Don’t send in the clowns

The recent murder of ex-drug lord Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix in Baja, Mexico by a man dressed as a clown (including wig and rubber nose) has received the censure of the International Clown Meeting n Mexico City.  One of the attendees, Tomas Morales is certain that the gunman was not a professional clown.  Well of course not, otherwise his gun would have popped out a red flag with ‘bang’ on it. Certainly The Joker would not have stooped to a gun-n-run.  But it cuts both ways, Tomas, to claim that clowns are non-violent, as they therefore cannot be secret agents like 007 (and 009) in Octopussy -plenty of violence while dressed as such.  On related line, a Mexican wrestler’s mask may not be as folksy as made out in American popular culture, Jack Black’s clowning in Nacho Libre aside.  To be fair, the killer should have worn one of the ex-president’s masks as did the protagonists in Point Break, given the enmity of the US federal government to Mexico’s drug culture, but it might have been even more conspicuous than wearing nothing at all. But for all that, you may escape and may never be caught, but if you are identified, the savagery of the Mexican drug war means your family and friends will suffer, gruesomely. 

Even if one of the 500 congregants at this Latin American comic convention has showed up, I doubt Felix would have needed mirth, given his name means happiness.  He had done his time in both Mexico and the USA and out of all his brothers, he was still alive and out of jail.  Yet like the Roman imperial province of Dacia, a region known as felix for its prosperity and so happy that even Hadrian could not abandon it, this latter-day Mexican was always in danger and likely to be assailed repeatedly by those of a barbarous and nihilistic nature.  Felix would never live in seclusion for long.