Intersections

Return to Los Angeles, via Mexico City

* Above, Mexico City youth in resistance, on the 40th anniversary of 1968.

After a full year in exile, in forced total-immersion in Mexico, I'll be back in my native California later this month. I plan to see family in San Diego (and hopefully by then greet a new nephew), attend a wedding in L.A., and speak at the invitation of the Zócalo public lecture series, a wonderful civic institution in Los Angeles. The invite is such an honor.

Here's the event link, and the text:

Swine flu, a contracting economy, rising unemployment, a wild and bloody conflict with drug traffickers, the constant threat of natural disasters and ransom kidnappings — Mexico faces several serious challenges. Since the contested 2006 presidential election there, the country has suffered crisis after crisis, constantly testing the Mexican people's ability to realign their everyday lives. Some seek economic refuge in the United States, but most remain home, adapting, tuning out, dancing with Death. Daniel Hernandez, a former Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly writer who has spent the past 18 months blogging Mexico City, visits Zócalo to share his insights on that sprawling capital, its youth culture, and the alternately defiant and detached, resigned and resistant approaches of Mexican people to threats always looming.

For the talk, I'll keep it loose and simple, and probably bring up themes I'm tackling in my upcoming book.

But I'd like to envision a different kind of dynamic for this lecture. Bring the kids. There are few things I enjoy more than speaking about my work to audiences of young people. I am constantly amazed by the sophistication of their thinking, by their ability to quickly synthesize new information and challenge assumptions.

So if you're around and can encourage teens and students to stop in at MOCA on the evening of June 25, please, by all means, do. The event is free -- and I promise not to bore you.

Excavations: El Haragán

With elements of arena rock, hair metal, punk, and classic rock, "rock urbano" in Mexico describes a genre of music and a subculture that flourished in the outer slums of Mexico City for many years before being eclipsed by new rock currents and by reggaeton.

Largely forgotten, rock urbano has not entirely disappeared. You can still find toquines on the D.F.'s fringes that celebrate this scene -- although the rockers present can often be a bit on the gray side. Above, a king of the genre, El Haragán, or Luis Antonio Alvarez, blasting through his anthem "Muñequita Sintetica." It's sung in that unmistakably barrio, rough-around-the-edges manner. Enjoy.

* Previously, "Excavations: The rock underground in 1980s Mexico."

Hip-hop 'nice'

Here are some kids listening to some MCs spit at the fancy Nike theme store on Teotihuacan in Condesa, Friday night. Who were they? Don't know. We were passing through, and they were wearing really bright colors.

Anyway it appears the real stars of the party were the brands: Nike, Dos Equis, and Vitamin Water. Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

Just say no to candids

* At the one-year anniversary of Marrekech Salon, last Thursday.

Temple of blood: Teresa Margolles at the Venice Biennale

* Above, Margolles, via Universe in Universe.

What do you get when you put Mexico's preeminent contemporary art critic and its most radical working artist together on the global stage of the moment? I'm gonna go ahead and say it: You get a temple of blood.

Cuauhtémoc Medina, as a curator, submitted the winning entry for the Mexico pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale, featuring a new installation by Teresa Margolles, an artist who specializes in the material usage of cadavers, morgue water, and blood. For the 2009 Mexico pavilion, Margolles will exhibit mud and human blood from the sites of narco executions in Sinaloa area, where she is based. The pavilion is to be installed at the 16th Century Palazzo Rota Ivancich, just steps from St. Mark's Square. Blood, I'm told, will drip continuously upon the palace's ancient floors.

Read more at e-flux.

Reforma announced the exhibit in Wednesday's paper with this headline: "Narcoterror to be Exhibited in Venice." It's actual title is "What else could we talk about?", a blunt admission of the blood-soaked elephant in the room that no one in Mexico can deny, no matter how hard the president, media, and foreign boosters try. The purpose of the work, I'm told, is to "activate back those materials" in the face of the art-world and the consumers of Mexican-managed drugs in the United States and Europe -- and in Mexico itself.

So said Mariana Botey and Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, who aided Medina in the curation and writing of the work's texts. Those writings will be available later at this site where the artists contribute, Des-Bordes. Drenched in real Mexican blood, the installation, Chavez said, is all the more pertinent as Mexico became the pariah of the global community this spring after the swine flu feargasm.

"It's pure contamination, pure infection," Chavez told me Wednesday evening.

Botey added in our dual interview: "[Margolles] interrupts the art space by bringing in these materials that are really charged, which traces the relationship between death and power. It's about necropolitics, and the eruption of necropolitics in the art sphere."

With Mexico's conservative federal government trying its best to contain the geopolitical consequences of the orgy of narco violence in Mexico, and Europe's generally delicate airs, we'll see in the coming days how this aggressive gesture by Mexico's Medina and Margolles goes over. The Mexico Pavilion in Venice is slated to be on view until November.

* Images and media reaction to come later.

Getting into Lady Gaga

At first, who doesn't want to hate on Lady Gaga? Everything about her is extreme hyper-pop, she vaguely resembles old Christina Aguilera (or is it the other way around?), and it feels like her persona is about overproducing recycled New York/L.A. party monster looks from the past few years.

Whatever. Point is, Gaga is very, very hungry -- and entirely herself. That's something I can respect. From Rolling Stone:

Lady Gaga's devotion to being a star drove her to order bags of cocaine and spend hours perfecting her hair and makeup in a tiny Lower East Side apartment after she dropped out of NYU several years ago — well before she was actually famous. "It was quite sick," she admits. "I suppose that's where the vanity of the album came from." Her debut, The Fame, was almost entirely inspired by her relationship with a heavy-metal drummer named Luke, and their breakup profoundly changed Gaga. She tells Hiatt she's bisexual, but her attraction to women is purely physical. It's an aspect of her sexuality that makes boyfriends "uncomfortable," she says.

In December, Gaga told The Times of London, where she already has a large fan base:

"Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show," she says of her impressive stage set. "I don't give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can't drive."

When she started popping up on the radar stateside earlier this year, I asked my friend Nina Tahash about Gaga, commenting to her that this pop star looked very East L.A. to me, her attitude, her look. Nina replied: 'No she's real jersey tranny NYC clubkid fag hag.'

Fine by me. Pop is pop.

* L.A. designer Brian Lichtenberg is reportedly doing some of Lady Gaga's costumes. Above, Gaga doing a live acoustic version of "Fooled Me Again, Honest Eyes" on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. More points: She writes her own music.

An über-hip vision of the rain god?

There's been a welcome re-shuffling of the permanent collection at the MUNAL, a grand museum that like many in Mexico City has a breathtaking permanent collection but suffers from terrible museumography. The main temporary show right now is built on the weak premise of somehow filtering MUNAL's collection through the "lens" of Octavio Paz. This basically means moving around the artworks and stringing them together with strange and confusing quotations from Paz's writings.

The upside, room for fresh works!

The MUNAL is finally acknowledging thousands of years of Mexican history that preceded the collision with the Spanish by bringing in pre-Columbian artifacts to the spaces. One of these, seen above, stopped me in my tracks. It's a late Classic Tlaloc (for whom I've always had a soft spot) from the Veracruz region.

The Tlaloc is in remarkable condition. But take a close look. With his skinny frame, hunched and pensive pose, oversized eyewear, uh, uncommon fashion sense, and petulant demeanor, I couldn't help asking ...

Is this the most hipster-ish deity figure that Mesoamerica ever produced?

On Bolaño, and LaChapelle in conversation

Amanda Lepore "is the Zona Rosa," David LaChapelle says in my interview with him, found right now in the April-May issue of the Mexico City fashion, arts, and design magazine 192.

She's "such a perfect example of self-creation," LaChapelle adds. "People will say, 'Oh, I reinvented my career.' ... Well, yeah, but you kinda look the same. But here's someone who was born a boy named Armand and mistreated and abused as a kid, who is now like this glamorous sex symbol. So there's something very transcendent about that."

I met with LaChapelle while he was in town for the opening of an exhibit of his work at San Ildefonso. He says in the Q&A, published in Spanish, that his recent "mural" series are "more understood" in Mexico because of its heritage of muralism, and that since he works mostly in Los Angeles, Latin American style and culture has always influenced him.

Earlier in the issue, I wrote an appreciation in Spanish on author Roberto Bolaño (see previous posts here and here). An excerpt:

Bolaño, en su vida y en su obra, estaba obsesionado con las historias, las tempestades, y las fallas de otros escritores. Los cuentos de Bolaño crecen siempre de la perspectiva de poetas o lectores apasionados de la literatura –- y casi siempre estos son jóvenes, idealistas, distraídos, y en caminos trágicos y quijotescos. Desde Amuleto, novela que trata de una jóven poeta escondida en un baño en la UNAM durante el tome militar del campus en 1968, hasta 2666 y Los detectives salvajes, que narra la historia de una banda de poetas rebeldes que inician un viaje, tambien hacia el Norte, para descubrir el destino de una poeta que desaparecio misteriosamente cerca de la frontera.

192 is setting a high standard for new fashion editorial in Mexico. If this issue is still out there, there is also an interview with Diane Pernet; a conversation between artists Miguel Calderón and Abraham Cruzvillegas, and collector César Cervantes; and a fashion shoot by César Arellano, with styling by Denise Marchebout and Lizza Freer, and assisting by Uriel Urban.

* BOOK NOTE: My Gatopardo crónica on the 2008 emo riots is included in the anthology "Crónicas de otro planeta," or 'Tales from Another Planet,' the third collection of the best stories in the magazine, covering the recent years.

The book is compiled and edited by Guillermo Osorno and includes pieces by Laura Castellanos, Salvador Frausto Crotte, David Lida, and Fabrizio Mejía Madrid. It's an honor to see my work included in such company.

The travelling circus

Above, Mexico City youth in action practicing malabar, or roaming circus entertainment, behind the Hemiciclo de Juarez at the Alameda Central, in downtown D.F. on Saturday.

Based on a casual conversation, these young people -- some students, some drop-outs -- spend their time travelling to cities and towns across Mexico, surviving by performing at plazas and intersections for loose change, living the ultimate experience of the day-to-day.

'El Triste,' again, and again

Here is 23-year-old Ximena Sariñana, a singer, songwriter, and actress, doing her bluesy-pop take on the ultimate tear-your-heart-out tune, José José's "El Triste." And here goes a version by Kalimba. It is just me, or does this song get better and better with age and interpretation?

* Previously, "Excavations: José José, enjoying his sadness." The embedded clip there is now dead, so go here for that knock-out 1970 performance.

A Friday shake: Earthquake in Mexico City

* Above, an hour after the tremblor, Eje Central back to normal.

At the moment it struck, I was standing inside my apartment when a strange movement drew my eyes up. A strong wind, I thought. My curtains were fluttering, my little palm tree was flapping, and the doors in my place were swaying in unison.

Oh shit, another earthquake.

I threw on some jeans, grabbed my cell phone and keys, and ran out the door. In the hallway a woman stood in her doorway holding a small baby, eyes wide and panting. The light fixtures on my floor were swinging wildly. Shit shit shit. I ran out onto the street, into the crowds.

Everyone outside, standing around, looking up, at each other, trying to get a signal on a cell phone.

A magnitude 5.7 quake that lasted 15 seconds struck Mexico City at 2:24 p.m. on Friday, less than a month after a 5.6 quake hit us at the peak of the swine flu feargasm. That quake was centered in Guerrero, while Friday's quake epicenter hit in Puebla. Either way, any quake in this part of the earth hits the densely urbanized Valley of Mexico -- a former network of lakes -- the hardest. That quiet early morning of September 19, 1985, when an 8.1 monster left the great city in ruins, still looms large in the popular consciousness.

This shaker, thankfully, left no major damage or victims. The government responded swiftly today. Everything got quickly back to normal. (I posted updates from the shaky afternoon on Twitter.)

But still ... You can't help wonder ... What's next?

Pulqueria love

This is a photograph by Conrad Starr, who was in town recently from Los Angeles, capturing a tender moment at a newly reopened pulqueria in the Centro of Mexico City. It's a popular spot with down-trodden hippies and perpetual university types. My favorite brews there are the celery and beet, but the choices change daily.

Kalimba: Power-pop from Mexico's racial medley

Ever heard of Kalimba? Right now the Mexican singer is putting out albums of sugary power ballads, but he's also done the boy band thing, the TV child-actor thing, and the voice-over thing. Here are videos for recent singles "Duele" and "No Me Quiero Enamorar." Here's his Wiki.

This week Kalimba is in the national gossip pages over a rumored affair with actress Sherlyn. Oh yeah, he's also Afro-Mexican, part of a family of entertainers, and as of last July, father to a little girl.

* I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that if Kalimba had a career in the U.S. he might register as some kind of racial curiosity. But in Mexico, for the most part, Kalimba is just another pop crooner (who can actually sing). Enjoy.

New York lives: Introducing Second Floor

After checking in this week on new art in Mexico City and California, we now cruise over to New York, where independent curator Sarvia Jasso (co-creator of "Brooklyn is Burning") and artist and writer Kathryn Garcia are opening up creative space in their Brooklyn apartment based on a powerful concept.

Their Second Floor project debuted this month with a sexy group show titled "Can't Rape the Willing," ongoing through June 14. For a virtual tour, check out the installation images by Danielle Levitt. The organizers explain:

In part fueled by the economic crisis, we want to challenge the "white cube" mentality, plus challenge artists to work outside of the "normal" exhibiting structure, i.e works made specifically for a domestic setting, works that engage the space both conceptually and thematically. On a side note, working with galleries can be exhausting, loan forms, editions, percentages, pressure to sell, we thought of this as a way to forego all the "market" b.s. So we opened up a space to interesting young artists as a way to let them "Do whatever the fuck they want" and to have that feeling of "I'm doing this because I want to show work, period."

The idea of an artist community in a place like New York can be met with jaded responses, perhaps even thought of as outdated, so we were also hoping to bring back some of that excitement that inevitably results when you are surrounded by such talented and inspiring peers. Not only do we feel that this exhibition is extremely relevant in this time, but also that opening up our apartment is one of the most powerful and subversive gestures in the art world right now.

Thinking about this, it's time to retire the prevailing idea that in cultural terms some cities are "dead" (which is often said of New York) and some cities are up-and-coming (which is being said this year of ... Washington, D.C.?)

In the flattening global community, there are pockets of exciting energy anywhere and everywhere. The trick is to be an active cultural detective, at all times. So ... Istanbul, anyone?

* In image above, from left to right: Small yellow image, Danielle Levitt; large wall paper, Michael Sharkey; framed drawing, Michael Bilsborough.

Stay Gold: New work by Shizu Saldamando

 * Above, "Carm's Crew," gold leaf, glitter, oil paint on wood, 2009.

Artist Shizu Saldamando, an intimate chronicler of multiethnic youth subcultures in Southern California has a show of new work right now at Space 47 in San Jose, Calif. From the show's statement:

She is an observer of backyard parties, dance clubs, music shows, hang out spots, and art receptions. By exploring subcultures through personal narrative, and employing an eclectic mix of materials, Saldamando hopes to neutralize fixed hierarchical social constructs where the viewer becomes aware of their own fluid subjectivity, and begins to question their assumptions regarding the subject matter in each piece.

Saldamando employs shimmering washi paper, gold leaf, and other new materials in this exhibit, adding a striking dimension to her work. For this set of new pieces, I posed for her without knowing it. The piece linked here was created off a candid photo Shizu took of Uriel Urban and I in my Mexico City apartment, while she was in town for the "Phantom Sightings" opening at the Tamayo. It is called "Daniel y Uriel," and is colored pencil on paper with a washi paper collage. It is on view in San Jose, until May 29.

... Of course, Saldamando loved our visit to El Chopo. She took a lot of photos and left with the impression that the youth tribes of Mexico City are more deeply devoted to their chosen ideologies than their tribal counterparts in the U.S.

* But more on that later.

Gabriel Orozco takes on the desert

Above, a detail of a piece in Gabriel Orozco's solo show currently up at Kurimanzutto, shot by Deborah Bonello of MexicoReporter. Here's Deborah's post on the show, with a video interview with the artist, at La Plaza.

Orozco inserts ancient dried plant life from Mexico's harsh deserts into the white cube of the gallery, and rings the space with psychedelic geometrical drawings, some done beautifully in gold leaf. The desert object above is fitted with creepy glass eyes. Forgive me, but the whole thing feels like an homage to peyote.

Who is Gabriel Orozco? In the history of Mexican contemporary art, he holds a singular place, as his practice in the late 1980s and 90s impacted not only Mexican art but aesthetic trends on a global scale. From the catalog for "La era de la discrepancia/The Age of Discrepancy," edited by Olivier Debroise:

From 1987 to 1990, he began to formulate a dissident approach to art that drew upon numerous anti-art strategies, from Marcel Duchamp's read-mades to Joseph Beuys's concept of "expansion." Through his talleres de los viernes, or Friday workshop, Orozco had a notable influence on the artists who would later found Temistocles 44, marked by the irruption of philosophical theory into artistic practices. Orozco participated in several group shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but he maintained a low profile, since his proposals -- like abrading bricks during a walk through a vacant lot, leaving traces of red powder, or arranging abandoned oranges on the stands in an open air market, or inserting stones found while walking in his Tlalpan neighborhood into a metal fence -- did not really fit within the institutional structures of the time, mainly because they questioned the artistic support itself.

Orozco's show at Kurimanzutto is up until June 13. He is currently preparing a retrospective that debuts in December at New York's MOMA, then travels to Paris and London.

Airwaves: 'A great flight'

What a great idea! Rent an enormous mansion in the Pedregal, a region of Mexico City featuring many enormous mansions, get some DJs, some lights, lots of alcohol, invite people, and throw a party. They called it Airwaves. Yay!

It happened Saturday night, a damp, chilly night. Tickets were made to look impressively like airline boarding passes. Arturo and Lili of Elaboratorio worked the door. "Welcome aboard, have a great flight," said the 'stewardess' standing next to a cardboard 'metal detector.' A few of the Imeca selectors DJ'd: Chuck Pereda, Damian Romero, Puma, along with some Zoe and Molotov associates.

The complex was ... huge.

A healthy mix of the scenesters, models, "nice girls," fashion kids, and Televisa weirdos faithfully partied it up. The music was good, the mood was right, and there was free booze scheduled between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. the next day. In my estimation, though, it ran dry by 3.

So we went for some Chupas. At 5 in the morning, the stand in Coyoacan was just packed with kids, and someone was playing house from somewhere, so people were dancing. Eating and dancing, dancing and eating.

It's Tokyo

What is a common Mexican euphemism for the farthest, most alien place you can imagine? For a place you've never seen, a source of both unease and infatuation? Carlos Reygadas, in a stroke of genius, is well familiarized with it. From my working manuscript:

The basic obsession that binds them all is the fixation with personal appearance, with costumes and masks, with communicating a culture through their dress. On the surface at least, the tribal scene here is so intense sometimes it can feel like walking in parts of this city must be like walking among the fashion-obsessed Harajuku youth of Tokyo.

That would be Japan's El Chopo. So ... are we almost there?

* Above, between red wine and atole with fashion designer Denise Marchebout, Thursday night, May 14, downtown Mexico City.

The resurrection of Chaka *

* Daniel Ramos in 1994. Image via L.A. Times.

Whatever happened to Chaka? I bet too many of us thought he was still locked up, or worse. But, nope. Chaka -- the "nation's most prolific graffiti vandal" in the 1980s and early 90s, the golden age of tagging -- is alive and well and staying in Bakersfield, Calif., reports Mike Boehm on Culture Monster at the L.A. Times.

On April 25, King Chaka, a.k.a. Daniel Ramos, re-emerged for his first-ever solo art show at Mid-City Arts in Los Angeles. LA TACO has photos of the opening. Looks like the dude basically tagged up some things and put them in the gallery, but still ... it's Chaka.

Boehm has more, responding in part to to angry readers accusing the paper's blog of celebrating a "criminal." See also, photos at Mid-City Arts and Senses Lost.

Who was the swine flu-protected saint?

This iconic image by Jorge Dan of Reuters came to epitomize in these weeks that famous instinct of Mexican ingenuity in the face of constant existential threats. It's a very funny photograh.

Specifically, the masked saint is San Judas Tadeo. As I've discussed before, many young people in Mexico City's poorest or most 'dangerous' barrios venerate San Judas as the patron of lost causes and lost souls.

Non-adherents disparagingly call them "reggaetoneros" or "tepiteños," making reference to the famous barrio bravo where San Judas's presence is strong. The prevailing assumption is that most of his devoted in Mexico are hoodlums and petty criminals. Others say San Judas is just a fad, a fashion trend.

This photo must have been taken on April 28, at the peak of the swine flu fear. Each 28th of each month, the San Judas tribe makes pilgrimage to the San Hipolite church in Centro. There by Hidalgo, they get their statues blessed, buy loads of San Judas jewelry and trinkets, and on the fringes, drink and take drugs.

Check out this portrait of a San Judas kid by Keith Dannemiller.

* In Centro, I am bombarded with San Judas signals every day. Seduced by the perception of his spiritual strength, I have been begun wearing him myself. But more on that later.

The pig conglomerate vs. the villagers

* Above, Waiting to be slaughtered in Veracruz, AP photo via Daylife.

We posted previously about the gross conditions at the Smithfield subsidiary hog farm in the Perote Valley in the state of Veracruz. (Watch this Channel 4 video for the rotting pig carcasses.) On Sunday the Washington Post's Steve Fainaru went long on the ongoing war Grangas Carroll has waged with the old men and women of La Gloria, the village that decided to stand up to the pork plantation.

The paper says La Gloria villagers blocked a highway to protest the awful and potentially dangerous stench that emanates from the farm's football field-sized, open-air fecal pools. And what did the U.S.-based conglomerate's local arm do to its neighbors? It took the old folks to court:

Closing roads and highways is one of the most common forms of protest in Mexico. "Normally, the police arrive and they enter into a negotiation to open up the highway. It usually takes an hour or two," said Franco, the Perote mayor. "But Granjas Carroll, as a company, went to the authorities."

[...]

A month after the demonstrations, around 10 a.m., Guadelupe Serrano heard a knock at his door. He was greeted by a man in civilian clothes and three federal policemen, he said, and was told that he had been charged with launching an "attack" on a federal highway. He was taken first to Jalapa, the Veracruz state capital, then to Puebla, where he was jailed overnight before his family bailed him out, he said.

Serrano, 66, has short gray hair and weathered skin from a lifetime in the fields. "I didn't kill anyone. I didn't rob anyone. I'm not a drug trafficker," he said during an interview in his living room. "We simply raised the voice of alarm that these pig facilities are contaminating our environment and threatening the health of the people."

Read the whole thing there. At La Jornada, here is a crónica narrating the scene in La Gloria under the eye of the international news media.

Meanwhile, Larry Rohter of the NYT argues convincingly in the first-person for more credit for the Mexican government's response to the swine flu outbreak, particularly in comparison to China's response to SARS in 2003. But in a quote, Denise Dresser warns us against getting too cozy with the idea that Mexico is suddenly a mature democracy out of the shadows of the PRI autocracy:

What you've created is a perverse system of oligopolistic elites with vested interests and a willingness to use their veto power to prevent the changes that are needed but which they don't want.

Dresser is referring to Mexico's politicians and moguls, of course. Yet I couldn't help thinking that in the country's new-world bilateral relationship with the U.S., she might just as well be referring to companies like Smithfield, Inc.

Gwen Stefani comes out as a chola

My friend Jane in middle school once gave herself a chola make-over. She totally pulled it off. So does Stevie Ryan. This is because if you had contact with cholas growing up, with a little effort you could turn yourself into one, too –- as many "gueras" do in real life. The chola style and attitude is that distinct and recognizable.

With her 2007 video for "Luxurious," add Gwen Stefani, who grew up in Orange County. Her California Chicana, directed by Sophie Muller, is uncanny. She even shows us her chancla at the end. That’s bold. In the codes of the classical barrio, taking off your chancla is basically saying, ‘You wanna fight?'

* Previously, "It's your homegirl up in here ..."

Buffing the everyday boot *

My most prized possession: a pair of black work boots of indeterminate make or era, bought years ago at a vintage shop near Portobello Road in West London. As good as they look dusty and beat-up, they certainly deserve a good buffing every now and then. While earning his keep, this shoe shiner at the Zócalo in Puebla spoke an indigenous language to his mate one chair over, snickering and gossiping -- then he charged me $25 pesos.

Humph. Isn't this service ordinarily a $15 peso job? With so many Mexico City exiles away from town during the swine flu outbreak, I guess that was his special chilango rate.

* ELSEWHERE: I answered questions for "Let's Talk," a feature at the popular U.S. Latino youth-oriented site mun2. Check the comments, they're hilarious.

** NOTES ON MY LINKS: While I blog less deeply for a little bit, I hope readers will take greater advantage of my link sidebars, especially those on D.F. These shift a lot, so how are they chosen?

The first requisite is frequent updating. Next is link-heaviness. The primary goal here is to offer readers a good cross section of sites that probe or reflect the realities of life in Mexico, in both English and Spanish. That means avoiding a sort of ex-patriates blogroll; that would not be reflective of the society at large.

Consistent favorites? They include Gancho, El Blog del Narco, Plaqueta y ya, The Mex Files, Hazme el Chingado Favor, La Plaza, The Mija Chronicles, and the aggregator Mexico Alltop. Know any others that should be here? Please drop me a comment or an email.

Between monoliths

* Photo via Diario de Fiestas.

The Museo Experimental El Eco put an installation up in mid-April by Aldo Chaparro titled "Two Black Monoliths." Cesar Arellano has great photos from the exhibit's opening. And the blog En el Fastigo has an interview with the artist, who admits the work is reinterpreting a 1963 sculpture by Tony Smith -- and also has some "Tron" and "2001" flavor thrown in.

Yes, that's blatantly derivative, but I for one am unable to resist the play of monoliths and light. * Chaparro shows at OMR.

Boxing in Mexico City, and family ties

* Photo by Conrad Starr.

Here's up-and-coming Mexico City boxer Christian Uruzquieta saluting his fans after winning a 4-round decision against rival Javier Rivas, on April 23, the night before the swine flu outbreak. The match was part of a Cinturon de Oro line-up at the Woda nightclub near the Cuatro Caminos transit hub, on the border with Naucalpan.

Christian has several victories already under his belt. He is trained by his father and uncle, the Uruzquieta brothers of the Colonia Zapata Vela in Iztacalco, friends of friends of my father, who is also a trainer back in San Diego, Calif.

Cinturon de Oro offers serious boxing fans regular events focusing on talented young D.F. fighters in professional venues. An all-around solid entertainment. Currently however, boxing in Mexico City doesn't much of a Web presence.

** Here's another family tie I just found: Photos of my older brother Sergio, a painter and tattoo artist, in action in the ring during a recent mixed martial arts match in Long Beach. Surge has a good record, but just this time, he was outgunned.

... Knowing him, though, he'll be sure to get revenge.

* And how am I doing? ... Ishmael Reed said it best: Writin' is fightin'.

Dispatches on the swine flu

Two of the most prominent chroniclers of Mexican society in English had dispatches this past week on the swine flu outbreak in the capital. Author Alma Guillermoprieto did a "Talk of the Town" for The New Yorker:

"We don't see anyone," a very pregnant friend complained. "We're all afraid of contagion." In the days since the news of the epidemic broke, she had caught up on all her work, paid the bills, changed the haircut of her toddler daughter—whose kindergarten has also been closed down—and was about to take some photographs of her own belly. There's a small park outside her building, but, like all the other mothers, she was afraid to use it. "Am I bored?" she exclaimed. "Muchísimo! I imagine people all over the city locked up in their apartments, staring into the mirror, plucking their eyebrows down to nothing."

Author David Lida contributed a mask and cantina vignette for The New York Times op-ed page:

With no success in the pharmacies, I did what I usually do in moments of frustration and anxiety: I went to a cantina. Many were closed, but one called El Jarrito, which could be flatteringly described as a dive, remained open. The waitresses, short and squat, encased in tight skirts and suffocating beige hose, circulated among the customers. The woman who served me a drink lowered her mask to flash me a crooked-toothed smile. Customers laughed, argued, played dominoes and lowered their masks to drink or eat.

Things are thankfully getting back to normal. Today, restaurants and cafes reopen. On Monday, schools are back in session. * Illustration above by Anthony Russo for the NYT, where there's also a really good video up on the homepage right now from the streets of D.F.

** NOTE: Still doing low-impact blogging till further notice.

The swine flu survivors *

  * Moises Bonilla, a swine flu survivor, by Adam Nadel, via The Telegraph.

Moises Bonilla, a 46-year-old man from Iztapalapa, began feeling ill on April 22. "By the next day, I felt so bad that I thought my lungs were going to burst and my throat was closing up," he told The Telegraph. That night he watched the news and heard that a deadly new flu virus was spreading in Mexico. He rushed to the hospital, and that swift reaction probably saved his life.

More details in The Telegraph piece by Philip Sherwell and Ioan Grillo. It's one of the best I've seen out there on the victims of the swine flu epidemic, beating out most American news outlets I think on street-level, find-the-voices reporting. An excerpt:

Mr. Levya used to commute 20 miles to the capital to work on building sites, but he came home with a sore throat and headache in the second week of April.

"It was just like a normal flu at first and he wasn't worried," said his niece Yazmin Cortes, a 30-year-old hair stylist. "He would say 'Look at me. I’m fine.' He wanted to carry on working."

He went to the local doctor and was given traditional anti-flu medicine. But his cough got progressively worse and he was soon bedridden and being given injections of more potent antibiotics.

"He kept on saying that he would be all right. He didn't complain about a headache or muscle aches or anything," Cortes recounted standing outside the family’s one-floor cinder block home.

"Then one day his cough got much worse. He said he couldn't breathe, that he felt like he was drowning."

Another solid piece I spotted in this manner is by David Argen for Canwest News Service in Canada, on Mexico City's current state of paralysis.

So now that the outbreak is less serious than initially thought, and some of the hype has subsided (except in Hong Kong), epidemiologists around the world are still actively trying to figure out where the new A/H1N1 virus came from and how it transferred to humans. The Wall Street Journal is suggesting that the source might not be that nasty pig farm in Veracruz after all, but in California, where in fact the first cases occurred.

* The WSJ hits us with human color from the Mexican scientists working behind the scenes as the outbreak spread:

On Friday, after treating ill and dying patients from dawn to dusk, Dr. Sada went home, hugged his 2-year-old son and his wife, broke down and cried. "I told my wife it was the saddest day in my life," says Dr. Sada. "I had treated a young person who I thought was going to die, and I knew that many other people were going to die."

At the same time, Dr. Sada says, it could have been worse. He praised health officials here for deciding two years ago to stockpile antiviral medicines and upgrade the country's system of disease alerts. "I'm proud of my country," Dr. Sada says.

Back in Mexico City, the surreality of our present situation persists. Almost nothing is open. Trains are nearly empty. May Day was canceled. So was the Day of the Child. And it's impossible to get tacos anywhere.

With the population going a little stir crazy in their homes and suitably preoccupied, Congress is passing strange and frightening laws on both left and right. The Chamber of Deputies has approved the federal police law, allowing our phone conversations to be tapped. And the Senate passed a law that allows citizen to possess small amounts of marijuana, opium, heroin, cocaine, LSD, and crystal meth for 'autoconsumo.'

We'll see how these fare when they cross paths in the legislative cycle -- and interest groups start paying attention again.

Finally, in case you missed my diary in The Guardian, here it is again, a stringing together of my posts and dispatches since last Friday, with added material. An excerpt:

My family is originally from the Tijuana and San Diego area. Over the past week they have been writing to me constantly, asking for the latest news, worrying about my safety. But now the outbreak has reached them as well. Last night I wrote home and asked how they were coping. My younger sister, Erika, wisely replied: "Well, people are all confused here. Schools in TJ are closed, but some 'all-American' idiots here couldn't care less because in the US they feel they are protected. Others are panicking and are taking extra precautions. I'm scared, not for myself but for others."

My father, however, has been a bit more - how shall I put it? - urgent in his insistence for me to return to our native border region. Sergio Hernandez is a former boxing trainer: he gives it to you straight ...

That's all for now ...

* NOTE: Intersections goes dark this week as a I continue work on my book manuscript up against my deadline.

Return to Mexico City

These shots were taken at around 6:00 p.m. local time heading west within the urban zone on a Estrella Roja bus from Puebla to the southern Tasqueña bus terminal.

Most people on board wore face masks. Everyone mindfully avoided touching the cabin's interior surfaces. Fearlessly, I ventured to utilize the on-board WC.

We'd been away from the capital for four days and were somehow genuinely eager to get back. But coasting into the city, it felt weirdly quiet and deserted. The major streets were clear of heavy traffic. Everything looked closed.

Once we disembarked upon D.F. concrete, I donned my pandemic preparedness look and we headed straight to the metro.

No fear.

                     ... NO ... FEAR.