Although meat is a mainstay of Mexican cuisine and vegetarians are generally not at home here, the discriminating seeker of good quality, grass-fed or organic beef, pork and lamb — especially city dwellers — may come up almost empty.

One of Jalisco’s more unusual side-trips could be the perfect place  for new-age enthusiasts searching for more connective experiences with their inner selves.

At least for the next month, Guadalajara is taking its place — alongside Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Chinese “Bodies” exhibit that showcases preserved and dissected human remains — as the locale for two gruesome but probably necessary museum exhibits. 

Plenty of people will tell you that witchcraft works in Mexico. A spiritual cleansing can safeguard against bewitchment. A wife can put a spell on a husband to stop him philandering. A storekeeper can hire a witch to put his rivals out of business. 

A hundred years after his death, Porfirio Diaz is remembered not only as Mexico’s longest ruling president, but also as the person credited with putting Chapala on the map as a tourist destination.

The “Black Widow” of Chapala 

With a string of suspected poisonings, a strangling and an empty coffin, the case of the “Black Widow” is a narrative Raymond Chandler would have been proud of. Yet Maria Socorro Rodriguez, the femme fatale of the story, was no fiction. A Mexican woman who married a string of wealthy U.S.-born retirees, Maria is suspected of bringing them all to an early grave.