A Gringo in Mexico

to see the video My five year old daughter Angie just finished prescolar 2 here in San Cristobal de Las Casas (the Mexican equivaleny of kindergarten). As part of the celebration her class put on a short show. It had to do with all the animals in the ...

to see the video Murder, incest, self-abuse, amateur theater.... Hey, at least there are no bunnies. My other daughter Helena is finishing the first year of prepa (Mexican equivalent of high school). The final project for her English class was to put on ...

to see the video Well, it's been a big week. Angie and Helena both finished up their school and my wife Rocio and her sister Aurora both received their Masters Degree in Education. Rocio teaches English at a prepa and Aurora teaches history at a private ...

to see the video This is a clip from a project I'm working on, a documentary about the Corpus Cristi fiesta in Suchiapa Mexico. I have hours of tape of the fiesta, the dances and processions. This year I started interviewing people: participants, ...

to see the video More footage from my documentary-in-the-making about the Corpus Cristi fiesta in Suchiapa Mexico. Here is a couple of from an interview I did with my friend Mariano who is a maskmaker in Suchiapa and makes many of the masks used in the ...

to see the video We went to Tuxtla this weekend and I bought Angie a CD from one of those awful Mexican children's telenovelas. She loved the music, played it for hours, and then dragged me in to dance with her in front of her mirror. I look like a ...

to see the video Angie's taking swimming lessons this summer. Here is her class. At the end of the class she tried over and over to dive to the bottom of the shallow end of the pool to pick up canicas (marbles). She couldn't quite do it. Of course the ...

to see the video So we just got back from a short vacation trip to Mexico City (we live in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas). Here's the first of three short video blog pieces about looking for the real Mexico.

to see the video While we were in Mexico City we went to a few markets. Tenochtitlan was the biggest market in the new world before the Spaniards conquered it and created Mexico City. It is still a huge marketplace. There are illegal street vendors ...

to see the video I didn't have enough footage to make a story, but I'm posting it anyway. The zocalo is the central square of Mexico City. It stands where the center of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city stood. The Spaniards tore down the Aztec temples and ...

to see the video We pretty much did our vacation on the cheap: we took the overnight bus to Mexico City, stayed in a fairly cheap hotel and ate mostly in economical places. I wanted to take the family to one special place to eat, so we went to Cafe ...

to see the video UNAM is the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. It's the oldest university in the Americas (founded 1551) and the largest in Latin America (290,000 students if you include all of it's campuses). The main campus is the Ciudad ...

to see the video This is another outake from the promotional film I worked on for the publishing services company I work for called Booklinks. They needed some comic relief and I was elected (thanks Cory). In this scene they are featuring the Mexican ...

to see the video Another short clip from our vacation. The Torre Latinoamericano is the tallest building in Mexico City, much higher than any other building, so you get a great view of the valley from the observation deck on the 42nd floor. Music is Al ...

to see the video Xochimilco is home to the last of the chinampas or "floating gardens". The Axtecs used the chinampas to raise the food that was needed for their capital city of Tenochtitlan. They were originaly artificial islands that were anchored to ...

to see the video Here's the finished version of the movie I was the the DP of in NYC. This is the finished version (I posted an animation clip from it earlier) This is a promotional film for the publishing services company that I work for. It will be ...

to see the video This is my post for Halloween Vlogfest 2005. This is from about 4 years ago. I did a Day of the Dead tour for seven years; five years in Oaxaca and two years here in Chiapas. This footage was shot in the cemetary in Xoxocotlan which is ...

Bombs As part of the Guadalupe Fisesta in San Cristobal there is a Grand Quemada de Cuetes y Bombas (Greta Burning of Rockets and Bombs). The same family has been putting on this exhibition for over 45 years.

Guadalupe Fiesta: Rockets As part of the Guadalupe Fiesta in San Cristobal there is a Grand Quemada de Cuetes y Bombas (the great Burning of Rockets and Bombs). Once the 1000+ bombs have exploded (see previous post) the cueteros (rocket ...