Sunday, February 22, 2009

Trip Pic of the Day

Puente Talisman frontier post.

I had an interesting dinnertime discussion in Mazunte on the question of exactly how much love is lost between these two neighbours. 

"The Guatemalans hate the Mexicans, but the Mexicans don't hate them back," opined my host, a man who'd grown up as a Mexican in Chiapas after his parents had fled Guatemala during the civil war.  

The Mexicans can't have been too chuffed though when Guatemala cost Hugo Sanchez his job as head coach of the national team by dumping them out of the qualifiers for the Olympic soccer tournament - first by beating them and then by losing by an unseemly margin in the next fixture, just to make sure that el tri failed to make it out of the group...on goal difference. 

There also has to be a reason why the Tapachula Pollo Campero appears to be doing its best to pass itself off as a bona fide Mexican institution. All the staff had little tricolor banderas on their orange and yellow uniforms, and the rear wall was emblazoned with images of Chiapanecan beauty spots and a big flappy Mexican flag, under which appeared the oddly familiar strapline: "Nuestro Orgullo"


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