On the night of September 15th Mexicans celebrate “El Grito de Dolores,” the sometimes-rebel priest Miguel Hidalgo’s cry for freedom that, according to tradition, fueled the flames of an independence movement in 1810. Central American countries share a similar independence holiday, so it makes sense to honor the day with a party at the Hogar […]
I’d heard lots of wonderful things about San Miguel de Allende. Mostly that it’s beautiful. I’d also received an open invitation to stay at a friend’s family home there, which by itself was enough to make me want to go. But the more I heard about San Miguel de Allende, the more I became interested […]
This article first appeared on May 30, 2013 on Waging Nonviolence, “a source for original news and analysis about struggles for justice and peace around the globe.” Feel free to share it in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licensing. On May 25, an estimated two million people across 50 countries participated in the […]
I had just gotten back to Mexico City from a trip to nearby Cuernavaca and was putting down my backpack when my housemate Paula said, “hey, I’m going to a Food Not Bombs meeting. Want to go?” “Food Not Bombs? In Mexico City? Sure, let’s go.”
“I know it’s illegal, and I don’t like that. But I’m obligated to do it.” Have you ever heard of the experiment where a child is left in a room with a marshmallow and promised two marshmallows if they don’t eat the first one for fifteen minutes? I know I’m just guessing, but based on […]
One of the ways that the USA has influenced Latin America and the rest of the world is through its music. It’s true that US culture has flooded other parts of the world more than they have flooded each other in the last century, but music is rarely adopted without adding local flavor. Musical hybridization […]
The other day I was talking with my friend Paula in her Mexico City living room. She sat across from me on a couch, laptop open, glancing now and again at the latest updates on the student occupation of UNAM’s executive office building (the National Autonomous University of Mexico). “Alex,” she said, sighing a strange […]
“They became furious.” To say that “they became furious” falls far short of foreshadowing what the Mara-18 gang did to Don Ramón and his family. But let me introduce you to Don Ramón, because he’s a wonderful man. Don Ramón was born 58 years ago in a small town in Honduras. His father passed away […]
Neza York. Arabronx. Xochihouston. Sound somewhat familiar? Mexicans have an affinity for wordplay. They mix and mash their words up, they make lots of puns, and they have a very, ahem, rich tradition of albures, or double-entendres. Of course, for a word or a concept to enter Mexican wordplay with any degree of efficacy, it […]
“Extremely difficult.” That’s how a member of Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity described last year’s caravan through the USA. Why? Because unlike in Mexico where the whole country has faced the repercussions of the drug war’s violence in one way or another, the population that the caravan encountered in the USA was […]
Porque El Sur También Existe 