Civil War Stops for a Day in Mexico to Celebrate Chinese Unity

For all the bellyaching by various Western commentors (including myself) about the various distortions, omissions, and portents of the PRC’s celebration of its 60th anniversary, something good indisputably resulted from that event: peace, for a day, in the wartorn Mexican border city of Tiujana.

Tiujuana has been absolutely besotted for many months with internecine drug violence, gang warfare, and random violence.  It is a city basically under martial law, but without much sense of security, according to residents and Americans who travel there from nearby San Diego.  The State Department put out a travel warning recently to stay away!

In this context, a happy dispatch from Xinhua cures all doubts, soothes all ailments, much like even someone who knows Gen. MacArthur is a narcissist and potentially dangerous to all humanity is glad to see him emerge out of the smoke at the Nampo airfield and lift you and your typewriter the hell out of there, and to safety beyond North Korean guns. 

I think you will see what I mean when I say it was somewhat heartening to read this:

Overseas Chinese in Tijuana City of Mexico celebrate the 60th anniversary of the PRC

Mexico’s Tijuana Chinese Association has obtained approval from local government to blockade the city’s busiest street to for a whole day to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their motherland.

The celebration on Avenida Revolucion will begin on the morning of September 19. Nearly 100 retail booths will sell both Chinese and Mexican food and souvenirs, as well as providing financial, travelling and cultural exchange services.

There will be various performances by the local Chinese organizations, including lion dances and dragon dances.

Leaders of local overseas Chinese organizations, including Huang Yuepei, Liang Quannuan, Zhou Guanhui, Ouyang Min and Liu Kewei, etc, have taken on the responsibility of organizing the event, which will also involve Chinese people from the neighboring countries.

or,

华社获市府批准 墨西哥小镇封路搭台庆中国国庆

据美国《世界日报》报道，为隆重庆祝中华人民共和国60周年国庆，墨西哥提璜纳华侨协会取得当地市政当局批准，将在该市中心最繁华的“革命大街”(Avenida Revolucion)封街搭台，举行一整天的欢庆活动。 庆祝活动将从9月19日上午开始到晚间结束，革命大街届时禁止车辆通行，街道两旁将设立近百个零售摊位，供商家租用，售卖中墨两国美食与各式礼品，或提供财务、旅行、文化交流等信息服务。 提璜纳与墨西加利(Mexicali)等城市的华人社团，将组织形式多姿多样的演出、舞狮舞龙，为节日添彩。 今年“十一”庆祝活动由边境各埠华人社团负责人黄沃沛、梁权暖、周冠辉、欧阳民、刘可伟等担纲，来自墨国邻近各州的华人也将派代表参加。（综合中国新闻网消息） 编辑：李诚

Although Western commentators (note my essentialization of “the West,” implying a monolithic drumbeat that levels everyone into an expanding miasmic pool of Westernness where Tom Friedman, Philippe Pons, and my own views all merge into a synergistic and toxic anti-China sludge that wants to keep their antiquities)  — ahem! 

Although Western commentators have been hyperventilating of late as to the Chinese penetration of developing states (see Joshua Kurtzlantzic’s wildly successful Charm Offensive, for instance),  the Chinese have been in Mexico City since 1635.   The Cathcarts — from whom I derive my name and my love for green Scottish lichens — got to Martha’s Vineyard around the same time.  So who is more “American” now? 

In any case, I thought readers of this here pixelwidth-snapping-corneas-to-attention and wrists into tunnels of blood flow which lead to further downward spirals of clicks (for what could be more interesting online than this, as Just Recently calls his own, Wonderful Weblog?) might appreciate a bit of good news for a change. 

Viva la Republica Popular China!?  Fresh from an encounter with an essay on China’s appropriation of the French Commune (even as they bash everyone over the heads with ostensibly feudal Yuanmingyuan heads), I still prefer  “Viva la Republique populaire chinois! ”

Oh, and viva insanely rich Chinese-Mexican drug kingpins who keep billions of RMB in their basements in Mexico City.  (I literally learned of this amazing transnational tale while fondling a rubber-band bound and highly supple version of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in a dark alleyway in San Francisco Chinatown while staring up, away from the bootlegged 精神污染品, and past three competing Chinese flags, to the architecture of another type of  illicit gain — insurance profits and the white Prudential tower, all the while Buddhist chants warbled down the alley…Somehow it made me long for Latin America, another alley-rich environment… )