I have visited the convenience store on Calle Jesús García near my neighborhood in Guadalajara dozens of times without much thought as to how it got its name.
A little-known revolutionary? A forgotten writer or artist? Perhaps a young man visited by the Virgin, like Juan Diego of Guadalupe? With time on my hands last year because of the quarantine, I decided to do some research.
I discovered monuments to Jesús García in Mexico City and Zacatecas, in Veracruz and Aguascalientes. In Hermosillo, a stadium is named in his honor and several schools. There are statues of him in Cuba and Guatemala, as well as in Germany and the United Kingdom. Nor has the music world been silent. Jesús García, far from being an unsung hero, has had at least two corridos composed in his honor.
It all began in the early years of the 20th century when copper was suddenly in demand for telephone wires, motors, and pipes for plumbing. Phelps-Dodge opened a subsidiary called Moctezuma Copper Corporation in Sonora.
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