Why does local law enforcement here seem so ineffective? About ten days ago, a close friend I'll call Tom, was carjacked and kidnapped as he returned to his ranch early in the afternoon, on a road near our ranch. During the attack the assailants busted the driver side window, yanked him out and shoved him …
Tag: crime
Unsafe in either country?
How alarmed you should be by crime in the U.S. or in Mexico? It can be a matter of perspective The abduction about ten days ago of four Americans driving across the border from Brownsville, Texas to the Mexican city of Matam0ros, left two of them dead in addition to a Mexican bystander, and restarted …
My denial runs thin about crime in San Miguel
In this morning's Civil List, the internet bulletin board shared by expats in San Miguel, there was a post about the escalating security problem. In addition to alarm, I felt curiosity about what tune the usual chorus of civic boosters, particularly the municipal authorities, would intone this time, to downplay bad news about a town …
Continue reading My denial runs thin about crime in San Miguel
The tale of the Hens and the Ostriches
In a shocking demonstration of how reality can resemble folklore, a 78-year-old American woman was found murdered in her San Miguel home on October 26, a week before the big Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. Road to heaven: Locals on the way to the cemetery pick upthe traditional Day of the Dead …
Protests on the road to nowhere
Driving back from two weeks at the beach with our dowager mutt Gladys, Stew and I were trapped in a seven-hour live demonstration of the Mexican art of futile political protest: A lot of sound and fury—perhaps justified—but ultimately signifying very little except that our trip to our friends’ place in the beautiful colonial town of …
Countryside tour, includes dead body!
The church Stew and I attend, a non-denominational enterprise with a sketchy doctrinal corpus but a strong commitment to good works in small villages surrounding San Miguel, had organized an outing to Fajardo de Bocas, located about ten miles from our ranch, to inspect a domestic gray-water treatment plant some members had built at a …
Is that change we smell in San Miguel?
At noon last Sunday, with balmy temperatures and clear skies, about seventy-five San Miguel residents gathered in the main square to protest the increasing level of crime in the city, most recently highlighted by the murder of a twenty-nine-year-old Mexican woman whose body, wrapped in a tarp secured with duct tape, was dumped by the …
Ode to Joyous
Stew and I are not big on attending memorial services but on Sunday we went to one for a local American woman who had been murdered a little more than a week before but whom we barely knew. We felt our presence would signal concern about the lengthening string of murders, assaults and other serious …
Murders, he wrote
During the past five weeks two Americans, or maybe three, were found murdered in San Miguel, adding to the smog of bad news and publicity already enveloping the town. In an American or Canadian city of comparable size, two or three homicides coming so close together would have raised public questions or perhaps just one: …
Somewhat sleepless in San Miguel
Last week yet another e-mail arrived, this one from my former boss in Chicago, inquiring how we were holding up amid all the violence and bloodshed reportedly wracking Mexico. I'd like to reply that, ha-ha, except for the bother of having to wear bulletproof vests and helmets every time we drive to the grocery store, …
El Rancho Santa Clara 