Los carteles

It's a nice Thursday afternoon. Weather's crisp and sunny, but instead of being outside enjoying it, I'm gonna bring up a bleak subject.

Here's a map of my homecountry with pretty colours all over.



These colours represent -according to BBC News- the areas of influence of different drug cartels. Drug cartels -a term that was coined (me thinks) in Latin America- are pretty much organized crime groups, the Mexican mafia, whatever you wanna call em. Their main goal is to ship drugs to the biggest consumer of em, the US. Considering the country's geographical position, Mexico is the melting pot for drug dealers from all over the continent.

Hillary Clinton is visiting the country at the moment, and while she has been doing her usual 'I'm traveling overseas making my own campaign for elections in 2012/2016', she proposed something new-ish. The US is planning to send over troops to the border to boost defenses and prevent drug smuggling. I find this pretty controversial. I mean, I am thankful of the fact that the US is finally paying attention and trying to solve things directly with Mexico, rather than doing it the Bush way, which was building a fortified fence all over the country and letting civilian groups shoot illegal immigrants. Then again, I think that the fact that the US will have increased control over Mexico's stability will lead to increased influence, and people are afraid that one day, American soldiers might become a common sight in Mexican soil. Mexico's drug-scarred towns are already drowned with soldiers - their vehicles forming part of everyday traffic, but the idea of the possibility of foreign intervention to crack down a possible insurgency, is probably what lead MSNBC news to question whether we'll become the New Iraq/Afghanistan.

Comments on this video (and general comments):
- The official murder numbers is kinda dodgy. Even though 7000 is a really high number, that is the number given by the Mexican goverment. I am not saying that they are blatantly lying, but most Mexicans believe this number is sugar-coated and that it is actually far higher. Also, the numbers refer to 'drug-related' murders. What about the surge of violence which is due to this but it is not classified as drug-related? What about the country's kidnapping rates, which are often compared with those of Iraq and Colombia?

- This is a sensitive issue for 'us' Mexicans. We've always suffered from stereotypical portrayals (which country doesn't, really?) that shows us like violent cowboys, and hearing it become an actual portrayal of us in the news obviously doesn't paint a smile in any of us. I had the chance to visit Tijuana after two years of being in NZ this last (southern-hemisphere) summer. My friends were all tired of bloodshed being something that was talked about everyday during dinner. They were tired of their mums and dads saying that the only option was to move somewhere else. Tired of hearing pessimistic comments saying that this is far from getting any better. It's a harsh reality in which I rarely get any say, as I'm the one who 'had the chance to live in a first world country', and I'm out of touch with the ordinary Mexican. I am someone who has gotten used to the complains of New Zealanders, which are usually about a murder, or two, per week. In Tijuana alone, we're used of hearing from 10 to 15 murders a day in the news. And not just your 'typical' (generalising much already?) murder, we get beheadings, bodies dissolved in acid, and scorched. In fact, last year a guy in Tijuana was convicted and charged with the dissolving of more than 300 bodies, all by himself. He was called the 'stew maker'.

People do protest, attend rallies, and raise the issue. But I think that is the least we can do. Corruption and drug use are deeply rooted in our government, and our culture itself. A popular example of the latter are the 'narcocorridos' (narco as in narcotic, alluding to drugs), a 'regional' music style which idolizes drug-lords. It's a common sight in the radio, specially in border towns, both Mexican and American ones.

- Then again, coming to the Iraq/Afghanistan comparison bit, we must remember that Mexico is for obvious reasons, quite different from those countries (and those countries have pretty different issues among themselves, anyway). Mexico is considered to be between the 10 and 12 largest economies of the world, and some predict it will be the 6th largest one by 2050. The country's infrastructure is developed in its major cities, and our population is of 100 millions. This is compared with the lack of infrastructure and economical 'stability' (not that Mexico is exactly very economically stable, anyways) of the other two countries, and while simple the comparison might be, it marks a big difference when it comes to the US interfering with Mexico's own affairs. Since Cartels are infiltrated in some of the biggest companies of the country, they got the resources to obtain weapons, and have a sophisticated red of communications. Cracking em up is gonna be a tough job.



My intention is not to degrade my country's status to a 'failed state' one. It faces huge problems that have been exposed more and more lately since they're becoming worse. It also has an amazing history, culture, cuisine, scenery, people, language, and a lot more. And to top it, with corn and cheese, my family and friends live there.

Peace *does the anime style peace sign*

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is great. It's such a wannabe fountain of wisdom. You can search for pretty much anything there, and you will feel like you actually learned something after reading some article about quantum physics. Yet you know that if you quote wiki or refer to it in an argument against an academic you're probably gonna find yourself in a kamikaze airplane.

'Neways. I'll keep it short this time. Story is that as I was going from one article to another, I ended up with this Mammary Intercourse one. I always wondered why-oh-why they have this really explicit cartoon-ish pictures on those sex-related articles (or worse, an actual penis ejaculating). This one not only gives you such a thing, it also comes with an audio version. Just click on the "Listen to this article bit".

Moments like this remind me that wiki can be edited by anyone. The guy's voice is everything but academic sounding - he sounds like he's about to burst laughing every 5 seconds. But I mean, I would too, if I had to say 'titty fuck' 10 times while reading such thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammary_intercourse








Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

- Pablo Picasso

No man should die alone

That predicament about not posting so often came true. It's been 10 days since I been here (been here as in actually posting, not as in checking my blog every hour for new comments even though I'm fairly sure that the only one will be from Esteban, and that's cause I forced him to). But hey, I'm starting to feel the burn from Uni, and I've been busy having a life. I was meant to be running/exercising/actually-just-walking right now, but my calf is kinda fucked, so I can barely walk without complaining like the little girl I am (or was, before going thru that operation - hmmm).

Should I post about movies again? I mean, it's real easy, as I've seen two movies since my last post, but then it'll be the third time I do this. Meh

At the Death House Door

I know, I know, another doco... But give me a break, this is the last one I saw at the festival, and I dunno if I will be watching any docos (National Geography, Discovery Channel and the like don't count) anytime soon. This one, I must say (and that's coming from a chunk of ice), is pretty moving. This chaplain from this prision in Texas that was with people who were being executed for decades. He saw the death of almost 100 prisioners, and was the first one to witness the lethal injection. Packed with moral dilemmas and the like, it's a sure stunner (why is no one paying me for giving praise to their movies?).

Watchmen

If you're not a geek, or someone who would find superheroes at least mildly amusing, then don't even bother watching it. Otherwise this movie is a mean superheroes flick with lots of violence, a WAY too complicated it plot, and plenty of action. Blue male genitalia and awkward sex scenes are there to distract those who think that a 160 minute film is a bit too long, so don't worry, even if you're not finding it interesting, that, and the blood splattering, will keep you awake. Interesting to note is the lack of superpowers; only one of the characters had proper superpowers, and damn they were godly like! The Cold War atmosphere is pretty good as well, considering the graphic novel (which the film is based on) sets and was made at the time.

It's a yus from me

Theme

While I got no intention in turning this blog into a movie review website, I do have to say that it's the main thing that will be posted 'bout today. That's mainly cause my week has been rather uneventful besides uni, and while I could post random thoughts that I have deep inside, this is something that's actually going on.

Before getting into that... a short list of things that happened this week.

1. I am a class rep, again! I was a class rep for my Philosophy 105 course last semester, the lecturer decided to make it a 'big' deal by having elections 'cause there were more than two applying for the post. We even had to give a speech. There were four of us, two were Pakeha (NZers of European descent) and the other two were international students (a Russian chick and the dodgy Mexican who got really nervous during the speech). Oddly enough, we -the international students- got the most votes. Maybe it's because people couldn't understand our accent... Anyways, thing is that in my Linguistics class we didn't have any of that fancy stuff. Nobody wanted to volunteer, I wasn't in an 'can't be farked' state, and ending the awkward silence sounded like a good idea. So I raised my hand and the teacher (imagine this really old nice lady) goes "Give this young man a big applause!". Talking about embarrassing eh, I even had to say my name out loud and all (and you notice that people notice that you got a weird name, for that country standards, of course).

Me for class rep plz? (yes, I actually grabbed the camera and spent more than 5 minutes taking pictures of myself. You're justified if you go and say 'get a life')

2. Continuing with the awkwardness at uni... I had a tutorial for Linguistics. They made us write a really short essay about one of four different options we had. I chose to write about whether 'People should be educated in their native language'. I thought it'd be easy. You know, being an international student and all and having my self esteem up at that moment while thinking that I'm actually pretty educated when it comes to Spanish. Well, it turns out that my mind was empty, I didn't even know what position to take. Damn I spilled a bunch of crap into that piece of paper. Been a while since I do the whole gibberish thing (I mean, on purpose, not as in my usual 'trying to speak english gibberish').

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

Imagine this, but in paper and about what I was meant to write about

3. This was meant to be a list. I think a list is meant to have more than two items, really, otherwise it just looks kinda sad. So I'll just add something pretty trivial and random... Which will be eh... *sits around thinking about it, literally*.... Yeah, I actually cooked tomato soup this week, and I found this really good chorizo at the supermarket. Gotta love chorizo, it reminds me of 'chorizo con huevos', and 'choriqueso', and all that stuff from back at home. Bit of a lame culinary week, but hey.



Moo-vies.

I've been going to the documentary film festival quite a bit during the last couple of days. I watched two movies yesterday and one earlier today. They were all about really different stuff, yet the audience was kinda the same for all three somehow.

Laya Project

Laya Project was unique from the movies I watched in the festival, in the way that it wasn't exactly what you would call a traditional documentary. There was pretty much no narrative, at least not with words. All of it was in the form of images/video and sound.

This doco takes ya around different countries -and their music- most of them who were heavily affected by the 2004 tsunami. Most of it being fairly traditional, with some regions showing a more modern touch, coupled by some really strong pictures of everyday life. This pictures showed no prosperity overall, they pictured mainly people from a poor economic background, who lived in the outskirts, in the coast, in the areas most affected by the natural disaster. They were also the people who performed the music, so the whole idea ( I think, and no, I'm not having a joint at this moment to try and come up with a conclusion like that). I definitely recommend it, with the only warning of being prepared to be bombarded by music you're probably not 'used' to.






Lucio

Lucio is a bricklayer. He's also a modern Robin Hood of sorts (I wonder how many times that's been said). He's a character, really. He counterfeited heaps of money during the 60s and 70s, and he didn't have a single drop of blood in his hands (or that's what he tells us). His cause was a great cause (hint hint, guess the decades we're talking about), he was a revolutionary, and he did a lot to end with Franco's regime. It's hard to really say anything about the character without spoiling ya the juicy details and mysteries about his life. He's very enigmatic, and over all, charismatic. Definitely my favourite from the festival.













A Jihad for Love

According to wikipedia (cause I'm too lazy to reference any other source) it was the first documentary that associates islam with homosexuality. I wouldn't be too sure if this is true, but maybe they're talking about a documentary that actually made it overseas and to festivals, and the like. Anyhoo, as mentioned before, the film's about Islam and homosexuality (surprise surprise). It tells ya various stories, involving people from different countries and backgrounds. It's quite empowering because it really lets ya see what some people have to go through in their countries for something like that. Some of them are refugees, some of them won't even show their faces in the film, fearing that they might be targeted. It depicts both gay men and lesbians, which is a plus since most films about homosexuality focus on men. It is to say that the lesbians who were included in the film didn't go through anything as heavy as the gay dudes did. I wouldn't say the film represents your average 'Muslim homosexual', it depicts people who try to reconcile their religion with their sexuality, even in countries where their sexuality can lead them to jail, or even to a death sentence.






And that's it. The pillow is calling me. I'm actually feeling so sleepy that I started to write in Spanish out of nowhere.

Adiós amigos *gringo accent*

No. 2

Ohai!

I'm just returning from a Hanna's sister place (Hannah's a mate from biomed) place. Had a pretty good time talking bout lolcats, life, uni (dreaded uni), and what not.

Tomorrow Uni starts. I'll save up the swearing as I'm semi-not-keen on going there to be honest. It's a new year, a 'new start', new papers, new people. Then again I'm repeating one of my papers, and two of them are damn cruisy, so I wonder how much of 'new' will be in there.

I'm really not here to talk about the papers I'm taking. They're only three, and only one of them is a proper science one, which is Physics. Other than that I have Linguistics and Statistics.

Twodais I'm gonna throw a random intro bout some of the websites I've been on and off during the years, whether they are social ones or not.

In order of appearance...

- Hotmail

Is this a joke? Of course 'hotmail' (bar google, aol or msn's search engine) was the first website most people my generation used constantly. At least in Tijuana. Most people surrendered to having a hotmail account. Aol was seen as something americans would join and Yahoo was kinda if you were into random chats with other teenagers (but deep inside you knew they were forthy rather than forthy-een!). For the first 3 to 4 years I only received a couple of proper personalized emails, everything else was either emails thanking me for subscribing to random websites or offers to make my wife happy by increasing my 'meat' (?). They usually had crap stories of how Mr. Johnson had a happy life after enlarging his average yet not satisfying tool. Now hotmail is something I'll visit everyday, and I do engage in writing letters to mates (that peaked in round 2005) and receive more interesting stuff than a 'free trip to Hawaii'.


- Gamefaqs/Gamespot/Cheats

Besides using the internet to check my 'emai' (or spam-mail), I used it to check walktroughs for videogames, to read reviews and watch upcoming games. Occasionally I would go on and find cheats, but I never been too keen on using them before finishing a game, cause it kinda ruins the moment for me. I can say that besides of helping me at becoming the semi-geek that I am and erradicating any possibility of being a normal kid who would go outside to the park and play soccer, this websites helped me at being good at navigating the web search engines and websites in general.

- Hi5

I wonder how my myspace and facebook would look like nowadays if it weren't for Hi5. That strange website in which you could have 'friends' and you could add pictures of yourself in which people would comment on you mainly saying 'oh you look really nice! :)' and what not. Websites in which people would start taking pictures of themselves in front of mirrors, in their rooms - they would start searching for the perfect angle. That one that would make them look great (in most cases they didn't realise they also made them look like somewhere they were not, as they were ugly as in real life), the one that would make their noses look normal sized, etc.

Hi5 was a lot of fun, it was probably one of the first websites I started talking to random people and actually meeting them. Something that at that stage would be deemed as very 'open-minded', but that now heaps of teenagers (and people of all ages) engage in. It's actually so much fun (in the 'not-funny' way) to meet someone you chat with online. Specially when they end up being that seedy bald guy from the liquor store right down the road. I even had a fake hi5 profile of myself being made up! So many epic adventures there...

- Myspace

Suddenly this new thing came up, which striked me as the same as hi5 but you could actually edit your profile in many ways. Personalize it, pimp it, rape it and what not. As usual, like with any other new thing on the web that comes on, I'm kinda reluctant on moving on to the 'next big thing'. So it took me a little while to get rid of hi5 and move on to myspace. Yeah, I did the 'taking pictures of myself' bit, and the 'new pic comment plz' thing as well (well, actually only to close mates, not to random people on bulletins). So far I've done little to my profile. In fact I have done almost nothing besides the writing and uploading the pictures, as one of my mates pimped it out for me.

- Autoliniers/Alberto Montt/Various random bloggers

Blogging was becoming something a bit more mainstream. People would use it for different reasons. To post every little detail in their life, to upload their work (in whatever area they worked in), to share with the world those dark and twisted thoughts they had (or so they thought they were), etc. I found myself mainly looking at cartoonist's blogs. Which meant watching countless of images till I found myself with nothing else to watch. There's a couple I see on a daily basis, while others post at random times. But the two first ones that are features in the 'title' are the ones that I actually read most days.



- BBC News/El Frontera/NZ Herald

And so those moments where I thought I knew heaps about the world, that I was real smart and cultured ended, with highschool altogether. I realised that I was one of those kids who could talk nonsense and look like they 'knew' stuff because most people didn't, but deep inside I didn't know a shit about the world. If ya asked me where Bahrain, Yemen, Cambodia, Indonesia was, or what the situation was like there I probably would've come up with a witty yet not very credible answer for it. The 'cable' company that we had just added the BBC News channel to their list, and me going to NZ was few months away, so I started watching the news there everyday, all the time, even just as background sound, to see if I found something about this new country I was going to. Pissed off my olds cause it was the only thing on the tv, and I was quite territorial about it. But they learned to live with it tho, they knew it was only going to last for a little while longer.

Later on as I went to NZ, and stopped watching tv altogether, I had to find other sources of news. I turned into the web. First I navigated the BBC News, then I turned into El Frontera, a Tijuana based new source, and then the NZ Herald, which is pretty self explanatory. Reading the news is a lot of fun, it gives ya things to talk about when you meet someone from somewhere else, and an insight on what to comment on or not. If you fancy local news more, then it gives ya knowledge on what happens around your block if you don't get to see it for yourself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

- Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia, Lolcats, etc.

I actually knew of wikipedia since quite a while by the time I was in NZ. It had become a staple in my diet, or more like the website I would check if I came across something I didn't know about. It would also fuel my hours of procrastination, with a hundred tabs opened in my browser as I jumped from one article to another. Wikipedia rocks, I think it's one of the most awesome websites out there, just for bringing information (whether reliable or not) to everyone with internet access, for free!

Uncyclopedia is like the mischevious twin of Wikipedia. Do check the articles on Uncyclopedia itself, and on New Zealand. Look for 18+ stuff as well! wink wink

Lolcats well... Lolcats have been on the net since quite a fucking while, but I'm a bit like a grandpa when it comes to those things. I would probably go crazy about finding this 'new and cool' website, and I'll send it to all of my mates, just to discover everyone already knew about it and got over it more than 3 years ago. But hey, akshully they're really good. I've seen 4000 of em and you might end up seeing a lolcat of the day now and then!


http://icanhascheezburger.com/













Over and out

No. 1 about No. 2

Sorta.

Alright, this is probably a failed attempt at starting a blog (you can bet how many times I'll post before surrendering) - I'm kinda bombarded with ideas of what to 'post', how to make this blog attractive, or at least coherent, but I'm guessing the most decent thing is to do a lil' intro bout me.



- Name's Ricardo














Above you have a normal looking Ricardo, with a typical 2008/2009 face. He was kinda weird during 2007 tho.














- I'm from Tijuana (Mexico), but I've been living in Auckland (New Zealand) for almost two and a half years now. Why the hell I'd come to a country like this that's on the other side of the world, instead of going to Zimbabwe, or to my neighboring country, is another story.

- I am bilingual, I speak Mexican AND Spanish. Oh wait, in that case I'm a polyglot.

- My virtual breakfast consists of various social websites plus three newspapers and a couple of blogs. Doesn't help a lot to get in time to uni.

I'm gonna write most of my post in engridish (gotta love broken English), with a couple of words in Spanish. Mexican is really hard to write, so you might not get to see much of it in here.

As an attempt of trying to sound interesting and to speak about current issues I'll comment on the following things.













- Slumdog Millionaire

Yeah yeah, everyone's probably talking about it. Everyone who doesn't live in a shell that is. I watched it a couple of days ago, cause of course, most mainstream hollywood movies arrive to NZ quite a bit later than the rest of the world. I quited liked it, it was a bit like hollywood meets bollywood, or a western bollywood movie that is. Editing was great, so was the music, which I highly recommend checking on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e4qHRhlJlc ---- It's probably not the typical song you'd find in Bollywood films, and the dancing is pretty boring compared to what you'd find in them as well, but I thought it was a cool as thing to add to the movie. I don't think it'd be Bollywood without at least a bit of dancing. (I was a bit like WTF with the bits in Spanish though)

Mate of mine said I was a cynical cunt for thinking the following, but I always find it funny how this 'pseudo-non-meanstream' movies that are featured at the Oscars always sweep a lot of awards. I'm not saying that this film was bad or anything, I thought it was great. But it kinda reminds me when Crash won a lot of awards in 2005. It got a lot of praise for its portrayal of xenophobia & racism in the American world. Slumdog's features muslim characters who are discriminated, but of course, not by Americans, but by Indians themselves. Bit of a 'lets show how much they suffer in some parts of the world but no by our hands' film? I don't think that was the intention of the director, or that that would make the movie any worse/better. In fact I'm just gonna get to a pretty bad conspiracy theory if I keep writing about this. Seems like I didn't learn a lot last semester at uni while taking Logic.







- New Zealand's International Documentary Film Festival
Sari Soldiers



A film by Julie Bridgham that tells you the story of 6 women and their lifes during between ~2004-2008. Of course, that's only the tip of the iceberg - Filmed in Nepal during this period in which the King tries to crackdown the Maoist Insurgecy. All the characters in the film, as well as every other Nepali, have been affected by this in some way - not all of them are on the same side though, which is one of the reasons that makes this film very special. Characters take different positions, some of them fervent followers of the King, while others take important positions in the Maoist army. An empowering feminist film, and a film that shows the most important events regarding Nepal's history in the past few years, this is a must-see!

http://www.docnz.org.nz/2009/ak/ Take a look and please do comment if you've seen any of the movies shown or have any recommendations! Not that I'm expecting a lot of comments besides the ones from people I'm gonna be bombarding with messages like "comment plz ktnxbai" (that's if I get lucky).

- No. 2

Yeah, the title of this post alludes that it's gonna be about this movie. Turns out I wrote a lot of gibberish before getting to it. To be honest, there's not A LOT that I'm going to be saying about it. The movie's pretty good, AND it's a NZ made - I dig into anything that is NZ made just cause it kinda helps me get more immersed in the culture and what not. The coolest thing about it was that it was free, and it was an outdoor screening! That was mint. Movie's about this Fijian family and a mockery of Auckland's suburbian life (I'm almost copy pasting from the Auckland Council website at this stage). Do check it out if family feuds mixed with comedy and light drama fancies you.














I'll post again sometime soon. Can't really commit to a date at this stage.

Peace out peeps *latino gangstah pose*

P.S: What? You're saying that I'm actually friends with 'Stevie' and that I'm copying him cause I'm posting about movies mainly? Maybe, but whatever the case check out his blog.

http://mundo-stevie.blogspot.com/

P.S.2: Layout's pretty boring, I know. I'll have to force one of my mates to help me with that cause I'm useless at that stuff.