Something to consider as you enjoy your guacamole.

19 dead, nine of them swinging from a bridge in a town 250 miles from Mexico City.

This is about drugs, right?

Yes and no, but in the sense of insatiable demand by American consumers ...

Mexico cartel hangs bodies from city bridge in grisly show of force, by Tom Phillips (The Guardian)

 ... Falko Ernst, an International Crisis Group researcher who studies Mexico’s cartels, said this week’s slaughter was clearly intended to intimidate rival criminal groups, the families of their members, as well as Mexican authorities.

Ernst said the bloodbath was partly about the struggle for control of Uruapan’s local drug trade. But a more important motivation was the fight for the region’s billion-dollar avocado industry. “The big magnet here is avocados,” he said.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Mexican beer versus craft-brewed, Mexican-style beer.

Back in the day when beer judging actually mattered to me, I was fond of saying that if one were to take Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) and other aggregations of beer style definitions at face value, the most accurate and clever of the definitions thus far devised would be the ones describing Miller Lite and its emasculated ilk.

These definitions invariably were written as a litany of comical negations -- this beer sample submitted for judging can't have any evidence of malt and mustn't have hop character ... best examples are clean, crisp, odorless and entirely without flavor.

In short, all but the faintest traces of those qualities separating beer from carbonated water were to be removed almost entirely for the beer in question to be representative of style -- with the margin for error always tilted toward fizzy wateriness.

This brings me to Mexican lagers, and before wading into the trend nouveau swamp, allow me to issue a reasonably honest disclaimer, in that I've waited a very long time to dip a quivering toe into this topic.

First it was necessary for me to complete my beer snob rehabilitation course. I'll never be fully recovered, but I'm much better now. I remain determined to avoid liquid atrocities like Bud Light touching my lips, and yet there is peace in my tattered soul; if you want to subject yourself to the senselessness, it's fine and dandy with me. Go right ahead and urinate a lot.

Live and let drink swill, I say, and no longer do I have any compelling interest in explaining the error of your ways -- well, except today, as insinuated by the words I'm writing.

(My therapist kinda/sorta approves the preceding message.) 

For most of my adult life, the preceding antipathy to flavorless beer has applied as much to standard golden Mexican lagers as low-calorie American marketing exercises. There's a caveat, however. Dos Equis (the Amber version) and Negra Modelo are different.

While not exuberantly flavorful, there's enough Vienna or Munich malt in them to make the game worth the flame, especially with Mexican food -- although Negra Modelo's claim to be a Munich Dunkel seems contrived to me.

As it pertains to all those golden-colored Mexican lagers, it can't really be asserted that they have much to do with Vienna anything; it's more about corn and faint hints of grain and hops, eternally touted on the basis on thirst-quenching capability.

Again: fine. Have at them and exercise your kidneys. What I find exceedingly curious about all of this is the (fairly) new wave of craft-brewed, Mexican-style lagers.

(Further reading: What makes a Mexican-style lager?)

It puzzles me because of a very simple distinction: If a craft brewery succeeds in mimicking a Mexican golden lager, then it has produced a flavorless beer which usually will cost 25% more than the genuine article.

And, if the objective is replicating Negra Modelo -- as Daredevil in Indianapolis has done quite tastily, the price differential might be closer to 30% more.

It isn't my aim to stomp on creative exuberance, just to point out that mass market economies of scale are neither friendly nor available to craft brewers who conjure flavorlessness rather than flavor. Speaking only for myself, I'd just as soon pay less for the beer from Mexican -- you can do as you please with no riposte from me.   

---

As a postscript, something not about Mexico at all.

Festivals: 10 of the UK’s most scenic beer festivals, by Tony Naylor

Beer and beauty combine at these brews with a view events at both rural and city locations across the country

Historical amnesia: "The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition."

There is very little "new" under the sun, but with the advent of the internetz and social media, there are numerous and innovative ways of misunderstanding the "old."

In short, southern border issues real or imagined are a natural, longstanding consequence of America's presumed "manifest destiny," or in other words, our deity-given right to claim western territories from whomever occupied them first -- by force, if necessary.

Ever heard of the Mexican-American War?

The Militarization of the Southern Border Is a Long-Standing American Tradition, by Greg Grandin (The Nation)

Trump’s wall is just the latest incarnation of an old fixation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.

The point was less to actually build “the wall” than to constantly announce the building of the wall. “We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it,” Donald Trump tweeted. “What a thing of beauty.”

In fact, no wall, or certainly not the “big, fat, beautiful” one promised by Trump, is being built. True, miles of some kind of barrier—barbed wire, chain-link and steel-slat fencing, corrugated panels, and, yes, even lengths of what can only be described as concrete wall—have gone up along the US-Mexico border, starting at least as far back as the administration of President William Taft, early in the last century. Trump has claimed repairs and expansions of these barriers as proof that he is fulfilling his signature campaign promise. Plaques have already been bolted onto upgrades in existing fencing, crediting him with work started and funded by previous administrations.

And yet Trump’s phantasmagorical wall, whether it ever materializes or not, has become a central artifact in American politics. Think of his promise of a more than 1,000-mile-long, 30-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the southern border of the United States as America’s new myth. It is a monument to the final closing of the frontier, a symbol of a nation that used to believe it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to believe they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past.

Prior to World War I, the border—established in the late 1840s and early 1850s after the US military invaded Mexico and took a significant part of that country’s territory—was relatively unpoliced ...

As long as DNA continues to evade its "Taco Walk" ramifications of stereotyping and cultural appropriation, we'll keep bringing it up.

For those who have commented that stereotyping and cultural appropriation are perfectly acceptable examples of harmless human frivolity ...

In 2018, DNA's artlessly purloined Taco Tone Deaf Cultural Appropriation Walk moves forward to May 19, with the Frito Bandito returning as Grand Marshal.

... it may prove helpful to peruse this repeat of a post from August 19, 2017.

Which is to say, what you do on your own time is your burden, but shouldn't we expect a higher standard from organizations tied to municipal government?

---

Who'd have guessed? William Anthony Nericcio's "aggressive, relentless, and, at times, pathological interrogation of Mexican, Latina/o, Chicana/o, "Hispanic," Mexican-American, and Latin American stereotypes."

Apropos to nothing in particular, were you aware of this blog?

The new and improved Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog™ devotes itself to the aggressive, relentless, and, at times, pathological interrogation of Mexican, Latina/o, Chicana/o, "Hispanic," Mexican-American, and Latin American stereotypes. It is both the online supplement to and the bastard sister of a 2007 University of Texas Press book. The book, marketed for the general public (not just academic cultural studies wonks) and a perfect (if a tad garish) stocking stuffer, is also available from Powells, Amazon.com, and LA's rad Skylight Books.

The educational opportunities are virtually limitless, but here's a particularly instructive blog entry: Hipster Ode: Sombreros, Zarapes, and the Witchy Magic of Tequila.

Well there! Thanks to our friend Miguel-Angel Soria for the saucy linkazo to Etsy, the hipster DIY mercado. This stationer was so inspired by the dreamy voice of Joe Nichols' song: Tequila Makes her Clothes Fall Off, she designed a bachelorette party invitation as a loose-fitting ode to the song. No need for the Algebra degree. Etsy-selling lady figured it all out. ¿Cierto?

Tequila = Mexican, which means: Mexican = Sombrero and Zarapes.

A taste of the salty lyrics (no lime required.)

"Them pantyhose ain't gonna last too long

If the DJ puts Bon Jovi on

She might come home in a table cloth.

Ya tequila makes her clothes fall off"

Unconvinced by a blog? Confident that this troublesome blogger probably comes without the sort of academic credentials designed to make you sweat? Wrong again. The blog's creator ...

William Anthony Nericcio is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University in California, where he also serves on the faculty of the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

... has even written a much praised book on the topic.

Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America, by William Anthony Nericcio

A rogues' gallery of Mexican bandits, bombshells, lotharios, and thieves saturates American popular culture. Remember Speedy Gonzalez? "Mexican Spitfire" Lupe Vélez? The Frito Bandito? Familiar and reassuring—at least to Anglos—these Mexican stereotypes are not a people but a text, a carefully woven, articulated, and consumer-ready commodity. In this original, provocative, and highly entertaining book, William Anthony Nericcio deconstructs Tex[t]-Mexicans in films, television, advertising, comic books, toys, literature, and even critical theory, revealing them to be less flesh-and-blood than "seductive hallucinations," less reality than consumer products, a kind of "digital crack."

Nericcio engages in close readings of rogue/icons Rita Hayworth, Speedy Gonzalez, Lupe Vélez, and Frida Kahlo, as well as Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil and the comic artistry of Gilbert Hernandez. He playfully yet devastatingly discloses how American cultural creators have invented and used these and other Tex[t]-Mexicans since the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thereby exposing the stereotypes, agendas, phobias, and intellectual deceits that drive American popular culture. This sophisticated, innovative history of celebrity Latina/o mannequins in the American marketplace takes a quantum leap toward a constructive and deconstructive next-generation figuration/adoration of Latinos in America.

Why bring this up?

Just because I believe in teachable moments -- nothing more, nothing less, and if the ones who should be doing it refuse to so much as answer e-mails, I'm eager to step into the breach with source material.

Who'd have guessed? William Anthony Nericcio's "aggressive, relentless, and, at times, pathological interrogation of Mexican, Latina/o, Chicana/o, "Hispanic," Mexican-American, and Latin American stereotypes."

Apropos to nothing in particular, were you aware of this blog?

The new and improved Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog™ devotes itself to the aggressive, relentless, and, at times, pathological interrogation of Mexican, Latina/o, Chicana/o, "Hispanic," Mexican-American, and Latin American stereotypes. It is both the online supplement to and the bastard sister of a 2007 University of Texas Press book. The book, marketed for the general public (not just academic cultural studies wonks) and a perfect (if a tad garish) stocking stuffer, is also available from Powells, Amazon.com, and LA's rad Skylight Books.

The educational opportunities are virtually limitless, but here's a particularly instructive blog entry: Hipster Ode: Sombreros, Zarapes, and the Witchy Magic of Tequila.

Well there! Thanks to our friend Miguel-Angel Soria for the saucy linkazo to Etsy, the hipster DIY mercado. This stationer was so inspired by the dreamy voice of Joe Nichols' song: Tequila Makes her Clothes Fall Off, she designed a bachelorette party invitation as a loose-fitting ode to the song. No need for the Algebra degree. Etsy-selling lady figured it all out. ¿Cierto?

Tequila = Mexican, which means: Mexican = Sombrero and Zarapes.

A taste of the salty lyrics (no lime required.)

"Them pantyhose ain't gonna last too long

If the DJ puts Bon Jovi on

She might come home in a table cloth.

Ya tequila makes her clothes fall off"

Unconvinced by a blog? Confident that this troublesome blogger probably comes without the sort of academic credentials designed to make you sweat? Wrong again. The blog's creator ...

William Anthony Nericcio is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University in California, where he also serves on the faculty of the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

... has even written a much praised book on the topic.

Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America, by William Anthony Nericcio

A rogues' gallery of Mexican bandits, bombshells, lotharios, and thieves saturates American popular culture. Remember Speedy Gonzalez? "Mexican Spitfire" Lupe Vélez? The Frito Bandito? Familiar and reassuring—at least to Anglos—these Mexican stereotypes are not a people but a text, a carefully woven, articulated, and consumer-ready commodity. In this original, provocative, and highly entertaining book, William Anthony Nericcio deconstructs Tex[t]-Mexicans in films, television, advertising, comic books, toys, literature, and even critical theory, revealing them to be less flesh-and-blood than "seductive hallucinations," less reality than consumer products, a kind of "digital crack."

Nericcio engages in close readings of rogue/icons Rita Hayworth, Speedy Gonzalez, Lupe Vélez, and Frida Kahlo, as well as Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil and the comic artistry of Gilbert Hernandez. He playfully yet devastatingly discloses how American cultural creators have invented and used these and other Tex[t]-Mexicans since the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thereby exposing the stereotypes, agendas, phobias, and intellectual deceits that drive American popular culture. This sophisticated, innovative history of celebrity Latina/o mannequins in the American marketplace takes a quantum leap toward a constructive and deconstructive next-generation figuration/adoration of Latinos in America.

Why bring this up?

Just because I believe in teachable moments -- nothing more, nothing less, and if the ones who should be doing it refuse to so much as answer e-mails, I'm eager to step into the breach with source material.

ON THE AVENUES: Mezcal for what ails you.

ON THE AVENUES: Mezcal for what ails you. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

My most recent writing assignment for Food & Dining Magazine has taken me into the exotic realm of mezcal, one of our planet’s most unique distillates, as well as the probable source of at least one superb literary insight.

“How, unless you drink as I do, could you hope to understand the beauty of an old Indian woman playing dominoes with a chicken?” ― Geoffrey Firmin (the Consul), in Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano

Indeed, it is highly doubtful that Bud Light Lime might ever assist an aesthetic judgment in this manner, though it suffices very nicely for TIF bonding and bunker ductwork maintenance.

(As an aside, mezcal often is spelled mescal, as in Lowry’s novel, with Microsoft frustratingly opting for the latter usage in its Word spellcheck feature. Which spelling is proper? Given that most of Mexican sources consistently use mezcal, and mescal only confuses matters by suggesting a non-existent correlation with mescaline, I’m opting for the “z”. Perhaps someday Bill Gates will, too.)

As mentioned previously at NA Confidential, the former consular official Geoffrey Firmin is the main character in Lowry’s acknowledged literary masterpiece, a story that takes place in Quauhnahuac, the ancient name for present-day Cuernavaca. Lowry lived there briefly during the late 1930s, and then as now, the monolithic volcanoes named Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl loom over the city, both topping 17,000 feet.

The volcanoes don’t feature prominently in the novel’s plot, but their presence as backdrop is a smoldering, implicit threat of abrupt violence. This is indicative of the symbolic and metaphorical value of volcanoes throughout recorded history, as in the case of a contemporary writer describing them as "wombs spouting flame."

You wouldn’t necessarily compare a volcano to mezcal, although a bottle of champagne often is used to describe pressure building to a breaking point, a phenomenon with which white American males of a certain age are becoming depressingly familiar.

The Consul is a raging alcoholic on a fast track to oblivion, and mezcal is his drink of choice, lubricating a winding path from cantina to cantina as Lowry deploys Cuernavaca’s annual Day of the Dead festival to spread foreshadowing all around. Firmin was Lowry’s fictionalized mirror image, and yet while the writer’s own drinking problems occasionally were debilitating, his skill in painting word pictures of Mexican people and landscapes remain noteworthy even today.

For me, researching mezcal has been a refresher course in Mexican history, and a reminder that Americans actually know very little about it.

Sadly, my deadline has decreed the expenditure of far more time spent writing soberly about mezcal than devoted to instructional tastings of the elixir, but I’ve had nips and sips enough to suggest that further self-education in mezcal will be edifying, indeed.

Think of it as a journey: Agave → Pulque → Mezcal.

---

From the dawn of human habitation in Mexico, the region’s indigenous peoples knew that agave, a cactus-like “wonder plant” also known as maguey, was indispensable to their existence. Every part of the agave could be used to sustain human life. It was capable of providing food, clothing and the raw materials for tools and shelter.

The agave plant adapts to its hot, dry climate by hoarding water and harboring sugary sap, used traditionally both as a sweetening agent and the source of fermentable sugars. For thousands of years, the daily outcome of putting agave’s sugars to work was a milky, lightly alcoholic beverage called pulque.

Hence, my favorite foundational agave tale from ancient times. There was a clever tlacuache (opossum), who cracked the code and learned how use agave’s sap to ferment pulque. The opossum later was placed in charge of river design. Eventually it was noticed that rivers ran straight when the opossum was sober, but zigzagged unpredictably when he was hammered on pulque.

Much later, when the invading Spaniards brought alembics, or stills after the Arabic model, it became possible to concentrate pulque’s alcoholic content into a liquid far stronger. The result was mezcal, of which tequila is merely one variety according to rules governing denomination of origin.

Nowadays mezcal differs from tequila according to demarcated region; the type of agave used; and the manner of production.

Mezcal’s demarcated "source" region centers on the city and hinterlands of Oacaxa, and a few other surrounding Mexican states. The emphasis is placed on old-school techniques, of which some are more modern than others, though mezcal’s current notoriety and its value as an export seem firmly rooted in “small batch” thinking and practice. I hesitate to use the word artisanal, which nonetheless is appropriate in this instance.

For those palenques (farmhouse distilleries) foraging wild agave, the harvest is a time-consuming exercise in itself, akin to patiently searching for mushrooms or truffles. Agave resists domestication and its maturation is painstakingly slow, lasting up to ten years even for those semi-domesticated varieties that permit farming.

A mezcal producer might wait fifteen to twenty years for highly desired wild agave to become suitable for use, then spend hours extracting and transporting the piña (or heart, resembling a giant steroidal pineapple) from the top of a hill or bottom of a ravine, with the ultimate yield of only a few dozen bottles of exceedingly rare albeit extremely valuable mezcal to come from the effort.

Traditional fermentation and distillation are labor intensive and time consuming. The harvested agave hearts are pit-cooked for days on wood-fired rocks, then pulped and mashed by hand, or with a huge circular stone wheel (tahona) pulled by a horse.

The liquid pressed out by the tahona is called aguamiel (honey water) and resembles sweet, unhopped brewing wort. The aguamiel and leftover agave fibers are transferred to wooden for open fermentation with added water and ambient yeast (as with Belgian Lambic).

Stills are made from copper or clay. Mezcal is colorless like vodka and generally undergoes no further aging after distillation is completed, but the words Reposado and Añejo signify examples that have been oak-aged. Mezcal now is shipped around the world, fetching prices you’d expect from special Bourbons and Scotches.

Each stage in the conversion of agave into mezcal has the potential to alter the character of the finished product, making for a spirit wickedly adept at revealing the nuances of its terroir.

More than 40 types of agave can be used to make mezcal, and each one has its own distinct fruity flavors and aromatics. Roast and smoke are added when the hearts are cooked. Wild yeasts leave their own olfactory calling card during fermentation. Clay stills just might leave a sensation that copper ones wouldn’t.

It isn't hyperbole at all. Mezcal’s organoleptic kaleidoscope is vast and endlessly evocative, but it's moot if the agave runs out, and this is a consideration as mezcal's export value increases.

Can mezcal be sustained in environmental and human terms, and still retain the qualities that make it unique? That's the million-dollar question at present. Let's hope we're not witnessing the end times for an art form that originated so long ago.

---

At this point you may be wondering about the worms.

After first reading Under the Volcano more than three decades ago, my friend Bob and I decided to conduct field research on mezcal. We went to Cut Rate Liquors in Jeffersonville, which offered the largest selection of booze at the time, only to find precisely one bottle labeled as mezcal, complete with two deceased agave worms (dos gusanos) reposing at the bottom.

These worms were supposed to be the ultimate stamp of macho Mexican authenticity, but to us they contributed little to the drinking experience. In fact, the mezcal in which they were immersed itself seemed unspectacular, and soon we were back to mass-produced Pepe Lopez tequila and Dos Equis cerveza.

These days, there is broad agreement that the embalmed worms are little more than a marketing-driven distraction. However, it is both permissible and encouraged to crush worm larvae along with chili peppers and salt, a condiment called sal de gusano (worm salt), meant for dredging with orange slices to cleanse the palate between straight shots of mezcal.

Let’s hope mezcal's sustainability issues are resolved, and that it continues to find its way through Donald Trump’s projected Great Wall of Futility, to reach those of us right here in New Albany who need it so much.

Starting tomorrow, the mescaline sounds appropriate, too.

After all, we'll be padding the Consul's one-day, mezcal-powered barroom crawl to at least four years, and hallucinogenics are looking like the ideal pairing with worm salt.

---

Recent columns:

January 12: ON THE AVENUES: I can only handle one resistance at a time, please.

January 5: ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's stadium arcadium kicks off a new year with hilarity, pathos and own goals.

December 29: ON THE AVENUES: The 45 46 Most Popular NA Confidential Stories of 2016.

December 22: ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

Under the Volcano ... and an inquiry into the life and death of Malcolm Lowry.

And now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal.
-- Malcolm Lowry, in Under the Volcano

In 2015, I had the pleasure of reading the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, a substantial portion of which takes place in Mexico. At present, I'm wading through Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer, another hefty novel centering on Mexico, and also writing a column about mezcal for Food & Dining Magazine.

It was only a matter of time until an old fascination came back to seize me: Under the Volcano, the legendary novel by Malcolm Lowry, telling the story of the doomed, self-destructive Consul, Geoffrey Firmin, stumbling drunkenly through his last day on earth, amid the Day of the Dead, in the shadow of two Mexican volcanoes.

Booze flows through Lowry’s writing. It’s a way of escape, as much as the sea voyages and plane journeys he wrote about. In Medieval times, a definition of possession included drunkenness, and Lowry was well aware of drink’s shamanic association:

“The agonies of the drunkard find their most accurate poetic analogue in the agonies of the mystic who has abused his powers.”

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this 1976 documentary film about Malcolm Lowry, arguably the English-speaking literary world's most infamous alcoholic, is that Richard Burton, himself a legendary drinker, was both willing and eager to act as conduit for Lowry's voice.

This feature-length Oscar®-nominated documentary focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano. But while Lowry fought a winning battle with words, he lost his battle with alcohol. Shot on location in four countries, the film combines photographs, readings by Richard Burton from the novel and interviews with the people who loved and hated Lowry, to create a vivid portrait of the man.

The excellent short essay at Dangerous Minds offers this disclaimer:

(The documentary) does create a vivid portrait, but one under the shadow of Lowry’s last wife Marjorie Bonner, and it was not until after her death, in 1988, and the publication of Gordon Bowker’s top class biography, Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry, that a complete picture of Lowry came to fruition.

D.T. Max's 2007 essay in The New Yorker provides more information on Lowry's "mysterious demise."

Margerie at first told friends that there had been a suicide note but then said that there wasn’t. The lack of a note surprised them. Alcohol would hardly have stopped his pen—he wrote while drunk all the time. And he was someone for whom written words accompanied nearly every moment of life; he even scrawled observations as he sat drunk in bars. Some four hundred jotted notes to Margerie are in the British Columbia archive—messages from El Leon to Miss Hartebeeste. “Lowry was always saying, ‘Make notes,’ “ Markson told me. Lowry’s despair was always part theatre; and, for such a person, self-destruction practically demanded documentation.

To me, the film's early 1970s footage of England, New York City, Mexico and Vancouver is what resonates. The dive bars in the Big Apple? Those are pre-gentrification. The Mexican urban vistas wouldn't have been altered much from Lowry's period of residence prior to WWII. The "beer parlor" in Vancouver -- well, who among us knew there was such a thing?

Having read Kunstler's forecast for 2017, it's obvious that we're headed back ... toward Lowry, not away from him.

But look at that sunlight there, look at the way it falls through the window. What beauty can compare with that of a cantina in the early morning? This cantina has been open all night and so cannot compare with the beauty of one which has just opened, which most of them do in a couple of hours, and not even the opening gates of heaven could mean as much to me as the iron screen that rolls up with a crash, as the unpadlocked, jostling, jalousies which admit those whose souls tremble with the drinks they unsteadily carry to their lips. All mystery, all assuagement of hope, all disappointment is here, beyond those swinging doors. "And do you see that old woman from Tarasco over there playing dominoes?" he asked aloud. But his glance implied: how, unless you drink, can you understand the beauty of an old woman from Tarasco who plays dominoes at seven o’clock in the morning?

Hopefully, it's not illegal for sense to cross the border, too.

Because even when translated, it's not difficult to understand.