A followup on an issue we covered a few months back: El Salvador’s elections, recently concluded in favor of the leftist FMLN party. Here’s the take from the Washington Post.

And an analysis piece The New York Times did just before the election.

Now it’s just a waiting game, to see if Mauricio Funes is really the Obamaesque hope he claims to be, or just another Chavez or Ortega.

SOMETIMES, IN A RELATIONSHIP, all your partner really wants is for you to validate his or her feelings and admit you’re part of the problem.

I’m guessing that’s why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who understands a thing or two about contentious close relationships, finally acknowledged this week that America’s “insatiable” appetite for drugs doesn’t help our neighbors to the south one bit.

The Mexican government is pulling out all the stops to do battle with a better armed and better organized group of drug cartels, and thousands are dying in the process. But who is paying the enemy? Let’s recreate the money trail.

Say a cocaine user in Tulsa, Oklahoma gives a dollar to his dealer. That dealer, in turn, ends up giving it to his wholesaler, who quite possibly works for a Mexican cartel. That dollar will likely end up either pimping out some kingpin’s car, corrupting a politician or police officer, or buying a scary-looking gun that is then smuggled back from the U.S.

Great. We get it.

This is where the story stops conforming with the popular leftist narrative that holds the U.S. responsible for everything that ever went wrong in Latin America. Yes, we are part of the problem, and should be part of solving it. But Clinton’s mea cupla (which will, presumably, will be followed by similar statements Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and President Obama, who are both due to visit Mexico in the coming weeks) is probably useful only to the extent that it helps Mexico get over the idea that we’re the whole problem. 

What are we supposed to do, goes the typical Mexican refrain, when this river of money and guns is flowing into our country from the U.S.? While living in Michoacan, I heard it from friends. It comes out of President Calderon’s mouth frequently. A Mexican friend of mine posted it as a comment a few blog posts ago.

Sure, it’s easier to focus on other people’s problems, which is why the U.S. didn’t bother to acknowledge the elephant in our room until this week. But blaming Mexico’s narco trafficking problem on American drug users is a bit like blaming the global recession on Americans who wanted mortgages. Sure, there’s some technical truth in it, but actually turning that part around is next-to-impossible and completely ignores the structural issues that allowed the problem to fester out of control in the first place.

For decades, a succession of Mexican governments either left the cartels alone or actually supervised the trafficking. Over the years, the gangs consolidated their power, started fighting with each other, and even diversified their portfolios to include kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and drugs for domestic - not just gringo - consumption.

So what happens when you let a bunch of thugs armed to the teeth run around a country unsupervised? You get a situation where, these days, normal citizens are scared to report drug violence to police. Why bother, really, since the police have probably already signed off on it. No use complaining to the mayor either, given that if he’s still alive, he’s probably on the take too. Journalists who report in too much detail on this disgusting situation have found severed heads delivered to their offices or worse, been killed.

This makes Mexico a less safe place, but it also delivers a gut punch to the economy. Try running a business in the middle of a corrupt legal system, where all your R & D and job creation money goes to an extortion racket.

So what if all American drug users quit tomorrow? Would Mexico be rid of this cancer? Hardly. Would gangsters be able to find a new source of guns if we managed to clamp down on sales? Yes.

And what, really, is the likelihood of reducing demand for drugs in the U.S.? Maybe if we devoted all of our national energy to the problem we could produce a drop of 20 percent in the next ten years. That would be revolutionary, but it wouldn’t really help Mexico that much. 

American money is an enemy in this conflict, but Mexican political corruption is a bigger (and more vulnerable) one. Mexicans, who are generally less apt to organize themselves for political change than we are, need to get over that and take their country back as soon as possible. (Including adding some teeth to their pro forma border checkpoints.) We should help however we can, but there’s only so much we can do.

It’s so easy to see bodies piled up and then to blame drug money from the U.S. But Mexico is not alone in receiving this dubious bounty. Canada, too, gets billions from the pockets of Yankee users, in exchange for what I’m told is some top shelf marijuana. Yet the chief of police in Winnipeg did not recently resign because a local cartel threatened to kill one of his officers every other day if he didn’t (see Juarez). They haven’t discovered any drug tunnels between Vancouver and Blaine, Wash. recently (Tijuana). And Miss Manitoba was not arrested last year in a car full of drug smugglers (Sinaloa).

I have several Canadian friends, and none of them report personal experiences with kidnapping and murder. The same cannot be said for my Mexican friends.

So here’s hoping the validation coming out of the Obama administration will lead to progress. By taking some responsibility, the U.S. might just inspire its neighbors to follow suit.

Why do women in Española take two pregnancy tests?

Because they want to be for sure for sure.

Funny, right? Hilarious, in fact. Española, New Mexico is one of those places in America that is so unique that it’s developed its own genre of joke. In this case, the unique part is a local linguistic affinity for the saying “for sure for sure.” It adds emphasis, and, I suppose, rolls off the tounge a little better than “like, yea, totally.”

So then, why wasn’t Jesus born in Española?

Because they couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin.

But this one could be said about any town, a pal of mine who used to live there reminded me. Except, of course, Bethlehem.

Maybe this, at the end of the day, is just a way to pick on a town that really doesn’t have a whole lot going for it except scenery. Like this one:

What’s the difference between a prom queen from Española and a 57 Chevy?

Not everyone has been inside a 57 Chevy.

Now that’s just beyond the pale, really. It’s a poverty stricken town with a heroin problem. Must we make fun of them so much?

Yes.

So did you hear about the torado that went through Española and did $2 million worth of improvements?

Didn’t think so.

Good luck, friends. 

It just keeps getting worse.

First came the recent news that Mexican authorities had caught a guy known as El Pozolero. A technicrat in a Tijuana drug cartel, he earned the nickname by dissolving the bodies of over 300 cartel enemies in acid.

And the situation in Juarez and Chihuahua gets more depressing by the hour. Gunmen attacked a convoy carrying the governor recently, and the police chief also resigned, bowing to cartel threats to kill one policeman per day if he didn’t.

The mayor of Juarez, quite possibly the most dangerous city in North America, is now living in El Paso, which, oddly enough, is one of the safest.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the violence is spilling into my new backyard in Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Journal reported the following on February 14:

     One of the cartels with ties to Ciudad Juarez was “sending a message” with the death of Danny Baca, who was found shot 22 times with an assault rifle, burned and left in the middle of a far West Mesa roadway in January 2008. 
     Baca, 54, was supposed to bring a load of drugs across the border for a smuggling cartel, meet a connection in El Paso and go from there, according to authorities. 
     Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White said Baca “signed his own death warrant” when he and another man decided to bypass El Paso and bring the drugs to Albuquerque. 
     “They wanted to make sure everybody knew you don’t mess with the cartel,” White said Friday. “This was a very clear message they were sending.”

Here I thought I had left all this behind in Michoacan.

The good news is that White and his colleagues in New Mexico and federal law enforcement could beat the cartels in a fight. The bad news is that they might one day have to. 

Time to get hip to the third wave times.

So there I was, back in college, when several of my liberal and progressive female friends dressed up as prostitutes and danced a jaw-dropping little number with an excerpt of the Moulin Rouge soundtrack blaring in the background.

Truly, feminism died that night, I told one of my friends later.

Not so, she responded. Today’s young feminists (who often don’t even call themselves as such) actually can be empowered by doing the kinds of overtly sexual and “overly feminine” things that the feminists of the 60s and Susan B. Anthony would have frowned on. 

This is one of the many tenants of third wave feminism. Those of you with some time to kill can read more. But if you want the jist of it, it’s this: Feminism, but a bit more light-hearted and, in a weird way, traditionalist, with less armpit hair. 

But why should the women have all the fun reinventing themselves? That’s why I’ve compiled the following guidelines for being a hip, modern, third-wave masculinist. Enjoy.

1.) It’s okay to enjoy James Bond, The Terminator, and other guy movies. It’s also okay to not enjoy anything that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan put to the silver screen.

2.) If the bathroom sink drain clogs up, you should know how to fix it without calling a plumber, and preferably without pouring toxic solvents down the drain. Why? Because you’re a man. Get used to it. Learn how to cook too.

3.) Peeing is best done outside, but if it must be done inside, standing up.

4.) It’s not okay to buy a Hummer, because it’s not okay to flagrantly destroy the environment, but it is okay to fantasize about how cool it would be to drive one around.

5.) Heading out to a bar with other guys to talk about women and power tools is fun and doesn’t mean you don’t respect women any more than it means you don’t respect power tools. 

6.) Opening doors for women is fine, but put the toilet seat down on a case by case basis.

7.) When a woman asks you to hold her purse, do it, but carry it from the bottom or grab onto the top, rather than slinging it over your shoulder like they do.

8.) It’s possible to respect their right to vote while also killing spiders when called upon.

9.) If you find going to the garage to brood more helpful than sharing your feelings with others, that’s fine.

10.) When enjoyed responsibly in a safe, non-alcoholic environment, firearms are cool. 

Feel free to add your own guidelines in the comments section.

The Sandia Mountains: Yes, they really are that beautiful.

The Land of Enchantment, they call it. The Land of Entrapment, the smart asses call it.

Yet who can argue? After nearly a year and a half bombing around Mexico and Costa Rica and all points in between, I find myself back in New Mexico in the middle of a biting recession, a new era for national leadership, and a windy spring. For the first time in a long time, I own a pillow and a large bath towell.

I planned to come back, just not this soon. But that’s how life works sometimes, and who could argue that any time spent in close proximity to this mountain range was time wasted?

No matter what happens, though, the blog goes on. Look for meditations on Albuquerque, New Mexico, and our Old Mexican neighbors to the south. And whatever else.

It’s a very interesting life, and that statement seems to take on new and deeper meaning every year. So here’s to a fascinating 2009. Hope you’ll stay tuned.

Garrison Keillor, delivering the News From Lake Wobegon

ST PAUL, MINN. — The legendary public radio show A Prairie Home Companion comes off as an exercise in spontaneity. But sounds can deceive. The scripts are tight, the music is well coordinated, and all the segments are planned to a tee to meet a rigid two-hour format.

Except for the traditional News from Lake Wobegon monologue.

For fifteen or twenty minutes, it’s just host Garrison Keillor, a stool, and a microphone. He speaks without notes from a mostly dark stage about the various adventures of small town farming people in Central Minnesota.

For years I have joked that a majority of whatever can be considered my spirituality centers around A Prairie Home Companion. These, are, after all, my people. Many a relative and great grandparent from Mom’s side rests a few feet below ground on the banks of the Mississippi in Central Minnesota, not far from where Lake Wobegon would be. Listening to Keillor’s weekly news bulletin, I come to new understandings of my family, heritage, and self. The songs are familiar, even if the words are not. The comedy brings back many a blissful Saturday long gone.

This past weekend my buddy Joe and I stood in line for three hours in the bitter St. Paul cold in a successful bid to score rush tickets for the show. We ended up sitting on the stage, on a mocked up front porch, where I shot the above picture.

We were at the heart of the action. We were close enough to the band to exchange pleasantries with the drummer and piano player. We witnessed the frantic pre-show rush to find Keillor’s glasses. We saw the drummer getting handed his paycheck after the show.

At some point during the News from Lake Wobegon, I realized that the excitement of the moment was, in fact, something more. The jokes I had been telling all these years were true.

What is church, really, but a community of like-minded people who come together once a week to sing the old songs, tell the old stories, and generally lift up the simple, ordinary, and decent part of our life and our nature? By that definition, A Prairie Home Companion is high church, and Keillor, one of the better ministers this nation has ever seen.

This is a native Costa Rican, well, bug.

COSTA RICA IS KNOWN FOR ITS BIODIVERSITY, but this never really sunk in for me until a little piece of it flew into my ear.

Being midnight, I was sleeping more or less peacefully at the time. I woke to hear the buzzing of some anonymous tiny insect in my ear, but to my horror I could also feel this buzzing.

This sort of thing never happened in Washington, where I grew up, nor in New Mexico, which I now call home. Those places feature millions of bugs, but Costa Rica is home to - and this statement has been scientifically vetted - a million billion jillion gazillion.

It’s not just bugs. It’s life of all kinds. Trees, bushes, grasses, fungi, mice, geckos, monkeys, and hummingbirds. They show up all over the

Life - pure life - is really the modus operandi here, the sort of place that Calvin and Hobbes would love.

“It’s an endless source of wonder and amazement,” my friend Eric told me the other day. “You could spend the rest of your life studying the moths in this country and not get 5 percent.”

Some fly like jets, some like drunks. He even saw one that rolls its wings up like an old piece of parchment.

We’re not just talking about starry-eyed tourists either. Once, when Eric was cleaning out an old building in another part of the country, some of his fellow volunteers, 13-year-old girls as it happens, displayed their own unique appreciation for biodiversity.

“These girls were gently reaching down and picking up these scorpions and carrying them out and letting them go. I thought, ‘whoa, this is truly something new under the sun.’”

He told me this as we killed time in the front yard of Enrique and Anna, who have been living in Providencia for ages now. Having a surplus of bananas, which grow like weeds around here, they wondered what to do with them, but eventually settled on putting them out for the birds.

Quickly, it became about the most interesting activity available on a lazy Saturday afternoon. All sorts of birds, in all sorts of shapes and sizes, now drop by for a snack. To the uninitiated, it’s a wonderful display of unique color not unlike a tropical fish tank. To those who know a few things about birds, the dramas that lie just beneath the surface are laid bare.

The result is something that Enrique insists is much better than television. To this day, he still often runs into species, be they bird or bug, that he has never seen before.

On the other hand, mused Kim, a fellow volunteer from Massachusetts, the birds are awfully like television. The hot topics for the birds include food, sex, and enemies, which is basically what every Bond flick has been about.

And as if frequently running into all manner of tarantula, gecko, and moth were not enough to remind you, Costa Ricans tend to greet each other with the maxim “Pura Vida” (Pure Life). They use it where English speakers would blandly use an uncaring “How Are You?”

So it was with a surprising serenity, and probably the effects of being caught in the wrong place on the REM cycle, that I tolerated the buzzing bug in my ear. This, after all, was a pretty unique Costa Rican experience (or at least a tropics experience). It buzzed around every 30 seconds or so, and kept it up for several minutes. Then it was quiet for a few minutes more.

At last, I thought. It’s gone. I started drifting back to sleep, but then it started buzzing again. This was getting out of hand, I thought.

But as I was about to fetch some water to throw in my ear, I heard/felt the buzzing move to my outer ear, and then off into the dark, another victory for Pura Vida.

Today’s blog post is basically these two pictures. One is Alfred E. Newman, the MAD Magazine mascot. The other is Maikol, a student at the school I’ve been volunteering at.

Is it just me? No, it’s not. He’s dead on. Here, all this time, I thought Alfred E. was just a figment of some crazed artist’s imagination. Nope. He’s a living, breathing (and incredibly short) 14-year-old in rural Costa Rica.

That’s really all I have to say.

Except this: Once, I was having dinner with one of Maikol’s elementary school teachers. We whipped out the computer and showed her Alfred the cartoon’s picture, explaining that he was a famous character in the United States.

She laughed. And then she cried. Not just a little tear up, mind you, she wept with laughter, and had to borrow several napkins to dry her face.

This is the inside of a tree, if you can believe it.

Bird meets fig. Bird eats fig. About an hour later, while flying, bird, ahem, releases fig remains. Fig remains land on top of a tree, where the division of branches has created a kind of bowl where leaves and twigs accumulate and turn into compost.

And so, the cycle of life, and death by strangulation, begins again.

“What rotten luck to be planted in a small bowl at the top of a huge tree.”

That’s what most tree seedlings would say if they could talk. But not the strangler fig tree. Instead, it send up branches and leaves, while sending down roots. The roots travel the six or seven stories down to the ground and supply the new tree with a quantity of nutrients that couldn’t be found in the bowl.

But the strangler fig is like the house guest that won’t leave, or even peaceably coexist. The roots keep coming, even melding together, covering the tree with a web of roots and slowly choking the life out of it.

The tree - specifically a tree about a 10 minute drive from here - died for a pretty good cause, however. I say this because, if some enterprising human goes to the trouble of cleaning out all the decomposed remains, then it’s possible to easily climb this tree from the inside. Let me say that again: From the inside.

That enterprising person was my pal Eric. That person to climb it was me, joined by fellow volunteers Tony and Kim.

Inside, the tree smells musty, and anyone who goes in is guaranteed to get dirty, but the tangled root network not only provides light for the fascinating view, but also easy footholds for the trek up. It’s a bit like climbing the dark spiral staircase of the Statue of Liberty: You can’t see the top and on the way up, you lose all sense of where you are relative to the ground. But it’s climbing for those who don’t really dig climbing, and even those with a modest fear of heights.

Eventually, you emerge from a hole in the top of the tree and find a small platform. It’s a good place to take in the cloud forest, really feel the quiet, and take a few pictures. It’s also a good place for a bird to drop a seedling, if you know any in the mood for a little poetic justice.