Tlaxcala, México (21 May 2008 ) -- A priest, Rolando Corona Eliosa has been apprehended by the Tlaxcala Federal Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of robbing sacred art.

The approximately 36 year old cleric was arrested in Municipio San Pablo del Monte, in the southern part of the state, and locked up in the Center for Social Readaption of the Tlaxcalan capital according to informatin provided by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office

According to investigations arising from criminal investigation, AP/RGR/TLAX/35/2004, the suspect, a parish priest in the community of San Andrés Buenavista, took six retablos stored in the chapel of the ex-hacienda El Rosario and from another church in the Municipio of Tlaxco, allegedly for restoration.

However, he did not have the permission of his superiors, nor of the the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) to do so.

In March 2004, he took retablos representing Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Rosalia, Saint Vincent Ferrer, God the Father and the Sorrowful Mother of Jesus as well as an unidentified piece.

On the fifth of September in that same year, when the directors of the ex-hacienda solicited the return of their pieces, Corona Eliosa sent painted replicas.

In March 2005, INAH personnel became suspicious, and conducted tests on the retablos, discovering the counterfeit works.

For having falsified the images, ecclesiastical authorities have suspended Corona Eliosa from his priestly functions.

When questioned, the detainee returned the retablos of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Rosalia, Saint Vincent Ferrer, God the Father and the Sorrowful Mother of Jesus, but the whereabouts of the unidentified piece are unknown.

As a result of these events, the social representative of the Federation opened criminal investigation file AP/PRG/TLAX/35/3004, including relevent complaints, and – not being able to locate the missing oil painting – determined there was a probable criminal violation of the Federal Law Regarding Monuments, Archeological Zones, Artistic and Historical Works.

“Federal agents complied with an apprehension order requested by the Federal Minister’s Office for crimes against the people of San Pablo del Monte, taking the prisoner to the Center for Social Readaption in the state Capital while the legal process continues,” the Federal Prosecutor’s Office press release stated.

However, the priest could be released on conditional liberty since robbing sacred art is not considered a serious crime in Tlaxcala.

Court fines are multiples of the "salario minimo" which is usually translated as "minimum wage," although it is more a benchmark figure for the cost of living in geographic areas of the country, as well as the lowest minimum daily wage. With Mexico having gone through devaluations several years ago, this was a handy way of not having to change the legal code every time the country went through a round of inflation or there was a currency change.

Campeche, Camp., 7 May 2008: Second District Court Judge, Jesus Bañales Sanchez, fined the outspoken poet Sergio Hernán Witz Rodriguez 50 pesos and gave him a "public reprimand" after finding the poet guilty of “outrage to the flag” for authoring a poem” to find it responsible for the crime of ultraje to the national standards, by his responsibility of the poem Invitation to a country full of shit [Invitación: La Patria entre la mierda]

Later that afternoon, the writer and university professor appealed his sentence, which he considers “ridiculous”. In spite of the very small fine (one "salario minimo" for Geographic Zone “C” which includes Campeche), Witz said that he will not accept that he has committed any crime by exerting his right to free expression.

In addition, Witz claims Federal Prosecutor’s office for Campeche Delegation prejudged the case. He noted that the Prosecutor’s office issued a press release about his sentence three hours before his court appearance.

Interviewed in person moments after his hearing, the poet said that once again the Mexican judicial system has held itself up for ridicule.

"But, seriously, it’s less the fifty pesos than the arguments on which they based the sentence.”

Of course, for writers in Mexico, fifty pesos could be a big deal.

This is his 1992 "Mexican Whale"... of which Senosiaian says:

The core of the architonic concept of this house is the result of a search for man's natural space and his historic and cultural roots along with the constructional traditions of Mexican art.

Whatever. It sure would stand out in your subdivision... unless your subdivision was the one Senosiaian designed in Lerma...

Traditional homebuilders in Mexican homes have been slow to change their thinking. As in the United States and the wealthy countries, more and more adults live on their own -- either single, or as couples independent of their multi-generational family homes. Some of these "new" Mexicans want to live in suburbia, just like in the rich countries. To meet their needs, the 1990 Lerma complex included what are basically stand-alone efficiency apartments. They look... well... NUTS...

Peanuts, to be exact --

Juana, the "little old lady killer" (La Mataviejitas) killed at least 29 elderly middle-class and upper middle-class women in Mexico City in 2005-2006. What made the case more interesting was what it revealed about changing Mexican culture. It used to be that people lived in multi-generational households, and it would be rare for elderly women to be living alone -- few had the luxury, and those that did generally lived with a companion, or at least a maid.

I lived a few doors down from a Mercado with apartments on the top floors (and wanted to rent there myself, but nothing ever came open). The place was almost an informal teachers' retirement home -- there was a gang of retired schoolma'arms living there who always had their dinner at the same Comida Economica I favored (and once, having made the error of sitting at THEIR table -- I forgot it was time for them to show up -- the one with Alzheimers simply sat down, rambled on and ate her dinner with me... probably having the same converstion -- and dinner -- she always did). The point is that little old ladies -- even maiden lady schoolma'arms usually weren't completely on their own.

It was kind of a shock to the sociologists and talking heads to discover that times were changing. The best anyone could do was advise this until then unknown social group to stick together (solidarity isn't just a political phrase in Mexico), and hang out in the parks or other public places. Being anti-clerical Mexico, of course the official worriers never suggested they all go to church.

Juana Barraza was operating in a changing social climate. The Federal District had just introduced a 600 peso credit for the elderly. That wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough in many cases to stretch the family budget to a point where grandma wasn't having to go out selling candy on the Metro. And, given the economic uncertainty in Mexico (and the worries of elderly middle-class ladies trying to maintain their standard of living), it was popular with most people. But, was the killer finding people through the pension records?

Given that Mexican politics is a rough sport, it was only to be expected that some in the media would blame the leftist district government (specifically AMLO) for somehow unleasing the killer. Then again, anything that went wrong in Mexico City was blamed on AMLO by the same people.

As it turned out, Barraza was -- in a roundabout way -- taking advantage of the social services system. The victims were mostly middle-class, or upper middle-class women. Usually they did have a maid, but very few people have live-ins any more. Barraza, again unusual for a serial killer, didn't have some particuarly twisted psychotic reason for killing... it was simple greed. She'd killed the old ladies to cover up robberies.

She'd show up, claiming to be from the District health department (public health workers, social services providers -- and even the animal control folks -- who innoculated my dogs for free) do show up at your door from time to time in DF). If no one was home, she just broke in and robbed the joint. And, if she wasn't caught in the robbery, the little old lady lived to tell the tale. Which several did. And led to Barraza's capture in June 2006.

Barraza was sentenced to 900 years in the slammer yesterday. That in itself is noteworthy. Mexico has no death penalty (it is a civilized country, after all) and no such thing as a "life sentence". The maximum sentence for any crime is 50 years. However, with 17 murder convictions, and 12 for robbery, even with time off for good behavior, she's unlikely to leave prison alive. If she does, she'll be a very old lady by then -- and hopefully living alone.

The champion serial killers of all times in Mexico were also women with an odd business ethic. Las Poquianchis, Delfina and María de Jesús Gonzáles buried at least eighty women and ten men in their back yard.

The sisters were too cheap to pay pensions to aging hookers, and a shallow grave in the back yard was the retirement plan at Guanajuanto's Whorehouse from Hell. Other victims were unfortunate job seekers. Everyone knew there was something shady about the Gonzáles sisters' establishment, and the job seekers who answered their want ads weren't always suitable for the world's oldest profession. Some of those ending up in the back yard were the ultimate in rejected job applicants. The men were apparently out-of-town customers who'd showed up with cash in their pockets. The pair was convicted in 1964 and each received a measly 40 year sentence.

Las Poquianchis were immortalized in Jorge Ibargüengoitia's satirical 1977 novel, Los Muertas (available in English as "Dead Girls"). And, you'll still find Mexicans who grew up in the 60s and 70s who call slutty girls "Las Poquianchis" -- for the killers or the victims, I can't say.

Their English-language selection is rather small, but perhaps they'll have room for a Mexican history in English book ... and perhaps someone will buy the author a coffee (and the book, natch)

Photo by Lourdes Place

In an up-scale neighborhood of Culiacán, the botanical displays seem to reflect Sinaloa's proud agrarian traditions. This meter high beauty (photographed by Alfredo Tolosa of El Universal) graces one of the city's boulevards...

... Two American tourists, Billy David Thomas, 32, and Mitchell Owen Collins, 33, both of Denver, found themselves in a legal debacle after taking photographs of Mexican children in Puerto Vallarta. The children’s parents alerted authorities because they said Thomas and Collins were hiding while taking the pictures with the intention of uploading them and posting them on the Internet.

According to an article in Guadalajara daily El Informador, one of the parents, Jose Socorro Nava Gomez, told police that two Americans had taken photos of his children without his consent.

When the fathers confronted the two men, they said that they were planning to compensate the children with Christmas money. The fathers were not satisfied and a fight ensued. During the melee, the Americans managed to flee to a nearby church where they were eventually identified and detained by police.

In recent years, child pornography and pedophilia have become an all-too serious issue in Puerto Vallarta. There have been several high profile arrests of foreigners who allegedly have come to the resort city to engage in “sexual tourism.” In one of the most notorious cases, San Francisco millionaire Thomas Frank White was jailed on child sexual abuse charges and providing drugs to minors.

So with this type of history, it’s understandable that parents in Puerto Vallarta might be sensitive to these kinds of issues. When in doubt, ask first.

At press time, this newspaper understood that the men had been released and not charged.

Tourists, don't let this happen to you! Spend the 90 pesos for "Enjoy Mexico in Spanish" before you go -- which happened to be reviewed in the 29 December edition (along with my Bosques' War, from the same publisher)  of the same Mexican newspaper.

...a towering personality, esteemed as "El Maestro" not only for his art but for his leadership in the protection of Oaxaca's political autonomy, cultural heritage and environment. In Mexico, he's sort of Al Gore, Sitting Bull, and the Yale art department, all rolled into one.

We don't think of Toledo as a Zapotec, though he's probably the best known member of that Oxacacan indigeneous group since Benito Juárez. When I was writing my Mexican history for foreigners (good news ... it looks like pre-publication review copies will be available as early as January), I always had to mention the "race" of prominent Mexicans who were from minorities. Juárez' "Zapotec-itude" is of less concern to Mexican historians than the fact that he overcame a non-Spanish speaking, dirt-poor backcountry childhood. Or that Juan Alvardo or Vicente Guerrero were Afro-Mexicans.

At first, I thought Biskoff might be using the Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotaka) reference simply because it was the first "Indian" that came to mind. But it makes sense. The wise Hunkpapa leader

... was not impressed by white society and their version of civilization... He counseled his people to be wary of what they accept from white culture. He saw some things which might benefit his people; but cautioned Indian people to accept only those things that were useful to us, and to leave everything else alone. Tatanka Iyotaka was a man of clear vision and pure motivation.

Maybe it fits. Francisco Toledo -- as a world-renowned artist -- has traded on his name-recognition to fight cultural hegonomy. Sitting Bull, during his tours with the Buffalo Bill Wild-West Show used to give food and money to poor whites. Toledo, protesting the imposition of a McDonalds' on Oaxaca City's main Zocalo, also fed the "whites" -- though in Oaxaca, foreign tourists weren't so much in need of immediate assistance as consciousness-raising.

Since the 2002 "Food Fight" Toledo has been connected with numerous actions to protect his state (and his people -- or people in general) from those that would impose foreign values (or plain old fashioned home-grown repression. Sitting Bull isn't such a bad comparison.

Rabbit Beheading Bean

 2002, oil on canvas (Arts Central)

There's a whole sub-genre of Mexican literature, the fictive biography. Carlos Casteñada (ok, he was Peruvian, but his subject was Mexican) inspired a whole generation of gringos to come looking for Don Juan (or at least hallucinate about him; Diego Rivera entertained himself (and the rest of us) making up his life story for his official biographer, Bertram Wolfe; Princess Salm-Salm milked her brief Mexican experience for all it was worth in her untrustworthy (but eminently readable) biography of Prince Felix; Martin Guzmán's "Eagle and the Serpent" is sometimes listed as a biolgraphy of Pancho Villa, and sometimes as a novel about Pancho. It's both. Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Fuentes have both written fictional biographies, which may or may not be true.

I don't know that it's a "Latin thing" -- after all Emily Dickinson (about as un-Latin as you can get) once wrote "Tell the truth, but tell it slant." Burro Hall -- who like Miss Dickinson -- is from Massachucetts (which must mean something, I'm sure), is delighted with the latest contribution to Mexican fictography, Vicente Fox's Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President (Viking, 2007. Listed at 27.95, but already marked down to $16.65 at Amazon).

Delighted, but not completely sold on it:

Ex-presidente Vicente "Fat Tony" Fox, the American-educated former executive for the American Coca-Cola Company, has written his life's story (co-authored with his American political consultant Rob Allyn) about how, when he was president, he kept it real by wearing cowboy boots. He's currently on a book tour in America. Why not Mexico? Because the book is written in American, not Mexican. After six years of Fox's rule, the adult literacy numbers apparently aren't high enough to justify publishing a book here.

Very odd to have the book that claims George W. Bush speaks "grade school Spanish" co-authored by a guy who sells the idea that George W. can speak coherently in English or Spanish:

"One of the first phone calls George W. Bush made after the inauguration was to Mexican president Vicente Fox. The men chatted amiably in Spanish. Perhaps President Bush ought to keep Rob Allyn’s phone number nearby, too—Allyn helped put Fox in power.

Burro has great fun in looking at Don Chente's own reality-challenged claims, but he's a politician and, we'd expect his autobiography to be at least half-bullshit, and 100 percent self-serving. Rob Alyn is only the co-author, but given Fox's well-known aversion to reading, one suspects Alyn contributed something more than fifty percent of the total project.

Alyn is a professional sleaze-bag political media consultant. As Sourcewatch notes about his affairs in the U.S.:

Allyn was a key player in the George W. Bush campaign to discredit his rival for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination Senator John McCain. Millionaire Bush supporter Sam Wyly funded Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCain in key states during the 2000 primary campaign. Rob Allyn was paid $46,000 to help create the ads.

His pimping consulting for Fox's 2000 campaign (suspected of being paid for the the U.S. Republican Party) was more controversial. Narco News has been on Alyn's back for years. As they point out, Alyn set up a front group called "Democracy Watch" and engaged in all kinds of illegal activities in Mexico before and after Fox's 2000 campaign, in his attempt to sell the candidate from a former fascist party as a "democratic alternative" to the PRI.

Don't get me wrong... I like Mexican fiction, and I'm just twisted enough to enjoy Mexican politics. But, I want to wait until either Vicente Fox reads "his" book and gives a cogent report on it, or it's marked down by Amazon to a buck.

I was going to write about this, but Burro Hall beat me to it, and did a better job

The local politicos in Boca del Rio thought putting up a statue in honor of Vicente Fox was a nice idea. PRI politicos wanted an edgy performance art piece... and you can see the result.

PAN had a repeat performance of "raising Vicente" yesterday, this time joined by the aesthetes of PRD, who were quoted in the press as saying the statue -- or maybe Don Chente himself -- was in the worst possible taste.

Vincente -- and the statue -- are, I must admit, rather cursi.

Carlos Monsivias on opening Taco Bell Restaurants in Mexico.

Since whatever those weird things that look like napkin holders full of hamburger that Taco Bell calls "tacos" in the U.S. are assuredly NOT tacos... they're called "Tacostadas" in Mexico.  Which kind of defeats the purpose of the restaurant's name.

Some Mexican media outlets, afraid of retaliation from drug lords, have shied away from reporting on the brutality ravaging the country.

The void has been filled by an unlikely source — an artist.

Using a bundle of tattered blankets as her canvas, Rosa Maria Robles splattered it with red paint — a gruesome representation of the bloody shrouds that encase victims of the drug wars in Mexico.

The exhibit, titled "Red Carpet," is on display at a museum in Sinaloa, the northern state plagued by gangland murders.

The artist included what she claimed were blankets from actual crimes, although she refused to say where she got them, Reuters reported.

The display is no substitute for solid reporting by the media, but it represents a grim reminder of the violence in Mexico — and the critical need for the government to address it.

(Photo: Marco Peláez, Jornada)

See... I told you all Mexicans aren't Frida Kahlo fans. This is the scene outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes at the opening of the Kahlo exhibit. Of course, SOME of the protests may have had a bit to do with Felipe Calderón (FeCAL)'s appearance (he had to be hustled in by a side door). The press was "disinvited" to what was originally supposed to be a public Presidential appearance.

School teachers, the APPO, the PRD and the supporters of the Alternative Presidency (yup, they didn't just dry up and disappear) all showed up (and, el Universal reports, and had some strong words for the invited guests (movie actresses, business leaders and the like): "pendejos" being one of the milder ones.

There's something a little more than a bit ironic in all this. Kahlo's wake was to have been held at the Palacio back in 1954 but the then "leftist" PRI government refused to allow the Communist Kahlo to be so honored...so, now that she's hip (for things having to do with clothing style, or her physical problems or... well, everything BUT her art) , she's in with the right-wing present administration. And, again, locks out the people from the people's art palace.

With no press coverage of the "official" event, who do you think got the good coverage this morning?

Now, I realize this vato never spent time in my third period High School Spanish II class, where dudes named Hernandez and Garcia regularly butchered certain simple verb conjugations, but his assumption that every Brown person in the United States spoke Spanish and could read Octavio Paz was fundamentally wrong. I was reminded of this every time I struggled in speaking to my grandmother.

What actually does bind us all, I submit, is not a shared knowledge of the mother tongue but instead a reckoning with the language. Not all of Brown folks in the U.S. speak Spanish, especially as the generation number accumulates, and those that do speak Spanish do it at various levels of ease and ability.

“My soul frets in the shadow of his language,” the original Pocho James Joyce wrote. Having his raza’s OG mother tongue of Irish Gaelic subjugated by the conquering English, Joyce had the final laugh by mastering his oppressor’s language and writing Finnegan’s Wake, which to this day puzzles Oxford deans.

Of course, Jimmy is right. The loss of the "mother tongue" should be no surprise to anyone: no one expects Rudolf Giuliani or Nancy Pelosi to speak fluent Italian. Despite my family name, I have no interest in learning, or speaking, German. It's of absolutely no use to me, though Spanglish and Spanish are. The wonder isn't that Charlie Gonzales has trouble with the language of his distinguished forefathers... the wonder is that it's held on at all. It's to Chalie Gonzales' credit that he's going to the trouble of learning the family tongue. Too bad the same can't be said for Anglo George W. Bush.

Most of this site's original readers are folks interested in Mexican travel... and a lot of them make just the assumption Jimmy objects to. It's funny, but I hear from travel snobs who complain that Mexicans speak too much English. The would be "off the tourist trail" traveler is always disappointed that they've gone to the trouble to learn Spanish, and then find themselves answered by some guy who spent a couple of years washing dishes in Chicago.

The Real Academia Español is still arguing (last I heard) on whether Spanglish is a dialect of Spanish, or one of English. Or its own language. I tend to think the latter. It has a grammar and literature of its own. And, there's no rule that says a language can't combine two wildly different roots -- English throws Germanic and Romance languages together somehow). I once heard it said that "a dialect is a language without a country," but then again, "Texas is a whole other country," too.

Well, the facts are, immigration is FUBAR. Even for legal immigrants, it's not the simplistic world of Pat Buchanan or Lou Dobbs. If they want to read fiction, they should stick to Kafka. Otherwise, they should be reading Laura Fern's One Step Closer

I miss Fermin. I’m an independent, generally optimistic person, and I really believe not dwelling on our separation is best for me. It’s not denial, just coping. I stay busy, work hard, remain a productive member of my community and workplace. But some days, when all this stuff piles up, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight, and I don’t have a trip planned to Mexico, I just want to give a big middle finger to this country, quit my job(s) and move to Mexico.

This puts a very human (and very literature human at that) face on a part of the immigration "issue" we don't often see.  For Fern, and her husband, Ferman, this isn't an issue... this is people.  The absurdities of the immigration process mean Ferman is living and working in Mexico, Laura in Milwaukee. 

Both are well-educated people, and work, but even they can't quite manage the absurd immigration process.  She writes (in response to a person questioning another separated couple's situation, and the supposed "ease" of immigration):

Mr. Lopez is applying for lawful permanent residency (this is necessary before applying for citizenship) through his fiance relationship with Laura Braun. However, were he not involved with her (or another U.S. Citizen), there would be no avenue for him to legalize. Even if he had never been in the country illegally and been deported, he would have had to be an extremely educated or exceptionally skilled foreign worder to immigrate here legally. I appreciate your sincere questions on this issue, but I have to admit I am always shocked when I realize that there are still many who believe Mexicans (and other low-skilled foreign workers) have some legal way to immigrate to the U.S. They very simply do not. 

Laura recommends "immigate2us.net" for people like her, and ... I'm assuing... some MexFile readers might also find this a useful resource.  Those of us NOT in this situation could learn something (but we have no business posting there).  So could Franz. 

(original in El Informador de Guadelajara, 7-abril-2007, my translation)

He was a taxi driver like any other in a North American city: brown-skinned, speaking only a little English, but knowing streets he could barely pronounce like the back of his hand. Our driver was Ethiopian, but immediately identified his Mexican passengers as compatriots, both citizens of somewhere other than the first world.

He was a philosopher-taxi driver. His first question confirmed our citizenship with the univerally displaced: “What did we find different in the United States from Mexico?”

The first thing that came to mind was that in our country people do not run alienated from one thing to another, stuffing in fast food , while stressed out in their search for something they never seem to find.

A big smile crossed the driver's face. We had passed the test.

“Exactly,” he said. “I don't understand rich people. They enjoy things and pleasures we never would dream of in Ethiopia, but they don't seem happy. In my family, we often could only eat once a day, but I remember us laughing and dancing a lot.”. He added pensively, “People don't dance here.”

He said it as if it were a scientific discovery, a critical indicator of human unhappiness. We got out of the cab, amazed by our philosophical cabbie, though amused by what we saw as another folk tale of life in the New York jungle.

A few days later, I learned that our Ethiopian taxi driver's reflections were much more “scientific” than I'd first thought. Leafing through the April issue of “Mother Jones,” I ran across an article by Bill McKibben (http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2007/03/index.html), from a new book, “Deep Economy: The durable wealth of communities and the future.”

McKibben's article is a notable confirmation of our taxi driver's thesis. The author looks at various research which reveals the growing unhappiness of first-world inhabitants, individually and collectively.

Of course that the human beings are displeased if they cannot satisfy basic needs. But once the required food, shelter, clothing and education are met, all the indicators show that happiness has to do with factors unrelated to family or national income. In other worlds, the middle-class family should have equal or better chances of being happy than those from a wealthy family.

Starting in 1972, the Opinion Research Center of the United States has asked citizens about their level of happiness and satisfaction with their lives. The optimistic responses have decreased substantially over the years, even as per capita income and consumption levels have multiplied several times. And this is not just a subjective measurement. The responses cross-check against other indications like stress levels, work and family conflicts, willingness to help others, worries about personal security, etc. The unhappiness is not just individual, but agrees with indicators relative to society as a whole: family indebtedness, violence, suicides, drug dependency. A 2000 report showed that the average anxiety levels among young Americans was higher than among children in psychotherapy in the 1950s. The author reports that there are similar indicators from Japan, England and other first world countries.

Study after study shows that happiness has much more to do with a person's relationship with their social network than with the number “satisfactors.” But modern man is going in exactly the wrong direction, turning his back on millenia of “human community” to search for a deeper individualism.

Instantaneous communication (by cellular and e-mail) have meant more communications, but the quality of conversation has diminished. A social psychology researcher, for example, found a correlation between the level of happiness reported by people and the number of intimates with whom the person was accustomed to speak of their problems. North American houses are increasingly larger, and give more opportunity for “members of the family to know the least possible about each other.”

Another writer, Benjamin R. Barber, has labelled the tendancies of modern society as a form of infantile regression and immaturity (in his book “Consumed: How markets corrupt children, infantilize adults, and swallow citizens whole"). We prioritize, Barber says, the image over the idea, pleasure over happiness, egoism over altruism, instant gratification in place of lasting satisfaction, sexual pleasure over erotic love, and dogmatism over doubt.

What we see from all the research, McKibben says, is that people who have friends and intimate family relations, and who are part of social networks are the happiest. While this is not a surprise, it does mean that social ties diminish individual liberties assumed to be the “maximum good.” Being a good friend imposes some sacrifices.

I never learned the name of our Ethiopian taxi driver. But I am sure he is happier than the harried passengers he drives around Manhattan. Most of them don't dance.

IT'S NOT OFTEN that you'll hear me say "I sure wish I were in Houston!" But this is an exception.

Concerts, exhibitions and performances are only part of the National Sor Juana Festival: A Tribute to Mexican Women, which begins Sunday and continues at venues across the city through April.

The festival celebrates Mexican-born Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), a poet, playwright, rebel nun — and the first feminist of the Americas. [...]

—chron.com

What a woman! Come on. Poet, playwright, rebel nun? Damn.

Nun. Yup. Mexican-born. Yup. Also Mexican lived and died. I had the advantage of having lived in Santa Maria de la Ribera, where the streets are named for Mexican writers and poets. Specifically, I lived next to the fruit vendor (it was a farmacia while I was there) behind the Jehovah's Witnesses' empanda stand on Dr. Enrique Gonzales Martinez (who is best know... if known at all... in English for translating T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" into Spanish) and calle Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

I don't understand why Sor Juana isn't better known in the United States... other than she was Spanish-speaking and Mexican. She was the continent's first real feminist (what got her in trouble with the Church was defending women's education), writing philosophy, theology, drama and... when she had the time... poetry.

Her English contemporaries, Donne, Marvell, John Milton, also speculated on God and man and mixed the erotic and sacred in their writing. Though the English think their "metaphysical poetry" is unique, it is all part of the same Baroque mindset. In Spanish literature, she's at the top of most lists, somewhere between Cervantes and Garcia Lorca. Octavio Paz (who knew something about poetry, and about world literature) once said, the first, and best, American poet.

While I've focused my own Mexican history on the foreigners, Sor Juana is one of the people, like Benito Juarez or Santa Ana, just can't overlook...

The greatest of Mexico's colonial intellectuals produced mystical and erotic poetry, feminist tracts and philosophical studies. If that wasn't enough, she defended scientific education in a religious age. This was an unusual combination of talents, especially for a nun.

Juana Inés María del Carmen Martínez de Zaragoza Gaxiola de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana Odonoju was a child prodigy. Born in 1651, she could read and write by the time she was three. The only place for a prodigy like Juana was Mexico City. She was sent to live with relatives. She was a talented writer and musician by the time she was a teenager, and was a beauty on top of everything else. The Viceroy's wife heard about this amazing country girl, and moved her into the palace. The girl could hold her own with scholars and fended off would-be boyfriends with witty verses. Some of her most erotic poetry was addressed to the Viceroy's wife, which some people take to mean she was a lesbian.

She may have been, but the only career paths for respectable women were as wives or nuns. A housewife wouldn't be able to pursue intellectual interests, so she joined the Carmelite nuns, taking the religious name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The Carmelites practiced strict discipline with no personal comforts - they would only sleep for an hour of two on cold floors between religious services, and never ate hot meals. Sometimes they whipped themselves as a religious practice. This nearly killed Juana, and the Viceroy's wife rescued her once again, sending her to the Jeronomytes, whom the Carmelites probably considered slackers. The Jeronomyte convents were more women's residential hotels with religious obligations. Juana collected books, wrote and, shocking the entire Mexican clergy, wrote theology and defended science studies, and women's education in general.

When the Viceroy and his wife returned to Spain, Juana lost her powerful defenders. Visitors dropped off and the Jeronomyte superiors were suspicious of the radical nun. Cut off from her friends, she either became depressed, or developed serious religious ideas. She gave up her studies, put away her papers and books, moved into an isolated room in the convent and took up the Carmelite practices. In her own blood, she wrote out religious vows, signing them "Juana, the worst of all". Two years later, at age 43, she died in a cholera epidemic, one of the major intellectuals and writers of the 17th Century¹.

Rosa divina II (translated by B. Limosneros)

Rose, heaven's flower versed in grace,

from your subtle censers you dispense

on beauty, scarlet homilies,

snowy lessons in loveliness.

Frail emblem of our human framing,

prophetess of cultivation's ruin,

in whose chambers nature beds

the cradle's joys in sepulchral gloom.

So haughty in your youth, presumptuous bloom,

so archly death's approaches you disdained.

Yet even as blossoms soon fade and fray

to the tattered copes of our noon's collapse -

so through life's low masquerades and death's high craft,

your living veils all your dying unmasks.

1 Sor Juana is probably the only pre-Independence woman (other than the Virgin of Guadalupe) who’s name you see on street signs. Her portrait is on the 200-peso note. Fittingly, the convent where she lived is now Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana.

The Nobel Prize Winning Columbian-born author (and naturalized Mexican citizen) after a  ... ah... heated literary discussion in Mexico City with conservative Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa back in February 1976.  Jornada photo by  Rodrigo Moya 

Several articles in today's Jornada:

On the world-wide birthday party

On Diatriba de amor contra un hombre sentado.(Garcia's one and only stageplay)

The hoopla in Aracataca Colombia

And... about that shiner.

 “There’s no abundance of travel books in our national letters,” notes Emmanuel Carballo, the dean of Mexican literary critics, in his prologue to “¿Qué país es éste?” (“What Country is This?")

That curious fact couldn’t have helped Carballo’s task of selecting commentary by Mexican writers about the United States..

.... More than one excerpted author from the 19th century, for example, dwells on the public slave auctions they witnessed. And lest modern readers smugly assign such atrocities to the distant past, a contemporary visitor may be similarly shocked at the frequent public executions carried out on U.S. soil — a practice considered barbaric in most of the world but pursued with gusto in the United States by politicians and the public alike. In less disturbing matters, visitors still tend to notice things that natives don’t. Writes Lorenzo de Zavala (1788-1836), the earliest author to appear in the book, “As for the North Americans’ habit of frequent spitting, we shouldn’t conclude that it is a repugnant defect in polite society, given the general custom of chewing tobacco.”

Kelly Arthur Garret, in Monday's Mexico City Herald.

Muerte en canasto by Franciso Toledo, Interior by José Luis Cuevas (both limited run lithographs), a pencil drawing by Rafael Coronel and Guillermo Scully's Sax "mysteriously disappeared" from the Heroico Cuerpo de Donadores' storeroom. 

 We "heroic donors" put up the money for a new firehouse in Colonia Cuauhtémoc... on the site of the Lobohomo nightclub, that burned down in 2000, killing 24 teenagers.  It wasn't the fire department's fault... there just wasn't a firehouse that could get to the Zona Rosa in time.  Having spent more time in more ZR clubs than I'd like to admit, I don't feel particularly "heroic" in donating a few pesos for something so worthwhile, but hey, how can you not support the Heroico Cuerpo de Bomberos? 

We donadores put up the money originally just for a modest neighborhood firehouse.  So much for the idea that Mexicans don't support charities... we ended up (heroically) donating 79,362,000 pesos.  The money went towards an "environmentally-smart" 1300 square meter firehouse, training center and communications center.  AND... and upgrades to 14 local firehouses) and whatever else the fire department needs.    By the way, donations to the Heroico Cuerpo de Donadores, A.C. can be made to HBSC account # 4037889151, Sucursal 3070 (monumento a la Madre). 

There was some slight grumbling, when the firemen's union wanted a raise a few years ago, but even then, it was only a questin of "how much?" not "do they deserve one?"  Chilangos despise los Esmurfs (the cops) and like their Pependores (garbagemen), but respect los Bomberos.  You'll never hear of a scandal or shakedown by a fireman... even when he's not pulling you out of an exploding building, dealing with earthquakes, floods and the occasional fire we have in a mostly concrete city. 

Next to robbing a church, this is about as low as you can go.  Whoever did this probably deserves to burn... horribly... for several millenia. 

Art is not for those who can afford the galleries.  Why shouldn't some of the best exhibits in Mexico City only cost two pesos?  Ride the Metro.  You never know what you'll see or find.  Besides the people, I mean.

 There's the fossilized mammoth at Talismán (it's advertised... the stop's glyph is a Mammoth), the mosaics on Linea B (Tepito's is fun, showing off the bravado of el barrio bravo), the scale model of Tenotichtlan in Zocalo Station (and the publisher's tunnel between Zocalo and Pino Suarez, with parts of an Aztec temple in the corridor), the science exhibits and the planetarium at La Raza.  The temporary art exhibits are sometimes better than what you'd find ducking in and out of the high falutin' galleries in Zona Rosa or Coyoacán.  There was a fun one featuring dinasours made of industrial tubing in the rotunda at San Lázaro for a time, and there were several cutting edge displays at Cuarto Caminos -- featuring "Missing Person" posters that were good enough to annoy middle-class suburbanites and had to be moved. 

So, when I read this, I said... COOOLLL! 

Six Artists take on Mexico's problems (my translation) 

México.- An intergeneration collective of six artists take on contemporary problems in a series of murals. Entitled “Artist's Denunciations” the six panels by six different artists deal with rural soil degradation, underfinancing for culture, migration, illegal commerce, extreme poverty and narcotics trafficing.

Work on the project began today, and will continue through the end of the month, as the artists paint the murals in public, eventually covering the central display cases in Zócalo Station (Metro Line 2).

The three artists who started work today were the object of curious stares from passer-bys, as they donned white uniforms to began installing six blank 1.80 meter wide canvases that cover the plate glass windowes, and started to apply their first brushstrokes.

Unaware of what was planned, the public began to watch with appreciation the the serveral techniques and movements of the work in progress. The groups' coordinator, and one of the painters, Juan Carlos Garcés, said that “Communications media have a duty to inform the public of serious problems in the country.”

He added, “ Too many artists have lost the view that painting is a resource which also serve to tell the people not to be indifferent, and which speaks to the present adversity of thousands of Mexicans.

Antonio Cruz said, “Today's painters do landscapes. They've forgetten they are heirs to the great muralists of the 50s, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, that made “portraits” of the cournty's reality."

For this project, the people will be able to meet with the artists, criticize the work, and exchange ideas. According to project coordinator Juan Carlos Garcés, the work is an graphic interpretation by the two generations, uniting in artistic creativitity to bring national problems into public consciousness.

Little by little, with different painters using different techniques, three of the six canvases started to take on the form, texture and composition of their chosen theme.

Isaac Holoschutz, one of the first three artists, immediately took up his brush and began drawing green, white, black and yellow human figures, part of his work on narcotics trafficing.

Carlos Estevan García, who has taken on the theme of Extreme Poverty, will use starkly outlined figures to show the present situation in the country.

Juan Carlos Garcés called on artists to join in the project, and use painting to come to know the nation's problems.

Besides Garcés, 50, the collective includes Antonio Cruz, 52, Cristóbal Flores, 21, Bernardo Franco, 19, Carlos Estevan García, 25, and Isaac Holoschutz, 43.

Cruz's piece, “El Campo” (“The Field”) expresses the effects of 70 years of “letting erosion turn the earth to sterile, useless dust, with harvests monopolized before planting.” Cruz said that the character and composition of the colors were meant to further his artistic ends.

Cristóbal Flores Carmona's “El Presupuesto Bajo para la Cultura” (“The low cultural budget”) is in a lyrical style, expressing the thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, fantasies and hopes for a time when there is a whole society. Flores' work turns on emotion, and a strong sense of perspective and composition.

Bernardo Franco, working in a frankly fantastical mode, with stylized and imaginary figures is creating a retrospective on migration. Juan Carlos Garcés is using a combination of resins and other materials to give volume to “El Comercio Informal”.

The project is being funded by the Board of Directors of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics (Junta Directiva Nacional de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía y Estadística) in collaboration with the Collective Transit System( Sistema de Transporte Colectivo (Metro)).

Notimex

"University Station" ©2001, Edward Dawson

Molly Ivins, 1944 -2007

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults

There are some fine "in memoriums" on Molly Ivins around... The Texas Observer, which prides itself on covering the "strangest state in the union" devotes their entire latest issue to Ivins.  Her last regular newspaper employer, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram laments the passing of a "difficult" writer. 

"XicanoPwr" at ¡Para justicia y liberdad! expresses the thoughts of the hoarde (and we are legion) of Texas progressives who've lost the best -- and funniest -- of us. 

 Ivins, like me, wasn't born in Texas, but never let that shut us up. But I didn't get here until much later, and she grew up here, managing to even date some not-real-bright, but presentable college boy named George W. Bush during her years in Houston. 

Ivins was the first "major" Texas news writer to come out and say that it was racist for papers not to have Spanish-speaking reporters.  My Spanish is aweful, by the way, but I'd miss a hell of a lot of what happens around here if I didn't hear what was said around me.  And, around here, half of it is in Spanish. 

When I lived in Mexico City, I kept up with what was really going on in Tejas, not from the A.P., but from Ivin's column in Jornada.  Though she was fluent in Spanish, her wit and style was that of an old-fashioned story-teller (and, covering the scoundrels and rascals that run Texas, there's never a dearth of stories to tell), dependent on nuance and turn of phrase that didn't always come through in a serious, academic, scrupulously edited publication like Jornada.  Oh, they could deal with "el gobernador bien-pelo" without too much trouble, but quoting Ann Richard's wisecrack about having to take the Christmas Star off the Texas Statehouse ("Nunca podremos ahora conseguir a tres hombres sabios" -- "Now we'll never find three wise men") required one of Jornada's specialties... a learned footnote and short essay on cultural differences, attached to a newspaper column (but, hey, that's Jornada!). 

Ivins and I agree about West Texans -- "The nicest people in the world. You just don't want them running it."  She was writing about the rich guys from Midland.  Those of us in the strangest corner of the strangest chunk of the strangest state of the Union, whichever language we speak, aren't in any position to do so.  We're the kind of people she wrote for -- not the big boys, but those affected by the outside world:  

Vibrant as the Paint on the Walls

John Ross

The walls of this city of painters have been freshly whitewashed on orders from a much-lampooned governor, the whiteout financed by transnational tourist moguls to promote the illusion that peace has returned to Oaxaca.  ...there were seven months of dramatic confrontations between striking teachers and their allies in the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO) and security forces backing the despotic governor Ulisis Ruiz whose removal from office the insurgents demand. Over 200 prisoners were taken during the skirmishing and another 60 are listed as disappeared. 19 dissidents have been gunned down by Ruiz's death squads.

But despite the savage repression, if one keeps an ear to the ground and an eye to the whitewashed walls once plastered with revolutionary slogans, tags, full-length murals, throw-ups, and ingenious stencils, it doesn’t much sound or look like the Oaxaca Intifada is done with yet.

...The bitterness of those who have suffered seven months of depravities at the governor's hands finds distinct outlets...

Oaxaca is a city of painters, the cradle of the late master colorist Rufino Tamayo and the very much-alive Francisco Toledo who stands with the resistance movement, and during the long struggle the walls of the city were transformed into a dizzying open-air gallery of popular art.  Despite the thousands of gallons that have been expended to blot out the rebellion in a doomed campaign to assure tourists that "no pasa nada aqui", that nothing is happening here and it is safe to return, the images, like the anger, endure just beneath the surface.  "The white paint cannot erase the blood of our comrades" defiantly advertises a spray-painted wall scrawl.  A remarkable archive of over a thousand images of the struggle for the walls of Oaxaca offers poignant witness to the ongoing resistance.

Some of the works were spray painted freehand, others stenciled onto every available space, still others printed out on paper and fastened to the walls with a wheat glue tough as steel so that to remove the offending art requires dismantling the buildings to which they were affixed brick by brick.  Although Ulisis's obliteration teams stalk the streets, new art goes up every day right under the noses of the police.

Indeed, Ulisis is everywhere on these walls - as a burro, as a rat, a raccoon, a chimpanzee, a skull and crossbones, with shit on his head. A mammoth Mayan head was painted to scale by an apparently well-coordinated team of throw-up artists, a Playboy nude appeared curled up on the wall of the Cathedral rectory and tagged as "The Pope's Girlfriend" - the Church played an equivocal role in the Oaxaca uprising.

...

Zapata in a gas mask is still up there just under the whitewash, Benito Juarez with a Mohawk. Mug shots of Gandhi, the old anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon, the martyred guerrillero Lucio Cabanas, the Zapatistas' Comandanta Ramona.

This ebullient outpouring of graphic resistance to the caprices of a governor whose sanity is openly questioned, and the connivance of a government under the "hard hand" of a president much of the electoral considers a usurper, is firmly rooted in the popular traditions of Oaxaca, the most indigenous entity in the Mexican union ...

I'm of two minds about what to tell people.  I know too many foreigners of limited means who live in Oaxaca -- they can't pack up and leave, having become Oaxaños themselves, and are (for the most part) sympathetic to the people's demands.  But, as foreigners, they can do nothing overt. 

These foreigners have been the best witnesses (and, in "Mark-in-Mexico's case ... the worst).  And, yes... Oaxaca is a very safe place for a foreigner to travel.  If nothing else, a tourist on the spot will likely keep the goons from acting out (I admit once having invited a Mayan ambulanta to share a coffee at my outside table on the Mexico City Zocalo during a Granadero raid.  No copper was going to seize her beads and trinkets that were shoved under the table ... and not a damn thing the cop could do but stare daggers at me.  We had a leisurely cafe til the coppers moved on with their three or four human sacrifices to the Gods of international commercial patents). 

I don't begrudge tourists going to other places with much more repressive governments -- Guatemala or Haiti.

 Do go... but buy from street vendors and tip the waiters.  Shop til you drop... but get away from the tourist quarter and buy where the locals buy.  You have a better time in Mexico that way anyway.  

The Oaxacaños are wonderful people.  Talk to them... they're friendly.   You're not a missionary bringing "light and democracy" to those sitting in darkness.  The Oaxacaños are trying to build a democracy, under difficult conditions.  If anything, we should be humbled, and are the students, not the teachers. 

Hey, but since when can't students have fun?  Eat, drink and merrily subvert the mal-administration... and please... do everyone a favor and send us back your adventures, even if it's only a post on a tourism message board or a comment in some obscure blog...Sunlight is the best disinfectant. 
 

Led by writers, choreographers, actors,  thousands of university students marched down Paseo de la Reforma to the National Congress to protest budget cuts for education and the military budget.

 Great slogan:  ¡ARTE, SI! ¡ARMAS, NO!  ¡

Lyn has written elegantly, and movingly on the soldadaras of the Revolution. “Jesusa” -- in reality Josefina Bórquez – was one of those tough, pistol-packin' mamas. Pistol-packin' anyway. Given her ... uhhh... brutal lifestyle, it was just as well she wasn't a mother in anything but name.

In 1964, Bórquez was an irrasible, anti-social tough old lady in the Penitenteria (not in prison, but the Mexico City neighborhood near Leucumberri – then the city prison, now the National Archives) living in a single room with cats, canaries and chickens. She claimed she had no friends, and to hate children. It was her pride and dignity. So many of her friends had left her or died horribly (one grusomely when she was hit by a train). The foster son who called her “mama” broke her heart.

By the time she was 11, Bórquez been a peddler, a fisherwoman and a cook in the Oaxaca woman's prison (her stepmother was warden) when her feckless father joined the revolution and brought her along. It got her out ofOaxaca anway...

“Jesusa” spent her adolescence tramping the length and breadth of Mexico... and buried her 18 year old husband (who regularly beat her, convincing her never to tie herself to any man) in Marfa Texas. The Revolution was the highlight of her irregular and violent life: despite losing not only her husband, but the two men she truly loved – her father and her older brother -- “...if there ever was another revolution, and I had the opportunity to go to war, I'd be there in a second. I want to travel again.”

A captain's widow at 16, and for a short time a capitana herself, the Tehuana Zapotec ended up – like so many rootless young Mexicans – in the Capital. She got by – somehow. In this country, if we need a job, we figure out what we already know how to do. Not Mexicans. If there's a job – or you can make a job – they'll do it. But Jesusa's resume was a little more varied than most. Besides soldiering, Bórquez was variously a maid, a nurse, a dance hall “hostess”, a factory worker, a barber, a professional drinker, a furniture maker, an ambulanta, a butcher, an “apache dancer” in a circus and a medium. And a grumpy old lady who managed to keep going into her late 80s.

Sometimes homeless, but never completely alone, though she'd argue otherwise, “Jesusa” was a hell-raiser prone to getting into fist-fights with strangers until she got got religion: in her case, becoming a devout member of the Obra Espiritual, professing a belief in God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, AND... Anton Mesmer the hypnotist, 19^th Century French psychologist Pierre Charcot, reincarnation, karma and the teachings of Roque Rojas, who was reborn as the Messiah in his backyard ditch in Mexico City in 1866. In some ways, it was the knowledge that she was working off some bad karma that kept her going until 1987. She asked Poniatoska, the day before she died, to throw her body to the dogs (she found it comforting that her father's unburied corpse was picked clean by vultures), but the author, more conventional than otherwise, paid for Josefina Bórquez' conventional burial

It was an unlikely friendship... the former Princessa Helena de Poniatoska and a tiny old woman who made her living scrubbing down printing presses with gasoline by day and scrubbing grease out of workers' coveralls on the roof and feeding her chickens by night... but somehow the two remained friends for 20 years. Borquez was still alive when Poniatoska published her book in 1968. At the time it was called a “novel” ... but like Norman Mailer's “Armies of the Night” or Tom Wolfe's “new journalism” whether we are reading journalism by an artist, or an artist's attempts at journalism. In the end, as Josefina – or Jesusa -- would say, “pues, who the fuck cares?”

Jesusa on her military career:

A lot of people got killed out of stupidity. I think it was a misunderstood war because people simply killed each other, fathers against sons, brother against brother: Carrancistas, Villastas, Zapatistas, we were all the same ragged people, starving to dealth. But that's somethat that, as they say, you keep to yourself.

On herself – a Zapotec in Mexico City:

If I had money and property, I'd be Mexican, but since I'm worse than garbage, I'm nothing. I'm trash that the dog pees on and then walks away from. A strong wind comes along, blows it all down the street and it's gone... I'm garbage because I can't be anything else. I've never been good for anything. My whole life I've been this very same germ you see right in front of you... When I was left alone I intended to go back to my homeland. I'd have a better life in Salina Cruz or in Tehuantepec...”

Maybe so, “Jesusa...” but what would Mexico City have been without you? You were not the stereotypical Chilango I like to write about, nor one I hung around with. But so very real... tough enough to get through anything, resourceful beyond all reason, and a survivor. In that, Jesusa you were not garbage... but a real Chilanga.

Thank you Jesusa! Thank you Elena Poniatoska!