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
When we arrived in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a few weeks ago, to visit some friends who used to live in San Miguel, what immediately struck Stew and me was the sight of so many trees: Stately evergreens keeping such close company with oaks, maples, cypresses and other varieties that, beyond 15 or 20 feet, the …
Last Tuesday I attended a funeral mass at the church in Sosnavar, a hardscrabble village two kilometers from us, for Eduardo Arzola Chávez, age 30, whom I'd never met but somehow felt some connection to. He'd been shot to death a couple of days before.The small church was packed. Seemingly everyone in town had shown …
Security in Mexico worries expats but we don't even want to talk about it. On March 13 a woman friend was kidnapped in broad daylight in downtown San Miguel. She's still missing. The event was confirmed by the U.S. Consular Agent here, who passed on the news to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. But for several days …
When Stew and I visit the United States we can count on one tedious question to come up: "Aren't you afraid to live in Mexico?" Over lunch, when we visited Chicago in October, a friend asked us that and it struck me as odd, considering I'd just read in the local newspaper there had been …
El Rancho Santa Clara 