Querétaro's Media: Speaking Truth to Power

Plaza de Armas the local paper that started publishing six months ago, has - in our humble opinion at least - turned out to the best paper in town. But, man, that's sure not saying a lot. Today, after half a year of hagiographic coverage of the governor and his family, PdeA performed a year-ending act of journalistic cunnilingus by courageously awarding its 2010 Person Of The Year to the governor's wife, Sandra Albarrán de Calzada!

Some of our coverage of Señora Calzada's tenure as the head of DIF can be found here, here, here and here. But lest you think she's all work and no play, PdeA also has a year-end round up for "The Best Parties of 2010." And of the ten accompanying photographs five (5) show 2010's Person Of The Year, Sandra Albarrán de Calzada.

Where does she find the time?

Oh, in a completely unrelated matter, we mentioned a few weeks ago that our perro's accordion-playing namesake street urchin had seemed to have disappeared. He still hasn't surfaced, but don't worry, the city has brought in another seven-year-old kid to sit outside the governor's office playing accordion for money.

Happy 2011 from everyone at Burro Hall.

Kids Today!

Thanks to cross-cultural pollination, Mexican teens have a variety of bedroom decorating options: Justin Beiber, Disney princesses, golden retriever puppies, fighting cocks or the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Or all the above - they're only a buck or two apiece.

A Holiday Prayer For the Slow, Painful Death of Carlos Slim

This International Consortium for Investigative Journalism report on the legal and extra-legal lobbying by the Mexican tobacco industry (also available in Spanish here) came out a few months ago, but we only just got around to reading it, and so would like to take a moment during this holiday season to say fuck you, Carlos Slim, you evil, money-grubbing douchebag.

(Typing quickly now, before our internet connection is severed by TelMex...)

Carlos Slim Helú is more than a tobacco baron —he is the world’s wealthiest person, worth an estimated $54 billion, according to Forbes magazine. As a telecommunications and retail tycoon, Slim’s unrivaled clout reaches deep into the Mexican political system. His early fortune fed off tobacco, and he remains a major player in the industry. His longtime tobacco company was Cigarros La Tabacalera Mexicana, and he holds a particular fondness for the Mexican brands Delicados and Faros. Although in 2007 his holding company reduced its stake in Philip Morris de Mexico from 50 percent to 20 percent, ICIJ estimates, based on public securities filings, that his tobacco business last year was worth $284 million. Between 1997 and 2006, Slim was a director with Philip Morris International’s former parent company, Altria. Today he serves on the board of Philip Morris International, whose Marlboro brand accounts for nearly half the Mexican market.

“Tell me, do you believe anyone in this country… will deny an audience to one of his aides?” asked Rafael Camacho Solis, a leading tobacco control advocate. "I think no one really wants to be in a fight with Slim in this country. In no other place is there another man who is so rich, and who has so much control over things that can affect an entire country.”

Critics of Mexico’s slow pace on tobacco control say Slim’s clout in Mexico on behalf of Philip Morris, and a strong lobbying push by BAT, persuaded the government that it’s better to seek deals with the industry than fight it.

Evidence of this influence is in documents obtained from the Mexican Ministry of Health that show Philip Morris and BAT representatives attended at least 30 meetings with regulators between May 2003 and June 2004. At many, if not all, of these meetings, no other outside interest was represented, sources told ICIJ. Officials who attended the meetings recall them as more like friendly talks.

There was a fair amount of outrage in Mexico last year when Forbes named Sinaloa cartel chief Chapo Guzman to their billionaires list - along with Slim (the only two Mexicans to make the list). What does it say about our country (or at least its image) that a law-breaking mass-murder is our second-richest person? the pundits wondered.

We'll leave it to the lawyers to determine what laws, if any Carlos Slim has broken, but as far as mass-murder goes, Carlos Slim has no equal in Mexico. It would be impossible to quantify just how many of the 10,000 drug war deaths this year are attributable to Guzman, so let wildly overestimate and say half - 5,000. If Carlos Slim owns 20 percent of the company that controls two-thirds of the Mexican tobacco market, then his share of the 60,000 Mexicans killed this year by his industry comes to 8,000. And that doesn't factor in the effect his actions have in bolstering the segment of the business not under his direct control. So even when you stack the math in Chapo's favor, there's no beating Carlos Slim.

And yet which one of these guys is the Most Wanted Man in Mexico?

The Juárez Airlift

The UK Daily Mail - a "newspaper" of sorts, devoted mostly to soccer, celebrity gossip and climate change denial - has a story today about the mass exodus of Mexicans from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, illustrated with photos of said Mexicans amassing on the airport tarmac and huddled aboard their flight to freedom:

We wonder - is this a nonstop flight? The assumption that people are fleeing Juárez by airplane would almost lead us to believe that no one from the Daily Mail had ever set foot in the city. Sure enough, the story - credited to "Daily Mail Reporter" - is ripped off almost verbatim from the Associated Press, pumped up with a little more mayhem (which is, as the limeys would say, like bringing coals to Newcastle) and some unrelated photos. Another example of what passes for reporting on Mexico these days.

All I Can Tell You Is Brother You'll Have To Wait

A few years ago, this piece of graffiti started showing up all over the country. "We'll See You in 2010!" it says, a reference to the historical fact that Mexicans tend to revolt against their government in years ending with 10.

We're not sure who "We" refers to here, but in case they're reading this, we'd like to point out that today is December 29, 2010. We know to take it with a grain of salt when Mexicans say "See you at 8:00," but "Nos vemos en 2010" really ought to mean 2010. As our fellow Brooklynite Woody Allen put it, eighty percent of success is just showing up. You have 64 hours...

¡Sí, Se Puede!

Though the count is wildly unofficial, the media's Drug War Body Count just passed 10,000 for the year - which, if it's any consolation to the Mexican people, just might be a world record of some kind. To give you a sense of how big a number that is, the title banner at the top of this page has 10,000 little notches in it.

But the street price of cocaine is dropping again, so it's all been worth it. Here's to 2011!

The Duda Abides

The newsweekly Proceso has our favorite holiday elf on the cover this week, with the headline "The Doubts." You can read their doubt-plagued coverage here.

Also, just a minor housekeeping note here: Staring on January 1, the minimum wage in Querétaro will skyrocket to US$4.58 a day, up 18 cents from the current $4.40. Because we're bleeding-heart liberal gringos, we initially offered to pay our 28 full-time employees (not the interns) twice the minimum wage. But because our 28 full-time employees are treacherous Mexican bastards, they've taken that to mean that they get a raise every year in conjunction with the Mexican salario minimo. So effective January 1, 2011, Burro Hall will become subscription only. Membership will be $19.99 a month, or $199.99 for the year. The Foto del Dia will remain free. Thanks for your understanding.

Crime Blotter

That "spillover" of Mexican violence into the United States we keep being warned about is totally gonna happen one of these days. Just not right now.

El Paso, a sprawling southwest Texas city of 700,000 residents, was named the safest city of its size in the United States for the first time, and it is on track to close out 2010 with just five murders....killings that include a murder suicide and a killing at a bar at around closing time -- routine crimes for any U.S. city.

But just over the shallow concrete trench of the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez, more than 3,000 people have been tortured, shot and blasted to death in gang warfare this year, clinching its grim reputation as the world's most dangerous city.

But then this is what happens when you ship all your guns south of the border.

Meanwhile, here in Querétaro, the government has announced that of the 14,000 calls received every week by 066 (which is Mexican for 911) 2,800 of them are prank calls. That is, to put it mildly, an awful lot of people taking time out of their busy day to pick up the phone and punk The Man. And the number usually rises during the holidays - 'tis the season to be jolly, and all.

(Of course, to give you an idea about the reliability of statistics around here, two and a half years ago the government said that 066 received just 1,000 calls a week, with 90 [!] percent of them being pranks.)

The article ends by saying that the 066 folks are "trying to find a way to identify the numbers from which these prank calls are coming." We suggest the Motorola cordless phone we picked up at Costco for about 30 bucks - displays the incoming call right there on the handset.

Great Moments In Algorhythmically-Generated Story Classification

Looks like a certain Mexican city made the "naughty" list.

Boxing Day

C. Venustiano Carranza, Querétaro.

Sábado Gigante

* A Christmas morning tale of good cheer: After exchanging gifts here in the office this morning, we gathered up all the wrapping paper and bows and stuffed them into the ugly plastic trash can the city of Querétaro recently attached to the historic landmarked facade of our building. Less then an hour later, we stepped outside with the perro and discovered that someone had taken the time to reach in and steal it all - for what purpose, we can't even begin to imagine. God bless us all, everyone.

* As you can see in the photo, we have the choice of spending Christmas Day either at a bullfight or a 12-man steel cage lucha libre. What would baby Jesus do?

* Dept. of We Don't Ask You For Much: Seriously, none of you can explain this to us?

* India delivered Mexico a Christmas morning slap in the face by stealing the World Record for Most Chess Games Played Simultaneously. We're retaliating with a boycott of our local Hindu restaurant.

* La Familia Michoacana's Christmas card is beyond lame.

* The crazies take a post-DREAM-Act victory lap, reminding us all that the true meaning of Christmas is depriving children of a chance to go to college.

* Querétaro's returning wetback community gets a police escort from the border to the Sierra. They're probably on their own for the return trip, though.

* If you need a last-minute gift, you can download this Spanish-Hñähñu Dictionary for free.

* Some cool old snapshots of Mexico here and here, via The Mexile.

* Turns out the Acteal Massacre was just an accident. Problem solved!

* A great interactive map of the last 13 years of crime in Mexico. Querétaro is almost embarrassingly safe. We're not sure why we bother locking the doors at night.

* Last summer, Mexico busted the American Barbie. Now, it's payback time.

* Failed State of Arizona holiday roundup: Surprisingly, the state's Death Panels have been relying on erroneous information; FSoAZ resident Rebecca Parrett insists she was only coming to Mexico to die, apparently unaware of the beheading epidemic right at home; But in spite of all its problems, the state continues to attract the best and the brightest.

* So, we were wrong - Puebla is in fact insanely dangerous. The Pemex explosion was apparently visible from space.

* San Diego sounds like a dangerous, gun-crazy place. Must be because it has a Spanish name.

* Is there any situation so bad that Germany can't make it worse?

* Thank God climate change is a myth (as evidenced by the fact that it's snowing in Europe), otherwise Mexico would be fucked.

* A review of Viva Mexico! by Charles Macomb Flandrau, 1908. We'd heard good things about it, but have yet to find a copy.

* Courtesy of a commenter, we learn that Tijuana's basketball team is called the Zonkeys, though we have no idea why. The halftime show must be something to see.

* Miss Universe - from adorable to absolutely cringe-worthy in just four short months. Just pose for Playboy and get it over with!



* Speaking of cringe-worthy video... Happy Holidays from Burro Hall Enterprises, S.A.

Happy Xmas (War on Xmas Is Over)

Just in time for Christmas, the War on Christmas has finally been won! The Baby Jesus's Waterloo turned out to be the Jardin Zenea in Querétaro, where for the past month the city's publicly-funded Nativity scene has sent a subliminal yet unmistakable message about the holiday season.

The Christ child? Completely unnecessary! But the burro? Indispensable! And possibly even the real father, given his place of honor next to the "virgin."

Christmas will sign a formal declaration of surrender on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan on Saturday morning.

News of a Kidnapping

With most of the interns on vacation, we'll be switching to a more or less all-goofy-photos format for the rest of 2010, but we wanted to round up the latest tidbits on Jefe "Freedom's Just Another Word for Nuthing' Left to Lose" Diego, whose wife obviously had assumed he was dead and gave his suits to the Salvation Army.

So far, about the only reasonably credible piece of information to come out since he got sprung is the fact that the ransom negotiations were headed up by Jefe Diego himself. Some people just don't know how to delegate. Apparently the kidnappers wanted an Austin Powers-esque One...hundred...million...dollars! But El Jefe told 'em fuck you, 30 mil or I walk. So $30 million it was. In cash. US dollars. El Jefe just had it laying around. Other press reports are saying that he's been free since Dec 11.

Opposition politicians in Querétaro are now saying things like "How great that he's re-appeared - if he really was kidnapped, that is," while others are saying that it would be unfair of PAN to use the kidnapping to gain an advantage in the polls next year. We Americans have some experiences with right-wing politicians cashing in on their lengthy involuntary confinement, and we can tell you it's never pretty.

Meanwhile, fingers are pointing at the Ejército de Liberación Nacional as the possible kidnappers, though there doesn't appear to be any actual evidence for this. The ELN is a splinter group of the EPR, whose savage cruelty we tasted a few years ago when they deprived us of hot showers for nearly 48 hours, so we know what they're capable of. President Calderón has promised an investigation into the kidnapping, using the future tense investigaremos. We like to think that if a comparable American figure - Bob Dole, say - had been kidnapped in May that an investigation would already be underway by now.

El Universal asked their readers what questions they would like to ask Jefe Diego. "Who could have been behind your kidnapping?" finished eight places behind "Why are your eyebrows so dark and the rest of your hair so white?"

Mascotas Perdidas

Because puppies make excellent Christmas gifts - particularly if it's your own puppy who's been missing for several weeks - we thought we'd run another collection of "Lost Dog" flyers from around the Centro. Click for larger photos if you need the details.

Negrita. "Please help me get home. I'm sick, and they miss me very much."

Otto. "Doesn't know how to walk in the street."

Chiquitilina. This flyer makes reference to this missing dogs site.

Panchito. "I'm sick and need medicine and special care." His owners also printed up a very large vinyl version of this flyer, which probably cost more than the reward (we assume that's 1000 pesos).

It's not just doggies that wander off sometimes.

Imperialismo

Otomí women from the Sierra Gorda highlands selling indigenous handicrafts in the Centro, including the traditional füi baxjuä ko ndäni fanthö,* or "Santa Claus hat with Reindeer Antlers."

*[And before you all start piling on in comments, yes, we know that actually means "Christmas hat with deer horn" in Hñähñu - we're not stupid, okay?]

Shattering the "Dumb Jock" Stereotype

As graduates of Boston College, we're familiar with the lax admission standards at Notre Dame, especially as regards its football team, but even we were surprised to learn that the Fighting Irish starting lineup is made of guys who consider a late-night romp in Ciudad Juárez not just a good idea, but an irresistible one - so irresistible, in fact, that the coach feels it prudent to confiscate everyone's passports.

With the Irish set to arrive in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday to prepare for their game against Miami (Fla.) in the Sun Bowl on Dec. 31, [Coach Brian] Kelly is forbidding his players from crossing the border to Juarez, Mexico. He’s even having them turn in their passports to avoid trouble. The message is far more serious than the standard "Don’t drink the water."

"Don’t go over the border or you may not come back," Kelly said. "I know that El Paso is the safest city in the country. But it’s serious [in Mexico]. It’s not, ‘Hey, let’s jump in the car and see what it’s like.’ You can’t go there or nobody’s going to be able to help you."

On the other hand, it's never been more affordable!

We've been to South Bend, so we understand how five years there could make a young man want to risk having his own decapitation broadcast on YouTube for the chance to see a donkey show - but is El Paso really that boring?

And His Hair Was Perfect

So it took about a day after the release of Jefe Diego Fernández de Cevallos [right] for the Santa Claus jokes to run their course and the conspiracy-theorizing to kick into high gear.
Today's editorial in El Universal sets the tone. On the one hand, they might just be trying to defend their three-week jumping of the gun, since we prefer the elaborate conspiracy to the easy laugh, we hope they were right and will be the first to apologize if that's the case.

Basically, it all boils down to, Man, he looks good, doesn't he? But still, a 70 year old guy is held hostage for seven months, and suddenly appears one morning, offering no information about his captivity or any details about how he came to be standing in front of his own home (having arrived at his impromptu press conference behind the wheel of his own Mercedes) - and he looks great! Certainly better than he did in September, when his captors released this picture of him. His beard seems to have grown a hell of a lot in 3 months (though, as the MexFiles noted, his hair did not). And while a message he sent his family several months ago refered to his captivity as "hell," he now says they treated him like a prince.

Add to this the fact that, three days after his disappearance, his family insisted that the government and the police back off and let them handle this - which they did - and you have a situation where one of the country's major political figures has been missing for half a year and literally no one outside his spectacularly dysfunctional family has any idea what's been going on. And based on the first 36 hours, at least, they don't seem to be talking.

To be clear, we don't think for a minute that he wasn't actually kidnapped (the fact that his anti-kidnapping tracking chip was carved out of his body with scissors kind of sealed that one for us), but everything after that seems a bit of a mystery to us, so let the feverish speculation begin.

The Violence of the Hams

Makin' bacon at the Mercado de la Cruz.

Mmmmmmm.....bacon!

'Zat You, Santa Claus?

Sadly, no - it's just "Jefe" Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, the panista power-broker douchebag who was finally freed by his captors today after seven months of personal-grooming deprivation. This brings to an end our long national nightmare of "Jefe Diego To Be Released Any Day Now, Really!" news coverage. (El Universal's chronology of the case hilariously omits their Nov 27 scoop, "Diego is Free." Plaza de Armas has been running a variation of this three times a week since September.)

Getting somewhat lost in all the coverage is the fact that Diego does in fact appear to have been targeted because he's a panista power-broker douchebag, rather than just a rich guy who could raise a tidy ransom. Over the past couple of days a previously unknown group called the Network for Global Transformation released a one, two, three part "Epilogue to a Kidnapping" that reads like a mash-up of the Unabomer Manifesto, the Port Huron Statement and the liner notes for Rage Against the Machine's second album. Fists are raised at everyone from Carlos Salinas to Pablo Escobar to the church, the army, NAFTA, poverty, violence, illiteracy and inequality, with Jefe Diego the lynchpin of it all. Though the Burro Hall Editorial Board unequivocally rejects violence and kidnapping as a means to achieve social change, we have to admit we like the cut of their jib, and find ourselves lamenting in advance the way the issues they raise will be quietly ignored as the Jefe Diego story plays out.

Unless, of course, any of the dozens of people named in the Network's second letter suddenly go missing...

Update: Well, it only took a few hours for the PAN to adamantly deny that there was any political motive to the kidnapping. Meanwhile, there's already talk of a presidential run in 2012.

Great Moments in Subliminal Advertising

The Barrio of Santa Ana extends its "traditional" welcome to their new priest, Fr. Hilario López Medina.

We're partial to the brunette, but it's really the padre's choice.

Sábado Gigante

* A while back, we started writing a post about readers' comments on American news stories about Mexico, but never finished it because it was (to quote Morgan Freeman) like crawling through "500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't imagine - or maybe I just don't want to." Now that our own comments section occasionally falls into that category, we might revisit the topic. But in the meantime, enjoy FoxNewsComments.com. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.

* Seriously, what's up with Fox?

* The DREAM Act was supported by a majority of the American people, endorsed by the president and passed by an 18-vote margin in the House and a 14-vote margin in the Senate. Which - for the benefit of our Mexican readers who may not understand how freedom and democracy work - means that the measure failed.

* Texas Republicans are unable to decide whether Mexicans are a menace, or a natural ally in the struggle against Islamofascism.

The majority of the Hispanic culture in America is Christian, pro-family, pro-life and pro-free enterprise. Sounds like they would make great Republicans to me.

Indeed - according to this survey, 73% of Mexicans haven't read a book this year, 43% don't know where the nearest library is, and 24% don't own any books at all. Sounds like they would make great Republicans to us.

* Meanwhile, the Texas Dept. of Public Safety is urging Texans not to travel to Mexico, so as to avoid being shot to death with Texan guns.

* Tom Tancredo sure drives a shitty car.

* Another gringo drug trafficker arrested in Mexico. When are we going to finish that wall?

* Gruesome video of dead bodies on the highway to Tamaulipas. Video of the dead bodies on the road to Oak Beach, Long Island not yet available, but here's 180 pictures of possible victims of Los Angeles's "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, if you're into that sort of thing.

* An un-Mexicaned drone crashed into a backyard in Texas this week (but really, we're sure the Learjets will work just fine!) Because the drone by definition carried no actual Mexicans, it will be allowed to stay.

* The MexFiles provides one-stop shopping for all your WikiLeaks Mexico Cables-related needs.

* Courtesy of CM Mayo, these are the requirements [pdf] for bringing a dog into Mexico.

* Presumably, this Aztec wolf-dog breeding is now prohibited.

* US Customs and Border Patrol Agent in Atlanta busted for smuggling guns and drug money. This is unlikely to cost him his lunch privileges at Mulligan's.

* It's awards season again, the time of year when the Mexican press catalogs the way the world slights Mexican cinema. Latest outrage: no SAG Award nominations for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful. We couldn't believe it either.

* Crime sprees, home invasions, brutal, unsolved murders... Swampscott really is the Juárez of the north, isn't it?

* Not to be outdone by the pussies in Mexico City, Querétaro want you to know that we're gonna have breathalyzer tests every freakin' day here. We're just gonna get rid of the car.

* The second-most-popular Google search in Mexico this year? Justin Bieber.

* For the record, this kid would kick Justin Bieber's ass.

* Just 13 days left until they tear up Ruta 2010, so get out there.

* Our Executive Editor reminds you there are only six shopping days left.

On Mexican Time

Today is December 17, the 351st day of 2010, with 14 days remaining. We mention this specifically because of these new kiosks that have been going up all around town in the past week in honor of the 2010 Bicentennial year.

"Do you want to know what happened here?" they ask. In this city full of Bicentennial-related landmarks, you dial can *2010 and get a recording or a text message explaining the what you're looking at. Okay, sure, the actual Bicentennial was three months ago, but "2010" is all year long! And, yeah, there's only two weeks left in 2010, and everyone will be tied up with Christmas stuff, but it takes a while to put these things in place, and we've only known this was coming for 200 years.

"Staring in December, Discover the New 2010 Sites," reads the orange banner.  Because why would you start any sooner than that?  2011 is going to be the best 2010 year ever!

Have Yourself a Mammy Little Christmas

[From the Burro Hall Way-Back Machine: Walking through the Centro this morning and seeing preparations underway for the posada brought to mind this post from three Christmases ago, which poses a question we still have not had answered, so we thought we'd post it again. What, you never re-gifted anything?]

One of the most popular Mexican Christmas traditions is the posada, a nightly procession reenacting the night before Christmas, in which the processioners go from house asking for shelter and are turned away, usually in song. To our way of thinking, this is quintessentially Mexican. While the rest of the world takes this time of the year to "accentuate the positive" - celebrating the birth of the Messiah, the Redeemer of Mankind, etc - Mexicans repeatedly and obsessively dwell on the night Mary and Joseph - nice couple, a bit down on their luck, but still favored by God - asked for one little favor, nothing lavish (and, by the way, something they'd totally do for you if the positions were reversed) and were told to fuck off. These people know how to nurse a grudge - and this happened 2000 years ago, to someone else, half a world away. (This is something Americans may want to keep in mind during the current orgy of anti-Mexican sentiment; it'll be the year 5000 and these guys will be acting like it happened only yesterday.)

So in addition to the regular processions comprised of the miscellaneous faithful, there's an official town Posada Float, pulled by a tractor, rigged with a sound system, that travels around the streets of the Centro Historico every night, stopping every few hundred yards for a song. There's a chorus of little angels, a white-bearded Joseph, and Mary sitting sidesaddle on a burro. The angels sing a beautiful little song on behalf of the couple, asking for shelter for the night, and are angrily turned away by Hattie McDaniel.



If we may pose a question here in the spirit of honest holiday inquiry, what the fuckin' fuck? We expected attorneys for the Aunt Jemima Corporation to step in with a cease and desist order. We know Mexico has a somewhat less-uptight attitude towards blackface minstrelsy than we do up north, but putting aside the offensiveness of it for a minute, it just doesn't make sense. The angels, the donkey, the Holy Parents, all more or less period-correct for an event that happened 1-Day B.C....and then - sho 'nuff! - out pops this antebellum galley slave! Can someone with a better understanding of all this explain it to us?

God Damn the Pusher Man

It's been a while since we spent time in an American school, but from what we remember they tend to attract harmless characters like drug dealers, angry gunmen, pedophiles and the like. But Mexican schoolkids are preyed on by a much more malign group of sociopaths: noisy-toy vendors.

We live across the street from the Ignacio Altamirano Institute for the Intensive and Repetitive Study of the Mexican National Anthem, and every afternoon have to endure the cacophony of 200 pre-teen children being picked up by their parents. It's basically become white noise to us, but today this guy shows up hawking some kind of unholy balloon-and-lung-powered combination kazoo-police-whistle-birdcaller thingamajig. We really don't know what the fuck it is, but it sounds exactly like you think it sounds, only much, much louder. He must have had 50 of these things, and he sold out of them in 15 minutes - meaning that what started out as one horrible noise-making adult had morphed into fifty horrible noise-making children in less than a quarter of an hour. We expect this racket to last the rest of the school year.

And where do little kids get money to buy toys? Why, from their parents, who swarmed around the guy and started stocking up for the holidays! We've theorized before that there's some congenital deformity to the Mexican inner-ear hammer/anvil/stirrup alignment that renders them incapable of hearing noises that would drive any other person insane, and this is just another data point backing us up.

We're offering a free Christmas shopping-spree at El Palacio de Hierro to the first reader who cuts off this guy's lips and delivers them to us.

[Previously in our Toys That Make Us Want to Commit Infanticide series.]

Great Moments in Historical Airbrushing

Whatever one thinks of Father Marcial Maciel, it's hard to deny that he was the founder and spiritual leader of the Legion of Christ. Okay, so he had his share of controversy - an ardent belief in the virtues of Fascism, decades of sexual abuse accusations, and fathering more children than priests are generally allowed, just to name a few. His lifelong bromance with John Paul II kept him out of trouble, but once the new guy (who, we never tire of noting, was never technically a member of the Nazi Party) took over, an anti-Maciel inquisition began. Earlier this week, the Vatican decided that one can, in fact, deny he was the founder and spiritual leader of the Legion of Christ.

New changes – which are the result of ongoing dialogue between the leaders of the religious order and lay movement – mandate that significant days related to Fr. Marciel's birth, baptism, and priestly ordination can no longer be celebrated by members.

The founder will also be referred to simply as “Fr. Maciel” instead of “Nuestro Padre” (our father) and his personal writings and talks will no longer be available for purchase at Legionary publishing houses or centers.

New norms also require that photos of Fr. Marciel either alone or with the Pope be removed from Legionary and Regnum Christi buildings.

So there you go - problem solved! Hey, look, the pope's palming a basketball!

Infallible!

Imagine If Louisiana Was An Entire Country

The hometown paper has a nice English summary of one of the better political tales here this year, and a great window on the current state of Mexican politics. The 5-peso summary is that the government arrested a bunch of officials in the state of Michoacán last year on various drug-cartel related charges, including congressman-elect Julio César Godoy, whose half-brother is the governor. This was widely seen as a political vendetta, and most of the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence, but not against Godoy, who is accused of laundering millions of dollars for La Familia (which has been engaged in a spectacular running street battle with the army for most of the past week) and who, earlier this month, somehow managed to slip past the ring of police stationed around the Congress to intercept him, went inside, and got sworn in as a Congressman - one of the perks of which is... immunity from prosecution! (As a nice bonus, Godoy is allegedly connected to a Familia leader named La Tuta, a former school teacher who was just discovered to still be on the Education Ministry's payroll, and no one can figure out how to get him off it.) Today the Congress stripped Godoy of his immunity, but of course he's now on the lam again.

It's funny to think of how much time and money was spent prosecuting the Clintons for Whitewater, isn't it?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's time of year again - millions of Monarch butterflies are coming home to Mexico as part of the insect-world's most extraordinary migration. Every year, the Monarchs move north, all the way to the Canadian border, in a journey that takes three generations - because of their short six-week lifespan, one generation dies, while their offspring continue flying. But then the fourth generation, which somehow manages to live seven months, turns around and flies all the way - 2,500 miles! - back to their sanctuary in central Mexico. Along the way, some of them stop to rest here at Burro Hall, after 4 months of nonstop flying, a mere 150 miles short of their goal, and are devoured by the cat like a jalapeño popper.

Betcha can't eat just one!

Illegal Illegals

Proving once and for all that literally everything can be counterfeited in Mexico (nah, we're just teasing - we're sure the Learjets will turn out just fine), authorities in Querétaro are warning citizens to beware of counterfeit illegal aliens ("indocumentados piratas") begging for money in the streets. It seems that 60 percent of the people claiming to be Central Americans passing through on their way to the US are actually Mexicans from neighboring states. So that's one more way the US and Mexico are alike - in both countries, the majority of the illegal aliens are Mexican.

This is one of those stories where we're left wanting a lot more information, and we can't tell whether it's bad reporting or if they just leave this stuff out because Mexicans would know the answer anyway. Specifically, we're pretty sure it's not illegal to ask people on the street for money (if it is, then the Plaza de Armas here is swarming with criminals every evening). But it is illegal to be an illegal alien. So it would seem that people are engaging in a legal activity, but then dishonestly claiming to be criminals. (And indeed, that 60 percent number refers to people who were detained by Immigration officials - who do not typically run around arresting panhandlers.) Why not just say you need the money because you're disposing of a dead body and need to buy more lye?

It's also not clear whether pretending to be an illegal alien is actually a crime. The article ends with a local congressman vowing to "apply the full weight of the law" to the fake illegals - just as soon as someone figures out what exactly that might mean.

Our Christmas Tree Angel Will Kick Your Christmas Tree Angel's Ass

You wanna piece of this!?!

Yeah, we didn't think so. Now go read another blog before we loose our Christmas spirit...

Guadalupisimo!

We make it our habit to laugh off most religious mumbo-jumbo as superstitious nonsense, including, the the horror of our Mexican amigos, the Virgen de Guadalupe. But we have to admit to a brief "come to Jesus" moment when we read about yesterday's bullfight in Mexico City, which, because it fell on her Feast Day, was dedicated to the VdeG herself.

There's a VdeG Day tradition that you're supposed to do something nice (we forget what - sing "Happy Birthday," or give them a kiss?) for anyone you meet named Guadalupe. And so it was that on VdeG Day, in Mexico City (home of the VdeG's Basilica), a bull named Guadalupano - translating roughly as "affiliated with Guadalupe" - performed so magnificently that it received an extremely rare pardon and will live out the rest of his happy life having sex with as many cows as he can handle.

About the only thing that tainted the sheer fucking Mexicanismo of the moment was that the bullfighter, Sebastián Castella, is actually French. But then bullfighters are a particularly religious lot, and we imagine a Mexican would have balked at killing an animal named Guadalupano on Dec. 12.

Of course, despite having ample opportunity, Guadalupano did not leave an image of himself inside Castella's cape, so we can go back to deriding the VdeG as holy hokum.

But still. Weird.

Happiness Is a Warm, Poorly-Regulated Texas Gun

A couple of days ago we snidely suggested that a recent study finding no increase in violence in the areas around gun shows in Texas might have been skewed by the fact that the guns were probably all headed to Mexico. The Washington Post today offers yet more proof that this is probably the case.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years.

Eight of the top 12 dealers are in Texas, three are in Arizona, and one is in California. In Texas, two of the four Houston area Carter's Country stores are on the list, along with four gun retailers in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone.

Of course, it's unfair just to shit on Texas, since two of the top three worst offenders are located in the Failed State of Arizona.

We hear so much about the horrific Mexican violence taking place right on our border, but maybe there's a reason that the closer you get to the US, the more dangerous Mexico becomes.

Goodbye Blue Sky

Not content to annoy us simply with loudspeakers mounted on trucks, bicycles, fat-ass Jesus freaks, and...shit, we don't even know what this is - Querétaro's megaphone-based advertising community has now taken to air.



This barnstorming braniac has been strafing the Centro several hours a day for about the past week and a half, playing the same advertisement over and over - and still, we have no idea what it's for. Between the roar of the engine, the Doppler Effect, and the fact that the guy is a mile above us, we've only been able to make out the words "Querétaro," "today," thank you," and "20 pesos" - meaning that whatever this clown is burning all this gasoline in the hope of selling to us, it costs about a buck-fifty.

According to the Wikileaks cables, the US has been worried that the Mexican cartels might acquire Russian anti-aircraft missiles. If any of our readers happen to belong to a cartel which has, in fact, acquired anti-aircraft missiles, please get in touch with us via the email address on the right. Confidentiality guaranteed.

La Santísima

Today's Virgin of Guadalupe Day - a rare opportunity to hear church bells, fireworks, and the tone-deaf harmonizing of thousands of pilgrims parading through the Centro.

Only one of these people is thought to be imaginary.

Despite the Virgin's magical ability to protect us all from harm, the state of Querétaro is in military lockdown today because of some rather crazy fighting going on in Morelia. The fact that Morelia is 175 miles away should mean that the Virgin's blessing is protection enough, but apparently faith only gets you so far around here.

Sábado Gigante

* Researchers examined the crime rate in the areas around gun shows in Texas and California, and found no significant rise in homicide or other violence. Not surprisingly, their research stopped at the Mexican border, thus excluding most of those gun-show guns.

* Querétaro leads the nation in workplace violence against women. Rather confusingly, it's also home to the Women's Kick Boxing World Champion.

* The World's Largest Yellowfin Tuna was apparently caught in Mexico last week, But "because it was caught in Mexico, the organization's records coordinator says it will take at least 90 days to approve it as a record," which pretty much jibes with our bureaucratic experiences here.

* Christmas and New Year's Eve are fantastic occasions to get liquored up, so of course those are the only two days this holiday season that Mexico City is suspending its breathalyzer program. Do you have the balls to live in this country?

* We're glad they appear to have killed the guy who did this. We're not sure that throwing severed heads into a nightclub can be considered a "cultic hybrid of Christianity and grisly violence," though. We think it's just the latter.

* Not that capturing kingpins has any effect on the drug war, of course.

* USA Today, which seems to be on the verge of opening a San Miguel de Allende Bureau, interviews our former landlady and determines that Mexico is both safe and has never been more affordable!

* On the other hand, there's the risk of running into Martha Stewart. We'll take our chances with the Zetas, thankyouverymuch.

* A former Republican candidate for Congress, with the very non-immigrant-sounding name of Tan Nguyen is convicted of anti-Hispanic vote suppression.

* Unlike today's Republicans, Richard Nixon didn't really have a problem with Mexicans.

* Shit like this makes sense when you remember the Homeland Security secretary is from the Failed State of Arizona.

* The Americano. Brought to you by failed Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

* We've never been huge fans of Huichole art, but that was before we saw this Volkswagen.

* Five silly-looking tequila bottles.

* Some Mexican supermodels have aged better than others.

* You know who produces more Latin American kiddie porn than Mexico? No one, that's who! (The teddy bear illustration is priceless, by the way. We may adopt it as our logo.

* 200 photos for 200 years of Mexico.

* We really do need to build that wall to keep undesirables out.

Uh-oh.

Progress comes to the Centro Historico.

This storefront on the Andador 5 de Mayo is quite small so, this being Mexico, it's possible that it's just a taco stand infringing on Micky D's trademark (there's a "WaldoMart" and "Abercromby's Fitch" nearby), but this sign looks kind of expensive. Like, McDonald's expensive.

Sigh. We're old enough to remember the good old days, when the city tried to make us tunnel our electric meter under the floor rather than harm our precious historic facade.

They'd better at least be selling the McCostilla.

Update: You can tell it's a genuine McDonald's project because the whole thing has basically been built in 48 hours. Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on your attitude - it only sells ice-cream: cones, sundaes, and something called a McFlurry, which the kids tell us is like a milkshake, or maybe like a sundae, or something.

Same As It Ever Was

With Congress debating the DREAM Act, it seemed like a good time to post this urgent warning [pdf] from the New York Times:

[House Immigration Committee Chairman Albert Johnson] said the committee had information that aliens were being smuggled across the Mexican border at the rate of 100 a day, a large part of them being Russian Reds who had reached Mexico in Japanese vessels.

This was in 1919. And surely we all remember the way America was overrun and nearly destroyed by Russian Red anarchists in the 1920s.

"It is difficult to say," said Mr. Johnson, "how far the trouble in handling dangerous aliens has been due to officials, or how far it has been die to the law."... "It is apparent that one reason why vicious, half-crazed foreigners are able to get into this country is that they slip by an organization which is not physically capable of doing the work assigned to it."

And here we thought Gov Brewer had come up with that rhetoric all by herself! We wonder what other ideas she stole from Al Johnson.

Twin Sisters

In our capacity as Queretaro's semi-official Sister Cities representative, we received an official inquiry a couple of years ago from the people of Tyler, TX. We sent a very cordial response, offering to send a delegation - at Tyler's expense, of course - at their earliest convenience. We never heard back. So it was a little galling to come across this article eariler today.

Tyler Sister Cities representatives and city officials welcomed their newest Sister City Friday during a twinning ceremony with a delegation from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

"It is a glorious day and a great occasion to welcome our newest Sister City to Tyler," Tyler Mayor Barbara Bass said at the ceremony in the Sister Cities Garden in front of City Hall. "We are extremely overwhelmed to welcome San Miguel de Allende."

The Tyler Police Department Color Guard presented the American and Mexican flags as the country's respective national anthems played in the cool breeze Friday morning.

Seriously? They dumped us - without even a callback - for San Miguel? A town overrun half the of year by, well, Texans? It's like Minneapolis becoming sister cities with St. Paul.

The Departed

Reading about the governor's wife's first Annual Report as head of DIF, it occurred to us that we haven't seen the perro's namesake street urchin in nearly a month - which was coincidentally around the time we started posting admittedly less-than-kind commentary about Sra. de Calzada.

We suppose it's possible that DIF has been spurred into action and has enrolled the boy at the finest private academy the city has to offer. It's also possible that the mystery company the governor has lured to Querétaro is the Soylent Corporation. Given that the former would not have taken place without cameras rolling and multiple photos of Sra. de Calzada on the DIF News website, our money's on the latter. Let us know if you see him. Until then, avoid the street tacos.

Teenage Crime Wave!

The bad news just keeps pummeling Querétaro. Just days after the news that kidnappings reached an all time high of five in 2010, we learn that officals here are very concerned about the 32% rise in juvenile delinquency this year. Ninety-three kids have been processed through juvenile court this year, and 24 have been convicted of crimes. Twelve - 12! - teenagers have been busted for drugs.

Did we mention Querétaro's population is 1.5 million? We're pretty sure 12 kids in our high school class had been busted for drugs at some point.

And when you consider that just three years ago it was being reported that every single child in Querétaro was addicted to drugs, 12 is a hell of an improvement.

(Tangential Lament About the Reliability of Statistical Information Here: The article also notes that there are three minors in custody for kidnapping. Assuming this is true, we have a hard time reconciling that with the statistic that there are have been five kidnappings this year - presumably, the vast majority of kidnappers are over 18. So are all three kids involved in one kidnapping? Are 60% of Querértaro's kidnappings carried out by minors? Since all four of the "resolved" kidnappings ended in death, why aren't the kids up for accessory to murder? Or have there in fact been more than five kidnappings? We think the last option the most likely, though even if this number is off by a factor of 20 it's still lower than the US average.

Great Moments in Big Government

With winter just about over here, we've been remiss in reporting that Mexico recently broke the world record for the Largest Cup of Hot Chocolate! At 2500 liters - roughly 600 gallons - it beat the old record of four (4!) gallons by such a wide margin, we're embarrassed even to name the city where the previous record was set.

We've long been fascinated with this country's obsession with setting world records. We believed it offered some sort of insight into the Mexican psyche: a desperate desire for the approval of others, and a longing to be the best at anything - and if you can't put men on the moon or successfully rescue trapped miners, at least you can say you got 13,000 people to do the "Thriller" dance simultaneously. Suck on that, Dubai!

But as it turns out, what we thought was a spontaneously-opened window on the Mexican soul is actually a centrally-planned exercise in national identity-building orchestrated by the Mexico City government since 2006.

Most of the events have been organized by the government of Mexico City, though others have been produced by the private sector...

Mexico City Tourism Secretary Alejandro Rojas Diaz Durán says that these activities aren't frivolous, but rather have allowed the capital "to change the face of Mexico. They've put Mexico City on the world stage."

This site has certainly done its part to help. The print edition of that article lists 13 Guinness records broken in the capital in the last four years, and we were amused to see we'd written about 11 of them. Somehow, we missed the World's Highest Revolving Restaurant, and the World's Longest Chain of Ice Skaters - this latter one being a particularly impressive achievement for a country devoid of ice. (Though we did have a few El Universal missed - World's Largest Fleur-de-Lis Made of Recycled Cans, anyone?) Still, the Secretary goes on to say that one of the goals of the program is to increase tourism - and since tourism to Mexico City has, in fact, increased, well...Mission Accomplished.

We'll call bullshit. For the last four years, a violent drug war has gone increasingly out of control here. Tourism has gone up, but no one would give the drug war credit for that. Similarly, we doubt many people have come to Mexico City because it's the home of the World's Largest Cheesecake.

Nevertheless, there are some big things - world-record-big things - on the horizon: the World's Largest Fashion Runway, Largest Number of People on Bicycles and Largest Gathering of Boy Scouts, just to name a few, so we may soon be proven wrong about the tourists. Book your hotels now, just in case.

Dreamland

Our travel advisory for the Failed State of Arizona has been upgraded to a travel warning, in light of recent developments:

PHOENIX — Arizona used to be a knife carrier’s nightmare, with a patchwork of local laws that forced those inclined to strap Buck knives or other sharp objects to their belts to tread carefully as they moved from Phoenix (no knives except pocketknives) to Tempe (no knives at all) to Tucson (no knives on library grounds).

But that changed earlier this year when Arizona made its Legislature the sole arbiter of knife regulations. And because of loose restrictions on weapons here, Arizona is now considered a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.

If "A Knife Carrier's Dream" isn't the FSoAZ license-plate motto, it ought to be.

The travel warning will be in effect until such time that the state legislature lifts the ban on cannibalism, at which point we'll issue an all-out travel ban. But while it's obvious that entire state has gone stark raving mad, we were impressed with this one little glint of sobriety:

Sure, knife fights and knife attacks are a concern. No knife-lover would ever deny that.... But the problem is with the knife wielder, not the knife itself, the knife lobby says, sounding very much like those who advocate for gun rights.

So the FSoAZ's policy appears to be, "Once you get rid of all the Mexicans, the switchblades become harmless." We may have to concede there's a method to their madness after all.

Sábado Gigante

* Last week we were lauding the entrepreneurial spirit of this teenage cartel hitman. We should have known that anyone that ambitious and hard-working would turn out to be an American.

* Much as we like to believe we're the best New Yorkers blogging about their experiences in Mexico, this chick sounds way more interesting.

* Like tobacco companies, drug traffickers want to appeal to kids.

* The Quintana Roo state legislature unanimously passed an anti-trafficking law. Meanwhile, Querétaro's law has been stalled in committee for more than six months.

* Mexican migrants pay $53 billion a year in US taxes. Couple that with their ardent Christianity, and the way the Republicans have succeeded in alienating them is actually quite impressive.

* For instance, their insistence, despite a complete absence of evidence, that illegal immigrants are actually Hezbollah agents in disguise. Heroic!

* But still, that's no excuse for something as lame as the "Tequila Party."

* The Failed State of Arizona is trying to make amends, bless them. The Arizona State Museum is holding an exhibit on Mexican history, and the Phoenix Tequilafest comes to the US Airways Center next weekend. But our FSoAZ travel advisory is still in effect. If the Mexican wolves don't get you, the GOP death panels will. Come to Mexico instead - everybody else is. And our air travel is safe again!

* Although, most emphatically, not all forms of air travel.

* Where to find AA Meetings in Mexico.

* With just 853 executions, November was the least-deadly month of 2010 (not counting February, which cheated by being only 28 days long). So it really feels like the drug war is turning a corner.

* The Onion, 2010: "As Chief Of Police, I Believe Even 500 Murders Is Too Many." Houston Police Dept, 2007: "Even if the number ... for 2006 hits 400 it's not a bleak picture for Houston."

* According to the Mexican government, the best-paying career in Mexico (excluding drug lord, telenovela star or politician) is...physicist? Which pays...$16,000 a year? Shit, it never occurred to us that we were overpaying the interns.

* It took Machete over two months to make it to Mexico, but Waiting for Superman is already in theaters? We swear, we could live in this country for 100 years and still not understand the place.

Kidnapping Epidemic in Querétaro

Omigod omigod omigod!! According to the state law enforcement agency, Querétaro experienced as many kidnappings in 2010 as in the previous five years combined!!!!1!

Or, to put it another way: um, five. Which is definitely an increase from the previous years' totals of 2, 2, 0, 1 and 0, but in a state of 1.5 million people still works out to an incidence of 0.3 per 100,000 - just slightly below the U.S. rate of 6.7.

Happily, four of the five have been found - though, somewhat less happily, all were suffering from advanced rigor mortis.  The fifth was allegedly released to great fanfare last week, but so far no one has seen or heard from him, which we're pretty sure is not how these things are supposed to work.  Perhaps he's been re-kidnapped, in which case we're uncertain whether it would count as a sixth kidnapping or not.

But, most certainly, it is no reflection at all on our current law-and-order governor, Pepe Calzada, that there have been five kidnappings and four deaths in his first year in office, while his two predecessors had a six-year total of just seven kidnappings, all of whom came home alive. Harrasing gringo bloggers has in no way diverted public safety resources, and it's really sleazy of you to even imply this. We await your apology.

Mexico In a Nutshell

Gun buy-back program [left], Nativity scene [right].

Racial Sensitivity Watch: Buck Teeth Sold Separately

Oriental Grill: "So delicious, you'll turn into a little Chinaman!"

Nevertheless, the food looks pretty good by local standards.

[Previously]

The Perro's Perils, Day 4: America Held Hostage

We'd hoped to abandon out saturation coverage of the perro’s teeth-cleaning - there are other important stories that need our attention: for instance, the American conspiracy to cheat Mexico out of her Guinness World Record for Largest Enchilada; or the coronation of Querétaro's Christmas Queen later this evening - but this longish perro-post might be of interest to anyone bringing a pet in and out of the country – and we’d be very interested in your feedback.

For the rest of you, here’s a rare pic of the perro flying economy class:

Having received assurances that it was safe to return to Querétaro, we boarded a plane in Boston this morning. After 10 hours and 2500 miles stuffed inside a travel bag, the perro finally touched down at Querétaro “International” Airport last night, and sniffed the warm, dry air of freedom. A quick pass through immigration, then over the to baggage conveyer, and then – strictly a formality! – a trip to the Customs desk to inform them that we’re “importing livestock.” Done it a dozen times before – just hand them the travel certificate from the vet, and we’re on our way.

“No, this isn’t what I need,” the Customs Guy says. “I need a travel certificate and import documents from the US.”

Clearly, there was some misunderstanding, probably stemming from the four bloody marys we’d consumed in-flight. For years, we’ve been bring the perro to the US with a travel certificate from our Mexican vet, which is generally valid for 30 days. Since the perro never stayed for 30 days in the US, we always returned to Mexico on the same certificate – a certificate issued, as we just said, by a local, Querétaro veterinarian, attesting to the fact that as of 13 days ago the perro was completely healthy, fully vaccinated, and parasite-free.

We have done this repeatedly, and have been admitted every time, without fail.

“No, I’m sorry,” Customs Guy smiles, “but the law says that to bring a pet into Mexico you must present this” – and here he pulls out two documents that we’ll discuss in a minute, but at this point in the story the important thing is that we don't have them – “otherwise, we'll have to keep him here until you can pay to have a veterinarian come out and examine him and certify that he’s okay to enter the country.” Something that we would conservatively estimate would take three days.

Longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with this animal's serious, DSM-IV-verified psychological issues, chief among them a tendency towards cardiac-arrest-level episodes of separation anxiety (a quick trip to the bathroom at Logan Airport precipitated a howling fit that almost got us kicked out of the Continental lounge, despite the fact I had left him with my wife) - and that's when he's at his best. Factor in some serious oral discomfort, his need for three different medicines over the next five days, and the fact that, thanks to the anesthesia, he hasn't taken a shit since Monday, and suddenly we're sizing up the security situation, wondering which soldier's gun might be the easiest to grab.

And it's 9PM. And everything's closed. And there are no flights leaving back to the US. And there's no one to go over Customs Guy's head to. And it's clear he isn't fishing for a bribe.

"I don't care what has happened the other times you have come in with him. They weren't following the rules. I am following the rules." He'd been newly transferred here from Zacatecas. There's a new sheriff in town.

We explained as politely as possible that we weren't say that he was wrong - God, no! It's just that the fact that we have done it this way on a dozen previous occasions had somehow given us the mistaken impression we had been doing it correctly all along.

At this point, because we did have at least some kind of documentation, including six pages of bills from the vet up in Boston ("very expensive!" he says), and because he basically just took pity on us, Customs Guy agreed to let us in, pending the completion of a bunch of forms, which would take half an hour.

In other words, problem solved! But we still had a lot of questions, which we asked as politely as possible, because our ability to fuck ourselves hard by continuing to speak when we should just be quiet is legendary.

What Customs Guy wanted was Form 7001 from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which is pretty much the standard international travel certificate, and which can only be filled in by an APHIS-certified vet. We got one of these when we first "imported" him into Mexico in 2006, but these are only valid for a few weeks, so going home and bringing ours back was not an option.

But additionally, after the vet completes your form, it must be sent to the USDA to be "endorsed" and stamped. According to PetRelocation.com:

5. Depending on where your state veterinary service office is, you can either go into the office in person to obtain the endorsement or you can send it in via FedEx. If you are going to take your documents in, you will want to call about a week in advance to make sure they will allow you to come in and to make an appointment. If you are sending your paperwork in, you will need to include some sort of payment information. The USDA does not take checks. You might consider writing a coversheet with your contact information instructing them to call for a credit card number. Also, keep in mind that if you do not include a return envelope, the USDA will send it back via US Postal Service. If you need your paperwork returned sooner (which most people do), include a pre-addressed FedEx overnight envelope with your paperwork. The USDA typically will stamp documents on the same day or the following day after they receive them.

So we're basically talking about a week-long process here. The second document that Customs Guy showed us (which in retrospect we wish we had read more closely) appeared to be a letter on APHIS stationery attesting to the authenticity of the APHIS stamp on the travel certificate.

Contrast this with the process of getting the perro into the United States - a country that takes a rather, shall we say, conservative approach to admitting living beings through its southern border. Without even examining him, the Mexican vet wrote up a brief letter listing the perro's vital stats, ending with "the animal is healthy enough to travel." When we realized we had misplaced his rabies vaccination certificate, he simply gave us another one, affixing the seals from the batch of vaccine he had on hand, rather than the one actually administered six months ago. This passed muster with Customs and Border Patrol in Houston, though they did confiscate a baggie full of dry dog food (from Wal-Mart!) on the grounds that it might contain animal blood.

When we pointed out this disparity, the Customs Guy mutter vaguely about some "convention" the US and Mexico had signed, though we have a hard time believing this.

If we had been visiting the US for a month or more, or had spent a lot of time on a working farm, the scene last night might make sense. (Customs Guy specifically mentioned Mad Cow Disease as a concern. Easy jokes about my English spouse aside, we feel confident that my parents' yard in suburban Massachusetts is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy-free.) But these requirements, if enforced, essentially make a short trip out of the country impossible. A week-long visit to the family would largely be spent acquiring documentation for the perro's return, which probably wouldn't arrive in time. Even if we skipped the USDA certification, it would still require a full-priced US vet exam - just days after the Mexican exam. And according to this page that Customs Guy referred us to, all vaccines have to have been administered in the past 12 months, despite the fact that many vaccines - such as rabies - are good for three years.

Lastly, and most maddeningly, the way Customs Guy was planning to rectify our mistake last night was to imprison the perro until such time as we could get our Mexican vet to come give him a clean bill of health - in other words, to come and give us the exact letter we were already holding in our hands when the shit hit the fan.

We're guessing that if you've bothered to read to the end of this post, you've possibly brought an animal into Mexico yourself. Any advice, comments or feedback would be appreciated. Probably nine times out of ten we'd be able to bullshit our way through this, but if they ever decided to hold him for the night, his head would literally explode.

Postscript: After all this, Customs Guy looks at our luggage, asks us if we have anything we shouldn't, and then waves us out the door without inspection. We did in fact have a bag of cooked carrots for the perro that we expected to have confiscated. We're now going to toss them in a nearby field in the hopes that they carry some alien fungus that will lead to massive crop failures and widespread famine. At which point, in a later post, we'll publish Custom Guy's full name and badge number.