The insignia, scarves and uniforms worn by the seven strangers to a recent lakeside church service created an instant bond with many of the expats attending the service.
For the more than 100 years since Lord Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts and Juliet Gordon Lowe formed a similar organization for girls in 1910, Scouting has not only spread around the globe, but surprisingly maintained its popularity among the world’s youth. The years of unrest that followed Mexico’s 1910-1920 Revolution delayed the formation of the first troop until 1937.
In Jalisco, Scouts (the gender-specific terms are not used in Mexico where most troops include both boys and girls) participate in gigantic annual drives to collect soda and beer cans. The successful 2014 record-breaking project netted the scouts 3,249 kilos of aluminum containers. Each year at the conclusion of the campaign, the more than 259,000 cans were used to cover an entire downtown Guadalajara plaza with a replica of the worldwide organization’s fleur de lis emblem.
“I was an Eagle Scout,” said one elderly man as he shook the hands of each of the Guadalajara Scouts, all members of the Rover Youth Network of Jalisco for those between 17 and 22 years. In addition to workdays in area forests and national parks, support projects for area firefighters and emergency medical teams and camping and hiking, some Mexican Rovers attend annual World Scout Moots, enormous conclaves to foster understanding. The 2014 event, “America Without Borders,” was held in Brazil.
A map on the website of the state organization, jaliscouts.org.mx, details the locations of dozens of Guadalajara Scout troops. While there are none at lakeside, the group of Rovers I met on Sunday were headed to a camp in the Sierra de San Juan Cosalá National Park, the range ringing the north side of Lake Chapala.