Intersections

Incidents of travel in the Yucatan, Part 4 *

This is the mercado in Tizimin, a stop between Valladolid and the port of Chiquilá. The mercado is easily one of the coolest structures I think I've ever seen in Mexico. It is circular; concentric rows of stalls are separated in meats, produce, produce, and meats again. Tizimin is known for its meats. But not for this building, unbelievably.

The design makes the market feel airy, inviting, even logical; those are qualities that would rarely be used to describe a mercado in Mexico, where stalls are usually crammed into a dense maze system. The circular design also permits the room to be flooded with natural light all day. Noise bounces around soothingly.

I found a circular market online in Coventry, Britain, and one Givry, France. Any others? In Tizimin's case, it feels like one of those rare "perfect" buildings, in terms of its properties of harmony, and I'm glad I got to see it.

It was a Saturday. We asked vendors when the market was built, or who designed it. The most we got was that it was about 50 years old. If so, the mercado would have been built during the boom of spirited Modern architecture in Mexico, chronicled by enthusiasts such as Mario Ballesteros.

What brilliant young Maya architect snagged this PRI era contract and came up with harmony? Is the form a reference to prehispanic Maya design? Or is it by the architect who did TAPO? Serious Investigations.

A 'Hank Rhon' appears in a museum, and Mexicans mostly shrug

** Originally published at World Now:

The art world in this art-obsessed city entertained a minor controversy last week during the official reopening of the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Chapultepec Park.

With President Felipe Calderon presiding at an official ceremony, the museum was reinaugurated with the names of two patrons placed in gold-lettered signs in two refurbished halls.

One hall is now named for Angelica Fuentes, president of Omnilife, a supplements company. The other is named for Carlos Hank Rhon, a banker who sparks polarizing reactions anywhere Mexicans gather to gossip or argue about the state of their country.

Hank Rhon, who recently entered Forbes' wealthiest list, is brother of the scandal-ridden former mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Hank Rhon. Their father is Carlos Hank Gonzalez, former governor of the state of Mexico and a powerful figure in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

La Jornada, the stalwart of leftist newspaper journalism in Mexico, quoted a rebuke from the respected art critic Raquel Tibol, who knew Tamayo and sometimes squabbled with the painter.

"It is embarrassing that culture and art these days must depend on the money of ricachones" -- fat cats -- "without determining the origin of those accumulations," Tibol said.

There were similar complaints on Twitter.

"Better be the room dedicated to surrealism," one quipped. "At this rate, the new airport will end up being named Joaquin Guzman," after the world's most-wanted drug lord, another huffed.

But the complaining didn't last very long, and for some that crystallizes a cold reality. Private money is increasingly a crucial source of funding for public cultural institutions in Mexico.

In turn, private cultural institutions are gradually muscling out public ones as the sources of dynamism with the art community at large. Last year, for example, the biggest art event in Mexico was the opening of the new sponge-shaped Soumaya Museum, built by the world's richest man, Carlos Slim.

Hank Rhon is a longtime patron of the Tamayo museum, one of several grouped under the Olga and Rufino Tamayo Foundation. The foundation provided $2.5 million for the renovation, or about a third of the total cost (link in Spanish).

The size of the gift from Hank Rhon that led to his name being placed in a gallery hall, however, was confidential due to the foundation's rules, said museum spokeswoman Beatriz Cortes.

Carlos Hank Rhon is not directly implicated in any of the kind of scandals surrounding his brother Jorge Hank Rhon, whose Tijuana compound was raided in June 2011 by Mexican soldiers looking for weapons. Jorge Hank Rhon was arrested, but later released, to the approval of many residents of Tijuana whose livelihoods depend on the family's businesses.

Yet the name sizzles among the political chattering classes. Some still said they thought the gold-lettered names were a bit too much.

"Is it an art piece?" asked artist Miguel Calderon. "Because if it's an art piece, that'd be amazing."

On Sunday, the first day the renovated Tamayo opened to the public, visitors mostly shrugged when asked for their opinion of the museum's new Hank Rhon gallery.

"I don't have a document that tells me where his money came from, and I don't need it," said Ricardo Martinez, 40. "I applaud the gesture, bringing art nearer to the public."

* Photo: An interior view of the renovated Rufino Tamayo Museum in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. Credit: Alex Cruz / European Pressphoto Agency

Incidents of travel in the Yucatan, Part 3

Vendors, vendors, vendors ...

People, people, people ...

And then ...

Incidents of travel in the Yucatan, Part 2

** From here to below, photos by Alberto Bustamante.

Incidents of travel in the Yucatan, Part 1

Is this for real?

Your faithful writer, floating over an eternal galactic blue portal into the inframundo.

Adios Chavelita

* From Latino USA:

Singer Chavela Vargas was beloved throughout the continent for her rough yet tender voice singing songs of love gained and lost. She died August 5. Reporter Daniel Hernandez attended her very public wake in her adopted home, Mexico City.

Listen to the piece here. Previously, "On voting for the first time for president in Mexico."

** Photo: Fans at Garibaldi.

Google Street View now available for Mexico archaeological sites

** Originally published at World Now:

For travelers who've never been to the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza, a virtual window into the site's pyramids and plazas is available online, among 30 archaeological zones in Mexico now mapped by history's greatest peeping Tom: Google Street View.

From the comfort of a computer, any Internet user anywhere can now zoom in and examine the perfect form of Chichen Itza's Kukulkan pyramid, known also El Castillo, or the Castle.

On Google Street View, a viewer can almost feel like they might tumble into the Sacred Cenote, or natural sinkhole, where Maya priests practiced ritual sacrifice. Or imagine cavorting on the Plaza of the Thousand Columns. Or maybe do some souvenir browsing, up close and in intensely high resolution.

Google and Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, announced the new maps last week. Using a 360-degree camera mounted on a bicycle, Google captured "street views" of other major archaeological sites in Mexico, such as Monte Alban in Oaxaca and Teotihuacan outside Mexico City.

Lesser-known Mesoamerican sites are also now mapped by Google Street View, including Tula in the state of Hidalgo and Xochicalco in Morelos.

The Internet search engine has focused its publicity campaign for the new maps on images captured at Chichen Itza, one of Mexico's most storied tourist destinations. But for travelers who have been there, could Google Street View now be better than the real thing?

Consider: A recent (physical) visit to Chichen Itza confirmed that tourists are no longer allowed to climb the Castillo pyramid, no more tackling its famous 91 steps that President Felipe Calderon recently climbed in a widely mocked tourism video.

Visitors can no longer actually, physically cavort among the plaza of the columns. In fact, most of the structures at Chichen Itza these days are off-limits to tourists, who must settle on snapping photos behind wire barriers. Worse, the archaeological zone is also overrun with vendors from the neighboring communities, making a non-virtual visit a somewhat disappointing experience overall.

Since Chichen Itza was declared a new Seven Wonders of the World site in 2007, access has been limited due to concerns over deterioration and also because the site's restoration process is ongoing, said an INAH spokesman.

The same is true at the Palenque zone in Chiapas, the spokesman said, where a visitor like you and me may no longer be able to climb that site's spectacular structures. But on Google, at least, there's a decent shot of a man in an orange polo with a sweat towel on his head.

* Photo: A view of the Kukulkan pyramid, or El Castillo, at the Chichen Itza archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatan. Credit: Google, via INAH

Mexico's first loss to U.S. at home, on a Mexican American's goal

** Originally published at World Now:

It was a sweet Olympic gold victory for Mexican soccer, yes. But that was last week.

On Wednesday night, Mexico was defeated by the United States in a friendly match at the cavernous  high-altitude Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, 1-0, the first win for the U.S. on Mexican soil in 75 years of a storied and often bitter rivalry.

The only goal of the game came from U.S. defender Michael Orozco Fiscal, 26, a Mexican American native of Orange.

When it happened, in the 79th minute, utter silence seemed to befall the entire Mexican capital for a second or two. The United States had not won a single game at the Azteca, and Mexico had barely lost there against any opponent, in official matches or friendlies.

Watch the game-winning goal here:

Mexico's current sports superstar, Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez -- who didn't play for gold in London in the men's soccer final on Saturday -- attempted a few desperate strikes in the final minutes to salvage the game.

But U.S. goalie Tim Howard delivered crucial saves for the Americans, despite being battered with harrasment from the stands, a custom relished by fans at the Azteca. (At least one pesky person Wednesday was distracting the U.S. goalie with the light of a green laser.)

There was surprisingly little bad blood for Orozco in Mexico's media the next morning and among armchair analysts online.

Where could an ardently nationalist fan draw a line on criticism anyway? The U.S. friendly roster is rife with border-blurring athletes, a reflection of the complex historical migration patterns between the  countries, and maybe a little of that free-trade spirit that has defined the binational relationship since 1994.

Edgar Castillo, a defender born in Las Cruces, N.M., has played for both the Mexican and U.S. national teams. Midfielder Joe Corona -- half-Mexican, half-Salvadoran and born in Los Angeles --plays professionally for Tijuana. And Herculez Gomez, born in L.A. to Mexican American parents, plays in Mexico for Pachuca.

Game-winner Orozco's parents are from the Mexican states of Durango and Queretaro. He was born in Orange County but plays professionally in Mexico for San Luis.

"That's history," he told one news outlet after the game. "It does leave a mark in my heart."

Photo: U.S. defender Michael Orozco, right, celebrates with teammate Terrence Boyd after scoring during a friendly soccer game against Mexico in Mexico City, Aug. 15, 2012. Credit: Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press

How many have died, how many are dying in Mexico?

** Originally published at World Now:

A recent string of deadly incidents tied to Mexico's drug war does not appear to indicate a surge in the violence but does suggest a new flash point as the fearsome Zetas cartel shows signs of splitting apart.

Fourteen bodies were found dumped in San Luis Potosi state on Thursday, and the mayor-elect of the city of Matehuala in the same state was killed in an attack along with one of his campaign aides as they left a party Sunday.

The incidents are rare for relatively peaceful San Luis Potosi. One journalist's account, yet to be confirmed by authorities, says the Zetas are facing an internal struggle between a camp following its leader, "Zeta 40," and one following "Zeta 50." 

New figures show a steady and unrelenting pace in drug-related homicides as Mexico approaches six years of the government's fight against cartels, which are themselves battling one another over trafficking routes.

Deaths allegedly related to organized crime have remained steady in 2012 in the states already identified as Mexico's most violent: Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Nuevo Leon, Jalisco and Coahuila, according to a July report by Lantia Consultores in Mexico City.

Lantia analyst Eduardo Guerrero Gutierrez reports that homicides in Mexico tied to organized crime grew by 10% in the first half of the year over the last half of 2011.

In contrast, President Felipe Calderon said earlier this month that such homicides have dropped by 15%. The president compared figures in the first half of the years, however, not the second.

Such contradictions over the numbers are reminders that accurately counting the victims of Mexico's conflict will always be a murky process and, inevitably, a political one.

With less than four months to go in Calderon's six-year term, his administration is under pressure to convince the public that the security strategies have worked. Calderon hands power in December to President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, who has pledged to maintain the offensive against Mexico's cartels.

The federal attorney-general's office has counted drug-related homicides only through September 2011, and that figure stands at 47,515 since December 2006, when Calderon took office. Separately, the National Security Council said in a report last month that 10,604 aggravated homicides occurred across the country in the first half of 2012.

But crucially, these figures are not yet divided into drug-related and non-drug-related.

Moreover, the federal government relies on figures sent to Mexico City by local and state governments, whose methods for counting are notoriously unreliable or motivated by political interests.

In another estimate, the Ciudad Juarez newspaper El Diario said on Aug. 4 that it found that 83,541 people were killed in Mexico, in both drug-related and non-drug-related homicides, from December 2006 to December 2011, citing figures it gathered using a freedom-of-information request.

Last week, grisly massacres dotted the country from the port of Acapulco in the south to Coahuila state in the north. On Tuesday, authorities said nine people were killed overnight in a shootout in a bar in the increasingly troubled city of Monterrey, Mexico's wealthiest.

Security analyst Alejandro Hope writes that any uptick in recent days may be at least partly attributed to high summer temperatures in many regions of the country, and to patterns in drug-producing harvests in Mexico.

Meanwhile in the United States, Mexican poet and activist Javier Sicilia has launched a Caravan for Peace, along with victims and survivors, in an effort to bring attention to the consequences of Calderon's war on cartels.

The caravan is scheduled to visit a string of U.S. cities and arrives in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 10, where it plans to stay for three days. It was in Los Angeles this week.

-- Daniel Hernandez

Photo: Family members display portraits of dead or missing loved ones at La Placita Church in Los Angeles on Monday as part of the Caravan for Peace being led across the United States by Mexican activist Javier Sicilia. Credit: Frederic J. Brown / Agence France-Presse/Getty

Dozens dead in attacks in Acapulco, San Luis Potosi, Mexico City

** Originally published at World Now and re-published in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times, with added material from the Mexico City bureau:

Fourteen bodies were found in a truck Thursday in the state of San Luis Potosi, at least 17 people have been killed since Sunday in the port of Acapulco, and 12 others were reported killed in 24 hours in metropolitan Mexico City.

The string of bloody reports grabbed headlines in Mexico, reminding the public that drug-related violence continues unabated as the six-year mark approaches in the federal government's declared war on drug cartels.

The bodies were found Thursday in a truck left near a gasoline station on the highway between the city of San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas state. Authorities said in initial statements that all the victims were male and had come from the neighboring border state of Coahuila.

Body dumps along highways are a fixture of the conflict between Mexico's most powerful drug cartels, Sinaloa and the Zetas. San Luis Potosi, however, until recently had not seen the same level of violence as other parts of the country.

In Acapulco, where smaller rival drug-trafficking groups are still locked in a struggle for control, the victims of an attack on a family included a pregnant woman and a 3-year-old boy, El Sol de Acapulco reported, accompanied by graphic images.

They were killed along with a man and two other women in an early Wednesday morning attack on a "humble house" in a low-income neighborhood called Colonia Ampliacion 5 de Mayo, the newspaper said. At least 12 other people have been killed in Acapulco since Sunday.

In Mexico City, seen as a relative haven from the drug-related violence that besets many other regions of the country, 12 people were killed in the metropolitan zone on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Four men were shot to death during a neighborhood street festival in the populous borough of Iztapalapa on Tuesday afternoon.

In Colonia Country Club, an upper-class neighborhood in the Coyoacan district, one suspected criminal was killed in a gunfight when federal authorities served a search warrant on a house. The federal prosecutor's office said two Colombians and one Israeli were arrested, but they were not identified.

Early Wednesday, the owner and five employees of a bar in the suburb of Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl were slain by armed men, reports said.

The Mexico City tabloid La Prensa reported that a local crime group that calls itself "The Business" killed the six victims because the bar, La Pachangona, would not pay an extortion fee.

Later, a real estate businessman was gunned down as he left his offices in the middle-class central district of the capital. Jaime Quiroz Gutierrez, 59, was shot three times on New York Street in Colonia Napoles as his two bodyguards watched, some reports said.

With a population of 20 million spread over the Valley of Mexico, the capital's enormous size often means multiple violent attacks can have little effect on daily life, yet the drug war has not been absent from the urban zone.

Scores have been killed in Mexico City and the neighboring state of Mexico since the government's offensive against cartels began in December 2006, official figures show. Violence against women has surged in the state recently governed by President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, The Times reported.

President Felipe Calderon told the National Security Council on Aug. 2 that drug-related homicides had dropped nationally in the first half of the year over the same period last year by 15%. Homicides overall have dropped 7%, Calderon said.

The federal government's drug war death toll remains tallied only until September 2011, at 47,515. Peace activists and some independent analysts say the toll now surpasses 60,000, with at least 10,000 missing.

Other grim stories were circulating in Mexico on Thursday. Four women were found tortured and strangled to death in the northern city of Torreon. In the western state of Sinaloa, armed men killed seven ranchers on Wednesday.

* Photo: A handout photograph made available by Pulso newspaper shows authorities investigating  a vehicle that was found to contain 14 dead bodies in the state of San Luis Potosi on Thursday. Credit: Teodoro Blanco Vazquez / Periodico Pulso / European Pressphoto Agency

Interview: On the state of 'pocho' and 'naco' *

Here's the extended clip of an interview I did with the charming Yarel Ramos of mun2 some weeks ago in Mexico City about a subject that touches us all -- ha! -- the state of the Mexican pegoratives of pocho and naco.

Enjoy. And ... Pochos Unite!

* ADD: I'm inspired on this subject by the work of historian Claudio Lomnitz.

Singer Chavela Vargas 'had the public at her feet'

** Originally published at World Now:

It is almost pointless to be sad about the passing of Chavela Vargas. Her entire life, through song, was about transcending and challenging death.

The singer, who passed away Sunday in Cuernavaca, lived to be 93, surviving many contemporaries from decades ago when Vargas wore men’s clothes, smoked, and carried a pistol in macho-bound Mexico.

Then she disappeared. For a few foggy years in the last century, when Vargas stayed away from the capital's cabarets and fell under the spell of alcohol in a forgotten town in the state of Morelos, she had become a ghostly myth. Many people actually thought she had died.

After the reflourishing of her career -- starting in 1991 at the Coyoacan district cabaret El Habito, but marked for U.S. audiences by her performance of "La Llorona" in the 2002 film "Frida" -- Vargas through her performances seemed to be gamely singing her way around death.

It was always a fair match, always a matter of courtly struggle against a respected rival.

In her songs, in that uniquely Latin American way of romancing melancholy, Vargas would channel the long echoes of sorrow and pain that accompany any life as long as hers, armor against its end. Few details are known about her famous affairs, but we didn't really need them. Her songs about love and loss evoked countless shivers and heavy hearts, countless borracheras -- enthusiastically sorrowful drinking sessions.

For that, audiences and listeners across Mexico, the Americas and Spain would sometimes find themselves under a surprising state of rapture in the presence of her voice. It was pleading and raspy, yet always remarkably controlled.

On Monday night, throngs of Vargas devotees filled Plaza Garibaldi near downtown Mexico City to be near her casket for a few hours and participate in a customary Mexican ritual that's become familiar after the passings of Carlos Fuentes and Carlos Monsivais: a public mourning session.

Howls of farewell from fans were heard across the plaza. When prominent folk singer Eugenia Leon led the crowds in the universally revered ranchera ballad “Volver,” which Vargas always delivered with fire and ruination, hundreds of voices joined in what felt like a spontaneous group therapy session. There was a lot of tequila flowing by then.

This sort of event in any context can become a platform for insincere or awkward reactions to the death of a beloved figure, and this was particularly apparent. The memorial was organized by the culture ministry of the Mexico City municipal government and included the participation of a mariachi band associated with the media conglomerate Televisa.

 Against such a powerfully distinct voice as that of "Chavela," the tributes sung by Leon, Tania Libertad and Lila Downs as "offerings" before her reboso-covered casket served only as reminders of what has been lost. All are accomplished singers, but none could capture what Vargas could.

When she sang, she'd sometimes lift her chin in a slow physical gesture, as if exposing both her dignity and wounds. At a microphone, she'd take her arms and raise them past her head, palms open, as though conjuring a ghost. Vargas might have laughed out loud if she was observing the memorial Monday night from the comforts of the Aztecs' underworld.

At Plaza Garibaldi, the troubled meeting-point for Mexico City’s roving mariachi musicians, several mariachis said gruffly that they were respectful but indifferent to her passing because Vargas usually did not perform with mariachis but with the solitary guitar.

She did, however, drink at the Tenampa cantina on the plaza. On Monday night, a group of longtime lesbian activists who knew Vargas gathered at a table at the Tenampa, with a bottle of tequila in her honor.

Patria Jimenez Flores, 55, described herself as a "spiritual daughter" to Vargas, who was also seriously regarded by many as a shaman.

"She was the first to break with all the stereotypes and paradigms in a country like Mexico, that is somachista. She took the criticisms, and then had the public at her feet," Jimenez said.

A comment heard since Vargas's death is that, as a chamana, she not merely died but "transcended" to another plane.

In one of her final interviews, Vargas told the El Universal newspaper's Sunday magazine in April that she was enjoying her final years in her home in Tepoztlan. She told the magazine that she would "cease living without dying."

ALSO:

On Mexico's Carlos Monsivais: 1938-2010

Mariachis struggle in Mexico despite U.N. heritage nod

Chavela Vargas dies at 93; preeminent ranchera songstress

* Photo: Chavela Vargas performs in Lima, Peru, on Oct. 12, 2002. Credit: Jaime Razuri / AFP/Getty Images

Excavations: Novacane

 

From Frank Ocean's first mixtape, a video and track that captures with uncanny accuracy a certain late-2000s decade Los Angeles lifestyle that led to many transcended boundaries for many kids in the city at the time -- right when no one was really paying attention.

* "Excavations" is not a category on this blog, it's a theme.