The Mex Files

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)…

At the Greater Metropolitian Alpine Press Club today, someone who knows my financial status (poorer than most, but then, we’re poor folks out here to begin with) suggested a new financial opportunity … Chihuahuas to Chihuahua:

MEXICO CITY, April 25 Pet stores in Mexico have begun selling U.S.-bred Chihuahuas to their more high-brow customers.

“I think it’s probably partly a matter of status, this desire for an American dog,” said David Sanchez, assistant manager of the Mas-Kota shop in Mexico City ‘ s Perisur Mall. Sales of the tiny dogs from the United States have even increased in the northern state of Chihuahua, from which the tiny breed originated, USA Today newspaper reported Wednesday.

“A lot of the time these are the same blood lines we sent over the border years ago,” said Mayra Rodriguez, owner of the Mascota Pet Shop.

Copyright 2007 by UPI

I have to admit, it’s one that never crossed my mind, though importing Mexican exports isn’t unhead of. Nescafé, or… as the serious coffee-drinkers call it … ¡No es café! … still dominates the consumer market for coffee in a country that produces about 50 million tons of coffee a year. According to Nestlé,

Soluble coffee again leads the way in this market, with NESCAFÉ absolutely dominating the scene. NESCAFÉ Classico is the stongest player in the market. A sample of NESCAFÉ products sold: Decaffeinated, Diplomat, Ristreto, Dolca.

As far as instant coffee goes, Ristreto isn’t undrinkable, but outside of the traditional cafés (which mostly use the Mexican brand, Café Legal) and a few “foreign” restaurants like McDonald’s, the bigger chains like Sandborns (which used to be Chase and Sandborn way back when, and still sells their own crappy – though inexpensive – coffee), the same cafes that have sprung up everywhere the hip and pretentious gather (even in Marfa, Texas …which is why I live in Alpine: our unofficial motto is “50% less attitude than Marfa”) — and a few classic coffee houses like Cafe Habana in Mexico City, or La Paroquia in Veracruz (where Benito Juarez used to go for coffee).

Most places it’s Nescafé – Classico if you’re lucky – or nothin’. Even in the coffee-regions. The worst cup of coffee I ever had in my life was at the Veracruz bus station. I’d arrived at some ungodly hour of the morning and the only place open had a pot of hot water on the stove, into which the counterwoman dumped a jar of “No es café” and started ladling out what probably was meant for washing the dishes at 8 pesos a cup. You wonder why addicts of less legal substances turn to crime?

Some of us hard-core Mexphile caffiends resort to the simple expedient of just taking a spoonful of the stuff straight and getting it over with – it’s about as horrible, but a lot quicker than dissolving it in water and stretching out the torture. I found you can wash out the taste with some decent atole

¡NO PASARAN! Or, rather… it shouldn’t be thus.

Mexicans are traditionally not big coffee drinkers. According to an article in the October 30, 2000 Food and Drink Weekly, Mexican coffee consumption was only about 2 cups per person per week.

Which is not to say Mexicans don’t drink coffee. Traditionally, they do, and have since the 18^th century. I admit that surprised me, but … and it’s amazing what you find when you start looking… a California historian named Stephen Topik presented a learned paper at the Segundo congreso de historia económica sponsored by the Economics department at UNAM back in 2004, on the history of coffee drinking in Mexico. It’s fascinating reading (or at least the PDF file makes interesting reading when you’ve had too much coffee and are up late at night):

One study puts 1785 as the date of the first coffee in Mexico while another cites 1789 as the founding year of the Café de Manrique in Mexico City. The European name “café” was adopted in Spanish but it was also supposedly given an indigenous name “acoxcapolli” which means “without sleep.”

But, most coffee consumption was local (Topik quotes from 18^th and 19^th century sources who talked about local coffee in the local markets, and points out that most small farmers had a few coffee trees in the growing region) and even complaints from foreigners about crappy coffee are nothing new.

The French courtiers who accompanied Emperor Maximilian in 1863 were dismayed with the quality of the coffee they encountered in Mexico. Countess Paula Kollonitz complained that “coffee, which grows here of the best kind, is so badly prepared that it is almost impossible to drink it.”

It’s that “coffee… of the best kind” that may be the reason coffee of the undrinkable kind is so prevalent today. It really shouldn’t have happened:

Guatemala’s success in the last decades of the nineteenth century encouraged foreign and Mexican plantation growers to spread the caffeinated habit with indigenous peoples adopting it; and in the north, proletarian workers accepted the habit as an extension of the United States culture of mass, home-oriented, coffee drinking.

The historiography of the Porfiriato has stressed the export economy and hence has neglected the spread of new consumption items. Mexican coffee production shot up from 10 million kilos to 45 million kilos from 1901 to 1911. However exports remained stable at 20 million kilos after 1905 demonstrating that internal consumption overshadowed exports. Joseph Walsh reported in 1902 that internal transport problems had hindered Mexico’s coffee exports “so much so that the production of coffee in Mexico has been almost limited to supplying the home demand.”

In other words, Mexicans were drinking coffee, and fairly decent coffee at that, before the Revolution. After the Revolution, the emphasis was on nationalism, and coffee was never seen as a national beverage. But it was a damn good export crop, and the government was happy to help the farmers find new markets. They subsidized coffee growers since there was a huge growth in foreign demand after 1920., though, for complicated reasons, Mexicans turned to Coca Cola for their caffiene fix.

And, the Revolution created an urban middle class, who wanted consumer goods. After WWII, when the Revolution was turned into the Institutional Revolution, the state focused on creating Mexican industries that would meet internal demand: if a product was available in the United States, the same TYPE of product would be available in Mexico, even if there was only one brand, and it wasn’t as good as the foreign variety. Thus, Café Legal Soluable entered the market in 1964.

With globalization in the 90s, foreign brands began driving the Mexican brands off the market, or making them non-competitive. Nestlé, the Swiss-based multinational, gobbled up what Mexican market there was… and heavily promoted – not Mexican coffee – but imported Nescafé. While Mexican farmers still sold about a third of their coffee on the local market, export prices remained high (and shot up between 1960 and 1990)

The largest buyer, as with most Mexican exports after World War II, was the United States. In 1989, the U.S. decided to pull out of the International Coffee Agreement, which had kept prices stable (and farmers happy). It helped consumers in the short run, since coffee buyers were free to shop the world market for the cheapest beans (and instant coffee is made mostly from robusta beans, which only grow in the Eastern Hemisphere. Mexican coffee is the “higher grade” arabica variety  ), just as the coffee craze was starting (I worked for a short time for a small coffee distributor. We called it “the drug of the 90s”).

It appeared as if more people were drinking coffee, though it may just be that people were willing to pay a premium to drink concoctions made with coffee (what the hell is a white coffee decaf latte anyway? It ain’t a cuppa Joe). That premium didn’t translate into higher prices for the arabica growers, who were rapidly going broke, just as they were being encouraged to increase production.

Cancelling the ICA in 1989 had a secondary effect.

To some extent, the 1989 decision to abandon the ICA system has come back to haunt the US. Lower coffee prices gave encouragement to many Latin American peasant farmers to cultivate coca, in order to make up lost income. Thus, the rapid upsurge of illegal drug imports in the US during the early 1990s was connected to the post-Cold War politics of coffee. Then, in the late 1990s, the US Government provided subsidies to farmers in Bolivia and Columbia to switch from coca to coffee production, which further added to world production, over-supply, and lower prices. In another example of how the decision to abandon the ICA has come back to impact on the US, the New York Times reported that ‘In Central America, the World Bank estimates that 600,000 coffee workers had recently lost full-time or temporary jobs, prompting a flight of Guatemalans and Hondurans to Mexico and a separate exodus of Mexican farmers into the US

In other words… too much coffee, too little money… too few jobs for coffee farmers. To add insult to injury, NAFTA meant the end of Mexican farm subsidies. Not growing robusta beans for the cheap coffee market, and locked into multi-year contracts by the buyers who could find cheaper arabica beans elsewhere, the Mexican coffee growers were shit out of luck.

There were some half-hearted attempts to stimulate an internal market for Mexican coffee  but with consumers already buying Nescafé, and Mexican coffee consumption actually dropping (according to the Food and Agriculture Organization ) there isn’t much that can be done.

The small growers’ association, CNOC, has done what it can, and is selling some export coffee under the Aztec Harvest label.  I sure appreciated buying REAL coffee direct from the farmers on the streets of Mexico City — but even with fair-trade agreements and the realization that coffee trees are actually environmentally useful in preserving rain forests  it’s probably too late to save Mexico from years of crappy coffee, emigration and foreign imports of national products – coffee or chihuahuas.

Save the Mex Files from cheap coffee!

Half the Unknown Universe discovers Xoloitzcuintlis, which have a much nicer personality than their well-known descendants, the Chihuahuas.

The Mexico City Zoo has a pack, not because they’re a wild animal, but because they were practically wiped out as a breed, and because so many Mexicans had never seen them.  Though originally just a Mexican housedog, they also served as a guide and companion in Mixtlan, the afterlife. The little terra-cotta doggie statues you see sold around ruins are copies of a common grave offering.

And in a society without a lot of tasty domestic animals beyond turkeys (which are very low in fat), added a little flavor to the soup.

Lately, they’ve become fashionable, under the name ”Raza Azteca”, which means a lot of the ones you see are as neurotic as the fresas that own them.  Quade, at Half the Unknown Universe, interviewed a breeder whose puppies start at about 10,000 pesos. 

You can see why they nearly disappeared as a breed.  You can get a generic dog for free in Mexico.  I had two nice, normal dogs — Eva Perra (like her namesake, a blonde of uncertain parentage — cocker and sheltie and and who knows – a friend to all, but always looking out for her own advantage) and Iztaccihuatl, a poodle pup I found one night huddled in an abandoned doorway, so named because I had to give her a bath before I realized the little brown boy was a “white lady.”  They were typical Mexican dogs… hung out, begged for snacks at the local comida economia (the Señora was very kind to them, and rather tolerant of the little mooches) and… shed everywhere and full time flea markets. 

But the price was right.  Xoloitzcuintlis are a nice apartment sized dog …about the same size and weight of Eva Perra, around 25 pounds (10 kg) and maybe 15 inches high (0.4 m) , not real fussy, intellegent, affectionate and  bark only when necessary  (hard to believe they degenerated into Chihuahaua!). 

As an added bonus, they keep your feet warm at night without getting doggie hair all over your bed.  Or give the fleas anywhere to hide out. Ok, they do look kinda weird, but hey, they’re a dog.. they don’t care. 

Keep the Mex Files in kibbles, and I won’t have to cook the dog…

An internet friend, “one of those people who moved ” to a gated community where she and her husband — though gringos — are the poorest people in the complex, writes on the downside of life in “gringo gulch”:

Screw the revolution, drug cartels, police on the take, malaria, stomach bugs … the DOGS will get you!

On my street the people go armed with bear mace, bb guns, rocks blunt instruments. Don’t think we are afraid of being kidnapped or raped … just attacked by our friendly neighborhood pets.

If you are coming to Mexico I advice pepper spray (the larger the container the better — it is legal) rocks, canes, anything.My neighborhood is gated, 24/7 etc. but we are all armed to the teeth against the guard dogs let out to use the baño or just let out off leash. These dogs are well fed and trained.

A huge terrier attacked our dog when we were out for a alk. It came out of the blue, and went straight for our dog’s throat. I had the safety on the mace and my husband had to use his cane to fight the dog off. The caretaker found the house where the culprit was hiding, and a neighbor filed a report with the security guards.

My husband is hiding his black and blue wounds and his leg is really swollen. But we’re off to the vet — the dog needs antibiotics for his 4 puncture wounds — then to the doctor. The attack dog’s owner (of course) is out of the country, though his brother will pay the doctor/vet bills. Great. The dog is going to a ranch. Sure. This is his fourth attack.My attitude now is if I see a dog I don’t know, spray the bear mace and keep spraying. Then plead fear or just deny doing it.

Meanwhile, this bad dog report from a foreigner in a traditional Mexican village:

I was in the market square talking to my son on the phone at 10:30 pm. When I hung up and started back to my car, I was attacked by 6 or 8 dogs, who were seriously lunging and trying to bite me. I called them some real nasty names at the top of my lungs. I was angry, but fortunately, most of the local women couldn’t understand what I was saying. Finally, I managed to get my hands on a rock, and they evaporated instantly.

The next morning, my wife went down town to buy milk to make atole for her bachelor uncles. She came back rather excited, told me all the dogs were dead, that someone had poisoned them. I was horrified, because a lot of witnesses had seen me fighing those beasts. So, I expected to be blamed. Her cousin told me not to worry. They have a dog killer, the Mexican equivalent of our dog catchers. When the problem gets bad enough and street dogs are menacing people, the Municipal President writes a kill order, and the dog killer tosses around plenty of poisoned meat, and walks away. The next day, the street cleaners cart off the dead dogs.

I asked what happens if a good dog is out there. He said if people aren’t taking care of their dog, too bad.

I like dogs, and I’ve known some very nice street dogs. But, tossing rocks is always an option. Or using pepper spray and denying it. That works too.

09 de Marzo de 2005It hasn’t been so quiet here in Lake Tezcoco-be-gone. Like Rick, who moved to Casablanca for the waters, “I was misinformed”… here I thought I moved to Mexico City to be a semi-retired semi-scholar. “Gerente de desarrollo” seems to mean I do a little of everything…. I had to throw together a “PowerPoint presentation” for a big client, which only took about 150 hours to do (it was a short, 15-minute presentation), then work on giving the presentation, then interviewing about 60 people to determine their English comprehension level… and, somewhere in there, finding out one of our foreign teachers had gone AWOL (which meant replacing the teacher, moving classes around, and going out and talking to the “Advanced English” – i.e., executives – people whose classes were being switched around)… and then – just when it looked like I’d have a weekend to myself, getting a 3000 word translation over the transom (well, through the Windows anyway – this IS the 21st century, after all), picked up the project from Purgatory (I haven’t decided if it’s from Hell or not)… telephone screening people who are applying for jobs as English-speaking operators. The latter takes three of us several hours a week just to sit in a conference room and dial up the folks who sent in their resumes. It takes about four hours just to get ahold of 30 people, talk to them and try to figure out if they understand English well enough for the client to bother interviewing them. I need to find some down-and-out grammarians for that job… I donno, either look under a bridge, or in a Youth Hostel, I guess.Hopefully, it’s all going to pay off. The business is in that weird state where its growing faster than the resources… like we’re fighting for the one computer and all getting a bit cranky from lack of time for little things like … lunch somewhere in the middle of a very long day. We finally have to invest in things like an administrative assistant, which we found very, very close to home. In the home, to be exact. We use two rooms in Araceli’s garage for an office. Araceli is working every bit as much as I am, plus she’s got those two kids to raise. So, she needs a cleaning lady. And Hermilla is no ordinary cleaning lady… we can never find stuff after she’s been through, mostly because she puts it where it belongs. AND… when a delivery man stopped by, and needed our taxpayer number, Hermilla, unlike a normal cleaning lady, simply opened the checkbook, copied down the tax number, wrote the guy an invoice and sent him on his way…

Hermilla had been trained as a secretary, but stayed home to raise her kids, then at 35 was “too old”. So, she’s been cleaning houses. Happy ending? Hermilla surprised herself… she’s pregnant. Oh well, so we’ll add a baby to the two cats that wander through the office and Araceli’s kid and his buddies kicking futbals around the garage.

Yeah, yeah… I know… yesterday was International Woman’s Day. But Hermilla can make phone calls and the coffee. It’s still expected to have a female make the calls, and Araceli, who is an owner, has been doing it.

This is a big change. We actually have to make capital investments… like a real desk (we’ve been getting by on an old dining room table up to now) and another computer. Darn… that means I actually have to show up in that office now.

I haven’t even had time to read the newspaper. If there was “great tension” in Mexico City, I just didn’t have time to feel it. The “powers that be”, i.e., the Foxistas and the PRI, were hunkering down, expecting trouble when Congress voted to impeach our PRD “mayor” (Jefe de gobernacíon) for the serious crime of not answering his mail.

The attacks on AMLO, the jefe, have always been politically motivated. You can’t run for office if you’ve been convicted of a crime, and can’t be dragged into court if you’re a sitting office-holder, which is the reason for impeaching the guy. And only Congress can do that. None of the other parties likes to read that he’s polls about 2/3rds of all choices for the next president. And, it doesn’t make the U.S. government comfortable that he’s the head of a socialist party. The other parties found a contempt of court citation (based on not opening his mail) and started braying about how the “law is the law” – overlooking various peccadilloes of their own, naturally.

Congress hasn’t voted, and doesn’t look like they’re going to, so all the behind the scenes preparations – the PRI expected angry mobs of grannies (one reason for AMLO’s popularity has been giving 600 pesos a month in food stamps and cash assistance to senior citizens – not a huge amount of money, but enough to turn every geezer into a militant socialist) and hired their own private security force (the city police union backs AMLO). Agence France-Presse, who aren’t known as nervous nellies, expected lots of tear-gas canisters to be flying and bought gas masks for all their reporters. Darn… I haven’t seen a good riot around here in some time, either.

Besides all the pro-AMLO posters (everywhere… on buses, on peoples houses, on cars, on overpasses), advertising has temporary disappeared in a lot of places. The city fathers and the biggest outdoor advertising agency in Mexico had a little disagreement, and the city cancelled their contract. So, our buses look kind of naked right now. Silly me, I thought it was because the buses are coming off my main street (Insurgentes) supposedly the first of May. They’re going to be replaced by double-length buses running opposite traffic in special bus lanes, and stopping at their own stations. The stations have gone up as far as where I live, but Insurgentes is the longest city street in the world, and I don’t know if work will be finished on time. It’s Mexico, and nothing ever is.

What little personal life I have is going to the dogs. Poor Eva Peron was home alone all day, lucky to get out for a walk early in the AM, and late in the PM. Good thing she’s got a good bladder. Naming a dog for a politician was not a good idea, I’ve decided. I just named her that because she was a streetwise blonde of uncertain parentage and… this is Latin America. She’s also taken to building an entourage of poor dogs (Canello, the street mutt goes for walks with us), DEMANDS attention and is not above a little larceny… AND, — though I can’t completely blame her name for it – she’s developed a crush on German Shepherds… especially the one named Fuhrer. Fuhrer, naturally, raises his front paw when you say “Heil!” Scary in a park in a neighborhood where everybody seems to have a grandfather or great-grandfather who fled Europe in the 40s.

So… the little starving pup I found is going to have a good non-partisan name. I’m trying to find a home for the pup, but she’s keeping Eva company for now (though they fight for attention – I get licked to death when I get home, and the little one is able to climb. It thinks its half-parrot, and tries to sit on my shoulder). The little thing was a mess, and I thought it was a brown male poodle. It was too scared to let me close, and I had to muzzle it to get it home. It really stunk. After it calmed down enough to eat and let me close, it turned out – not to be gross – that a nasty boil was causing some gender confusion. After lancing the boil, and bathing the dog, and then bathing the little stinker again, there was another identity issue. This was not a brown male poodle. This is a white female ragmop dog. “White Female”… I’ve got to remember that. And, since it may not be a keeper-dog, “White Female” should work… except that in Nahuatl, that’s “Iztaccíhuatl”… more name than dog, though she’ll answer to Iztac.

Anybody want a cute little dog, recovering nicely from skin infections?

And that’s all the news from Lake Texcoco-be-gone, where all the men are overworked and underpaid, all the women are threatening to launch tear gas at French reporters and all the dogs are good looking.

Santa Claus, or his elves, paid a visit to my bank north of the border, leaving enough goodies in there to buy a crock-pot … AND… an electric oil heater. I appreciate thick concrete walls about June, but in December, it gets just a tad chilly. And, I’ve lived here so long, my fingers and toes go numb when it’s only 5° at night (Celsius, of course… 40° to those of you in Gringolandia). WHOO… HOO… Eva Perra was enjoying herself roasing by a Portuguese radiator (don’t know why it was Portuguese… but it said “Product of Portugal” and the manual was in Portuguese, which I don’t read, but can figure out)… until…my nice, cheap, subsidized electricity went out.OK, maybe running the washing machine, the computer, the electric coffee pot and a couple of lamps at the same time had a little something to do with it, but I didn’t just blow a fuse. The fuse… maybe just completely stressed out… turned suicide bomber. It literally blew out… taking a chunk of the switch with it. In Mexico, this is why you have an extended family – you keep someone around to fix stuff.Not being exactly Señor Fix-it, and being a little leery of playing with live wires, I do the next best thing… go to the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall Comida Economico for my household needs. Santa left more than enough for a new fuse box and fuses, and the electrician only charged me a few pesos over his lunch. And, the Señora threw in some bones for Eva Perra.

I’ve learned my lesson… I’ll take down the Christmas lights… manaña.

Christmas Dinner included New Zealanders, Canadians and cranberries. The latter are something of an obsession for foreigners this time of year. Until a couple of years ago, people had cans (costing, what… 50 cents?) mailed in (running, oh… 100 pesos or so in postage) or trekked out to the pretentious Polanco specialty food store (they wrap your packages and deliver them to the chauffeur. I think even the clerks arrive by chauffeur… they know such strange, exotic foods as Cambell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, but they don’t know how to get to the Metro). Nowadays, for a hefty price, and if you’re willing to make a special trip to the gringo ghetto, you can find them in the exotic foods aisle at the supermercado. Or… have them smuggled in by a Canadian with extra room in his suitcase (he also brought in the once-forbidden smoked salmon… a few years ago Congress, to get Socialist and Green support for some tax bill, lumped decadent capitalist and environmentally suspicious goods together and slapped an exorbitant luxury tax on them: Rolls-Royces and canned salmon are still rarities here).

I’m starting to see the (non-Christmassy) light at the end of the Guadelupe-Reyes tunnel. I’ve actually started having to do some real work… putting together test material, figuring out where we’re going to find teachers and start thinking about fruit (the other bidness… is fruit exporting) for next year. And about finishing the paint job in my bedroom: it still looks like a badly-done knock-off of a de Kooning abstract: abruptly going from slate to blood-red with a pink and yellow border around the top. I’m going to have to rethink that project.

We’re all set for the New Year… including divine assistance. San Judeo Tadeo — patron saint of collecting our 30,000 pesos from Abbot Laboratories and other lost causes, was joined by Santa Muerte in her blue dress (nothing to do with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels — but our consulting witch doctor recommends a blue Santa Muerte for business success) and our LUCKY SHEEP.

I’ve lived here going on four years, and never did understand why all the farmers come into town selling toy sheep. I thought they were Naciamento accessories for the shepherds. Noooooooo! DUH! Lana … wool… is slang for money. SO… naturally, if you want lana, you need a borrego. We’ve got the students, we’re getting the teachers (most are still around, though one quit in a dramatic huff… and tried to sue us. We said “thank you”… she doesn’t have anything to sue us for, and besides… we would have paid her to go away, and still will pay here. But there’s no hurry now. At some point… the manaña after manaña we’ll get a demanda, and pay it then. In the meantime, it’s an interest-free loan), and things are looking up. We’re a standard, normal Mexican company with our standard, normal consultants… the accountant, the lawyer, the computer geek, the witch doctor. And — standard and normal — not much got done in the way of planned Holiday time-fillers. I worked a little on my Mexican history book (it’ll be done when it’s done), wrote some letters, did a little translating, and otherwise wasted time. But, that’s what I’m here to do, ¿verdad?

It’s been a quiet week here in Lake Texcoco-be-gone. This is — por supuesto — the slowest time of the year (and, when you’re doing business, you start to dread the long holidays). I had a bad bout of insomnia for the last week or two, but I tried not to lose any sleep over it … which put me on Dracula Standard Time for a while. While it was nice to talk on the internet with Australians and Chinese, there’s not a heck of a lot to recommend that kind of schedule. At least in Mexico City, there’s no problem taking the dog for a walk at … 3 or 4 AM.

Now that it’s “officially” unofficially Christmas. My next-door neighbor, Felipe the Jehovah’s Witness owns ONE, AND ONLY ONE, CD THAT HE PLAYS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER… usually about 1 in the AM. “¡Yo soy un testigo…yo soy un testigo!” … could work like those tapeworms that eat their way into your frontal lobes and cause unpredicable behavior. I’d never heard of Cysticercosis, but apparently, it’s a fairly common disease in rural Mexico and can cause weird and wacky behavior (jumping out of your car while driving, or joining the Mormons or such).

Anyway… I hesitated about hanging my Christmas lights on the front door, but … ah, the hell with it. Benito Juarez (who is something of a saint for Jehovahs’ Witnesses, mostly because he left them alone) said, “peace is the respect for the rights of others,” and this is supposedly the season for Peace on Earth, Good Will towards men (except for Iraqi men, according to our Christian Leader). So, if I can put up with Jehovahs Witness choir music, he can deal with Christmas Lights. My bonsai is decorated and I’ve put my teeny-tiny electric train (bonsai electric train?) around. I’ve yet to hang a piñata, but that’s coming. Hopefully, so is Santa… I’m trying to save him having to land his flying burros (led by Rudolfo) on my roof and tangling with Manches, the roof Jack Russell Terrier. They’re a bit more expensive here, but one of these is all I really want for Christmas.

AND AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM EVA PERRA…

Hey, Hey… SANTA!!!! Don’t forget me! Hey… Hey… (Uh… what’s to eat? Huh? Huh?) Hey, hey… SANTA!!! SANTA!!!!

From the halls of Montezuma…

We had a high-level bi-lateral conference (US — and them) here last week. This was a challenge for my favorite Mexican newspaper. It’s newsworthy when the usual suspects, Colin Powell and Tom Ridge for the US; Vincente Fox and Santiago Creel for them – get together and talk about… whatever it is discredited, ineffectual high government officials talk about. Jornada in the spirit of Harpo, not Karl, Marx, covered the non-event effectively:

Colin Powell arrived in a Lincoln limousine. President Fox also arrived in a limousine. They went into the Palace. They stood on the balcony. They posed for the cameras. Then they left.

I guess the late Rodney Dangerfield was the Colin Powell of comedians. But speaking of cabinet officers who don’t get no respect, the Chairman of Pemex (Pemex profits keep taxes low, since they kick in more than enough for the politicians to steal, mismanage and sometimes use… so, the chairman of the board is a Cabinet Secretary), Raul Muñoz Leos received one of el Presidente’s famous cowboy boots up his backside last week. At least metaphorically. It appears using government funds to pay for his wife’s fat butt was not exactly what Fox had in mind, when he talked about investing in tapping new and unexplored oil reserves. But, misappropriating government funds for his wife’s liposuction treatments really wasn’t that strange. LOWERING the price of oil sold to U.S. companies by 3 dollars a barrel.. now that’s really shady.It’s no wonder Fox, and his party, are seen as losers. They are. Fox was supposed to be a Mexican Ronald Reagan… Muñoz Leos was like a lot of Reagan’s cabinet officers, who saw cutting their department down to size and running it like a business (or even better, selling it off to corporate interests) was their purpose in life. But Reagan was able to see the idea that bureaucracies are supposed to be cost-efficient. Fox can’t make the argument that cheap oil for ExxonMobile (or is it MobilExxon?) is good for Mexican workers.It’s not the best source, but it’s in English: The Mexico City News has a longish, superficial article on the doings at Pemex.

I had the best Sopa Azteca the other day, and asked the chef for the recipe. It was an old family recipe, and he wasn’t about to give away the secret, but I did learn one thing… use fresh ingredients and start with a whole Aztec…

To the Saint Mary’s Shores …

Meanwhile, life here in America’s oldest bedroom community (if your burro was plodding up the Tacuba causeway about 1535, you would have seen a sign reading “If you lived here, you’d be home now… swampside lots now available!) goes on as always. And, as always, I’m amazed at the number of gringos who can’t place this neighborhood… who think it’s out in the boonies somewhere (not since the 16th century anyway). Poor benighted souls… they think anything further away from Polanco than the Zona Rosa is “injun country”. What they don’t know is we’re the “French Quarter”… and the Spanish Quarter, and the Kenyan Quarter, and the Brazilian Quarter, and the Russian Quarter … and, yes, we have injuns too.When I go to the mercado on Sunday, I meet a few elderly French men and women in the park. Most of them came here in the 1940s, and we still have a French lycée facing the park… along with a 100 year old store specializing in bugs – right next to a Russian taco stand.The way to meet the neighbors is to have a dog. Eva Perra is the one who meets and greets everyone… I’m just along for the walk. Besides her canine buddies and boyfriends (including Filomon the Yorkie… who is madly in love with her, but alas – or thankfully – unable to consummate his love, being about a tenth her size) there are her political contacts – like her Argentine namesake, she’s been trying to organize the poor and dispossessed… in her case the pack of half-feral collies … los perros sin hogares… or at least bring them into her Perro-ista movement.

Mexican dogs have their own political persuasions. Roof dogs, like Manches the Jack Russell, are capitalists and generally right-wingers. They are sticklers for order and complain loudly about any violation – or presumed violation – of their property rights (in Peru, where property titles have been screwed up since Pizarro, a conservative economist seriously suggested drawing up deeds based on the mid-point between where roof dogs start barking). Pure bred house dogs – like Frieda Kahlo the French Poodle are the neurotic petite bourgeois … forever worried about what the neighbors are up to, and their own place in the social hierarchy. Frieda the Poodle, like her Commie namesake, is an annoying pest… if she lost a leg or two, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad… yeah… hmmmmm….

The less pure-bred house dogs are probably leftists, though you find a few reactionaries in there.

Street dogs are anarchists. Some work hard, like Paloma the taco-vending German Shepard (really… he sits in front of the taco stand all night, and when you want a taco, he informs the jefe, who’s inside watching the futbal game) or are struggling to get by, like Canello who works as a security guard at the corner newsstand in the morning, and the farmacia at night. Others want to live on the dole, like the Cantina dog across the street. Don’t know his name… he’s just the Cantina dog.

Then there’s dogs like Eva… who never forgot where she came from. Like all doggies, she’d make a good fascist, though saved by her anarchist streak from mindless obedience. And, being a Latin American, of course, she’s open to bribery and flattery.

When NOT being walked by the dog, I’ve been writing propaganda for my company. It looks like I have to really, really work now (well, not now, but manaña… or the manaña after that) since our propaganda is starting to pay off and it looks like we have a shitload of new people to train. “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach are administrators”. Pretty cool trick, huh? Make the programs so good that I wouldn’t hire me to teach them. So… anybody know where I can find some excellent teachers, with experience – preferably in business or administration – and interested in making not a lot of money in Mexico?

And that’s all the news from Lake Texcoco-begone, where all the women are getting liposuction, all the men are tasty (if prepared properly) and all the tourist’s children are uncomfortable.

Well, hello Dalai…

The People’s Republic of China mounted a photo exhibit here last week on exploitation in Tibet. New openness, letting, as Chairman Mao once said, “a thousand flowers bloom, a thousand thoughts contend”? Not on your life! These are old, old photos showing how crappy things were in Tibet before their “liberation”.

Nobody went. While Mexicans are no slouches when it comes to lousy wages, hours and working conditions, they still have pesky things like a minimum wage and unions that really cut into the cheap exports and (Wal)market. Nobody north of the border is going to worry too much about it, so the Mexicans are appealing to a higher authority. The Dalai Lama is making a State Visit later this week. If nothing else, the Chinese are really, really pissed off… which is probably the whole point.

Speaking of governments that like to shoot unarmed student protesters… yesterday was the 36th anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre. Despite the commie rhetoric (The PRD, and Cuauhtémoc Cardenas are the good guys, not the villains – they’re just not commie enough for the author), http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/tlatelolco/tlatelolco1e.html is readable overview of what happened.

The kids are all right…

Even people who knew about this event somehow forget how young some of these protesters were… it was high school kids protesting police repression (the coppers started busting heads when a pickup soccer game between two prepas got a little rough) that led to general protests by college students, workers, housewives, campesinos and civil servants… you know – what Time and Newsweek and CBS and the New York Times all called “Communist Inspired” types. Read “educated people”… a whole generation of them. Even those 14-year old “commies” are getting a little long in the tooth. The poor has always distrusted the cops… ever middle-class person my age or older fears them. It’s a good thing people are self-reliant… or neighborhood-reliant… here. The last thing you want to do is call a bunch of yahoos who had trouble getting through 6th grade to handle a problem. The cops are starting to get a little better – they have to be 7th grade graduates now, and the younger ones can actually run a few blocks if they have to. There were 3500 of them lined up down Insurgentes this afternoon waiting for the protesters.

Maybe Mexican kids have more respect for their elders… or tradition. They’re still the bulk of the 2 October protesters. I watched the cops patting down a few punkers. Two years ago, when a few of the “usual suspects” (Kentucky Fried Chicken and the foreign owned banks) had their windows smashed, the powers that be blamed the “darkeos” for the trouble. The “darkies” are the weird kids who like morose music, read Edgar Alan Poe and wear lots and lots of black. They’re just smart, weird teenagers – and lucky for them they live in a big enough city to find other smart, weird teenagers (besides not having guns, you’re more likely to find a Mexican who likes George W. Bush than a potential high school shooter in a city where even morose loners have a huge peer group). Like I said, our police are not known for their smarts. This year’s flavor of “potential trouble maker” are the punks. Excelsior said a few were arrested for carrying explosives (i.e., firecrackers), but then, the punks stand out even more than the darkeos – they both wear a lot of black, but the darkeos have long hair and the punks have spiked hairdos. I guess next year, it’ll be the skaterboarders the coppers go after.

President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz died and went to Hell before he could be prosecuted for Tlatelolco, but Luis Echiverria is still among the living. Echiverria was the Sec. de Gobernacion (sort of Homeland Security chief) in 1968… with a second job as a C.I.A. agent (like our friends Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussain and Osama bin Ladin). Maybe they’ll get him into a courtroom before he goes to his reward.

Another Mex-File mystery, semi-solved…

Thanks to Jeff A. Taylor at Reason Magazine’s Hit and Run website for this one. (http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2004/09/26-week/index.shtml) . The Las Vegas Journal Review, covering a store about Judge Marrero’s ruling that the Patriot Act was unconstitutional gives me a clue to solving one Mex-File…

The Journal-Review (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Sep-30-Thu-2004/news/24881864.html) reports

… late last year Vegas casinos, hotels, and airlines were subject to a massive FBI data mining exercise the true extent of which remains unknown. Some 350,000 people had their personal info sucked up without their consent or even knowledge. Indeed, the PATRIOT Act forbade companies from even disclosing the federal request for info to anyone.

Last January, our City Comptroller was videotaped in Las Vegas playing blackjack with MY TAX MONEY. Ok, the guy’s a scumbag (present whereabouts unknown – Interpol is guessing Brazil or Cuba. I’m betting he’s at the bottom of Lake Powell with his feet sitting in cement). We have a lot of scumbags in city government. But, just when it started to become obvious that our Socialist Jefe de Gobernacion was the overwhelming favorite for President in 2006, all sorts of Socialist corruption (a refreshing change from the usual PRI and Foxista corruption) started to pop up. Our Jefe (who drives a Tsuru and lives with his three sons in a middle-class apartment) always said there was a right-wing (read “gringo”) plot to discredit him. How did Vegas casino security tapes (supposedly not available to anyone without a court order) end up on a morning talk show, in the possession of a right-wing congressman. Do you really believe the F.B.I. was looking for terrorists at the blackjack table?

And… yes, I do have a life…

Things were getting a little too normal. I’m STILL waiting for one client to pay a very large bill (They’ve promised to pay this week, but then, they’ve promised to pay in 15 days, 5 months ago too. And we’re not talking about some fly-by-night company, or a mom-and-pop operation here. I won’t mention any names, but the only way I’d do business with that unnamed international pharmaceutical company listed as ABT on the New York Stock Exchange is if they pay up-front). So, my “emergency” U.S. bank account is running very, very low. Not exactly an emergency, true… but then, after buying household appliances and paying little incidentals like rent, the phone bill, and silly things like that, I’ve developed this weird habit of eating every day.
And, I have another mouth to feed. I know, I know… I said I really wanted to live alone. But, what are you going to do… an orphan with questionable parentage, though a real charmer and knows it… and a Latin American blonde. What else can you call the pup but Eva Perra? I’m guessing she’s about 10 months old… probably a Christmas puppy some asshole abandoned when they went on vacation. Small – 6 Kilos and, best guess, some sort of collie and terrier and maybe Cocker Spaniel in the family tree. I notice the serious political bloggers always post a picture of their cat on Fridays. But, I’m not serious, and I don’t have a cat… and I don’t have a regular posting schedule. Still, I’ll post a pooch picture when I find my camera.
Here’s the big difference between Mexico City and Houston. I’m absolutely comfortable walking Eva at 1 AM through a park and around the hood here. I don’t think I’d have walked Hippie (or Stella, or Bubba) outside my semi-suburban neighborhood at that hour. Even the guys hanging in doorways smoking mota and dinking coronas say “Buenos dias”.

And that’s all the news from Lake Tezcoco-be-gone, where all the men are good looking, the women are strong, and the children are suspects.

Two signs of winter: dogs in clothes and changing exchange rates. Other than poodles and german shepherds (and not even then), you can’t always tell family pets from free spirits. They’re all happy and dirty, laying out on the street or scrounging around the market. But, when the weather turns cold (and it has), everyone in the family puts on a coat – including Fido. Coatless dogs are homeless dogs. The dog at the local gas station sports his own Pemex uniform jacket, though I think “Manuel” is his person – dogs usually don’t get people names here. And the dollar drops. Zacatecas used to be the richest place in the western hemisphere (well worth a visit), but the silver mines gave out in the 19th century, and the only crops are goats and cactus. Even in good-sized Zacatecan towns, you don’t see any adult men most of the year. An awful lot of them come home for Christmas, but, if they can’t, they find Bank of America or Western Union. A banker told me his biggest headache is finding extra people and cash for rural banks this time of year. Every Mexican “on the other side” (with or without papers) also sends money home. Billions of dollars pout into Mexico, and you know the story … the supply increases more than the demand . The dollar plunged from 11 pesos to around 10.25. The big debtors buy cheap dollars, pay off foreign debts, the dollar goes back up, and it’s back to normal instability. Ah, Christmas! My traditionally cheesy pirata Christmas CD lacks Elvis’ “Blue Christmas”, but it has Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “Jingle Bells” in Spanglish. The church across the street has an extravagantly lit work in progress now featuring: Maria, Jose, el Niño, shepherds, sheep, goats, 8 tiny reindeer (nowhere do I recall it ever says exactly what critters composed those flocks watched by night), chickens, ducks, turkeys, burros, campesinos, cacti, Aztecs, Mayans, Melichor, Balthazar, Abindingo, camels, elephants, horses, Bambi and Thumper. No Spiderman — yet. Speaking of impressive displays, go to the cathedral and check out all the padlocks offered to San Ramon Nonato — not to be confused with Ramon Novarro. They’re both known for silent roles. Novarro was a Mexican-born 20s film star; San Ramon a 13th century Spanish preacher who annoyed the Moors. Being heathens and all they sewed his lips shut. The favorite activity of your traditionally dysfunctional Mexican family – especially at this time of fellowship and good cheer — is calumniating and bearing false witness against their nearest and dearest. Mexicans love gossip. You need a saint who tells people to shut up. The calumniators should lock their lips, so the caluminatees leave San Ramon the locks. Looks like there’s a whole lotta calumniating going on. History is gossip that doesn’t get back to Aunt Consuela … who might put a divine “lip lock” on ya! So, better to talk about, oh… Joel Roberts Poinsett, our first master spy. Who knows what he was up to in Kygyzia during George Washington’s administration? GW, unlike GWB, was intelligent and far-sighted –he knew where the future trouble spots were. Our first Ambassador to Mexico channeled secret state department funds to a Masonic lodge — a front to recruit agents and influence domestic policy. When his cover was blown, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams “disavowed any knowledge”. Poinsett packed a few “flor de nochebuena” cuttings in his luggage and fled north. I’d say more about poinsettias, but my lips are sealed.