Ezequiel lesson, part I: Green Go! = gringo

I got it from one very wise co-worker of mine that the etymology of the word gringo originates from the Mexican-American war. As the story goes, American troops - dressed in their green uniforms - were occupying Mexico City when they began to encounter resistance from Mexican nationalists. These nationalists used as their rallying cry "Green... Go!" because they wanted the American soldiers dressed in their green uniforms to go home. Thus, the moniker "gringo".

Outside of Mexico: North Korea has nukes, twitter

We all know the DPRK is a sane, responsible, and benevolent member of the international community. But, did you know that they twitter?

Bonus, apparently Kim Jong Il has a twitter page too, but he doesn't update (what a shame).

This week in odd Mexican news: swine flu statues and stripping government officials

As my roommate (a life-long resident of Mexico City) has told me, the greatest thing about Mexico is its chaos. I would add to that its quirkiness. Here are two stories from this week that are particularly odd, and completely Mexican - and I mean that in the best way.

So swine flu has got you down, nearly ruined your economy... well how's about erecting a statue to memorialize it then. And so it seems, we here in Mexico are commemorating this "pandemic" outbreak with a statue of the little young'n who was the first to contract the virus (don't worry he didn't die).

I wish I had more weird stories but I've been a little busy trying to find $650,000. Either way, I got the best weird news story right here. It seems one Veracruz government employee decided to go desnuda to work one day to garner support for a legal case against her ex-husband (er... what? Isn't there better ways to do this?). Apparently, Ms. Garcia says her ex-husband who is the Minister of Finance for the State of Veracruz and is swindling her out of her monthly alimony of MXN $7000 (USD $500) a month. So, obviously this kind of injustice calls for naked civil disobedience.

"There are no good parts in the east"

I got acquainted with an eastern part of Mexico City, known as Chimalhuacan on Monday. We drove to this area of Chimalhuacan, called ciudad dormitorio, from our main office which is southwest of the city center. Although the total distance was less than 20 miles, it took us nearly 1.5 hours to get to these centers because the roads and traffic are tremendously bad.

I am told the area is called Ciudad Dormitorio (sleeping city) because many who live there travel to the city center to work and do not return but only to sleep. I asked my co-worker if the eastern part of the city was the poorest and he said that there are poor areas like that all over Mexico City, in every section. However, he did say that of all the wealthy parts of the City, none are in the east.

There was a Slumdog moment during this drive when we passed up the pepenadores who are trash collectors and live on the city dump. They cart tremendous amounts of trash on the back of their caballos (horses) to a pepenador market where they sell the best of what they got in order to earn a living.

As my co-worker observed "one man's trash is another man's treasure". I understand that many people would have probably a range of feelings about this, from pity to shame, and of course these pepenadores are stigmatized in society for being dirty and uncivilized. But, I guess my feeling is more of an admiration for people like this because they work hard for what they got and put up with so much crap just to make it by. I don't know what I would do if I was born in conditions like that. Actually, I know very well what I would do. I would make a B-line for the border and try to find my way in the United States.

Thesis topic

So, I believe I decided on a thesis topic. Or at least something definitive enough to look into. I was thinking that an analysis of the Merida Initiative would be good.

What kind of analysis, I'm not to sure. Potentially it could be about how the $1.4 billion USD is being used for the initiative. Most of it is going to supply Mexican counter-drug forces with equipment to do interdiction. For this, the US is supplying Mexico with various types of equipment from helicopters, to reconnaissance aircraft, to non-intrusive inspection equipment. I may look into the Merida legislation to see if this type of equipment is the best use of our resources, or if other types of assistance would actually work better, bearing in mind that probably the principle goal for any US-assistance in this regard would be for interdiction of narcotics entering the US and not as much to aid Mexican officials in decreasing their violent crime or own domestic drug problem.

Monopolies are bad

And Carlos Slim is no bueno.

According to these rankings (pdf) of internet accessibility and broadband usage, Mexico ranks last of thirty countries in a composite of broadband measures. One of those measures is price per Mpbs of usage per month. And at $18.41 a month per Mpbs, Mexicans pay about 6x more than combined average of the other 29 countries.

From what I hear, the world´s richest man and proprietor of Telemex (Mexico´s telecom giant), Carlos Slim has something to do with these gauging prices that have resulted in only 20% of the households here having access to internet. For comparison´s sake, the US has about 60% household access to internet.

Hangover earthquake

Also, today during my heated battle with a hangover, I thought it had the best of me for a second when I felt like the earth was moving. But actually that wasn´t the hangover but this.

Want to see something nice.

This is outside my house.

Too bad I can´t go into my house because of that crap door.

Mescal no bueno

I´m going to do some backtracking right now because I meant to get this blog up when I first arrived in Mexico but got distracted with a few things.

But now I have some free time, since it´s about 10:30 on a Friday night and I´m locked out of my house and my roommate just left for San Diego and won´t be back until Wednesday. Regarding me being locked out. I´m not really, just a little lost, or confused. Because for some reason I turn the key but the lock doesn´t release. Even when I bang and push on the door it doesn´t open. The fail-proof yelling at the door didn´t do anything. So, now I´m left on the streets in a city I don´t know, trying to speak Spanish, which I also don´t know. But I´m certain it will all work out for the best.

Other than this latest development, my trip has been great. Yesterday I was greeted by my new co-workers, and to celebrate my arrival (and the culmination of 6 months of hard-work they had been doing to open up several computer centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods) we put down some drinks. Vino tinto and mescal to be exact. To much of it to be more exact.

The mescal and red wine was the glue that helped me bond with my new co-workers. It also caused a poor co-worker to lose his lunch. Too much drinking left me extremely hung-over this morning for my first official day of work. I drank too much in fact that I had to brush my teeth twice this morning to remove the red (vino tinto) tint that had become a part of me.

Despite the hangover, I learned a lot today about the project and what I´ll be doing. I came here only knowing the name (Proacceso ECO) and my duties (to seek additional funding sources for the project). My other additional job duty is to help everyone in the project to practice their english. The project will eventually open 80 computer centers in Mexico housing over 5,000 computers and bring unprecedented technology to about 1.2 million Mexicans who have never had access to the sort before. As of today, there are 3 computer centers open with approximately 150 computers, but they are already registering almost 2,000 users. About 85% of these users have extemely limited experience with computer technology.

I also learned a little about programming and systems administration from a couple of very competant techies. One thing of which is apparently going to change the world and we are the first ones using it in Mexico.

So, this summer looks like its going to be great (despite the fact that I might be homeless on the streets of Mexico until work starts up again on Monday). The expectations are high here that this thing will work. Already, the Mexican government has guaranteed about $4 million USD in funding, we are just short of about $650,000 for our goal. Unfortunately for me, that is going to be my job. I can´t come up with a few thousand to pay down my credit card, but it is expected that in the next three months I can round up some funds to put a dent in this monstrous some. I think I can do it. Hopefully, I better at grantwriting than I am at opening doors.