What’s in a name?

25 May 2008

There was a short article in today’s Noroeste on a campaign by the local Registro Civil to remind people to give their kids “normal” names — like José… or Lenin or Nezahaucoatl. It seems there’s a fashion lately of giving kids “foreign” names — unpronounceable ones like “Stephanie, “Irving” and “Christopher.”

The Registrars have trouble spelling the names (and so do the parents sometimes… Jhonnie and Yonnie are both fairly common names along the coast) and — in a country where your name stays with you for life (and is part of your “permanent record”) it can cause problems, and screw up your life.

Which may explain the odd case of Glenn Christoper Cerda Guajardo. Given his name, when he surfaced in Costa Rica with some story about Mexican ties to Colombian FARC guerrillas (or “terrorists” as they’re labeled in the U.S. and Colombia), I wondered if he wasn’t a U.S. raised Mexican working for the CIA or Colombian intelligence.

Given the dubious nature of Colombian claims about FARC (from laptop computers that mysteriously survive direct hits from missiles to disappearing photographs to later denied claims of Mexican ties to the organization), and Cerda’s appearance in one of the few countries that still will tolerate the Bush and Uribe adminstrations’ pathetic attempts to create a situation that justifies aggression against Venezuela and Ecuador, it was a natural suspicion.

This just sounded like one more attempt to throw up a bunch of accusations and see what stuck. Cerda claimed just about every group that’s an inconvenience to the Mexican administration (from APPO to UNAM student groups) was involved with FARC and cocaine dealing… which was convenient for the Calderon administration, but even they found the story hard to swallow.

Then I saw a photo of the guy with the odd name. He sure doesn’t look like a spy… though he may be in his own mind. Being mentally ill and given to serial fantasies, though, he could be the perfect patsy for incompetent spies.