The security officer is dissatisfied. “Sir, sir, please can’t you be here,” he says as he grabs the transmitter he keeps on the table in the cabin and speaks to a colleague. “Please help me with one person, he can’t be here.” Just outside of Rancho San Francisco, one of the safest and most exclusive urbanizations in Mexico City, nerves are still on edge in the Mayor’s office of Álvaro Obregón. Miguel Bosé was robbed here this Friday at his home by an armed squad of ten men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, who threatened and subdued the singer, his two 12-year-old sons, the bodyguards and the staff at the moment at home. So far, no one has been able to explain how they managed to carry out an operation of this magnitude in a place surrounded by guards, cameras and walls with supposedly live wires.
Rancho San Francisco is located in the middle of the forest, a mountainous area east of Mexico City, surrounded by trees and a beautiful street that connects this complex to Desierto de los Leones street, in the upper part of which there are numerous private housing developments flanked by huge steel doors and lots of security personnel. This is where the wealthy live, who want to be relatively close to the center of the capital – Avenida Reforma is about a thirty-minute drive away – but can’t stand the chaos and noise of life in the middle of the city. So they retire to this territory full of canyons and natural disasters, where they can live isolated from the world and the refugees in their prisons with swimming pools and neighbors that are just as exclusive (the entrepreneurs Carlos Slim, Inés Gómez Mont, Angélica Mont, are said to have also a home here. Rivera or Ricardo Salinas Pliego).
But that wasn’t always the case. The Mayor’s Office of Álvaro Obregón, characterized by its gorges and small rivers that cut and erode the terrain, was originally the neighborhood of the poorest. In the 1960s, the humble families who came to the city from the opportunities offered by the capital of Mexico, but did not have the money to settle in the most central neighborhoods, began to settle here. When they arrived, they chose a spot in the lower reaches of the gorge, closest to the river, and built their house there out of plywood or cement and bricks. When the wealthiest people arrived from the capital, they began to build their houses in the upper parts of the gorges, and this is how the space is distributed now. Rancho San Francisco, for example, has properties that can easily reach 30 million pesos ($1.7 million at current exchange rates).
Singer Miguel Bosé at his home in the Interlomas neighborhood of Mexico City. With kind approval
Miguel Bosé settled in the upper part of one of the gorges when he came here in 2018. She had divorced her husband, Nacho Palau, with whom she lived in Panama, and had been given custody of their two children, Diego and Tadeo. who are now 12 years old. They probably moved to this urbanization for the safety of the complex, the neighbors and the international school just a few minutes away. By 8 a.m. Friday, when the singer was at home with his children, ten men disarmed security personnel and broke into the home. There they gagged and put everyone in the house in one room. They then spent up to two hours on the property stealing the money and jewelry they found. It was some neighbors who called the police when the nightmare ended with no one getting hurt.
As this newspaper has learned, Miguel Bosé has reported the facts to the public prosecutor’s office so that the investigation can begin. It wasn’t easy for them these days: they wouldn’t let the security personnel into the facility without a complaint. The authorities tried to contact the manager of the urbanization, but she assured that the person concerned was “not at home” and that she “did not want to give an interview of any kind”. The vehicle used by the thieves to flee the home and Rancho San Francisco, a Miguel Bosé Chevrolet Suburban truck, was found 20 kilometers away in the Miguel Hidalgo mayor’s office.
Following the attack on his privacy, Miguel Bosé maintained a freezing silence that he only broke on Monday after the news broke in some media outlets and people began speculating about his condition and future. Bosé came out to calm the waters: “We’re all fine. My children behaved like two brave and admirable people. It was all very tense, delicate and uncomfortable. Thank you everyone for the support and concern shown.” He also cleared any doubts about his future in Mexico: “And to those who speculate so much that I will leave Mexico after what happened, it does I am very sorry to disappoint you. “This is a hospitable country on the planet,” the singer said just three days after the incident.
A walk down Desierto de los Leones street, one of the longest in the area, reveals this distribution. In the upper part is Rancho San Francisco and the international school The Edron Academy. The houses are surrounded by big walls with sharp or electric fences, the sidewalk is small because everyone is driving and the only ones on the street are the security guards sitting at the door. As you walk down the street, the landscape changes. The houses are getting smaller and smaller, their paint is increasingly worn, people are marching through the streets and the first grocery stores and the first taco stands can be seen. If you continue down, you will reach the end of the gorge, where the houses closest to the river are flooded with every storm.
Aerial view of Interlomas in Mexico City.UlrikeStein (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Several TV journalists are standing in front of the complex’s door, cameras and microphones in hand, ready to record a report. The security staff doesn’t seem very happy, but they are busy. Vehicles come and go all the time. Every time a vehicle that does not belong to an owner enters, the guards check the trunk, note the name and await confirmation from the owner’s neighbor who will confirm permission to enter. As they drive away, too, they look in the trunk to make sure the driver hasn’t taken anything he shouldn’t. At least five cameras monitor the entrance. Some media say that up to 30 gunmen there are responsible for keeping the peace that has cost neighbors so much money.
A drinks cart pulls out of the interior and stops near the entrance. “Yes, it’s very difficult to get in,” he says, pointing to his partner. “They didn’t let him because his name wasn’t on the list.” The other nods. They didn’t even know that Miguel Bosé was robbed here last week. In the background, journalists approach the entrance to start the broadcast. Behind him is a sign that reads, “There are armed guards in this residential area.” Before entering, turn off the exterior lights and turn on the interior lights. As he is about to start speaking, two people dressed in black come out and tell the journalist to leave. “You can’t be there, sir,” they tell him. The journalist with the microphone in his hand turns to them and says: “And if I bring a ski mask, would you let me in?”
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