Viva La Habana

It's been around since 1954, and Café La Habana, at the corner of Bucareli and Morelos in Colonia Juárez, has become the stuff of legend. Once, the offices of all the Mexican newspapers were around the corner, and Café La Habana was their reporters' favorite haunt. It was also popular among writers -- Salvador Novo, Juan Rulfo, Augusto Monterroso and Juan Jose Arreola are all said to have gotten into heated discussions or worked at the tables here. It is more or less a character in the work of Roberto Bolaño, appearing in Los detectives salvajes and at least one of his short stories. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are said to have planned the Cuban revolution here. If truth be told, the food is at best adequate, and the service is, to put it mildly, unhurried. Still, the coffee is excellent, and it is a wonderful place to watch people -- both the clientele and those who pass by outside the picture windows.

Acorn of an empire

Known as la voz de Ámerica Latina desde México (the voice of Latin America from Mexico), XEW was the first important radio station in the Spanish-speaking Americas, as well as the first to succeed as a significant commercial enterprise. In 1930, from this unprepossessing building in the centro histórico, broadcasting began and the station's success was meteoric. All of Mexico's greatest stars could be heard on XEW, from balladeer Agustín Lara to the romantic trio Los Panchos to ranchera singers Jorge Negrete and Lola Beltrán.

The station's owner, Emilio Azcárraga Vidauretta, was the first of three generations of media barons. His son, Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, known as El Tigre (the tiger), brought Mexico into the television age, and for many years his often-reviled network Televisa was the only game in town. (Now, "competition" has brought it only one equally puerile challenger, TV Azteca.) Today, el Tigre's son, Emilio Azcárraga Jean, presides over a media conglomerate that includes radio, TV, publishing, movie production, football teams and an airline. In the same building where they began, Televisa still produces the odd variety show.

Son of a Salinas

I was alerted by my friend Jim Johnston's blog that last November, the geniuses at “TED” – an organization whose motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading” – invited Emiliano Salinas, son of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to emit his ideas about how Mexicans should respond to the violence that is plaguing the country these days. If you have twelve minutes to spare, you can see his remarks, in Spanish with English subtitles, here.

(By the way, that's him in the photo up there. Umm ... was he adopted or what?)

I found myself somewhere between perplexed and enraged by his remarks. They are at best disingenuous and reflect that, while he may carry a Mexican passport, he has no idea how his country functions (or, perhaps more aptly, dysfunctions). His speech carries so many misconceptions that it's a little overwhelming. I will only focus on two or three of his most spurious points.

AP photo

He says disapprovingly that the response of many Mexicans to the overwhelming violence in much of the country is to stay at home in fear. With over forty thousand dead in the last five years – and those are only the official figures – as a consequence of all this violence, many might say that cowering in fear is a reasonable response.  Particularly when there are no organs of the government that are protecting people from the carnage.

Salinas suggests that Mexican citizens should take non-violent civil actions to “take back” their society from the drug traffickers and other assorted gangsters. (He avoids talking about the politicians, police and army --on both sides of the border -- that seem to be, at best, unable to protect society from the violence, and at worst, fostering the violence for their own financial and political gain).

Yet he only talks about one instance of this sort of civil protest, which resulted in the murder of a family member of the organizers. That murder does not bode well for the “thousand Gandhis” he’d like to see organizing all over the country. Shall they incite a thousand more murders?

Latin American Herald Tribune photo

A few months after he made this speech, Salinas could have spoken of poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was murdered last March and who, as a consequence, has founded the National Movement for Peace, which has organized marches and manifestations all over the country in the last few months. However, he wouldn't have quite fit into the Salinas plan. As commendable as Sicilia’s actions are, they have not spurred the government to reconsider its position justifying all those murders due to its supposed “war on drugs.” The movement of this one Gandhi may have raised the consciousness of some people, but it has not changed or stopped the continuing violence in the country.

The most upsetting part of Salinas’s speech is early on, when he blames Mexicans for their problems because, according to him, they “think like victims.” Sad to say, most Mexicans are indeed victims – victims of scandalous governments, in which politicians enrich themselves legally (by whopping salaries, higher than those of their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe) as well as illicitly, manipulating the public trough and making corrupt business deals. People who are doing so well that it is in their interests to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the minimum wage in Mexico is about $4 a day.

It is unfair to blame the sons for the sins of their fathers. Still, there is something particularly distasteful and offensive about this speech, because it comes from the mouth of a man whose father is generally acknowledged to have stolen the 1988 presidential elections – as well as billions of dollars while he was in office.

Think positive

A recent public service ad campaign at Metrobus stops purports to teach people in Mexico City how to be better citizens, "for a more positive city." Among the recommendations: throw garbage where it belongs. If it's true that chilangos are notorious litterbugs, this overly full garbage can gives us a clue as to why.  Trash cans are few and far between and collection is spotty, even in spitting distance of the Metrobus signs.

I've posted about garbage before. Actually ... more than once. Am I putting too fine a point on this?

Loopy for Guadalupe

The Virgin of Guadalupe is not only Mexico's patron saint, but was declared "Patron of the Americas" by Pope John Paul II in 1999. On her feast day, December 12, she attracts about seven million worshipers from around the world at her shrine in the north of city. On any given day a few of the most devout make their way inside on their knees, like the couple above.

On a daily basis, there are between two and eight peregrinations to the Basílica de Guadalupe. In most cases special masses -- which cost between $120 and $400, depending on how many singers and organists are involved -- are given in the names of the pilgrims. On a recent month, the list of peregrinos included bicyclists from the town of San Isidro el Tanque, employees of the Le-Roy Laboratories, a group of podiatrists with the last name Hernández, and the inhabitants of the Cristantemo 13 Housing Project.

This believer had to take a cell phone call in the middle of Mass the other day. You got to hand it to her for wearing pants that tight to church