Southern under-exposure

I just purged about 100 pages I’d bookmarked over the last week or two.  I can’t write about EVERYTHING, but before getting back to the one or two issues that have obsessed me lately, a few worthwhile pieces that cry out for someone — anyone? — to follow up in more detail.

Baja Humbuggery:

Via some website that seems to be more interested in who is hacking who up in the Baja, and I only heard of because a better informed site seemed to think I was in cahoots with the guy (whoever he is) I ran across an article in the on-line Rosarita Noticias about an “investigation” into the “rent-a-moppet” racket.  I think everyone has heard that the kids begging in the streets, or with the woman selling gum or candy, isn’t really her kid, but was rented for the day.  You’d think somewhere, some not-too-enterprising investigative reporter (or even the consumer affairs writer) would have simply followed some beggar home.  Or a “rent-a-kid” racket would have shown up somehow… in the couple of millenia this tale has been floating around wherever there are beggars… in other words, it’s  a story that has probably been around ever since Abraham was tramping around the City of Ur… in other words, an urban myth that goes back to the beginning of urbs… and myths.

Can’t stop the music gunfights

While Rosarita’s great minds worry about rent-a-waifs, in Mazatlán at least there’s something real to worry about … musicians and their patrons getting shot.  What’s the answer… simple:  ban “narco-corrida” music. Probably not what Joe Stalin meant when he said “No man, no problem”.

Another Sinaloa Cartel

The Surfer Cartel.  I need to get out more… about the only surfing I do is surfing the internet… but this is a real problem (and one that the U.S. Consulate has been aware of, but unwilling to do anything about) involving what looks like more than just bullying by foreign-run resort personnel, but an attempt to illegally take possession of what are public beaches by these “camps.”  Sinaloa has seen enough violence lately… I hope we don’t need to call in Leroy’s Mama:

Another drug lord

Well, it was only a matter of time before the gringos muscled in.    Chapo Guzman’s fellow billionaire, Bill Gates, has bought a hefty stake in Latin America’s largest purveyor of addictive, health-destroying and money wasting products — what a Catalan-Jewish Mexican friend of mine used to call “las aguas negras de los imperialista gringas.”

And speaking of colonialism…

Bolivians are again facing malnutrition, thanks to the “discovery” by the rich countries of the healthy properties of one of the few foods they could afford, and — of course — the well fed “west” must be served.