16341: Leather Ladies Looks Limiting.

 

This PETA campaign from Mexico takes a standard over-the-top approach to condemn leather. But why are women always targeted as the fashionista villains? Are men not equal leather enthusiasts? Just wondering.

 

15903: Overreaction Of The Week.

 

First, Edy’s erased the Eskimo Pie. Now, Klondike canceled the Choco Taco—a blatant cultural appropriation of Mexican cuisine. It’s only a matter of time before lesbians take offense to Klondike.

 

15414: Maître d' Messiah…?

 

Fogo de Chão uses Jesus to feed the masses—with social distancing, of course.

15224: Popeyes Pretend Postcard Puke.

Popeyes has positioned its menu items as authentic Louisiana cuisine cooked up by a native of Barbados faking a Southern accent. Now the fast feeder is going further south, hyping its Guadalajara-inspired chicken sandwich with a video full of Mexican stereotypes. ¡Ay, Dios Mío!

14740: Cicloferón Thinks People with Sickness Are Savages.

This Cicloferón advertisement from JWT in Mexico demonstrates that pharmaceutical advertising sucks worldwide.

14667: Heinz In Mexico Is Fucking Stupid.

This Heinz advertisement from Mexico is bound to get a quick and hot response from TIME’S UP/Advertising.

14630: BBDO Gives Snickers A Kick In The Nuts.

BBDO Mexico demonstrates that it is indeed possible to produce a shitty Snickers advertisement. Did the Brazilian creatives responsible for the scammy Bayer campaign move to Mexico?

14157: Dreaming Of Gender Stereotypes.

Y&R in Mexico is responsible for this Save the Children campaign, imploring people to not let kids’ dreams die. But the dreams seem somewhat sexist—why can’t girls dream of being firefighters and astronauts?

12182: WTF BMW.

Don’t understand this BMW campaign from Mexico at all. Suspect it would require much more than an interpreter to decipher the messages.

From Ads of the World.

11370: Rance Crain Reimagines America.

Advertising Age Editor-in-Chief Rance Crain published a column titled, “Merger Works For Omnicom, Publicis; Why Not U.S., Mexico?” Crain wondered if combining the two countries would help solve the problems connected with undocumented workers in the U.S. It’s unlikely Crain was completely serious in asking the title question, so here’s a not-completely-serious response.

The key and critical differences between a merger involving Omnicom and Publicis Groupe and a merger involving the U.S. and Mexico are rooted in culture, race, ethnicity and morality. Omnicom President and CEO John Wren and Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy are essentially two Old White Guys—dos amigos (or gringos)—hooking up to make stupid money and inflate stupider egos. Contrary to the PR hype, Publicis Omnicom Groupe doesn’t give a flying fuck about the minions in the new network, especially the non-White populace. In fact, most of the U.S.-French holding company’s minorities are woefully underrepresented and filed into “multicultural” units where they receive less respect and far less compensation than their majority counterparts; in short, they are second-class citizens in every sense of the term. However, given the advertising industry’s existing power structure, it’s totally okay for two White men to orchestrate an exclusive alliance of two White corporations that further diminishes and ultimately disregards the welfare of non-White folks. On the flipside, if two White emperors attempted to merge their countries, resulting in the segregation and marginalization of minority groups, the very proposal would be condemned and rejected.

11181: To And Fro With Negrito.

Laura Martinez examined the experiential and evolutionary marketing for Negrito candy. Gee, it’s like taking a stroll down memory lane. MultiCultClassics first encountered Martinez while debating the controversies surrounding Memín Pinguín in 2005.

9328: GSD&Mexican Mess.

MultiCultClassics had almost forgotten the news last April that Jarritos, a Mexican soft drink popular with Latinos in the U.S., would be marketed to non-Latinos via advertising by GSD&M. Even crosscultural cult leader Ken Muench wondered about the decision to pass over a Latino shop in favor of the Austin-based White agency. How would the brand be handled by those wonderful folks who gave you Annie the Chicken Queen?

Well, nearly six months later, the answer has arrived (and during National Hispanic Heritage Month!). The campaign features multiple components across lots of media, with a tagline that reads, “We’re Not From Here”—which pretty much summarizes the cultural cluelessness of GSD&M. For example, the website homepage (above) looks like a junior art director spent an afternoon doing Google searches of Mexican art.

Jarrito’s new TV commercials are worth examining—especially the spot titled, “Boomerang.” The main character is a stereotypical Mexican who is one burro shy of being the original Juan Valdez. He shows up in various settings, offering samples of Jarritos to people passing by. When folks opt against accepting the free taste, odd individuals stage “involuntary trials,” forcing the beverage on the rejecters. In “Boomerang,” someone appearing to be an Indigenous Australian delivers the drink with a boomerang. Oh, there must have been lots of knee-slapping giggles happening on the production set of this mess.

Looking forward to the inevitable showdown between the Mexican guy with his Jarritos and Annie the Chicken Queen with her Fresh Brewed Cane Sweeeet Tea.

9197: Authentic Mexican Stereotypes.

Guessing the typical Mexican drug lord would not find the food at this place to be very authentic.

8964: Indicating Indian Identity.

From The New York Times…

Hispanics Identifying Themselves as Indians

By Geoffrey Decker

A procession of American Indians marched through Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on a weekend afternoon in early May, bouncing to a tribal beat. They dressed in a burst of colors, wore tall headdresses and danced in circles, as custom dictated, along a short stretch of the park.

But there was something different about this tribe, the Tlaxcala, and when the music ceased and the chatter resumed, the difference became clear: They spoke exclusively Spanish.

The event was Carnaval, an annual tradition celebrated by tribes indigenous to land that is now Mexico. And despite centuries of Spanish influence, the participants identify themselves by their indigenous heritage more than any other ethnicity.

When Fernando Meza is asked about his identity, “I tell them that I am Indian,” said Mr. Meza, a parade participant from the Tlaxcala tribe. “They say, ‘But you’re Mexican.’ And I say, ‘But I’m Indian.’ ”

Mr. Meza represents one of the changes to emerge from the 2010 census, which showed an explosion in respondents of Hispanic descent who also identified themselves as American Indians.

Seventy percent of the 57,000 American Indians living in New York City are of Hispanic origin, according to census figures. That is 40,000 American Indians from Latin America — up 70 percent from a decade ago.

The trend is part of a demographic growth taking place nationwide of Hispanics using “American Indian” to identify their race. The number of Amerindians — a blanket term for indigenous people of the Americas, North and South — who also identify themselves as Hispanic has tripled since 2000, to 1.2 million from 400,000.

“There has been an actual and dramatic increase of Amerindian immigration from Latin America,” said José C. Moya, a professor of Latin American history at Barnard College.

Dr. Moya attributes the increase to shifting patterns of immigration to the United States over the last two decades, from regions with larger indigenous populations, like southern Mexico and Central America, instead of northern Mexico.

Half of all Hispanics who moved to New York over the last 10 years were Mexican, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Most of them come from southern Mexico.

The pattern started in 1994 with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened the American-Mexican border to more economic activity. To encourage foreign investment in Mexico, its government started to strip Indian landowners of a long-held legal protection from privatization. The resulting conflict awakened ethnic tensions that dated back centuries, and spurred a populist support of indigenous heritage.

That movement was on vivid display at Carnaval in Sunset Park, home to the city’s largest Mexican community.

The Tlaxcala were costumed, carried whips and wore pink-hued masks that had flush cheeks, blue eyes and thin mustaches — obvious stereotypes of the European conquerors. Tlaxcala costumes are also worn in parades in other months in New York, and in other boroughs.

The Indians’ version of Carnaval, a Christian holiday of revelry that falls just before Lent, is satirical in nature, the Tlaxcala marchers explained. When Spanish conquistadors celebrated Carnaval in the 16th century, the Tlaxcala observed the custom from afar. The Spaniards wore flamboyant dress, drank too much wine and danced late into the night.

“We are descendants from the original people of Tlaxcala,” said Gabriel Aguilar, a Ditmas Park resident. “Five hundred years ago, there is not territory known as Mexico. It’s just tribes.”

The American Indian totals are still a small fraction of the overall Hispanic population of the United States, which eclipsed 50 million this year. But the blip in the census data represents raised awareness among native Latinos who believe their heritage stretches farther back than the nationalities available on the census form.

The trend is not occurring solely among newcomers to the United States. Nancy Perez, who shares her household in Ditmas Park with her sister and parents, held a family meeting to decide how they should identify themselves in the census. Her parents moved to the United States from Puebla, Mexico, in the 1970s, and although her family was mixed, “if you go back far enough, we are indigenous,” Ms. Perez said. American Indian, they decided, made the most sense.

“We felt that there were very limited options to identify with,” Ms. Perez, 32, said. “So out of the options available, that was the best one.”

The Amerindian numbers do not account for those who take a more activist approach toward filling out the census form. Carlos A. Quiroz, an activist and blogger born in Peru, checked off that he was a “Non-Hispanic” American Indian, a category normally associated with North American Indians. Mr. Quiroz said he selected it because he opposed use of the word “Hispanic” as an ethnic category.

“Hispanic is not a race, ” said Mr. Quiroz, whose ancestors were the Quechua people, of the Central Andes. “Hispanic is not a culture. Hispanic is an invention by some people who wanted to erase the identity of indigenous communities in America.”

“We don’t believe we have to accept this identity just because we speak Spanish,” Mr. Quiroz added.

7767: Cultural Cluelessness In Mexico.

From The Los Angeles Times…

In Mexico, Times report on network’s use of blackface renews racism debate

The Mexican media conglomerate Televisa employs actors in blackface during a popular morning program on the World Cup, underscoring once more the conflicting attitudes held by Mexico and the United States about race and racism. Tracy Wilkinson writes in The Times:

But this is Mexico, and definitions of racism are complicated and influenced by the country’s own tortured relationship with invading powers and indigenous cultures.

Many Mexicans will say they are not racist and that very little racism exists in Mexico, a nation, after all, of mestizos, who are of European and indigenous blood.
As proof, they point to the fact that slavery was ended in Mexico decades before it was abolished in the United States, and that Mexico never institutionalized racism the way the U.S. did with its segregationist laws that lasted into the 1960s.

Mexicans, it turns out, just don’t see caricatures of Africans or black people as inherently racist, bringing to mind the flap in 2005 over a historic comic book character named Memin Pinguin, beloved by Mexicans but reviled in the U.S. for his exaggerated African features. Wilkinson adds:

Still, in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, people operate with a different comfort level when it comes to physical attributes. It remains common for Mexicans to use nicknames like “Chino” for someone with almond-shaped eyes, “Negrito” for someone with dark skin, “Gordo” (Fatso) for a plump person.

These terms are jarring when seen through the prism of U.S. sensibilities, but here they are usually used in a context of affection and friendship.

In online reader comments to an article in the El Universal newspaper on the Times report, many readers reacted with indignation to the suggestion that the Televisa skits are racist (link in Spanish). “Disgusting double standard for an imperialist and invading country,” wrote one El Universal reader. “They should be ashamed criticizing a cartoon.”

But another reader commented: “Showing people in black-face as primitive persons is the same as showing Mexicans as delinquents, and of course the latter doesn’t strike us as a joke. Both acts are racist, but the difference is one makes us laugh and therefore it’s approved.”

Author David Lida, in a post on his blog, discussed the image used on a Mexican snack cake called “Negrito” as another instance of Mexico’s blithe treatment of racial caricatures:

I’ve never met a Mexican who copped to being a racist. Some, particularly from the upper echelons, lament that their society is class-based, but argue that since nearly everyone is mestizo—with a mixture of Spanish and indigenous blood—therefore how could they be racist?

Meanwhile, in an article on the Memin Pinguin controversy in the Boston Review, historian Claudio Lomnitz argues that the scandalized American responses to Mexican racial caricatures reflect a recent phenomenon of identity politics and “political correctness” that has no direct equivalent in Mexico or the rest of Latin America. It’s a long article but worth reading:

There has been a sea change since the 1980s in the ways that Latin American race relations are understood by American academics and educators. Criticism of race relations and racism in Brazil, Mexico, the Andes, the Caribbean, and Central America has developed as a natural extension of multiculturalism and identity politics in the United States, and many studies describe persistent racial inequalities masked by the idea of racial democracy. This criticism and research has, in turn, fed discussions of race in Latin America, albeit in an attenuated manner: Brazil has had its own proponents of “black power,” and racism against Indians has become a theme in Mexican social movements. Because these challenges are difficult to reconcile with Mexico’s 80-year-old ideology of national integration, they are often downplayed in public debate — as if Mexican racism had long been taken care of, and as if whatever remains of it were somehow less harmful because things are worse in the United States.

So what’s your take? Is racism in Mexico alive and well? Or is Mexico, with its long history of racial mixture, just racially liberated? The questions get to the core of one of the most complex aspects of Mexican identity. Mexico’s Televisa can’t be accused of tiptoeing around them.

—Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

7394: Humming Along With Drug Ballads.

From USA TODAY…

Mexico’s drug ballads hit sour note with government

By Chris Hawley, USA TODAY

MEXICO CITY MEXICO CITY — Experts worry the music romanticizes leaders of cartels, desensitizes fans and undermines the fight against crime.

When the song The Farm hit Mexico’s airwaves this fall, it quickly became a sensation in a country increasingly frustrated by a 3-year-old war against drug cartels.

In seven stanzas stuffed with symbolism, the song tells the story of a fierce dog, perhaps representing drug traffickers, that causes no trouble until a fox — the Mexican president — provokes it, unleashing a wave of bloodshed. The music ends with a plea to tie up the dog.

The song by Los Tigres del Norte, along with “drug ballads” by other musicians and the investigation of a Grammy-winning singer for possible drug ties, has stirred a debate over the role of popular music as Mexico, helped by some $830 million so far in U.S. aid, tries to break the cartels. About 13,000 people have died in drug-related violence since the crackdown began in 2006.

Drug ballads, known as narcocorridos in Spanish, have long been a part of Mexico’s norteño music, which is driven by accordions and a polka-like beat. As the body count climbs, though, some experts worry that such hits are undermining the government’s efforts.

“It’s possible that this kind of music desensitizes Mexicans to what’s going on,” says Rubén Tinajero Medina, a musicologist at the University of Chihuahua.

Decoding the message
The controversy over the music echoes similar debates over “cop killer” rap music in the United States during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

Greg Etter, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Missouri who has studied narcocorridos, likens the most explicit of them to neo-Nazi death metal and says they could fuel a backlash against authorities.

“Music is a motivator,” Etter says. “Depending on how it is received, it can be very dangerous.”

In Mexican dance halls and record shops, smuggler music is hot: Sixteen Drug Ballads, by singer Larry Hernández, is one of the best-selling albums of the year. Another new album, El Tigrillo Palma, recounts the exploits of fugitive kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzmán in songs such as The Power of Chapo. El Compa Chuy is nominated for a Grammy for an album featuring smuggler ballads, El Niño de Oro.

“It’s a way of describing what our people are going through, the suffering of the Mexican people,” says Jorge Hernández, lead singer of Los Tigres del Norte.

Singing about drug traffickers also carries risks. Since 2006, at least 10 norteño musicians have been killed in apparent hits by drug gangs, and on Dec. 11, police detained three bands, including Grammy-winning singer Ramón Ayala, during a shootout at a Christmas party attended by alleged members of the Beltrán Leyva gang.

Ayala was released on Wednesday but remains under investigation for possible organized crime offenses, the office of Mexico’s attorney general says.

Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the leader of the drug gang, was killed Dec. 17 in a shootout with authorities.

In the past year, no song has created more controversy than The Farm (La Granja in Spanish). The song is inspired by Animal Farm, George Orwell’s 1945 allegorical book assailing communism.

The song is written to make it onto radio stations that normally would not air narcocorridos, says Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta, a Mexican music expert at San Diego State University.

Listeners pore over the lyrics and the song’s video, looking for meaning in the animal characters and decoding them on fan websites.

Many seem easy to interpret: The fox is former president Vicente Fox, who began purging the federal police of corrupt elements and extradited dozens of drug kingpins to the United States during his 2000-06 term.

The crash of a “sparrow hawk” refers to the mysterious crash of a Learjet carrying Mexico’s Interior minister on Nov. 4, 2008.

Open to interpretation: Does the dog represent drug traffickers or the Mexican police? And is the finale urging Mexicans to unite against drug traffickers or let them be? The band won’t say.

“Everybody can interpret it as they want,” Hernández says. “We’re just storytellers.”

In defense of free speech
In October, the organizers of the Lunas Entertainment Awards asked the band not to play the song during the awards show at the government-owned National Auditorium. Los Tigres boycotted the show in protest. At a news conference, they accused the Mexican Interior Ministry of pressuring the Lunas organizers and some radio stations to keep the song off the air.

The Interior Ministry issued a written statement denying the accusation.

The Farm reflects a recent change in the themes of narcocorridos, Ramírez-Pimienta says.

Before the latest crackdown on cartels, such songs focused on cars, women, clothes and other luxuries enjoyed by Mexican drug traffickers — “party corridos,” Ramírez-Pimienta calls them.

“Now we’re seeing a return to the ‘epic’ corrido, with more emphasis on the battles involved,” Ramírez-Pimienta says.

Other songs romanticize newly emerging cartel leaders. A new Los Tigres del Norte song, Queen of Queens, likens alleged trafficker Sandra Ávila Beltrán to Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba.

“Two beauties of the ages, but nothing compared to Sandra,” the song says.

Fans deny that music is undermining the fight against crime.

“People take it too seriously,” says Elizabeth Monroig, a member of the Boss of Bosses, a Los Tigres del Norte fan club in suburban Mexico City.

“Yes, these groups talk about things that are going on in the country, but they also sing about love and other things. It’s just music.”

Hawley is Latin America correspondent for USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic. Contributing: Dan Nowicki of The Arizona Republic.