Life and Death in Coyoacan

What's Mexico's take on the revelation of Deep Throat?

Also, are there any Taco Bell outlets in Mexico City?

My reccomendations are do not drink water from the pipes. Buy water bottles and do not carry jewerly or anything that look expensive. Besides that have fun and enjoy the scenary

There are Taco Bells in D.F. - but you'd be better off eating the local food (besides, the local tacos are way tastier than anything you'd find at an international chain).

Fdg31 is right about the water, but I would also caution: be sure the bottle you buy has an unbroken safety seal on it. Less scrupulous vendors have been known to refill bottles with tap water - and *no one* drinks the local tap water if they afford to have water delivered (that obvoiusly leaves out a lot of people, though).

People traveling to D.C. probably receive these kinds of travel tips as well.

La agua is no importante. La muerte de Zinser es muy significado porque: Zinser citicized the United States' unilateral actions in Iraq. Zinser was ousted from his post as Mexco's ambassador to the United Nations in December 2003 after a diplomatic flap, touched off by his comments--that the United States treats Mexico like its "back yard"--just a month earlier.

How do residents of Mexico feel about the Iraqi war today? (Will you be reporting on this, Joel?) Were there others in Fox's administration who were as outspoken as Zinser was at the time? Were there others in the Fox government who lost their jobs because of their beliefs and dissent, like Zinser?

Our government certainly disapproved of Zinser and his outspokenness. Was Fox under pressure from our administration, to the point that Fox would betray his long-standing relationship with his friend Zinser? Did Fox intentionally embarrass Zinser by removing him from his diplomatic post simply to improve relations with the United States and George W. Bush? Que lastima!

DC travel tip:

Don't drink the water and beware of men congregating in parking garages at 2 am.

are we sure the Zinser accident was an "accident"?

This entry brings to mind the opening paragraph of Tom Shroder's book:

"It is late, nearly lightless. Smoke from a million dung fires hangs in the headlights as the Maruti microbus bangs along the narrow, cratered hardpack that passes for a paved road in the Indian outback. We are still hours away from the hotel, an island of First World comfort in this simmering Third World ocean, and the possibility that we will never get there looms as large as the oncoming truck, absurdly overloaded and undermaintained, shuddering violently as it hurtles toward us dead in the middle of the road. Using every inch of the rutted dirt shoulder, we barely escape. Through the thin tin of the Maruti, I can feel the truck vibrate, smell death in the exhaust pumping from its tailpipe. In escape, there is no relief. We bounce back onto the road's pitted surface and immediately overtake a wooden cart lumbering to the heavy gait of yoked oxen with immense horns. Our driver leans on his horn as he swerves around the cart into a blind curve that I can only pray is not occupied by a bus loaded to the dented metal ceiling with humans and farm animals. I try not to think about the lack of seat belts or the mere half inch of glass and metal that separates the front seat from whatever we plow into -- or the Lonely Planet article I read that said fatal accidents were forty times more likely on Indian roads than on American highways. . . ."

Um, when you hit a bus head-on, death comes pretty quickly anywhere. Would it be good to check average life expectancy in the country and in the DF before starting on the Mexico/death meme?

JimM-

Achenblog is the NYT of blogs (in that incestuous media way)....why let facts get in the way of a good story or anecdote.

Zinser was essentially a politician, not a Diplomat, before going to the UN he was Fox's National Security Advisor, was a Senator and a Congressman and worked with all three major parties once in his lifetime. Yet he will be remembered for being the reason (along with mid-term elections at that time) that Mexico did not support the U.S on the war.
His death is a tragedy, good luck on Francisco Sosa #440 where already many of his former friends that got distant because of politics (including Fox and former Foreign Secretary Castañeda) have paid their respects.

(I agree on the tap water, but Taco Bell? I've lived in this city for almost twenty years and I'm yet to see one of those)

Relations between Washington and Mexico City soured precipitously on the eve of the war last February and March. In one of the few moments of truth in his three-year reign, Mexican president Vicente Fox earned Bush's enmity by doing the right thing and instructing his representative on the United Nations Security Council, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, to vote down the U.S.-Great Britain-sponsored aggression against Iraq. Knowing that it would fail to carry, the White House eventually withdrew its war resolution and unilaterally marched into Iraq with the Brits and the Spanish tagging along at their side, puppy dog-style. Communication between Bush and Fox got very frosty very fast.

Before the resolution was withdrawn, however, British intelligence was asked by its U.S. counterparts to provide "technical" assistance in "observing" the delegations of Security Council members that had not yet announced their intentions, according to testimony offered in a London courtroom by Katherine Gun, a British operative, who leaked the information to the press and was subsequently drummed out of a job. Both Aguilar Zinser and Juan Manuel Valdez, head of Chile's Security Council delegation, have confirmed that their office telephones were bugged, a violation of United Nations protocols.

In an interview with the British Observer last month, Aguilar Zinser revealed how a last-ditch peace effort by six uncommitted Security Council members on the eve of the aggression had been bugged. The morning after the meeting, when the group met with John Negroponte, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., the plan was already on his desk. The espionage "wrecked the last chance for peace," Aguilar Zinser laments.

Notwithstanding, when Aguilar Zinser asked Mexico's neophyte Secretary of Foreign Relations, Luis Ernesto Derbez, who had just replaced the mercurial Jorge Castañeda as foreign minister, to send him a team of security agents to sweep the Mexican U.N. offices for eavesdropping devices, he was told to forget about it. Derbez apparently wanted no new problems with the gringos to contaminate his administration of Mexico's foreign policy. Late last month, Derbez was asked at a press conference about the alleged spying and responded, "Our position is simple, we do not have our own verification. We have no way of saying, 'I found this little microphone.'"

Moreover, "If there is no trial, surely there will therefore be no verification of whether there was spying or not," he said. (Gun had been charged with violating Britain's Official Secrets Act. Prosecutors dropped the case, offering no explanation.)

Aguilar Zinser himself was fired after telling a Mexico City university audience that the United States continues to treat Mexico as if it were its backyard. Zinser's removal had been repeatedly called for by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his firing was taken as a clear signal that Fox was once again snuggling up to Bush.

Indeed, a letter timidly inquiring about the spy caper was not tendered to either Washington or London until this past December, nine months after the bugging occurred. Both the United States and the United Kingdom said they would not respond to the inquiry because "we never respond to questions about intelligence matters."

John Ross, reporter
The Texas Observer

Zinser had it wrong. The US is the backyard of Mexico thanks to unendless illegal immigration.

Um...

If it's "unendless", that means it has an end, doesn't it?

And if you're referring to Mexico as the "backyard", what does that make Canada? There are a lot of Canadians here without proper papers, too. Or maybe it something else you have a problem with...

help, what's "D.T." stand for (in reference to Mexico City, probably something real obvious, but it's Monday, forgive me, please) ??

unendless - yes, guess the end will come when the end comes, you know, WW III.

Yeah man, let's crack down on all the illegal Canucks too, nothing personal!

D.F. stands for Distrito Federal. (D.T. stands for Deep Throat.)

Hey, thanks for the interesting insights on Mexico City and Aguilar Zinser etc. FYI, Zinser was a diplomat, intellectual, academic, and a man of great energy, conscience and conviction, unafraid to speak his mind, and in Mexico and all other countries including the US that sometimes upsets a few apple carts. (Manzana carts). The home down the street appears to have thrown open the gates to any and all, many bringing flowers. Whatever the differences that Aguilar Z. had with Fox, Fox came by this morning. In other news, it's blazingly hot, the hottest week in a year in Mexico according to my very well placed sources.

Oh, one other thing: There's a starbucks just 3 blocks away. MY KIND OF TOWN.

"People in other countries like it when Americans tell them what they should do."

"Oh, one other thing: There's a starbucks just 3 blocks away. MY KIND OF TOWN"

--El Americano feo

Esta tan aturdido que no da pie con bola. Por meterte a redentor te ha pasado todo esto. Prefiero ir al grano y dejat de hablar bobieras.

Los Gatos: Once again, alguna vez, it's humor, people. Satire. Irony.

Speaking of humor, here's Dave Barry in the (Miami)Herald today, in an article about the Heat's loss last night:

"Watching Shaq try to make a free throw is like watching the president try to complete a sentence. You're thinking: 'Come on! You can do it! Noooooooo . . . '"

Here's the link
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/11831844.htm

I'm sorry, "Death can come quickly in Mexico."?????? Did I walk into a Raymond Chandler novel? Did those pictures of W. Mark Felt in his spiffy G-Man pose bring back the ghosts of "Spooky Fun-time Radio Hour"?

It's nice to know that the some people still can tell when someone has been "smoked" because he voiced his conscience. Reality is that the majority of the world population either is afraid to "piss off" the MIGHTY U.S., and or just want to please it to stay on its good side. There is an understood silence when most countries don't stand against "god Bush", they KNOW that any dissent will be dealt either directly and or indirectly, legally or illegally, and no one will even have a second thought about questioning the actions. The U.S. mentality of
"we are right" doesn't leave options for contradictions. If you
are not with them YOU are against them, and sooner or later if you don't watch your back, your own people will "rub you off" to appease the fury of the new "Almighty U.S. god...Bush"