Grace Under Pressure

American right-wingers have apparently declared 2011 "The Year of Vilifying Educators," so we thought we'd post this video that's been making the rounds of the intertubes this week of a Monterrey kindergarten teacher calming her cowering young charges while a furious gun battle rages outside. Our knowledge of Mexican nursery rhymes is pretty rudimentary, but this one seems to involve catching drops of candy raining from the sky.



Of course, aside from the language, the way you can tell this is Mexico and not America is that the gunmen are outside the school. Still, in recognition of the non-potable ice water in her veins, we're bestowing upon this still-anonymous woman our very First Burro Hall Teacher of the Year award.

Train of Fools

This is a fairly popular postcard of Ye Olde Querétaro, notwithstanding the fact that it's an obvious photomontage (unless we're wrong, and the aqueduct was designed by Augie Möbius).

But so we were going to put the question to our more knowledgeable readers: was there ever a train that passed under the aqueduct? Then one of the interns came running in, and breathlessly pointed us to this image from this page (and also this), answering the question for us (though raising another - namely, why would someone fake a picture of a train going under the aqueduct when trains did, in fact, go under the aqueduct?). But we'd already started this post, and were too lazy to replace it. So now you know.

Cinco de Burro: July 19, 2009

You can take crazy religious people out of Mexico, but apparently you can't take Mexico out of crazy religious people.

Sunday, July 19, 2009
Some Crazy Religious Shit

In the category of Events We Wish We'd Known About in Advance Because We Definitely Would Have Attended, the National Congress of Exorcists just finished up their fourth annual meeting last Friday in Cuahutitlán Izcalli, Edomex. The participants' 3500 peso fee covered room and board for the four-day conference, "coffee during breaks," and a souvenir DVD of the conference. (That last item, we're offering 3500 pesos for, in case any of our exorcist readers would be willing to part with one.) And lest you think this is some fringe-y group of superstitious weirdos, the conference's opening mass was presided over by the Archbishop of Mexico, Cardinal Norberto Rivera. (If you click that last link, you'll notice some stray bits of code showing up of the conference program. We assume that's attributable to demonic possession.)

Meanwhile, in more down-to-earth religious news, the annual Querétaro-to-Tepeyac "We Love the Virgin of Guadalupe" pilgrimage (which seems to happen about five times a year) is in full swing, despite the womens pilgrimage (they're segregated) being canceled this year due to swine flu concerns. Because Mexico's done such a great job being proactive on the flu, we can't criticize this on the merits, but it does show a tremendous lack of faith in the protective grace of La Santisima Virgen on the part of the Asociación de Peregrinas de Querétaro, doesn't it?

Of course, maybe the Virgen can't protect the peregrinas here because she's too busy showing up in shit stains north of the border. And before you send a squad of exorcists to punish us for our blasphemy, we swear to God we're not making that up. A bird - a miraculous bird! - took a miraculous shit on the side-mirror of a pickup truck belonging to Mexican-American family in Bryan, Texas, and said shit stain has miraculously taken the form a the Virgin of Guadalupe. And - predictably, rather than miraculously - hundreds of faithful are staging their own pilgrimages to Our Lady of the Blessed and Holy Bird Poop.

The Pachucas say the image is more than a coincidence especially since it happened on the 12th. The family says in Mexico, December 12 is celebrated as the day of The Virgin Guadalupe.

They've got a point. The chances of a bird shitting on your truck on the 12th is like 1-in-30! What greater proof do you need?

Don't just read the article, though. The power of Christ compels you to watch the video, which is so completely, deadly earnest that we're still not 100% convinced it isn't a joke, and which says as much about local news in Bryan, TX, as it does about Mexico.

As of this writing, the readers poll has 92% saying the Holy Shit Stain is "not a miracle." This simply means that a mere 8% of KBTX's viewers are Mexican.

Dim Bulbs

Just a quick update on the never-ending saga of the Querétaro aqueduct, which has stood pretty much without incident since 1727, until last summer, when the city government could think of no better way to spend a million and a half dollars than on lighting up the arcos with blue, red and yellow flashing lights, like a 1200-meter stretch Hummer. Things went along just fine for a surprisingly long while before INAH noticed that the enormous throbbing discotheque on the middle of the city was not part of the landmarked monument's original design. That dispute was rendered moot after the computer-controlled light show began to malfunction, forcing the designers to simplify the system so that it merely illuminated the thing in one color (which, truth be told, the new, high-tech LEDs did much better than the previous lights).

And then, a few nights ago, the city got two consecutive nights of drenching rains, the first precipitation in at least nine months. Which is when they discovered that the light system is not waterproof. In fact, it's not even water-resistant - it's more like water-absorbant. Below is a photo from the local paper of the freshly-extracted million-dollar LED units, drying in the afternoon sun.

Sábado Gigante

* Cinco de Burro Bonus, from 2008: "On Monday a gentleman in his late 60s boarded the Mexico City subway... and eventually came to the Nuevo Jordan gym, one of Mexico's premiere boxing establishments. He and his three companions - two younger Latinos and another older guy - paid 50 pesos for a one day pass. 'Fucking old guys,' said the manager, 'They're gonna have a heart attack.' But the men had brought their own gear with them, boxed for an hour or so, and before they left, the manager finally conceded that the old guy was no pretender. 'He knows el pugilismo,' he said. Never did catch his name, though."

* Annals of Sensible Crime-Fighting: After the recent robbery of a tank of deadly chlorine gas, the Querétaro water authority has decided to, y'know, start keeping better track of 'em. We would have thought that was the plan after 14 tanks were stolen in 2008, but what do we know about law and order?

* Here's a good article on gun trafficking into Mexico, from that bastion of predictable, left-wing, blame-America-first sentiment, The Wall Street Journal.

* We have to admit not being very familiar with Lenora Carrington's art, but her death seems to be a pretty big deal, so we'll link to her obit here.

* The results of Mexico's Census can be found here. We haven't had time to drill into it ourselves, but feel free to pass along anything interesting.

* Wait, here's one: queretana girls under the age of 14 are impregnated at a rate of about one day.

* According to Transparency International, in Querétaro there is a greater than 80% chance of bribing a traffic cop when stopped, to avoid arrest or detention - though this seems pretty badly-worded to us. Does that mean offering a bribe, being asked for one, or having your offer accepted?

* Congratulations to Plaza de Armas, on going to solid months without ever mentioning their Archbishop scoop again.

* Mexico's gross overreaction to the Swine Flu epidemic appears to have, um, contained the Swine Flu epidemic.

* We don't know much about economics, or Augustín Carstens's qualifications to lead the IMF, but he owns an adorable pug, and that's good enough for us.

* The whole Strauss-Kahn scandal has really taken the heat off the whole "Year of Mexico in France" thing, hasn't it? In fact, it seems that a few years ago, Strauss-Kahn had his own "Day of France in Mexican Chambermaids" festival a couple years ago.



* It's Definitely Because I'm Mexican: Man sent to jail in the Failed State of Arizona for possession of a gun and ammo.

* Burro Hall's Anchor Baby of the Week: the soon-to-bee spawn of Francisco "Lorenzo" Arce-Torres, a known member of the Sinaloa drug cartel, and Maricopa County, FSoAZ, Sheriff's Detention Officer Marcella Hernandez. Mazel tov!

* How serious is "spillover violence" from Mexico? Um, not very? Though it does provide an excuse for San Diego country to rake in Federal grant money.

* Machete don't text; Machete cook.

* Headline of the Week: Bar Shut Down at Mexico Prison.

* 17 inmates escape Mexican prison by tunnel. It's a tradition that goes back over 1,800 years.

* Mexican Hoop Dreams.

* An interesting piece on Muslims in Mexico, of which there are apparently fewer than 3,800. Like Muslims everywhere, they are under government surveillance, which has at least had the effect of confirming that they're among the least-violent people in Mexico. (Which is not to say that there aren't Latino religious extremists, but they're found mostly in the Failed State of Arizona.)

* Letter of the Week: "I can't help thinking of Mexico as a Tea Party paradise..."

* Burro Hall stands solidly with the spray-pained burros of Gaza.

* Bad news for Mexico: Whale shark swarm spotted off coast of Yucatán Peninsula. Good News for Mexico: World record whale shark swarm spotted off coast of Yucatán Peninsula.

* We'd hit that.

* University of South Carolina reminds us why "Gallos Blancos" is an amusing name for a sports team.

Pledge Week

Just a reminder that Burro Hall covers Mexico 3-6 months ahead of the mainstream media, at a cost to you of zero dollars per year.

Some Things Are Simply Inevitable

Fail and fail alike...

Sarah Palin Reportedly Buys Arizona Home For $1.7M

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has bought an 8,000-sq. ft. house in North Scottsdale, Arizona for about $1.7 million, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the deal.

The house is situated in 4.4 acres and has a walk-in wine room, home theater and billiard room, the Journal said.

Cinco de Burro: October 05, 2007

Our favorite-ever mixing of politics and sports.

Friday, October 05, 2007
The Distance

From Josh in our East Coast legal department we learn of the amazing feats of athletic prowess performed by third-place presidential candiate Roberto Madrazo, standard-bearer of the spectacularly corrupt PRI, which ran this country as a one-party state for about 70 years. (See here for a brief recap of the stolen 1988 election, for instance.) Last weekend Madrazo blasted to victory in the 55-and-older division of the Berlin Marathon, in an astounding 2:40:57. Astounding, we mean, because it's an hour faster than he had ever run before. As often happens with a PRI victory, there were some, uh, irregularities...

Runners carried a microchip that recorded their times at stations located every five kilometers along the course. Madrazo ran his first 20 kilometers, taking him to the marathon's halfway mark, in a respectable 1:42:42. He was on track to beat his best times this year, 3:39 at the London marathon, and 3:44 in San Diego. Not bad for a guy who turned 55 in July.

But he must have slipped into a Berlin Triangle somewhere along the Potsdamer Strasse. There's no record, according to German race officials, of him passing the 25- or 30-kilometer stations, leaving 15 kilometers of the race with no record of his passing.

Ah, yes, well...record-keeping was never the PRI's strong suit. Madrazo insists that he ran the whole way, of course, and if the German computers missed him at a few checkpoints, that's not his fault. As always with the PRI, it's not the lie, but the audacity of it, that astounds. The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the numbers, but merely notes that Madrazo would have been running faster than the eventual winner for part of the race. In fact, our analysis here at the Burro Hall Institute for Human Performance indicates that he would have been running faster than any athlete in the history of sports, with the possible exception of Secretariat.

According to the time records of the checkpoints he did pass, Madrazo disappeared at 20 km, and reappeared at 35 km 25 minutes later, which means he went "off the grid" just as he was just as he was accelerating to a 2:41 mile pace - shattering the world record in the mile by more than a minute - a pace he maintained for the next 9.3 miles. (Put another way, he came within 0.4 seconds of the world record in the 200 meters, 74 consecutive times. It's entirely possible that the checkpoint computers missed him because he was simply moving too fast to be seen. ) With an officially-recorded time of 1:42:42 at the half, Madrazo apparently ran the last 13.1 miles in 58:15, shaving 18 seconds off the current world half-marathon record set by Kenya's Samuel Wanjiru Kamau earlier in the year. Without exaggeration, this 55-year-old Mexican bureaucrat/weekend jogger turned in the greatest athletic performance in human history.

And yet with a totally straight face,

A Madrazo spokeswoman denied any irregularities....

"The media call Madrazo the king of cheating and manipulation," Garcia said. "But if that were true, we would have won the presidential election."

Touché.

Madrazo's completely ballsy, not-even-trying-to-explain-it explanation earned him the very first Burro Hall Sportsman of the Year Award.

Just a Stupid Popularity Contest

This is what we get for speaking our mind and telling some painful truths:

President Barack Obama will nominate Earl Anthony Wayne, a high-ranking career diplomat with scant experience in Latin America, as his new ambassador to Mexico, sources confirmed Tuesday.

The appointment of Wayne, currently serving as U.S. deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, will require approval from both the U.S. Senate and the Mexican government. It has yet to be formally submitted to either.

Wayne's nomination was reported Tuesday by the Mexican media, citing diplomatic sources. Neither the White House nor the Mexican government would confirm Wayne will be named, but three knowledgeable Washington sources did.

"The word is that Wayne has it," a former senior U.S. diplomat with long experience in Latin America said, on condition his name not be used.

We're not sure who a guy has to blow to get named Ambassador to Mexico these days, but posting will be light while we retreat to the boardroom and sulk.

(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)

With every other problem facing the city of Querétaro firmly under control, the government has set its sights on eliminating hora feliz - Happy Hour - in the city's bars and restaurants. The tavern-keeping community has vowed to defend their right to sell 2-por-1 cervezas and, judging by the photograph, to defend it to the death.

We'll just say that piles of dead bodies have been created here for reasons far less noble, and we'll be shipping arms and supplies to the rebels as soon as we can secure transport, and we urge loyal readers to do the same. You've seen how our need to raise money has been interfering with our output lately - and that's while we're paying a buck-twenty-five a beer during our evening editorial meetings. Take away hora feliz and we may as well just sell this blog to The Man.

In Your Face, America!

From now on, when you need and end-of-the-world prediction, stick with ancient Mexico, okay?

See you in 579 days, bitches.

Cinco de Burro: July 07, 2008

As luck would have it, our Executive Editor has been Raptured. Or perhaps kidnapped. It's hard to tell. Anyway, regular posting has been and will continue to be sporadic over the next few days. Fortunately, our ongoing Cinco de Burro celebration continues. Really, we don't know why we didn't think of this before, just repackaging old crap that's been sitting around for year. And to think, we used to work in television.

Monday, July 07, 2008
The Graduate

I was never much of a student, but in my entire checkered academic career I only managed to get two Fs on my report card - one in English, the other in Spanish. So of course I went on to major in English and eventually moved to a Spanish-speaking country. I mentioned this to my high school girlfriend a year ago, forgetting that Swampscott is the kind of town where your high school girlfriend and your ninth grade Spanish teacher will almost certainly be friends with each other a quarter century later. So a couple of months ago I got an email from my teacher saying that she couldn't remember ever giving anyone an F, and that I must be misremembering.

But - for better or worse (and if we're voting, I'd say worse) - she also kept all her grade books, which she eventually dug out of storage somewhere. Fantastic! So here, in my ninth-grade Spanish teacher's own words, are my individual test scores for the 1981-82 academic year:

Term 1 (with [a different teacher who left after one month]) you had grades of 30,34,40,60. I came in a gave you a 60 for the term (benefit of the doubt and the transition)

Term II grades, 68,70,20,58 you got a 52 for the term (took back the benefit of the doubt)

Term III grades 79,100,80,96,91,100,10 (The ten was on a test of the preterite) and an 80 for the term (you were finally getting serious)

Term IV 70,95,67,84, (overconfident, did less work?) term grade 79, Final Exam C- and it looks like a D for the year.

Not only did I get an F second term, but my first term grade was actually 41. Out of 100. All of this proves that the grades you get in school have nothing to do with real life, kids. So when some grown-up - your parents, the principal or a police officer - try to tell you you should study hard and not do drugs, don't you listen to them.

Burro Hall Car Seat Giveaway Madness!!

With just one day left before we learn who's better at forecasting the Apocalypse - ancient Mayans or modern-day Christians - we thought we'd throw in one last image of Mexicans laughing in the face of Death. Or, if not really laughing, then giggling in that adorable way babies do. With their giant heads and weak little limbs, the little droolers have a hard enough time standing upright on the kitchen floor, never mind on Grandma's un-seatbelted lap while Mamá's taking a right turn a little faster than she ought to to beat out an oncoming taxi. Fortunately, this family has been well-schooled in the rules of Mexican road safety, and has taught the young-un to grip the passenger-side window with both hands, and have fitted him with a Safety Bib to prevent blood stains on his overalls.

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.

Update: See EduardoAIG's comment for evidence of the awesome power of Burro Hall to set the legislative agenda in Mexico...

Cinco de Burro: Aug 26-28, 2007

One of the running jokes when we were moving our offices south of the border was that we were planning to hook up with Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Of course, this was funny because it was so ridiculous - so it made perfect sense that we would in face spend our first Cinco de Mayo here holed up in a small, secure location with Marcos and Dan Rather. We planned to write a four or five-post series about it, but only got as far as parts one and two before getting distracted by a shiny object of some sort, most likely a martini shaker.

That's a shame, because the actual interview was kind of amusing, the most endearing part being when we were interrupted by Cinco de Mayo revelry from a nearby home, causing Marcos to wander off to see if they could get the neighbors to tone it down a bit - then sheepishly announcing a few minutes later that we'd just have to put up with it. And then, a couple days later, we became probably the first foreign journalists ever to charter a jet from Zapatista-controlled territory. We'll get one of the interns to type up our notes from this later.

The sudden appearance of 18,000 naked Mexicans outside our hotel window was perfectly in keeping with the tenor of that week, and not even remotely the weirdest part of it.

He's Got Legs

The son of the autocratic former president of Peru is teaming up with the autocratic former mayor of 9/11 to further their mutual self-interest!

(Reuters) - Peru's presidential front-runner Keiko Fujimori has hired former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as an adviser, trying to bolster her law-and-order credentials without relying on the image of her divisive father, jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.

Hopefully, Giuliani will continue that Latin American law-and-order winning streak that made him such a viable presidential candidate in '08.

Cinco de Burro: August 19, 2007

Sunday, August 19, 2007
Periodismo 101

There was a story that got a lot of attention this week, about Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu who, on her way to meet with President Calderon, was almost tossed out of a swanky resort in Cancun because they thought she was an Indian beggar. This seemed perfectly plausible because (a) it's perfectly plausible, and (b) it was witnessed by a journalist who was meeting her at the hotel for an interview.

Newsreader David Romero [of Cancun's Enfoque Radio] said he himself was present when the hotel's security personnel tried to get Menchu out of the lobby of the five-star hotel.

Romero - who was there to interview the woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 - added that the expulsion was prevented by people who recognized the activist for the rights of indigenous peoples.

The mayor of Cancun condemned the hotel's action. Much debate ensued about whether this was a case of racism, or just an aggressive enforcement of the resort's "no beggars or peddlers" policy. The usually soul-searching over Mexico's treatment of its Indians began again. Finally, Menchu herself called a press conference to declare: "WTF?"

Menchu and her sister Anita said none of it had happened. "This was purely an invention of the press," Anita told Latina.com today in an exclusive interview. "Nothing at all happened in the hotel, and we didn't even know about the rumor until we got on the plane to go back to Mexico City."

And the reporter who witnessed the whole thing?

For his part, the reporter to whom the story was originally attributed, David Romero Vara of Cancun's Enfoque Radio, admitted on air today that nothing happened to Menchu, and that the only ones who were removed forcibly from the hotel were his station's reporters.

Translation: "What, that? Oh, I made that shit up. Why do you ask?" There appears to be absolutely no penalty for this, nor even a discussion of what - y'know, if anything - might be wrong with wholesale fabrication of news stories.

In other news news, this is the headline in today's local paper: 2 Lions Escape from Circus (unintentionally hilarious subhed: "Also, a Kangaroo"). Maybe it's because we're terrified of large, hungry carnivores, or because being eaten by a lion here is not unheard of, but we think a better headline would have been, No Need to Panic: Now Back in Captivity, 2 Lions Briefly Were Not. There - isn't that nicer? It's Sunday morning, you know.

So because you're dying to know, it went down like this: as a traveling circus was getting underway last night, someone noticed that not all the man-eating animals were where they were supposed to be. The male lion never made it off the circus grounds, because he wouldn't ask directions, and was re-bagged within minutes. The kangaroo took off down Cimatario Ave. before getting himself cornered on a school campus (where he "suffered grave injuries," probably from boxing above his weight class). The she-lion, though, made it all the way to 57 Ave, where she entered the lobby of the Hotel Las Campanas ("Indian Beggars Welcome!") in all her pouncing, roaring, charging-lion majesty, overturning furniture and shattering glass. We're guessing this was probably the scariest, pants-shittingest moment in the lives of any of the guests, and that no one had their room, their meal, or even a shot of tequila comped as a result.

August. It's a slow news month.

And I Swear That I Don’t Have a Gun, No I Don’t Have a Gun

If you’re looking for a safe refuge in Mexico, might we suggest spending your entire visit in the air? The security inspection at Querétaro “International” Airport is refreshingly albeit absurdly thorough – you take of your shoes, you take off your belt, you take your laptop out of its case and remove all metal objects from your pockets, and put your bags through the x-ray. Then you go through the metal detector and even if you don’t set it off you are then thoroughly hand-wanded, where the rivets on your jeans (and, weirdly and consistently, your shins) will set off the buzzer prompting a further manual pat-down, after which you step over to the table where your carry-on bags, your belt and your shoes are waiting to be searched in minute detail by the airport’s private security personnel. If you’re carrying a wallet, they’ll ask you to pull it out and open it (not for the usual reason Mexican officials ask you to do this). All the American rules regarding liquids, ziplock bags and sharp objects apply.

And then, because American air carriers don’t trust Mexicans to do something as simple as find a gun in a backpack, you pick up your bags, walk a few feet towards the gate, and go through the entire inspection process all over again. The belt, the shoes, the wand, the pat-down, the bag search, etc, etc, all performed by a private security company hired by (in this case) Continental Airlines – the same private security company that inspected you on behalf of the airport 30 seconds ago. The two stations are so close together you can see one from the other.

And of course, because Americans don’t trust any foreigners – not just Mexicans – to get this shit right, when you change planes in Houston, you do it all again. We’re pretty sure we were the only unarmed people in Texas this afternoon – and, really, we were most emphatically unarmed.

Travel Day

Don't worry, we'll be back.

Cinco de Burro: June 25, 2006

How long does it take for the enchantment with Mexico to wear off? In our case, 39 days.

Sunday, June 25, 2006
The Birds

You could probably compile a thick anthology of New Yorker cartoons in which the city slickers slumber blissfully, undisturbed by the traffic noise and the gunfire and then, when they vacation in the countryside, are kept awake all night by the sound of chirping birds and babbling brooks. Let me tell you, there’s nothing funny about it. These fuckin’ birds are killing me. They start up around 5:15AM. There’s probably 200 of them, but there’s one in particular – I know absolutely nothing about birds, and at that hour it’s too dark to see, but I imagine it to be a small, prissy, tremendously self-satisfied little fuck who, even if you somehow succeeded in killing him, would yield only a few mouthfuls of greasy dark meat – with a repetitive, three-part call: do do do doo…do do do doo…do do doo DEE DEE doo doo. He’s either really, really enamored with the sound of his own voice, or this call has succeeded in getting him laid in the past, but if I thought for a minute that burning the house down might cause him to move to another neighborhood, I’d have done it three weeks ago.

The birds are pretty quickly drowned out by the fireworks, though - part of the Mexican custom of helping St. Whoever welcome the dawn of his special feast day. I’m guessing there are roughly 350 saints who have their own day here. The idea that a saint may want to sleep in a bit, then start his feast day with the Times crossword puzzle over breakfast in bed seems to have no cultural resonance here. It’s 7:55AM right now. The fireworks have been going for an hour and a half. Ironically, if the Aztecs had this much gunpowder 490 years ago, no one would be celebrating Catholic saints here today.

The fireworks also serve a more earthly purpose: to wake up the guys who work the church bells and remind them there’s ringing to be done. Lot of ringing. Whereas in most other places, church bells signal the hour, or the half hour, or even the quarter hour, here they mean, “Check me out, I’m ringin’ a bell! And I ain’t stoppin’!”

The bells usually fade out about the time the garbage truck comes. People don’t put their garbage out the night before. Instead, the truck is preceded by a guy whose entire job is to walk down the street clanging together two pieces of metal as loudly as possible, to let people know it’s garbage time. It’s funny, the things you miss: 16 years in New York, and I always took those huge, festering piles of garbage lining the sidewalks overnight for granted. Now I think they’re just what this town needs.

Sábado Gigante

* Not that we need the work right now, but we'd like to remind some of the State Dept. employees who (according to the sitemeter) read this blog during work hours, that the US Ambassador to Mexico is leaving on Wednesday. Ahem.

* Most of the comments we got last week were wiped out in the Blogger clusterfuck, lest you think we're deleting you just for the hell of it.

* The Mexican press is apparently no longer free. Be assured, dear reader, Burro Hall will never hide behind a paywall.

* Mexicans - making the New York City taxicabs Americans won't.

* Mexican newspapers - getting punk'd by the fake stories of Mexicans killing Osama bin Laden American newspapers aren't.

* You know what Querétaro could really use right now? Another $10 million in police equipment.

* Burro abuse in California.

* More good economic news! Bribes pump nearly $3 billion a year into the Mexican economy.

* And remittances are up 5%, meaning some of our finest border vigilantes are falling down on the job, possibly from excessive consumption of crystal meth.

* Will wonders never cease: American travel writer (who is in fact a friend of ours) gets Mexico right.

* No, wait...this is more like it. An anonymously sourced article out of (where else?) San Diego pegs Mexico as Hezbollah's new staging ground for anti-American jihad.

* Live by the anti-Mexican hysterics, die by the anti-Mexican hysterics. "The redeployment of the Oosterdam, which makes seven-day cruises to Mexico, marks the third ship to leave San Diego waters in the wake of a prolonged economic downturn and rising violence in Mexico. The net effect has been a plunge in cruise ship calls, which are an important component of San Diego’s tourism economy." We guess they can always fall back on that other thing San Diego is famous for, whatever it is.

* The "Surfing Madonna," perhaps.

* The pernicious influence of Glenn Beck: Mexico Buy 100 Tons of Gold.

* Time was, this sort of thing only happened in Mexico...

* Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border, by FSoAZ Governess Jan Brewer's ghostwriter, coming soon to a purchasing-in-bulk conservative book club near you. Brewer "would not discuss financial terms or whether she intends to donate any of the profits to a charity or to another cause." May we suggest the Shawna Forde Legal Defense Fund?

* Anti-Socialists in the Failed State of Arizona believe that if everyone would just pool their resources for the common good, they could succeed at walling their state off from Mexico. Put us down for $100 to re-route Highway 15 around the northwest corner of the state.

* Literally everybody in Arizona is corrupt.

* Once again, we fail to make the list of Mexico's Top Ten Contemporary Artists, which is really just a stupid popularity contest.

* Public restroom Bible-reading in Catemaco.

* The latest release from G-Unit: El Chapo. Viva!

* Great Moments is Mixed Messages: May Day tea-partiers. "More pay, less taxes!"

* Headline of the week, from El Diario de Ciudad Victoria: "US Kills Obama, Millions Celebrate."

* Why Do Smart Kids Grow Up to Be Heavier Drinkers? #3: Drinking is the only way to deal with morons.

* Morons like Sen. Scott Brown, who is apparently no smarter than La Prensa.

* The Week in Mexican Cheesecake: Lady Gaga in Mexico City; Kim Kardashian in Puerto Mita.

* "Mexico is the largest market for erectile dysfunction in the developing world, with about $200 million in sales every year."

* Things couldn't get any worse in Tamaulipas, could they? Cue the crocodiles...

* Gustavo Arellano runs down the Top Six Presidential Encounters With Mexican Food. #5: "Gerald Ford Bites into a Tamale with Husk Still Wrapped Around It."

* Related: "Insane ingredients in Mexican tacos."

* Brown-skinned man arrested with 91 pounds of cocaine tortilla dough.

Narco Polo

A few months ago we posted a silly item noting a mini-trend among drug lords of being arrested wearing the Big Pony custom-fit polo shirt by Ralph Lauren. It was a dumb post, but this is a dumb blog on the internets, so that's totally cool. But today the Saltillo Vanguadia, which we believe is an actual, serious newspaper, upped the ante with a story on the arrest of drug dude Martín Beltrán Coronel, who they say Continues In the Style of Polo Shirts. But they concede that they don't mean Polo by Ralph Lauren, but merely polo-style shirts like the knockoff Puma Scuderia Ferrari shirt Beltrán was arrested in, which he was presumably wearing because, well, that's what people wear here.

An analogy would be an American newspaper in the 1940s noting that another mafioso has been arrested wearing a jacket and tie.

Cinco de Burro: May 20, 2006

For today's exercise in self-aggrandizement, we reprint the first dispatch we filed from the wrong side of the US/Mexico border.

Saturday, May 20, 2006
Shakedown Street

So we finally reach the border – la frontera. If anyone has any doubt about us being a Superpower In Decline, all you need to know is that there’s a $2.25 toll to leave the United States. How cheesy is that? Hell, it’s $4.50 to leave New York City.

But when we tried to hand over our nine quarters, we were motioned out of the line and sent over to a US Customs Service corral. No one explained why, and when we got there, no one who worked there could explain why either, until one of them said we needed an export permit for the car. This was the first we’d heard of an export permit, but the nice man assured us that it was really no big deal, and that they would only need to impound our vehicle for 72 hours. It was at this point that the export permit for my bowels arrived. Three days in Brownsville, Texas! Men have killed themselves over less.

After about an hour we were referred to someone who actually knew what he was talking about, who told us we needed no such document. We paid our $2.25 and watched Texas recede in the rearview mirror. In less than a mile, we arrived at Mexican Customs in Matamoros, an operation that makes the chuckleheads to the north look like the Blue Angels.

Basically, to get into Mexico, we needed three visas: one for us, one for the car and one for our stuff. Each of these visas is processed by a separate department, each deploying the latest in ballpoint-pen-and-carbon-paper technology. The personal visas went through without a hitch (we’re officially classified as “pensioners”), as did the car visa. The household goods visa, called a “manaje de casa,” was another story.

The manaje is something the Mexican Consulates in both New York and Boston told us we absolutely had to have. It’s a list of everything you’re carrying with you – some of it general (“one suitcase of women’s clothing”), some of it specific – make, model, serial number, etc. And since we got the manaje before we’d actually packed, we loaded it up with everything we might potentially bring, figuring it’s better to have too much on the list than to get caught with an item that wasn’t listed. The whole point of the manaje as it was explained to us, is that it allows you a one-shot, tax-free opportunity to get your stuff into Mexico

No one at Mexican Customs had ever seen or heard of a manaje de casa. But they were very pleased to have a detailed list of all the expensive electronic goods we were carrying, since it would make it easier for them to calculate the 15 percent import tax we’d have to pay. Initial estimates were somewhere between $1000 and $2000. It was here that a number of heated arguments broke out – between us and Customs, between the various Customs agents and between Laura and myself.

Mexican Customs is staffed almost entirely by women under the age of 22 who might someday get around to memorizing the actual customs rules and regulations. In the meantime, the operation seems to be completely improvised. After a number of long conversations among themselves (during which time no one else was being served) a suggestion was made that someone ought to actually take a look at our stuff. This involved opening the car door, pointing to a few boxes, and asking what was in them. After explaining that most of our stuff was “old,” “used,” “broken,” or “second-hand” (words we took care to learn before arriving), Customs arrived at a fair valuation of all our worldly possessions: $479. We paid our $67 in import taxes, tossed the manaje out the window, and embarked on our Mexican Adventure.

A hundred feet later, we were stopped by a Customs Police officer – a man who looked like he’d read the manual every night before going to bed - who looked at our receipt and suggested that $479 might be a slight undervaluation of two computers, a printer, a scanner, two iPods, an electric guitar and all our clothes, books and household appliances. Incredulous, we explained to him the old, used, broken, second-hand nature of our lives, averting our eyes in shame over the way we live. It was getting close to lunchtime. He waved us on, and we embarked on our Mexican Adventure.

Happy Belated Mother's Day

Mexican Mother's Day was earlier this week, a day marked here in Querétaro by the gruesome discovery of a trash can full of fetuses! We're sure this is in no way related to the fact that abortion is 1000-percent illegal here, and the sate leads the nation in teenage pregnancies and domestic abuse. In just one town, Amealco, of the 20 babies born last month, 17 were born to single mothers, and 12 of them were minors. Just imagine how crazy those numbers would be if these kids received sex education!

Ominously, the same paper reports that Mother's Day festivities generated 100 tons more garbage than a usual day does. If even half of that is composed of fetuses, this town has a serious problem.

Land of the Coherent

Presidene Calderón is in the US this week, and the Mexican papers are headlining his ridiculous critique of the United States: that we somehow lack "coherence" in our anti-drug policies.

It's really pretty simple, Sr. Presidente: we buy the drugs and supply the cartels with money and guns, and you fight them to the death. We think if you look back over the years you'll see we've been remarkably coherent and consistent in this policy. We await your apology.

Cinco de Burro

Burro Hall is about as "Hecho en Mexico" as a New York City taxicab, but most readers are probably too young to remember its roots in the fertile soil of Meridian, Mississippi (fertile thanks to the decomposing bodies of civil rights activists buried in shallow graves, but fertile nonetheless). It was on this day five years ago, having hastily checked in to a La Quinta Inn after golfball-sized hail and numerous tornado-warning broadcasts mentioning the specific highway we were driving on persuaded us that continuing our southward trajectory was even foolhardier than everyone had believed, we posted our first entry on Burro Hall. Re-reading it today, you can see how this blog seemed to emerge fully-formed, like a thunderbolt-wielding Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

Partly in a orgy of self-congratulation, and partly because The Man is keeping us kind of busy as of late, we're declaring the next 30 days "Cinco de Burro," and will be padding out our already-thin content with some of our favorite posts of the last half-decade. Readers are encouraged to observe this month-long celebration in their own way, and post testimonials and words of praise in comments. Long time readers are asked to reflect on what this blog has meant to their lives - particularly, what might you have accomplished had you not spent however many days, weeks or months scrolling through this nonsense in the first place.

Are You Down?

Enigmatic Tweet of the Week:

Just a reminder: Burro Hall is open to the public by appointment only.

Gonna Send You Back To Mother In A Cardboard Box

Querétaro turns out to be a pretty good place to be an out-of-towner! According to the always-reliable local press, companies from all around Mexico are fleeing to Querétaro to get away from the craziness being wrought elsewhere by America's drugs. But at the same time, there's been 70 percent rise in inter-familiar violence, meaning that the state is paradoxically a great place to avoid violence, unless the source of it is your husband. It's sort of an argument for being transferred without your family in tow.

But the stat that was most interesting to us this week was the fact that the Mexican government has, in the past year, helped arranged for the repatriation of the dead bodies 25 queretanos who have met their maker in the US of A. The numbers on painsaons abroad are a little unreliable, but at any given time there are generally about 40,000 queretanos in the US, which means their annual death rate is about 62 per 100,000, compared to the annual death rate of 0 per 100,000 for Americans in Querétaro (unless we've missed something, which we doubt). And that figure is just for queretanos who needed the government's help getting their body back home - which is probably the majority, but the number could nevertheless be higher.

On the other hand, probably very few were killed as a result of inter-familial violence, so it's not like lifein the US is all downside.

Mother of the Year

It's Mexican Mother's Day today, and since we don't have a Mexican mother, we thought we'd see what local moms the Querétaro media saw fit to honor and...oh, look! What a surprise! It's 2010's Person of the Year Sandra Calzada on the front page of the paper once again!

"Mothers are the heart of the family," she says. And Sandy, you'll always be the mother of our hearts.

Outside Is America...

Next stop, someplace not crazy.

Update: An astute commenter correctly points out that people sometimes get killed in Mexico, because when Americans have finished using guns for entertainment purposes, weak gun-control laws and lax federal regulation allow then to be smuggled into Mexico, where they help ensure an unimpeded flow of recreational drugs to paying customers in the US. Burro Hall regrets the oversight.

Downtime

Regular posting will be curtailed or suspended this weekend while we're busy being best man in our uncle's wedding. (Not best man in the ceremonial sense of the word, but rather in the sense that we are whenever there are other men in the room.) But since cute dog pictures are the only reason anyone bothers to come here, we'll leave you this shot of the perro from last Wednesday, taken at the precise moment he realized that the delicious carrot treat he'd been given for no apparent reason was in fact a ploy to distract him while the interns hustled our bags out to the taxi. Which is how we imagine you all feel right now.

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Patron Saint of Soggy Gringos

After swimming in Utah's Zion River, you can towel off your wet, sweaty butt with the Virgen of Guadalupe's face, thank to this lovely beach towel available for just $19.99 at your supermarket checkout.

If you squint (or if we had a better camera) you could see that the matches for sale also feature the VdeG, and there's a smattering of Mexican-ish folk art - not a lot, but more than you'd expect - available here, plus a substantial number of Mexican restaurants, one of which is the only place in town open past 9:30 (you can imagine our excitement to pull into town Wednesday night only to discover that our drinking options were Corona, Tecate or Dos Equis). We understand the whole Mormons-in-Mexico thing, but are a little clueless why there's such a Mexican vibe to this tiny little Utah tourist town. We doubt it's to cater to the predominantly Mexican hotel and restaurant staff (and by the way, the mouths on the chambermaids here - we didn't expect to hear such relentless obscenity in Mormonville). If we were better journalists we'd try to get you an answer, but frankly, we're too consumed with trying to find a decent martini around here.

Outsourcers of the World, Unite

Here's a scene from Querétaro's May Day parade (which was somewhat overshadowed by the beatification of Juan Pablo II) - a sign protesting the scourge of outsourcing, which "enslaves the workers and impoverishes the family - We Want Them Out!" All of which we agree with, generally, except this seems to misunderstand somewhat the basis of Querétaro's economy, which consists largely of assembly jobs formerly done by Americans, Canadians and Europeans, but are now performed by Mexicans for two bucks an hour.

We're thinking maybe the UAW snuck this banner into the parade.

Cinco Virgins

Happy Cinco de Mayo from Reed's Gas & Camping Supplies, Virgin, UT.

Live From the Battlefield

We arrived last night for the staff retreat in Utah after an arduous day of travel that we imagine would have been a lot easier had Mexican troops gotten their shit together and held on to this piece of territory 1848 (btw: happy 5 de Mayo, amigos. lol!!)   We covered a couple thousand miles, but none were as bad as the 30-mile stretch we spent driving across the northwest corner of the Failed State of Arizona - a place we've been badmouthing without having actually set foot in it since 2005.  Christ, it's worse than we remember it.

Really, this sounds like the kind of thing we'd make up just to be obnoxious, but you can actually feel the failure - physically - the second you cross the border because, unlike its non-failed neighbor, Nevada, the FSoAZ highway-maintenance funds apparently dried up long before Governess Brewer's face did.  We have no idea why there are so many potholes in a state so utterly devoid of life-sustaining moisture, but if the roadway erodes any further, the Parks Service could start to charge admission to look at it.  The suspension on our rental car breathed an audible sigh of relief as we eased onto the brand-new asphalt marking our entry into the non-failed state of Utah. We'd try to avoid it on the return trip (our travel warning remains in effect), but presumably the architects of the interstate highways system already thought of that, and were thwarted by geography. Fortunately, our European heritage allows us to exceed the speed limit without fear of arrest.

The majestic, utility-and-Latino-free trailer homes of NW FSoAZ.

Program Note

We're off to our annual editorial leadership retreat, which is being held this year in Zion National Park, in American-occupied Aztlán. Six days of Outward Bound-style team-building exercises, sweat lodges, drum circles, etc. A skeleton crew of interns will be manning the offices, but posting could be light for the rest of the week because the interns are, y'know, Mexican...

Sometimes, we're too busy to post stuff.  Thank you for your patience.

Big Friends

We've never really understood the the whole Tony-Montana-as-role-model thing among wannabee tough-guys. Not only does he fuck up and get blown away in the end by some bigger badasses, but he's unable to sexually satisfy a woman who at the time was married in real life to that wussy dweeb from Thirtysomething. We see a guy in a $300 Scarface leather jacket, and we know we can beat him in a fight. Still, he had a pretty big gun and abundant self-confidence, so we can see his appeal to the small-dick crowd. It's not at all astonishing to see a couple of cheap, cheesy pictures of Li'l Al Pacino on the wall of a recently-raided bad-guy house in Juárez.

Except, holy shit, these guys were some seriously bad-assed badasses! Tony may have had his "li'l frien'," but these dudes had

a basement arsenal.. that included three anti-aircraft guns, dozens of grenades, a grenade launcher, AK-47s ... several makes of machine guns, rifles, a shotgun and more than 26,000 ammunition cartridges... more than 50 military uniforms, as well as bulletproof vests and gas masks.

"Make way for the bad guy," indeed.

Punk'd

The "dead bin Laden" photo splashing around on the intertubes since Sunday night was pretty quickly debunked, but that didn't stop Mexico's La Presna tabloid from running it on page one today (with, to be sorta fair, a note that "the yanquis deny it's him"). Amusingly, they seem to make their case for authenticity by running it alongside the actual photo from which it's Photoshopped, as if bin Laden had undergone a botched botox treatment that froze his face like that for the last 15 years.

Mexiphiles will also be amused to learn that the strike team's code name for bin Laden was "Geronimo" - a man who hated Mexicans more than most Americans do.

Relics

Yesterday we mentioned how, through the magic of papal corner-cutting, what had once been an old used skullcap laying around in a drawer here in Querétaro was now a secondary relic of the soon-to-be-Saint Juan Pablo II. We put a couple of interns on the case and learned that "primary relics" are parts of the body of the saint, while "secondary relics" are objects that have been in contact with and/or used by the saint. And "tertiary relics" are those that have touched a primary or secondary relic.

Which reminded us of this picture of our executive editor's late grandfather touching the primary relics (i.e., body parts - specifically the right hand) of His Beatitude.

Gramps - or, as we'll now be referring to him, "The Tertiary Relic" - has been laid to rest... um, somewhere in the northeast United States. (We don't want to encourage pilgrims.) But in the years after this mystical exchange of holy mojo took place, our executive editor came into physical contact with him on a number of occasions, thus becoming, if our Latin serves us correctly, a "quaternary relic" (an object that has come in contact with a primary, secondary or tertiary relic) of the man who will one day supplant the Virgen de Guadalupe as Patron Saint of Mexico. And if you don't think we plan to abuse this, you should pray for a miraculous cure for your insanity. Spread the word, people: even trying to charge us for a drink will earn you a quick 500 years in Limbo. And that's for the first offense.

We're awaiting a ruling on whether or not reading this blog makes you a "quinary relic," but don't get your hopes up, mortals.

Actionable Intelligence

Since President Obama has proven himself more than willing to send in CIA kill squads to ensure the safety of Americans wherever they are, we'd like to nominate his next target:



CENTCOM can email us for the exact coordinates whenever they want to call in the air strike.

Oh, Snap!

Mexico's First Lady, Margarita Zavala, displaying her legendarily wicked sense of humor, pokes fun at Princess Beatrice's royal wedding sombrero at the beatification of Pope John Paul II.

Papapalooza

Today is Day 11 of Plaza de Armas's heroic effort to pretend that its botched Archbishop of Querétaro scoop never happened. Under normal circumstances, the reporter responsible for such a story would find himself exploring an exciting career in footware retail, but since in this case the reporter in question was the executive editor of the paper and - we're sure this part is a total coincidence - son of the publisher, he's been punished with an all-expenses-paid trip to the Vatican to cover the beatification of Mexico's pope, Juan Pablo II. He filed this report:

"IT'S SUNDAY!" says the little blue headline, showcasing the paper's trademark prognostication. And then, "HE'S BEATIFIED!" which, at the time PdeA went to press, was not technically true. JP2 was beatified at or about 10:39am Vatican time, or 3:39am Mexico City time, which we can confirm because our clock read 3:42 when we were blasted out of bed by fireworks this morning. Reporting from the scene, but having obviously filed his story in advance of the events actually taking place, our intrepid correspondent, writing in the past tense as if it had already happened, informed readers that the beatification ceremony had taken place "this morning (afternoon in Italy)" and had begun "at 10:30am Mexican time," which amused us because we were reading the paper at 9:45. Other than those two mistakes, the rest of the four-paragraph dispatch - which basically said that JP2 has been beatified - was right on, and totally worth the airfare.

Regular readers will probably not be surprised to hear of our indifference to JP2's fast-tracked, shortcut (what the nativist crowd would call "amnesty")-laden path to sainthood. Sure, we stood in the rain to see him in Boston once, but who here is proud of everything they did when they were 12 years old? Speaking of 12-year-olds, it's nice to know that an utterly massive child abuse and molestation scandal occurring - and being covered up - on your watch is in no way considered a barrier to beatification these days. Perhaps Benedict should appoint Gary Glitter as Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City.

But we're probably the only people in Mexico who feel this way. Of the five papal visits ever made to Mexico, all five were made by Juan Pablo Segundo ("te quiere todo el mundo!"), and because Mexicans love any attention from non-Mexicans, they've been wanting to see him canonized for 30 years. You can see the signs here in Querétaro, both big...

...and small.

This is despite the fact that JP2 used his first visit to Mexico to eviscerate the church-led social justice movement known as liberation theology, at a time when repression and inequality were even greater in Latin America than they are today.

In the chapel of the Palafox Seminary, before an audience of bishops, 6,500 miles from St. Peter's, John Paul delivered a 5,000-word speech that may mark the entire course of his papacy. The text was designed to strip away any ambiguity over future papal social policy. ...

John Paul, who rose to eminence in Communist Poland, made clear his urgent desire to eliminate priestly activism based upon Marxist dogma. The Pope emphatically rejected liberation theology, without ever using that phrase. Repeatedly emphasizing the value of each person before God, and the need for spiritual freedom, he used the term liberation in a Christianized context. To the Pope, "atheistic humanism" holds out to mankind only a half liberation, because it bases everything on economic determinism ignores spiritual dynamics. The result, he said, is that man's very being is "reduced in the worst way." Today, he said, "human values are trampled on as never before." Implicit in his statements was a basic judgment: the tactics of Marxist revolution, based as they are on class conflict, violate the most profound Christian teaching.

In one passage heavy with theological significance, he rejected efforts by modern radicals to view Jesus Christ as a political Messiah. "People claim to show Jesus as politically committed, as one who fought against Roman oppression and the authorities and also as one involved in the class struggle," said the Pope. "This idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive man from Nazareth, does not tally with the church's catechesis."

Music to a wealthy landowner's ears.

But Querétaro is Wealthy Landowner Central, and all day long the celebratory fireworks have been echoing through the hills like a US-sponsored death squad. The city is apparently home to what was yesterday a used skullcap but now, as of 3:39am, a secondary relic of a saint. And while today's festivities came about thanks to JP2's miraculous curing of a French nun's Parkinson's disease (an illness we wish he would continue to attack as if it were a left-leaning Jesuit), at least five queretanos claim to have been cured of various (suspiciously unspecified) illnesses, according to the archdiocese - meaning that if just one of them pans out, Querétaro could give JP2 his second, saint-qualifying miracle. We're sure Plaza de Armas already has its full-canonization report typeset and ready to run.