In this monthly series, we republish a few of the headlines from our March editions 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
1973
Women police well accepted
Increasing official enthusiasm for Guadalajara’s unusual Women’s Police Corps is being expressed almost daily now that 26 graduates are on the job and another group of 24 about to finish their studies.
Of the 108 students, both men and women, now enrolled in the school, eight are on the honor roll and of those, five are women.
The women police, well trained in karate as well as marksmanship, serve in pairs in the downtown area, at soccer games and in places were crowds are apt to attract pickpockets.
1983
American exonerated of smuggling
Mexico’s system of justice triumphed over itself last week, but it wasn’t an easy process. It took a while for fairness to win because Mexico’s legal system is an intricate one of rule by (often sudden) presidential decree (The Constitution is changed this way—no referendum—laws of every kind and significance are amended, rescinded and originated by decree) and justice by Napoleonic Code, which holds that a person is guilty until proven innocent.
Michael Tym, a 47-year-old contractor from Michigan City, Indiana, had $US222,000 in Mexican coins confiscated September 9, 1982, and was thrown in the Guadalajara Penitentiary for 93 days because of an unpublicized presidential decree. On top of that, he was fined $US55,600 dollars.
Tym’s father, who lived in Manzanillo from 1963 until his death in 1980, left an inheritance that included several hundred Mexican gold coins of the type the government has long been advertising for sale in national magazines in the United States. Michael Tym flew to the United States with 160 of the coins from his Mexico City safety deposit box on September 7, 1982. He returned to Mexico at the Guadalajara Airport and was ready to board an American Airlines flight to Dallas on September 9, with 407 of the Centenario coins, which contain a bit more than 1.2 ounces of gold and were then worth 222,000 dollars. Customs officials at the airport confiscated all the coins and charged Tym with trying to smuggle gold out of the country. Mexico’s law concerning free movement of precious metals had been changed by presidential decree September 8 — a decree that few Mexican citizens, including most Guadalajara bankers, knew about on September 9.
After a night held in the Customs office he was taken before a local magistrate, who charged him with smuggling — with a possible sentence of six to 12 years.
Tym pleaded with the judge, that there was no way he could have known of the sudden presidential decree. The judge ruled that “ignorance of the law was no defense,” and refused to set bail, because he was a foreigner and the crime was a serious one.
U.S. State Department authorities began to publicly and quietly bring reason and justice toe the Tym case. December 10, shortly after the inauguration of Mexico’s new president, Miguel de la Madrid, the decree under which Tym had been arrested, was rescinded. December 15, Tym was deported after 93 days in the penitentiary. In February, an appeals court nullified Tym’s conviction and punishment. The deportation sentence against him was lifted and on March 18, Tym’s wife returned the 407 Centenario coins at the Guadalajara branch of the government bank, and was escorted by U.S. vice-consul Richard Rogers to the Guadalajara air terminal, where she reportedly got the red-carpet treatment before boarding a flight to Dallas.
1993
Guadalajara blast zone evacuated
Part of Guadalajara’s devastated Sector Reforma was evacuated March 9 following the discovery of diesel fuel in the sewers beneath the area’s streets. Some 50 families were advised to move from their homes while investigators sealed off a two-block area to remove the flammable liquid.
The streets affected by the evacuation lie on either side of Calle Gante, the center of the April 22, 1991 explosions that disrupted the lives of thousands and left at least 207 dead.
2003
Academy snubs local film producer
Mexican films were “punished” for this country’s opposition to the war in Iraq, claims Jorge Vergara, Guadalajara’s nutrition supplements king and owner of the Chivas soccer club.
Vergara’s comments came after the film he produced, “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” lost out in the race of Best Original Screenplay to the Spanish film “Hable con Ella.”
“Clearly it affected their decision. It demonstrates that the Academy is scared to go against Bush, they fear the position that Mexico has taken against this violent situation,” Vergara said.
But to many people, Vergara’s comments smacked of sour grapes. Pedro Almodovar, who wrote, produced and directed “Hable con Ella,” is publicly anti-war, and collected his prize wearing a pin with doves as a silent call for peace.
Mexican films were nominated in eight categories, but won just two Oscars (“Frida” for Best Makeup and Best Music Score.) “El Crimen del Padre Amaro” failed in the category of Best Foreign Film.
2013
Monarch butterfly migration in heavy decline
The number of Monarch butterflies migrating to central Mexico has plummeted by 59 percent in the last year, according to the annual census released earlier this month.
Illegal logging, the use of herbicides and climate change are all thought to have contributed to the sixth drop in butterfly numbers in the last seven years.
Due to the sheer quantity of butterflies that settle in and around Michoacan’s Monarch Butterfly Reserve, the insects are counted by the amount of forest they cover.
This winter they covered just 2.93 acres, the lowest figure since records began 20 years ago and 59 percent down from last year’s 7.14 acres.
The figures confirm a long-term statistical trend, which the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) blames primarily on the extensive use of herbicides that kill off milkweed, the Monarchs’ main food source, in their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada. In recent years farmers have increasingly used herbicides to kill off all plants in their fields except for their genetically modified corn and soybean crops. The ensuing destruction of milkweed is extremely damaging for the butterflies that lay their eggs on the plant and rely upon it as an essential food which also provides a poisonous toxin that makes them unpalatable to birds and other predators.