Mexico has always attracted a wide roster of foreign artists and intellectuals. Among those who pursued their creative vision in the country are U.S. writers Katherine Anne Porter and William Burroughs, British novelist Graham Greene, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his countryman, filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. 

In 2014, Islam and Mexico were most frequently mentioned together in the context of terrorism. Republicans such as Rick Perry and Duncan Hunter caused controversy by saying that Muslim extremists were entering the United States through its southern border. The allegations were part of a long series of similar claims. Terrorists sneaking north or allying with drug cartels has been a persistent theme in the U.S. media since 9/11. Some cases, including a December 2002 incident in which a Lebanese man smuggled in Hezbollah sympathizers, have had truth to them. Yet the vast majority of these claims were unsubstantiated and amounted to little more than fear-mongering.

Canadian Sylvia Rempel of Sewing Seeds International (SSI) has set up a sewing school in the Volcanes neighborhood of Puerto Vallarta, with classes due to begin this month.

Wildlife management specialist Rodrigo Migoya likes to recall a crisis that occurred in 2000, the year after the group he founded, Niños y Crías (Kids and Critters), began banding flamingoes in coastal wetlands near the city where he lives, Mérida, in Yucatán, an area he calls “the most important breeding site for flamingoes” and crucial to their wellbeing worldwide.

Before dawn on a cold winter’s morning in a field outside of Guadalajara, a row of young people file past a bonfire and throw tobacco into the flames. The women wear long flowing dresses, while the men are shirtless and shiver silently in the dark.

Time is of the essence, given that I was only in Guadalajara for a month. One of the things on my to-do list was to visit some of the city’s much-praised museums. So when the editor of this newspaper informed me that some museums are free to visit on a Tuesday, we decided that I would take on the “Guadalajara museum challenge.”