Raul Ybarra: Embryography of a Mexican jeweler

Churubusco, Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones

If you would like a glimpse of several slices of Mexican history in all their messy complexity, with its heroes and villains, both local and foreign, the National Interventions Museum should be on your list of places to visit. Located in the Ex-Convento Churubusco of Mexico City, the museum [Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones] offers exhibits […]

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'Compassion'

A million meanings: the art of Mexican painter Raul Lopez Garcia

For artist Raúl López García, it is the language of his subconscious that manifests itself in his paintings. “About two years ago, I realized that I wasn’t inventing anything, but that I was simply transporting my own experiences to a canvas,” says Raúl, who uses just his first name in connection with his artistic endeavors. […]

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Mexico City's urban sprawl extends to the mountains that ring the Valley of Mexico. © Anthony Wright, 2009

First Stop in the New World by David Lida: an interview with the author

Available from Amazon Books: Hardcover “Mexico City offers us a mirror of our urban prospects, and Americans ignore its example somewhat at their peril.” Mexico City has long exercised a fascination for writers of varying foreign stripes — Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Jack Keruoac, D. H. Lawrence, William S. Burroughs, B. Traven; not to mention Latin […]

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Anthony Wright pens his first Mexico novel: Infernal Drums

MexConnect contributor Anthony Wright has published his first novel with the Vancouver, Canada-based independent publishing house Moon Willow Press. The novel, called Infernal Drums is set in Mexico and is a heady mix of road tale, occult drama, and dark comedy. Anthony, an Australian, spent a number of years in Mexico City during the 1990s, […]

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Tlalnepantla – the land in-between

Some time around the turn of the eleventh century indigenous tribes from the Valley of Anahuac trekked north and settled in the land that Franciscans, half a millennium later baptized, “Tlanepantla”. Today Tlanepantla thrives among Mexico’s largest populations, with nearly twelve million (12,000,000) inhabitants. Below the gray stones of Chiquihuite Hill, smelting, metalworking, machine-building, and […]

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Down and Delirious in Mexico City by Daniel Hernandez © Anthony Wright, 2011

Down and Delirious in Mexico City: Memoir by Daniel Hernandez digs deep into youth culture

Mexican-American author Daniel Hernandez has hit a fresh nail on an old head by exploring different youth cultures in Mexico City. Youth is a favored subject for a modern mass media obsessed with this demographic, and one would think the market was pretty well saturated by this point. Moving rapidly from an emerging subculture in […]

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Apache shows Jocelyn the ropes as she trains for Mexico's lucha libre. © Annick Donkers, 2012

Mexico’s lucha libre: Dreams of professional wrestling

It’s surely one of the coolest jobs in the world — donning a glittery mask and playing superhero or villain every night, flying around a packed arena. These are the men and women who aim to make their living as luchadores — athletes-cum-performers in the unique and very Mexican sport (or whatever you want to call it) […]

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Es plata, cemento y brisa, México D.F., 1989 © Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, 1989

Mexico City’s “apocalypse” has come and gone: Mexican photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio

In the novel “Virtual Light,” cyberpunk author William Gibson envisages a Mexico City of the near future where the air is a sooted ebon and the populace wears oxygen masks. It might seem far-fetched, but with the city’s population topping 20 million, and the city’s cars about a third that number and all of it […]

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A lone foreign tourist (back left) carefully carries out an inspection of the wares.

To market, to market: treasure hunting in Mexico City’s flea markets

Some time ago I was exploring the Mercado de Antiguëdades de Cuauhtemoc in downtown Mexico City with my brother-in-law and an entrepreneurial young Mexican named Carlos Villasena, press officer for the Philippine Embassy in Mexico – who was at that time just breaking into the antiques game, teaching himself to spot a bargain in the […]

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