An Invitation to Monterrey

Monterrey, Mexico, as seen from the Chipinque mountain.

I have to confess I did think twice about accepting an invitation to Monterrey, Mexico to show some of my movies recently, considering all the international hype around the extremely gruesome cartel violence in the Northern cities of Mexico. But it was only a fleeting bout of cowardice, and considering how much fun I had had at the Guadalajara International Film Festival this past February, a city where the bound and gagged bodies of 25 people were discovered last year under the Millennial Arches with “Milenium” written in oil on their chests stuffed into three vehicles not far from the hotel where I stayed, I could hardly say no and remain consistent. I did have another moment’s hesitation on the plane down to Monterrey from Toronto when I made the mistake of reading an exceedingly alarmist article in the New Yorker about the drug wars, which made it sound like your head would be on a stick in a public square somewhere soon after leaving the airport. I had a brief fantasy of accidentally-on-purpose missing my connecting flight in Houston, Texas, but I figured my chances wouldn’t be so great there either, so the clear thinking of my still-attached head prevailing, I soldiered on to Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest metropolitan area, which until fairly recently was considered the safest city in Latin America. It isn’t anymore, not by a long shot, but I’m glad I went anyway.

It’s strange that a metropolis with a population of five million can be so far off the radar of so many people, especially when you consider that Monterrey is also a gorgeous city nestled among several mountain ranges in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. (I shudder when I think of the cretins who think of Mexico only as a holiday destination for sandy beaches and thereby never bother to check out its great cities, much like the tired tourists who only go to resort hotels in Cuba and neglect to explore Havana.) It’s true that incidents of cartel violence, which escalated exponentially over the past six years as former President Felipe Caldéron unsuccessfully attempted to wage war against the drug lords, pretty much stopped American tourists from driving down to Monterrey altogether, only 150 miles from the Texas border. In fact, at times it seemed like I was the only tourist in town (my gingerness made me stick out like a sore thumb), except when ensconced in a swanky Holiday Inn, where a gaggle of American bikers were lodging while attending a nearby motorcycle convention.

Reminders of the barbarity resulting from the turf war between rival drug trafficking gangs do tend to crop up. The gaping, charred remains of a gambling casino, called Casino Royale, which was torched by gun-wielding cartel members last August, burning to death some 53 people trapped inside—mostly women—still stands in the middle of the city. For the last three years the beautiful old part of town, the Barrio Antiguo, which used to be packed with revelers from Thursday to Sunday, is now practically deserted after sundown owing to the presence of the gangs. My host and guide, Alejandro Treviño, director of the Cinetica—where my movies showed as part of QMTY, a new showcase for queer cinema—showed me the exterior of a popular music venue, the Iguana Café, riddled with bullet holes, now colorfully adorned with pastel spray paint. After four people were machine-gunned down in front of it last year, and especially after the casino incident, the downtown area has been eerily deserted. But according to my host, that hasn’t slowed down the gays much. Anecdotal evidence suggests that whereas about 70 per cent of the straight club-goers now avoid the old barrio, only about 20 per cent of the homosexuals have been scared away. Girl has to get her party on. In fact, on a Saturday night, Alejandro and a few of his friends took me to some pretty raucous gay bars in the district, such as the leather bar Brut 33 and the huge, supertrashy tranny/hustler-style bar Wateke, and despite driving around in an expensive vehicle that would be a magnet for the cartels’ favorite sport—car-jacking, with a side of kidnapping—we managed not to have our balls cut off and shoved down our throats. That would have definitely put a damper on the evening.

But not to worry: My host assured me that there is now an app that everyone has in Monterrey that warns them what part of the city to steer clear of on any given day or night. It also helps to have a very experienced and savvy cab driver to take you everywhere, as Alejandro did, a very pleasant fellow named Javier who knew the city inside and out. It was safe enough one day to drive out on a notoriously bad stretch of highway to the Cola de Caballo (horse tail), a beautiful waterfall not far outside the city. My host explained how a majority of the businesses along the highway that had sprung up over the past 30 years—stores selling everything from furniture to swimming pools to children’s toys—have been shuttered, thanks to the cartels. But again, not to worry: the brand new President, Enrique Peña Nieto, leader of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the party that ruled before former President Felipe Calderon for some 71 years, is supposedly cutting deals with the drug lords, so there had been an unusual lull in violent crime in the two weeks since he’d been elected. Most people I talked to had mixed feelings about the old regime, with its fabled history of corruption and fraud, coming back to power, especially as it is now headed by a man referred to as the “Telenovela President” —the Sarah Palin of Mexico, telegenic but dumb (when asked which books have influenced him the most, he could only name approximately two, including the Bible, and he got the author of one of them wrong). But clearly Calderon’s war on drugs wasn’t exactly effective, considering that there were over 45,000 cartel-related deaths when he was in office, nearly 3,500 of them in Nuevo León, the state of which Monterrey is the capital city.

But enough about those bloody-thirsty banditos. Except that I forget to mention that on the day after I went into the offices of El Norte, the largest newspaper in northern Mexico, to be interviewed for a feature article (they also gave a nice review to my gay zombie movie Otto; or, Up with Dead People), several of its offices were attacked with grenades and machine guns. Thankfully, no film critics were killed. I should also point out that the pages of El Norte on the same day announced the “canonization” of a new “narco a capo,” or Narco-Saint. Apparently altars to “San Nazario,” who distributed Bibles to the poor before he was martyred, have popped up faster than the police can destroy them. Luis Buñuel, who made the film Nazarin in Mexico in 1959 about a pious Catholic priest named Padre Nazario who ends up wreaking havoc through his attempts at charity, might have appreciated the irony. As I have recently written a screenplay inspired by two of the greatest foreign directors ever to make films in Mexico, Buñuel and Alejandro Jodorowsky, I am now keen to shoot there myself. I am also ready to complete my zombie trilogy with “Narco-Zombie” (copyright pending), a script I will soon be digging into.

What follows is my photo diary of Monterrey, which, in spite of the drug wars, shows a city full of life, culture, stunning art, and great food that is well worth visiting. Most of the sensational articles about the narco-violence neglect to mention that it’s mostly people directly involved in the drug cartels who become its victims, and although there are sometimes randoms, you might just as easily be killed in, oh, say a movie theater in Denver.

My congenial host and director of the Cinetica, Alejandro Trevin, right, with Juan Manuel Fernandez, director of the Monterrey International Film Festival

The view from my hotel of the Cerrode la Silla (Saddle Mountain), one of the several mountains surrounding the city.

The fancy Holiday Inn I stayed at along with some American bikers in Monterrey.

I ate the delicious machacado con huevos every morning, a Mexican dish made of scrambled eggs and shredded dry beef.

You might not want to eat this: a portrait of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus made out of lentil beans, for sale at a street market.

Like other metropolises I’ve visited in Mexico, amazing works of public art and sculpture abound.

A street in the Barrio Antiguo.

Art is everywhere in Monterrey, including the vans.

View of theCerrode la Silla from MARCO, the impressive Museo de Arte Contemporaneo

I’m not sure what this bus was advertising, but you could probably find it in the Zona Rosa, the gay district of Monterrey. Like most places I’ve visited in Mexico, gay life seems to be relatively open and accepted.

I loved this “zombie building” near my hotel, which the locals call either the “electric shaver” or the “bottle opener”. It was built by the city several years ago as a government office building, but has since remained empty.

I love Latin American cities. They always have an Avenue or Boulevard named after the Revolution.

Roller derby seems to be big in Monterrey.

You have to get your meat on in Monterrey, a city known for its ubiquitous beef and baby goat.

The church and square of nearby Santiago, where protestors and mourners gathered in 2010 after its mayor had his head blown off by a drug cartel. It was later revealed that local police were also implicated in the assassination.

Next week: More faggotry, food, and formations of nature in Monterrey.

Previously – Gays Misguided