New 500-peso bills pay homage to Kahlo, Rivera

Martes, 31 de Agosto de 2010

MEXICO CITY – The Central Bank of Mexico (Banxico) issued on Monday the new 500-peso bill, which has images of painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Andres Villalobos is a successful, single-minded, if rather abrasive, entrepreneur, whose desire to build a luxury tourist resort alongside Tenacatita’s spectacular beach dates back several decades, when he first entered litigation with the ejido over ownership of the valuable land in question.  The legal machinations of this particular case are almost too complex to follow but if possession really is nine-tenths of the law then Villalobos will be virtually impossible to remove.  And even if judges do rule that the foreigners’ plots of land are rightfully theirs, who could they count on to evict the real-estate baron’s guaruas (guards) with the same show of strength displayed by state police on August 4.  Certainly not the current state government. The federal police or the Army? Don’t bet the farm on it.

I wish that I didn’t agree with this reporter’s conclusions but this truly is a “right fine mess” that won’t be easily resolved.

Working Class Heroes
The Barrenderos of Mexico City

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City
A small army of men and women in fluorescent orange and green uniforms pushing bright yellow carts hovers on the edge of the overflow crowd in the great Zocalo plaza of this city, ready to pounce.  Whether it’s the 62 matches of the World Cup “FIFA FanFest” shown on giant screens for the diversion of the masses or a rally of tens of thousands of disgruntled citizens who have gathered to protest the policies of their government, the “barrenderos” are prepared to move in and haul away the mess the “fanaticos” have left behind.

Follow John Ross and his excellent reports from Mexico City on counterpunch.org Thanks go to Graham Wilson for pointing me to this website.

I once had the pleasure of spending the night by a campfire, drinking mescal on the roof of an abandoned hotel in Chamela, on the coast of Jalisco, Mexico. The rooms below were spectral, caked with bat shit, crumbling. Chunks of cement littered the stairway, and traversing it was no doubt incredibly dangerous. But I was 20, and I didn’t care, and up on the roof the sky was a vast, glittering starscape and the wind smelled of wood smoke and palm fronds and ship wrecks.

I have a long history of exploring the abandoned resorts that dot the coast of Jalisco. The habit dates back to my childhood, when my parents and their hippie friends used to party in a sprawling complex of abandoned condominiums not far from the aforementioned hotel at Chamela. 

Felisa Rogers has done it again with an Open Salon article that goes right to the heart and soul of our love affair with Mexico.

Safety ruling complicates some Mexico flights

If you’re traveling to Mexico soon, be aware that the FAA recently downgraded Mexico’s safety rating due to oversight concerns. U.S. carriers will still be able to fly to Mexico, but they won’t be able to do code-sharing flights with Mexican carriers.

Foreigners – perhaps as many as 40, mainly Americans and Canadians – who purchased beachfront land in Tenacatita are outraged by the actions of wealthy Guadalajara businessman Andres Villalobos, who, with the support of dozens of armed Jalisco state police officers, has appropriated their properties, even though many have legal titles held in bank trusts.

Villalobos, who obtained a court order to carry out the eviction of around 50 low-income families, has vowed to demolish every standing structure in a 80-hectare tract of land bordering Tenacatita beach, regardless whether they are legally titled to others. State police and employees of Villalobos’ company, Inmobiliaria Rodenas, have blocked the road to the beach and are keeping everyone off the land.

This very detailed article about the Tenacatita debacle should be required reading for anyone considering the purchase or lease of Mexican ejido property.

Since we launched our partnership with the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, we have been working hard to make their unique Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection accessible to readers online. The collection is one of the largest Latin American collections in the world, and is renowned for the scope and breadth of its materials covering Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean island nations, South America, and the Latino presence in the United States.

Today, we are proud to announce the completion of our digitization project with the University of Texas Libraries and the inclusion of over 500,000 unique volumes into the Google Books index.

Books from this collection range from the 18th century to newly-published materials, and represent over 50 languages. While the highest concentration of these texts are in Spanish and Portuguese, there are also books written in many indigenous languages of Central and South America. Whether you’re interested in the political journal mentioned in Jorge Luis Borges’s Funes el memorioso (Funes the Memorious), a memoir from an American veteran of the Mexican-American war, or even details on the archaeological remains from Lake Chapala, Mexico, you and other readers around the world now have access to a wealth of information from this exceptional collection.

“We’ve long wanted to share these treasures of Latin America with the world, and Google has helped us to do just that.” — Dennis Dillon, University of Texas

We invite you to explore this collection along with millions of other books on books.google.com.

I’m a great fan of old travel books on Mexico. Anything out-of-print, outdated, odd, or unfairly overlooked really excites me. This morning I stumbled across a February announcement from Google Books that jolted me right out of my chair — free digitized book downloads from the Nettie Lee Benson library! I immediately ripped Lorena’s iPad out of her hands and began downloading one fantastic title after another, most from the mid-19th century, books that I’d love to own but can’t possibly afford to buy as hard copy collector’s items. Check it out and please… if you find a special gem I may have overlooked, would you let me know?

saludos, Carl