The Mexpat Notebook: Summer

What I've been reading and listening to

Welcome to The Mexpatriate.

Summer days linger, but the season slips away. Time is a rapidly depleting resource; a luxury item. We are obsessed with inventing time-saving tools—from the humble washing machine to the chatbot in your pocket—yet no one has any time. We live longer lives than our ancestors dreamed of and never tire hunting for longevity hacks, but time is always running out.

My reading list has no respect for time. I’m always reading several books simultaneously, spread across my Kindle and bedside table, and have to scroll further and further down my running to-read note to add more.

I haven’t spent many (well any) languid afternoons poolside with a book this summer, but I’ve read even more than usual to keep up with a course I’m taking and a gestating long-form project. In today’s newsletter, I share a highlights reel of (mostly) Mexico-related articles, books and podcasts.

Reading

‘She was almost a Batman figure’: Mexico’s avenging Mother Courage (The Guardian)

Isabel Miranda de Wallace would likely have approved of the comparison to the Dark Knight in this headline, but I think Mother Courage—a deeply flawed character whom Bertolt Brecht tried to make less sympathetic in his play after audiences responded with more pity than aversion—is a better reference. This long-form story is a tight overview of the sprawling case that began in 2005, and follows another tenacious mother, Enriqueta Cruz, whose daughter Brenda Quevedo was finally released from house arrest this week 19 years after being detained for allegedly participating in the kidnapping and murder of Miranda de Wallace’s son, Hugo. Quevedo had never been tried or sentenced and was tortured multiple times during her time in prison from 2007 to 2024.

In Mexico, soccer is played wherever space permits (Reuters)

There are some essential ingredients in the recipe for a Mexican village: a church, a papelería, a mercado and a football pitch. This photo essay depicts matches and pitches across the country, “wherever communities can find the space”—from humble fields of dust to urban fields of concrete to grand fields of World Cup dreams.

Magical Mystery Toads (Longreads)

The modern history of psychedelics really is a long, strange trip. This excerpt from journalist Kimon de Greef’s new book “The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Death, and the Guru who Peddled Transcendence” (yes, it’s high up on my list) explores the peculiar story of how the synthesis of 5-MeO-DMT in a chemistry lab in 1935 would much later set off a toad-licking craze and outlandish claims about ancient Mesoamerican cultures and psychedelic toads. The “guru” in the title is Mexican doctor Octavio Rettig, who went from psychedelic celebrity (here in San Miguel, around 2013, it seemed like everyone was trying “the toad”) to mostly disgraced. As the author notes: “Although 5-MeO-DMT can produce experiences of overwhelming intensity, often interpreted as encounters with ultimate truth, the history of toad smoking is riddled with false leads and misinformation.”

A Mexican Ghost Town Reemerges From the Banks of the Drying Rio Grande (Texas Monthly)

The river that the U.S. and Mexico share is drying up and as the surrounding areas try to grapple with the consequences, the receding waters are also revealing “the trash and treasures left behind” in places like Guerrero Viejo in Tamaulipas. The 18th-century town was flooded when the Falcon Dam was finished in 1954, but it began to reemerge in the early 2000s. This story follows the return of an architect who had worked on restoring the ghost town, but was forced to leave when Los Zetas started terrorizing the region. Today, Trump’s border wall looms large: “Those who are devoting their work to the story of civilization along the Rio Grande agree that the wall, the tanks, and the surveillance equipment are a disruption to something larger.”

Fridas for Everyone (The New York Review)

It’s been a very Frida summer. The “face that sold a million mugs” and artist who continues to beguile a global fandom has been on display at the Tate Modern in London and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City; an opera about Frida and Diego also made its first New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera. In this piece, Alma Guillermoprieto considers this “High Art Frida” revival (though she never really left), including the irony of Kahlo’s own insecurity about not being seen as Mexican enough, as the daughter of a German immigrant. She reviews details of her biography, both real and invented: “She would continue to invent herself, or her self, with each portrait to the end.”

Prophecy by Carissa Véliz

Is there anything more human than trying to divine the future? As far as we know, animals don’t do it, but homo sapiens have forever tried to predict what will happen next. I’ve been taken in by the voracious scope of this book by Mexican-Spanish philosopher and Oxford professor Carissa Véliz, and how it leaps from the Oracle at Delphi to the tech barons and predictive large-language models of today.

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

I just began reading this collection of stories on a friend’s persuasive and urgent recommendation. Published posthumously in 2015, the book brought Berlin—an Alaska-born writer and mother of four who lived across the U.S. and Mexico—much wider recognition than she’d received in her lifetime. I’m not sure how to describe Berlin’s prose, precise as an arrow finding its mark and warm as a gale of laughter; I only wish I’d started reading her sooner.

Birth Wars by Janet Jarman

Photojournalist Janet Jarman’s arresting photographs and stories of her experiences documenting the lives and work of Mexican and Guatemalan midwives make this book a treasure. You can learn more about Janet and her work in my conversation with her for The Mexpat Interview.

Listening

Mundial 2026: El lenguaje universal del futbol (Hablemos con Juan Villoro, Ep. 35)

I’m a devoted fan of journalist Denise Maerker’s podcast Hablemos, and this is one of my favorite interviews so far. Juan Villoro is not only a gifted writer across genres and subjects, he’s wonderful to listen to; this conversation about Mexico (and the world’s) love of football, despite all the crushing disappointments and shameless corruption, is a gem.

Tocqueville Road Trip (The Economist podcasts)

I binged this podcast series and it was well worth the price of admission. Retracing Alexis de Tocqueville’s path through the young United States in 1831, editor John Prideaux finds surprising insights and parallels that raise essential questions about the country’s trajectory, and also the broader future of democracy.

Uncaptioned. San Miguel de Allende, July 2026. (Photo: K. Bohné)

Feel inspired to share your summer finds? Please leave a comment below and as always, email me at hola@themexpatriate.com with any questions or feedback.