"Jalisco never loses. And when it loses, it kills."
The Champions of Justice
"Whoever does not serve to kill,
let him serve to be killed."
Manuel Parra Mata
1. The Champions of Justice
The Champions of Justice were a coalition of Mexican bondage freaks who wore latex masks at business meetings, while waterskiing, and in the ring. Their greatest nemesis was La Mano Negra, The Black Hand, a paramilitary midget wrestling organization founded in Veracruz, Mexico by Manuel Parra Mata in 1928. At least 10,000 murders, kidnappings, and low-budget Mexploitation films are attributed to the organization. Here they are, attempting to extort a member of The Champions of Justice, by threatening to kidnap his girlfriend if he doesn't pay.
And here are The Champions of Justice in a meeting, congratulating each other for their powers of wrestling, and deduction. Think Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes was into bondage apparel and wrestling, and had to save the Miss Mexico contestants from a bunch of midgets.
Because it takes more than brains if you want to survive in a world of amusing, mindless contradictions.
And the kidnapped Miss Mexico contestants, who are in cold storage in cheap caskets, for easy transport. That's The Black Hand himself, walking among them in a lab coat.
Clearly, The Black Hand is an organization that means business.
But what is it?
A criminal syndicate? An offering to Huitzilopochtli? A band?
All of the above?
2. Tangent of the Black Hand
"You cannot walk without collaborating with
His Holiness: Mr. Killing"
Mano Negra
Manu Chao is a Spanish-French singer/songwriter guy. "Mano Negra" (Black Hand) was the name of his band through the late 80s and early 90s. Their last album is called Casa Babylon, which contains the song "Señor Matanza," or "Mr. Killing." According to the lyrics, you "cannot walk without collaborating with 'His Holiness.'" The true nature of the holiness of Señor Matanza is not difficult to guess.
Lila Downs seems to think Señor Matanza is cool. In her song "Mano Negra," she writes:
"And I'm thinking about your good commands
And the light of heaven that guides me
It takes me far away from worldly things
To this wandering people;
Horns and bazookas"
Lila Downs
Whose good commands? The light of whose heaven? Señor Matanza? Huitzilopochtli?
Horns and bazookas?
Huitzilopochtli?
Lila Downs' musical tribute to the leader of the midgets begins with a deep voice intoning an "offering to Huitzilopochtli." According to Wikipedia, Huitzilopochtli is "the solar and war deity of sacrifice in [the] Aztec religion."
Casa Babylon, indeed.
If this is who The Black Hand is, it is essential to adopt a healthy disbelief in the righteousness of his "good commands," the "holy" nature of the light emanating from his infernal, sacrificial heaven-ovens, and the veracity of the claim that horns and bazookas are not worldly things.
What's up, Lila Downs? Are you gunning for a beatdown from the Champions of Justice?
Fortunately, these guys are on our side. They may drive to the store wearing masks, dressed like guys who live in a rubber elevator, but their assistance is a blessing. Albeit one in a hunky, buff disguise.
3. Outlaw Justice
I grew up in Rockford, Illinois. I wasn't born there, but I spent most of my childhood and my entire adolescence in The Forest City. They call it that because of all the green space. Returning to Rockford later in life for various reasons, I realized it's actually a really nice place to live. The weather is abysmal in the winter, but if that doesn't bother you too much, Rockford is a good place to raise a family. It's a good place to be a kid. It's not suburban, not rural, not urban. Not too big, not too small. You could ride your bikes around the neighborhood, and walk down to the river, or go sledding down the giant hills in winter. There were bad areas, but they weren't terrible. There were good areas, but they weren't overly affluent. They stopped doing it a long time ago, but for many years they'd have a festival over Labor Day weekend that took up the entire downtown area. Downtown became a giant carnival. Rides, music, carnival food, art stands. There was actually a pretty decent art scene there. I was a kid, but my earliest shows were playing background music on acoustic guitar in the lobby of one of the art galleries, an old abandoned 3-story building with a loft, someone bought and converted into a live-in art studio. The place smelled like clay and paint, and artful boomers came and went with their sculptures and their wine, and it was a cultural education of sorts. Rockford is cool. And because of all the Italians, it has the best pizza in America. Yes, I'm saying it, New York. Rockford pizza is the best. And Christmas there was great.
It's also where Cheap Trick is from.
(In the war of the album titles, who has odds? Casa Babylon, or Heaven Tonight? Heaven Tonight is the underdog, but insiders tell me it's going to rally at the end and take the game. You can do what you want, but I'm putting all my money on Heaven Tonight).
But Rockford has been in the news a lot this week. International headline news. On Sunday, an 18-year-old kid was stabbed to death while working at a Walmart on the north side, and on Wednesday, 4 people were stabbed to death in a quiet, residential neighborhood. A postman, a teenage girl, and a younger guy and his mom were stabbed to death by The Black Hand, some morally-indigent demon who's trying to blame his killing spree on weed.
We used to laugh at Reefer Madness; now, some people are trying to use it as legal defense.
Casa Babylon, indeed.
I don't want to get into the politics; I don't even want to get into the spiritual reasons these kinds of events are spreading like a plague across America. I don't want to talk about Kaylee Gain (thank GOD she's alive, may Jesus have mercy on her and her family), Jonathan Lewis, Riley Strain, or any number of other victims that are piling up like so much firewood in the sacrificial ovens of an overwrought demonic war deity, who wants you to believe it was the weed that made him do it.
I want to talk about Marianne Bachmeier, and the citizens of Taxco, Guerrero, who have firsthand knowledge of the standard operating procedures of The Black Hand, and who have dealt with him accordingly. Which is to say, I want to talk about outlaw justice, and how the social engineers are counting on it, which is why the criminals get off so easy. The Black Hand wants you to attack these people. And I don't judge you if you do. My rage is being manufactured, baked in the sacrificial ovens of a formerly-civilized society as well, and I don't judge you if you react naturally to a chain of horrible events. God might, but I don't. If it was my kid, or my mom, I can NOT say with any certainty that I'd behave any differently.
Because these people are abhorrent.
In a Rockfordian display of lawless violence, an 8-year-old girl was kidnapped a couple days ago in a small town in the state of Guerrero. Her kidnappers called her mother and demanded the equivalent of $15,000 USD, or they'd kill her. They killed her. In these 2 videos, the townspeople form a lynch mob around the suspects, and start beating the crap out of them in full view of the cops. The cops don't interfere, though eventually the male perpetrator is led off by the cops after having somehow lost his pants, and the crowd reaches into the back of the police truck to rip the shirt off of the female perpetrator. Both of them are exposed to the crowd, who clearly wants blood.
A younger delincuente is carried off by 4 cops, one holding each limb, carrying him down the street like a dead bag of wheat. At one point, one of the townspeople is talking to a cop, who clearly sympathizes with him, before he loses control of his emotions once again and strikes at the bloody object of contempt in the center of the mob. "Jalisco never loses, and if it loses, it kills," indeed. The state of Guerrero is only 2 states down from Jalisco.
"Guerrero" is Spanish for "warrior," in fact.
The perpetrators are lucky to be alive.
Marianne Bachmeier shot and killed the man suspected of raping and killing her 7-year-old daughter. She shot him in court. He died instantly. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison, but was released after 3. She died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 46, and is buried next to her daughter in Lübeck, Germany. I'm sure you can find someone who will blame her, but these days, it isn't hard to find a pedophile, or a killer.
I am in a state of pre-emptive mourning for what's coming to this world. Because this is just the trailer, the 2-minute preview before the feature presentation. These kinds of stories are not going away. They're going to increase in regularity, on all sides of every border, worldwide. My heart is broken for my fellow Americanos, whatever ethnicity they may be. Agents of La Mano Negra, whatever language they speak, I find it hard to sympathize with. It's easy for me to pray for them, so I do, but my soul is in the crowd alongside the victims' families, not caring about the blood of the killers, if not quite calling for it outright. I pray sincerely that the perpetrators repent and get saved, but my broken heart does not presume to stand in the way of any justice meted out to them. Whether that justice is meted out by the courts, or by the people. In Rockford, Germany, Missouri, and Mexico alike.
Perhaps I only pray that they are saved before they're torn to shreds.
Being torn to shreds might be the only thing that saves their soul.
I wouldn't know. It's not for me to say. But since they feel compelled to kidnap, rape, and murder innocent people like this, I'm not going to lie to you, and tell you that I care.
But The Champions of Justice will prevail. At the end of the film, The Black Hand realizes his imminent defeat, and takes a self-destruct pill. You think it's a suicide pill, but he doesn't merely die. He explodes. It's an end which is both hilarious and fitting. All the Miss Mexico contestants are rescued, and the pageant goes on without a hitch. Even though only one of them is crowned, everybody wins.
Well, maybe not everyone.
Thanks for listening.
