Beginning December 1, Mexico City plans to hand out free medicine to elderly men with erectile dysfunction, the local government said.

"Everyone has the right to be happy," said Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, governor of the federal district that encompasses the Mexican capital.

"We have to protect people -- senior citizens above all," he said in a statement Thursday. "Many of them are abandoned and lack money. They don't have medical services, and a society that doesn't care for its senior citizens has no dignity."

A teenage girl was among 11 people shot dead in suspected drug-related violence at the weekend in the northern city of Tijuana, authorities in Mexico say.

In one attack, masked gunmen opened fire in a pool hall, killing five people, while the girl, 14, and two men were killed in a shootout in a street.

This violence came shortly after at least one thousand people marched through Tijana demanding and end to the violence. Even worse, this violence comes after the brutal kidnapping/murder of a young boy earlier this month:

Kidnappers grabbed a 5-year-old boy from a gritty Mexico City street market, then killed him by injecting acid into his heart — a new low even for Mexico's brutal kidnapping gangs.

The boy, Javier Morena, was the oldest son of a poor family that sold fruit at a market in the tough neighborhood of Iztapalapa, proof that the plague of kidnappings for ransom afflicts the working class as well as the wealthy.

So what is Mexican president, Felipe Calderon doing about all this? Congratulating himself on job well done. Of course.

Mexico has made "important achievements" in fighting drugs under the current administration, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said on Sunday.

Some 43 tons of cocaine have been seized in the littorals of the country since his government took office in December 2006, Calderon said at the welcoming ceremony in Acapulco Port for the arrival of School Vessel "Cuauhtemoc" after its international tour.

"The trafficking of that dangerous drug" was controlled, Calderon said.

For some reason, I'm thinking that concentrating on how great it is to find drugs is not quite what most Mexicans are hoping for when little boys are getting their hearts injected with acid. For some reason, I think those people might be hoping for a focus on human life and safety.

You can always count on the Mexican government to be in step with it's people.

Continuing with the trend of using women of color bodies as test subjects, Mexico City is will begin to offer the vaccine for free on December 1st, targeting girls between 11-13.

No one feels the effects of what happens in the U.S. as much as Mexico. It's as if the fault line we share were a conductor of not just seismic energy but also shared grief. And when things get bad in the U.S., they get worse in Mexico. Issues such as border control, the economy -- which affects jobs done by Mexicans and subsequently remesas sent back home (one of Mexico's top economic drivers) -- and trade have Mexican analysts, politicians and journalists waiting with baited breath. The cover of today's El Universal (Mexico City) newspaper could easily be mistaken for a U.S. newspaper. Under the masthead, prime page space is 100% occupied by poll information, predictions, photographs of the candidates.

And the ripple effect of the continues even further south. Buenos Aires' Clarin proclaims, jubilantly, "Obama- McCain: an election that puts an end to the Bush era." In the ranking of most popular news stories according to readers, a story about the death of Barack Obama's grandmother is second only to news about soccer legend Diego Maradona.

And the same story in papers throughout the region and the world. Expectations are high in Latin America, perhaps as high as they are in the U.S., and the disappointment of 4 more years of failed Bush policy will be the same should McCain surprise us all with a victory tonight.

If you know a shaman, give him a call.

The premise of the movie is effed up enough. La Macha has mentioned the whole dog as Latino problem, and no matter how many Latino actors are in the this animated flick, nothing justifies the stereotypes that were used in this film.

Warning if you haven't seen the movie I will give away the whole damn thing. You shouldn't see the movie anyway so just click after the jump anyway.

Here is a clip the now famous video:

Well, people have finally been charged in his murder--unfortunatly, it appears that the people charged are probably the wrong people.

From Democracy Now!

As you see in the video, which you’ve shown today, which Brad filmed, and his camera was still running as people carry him away, he falls, and immediately all the people around him rush to help him. They rush to pick him up and carry him to safety. Coming around the corner, many newspaper photographers then took pictures of the witnesses who were trying to resuscitate him and then who rushed him off to the hospital. Those very people who risked their lives to pick him up and to carry him to safety, the Mexican government is now saying those are the ones who shot and killed him, instead of the paramilitary forces down the street who had been shooting at people all day, whose photographs have been published in the national and international press with them pointing their guns straight at the camera.

Caro was blessed enough to see Calle 13 here in NYC the other night.

Via / Remolacha

Put us or this "band" out of misery.

Via / Blogamole

You can listen to the single here.

I love Calle 13 and Cafe Tacuba pero I'm not sold on this joint effort. No se. What do you all think?

Communiqué from the of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command, of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Mexico

September 15 and 16 of 2008

To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:

To the People of Mexico:

To the Peoples of the World:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

Brother and Sisters:

Once again we send you our words.

This is what we see, what we are looking at.

This is what has come to our ears, to our brown heart.

I.

Above they intend to repeat history.

They want to impose on us once again their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.

When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.

They steal our work, our strength.

They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.

The cities pursue and expel us.

The countryside both kills us and dies on us.

Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.
We are the illegal, the undocumented, the undesired of the world.

We are pursued.

Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.

And there above they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.

Here below we are being left with nothing.

Except rage.

And dignity.

There is no ear for our pain, that is not like what we are.

We are no one.

We are alone, alone with our dignity and our rage.

Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.

We must listen to each other then, learn to know each other.

So that our courage and rage grows and becomes hope.

So that our dignity takes root again and births another world.

We have seen and heard.

Our voice is small to be the echo of that word, our gaze small for so much dignified rage.

The process of seeing each other, looking at each other, speaking to each other, listening to each other, is still lacking.

We are others, the other.

If this world does not have a place for us, then another world must be made.

With no tool other than our rage, no material other than our dignity.

We still must encounter each other more, know each other better.

What is missing is yet to come…

You can get a sneak preview listen over at MTV's The Leak.

I've been bouncing to it all morning and you should join me! Makes me more excited to own the Monterrey musical group's latest.

Via / Blogamole

Some other findings:

The survey suggests significant numbers of Mexicans across the country have personal experience of the violence.

Of those surveyed, 9% had been directly affected by drugs-related violence, and 32% indirectly affected. Another 16% knew someone who had been tempted to join drugs gangs in order to increase their personal income.

Many of the respondents (42%) attributed the boom in the drug cartels to unemployment and the poor state of the economy.

More than 11,700 Mexican children and teenagers tried to cross the US border alone and were sent back to their native country in the first seven months of this year, Mexican migration officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile ICE raids continue, people are dead, and John McCain and Barack Obama are pointing fingers.