Dan Turnquist has stories.
They may be about the American prisoner in Mexico, arrested on drug charges in Cancun, who got transferred to county jails in Florida, and told Turnquist he wished he’d served out his sentence in Mexico. Or about the two Drug Enforcement Administration officers, who showed up at the Guadalajara consulate doorstep waiting for him to open the door, just one day after former Mexican President Díaz Ordaz announced that no American police were allowed in Mexico. Turnquist has more stories, and can be coaxed into sharing them and other memories of his long career in the U.S. foreign service.
Celebrating his 84th birthday this week in Guadalajara, Turnquist reminisced about his first posting — here in “la perla tapatía” — when he was 25 years old. (He returned to live here after retiring from the State Department in 2001, partly because he had married a Guadalajara native, Carolina Escobar.)
Asked if he was glad he was sent to Guadalajara, Turnquist didn’t hesitate: “It was a wonderful posting … a beautiful city, wonderful climate, active cultural life, the Philharmonic, occasional operas, experimental theater. I had a nice office in the consulate on Progreso. I was in the first generation to work in that building when I arrived in January 1968.
“There were great restaurants and my colleague Bob Lane had a housekeeper who was a great cook, so I’d go over there to eat.”
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“But I guess the consulate in Guadalajara has been extended, probably because they process so many visas here.”