The Mex Files

Plaza de Toros Mexico was raided yesterday morning by twenty bank and industrial police officers yesterday and the joint was temporarily closed. The reason?… illegal alien bulls.

Promotores Taurinos y Asociados had run afoul of District regulations back in December of last year but was operating the bullring under an amparo, a temporary restraining order. Article 47 of the “Reglamento para la Celebración de Espectáculos Públicos del Distrito Federal” states that at least half the bulls in any bullfight have to be Mexican bred.

Somehow I don’t think the illegal alien bulls will be getting on a plane any time soon. They won’t be facing a deportation order, but they may be part of your next order of tacos.

If they talk to the judge, the guys in Cuilicán are toast! Smuggling wildlife can get you nine years in the slammer in Mexico.

I have a story on this coming out in tomorrow’s (not yet on-line) Mexico City News. These are a few of the 297 baby orange-fronted conures recovered from bird smugglers last week. There’s a story in Spanish (from Noroeste de Cuilicán) by Guadalupe Martinéz which says there were 400+ birds.

Along with losing their parents (bird buyers should know, that’s the way baby parrots get to market), the 297 orphan orange-fronted conures had their wings clipped, and the birds are too young to forage on their own. They need to be hand fed for the next several weeks before they can be released in a nature park near Mazatlán.

Tha amazing — and apparently inexhaustable — Clare Simmons had been up about 15 hours making parrot baby food and feeding the little guys when I took this photo. Conrehabit, A.C. has taken responsiblity for the project, but homemade parrot feed, and their other on-going projects will strain their budget.

Francisco Ynurreta, in today’s El Grafico:

CAMPECHE, Camp.— Chupacabras have reappeared in the municipality of Champotón, leaving behind eight dead hens and a turkey, as well as a blood-drained rooster, who survived, at the home of Aurelio Tamay.

The fowl were inside a henhouse, and what – or how – entered is ununknown, as is the way it succeeded in draining the animal’s blood.

Tamay said that he heard an commotion from the fowl, and a low roar on his patio early Sunday morning, and went to investigate.  In the shadows, he saw an animal of “strage form” slinking away.   

Neighbors believe the attacks were the work of a chupacabra, based on the similiarity to attacks on other fowl and animal slaughters going back several years in other parts of the country.  

Worried by the event, several locals formed a posse to search the city, without results.

The incident occured at the Tamay Ac family home, between 18th and 19th streets in Colonia La Playa, Champotón.  There was no explanation of why the rooster survived the attack.  

Tamay insisted he heard the animal screams and the roars, then say the strange animal.  Later he discovered his birds killed and drained of their blood.  

For now, all his birds and animals are staying in his house, and a street brigade is patrolling at night armed with clubs and machetes.  

Lynn Brezosky in the San Antonio Express-News (via Houston Chronicle)

LA GLORIA — The bleachers were full, the air rich with the aroma of fajitas, the matadors resplendent as the sixth season of corridas, or bullfights, at Texas’ only exhibition bullring got under way.

After the opening act — Guapo, the dancing horse, pranced sideways and backward, lifted its hooves, and curtsied to ranchera music — a tractor combed the dirt.

Announcer Lyn Sherwood prepped the crowd. Many were white-haired retirees from Northern states, “Winter Texans” taking in part of the tapestry of the Mexican border. Others were families from surrounding miles of lonely ranchland. Most had never seen a bullfight.

What they saw last week at the Santa Maria bullring wasn’t a classic bullfight, with a half-ton animal weakened by lances and barbs but still capable of killing the matador with each pass at his cape before being killed himself.

By U.S. law, there can be no blood and no kill, only a final swipe by the matador to remove a rose attached to the back of the bull. Without the lancing during the picador phase, known as the Tercio de Varas, the bulls must be smaller.

But the essence of the bullfight is retained, owner Fred Renk said, and spectators are able to experience the dance of man against beast, which he said is as ancient as the walls of Crete.

Renk, 71, inaugurated the 30-foot ring at his ranch 60 miles northwest of McAllen in 2002. He named it for his patron saint and installed a small prayer chapel for the matadors under the stands.

It was the realization of a dream dating back to his own days in Mexico City, when he abandoned plans to become a priest in favor of becoming a bullfighter. He fought as a novillero, or novice bullfighter below the rank of matador, from 1958 to 1967.

His son, 44-year-old David, made full matador in 1981 and earned respect even in the most snobbish of bullfighting circles as El Texano. He was the sixth U.S. matador in history and the only American to confirm that status in Mexico City’s La Plaza Mexico, the largest bullring in the world.

[...]

I have yet to write on two Texas-born bullfighters who particularly fascinate me: Patricia Hayes, who threw up her music studies at North Texas State College in the early 1950s to move to Mexico City and take up a respectable career as a”the Grace Kelly of the Bullring” and Patricia McCormick of Big Springs, Texas.

Bullfighting is not nearly the elitist sport we think. There have been women bullfighters (including the two Texans), gay bullfighters (see Ernest Hemingway’s “The Mother of a Queen” — incidentally Hemingway’s only story with a Mexican protagonist, or the somewhat NSFW gay Turkish site, Casual in Istanbul – gay Turkish bullfight fans… who knew?) and tauromachia has been racially integrated as long as “race” has been a factor in our thinking.

While tauromachia has roots going back to ancient Crete, the modern bullfight celebrates the common man (never mind the fancy suits). In the 18^th century, the sport radically changed: before that it was meant as a ritual glorifying stratified social classes. The picadors – representing the nobility – were protecting the unarmed peasant from the forces of nature. When the matador first took up the sword in the ring, the commoners came into their own. And, became demi-gods. In their traje de luz, the matador – a common man (or woman) – takes on an almost mythic status. Unlike other “mythic” creatures like rock stars or pro athletes, the matador in a very real sense is putting his (or her) humanity on the line. A “bloodless” bullfight misses that “point” … Becoming one with nature is not risk free.

Hemingway’s story (which is somewhat difficult to find) is less about bullfighting (or gays) than about accepting our place in nature, and our own mortality. The greatest of twentieth century matadors, Silverio Perez, (who lived to be over 90 by the way) spoke and wrote of his art almost as if he were writing Buddhist precepts. “Only by becoming one with our fear, and the bull’s fear, and becoming one with our own mortality, are we alive,” he wrote.

And, consider this. In Texas, you can’t stab a bull, but you can shoot your neighbor. ¿Qué barbaro?

Who knew?

The Museo Valdemar Juslrud in Acambaro, Guanajuanto holds the collection of local artifacts “discovered” by a local merchant and amatuer archeologist, Valdemar Juslrud, in the 1940s.

Juslrud paid local farmers to bring in ceramics they found, which the farmers were happy to do. Over the next several years, over 32,000 ceramic objects were uncovered.

Juslrud ended up spending a fortune for figurines showing a little of everything. Including, some say, dinosaurs. Oddly, the expected Tarascan artifacts, which are normally found around Acabaro, are all pretty well beaten up — as you’d expect things that have been in the ground a few centuries … let alone a few millenia — to be. The dinos and others were all intact.

If you’re a little dubious, rest assured. In 1955, the whole thing was investigated by none other than Earl Stanley Gardner. After all, he wrote the Perry Mason stories, so he had to know something about archaeology, ¿verdad?

Creationist websites in the U.S. (and home-school textbooks for the willfully uneducated future voters!) all use these figurines as evidence that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. It might not have been a peaceful co-existence (apparently the dinos are happily munching away on people) though it might have had its moments .. from the scant description I can find, it seems to show Bedrock’s equivalent of the Tijuana Donkey Show (which is a little dubious itself). Funny, the Creationist literature doesn’t talk about that particular figurine.

Isn’t Yabba-dabba-doo Purimpecha for “There’s a sucker born every minute”?

MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexican authorities say they have confiscated more than 6,000 tons of logs and boards in the country’s biggest anti-logging raid ever.

And they did it to protect butterflies.

Authorities are trying to sweep illicit loggers out of a nature reserve that’s home to millions of Monarch butterflies.

Deforestation in and around the reserve threatens the butterflies, which rely on forest cover to protect them from cold winds.

About 700 Mexican police and environmental officers raided 19 clandestine saw mills this week.

Authorities seized the equivalent of more than 600 heavy truckloads of wood that had been cut within the Monarch butterfly reserve. And they arrested more than 50 people, including sawmill employees, lumberjacks and truck drivers.

This is a police raid I support (700 cops on an environmental protection operation? So much for the idea that Mexico doesn’t take the environment seriously!). While everyone likes butterflies and eco-tourism has become integral to the Michoacan economy (if you look at the back of the 50-peso note, which features scenes from Michaoacan, you’ll find mariposas monarchas fluttering around), clandestine logging is probably a more serious long-term threat to Mexico than narcotics dealers. We don’t hear much about it, but logging gangs kill people too — and for the same reason: there’s money to be made).

Forest protection (Mexico hopes to plant a billion trees over the next six years — even if it doesn’t meet the goal, that’s still a lot more trees) is vital for Mexico’s survival. It’s not just the butterflies (and the tourists who come to see the migrating insects in their winter home), but watersheds, land conservation and air quality that the forests protect. And, if it takes 700 armed coppers to stop illegal loggers, it’s an investment in the future. If the Mexican government was using the “Plan Merida” funding to fight this real threat to their own survival, I might be less opposed to it.

This video was made in Valle de Bravo by JGrillo310:

My best Thanksgiving dinner was at “el Rey de Pavo” on calle Simon Bolivar (or is it Motolinía?) — a little semi-hole in the wall joint serving nothing but turkey, 7 days a week — turkey tacos, turkey tortas, turkey soup, turkey mole… With limited seating, I had thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of jolly Quechans from Ecuador who’d come up to Mexico City to sell silk scarves on the streets.

OK, so we had to watch futbol, and not football. And the half-time show was a skinny old guy with a 12-string guitar. I had jamaica, which is the closest thing to cranberry you’re going to find in Mexico (it’s at least a pretty red color, and kind of tart)… but the basics were there. A peaceable dinner of corn and turkey with a bunch of Indians.

I don’t think the custom started with our Puritan Fathers, by the way… though the Plymouth Colonists and Squanto obviously got along a tad better than the folks at America’s first “inter-racial encounter” and dinner-party

Cortés had incredible luck off Cozumel. His ships were separated, and Pedro de Alvarado had arrived first. Alvarado, who turned out to be one of the greediest of the conquistadors, was stealing turkeys from the local villages when Cortés arrived. More importantly for Cortés, his crew had found two Spaniards. They were the last survivors of a shipwreck eight years earlier—the others had been sacrificed and eaten. Gonzalo Guerrero, a sailor, had married the local chief’s daughter. He had three children (these little Guerreros are probably the first modern Mexicans, mestizos - mixed bloods - part European and part indigenous), a responsible job as an advisor to his father-in-law and no intention of becoming a common sailor again.

The other Spaniard, Gerónimo de Aguilar, was a priest and carpenter. It was his carpentry skills that kept him alive; they made him a valuable slave. Father Aguilar was more than happy to be rescued. Slavery was bad and the human sacrifice worse,¹ but what terrified Father Aguilar were women. As a priest, he had taken a vow of celibacy and the indigenous people simply couldn’t comprehend a healthy young man refusing to take a wife. Eight years of temptation was enough. He considered his rescuers God-sent. He spoke fluent Mayan and was more talkative than Melchor.

Father Aguilar preached a sermon in Mayan, pouring out eight years of built-up frustration and anger. Though the people had treated their visitors kindly and fed them, the Spaniards insulted their hosts, destroyed the local temple and sailed north. Landing at the mouth of the Usumacinta river (near modern Frontera, Tabasco), they found much warier Mayans—they had evacuated their women and children and cautiously approached the Spaniards, sprinkling incense. The Spaniards thought it was a compliment, but the truth is that Europeans didn’t bathe, and the indigenous people were extremely cleanly. The Spaniards smelled terrible, but the Mayans were much too polite to say anything about it.²

These extremely polite people fed the Spaniards a turkey dinner and then nicely told them to go home, otherwise, regrettably, they would have to kill them. The smelly Spaniards asked to visit the Mayans’ houses. The Mayans, still polite, suggested the Spaniards had missed something in the translation. Cortés trotted out his lawyers, read the official document and turned his cannons against the Mayan stone clubs and obsidian swords. It was only a test to see if cannons, horses and war-dogs were effective weapons. The cannons scared people as much as killed them. Horses were unknown in the Americas, and the only dogs were small animals (ancestors of today’s Chihuahua) that were used both for food and for pets. Melchor, the grumpy old cross-eyed fisherman, took this as his cue to exit history.

1 When she learned of her son’s shipwreck and his probable fate, Aguilar’s mother became a vegetarian.

2Americans, north and south, generally bathe daily—one of the few indigenous customs adopted throughout the hemisphere. In Mexico City, the custom is so well ingrained that “bath houses” are just that—places to clean up when there’s no water at home. This confuses some gay visitors, for whom a “bath house” has a different purpose, though such institutions also exist.

You can understand then, why Thanksgiving never quite caught on in Mexico… though they have their own turkey customs…

Now that you’ve digested your meal… time to watch a little turkey-related sports action: El Globo de Manteca contra el Pipilo… may be best gobbler win!

mi pavo en accion

A tip of mi sombrero to Guanabee.com (and “viento” at tu.tv).

KRQE-ALBUQUERQUE

For the believers among you, chupacabra is mysterious creature said to attack and suck the blood out of goats and other farm animals.

Descriptions have varied greatly ever since the first reported sighting almost 20 years ago in Puerto Rico.

They have since been reported in parts of Latin America, Mexico, the United States, even Russia and, now, maybe, in Albuquerque, too.

A mysterious animal has been lurking the streets of a northwest Albuquerque subdivision, and it’s been very hard for people living there to figure out what it is.

…

Nope, it ain’t a chupacabra. Ugly critter, but nothing strange about it. Besides, we all know the REAL chupacabra has been sighted before… and looks nothing like those sweet (but really butt-ugly) doggies…

Speaking of things that suck… the telephone bill, the electric bill, the rent… MexFiles only survives on donations (and not on attacking chickens and goats)…

WTF?  Sending death threats to Mexican ANIMALS?

TBOGG has the whole bizarre story:

The Mexican flag flies no more over the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum — and the U.S. flag is gone, too.

The museum’s board of trustees voted to remove the flags — which had flown side-by-side since 1954 — after receiving complaints and threats about flying the Mexican flag.

Questions from visitors about why the Mexican flag was being flown on U.S. soil escalated in the past couple of years, said board chairwoman Sophia Kaluzniacki.

An anonymous death threat against the museum’s animals made earlier this year by a phone caller also factored into the board’s decision, but to a lesser degree, she said. The desire to avoid controversy on border-related issues was the main thrust, she said.

Victor Trujillo, KGBT Channel 4, (Harlingen,Texas) reports:

Minuteman Civil Defense Corps believe the construction of a border fence will help deter illegal activity along the border region.

As Minuteman volunteers arrive in the Valley from different parts of the country, they are setting up posts at undisclosed locations to monitor and report suspicious activity along the border.

It’s the official start for Operation Secure America by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a border watch operation scheduled throughout the month of October with intentions to monitor suspicious activity, report illegal crossings and support border patrol agents.

Connie Foust, their national operations director, told Action 4 News they have men and women volunteering for this fall operation.

“Hopefully we will be turning in illegal alien entrance into our country and securing our nation’s border,” Foust said.

She said the group is in favor of the border fence planned by federal government.

“I’m sorry that we have to do that, but we have to do that. We have to enforce our borders for the security and prosperity of our country,” she said.

She doesn’t believe farmers will have to struggle to get access to the water as some private land owners and farmers have said.

OK, Connie. The farmers don’t know about water access, but you do?

“What I’d like to know is those that are worried about the habitat, all right, they need to look at the plastics and the clothing and everything that is left out here in this habitat that animals and birds eat and die from,” she said.

When was the last time you saw a jackrabbit, let alone an ocelot, eating a plastic bottle?

Just on their first visit to the several high traffic areas along the Rio Grande, they’ve spotted trails and landing areas commonly used by undocumented immigrants. Inflatable tubes and wet clothing were found near one of their posts.

The Minuteman’s National Operations Director wants to make one thing clear to the border communities.

“I have the opportunity to have interaction with many thousands of Minuteman. What I found them to be in reality are patriotic Americans; they are not racists; this is not a race issue, and I really want people to understand that,” Foust said.

We should take Connie’s word for it, not folks that monitor racist groups. I guess by the definition the Minutemen use of “non-racism” (kinda long and convoluted — though basically it boils down to they have the political right to act like idiots. Geeze, so did the Klan), Connie would be right.  But — in another context — Pam Spaulding wonders why people feel compelled to say “I’m not a racist” (usually when they’re busted for doing something so boneheaded we can’t label it any other way) .

The Minuteman’s National Operations Director, who spoke exclusively to Action 4 News, said Operation Secure America will run through October 28.

Oh goody…

If you see Connie, say “HOLA” for me — though I might not have as favorable an impression of her that The Age (Australia) did…

Mexican President Vincente Fox calls them ruthless and dangerous migrant hunters; George Bush has called them vigilantes. …

…Connie Foust favours a more discreet Ladysmith .38, which she wears high up on her waist. Ms Foust lives in a small town near the border. She arrived from Montana five years ago for the climate, which she hoped would make her arthritis more bearable.

Great… arthritic old ladies with guns. I guess Connie could prove she’s not a racist and plug a white guy.  Harlingen isn’t far from where Dick Cheney shot one not too long ago.  This should be … uh… interesting.