Intersections

Fidget spinners: Don't even know who to send this to

A brilliant piece of performance art. These devices are so so satisfying when in use.

Day of the Dead isn't dead

* Sigman (left) was born in Obregon, Sonora.

There’s a reason you saw more sugar skulls and calaveras on the streets of the U.S.A. this year.

It’s one of the many after-effects of the second major historical wave of U.S. migration from Mexico, which more or less coalesced around the opening of the North American market and has reached net-zero in relation to migrants who are returning to Mexico. In its wake, Americans have adopted the taco truck, the liberal use of Spanish phrases in rap by major American hip-hop stars like Kayne West and Kendrick Lamar, and the Days of the Dead.

The (Days or) Day of the Dead, aka "Dia de Muertos," is celebrated November 1 to 2, overnight. Mexicans at home make altars for their departed, while on the streets the holiday has morphed into a carnival of sugar skulls, calavera skeleton figures, and crowns of marigold flowers.

Since last weekend, countless communities from big cities to rural counties in the United States took on festivals and special events, concerts, art openings, and exhibits related to Day of the Dead. Morrissey — idol to many, many Mexican American mozheads — headlined last night's Day of the Dead festival in Santa Barbara.

Inevitably, given current trends in liberal academic theory, Day of the Dead has become a flash-point in ongoing debates about cultural appropriation in U.S. consumer culture. The imagery related to the holiday will abound in a forthcoming Disney/Pixar animated feature titled "Coco"; cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz is a consulting producer on the film, which can't be anything but a good thing.

Remember when ...?

Vampire Weekend singing "This Land Is Your Land," the popular national anthem, with Democratic primary presidential nominee Bernie Sanders. 

On 'How to Write About Trauma'

Been thinking and engaging lots with trauma lately in my journalism, and in reckoning with what so many of us have gone through in Mexico. The terror of losing a loved one, or being abused, or being cast aside by society, rendering trauma as a state of homelessness, for example.

This essay by author Saïd Sayrafiezadeh lances through the heart of the matter:

I was not gay and I told him so. He would not accept no for an answer. The no was even more evidence that I was gay. Back and forth we went like this. Since there had never been any precedent in my household for alerting the authorities to misdeeds, it never occurred to me that I could have walked over to the campus student services office and reported his behavior. In my confused and desperate state, I even wasted a significant amount of time entertaining with some seriousness the possibility that I might indeed be gay. This went on for the duration of my college career, which for the record was never completed.

NYT opinion.

The rise of Mexican black tar heroin

 

Mexico City kids dancing downtown ninety years ago

Via INAH: "Concurso infantil de baile organizado por el periódico 'El Demócrata'. Ciudad de México, 1920-1925. INAH. Sinafo.FN."

The power vote

The story of Alex Chalgren, a young black gay Trump supporter in South Carolina, produced by Zoe Chace, almost made me cry. Hate that.

This is what Buenos Aires really feels like

Watch: Cashing In On 'El Chapo'

 

My latest for VICE News. In this documentary, I served as both producer and correspondent. Thanks to my crew, Brooke, Phoebe, and Mack.

Watch: VICE News Highlights of 2015

 

Some of the work produced out of our office in Mexico City shows up on this compilation of highlights from VICE News' year.

So long for now Mexico City ... Hi again Los Angeles *

 * Campus de la Escuela Normal Rural Raul Isidro Burgos, Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, 2014.

It's been an honor reporting the news in Latin America. And it's been especially rewarding to cover news in Mexico, on Mexico, and especially for Mexico. Now, after eight years of doing so, I'm relocating to Los Angeles and picking up where I left off.

I've been trying for weeks to come up with something decent to say about this change. I've received anxious reactions from readers asking why I'd leave, and believe me, I've been anxious too.

It's a combination of personal factors and the opportunity for another big challenge.

I needed to invoke binational privilege, and take a little breather on this maddening and infinite place. DF wears on the body and brain. Anyone who's lived there knows this. In my case, the horrors of the daily news cycle in war-weary Mexico began straining me with greater force. Each trip to the field with the VICE News crew in Mexico, to see how someone in my country had something horrific happen to them, with no recourse, no justice, left a little unexpected scar. (I know "tough" reporters aren't supposed to talk about this stuff, but that's that.)

Being away from the beach for so long wasn't good for me either.

I also needed to check back in with my family. Their demands that I be closer to them intensified in 2015 as the news out of Mexico got worse and worse. Yes, the flight to DF is as long as the time it takes to drive between L.A. and San Diego. But it's the cosmic comfort of knowing I'm not across a border and several states away on the bellybutton of the moon that pulled me back.

I also began missing, for reals now, a lot of my old friends.

This is not an act of abandoning Mexico, not abandoning my friends in arms in DF. I'll still be covering the stories that matter to my communities, doing some field reporting in Mexico and anywhere else we gotta check out in Latin America, as long as VICE lets me. I still got my Mexico cell phone. Now I'll also start poking around for stories in Califaztlán and down the border, a fertile land for contradictions to explore.

Not clueless: I know my country the USA is as messed up as Mexico but in different ways. So if you got any leads or tips, drop me a line.

Writing about leaving Mexico has failed me. I can't really wrap my brain around all the issues and implications that this transition stirs up. I love Mexico too jealously — maybe too violently — to attempt to sum up these years with some lines, or even some pages. Maybe a little down the road.

Right now I just wanna wake up on Monday morning and get to work.

* Related: Leaving Los Angeles for a little bit ... and The year I ate my way through Oaxaca, and reported in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Guerrero, Mexico.

A Prayer: 'Dry Drunk Emperor,' 10 Years After Katrina

  

I once said this song is an "artifact, a witness, an indictment, a prayer." Ten years later, "Dry Drunk Emperor" by the 2000s New York band TV on the Radio remains the most stirring offering in any language of mourning to the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

And more potently, ten years after the avoidable disaster, the song is a clear call for revolution. It's references to then-President George W. Bush as a "dry drunk emperor" of "gold cross jock skull and bones" and a "mocking smile" are reminders of the darkest moments of the Bush-era decadence.

In the remembrances this week, where is the acknowledgement of those days' feelings of anger, desperation, disgust? Where is the howling from the bottom of our gut? 

I encourage you to listen today to this track and to ponder the power of its lyrics:

Baby boy
dying under hot desert sun,
watch your colors run.

Did you believe the lie they told you,
that Christ would lead the way
and in a matter of days
hand us victory?

Did you buy the bull they sold you,
that the bullets and the bombs
and all the strong arms
would bring home security?

All eyes upon
Dry Drunk Emperor
gold cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he's been
standing naked for a while!
Get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!
and bring all the thieves to trial.

End their promise
end their dream
watch it turn to steam
rising to the nose of some cross-legged god
Gog of Magog
end-times sort of thing.
Oh, unmentionable disgrace
shield the children's faces
as all the monied apes
display unimaginably poor taste
in a scramble for mastery.

Atta' boy get em with your gun
till Mr. Mega-Ton
tells us when we've won
or
what we're gonna leave undone.

All eyes upon
Dry Drunk Emperor
gold cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he's been
naked for a while.
Get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!!
and bring all his thieves to trial.

What if all the fathers and the sons
went marching with their guns
drawn on Washington.
That would seal the deal,
show if it was real,
this supposed freedom.

What if all the bleeding hearts
took it on themselves
to make a brand new start.
Organs pumpin' on their sleeves,
paint murals on the White House
feed the leaders L.S.D.
Grab your fife and drum,
grab your gold baton
and let's meet on the lawn,
shut down this hypocrisy. 

* Previously, "Obama in the eye of the storm," "Los Angeles."

Watch: Who killed Alberto Nisman?

 

Above, our VICE News documentary produced by the Mexico bureau, regarding the case of Alberto Nisman, the federal prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires.

Our crew spent a week in BA investigating this case, with local producer Gaston Cavanagh. It was one of the more complex stories I've had to cover, because every time we reached what seemed like a reasonable conclusion about something, the next turn, the next interview, completely flipped it.

The assignment was also challenging because it dealt with the thorny themes of anti-Semitism, terrorism, the Kirchners, the opposition in Argentina (the left calls them "the right," but they call themselves "liberal"), and Iran. You decide where you stand on all that.

You're eating fake tortillas, and Diana Kennedy is pissed about it

** Originally published at Munchies, on May 7, 2014:

“Why is it that we have allowed people who are totally incompetent in food to design our food?” Diana Kennedy was saying, her gray and white hair lifting lightly in the breeze. “Our food doesn’t have the flavor it used to have. I remember the chile poblanos, full of flavor, thin-fleshed, very dark green, and that big. Now ¡olvidalo!”

“Forget it,” she said. Today, there is actually a four in ten chance a chile poblano served to you anywhere in Mexico has been imported, most likely from China. Kennedy knows this, and the truth seems to burn through her entire being.

A living legend in food, Kennedy started exploring the markets of Mexico’s towns and villages more than fifty years ago, meeting cooks and gathering plants and recipes with the precision of a ethnobotanist. It has been her lifelong project of achieving total intimacy with Mexico’s native ingredients.

Sitting at Kennedy’s outdoor dining table with a tiny glass of mezcal before me, I struggled to imagine the flavor of the chile poblanos back then because fifty years ago, Mexico and the planet were simply different places than they are now. There were less people, for one, and probably a lot less contaminants in the air, in the soil, in the water. In our lives.

There was no transgenic corn in Mexico fifty years ago, and definitely none imported from the United States—as there is today—not in the land where science has agreed that corn was born.

At 91 years old, Diana is old enough to remember what that Mexico tasted like. Her palate fuels her ideas—and anger.

“People are losing taste, especially in the US, and then it passes to Mexico,” Kennedy told me. “It’s ridiculous, but then nobody has paid attention to the agriculture in Mexico.”

* All photos by Alejandro Mendoza.

Ayotzinapa, in VICE magazine

* Photo by Hans-Máximo Musielik.

Here's a link to my print feature in the January issue of VICE magazine, on the Raul Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, near Tixtla, Guerrero. Excerpt:

It's said as a slur, but it happens to be somewhat true. The Federation of Campesino Socialist Mexican Students, uniting the student leadership at 16 schools across Mexico, including the one in Ayotzinapa, formed in 1935. One of Ayotzinapa's best-known graduates, Lucio Cabañas, was national president of this group when he studied there. Cabañas would go on to form the Poor People's Party, a militant political organization with an armed wing. The group kidnapped politicians and operated a radio signal over a wide region in the Sierra de Atoyac. 

The students believe in direct action today as well. Through their "Struggle Commission," for example, they take over buses and toll booths. Masking their faces, the Ayotzinapa students charge a flat 50-peso toll on any vehicle that passes, be it private, public, or a commercial passenger bus. We watched as they did this for a few hours one day at the Palo Blanco toll booth. Some motorists I approached in line said they supported the Ayotzinapa students, but about just as many said they were nothing but vandals and hooligans. 

Read more here. To read all our coverage related to the Ayotzinapa mass disappearance, check out the tags Guerrero, Ayotzinapa, and Mexico on VICE News.

The year I ate my way through Oaxaca and reported in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and Guerrero, Mexico

* With my homie Franco, an hincha for club Newell's Old Boys in Rosario, Argentina, May 2014. Photo by producer Raymundo Perez-Arellano.

There is no use apologizing. Intersections, like a lot of blogs that started in this long-forgotten blog big bang of 2005-2006, went into posting decline after the realization that it was impossible for me to keep up. Not while at the same time taking on a reporting and writing job with extremely demanding responsibilities and expectations.

When I was in the DF bureau of the LA Times, at least I managed to re-post my stories, most of the time. Since 2013, this has also become functionally impossible. Work just went from crazy to crazier.

After a year as editor of VICE México, in June of 2014, my boss asked me to step in and become Mexico bureau chief of VICE News. It was the kind of job I had never really thought about doing but at the same time knew I was capable of doing, so I said yes. With this, my year, and my life, changed. 

By then, early summer, our office's Munchies Guide to Oaxaca (which we actually recorded in November 2013, produced by Santiago Fábregas and shot by Guillermo Alvarez), was finally live and cookin'. Munchies had also just posted my profile on food queen Diana Kennedy.

I was on my way to being a food host for VICE, and was still editing the Mexican edition of the print magazine at the time.

 

But after seeing and hearing good responses to my first hosting gig for VICE with the Oaxaca guía, the chiefs wanted to try me out on a serious news assignment. Right away, they sent me and a crew to Rosario, to investigate the drug war happening on the streets of an important port city in Argentina.

From there, other assignments in the field followed. I said "Yes" to whatever was asked of me — including yes to a trip that was decided on and carried out within hours of arriving to the office for a normal work day — dealing with the challenges as best I could, recognizing and representing, in a corner of my mind and in my own little way, for my beloved brown America.

During all this, I've had to keep up my main, most important duties, with a teensy staff: editing, translating, fact-checking, and publishing original news stories and features from across Latin America. The bureau staff and I have spent long hours working with reporters filing from Santiago to Tijuana, often under breaking-news pressure, just everyday hustling, getting stories up onto the VICE News site.

The stresses in 2014 were the steepest I've confronted since the start of my career. Then, in late September, Ayotzinapa happened. And the work got even more intense.

But I'm not gonna complain. I'm only looking forward. This year I plan on hosting more for VICE News in my role in the bureau, and I also hope to squeeze in some fresh field assignments with Munchies. There's more in store, and I want to thank all my readers and my community for staying strong with me and hanging on through all the madness and bullshit out there.

So, below, some highlights from my first seven months at VICE News. For all the stories I've written or co-written for News, click here. I'll have a post later — I hope! — all about our Ayotzinapa coverage.

 

The Rosario documentary I mentioned. Beautiful city, fucked-up story. This documentary, fixed locally by Gaston Cavanagh, made some waves among locals in Rosario and was cited in numerous subsequent news reports in the Argentine press.

 

Stopping over in Buenos Aires, we decided to check out the issue of paco, the BA streets version of crack, and a symptom of the economic malaise that has plagued the country since 2001.

 

A quick Munchies interlude in here, a tour of three classic Mexico City fondas. Mmmmmmm, ¿A que hora es la comida?

 

On September 11, we landed in Chile, to cover the demonstrations and street protests tied to the anniversary of the 1973 coup that brought down socialist president Salvador Allende and initiated the military dictatorship. Three days earlier, a bomb went off in a Santiago subway station.

 

At the Tolemaida military base, in Melgar, Colombia, our crew covered the 2014 Fuerzas Comando competition, a meet-and-greet for elite special ops teams from across Latin America. This documentary was produced as part of the VICE News "War Games" series.

 

This is the full-length version of our documentary on the horrible case of the missing students in Guerrero, Mexico. All the credit in the world for this work is to be shared with the committed and talented producers, fixers, photographers, editors, and administrators at the VICE México headquarters in Mexico City, and in particular, Rafael Castillo, Hans-Máximo Musielik, and Melissa del Pozo.

We really put in as a team the toughest hours and biggest risks many of us had ever seen in Mexico.

Me and the VICE News crew were also in Peru in late 2014, for a documentary that is coming up early this year. But that's another story ... 2K15 has begun. Stay tuned, and as always ... More soon. 

Trailer: Munchies Guide to Oaxaca

Check out the official trailer for the Guide to Oaxaca I am hosting for MUNCHIES, the newly launched food channel at VICE. It's a quick taste of the five-part, hour-long series I recorded in November with colleagues Santiago F. and Guillermo A. from VICE México.

Yes, I tried the turtle eggs.

* Previously, "BBC: Mexico's youth culture explosion," "Video report: Tacos de guisado in Polanco."

 

'El Chapo' captured in Mexico: What you need to know

* Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images.

** Originally published at VICE.com and VICE News, on Feb. 24, 2014.

“I’m a farmer.”

So said Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán when the press asked him what he did for a living on June 10, 1993, following his arrest and extradition to Mexico after years on the run. In a way, no truer words have been spoken in the history of the country’s bizarre and bloody drug war.

Guzmán was indeed a kind of “farmer.” The poppy and marijuana crops under his control were the basis of a multibillion-dollar transnational trafficking empire that would eventually make him one of the richest and most wanted men in the world.

He was sentenced to 20 years in a maximum-security prison, but in 2001 he managed to escape, cartoonishly, in a laundry cart. Guzmán expanded his reach by trafficking marijuana, heroin, and cocaine into the United States, Europe, and Australia. He is said to exert control over most of western Mexico, parts of Guatemala, and trafficking ports in West Africa. While his nickname means “Shorty,” there’s nothing diminutive about El Chapo’s stature in the illicit drug world. Forbeshas regularly named him in its lists of richest and “most powerful” people.

Guzmán’s prosperous stint as a fugitive came to an end again on Saturday morning, following an epic 13-year manhunt that left a trail of blood and tragedy as Sinaloa, his cartel, ruthlessly fought off Mexico's security forces on one front and combated rival cartels for control of the country’s lucrative drug trade on another.

Shortly before 7 AM, Mexican authorities captured Guzmán in a condominium buildingoverlooking the water in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlán, in Sinaloa. No shots were fired in the raid, which was assisted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the US Marshals Service, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Condo 401 looks plain, almost shabby, in photos taken after the raid that led to Guzmán’s capture.

Mexican authorities addressed the media on February 22.

Guzmán was flown to Mexico City. In the afternoon, after Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam delivered a brief statement on the tarmac of the international airport, uniformed soldiers wearing face masks led the drug lord from a navy hangar to a federal police helicopter.

Guzmán wore dark jeans, a pale long-sleeved shirt, and a formidable mustache. The kingpin was briefly seen hunched over and wearing handcuffs. He didn’t take questions and wasn’t heard speaking before the helicopter swiftly carried him away to the Altiplano federal prison. (The Justice Department announced on Sunday that it will seek Guzmán’s extradition to the US.)

Mexican authorities also took no questions; the dais and flag that were used for their statements were packed up within seconds of the helicopter’s departure.

Mexicans were left to absorb the fall of a mythic figure in the country's recent history. Many wondered what would come next. Despite recent drug-liberalization initiatives within the United States—the leading drug-consuming nation in the world—Mexico’s drug war has shown no signs of abating.

Guzmán’s role in the US-Mexico drug trade is a mystery, colored by allegations that he or his operatives maintain contact with US and Mexican authorities, perhaps as protected informants.

Jesús Vicente Zambada, a major Sinaloa cartel operative who was extradited to Chicago to face trafficking charges, has claimed in court that US agents in Mexico gave him and other cartel members immunity in exchange for information about rival cartels, particularly the bloodthirsty Zetas. US prosecutors insist that he had no such deal with federal agents. (Zambada is still awaiting trial.)

While associates and relatives of Guzmán have been arrested or killed in shoot-outs in recent years—among those killed was Guzmán's 22-year-old son, Édgar, in 2008—others in his inner circle have been known to move about on either side of the border.

In the summer of 2011, Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, gave birth to twin girls at a hospital in Los Angeles County. Guzmán married the former beauty queen in a extravagant party in 2007, when she was only 18. Federal agents monitored Coronel, a US citizen, while she was in California. Because there were no charges against her, she freely returned to Mexico with her children.

Guzmán was born in 1957 in a village called La Tuna, located in the Sinaloa municipality of Badiraguato—one of the poorest counties in all of Mexico. His father was a gomero, or poppy farmer, but Guzmán grew up mostly poor and neglected, and eager to prove himself.

Badiraguato is considered the gateway to the "Golden Triangle," the rough and remote poppy- and cannabis-growing region of the Sierra Madre mountain range that runs down western Mexico, dominating Sinaloa and neighboring Durango and Chihuahua. Some of the biggest names in Mexico’s narcotics industry were also born in Badiraguato, including Rafael Caro Quintero, an old-school drug lord who was released from prison on a technicality last August, after 28 years behind bars.

According to the book The Last Narco by Malcolm Beith, Guzmán got started in the drug industry as a lieutenant to Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, considered the godfather of Mexico’s cocaine shipping trade, in what was then known as the Guadalajara cartel. After Félix Gallardo’s capture in 1989, Guzmán and his group within the Sinaloa cartel effectively took over and began expanding, killing, or disappearing anyone who stood in their way. By 1993, when Guzmán survived an assassination attempt in Guadalajara that left an archbishop dead, El Chapo’s legend already loomed large in Mexico.

Pressure began mounting on the government to score a victory against the drug traffickers, which led to Guzmán’s capture in the summer of 1993 by Guatemalan authorities and his extradition to Mexico. Guzmán reportedly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle within the maximum-security prison Puente Grande. According to a 2009 Wall Street Journal profile, he was so well-pampered during his stint in the pit that his set-up rivaled the comforts of his beachside condo in Mazatlán. He had a television and a cellphone to direct his drug empire, selected meals from a menu, smuggled plenty of contraband, and received visits from cartel members and prostitutes. He kept a supply of Viagra on hand.

Guzmán’s escape coincided with the transition to a multi-party democracy after the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was interrupted by the election of President Vicente Fox, a member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Fox took office in December 2000 as the first non-PRI president in Mexico’s post-Revolutionary history. Guzmán escaped from Puente Grande a month later.

The country’s bitterly contested 2006 presidential election resulted in a second presidential term for PAN under Felipe Calderón. Immediately after taking office, Calderón launched a military campaign against drug cartels in his home state of Michoacán. The new president even made an appearance in public wearing military fatigues.

Troops rolled into cities and towns within cartel territories, sparking warfare in major cities like Monterrey, Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Morelia, Acapulco, and Culiacán, Sinaloa’s capital.

The six years of Calderón’s presidential term proved to be the bloodiest period in Mexico’s history since its revolution, more than a century before. At least 70,000 people were killed in drug violence during that time, and some 26,000 people went missing. Only a small fraction of these cases will ever be solved. Most of these atrocities occurred because of a government-approved, prohibitionist drug war in which Guzmán was arguably the most symbolic figure.

Sightings of Guzmán abounded for the next several years. He was said to be in Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, and even the US. Narcocorridos about his exploits could be heard in nightclubs, on YouTube, and over the airwaves in northern Mexico (until authorities banned their broadcast). When Guzmán dined out, he would pay the tabs of the other diners. It seemed for a while that El Chapo was everywhere except prison.

In 2009, a Catholic archbishop in the state of Durango said that Guzmán was living just up the road from a town called Guanacevi. “Everyone knows it, except the authorities,” he said.

The Sinaloa cartel made strategic decisions to combat its rivals—the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, and the Beltran Leyva gang—across Mexico. Violence erupted in Guerrero, Veracruz, and Michoacán, with Mexico’s security forces killing and capturing various capos.

Ciudad Juárez saw the worst of the warfare by far. An estimated 11,000 people were killed in there between 2007 and 2012. Over the same span, more than 7,000 civilian complaints of military abuses were registered with the country’s National Human Rights Commission.

In the course of the conflict, the US played an unprecedented role in Mexican law enforcement, making it seem almost as though the US agents operating in Mexico were practically in control of the push to find and capture Guzmán and others. Calderón left office in December 2012 and turned over power to Enrique Peña Nieto, returning the PRI to the presidency and introducing uncertainty about the direction of the fight against cartels.

With Guzmán’s capture, there’s no telling what will happen next. History has shown that the capture of top capos in Mexico often precipitates a violent struggle among splintering forces to fill the power vacuum. The leadership of the Sinaloa cartel is said to have shifted to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Jesús Vicente's father, who is believed to be Guzmán’s second-in-command. But reports have also noted that Dámaso López, a young, flashy capo known as “El Mini Lic,” could position himself strongly within the top ranks of the Sinaloa cartel in Guzmán’s absence.

At the same time, rival cartels could detect an opening in Guzmán’s arrest and seek to regain ground that they have lost to the Sinaloa cartel in recent years. This would be a very dark turn of events.

Happy 20th Birthday, Zapatistas!

** Published simultaneously at VICE (US, UK, Canada) and VICE México, Jan 1, 2014:

Photo by Marco Antonio Cruz.

Today marks 20 years since a previously unknown army emerged from the rain forests of the indigenous highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and declared war on the government. It was a landmark day. Even in early 1994, as a 13-year-old middle-school kid living in Southern California, I knew something huge was happening in my parents’ homeland. And I started to pay attention.

That same day, the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA was going to launch the hemisphere into the age of the globalized economy, inducting Mexico into the club of developed nations. There was what seemed to be an infallible hope of more and better and cheaper goods would pour in from the United States. We were all supposed to be excited about it.

But the armed group that seized parts of Chiapas that New Year’s Day, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), had a much different point of view.

They declared war—specifically on an army dozens of times larger than theirs. The indigenous and poor of Mexico had apparently had enough. Under the autocratic regime of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), or “dinosaurs” as they were more colloquially known, exploitation, inequality, and neglect were the norm. Nothing was changing, and there was no potential for change on the horizon. Peaceful means of protest were no longer an option for the army that called themselves Zapatistas, in honor of the Mexican Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata who took up arms nearly a century before.

The new Zapatistas rightly suspected that NAFTA would do little to better their conditions, or could even worsen them. The guerrillas offered a wake-up call for Mexico, but also, I think, for all of Latin America and for Latino diasporas in the United States.

It was the first armed uprising in Mexico since the country’s “Dirty War” against leftist guerillas in the 60s and 70s (a period that’s been erased from Mexico’s official history, and thus is barely mentioned in the national narrative). It was also considered the first armed uprising in history aided and spread by modern technology and organized through the internet (the EZLN’s first declarations, which were distributed via fax). The guerrillas included men and women, mostly ethnic Maya Indians who spoke Mayan languages. They relied on a charismatic Spanish-speakingmestizo spokesman known as Subcomandante Marcos to send their message around the globe. In short time, Marcos’s pipe, machine gun, and ski mask quickly became iconic.

The armed EZLN rebellion lasted 12 days, costing roughly 100 lives, although that figure remains in dispute. A ceasefire was called, and peace accords began. Those went basically nowhere. A stalemate has hung over the two sides ever since, while political violence and disappearances in Chiapas continue to this day.

On January 1, 1994, no one knew how the Zapatista uprising would play out. But we all knew that Mexico—and a few generations of Mexicans—would never be the same again.

Marco Antonio Cruz, one of Mexico’s most respected photojournalists, managed a photo agency called Imagen Latina at this pivotal time. On the morning after word emerged that the EZLN revolt had begun in the mountains, Marco Antonio and a small group of journalists in Mexico City gathered at the airport and wrangled an airline to fly them to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the Chiapas state capital, after all routes there had been halted. He covered the earliest and bloodiest days of the EZLN conflict.

Today Marco Antonio is photography editor of Mexico’s storied investigative weekly, Proceso. The magazine has published some of the most memorable shots from the Zapatista movement.Proceso’s Mexico City headquarters is a modest, white-stucco house on a residential street in Colonia Del Valle. I recently visited Marco Antonio there to recall the EZLN revolt through the lens of the photojournalists who were there to document it.

“For many of photographers Chiapas is a state where the injustice, the neglect, has been historic,” Marco Antonio told me. “Much of what occurred after the triumph of the Mexican Revolution [1910-1920] never reached Chiapas. It’s been centuries and centuries of slavery and oppression.

“[Photographer] Antonio Turok had already been living there for 15 or 20 years, and my first trips were in the 80s when the Guatemalan refugees arrived. I also did a project about blindness in Mexico, so I went to communities in Chiapas where people were affected by blindness. I knew the situation. It is a place where people die from curable diseases. Something like this had to happen, and so, when it did, it really wasn’t all that surprising.”

In his dim office, the photographer went on to remember the fear that gripped him the first time he saw uniformed Zapatista casualties following their skirmishes with the Mexican Army, and then how he shared in the thrill that many of us felt years later upon seeing the Zapatistas’ caravan arriving before crowds of supportive civilians in the symbolic core of the nation—the Zocalo central square in Mexico City.

Here are 20 photographs that Cruz shared with VICE that tell us, paired with his commentary, the story of 20 years of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional.

Photo by Antonio Turok.

“This is by Antonio Turok, he used to contribute to Imagen Latina, and lived in San Cristobal de las Casas. In the middle of the night on January 1, he came upon the arrival of the Zapatistas and the take-over of the municipal hall in San Cristobal de las Casas. They took the main city halls in the highlands and in the jungle, and the most important one was San Cristobal. And this photo, well, is an icon. It is part of the history of this country, the entrance of the Zapatistas.”

Joven Will

This photo of a photo shows my first apartment without roommates in Mexico City, 106 in the Edificio Victoria. It's where I wrote most of "Down & Delirious in Mexico City" and had some of the best, worst experiences of my life. Joven Will is how I called William Dunleavy, a friendly young punk from New York and New Jersey who I met one day in DF.

Will threw me off at first when he let me know he was taking photos of a family of dedicated punks who lived in La Paz, past Ciudad Neza. He was 19 years old yet had a totally clear vision of what "good" documenting meant and what it did not. It was almost like he was trying to determine my seriousness the first time we talked, not the other way around. This photos is from the night Will had his 20th birthday at my place. A bunch of wanderers from the Hotel Virreyes came by. It was just a senseless DF beer peda. Really fun.

Will eventually helped illustrate "Down and Delirious," and I'm super proud to say it.

The poster behind Will is a Foro Alicia response to a government-mass media campaign of demonizing young people during those intense months of 2008 (but really always). It says: Soy delincuente, tengo 20 años, soy joven, no tengo derecho a la educación, al trabajo, a la vivienda, a la saludo, y a muchas cosas más.

We were down with that. Anyway, all of this is to say, I know it's not anywhere near your birthday, but, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Will!

Los hermanos gorditos

** Originally published in the print edition of VICE México, Nov. 2013:

* Fotos por Bénédicte Desrus.

Los hermanos Juan Luis y Pedro Poncho Vanegas Bravo, de 20 y de 17 años respectivamente, nacieron en la Ciudad de México y pasaron la mayoría de su niñez en condición de obesidad. Eran, como se dice con ternura en México y como siguen refiriéndose a sí mismos cuando hablan de sus vidas, “gorditos”.

A ellos los conocí este verano gracias a la fotógrafa Bénédicte Desrus. Ella ha documentado la obesidad global en su proyecto Globesity, que la ha llevado a conocer a personas obesas en África del Este, Egipto, Estados Unidos y México.

Bénédicte primero fotografió a los hermanos Juan Luis y Pedro en el Hospital Infantil de la Ciudad de México en 2011, cuando ellos enfrentaban los retos más difíciles de sus vidas. Como su obesidad estaba poniendo en riesgo su salud, los hermanos Vanegas Bravo fueron los primeros menores de edad en recibir cirugías bariátricas en un hospital público en México, con el fin de reducir el tamaño de sus estómagos y así combatir la obesidad.

Las cirugías venían con riesgos propios. Los doctores les explicaron que de cada diez pacientes, uno sufre complicaciones, y de cada cien, dos fallecen. Además, el papá de ellos, Juan ManuelVanegas, murió en 2005 por complicaciones relacionadas con su obesidad mórbida. La mamá de los chicos, Juana Bravo, nos dijo que su esposo padecía diabetes, y cuando se detectó una perforación en su colon, los doctores no pudieron alcanzar la herida y sanarla. Tuvo ocho operaciones antes de morir, a los 42 años. Uno de sus hijos tenía 12 años, el otro, ocho.

“Me di cuenta que si no bajaba, iba a terminar como él; iba a terminar muerto”, me dijo Juan Luis cuando lo visitamos por primera vez en su casa por el rumbo de Metro Camarones, en la delegación Azcapotzalco.

“Anduvimos buscando la cirugía por años, porque no nos la daban, porque yo era menor de edad y no nos podían operar en hospitales del gobierno”, dijo. “Pero uno de los doctores que hacía esa operación tenía un proyecto de operar adolescentes, y yo me presté. Básicamente como conejillo de indias”.

Ese doctor fue Francisco José Campos Pérez, reconocido especialista en el campo de cirugías bariátricas en adolescentes en México. Pero antes de saber cómo les fue a Juan Luis y Pedro, cabe mencionar que la situación que han enfrentado con su salud es una que enfrentan millones y millones de mexicanos, muchos de ellos desde chiquitos.

En México, el sobrepeso y obesidad (que son niveles diferentes del mismo problema) afecta a 32% de las niñas y 36.9% de los niños entre las edades de cinco y 11, según la Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición de 2012. Son unos cinco millones 664,870 niños con sobrepeso y obesidad en el país, según la encuesta.

Las cifras aumentan entre los adolescentes y más entre adultos. Ya casi alcanzando niveles de obesidad de Estados Unidos —el más gordo de los países desarrollados—, en México son aproximadamente 69.5% de personas mayores de 15 años que viven con sobrepeso u obesidad, dice la Organización para la Cooperación y Desarrollo Económico.

Ser gordo mata.

La diabetes, la enfermedad más relacionada con la obesidad, es la mayor causa de muerte en el país, bastante más que los homicidios, enfermedades cardiovasculares o accidentes vehiculares. Este padecimiento se ha convertido en el mayor asesino de los mexicanos de una manera exponencial desde los ochenta, lo revelan varios estudios nacionales e internacionales.

En 2012 las autoridades contaron más de 80 mil mexicanos que murieron a causa de diabetes (básicamente la suma de todas las ejecuciones relacionadas con la guerra contra el narco, en los seis años del último gobierno); y son más de 10.6 millones de mexicanos que ahora lo padecen. Peor aún, se calcula que para el 2030 serán más de 16.3 millones de mexicanos con esa enfermedad.

Las razones son variadas y muy cercanas a nosotros, como lo son el refrigerador y la tiendita de la esquina. Es la comida frita, la comida chatarra, el McDonald’s, la Coca-Cola y sus 12 cucharadas de azúcar, y tal vez las costumbres sociales que se pueden describir comomexicanas que llevan a uno a comer más y más: ofrecer más (para demostrar hospitalidad), pedirmás (para demostrar confianza), y consumir más cuando se te ofrece (para demostrar gratitud).

Juan Luis y Pedro empezaron a engordar a los tres años de edad, me explicó su mamá. “Era mucho comer y comer”, dijo la señora de 51 años un sábado que nos juntamos en el hogarVanegas para platicar y asar hamburguesas. “Yo me preocupaba”.

“Los llevaba a nadar, al futbol, tae-kwon-do, lo que hubiera. Mi error fue que teníamos un refrigerador dúplex y cada quince días lo llenaba de carnes frías. Si se te antojaba algo en la semana, en el refrigerador había”.

En fotos, los hermanos lucen felices y activos, pero definitivamente, se nota cómo van engordando a través de los años. Son un par único. Juan Luis es moreno, y en las fotos se ve cómo de niño le encantaba el escenario y el performance; ahora es bailarín de danza “árabe gótica”. Del otro lado, Pedro es blanco, más reservado en sus fotos, y a él le han gustado los deportes desde pequeño. Ahora juega como centro en una liga de futbol americano.

Ya para su adolescencia, los hermanos Vanegas eran enormes. Sus cuerpos llenaban los retratos de familia. En el punto más extremo de su obesidad, parece que sus formas están infladas con aire.

“Tú no te das cuenta de qué tan gordos son tus hijos”, dijo la señora Juana. “Cada que entraban a la escuela, yo les mandaba a hacer sus pantalones. No me daba cuenta que eran talla 38 cuandotenían seis años, o 40 cuando tenían diez. No sabía cómo revertirlo”.

Después de la muerte del papá de Juan Luis y Pedro, la familia Vanegas empezó a buscar ayuda. Hubo consultas y más consultas, entrevistas, listas de espera, especialistas de todo tipo. Juan Luis pesaba en el momento más crítico de su condición unos 146 kilos. Tenía 15 años. Pedro tocó los 138 kilos a los 14. Tenían que hacer algo.

En 2009, a Juan Luis le aplicaron una manga gástrica en el Hospital General Rubén Leñero, de la Secretaría de Salud del Distrito Federal. En esta cirugía el estómago es reducido entre 60% y 85%, dejando una “manga” de estómago donde cabe menos comida. Juan Luis bajó hasta 105 kilos, pero su cuerpo se aferró. La capacidad de su estómago se acomodó, creciendo de nuevo, y así volvió a subir de peso.

El mejor altar de Muertos que he visto en mi vida

** Originally published Nov. 1, 2013, at VICE México:

En Los Ángeles -- la segunda ciudad de mexicanos más grande del mundo -- el Día de Muertos se lo toman en serio. El año pasado estuve en el Sur de California por estas fechas, donde, en el centro cultural Self-Help Graphics & Art, una joya histórica de la raza del Este de Los Ángeles, vi el mejor altar de muertos que jamás he visto.  

Lo hizo un artista conocido como Vyal Reyes, en memoria de grafiteros y taggers que han muerto de L.A. durante sus búsquedas por conquistar las calles con sus rayas.

Viniendo de una familia que incluye grafiteros, me impactó mucho este altar. 

Primero, el artista uso un ataúd negro como pieza principal, donde metió fotos de graffiti-heads que han caído junto con latas de aerosol negras. Por fuera, Vyal pinto escenas urbanas con ojos "para estar trucha." Colocó latas de aerosol blancas en vez de velas, y pañuelos en vez de mantelitos.
  
"También incluí una cinta de seguridad, para indicar que la mayoría de estos artistas tuvieron muertes violentas" me dijo Vyal ayer vía correo, desde Los Ángeles.

"No conocí a todos los artistas personalmente", agregó, "pero tengo un gran respecto hacia ellos y hacia las contribuciones artísticas que dieron a la escena. Quiero homenajearlos para que sus esfuerzos no sean olvidados".

Los detalles obviamente tienen un sentido bien pensado. Hay una máscara para pintadores, junto con la salvia blanca que se quema tradicionalmente en California. 

"Son las herramientas que usamos para protegernos físicamente y espiritualmente", añadió Vyal. 

Afuera en el patio de Self Help, chicos del barrio del Centro de Los Ángeles estaban practicando su "spray art". Adentro, había muchos altares de la comunidad chicana de L.A., pero ninguno tenía la relevancia bruta con las calles como el de Vyal One. Tuve que regresar a tomarle más fotos, y a pararme a contemplar un poco la ofrenda.

El trabajo de Vyal se puede ver aquí. Este año, me dijo, está armando un altar en downtown Los Ángeles.

The Christmas message you didn't see

I was in Southern California and Mexico City over the holidays and barely saw any sizable mention of surviellance whistleblower Edward Snowden's Christmas message. It is plain and stirring (and less than 2 minutes).

"A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all," Snowden says. "They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves -- an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought."

Full transcript here. The NYT editorial board said he is clearly justified.

On Mike O'Connor

Rest in peace, Mike ... journalist, press advocate, warrior.

O'Connor was funny as hell, too, in the face of all the calamity he saw in Mexico. A dry wit that seemed at first to border on the unstable. He used extremely, uh, colorful language whenever warranted. It was fun talking to him on the phone, like we did just a few weeks ago. He'd ring me to shoot the shit for a bit, catch up on deep media-world memes. We'd curse the owners, curse the politicians, make dark jokes about life as a reporter in Mexico.

While working for Tracy Wilkinson at the LA Times bureau in Mexico City, I met Mike and gradually got to know the critical work he did in these years. He'd travel to the most cartel-corrupted regions of the country to investigate the murders and disappearances of local news reporters, and to offer support and guidance for those still keeping up a candle in the darkness. His most recent in-depth report on press security in Mexico for CPJ focused on the state of Zacatecas, which, not surprisingly, is smothered by fear, corruption, and silence.

He did it mostly in secret, to protect his subjects, and to protect himself. He was expert at these topics, shared his advice liberally: no photos of you if you cover corruption and drug war in regional Mexico, all lines should be considered tapped and recorded at all times, BlackBerry BBM (was) the most secure communications method for reporters working on dangerous subjects. In conversations both serious and casual, he made it clear: Never, ever trust the Party.

In short, fue un cabrón de los buenos and he will be missed, sorely. Especially now, as the silencing power of political and mass-media hegemony takes hold in Mexico, as the country returns to official-party rule, and as so many journalists begin falling, whether in intimidation, in selling-out, or in death.

Bad news losing you, Mike. Bad news for all of us.

Mal del Puerco: Dos días de comer y chupar en Nueva York

** Originally published at VICE México:

La última vez que fui a Nueva York, en 2011, cené una noche yo solito en un bistro precioso en Little Italy. Todos mis amigos y contactos estaban o afuera de la ciudad o “muy ocupados”. (Pues ya qué, es Nueva York). Luego, esa madrugada, mi estómago me despertó y me pidió vomitar cada último pedazo de la pasta de cuatro quesos que cargaba. No fue un pedo de alcohol ni cruda, fue solo un misterio.

Otra noche, cené con una vieja amiga en un restaurante seminuevo en Brooklyn donde cada mesero y bartender tenía tatuajes y lentes de pasta. En el sistema de sonido sólo tocaban hits como del 2002 y 2003, o sea, Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs! y Chromeo, todo con una gran sonrisa que no pude descifrar si era de chiste o de nostalgia. En el aeropuerto de regreso a México, sólo quería algo fresco –algo– entonces me compré una manzana roja como de 1.50 dólares en la terminal. Le di una mordida y noté que algo estaba raro. El corazón de la manzana estaba completamente negro.

Bueno, fueron tiempos raros. Era abril, pero el clima se sentía como de febrero. La ciudad estaba fría, lluviosa y todos se quejaban de que el "invierno no terminaba”. No entendía por qué se oscurecía a las cuatro de la tarde; de pronto el cielo se hundía en un morado deprimente.

Lo frío se extendía a la gente.

En el metro una noche regresando de Manhattan a donde me estaba quedando, vi un mexicano bien mexicano parado en mi vagón, seguro regresando de su chamba a la casa. Tenía piel de color madera, ojos chinos, nariz elegantemente grande, cabello brillantemente negro, un verdaderomexica del continente americano. Yo (ya pedo) me le acerqué y le pregunté con toda la buena onda de mi alma que si era de México. El vato me dio la cara más irritada e indiferente de su vida. Claramente estaba pensando: Sí, pendejo, obvio que soy de México y ando aquí chambeando, ya se sabe que esto es Puebla York, entonces ¿qué me miras?

Como buen neoyorkino, supongo. En la ciudad de Nueva York no hay tiempo para pendejadas.

En fin, no la pase bien en 2011. Pero la semana pasada, cuando regresé al Noreste estadunidense por un par de días, estuve resuelto en mejorar mis impresiones, y la ciudad en este caso me consintió. El clima estaba espectacular. Y aunque Nueva York ha tenido sus días duros —el huracán Sandy, la ley racista de Stop-and-Frisk, y la gentrificación y clasismo brutales generados por la corrupción de los grandes grupos financieros— al final sigue siendo una ciudad de gente fregona y movida y bella como lo ha sido por siglos.

Uno se la puede pasar bien, beber bien y definitivamente comer bien. Pero eso sí, si tienes lana/plata/baro/feria. Esto fue lo que comí en 48 horas en New York City, y lo que me costó.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 10:00 PM, ARRIVAL

Llegando, tomé el metro desde el aeropuerto hasta Williamsburg, donde me quedé con una amiga querida. Después de despertar a la vecina de abajo (perdón), me pasaron llaves y decidí tener una noche para salir y ver Brooklyn un ratito antes de un día de trabajo el miércoles en las oficinas centrales de VICE.

El roomie de mi amiga, Scott, decidió acompañarme, y fuimos al Metropolitan en Williamsburg. Es un bar divey, punky, ghetto, ambisexual, queer, de gays no horribles y todos sus amigos. Una noche aquí en el 2011 conocí y hablé un buen rato con una chica lesbiana criada como judía jasídica, súper fregona. Como lo anticipé, esta noche había gente. Hombres con barbas blancas largas y chamarras de piel, modernas de la moda, vestidas con dudes en cachuchas, niñas lindas; era noche de QUEERAOKE. Me tomé dos chelas locales de Brooklyn, a cinco dólares cada una, y le invité una Diet Coke al amigo Scott. Más propina, gasté 16 dólares.

Saliendo quería cenar, entonces pasamos a un deli, de estos lugares que están abiertos las 24 horas y que a veces se conocen como bodegas. Venden de todo: frutas, carnes, cereales, chupe y sándwiches hechos a la orden, al total estilo New York. Me comí un sandwichito de pavo con queso, unos chips y una chela Newcastle. Fueron 11 dólares.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 10:00 AM, BREAKFAST & LUNCH

Al día siguiente, quería un desayuno cute de Brooklyn, pero me desperté tarde, y quería llegar rápido a la oficina. Entonces paré en otro deli sobre Bedford Avenue y aquí al cocinero mexicano le dije: “Me das una egg and cheese”, a lo que contestó: An egg and cheese, you want it on roll?en inglés perfecto.

Los mexicanos chambeando en el Noreste siempre quieren asegurar a todos los clientes —incluyendo a los mexicanos— que pueden hacer bizness en inglés, que son buenos migrantes. El sándwich de queso y huevo con tocino estaba simple, servible. Con un jugo verde de botella, mi desayuno empezó a $8. Al lado, en un café con demasiado estilo, pedí un latte para acompañar, a4 dolarotes.

No tenían canela, como siempre le agrego a cualquier café, y me vieron con cara de loco por haberla pedido. De la noche a la mañana había gastado casi 40 dólares en alimentos, y todo de bar y bodega, nada de lujo.

A la hora de la comida nos juntamos para comer con compañeros de VICE México que también estaban en esos rumbos. Nuestro director de contenido Bernardo Loyola conocía un buen lugar de ramen japonés, en la calle Grand, aunque dijo que Fette Sau era “el mejor restaurante en Nueva York”. No lo dudé, pero todo el chiste del lugar era la celebración de la carne de puerco, puro puerco, y entre nosotros había una vegetariana.

De hecho, el puerco está bastante in en Nueva York, o por lo menos en Brooklyn. Todos los lugares cool parecen tener algo de pork, casi siempre, es pork belly this o pork belly that, pancita básicamente. Le pregunté al artista y galerista William Dunleavy, un amigo de NY que conocí cuando pasó un rato documentando a un grupo de punks en el DF, por qué el puerco es la carne de moda en Nueva York.

“Creo que es porque los judíos jasídicos no comen puerco, y todo en Nueva York es contradictorio a como era antes de la gentrificación”, me dijo Will. “Son economías dictadas por losyuppies que dicen ‘El puerco puede ser preparado deliciosamente por nueve dólares la orden, y eso lo vamos a adoptar y abrazar’”.

Y luego agregó: I think pork is delicious.

The hypnotizing anger of Siete Catorce

** Originally published at Thump:

It was 3AM on a Saturday morning by the time we made it to Del Valle, the middle-class mid-section of Mexico City. We inched our way into a tacky, vacant bar where Siete Catorce was scheduled to play a late-night set. Ten Foot, a prominent DJ from London, was playing before a crowd of about eight, and when the Mexicali electronic music producer walked in he went straight for the DJ table. The two hashed it out, and before long, Siete had assumed the position in front of his PC laptop. We were there to watch him make music live on his screen, mixing and manipulating original tracks with nothing but a laptop and a mousepad.

It was a weird, soggy summer night. There were a few strewn about tables, fluorescent lights, people smoking indoors (which is illegal here, but only incidentally), and furtive passages to the restrooms to “powder noses.” The bar wouldn’t have been out of place tucked away in LA’s Koreatown district, and it was a perfect place to dance to Siete Catorce’s mix of tribal, techno, and “emo broken beats.”

A few minutes into his set, I was dancing. A few minutes more and everyone in the bar was dancing.

Dawn approached, and he kept playing. Thin and wily, basked in the glow of his laptop screen, Siete hopped and swayed through his set. Only after every authority figure in the place, from the bartender to the promoter, told him he had to stop, did Siete stop playing. The speakers rested. People were panting, walking around in circles. The young DJ turned to the nearest girl next to him and asked, still bobbing, “Was that good? Did you like that?” But he already knew the answer.

It was good. The girl by his side knew it. I knew it. Even the angry bartender knew it.

Since moving to Mexico City from his native Mexicali—thanks to the release of his EP with local label NAAFI—Siete Catorce has torn through town, playing wherever he can, and frequently winding up crowd-surfing during his sets. From that nameless bar in Del Valle, to the it venue of the moment, Bahía, to Mexico City living rooms dusted with cigarette smoke, he’s been dazzling audiences with a sound that marries Mexican tribal jubilance (à la 3BALL MTY) with an unmistakable feeling of sadness, rage, and foreboding.

It was about time somebody did it.

Life in Mexico is hard right now: traffic is bad, the rainy season was devastating, no one has money, people get paid shit. Encounters with cartel or state violence are basically considered normal. Some economists already think Mexico is slipping into a new recession, even though the cost of food and transportation continues to rise. But night after night, weekend after weekend, the party rolls on. In Mexico City, Siete Catorce (or “7:14”) has been there for us consistently.

“My music is very Mexican but also very tripped-out”—ondeada—Siete Catorce told me. “I like the vibe here. It reminds me of when I lived in Oakland, even in the weather a little bit. I like the vibe of a city that’s always busy.”

Marco Polo Gutierrez was born in Mexicali but was raised mostly in Oakland, CA. He identifies strongly with the Bay Area in his music, tastes, and cultural stance. This got us talking. I went to school in the Bay and spent childhood summer vacations visiting relatives in Northern CA. During one YouTube-scrolling hangout session, we confirmed that we could both rap along with “93 ‘till Infinity.”

“I was born in Mexicali, and when I was two, I went to live in Oakland,” Siete said during a rainstorm in early July. “I lived there till I was 14 or 15. I came over here because they deported my mom, and so, the whole family came back.”

Mexicali is the vast desert sister city to Tijuana. Singer-songwriter Juan Cirerol is from there, and there’s a significant Chinese-Mexican population, but other than that there’s not much going for it. It must have been a tough place to adapt to after feeling the freedom and mobility that comes with life in Oakland.

“Well, over [in Oakland], you’re in the ghetto. It’s dope because there are cultures from everywhere. And you grow up exposed to all that. I just hung out with my cousins. They were stoners and listened to rap and hip-hop. And that’s the environment I grew up in.”

His sound, he explains, is deeply rooted in the all-night birthday and quinceañera parties among relatives that marked his childhood—the hours and hours of cumbia. It’s an experience that almost any Mexican kid can tap into, but in his case, one that is marred by the trauma of a parent’s expulsion from the United States.

In 2007 Siete's mother was deported. He tells me she had to visit a sick relative in Mexicali and used a sister's passport to cross back to the U.S., and was caught. His entire family followed her to Mexicali. This was around the same time that the Baja drug-smuggling corridor erupted in internal warfare—one site of unrest within a country-wide drug war that was getting increasingly out of control. All across northern Mexico, many young producers and musicians at the time were literally retreating to their bedrooms for safety. They dabbled across genres, from sad-core garage to hard-core club. In the process, they developed the personalities that would later become an Erick Rincon or a Dani Shivers, names now defining music in Mexico today.

Siete Catorce started playing piano at the age of five. Once he settled in Mexicali, he downloaded Ableton Live and started taking his first cracks at house and electro. “Then I started making glitch, glitch-hop, dubstep, stuff like that,” Siete said. “But that was a long time ago, when no one listened to Skrillex or anything.”

He explains his start as a producer in recognizable steps: first came the teenage boredom, then the isolation; followed by an introduction to raves, a few lessons in desktop mixing, and a period of dancing around genres and scenes before finally finding a sound. In this case, it was thanks to a cumbia remix he did for the cura of it—the shits-and-giggles.

“You could say that what changed everything was when I remixed a track by Celso Piña, ‘Cumbia del Poder’,” Siete said.

The remix of the Celso was driven by a dubby boom with some hip to it. A DJ in Canada picked it up, and then the music site Generation Bass posted it, Siete recalls. Then, in April 2011, he was invited to open at a party for experimental electronic music in Tijuana.

Marco Polo, then known by his Den5hion moniker, wasn’t even on the flier.

Mal Del Puerco: Pulques para el 2 de Octubre

 * Fotos por Alejandro Mendoza.

** Originally published at VICE México:

El miércoles fue 2 de octubre, fecha oscura en México para la gente que le importa una cosita que es la protección de derechos y de la justicia en nuestro país.

En otros años, he cubierto la marcha de los estudiantes y de los señores y las señoras del Comité del ‘68, los que siguen vivos, los que siguen caminando cada 2 de octubre en memoria de los compañeros de las unis y las prepas que perdieron hace 45 años en la Plaza de las Tres Culturas. (QDEP Carlota Botey, ¡presente!)

Créanme que la convicción personal me guía como periodista en esta fecha.

La primera vez que entendí lo que ocurrió en 1968 en México —porque nunca se sabrá a fondo y con claridad— caí en una depresión de varios días, no lo creía y no lo quería creer. ¿Dónde hubiera estado si a mí me hubiera tocado caminar por estas calles en esas fechas y no en las de hoy? ¿Estuviera en Tlatelolco en esos días tensos, antes del inicio de las Olimpiadas en la Ciudad de México, cuando las clases medias del “Mexican Miracle” salieron a reclamar la apertura de un estado autoritario y corrupto?

Y a la vez, se me ha pasado la fecha impredeciblemente. El año pasado, casi ni me di cuenta cuando se aproximaba el 2 de octubre. Al final, no hubo heridos en los demadres entre encapuchados/anarquistas/infiltrados/porros y las fuerzas de la seguridad pública en su labor de “vigilar” la marcha conmemorativa, el baile de putazos de siempre.

Pero este 2013 no pude ignorar el calendario. Desde el 1 de diciembre han ido incrementando los golpes entre la policía y manifestantes que ven tan mal su situación y sus expectativas para el futuro que deciden joder el tráfico en la ciudad, y hasta el acceso al aeropuerto cuando se les ocurre. Pobres. Los polis les pegan, y los ciudadanos les tiran duro hate. En todo caso, se siente un lento aumento en la tensión en el aire, y me preocupa lo que traerán los próximos cinco años —por lo menos para todos los que no directamente vamos a ganar bajo la gloria de la restauración del viejo régimen.

Pero… fuera con la depre.

Los días en el inicio del otoño han estado lindos, y hoy viernes es luna nueva. ¡Todo nuevo! Y como la mañana, el día, la tarde, la noche y la madrugada para mí gira alrededor de la comida, decidí el miércoles marcar el 2 de octubre tomándome unos buenos pulques, schido’la’banda.

En la calle Aranda, atrás del triste y olvidado mercado setentero de artesanías de la calle Ayuntamiento, entre unos baños públicos y el Molinero Progreso (que huele tan rico siempre), está la pulquería Las Duelistas. Sí, ya todos las conocen y ya ha salido en todos los medios y ahora llegan turistas y cámaras casi diario. Lo hermoso de Las Duelistas es que a pesar de la atención mediática, no ha cambiado: es un lugar para los viejitos de la colonia que conocen los secretos milenarios de este regalo del maguey, y los chavos estudiantes que lo han “descubierto” de nuevo. (¿Podemos ya dejar de hablar del descubrimiento de estas generaciones al pulque? Ya pasó, ¿no? Por su attn., gracias).

Mi amigo El Ponce me trajo a este lugar por primera vez en 2008 cuando llegué a vivir al barrio. Era cuando apenitas el amigo ponk El Xuve estaba elaborando los bellos murales del panteón de dioses mexicas que ahora decoran el lugar y lo hacen (creo yo) uno de los espacios más especiales en el Centro. El dueño Arturo Garrido siempre me ha dado la bienvenida. Sus curados, más.

Este miércoles en Las Duelistas, me atrajo el tuit de diario de la noche antes, anunciando los curados del día próximo:

 

Miércoles de Mango, Betabel, Avena, Apio y Guayaba y de botana unos Frijoles guisados con chorizo acompañados de una salsa molcajeteada

— Las Duelistas (@LaPulqueria) October 2, 2013

 

Llegué con mi compañero de VICE México, Alejandro Mendoza, y empecé con un curado de betabel, uno de mis favoritos de este lugar. Como me iba a quedar a tomarme por lo menos dos tarros hoy, pedí la botana, esta vez unos frijoles con chorizo, picados con cebolla y cilantro, y unas tortitillas simples.

La pulquería estaba llena ya de jóvenes y grandes. A tres cuadras de aquí, la policía de la ciudad ya tenía sus vallas metálicas cerrando el paso a la Alameda Central, a Bellas Artes y a Madero. Pero eso no se sentía adentro de Las Duelistas.

Le pregunté a mi servidor de siempre que dónde estaba Don Arturo. Ahí anda, me dejó saber, “A ver si va a la marcha”, agregó, y no entendí si hablaba en serio. En pocos minutos llegó Don Arturo, nos saludamos y sólo se quejó de que los policías hubieran tomado el Centro de nuevo.

Me eché p’atrás el de betabel. Pedí luego un curado de apio, sin chile, sólo sal y limón. Para este entonces, ya sentía la peda de los 400 conejos. Me sentía feliz, fuerte y no quería que las madrizas que seguro venían más tarde en la calle me bajaran la buena vibra.

Los frijolitos me llenaron bien. Me acerqué a la rockola, y, como por instinto, busqué Panteón Rococó. Ahí estaban. Por unos segundos, pensé en pedir “Nada Pasó.”

No, esta vez no. Qué cliché. Qué tristeza. Mejor otra… ¡Salud!

Otras pulquerías donde he chupado, sin fichas directas. (¡Búsquenle, que esto no es Chilango Punto Com, dudes!):

La Ana María, en la Colonia Portales

El Salón Casino, en la Colonia Obrera

La Risa, en Mesones en el Centro

Un puesto en la Merced

La Pirata, por Patriotismo

La Antigua Roma (por si te atreves), sobre Allende, cerca de Garibaldi

No Más No Llores, allá en Xochimilco

La Titina, por Misterios y Calzada de Guadalupe

Un puesto de tacos en la México-Cuernavaca libre, después de Tres Marías

Mal del Puerco: Con un nombre que grita fiesta, el pambazo consiente

** Originally published at VICE México:

Ahora que acaban de pasar las fiestas patrias tuve mucho tiempo para contemplar el antojito al que le tengo más cariño en todo México: el pambazo. Una delicia, un desmadre, con un nombre que prácticamente grita “fiesta”, el pambazo se derrumba y derrite en las manos como un alud que anuncia no la muerte sino puro sabor. O, como a veces les digo, "the best comfort food in D.F."

Tengo años comiendo pambazos aquí, pero por un par de días no me acordaba cómo fue que los conocí. Anduve rarón, buscando en mi boca la sensación inicial de este platillo que a un desconocedor --la neta-- le puede parecer medio asqueroso.

¿Fue en el Centro? ¿En la Guerrero? ¿En la Portales? ¿O ni por aquí, y mi memoria me falla? Ayer me llegaron las vagas imágenes de cómo y cuándo fue... y no'mbre, con razón no me acordaba: fue una noche que por poco no sobrevivo.

Les cuento: Tenía un cuate, que desde luego le perdí la pista, que conocí por parte de la Señorita Vodka en las épocas en que cantineabamos duro y harto, al principio de la última gran recesión. Una noche nos invitó este tal Memo a chupar y fumar en su casa en el norte, arriba del Circuito Interior, y como yo andaba de periquillo sarniento, me lancé por la línea amarilla a la Colonia Valle Gómez.

Sacamos las caguamas, las papitas, creo que un tequila o un whiskey, y nos pusimos a escuchar cumbias de mp3 conectadas a la tele. Todo bonito. Luego, a Memo se lo ocurrió que saliéramos a las "casitas" del barrio donde tocas y te venden un toque. Memo los conocía a todos. Dos o tres veces, nos pasaban a unas salas oscuras pero acogedoras, y ahí nos servían unas madres que a final de cuentas fueron cigarros de coca. O sea, crack.

Por tener la rabia de la noche, tomas decisiones que son inspiradas o totalmente estupidas. En esos momentos, cómo disfrutaba andando a las tres o cuatro de la madrugada a casas vende-drogas por un barrio arriba del Circuito que no conocía, metiéndome pura mierda. Inspirado y estúpido, el efecto en muchos casos es igual. Conoces lo nuevo de ti o del mundo. En este caso, conocí el pambazo de México.

Los perros de la calle ladraban. La noche se había puesto fría. En algún punto, necesitabamos comida. La mujer de Memo fue con la señora de la esquina y trajo el primer pambazo que vi en mi vida. "¿Qué. Es. Eso?"

Todos soltaron una risa. Hahaha --y a la boca—. Y así es como la vida toma sus ejes, ¿no?

Al día siguiente, y en días que pasaron después, pase la peor cruda de mi vida. Peor. (Say no to crack, amigos.) Pero pasó. Así fue. Y ahora conocía lo que era el pambazo.

El pambazo, como ya lo sabrán ustedes, es como una torta ahogada chilanga, por decirlo de una manera cruda. (¡No quiero se me echen encima los tapatíos!)

Es tradicionalmente hecho con el pan pambazo, que es relacionado al bolillo, y tradicionalmente contiene papas con chorizo por dentro, aunque variaciones existen y se practican por todos lados. Se fríe. Con el aceite, la salsa guajillo se fusiona con el pan y con las papas con chorizo. Aparte, se le echa lechuga, crema y queso fresco.

Lo más destacado de este platillo es el uso generoso de salsa de chile guajillo que une tanto el contenido como el soporte de la torta. Así es, el pambazo está mojado en esta salsa en todas las etapas de su preparación: principio, intermedio, y a veces momentos antes de consumir. ¿Cómo no lo puedo querer?

Con Abuelta Marthita, una receta para unos pambazos "bien mexicanotes".

Calientitos, suavecitos, y a veces mal hechos, he comido pambazos en las esquinas más tristes que he conocido en la Ciudad de México. Y también en las más hospitalarias, en barrios donde la gente guarda ese orgullo natural, duro, fiel. De noche, de día, o de mañana, el pambazo me consuela. Y aún mejor, me llena.

Últimamente, me he enamorado del pambazo que sirven los fines de semana en un puesto que se pone por la placita de la Romita. Con una Coca Cola bien fría, es la perfección. Tanto me he obsesionado, que en estas fiestas patrias nos inventamos uno en casa. Este es el relato del resultado.

"La Normis", mi jefa que vino de visita a la ciudad (muy patriótica, la señora), preparó una salsa guajillo en casa. Esa fue la parte más complicada y en realidad ni puse mucha atención; no tenía ni las ganas ni el tiempo para preparar chorizo con papas. Entonces, muy a lo norteño, improvisamos de esta forma: en el mercado, mi amá buscó y buscó hasta encontrar un puesto que tenía chilorio enlatado de Culiacán, Sinaloa (carita la lata, por cierto). Yo fui por los bolillos.

No teníamos nada de experiencia con el proceso de elaborar un pambazo. El primer intento salió bastante aguado y deprimente. En el segundo intento, al chorilio le agregamos cebolla y, sí, papa picada. Hmmm. En este punto, con pena, le informé a mi madre que ya no estabamos hablando de un pambazo, literalmente viéndolo. Como con Abuelita Marthita, también nos faltaba lechuga. Pero bueno, estaba rico la cosa de cualquier forma. Hicimos cuatro.

Este jueves, en el bajón post-fiesta, noté que en el refri quedada un poco de la carne. En una sartén quedaba un poco de la salsa. Y en una bolsa escondida, quedaba un bolillo. El pan aún no se había endurecido.

Regresé la salsa a la estufa y me puse a tostar el bolillo en un comal. Luego, al baño rojo. Luego la carne con papa. Luego el queso.

Entonces sí se puede.

Mal del Puerco: Cinco cosas que comes en México que les produce envidia a los gringos

** Originally published at VICE México:

Por si no han visto las noticias, la comida mexicana es más querida que nunca en Estados Unidos.

La cosa ya se ha convertido en una obsesión nacional. Como lo documenta la banda pocha del otro lado —escritores como Lesley Tellez, Gustavo Arrellano y Jonathan Gold — la población estadunidense se ha dejado seducir por el sazón mexicano de una forma que nos sorprende a los que crecimos allá y nos acordamos de los tiempos del Taco Bell.

Antes, el gringo típico no tenía ni idea de lo que era la comida mexicana más allá de lo rápida y furiosa: tacos congelados, burritos y fantasías inventadas como la chimichanga y los nachos, aunque es cierto que estos últimos ya se consumen en México. Los mexicoamericanos, incluso en el Southwest, sí teníamos los taco shops y el “Taco USA”. En zonas muy mexicanas, los restaurantes mexican american existían, mezclando los antojitos mexicanos con la comida casera que se consume en hogares mexas. Pero nada de eso se compara con lo que tienen ahora. Actualmente hay restaurantes gourmet de gastronomía regional en los centros de las grandes ciudades como Nueva York y Los Ángeles: ya pueden comer cuisine de alto nivel yucateca, oaxaqueña, defeña y hasta norteña high-class. Y los clientes son de todo tipos, entre anglos, afroamericanos, asiáticos y pochos que buscan renovar sus raíces.

La cosa ya está medio loca; en el barrio históricamente mexicano de Boyle Heights, Los Ángeles, por ejemplo, ya tienen puestos que venden pambazos al estilo DF.

Aunque los últimos treinta años de migración mexicana al otro lado ha producido una explosión reciente de lugares donde comer mexicano regional ya significa “tener cultura” en el contexto local, sigue habiendo cosas que hasta los norteamericanos más obsesionados no pueden obtener tan fácilmente como nosotros. Y los gringos se están dando cuenta, con gran frustración, que mucho del hotness de la comida mexicana se debe al incremento en épocas recientes de viajes y estancias que hacen a México, en particular, al Distrito Federal.

Dicen, en primer lugar, que las cosas acá simplemente saben “diferentes”.

Lo puedo confirmar; cosas básicas como la tortilla hecha a mano o las salsas taqueras son difícilmente replicadas en el gabacho. ¿Será algo en la tierra que tenemos acá? ¿En el aire? O, para bien y para mal, ¿en el agua? Sea lo que sea, me ha tocado ver cómo los visitantes se quedan atónitos con lo que están tragando. Lo he visto en el DF en puestos de tacos, mariscos y de antojitos. A veces, te lo juro, lloran.

No importa si tienes o no visa, debes —como buen compatriota mexicano— vivir con orgullo de saber que cada residente norteamericano que conoce tu comida se muere de envidia por lo que no puede encontrar allá, y que tú comes aquí casi diario, por lo menos, en la cuenca del valle. ¿Y allá por tus rumbos qué te dicen los primos pochos?

Una quesadilla de huitlacoche con queso, esquina de Mérida y Colima, Colonia Roma, 2013.

Maíz azul. Mi mamá a veces se rifaba tortillas de harina hechas en casa. Del comal directo a la servilleta, con un poquito de mantequilla que se derrite al instante, así de simple; fue una de las grandes delicias de mi juventud. Como el Southwest es colindante con Baja California, Sonora y Chihuahua, se practica de forma general la cultura de la tortilla de harina. La de maíz se empezó a ver más en el Norte con el incremento de migrantes de zonas sur y centro de México, como Oaxaca, Yucatán, el Valle y el Estado de México, aunque Gustavo me comenta vía correo que “estudios demuestran que migrantes mexicanos en el Norte luego prefieren tortillas de harina cuando tienen más tiempo viviendo aquí”. Luego, para los aficionados, ya podemos ir a los mercados mexicanos como Northgate y Pancho Villa’s en San Diego, donde mi familia y yo vamos de compras; ahí pueden adquirir paquetes de tortillas de maíz azul, que se consume entre las comunidades indígenas nativos del otro lado. Está de moda porque le recuerda a la gente las quesadillas del antiplanto. La tortilla hecha a mano, de ese maíz de color seductor, como ceniza de algún mar, y los guisados de flor de calabaza, de huitlacoche y de queso (un duh incomprensible para mí). En fin, las señoras a quienes les compras las quesadillas de desayuno en la esquina cada mañana acá difícilmente podrían compartir este ritual contigo si vivieras en USA. Esa realidad duele.

Conoce 'El Barrio Antiguo': Crónicas contra la barbarie

** Originally published at VICE México:

Suena como una fantasía para cualquier periodista que ama a su comunidad: mudarte a un barrio emblemático, querido, herido de tu ciudad, y luego, empezar un periódico sobre el barrio, en servicio al barrio – sí, en papel.

Esto es lo que ha hecho el periodista regio Diego Enrique Osorno, uno de los más reconocidos actualmente en México y en el extranjero. Además de ganarse el cariño de las personas por hacer un periodismo de servicio y denuncia, Osorno acaba de lanzar un semanario impreso para abrir un espacio a los jóvenes escritores de Monterrey, y a partir del nuevo periodismo, ayudar rehabilitar su ciudad tan golpeada por la violencia de la guerra contra el narco.

Lanzado el 1 de mayo (“Dia del Trabajo,” Diego me recuerda), El Barrio Antiguo se ha convertido en un fenómeno social en Monterrey en poco tiempo. Osorno es el editor en jefe, y con él colabora como editor adjunto el periodista Diego Legrand, además de un buen grupo de jóvenes narradores reporteros. Como admiramos el trabajo de Osorno, también colaborador de VICE, les compartimos esta conversación con él sobre su proyecto.

“Somos pobres, pero honrados,” me comentó Diego sobre la publicación. Con esa gran declaración en mente, me da gusto anunciar que cada semana VICE México publicará una nota deEl Barrio Antiguo para compartir el buen trabajo que el proyecto realiza, y ojalá para apoyar el periódico con más ojos a nivel nacional e internacional. ¡Bienvenidos!

VICE: ¿Cómo y desde cuándo surgió El Barrio Antiguo y con qué apoyo? Hoy en día armar un periódico impreso nuevo en México no es nada fácil.