Viva Mexico Houston

Global Short Film Competition

2010-02-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

As part of the 2010 events, the Foreign Ministry of Mexico is hosting a Global Short Film Competition for youth.

Student films created at the event can be submitted for entry in the competition for youth. Contestants must be Mexican nationals living abroad or of Mexican heritage.

View all contest details here

Viva Mexico Student Videos

2010-02-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

During the Viva Mexico Forum, students were given the challenge to create a short film--in only 40 minutes--on one Mexico-related theme. They included Mexican Cultural Diversity, Street Art, Mexican Youth Stereotypes, Employment Prospects in Mexico.

Here's a film from one of the student groups about Mexican youth stereotypes "Nacos y Fresas"

Get started with a blog and with making videos

2010-01-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

Mindy McAdams is an accomplished multimedia journalist who now teaches at the University of Florida.

Many professional journalists who knew nothing about the Internet or blogging have become proficient in digital journalism by using her tutorials. Here are a few that could be useful if you´re trying to get started.

Read blogs

Start a blog

Learn how to shoot decent photos

Learn to shoot video

Edit your movie with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker

Jaycut and Motionbox are two other free programs for editing video that are available online.

This is a 3-minute video I shot using a video camera that is the size of a cellphone, called a Flip camera. I edited it in iMovie.

I shot about 30 minutes of video and used about 3 minutes, and even that is probably too much. Individual shots that last more than 3 or 4 seconds will lose a viewer if they don´t have some compelling movement or activity.

For me, it takes about one to two hours to edit each minute of video. Shooting and editing video isn´t what I do best. I´m really a writer, editor and teacher. But I can do the basics.

Young graffiti writers arrested in Monterrey

2010-01-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

A group of young people who decided to block traffic and paint traffic barriers on a major road in Monterrey made a 7-minute video of their mural work.

This article is taken from Global Voices.

Thirteen teenagers and young adults from the metropolitan area of Monterrey, city in the North of México, were sent to prison after a “graffiti attack” on an overpass along one of the busiest avenues in the city.

They were part of a group of 300 graffiti “writers” that organized the event through Fotologs (a social network similar to Flickr to upload photos) and websites. During the afternoon of May 17, they covered three lanes on Constitution Avenue with graffiti, with the paintings measuring one kilometer in length on walls on both sides of the lanes, taking on the name “macropinta” [macropainting].

According to Mexican newspaper Milenio [es], of the thirteen young boys arrested, 7 have paid 20,000 pesos [approx. 1,520 USD] individually in bail and fines in order to be released.

However, the ones that have not covered the bail are still in prison and, as newspaper El Porvenir [es] warns, they could spend more than 10 years in jail for causing damage on third-party property, with the aggravating circumstance that it was made as part of a “gang.” In sum, fines and bails have reached 200,000 pesos [approx. 15,200 USD] for these young boys of medium and lower socioeconomic levels.

Read the complete article here.

Here is TV news coverage of the incident.

Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco developed mural painting to a high art, so the "macropainting" event of Monterrey could be seen as a tribute to them. Obviously the police don´t see it that way. Here´s an article on Mexican muralists, and another, this one in English.

Mexico has 63 native languages and a variety of cultures

2010-01-21T12:03:00.001-08:00

Mexico's amazing ethnic diversity is visible wherever you travel. In one state, Oaxaca, there are 15 distinct groups each speaking its own language.

Of the 63 languages still spoken in Mexico, 16 of them have more than 100,000 speakers. The biggest of these groups is Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest. More than 1.3 million Mexicans speak Nahuatl.

Other major language groups are Maya, Mixtec, Purépecha and Zapoteco. A website run by a friend of mine includes articles about indigenous groups, their politics, their languages and their cultures http://corresponsalesindigenas.blogspot.com/

The pyramids at Palenque, in Chiapas, were built by Mayan speakers.

In other words, these languages and cultures have survived five centuries after the arrival of the Spanish. Native languages also survive in many parts of Latin America.

Race can be a touchy subject in Mexico. Some are proud of their indigenous blood, others not so much.

About 80% of the population of Mexico is mestizo, of mixed race. The mainly male Spanish conquistadores intermarried with indigenous women and enslaved the native population to work in mines and on vast estates known as haciendas.

By contrast, the immmigrants who colonized Canada and the U.S. brought their wives and families, and they killed or displaced the Indian population to reservations. There was far less intermarriage.

These children were in a procession at Christmas in Oaxaca.

Pyramids and tombs

We visited several archaeological sites in the Oaxaca area.

Monte Albán sits on a mountain high above the Oaxaca Valley and the city of Oaxaca. The top of the mountain was leveled off to allow for the creation of this Zapotec ceremonial site.

Here I´m in one of the tombs discovered at Monte Albán.

This funerary statue was found in one of the tombs in the area.

This shot of Yagul was taken from a fort on the hill. You can see the ball court in the lower left.

This mask of the Zapotec god of rain and thunder, Cocijo, decorated an altar at the nearby Lambyteco ruins and was still on site.

The buildings at Mitla are famous for the superb stone friezes that decorate their facades.

Here is a close up of some of the geometric designs. Imagine these brightly painted - awesome.

Streets, courtyards and crafts

We didn't spend the whole trip walking around ruins. In fact most of our ramblings were around the streets and parks of Oaxaca.

Bright sunshine, vivid colors, warm weather - who needs snow to celebrate Christmas?

We saw an unusual type of local handicraft at Noche de los Rábanos (Night of the Radishes), an annual fiesta held two nights before Christmas. Local people compete to carve radishes into people, animals, and occasionally, churches.

A third of the displays were flowers and people made from corn husks - like these. Maybe they should change the name of the fiesta.

And Spanish influence in the churches

After the Spanish arrived, they imposed their religion and language where they could on the native population. Thousands of churches were built in the colonial era.

This is the pulpit in the Templo de Santa María de la Asuncion in El Tule.

Templo de Santa María de la Asunción in El Tule

This is one of the bell towers of the Virgen de la Asunción in the village of Tlacolula.

The church of San Jerónimo in the village of Tlacochahuaya ...

... is decorated in vivid floral murals by local artists. Very unusual.

San Matías Jalatlaco in the city of Oaxaca is notable for its simple altar accented in bright red and gold. Notice all the fresh flowers - we saw lots of flowers in every church we visited.

The bigger churches often display bronze or richly gilded plaster. This gilt-covered altar ...

... and pulpit are in the Church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán.

Students in Monterrey create their own blogs

2010-01-20T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here are some examples of blogs created by students at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Monterrey for an Olympics of Digital Journalism.

You can get the idea of some of the possibilities for publishing not only words but photos, slideshows, video and graphics.

This entry has a light-hearted cartoon about the twin worries of contracting dengue or human influenza.

The blog rehiletee showcases student artwork.

The blog Jovenomía focuses on getting a debate going.

The blog Sugiere-me also is a space for debates.

Get over the fear, get started

It´s fairly simple to start a basic blog using Wordpress or Blogger. Get a friend to help you get started.

What I tell journalists is to start the blog and gradually add elements as you learn more. A blog can evolve over time and become more and more sophisticated.

My own blog has gone through several transformations. Some of the early work is a little embarrassing because it´s so simple, but it´s a learning process.

Students talk about expressing themselves through photography

2010-01-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

Listen to My Pictures - Foto Class - Guadalajara, Mexico from Josh Meltzer on Vimeo.

In this video of 13 minutes, a half-dozen photography students describe how they are using cameras to capture the world as they see it.

Josh Meltzer, a newspaper photographer on sabbatical as a Fulbright Fellow in Guadalajara, taught the class and invited other professionals to work with the students.

As you can see, the students produced some exceptional work using very simple digital cameras. In the interviews you´ll get an idea of what they were trying to say with their work.

Stereotyping, biting satire and youth culture: Nacos vs. Fresas

2010-01-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

Part of youth culture is deciding who´s in and who´s out. This is not new. And it creates culture clashes. It has to do with how young people dress and talk, the music and movies they like and how they spend their time.

In Mexico today, it´s about the Nacos and the Fresas. Here´s a video that makes fun of the mannerisms and tastes of both.

What do you think about these stereotypes? What kind of video would you make about other young people at your school? Satire is by its nature nasty. It demeans people. Would you want to make that kind of art?

Nothing new about the clashes

In the Broadway play and movie "West Side Story," the art form is not satire but musical tragedy, and its setting is New York City in the 1950s.

The two gangs that are battling each other are the Sharks, who are from families of Puerto Rican immigrants, and the Jets, who are from working class white families.

In the end the clashes lead to violence and death, just as they did in Shakespeare´s play "Romeo and Juliet," which "West Side Story" draws upon.

Featured in the newspaper

The Guadalajara Reporter, an English language newspaper here in the capital of Jalisco, recently did an article about the cultural phenomenon of Nacos and Fresas.

"From the dandies of the early 19th century to greasers, punks, teddies, mods, hicks, Goths, thugs and metrosexuals, social stereotyping has forever been part of our culture, says the Reporter.

"Mexico’s naco and fresa phenomenon is a societal chasm that accentuates two ends of the cultural spectrum. It’s also sprouted a rash of jokes and a now famous cartoon series on YouTube."

Art isn´t always pretty. Often it highlights the dark side of human nature.

What did you like or dislike about these videos?

Young Mexicans have few job prospects

2010-01-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

A recent article in the daily newspaper La Jornada talked about how Mexico´s adolescents are among the most forgotten groups in society.

Academics at the National University (UNAM) blame this on the lack of public policies, family crises and the fact that staying in school doesn´t help one´s job prospects.

An estimated 7 to 9 million adolescents in Mexico are neither employed nor in school. In Mexico City, about half of all adolescents are in that category.

Even a student who graduates from high school or obtains a college degree has no guarantee of getting a job, according to authorities quoted in La Jornada.

In many families, one parent has left home to find work in another state or country, which means the young people don´t get the guidance they need.

As a result, many young people enter the informal economy, which means street vendors, casual labor in construction, housemaids, washing cars and other types of unstable employment.

In the building where I live in Guadalajara, a 16-year-old boy works as the caretaker and gardener for a small salary. He dropped out of school to work.

In some cases, adolescents get into illegal activities, such as the drug trade. Grafitti on a wall in Culiacán, Sinaloa, expressed the attitude of some who go that route: "I prefer to die young and rich rather than old and poor".

Street art and street events thrive in Mexico

2010-01-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

A website called Arte Callejero in Mexico City is all about celebrating street art and street events.

The site says it is aimed at improving the quality of life in cities.

This wall painting, next to a downspout, was taken from the website. With the country´s war on organized crime and druglords, Mexicans see military vehicles and heavily armed soldiers all over the cities and countryside.

Street art, graffiti, murals or whatever you want to call these works bring popular expression into a public place. Art isn´t just in museums.

This painting of a lady, with its elaborately painted frame, is on a busy pedestrian walkway in Mexico where it´s designed to make people stop, look, think and maybe be moved.

This is one of several examples from the website of paintings done in broken-down buildings in Monterrey. The artists evidently are trying to add something beautiful to something ugly.

Hispanic students produce online news in Spanish, English

2010-01-14T01:45:00.000-08:00

Hispanic students at California State University at Northridge publish their own multimedia web page and blogs, called El Nuevo Sol, with stories in Spanish and English.

Above is a screenshot from a blog on performing arts called Trendz LA that is part of the site.

Jóvenes indocumentados luchan por educarse from Jessica Retis on Vimeo.

Students produced a multimedia package, with video and text in Spanish, about the struggle of undocumented students to get an education in the U.S.

Another student blog, called AmericaTropical, has articles by students in both English and Spanish on a variety of topics. Here´s one in Spanish on the laws to prevent hate crimes.

A Mexican professor with a vision

El Nuevo Sol is the project of Professor José Luis Benavides, a native of Mexico City who left in the 1980s to get his master´s and doctoral degrees at the University of Texas.

California State already has a student publication in English, called the Sundial, but Benavides wanted to develop a news medium for the Hispanic students in his classes, many of them with Mexican heritage.

Multilingüe, multimedia y multicultural

His vision is to train Hispanic students to work in the many Spanish-language media outlets in Los Angeles, whose Hispanic population is 48%, and elsewhere in the U.S. To do this they must develop the skills to be, in his words, "multilingüe, multimedia y multicultural."

He offers courses in Latino Journalism and advises students on the El Nuevo Sol website.

Professor Benavides´s project serves an important need because many Spanish-language news outlets in the States have a difficult time recruiting journalists with the required language skills.

Here´s another example of a student´s multimedia package, this one an audio slideshow about the language barrier.

Las barreras del lenguaje from Jessica Retis on Vimeo.

Mexican journalism student makes his mark

2010-01-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

Jorge Tirzo, a 20-year-old journalism student at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, has managed to make a name for himself online.

In the photo above, he is showing a class of professional journalists the website that he and a group of fellow students launched. The site is now defunct, but Jorge has a blog called Cosas Imposibles 3.0, which is a lighthearted look at his explorations into literature, art, technology and journalism.

Jorge is also working with an environmental organization called Pronatura to publish video podcasts produced by students. He regularly posts items about journalism and culture on his Twitter feed.

I invited Jorge to participate with professionals in a course at the Digital Journalism Center (Centro de Periodismo Digital) because he has some skills and experience online that the veterans don´t. He also had shown some initiative in launching various projects and getting involved in activities outside the classroom.

The truth is that veterans and beginning journalists have a lot they can learn from each other.

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley

2009-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

This post was written by Rosa Flores, our event host.

I'm a television reporter in Houston, Texas; but my roots run deep into the lands of Mexico. My grandparents on my mother's side are half Spanish and half Mexican. My grandparents on my dad's side are from Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

When I was born, my parents lived in Progreso, Texas; but I was born
in Rio Bravo, Mexico. Odd, hugh? My parents didn't have enough
money to pay a hospital in America; so my mother crossed the border and into Mexico to deliver her 4th of July baby.

Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley was an amazing cultural experience. I remember going to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico to buy "tortillas," avocados, soap, "pan dulce". you name it, and my family found it two miles away in Mexico.

This was before September 11th so crossing the border was easy. Sometimes immigration agents didn't even ask us for our documents, or if we were United States citizens.

The only thing agents asked was "¿Que llevan?" Or, 'What are you bringing back from Mexico?" So, for me and for the people who grow up on the border between the United States and Mexico, there isn't much of a border. Like any other neighborhood, I had family, friends and acquaintances a few miles from my home, it just happened to be in Mexico.
Summers were always fun! My father would drive us to my grandparent's ranch in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. It was a blast! To my cousins and me it was an amusement park. We had natural water holes to play, a river to fish, and a forest filled with Mexican Indian artifacts. Among the many things we found were arrowheads, stone axes, stone bowls and pieces of pottery.

You have probably figured out that I like digging into the past.
That's why I'm working on a book about the history of the town where I grew up. The book, titled Progreso, is due to publish next year. I found that Captain James Baker, from Houston law firm Baker Botts invested in my hometown in the 1920s. The rumor in town is that infamous gangster Al Capone traveled the area during the Prohibition.

Before speakeasies on the Mexican side attracted people to Progreso, Texas, a visionary by the name of Juan Jose Hinojosa requested a land grant from the Spanish crown in 1776 and was given rights to the land in 1790.

Through the years the border changed on my town many times; it has belonged to Mexican Indians, the Spanish Crown, Texas and the United
States at different points in time. Even though the border has moved
many times, I am proud to say that my roots have survived the turmoil.

Journalists from Oaxaca serve an audience in the U.S.

2009-12-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

Victor Ruiz and his wife, Olga Rosario Avendaño, are the publishers of a website that offers news about the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Victor says that their website, called El Olor a Mi Tierra (The Scent of My Homeland), has a large audience in the U.S. and in the metropolitan area of Mexico City.

The site gets 3,000 visitors a day, most of them from outside of Oaxaca. Many residents in their home region of Oaxaca, a relatively poor state, leave home to find work and want to find out what´s happening back home.

El Olor a Mi Tierra publishes news about town festivals and local people as well as coverage of politics, the environment, human rights and immigration.

A community service

Victor and Olga started thinking about starting their own web page during the elections of 2000, when they saw how foreign reporters were sending their stories back home by email. They themselves were still relying on a fax machine to transmit their stories.

Using their own money they paid a web designer about $300 to set up their page, bought a web domain for $75 and got started.

Today they are generating about $1,000 to $1,200 a month in ad revenues from governmental and nonprofit organizations, enough to cover their modest expenses. Their office is in their home in San Sebastian Tutla. They´re breaking even.

Victor and Olga earn their living as correspondents for international news agencies such as Agence France Press and EFE of Spain as well as newspapers such as El Universal of Mexico City.

Often the big news organizations will use only a few paragraphs of the stories, so Victor and Olga publish the rest on their website. They generate much of the content but sometimes will pay a correspondent 100 pesos (about $7.50) for a story or a photograph.

Both Victor and Olga have participated in the courses offered by the Center of Digital Journalism at the University of Guadalajara so that can hone their skills.

Their news service is a good example of how digital journalism manages to link people across the border.

Todos Somos Americanos

2009-11-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

How are we connected to Mexico? Travel, immigration, trade & NAFTA, diplomatic relations are some of the ways we are linked. We share are a border and both belong to the continent of North America. As one attorney in Mexico City put it "We are tied at the hip."

How do policy-makers see this relationship?
This overview from the Inter-American Dialogue outlines some of the big issues in US-Mexico relations.

Their Mexico press page sums up what some of the policy experts are saying about this relationship:

If everything was going right Mexico should be growing huge amounts, but that never happened. In the worst of times, Mexico really did get knocked off its perch," Peter Hakim in Reuters on August 4, 2009.

"La novedad más notable sea con México, que ha pasado rápidamente al frente de la agenda política en Washington. Hay mucha más atención a México que antes, y el reconocimiento de que la política antidrogas también ha fracasado fue también muy bien recibido en la región," Michael Shifter in AP on April 27, 2009.

“Obama has had a quick learning curve on Mexico. He understands that this is absolutely crucial,” Michael Shifter in The Houston Chronicle on April 16, 2009.

"Mexico is facing a grave challenge and a threatening level of violence, but we're not talking Afghanistan here. Mexico is a state that has built up its governmental capacities and effectiveness in recent years, but it's also a neighbor that is now under stress and needs reinforcement," Michael Shifter in The Christian Science Monitor on March 25, 2009.

Reading Mexico

2009-11-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

How do we think of Mexico? To answer this, let’s think about where our information on Mexico comes from. At the World Affairs Council, we consult the Woodrow Wilson Institue's Mexico Portal, the World Bank's Mexico page, and Mexico's bicentennial page among others.

Through our Mexico speaker series we have learned about Mexican experts such as Shannon O'Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations, or Edward Schumacher-Matos at Harvard.

Here are some reading lists we think you may enjoy --
Shannon O’Neil’s reading list on Mexican Politics
National Geographic’s recommended reading on Mexico
The World Affairs of Houston recommended reading list

What is on your Mexico reading list?

About this blog

2009-11-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this blog is to engage Houston students in a discussion on Mexico in preparation for the VivaMexico student forum on January 27th. We will examine our perceptions of the country, Mexican identity and culture, our sources of information on Mexico, young people, the internet and more. We hope to deepen students’ understanding of the country and to encourage further exploration and study.

We invite Mexican experts, journalists, artists, teachers, Mexican Peace Corps volunteers, and most importantly, students to contribute to this blog. It is a chance to ask questions, consider points of view, and leave with new questions.