Chili on the eyeball
While I’m quite blunt about the many negative aspects of Mexican culture I do admit to loving their food. I’ve traveled a great deal and have sampled a lot of national dishes and can honestly say that Mexican food is the absolute best on the planet. If you go to a Mexican restaurant in other countries you just don’t get the authentic taste because all the right ingredients are only available in Mexico; a vast variety of cheeses, tortillas hot and fresh from the neighborhood tortillería, the terrific sauces including the famous pico de gallo and the chilis. In Mexico the important and most tasty ingredients are obtained fresh and have a very distinct taste from what you find in say, Taco Bell or any other so-called Mexican restaurant in other countries.
I now live in the Philippines where the food is pretty bland for my taste. While they do have some chilis here they usually appear in a spicy vinegar, as a condiment rather than in sauces and dishes themselves. In Mexico chili is an integral part of the cuisine while here it’s a mere add-on heavily diluted by vinegar which, to my taste, does nothing for my food. For Filipinos vinegar is the only condiment seen on their tables, while Mexicans never use vinegar. The infamous Tabasco Sauce sold in the US, is nothing more than some hot chilis in vinegar and while many Americans say they love it and assume it’s of Mexican origin, it is not. Well, the chilis may be from Mexico (Tabasco is the name of one of Mexico’s states) but that American hot sauce is purely American. Mexicans wrinkle their noses at any suggestion that it would be similar to anything served in their country.
I’ve been craving Mexican food lately and so got some chili in the local market and allowed them to dry in the sun, in the way Mexicans do sometimes. My plan was to grind up the dried chili and make some Mexican-style tomato sauce to add to my food. When they were dry I opened the pods to access the seeds. Mexican cooks are careful not to allow the chili seeds and pulp to touch any part of their skin, other than the fingers. You don’t want to touch any part of your body while that capsaisin is on your hands. For some reason the hot ingredient does not affect the thicker skin of our fingers, the fingerprint sides, but if it touches any other skin or mucous membrane you’ll be very sorry indeed.
I got careless and was very sorry indeed. I thought I was being careful but must have unconsciously touched my cheek during the process. I’d nearly finished opening all the dried pods and I began to feel a slight tingling on my cheek and gradually it became more intense. I then realized I’d been incautious and ran to the shower to get that stuff off of me. I turned on the shower at full blast and soaped up my face to get the hot stuff off as quickly as possible. I used a scrub pad as well to make sure I was getting it but instead of removing it I was spreading it. In spite of being diluted by soap and continually running water the chili spread to my forehead and even my eyeball and it stung like hell! Jaysus!
That’s pretty scary to have your eyeball stinging from hot chili and there’s nothing you can do about it. I realized the shower was not a good solution and instead dried off my face, this time pat drying and not rubbing, then went to lie down and wait for the pain to diminish. There is no antidote for that, nothing that will relieve the pain, except for time. Cripes! The pain was so bad I thought I was going to be blinded! Finally after about 15 minutes the worst was over and I went back to finishing my hot sauce. This time being much more careful about what I was doing.
It’s amazing that we can’t wash that off of our skin, and any attempt to do so only spreads the magic ingredient. I told this story to an American friend who has a Mexican wife. He said he had a similar experience; when they were first married his wife had been handling chili in the kitchen when he arrived home from work. As a newlywed he’d been expecting to have some fun immediately and began caressing his wife. She got wired up too and after washing her hands they went to the bedroom, where she began caressing his groin area. My friend said as the tingling sensation slowly began he thought to himself, “Hey, this really feels good!” but it didn’t take long before the pleasurable sensation turned to outright pain and he had to run to the bath. But the shower only spread it around, as in my case, and he soon had his entire abdomen and thighs stinging as well.
So, folks, enjoy your hot spicy foods, but be very careful how you handle the ingredients, eh! That chili is some wicked stuff!
Noblesse Oblige
I ran across something fascinating about George Orwell. He died of tuberculosis just at the time when TB drugs were appearing in the US and he might have used his celebrity and wealth to obtain them to save his life. However, he hesitated because it might appear to “exercise privilege”. Where has that sense of honor gone? The Brits were very class conscious not only about privilege but also about duties, noblese oblige, a very nice balance of the two and that speaks very well of them.
Exercising privilege in the Third World is a given; it’s done by anybody who has power but what’s lacking is the noblese oblige part of the equation. I have a foreign friend here in the Philippines who lives in a gated subdivision where there are fees assessed to pay the guards and other shared benefits. One of his neighbors is some high ranking cop, or he’s protected by somebody very influential, and this guy refuses to pay for this year’s gate access decal for his car. It’s as if his thoughts are “I’m powerful so why should I pay that?” It’s not a lot of money but it feeds his fragile ego to get by NOT paying it.
That’s similar to the case of the Saudi princess in Paris who charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in shops around the city and refuses to pay for the items. I had a friend in Mexico City who lived in a lovely condominium on the edge of the city’s Sunken Park. Because of some unclear legal language the condo board assessed each member for water use. However, several owners simply refused to pay for the water, leaving the others to pay the whole amount. Why? Because they could get by with it! What despicable, crude, anti-social behavior all these Third World people exhibit!
Contrast that with Orwell passing on the TB drugs so as not to appear to be uppity. And you recall how the Titanic’s passengers so nobly allowed women and children first access to the boats while the band played calming music, the men unsure of their own survival. That’s because the passengers were British and Americans. Can you imagine what it would be like if the passengers had been Filipinos or Mexican? When the Superferry 14 caught fire here a few years ago do you suppose the crew aided the passengers to leave? Of course not; the crew had been trained in handling lifeboats and so they themselves abandoned the ship and left the passengers to their own fate. Ah, what a noble and cultured race these Filipinos are, eh? Do you suppose that’s why they have such a hard time with nation-building? Huh? Huh? Captain Smith of the Titanic went down with his ship!
(In all fairness I cannot now find the link to that story about the crew abandoning the ship. For many weeks after the disaster there were various conflicting reports appearing in the press. One of them was that of the crew leaving the passengers stranded on board, and the ship’s officers having subsequently disappeared into hiding to avoid legal charges. I did see that story but cannot now find it.)
Puede Na!
Recently I took my girlfriend and her boy to Manila to see the zoo. We did it a couple of years ago but at three a kid doesn’t really get it all. Now he’s five and can understand and appreciate it more. We went early to be the first at the zoo and that was a good move, a very good move because by noon the place was packed and we were ready to leave.
We then went for a long lunch to regain our energy and since we still had plenty of time we moved on to the Children’s Museum. The place advertises on TV and newspapers like it’s the best damned thing ever. I’ve seen one or two kids’ museums in the US and they are really well-done. This one appears to have been well-built when it opened but it’s the Filipino idea of maintenance that is killing it. It almost appears it was built by a foreign contractor to foreign standards and then left in the hands of the locals. Just like Mexicans, the Filipinos have this “Oh well, this is good enough” attitude about repairs and replacements, with everything slipshod or undone.
It’s funny that both Mexicans and Filipinos actually have catch phrases in their languages for this attitude. It’s as if they recognize it in their cultures, enough to even laugh at themselves a bit, but not enough to actually stimulate change in attitude. Mexicans say “Ahí se va!” and for Filipinos it’s “Puede na!”. This museum even had sections roped off because some of the exhibits were not working. Like hey, guys!, isn’t that the job of maintenance to FIX those things? And they were not even complicated things, just simple kid stuff really.
Gawd! What a disappointment. The zoo, we’ll do again. The Children’s Museum, not likely.
Mexico exploits Central American migrants
Mexicans facilitate the passage of Central Americans planning to illegally cross the US border, and make a tidy profit doing so.One time I’d been in Guatemala and was returning to Mexico. I crossed the border near Tapachula, the largest Mexican city in the region, and purchased bus fare to go to Mexico City. The sold-out bus departed about 5 PM and we moved without stopping for several hours. During the night the bus stopped in an unpopulated area and the driver opened the door but did not turn on the interior lights.
A man boarded the darkened bus, ordered us to show our documents, and then proceeded to use his flashlight to inspect them. After taking each passport he ordered the passengers, one by one, off the bus and into a nearby shack. He never shined the light in our faces but only on our passports. All of us, except my seatmate, who showed his Mexican national identification card, were ordered off the bus.
We entered a small shack near the road, where we saw another man standing near an old steel office desk. The one from the bus entered with our passports and stood behind the desk. Under the bright light I saw they wore green uniforms similar to that of the army but with insignia of the Immigration Service.
The officer began sorting the passports as if they were a deck of cards, with one stack for Salvadorans, another for Hondurans, etc. He came upon an American passport, mine, and paused a bit, glanced up but didn’t see me since I was in the middle of the crowd. He shrugged and put it down near the other stacks and continued sorting.
When he finished that task he announced that there is a twenty dollar immigration fee for each of us. Central Americans are mostly of an Indian culture and are usually very submissive and unassuming. One however was bold enough to say “Hey, we all have visas to be in Mexico; our passports were checked at the border. We don’t have to pay you anything!” Both officers stood erect and the leader opened his coat to remind us he was armed. He said “You’ll pay it or you don’t get on the bus!”
He then picked up the top passport from the first pile and read out the name. After a short pause the passport’s owner appeared from the crowd with a twenty dollar bill. The officer handed him his passport and told him to get on the bus.
As this was going on I was thinking “No, no no. . . I’m not going to let this guy get away with this. If I’m forced into this extortion I’m going to make a lot of noise when I get to Mexico City, calling newspapers and television stations and just generally make a real pest of myself.”
The officer continued working from that one stack of passports, collecting the money and ordering the passenger back on the bus. He finished that stack and moved to the next, then appeared to recall that lone American passport off to the side. He picked up my passport, looked around until he saw me, read out my name and simply handed it to me and said to get on the bus. He must have picked up the negative energy I was sending out because he didn’t ask me for money, but also wanted me on the bus so I could not witness what he was doing. Well, he was a bit late for that!
I got on the bus and began talking to the other passengers. They were all angry but felt trapped into complying. My Mexican seatmate said that every bus on that route is stopped like that. Our bus alone yielded a net profit of $900 for those two officers, quite a nice income for just 15 minutes of work.
When we got to Mexico City, all the Central Americans got off the bus about two blocks from the terminal, fearing another shakedown from officials there. Mexico City was my final stop, as it was for my Mexican seatmate. All the others were going to the US border hoping to cross illegally.
US visas are very hard to get but Mexico gladly “sells” its visas to Central Americans, knowing that those people have no plans to tour Mexico. Mexico earns a lot of money by facilitating the movement of Central American illegals to the United States, not just from the legal fees for visas, and the illegal collection of other “fees”, but also revenue that bus companies, hotels, and coyotes generate.
Spending some time in the world of illegal immigration.
Let me return to the theme of illegal immigration, since it seems George Bush is determined not to let it go away. He and his cabal are apparently willing to defy the will of the citizens and ram this amnesty bill into law by any means they can.
As I wrote in my previous entry about immigration, those who will benefit from amnesty are not the kind of people we need as fellow citizens. They are not community builders but are rather net takers from the community.
I lived several years on the US border with Mexico as well as in Mexico itself. I’ve had a lot of contact with illegal immigrants in various ways: as a volunteer English teacher for them at my church, as their co-worker and supervisor, as their neighbor, and as a frequent traveler in that region.
Let me tell you about Jorge and Enrique.
But first my credentials, okay? I’m an admirer of Spanish culture, have read as many books in Spanish as I’ve read in English, and speak both languages equally well. I have a BA from a Texas university in history with a concentration on Latin America and the Spanish Empire. I also did graduate studies in Latin American Studies in Mexico. But let’s be clear on what’s Hispanic okay? The word origin denotes something or someone from Spain, Hispanic coming from the word España. I will, however, use it here in the way Americans use it, albeit incorrectly.
I’d be willing to accept any Spaniard to the US as an immigrant. But those who come from Mexico and other nations in the Americas are not really Hispanic, but are in fact predominantly of a tribal and Indian culture. They may speak Spanish but that’s clearly the only link to Spain that they carry. You can bet that few, if any, of them have ever read (or heard of?) Cervantes, even if they can read. Most read at a very limited level; comic books are very popular in Mexico and Central America.
Okay, back to Jorge and Enrique. When I was studying in Mexico I returned to the US one time on a semester break. I’d left my car at my sister’s house in northern Minnesota and was going there to get it. I traveled by bus from Mexico City to the border at Laredo, Texas, about a 20 hour ride. Then continued by bus with Greyhound going north. At our stop in Dallas two young Mexican men boarded the bus and it was quite obvious they were illegals. We conversed a lot during the long bus ride as well as at the many stops along the way.
They were from the Mexican state of Chihuahua , the one that borders west Texas, and crossed the border near El Paso . Their plan was to go to Minnesota because they’d heard from others that jobs might be available there. They knew nothing about Minnesota but just had some vague idea that’s where they wanted to go. So near El Paso they hopped a freight train carrying automobiles, telling me they rode in air-conditioned comfort because the keys were in the cars. The train stopped in Dallas and they then found their way to the Greyhound station where I met them.
They had just enough money for bus fare to Minneapolis and spent almost nothing on food at the rest stops. It took a couple of days to reach that destination so I got to know them very well. They were not the kind of people I’d seek out as friends (they had about as much intellect as a box of rocks) but under the circumstances they were entertaining. And I was getting some really interesting insight into the world of illegal immigration.
We arrived in Minneapolis at about 5:00 AM. and I immediately asked about my connections to continue to my sister’s house. I learned that she lived on a one-bus-a-day minor route that leaves Minneapolis at 3:00 AM., making for a fun-filled 23 hour layover for me.
So I stayed with my illegal friends for a while longer. As soon as we got off the bus they asked me where Minnesota was. I said Minnesota is the state and they’re IN it. The name Minneapolis meant nothing to them and they were visibly distraught at not finding themselves in a place called Minnesota. The concepts of city and state were meaningless to them, although their country has the same political structure as mine.
One of them had heard that a used car lot on Broadway hires illegals. This was ALL they had to go on, the only reason for traveling across a continent without money for food or to return home if things didn’t work out. I imagine this snippet of information came out while drinking beer with some folks back in their home village. They had nothing written down, had no names of cities, streets, or people to work with.
I’d lived in Minneapolis before and knew my way around so I offered to take them to Broadway but warned them it’s far away and that it’s also a cross-town street, meaning it would be hard to find which used-car lot is the right one. They didn’t want to spend money for a city bus so we walked to one end of that avenue, then began trekking across town.
I was getting pretty impatient with these cretins and their disorderly and unfocused minds but gritted my teeth and persevered. . . for my own learning experience. I also began thinking that there’s potential for writing a novel about goofy characters like these.
So we spent most of the morning walking from one end of the city to the other, stopping at each used car lot on Broadway. At each Jorge would study the sign to see if it brought up some recognition for him, to try to recall if THAT was the name his fellow beer drinker had said.
These guys were really out of their element not having any other Spanish speakers to talk to. They asked me several times where Minnesota was, perhaps suspicious that I might be tricking them. One time we met a Latino-looking man on the sidewalk and they tried to ask him where Minnesota was. But the guy just shrugged his shoulders and moved on, apparently not being a Spanish speaker.
I’d made up my mind earlier in the day that I was not going to rescue these guys from their own stupidity. If they are so stupid to travel thousands of miles on wisps of rumored information and do it without funds, well then they deserve their fate. But by noon I was hot, tired, thirsty, and footsore. They were ready to admit defeat and wanted to go back to the downtown area. I broke my own rule that one time and paid our fares for the city bus.
We had an inexpensive snack by buying a couple of rolls in a bakery, each of us paying for our own food. Jorge and Enrique began to show irritation with each other and that soon turned into a loud argument, ending with Enrique reproaching Jorge for suggesting this fruitless journey.
The men knew my plan was to pick up my car at my sister’s house and then drive it back to Texas so they asked if they could ride with me back south. I said no for two reasons: one, my sister is a law-and-order kind of woman and would not appreciate my taking outlaws to her house, and two, I was just getting pretty tired of these guys by this time.
I figured I now had to get them connected with the Hispanic (sic) community so they could use the resources it offered. I checked the yellow pages and found a non-governmental organization that seemed to fit their needs. I called and after explaining the situation was told to bring them over.
After another long walk we arrived at that agency only to find that the counselor, although of Mexican descent, did not speak Spanish well enough to deal effectively with these guys. She was eager to help them, however, and asked me to stay and translate for her.
Minnesota is about as socialist as any American state can be, and this girl really knew her stuff about tapping into all of that state’s public and private sources of help. First thing she did was get us a free meal at a nearby community center. While we were eating she interviewed Jorge and Enrique and filled out some forms.
Then she drove us over to the state’s welfare office to get the men on the dole. While driving she tried to converse with the guys and asked them what they did in Mexico. Enrique had worked on a ranch. Jorge stated that he “helped” people cross the border, saying it in a tone that suggested he was a man of compassion. The woman followed that up by asking “And did you charge them for that help, Jorge?” SILENCE. . . Jorge knew he was caught and I burst out laughing at both their naivety. I don’t think she intended to entrap him like that; I really think she was just trying to converse, to be friendly.
So that friggin Jorge had been a coyote, eh? Those guys charge not hundreds of dollars, but thousands, for “helping” people cross the border. And where did he invest his earnings? Probably on women and wine and entertaining friends; he surely didn’t invest it wisely because here he was stranded more than 1500 miles from home with about two dollars in his pocket.
Well my esteem for these guys had been hanging around the zero point all day anyway but at this point it dipped really low, far, very far into the negative range.
The counselor got them enrolled in Minnesota’s welfare system, enabling (how appropriate is THAT word in this case, eh?) them to have a few days in the state’s welfare hotel with meals. The idea was to get them off of the streets. . and maybe jail. . and time to link up with sources of employment. It gave them breathing space.
She was kind enough to get me a room at the welfare hotel too so that I’d have place to hang out until my bus left at 3:00 in the morning. And since I was on the welfare rolls for those few hours, I also got a free meal that evening, thanks to all you kind taxpayers.
That evening I walked around the hotel a bit and ran into Jorge and Enrique chatting with other Hispanics in a recreation room. They were still asking where Minnesota was. Cripes!
So I got to spend some time in the world of illegal immigration. George Bush and Teddy Kennedy, folks who should know better but insist that we legalize 12 or 15 or 20 million of these types. What are they thinking?
This is a population unlike our own, one that cannot plan their lives beyond getting the beans for the next meal, one that has no sense of propriety or legality or truthfulness, and apparently one of very limited intellect.
Amnesty
The Dumbing Down of America
There are many good arguments against giving amnesty to the illegal residents in the United States. We’ve heard many of them, including their propensity for criminal behavior, their abuse of social services, and their underperformance in education. At the root of these traits is their lower intelligence. There. . . I’ve said it. It makes you uncomfortable, right? Americans want to believe we are all equal and therefore don’t like to discuss intelligence. This is a very serious issue because the illegals are a low-IQ population that reproduces faster than the native population, a scenario that presents a very grim future for our country.
We do need to talk about this! It is no accident that parliamentary democracy, industrialization, and capitalism thrive in those nations whose populations have North Atlantic origins. Those nations have a mean IQ of about 100 while those of Latin America are much lower and those of Africa lower still. The people of those regions are known for their inability to effectively self-organize, resulting in endemic corruption, poverty, and frequent violence.
The average IQ of Mexicans is 86 and that of Guatemalans is 79. Average. Think about that a moment. Half of those populations have an IQ that would mark them as dullards in our society. Not merely below our average, but far below it. Do we need to import people like this? Mexico has a sizeable elite and educated class but they surely are doing very well at home and have neither need nor desire to leave their country. Instead, we are getting their underclass.
The Bell Curve’s distribution of IQ scores uses 15-point sections as standard deviations. For nations with origins in the North Atlantic the distribution ( I’m simplifying a bit because I don’t want this to be too technical) goes about like this:
So our society functions quite well with 84% of us having IQ scores of 85 and above. Now let’s compare this to Mexico:
While only 16% of Americans score 85 and below, half of all Mexicans are at that level. That’s an awful lot of underachievers. And because of our open border they are probably the ones we are getting. Is it any wonder that the Hispanic population in the US has such high rates of gang and crime activity and such remarkably low rates of educational achievement?
Other nations have IQ scores similar to Mexico’s, the Philippines for example. But not just any Filipino can walk into our country. The screening process they have to go through to get passports, visas, and airfare probably filters out their underclass and so we tend to get above-average Filipinos.
But the migrants coming from our porous southern border are a problem. And the Central Americans have even lower IQ scores than do the Mexicans. Is this not a scary scenario? What are our congressmen thinking? There should be no amnesty; it just encourages more to come. Those people should not even have been allowed into our country in the first place.
We need a sane immigration policy. Even though we are conditioned to feel uncomfortable speaking bluntly about intelligence, it must be done. A nation has not only a right, but an obligation, to maintain its cultural origins as well as its IQ.
References:
Steve Sailer’s articles about IQ
Steve Sailer’s articles about Mexico
Related articles by J. Philippe Rushton
Hispanics: A Statistical Portrait
