New year, New World
Here be tequila lakes and fentanyl kitchens
Welcome to a news roundup edition of The Mexpatriate.
I think it’s safe to predict that no 2025 predictions are safe.
From his Mar-a-Lago stronghold, President-elect (and geographer in chief) Trump is having a grand time playing the game of global domination. Someone has pulled Risk out of the game room cabinet and discovered that Greenland’s manifest destiny is to be part of North America. And since when did Mexico get its own gulf?
But it turns out two can play at this game of map-foolery. Sheinbaum retorted on Wednesday to Trump’s “Gulf of America” proposal that the United States should be renamed “América Mexicana,” standing before a projection of a 17th-century map.
“It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
She also tartly noted that Trump must be “misinformed” (where are those fact-checkers?) about who is in charge of Mexico now: “I think they misinformed him that Calderón and García Luna still govern in Mexico. But no, in Mexico, the people govern.”
Speaking of “the people,” their airline—the government-acquired Mexicana de Aviación—reached the one-year milestone on Dec. 26 having flown 384,749 passengers through November, which is under 1% of all Mexican airline travelers in the same period. On Monday, news broke that the airline was reducing its fleet to just two planes, and consequently would have to cancel eight of its 17 routes. Sheinbaum said that this week a “master plan” for the future of the airline would be presented to her government, but denied what appears to be imminent failure. “Mexicana will continue to be the people of Mexico’s company, and will keep flying.”
In other transportation news, the Sheinbaum administration also provided further details and a launch date for the first Mexican-made EV this week. The first of the three models of the “Olinia” is supposed to be presented at the inaugural game of the World Cup 2026 in Mexico City. The cars are projected to cost 90,000-150,000 pesos (between US $4800-$7300) and are designed for city dwellers who travel short distances. The question is will Mexicans learn to love these homemade battery-operated toy cars as much as the other “people’s car”—the “vocho”?
“For us, in Mexico, mini vehicles are the category with greatest potential in electric transportation,” said the project director Roberto Capuano Tripp. “We say this because we are already seeing it on the streets of Mexico and in other parts of the world.”
Sales of hybrid and electric vehicles hit a new record last year in Mexico (124,303 units) according to INEGI data—which does not include vehicle sales from some Chinese brands nor Tesla. But while this means nearly 70% growth compared to sales in 2023, it’s a slowdown from the triple-digit growth seen in the previous three years.
On Jan. 9, Sheinbaum reached the 100-day mark of her term, which she celebrated today with an address in the Zócalo. Despite the protests and controversy over constitutional reforms, cloudy economic forecasts and ongoing violence in the country since she took office, Sheinbaum has a 77% approval rating, according to a recent El Universal poll.
But with Trump’s coronation just eight days away, the next 100 could make these eventful early days look tame.
Is that fentanyl you’re cooking?
Another week means another lashing of The New York Times at the mañanera. While AMLO was certainly no admirer of “The Gray Lady” it appears Sheinbaum may despise the paper even more—in early December, she implied their reporters were using Breaking Bad for inspiration in a story about cartel recruitment at universities, and right before the new year, she accused them of shoddy reporting about a makeshift fentanyl lab in Culiacán.
“While one sniff of the toxic substance could kill us, they explained, they had built up a tolerance to the lethal drug,” wrote reporters Natalie Kitroeff and Paulina Villegas, who described the lab as a “small kitchen” where the cooks wore only surgical masks.
Sheinbaum questioned the report’s veracity “from a scientific perspective” and had the head of IMSS and a Navy chemist join her at the mañanera on Jan. 2 to refute the story and the notion of developing tolerance to the toxic fumes. She suggested the reporters had actually been witness to methamphetamine, not fentanyl, production in the Culiacán kitchen.
The story doesn’t offer much to refute her assertion, lacking in any external corroboration beyond what the reporters witnessed and were told by their criminal contacts.
As pointed out by Mexican journalist Ivabelle Arroyo:
“We can’t ascertain whether the fentanyl kitchen as described [in the NY Times report] is real or not because the reporters don’t provide enough pieces of evidence to support their story. However, this doesn’t mean the story is false. To prove that, we would also need more information, which Sheinbaum hasn’t provided.”
The overarching government narrative is a continuation of AMLO’s assertion that fentanyl is not actually fabricated in Mexico, despite the Defense Department’s own reports to the contrary. Other media outlets have also reported on how relatively easy it is to obtain the chemical precursors and synthesize fentanyl—as depicted in this in-depth 2024 Reuters report. There is no reason to believe that Mexican cartels aren’t working to master fentanyl manufacturing, as they have meth.
Meanwhile, the NYT has responded that it stands by their reporters; undoubtedly, there will be more chapters coming in this story.
Pueblo chico, infierno grande
“The children of Coalcomán thank Mr. Nemesio Oseguera and his sons 2 and 3, Delta 1 for their noble gesture. Thank you for your gifts.”
This message, written on a sign hung up for an official municipal event in the small Michoacán city of around 20,000 (also the epicenter of a 6.1 magnitude earthquake early this morning—no reports of casualties) could bring down the town’s mayor, as the plague of small-town corruption continues to make headlines in Mexico.
Oseguera is “El Mencho,” the elusive and feared leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The Dec. 10 event—which also included the performance of a corrido about “El Mencho”—was attended by the 38-year-old mayor of the town, Anavel Ávila Castrejón, who was elected on the Movimiento Ciudadano (MC) ticket last year. A video published to the Coalcomán government’s Facebook page sparked the controversy; a public official’s voice can be heard reading the message to the crowd, thanking “El Mencho” for “bringing smiles” to the local children.
The governor of Michoacán, morenista Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, has called for Ávila’s resignation and President Sheinbaum confirmed that federal authorities are investigating. Ávila has denied participating in any “defense of crime.”
This is not the first time that a town in Mexico is in the spotlight for receiving cartel philanthropy. Early in the days of the pandemic in spring 2020, photos of boxes of donated food branded with the face of “El Chapo” in Guadalajara went viral. According to an InSight Crime report, some schools in Guerrero were built by the Caballeros Templarios and La Familia Michoacana, and the Zetas built roads in Veracruz. “El Mencho” also reportedly built a hospital in El Alcíhuatl, Jalisco. It seems it was originally for his personal use (he allegedly suffers from kidney disease) but has also been used by the local community.
The mayors of Mexico find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis—navigating between the deadly demands of cartels operating in their cities and an intensifying scrutiny from state and federal authorities.
The headline-grabbing “Operación Enjambre” in November in México state has continued to lead to arrests (at least 20 to date) of officials and cops from various municipalities, and last week, the interim mayor of Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, José Antonio Villatoro, was arrested for corruption, forced disappearance, extortion and homicide in a joint federal and state operation. The city’s mayor-elect, Aníbal Roblero Castillo (PVEM), was kidnapped in September and is still missing.
Frontera Comalapa has been a focal point of the rising violence near the Guatemala border, where cartels are competing for drug and human trafficking routes. Chiapas was also one of the states most affected by electoral violence last year, with 11 candidates murdered during the campaign season.
Could an inversion of the “kingpin” strategy—taking down corrupt local fiefdoms rather than splashy cartel leader captures—lead to longer-lasting security results?
The biggest hurdle would be successful prosecution, and it’s too early to tell if the judicial system will do any better executing this than they have in previous sexenios. Meanwhile, in Coalcomán, Mayor Ávila remains in power. The investigation is ongoing.
Is it time to panic yet?
If you’re a Mexican migrant in trouble north of the border, the answer is “not quite.”
At the end of the year, Sheinbaum presented her government’s plan to assist Mexicans living in the United States as Trump’s mass deportations loom, which includes a 24-hour call center and beefing up consular staff. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente also said a digital alert app (dubbed a “panic button” in the press) was in development as a way to notify a selected list of emergency contacts and the nearest consulate in case of detention.
However, as of Jan. 7, De la Fuente told the press that while the “panic button” app is finished, it’s still not available for users, as they are awaiting the greenlight from Apple and Android operating systems.
As undocumented Mexicans face an uncertain future in the U.S., Mexican-Americans face danger when visiting relatives here in Mexico. In December, there were two incidents of violence affecting U.S. citizens. A married couple from California was killed on a road near Angamacutiro, Michoacán on Dec. 11 (the husband’s brother-in-law is the mayor of the town), and a family was attacked on a road in Las Palmas, Durango on Dec. 27, leaving two men dead and one 14-year-old boy, Jason Peña, in critical condition. The local authorities told El País newspaper they are pursuing all lines of investigation, “but it was probably a robbery.”
Tequila on the rocks
The pandemic didn’t only disrupt global supply chains and turn Zoom into a verb, it boosted alcohol sales. In the United States, retail alcohol sales spiked in the early months of lockdowns in 2020, with the volume of U.S. spirit sales increasing 5% between 2020-21, after years of growth hovering around 2.6%.
One of the beneficiaries of this drinking habit was Mexico. Tequila consumption in the U.S. surged 17% in 2021 and Mexico’s tequila exports to the U.S. reached a record 418.8 million liters in 2022.
But no bubble (or margarita binge) lasts forever. According to a report in the Financial Times based on data from the Tequila Regulatory Council, Mexico is now sitting on a “tequila lake” of 500 million liters of unsold liquor as demand started dropping in 2023 and 2024. The price for agave has taken a nosedive, and if Trump makes good on his tariff threats, the sector will suffer another setback—2025 will be a “turbulent” year for the industry, according to one analyst.
However, Mexico’s agro-food exports saw steady growth last year, and beer, tequila and mezcal were the leading sources of revenue in the first six months of 2024 (followed by avocados). It appears Mexico will come out as the world’s top exporter to the U.S. for the second consecutive year, with a record-high trade surplus of US $157.2 billion (from Jan-Nov 2024). While this may sound like nails on a chalkboard for the Trump team, they would do well to remember that the neighbor to the south was also the biggest market for U.S. food exports in fiscal year 2024.
Thank you for reading and feel free to send me your suggestions, comments and questions at hola@themexpatriate.com. If you’re new here, please check out this page to learn more about The Mexpatriate.
I read the newspaper every morning in Spanish. Then I read Mexpatriate and it clears everything up.😎