if you can watch this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Itpne_1Ww&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL07AD1AA82B78873E

Good Luck and hope this is the first of many visits to our beautiful country.

http://www.everything2.com/title/Guanajuato

A friend from Canada recently visited me in Mexico City, and she was really enamoured with our trees. She kept taking pictures of them:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/juilletrain/sets/72157627586875088/

Yep, I was aware of that artistic streak. And in fact had thought we might go see some of the famous murals, but it didn’t work out this time. (Also some of them may not have been appropriate for our children.) On my list for next time ;-)

Of course, not all evangelists work on a bench on a square — those are quite prominent, but you might have seen several office supplies stores advertising they are also “escritorio público” (public desk). Of course, their numbers are shrinking as they gradually become internet cafes.

Oh, FWIW – The square where you will find most old-school evangelists in Mexico City is Plaza de Santo Domingo. They work together with printing workshops (offset, silk-screen, …), and are said to be one of the largest fake paperwork issuers in the country. It is rumored you can buy anything from a block of invoices for which the government has no trace to a fake posgraduate university degree (mockingly, when you doubt somebody’s credentials, you say they are graduates of the Universidad de Santo Domingo). In fact, we had even a Federal Education Secretary, Fausto Calderón Alzati, who had to step down when it was discovered his doctorate was false (and he had only a “licenciatura”, equivalent to a B.Sc.)

Regarding the bench you took a photo of: I know many foreigners are amazed at the familiarity we have here with skulls and different representations of death in a funny way. No, I won’t repeat the (false IMO) meme that “we Mexicans are friends with death, instead of fearing it, we laugh at it”. Of course we are people, just like anybody, and fear it. But you will find many, many artworks (mainly starting with the great impulse of the late-XIX century engraver José Guadalupe Posada) where death is just one more common visitor. Posada started drawing skulls in order to hide the identity of the politicians he was mocking in a time of strong censorship, and it stuck, and… many of us love it :) Sadly you didn’t stay until closer to November 1st (Día de Muertos, Day of the Dead), which is probably the most beautiful, colorful, joyful parties of our calendar.