They like me! They really like me!

“Forget Lonely Planet and Fodors,” writes Meredith Veto in the Guadalajara Reporter. If you want to know what’s going on in Mexico, she recommends a mixed bag of different websites.

Two of the sites I don’t know at all — one from a surfer dude in Bucerias and the other from Cancún (which Veto says ” is ‘like free therapy … and that’s the sense you get when you scroll through—you might as well be sitting on a bar stool next to her and at least three drinks into the night.”) are interesting in their own right, but no mi onda: after all, I “started the [MexFiles] to fill the “need for an English-language Mexican website that wasn’t a tourism site, or ‘my life in wherever-tlan.’”

One I do read, and is also recommended by Veto, is droppedin.com . Malcolm and Jillian are making a fine art of creative slackering … they’re twenty-something professional ex-pats… presently living in the Yucatan. They take a nicely jaundiced view of the world, which I find refreshing.  A little twisted … cae bueno!

What surprised me was that Veto also includes the Mex Files in this company. “The site, as any politically oriented forum might be, is somewhat less than objective”. Yeah, well… there’s objective, and there’s the corporate press. I’ll go with “a short rant or rave, but not without foundation and historical perspective” any day.

Meredith Veto obviously has good taste:

The Mex Files is a priceless resource for expats who don’t read Mexican newspapers but want to keep informed—the blog covers current politics, culture, economics, and some U.S.-Mexico related news.

[…] This webpage demands a bookmark—it’s simple way to keep afloat in an unfamiliar political culture.

It also needs to pay for itself.