Bono, lead singer of U2, took a moment during a concert the band played in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca on Sunday to send a message north across the border. The singer – famous for his political and social activism – asked the band’s Mexico fans to “send a message of love across the border to the good and great people of the United States of America.”

“I want you to send a message to people of conscience. And ask them to answer the question: why is it that all we hear on the news is how drugs are smuggled through Mexico to the United States and we don’t hear about all the automatic weapons that are being smuggled into Mexico from the United States. 9,00 registered arms dealers on the United States, on the other side of the border – 9,000. Most of the murder committed here are from weapons sold in the United States of America. Sing this – we sing this for the innocents who have lost their lives in the violence here.”

There has been some serious media attention given to the arms issue, as the recent Fast and Furious scandal showed. All the same, one hopes someone in the United States is listening.

 
Gun flow south is a crisis for two nations

May 16th 2011 – Lady Gaga’s “Monster Ball” tour finale in Mexico City inspired devoted fans to dress up and share their enthusiasm. I worked with photographer Yvonne Venegas, who created this series of photographic portraits, of the two dates Lady Gaga played in May.

You can see the video here on Time’s website.

Videographer: Deborah Bonello
Assistant: Ulises Escamilla Haro

“Arturo has captured with his camera shocking images which document the massacres, attacks, disappearances and car bombs which have left thousands of victims in a city which has become the battle ground for criminal gangs”, says Manuel Carrillo, Senior Producer at Reuters Television in Mexico, who nominated Arturo for the Prize.

“Despite threats and intimidation from these gangs and even from the security forces, Arturo has remained strong and unfailing in his coverage – mindful of the fact that in Mexico, other journalists have been killed just for fulfilling their duty to keep society informed”.

The recognition of Arturo is a nod to all of the journalists who work up on the Mexican border, covering the violent flashpoints of the ongoing conflicts between Mexico’s drug cartels and government. Violence against journalists in Mexico was a theme that I found difficult to escape on MexicoReporter.com, from when I arrived in 2007. Things have only grown worse since then.

It remains incredible to me that many of the local journalists and fixers who foreign correspondents often work with up on the border manage to get up and go to work every morning in a climate as violent, insecure and explosive as the one they live in. Respect to them.

You can see Arturo talking about life on the job in Ciudad Juarez below.

Mexico’s second annual human rights film festival, supported by a number of organizations here including the Mexico branch of Amnesty International, the Ambulante documentary film project and Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission, opens at the end of the week.

The series of documentary and fiction features, as well as short films, come from 23 countries and will run on screens Aug. 14-20 in two of the city’s Cinepolis cinemas. The cinema chain’s Fundacion Cinepolis is the event organizer.

Unlike last year, this year’s festival will have two competitive sections: best Mexican documentary and best Mexican short.

Mexico has no shortage of human rights issues for documentarians to tackle, and among the fare at this year’s festival are themes such as migration, global warming, freedom of expression, child prostitution and the slayings of women in Ciudad Juarez.

Productions included in the program range from films such as “Los Que Se Quedan” (“Those Who Remain”), “Voces Silenciadas” (“Silenced Voices”) and “Sin Nombre” (“Nameless”), which have already made the film festival rounds, to less prominent documentaries.

Last year’s event attracted fewer than 4,000 visitors, and about 1,000 of those attended an open-air film broadcast in Mexico City’s Zocalo. In a city of more than 20 million people, that’s not a great turnout.

This year, organizers are going to charge 20 pesos per ticket, unlike last year, when screenings were free.

It’s hoped that charging for tickets might encourage more people to come and see the films. Lorena Guille, executive director of Fundacion Cinepolis, said, “There is a cultural perception here that what’s free isn’t of good quality.”

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

This is probably the least exciting location from which I have filed a dispatch. My sofa, in my third-floor apartment, my snowball-like foot propped up on a couple of cushions as I look out onto the cloudy Mexico City panorama this morning.

What happened? Well, it’s all Cafe Tacuba’s fault really.

I interviewed two of the members – “Meme” and “Quique” – of one of Mexico’s most successful rock bands early Saturday evening at the Foro Sol, one of the city’s biggest venues with a capacity of 55,000.

Emmanuel “Meme” del Real Díaz and Enrique ‘Quique’ Rangel Arroyo were both really nervous, as they were about to step out in front of their massive home town audience for a marathon four hour set.

Anyway, it’s always a buzz interviewing creative and passionate people, so I was set for the gig which started at 8 pm. The atmosphere was intoxicating, and not just because of the beers and the mixers being sold by waiters passing continuously through the crowds.

Cafe Tacuba are from Mexico City and – as is evident from the sold-out show – loved by Mexico City. They still live here and that in part contributes to the “chilango-ness” of their sound. But more to come of that later in a interview with the band, which I’m still editing.

The band came on at around 8:30 pm to chants of “pa pa pa pa weyeweyooooo”, which is from the song “el baile y el salon” (hear it here). The energy that they put into the show was incredible, with vocalist Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega, who currently goes by the name of “Ixaya Mazatzin Tleyotl” (he changes his name for every album) wheeling around like a spinning top, his long curly hair spinning out around him like a skirt. And when he wasn’t spinning he was jumping, or running, or dancing.

Standing in a crowd of 55,000 bouncing Chilangos (what they call “Londoners” or “Angelinos” here in Mexico City – the city natives) is no small thing, and the song “Chilangabanda” (“banda” means gang) had special meaning.

Which explains why I was hopping and skipping my way to the toilets. I was elated. Too elated. My ankle gave way, and I fell to my knees. Even after a few beers, the pain was excruciating.

Which brings me back to why I am filing this dispatch from my sofa.

Pinche Cafe Tacuba.

Nicaragua’s culture, arts and music scene is the focus of a new magazine launched by two American designers living in the country’s capital, Managua.

Hecho, which means “done” or “made” in Spanish, is the project of Christopher Sataua, 27, from San Diego and Oliver Best, 31, from Oregon. I caught up with them from Mexico City via Skype video phone to talk about the magazine.

The bimonthly is about to publish its third issue and, despite the weak global media market, has managed to sign up more than 30 local advertisers. Best says that although they expect to see a loss on the first three issues and have so far funded the project themselves, they’re working hard to build Hecho into a vehicle that local advertisers want to be seen in.

Hecho is visually striking, due at least in part to the design background of both owners. The magazine isn’t aimed at travelers but, rather, locals and foreigners living and working in the country who want to know about what’s going on in the underground music, arts and culture scene.

It’s a locally produced, bilingual effort produced by a group of both native and foreign writers and others living in Nicaragua and focusing on a strand of society that both local and international media largely ignore, the owners say.

“I don’t know of anybody writing anything about what’s happening culturally inside the country,” said Sataua.

Their tone is cool, collected and informed, and their print run of 4,000 per issue disappears pretty quickly.

“We went to do a photo shoot in the market, and as we were going through the market, we were throwing the magazine around, and people were like ants, you know, coming to it,” Sataua said.

The online version of Hecho is “still in its infancy,” according to Best, who says he and his partner want to build it out into a much bigger presence. For now, you can download the print version of the magazine from the site, as well as read some of the articles and peruse a blog.

Thanks to Americas Quarterly for alerting us to Hecho. You can read more about the project in their report here.

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Government restrictions have limited them and the thousands of other restaurants in Mexico City to only providing takeout meals, and sales at Fonda Garufa have plummeted as a result.

]]> http://www.mexicoreporter.com/2009/04/30/video-mexico-city-restaurant-business-battered-by-swine-flu/feed/ 25 http://www.mexicoreporter.com/2009/04/25/swine-flu-doesnt-deter-art-fans-in-mexico-city/ http://www.mexicoreporter.com/2009/04/25/swine-flu-doesnt-deter-art-fans-in-mexico-city/#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:22:58 +0000 MexicoReporter http://www.mexicoreporter.com/?p=2053 If you’ve been paying attention to any news out of Mexico over the last 36 hours, you can’t have failed to notice that we are in the grip of an outbreak of swine flu. As the  media reported yesterday, as many as 60 people have been killed by the outbreak and schools, public offices, cinemas and museums have all been closed by the government as a precaution. 

Waking up this morning, I noticed that the death toll attributed to the outbreak had risen since Friday and that the virus – which has also been detected in the United States - is being called a possible pandemic by the WHO. The streets were very quiet for a Saturday morning and the odd person we passed on the way through town in a taxi was wearing the government-issued blue surgical masks to cover their faces to avoid contagion. But there was no panic, no wrestling in the streets for the last face mask, just a sort of eerie quiet – eerie for Mexico City, which is always a seething mass of traffic and people on a Saturday.

So I was surprised to find that a gallery opening in the posh neighbourhood of San Miguel de Chapultepec, part of the city-wide Zona Maco contemporary art festival, was swarming with people. I at least expected to see fashionable versions of the blue face masks being combined with the latest clothes labels, but it wasn’t so. Of the 500 or so attendees at the event (download the details here), perhaps 10 of them were covering their mouths, and some of those had their masks pulled down around their necks. 

Risking their lives for art? Well, the new Gabriel Orozco work unveiled at the recently-opened contemporary gallery Kurimanzutto was rather smashing. No one I spoke to felt that the risk of contracting a possibly deadly form of flu was as high as the repercussions of missing out on one of the most trendy dates in the Mexico City art diary.

Annabell Villareal, a 45-year-old business woman at the launch, had rather smartly woven her face mask into her outfit of tight black pants and fitted white jacket, covering her lower face with a white scarf in the style of a bandit rather than a doctor.

“There is a lot of risk – we’re on alert,” she said.

“But by taking precautions such as covering the mouth…we can go on existing with other people.”

Then it was on to Del Valle, the middle class neighbourhood where I live, after passing through the trendier Condesa on the way. The streets in Condesa were unusually quiet and the restaurants had a lot of empty tables. We went to two major emergency rooms in Del Valle – the IMSS on Gabriel Mancera, and the ISSTE hospital called “20 de Noviembre.” Both of them had people their awaiting attention, but nothing like the lines AP was reporting yesterday.

We got a number of taxis during the day, none of the drivers of which reported seeing anything out of the ordinary other than the eerie quiet I mentioned earlier. The theory of one of our drivers was that Mexico’s working classes pay such little attention to health scares and government-issued orders that it is only the dramatic kind of measures being taken by the Government now that spur them into action and taking precautions. 

Not only have schools been closed and soccer matches been cancelled, but President Felipe Calderon signed this directive which gives the Government the freedom to implement any measure it sees necessary to prevent, control and combat the virus, and that includes entering private houses and businesses.  

The government reaction has definitely caught people’s attention. Let’s just hope that such severe measures prove themselves necessary over the coming days.

Check my mate Daniel Hernandez at his blog Intersections for more on Mexico City today…..

Image: Annabell Villareal, a 45-year-old business woman at the launch, had rather smartly woven her face mask into her outfit of tight black pants and fitted white jacket, covering her lower face with a white scarf in the style of a bandit rather than a doctor. ”There is a lot of risk – we’re on alert,” she said. ”But by taking precautions such as covering the mouth…we can go on existing with other people.” Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times and MexicoReporter.com.

Nothing was left to the imagination in what is one of the world’s biggest Passion plays. Holy Week, or Semana Santa, sees the staging of a number of scenes from the Bible on the streets of Iztapalapa, including Palm Sunday and the Resurrection. But none are as dramatic as the reenactment of Good Friday.

An estimated 2 million people descended on Iztapalapa on Friday to witness the 166th annual crucifixion, this year of Diego Villagran, the 18-year-old local playing the role of Jesus.

The sheer number of people taking part in or watching what was well-organized chaos was similar to portrayals of the crucifixion one might have seen in films such as “Ben-Hur” and Mel Gibson’s controversial “The Passion of the Christ.” Babies and young children sat atop their parents’ shoulders, crammed into crowded streets and pushed up against police barriers as some of the 4,000 actors in the street play bayed for the blood of “Christ”.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s ubiquitous street vendors showed no shyness in taking advantage of the religious event. They were everywhere, flogging sunhats, bottled water and stamps of the face of Jesus, while offering to imprint the faces of those willing to pay five pesos.

The heat of the April sun, combined with the severe water shortages that the borough also experienced over the week, made the setting feel uncomfortably real. When the blood-soaked “Jesus” staggered past, surrounded by a jeering crowd that kept pushing him to the ground and laughing, it was hard to resist the urge to wade in and save him from his violent destiny.

But Villagran was well prepared for his ordeal. He has been in training for the role since January, when he was selected during a casting process from 20 young men from the neighborhood (watch the video above, filmed over a period of three months, to see Villagran prepping for his big day).

Playing the lead made Villagran into a temporary celebrity here in Mexico, and he says he has had at least one media interview a day since he was given the role.

Over the last few months in the build-up to his big week, Villagran trained daily on the Cerro de la Estrella, a steep hill that doubled as Mount Calvary on Friday. His preparation included dragging a 190-pound cross around a 2.5-mile running track and doing push-ups with a brick on his back.

But he also said that he had to do some spiritual preparation for the role that included, naturally, regular visits to church, but also what he described as “finding himself, within himself,” and asking himself at every step of the process why he was doing it.

“It doesn’t scare me to play this role – it makes me feel proud and gives me confidence,” says Villagran, who is unusually tall for his 18 years and stands head and shoulders above most of the men in the neighborhood.

Although a big guy, Villagran is still boyishly handsome, and he was striking in the role of Jesus. But he says that acting isn’t something he’s planning to pursue, adding that he’s more interested in becoming an engineer at the state-owned oil company Pemex.

“Since I was little, I’ve watched the procession, and I always wanted to see myself there – I always wanted to play the main role,” says Villagran.

“And now that they’ve given me the chance, I’m going to make the most of it.”

Well, he certainly did.

Click here for the New York Times coverage of the event, and here for the Washington Post piece.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Video: Diego Villagran trains for the role of Jesus on Iztapalapa’s Cerro de la Estrella. Photo image: A video still taken from the above film. Click here for more images on Flickr. Video and photographs by Deborah Bonello