"To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!"
Ambrose Bierce

 

Mexican states have horrifying shapes.  One of the reasons Mexican travel advisory warnings are so scary is because the shapes of the states don't make any sense.  They look like puzzle pieces, hooded ogres, puddles of psychedelic vomit.  Mexican states look like cancer cells on bad cartoon drugs, dropped from a great, splattering height.  Look at the state of Tamaulipas below.  It's in the northeast of the country, shaded in dark red.  It looks like an emaciated elephant crying for its mother from the pits of eternal torment.  Mamá ayúdame, soy Tamaulipas y me duele.  Or what about Zacatecas?  It's the one in the middle, shaded in dark orange.  Zacatecas looks like some weird, evil dwarf in a hoodie, goosestepping like a drunken Nazi hunchback with his arms trailing behind him.  Where is he going?  What's he going to do when he gets there?  Do I want to be there with him?  Is it even a state, or some weird little man in the twisted clutches of a Fentanyl frenzy?  Perhaps I should reconsider travel.

In direct contrast, the states of the United States are organized in an orderly, aesthetically-pleasing manner.  Most of them are interesting, and have a unique and instantly-identifiable shape.  California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and almost everything in between, have a shape that looks cool from outer space, or on the door of a police car.  Even the states that are kind of boring make sense.  Their proportions are correct.  There's nothing trippy or horrific about any of it.

At least, there wasn't.

The border has been in the news a lot, again, due to the 4 Americanos who were kidnapped this weekend in Matamoros.  You can watch it happen on this Bitchute video:

People think Mexico is a dangerous place, and the fact that the locals in Matamoros are driving around a live kidnapping like it's a construction zone attests to this believable, demonstrably-accurate theory.  "What is that up ahead, a car accident?"  "Nope, it's a bunch of armed guys dragging bleeding people into the back of a pickup truck, while their friend lies dead in the street."  "Great.  I guess this means I'm going to be late for my appointment."

Pretty harsh.

One of my new friends in this small Mexican village I've been living in said that he had to go to Home Depot in a nearby town to pickup some supplies, and didn't stop for anybody.  He told me, "I drove straight to Home Depot, bought my supplies, and got out of there as soon as possible."  That isn't something that crosses the minds of most Americans, yet.  "Hmmm, I have to go to Milwaukee for paint and plumbing supplies.  Is it worth the risk?!?"

This town is not far from a major Mexican supermarket chain, but on the road back, sometimes the cops will set up a temporary checkpoint.  It's funny, cuz you can see the checkpoint coming from half a mile away, and half the cars get off the road immediately.  All of a sudden, several people need to take a hard, unannounced right into the maze of cobbled backstreets that are less likely to be patrolled by drunken, cigarette-smoking narco cops.  I count myself among their ranks, and am at the point where I don't even bother with the main route anymore, and take the roundabout detour as a matter of natural course.  It's slower, farther, out of the way, and....  a lot easier.

As stressful as the local temporary checkpoints can be, it's still a lot better than it was when I lived in Marfil, which is a town just outside of Guanajuato.  The maze of streets in that area is hard to navigate.  It's like a town comprised entirely of unmarked detours.  The straightaway that begins at the 1:25 mark in the video below was particularly impossible to avoid, and often enough, a temporary cop checkpoint would be set up.  There was no way to avoid it.  If you went through it more than twice, they'd notice you, and finally it got to the point that I got a ticket.  They confiscated my license and told me it would be available at the office of arbitrary tariffs and state-sponsored extortion the next day.  Fortunately, my landlord offered to go with me to pick it up.  

Yes, that's right.  My landlord.  Went out of his way on his own time to help me get my license out of hock.  My landlord.  The paradox of Mexico.  Hardcore, 5-star lawlessness mixed with neighborly friendliness that reminds me of Minnesota in the 80s.  Mexico is like a strange mix of evenly-browned, sun-dried Minnesotans from the 80s and hardcore criminals who are among the most brutal in the history of the world. 

It's a beautiful drive, though, don't you think?

Zacatecas is actually a really beautiful place.  I had to go through it in October, right after it had been in the news for narcobloqueos, or narco blockades, which means burning school buses in the highway.  I'm not afraid, but I'm not reckless or stupid either, and tried to go around it.  But it was the best route.  I had no choice.  Technically I did, but not really.  You weigh your options, throw the dice in your mind, figure out your route, decide on it, stop thinking, and "gun it headfirst like a fiend into the smoking crackerworks, changed forever/nevertobeseen again."  Fortunately, I didn't run into this:

It was actually a really beautiful drive.  Both ways, up towards the States in October, and back down a month or so later.  Beautiful:

Here's the square around the Fountain of Lanterns in central Zacatecas:

And a guy walking down Ramón López Velarde wearing a pink backpack while not looking gay, since this isn't America:

Beautiful place, Zacatecas.  Unfortunate that it's shaped like one of the Narco Clowns of Tamaulipas on a lurchy bender.  Maybe that's what its problem is.  If it was shaped like New York, or Illinois, the criminal extortion in Zacatecas would be limited to straight white people.  As it is, however, nobody is safe.

According to a report by The Gateway Pundit in January, "Cincinnati architect Jose Gutiérrez is one of four people found buried next to a bullet-riddled vehicle in Zacatecas, Mexico, last week....  Mexican authorities discovered Gutiérrez — along with his fiancée, Daniela Pichardo, and Pichardo’s sister and cousin — dead and buried next to a car with multiple bullet holes and flat tires."

Terrible.  

By all accounts, Zacatecas is a dangerous place.  But unlike the United States, Jose Gutiérrez and his fiancée were not targeted because they were straight white people.  They were targeted because they were driving through a warzone populated by armed narco clowns.

Is it safe?  No.  Statistically, as civilization continues its downward trajectory on the Slip-n-Slide to perdition, and things get progressively worse on a daily basis, is it safer for straight white people than a country in which straight white people are blamed for everything bad that has ever happened anywhere, way beyond merely being a ripe target for roadside extortion, but are actually considered enemies of the state by every legal and government institution staffed by people too stupid and self-righteous to see that they're being used to destroy their own S.O.L. (standard of living), so that everybody can be slaves, black and brown and white and red and yellow people too?

I certainly think so.

I have always liked black people.  In fact I have a black aunt; one of my uncles married a black lady.  It has never been an issue with me.  But black people have been set back at least 60 years since Obama took office, when all of a sudden everybody became a "racist."  What a load of transparent, idiotic bunk.  And it's gotten worse, progressively and exponentially, since then.  These days, there's not much I appreciate more than a cool, smart black person.  I'm not going to patronize you (or them) by saying I have known many, even if I have.  But cool, smart black people have been given a raw deal by this hyper-stupid BLM nonsense, to the point that, when the smug, arrogant, self-righteous, entitled grins are finally wiped off of the faces of those people, I am not going to care in the slightest.  They have drained all empathy and respect from my being.

I'm not going to tell them to go to hell.  I'm going to tell them that they are certainly welcome to go to hell, if they insist.  You don't want my respect, fine.  You no longer have it.  As they say in Spanish,"To God."

Which brings me back to the updated U.S. Travel Advisory Map above, prepared by my own Emotional State Department while standing on the sidewalk filming somebody's quinceañera, admiring the familial and social cohesion from afar, like someone locked in a transparent zoo of self-imposed exile.  Free, but also trapped.  Behold the view of an oddly-unified social structure, filmed from behind the sad-but-also-happy plexiglass of hardcore cultural disenfranchisement:

I saw my friend a couple times that day.  We had short conversations on the street; I even met his wife.  The people at the tienda were happy and friendly as usual, and told me the party was a quinceañera instead of a wedding, which is what I originally thought.  The neighbor introduced himself while cleaning out his car this weekend, wanted to know my name.  It always makes me laugh, the look of concentration and consternation they get when trying to decipher my name; Mexicans never have any idea what to do with the word "Nathan."  They have no "th" sound, and there is no Spanish equivalent.  No "Juan" for John, no "Miguel" for Michael; there is no Spanish Nathan.  The Hebrew/Bible word "Nathan" means nothin' to them.  I've had Starbucks cups with the word "Leifen" written on them.  Which is a heckuva lot better than reading "cis-gender white oppressor."  "Leifen" isn't the worst thing you could call somebody.  Maybe I'm a Viking.  A gringo Viking with a Jewish name and a black aunt.  My mother's side is all Swedish people from Minnesota, like the characters in the movie Fargo.

I've never had the slightest problem with black people, or Mexicans, or anybody.

Which is perhaps why I feel safer not living in the States.  In spite of all the scary Mexican news, at the end of the day, I feel safer here.  The relief, while slightly sad, is also visceral.  The U.S. is like a dangerous cauldron of dumb, legalistic racists who are all obsessed with their sex lives, all roiling around like naked, emasculated potatoes in a tasteless, idiot orgy stew boiling over and scalding the S.O.L. (standard of living) that gives them the freedom and time to complain about their manufactured, wannabe problems in the first place.

It makes me sad, but if the girl who escaped from North Korea thinks it's messed up, you know something is wrong.

Fortunately, I like it here anyway.  Mexico is great.  It is definitely the Halloween of Nations, and an undeniable outlaw culture, but it's alright.  At some level, that's part of the appeal.  When the cigarette-smoking cop shakes you down, ask him for a cigarette, throw some money at him, and drive away.  He's dangerous, but at least he's not yelling at you while he preaches about how entitled he's going to be when he's finally allowed to line you up in a firing squad and make the world a better place by removing you from it, at some point in the future.  These insane, deadly people are 1000x more dangerous than any drunken narco cop, whether those are famous last words and I'm gunned down at last by a drunken narco cop, or not:

What a bunch of worthless dogs.  All the more worthless for the fact that their condition is actually chosen; nobody is inherently worthless or that much of a nosy bitch; as hard as it is to believe, they have chosen so to be.  

Why?  Who knows.  Who cares.

My name is Dances With Wolves, and you are not worth talking to.

Mi nombre es Bailando Con Lobos, y no vale la pena hablar contigo.

So, what happened to the gringos who were kidnapped in Matamoros the other day?  Were they kidnapped for being gringos, or were they involved with the cartels in some capacity?  Was it a case of mistaken identity?  Were the gringos simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Were they Hispanic gringos, like the guy from Cincinnati?  Did they fall prey to the horrifying Narco Clowns of Tamaulipas?

Horrific.  Perhaps we should sic the Batman of Tamaulipas on them, so he can tie them to a telephone pole.  Some strange vigilante tied these 2 mirthless characters to a pole, and wrote "I'm a rat" on the chest of the male.  Whether the alleged perpetrators were wearing the Joker makeup before they went out for a night of delinquent activity, or it was applied after the fact by the vigilante Batman of Tamaulipas, is unknown.  Either way, a chemically-enhanced showdown between Batman and the Narco Clowns is probably imminent.

Sigh.  How utterly insane.  The whole world is a giant, orgiastic money laundering operation in which Satan deceives everybody into exchanging their souls for money, so that they waste their lives trying to "atone for" their money's sins by making it "clean" through "legitimate" channels, like some kind of financial baptismal rite.  Rather than accepting the atoning sacrifice of Christ and cleansing their souls, they waste their time pursuing the purification of their money instead.  The clown troops on the ground may take the form of Karens, or literal homicidal clowns employed by the cartels, but the endgame is the same:

The money is cleaned, but their souls remain dark.

May God have mercy on them, and go to them, and may He appear to them before it's too late, one way or another.

Thanks for listening,

Bailando Con Lobos

 

*     *     *

 

Update 3/7/23 about 12 noon US Central Time:

Apparently, 2 of the kidnapping victims have been found alive.  Two are dead.

The governor of the state of Tamaulipas, Américo Villarreal Anaya, announced at the conference of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that two of the kidnapped American citizens are alive, although one is injured.

Two of the four kidnapped Americans in Matamoros are killed.

 

It's a lot more than most Mexican families get.  Most of the time, the cartels don't even leave a body for the familia to mourn.  There's a documentary out there about the mothers of the desaparecidos, who band together and scour the countryside for the bodies of their loved ones.  They hear rumors of mass graves, and take an iron rod into the desert, which they plunge into the ground.  When the rod comes out, if there's gore on the end of it, they know they've found a body.

At least the families of the gringos have been given "closure," if nothing else.  Another case of white privilege, no doubt.

Except in this case, the gringos are black.  How unspeakably inconvenient.

Don't take your S.O.L. for granted, America.  If you don't get off your high horse now (now), your fall will be permanent, and harsh.  I don't think you're going to do it.  That's why I left.  There is no humility there.  The demons have clearly been unleashed.

Vaya con Dios, amigos.  Si nunca te vuelvo a ver otra vez en esta tierra, espero verte en el cielo.

To God,