Intersections

Mexico's PRI opens campaign office in Los Angeles

** Originally published at World Now:

LYNWOOD, Calif. -- Immigrants supporting Mexico's formerly long-ruling political party have opened a campaign office in the Los Angeles area for its 2012 presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The office, opened Thursday at a Mexico-themed mall in this suburb, is an unofficial headquarters for the party in Southern California and represents a shift both for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and for the increasingly influential communities of Los Angeles-area immigrants from various regions of Mexico.

Officially the office is for a group calling itself the Committee of Migrants United for Mexico. Leaders said they would be phone-banking with their relatives back home to encourage them to vote for the PRI.

"We opened this office so that any migrant who has a proposal [can] pass it to us, and we pass it" to the presidential candidate, said Roman Cabral, a former migrant-abroad state legislator from Zacatecas state.

"We will have direct communication with Mexico City," he said.

Photographs of Peña Nieto adorn the walls of the mostly bare new office, where tortas and pan de dulce were served for participants and journalists, a party custom.

And just like back in Mexico, the PRI activists wore the party's bright red campaign color and spoke glowingly about Peña Nieto -- who is leading in polls -- and what they described as the party's "regenerated" identity.

The PRI for many years resisted reforms that would have given Mexicans abroad the right to vote. Their new presence in Southern California also reflects a change in the party's ideals and shows that the "new PRI" will pay attention to migrants' needs, activists said.

Yet at the office opening at the suburban Plaza Mexico mall, the PRI members found themselves facing  tough questions from local Spanish-language reporters. How could you support the PRI, one reporter asked, if decades of PRI policies and corruption scandals pushed many migrants to come to the United States?

"Why would I vote for the PRI if the PRI was the reason that we came here? Well, I respond, 'Why don't you go back?' It's been 12 years without the PRI and no one's gone back," said Felipe Cabral, also of Zacatecas. 

"The last 10 years is when the most migrants came, and that shows the bad work done by other parties," said Mike Gonzalez, an immigrant from Jalisco, referring to President Felipe Calderon's ruling National Action Party, or PAN.

Another reporter asked what the migrant PRI members thought of the grassroots student demonstrations  in Mexico against their candidate. Protesters argue that the dominant news network Televisa favors Peña Nieto's candidacy.

"I think Mr. Peña Nieto has won his media power through his good record," migrant Arturo Vega said.

The PRI members said they would propose that, if elected, Peña Nieto open a Cabinet-level ministry for migrant affairs. They said their effort in L.A. was entirely volunteer-based.

Peña Nieto leads by at least 15 points in most polls, ahead of Josefina Vazquez Mota of PAN and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of a three-party leftist coalition.

This year, more than 59,000 Mexicans living abroad requested mail-in ballots for the July 1 vote, electoral officials in Mexico City said.

* Top Photo: Angel Morales, center, and other migrant voters answer questions during the opening of a new office for the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico at the Plaza Mexico mall in Lynwood, May 24, 2012. Credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

** Bottom Photo: A view of the outside of the office at the Plaza Mexico mall. Credit: Daniel Hernandez

More snapshots from Monterrey, NRMAL fest *

El Festival NRMAL fue *laaaaa onda.* Pero la otra realidad pica.

From Wikileaks: "While there is public concern about the influence of the cartels, civil society is in general unaware of the degree to which the cartels have infiltrated key state and municipal institutions. All of the region's police forces are controlled by organized crime. In the case of San Pedro, the ABL cartel called the shots although a 15-person advance squad from la Familia was present in the city and trying to gain a foothold among the police force. (Separately, the former San Pedro Secretary of Public Security reports that La Familia has been engaged in such efforts intermittently since 2006.) As for the other police forces in the area, the Gulf Cartel was the true master. In general, and as was the case in San Pedro, the cartels did not attempt to bribe the municipal secretaries of public security, but bought off the number two and number three level officials on the force. Note: The mid-September detention by state law enforcement authorities of the Municipal Secretary for Public Security of Santiago (a Monterrey suburb) would represent an exception to this rule. End Note."

A new wave of SoCal ska, with a Latin beat *

** Originally published in the Calendar section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times:

On a wide but quiet strip of Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles, in the run-down Casa Honduras dance hall, the ska kids are waiting for the next band to start.

Couples are making out in the corners of the venue, attached to a Honduran restaurant. They sport dreadlocks, Afros and spiky punk 'dos and are dressed in everything from camouflage and combat boots to Chucks and suspenders.

A sound check ensues with a band called Blanco y Negro. Once its members get going, blasting the room with a frenetic Latin-punk sound sung both in English and Spanish, the young crowd forms a circle and begins to skank. The dance has them lifting their elbows and knees rhythmically to the ska beat, rushing and pushing against one another when the music accelerates into punk or metal.

Bodies are in motion, sweating, pounding skin to skin. Though just eight miles from downtown L.A., by the sounds and faces, this could be a jam in Mexico City or Tijuana.

Ska — the Jamaican sound that expanded into a variety of rock and reggae subgenres in the United Kingdom and then the United States in the late 1970s through the '90s — is booming again in Southern California. It is experiencing a comeback after a decade of relative exile, but this time around it's influenced by ska from Latin America.

Underground shows are happening in backyards and warehouses across Southern California, with mini-scenes developing in areas such as South and southeastern Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire.

"Do you remember the swing days? This is the new era of that," said Hollywood resident Josh Morales, 24. "But it's more ska-reggae."

"It's like a combination of cumbia with ska," Morales said as the band Los Chiles Verdes began warming up for its set. "It's like Spanish rock.... I don't know. It's hard to explain."

** Read the rest here. Read more ...

NRMAL music festival shows different side of Mexico

** Originally published in the L.A. Times Calendar section:

REPORTING FROM SAN PEDRO GARZA GARCIA, MEXICO -- Oakland-bred Raka Rich brought the flow of California hip-hop, in Spanish.

Puerto Rico's Davila 666 ignited a wild mosh-pit with its Latin-tinged punk.

And all kinds of new Mexican acts — as varied as Juan Cirerol of Mexicali and cumbia-rockers Sonido San Francisco — showed that Mexico's independent music scene just might be at its most dynamic in years. Over 12 hours on Saturday, some 4,500 fans gathered to hear more than 50 international acts at a sonically diverse annual music festival called NRMAL.

The name belies the fact that nothing here can be taken for granted. Not only was it the biggest NRMAL fest held in the past three years, but the fact that it took place in this industrial city of more than 4 million without any serious trouble makes it even more of a triumph.

Metropolitan Monterrey is currently a battleground in Mexico's ongoing drug war, where a string of deadly tragedies such as the last August's Casino Royale massacre, in which 52 people died after drug traffickers torched a casino, have traumatized a once-proud hub of industry and innovation.

The storied Monterrey night life that was once centered around the Barrio Antiguo neighborhood is all but dead after a series of shootings with multiple fatalities at popular night spots. Many musicians who in previous years helped make Monterrey an incubator for new Latino sounds — groups such as Kinky or newer rockers She's a Tease — have migrated to safer centers such as Mexico City or to the United States.

"There was sadness, deception, uncertainty, a lack of will to get things done," said NRMAL organizer Pablo Martinez, speaking about the effects of violence on the Monterrey scene. "I think the fruits of staying standing through this year is this festival."

The outdoor fete, with bands spread over three stages all day long, was a stylish yet friendly event where security was casual and the boundary between the performing musicians and the fans was almost nonexistent.

"This is definitely a cutting-edge festival," said Travis Egedy of Denver punk-rave act Pictureplane as the afternoon got going. "The idea to have a cross-cultural music festival is really important and really cool, getting Americans to play down here for Mexicans."

That welcoming vibe was partly the product of a new spirit of collaboration brought by this year's NRMAL co-curator, Brooklyn DIY promoter Todd P.

In 2010, Todd P. organized a separate festival in Monterrey dubbed MTY MX, competing with the budding NRMAL crew and its first festival. That same year, an outbreak of drug-war violence in Monterrey resulted in many U.S. performers canceling their visits at the last minute. Both festivals struggled.

This year, Todd P. joined forces with NRMAL, setting aside the previous atmosphere of competition. He pumped a New York indie ethos into the lineup with acts he invited such as Prince Rama, Liturgy and Gatekeeper.

"The story line is: It's so bad, things are falling apart and it's chaos," Todd P. said. "I'm here, I'm looking around. It's not falling apart. This is a functioning country. It has problems but it's not the country portrayed in the news."

* Read the rest here.

* Photo: Tijuana goth-pop singer Dani Shivers performs at Festival NRMAL in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, March 10, 2012.

Mariachis in Mexico struggle despite U.N. heritage nod

** Never got around to posting this here! Originally published at World Now (months ago):

Like most of the mariachi musicians milling about Plaza Garibaldi this early morning waiting for work, Juan Ramon Ramirez had his hands in his pockets, not on the strings of his vihuela.

It was cold, and there weren't many customers out looking for a song. Not even just a few days after Mexico's most well-known musical tradition got a dose of good news.

Mariachi music -- who hasn't ever heard that spirited strumming? -- now belongs to the world's list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," as declared this week by the United Nations.

Ramirez, 62, had heard about the U.N. designation and it sounded good to him.

"I hope it turns into more work," he said, not appearing very hopeful. "Well, it could turn into more work."

Minutes passed, and no one approached to commission a ringing rendition of "Cielito Lindo" or "El Rey."

"Let's hope this gets fixed," the musician said.

UNESCO, the U.N. educational and cultural agency, added mariachi and 18 other demonstrations of intangible world heritage to its list during a meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The additions include Chinese shadow puppetry and French horseback riding, which is intangibly vital for the world because it "emphasizes harmonious relations between humans and horses," the agency said.

UNESCO also added 11 demonstrations of intangible world heritage that, in its phrasing, are in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. These include Yaokwa, the "Enawene Nawe people's ritual for the maintenance of social and cosmic order," in the Brazilian Amazon, and a "circular breathing" singing technique from Mongolia.

But was mariachi placed on the wrong list? Could it be considered in Need of Urgent Safeguarding?

You might think so after a night at Plaza Garibaldi, or any plaza, it might seem, where mariachis traditionally gather and busk for work. Mariachis everywhere are having a tough time.

In Los Angeles, home to the world's second largest population of Mexicans, mariachis are feeling pushed out of the traditional Mariachi Plaza east of downtown due to the looming threat of development and gentrification.

In Guadalajara, the historic birthplace of mariachi, the musicians at the Plaza de los Mariachis complain of a declining clientele due to security fears and a lack of support from the local government.

The city is the capital of Jalisco state in western Mexico, and it means business when it often proclaims itself the "cradle" of Mexican culture. Tequila, the highly tangible alcoholic spirit, is also from there.

Here in Mexico City, Plaza Garibaldi north of downtown has been completely remodeled in the last two years, with a new plaza floor and a new tequila museum. Local mariachis, however, say the imposing museum structure is unwelcoming and "doesn't have a point." The remodeling also kept customers away for months at a time, and since the project was finished, they haven't quite come back.

That's how mariachi David Figueroa put it. The 66-year-old guitar player said the fixes to the plaza are largely cosmetic. He's played in Plaza Garibaldi, he said, since 1957. His workload suffered once the city started cleaning up the area, and it hasn't fully recovered since. 

Attempts at integrating mariachis into established unions have also produced poor results for the musicians, Figueroa added.

"What we really need is a good restaurant with good food where you can go listen to good music," Figueroa said. "They don't help us at all."

Indeed, mariachi's addition to the UNESCO list will probably mean little to the musicians who gather at places like Garibaldi. (The full-band price for a song, 150 pesos or about $11, has not changed since the Sunday news of the UNESCO list, several musicians acknowledged.)

Here, drunken revelers show up to hire bands or trios for whatever song they might want, in just about any genre. Few make much of a distinction between the traditional mariachis -- with their form-fitting suits and wide-brimmed sombreros -- and newer additions to the plaza who play popular nortenos from Mexico's north or jarocho from the tropical eastern coast.

"Now they think they own the plaza!" Figueroa huffed. "But here, the tradition of Plaza Garibaldi has always been mariachi. It's not norteno, not jarocho, not trio, it's mariachi."

A song wafted over the chilly night air from nearby. The men shivered.

"Hopefully the patrimony [list] will mean people will respect mariachis more," said viola player Antonio Hernandez, 55. "We only charge what you're supposed to charge."

* Photo: Mariachis perform in 2009. Credit: UNESCO

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (At Burning Man)

If you're like most people and have never been to Burning Man, here's a video you won't know whether to love or to hate: A narration of the Dr. Seuss classic "Oh the places you'll go!" by people of the desert-rave "tribe."

Does it melt your heart and brain? (Wait. Should we go this year?)

Raquel Welch for 2012

Raquel Welch singing "Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine In" at the pyramids of Teotihuacan, via mañanarama, always on the touch.

The costumes are weirdo enough, but the interplay with the ancient archeological site and performers who appear to be native mexicanos is even weirder. Can she come back and do more? Or should we film a re-make?

Feliz año nuevo!

El bajón y el delirio

The Spanish-language translation of my book, "El bajón y el delirio," is going on sale in Mexico. I'm excited and nervous. Starting in January, I'm going to have to re-live the book all over again, this time in chilango Spanish, which automatically takes the intimacy and immediacy of the book to other levels.

I'm also super happy with it y espero que los lectores lo disfruten. The design is beautiful, a worthy match to the terrific design of the original edition. For the Spanish edition, the celebrated Alejandro Magallanes devised a double-flap sketch for the cover, with the title in relief, as if the words were tagged with a scriber. He has more on his design at his blog, here.

(I love it. Gracias, Alejandro!)

The translation of "Down & Delirious in Mexico City" to Spanish is by Elizabeth Flores (an old friend from the Survival Brigade). Liz and I worked closely all summer on the translation, meeting in person to review each chapter line-by-line, discussing every possible outcome for a translation we both wanted to ring as true as possible for D.F. readers, yet while also retaining some of my native pochismos.

The editor of the translation is Guillermo Osorno, an associate editor at Editorial Oceano, my publisher in Spanish. Osorno is also editor of Gatopardo magazine, where one of two early sneaks of the book is published, in the December issue. Here is the chapter titled "Originales del punk," in its entirety, a journey through Mexico City punk, to the other side of Santa Fe, and back.

I hope you like it. I re-read it in the magazine with lots of trepidation, then found myself moved by it in a totally new way. You'll see.

At the news site Animal Politico, the book's first chapter is published as a downloadable document. Here is "Guadalupanos pachecos," in honor of December 12, the virgencita's feast day. 

Of course, there will be another big-ass party. Thank you. Y saludos a la banda de la caseta a Cuernavaca, a Reyes y su familia, y a los Agudos Crónicos y Vegetales.

* Elsewhere, "Gringo, chicano, chilango, y delirante."

Tepichulos y Guapiteñas?

Entonces, which is it? Watch above as Samantha leads the way. Again, a deeper investigation is necessary here! But whichever it is, I'm in.

* Previously, "Hipstertitlan ... o chakahipsters?" "The pachucos of Tepito," "Sonidero on the streets," "Human madness for San Judas Tadeo."

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."

A place where Guatemalan day laborers are survivors of war

** Originally published at World Now:

A day laborer outside a Home Depot hardware store in northeast Los Angeles is riding in a bright orange shopping cart in the store's parking lot, peering through imaginary binoculars, as if he were on patrol in a dangerous jungle.

Others are crawling under parked vehicles as if squeezing below barbed wire, or diving and body-rolling as if evading gunfire. Before a sale display for storage sheds, two men lie still on the asphalt, their legs spread, as if dead.

The laborers are undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, and in an unsettling video installation by Mexican artist Yoshua Okon on view at a university gallery in Mexico City, they are war survivors playing themselves.

Before Okon's cameras, the migrants are reenacting their days fighting in Guatemala's long and catastrophic civil war.

The four-channel video piece, called "Octopus," is Okon's latest and possibly most provocative video in a career in which he frequently pushes against viewers' comfort zones with the use of improvising non-actors.

A native of Mexico City, Okon has also lived part-time in Los Angeles. He bought a house in L.A. and came to participate in a rite of passage for many new U.S. homeowners in the last decade -- hiring day workers.

The men he found at the Home Depot store in the Cypress Park district, it turned out, were indigenous Maya from Guatemala. They spoke a Mayan dialect and very little Spanish or English. They had escaped Guatemala's war in search of work in the United States.

Some fought for the U.S.-backed military government and others for the leftist guerrillas. Some, he said, showed him scars of bullet wounds. Now, as laborers at the bottom of the U.S. social ladder, they fight for scraps of work in the slumping construction market.

"They're more afraid of immigration than about talking about the war," Okon said during a visit this week to the exhibition space in Mexico City's Roma district. "To me, that's what the piece is about. It's the United States. The war is not over. The war is over there."

Okon, 41, has made films with wanna-be Nazis in Mexico City, an isolated family in California's high desert getting drunk on "White Russians," and Mexican police officers who agree to make bawdy sexual gestures they probably shouldn't in uniform.

While these works usually elicit in viewers a mix of chuckles and creeps, "Octopus" is different.

The new video is guided by a polemical stance, not self-parody. Home Depot customers amble past the bizarre scenes playing out with hardly a blink, showing that workers who build homes in the United States have "always been invisible," Okon said.

The artist also had to work guerrilla-style in some form himself. He filmed on the store's parking lot without proper permission. "I had to constantly negotiate with the security guards, until they finally kicked me out," he said.

Over two days of filming in March, Okon said the men from Guatemala gradually stopped giggling through takes and began to seriously inhabit -- or re-inhabit -- their roles. "It felt like a job," one of the workers later told the LA Weekly. And indeed it was; Okon said he paid the men a double day-rate for their time.

"Octopus," commissioned by the Hammer Museum at UCLA, will show at the Casa Jose Galvan exhibition space in Mexico City through January. Next year, Okon plans to take the piece toProyectos Ultravioleta, an arts space in Guatemala City.

A single-screen version of the 18-minute piece is viewable here. In one shot, as seen above, a motorist drives past Okon's cameras with a bumper sticker that reads, "Voter for a new foreign policy."

The shot was not staged.

* Image: A still from 'Pulpo.'

Estrella Cercana: A newspaper's obituary, Part 4

** ... Continued from previous post [or start with Part 1, then 2, then 3].

And here is some of the cool shit we got around to publishing in six lil issues of 8-pages each!

This was the best part of the entire Estrella Cercana operation, I think. We turned into a platform for fresh and interesting work, intersecting on the printed page across text and image, and often in interaction with pieces in the "Distant Star" show at the gallery.

We had no editorial guidelines from our publisher, the Kuris. The sky was the limit.

And as things came in, we went with the most Newsy stuff possible. Inevitably, this led to some criticisms about whether there was too much death, exploitation, violence, abuse, loathing, shock-value, guns, fascism, skin, dirty sex, and politics in our pages.

Our response, inevitably, was, 'Duh.' This is a NEWSpaper. (But with pseudonyms at work, yes.) We published, and please stay with me, the following ...

Estrella Cercana: A newspaper's obituary, Part 3

** ... Continued from previous post.

The launch of a project without an immediate precedent -- in this case, an experimental newspaper with a six-week life-span -- is never smooth. The team had to establish a working schedule that could form around our already-busy lives. We had to communicate to our collaborators what we wanted but didn't have a model to show them yet. And we had to settle on a printer.

From a year of service leading the campus paper at Berkeley (props to anyone who does it; the Daily Cal is a 15,000-circ., city-serving, five-days-a-week, totally independent operation), I knew we had to establish a solid working relationship with the imprenta Homero found and eventually hired.

One evening early on, we went to visit and personally introduce ourselves at Litografía HEVA, near Tlatelolco. We arrived on a bad footing from the get-go.

The first issue was delayed by several days due to a serious printing error in the first-run of the first issue. We couldn't introduce Estrella Cercana to our readers with huge black marks over some of the images, as the first-run turned out, and we had to convince Señor Felipe, our man at HEVA, that the printer needed to make a second-run for us. For free.

Don Felipe was cool. Chilango to the core, but cool. About fifteen years ago, he told us, he lost half of his left-hand index finger in an accident on a large cutting machine in the workshop. (See Don Felipe standing with that machine here, and his half-finger here.) We checked out machines and techniques that now only exist in analog-era journalists' nostalgic memories: off-set, movable types, plates, inks!, etc.

During the visit, Don Felipe made a weird and slightly offensive comment that ended becoming something of a calling card for us, "Este periódico no es para familias ni para gente honesta." ("This newspaper isn't for families or for honest people.")

Huh?

Our work schedule also proved challenging. Everyone on board was good for the project because we're the sort of people who are constantly juggling several projects at once. (I work as a news assistant in the Mexico City bureau of the L.A. Times, contributing regularly to the World Now blog.) We decided we would work whenever possible at the Kurimanzutto space, an environment which I ended up developing a strong admiration for, it's so well-done, or at our home offices.

Yet over the six hectic and crazied weeks, the design and editorial team never quite pinned down a reliable schedule. We worked together a few nights a week whenever we could, and rushed through galley edits at the last minute in order to meet our weekly Thursday (... or Friday...) printing deadline.

This kind of pace meant we had limited time to engage with collaborators. We needed pieces to come in clean and sharp, as ready for publication as possible. A couple things we commissioned, especially for the most "relevant" and up-to-date news reports we carried (Beyonce's baby-bump, for example, or Justin Bieber's visit to DF).

We also, you might've noticed, permitted writers to submit pieces under psuedonyms, making for a lot of unusual fun fun fun.

** Part 4, next.

(* Photo above, inside Litografía HEVA, by @demomilton.)

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.

⟢ Estrella Cercana, Part 2 ⟣

Los contenidos del primer num. de Estrella Cercana ya estan en línea. Checkanlo! El periódico se puede conseguir imprentos en kurimanzutto, y varios otros locaciones entre el Centro, la Condesa, Roma, y por los alrededores.

Follow @StrellaCercana for the details. 

* More info here. cc: The one and only ... Zemmoa. ("Fun Fun Fun.")

Nuevo Laredo: Killing social media users in Mexico

** Originally published at World Now at the L.A. Times, the paper's new international news blog. My recent base at LAT.com, La Plaza, is hereby retired, but links remain live and available. Thanks for the follows and re-posts and continued tips and feedback.

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- A woman found decapitated in the border city of Nuevo Laredo is being mourned as an apparent member of a social networking site used by local residents to share information on drug cartel activity.

The victim was found early Saturday with a note nearby saying she was killed for posting messages online about violent or criminal incidents in Nuevo Laredo.

The Tamaulipas state attorney general's office identified the woman as Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro, 39, and said she was an editor at the newspaper Primera Hora (links in Spanish). The Associated Press, however, quoting an employee of the newspaper, identified the victim as Marisol Macias Castaneda, and said she held an administrative and not an editorial post at Primera Hora.

A web search of the newspaper's website found no mention of the woman's death or the discovery of a decapitated female body on Saturday.

But on the website Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, a banner image appeared memorializing a member known as NenaDLaredo. "You'll always be present," the display says.

⟢ Estrella Cercana ⟣

Here's the site for Estrella Cercana, our experimental newspaper underway now at kurimanzutto. At the site, the main editorial crew and I are posting images and links to stuff we're thinking about, talking about, laughing about, cringing at, all through the production process for the weekly periódico con fin de vida.

We'll also be posting the issue's content on the day we publish, planned now for Saturdays through Nov. 5, as well as .pdf files of how the paper looks in print once distributed here in Mexico City.

What is Estrella Cercana, you ask?

It's a publishing project built around Distant Star, the show currently up at kuri, inspired by the literature of Roberto Bolaño. (See Intersections posts on Bolaño from 2007 here and from 2009 here). We're building a weekly newspaper, primarily in Spanish, partly in spirit of the Infrarrealists, but sort-of-actually-really-not-all.

("I haven't even read 2666, and that's so infrarrealista!")

Our newsroom is roaming between the gallery space and various points in the city, and so far always jussied up with the proper editorial bottles and snacks. The first issue of EC drops this Saturday, Sept. 24, and we haven't quite yet figured out how we're going to get it into people's hands. But it's definitely coming. Each issue will feature a beautiful full-color visual piece as a centerfold, and will also come with a link to a special audio track from one of our many beat-oriented comrades and collaborators.

We're all super excited, super nervous, and super busy (everyone on the small team has regular gigs or is juggling various other projects). So let's report it out, be nosy, read, not read, burn books, have a dance party, start a reality TV propaganda show, I dunno!

Update soon.

* NOTE: We are accepting pitches for your Highly Newsworthy stories, photography, cartoons, comics, info-graphics or maps, anything! Write us at prensaestrellacercana at gmail. Or to advertise in our pages, to reach our very classy would-be readers, please write publicidadestrellacercana at gmail.

** ABOVE: A Polaroid shot I've been holding onto for years. West Temple Street, Los Angeles, Calif., circa 2004. It lasted only a day, if not hours.

Eyaculacion Post Mortem

This is Eyaculacion Post Mortem, from Barcelona, on Friday night at Club Atlantico in downtown Mexico DF. Like death-punk? They're synthy and hardcore. Live, one of the best shows of any kind I've been to in a long while.

People were dressed in their darky punk best. I was busy in the slam. Everyone's sweat. Bodies. "Gente guapa aqui en México," said a voice from behind the masks.

Here's an FB photo set from the show. Here's the band's blog with a report from a stop at the Airliner in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. Sick.

Hipstertitlán ... o chakahipsters?

Here's part one the episode from June of the Canal 22 program Esquizofrenia on hipsters in Mexico City, with a exploration of the Condesa vortex then a graceful and smart detour to reggaetonero-land. I am interviewed as a periodista cultural along with a few other expert commentators.

Also appearing in part two and three. Fascinating, and great television!

I had no idea there was such a thing as "reggaetoneros fresas." For our part, we had started calling them chakahipsters. You know who I'm talking about. Have we really come full circle?

Naomi

Met this stunning lady at Mexico City pride a few weeks ago. 'Naomi.'

Reading: 'The Voting Booth After Dark,' or, remember 2008?

It's 2011 and the only memory I have left from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary -- in which Barack Obama was fighting a political death-match against the Clinton machine -- is Bill Clinton saying something mildly demeaning about Obama's campaign while in South Carolina.

As far as I was concerned, Obama was a darling, semi-naive pipe-dream until the very last minute.

So I was surprised when I opened a note from a writer who said she'd like me to read a book she wrote about a young gay Latina in East L.A. with a drinking problem, and set during the 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Huh?

The following is an excerpt from that book, "The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive," by Vanessa Libertad Garcia. This is from a section called "Lament," while the speaker is on the beach drinking 40s and watching a homeless man collect trash:

I've given others money: Friends, Acquaintances, Churches, Family, Causes, Co-workers, and Other homeless people. I drink the second bottle and catch him to my left not too far away.

I call him over. "Hey you!"

He walks over. It takes him a couple of minutes. Each small step he makes, I take a long swig. I finish it. He opens his bag. I drop it in. We both hear it clank.

I ask him to sit. I ask him his name. I open the third 40.

We're both liberal. Eugene is a lot more hopeful than I. I ask him why he's homeless, of course. He responds and then I reply with a monologue about why I want to die.

Busting up. Throughout, in a series of loosely interconnected sections of prose and poetry (and even a long transcribed IM chat), the book is this wonderful mix of coy and cutting, open-hearted and bleak. It is a short book and ends without a looping resolution, yet it is an enjoyable, satisfying read. The prose sections in first-person have some real gems. Here's another:

Look at me in this mirror, my tits, breasts look great, my face is doing its job and this forty tastes so gooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. I wonder if that bi chick, with the ex-boyfriend, is going to be there tonight. Why can't we just get drunk and then I fingerfuck her and then she falls asleep in my arms all lusty and needy like Kathleen Turner in all those early films before the fun went to her face and turned her into Chandler's dad and then I leave at 6am and then I get a mcgriddle.

See what I mean?

A real voice. "The Voting Booth After Dark" also did something only good books can do: It reminds you --- or tricks you into being reminded -- of places you've been, people and crews you know, even situations that feel familiar or thought-trains you've had.

The thing also made me miss L.A. a little. The billboards. The stucco-choked windows poking out from behind sound walls on the freeways. The unpretentious yet sophisticated L.A. kids who are usually, deep down, from East of East L.A. The bars.

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.

Botas picudas

No exaggeration, a good 18 different people have personally sent me this link since it went live (though I saw right after it dropped, via Mudd Up!). So I'm just gonna post it already. Pointy Boots. Extremely pointy pointy boots. Botas picudas.

I'm as much at a loss about this 'craze' as you must be.

The video, part of an art package by Vice, is an introduction to a fashion phenomenon that is directly tied to the tribal guarachero boom that has taken hold in the north of Mexico and in some parts of the U.S, particularly in Texas. Filmmaker Bernardo Loyola and crew visit a town in San Luis Potosí named Matehuala (near the border with Nuevo Leon state), where local vatos claim the pointy boots were invented.

3BALL MTY mix-master Erick Rincon ("un dios para hacer el tribal") makes an appearance. He makes the connection between SLP and its migrant diaspora in the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex. Watch and learn.

Let's just quickly hit the most obvious wonders. The pointy boots point to a fusion between a music movement and a regional tribalism in Mexico that appears to have nothing to do with any kind of illicit trade, neither as a belated reaction to a trend from north of the border. The boots, intervened, are the basis for a competitive dance-crew culture as well. Reminds me somewhat of the ass-bouncing cowboy crews in California.

For a window into the pointy boots' greater paisa-sphere, check in at Chuntaritos. And for pointy boots from Dallas that glow in the dark, see this video at mun2.

* Photo above via Vice. * Post edited. ** See Intersections category Tribes for more.

A New York diary, Part 2

I'm just gonna to keep it real up-front right here.

During Part 1, Tuesday night, I had a nice dinner in the West Village with a friend, nice little Italian place, quintessentially New York, four cheeses. Later, in the dead of night, my stomach rumbled me awake. I got up. I then proceeded to puke up buckets and buckets of purple cheese sludge.

It was really disgusting. Came without warning, unprompted by alcohol or anything else. Just a violent expulsion. At a loss once more. Something in this city is disagreeing with me, I thought. Then Thursday happened ...

New Yorkers *

One minute in New York City, a stranger on a subway staircase is barking -- "Excuse me!" -- because he perceives that you are standing directly in his way, on his way to some Very Important Business, and he's just about prepared to run you over. The next, someone stops, engages, makes conversation, and it is genuine and the engagement is mutual.

People who were born and raised here say the famous rudeness of New Yorkers is just a matter of a misperception. In a city this fast, competitive, overcrowded, and cold, "being fast is being polite." The look in people's eyes when you approach them is: "Whatta ya need whatta ya need whatta need."

The winter's been hard. People just say "brutal" and shake their head, in a sustained disbelief. You can see it in their faces. It's been so cold this week (except Monday) and it seems like the winter just isn't over. They just want to get home and get into bed. You gotta be quick. A friend said this morning about the snap-snap-snap: "It's neighborly, it's helping everyone out, keep it going."

Gotcha.

Since I've been here I've been asking nahua-looking faces, 'De donde eres?' They say Mexico -- with one Guatemala so far. Puebla, Neza, el Estado. They're mostly behind the counter, hustling. They wanna answer in English but I'll jostle the conversation back into Spanish, just to keep hearing the dialect in this outer-world context.

Last night with a buzz on the L back into Brooklyn I asked another guy who was having a conversation with another guy. I basically interrupted. I asked him where he was from. He was leaning against the standing pole and holding it with his hands, over his head. He looked at me like I was crazy. Like, 'Mexico, duh, pendejo.'

Where in Mexico? He rolled his eyes. Like, 'Where else?' "Poblanos," he said. Just straight-up rude. I backed off.

OK. You guys are fully integrated.

Links: "WNYC: Know Your Neighbor: Lucia, the Frequent Flyer to Mexico." "WNYC: Dominican Bachata Founder Spices Up Tiny Washington Heights Restaurant." "Nueva York, by Carolina Gonzalez and Seth Kugel." "New York Times Video: Playing the Subways." "Mexican New York, by Robert Courtney Smith."

More: East WillyB, a New Web Series. Club Atlantis. Camaradas el barrio. GHE20 G0TH1K. ** Remezcla.

Someone ...

... in New York City right now is writing PEMEX. Pemex, as in the state oil company in Mexico. Nice choice of letters, which is what it's really all about.

I spotted this lil guy of a tag while on a walk with Joven Will the other night along the now-soul-crunching region of Manhattan formerly known as something that used to be called the Lower East Side.

Now, I really don't know what you're supposed to call this. To think, these streets were once the trods of SACER-IRAK. But fuck-wait, what happened to them?

No use complaining anymore. I'm just gonna look at more by Pemex, look for more by SHA MONEY, and hope for the best. In New York, the birthplace of modern graffiti, bombing will never die.

Skanking in San Bernardino *

Above, kids in the midst of some hard-core skanking at an underground ska toquin in San Bernardino, Calif., up near the mountains in the Inland Empire, Friday, February 11, 2011. I shot these photos with a disposible camera. It's all I had on me. It was so smokey and hot in there.

What is skank? Wikipedia says: "Originally, skanking consisted of a 'running man' motion of the legs to the beat while alternating bent-elbow fist-punches, left and right. Over time, however, variations have emerged across the musical world. The punk version features a sharp striking out look with the arms, and is sometimes used in moshing to knock around others doing the same."

Here's a blog-post on Skanking 101.

The show got going in a warehouse behind a storefront in downtown San Bernardino, with a long line-up of IE ska bands, a 5-dollar cover, and a BOYB ground-rule that usually promotes good vibes and good skanking. The dudes in Los Rudos told me about it during an interview the night before in Riverside (more on that later!), so I went. Among the bands on the bill, some of the hardest working Latin ska bands in the IE: Cerebro Negro, Skakahuate, La Liberacion, and more.

More ...

Joy Haus *

It hit me standing front-and-center before a Joy Division/Bauhaus cover band at a tucked-away little "centro cultural" (read: bar) on Bolivar in Centro, with two friends, Susana and Andreina, and Andreina's tattoo artist homies from down on Regina: Really, I could die happy right now.

Above, Joy Haus, playing all the dark-core post-punk hits, late Saturday, March 5, 2011. They played so good -- "She's Lost Control," "Bela Lugosi is Dead," "Love Will Tear Us Apart," "The Sanity Assassin" -- I coulda been in Manchester, circa 1979. In Mexico City, kids know their rock covers.

I can't find much of an Internet presence for Joy Haus, and I was hesitant to hit them up right away after their set because the singer was so, um, intense while performing.  Called it a night. Felt so good the next day.

"Nos desquitamos de todos los pedos esa noche, pero cabron."

More photos and a short video clip after the jump.

No Grupo: Art provocateurs in 70s, 80s Mexico

* Above, No Grupo, Mexico City, c. 1980. Don't they look familiar?

No Grupo, pictured above, formed in Mexico City in 1977 and were active until 1983. They did conceptual collaborative art actions, but preferred not to be called a collective. They arrived uninvited to the Paris Biennial in the form of photographic face masks, they interviewed elder artists then harpooned their work in video or performance pieces, they did mail and paper art, they "patented" the act of appreciating the taco.

An exhibit on No-Grupo is up for only days more at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City. It opened in October last year and closes on March 13. I finally caught it recently. It's an exciting show because you can make an immediate parallel to the work of a similar group doing similar work at the time in Los Angeles, Asco.

No-Grupo consisted of four core artists, like Asco, three men and one woman, also like Asco, and collaborated with several transient members, again like Asco. Melquiades Herrera, Alfredo Núñez, Rubén Valencia, and Maris Bustamante (who led the taco-patenting project) made conceptual gestures that played off popular, "low-brow" culture in Mexico City. They rejected dominant norms in a stratified state-dependent art-world of the day in performances in galleries and museums. They had fun.