I’m sick and tired of hearing disagreements between the U.S.A. and Mexico. First, there’s the emigration thing with fences and coyotes and blustering politicians; second is the drug thing where the U.S. blames Mexico for their own addictive population; and now the U.S. is blaming the Maya for a prophesied 2012 doomsday scenario. Let’s take […]
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Once upon a time in Mexico, a little boy was walking to church to see the Nativity scene. He thought hard about a gift to bring the Christ child, but had no money to buy one. Jesus will understand, thought the little boy stopping to gather a few bare weedy branches lying at the side […]
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In 1916, an intrepid reporter, Guillermo Ojara, was assigned by his paper, El Demócrata, to go south to seek and interview Emiliano Zapata. After harrowing incidents with hundreds of Zapatistas in the mountains, valleys, even The Hill of the Scorpions inhabited by thousands of those deadly creatures, Ojara was finally brought to his subject. It is interesting […]
Continue ReadingJohn Steinbeck penned his famous book, Tortilla Flat, in 1935, and apparently never considered Hollywood’s casting choices when it was made into a film in 1942. If he had, he would’ve fallen flat himself, either from laughing or from astonishment. Steinbeck’s classic is the sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant story of a group of Mexican amigos living in […]
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When Kenny Rogers sang, “Ya got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em … ” in his hit, “The Gambler,” he was singing about more than playing cards, he was singing about life with Josefina. With all that’s going on in the world today, I should probably be more upset about unchecked […]
Continue ReadingMexico’s economic downturn may be worse than those of other nations, because so much of Mexico’s economy depends on tourism. Mexico City is desperate to restore its tourism industry; perhaps they’re suffering from an abundance of media coverage of killings, kidnappings, and cartels. What can Mexico possibly come up with to attract tourists under this […]
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Even if you have never wondered what ties Mexico to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I’m going to tell you anyway. It begins with a poem. Longfellow’s epic 1847 poem, “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie,” is the story of an Acadian girl, Evangeline Bellefontaine (“Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers”), her betrothed, Gabriel […]
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In 1934 during the depths of the Great Depression, horse trainer Tom Smith was living out of a stall at Mexico’s Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana. Flat broke, Smith shared the stall with Noble Threewit, who trained horses for a friend of Charles Howard. Howard was seeking a trainer for his new horse, Seabiscuit, a […]
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The mean streets of Tijuana have at last dispatched something other than media reports of killings, kidnappings and cartels. The bloody, dusty, bullet-ridden streets of Tijuana have wached Cejas emigrate, even without proper papers. You may be wondering, Who is this Cejas of whom she writes? Is he a Mexican hero? Is he a famous […]
Continue ReadingIt may be time to add one more famous face to the posters hanging on my wall, the ones of Brando, Depp and Jim Morrison. Someone new may be exciting enough to be placed among them. I know because I heard all about it from Juanita, the Mexican cashier who snatched the special Obama issue […]
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