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Guadalajara’s famed birote bread was born of serendipity after a Belgian baker in the late 1800s tried making baguette not knowing how yeast would react in the city’s high altitude, said Perla Montes de Oca, whose family founded El Pesebre restaurant, now a prominent local chain.
The bread, with a crusty outer shell and a soft centre, is the foundation for El Pesebre’s “star” sandwich made with lightly marinated pork leg, avocado, tomato, onion, little slices of jalapeño peppers and a touch of local cream.
“They say [birote] can’t be replicated in other places,” said Montes de Oca.“The chemical reaction of the yeast happens specifically in this location.”
El Pesebre’s flagship restaurant sits slightly northeast from the city’s historic centre and across the street from the old Jalisco stadium which hosted matches from the 1986 World Cup of soccer. Its walls are covered in soccer memorabilia.
“For my parents, the World Cup was synonymous with Brazilians jumping and dancing Samba on the brand-new tables they’d just bought,” she said.
El Pesebre now has a storefront at the newer Akron stadium, in Zapopan in greater Guadalajara, that will host several World Cup matches beginning in June.
Guadalajara, the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, is the home of tequila and the cradle of mariachi, and one of three host Mexican cities for the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Preparations in Guadalajara were recently plunged under a cloud of uncertainty following an explosion of violence on Feb. 22 that ripped through the city, across Jalisco, and flared in several parts of the country.
While unrest has quieted and officials are projecting calm, it’s been a reminder of the two decades of conflict involving state agencies and organized crime groups that have left thousands of people missing, and human remains discovered kilometres from the new stadium.
Unease lingers
On Feb. 22, armed men set stores on fire and torched vehicles to block roads and highways after Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, died at the hands of Mexican special forces during a targeted operation in Jalisco.
Oseguera Cervantes led a sprawling criminal paramilitary organization that carries the state’s name, Jalisco New Generation Cartel. He was buried Monday in a gold casket, amid flatbed loads of flowers, at a cemetery in Zapopan.
Plywood now covers the windows of burned-out convenience stores and the charred remains of vehicles have been cleared from Guadalajara’s streets. Mexican Army and National Guard troops also now conduct regular patrols in convoys of modified pickup trucks and armoured vehicles throughout the city.
Still, an unease lingers in the city that the violence could return.
“I think it’s a shadow that many of us perhaps don’t want to fully materialize, but deep down, we know it’s there.” said Montes de Oca.
But she has faith in Mexico’s security services.
“I’m confident that every possible variable has been accounted for, and that [security forces] have the certainty and confidence that everything will work out,” said Montes de Oca.
Gustavo Staufert, vice-president of Jalisco’s tourism board, said the violence of Feb. 22 was a one-off event that should not be used to paint all of Guadalajara and Jalisco as dangerous.
“Things happen in every country,” said Staufert.
He said there is no reason for Canadians, who make up about 11 per cent of tourists who visit Jalisco, to worry if they’re planning to take part in World Cup festivities.
“People are going to have a fiesta all around and people can be sure that everything will be all right and will be secure,” he said.
‘Mexico is in peace’
It’s a message Jalisco and Mexican federal officials are also repeating.
During a splashy media event at Akron stadium to display the golden World Cup trophy, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro praised the Mexican military for helping to secure the state.
“My generals, thank you very much. I ask that you stand so Jalisco can offer you tribute,” said Lemus Navarro as the room clapped.
Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez also declared Mexico safe for the World Cup.
“We can affirm that Mexico is in peace. Soccer can be enjoyed with calmness,” said Rodríguez Velázquez.
Crisis of the disappeared
But for many in Jalisco, peace remains 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 Fernández, 19, was kidnapped at gunpoint.
“It’s like I’m reliving … what happened to my son one more time,” said Flores González. “It’s that feeling of uncertainty, of being abandoned by institutions, that anxiety of living in a failed state, in a place where nobody matters.”
He carries security camera video of his son’s kidnapping on his cellphone. It marks the exact time his son was taken — 6:28 a.m. — by agents with Jalisco’s attorney general’s office and never seen again.
No charges were ever filed against Flores Fernández, and 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 with the state attorney general’s office and ordered Jalisco to investigate. Flores González said the ruling has been ignored.
Flores González continues to search for his son. He leads a group, known as a colectivo, called the Light of Hope that is composed of about 500 family members of some of the 16,000 people who have been reported missing in Jalisco, according to state figures.
Posters with the faces of the missing are pasted throughout the city, attached to light posts, walls, parks and plazas, while transforming a major central roundabout into a permanent monument of remembrance.
These colectivos discovered at least three spots last year used as dumping grounds for bodies within a roughly 20 kilometre radius of Akron stadium. Hundreds of bags of human remains were recovered from these areas and the identification process continues.
Mexico, according to the national registry, has over 130,000 people reported as vanished, putting the country on par with places like Syria and Colombia. Jalisco is the state with the highest number of missing persons. Many are victims of 20 years of 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.
“The corruption and collusion is terrible.”
Flores González said while the state has spent hundreds of millions of pesos to spruce up Guadalajara for the World Cup, it spends only tens of millions of pesos a year on the state agency tasked with searching for the missing.
“There’s a disparity in priorities,” he said.
Members of the Light of Hope are planning to join colectivos from across to converge on Mexico City for a march planned for June 11, the first day of the World Cup, said Flores González.
“The World Cup is important, of course it is,” he said.
“What isn’t good is for the country to cover its memory, to cover up its justice, and the truth with the excuse of a sporting event.”
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