Piñatas and Panties

Feliz 2012, and a joyous End o' the World from all of us at Burro Hall.

99 Problems

Ah, Querétaro. It's the second-safest state in Mexico. Forty-nine families a day have been moving here from the crazier parts of the Republic. Unemployment is reasonably low, quality of life is reasonably high. It's the home of Burro fuckin' Hall, for chrissakes! And so of course we managed to set an all-time state record for suicides this year, with 99 queretanos taking matters into their own hands - up from 78 least year, and squashing the previous record of 85 in 2007. Weird, to say the least. Nineteen were minors. (And that 99 number is as of Dec 22. That no one has killed themselves over Christmas is maybe the strangest part of this; we seriously consider it every time we hear "O Holy Night.")

The local paper, perhaps frustrated by its inability to work a photo of the publisher's family into the story (seriously, father and son are both on the front page today), decided to go with this super-classy graphic:

Of course, even the suicidiest year ever, which works out to 5.5 per 100,000 population, is still less than half the rate up north of the border, so things could definitely be a lot worse.

The Lonesome, Well-Attended Death of Jesús Angel Vela Lares

A year ago last September, a businessman named Jesús Angel Vela Lares treated himself to a night out at the Fantastic casino in Querétaro. It's not clear whether or not he came out ahead - probably not - but he more than broke even on the cut-rate alcoholic beverages. Around 4am, he wandered out the door and wove an uneasy path down Constituyentes, which is a six-lane highway. Jesús Angel Vela Lares was on foot.

At that point, and over the next two hours, at least five of the 300 police-state security cameras that blanket this city kept Jesús Angel Vela Lares in their sites. Soon, a couple of Querétaro's vastly over-armed police officers showed up and tried to persuade him to use the sidewalk. Jesús Angel Vela Lares responded by running smack into a tree. The police then did what you'd expect - they got in their car and drove off, leaving him there. Jesús Angel Vela Lares staggered to his feet and continued ambling down the six-lane highway. Another patrol car came and went. Drivers swerved to avoid him. The cameras kept rolling.

Jesús Angel Vela Lares turned onto Bernardo Quintana, another six-lane highway, and eventually staggered into an auto service store's parking lot, where he fell over a trash can, got up and then fell down a flight of stairs. He got up, made it to the sidewalk, and dropped to the ground, slumped forward on his knees. Another patrol car arrived, watched him for a few minutes, and left. The cameras were still rolling a half hour later, as another man came up, rifled Jesús Angel Vela Lares's pockets, and made off with his wallet. A fourth patrol car picked up the wallet thief and, after several more minutes, went back to the parking lot to check on Jesús Angel Vela Lares, who was dead from a heart attack at age 44. The eight hours of combined video tape of his last 110 minutes was the basis for the State Human Rights Commission recommending charges be brought against the various cops and officials who watched him die. So maybe those 300 cameras are good for something, after all.

Have Yourself a Merry Moral Crisis

The local archbishop took a few minutes out of his busy Christmas schedule this week to lecture us all on our impending moral crisis. We realize this is literally his entire job, so we should probably just tune him out the way we do with Christmas music, but it does get a little tedious after the 40th or 50th exhortation. Halloween creates a moral crisis. The equinox is a moral crisis. They nation's rising crime and mayhem is a moral crisis. And now, in the middle of the annual orgy of generosity, charity, family-orientation and general, all-around Jesusyness, what's his message? We are mired in a moral crisis. That the local news reports this stuff straightforwardly and without comment, the way the state-run media in North Korea report utterances from the Dear Leader, only heightens our despair.

Meanwhile, in related news, twice-weekly nonstop service from Querétaro to Las Vegas is expected to begin in 2012, which should keep his Holy Excellence busy through the end of the world on Dec 21.

Robbed!

We take a backseat to no one when it comes to supporting tough, highly-restrictive laws on the financing and promotion of political campaigns, but even we found ourselves going, "Dayum!" when we saw this thing. Apparently, the results of last month's very hotly-contested mayoral election in Morelia has been overturned because someone violated the "no political ads within three days of the election" rule. That's ballsy enough in its own right, but the specific violation was that Mexican boxer Juan Manuel Marquez - who was not a candidate for office in Morelia or anywhere else - fought a televised bout in Las Vegas - which, despite the name, is not in Mexico - while wearing a small PRI logo on his shorts.

And because of that, Wilfrido Lazaro Medina is no longer the new mayor of Morelia. Look for "Lazaro Was Robbed!" to replace "Marquez Was Robbed!" as the nation's hottest boxing-related topic.

Dreaming of a White Isthmus

There's a restaurant a couple of blocks from our offices, Maria y Su Bici (which is actually really terrific, if you're ever stuck in Querétaro for some godforsaken reason), specializing in the food, flavors and overall mezcal-soaked ambiance of Oaxaca - home of Benito Juárez, Mexico's shortest, second-brownest president. As part of the decorative theme, they wanted to display some examples of traditional Oaxacan peasantwear. It's hard to tell if this is another example of latent Malinchistic aspirations, or simply a dearth of good Zapotec mannequins, but the result looks like an EZLN/Abercombie & Fitch mash-up:
 

The young lady would literally burst into flames if she dared expose skin that alabaster to the Oaxacan sun. Her husband, meanwhile, looks like he's heading to Yale on a rowing scholarship.

For comparison, here are some randomly-selected couples from Oaxaca's Guelaguetza festival. See how many differences you can spot.

Sh*t My Dad Says

Punk'd

Today is Día de los Inocentes, the Mexican equivalent of April Fool's Day. This has always struck us as a little weird since, in the Christian tradition, the Day of the Innocents commemorates the day, three days after the birth of Jesus, that King Herod ordered the slaughter of every newborn male child in Bethlehem. That this somehow became the Day of Goofball Pranks has always kind of baffled us. As pranks go, ripping a newborn out of his mother's arms and impaling him on a spear seems to us to be the prime example of "carrying the joke too far."  But then, we've always found Mexican humor a little... broad.

As far as we've seen, Mexicans don't invest a lot in DdlI jokes. Instead, it seems to fall mostly to the news media to publish silly stories in the hopes of punking a few readers - "[World Famous Soccer Star] to Join Local Soccer Team!" read one. "[Politician Unlikely to Run for Mayor] to Run for Mayor!" You get the idea.

Our favorite of the day - by which we mean, "most in keeping with the original proposition that bayoneting babies is funny" - came from a.m. Querétaro, with it's headline "General Motors Coming to Querétaro!" GM, they insisted, was planning to build one of the largest automotive assembly plants in Latin America right here in town.  Over $3 billion in investment, with more than 10,000 precious new jobs created.

HAHAHAHAHA! Psych!  Oh my God, you should have seen the look on your face! Fucking priceless!   No... sorry.  No new investment.  No new jobs.  Nope. Heh-heh-heh.  No. Sorry.  Nada. Nothing.  Ha. 

Have a nice day.

Delicious, Chocolatey Nun's Farts

Don't blame us - that's the actual name of a candy manufactured in Querétaro. Judging from the packaging, nuns' farts leave little steaming piles of nun-poop! Mmmmmmm! From a marketing standpoint, we can see how this would appeal to your average 12-year-old, though the candies themselves (which we think are terrific) are basically a milk chocolate-covered rum-soaked truffle, with enough alcohol to warrant a heavy-machinery warning, and so maybe not appropriate for the young'uns.

Of course, lest anyone in this staunchly religious town be offended by the name, the packaging goes on to explain that it's a misspelling of the name originally coined by the Barcelona-based Italian confectioner who invented them: "Petto di Monca," or "nun's tit." So there you have it. Though the matter is obviously debatable (and feel free to have at it in comments), we suppose we'd have to concede that "nun's fart" is less offensive than "nun's tit" - though neither conjures up something we'd like to have in our mouths.

How Mexicans Think of Christmas in America

Given the way the American media's distorted coverage of Mexico as a blood-soaked nightmare, we probably shouldn't complain about today's local headline: "SANTA GOES CRAZY IN DALLAS:  KILLS SIX!"

(Except to point out that it wasn't really Santa Claus, of course.)

If I Could Talk to the Animals

You'll all be relieved to know the baby Jesus did show up again this year! Here, his mom explains how the burro is the most delightful of all God's creatures.

Meanwhile, because the town's nativity scene includes dioramas of just about every religiously significant person except Buffy the Vampire Slayer, here's St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, seen here blessing a... a...

Holy shit, what the fuck is that? Can anyone out there identify this thing? It could be some kind of jungle cat - or then again maybe a feral dog of some sort. A hairless warthog? Chupacabra? Anyone?

Well Tonight Thank God It's Them Instead of You

Remember to respect your Elders!

Mormon missionaries in front of Querétaro's Dancing Fountain, Christmas Eve 2011

O Come Let Us Adore Him

The Man Comes Around

Let Johnny talk you through the story of Christmas:

Nativity, Seen

The city's Nativity scene has been up since, like, mid-summer. It's this weird amalgam of Bible stories, Mexican folklore, and whatever papier-mâché animals they happen to have laying around at the time. Here are a few pictures, because we don't feel like typing words.

We don't know who the bride is supposed to be, but she's purty...

The Mexican butcher selling dried beef, mentioned, we believe in the Gospel of Mark.

Creepy children.

Even the statue of the Third King is wearing blackface.

This is what we're having for dinner at the Burro Hall office party.

Can we just agree this is the worst likeness of a zebra ever?  It looks like two guys in a zebra suit.

The famous crocodile of the Palestinian desert.

There's no baby yet, but there is a burro, which is all you need.

If We Sent It By Mexican Post You Wouldn't Get It Until April

Every year we hold a competition among the interns to see who can come up with the best holiday card design and thus keep his or her job after December 24. This year's winner - ¡Felicidades, Lazaro! ¡Nos vemos el lunes! - puts the Christ back in Christmas, with a meditation on how we might strive to emulate his life. We guess the takeaway here is "keep it short."

Warm holiday wishes from the board of directors, staff, interns, small domestic animals, lawyers, accountants and all the other assorted leeches and hangers-on here at Burro Hall.

A Burro Hall-iday Tradition

It's that time of the year again, when we repost this item from 2007 and ask our more knowledgeable readers to enlighten us. Which, at the risk of being churlish - and let us here reiterate how much we love you all - you never fucking do. Why do you all hate the baby Jesus?

Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Have Yourself a Mammy Little Christmas

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

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



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

¡Felíz Navidad, Cartel Assassins!

This sure seems like a great idea:

Rules Eased on Gun Sales to Noncitizens

WASHINGTON — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is relaxing restrictions on the sale of guns to noncitizens because Justice Department lawyers have concluded that the rules had no legal basis, officials said on Thursday.

In a letter to firearms dealers on Thursday, the bureau said it would soon drop a regulation that bars the sale of guns to noncitizens until they can document that they have lived in a state for at least 90 days, such as by producing three months of utility bills in their name at a local address.

...This month, the department published an October memorandum by the Office of Legal Counsel that said another aspect of the A.T.F.’s regulations went too far. It was a rule carrying out a section of the Gun Control Act that generally bars “aliens” who have “been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa” from buying or possessing weapons.

Well, that's a relief! We've been thinking it's just way too difficult for, say, Mexican visitors to Texas and the Failed State of Arizona to obtain high-powered weapons. Cheers to the ATF for cutting through all that nanny-state red tape. The Totally Awesome Zetas! just got totally awesomer.

Tour Guides with Guns

Yesterday was "Police Day" in Querétaro, and in honor of the event, Gov. Calzada inaugurated yet another police force, which is exactly what this town needs! In addition to the Federal Police, the State Police, the Municipal Police, the Transit Police and the various offshoot, subdivisions and SWAT teams associated with each of them, we now have the Tourist Police. We have no idea why.

At first we assumed this was a special force aimed at arresting, detaining and just generally policing tourists, though why this would require its own police force is beyond us. Furthermore, the vast majority of tourists in Querétaro are Mexican, not foreign, so again, why would they need their own police force? Los Angeles is 3,000 miles from Brooklyn, but we can more or less deal with their policemen without incident (maybe more so than the locals).

But no, apparently the Tourist Police received special training in "cultural and historical themes" (as well as "specialized defense," whatever that is), and are required to understand English and be able to "orient and guide" people around the city.

In the rest of the world, these people are called "tour guides."  There's a central tourist office here, and a handful of information kiosks scattered around town not to mention the dozens of privately-run tours of the Centro.  But because Querétaro's solution to everything is to add more inadequately-trained people with guns into the mix, we now have a platoon of armed tour guides trained in "specialized defense," just in time for the holidays.

War Horse

The bull scored a few points at the plaza de toros in Morelia last weekend, which is sure to delight the anti-bullfighting crowds out there, except that it came at the expense of rejoneador Diego Ventura's horse, "Revuelo" - a name that means "commotion," so extra points for irony.



It's hard to tell from this angle (this one is better, if more cringe-inducing) whether it was the initial fall or the subsequent goring that did the most damage, but the horse eventually limped off (to a nice round of applause) to the veterinarian, where the standard treatment for all equine ailments was administered. Though Ventura, who'll be in Querétaro on Christmas Day, has been doing this for 15 years, this is only the second horse he's lost, a testament to his great skill as a rider. The front page of his website, however, is hard to describe without using the word "gay" in the pejorative sense teenagers sometimes use it.

Seriously, for what reason would it be a good idea to do this in water?

Back in the old days, horses had it even worse, since the picador's horses weren't covered in leather mattresses like they are today, and the whole idea was for the bull to gore them.  Even Ernest Hemingway starts his Death in the Afternoon with: "At the first bullfight I ever went to I expected to be horrified and perhaps sickened by what I had been told would happen to the horses."  Of course, Papa being Papa, he was totally cool with it by the third page of his 517-page book. 

(As we were searching for that quote, we came across the book's review in the Sept. 25, 1932, New York Times, which we link to here just for the hell of it.)

Since the year is almost over, and the only other serious competitor is the Querétaro White Cocks's Manuel López, who scored the winning own-goal in the Mexican League semifinals, we're going to just go ahead and name Revuelo the Horse the 2011 Burro Hall Sportsman of the Year, the first posthumous non-human recipient in the award's illustrious history.  Vaya con Dios, caballo!

No Car Seat For You!

Contrary to popular belief, we don't go out looking for car seat violations to feed this blog. What usually happens is that we'll stumble upon on while we're out, happen to have a camera on us, and if we're lucky, get the shot. Yesterday, we weren't lucky, so we have no photographic record of the worst offense we've ever seen.

We'd thought we'd seen it all, including multiple instances of parents driving while holding a baby on their lap, but yesterday we saw a woman driving down Corregidora St. with her baby sitting in the front passenger seat, unaccompanied, un-seatbelted, and being held upright by Mommy's hand pressed against its chest because, given it's age, it probably couldn't have sat up on its own even if the car wasn't jostling along in traffic.

By the time we caught up with her at a red light a block away, she had pulled over to pick up a couple of young adults, so the shot below is just your standard, everyday outrage of an adult without a seatbelt holding a small baby in her arms in the front passenger seat.  Nothing to see here, folks.

If you happen to see the parents of this child, do not ask them to contact us because we are declaring them ineligible for a free car seat.  Instead, we're asking to you kidnap the child and deliver it to us, so we can smuggle it into the US and give it to one of the many childless, overprotective couples currently waiting to adopt.

Sh*t My Dad Says

Countdown to Ecstasy

We're not looking to harsh anyone's winter solstice/holiday mellow, but according to the Maya - whose entire civilization collapsed into the toilet 1100 years ago, so, really, why wouldn't we trust them - the world will end a year from today.

That's all. Look, it's probably nothing. Go back to whatever you were doing.

Armed & Anachronous II

A couple weeks go, Querétaro held one of those guns-for-cash things, whereby you show up with a firearm and the military buys it back from you without a lot of uncomfortable questions like, "You know guns are illegal in Mexico, right?" and "Did you perchance use this thing to rub out a snitch?" Even though QRO is the least-gunny place in the country right now, they still managed to pick up about 680 pieces, all of which were destroyed today in an elaborate ceremony in the city's central Plaza. Amid a phalanx of officials and Generals from the 17th Zona Militar, the gun were admired, photographed, denounced, meticulously logged one at time by make and serial number, and then laboriously sliced into non-lethal pieces.

InQro.com

And from the buzzsaws rose the unmistakeable smell of... burning wood? Jesus H. Christ on a holiday furlough, will you look at these "weapons"? Did everyone who turning one in actually ride with Pancho Villa? Because he's been dead at for 90 years. Seriously, if we were packing this kind of heat the night we got our ribs broken, we'd still have gotten our ribs broken.

InQro.com

If anything, these babies are worth something. Why are we destroying them in front of the media? Why not auction them off to collectors of antique weapons and use the proceeds to fight crime? Do we have to think of everything for you people?

[Armed & Anachronous I here.]

Once Again, We Are Passed Over for Person of the Year

It's the end of the year, and if you're like us, you've been positively pissing yourselves wondering, "Who will be the Plaza de Armas person of the year for 2011?" We had to suspend our office pool after we realized every single person had picked "Sandra Calzada for the repeat." Hey, if you'd seen how many times she'd appeared on the front page of the paper, you'd think this was a reasonable assumption. Other contenders were her husband, her two kids, her sister-in-law (the head of public security) and her father-in-law, the former governor. In fact, if you took the Calzadas out of the running, we actually stood a a pretty decent chance of taking the thing.

But anyway, 2011 is almost in the rear view mirror, it's all over but the shouting, and the most important, most influential, most inspiring queretano of 2011 is... some guy we've never heard of!

Okay, so that's not true. Having gotten over our initial "WTF?" reaction, we now recognize the man (he's the smallish one between the two members of the family that owns PdeA - seriously, muchachos, this is getting out of hand; we've been reading the New York Times for 25 years, and we wouldn't recognize a single member of the Sulzberger family if they turned up in out kitchen making latkes tonight) as the newly-elected rector of the Autonomous University of Querétaro. The election, as we recall from Plaza de Armas's coverage, was somewhat contentious, and there was a Bush-Gore-like standoff for a while, and then Herrera won, and then that was that. This happened like a month ago. So the most important, most inspiring, most influential queretano of the year is the head of one of the city's many colleges, who's been on the job for a few weeks. Seriously, you can see why we're not kidding when we say we're pissed off that we weren't chosen.

Chickencock Update

As promised, we sent the interns out to visit El Pollo Es Mi Gallo. Here's the "restaurant" that's shelling out big bucks to plaster billboards all over Querétaro:

It's not even a new chicken joint - this hole-in-the-wall has been here for years, under the name Pronto Pollos.

Cinco de Burro Hall

Burro Hall - it's not just a website, publishing empire, a philosophy and a way of life; it's also a physical structure, a stately Mexican hacienda, as important to the publication of this site as Hef's mansion is to his. And today marks five years since we burst in the the dead of night, bound and gagged the owner, and set up shop here.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Greetings from Burro Hall

We moved into the new house yesterday, lyrically named Casa de la Sirena - The Mermaid House - by its owner, after the large hand-painted tile mermaid on one wall of the courtyard. We've got most if it chipped off by now, to be replaced with the new Burro Hall logo: a donkey with enormous testicles wearing an Uncle Sam top hat. We just need to find some flashing red lights for the eyeballs.

The house is lovely, if a bit eccentric, and we're sure the next few days will be discovery-filled. For instance, we've discovered that bathrooms outnumber closets here 3-1, and that wireless internet is utterly ineffective when your walls are two feet thick.

But last night, we took out the garbage. Having lived in apartment buildings since we were 18, this was actually the very first time in our adult life that we've done that. See what we mean about discovery-filled?

Tonight, we took out the trash for the 1,825th time. It never gets old.

Choosing Sides

So over the weekend, the US Congress took a few minutes out of its busy schedule of threatening to shut down the whole US Government to search behind the Congressional couch cushions to see if they can continue helping out Mexico in 2012 in it's War to Stop America's Drugs From Getting to America. After careful deliberation, they decided to toss the Mexicans $248.5 million bucks under the Mérida Initiative, to combat the murderous cartels who deliver us our drugs. Mighty neighborly of us, no?

Well, estimates vary, but during that same 2012 period Americans will probably put between $20-30 billion into the hands of those same cartels.  We had one of the interns put this into bar-graph form so we could see whose side the US is fighting on in this so-called war:

Meanwhile, back in Washington, elected officials are driving themselves crazy trying to figure out why the stupid lazy Mexicans can't just win this thing and be done with it.

A Children's Treasury of Presidential Candidates Speaking Spanish

Mexico's next president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has gotten off to kind of a rocky start - actually, he's been proving himself the Baryshnikov of stomping on his own dick. But his latest embarrassment - the surfacing of a three-year-old video of himself attempting to speak a language we vaguely recognize as English, seems to us a blow landed slightly south of the waistline, if only because we're pretty sure this is exactly what we sound like in Spanish:



So we figured we'd be clever and try to dig up some old video of candidate Obama pandering to the Latino vote with a fractured attempt at Espanglish - but, damn! When this guy isn't busy killing Osama bin Laden, he's obviously working on his pronunciation:



Of course, you can always count on his predecessor:



But so what about the current crop of presidential guanabees? We've brought this video current frontrunner Newt Gingrich going all Torquemada on lengua materna before:



On the other hand, the only thing we could find on his rival Willard Romney is this ad recorded by his son, which leads us to assume the Mittster himself no habla the espanyol - all the more shocking because, of everyone in the field, he's the one with Mexican roots.



Searches for Clinton, Bush Sr. and a few of their predecessors came up empty, though we definitely recall seeing Jimmy Carter speaking Mexican on a few occasions. A few months ago Mike Bloomberg, the CEO of New York City and probably the politician Peña Nieto most resembles, did this to himself, to the delight of late-night comedians everywhere:



Finally, here's Jackie Kennedy, proving there's nothing she can't do with grace and elegance...

Sábado Gigante

* The Burro Hall 2011 Award for Best Euphemism Ever, In Any Language: Totally Awesome Zetas! boss Miguel Angel Treviño referring to his organization's ongoing murderous reign of terror in support of drug trafficking and organized crime with, "We concentrate on our work."

* Eighty thousand queretanos can't read, and therefore, tragically, cannot enjoy Burro Hall.

* Querétaro launchs a "No More Teen Moms" campaign, which, as far as we can tell, doesn't involve the distribution of contraceptives.  And abortion remains 100% illegal here.  Let's just say we're keeping our optimism in check on this one.

* American Navy names American ship after American citizen with Mexican-sounding name.  Republicans freak out.

* Last minute gift idea: coffee-table book of old Mexico photos by Hugo Brehme.

* Or, just go with the Mexican Flag/Penis boxer shorts.

* Querétaro's DIF is urging everyone not to give toys to street urchins at this time of year, since it reduces the opportunities for First Lady Sandra Calzada to be photographed.

* President-to-be  Enrique Peña Nieto is no lady.

* Because Mexicans can find the toxins in any silver lining, funeral directors in Juárez are fuming over the declining homicide rate.

* Speaking of toxins, we wish the US made it as hard for lead batteries to enter Mexico as they make it for Mexicans to enter the US.

* Dump on the Totally Awesome Zetas! if you like, but first ask yourself what you're doing to reduce your carbon footprint.

* Drug war means hard times for Mexican artists. We're still waiting for someone to produce the Mexican drug war's Guernica.  (Also, while we're on the subject of arts and craft, AK-47 jewelry seems like something that could have quite a future here.)

* We've had some "crazy uncle" issues of our own, but we're still glad we're not Chapo Guzmán's nephew.

* This is a couple months old, but a year after the alleged murder of David Hartley on  Falcon Lake, most of the locals think his wife's story is full of shit.

* Season's Greetings from the Failed State of Arizona!

* Here's an FSoAZ state senatrix to who loves sexual harassment almost as much as Sheriff Joe Arpaio does.

* Meanwhile, this ain't gonna happen, but it's fun to see it even being talked about by serious people.

* Speaking of raging, stinking failures from the FSoAZ, Querétaro's record for World's Largest Taco may be silly, but Phoenix's World's Longest Line of Tacos is just embarrassing. 

* Smell the flop sweat: Denizens of the Baja monkey house attempt a laugh at our expense, because that's what classy people do.

*American law-breaking beauty queens have a long way to go to catch up to their Mexican counterparts.

* Daniel Hernandez's Estrella Cercana is, well, intriguing, let's say.

* And you should add Think Mexican to your daily reading/viewing.

* From now on, it's Doctor Mija Chronicles to you.

* Urban Mushing Querétaro: We're signing up the perro tomorrow. (More info here.) 

* Mexican World Records Update:  Largest yoga class, Largest zombie walk.  We're bursting with pride. 

* Parrot-smuggling is surprisingly popular.

* Fuck Yeah Cholas!

* Strange image of the week: via Tex[t]-Mex, a honky lawn jockey in San Diego.

*People in this part of Mexico continue to struggle with the difference between a flash mob and an unannounced dance performance.

Church & State

We'd have to re-read the relevant passages, but we're pretty sure that when Jesus hung out with criminals he didn't come in quite this heavily strapped.

"Mexico City - Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera celebrated a mass in the Santa Martha Norte prison. He didn't mingle with the prisoners because the thick cordon of police protection got in the way."

[Thanks, Richard.]

That's Life

A few weeks ago we were heading to our favorite watering hole, when he happened upon this:

We were pleased to have a camera with which to take a picture of a cameraman shooting pictures of a crowd taking cellphone pictures of a couple of lip-synching guys with whom, owing to our antipathy towards Mexican pop music, we were unfamiliar. Reyli and Joan Sebastian, it turns out, which aficionados inform us is a Really Big Deal. (Though considering the fact that Sebastian's website lists his cellphone number, really, how big can he be?)

Anyway, here at last is the video in question, "Así Es La Vida," shot entirely in Querétaro - and not just at our favorite bar, but in the seats we usually sit in at said bar.



(And yeah, that's the world-famous Dancing Fountain behind them.)

Update: So apparently the video is unviewable north of the Rio Grande, with strikes us as both un-neighborly and, from a marketing standpoint (this being, after all, a music video) kind of shortsighted. Suffice it to say the song sucks ass (you can maybe hear it here). Click here for cellphone videos of the making of the video. If all else fails, come visit.

The Racist Pig

So it turns out the America's Least Effective, Most Rapist-Loving Sheriff, Joe "Joe" Arpaio of the Failed State of Arizona, is a racist goon leading his own private brownshirt division on a reign of terror against the Latino population of his county, a people whose very existence offends his understanding of what America is about. This, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which for some reason took three years to reach the same conclusion already known to everyone who isn't idiot or a racist, despite being led during all those years by a former governor of the FSoAZ.

We're not sure what effect any of this will have - even Bull Connor managed to cling to office until he became such an embarrassment that the people of Birmingham voted him out, which required a level of self-awareness that the people of Maricopa County seem to lack.  But either way, we're pretty sure this is the first official DHS report to contain the line "wetbacks, Mexican bitches and fucking Mexicans."

Sh*t My Dad Says

The Dead Juan Pablo II 2011 "Hell on Wheels" Tour: Additional Dates Announced!

Because Mexicans loves them some dead pontiff blood, Gabriel Berumen, the man in charge of logistics (ie, the "head roadie") for the tour, has sent a letter to the Vatican asking if it would be okay to add a few dates up along the border zone (presumably safety isn't a concern, what with the pope being already dead and everything). The idea is to get him up as close to the frontera as possible so that "the Hispanics who have emigrated to our neighboring country will also have the opportunity to participate in this show of faith."

In other words, Berumen - who, we concede, probably understands Mexican devotion better than we do - thinks that Mexicans who have crossed into El Norte are willing - indeed, demanding! - to cross back south, evading the ICE, the physical hazards, the coyotes and the narcos, for the chance to gaze momentarily upon a life-size waxen effigy of the pope which houses inside itself a tiny vial of his blood - a much smaller quantity of blood than was contained in the actual pope during his five living visits to Mexico.  Again, we'll defer to the man's expertise here, but if that's true, it's extraordinary. 

We'd ask why they don't just drive the Fake-Popemobile over the border, but we suppose there's a bunch of reasons why hauling a bag of pope-blood into the American Deep South is a bad idea, even (or especially) at Christmastime. 

Bilking the Indians: A Centuries-Old Tradition

Having eliminated all crime in the city, and reduced random bone-breaking beatings of the comunidad extranjera to fewer than one a week, the Police State of Querétaro is able to focus its enforcement wing on more serious threats, like the indigenous women and kids selling cheap crap on the streets. In the video below, a team of municipal inspectors relieve a young Otomí of her merchandise in an orderly, professional manner - by which we mean they wrestle it away from her and run off down the street, without writing up any sort of citation, receipt or documentation.  (The common term for this is "stealing.") We're sure the only difference between this and a dozen similar incidents daily is the presence of a camera.



We were tying to remember where we had seen this shaky nighttime, streetlight-illuminated video style before. Then it hit us:



The state Human Rights Commission is promising an investigation, so we can expect a bunch inspectors dressed as pallbearers standing outside that office any day now.

Great Moments In People Not Quite Grasping the Meaning of "Old School"

"Since 2011."

The Chicken Is My Cock

As gringos, we're constitutionally prohibited from participating in the political process here, so it's in no way an official endorsement when we say that we'd love to see local businessman Juan Arturo "El Pollo" Torreslanda succeed in his bid to purchase the mayor's office in next year's election. We can't say we know much about his politics or his policies, but we like that facts that (a) he, like the current governor, is the son of a former governor of Querétaro, which would put the state's two top offices in the hands of legacy hires; (b) he's the owner of the bullring in Juriquilla, which would put an end to any talk of outlawing bullfighting here, and actually probably usher in three years of terrific cartels, financed through some public slushfund; (c) he's a distinguished-looking grown man who goes by the nickname "The Chicken." Seriously if we were capable of inventing him, he'd be serving his fourth term as Brooklyn Borough President by now.

We also love him because he seems to be behind a series of enormous, expensive, election-law-evading billboards that have gone up around town advertising a new roast-chicken joint called "El Pollo Es Mi Gallo" - The Chicken is My Fighting Cock - which in Mexicanese means something like 'The Chicken fights for me." The billboards are colored in the red white and green of Torreslanda's PRI party.

E.P.E.M.G. is a real restaurant, which we haven't visited yet (we're out of town at the moment), but is apparently a tiny hole-in-the-wall place near the Mercado la Cruz, the kind of place which has trouble making change for 100 pesos, rather than the kind of place sinking tens of thousands of dollars into advertising. We hope to send our restaurant critic there in a few days and file a complete report.

Mmmmmm...corruption!

Dick In a Box

We're out of town at the moment, so we aren't reporting in person on the vial-of-a-dead-pope's-blood-stuffed-inside-a-wax-effigy's tour of the city, but it looked a little something like this:

InQro.com photo

Really, what else is there to say?

Hundreds of Mexicans Chase Virgin Through Central Park!

Our former CBS colleague and new Upper West Side Bureau Chief, Claudia Weinstein, sends us these pics of a bunch of Mexi-Neoyorquinos who've become so assimilated, they've forgotten that "The Guadalupe- Reyes Marathon" is just an expression.

Check back with us on Jaunary 6 to see who the winner is.

Top Gun

We've said it before (like, a couple dozen times): the cops in this town have got too many guns and not enough gun-learnin'.  "Someone's gonna poke an eye out," we said.  Or, as happened on Saturday, some cop's gonna accidentally shoot his partner to death.

Our first thought on reading this was, "Yeah, right, an 'accident'."  But seriously, have you ever heard of a competent law-enforcement officer accidentally offing his partner, not by mistake in the heat of battle, but just, "the dang thing done gone off"?  If we'd really done that, we'd stick ourselves in the arm, put the knife in our partner's cold dead hand and plead self defense.  Any cop who cops to accidentally icing his partner is incompetent enough that he simply has to be telling the truth.  Maybe delivering a guy like that a fresh machine gun every couple of months isn't such a hot idea.

Eine Kleine Chin-musik

Today's topic for debate: is the proprietor of this blog, or is he not, a "fucking piece of shit gringo"?  Okay, never mind - it's a rhetorical question.  But last Saturday night we found ourselves  debating this very issue with a total stranger from Mexico City, him taking the affirmative position while we argued to the contrary. Ultimately, the question was deemed unresolvable, but not before we were persuaded not to press the point any further.

After a rewarding evening spent tutoring a new bartender on the construction of the perfect martini, we were walking home along our own street - the one we've lived on for five years next week - when a beefy young man and his equally beefy girlfriend passed us on their way out of a bar and said, "Oye, pinche gringo..." Though rare, this isn't the first time we've heard this from some dumb rummy, and we ignored him the way we usually do.  But a block further up the street, Sancho Panza pulls up along side us in his car.

Hey, fucking gringo, where you from?

Considering it rude it ignore a direct question, we walked over to his car, stuck our head in the driver's window, and said, "Right here, idiot," and, gesturing toward his Mexico City plates, added, "Unlike you."

The next several moments were consumed in cross talk, with Sancho trying to clarify the question, his bubbleheaded escort squeaking, "No, where were you born?" and us explaining rather impatiently that we live right the fuck here and that maybe it would be best if they went the fuck back where they came from.  We ended the conversation with, "Does that answer your question, idiot?" and, with that, we reached into the car and patted him on his chubby cheek as if to say "now run along, bright boy," -  an insulting and patronizing gesture which, in retrospect, is the kind of thing you shouldn't do to a drunk and combative Mexican in full view of his chica.

Then we made a dumb mistake.  (Why no, the preceding wasn't the dumb part - we've been doing that all our lives.  Ask anyone we went to school with.)  Considering the matter more of less resolved in our favor, we turned around and walked away slowly and triumphantly, like a torero at the end of a brilliant faena. In less time than it will take you to finish this paragraph, we felt the fist on the back of our head, and the grit of the pavement as we lay in the street trying to remember which organs were most vulnerable to kicking.  There was the screaming girlfriend pulling him back, the shop owner's  sons running into the street, and us being helped to our feet as we yelled, "Yeah, you better fuckin' run, pinche pendejo!"  The final tally, arrived at after two sleepless nights forced us to at last go to the emergency room, was one rib broken, two more fractured, but nary a cut or a bruise on our beautiful gringo exterior.

(Also, at some point prior to this, someone appears to have accidentally dumped half a box of staples into our abdomen, which we plan to discuss with our GP next time we're in the States for a checkup.)

After Sancho slid his drunken ass behind the wheel again, we decided the wisest route was to limp down a one-way street where he couldn't follow us.  Instead, he pulled into the intersection, leaned out the window and loudly and repeatedly screamed, "Fucking piece of shit gringo!  Fucking piece of shit gringo!  Get the fuck out of here you fucking piece of shit gringo!"   This - rather than the public beatdown of a resident of the town in the middle of a busy street - managed to attract the members of the local constabulary, who we're told pulled him over and had a word with him.  We say "we're told" because, in keeping with our profound belief that there is no situation that is ever improved by the arrival of a Mexican policeman, we kept on walking.  With no one to press a complaint, Sancho and his moll trotted back to Mexico City for a bout of post-bellicosity lovemaking. 

Querétaro Centro is a place where nothing much exciting ever happens, so it doesn't take a lot to become talk of the town.  Maybe the most surprising reaction has been from Mexican friends who have apologized to us as if they'd done something wrong - as if we'd been collectively stomped on by Mexico rather than by the kind of slow-witted drunkard you find all over the world.  (Commenters who feel compelled to say things like, We told you it was a dangerous country, Pollyanna! need to pour themselves a great big snifter of shut-the-fuck-up.  Seriously, we got the shit kicked out of us in Swampscott on a twice-weekly basis for the entirety of the Carter presidency, and we don't recall the State Department issuing any travel warnings.)

That said, it's slightly sobering for a middle-class white heterosexual Christian male to get beat up on the basis of our identity.  Sure, you could make the argument that we got beat up for mouthing off above our weight class, but the whole altercation was bookended by the phrase "fucking gringo." If we were to go back home and jump up and down on somebody ribcage screaming "fuck you, fuckin' wetback," we'd be looking at a hate crimes prosecution.  Here in Mexico, not so much.  Though, depending how things work out in the Hague, we'll be keeping our options open.

Incidentally, we know the US has The Best Health Care System in the World, but a trip to the private hospital's emergency room, an exam, x-rays, the option (declined) to see a specialist, and a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and two extremely disappointing non-narcotic painkillers took a grand total of 90 minutes and cost about 120 dollars.  Unfortunately, the treatment for broken ribs is to do literally nothing.  Just suck it up and let the Good Lord work His magic. Fortunately, it only hurts when we laugh, cough, sneeze, belch, stand, sit, lie down or use any of the muscles between our shoulders and our hips.  We had a 10-second hiccuping fit yesterday that we'll remember long after we've forgotten September 11, and after a week this crap we'd trade the perro to the carnitas man for an hour of uninterrupted sleep.  Blogging will be short-tempered and cranky for the next 4-6 weeks.  Thank you in advance for not taking offense, pinche pendejos.