Tag Archives: Mexico

Organized crime north and south of the border

“When you know there are babies tied in a car seat that are burning because of some twisted evil that’s in this world, it’s just hard to cope with that,” ( –a cousin of the victims quoted in the New York Times story on the recent cartel massacre in northern Mexico of six children and […]

December 5, 2019 – 2:21 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Tourist development: Cape Cod and Mexico

Notes on tourist development from down where they really know how to do it. In the late 1980s, a friend wrote me a letter from Mexico. “Hey, you would love this place.” He and his wife were staying in rustic palapas (rudimentary straw-roofed open air structures) on the Mexican Caribbean beach in a place called […]

February 21, 2016 – 1:05 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Contradictions of “tourist destination”

I recently found out something about this small Mexican city, where we’ve spent a chunk of winter the past five years, that changed my whole way of looking at the place. San Miguel de Allende is famous for the colors of its buildings—a rich palette of blood red, oranges, earthy ochres. The way the town […]

May 8, 2015 – 10:46 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Native Americans and the meaning of “we”

This is something that never occurred to me before spending time in Mexico (where we go for a few weeks to reduce the length of winter). A very big difference between north and south of the border is in the content of “we.” Mexico is a much more racially homogenized society than ours. It’s one […]

March 7, 2015 – 6:35 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Impossible but true: a city without traffic lights

One of the most striking things about this small city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is that there are no traffic lights or stop signs in the whole city. How can that be? By what we know and how we live traffic-wise in el norte, such a thing is impossible. Traffic lights and signs […]

February 26, 2015 – 3:11 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

South of the border: a democracy of religion? [op-ed CCT 18 February 2014]

If you had been up really early and felt inclined you could have gone recently to the San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, webcam and seen four Cape Codders—Wellfleetians to be specific– standing in the pre-dawn dark in front of an impressive little cathedral waiting to join a religious pilgrimage.   Travel is said to be […]

February 18, 2014 – 3:22 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

What should we learn from Mexican suffering? [ CCT 6 March 2012 ]

Time to come clean: I’ve been in Mexico. As much as anyone actually gets away these days, given the internet apron strings. My main motivation, of course, like that of many another gringo, was to get away from the northern winter. But I’ve been noticing that the warmer more clement weather comes with, of all […]

March 6, 2012 – 1:20 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)