Coin Toss

Let's flip a coin. Heads, Mexico will hold the world record for Largest Group Golf Lesson. Tails, it will be home to the Most People Hugging For One Minute. Ready?

And....it's both!

Excuse us, we've just been handed a note. Oh my God, we've also got the world record for Most People Tossing Coins Simultaneously! Why is Egypt getting all the news coverage?

Greetings From Pleasantville

Just a quick update to our story a couple days ago about Querétaro being such a wonderful place to live that 50 families a day a pouring in from other parts of the country to grab their little piece of the QRO Dream:

Querétaro leads the nation in suicides.

This seems the perfect place for a long essay about the Impenetrable Sadness of the Mexican Heart, but it's a nice Sunday, we're hungry, and life is short, so we'll let the band take it from here.

Sábado Gigante

* Our executive editor returned to the lecture circuit this week with a scriptwriting seminar at the Jefferson Institute - which turned out to be nothing like it's portrayed in the movie. In fact, it turned out to be a classroom full of fourth graders, and if our agent ever returns our call, she's going to get an earful. The best moment of the class was when a shy girl raised her hand and asked, "how famous are you?" - to which the teacher helpfully suggested they could all Google Mr. Frank after the class was over. Presumably, the teacher has now been sacked. Burro Hall welcomes our new 10-and-under readers, eager to learn new words!

* The week in Mexican-American dining: First, Taco Bell is sued because their "beef" is only 36% beef. Then a tortilla-maker in Brooklyn falls into the machine and dies - prompting Taco Bell to announce that now their fillings are 88% beef! We'll stick to the lion tacos, thanks.

* Usually, we'd find an 18-year-old girl giving birth in the back of a pickup truck kind of depressing. But when it happens under Querétaro's beautiful, historic aqueduct, then we're all like "awwwww...."

* And here's a feel-good story about a gang in Juárez. Seriously.

* We were going to write a post about this story: Rouge Border Patrol Agent's Illegal Alien Father Arrested, but decided it would only work as an opera.

* Bishop Samuel Ruiz died this week, having lived out his last decade in Querétaro - and outlived the pope who tried to shitcan him.

* Let's check in quickly on the Failed State of Arizona! Honor killings? Check. Citizens indicted for illegally arming drug cartels? Check. Small businesses threatened? Check. 60 Minutes parachuting in to report on the state's descent into madness? Check. And it's never been more affordable.

* Meanwhile, there are 17 countries more likely than Mexico to descend into political violence by 2014. Glass half full, amigos.

* There's been an epidemic of cop-killing recently. Happens in Mexico, too.

* Terrorists are sneaking over the border! Okay, not terrorists, really, but "controversial" Muslim clerics. Okay, cleric, singular. Hiding in the trunk of a BMW driven by an American - which is exactly the way most Mexicans sneak in, too.

* Actually, wait - a terrorist did sneak into the US via Mexico. But it's okay because he's one of ours.

* Republicans demand less-effective immigration enforcement. Hopefully, they'll prevail.

* Maybe it's time to change the government's motto from "Vivir Mejor" (Live Better) to something else?

* Authorities confiscate a catapult capable of hurling 2-kilo bales of pot over the border fence into the Failed State of Arizona. People, no one smuggles pot four pounds at a time. Clearly, this thing is designed toss anchor babies. Residents of Naco, AZ, are said to have ordered a pack of wild dingoes to patrol the border.

* America rightly encourages justice reform in Mexico and elsewhere, but seems to always fuck it up somehow. (And not just in Mexico...)

* We're good at training assassins, though.

* The Name of This Book Is Talking Heads: Carlos Fuentes' Destiny and Desire narrated by a severed Mexican head, is now out in English.

* Jeniffer Aniston is adopting a Messican! Wait, no she isn't! She will be selling her new perfume here, though, so it's not a total loss. Plus, there's her annual trip to Cabo with Sandra Calzada.

* Press conference to announce an upcoming road race in Querétaro. We're not sure who the chick in the hot pants and tube top is.

* Chia seeds, the dietary secret of Mexico's most amazing runners, really aren't all that great.

* Latino Americans: gaining the weight American's don't want to.

* Video from our most recent Board of Directors meeting.

Impaired Judgment

A "Major League of Drinkers" bumper sticker is never a good idea.

Especially on a taxi.

Enough With the Huddled Masses, Already!

You know, you think we're making it up, but tens of thousands of Mexicans seem to agree with us: if you're gonna live in Mexico, Querétaro is a pretty good place to do it.

Families from the north of the country and from areas where violence is increasing make up a "silent migration" to Querétaro. The data is clear: every 24 hours, on average, Querétaro receives 49 new families or individuals.

Setting aside the nonsense that 10,000 Mexicans could do anything "silently," this migration has been noticed by local officials and, candidly, they're less than thrilled. School enrollment is up 11% this year because students keep transferring here from other states. 13,000 new vehicles were registered in the city last year. The governor is, on the basis of no actual increase in crime, worried about an increase in crime, and so we start seeing news stories touting the network of 300 super-powerful video cameras watching over the city 24/7 (at least two of which are trained on the headquarters of Burro Hall).

And yet the government keeps cranking out ads like this one, which even we find embarrassing...



Querétaro: we're litter-free, offer our seats to the elderly, and if you drop your wallet on the street, a kid will run a mile to return it to you! (But please don't come.)

But Burro Hall is here to give you the ugly truth - the truth the government and the media don't want you to hear: the fire department here is mostly volunteers. So if your cat gets stuck in a tree, you may have to wait an hour for them to come and get him down.

Still thinking of moving here, amigos?

Regrettable Photo-Illustration of the Day

In American newspapers, we try to point the gun away from the president's chest.

Hi Mom!

Fresh off their exclusive, front-page coverage of CNN Mexico's website's use of a photo of a newsstand in which their paper is visible, the hits just keep coming for our local paper, Plaza de Armas. Yesterday, their front page screamed their exclusive headline - that the chairman of the PRI political party would be in Querétaro this coming Saturday for a meeting of the state party committee!!! Okay, so we added those exclamation points for ironic effect. Querétaro is a city about the size of San Francisco. Isn't there anything else to report on? We can't imagine "Reince Priebus to Visit City This Weekend" as banner headline in the Chronicle. (We do remember once being in Malone, NY, with our old employer, and waking up to see, on the front page of that morning's Malone Telegram, the headline "Mike Wallace Finds News Here," but Malone has a population of 14,000, if you don't count the prisoners. Eight thousand if you don't count the people who are just there buy meth.)

But so hey, it was probably a slow news day.

Except that yesterday the head of the state party committee said, uh, yeah, sure, the chairman will be at the meeting, prompting the PdeA to run another front-page story announcing that yesterday's front-page "party functionary to attend party function" story has been confirmed!!! (Seriously, the headline above the headline says "Plaza de Armas's Exclusive Confirmed.") Next to the story (which of course ran above a photo of Plaza de Armas's 2010 Person of the Year Sandra Calzada Albarrán) is a column by the paper's editorial director patting itself on the back for its scoop. The story continues on page 3. The self-congratulatory editorial director's column continues on page 2.

Anyway, we're far too modest do this ourselves, but if all of you were to send the link for this post (http://burrohall.blogspot.com/2011/01/hi-mom.html) to Plaza de Armas's editorial director at svenegas_ramirez@hotmail.com, we're pretty sure we could get Burro Hall on page one - which is the reason for the somewhat incongruous headline here; it would be a really nice treat for our mom, wouldn't it? And of course we promise to provide exclusive coverage of PdeA's coverage of our coverage of their coverage as soon as it happens.

Spillover

We've been saying for a number of years now that of all the potential hazards of visiting Mexico, by far the most dangerous is the traffic. That's not an attempt to minimize the other stuff - traffic really is insanely dangerous here. Inevitably, today, the bloodshed finally spilled over the border:

A car bumped off a highway in northern Mexico, vaulted over the border fence and came to rest 40 yards inside the United States, injuring two passengers, authorities said on Wednesday.

The sedan drove along a highway north of the border city of Tijuana in morning traffic on Tuesday, when it was shunted by another vehicle, forcing it to drop over an embankment and fall 40 feet into the United States, the U.S. Border Patrol said.

The vehicle came to rest between primary and secondary border barriers, some 40 yards inside California, San Diego Border Patrol spokesman Rodolfo Zuniga said.

Border Patrol agents and California National Guard service members provided first aid to the two Mexican passengers in their mid-twenties who suffered moderate to severe injuries. The 44-year-old driver was not injured.

Obviously, God was watching today, since the only injuries were to Mexicans. But will your child be next...?

Death In The Afternoon

Or, actually, in the wee hours of Monday morning, which is when Mexican bullfighter José María Luévano answered the question, "Which is more dangerous, 20 years in the bullring, or a few minutes on the Querétaro-México autopista?"

From the Port au Prince Bureau

Following up on our confusion over the number of dead/missing Mexicans in the Haiti earthquake last year, we put the question to the Mexican Embassy in Haiti, which immediately put a dozen or so people on the question, and after 12 days of round-the-clock number crunching have given us the official figure: 1. The UN employee María Antonieta Castillo. Querétaro's Karen Valero Jacques, long credited as a quake casualty, apparently died earlier in the day of a medical condition. The Embassy is not maintaining a list of the missing - which, in the interest of closely parsing everything, we'll note is not the same as saying everyone's accounted for, but we're giving them the benefit of the doubt.

From: Romero Zavala, Alan
To: Burro Hall Enterprises, S.A.
Sent: Mon, Jan 24, 2011
Subject: embajada de México en Haití

Estimado señor Koughan,

En atención a su correo electrónico del pasado 12 de enero le comento que, como consecuencia directa del sismo del 12 de enero de 2010 en Haití, falleció una (1) persona de nacionalidad mexicana, la señora María Antonieta Castillo, quien laboraba para la Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la Estabilización de Haití (MINUSTAH).

La señora Karen Valero Jacques falleció el mismo día 12, pero antes del sismo, por una condición médica preexsistente.

No tenemos registro de ningún desaparecido de nacionalidad mexicana.

Atentamente

Alan Romero Zavala
Jefe de Cancillería
Embajada de México en Haití

Let 'em Eat Paint

Cigarette merchant Carlos Slim became The World's Richest Mexican after basically being handed a monopoly on telephone service by the Mexican government 20 years ago. Which means he worked too damn hard to just give that money away.

On donating half his fortune to charity like billionaires Buffett and Gates are doing, Slim says it's the wrong way to resolve the world's problems.

"What we need to do as businessmen, is to help to solve the problems, the social problems," he explains. "To fight poverty, but not by charity."

Carlos Slim knows what Mexico needs. No, not charity...

Carlos Slim Art Museum in Mexico City Nearing Completion

MEXICO CITY – The most ambitious cultural project undertaken to date by Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, is nearing completion, and in a few months will exhibit in an innovative museum “the best” of his private art collection, made up of some 66,000 works, chiefly from Latin America and Europe.

Construction of the new Soumaya Museum, designed by his son-in-law, the Mexican architect Fernando Romero, started on Mexico City’s west side in 2008, and its inauguration is slated for this coming April, its future curator Alfonso Miranda said on Friday.

The imposing edifice, with its soaring curvilinear structure and a facade covered with 16,000 hexagonal mirrors of varying sizes, will boast an exhibition space of 6,000 square meters (64,000 square feet) distributed on six floors.

Notable among the masterpieces chosen for display are works by Picasso, Rodin, Dali and the Mexicans Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo.

Because who needs bread when you have such pretty circuses?

Sábado Gigante

* Former Florida governor and proud papá of three anchor babies, Jeb Bush, thinks Hispanics and Republicans should be natural allies, because they have so much in common. With recent surveys showing that very few Mexicans read books, care about culture, or believe in science, we have to agree it's sort of a match made in Heaven.

* Also, Mexicans and Republicans go way back.

* From the Self-Correcting Blogosphere: contrary to our early-morning rant, it turns out the Nissan Tsuru ("Piece of Shit" in Spanish) is in fact the most-stolen car in Mexico. So those alarms are really working.

* Three well-bred young ladies from the FSoAZ take a break from having sex with their stepdads to discuss their views on immigration. Is it possible that Bristol Palin might actually raise the state's collective IQ?

* One thing that might make us suspend our FSoAZ Travel Advisory: lion tacos.

* The number of innocent civilians killed in Drug War crossfire skyrockets 172% to...um, 166. Out of 15,000. (And before the Flying Monkey Brigade alights for the comment section, yes, these figures are highly suspect...)

* Compared to parts of the US, Mexico is dangerous. Compared to Latin America, not so much.

* Surfing With the Aliens: Joe Satriani won't play Arizona, but you can catch him in Mexico City tonight and tomorrow.

* Not for the squeamish: Queretaro tourism officials kidnapped two gringa students this week, and forced them to make this promotional video before beheading them:



* Another Mexican journalist gets death threats for reporting on the folks who supply America her drugs and seeks asylum in America. And of course the odds are against him getting it.

* So the going rate to hire a Texan to smuggle body armor into Mexico is $150. Wonder how much it would take to get them to secede.

* "My name in Pancho, and I'm an alcoholic, which you can tell because I'm walking into this conspicuously-painted "Alcoholics Anonymous" building..."

* The Mexican media finally gets a scary black man of its own!

* Killing has always been a way of life in northern Mexico.

* If George Lucas believes the world is ending in 2012, then we're discontinuing this blog so we can devote more time to building an ark.

* Besides, this blog is killing you, as sure as it's killing us.

* With the news that Johnny Depp is to play Tonto in the upcoming Lone Ranger movie, we learn that, in Spanish, the character is called "Toro," meaning "bull," rather than Tonto, which means "stupid."

* Austria, which did such a fine job taking care of Mexico 140 years ago, just might condescend to allow Mexico to borrow Moctezuma's headdress one of these days.

* Philly's Major League Soccer team kinda wishes it wasn't sponsored by Bimbo.

* If this doesn't make you cry, we suggest you hold a mirror under your nose to see if you're actually breathing.

* Mexico defeats Serbia in ice hockey. Seriously.

* At the risk of violating Rules #1 and #2, Queretaro's Fight Club is located on Calle Invierno, in colonia Indeco La Popular. See you there.

* Speaking of wanting to punch people unconscious, San Miguel inspires that feeling in a lot of people. Here's one reason.

* Burro Hall Entertainment proudly presents its latest acquisition. (Don't tell the others, but we only signed the band so we could spin the recorder-player off as a solo act.)

Our Continuing Coverage of "El JJ's" Colombian Model/Beauty Queen Girlfriend Continues

An outfit called the "British Broadcasting Corporation" followed up on our earlier reporting and confirmed that El JJ's mistress's Facebook page provided the Mexican government the critical break in the case. But, oddly, when we checked back on her profile (we're really determined to friend her), it seems that her location has changed from Huixquilucan de Degollado, as it read two days ago (After she'd been taken into custody)...

to Lomas de Chapultepec, DF, today.

We don't have the slightest idea what this means - do federal prisoners have internet access? And if she did it... is she really that dumb? - but see it as a great excuse to link to this photo gallery, and increase Burro Hall's page views so we don't have to work anymore.

A Burro Hall Investigation

Here's a fun footnote to the recent madness in the Failed State of Arizona. Within a day of the shooting of Rep Giffords, Fox News moved a story saying the Dept. of Homeland Security had released a memo linking the shooter to a racist group called American Renaissance. Within hours, Fox had revised "DHS memo" to "a law enforcement memo based on information provided by DHS". By Jan. 11, DHS was well on the record saying the Fox story - like so many Fox stories, really - was utter bullshit.

But DHS has not officially provided any such information to any law enforcement officials, the DHS official says.

"We have not established any such possible link," the official says. We're sure she'll be same there.

The official cautions it's conceivable that a law enforcement official got unofficial info from a DHS official somewhere along the lines of what Fox reported. But he emphasizes that DHS has not even concluded in any official way that even the possibility of such ties exists. The official adds that it wouldn't be DHS's place to reach any such conclusion in the first place, since the FBI is leading the investigation.

And then ten whole days passed. And then today, for no apparent reason other than the fact that they are deeply, deeply stupid people, the patriots at ALIPAC demanded a Congressional investigation into "why the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to the media containing false information implying that the Tucson shooter Jared Loughner, was motivated by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' religion and stance in favor of Amnesty for illegal immigrants!!!!!!!1!" [Emphasis added for comic effect.]

We can't tell if they feel the guy who shot the anti-SB1070 congresswoman was tarnished by the association with crypto-Nazi racialists, or vice-versa. But since Congress is busy trying to deny insurance to poor people this week, we figured we'd help out by conducting our own five-minute investigation and helping ALIPAC by setting the record straight. You're welcome.

Meanwhile, we see that Giffords is now leaving the FSoAZ for Houston. We're sure she'll be safe there.

Extra!

In case you were wondering what it takes to knock 2010's Person of the Year Sandra Calzada off the front page of our local paper, we now have the answer: the appearance, somewhere on the internet, of a photo of our local paper! Plaza de Armas's front-page-above-the-fold coverage of CNN Mexico's coverage of Plaza de Armas's coverage of the Jefe Diego kidnapping is right here, in case you missed it. It's nice to know there's an even more narcissistic outfit than Burro Hall in the town. PdeA's caption says that the CNN story credits PdeA for its exclusive coverage of the kidnapping, which of course it does not.

Fortunately, the very next day, Mrs. Calzada was returned to her perch on page one, and all was right with the world again.

Mexican Organs: Performing the Vital Functions American Organs Won't

Part of the reason we have no patience for the "We Hate Illegal Immigrants" crowd is that they tend to have no interest whatsoever in making legal immigration any easier. We have a friend here who is married to a gringo. Last year, her husband went back to the US to do some freelance work. Our amiga - an English-speaking, college-educated, gainfully employed woman with deep family ties here, no desire to live in the US, and certifiably free of anchor babies - applied at the US Embassy for a visa so she that might visit her hard-working husband. Or, more accurately, she applied for an appointment to apply for a visa. Her husband's six-month project came and went, and he returned to Mexico last month. She's still waiting to hear when she might possibly be allowed an appointment to apply for that now-moot visa.

Of course, that's merely a pointless annoyance. This is a life-and-death outrage:

The clock is ticking for Dr. Gabriel Danovitch’s patient. Dr. Danovitch, a transplant surgeon at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, is treating an immigrant from Mexico in his 40s whose kidneys have failed. The patient is a good candidate for a transplant and has a donor, his brother.

But there is a big problem: His brother is a Mexican citizen whose application for a visa to come to the United States was not granted.

Physicians who perform transplants say patients who need organ donations from a family member or other close match outside the United States face hurdles that are often hard to surmount. Difficulties in obtaining visas leave many potential donors frustrated and force their sick relatives in the United States to wait months or even years on a list for organs like a liver or kidney.

Seriously? How about, can we give a visa just to his kidney? They could take it out at the Otay Mesa border station and wheel the rest of him back to Mexico before he's able to wake up and apply for welfare and food stamps.

At least his brother doesn't live in the Failed State of Arizona. The death panels there won't even give organ to white people these days.

I Dig a Pony

Today's big news here the latest success in Mexico's failed "kingpin" strategy: the arrest of Jose Jorge "El JJ" Balderas, a cartel big shot who is also accused of having shot a famous Paraguayan soccer star whose name we would certainly recall if we actually followed soccer, but we remember it was kind of a big deal.

El JJ [above] "also is accused of having ties to Edgar Valdez 'La Barbie' Villarreal [below], an alleged U.S.-born drug kingpin arrested last year." This is obvious, because they were both arrested wearing the official Beltrán-Leyva cartel "Big Pony custom-fit polo shirt by Ralph Lauren" uniform.

With #3 and #2 now in custody, #1 might want to consider switching to Tommy Hilfiger.

Also arrested yesterday was El JJ's girlfriend, Colombian model/beauty queen Juliana Sossa Toro. The cool thing about being a drug lord is you get to have as your girlfriend a Colombian model/beauty queen. The bad thing is that Colombian models/beauty queens tend to be just dumb enough to put their home address on their Facebook pages.

Don't bother trying to friend her. We already did, and were told, "Sorry, this user already has too many friend requests." Literally thousands of people looked at that picture and said, "sure, her boyfriend is a ruthless killer, but I still think she'll dig me."

The Dawn Patrol

Here's a couple of minutes of footage shot by our audio/visual division from the doorway of Burro Hall at a quarter to six this morning. It neatly encapsulates nearly everything that drives us mad about Mexico: religious fanatics, idolatry, fireworks, megaphones, car alarms, imperviousness to noise, and a complete and utter lack of even the tiniest bit of consideration for other people. (For best effect, connect your computer's speakers to Pete Townshend's concert rig.)



Note the interplay between the fireworks powerful enough to set off a car alarm, and the collection of shitbox cars with alarms so sensitive that they can be triggered by fireworks. Seriously, our testicles are not this sensitive! We understand this is Mexico and there are banditos lurking everywhere - but really, amigos, no one in the history of the world has ever bothered to steal a Nissan Tsuru. You do not need to wire that thing up like it's the Federal Reserve.

Sometimes, noise is inadvertent and unavoidable - we're thinking specifically here of the street-sweeper lady who rolls her squeaky, clanging trash can past our windows every morning at 6:25, on her way to begin 12 hours of tedious, difficult work - and we're cool with that. But parading through the streets with loudspeakers and explosives at 5:45 has only one purpose: to deliberately wake up everyone in the neighborhood and let them know what a fucking asshole you are.

The assholes would insist differently, of course. This, we're told, is a critical part of the annual pilgrimage to San Juan de los Lagos, where every year thousands of like-minded noisemakers trudge hundreds of kilometers because 387 years ago some kid got sick, then got better. Sure, whatever. But let's review for a minute the definition of "pilgrimage":

Pil·grim·age (pĭl'grə-mĭj)
n.

1. A journey to a sacred place or shrine.
2. A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.

intr.v., -aged, -ag·ing, -ag·es.
To go on a pilgrimage.

"A journey"..."A long journey"..."To go"... And yet this is the third morning in a row these people have buffeted our street with rockets and Jesus-songs. Why won't they go? San Juan is over 250 km away - don't they think they should get moving? Are they lost? Confused? Will they wander the Centro for 40 years, like Moses and the Israelites? Do they think they're making progress, when in fact they've been marching is circles for half a week? Should we print out some directions for them? Offer them a ride? Just stop whining and roll with it?

Yes, we know the last one is the correct answer. But, shit, 5AM? C'mon.

Useless and Pointless Knowledge

For no particularly good reason, we were screwing around with Google's Ngram Viewer, a graphable database of all the books they've digitized as part of their Campaign to Control All Knowledge. This thing probably has some value to academic researchers - and we, to put it mildly, are not academic researchers. Still, we thought we'd see how often "Mexico" has appeared in print in English-language books since 1521.

We were kind of fascinated to see that Mexico was written about more frequently during the 1620s than during the 1920s, but we think that may be due to a flaw in the database, which lists all the journals of the American Chemical Society as having been published in 1620. Perhaps it'll be a while before Google takes over the world.

Surprisingly, Mexico is - and apparently always has been - of greater interest to English-language writers than Spanish-language ones. The charts don't match exactly - the top of the chart below [click to embiggen] is about 30% greater than the one above, but it's still striking.

Rather counter-intuitively, it seems the word "wetbacks" is actually on the decline from its early 1970s peak. We attribute this to the fact that books by talk-radio hosts are a relatively new phenomenon, and are all still under copyright. Check back on this one in, like, 70 years.

Sadly, the phrase "Burro Hall" has yet to make its mark on the literary world, having appeared only once that we know of.

Though we assume folks songs are being written about us at this very moment.

Extortion Contortion

We've mentioned before that Querétaro has no law against the trafficking of people for sexual or labor exploitation. And we're cool with that - presumably the pro-child labor/sexual slavery lobby has a really good argument that we can't understand because we're not from here. (Also, given what we underpay the interns, there's no need to go hurling stones around our glass offices, right?) But sometimes shit here makes our heads explode.

One of the local rags has a story about the rise in pet kidnappings here - noting the increasing number of "missing dog" flyers around town. Long story short, people steal dogs, wait for the "missing dog" flyer to go up, then call the number and say, "I've found your dog! But about that 500 peso reward...let's make it 50,000." It's a nice little scam (sometimes they don't even have the dog). It's also - this is the crazy-making part - not especially illegal.

The 'kidnapping' of dogs is not covered by law, so it's treated as simple theft, which is hard to prove before a judge if the robber is not caught in the act.

Furthermore, to prove a robbery, the owner has to prove ownership of the object, which is extremely difficult, since the pets generally do not come with invoices, and most are gifts.

According to Rep. Luis Antonio Macías Trejo, who chairs the Committee on Administration and Law Enforcement, "the crime of kidnapping is only applied to people and deals with deprivation of liberty. Remember that pets are obviously not considered persons but things."

These two things have a combined value of $612.  Stealing either is not a serious crime.

Okay, we'll reserve taking umbrage on the perrito's behalf and concede that this is true in the US as well, where pet-nappers are treated as thieves. Laws vary from state to state there, but generally if the dog is worth over $500, it's considered grand larceny, punishable by up to a decade in the slammer.

But in Querétaro, according to Rep. Macías, if the value of the dog doesn't exceed about 32,000 pesos ("600 times the minimum wage," is the weird way the courts phrase these things) - or roughly $2,675! -  the thief can post bail and walk. Given that the perrito - who came with AKC pedigree papers and was purchased in tony Kennebunkport, Maine - cost a mere 600 bucks, we can't imagine there are too many $2,676 house pets here in Querétaro.

So, fine, dogs can't be "kidnapped" and theft is hard to prove, but surely someone who has an object belonging to you and who will only return it to you upon payment of an exorbitant amount of cash is guilty of extortion, no?

Macías stated that it is also not a crime of extortion, because this, too, has to do with acts between people and relating to people.

"It's not extortion. It is theft.... Extortion means forcing someone to do, tolerate, or fail to do something to his detriment or to that of a third party, but we're talking about people."

Umm...seriously? Can we respectfully suggest to the learned gentleman that there are in fact, two people involved: the extortionist and the dog-owner? That forcing a guy to cough up 50,000 pesos to get back a piece of his property worth (in non-sentimental terms) considerably less constitutes "forcing someone to do something to his detriment"?

Anyway, later today we're taking the perrito's bill of sale down to the same guy who made our fake FM3s and having him change the price to 100,000 US dollars. Also, we'd like to remind any potential dognappers out there that there are significant loopholes in the laws regarding sexual slavery here, and we will not hesitate to stage a retaliatory abduction and sell you to the local pimps for considerably less than 600 salario minimos.

Car Seat Chronicles

This Anonymous comment on last week's post about car seats was too good not to bump up to the front page:

This morning here in Culiacan, I enjoyed breakfast at a taco stand. We sat by a nice lady whose tiny baby was sleeping in a car seat on the ground. She left after eating, taking the baby out of the carseat, which she then put in the trunk, and drove away with her baby tucked safely on her lap. hecf!!!

Viva!

So Far From God...

It's widely known in Mexico that the closer you get to the United States, the greater your chances of being horribly murdered, most likely by an American gun. But we were surprised to learn that the closer a Mexican woman lives to the US, the greater her chances are of developing breast cancer. Must be all that toxic rhetoric we've been hearing about.

Meanwhile, in Texas at least, the closer you live to Mexico, the greater your chances of living a much-longer-than-average life. Surely this is because the US has the Best Healthcare System in the World(TM)!

And although they may not have health insurance, many South Texans cross the border into Mexico to see doctors and get prescriptions filled for a small fraction of the cost in the United States. (In a recent study of border residents, roughly half of the sample population reported crossing the border for health care — though this number is dropping because of drug violence in Mexico.)

“The presence of Mexican care is a good thing for those who have no health insurance in this area,” said Dejun Su, director of the South Texas Border Health Disparities Center at the University of Texas-Pan American. “It’s an advantage people living in poverty in big metropolitan areas in the U.S. don’t have.”

You're welcome, America.

The Immigrant Experience

We drove to the Superama in the exclusive Milenio III subdivision yesterday to stock up on some provisions - Saturday is "Make Your Own Sundae" night here in the interns' dormitory - and, in the first bit of good luck we'd had all day, spotted a parking space right near the entrance. It was in the next lane over, on the other side of a handicapped space, but having learned to drive in Boston, we simply drove through the handicapped space on our side and straight into the regular space - much to the chagrin of one of the local "Desperate Housewife" types who had been heading toward the space in a more conventional (and therefore more roundabout, less effective, and ultimately fruitless) manner.

Oh, but such is the sense of entitlement of the spoiled, idle, twice-facelifted-before-the-age-of-40 breeder units that populate the hills around this city that the mere fact of having desired the space meant that it was rightfully hers. "Excuse me. Excuse me!" she called to us as we were walking towards the store. "I had driven around to this side in order to take that space." Not quite grasping that in her head the matter was now settled and we were supposed to walk back to our vehicle and move it, we shrugged weakly and kept going.

"Oh, so that's how you do things in your country," she said - correctly. (Was she pouting, or was it just the collagen?) "How lovely! Why don't you just go back to your own country then!" [Emphasis in the original tirade.]

In more than four years in Mexico, this was the first time anyone had yelled at us to go back to our own country. Part of us admired the karmic justice of it: Mexicans up in El Norte probably hear that sort of shit all the time, now it was the pinche gringos turn! Then we remembered that the gringos in question were us, and that while something like that is always small-minded, it's particularly so when it comes in response to being beaten to a parking space. Furthermore, Superama is a subsidiary of WalMart. To be tagged as undesirably foreign and deportable by a cosmetically-enhanced housewife sitting in gas-guzzling SUV in the the parking lot of a WalMart is a bit rich; surely we were already on American soil? We offered up an anatomical epithet and kept walking.

Of course, we're wildly overthinking this now. Really, she was just a crank. Inside the supermarket we soon ran into our plasticized antagonist who, forsaken by God, had been forced to park almost 30 feet away. As she walked past us, she scrunched up her face, theatrically pinched her nose and, with her other hand, furious fanned away an imaginary stench. We wish we could report that we yelled after her: "The feminine hygiene products are in Aisle 5! Hurry!" but we didn't think of that until half way through happy hour. So instead we just laughed.

Sábado Gigante

* Correction: The 2010 Mexican Drug War Body Count turns out to be 15,273, not 10,088 as we reported. And last year, the country fell from 43rd to 53rd in the Legatum Prosperity Index, and has been downgraded from Free to Partly Free in the Freedom House survey. Also, it has come to our attention that as recently as the 1994 peso crisis, Mexico was considerably more affordable than it is now. Burro Hall regrets the error.

* One statistic we'd love to see is how many people within 100 yards of Jared Loughner were packing heat. "When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim," said Surprise, AZ's Republican (surprise!) State Rep. Jack Harper. The shooting happened on a Saturday morning an enormous supermarket in a shopping mall in Arizona, a state where the only people not carrying guns are those who prefer knives. We'll conservatively estimate, what, 300 guns capable of putting Loughner in the crosshairs? More than enough to maintain a well-regulated militia. Yet he managed to shoot 20 people before being tackled by a bystander.

* But if you're in Tuscon for one of the funerals and you've got some time to kill today, head on over to the Crossroads of the West gun show. (Limit 12 per customer.)

* “I know everyone in the country thinks World War III is going on in Arizona, but it’s probably still the nicest place I can think of to live,” Rep. Giffords's surgeon said. Must suck when the media focuses only on the lurid stuff, huh?

* Latinos wondering how they could become more hated in the United States have an epiphany: Let's try converting to Islam! (Related: 2011 is The Year of Mexico in France.)

* The billion-dollar "virtual border fence" collapses into the Great Lake of Fail. Maybe we can convert the Star Wars missile defense system to shoot brown people along the Rio Grande.

* Not that the Border Patrol needs any help shooting them, of course. Their problem is more in getting their stories straight. Perhaps this course can help.

* America, like the good neighbor she is, keep sending her best citizens over the border to Mexico. Thanks! (Thanks for this, too, neighbor!)

*"There are ways in which we are contributing to this problem, not just in our [drug] use in America and therefore the demand, but also in the gun trafficking and flow of weapons that have empowered people to engage in a kind of civil war within that country," said John Kerry, US Senator, former presidential candidate, and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who, because he is not a conservative Republican, need not be taken seriously.

* We know what you're wondering: 15,000 narco-murders...how will that affect Home Depot's expansion plans?

* Maybe they should have picked different names: The Civility Project shuts down due to lack of civility. Woman who coined phrase "Not One More Death," is found dead. (Though it turns out that her strangled, handless corpse had nothing to do with organized crime. Just a weird coincidence.)

* Diana's Kennedy's tamales have a thick, tough husk. Diana Kennedy, not so much.

* For our readers who enjoy stories about foreigners getting shot in Mexico (you know who you are), Burro Hall Canine Affairs correspondent CM Mayo will be reading from her novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire next Wednesday in San Miguel de Allende.

* Mexico's go-to pope, John Paul II, officially performed a miracle by curing a woman of Parkinson's. Added to his miracle of keeping Fr. Marcial Maciel out of prison, that should be enough for sainthood.

* The Archbishop of Querétaro's New Year's address declares Catholics to be "among the most persecuted in the world." Vows to retaliate with 5:00AM fireworks for the rest of the year.

* You know things are crazy in Mexico when one death cult is trying to distance itself from what it considers the other, lunatic death cult.

* Querétanos: Making the cheese graters Americans won't.

* Mexico: even the beer is gay.

* We finally found a donkey show! Typically, it's in Santa Monica, CA.

* Best wishes to frequent commenter "M" for a speedy recovery. Could be worse.

The Reconquista Colonies: Missouri

Don’t think the Reconquista is real? Well, we’ve got news for you! While America sat on its fat, jiggly ass playing first-person shooter video games, at least eleven towns named “Mexico” have quietly taken root across the country. Sorry. We’ll wait while you finish your Twinkie. Done? We said, eleven entire towns named Mexico, legally incorporated within our sacred borders. How’s that fit in with your Reconquista nightmares, Lou Dobbs?

This is the first of our eleven-part series laying bare the Reconquista Colonies the lamestream media doesn’t want you to know about. We begin with the tierra del corazón of America’s Heartland: Mexico, Missouri.

Local legend holds that the town got its name when the first settlers found a wooden sign along a trail saying “Mexico” and pointing south, and that it was easier to call their settlement “Mexico” than to take down the old sign. Mexicans, in other words, are lazy. Sound familiar?

The city was General Ulysses S. Grant’s first staging point during the Civil War. Grant, you’ll recall, got his first real military experience 15 years earlier in the other Mexico – during a war he was bitterly opposed to. What else did he pick up there? Political indoctrination, perhaps? Grant went on to become president of the United States, overseeing an administration whose corruption would not be out of place south of the border. The house he stayed in is now a museum housing, among other things, a collection of 400 dolls.

Speaking of Manchurian candidates, Kit Bond, the Missouri’s former governor and (up until two weeks ago) Republican senator, is a Mexican.

Mexicans love their beauty queens, so of course Mexico is the home of the Miss Missouri pageant.

Missouri’s Mexicans have deviously assimilated. 99.13% of the Mexico’s 12,000 residents are non-Hispanic.

There are just two Mexican restaurants in Mexico – not counting Taco Bell - and 31 churches, only two of which are Catholic.

Guns are readily available, and yet Mexico is one of the safest towns in all of Missouri. Residents call it “Main St. of the Midwest.” (And it’s never been more affordable!)

One out of every 254 Mexicans is a registered sex offender. We told you they'd assimilated. When the time comes, Missouri will be the capital of Nuevo Aztlán.

Because All Gringas Look Alike

We sent the interns out this morning to pick up some piratas for the weekend. We're especially excited about Black Swan. We loved Winona in The Age of Innocence, but haven't seen very much of her since then.

Charmingly, the credits on the back indicate that it stars Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara.

Update: Ah, well it seems Winona Ryder actually is in this movie (which, by the way, has way more sex and violence than you'd expect in a ballet film). She's got less than three minutes of screen time, though, so it's still like giving Marshal McLuhan top billing in Annie Hall.

From the Journal of Parental Recklessness

We saw a story a few days ago about a town in Puebla called La Magdalena Tlatlauquitepec. Typical Mexican hard-luck story - poor, mostly indigenous, most of the able-bodied folks having moved out over the years, those left behind wholly dependent on some arcane, low-paying activity. In the case of La Magdelena Whatever, most of the women make a living packaging fireworks for about 8 cents per thousand, or about 50 bucks a week. The good news is that the work can be done at home. The bad news is that the work involves thousands upon thousands of fireworks. In the accompanying photo we see the kitchen of the house where Eusebia Sánchez Miranda, 36, lives with her seven children. The makeshift hammock/crib allows her to keep an eye on the youngest while she works. And hey, what could possibly go wrong?

We're not even going to bother to ask about the car-seat situation.

Of Course They Did.

Arizona Shootings Trigger Surge in Glock Sales Amid Fear of Ban.

Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14 wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition.

...Arizona gun dealers say that among the biggest sellers in the past few days is the Glock 19 made by privately held Glock GmbH, based in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the model used in the shootings.

One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to 263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a year ago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.

Of course, to use these figures to make sweeping generalizations about the kind of deeply paranoid, violence-loving people who live in the Failed State of Arizona would a form of blood libel, and Burro Hall is all about healing, so we'll just note that even the Westboro Baptists have heeded our travel advisory, and leave it at that.

Unsafe At Any Speed

The death of a two-year-old infant is a horrible tragedy, though perhaps some tiny consolation can be taken when the babe dies bundled up in its mother's arms. Unless, of course, those mother's arms happen to be sitting, unseatbelted, in the front seat of a moving vehicle as it loses control and crashes into a concrete barrier at high speed.

"With her baby in her arms, mother and son are crushed when their car loses control"

We would never be so uncharitable as to say we told you so - and really, who can say what would have happened if the baby had been in a car seat in the back? - it's worth noting that the father, who was driving, and another (presumably un-carseated) child sitting in the back seat survived in serious condition. Compared to the front passenger seat, the back looks pretty good:



Of course, while both the newspaper linked to above, and this one do mention the way the baby was traveling (the former actually plays up the Pietá-like tableau of the babe in mama's arms), neither finds it in any way remarkable or explicitly inadvisable. It's just the way people drive here. Ni modo.

Depending on the age of the surviving daughter, María Fernanda Morales Camacho, Burro Hall plans to suspend the rules and just send the Camacho family a car seat.

The Earthquake

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Port au Prince earthquake that killed 200,000 people including a small but as of this writing still unknown number of Mexicans. New reports in the first couple weeks after the quake put the number of confirmed dead at two, including a woman from Querétaro. The number of missing ranged from a high of 131 down to the lowest (and most recent) number we could find: 14.

To us, the most amazing thing about that number is that it's dated Jan 26, 2010, and so far the Research Dept. hasn't been able to find anything more current. One of the kind of endearing things about Mexico is the media's habit of making every story All About Mexico (see, for instance, the coverage of Barry Bond's home run record, which focused on how many Mexican pitchers he [and also Hank Aaron] lit up). So it's kinda stunning to us that 14 missing paisanos, or the happy discovery of the same, would simply drop from the headlines for 50 weeks. Weirder still, we can find no mention in today's coverage of even the two confirmed victims. In fact, the only stab at a "Mexican angle" we could find was this account of some Haitians who relocated to Mexico.

Anyone with better or more up-to-date figures is welcome to share.

Armed & Anachronous

From the local police blotter, we learn that Querétaro's days as a peaceful oasis in a sea of gun-toting killers are probably numbered, as cops in San Juan del Rio apprehend a suspected illegal arms merchant and confiscate his cache:

Oh, sure, go ahead and laugh. And then with in a few years you've got 30,000 dead and have lost control of half your country. Especially if they've replaced the flintlocks with percussion caps.

Survivor

Thank God there are still some Latinos left in Arizona.

Daniel Hernandez had been U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' intern for five days when she was shot Saturday outside Tucson.

The junior at the University of Arizona was helping check people in at the "Congress on Your Corner" event when he heard gunfire. He was about 30 feet from the congresswoman. When the shots began, he ran toward them.

...Using his hand, Hernandez applied pressure to the entry wound on her forehead. He pulled her into his lap, holding her upright against him so she wouldn't choke on her own blood. Giffords was conscious, but quiet.

When they arrived at the hospital, Hernandez was soaked in blood. His family brought him clean clothes because the FBI took his for evidence.

Here's hoping all his papers are in order.

Sábado Gigante

* A week into the new year, and the Elected Officials Gunned Down scoreboard stands at Mexico: 1, Failed State of Arizona: 1 - but we're awarding the FSoAZ a couple bonus points for the 11 bystanders shot as well. One of Arizona's few non-crazy politicians, Rep. Giffords actually understands Mexico. She also has a D+ rating from the NRA, which strikes us as somewhat ungracious now.

* "At a similar event in 2009, a protester was removed by police when his pistol fell on the supermarket floor." But really, it would be wrong to draw conclusions about the kind of people who live in that state.

* Reality tv-show star Sarah Palin "targeted" Giffords in the last election. You can see the sniper crosshairs over her district here. But it was all in good fun, you betcha. Must be hilarious to be one of the 19 others on the hit list. (Though not as funny as the error message we keep getting at the website. Must have taken it down for "cleaning.") Giffords's Teabagger opponent held a fundraising event where you could help remove Giffords from office by firing a fully automatic M16, the kind all Arizonans are required to carry. But really, it was just a joke. Nothing serious.

* Among the dead was Federal Judge John Roll, who recently needed 24-hour protection from the US Marshals after failing to hate on immigrants, much to the frenzied chagrin of talk radio douchebags. But again, we wouldn't want to be unfair. They were just frustrated at Obama's failure to enforce the law or something. And that Tree of Liberty does need watering.

* Meanwhile, in other Failed State of Arizona Shopping Center Shootings news this week, a suspect in Phoenix exchanged fire with police before fleeing to Mexico - well, not quite Mexico, but to Baja Fresh - where he eventually surrendered.

* Texas judge wisely decides that a non-corrupt Juárez cop has nothing to fear from the narcos, and therefore has no need for asylum.

* As they used to say in the FSoAZ back when they were the lone anti-MLK Day holdout, "No King Over Us!"

* We're pleased to see Chip Saltsman, the Republican operative who distributed a CD with wacky tunes like "Barack the Magic Negro" and "The Star Spanglish Banner" landing on his feet in the new Republican congress.

* Why must the white man move in on Mexico's apocalypse? The world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, not May 21, 2011! (Unless you're from our old neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, in which case, the world ended in 1925, 1941, 1975 and/or 1994.)

* It's early, but we'd like to nominate the Washington Post's "Mexican pro wrestlers keep drug-trafficking culture out of the lucha libre ring" as one of the Dumbest Mexico Stories of 2011. Next week: "Frida Kahlo Museum not connected to Gulf Cartel." (The pix are excellent, though.)

* The Catholic Church in Mexico clearly has no idea what Taliban means.

* It's hard to believe Mexico City is shrinking, not expanding. But if that means there'll be no more room for the organ grinders soon, that's okay by us.

* Mexican national records in track and field.

* Speaking of records, Mexico recently racked up the World's Largest Burrito, Longest Folding Screen, and Largest Attendance at a Boxing Match, which for reasons we can't quite fathom was just awarded to Don King for a fight in Mexico City 18 years ago. Mexico and its paperwork...

* Sábado Gigante host Don Francisco may have a 43-year-old bastard son. Our 43-year-old executive editor, Don Francisco Jr, may have some 'splainin' to do...

First, Call All The Lawyers

We were a little surprised to turn on the internets this morning and learn of a "New Website to Draw Attention to Trash at Arizona-Mexico Border". As our our legal firm of Winklevoss & Winklevoss made clear in a letter sent to Gov. Jan Brewer just moments ago, this blog has been drawing attention to Arizona's border trash for the better part of two years now, and we're not going to stand by while the Failed State tries to muscle in on our success.

The Three Kings

Get up kids, and open your presents! And don't be confused by the lack of blackface.

Wrong Number(s)

Here at Burro Hall, we try to ensure that up to 50 percent of this site's content is based, however tenuously, in actual fact. But it's not easy, even for our crack research team. Case in point, today's announcement that, of the 726,472 calls to the city's 066 (i.e., 911) line, 65 percent of them were pranks. The good news, the government insists, is that this is down substantially from 2009, when the figure was 80 percent. The bad news is that it's a considerable jump up from the 20 percent figure released just 10 days ago.

Or was it 80 percent, as they said a month ago? Or 70 percent, as reported last January? We're beginning to think the number one source of prank calls in this town is government bureaucrats calling reporters to pass on official statistics. The fact that the lawman in charge of pursuing these pranksters gives his name as "Victor Hugo" should have been the first clue. "Inspector Javert" might have been too obvious.

Anyway, punking 066 is such a problem that the city made this video, which is so unspeakably awful even our own Audio/Visual Division would be ashamed to be associated with it.



Seriously, it's six and a half minutes long. Just to say, "don't make prank calls."

Finish the Danged Fence!

Over the last decade the government of Mexico has spent close to three billion dollars constructing a fence along the border to keep obnoxious gringos out of the country. This short video by filmmaker Roy Germano purports to show what a failure that effort has been, as two American teenagers are able to scale the American side of the wall in under 18 seconds.



We're not prepared to write the whole thing off just yet. Obviously, a border fence that only allowed robust, physically fit teenage girls to enter the country would have to be judged a success, but it stands to reason that if these two can do it, the majority of spring break duuuuuudes can clear the thing even faster. Fortunately, none of them are likely to hop a freight train bound for the central highlands.

But here's our challenge to Mr. Germano: Gather up a group of five or six retirement-age Texans in search of cheap real estate and/or cosmetic surgery, at least half of whom are excited to finally indulge their long-suppressed talent for watercolor painting/ jewelry making /experimental fiction, bring them to the fence, set up your camera, and show us how long it takes them to scramble up and over the thing. If they fail, and the border remains secure, we'll be happy to accept your apology, on behalf of President Calderón.

A Christmas Story

Tomorrow is Three Kings Day - the day when Mexican kids traditionally get their Christmas presents because in Mexico no one is capable of showing up on time for anything, not even the Baby Jesus's birthday party.

Just as American kids write to Santa Claus, Mexican kids make out a list of what they want the Three Kings to bring them, the idea being that, when left to their own devices, at least two out of the three tend to pick really shit gifts (gold is always cool). Mexican parents, in a brilliant counter-move, started a tradition whereby the letters are sent not through the mail, but via a little helium balloon, thus ensuring that the kids' wish lists are short and lightweight. (The inevitable environmental damage strikes us as no worse than chopping down a Douglas-fir and covering it with tinsel and lights.) All this week the plazas where we hold our evening editorial meetings have been full of vendors selling "Dear Three Kings..." balloons, and squealing kids launching them into the troposphere.

And because we believe nothing cleanses the soul like a young child's tears (and because we're usually drinking gin during the meetings), every time a kid releases a balloon we start shouting, "Oh, no! The wind! It's carrying it the wrong way! The Three Kings live this way! It will never get to them in time! Oh no!" Their reactions are absolutely priceless. All happy children are more or less the same - but crying children all scream and sob in their own beautiful, unique way.

Least Surprising Press Release of the Week

The EZLN adamantly denies having anything to do with the Jefe Diego kidnapping, on the grounds of what are you, fucking crazy?

Really, they sound downright peevish about the whole thing.

"Five Hundred Yards..."

In honor of the opening of the US Congress this week under the aegis of "Weepin'" John Boehner and the Tea Baggers, here's the comment of the day from foxnewscomments.com:

Only 11 people liked this? Doritos, of course, are made by the Frito-Lay company of Plano, TX, itself a subsidiary of New York's PepsiCo. But we'll concede that "Doritos" does sound "to Mexican" - just as "Wolverine OathKeeper" sounds a bit "to German."

Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!!

The year-end data keeps pouring in to the Burro Hall Research Labs, including the fact that there were 7,241 traffic accidents in Querétaro this year (and three fatalities already in 2011). No numbers yet on how many of those resulted in children being needlessly injured because they were, say, standing up on the back seat rather than buckled into a car seat, but that's no reason not to throw out another edition of BHCSGM!!

Our latest contestant, seen here pulling up in front of a restaurant on Independencia, teaches us the true meaning of family this holiday season - he's not gonna let simple act of driving a car interfere with his father-son bonding time! Hey, there's nothing wrong with driving with a kid sitting on your lap - babies are small. You can always see over them.

"And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon..."

[The rules: 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 publicly flagellating themselves for the crime of child endangerment, Burro Hall Enterprises will buy that family a child car seat and help them install it.]

The Not-Me Decade Begins

We saw this headline in yesterday's paper - "In Mexico There Is A Growing Intolerance of Foreigners" - and though, man, don't we know it! It's only fear of someone hurting the perro that prevents us from turning this blog into a 24/7 bitchfest about the annoying gringos around here!

Then we realized they were talking about Central Americans, of whom we really don't have any opinion. Mexicans are looked down on by all of North America and half of South America, but Central Americans are basically the Mexicans of Mexico. We have no idea what the inter-Central American breakdown is - is it better to be Guatemalan or Honduran? - but we're willing to bet El Salvadoreans are at the bottom of the list, which makes us wonder who they look down on.

Then we saw today that "Mexico Plans Immigration Shake-up," and thought, man, it's about time! We can't think of a government agency that has caused us more hassles than INM. Turns out that, again, the main concern is the kidnapping and murdering of Central Americans, not the paperwork problems of gringos renewing their FM3s. The white man just can't catch a break in the world anymore.