World-class vibes
A dispatch from the "world's best city," plus the crackdown on fuel theft
Welcome to The Mexpatriate.
I’m back from the first week of school vacation adventures here in Travel + Leisure’s best city in the world—we tallied one emergency room visit, several sunburns, one night at the Chinese-Russian circus, one bout of food poisoning and one passport renewal fail.
Any new tariffs or taunts from the north I should know about?
Let’s see…President Sheinbaum is again trying to keep calm and carry on with a fresh 30% tariff deadline looming (Aug. 1) while fending off accusations of acting on behalf of drug traffickers (by the Guzmán family lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman). The déjà vu continues with the opposition blaming Sheinbaum for being bullied, while also agreeing with the bully’s arguments.
Sheinbaum has filed a defamation lawsuit against Lichtman here in Mexico, saying the lawyer’s allegations—made to the press after Ovidio Guzmán’s hearing in Chicago on Friday—“can’t be allowed to stand.” In 2023, AMLO also threatened a lawsuit against a U.S. criminal defense attorney, during the trial of Genaro García Luna. César de Castro (García’s lawyer) implied that AMLO had once received narco campaign money during his cross-examination of Jesús “El Rey” Zambada (brother of “El Mayo”) and AMLO accused Castro of slandering not just him, but the office of the president. However, he later acknowledged that under U.S. law, he couldn’t sue the attorney for statements made during a trial. So, he wrote de Castro a letter instead—admonishing that “the most important thing in life isn’t power or money, it’s honesty.”
In today’s letter, I cover San Miguel de Allende’s week of (dubious) distinctions and the national crackdown on fuel theft. I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday and will be publishing twice a week through the rest of July and August.
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The city I’ve called home for the last 20 years is no stranger to attention.
Last week, Travel + Leisure Readers’ Choice Awards ranked San Miguel de Allende as the world’s best city for the second year in a row (and fourth time since 2017), citing its “distinctive cultural milieu” and “affordability” as reasons for its popularity with visitors, leading a selection of 25 global cities with “world-class vibes” and “electric dining scenes” including Florence, Seville, Bangkok, Tokyo, Cuzco and Mexico City (ranked seventh). With gentrification still a leading topic in the national conversation, the usual yawn that would accompany this news came out as a sad sigh.
But it wasn’t the only list that San Miguel showed up on last week.
According to the most recent federal data on extortion, Guanajuato is second only to México state in reported cases this year, and San Miguel ranks third of municipalities nationwide for incidence per 100,000 people—in fact, six of the top ten cities are in Guanajuato. High-impact crimes rose nearly 25% annually in San Miguel this year, though it is still one of the safer cities in the state. In a June interview, Mayor Mauricio Trejo (PRI) decided to demonstrate this (after all, the city’s economy is 85% tourism-based) by boasting to reporters that he can wear a Rolex and Prada shoes while walking the city’s streets: “It’s my duty to wear a good watch, to show that there isn’t crime here.” He did say that his compression socks were cheap, though.
Last week President Sheinbaum sent a new federal law to Congress and security chief Omar García Harfuch announced a five-pronged strategy to combat extortion, which was the only high-impact crime that increased (27.7%) at a national level in the first six months of 2025, compared to 2019. Both in-person and phone extortion have a high “cifra negra”—official data indicates around 97% of incidents go unreported to law enforcement.
Rumors and resignation are the two words that come to mind when I think of my indirect encounters with extortion in San Miguel. Stories of threats to local business owners travel quickly by word of mouth here, but hardly ever include references to police involvement. Many grudgingly accept it as the cost of doing business—I was told by my boss at a local travel agency years ago that it’s the one “tax” that Mexican businesses can’t avoid paying (67% of businesses report giving into extortion demands made in person). Others just decide to close up shop.
National business associations have long been calling for more government action against extortion, and have come out in support of Sheinbaum’s proposed legislation. Coparmex (national employers’ federation) reports that 12.8% of its member companies have been extorted, and that it cost the country’s businesses 26 billion pesos in 2023. The tourism and commerce chamber describes it as “economic terrorism.” Both hailed the law as a step in the right direction, particularly the reform that would make extortion a “delito de oficio” (prosecuted ex officio by the state) in all 32 states.
“Today, it’s the victim who has to report the extortion, putting their life at risk. We are taking that burden off of the victim—the Mexican State assumes it,” explained Sheinbaum. “The victim is all of us. The victim is the State.”
In January 2019, then-President López Obrador initiated a crackdown on fuel theft with the proposed aim of eradicating the scourge completely (spoiler alert: huachicol is still very much alive and kicking).
As frustrated Mexicans faced shortages and endless lines at the gas station (I remember it well!), AMLO asked for forbearance to implement a strategy of reducing distribution via pipelines to more gas tankers. Pemex pipelines were known to be heavily “milked” by thieves.
There was an initial drop in reported fuel theft, but it didn’t last long; both tanker robberies and illegal tapping continued to escalate throughout the rest of the sexenio. Pemex reported there were 11,774 illegal pipeline taps detected in 2024 and in the first four months of this year, another 3,699 have been found. With the reduction in use of gasoline pipelines, thieves also turned to tapping LPG pipelines—going from 451 taps reported during the term of Enrique Peña Nieto, to 10,662 reported from 2018-2023.
According to the U.S. Treasury in 2024, fuel theft has become the “most profitable non-drug-related criminal activity” for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and it is far from the only criminal group involved. In addition to stealing fuel directly, cartels have also developed sophisticated networks of “huachicol fiscal,” importing fuel from the U.S. without paying tax. As described in a report by El País:
“According to the consultancy Petro Intelligence, the economic blow to Mexico—from both pipeline tapping and tax evasion on gasoline—amounts to more than 197.609 billion pesos, or about US $10.6 billion, per year.”
This leaves Sheinbaum with little choice but to make combating fuel theft a major priority (39 million liters have been seized since she took office), and in the past few weeks, there have been some headline-grabbing operations.
On June 30, García Harfuch reported that one of the main huachicol networks operating in the central region of the country had been dismantled, leading to 32 arrests and seizures of weapons, vehicles, nearly 16 million pesos in cash and 66 animals, including a jaguar and a lion. On July 7, the federal security department announced the largest single seizure so far in her term—15 million liters of illegal diesel, gasoline and petroleum distillates in Coahuila. On Monday, another 19,000 liters were seized in Jalisco (no arrests were made in either operation).
News also broke this week that the former head of security in Tabasco, Hernán Bermúdez, is on the run, wanted for allegedly leading the local criminal group “La Barredora” which is known to participate in fuel theft (16.8 million liters of stolen fuel have been seized in the state so far this year). Bermúdez was appointed head of security during the governorship of Adán Augusto López, a close ally of AMLO who served as Secretary of the Interior from 2021-2023, competed against Sheinbaum for the Morena presidential nomination and today serves as Morena’s leader in the federal Senate.
On Monday, Sheinbaum told the press that “no one will be protected” in the pursuit of huachicoleros, but when asked about a possible investigation of López, she said none has been opened.
Questions, criticism or tips? Email me: hola@themexpatriate.com. And if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it.