Intersections

Mexican Mafia defector Rene Enriquez tells his story

Meet Rene Enriquez, a model inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison. He's also a high-level defector of the Mexican Mafia, one of the most notorious and largely mysterious criminal organizations in the United States. A radio documentary about Enriquez, produced by journalist Michael Montgomery for American RadioWorks, aired on KPCC in L.A. months ago, but this being another backlog item, it's worth noting that the entire report, called "Gangster Confidential," remains online.

"I look like a typical gang member," Enriquez says, "but I don't believe I'm a typical gangmember. I believe I'm a cut above the rest. As a mafioso, you have to be an elitist." The entire piece, plus the videos and articles online, offer an unprecedented view inside the Eme, and inside one brilliant criminal mind.

* Previously, "The Mexican Mafia connection," "This week in gangs: Does the Mexican Mafia run Cudahy?" and "This week in gangs: Mexican Mafia sting at Coachella?"

Backlog: UFO sighting in Mexico City, seriously said

Mexico has its own big-name journalist known for his reports on UFO sightings, Jaime Maussan. Here's a clip of the ufologist at work, calmly explaining what happened over Tlatelolco on December 9 of last year, and also on the timidity of the mainstream media on reporting it. Maussan interviews the photographer who captured an astounding image of a bright aircraft just above the blacked-out area of the city. "I imagine you're proud of your photograph, no?" he asks the man. At the end, the newscaster reminds us that a similar incident happened in Cuernavaca in 1970. Strange.

What happened in Nueva Atzacoalco **

A nightmare of a scene on Friday at a disco in Nueva Aztacoalco, a tough barrio in the sprawling north of Mexico City. During a tardeada, or an afternoon party common for teens just finishing the spring semester, nine young people and three police officers were asphyxiated or crushed in a moment of confusion and panic when the police attempted to raid the News Divine club for suspicions of under-age drinking and drug-use. Hundreds of clubgoers tried rushing out through a single entryway. The other exit had been blocked by cases of beers, reports said.

On Saturday, El Universal asked bluntly, "Who killed 12 people?" Here are the names of the dead; they include a 20-year-old female police officer and 13-year-old girl.

The paper's online radio edition has this first-person audio account from the scene. The reporter notes that when she entered the club after it had been emptied, it was still unbearably hot inside. The owner of the club was detained by the authorities. And the D.F. attorney general has opened an investigation on the tactics used by police before the stampede at the News Divine. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard suspended the officials involved in the incident.

* Two young victims: The image above is from Las Noticias Mexico.

** SPECIAL NOTE: No updates on this post. I will be out of the city and away from regular Internet service for two weeks. A few forthcoming posts will be published on a pre-set schedule until July 4.

Trip out: Freaky Medusa on the Angel of Independence

While exploring the Angel de la Independencia on a rainy, trippy night, we spotted Medusa on the monument's east side, facing Centro. What the ... ? The Angel was designed by Antonio Rivas Mercado and Enrique Alciati, but a search turns up nothing. There may be an obvious explanation for it, who knows.

Same-sex couples on display in Mexico City metro *

The metro in D.F. is truly the working citizen's art museum. Many stations feature permanent murals and sculptures or pre-Hispanic artifacts, such as the Ehecatl pyramid that sits in the middle of metro Pino Suarez. There are also temporary exhibits. These are images from "Familias Mexicanas," currently on view at metro Centro Medico, a transfer point for Lines 3 and 9. It is a series of photographs by Oscar Sanchez doumenting same-sex couples in the capital, in their domestic spaces.

In the image above are Alfonso and Ruben, who according to the exhibit materials first met when Ruben was 11 and Alfonso was 18. Seven years later they ran into each other on the train, and immediately became a couple. They're in an "open relationship," hence the guy in the middle. Also, I noticed they're both wearing the Star of David. Below, more images.

The exhibit is mounted in conjunction with the Museo Universitario del Chopo, and is up until June 30. By the way, after taking these photos late on Tuesday night I headed back to the place where I'm currently staying, at metro Patriotismo, and saw a couple in a loving embrace on a staircase. I managed to snap a photo while taking the escalator to surface level. Yup, two dudes.

* Click on photos for larger views. Previously, "Happy gays in Mexico." * Add: Macha Mexico on the exhibit.

Backlog: Taggers tag at panel on tagging **

Meant to post this a whole ago: Sickly Season has valuable audio from a panel discussing graffiti and its engagement with civic life in Los Angeles, from June 2007, at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, in Little Tokyo. Really interesting perspectives in there from OG writer Chaz Bojorquez, Retna, Al Nodal, Slick, CalTrans official Dan Freeman, and Roger Gatsman, founding editor of While You Were Sleeping and Swindle. Also on the panel sat Shelley Leopold of the LA Weekly. Leopold has a feature this week on Mr. Brainwash, who is apparently making a scene on the L.A. landscape right now.

Definitely listen to what Chaz has to say. ("New York? They're still doing bubble letters.") But the really interesting part comes at the very beginning, when the panel's organizer tells the audience that someone had tagged the NCPD building in the "in the last fifteen minutes, which isn't cool." The organizer, in a fascinating bit of protocol and street smarts, handles the incident very well. Download the audio here. Graffiti: ever-mainstreaming, ever renegade.

* Image above, a piece by Revok on a Korean market in Mid-City, from the blog Lurker by LA Weekly online editor Mark Mauer. See related posts in Intersections in our graffiti category.

** Housekeeping note: The fonts here have been finally, mercifully updated. Sans serif at last. I also added the "recent comments" box on the left, to highlight feedback that arrives on posts deep in the archives. Also slightly updated my author profile. Thanks for the continued feedback and encouragement.

Introducing Domestic Fine Arts *

Yes everyone has one now and they're kinda predictable, but what is it about party photoblogs, at least the good ones, that makes them endlessly fascinating? Regular readers in D.F. may be already familiar with Domestic Fine Arts, but those in farther reaches of the planet might be interested to know what happens on a casual Wednesday or early Friday in Mexico City, through the eye of one embedded documenter, in certain places, under certain clouds, maybe, perhaps, wait that happened?

* All images from recent posts at Domestic Fine Arts. Previously, "Hyper-fashion scenesters in the D.F."

Moctezuma and Malinche, together at last

Manuel Vilar was a Spanish-born sculptor who worked in the mid-19th Century in Mexico City. Above, a shot of his Neoclassical renderings of Moctezuma II and La Malinche, side by side in the "Construction of a Nation" rooms of the second floor of the Museo Nacional de Arte. Below, a close-up of what is perhaps Vilar's most famous work, a larger-than-life sculpture of the heroic Tlaxcalan warrior, Tlahuicole, who preferred to die as a gladiator rather than face his people for compromising with the Aztecs.

* Click on both images for mega-large views.

Interview with M.I.A. in Baby Baby Baby magazine

 
For the Baby Baby Baby interview we sat down back in March at El Califa in Condesa, along with her crew, the local organizers and promoters behind MX Beat, and friends. As our conversation progressed, M.I.A. ate a juicy chunk of beef over a tortilla with her hands ("This is the first time I've been anywhere where I've constantly been eating."). The nail polish was neon orange.

Such details are relevant because besides being a sensational performer and beat-maker, Maya Arulpragasam is a goddess of street fashion and a self-described "muse" to designers. And writers. Besides being gorgeous the London native possesses an intense personal energy that translated directly into our conversation, where she made plenty of rather bold statements. Here's an excerpt, from a series of questions about what it means to be an immigrant in the United States and the creative energy that the Third World brings to it:

America has no more creative energy than England. England has way more. All this stuff that’s happening in Middle America, if you think about it, creatively, their political stance. People fly-posting, and ‘fuck this shit.' All that shit. If you look at the designers that make political T-shirts, ‘Fuck Nike, Here’s Mike.’ That actual attitude started in England. It didn’t even start in America while they were fucking going around bombing people all over the planet. It kind of came from Banksy. We were doing shit like that 10 years ago reacting to what was going on in America, because there was no reaction that was coming out of America. […] It couldn’t have come from America. You can’t make that happen in America because they’re not tolerant. That was the whole point.

She also said, about Kala, "I wrote the album for Mexicans, shit," and that if her visa is not renewed and she must leave her place in Brooklyn she will, jokingly, "Move to Mexico and start launching missles from here." And when I asked her if fashion influences her music or if music influences her fashion, M.I.A. unequivocably said, "Fashion comes first."

* Note: Some pages have reported that M.I.A. told Baby Baby Baby she is moving to Canada or marrying Kanye West. This is incorrect and does not appear anywhere in my transcripts. There must be some confusion with whatever source this is from. Baby Baby Baby is a sister publication of Celeste magazine. I'm told it is sold at American Apparel stores worldwide.

** Photo above by Mexico City photographer Napoleon Habeica.

Leaving Tijuana: Everyone is doing it

The social elite of Tijuana -- its surgeons, lawyers, maquiladora managers, marquee chefs -- have over the past few years built a colony of wealthy refugees just across the border in San Diego. With those mysterious kidnapping gangs getting more brazen and more deadly, Richard Marosi reports at the L.A. Times that tijuanenses with means are settling in Eastlake, Chula Vista.

This migratory phenomenon has been practiced long before the upper classes felt threatened enough to catch on, though, but for different reasons. On my dad's side, he and my uncles left Tijuana as soon as they were of age. On my mom's side, most of my cousins and relatives lived in Tijuana when I was little, while we were the rare ones who lived in San Diego. Now most of us live in San Diego. The ones who've stayed are the rare ones.

It's standard social climbing for some members of the low to middle classes of TJ. And it's about living a perpetual state of gray. San Ysidro may be U.S. territory, but for many of us natives to this slice of the border, it is merely a neighborhood in Tijuana that happens to be on the north side of "the line."

* Photo above, an Andrade family piñata-bashing in San Ysidro, Calif.

Social studies in food, graffiti, and fake money

A fresh batch of posts at my "Letter from Mexico City" over at LA Weekly. Here are images from a show of Mexican graffiti at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico. Here's a quick look at the way the global food crisis is being approached in Mexico. And here is a cronica of my reluctant affair with a fake 10 peso coin. Lesson learned: Always check your change. * Image above, a pedestrian tunnel below Calzada de Tlalpan.

Photo journal: Tropical noir in Puerto Vallarta *

Vallarta, the once sleepy port permanently transformed by the film adaption of Tennessee Williams's "The Night of the Iguana," remains largely defined as a tourist colony for Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans on holiday from the interior. But in five days there for the arte contemporaneo festival, ignoring the tourist traps, I found it to be definitely coming into its own, with distinctly local culture-makers and scenesters, pleasing non-touristy nightspots, excellent food, and a seductive mixture of myth and menace that gave me an overall feeling of tropical noir. Below, some more snapshots.

A floating installation by Cristian Silva, mimicking the swan-shaped towel sculptures traditionally left by maids on beds in Vallarta hotel rooms.

Panelists Rita Gonzalez, Alma Ruiz, and Ruben Ortiz Torres, preparing.

A soup of chile poblano poured over huitlacoche and corn, at Los Xitomates.

Me with artist Shizu Saldamando after our panel talk outdoors.

A (lip-syncing, male) songstress performing at legendary gay disco Paco Paco.

A work by Davis Birks. The word "ELLOS" is readable on the fence's other side.

Shrimp tacos seasoned al pastor at the beach-front spot Barracuda.

A quiet corner late Friday night, up behind the bustle of town.

Sunset on Saturday, before returning to the big city.

* Congrats and cheers are due to curator/organizer Pilar Perez, and to all the local artists and volunteers who participated and helped put the event together. * ADD: Here's the L.A. Times' Reed Johnson writing on the festival.