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An article from Matador contributor Sarah Menkedick
 
Jail time for kissing in public? For using slang in the street?
 
Sound like Dubai?
 
Try Guanajuato, a city in central Mexico, the world's PDA capital.
 
Eduardo Romero Hicks, the city's mayor, recently passed an
anti-obscenity law that bans kissing in public, "obscene" speech
(including the classic Mexican slang word, "guey"), buying anything
from street vendors, begging, and obstructing public space without a
permit.
 
Ironically, Guanajuato is famous for El Callejón del Beso (Kissing
Alley), a narrow alleyway where, as legend has it, couples who kiss
will have seven years of good luck. Couples who pass by without
kissing will have seven years of bad luck. The street is one of the
city's predominant tourist attractions.
 
The mayor, who belongs to the conservative right-ring National Action
Party (PAN), justified the law by stating that kissing in public
embarrasses children. To which I respond: Since when are laws made
according to what embarrasses four year-olds?
 
I'm not the only one who finds the law ridiculous: university students
took to the streets in Guanajuato to protest, UNAM law students wrote
up a petition and sent it to the mayor, and activist and ex-PRI member
Gerardo Fernandez Noroña organized a "collective kiss" (which, before
anyone gets any salacious ideas, occurred mostly between family
members—Noroña kissed his young niece) in Mexico City to protest.
 
Meanwhile, senators from the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party)
and the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) spoke out against the
law as retrograde, barbaric, and medieval. The latter party pledged to
begin an investigation to see if the law violates the Mexican
constitution and impedes on individual human rights.
 
Many have speculated here in Mexico that the law is an attempt by the
PAN to distract attention from the growing violence between drug
cartels, the contested 2006 election, and widespread government
corruption. PAN rule has seen a terrifying wave of violence sweep
Mexico, with daily executions and assassinations of police chiefs and
judges.
 
The mayor's "freezing" of the law mere days after passing it tends to
support this view. Supposedly, the law is merely being put on hold
while the government begins a campaign to educate citizens about it. I
wonder: Educate citizens? Are there going to be
how-to-not-kiss-in-the-street and how-to-not-block-the-sidewalk
classes for Guanajuato's citizens?
 
The new law points to an alarming trend in Mexico: the creeping
influence of the church, and particularly the Vatican, in state
affairs. Just as the Bush administration mixed right-wing politics
with conservative religious values in its law-making, the Calderón
administration is taking controversial steps closer to the Catholic
Church, despite public outcry about the disintegration of the laic
state.

An incredible blog from Matador member Teresita:
 
In San Jose, there's The Roller Skating Guy.
 
In Santa Cruz, there's The Cranky Lady with the Pink Dreads.
 
In Missoula, there's The Guy Who Parks His Huge, Smelly Dogs Outside
of Coffee Shops All Over Town.
 
And in the Campestre neighborhood of Pachuca, Hidalgo, there is,
apparently…me. The Girl with the Pretty Eyes. Blush, blush.
 
I learned of my fame like this: I got into a taxi on a relatively
obscure street downtown, and the driver immediately said,You're going
to Campestre, right?
 
I said, Um…right…, but I thought, creeee-py!
 
I'd seen you before, he told me in such a friendly way the creepiness
was immediately dispelled. You walk a lot! I see you sometimes
walking on the avenue in Campestre. And I saw you at the butcher one
time, and I thought, 'there goes the girl with the pretty eyes.'
 
I blushed and said something like "gleeerp...?"
 
He went on —And then I asked my compadre who lives over there, 'you
know the girl with the pretty eyes?' And he said, 'oh, yeah, she has
pretty eyes, she lives on X Street, I see her around.' And then I saw
you today and I thought, 'looks like the girl with the pretty eyes
needs a taxi!'
 
I blushed some more and responded, approximately, "graaallf"
 
For the next several blocks he told me of his master plan to
jump-start the American economy, while I nodded and murmured
meaningless politenesses, not wishing to alert him to the fact that
his plan was utterly incomprehensible. Just before he dropped me at
my corner, he mentioned that his previous fare had been an illegal
Guatemalan immigrant on his way to meet a coyote and be smuggled to
the "other side."
 
So, I'm The Girl with the Pretty Eyes. I'm not particularly
comfortable with this, to start with because my eyes aren't even all
that pretty. My brother, now, his eyes are pretty, pure sky blue,
knocking the ladies dead since 1984. Or our niece Montserrat's
enormous, sparkling black eyes. Mine—pshaw, just plain old bluey-gray
eyes. Seein' eyes.
 
But mostly, I'm uncomfortable with it because The Girl with the Pretty
Eyes is just a euphemism for the The Girl Whose Eyes Are Considered
Pretty Because They Aren't Brown, which is a euphemism for The Girl
Who's Considered Pretty Because She's White. And I know that if I'm
going to live out my life in Mexico, I have to get used to that, but I
don't think I'll ever be okay with it.
 
This morning I was teaching a class on possessive pronouns. We were
comparing our different possessions: I'd say, "My pen is blue," and
the students would respond, "Mine is black," "Mine is purple," and so
on. For one cue, I said, "My eyes are blue." Adriana said, "Uuuuy,
que presumida, teacher!"-What a showoff! Adriana and I go back to
Level 1 and I knew she was just joking. But after Jesi and Lucia had
both offered "Mine are brown," Juan, who's a showoff if there ever was
one, said, "MINE are GRAY!" with as much pride as though he'd said,
"MINE won the Nobel PEACE Prize!" I thought, "Yeah, but that doesn't
keep you from sucking at English, asshole," though of course I smiled
a teacher smile and nodded, yes, that's correct.
 
Anyway, I know that taxi driver meant to pay me a compliment. It was
very sweet, really. Maybe I should leave it at that.
 
I just keep wondering how that Guatemalan guy is doing. We shared a
taxi in space, if not in time—a tenuous bond, to be sure, but I think
of him. I think this: Soon my blue eyes and I--with all our pretty
legal paperwork--will be moving south, closer to where he came from.
He and his brown eyes are heading north, taking an incredible risk, to
get to where I came from.
 
But that day, we were both right here.