Guadalajara is famous the birote the bread was quietly born after a Belgian baker in the late 1800s tried to make a baguette without knowing how the yeast would react to the city’s altitude, says Perla Montes de Oca, whose family founded the restaurant El Pesebre, now a popular local chain.
The bread, with a crusty outer shell and a soft center, is the basis of El Pesebre’s “star” sandwich made with lightly marinated pork leg, avocado, tomato, onion, slices of jalapeño pepper and a touch of local cream.
“They said [birote] it cannot be replicated in other areas,” said Montes de Oca. “The chemical reaction of the yeast occurs specifically in this area.”
El Pesebre’s flagship restaurant sits a little northeast from the city’s historic center and across the street from the old Jalisco stadium that hosted the 1986 soccer World Cup. Its walls are covered with soccer memorabilia.
“For my parents, the World Cup was like Brazilians jumping and Samba dancing on the brand new tables they just bought,” she said.
El Pesebre now has a storefront in Akron’s new stadium, Zapopan in Great Guadalajara, which will host several World Cup games starting in June..
Guadalajara, the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, is the home of tequila and the cradle of mariachi, and is one of three cities in Mexico to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Preparations in Guadalajara have recently come under a cloud of uncertainty following the outbreak of violence on Feb. 22 that passed through the city, across Jalisco, and burned in several parts of the country.
Although the unrest has subsided and officials have shown calm, it has been a reminder of a two-decade conflict involving state agencies and organized crime groups that has left thousands of people missing, and human remains found miles from the new stadium.
The concern continues
On Feb. 22, armed men set fire to shops and cars to block roads and highways after Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, died at the hands of Mexican special forces during an operation in Jalisco.
Oseguera Cervantes led an expanding military gang with a state name, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. He was buried on Monday in a gold casket, among many flowers, in the Zapopan cemetery.
Plywood now covers the windows of burned shops and the charred remains of cars have been removed from the streets of Guadalajara. Mexican soldiers and National Guard troops also now regularly patrol modified trucks and armored vehicles throughout the city.
Still, anger persists in the city that violence could return.
“I think it’s a shadow that many of us probably don’t want to fully realize, but deep down, we know it’s there.” said Montes de Oca.
But he has faith in Mexico’s security services.
“I hope that all variables are accounted for, and that [security forces] I was sure and confident that everything will be fine,” said Montes de Oca.
Gustavo Staufert, vice president of the Jalisco tourism board, said the February 22 violence was one event that should not be used to paint all of Guadalajara and Jalisco as dangerous.
“Things happen in every country,” Staufert said.
He said there is no reason for Canadians, who are 11 percent of tourists visiting Jalisco, to worry if they plan to participate in the World Cup festivities.
“People will have a fiesta everywhere and people can be sure that everything will be fine and it will be safe,” he said.
‘Mexico is peaceful’
It’s a message Jalisco and Mexican federal officials are echoing.
During a raucous press event at the Akron stadium to present the World Cup gold trophy, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro praised the Mexican military for helping to defend the country.
“My generals, thank you very much. I ask you to stand up so that Jalisco can respect you,” said Lemus Navarro while the room clapped.
Mexican Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez also announced that Mexico is safe from the World Cup.
“We can assure you that Mexico is in peace. Football can be enjoyed in peace,” he said Rodríguez Velázquez.
The problem of disappearance
But for many in Jalisco, peace is elusive.
When Héctor Flores González saw images of armed men on the streets of Guadalajara it brought him back to that morning of May 18, 2021, when his only child, Héctor Daniel Flores. Fernandez, 19, he was kidnapped at gunpoint.
“It’s like I remember … what happened to my son again,” said Flores González. “It’s that feeling of uncertainty, of being abandoned by institutions, the anxiety of living in a failed state, in a place where no one matters.”
She holds the surveillance camera video of her son’s abduction on her cell phone. It marks the exact time her son was taken – 6:28 am – by agents with the Jalisco attorney general’s office and was never seen again.
No charges have ever been filed against Flores Fernandezand the state has never offered an explanation or launched a serious investigation.
A Mexican court ruled last year that Flores Fernández was forcibly disappeared by agents from the state attorney general’s office and ordered Jalisco to investigate. Flores González said this decision had been ignored.
Flores González continues to search for his son. He leads a group, known as a the colectivocalled Light of Hope that includes about 500 family members of the other 16,000 people reported missing in Jalisco, according to state statistics.
Posters with the faces of the missing are pasted all over the city, pasted on light poles, walls, parks and plazas, while turning the main central circle into an eternal memorial.
These the colectivos they found at least three landfills last year within a 20-mile radius of the Akron stadium. Hundreds of bags of human remains have been found at these sites and the identification process is ongoing.
Mexico, according to the national registry, has more than 130,000 people reported as disappeared, putting the country on par with places like Syria and Colombia. Jalisco is the country with the highest number of missing persons. Many are victims of a 20-year conflict involving the state and organized crime groups.
“Here in Jalisco, and in Mexico, we don’t know where organized crime ends and the state begins,” Flores González.
“Corruption and collusion are bad.”
Flores González said that although the government has spent hundreds of millions of pesos to develop Guadalajara for the World Cup, it spends tens of millions of pesos a year on the government agency tasked with searching for the missing.
“There is a difference in priorities,” he said.
Light of Hope members plan to join the colectivos from the other side to meet in Mexico City in a march planned for June 11, the first day of the World Cup, said Flores González.
“The World Cup is important, of course,” he said.
“What is not good is that the country closes its memory, hides its justice, and the truth and has an excuse for a sports event.”
