In this monthly series, we republish a few of the headlines from our September editions 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
1967
Sucker forgas pump gangs
Tourists beware. The gas pump gangs are waiting for you.
While you are in Tlaquepaque (or anywhere beyond your home or hotel parking lot), that fellow with the rag who said he’d “echar ojo” (watch) your car for you quickly gets under the car and quickly and efficiently gimmicks your car — crawls under the rear of a car and detaches the fuel line from the tank and plugs it with a wad of cloth and then reconnects it.
You return to your car, and drive off. A few blocks later the engine sputters, gasps and dies. Out of gas? Not unless the reliable gas gauge has become a blatant liar. You get out of the car and raise the hood. At this point a solicitous, smiling man materializes and asks – in reasonably good English – if he may be of assistance.
He seems to know something about cars, takes off the air filter, fiddles with the carburetor, usually gets behind the wheel and grinds the starter for a while, but to no avail. Of course not, what little fuel remained the in the gas line was used up in starting the car and driving those few blocks.
Luckily your new friend knows a mechanic. After a short wait he returns with a suitably grease-encrusted “mechanic,” who conveys through his friend that possibly the fuel line is blocked. After getting under the car (and taking out the cloth) and blowing through the line so he can show you it’s all clear, he then says that most likely your fuel pump is faulty. He detaches the pump and examines it. “Yes, it is defective.” Off he goes with your old pump to the dealership and returns and puts (your old cleaned up old pump) on and shortly thereafter away you go, after a 50-dollar charge for parts and labor.
1977
Kidnapper ofUS envoy sentenced
Ramon Campaña Lopez, alias “The Butcher,” whose release from jail has been the avowed object of several terrorist attacks by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FRAP) and who is said to be responsible for the deaths of 12 people, was sentenced to 26 years in prison for his part in the 1973 kidnapping of Terrence Leonhardy, the then U.S. consul general in Guadalajara.
Campaña, the head of FRAP at the time of the Leonheardy kidnapping, is already serving a 29-year sentence for the kidnapping of Jose Guadalupe Zuno Hernandez, father-in-law of former President Luis Echeveria.
Held hostage for three days, Leonhardy was released upon payment of one million pesos and the sending of 30 “political prisoners” to Cuba, among whom were two of Campaña’s brothers.
1987
Telephone ratesrise monthly
Service from government-owned Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) went up 33.1 percent in August and price hikes have already been fixed for the coming four months. Prices will go up four percent in both September and October, and 3.5 percent in November and December. New prices for the installation of a residential telephone line are now an average 366,000 pesos, depending on where the customer lives.
A spokesman for the Industrial Association of El Salto said that the cost of installing a telephone in that area is more than two million pesos.
Others complain that in order to have their telephone service repaired they have to pay the Telmex repairman a bribe of between 10,000 and 20,000 pesos and often the misfunction reappears after a few days.
Workers, business face inflation alone
As August inflation hit 8.2 percent, high domestic interest rates (short term: 85-95 percent) and the unrelenting devaluation of the Mexican peso are giving domestic inflation “a life of its own,” said Pedro Aspe, sub-secretary of Programing and Budget. Cabinet ministers in general appeared to throw in the towel this week in the fight to control the Republic’s galloping price spiral.
Even as President Miguel de la Madrid continues to point to encouraging financial and economic indicators and the Mexican stock market continues to soar, inflation-battered wage earners and crisis-hit small businessmen express skepticism as they wait to feel the much-touted domestic economic recovery.
1997
Church deniesgift from narcos
On the 12th anniversary of the September 19, 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Reverend Jose Raul Soto Vazquez was celebrating a memorial Mass in the Basilica of Guadalupe, the nation’s most revered Roman Catholic shrine, when during his sermon, one of his remarks was picked up by the media and set off a chain reaction leading to critical mass and a meltdown.
During his sermon, the cleric made a comment that “notable prisoners” had made donations to the quake victims. Among them, he said, was drug capo Rafael Caro Quintero, imprisoned for killing a U.S. anti-drug agent and his pilot in 1985. Soto also reportedly mentioned gifts to “his community” by notorious drug baron Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in July.
The story mushroomed overnight, and shocked politicians demanded an immediate investigation of donations to the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico.
Children of Black Widow go to court
The children of a woman known as the Black Widow are involved in a court battle trying to prove their mother is dead, even though her exhumed coffin held only wooden boards, clothes and old newspaper two years ago. On the other side is the Seguros Monterrey-Aetna company, which is refusing to pay the 500,000-dollar insurance policy that was taken out on the life of Socorro Rodriguez de Lapine.
The courtroom drama is the latest twist in a bizarre case that stunned the Mexican and English-speaking communities in January 1996.
Rodriguez de Lapine, 57, owes her nickname to a trail of dead husbands and boyfriends, all U.S. citizens who passed away under mysterious circumstances in the past 15 years. Now, almost two-and-a-half years after faking her own death and pulling one of the great disappearing acts in history, she is back center stage. Although no recent sightings of Rodriguez de Lapine have been reported, indications that she was living in Ixtapa, near Puerto Vallarta, in October 1985 – seven months after her alleged “death” in Chapala – have been confirmed.
Less than a week after police exhumed the first empty coffin, they dug up the coffin of Rodriguez de Lapine’s half-sister, Consuelo Guijarro, which was also empty. Seguros Monterrey had paid out on a 100,000-dollar life insurance policy for Guijarro three years earlier. It was later discovered that Rodriguez de Lapine had invented her half sister, wore a disguise to take out the policy and then “killed her off.”
2007
Mayhem in San Juan Cosala
The horrific roar of rushing water and tumbling rocks roused thousands of San Juan Cosala residents from their slumber September 12 as waves of muddy water and debris washed through the community just before dawn. At least 1,200 homes were evacuated due to flood damage, but government officials said that they had no confirmed reports of deaths, serious injuries or missing persons. Rescue workers were relieved to find a 57-year old woman and her two grandchildren who had been swept from the roof of their home into Lake Chapala safe, sound and uninjured. The flooding was attributed to a waterspout that hit the mountain above the village around 6 a.m. during a prolonged rainstorm. Water rushed down the slopes of the steep hillside unleashing an avalanche of earth and boulders that swept down creek beds running through the Raquet Club subdivision and east side of the village.