I’d pork these fine swine flu mamacitas, the pandemic be damned

MONTERREY, MEXICO — I’ve been meaning to do a dispatch on the Swine Flu ever since the “epidemic” broke out, but I have been too busy working and scoring some good shit to smoke in my free time. The drought is on this time of year, and almost all the goddamn weed in the city is dry, dusty and tastes like shit. There is nothing worse for a true pothead than to have to smoke shitty weed.

As far as the Swine Flu goes, people will look back and remember the pandemic as a random memory, a wacky story for the grandchildren. Maybe you’ll see street vendors selling “I went to Mexico and all I got was influenza” t-shirts to drunken college students in Cancun. Pretty funny, but it ain’t true. I don’t know a single person who got the flu. In fact, I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone that got the flu. That’s pandemic for you.

Out here in Monterrey, opinion about the flu is very divided. A silent majority thinks that this was just a distraction to pass a couple of controversial laws unnoticed. But for the most part people think the flu is real, and the media and government are hyping it to as much as they can to gain something, the greedy assholes.

People have learned to “coexist” with the virus. That is what was recommended by Marcelo Ebrard, Governor of Mexico City. The man really cares.

You hardly see anyone anymore plastering paper onto their faces. These days, it’s mostly children and old people. But the surgical mask fashion was going strong during the first two or so weeks of the outbreak, with a lot of people profiting by selling them clandestinely at up to 20 times what they normally cost. Always trust a Mexican to profit from his fellowmen`s misfortunes.

There were many mask styles to choose from, too. You could buy ones with everything from Pancho Villa revolutionary mustaches to Rolling Stones’ lips painted on them, but they were cheap and looked real crappy.

Okay, well this lasted for about a week or so. But you hardly see anyone with the damn things anymore, people here started shifting their worries to more important things, like the possibility that a local soccer team of the “Primera Division,” the Tigres, was going to descend to the lower division, the very shitty “Primera A”.

So were people around here getting killed by the Swine Flu? Naah, we leave that to over-reacting Anglos ( or the Chinese). People here see things in through a lighthearted kinda lens, joking about it. A few Swine Flu inspired songs appeared on YouTube and even a rather good and funny corrido (folk drug ballad) started making the rounds. People also took advantage of the government-imposed suspension of work a few weeks ago to travel, go shopping, hang at the beach, get drunk and high—whatever your pleasure.

I really would like to avoid pointing fingers at where the outbreak originated, because this country and even Mexicans as individuals have been getting so much shit from the global media that it drove me fucking crazy. I saw a story about a group of Mexicans who traveled to Germany to visit some relatives, but when they arrived their cousins — their OWN FAMILY — avoided touching them. So the poor fuckers ended up taking the plane back home. What a vacation! That’s the power of the media for you, shifting the perspective of the masses to just about whatever it wants.

Of course you probably heard of the stories about the Chinese quarantining Mexicans in a shitty hotel outside Beijing, even though most were residents and hadn’t left the country in like a year or more. They weren’t related and hadn’t even been in contact with the infected person that arrived in Hong Kong. Shit, they weren’t even in the same region.

Even Haiti, of all places, is giving us the cold shoulder. That’s right, the asshole of the Caribbean would rather starve to death and die of countless other diseases that are far more nasty than this harmless, pussy flu than receive a boatload of humanitarian aid, as in food and medicine. God forbid the big bad Swine Flu spoils the native fauna of the disease-ridden voodoo paradise of Port au Prince.

I even heard something about a Bahamas cruise that was booting Mexicans off at the nearest port. They got no refund and no explanation, only told that it was a measure to “guarantee” the safety of the ship.

We are getting a bad rep for this because we are the ones that have been hit the hardest, but it’s not like it came from here. Hey, it’s very likely that the flu originated in the Imperial Valley near San Diego. As in, America. Leave it to the media to spin it that it was in a mainly MEXICAN neighborhood in San Diego. Other theories place the origin in filthy, American-run pig farms that had been relocated to Mexico to take advantage of our lax laws so the pigs could be even filthier and more disease ridden.

But things have normalized. The nightlife is back to normal, with every “antro” (club) operating and the Barrio Antiguo (Monterrey’s bumpin’ downtown section) coming back to life. I trust that weekends will pick up again soon.

The drug trade is the lifeblood of Monterrey, a reflection of how society is doing. And judging by recent activity, we are back to normal.

The first sign of recovery was observed when the Zeta’s jefe de plaza from Santiago, Nuevo Leon, was captured a few weeks ago after a shootout with the army. “El Ruly” Salinas (L-13) was at a high class party when the Man decided to take him down. The Army captured him along with some of his bodyguards and confiscated some gold-plated, diamond encrusted 45s along with some purebred horses and even some boats. All in all, it was an honest day’s work.

The Zetas were also involved in another shootout during a party celebrating the jefe de plaza of San Nicolas, Nuevo Leon. If you remember, I wrote about the army’s recent precision-guided operations that have been taking down capos without having to fire a single shot. It was impressive stuff. But, well, that went out the window. Now we’re back to the good ol’ days of blood and violence. In this shootout, the soldiers managed to wound the jefe de plaza, only known as “Comandante Colosio.” But he managed to escape the ambush because he was rescued by…a police officer known as “El tiburon” or “shark”, who worked for him as his jefe de halcones.

Then this past week, El Nito, who was going to be the successor of “La Burra” Huerta was captured in the old airport after he arrived from Acapulco. A few days later, there was news of a shootout that erupted when a team of sicarios moved in to execute a police commander and kidnap seven of his underlings. They didn’t kill them though, “returning” them 24 hours later unharmed. But I’m pretty sure they got to know each other real good, with the cops “conditioned” to be sympathetic to the sicario cause.

Yes, life is back to normal for the hardworking people of Monterrey. We here hardly think about the pandemic anymore. Like I said, we are more worried about soccer than these pesky little bugs. What can I say, that’s how Mexicans are. If we are going to die, we might as well have fun doing it. You, my gringo friends, prefer to go out in fear.

Pancho Montana is an eXiled Special Mexican War on Drugs Correspondent.

As a native of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, located in northern Mexico, Mr. Montana lives in Gulf Cartel territory. That means the streets belong to the Zetas, a paramilitary organization trained by the Yankees and hired by the Gulf Cartel to keep things civilized and business booming.

Read more: mexico, pandemic, swine flu, Pancho Montana, The Mexican Drug War

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