Et Cetera

Although 90% of all Mexicans claim to be Roman Catholic, the church in Mexico hasn't officially existed for most of the past 131 years. Revolutionary heroes severed all ties to the Vatican as punishment for Catholic support of the landed elite and European intervention. Last week Mexican and church officials finally re-established diplomatic relations. "It is the end of an archaic debate," Nobel-prizewinning poet Octavio Paz told the local press. "We have problems too immense to be wasting our time with problems that are a hangover from the last century."