This picture is only “shocking” for people who don’t know Spain, Spaniards or the Spanish language. I know all three, and it comes as no surprise at all.What sucks, and what doesn’t — Friday night video
15 August 2008
Hugo Chavez is blamed for just about every weird thing that happens in Venezuela, but this one is just too weird — and for once is blamed on an even more popular villain, global warming.
ATTACKS by deadly vampire bats have left at least 38 people dead.
The blood-thirsty predators have devastated whole villages after sinking their fangs into women and children.
And scientists warn global warming and habitat destruction could end up pushing the bats closer to humans than ever before.
Settlements in Venezuela, South America, have come under attack from the winged menaces, with natives fearing for their lives. It is thought the bats were carrying rabies, which then infected members of the remote Warao tribe.
All victims died within a week of showing signs of rabies, which includes fever, tingling in the feet followed by paralysis, and an extreme fear of water.
Dr Charles Rupprecht, a rabies expert in Atlanta, USA, said: “Vampire bats are very adaptable. Homo sapiens are a pretty easy meal.”
But, it’s not all bad. As this video posted by “FilmFanTV” points out, Latin vampires are a lot more fun than their Anglo cousins:
Pirates attack Mexico!
15 August 2008
Concert Productions International, a Canadian rock concert tour promoter, certainly would object if I started downloading entire CDS of concerts by Canadian artists (I’m sure there are some… um… Brian Adams, uh… Gordon Lightfoot… Celine Dion … and … um, uh, ahhh ??)
While it’s true the Mex Files uses a Creative Commons License, which grants others the rights to reprint (with attribution) or “re-mix” files, it is for NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY. Otherwise, normal International Copyright laws apply. I don’t see that reposting — in their entirety — twenty-four entire Mex Files on a site designed to draw business to Concert Productions International is anything but commercial.
Look, I don’t mind people copying an article now and again, or even reposting it as their own … but 
usually it’s penny-ante stuff not worth getting in a sweat over, or some kid doing their homework. Not something on a corporate scale. Corporations can pay.
People who are profiting from Mex Files should, I know not everyone can contribute, and a lot of times the only profit they receive is some help with their homework, or a better understanding of issues, or reassurance that they’re vacation is not going to entail kidnapping and walking the plank. I ask those regular readers to try to commit to at least 3 USD per month… A MEASLY 36 DOLLARS A YEAR.
From Mr. Michael Cohl, Mr. David Wolinsky, Mr. William Ballard and Mr. Mark Norman of Concert Productions International, 111 George Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, ON M5A 2N4 (Phone: +1-416-777-1811) I’d expect much more.
Copying their CDs is illegal, and so is commercial use of my production. If these guys have a shred of integrity, they’ll make a sizable donation to the Mex Files at least comparable to what they expect to be paid were I to steal 25 of their CDs or DVDs. Retail.
¡Pinche gachupines!
15 August 2008
The Spaniards still don’t “get it” after 500 years. Though he normally covers the commodity trading and mining stocks in South America (with some excellent writing on “other stuff” like culture and politics in the region), Otto at the (English-language) Peruvian site, IncaKola News, has the same reaction anyone in Latin America would have to this photo of a Spaniards in China acting like… well… Spaniards who think their shit don’t stink (in Mexico, these guys would be called “guchupines” which in Nahuatl literally refers to a Spaniard with a horse — or rather the spurs a horseman wears — but “racist assholes” is a pretty good metaphorical translation).
This picture is only “shocking” for people who don’t know Spain, Spaniards or the Spanish language. I know all three, and it comes as no surprise at all.
The thing is, I’m quite sure the Spanish basketball team who posed all slitty-eyed for the cameras didn’t even realize themselves how insulting their behaviour is, this because the whole country is as ignorant about their disgusting attitudes as they are. Latin Americans are well used to this kind of racism from the Spanish, unfortunately. It started in 1523 and hasn’t changed much since.
The Bourbon rulers of Spain were said to “never change, and never learn”. The same seems to be true about Spanish sports teams. From the LatinAmericanist, here is the Women’s Tennis Team:
There have been several instances if [sic] racism and sport in Spain in the past; monkey chants were made from the stands of a 2004 England-Spain soccer friendly in Madrid, while in the 1990s ex-Atletico Madrid owner Jesus Gil y Gil threatening to “slash the nigger’s throat” and “shit on the bitch mother” of Colombian player Adolfo Valencia.
Catching the first wave in Mazatlán
15 August 2008
When you write history, there’s always a temptation to say this or that was the first time something happened… only to have more evidence pop up later. And sometimes the explorers themselves have to admit they probably aren’t the first.
From Malcolm Gault-Williams, “LEGENDARY SURFERS: A Definitive History of Surfing’s Culture and Heroes.”
Phil Edwards, in the company of legendary surfer Whitey Harrison, were two of the first known surfers to explore Mexico in 1957. But, as Edwards’ description aptly points out, they were far from the first:
“In Mexico,” Edwards wrote, “I… served as a crewman aboard another boat, a 30-foot sloop. Then the owners took off for home; leaving the boat with Harrison and me — with the agreement that we could take three months to bring it home, providing we got it there intact.
“Naturally, we surfed our way back, stopping and anchoring wherever the surf looked good, taking our time in the lazy, hot waters off Mexico.
“One day we found the island.
“It lay uninhabited, a humpback of pure desert, 150 miles off the Mexican coast — three degrees north of our charted course — somewhere off Mazatlan. On the east face of it, waves were breaking in perfectly. A million miles of waves, each with a tube slicing across the top, each with the light shining through like turquoise, glittering. Alone in the world.
“We dropped the anchor, got our boards, got out of our clothes and over the side in one blur of motion. It was perfect: the waves were eight feet and we began to cut patterns where no man had ever surfed before, kicking up plumes of green and white diamonds.
“Then, jazzed, we fell on the beach to rest. And we found the sign. It was a crude thing, hand lettered on an old board and jammed into the sand.
“‘Mel Ross surfed here,’ it said, and gave the date. ‘The surf was 10 feet,’ it said.
“You should have been here a year ago.”
Here’s an interesting throught. There were more than a few sailors bound to and from Polynesia in Mazatlán in the 1840s and 50s. One was a guy named Herman Melville — who wrote a couple of books about Polynesia and — probably learned to surf or at least ride a body-board. Everyone assumes Herman spent his time in Mazatlan just toiling away at Redfern, but he must have hung around with somebody, and his gloomy puritanical New England buds weren’t around. Which was probably just as well: otherwise, we be reading Henry David Thoreau on how to sell timeshares to your cabin, and we’d all suffer through reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Condo of Seven Gables.”
I guess if you’re going to write the Great American Maritime Novel, you need to be in puritanical New England… so, I’m afraid Mazatlan can’t take credit for Moby Dick. However, there’s not reason to not think that Herman might have been hanging out with Polynesian harpooners while he was here. And we have no definitive proof that Mel Ross DID NOT run across an old coffin lid used as a body board with “Want to know where the really big waves are? Call me… Ishmael” written on it.
Could be true. Should be true. But damned if I can prove it.
Dude, where’s my border?
14 August 2008
Lynn Brezosky, San Antonio Express-News, via South Texas Chisme .
GRANJENO — Perhaps it was the shade-giving mesquite and the storied ebony tree that caused border-fence surveyors to apparently miss the Anzaldua family and their two neighbors’ bucolic cropping of homes, horse paddocks and farm equipment.
But if construction on the first segments proceeds without changes, the family will end up in a kind of no man’s land between the Homeland Security Department’s border wall and the Rio Grande.
…No one from Customs and Border Protection or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came by to tell them a fence was planned that would put them somewhere between the United States and Mexico.
No one from Hidalgo County came by to tell them whether the school bus would come once the dirt roads changed to a precarious series of dirt piles.
There is, of course, a perfectly logical reason for this:
The engineers, employed by one of the private contractors for the barrier, said they hadn’t known.
No reason to be in your own country?
13 August 2008
A U.S. Border Patrol agent in San Ysidrio, California apparently shot a Mexican national today, during a rock-throwing incident. The shooting victim probably was throwing rocks, but whether he deserved to be shot is for others to work out. This happens from time to time (and probably will continue to happen) but what makes this shooting so different is that the border wall in that area tends to meander into both countries in that area, and the Mexican appears to have been in Mexico. I’m sure others will be commenting on that.
What bothers me is the statement by Supervisory Border Patrol agent Daryl Reed:
Reed said there is no other reason for people to be in that area other than to conduct illegal activity.
Excuse me? I’ve commented before that the Border Patrol, and Homeland Security, is of a mindset that denies American citizens who are near the border their basic rights as citizens. Who is Hell is Daryl Reed to tell other countries where their own citizens can, and cannot, congregate?
Perhaps he needs to do a bit of reading.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):
Article 13.
- (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Meet the new cops, same as the old cops?
13 August 2008
The Monday announcement to disband Mexico City’s judicial police force and implement 20 new measures to improve security and policing was met with approval from the federal government, but human rights activists and analysts expressed skepticism over whether the moves would be enough.
Mexico City Human Rights Commissioner Emilio Alvarez Icaza told reporters that Mayor Marcelo Ebrard must focus on real changes within the judicial police and law enforcement in general, rather than just replacing “names.”
In the Federal District the Judicial Police — not so affectionately know as “los Judas” (as in bribery, 30 pieces of silver, treachery… as well as Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of Mexican cops and other lost causes) — are being disbanded, and will be replaced by the “Investigative Police.” Alvarez Icaza is concerned that this is just a cosmetic change, getting rid of the discredited “Judas” (who were fingered for blame after the disastrous “News Divine” bar raid) who may have been involved in the recent kidnap and murder of a 14-year old boy.
Judicial police functions will be folded into a new body, the Investigative Police (Policia Investigadora), which — if it is more than a change in uniforms and names — may be a step in the right direction. My understanding (which I admit is far from complete) is that the Judas were basically “go-fers” for the courts and public ministers (prosecutors). They are not involved in crime control until after the fact. The requirements for the job seem to be sketchy at best. According to El Universal, half of all kidnappings involve active or former policemen.
The Policia Investigadora will give the ministers a tool to look into suspicious activities before a denuncion is issued. Among other things, the Policia Investigadora will (at least it appears they will)include plain-clothes detectives. And, probably more importantly, an internal affairs division. A lot of this is just a management shake-up, which is a good thing. It is a chance to change the job requirements, weed out the losers and crooks (who may need to rehabilitation… or be tracked by the new Investigative police), and continue the slow process of building a better educated, better trained public security force.
Chupacabra! Hey, this is the me X-FILES, right?
13 August 2008
Looks more like a slightly-overweight Xoloitzcuintli to me. I get kind of a kick out of people saying this is an “urban legend”. Cuero Texas might have legends… but they ain’t urban by a long shot. Still, to the 6500 or so residents of Cuero, best of luck becoming the “Chupacabra Capital of the World”. Hopefully, that will overcome the stigma — and bad jokes — about the town’s embarrasing iconic critter .
When marching through Georgia remember the Alamo
13 August 2008
The best line I read last week was in Kissmybluebutt.com:
I just turned on CNN and see that Russia has invaded Georgia. For my money, they could take Alabama and Mississippi while they’re at it.
I had never even heard of South Ossetia until last week, and kind of doubt even those of us who enjoy geographic trivia could have found it on a map. So, I cheated, and read the encyclopedia. South Ossetia had been part of Georgia for a very long time (going back to the Tsars), but — under pressure from Russian immigrants and tired of the inefficient and corrupt Georgian government, staged a brief uprising and declared independence in 1992. Not recognizing the “Republic of South Ossetia”, the Georgians have regularly sent troops into the region, leading the South Ossetians to turn to their natural allies, and de facto protector, Russia.
The Russians, out of ethnic solidarity, territorial ambition… or to distract their people from other pressing issues.. sent their troops into South Ossetia. After some shots were fired along the disputed border, the Russians went into Georgia and — while occupying parts of the country — are forcing the Georgians to negotiate.
Everyone I’m reading is trying to draw some parallels from European history, but breakaway regions full of ethnic outsiders who came from the larger power on their border, and then ask the bigger power to use border disputes to force their annexation, always calls to mind something else. Think 1845… if you read “Texas” for “South Ossetia”; “the corrupt and inefficient Santa Ana government” for “Georgia” and “James Knox Polk” for “Dmitry Medvedev”, you probably won’t be too far off.
I can’t see taking sides in this conflict, but South Ossetia’s “manifest destiny” probably lies with Russia.
A word of waring though. If my Texas analogy is even slightly valid, the Russians may be in for trouble. Georgia produced Stalin, and Texas LBJ, but nations need asskickers like those guys now and then. But for the sake of Mother Russia stop and think of the future. Will South Ossetia produce BUSHiveks?
Mexican economy keeps on truckin’
12 August 2008
Still another automotive plant moving to Mexico. This is the third or fourth announcement within the last year. From TradingMarkets.com
Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor and a manufacturer of diesel trucks and buses, has decided to establish a new truck manufacturing company, Hino Motors Manufacturing Mexico, in Guanajuato, Mexico, through a joint venture with Mitsui.
Hino has said that it has entered the Mexican market and started marketing its Hino 300 series, since August 2007, through Hino Motors Sales Mexico, a sales company established by Mitsui, and it will aim to increase its sales volume and position Hino’s brand in Mexico by introducing a new product, Hino 500 series.
The “gasoline of crime”
12 August 2008
Free Internet Press:
More than 6,700 licensed gun dealers have set up shop within a short drive of the 2,000-mile border, from the Gulf Coast of Texas to San Diego – which amounts to more than three dealers for every mile of border territory. Law enforcement has come to call the region an “iron river of guns.”
While U.S. political leaders and presidential candidates have focused rhetoric, money and time on stemming the northward flow of drugs and illegal immigrants, far less has been said and done about arms flowing south, largely from states with liberal gun laws, into a nation where only police and the military can legally own a firearm.
Mexican authorities have been pressing the United States to do more to help a border force they describe as overwhelmed and often intimidated.
“Just guarantee me that arms won’t enter Mexico,” Mexico’s public-safety chief, Genaro Garcia Luna, told a radio interviewer recently. Stop the flow of guns from the United States, he said, “and the gasoline for the crimes that we have will run out.”
The Olympic ideal…
12 August 2008
A Korean’s photograph in an Irish newspaper of a Malagasy punched in the head by a Mexican in China.
Photo in the Irish TImes by Lee Jae-Won shows lightweight boxer Jean de Dieu Soloniana of Madagascar and the fist of Francisco Javier Vargas of Mexico during preliminary rounds.
mexfiles.net 