Donald Trump began his trip to Saudi Arabia this week with a record $US110 billion armaments sale and pundits note that he is not the first U.S. leader to hold that “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”

Astute observers of urban milieus, be they dilettantes or professional urbanists, can’t have failed to noticed the proliferation in the past few years of a specific trope which could be described as a haute bourgeois mutation of the classic suburban strip mall, within whose confines are found, say, a collection of boutiques, a variety of vendors hawking whichever foods are currently the hotness  (Korean tacos, pork belly Bao, fried ants), and a couple of guilt-expiating temples of self-flagellation (pilates, yoga, weight-lifting), all unified by a shared design aesthetic.  The Via Libertad complex in Guadalajara’s Zona Rosa (Pink Zone) – composed of Torre Libertad, A La Libertad and Mercado Mexico – could be said to be of this ilk.  

Drop-in classes focusing on the practical benefits of the Kadampa Buddhist tradition of philosophy and meditation have begun at the American Society of Jalisco (Amsoc) in Guadalajara on Thursday mornings.

A printed introduction to a current show at the University of Guadalajara’s midtown Museum of Arts (MUSA) aptly sums up the material in its newest offering.

Plant-based cooking classes were essentially non-existent at Lakeside when Greg Laviolette and his partner Eddy Espindola arrived from Canada in December 2014.

Base criminality? Poetic justice? Whichever way you might lean, it’s safe to assume that the mitered grandees of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara are none too pleased by a recent spate of stealth thefts by brazen (one assumes) and  less-than-faithful parishioners.