As she was driving out of party headquarters, five vans with dark‑tinted windows cut her off. She doesn’t remember how many men got out, but they were dressed in black, their faces covered with balaclavas, and they carried rifles. From that moment on, everything becomes hazier. They pushed her into the back seat of one of the vehicles, blindfolded her, and began driving in circles around Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state Sinaloa. There was no physical or verbal abuse, just veiled threats like “we’ve got half of Culiacán here” or “we can take you home whenever you want.” Nearly nine hours later, as the sun began to rise over the soft hills surrounding the city, Paola Gárate had her blindfold removed and was released near a supermarket. It was Sunday, and in just a few hours, the polls would open to choose Sinaloa’s next governor. Dazed but relieved, that was how the election day began for the president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Sinaloa.

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The fate of a few artworks by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco has Mexico on edge, to the point of practically becoming a matter of state. Ever since the announcement early this year of a long-term agreement to transfer the Gelman collection to the Spanish banking giant Banco Santander, which will be responsible for the management (including conservation, research and exhibition) of part of one of the most significant collections of 20th-century Mexican art, a formidable controversy has erupted, forcing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to step in and try to clarify the situation.

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It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed in a hotel near the ruins and spent the day planning something big and sinister at the pyramids, something that in his mind resembled those school or church shootings so common in the United States. Last Sunday he did it again. He arrived by bus from the north of Mexico City, rented a room in a nearby hotel, and on Monday morning entered the Teotihuacán archaeological site in the State of Mexico. For his big day, he chose to wear black pants and a plaid shirt. In his backpack, he put some sheets of paper on which he had handwritten what he was about to do with an old revolver and 42 rounds of .38 caliber ammunition.

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