Veracruz

Unless you're from Veracruz, Mexico, or a historian of Mexican music, the songs emanating from the Mexican Cultural Center in Santa Ana might be something of a mystery. Although Latin American in flavor, the melodies and rhythms aren't typical folkloric music, mariachi or trios romanticos. The dozen or so musicians are playing son jarocho, a 400-year-old Mexican genre that blends indigenous, Spanish and African styles into foot-stomping, hand-clapping songs often with ad-libbed lyrics.

IF I'm reading the U.S. census data correctly, California ranks second behind Utah in the average number of family members per household. Utah I get. I mean, I've seen "Big Love." But California, land of selfish singletons, DINKs (double income, no kids) and others with, shall we say, unfruited loins? Maybe we're not the godless child-haters we're alleged to be.

FEW collections of stories open with such breathtaking charm as Barry Gifford's latest. "I am a funambulist. I was trained as a ropewalker, or ropedancer, from my third birthday, and I performed with my parents, the Dancing Ciegas, until they plunged to their deaths from a high wire when I was sixteen years old. Following this tragedy, I made a decision to stop performing. That was forty years ago."

Say one thing for fans of Club Deportivo Guadalajara: When push comes to shove, the Chivas faithful know how to pack a stadium. On Sunday evening, for the second time in six days, they flocked to the Home Depot Center in the thousands, this time for the finals of the Interliga soccer tournament, which qualifies two teams for South America's prestigious Copa Libertadores.

Mexican teams Veracruz and Monterrey qualified for Sunday's Interliga finals by defeating Morelia and tying Pachuca, respectively, in a Wednesday night doubleheader at the Home Depot Center. They will be joined in the final four by Chivas de Guadalajara and the UANL Tigres, who advanced Tuesday night.

Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's gulf coast Tuesday, after forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 66 people dead, most of them from landslides in El Salvador. The hurricane, which whipped up 80-mph winds before being downgraded to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a busy port 185 miles east of Mexico City.

About 1,500 workers in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz struggled to clean oil and oil-soaked sand and vegetation after 5,000 barrels of crude leaked into a river leading into the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex, said that by Friday, workers had recovered about half the oil that spilled after an explosion at a pumping station near Santiago Tuxtla, southeast of Mexico City. Five people were hurt in the blast.

Two candidates were in a close race for the governor's seat in Veracruz, preliminary returns showed early today. A loss would be a blow to the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has held the state since the party's creation in 1929. With 56% of the votes counted, the PRI's Fidel Herrera, a 55-year-old lawyer and senator, had 33.

Monterrey and Veracruz have the upper hand going into Saturday's decisive second-leg games in the Mexican league championship semifinals. Two goals by Guillermo Franco, both on headers off corner kicks, and one each by Jesus Arellano and Omar Avilan earned Monterrey an impressive 4-1 victory Wednesday over Universidad de Nuevo Leon in the first game of the series in front of 43,000 at Monterrey. Brazilian striker Kleber scored the opening goal for UNL, but Monterrey then took charge.

Police in the port city of Veracruz detained three people and seized 5 tons of fireworks Wednesday, vowing a crackdown on illegal pyrotechnics after a New Year's Eve blaze at an outdoor market killed at least 28 vendors and shoppers. The swift search for culprits in the latest in a terrible history of deadly fireworks accidents in Mexico signaled fresh determination among authorities to enforce widely ignored safety regulations.