Tag Archives: europe

Mexico victim, this time, of the New Kabuki

Twitter has been full of references to history and colonialism and Europeans stealing what rightfully belongs to Latin America.

Dutch airline KLM exacerbated things by apparently assigning the intern to PR. Anyway, somebody at KLM put up a BrUTRLDCMAAIiufphotoshopped tweet with a “Departures” sign next to the figure of a Mexican fellow in a large sombrero and thick mustache. “Adios Mexico” read the tweet that lasted about two minutes before it was taken down, but still preserved online.

Case you missed it, Mexico was robbed of its advance in the World Cup by a shameless flop by Dutch forward Arjen Robben.

It was an outrageous piece of work that any ref ought to have seen. Replays sure showed it. The flop led to a penalty kick that put Holland up 2-1.

Mexican coach Miguel Herrera said “the guy with the whistle” knocked Mexico from the World Cup.

Much as I was disgusted by the play, I don’t see Herrera’s complaint.

That’s soccer. Flopping and absurd playacting are allowed to be part of the game – like fighting in hockey and equally detrimental. I wonder seriously if players aren’t instructed by acting coaches. It’s embarrassing. The other day Uruguayan Luis Suarez bit an Italian, then faked as if he himself had been hit in the head, without penalty. It probably determined who advanced and who went home.

I wonder what it means that a sport so much of the world is crazy about relies so heavily on fakery, histrionics, on the telenovela, the soap opera.

What is clear is that the New Kabuki affects outcomes. Mexico was the victim this time, but I’ve seen Mexican players flop with equal vigor and shamelessness.

215285I’m watching Greece vs. Costa Rica and Greek tragedy is on display. Replays have shown at least three pathetic pieces of Greek faking.

The saddest part is that it robbed the best player in the tournament so far, Guillermo Ochoa, of continuing to display his talent on the world stage.

The noblest guy on the field had to endure a penalty kick that he didn’t handle.

Without any irony, apparently, he was selected as player of the game.

 

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Mexico’s gypsies, traveling movies & the blond-haired Roma girl

Europe is abuzz with the discovery of a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl named Maria, found among Roma gypsies in Greece and presumed to have been abducted. At least those with custody of her are not her biological parents.

So far, however, her DNA has not matched with any missing girl in Europe.

I’ve watched this with interest.

I had an encounter with the Roma several years ago in an isolated village in Mexico. Roma came to Mexico in the 1920s and there are about 16,000 of them, though they’re all but invisible.

“Gypsies have been ‘de-historified’; they do not appear in the history of Mexico,” David Lagunas, of the National School of Anthropology and History, told Inter Press Service. “We know very little about them.”

I had no idea they existed. But they remain a fairly coherent group, still speaking Roma and wandering through the country — the ones I met did anyway.

This was several years ago — 2002 I believe. I was a freelancer in Mexico. The O.C. Register called and asked if I’d go to a village in Puebla where a boy was to be buried. He had been shot to death by Huntington Beach Police and the family was sending his body back. That was a whole other story.

But while I was in the village, waiting for his burial the next day, I heard a loudspeaker announcing something I couldn’t understand. A few minutes later, I saw a ramshackle truck, filled with chairs and tables and barely hanging together.

Then it stopped and ten or twelve people piled out. They were the Brandy family — three generations of Roma gypsies.  I went over to talk to them, wondering who on earth they could be and what they were doing in town.

They spoke Spanish and Roma. Turned out, they spent their lives touring the most isolated villages, showing movies and charging 15 or 20 pesos. Many Roma people did that much of the year in Mexico, they said.

For some villages, impromptu Roma theater was welcome entertainment, though the Brandys allowed that with cable TV, VCRs and DVDs the numbers of these villages was dwindling.

I watched as the Brandys cordoned off a lot with high sheets so no one could see in. Inside, they set up a projector, put out chairs and benches they had in their truck, and as night fell, they charged admission and put on the worst monster movie I’d ever seen.

I hate all monster movies, but this was the worst. It featured, I remember, building-sized snakes. I remember a desultory crowd of 15 or so enduring this flick.

I didn’t stick around long.

I wanted desperately to go off with them the next day, but the Register needed a story and so I remained. The Brandys didn’t have telephones or maybe they told me that so I wouldn’t tag along.

Either way, I never forgot them.

Photo: Maria (IBTimes)

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