Link Salad, the South of the Border Edition
-- La Violencia - Ed Vulliamy, Guernica, Nov. 2010
"The children of some lesser narcos attend Valentín Gómez Farías primary school in Tijuana. The school is kept beautifully clean, and the children, wearing red uniforms, chirp around the playground before settling in for lessons with orderly discipline. One morning in September 2008, however, the children arrived to find a message for them to bear in mind as they prepared their futures in the community: twelve festering corpses piled across the road from the school gates, naked, tortured, and with tongues cut-people who talked too much. It was a lesson to the pupils not to do the same, says the principal, Miguel Ángel González Tovar, simultaneously courteous and exhausted as he describes running a school attended by “the children of narcos, children of police officers, and children of ordinary workers. The situation is very delicate. There are evil people in our area, but they still send their children to school.”"
-- The Bridge of Tears: FX's excellent new series, 'The Bridge' - Andy Greenwald, Grantland, July 10, 2013
"As cable dramas retreat further and further into the sterile, knowable past of period pieces or the even more barren imaginings of fantasy and horror, it's such a relief to encounter a show willing to examine the messy present without blinking. Nobody wants to think about what's been happening in Mexico or Americans' own culpability in the madness. But it's impossible to turn the other way forever. Better to be like Sonya Cross and run fearlessly up to ugliness and poke it in the eye; better yet to be like Marco Ruiz and be very much afraid of what lingers in the dark and chase after it anyway. As a dying Roberto Bolaño wrote in 2666, "No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.""
Addendum (9.06pm):
-- The underworld of raiteros - Michael Grabell/ProPublica, Chicago Reader, May 2, 2013
"The word raitero is a Spanglish invention that roughly means "a person who gives rides." In fact, the raiteros are effectively agents for Select Remedy and other temp agencies, which have grown steadily since the 1990s and are approaching new heights after the recent recession. While not a household name, the Select Family of Staffing Companies, which controls Select Remedy, posted $1.8 billion in revenue last year and employs nearly 100,000 people every week-about as many as Starbucks."
"The children of some lesser narcos attend Valentín Gómez Farías primary school in Tijuana. The school is kept beautifully clean, and the children, wearing red uniforms, chirp around the playground before settling in for lessons with orderly discipline. One morning in September 2008, however, the children arrived to find a message for them to bear in mind as they prepared their futures in the community: twelve festering corpses piled across the road from the school gates, naked, tortured, and with tongues cut-people who talked too much. It was a lesson to the pupils not to do the same, says the principal, Miguel Ángel González Tovar, simultaneously courteous and exhausted as he describes running a school attended by “the children of narcos, children of police officers, and children of ordinary workers. The situation is very delicate. There are evil people in our area, but they still send their children to school.”"
-- The Bridge of Tears: FX's excellent new series, 'The Bridge' - Andy Greenwald, Grantland, July 10, 2013
"As cable dramas retreat further and further into the sterile, knowable past of period pieces or the even more barren imaginings of fantasy and horror, it's such a relief to encounter a show willing to examine the messy present without blinking. Nobody wants to think about what's been happening in Mexico or Americans' own culpability in the madness. But it's impossible to turn the other way forever. Better to be like Sonya Cross and run fearlessly up to ugliness and poke it in the eye; better yet to be like Marco Ruiz and be very much afraid of what lingers in the dark and chase after it anyway. As a dying Roberto Bolaño wrote in 2666, "No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.""
Addendum (9.06pm):
-- The underworld of raiteros - Michael Grabell/ProPublica, Chicago Reader, May 2, 2013
"The word raitero is a Spanglish invention that roughly means "a person who gives rides." In fact, the raiteros are effectively agents for Select Remedy and other temp agencies, which have grown steadily since the 1990s and are approaching new heights after the recent recession. While not a household name, the Select Family of Staffing Companies, which controls Select Remedy, posted $1.8 billion in revenue last year and employs nearly 100,000 people every week-about as many as Starbucks."