Chabelo Continues to be News

The local paper, el Diario de Yucatan, continues its exciting coverage of the Chabelo affair with the zeal normally reserved for real news and political reporting. If you don't know what Chabelo is, read yesterdays post or visit his website.

Yesterday, Sunday, the paper had more info on 'what happened' during Chabelo's truncated performance as a guest of the state government. The report included exciting details of the state government officials (paid by our tax pesos) went on a Chabelo hunt looking for the 'artist' after he left the stage and found him in the Liverpool parking lot, waiting for a taxi. The heart-stopping events that followed were also reported, indicating that the government officials convinced Chabelo not to take the taxi (even though it had already arrived and was sent away) and they managed to get Chabelo to get into the official, tax payer funded, vehicle. What they did after that is unclear, since the show did not go on and Chabelo appeared in Mexico City the next day to do his Sunday show.

Today, there is even more news. Hard to believe but thank goodness for this breath of fresh air, because if not, we would be reading news only about the never-ending problems between the PAN, PRI and PRD political factions, narco executions in Sinaloa and the latest man (it's always men, never a woman) to fall down a well, leaving behind children and a distraught wife. The latest report is not really news of course, but a rehash of previous reports and the addition of new 'facts' to the case.

It seems that Chabelo offered a public apology to the people of Yucatan, who he professed to 'love very much' and that the problem was with the 'organizers' (the state government of Yucatan, whom we are supporting with our taxes). He apparently didn't love them enough to continue with some kind of show, though.

Pedro Borges, the local empresario who rented the sound equipment to the government (with our tax pesos of course) to the Chabelo technical crew, and who handed control over to them for the actual performance, indicated that he had noted a feedback problem and commented to the
audio guy working the controls that the problem was with the monitors and that the audio guy took offense at this, closed his laptop containing the Chabelo program and walked away, leaving the suspender and shorts-clad, falsetto-speaking 60 year old 'amigo de los niños' on stage with no tech support.

From a purely Yucatecan POV, this is yet another typical demonstration of why the waches are so hated in the Yucatan. The wach technician (he must have been a wach; I am sure that if you ask people who were there, they will tell you that at least he had an aspecto fuereño) got offended that some country bumpkin from here would tell him, the knowledgeable expert from the big city, about a problem he might or might not be having. And to actually dare to suggest a solution; well, that would be just too much for the ego of this wach and this is why he walked away in disgust at the preposterousness of the mere implication of him not knowing that a) he had a problem and b) that he might not know how to correct said problem. That's what I suspect will be the typical Yucatecan POV, and it's probably correct.

Personally, I am enjoying seeing how our tax pesos are being spent on this ridiculous show, and all the government resources - vehicles, staff, the governor of the state herself taking the stage to apologize for a hissy fit by a self important fossil that could only call himself an artist in a third world culture - alloted not only to the planning of, but also the damage control surrounding the program and it's spectacular failure.