**

Hotel rooms make me lonely, even the loveliest ones.

My lovely hotel room on a recent trip to Amsterdam.

I can go strong all day, but when I return to my hotel room, devoid of anything other than my bags to say “This is your place,” well, I get sad, and fast.

You may know that I have a crazy, crazy passion for love songs in Spanish. When I’m alone in a hotel room, I DJ myself through the loneliness by pulling up dramatic love songs^ on YouTube (forget Pandora, whose “Latin music” selection is pretty lame).

Seems strange to cure loneliness with plaintive songs, perhaps, but it works for me.

Here’s my soundtrack for six nights in a lonely hotel room:

-“Acompañame a Estar Solo,” Ricardo Arjona

-“La Nave del Olvido,” Cristian

-“Remolino,” Francisco Cespedes with Ana Belen

-“Yolanda”, Pablo Milanes

-“Me Dedique a Perderte,” Alejandro Fernandez

-“Yo Queria,” Cristian

-“Como Si No Nos Hubieramos Amado,” Laura Pausini

-“Lento,” Julieta Venegas

-“Lola,” Chayanne

-“Quitemonos la Ropa,” Alexandre Pires

-“Volver a Amar,” Cristian

-“Peces de Ciudad,” Ana Belen

-“Siete,” Carlos Varela

-“El Alma al Aire,” Alejandro Sanz

-“Guitarra Mia,” Polo Montanez

-“Si No Te Hubieras Ido,” Marco Antonio Solis

What’s your travel soundtrack, and when do you cue it?

–
^Not all the “love songs” are love for a person; a few are about love for a place or idea.

2010 in Mexico

Forward:   In August, Jimena Navarrete won the Miss Universe pageant, only the second win for Mexico in the contest’s 59 year history. And in September, despite cancellations of celebrations in a handful of cities, including beleaguered Ciudad Juarez, Mexico City’s grand bicentennial festivities went off without any serious or noticeable hitches (though not without considerable expense).

Backward:  Continued narcoviolence and the attendant media reports about it, coupled with growing doubts, both at home and abroad, about the wisdom and efficacy of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s aggressive strategy for managing the persistent problem.

These were the stories, good and bad, that dominated Mexican and international news reports in 2010.

But in a three-week period spanning the middle of November and the beginning of December, two significant good news stories went largely unnoticed, especially by international media. Mexico City’s Mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, was named the World’s Best Mayor by City Mayors Foundation, a global think tank, and UNESCO inscribed Mexico’s traditional cuisine on its List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Chef Enrique Farjeat

UNESCO, the educational, scientific, and cultural arm of the United Nations, is charged with many responsibilities, among them, declaring and inscribing physical sites and structures on its World Heritage list. Mexico is home to 27 such sites, including Chichen Itza. Among the lesser known functions of UNESCO is that of inscribing intangible elements of regional or national culture deemed so valuable that they are considered treasures of global culture at large. Forms of dance and dress, traditional musical instruments and songs, sports, rituals, and even medical procedures have been adopted by UNESCO as intangible elements of human heritage, but it wasn’t until Gironella, founder of the Conservatory of the Culture of Mexican Gastronomy, convened a group of colleagues, including Farjeat, to present a proposal that UNESCO had ever considered a country’s cuisine for inscription.

The idea was so novel, says Farjeat, that UNESCO was unable to even consider Mexico’s proposal when it first made its case for inscription five years earlier. “At the time, they didn’t have any criteria to even make a determination,” says Farjeat. “We helped them establish criteria, and they asked us to make a video, to present visual evidence to support the extensive written proposal we had submitted.”
 
Though its initial application was declined, the Mexican team was encouraged, and committed itself to fulfilling UNESCO’s request. In addition to producing the requested video, Farjeat and his colleagues had to make a challenging decision: How to narrow the proposal a bit by determining which region’s food was most representative of Mexico’s diverse culinary traditions? “Ultimately, we chose Michoacan,” Farjeat explains, adding that while UNESCO’s 2010 inscription acknowledges and honors all Mexican cuisine, it highlights the role of “the Michoacan paradigm,” characterized by the use of the clay comal for cooking tortillas.

When the video was done and the focus of their proposal more honed, Farjeat and the Mexico team submitted its revised package to UNESCO and prepared to travel to Nairobi, where proposals would be deliberated and decided upon. Farjeat’s task was to handle procurement and logistics, ensuring that the equipment, the ingredients—and even two cooks from Michoacan—made it from Mexico to Kenya intact and fresh for their performance.

And what a performance it would be.

Vegetables at a Mexican market

 
But this being Mexico, the performance seemed fated to encounter serious obstacles, challenges that might even put its inscription in jeopardy. For Farjeat, in particular, the days and hours leading up to the presentation before the panel of UNESCO judges were some of the most tense of his life. “Practically everything got held up in Customs,” he remembers, ticking off a list of ingredients that sat languishing in the corner of an airport warehouse. He imagined avocados and tomatoes softening to the point of rot, and the variety of cheeses he’d packed going rancid, the red, white, and green, Mexico’s national colors, a not-so-subtle metaphor of disaster.
 
Not only that, but the clay comales hauled across three continents broke, leaving Farjeat with a daunting dilemma: How would he replace his goods and his gear in sub-saharan Africa? “Even though Nairobi’s a capital city and it has a wonderful market, it didn’t have the ingredients we needed,” he explains, mentioning, among others, chipotles, corn husks for tamales, the corn fungus called huitlacoche, and chapulines, roasted crickets. After consulting with the host hotel’s chefs, Farjeat dispatched a team of scouts to the local market with a detailed list and the mandate to buy anything and everything they could find that would help Mexico pull its performance off.
 
“I wanted pork, chicken, shrimp,” he says, mentioning the items he thought would be easiest to replace. What the team returned with might have made a chef with less experience and less determination declare the challenge impossible and the inscription lost. Farjeat shows me a photo of an enormous fish with row upon row of teeth marching deep into its throat. “What is that?” I ask, leaning closer to the photo. “You tell me,” he replies, putting his hand over his mouth and shaking his head as if the fish had just been presented to him. He laughs. “What craziness.”
 
But what was there to do except pull it all together into something presentable? The Mexican team was fortunate to have Farjeat at its logistical helm; he excels in moments of tension. He called the cooks together and made the challenge plain. He explained the ingredients as best he could; then, they rolled up their sleeves, and got cooking.
 

 
The fish was stuffed with achiote and doused with orange juice and put on a charcoal grill. “People came by to take photos of the fish; ‘Look at the Mexican fish!’ they said,” Enrique recalls. The two cooks from Michoacan made tortillas on their new metal griddles. “They loved them so much they insisted on taking them home even though we had to pay airfare for them,” Enrique says.  
   
Somehow, in spite of all the challenges–the unfamiliar ingredients, the broken equipment, the small workspace, the sudden uptick in the number of plates they were told to prepare at the last minute–Farjeat and the Mexican team pulled it all off. When I ask him about the moment of the announcement of Mexico’s inscription on the intangibles list, he pauses for a long time and clears his throat. When he finally speaks, he is visibly emotional. His smile is big and genuine, his eyes are a bit wet, and his mind, well, it seems far away.

He remembers that the room erupted in applause. Proceedings had to stop while other delegates surrounded the Mexican team to offer their congratulations and take photos. And later that evening, Farjeat could finally sit down, put his feet up, and drink a celebratory tequila.
 
*
When the Mexican delegation returned to Mexico, it was not, as they might have expected, to national acclaim and congratulations. Several days after their return from Nairobi, a press conference was held in the Sor Juana Cloister, the hub of Mexico City’s efforts to document its gastronomic history. Eighty members of the press were there, according to Farjeat, but overall, he felt that the event was post-climactic. “The impact hasn’t been as great as we’d hoped,” he says. The story made the newspapers, of course, but the press then moved on.
 

Churros at St. Regis, Mexico City

Guadalajara inaugurates the 2011 Pan American Games

“Que tal Guadalajara?” I ask the taxi driver as we leave the airport en route to Del Carmen Concept Hotel, where I’ll be staying for the next three nights. I was last here in 2008, updating a guide to Guadalajara for Gayot, and I’m wondering how the city has changed since then.

“Uuf,” he replies. I wait for elaboration, but it’s slow in coming and vague when it finally arrives. “It’s changed bastante,” he says. I want him to say more, to say how it has changed and to analyze those changes from his place behind the wheel, but he refrains, which may be smart. When your city is hosting an international sporting event in a time when your country is under intense scrutiny, perhaps you can’t afford to be overly free with your opinions. Either that, or he just prefers the quiet.

The taxi driver won’t have much of that this week; today is the opening of the Pan American Games and everything is motion and buzz. Runners are sporting the flame in the traditional relay; as I approach the city, the flame is approaching it, too. The country’s biggest names in music– Vicente Fernandez and Alejandro Fernandez– are surely warming up their vocal cords in preparation for their performances tonight.

My press credential for the Pan Am Games

And I’m among them.

For the next three days, I’ll be covering the Pan Am Games for this site, as well as for Matador.

I hope you’ll follow along. I’ll also be on twitter, checking in on foursquare and Gowalla, and posting photos on instagram and flickr.

Have questions about the Games? Please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Everything I’ve read to date about the Museo Soumaya has left me dissatisfied… not the facts, which are what they are (a museum housing 66,000 or so pieces of art acquired by Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man), but the assessment of the collection (“tragic”); Slim’s style of collecting (“more of a bargain hunter than an aesthete”); the building in which the museum is housed (“like an oversize mushroom thought up by Magritte”); and even the neighborhood itself (“the slick establishments paving the way are just enough to make you forget you’re in Mexico”– as if Mexico can only be slick or poverty-ridden).

Everyone’s entitled to his/her own opinion, of course, and here’s mine: the collection may seem random (Dali, Rodin, Mexican masters), but I prefer to think of it as the reflection of diverse interests. Who but an absolute art snob cares, anyway? There are some incredible pieces in the collection and you don’t have to look hard to find them; check out this intricate piece, made entirely of rice paper (except the frame, obviously) in 1883:

There are pieces in this collection I haven’t seen the likes of anywhere else, and that’s particularly true of the religious art.

I mean, take a look at this version of Eve, literally coming out of Adam’s rib:

The curation is excellent, particularly in the gallery exhibiting 20th century Mexican painting, where thematic preoccupations are grouped together in a way that’s logical and obvious without being redundant and boring.

Bottom line: Who cares about Slim? It’s about the art.

For more photos from the Soumaya, check out this gallery.

Acapulco as seen from above

At the end of March, I went to Acapulco for the first time in my life; I was a guest of a PR firm, invited to the city for the annual Tianguis, a travel and trade show.

I’d heard about Tianguis from some other travel writers, who painted it as a long weekend bacchanal (and for some people, the description is not inaccurate). I was there to meet local tourism board officials, PR firms, and outfitters to scope out potential collaborations.

Though it’s not a city I’d hurry back to (to me, it’s got a worn, cheap, and slightly sad feel, similar to Myrtle Beach, but with a much more complicated backstory), there were some moments outside of Tianguis when I experienced genuine pleasure, and when I found a story interesting enough to make me wish I’d had just a bit more time there.

One of those stories was the cliff divers of Acapulco. When told we’d be going to see the cliff divers, I quickly developed a mental image of what the scene might look like.

But because I also fully expected a cheesy, overly touristy scenario, I didn’t do any advance research and didn’t give the excursion much thought until we were actually there, in the dark, watching the water below us froth and churn wildly.

I wasn’t prepared to take quality photos, I wasn’t prepared to ask for an interview afterward, or even to take the names of the cliff divers as they posed for photos and asked for tips after their jumps from the cliff face, and I went away disappointed in myself, but not in the show. If you ever find yourself in Acapulco, I definitely recommend that you make time one evening for the cliff diving show.

**
The question that stayed with me for several weeks after watching “La Teta Asustada” (released with the English title “The Milk of Sorrow,” but literally “The Frightened Breast”) was this: Are there films whose topics are so specific, so insular in some way, that their audience just won’t “get” them?

The answer is “Yes, of course,” which then leads to another question: What does the person who comes across this type of film do after having had the experience of seeing it?

*
“La Teta Asustada” was a disturbing, disorienting film that explores an aspect of Peruvian history few Americans are likely to know in any great detail. During the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Maoist Sendero Luminoso group clashed with paramilitary and state military troops; among the many casualties of the ongoing conflict were women raped by “security” forces.

The name given to the psychological trauma ensuing from mass rape was “la teta asustada,” and the underlying presumption was that women who had been victimized had passed along the emotional sequelae of their own trauma to their children through breast milk.

*
Fausta, the protagonist, is a second generation victim of rape via “la teta asustada.” In addition to the emotional burdens she carries, she is coping with her mother’s death, entrenched poverty, and a particularly troublesome response to victimization: in an attempt to protect herself from rape, she has put a potato in her vagina; the potato has sprouted, causing her to seek medical attention. (This, no doubt, is why at least one non-Peruvian critic has said the film has elements of “magical realism”, though I’d argue that there’s nothing “magical” about it; the potato is both real and symbolic, as is the trauma.)

“La Teta Asustada” is desperately bleak: the Peru of the film is grayscale. For the have-nots, daily life is an interminable, grinding series of little trials that pile up one on top of the other, rarely with satisfactory resolutions. The possibility of “superando,” overcoming, perhaps escaping, is visible for a moment–perhaps Fausta will fall in love with the gentle gardener and he will “rescue” her; perhaps the “patrona” for whom she works–a wealthy concert pianist with her own psychological trauma–will give Fausta an out.

Of course, it’s not to be. The film is frustratingly true to so many women’s real lives.
*
And that is what I took away from the film, but only a few weeks after seeing it. “La Teta Asustada” stayed with me in a deep, uncomfortable way, rising up in dreams and insisting that I learn more about a history that wasn’t my own.

*
Here’s the trailer for the film. It will be released on DVD in early December.

Steven Roll, the founder of the blog, Travelojos, has just released Celebrating Latin America at Ground Level, an ebook to which I and many of my Matador colleagues and friends contributed.

The participating writers are all passionate about Latin America; many of us have lived there for an extended period.

If you’d like a copy–it’s free–please email me at writingjulie[at]gmail[dot]com to request one.

For me, New York isn’t the Big Apple everyone talks about. It’s a grand piano, an enormous trumpet, a giant book, a city full of cultural events I want to experience: lectures, exhibits, concerts, sporting events, and an endless number of other things. Besides birthdays, anniversaries, medical appointments, and other personal obligations, my calendar is full of these events and activities.

Last month, one of those events was Brazilian Day. Though I’m not from Brazil, I’ve always admired the country for its fascinating people, the sheer size of the nation, and–of course– its music. Brazilian Day has been celebrated in New York City for 26 years, and each year is bigger than the one before. For me, seeing a little piece of Río de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Ouro Preto, Espiritu Santo and other Brazilian cities in New York was an unforgettable experience.

Like Cuba (where I’m from), Brazil’s music has a strong African influence. Nevertheless, Brazilian music also has something very different from Cuban music; it incorporates rhythms and instruments with indigenous elements. The result is a mix that’s stronger for this diversity, a music that’s notable for its compexity.

Brazilian Day lasted two days and attracted more than 1.5 million people. A sea of people filled “Rua 46,” 46th Street, all the way to Central Park. Standing over the crowd, people appeared like an immense living yellow-green flag, with 1.5 million stars.

Brazilian Day doesn’t begin like other cultural parades; instead, the festivities kick off with a blessing and cleaning of the street. The samba and batucada processions will parade through this street, so the street must be cleaned of any evil spirits, ensuring that peace, pleasure, and harmony will reign. The task falls to the godfathers and godmothers of the Candomble religion, who are dressed in the white outfits typically worn by the Afro-Brazilians of Bahia. They also wear multi-colored necklaces, kerchiefs, and bels with colors reflecting both national pride and religious symbolism. Black and white Brazilians are in the procession, men and women, women dressed like men, young children and old people, and a mix of Christianity and African syncretism.

The music that pervades the celebration starts on the first day and crescendoes from there. With every step the musicians in the samba bands march in step like soldiers headed to battle. The beat of their drums are strong and violent, punctuating the air like cannons. They remind me of a passage I read once about the terror of the Roman legion as it heard, for the first time, thousands of drums beat by the troops of “Anibal the African.” Only elephants were needed to complete the scene.

The complex rhythm of Brazil’s varied regions are all represented here. There are the samba dancers whose colorful, athletic movements bring the sidewalks to life. The intersection of African, Portuguese, and American influences are impossible to imitate, but amazing to see.

There are tourists, locals, and all types of onlookers who have stumbled onto the scene. They’re filming video or shooting photos; some are shouting and dancing in step. It’s impossible to make my way to the stage, where famous singers are performing, among them Carlinhos Brown, Zeze Camargo e Luciano, Margareth Menezes, and the popular Brazilian TV host, Luciano Huck.

For “Nova-Yorki,” as Brazilians call New York City, Brazilian Day was a gift and a profound cultural exchange, filling the air with capirinha, Samba, Bossa Nova, and other Brazilian rhythms and flavors.

**

Nueva York no es para mi esa Gran Manzana que todos hablan, sino, un gran piano, una gran trompeta, un libro gigante, una ciudad llena de todas esas cosas culturales que quiero y debo hacer: lecturas, exhibiciones, conciertos, eventos deportivos y un sin numero de cosas mas. Mi calendario aparte de fechas de cumpleanos, aniversario, citas medicas, y obligaciones personales, esta lleno de eventos y de actividades.

Hace un mes, uno de aquellos eventos era el dia de la Parada Brasilera o Brasileña como otros la llaman. Aunque no soy del Brasil siempre he admirado ese pais por lo interesante de su gente, por la inmensidad de esa nacion y-claro- por su musica. Esta parada se celebra en la ciudad de Nueva York por 26 años consecutivos. Cada año con mas participantes que el anterior. Ver un pedacito de Río de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Ouro Preto, Espiritu Santo y demas ciudades de Brasil en Nueva York es para mi una oportunidad inigualable. Brasil al igual que Cuba tiene una fuerte influencia africana en su cultura y en su música. Sin embargo, tiene algo muy diferente a Cuba en su musica; incorpora en sus ritmos e instrumentos elementos indigenas, haciendo una mezcla mas fuertes y complejas a la sonoridad instrumental única de ese pueblo.

Esta celebración que duro dos días consecutivos atrae a mas de un millón y medio de personas. Una inmensidad de gente llenaron ese espacio de la “Rua 46,” como le llaman ellos a la “Calle 46,” hasta el Parque Central. Todo se veia como una inmensa bandera verde-amarilla llenas de un millon y medio de estrellas.

El evento no comienza como todos los demás eventos; en este se bendicen y se limpian las calles por donde desfilaran las bandas de Sambas y Batucadas de los espíritus malos, para asegurarse que halla paz, gozo y armonía. Es un trabajo designado para los padrinos y madrinas de la religión Candomble con sus trajes blanco tipicos de los negros de Bahia, collares multicolores, panuelos, y cintas de colores patrios y religiosos. Hay negros y blancos en toda la procesion, hombres y mujeres, hombres vestido de mujer, niños y ancianos, una mezcla de cristianidad con africanidad.

La música que marca las celebraciones empiezan desde el primer día y aumenta en crecendo y sonoridad. A cada paso con su marcha los musicos de las bandas de Sambas parecen por su coreografia y sus uniformes como si fueran soldados de otra nacion que marchan a una pelea. Los gemidos de sus tambores son fuertes y violentos, ensordeciendo como cañones las calles de Nueva York; estos me recuerdan un pasaje que lei sobre el terror de las legiones romanos al escuchar por primera vez a miles de tambores rugiendo al unisono al frente de las tropas de Anibal “El Africano,” donde solo les faltaban los elefantes para completar la escena. Los complejos ritmos de todas sus regiones están representados aquí. Por un lado los bailadores de Samba arrollaban en las aceras que dan a cada paso un movimiento colorido y atletico al ritmo de la musica, una mezcla de africano-portugues- americano un poco complejo de imitar, pero maravilloso de ver.

Por el otro lado, turistas, locales, y curiosos de todo tipo que filman, gritan, y marchan lado a lado con la tropa. Me fue dificil llegar hasta la tarima donde artistas y celebridades la tomaban por asalto: Carlinhos Brown, Zeze Camargo e Luciano, Margareth Menezes, incluyendo el muy conocido y popular presentador de la television brasilena Luciano Huck. Para “Nova-Yorki,” como los brasileros le llaman a la ciudad de Nueva York, como para los neoyorquinos fue un regalo muy especial y un intercambio cultural de gran profundidad, esta celebracion nos dejo el aire lleno de Capirinha, Samba, Bossa Nova y de otros ritmos, sabores y olores tipicos del Brasil que salian bailando desde todos los rincones, bares y restaurantes en la parte de esta ciudad conocida como “Pequeño Brasil.”

Aun me cada mas por hacer; las paginas de mi calendario esta llena de eventos para este mes. Fue algo muy especial que me dejo profundas huellas en mi experiencia, no queria terminar esta fiesta; esta me dejo muy contento de vivir en esta isla y me preparo para las proximas celebraciones.

Muito obrigado Brasil por dejarnos a todos con tu musica ese dia! Que lindo!

To see all of Francisco’s Brazil Day photos, view the portfolio here.

“[T]he film gripped me in this anxious way, almost like cocaine. My palms were sweaty. My heart beat fast. I was excited and depressed throughout.”

That’s how writer Mitch Anderson described what it was like for him to watch “The Two Escobars,” a documentary about the relationship between drugs and soccer in Colombia during the era of Pablo Escobar, cocaine’s kingpin, and Andres Escobar, the “gentleman of the field” and captain of Colombia’s national team.

Francisco and I had the opportunity to see “The Two Escobars” at the 2010 HBO New York International Latino Film Festival, but we’d missed the first 15 minutes; plus, this is the kind of documentary that’s worth viewing twice. Director Jeff Zimbalist was kind enough to send us a screener copy so we could watch it in full.

The protagonists of “The Two Escobars” are two of Colombia’s most famous figures of the late 20th century, both of whom are dead now. Zimbalist resolves the problems associated with making a film about two people who can no no longer be interviewed by combining in-depth interviews with the people who were closest to both of the Escobars with unprecedented archival footage that gives credence to what those interviewees are saying.

And what they’re saying–though they come from opposite backgrounds in most cases, as well as wildly divergent motives–is that the stories of drugs and soccer in Colombia that have been told to date are incomplete. The relationship between drugs and soccer, and the relationships among all of the people considered by the documentary, are far more complex than the dominant narratives have allowed us to believe.

For someone who shares our deep interest in Colombia, or for someone who is as compelled by overlooked stories as we are, or for someone who believes there is never a single narrative of an event, but many, “The Two Escobars” is likely to be exactly as Anderson described it: anxiety-provoking, playing on every emotion and challenging whatever conclusions you might have made about Colombia. And ultimately, the film fills in a gap in the historical record, contextualizing complicated chapters in Colombian history.

Mitch Anderson interviewed “The Two Escobars” director Jeff Zimbalist on Matador Change. Read the fascinating back story of the documentary here.
**
“The Two Escobars” is currently being screened in the US and around the world. For a full list of upcoming showings, visit the film’s website. The DVD
DVD will be available for purchase in November 2010.