"Illegal alien tribute to America"

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ILLEGAL ALIEN TRIBUTE TO AMERICA:
By Skrualla

We break the law in every way
Make working American citizens pay
Buy junk food with free food stamps
Take free stuff back to our camps

Don't have to be responsible
Your taxes keep our bellies full
Some say that we should look for jobs
Why should we, we’re welfare slobs

We cross border, now you must please
Our people sick with bad disease
Demand free cash with grubby hands
Because Obama says we can

When we are angered, we protest
For more welfare you must invest
Our familias wave our flag
You hear us gripe and moan and nag

(10 toughest border crossings in the world)

Our mijos you must educate
Even though they are ingrates
They get school meals, all for free
Must come home sick, well don’t call me

Don’t care if kids will pass or fail
They’ll join a gang, wind up in jail
They’re treated mucho good in there
Thanks to your Obummacare

We murder, steal, destroy your land
Get more free food stamps, YES WE CAN!
Breed like rabbits in a pen
Come back for more free stuff again

Yes we really like it here
Our EBT cards buy our beer
Have no need to look for work
Keep paying our way, American jerks!

Some education reform Mexico!

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A sign on a Mexican bus stop

How applicable is this propaganda after the bizarre incident involving the 42 43 college students who were ambushed with a surprise 'field trip'?

The billboard reads as follows:
With the participation of your communities you get back EDUCATIONAL/LEARNING SPACES. 
The Education Reform Program is on the move. www.sep.gob.mx

Mexico is full of this double-speak crap. 
The gov't publicizes all sorts of non-stop TV and radio commercials and announcements of purported modern achievements and patriotism. Anything, though, that can be verified by the 'eyeball test' like adequate standards of living, judicial due process and drinkable agua ain't among them.

Presidente Nieto 

makes Washington trip

At least somebody is protecting their border

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According to the Examiner report below, the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala (beautiful countries, by the way, I've been to them both) recently confirmed a pact on July 7th to, essentially, aid further illegal immigration to the United States of America. Say whuh?!

(Examiner article)

When the natives vowed to take back their lands who would've thought it would come via a "humanitarian crisis"? 

Stuck between two countries (US/MX)

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Also known as Hell on earth. There's a movie, starring Tom Hanks, where he plays a man who lives in the airport terminal because he has no documented country of citizenship. This is like that only far less cute. If one enters Tijuana via ground transport (or tours downtown) chances are very, very, very high that one will encounter the literal wasteland that is home to the unfortunate lot, both, stuck from making a living in Mexico and entering America.

At any time of the day individuals stand and call up to passers-by begging and pleading for alms to be thrown their way

These people, homeless, forsaken, dirty, rejected, live under the bridges in Tijuana's river. Like trolls. I suppose water once flowed through it (or maybe it still does during specific times of the year) but I've only ever seen a steady stream of waste churn through. In fact, the walls on either sides are decorated with large murals so I guess artists wouldn't do that if they expected the work to be covered by shit water. And that's about as pretty as it gets. The other, living images are a painful eye-sore.

tale of two cities 

or Upstairs, Downstairs

Typically the lost souls are illegals deported back to Mexico -- but with no connections to the land whatsoever besides nationality. That means no family, friends, jobs, resources. Some of them have grown up in America without, unfortunately, ever becoming American. Go figure. Criminals, junkies, vagabonds wouldn't be an unwarranted generalization. However some do have skills/trades; they're simply without any wherewithal to apply them. At any time of the day individuals stand and call up to passers-by begging and pleading for alms to be thrown their way.

I guess artists wouldn't do that if they expected the work to be covered by shit water

These rejects - because it's a fact: Mexico doesn't want them either - establish tent cities along the river. At night they start camp fires which stink up the air. 

In Playas de Tijuana, the westernmost section of the city along the coast and one of the preferred areas for expats, some homeless people (and regular beach goers too) start stinky campfires on the beach. A neighbor told me the homeless used to sleep under the boardwalk until authorities ran them out. Now, the homeless break off parts of the boardwalk, and whatever else is flammable, for their heat! At this rate, in a year the boardwalk will be as snaggletooth as Broom-Hilda. 

Big Brother landlord

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Some landlords have Gov't complexes when it comes to renting their spaces: they want to know everything about you and be all up in your business. Or you can think of it as playing Mother; with their house rules regarding what the renter can and can not do under "their roof."

While apt-hunting in Baja California I came across just such a post on Craigslist. The building is listed in Playas de Tijuana - supposedly the nicer area of town seeing as how it is near the beach (playas is Spanish for beach), populated with English-speaking foreigners and, subsequently, charges higher rents - and advertised as U.S. STANDARDS. But, according to the long-winded ad, renters can't have company over -- unless they fork over an additional $60USD per night. Wtf?! The sonofabitch is charging $400/month for a supposedly private apartment and has the gall to dictate how one socializes?

Or you can think of it as playing Mother

A check of the personal contact reveals a United Kingdom email address. The U.K. is one of the countries with the most prevalent surveillance. It was also, you might recall, the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. It sounds like this British expat should carry his pink hide back across the Pond and live under Big Brother since he approves of it so much. I wasn't stupid enough to answer this ad - apart from a geriatric who in the hell would? - but I did email the owner about his hubris. This is how he replied (notice the funny characters alongside the iPhone. Suddenly the greediness all makes sense):   

FUCK OFF YOU BLOODY BASTARD! If I don't like u r not obligated to stay with us. We charge extra to prevent tenants from bringing the entire family as many of u tried to do it in the several occasions. Do u get it stupid!

iPhone Россия/אןלימןר גיירמן 

Cinco de Mayo? Who cares!

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I'm in Mexico and I can tell you: Cinco de Mayo means shit. 

The importance of the holiday ranks right up there with the Easter Bunny. It's cutesy and a good time for family/communal gatherings without the drama of hatchets in shallow graves. To help grasp a hold of the holiday just look at who celebrates it. Here's a hint: it is a North American country but it ain't Mexico and it ain't Canada. 

Fact is, Cinco de Mayo does not even garner a bat of the eye in Mexico! The first of the month is Mexico's Labor Day (Dia de Trabajadores "Workers' Day") and you best believe the citizens observed that holiday...producing, in effect, a five-day weekend. Hard working, my ass.

President Obama took the moment to advance his immigration reform. The Speechmaker should divert those smoke-and-mirror stunts towards something viable and concrete like the ridiculously stressful San Ysidro port of entry. Only in America is another country's Independence Day seriously observed. Silly gringos....

El Chayo is CA-RAZE-AY

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He ain't crazy. He's ca-raze-ay! And now El Chayo is dead -- for real this time. Maybe. Leave it to the Mexicans to make even death complicated. No mames, cabron!

The druglord Nazario "El Chayo" Moreno (aka El Mas Loco 'the Craziest One') was a brutal sonofabitch who headed the powerful, ruthless Knights Templar cartel before being killed in 2010. But, just like a cheesy plot in the telenovelas (soap operas full of shouting and ham acting), it turns out the Crazy One wasn't dead at all! Could it have been a serious case of diarrhea or had he - or someone - faked his death. Fact is, his corpse was never found back then. Normally this would remain a cold case BUT in Mexico where over 300 low-skilled females mysteriously turned up dead in Ciudad Juarez, alone, since around 1993 and the pornography of death is routinely broadcast on the news as well as casually enjoyed in publications such as Alarma! it is not, then, so surprising that a suddenly unseen individual would logically been declared dead. 

Now, according to immediate statements from the Mexican gov't, the cartel and the nation's marines had a gunfight last night, March 9th, in Michoacan in which it is believed El Mas Loco became El Muerto (the Dead One) -- pending the coroner's review.

(read more in this Latin Times article)

PS: They make tasty ice cream in Michoacan, though. 

What Mandela would say to the Mexican president

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Mexican President Peña: Mexico will honor Mandela by being                            more egalitarian.

Mandela (from the grave): Uh-huh...start with the numerous                            black people there.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that Mexicans are very color-conscious -- and far from being above racism. There is a small population of native born black people in the country but from the stares and pointed fingers I get (even when I have my shirt on) it is evident seeing real-live black persons is still a novelty. Just to be clear, the year is now 2013. 

What do you make of it: think the cartoon is making a point of color injustice or economic injustice?

Skimpy reports of Malcolm Shabazz's murder

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I was in Mexico when young Malcolm Shabazz was killed. However, I just now heard about it -- three weeks later. This is unbelievable. I flew into Mexico City on May 4th (and then traveled to the west coast) and Shabazz was beaten to death, presumably by extortionist waiters, on the night of May 9th. And this news I only happened to learn via The Christian Science Monitor article about last night's mass kidnappings in Mexico City. Unbelievable! 

Yesterday I read about the (white)Arizona mother jailed in Mexico because of marijuana found under her bus seat (yesterday I travelled through Mexico on the bus!) and, before that, the sensational torture and gang-rape of Spanish tourists in Acapulco plus other similar crimes to other similarly pale skinned peoples...but nothing - nothing - about Shabazz. This could be me. Or someone who looks like me. Why does this not surprise me? I'm shocked as all hell but I'm not surprised. As I write, "Mexico kidnapping" is 'trending' on Yahoo.

Why? Because it does not concern black people.

At the risk of sounding selfish, maybe even racist, Ain't this a bitch! 

This could be me. Or someone who looks like me

It is very easy for white people to caution, Don't play the race card; Like rich people extolling the virtues of humility and having-not to poor people. The news of Malcolm X's grandson's killing should have blazed across headlines, if only for that weekend. But not a peep did I hear and I'm here in the country, itself. Didn't come across a remark by President Obama in the Associated Press - but I'm convinced he's a lanky phony, anyway - didn't come across a 'trending' ticker-tape, didn't come across a social network meme, and I certainly didn't hear it mentioned by anyone in passing. This could be me. Or someone who looks like me. If I disappoint white friends or fans or casual readers over this, then simply go your way. And don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

Methinks I've had my fill of this country. Pity. I so enjoy Puerto Vallarta. The living is easy, the weather is wonderful and I have several friends here. I have connections here. There's even a burgeoning theatre group I was looking forward to working with next season. But hang it. If Mexico is a corrupt country, then that means it is filled with corrupt peoples who, by no coincidence, guide their actions by corrupt thinking. And as a man habitually thinks, so he behaves. 

sitting ducks in a sea of amnesiac eye-witnesses

A nation populated by cowards who only know fear and might means we're all sitting ducks in a sea of amnesiac eye-witnesses. There is absolutely nothing to stop what happens in Mexico City or Sonora or Sinaloa or Oaxaca or Acapulco or Queretero from happening in Vallarta. Nothing. Bet your bottom dollar that when it counts, cowards, those erstwhile smiling neighbors and friends, will see nothing, hear nothing, and sure as hell, will say nothing.

Somebody who looks like me mightn't make the news. But that doesn't save the misfortune from befalling someone who looks like YOU. 

No mas Niemans

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Well it's going on a month and La Maestra, Sra Gordillo is STILL in jail.

Mexicans are great at laughing at other people's misfortunes. Case in point: last week I saw a T-shirt in a souvenir shop with a caricature of Gordillo's surgically altered mug behind a window of bars. Attached to her black&white prison stripes is a red tag which reads: NO MAS MARCUS (No more Marcus)

A very, very clever pun at her infamous Nieman Marcus shopping spree.

Elba Esther Gordillo

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The bride of Chucky sits in a jail. Not a metaphorical opulent palace providing for everything - sans the freedom of mobility - like the beautiful Taj Mahal or even the seat of power, the White House, which has, at times, been referred to by its occupants as something of a prison ("A cross between a nunnery and a penitentiary," remembered Susan Ford, daughter of President Gerald Ford) but, rather, an actual real as hell Mexican jail. Specifically, the weirdly named, Santa Martha Acatitla prison in Mexico City.

An incarceration hole named after a christian saint. Talk about a mind fuck!

Showy, brash, divisive Elba Esther Gordillo, a self-made caricature and political fixture of the country's standard bearer PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) forgot two important axioms:

1. She's an ambitious woman in a man's world (not to mention - cough - Mexico!) 
2. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Senora Gordillo also forgot about her people...her humble beginnings as a school teacher...her purported purpose in politics and life: to advance the formal education of Mexican students which, in turn, produces educated & civil members of society. Whether the charges of embezzlement stick are moot.

As the head of the immensely powerful teacher's union for the past 23 years (in October she won re-election to another 6-year term) this lady qualifies as a kingfish; And she behaved as a kingfish. She preferred to enrich herself and cronies, living the life of a big  spender - a celebrity - while her very constituents, teachers, pinch pesos to make ends meet until they can plant enough besos on the right asses to eat from the trough themselves.

I don't know what the state of general education was like two decades ago and I'm sure it has improved since then, but in the many years I've been coming to Mexico I often wonder "Why aren't these children in school?", "Why aren't these children in bed on a school night?" and "Is school attendance mandatory in Mexico?"     

Methinks she looks like the Bride of Chucky. 

Remember the cute but demented murderous doll?

If you scream in Acapulco does it make a sound?

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Mexican authorities have arrested six men this morning in connection with the unbelievable assault and gang-rape of Spanish tourists last week at an Acapulco resort. I caution you to hold the applause: The policia is known for manhandling and arresting innocent people as well as working with known bad guys. Corruption is rife in Mexico.

read more about the incident here

That Mexican bandits perpetrated their criminality with impunity in Acapulco is not so shocking. Unfortunately it really isn't. That they, thus far, have gotten away with it is not so shocking either...nor that it took over two days for arrests to be made. What is most disturbing, however, is that police didn't have a chance to apprehend the thug rapists sooner. Throughout the three-hour ordeal of drinking and raping none of the neighbors - NOT ONE - responded to the desperate screams and shouts of these women and their bound male counterparts.

You'll notice I said 'disturbing' instead of 'shocking'. Humanity's cowardice doesn't shock me anymore; but it still sickens the shit out of me.

Mexican president IS trying to effect change

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Bless his heart, Mexican President Calderon is trying to make the buck stop but the drug cartels are as massive and slippery a problem to clean up as the BP oil spill. (I don't know why American motorists haven't effectively boycotted BP gas stations. Tea Party nuts like the symbolism of dumping tea in the ocean but, apparently, are not so bothered by oil in the same. Go figure)

 related AP news report

Pissed off by the super low conviction rates President Calderon is calling prosecutors and judges to the carpet about the essentially empty arrests. Hopefully he can inject action where before there is only show and tell. 

Mexico's showy justice system

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One of the tasteless spectacles of Mexico's justice system is its protocol for parading arrested people. Suspects, known cartel heads, bar fights...it doesn't matter. Police handcuff the individual to the back of the pick-up truck and/or actually places the arrested person(s) before the media. The juicier the supposed infraction, the more wattage the press conference.

They love to broadcast shame and cast stones. Very little is worth doing if the equation isn't zero-sum; put another way, if the other person isn't humiliated then what have I gained? According to a recent AP news article, Mexico justice means catch and release, this showy feature is more important and a bigger fixture to Mexico's justice system than the more important element of  prosecution. Which just goes to prove nothing outdoes Mexico's number one attribute: corruption.


Say, "Queso!"

Liberal bullshit in Puerto Vallarta

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The Puerto Vallarta Scene Forum is an all-around news & gossip electronic bulletin board. Open to almost anything except unless it is contrary to the webmaster and the other liberal narrow minds who live on it. I get it. I do: Canadians and Americans flock to Vallarta to escape people who don't think like them, to work on that permanent tan, to make their savings stretch, to patronize Mexicans (and Mexican hustlers).


It was that last part which so irked the forum webmaster who calls himself Freeeye. When I posted the following critique against the Antropology Bar

Freeeye's knee-jerk reaction was to call me a right-wing nut and accuse me of slander...because, apparently, anyone who doesn't like a part of the Vallarta scene is a neo-con, neo Nazi, Sarah Palin supporter, right-wing nut, bigot; I've been called them all by "open-minded" people who seem to never leave the computer. Losers are as losers do. If you find fault with any aspect of Old Vallarta's affluent hippy and/or homosexual dogmas, then surely you are, to sum the above names, a bad man.

I'm a muckraker other. Other, referring to those "communities" who think their shit don't stink owing to their anti-war commitments

Why would the webmaster (and the others, all foreigners and, I suspect, all white) take exception to my piece on the Antropology Bar? (Click above link show me the racism!) Maybe the bar owner, Jose, is his drinking or butt buddy? Or maybe, like so many other gringos, Freeeye is just another exploitative expat and likes to get his rocks off with the cheap chichifos. Consequently this made me the unwanted whistle-blower (click 'exploitative' link to see how I upset the Vallarta Scene liberal hypocrites) and I've been permanently banned. Ob la dee, ob la da. This is why I've never cottoned to these electronic social boards: they are nearly never discussions and they are always a waste of time.


But I'm not just a whistle-blower. I'm a muckraker other. Other, referring to those "communities" who think their shit don't stink owing to their anti-war, anti-GOP, heterophobic commitments. Wake up! Republicans, Christians and straight people don't own racism and bigotry.


I'm sure Freeeye et al. also took massive exception when, after posting about his marriage to a "professional whore" and a son who was a "pimp-- his words, not mine - I informed him:  1) he was sharing way too much (irrelevant)information and suggested 2) maybe he should marry another "whore." 

No wonder Freeeye's avatar is that of a hobo cat. Booyah!

Vallartascene.com

Bienvenido el presidente

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The Obamas are holding a state dinner in honor of Mexican President and Mrs Calderon. President Calderon has wasted little time with circumspection, expressing his--and Mexico's--discontent with, among other things, Arizona's new anti-immigration measures.


Well!


The Third World president has yet to address the American Congress but it'll be little surprise what he has to say. In advance I share with you a sobering Time article by fellow alumnus, Tim Padgett:

Mexico's Calderon Needs to Listen, Not Just Lecture U.S.

Such is my desk....

 

Me happy with my new passport

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I know just how you feel, baby. I have my new passport, too!!

& THIS MARKS MY 300th POST. Booyah!

Don't lose your head during Spring Break

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With so many fresh barbaric killings taking place in Mexico it is somewhat surprising that MTV insists on hosting its annual Spring Break show in, of all places, Acapulco where just one week ago four decapitated heads were included in the sum of twenty-seven fresh kills---in one day. But it's only somewhat surprising. MTV is, after all, only "responsible" and "somber" when it comes to celebrating or justifying low behaviour or homosexuality.

 Will Mexico shootings kill Spring Break Buzz?

In Puerto Vallarta, where I vacation, we have yet to have any headless corpses or the type of shoot-em-up violence which typifies Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Sinaloa; but that hardly makes choosing to Spring Break in Mexico, period, an okay choice this year.

Surely, they sell enough tequila in Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico and every other State in the Union to get plastered enough to act a fool without putting oneself in the crossfire(?) of drug cartels.

Mexican is 'richest man' in the world

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Say whuh?!


Mexican billionaire, as if one has to emphasize billionaire, Carlos Slim is now ranked by Forbes Magazine as thee richest man in the world. A Mexican! Who would've thunk it? This is the first time anyone from a developing country has topped the famous list, which also included a Brazilian fat cat along with two from India.


Fyi, much of the reason why Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffet 'failed' to hold the spot this year is because they've taken to giving away billions of their fortune. Philanthropy. Logically, the less billions of dollars one has, the less chance he has of being ranked "the richest". But this takes nothing away from Mr Slim's accomplishment...and, apparently, the richest man title means little to him. He prefers inexpensive, boring suits and does not lead a flashy, rich lifestyle. But something tells me the man has surely increased his security detail.