The music has stopped in Guadalajara’s once landmark Plaza de los Mariachis, where grown  men could hang out with beer and tequila, openly  shed tears and sing along to soulful melodies of requited love.

Two incidents on consecutive days suggest that criminals targeting bank customers are prepared to use more aggressive methods.

Many civic minded citizens rose well before the crack of dawn on Monday, January 4 to stand in line at metro-area tax collection offices to pay their annual bills. Discounts are offered for early payment of municipal and state property, water and vehicle taxes. Above, Tapatios brave the chilly morning weather to wait outside the state tax collection office (recaudadora) in the city center to pay their annual car tax (refrendo).

Relatives of missing loved ones are demanding that the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and State Forensic Sciences Institute stop the practice of cremating the bodies of unidentified persons.

Even though traffic was virtually nonexistent in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara on December 25, the air quality dipped dramatically, mostly provoked by dozens of fires set by celebrants on Christmas Eve, especially in the southern part of the city. 

An air quality reading of 162 Imecas (very bad) registered at Las Pintas monitoring station wasn’t helped by a fire at a plastics factory in the Alamo industrial zone. Civil Protection officials report extinguishing around 50 bonfires on the night of December 24, and confiscating 12 kilograms of fireworks, mostly luces de bengala (hand-held flares). 

The food truck boom in Guadalajara shows no sign of slowing down.