Rancho San Francisco, the oasis of luxury and security where Miguel Bosé was robbed

The security officer is not happy. “Sir, sir, she can’t be here, please,” she says as she grabs the transmitter that she has on the table in the booth, and talks to a colleague. “Please, help me with a person, he can’t be here.” At the gates of Rancho San Francisco, one of the safest and most exclusive urbanizations in Mexico City, in the Álvaro Obregón mayor’s office, nerves are still on the surface. Miguel Bosé was robbed here, at his home, this Friday, by an armed commando of 10 men dressed in black and balaclavas who threatened and subdued the singer, his two 12-year-old sons, the bodyguards and the staff who were in that 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 that is surrounded by guards, cameras and walls with supposedly electrified cables.

Rancho San Francisco is in the middle of the forest, a mountainous area to the east of Mexico City surrounded by trees and a fine road that connects this complex with Desierto de los Leones street, in whose upper part you can see as many private housing estates flanked by huge steel doors and a lot of security personnel. Here live the rich who want to be relatively close to the center of the capital —Avenida Reforma is about thirty minutes away by car— but can’t stand the chaos and noise of living in the middle of the city. So they retire to this area of ​​ravines and natural accidents where they can live isolated from the world and refugees in their prisons with swimming pools and neighbors as exclusive as they are (it is said that businessman Carlos Slim, Inés Gómez Mont, Angélica Mont, also have a home here). Rivera or Ricardo Salinas Pliego).

But it was not always like this. The Álvaro Obregón mayor’s office, characterized by its ravines and small rivers that run through and erode the terrain, began as the neighborhood of the poorest. The most humble families began to settle here in the sixties of the last century, who came to the city attracted by the opportunities offered by the capital of Mexico but without the money to settle in the most central neighborhoods. When they arrived, they chose a place in the lower areas, closest to the river, of the ravine, and there they built their house of plywood or cement and brick. When the wealthiest people from the capital began to arrive, they began to build their houses in the upper parts of the ravines, and that is how the space is now distributed. Rancho San Francisco, for example, has properties with prices that easily reach 30 million pesos (1.7 million dollars at current exchange rates).

The singer Miguel Bosé at his home in the Interlomas neighborhood, in Mexico City. COURTESY

Miguel Bosé settled in the upper part of one of the ravines when he came to live here in 2018. She had divorced her husband Nacho Palau, with whom she lived in Panama, and had obtained custody of her two children, Diego and Tadeo. , who are now 12 years old. They moved to that urbanization probably because of the security of the complex, the neighbors and the international school that is a few minutes away. Until Friday at eight o’clock at night, when the singer was at home with his children, ten men disarmed the security personnel and entered the house. There they gagged and put everyone in the house in a room. They then spent up to two hours on the property and stole the money and jewelry they found. It was some neighbors who called the police when the nightmare ended, from which no one was injured.

Miguel Bosé has denounced the facts to the Prosecutor’s Office, as this newspaper has learned, so that the investigation work can begin. These days they have not had it easy: without a complaint, the security personnel would not let them enter the complex. The authorities tried to contact the administrator of the urbanization, but she assured that the affected person “was not at her home” and that she did not want to give “any type of interview.” The vehicle with which the thieves escaped from the house and from Rancho San Francisco, a Chevrolet Suburban truck owned by Miguel Bosé, was found 20 kilometers from there, in the Miguel Hidalgo mayor’s office.

After the attack on his privacy, Miguel Bosé maintained a stony silence that he did not break until Monday, after the news appeared in some media and people began to speculate about his condition and his future. Bosé came out to calm the waters: “We are all fine. My children behaved like two brave, admirable. It was all very tense, delicate and unpleasant. Thank you all for the support and concern shown.” He also cleared up any doubts about his future in Mexico: “And to those who speculate so much that after what happened I am going to leave Mexico, I am very sorry to disappoint you, here I am and I will stay here in the most hospitable country on the planet,” the singer said just three days after the incident.

Walking down Desierto de los Leones street, one of the longest in this area, illustrates this distribution. In the upper part is Rancho San Francisco and the international school The Edron Academy. The houses are flanked by large walls finished in sharp or electrified fences, the sidewalk is small because everyone travels by car and the only ones on the street are the security guards sitting at the door. As you go down the street, the landscape changes. The houses are getting smaller and smaller, their paint is increasingly worn, people appear walking through the streets and the first grocery stores and the first taco stands begin to be seen. Going further down you reach the end of the ravine, where the houses closest to the river are flooded every time a storm falls.

Aerial view of Interlomas, in Mexico City.UlrikeStein (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Some television journalists are stationed at the door of the complex, camera and microphone in hand, ready to record a segment. The security staff don’t seem very happy, but they’re 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, write down the name and wait for confirmation from the owner neighbor who confirms the permission to enter. When they also leave, they look at the trunk to verify that the driver has not taken anything he should not. At least five cameras monitor the entrance. Inside, some media say that there are up to 30 armed men in charge of keeping the peace that has cost the neighbors so dearly.

A soda truck pulls out of the interior and stops near the entrance. “Yeah, it’s very hard 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, the journalists approach the entrance to start the broadcast. Behind him, a sign that says: “This residential has armed guards. Before entering turn off external lights and turn on internal lights. When he is about to start speaking, two people dressed in black come out to ask the journalist to get away. “You can’t be there, sir,” they tell him. The journalist with the microphone in hand, turns to them and says: “And if I bring a ski mask, would you let me in?”

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

#Rancho #San #Francisco #oasis #luxury #security #Miguel #Bosé #robbed