Guadalajara, Jalisco

The small lakeside town of Chapala in Jalisco had more buildings designed by notable architects in the first half of the twentieth century than any other location of its size in Mexico, perhaps even in North America. In 1900, Chapala was little more than an overgrown fishing village with one major hotel and 1753 residents. […]

In March 2023 the city of Guadalajara dedicated a new monument to world-renowned engineer-architect Luis Barragán. The monument, El Palomar, was originally designed by Barragán in the 1970s but did not come to fruition until many years after his death. Barragán’s career has been extensively documented. However, the emphasis has usually been  on his later […]

The venerable old Zuno residence is a historic house in its own right but was designed to teach Mexican history. So it’s doubly “historic.” The person who said modern artists try to hide their meanings was wrong. This house was designed by four distinguished modern Mexican artists — aided by two architects — and yet […]

In rural Canada, I live close to the land and to a farming lifestyle that was once traditional. Therefore, when I’m in Mexico the countryside draws me to its peoples and traditions. It seemed natural to me to seek more information about the charro (cowboy), heir to Mexico’s charrería or equestrian tradition. The search led me to people on […]

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the village of Tlaquepaque just outside Guadalajara was where Guadalajara’s upper crust built their summer homes, places where they could escape the congestion of what was then considered to be a very busy city. Today, Tlaquepaque seems like a natural extension of the city of Guadalajara and, although […]

When Mexico braced herself for the imminent arrival of cholera from South America fifteen years ago, many people believed that the disease had never previously been known here. During the nineteenth century, however, there were several outbreaks, including the epidemic of 1833 in which more than 3,000 people died in the city of Guadalajara alone. […]

Very few visitors to Guadalajara and, indeed, only a minority of Tapatios (Guadalajara residents), realize that several ancient pyramids, built more than a thousand years ago, still stand in silent pride even as they hear the noise and feel the rumble of the traffic on the city’s ring-road or periférico. The site of Iztépete is […]

Charlie G. Posted by Charlie G. on January 13, 1999 Headin’ South from Nogales (an update) My son and I crossed the border at Nogales yesterday (1/11) and were pleasantly surprised with the efficient system we found at the Mexican immigration and customs station on the loop west of Nogales about 19 miles below the […]

Posted by charlie g. on April 11, 1999 On the road again – Oaxaca to Guad – The good, the bad and the ugly After getting set up to stay in Oaxaca for a while I decided last week to make a quick trip to Guadalajara and Ajijic to pick up some stuff I left […]

Posted by Ann Bice on June 29, 1997 We are planning to check out the Guad-Lake area for potential retirement-it sounds too good to be true. Anyway, we can get cheap airfare from Denver to Vallarta- much cheaper than to Guadaljara. Does it make sense to take the bus or train from Vallarta to Guad-Lake […]

Non Emergency Services United States Consular Office – Guadalajara Address: 175 Progreso Guadalajara, 44100 Jalisco, Mexico Web Site: https://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/Guadalajara.htm Entrance: For American Citizen Services & Federal Benefits: – Lopez Cotilla For Non-Immigrant Visas – Libertad Telephone: (3) 825-2700 or (3) 825-2998 Hours of Service: General telephone response: 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. Passports and Citizenship: 8:00 am to […]

Cogan’s Reviews I’ve been heard to complain lately about the way a lot of books come to us laden with reviewers’ glowing comments and overblown descriptions of the contents. I picked up a paperback not too long ago that had eight pages of reviews inside the covers and a bunch more on the outside covers, […]

Cogan’s Reviews The simplest way to describe this tale is to quote from the author’s preface. “South of Yesterday” is the story of my mother’s life as a bride coming to a strange land. The book flows through the charmed life of an American living in Guadalajara in the early nineteen hundreds, into the violence […]

Cogan’s Reviews I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guidebook specifically on Guadalajara and the surrounding area. There are plenty of such books on the Lake Chapala region, serving the many tourists, retirees and ex-pats who find their way down here. But I just don’t recall seeing a specific English text on Mexico’s second largest […]

Cogan’s Reviews Here’s an interesting and entertaining collection of essays, mainly about Mexico, but also covering a surprisingly wide range of other topics that reflect Michael Hogan’s many and varied interests. The Mexican entries include items like “The Crawling Things of Paradise”, a small tribute to all the crawling, flying, buzzing, poisonous, and non-poisonous insects […]

Motorists traveling recently along the Guadalajara-Chapala highway may have been puzzled by what looks like the structural foundations of a mighty cathedral rising up near the roadway between the airport and the Cajititlan turn-off. The towering tangle of iron girders is in fact the framework for what will soon turn into a temple for Mexico’s […]

The Sunday Mexican fiesta at Guadalajara’s Camino Real promised cockfighting. I should have expected the “cockfight” would amount to a quick display of two cheerfully bored roosters who could have auditioned for a wholesome children’s show. “Genuine cockfights are illegal in Mexico,” chastened self-appointed cognoscenti. I should have known that a real cockfight was as likely to take […]

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico. The metropolitan area includes Tlaquepaque, Tonala, and Zapopan, with a total population of about 4 million people. It is located about 200 miles east of Puerto Vallarta, and 300 miles west of Mexico City.   Guadalajara seems prosperous, orderly, and clean, compared to most Mexican cities. My wife […]

The streetlamp on any street, in any city, sees so many people passing by… Alberto Cortez I live now in this junkyard. It is not such a bad life. The open sky, the sun, the rain, and the beautiful starry nights of October are my faithful companions. Almost every morning, except when it is very […]

I was born in a land that has her womb full of sunlight; that smells of tobacco, and the air intoxicates you because it tastes of rum. The sea caresses all of her body: it dresses her with garments made from coral and salt. Marisela Verena Each year here in Guadalajara, we host an international […]

One day Mary and I decided to go to the nearby town of Tequila where, of course, they make tequila. There’s a train you can take from Guadalajara to Tequila on Saturdays. Lots of tourists do this. I’d read articles in guidebooks that described whole groups of people getting stone cold drunk during drinking contests. […]

Moctezuma ordered his special chair. Pedro Páramo, in Juan Rulfo’s award winning novel sat upon one. Both men enjoyed equipales, the rustic leather furniture found everywhere in Mexico. Equipales are still hand-manufactured in many parts of the country. However in Zacoalco de Torres, a small town south of Guadalajara, the tradition dates back to Pre-Hispanic times. By the […]

When Miguel Angel Martínez attended a photography class nearly a decade ago at the Universidad de Guadalajara (Guadalajara University), he suddenly knew that he had found his calling. A student in the university’s Escuela de Artes Plásticas (School of Plastic Arts), Martínez had been immersed in a world of painting and drawing. But when he […]

Art is a necessity and as such, it is important not just in our personal lives, but is also the reflection of a society’s reality. If you are ever wandering around the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico, you may just stumble upon a larger than life young woman smiling down at you, her naked body partially […]

Many of the things we take for granted today didn’t exist in the last century. A case in point is the railroad from Manzanillo to Guadalajara. The grand celebrations for the inauguration of this line, completed in 1908, were among the finest ever seen in Colima. The Mexican President of the time, Porfirio Diaz, attended […]

We were snapping wedding photos in the atrium of the church – that’s the big square in front of old Mexican churches where the Indians gathered to hear Mass – when the “next” bride and her wedding party arrived and politely shooed our party away. We couldn’t complain. “Our” bride had shooed off a “previous” […]

I hadn’t realized how much help an escribano might be. An escribano – sometimes called evangelista – is one of those fellows who works at a typewriter under the downtown arches. And I found out some things about those arches, too. I had a form to fill out for the Mexican government. It was long, with a lot of lines. Worse, […]

Visitors – even those who come regularly – will always find something they haven’t seen before by taking long strolls in Guadalajara’s mansion area. Hungry? That’s where the best restaurants are. Blossoming out in bright yellows, whites, greens and even a few blues, the area sparkles monthly with recent changes. Old homes suddenly become visible […]

It was like following three battleships. The shoppers rolled away like bow waves before the three “cargadores” who churned toward them with two hundred pounds of produce on each of their hand carts. “Aguas, ahi va el golpe!” – watch out, here comes a hard knock! – the warning cry scattered people out of the exit aisle of […]

As I walked through the gardens of La Nueva Posada, my eyes were riveted on the young indigenous girl seated on the garden wall. Her vivid yellow skirt and blue top reminded me of our magazine’s masthead. To the Huichols, an eclipse is the symbol of a new era. For the Huichol, indigenous people of […]

By mid-October, everything was done, I was packed and ready to leave. I placed the cat carrier on the front seat, hugged my friends as they warned me again that I would surely be raped and pillaged, climbed behind the wheel and began my trek to my new life in Mexico. This trip had actually […]

At age 17, I set out from my home in Colorado to Guadalajara… and my career found me. That one journey altered my life boundlessly. The adventure of a long and colorful bus trip set off an insatiable curiosity to explore the rest of the world. From exploring Mexico, I went on to travel the […]

Some stories are too good to forget. This one is told by Tepatitlán chronicler Francisco Gallegos Franco in his book Leyendas de Tepatitlán (Legends of Tepatitlán) — John Pint. In 1870, the richest man in Guadalajara was, without a doubt, Don Manuel Escandón, owner of La Escoba Yarn and Fabric Company. In this year, however, a […]

In most places, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but not in many parts of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, located at the western edge of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. In this woods, a person trying to take a shortcut to some spot only 100 meters away may suddenly find himself or herself […]

Before the revolution, haciendas dotted the countryside of Mexico. With their classic architecture and splendid great houses, each Mexico hacienda is surrounded in an aura of romance. Located 40 kilometers west of Guadalajara, the circular pyramids of Teuchitlán, attract tourists from all over the world. The “Guachimontones” are the centerpiece of several attractions in the […]

2013 saw the launching of a new book describing the mammals of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, located just west of the city of Guadalajara. Mamíferos del Bosque La Primavera, Guía Ilustrada (in Spanish) has 112 pages and 60 color photographs. The authors are three biologists — Silvia Zalapa, Edgar Godinez and Sergio Guerrero. Several hundred friends of the […]

Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city happens to be situated right next to a beautiful pine and oak forest covering more than 36,000 hectares (139 square miles). For as long as anyone can remember, el Bosque de la Primavera has been referred to as “Guadalajara’s lungs” and in 1980, when big-time development plans threatened the woods, the […]

On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, the first book ever on the geology of the Primavera Forest was launched at ITESO University in Guadalajara. La Apasionante Geología del Área de Protección de Flora y Fauna La Primavera was written by U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer and geologist Barbara Dye during her two years of service at the woodland sanctuary. Although written […]

It all began with a casual comment by my friend Rodrigo Orozco — also known as Tarantula Man, thanks to the anti-poaching project he leads in western Mexico — when I told him about a hike I was organizing for the following Saturday. “Sorry, John,” replied Orozco, “I’m going to be tied up for the next 44 […]

In Guadalajara with a short time to spare after a business meeting or a long wait between flight? Even an hour or two will suffice to see something of the artistic heritage that Mexico’s second city, Guadalajara, houses on behalf of the nation. It is especially fitting that the city houses so much fine mural […]

Posted by Paul Woodman on January 27, 1997 I’m driving fro Guadalajara to PV and back. I would appreciate comments on routes and places to visit and things to see. Via Manzanillo ? Via Tepic, San Blas ? Hola!!! Posted by BETSY on January 27, 1997 If you are going to PV from Guadalajara on […]

Guadalajara Country Club Atlas Country Club Club de Golf Santa Anita Chapala Country Club Chula Vista Country Club S.C Course Name: Guadalajara Country Club A.C Address: Mar Caribe 2615, Guadalajara, Jal. Phone: (3) 817-2858 or (3) 817-3502 Fax: (3) 817-3475 Accepts outside players Monday thru Friday if they show proof of membership in another Country Club Course Length: 6,900 yds. […]

Nací en una tierra que tiene la entraña preñada de sol; que huele a tabaco, y el aire emborracha porque sabe a ron. El mar acaricia toda su figura: la viste con prendas de coral y sal. Marisela Verena Aquí en Guadalajara se celebra cada año un encuentro internacional de mariachis, con festival y todo. […]

In response to all the positive feedback on my Day of the Dead article, here are a few related activities you might pursue in the Guadalajara – Lake Chapala area during late October – early November. It is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating of Mexico´s many holidays and traditions. For authenticity, Guadalajara’s Museo Regional […]

The reasons to learn a foreign language are many. “For those of us traveling or living in Mexico, there is no doubt that learning Spanish enriches our lives,” says Ohio native Anne Meyer, a social studies teacher. Spanish differs from region to region, so studying Spanish in Mexico gave her advantage for retiring in the […]

Olvera has been teaching a choir in Santa Ana Tepetitlan, for boys aged six to 13 years old, five days a week for the last 23 years. The first time I hear the choir Ninos Cantores de Santa Ana, led by Professor Jose Garcia Olvera, is at the Jocotepec church. They have been asked to […]

NEW TO MEXICO? Get off on the right foot! Let an experienced bilingual professional be your guide. I’m well qualified to help you find viable pathways in and around Guadalajara and Lake Chapala IF YOU ARE EXPLORING MARKETS OR STARTING A NEW BUSINESS IN MEXICO… Let me assist you: – making contacts – setting up […]

Anon Business took me to Guadalajara, and I was looking forward to a couple of extra days for sightseeing, shopping and good Mexican food. I hadn’t been there for years, but I remembered the colonial city center, the variety of restaurants, and the chance to pick up presents for friends and family at really attractive […]

The mariachi is believed to have originated in Jalisco, in the area of Cocula and Tecolitlan. So it is fitting that the capital of Jalisco celebrate this quintessential musical tradition, and the annual International Mariachi Festival — begun in 1994 — brings together groups from all over the world. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the event includes concerts, […]

“The Twenty-Two Music Professors” squared off against “The “Heavy Metal Charros,” (Heavy Metal Cowboys) separated only by the four lanes of a major cross street. Batteries of powerful lights turned an area of several square blocks of the city into day. Huge amplifiers were dotted around in a very scientific and acoustically successful manner. The […]

Right behind Hospicio Cabañas, at the south-east corner of that building, you abruptly run into a rabbit warren of narrow streets, dilapidated adobe buildings, lots of old cars and poorly dressed people. But don’t be afraid, it’s just a working-class barrio and the people are starting their day. They greet their friends and a few will say “Buenos días” to you, […]

I had had a bad day. I had gone back to work after being sick for three days with the flu. People who were supposed to pay didn’t. My appointment this morning didn’t work out as well as I could have hoped and I felt just all around crappy. But every cloud has its lining […]

I had known Jaime Nuñez for three years when the big incident took place on a Saturday, the third day of a four-day annual equestrian event, the Concurso Amistad, at the CHE equestrian club (Centro Hípico Ecuestre) on the outskirts of Guadalajara. This was one of the stellar horse shows in that city, and one of the more important […]