What a drag it is growing old…

As she’s grown older — and scarier — Irma Serrano’s ventures into the public eye have gotten weirder and weirder.  The former 60s “sex-kitten” and presidential mistress (of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz), was known as “La loca de Polanco” (The nut from Polanco) during her stint as a plurinomal  Senator for a small left-wing party.  She resigned her seat to launch a losing campaign for Governor of Chiapas (which not only did her party lose, it lost badly enough to lose its registration).

Never one to stay out of the public eye long, in 2003, Serrano was back in the news when she announced she was pregnant, carrying the child of a long-dead boyfriend.  While the idea of in vitrio fertilzation by sperm aged 12-years in the test tube wasn’t all that implausible, reporters doing a little bit of math, and checking published biographical data were, shall we say, rather skeptical of the claims of a 70 year old publicity hound.

When Serrano’s alleged pregnancy became a standard joke for late night comedians and even on the newscasts, she called a news conference to announce a miscarriage.  Less publicized  was her feud with the manager of Serrano’s former nightclub (“Club Fru-Fru”, next door to the former federal congressional building, which now houses the District Assembly, and famous more as one of the few surviving burlesque theaters in the world than for the life-size guilded statue of a nude… and much younger… Irma in its lobby).  The club was robbed in 2006, and the owner held at gunpoint as fixtures, cash receipts and memoriabilia were carted out.

Last week, Serrano was picked up in Chiapas on a federal warrant charging her with participating in robbery.  Normally, a woman charged with a 10 million peso armed robbery (along with kidnapping and carrying illegal firearms) is going to stay in Santa Martha Acatitla women’s penitentary until trial, but Serrano is, after all, 75 years old, and — as in other Latin American countries — elderly prisoners are eligible for conditional release.

Serrano was released at 2 in the morning in an attempt to avoid the press… an impossiblity for her.  She did, however, say “not now, I have a headache” before being whisked away to an unknown location.

(El Porvenir, Notimex, Biostars International)