Mexico’s unrest, America’s money

To grasp Morrow’s significance, return to Mexico in the 1920s: a country still recovering
from revolution and rewriting the rules of sovereignty. The Constitution of 1917, notably
Article 27 declared that everything above, on and below Mexican soil belonged to the
nation. That principle directly challenged foreign oil concessions awarded during the
Porfirio Díaz era.

By 1920, Mexico was the world’s second-largest oil producer, home to Mexican Eagle (a
Royal Dutch/Shell subsidiary), Jersey Standard and Standard Oil. American and
European investors watched nervously: a nation with shifting politics and a new
constitution looked less like a neighbor and more like a precarious asset.

President Álvaro Obregón offered a stopgap in 1923, recognizing foreign property rights
in exchange for diplomatic recognition. His successor, Plutarco Elías Calles, later
deemed the agreement unconstitutional and issued fresh 50-year exploration permits,
enraging companies that believed their long-term claims had been secured.

Simultaneously, enforcement of Article 130 — curbing the Church’s political
role — sparked the Cristero War, a brutal conflict that drew appeals for U.S. intervention
from clerical networks. Mexico’s domestic battles had become entangled with foreign
business and public opinion.

The outgoing U.S. ambassador, James R. Sheffield, personified a hard line, reflecting
an older, force-first approach to Latin America. When Dwight Morrow, a senior partner
at J.P. Morgan & Co., which held much of Mexico’s US $514 million external debt, was
appointed ambassador in 1927, many Mexicans braced for “dollar diplomacy” in a
diplomatic coat and tails.

‘Ham and eggs’ diplomacy

Morrow arrived with a different playbook. His strategy rested on three deceptively simple
principles: respect Mexican sovereignty, cultivate genuine personal ties with Mexican
leaders, and recast conflicts as legal problems rather than theatrical confrontations.
American papers nicknamed him “the ham and eggs diplomat” for his routine breakfasts
with President Calles. The label belied the seriousness of those meetings. Over morning coffee, the two men tested ideas, lowered tensions and created a private space
for candid negotiation.

When Calles raised the oil question, Morrow answered not with threats but with a lawyer’s framing: this was “a question of law.” By urging legal channels — Mexican courts and legal process — he enabled Calles to reach a compromise without appearing to capitulate to foreign pressure.

The 1927–28 oil settlement remains contested. In November 1927, Mexico’s Supreme
Court removed time limits on foreign concessions for companies that had undertaken
“positive acts” (drilling, infrastructure) before 1917. Nationalists denounced the decision
as a surrender to foreign interests; Morrow’s supporters hailed it as proof that diplomacy
and law could trump coercion. Historians today offer a nuanced view: Calles was by
then a pragmatic modernizer, and Morrow provided a diplomatic offramp that allowed
him to retreat from unsustainable positions while preserving domestic legitimacy.

Faith, violence and quiet deals

Morrow’s mediation in the Church–State conflict required a subtler touch than oil
diplomacy. In 1927, he joined Calles on a northern tour. It was an image that startled some: an American Protestant banker riding beside an anticlerical revolutionary general. For Calles, the gesture signaled that Morrow was there to enable settlement rather than
dictate terms.

Between 1928 and 1929, Morrow quietly coordinated talks between Vatican envoys and
Mexican officials. The June 1929 “arrangements” did not restore the Church’s
prerevolutionary privileges, but they halted open hostilities: public worship resumed,
priests registered and the Church stepped back from direct political activity while the
state retained legal ownership of ecclesiastical property but allowed effective control
over church life. The deal reduced bloodshed, eased refugee flows and stabilized a
tense border situation. For Morrow, religious pragmatism was crisis management: a
peaceful Mexico was also a secure one.

Soft power, Mexican style

If breakfasts and back channels stabilized politics, Morrow’s most imaginative initiatives
targeted perception. He understood that shaping how Americans viewed Mexico would
be as important as resolving legal disputes. So he turned to spectacle, personalities and
museums to make Mexico legible and attractive to U.S. audiences.

In December 1927, Charles Lindbergh, fresh from his transatlantic triumph, flew to
Mexico at Morrow’s invitation. More than 150,000 people greeted him in Mexico City;
Calles publicly welcomed the aviator. Lindbergh toured Xochimilco, watched Revolution
Day parades and was feted for a week. It was an upbeat counterstory to headlines about
unrest. The visit also yielded a humanizing subplot: Lindbergh met and later married Anne Morrow, the ambassador’s daughter. The romance drew American attention and
softened public perceptions, mixing glamour with diplomacy.

Canonizing “Mexicanness”

Morrow’s cultural diplomacy reached institutional heights in 1930 when the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York opened “Mexican Arts,” a sweeping exhibition of roughly
1,300 objects that had debuted months earlier in Mexico City. Backed by the Carnegie
Corporation and the American Federation of Arts, and energetically supported by
Morrow, the show presented pre-Hispanic artifacts alongside colonial works, modern
muralism and popular crafts. Morrow lent pieces from his collection and helped secure
funding.

The exhibition offered a curated argument: Mexico had deep historical roots and a
vibrant contemporary culture. Touring U.S. cities for two years, it helped recast Mexico
in American eyes from a land of uprisings and banditry to a nation with a continuous
civilizational story and modern ambitions. The narrative aligned neatly with Mexico’s
postrevolutionary nationbuilding project — mixing Indigenous and European elements
into a celebratory mestizo identity — while also channeling that narrative through
American tastes.

Rivera, revolution and a banker’s check

Morrow’s most provocative cultural gamble came in paint. In 1929, he commissioned
Diego Rivera’s mural “History of Morelos, Conquest and Revolution” for the Palacio de Hernán Cortés in Cuernavaca. Rivera and Frida Kahlo worked at Casa Mañana, the Morrows’
country home, while completing the fresco, which depicts conquest, exploitation and
peasant uprising with blunt political clarity. That a former J.P. Morgan partner would
finance a fresco criticising colonial domination looks paradoxical — and it was. Mexico’s
Communist Party accused Rivera of selling out; U.S. conservatives fretted that
American funds were underwriting radical art.

Morrow’s logic was pragmatic: supporting Mexican artists, even when their work was
politically charged, signaled respect for Mexico’s cultural autonomy and helped
normalize its government before foreign audiences. A portion of Rivera’s work later
toured U.S. museums, linking Mexican muralism to the American art world.

Elizabeth Morrow’s curated Mexico

Elizabeth Cutter Morrow was no mere hostess. She turned Casa Mañana into a living
display of textiles, ceramics and folk objects, organized exhibitions of Mexican crafts in
the United States and wrote for American audiences about Mexican art. Her aesthetic
smoothed Mexico into a cohesive mestizo image, one appealing and accessible to U.S.
patrons, but which tended to obscure the poverty and marginalization behind many crafts.

Still, her efforts connected artisans with collectors and institutions, institutionalizing a
form of bilateral cultural exchange that endured, however unequal its dynamics.

The shadow of J.P. Morgan

Morrow formally resigned from J.P. Morgan on taking the ambassadorship, but his
banking past mattered. The bank’s role in financing Mexico’s foreign debt and Wall
Street’s interest in Mexican stability gave his appointment immediate market effects:
bond prices rose on news he was taking the post. Morrow was, at bottom, a
businessman in diplomatic guise. He delivered what American capital wanted — manageable debt, protection for oil interests and no sweeping expropriations—yet did so through negotiation that preserved Mexican dignity.

A shared project of modernity

Plutarco Elías Calles was a pragmatic modernizer, not a radical like Zapata or Villa. He
sought to build a postrevolutionary state through schools, infrastructure and a cultural
program that recovered Indigenous pasts and fostered national cohesion. Morrow’s
diplomacy complemented that agenda. By promoting Mexican art and culture in the
United States, he lent international validation to Mexico’s nation-building narrative.
In return, Americans were offered a reassuring story of a neighbor on a path to stability.

Dwight Morrow embodied a paradox. He defended U.S. interests within an unequal
system, but he chose negotiation, legal process and cultural engagement over coercion.
He did not upend the power imbalance between nations, yet his methods reduced
violence and allowed Mexico’s postrevolutionary state to consolidate legitimacy without
the spectacle of foreign intervention.

A century on, Morrow’s tenure offers a practical lesson: diplomacy that respects
sovereignty, leans on law and pairs political negotiation with cultural exchange can
defuse crises and reshape perceptions. That approach does not erase the realities of
power; it simply shows that skillful, respectful engagement can prevent escalation and
open channels for mutual understanding.

In 1927, when military intervention remained conceivable, that was a significant achievement — and one worth remembering whenever international relations risk being reduced to slogans rather than solved through sustained, patient diplomacy.

Maria Meléndez writes for Mexico News Daily in Mexico City.

The post Made in Mexico — By an American ambassador appeared first on Mexico News Daily

For Mexicans, few genres hold that power like the bolero. Its chords are interlaced with memory itself, woven through family stories, love and loss.

The power of bolero

After losing both my maternal grandparents in the same year, I began to hear boleros differently. They became more than love songs; they were vessels of remembrance. I think often of their home, filled with the aroma of morning coffee and my grandmother’s voice humming as she pretended to ready me for kindergarten — the school she never quite took me to. Now, the sound of boleros revives the ache of knowing that their house sits quiet, the old vinyls of Guty Cárdenas long stilled, their duets consigned to memory.

As the years have passed, those lyrics — once little more than background melodies — have transformed. The love songs our parents and grandparents sang now read as rich social documents, refracting shifting ideas of passion, duty and gender. Bolero’s old-world notions of romance collide with today’s evolving understandings of equality and affection. Yet for new generations, those same lyrics remain intoxicating reminders of love’s first sting.

Cuban bolero

Born in Cuba in the late nineteenth century, the bolero soon anchored itself deep in Mexican culture. It grew out of a marriage between danzón and son rhythms; its earliest recognized composition, “Tristezas,” came from the guitar of Pepe Sánchez in 1883. From the start, the bolero invited intimacy — its rhythm slow and swaying, perfect for dancing cheek to cheek, de cachetito pegado.

Its spread followed the sea routes of the Ward Line shipping company, linking Havana with New Orleans, Veracruz and Yucatán. These maritime arteries carried not only goods but ideas and melodies. Through Yucatán — long steeped in Cuban cultural exchange — the bolero crossed into Mexico’s heart. Legend holds that the singer and actor Arquímides Pous introduced it to Yucatecan audiences around 1918, where it mingled with son yucateco traditions and quickly became a local obsession.

The Mexican transformation

From Yucatán, the bolero journeyed north to Mexico City during a time when corridos — epic ballads of revolution and rural struggle — dominated popular song. Amid those tales of rifles and rebellion, bolero offered something more intimate: not war, but longing; not countryside ballads, but urban sighs.

The first Mexican bolero, “Madrigal,” appeared in 1918. What followed was a renaissance of romantic composition, with gatherings where sones and boleros conversed across guitars and voices. Mexico’s interpretation infused the genre with a distinct cosmopolitan charm: a hint of jazz, a whisper of contradanza, the emotive storytelling of local tradition.

Recognizing bolero

Recognizing a bolero is easy once you feel its pulse: a slow 4/4 rhythm tracing the fine line between yearning and heartbreak. It is the song of the yo cantante — the self who sings — to a distant or lost tú.

At its core lies the guitar, elevated into the requinto, a smaller, sharper-voiced cousin that answers the singer’s lament with delicate flurries of melody.

In Mexico, boleros typically found their voice in guitar trios or, occasionally, lush tropical big bands with bongos and congas. The genre splintered into variations: the elegant bolero de cabaret, with its big-band sophistication; the bolero ranchero, reimagined through the mariachi’s brass and strings; and the bolero yucateco, truest to its Cuban lineage — simple, tender and unabashedly romantic.

The greatest boleristas

It’s impossible to appreciate the Mexican bolero without knowing the composers who defined it. This is just a mini guide to get you started.

Guty Cárdenas: Regarded as Mexico’s first great bolerista, his songs are anthems among us. One of my favorites, though now less known, is “Nunca,” because it captures the beautiful futility of love unreturned: “I know that I love you in vain, that my heart uselessly calls you, but despite everything, I love you.” Can heartache sound more romantic?

Agustín Lara: The “Flaco de Oro” is our Mexican Cole Porter. His timeless compositions, such as “Piensa en mí,” “Solamente una vez,” and “María Bonita,” continue to resonate at gatherings.

Consuelo Velázquez: At just 16, she penned what is arguably the most famous Mexican bolero worldwide, “Bésame mucho.” This beautiful melody has been covered by artists from Frank Sinatra to Dua Lipa.

Álvaro Carrillo: Hailing from Oaxaca, he composed around 300 songs that continue to resonate and are frequently covered, including the beloved “Sabor a mí.”

María Grever: A truly remarkable composer deserving of a “Made in Mexico” article. She crafted around 800 songs, including “What a Difference a Day Makes?” originally titled “Cuando vuelva a tu lado.” Hired by Paramount and 20th Century Fox to create music for films and documentaries, her work has been performed by legends like Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Sarah Vaughn and Tony Bennett, among many others.

Each of them caught something enduring about love’s grammar — the unspoken pauses between devotion and despair.

Keeping the spirit alive

On Dec. 4, 2023, UNESCO declared the bolero part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For those of us raised with its melodies, the recognition felt inevitable: Bolero has always been more than music; it is memory’s soundtrack.

When I hear those familiar chords, I see my grandparents again — my itos — their distant gazes softening as a record played. I wonder who they imagined as they sang along, whose absence made their voices tremble. I see my father, half-mocking the genre’s sentimentality, yet still knowing every lyric. I hear my mother moving through the house, her voice wrapping itself around melodies she’s known since girlhood.

During the isolation of the pandemic, bolero became my family’s lifeline. On Friday nights, my sister and I would pour tequila and sing those old songs, laughing and crying in equal measure, reaching for warmth across the void of distance. Even now, it fills quiet afternoons at home — my boyfriend, my dog, the soft crackle of an old speaker. In those moments, bolero collapses time.

Listening to it is like stepping into memory’s photograph full of life.

The songs that hold us together

In a world that fragments daily — our attention splintered by screens and algorithms — bolero reminds us of our elemental need for connection. Its melodies invite us to sit still, to listen, to remember that even heartache has its beauty. Through its tender excess, it teaches emotional courage: to love deeply, to grieve openly and to keep singing anyway.

For me, returning to bolero is an act of revival — a way to bring back my itos for a few stolen minutes, to hear their laughter between verses.

Turn up the volume. Let the guitars and velvet voices fill your home. Whether you dance alone in the kitchen or croon off-key with your siblings, you join a tradition that stretches across oceans and generations. Each note carries the pulse of a shared past, each lyric a whisper of belonging.

In the end, bolero doesn’t just tell love stories — it keeps them alive.

Maria Meléndez writes for Mexico News Daily in Mexico City.

The post Made in Mexico: Bolero appeared first on Mexico News Daily

This year, the main purpose of my trip was to see, in person, the mural that Mexican
painter David Alfaro Siqueiros created in Los Angeles. Long considered lost and
wrapped in controversy, it was eventually recovered and conserved by the Getty
Museum, and is now on view again. Seeing it felt essential, especially because my work
with Mexico News Daily has made me much more aware of the ties that connect the
U.S. with other countries, and especially with Mexico.

I’ve often written about Mexican artists in the U.S. during the twentieth century
and the impact they had. Today, though, I want to focus on David Alfaro Siqueiros, not
only because he is crucial for Mexican art history, but because his influence was truly
international.

A life shaped by politics

 

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 David Alfaro Siqueiros always insisted that he had been born in Santa Rosalía, now
Camargo, Chihuahua, on Dec. 29, 1896, the son of Cipriano Alfaro Palomino, a
lawyer from Irapuato, and Teresa Siqueiros Feldmann, daughter of Felipe Siqueiros, a
politician and poet from Chihuahua. Years later, however, a birth certificate surfaced
indicating that he had actually been born in Mexico City under the name of José de
Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros.

Siqueiros has long been seen as an artist of intense political commitment, and that may
have begun at home. His maternal grandfather was a politician, and his paternal
grandfather fought in the army of Benito Juárez. From an early age, he showed a sharp
mind, equally eager to explore political ideas and artistic questions.

Education and influences

Like many of his generation, he received an unusually solid education. He studied at the
Colegio Franco-Inglés, the National Preparatory School and the Academy of San
Carlos, until his studies were interrupted by the Mexican Revolution. He joined the
Constitutionalist Army in 1914, fighting in battles in states such as Jalisco, Guanajuato,
Colima and Sinaloa. At the same time, he worked as a newspaper correspondent.

When the Revolution ended, Siqueiros was sent to Europe to continue his artistic
training. He visited Spain, France, Belgium and Italy, became friends with Diego Rivera,
and immersed himself in movements like Cubism and Futurism. A year later, he returned
to Mexico and, together with other artists, painted some of the first murals at the
National Preparatory School, works that presented a new Mexico: rooted in its
Indigenous past, yet stepping into a modern, industrial age. For Siqueiros, art was a
democratic weapon, something anyone should be able to understand. It was not just for quiet contemplation; it was a place for ideas and political debate, a way to awaken an
entire society.

Siqueiros’ style 

Siqueiros’s work hits you with movement before anything else. Figures twist, tilt and
seem to rush out of the wall, as if the mural were frozen in the middle of an explosion of
energy. He loved extreme perspectives. Bodies are seen from below or at sharp angles,
so you feel dragged inside the scene rather than politely invited to look at it from a
distance.

His use of materials was also distinctive. He experimented with industrial paints, spray
guns and unconventional supports, giving his surfaces a raw, almost metallic intensity
that set him apart from more traditional muralists.

The light in his work is both dramatic and theatrical. Strong contrasts between brightness and shadow heighten the sense of conflict, making every composition feel like a stage
where history and ideology collide.

Above all, his murals are openly political. They do not decorate; they denounce.
Oppression, revolution, imperialism and collective struggle are not background themes,
but the main characters of his visual language.

On May 1, 1930, his intense communist activity led to his imprisonment for a year, and it
was there, in jail, that he returned to painting. With support from Mexican friends already
in the U.S., he was invited in 1932 to paint murals and teach mural techniques
at the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles. That invitation opened a crucial chapter
for Siqueiros in the history of art in the Americas.

‘América Tropical’

By the time Siqueiros arrived in the U.S., he was already a recognized
muralist, a leading figure of the “new Mexican art.” He had been invited to show
“Mexican-ness” in a Los Angeles that, thanks to the film industry, was turning into an
important cultural and economic city within the U.S.

A patron commissioned Siqueiros to paint a rooftop mural, visible from the street, on the
Italian Hall on Olvera Street. The romanticized Mexican market on Olvera Street, what
many people think of when they say “el pueblito” there, was the brainchild of socialite
and activist Christine Sterling in the late 1920s and early 1930s.​

She campaigned to save the rundown historic plaza area from demolition and
convinced the city to support a makeover of Olvera Street as a picturesque Mexican-
style marketplace, with vendors, music and decorations meant to evoke a small
Mexican town.​

Siqueiros’ critique of the U.S.

At the Italian Hall, they envisioned a beer garden for the tourists. The request was clear:
an image that would feed into a romantic vision of the city, full of sunshine, Mexican
folklore, pre-Hispanic ruins, happy peasants and a sweet, tropical past. Offended by this
sanitized fantasy, Siqueiros painted the opposite. At the center, he placed a crucified Indigenous peasant; behind him, a stepped pyramid; above, the American eagle
perched on the cross; and all around, dense jungle vegetation, from which hidden
guerrilla fighters point their rifles at the eagle.

The mural delivered a direct, unapologetic critique of U.S. domination over Mexican
culture. The response was predictable: scandal, outrage and censorship. Within two
years, the mural had been covered in white paint.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as Latino and Chicano movements gained strength, activists
and artists began working to recover at least the story of América Tropical, which many
came to see as a starting point for the street art that still covers so many walls in Los
Angeles today. In the early 2000s, the Getty launched a long and complex project to
stabilize what remained of the work, conserve it and make it visible again to the public.

The experimental workshop in New York

Feeling censored and frustrated, Siqueiros went back to Mexico and returned to political
activism, which soon put him at odds with Diego Rivera. Convinced he no longer fit in
that environment, he left again for the U.S. in 1936, this time heading to New
York, where he believed his ideas would be better received.

In New York, he founded the “Siqueiros Experimental Workshop.” The idea was simple
but radical: if painting was going to be revolutionary, then both its themes and its
techniques had to change. He encouraged his students to experiment with new
industrial materials, to abandon traditional brushes and try tools like spray guns used to
paint cars, to use their own bodies as part of the creative process, to lay canvases on
the floor and explore new points of view. One of his most important lessons was that
“artistic accidents,” as he called them, should not be erased but integrated into the final
work.

Jackson Pollock was one of the students who passed through this workshop. Even if
Siqueiros did not invent Pollock’s famous dripping or action painting; it is clear that his
bold experiments and ideas left a deep mark on the American painter.

Controversial but ultimately honored in Mexico

Siqueiros, meanwhile, kept up his intense political activity. Banned at different moments
by various governments, he lived a kind of traveling exile, broken up by stretches in
prison. He worked in countries such as Argentina and in several European cities,
including Venice, and also left artwork in Asia, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

Toward the end of his life, the Mexican state decided to acknowledge his artistic
importance beyond political disagreements and awarded him the National Prize for Arts
in 1966. He died in Cuernavaca in 1974.

Why Siqueiros matters today

Of the “big three” Mexican muralists, the most celebrated today is Diego Rivera, yet to
me, he is the least impressive. Siqueiros seems not only visually more powerful, but also
a man who was never afraid of censorship and who dared, both in Mexico and in the
U.S., to question regimes and the structures and narratives of power.

At the same time, with the distance history affords, his faith in the possibility of socialist
or communist governments in countries like Mexico — and especially in the U.S. — feels somewhat naïve. And yet his unwavering commitment to his causes remains profoundly admirable.

Where to see his work

If you are in the U.S., you can visit the mural América Tropical in Los Angeles.
Just make sure to check the hours, as they change throughout the year.

In New York, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Whitney Museum hold
significant examples of his work; in Washington, D.C., you can find more at the
Hirshhorn Museum.​

In Mexico City, Siqueiros’s work is scattered across much of the city, from the University
City campus at UNAM to the Polyforum Siqueiros in Colonia Nápoles. There are also the murals inside the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Castillo de Chapultepec, works at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, the building of the current Secretaría de Educación Pública, the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and the Museo de Arte Moderno, among many other sites.​

When you encounter his work, try to see not just the images on the wall, but the life
behind them: a man who fought in the Revolution and, once the war ended, chose art
as his way of transforming society. In Siqueiros, art itself becomes a political act. What
do you think of his work — does it speak to you?

Maria Meléndez writes for Mexico News Daily in Mexico City.

The post Made in Mexico: David Alfaro Siqueiros appeared first on Mexico News Daily

The question, of course, is what that “something” means. A mobilization like the one he boasted about in Venezuela? A military strike disguised as humanitarian aid? In geopolitics, answers are never simple, but several factors suggest such a U.S.-led operation would be not only ineffective but dangerously misguided.

Balkanization

Cartels function everywhere in Mexico, but their activities vary. Along the borders, they once specialized in human smuggling — a business reshaped, though not erased, by Trump’s immigration crackdowns. In Puebla, they steal. In Mexico City, they extort. Their operations reach deep into daily life, adapting like a shadow economy that feeds on absence and fear.

The popular image of gleaming narcos with gold chains and pet tigers misses the truth. These are not caricatures; they are corporations. They run logistics networks that operate with the efficiency of global retailers. The difference is that Walmart files taxes; cartels file body counts.

And when you remove cartel leaders, you don’t end the organization. The fall of El Chapo divided the Sinaloa cartel into rival factions, as his sons, Los Chapitos, battled his old partner Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada for control. Violence surged. New cells formed. “Kingpin strategy” is not a decapitation, but instead a fragmentation of the problem into even harder to remove pieces. Each head cut off becomes a new command structure, smaller, quicker, and often more violent.

Something is already being done

Let’s not pretend Mexico and the U.S. operate in isolation. DEA agents and American intelligence personnel have worked in Mexico for decades. Bilateral operations against cartels are routine; intelligence is shared, coordinated, and, often, successful.

If what Trump imagines is Marines parading through Mexican streets, that’s not cooperation. It’s an invasion. President Sheinbaum is right: that would be a direct violation of Mexican sovereignty. Mexico is not a failed state begging for rescue; it’s a struggling democracy managing one of the harshest criminal ecosystems on the planet, one fed by its neighbour, often with limited tools and too little support.

Just look at Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch’s record — his operations dismantled dozens of criminal cells and captured high-ranking traffickers. Progress exists. What doesn’t is patience.

As long as demand exists

Believing that killing cartel leaders will end drug addiction is delusional. The only way to deal with the problem seriously is to treat addiction as the public health crisis it is. Switzerland learned that decades ago. Instead of declaring war on heroin in the 1980s, the Swiss government created supervised heroin and methadone programs so addicts could transition safely toward recovery. Infection rates dropped, overdose deaths plummeted, and drug-related crime fell. The state, not the streets, took control.

Mexico has destroyed countless synthetic drug labs, but the results are temporary at best. When one operation disappears, another one appears elsewhere. As long as the U.S. appetite for narcotics endures, Mexico’s cartels will adapt, relocate, and rebuild.

In essence, legalization removes control from the hands of the criminal underworld and places it squarely with institutions. It doesn’t celebrate drug use, it sets boundaries around it—with rules about who can sell, who can buy, and where consumption can happen. Legalization doesn’t mean permissiveness; it means precision.

“Something has to be done”

On this point, Trump isn’t alone. Mexicans are equally desperate. We are tired of the headlines, the funerals and the fear. Our parents remember another Mexico, one where you could travel at night without locking your doors. My generation remembers the warning signs: don’t drive certain highways, don’t look at strangers too long, don’t ask who lives next door.

Of course, we want the violence to stop. But we also know what happens when foreign troops step in under the pretext of restoration. They rarely leave when the fighting’s over. Once a Marine garrison appears in Chiapas or Sinaloa, sovereignty becomes a negotiation, not a right.

Intervention promises quick relief but often ends in permanent instability. The “war on terror” taught us that lesson painfully well.

A final thought

Drugs are already here. The question is who decides their terms — cartels or governments. Prohibition has failed for half a century; legalization, for all its risks, at least offers the chance to manage the damage instead of multiplying it.

Something does have to be done about Mexico — about the violence, about the fear, about the hypocrisy on both sides of the border. But the solution won’t come from cruise missiles or foreign boots on Mexican soil. It will come when both countries can admit that the drug war, as we’ve waged it, has been an act of self-deception.

As Mexicans, we’ve lived with this crisis for far too long and perhaps we’ve also been shortsighted about how to confront it. We’ve demanded action, yet often repeated the same failed formulas. Maybe the real challenge is daring to do something different — and finally breaking free from the cycle that keeps us trapped between fear and denial.

Maria Meléndez writes for Mexico News Daily in Mexico City.

The post Opinion: ‘Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico’ but it must not be by Trump appeared first on Mexico News Daily

El bolillo is a cornerstone of Mexican cuisine. It holds together our tortas, becomes
dessert when buttered and sprinkled with sugar, and serves as comfort food after a
fright — a meme-worthy “toma un bolillo pa’l susto” moment (“have a roll for the scare”).

To us, this humble bread is delicious, trustworthy and endlessly comforting. As I explained in my earlier tortas article, el bolillo is a piece of national identity. So
when a foreigner — especially one who has invested in a Mexico City bakery, Green
Rhino — criticizes our bread; it feels personal, almost like a slight against us as a people.

In the article’s comment section on MND and across social media, many agreed with
Hart, especially foreign readers: “Mexican bread just isn’t good.” As we say here, en
gustos se rompen géneros — to each his own. Even though UNESCO recognizes
Mexican cuisine as part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage, doesn’t mean everyone must like it. But if you choose to live, invest or belong to a culture not your own, there’s a basic responsibility to learn from it, not just consume it.

Food, when viewed not merely as sustenance but as an expression of the land that
shapes it, becomes an X-ray of belief, economy and identity. Food is one of the best
ways to know a nation. Had Mr. Hart subscribed to Mexico News Daily and read our
articles about tortas and pan dulce, but also those on our economy and culture, he
might have understood that better.

If you, like Mr. Hart, dislike pan dulce or bolillos, I won’t try to change your taste buds.
But I do want to offer you some context on our bread culture, since it is a staple.

Historical dimension

Mexican bread stems from two distinct traditions. Pan dulce consists of reimagined
French, Spanish and Portuguese recipes that were adapted during the 19th and
20th century — with the arrival of modern and industrial ovens — into the dazzling
variety available in every local bakery today. As I’ve written before, the assortment of
sweet breads in a given town reflect the availability of regional ingredients.

Savory bread, meanwhile, is a Spanish inheritance. If you’ve traveled through Spain,
you’ll recognize our bolillos, teleras and molletes under different names — especially in
Andalusia.

During the Spanish Civil War, a significant wave of Spaniards migrated to Mexico. They
founded great universities, but also gifted us their bakeries, furniture shops and more. The best bakeries in the neighborhoods where my parents and I grew up were those
proudly run by “los gachupines.”

Economic dimension

The kind of bread Hart celebrates comes with a steep price tag. In Mexico City, a
supermarket sourdough loaf costs about 80 pesos; at Green Rhino, prices climb from
60 to 165. Mexico’s Ministry of Economy reports that the average monthly salary in
2025 was 6,430 pesos. Clearly, his bakery doesn’t cater to the average local.

His remark — “They don’t really have a bread culture. They make tortas with these ugly
white buns that are cheap and industrially made” — reveals something deeper. “Cheap”
and “industrial” aren’t aesthetic flaws; they’re symptoms of economic structures. When
quality food becomes a luxury good, the problem isn’t taste — it’s inequality. Un
bolillo costs about 5 pesos. His artisan loaf, 165. Taste is relative; economics are not. At
the same time, 5 pesos for a bolillo sounds like a great deal.

Raw material

“The wheat in Mexico isn’t good,” Hart claimed. “They don’t have much of a wheat-
growing culture, and what they use is overprocessed.” That’s not accurate. Wheat is
Mexico’s second most cultivated grain after corn. Though nonnative, it’s deeply rooted
in our agricultural landscape.

Here, wheat faced a deadly fungus, chahuistle, that destroyed crops. That word lives on
in our slang. When life falls apart, we say, “ya te cayó el chahuistle” (“the blight’s hit
you”). Breeding resistant strains was imperative. Since the Porfirian era, the Mexican
government has sought to enhance grain efficiency, particularly wheat, to supply the à la
française bakeries sprouting across the country.

After World War II, the Rockefeller Foundation, with the Mexican government, funded
research led by Norman Borlaug to improve cereal yields — a project that earned him the
1970 Nobel Peace Prize. The goal wasn’t to exploit or poison the world; it responded to
a genuine global desire to fight famine in the postwar world.

Technicalities

Discussing this debate with friends, Gabriela Espinosa, a professional chef and owner
of Delia in Bangkok, offered a technical perspective that humbled all of us who’ve
learned “baking” by streaming shows. In high-altitude Mexico City — 2,000 meters above
sea level — geography itself is the baker’s first enemy.

As she explained, “You have to adjust recipes for altitude.” Yeast behaves
unpredictably; lower air pressure makes dough rise faster but weaker. Water evaporates
quickly; kneading requires more effort. In short, imported recipes — from sea-level countries like France — must be rewritten with patience and local precision. Baking here
is not imitation; it’s adaptation.

We DO have bread culture!

The rebuttal to Hart’s insult has been loud and clear: Mexico does have a bread culture.
It may not be British, but that doesn’t make it any less of a culture. Most Mexicans begin
or end their day with sweet bread. When the temperature drops or rain hits the streets,
we turn instinctively to bread once again.

According to official data, each Mexican consumes 57 kilograms of wheat annually. Corn
is our soul, wheat still holds its ground. From Mexico City to Sonora, Guerrero to
Oaxaca, breads differ wildly. Their diversity reflects regional ingredients and two
centuries of evolution — reshaped by local tastes, customs and needs. You may find it
unfamiliar or even unappealing, but it stands as a testament to our enduring
gastronomic heritage.

Bread — both artisanal and industrial — remains central to our identity. Even Bimbo, the
world’s largest bakery, is a cultural symbol. Dismiss it as mass-produced if you will, but
it embodies our own definition of progress, mastery and national taste.

The “Before Green Rhino” bakeries in CDMX

I want to apologize in advance to all our subscribers who aren’t in CMDX, but Mr. Hart
started this centralization by establishing his bakery in Roma Norte. Jijitl! How I
imagine a laugh sounds in Nahuatl.

Panadería Rosetta

Chef Elena Reygadas gave us, back in 2012, one of the most emblematic bakeries in
Colonia Roma. Beyond the loaves, which are a delight, her selection of pan dulce is
wonderful. My favorite used to be the rosemary bun.

Bottega

If anyone understands dough, it is Italian chef Marco Carboni, who opened his first
restaurant in Mexico City in 2016: Sartoria. In 2019, Marco opened his shop, Bottega,
created to sell Italian products of extremely high quality. His loaves and seasonal
breads are exceptional, like everything else in the store. And try the espresso
cortado — it is my favorite in CDMX.

Odette

Odette opened in 2016 in Lomas de Chapultepec with the idea of making artisanal
bread that was delicious and felt like home. Their loaves are among my favorites, and
fortunately, you do not have to trek all the way to Lomas; there is a branch in Condesa.

City Market o La Comer

Hear me out: for quick supermarket bread that gets you out of a bind, City Market or La
Comer are among my favorites. It is good bread. It is not the same as bread from a
specialized bakery, but it is highly convenient.

Globo, Maison Kaiser, La Esperanza

Mr. Hart criticized commercial bakeries, and that part is understandable. If what you
want is a strictly artisanal loaf, this might not be your place. But if what you are looking
for is a reliable standard of quality and price, these are your bakeries. They are
specialized — unlike La Comer or City Market — and you can find them in several cities
around the country, with consistent quality.

Don’t pull a Richard Hart

Mexicans know this exhaustion: seeing our culture constantly equated with cheapness,
mediocrity or kitsch. We live under the shadow of stereotypes, like every culture outside
the Euro-American mainstream.

Outsiders aren’t expected to know us. But those who choose to build a life or business
here carry some responsibility to understand the land they now call home. You’re free to
dislike bolillos, mole, traffic or our refusal to say “no.” Just don’t use cultural superiority
as a seasoning.

Friends, don’t pull a Richard Hart. We pour thought, history and heart into every article to help you not just live here, but belong. Think of your time in Mexico as an opportunity to build a multicultural coexistence rooted in respect for our cultures and traditions.

Maria Meléndez is an influencer with half a degree in journalism.

The post Taste of Mexico: How to avoid pulling a Richard Hart appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Her name was Anita Brenner. She was Mexican-American. She was Jewish. And she was absolutely convinced that the world had Mexico completely wrong.

Anita Brenner was born in 1905, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, to a problem that would define her life: she belonged nowhere. In a deeply Catholic community obsessed with indigenous roots and unmistakably Mexican surnames, the Jewish girl with the hyphenated identity was a foreigner in her own birthplace. 

That hunger to understand the place that rejected her became her superpower. While other people might have simply left and never looked back, Brenner decided to become an expert on the thing that had cast her out. From childhood, she wielded the only real tool available to women of her era — her pen.

By the 1920s, with an anthropology degree in hand, she started writing for The Jewish Daily Forward in New York, winning contests with essays that were decades ahead of their time in intellectual dexterity and emotional honesty. Then she did something audacious: she infiltrated Mexico’s artistic and political circles with such thoroughness that a Mexican saying about people who “get into everything like humidity” might have been invented for her.

Between 1924 and 1925, she formalized her position as correspondent for B’nai B’rith International, a Jewish nonprofit organization in Mexico, crafting a narrative that would later reshape how the world perceived Mexico. In the chaos of the post-Revolutionary era, when Europe was turning inward, she portrayed Mexico as a sanctuary — a modern country, safe, sophisticated, and worth looking at.

The first time Mexico became cool

There was a cultural phenomenon in the early twentieth century that we rarely talk about with the excitement it deserves. Mexican artists, writers, and intellectuals flooded New York and other American cities.

Anita Brenner was the architect of this paradigm shift, writing for the magazines that mattered — Mexican Folkways, The Nation and Mademoiselle — and she did something radical: she refused to treat Mexican culture as a distant third-world curiosity. She presented it as a vanguard. She was among the first to describe what art historians now call “the Mexican Renaissance” — the moment when Mexican artists looked to indigenous civilizations the way Renaissance masters had gazed at Roman ruins and created something entirely new. She helped place Mexican muralists in galleries and museums across America. She was the translator who made the incomprehensible suddenly inevitable.

The intellectual circles of New York were electrified.

Idols Behind Altars

In 1929, Anita Brenner published what would become one of the foundational texts in Mexican art history: “Idols Behind Altars.” The book marked the moment when Mexican art historiography became international.

The book did something almost no one had done before: it treated Mexican culture as a unified continuum. Pre-Hispanic art. Colonial art. Popular art. Modern art. Muralism. Not as separate categories, but as chapters in a singular, thousand-year conversation about what it meant to be Mexico. A retablo hanging in someone’s home had the same scholarly weight as a mural by Diego Rivera. Ceramics were studied with the same rigor as oil paintings. Brenner refused the distinction between high art and low art because she understood that this distinction was itself a form of erasure.

The photography in the book was by Edward Weston and Tina Modotti — two foreigners whose images documented a vision of a Mexico that has transformed almost beyond recognition in the century since.

In her magnum opus, Brenner argued that Mexico was not a nation of violent primitives, but a country with millennia-deep roots and a thriving present. That its strength came from this very continuity — from the past still alive in the countryside, from the colonial period’s productive collision with indigenous traditions, from the modern world’s experiments in radical new forms. In short: that Mexico had a story worth hearing, told by someone who knew how to make the world listen.

New York’s intellectual establishment listened.

The machinery of influence

At the legendary Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), an unprecedented decision was made: for the only time in the museum’s history, they dedicated the entire building to a single exhibition. Entitled “20 Centuries of Mexican Art,” the accompanying catalogue followed the exact intellectual architecture of Brenner’s book, although her name was never credited directly.

This growing American fascination with Mexico triggered investment and tourism. It reshaped how American capital flowed into the country. The machinery was complex and multilayered, involving diplomats like Dwight W. Morrow (J.P. Morgan’s partner) and power brokers like Nelson Rockefeller, all with their own strategic interests in presenting Mexico as modern, peaceful, cultured and crucially, safe for American investment. It involved art, yes. But it also involved finance and influence and the careful construction of narratives that served very specific geopolitical purposes.

Brenner was a crucial part of this machinery, whether she fully understood it or not.

A complicated relationship

But here’s where the story darkens.

In 1943, Brenner published “The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution 1910–1942,” an illustrated history meant for English speakers just beginning to process what the Revolution had actually meant. It was one of the first comprehensive histories written, a book that seemed to continue the project she’d begun in Idols Behind Altars.

Except it didn’t. It did something far more troubling.

Using photographs from the Casasola archive — many of them posed, many of them unreliable as historical documents — Brenner attempted to construct a visual narrative of the Revolution as progress. The problem, for historians, is this: while her text offered an interpretation at a moment when even Mexican scholars were still trying to make sense of the armed conflict, she romanticized it. She presented the Revolution as the necessary crucible that forged modern Mexico, conveniently eliding what that crucible actually destroyed.

She didn’t write about the food crises it created, the women violated in its chaos, or the colonial art stolen and destroyed. She certainly didn’t grapple with the political complexity — the competing groups, each convinced they alone could save the nation, each willing to massacre villages to prove it. Instead, she presented Mexico’s bloodiest decade as a necessary price for progress, a tragic but acceptable cost of becoming modern.

In doing so, she contradicted everything she’d argued just fourteen years earlier in, when she’d insisted on the dignity and continuity of Mexican culture. The Revolution, in her first book, was a rupture to be understood. In her second book, it was a rupture to be celebrated.

A changing tale

Why did Anita Brenner change her story? The answer lies in understanding the specific moment she was writing in.

The interwar period was a time of urgent strategic concern for American power. After the Revolution, Mexico had a problem: it was perceived abroad as wealthy in resources but unstable in society — a country that had just exploded into civil war, and that was now flirting with socialism and communism. American businesses needed to invest in Mexican infrastructure, but first, American capital needed to feel safe.

The new Mexican State understood this too. Ambassadors and billionaires and cultural entrepreneurs all realized the same thing simultaneously: Mexico needed a new image. Not a false image, but an authentic one, which was carefully curated. Modern and traditional at once. Cultured and economically sound. An investment opportunity dressed in indigenous beauty.

Brenner’s work was not operating in a vacuum. It was part of an architecture of influence that linked finance, diplomacy, philanthropy, and propaganda into a single coherent machine. The people who wanted to remake Mexico’s image in the American imagination had the resources to make it happen. And Brenner, brilliant, well-placed, influential as she was, became an essential part of how that happened.

Did she understand this fully? We can’t know. Her love for Mexico, her genuine scholarly passion, her binational perspective — all of it became instrumentalized by forces far larger than her individual intentions.

What endures

If you can find Idols Behind Altars, read it. Read it knowing that some sections have been updated by contemporary scholars, that the book reflects the ideologies of 1929, that it was written by a binational woman determined to travel throughout an entire country to make it intelligible to strangers. Read it as a document of a moment that tells us as much about what we valued then as what we value now.

You’ll notice something unsettling: ideas Brenner articulated in 1929 still echo in how we talk about Mexico today. Some have endured because they’re true. 

But here’s the deeper lesson: Anita Brenner became an expert in Mexican culture because she refused to accept that her outsider status disqualified her from understanding. She traveled. She studied. She thought carefully. She wrote persuasively. She didn’t know whose ears she’d reach or what impact her work would have—and then it turned out she reached everyone who mattered.

If you’re interested in becoming an expert in anything, you never know what kind of influence you might wield, what doors your knowledge might open, or whose interests — noble or otherwise — your work might serve. That’s not a reason to stop studying. It’s a reason to study more carefully, more critically, and with eyes wide open to the complex machinery that surrounds even the most sincere acts of love.

Maria Meléndez is an influencer with half a degree in journalism. 

The post Made in Mexico: Anita Brenner appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Years later, while studying the Spanish Conquest in college as a cultural collision, these
same pastorelas — and their sister celebration, the posadas —became my focus, since
they were more than dogmatic tools; they shaped our relationship with Catholic religion.

The friar’s dilemma

To understand the origins of these traditions, one must first inhabit the mind of their
inventors. Imagine you are a Franciscan friar in the 16th century. You have just stepped
off a ship into a world that defies every category of your existence.

You are standing in a land where the Bible has no authority, where the name Dios (God)
evoke no recognition, and where Jesus is a ghost of a foreign land. But the theological
silence is the least of your disorientation.

In the world you left behind, humanity was crafted in the image of God. Here, you find a
civilization convinced of the inverse: humans were not made to reflect the gods but
to sustain them. The relationship is not one of adoration, but of metabolic necessity.
Without human intervention, the cosmos collapses.

Here, nature is not a backdrop for human morality but a deity in itself — the stars do not merely shine; they dictate the rhythm of breath and blood. Even the architecture rejects you: in Castile, the church is a sanctuary for the flock; here, entering the House of any God is an unthinkable transgression, a terrifying privilege reserved only for the tlatoanis and warriors who feed the Gods.

The scale of this “New World” is also bewildering — larger than the Kingdom of Castile, a
patchwork of nations with distinct tongues and pantheons. But the deepest chasm is not
linguistic; it is conceptual.

How do you explain the unique and linear path to salvation — final judgment — to a
people who live in a universe of relentless, cyclical duality? Binary tensions structure their reality: life and death, male and female, rain and drought, light and darkness.
They do not seek “goodness” in the Christian sense; they seek balance. To them,
morality is not about avoiding sin; it is about maintaining cosmic equilibrium. Actions
have immediate, tangible consequences in the here and now, not in a distant afterlife.
The collision of these two worldviews must have been absolute. How do you translate
the concept of “sin to a mind that sees only “chaos”? How do you preach “grace” to a
culture obsessed with “order”?

Facing this metaphysical abyss, the friars stopped trying to translate the untranslatable.
Instead, they looked for the one language that transcends doctrine: the seasons.

Where calendars converge

Every religion, at some point in its history, follows the rhythm of the harvest. And so it
was not difficult for the friars to spot the parallels between European and Indigenous
calendars. Across cultures, key festivals clustered at the end of the agricultural year,
celebrating renewal, abundance and hope.

In Central Mexico, one of the most important of these celebrations was Panquetzaliztli,
or the “Raising of the Banners.” Despite what many modern retellings suggest,
Panquetzaliztli was not a single-day festivity, but the name of the 15th twenty-day
month — dense with mythic reenactments, sacrifices and ritual drama.

It commemorated the miraculous birth of Huitzilopochtli, the Sun God, born of the
immaculate conception of the goddess Coatlicue. His 400 siblings, consumed by
suspicion and rage, attempted to kill their mother for what they perceived as infidelity.
But Huitzilopochtli, emerging fully armed from her womb, defeated them all — a cosmic
allegory of light triumphing over darkness.

Panquetzaliztli functioned simultaneously as a method of preserving Mexica cosmic
tradition and as a terrifying reminder to subject nations that the Mexica were the chosen
children of the sun. The month-long observance was a crescendo of ritual acts,
escalating in intensity until the final three days.

The Incarnation (Day 18):

The climax began with an act of sacred sculpting. Priests and devotees fashioned a life-
sized effigy of Huitzilopochtli from a paste of toasted corn, amaranth and agave honey,
to be consumed on the last day.

The Enthronement (Day 19):

The figure was carried to the summit of the Templo Mayor. There, overlooking the valley,
it was displayed for public adoration before being processed inside the sanctuary. The
day was filled with incensing, dance and liturgy, marking the god’s presence among his people.

The Sacrifice and Communion (Day 20):

The final day brought a spectacle of movement and blood. A high priest, trailing a
massive banner in the shape of a serpent, led a procession that wound through the city
for nearly four hours. This was a harvest of souls: the procession visited various sites
and temples to collect war prisoners and march them back to the feet of Huitzilopochtli.

Inside the temple precinct, a ritualized skirmish was staged among the prisoners
destined for the stone. But the violence extended to the god itself. In a symbolic slaying, priests hurled darts into the heart of the amaranth Huitzilopochtli. The “dead” god was
then broken into pieces. The heart and limbs were distributed to the nobility, while
smaller bones made of the same seed-paste were given to the commoners.

The day concluded with social renewal marked by the birth of Huitzilopochtli, followed
by a solemn sermon reinforcing the necessity of these rites to maintain the universe.
Panquetzaliztli was a rigorous, blood-soaked affirmation of power.

Creating Navidad

So picture the friars now, standing before a ritual that resembled — uncomfortably
so — the structure of their own faith. Here was a god born of a virgin, and here was
bread made sacred and consumed in his name.

The horror must have been real. In the pageantry of Panquetzaliztli, they saw a
narrative bridge from indigenous faith to Catholic doctrine. Huitzilopochtli’s story could
be reframed through the miracle of another birth: that of the Son of God, who required
not blood, but prayer.

But they had a tonal problem. While the Valley of Mexico pulsated with the martial rhythms of Panquetzaliztli, the Old World was immersed in a deeply different frequency:
Advent.

In the 16th-century Catholic imagination, the weeks leading up to Christmas were a
period of rigorous spiritual hibernation. Beginning on the Sunday closest to November
30 and stretching to Christmas Eve, Advent was a season of “little Lent.” The churches
were draped in purple—the liturgical color of penance. The atmosphere was a complex
emotional alloy of repentance, fear and a desperate hope for redemption. The Advent
wreath, with its four candles nestled in evergreen, marked the slow, deliberate conquest
of light over darkness, week by week.

How could such a somber season compete with the vibrancy of the Indigenous rites?
The friars found their answer in a tradition already popular in Seville: the Misas de
Aguinaldo. They realized that if the Indigenous people were eager to celebrate during
the days of Panquetzaliztli, the Church had to offer them back their own “ritualistic
sacred days,” but repackaged.

And so, nine days before the Nativity, the solemnity was deliberately cracked open. At these special dawn masses, the church offered Eucharist and aguinaldos — gifts of dried
fruit, sweets and food.

The clergy officially maintained that the overflowing pews were a testament to spiritual
fervor. But historical chronicles from the era paint a more human picture: they describe the churches turning into raucous romerías — chaotic festivals where the faithful were
driven less by a hunger for God than by a very literal hunger for the treats.

It was this specific tension—between the solemn requirements of the liturgy and the
irrepressible human desire for celebration—that the friars harnessed. They exploited
this crack in the solemnity to erase the memory of the pre-Hispanic gods, replacing
sacred amaranth with aguinaldo.

The theater of conversion

Conversion required more than treats; it required a story. And the friars’ most effective tool
was theater. During the same Advent season, at sunset, they began to stage short plays
designed to educate the populace on the importance of the nativity.

As early as 1539, plays like “The Conquest of Jerusalem” were performed not for
entertainment but for edification. Since the Indigenous people were often terrified to enter the house of God, open chapels were built as hybrid sacred stages. There, beneath the
sky, faith became as much doctrine as it was spectacle.

By the 17th century, the stories evolved. The focus shifted from grand liturgy to human
a drama where the audience could see themselves reflected in the moral journeys of
shepherds, angels and devils. The tone became warmer, more familiar. Thus were born the pastorelas: plays that dramatized the humble pilgrimage of Indigenous shepherds
seeking the newborn Christ, repeatedly tempted by evil with the seven capital sins, but
never defeated.

The audience might not yet grasp the dogma, but they understood ritual repetition,
music and dance. So around pastorelas bloomed the posadas — popular processions
where communities reenacted Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter. People carried
candles and sang villancicos, local carols written in the vernacular. Between the verses
and the laughter, Catholic doctrine quietly took root.

It was, in essence, a masterclass in cultural negotiation disguised as a three-part
celebration: the Misas de Aguinaldo, the pastorelas and the posadas.

Secularization and sentiment

By the 19th century, Mexico had legally divorced church and state. Religion retreated
from public life, but its rituals remained, dressed in the garb of community. The posadas
escaped the church walls and spilled into streets and courtyards. What had begun as
catechism became shared festivity.

Some clergy saw the change as irreverent. But it was a fulfillment of the very
syncretism that had birthed the tradition centuries earlier: a joyful coexistence of the
sacred and the human.

From Navidad to Christmas

In today’s Mexico, the overt religiosity of the season has faded further still. Many attend
mass only out of habit or family duty, if at all. The air is no longer filled with the scent of
copal or the solemnity of Latin but with English-language carols translated into
Spanish — the soundtrack of a globalized December.

As a Catholic, I admit to feeling a pang of melancholy watching the deep theological
weight of Navidad morph into a secular exchange of goods (even as I open my own
gifts with Bing Crosby crooning in the background, of course). Yet, I also recognize the
profound irony of my nostalgia. Five centuries ago, an Indigenous woman must have felt
the same disorientation and loss as she watched the sacred banner of Panquetzaliztli give way to the manger of Christmas.

But perhaps to mourn this shift is to misunderstand the very nature of our culture. The
essence of Mexican identity is not purity, but adaptation. Faith becomes story, story
becomes ritual, and ritual becomes survival.

Whether we offer amaranth to the sun, prayers to the Christ Child, or simply time to our
families, the impulse remains unchanged. We are still doing what the Mexica and the
friars did before us: gathering together to light a fire against the longest, darkest nights
of the year, driven by the stubborn, ancient hope that the light will, inevitably, return.

Maria Meléndez is an influencer with half a degree in journalism

The post Made in Mexico: Inventing Navidad appeared first on Mexico News Daily

So, a few weeks ago, when I read that Boing! — after 80 years of being woven into the fabric of Mexican life — may soon disappear under legislation that raised the price of sugary beverages, the news struck with a familiar ache. The sadness came not only from
nostalgia but from the belief that behind this policy lies a fundamental miscalculation.
You can educate the public about balanced diets and curb aggressive advertising, but
punitive measures rarely unravel problems with deep cultural and logistical roots.

Pascual–Boing

Its story starts in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Rafael Víctor Jiménez Zamudio
founded a modest company selling popsicles and bottled water. But Don Rafael had
always harbored a larger ambition: to offer refreshing beverages made with real fruit.
The company opened its first facilities in the San Rafael and Tránsito neighborhoods of
Mexico City. Its first major success was Pato Pascual, a soda marketed as the first
100% Mexican soft drink made with fruit. By the late 1950s, the company introduced
Lulú, another product crafted for a growing urban market seeking quality and flavor at
an accessible price.

By 1960, Pascual was thriving, expanding into other Mexican states and even reaching
the United States and Japan. It also launched Boing!, a non-carbonated drink made with
natural pulp and free of preservatives. Distinct from the rest of the brand’s
portfolio — and from its competitors — Boing drew on the cultural memory of aguas
frescas, tapping into Mexico’s deep affection for natural fruit beverages. Don Rafael, still
pursuing durability and innovation, approached the Swedish company Tetra Pak and
secured exclusive rights to its now-iconic triangular packaging, making Pascual the first
and, for a time, the only brand to use what was then considered the most hygienic
packaging available.

By the decade’s end, Pascual purchased a plant from Canada Dry and took over its
production lines. But the relationships with both Tetra Pak and Canada Dry would
fracture after a workers’ strike erupted.

La Guerra de los Patos 

One of Mexico’s defining labor movements was led by Pascual Boing’s workers. In March
1982, amid a national economic crisis, the government decreed mandatory wage increases of 10%, 20% and 30%. Many companies complied; the Pascual Boing family
did not.

Frustrated by precarious working conditions, like 12-hour shifts, employees sought
support from the Mexican Workers’ Party. With its guidance, they launched a strike on
May 18, 1982, and shut down both the plants in Mexico City. Don Rafael assumed they
would eventually return. They did not.

On May 31, he made the unthinkable decision: he ordered that gunfire be opened on
the demonstrators. Two people were killed. Seventeen were wounded. Public outrage
surged. Workers, joined by allies, occupied the offices of the Federal Conciliation and
Arbitration Board. Eventually, the movement prevailed.

In August 1984, in an unprecedented resolution, it was agreed that the strike and the
so-called “Duck War” would end with the creation of a cooperative. The assets of
Refrescos Pascual S.A. would be transferred to its workers.

Pascual Workers’ Cooperative S.C.L.

On May 27, 1985, the newly formed Cooperative launched the Aguascalientes Project.
Eight trucks traveled to the Aguascalientes plant — where Boing! was still being
produced — to load products and return to what was then the Federal District, with the
intention of reopening operations.

The workers reclaimed control of the production process, not by abolishing hierarchy
but by humanizing it. Critical decisions were now made in assemblies where every
member had a voice.

They resumed activities with a renewed purpose: to craft natural, healthy, nourishing
beverages that could satisfy consumers of all ages, within a dignified and equitable
workplace.

Today, the cooperative employs 4,500 people across multiple Mexican states. It stands
as an exception in an industry dominated by multinational corporations, reinvesting
profits into cooperative members and the agricultural communities it supports. Its
financial philosophy is modest by design: prioritize employment and affordability over
profit maximization.

Adapting to a modern lifestyle

For more than a decade, Cooperativa Pascual has contended with policy initiatives
meant to limit sugary drink consumption. When the first tax on sugary beverages was
implemented in 2014, Boing!’s sales fell by 50%. Recovery took years, as the
cooperative chose job preservation over aggressive cost-cutting.

Since then, additional tax increases and regulatory measures have continued to weigh
heavily on production and distribution. To tackle this impact, they have added Agua
Pascual and Leche Pascual to their product lineup. Yet Boing!, Lulú sodas, Pato
Pascual and Mexicola remain their most popular products.

Boing and street food

Street food has been a cornerstone of Mexican life since pre-Hispanic times, yet Boing!
stands out as the first mass-produced commercial beverage to integrate organically into
this popular gastronomic ecosystem without flattening its diversity. At food stalls across
the country — though less frequently now than in years past — you can still find Boing! as
the traditional companion to tacos, gorditas, soups, panuchos and an endless array of
antojitos.

But Boing now faces an unprecedented threat. In March 2025, the Mexican government
launched the “Healthy Life” program, banning sugary drinks from all schools nationwide
and eliminating a significant segment of Boing!’s traditional market, which is a great
initiative, to be fair.

In October 2025, Congress approved a dramatic increase to the Special Tax on
Production and Services (IEPS) for sugary drinks. The tax will rise from 1.64 to 3.08
pesos per liter in 2026 — an 88% jump. Drinks with non-caloric sweeteners will face a tax
of 1.5 pesos per liter.

For a cooperative with just 2% of the national soft drink market that is competing against
Coca-Cola’s approximate 60% and PepsiCo, this escalation is disproportionate and
potentially catastrophic. Pascual’s leadership warns sales could shrink by as much as
60%, forcing the suspension of a new plant slated to open in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas,
in 2026. A 900-million-peso investment is now frozen.

The paradox of public health legislation

The tragedy here is that the legislation threatening Boing! was designed in the name of
public health, to combat Mexico’s staggering rates of childhood obesity. According to
the National Health and Nutrition Survey 2020–2023, 5.7 million children ages 5–11 and
10.4 million adolescents ages 12–19 live with obesity.

But the law lacks the nuance to distinguish between different production models. Coca-
Cola and PepsiCo can rapidly reformulate their beverages with synthetic sweeteners
and qualify for the lower tax rate of 1.5 pesos per liter. Pascual, operating under a
cooperative ethos and cultural mission, remains committed to natural cane sugar and
rejects high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the cheaper alternative used by the U.S.
multinationals.

This commitment has real consequences. HFCS is inexpensive and helps large
corporations absorb tax burdens. Mexican cane sugar is costlier but nutritionally
superior — and central to Boing’s identity as an authentically Mexican beverage. Pascual
requested that Congress create differentiated tax mechanisms or incentives for social-
economy companies using natural and domestic ingredients. The plea went
unanswered.

Pascual’s leadership is weighing a complete reconfiguration of its products — or the
possibility of closing operations altogether. For the cooperative’s 4,500 workers and the
livelihoods of 785 cooperative members hang in the balance, alongside thousands of
sugarcane producers who rely on Pascual as a major buyer. Senator Carolina Viggiano
has warned that Mexican cane growers have already begun reducing supply because it
is no longer viable without large, consistent purchases from Pascual. This would mean
job loss in a sector where cooperatives already occupy a precarious position.

A political and cultural crossroads

In 2025 and 2026, Boing! stands at an economic, political and cultural crossroads. So, the fundamental question emerges: Is Mexico prepared to sacrifice the icons of its
social economy and popular gastronomy on the altar of well-intentioned but blunt
regulation — one that cannot distinguish what deserves protection (cooperative labor,
national production, cultural tradition) from what should truly be discouraged?

As a ’90s kid who grew up on radioactive chips, fluorescent ICEEs, candies that
probably violated several laws of physics, Morgan & Drake sodas with what looked like
floating confetti, and liters upon liters of Boing! as the perfect companion to my taquitos,
I learned a crucial truth at home — one that shaped both my health and my relationship
with food: having a treat now and then is perfectly fine, so long as you maintain a
balanced diet.

Yet maintaining a clean, healthy diet is far more difficult for most Mexicans, for reasons
that run deep in culture, infrastructure and economics — reasons that I’ll explore in future
articles.

Maria Meléndez is an influencer with half a degree in journalism

The post Made in Mexico: Cooperativa Pascual y Boing! appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Each photographer held up a different mirror to Mexico. Sometimes it was almost dreamlike and poetic, as in the case of Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s particular gift. Other times, it was violently confrontational, the way Enrique Metinides trained his camera on the city’s margins. Juan Rulfo offered us nostalgia. Tina Modotti and Gabriel Figueroa infused their frames with nationalist fervor and revolutionary spirit. And Lola Álvarez Bravo, the first woman photographer in México, blended art and beauty with documentation and anthropology.

Today, I want to tell you about Lola and Manuel Álvarez Bravo because they were architects of how Mexico would come to understand itself, and their work was intimately bound up with the muralistas and the grand project of constructing a national identity after revolution.

Two lives

The photographs they took together and apart tell the story of a nation in reconstruction, oscillating between the authentically Mexican and the strikingly modern. Their own history reads like cinema — which is fitting, given how much of it remains mysterious. Different sources place their first meeting at different moments: as children, they say, because they were neighbors; or years later, when both were high school students. What matters is that it began.

Manuel Álvarez Bravo was born in Mexico City on February 4, 1902, into a family where art wasn’t a career choice, but as essential as oxygen. His grandfather was a painter; his father was a schoolteacher and amateur photographer. They taught him to see composition before he understood technique, to frame a shot before he held a camera. The camera, a daguerreotype, came as a gift from his best friend’s father, an object that must have felt like magic in the hands of a young man hungry to capture the world.

When his father died, when Manuel was barely twelve, everything shifted. Economic necessity pushed him toward work in a textile factory, then into a position at the National Treasury. But photography never released its hold on him. It lived beneath the surface of his ordinary life, waiting. Later, when he attended the San Carlos Academy, he thought briefly that he might become a painter. He was learning, always learning, waiting for clarity.

Dolores Martínez de Anda, known as Lola, was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, on April 3, 1903. Her early life held a different kind of luxury — her father was an importer, and the family lived comfortably. But comfort is fragile. Her mother abandoned them and the family moved to Mexico City while Lola was still a child. She lost her father soon after, and her stepbrother, who claimed he couldn’t afford to keep her, sent her to an orphanage.

In 1922, at the National Preparatory School, Lola found what institutions and family had failed to provide: kinship. She met Frida Kahlo and they soon became inseparable. Around the same time, she reconnected with Manuel. What had been childhood familiarity became something else entirely. They married in 1925.

The marriage transformed Lola into a photographer, despite Manuel’s desire. In the darkroom, watching Manuel work, she discovered something she didn’t know she was looking for. While her husband composed his shots with the precision of a trained eye, she found herself drawn to the medium with the intensity of discovery. At the same time, the young couple found themselves at the center of Mexico City’s artistic ferment. They knew the painters, the intellectuals, the people who were consciously building a new Mexico from the wreckage of revolution.

The foreigners who became midwives for Mexican culture

Then came Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. The American and the Italian arrived in Mexico in 1923, intending to stay briefly, instead finding themselves enraptured by the country’s artistic potential. They remained. They worked. They connected with everyone who mattered and were actively imagining what Mexico could become.

Weston eventually returned to the United States in 1927, but Tina Modotti stayed until her political activism became impossible to ignore. In 1930, she was imprisoned on accusations of participating in an assassination attempt against President Pascual Ortiz Rubio and subsequently expelled from Mexico. But in those years, Modotti became something closer to a midwife of the Mexican photographic imagination. She collaborated with Anita Brenner on “Idols Behind Altars,” a landmark text on pre-Hispanic Mexican culture. More immediately, she worked with Mexican Folkways, the cultural journal created by Frances Toor — the Mexico News Daily of the 1920s and 1930s — where anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, artists, and historians gathered to interpret Mexican culture to an international audience.

For Manuel and Lola, Modotti was instrumental to their artistic trajectories. She gave Manuel her position at Mexican Folkways when she left Mexico in 1930. For Lola, she did something more intimate: needing money to survive abroad, Modotti sold her first camera to her younger colleague. A camera purchased under necessity became the tool that would launch a career.

Two different angles

Influenced by the aesthetic sophistication of both Modotti and Weston, Manuel Álvarez Bravo developed his own distinctive vision, one that drew back from explicit politics. This choice haunts his legacy. Critics have argued that by stepping away from the activist dimension of photography, by becoming instead almost a voyeur of Mexican daily life, he retreated from art’s political responsibility. But such criticism misses something essential about his gift.

Manuel gave us two Mexicos. The first is intimate and hidden in the theaters of ordinary life. The other is a poetic view of what Mexico could look like beyond partisan ideology. He didn’t want to lead viewers to conclusions about what Mexico should be; he wanted to portray Mexico’s cultural richness, whether capturing a fleeting moment or constructing a carefully composed visual poem. His photographs became a meditation on Mexican identity without descending into propaganda or stereotype.

Manuel proved that the medium was capable of something beyond documentation, that it could carry aesthetic intention and formal mastery, that a photograph could be a complete work of art in itself. He became one of the founding fathers of artistic photography in the Western hemisphere. His work was recognized by UNESCO in 2017, when his archive of negatives, documents, and photographs was added to the Memory of the World program — an honor befitting the depth of his contribution to global visual culture.​

Lola’s path diverged significantly. As Mexico’s first major female photographer, she refused false choices. Where Manuel privileged the poetic and intimate, Lola synthesized the political urgency of Modotti with Manuel’s aesthetic refinement. The result was something distinct: photographs that read as almost ethnographic in their attention to detail and context, yet suffused with a sensitivity, a recognition of dignity in her subjects, that revealed dimensions her husband’s work did not fully explore. She photographed indigenous and peasant populations with what one historian called “empathetic archaeology” — a phrase that captures how she blended documentary rigor with profound compassion.

Lola photographed Mexico’s artistic scene who happened to be friends with, the muralistas, painters, musicians and writers, as casually as we take snaps of our friends. But her career truly accelerated only after their separation. There is a mystery here: she kept Manuel’s surname, though their intimacy seems to have ended. The records suggest they grew distant, almost strangers sharing a name. Perhaps this is why her work could finally flower.

The second act

After the separation in 1934 (though they formally divorce until 1949), Lola became a photographer in the most complete sense, but more than that, she became a cultural force. She directed the photography department of the National Institute of Fine Arts. She organized exhibitions of Mexican art for the national museum. She opened her own gallery — the Gallery of Contemporary Art, known today as “La GAM,” which continues to operate today. In 1953, her gallery presented Frida Kahlo’s only solo exhibition in Mexico during Kahlo’s lifetime, a singular honor that speaks to both women’s importance in Mexican artistic history. She not only participated as an artist but shaped the infrastructure of Mexican culture itself.

While Lola’s photography career ascended, Manuel found refuge in film work, where the act of composing and manipulating images carried no stigma, where the reshaping of reality was understood as art rather than deception. From 1943 to 1959, he worked on film productions, including as a cameraman on Sergey Eisenstein’s “¡Que viva Mexico!.”

Lola often remarked that she was the only woman in a world dominated entirely by men. Rather than intimidating her, this circumstance seemed to embolden her. “In my photographs, there are things about Mexico that no longer exist,” she would later say, speaking about her archive. “If I was fortunate enough to find and capture these images, they can serve later as testimony to how life has passed and transformed.” She received the José Clemente Orozco Prize in 1964 from the State of Jalisco, a recognition of her contributions to photography and her efforts to preserve Mexican culture.

An enduring impact

Her work functions as something like an empathetic archaeology of Mexico itself — of its cities and countryside, its people and their transformations over time. It is careful observation married to profound feeling. Manuel’s photographs, by contrast, capture what Mexicans imagined for themselves: their aspirations, their dreams, their attempts to reconcile tradition with modernity. His aesthetic, both classical and modern, was nourished by the cultural expressions of his native Mexico and influenced by cubism and the possibilities of abstract art.​

Together, they created a visual narrative of post-revolutionary Mexico and its ongoing evolution. For amateur photographers like myself, their work remains endlessly instructive — not as something to copy, but as proof that the medium can hold depths we haven’t yet discovered. For Mexican women, Lola did something perhaps more important: she proved that a woman could not only participate in art, which was difficult enough in her era, but that they could direct it, promote it and reshape it according to their own vision. She was a photographer, curator, gallery owner, cultural ambassador,and educator. She worked until 1980, when failing eyesight forced her to stop. She died on July 31, 1993, at the age of ninety.​

Manuel lived longer — to one hundred years old, passing away on October 19, 2002. Today his archive, scattered between his foundation and the National Institute of Fine Arts, carries a designation befitting his influence: in 2017, his negatives, documents, and photographs were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World program. He is recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern photography and considered the greatest representative of twentieth-century Latin American photography.​

Why they matter today

Today, when everyone is a photographer with their cellphones, their artwork stands as a reference point for what it means to capture something fleeting — a society strongly rooted in its heritage while rapidly adapting to new circumstances. They taught Mexico to photograph itself with dignity and complexity. They taught the world what a post-revolutionary nation looked like when it paused to truly see itself.

More than that, they demonstrated that photography, in the hands of artists with something to say, could be as essential to nation-building as the muralists’ brushstrokes or the writers’ words. In an age of visual oversaturation, their measured, intentional, deeply human images remind us truly seeing one’s own country, one’s own moment — is not passive. It is an act of love, of witness, of responsibility. And they show us that such seeing, when it is genuine, becomes history.​

Maria Meléndez is an influencer with half a degree in journalism

The post Made in Mexico: Lola and Manuel Álvarez Bravo appeared first on Mexico News Daily

My intent isn’t to convert skeptics or inspire unanimity but to inject another thread into the noisy tapestry of public debate — a mosaic that too often leaves out dissent and discomfort.

A few months back, I admitted in print that I hadn’t voted for President Claudia Sheinbaum or her party, yet found myself — rather unexpectedly — moved by the promise of her early months in office. There was something genuinely hopeful in the way she handled Washington’s overtures, how she and federal Security Minister Omar Harfuch grappled with the crime organizations, how she made bold efforts to attract foreign investment and, not least, appointed a self-declared feminist cabinet. 

I said then — and I say now — that the judicial reform, whose final steps into law she shepherded, was a dangerous regression. But still, hope was afoot. Even among my skeptical friends, that faint but palpable sense of possibility drifted through our conversations.

A Michoacán mayor’s murder and polarization

Yet, today, that hope has curdled. The murder of Carlos Manzo was the inflection point — not just for its brutality but also for the eerie sense of déjà vu it delivered. 

Manzo wasn’t swallowed by the anonymizing tide of statistics. He was on camera, pleading with the president to protect his city — Uruapan. Sheinbaum’s response, from the mañanera’s sacred dais, was to urge Manzo to follow official procedures. Bureaucracy offered as balm. 

He did, dutifully. In the end, the Mexican National Guard’s “protection” extended to just one man — not to a community gripped by real peril.

Protests erupted, first in Uruapan, then across Michoacán. The unrest found its face and symbol — the sombrero, a homegrown call to reclaim basic security. As former electoral councilor Luis Carlos Ugalde observed, these were perfect conditions for authentic mobilization: a fallen leader, a potent symbol, a crisis and an urgent call to action.

But let’s not mistake consequences for coincidence. According to reporting in the news magazine Wired, a group of young Mexicans — organizing on Discord, the online chat platform favored by gamers worldwide — were galvanized by the Nepal movement to denounce corruption and violence. Yet, almost instantly after Manzo’s killing, social media profiles surfaced for “Generación Z,” purportedly a leaderless and idealistic movement but quickly entangled with National Action Party (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) operatives. 

Right from the outset, the movement showed signs of being co-opted, as Sheinbaum herself pointed out.

The choreography of blame and deflection

During her November 13 daily press conference, President Sheinbaum invited Miguel Ángel Elorza, head of Infodemia.mx — a Mexican website dedicated to exposing “fake news” — to disclose the faces, names and histories of protest organizers, as if these citizens had morphed overnight into public enemy number one. 

In the presidential press conference that followed Manzo’s murder, Sheinbaum reverted to a familiar script: invoking “the opposition,” brandishing memories of Calderón’s drug war and deflecting blame onto the ghosts of administrations past.

Polarization, in Mexico, has become second nature — a convenient shield against reckoning with uncomfortable truths. PAN president Felipe Calderón’s crime-fighting policy of militarization was once denounced by Sheinbaum’s side; now, her policies — hardly distinguishable — are met with a choreography of blame and denial.

The absurdity is evident: No single leader, least of all Sheinbaum, created the cartels’ stranglehold on the country or Mexico’s perilous vulnerability. And what she inherited was a ticking time bomb. 

Expectations that she could defuse this bomb before the World Cup begins are the stuff of fantasy. Yet, what’s most disturbing isn’t the persistence of Mexico’s insecurity but the almost theatrical response from the National Palace: finger-pointing and spectacle, rather than reflection and reform.

Co-opted marches, manufactured consent

As for marches — I don’t join them anymore. In a country where paid crowds are a matter of course, public protest often feels performative, stripped of its potency. Still, to even have the right to gather, to vent — even if only on paper — remains a privilege not to be scoffed at. But this fragile right is easily crushed. One hurled accusation — that your outrage is bought, your protest orchestrated by “la oposición” — can cheapen and silence dissent. Criticism these days is quickly tarred as betrayal.

I already can hear the response: “Here’s another bitter PAN supporter.” But after years in the media trenches, cynicism is nonpartisan; I mistrust all parties equally. If the president were PAN or PRI, you’d still be reading this exact argument.

I agree with the president on one point: In Mexico, social movements have long doubled as opportunistic platforms for politicians seeking electoral gain. It is, indeed, immoral that the PAN, PRI, and even business tycoons like Ricardo Salinas Pliego rush to capitalize on a tragedy. Profiting from violence and grief is indefensible.

Yet, with every protest, the government’s impulse isn’t to listen but to shame — to publicly expose those who organize marches, putting names and faces on screen as if organizing a protest had become an act of subversion, not a civic right. 

Was this spectacle necessary? Was it ever justified? When the president mocks the existence of elderly marchers at a “Gen Z” march, even as intelligence briefings confirm real grievances driving them, does this reflect a government open to dissent — or just skilled at denial?

Doctors, farmers and parents getting lumped together with agitators and dismissed with a shrug — that’s not engagement, it’s erasure.

The manual of good governance — lost in translation

The ancient Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero believed rulers should serve all people impartially. By this metric, Sheinbaum falters. A 25-year-old protest organizer gets a public drubbing while party insiders dogged by corruption accusations get a free pass. Justice in Mexico is doled out with a troubling selectivity.

Among friends and acquaintances, it’s less the ideology that alarms and more the sense projected by the government that even reasonable critique is suspect — a nation-state on the defensive, where questions equal subversion. 

In this context, 37,000 Mexicans — mostly privileged, mostly employers — have chosen to rebuild their lives in Spain and Portugal, according to the financial magazine Forbes. If this many Mexicans are quietly weighing the option of leaving their homeland, it’s not a fluke; it’s a tremor.

The question we should all ask

If the president were listening, I’d ask: What happened to the hope that once united ordinary citizens — doctors, farmers, mothers — under a promise of something better? Perhaps the answer is this: A government that exposes and discredits dissenters leaves little room for loyalty, less still for hope.

To criticize is not to betray; it is to take citizenship seriously. The real “yellow light” of alarm is not to be found in the street protests rocking Mexican cities but in the highest office of the land — where forgetting that criticism is democracy’s lifeblood may be the gravest issue of all.

The post Why my early hope in Sheinbaum’s Mexico has wilted appeared first on Mexico News Daily