Photo by Blake Guidry on Unsplash

In a court filing on Feb. 1, one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Jenny Cudd, asked a court to let her vacation in Mexico since she’d “planned and prepaid for a weekend retreat with her employees.”

Judge:

I get that you think I have “things to answer for” and I’m not saying I won’t answer. I’m just saying, it’s a nonrefundable trip and I’d been planning it for months. First, “Stop the Steal,” then Cancún.

It’s for work, I swear. Every year, I take the employees at my flower shop along with their spouses for an annual retreat, when we get to just—bond, you know? It just so happens that our retreat always lands on the Biggest Spring Break Week when like thousands of us take over the Hard Rock resort and all the beaches—kinda like how we stormed the Capitol! Except you can’t bring your guns. But you can get a margarita just about anywhere.

The first time we went down there, we got this all-inclusive package: four days for $400, an all-you-can-eat buffet with all the chimichangas and cheesy nachos a ginger-haired girl could ask for. Mixed drinks in to-go cups with the little colorful umbrellas, stand-up and laser shows, beach dance parties, getting plastered night and day, live music—a ZZ Top cover band! I’m serious. All-American, English only. Good stuff.

Well, maybe not everywhere. We work hard to never leave the perimeter marked by the Hard Rock, Señor Frog’s, and the cute tourist market where I got my first sombrero. The Mexican guy tried to charge me ten pesos for it, can you believe it? So my boyfriend got all in his face, put him in his place. That’s how we bargain haha. We ended up getting a few more sombreros for my girlfriends back home in Texas; they took up a luggage compartment each, although we had to fight the flight attendant to let us. But we know our rights.

I streamed the whole bargaining thing on my phone and shared it on Facebook. It got so many likes! That’s how I taught myself how to document all the injustices we Americans face fighting back against the Deep State, the Mexicans, the pedophiles, the socialists. It’s outrageous. I don’t vote ‘cause I don’t believe in the system, but I sure as hell know when someone’s gonna try to steal Trump’s presidency from him! From us.

Like I told y’all on the video I recorded from inside the Capitol Rotunda, after we broke down Nancy’s door: “Fuck yes, I am proud of my actions. I fucking charged the Capitol with patriots today!”

But I didn’t do anything wrong, definitely nothing wrong enough to justify interfering with my freedom to drink tequila in Mexico. I’m just a proud American exercising her First Amendment rights while looking to spend her hard-earned cash. And now I need a vacation, okay?

xo
Jenny

A US magistrate approved her request, ordering that her pretrial travel restrictions be amended to allow the four-day trip.

Ruxandra Guidi
Ruxandra Guidi is a native of Caracas, Venezuela. She has been working in public radio, magazines, and podcasts for twenty years across the US, Latin America, and the US-Mexico border region. She’s an assistant professor of practice at the University of Arizona School of Journalism and a contributing editor to High Country News magazine. She collaborates regularly with her partner Bear Guerra under the name Fonografia Collective.

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