About the banner
The banner photos were all taken from various “public domain” or “fair use” sites … Tezacatlapoca, “Lord Smoking Mirror”, is the god of the world we know, master of reality and unreality. Only Mexico would conceive of the master of the real world as a trickster.
Maria Felix, was THE Mexican film star. She played everything from sickly school-ma’arms to femmes fatales. Something of a trickster herself over the course of a very long career stretching from the 1930s almost into the new millenium, she remains an iconic Mexican figure, though one barely recognized a few miles north of the border.
Many claim Andres Manuel Lopez Obradór is another trickster. Some say Mexican public life is half theater, and he is one of the best performers on that stage today. His career has been fascinating to observe, and he will remain an essential figure in contemporary Mexican political life.
Lopez Obradór’s following includes a lot of the descendants of the people shopping on calle Corregadora about 1912. What’s for sale, and how the people dress has changed in the last century, but the street remains as crowded and “real” now, as it did then.
The Eagle Warrior is a popular figure in chromatic calander art. In his own right, he’s an iconic figure, reminding the Mexicans of their heroic, tragic history.
The cover photo on the English translation of Luis Zapata’s 1979 novel, “Adonis Garcia” was taken by David Greene. A male prostitute is, by profession, a “trickster”… but the anti-hero of that novel is a joyful, exuberant survivor — who might explain, but never complains. And that’s Mexican!
And us…
Richard Grabman
When I moved to Mexico at the age of 45, I said I was from Texas. True, though I grew up in western New York State.
I studied English and Biology (and Classics, for God knows why), but found that qualified me to be a starving artiste… so with a year of computer and accounting courses, reinvented myself as a technical writer… which I did long enough to never want to write “Press any key to continue” as long as I lived. By that time, I was living in Houston, in a Mexican neighborhood, and travelling every chance I had back and forth to Mexico. Flights were cheap and I didn’t have anything more pressing to do than to fly down to Mexico City every three day weekend I could.
When the dot.com industry went belly-up, I was ready for a change anyway. So, half-way into a still-unfinished book on Mexican History, I took a job teaching English at a grade school in Cuernavaca. I don’t particularly like kids (and cannibalism is no longer an option in Mexico), so moved to Mexico City, where I taught English, did translations, wrote and went bust setting up an avocado exporter.
I recently returned to another Texas… the Big Bend, with one person per square mile — when I get over the culture shock, I’ll let y’all know.
I still do translations, at Mexican rates, by the way. Local reporting and a bit of free-lancing doesn’t cover the bills. I’ll need to get a new computer, and keep the telephone connected. I’m not too proud to ask for donations to my Pay Pal account.
Lyn_2
Lyn worked with the migrant farmerworker community, and with the immigrant community in the United States. She is a fearless Mexican traveller, going far off the beaten path sometimes by the simple expedient of following the hotel maid about her daily chores.
Lyn’s lair lay somewhere in the mountains (of Colorado) in dangerous “occupied territory”… her congressman is Tom Tancredo.
