Sánchez previously worked with the Federal Police and with the Federal Investigation Agency under officials later arrested for corruption or abuse of authority.
The Aguascalientes security minister was arrested Wednesday on charges including torture and abuse of authority.
Porfirio Javier Sánchez Mendoza, security minister since 2018, was taken into custody by federal agents in an operation supported by the army.
According to a report by the newspaper Milenio, an investigation into Sánchez’s alleged wrongdoing dates back to 2016. The minister previously worked for the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency and the Federal Police when Luis Cárdenas Palominio was intelligence chief.
A person who filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights claims that he or she was tortured by Sánchez and another Federal Police official after being arbitrarily detained in Mexico City.
The state security minister also faces charges of giving false statements to authorities, Milenio said.
The Aguascalientes government said in a statement that it was willing to collaborate with federal authorities in their investigation into crimes allegedly committed by Sánchez.
It also said that his conduct as security minister has been “irreproachable” and that he has achieved “optimal” results for the state.
Juan Manuel Flores Femat, secretary-general of the Aguascalientes government, said in a radio interview that Sánchez was detained after a security meeting and didn’t resist arrest. “It seems he had no knowledge of any investigation against him,” he said.
Alberto Gómez Sánchez is a painter as well as a musician and an exhibit curator for a local gallery. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
Puebla city is probably not the first place you think of when listing off the world’s venerable old artists’ quarters, but the Puebla state capital’s Barrio del Artista (artist’s neighborhood) has been going strong for over 80 years, a small but cohesive community of creatives ever since it was founded by a pair of brothers.
Artists José and Ángel Márquez Figueroa raised the idea of creating an artists’ neighborhood in the city back in 1940 while holding outdoor classes in an area known as El Parián. José asked his students if they’d like to have an area in the city dedicated to artists and, of course, they all did.
After several months of effort, they secured a meeting with then-governor Gonzalo Bautista Castillo, who agreed that it was a good idea. Mayor Juan Manuel Treviño gave them a location at Calle 8 Norte, Esquina 4 Oriente, and the artists soon formed the Union of Plastic Arts of Puebla, an artists’ collective. The union held its first exhibit on May 5, 1941.
Eighty years later, the Barrio, the gallery and the union — now named the Union of Plastic Artists of Puebla of the Artist’s Neighborhood — are all still in existence, despite the fact that most of the union’s members are painters. “Two are sculptors and three are musicians,” Laura Díaz Heredia, the union’s secretary, said.
Díaz herself is a painter who specializes in portraits — “I like the expressions in portraits,” she said — but she also works as a sculptor, restores a variety of artwork and, like most of the artists there, gives classes.
Artist Laura Díaz Heredia, left, working with her student, preschool teacher María Fernanda Castañeda.
She’s apparently an excellent and influential teacher. María Fernanda Castañeda Coiro, a preschool educator who, after studying with Díaz for four months, said she’d consider a career change. “If I have the opportunity, I would like to work as an artist,” Castañeda said.
The Barrio occupies a plaza that’s a block long. “There are 43 workshops,” Díaz explained. “Everyone in the Barrio is a member [of the union], and we are 38 members.”
One of the studios in the Barrio is used for a café, two are used to give courses and two are called the Rincón Histórico (historic corner), where photographs of the Barrio’s early years are on exhibit. The first one is a photograph of the extraordinary group of artists who exhibited in 1962.
In May of that year, a gallery named for José Luis Rodríguez Alconedo, a painter and revolutionary who was executed in 1815 for his antigovernment actions, opened on the second floor of one of the buildings in the neighborhood. Its exhibit featured some of Mexico’s most famous artists, including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that becoming a member of the Barrio is no easy feat.
“There is an exam to get in,” Díaz said. “An artist must show the type of work, the way one works. It is a process that takes several years. It is a little difficult to join, yes. It is not impossible but it is hard.”
Painter Julián Villalobos Pérez.
There are many benefits to having a studio here and being part of the union, she said. “[It] is to know other artists, to share knowledge, to talk about problems and to talk about art,” she said.
A couple of doors down from Díaz’s studio, Julian Villalobos Pérez was putting the finishing touches on a painting. Most of his work depicts Mexican pueblos.
“My technique is applying oil paint with a spatula,” he said. But he doesn’t always paint on a canvas. “I paint on papel amate,” he said, “a pre-Hispanic paper from San Pablito,” a pueblo in the Puebla municipality of Pahuatla.
Papel amate is made by pounding the boiled bark of fig or mulberry trees into a pulp. The resulting sheets are then traditionally dried in the open air. The process yields a paper that’s uneven, filled with ridges and bumps, something that Villalobos likes.
“It is very pretty to work with this paper,” Villalobos said. “It gives the painting more texture. It is more original to use this paper. It gives a different effect.”
Alberto Gómez Sánchez specializes in painting still lifes and is very clear about why he’s chosen a career as an artist. “The attraction for art is that I feel free,” he said. “It is one of the parts I like best, the freedom. No boss, no business. I do it to express my thoughts, ideas and feelings.”
He’s also a guitarist and the director of the José Luis Rodríguez Alconedo Gallery. “I like to direct events, to organize them,” he said. “We have a variety of art: painting, photography, sculpture. Many times, the exhibits are of people from outside. Part of my role is to bring in artists from outside.”
The gallery has a large number of exhibits annually. “We usually have 15 exhibits a year for members,” said Díaz, “[and] 30 for invited artists.” In addition to exhibits in the gallery here, the union also mounts exhibits in other Mexican states.
Like everywhere in the world, the Barrio del Artista was impacted by COVID-19. “With the pandemic, there have been some challenges,” said Gómez. “Last year, we were closed completely and we all worked from home. We were closed from April 2019 through February 2020 — 10 months.”
Tourists have been slowly trickling back to the area, and business, although still a little slow, has been picking up.
The Barrio del Artista is a great place to spend a couple of hours. In addition to the wide range of art on display in the studios and the gallery — and an opportunity to talk with artists about their work — the area boasts several restaurants and coffee shops. There are a number of large trees shading benches and inviting visitors to take a break from the hustle and bustle of daily life to sit with a cup of coffee and enjoy some art.
Onésimo Cepeda was known for his controversial views, eccentric behavior, wealth and links to the once omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The first bishop of Ecatepec – a former lawyer, stockbroker and banker who founded the Inbursa financial group with Mexico’s richest person, Carlos Slim – died of complications related to COVID-19 on Monday night.
Onésimo Cepeda Silva, 84, was anointed bishop of Ecatepec in 1995 and remained in the position until his retirement in 2012.
He was born in Mexico City in 1937 and became a priest in 1970. His death came weeks after he was admitted to hospital in serious condition.
The former Catholic Church leader was a larger-than-life figure, widely known for his controversial views, eccentric behavior, wealth and links to the once omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action Party and some of Mexico’s most powerful and influential businesspeople.
For Cepeda, the separation of church and state was “nonsense,” abortion was murder and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party – whose logo features a shining sun – was a party with “a sun that is darker than the moon.”
Cepeda attracted attention for his ostentatious dress (including his oversized cross necklace), his love of bullfighting, golf and fine wines.
His 16-year tenure as bishop of Ecatepec was punctuated by controversy: he was accused of interfering in the 2006 presidential election; the Vatican called him out for preaching in favor of the PRI; he defended a cardinal accused of covering up pedophilia in the church; he clashed with former Mexico City mayor Rosario Robles over the decriminalization of abortion; he criticized former Zapatistas leader Subcomandate Marcos; the media alleged that he used his position for financial gain; and he flirted with the idea of running for political office.
Cepeda was also identified with a money laundering scandal involving a supposed US $130 million loan to a businesswoman and an art collection containing works by renowned artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Francisco de Goya. A formal complaint was filed against him with the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office but he was never arrested or convicted of any crime.
The former bishop, appointed to the newly formed diocese of Ecatepec by Pope John Paul II, also attracted attention for his ostentatious dress (including his oversized cross necklace), his love of bullfighting, golf and fine wines, his security arrangements – he had bodyguards, and traveled in an armored vehicle with a machine gun under his seat, according to one report – and the parties he hosted.
His wealth earned him the nickname millonésimo, which roughly translates as the million-dollar man. Asked in his twilight years how he would like to be remembered, Cepeda responded as “a friend of the poor” – which describes many of the parishioners he served in Ecatepec, a heavily-populated municipality adjoining Mexico City that is plagued by crime and poverty.
But in a blunt assessment of his character, the newspaper Milenio declared that’s not who Cepeda was. Instead he may be more aptly described as an “eccentric” and “extravagant” religious man, with a talent and passion for hobnobbing with the nation’s rich and powerful, and a love and appreciation of the good life.
The former bishop will be buried in the Panteón Francés, or French Cemetery, in Mexico City.
López Obrador: 'I have information and I’m also optimistic.'
President López Obrador denied the economy was in recession despite two consecutive quarters of contraction in 2021, considered a technical recession.
From October through December, the economy contracted 0.08%, following a 0.43% decline in the previous quarter, the national statistics agency INEGI announced this week.
The president said job creation was proof enough of economic vitality. “In the case of growth it must be understood that the economy is growing. There can’t be any recession if in the month of January more jobs were created than in the last 20 years. What recession?” he said.
López Obrador also predicted 5% growth for the next three years, more than double the rate forecast by financial experts for 2022.
“Five percent [growth for this year] …. the experts and specialists are giving us at most 2.5% and I’m putting forward 5%. I have information and I’m also optimistic … 5% for 2023 and 5% for 2024,” he said.
The last time Mexico achieved two consecutive years of growth over 5% was 1996-97. Prior to that was in the early 1980s.
The president argued that growth in 2021 was impeded by COVID-19. “We are coming out of the crisis … that was what prevented us from reaching 6% growth, among other factors. But that stopped us and that’s why the average or estimate is 5% annual growth,” he said.
However, the president hinted that greater equality — rather than growth — might be of higher value, but assured that both were being achieved. “It may be that because of COVID we have less growth, but there is more equality. Now [resources] are reaching the poor more than before, we are living in a less unequal country than when neoliberal politics were applied, but we are also growing,” he said.
Whether or not the economy is in recession is a matter for debate: the deputy governor of the Bank of México, Jonathan Heath, cast doubt on the claim and a financial analyst at Banco BASE, Gabriela Siller, said the interpretation should be left to the independent working group under the Mexican Institute of Executive Finance (IMEF), which has yet to state its position.
Siller said that whatever the case, the picture was far from rosy. “We are going to lose a six-year term in terms of economic growth, where Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will only return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024,” she said.
Experts surveyed by the Bank of México revised their growth forecast to 2.2% on Tuesday and upped the predicted inflation rate from 4.16-4.27%. Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its growth forecast to 2.8%.
The 5% overall growth in 2021 followed an 8.4% contraction in 2020, while inflation in 2021 soared to 7.36%, the highest level in 21 years.
'We need time, patience and citizens' participation,' says Ramírez.
Pacifying Michoacán – Mexico’s third most violent state in 2021 with over 2,700 homicides – might take six years, according to Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla.
“This is not a 15-minute issue, [violence] isn’t resolved in a month or six months,” he told Milenio Televisión.
“We’ve had this situation [of insecurity] in the country, in Michoacán, for at least 20 years,” said the Morena party governor, who took office last October.
“We need time, patience and citizens’ participation as well. … It will take us time [to reduce violence], it might take the six years [I’m in office] but … the government of Michoacán will do all it can to have peace in the state,” he said.
“The Tepalcatepec-Coalcomán highway has now been liberated. When I became governor on October 1, the highway was closed at more than 17 points but we now have peaceful and constant passage between Apatzingán and Tepalcatepec and Tepalcatepec and Coalcomán,” he said.
“I am very grateful to the Mexican army and the federal forces that managed to reestablish movement … on the highway,” Ramírez said.
The governor also said that avocado farmers are not facing any production delays due to the presence of organized crime, but conceded that lime supply problems have been caused in part by conflicts between criminal groups in Tepalcatepec, one of several Tierra Caliente municipalities where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Cárteles Unidos are engaged in a turf war.
Ramírez claimed that the murder in Zitácuaro on Monday of Roberto Toledo – the fourth journalist to be killed in Mexico this year – was related to his employment at a legal practice rather than his reporting for the news website Monitor Michoacán.
“… Everything points to … it having more to do with his … [position] as an assistant at a law firm,” he said.
The governor asserted that teachers who attacked security forces on Tuesday have no reason to be protesting because his government has paid them all wages and benefits they were owed and assigned positions to graduates of teacher training colleges.
“Our government has been paying fortnightly salaries and bonuses punctually. We gave positions to the normalistas [teaching students] in December,” Ramírez said.
Minors under 18 made up 14.5% of migrants detained in January.
Immigration officials detained 16,740 undocumented migrants last month, the National Immigration Institute (INM) said on Monday.
The influx was 78% more than in January 2021.
Minors under 18 made up 2,421 of the detainees — or about 14.5%. Of that number, 780 were unaccompanied.
Of the minors, 1,434 were boys and 987 were girls.
The majority, 10,443, were from Central and South America, principally Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Another 6,297 were from Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania, according to the INM, which doesn’t account for any migrants detained from the Caribbean: undocumented Cubans are well represented in Mexico, and Haitian nationals are one of the main groups that enter the country without papers.
Migrants discovered by Mexican immigration officials on January 27 after being discovered hidden in a semi-trailer.
The INM said it detained 966 people in tractor-trailers in Veracruz, Oaxaca and Coahuila. It added that 319 people in a caravan were detained in Chiapas and that 328 were found on buses in Puebla and Oaxaca.
“The INM reaffirms its commitment to safe, orderly and regular migration with full respect and safeguarding of the human rights of those transiting through Mexico,” the INM statement read.
Migrants detained by the INM are normally taken to detention centers manned by armed police. The INM terms the detainment of migrants as “rescue,” which means no judicial process is required for their detention.
Such detentions increased nearly threefold in Chiapas in annual terms last year: in 2020 there were 25,000 detentions, compared to 67,376 in 2021.
More than 4,000 migrants crossed the southern border every day in 2021 on average, a 44.5% increase over 2020, the INM said in December.
Salmeron is out, Rodríguez is in for ambassadorial nomination.
The government of Panama rejected the federal government’s nominated ambassador to that country, President López Obrador revealed Tuesday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced last month that Pedro Agustín Salmerón, a National Autonomous University-trained historian, would be Mexico’s next ambassador to the Central American nation.
But the appointment was condemned by feminist collectives and others because Salmerón, a former professor at the Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico (ITAM), is accused of sexual harassment.
López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference that the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the academic’s appointment.
“As if it was the Holy Inquisition, the foreign affairs minister of Panama [Erika Mouynes] didn’t agree [with the appointment] because they opposed it at ITAM,” he said.
“… She asked us not to send the approval request. I really regret it because [Panama] is the land of [leftist dictator/supreme military leader] Omar Torrijos, who returned sovereignty to Panama,” López Obrador said before recommending the Graham Greene book Getting To Know The General.
The president claimed that political scientist and columnist Denise Dresser led a “lynching campaign” against Salmerón.
He said that former Morena party senator Jesusa Rodríguez – an activist and actress known for controversial statements and political stunts – would be nominated instead.
“She will be the ambassador of Mexico in Panama if the government of Panama accepts her, if it gives its consent,”López Obrador said.
He said he will seek to appoint Salmerón – who wrote to the president to express his “willingness” to turn down the ambassador position amid what he described as a “media lynching” – to another government position.
“We’re going to look for a way to use Pedro’s knowledge in another field, let’s see if the conservatives don’t get angry,” López Obrador said.
“I would really like him to help us with everything to do with the [national] archives, I’m very concerned about leaving them well … protected because since the [2017] earthquake [the National Archives] building has been [in a] poor [state],” he said.
“… I would like him to be my advisor to make … a story for young people about electoral fraud in Mexico – it would be really great, all the frauds, at least 100 years of frauds,” López Obrador said, adding that Salmerón could be appointed to undertake “any other historic activity he would like to accept.”
The first of 32 assemblies to discuss new textbooks was held this week in Veracruz.
Words and concepts considered “neoliberal” by the federal government look set to be scrapped from new textbooks for primary and middle school students.
In a document distributed to attendees of a series of meetings on the design of free textbooks for basic education students, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) advises against the use of words and concepts such as “educational quality,” “competition,” “knowledge society,” “efficiency” and “productivity.”
The SEP asserts that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), non-governmental organizations and “groups close to the business sector” intervened in educational reforms carried out over the past 30 years and succeeded in introducing “the concept of quality to measure the performance of the education system.”
In a 157-page document, downloadable via the scanning of a QR code, the ministry also insinuates contempt for seemingly innocuous words such as “equity,” “coverage” and “graduation.”
President López Obrador frequently rails against what he describes as Mexico’s “neoliberal period” – the 36 years before he took office in late 2018.
Speaking at the first textbook design assembly, held on Tuesday, the SEP’s director of educational materials said that education needs to be conceived in an alternative way in order to put an end to “the neoliberal dream.”
Marx Arriaga Navarro, who has previously told textbook authors to “eliminate authoritarian discourse” from existing texts, asserted that the OECD sought to have educators removed from the process of designing education policy and content in Mexico.
Its board, Arriaga claimed, said: “’The education reform is too important for the future of Mexico … to leave it to educators …’”
“But, what do you know? We’re not infants. … We will not accept education policy being imposed on us. … These assemblies are the first step toward completing the guiding documents that the country needs,” he said.
Arriaga said that a “different way” of educating must be developed and claimed that previous governments misled the nation.
“They promised us that if the companies did well the workers would do well and today we see that’s not the case. Not even money brings happiness and this excessive industrial development and this free market [model] they proposed is destroying the environment, morals and security,” he said.
The Education ministry’s Marx Arriaga said education needs to be conceived in an alternative way in order to put an end to ‘the neoliberal dream.’
Arriaga also criticized the system of educational evaluation and diagnostic testing designed by previous governments.
Education experts who spoke with the newspaper El Universal predicted that nothing good will come out of the SEP textbook design assemblies.
“… Those who are going to attend are supporters of [the ruling party] Morena, of [Education Minister] Delfina Gómez. … [They’ll be] factious, partisan meetings. The only thing we can expect from these assemblies is that trash, monstrosities that could … cause tremendous damage in the education of children and adolescents will come out,” said Gilberto Guevara Niebla, director of the Institute of Educational Research at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara.
The former deputy education minister, a leader of the student movement that was violently repressed by the government at the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, charged that assemblies such as those organized by the SEP are not the correct forums for the development of new textbooks.
The content of textbooks is “not resolved in assemblies,” Guevara said. “That’s the problem. … Scientists don’t meet in assemblies to create new knowledge, it’s absurd.”
The staging of the assemblies is nothing more than “a vulgar maneuver to create the appearance that the SEP is doing something when in reality it has done very little,” he added.
Guevara also said it’s absurd that the SEP considers words such as “quality, competition, performance and evaluation” to be neoliberal terms.
Similarly, the former chief of the now-defunct National Education Evaluation Institute said that “competition” and “quality” are not “concepts invented by any neoliberal current.”
“They’re concepts that have been used for years to refer to fundamental education processes,” Eduardo Backhoff Escudero said.
“All this is part of … a narrative … that they’re making a real change in education, when what they’re [actually] doing is just changing words,” he said.
Carlos Ornelas, an academic at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University who has a doctorate in education from Stanford University, claimed that the SEP has already decided on the content for new textbooks and curriculums and is only using the assemblies to “legitimize” it.
“There is already a direction [for education in Mexico] but there is no clear strategy,” he said.
At least 11 people were injured during protests by militant teachers in Michoacán on Tuesday.
The radical wing of the CNTE teachers union, Poder de Base (Power Base), has attempted to block train tracks in Morelia, Pátzcuaro and Uruapan since Monday, attacking security forces with rockets, sticks, stones and pipes.
Most of the violence was concentrated in Caltzontzin on the outskirts of Uruapan, where at least 11 police and National Guardsmen were hurt — two seriously — and taken to hospital. Security forces numbered around 350 and protesters were about 400-strong.
After being repelled from the train tracks, some of the militants burned tires and tried to block the Siglo 21 highway near Tiripetío, 25 kilometers southwest of Morelia, the exact location of another clash on January 17, but were cleared by police.
The protesters were demanding the payment of wages, consultation before any changes to pensions and jobs to be automatically awarded to teachers who have completed their training, a perennial demand by teaching students and the dissident CNTE union.
🚨 #AMPLIACIÓN | Al menos 20 uniformados han resultado lesionados en el enfrentamiento de profesores agremiados a la #CNTE con elementos de la @GN_MEXICO_.
They were also unhappy over the appointment of a new director of indigenous education, the newspaper Excélsior reported.
The state Education Ministry said it was up to date with payments to teachers.
The state Public Security Ministry (SSP) said in a statement that only peaceful protests would be tolerated. “The SSP emphasizes that it endorses total respect for free demonstration framed within legality, which doesn’t affect third parties. [The ministry] emphasizes that illegal acts masked as demonstrations which try to destabilize Michoacán society will not be allowed.”
Blockades are a common tactic for dissatisfied teachers and teachers-to-be in Michoacán and other states: members of the CNTE blocked tracks for 91 days last year, costing businesses an estimated 50 million pesos per day (US $2.5 million at the exchange rate at the time).
Sick of the rat race in California, the O'Gradys moved their family to San Pancho, Nayarit. They currently live in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.
When you think about who is moving to Mexico from the United States, you probably think of retirees seeking a warmer and more affordable place to live out their golden years.
While there is certainly a large population of senior snowbirds from the U.S. that live full- or part-time in Mexico, the truth is that most U.S. citizens moving to and living in Mexico today are younger people — mostly the children and spouses of Mexican citizens who have returned to their family’s home country.
According to Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute, of the approximately 1.5 to 1.8 million U.S. citizens living in Mexico today, at least 550,000 are children of Mexicans who have returned, according to Mexican census numbers.
But there is also a growing number of young families from the U.S. with fewer direct ties to Mexico that are making the move or are already settled in the country. There is no official count of the number of American families living in Mexico today, but if their obvious presence in communities across the country is any indication, it is surely in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.
San Miguel de Allende-based relocation consultant Katie O’Grady has helped hundreds of individuals, couples and families plan, research and make the move to Mexico. She says there are myriad reasons American families move here, but it all boils down to improving their quality of life.
“Living in Mexico has restored my faith in humanity,” says Kimberly Miles, who moved to Mexico from the US in 2018.
“The main driving force for families is their overall desire to have a life well-lived, quality family time and true connections with people — to be able to walk around their community and stop and literally smell the flowers, have conversations with people and make that personal connection,” she said.
“Americans tend to move because they like the pace in Mexico — it’s a less frenetic society. They also like the sense of community. Family is tight. Neighbors are tight. There is a code about relationships between people here that Americans find attractive and refreshing and different from where they came from,” said Selee.
As an American citizen who moved from San Diego to Mexico in 2012 with her husband, Frank, and young twins, O’Grady has experienced firsthand the transformation that can occur when families leave the rat race and create more expansive, balanced and connected lives in Mexico.
Back in San Diego, Frank was a firefighter whose work required him to be away from home and in life- and health-threatening situations for days at a time. Katie was an accomplished K-12 Spanish teacher who retired early a few years after their twins were born to homeschool them.
Reflecting back, with all that she and Frank were balancing in their lives in the fast-paced environment of Southern California, O’Grady said, “We were like two ships passing in the night.”
The O’Gradys spent most of their precious time off together back then in Baja California, where they lived simply from their RV, played on the beach and finally had a chance to unwind.
“From an early age, my kids had a sprinkling of what life in Mexico looks like. For them, it always represented [that] mom and dad aren’t stressed,” O’Grady said. “Mexico always had this very positive connotation to it. It always represented relaxation, concentrated family time and adventure.”
As someone who grew up near the Mexican border, visiting Mexico frequently and having a grandfather who was the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration in the 1940s — a time when border relations were more convivial than confrontational — O’Grady already had deep connections to Mexico. So when she and Frank dreamed of one day creating a different life for their family outside the U.S., Mexico was a natural fit.
In 2012, when their twins were eight years old, they made the move, first landing in San Pancho, Nayarit.
“We dove in. And we haven’t looked back with any regrets. Of course, we’ve had hard times, bumps in the road and inconveniences that weren’t expected. But that’s going to happen anywhere. I’d much rather be doing life on this side of the border any day,” said O’Grady.
She started blogging about their family’s experience immigrating to and living in Mexico, which grew in popularity and attracted the attention of others looking to make the move. In 2014, she launched her relocation consulting business, focusing on the Puerto Vallarta coastal corridor and San Miguel de Allende, where she lives now.
“From an early age, my kids had a sprinkling of what life in Mexico looks like. For them, it always represented [that] mom and dad aren’t stressed,” Katie O’Grady said.O’Grady says she has seen different waves of interest in moving to Mexico — first with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, and more recently with the pandemic.
“The pandemic has been a huge impetus behind the current uptick in requests for my services. Every day there are more people,” O’Grady said. “The biggest difference I see now is inquiries are coming not just from the U.S. but also from Canada, Australia and Ireland. Before, 90% of my inquiries were from the U.S. Then, it was about political discomfort. Now, interest is a direct result of the pandemic.”
Selee also sees the pandemic as a catalyst for greater immigration into Mexico.
“In the COVID world, we learned that so many jobs can be done outside of offices. That is only going to encourage more people to look at where they want to live for quality of life. I think we have seen accelerated immigration to Mexico because of the pandemic,” he said.
But even before the pandemic, populations of American immigrants throughout Mexico were growing. Not just among retirees, two-parent families, couples and individuals but also among single parents such as Kimberly Miles.
It was her longtime wish to live abroad in a Spanish-speaking country that originally drew Miles and her four-year-old son from Alexandria, Virginia, to Puerto Vallarta — that, and her desire to create a different life, one that would allow her more time with her son, immerse them both in a new culture and give her a chance to start her own marketing consulting business.
Miles left her corporate job of 15 years and moved to Mexico in 2018. She is now her own boss, catering mostly to single moms like herself looking to launch their own businesses. She is also the creator and administrator of the Facebook Group Single Moms in Mexico.
Miles says her life in Mexico is markedly different than it was in Virginia. “The stress level is completely different. As a single mom in the northern Virginia area, it is extremely difficult,” she said.
“Not only is it expensive but there is also so much pressure to be a certain thing, do a certain thing, go to certain places and act a certain way. Here, I’ve found that’s not the case. I can be more relaxed and do the things I enjoy.”
Instead of rushing out of the house at 7 a.m. to get to work and get her son to school on time, only to turn around at the end of the day to pick him up and not get home until 6:30 p.m., now Miles works from home and clocks off at 2 p.m. when her son is done at school.
“Living here has provided me with a much better quality of life in terms of motherhood. Plus, I would not have had the opportunity to build a business had we stayed in Virginia,” she said.
Similar to what O’Grady and Selee have observed and experienced, the strong sense of community here — a different experience than she had in the U.S. — is what Miles finds so attractive about living in Mexico.
Mexico is increasingly an immigrant society, says Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.
“Living in Mexico has restored my faith in humanity. People walk down the streets and say good morning to complete strangers. People are willing to go out of their way to help. When you see someone’s car broken down on the side of the road, people come out and help. I’ve never seen that back at home,” she said.
While moving to Mexico can provide harried families and parents a slower, more connected life rich with new cultural experiences, it is not without its challenges. Among the biggest are one’s ability to assimilate and adapt to things like a new language, unfamiliar social norms and a different sense of time. That’s not always easy for those conditioned in the customer-is-always-right, hurry-up culture of the United States.
“I tell people — wherever you are, there you will be. You are taking that wherever you go. A lot of people move to Mexico and it’s not the place for them,” Miles said. “It’s not the place, it’s you. Unless you understand yourself, you are not going to get what you are expecting.”
“The real opportunity,” said Selee about living in Mexico, “is integrating into local society and taking advantage of getting to know the country. There are Americans who move to Mexico and stay in American communities. Any immigrant is going to want to find people who have the same background, and you don’t want to give that up. But at the same time, you want to meet people from the country you are settling in and become part of the texture of the community you are living in. Mexico is increasingly an immigrant society. It’s ok to be one of those people.”
“Mexico is not for everybody, but it is for a lot of people,” said O’Grady. She advises families considering the move to not live in fear and figure out a way to re-create and reinvent their lives.
“If there is a little whisper knocking on the door of your heart saying, ‘See what else is out there,’ do it,” she said. “None of us are trees. We can get up and move. We don’t have to stay stuck anywhere – and that includes in Mexico.
“Try it all out; this is a big, diverse, magnificent, beautiful country — so get out and see it.”
Did you recently move your family here to Mexico? We’re interested to hear about your experience in the comments.
Debbie Slobe is a writer and communications strategist based in Chacala, Nayarit. She blogs at Mexpatmama.com and is a senior program director at Resource Media. Find her on Instagram and Facebook.
