The Mexpat Notebook: February
On border pastors, the CDMX art scene and Mexico's "chili-onaire"
Welcome to the February edition of The Mexpat Notebook.
Below you’ll find a selection of links to good reads (in English and Spanish), as well as snippets from the national conversation in the new “Odds and Ends” section.
If you feel inspired, please share your own finds—good reads, podcasts, films, or just fun tidbits about Mexico—in the comments section below.
ICYMI, here’s a recap of this month at The Mexpatriate:
The Mexpat Interview: Fernanda Caso - What’s the history behind the headlines in Mexico in 2025?
The visible hand - A deep dive on Plan México and Claudia Sheinbaum’s economic ambitions
What I’m reading
Mexico is growing old. Can it build a care system in time? (Americas Quarterly)
The country’s 60-year-long demographic dividend, the period when the working-age population outnumbers dependents, will come to an end in 2030—just as Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency draws to a close.
Mexico’s aging population is of course hardly unique on a global scale, but it’s happening at a relatively brisk pace (the median age went from 18 in 1987 to 29 in 2024—and is projected to be 40 by 2050). This article lays out the challenges faced in Mexico and in the wider “silvering region” of Latin America, where government budgets will be increasingly weighed down by pensions and the population faces a lack of care systems.
La mujer olvidada que entrevistó a Villa (Nexos)
¿Quién fue esa mujer “con más pantalones que yo, que usted y que diez más iguales a usted y a mí” (como la describió Hernández Llergo), que tomó el tren hacia Durango y pasó una semana en la hacienda de Villa, acompañada de sus colegas? Ni la publicación de 1922 ni todas las reediciones y comentarios posteriores revelaron su identidad.
The mysterious woman who accompanied journalist Regino Hernández Llergo to Pancho Villa’s hacienda in 1922 was Emilia Enríquez de Rivera, a journalist and editor in her own right, whose role in the legendary interview has been hidden, confused or minimized. This piece revives her story as an interlocutor with the “centaur of the north,” including during a well-known exchange about his bitter enmity towards the United States—“the enemy of my race” in Villa’s words.
If you want to stay on top of the national conversation in Mexico, sign up for a paid subscription for full access to The Mexpatriate.
Meet Mexico’s first Chili-onaire (Forbes)
Some 40 million pounds of Tajín is now sold in America annually, much of it at Walmart, according to the cowboy hat–wearing Fernández, who rarely gives interviews. The U.S. is the engine behind the brand’s cultlike following, making up 60% of its business.
What?! I admit I was surprised to learn from this profile of founder Horacio Fernández that Tajín is so successful north of the border (my kids alone could keep them in business in Mexico). The company is worth an estimated US $1.5 billion, according to Forbes, and is almost entirely owned by Fernández and his brother, who are originally from Guadalajara.
The immigration crackdown is working as intended. These pastors are managing the fallout. (Texas Monthly)
At Senda de Vida, a shelter operated with private support from corporations and churches since 1999, Pastor Héctor Silva urges migrants not to do anything dangerous. He pleads with them to stick with safe, legal pathways, but he knows that plea sounds hollow when there are no legal pathways ahead. “Lots of families have been discouraged,” Silva told me, his inviting, jolly face falling into a frown. “I don’t have an answer.”
An on-the-ground report—told through the eyes of churches and shelters that have assisted migrants for decades, and disheartened asylum seekers—about how border cities like Brownsville have seen the shift since the Trump administration put a moratorium on asylum. According to data from the U.S. CBP, there were just 229 “encounters” on the southern border on Feb. 17, down from peaks of 12,000 per day in 2023.
Pundits and historians declare neoliberalism over: Mexico begs to differ (Aeon)
My British classmates were enthused, but I had not crossed an ocean to be educated on neoliberalism. After all, I had been reckoning with the thing, experiencing, analysing and making sense of it alongside my parents, teachers, peers and fellow Mexican citizens, for as long as I could remember.
This is an in-depth essay by a Mexican academic who has spent over a decade researching the “rascal concept” of neoliberalism and its ongoing influence in Mexico—even as AMLO and Morena claim to have vanquished it. There is a lot to digest in this meaty piece, which has made me reconsider some of my own thinking about the shift in Mexican politics since 2018 and sparked a desire to go deeper (stay tuned for more on this soon).
Sandra Cuevas: las muchas personas (El País)
Desde el primer día de su gobierno, la alcaldesa que se refiere a sí misma en tercera persona dejó claro su estilo. En medio de los peores días de la pandemia, tomó protesta entre alfombra roja, fuegos artificiales y mariposas. Lo que en show empieza, en show termina.
I relished this profile of Sandra Cuevas, former alcaldesa of Mexico City’s Cuauhtémoc borough and failed candidate for the federal Senate. Cuevas—who claims she works from 5 am to 2 am every day—is focusing all of her efforts now on her own political party (I wrote about her brash launch event just over a year ago), whose ideology she places somewhere “between Mujica and Bukele.”
Most of those galleries have since closed, a fact that Ochoa and Diaque said represents the difficulty of navigating the city’s unspoken rules. It also is emblematic of the fact that the expats, many of whom are now leaving, were interested in Mexico City as a cheap, “fetishized” space of experimentation, according to Diaque, not as a place for purchasing art.
This piece focuses on the “vibrancy, experimentation and risk” of the young Mexican artists showcased at the 21st edition of Zona Maco (and its spin-offs). It goes deeper into the weeds of the art world than I normally venture, but I wonder if it also reflects a broader trend of the decline of Mexico City as a “cheap, fetishized” fad for foreigners?
Odds and Ends
Love is…awful
Valentine’s Day was served with a side of sadism at the Nuevo Laredo zoo, where you could sign up to have a cockroach “named” after an ex-lover and fed to the animals (to help you “find closure”). There are 117 comments on the zoo’s Facebook post, many along the lines of this one: “Set aside 15 cockroaches for me jajaja.” Meanwhile, Mexico’s musical queen of jilted lovers, Paquita la del Barrio, died at 77 years old on Feb. 19—one of her most famous ballads is “Rata de dos patas,” which includes this scathing verse:
Rata de dos patas
Te estoy hablando a ti
Porque un bicho rastrero
Aún siendo el más maldito
Comparado contigo
Se queda muy chiquitoMaldita sanguijuela
Maldita cucaracha
Que infectas donde picas
Que hieres y que matas
Musical accompaniment for the cockroach feast, perhaps?
Trouble for Paradise
Mexico’s health regulatory agency (Cofepris) issued a safety alert on Feb. 17 advising the public not to buy unregulated “food, cosmetic, drinks or supplements” containing CBD or THC, since these substances are permitted for medicinal use only. The alert lists offending brands, including Paradise—a franchise founded in 2015 with over 100 locations around the country, and a famous shareholder and spokesman, ex-President Vicente Fox. This isn’t the first time the federal authorities have cracked down on Paradise (they shuttered a Mexico City shop in 2023 and confiscated 1,800 products). Fox has long been an advocate for legalization of marijuana, and in 2019, said he planned to grow it on his Guanajuato ranch “to study and research it.”
Guanajuato gives Egypt a run for its mummies
A few weeks ago, this morbid banner ad appeared on a pedestrian bridge here in San Miguel de Allende that I drive by every day:
Which made me wonder when (and why) the city known for cajeta and crime started using dead bodies to attract tourists?
I found out the museum actually opened back in 2014, but now it’s getting a makeover—the municipality hopes it will double its revenue to 1 million pesos this year. The state capital of Guanajuato has a larger and more (in)famous mummy museum, but Celaya has similar soil conditions that can cause accidental mummification in the city’s cemeteries. In November, Celaya’s tourism director said he hoped to welcome “a new guest” to the remodeled museum after the discovery of a mummy in the city’s Panteón Sur—but it turns out she was a homicide victim, and the attorney general’s office is holding on to the corpse.
Now it’s your turn! Please share what you’ve been reading about Mexico lately in the comments, and let’s get a discussion going. And feel free to email me at hola@themexpatriate.com with any questions or suggestions.