Salon.com > Mexico

Salon.com > Mexico http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A better border is possible http://www.salon.com/2012/05/26/a_better_border_is_possible/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/26/a_better_border_is_possible/#comments Sat, 26 May 2012 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12927599 Ever since Mitt Romney became the presumptive nominee in the Republican primary, something curious has happened to his hardline stance on immigration: It's largely disappeared. Though he previously supported “attrition through enforcement” – a deeply disturbing approach already in practice in some states that sets out to make working and living conditions so bad for undocumented immigrants that they, in theory, “self-deport” -- Mitt recently claimed he would "study" Marco Rubio's more forgiving immigration bill.

But as Romney clumsily half-courts the Hispanic vote, conditions at our southern border are growing more dire. The brutal drug-related violence that has long gripped Mexico is on the rise. Two weeks ago, 49 bodies missing their heads, hands and legs were found near Monterey, Mexico. A message left nearby indicated the Zetas cartel was responsible. One week earlier, 18 dismembered bodies were found in Guadalajara. One week before that, 23 bodies, with indications of torture, were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border. They are casualties of an apocalyptic drug war, a thriving human smuggling trade and, more broadly, a deeply dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/26/a_better_border_is_possible/feed/ 5 Mexican drug cartel calls truce for pope’s visit http://www.salon.com/2012/03/24/mexican_drug_cartel_calls_truce_for_popes_visit/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/24/mexican_drug_cartel_calls_truce_for_popes_visit/#comments Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12728991 Late last week, residents of Michoacán received some of the best news the dangerous Mexican state has gotten in months. Friday afternoon, the powerful drug cartel the Knights Templar (Los caballeros templarios) announced a three-day truega, or truce, on violent action. The reason? Not the pleas of terrorized residents, and certainly not the futile efforts of state police, who still remain nearly powerless against the cartels. The cause of this miracle - -if you would call it that -- was nothing short of the pope himself.

In handmade posters hung in various places around the state, the Knights Templar announced their plan to renounce violence during Pope Benedict XVI’s three-day sojourn to Mexico this weekend. The posters, which were hung near busy intersections and pedestrian bridges, announced their “welcome” to the pope and renounced any “violent action” during his visit. Translated into English, their signs read:

The Knights Templar renounces any military or violent action. We are not murderers. We welcome the pope.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/24/mexican_drug_cartel_calls_truce_for_popes_visit/feed/ 19 The pope’s controversial visit http://www.salon.com/2012/03/23/the_popes_controversial_visit/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/23/the_popes_controversial_visit/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:46:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12728561 LEON, GUANAJUATO, Mexico — The arrival of Pope Benedict XVI here is being celebrated by many, but not by all.

Guanajuato is one of Mexico’s most religious, conservative states, and the birthplace of President Felipe Calderon’s center-right National Action Party. The pope’s decision to visit this town — and bypass Mexico City — sends a message to the country’s more liberal capital.

Few issues bring the contrast into focus as sharply as abortion. Mexico City legalized abortion; Guanajuato cracks down hard on any signs of it.

Maria Lopez (not her real name) got pregnant in Leon in 2008 when she was 19, and she couldn't afford to bring up a child at that time. She took the drug misoprostol, used for chemically induced abortions in many Western countries, to provoke a miscarriage. She ended up in an emergency room with severe abdominal pains.

"A doctor arrived to examine me, and she opened my legs almost in anger, saying 'let's see what you've done,'" says Lopez, now 22.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/23/the_popes_controversial_visit/feed/ 31 The unexpected lessons of Mexican food http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/the_unexpected_lessons_of_mexican_food/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/the_unexpected_lessons_of_mexican_food/#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12680551 I first discovered cooking at age 5, when the earthy smell of boiling pinto beans lured me into the kitchen. It was my dad. He dripped them into an oily skillet and smashed them into a lumpy paste. I started pulling on his apron straps, begging to know the name of the concoction.

“Your grandmother always made this,” he said, stirring the bubbling brown stew and pinching in cumin. “I’ll teach you how to make it. Here, try it.” He raised the dripping spoon to my mouth. The mild tingle of cumin and the soft squish of beans lingered on my pallet, like a spicy fingerprint.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the push and pull of growing up biracial in America. In the Mexican side of my family I was known as the white one. Even though I spoke Spanish, it was the formal kind learned from classrooms and reading, rather than the one you pick up by bartering with local shop owners over the price of firm avocados, or arguing with parents over a ridiculous curfew. On the other side, my cousins called me a “Wexican,” a white Mexican despite my similarly toned skin.

Cooking, however, taught me to channel my frustrations by creating foods through the addition of sour cream, cilantro, cayenne pepper and tender meat. I could make a food that doesn’t have to be Mexican or American.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/the_unexpected_lessons_of_mexican_food/feed/ 40 Pick of the week: Will Ferrell’s incredibly strange Mexican adventure http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/pick_of_the_week_will_ferrells_incredibly_strange_mexican_adventure/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/pick_of_the_week_will_ferrells_incredibly_strange_mexican_adventure/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12680521 History will judge whether Will Ferrell's decision to make a movie entirely in Spanish -- and in loving imitation of a genre of Mexican film and TV that most English-speaking Americans have presumably never watched -- goes down as an act of far-sighted demographic brilliance or a bizarre and pointless practical joke. Well, OK, it probably won't. It's already clear that most reviews of "Casa de Mi Padre" -- which was written by Andrew Steele and directed by Matt Piedmont, both part of Ferrell's "Saturday Night Live"/Funny or Die posse -- will be tepid or worse. And mainstream audiences can completely be forgiven for wondering what the hell kind of movie this is and why it exists, and for feeling that they're somehow not in on the joke.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/pick_of_the_week_will_ferrells_incredibly_strange_mexican_adventure/feed/ 18 Where murder may as well be legal http://www.salon.com/2012/03/01/where_murder_may_as_well_be_legal/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/01/where_murder_may_as_well_be_legal/#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12460911 American journalists love to write about the violence that afflicts Ciudad Juárez, the sprawling city of 1.3 million just across the river from El Paso, Texas. It’s a quick jaunt across the Rio Grande, after all, and a guaranteed story. Thanks to a ghastly combination of warring drug cartels, poverty and virtually ineffectual law enforcement, the city has become one of the most dangerous in the world. Last February, for example, 229 Juárenses were murdered, more than 10 per day.

But not many gringo journalists spend more than a few days in Juarez. None — at least that I know of — move there. Nor do they make much effort to write about what it feels like to live in the city, as opposed to dying there.

Which is what makes Robert Andrew Powell’s new book, "This Love Is Not for Cowards," so gripping. It tells the bittersweet story of Juárez’s hapless professional soccer team, Los Indios, and the rabid fans who support them. The book reads like a mashup of Nick Hornby’s "Fever Pitch," Bill Buford’s "Among the Thugs" and Charles Bowden’s grim 2010 survey of Juárez, "Murder City."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/01/where_murder_may_as_well_be_legal/feed/ 15 The threat to Mexico’s machismo culture http://www.salon.com/2012/02/15/the_threat_to_mexicos_machismo_culture/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/15/the_threat_to_mexicos_machismo_culture/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:08:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12363721 MEXICO CITY — At El Mirador, a cantina frequented by Mexico’s political and economic elite, you can see a fine selection of spirits and a menu that features dishes like pickled pigs’ feet and beef tongue tacos.

But what you won’t see are women.

El Mirador, a relic from the country’s machista past, politely refuses to serve them. The bathroom has only a urinal and a sink.

So it may have come as a surprise to some when Mexico's PAN party decided to nominate Josefina Vazquez Mota, a woman, for president – the first time a woman has ever been nominated by a major Mexican party.

Accepting her nomination, Vazquez Mota, a longtime government official, said, "I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history.”

Even if they are not yet welcome in the cantina at El Mirador, women are making noticeable inroads into other areas of Mexican political life.

With the real possibility that Mexico may join Latin American countries like Argentina, Brazil and Chile in electing a female to the highest office, her nomination marks a slow but steady erosion of Mexico’s macho culture, a way of life that lives on in the upper echelon of Mexican business world.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/02/15/the_threat_to_mexicos_machismo_culture/feed/ 9 “Miss Bala”: Ballad of the beauty queen and the drug lord http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/miss_bala_ballad_of_the_beauty_queen_and_the_drug_lord/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/miss_bala_ballad_of_the_beauty_queen_and_the_drug_lord/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12190411 Much of the celebrated Mexican cinema of recent years has defied conventional norteamericano expectations about what life is like in our oft-misunderstood southern neighbor. Gerardo Naranjo's action-packed "Miss Bala," on the other hand, seizes all the stereotypes and runs with them. In the vision of this ruthless and abundantly talented young director, life in Tijuana isn't merely as bad as you think. It's worse.

I heard one prominent critic complaining after the Cannes premiere of "Miss Bala" that some of Naranjo’s plot twists were implausible, to which I say: Give me a break. First of all, while “Miss Bala” strives for a naturalistic feeling and pulls facts from some recent headlines on some recent criminal history, it’s a bullet-riddled downhill thrill ride about a would-be beauty queen and a drug lord, not “The Bicycle Thief.” Second of all, Naranjo’s point is that almost nothing is implausible in the upside-down borderlands of Tijuana, where Mexican sovereignty is almost meaningless and it’s impossible to identify a clear line between cops and criminals.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/miss_bala_ballad_of_the_beauty_queen_and_the_drug_lord/feed/ 18 Adventures in drug war logic http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:24:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10292573 It's time for an important lesson in proper, civilized behavior. Drug war soldier Gallant launders vast sums of money for the Mexican drug cartels. Drug war soldier Goofus expresses skepticism at the size and scope of this expensive and deadly boondoggle. Goofus gets canned. Gallant is the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Sorry, what's our DEA doing this time?

Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”

“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/adventures_in_drug_war_logic/feed/ 33 Why China and Mexico matter http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/why_china_and_mexico_matter/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/why_china_and_mexico_matter/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10269942 One of the most tiresome games in Washington, D.C., is the search for a new American grand strategy. According to the folklore of the foreign policy community, the American diplomat George Kennan came up with the grand strategy of containment of the Soviet Union that the U.S. followed through successfully until the end of the Cold War. While Kennan indeed contributed the name “containment,” by the mid-1950s he had repudiated the policy and became in effect a conservative isolationist. Nixonian realpolitik, Carter-style human rights diplomacy and Reagan’s renewed Cold War were quite different. But the myth persists that some Kennan-like genius devised a new grand strategy, be it the “concert of democracies” favored by neocons and neoliberal hawks or the “offshore balancing” preferred by realists.

A much more useful approach was laid out by the journalist and political thinker Walter Lippmann in "U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic," which he published in 1943 during World War II. Lippmann spoke of “the order of power,” that is, the relationships among the handful of great military and economic powers that matter the most. In his view of history, American foreign policy has always been defined by America’s relations with other great powers: first Britain and France, and later Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/why_china_and_mexico_matter/feed/ 9 “El Narco”: The drug war next door http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10206015 Among the many striking facts that journalist Ioan Grillo recounts in his new book, "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency," is that the Mexican city of Juarez became the murder capital of the world last year, beating out Mogadishu and Cape Town, South Africa, for per-capita homicides. Some 3,000 people were killed in Juarez in 2010, yet in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. city right across the river -- almost a literal stone's throw away -- there were only five murders.

Some would say this proves that better law enforcement is all Mexico needs to end the drug-cartel violence currently drenching its northern states in blood. Or maybe, as Grillo suggests, it merely shows that when the cartels and their associates want to kill someone in El Paso, they first take their victim across the border where, chances are, the murder will never be properly investigated.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/13/el_narco_the_drug_war_next_door/feed/ 40 Recession lessons from my backwater childhood http://www.salon.com/2011/08/13/scavenger_salmonberry_champagne_sauce/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/13/scavenger_salmonberry_champagne_sauce/#comments Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2011/08/13/scavenger_salmonberry_champagne_sauce We go camping and my mother sets up shop. She spreads swaths of flowered oilcloth on the mossy ground and hangs Mexican shopping bags from a fir tree. She pins signs to each item: Bags $7, Bracelets $10. A basketful of coin purses made out of recycled pop-tops is the centerpiece of our picnic table. This is my mom to the core. We traveled to the Umpqua National Forest for a family reunion, not a swap meet, but my mother can't resist the thought that some member of our group of 30 campers might be in dire need of a bright Mexican accessory. My mom has spent a good chunk of the last 40 years living on the cheap in Latin America, and she's developed some distinctly third-world traits: creative moneymaking skills and a certain disregard for regulations. (When I mention that it's probably illegal to set up a retail shop in a national forest, she pretends not to hear me.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/13/scavenger_salmonberry_champagne_sauce/feed/ 16 Mexico says a top Juarez cartel figure captured http://www.salon.com/2011/08/01/lt_drug_war_mexico_15/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/01/lt_drug_war_mexico_15/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:57:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/08/01/lt_drug_war_mexico_15 A former police officer who allegedly admits ordering 1,500 killings during a campaign of terror as a drug gang chieftain along the U.S. border has been captured in northern Mexico, federal officials said Sunday.

Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez also is a suspect in last year's slaying of a U.S. consulate employee near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said through his Twitter account that Acosta's capture is "the biggest blow" to organized crime in Ciudad Juarez since he sent about 5,000 federal police to the city in April 2010 to try to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.

Acosta, 33, was caught Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua along with his bodyguard, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police anti-drug unit. Without offering details on the capture, he said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration helped by providing information. Acosta's arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before officials displayed him to journalists in Mexico City.

Wearing a long-sleeve dress shirt, the short man with a cleft chin and thick eyebrows limped as he was escorted by two masked federal police officers to stand before the cameras.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/01/lt_drug_war_mexico_15/feed/ 2 I’ve got the Foreign Service blues http://www.salon.com/2011/07/20/foreign_service/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/20/foreign_service/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked//2011/07/19/foreign_service Dear Cary,

You have for years drawn me in as a unique and singular source of insightful, brilliant, sympathetic -- often empathetic -- and kind guidance. In life, if we are lucky, we have unexpected mentors. I am writing you now, even after storing and applying your wisdom over the years, for such mentorship/guidance.

I am a 31-year-old woman. I am Foreign Service officer (read: diplomat) with the Department of State posted to my second assignment, in Mexico. I have experienced profound professional development in this unorthodox career, for which I am unequivocally grateful. As a prospective grad student of 25 I agreed to a fellowship that committed me to a minimum of three years of service (I'm now at nearly four years) after grad school as a diplomat.

My priorities at 31 are quite different than they were at 25.

In the past nearly four years, I've exited an engagement (by my choice, months after entering the Foreign Service, to a wonderful man not enthused by the Service and the complications his life would have undergone) and have had a series of at best minor relationships with people of equal transience and of otherwise committed situations. These are dating compromises I would not have otherwise made had my situation not been circumscribed (by regulation and a limited dating pool).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/20/foreign_service/feed/ 53 Where have all the illegal immigrants gone? http://www.salon.com/2011/07/06/chinese_nuts_and_mexican_immigration/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/06/chinese_nuts_and_mexican_immigration/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:29:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works//2011/07/06/chinese_nuts_and_mexican_immigration Momentous news for American workers: The Chinese are eating more nuts than ever, and illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico is on what looks to be a long-term sustainable decline.

First: Mexico. Damien Cave's story in the New York Times on changing trends in Mexican emigration to the United States is a true blockbuster. There are many reasons why illegal immigration into the United States is down sharply -- new punitive laws in American states, the impact of the recession on the construction business, reforms that make it easier for Mexicans to get legitimate visas, demographic changes resulting in smaller Mexican families -- but one crucial factor with enormous implications for the future is the growth and maturation of the Mexican economy.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/06/chinese_nuts_and_mexican_immigration/feed/ 24 Pick of the week: A dark, erotic “Leap Year” in Mexico http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/leap_year_2/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/leap_year_2/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/06/23/leap_year We're probably better off not working too hard to interpret Michael Rowe's claustrophobic, erotic, ships-in-the-night drama "Leap Year." This is a movie that might well lend itself to some heavy-duty analysis, whether that means post-Freudian gender-studies hoo-ha or post-colonial racial theory. But even by bringing that stuff up I run the risk of making "Leap Year" seem impossibly dreary, when in fact it's a gripping, mysterious use of no-budget cinema at its finest, and an intimate character study with surprising emotional power. (Be advised that there was another movie made in 2010 with this title. This one does not have Amy Adams in it.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/leap_year_2/feed/ 16 Obama mimics Bush on the border fence http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/obama_mexico_border_wall/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/obama_mexico_border_wall/#comments Sat, 14 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/05/14/obama_mexico_border_wall President Obama traveled to El Paso, Texas, this week and delivered an immigration speech that was widely viewed as an appeal to Hispanic voters.

While there's virtually no prospect of comprehensive immigration reform getting through the current Congress, the Obama administration has been emphasizing enforcement and border security. One under-examined aspect of the administration's policy is the continuation of Clinton- and Bush-era efforts to build a physical -- and virtual -- fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. In El Paso, Obama actually touted the fact that his administration had completed the fence. So we thought it was a good time to check in on the status of the fence, whether it's working, and what's planned for the future.

Billions of dollars have been spent in recent years on a physical wall and the so-called virtual fence, and the efforts have been criticized by some who live on the border on human rights and environmental grounds.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/obama_mexico_border_wall/feed/ 35 Cannes: An explosive Mexican thriller http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/miss_bala/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/miss_bala/#comments Sat, 14 May 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/05/13/miss_bala CANNES, France -- Despite this festival's long-standing reputation as a home for worthy and difficult dramas where nothing happens, its programmers have begun to embrace genre movies in recent years. Our first 2011 example arrived on Friday, with the premiere of Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo's pulse-pounding "Miss Bala" in the Certain Regard competition. I heard one prominent critic in the hallway after the screening complaining that some of Naranjo's plot twists were implausible, but give me a break. First of all, much of Naranjo's point is that almost nothing is implausible in the upside-down world of Tijuana, where it's nearly impossible to identify a clear line between cops and criminals. Secondly, while "Miss Bala" strives for a naturalistic feeling and draws on some recent criminal history, it's a bullet-riddled downhill thrill ride about a would-be beauty queen and a drug lord, not "The Bicycle Thief."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/14/miss_bala/feed/ 16 Does Obama’s trip to the border actually matter? http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/obama_immigration_politics/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/obama_immigration_politics/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 18:47:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/05/10/obama_immigration_politics When Barack Obama speaks at the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday, calling for immigration reform, he will have a tough time winning over immigration advocates -- and rightly so: There have been a record-breaking 400,000 deportations in each of the past two years, more than under the Bush administration; border security has ramped up; and even the modest Dream Act failed to pass the Senate last year.

Obama's speech in El Paso will specifically argue for the economic benefits of immigration and the tightening of border controls, according to officials who have previewed the speech. He will push to extend the stay of 1,200 National Guard stationed at the border, Reuters reports, but will also argue for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

With a Republican controlled House, no one is laboring under the impression that a comprehensive immigration reform bill could pass now. And as Politico notes, immigration advocates have called for the president to use his executive powers to "halt deportations of young illegal immigrants who would qualify for the Dream Act" -- a move Obama is resisting. So all it is even possible for the president to offer Tuesday is a stated (but as yet unproven) commitment to immigration reform.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/obama_immigration_politics/feed/ 36 What you didn’t know about tequila http://www.salon.com/2011/05/05/tequila_history_margarita_tenacatita/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/05/tequila_history_margarita_tenacatita/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2011/05/04/tequila_history_margarita_tenacatita The best tequila I ever drank came to me in a plastic jug. I was young, 20 maybe, with a decidedly unrefined palate. I certainly didn't think twice about drinking from the unmarked plastic jug that our friend Danny proffered to me. Hey, it was alcohol, right? But even with my unrefined tastes, the second that tequila touched my lips I understood it was something special. It was so smooth, limes would have been an insult.

Danny was just down from the mountains of Jalisco. The jug came straight from a little distillery in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, which sits on a hill above rolling fields of agave -- the domain of the ancient Cuervo and Sauza families, and home to hundreds of better distilleries. As Cinco de Mayo draws near, our thoughts drift to this tequila Valhalla and it seems an appropriate time to spill some ink on the drink beloved to sophisticates and sorority girls alike.

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