Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on December 11, 2007.
Categories
Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F
More recent entries
- Circus elephant dashes onto highway, killed by bus
- Mexico pledges to halt sale of teaching positions
- Mexico to inspect cars coming from U.S.
- Get ready for Mexico's Next Top Model
- Narcos: we didn't blow up celebration
- More entries...
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
| More archives... | ||||||
Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2007 > December > 11
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Cannibal Poet found dead in prison cell
Jose Luis Calva, Mexico City’s “Cannibal Poet,” was found dead inside his prison cell this morning. Mexico City authorities are calling the death a suicide, but Calva’s sister claims other inmates were extorting him and threatened to kill him if he didn’t pay them a reported 500 pesos (about $50). He was found strangled with his own belt.
Calvo shocked Mexico earlier this year when police found the remains of his ex-girlfriend frying on his stove and her body parts in the refrigerator. Calvo was a failed screenwriter who sold his horror-infused poetry at informal, bohemian markets around Mexico City.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Frida: Now found on your shoes and in your tequila
The commercialization of Frida Kahlo is now complete: You can wear the works of the iconic Mexican painter on your shoes, as Converse has released a Frida Kahlo line of its Chuck Taylors. There are three styles to choose from, “The Two Fridas,” “Feet for Those I Love,” and simply, “Frida Kahlo!” The shoes, featuring the painter’s image, signature and snippets of her more famous paintings, are available throughout Mexico and are going for about $80 a pop on Mexico City’s trendiest avenue.
The cult of Frida has reached so far that the Mexican media has coined a term for it: Fridamania. And lest you think sneakers are the only mass consumer item you can buy with Frida’s visage, you can also buy Frida Kahlo tequila, courtesy of Venezuelan businessman Carlos Dorado, who has bought a 51 percent share in the Frida Kahlo Corporation. The Corporation, set up along with Frida’s niece, controls the rights to Frida’s image and Dorado is also reportedly planning a Frida clothing line and, if you can believe it, a musical group called “The Daughters of Frida.”
The mass marketing of Frida has generated a number of critics in her homeland, who point out that the leftist painter (her casket was covered with a Communist Party flag) would have likely been revolted by the idea of her face and paintings being used to rake in corporate profits. “In this instant she must be turning in her grave (and not because of the pain in her spinal column)” wrote columnist Fernando Rivera Calderon in the Mexico City daily La Cronica.