Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
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- Merida Initiative doomed?
- IHOP goes upscale in Mexico City
- Mexico's drug war: Perry talks addiction
- Did Mexican Cannes winner plagiarize his film?
- Mexican soccer finals set: Texas with a rooting interest?
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2008 > May
May 2008
Mexico’s drug war: Perry talks addiction
So it was perhaps somewhat surprising to hear Gov. Rick Perry bring up the issue of addiction when he was in Mexico City this week for a meeting of border governors with President Felipe Calderon.
“We were talking about some of the ways that the universities, with technology and DNA and science, can help with finding out why people are addicted,” Perry said in a phone interview as he sped toward the Mexico City airport yesterday afternoon (the governor graciously called back four or five times after his cell phone kept cutting out). Perry said the governors discussed joint research between Texas schools and universities in Monterrey.
The lack of funding for addiction treatment has been one of the chief complaints of human rights groups when it comes to the so-called Merida Initiative, a proposed military aid package to help Mexico fight the cartels. And since the Nixon administration, treatment has taken a distant back seat to law enforcement strategies. Do Perry’s comments signal a fundamental shift in drug war strategy? Probably not. But they do add another element to the discussion.
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Did Mexican Cannes winner plagiarize his film?
Scandal is rocking a Mexican filmmaker whose short film about a blind beggar won an online competition at the Cannes Film Festival, only to be accused of stealing his idea from a Spanish movie.
Alonso Alvarez Barreda claims there are important differences between his award winning flik “Historia de un letrero (History of a sign)” and the 30-second Spanish movie “Una limosna, por favor (An alm, please).” But both films are short takes on a blind man begging in a public square. And in both, a stranger writes a heartwarming message on the man’s sign helping him earn more money. Unfortunately for the Tamauilpas-born Alvarez, the movie from Spain came out two years before “Historia de un letrero” was honored at Cannes.
The Mexican network Televisa cracked the story, when a viewer emailed a copy of the Spanish film. Alvarez says he will not give up his award and says that a friend pitched him the story idea by telephone. He claims not to have seen the Spanish film until after his version was made. “Some say it’s a rip-off,” he told Televisa in an interview defending his work. “For others it’s a beautiful inspiration.” Spanish speakers can watch Alvarez’s detailed, and at times tortured defense here.
The movie was honored by the National Film Board of Canada, which in conjunction with Cannes held an online competition of Cannes’ short films. Viewers watched the movies on Youtube and then voted for their favorite.
So is the award winner a rip-off? You be the judge. Here is Cannes winner “Historia de un letrero”:
And here is the Spanish film “Una limosna, por favor”:
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Mexican soccer finals set: Texas with a rooting interest?
The Coahuila team, Santos, has a couple Texan links that might make it the “home team” in Central Texas: First of all, it’s among the closest teams to the Lone Star state, as Coahuila is home to border cities like Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuna (Santos actually plays in Torreon, in the south of the state). Secondly a local soccer star, Sonny Guadarrama, played for the team after graduating from Cedar Park High School (He has since been traded to the team in Morelia).
But this may be the last year that Santos gets to claim the local rooting rights. The professional team from Ciudad Juarez just jumped into the top division after years of languishing in Mexico’s second division. Texans hungering for a fix of live Mexican soccer will only have to hop across the bridge in El Paso when the next season begins.
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Narco toll: Bloodiest month in five years
The two epicenters of the latest rash of violence are Culiacan, the home of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Ciudad Juarez, across the river from El Paso. Chihuahua, Juarez’s home state, has registered more than 150 executions this month, according to the newspaper.
Some sources have speculated that the explosion of violence in Ciudad Juarez is the result of a falling out between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, which reportedly had been united for years in the battle against the rival Gulf Cartel, headquartered in Tamauilipas. Others argue it’s the inevitable result of President Felipe Calderon’s offensive against the cartels. He has sent more than 20,000 federal troops into trouble spots to confront the drug gangs, leading to executions of hundreds of police officers and agents. In recent weeks, cartels have begun publishing hit lists with the names of agents they are targeting. Several have been gunned down following their appearance on the lists.
All of which has created an atmosphere of extreme fear in Culiacan and Ciudad Juarez. According to Mexican news reports, those two cities have become virtual “ghost towns” as residents, gripped by a collective “psychosis,” shut themselves inside their homes instead of venturing into the increasingly dangerous streets.
Meanwhile, the spike in violence provides a grim backdrop to the debate over the so-called Merida Initiative, a proposal to give Mexico $500,000 in military aid to fight the cartels. The U.S. Congress has slashed the proposal to $350,000 and the proposal has been criticized by forces as disparate as right wing talk radio and liberal Rep. Lloyd Dogget, D-Austin. Mexican anger at American reluctance to get its hands dirty appears to be rising. A common complaint here is that Mexico is paying an unfair price as it tries to keep drugs out of the United States.
“As the tragic toll seems to lose all sense, our American ‘allies’ haggle over funding for the Merida Initiative, dropping it from $500 million to $350 million,” El Universal wrote this morning in an editorial. “Mexico provides 20 times more in money, and all the deaths.”
Meanwhile, the spike in violence provides a grim backdrop to the debate over the so-called Merida Initiative, a proposal to give Mexico $500,000 in military aid to fight the cartels. The U.S. Congress has slashed the proposal to $350,000 and the proposal has been criticized by such disparate forces as right wing talk radio and liberal Rep. Lloyd Dogget, D-Austin. Mexican anger at American reluctance to fund the initiative appears to be rising. A common complaint here is that Mexico is paying an unfair price as it tries to keep drugs out of the United States.
“As the tragic toll seems to lose all sense, our American ‘allies’ haggle over funding for the Merida Initiative, dropping it from $500 million to $350 million,” El Universal wrote this morning in an editorial. “Mexico provides 20 times more money, and all the deaths.”
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Graffiti dreams part V
It’s time for another installment of Mexico City’s amazing street art. Previous blog entries have chronicled the pieces in Ciudad Neza and the rough and tumble area around the bus station in northern Mexico City.
Today’s graffiti selection is a tad more political - probably because it’s outside the Trotsky Museum in the Coyoacan neighborhood. The first two pieces are portraits of Leon Trotsky, who was killed in 1940 while he was hiding out in Coyoacan. The Stalinists hunted Trotsky across the globe after he was expelled from the Soviet Union. He survived an armed attack on his Coyoacan home (the famed muralist Diego Rivera originally gave him refuge), but was killed by an undercover agent with an ice pick. His home is now one of the more fascinating museums in the city (he is buried in the garden).
In recent months, a number of fine pieces have popped up on the walls around the house, particularly impressive because of the jagged and uneven surface of the rock walls. I hope you enjoy. Uncovering Mexico is going on vacation for a week, but we’ll see you at the end of May.
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Baseball in the Zocalo?
The Zocalo, Mexico City’s massive, utilitarian main plaza, has been used for just about anything you can imagine in recent months: a massive ice skating rink, a traveling museum and of course a number of various and sundry political protests. But I’m not sure the Zocalo has ever been the scene of a homerun. That will change come October when the Zocalo hosts a weekend of baseball, featuring little league action and a homerun derby to promote next year’s World Baseball Classic. The homerun derby will feature some Mexican heavy hitters, including Vinny Castilla, Adrian Gonzalez (of San Diego Padres fame) and Jorge Cantu (the Florida Marlins slugger).
I’m all for baseball in the Zocalo, but it does bring up some unique problems: according to a diagram in this morning’s Reforma newspaper, long blasts could smack off the ancient Metropolitan Cathedral and foul balls could ricochet of the stately National Palace (home to Diego Rivera’s masterpiece mural). Maybe they’ll erect a massive backstop.
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Mexico sees Austin as a ‘Texas oasis’
Austin dominated the cover of this Sunday’s travel section in the Reforma newspaper, one of the nation’s two leading dailies. Under a banner headline proclaiming Austin “the Texas secret,” Mexico City’s movers and shakers were treated to pictures of Austin’s skyline and the Texas Capitol. The accompanying article spent a good bit of time trying to explain to Mexican readers just what “Keep it Weird” means: “It’s hard to translate it literally into Spanish,” the article read. “It means a kind of uniqueness more than strangeness.”
Mexicans learn that Austin is “flooded with an atmosphere of peace and love” and are urged to hit South Congress for some Amy’s Ice Cream and Jo’s Coffee Shop, “which is distinguished by it ‘easy going’ atmosphere as the Texans would say.” Other points of interest mentioned in the article include Barton Springs pool and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, as well as Shady Grove restaurant and Emo’s nightclub. Potential visitors are also told not to miss the delights on “Sexta Avenida.”
Direct travel between Austin and Mexico is increasing. Aeromexico has daily flights between the Mexican capital and the Texan capital, and Viva Aerobus just last week began flights to Monterrey and Cancun. It seems Mexicans are learning there’s more to Texas than San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.