The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
With the sudden mushrooming of downtown Chapala’s metered parking zone, the local government came under fire this week from scores of furious residents and business operators.
Two teenage siblings who went missing on Monday, April 8 were found safe and sound early the following morning by Chapala police. The sister and brother, aged 14 and 16, had holed up in a local hotel after they and their parents were targeted in a common telephone extortion ploy that authorities label as “psychological kidnapping.”
In a crackdown aimed at boosting highway safety during the Easter holiday season, Jalisco traffic police netted hundreds of motorists in the Lake Chapala area for diverse violations of the law.
A local woman was shot dead on the evening of Friday, April 5 while walking towards her home in an upper Chapala neighborhood. The victim was identified as Raquel Muñoz González, 36.
In February, local Rotarians Barbara and Bill Wilson flew to India to be part of National Immunization Day, when 2.3 million World Health Organization (WHO) workers, Rotarians and local volunteers joined together to administer polio drops to 176 million children.
Four men arrested last weekend in Cancun have been identified as prime suspects in a recent double kidnapping-murder case at lakeside.
“Most people do not know how the emergency response system functions in the Lake Chapala area, and many are completely confused and unprepared when a serious emergency arises,” says Chapala Red Cross medical director Sam Thelin. Expatriate residents often face legal, cultural and language barriers that aggravate the situation, the doctor says. “However the emergency response system worked in your home country, it is probably different here.”
In a carbon copy of a telephone scam reported by this newspaper in September 2012, a Chapala area expat’s bank balance is 10,000 pesos lighter after she fell for a hoax perpetrated by a fluent English speaker.
For thousands of years the flow of the 750-kilometer-long Lerma River was sufficient to exchange the entire water in Lake Chapala each year or two. The abundant excess of water flowed out of the lake and into the Santiago River where it continued past Guadalajara for its 500-kilometer run to the Pacific Ocean.
