Dear Sir,

Would the Guadalajara Reporter, have any idea why the Mexican postal service have been holding our mail from the UK, Canada and the US.

I enquired once again, at the post office and was told that our mail has been held in Mexico City. I along with many others have not received mail since November, do you know why.

Gillian Whitehead, Ajijic

Editor:  Oralia Peña, manager at Post Office Number Two at the Federal Building on Avenida Acalde in Guadalajara said that mail from U.S. and Canada has been held up at two Mexican Aduana (Customs) centers, one in the U.S. and another in Mexico City since before Christmas. But, she said the block is starting to lift and mail is now being transferred to sorting centers throughout the country. She noted that she had checked on a registered letter sent from the U.S. January 1 and that it was just now being sent from Mexico City to the regional sorting center.

Dear Sir,

The other evening at around 12:30 a.m., while returning home to Ajijic from the charreada in Tlajomulco, we had a flat tire.  We were on the Guadalajara-Chapala highway at the La Barca exit, near I believe, the pueblo of La Calera.

Dear Sir,

I have lived in Mexico off and on for 50 years and I have never made an altar before.  A few days ago I saw an Indian family pass by my bedroom window pushing a cart full of orange marigolds (cempasúchil). I thought how strange, they usually have a variety of potted plants.  Then I remembered it was October and these flowers are used for an altar.  About an hour later a woman with two plants rang the bell.  I quickly decided to put up an altar and bought one.  

Dear Sir,

The Lake Chapala Reporter (no relation to the Guadalajara  Reporter) and its owner, Lisa L. Jorgensen, have been doing their best to damage the reputation of lakeside realtors affiliated with the GIL/AMPI. It is obvious that this is a blatant attempt to sell subscriptions to her online magazine (in reality, a personal blog of the owner). She portrays herself an honorable crusader with unblemished integrity looking to save the public from unscrupulous realtors. Actually, this is nothing more than “yellow journalism”.

Dear Sir,

We are former Torontonians and world travelers, now living permanently in Ajijic.  Having raised, between us, eight children who have all become successful adults, we cannot stress enough the importance of supporting not only orphanages, abused women and children and abandoned pets, but the young people of our village.  

Dear Sir,

I would like to warn the foreign community that a BBVA Bancomer ATM recently ate my cash card and officials at the bank would not give it back to me.  They told me that  U.S. cards would be destroyed if retained by the machine.

Walter Januszko

Editor’s note: It is our understanding that cards retained by an ATM attached to a bank will only be returned by staff if the card is emitted by the parent bank.  In the past, bank staff would gladly retrieve the card and return it to the owner.  However, we understand that nowadays many ATMs are maintained by outside personnel, and that bank staff at branches have no way to access them to retrieve swallowed cards.  In these cases, getting them back is likely to be more complicated.  Remember, if a person’s card is swallowed up at an ATM that is not attached to a bank branch, there is absolutely no way that it will be returned.  Anyone who has their card swallowed should immediately call their bank’s customer service hotline to freeze the account.

Dear Sir,

While driving recently from Vista del Lago to the Pemex station in San Juan Tecomatlan we saw a young man lying on the Carreterra straddling the center line. He appeared to be sleeping. Two men, in separate vehicles, moved him to the side of the road.

We passed by again after we had gassed up and were returning home. An older man who lives in the house to the south of where the boy was lying was attempting to assist the boy. We stopped and he told us that Chapala police officers had driven into Poncitlan territory and deposited the boy in the middle of the highway. They then apparently turned around and left for home.

Soon, other locals had become involved as they tired to determine who the young man was and what his problem was.

We hope this works out for the best and consider it another example of why to not call the Chapala police force for help.

Alan Henningsgaard