Letters

Editor, 

This is it! I unilaterally declare war and tomorrow will buy an anti-aircraft gun, or in case my aim is shaky, a heat-seeking missle. My target will be the light plane that circled San Miguel today (Thursday, November 6), broadcasting advertisments so loudly that the walls of the house shook. If I receive any messages from heaven I want them to come from an archangel or directly from God Himself, not from some thoughtless clod who has no respect for the citizens of San Miguel.

San Miguel is about fireworks, church bells, music in the Jardín and fiestas. The authentic sounds and noises of Mexico only add flavor to the town we love to live in. Up til now I have tolerated the chainsaw whine of the ultralights, the nasty chop, chop, chop of the helicopters and the drone of light planes. I hoped that they would be banned; now I will be tempted to eliminate them all. 

What they do not have is respect. Respect for our city. Respect for our privacy. Respect for our tranquility.


There is plenty of sky up there. Please, thoughtless pilots, fly over the beautiful mountains; fly over the empty, dry plains; fly at higher altitudes and please respect the comparatively tiny air space over San Miguel.

Jerry Davis
P.S. Don’t forget, I have you in my sights!

Editor,

I could shut up, but for the sanity of other residents of San Miguel I have decided to speak out. I want to describe my recent encounter with CFE, the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, the state electric monopoly.

I pay all my bills religiously every month using Lloyd’s service for this. Unfortunately, neither Lloyd nor I received any bill for October 14. Neither did my neighbours, neither did 20 residents of the Atascadero area of San Miguel. So, the CFE promptly cut the power. They did the same to my Canadian neighbours. I promptly paid the fine of 80 pesos so that I could be reconnected.

Someone came the same day to reconnect, but I told him that very Friday that there was no electricity in the house. He did spend two hours trying to find the problem and claimed the problem was inside my house.

The next day I hired a local electrician, Juan, who arrived on his bicycle to demonstrate to me that the problem came from a bad grounding on the electric post. The electrician of the Puertecita Hotel also confirmed the diagnosis. Thanks to the courtesy of the Puertecita Hotel (my phones needed electricity to work) I called the EDF, which claims to have 24-hour service, and was told very arrogantly that since I had not paid my bill I was to blame and that they would not do anything until Monday.

Three days later, Monday, nothing happened. I called them again. They did not come on Tuesday. I called to ask why, and they said their truck had broken down.

On Wednesday, they finally sent another employee, who confirmed that the problem was the ground in the electric post and that they would send another truck with a ladder.

By then Timothy Morrier, a Canadian master electrician, was at my home to give me support. At Timothy’s suggestion, by 2pm that day I spoke again with the engineer at the electric company. He said he would send the truck within a half-hour. The truck arrived and again the two employees would not acknowledge that the problem was the ground of the electric post. Timothy proceeded to show them what every other electrician (the two other Mexican electricians I had consulted) had confirmed. They finally took the ladder out and climbed the post … tried something else … and it did not work. At Timothy’s insistence they checked the ground and corrected the problem, and I had electricity. I am very grateful, after six days of trials, to have electricity. I do not know how good this kind of service is for any business in Mexico and for tourism to San Miguel. And thank God, I speak fairly good Spanish. I might still be burning candles on Christmas!

I still do not know why the CFE decides once in a while not to send bills and quickly proceeds to cut the service. I will try next year to make a deposit at CFE before I return to Canada for the summer, in case someone at the local CFE decides again not to send the bills to Lloyd or to my home address and service is cut again.

Denis LaRose

Editor,

I have no problem with you printing somebody else’s article [on danzón and Acerina]. That is completely your prerogative. However, I am very disappointed that the article [Atención, Nov. 7, p 11] is loaded with misinformation about the danzón in Mexico and the life of Consejo Valiente “Acerina.” Much of my information comes from Salon Mexico by Jesús Flores y Escalante, a supreme authority on the subject. Profesor Flores came here for the last Cuban festival of Adolfo Rubio and Lupe Meza. I also used “Hey Familia, Danzón Dedicado a ....” by Angel Trejo, as well as one other Mexican and one Cuban authoritative source. I will cite my sources and defend them to anyone. An example: The danzón most certainly did not start in Mexico with Acerina, as the article states. It’s been here for almost 130 years. It may have arrived in this country as early as a year after the 1879 debut in Cuba of what is generally accepted as the first danzón, “Las Alturas de Simpson” by Miguel Failde Pérez. This is in previous articl
es of mine in Atención. Various authorities write that Acerina arrived in Yucatán from Cuba in 1913, not 1921, as your author states. Acerina was born in 1899, according to many sources, and 1903, according to a few. He may have been all of 14 years old when he arrived in this country. I must ask what kind of research the author of your article did. It is certainly true that no one can be 100% certain of the early history of the great one, but your author is way off on many points, including details of his career in Mexico City later on. 

This theme is very specialized, to be sure. It may not matter to readers who are not conversant with the danzón or Acerina. However, it is our duty to give all readers the most accurate information possible. I hope to have the opportunity to present the scholarly information that is certainly available about the danzón and Acerina.

Your reporter also does not know anything about Cuban history. Slavery in Cuba did not last into the 20th, as she states. It was finally abolished by the Spanish Crown in October 1886. You can find this in Cuba: A New History, by Richard Gott, or any other reputable history of Cuba.

Also, your writer says that “thanks to the danzón, Cubans had a moral and ethical basis to consolidate as a nation, that it gave them identity and a sense of identity.” As a joke, I could say, “No, it was thanks to the bolero, or the son.” What happened to Cespédes, Martí, Maceo, etc.? Why did the Mambises have to fight and die? Here, the struggle for Cuban independence has been reduced to a dance. This is absurd!

All of the above is in addition to the misinformation about the danzón and Acerina.

However, it is not all Krishna Villena’s fault. It is also the fault of the fault of editors who did not read or critically read the article so as to prevent erroneous and absurd statements from appearing in print.

Leonardo Rosen