Bajaga’s song says: Juan took a shot of tequila / Juan gathered a guerrilla/Juan shot in style/RA-TA-RA-TA-RA which leads us to the chorus Tekilaaaa-gerilaaaaa and an image of Mexican revolutionaries with sombreros on their heads, machine guns in their hands, and ammo belts crossed over their chests. 

I read somewhere that for more than 150 years, thanks to literature and movies we’ve watched and read, there has been a widespread stereotype in the world that Mexico is an area of continuous social conflict and lawlessness, and that its population is deeply involved in crime.

The descendants of ancient Mayans and Aztecs have greatly met with cruel exploitation of their own natural and human resources and a feudal social order imposed by the Spanish colonizers. When the constant conflicted state during the reign of General Porfirio Diaz became a blatant dictatorship, and hope for liberal reforms disappeared out of sight, the Mexican Revolution began, a period for which new and interesting facts are being discovered constantly. This was the first social revolution in Latin America in the 20th century. . 

Even though Francisco Madero was the ideological leader of the uprising in 1910 and later president, the public was interested the most in legendary figures Pancho Villa, on whose endeavors and weapons books are still being written, and rebel Emiliano Zapata, united in the wish to end the dictatorship. Everybody wanted to fight side by side with these heroes, even an old man with a weak little rifle, which inspired Zapato to say the words worthy of every revolutionary epitaph: "If it can shoot, welcome to the Revolution!"“




If we recall, in a passage in the previous blog, those unreal images of a beach, warm sand, beautiful haciendas, tropical forest and the happy mariachi music, we will have a scene from famous Mexican telenovelas. In beautiful villas or rather yet poor shacks, immortalized are beautiful and unreal love soap operas worthy of the famous “weekend” love novels from the 20th century, with plot twists which a normal human mind can’t imagine and can’t predict.


„“Rosa salvaje“is the first telenovela I encountered in my life, as it was aired here at the beginning of the 90s. It became a great hit and so popular among the people that it seemed like a clash of galaxies happened. I personally didn’t like it, I found it awfully funny, so that the genre never became my cup of tea, but who am I to judge? Telenovelas are so widely accepted and popular, not just here but everywhere around the world, to the point that they have taken on dimensions of socio-cultural research. Maybe UNESCO didn’t put telenovelas on the list of world’s intangible cultural heritage, but they had a great impact on Mexico, they adapted its content to the culture, helped awaken national awareness, addressed the issues of poverty, unfairness, revenge etc. Present in all parts of the world, they even inspired a student at the University of Nairobi, to explore, in her master's thesis, if and what effect they have on the social life of teenage girls in Kenya. As evidence to the fact that broadcasting telenovelas all over the world made them a common phenomenon and became a part of everyday life, speaks the humorous way a funny gentleman described his love life: My love life is like a telenovela: dramatic, messy, and full of unexpected twists from karma”. It’s immediately clear to all of us what he’s referring to, while the quote “That’s not you boyfriend, but your twin brother” will always be remembered as one of the favorites and most quoted telenovela lines. 😊

If there was no Mexico, it would have to be invented


There will be more…🌵

JJ B