Nacho Libre is nacho macho anymore

Untitled, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, June 2007.

Hotel people or I ♥ Mexico

Hotel People, Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, June 2007.




The week-long obsession with taco trucks made me hungry and nostalgic for Mexico. I love Mexico. I love eating ceviche on the beach while it rains. I love the family-owned distellerias and the sweet-smoky smell of burning agave leaves. I love how they let you sample almond flavored tequila even though you're only ten years old. I love that I can smoke in Mexican airports. I love that I can practice speaking in Spanish, but only in the present tense; the way I would struggle to order a meal in Spanish only to hear the counterboy answer, "do you want cheese with that?" I love Mexican Coke which is superior to American Coke. I love photographing in Mexico as much as I love Mexican photographers. I love Don Manuel Alvarez Bravo and his wife Lola, Graciela Iturbide, Nacho Lopez, Flora Garduño, and Tina Modotti, although she's really Italian. I love that Mexicans are not scared of color but also look great in black and white. I even love how they call me Chino even though I'm not really Chinese.


Nostalgia for all things Mexican had me clicking on my picture archives, where I found this old set of portraits that I took of hotel workers in Jalisco. A relentlessly friendly bunch, they make the phrase "hospitality industry" actually mean something. It's no different outside the hotels. People are pretty much all smiles and carefree everywhere in spite of the hard life and the hard work. Like they say in Mexico, good face to bad times. "Al mal tiempo, buena cara."

Real men don't have abs

Untitled, Jalisco, Mexico, June 2007.

Hay!Men! Ang blog ng mga tunay na lalaki (Hy!Men! The blog of real men) had me ROFL today that I just had to share it.

This photo blog from the Philippines is is a catalog of what makes a man a real man; more precisely, a real Filipino man. What a real man eats (anything made with violence, e.g., tilapia from dynamite fishing); a real man's job (jeepney driver, congressman); a real man's furniture (double bunk bed); a real man's drink (Robitussin DM); a real man's toilet (fancy shopping mall, and he won't flush).

The blog passes judgment on the manliness of famous people (and things): real man (Chairman Mao); not a real man (Bono, because real men don't use guitars as props); under consideration: (God the Father, because an omnipresent god can be in your ass and a real man will never be in anyone's ass).

Opinionated and tongue-in-cheek (although a real man will never admit to that), Hay!Men! is a hilarious and knowing look at the very many quirks of Filipinos.

Here's the Real Men Manifesto, according to Hay!Men! The original is in Tagalog so a lot is lost in translation:

1. Real men don't sleep.

2. Real men don't text back except to get free load. And when they do, you still won't know what they're saying.

3. Real men always ask for more rice.

4. Real men are not vegetarian.

5. Real men don't have abs.

6. Real men don't dance.

7. Real men will admit they are wrong only to other real men.

8. Real men always have skid marks in their underwear.

9. Real men don't wash dishes or clean their rooms; women do that for them. Real men become even more of a real man if they don't know the woman or can't remember her name.

10. Real men don't go to church.

A balancing act

Untitled, Malecon, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, June 2007.

Along the boardwalk of Puerto Vallarta's malecon (literally, a pier), on a narrow stretch of beach, you will find these young men when the winds are calm and the tourists are aplenty, balancing rocks on top of stones. They do this feat of marvel for the tourists' coins and cameras, but anyone who observes carefully can tell that they are also doing it for themselves. They're competing; and the rivalry is fierce and palpable: to pile higher, to balance larger on top of smaller, to make it stick. They check each other out, oblivious to the crowd, clutching a rock using both hands with laserlike focus. It seems like an eternity, but when they finally release their grip on a rock, it remains standing on its tip like a ballerina's foot on pointe.


The malecon dons the air of a fiesta on weekends when the locals come out to stroll along the pier, mingle with tourists, and watch all sorts of performers vie for the attention of the crowds. A few feet away from the rock balancers, a troupe of Huichol Indians who call themselves Flying Birdmen, spin like a carnival ride across the air as they are slowly lowered to the ground by wires attached to an 80-foot pole. The spectacle, supervised by a flute-playing shaman, is derived from a Huichol ritual and is meant to symbolize the meeting of heaven and earth. Elsewhere on this festive block, musicians play traditional folk songs; a mime performs in a small sunken amphitheater near the beach; and a group of young girls watch everything transpire from a narrow stone footbridge over the canal, which is the best seat in the house.

On the walk back to the sentro, we pass the rock balancers who are still at it. Their handiwork lines the beach like monoliths from Easter Island. Even as the late afternoon wind blows through the pier and the waves hit the shore a little harder than before, the rocks remain glued to each other without a wiggle.

It says a lot about the grace of a community when its residents can gather together in festive spirit. Festivity, like religious ritual (of which Puerto Vallarta has many), keeps the balance in a community; it gives its people respite from reality so they don't topple over.

Flying Huichol Birdmen