Intersections

Teen DJ from Ciudad Juarez, Mock the Zuma, reflects a 'bizarro' reality

** Originally published at World Now: 

Kevin Santana remembers with a blank disenchantment the night he threw a party in his hometown of Ciudad Juarez and soldiers came to break it up.

It was in 2009, the young music producer and DJ recalls, and he and his friends had set up a sound system at a raquetball court and invited other teens to come dance. "There was nothing else going on that night and people in Juarez like to party," he explained a few days ago.

"They put us with our hands against the wall, made us close our eyes, they said they were going to rape the girls. We thought, 'This is it, they are going to break us.' "

I paused and asked for an explanation. Quebrar -- to break -- is slang used to signify killing someone in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities in the world and a sad symbol for Mexico's brutal drug war.

In the end, the kids were let go and the party was over. Santana shrugged and added: "There have always been soldiers in Juarez."

Santana just turned 18 in August. Troops were first sent to Ciudad Juarez in early 2008. Put another way, Santana has lived in a city with armed federal forces on the streets for most of his teen years.

Known by his DJ name Mock The Zuma, Santana is part of a loose generation of electronic musicians and producers based predominantly in Mexico's northern region that are attracting attention among tastemakers in the capital and in Latino-heavy cities north of the border.

Their cutting-edge sounds draw on diverse Latin American rhythms -- such as cumbia and son -- filtered through easy-to-access editing software that allows the music-makers to mix, scratch, and cut it all up with spacey and aggressive electronic beats.

To call them very young is apt; most are still teenagers.

Dia de Muertos en Oaxaca *

* UPDATE: My report from San Agustin Etla, "A lively street party for the dead in Oaxaca, Mexico."

This is a Day of the Dead altar in a home in Oaxaca, Oaxaca, just now. All the elements were gathered on Sunday at the city's bustling Central de Abastos, at the special tianguis de muertos.

The pulque and tepache stand was closed. Momentary sad-face. 

Over here, we're looking at how they're passing noche de los difuntos in Ciudad Juarez; by beating up protesters and photographers outside a police station.

Honoring my dead and all of the dead of Mexico. Wherever you are, good evening.

* Previously, "In Mexico, more deaths than can we can image."

The 'silence and tragedy' of painter Manuel Rodriguez Lozano

Originally published at World Now:

The hard-hitting news magazine Proceso recently published a large-format special issue devoted to the tragedy of the drug war in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. For its cover image, Proceso chose a work from the golden era of Mexican modernist painting, a 1942 piece by Manuel Rodriguez Lozano called "Tragedy in the Desert."

The painting shows the backs of three hooded women who appear to be in mourning over the body of a female figure in a flat and desolate expanse of earth, blood emanating from her form. As a news image, the painting from more than half a century ago is meant to evoke the hopelessness felt by victims of Mexico's war, with its 40,000 dead.

"Tragedy in the Desert" is the first artwork seen by visitors to a sweeping exhibit on Rodriguez currently at the Museo Nacional de Arte in the historic center of Mexico City. It is an affecting and sad image, the colors muted, the perspective flattened in a recognizable Rodriguez motif.

Rodriguez is in fact known for a work more popularly seen at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, alongside Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco.

"Mercy in the Desert," a version of which is seen above (Rodriguez painted two), also belongs to a period in which Rodriguez painted what is now considered his most powerful pieces: an arresting series of paintings that cover themes of tragedy, suicide, rapture, holocaust and sorrow. The figures that appear here are elongated and mutated, as if moving in slow motion, expressions of sadness and fear evident even in faces that are far away.

Like a recent Orozco show in Mexico City that felt relevant in light of the country's ongoing tragedy, the Rodriguez exhibit -- and in particular its final room, "The Silence and the Tragedy" -- feels like a mirror to the world around us.

* 'Manuel Rodriguez Lozano: Pensamiento y pintura,' closed Sunday, Oct. 9.

Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council

Here is anchor-baby media demigod Steve Jobs addressing the city council in Cupertino near San Jose in June of this year. He's presenting plans for a new Apple campus within city limits. The clip is a fascinating document of Upper Cali small-city circumstance and the graces of genius CEO caszh.

'Miss Bala' and Independence Day

At least ten people were reportedly killed during fiesta patrias celebrations across Mexico last night.

That's an extremely low figure relative to Mexico's population and relative to an expectation that rises quietly every recent mid-September when Mexico celebrates its Independence Day. Inevitably, some people worry that a narco-terror attack will strike somewhere around the Grito like in 2008 in Michoacan. (See here.)

This week at La Plaza, I used the occasion to consider the implications for Mexico's current drug war and its future as a nation bound on democratic principles (supposedly) through the new Canana release "Miss Bala."

Read my thoughts on the flick here. And definitely go see it.

La Plaza: More Mexico youths die from violence than car wrecks

** Originally published here.

As Mexico's drug war grinds on, violent homicide has overtaken car accidents as the leading cause of death of young people in the country, reports the Mexico City daily El Universal (link in Spanish).

Government statistics reviewed by the newspaper show that in 2008 and 2009, the second and third complete years of Mexico's drug war, violent deaths of people between 15 and 29 shot up about 150%. The figures rose almost equally across various narrower age brackets within that group.

Half of those homicides occurred in five states that include some of those worst hit by the current violence: Chihuahua, Baja California, Guerrero, Sinaloa and the state of Mexico, on the border with Mexico City. Violence is now the leading cause of death among Mexicans between the ages of 15 and 29, overtaking car accidents, the report said.

* Continue reading.

** Photo credit: Gael Gonzalez / Reuters 

9/11

I stayed away from the news on Sunday, then logged on and looked at pictures and newspaper front-pages. From Patrick Smith at Salon:

It's not the anniversary itself that irks me. The 10-year mark is -- or should be -- worthy of our solemn respects and a national timeout. But commemorating the attacks would feel a lot more meaningful if, in fact, we had ever stopped commemorating them. Our healing process has been never-ending -- occasionally introspective and edifying, but all too often maudlin and suffocating.

Yes, exactly. Where we going with all this? What happens to America on Monday? And every Monday thereafter? More of the same, seems to me. That's the truly sad part.

* Photo via Framework at LAT. * Salon link via FAY0LA.

La Plaza: Who is responsible for the casino tragedy in Monterrey?

(Hint: A lot of powerful people who'll most likely get away with it.)

** Originally published at La Plaza:

Four days after the deadly casino attack in Monterrey in northern Mexico, the owner of the burned-out Casino Royale has not emerged in public or spoken with authorities.

In fact, little is known about the owners and operators of the casino, despite initial reports (later contradicted) that said emergency exits in the establishment were blocked, contributing to the high death toll of 52. The dead included one pregnant woman, and over the weekend, as families buried their loved ones, another large demonstration against violence and insecurity took place in Monterrey (link in Spanish).

The demonstration ended in scuffles for some as activists made competing calls for the resignations of the Monterrey mayor, the Nuevo Leon state government, and President Felipe Calderon (video link in Spanish).

Nuevo Leon authorities said the investigation into the arson blaze is ongoing. On Monday, Gov. Rodrigo Medina announced the arrest of five men suspected of being involved in the attack. The suspects were identified as Zetas, the drug gang that is seeking control over Monterrey in a campaign that has spread fear and violence in the affluent industrial city.

Authorities said they were eager to speak with Raul Rocha Cantu, a Monterrey businessman identified as one of the owners of the casino. One newspaper said the casino owners had not complied with an extortion demand of 130,000 pesos a week, or about $10,000 -- common deals that often lead to brutal attacks against bars and other businesses in Monterrey.

Another report said Rocha has lived in the United States for at least the last two months, but no location was specified (link in Spanish).

In a series of interviews since Friday, the casino owners' lawyer, Juan Gomez Jayme, said attorney-client privilege would not permit him to divulge where Rocha was or whether he would present himself to Nuevo Leon authorities as they have requested (link in Spanish).

Gomez defended the establishment, saying the casino operated lawfully under municipal, state, and federal regulations. Yet questions were raised almost immediately about word of blocked emergency exits, which were reported by the chief of civil protection in Monterrey after firefighters put down the arson blaze.

** Continue reading at La Plaza.

Crave the grave?

Satire at the heart of California glam goth? It's "Crav the Grav," by Celicaby, a collaboration that's aka Death Wears White Socks. (Don't you miss 1830?)

La Plaza: Protests over black man's death in Mexico

** Originally published at La Plaza:

Shortly after midnight on May 11 in central Mexico City, Isaac Chinedu, an immigrant from Nigeria, became involved in some kind of confrontation with a group of police officers on a dark side street. The encounter escalated, and Chinedu was severely beaten. Some minutes later, he was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run driver, authorities say.

The case of Isaac Chinedu has led to demonstrations among Mexico City's African and Afro-Mexican communities, which are laying blame on the police officers who allegedly beat the 29-year-old before he apparently ran into traffic on a busy highway. Chinedu's Mexican widow, Liduvina Castillo, claims that racial prejudice resulted in her husband's death, a charge activists here are rallying around.

"This was an act of discrimination," Castillo told a newscast. "Why? Because they detained him simply because he was black. He wasn't doing anything. Isaac was waiting for a taxi to return to his home in peace."

Prosecutors and forensic investigators said they've determined that Chinedu died of injuries suffered after he was struck by a vehicle on Calzada de Tlalpan, but said his body showed trauma from blows delivered by at least two auxiliary police officers, whose actions were captured by surveillance video. Four officers have been questioned in the incident, but there have been no arrests or charges filed.

Two other officers who may have been involved in the incident have not been identified, authorities said. The hit-and-run driver, meanwhile, remains at-large.

Supporters have held two protests this month seeking justice for Chinedu and bringing attention to a small but growing community of black foreigners in Mexico (links in Spanish). Hundreds of refugees arrived from Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, as La Plaza has reported. Chinedu had come to Mexico as a refugee from Nigeria, reports said.

A civil organization, the Citizen's Committee in Defense of the Naturalized and Afro-Mexicans, staged the demonstrations and plans to initiate a fast Thursday morning on the doorstep of City Hall. The group's president, Wilner Metelus, a native of Haiti and long-term resident of Mexico, said group members seek a meeting with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard about the death of Chinedu.

"We no longer believe what the attorney general says about the case. There are many contradictions," Metelus said in an interview with La Plaza. "We want a direct dialogue with Marcelo Ebrard on the matter. How could any human being receive such treatment?"

Chinedu had lived in Mexico City for about 10 years. He was a legal resident and the father of two Mexican-born children. As the incident was reported by the local press, revelations surfaced that Chinedu had spent two years behind bars on minor narcotics infractions, which were later dismissed. (In Mexico's deeply troubled justice system, such long prison terms for minor or even nonexistent offenses are quite common.)

On May 11, his widow says, Chinedu was leaving a Mother's Day party and waiting for a cab. The grainy video shows Chinedu rushing toward a passing police cruiser to flag it down. He then appears to try to force his way inside. Standing police officers drag and then violently yank Chinedu back to the sidewalk, where he is struck repeatedly, the video shows.

Neighbors came to Chinedu's aid and the officers left the scene, officials said. "What I did was hug him and separate him from the police so they would stop beating him," a witness told ForoTV.

A top official in the Mexico City attorney general's office said Sunday in a news conference that as paramedics arrived and began tending to Chinedu, he regained consciousness, kicking and struggling. Without explanation, he got up, ran into traffic, and was hit by a fast-moving passenger car.

Toxicology tests showed Chinedu was not under the influence or alcohol or drugs on the night he died, officials said. The investigation is ongoing.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Image: Screen-grab showing surveillance video of the incident in which Isaac Chinedu died May 11, 2011. Credit: ForoTV

Barrios, beats, and blood in Ciudad Juarez

Above, the documentary short "Barrios, Beats, and Blood," on the hip-hop scene in Ciudad Juarez, now on YouTube in its entirety. (I covered the premiere of the film last year at the Morelia Film Festival for La Plaza; see here.)

Directed and produced by journalists Ioan Grillo and John Dickie, "Barrios, Beats, and Blood" offers a direct window into the worldview of youth in a U.S.-Mexico border city that is drowning in death. The voices here direct their protest MCing at the cartels and the government alike: "Queremos que se jode y ya que se quede un puto cartel."

I bet Gil Scott-Heron would be nodding his head right now.

Santa Sabina

"El Angel" by Santa Sabina, 1996. RIP, Rita Guerrero, "una voz de fuego."

In Mexico, more deaths than we can imagine

The men lying under arrest in the photograph above are not dead, but, who knows, by now they could be. It's been three days since this post from Ciudad Juarez by journalist Diego Osorno has been published. In Juarez today, three days is plenty of time to possibly get killed.

Juarez is a government-sustained human rights disaster, a 21st Century-style slow-burn multi-actor city-cide. Don't get the daily carnage tally by Molly Molloy at Frontera List? It tests the stomach. Juarez is drowning in death. But Juarez is just the tip of it all.

Read this piece in Spanish by Froylan Enciso in a recent issue of Gatopardo. Up in a town in the Sierra Madre, up from Mazatlán, a drug-trade-related ambush during Christmas 2009 leaves at least 40 people dead, maybe up to 100, Enciso writes during a visit home.

The incident never makes it into the press. It didn't happen. I checked the federal government database on homicides this morning. For Mazatlán, only 97 homicides are reported in 2009. That doesn't sound right ...

They tell us lately "at least" 35,000 have been killed in Mexico's drug-trade violence since the governments ignited it on themselves in 2006. That can't be accurate. Just ask someone who knows better, ask Metinides. As Enciso illustrates, so many dead are not reported, so many kidnapped are never returned. We'll never know.

The "drug war" is a fiction. The violence it is inflicting on the people of Mexico is very real. It is crushing the country. I don't know about you, but I've been tired of it. Yet there's still no end in sight.

Violence stops by decriminalizing and demilitarizing the binational industry that pumps drugs into the United States. But don't expect Obama or Calderon to come to that conclusion in the blah-blah at the White House this week.

Man, then who'd get to keep all the money?

* Photo via Gatopardo.com

Cut cranium

Una obra que sobresale casi al final del recorrido de la expo de Jose Clemente Orozco, en San Ildefonso. "Craneo recortado," proxilina en masonite. La obra tiene como fecha 1947, dos años antes de la muerte de Orozco. Pertence al Instituto Cultural Cabañas en Guadalajara.

Mi reporte.

An outstanding painting near the end of the Jose Clemente Orozco exhibit at San Ildefonso. "Cut Cranium," proxylin on masonite. The painting's date is 1947, two years before Orozco's death. It belongs to the Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara.

My report in link above.

Enrique Metinides: 'So many dead'

My La Plaza post on Christmas Eve on photographer Enrique Metinides turned into a piece in the print paper, which ran today. (Somewhere. Couldn't find it anywhere on the main pages at LATimes.com.) Clip:

Even Metinides professes wonder at the ultra-violence of today's drug conflict. "There is just such a frightening quantity of dead, that they'll never find all the cadavers," Metinides said, fingering silicone albums filled with favorite snaps.

Then the retired journalist stops himself, arching an eyebrow. "But why even say it? What does that have to do with me?" he asks, then answers his own question. "Nothing."

Thanks to the editors in Foreign and Calendar for spotting the post and asking for a broader piece. Thanks to curator Veronique Ricardoni for connecting the interview. And thanks to photographer Eunice Adorno for sharing her portraits of Metinides with the paper.

By the way, readers in L.A., where did it run? How does it look?

* Previously, Enrique Metinides: 'El Niño' with all the shots.

Enrique Metinides: 'El Niño' with all the shots

Above, a portrait of Enrique Metinides, the great D.F. photojournalist, taken in October 2010 by Eunice Adorno.

Metinides, now 76, is one-of-a-kind, an OG photojournalist whose work transcends the field and enters the realm of high art. In my view, he's among the best to have ever practiced the craft, taking more photos over many more years than, say, Robert Capa, Weegee, or Dorothea Lange.

Here's my end-of-the-year post at La Plaza, my interview with Metinides, marking the latest exhibit of his work in Mexico City. "In the Place of Coincidence," curated by longtime Metinides collaborator Veronique Ricardoni, is up at Garash until the end of January. The video and photo-montages mentioned in the piece display Metinides in new formats and through new perspectives; highly recommended.

"I'm a photographer by accident," Metinides said.

Back in his day, they called him "El Niño." The Kid, a name that followed him for years. Here are a few more portraits by Adorno, who is gracefully sharing them with Intersections. (Earlier this month, Eunice won the 2010 Fernando Benitez national cultural journalism prize in photojournalism, for her work on Mennonite women in north-central Mexico. See this slideshow at BBC Mundo.)

'I'm a cokehead and I won't deny it'

Here's how we know the drug war isn't going well for the U.S. and Mexico governments: the catchy narcocorrido about life as a fun-loving cokehead. It's "El Cocaino," by Los Buitres de Culiacán. They work among many popular narcocorrido bands whose genre always implies a dance with death.

"El Cocaino" tells about not sleeping, partying with "the plebians," dealing with coke-itch, drinking Buchanan's, and not owing anyone any money. The verses all end with the line: "Soy cocaino no se los niego," or "I'm a cokehead and I won't deny it."

I don't keep steady track on this scene but, to those who might a bit more, what are the other new and good -- as in, outrageous or scandalous -- narcocorridos that you are especially fond of? Besides the golden classics, of course?

Looks like Los Buitres have a busy touring schedule across Mexico, too, hitting this month and into next year Michoacan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Tijuana on the border, and on Dec. 22, a "private event" in Sonora.

* MORE: My post at La Plaza today, "White House: Cocaine market in U.S. under 'stress'." A cokey heart attack trend in Sydney? Seriously?

White House: Cocaine market in U.S. under 'stress'

Diane Arbus on freaks: 'They're aristocrats'

Doon Arbus, daughter of the legendary New York photographer Diane Arbus, opens this beautiful 1972 short film on Arbus's images. Doon is phenomenal in her period Afro, her sense of empowerment, and her sharp analysis of work so intimately tied to her personal history. Please watch.

And definitely follow on to Part 2 and the rest. As Doon explains, a Japanese photographer learning English recorded Arbus in class sessions. In the film, an Arbus friend reads Diane's words "over glimpses of Diane's photographs."

Her frank thinking on the moral conundrums of documentary photography is golden. From Part 2 of the film as it appears on YouTube, and my transcript, Arbus on "freaks":

Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first thing I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends, but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks, like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. I mean, if you've ever spoken to someone with two heads, you know they know they something you don't. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

"Freaks," in the words of Lisette Model, who follows in the video, are in the same group as "homosexuals, lesbians, cripples, sick people, dying people, dead people."

Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971.

Turning 30 on the border *

I'm breaking a rule about posting too many photos with me in them, but who cares, I'm 30 today! They tell me 30 is when you get to say, 'I can do whatever I want,' and it finally becomes true.

This is me at the Monte de los Olivos cemetery in Tijuana this morning. Came with my mom and cousin Alan to visit our muertos on my arrival from Mexico City. That's the imposing Cerro Colorado in the background. The wind is strong, the hot sun. Many memories here, bitter and yet also sweet.

Tijuana is as clean, modern, and orderly as ever. We had breakfast at La Espadaña -- fast becoming a custom for us when I come home on early morning flights -- and then I crossed the border on foot. The heart always quickens as I stand in line; obese people, people whose skin has seen too much sun-and-meth cocktail, ancient tattoos, drawling English, AMERICA!!

The customs agent was kind of enough to say, "Happy birthday!" after scanning my passport. It was the only time, I thought, that the border-crossing experience has made me smile genuinely.

More photos from Monte de los Olivos are here, here, and here.

It's very warm up here/down here. I've slept all afternoon and I want more of it. Have no plans tonight except family and a certain date with any icy local beer. I appreciate all the kind wishes. Thank you.

Big banks knowingly laundering Mexican drug money

* Drug money fortress: A Wachovia bank building, via Google Images.

Here's a read for your Sunday morning coffee. Bloomberg goes deep on cases of major U.S. or multinational banks all but knowingly allowing the laundering of Mexican narco money for years on end, and for millions upon millions of dollars in bloody profits. Here is the printable version of the piece (at 13 pages).

Banks implicated include: Wachovia, Bank of America, Citigroud, HSBC, Santander, and Western Union.

The Bloomberg story, by reporter Michael Smith, lays out how narco cartels regularly transfer millions in U.S. cash drug profits down into Mexico through transfers and small currency exchange transactions. They in turn use the money to fund their trafficking operations, including buying airplanes to shuttle cocaine up to the U.S. from South America.

The big banks, for the most part, turn a blind eye. Meanwhile, Mexican President Felipe Calderon this week signaled a willingness to "debate" legalization of drugs in Mexico. Between that, the money laundering, and the lack of a visible dent in the flow of the drugs to the U.S. ... Makes you wonder if all those tens of thousands of deaths so far are in vain, don't it?

* Coming up soon: Issues, Realities, and Solutions in Mexico's drug war.

Inspired by Ciudad Juarez, Rodarte stumbles *

Above, what women "sleepwalking" through life in Ciudad Juarez really dress like. The image is from "Las Otras Batallas," a photo exhibit currently showing in Juarez, and these women's garments look nothing like the dresses that the city supposedly inspired in the upcoming fall/winter line by the Rodarte house. Read more in my post at La Plaza here.

A couple of troubling things linger about this story. MAC Cosmetics has apologized for the Rodarte line's accompanying limited edition make-up collection, the one with names like "Factory" and "Ghosttown," but there's been no word or response on the matter as far as I've seen from the Mulleavy sisters directly, besides a cursory statement within the MAC statement.

The clothes are apparently still heading to racks or boutiques or showrooms in the fall. I wonder, how many women in Juarez will die violently between now and then?

In the New Yorker profile on the sisters earlier this year, Kate said: "We want to make people think, and, once you decide to do that, you will have people that won't like what you're doing."

Yes, indeed.

The work: A sicario narrates an assassination, and more

In the latest installment in a periodic series, I hustle my posting at the L.A. Times La Plaza blog. Below, recent news and notes from across Latin America, with an inevitable leaning on Mexico, per our location, and a focus on the work of LAT correspondents, per the paycheck.

I've also had two stories recently in The Times. Nice to have a byline in there again. Those links hang down after the posts noted below (and I'm only going back to early June with the posts; this is making my head heart):

Shooting of Mexican boy by U.S. border agent ratchets up tensions

DNA testing pits media family against Argentina government

Ghosts of the Pinochet regime haunt Chile's conservative president

June is shaping up as one of the grisliest months in ...

Students in Puerto Rico end long strike

High-level Mexican officials not to blame in day-care center ...

Santos wins: A vote for continuity in Colombia

'The Other Battles' -- photos from Ciudad Juarez

Argentina dispatches Mexico in World Cup -- again

'Dudus' in drag: How accused Jamaican drug lord evaded arrest

Assassination of candidate Rodolfo Torre in Mexico rattles ...

Pressure mounts on Mauricio Funes in El Salvador

Earthquake felt across southern Mexico; 1 person dead

Mexico Supreme Court orders release of 12 activists jailed ...

Mexican authorities nab suspected cartel hit man, a former ...

Mexico City, Beijing top list for worst 'commuter pain'

Hurricane Alex: 'Monterrey is beyond recognition'

Giant whale fossil found in desert in Peru

Dissident on hunger strike in danger of dying, Cuba says

Drug-smuggling sub seized by Ecuador reportedly able to ...

In Mexico, Times report on network's use of blackface ...

Jorge Videla, former dictator, faces new trial in Argentina

Cuban dissident calls off hunger strike afer 134 days

Colombia journalist denied visa for Harvard fellowship

Drug gang hit man narrates assassination of prosecutor in Mexico

As always, more here. My recent stories in the actual paper are "Mexican labor secretary defends copper mine crackdown" and "For Mexico, 'Zoot Suit' still relevant after 30 years," with an interview with Luis Valdez.

If you've made this far down the post, might as well ask, What do you think of La Plaza? What would you like to see more of, less of? How about the state of Intersections?

And speaking this blog, I'll be updating my right-bar pages soon, I promise.

* Image above, Cristian "El Cris" Rosado Mendoza, accused Juarez hit man.

Excavations: 'Pobre de Ti,' mi querida Tijuana

* Above, crossing over, round the clock, into TJ.

Oh, Tijuana. A lot of signals lately from TJ. An incredible video documenting TJ 90s rock bands pops up on Facebook. A journalist publishes a nice site on TJ's recent transformations. And I finally catch "Sleep Dealer," but that's another post entirely.

As I type, I'm having visions of landing here again, seeing Mom or Dad smiling on the other side of the glass as usual, then crossing that pesky border, butterflies in the stomach every time. I can never get Tijuana out of my head, yet I remain unsure on where TJ fits in my story, or where I fit in its.

In celebration of this ambiguity, tonight, "Pobre de ti," which in my book is the most significant jam ever generated by the Mexican ska-punk movement, by the legendary Tijuana NO! Here, the band reunites with singer Ceci Bastida and fellow TJ native Julieta Venegas to reignite "Pobre de ti" before the slamming masses at Vive Latino 2010. La Jornada reported the "rola" generated festival's "mayor slam." Without question.

But go back to the original and take another good listen. For years now, this song still defines a city, a sound, and -- dare I say -- a generation.

Excavations: Salem nightmares

This is an excavations post not into the archive, but into a dark and lurid future, as projected by the New York musicians known as Salem. Above, Salem live in New York City, June 2009. Click and immerse yourself; it's a nasty ass ride no matter how you absorb it.

Salem digs below all known comfort levels, spatially, aurally, morally.

In the video for their track "Dirt" (audio doesn't begin until more than a minute into the track, and embedding is disabled), a tormented woman appears to be attempting suicide in a closed garage with her car engine running. Then, in the twist straight out of Hell, a naked female (or female-like) figure appears on the hood of the car, dancing suggestively.

Fucked up.

The attraction here is the sheer transgression, the bending, the channeling of the terrors we all know are just around any corner. The group's sound itself is difficult to describe, but it's been called "foggy, distorted," "muddy," "surreal and uncomfortable," and "goth/electro/juke." You can find plenty of tracks and remixes by Salem at The Fader, including discussion of their apparently poorly received performance at this year's SXSW. The We Make It Good Mix is especially good.

Salem singer John Holland is interviewed in a recent issue of Butt magazine (NSFW -- or for young children), where he talks about previous stints as a male prostitute and offers details of his drug use. Of the band's label aversion, Holland says, "I don't really know why everyone thinks it's 'Goth.'"

The work: Oaxacan attack, Haitians, and 'Zoot Suit'

* Above, actors doing it up in the Mexico production of 'Zoot Suit.'

Perdiocally I'll be posting some of my recent work at La Plaza, the Latin American news blog at the L.A. Times. Just now, "Zoot Suit" premieres in Mexico City, the first time the landmark Chicano musical play is mounted in Mexico -- and the first time it is presented in Spanish. Very exciting news.

Here, a report on a breaking news item -- 2 people, a Mexican woman and a Finnish man, are killed in an ambush attack on a humanitarian caravan in a disputed region of Oaxaca. Here, an update on the movement of Haitians to Mexico. Here, a look at a new Purepecha urban settlement discovery in Michoacan.

Also, Bolivian president Evo Morales suggests chicken causes baldness and homosexuality, and Mexico City archbishop Norberto Rivera is named in a sexual abuse suit in federal court in Los Angeles.

L.A. Times Mexico City bureau chief Tracy Wilkinson posts about Mexico protesting the Arizona immigration law, Lorena Ochoa quitting golf, the FBI calling Salvadoran gang members terrorists, and Mexico issuing a travel advisory on Arizona.

* More soon.

Malcolm McLaren's casket

Above, punk impresario Malcolm McLaren is lowered into his grave at Highgate cemetery in London, photographed by Olivier Zahm of Purple magazine, April 22. "An artist who all his life used to fight constantly against the Societé du Spectacle with anarchy and chaos. I love you for ever Malcolm," Zahm writes.

McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols and founder of the London store SEX with designer Vivienne Westwood, succumbed to cancer on April 8. He was 64.

Journalist Jess Bravin tweets of an encounter with McLaren -- covering in the L.A. Times a visit McLaren made to Cal State Fullerton, in 1990. From the article:

Possessing no talent as a writer, musician or visual artist, however, McLaren realized that only one profession seemed open to him: "Plunder. I asked myself, could I enter the world of plunder like the great masters?"

McLaren's casket reportedly carried his signature slogan: "Too fast to live, too young to die."

Jodorowsky's Sunday comics

Above, a little girl asks, "Dad, What is liberty?" The father, a big man in orange, responds: "It is knowing oneself and acting in accordance with what one is." The artist is Alejandro Jodorowsky. He drew it for publication for January 14, 1968, in the Mexico City newspaper El Heraldo.

Via Fimoculous, via Technoccult, via Arthur magazine founder Jay Babcock, here's a blog that posted Jodorowsky's Sunday newspaper comics from the late 1960s. I'm eager to examine each one.

The maestro's inclination toward Zen is evident in the last posted comic, in which the speaker, driving through a heavy rain, completes the strip: "Do not allow fear to hold you back; always finish what you start."

Check out Babcock's interview with Jodoroswky here. "Energy is coming because I will die very soon," the maestro says in response to a question about how he gets so much done. "I am old. I have so many things to do, so every day I get quicker, in order to do them! I don’t want to die without doing everything I wanted to do."

* Previously, "Defend when attacked: Zen meets Mexico, D.F."

Mexico's northern border, on fire once more

* Military on the streets in Reynosa, via Gringa-N-Mexico.

Narco-related violence in Mexico is dominating the news once more. Three people with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez were killed on Saturday. At least thirteen were killed over the weekend in Acapulco. And with scores dead in recent weeks, Reynosa is on fire due an apparent split between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. Things are so bad there, journalists are going missing, or just turning away from the story.

Getting a sense of what things like are like on the ground is becoming harder and harder. But there are some voices coming through.

If you can muster checking in on reality, the blog Ontobelli meticulously accounts for narco-related gun battles across the country, mostly via amateur YouTube clips. Many if not most of these battles go unreported in the mainstream press. The blog's author offers this narrated video explaining the background on the current outbreak of violence in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and all of Mexico's northeast.

For an achingly frank ex-pat account of the situation in Reynosa, check out the blog Gringa-N-Mexico, by a young woman named Lindy -- "born and raised in southern Michigan, just a little country gal" -- who followed her husband to Mexico after he was deported. In a Feb. 24 post, Lindy writes about how completely the Gulf Cartel controls the streets of her adopted city:

I guess the cartel wanted to make the citizens of the city feel better so a few days ago they made a gigantic banner and hung it from an overpass near where we live. It read something along the lines of - Citizens of Reynosa, you are safe. We the cartel so-and-so are here to do our job and we do not wish to harm any people of your city, we only want to do what we have to do and not hurt any civilians. ... How nice of them?

The kicker is when she realizes the meaning behind the acronym "C.D.G." that she spots on some police-looking vehicles.

* UPDATE: Looks like the post has been taken down. Too bad, but not unexpected. Suerte, Lindy.

** INTERESTINGLY: In the case of the consular official in Juarez who was killed along with her husband near the border with El Paso, the local NBC affiliate across the border notes that whatever the victim Lesley (or Leslie) Enriquez did exactly at the consulate has not been specified.

Robert Cason, victim Arthur Redelfs's stepfather, also told KTSM he did not know what his step-daughter-in-law did at the consulate. Meanwhile, Diana Washington Valdez in the El Paso Times quotes a former DEA agent who says he knew Redelfs, a local Sheriff's Office detention officer, "since 1990."

Speaking to The Takeaway, expert narco reporter Ioan Grillo says the Enriquez-Redelfs slaying appeared to be a "very organized hit."

However, unnamed sources in the State Department led The Washington Post to conclude that it "did not appear that the slain consular employee was involved in counternarcotics work."

Officials are saying now that it looks like a case of mistaken identity.

Assessing the damage

Above, an industrial electrical supply building along the road to the northwest of the Santiago metropolitan region, damaged by last week's magnitude 8.8. quake. More images of damage that I caught in the outskirts here and here.

While, again, the capital was not devastated by this earthquake as the south and coastal regions were, several buildings in the city have been deemed unsafe to return to, as shown by this interactive map at La Tercera. According to the official death toll (pdf) released by the government on Thursday, 21 people in metropolitan Santiago died in the quake.

That figure surprised me. Some cities in the most affected areas had less victims, but perhaps it is proportional to the city's size. "Santiago is Chile," someone here said the other night. Seven million people live in the capital, and there are 17 million overall in this very long, very geographically isolated nation.

Don Francisco from 'Sábado Gigante' -- who is Chilean, by the way -- is in town to host the teletón for victims. Today I'm reporting a piece on the "scene" and mood in Santiago. Any tips?

Quake exposes social disparities in Santiago

Above, a photo by L.A. Times staffer Michael Robinson Chavez from the quake devastation in Constitucion, central Chile. Help is finally arriving to the region. Here, my L.A. Times piece on social disparities evident in the aftermath of the quake in Chile's highly developed capital, Santiago.