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Mexico

Dec 2006Cost, in one Mexican town, of a six-hour tour “full of obstacles and persecution” across a mock U.S.-Mexico border: $14



Estimated percentage of the town’s population that has illegally crossed the real border: 90
Source:

Parque Eco-Alberto (Ixmiquilpan, Mexico)

Sep 2006Average income of an American child of Mexican immigrants, expressed as a percentage of the average income of a white American: 71
Source:

Pew Hispanic Center (Washington)

Jul 2006Ratio of the average U.S. import of Mexican lettuce each year to the average Mexican import of U.S. lettuce: 1:1
Source:

Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau

Jun 2006

Ratio of the average manufacturing wage in the United States to that in Mexico, before NAFTA took effect in 1994: 6:1

Ratio today: 8:1

Source:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Sep 2005Number of anti-globalization protesters who were tortured last year by Mexican officials : 19
Source:

Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (La Magdalena Contreras, Mexico)

Mar 2005Percentage of U.S.-born Mexican Americans who have suffered from some psychological disorder: 48
Source:

National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Md.)

Jan 2005Rank of Wal-Mart among Mexico's largest private employers : 1
Source:

Wal-Mart (Teotihuacan, Mexico)

Jan 2005Number of states, provinces, or territories of the United States, Canada, and Mexico that lack a McDonald's : 1
Source:

McDonald's (Oak Brook, Ill.)/McDonald's Canada (Toronto)

Oct 2004Square miles of surface areas between Canada and Mexico that are impervious to water : 112,610
Source:

American Geophysical Union (Washington)

Apr 2004Percentage change in Mexico's inflation-adjusted minimum wage since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 : -21
Source:

Carlos Salas, Universidad AutUnoma Metropolitana (Iztapalapa, Mexico)

Mar 2004Percentage of Mexicans who had a "bad" or "very bad" opinion of the United States in 2000 and 2003, respectively : 22, 58
Source:

Latinobarometro (Santiago, Chile)

Jan 2004Rank of oil exports and money sent home by U.S. immigrants, respectively, among Mexico's largest sources of income : 1, 2
Source:

Bendixen & Associates (Miami)

May 2003Ratio of the average garment-worker wage in China to that in Mexico: 1:3
Source:

International Labor Organization (Washington)

May 2003Percentage of Mexicans who believe that the U.S. Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico: 58
Source:

Zogby International (Utica, N.Y.)

Feb 2002Percentage of oil imported by the U.S. last year that came from Canada and Mexico: 27
Source:

U.S. Department of Energy

Nov 2001Percentage change since 1996 in the number of U.S. apprehensions of people trying to cross the Mexican border: +9
Source:

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

Jul 2001Estimated percentage of Mexico's thirty major newspapers that would fold without government subsidies: 90
Source:

EtcŽtera (Mexico City)

Jul 2001Chances that a body of water in Mexico is too contaminated to swim in: 3 in 4
Source:

Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Mexico City)

Mar 2001Number of “bonding sessions” organized by Procter & Gamble each week in Monterrey, Mexico, to encourage tampon use: 60
Source:

Procter & Gamble Co. (Cincinnati)

Jan 2001Years that Mexico spent fighting a Texas death sentence given one of its citizens before his execution last fall: 9
Source:

Consulate of Mexico (N.Y.C.)

Aug 2000 Bounty placed on the head of any U.S. DEA agent last January by Mexico's Juárez drug cartel: $200,000
Source:

Drug Enforcement Administration (El Paso, Tex.)

Apr 2000Gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico this year after an oil rig's anchor punctured an underwater pipeline: 94,500
Source:

Cutter Information Corp. (Arlington, Mass.)

Apr 2000Number of face masks that Mexico's Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos has worn out since 1994: 5
Source:

Gideon Lichfield, Chief Correspondent, The Economist (Mexico City)

Apr 2000Number of the eight Zapatista demands to which the Mexican government agreed in 1996 that have yet to be met: 0
Source:

Washington Office on Latin America (Washington)

Jan 2000Inches by which today's largest corncobs exceed the length of those grown in Mexico in 1500: 12
Source:

Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

Oct 1999Number of Vietnam-era helicopters that the U.S. donated to Mexico for drug control between 1996 and 1997: 73
Source:

U.S. Department of Defense

Oct 1999Percentage of Vietnam-era helicopters that the U.S. agreed to take back last summer after Mexico found them defective: 100
Source:

U.S. Department of Defense

May 1999Estimated number of drug-related U.S. extradition requests to Mexico that are pending: 40
Source:

U.S. State Department

Apr 1999Chance that a Mexican gray wolf released into the Arizona wilderness last spring has been shot: 1 in 2
Source:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Albuquerque, N.M.)

Oct 1998Percentage change since 1995 in Mexico's spending on its bank bailout: +705
Source:

Banco de Mexico (Mexico City)

Oct 1998Rank of General Motors, among the largest private employers in Mexico: 1
Source:

Mexican Automotive Industry Association (Mexico City)

Aug 1998Estimated number of undocumented migrants who have died since 1993 while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border: 1,185
Source:

Karl Eschbach, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Houston (Tex.)

Apr 1998Percentage of the raw materials bought by Mexican maquiladoras last year that came from Mexican suppliers: 2.1
Source:

Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografia é Informatica (Mexico City)

Apr 1998Percentage of crimes reported in Mexico City since 1993 that have been solved: 3.7
Source:

Professor Rafael Ruiz Harrell, National University of Mexico (Mexico City)

April 25, 2008A Mexican diplomat was fired after a video-surveillance tape showed him stealing BlackBerrys belonging to White House officials at a meeting in New Orleans.
Source:

Fox News

April 9, 2008Killer bees attacked Mexican policemen after one officer shot up their hive.
Source:

New York Times

April 5, 2008Angry Americans boycotted Absolut vodka after the company ran an ad showing much of the western United States as part of Mexico.
Source:

MSNBC.com

December 11, 2007The Mexican man arrested for seasoning and eating his girlfriend, and who had been writing a book entitled “The Cannibal Poet,” was found hanging from his belt in his jail cell.
Source:

Houston Chronicle

November 2, 2007Friday marked Mexico's Day of the Dead, which was celebrated as hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee the flooded state of Tabasco by boat, helicopter, jet ski, tractor, or by swimming through murky, snake-infested currents.
Source:

AP via Yahoo!

October 12, 2007Investigating the disappearance of a 30-year-old female pharmacist, police in Mexico arrested her boyfriend, Jose Luis Calva, after finding the woman’s torso in his closet, one of her legs in his refrigerator, bones in a cereal box, chunks of an unidentified fried meat in a pan, and the draft manuscript of a novel entitled “Cannibalistic Instincts.”
Source:

BBC

September 26, 2007The Department of Homeland Security announced that the completion of a $20 million “virtual fence” pilot project along the Mexican border near Tucson would be delayed because its cameras and radar were unable to distinguish people and vehicles from bushes and cows.
Source:

Washington Post

September 22, 2007The Mexican shoemaker who made the pair of ostrich-skin cowboy boots that former President Vicente Fox gave to President Bush was indicted after the contraband skins of sea turtles, caimans, and other endangered species were found in an associate's warehouse.
Source:

Rocky Mountain News

September 10, 2007Leftists in Mexico sabotaged oil pipelines for the third time in three months.
Source:

NYT

July 11, 2007In Mexico oil-pipeline sabotage forced more than 100 companies to reduce or suspend production.
Source:

Bloomberg

May 28, 2007The crowd at the Miss Universe competition in Mexico City booed Miss America.
Source:

breitbart.tv

May 25, 2007Thunder Ranch, a luxury motel in northern Mexico, was fortifying each of its 35 rooms with steel doors to stop the bullets of skirmishing drug cartels.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

March 14, 2007 Mexico City was planning to legalize abortion,
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo

January 18, 2007 Corn prices were at a 10-year high, leading to price-gouging by corn merchants. With more corn going to U.S. ethanol plants, the president of Mexico signed an accord with Mexican supermarket chains and bakers to cap tortilla prices.
Source 1:

BBCnews.com

Source 2:

BBCnews.com

December 1, 2006In Mexico, “donnybrooks and yelling matches” preceded the four-minute swearing-in ceremony of President Felipe Calderon.
Source:

New York Times

November 29, 2006The Mexican Committee for the Study of Kimilsungism hosted a seminar on the deceased North Korean dictator's seminal academic tome, “The Workers' Party of Korea Is the Party of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.”
Source:

North Korea News Service

November 3, 2006The Homeland Security website texasborderwatch.com began broadcasting live footage of the United States - Mexico border.
Source:

AP via Yahoo! News

October 30, 2006Grieving Maya in Mexico exhumed the bodies of their beloved in order to clean them.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

October 27, 2006 Mexican president Vicente Fox called a proposed 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border an “embarrassment.”
Source:

Yahoo News

October 15, 2006 Donkeys were increasingly popular with Mexican farmers.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor via Arizona Daily Star

September 27, 2006A cloud of locusts descended on Cancun.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

September 6, 2006A group of masked men burst into a bar in Michoacan, Mexico, and tossed five human heads into a crowd of dancers.
Source:

BBC News

July 19, 2006Sheriff's deputies in Arizona stumbled upon 100 Mexican immigrants wandering in the desert west of Phoenix.
Source:

NY Times

July 6, 2006Felipe Calderon, the candidate of Mexico's conservative National Action Party, was apparently elected president, though Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, refused to concede and demanded a complete recount.
Source:

Washington Post

June 14, 2006Vandals were emptying the water tanks that volunteers place in the Arizona desert; the volunteers maintain the tanks so that illegal immigrants from Mexico do not die from dehydration when crossing into the United States.
Source:

KVOA Tucson

June 14, 2006 Archaeologists said that ancient Mexicans wore decorative dentures made from wolves' teeth.
Source:

AP via MSNBC

June 2, 2006 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered 1,000 National Guard soldiers to the Mexican border.
Source:

The Los Angeles Times

May 13, 2006 President George W. Bush proposed sending in the National Guard to patrol the Mexican border.
Source:

ChinaView.cn

April 29, 2006The Mexican senate passed a bill legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, opium, cocaine, and heroin; President Vicente Fox was expected to approve the bill.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

April 24, 2006In Loreto, Mexico, a 17-year-old boy was killed at a horse race when he attempted to stop a horse from reaching the finish line by jumping in front of it.
Source:

AZCentral.com

April 19, 2006In Toluca, Mexico, a priest admitted to strangling and dismembering his pregnant lover after Easter mass.
Source:

MSNBC

March 25, 2006Omar Pimentel, the mayor of the violence-plagued town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, resigned nine months after being elected; his predecessor had been shot dead hours after being sworn in. "Something inside a man," said Pimentel, "tells him when he should come and when he should go."
Source:

The New York Times

March 20, 2006Sixty-two percent of Mexicans polled agreed that the United States is wealthy because it exploits others.
Source:

El Universal Online

March 8, 2006 Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano ordered more soldiers to patrol the Mexican border. "We are not," she said, "at war with Mexico."
Source:

The Washington Post

January 26, 2006Authorities in Mexico City arrested a woman named Juana Barraza, a 48-year-old former wrestler who is thought to be the serial killer known as Mataviejitas, or "the Killer of Little Old Ladies," and who may be responsible for strangling up to 30 of them.
Source:

BBC News

October 6, 2005Hundreds of people in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador were buried alive in mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan.
Source:

Science Daily

June 16, 2005A county commissioner in Marion County, Florida, was promoting his plan to send sex offenders to Mexico.
Source:

Local6.com

June 11, 2005The Xochiquetzal home for elderly prostitutes was slated to open in Mexico City.
Source:

News24.com

June 7, 2005 Dwarves fought bulls in Mexico.
Source:

Reuters

May 13, 2005 Mexican President Vicente Fox called on the United States to reconsider its immigration policies. “There is no doubt,” he said, “that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States.”
Source:

Reuters

May 11, 2005 Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos challenged Italy's Inter Milan soccer team to a match against a team of Zapatista soldiers.
Source:

BBC News

April 24, 2005One million people marched to support the mayor of Mexico City.
Source:

Knight Ridder

March 24, 2005 Mexican hit men were found to have dissolved their enemies in acid.
Source:

Reuters

March 8, 2005The mayor of Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, ordered the entire 1,100-member Nezahualcoyotl police force to read one book a month and to control its cholesterol.
Source:

The Guardian

March 2, 2005A toddler was swept away in the Rio Grande as his parents tried to cross into Texas from Mexico.
Source:

Houston Chronicle

January 29, 2005U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza tried to ease tensions by clarifying that "the wave of border violence is a result of successful efforts by President Fox's administration in the fight against organized crime."
Source:

Reuters

January 28, 2005The State Department offended Mexico by issuing a travel warning along the border;
Source:

CNN

January 24, 2005 United States immigration authorities were evaluating a program that uses unmanned drones to patrol the border of Arizona and Mexico.
Source:

USA Today

October 8, 2004 Mexico declined to stop the construction of a Wal-Mart next to the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán.
Source:

Reuters

July 25, 2004Former Mexican president Luis Echeverría was indicted for his role in the killings of student protesters in 1971; the next day a judge refused to issue an arrest warrant.
Source:

New York Times

July 14, 2004 Mexico's attorney general was implanted with computer chips that broadcast his location and his identity; security experts said that publicly revealing the existence of the location chip was unwise, since kidnappers could simply remove the chip.
Source:

Ananova

July 1, 2004A Mexican farmer upset about not getting his party's nomination to run for the state legislature put on a crown of thorns and nailed himself to a wooden cross outside the state's electoral office.
Source:

Local6news.com

April 22, 2004Police in Mexico arrested a tamale vendor after a dead body was found in his home.
Source:

New York Times

April 6, 2004 Mexican woman performed a cesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife.
Source:

Reuters

March 13, 2004The Commission for Environmental Cooperation warned Mexico that its genetically precious native corn varieties are threatened by pollution from genetically modified corn.
Source:

New York Times

January 15, 2004A Mexican man reportedly hacked open his father's head with a machete, drank his blood, and then ate his brains.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

November 19, 2003Mexico fired its ambassador to the United Nations for saying that the United States treats his country as a backyard. "We never, ever, in any way would treat Mexico as some backyard or as a second-class nation," said Colin Powell, the secretary of state. "We have too much of a history that we have gone through together."
Source:

New York Times

November 19, 2003The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a study concluding that Nafta has failed to create jobs for Mexico and has hurt thousands of rural Mexican farmers. The report also said that the net effect on U.S. jobs had been "minuscule."
Source:

New York Times

October 2, 2003Newly released files suggested that the Mexican government used at least 360 snipers in a massacre of protesters on October 2, 1968.
Source:

New York Times

September 20, 2003A South Korean farmer set himself on fire during a memorial for another Korean farmer who committed suicide (by stabbing himself in the heart with a Swiss Army knife) at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
Source:

Reuters

September 15, 2003The World Trade Organization met in Cancun, Mexico, and much of the discussion concerned a demand by several poor countries that wealthy countries eliminate agricultural subsidies for their farmers.The talks collapsed after the United States and Europe declined to do so and delegates from several African, Caribbean, and Asian countries walked out.
Source:

New York Times

August 19, 2003A drunk construction worker in Mexico paid two 11-year-old boys to castrate him so that he could "live more calmly."
Source:

Associated Press

April 15, 2003 Mexican authorities arrested 42 police officers for selling drugs to school children.
April 1, 2003 Women in the Mexican state of Colima lost the right to divorce their husbands for impotence, and German scientists reported that human sperm are attracted to pleasant odors.
March 11, 2003 President Bush warned Mexico that there could be reprisals against Mexican Americans if it fails to support the war on Iraq.
January 28, 2003 King Abdullah of Jordan appeared resigned to the war: “Let us hope that whatever happens between Iraq and the international community is as quick and painless as possible.” A movement was afoot in Mexico to remove the “United States” from its official name: the United Mexican States.
January 21, 2003 Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a quick tour of Mexico City as part of his $4.3 million contract to reduce the city's crime rate.
October 22, 2002 Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani went down to clean up all the crime in Mexico City in exchange for $4.3 million.
August 20, 2002 Texas executed a Mexican.
August 6, 2002 After violent protests by peasants armed with machetes, the Mexican government called off plans to confiscate the peasants' lands and build an airport on them.
June 25, 2002 President Vicente Fox declassified many of the files of Mexico's secret police, and scholars and families began trying to discover the fate of hundreds of dissidents who had disappeared over the years.
May 21, 2002 Thieves in Mexico stole a truck that was carrying ten tons of sodium cyanide.
April 2, 2002 President Bush traveled to Mexico, Peru, and El Salvador; when he was in Mexico he noted that “Mexico es a grand amigo de los Estados Unidos and we're equal partners.” The President promised to add $5 billion to American foreign aid.
March 26, 2002 Representatives of 58 rich and poor countries gathered in Monterrey, Mexico, to determine how best to spread the wealth and improve the lot of the 1.2 billion people who live on less than $1 a day. Although Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill worried that the money of American “plumbers and carpenters” would be squandered on aid to poor nations, President Bush pledged to increase such spending by 50 percent. One participant, Fidel Castro, opined that “the world economy today is a huge casino” run by self-appointed “masters of the world.”
February 19, 2002 Up to 270 million monarch butterflies froze to death in a winter storm in Mexico.
December 25, 2001 Tyson Foods, America's largest meat processor, was indicted for conspiring to smuggle Mexicans into the country to work in its plants.
December 18, 2001There was a report that British prime minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, recently underwent a “rebirthing ritual” in a Mexican steam bath; the ritual was said to include primal screams and the smearing of mud and fruit all over their bodies.
October 2, 2001People in Tijuana, Mexico, were upset about their new area code, 666, the Number of the Beast.
August 21, 2001A giant sea turtle that was being tracked via satellite by thousands of schoolchildren was barbecued and eaten at a fiesta in a Mexican village.
July 3, 2001President Vicente Fox of Mexico accepted the resignation of an old friend who took responsibility for the purchase of $400 towels, $1,500 sheets, and $17,000 electric curtains for the presidential palace.
April 17, 2001She got the parasite from a pork taco in Mexico.
March 27, 2001Denouncing Mexico's close-minded “caveman politicians,” Zapatista rebel leader Subcommander Marcos went home to the jungle after failing to reach a settlement with congress over Indian rights.
March 20, 2001President Vicente Fox of Mexico said that he would “eradicate torture forever,” even though it has been a standard part of Mexican justice for centuries, most recently with equipment purchased from the United States.
March 6, 2001 Mexican police beat protesters who tried to disrupt a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Cancún.
February 27, 2001Subcommander Marcos and twenty-three other Zapatista fighters were traveling to Mexico City in a bus convoy as federal police cars and cheering crowds lined the Panamerican Highway.
February 20, 2001 It was “foreign-policy week” at the White House: President Bush went down to Mexico for a visit, personally authorized what he called a “routine” bombing of five Iraqi anti-aircraft sites, and appointed John D. Negroponte to be his ambassador to the United Nations. Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, where he helped orchestrate Ronald Reagan's covert war against Nicaragua.
February 6, 2001 Mexico was selling fifty megawatts of power a day to California.
February 6, 2001 Mexico's new customs chief fired forty-three out of forty-seven customs supervisors in an attempt to reduce corruption.
January 2, 2001A Mexican court annulled a state election because of evidence of widespread fraud.
December 26, 2000 Mexicans living near the Popocatepetl volcano, many of whom worship the mountain, refused to be evacuated during its current eruption; local shamans said the mountain would not hurt them.
November 28, 2000A federal judge told Quadrtech Corporation that it could not escape to Mexico to avoid the Communications Workers of America, which the company said it would do one day after the union was certified to represent Quadrtech's workers, who are largely female and Mexican and who assemble cheap jewelry for a minimum wage.
November 7, 2000The Mexican government was upset about a Mexican citizen on death row whom Texas failed to notify of his right under the Vienna Convention to contact his government's embassy; the Mexican government did not find out about his arrest until a year after he was condemned.
October 3, 2000Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, the former head of Mexico's National Institute to Combat Drugs, was sentenced to 71 years in prison on drug and weapons charges.
September 19, 2000The Mexican forest where Monarch butterflies winter was being cut down.
August 15, 2000 Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox Quesada called on the United States to open its border with Mexico, saying that America needed Mexican workers if its prosperity was to continue.

JULY 2008

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THE MAGIC OLYMPICS
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THE CASE OF THE SEVERED HAND
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Also: J.G. Ballard: The Boy from Shanghai