interesting take from the daily telegraph’s david penberthy, a guy who’s spent some time living and working in mexico.
DEATH is often depicted in Mexico as an ever-present and humanised force, in the form of a skeletal woman with nicknames such as The Bald One, The Skinny One, The Weeping Woman and, creepiest of all, The Fancy Lady.
The country’s pre-Colombian traditions and its bloody modern history provide a good foundation for a death cult.
…. Overnight on Monday, some of the Mexican news sites started publishing stories about the small town of Perote, not far from where I used to live – a dusty, nondescript place known only for its local delicacy, honey bread.
The stories relate to a five-year-old girl who has contracted swine flu, and may have been the first to do so.
There is speculation in Perote, which the US media is starting to pick up on, that this girl may have become sick as a result of living near an enormous local piggery co-owned by a massive US-owned agribusiness, Smithfield Foods.
For several months now, residents of Perote and the neighbouring township of La Gloria, the site of the piggery, have complained of respiratory illnesses, which they believe are caused by excrement-laden dust in the air.
Also, many residents of Perote and La Gloria live in such extreme poverty that they keep their own pigs and chickens in a common area, in or near the same water supply they use for washing clothes, bathing and preparing meals.
El Excelsior has posted a video on life in the township – go to http://tinyurl.com/dknd33. It’s in Spanish, but the pictures tell the story. You can almost see the Fancy Lady herself.
Now that the five-year-old girl has been diagnosed with swine flu, it has also emerged that two children died in Perote in February and March under mysterious circumstances. Their bodies are being exhumed for testing.
it’s as good as any theory i’ve heard to date. you can read the whole piece here.
