Folks have told me to speak up…I am old…so what else should I do? AMLO and our best reckoning

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     All of this begins with the idea that my great grandfather, Peter Bonesteel Christian b. 1850, was an engineering genius and a cantankerous old goat, and a brilliant agriculturalist, and a magnificent manufacturing mind.   He was also a spy of the industrial, not military, order.   We ran across two references to his travels to France to review the French part of what would later be integrated indirectly  into the American Allis-Chalmers tractor and farm machinery factories and products.
      We know that he was a wayward child of Edward Chistian who was the son of David Christian and Esther Webster who were English people who lived in Ireland and whose parents were involved in liquor, spirits, beers, and such…especially for export.
      Their ancestry dealt for several hundred years in the northern swath of England itself, East Anglia-Nottingham-Stratford on Avon included.  And yes, your humble servant is not a ''pure Anglo"…there is a lot of Belgian, western French, Saxony, and Prussian, and Bremen blood in those veins...about 5 / 64's of El Gringo Viejo's genealogy…and yes, Maria, he is directly related to  Johann Michael Limbaugh and became the 1st cousin, three times removed of Rush because of the Limbaugh's Saxony, Prussian, and Bremen background.
     A  fellow named Asa Grant married a girl named Amelia (Meli) Limbaugh, and she bore a son, among others, named William Grant in 1842 who would become one of my great-grandfathers.


But we diverge:

We submit the words of a writer who visited at one time…not so long ago…and wrote an article for his magazine (of which we were not aware until picking it up on "the web" on this, the 1st day of November, 2019) :

Marvin West

Westwords

PHOTO GALLERY

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It has been said that beauty is where you see it and genius is all around, waiting to be identified.

Beauty — Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre is an adobe house and a little wildlife refuge on the banks of Rio Corona, at the end of the road, 25 or 30 miles from Ciudad Victoria, capital of Tamaulipas, in the middle of a truly majestic geographical and cultural setting.
    It could be the backdrop for a really good, very old movie.

Genius — David Christian Newton, a tall Tex-Mex retired from citrus farming and tour operations, picked this place to build a home and unique business — a guest house with just one guest room, two beds and breakfasts, three-day minimum, available with three week's advance notice.

David Christian Newton relaxes at the  Quinta Tesoro in Tamaulipas with his
 dogs and cats
_______________

He "sells" a form of relaxation that can be slowed down to  and by tranquility.

One guest said "This must be where God comes to gather His thoughts and lower His blood pressure."

Another said the modest fee "beats the heck out of paying a therapist."

David Christian Newton would disclaim any traces of genius. In real life, he is a hard-shell conservative who still thinks the wrong side won the Civil War and that Texas really should secede from the aggravating United States. (It should be noted he is vehemently anti-Klan, and his people were always of that anti-Klan disposition in those days after the War.)
What makes him a genial host is that he kind of likes Mexico, loves living on the outer edge of civilization and realizes he has a treasure to share. He has just enough visitors to keep the lights on. He has the rare ability to keep quiet or share delightful stories of long, long ago.

He says, through the years, he has housed people from afar, even France and Japan, and quite a few Americans and Canadians. Some are academics doing research. Some are serious bird-watchers. Some are history enthusiasts.

"We have had photographers, artists, horse trainers, ghost hunters, even reporters.

"This is a place where you can be pleasantly bored," said Newton. "You can drink beer or not drink beer, feast or fast, or do almost anything that is tolerated by the somewhat antiquated social standards of our peculiar little rural community.   He keeps a small reserve of high-mediocre and top-shelf wines, just in case."

And what a setting! — foothills, a spring-fed river lined with towering cypress, a green zone with no connection to Al Gore or tree-huggers, just the result of property owners agreeing to keep things as they were to ensure reasonable habitat for wildlife.

Next door are the remnants of La Hacienda de Santa Engracia, a legendary place established in the early 1700s, originally a half-million acres, self-contained, self-supporting, self-defending enterprise.

Newton's excursion company was the first to bring in visitors after the rehabilitation of Santa Engracia in the late 1970s.

"We introduced four or five thousand folks over the years to the Hacienda."

The Beautiful Rio Corona with 1,000 year old
cypress trees…"the Rio that never runs dry"
It has springs that originate from the Sierra
Madre Occidental on the western side of
 Mexico, and surface on the Sierra Madre
on the eastern side of the Sierra Madre
Oriental.

There was a time when touring Mexico was big business. David Christian Newton made it work at a high level for more than 20 years.

"We had very good clients — well-to-do people of some refinement, intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, and Lawrence Welk-HeeHaw types who could all get on the same touring coach and really enjoy and learn about Mexico."

Newton guesses he hauled 40,000 people here and there, to nearly every state inn Mexico. He recalls Mazatlan, Copper Canyon, train trips from Merida to Mexico City.

He remembers adventures in Oaxaca, Palenque, Veracruz at Mardi Gras, Xilitla with Los Pozos and the tales of Sir Edward James, Merida, Catemaco, and on and on.

He says his favorite place among truly hundreds was Monterrey. It was a magic mix, rough and tumble, more than a little sophisticated and even arrogant, but very blue-collar in that every third man was some kind of master, glass-blower, machinist, mechanic or watch-repairman.

Monterrey people made things for sale to the rest of Mexico and to the world.

Elections in Real de Catorce

One of Newton's best stories comes from Real de Catorce.

Real, once a thriving silver-mining center, turned into a ghost town in the high and dry hills of San Luis Potosí state. It came back as a pilgrimage site for Catholics and Huichol shamanists. International tourists appreciated the desert ambience. Some thought they felt spiritual energy.

Newton took a group to visit in the summer of 1981. Higinio Gomez and his wife Estella had just opened the newly rehabilitated Meson de Abundancia hotel and restaurant.  The actual building is over 150 years old.

Gomez, a big-city fellow properly aligned politically with the Partido de la Revolucion Institutional (PRI - the government party), decided to run for president municipal (county executive). Because he was PRI, that meant he was essentially elected.

As Newton tells it, Gomez had the support of everybody that mattered, from the governor to the President of the Republic. The campaign theme had been about the federal government providing many pesos for public works to make Real de Catorce into another San Miguel de Allende.

Opposition was a labor-union organizer who doubled as an extortionist.

Newton and 24 gringo tourists showed up on election day.  He observed, "When the polls closed at 7:00 pm, Gomez and his son took the ballot box to the Secretary of State of San Luis Potosi. We found it strange that a candidate would deliver the newly voted ballots, but, hey, who were we to say."

The tourists had a nice dinner. Miners provided entertainment. They had formed a medieval Spanish choral group with stringed accompaniment. Not bad, not bad at all…triple-A minor league.

While songs were being sung, a young hotel/restaurant staffer came to Newton with a whispered warning: "Estella says the boy Roberto has a revolver in his waistband and that his brother and the ruffians are by the cathedral and they are all drunk."

It sounded as if they were sore about losing the election.

Newton and his tour assistant, Rudy, confronted Roberto in the bathroom, quietly disarmed him and tied wrists to ankles. He was deposited in the kitchen pantry.

Estella and her daughter, Estella Jr., emerged with four pistols and a gallon of ammunition. There was a .45 automatic, two .38 S&W and a nine-shot revolver that fired .22 hollow points.

Estella Jr. had the big gun. She caught Newton's curious look and exclaimed, "What? I know how to shoot better than you. I've qualified as an expert with rifle and pistol."

What Newton said was where are the police or someone with the authority to detain these people?

"I was reassured that the driver of the Coca-Cola truck had promised to stop at the military garrison on the other side of the tunnel and tell the commander that there was an insurrection in Real de Catorce because of the election."

The tourists had no idea what was going on as the hotel firing squad left for the church. Estella Jr. and Rudy led the charge, guns aloft. Newton was smart enough to maintain a secondary position.

Not a shot was fired but there was a clatter of rocks, machetes and even a pair of old (inoperable) pistols on the cobblestones. The gaggle of ruffians essentially evaporated.

"The next morning, a very young Mexican Army lieutenant arrived with orders for the tour group: 'Retire from this community at once. That will be without delay.'"

In a matter of minutes, two little, tunnel-sized busses were in front of the hotel, taking on luggage and gringos who wondered why departure was rushed.

There was a command Jeep and a large troop transport with an escort of fully armed soldiers.

"We were soon 5000 feet down the mountain, and our fancy tour bus was there, with the same driver, and we were soon on our way to Saltillo."

Roots

David Christian Newton is also a story. He says he has an Anglo-Southerner/Latin - Spanish colonial Texas marriage.

He says his wife (Diana) is an urban sort, privileged to have had a private Roman Catholic education in the Rio Grande Valley and was almost entirely English-speaking from birth. He was born to a mix of real Yankee bluebloods and East Tennessee people who were substantial farmers.

David grew up on a farm and spoke mostly Spanish as a youth. His parents operated a citrus grove-care operation with Mexican "braceros" to help.

"For the first eight years of my life, I was pretty much surrounded by people from Mexico, working in my parent's business. From 1934 through 1966, we had in and out of our house Mexicans of Indian, mestizo and white ethnic and racial backgrounds.

"As an aside, we had no locks on our doors and had there been locks, we had no keys."

Roots?

"Oddly, from my mother's Tennessee line, I am a second cousin to Rush Limbaugh"  (He is actually a first cousin three-times removed). 

David's great-grandfather, Peter Bonesteel Christian, was involved in the establishment and modernization of the various grain milling operations in Minneapolis. The business, Washburn-Christian Mills, gradually became what is known today as General Mills.

David went to school in McAllen, Texas and graduated from Southwest Texas State University. His brother Milton earned a doctorate at Louisiana State University and headed up the college of earth sciences, geology and geography for a time at that same institution.

Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre "official State sign"

David's mother and brother sometimes served as Mexico tour guides. They couldn't resist. It was an interesting business, travel by busses, trains, horses & donkeys, hiking, and even a few flights.

They took some groups to Acapulco, Zihuatanejo and Huatulco but eventually concluded their people weren't really beachcombers. They did numerous combination Copper Canyon-Mazatlan-Guadalajara trip and a few  return from Merida to Mexico City to Monterrey after the Yucatan Excursion for train-addicts (such as himself)  and those who wanted to say that they "had done did it". (The return was an option, mainly for well-travelled folks.  We charged the cost only, because we were trying to return the touring coach to normal touristic service from Mexico City.)  

They never lost a client or a peso to a drug gang. They did get stranded in a rare snowstorm and spent a few hours in traffic stalled by a protest featuring a million rocks painted white and strategically placed over hundreds of yards of highway pavement.

Mexico City? Ah yes.

"Mexico City still remains fascinating if only because it works, somehow or another, in spite of itself. It has many beauty marks, but people see the scars, scabs, lesions and defects.

"The brooding Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl  mountain peaks to Mexico City's eastern rim,  with smoke and snow, and Chapultepec, The Basilica, the great public buildings and, of course, the incredible engineering — it strikes me as a terminal patient who never really dies.

"But the food, almost always, is really good, frequently excellent."

There is a rumor that the food is also good at Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre, even better if Diana is there.

Do remember to provide three weeks advance notice of intended arrival and probable appetite.

________________________________

    

Popocatapetl is the higher and most active
 volcano.  The  Sleeping Virgin or whatever is
Ixtaccihuatl, the ridge closest to the viewer.
  Both are currently volcanic,both emitting
 steam and other gasses that Ralph Nader
would condemn.

They are almost totally snow-covered during
 the entire year, from 17,000 to the peaks to
 nearly 19,000 feet or a little less. They are
 very, very active volcanoes. They are only
 about 28 miles from Mexico City's centre.
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     We regret boring the folks with these observations, although they are not mine…they are from a discerning…not suspicious, but a reasonable "I've been on these venues before…" type of writer.   That I recall, he was not a Mexico analyst, although he was (is) a savvy reporter and an honest, dutiful fact vacuum-cleaner.

     My calculation is that he gave us an A- for the entire event, although I also don't believe that he had come to the Quinta with the intent to write a penetrating article about it.
    I would prefer to continue with the pointless facts and such other remembrances.  It was surprising to have seen this article that comes from the not-so-distant past,  although we have many various and sundry such commentaries.  Those commentaries are issued more like thank-you notes, while almost all of the material posted above is a published article in a formal magazine.
     Almost all notes, articles, and newspaper inclusions, etc. have been very complementary.   About 2% are contemptuous.   What we are trying to point out and postulate is that there is not a First World nation to-day that is not dealing with the inundation like what is coming into America (and the Republic of Texas) of such slugs and dullards.
   Daily, now, we read or witness on some news broadcast, about those who slay and wound children like the Mara SalvaTrucha 13 and the Callejon 18 types from Central America.  It is as if their only mission in life is to make it  into Gringoland and kill, rape, destroy, and steal whatever they can.
     Lamentably, these types…such as the psychic offspring of Ben Laden and a hundred other nutters are doing the same in Europe, Asia, and other places in the world.   The number of these individuals is approximating three to four hundred thousand at this point, and we can only take solace in the fact that many if not most are killing their own kind.

      The good thing, as expressed above, for the foreign traveller...and the common American…is that the gang groupings seem to normally prefer to kill and rape and destroy other gang members and their sisters and relatives.  Therefore, while the reader might think…"Why do I even care about this…it is madness"…please understand that at the Great Pyramids of Teotihuican out to the near northeastern reaches of Mexico City, about 100,000 people per day visit…90% are foreigners.
      Every day the Grand Zocalo (main central and governmental and ecclesiastical Hallmark of Mexico), almost 1,000,000 people pass through without a problem.  Many gather for the raising and striking of the colours.  All are welcomed.   The average Mexican of the lower and/or upper-middle class enjoy the presence of foreigners…especially, interestingly enough…Gringos.

____________________________

THEREFORE:

    It does not matter where one might find him/her self.    If one slips in the bathtub and cracks his/her brain…it is lamentable.    HOWEVER, WE HAVE ARRIVED AT ANOTHER POINT:

     This is something that El Gringo Viejo has never encountered…and I mean after well over fifty years in Mexico.   A Mexican four-star General of the regular Army…semi-retired…and very successfully accounting for his properties…by inheritance…and by purchase…of small but very nice precincts.
  Although retired, he speaks to the point that ANTONIO MANUEL  LOPEZ OBRADOR (AMLO) has essentially broken the supposed understanding that the true criminals and traffickers (firearms, drugs, and humans) will be punished to fullest extent. 
     LOPEZ-OBRADOR  frankly told the Mexican Army to stand-down.    AMLO declared that probably about 90% of the people in the aforemention trade would understand that the kinder and gentler and more understanding Mexican central government would embrace them as a brother,  travelling a broken trail…etc.  etc.    He assured the Mexican public,  the world observers, and especially the criminal cartels that he would grant them safe harbour as they readapted and made passage to normal social and cultural standards.   They would learn that by a loving AMLO, by giving them money, legalisation papers, whatever they wanted…they would "SEE THE LIGHT" and become humans instead of jackals.

   It was a disaster.   Morale amongst the troops at almost all levels and ranks has wilted.   The "Iron Line" in the south of Mexico, is still attempting, with considerable success, to force Central Americans without entrance permits and appropriate papers as well as others who have been trundling through those precincts to be returned to the southern frontier.
________________________________________________________

      Interestingly enough…all the people who arrived illegally on the edge of the Rio Grande were aware that the people who had swum, crossed, or been delivered by human smugglers because they could live for free in the United States, had been assured that everything is free, especially for exploited and downtrodden immigrants. For Free.
  All of these people have been foisted upon the United States of America and Texas by a fairly well organised and implemented invasion.  Nicaraguan communists, Venezuelan marxist apparatchiks,  especially pseudo Roman Catholic priests, bishops, and nuns and pseudo-members of the diaconate…and yes, other false-flag orthodox and protestant operatives are "helping the poor" at every corner, alley, and "respite centre". 

   This is not a joke, folks!!!!!!!!!!  This is not a joke, folks!!!!!    There are so many babies…there are so many children of single digit ages….and the "refugees'' say that "she" is my daughter, or she is my "mother", or I am the mother of that boy;  but it turns out not to be so.  In almost 40% of the cases  a child did not biologically pertain in any way to the mother and the mother did not in any way pertain, especially biologically,  to the child or children.

     The purpose of Soros and the marxists and the other operatives is to break what little is left of the government bank…to put America into receivership.  We have to understand that the people who hate us, hate us because they think that they deserve something that they have not earned….they do not care.   The dedicated commies and socialists pretty much believe the bilge they spill, and they pour the venom from Satan's challis all over the "poor".

   They themselves make sad movies and provide sad scenarios about how "we" (the oppressed poor) are abused, discriminated against, denied just because we are filthy  and have venereal crabs and rashes, crawling all over themselves.    They think that it is some fault of the Republicans and the stupid people who still believe in the Bible.   The "popular culture" spends over 200% of their time in hedonism and sodomy and drugs and flying (via private Lear Jet) to Ixtupwidlblat in the Kepahwuppun outback to attend a 12 year-old girl's pronunciamentos about "Climate Change".   I forgot that these people drank the last drops of Napoleon's private cache of 200 year old brandy and wine, that had rested another 200 years before the "Climate Change" warning prophesy and warning.

(As an aside, how can these people prophesy?   How can a twelve year old girl prophesy and know, and stand to deliver to adults…all there is to know about geographic climate processes?  How is it that last year, long articles came out talking about the glaciers impeding all nature of sea transport around the tip of South America.)

To the left is how the Straights of Magellan appear during these moments.  Last year the little girl's people assured us and all of the acolytes of the dolt Al Gore (the one who plowed behind mules on the rocky and steep hillsides of Tennessee while tending his daddy's tobacco farms)...that the shipping lanes at the Straights of Magellan were closing due to the number of glaciers

There are three people in this photograph.
Only one is a lying dolt.  

breaking off and clogging everything.    Before long, according to them and the little girl, there would be an ice-bridge connecting the Antarctic Continent with the Continent of South Africa.

     Interesting, is it not, how during the 1970s and 1980s, we were sadly advised that the world would end soon because of Global Warming.   There were only 12 years left to us to try to save at least a remnant of what had been the "Green Planet"?  We were repeatedly reminded that this disaster was due entirely to American Greed, Avarice, and Conspicuous Consumption.   It should be instructive how, when Gore was dumped in the 2000 election by George Bush (also a mullet, but a somewhat good mullet), he dumped his frumpy wife and took took up with a lithe and wondrous honey.  They bought a love-nest on the ocean side of the State of California.

     Only one problem.   The place AlGore bought was well below the point where he declared flatly that the force of Global Warming,  all of that area would be inundated within the next few months with Antarctic and North Polar melt caused by the Republicans and people who had guns.
     To reveal a fact not allowed on the "correct media", AlGore's love-nest…(and according to various women who were masseuses, AlGore was a walking love-nest)…the place he bought for his love-nester-in-sequence…never had its "feet" wet.  The level of the impending melt of the Antarctic did not seem to menace AlBore's love nest, especially when it is noted that the actual sea level there receded by a two or three millimetres.  Sorry, East Anglia University School of Climate Change and Republican Disasters.
 It is almost spooky how Saint Peter and his choir of Angels keeping watch over Earth, have frequentlychanged the micro-climatic conditions to purposefully contradict all of Al Gore's Army forecasts upon hearing his/their pronouncements and the pronouncements of groups such as the  East Anglia University's openly and obviously corrupt, mendacious, surreptitious, and downright hippy, white-trash sneering contempt for "normal people".   Those  "normal people" and their minions are armed with much better intellect and  much greater understanding of climate, weather, and  geo-climatic conditions.
         This latter group (normal and accurate students of the matter) are almost quarantined against commenting publicly about any such topics on any "real" communication system (read 'mainstream media' ABCCBSMSNBCPBSNYTWP.ETC).

     You all must forgive me…but my brother was one of the pre-eminent professors of these matters, and I am somewhat…or slightly considerably familiar…with these matters…and ALL OF IT IS RANCID BOLOGNA.  Please conserve your electricity and do not throw your litter out.  But please do not believe that wind-farms and inverse-proportional infrared zomboistic chromossplats are going to replace natural gas, heating oil, gasoline, diesel, and such.

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     We have laboured little, but with significance,  with our little word-blurb site over the years.   But as it is said by a some Yankee…"The world  will little note, nor long remember"…these passages.  We shall try to send them over to the two off-spring we have produced…but even they have more important views and more important affairs to address.   So this will be "relegated to the dustbins of History" relatively soon I am sure.   Such is the way of life and the structure of things.   We thank one and all for having accompanied us through this portion of our times….

More later…
EL GRINGO VIEJO

_______________________

Sunrise, Sunset…Sunrise, Sunset

Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre

     The times tend to pass us by, while we wait for a better taxi or whatever.  Below, our  folks will see the original broadside propaganda piece that we registered with the British Bed and Breakfast service…almost 17 years ago.   Our place was elevated to the  first place for a B and B in Mexico for rural travellers.

     It was an interesting time when we made the commitment to have to place for birdwatchers and "leave-me-alone" folk who just wanted to read their Agatha Christi mysteries and have their iced-tea or bucket of Corona or Bohemia beers while they lounged on the massive rustic rocking chairs on our "long west-facing corridor".

     During that time to this, one must recognise that twenty or 100 people per week coming by arriving from the Carolinas via motorcycle, and people arriving from France on foot while doing a hiking review of Mexico, we have probably seen it all. 

     The problem at this point is that there are very few people who come out to enjoy the environment…which is still very enjoyable.   It becomes a burden…because both I and my "man-Friday", the venerable Alvaro who is the caretaker and defender of our property during my absence and the primary attendant of the visitors who want to do this or that, have arrived at that point where it is exhausting and unrewarding.    The following entry is the text of the first entry on the British Bed and Breakfast register:

Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre

The Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre is nestled against a spring-fed river, the Rio Corona which comes down from the Sierra only about 3 miles away. Elevations rise sharply to the west, up to 10,000 feet in 20 miles, with peaks up to 13,000 feet within 25 miles .. all this starting from the Quinta's 1,100 foot elevation.

This geographical change, when placed essentially on the Tropic of Cancer creates a mix of forests, vegetation, and wildlife that provides a veritable cornucopia for people who like to do serious...or not so serious .. bird and butterfly watching. We are, for instance, situated on a major flyway for the Monarch butterfly.

We frequently joke that we guarantee absolute boredom .. but it is true that our little place is extremely tranquil. Our clients like to sit in our incredibly comfortable native rocking chairs and read their Agatha Christi mystery on the corridor, drinking a tequila-laden mango & tropical juice iced smoothy, while cajoling our various animals. We refer to our two village dogs as our 'organic security system' and the three cats who condescend to favour us with their presence as our 'organic pest control system'.

The natural scheme is complemented by the fact that thousands of acres of citrus groves surround us. Our next-door neighbours, the Salazars of the Hacienda de La Vega, have several score acres of Valencia orange trees that are over 80 years old at this writing. Orchards with excellent producing orange and grapefruit trees of over 110 years are not that rare. 

There is a colonial-era hacienda, the Hacienda de Santa Engracia, founded in the early 1700's, a little less than a mile from our place, and it affords a nice way to spend a half day or even more. Other farming includes production of squash, beans, corn, vegetables, sorghum .. and one can still see the use of oxen for plows and carts. Modernity is the rule, but this part of rural Mexico always seems to retain significant parts of its past, sort of a permanent exception to the rule..

Your home, the Quinta, is made of all adobe, much in the style of a colonial-epoch Spanish military officer's quarters. It is well-plastered and painted bright white and topped with a split-tile red roof. We accept only 1 - 3 guests at a time, so you and your travelling mate(s) essentially have our un-divided attention. The guest room has its own private entrance and its own en suite private bath.

Your grounds, approximately one acre, are well invested with flowering and fruiting shrubs, trees, and bushes thereby providing generous splashes of colour at almost every turn, and almost any season. The rivermost portion of the property has been left essentially wild, and we have disciplined the grounds as the property moves up from the Rio Corona and closer to the house. This provides many, many places for the native flora and fauna to be seen and admired.

While the home has a military and antique appearance, we do have electricity, a very good-quality water supply, air-conditioned bedrooms, hot water, satellite television, and an antennae-assisted cellular telephone for at-cost-only telephoning. We have on-site enclosed parking, available hair-dryer & iron, am/fm/alarm radio. Laundry service upon request.

The mornings can begin as early as 4:00 am...or later, depending upon each client's wish .. and starts with coffee(or tea), juice, and water service. A very ample brunch is served between 7:00 - 10:00 am. This meal is normally fairly elaborate and will have things that are common to the area, as well as other dishes more typical of Texas ranch or seacoast fare. We do what has been said to be a good job on various Mexican haute cuisine specialties as well. Once again, the morning meal, be it brunch or breakfast, is included in your basis room charge.

The "parrilla" where many
 fine meals are prepared
 in the ancient way.

Other meals can be arranged, be they light lunches on up to nearly gourmet suppers. We can even do pleasant 'parrilladas' .. something like a Texas outdoor barbeque with our parrilla out in our front area. This is always a real hit with our visitors and clients.... something disorganized, informal, open-ended, and very much looked forward to by our return clients. The event commonly combines lunch and supper, beginning as early as 3:00 pm and lasting well into the evening.

We make really good margaritas, martinis, cubalibres, virgin and non-virgin Mango & tropical juice Smoothies. We have cold Mexican beer (usually Corona and/or Bohemia), and a selection of soda pops. These beverages are sold at a very nominal charge.

We also can direct folks to rustic but decent places to eat around the area. Remembering that we are truly situated 'in the middle of nowhere'...(the electrical supply stops at our home) .. It should also be remembered that Cd. Victoria, the capital city of the State of Tamaulipas, is an attractive, modern, progressive community of about 330,000 souls and is situated twenty-five miles or so to the southeast of us. It abounds in nice restaurants of various types, as well as a bit of shopping and touring alternatives.

Besides loafing, painting, photography, writing, editing, beer-drinking, hiking, fishing, birdwatching, eating, reading, horseback riding, butterfly watching, taking siestas, and such activities .. there are also side trips to places of considerable interest from as little as four or five miles distant to 90 miles round-trip requiring a full morning or a little more. Our mountains, just four miles to the west, abound with wildlife, caves, gems, minerals, and forests. Many of our clients continue their trip by driving to the famous El Cielo Biosphere reserve in the mountains south of Cd. Victoria, about 85 miles further to the south. 

Booking your stay through our email is easy .. our charges are nominal .. $140.00 USD for one person, $165.00 for two persons, including a full brunch. We receive no visitors for fewer than our required three nights' minimum. All prices posted in United States Dollars. Prices include relevant sales taxes. The price includes all three nights accommodations and three brunches or breakfasts.

We request at least 2 weeks anticipation so as to have your stay well provisioned. Deposit checks can be mailed to our address in Mission, Texas with balances to be liquidated upon departure in Mexican or American cash. Significant discounts are available for stays in excess of 6 nights. Cancellations 72 hours or less of reserved date will be subject to reduction of refund based upon already spent out-of-pocket expenses. Arrival and departure can be at any time during the reservation period.

Thanks for your interest and attention!

David Christian Newton / owner

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    We continue to have people come by and people who stay for a few nights, but the perception of danger that the American and international press publishes cannot be surmounted.  Much of their news is actually the truth, but it is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
   The Americans and Europeans hear and see things about Mexico that will not be excused or understood in any context.  Those same observers apparently overlook the avalanche of horrid crime, murder, and violence that occurs continuously in every major and middling city in America and the remainder of the "developed" world.

     We have never had an incident at our place…neither in our coming forth, our staying for weeks at a time, or our return for business in Texas.   Perhaps we have been lucky, perhaps we have been somewhat wise in revealing what little wealth we have.  Who can say?

       Consider that our next door neighbour put in a 25,000,000 peso upgrade of his plantation (hacienda), something along the line of 1,250,000 dollars.   The 6,000 tree lime orchard planting is very impressive.

     We shall have more commentary and observations about this topic in the coming days.

El Gringo Viejo

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Songs - Traditional - On Top of Old Smokey

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Please forgive the ancient and unpleasant prelude to the
 topic of this transmission
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The image of a Saturn-based Mr. Whangdoodle who arrived in

 Washington, District of Columbia in the year 1235,  via a

 Clydsedale-team of 12 which was towing a flying saucer.

  

His personal telephone number is BR - 549  (Hee-Haw people

 will understand). Do not reveal this telephone number to

 anyone unless they ask for it.

For lack of any intelligence or moral bearing, and for being

a chronic pathological liar, he was awarded by the Democrat

National Committee the position of Chairman of the Impeachment

Committee of the House of Representatives by Nancy Pelosi.

We regret allowing the picture below to be accessible, perhaps, to very

young children who might happen to see the image, although it does
show Mrs. Pelosi…perhaps at her best.

These two above pictured individuals managed to pick up American

citizenship in spite of being extraterrestrials.

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1.   Ridin' My Thumb to Mexico:

        During my last stay down at our place in Nowhere, Mexico there were many challenges.  Strong localised storms broke out, causing the loss of  many medium sized limbs and many of the older cypress, mesquite, and ebony trees-limbs…all well over 200 years old (some of the cypress trees down at our Rio Corona are 1,300 years old).   Perhaps six inches of rain fell at our place over a two day period…some other areas had 12 to 15 inches.

   It is thought that in the medium-ranges of the mountains to the west there was as much a 20 inches of rain in less than 48 hours.   Closer to the high reaches…Cerro Pen~a Nevada (Snowy Peak)…which is officially calculated at a little less than 12,000 feet…estimates of snow went as high a 24 inches (some analysts consider the elevation figure is too low…estimating its elevation at 13,000 feet).  The Pen~a Nevada is visible from our place, thirty miles distant, and there was considerable snow on "On Top of Old Pena Nevada".

     But I digress.  Your humble servant did his best to help and to organise a formal clearing of the roads and trails in our little community and adjacent places (about 10 square miles).   The Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) did have people out fairly quickly to restore power (14 hours) and certain elements of the Army came out quickly…medical and active soldiers with rifles AND shovels.  Things were pretty much survivable to even pleasant by the weekend…cable TV and all.

     My neighbour, the "hacendado" de la Hacienda de La Vega, came over to work about three hours on our new telephone "processor".  It is a table telephone connected to a land line, but which assigns calls to certain people, who are registered with it, to their cellular telephone in the event that those people are not in answering distance to the stationary "home  phone".    It all seemed too complicated…and the 1,600 pesos is a bit of a let-down…but our friend and neighbour is a brilliant engineer (all kidding aside), and he solved several installation challenges, leaving the apparatus totally functional.

     As a side note, the telephone mentioned above has South Korean, Mexican, and American patents and bloodlines.  As Yogi Berra said one time long ago, "Who'd a thunk it?"

(For newcomers, "hacendado" in the legal sense during these times means only that that person with the title is the owner of all that land you see before you…when you are arriving from afar.)

  In the 1700's through the first third of the 1900's the Hacendados were essentially Patriarchs of Duchies…Dukes at the least if not minor Princes in the  Spanish colonial social order.  Even female aristocrats carried the titles if abandoned by death or lack of progeny.   It was a different time.
      There was one "ranch" in Chihuahua State that was almost as large as the entire State of Chihuahua, back in the 1800s and well into the 1900s…interesting, when one considers that Texas is barely the double of the size of the State of Chihuahua, Mexico's largest State.

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2.   Andres Manuel  Lopez Obrador (AMLO)  -  Ridin' His Thumb to Who Knows Where:
   

     We have observed as carefully as possible, but with little judgementalism, that the President of Los Estados Unidos de Mexico (formal name of our Southern Neighbour), that he is a mentally-impaired dolt who stumbles over phrases…grants himself long pauses for a speaker (4 to 12 seconds)…who changes topics in mid-sentence, then searches the audience in the expectation that they missed the applause cues.


     Don Andres was truly elected to the Presidency of the  most powerful and influential country on the planet.  The Centre and the Right did not force upon Mexico the endless marches and meaningless chantings of leftist slogans of three or four million dullards and communist activists, marching and blocking the elegant…very elegant…Boulevards and tourist points of international interest of common Mexicans and Gringos and all foreigners;  for six to eight months.    Imagine the gutters and sidewalks filled with litter and unmentionable matter.

Downtown Mexico City…on a nice day…about 300 days

per year, now.   Imagine this rotunda surrounded by as

 many as three million dull, snail-brained dumbos every
 month for six to twelve months.

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    You all may have noticed that the PRI's (centrist old party)  Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon - 1994/2000, and Vicente Foxx Quesada of the National Action Party (read - GOP), and the one who followed, also a "conservative republican", Felipe Calderon Hinojosa…were all centrists or right-wingers, reasonable people of argument and agreement…all aggressive ("too many bulls in the corral" is the saying in Texas from days gone by…) but all putting Mexico first…after a fashion.

    While it is true that AMLO is a certified pinko…an ex-governor of the  extremely leftist State of (Tabasco), he has done really nothing worthy of comment in terms of the normal leftist agenda.
     He did say that he would travel only by commercial airliner and he moved out of the Presidential Offices at a place surrounded by highly-crack Mexican grenadiers and riflemen…and some really, really, really excellent military bands.
     Instead, AMLO has opted for a "normal" apartment and a regular date with the private doctors who always pronounce him to be "…in perfect health". 
     
     AMLO has promoted the notion of a Mexico City - Oaxaca - "Maya Regional" train that would connect all the way to Merida, Yucatan…perhaps even Cancun with trains of first-class and deluxe.  The route being proposed includes Tabasco State…which is AMLO's home territory.
    He is also toying with the idea of a "Panama Canal Railroad" that would link Puerto Angel on the Pacific Coast with Veracruz on the Coast of the Gulf of Mexico.   This rail line would probably be involved in Asian - European freight work…and perhaps a passenger line. 

    He also caused to be sold or de-commissioned the "Air Force One" and "Air Force Two", standby elegant jets normally apportioned to the President and/or Cabinet Secretaries.  Now AMLO travels on busses or on common commercial airplanes or in tourist limousines normally used to pick up daughters of foreign kings and poobahs from the Airport in downtown Mexico City.        

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FUTURE COMMENTARY IN THE DAYS AHEAD:    

    The times of the Terraza - Creel families passed…but not by much.   After all the revolutions…Pancho Villa (wildly misrepresented), and the Gringo intervention (1916), and all the losses suffered by the Haciendas by the Central Government's "Agrarian Reform" of the 1930s…one might think that there would a bit of charity…and the first among those needing charity would have been "the wealthy".
     We shall try to explain a bit about the arcane and complicated Mexican proprietary land ownership system.

More later…
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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Trying to re-engage: A battery of approvals and disapprovals

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     The following is my attempt to return to the Braying Barn Commentary Service as a full-time contributor again.  We shall also attempt to avoid long complex articles and justifications of logic that one normally finds in Apologia and Positions.  We now continue.

(1)     We shall begin at these later moments.  The retirement of American troops from Syria, as ordered by Mr. Trump, seemingly from one day to the next, is puzzling to say the least.  We now find ourselves abandoning the Kurdish fighters and their homeland with almost no warning whatsoever.

     The Kurds have been loyal allies, good fighters, and realistic militarists.  Now, they have been relegated to becoming the head of a sandy dust cloud following about 12,000 troops and various vehicles, heading home…as if in retreat or even surrender.   Our President, Mr. Trump, decided to exchange the Kurds for the Turks as per an agreement with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey. 
     The Turks have had a generations-long commitment to the extermination of the Kurds, and now they feel that they have been vindicated to an extent by having the Gringos clear their own allies (the Kurds) from a theatre of war…to be followed by the Americans in a full-speed retreat from Syria.   Upon the arrival of Turkish forces into the hinterland of Syria, the world will see a repeat…in per capita terms…similar to Mao's starvation and firing-squad elimination of over 60 million Chinese who happened to be "inconvenient" to the newly established Communist regime in the late 1940s.

These are Kurdish children…they look like my  grandchildren.  There
 are Yaddish, and Kenta and other such subdivisions of the ethnic group.
  They will "grow up", but they will always see the world as children.
   Very generous, truly warm people who actually love and worship (almost)
 Gringos. 

   We are neither in favour of, nor in opposition to, the matter pertaining to Syria.  Syria is a septic-tanque of scorpions, black intrigue, duplicity, and corruption.   The Kurds have demonstrated that they are child-like in many ways, while at the same time being fierce fighters in defence of their home territory and culture.   I admire Turkey and the Turks…but as a Texian, it is very easy to draw a parallel between Kurdistan and Texas…men and women who age but never mature…workaholics and celebrators of celebrations…friend to any visitor who arrives and does not offend…family…three generations back and three generations forward…and cleanliness.   I have personally engaged and heard of Gringos who said that they were going back because of a pledge made to a Kurdish girlfriend…aiming a marriage…after their tour.   In each case it appears that the commitment remained.

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(2)   With reference to matters on the border.   There are literally scores of "Everybody knows that".   People who say such things are being purposefully totally unaware of the inaccuracy caused by their lunacy and decrepit conclusions.  Such is a serious breach of the rule of logic and should prevent folks who think in said manner from holding property and/or voting, in local, State, and/or national elections.

Vicente Fox Quesada
First  of the Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN) to win
 the Presidency in an honest election in the Presidential
 Election of each six years since 1922 (and a little more).
He entered as an heroic figure, and left as an incoherent
 anti-Gringo somethingoranother.  Sad case.
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     The people flooding and who have flooded up to the border in order to "catch the wave" of automatic wealth by blobbing onto the "Sue~no Americano" are, in the 85 per cent, frauds.   To begin, it has been proven that 30 per cent of the children who arrived with a supposed adult parent(s), actually pertained to another birthing party.   Many of the "migrant children" were sons and daughters of nobody, or were sons and daughters of people who "leased" or "rented" or "sold" their children to those who were "brave enough" to face the American Iron Curtain.
     The once admired slayer of the one-party system in Mexico…a fellow who started his professional life as a Coca-cola delivery driver (as did my Ph.D brother) made a lot of sense during his essentially American conservative Republican catechism.  But, late in his term and thereafter he decided that all ills in Mexico were caused by the Americans because all Americans have and the Mexicans have nothing.  In other words, he reverted to the teachings at University by his professors that all evil flows from the United States of America.
    As the days have gone by, even other intellectual conservative politicians and thinkers in Mexico have tried to, "politely", disregard the first non-Partido de la Revolucion Institucional (PRI) presidente electo since 1922 (date of the infancy of the PRI before it became the PRI).
     And "Yes, Virginia.  You are right…the PRI period had leftists, centrists, and marxists as Presidents of Mexico during that formative period from 1922 through the "solidification" after World War II when things were supposed to close in upon a narrow "democratic socialism" and a "kinder  and gentler capitalist / free enterprise" environment.  That period clumsily bumped ahead from 1969 through the year 2000 when finally a non-PRI candidate won the Presidency of Mexico, the famous Vicente Fox Quesada. 
    Next…it must be repeated with all fervour, with absolute certainty, and with the Iron Will of the Truth…the children latched into cages on the border were not brought here by your humble servant or any other Americans or any other agents save for those in Honduras, El Salvador, and to a lesser extent in Guatemala.  It was and is a complete Real Live Communist offensive backed by George Soros, the Annenberg Foundation, and various European radical organisations. 
     Those children were photographed back in 2013 or 2014, chained into a dog-kennel style shipping crate.  The last time I checked…all such activities were under the control of the Lord Obbamaham and (Sir Edmund) Hillary, and others of their ilk who are dedicated to the destruction of the last remaining hope for the salvation of the Planet.   Donald Trump is not a free-enterprise and capitalist-type "Freedom Loving American", but he is the only limping donkey available to the due process confronting us at this time.   We have to admit that he makes good golf courses and he does have a vision of American larger than he, himself.

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(3)   But Trump is not a free-enterpriser and he will throw us under the bus if he can make some "Greater Compromise for American Culture" in order to "Ensure His Legacy".  Our job, as I see it, is to remain loyal to our catechisms and to our pledges, codes, and given promises.
      For instance, I shall always remain loyal to Texas, which provided me a home.  I shall always remain loyal to the South and the Confederacy…but never to the oppressors such a the Ku Klux Klan…because I am a Confederate…and not a Klanner…which was a pseudo- "veterans' group", closed down by (Retired General) Nathan Bedford Forrest, who shortly after the War, sponsored them.
    The facts are that the KKK was spawned more by the occupying Yankee invader  and their "businessmen" friends than anything else.…Many of the white-trash pseudo-Confederate soldiers (enter 'deserters') at the end of the War, found "employment" with the newly arriving Northern investors.   We enter this truly leftist, but honest, analysis of the life of the Confederate General:

Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest

(Following text is derived from Wikipedia.  It is somewhat accurate.)

     Forrest joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 (two years after its founding) and was elected its first Grand Wizard. The group was a loose collection of local factions throughout the former Confederacy, some used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly-enfranchised slaves.

     The Klan, with Forrest at the lead, suppressed voting rights of blacks in the South through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868 (?).  (The elections of 1868 were pure sham.  The entire exercise was controlled by the occupation army and civilians,  mainly northerners, who wanted the South to suffer its arrogance.) In 1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline among the various white supremacist groups across the South, and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan and the destruction of its costumes.

      He then withdrew from the organisation  In the last years of his life, Forrest publicly denounced the violence and racism of the Klan, insisted he had never been a member, and made a public speech in favour of racial harmony (Forrest declared that he was ashamed of the posture of many of the KKK cells and their leaders, so he resigned "from beginning to end" of his service.)

     We should point out that Nathan Bedford Forrest also funded the establishment of the first Negro Law School, requiring of the University of Tennessee that graduates would be sponsored to the Bar.  The University complied.  That was in 1872, I believe.

     He also had a Praetorian Guard of forty-two Negro slaves of his plantation enterprise.  They were excellent horsemen and very dedicated to Mr. Nathan. He spoke to the men at the beginning of the War and guaranteed them manumission at the end of the War.  In reality he gave them their letters of manumission after about 10 months, when it became apparent that the War would not be a short one.

     Oddly enough, although they assembled formally at times at the side of "Gen'l Nathan", they also served in the ranks. Their "camp" however, was always near the tent of General "Marse Nathan".  As stated before, Forrest delivered their manumission papers to them long before the end of the War…due to their incredibly brave and effective service. 

     Stranger yet, of the 42 or 43 previously "slave" soldiers, all survived without serious wounds, vigorous horrid warfare save for one who was blown off his mount by a Yankee "cannon bomb"…thereby suffering an incurable inner-ear insult…preventing him from ever climbing ladders, mounting mounts, or such things.  He could barely walk a straight line.

      All the other Nathan Bedford Forrest's command combat Negro Confederate Heroes survived the War, and all would receive, whenever recognised in public, reverential treatment even from Yankees, white-trash, and of course, the common Southern People, rich or poor or indifferent.

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(4)     We respond to folks who write or email and ask about recommendations about where to go in Mexico that might be relatively safe and also of interest to a visitor looking for interesting venues.  My first recommendation to anyone(s) who want to see the "real Mexico"…go to Guanajuato, Guanajuato.  One can walk onto a first-class or deluxe autobus near the airport …literally scores of clean, well-conducted drivers…it might take an hour or thirty minutes…more or less…but relax.   You will be in Guanajuato, Guanajuato in "poco rato" (a short time).   The run for a direct or semi-direct autobus will take about four hours to Guanajuato, Guanajuato.   San Miguel de Allende is an equivalent destination…about the same price and time.  Both are in the State of Guanajuato…the true finest jewel in the Crown of Mexico, in my humble opinion.  There are probably 1,000,000 other places that compete for that crown…in Mexico…but if you are just stepping off into the morass of busses and taxis and whistles and yelling and vendors with slop wrapped up that cannot be identified in any zoo…be aware…these are your friends.  And the slop they are wrapping in tortillas and otherwise dishing out is actually delicious and fortifying.  And cheap.

      It is difficult for a person to understand or believe.  If one might wish…take a taxi outside of the airport building…(there are several thousand landings during a 24 hour period at the Mexico City Airport)…and there are lines of taxistas waiting to take you to Acapulco or Guatemala City or to the nearest convenient hotel.  It is disciplined and there are monitors watching every move the taxistas make.
     We hear of horrid Bus Crashes in Latin American…sometimes Mexico…but the very, very sophisticated American and foreign reporters…all leftists…and who hate Mexico because Mexico's leftism is "peculiar"will write up copy that is full of the truth….to an extent.  Normally their submissions will include slightly incorrect to blatantly and intentionally wrong commentary.  New York Times and the Associated Press people like to sensationalise problems in Mexico and disregard Mexico's accomplishments.   It is very rare that I review an article from the Obsolete Press that pertains to Mexico and find it accurate.

    But we digress…if you wish to go a shorter distance and can put up with first-class instead of deluxe…one might leave the Airport and go to the nearest huge bus terminal in the North part of Mexico City…the taxi might be five or ten dollar's worth of pesos.  One can check at the "de luxe" bus service, because there might well be a vacancy, cancellation, or just available space.  It depends upon time of day, etc.
   Try and change at least 300 dollars into Mexican currency at the "change houses" in the airport.  (remember that your American Express, Visa, and/or MasterCharge are all en force and you can do well with a good secured card.    To give you an idea, my wife (who did most of the work and all of the accounting) or I would go and change dollars into pesos when we were starting our business, at times carrying more than 2,000,000 pesos in cash for a 14 day excursion..
     Towards the end…it was all credit card…almost no cash…although I did carry a massive amount (in Mexican terms) of Mexican paper in the outback areas where the people were suspicious of credit cards and such demonic things.   To-day, 98% of the territory is covered by the "little black box"that miraculously moves money from your card to the correct bank or business.

      REMEMBER, IF YOU ARE GOING TO MEXICO BY AIR…IT IS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT  TO KEEP YOUR PASSPORT, YOUR MEXICAN ENTRY PERMIT, AND SUCH CLOSE TO THE HEART.  MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU NEVER SAY,  "I am an American…you cannot detain or interrupt me." to the officers at the Airport in Mexico City or any other first landing airport  (Puebla, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Merida, Monterrey, etc). One will learn quickly that it is simply best to follow the instructions of the duly appointed officers.

    When I was born, in 1947…there were about three airports in Mexico that could tolerate landings by significant airliners.  All the airports, about 25 of them, at these times have an A++ record in terms of safety.  I do not fly because I hate flying.   But…the reader can be reasonably assured that the Mexican common carriers have a record at or above the best carriers in terms of more or less on-time and very professional safety procedures and process.

     At our little bed and brunch adobe hut…we have a Mulligan Stew of patrons.  We have had people coming to attend a wedding, people coming to take advantage of the over 500 species of birds, both common and exotic, to people coming to "finally see the stars" because of our very dark nights…and people who come specifically "be be bored, to read a good book, and drink decent beer".   I have become a fairly good minor league "cooker" and we have a very limited saloon selection…but no one has ever gone hungry or without "basic-deluxe" provisions.  We are genuinely at the edge of reality…although you will find the people very "associative" and kind and essentially proud of the fact that foreigners and out-of-towners are staying among them.
    And yes, Virginia, I did have a French couple who had their bedrolls and asked to sleep on our corridor.   They were essentially hiking through Mexico.  I allowed such…although it was required of myself by me that I stayed up all night due to the fact that we have the occasional major mammal…and there were snakes.   During the past 15 years, however, we have had no snakes save for a few non-poisonous types who keep their distance.  The French couple did use the television, the bathroom for showering and makeup, and so forth.  I charged them 1/2 price.  They left happy.
DCN (aka - El Magnifico)…..

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This will conclude my ramble.  More will follow.  Thank you all for your kind attention, your commentary, and your ideas for future articles.

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EL GRINGO VIEJO

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