It took 116 days for a letter mailed through the Mexican postal service to get from Monterrey, Nuevo León, to Dallas, Texas, the newspaper Reforma reported.

And that was after paying for “rapid delivery.”

Mexico’s notoriously slow mail service was the focus of an experiment by newspaper staff, who mailed the letter on August 25 as an experiment to test the post office’s efficiency. The letter finally arrived at its destination in Dallas — ironically with two postmark stickers bearing images of turtles — on Saturday, four months later.

Other letters were sent at the regular price to the municipalities of Allende, Nuevo León, Múzquiz, Coahuila, and even to a neighborhood in west Monterrey but they have yet to arrive despite being guaranteed delivery within two weeks.

The address in the Monterrey neighborhood to which the letter was sent is only 15 kilometers from the post office where reporters dropped it off.

The letter to Dallas, Reforma said, apparently did not even leave the Monterrey office where it was dropped off until September 11, i.e., 17 days after it was given to postal staff.

The newspaper also highlighted the story of Ernesto Rowe, an American citizen who tried to vote by absentee ballot in the recent U.S. presidential election but was unable to after his mailed-in ballot ended up in limbo in a post office in Mexico City.

Correos Mexico has suffered under competition from private mail services and the technological advances that has reduced the use of postal services around the world. Nevertheless, Reforma said, its snail’s pace is an issue in light of the fact that it managed a budget of 5.4 billion pesos this year. In a recent tour Reforma staff took of post offices in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara, they found little had been done to modernize operations or provide better service.

Source: Reforma (sp)