Christmas potpourri

Parroquia in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. Photo by Steven H. Miller.

I avoided working on Christmas Day for the first time in three years. But I noticed enough happenings back in Mexico worth mentioning in a blog post. (There certainly weren't any here in Canada worth mentioning, spare this outstanding year-end column penned by Lord Conrad Black from his Florida prison cell on the worst nonsense of 2009.)

Trips to the newsroom on the past two Christmas Days were rather bleak affairs - and made even more bleak by a big boss that was partial to a no-fun, let's-take-ourselves-too-serious editorial policy that kept the lighter side of the news out of the newspaper on holidays. (How many times can you write seriously about Andrés Manuel López Obrador rallies in the Zócalo? For the record, I've done it more than 20 times.)

The lighter side of the news in Mexico around this time of year often involves fireworks - or, more accurately, some mishap with fireworks, such as a pyrotechnics warehouse blowing up in Cancún.

And with most Mexicans feasting on their Christmas dinners - accompanied by generous amounts of drink - late on Dec. 24, a not-so-enterprising reporter in León wrote about the traditional remedy for a night of hard drinking: A hot bowl of menudo, or tripe soup. Menuderías were, no surprise, busy on Christmas morning, ladling up hot fare for those that hit the liquor a little too hard.

Others hitting the liquor a little too hard got busted by the "alcoholimétro," or breathalyzer. The Mexico City Public Security Secretariat reported that 1,096 motorists have been detained so far this holiday season for failing breathalyzer tests. Cops in the capital have reputedly been less inclined to take bribes from those anxious to avoid a possible trip to the drunk tank.

Reforma, meanwhile, noted that the Mexico City prison population also got into the Christmas spirit by hitting the liquor a little too hard. The newspaper reported in a Boxing Day story that wealthier inmates celebrated Christmas with feasts that featured "Serrano ham" along with "alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, music and ... and hired women."

Inmates with culinary skills reportedly prepared the feasts for their wealthier counterparts, who, the Mexico City daily said, "Are known as godfathers." An inmate known as Juan "N" told Reforma that guards got in on the act, too, but in a far less festive fashion. He said that the guards charged less-fortunate inmates double to be marked "present" during roll call because they needed money for Christmas bonuses and didn't want to have to disrupt the prison parties.

Christmas, unfortunately, was bleak for many in Mexico's working and lower classes, who have suffered through an economic crisis in 2009 that has been marked by rising prices, lower wages and record unemployment.

El Universal interviewed one of the Santas moonlighting in Mexico City's Alameda Central, who said he took the gig because his construction job wasn't giving him any hours. The 15-year-old Santa said that his temporary gig paid 130 pesos per day and that he liked the work - even though his reasons for saying so seemed truly dismal.

"They pay me less here, but I like it more," he said. "I remember my childhood [while working as a Santa], although Santa never brought me anything."

One person grumbling about the big Santa better known as the federal government not bringing anything for anyone was López Obrador - the so-called "legitimate president" and self-styled champion of the downtrodden. Not one to avoid mixing disparate happenings and holiday events with his pet causes - recall his August 2008 proposal to solve insecurity and kidnappings by avoiding the "privatization, open or disguised, of the national petroleum industry" - López Obrador invoked Jesus Christ in his Christmas Twitter remarks.

"According to history, a day such as today, 2009 years ago, Jesus Christ was born, the most important defender of the poor that has ever existed."

Naturally, Mexico's religious institutions weighed in on Christmas - but not with the usual tidings of comfort and joy. Bishop Raúl Vera López of Saltillo - a man, who, like López Obrador, shows frequent disdain for the country's political class - delivered a Christmas Day rebuke to the federal government's recent scalping of cartel kingpin Arturo Beltrán Leyva.

Members of the Mexican Navy shot Beltrán Leyva dead during a Dec. 16 raid in Cuernavaca. That raid, and the subsequent papering of the body with bank notes by crime scene workers, upset the good bishop. He told inmates at a women's prison that the federal government appeared to have no interest in capturing Beltrán Leyva, only executing him.

"They went to execute, not to apprehend," the bishop said.

"They went to execute, in a way to exhibit the executed people in the same way they exhibited those that were killed and left hanging from trees in the era of the Revolution.

"Now they're smearing them in bank notes."

Bishop Vera has been critical of the federal government's war on drugs from outset and told me in June 2007 that soldiers should be sent back to their barracks since they lack the proper training for dealing with the public.

The Archdiocese of Mexico City differed. Cardinal Norberto Rivera - who seldom sees eye-to-eye with Bishop Vera - told reporters Dec. 20 that he favoured keeping soldiers in the streets since there wasn't another organization ready to take their place.

But the cardinal became far more animated by the Mexico City Assembly (ALDF) approval last week of same-sex marriage laws and the last-minute changes to the legislation to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

Archidocese of Mexico City publication, Desde la Fe, reported Dec. 24 that during the archdiocese's annual posada, the cardinal "expressed his discontent with the recent approval by the (ALDF) of 'marriages' between persons of the same sex and the adoption of children by theses couples." (Bishop Vera, for the record, backed a 2007 initiative in Coahuila state, site of his diocese, that approved same-sex civil partnerships. He also has blessed the formation of a gay Catholic youth group in Saltillo.)

The salvo against the ALDF for its approval of same-sex marriage was only the latest in a series of tart editorials and statements from the archdiocese against the ALDF and the Chamber of Deputies. Past salvos have taken issue with lawmakers' lavish salaries, partisan political posturings, and their supposed frivolity in the face of the serious economic and social problems facing the country. The archdiocese went even further than just blasting the ALDF for approving same-sex marriage, however. The archdiocese issued an especially grumpy Christmas statement blasting the recently approved Mexico City budget, which increases taxes and metro fares and imposes a new water tariff regime that is meant to stave off forced water rationing in 2010.

"Why is the [majority] PRD, a fierce opponent of federal taxes, such a thief on local (taxes)?" the archdiocese asked.

"Will it be that they need more money to sustain corruption in the boroughs and the scandalous budgets of local deputies that they only use to approve criminal laws such as the one for abortion, immoral ones such as weddings between homosexuals and unjust ones such as the adoption by couples of the same sex.

Going beyond the ALDF, the archdiocese took issue with federal lawmakers, too. A Dec. 1 editorial asked federal lawmakers "to set the example" and take less generous Christmas bonuses, known as an aguinaldos.

The 500 deputies took their usual bonuses - a pro-rated sum of 65,000 pesos this year. The bonuses also included 9,157 pesos in coupons for a Christmas dinner.

At least there was no re-run of last year, when the deputies were reimbursed the money from their aguinaldos that had been deducted in taxes.

Mexican drug cartel peddles meth, preaches religion

I travelled to the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán last month to speak with local Catholic officials about the Aug. 1 raid on an Apatzingán parish that nabbed a cartel kingpin that federal officials say was responsible for sending truckloads of meth from clandestine labs to the United States. Church officials in Apatzinagan obviously objected to raids on religious events and being expected to play the role of detectives for the Federal Police and Army - whose intelligence gathering is woefully inadequate.

We also spoke about the supposed religiosity of "La Familia Michoacana," a drug cartel known for its acts of charity and piety - along with acts of gratuitous violence such as beheadings. La Familia leaders often speak of "imposing order," condemn the consumption of the very products they manufacture and smuggle, and even preach a homespun version of the gospel from their very own religious text. The cartel also has been the focus of an intense crackdown by federal officials - and, frankly, an embarrassment for federal officials, who had to send reinforcements to President Felipe Calderón's home state in July as a response to La Familia counterattacks.

Here's my dispatch on La Familia's supposed religiosity, published by Canwest News Service.

Where H1N1 began

H1N1 just keeps on giving in La Gloria, Veracruz, the hamlet where the virus was supposedly first detected back in April. Since the media from the across the globe first descended on La Gloria last spring, in search of the first-known H1N1 carrier, five-year-old Edgar Hernandez, the PRI state government has paved a new road through town, painted many of the public buildings and even erected a statue to young Edgar.

Locals seem indifferent to all of the attention - and many express doubts that something as sinister as H1N1 could have originated in their corner of Veracruz. (Some expressed sentiments like: "If it was so bad, why did we survive?")

Others blame the nearby pig farms - a charge hotly denied by the farm operators - and see the largess from the state government as nothing more than Gov. Fidel Herrera trying to make amends for all of the complaints about the agribusiness in the region. The boy, they complain, is an object of propaganda for the powerful state PRI and Gov. Herrera, who has given the Hernandez family a truck and given Edgar a scholarship. The governor said while unveiling the statue in August that it was a testament to the hearty folks of La Gloria, nothing more. Many speak ill of the statue, however.

I accompanied Thane Burnett of Sun Media to La Gloria in late August: here's his report.

At church conference, parties find religion

At church conference, parties find religion

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

CUAUTITLÁN IZCALLI, State of Mexico - National Action Party president Germán Martínez reminisced about a religious upbringing in Quiroga, Michoacán, while addressing an auditorium of Catholic prelates on Wednesday in this municipality on the northwestern fringes of the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Beatriz Paredes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party followed, speaking similarly about her childhood in the state of Tlaxcala, and of fond memories of the annual patron saint festival in the municipality of Huamantla that fetes La Virgen de la Caridad with predawn pilgrimages and streets carpeted with flowers. Democratic Revolution Party president Jesús Ortega, however, skipped the religious pleasantries and nostalgia and cut straight to politics.

The appearance by the trio of senior political leaders at the annual planning session of the Mexican Bishops' Conference - during which they outlined their platforms and fielded questions on the thorny issues of abortion and religious freedom - was not with without precedent; party officials from the PAN, PRI and PRD had met with senior Catholic prelates prior to the 2006 elections.

But the latest encounter - which also included the presidents of three smaller parties - came as the church has been criticized for wading into the public policy debate with pronouncements, running sharp editorials in church-run publications and lobbying political officials.

Some of the church's hierarchy have even urged Catholics to vote against parties that back policies such as liberalized abortion laws and civil union benefits to same-sex partners.

The encounter - and the recent criticism of the church's so-called meddling - come in spite of strict laws in Mexico that forbid preaching politics from the pulpit, a measure that some church officials want scrapped and say violates their freedom of religion.

"There's a church leadership that is convinced that the church should openly intervene in politics," said Ilán Semo, a political historian at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "[They] have a mentality from the 19th century."

In the mid-19th century, the Reform Laws of Benito Juárez removed the church from the political arena. The Constitution of 1917 reinforced the separation of church and state, along with measures such as prohibitions on the church owning property and priests not being able to wear clerical robes in public.

But reforms approved in 1992 softened many of the anti-clerical restrictions. The softening of the restrictions and the advent of the Catholic-friendly PAN, said Semo, emboldened church officials to opine on public policy and advance a political agenda.

That agenda includes discarding a ban on religious organizations owning radio and television stations and the implementation of religious education in public schools - which are constitutionally mandated to provide schooling that is both secular and free of cost.

The church also wants "freedom of religion" enshrined in the Constitution, which currently only guarantees "Freedom of worship."

Church officials deny allegations that they are attempting to steer parishioners toward preferred candidates or have prelates run for political office, the latter being a violation of cannon law.

They also deny any attempt at blurring the separation of church and state.

"The Catholic Church does not want a confessional state," Archbishop Carlos Aguiar of Tlalnepantla, president of the bishops' conference, said after the meeting with the party presidents on Wednesday.

"The church," he said, "will not be for or against any political party . [and] will promote the importance of the electoral process."

PARTISAN TIES?
The PAN's Martínez on Wednesday enthusiastically backed church participation in promoting democratic values and "fighting absenteeism"

"We're a party that for 70 years has said that there should be freedom, not only of worship, not only of the profession of faith, but rather . a broad and full religious liberty," he told reporters.

Martínez's party has long been accused of being too cozy with the church hierarchy. But church observers say that other parties and political leaders also pursue close church relations.

In Jalisco, for example, the PRI threw its support behind a constitutional ban on abortion after a meeting earlier this year between Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara and state party president Javier Guízar.

"Cardinal Sandoval himself often says that PRIístas are the ones that visit him the most," said Víctor Ramos Cortés, a religious studies professor at the University of Guadalajara.

HOT BUTTON
Unsurprisingly, the abortion issue surfaced at the bishops' conference meeting this week.

Only the PAN's Martínez declared his party, "Pro-life;" his PRI and PRD counterparts said that they personally favored the decriminalization of abortion - especially in certain circumstances - but added that blanket positions on the issue would fail to work in their parties due to diverse views on the subject and differing regional sensibilities.

Social Democratic Party, or PSD, president Jorge Díaz Cuervo, whose party is running on a platform that includes the decriminalizing abortion in the states, was less diplomatic.

Díaz Cuervo demanded that the church stay on the sidelines and butt out of people's personal lives. (The PSD platform also calls for legalizing drugs and providing expanded rights for gays and other minority groups.) He cited scripture to make his point.

"As a Catholic, It suits me to pay unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's," he said. "As a Mexican, I back the Constitution of 1917 that separates church and state."

His comments were received with a polite, tepid response from the audience. Cardinal Sandoval, for one, did not applaud.

PUBLIC STATEMENT
It remains to been seen what the consequences of the church's interventions into politics will be.

The Interior Secretariat has dismissed several recent complaints over church actions, including one from the PSD regarding a list of "electoral sins" issued by the bishop of Cuernavaca that urged the faithful to vote against any party promoting abortion and gay marriage.

But while government enthusiasm for enforcing laws against church interventions into politics has been minimal, the public has been more enthusiastic in denouncing the blurring of church and state lines.

In Jalisco, a state government donation last year for the construction of a Catholic temple generated such public outrage that the money was returned.

Religious observers say that even though most of the Mexican population is Catholic - and the church ranks as one of the country's most trustworthy institutions - the public draws a line at a certain point when it comes to power.

"People are Catholic ... [but] they don't want priests running the country," Ramos Cortés said.

Rising from ruin

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

CHAPALA, Jal. - The Titanic sets sail from the main pier in this municipality on the north shore of the country's largest lake, taking passengers on excursions to nearby Scorpion Island.

But earlier this decade, boarding the 12-person "lancha" - as such boats are locally known - wasn't easy. A precipitous decline in Lake Chapala's water level left the shoreline far away from the pier. Passengers had to board buses just to reach the departure point. Few bothered to show up, recalls Titanic captain Ramón Montes.

Today, however, he says he's making more trips than ever - at 200 pesos a boatload - thanks to a recovery in Lake Chapala's water level.

"There are at least 10 times as many passengers as there were six years ago," he said while docking at the Chapala pier. Within five minutes, his lancha filled up, and he was off to Scorpion Island again.

Six years ago, Lake Chapala was drying up - the lake's volume had receded to less than 20 percent of its capacity. The situation was so serious that some locals feared the level would never completely return to normal. Some in the ex-pat population fretted about low water levels hurting local property values; others who work in tourism and fishing figured their livelihoods would never bounce back.

"All you'd ever hear was that [Lake] Chapala is dying," said innkeeper Michael Eager, whose family runs La Nueva Posada in Ajijic, a village in the Lake Chapala area.

But some refused to give up on their lake. A local advocacy group organized events such as "hands around the lake," participated in forums and raised awareness. Politicians, too, promised action - in 2006, presidential candidates Felipe Calderón and Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that they would save the lake - but little concrete action was taken. That fueled conspiracy theories of unscrupulous politicians deliberately starving the lake to make other public works projects more saleable.

Other residents ignored politician's promises, and looked instead to divine intervention. Local Catholics pleaded with a revered local religious icon to save the lake; the indigenous Huichol, who consider Scorpion Island the southernmost point of their territory, said one of their gods was angry.

Then, almost serendipitously, the lake started filling up. In 2003, the water level climbed more than three meters during the annual rainy season. It continued climbing in subsequent rainy seasons, as upstream dams were unable to hoard any more water and spilled excess toward Lake Chapala. In 2008 alone, the water level rose more than two meters and swelled to more than 80 percent of full capacity.

UPS AND DOWNS

Locals haven't forgotten just how grim the Lake Chapala situation was just a decade ago.

With the shoreline receding, farmers invaded the dried-up lake bed, using the land to plant crops ranging from agave to zucchinis. They built fences around their fields and dug wells. Some even raised cattle on what once was lake. Locals still tell stories of baseball diamonds, racetracks and playgrounds being built.

The number of tourist visits also dropped along with the water level, especially in the town of Chapala, located 40 kilometers south of Guadalajara.

"The lake was completely forgotten," said Eager, whose business is now usually full of customers from the Guadalajara area.

Extreme fluctuations in water levels are nothing new for Lake Chapala, which is mainly fed by the Lerma River. The most recent crisis was not even the worst fluctuation, according to the National Water Commission, or Conagua. The water level dropped to barely 17 percent of its normal capacity in 1955. But just three years later, it recovered to the point that water splashed over the Chapala pier and flooded the local parish, famed for its twin spires.

"There have always been ups and downs," said Eugenio García, Conagua spokesman in Guadalajara. "When the Chapala [water levels] fall, it's due to hydrological cycles."

Environmental groups and scientists partially agree, but they blame many of the lake's woes on issues beyond capricious weather patterns.

Unseemly political maneuvering by Jalisco and federal lawmakers is one bone of contention, as is water management along the Lerma River, which flows from the State of Mexico through five states before emptying into Lake Chapala.

Problems upstream in the water basin are said to be rife. Agricultural and industrial users have been accused of having priority over those who live downstream in the villages by Lake Chapala. Upstream farmers are said to withdraw vast quantities of water for irrigating crops that include corn, sorghum and strawberries, while agricultural runoff pollutes the river. Discharge from industrial operations in the State of Mexico and Guanajuato - home to a refinery - add to the contamination, say environmental groups and scientists.

(Pemex says its Guanajuato refinery is no longer polluting the Lerma River.)

Further complicating matters, they say that more than 3,000 dams in the basin were hoarding water, mainly for agricultural users. State and local governments have also bickered over sharing water.

But García said the upstream situation changed earlier this decade with the signing of a water-sharing agreement by the federal government and the governors of the State of Mexico, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Jalisco.

In years prior, García said that the dams would routinely hold back any additional water beyond the amount that had been authorized by Conagua, but the new agreement mandates that any excess be sent onward toward Chapala.

Still, many academics and environmental groups dismiss the government's role in rescuing Lake Chapala. Some say that the main Lerma River dams were filled, and thus couldn't hoard any more of the runoff from heavy precipitation in the basin.

"It was nothing more than heavy rains," said Alicia Córdova, an adviser to Amigos del Lago, a lake advocacy group. "There were [water-sharing] agreements, but they weren't respected."

The University of Guadalajara's Manuel Guzmán, one of the foremost experts on Lake Chapala, blames the recent water-level problems on politicians attempting to create an "artificial crisis." Guzmán alleges that the Jalisco and federal governments attempted to starve Lake Chapala of water so that a new dam on the Santiago River - which drains the lake - could be built to supply the Guadalajara area with a more dependable source of drinking water. (The Guadalajara metropolitan area depends on Lake Chapala for most of its drinking water.)

"In 2000 and 2002 there were ... torrential rains for filling the lake, but the water wasn't allowed to reach Lake Chapala," he said, adding that recovery only really began after uncertainty over the construction of the dam diminished.

DIVINE INTERVENTION?

Whatever the exact reasons for the rebound, the rise in water levels caught many by surprise. The water level rose so quickly in 2008 that farmers reportedly tried using canoes to salvage their floating crops. One ejido to the east of Chapala had 400 hectares of farmland swallowed by the rising waters. In the community of San Juan Cosala, parts of a new waterfront development built by the municipal government - but built too low - were flooded out.

The rising water also flooded out a soccer pitch and playground near the Ajijic shoreline, where fisherman Toño López docks his boat. Today, goalposts, a swing set and several trees poke out from the water. Farmers who grew crops on the lake bed were also flooded out.

López has no idea where the farmers who swooped in when water levels declined originally came from, or where they went. But he vividly recalls them trying to board canoes last summer in an attempt to salvage their suddenly waterlogged crops. "The rising water completely caught them by surprise," he said.

López said underwater obstacles - fence posts and barbwire left by the farmers, for instance - still present boating hazards. But he's not complaining; he's more than doubled his daily catch of "tilapia" and "charales."

Like many in the area, he once thought the source of his livelihood was going to disappear.

"No one knew if the water would return - only God," he said.

The religious groups who once pleaded for divine intervention certainly credit what they asked for.

Catholics in the area are currently contemplating honoring the Virgin of Zapopan with the title "Queen of Lake Chapala" for answering their prayers. The Huichols, meanwhile, regularly return for ceremonies at their sacred body of water.

But some residents remain cautious about Lake Chapala's comeback. Córdova, the Amigos del Lago adviser, said that pollution in the lake remains a serious concern, for instance.

"There are still many challenges," she said.

Senate votes for reform

AMLO addresses followers at November 2007 rally.


Senate votes for reform

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

The Senate approved an energy reform package Thursday, six months after President Felipe Calderón unveiled his controversial plan for overhauling the state-run petroleum sector and stemming a precipitous decline in oil production.

Lawmakers from the three main parties voted overwhelmingly in favor of the seven initiatives comprising the package, which now moves to the Chamber of Deputies.

"It's a success that we've had a civilized Senate debate, producing new rules of the game for a better, more modern and more transparent Pemex," said Sen. Manlio Fabio Beltrones, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the Senate.

The vote was moved from the Senate chamber to a heavily guarded office tower several blocks away in order to avoid protesters loyal to former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has long decried the plan as a first step to privatizing the nation's oil industry.

But López Obrador's protests, which included a takeover of Congress earlier this year and regular street demonstrations by his "oil defense brigades," lost some of their steam after members of his same Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, opted to negotiate the deal with the PRI and Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN.

The initiatives approved Thursday grant Pemex increased budgetary and operational autonomy; allow the state-owned oil giant to partner with private firms for oil exploration and exploitation ventures; make the company's tendering process more flexible and provide incentives to restart dormant drilling activity in mature oil fields.

But the reforms discarded Calderón's proposals for paying performance bonuses to Pemex's private-sector partners and eliminated another for building new refineries with private money. The reforms also failed to touch the influential oil workers union, which holds five seats on the Pemex board.

Despite the changes, Calderón lauded the Senate-approved package.

"Without exaggerating, I can say that it is the most favorable change in the hydrocarbons sector since 1938," he said, referring to the year the petroleum industry was expropriated.

Analysts described the reforms as an improvement over the status quo, but inadequate for solving the managerial issues in Pemex and arresting production declines.

"This reform is important in providing Pemex with increased autonomy, both financially and operationally," said Alejandro Schtulmann, director of research at Empra, a Mexico City risk consultancy.

"But it falls short in solving Pemex's challenges. The union is a huge problem ... it won't do anything to reverse the decline of [the massive Cantarell oil field.]"

The vote followed six months of discord over energy reform, which has provoked legislative shutdowns, more than two months of public hearings, a partisan citizen consultation process and the threat of López Obrador-sponsored brigades flooding the streets.

A small group of senators representing a coalition of left-wing parties known as the FAP voted against the reforms due to the lack of a clause explicitly forbidding future privatization. They also objected to a measure allowing private firms to win contracts for managing entire production areas on behalf of Pemex.

Deputy Javier González Garza, PRD leader in the Chamber of Deputies, said the two measures would be raised during debate in the Chamber, although he added, "I agree with a large part of the reform."

Debate in the Chamber is expected to begin Tuesday.

Stolen mail surfaces in Ciudad Juarez

A story in today's Miami Herald, Mexico Edition reports on the PGR busting a small group of postal workers in Ciudad Juarez that stole an estimated 640,000 letters coming into the country from the United States. Apparently, the sticky-fingered posties were searching for valuables and cash, which is sometimes mailed back home as remittances from Mexican migrants in the United States.

If remittance money is being stolen, then this once again sadly highlights abusive behaviour by Mexicans in lower-level government positions towards migrants in on the other side of the border at the same time as the SRE and Mexican government officially lobbies on behalf of migrants. (Other stories have been published over the years of crooked cops and border officials stealing Christmas presents from migrants returning home for the holidays.)

As for the Mexican postal system (Sepomex), it's a disgrace. Mail often arrives late and the letter carrier in my neighourhood just chucks the letters at the house. Residents at Ajijic also report receiving bad service as Sepomex reportedly puts its employees in Chapala, keeping the Ajijic office understaffed.

In a curious event each November, letter carriers have a day in their honor marked on the calendar and it's customary to give them a tip. A friend here in Guadalajara failed to do so in past years and would subsequently receive no mail for several weeks thereafter. It begs the question: is it a tip being offered, or a bribe?

Chilling in Oaxaca

I've been in Oaxaca for the past nine days and loved pretty much every minute of it, spare the mezcal hangover this morning. For a place that just exited almost six months of turmoil, it's remarkably calm and tidy - not to mention friendly and safe.

For anyone contemplating a trip, check out planeta.com and be sure to visit the artisan towns, which are explained in detail on the website. For those living in Guadalajara or the Lake Chapala area, discount airline Avolar has round trip fares for only 1,500 pesos.