Intersections

Girl + garage punk + Mexico = Jessy Bulbo

Here is "Maldito," by Jessy Bulbo, a video faithful to the vibe of the old-school Mexican punk-rock moshing ritual. Check here to learn more. Jessy Bulbo plays at Foro Alicia on Nov. 7.

Human madness for San Judas Tadeo

San Judas Tadeo, the saint traditionally petitioned for "lost causes," is one of the biggest spiritual figures among young people in Mexico City. Every 28th day of the month, his devotees render pilgrimage from wherever they live in the city to the shrine at San Hipolito, near metro Hidalgo, in the Centro.

October 28 is San Judas Tadeo's annual feast day, the biggest 28th of the year. So San Hipolito on Tuesday was fittingly another D.F. scene of total human chaos. The above shot was taken nearing midnight, when the masses of pilgrims were then outnumbered by a sea of refuse and trash. * More later.

The de-coloring of the L.A. Times *

* Above, L.A. now: black and Mexican, sun and soccer. (LAT photo)

One of the most remarkable stories I read in the Los Angeles Times this year was a look at a small community of immigrants from Mexico's Costa Chica centered in Pasadena. The story, published in April, gave us a fascinating dose of nuance for a region long accustomed to overwrought tales of 'brown vs. black' violence and tension. Veteran metro reporter and editor John L. Mitchell wrote the piece. This week he was named among 75 editorial staffers at the LAT who were bought out or fired.

Mitchell will no longer be bringing L.A. and world readers stories such as these at a time when we need smart community journalism the most. Neither will Francisco Vara-Orta, a young staffer just starting out his career. Or Lynelle George. Or Agustin Gurza. And these are just a few names from this recent round of cuts at the LAT, the third so far this year. Add to them Connie Kang, Lorenza Muñoz, Cheryl Brownstein-Santiago, Sergio Muñoz, Solomon Moore, Sam Enriquez, Caitlin Liu, Gayle Pollard-Terry, Frank Sotomayor, Camilo Smith, Barbara Serrano, Daniel Yi, Martha Flores, Evelyn Iritani, Mike Terry, Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Mai Tran, Joe Hutchinson, Janet Clayton, and many others, all journalists of color who have left around or since the departures of former editors John Carroll and Dean Baquet. See more here.

Without these journalists, the situation has gone beyond tragic or sad. It is an extension of the failures I detailed in this LA Weekly feature, "Shades of Brown," using the Frank del Olmo papers at CSUN. The piece shows how the morass of late-20th Century identity politics combined with blunders at the corporate and newsroom-leadership level over how exactly the paper should cover L.A.'s changing demographic make-up continue to haunt the L.A. Times to this day. In the end it's not so much the color of people's faces or their surnames that count, but their ability as journalists to connect dots for the daily news report across cultures, languages, borders, and disparate neighborhoods -- which, really, is what life in L.A. is all about.

While all our best hopes and wishes are with the few left who keep at it over there on Spring Street, the chief news source for the most colorful place in America just got incredibly duller. Eventually markets and the new media landscape will settle and equalize things, but for now, these cuts amount to an abdication of the LAT's duty to its readers and the community.

Day of the Dead approaches

This is a stall at Mercado San Juan Arcos de Belen above Salto del Agua, on Monday. The markets of D.F., and the sidewalks outside the metro stations, and the sidewalks in general, are jammed this week with the seasonal merchandise of the moment: Day of the Dead decorations. In ever-Americanizing Mexico City, that also means jack o' lanterns, witches, spiders, and lots of orange and black.

Maniac Eduardo Verastegui hearts Prop. 8, McCain

"Sizzling," "hot," "Latino" Eduardo Verastegui is telling Spanish-speaking voters in California that they should vote 'Yes' on Prop. 8 because it "helps families and kids." How? Well, actually it doesn't, but that isn't the point, as long as you hit all the brown-n-proud cliches while hammering home a message of discrimination and exclusion. "As a Latino man proud of my community," he says in the clip, "I feel I have been called to fight for traditional marriage between a man and a woman."

Verastegui, a native of Tamaulipas and non-U.S. citizen McCain stumper, also lends his face to a fairly despicable screed against reproductive rights for women, and Barack Obama, whose positions he recklessly distorts. Verastegui's Wiki says he attends Mass daily, and IMDB says he practices abstinence. Hmm.

Voters in California, one hopes, are smarter. The lunacy of people like this clown, and the current Republican nominee for Vice President, is a stark reminder that religious fundamentalism in any form must be rejected as a tool of division, intolerance, and violence. Verastegui is an embarrassment.

Tô me sentindo muito sozinho!

A classic always worth reliving, it's "Sozinho," by the incomparable Caetano Veloso. * Enjoy.

The living 'phantom' of identity

Above, U.S. artist Carolyn Castaño, a descendant of Colombian immigrants who was raised within Mexican American culture in the barrios of Los Angeles, stands before a self-portrait currently on view in "Aparaciones Fantasmales," at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.

As we discussed the complexities of identity in contemporary art, Castaño told me that the binding theoretical approach among many of the artists in this show is similar to the ideas at play in "post-black" shows such as "Freestyle": "There is this identity but we're not just about this identity. But there's power in also acknowledging that some of these works have a particular voice in a way, a phantom if you will, of those interests, and they aren't divorced from that."

* More later.

What is Obama's Mexico agenda?

** APRIL 16 UPDATE: See fresh post, "The distant neighbor: Barack Obama in Mexico."

With the amounts of goods, money, migrants, media, tourists, and the endless intangibles of culture that flow between Mexico and the United States on a daily basis, there is hands-down no country more important to the future prosperity of the U.S. than its southern neighbor, and vice versa. Yet we've rarely heard Mexico mentioned on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. And particularly not from front-runner Barack Obama, who has not visited Mexico -- unlike rival John McCain, who was in Mexico City as recently as July -- but did find time this summer to go to Europe for whatever reasons.

Journalist Franc Contreras goes to the border for Al Jazeera and finds many more questions than reassurances among people on both sides of the border on how an Obama presidency might seek to mend the damage done to U.S.-Mexico relations under eight years of Republican rule in Washington. From immigration reform to trade and narcoterrorism, people excited about an Obama victory on Nov. 4 must keep in mind that border-related issues facing the next president will be every bit as challenging as anything the executive might face in the Middle East or in Asia.

What's Obama's view on the death of the binational border park, for symbolic starters? Or America's domestic Guantanamos? Who knows. But here is a boilerplate op-ed piece Obama published in February in The Dallas Morning News that lays out a general Mexico agenda, and a bit of analysis from Foreign Policy Association.

The Invisible College

In honor of Fashion Week in Mexico City (again), the above image is from the personal archive of artist and academic Mariana Botey, a native of Mexico City and a graduate of St. Martins, from her fall 1997 collection "The Invisible College," as presented in London. The collection is one of the earliest in contemporary couture that utilized indigenous Mexican motifs on the runway.

Here in D.F. in fall 2008, Marvin y Quetzal presents on Wednesday the last collection that the late Quetzal Rangel collaborated on with partner Marvin Duran. Fashion Week is at Campo Marte, in Chapultepec.

* Previously, "A few fashionable discoveries in Mexico City."

Mexico claims the APPO killed Brad Will

* Above, Who killed Brad Will? Not them, Mexico says.

Mexican federal prosecutors said on Friday that two APPO activists had been arrested in connection with the 2006 killing of New York Indymedia journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca. That would mean the same group that Will was supporting and covering is responsible for his death. This is an allegation that the Oaxacan PRI government made just weeks after the shooting on October 27, 2006 that left Will, 36, dead as he was filming a confrontation between the APPO and paramilitaries. For a differing perspective, take a look again at stills from Will's own footage that show PRI men, identified by name, aiming guns at him.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (along with Amnesty International) has decried the finding, claiming the federal investigation was riddled with "omissions, deficiencies, irregularities, and delays." Also unconvinced, Brad's mother Kathy told The New York Times: "It's been two years of the same thing. They are absolutely determined to pin it on somebody nearby."

For more, see this post at the Village Voice, and also Friends of Brad Will. * Previously, "Oaxaca in our hearts and minds."

Slow journalism movement?

Sasha Anawalt is hosting a panel at USC on Nov. 17 on a project that's very intellectually out-there, applying the ideas of "slow food" on the competitive news media:

Never heard of the Slow Journalism Movement? We barely have either -- a phrase coined by Naka Nathaniel to describe the growing practice of journalists sharing resources and caring less about beating their competition to the big story than about practicing human rights activism and doing the right thing. Nathaniel and Mister Jalopy both associate this trend in journalism with the Slow Food Movement. What are the commonalities? Few are better equipped to speak about slow food than Josh Viertel, and few have explored and exercised possible conjunctions between slow food and the arts than Peter Sellars.

The panel is part of the Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism program. * Intriguing, but, possible?

* Above, a reporter's work station at the L.A. Times, via the mass comm department at Glendale CC.

'I'll never change!'

Often covered, karaoke-ed, sung along to, remixed, and performed by tranvestis across the Ibero-mestizo diaspora, the original "A quien le importa," by weirdo 80s space-pop sensation Alaska y Dinarama. Enjoy.

'Phantom Sightings' arrives in Mexico City

The Tamayo is the Mexico City host for "Phantom Sightings," the LACMA-originated exhibit on "art after the Chicano Movement." What's that? That's art made by Mexican Americans in the decades since the height of the Chicano political movement and, through the curators' filter, work that is mostly conceptual in nature. The foundational influence running through much of the exhibit is the ground-breaking Asco collective.

Curator Rita Gonzalez and several of the artists were at the Tamayo on Tuesday for a press conference and a walk-through with arts reporters from the D.F. dailies. True to the Chicano social reality, much of the back-and-forth happened through an English-Spanish translator. Above, Ruben Ochoa discusses his "Freeway Wall Intervention" as it is being mounted.

Here is Mexico City's chance to see cutting-edge contemporary art made by its hyphenated cultural compatriots north of the border. "Phantom Sightings" opens as "Aparaciones Fantasmales" on Thursday night, October 16, at the Museo Tamayo in Chapultepec Park.

* Check out reviews of the show at LA Weekly, Frieze, and Art Review. Previously, "'Phantom Sightings' arrives in Los Angeles."

The Huajomulco: A previously unknown pre-Hispanic culture?

* Above, a missing link? The pyramid at Huapalcalco.

A possibly "new" Mesoamerican culture has been discovered in the state of Hidalgo. Investigators at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Hidalgo told the daily Excelsior that 41 artifacts found near the community of Huajomulco in the Valley of Tulancingo carry traits similar to the dominant cultures of the region but are distinctly different. The sculptures and figures are said to date from between 600-700 and 900 A.D., Mesoamerica's epiclassic period, said INAH archeologist Carlos Hernández Reyes. These artifacts may provide a crucial link to the obscure Huapalcalco pyramid, a subject of debate among archeologists:

In this period, he said, the region saw the development of the Coyotlatelcol culture, which appeared in Tula. But not in Tulancingo. The Huajomulco culture could be placed within this interval.

[...]

"We've worked at the pyramid and I can assure you it is not teotihuacana; neither the technique of the contruction nor the proportions are. As for the ceramic work, it is also not teotihuacana, but rather refers to the Huajomulco culture."

There is some contention however over the authencity of the discovered artifacts, Excelsior says. The pieces are now on display at the Museo de Datos Historicos de Tulancingo. * Here is the only serviceable image I found of the objects, at the local paper, El Sol de Tulancingo.

Late Sunday, late-season rainstorm

** Sunday: Metro to Portales, barbacoa tacos and consome, esquimo de fresa, michelada to go, strolling the market, vintage ashtrays, saying what's up to Perrito, rare visit deep into the inner bowels of Chabacano, friend's birthday in Roma, lemon cake, champagne, killing the piñata, talking Echo Park, rum and ice, rainstorm, ride home, new neon rocks for Jimmy the fish, work with criollo avocados, pay de elote, and Saturday's flat beer.

The enigmatic Jay Electronica, hip-hop's Jack Kerouac

Where else in the U.S. but post-Katrina New Orleans could the most evocative and compelling contemporary hip-hop be coming from? That's where Jay Electronica grew up -- the Magnolia Projects. Listen here while you can, because the enigmatic MC has already once deleted his MySpace profile, according to this solid profile at URB. The magazine dubs Jay Electronica "a sort of hip-hop Jack Kerouac" who has lived the transient life in Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington DC. Here's what he says about his roots:

"People will say, 'How could he be from New Orleans and rap like he does?'" Jay says, echoing a common Internet observation of his abstract rhyme style, which is more traceable to Nas (who appears on Act II) or Pharoahe Monch then Wayne or Juve. "Fuck where I'm from. I'm from the moon. I love New Orleans, it made me who I am, but, at the end of the day, it's just a place. I rep man and human beings."

He also discusses his connections to Erykah Badu and how he realized early on that "songs were stories and poems and books." * Above, "Dimethyltryptamine." The track is not for the faint-hearted. At the Mixtape Show, check out and take home a Jay Electronica set with a long, loving introduction by Ms. Badu.

From Mexico, a look at political 'Fraude' arrives in L.A. *

* Above, they gathered again and again for their man, 'el peje.'

"Fraude," the Mexican documentary by Luis Mandoki that openly lionizes the 2006 presidential candidacy of defeated leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador opens in the States this weekend. This is my review of the doc in the current LA Weekly film pages.

Mandoki and Lopez Obrador were in L.A. last week to promote the film and made the rounds with the regional Spanish-language media. Here are links where you can hear the man they affectionately call "el peje" on the air with the king of the L.A. radio market, El Piolin, and with Don Cheto. (Clips of his interview in studio with the anchors of Univision floated around for a few days but have been removed from the Net.) AMLO also made an appearance at USC.

Lopez Obrador has become the most idiosyncratic and polarizing political figure in recent Mexican history. After his defeat, supporters declared him the country's "legitimate president." He continues, more than two years after the election, to campaign all across Mexico for his movement, making him idol to many but absolutely hated by many others.

On Wednesday AMLO help a press conference to remind the few journalists who still cover him that he and his economic advisors warned Felipe Calderon 14 months ago that a financial crisis in the U.S. would severely impact Mexico. The U.S. dollar sold for 14 Mexican pesos this week. That's significantly higher than the 10 to 11 peso average we've been used to for years; significantly higher. Yet only yesterday did Felipe Calderon's conservative government announce a hurried financial stablization plan. It takes a bit of distance, but when you look back at Lopez Obrador's economic team during the campaign -- which featured some of the most respected financial minds in the country -- you're reminded of how essentially sound and moderate his candidacy actually was, despite all the noise.

You can revisit my coverage for the LA Weekly of the 2006 presidential election at the following links, in chronological order as they were filed: "The Mexico Cup," "Overtime in Mexico," "People Are Pissed," "Sticking it to El Hombre," and "The Simulated Republic." Here's my LA Weekly cover story based on that experience, "Down and Delirious in Mexico City."

* L.A.-based journalist Eileen Truax has her take on the AMLO visit at Mundo Abrierto, in Spanish: "On Lopez Obrador in Los Angeles, or How A Base's Loyalty is Measured in DVD Sales."

Mega-obese man dies in northern Mexico

He was not Manuel Uribe, the former obesity world record-holder of Monterrey. Uribe is the media star who has recently begun a new diet, significantly dropping his weight, and also announced that he was in love and ready to get married. José Luis Garza (above) was his neighbor. The two were friends, as Uribe and his fiancee had sought to help and encourage Garza with his hopes of losing weight.

Garza died in his home on Tuesday of apparent heart failure. Emergency workers had to knock down walls to reach him. He weighed 450 kilos, or 990 pounds. Garza, who was 47, died on the way to a hospital. Check out the AP image of the man's super-sized grave.

* Mexico is the second fattest country in the world after the United States. The new "fattest man" on Earth is reportedly an Egyptian.

Manu Chao: 'Hasta siempre, Mexico!'

The borderless French-Spanish activist hippie-punk world-beater Manu Chao ended his huge concert Saturday night at Foro Sol by ceding his microphone to the campesinas from Atenco. The women called for the release of their political prisoners who have been held since the battle with government forces in 2006 in the small but active municipality outside Mexico City. (See more here.) The last time Chao was in D.F. was that year when he recorded live at the Foro Alicia.

On Saturday, the stellar Mexican post-pachucos Maldita Vecindad opened; half-way through front-man Roco led the stadium in a raised fist for the dead at the U.S.-Mexico border. The rain poured down on us for much of the night. Hamburgers were $35 pesos, a double Indio went for $60, and pirated tees outside were $50 pesos and up.

* Falling James interviewed Manu for the LA Weekly when he was last in L.A. Above, "Welcome to Tijuana." See also this personal favorite, "Me llaman Calle."

From D.F. to Norwalk, correspondence for Obama

Monday morning: Dug out $59 pesos to send a fax and piece of letter mail from Mexico City to the United States -- to 12400 Imperial Highway in Norwalk, Calif., to be specific. That's the address for the registrar and clerk for L.A. County, where I am last registered to vote (and where voting materials are available in 10 languages). I submitted a request for an absentee ballot for an exciting day, Nov. 4. This "special note" from Sen. Joe Biden gave me the necessary nudge:

Dear Daniel,

I've traveled around the world, and I've seen my share of presidential campaigns. But I have never seen one in which Americans living abroad have had a bigger impact. Barack and I know we have support from Americans all over the globe -- and we appreciate all that Democrats Abroad has been doing to grow this movement for change. But the time for you to make your voice heard is quickly passing.

Voter registration and vote by mail deadlines are approaching. Some states close their rolls as early as today, October 5th. Find your state, get registered, and get your absentee ballot today: www.votefromabroad.org.

Eight disastrous years of George Bush policies have jeopardized our security, tarnished our international reputation, and sunk us into the most profound economic crisis we have seen since the Great Depression. Now, John McCain wants to continue down the same path.

Don't imagine for a second that your vote doesn't matter in this election. Register today and request your absentee ballot, and make sure your voice is heard. Together, we can make history and bring about the change we need.

Thank you, Joe

Whatever you say, "Joe." I'm more than happy to cast a vote for president, even in a "blue state," for your colleague, the cool and calm Barack Obama. I did so in the Global Primary, which Obama handily won. Having always been officially and proudly registered "decline to state" or "Independent," once I moved to Mexico I signed up with Democrats Abroad in order to put up a hand of "Yes" for a direly needed tectonic shift in U.S. policies and political culture, which an Obama presidency is sure to bring. And I have no problem, as a journalist who watches such things, with saying so.

I mean, it seems pretty straightforward to me. Even this guy gets it: "My grandfather owned slaves, but I'm thinking of voting for a black man." And this guy. Now, expats, let's get this shit done.

* Previously, "Everyone is everything: On gaps in media and modern thinking." Photo via Andrew Sullivan.

Controlled chaos: The October 2 march in Mexico City

Reforma reported on its front page Saturday that the authorities identified and captured a leader of the "disturbances" during the truly massive march for the 40th anniversary of the October 2 massacre. They ID'd the kid as Díder Salgado, saying that he was recorded directing "cells" of "anarcopunks" to strike against riot police and businesses in and around the Zocalo.

The paper (which is still depriving Internet readers of free access to its content and therefore not listed among links here) also said the anarchists were seen changing and swapping clothing to avoid detection. At least twenty people were detained during the clashes with police at Thursday's marcha. If convicted of charges, they could face up to nine years behind bars, warned D.F. government official José Angel Avila Pérez. Sounds excessive, but when it comes to the routine ritual dance between protesters and granaderos in Mexico, you never know who is directing who, and with what purpose.

* Above, resistance graffiti as group project along the route of the October 2 marcha from Tlatelolco to the Zocalo. Police nearby watched, hands behind their backs.

** And history just keeps repeating itself: On Friday, six indigenous protesters were killed in a clash with police at the Chinkultic archeological site in Chiapas. AP says the villagers had seized the site nearly a month ago and were charging tourists a smaller entrance fee. More here.

Changes

Intersections had a fixed look for most of its existence. Things change. In recent months you might have noticed some visual morphing here, starting with the re-publishing of the site with a cleaner font. I added pages featuring some of my journalism from the LA Weekly and the L.A. Times. The About page got updated. You can also find new extended links to some of my favorite and most invaluable sites, in information aggregation and news media, from Los Angeles, from Mexico City, from the border regions (geographically and conceptually), and in art, music, politics, and necessary surrealisms.

Then there are the cash-flow modifications. You will now see frames for Google ads and a PayPay contribution button. These are there for your consideration. From my current base in Mexico City I am also available for translation, English to Spanish, Spanish to English, and freelance editing, writing, and reporting. Trust me, when you're a free agent, every peso counts.

* Thank you as ever for your visits and comments. The book is coming along. I will have more on that later.

Tlatelolco, October 2, 1968: A day of infamy

Forty years ago today the Mexican government opened fire indiscriminately on a crowd of peaceful protesters at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, killing still-unknown numbers of students, bystanders, and demonstrators. The operation was a brutal smashing of the grassroots movement for social reform that had swept across Mexico and the world in that turbulent year, 1968.

October 2 is a date that forever remains a dark mark on the Mexican calendar and the Mexican psyche. Its significance in the country's history has been finally recognized with a permanent exhibit and UNAM cultural center at the former foreign relations ministry complex near the plaza. Today there are marches led partly by the Comite 68, survivors who are still seeking justice, and by various student and youth groups from the Tlatelolco plaza, to the Zocalo. The papers and magazines have been faithfully previewing the 40th anniversary of the '68 massacre for weeks now. We'll have photos and observations from today later in the week.

* Previously, "Living testimony from Tlatelolco, 1968," and "Nada pasó: Contemporary responses to Tlatelolco, '68." See also, "Graphic perfection: The 1968 Mexico City Olympics."