A Honduran migrant from San Pedro Sula, the world’s murder capital, beside the train tracks in Guadalajara.
With its leafy, brightly painted entrance, the new FM4 migrant shelter in Guadalajara is a welcome sight for the weary migrants making the hazardous journey from Central America and southern Mexico to the US.
Whether driven by economic desperation or displaced by the region’s rampant, gang-related violence, the majority of migrants have spent weeks clinging on to La Bestia, the freight train that runs to the US border.
Here they have a chance to rest, wash and eat, while volunteers from non-governmental organisation FM4 Paso Libre offer them clean clothes, medical attention, and legal and psychological counselling.
Volunteers cook meals for the migrants using ingredients donated by locals.
“This is the best shelter we’ve been through. They have my respect,” says Alvaro, a Honduran migrant who is particularly excited by the prospect of a shower and a change of footwear. “I haven’t taken my shoes off in two weeks and my feet smell awful.”
Alvaro, 26, and his cousin Emilio, 23, who asked that their names be changed to protect their identities, left home to seek work in the US.
Salvadoran businessman Eduardo Ramos is hoping to claim asylum in Mexico after being extorted and having his son kidnapped in his homeland.
Having lost what little money and possessions they had while fleeing immigration agents, the pair must now also dodge the ruthless gang members who demand $100 from every migrant boarding the train. Upon reaching the border, they intend to work in Mexicali, the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California, until they can afford a human trafficker, or coyote as they are known, to smuggle them across…
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Jesús Conrique has been serving drinks in La Fuente for 34 years.
With no sign bearing its name, no windows, and a large board just inside the doorway that prevents outsiders from looking in, La Fuente does not seem the most welcoming of bars at first glance. The only indication that 78 Pino Suarez street is home to one of Guadalajara’s oldest and most beloved cantinas is the faint piano sounds that drift onto the street outside.
Step inside this cavernous joint and it feels like you’ve stumbled into a Mexican speakeasy. Elderly regulars line the bar while large groups huddle around crowded wooden tables. The sepia walls could use a paint job and the complete absence of natural light makes it almost feel like a haunt for vampires. Given the number of politicians that drink here, some Mexicans would say it is…
Originally founded in the 1870s under the name El Bosque, this cantina was renamed La Iberia after a group of Spaniards won it in a game of poker in 1904.
Most old-school Mexican cantinas have their myths but few, if any, are as steeped in legend as Guadalajara’s oldest watering hole, La Iberia. To explore its past is to delve into a weird and wonderful world of iconic revolutionaries, trigger-happy gunslingers, attentive ghosts, and high-stakes poker games, all served up with a hearty helping of stewed cats and boiled bulls’ penises.
Located at 9 Calle Alameda, just north of Guadalajara’s rundown city center, the cantina was first founded under the name El Bosque sometime in the 1870s. Now Mexico’s second biggest metropolis, Guadalajara was only a fraction of its current size back then. El Bosque’s moniker owed to its position on the wooded edge of the city.
It changed names in 1904, the Spanish manager Martín Martínez López tells me excitedly, when a group of his compatriots won the cantina in a game of poker with the former owner. The Spaniards renamed the cantina La Iberia, and although it has changed hands several times since then, its Iberian heritage lives on through Martínez, a 37-year-old Galician with bright blue eyes.
La Iberia’s signature drink, La Batanga de Doña Chela is made with tequila, vodka, aguardiente, coke, lime, salt, mint and ice.
Like La Iberia’s potent house cocktail, La Batanga de Doña Chela, many of the cantina’s myths should be taken with a hefty dose of salt. Yet simply hearing the jovial bar staff recount the tall tales associated with the cantina is half the fun in itself…
The Tequila Files 