Babtist.
On the left is a photo of Parrett before she fled. At right, a photo taken this week, after her two-year course of Miraculous Blend-In-Easy Mexican Anti-Aging Treatments(TM).
The ballroom dancing, on the other hand, was exquisite!
If you're looking for a reason not to kill yourself, consider this: on November 3, having already shattered most of the uniquely-Mexican world record categories (World's Largest Enchilada; Cochinita Pibil; Rosca de Reyes; Chile en Nogada; Mariachi Band), Mexico will take on Freakishly Large Tex-Mex Cuisine by attempting to create a 2.7 kilometer-long burrito!
If that's not enough, Machete opens in Mexico on Nov. 12.
Still tempted to end it all on Nov. 13? Fine, but you won't be around to see the sequel, Machete Kill. Unless it premiers in Hell, of course.
Around here, we tend to think of the Diocese of Querétaro as a throwback to the 17th Century, given its rejection of scientific advances such as - to choose a random example here - contraception, and its insistence that gunpowder and iron bells are an still effective means of communication. So we were a little surprised to read in the paper that the Diocese has a Facebook page. On the other hand, we were somewhat delighted to read that God's self-appointed emissary in Querétaro had 35 fewer friends than we do.
But then we plugged in our trusty 286 and received another surprise: we're not the only ones who read the paper in this town (seriously, we've had our doubts), and 56 readers appear to have friended the D of Q overnight.
That means we need at least 22 new friends in order to make the Baby Jesus cry. We can do this, people! Just click here to send a message that the world's worst blog can be more beloved that God Himself, even in a city with 730,000 Catholics.
Update: Thanks to the eight of you who have so far heeded the call! This afternoon, Querétaro's oldest religious bookstore, the Libreria Sagrado Corazon, is closing its doors after 104 years. We've got them on the run, people!
It seems a foregone conclusion that the Teabagger Party will have a pretty good night on Tuesday, despite having no clear ideology or agenda other than tax cuts and a shared love of dressing up like Thomas Jefferson (if not actually taking the time to understand him). Most analysts seem to be missing this, but the source of the movement's power seems obvious: a desperate sense of shame and powerlessness in the wake of America's humiliating loss to Mexico of the Fattest Country in the World title - a loss that coincided with Mrs. Obama's anti-obesity initiative. With American prestige in tatters, Sharron Angle starts to look like the messiah.
But one patriotic American (we think she's American...that whole Brit accent thing was just an affectation, right?) is taking the fight right into the belly the beast. Having decided that Americans just really couldn't get any fucking fatter if they tried, Madonna - yes, Madonna! - is gonna tear the blubber off Mexicans' asses if she has to do it with her own fingernails!
Madonna announced Monday that she has partnered with manager Guy Oseary and the founder of 24 Hour Fitness to open Hard Candy Fitness in Mexico City, the first of what she's hoping will be a global chain of high-end health clubs.
"Hard Candy Fitness will be a reflection of Madonna's point of view and will reflect her input on every detail, including music space, light and other design cues," said 24 Hour founder Mark Mastrov, whose New Evolution Ventures is working with the singer. "Madonna's touch will be everywhere."
Okay, it's admittedly not much - Mexicans who can afford "high-end health clubs" designed by celebrities are probably not the greatest source of Mexican adipose tissue - but, hell, it's more than that has-been Toby Keith has done.
Driving back from Polotitlán this afternoon, we noticed a few cars around us seemed to have more corporate sponsorship than the average Mexican family out for a drive. Apparently, we had wandered into the middle of the Carrera Panamericana, which is stopping in Querétaro this evening.
The presence of several dozen race cars rocketing through the streets of Querétaro (which do not appear to have been closed for the event) seems as good a time as any to offer up another installment of Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!! This one was taken on the road leading out of San Miguel de Allende:
We're pretty sure we'd never let the perro hang his head out the window like that, but we're just a bunch of overcautious gringos afraid to watch a loved one die in a mass of twisted wreckage. Anyway, in case you've forgotten the rules: we occasionally publish pictures of dangerously uncarseated children with the intention of publicly shaming their parents or caregivers. If the parent or caregiver sees the picture, experiences genuine shame, and writes us a letter acknowledging the error of their ways, Burro Hall Enterprises will buy that family a child car seat and help them install it. Letters of shame and contrition can be sent to the email address at right.
* The idea that Latinos might actually vote seems to be one of the right-wing's biggest nightmares, so we should probably give props to these guys for dispensing with the code words and euphemisms and producing an ad that simply orders brown-skinned people to sit it out on election day. We were about to commend them for their honesty, but of course, being Republicans, they felt a chickenshit need to hide behind a bogus front group. Meanwhile, Teabagger pin-up girl Sharron Angle offers up some straight talk about The Messicans. And Failed State of Arizona wingnut Ruth McClung wants to you know that her (Mexican-American) opponent looks really, really Messican.
* It's enough to make us wish there were a Virtual Border Fence to help keep the craziness from spilling over from the north. In fact, there is! But like everything in Arizona, you can smell the failure all the way down on our side of the Sierra.
The result, after an investment of more than $1 billion, may be a system with only 53 miles of unreliable coverage along the nearly 2,000-mile border.
...Boeing has charged the department more than $850 million since the project began in 2006.
* Anyway, it's all too late: Obama has allowed the White (WHITE!) House to become fully Messicanized! (And because all roads lead to Burro Hall: Those mariachis are involved in this production which, though not mentioned in the article, was written by our neighbor who recently moved away and left behind the king-sized bed yr. humble correspondent now sleeps in. Burro Hall/Leader of Free World: two degrees of separation.)
* Everyone's writing about Marisol Valles Garcia, the 20-year-old college girl appointed top cop in Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, near Juárez, one of the most dangerous towns in Mexico, but we won't because we're sure she's thinking "I wish people would stop calling attention to me and publishing my photograph." But for comparison's sake, the state's beauty queen, Pamela Olivas Chaparro, is 23.
* The La Reata, the comely, masked sidekick of the alcoholic clown Brozo on the morning talk show El Mananero is on the cover of the Bicenetennial issue of Mexican Playboy, which gives us an chance to mention that a popular morning talk show here is hosted by an alcoholic clown with a masked nude model sidekick.
* Our editorial board has come out firmly opposed to breast cancer, but we still think turning everything pink on Breast Cancer Awareness Month is just infantilizing.
* Of course, Querétaro is the kind of place where the illumination of the aqueduct counts as a serious complaint. A gringa blogger in Reynosa reminds us that the expat experience elsewhere can be a little more...intense.
We'll be away for a couple of days inaugurating a new bureau in Polotitlán. We've having a little trouble with name, but we've created this mnemonic device to help remember it.
We were thinking of selling t-shirts to help defray the overhead, until we realized that in Spanish this would be polo-teta-RAL, which doesn't mean anything. (Polotitlán, on the other hand, means "land of the Polos," the latter being the surname of the Spaniards who settled it.)
According to the Wikipedias, the two most remarkable structures in town are a small bandstand and a clock, the land is basically unfarmable, and "there are also some small industries and family workshops making clothing, candles, cushions and concrete." Needless to say, we're gonna rock their backwards little world.
The marijuana was wrapped in silver, grey, yellow and red packages, each with a different logo, which authorities said were meant to identify the area in the United States where the shipments were to be sent.
Some packages depicted a dog, another a smiley face. One even had a scornful looking Homer Simpson with the inscription "Voy de mojarra y que wey!" which roughly translates as "I'm going to get high, dude!"
There was an old legend back at our alma mater that the day a virgin finally graduated, the BC eagle would fly away. Here in Querétaro, when a virgin finally leaves town, fireworks go off. Lots of fireworks. At 4 o'clock in the fucking morning.
All this week, Querétaro has been playing host to the Virgen del Pueblito, who has been moving between two churches that are unfortunately both within two blocks of our offices - and when she rolls, she rolls heavy. Fireworks, processions, church bells, drums, dancing indians, etc. The Virgen, seen here in her usual sanctuary, is basically a flat-chested Barbie doll whose Dream House is in the town of El Pueblito, a mere 6 miles from Querétaro. Six miles: like, a 15-minute drive at most, even in traffic. But every year her visit is treated as if she walked across the Himalayas to be here with us.
And make no mistake, it's the physical presence of Heavenly Barbie that everyone is worshiping, meaning the Archdiocese of Querétaro is sanctioning a mass-breaking of the Second Commandment ("Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.") as well as the Eighth ("Thous shall not steal a good night's sleep from thy neighbors.")
The fires of Hell await.
[Bonus Value-Added Fun Fact: The burro is one of only two animals mentioned in the Ten Commandments.]
Last weekend we picked up a pirated copy of the Steve Carell - Tina Fey romantic comedy "Date Night." Though we generally hate both romance and laughter, we were drawn in by the boxcover synopsis:
"A spaceship crash lands on a planet. The only survior is Kainan (Jim Caviezel), a warrior who carries with him Moorwen, a monstrous creature sworn to avenge the death of his species. When Kainan leave his ship to try and kill the beast, he realizes he has landed on Earth during the Age of the Vikings."
We assumed that explained the stunned look on Steve Carell's face. Also, according to the box cover, "Date Night" was directed by Roland Emmerich. Alas, we slogged through an hour and 45 minutes without a single vengeful Moorwen to be found, and are heading back to that intersection to get our 20 pesos refunded.
We know this city is overcrowded - we haven't moved our car in four years for fear of losing such a convenient parking space - but we were still surprised to learn that the cities eight burial grounds are close to their maximum capacity. Ninety-four percent full, to be precise (Lord, how Mexican officials love precise data). So if you're barely clinging to life or thinking about ending it all, you may not want to put it off any longer.
Just kidding! See, in Querétaro (and we think all of Mexico, but are not sure), being dead does not actually guarantee you the right to stay in your grave, and after a respectful period of time you can be moved out and your spot given to the nouveau mort. So, starting more or less right away, the Municipal Services Dept. will undertake (thank you, thank you very much...) "an exhumation project intended to free up between 1000 - 2000 spaces." And, hey, what could possibly go wrong?
The Mexican Congress voted yesterday to impose a seven-peso (60 cents) tax on cigarette sales here, meaning the cost of a pack is likely to climb above two dollars. Realizing that this would be a serious financial hardship for most small children, the foreign companies that dominate the Mexican market have gone scarlet with rage:
Philip Morris and British American Tobacco announced that due to the increase in the Special Tax on Production and Services both companies will withdraw their investments due to lack of legal certainty.
In a statement, Philip Morris said that this kind of impromptu decision "seriously puts at risk our investment and expansion plans and threatens hundreds of jobs directly and indirectly."
There's a long tradition of wealthy drug cartels pushing around the Mexican government, you see.
We hope the Congress is aware that this is what the tobacco companies always say when they're threatened, and they never follow through. The Mexican market is worth 50 billion pesos a year, and PM and BAT account for nearly 100% of that, so the idea that they're going to pull out of Mexico is simply laughable. A pack of Marlboros costs 135 pesos in New York City, and Philip Morris kept their headquarters on 42nd St. until a corporate restructuring a couple years ago. In fact, we suggest the Mexican Congress call Philip Morris and explain that it's all been a terrible mistake - that the tax increase is actually 70 pesos, not seven - and then sit back and wait for them to "withdraw their investments." It'll be a long wait, boys, so smoke 'em if you got 'em.
And if we're wrong (which we aren't)? Then we say adios and good riddance. Some of you may have read that Mexico is in the middle of a violent drug war that is escalating wildly out of control, turning this once beautiful country into free-fire killing zone. The unofficial body count looks likely to top 10,000 dead this year - a genuinely staggering, utterly unacceptable number.
In addition to giving him a few pesos for his marginally-improved rendition of Cielito Lindo yesterday, we made sure to give Jesús his own copy of yesterday's newspaper, which he hadn't yet seen. It's like one of those stars posing with their doppelganger at Madame Tussaud's, isn't it?
There was some heated debate at today's editorial meeting about publishing this picture, since it could be misconstrued as mocking and cruel. (Jesús is grinning and amused at seeing such a large picture of himself in the paper, but of course he can't read the words "Child Exploitation" plastered over his head.) In the end, though, we decided to run it with the explanation that this seven-year-old boy, now literally the poster boy for the traffic in child labor, is still sitting right outside the Governor's office playing the accordion for money rather than attending school so he can learn how to read something as basic as a newspaper article on child labor.
We'd like to see this as another sign that we are the most powerful media outlet in the entire Bajio region, but it's probably just a coincidence that ten days after this post, the local paper Plaza de Armas puts the perro's accordion-playing namesake street urchin on its front page.
The black rectangle across the eyes is a bit much, especially since they show his face literally life-size on the inside pages. The article, of course, is absolutely maddening. It explains in great detail how there are four "cells" that control the labors of 440 street kids in the center of Querétaro, providing them with gum, candy, etc, to sell in exchange for a big cut of the profits. Now, we should probably point out that we have never noticed a journalistic tradition here requiring photographs to be in any way related to the story, so we have no reason to believe one way or another that Jesús is involved with any of these cells. But that doesn't make a huge picture of him under the words "Child Exploitation" any less worthy of being framed.
The article features several quotes from the head of DIF Municipal (the city version of the state-wide DIF, which is run by the mayor's wife, rather than the governor's wife...see how this shit works?) in which she laments the situation and the difficulty of persuading these parents to get their kids off the street and into the classroom. Conspicuously absent from her comments is any pledge to actually fucking try to make it happen.
But then maybe we're being too hard on her. She goes on to say that this sort of organized child exploitation can be considered a form of human trafficking, no different from, say, forced prostitution, and that, for that reason, it would be great to see Querétaro pass a law against it. Another way of reading that - which we were sure could not be correct but in fact turns out to be the case - is that, holy fucking shit, human trafficking is not against the law in Querétaro. It's worth mentioning that the state legislature unanimously outlawed the sale of energy drinks in bars yesterday, after less than three weeks of debate, but has not yet acted on a proposed anti-trafficking law introduced on May 25. (And, it bears repeating, did not have a fucking law on the books prior to May 25, 2010.)
Now that Plaza de Armas has joined our crusade, we expect things to move quickly, so we're going out now to stock up on underage sex slaves before the law changes. Presumably, existing human-trafficking networks will be grandfathered in. Also, we're going to buy a couple of extra copies of the paper to give to Jesús and his mom.
Over the weekend, Mexico added yet another world record to its credit, in yet another category in which it would be inconceivable for it to be held by anyone other than Mexico: The World's Largest Enchilada. At 230 feet in length and half a ton in weight, the enchilada prepared in the Mexico City neighborhood of Iztapalapa absolutely crushed the (in retrospect, laughable) record set last year in Las Cruces "New" Mexico. On the other hand, speaking of laughable:
Mexico City tourism secretary Alejandro Rojas said 'With this Guinness record we are showing the world that Iztapalapa is a high-level tourist destination.'
Yes, the World's Largest Enchilada is exactly what will draw more tourism to Mexico.
In keeping with today's automotive theme, we recently read that, in Mexico, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in children and adolescents, and the second-leading cause of orphanhood. So it seems as good a time as any to re-inaugurate the Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!! The rules are simple: from time to time we'll publish a picture of a dangerously uncarseated child, with the intention of publicly shaming their parents or caregivers. If the parent or caregiver sees the picture, experiences genuine shame, and writes us a letter acknowledging the error of their ways, Burro Hall Enterprises will buy that family a child car seat and help them install it.
Here's a shot we took a couple of weeks ago at a red light in the center of town:
(And because we're not unaware that it's unfair to impose the economic standards of one country on the population of another, we'll point out that Daddy is driving a Ford Expedition, a vehicle our wealthy gringo Executive Editor once considered buying but discovered he couldn't even remotely afford it. Car seats start at 90 bucks at Costco.)
Previous episodes of child endangerment here and here. BHCSGM!! has no time limit, so these scofflaws are still eligible for a free car seat, assuming their children are still alive.
We know this looks like a cleverly doctored photo someone might create to ridicule Mexico on an icanhazcheeseburger site, but we assure you this vehicle is parked outside our offices at this very moment.
There's nothing we hate more than bureaucrats getting fat off the taxpayers' tit.
* The decidedly non-miraculous (how 'bout we give human ingenuity a little credit for once) rescue of the Chilean miners is the story of the week. La Plaza reminds us, though, that most trapped Latin American miners don't get book deals. Amazingly, there was only one Mexican involved in the mine rescue. And the Mole Men were nowhere to be found.
Are you kidding me? Are you really this blatantly ignorant, or are you STUPID? I Honestly can't believe you've even posted this GARBAGE on the internet.... Wow. Don't ever post again.
* On the other hand, we're no longer the most pretentious artistic endeavor in town.
* The nativists going crazy over Machete would probably love El Infierno, if not for the fact that it's Mexican and therefore hateful.
* And don't you just hate these fucking anchor babies? (And it looks like there's plenty more where she came from. The immigrant haters haven't figured out that if they keep making it more physically difficult to get into the US, only the healthiest, longest-lived Mexicans will come here. And then they'll become citizens and vote Democrat for the next 101 years, thus putting Aryan children at risk. Punk'd!)
* But we're sure the new Fox News Latino will be an excellent source of fair and balanced reporting.
* Memo to Vicente Fox: having Elton John play your private party stopped being cool around the time of America's bicentennial. (Related: for more tales of Elton John playing private parties than you could ever possibly need, check our our childhood friend Deborah Ball's new book, House of Versace.)
* Memo to our family: if we ever find ourselves kidnapped, please make "pay the kidnappers a shitload of money" the first thing you do, not something you decide to do six months later.
* Turns out, the block we live on isn't big enough for three Massachusetts-born writers from New York City, so the other two have fled back to the United States and are now dead to us. Here's a group shot from the goodbye party held after hours at the Burro Hall offices.
Ten years ago today, a young pug from Kennebunk, Maine, officially joined the staff of Burro Hall for a one-time fee of $600, plus a $100 stipend for getting his balls chopped off (a company policy we've since rescinded).
Over the subsequent decade, we estimate this astonishingly self-absorbed little canine has consumed 15 times his body weight in baby carrots, and spent eight of the last ten year asleep - six of those with his head resting on a human's lap. Apart from that, it's fair to say his contributions to the company and to the world in general total exactly nothing. Best hire we ever made. Here's to the next decade...
For years we've been warning you what will happen if we continue to let Mexican immigrants into our country: they'll move into our neighborhoods, they'll take low-paying construction jobs away from hard-working Americans, and then, if we're not careful, they'll risk their lives to prevent a hard-working American gunman from shooting up an American elementary school.
CARLSBAD — A man seemingly bent on violence and destruction stormed Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad Friday and fired into a crowd of children on the playground, striking two girls, before being chased and tackled by nearby construction workers.
A trail of blood led to a classroom, which held two second-graders who suffered bullet wounds to their right arms, police said. The girls, ages 6 and 7, were flown to Rady Children’s Hospital for treatment and were doing well.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!1! Election Day is less than a month away. Let Obama, Reid and the rest of the Amnesty crowd know that we don't want any stinking Mexicans interfering with our school massacres! For a list of pro-AMERICAN-school-massacre candidates, just click here.
Whatever other merits is may have as a movie, Machete succeeded in driving the anti-immigrant crowd batshit crazy, and for this we were more than eager to give Robert Rodriguez ten of our hard-earned dollars. But for reasons we can't even begin to fathom, Machete has yet to open in Mexico, so we've been forced to channel a mere two of our hard-earned dollars to the black-market pirata guys instead - a move Machete himself would have applauded, but it still feels to us like taking tacos off of Danny Trejo's plate. And taking tacos off of Danny Trejo's plate seems like a really, really bad idea.
Danny, Robert, or anyone associated with the film who happens to be reading this is encouraged to stop by our offices during normal business hours (Noon-2PM, Wed-Fri) to collect the full ticket price we owe them. Or you could just open the goddamn film in Mexico and make, oh, a billion pesos the first weekend. Seriously, did anyone at 20th Century Fox actually attend business school?
On the left, a story headlined "440 Children Work In The Streets of Querétaro," based on statistics complied by DIF, while on the right we have a photo of Sandra Albarrán de Calzada, president of DIF and coincidentally wife of the governor, "handing out baloons, t-shirts and candy" while yukking it up at the Gallos Blancos soccer game. Because, like, she cares.
This is the main entrance to the Querétaro Institute of Technology, located in the center of town. As far as we can tell, it's not related to our home state's similarly-named university, given that so many of its technology students were apparently baffled by the wonder of an electronic gate that they had to post a sign telling people not to push on it. But still, we admire the school's lofty motto, seen at the top right corner of the picture: "The Earth will be as Men will be."
And according to the enormous eight-foot high poster hanging just below the Lofty Motto, Men will be consuming 2x1 beers all night! And if that doesn't prompt Men to enroll, maybe this larger-than-life photo of a bosomy, orally-fixated young engineering major in a loosely-buttoned Catholic schoolgirl uniform will sweeten the deal. ITQ is a co-ed institution, of course.
John Lennon would have been 70 years old today. We've been hunting for a Mexico connection, but without a lot of luck. Despite writing a book called A Spaniard in the Works, and having multiple run-ins with US Immigration, Lennon had no real connection with Mexico. Even his maid was from Spain. We can't find any Mexico references in the Beatles' lyrics - that one Spanish-sounding verse in Sun King is actually just some made up bullshit. (And don't get us started on Besame Mucho.)
The Beatles had in fact planned to play Mexico City in August 1965, but the city's regent, Ernesto Peralta Uruchurtu, decided they were a bad influence and canceled it. Lennon's visit to Oaxaca to see Maria Sabina is unconfirmed at best, but there is a John Lennon Street in Ocampo, Michoacan. And of course, one of Mexico's swankiest department stores is called Liverpool (obviously named by marketers who have never been to Liverpool. (Actually, the name Liverpool opens a lot of doors in this country.) Still, Lennon's ghost shows up in the strangest places here:
Last Sunday, the mayor of Santiago, Edelmiro Cavazos Leal, while leading festivities for World Youth Day, made a special request... Can you play Imagine, by John Lennon? he asked, to which the guitarist readily agreed.
At 11:20 p.m., the mayor left the town square, less than an hour later he was abducted from his home by a group of armed men. Fifty six hours later, his lifeless, broken and battered body was found dumped along the road less than 5 kilometers from where he was abducted.
Heartwarming, no?
Anyone with a radio is probably sick of hearing the real John Lennon today, so here's some Banda-style Beatles:
Or some Mexican marching band Beatles:
Or Mariachi Beatles:
John Lennon, cut down at age 40. A tragedy, yes, but one that spared the world the sight of him frolicking half-naked on a Mexican beach - unlike some Beatles whose names we could mention.
* Independence Fever: And You Don't Stop! The bicentennial has been over for three weeks now, so of course today kicks off the Olympic Bicentennial Festival in Mexico City, despite the fact that the Mexico City Olympics were held only 42 years ago. It's nice to see Mexicans early for something. But when the Olympic Bicentennial is actually celebrated in 2168, we're sure it will look exactly like this.
* Congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa for beating us out for the Nobel Prize in Literature. We look forward to the next several years of Mexicans pretending The Feast of the Goat is their favorite book.
* We're generally in favor of legalizing all sorts of stuff, not just drugs, but if we were president of a country that's lost 30,000 people in a drug war fought at Uncle Sam's behest, we'd probably feel the same way Calderón does.
* We'll give Lou Dobbs points for consistency. After years of enriching himself by exploiting illegal immigrants on the air, doing it off the air is simply the honest option.
* But seriously, are there any Mexicans at all who don't find themselves exploited in the US? Of course, we know Viacom would never do anything like this, and it's all a big misunderstanding.
* The Week in Full-Frontal Nudity: Miss September Olivia Collins signs copies of Playboy in Querétaro; Burro Hall Contributing Sports Editor Ines Sainz declines the magazine's generous offer (Fun fact: the revolving door between newscasting and nudity is so prevalent here that a prohibition against posing naked is actually written into TV Azteca's contracts); Jessica Alba wasn't really naked in Machete.
* Non-rhetorical question: can anyone explain to us why Machete hasn't yet opened in Mexico?
* And a few pictures of beautiful Arizona. Sadly, there were no Mexicans to blame. (Incidentally, in case Mexicans are wondering if Arizonans hate all foreigners, the answer is no, just Mexicans.)
While we were away over the summer, there were some organizational changes made to the perro'snamesake street urchin's family business. Jesús has been more or less relieved of his gum-selling duties, those having been passed down to his three-year-old sister, while the boy has been moved to the playing-accordion-for-loose-pesos position, where he is hampered by a bad attitude that may or may not be connected to his complete inability - apart from the first few bars of Cielito Lindo - to actually play the accordion.
Don't be misled by the grin - that's from playing hide-and-seek with the camera-toting gringo. For the first few weeks before he taught himself that one snippet of a song, he repeatedly denied the instrument was his - he was merely "holding it" for his brother - which might have been believable if he did, in fact, have a brother. Now he cranks out the occasional bit of Cielito Lindo while staring dejectedly at the empty bowl in front of him. Meanwhile, his sister wanders the streets selling far less candy and gum in a week than Jesús could move in two nights. We're sure this new arrangement makes some sort of sense to the children's mother, a nice-enough if not especially bright young (very young) woman who in any civilized society would be doing time for child negligence.
Of course, Querétaro isn't really a civilized society, given the fact that the windowsill the boy is perched upon here - working a 10-hour day when he should be attending school - is part of the Casa de la Corregidora, the city's most richly historic building, and the seat of the state government. In a state with 1.5 million people, we can understand if some disadvantaged kids fall through the cracks, but this boy is literally sitting outside the governor's office. We imagine that, from time to time, the governor's wife comes to visit him - walking right past the young accordionist - when she can get some time away from her day job as the head of DIF, the state agency that's supposed to care for indigenous child laborers like Jesús, but is instead a vanity prize traditionally awarded to the governor's wife for the propaganda value of being photographed handing out blankets and Christmas dinners while actually doing fuck-all of any fucking value whatsofuckingever.
Who knows, maybe the kid will improve his playing enough to get into Julliard despite not attending primary school, but based on his desultory rendering of Cielito Lindo we'd say it's kind of hopeless. He's probably got about six more years to nail this instrument. If not, we're sure there'll be plenty of work available for him in the Failed State of Arizona.
We'll be doing the reverse border-crossing today, mostly as an experiment to see if anyone at the airport recognizes the new FM3 Visas. So we thought we'd leave you with some photocollages that Panchito, our most gifted intern, put together while we've been out of the office. We posted a bunch of before-and after photos of Querétaro a few years back, but Panchito, with time on his hands and possibly inspired by the work of Russian artist Sergey Larenkov, decided to re-work them a bit, though we have no idea how he hacked into the office computers. Anyway, there's about 20 of them here, most of them hidden below the fold. As you can see, nothing much ever changes in Querétaro, except that men wear fewer hats and there are more "auto-mobile" machines scattered about.
Yesterday was the 42ns anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, in which the Mexican Army clashed with unarmed (or, at worst, lightly-armed) students and protesters, and opened up on them like Sonny Corleone at the tollbooth. El Universal ran a small copy of its Oct 3, 1968 front page yesterday, which refers to the army standing tall against "agitators and terrorists." The photo in the middle is of "innocent women and children protected by the army," during the surprise sniper attack on the army.
We suppose the best thing we can say is that El Universal deserves credit for not flushing this one down the memory hole.
* We're broadcasting from Boston for the next several days, where we'll leading a delegation of prominent Mexicans at the funeral of our Executive Editor's grandfather - who, in one of those great cosmic coincidences we love so much, will be laid to rest on the 40th anniversary of the death of Janis Joplin. We've left the interns in charge of the Querétaro office, so we apologize in advance if the posting is somewhat light and incoherent this week.
* Having solved every other health problem facing the populace, the Querétaro legislature's Health Commission is turning its focus to energy drinks like Red Bull. One of the specific objections is that the slogan "Red Bull gives you wings" is not literally true. So now you know.
* And we thought the shittiest thing we did the Guatemalans was to overthrow President Arbenz.
* If you're compiling a list of the World's Crappiest Jobs, Mayor of Anywhere in Mexico has gotta be pretty close to the top.
* And the poor bastards were probably honest - unlike mayors in the Failed State of Arizona. (Where the sheriffs are kind of full of shit, too.)
* The anti-immigrant knuckleheads are calling for the arrest of Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for CA governor - and for once, we agree! Because we, too, support Jerry Brown.
* There's actually a brand of Jeans here called Magic Pomp, which loosely translates as "Magic Buttcheeks Jeans," Which is an even better than than Burro Jeans, which we see has, somewhat unsurprisingly, gone out of business.
* The United States of Mexico is considering shortening the name of the country to just Mexico, presumably to stimulate the economy through a massive re-ordering of government stationery. Pravda amusingly titles its article on this "United States Gradually Disappear From World Map."
* The General's obituary, because some of you have asked.
A few years ago, we were witnesses to the registration of a newborn baby at the civil registry here, an event we came to call the “Welcome to the Bureaucracy, Kid” ceremony. Unlike in the US, where a baby is born and someone hands you a birth certificate and that’s pretty much it, in Mexico the parents have to bring the infant in person before a public official who records the birth and all (and we do mean all) the relevant data in the presence of two duly sworn witnesses. Reams of documentation are required, and in this particular case, the witnesses being non-Mexicans, we each had to provide a binder full of information of our own. By the end of the morning, the squirming little girl had a file almost two inches thick, and another 80 years for it to grow.
And the whole thing was almost derailed at the last minute because of a weird law we’d never heard of, Article 36 of the Civil Code of Querétaro, that makes it illegal to give your child a stupid name – or, more specifically, a name that “contains unintelligible words or phrases, or may cause future ridicule or contempt.” This goes a long way towards explaining why Mexicans all seem to share like two dozen names. In our case, the baby’s file wound up containing a couple of pages from Wikipedia hastily printed out at an internet café, to prove to the bureaucracy that “Oriana” is an actual name held by respectable people.
We thought of this last week when we went to an exhibit of birth certificates at the Museo de la Restauracion de la Republica. We still can’t quite figure out the point of it – it was mostly just some photocopied birth certificates stuck to the wall – but there was text of Article 36 blown up poster-size and, next to it, a list of “curious names found in Querétaro” – including such curiosities as “Donald” and “Enzo.” (We totally agree that “Circumcision” is a “curious name.”)
But our favorite had to be the list of “names of famous people utilized by people in Querétaro,” which is for some reason a separate category from “curious names” – apparently because there’s nothing curious about naming your Mexican child Elvis, Ringo or Ozzy. We were especially struck by #2 on the list: somewhere in this state, some absolutely awesome parents convinced a bureaucrat that “Hitler” was not a name likely to cause future ridicule or contempt. Though in fairness, Hitler does have a Wikipedia entry.
