In this monthly series, we republish a few of the headlines from our September editions 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
1968
Georg Rauch opening
Opening at La Galeria in Guadalajara is a one-man show of Salzburg, Austria-born George Rauch. The show, sponsored by the Guadalajara Olympic Cultural Committee, might well be entitled “Unconventional Realism.
Rauch’s primary vehicles are imaginative starkness and an eccentric distortion. With a palette limited mostly to black, white, crimson and flesh tones, he cuts and partitions the figures of his models in ways that are both stark and affecting. He will for example, place a severely foreshortened model on a crisp white square situated on a ground of fierce black, edged at the horizon with red, while above this line is the stark white of thoroughly primed canvas. The effect is stunning, almost disturbing, because of the union of starkness with the emotionally-loaded gesture of a great, monumental hand, or hip or shoulder. Rauch will fasten on a single portion of his model’s anatomy, enlarging and distorting it until it blossoms into something quite human, becoming much more expressive than, say, a face might be. This is the work of a consummate draftsman, an artist with a penetrating knowledge of anatomy.
1978
Brokaw quizzes JLP
NBC Today Show host Tom Brokaw interviewed Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo (JLP) on the themes of illegal aliens, drug trafficking, natural gas and U.S. attitudes toward Mexico. “We have said frequently that we want to organize our country so that we can export goods instead of people … we don’t have the capacity to create enough jobs … therefore some of our best men go abroad,” said JLP. About the heroin traffic between Mexico and the United States, he said, “We shall do all that may be required, but the most important aspect of this problem is what the U.S. can do to cut consumption.” As for natural gas, JLP explained that, “We have decided to use our gas within the Republic instead of exporting it, and so at the moment we do not have enough gas for any appreciable exportation.” On U.S. attitudes toward Mexico, he said, “I believe the U.S. does not accord due importance to Mexico. Things would go better if there were complete understanding on the part of all those involved. We do not feel that we have a list of subjects that would simplify a solution to the problem, but it is the U.S.’s problem, and our problem is the United States.”
1988
Cops bust cat burglar
Chapala judicial police are holding a 16-year-old Ajijic youth in connection with a series of burglaries and car thefts that have plagued the lakeside area for several months. The suspect is not being charged with the 30 or more serious burglaries that occurred simultaneously with the auto thefts, said police chief Eduardo Ledezma Fregoso. When interviewed by this newspaper, the youth, Manuel Lara Garcia, spoke freely of his crime spree. He identified the cars he admitted stealing and said that he took them for joy rides or drove them to night spots in the vicinity. When asked why the cars were usually damaged and in some cases destroyed, Lara Garcia replied that he did not know how to drive very well. Though only five car thefts were reported, at least a dozen took place. The thief usually entered a house in search of car keys, generally leaving valuables alone, and driving the car away for a few hours. If still in running order, the car would be returned to its parking place, usually the worse for wear.
1998
Black Widow’s kids get jail
The children of the woman known as the “Black Widow,” who tried to defraud a local insurance company of thousands of dollars, received jail terms last week. Douglas Peter Lapine Rodriguez, 33, and Lena Mae Lapine Rodriguez, 27, were sentenced to eight years and three months in prison for aiding and abetting insurance fraud and perjury. Their mother, former Guadalajara and lakeside resident Maria del Socorro Rodriguez de Lapine, 58, is still at large. She became one of Mexico’s most famed criminals after it was discovered in 1995 that she had faked her own death to claim a half-million dollar insurance policy. The case achieved widespread publicity, making the pages of the National Enquirer and appearing on NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries.”
The friendly, English-speaking Rodriguez charmed her way into the hearts of four expatriates living in Guadalajara and at lakeside, and all of her partners died in less than clear circumstances, leaving Rodriguez to inherit much of their wealth. After an investigation was launched into the mysterious death of her last boyfriend, she herself passed away in Chapala – or so everyone thought. The insurance company became suspicious after her children and mother tried to claim the US$500,000 policy taken out less than two years earlier. When police dug up her coffin in the Chapala cemetery in January, 1996, it turned out to contain only rocks, boards and old newspapers. The insurance company later admitted that Rodriguez had committed a similar scam two years earlier, collecting a US$100,000 policy following the death of a non-existent half-sister she had invented and impersonated.
2008
UdG Rector toppled
There are few higher educational systems in the world where the intrigue, politics and backstabbing rises to such headline-grabbing heights as the publically-funded Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG), home to 195,116 students. In what amounted to a bloodless coup d’etat this week, 140 members of the UdG’s administrative council voted to kick Rector Carlos Briseño out of office. His crime was trying to purge the university of its 20-year power-behind-the-throne, Raul Padilla, a wily left-wing politician with a penchant for capitalism.
The battle had been brewing for months, with Briseño demanding more accountability, centralization of university functions and an increased focus on academic achievement. He drew up an amended budget, pointedly not allocating funds for commercial projects headed by Padilla, who has placed his own loyal men in the rector’s chair ever since he left that office in the early 1990s. Briseño, a former loyal subordinate of Padilla, seemed to be flexing his own political muscles without the approval of his godfather.
Sensing a plot building to oust him from office, the rector removed Padilla from several of his 12 university posts, including the chairmanship of the committees that operated UdG’s commercial and cultural enterprises – the International Book Fair (FIL), the International Film Festival, the Teatro Diana, Auditorio Telmex, two hotels, a sports club and a slew of other businesses, all run by senior university officials and none of which have to undergo external independent audits.
Forced to convene a meeting of the University Council, Briseño was forced out of office and a Padilla loyalist named as his replacement, who immediately reinstated Padilla in his old jobs, and then replaced any Briseño supporters left in the hierarchy.