For Governor of Yucatan, these are the candidates.
The names are in order of money being wasted on their “campaigns” complete with stupid, cliché’d, completely untrue and vague slogans and promises.
Actually this applies to the first two, since I actually haven’t seen anything from the PRD candidate, Cholo.
Another reason to vote for him!
And when I say original format, I am being facetious since my ‘formatting’ abilities are extremely limited.
As you may know, this blog was started as I looked around for a way to continue my neurotic ramblings on life in Merida after Geocities/Yahoo informed me that the ‘free’ space I had was rapidly filling up.
Doing a quick check on the internet last week, I found that the name “not-the-news.com” had been dropped by someone and was now available. I snatched the name and committed myself to a longer relationship with the folks at Yahoo, hosting the site there and actually paying them.
In other words, NotTheNews will continue there, as opposed to all those other options I was trying to juggle (elmaloso.com, this blog, the old Geocities site). All the archives are still at www.geocities.com/elmaloso.geo and all the new stuff will be located at www.not-the-news.com from this moment on (as Shania Twain would say).
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to email me.
One of the joys of living in Mérida, is the abundance of religious activity and hypocrisy one can observe in everyday life. From the local newspaper’s “Religion” section, which mentions, for the most part, only one religion (catholicism, of course) to the charming rituals that make the country as a whole so much more backward.
This month features the post-carnaval period of repentance. Isn’t it fun how you can completely misbehave during carnaval and then, by repenting and following the little rules the church has set out for you, can feel completely absolved of any wrongdoing! If only life was so simple.
The little anecdote you are about to read happened to a person close to me who shall remain nameless. Hopefully you will enjoy it.
Wednesday is class day at the Marista. The Marista, for those of you not in the know, is a college/university here in sunny Mérida run by some religious folks known as the Marista Brothers. This is not a local tropical music group, but yet another permutation of a catholic group with special beliefs that make them, well, special. Now this particular Wednesday is extra-special, because it is the Wednesday after Carnaval, which means “ash” Wednesday! Ash Wednesday is when someone from the religious hierarchy smears ashes on the foreheads of the believers, in an act that supposedly shows how repentant you are and all that nonsense.
The class is in full swing, when suddenly the door opens abrubtly and in walks a little man – un hermano (not a priest but a brother, and no he’s not black) who unceremoniously announces that the time has come to get your forehead smeared with ashes he has brought in what looks like an unlabelled plastic yoghurt container. Note that he hasn’t uttered any of the normal pleasantries associated with human interaction such as Good Morning, Excuse the Interruption, Hello, or Catholic Unite Against the Muslim Infidel. No, he just threw open the door and waltzed right in.
No one seems to mind however, and everyone listens patiently as he drones on in a quiet mumbling voice. When asked who would like to have their foreheads annointed with the ashes of dubious origin in his little container, the great majority of the sheep baa approvingly and stand in line.
But it doesn’t end just yet. There is an evangelio to be read and Little Hermano asks who would like to read it. Of course, the one person in the class whom everyone can’t stand because she interrupts the class by shouting into her cellphone which she ‘forgets’ to turn off and is generally obnoxious is the one whose hand shoots up and she proceeds to read the evangelio in question.
The evangelio chosen is particularly interesting for those of us who believe that the most vociferous of the religous are such hypocrites, as it dealt with the concept of celebrating your faith in private, not making a spectacle of your beliefs, not showing off your devotion in public, etc. which is what the whole morning’s spectacle has been about!
Again, no one seemed to notice, nor did they offer up any resistance when the LB (little brother, remember?) went on at some length about the sacrifices of the cuaresma and how he couldn’t get over the Yucatecan´s (he is Spanish) love for cochinita and that eating chicken was not a sacrifice and that you could eat all the seafood you wanted but not meat and that included chicken by golly and that there was so much sex and eroticism in the world today and and and.
While he was doing his little number about the chicken and the sacrifices, the afore-mentioned evangelio-reading lady had positioned herself next to the refreshments table and was happily – and completely oblivious to what the hermanito was droning on about sacrificing things you love during the holy cuaresma – enjoying a tamal.
She was hungry, after all.
To those of you still reading after all these years, THANK YOU and my wish for everyone is to have a peaceful and satisfying holiday season. It is very gratifying to know that I have made even the smallest difference in some of my reader’s lives, whether it was helping them find a great restaurant or convincing them that Merida, in spite of all its’ interesting quirks, would be a great place to buy a house, renovate it and enjoy all the many good things that the formerly white city offers.
Are you a 
tourist and looking for something interesting and relatively new to take up a good part of your day? Or maybe you are already a resident of the formerly white city and would like to explore a bit.
Since this blog is all about bitching and moaning, I thought I would share with aspiring business owners the experience to be had with the idiots that ‘work’ in the federal government agency charged with the registering of trademarks and logos.
Called the IMPI (sounds like impy: small, monkey-like – which seems to govern the manner in which they proceed), the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Intelectual is the branch of government that will review your logo, trademark and so on and register it so that no one may copy it. Or that is what they are SUPPOSED to do anyway.
The real life case of one local tshirt printer demonstrates that their efficiency is dubious at best; downright retarded at worst. In an effort to prevent the piracy so common among tshirt printers, the owners of Mayan Xic tried to register some of their more popular phrases and slogans, not to prevent others from saying them or to get some sort of dominion over phrases used in daily speech, but to prevent other tshirt printers from taking the original idea and printing them up for profit themselves.
When you apply for copyright protection, you must first apply ($$) for a ‘name search’ which will reveal if anyone else has registered the phrase or slogan before you. In the case of Mayan Xic, the phrase UAY (Mayan expression of surprise or fear) was searched for. Since no precedent was found, a formal application was filed (more $$). 6 months later, a letter left the Mexico City office and was delivered in Merida another 3 months after that, informing Mayan Xic that UAY was not available because there was a precedent. What was the precedent? It turns out that the brain surgeons at the IMPI, in true office-cloistered, blinded to reality, burocrat fashion, found that someone (Hershey’s no less) had registered Milky Way (really)!!! So much for that. You want to argue the point? Well, you can register a revision of their determination ($$) and wait another 9 months for their probably negative reply.
One of the phrases was actually registered, and it was found that a local printer was printing up shirts with the same phrase. The lawyers were approached and lo and behold, it WAS possible for the IMPI to act. The only caveat? The local office – here in Merida – had no one specialized enough to actually perform the required verification visit to the establishment in question. It turns out that this f^&%$d up system requires you, the person whose registered design is being pirated, to PAY FOR THE IMPI IDIOT TO COME FROM MEXICO CITY!!! Yes, you – already paying taxes that should be covering this – must pay for his airfare, his hotel, and his expenses while he is here doing his job! Is this outrageous or what or is it just me?
Remember the IMPI has an office in Merida – which your tax money is paying for – with over 7 employees in plain sight, none of whom apparently possess that obviously rare additional job skill required to go to a business and verify your complaint. And woe is you if the address you have given him is incorrect; in Merida many houses and businesses are the same number, only the letter changes. For example if your pirate is listed at Calle 50 #500C and the ‘inspector’ finds that the business is actually at #500B you are out of luck. He does not have the authority to go next door, even if the pirated goods are hanging there in plain sight.
As usual, this information is posted with the hopes that potential business owners in Mexico will read it and realize what kind of stupidity and burocratic entangelments await them in this still – in spite of what President Fox might declare on visits abroad – very much third world country.
It’s time I took my love of driving and exploring the Yucatan to the next level.
Personally, I like to rent a car when I travel. There’s nothing worse – to me – than being herded around like some sort of passive cow, having to adhere to someone else’s times and interests. Sometimes I like to just stop and have a coffee, buy some roadside peanuts, climb a hill that turns out to be a Mayan ruin or whatever.
But some folks don’t have the time or the inclination to rent a car themselves and don’t want to use public transportation. And they enjoy getting some clear answers to their questions on life in the Yucatan; objective opinions on what’s worth seeing and what’s a total tourist trap.
So. In between NotTheNews updates and Casual Restaurant Critic outings as well as regular work, I am going to offer this service – for a limited time to gauge the interest and demand – to those who want the convenience of a comfortable car with a knowledgeable driver AND the complete flexibility to do whatever they want, when they want.
The advantages are:
One of the things I want to specialize in is taking you to those wierd and wonderful, great and out of the way, known and unknown eateries that can be found in Merida that you might not get to if you were renting or bussing. Like La Susana Internacional in downtown Kanasin, home of possibly the World’s Finest Panucho. Hey I like to eat. What can I say.
Email me and we can discuss your travel plans for the Yucatan peninsula, if you will be based in – or visiting – the formerly white city of Merida.
Cheers and thanks for putting up with this totally commercial post!
One of the funny things to me – an anglo atheist – about living in a latino catholic culture is the predominance of people named after the bible’s main character, Jesus, as well as the two supporting actors Maria and Joseph. It seems that absolutely everyone is called at least Jose or Maria with the addition of another, more regular name.
The other day my daughter exclaimed to me “Jesus (Hay-SOOS) helped me with my math”. Of course she was talking about one of her classmates who shares a name with our biblical protagonist, but when we translated it into English we both thought the phrase was extremely hilarious, especially coming from her, the daughter of the afore-mentioned anglo atheist.
Who knew that Jesus was into algebra?
I thought it most pertinent and, as usual for anything written by this observer/writer, extremely well written and to the point. For Mexico is not just palm trees and cheap servants. There are things that anyone contemplating a move here should know; they just might take for granted that these little details, the solution of which would seem obvious and a done deal, were already taken care of. They are not.
I have tried to translate it as closely as possible to the original including the tone as well as the message.
For a little background, read up on recent events in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, the state of juvenile law in Yucatan and student protests in Mexico. The idea is not to alarm anyone, but to really alarm everyone, so that maybe a little pressure will make the authorities actually DO something.
W
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It’s wonderful and very healthy to be able to do whatever one wants, whatever one feels like doing. Here are some tips on how to go about doing just that:
The first tip is only for those who have their voter registration card, who have a penchant for social revindication and who are sick and tired of historical slights and inequalities.
Go shopping for a straw hat, a red bandana and a can of white spray paint. Get yourself a decent machete (you can buy a quality model just off the Calle Ancha del Bazar here in the formerly-white city of Merida) and head – together with another 200 like-minded persons – towards the city’s center. Make sure your that the timing of your procession coincides with that time of the day when downtown Merida’s traffic is at it’s horn-blaring, exhaust-spewing worst.
Once you are there, do whatever it is you have always wanted to do; don’t hold back or hesitate; let your thirst for justice run wild, unleash all your fury.
Overturning cars is good, setting busses on fire better; go ahead and spray paint graffitti on storefront windows and historical buildings, block access to public buildings, kidnap anyone who happens by and destroy anything belonging to the community you can get your judiciary hands on.
You need not fear punishment or the application of any law for that matter. The National Commission for Human Rights is there for you 24 hours a day. No government authority will even attempt to get in the way of your fun. We have spent far too many centuries in achieving this level of freedom of expression to have someone come and reprimand us ‘just because’.
Important Note: The mob is indispensable. Do not attempt this alone since this will result in you facing a judge and perhaps being sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The second tip is for those under the age of 17; adventurous, red-blooded youths suffering from misunderstandings great and small.
First, you must acquire a knife in the market known as Bazar Garcia Rejón, where rules regarding the sale of such artifacts are completely and happily ignored. After about a week, the idea is to stand on a street corner in your neighborhood with other under-age and resentful teens where you can show off your new weapon.
One night – any night will do – feeling a little offended, misunderstood or just in a bad mood, you insert blade of the afore-mentioned weapon into the lower abdomen of some person who happens to be nearby and that you don’t particularly care for very much, keeping the blade lodged there until the victim is most assuredly dead. When the Ministerio Publico (read police) arrive – if they do at all – it is important not to offer up any resistance and shed copious tears for all the injustices suffered in the past: abuse by parents and teachers, police brutality, globalization, a drug problem etc.
In no time at all, the victim will not be the stiff cadaver, in whose defense no one will speak, but you! We can bet that a psychologist will be dispatched to look into your case, a file will be started on you and a tutor assigned as well. All this will happen in the 48 hours after your detainment, after which you will be set loose so you can get on with your life, no worries. Isn’t it great this doing whatever we want?
The third tip is for disgruntled students unwilling to accept internal rules, statutes, federal laws and other minutae that tend to make one’s existence such ‘a drag’.
Get about 50 students together – either sex is fine – get an attitude happening and start making protesting gestures. The group isn’t complete without the six or seven students who have Shakira lyrics wallpapered on their brains and for whom ‘soneto’ is a Nestlé ice cream product.
Yell as loudly as possible about your rights as pubescents and the future of the country and remember as many old, communist-era protest chants as possible. “Si la leche es poca, al niño le toca” (if there’s only a little milk, give it to the children) “El hijo del obrero va primero” (the workers child comes first) etc.
Demand to be able to wear ear and nose rings, tattoos, pendants; color your hair and use any cosmetic you feel like. Insist on the use of cellular phones in class, sale of condoms in the school store. Your opinions must be absolutely respected, even if you demand this in language that otherwise might have been known as foul. Demand also more comprehension from school principals and counsellors. Praise the attitude of those teachers who are indeed, understanding, and do not hesitate to physically remove those teachers bold enough to attempt to restore some semblance of order. In the case of these, there is a formulaic approach that cannot fail: accuse them of sexual harrassment, of groping, of leering and lusting disgustingly. Go ahead and dare to do whatever you feel like. What could possibly happen to them that wouldn’t be for their own good? The crime of slander doesn’t even exit anymore in the penal code. You can defame someone, walk all over their reputation with big muddy boots, do whatever you want! The SEP (the federal Ministry of Education) will support you and the DIF (federal organism that oversees social programs for the young) will be most understanding.
Be happy