Burro Hall

We were having a good old-fashioned atheistic belly laugh the other day over the fact that Texas hillbillies, in their zeal to outlaw gay marriage, accidentally made all marriages illegal - though we did at least have to concede that this would, in fact, outlaw gay marriage, so it's not like it was a total screwup or anything.

Then this morning, thanks to an eagle-eyed reader in Mazatlan, we discovered that, upon actually reading the Querétaro Penal Code, government officials there have discovered at least 150 errors, mostly grammar and misplaced words, which have the effect of making the so-called "letter of the law" somewhat difficult to follow - or, for that matter, understand. For instance, it is apparently against the law in Querétaro to carry two cellphones, meaning a man must use one phone for his wife, his other wife, and his dealer, which is just obviously crazy. (Mexican journalism being what it is, there's no attempt to explain what the law is intended to be, so maybe this isn't actually a mistake.)

Nevertheless, we're hoping that the draconian new "life begins at conception" law contains enough errors to effectively outlaw childbirth and allow foreigners to kill any noisy children loitering outside their living room windows.

From Guanabee, Five Ways to Latinize Your Turkey Leftovers, including Turkey and Roasted Poblano Enchiladas Verdes, Turkey Carnitas, Turkey Flautas, and Grilled Turkey Cuban Sandwiches. Salud!

Here's a heartwarming headline!

Mexico Tightens Border.

We were hoping this was directed at the influx of Spring Break-ers and beach resort fat-asses, but instead Mexico has decided to get serious about border security in order to protect its people from the failed state to its north - to block the flow of illegals, as it were:

The Mexican government is modernizing its ports of entry, including its biggest border crossing in Tijuana. With gates, cameras and vehicle scales, the new infrastructure is meant to curtail the flow of drug money and weapons to Mexican organized crime groups.

...President Felipe Calderon, under pressure to show progress in his offensive against drug cartels, called the measures a necessary sacrifice. Since 2008, more than 1,000 people have been slain in Tijuana, many with guns believed to have been obtained in the U.S.

"We want security," Calderon said on a recent trip to Tijuana. "This requires sacrifice and measures that permit us to stop the trafficking of weapons, drugs, drug money and criminals across this border."

(These last couple of posts seem to have originated in some alternate universe, no?)

Señor Dobbs para presidente!

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, pondering a future in politics, is trying to wipe away his image as an enemy of Latino immigrants by positioning himself as a champion of that fast-growing ethnic bloc. ...

"Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together," he said in a live interview with Telemundo's Maria Celeste.

Sorry the posting has been so light (that is to say, nonexistent). The executive editor of our internet sites has been transferred over to our film and television division, and the transition has not been a smooth one. But he sent us back a few dispatches from the film set, including this image of the "producer's quarters" on location.


With perks like this, is easy to see why he's willing to work so cheap. The production then moved north to Howe Caverns, which they deemed the perfect setting (if you exclude the glass-bottomed boats) to stage the burial and resurrection of Christ.

It was also the perfect setting for an evil dwarf to run amok in the video for Savatage's "Hall of the Mountain King."

Anyway, we should be back to our regular information overload in a few days. Thanks for your patience.

Occasionally we mount an expedition from the island of Manhattan to the mainland United States - this week, we're somewhere in the middle of the 95% of New York State's landmass in which 5% of the population resides - which gives us a chance to see some of the thing you don't often find in the big city. For instance, tonight we've been kicking back at the Holiday Inn Express with a couple of 12-packs of Miller High Life (because that's the way we roll, motherfuckers). Outside the greater metropolitan area his time of year, they come in special camouflage colors:


If you can't see them, they're right behind the words "16 oz" magically floating above the table top. It seems to us that the only conceivable reason for creating an autumn-camo beer can is to more easily facilitate the mixing of alcohol and firearms during hunting season. This is just one of the many reasons we don't leave the city limits very often.

As your correspondents are currently working in El Norte and sending the earnings back to Mexico, we'd just like to say that, so far, we see no evidence that this is actually true:

Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

Which is not to say we don't think it's a great idea! Anyway, The Man will be making more demands on our time than usual this week, many of them in places without wireless intertubes, so posting will probably be as sparse as the Arizona desert for a bit. Might be a good time to check out some of the links over there to your right.

Another work of unparalleled genius from The Onion:

U.S. Deports Lou Dobbs

Acting on anonymous tips from within the Hispanic-American community, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Wednesday deported Luis Miguel Salvador Aguila Dominguez, who for the last 48 years had been living illegally in the United States under the name Lou Dobbs.

...Evidence collected by investigators indicates that Dominguez/Dobbs, who has long claimed Texas heritage, was actually born in the Mexican state of Puebla to parents of Colombian descent, neither of whom were U.S. citizens. In the summer of his 16th year, he and 14 of his brothers and sisters paid smugglers to let them ride atop packages of cocaine in the cargo hold of a fishing boat bound for Texas under cover of night.

In addition to holding multiple jobs without ever obtaining a guest-worker permit or H-1B visa, "Dobbs" is reported to have collected welfare every month for nearly five decades. He appeared in good health when apprehended, having used Medicaid to obtain numerous health care services over the years, but immigration officials fear he still may have exposed the American population to the many infectious diseases illegal immigrants tend to carry, including both malaria and leprosy.

Today is Mailman Day in Mexico – an actual holiday, which of course means no mail delivery – and yet it’s one of only two days a year in which Querétaro’s mail carriers manage visit every single address on their route, in order to collect the handy “gratuity envelopes” they delivered earlier in the week (that’s the other day). We’re attending a religious conference in El Norte at the moment, and can’t report directly on the festivities. Instead, please enjoy America’s most beloved alcoholic letter-carrier, Cliff Clavin, addressing an angry mob of right-wing lunatics outside the US Capitol last week.

We’ll be awarding a prize to the first Mexican reader who can correctly identify Abbie Hoffman, Saul Alinsky and Wavy Gravy. Sin googleando, por favor.

Shit, we wish someone had thought of throwing bullets at Lou Dobb's house years ago:

"Over the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day and to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible," Dobbs said during his 7 p.m. broadcast.

Dobbs, 64, said he had discussed the issue with CNN President Jonathan Klein, who had agreed to a release from his contract "that will enable me to pursue new opportunities."

Looks like that border wall will finally get finished now. Roll up your sleeves and get to work, Lou!

The Ciudad Juárez Anti-Temperance Union strikes again:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen burst into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and opened fire in a violence-plagued Mexican border state, killing one person and wounding four others, authorities said.

Gunmen have opened fire in several drug rehabilitation centers in Ciudad Juarez, located in the northern part of the state. In September, 28 people were killed in two such attacks in the border city,

Burro Hall remains committed to educating young people on the dangers of not drinking or doing drugs. Quitting is for quitters, kids.

The 442 area code gets some big lovin' from the Los Angeles Times today, with bonus points awarded for its snarky nod to the lust for violence that plagues so much reporting on Mexico.

There are plenty of reasons to visit Querétaro, but it's the instability and conflict and violence that finally won me over.
The instability of 1810, that is. The conflict of 1848. The violence of 1867. All set amid 18th century colonial architecture, surrounded these days by commerce and calm.

Double bonus points awarded to the writer for sharing one of our personal obsessions:

Now, the former convent houses the Querétaro Regional Museum and a certain piece of furniture I was keen to see.

In room after room, then down a long, well-polished hall, I found displays on Indian villages, Spanish colonization and city development but not the table I was after. Finally, I asked an employee whether he could point me toward the table where the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed.

He immediately jumped up, instructed me to follow him and led me down a hall to a locked door. Then he pulled out a fistful of keys and opened the door, revealing a long room that's usually open to the public. (It was a slow day.) Then he withdrew to a dark corner, threw a switch, and the lights came on, revealing a long table.

Facing the table, somebody had positioned a sculpture of a weeping woman -- probably not a coincidence. Mexico's leaders agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 because American troops had reached Mexico City and were ready to ruin the place if Mexico didn't sign. Some of that paperwork was finalized at this table in Querétaro. Under the treaty, in exchange for about $18 million, Mexico gave up 525,000 square miles of territory, including California and Texas. In many ways, that land transfer at gunpoint is the move that made the U.S. the power it is today, leaving many Mexicans with a bitter taste.

But my friend the museum worker was great. He waited at a distance while I circled the table. No pen imprints on top, no gum underneath, just a wooden rectangle, held up by fancy carved legs, the top big enough for six place settings, upon which world history was rewritten.

November 8, 1519: Aztec ruler Moctezuma II welcomes a large Spanish package tour organized by Hernan Cortés and a local representative, Doña Malinche, to his lakeside hotel in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).


Though booked for just two nights, the Cortés group repeatedly extended their stay - a development Moctezuma initially resisted. Luckily, the Quetzalcoatl party canceled at the last minute and, as this was the traditionally slow "smallpox/yellow fever" season, Moctezuma, glad for the business, went so far as to offer desayuno incluido and extend an open line of credit at the bar. The rest is history.

Aside from handouts from blue-state taxpayers, the Failed State of Arizona makes most of its money from shipping illegal guns into Mexico. Finally, Mexico's fighting back:

U.S. Border Patrol agents from Blythe arrested a convicted sex offender suspected of being in the United States illegally.

Jorge De Jesus-Martinez, a resident of the town of Querétaro in central Mexico, crossed into the United States in Arizona, said Ben Vik, spokesman for the Border Patrol's Yuma sector.

Hey, Arizona...betcha run out of guns before Querétaro runs out of sex offenders.

The Dutch royal family - whose existence we were unaware of until today - is on a state visit to Mexico at the moment, during which the crown prince (seriously? There's a crown prince of the Netherlands?), gave a speech on global warming. Mexico pollutes a lot and Holland flood a lot, and Mexicans are a tad on the sensitive side, so of all the possible approaches the kroonprins could have taken, telling the audience to go fuck themselves strikes us as the most reckless.

The crown prince who was urging his listeners to act against global warming was giving a speech in English when he used the Spanish expression, "camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva al corriente", (a sleeping shrimp will be washed away by the tide).

Instead of saying al corriente, Willem-Alexander said "a la chingada".

This is the kind of mistake we live in mortal fear of making. (We're still reeling from the time was asked a guy about his grandmother's rectum, rather than recipe.) We're so squeamish about stuff like this that, to be honest, we would have steered clear of comparing our audience to sleeping shrimps. ("Who you calling short and lazy, pendejo?") But Mexicans are a kind-hearted people, and so they "burst into laughter," which we assume was affectionate. But they also hold a grudge, dear Crown Prince, and by now they've certainly discovered that 60 percent of the Dutch population resides below sea level, and are increasing their carbon emissions accordingly. You may want to keep the royal yacht fully stocked from now on.

Of all the costumes at the Instituto John F. Kennedy’s annual Halloween party, this hot pink dildo with lifelike purple testicles is our favorite.


Second prize goes to the kid in Yankee pinstripes who we believe is supposed to be Johnny Damon.

We were going to link to this story about a pile of corpses this afternoon because we thought the killers scrawling "Job 38:15" on one of the bodies - a reference to the verse "The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken" - was pretty awesomely badass. It brought to mind Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction: "I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass." But then we got hungry and forgot about it.

But tonight we see that one of the dead bodies used to belong to a cat named Hector Saldana, who had issued some threat against the incoming mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Mauricio Fernandez. As Fernandez was being sworn in last Saturday, he gleefully passed along the news that Saldana had been found dead.

Except that he hadn't.

The problem was that the barefoot, blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" — whose real first name is Hector — wasn't found for another 3 1/2 hours, according to Mexico City prosecutors. And he wouldn't be identified for two days.

The mayor is facing tough questions about the killings: How did he know his nemesis was dead before the authorities apparently did? Does he have associations with the cartel that may have killed the men?

...The mayor's initial answer, repeated in a series of interviews, was simple: "Sometimes there are coincidences in life; it's better to look at it this way."

Indeed.

National Hispanic Media Week is apparently over.

A news reporter who wrote about violent drug crimes has been strangled in the northern Mexican state of Durango, authorities said Tuesday.

El Tiempo de Durango journalist Jose Bladimir Antuna was kidnapped Monday morning, said Ruben Lopez, spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office. Authorities found his body that night in a vacant lot in the state capital, about 400 miles southwest of Laredo, Texas.

State authorities are investigating the murder. Lopez would not specify whether they suspected connections with organized crime.

But Antuna had told his colleagues at the newspaper that he had received multiple telephone death threats, El Tiempo's business manager Fernando Mendoza told The Associated Press. And Mendoza said investigators found a message beside Antuna's body, claiming he was killed for giving information to the military.

Antuna filed a complaint with the state Attorney General's Office five months ago, saying gunmen had fired at his house. Lopez said investigators concluded that the gunfire was not aimed at Antuna, and that stray bullets from a fight outside had struck his house.

…Reporters Without Borders issued a statement on Tuesday complaining that Durango state authorities knew Antuna was receiving death threats but failed to protect him.

"It is unacceptable. Durango state, a bastion of organized crime where there is complete impunity, has become a torment for those defending a free press and openness in news and information," the statement said.