The Unsparing Metro Newspaper
MEXICO | Wednesday, 9 April 2008 | Views [853]
There’s a newspaper here called “Metro,” another called “Grafico.” Both are cheap, gory, and borderline pornographic as you near the last pages. Logistically, I don’t know how someone is always at the scene of a crash, murder, or assassination with their camera. They’re obviously there before the police arrive because everyday’s paper is inevitably plastered with some sort of bloody scene or body part. It’s vulgar on the front and vulgar on the back. And the thing is, you look. You know you’re not supposed to, but you’re also not supposed to take pictures of decapitated heads in garbage bags on the side of the street…you’re supposed to report them! The “Metro” costs a steep 5 pesos and the “Grafico” 2, and my estimation is that both are most commonly sold in the metro stations to the hundreds of thousands of daily commuters as most people who take the metro are low to middle-class citizens who don’t generally splurge on 10 peso papers, myself included.
It’s no secret that Mexicans have a macabre streak to them. I don’t know of any other country that celebrates a Day of the Dead where bread, representative of human flesh, is eaten and sugar skulls crowd corner “puestos” (stalls) to be offered to the dead then eaten. Though some aspects of the celebration were born of Spanish tradition, I don’t know which exactly so I’m going to have to research that and get back to you.
Small diversion cum history lesson…back to the reason for this entry. I consider myself as curious as the next Mexican and whenever I passed the “Metro” on my way through Tacubaya and saw its front and back pages sprawled across a showcase stand, I looked. I stared at the front page, not so much the back-page girl, with the same fascinated eyes as the locals and even bought it once. Just a note on that back-page girl, sometimes I look across at the person in front of me on the train and notice someone hiding behind the recognizable “Metro” reading whatever content there is intensely - front-page gore, back-page girl, what else could it be? But I find it particularly amusing when this person turns out to be a mother of two accompanying her children to school, or a Grandpa musing over the sports section and sitting there with his wife while that back-page girl teases her audience in front, and the front-page crash victim stares vacantly to the right. And without a doubt, the person to the right, intrigued by the blood he sees in his periphery, tilts his head to read further into the event. If he’s in a good position he might even lean back and start reading the paper with Grandpa. Grandpa doesn’t mind because we’re all gossips, chimosos, when it comes down to it and he knows it. I have to say though, that still bothers me. Dare I start writing a text message on the bus and Jose, who’s standing above me, will crane his neck over me and Maria next to me, will press her eyes into the side of her skull if she’s discreet, turn her head if she’s not…
So yesterday I started with a new class which ended at 8:30, nice and early, but too early for the market on Vera Cruz. I pondered waiting for my regular fruit stall man to set-up shop and waited at a puesto reading magazines in the meantime. Of course, “Metro” caught my eye because there in its vulgarity was a teenaged girl dressed in black hanging from a children’s slide at Parque Miguel Hidalgo. The only thing that make a tacky magazine more tacky is the accompanying headline. This one said, “Se puso Emo”: “she turned Emo.”
Recently there have been altercations between the “emos” and “punks” in the city. I saw a report on one in particular that made its way onto the news, which I viewed from Vera Cruz when I was there a month ago. Funnily enough, it happened at Metro Insurgentes in Zona Rosa, the closest metro stop to my house and a popular hangout for emos, punks, and gays and lesbians. The police were there with their shields separating the two groups who had gotten physical in their fight and at the end of the clip, a thin girl wearing a light tank top and dark eyeliner looked up into the camera and held a sign up to the camera that read: “Soy emo y que?” Yes, you are emo and so? Maybe I was just lost in translation or am completely ignorant, but I didn’t understand how the whole thing even begun. Aren’t emos and punks from the same alternative branch? Either way, this was an on-going issue and when I stopped at Metro Insurgentes two weeks later, the police were still standing there with their shields creating a human wall between the groups. Then this.
The headline was tactless to say the least. Whatever she was, I was really put off by this morbid display of her death and the assumptions made about her life. Emo or not, she’d killed herself very publicly in a place where children go to play and be innocent. It was sad and that was it. I bought a Women’s Health magazine to distract myself from this scene then turned around to face the gorgeous market, my favourite market, which brought me back to the beauty of Mexico. Then I realized I’d spent my money on that stupid magazine (good recipes however) and had nothing leftover for fruit and veg. I’m so glad that April has come - the mangoes are unbelievable, peaches are back, grapes are cheap and stuffed with flavor, and there are plums galore!
I walked home and waited for Saul to come back and now he is complaining about the Ranch dressing he bought. During lunch, he stuffed his mouth full of dressing-drenched salad then started gagging and spit it out. What was the problem? The dressing tasted like ass. Why? Made in Mexico. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with the dressing so we gave it to his mom along with the cream of corn soup we made and didn’t like. She was initially excited but when she realized it was a bag full of stuff we didn’t like she wasn’t so flattered. So there’s a recommendation: skip the cream of corn and go straight for the “esquite” (corn in a cup with a concoction of mayonnaise, chile, lemon…) from your local street corner.
