Reason number 1,001 why San Carlos will never amount to a hill of beans until it separates from Guaymas.

Over the last few months Guaymas has made national headlines for what could only be politely called less than stellar behavior. In spanish you might say Guaymas es un pinche desmadre. I am only going to focus on two nefarious acts that were committed here in Guaymas. Two is plenty for the moment. These two examples should be completely sufficient to drive home my point.

The first act describes the obliviousness that led to the death of migrant farm worker Jose Sanchez Carrsaco. On the 16th of October Jose Sanchez Carrasco showed up at the Guaymas General Hospital for medical help.  Jose was suffering from malnutrition and dehydration and possessed no money nor a IMSS registration number (mex social security). The doctors at the hospital refused to attend to him. No social workers tried to find him a place were he could sleep or some food. Apparently no one offered to take him to the Franciscans in Guaymas who would have fed him. None of that happened. What happened is that Jose Sanchez Carrasco when refused help at Guaymas General, with no were to go, simply lied down in front of the hospital from exhaustion and died of thirst and malnutrition. He spent five agonizing days just lying in front of Guaymas General. The day before he died on the 21st of October a local journalist interviewed him and posted it on you tube.

How many people simply walked around or over Mr. Sanchez as he lay there dying for a 5 full days in front of Guaymas general I can not tell you. It had to have been in the hundreds. What does it say about a city who lets someone simply die from malnutrition and thirst, in front of a hospital no less? Jose Sanchez was once again in the news just the other day in Guaymas. He made the front page in La Voz del Puerto on Friday the 17th of January. Perhaps for the last time. La Voz del Puerto reported that a local Franciscan father, Alejandro Torres, expressed his indignation towards the ministero public (district attorney) by stating that Jose was re victimized, by being denied a christian burial. If only someone would have had the bright idea of taking Jose over to the Franciscans in the first place. It seems that the ministero public couldn’t even give Jose a decent christian burial. Otto Claussen the mayor of Guaymas also criticized the ministero publico. Otto was quoted as saying that he found it surprising that Jose had  been almost clandestinely laid to rest in an unmarked common grave. Claussen also stated he felt impelled to find funding for a monument in memory of the man that Guaymas let die.

On the very same front page for that 17th of January edition of La Voz there was the second story which, although difficult to believe, is none the less

far more macabre. A lawyer by the name of Jose Maria Hernandez was kidnapped by unknown assailants. While speaking with a client in front of his house he was approached by two armed men. They covered his eyes with tape and then while shoving him into the Caravan, apparently by accident, crushed one of his ears in the door. These types of stories usually end badly. The corpse is found a few days later dumped in a nondescript desert arroyo not far from town. This case was not to be of the normal type. After being driven around for three hours with his assailants riffling through dozens of his cellular phone text messages he was released. La Voz del Puerto reported that Mr Hernandez heard three distinct voices while he was blindfolded and many times he heard them mention, ” let’s go, He is not the guy. He is not the guy.” Not only did they not kill him they stated to him that “We made a mistake and we are not thieves, here is your cell phone back.” Mr Hernandez then felt the cell phone

put back into his pocket.

Was this really a case of mistaken identity? The question needs to be asked for one reason and one reason only. Jose Maria Hernandez was the lawyer

for a women named Maria Jesus Coronado. Maria also went by the nickname “La China” although I am loath to use her nick name for reasons that I hope will be clear later. On the 29th of September Maria Jesus was involved in the attempted blackmail of a local Pan politician by the name of Omar Nunez. She was brought into custody on the 29th of September and by the 5th of October she was dead. The official report stated she hung her self in her cell with a television cord. Her lawyer Mr Jose Maria Hernandez has stated to the press that over the 5 days she was in her cell he was continually denied access to his client and that she was being interrogated in the dead of night with only a court appointed lawyer there to represent her.

Hernandez spoke with her on only a few occasions and he publicly stated to the local press that Maria Jesus had been forced to sign a statement that she was not allowed to read.

After Maria’s body was found in her cell the ministerio publico declared her death a suicide and the coroner and the state human rights commission signed off on the report. There was just one little problem. One of Maria’s sisters didn’t. Brenda Figueroa Maria’s half sister had the courage to say no, Maria would have never killed herself. She loved her 4 children far to much and after this last event she was going to go down the straight and narrow from here on in. It appears Brenda convinced the mayor Otto Clausen to call in the human rights commission from Mexico city to do a independent autopsy. That’s right, the body of

Maria was exhumed, another autopsy performed and low and behold what was once a suicide now becomes a murder.

Now the kidnapping of Mr. Hernandez can be put into perspective. Perhaps it really was a case of mistaken identity but something tells me that ten will get you 20 that the fact that Mr. Hernandez was the lawyer for Maria Jesus had something to do with it. In the coming months we are planning a special exposé on this one.

How does all this relate to San Carlos? Well here is the reality of it. San Carlos is nothing more than a belonging of Guaymas. They, Guaymas officials and politicians, own our town and they do with it as they please. The very same ministero publico and police comandante that most likely allowed Maria Jesus to be murdered reside over every single resident in this town. They run the show and let there be know mistake about it. In next months coming edition of the San Carlos Wireless we are going to talk a lot about crime in Guaymas and San Carlos. We have petitioned the state through the freedom of information act to provide us with crime statistics on Guaymas and San Carlos. We are also going to tell the stories of recent crimes committed against local residents and by local police. In my humble opinion the only real way forward for San Carlos is to break away from Guaymas and incorporate.

There are good people in Guaymas. There are positive things that happen there. Just take a walk over to Bellas Artes and chat with Fray Ivo. Make sure you buy a ticket to the upcoming concert by the Ochestra Esperanza on the 9th of February. San Carlos is a scenically beautiful area and offers a great life style for many here but we are, whether we like it or not increasingly defined by the negative. If we should ignore the negative as if it does not exist, as so many like to do here especially the realtors who all hate my guts for even bringing these subjects up, then we do ourselves and our community a disservice. If San Carlos residents, Mexican and American a like, were to band together, to break away from the unrelenting corruption of Guaymas, well then we would really have something here.