The Halls of Montezuma…
Today is the 165th anniversary of the Battle of Chapultepec. The U.S. victory over the 832 men and boys (some as young as 13) defending the Castle under the command of independence leader and former President Nicolas Bravo cleared the way for the U.S. occupation of Mexico City, and the subsequent treaty by which Mexico was forced to cede the northern third of the country to the United States.
In Mexico, the battle is remembered for the Boy Heroes (Los Niños Heroes), the military cadets who took an active part in the defense (General Bravo was the rector of the military academy, at the time located in the Castle) said to have chosen death over surrender when the castle was overrun by U.S. troops. The youngest, Francisco Márquez, was thirteen, the oldest, Juan de la Barrera, nineteen. By tradition, it is said that one of the boys, Juan Escutia, leaped to his death wrapped in the Bandera Nacional to keep it from falling into enemy hands.
More recently, a new appreciation has come to another set of martyrs to la patria, the former U.S. soldiers, mostly recent immigrants and mostly Irish, who recognized that the war was — as then Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant would later characterize it — “the worst injustice one nation has ever done to another” — and chose to fight for Mexico. They knew full well that to be captured was to be hanged. Thirty captured San Patricios were hanged in San Angel as the Stars and Stripes were raised over the castle.
While in the United States, the War Against Mexico is little remembered nor much noted, the United States Marines do honor the memory of their Mexican 
enemies in a small way. In honor of their fallen comrades, and in appreciation — if that’s the right word — of their Mexican foes determined defense, the blue stripe on the leg of the formal uniform was changed to a red stripe, to recognize the amount of blood they were forced to shed taking the gateway to “The Halls of Montezuma”.
¿Minusvalidos? ¡NO!
Via Letras Voladoras:
11-September in perspective
11-September 2001:
3000 eventually killed in a country of 281.5 millions (about 0.00001 percent of the general population) as a result of a foreign-instigated attack.
11-September 1973:
50,000 eventually killed in a country of 9.5 millions (about 0.005 percent of the general population) as a result of a foreign-instigated coup.
You go, girl!
So much for ergonomically designed sportswear and 500-dollar running shoes…. winner of the Maratón Oxxo K10 2012 Maria Salomé in a traditional Tarahumara running (and eating, and shopping, and child-care, and…) outfit.
(Photo via Colonia Felipe Angeles, Meoqui, Chihuahua).
While I’m not taking this post down, I think that “Maria Solomé” herself didn’t exist… those who commented below had good reasons for thinking so, and — something I should have noticed (but didn’t) — was the “patronizing” caption that also suggests it’s false. Had someone name “Maria Solomé” run in the race, she would have a surname (well, two surnames in Mexico) and as an adult woman they would have been reported. Identifying an adult by just her given name would be to treat her as a child… or… a romanticized “child of nature” as too many — even when well-meaning — still see indigenous people. (5 June 2013)
Gimme Shelter
Probably not the best way to start off a new administration.
Enrique Peña Nieto doesn’t even take office under the First of December, but at least one guy — Augustín Estrada Negrete — has already been granted political asylum (and in the United States, where political asylum isn’t easily obtained) out of a well-founded fear of the incoming President.
Estrada was a special education teacher and PRI activist in the State of Mexico, who was persecuted for his sexual orientation. Discrimination on the basis of sexual “preference” is specifically forbidden in Article One of the Mexican Constitution, although perhaps there is some super-secret override for governors being groomed for the presidency if — as Estrada claims — their own preference changes, which allows them to then have inconvenient boy-toys falsely arrested by State police and gang raped.
Whooops!
Very late in the Elector Tribunal hearings, there were accusations by the Citizen’s Movement and AMLO camp that State of Mexico funds were transferred illegally to the Peña Nieto campaign (via third parties). At the time, as Aguachile noted, the evidence was flimsy, and inflammatory accusations that Banco de México President Agustín Carstens was covering up the illegal transfers were seen as preposterous.
As my favorite villain (Auric Goldfinger) once said, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. But thee times is enemy Although Carstens doesn’t seem to have any involvement in any of this, it does appear that Scotiabank did change documents on receipts from the State of Mexico, ostensibly to correct a routing error. HOWEVER…
Unverified photo of Marcos Gonzaléz Pak
That third admitted “misdirected payment”, has opened the way for “enemy action”… or at least unfriendly questioning of the state Treasurer by the leftist opposition parties. And, if it doesn’t only call into question the State of Mexico’s financial operations, it , it raises some seriousl questions about the way Scotiabank operates.
That voodoo that you do so well
Catemaco shaman Luis Tomás Martén Torres was quoted in Thursday’s Notiver de Veracruz as having been solicited by attorneys for Enrique Peña Nieto to provide good luck charms and amulets to the candidate. According to Shaman Martén, he and Peña Nieto maintain contact, both by telephone and mental telepathy. (Proceso).
Print by Robert Dighton (1752-1814)
So that’s how he won, huh?
I don’t think it’s particularly weird for a politician to seek an edge from supernatural powers … even Andres Manuel Lopez Obradór underwent some sort of “laying on of hands” exercise with Evangelical clerics, nor particularly eccentric to seek the assistance of a shaman when calling on the Higher Powers — after all, this is Mexico, but what is troubling, is that he sent his lawyer… but then, depending on what supernatural assistance was sought by Enrique Peña Nieto, maybe a lawyer is the best qualified person to initiate contact.
7 September 1956
15 year old Edson Arantes do Nascimento debuted professionally with the Santos Futebol Clube.
Who would have thought then that this unassuming looking kid would become one of the most recognized human beings on the planet.
Viva Pelé!
Great Moments in International Trade
Courthouse News, via Inca Kola News:
WASHINGTON (CN) – The National Marine Fisheries Service has lifted trade restrictions on importing bigeye tuna from Bolivia and Georgia.
The move implements a 2011 recommendation by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
ICCAT members had prohibited imports of Atlantic bigeye tuna and its products from Bolivia and Georgia since at least 2003 due to fishing practices that thwarted ICCAT conservation rules.
The NMFS foresees no socioeconomic impacts on U.S. traders, because the two nations had not been importing of Atlantic bigeye tuna into the U.S. prior to the implementation of the prohibitions, and no attempt to import the tuna is expected.
Uh…
PRI runs amok in Neza… and ?
According to several different news sources “rumors” that Movimiento Antorcha Campesina has been attacking businesses and homes in Nezahualcóyotl, just inside the State of Mexico are just that, and are being denied by the state authorities (who claim nothing is happening)-
However, media is starting to report on Antorchista blockades of metro stations (the Mexico City Metro extends into Neza) and on social media, people are saying masked Antorchistas cut telephone lines and were shooting at people.
At least the blockades are confirmed, and various reports on Antorcha websites report on confrontations between their own taxi-driver’s union and members of a PRD-connected bicycle-taxi union which has left at least two people dead.
Movimiento Antorcha Campesina is a PRI “popular sector”, and its militants have been known to resort to violence before. Nezahualcóyotl has been a PRD stronghold within the State of Mexico, which makes it appear that a fight between two unions (basically over access to prime pick-up locations outside Metro stations) is in reprisal for the local voters’ continual support of the “wrong” party, with the violence said to be targeted at businesses owned by PRD supporters and individual PRD party members, whether connected to the bicycle-taxi union or not.
Antorcha blockade at Chicoloapan (Anima Politica: http://www.animalpolitico.com/2012/09/miembros-de-antorcha-campesina-bloquean-transporte-publico-en-edomex/
I know there were many in the “observer community” who expected some kind of trouble following the “problematic” Peña Nieto victory, but most were assuming the left would be blocking streets and annoying commuters and maybe… maybe… breaking a few windows here and there. They tend to forget that PRI violence against the left in the wake of seriously contested elections has happened before. Following Carlos Salinas’ “victory” over Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988, there was a series of assassinations, unexplained auto accidents and and other violent deaths of PRD loyalists which, thankfully, did not escalate (as it easily could have) into … politics by other means (“power comes from the barrel of a gun”, as Mao Zedong put it).
While I have always said that Mexican politics is a blood-sport, and have no illusions that politicians here “play nice”, I have to add that the major violence hasn’t been coming from the Left… who tend to still bring their library books (ok, and maybe their blackberries and cell phone cameras, too) to what could be a gun fight.
Damn well better hope the pen is mightier than the sword (or whatever the cyber variation of that might be).
And it’s not even St. Patrick’s Day
Clifden, Galway is celebrating it’s bicentennial with a blow-out honoring their most famous son, el Capitán John Riley.
Off-season
With September being the slow month, what with almost no tourists, and the closed season for shrimping, and the marijuana not yet ready to harvest, and the anti-Peña Nieto protests not having kicked off yet, people in Mazatlán have to find something to keep occupied. And we do… photo at Isla de la Piedra from El Debate.
mexfiles.net 