The proverbial bat in the belfry, a boy trapped in a bathroom, and a witching hour wander deep into the heart of a century old tunnel provided the eerie highlights of my recent overnighter at Mina Dos Estrellas, not far from Tlalpujahua in northeastern Michoacan (see map). Yet one resident phantom, reputed to be a […]
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MexConnect contributor Anthony Wright has published his first novel with the Vancouver, Canada-based independent publishing house Moon Willow Press. The novel, called Infernal Drums is set in Mexico and is a heady mix of road tale, occult drama, and dark comedy. Anthony, an Australian, spent a number of years in Mexico City during the 1990s, […]
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Anyone out there on the information highway heard of an American photographer named North? Worked in Mexico, made dozens of daguerreotypes of the cities, churches and countryside circa mid-1800s? Gina Rodriguez would like to know. The young photography historian, resident research expert of the INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) Fototeca – the national […]
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He’s stranded in Real de Catorce. His broken-down vehicle is without license plates, his Mexican tourist visa expired four months ago, and he has no money. A 20-year-old Alaskan tattoo designer of ancient Celtic spirit symbols, surveys the wavering desert. His beaten-up van isn’t going anywhere. He, too, is stranded in Real de Catorce. Welcome […]
Continue ReadingA riotous image of a storm of people bolting down a wide Mexico City avenue, in the midst of a live Maldita Vecindad rock performance from the back of a moving truck, comprises one of many memorable video images from that band’s new, self-produced history of itself. The scene describing the pandemonium on the day […]
Continue ReadingImmersed in the history of art and literature, weaved into the superstitions of the collective consciousness, and illumined by the silver screens of cinema, the Wild Man paradoxically basks in the light of celebrity while haunting a preserve of shadows. The “wild man” (and woman) has appeared in numerous forms throughout the centuries of art, […]
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I collect old books. There’s no more fun for me than to forage through secondhand bookstores, digging up the weird and wonderful, ’50s crime pulp and science fiction, 19th century poetry tomes, books on travel and adventure. In some of those cities where I’ve lived or spent time – Amsterdam, London, Melbourne, Stockholm, Tel Aviv […]
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In the novel “Virtual Light,” cyberpunk author William Gibson envisages a Mexico City of the near future where the air is a sooted ebon and the populace wears oxygen masks. It might seem far-fetched, but with the city’s population topping 20 million, and the city’s cars about a third that number and all of it […]
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“Magic realism” describes a style of Latin American writing where dreams and reality meet on equal footing in worlds lying ephemerally in between, poised to subvert back to the norm the very instant a strange experience is realized. Writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Laura Esquivel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez draw as much from the landscape […]
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Some time ago I was exploring the Mercado de Antiguëdades de Cuauhtemoc in downtown Mexico City with my brother-in-law and an entrepreneurial young Mexican named Carlos Villasena, press officer for the Philippine Embassy in Mexico – who was at that time just breaking into the antiques game, teaching himself to spot a bargain in the […]
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