Liquid lunch

Photo by Everett McCourt

This man is reputed to have a price on his head in Ciudad Juárez. He is not one of the responsible parties for the repeated murders of young women in that border city. Instead, he had the temerity to write a book about them, in which he presents reasonably credible evidence that very important people in Mexican government and law enforcement are at least implicated in those crimes.

The book is called Huesos en el desierto (Bones in the Desert) and was released a few years ago by Anagrama, the prestigious Barcelona publisher. It has been translated into Italian and French, but unfortunately not into English.

The author, Sergio González Rodríguez, has also published novels, books of essays and writes a weekly column for the newspaper Reforma about restaurants and bars. Pictured here in a traditional Iberian eatery called the Casino Español, located in the centro histórico of Mexico City, it is perhaps churlish for me to point out that he is drinking a shot of tequila, which serves as the chaser for the nearly empty vodka-and-tonic at his side. Both libations are warm-ups for the bottle of red wine burning a hole in the tablecloth. Note that González Rodríguez staunchly ignores the tortilla española and the bread on the table. This is his idiosyncratic version of a hunger strike, which he threatens to continue until the Juárez murders are solved.

El primer rocío de la mañana de un nuevo día

The taxi driver appeared to be 50 or 55, with cinnamon skin, whitening hair and the Clark Gable moustache still favored by many men of his generation. We’d been in traffic for ten minutes without exchanging a word, when suddenly he asked if I spoke English. I told him I did, figuring he would then want to know where I was from, what I thought of Mexico, and if preferred Obama or Hillary. But he surprised me, asking if I could translate the words to the song emanating from his CD player.

It was Barry White crooning “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything.” White is something of a hero here – you can find a pirated CD of his greatest hits at any market and most street stalls in the city. He isn't Mexico City's only American idol. The most popular oldies station programs the Beatles for two hours a day, and Creedence Clearwater Revival for an hour more. Other staples of the station are the more arcane “Xanadu” (one of Olvia Newton-John’s less fortunate numbers),and Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again Naturally,” a song that enjoyed a vogue in the U.S. for a matter of months in the early 1970s. Its whimpering, self-pitying lyrics appeal to the most sentimental and lachrymose side of the Mexican character.

Spontaneous interpretation is a talent I have never been able to capture, let alone master. Panic sets in: It’s hard to keep up. By the time I translated en tí he encontrado tantas cosas, Barry White had long finished murmuring the next couple of lines. So I tried to explain to the driver that White’s lyrics had never mattered so much as the Love Unlimited orchestrations, and that indeed part of the fun was just surfing along with his growly purr, particularly when he elongated the word "love" as if it had five or six syllables. He looked at me with a gravely mistrustful expression. All he wanted to know was the meaning of the song's lyrics, and he found himself with an incomprehensible gringo in the passenger seat.

The dirt about Paris Hilton

The woman in this pictureis not a gypsy fortune teller from a Fellini movie. Her name is Annie Lask and she is a stylist for fashion and celebrity shoots for various Mexico City magazines, such as Caras, Eres and the local edition of Cosmopolitan. A couple of years ago, when Paris Hilton descended upon Mexico City to shill a perfume with her name on it, it was Annie’s job to style her for cover photos.

“If I’m a monster, Paris Hilton is 100 times worse,” she claims. “She showed up two hours late for our first session because she was asleep. She threw a hissy fit because there was no music, and held up the production for two more hours until someone found a radio. Then she didn’t like the music. She only likes Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Madonna and hip-hop. They had to get her iPod from her room.”

The story gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view. “She complained that the cosmetics that the makeup woman brought weren’t new. She complained about her contact lenses – she got something in her eye and held us up while they looked for drops. She has extensions and she doesn’t like anyone to touch her hair. I’ve never seen anyone so insecure – she needed a mirror to check out each of her movements. She has green eyes but she puts on blue contact lenses. She has no glamour, no style. She’s like a sheep.”

Despite this litany, Annie claims that she grew to like the celebrity. She has some reflections about the world’s fascination with the heiress. “Don’t you understand? Everyone wants to be Paris Hilton. She’s a girl who has everything and doesn’t give a shit. Everyone wants to have millions, and be supposedly really beautiful and do whatever the hell she wants. That’s Paris.”

Hello Dolly

Guía del Centro Histórico

Fanny has long, chestnut-colored pig tails and a sad face.She’s yours for 89 pesos. Magy, with round cheeks and short curly hair, only costs 42 pesos. The German has blue eyes as shiny as the Caribbean on a sunny day, and Caro’s open mouth is scandalously suggestive. Either of them costs 95 pesos. They’re not B-girls or table dancers or prostitutes. They’re dolls, or rather, doll’s heads, with arms and legs alongside but not attached. In the store Muñecas Mary-Pily on Calle Jesús María, 87, it is possible, theoretically, to buy an entire doll, but its clientele tends to buy parts and a mold and put them together at home. “It’s cheaper that way,” says María de los Angeles Olivares, the manager. Confronting all the loose parts – heads, shoes, eyes of all colors – can be a disturbing experience. But don’t worry. Each Monday you can take a class on how to put them together.

Mexico City soul food, part one

If there is such thing as a Mexico City municipal dish, it would have to be tacos al pastor. A variation on Middle Eastern shawarma, it is made from pork (don’t tell Allah), marinated with various spices, including a heavy dose of annato, which gives it a shrill orange color. The slices of pork are mounted atop each other to form a huge orb, and impaled on a metal stick, which revolves around a vertical charcoal grill. The fire from the grill is turned up as orders are placed, and the taquero slices from the most fully cooked part to fashion the taco, which is adorned with cilantro, onion and a slice of pineapple.

Although this version of events is not universally accepted, supposedly the taco al pastor is the invention of a woman named Concepción Cervantes, who discovered shawarma on a trip to Lebanon, and debuted her version at a taco stand called El Tizoncito in 1966. That taco stand – now a well-appointed little restaurant – is still on the same street corner of Tamaulpas and Campeche in the fashionable Condesa neighborhood. (There are twenty franchises of El Tizoncito in Mexico City and around the country.)

My favorite tacos al pastor are located not at El Tizoncito but at Tacos Álvaro O., on calle Álvaro Obregón, nearly at the corner of Tonalá, in the Colonia Roma. The ones pictured are at Tacos Frontera, further down Calle Álvaro Obregón.