Intersections

Incidents of travel in the Yucatan, Part 3

Vendors, vendors, vendors ...

People, people, people ...

And then ...

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.

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

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

Carlos Fuentes to be buried in famed Paris cemetery

** Originally published at World Now:

The remains of Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes will be buried in the famed Montparnasse cemetery in Paris alongside those of two children who died before him, his widow, Silvia Lemus, told reporters in Mexico.

Fuentes, who died Tuesday in Mexico City at 83, served as Mexico's ambassador to France in the 1970s. He was given the country's highest award for a non-Frenchman, the Legion of Honor medal, in 1992.

He told a reporter as early as 1995 that he was considering Paris for his burial, saying that Montparnasse "would be a great place to spend eternity."

The cemetery is the resting place for a litany of artists and other famous names, including Fuentes' friend and fellow Latin American man of letters Julio Cortazar of Argentina and the former Mexican dictator Gen. Porfirio Diaz.

The Fuentes family plot at the Montparnasse cemetery already holds the remains of his son Carlos, who died in 1999, and his daughter Natasha, who died in 2005. The plot also reserves a space for Lemus, reports said.

The author of "The Death of Artemio Cruz" and "Aura" consistently declined to discuss his children's deaths, although some news outlets have noted this week that Natasha Fuentes died in tragic circumstances in a tough Mexico City neighborhood. Among conflicting accounts of her death was that she suffered a drug overdose.

Fuentes was honored by President Felipe Calderon during a wake Wednesday at the Palace of Fine Arts in the heart of Mexico City.

* Photo: People touch the flag-draped casket of Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes during his wake at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City on Wednesday. Credit: Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press

Mexican reporter killed in another case unlikely to be solved

** Originally published at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- If the long list of unsolved murders of journalists in Mexico offers any indication, there is little likelihood that justice will be reached in the weekend death of magazine reporter Regina Martinez.

Little chance of a credible arrest. Little chance of charges or a successful prosecution for her killer or killers.

The 49-year-old journalist was found dead in her home in the state of Veracruz on Saturday, beaten and strangled to death. She was a correspondent for the national investigative news magazine Proceso and based in Xalapa, the capital of a coastal state where violence and corresponding impunity are widespread.

A neighbor called police after noticing Martinez's front door was left open since morning. The day before, Martinez was reporting on municipal police officers arrested for alleged links to organized crime. Throughout her career, Martinez reported on organized crime and corruption, including a 2007 case of the rape and killing of a indigenous woman at the hands of Mexican soldiers.

Martinez, a native of the state she covered, is at least the fourth journalist killed in Veracruz since Gov. Javier Duarte took office in late 2010, reports have noted.

Last year, a newspaper columnist and his wife and son were shot to death during an ambush in their home. A woman covering crime in the port of Veracruz was found decapitated. And a rural Veracruz columnist was kidnapped in March and found dead in May.

All those cases remain unsolved, said Mike O'Connor, a representative in Mexico for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that more than 40 journalists have been killed or have disappeared throughout the country since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

The Duarte administration said it was investigating Martinez's murder and formed a special commission Sunday that includes the participation of Proceso's founder, Julio Scherer. But "given the history, there's very little likelihood that there will be justice in this case," O'Connor said.

Already, Veracruz prosecutors said one line of investigation is that Martinez may have been killed in a robbery. Two cellphones, a laptop computer and plasma television screen were stolen, they said.

"That is how they are going to minimize the gravity of this murder," Jose Gil Olmos, a fellow reporter for Proceso, said in an interview on Monday. "It is a message of power and impunity. That is the lesson of this act."

Calls made to the Veracruz state government were not returned.

Nationally, efforts to protect news gatherers during 5-1/2 years of high drug violence have been feeble or ineffective. The post of special federal prosecutor to investigate crimes against "freedom of expression" was created in 2006. But it has mainly operated as a revolving door for bureaucrats, and closed no significant cases. The latest official tapped to head the post was appointed in February.

On Monday, as previously scheduled, the lower house of Congress unanimously passed legislation meant to further help protect reporters (link in Spanish). Martinez's killing was memorialized from the chamber's floor with a minute of silence. But press advocates, in exasperation, said the basic problem remains. Killers are rarely brought to justice.

"There is simulation by the state," said Antonio Martinez, spokesman for Articulo 19, a free-speech advocacy group. "We have more than enough mechanisms for protection. Nevertheless, they fail to attack the impunity."

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Photos, from top: Journalists embrace during a demonstration in Mexico City condemning the killing of fellow journalist Regina Martinez in Veracruz on Saturday (Credit: Marco Ugarte / Associated Press);  Martinez, in an undated photograph (Revista Proceso).

Mexican ex-general once accused of narco ties is shot dead

** Originally published on April 22 at World Now:

MEXICO CITY -- A gunman has shot and killed a retired Mexican army general at a garage in Mexico City, authorities said.

Gen. Mario Acosta Chaparro was accused in 2000 of ties to the Juarez drug cartel in northern Mexico, but later exonerated. A lone gunman shot him three times in the upper body late Friday afternoon at a garage in the Anahuac district, on Mexico City's central-west side, authorities said. Witnesses said the gunman then fled on a motorcycle, the Mexico City attorney general's office reported.

Acosta, 70, who survived a shooting attempt in 2010, is the second retired general to be assassinated in Mexico City in the last year.

In May 2011, retired Gen. Jorge Juarez Loera was shot in Ciudad Satelite, a northwest suburb. Theoutspoken general had overseen Joint Operation Chihuahua, a military-led campaign targeting drug traffickers in the northern border state of Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juarez, the violence-plagued base of the Juarez cartel, is located.

Acosta Chaparro was accused in 2000 of ties to the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who for years led the Juarez cartel. Acosta Chaparro was sentenced by a military tribunal in 2002 to a minimum of 15 years in prison for ties to drug traffickers. The federal attorney general's office exonerated him in 2007, and the general retired in 2008, reports said. 

Mexico City Atty. Gen. Jesus Rodriguez Almeida told reporters Friday evening that authorities had not yet established a motive for the killing, and that his office would continue its investigation.

RELATED:

Retired general who led campaign against drug gangs killed in Mexico

Mexico's defense secretary acknowledges errors in drug war

Mexico military faces political risks over drug war

* Photo: Retired Gen. Mario Acosta Chaparro is escorted by military police into a military court trial Oct. 31, 2002, in Mexico City. Credit: Victor R. Caivano / Associated Press

American exile Elizabeth Catlett dies at 96 in Mexico

** Originally published at World Now:

Elizabeth Catlett, a U.S.-born artist who directly confronted the injustices faced by African Americans and celebrated black identity and culture through her work, has died in her longtime home in Mexico.

Catlett, who died Monday, had lived in Mexico since 1946. She spent most of her years here as an exile from the United States, which in 1962 tagged her an "undesirable alien" after she became a Mexican citizen. Her U.S. citizenship was eventually reinstated in 2002.

A sculptor and printmaker, she had recently begun to gain international renown for her long body of work.

Read the L.A. Times obituary on Elizabeth Catlett here.

"Confident that art could foster social change, Catlett confronted the most disturbing injustices against African Americans, including lynchings and beatings," says The Times article written by Mary Rourke and Valerie J. Nelson. "One of her best-known sculptures, 'Target' (1970), was created after police shot a Black Panther; it shows a black man's head framed by a rifle sight."

In Mexico, she belonged to the international circle of new artists that included Diego Rivera and Pablo O'Higgins, which early on was partly centered at the printmaking collective Taller de Grafica Popular. Between 1959 and 1975, Catlett chaired the sculpture department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, training many young Mexican artists and teaching in Spanish.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., memorialized Catlett in a message via Twitter on Tuesday night: "Mexico & the US today lose a great sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett, an American by birth and a Mexican by choice."

Reporting her death, Mexico's national arts council said: "Through her work, Elizabeth Catlett always demonstrated her interest in social justice and the rights of black Mexican women."

Catlett is survived by Mexican children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You can see more of her work and read more about her personal history here.

RELATED:

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MORE:

Washington Post obituary

New York Times obituary

Washington Post image gallery

* Image: "Sharecropper,” (1970), Elizabeth Catlett, via National Museum of American Art.

Death toll is 2 in Mexico quake; no volcano

** Originally published at World Now:

Two people have died after last week's large earthquake in Mexico, the first casualties reported since the magnitude 7.4 quake shook densely populated Mexico City and damaged thousands of homes across several southern states.

The mayor of a municipality in Guerrero state, near the border with Oaxaca and near the quake epicenter, said that one man died of his injuries after a wall fell on him and that another man died from complications of a heart attack suffered during the quake.

The deaths in the Cuajinicuilapa municipality were reported to the federal government during a tour Friday of the largely rural zone by Social Development Secretary Heriberto Felix Guerra.

Previously, no deaths and no major damages had been reported since the quake, which was centered in Ometepec, Guerrero state.

It was one of the largest seismic events in Mexico since the devastating magnitude 8 quake of 1985 that left more than 10,000 dead. (A quake of equal magnitude hit western Mexico in 1995, killing 49, and a quake measuring 7.6 hit the same region in 2003.)

The low death toll in Tuesday's quake suggests Mexico's progress on earthquake preparedness since 1985 makes the country a "model for preparedness in the developing world," said an online story by Nature. 

Mexico's interior secretariat said 29 municipalities in Guerrero would receive funds for damage to homes and buildings during the quake. Thousands were damaged in Guerrero and Oaxaca, officials said.

Separately, the geophysics institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico released a statement contesting a claim made by Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre that caused a brief buzz on social networking sites. The governor said Thursday that the university's geophysicists were headed to the quake zone to determine whether a small volcano was emerging and therefore causing the seismic activity.

The institute said it was routine to send analysts to earthquake epicenters to study seismic activity after a large quake. "The earthquake ... had a non-volcanic origin," the statement said.

On Sunday, a quake measuring 7.1 hit Chile, resulting in no deaths.

The captions will remain in present participle

He's looking at a sweater. He's looking at cotton. He's looking at rubber boots. He's looking at a door. This is what Tumblr is made for: Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things. I went through 14 pages and decided to stop (and resume later).

Above, he's looking at a soft drink. From the In Memoriam page, added since the unexpected death of the "Dear Leader":

at last the dear leader has quit this mortal coil. i have decided, nonetheless, to keep the blog running as long as my photo archive will last. i don’t how long that will be but i figure that if you’re reading this, you never minded the lack of good taste in this form of humor, which i’m very proud of, and the fact that he’s dead will make little difference.

i have also decided to make no change on the captions. they will remain in the present participle, as always. much like his father still is, and forever will be, the ‘eternal president’ of north korea, so will kim jong-il forever look at things on this site. well, not forever, it’s not like i have infinite photos of the guy, but you know what i mean…

you may tune-in as regularly as before, or if you prefer, join the myriad of successors that have appeared. or do both, if you don’t suffer from some form of attention deficit disorder, which i hope you don’t.

The author of the blog professes to be based in Lisbon. On Facebook, more than 43,000 people like it.

I know about the knock-off, Kim Jong-Il Dropping the Bass. It's amusing and all. But I must say, nothing can compare with the purity of Kim Jong-Il ... simply ... Looking at Things.

* Elsewhere, an amazing set of photos from inside North Korea, at The Atlantic.

Two 'normalistas' dead in clash with police in Guerrero

** Originally published at World Now:

Two students are dead after a confrontation between police and rural teaching students in the southern state of Guerrero, in an incident that is reminding many here of the history of brutal crackdowns against leftist protesters in Mexico.

Authorities promised an investigation, but student groups and several leftist-identified sections of the national teachers union called the deaths  acts of "repression" and "murder" and said they would hold protest demonstrations this week.

The clash occurred Monday on a stretch of the federal highway that connects Mexico City and the resort of Acapulco, just south of Guerrero's capital city, Chilpancingo.

According to accounts, between 300 and 500 unarmed students and activists affiliated with a   teachers college blocked the Autopista del Sol as part of their ongoing demands related to improvements and funding for the Raul Isidro Burgos normal college in Ayotzinapa, a town about 90 miles east of Chilpancingo.

When police arrived at the blockade with the intent to clear the highway, the normalistas, as they are known, threw projectiles. Tear gas was fired, and a gasoline station caught fire, news reports said.

In the chaos that followed, shots were fired into the protesters. Two students died. They were identified as Gabriel Echeverria and Jorge Herrera.

Photos published in Mexican newspapers showed the bodies of two young men, one wearing a backpack, lying on the highway.

Federal, state and ministerial police were present, as well as armed men in plainclothes and, later, the army, the reports said. It remained unclear Tuesday who fired at the students and who ordered the use of force.

The "normal school" system -- in which rural campesinos are trained to be teachers -- is one of the few remaining socialist-styled legacies of the period after the Mexican Revolution. The system's students and teachers often clash with authorities. The powerful chief of the national teachers union, Elba Esther Gordillo, described the system in comments made earlier this year as a "hotbed for political scheming."

In Chilpancingo, at least 20 demonstrators were detained, at least two were seriously injured, and one reporter was arrested, beaten and later released, several reports said. There were also several police injuries.

Many demonstrators dispersed into the hillsides near the highway after the gunfire and remain unaccounted for, union leaders and students said at a news conference in Mexico City on Tuesday.

A witness identified as a student from Ayotzinapa, wearing glasses and a U.S. university sweatshirt, described the incident in detail, saying the federal police fired first toward the demonstrators. The man, said to be 22, was not identified by name for fear of reprisal.

"We never had arms," said the student witness, speaking at a local teachers union branch. "When the aggression started, we used what we had in our reach -- stones and sticks."

The incident led to promises of justice from Mexico's federal Interior Ministry and Gov. Angel Aguirre of Guerrero. On Tuesday, Aguirre said in a radio interview that he had fired his top prosecutor and the head of public security in the state and asked federal authorities to take over the investigation.

Amnesty International released a statement condemning the violence, and Mexico's national human rights commission also promised to investigate.

"Some [protesters] managed to make it up to the hills, and some came down, but 20 others, we don't know where they are," the student witness said Tuesday. "We don't know if they're still up on the mountain or if they were picked up by authorities."

The student also said one female activist from the community was missing.

* Photo: A 22-year-old man identified as a teaching student from Ayotzinapa describes the confrontation with police in Guerrero.

Calaveras going to drag prom *

Just another shot from the Marcha de las Calaveras. I keep this person here and there, who is she?

* Previously, "Naomi."

Jodorowsky holds 'march of skulls' for Mexico's drug war dead

** Originally published at World Now:

It was billed as "the first act of collective psycho-magic in Mexico."

The call made by the cult mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky said the event would seek to "heal" the country of the cosmic weight of so many dead in the drug war, by gathering for something he called the March of the Skulls.

On Sunday, on a wet and frigid morning in this mountain capital, hundreds of Jodorowsky fans answered the open convocation (video link in Spanish).

They donned black top hats and black shawls, and carried canes and Mexican flags colored in black. They wore calavera face paint or masks to give themselves the look of stylish skeletons gathered in this often-surreal city in the name of Mexico's tens of thousands of sometimes nameless drug war dead.

"Long live the dead!" they shouted.

Truthfully, the Marcha de las Calaveras was a minor weekend event compared to the city's heavily publicized "zombie walk" the day before, in which almost 10,000 people playing zombies marched through the city's core. That event marked yet another one of Mexico City's recent obsessive hobbies:breaking Guinness world records.

Yet for the estimated 3,000 people who showed up to the Jodorowsky march over the course of the day, it was significant as a rare public appearance in Mexico by the Chilean-born filmmaker and tarot guru (link in Spanish). Jodorowsky lived in Mexico for many years and produced his most well-known works in the country, the films "El Topo," "Santa Sangre," and "The Holy Mountain."

The event also demonstrated that Mexicans seem willing to try almost anything at this point -- even a counterculture-era act of public mysticism -- to seek an end to the awful violence brought by the fighting between the government and the cartels, a war that has cost more than 40,000 lives since December 2006.

"The young people's call is another form of saying, 'Enough.' Enough deaths," said Angelica Cuellar, a 63-year-old teacher. "Through the psycho-magic, we are saying, for this moment, we are them."

Her sister, Dulce, standing nearby, said: "I am here in the name of someone who didn't have a voice, someone who was suffocated, someone who went north searching for work. I say, 'I'm here for you.'"

"And if we do it collectively, I assure you, at another level of energy, those dead will come awake," added Dulce Cuellar, 60.

Walking skeletons milled about in the background on the steps of the downtown Palace of Fine Arts, as the crowds eagerly awaited Jodorowsky's arrival. Perhaps out of boredom, or inspiration, some mimicked the mournful howl of the native xoloitzcuintli dog, man's guide to the underworld in Aztec mythology.

(There were also a few deep incantations of "om.")

The "maestro" arrived at the palace steps about 1:30 p.m., causing brief havoc among the gatheredcalaveras as people jostled to get near him. The white-haired Jodorowsky, fit and agile at 82, wore a black sports coat, a bright purple scarf and a detailed skull mask.

Along with his family, Jodorowsky led the calaveras up the Eje Central avenue to Plaza Garibaldi in a mostly silent demonstration. In the late 1980s, he filmed some key scenes of "Santa Sangre" at this plaza, homebase for the city's for-hire mariachi bands. On Sunday, it was easy to imagine another "Santa Sangre" scene being filmed during the march, but this time from a dark and unfamiliar future.

Someone decided the group should sing a song. It became "La Llorona," the Weeping Woman. 

Jodorowsky was displeased with the group's initial interpretation, so he asked for another go at it. A mariachi band joined in as accompaniment.

"There are 50,000 dead beings," Jodorowsky said through a bullhorn, before the sea of skulls. "They are sheep. They are not black sheep. We must have mercy for these souls that have disappeared. Let's sing this song with lament, as if we were the mother of one of these persons. Understand?"

Then he asked that all those present cross and link their arms with those of the strangers around them. The group did. They chanted "Peace, peace, peace!" until Jodorowsky asked that everyone let out a big laugh. Laughter and applause followed.

* Previously, "We're mutants: Wisdom from maestro Jodorowsky," and "Jodorowsky's Sunday comics."

Facts also fall victim in Mexico 'social media' killings

** Originally published at World Now:

Four people have been killed in gruesome fashion in Mexico since September for posting about drug cartels on social-media websites, the headlines and news reports say.

Trouble is, the reports could be wrong.

Information is the latest battleground in Mexico's drug war, as a string of brutal deaths in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo has produced alarming reports that social networks are under attack by the infamous Zetas cartel.

Most of the reports, however, are not built on verifiable facts. And facts have become a rare commodity in many regions of Mexico that are dominated by drug cartels.

In each case, such as a man found decapitated near a monument in Nuevo Laredo on Wednesday, the victims have been left with hand-lettered messages suggesting that they were using Twitter and the local chat board Nuevo Laredo En Vivo to report on cartels. 

In each case, the messages have warned against cooperating with the Mexican military and have been signed with multiple Zs, presumably referring to the Zetas.

But how can anyone know for sure?

Teen DJ from Ciudad Juarez, Mock the Zuma, reflects a 'bizarro' reality

** Originally published at World Now: 

Kevin Santana remembers with a blank disenchantment the night he threw a party in his hometown of Ciudad Juarez and soldiers came to break it up.

It was in 2009, the young music producer and DJ recalls, and he and his friends had set up a sound system at a raquetball court and invited other teens to come dance. "There was nothing else going on that night and people in Juarez like to party," he explained a few days ago.

"They put us with our hands against the wall, made us close our eyes, they said they were going to rape the girls. We thought, 'This is it, they are going to break us.' "

I paused and asked for an explanation. Quebrar -- to break -- is slang used to signify killing someone in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities in the world and a sad symbol for Mexico's brutal drug war.

In the end, the kids were let go and the party was over. Santana shrugged and added: "There have always been soldiers in Juarez."

Santana just turned 18 in August. Troops were first sent to Ciudad Juarez in early 2008. Put another way, Santana has lived in a city with armed federal forces on the streets for most of his teen years.

Known by his DJ name Mock The Zuma, Santana is part of a loose generation of electronic musicians and producers based predominantly in Mexico's northern region that are attracting attention among tastemakers in the capital and in Latino-heavy cities north of the border.

Their cutting-edge sounds draw on diverse Latin American rhythms -- such as cumbia and son -- filtered through easy-to-access editing software that allows the music-makers to mix, scratch, and cut it all up with spacey and aggressive electronic beats.

To call them very young is apt; most are still teenagers.

Dia de Muertos en Oaxaca *

* UPDATE: My report from San Agustin Etla, "A lively street party for the dead in Oaxaca, Mexico."

This is a Day of the Dead altar in a home in Oaxaca, Oaxaca, just now. All the elements were gathered on Sunday at the city's bustling Central de Abastos, at the special tianguis de muertos.

The pulque and tepache stand was closed. Momentary sad-face. 

Over here, we're looking at how they're passing noche de los difuntos in Ciudad Juarez; by beating up protesters and photographers outside a police station.

Honoring my dead and all of the dead of Mexico. Wherever you are, good evening.

* Previously, "In Mexico, more deaths than can we can image."

The 'silence and tragedy' of painter Manuel Rodriguez Lozano

Originally published at World Now:

The hard-hitting news magazine Proceso recently published a large-format special issue devoted to the tragedy of the drug war in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. For its cover image, Proceso chose a work from the golden era of Mexican modernist painting, a 1942 piece by Manuel Rodriguez Lozano called "Tragedy in the Desert."

The painting shows the backs of three hooded women who appear to be in mourning over the body of a female figure in a flat and desolate expanse of earth, blood emanating from her form. As a news image, the painting from more than half a century ago is meant to evoke the hopelessness felt by victims of Mexico's war, with its 40,000 dead.

"Tragedy in the Desert" is the first artwork seen by visitors to a sweeping exhibit on Rodriguez currently at the Museo Nacional de Arte in the historic center of Mexico City. It is an affecting and sad image, the colors muted, the perspective flattened in a recognizable Rodriguez motif.

Rodriguez is in fact known for a work more popularly seen at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, alongside Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco.

"Mercy in the Desert," a version of which is seen above (Rodriguez painted two), also belongs to a period in which Rodriguez painted what is now considered his most powerful pieces: an arresting series of paintings that cover themes of tragedy, suicide, rapture, holocaust and sorrow. The figures that appear here are elongated and mutated, as if moving in slow motion, expressions of sadness and fear evident even in faces that are far away.

Like a recent Orozco show in Mexico City that felt relevant in light of the country's ongoing tragedy, the Rodriguez exhibit -- and in particular its final room, "The Silence and the Tragedy" -- feels like a mirror to the world around us.

* 'Manuel Rodriguez Lozano: Pensamiento y pintura,' closed Sunday, Oct. 9.

Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council

Here is anchor-baby media demigod Steve Jobs addressing the city council in Cupertino near San Jose in June of this year. He's presenting plans for a new Apple campus within city limits. The clip is a fascinating document of Upper Cali small-city circumstance and the graces of genius CEO caszh.

'Miss Bala' and Independence Day

At least ten people were reportedly killed during fiesta patrias celebrations across Mexico last night.

That's an extremely low figure relative to Mexico's population and relative to an expectation that rises quietly every recent mid-September when Mexico celebrates its Independence Day. Inevitably, some people worry that a narco-terror attack will strike somewhere around the Grito like in 2008 in Michoacan. (See here.)

This week at La Plaza, I used the occasion to consider the implications for Mexico's current drug war and its future as a nation bound on democratic principles (supposedly) through the new Canana release "Miss Bala."

Read my thoughts on the flick here. And definitely go see it.

La Plaza: More Mexico youths die from violence than car wrecks

** Originally published here.

As Mexico's drug war grinds on, violent homicide has overtaken car accidents as the leading cause of death of young people in the country, reports the Mexico City daily El Universal (link in Spanish).

Government statistics reviewed by the newspaper show that in 2008 and 2009, the second and third complete years of Mexico's drug war, violent deaths of people between 15 and 29 shot up about 150%. The figures rose almost equally across various narrower age brackets within that group.

Half of those homicides occurred in five states that include some of those worst hit by the current violence: Chihuahua, Baja California, Guerrero, Sinaloa and the state of Mexico, on the border with Mexico City. Violence is now the leading cause of death among Mexicans between the ages of 15 and 29, overtaking car accidents, the report said.

* Continue reading.

** Photo credit: Gael Gonzalez / Reuters 

9/11

I stayed away from the news on Sunday, then logged on and looked at pictures and newspaper front-pages. From Patrick Smith at Salon:

It's not the anniversary itself that irks me. The 10-year mark is -- or should be -- worthy of our solemn respects and a national timeout. But commemorating the attacks would feel a lot more meaningful if, in fact, we had ever stopped commemorating them. Our healing process has been never-ending -- occasionally introspective and edifying, but all too often maudlin and suffocating.

Yes, exactly. Where we going with all this? What happens to America on Monday? And every Monday thereafter? More of the same, seems to me. That's the truly sad part.

* Photo via Framework at LAT. * Salon link via FAY0LA.

La Plaza: Who is responsible for the casino tragedy in Monterrey?

(Hint: A lot of powerful people who'll most likely get away with it.)

** Originally published at La Plaza:

Four days after the deadly casino attack in Monterrey in northern Mexico, the owner of the burned-out Casino Royale has not emerged in public or spoken with authorities.

In fact, little is known about the owners and operators of the casino, despite initial reports (later contradicted) that said emergency exits in the establishment were blocked, contributing to the high death toll of 52. The dead included one pregnant woman, and over the weekend, as families buried their loved ones, another large demonstration against violence and insecurity took place in Monterrey (link in Spanish).

The demonstration ended in scuffles for some as activists made competing calls for the resignations of the Monterrey mayor, the Nuevo Leon state government, and President Felipe Calderon (video link in Spanish).

Nuevo Leon authorities said the investigation into the arson blaze is ongoing. On Monday, Gov. Rodrigo Medina announced the arrest of five men suspected of being involved in the attack. The suspects were identified as Zetas, the drug gang that is seeking control over Monterrey in a campaign that has spread fear and violence in the affluent industrial city.

Authorities said they were eager to speak with Raul Rocha Cantu, a Monterrey businessman identified as one of the owners of the casino. One newspaper said the casino owners had not complied with an extortion demand of 130,000 pesos a week, or about $10,000 -- common deals that often lead to brutal attacks against bars and other businesses in Monterrey.

Another report said Rocha has lived in the United States for at least the last two months, but no location was specified (link in Spanish).

In a series of interviews since Friday, the casino owners' lawyer, Juan Gomez Jayme, said attorney-client privilege would not permit him to divulge where Rocha was or whether he would present himself to Nuevo Leon authorities as they have requested (link in Spanish).

Gomez defended the establishment, saying the casino operated lawfully under municipal, state, and federal regulations. Yet questions were raised almost immediately about word of blocked emergency exits, which were reported by the chief of civil protection in Monterrey after firefighters put down the arson blaze.

** Continue reading at La Plaza.

Crave the grave?

Satire at the heart of California glam goth? It's "Crav the Grav," by Celicaby, a collaboration that's aka Death Wears White Socks. (Don't you miss 1830?)

La Plaza: Protests over black man's death in Mexico

** Originally published at La Plaza:

Shortly after midnight on May 11 in central Mexico City, Isaac Chinedu, an immigrant from Nigeria, became involved in some kind of confrontation with a group of police officers on a dark side street. The encounter escalated, and Chinedu was severely beaten. Some minutes later, he was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run driver, authorities say.

The case of Isaac Chinedu has led to demonstrations among Mexico City's African and Afro-Mexican communities, which are laying blame on the police officers who allegedly beat the 29-year-old before he apparently ran into traffic on a busy highway. Chinedu's Mexican widow, Liduvina Castillo, claims that racial prejudice resulted in her husband's death, a charge activists here are rallying around.

"This was an act of discrimination," Castillo told a newscast. "Why? Because they detained him simply because he was black. He wasn't doing anything. Isaac was waiting for a taxi to return to his home in peace."

Prosecutors and forensic investigators said they've determined that Chinedu died of injuries suffered after he was struck by a vehicle on Calzada de Tlalpan, but said his body showed trauma from blows delivered by at least two auxiliary police officers, whose actions were captured by surveillance video. Four officers have been questioned in the incident, but there have been no arrests or charges filed.

Two other officers who may have been involved in the incident have not been identified, authorities said. The hit-and-run driver, meanwhile, remains at-large.

Supporters have held two protests this month seeking justice for Chinedu and bringing attention to a small but growing community of black foreigners in Mexico (links in Spanish). Hundreds of refugees arrived from Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, as La Plaza has reported. Chinedu had come to Mexico as a refugee from Nigeria, reports said.

A civil organization, the Citizen's Committee in Defense of the Naturalized and Afro-Mexicans, staged the demonstrations and plans to initiate a fast Thursday morning on the doorstep of City Hall. The group's president, Wilner Metelus, a native of Haiti and long-term resident of Mexico, said group members seek a meeting with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard about the death of Chinedu.

"We no longer believe what the attorney general says about the case. There are many contradictions," Metelus said in an interview with La Plaza. "We want a direct dialogue with Marcelo Ebrard on the matter. How could any human being receive such treatment?"

Chinedu had lived in Mexico City for about 10 years. He was a legal resident and the father of two Mexican-born children. As the incident was reported by the local press, revelations surfaced that Chinedu had spent two years behind bars on minor narcotics infractions, which were later dismissed. (In Mexico's deeply troubled justice system, such long prison terms for minor or even nonexistent offenses are quite common.)

On May 11, his widow says, Chinedu was leaving a Mother's Day party and waiting for a cab. The grainy video shows Chinedu rushing toward a passing police cruiser to flag it down. He then appears to try to force his way inside. Standing police officers drag and then violently yank Chinedu back to the sidewalk, where he is struck repeatedly, the video shows.

Neighbors came to Chinedu's aid and the officers left the scene, officials said. "What I did was hug him and separate him from the police so they would stop beating him," a witness told ForoTV.

A top official in the Mexico City attorney general's office said Sunday in a news conference that as paramedics arrived and began tending to Chinedu, he regained consciousness, kicking and struggling. Without explanation, he got up, ran into traffic, and was hit by a fast-moving passenger car.

Toxicology tests showed Chinedu was not under the influence or alcohol or drugs on the night he died, officials said. The investigation is ongoing.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Image: Screen-grab showing surveillance video of the incident in which Isaac Chinedu died May 11, 2011. Credit: ForoTV

Barrios, beats, and blood in Ciudad Juarez

Above, the documentary short "Barrios, Beats, and Blood," on the hip-hop scene in Ciudad Juarez, now on YouTube in its entirety. (I covered the premiere of the film last year at the Morelia Film Festival for La Plaza; see here.)

Directed and produced by journalists Ioan Grillo and John Dickie, "Barrios, Beats, and Blood" offers a direct window into the worldview of youth in a U.S.-Mexico border city that is drowning in death. The voices here direct their protest MCing at the cartels and the government alike: "Queremos que se jode y ya que se quede un puto cartel."

I bet Gil Scott-Heron would be nodding his head right now.

Santa Sabina

"El Angel" by Santa Sabina, 1996. RIP, Rita Guerrero, "una voz de fuego."

In Mexico, more deaths than we can imagine

The men lying under arrest in the photograph above are not dead, but, who knows, by now they could be. It's been three days since this post from Ciudad Juarez by journalist Diego Osorno has been published. In Juarez today, three days is plenty of time to possibly get killed.

Juarez is a government-sustained human rights disaster, a 21st Century-style slow-burn multi-actor city-cide. Don't get the daily carnage tally by Molly Molloy at Frontera List? It tests the stomach. Juarez is drowning in death. But Juarez is just the tip of it all.

Read this piece in Spanish by Froylan Enciso in a recent issue of Gatopardo. Up in a town in the Sierra Madre, up from Mazatlán, a drug-trade-related ambush during Christmas 2009 leaves at least 40 people dead, maybe up to 100, Enciso writes during a visit home.

The incident never makes it into the press. It didn't happen. I checked the federal government database on homicides this morning. For Mazatlán, only 97 homicides are reported in 2009. That doesn't sound right ...

They tell us lately "at least" 35,000 have been killed in Mexico's drug-trade violence since the governments ignited it on themselves in 2006. That can't be accurate. Just ask someone who knows better, ask Metinides. As Enciso illustrates, so many dead are not reported, so many kidnapped are never returned. We'll never know.

The "drug war" is a fiction. The violence it is inflicting on the people of Mexico is very real. It is crushing the country. I don't know about you, but I've been tired of it. Yet there's still no end in sight.

Violence stops by decriminalizing and demilitarizing the binational industry that pumps drugs into the United States. But don't expect Obama or Calderon to come to that conclusion in the blah-blah at the White House this week.

Man, then who'd get to keep all the money?

* Photo via Gatopardo.com

Cut cranium

Una obra que sobresale casi al final del recorrido de la expo de Jose Clemente Orozco, en San Ildefonso. "Craneo recortado," proxilina en masonite. La obra tiene como fecha 1947, dos años antes de la muerte de Orozco. Pertence al Instituto Cultural Cabañas en Guadalajara.

Mi reporte.

An outstanding painting near the end of the Jose Clemente Orozco exhibit at San Ildefonso. "Cut Cranium," proxylin on masonite. The painting's date is 1947, two years before Orozco's death. It belongs to the Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara.

My report in link above.

Enrique Metinides: 'So many dead'

My La Plaza post on Christmas Eve on photographer Enrique Metinides turned into a piece in the print paper, which ran today. (Somewhere. Couldn't find it anywhere on the main pages at LATimes.com.) Clip:

Even Metinides professes wonder at the ultra-violence of today's drug conflict. "There is just such a frightening quantity of dead, that they'll never find all the cadavers," Metinides said, fingering silicone albums filled with favorite snaps.

Then the retired journalist stops himself, arching an eyebrow. "But why even say it? What does that have to do with me?" he asks, then answers his own question. "Nothing."

Thanks to the editors in Foreign and Calendar for spotting the post and asking for a broader piece. Thanks to curator Veronique Ricardoni for connecting the interview. And thanks to photographer Eunice Adorno for sharing her portraits of Metinides with the paper.

By the way, readers in L.A., where did it run? How does it look?

* Previously, Enrique Metinides: 'El Niño' with all the shots.