Welcome to The Mexpatriate.
Nostalgia is trending—a longing for lost landline innocence, for offline “grandma hobbies” like knitting, or you know, reading paper books. We yearn for simpler analog times; for natural stupidity rather than artificial intelligence. And apparently, for the OG party drug: cocaine.
“For new users, cocaine doesn’t carry the stigma of fentanyl addiction,” notes a WSJ report published earlier this month called “America Loves Cocaine Again.” The article includes a couple of startling stats (cocaine use increased 154% since 2019 in the western United States), but then shifts gears quickly from the demand to the supply side, and to a kingpin riding the white powder wave: Nemesio Oseguera, or “El Mencho” and his Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
While fentanyl has stolen most of the law enforcement thunder, cocaine was highlighted as the world’s fastest-growing illicit drug market in the UNODC Drug Report 2025. Production has exploded, bringing prices down and making the drug more accessible. “CJNG appears to have anticipated the cocaine resurgence earlier than most,” writes organized crime expert Chris Dalby in World of Crime (read my June interview with him here). “Throughout the years when US cocaine demand was softer, the cartel still formed alliances to ship cocaine through places like Ecuador and cultivated Colombian sources.”
Now that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada will end his days in a U.S. prison and the Sinaloa Cartel wages internal war, the DEA has shifted its focus to the elusive 59 year-old El Mencho, who is reportedly holed up somewhere in the Sierra Madre mountains—profiting millions.
News for the non-cocaine economy is a mixed bag: INEGI data published last week showed a 0.9% drop in economic activity between June and July, and a 1.2% annual decline in July, which was a bigger contraction than anticipated. Agriculture saw the most dramatic slowdown, as well as mining and manufacturing.
However, a few days before, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bumped up its GDP growth forecast for Mexico in 2025 from a 0.3% contraction to 1% growth—above most other estimates. The IMF predicated its optimism on Mexico’s record of “very strong policies and policy frameworks” that have helped it to weather adverse conditions this year. In fact, the value of Mexico’s exports increased 7.4% annually in August, showing “notable resilience” according to Grupo Monex analysts (and despite a decline in auto export revenue).
In today’s free newsletter, you’ll get an update on the administration’s passenger train projects as well as how the resurgence of the once-eradicated screwworm is affecting Mexican agro exports. I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday with a full news roundup (for paid subscribers).
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All aboard?
“It should be remembered that it is with the Fourth Transformation that passenger trains are being recovered, reborn, brought back to life. We must not forget that Mexico, for decades, built tracks for passenger trains, and in just a few years neoliberalism wiped them out.”
President Sheinbaum preached the passenger train gospel at her Sept. 18 mañanera while announcing the start of construction on the Querétaro-Irapuato train, which is expected to be finished by late 2027. This is one of four routes the government has started construction on this year—the others are AIFA-Pachuca, Querétaro-Mexico City and Saltillo-Nuevo Laredo. The government plans to add over 3,000 kilometers of passenger railway to the country’s 28,864-km rail network during Sheinbaum’s term and allotted 157 billion pesos (US $8.5 billion) to train projects this year alone.
The restoration of passenger trains was one of President López Obrador’s hallmark policies, encapsulating his vision of the State recovering infrastructure that had been abandoned through privatization (70% of national railways today are run by a handful of private companies, mostly transporting freight). During AMLO’s term, the polarizing 1,554-km Tren Maya project and the 1,091-km Tren Interoceánico across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were (nearly) completed. Both have attracted lower numbers of passengers than the government anticipated and neither project is breaking even yet—the Tren Maya has lost 5.8 billion pesos since starting operations in December 2023, though the government insists this will change once the freight route begins operations in the summer of 2026.
Sheinbaum is relying on the army (as AMLO did) to build two of the four train projects in the works this year, but is also working with the private sector. The first section of the Querétaro-Irapuato train will be built by Portuguese conglomerate Mota-Engil and a company owned by Carlos Slim won the bid to build the Saltillo-Nuevo Laredo route. This model of assigning projects and funds to private contractors, rather than granting concessions, keeps ownership in the hands of the State—but also puts the administrative and financial onus on the government to operate the trains.
While train travel is generally safe, some grim accidents have made headlines this month. On Sept. 9 a collision between a bus and a cargo train in Atlacomulco, México state killed 10 people and another cargo train-bus crash in Comonfort, Guanajuato on Sept. 27 left five people dead. In 2024, there were 232 reports of injuries or deaths involving trains nationwide; most involved vehicles hit by trains while crossing the tracks.
Lord of the (sterile) Flies
A fly with a 20-day life cycle has cost the Mexican cattle industry an estimated US $800 million as their exports to the United States have been halted for much of this year. The New World screwworm (gusano barrenador in Spanish)—so named because of how the parasitic larvae bore into flesh—was considered eradicated in Mexico in 1991, until a case was detected in November 2024 in Chiapas.
The U.S., which was declared screwworm-free in 1982 (though there was an outbreak in a deer population in Florida in 2016), has temporarily suspended imports of live cattle from Mexico three times since, most recently on July 10. Last year, exports of Mexican livestock to the U.S. were worth US $1.2 billion.
The fly earned its equally grotesque scientific name, Colchiomyia hominivorax or “man-eating,” after an outbreak among inmates in the penal colony on Devil’s Island in the 19th century, and has been described as a “devastating pest” by the USDA. The parasite can affect any warm-blooded animal, though human cases are rare. As of last week, there had been 49 reported human cases of screwworm infestation or myiasis in Mexico this year, and three deaths (all of the victims were over 80 years old).
However, there have been over 5,000 cases of screwworm detected in animals in Mexico through August 17, and on Sept. 21, an infected cow was discovered in Nuevo León, just 113 kilometers from the northern border. Mexican authorities say through early detection and immediate treatment, the case has been contained; President Sheinbaum said last week that this should not affect the planned resumption of U.S. imports of Mexican cattle in November.
The New World screwworm fly has the distinction of being the first species targeted with the Sterile Insect Technique (STI), a method of biological pest control discovered in the 1950s. By breeding and releasing irradiated sterile male flies, the reproductive cycle of the fly is broken (females only mate once). The USDA has funded an invisible screwworm barrier in Panama for decades, the site of the only sterile screwworm fly production facility in the world; millions are released over the Panama-Colombia border every week.
On Sept. 26, 800,000 sterile flies were released in Nuevo León; Mexico and the U.S. are jointly funding a sterile fly production facility in southern Mexico that will be operational in the first half of next year, and the U.S. is also building its own.
The return of the screwworm to Mexico has also drawn attention to cattle smuggling from Central America. InSight Crime published an in-depth investigative report in 2022 detailing the route cattle travel from illegal ranches (often on protected lands) in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala across the Mexican border, bypassing import duties and using false paperwork, including veterinary certificates. Guatemala reported the reemergence of the parasite just one month before Mexico confirmed its first case last November.
According to the report, the illegal cattle trade could be worth up to US $320 million a year and has attracted organized crime…like flies.
In the words of one Veracruz rancher who went to Benemérito, on the border with Guatemala to buy livestock: “Armed people guard the transfer of cattle. They told us not to go any further. Criminal groups are taking care of this business.”
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Cocaine and trains! Who'd have thunk it? Super interesting, thanks.