Dead Men Tell No Tales

We've written too much in the past about the excessive militarization (for want of an actual, serious threat) of Querétaro's public security system to even begin linking to old posts, so instead we'll link to this new one from the state's Human Rights Commission informing us that accusations of human rights violations rose 43% last year compared to 2009. The entity with the most complaints against it is the municipal police, averaging one (alleged) human rights violation every five days.

So how awesome to see the municipal police upgrading their tactical arsenal last week. Put ya gunz in tha air, muthafuckas! We wouldn't be surprised to see a marked decline in the number of people living to file complaints. Never let it be said that the police here aren't proactive.

Photo: InQro.com

Overkill? Well, for sake of comparison, New York City cops carry a single 9mm pistol. Of course, the municipal police here don't really need high-tech weapons to kill a guy. Why, just this weekend they apparently beat a guy to death with their bare hands while he was in custody. Unfortunately for the department, his family seems unhappy about this, so there'll probably be another complaint filed soon.

The Red Carpet Diaries

It's Oscar Night - the one night a year where we kind of regret not owning one of those electric "Tele-Vision" machines.  But we're still excited because we're going to take our Mexican friends to the cleaners in the Oscar pool, since we know most of them will pick Javier Bardem (who no one here seems to realize is even less Mexican than we are) as Best Actor, and Biutiful as Best Picture, on the mistaken premise that write-ins are allowed.  Hey, should we play for dollars, rather than pesos?

As we have for four of the past five years, we'll be cheering extra loud for former Burro Hall staff photographer Wally Pfister, who's nominated again for his cinematography on Inception.  With three previous, unrewarded nominations and this year's ASC Award under his belt, he would - in a universe ruled by a just and benevolent God - be a shoo-in.  Of course, we don't live in such a universe, so he's up against the legendary Roger Deakins (nine nominations, no wins) who's in the lifetime-achievement-award phase of his career.  The Oscar pool is no place for sentiment, though, so we find ourselves in the strange position of staking money on Deakins while hoping we're wrong. (And long-time readers of this blog will understand how rarely that happens.)

"I only have four fingers!"

The way the Mexican press makes a such a fuss about the tiniest Mexican-Hollywood connections (seriously, we've seen feature articles on Mexicans that have worked as makeup assistants on some big-budget blockbuster), we're surprised that the press here is unaware that Andres Heinz, who wrote the (unfortunately, not-nominated) story for Black Swan, used to live in Querétaro.  In fact (since this is a blog and therefore All About Us), his going-away party (he was moving to the US with his girlfriend) was one of the first social events we were invited to upon moving our headquarters here.  (Also one of the last, but that's a story for later.)

Bonus Burro Hall/Oscar anecdote: Black Swan's Oscar-nominated director's sister worked with (okay, near) us at CBS, and is married to a cameraman we were very fond of, who (if we're remembering the story correctly) honeymooned in Mexico with his first wife in Sept. 1985, where he unexpectedly spent most of his vacation working.   Honestly, we don't understand why the Mexican press hasn't done a full-page profile of us; we know a guy who survived the big quake, and went on to marry the sister of the director of Black Swan, which was written by a guy we met once when he was living in Mexico!  We really need to start charging the features editors for all these great ideas.

Update:

And we still went 17 for 24 in the pool.

Sábado Gigante

* We shouldn't be surprised that there's an actual Major League Baseball Statistic for "Most Saves By A Mexican-born Relief Pitcher" - but it's currently held by Kansas City's Joakim "The Mexicutioner" Soria. Last week, during spring training camp in the Failed State of Arizona, Soria asked his fans via Twitter to please stop calling him "The Mexicutioner". "That nickname is a negative to the kids in Mexico," he said in an interview. “I know I can’t really do anything about it, but the mind-set needs to change. People follow me in Mexico.” We've never bought into the whole athletes-as-role-models thing, but at this point the 2011 Burro Hall Sportsman of the Year award is his to lose. (Previous winners here and here.)

* Mexico is the kind of place where they use the word "legendary" to describe a featherweight boxer. We'd never heard of the legendary Salvador Sanchez, but he apparently died in Querétaro 30 years ago, passing a truck at night in his Porsche. His sparring partner remembers.

* Here's an episode of Top Gear we'd like to see:

You have to be brave to take on the traffic in Mexico City. But the world’s richest man, at the wheel of his car, certainly relishes a challenge.

With a convoy of bodyguards following closely behind in blacked-out 4x4s, [Slim's] navy Mercedes darts across the lanes.

“Would you like me to scare you?” he says with a twinkle in his eye, accelerating suddenly and laughing at my braced position as we jostle through the congested streets.

* Via WikiLeaks, the US Embassy's list of the richest Mexicans. Somehow, the US Ambassadors billionaire wife didn't make the list.

* US Wins Drug War!

* Or not. President Calderón: "What are the Americans supposed to be doing? Reducing drug consumption on the part of their citizens; they haven't done it. In fact, in some categories it's gone up." Typical Mexican, blaming America just because we buy billions of dollars of illegal drugs every year from the cartels that are destroying his country.

* And making it easy for them to get assault weapons. Look, the important thing is that the NRA is happy.

* Querétaro cops get mad gunz! We didn't notice the Mexican word for "training" anywhere in the news coverage.

* In other firearms news, the Failed State of Arizona wants to make the Colt Single Action Army Revolver its official state gun in homage to a better era, where Arizonans murdered each other with American guns instead of German ones. Also pending in the world's most amusing state legislature is a bill to close the loophole allowing Mexicans to exist, one allowing guns in college classrooms (because hey, an Arizona college student with a gun - what could possibly go wrong?) and one banning karma, which we have to admit is probably a good idea if you're Arizona.

* We guess that in a state that crazy, only sane people are unable to avoid jury duty. Which is a really tough break for Shawna, She-Wolf of the FSoAZ.

* And, possibly anticipating the day in the very near future when all its students are packing, the University of FSoAZ announces it's establishing a "Civility Institute." Um...if we recall from his 60 Minutes interview, for FSoAZ resident Timothy McVeigh was an unfailingly polite young man.

* We're not a big fan of the traditional Mexican "perp walk before charges are even filed," but some people really do just look guilty.

* America Faces Epidemic of Fat Pets. Though some are just big-boned.

* If you can avoid getting decapitated, Mexico is actually a pretty healthy place to live.

* We don't know this woman, but she's a very good friend of a very good friend, so if you're looking for an easy way to do something nice today, go visit her blog and leave her some good wishes. If you don't, she'll beat your ass like it owes her money.

* We wish "Mariachi Bohemian Rhapsody" was better, but it ain't terrible.



* Americans who don't get the joke in the photo up top, click here.

2,500

According to the odometer, this is the 2,500th post on Burro Hall. The strain of churning out so much high-quality content is clearly showing on our exhausted copy editor.

We can only imagine how hard it is to actually read this shit. So, thanks.

Presumed Guilty

Here's something fun about living in a place where the local government exists in a constant state of red alert despite there being no appreciable security threat to speak of. Let's say someone makes an anonymous report to the police that two guys in a car are carrying firearms in the center of Querétaro. Not only will "a great portion" of the police force be dispatched find the vehicle in question - plus elements from the Crime Investigation Unit and the state Justice Dept. - but, when they find the suspects, apprehend them, search and interrogate them, only to discover that they're just a couple of businessmen in town for a meeting, with no firearms or weapons whatsoever... the local paper will still run a half-page story, complete with names and photographs, even though it's just a false alarm. Consider it a souvenir of your visit to our humble police state!

If you see these men, they should be considered unarmed and harmless.

Needless to say, our prank-call-dialing finger will be getting quite a workout this weekend.

Say It Ain't So, 'Co...

A few days ago we saw posters around town announcing that our favorite luchador, Mistico, would be grappling at the Arena Querétaro next Tuesday night. So we put together a group of four or five people interested in an evening of Old School luchistic arts and sciences, and went off to the crappy bodega in the dangerous neighborhood where tickets are sold. And that's where we were told that Mistico had canceled. But why? "He went to the United States," the bodega-lady said. Okay. It's not uncommon for us to not completely understand what people are saying to us, and this was one of those occasions, but pressing for more information wasn't going to change the fact that Tuesday was shaping up to be a evening of B-List wrestling, so we thanked her, pocketed our money, and left.

Today, we understand what she meant.

STAMFORD, Conn. – WWE today unveiled their latest Superstar signing, Sin Cara, formerly known worldwide as Mistico. The announcement took place today during a press conference in his hometown Mexico City, where passionate fans of all ages turned out to see their favorite performer become the newest addition to the WWE roster.

“Sin Cara is a tremendous performer who brings the crowd to its feet every time he steps into the ring,” said Stephanie McMahon, Executive Vice President, WWE. “With us, his stardom will only get bigger and brighter.”

Upon his signing, Sin Cara said, “WWE is the pinnacle of sports-entertainment. It is an honor and a thrill for me to be able to perform with the world’s best. Being a WWE Superstar will present new challenges, new mountains to climb and new competition. It is a new beginning and a new life. With that in mind, I have chosen the new name of Sin Cara in hopes to represent all the legendary Mexican masked performers and to carry the banner of their legacy to the entire world.”

This is what we get for falling in love. Now we know howw Seattle grunge fans felt after "Nevermind" went quadruple-platinum. Mistico's new name means "Without a Face," and as part of yesterday's sellout he unveiled his new, gaudier mask, and posed with his new manager, Col. Tom Parker.

"I's 'Without a Face'!"

We can already hear you saying, "Big deal - a professional athlete grabs for a bigger paycheck," and, yeah, we're not completely naive here. But the appeal of Mistico has always been that he keeps it real, as the kids say. He's probably the best luchador in Mexico, but he still fights in the seedy CMLL instead of the more Hollywood-style AAA. To put this is American terms, see Rocky III. Clubber Lang would have fought in the CMLL. Rocky (before his epiphany) would be AAA. WWE is Apollo Creed from the first Rocky. Or possibly the late-90s New York Yankees. Anyway, it hurts, that's all.

But hey, if nothing else, it should help Linda McMahon reach Latino voters in 2018.

Peanut Brittle

Less than a week after posting this picture of a Mexican peanut company's crude buck-toothed Chinaman logo (for its Japanese style peanuts), we come across an article - "Planters Peanut Commercial Insults Mexicans" - that is so off-the-wall, um, nuts, that it defies our ability to describe it concisely. If you actually find the ad insulting, then Jeremy Clarkson is Hitler.

Because if there's one think Mexicans hate, its ethnic stereotyping. Take, for instance, the issue of Memín Pinguín currently on sale at the newsstand down the street from our offices.  In most countries, a goggle-eyed, balloon-lipped golliwog's tasty snack of choice would be watermelon.  But because Mexico is particularly enlightened on matters of race, the headline - "Con Melón o Con Sandía" - merely offers the option of watermelon or, if you/he prefers, melon. 

Of course, bof o' dems sho' am sweet-tastin'...

Bicentennial Countdown Clock Count-Up: The End

An alert commenter informs us that our Bicentennial Countdown Clock Count-Up, which we'd speculated could go as high as 36,524 days, actually ended earlier this week, as the clock's decaying glass-and-stainless-steel hulk was removed (or stolen, it's not clear) after just 159 days. What remains is a far more suitable monument Mexican engineering: as two-inch high slab of easily tripped-over, ankle-breaking rubble with four sharp bolts and a cut-off bit of PVC pipe sticking up, right in the middle of a busy andador.

Monument to the Unknown Civil Engineer, Querétaro, Mexico, 2011.

Three blocks away, in Plaza Constitucion, is the Mexico 2010 Torch, a 20-foot sculpture made primarily of Christmas-tree lights and cellophane, with "Mexico 2010" carved into its plastic crown.

Today is the 55th day of 2011.

Clap Louder!

Most people would consider an 88 percent drop in the number of drunken assholes running naked through the streets doing tequila shooters to be a remarkable civic achievement, but in Acapulco, it's considered very bad for business. The reason for the drop-off, according to Bloomberg, is "reports of violence," and the city fathers have responded with an Up With People!-style campaign of t-shirts, posters and fliers urging departing visitors to "Speak Well" of the city. (ACA is a play on the abbreviation for Acapulco, and the Spanish word for "here.")

Photo: David Agren

Which is, like, all well and good and stuff, but we think that the more serious problem is not "reports of violence," but rather, actual violence:

In the Guerrero state resort of Acapulco, where the Mexican Open tennis tournament is being held, police found the bodies of seven men, some mutilated, on Tuesday.

The hacked up remains of three men were found dumped in a highway tunnel that leads into Acapulco's tourist zone, state police reported. Some pieces of the bodies were missing.

Earlier, police found the bullet-ridden bodies of three men on Acapulco streets and discovered a fourth body half-buried and lacking its head.

And then, just today:

Authorities in Acapulco have found the bodies of two men and a woman in a stolen taxi, the latest victims in a wave of violence gripping the Mexican resort city.

The public security agency of Guerrero state says the bodies were found in the trunk of a sedan that was left on a major avenue late Tuesday. Gunmen had stolen the taxi from its driver a short time earlier.

Officials say one of the male victims was decapitated.

We're all in favor of local pride, and love a good bit of cheerleading as much as the next guys, but we feel an obligation to suggest to the Municpality of Acapulco that they might want to get this whole taxicab-decapitations thing under control before handing out any more fliers.

[Also, Note to Spring Breakers looking for an alternative destination in Mexico: Did we mention that a bunch of guys got killed in Querétaro last week? Horrible.]

Nazipalooza

We don't know if the Simon Wiesenthal Center has a file on Querétaro, but sometimes this place feels like Argentina without the red meat and tangoing. This morning we spotted this escapee from Nuremberg hiding in the city center. The urban camouflage helps him blend in seamlessly with his surroundings, but the big red swastika is a dead giveaway.

Middle-aged queretano swastika aficionados is a theme we've been writing about since our earliest days in Querétaro. This is a town where you can buy second-hand Hitler memorabilia, find a used copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the street, and, if you're so inclined, just flat-out name your kid Hitler. The former basketball team's athletic director's self-proclaimed nickname was "El Nazi." Some public buses have swastika decals on them, and if you want to know what Homer Simpson would look like as a soccer-playing Adolf Hitler, yeah, we got that, too. And the World's Most Inaccessible Holocaust Museum is just a few hours away.

Personally, we think this guy's lady friend should pick up the matching earrings we recently found on the Andador Libertad. Because it's cute when couples dress alike.

His Cross To Bear

A few months ago, immigration agents in the US (or perhaps a judge...the details are missing) sent a 25-year-old illegal immigrant named Cruz González Chávez back to his hometown of San Juan del Río, Querétaro. González was the father of two American children with his American wife, but the government wisely decided that what's best for a child is for his father to be deported, because if he were allowed to stay, well, what kind of country would that be for a child to grow up in? (Anyone who suggests the mother and children should have also shipped out to San Juan del Río has never been to San Juan del Río.)

Cruz González Chávez was the kind of guy who, for some unfathomable reason, loved and missed his wife and children in that melancholy Mexican way familiar to anyone who's read The Labyrinth of Solitude. So after a few beers last Sunday, he went outside and put a bullet though his head. We doubt his name will make it into the American newspapers, so we thought we'd mention him here.

Unsolved Mysteries

Querétaro is still all a-twitter over having our very own gangland-style executions last week - a man and two women from Amealco found blindfolded and shot just over the Querétaro-Michoacán border.  Michoacán is home to the spectacularly crazy "La Familia" drug cartel. The male victim is believed to have done a little low-level drug dealing on the side.  And the corpses were labeled with a two-foot-by-three-foot sign, written in magic marker, saying the the killings were part of a "promise" made to the Attorney General of Guanajuato (a state that has had it own rising level of drug violence lately), and signed by someone named Mencho.  We ran all this data through the BurroVac-9000 Crime-Solving Computer which crunched the numbers all weekend and concluded that the killings were drug-related, possibly carried out by someone named Mencho who has a specific beef with the Atty Gen of Guanajuato. It's now quietly calculating its share of the reward money.

So of course we read in yesterday's paper that investigators in Querétaro "have no particular theory regarding the executions."

Wish You Were Here

Found on the intertubes. Date unknown, but likely pre-2006.

"And it's never been more affordable!"

I Just Called To Say Niconanaznequi Tepal

We've always taken some consolation in knowing that we aren't the only people in Mexico who don't speak Spanish very well - and that, unlike us, many of those people were actually born here. For instance, at least 300 families living Mexico City speak only (or primarily) Náhuatl, the language the Aztecs spoke before Jesus showed them who's boss. But starting now, Náhuatl-speakers can call a city government hotline (55 33 03 39, if you feel like pranking them in, say, Tzotzil) and get whatever questions they may have answered in their own language. Strangely, no one in Mexico thinks that this poses some sort of imminent danger to their Mexican way of life, and no one's demanding these people "assimilate" (and, to be fair, they've had 480 years to do so) or rushing "Spanish-Only" initiatives onto the ballot. It's almost as if they have such confidence in the primacy of their own language that they're not afraid to accommodate people who speak another. It's downright un-American, really.

(Residents of certain southwestern American states who would argue that the comparison is invalid because "the Náhuatl-speakers were there first," are encouraged to think a little harder on this.)

Spy's Like Us

Our Executive Editor's first paying job out of college was as a research intern at Spy Magazine, where, after a $60,000 education, he earned barely twice the Mexican minimum wage while living in midtown Manhattan. (And this was a considerable step up from his previous, unpaid job at Harper's, which he agreed to take because the magazine is owned by the folks who hand out those Genius Awards. J-Schoolers take note: three months of free labor for the MacArthur family does not guarantee you a $500,000 grant on the back end.) But so it's not inaccurate to call Burro Hall a direct descendant of Spy, much in the way, say, "Personal Best" is a direct descendant of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

You don't agree, dear reader? Well, we'll have you know that the preceding joke was lifted almost verbatim from the June 1992 issue, and yet it feels just as fresh here today as it did 18-and-a-half years ago. Consider your mind officially blown.

Anyway, the point of this ramble is to let you know - at the risk of inviting a very unflattering comparison - that the magazine's entire archives are now available online for you to waste your entire Sunday perusing.  Mexican readers confused by repeated references Anthony Haden-Guest and Larry Tisch are invited to email us directly.

Sábado Gigante

* Slapfest 2011 shows no sign of abating. Though Mexico has announced it will essentially boycott the festivities, France has decided to ignore this and press on without the guest of honor. In the interest of providing a face-saving way to preserve bilateral relations, the staff of Burro Hall has sent word via our offices in Cannes that we are willing to be flown to Paris as guests of honor for a year-long state-sponsored cultural and culinary festival, with 10 percent of gross ticket sales going to the Florence Cassez Legal Defense Fund. Apparently, we sent our message during one of the 132 hours of the week in which French people do not work, but we hope to hear back from them soon.

* Much of the week here has been taken up by high-level meetings between our editorial board and officials in San Miguel de Allende in the aftermath of our 23 dollar shakedown. We can't really comment on an ongoing investigation, except to say that the directors of the Transit and Environmental departments are handling things with a thoroughness and professionalism we wish had been brought to bear on the thousands of unsolved decapitations last year. The inference in our original post that the offenders' "superiors are aware of the scam and approve of it" was regrettable, and we retract it.

* And then, across Querétaro, spontaneous pro-Burro demonstrations broke out. Tahrir Square redux!

* Given how much traffic we've had this week from "guanajuato.gob.mx/" addresses, we kinda wish this site's title banner was not a photograph of a prostitute French-kissing a donkey, and have put in a call to the Graphics Dept.

* Having paid 16 million pesos to light up the Aqueduct like a French whorehouse, the municipality of Querétaro has asked the lighting designers if the could maybe find a way to make the lights work properly.

* Wow, is there anyone in the Failed State of Arizona who's not as crooked as the Grand Canyon? (Okay, maybe the border-city mayors, who have respectfully suggested that Sheriff Paul Babeu [R-Fox News greenroom] sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. But that's about it.)

* Good neighbor that she is, FSoAZ keeps sending us her pedophile Jesus freaks. Anyone know when that border wall will be finished?

* Of course, if Mexicans want to start an underage sex-ring, the lawless climate in Houston seems pretty enticing.

* Shawna, She-Wolf of the FSoAZ, is convicted of gunning down a US citizen and his 9-year-old daughter despite her reasonable suspicion that they may have been Mexican. The Burro Hall Editorial Board does not support capital punishment, but Arizona seems pretty enthusiastic about it, so we'll just butt out.

* The difference between Mexican cows and Mexican humans is that Americans welcome Mexican cows.

* Fewer Americans were killed in Mexico last year than the year before. No word yet on the number of Mexicans killed in the US, but we've got the interns working on it. Anyone care to wager which number is higher?

* We're totally in favor of this proposal to reduce the number of Mormon missionaries in Mexico, solely on the grounds that they creep us out.

* GOP presidential hopeful Haley Barbour has a skeleton in his closet - of the José Posada variety. Sadly, he was considered a viable contender among voters lacking any memory of Boss Hogg.

* So what do nepotism hires do after their undistinguished career as Assistant Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes to an end? Why, they open a high-price Immigration and Customs Enforcement consulting firm, of course.

* Good thing climate change is a complete hoax, or this would be worrying.

* Annals of Criminal Genius: Former border cop believes dressing as a mailman will allow him to smuggle Mexicans into the US without being questioned. As opposed to, say, dressing as a border cop.

* Burro Hall Answer Lady takes readers questions!

Q: "Are they going to let me die just because they wouldn't give me an invitation to the royal wedding?"

A: Yes.

* Mexicans: chugging the alcohol Americans won't.

* Colorful local oddball Ánimo! gets himself a new paint job. We thought this would eliminate the need for him to honk the horn and scream "ánimo!" every few seconds, but we thought wrong.

* Great. As if hummingbirds weren't annoying enough, now we have to worry that they might be Pentagon drones.

* Pamela Anderson, under the mistaken impression that she's interesting when clothed, shares her thoughts on illegal immigration.

* Our summit meeting with the MexFiles this week was canceled due to car trouble, but we'll still steal his link to this photo gallery, which we'll file under "What Multiculturalism Looks Like."

* Look who's lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight! (Is the guy in the photo leaning against a fence, asleep?)

* Someone stole our idea for a musical, "Drug War on Ice."

* The Westminster Dog Show's Best-of-Breed Pug [Update from the perro: "that should read 'Best of the Handful of Pretty-Boy Wannabes Willing to Disgrace Their Entire Species For a Few Word of Praise from that Pompous Foof David Frei'"] is named Oscar de la Hoya.

* [Update #2 from the perro: "See?"]

Another Crime-Free Week in Querétaro!

As if part of a massive conspiracy to undermine all the recent "come to Querétaro, the safest place on earth" hype, the last two weeks have seen five spectacular deaths in the state. First, two people spontaneously combusted while sleeping in the trunks of their cars, and then, on Tuesday, three people accidentally shot themselves in the back of the head while blindfolded.

The Querétaro government immediately sprang into action, with Gov. Calzada holding a press conference to remind everyone that "We Are A Safe State." So there.

Actually, both incidents happened in almost exactly the same place, on the outskirts of Amealco de Bonfil, which happens to be the poorest, most depressed, most illiterate, most Indigenous town in the entire state, as well as the most alcoholic place in all of Mexico. Amazingly, it seems there is also crime there. It's a place that is, at best, extremely marginal, and it's been kind of amusing watching the commentariat marginalize these incidents even further. The two charred bodies turned out to be from Edomex, not Querétaro! And while the three people who got shot were in fact from Amealco, it's likely (though reports vary) that they were actually found a few meters over on the other side of the Querétaro-Michoacán border! So, really, they count against Michoacán! So, to review, that's:

Total number of people murdered: 5.

Total number of queretanos murdered in Querétaro: 0!

Gotta hand it to this Calzada guy: he delivers.

Of course, everyone's looking for the narco angle, and so far no one seems to have found one (only one of the five had any criminal record, and that was for car theft). But probably the strangest twist was the way our local paper Plaza de Armas, published the same photo (or almost the same - slightly different angles, but taken by the same photographer within seconds of each other) of the crime scene on consecutive days, Wednesday and Thursday. In Wednesday's photo, there's an indistinct, smudged piece of paper on the wall behind the victims.

In Thursday's picture, it's a clearly visible narcomanta, which reads, according to the paper, "Lic. Zamarripa [Atty. Gen of Guanjuato], we're keeping our promise, and hope you'll continue to keep yours. Signed, Mencho."

Note to investigators: We think Mencho did it. We don't have much of an opinion on the meaning or significance of that, but it seems a rather large clue, and a strange one for the newspaper to deliberately airbrush out of their photo without an explanation to their readers.

Racial Sensitivity Watch: Pan-Asian Edition

On the floor of a mercado in Querétaro, a shipping box for De la Rosa brand Japanese Peanuts, featuring a corporate mascot we'll call "Mr Peanut-san," who in his spare time likes to dress up as a stereotypical Chinaman, right down to the fu manchu mustache and coolie hat, to amuse his Japanese peanut friends.

That's the thing about anthropomorphic Asian cartoon legumes: they all look alike.

A Sure-Fire Way To Avoid Offending Mexicans

Just lie to them! In these clips from The Simpsons Movie, your old pal Krusty shows ya how it's done. First, in the original version, make a joke about Mexican food being even greasier than the Krustyburger Klogger.



Then, on the Spanish-dubbed version released in Mexico, you subtly change the wording to the considerably less-funny, "If you can find a greasier burger, I'll give you a prize!



Diplomatic crisis averted, kids! [Insert Krusty laugh here.]

I Snub In Your General Direction

Slapfest 2011 is on, bitches!

When we last visited this saga, the nation of France was threatening the nation of Mexico with unspecified "consequences" if it didn't release Florence Cassez, a French woman sentenced to 60 years in a Mexican jail for kidnapping. Mexico held firm, and so the French foreign minister announced she would snub the upcoming festivities for the rather unfortunately-timed "Year of Mexico in France." Your move, Mexico.

The Mexican government said Monday it will not participate in France's yearlong festival celebrating Mexican culture because of a feud over a French woman convicted of kidnapping.

Ha! You can't snub our festival, Frenchie, because we're already snubbing it! And just for fun, we'll throw in Carlos Fuentes calling your president a "banana-republic dictator."

To which France responds by saying, Fuck it...the whole damn city of Toulouse is pulling out of the festival altogether!

We're sure this will continue to escalate - though once both Mexico and France have pulled out of the Year of Mexico in France, we're not sure what's left. And while it's tempting to laugh at the silliness of it (more than one person has cited Monty Python), when it comes to Mexico, France has been known to step up to the plate over sillier things than a wrongful conviction.

Nothing Shakin' on Shakedown Street

We teach a Pilates class for indigenous midwives in San Miguel once a week, as part of our "Burro Hall Cares" community-outreach program. So yesterday, we're pulling into town, running a few minutes late, as usual, when a transit cop pulls us over to the side of the road (this would be on San Antonio, just past the glorieta, across the street from the Pemex). We probably should have just ignored him, but with enormous speedbumps situated every 50 meters, we would have been setting ourselves up for the silliest car-chase ever. Also, we were pretty sure we'd done nothing wrong.

We roll down the window, to be greeted not by a policeman, but by an official with the state of Guanajuato's environmental agency. "Buenos días," he says. "We're checking to make sure you have your emissions verification certificate."

Transito police vehicle, GTO license plate # 06-516 - Feb 14, 2011, 11:30AM

Mexican cars have to be inspected once a year (twice a year in Guanajuato) to make sure they comply with government emissions standards. As tree-hugging lefties, we heartily applaud this, considering that when we first moved here, leaded gasoline was still available, and we didn't move here all that long ago. However...

"Um...no, we don't have an emission verification, Sir. In fact, no one has ever told us that we needed one. Actually, we were under the impression that foreign-registered vehicles like ours don't have to be emissions-tested."

"Oh, no, Señor, all vehicles must have a verification, even foreigners. So I'm afraid we will have to give you a violation."

Okay, so a couple of things at this point. We're running late already, and we have to be back in Querétaro after class to meet with some venture capitalists for our upcoming IPO (more on that later in the week), so we're really pressed for time, and while we think we're probably in the right about being exempt, we're not 100% certain of this - and as we learned bringing the perro though customs last year, just because no one here tells you need to do something, that doesn't mean you don't need to do it. So we're on kind of shaky ground.

The environmental official steps aside and hands things over to a transito police officer, who takes our license, and informs us that our fine will be 283 pesos - or about 23 dollars - plus we'll have to get our emissions tested. He then puts our license in his pocket and says that after we pay the fine at the environmental office, we can reclaim it. We're watching our entire day go up in a cloud of toxic exhaust smoke.

"Well, can't we take care of it here?" we ask. We know that, in Mexico, this is the traditional opening gambit for offering a bribe, but in our case, given that we were in a massive hurry, it really was just a request to see if we could take care of it here. The fact that the officer was so willing to oblige us was our first sign that something wasn't right.

That he was willing to take 270 pesos instead of 283, because that's what we had exact change for, was our second sign.

At this point, we probably still had the option not to pay, but he was still holding our license, and time wasn't moving any slower, so we handed over the cash. His refusal to give us a receipt or any official document attesting to the fact that we'd paid our "penalty" for "failing" to "verify our emissions" was our third sign that, yes, we'd just been shaken down by one of San Miguel's finest.

We understand that police officers are paid very little to do a dangerous job (though we doubt this guy has been shot at too many times in San Miguel de Allende), and when an opportunity presents itself, who among us can saw we would always resist temptation?

But having checked with both the Querétaro Secretaria de Desarrollo Sustentable and the Guanajuato Instituto de Ecología, we can confirm that

FOREIGN-REGISTERED CARS DO NOT NEED TO BE EMISSIONS TESTED.

What that means, of course, is that the environmental official who spoke with us just flat out lied, telling us we had committed a violation when in fact he knew we had committed none. He turned us over to the police officer, who was in on the scam from the start. And the fact that they expected us to go to the local environmental office to pay the fine leads us to believe that their superiors are aware of the scam and approve of it. [Update: Subsequent correspondence with the Director of the Instituto de Ecologia persuades us that this is not the case.]

Fortunately, we always travel with a camera, albeit a crappy one, and were able to get somewhat grainy pictures of public officials who knowingly and with premeditation stole 270 pesos from us. And while it's considered bad manners to pay a bribe and then out the offending recipients, we really weren't offering a bribe, so we consider ourselves to have been robbed, literally in broad daylight.

[Update: At the risk of ruining everyone's fun, we've blocked out the faces, having been assured by the officials' superiors that internal investigations are underway. No need for us to pile on, right? For what it's worth, the pictures weren't very good...]

The official from the Instituto de Ecología who insisted we needed an emissions verification.

The San Miguel policeman to whom we paid a 270-peso "fine."  "No, no receipt," he told us.

Another view of the same police officer, now 270 pesos richer.

Update: To the great credit of the San Miguel Tránsito Dept, and its director, Sr. Adolfo Cervantes, they have announced that an investigation is underway, and the offending officer has been referred to a disciplinary committee. Effective immediately, the participation of Tránsito officers in Vehicle Verification program is suspended until further notice. Muchisimas gracias, Sr. Cervantes!

Valentine's Day Massacre?

One final Valentine's item: as of yesterday, the unofficial 2011 Drug War Body Count stood at 963.

Thirty-seven dead would be a busy day, but since the total for the 12th was 40, it's definitely doable. In which case, we'll hit murder #1,000 on Valentine's Day - "El Día de Amor y Amistad"! How adorably ironic is that?

Update: 1,008! Congratulations, you hopeless romantics, you!

Love Story

It's Valentine's Day in Querétaro, the conservative, ultra-Catholic state where Burro Hall Enterprises is headquartered, which seems to us a good time to note that, despite (or perhaps because of?) being a conservative, ultra-Catholic state, the age of consent here is still 12 years old. And while raping 12-year-old children is generally frowned upon - punishable by "up to" six years in prison - Querétaro is one of ten Mexican states which will drop the charges if the aggressor marries the victim.

If, like us, you assumed someone was just making that up, you can find it in the Querétaro Penal Code [pdf]:

Article 153: When the offender contracts marriage with the offended person, the prosecution or carrying out of the sentence will be terminated...except if the marriage should be nullified or ended.

Awww....Don't you just love a happy ending?

(And before we get all jingoistic and superior, let's note that things really aren't all that much better in New Jersey.)

Of course - being a conservative, ultra-Catholic state - gay marriage isn't recognized here. So if a guy rapes a 12-year-old boy, he's still on the hook for "up to" six years in jail. Just something for our readers in the sexual-predator community to keep in mind if you're planning a visit.

Mascotas Perdidas

Most people in Mexico get paid on the 15th and 30th of the month, so a holiday in which there is an expectation of an expensive and romantic evening out on the 14th is a joke of such exquisite cruelty it's hard to believe the Mexicans didn't think it up themselves.

But because an animal's love is unconditional and free (unless they need their teeth cleaned, in which case you're out 800 bucks) here's the latest batch of "missing pet" fliers found around the center of Querétaro. You just might make someone's Valentine's Day the happiest ever...

Answers to Balu or Biche. Last seen near Universidad and Los Arcos.

We're not sure about naming a German Shepard "Bormman," but if you see him near Cimitario, call Jorge.

Black and brown striped kitty lost near Madero and Ezekiel Montes.

This little guy has been deaf since birth and has chronic gastritis.

We can't tell you much about this guy, except that you should boycott "Querétaro y Sus Leyendas," whose poster is covering most of the flier.

Cooler Heads

Perusing the news yesterday, we came upon this photo accompanying a story about a headless body found in in Celaya, Guanajuato, on Saturday - which turned out to be a perfect fit with a bodiless head found in a cooler not too far away. That's some ace detective work there, boys.

Reunited...and it feels so good.

But really what caught our eye was the familiar red-white-and-yellow OXXO logo. OXXO is like the 7-Eleven of Mexico. Perhaps because they're so ubiquitous - 7,000 locations nationwide - they've become to go-to supplier for all the drug cartel hitmen's severed-head-container needs. Frankly, we have no idea why they use coolers at all; the heads are almost never on ice, and it seems to us that one of the main reasons for chopping off a head is shock value - and for that, nothing beats just leaving the it out in the hot sun to be eaten by vultures, right? But day after day, there it is, the white Styrofoam cooler with the OXXO logo on it, surrounded by police tape and a team of forensic investigators. From a corporate branding standpoint, it's got to be the worst thing to happen to a company since OJ Simpson stomped through his dead wife's blood in a pair of Bruno Magli shoes, which makes us wonder why OXXO doesn't just discontinue them. Then it occurred to us: OXXO is probably just a money laundering operation for one of the cartels.

After the jump, a treasury of severed-heads-in-an-OXXO-cooler photos.

Sábado Gigante

* We used to get ourselves out of jury duty by telling the judge we'd be excellent jurors because we can spot guilty people just by looking at them. So, for what it's worth, this French chick doesn't look like a kidnapper to us. Mexico sees it differently, though, and has denied her appeal of her 60 (sixty!) year sentence. France warned Mexico that the decision will have "consequences" - and sure enough, "The French foreign minister said Friday that she plans to snub France's yearlong festival celebrating Mexican culture." Given the almost transparent thinness of Mexico's skin, that might actually work.

* "The donkey screamed and the children cried," and now, it's our sad duty to report, the donkey has died.

* We've instituted a slightly annoying and hopefully temporary comment-moderation system this week. It's not aimed at commenters hostile towards us (we get enough of that in real life that we barely even notice it here). Rather, we seem to have attracted a small but vocal group of commenters who snipe at each other under various aliases, linking back to their own blogs which seem to have been established for the sole purpose of sniping at each other even further. We love you guys, but we have no perro in your lucha. All are welcome here at Burro Hall, but no fighting in the war room, okay?

* Mexican-Americans won't be complaining about Top Gear, and not because they're too lazy to bother.

* The Failed State of Arizona, which has historically survived on handouts from the more developed states, has dragged the Federal government into court to demand that untold billions of taxpayer dollars be earmarked to protect the state's southern border from "invasion" (a Constitutional claim which rests on a vigorous re-interpretation of the Founding Fathers' original intent). We can see why Governess Brewer is so popular with the teabaggers.

* How to tell if your state is a failed state: Correspondents from the New York Times sign their dispatches "By NYT" out of fear for their personal safety. This is common with stories from Myanmar and Zimbabwe as well. (On the other hand, elected officials now feel confident enough to appear in public with only a "substantial" police escort, so things are definitely improving there.)

* It's a thin line between posses and pussies, but we still thought Seagal was great in Machete.



* We agree with Numbers USA that the potential Republican field for 2012 sucks, though probably not for the same reasons.

* Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller won five Olympic gold medals in swimming for the United States by lying about his status as an anchor baby.

* Mexico routs Bosnia 2-0. As we've said before, Serbia and Mexico have a lot in common.

* Semantic debates that matter: Whether the Mexican drug war is in fact a war may be debatable, but it is most certainly not an insurgency.

* Now, 1847...that was a war.

* Here's some 19th Century patriotic music from the Siege of Querétaro.

* Geo-Mexico says the gringo-inhabited areas of Mexico are relatively safe, most likely because we're all such goddamned nice people. Also, Querétaro has the McRib, which has never been more affordable.

* Kudos to the Mexfiles for catching what may be the first appearance by Diego Rivera in a Super Bowl advertisement.

* Are we wrong, or should an article titled "Why Mexico City is Chock Full of Pittsburgh Steelers Fans" actually explain why Mexico City is chock full of Pittsburgh Steelers fans?

* Midwesterner In Mexico paid their respects; Jim & Carole took us out for coffee; El Blog de Joy actually moved its headquarters to New York when they heard we were working there. But the Mija Chronicles? They visit Querétaro without so much as a, "Hi, we just wanted to drop off these homemade huitlacoche quesadillas for you." But then, in the course of a two-day visit, she manages to find a great gordita place we hadn't tried yet, so all's forgiven...this time.

* The ugly side of assimilation: influenced, perhaps, the by the KFC Double Down, Lolita's Tacos in Chula Vista, CA, offers The 2-in-1, a burrito stuffed with tacos.

* Meanwhile, Chipotle is in trouble for being a little too Mexican.

* A first-person shooter video game set in Juárez just feels, I dunno...superfluous.

* Man, there's nothing funnier than one cartel accusing another of unethical behavior.

* Mexican drub porn scores 3rd prize in the World Press Photo contest.

* Hippotherapy in Mexico - but using horses, because Mexico doesn't have hippos. (They have them in Colombia, though.)

* Not Quite an Update: It's been three months since the governor announced a super-secret American investment in Querétaro. We have yet to hear any follow up on this.

* Khloe Kardashian vows to be "bikini-ready" in time for her Mexican vacation in June. Hopefully, we haven't heard the last of the "killer waves."

* Great Moments in Copyright Infringement.

Tanned, Rested...and Oh! So Ready

Ever since he was "released" from "captivity," Jefe Diego has been at the top of the A-List. Your party - if it can even be called that! - sucks without him.  Here he is kockin' 'em dead at the GoDaddy.com Super Bowl party in Juriquilla last weekend.

"Hey, ladies - wanna see how many times 70 goes into 18?"

We're especially pleased to see the photo credit for our favorite local paparazzo, Franci Oh! (Yes, the exclamation point is part of his name. And no, we don't know why it's not "Franci ¡Oh!") It's officially the weekend. Rock on.

Chariot of Ire

"Public Transportation" in Querétaro, like many Mexican cities (note the vagueness - we can't be bothered to look it up), consists mostly of privately-owned, lightly regulated "taxibuses" that race through the streets at five times the posted speed limit, darting from corner to corner to pick up passengers before their competitors can. (Basically, imagine if New York City's buses operated the way its taxis do, and you'll get the idea.) The police pages of the newspapers here are full of taxibus-related crashes. In fact, just yesterday, we read of a collision in the Centro. There was no need to call an ambulance - not because there were no injuries (there were), but because the other vehicle was an ambulance, carrying an already-injured patient to the hospital. At best, these things are a menace to God-fearing peoples everywhere.

But then, walking through the extremely narrow streets here this week - streets that are barely wide enough to accommodate the width of a parked car plus a taxibus without at least one of them inching on to the sidewalk - we were passed by this gasoline-powered murder machine (license number 626-906-T, for any of our readers in local traffic enforcement).

Just back from the Ben Hur chariot race, are we? Given the congestion in the Centro, it's hard to get above 10 miles per hour, but we think that's still fast enough for this thing to open up your VW Bug, or your thigh, like a can of sardines. The first two questions that come to mind - both rhetorical - are, How can this possibly be legal? and, Seriously, what are you, some kind of a fucking asshole?

Here's the same taxibus passing close to a helpless schoolgirl and an adorable shaggy puppy.

We've managed to go for years without taking one of these things, mostly because we can't figure out the system. But if we ever did ride one, we'd ride this one, simply because it's safer to be inside.

Worth Their Weight in Querétaro Gold

We're constantly hearing from the authorities here that, no matter what bit of occasional weirdness may happen, there are no narcos operating in Querétaro. Presumably, then, these guys were holding 725 pounds of dope for their own personal consumption.

If the PGJ follows the usual procedures, they'll burn it all in a big bonfire (they love burning contraband here - they even did it with fireworks recently, which struck us as particularly unwise). We'll keep on top of this story, and as soon as we have the location and figure out the wind patterns, we'll invite all our loyal readers over for a cookout.

Online, Yet So Lifelike

We wish we could report that the Fototeca Nacional's new online catalog is as awesome as it sounds - basically the Mexican version of the Library of Congress image bank, with 900,000 photos, including the legendary Casasola archive.

Sadly, the site is exactly like any bricks-and-mortar government office here. Sluggish, indifferent, fickle, rarely producing the result you wanted and, when it does, it somehow manages to disappoint.

After a dozen different searches produced nothing but the Spinning Wheel of Death, we gave up trying to search on our own and instead clicked the "most searched" topic, the Revolution, which finally kicked up a bunch of photos, including this one of Gen. Pablo González Garza in Querétaro in 1916 (three years before he masterminded the assassination of Emiliano Zapata.) We've reproduced it here actual size, though, which is kind of a letdown. If anyone else has a better experience, let us know, and the blame will lie with Carlos Slim instead.

As if this wasn't annoying enough, we learn that the city's only Hooters has apparently been operating without any sort of license for the past two years and has therefore been shuttered before we could even visit. Alternative suggestions for this year's company Christmas party are welcom.

Crowbar Award Nominee

Many thanks to reader Margaret S. for giving us our third nominee for the Crowbar Award, honoring the best attempts by the foreign media to force a drug-trade angle into every Mexican story, no matter how awkward the fit. Margaret directs us to this "Top Gear insults Mexicans" story in the Edmonton (Canada) Journal, which some quick-thinking editor, realizing that the Journal was about to move a non-drug-related Mexico story, grabbed his crowbar and squeezed in the photograph below, with the caption "A local police car is seen with two bullet holes in Acapulco, Guerrero state, Mexico on March 10, 2010."

Nice save! Remember, you can't spell "journalistic intuition" without "I-n-u-i-t".

You've Got Fail

We're regular readers - okay, skimmers - of the Huffington Post, because we love busty celebrities and strange little news-of-the-weird items as much as anyone else does. But that doesn't mean we don't think of it as a sensationalistic page-view generator with about as much relationship to actual journalism as, well, Burro Hall. Case in point - which we've bitched about before - is HuffPo's Mexico Big News Page, whose coverage of Mexico runs the gamut from Horribly Mutilated Bodies Discovered In Mexico to Brutally Mutilated Bodies Discovered In Mexico (yes, those are actually two different stories).

Between those two poles we get such headlines as Mexican Drug War: 10 Shocking Facts; Mexico Drug War's Deadliest 2010 Attacks (GRAPHIC PHOTOS); Mexican Drug Lords Importing Beauty Queens and Mexican Pop Star's Rape Allegations Grip Mexico. None of this is inaccurate, per se, but it hardly ads up to a nuanced and in-depth portrait of our neighbor to the south.

But hey, porn sells, and so we were not surprised to read that AOL has gobbled HP up for a third-of-a-billion dollars.

The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation...Arianna Huffington will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises...

Anyway, for reasons having to do with the fact that they never bill us, we sometimes use AOL Mail despite its being the shittiest service since CompuServe went under. We log on today to the New, Improved HuffPoAOL, and what do we see?

We guess when someone's paying you $300 million, you get right to work.

The Envoy

Well now this sure is interesting. Her Majesty's former Prime Minister In Charge of Doing What America Says, Anthony "Tony" Blair, is being sent to our humble little town later this year, presumably to apologize in person for the derogatory, anti-Mexican comments made by the BBC show Top Gear.

As it happens, a top member of the Burro Hall Editorial Board is also a former vice consul of the UK consulate in NYC - we'll give all the folks who turned our TG posts' comment sections into a forum for limey-bashing a minute to compose themselves - and so we plan to offer Mr. Blair the use of our Artist-in-Residence suite for the duration of his stay. There's a curry place down the street, and, while we realize there's not a lot of competition, the best scones in Querétaro are made right here at Burro Hall. The perro may not want another lap dog in the house, but we'll just stick him in a kennel for the week.

Update: A dedicated reader who, like most of you, happens to be a member of our Executive Editor's immediate family, writes in to remind us that among our possessions currently in storage is a souvenir bottle of wine from the House of Parliament signed by Tony Blair! Man, we can hardly wait to finish off that bottle during a late night bull session with the man himself.

Scenes From Dystopia

Something we've been posting about frequently these days is the fact that, however crazy Mexico may be, Querétaro is almost comically safe. Five kidnappings last year; A handful of murders; Despite having a really high rate of violence against women, it has the third-lowest feminicide rate in the country; Even the recent spate of bodies being "dumped" was just three alkies who drank themselves to death.

So of course the Querétaro police just keep getting bigger and better police-state toys to play with. Yesterday, perhaps unsettled by the recent unrest in Cairo, or concerned about a potential rampage by victorious Packers fans, the cops had stationed an enormous mobile "eye in the sky" truck in the Jardin Zenea, its pair of telescope-mounted video cameras rotating 360 degrees to ensure the safety of the God-fearing from the wicked.

But like just about every public space in this town, the Jardin is already ringed with security cameras - three of which are visible in this picture, with at least two more that could be seen from where our photographer was standing, plus who knows how many mounted on the bell tower of the church just outside the frame - just a handful of the 300 that monitor the docile populace day and night.

All of this for...what? The Reagan centennial? This was a Sunday evening in the middle of a three-day weekend, and the main activity in the Centro seemed to be families going out for a stroll. We realize it's a chicken-and-egg situation: perhaps the city is safe because of measures that seem to us like ridiculous overkill, we just don't see a whole lot of evidence for this. Instead, we find ourselves running errands on a Saturday morning and coming around the corner to see, for no apparent reason, 30 shielded and helmeted riot police standing in the plaza.

Yes, the annual ceremony honoring the constitution was happening in a theater two blocks away, but (a) the president, who usually attends, stayed home this year and (b) there's not the slightest hint of political unrest here, so who, exactly, was going to riot - at 10AM on a Saturday? We assure you, we did not crop an enormous crowd of people out of the above photo. Without the president in town, the highest ranking official at the ceremony was the governor, who - obviously not fearing that a riot might break out - calmly walked to a statue unveiling a few blocks away. Okay, so he had a heavily-armed police detail...

...and security goons photographing everyone in the crowd...

...but, hell, that's just one of the perks of the office.