The last two weeks have seen me on a whirlwind tour of the US, well at least Colorado and Oklahoma. There has also been a whirlwond stirring about the "Absolute Mexico" ad.
I was at a company that had two plants, one in Pueblo and one in Cañon City... they have two others but I was only at two of them. When I was in Pueblo the maintenance supervisor, who was my company contact, started filling me in on the history of Colorado, including, among other things, that Pueblo was an Indian word and the name of the tribe that settled in Colorado. He said the same of Cañon City, that it's name was also derived of an Indian name.
Now I didn't want to argue with the guy so I just let him finish and politely got him to focus on my audit of the plant. At lunch I talked with a woman who was of Mexican decent but was born in that area, I asked her why she didn't correct the maintenance supervisor and she asked "Why?" when I pointed out that as a spanish speaker she knew he was wrong that pueblo and cañon are spanish words she stopped me in mid-sentence and said "No, they are Indian words, pueblo means city in Indian."
So this weekend as people began to get worked up over the Absolut ad my initial thought was to wonder if these people (who I know are probably not representative of most Coloradans) will finally learn that until 160 years ago Colorado was part of Mexico.
Probably not, since the ad was ran in a Mexican magazine with a circulation of 500,000 which in a novel twist includes "pass arounds" in their circulation numbers. But thanks to Drudge, and people with little sense of humor (or is that little sense of history?), the ad got Absolut a ton of free advertising which in 6 months the only thing people will remember is "Absolut" and forget the rest of the ad, or that they are supposed to be boycotting it.
Absolute Mexico? I think Absolute Nonsense is a more appropriate name. Not for the ad, but for the furor it triggered here in the US.
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