The Unapologetic Mexican (“Prettier than Lou Dobbs and smarter than ten Aryans”) bears an uncanny resemblance to Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — which in turn is a less kinder, less gentler version of the fashionista uprising being fomented by that merry Reconquistador. All the brilliant work of Wreckingboy, who is busily crossing the borders of cyberspace and is here to stay. — like it or not, gringo!.. Great work, Joaquin!
Photo of Pedro Infante, Pedro Infante and Pedro Infante,
from “Más de Cien Años de Cine Mexicano”, ITESM.
Don Goyo on the election…
… on the morning the judges decided against a total recount, as if it were echoing the mood of AMLO’s people, Popocatepetl, the smoking volcano south of the capital whose eruptions traditionally presage dark days for this distant neighbor nation, exhaled seven great gasps of fiery rock and ash for the first time in several years.
John Ross, “The Smoking Volcano” in The Nation (8 August 2006)
And, Roberto Gomez, formerly of Time Magazine and the U.S. State Department, has a comprehensive roundout of Mexican press reports on the latest election news at SFGate’s World News Roundout
My bad!
I’m still the new guy in town, and don’t get a lot of personal calls. And, as the new guy in town, my phone number hasn’t shown up on the National ‘Do Not Call’ Registry. Luckily, I DO have Caller ID on my telephone. When one of the six or seven nightly calls comes in from an “800” number or “out of area” number or “unknown caller” number, of course, I answer — in my best New York/midwest/southern/Texas accented Spanish: ¿BUENO?
One of two types of person — normally — will be on the other end. A slightly confused housewife trying to make ends meet on excrable pay somewhere like Cedar Falls, Iowa… or a decently paid, but terribly mis-employed unsatisfied in his career young fellow from Bangalore or Mumbai (unlike the very satisfied, and always graceful writer on everything from postcards to Turkish seaports to the recent tragedy in Mumbai, and hilariouly on buying — or not buying — a cell phone… sailor,writer and racontuer, Anuj Velu ).
The joke in Mexico (and alas throughout the world) is “Tres idiomas – trilingües. Dos idiomas – bilingüe. Una idioma – ¡GRINGO! It’s not the housewife in Iowa’s fault that she received a poor education… or that I have no interest in buying… well, anything. And, I suspect the fellow from Mumbai or Bangalore is a few credits short of his PhD in Electrical Engineering, and speaks two or three languages besides English… but, that the languages he knows are Bengali or Hindi or… certainly not Spanish.
Even though I’ve only been here a few weeks, that trick is getting old. Maybe U.S. education is getting better, or more immigrants are getting hired by U.S. call centers. OR… and this scares me… maybe the job I did recruiting call center operators in Mexico is paying off for the client. At any rate, I’ve gotten two where the operator immediately switched to the Spanish version of the sales pitch … without, I assume, batting an eyelash.
Maybe it’s time to go back to studying Nahuatl. Last time I tried (with a “Teach Yourself Cassette and Program”, I never got beyond Chapter One… though the parrot I had at the time was greatly amused by the sound of the language (but she never learned it either).
I gave up when I figured out that to say “my name is Richard Grabman”, I had to wrap my tonuge around Nehuatl notoka Kualli-yollatitli Tiquinquitzquizqueh.
Maybe I’ll stick to Hello (“Niltze“). I can say “Eat me” (¡NECH-CUAZ!), but I’m always afraid I’ll run into some unreconstructed Aztec who’d take me literally…
Eat your heart out, telemarketers!
“Polite as a Mexican”
The teachers’ — and other people’s — strike against the Oaxacan State government has gotten downright nasty lately (the APPO, the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca), has taken to “liberating” state owned cars and trucks, blocking state government offices and otherwise making life miserable for the widely despised PRI-governor, Ulises Ramirez.. None of which, to the Oaxaño way of thinking, justifies bad manners.
Photo: http://www.corrugate.org
Erwin C., at The Latin Americanist, posted this earlier today:
Mexican court rejects recount request
Mexico’s Federal Electoral Tribunal denied presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s demand for a vote-by-vote recount. Instead, the court ordered a partial recount of approximately 9% of the voting stations registered in last month’s presidential election.
Links to sources at Latin Americanist. The blog, produced by two NYC based scholars, is “The English-language forum for all things Latin American, covering business, politics, and culture.” The “Links and Organizations” page is especially valuable.
It has a free subscription list for those keeping up with news and information from throughout Latin America, or looking for something more scholarly than the little bits and pieces that catch my eye out here in the back of beyond.
Ricardo’s Blog, produced by Ricardo Carreon, is in Portugese and English. It focuses nmainly on Brazil and the internet, but often writes on other pertinent Latin American issues. It too will send free e-mail updates.
Ricardo has links to a video of the Mexico City post-elections protests, and posted a little more on TEJPF’s decision:
The Federal Electoral Court of Mexiclo is currently in session ruling on the request by the left wing Coalition “Por el Bien de Todos” for a full vote by vote recount. The session is still running, but several newspapers like Reforma and El Universal have reported that the likely outcome is for a partial recount. Both newspapers have reported that the full vote by vote recount
was rejected given that the petition did not sustain the need for a full recount. Both newspapers
are saying that the recount will be of 50% of the districts and 9.07% of the total ballot boxes. The court decision was reached unanimously.
The spin stops here… and there
XicanoPwr writes on Mexican-American affairs in his blog, ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!. Last week, he had several posts on media spin and the Mexican election. Montreal writer Susana Vargas weighted in on the “notorious” Washington Post editorial, and other corporate media coverage of the post-election mess in “Mistranslating the Mexican Election“.
We have been hearing the same story over and over: Calderon, the right wing candidate won, but the leftist Obrador is trying to steal the election away. On July 7, all these newspapers declared the right-wing candidate Calderon as a winner. This may be an easy assumption to make if one doesn’t understand the Mexican electoral system. But the declaration just echoes the right wing position in Mexico. Luis Carlos Ugalde, the President of the Federal Electoral Institute declared on national TV on July 6 that conservative Calderon had the majority of votes, a difference of 0.58% against the leftist candidate Obrador. Ugalde proceeded to say: “it is the golden rule in democracies that the candidate with more votes wins the election”. But Ugalde didn’t have the authority to declare a winner. In the Mexican media we read headlines stating that Calderon is the “virtual” winner, “IFE backs up Calderon”, or “Calderon wins in the count of tallies”. This is because Calderon’s official victory has not and can not yet be declared.…
So if the election is not over, then the English language papers are wrong to depict Obrador as a “racial leftist” who will not concede the election when he should. By they cast Obrador as a sore loser who will “fight the results in court” (Globe and Mail) that Obrador “vowed to take his case to a special tribunal” (Toronto Star). The Washington Post erroneously reported that that “Obrador, refused to concede and demanded a recount, and it appeared that the winner of Sunday’s balloting would ultimately be decided in court” and The Herald Tribune made refernce to a “special tribunal set up to handle electoral disputes, a court that has never before been asked to make such a momentous ruling.” The problem is that none of these claims are true. Unlike in the 2000 U.S. election, no one is taking the election to court, there are no special tribunals have been set up to decide this election. Reviewing the votes is a compulsory step in every Mexican election; the Federal Electoral Tribunals (TRIFE) assesses the validity of the election, and they are the only authority allowed to officially declare a winner.
Spanglish anguish
SPANGLISH is NOT pronouncing English words as if they were Spanish ones (though, sometimes the opposite occurs: “¿Donde es mi carro, güey?”). Today, I had to call a county sheriff’s office about a personal matter. This was where I used to live, in an area where Spanish and Spanglish speakers combined outnumber English speakers, and got a recording telling me “esta el SHARIF de contado de —–“. The local media, and the department themselves, use “aguacil” for what sounded like the name of an Egyptian film star of the 50 and 60s. That might be a weird local variant on proper Spanglish, but I have it on good authority (the waitress at my local coffee shop in deepest darkest west Texas) it certainly is not standard.
I’ve run into English-speakers in Mexico asking for “el Ah-Tay-emAy” (which, according to jerga maven Armando Jimenez, means something closer to “everything’s cool” than a machine that finances your vacation), looking for “Gee-ZUS TAY-ran” (and, suprisingly, the cabbie took the speaker to her hotel on calle Jesús Teran, though I have to admit, little old English ladies who wield foreign languages with the fine contempt their imperial ancestors showed half the planet manage to thrive on butchered foreign tongues) and “Kaley Don-SELLS” (you know, where they have the used bookshops near the Cathedral). And, I had a very uncomfortable experience trying to help an English-speaking visitor in Mexico make some purchases, only to have him start screaming “DOSE! DOSE! RAID! RAID!” at an uncomprehending — and impassive — clerk. While no scholar of Spanglish, I was able to figure out that the foreigner thought he’d given the clerk a two-hundred peso note — the red ones, right?
An update: I posted a draft of this on “Thorn Tree Mexico Message Board”. “CaliTravellingMan” wrote, regarding “el Sharif”:
Alguacil is used officially for ‘sheriff’ here in So Cal, and people do use and understand the term, although the term ‘el cherif’ or ‘los cherífes’ (now THAT is Spanglish) is as common, if not more so, at the street level. It has an interesting etymology, and though its use in other Spanish-speaking countries faded, in the US, the term was made to fit the new convention of ‘sheriff’.
“edlyn” corrected me on “ATM” — which I had confused with the “proper” Mexican jerga, “desmadre”. Thanks to all beady-eyed fact checkers!
Fidel, we hardly knew ye…
Yeah… I know… this is a Mexican website, so I’ll quote Alvaro Obregon, speaking of Porfirio Diaz, another Latin American leader with a world reputation… “his only mistake was to grow old.”
Un pocito español…
I was given permission by “rich”, who posts regularly on the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Mexico Message Board to reprint this true — and perhaps cautionary — tale.
…many years ago in Mazatlan when I was just starting to learn the language (I was)walking from the bus station to where I was staying (a couple of miles) and having not eaten on the bus trip, I decided to enter a little corner shop and buy a snack.
In front of me at the cash register was an older guy speaking English with a strong Canadian accent buying a few items which he dropped on the counter and roughly ask “How much is this stuff?” The Mexican running the store shrugged his shoulders and replied No entiendo. to which the customer using gringo logic responded by speaking louder and slower “How much is it?” Again the Mexican responded No se, no entiendo.
This continued a bit more an finally the Canadian grabbed a bunch of Pesos out of his pocket and slammed them down on the counter half yelling “Okay!” The Mexican looked at the money and said Okay. The guy grabbed his stuff and left.
At this point I was a bit worried but with what at that time was a very rudimentary and poorly pronounced Spanish I put my stuff down and asked ¿Cuanto cuesta esto? The Mexican looked at my stuff, looked at me and in better English than I can speak responded “Don’t worry about it, that guy paid for it.” indicating the customer who had just left.
…and the moral of the story is…
Agit-prop
Politically incorrect
Mexico On-Line is a great resource… for the less-than-budget tourist or those with a farily substantial pension who are considering retirement to Mexico. It’s got its quirks.
In the age of the internet, are there really adults of any age who don’t know what certain common words mean. Oh, I can understand a website appealing to the tender sensitivies of timid sorts seeking a warm climate in a cheap place to live, who would be shocked if they read all the letters in f*** or sh**. I can almost understand ***, though it made responding to a message regarding gender isses problematic. (I could have lived with s*x, or even s**, but I finally had to resort to victorian euphemisms like “personal congress” and bizarre 1950s-style clinical terminology, like “same-gender interpersonal relationships” to talk about, something that an issue involving a word their software accepts — “prostitution”.)
Anyway, it’s not just “sex” that bothers these folks… it’s “political correctness” — GRINGO correctness. According to “Dr. Charles”, Lopez Obrador is a “Communist” and some of the regulars seem convinced all hell is going to break loose if the Mexicans do something radical like follow their own laws and maybe decide they did elect Lopez Obrador. I love to read the folks who think that if the “left” takes over, they’re going to be facing an angry mob of campesinos armed with machetes (probably demanding the agualdo the retirees never bothered to pay their campesino maids and gardeners, because… to hear them tell it… getting around Mexican labor law is what gringo retirees are supposed to do).
Type “Socialism” — a word that sometimes comes up when talking about a country where 4 of the 6 national parties are “Socialist” and you get “S*******m”! Fuck that shit!
The wild, wired west
Here’s a few snapshots from my new neighborhood. This is the north end of the Sierra Madres, known to creative nineteenth realtors as the “Texas Alps”… thus, Alpine Texas, where I’m now ensconsed… doing a REAL JOB, I might add.
The Big Bend is an interesting place… with about one person per square mile, there’s plenty of room for the weird and the wired… and those who are both (I don’t know how scared I should be about living someplace where I seem perfectly normal). Besides the native cowboys, Indians and Mexicans it attracts more than its share of folks stuck in the 60s (both the 1860s and the 1960s), Henry David Thoreau and Yosemite Sam wannabes, cranky individualists and harmless eccentrics. And… suprisingly enough… the hip, slick and cool. Marfa down the road is not only known for the mysterious lights (some of our “illegal aliens” may be from another gallaxy) but for its mysterious draw for artists, artistes and hangers-on. I think galleries outnumber any other business there… you can’t find a pharmacy in downtown Marfa, but you’ll refresh your soul, and find a latte in every remodelled gas station.
Oh… and let’s not forget our enterprising smugglers — of marijuana and people. And anti-smugglers. While Migra (the United States Border Patrol to y’all) is a major employer (and Alpine even has a Federal Court House to handle the “traffic”), the National Guard is also around… as, once in a while, are the Minute Men. Who don’t get much respect. Round about these parts folks think of the Minute Men as a bunch of pansies who wouldn’t last ten minutes outside their RV parked somewhere on a dark desert highway. We don’t need no stinkin fence.
It’s hard enough to communicate through the mountains and with that river serving as a national boundry, it creates some communications problems. The hipsters, the cowboys, the gangsters and the hippies (and even Yosemite Sam) are all wired. Though with all those professors who fled English departments holed up in old mining towns, you have a plethora of small publications, a daily on-line newspaper, but only two kinds of radio stations — country AND western. There was an NPR station in Marfa, but it seems to be off the air lately. And the Sul Ross college station, which has been run by the profs over the summer — meaning Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and other “golden oldies” for those of us who grew up on sexdrugsandrocknroll.
There’s no local TV station (and… a selling point, no Walmart within an hour of Alpine, and we’re closer to the Evil Empire than most other population centers in the area), so add satelite TV. And cell phones… and international calling (for some stupid reason, it’s still an international call just to Ojinaga, an hour down the road… but the dentist is a hell of a lot less expensive there. Being about the same distance to Chihuahua or El Paso, guess where I’ll go shopping… unless I want to go to THE shopping mall in Odessa Texas).
I’m actually behind the curve right now. I got my phone installed today, but I haven’t received the modem and software for my highspeed conections (and, I’m working off an old Dell computer with Windows Millenium software), so for tonight, I’m using dial-up. Luckily, given that everywhere is long-distance, I contracted for unlimited long distance service, since I’m connected through Alburquerque right now. HOPEFULLY, I’ll be back in cyber-Mexico within a week or so…
AND… of course, those of you in REAL Mexico… please let me know if you’d like to post on this blog. With a “real job”, I ‘m not sure how much time and effort I can put into this for the next several months. Other opinioned, cranky Mexophiles welcome. I’ll leave a light on for y’all.
mexfiles.net 