Sábado Gigante

* Another beautiful week here in paradise! The heat wave has gotten so bad that the countryside is literally burning up; child labor is on the rise; the place is filling up with tourists ; and gay marriage is still illegal despite the fact that there are now fewer females than males, and at least 30,000 of those females are anorexic. The fact that the suicide rate is holding steady at a mere seven per month is what's passing for good news these days.

* This past week we were forced by a snowstorm to overcome our fear of airplanes maintained by Mexicans, and flew into Mexico City for the first time on Aeromexico. Having gotten used to shelling out $7 a pop (credit cards only!) for tiny nips of vodka on Continental, we were amused to see that Aeromexico's free all-you-can-drink beverage service involved a cart fully-loaded with real 750ml bottles of top-shelf alcohol, which clanked loudly during turbulence.

* "Just as every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints..."

* Malcolm Beith contemplates the failed state right on our border.

* Everyone's having a good laugh at the Failed State of Arizona's new official state gun, but we'd also note that at the same time, Governess Brewer signed a bill permitting "a mentally ill person who was prohibited from possessing a firearm and has been rehabilitated to petition the court to have their right to own a firearm restored." Because how much damage could an insane Arizonan with a gun really do?

* "Politicians say the U.S.-Mexico border is the most dangerous it’s ever been, but Border Patrol agents in the field disagree." Please. What do they know?

* Manifest Destiny: Once the mightiest nation on Earth, the United States appears much smaller than it used to be, and will likely continue shrinking as the failed "Texas Miracle" has created an opportunity for well-to-do Mexicans to buy the state back piece by piece.

* Speaking of Texas, it seems its official state armadillo, the armadillo, is busy spreading leprosy throughout the American south... though it was a lot more fun to blame Mexicans for this.

* The MargaDita. Just in time for 5 de Mayo.

* The San Francisco Chronicle relies on some unconventional methodology to to declare Querétaro, which really is one of the safest places in Mexico, one of The Safest Places in Mexico.

* Republican Presidential Candidates In The News: Gringos in Baja lose millions in a real-estate swindle to Donald Trump. It's a shame, really. If there's one place in Mexico we can see Trump fitting in, it's Baja.

* Meanwhile, John Bolton exposes the drug violence in Mexico for what it really is: the cat's paw of Obama ambitious and heretofore entirely secret plan to roll back the Second Amendment. And if you can't trust John Bolton on weapons issues, who can you trust?

* Cartoonish nativists can't stop boo-hoo-hooing as a cartoon superhero renounces his US citizenship - albeit one who arrived in the US illegally in the first place.

* We finally figured out what happened to the perro's namesake street urchin: he's been automated out of a job.

* Nothing worse than leaving Mexico to escape the drug war, only to be hanged for suspicion of drug trafficking.

* Mexican congress-critters have been issued brand new iPads to help improve productivity. And it works. In the old days, they used to have to sneak out to the theater if they wanted to watch a Cantinflas movie during work hours.

* The Ballad of Jaime "Badass" Rodriguez Calderon. (We hope to find a link to the actual song soon.)

* Another Mexican turned away at a border for no particularly good reason, and yet we're cool with it.

* Comedy's Not Pretty: Diario de Querétaro tries its hand at satirical headline-writing with a story about five perros who burned to death when their owner's house burned down. Stay classy, amigos!

* Via Tex[t]-Mex, the gorgeous Album Pintoresco de la Republica Mexicana.

* The shirt worn by La Malinche will go on display at the National Anthropology Museum next month, though Mexicans will probably prefer to look at better-quality American clothing.

* This video clip is exactly what Mexico sounds like all day long - and what it would look like, if it were populated entirely by hot babes in bikinis. Which it is not.

Burrofest 2011

We've mentioned before that the name of this site is actually a terrible pun on the name of a New York subway station, and as such has nothing to do with any actual burros. There are no burros in Querétaro, as far as we've been able to tell, and we certainly don't want to get into too much cutesy burro-themed marketing crap. (In other words, if you're at a loss for a Christmas present for us, don't think, "Wait, I know...burros!")

That said, we do have an official Burro Correspondent, Julie from Midwesterner in Mexico, who reminds us for the second year running that, fuck this royal wedding shit, the annual Feria Nacional del Burro is underway (and, indeed, almost over, which is what you get for reading this blog instead of that one) in Otumba, Edomex.

Go read her report, here.

Stairway to Heaven

Most of Burro Hall's start-up money (by which we mean childhood expenses, orthodontics, college tuition, etc.) has come from the American ladder industry, where we had a summer job and, not coincidentally, a number of well-connected relatives. But even though we've been in and around the ladder biz for over 40 years, it was not until we walked up our own little Mexican street today that we saw someone actually create a homemade 25-foot ladder by tying a 20-foot extension ladder onto an unopened six-foot stepladder. Presumably a couple guys from Mexican OSHA signed off of this just before we got there.

But just to show you that Mexicans are not completely oblivious to the concept of personal safety, please note that this guy is securing his death-contraption to the wall with a safety rope, which should be about as effective as putting your head on your knees during a plane crash, but we still admire the effort.

Jumbo Shrimp

An alert reader sends us this important item regarding Mexico's ongoing attempt to break the world record for Most World Records Held By a Single Nation:

Members of Mazatlán’s Tres Islas Hotel and Motel Association are determined to make the world’s biggest shrimp cocktail and put the city’s name in the Guinness World Book of Records.

The cocktail, which will require 500 kilos of shrimp, will be put together in a two meter high container most probably in front of the Family Monument at the intersection of Avenida del Mar and Rafael Buelna in mid-June.

..."This is something no one has ever done before and it will be ours alone," [the hotel association president] told media. And once it is ready, and presumably Guinness has finished with the formalities, families will be invited to enjoy the results.

We've had our fair share of experience with Mexican paperwork procedures, so we're sure the "Guinness formalities" won't take more than three or four hours, after which time, "families will be invited to enjoy" half a ton of shellfish that's been sitting in an enormous bucket in the middle of a busy intersection under the Mazatlán summer sun, where temperatures in June average 88 degrees. Then, in late June, Mazatlán will break the record for World's Largest Case of Mass-Shellfish Poisoning.

Climate Change

Querétaro is suffering though another 90+ degrees heat wave this week, and, because everything in Mexico will kill you, public safety officials are warning the populace to cover up to avoid Fukushima-high levels of radiation.

Meanwhile, our executive editor is helping The Man buy another Faberge egg this week, requiring him to spend a few days in a part of El Norte where, apparently, this is what a view out one's window looks like in late April.

Posting will be light as we try to reconcile our wardrobe with our surroundings, and figure out how to attach tire chains.

The Memory Hole

A big Burro Hall shout-out to Plaza de Armas for publishing, in the wake of Faustino Armendáriz's appointment as Archbishop, five consecutive editions of the paper that have failed to mention that they not only gave their erroneous scoop bigger play than the news of the Dewey Administration, but that they taunted their rivals for missing the Briseño boat. New days are here, Querétaro!

Instead, they pretty much dropped the baby Jesus this weekend in favor of a three-part series on Claudia Mijangos, "The Hyena of Querétaro," who killed all her non-resurrecting children 22 years ago. This comes with another exclusive, of course - the news that she "could get out in 2019." Note the conditional tense and the fact that, if they're wrong, we won't know for at least eight years. New days!

Racial Sensitivity Watch: Strange Fruit Edition

Aside from an ear-splitting fusillade of fireworks in the middle of the night, Easter Sunday is pretty peaceful here, except for the weird custom known as the Burning of Judas, which takes place near Jardin Zenea around 9pm.

In many parts of Latin America this practice occurs on the eve of the new year as a symbol of ridding one's self of evil and beginning a new year in spiritual purity. Some communities observe this ritual using various effigies, including the biblical Judas (who betrayed Jesus), Satan, a harlot, or a Jew (represented by the stereotypical European depiction of a Jewish male with a goat beard, side locks, and a black frock coat).

We'll skip our standard speech about how Christianity wouldn't exist without Judas, and just share with you this shot from one of the various "Exploding Judases for Sale" market stalls set up around town. Not only can you pick up a little hook-nosed Jew but, if there's room on your tree, you can string up a little Negro child and set him on fire too!



Happy burning!

Sábado Gigante

* There's an enormous and deadly conflagration consuming Mexico at the moment, so large it can be seen from space. As often happens, the conflagration has spilled over the border into the United States. Predictably, the US response was excessively militaristic and ineffective, but, to their credit, the US has not spent billions of dollars financing the fire, nor shipped oxygen and gasoline to it. So that's progress.

* Of course, Texas being Texas, the secessionist governor's official plan is to ask the citizens to pray harder for rain to end the drought. Notwithstanding the fact that a drought is, by definition, an Act of God. (Unless man-made climate change is real, but we know better than that!)

* Taco Bell meat turns out to contain meat, after all.

* The Failed State of Arizona did one, two, three, four completely non-insane things this week, leaving us more or less speechless.

* And then Sheriff Joe did something fuck-all stupid again, and all was right with the world.

* Redefining the word "Crosswalk."

* For a country that takes Holy Week so seriously, Mexico seems to have forgotten that the tombs are supposed to be empty, not packed shoulder to shoulder.

* Of course, any Mexican could probably kill a dozen people if they tried. But if you want to rack up a triple-digit body count, you've got to spend a lot of time in the US first.

* We wouldn't have thought keeping track of the number of dead Mexican soldiers would be so hard.

* But then, in Mexico, everyone is killed of eventually...

* Fearless Washington Post reporters venture onto The Highway o' Death.

* Burro Hall's weekend/overnight sports editor got cheated of another Pulitzer in the most amusing way possible this week, but the bigger was was the Pulitzer Medal for Public Service going to a former illegal immigrant, which should drive the barely-literate nativist crowd even nutsier.

* Our Award for the Most Baffling Use of Ground Zero Imagery goes to the trailer for the upcoming full-length Mexican feature Don Gato (aka Top Cat).

* In Mexico, participating in a flash mob gets you ridiculed on this blog. In America, it gets you shot in the head.

* Carlos Slim's Telecel gets hit with a billion-dollar fine.  That's over two weeks salary!

* The poorest, most welfare-hungry place in America is of course populated almost entirely by Mexican immigrants American-born New York Jews.

* Down & Delirious in New York City.

* The president of the United States would prefer that you not have to go to Mexico to get affordable healthcare. But with the Republicans planning to abolish Medicare, we suppose he's not ruling it out entirely.

* We don't know what's more surprising: that NFL cheerleaders only make $50 a game, or that Mexican cheerleaders don't earn anything at all. (Or that one of the Pats' cheerleaders is an aspiring broadcast journalist from Swampscott. Ask about our Burro Hall Journalism Apprenticeship Program!

* Fidel Castro formally cedes power. Embargo proponents vindicated!

* This short film is from Spain, but anyone who's tried to renew an FM3 visa in Mexico will recognize it.



* Art: Andy wants to escape to Zihuatanejo. Life: Both of Tim Robbins' parents die in Mexico.

* We can't force you to read the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog, but if you're not, then you missed Banksy's Rodney King piñata, a vintage Mexican Ken doll, and Jimmy Olsen hatin' on Messicans - all in one week.

* We're also liking The Daily Mexican (based in the UK).

* We're really kind of shocked that the Brits are letting a Mexican this dangerouly unstable into their country.

* We love El Pinche Holandés, except for the whole it's-written-in-Dutch part, but we're guessing this post excoriates Presidente Calderón for his habit of presuming people guilty on Twitter. Voor de overwinning!

* Luchador art at Galeria DRT in Querétaro.

* Jesus: The Lost 40 Days enjoyed a small bit of input from our audio/visual division. The free prostate exams being offered in Querétaro next month, we had nothing to do with.

* Mexican trading cards. Collect 'em all!

* The Last Fiesta. We're probably too old for this, but we're taking up skateboarding again.

* We don't understand cat people.

* Pancho Villa's finger for sale. $9500.

Call to Prayer

Here's the morning wake-up call outside the Burro Hall offices today, a reminder that horrific torture devices such as the cross Jesus was killed on are the result of human ingenuity, creativity, and design.



Good Friday is a pretty impressive spectacle around here, but once you've seen it four or five times, you realize there's not a lot left to say about it. So we'll just reach into the archives for a few pages of Burro Hall Classics, some with links to even more. Resurrection ain't just for the Messiah, you know.

Boys N Tha Hoods

The Longest Story Ever Told

Worst Shroud Ever

Best Visual Metaphor

TGIGF

Update: 1:30PM Seriously, he does this All. Fucking. Day.

Surf & Turf

In Mexico, the day before Good Friday is a good day to be in the fish business.

The meat business, not so much...

Jesus Christ's Superstar

Out here in Jesusville, the Catholic Archbishop is the proverbial Big Man on Campus. So when Querétaro's Archbishop, Mario de Gasperín Gasperín, announced a few months ago that he was retiring so he could spend more time with his family, there was a lot of interest in who would be his Vatican-appointed successor. On March 21, Plaza de Armas went all-in with a big, big scoop, which they played with all their usual subtlety:  Carlos Briseño would be the new Archbishop, bitches!  The story came with a life-size cutout of Briseño, who was also for some reason now writing a front-page column for the paper.

The next day, as is their custom, the paper modestly reprinted its previous day's front page on the front page. Strangely, no one joined them in reporting this really important piece of news, and PdeA began including quotes from the Vatican to the effect of, "really, we haven't made any decision yet..." while insisting that their sources on this one were rock-solid. The following day they were taunting other news outlets for failing to credit Plaza de Armas by name when reporting on the rumor, pointing out that they all got scooped by a paper founded just eight months earlier. "New days are here, Querétaro!"

On the 24th, they ran a short piece suggesting all the haters out there shut the fuck up and wait for the Vatican's confirmation of their scoop.

Four days later, the walkback began, with the news that, according to PdeA's sources, there were three finalists for the position: Briseño, Faustino Armendáriz, and Ramón Castro Castro - the last one being our personal favorite, because we liked the idea of Castro Castro replacing Gasperín Gasperín (two identical last names being a likely sign that one's parents were related to each other).

So now stop us if you can see where this is going, but today every paper in Querétaro - including Plaza de Armas - has on it's front page the news that Faustino Armendáriz, the current Archbishop of Tamaulipas, has been officially appointed Archbishop of Querétaro by Pope Benedict XVI. Nowhere in PdeA's four pages of coverage does the name Carlos Briseño appear, except in the tiny item at the bottom of the front page that says, "Plaza de Armas published on March 28 the short list of successors for Mario Gasperín: Briseño, Armendáriz, and Castro. It's Armendáriz." So, see? They got it right! New days are here, Querétaro!

And then, 12 pages later, in a fit of either pique or incompetence, they illustrate an unrelated story about the beatification of John Paul II with an image of a crucifix credited to "Andres Serrano/EFE." That would of course be Piss Christ, Serrano's controversial 1987 photograph depicting "a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artists own urine." We haven't checked out the beatification pieces in all the other papers yet, but we're betting PdeA is out alone on that one, too.

Rights and Wrongs

Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights issued a pretty harsh report [pdf] this week on the plight of migrants in this country (which we like to think means us, but generally means Central Americans hoping to pursue a career in the American dishwashing industry). The Commission complied a list of 71 places where migrants are considered at "high risk" for being kidnapped or otherwise victimized, including three in Querétaro (Pedro Escobedo, El Marqués, and San Juan del Rio).

It didn't take long for a local official to blast the report as an "exaggeration." "It seems a bit excessive to me," said Adolfo Ortega. " We don't have reports of criminal acts in these areas....we've always acted decisively to ensure that (migrants') rights are protected."

Right on, Sr. Ortega! We're not gonna let a bunch of do-gooder bureaucrats badmouth Querétaro's human rights record! Unfortunately, Adolfo Ortega is the president of the Querétaro's branch of the Commission on Human Rights, and thus not intuitively the person we nominate as the state's go-to denier of human rights violations. Still, it's nice to know that if we ever decided to violate the human rights of our fellow migrants, the Human Rights Commission will have our back.

No Place Like Home

One of the local rags writes up the completely not-climate-change-related plague of tornadoes infesting the US.  "The tornadoes affected cities and towns from Oklahoma to North Carolina," says the caption.  This photo is, of course, Park Slope, Brooklyn, taken last September - but hey, close enough. All those gringo towns look alike.

Freedom of Assembly

We happened to be outside the Teatro de la Republica yesterday, where some sort of official government gathering was taking place. Nearby, a bunch of college professors were protesting over some sort of alleged governmental contract breach. They were peaceful - silent, in fact - and stayed safely on the sidewalk across the street. The Municipal cops were there directing traffic and now apparently come armed not just with semi-automatic machine guns, but point-and-shoot digital cameras. Since peaceful protests are not (to our knowledge) illegal, we're not sure why this cop felt the need to photograph as many of the protesters as possible.

And of course, upon pulling out our camera and taking a picture of the cop taking a picture of the protesters, another cop pulled out his camera and took a picture of us taking a picture of the cop. We thought about taking a picture of him, too, but then we remembered that he could always put down his camera and pull out his semi-automatic machine gun, and that all that stuff about the pen being mightier than the sword is not something that anyone carrying a sword actually believes. So we smiled and went home.

Climate Changes

February, 2010:

Querétaro's Reservoirs at 100% Capacity

April, 2011:

Querétaro Reports 8 Reservoirs Completely Empty

Probably nothing to worry about, of course. The water here isn't very good anyway...

"Why Is He Out Here?"

In honor of this week's celebration of the messiah's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, here's Sin Cara (The Artist Formerly Known As Mistico)'s triumphal entry into the world of American corporate entertainment.



We'd pretty much written Mistico off for selling out (see for instance this, which he should never be allowed to live down), but we now find some humor in the announcers' struggles to pronounce Sin Cara. ("Sane Kerrah" is so far the one to beat.)

Change, We Can Believe In II

We're lucky to have a really good coffee store near our offices - because, this being Mexico, we put in longer, harder hours than a lot of other countries whose names we could mention, so we're constantly in need of a caffeine fix. It takes about three minutes to walk there, which is fortunate because the process of actually obtaining coffee takes longer than some surgeries we've undergone. Today we set a record of nearly 30 minutes to pick up our usual order: a kilo of the house blend, ground for paper filter.

Though the shop sells nothing but coffee, so grinding and bagging coffee is literally all the kid who works there has to do, he approaches every order with the same tentative sense of wonder and apprehension that we image he felt on his very first day. Watching him work reminds us of ourselves wrapping Christmas presents: It's pretty simple, and we know how to do it, but we don't do it very often and would hate to fuck it up, so we bring a certain gingerness to the process. In the end, two 500-gram bags of fresh-ground coffee were successfully sealed shut with scotch tape, and we all exhaled. And then we made the mistake of trying to pay for 135 pesos worth of coffee with a 200-peso bill.

"Do you have anything smaller?" he asked, after several minutes rummaging for change in the back room. We explained that the next smallest bill in the Mexican currency system, the 100-peso note, would not actually cover the cost of the coffee, but that in any case, no, we didn't.

"Wait here," he said, and - in a time-honored Mexican tradition - took off down the street in search of change. For 15 minutes, we stood alone in the coffee shop - more than enough time to have gone home, gotten exact change, and returned. Or to have pulled our car around and loaded it up with the store's safe, the coffee roaster, and a couple of 50 kg. bags of Chiapas beans.

After a quarter of an hour of searching, he returned empty-handed - because how could any merchant in the centro of a large city at 3:00 in the afternoon of the first day of the biggest tourist week of the year be expected to have the equivalent of 15 dollars in change?

Back into the storeroom he went, and we could hear the methodical plink-plink-plinking of someone counting out coins. The usual way to configure 65 pesos would be one bill and two coins - maybe two bills and three coins if you don't have any 50s. Instead, our boy comes out with what we later counted out to be 83 coins, mostly 50-centavo pieces, muttered something that sounded like an apology, and poured them into our cupped hands. Then we walked home more slowly than usual, trying not to drop them.

The Real Face of Jesús

Today's El Universal brings us a profile of Giberto Morales, the young man who will play Jesus Christ in the famous Passion Play of Iztapalapa this Friday. The story details the 20-year-old's intense training regimen - hitting the weightroom, running several miles a day, dragging a 90 kg. wooden cross around town, diet, exercise, Bible study - everything, really, except actually growing long hair and a beard.

Of course, they're not really gonna crucify the kid, either, so we probably shouldn't nitpick the wardrobe and makeup choices.

Sábado Gigante

* The idea that the Mexican cartels have invaded the US seems to be getting some traction in the papers here lately. We guess people must have assumed Americans got their illegal drugs by driving to the border and waiting for Mexicans to toss them over the fence or something. We'll just link to Gancho quoting himself from a year ago to explain why this is kind of silly.

* Great Moments in Graphic Design: Rosie the Riveter gets a Mexican, pro-choice, lucha libre makeover.

* News Flash: Failed State of Arizona orders brown-skinned man to show his papers.

* Some illegal aliens may commit crimes, but most of them don't cook the books to the tune of $99 million.

* "The man struck his head on the ground during the incident," says Customs and Border Patrol, demonstrating how easily the English language can used to obscure blame.

* The Telegraph, the Mail and NPR all picked up the story of the last two speakers of Ayapaneco, which you read here a month ago.

* Mexico: come for the cheap gas, stay for the delicious margaritas.

* Amealco, Querétaro, is an excellent place to drink oneself to death.

* Can you guess which of these women is the real Frida Kahlo, and which one is the model pretending to be her in Vogue? Take your time.

* "Mexico drug war's latest victim: the lime" should be eligible for some sort of Reverse-Crowbar Award - rather than squeezing a drug war reference into an otherwise quotidian story, it take a quotidian story (a spike in the price of limes) and forces it into the drug war narrative, possibly after the author had a few too many micheladas.

* We got 16 out of 17 on the Monitor's "How Well Do You Know Mexico" quiz. (Mexico City is apparently the sixth-, not the third-, largest city in the world.)

* Trade-based money laundering. This goes a long way towards explaining the number of businesses around town that continue to thrive without ever apparently serving a customer.

* Here's a 24 minute video celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Bimbo Bear, which we're posting because we cannot fucking believe anyone - even Grupo Bimbo - would make a 24 minute video about the Bimbo Bear.



*Geo-Mexico's handy list of Places to Avoid in Mexico.

* We Are the World: An American blogger's posting of a Spanish translation of a Hungarian eyewitness account of the execution of Mexico's Austrian emperor.

* The Baby Jesus's mouthpieces in Querétaro actually have a pretty good digital magazine. We especially like the article on the evils of the digital age.

* Nick Kristof on the power of savage mockery to change the world. Needless to say, we endorse this unreservedly.

* Finally, a common-sense proposal to make American churches safe enough to worship in.

* Querétaro cops lock and load for Semana Santa. Because God forbid anyone get hurt on Good Friday.

King of the World

Today is the 99th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, so we've cued up the Dancing Fountain of Querétaro performing My Heart Will Go On.



Celine Dion and the fuente danzarina - a combination second only to the RMS Titanic and an iceberg in terms of sheer misery and human suffering.

OECD: Mexicans the Least-Productive People In the Whole Entire World

As one might expect from a country that's routinely derided as fat, feckless and lazy, there's been a fair amount of crowing over this report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing that Mexicans are, the hardest-working people on planet Earth.

Mexicans work longer days than anyone else in OECD countries, devoting 10 hours to paid and unpaid work, such as cleaning or cooking at home. Belgians work the least, at 7 hours, compared with an OECD average of 8 hours a day.

Belgians? Ha! Suck on this, Jean-Claude Van Damme!

But, amigos, we hate to interrupt you while you're running - or, more likely, sauntering verrrry slooooowly, five abreast - through your victory lap, but... seriously? You know we've never bought into the stereotype of Mexicans as lazy, not at all, but there's a difference between putting in time on the job and actually doing stuff. And so after four years of standing in line at the bank to get a form filled out so we can stand in another line to get it stamped so we can get back in the first line to pay the bill; of making four trips over a three week period to a government office to get a document that takes ten minutes to prepare; of seeing the cleaning lady spend an hour and a half rearranging our spice rack by color; or watching workmen tear up the road using sledgehammers, and women clean the entire city with brooms made of twigs, we can certainly confirm that, yeah, no one puts in more time on the job than Mexicans do. But just let's not confuse that with productivity or working hard (with notable exceptions, of course - though it might be cathartic for a few minutes, we wouldn't trade our jobs for one that involved a sledgehammer).

According to the report:

Most unpaid work is housework. Mexicans do the most, at more than 3 hours per day, and Koreans the least, at 1 hour and 19 minutes. Much of this time is spent cooking. Americans spend the least time cooking each day (30 minutes) and Turks the most in the OECD (74 minutes). Most people spend around 50 minutes a day cooking.

This is one of the great things about living in a very Catholic and patriarchal country, where women are treated like incubators and servants, just like God intended! But if you look at the chart above, while it's clear that unpaid work is what puts Mexico on top, when it comes to paid work, they're still a close third or fourth behind Japan, Korea and maybe (we really can't tell) China. Now, much of Mexico is truly magnificent, and we actually love it because of, rather than in spite of, many of its flaws - but can anyone look at this country and really say, "this is what happens when you get 100 million of the world's third- or fourth-hardest working people together in one place"? Every morning we walk to the bakery up the street to buy 25 cents worth of bread rolls - a transaction that for some reason involves the efforts of at least three full-time, paid bakery employees - not counting the people who actually bake the bread.

And of course if we dig down into the OECD data [pdf], we learn that

Mexicans report the third highest positive psychological experiences (feeling rested, smiling, learning, and enjoyment) and lower than average negative experiences (pain, worry, stress, sadness, depression).

Because working hard for long hours always makes us feel enjoyably, smilingly rested. Just ask the interns here.

Changing Times

It's hard to believe that we're coming up on the fifth anniversary of the relocation of our offices from the US to Mexico, but it's about a month away. On that first day, after a series of massive headaches at US customs in Brownsville and Mexican customs in Matamoros, we drove down Highway 101 from Matamoros to Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, where we spent the night. We barely remember the journey or the highway, took no photos, and if anything at all remarkable happened it was overshadowed by the effort to find a perro-friendly hotel in Victoria and the twisty mountain road into Guanajuato we drove the next day. So it's with some surprise that we learn that the Matamoros-Victoria stretch of 101 is referred to today as "The Highway of Death."

If the US ever cuts corporate taxes and relaxes labor laws enough to persuade us to move the office back there, we'll probably leave the car behind and fly. Or swim.

On the plus side, the State Dept. now says that Americans are not being targeted by cartels on the Highway o' Death or in Nuevo León or San Luis Potosí, so there's probably nothing to worry about.

But It's Never Been More Affordable!

Recently, about 100 Mexicans living in Japan came home, having decided that, whatever Mexico's problems, it beat living in a thoroughly-tsunamied earthquake zone glowing with radiation and awaiting the arrival of Godzilla. But that was before they actually spent a month here.

Among them was Adriana Ledezma Estrada, who is studying for a PhD in treatment of wastewater in Tohoku, one of the most devastated areas.

"I have my plane ticket ready, I'm going back to Japan on April 23, even though my teachers there say there is no gas, frequent power outages that occur, and there are long lines for food, I don't care. I want to be there and be ready when classes resume," she said.

For her, the two years she lived in Japan these days made it difficult to adapt to Mexico City. "They are very different worlds." The discipline, order and security of the Japanese contrast with the chaos in the capital. "I was afraid to leave home in the early days, and you hear bad news every few minutes, and going out and the traffic and transportation are crazy, and everything is more expensive," she explained.

So far, no Mexicans have been repatriated from Libya. Maybe because there are none there - or maybe they just don't want to leave.

News From Home

Our local front page is alerting the populace here that a "Serial Killer Terrorizes New York!" Though the story is somewhat drowned out by the headline about 116 bodies being pulled from a mass grave in Tamaulipas.  We might just stay inside with the doors locked for the next couple of years.

Sábado Gigante

* Yes, we know it's Tuesday. So? Anyone who wants a refund can apply for one in person at our office in Guadalajara.

* It's stunning how few of the potential GOP candidates are considered crazy and hate-filled enough for the nativists.

* Great April Fool's sign at the US-Mexico border. Of course, Mexicans don't celebrate April Fool's Day, so maybe it's not.

* Mexicans on Death Row.

* White supremacist on death row.

* In the Failed State of Arizona - where the grass is always greener! - the Neo-Nazi-curious senate president isn't just a racist, he's corrupt, too.

* Eventually, everyone who comes to Mexico gets murdered, including the dinosaurs.

* If Tijuana's police chief is so wonderful, why is Tijuana more violent than ever?

* The story of a couple of Americans being gunned down point-blank at the Tijuana border crossing turns out to be a little more complicated than initially reported. The big question is not, "Is cartel violence targeting Americans?" but, "Who in their right mind would try to steal a mixed martial artist's girlfriend?"

* Peace has finally been achieved in Mexico's drug war! Unfortunately, it's between the Zetas and the Mara Salvatrucha.

* "Following devastating and systematic episodes of abuse from her ex-husband, she decided to turn her life around, reinvent herself and become the vampire woman."

* New Yorkers: Daniel Hernandez will be discussing his book in NYC on April 14. You get 50% off the cover price is you tell him "the guys from Burro Hall said your poster had the worst New York City subway map ever!"

* Lesley Téllez on the ambivalence of living in a place where a lot of stuff sucks.

* Mexico's worst Mexican restaurant: Neptuno, located in the Reclusorio Norte prison.

* For those about to rock in Tzotzil, we salute you.

* A couple weeks ago, the entire local legislature was replaced by children. No one noticed.

* This "flashmob" stuff is getting a little silly. We're not sure why professional singers bursting into patriotic songs is considered a flashmob, but this is still a lot better than the usual instrumental Muzak this restaurant usually plays.



* Hippies in Hidalgo got a special equinox treat: several dozen UFOs. Duuude...

* Sure, Japan's nuclear one survived an earthquake and a tsunami, but Mexico's survived an earthquake and the chupacabras.

* How to do Mexico City with your faithful canine companion.

* Star Wars loteria cards.

* The Week in Cheesecake: We don't know who Kate Bosworth is, but she's all we got.

* J.Lo does Chichen Itza just like any other tourist.

Ganando!

Sheen-co de Mayo!

The Lake Elsinore Storm Professional Baseball Team today officially invited actor Charlie Sheen to participate in a different kind of rehab, one that will recognize the former on-screen pitcher and star of "Major League" with a "Charlie Sheen-co de Mayo" promotion.

This special occasion, held on May 5, 2011, is fittingly a Thirsty Thursday promotion featuring one dollar beers and Coke products. On this festive night, fans can expect a full slate of fun to highlight the antics of the beloved star of "Two and a Half Men."

Mr. Sheen, his entourage and "goddesses" are formally invited to attend this night of baseball, Charlie and fun. Pregame plans for the Charlie Sheen-co de Mayo Night include a limited edition bobblehead immortalizing the Hollywood icon, a "Wild Thing" glasses giveaway as well as retiring, for the season, his number 99 from his legendary role as closer Ricky Vaughn.

Other promotional elements will include an in-game taco eating contest, a Rehab-style party on the exclusive Tiki Terrace featuring #tigerblood cocktails and a two-for-one Ho Hos special.

We won't rain this one out by speculating how many Mexicans have been executed in direct service of Charlie Sheen's crack habit. He probably has his stuff flown in straight from Medellin, anyway.

Worst Gift Idea Ever

A few months ago our lifestyle editor noted that the "Big Pony custom-fit polo shirt by Ralph Lauren" was becoming a fashion "Do" among the younger, hipper narcotrafficking crowd here. So we probably shouldn't be surprised that the Sunday mercado is doing a roaring trade in cheap Big Pony knockoffs.

Unless Ralph Lauren has started working in burlap, these are almost certainly Chinese counterfeits, but they're selling for an astounding 350 pesos - around 30 dollars - apiece, which means that, in a city that seems to provide its police force with a new piece of high-powered weaponry on a weekly basis, there's a huge demand for an item of clothing that's likely to get you confused with a wanted drug lord. We suppose that, for some people, being gunned down on the way to work is their best shot at being immortalized in a narcocorrido. We'll stick to J. Crew t-shirts, thank you very much.

Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!!

Despite the prevalence of narco-porn on the internet and in the American and Mexican media, a far more likely way to die here is in a spectacular traffic accident. We don't spend a lot of time worrying about being flayed alive on YouTube, but we get a sinking feeling in our stomachs every time we need to go grocery shopping. The pictures below all appeared in one of our local papers on a single day about a week ago.

All these articles contain the words exceso de velocidad. How excessively fast do Mexicans drive? Well, amigos, last week the Mexican Formula One driver Sergio "Checo" Pérez was fined 2,400 euros for excessive speed during a Formula One race. We were unaware that such an infraction was even possible

Volcadura is another valuable word - it means "flipped over car." We didn't do much driving when we lived in New York, but even on TV we hardly ever saw an overturned car unless the Rangers had made it to the Stanley Cup. We must see a dozen volcadura pictures a week here.

Which rings us to the latest installment of Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!! Today's entrant is an adorable little tyke who's leaning out the window to get a better look at the fine print on the mirror (it says "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear," mijo), while Mamá races up the street, her mind uncluttered by thoughts of car seats, seat belts, or even if a child this young should be compelled to at least sit down while the car is in motion.

As always, if the parent or guardian of this child sees this photo and sends us a letter or an email apologizing for endangering their child and acknowledging the error of their ways, Burro Hall Enterprises S.A. will buy that family a brand new car seat and help them to install it.

The Liveries of Others

It seems that the Querétaro government has once again decided that the police-state apparatus here is insufficiently disproportionate to the city's negligible crime rate, so yesterday Governor Calzada rolled out the latest program from his Urban Paranoia Department: a plan to recruit 1,000 taxi drivers to fink on the citizenry via a network of government-financed cellphones.

A thousand taxi drivers will be "the eyes and the voice of the citizens," via the cellphones that the government distributed this weekend.

With this delivery of 1,000 cellphones and an investment of 6 million pesos, the taxi drivers and citizenry will be able to report any kind of irregularity...

It's not clear if it will be obvious which taxi drivers are the snitches-on-wheels and which ones aren't, so if you happen to be doing something suspicious-looking as a taxi drives by, you should probably kill the driver just to be safe. We all know what happens to the wrongly-accused in this country.

No Excuses

Among the many great things about having your own blog is that if you have a regular weekly news round-up that usually runs on Saturday, you can actually run it whenever you damn well please and no one can do a damn thing about it because what're gonna do, fire us? So we'll get to it eventually, but not today. Feel free to check back hourly, though, just to be sure.

We'll just leave you with the thought for today, which is that while we continuously hear people refer to Mexico as a failed - or failing - state, no one here went to bed last night wondering if the government would still be functioning in the morning. (On the other hand, if that ever happened, 99% of the government workforce could easily be deemed nonessential.)

How Now Green Cow?

We mentioned a few weeks ago a rather unsightly dead-cow-in-the-middle-of-the-road problem we've been having here. Though we said it was in Querétaro, but thanks to some recently-installed signage along the road, we see that we were in fact in Guanajuato. Apparently, there's something of an infestation of cows infecting that state's highways. Luckily for the bovine-vulnerable drivers of Guanajuato, local officials have a plan:

The problem of cattle roaming the streets of the city is serious, said councilman Israel Cabrera Barrón, who said he would paint the cows fluorescent green so that the authorities would be able to see them.

This is one government make-work program we frankly cannot wait to see in action. We've never tried to paint a herd of cattle fluorescent green before, but we're willing to wager it's even more difficult than we imagine.

Gun Control We Can All Apparently Agree On

Leave it to the nativists to not quite get the point on the Project Gunrunner scandal,

As the Obama administration continues to stonewall congressional inquiries regarding orders issued to ATF agents to allow the arming of drug and illegal alien importing paramilitary groups, the level of public concern and alarm is growing.

"We need to know how many assault rifles are currently pointed at American citizens courtesy of the Obama administration's assistance to these domestic terrorist groups," said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC.

Well, so far...two. But there's probably a few more.

We're not sure what to make of the right wing's sudden conversion to the cause of international gun control - but we welcome their return to common sense. For years, they've denied that many American guns were being smuggled into Mexico. And then, one of their first acts upon taking control of the House (after reading the Constitution aloud), was to kill a proposal that would make this non-existent gun smuggling more difficult. But now - and we're sure this is just a coincidence - that there's a way (rightfully) to make the Obama Administration look bad, suddenly the pipeline of guns into Mexico is as big a scandal as Watergate and Iran Contra. Or, as ALIPAC puts it:

The scandal known as Project Gunrunner continues to sweep the nation, creating a groundswell of concern from American citizens of all races, political parties, and walks of life.

The Project Gunrunner, also called Fast and Furious, will likely become as big of a scandal as Watergate and Iran Contra!

Creating a groundswell of concern from American citizens of all races, political parties and walks of life about the free-for-all arms bazaar showering Mexico with high-powered firearms has long been a goal of this site's Editorial Board. We look forward to working with our Tea Party brethren to restrict the trade in semi-automatic weaponry and to empower the Federal government to prevent the flow of these guns into Mexico.

We'll get started right after the government shutdown, shall we?

D'oh!

Because using the Simpsons to anonymously lampoon Carlos Slim sounds exactly like the sort of thing we'd do, we want to make clear to Mr. Slim - whose telephone monopoly controls this site's gossamer connections to the intertubes - that we had nothing to do with this.

Attacks on Carlos Slim's hold on Mexico's telecoms market intensified on Monday when a secret group opposed to the world's richest man rubbished his core business in a newspaper advert called "The Slimsons".

Drawn in the style of U.S. cartoon sitcom "The Simpsons", the full-page broadside against the 71-year-old tycoon ran in several of Mexico's biggest dailies, lampooning the cost, reliability and services of Slim's telephone networks.

In the advert, four blue-faced characters in the clouds state respectively "In Slimlandia -- clients get 'quality service'", "telephone charges 'are low'", "connection speeds 'are infinite'", and "your mobile 'always works'".

Below, a sad-looking man with a pink face says: "Not in Mexico." Signed off by anti-Slim group calling itself "Todos los Mexicanos" (All the Mexicans).

We have noting but the utmost respect for Mr. Slim, and really don't mind all the dropped calls and slow connections. Please don't hurt us.

UK Government: Insulting Mexicans Is Okay If You Do a Lot of That Sort of Thing

We were pretty critical of the Mexican overreaction to the whole stupid Top Gear thing, and especially of the argument that, because the BBC is a government broadcaster, the addled musings of Jeremy Clarkson are, in effect, pronouncements by the British government. But now the British government, in the form of its broadcast regulator, Ofcom, has in fact weighed in on the controversy. Its verdict: Jesus, can't you lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight Mexicans take a joke?

Although the watchdog group said the comments could be read out of context as “very offensive,” it said were part of the program’s “irreverent style and sometimes outspoken humor” which had spared few nationalities.

"Ofcom considered that the majority of the audience would be familiar with the presenters' approach to mocking, playground-style humor, and would have considered that applying that approach to national stereotypes was in keeping with the program’s usual content and the presenters' typical style,” the regulator said.

Don't you wetbacks get it? These guys are always saying shit like this! So it's no big deal. Now run along and make yourself a plate of refried sick with cheese on it.

Never Get Out Of The Boat

Absolutely goddamn right.

People who migrate to the United States from Mexico have a significantly higher risk of developing depressive or anxiety disorders than family members of migrants who remain in Mexico, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry...

"The finding that migrants are at higher risk for onset of depressive and anxiety disorders after migration compared with family members of migrants who remained in Mexico provides the first direct evidence that experiences as a migrant might lead to the onset of clinically significant mental health problems in this population," the authors write. "In particular, migrants were at higher risk for depressive disorders, inclusive of major depression and dysthymia, GAD, and social phobia."

This seems about right to us, though the study doesn't seem to have controlled for the fact that so many Mexican migrants wind up in the Failed State of Arizona, which is a depressing place even for Americans.

Programming Note

We got a call this morning from The Man, reminding us that stuff costs money. "Don't worry about that," we told him. "We've got a plans to erect a paywall and start charging people to access our content." The Man just laughed. "You're not actually a burro, are you?"

Anyway, he laid out a get-rich-quick scheme that centers on us exchanging time and labor for currency. Sounds crazy, but we're going to give it a shot. So for most of this week we'll be working for The Man, and posting here will be affected accordingly. Feel free to visit some of our far-flung correspondents via the links on the right.

Small Worlds

We'll be away from the Intertubes for most of the day, so we thought we'd leave you with this amazing set of planetoid panorama photos of Querétaro by Flickr user MontekristuM, whose profile says he lives in Moscow. (Clicking photos takes you to the Flickr page.) We were going to compose a short essay on how they're a metaphor for this city's insularity, etc, but just enjoy the pix.

Templo de la Cruz

Panteon de Queretanos Notables

Plaza de Armas

Plaza de Armas (opposite view)

Jardin de la Corregidora

Plaza Constitución

(The copyright notice says "All rights reserved," which probably means "don't steal them and put them on your blog," so if MontekirstuM sees this, cease and desist letters can be sent via the email address above. But if you're still in Querétaro, stop by for a beer, okay?)

Sábado Gigante

* Federal agents in Querétaro just arrested four guys in connection with the disappearance of 40 migrants (32 from Querétaro) who vanished into thin air on their way to the US last year. We just hope that for their sake they don't wind up before the same judge as this guy, who spent 3 years in jail for a human-trafficking crime he didn't commit. (This judge also sentenced this woman and two companions to 20 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. None of this has affected his career, of course.)

* Wandering through the desert with a drug-laden Mexican was a lot more fun 40 years ago.

* Change we can believe in: The Octavio Paz commemorative 20-peso coin.

* Back in the day, anti-immigrant sentiment was more scientifically-based... if eugenics can be considered a science.

* White folks now a minority in New York. Looks like we got out just in time.

* Nebraska comes up with an innovative solution to the "anchor baby" problem: just let the little fuckers die. Who needs a Constitutional amendment?

* Business leaders predict: the Failed State of Arizona will be stupid for a long time to come.

* Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), whose district includes the Koughan Memorial Water Tower, is a not-very-bright man, either.

* "President says Mexico not a failed state." But then he would, wouldn't he?

* Mexican congressman suggests drug lord Chapo Guzman should be the PAN presidential candidate for 2012. We first endorsed this idea more than two years ago.

* A Mexican is stopped at the border after zipping into Texas to by 150 AK-47 magazines and 6,000 rounds of ammunition. CPB's public affairs liaison: "It makes you wonder what they're going to do with all those magazines." Yes, what could they possibly be doing?

* The wrongly accused guy from Presumed Guilty has just released a rap album. He wants people to buy it on its merits, rather than because of his notoriety, but either reason is fine with us.

* Presumed Guilty: The US has a less-cruel judicial system than Mexico, but not entirely.

* This San Diego cop reminds us his Mexican counterparts have no monopoly on police brutality:



* Or corruption.

* May is going to be a tough month to be a Mexico City street dog. (Yes, "sacrificar" means what you think it does.)

* Acapulco: It's never been more affordable! (Cancun, too.)

* Some great old bullfight photos. [pdf]

* For Those About to Rock We Salute You.

* Five (largely inaccurate) Oxford English Dictionary entries for Mexican foods.

* Kids say the darndest things.

* How dry has it been in Querétaro? Paint-the-grass-green dry.

* Attention, lazy stereotypers: Mariachis don't have ruffled sleeves.

* We know from experience that moving to Mexico involves unloading a lot of your stuff first. Here's one person's quantification of that.

* Mexico now shunning fat people. We should note here that we see absolutely no evidence this is true.

* This just in: Inés Sainz is not the sexiest woman on Earth - in fact, she's not even the sexiest sportscaster on Earth, ESPN'S Erin Andrews is. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

* Headline of the Week: "U.S. Marshals: Child Molesting Swami is Hiding Out Near U.S.-Mexico Border." What - again?

Crowbar Award Nominees

We find this "blogging" thing works best when we let other people do most of the work, so we've stolen (or, as the rappers say, "sampled") our next two Crowbar Award nominees (honoring the best attempts by the foreign media to force a drug-trade angle into every Mexican story, no matter how awkward the fit) from a couple of our favorite blogs.

First, via the MexFiles (and with thanks to Margaret for emailing the link), this Reuters story on exotic-animal trafficking through Mexico that manages to squeeze in the notion that

Mexican drug lords have been known to collect animals like big cats as trophy pets or hide narcotics in wildlife cargo.

The first part of that is true, if not especially relevant. As to the second part, well, really - what better way to move illicit narcotics past US Customs than in the ass of an endangered jungle cat?

The next one comes from Gancho, who, on the mistaken belief that living north of the Rio Grande allows him to go rogue without fear of reprisals, actually declares this New York Times story the Crowbar Award winner, despite there being nine months left in 2011. That said, this really could be the one to beat. In the middle of an otherwise questionable story about scandalous public displays of affection in Mexico City, we get:

Other couples, however, described public affection in more ominous terms. Mexico these days is essentially Jekyll and Hyde: positive economic growth is paired with a sprawling war on drug cartels that has claimed 34,000 lives since 2006.

We've read that line about 20 times, and keep coming back to the same question: What the fuckin' fuck? The reporter goes on for a few more paragraphs before trying to close the thought with:

“Affection is a way to forget,” Ms. Pérez said. “You forget your problems, and you live.”

Mexican teenage boys are some of the horniest-looking creatures we've ever seen, but we guarantee you none of them have ever used the Drug War body count as a way to get to second base. Not even Octavio Paz could pull off that line.

[Previous nominees here.]

The New Face of Mexican Law Enforcement

In what's being hailed as a victory for victims of botched plastic surgery everywhere, President Calderón has nominated Marisela Morales Ibáñez to be Mexico's first botched plastic surgery victim Attorney General.

If you want to catch a drug lord, you have to think like a drug lord.