Juan of Words

Top 10 Reasons Why I Fell In Love With La Reina Del Sur

¡Se nos acabo La Reina Del Sur! I for one am entering withdrawals already.  Not in a long time had a telenovela connected with me in such a way as Telemundo’s megahit about the narco legend Teresa Mendoza did.  The reasons for loving the novela and our Teresa are many, and I could go on for days explaining them, but instead let me just share these 10 very personal reasons why I fell in love with La Reina Del Sur from the very beginning and as the television hit progressed.

Los Narcos de La Reina Del Sur

10. Teresa was strong.  ¡Indomable! The kind of woman that makes you pay attention, that you can’t help but gravitate towards, because she possesses so many admirable attributes, least of which are the ganas to seguir luchando and never give up.  How can we ever forget those scenes where she was running for her life at the beginning of the novela?

9. She took the bad things people said about her and used them to her advantage.  Teresa was a sudaca and La Mexicana, both meant in disparaging forms many a times, but she never let other people’s discrimination prevent her from demanding the respect she felt she deserved.

8. La Reina Del Sur was never afraid to kick some ass to defend herself.  Hasta con las puras garras she was willing to fight against those who tried to take advantage of her.  Teresa was fierce!  Just ask La Makoki or Sheila, two of the first to experience the wrath of Teresa Mendoza.  Era mujer de pocas palabras y pantalones bien puestos.

7. Mexicans were the center of attention for once, and not in a negative way.  Contrary to so many other internationally set movies and shows that always portray us Mexicans as a people of ignorance and little imagination, La Reina Del Sur cast Teresa Mendoza as a humble, but determined woman who was neither dumb nor helpless.  “Me veo mensa, pero no lo soy”.

6. The Cast.  Oh, the cast!  From Kate del Castillo herself, to Cristina Urgel, Humberto Zurita, Rafael Amaya, Ivan Sanchez, Alberto Jimenez, Gabriel Porras, Dagoberto Gama, and so many others, everyone was excellent in this novela.  My vote is already cast!  Best novela of the year, and best cast ever!

5. Friendships.  There was more than one occasion when I got all choked up because of the realness in the friendships that we saw unravel before our eyes on the novela. To name just a few, Fatima risking her life and her livelihood for Teresa, Ole being such a gentleman all of the time, el distinguido Sr. Pote, Patricia and Conejo, and of course the last scene between Patty and Teresa – that was the hardest one for me to keep a straight face through.

4. Teresa’s ability to love.  Despite losing everything and everyone she loved along the way, somehow Teresa always managed to believe in love again.  It was almost her demise, yes, but it was also what made her so human.  That despite being such a rich and powerful woman, cold almost, she could still manage to open her arms and heart to love over and over again… even at the end with her baby bump, she was in love.

3. The Action.  Wow!  We definitely got to see a lot more than we usually do in a telenovela.  My favorite scenes are two: 1) when Teresa gets to whip Ratas in the face with the back of her hand, and 2) the shoot out scene at the end.  That was awesome!  But in between there were also quite a few slaughters, the gun battles across multiple continents, and even the hanging of the snitch, Driss.

2. The moral of the story.  As cheesy as it sounds, the ultimate message of the novela to me was that good always triumphs over evil.  Sure Teresa was doing a bad thing, trafficking drugs and ordering people in her way to be eliminated, but she wasn’t the one who started the war.  In a way, it was self defense.  If she hadn’t finished her enemies off they would have finished her off.  When we leave our mexicana in the final scene of La Reina Del Sur she is tranquil and happy for the first time in a long time.  Good triumphing over evil once again, LOL!

1. The bad ass production by Telemundo of such a worthy story!  Not only did they tell Univision and the rest of the television networks out there that they are a force to be reckoned with, but they also told us, their audience, that they are willing to raise the stakes in quality productions to win over our viewership.  I for one am paying more attention to their future lineups.

La Reina Del Sur was my favorite novela in years, and to make up for her absence in my nightly programming I will likely be picking up the book by the same name.  Hopefully it will be as good as the show.

Share your reasons for loving our Teresa Mendoza.

Una Piedra En El Camino, Me Enseño Que Mi Destino

Las piedras...

Las piedras en México tienen historia.  They’re jagged and rough.  Shapely in all sorts of colors and sizes.  Smooth to the touch.   Rough to the grasp.  Sturdy.  They tell the story of generations gone by, of old men playing their instruments and singing their música de vara, of old women walking by at the dawn of early morning, wrapped up against the cold in their rebozos, always in pairs, with their pails of fresh corn, heading to the molino, of huaraches de piel walking alongside mules, sheep and all sorts of other assortment of livestock, of children running to take care of mandados, of young men with their alcohol and cigarettes, laughing and carrying on, of young women giggling and smiling, trying their best to be proper while the objects of their affection walk by, of young boys and girls escaping from school, marching to the beat of el himno de independencia on Independence Day, of so many cousins showing us how to get from one place to the next without ever being seen.

That’s what I remember in those rocks.

I imagine Mamatule and Papanino, my grandparents, sitting at the front of their kitchen, wrapping up their tobacco in corn leaves, smoking it ever so peacefully in the dead air and silence of night, my father as a young man courting my mother, the young girl from Monterrey who showed up at the rancho every couple of months with her padrinos, wearing nice dresses and sensible shoes.  Shoes, in this place, where most girls walked around barefoot.  I imagine their conversations.  My mother playing hard to get, stern and dismissive, measuring every single one of her expressions ever so carefully, a half smile here, a look of agreement there, my father unrelenting, with his big smiles and nice words, staking out her every move from the tanque where pigs swam around to get refreshed and people carried pails of water to heat up for their baths, and slowly winning her over, one platica at a time.

I try to envision our land before the casita de escobas, that’s what they called the firmer shrubs they used to fill in the gaps between the frames of wooden sticks in those days, before the first room of cement blocks went up, when it was up to the people of the pueblo to decide whether the newly-wedded couple of my parents deserved to have this empty section of land donated to them, and then when they were there together for the first time, what conversations they might have had, what first moments they might have lived, welcoming my eldest sister, their firstborn, and then the ones that followed, the decision to leave home, first apart, cada quien a su tiempo, and then together, all of us together.

And I’m inspired.

It was there we began our journey.  The only place that ever felt like home, where even though it wasn’t my precise history that took place, it called out to me, made me feel one with the land, with the air, with the water, in a way that I’d never felt before.  Our apartments, houses here were mundane.

Those piedras, majestic.  Respectable.  Ours!

People En Español’s Most Popular… err, Beautiful Gente

Beautiful People

More of a popularity list really, People en Español’s 50 Most Beautiful people… well celebrities, edition is at your local grocery stores and retail shops now.  As if you hadn’t already noticed, with all the promotion People does every year to get as much attention as possible during this time.  They even have an entire TV show dedicated to announcing the bellos on Univision now.

This year, though, for some reason, the list of famosos being recognized, to me, is missing a little oomph.  A little star power.  A little pizazz.  The themes are interesting, sure.  Vintage looks on the usual suspects we’ve seen get the most exposure on various media over the last 12 months, but not much else.   Pero bueno, you judge for yourselves. 

My Favorites

As always, my Reina Del Sur looks amazing in this shot.  ¡Qué hermosa!

They made her look very feminine here.  Me gusta el vintage look on her.

Aunque no es de mis favoritas, in this picture Maite looks amazing.

Y este, bueno si no lo incluyo me matan.  Couldn’t get his actual picture from this edition online so I settled for this one from the net.  I’m sure there won’t be any complaints.

Same story here.  Yes!  Ladies we all know you love him.  So here!

My Not So Favorites:

Niurka Marcos

The picture speaks for itself.  Not sure exactly what it’s saying though.

Ale Guzman - Nalgas...

Ale Guzman.  LOL!  Perdon… pero pues no la reconozco.  Miss her pre-booty-scandal days when she was just a bad ass rockera!

Gaby Spanic

Gaby is an attractive woman… in the right light, y con mucha pechonalidad, ja ja!  Just kidding.  But in all seriousness, this picture is just not very flattering.

Angelique Boyer - the other Teresa

And finally, Angelique.  She’s hot stuff in real life and in the telenovelas, but here she looks too mature… covering up too much.  No fun!

To read and view all things 50 Más Bellos visit People en Español.

Rich, Famous, and Vulnerable: La Reina Del Sur

Teresa y Patty

Our Mexicana is now definitely La Reina Del Sur!  Rich, powerful, strong, impeccably dressed, and more confident than we’ve ever seen her before.  Only now, she’s also vulnerable.  Much more vulnerable than she had ever been… than even when she was running for her life in little more than panties, a buttoned down shirt and her baby blue pumps clutched in her arms, trying to make her way out of Mexico as fast as she could.  Gone are the days when her street smarts were enough to keep her ahead of the pack, when she could walk around in disguise, or resolve any issues a puros madrazos.

As is her most loyal friend, Patricia O’ Farrell, La Tenienta, who herself was the victim of her own ingenuity.

This last progression es la que me tiene más apachurrado que cualquier otra. At the beginning, I’ll confess, I did not like Patty.  She was cocky, spoiled, arrogant and rich, probably the worst combination for a likable character in my book.  But then in jail… in jail we saw her unfold as a kindhearted, albeit still spoiled and pretentious, lovable sidekick to our increasingly brave mexicana. They lived, cried and laughed together in there.  One was always looking out for the other, and when that fire almost ended the lives of Teresa and Conejo, it was La Teniente who came to their rescue.  La Reina even thanked her with a drunken kiss, which she immediately took back and Patricia took to mean there was some possibility of “happily ever after” between them after all.

She held on to that dream as long as she could.

Una vez fuera de la carcel, it was Patty who brought Teresa to the level of Diva and Reina by sharing with her those kilos of coca.  O’ Farrell couldn’t have placed that drug in better hands.  Teresa had nothing to lose and she was well trained by both El Guero and Santiago to convince even the Russians to give her a shot.  The rest is history.  In came the millions of dollars, the yachts, the investments, the designer clothes, the fancy houses, the limelight, and eventually even la traición. Somehow, somewhere along that road La Reina Del Sur lost her most valuable ally, Patricia.

The one who had always been honest with her, who had never dreamt of betraying her, and who even in her last hours never thought once about damaging her by keeping from her what she had learned about Lupita.  With a final kiss from her Conde de Montecristo, O’ Farrell made her final departure and left, at least me, with a genuine sentimiento of sadness.  That while their luck seemingly had turned and they had become virtually untouchable, both Teresa and Patricia neglected to take care of the one relationship that had been genuine in their lives: their friendship.

Para mi, that was the biggest tragedy of Patty’s suicide.

Now, once again, La Reina Del Sur is all alone in the world.  Sure, she’s got her allies and the people that work for her, but nobody to trust beyond the shadow of a doubt.  The one good thing that has come from all of this is that finally, after all these months of being way too nice, the fire in Teresa’s eyes is back.  She’s spitting words and threatening lives left and right, determined to not let her Teniente’s death be in vain.  Maybe that was the ultimate purpose of Patty’s departure?  A wake up call for her partner in crime… or maybe, just maybe, I’m reading way too much into my favorite telenovela.

Lo que sí les digo es que este final de La Reina Del Sur ¡sí que estará bueno!

R.I.P.  Mi Tenienta, Patricia O’ Farrell!

Aquí los dejo con los últimos momentos de O’ Farrrell:

La Pura Neta / Nothing But The Truth: Q&A

Not much of an intro is needed for this video, creo yo. You asked the questions, and well, I answered them.  Thank you all for participating.

Cellphone Fotos

This will be the blog that never ends.  “Yes it goes on and on my friends…”  Sorry, couldn’t help myself with that Lamb Chop reference there, LOL.  It was too easy.  Okay!  In all seriousness now, this post here today was inspired by a couple of ‘gal pal’ blogger friends of mine (Latinaish and La Cabrona) who came up with the idea of sharing their cell phone fotos online with the world to give us a little more insight into what their daily lives are like, offline… or at the very least, what kind of fotos they take with their camera phones.

I’m real METICHE so you know I immediately fell in love with the idea!  So here it is! My turn.  A couple of my own pictures from my cell phone.   Can you believe I have over 450 pictures on my phone?

US-Mexico Border

I took this picture on our way back from Mexico the last time we went, earlier this year.  We’d been traveling for hours, seven of us, in my dad’s four-door pickup and after waiting in line for what seemed like forever, we had to find some kind of way to entertain ourselves.  My niece Jessy and I opted for sitting on the bed of the truck and taking random pictures.

Keeping with Mexico

And sticking with the borderland images… I want to say that we were on this side of the border (the States) already, but am not entirely sure.  That’s my niece and my younger brother riding in the bed of the pickup.  Les dije that we were crowded in that truck!  This was right before we stopped to eat at Whataburger… todos sudados y mojosos!

Angie's Crafts

Now, something a little more mundane.  I took this picture probably around Christmas… I’m assuming because of the wrapping paper, but this is what our table sometimes looks like when my wife, Anjelica is working on one of her craft projects (manualidades).  She’s the artist in our household.

Pura Salsa

People are always haciendome burla for all of the hot sauce I eat with all of my food, all of the time.  So why not give them something to talk about?  I took this picture just for kicks and shared it online to see what people would say.  The general consensus turned out to be that we all love spicy food and are probably ruining a lot of our internal organs with this stuff…

Crossroads

And finally, this picture that I took very recently.  We were at a local park, out to do some exercising and to take a couple of pictures in the process.  Well, Anjelica was taking the pictures… me and Edgar were just goofing around.  Anyhow, that’s all folks!  Hope you enjoyed the pictures.