Tag Archives: mexico

3 films by Mexican directors nominated for the Oscars

Babel received 7 nominations (including best director and best picture), El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labrynth) 6 (including best foreign language film) and Children of Men 3.

I found the best quote about the three movies in a Brazilian website:

Del Toro, Alejando González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón are examples of movie makers that never stopped giving their own touch to their productions, regardless of being tied to big studios. Coincidentially, or not, all three are nationals of a country that still today is treated with disdain by the Americans. The prejudices won’t end any time soon, but their talent and their success is the best answer.”

In other news, the Spanish are also happy. Penélope Cruz is also nominated for best actress, some Spanish documentaries are in the fray, and the possible success of Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labrynth) is also theirs, as a big part of the staff and all of the actors are Spanish.

Gustavo Santaolalla from Argentina created the score for Babel, and he’s also in the running.

I hope they all win, but of course the competion is tough.

1st Matchday Clausura 2007: Chivas-Toluca

A reload of the Apertura 2006 final, Chivas received Toluca at the Jalisco stadium for the 1st matchday of the new tournament. In between the two games Oswaldo Sánchez, former captain, goalkeeper and idol, was sold to Santos Laguna and Ramoncito Morales was chosen in his place. Chivas was also selected by the IFFHS as the 24th best football team in the world, which doesn’t sound too bad either.

According to the news reports Saturday’s game was entertaining, with Chivas tying at the last minute with a sublime freekick from our new captain.

More information at mediotiempo.com, the video highlights below.
In other news, Hugo Sánchez had his first team training with the national team as new coach today. Twelve players have been called from those that went to the World Cup in Germany last year, and there are 8 players from Chivas.

I really like the new Adidas uniforms. Nike is not providing them anymore as their contract ran out, and the Mexican Football Federation didn’t renew their contract for two reasons: Adidas’s offer was better and Nike had serious problems meeting jersey demand from the public during the WC.

El mexicano errante

Me confieso chilango. Llevo casi 7 años fuera de México (prácticamente me volví adulto fuera), y he sabido adaptarme muy bien a la vida fuera de mi país, lejos de mi familia y mi gente, aunque el messenger, el skype, las visitas y las largas distancias son una maravilla. Tan bien, que no sé cuándo regrese. Le comentaba a una amiga alemana de mi clase anterior de francés (ya me cambié otra vez) que tengo tres pulseras en la mano izquierda. Una me la compré en Greenwich, en el meridiano cero. Otra es un regalo de graduación de ingeniería de mi abuelo. La última es una pulsera tricolor, en verde, blanco y rojo (o más bien, verde, gris y rojo, porque ya está muy sucia) que me compré en el Zócalo del D.F. justo antes de partir en el 2000. Mi idea entonces era (muy romántico yo) que me quitaría esa pulsera cuando regresara a México a vivir. Cuando le dije la historia a mi amiga me quedé pensando que aún no sé ni le veo para cuándo me la voy a quitar.

Aunque Europa creo que ya la conozco relativamente bien (aunque me falta buena parte de esa área entre Alemania y Rusia que ya no sé si llamar Europa Oriental o Europa Central), del Lejano Oriente sólo conozco un país, de Medio Oriente dos, de Sudamérica tres, de África ninguno y de Oceanía tampoco. Quisiera ver más mundo antes de regresarme a mi tierra, porque sé que cuando regrese para establecerme va a ser muy difícil para mí volver a salir. O quién sabe.

El Fogoncito va a China

La cadena mexicana de taquerías El Fogoncito ha decidido abrir sucursales en China. Yo me pregunto, ¿cuánto tiempo tardará antes de que salgan fotos de versiones piratas en Pinches Chinos?

Disclaimer: No estoy de acuerdo con algunas actitudes del site anterior que podrían ser interpretadas como racistas.

Actualización: Las fotos en Flickr. Como la de abajo. ¿A poco no se les antoja?


Fogoncito, Inauguracion 092, originally uploaded by CRoberts.

A friend’s adventures in the UK

I was chatting over messenger with a good Mexican friend of mine who is now living in the UK. She told me a couple of stories that dovetail nicely with my own that I’ve also posted in this blog.

She’s rather fair-skinned, with blue eyes and blond hair, so I asked her if people believed her when she said where was she from. She answered that usually they don’t, but the worst part was with her doctor, who for half an hour analysed her facial features until declaring that “I thought that all Mexicans were short, dark Native Americans”. The funniest part was that he was Pakistani himself.

In another instance, after arriving in Barcelona for spending the holidays she was asked to answer a survey. The interviewer started going through the survey in English and as she stutterd with a word my friend ask her to switch to Spanish. The interviewer then seemed rather taken aback, as she didn’t expect my friend to be a native Spanish speaker.

So, the lesson is that in Europe people think she’s from an English-speaking country, whereas in my case people think I’m Morrocan, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian, or even half-Thai half-Finn, but we’re both Mexican.

I think it’s time we all get rid of our stereotypes. They might be reference points, but they’re not very valid.

Current Mexican rock scene

Another article in the Rock en Español series.

In the last 6 years there has been an explosion of so-called indie rock bands in Mexico, giving it a very active scene. As has been the case before, some bands from other countries have also been performing in festivals such as the Vive Latino or Rock en Exa.

The rock scene in Mexico had been strongly supported in Mexico City with magazines such as Rock and Roll and radio stations such as the defunct Rock 101, Radioactivo and now Reactor. The latter released during the past two years a series of until now 4 EPs with the independent bands they have given airplay to called “¿Cuál es tu Rock? Mi primera caja de música” and they have been warmly received by a young public avid of new music. I have them all and heartily recommend them.

The bands included are (all are links to their Myspace profiles, where you can listen to their music):

Funnily enough, not all of them are Mexican, and neither do they all sing in Spanish, but that’s the kind of music that has been making the rounds there in the past couple of years.

More background on the current indie scene from El Universal.

Tex-Mex is not Mexican food!

I bump into this issue from time to time (this photo is from Helsingin Sanomat), so I guess I have to tell my audience about it. The long rant that follows simply boils down to this: Tex-Mex is not Mexican food! The first time I saw hard-shell so-called tacos was in Europe. The only truly Mexican brand of chillies on sale here is “La Costeña”, all others are European or American copycats.

Most of the food on sale in “Mexican” restaurants outside of North America (there are honourable exceptions, but they’re few) is unknown to a Mexican, including such things as burritos (which are only found in Northern Mexico, if at all) or nachos with cheese. Those things to us are like a salmon burger would be to a Finn, or mussels with cheddar to a Belgian.

I don’t deny Tex-Mex can be good food, just please don’t call it Mexican. You have no idea how much you’re missing. The funniest thing is that now in the States you can get proper Mexican food, but in Europe we’re still stuck with the Americanised adaptation (just like the differences between rodeo and charrería).

Mandando mensajes de texto a México

No sé si la situación sea diferente con Movistar, pero al menos con Telcel no puedo mandar mensajes de celulares de otros países a números Telcel. Eso me parece muy raro ya que puedo mandar a números de otros países, e incluso haciendo roaming en México me llegó a pasar que recibía y podía mandar mensajes con mi número finlandés de un amigo con un número de Singapur tomando vacaciones en Nueva Zelanda, pero no podía recibir y mandar mensajes a mi papá con un Telcel en el cuarto de al lado.

¿Cuándo van a conectar su SMSC (la parte de la red de GSM que manipula los mensajes de texto) al mundo? ¿Realmente necesitan convencimiento sobre el modelo de negocio, dada la cantidad de mexicanos que vivimos fuera del país que podríamos causar una explosión en el uso de los mensajes de texto internacionales?