In this monthly series, we republish a few of the headlines from our November editions 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
1973
Jalisco’s health hurting say docs
Almost half of Guadalajara and nearly two-thirds of Jalisco’s population outside the capital suffer from parasites and intestinal maladies, a team of doctors surveying the state’s health conditions has estimated.
The medics, part of the Social Action Brigades launching an offensive against various state problems, say their estimate is conservative and blame impure water for the situation. Children, they said, are particular victims of the sickness.
1983
Marzipan delux
An ingenious street-found bassinette serves to keep this child safe as his father sells paletas (popsicles) at Guadalajara’s Parque Agua Azul on holidays and at weekends. The bilingual bassinette label indicates the contents as units of marzipan (a peanut confection) whose brand name is “De La Rosa.” The youngster, however, is busily advertising just how tasty his father’s paletas are.
1993
US couple commitssuicide in GDL hotel
A married couple from the U.S. died holding hands in a Guadalajara hotel room after agreeing on a suicide pact.
Elbert “Rojo” Reed, 83, and his wife Muriel, 72, were found by staff in the Hotel Diana after taking an overdose of sleeping pills November 4. According to police reports, the couple had ingested around 90 pills.
The Reeds had become well-known figures in the Lakeside area after moving to the region seven years ago. Elbert Reed had suffered a stroke in June and had been prone to bouts of depression, according to friends of the couple. Muriel Reed had been facing legal problems at Lakeside, where she ran a rest home for the elderly, had dealings in real estate and published a monthly advertising paper called the Money Saver.
Hotel staff found a note in the dead couple’s room apologizing for the trouble caused and asking the management to contact Muriel Reed’s secretary to arrange disposal of the bodies. Their hotel bill had been paid in advance. A friend of the Reeds had earlier received a note from Muriel which said, “We cannot run for the rest of our lives,” and that she wasn’t going to put Rojo through all of this.”
Another friend commented that Muriel believed her husband had only a few months to live and that she didn’t feel she could carry on without him. They had been married for 41 years.
2003
Fox brings power to Huichols
Mexican President Vicente Fox inaugurated the first electrification project in the remote Cora-Huichol zone in the mountainous border between northern Jalisco and Nayarit this month. The 60-million-peso project began providing electricity to 7,000 indigenous in six isolated communities in early November. These communities had reportedly first solicited electricity from the federal government 50 years ago.
Fox, who is embroiled in a bitter fight with Congress to push through a controversial budget that would tax medicine, books and food, said the first beneficiaries from the proposal would be the impoverished indigenous communities of Mexico.
The budget for indigenous issues for 2003 in Mexico is a not-too-shabby 2.3 billion pesos, but Xochitl Galvez, Fox’s Indigenous Affairs minister (now a 2024 candidate for president), estimates that there is an infrastructure shortfall (including electricity, hospitals and schools) in indigenous areas of Mexico to the tune of 30 billion pesos. There are an estimated nine million full-blooded indigenous people from 62 ethnic groups in Mexico.
2013
Right wing rage over equality bill
Governor Aristoteles Sandoval signed Jalisco’s Ley de Libre Convivencia into law November 1, just hours after the State Congress had passed the bill the night before.
Having now been published in the Official Journal of Jalisco, the legislation that enhances same-sex couples’ rights to inheritance and social security by allowing two or more adults to enter into a notarized civil contract will take effect January 1, 2014.
Opponents of the bill called in vain for Sandoval to veto its passage late last Thursday, but the governor maintained his support for the initiative introduced by his party, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
The law does not permit same-sex couples to marry and explicitly states that they cannot adopt children.
Nonetheless, local conservative groups fear that the legislation paves the way for such developments. During Sunday Mass, Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, the archbishop of Guadalajara, warned the Catholic community to remain alert and keep defending the sanctity of marriage, because “we know this isn’t going to stop here. There are groups that will continue to be active upon seeing that they did not get everything they proposed.”
Meanwhile, Guillermo Martinez Mora, a legislator from the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), reacted to the bill’s passage with a rabid, unsubstantiated rant, claiming that “children living with homosexuals have mental and physical problems and use more drugs.” Even with its adoption clause, he called the initiative “detrimental to the development of children.”