On July 3, 1955, Maria Guadalupe Urzúa Flores won the Jalisco Electoral District X seat in the first federal election in Mexico in which women were allowed to vote and stand. 

She was an ordinary American girl of no great promise or lineage. Born into a middle-class family on Christmas Day 1844, the daughter of an army general.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa, a central figure of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, will be trumpeted July 20, when the federal government pays tribute to this complex and divisive figure on the centenary of his death.   

In January, shortly after a Guadalajara-born man I’ll call Rolando Bouchet retired at age 75, a malady that seemed to come out of nowhere put him in bed for weeks, with “hives all over his body, fevers every day and barely eating enough to stay alive,” his wife lamented.

May and June of 2023 mark 100 years since the renowned and controversial English novelist, D. H. Lawrence, spent a remarkably productive and well-documented two months in Chapala.

Some call it fate, others destiny or karma. In Spanish it’s destino, but in Hebrew, “bershert” is the word that means “it was meant to be” – always in a positive sense.