On Felix Batista ’77: In Crime Wave, an Interrupted Meal Haunts Mexico | New York Times

SALTILLO, Mexico — Until recently, before a customer was abducted outside its front door, El Mesón Principal del Norte was known simply as a great place to get meat, usually roasted on a spit in northern Mexican style.  

But ask a hotel concierge in this industrial city about El Mesón these days and the gastronomy may not come up first. “Be careful,” one whispered conspiratorially last month. “That’s where they got the gringo.”

It was outside El Mesón that Felix Batista, an American security consultant who specialized in resolving kidnappings, was himself abducted on the evening of Dec. 10. He has not been heard from since. [Batista received a B.A. from Middlebury in 1977 and an M.A. in Spanish in 1991.]

After weeks of silence, his wife and sister held a news conference in Miami on Wednesday, urging his captors to release him and providing an e-mail address, infofelixbatista@gmail.com, for those with information about the case. “I don’t understand how a man who has always loved Mexico and its people so dearly can be made to suffer in this manner,” said his wife of 31 years, Lourdes Batista [who also received a masters in Spanish from Middlebury, in 1981]. “My heart is broken.”

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[ Read a story from the Washington Post, 12/27/08 ]

[ Read a CNN story and watch video of Lourdes Batista appealing for husband's release ]