Tortilla Virgen

For a devout Catholic, finding the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the opportunity of a lifetime. Doña Natalia Robles has been fortunate enough to see the image of the “Empress of the Americas” twice; first on the metal panel of a public telephone and second on a postage-stamp -sized piece of tortilla.
Robles, a mother of 15, first gained notoriety five years ago when she discovered an image of the Virgin on a panel of a Telmex pay phone on a rundown corner in eastern Guadalajara. People came from miles around to pay their respects, leave offerings and, in the case of one mariachi musician, to cry.
The Virgin reigned peacefully over the corner, next to an electronics repair shop and across the street from a flower stand, until last November when an out of control car crashed into the telephone.
“The whole thing was bent,” says Robles. “But somehow the panel with the Virgen survived.”
Robles helped to salvage the metal panel and created a bright red altar that now sits on the same corner of the phone. She became a de facto caretaker of the new altar and she says that since the Virgen appeared, the area has become a safer place.
“Before she came people smoked marijuana on that corner, and there was a lot of fighting between families,” she says. “Now everything is tranquil.”
Nearly a month after the crash, Robles’ son, Jorge Gonzalez, decided to heat the last tortilla in a one-kilo package. But he didn’t even have time to turn the stove on before he saw it: the oval shaped outline of Guadalupe in her mantilla. He called for his mother and it didn’t take long for her to put it in a safe place and have it blessed by a priest.
“My son wanted to take it to school and show it to his friends, but I said, ‘No, we need to make sure to keep it safe,’” she says.
Now, five months later, the image is still clear. Robles keeps it under lock and key in her humble home that is decorated, of course, with paintings and statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Robles has raised a Catholic family. Each of her 15 children attends church on a regular basis and has gone through the age-appropriate Catholic rites. But she is modest about her discoveries.
“People think they’re lies, but here they are,” she says. “Nothing has really changed, I’m still living my life every day.”

Fraudulent Dreams

With their luggage full of their best clothes, and their imaginations brimming with dreams of America, 40 of Tequililla’s most optimistic citizens waited for the bus they had been told would take them to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez where they believed they were to pick up their entry visas. But the scheduled arrival time of 1 a.m. came and went. And with each passing hour, the group cursed, cried and, eventually, decided to bring Anthony Steve Bonilla Roman to justice. 
It’s easy to see how the well-meaning people of the small tequila-producing rancho that is home to more livestock than people could have bought into Bonilla’s elaborate plan to get them visas to enter the United States. On Wednesday, he greeted a reporter and photographer from this newspaper to his jail cell in Acatic as if they had arrived for Sunday brunch. The 24-year-old, U.S.-born former Marine is quick to laugh, has an answer for everything and is surprisingly candid for someone facing serious charges of fraud and deception.
Bonilla said he first drifted into Tepatitlan, a medium-sized town in Los Altos de Jalisco, on the advice of a friend after fleeing from the FBI in California in March of this year. He settled into the slow-paced pueblo lifestyle and eventually met a group of friends that included “Chuy,” a businessman who made his money by selling fake U.S. entry visas.
Bonilla also met Maria, a pretty girl from Tequililla, a nearby rancho. She claims that he impressed her with a picture of him and his good friend, George W. Bush. (It was actually taken at the Guadalajara wax museum, Bonilla admitted.) Nonetheless, the two got along well and she invited him to come and live with her family.
According to Bonilla, people started showing up to Maria’s house with money for him to hand over to Chuy. He liked what he saw and began to devise a plan of his own. 
“I was like, what’s wrong with these people, are they stupid?” he said.
Bonilla began to spread the story that he was the vice consul at the Guadalajara consulate and that he would be happy to help them get work or travel visas, for a price. He charged anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 pesos a person for his services. Neighbors, eager to avoid the costly and dangerous process of crossing the border illegally with a coyote, lined up to pay him.
After collecting his fees, photos and birth and marriage certificates, Bonilla presented his marks with letters that promised their visas were on the way. He admitted paying an Office Depot employee 10,000 pesos to help him create the phony U.S. documents. They looked official enough but were full of blatant spelling errors, such as the inclusion of a misnamed “General Consult Edgard Millet,” and an absurdly large homeland security logo that was clearly a fraud to even the untrained eye. But the citizens of Tequililla were so accustomed to the mutual trust of a close-knit community that they say they had no reason to doubt him. He was Martha’s boyfriend after all.
When months passed and no visas appeared, people started to ask questions. That’s when Bonilla got the idea for the bus. He told them that they would need to go to Ciudad Juarez to pick up their visas but that he would arrange for housing and transportation for an additional 3,000 pesos. The bus, of course, never came.
“I don’t feel that bad because I think if they had the chance they would do it again. Most of the people came to me because they were bad people and had bad records in the States and couldn’t get back legally,” Bonilla said from his jail cell.
While it’s true that some of the people who came to Bonilla for help had experienced trouble with the U.S. border patrol on previous trips, there were also upstanding folks among those who were taken in. They included the village schoolteacher and 57-year-old Benjamin Amezquita, a cattleman who lives with his family about a five-minute walk from the bus stop that never was. Amezquita said the cost of his wife’s cancer medication had set him back financially in recent months.
“With 20 good cows I usually live just fine,” he said. “But we had had an especially tough year so I thought I could make some money in the States to buy some more animals.”
Amezquita was not among those crying at the bus stop. As is typical for the people of his generation in this region, he’s able to see the positive in a seemingly hopeless situation.
“I’m just glad we’re all still alive and we didn’t end up left on the side of the road somewhere,” he said. “However, it does makes me sad because we were caught in his web and we were caught so innocently.”
Amezquita said he’s happy that the authorities were able to track Bonilla down, but one can’t help but wonder how this middle-aged man would have felt if he had gotten away.
“I really do admire his intelligence,” he said. “But his biggest mistake was being in love with that girl.”
While the visa seekers waited in vain for the non-existent bus, Bonilla and his brother were speeding down the highway to Aguascalientes in his girlfriend’s Volkswagen Pointer. They scarcely had time to set down their bags before Bonilla received a tearful call from his girlfriend. She wanted him back and could he please come and get her. He told her it was too dangerous and it would be better for them to meet up at the bus station in Guadalajara.
Instead of her loving embrace, Bonilla was met by state police officers.
When the bus never showed up and her car went missing, Martha finally saw the light. She convinced a group of her neighbors to give testimony in the nearby municipalities of Tepatitlan and Acatic.
Bonilla is being housed in the small jailhouse in Acatic while investigators continue to gather testimony from his victims. Even after all that has happened, it’s still difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. A photograph of a group of soldiers in front of a Saddam Hussein poster on his MySpace Internet site titled “my potton” (presumably meant to say “platoon”) is so blurry that it would be impossible to identify Bonilla or anyone else. News reports say that he is 26 years old, but he told this newspaper he was born in 1983. He does say one thing that seems undeniably true.
“I’m only sad because I’m still in love with that girl.”

Death Wears a Dress

Followers of Mexico’s cult of death are upset at an extreme makeover that has seen the saint’s image change from a creepy-cloaked skeleton to an angelic Elvira look-alike in a golden gown.
Santa Muerte (Saint Death) has adherents across Mexico and Latin America but is not recognized by the mainstream Catholic Church. They visit her shrines leaving offerings of tequila and roses, and pray for miracles such as the return of a stolen car or kidnapped relative. And for decades they have been coming to see an image of death personified. 
“People will continue to believe in the skeleton image of Santa Muerte,” said Juan Ambrosio, an expert and author of a book on Santa Muerte. 
The closest thing the cult has to an official leader is David Romo, the archbishop of Traditional Mex-USA Church. Last Sunday, Romo revealed and “canonized” the new saint in front of a packed crowd in the Santa Muerte sanctuary in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City.
“In following our tradition of not imposing any kind of doctrine, we will be granting a three-year grace period in order for our faithful to incorporate the new image into their consciousness,” Romo told Milenio newspaper.
“It’s not as simple as changing the image from one to another,” Ambrosio said. “We’re talking about religion and that’s why people who believe in the (original) Santa Muerte will continue to do so.”
Some worshipers at the unveiling expressed positive reactions to the change.
“It’s a lot better,” Mabel Lopez told the Associated Press. “She’s not as scary now.”
The makeover may be part of an effort to soften the cult’s image and regain favor with the government. In 2005 the Mexican Interior Ministry refused the group status as a religious institution, thus blocking it from owning property or accepting donations.
Romo denied the change was part of a publicity stunt, but told reporters that the new image appeared to one of his parishioners in a dream.
While many followers welcome the change, many more have reservations. 
Maribel Lopez, who helps maintain Santa Muerte Web (www.santamuerte.galeon.com), said: “To many of us she looks more like a mannequin than an angel. I see this image as unacceptable, especially for the people who have lived their lives within the cult.”