Electrical upgrades, new cars and improvements to stations are planned for the transit system.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced Sunday that the city will invest over 41 billion pesos (US $2.09 billion) in an overhaul of the Metro that she said will breathe another 50 years of life into the city’s infamously aging subway system.
A January 9 fire, which occurred in an electrical substation inside the control center for subway lines 1-6 and put those lines out of commission for weeks, called new attention to the state of the Metro’s equipment, which is subject to frequent failures.
“Since the accident in January 2021, we decided we could not return to what we had,” Sheinbaum said. “The objective is to deliver something much better than what we currently find ourselves with. We will not only improve the aged conditions and the electrical installations, but we also have to renovate [the Metro] completely.”
Sheinbaum said a Metro overhaul had been planned since before the January fire, but the incident triggered an expansion of the project.
“From the adversity that the Metro experienced in January 2021, we are keeping the best, and giving citizens a much better Metro than we could have ever imagined in 2019,” Sheinbaum said.
Currently planned is the construction of a new electrical substation to replace the one destroyed in the fire; building a new train control center to manage lines 1–6 “to be the command and control center of the Metro;” the building of four new electrical transformers; modernization of the system’s electrical network, particularly that of lines 1 and 3; and other modernizations of line 1, including the addition of new train cars and repairs to station infrastructure such as escalators.
Modernization of line 1 is expected to be finished by the end of this year, although Metro director Florencia Serranía said the electrical improvements would take until sometime in 2022.
Those improvements will allow the system to run on 230 kilovolts instead of the current 85, Serranía said.
The electrical improvements to line 3 will take place in 2022 and 2023. There is also a future project being developed to modernize line 2’s electrical network.
The president officiates at the opening of new National Guard barracks in Jalisco with Governor Alfaro and Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez.
President López Obrador is confident that the United States will supply Covid-19 vaccines to Mexico as three other countries have already done.
Speaking at the inauguration of National Guard barracks in Tequila, Jalisco, on Sunday, López Obrador thanked India, Russia and China for sending vaccines and predicted that he will soon be expressing the same gratitude to Mexico’s northern neighbor.
“I hope to be saying soon that I also thank the United States government because I’m sure that they’re going to help – they just haven’t done so yet. … I always say what I think and feel and I’m sure they will help,” he said.
After speaking to United States President Joe Biden earlier this month, López Obrador said his counterpart demonstrated “great understanding” of Mexico’s request for the U.S. to supply vaccines to its southern neighbor.
The Biden administration has said that it is willing to send vaccines abroad but only after it inoculates its own adult population, which is expected to occur in May.
López Obrador reiterated Sunday that the government will vaccinate all Mexicans free of charge and predicted that all seniors in Jalisco will be inoculated by the end of April. He has said previously that all of Mexico’s approximately 15 million seniors will have received at least one vaccine shot by the middle of April.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, who also attended the inauguration, called on the president to review the national vaccination strategy, pointing out that no shots have been administered in Guadalajara and Zapopan, the two municipalities with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the state.
López Obrador responded that the program will reach the Jalisco capital and neighboring Zapopan soon.
He also said his government intends to offer teachers early access to the vaccine so that the nation’s students, who haven’t attended face-to-face classes for almost a year, can return to school.
Online classes are just not the same, López Obrador said before asserting that schools are students’ second home. “We need them to return to the classroom,” he said.
Mexico’s vaccination program began on December 24 but almost three months later only 4.34 million doses have been administered, according to Health Ministry data presented Sunday night. In contrast, the United States has administered more than 107 million doses since its vaccination program began on December 14.
Mexico’s vaccination efforts virtually stalled last month due to a lack of supply but the pace has quickened considerably after additional shipments arrived in the country.
Municipalities where the vaccination of seniors is under way can be tracked on the federal Health Ministry’s vaccination progress map on Mexico News Daily’s coronavirus page, although it appears the information is not being updated regularly.
As of Sunday night, Mexico had received just under 6.5 million vaccine doses – just over 3.2 million Pfizer/BioNTech shots; 870,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India; 2 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine; and 400,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V shot.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated coronavirus case tally rose by 2,415 on Sunday to almost 2.17 million while the official Covid-19 death toll increased by 220 to 194,710.
Average daily case numbers declined 28% to 5,668 during the first 14 days of March compared to February while reported fatalities decreased 34% to 642.
A protester takes a hammer to barricades at the National Palace last week.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a man born before women in Mexico were able to vote, spent International Women’s Day barricaded in the National Palace behind a wall guarded by riot police. For a president who promised respect, tolerance and peace, it looked as if he was at war with half his country — women.
Feminists were incensed with López Obrador even before he erected 3-meter-high metal barriers that his spokesman insisted were a “wall of peace” ahead of an International Women’s Day march.
Not only has he failed to make inroads on femicide — a shocking 11 women are killed every day — but he has refused to condemn the candidacy of a member of his Morena party, who is accused of being a serial rapist and is standing for governor in midterm elections in June. When women — including Citlalli Hernández, Morena secretary-general — protested at Félix Salgado Macedonio’s candidacy and urged a break with the “pact” of patriarchy in macho Mexico, López Obrador said he had to ask his wife what they were talking about.
Until then, it might have looked as if López Obrador was “just” out-of-touch or had a tin ear — neither something a politician in the 21st century ought to be advertising, especially one who congratulates himself on leading a gender-parity government. But on International Women’s Day, he smilingly cut off a female journalist’s question in a news conference saying “you’ll have to wait, corazón [darling].” The apparently deliberate choice of words failed to make it into the official transcript but it was not the first time the president had addressed a female reporter in this way.
For women clamouring for their grievances to be heard — like the groups who transformed the barriers around the national palace into a moving memorial with the names of victims of femicide adorned with flowers, and who then projected feminist slogans on to the building’s facade — the message was crystal clear: women’s rights are not a priority for this president. “López Obrador, corazón: women’s votes for your party in the next elections will surely have to wait,” tweeted Ximena Medellín, a professor at CIDE university.
López Obrador: women’s rights are not a priority.
But gender violence is not an issue that resonates strongly for López Obrador’s base — Mexico’s poor — who are more concerned about receiving state handouts. He won by a landslide in 2018. Middle-class women incensed by his attitude are likely to have turned their backs on him already, pollsters and analysts say.
The president insists the barricades around his palace were vital to prevent vandalism. Seemingly unable to comprehend the women’s fury, he called their attempts to break them down with hammers and petrol a “shameless provocation” and said that instead they should have held a demonstration “asking for respect.”
“We’ve tried a lot of things, this is the only way we have left,” said one protester, who asked not to be named, a baseball bat in her hand. Other women carried signs saying: “If only they protected us like they protect their monuments.”
López Obrador is often accused of trying to turn back the clock with his nationalistic economic policies, especially his attempts to make state energy companies great again. He appears to have equally deep-rooted and old-fashioned views about women, and says it is traditional for daughters in Mexico to look after their parents.
And while he admires his wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez, as an intellectual, he seems to delegate care of their 13-year-old son to her while he travels the country every weekend — not unlike the majority of Mexican men, who dump most household chores on their partners.
Although López Obrador’s supporters say he is Mexico’s most feminist president, he shuns the label, calling himself a “humanist.” He maintains his political enemies have jumped on the feminist bandwagon and “infiltrated” the women’s movement in order to attack him.
López Obrador claims to be on a quest to transform Mexico. Transforming his own world view may be harder. As Hernández acknowledged, he “doesn’t seek to be politically correct and won’t force his discourse to ‘make nice’ with us women.”
The Valle de Bravo dam is one of the three main dams in the system.
The main dams that feed the water system that supplies Mexico City and México state are at their lowest level in 25 years, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua).
And the situation will only become more critical until the commencement of the rainy season in late spring.
The three main dams that supply the Cutzamala system – Villa Victoria and Valle de Bravo in México state and El Bosque in Michoacán – are currently holding 399 million cubic meters of water, a figure that accounts for 47.9% of their collective capacity.
Víctor Bourguett Ortiz, Conagua’s top official in the Valley of México, told the newspaper Milenio that the combined storage level in the three dams is typically almost 70% at this time of year. He predicted that water levels will decline to 40% of capacity by the end of May or the beginning of June.
“[The level now] is the lowest level in the last 25 years for this same date. It’s not the lowest level in history … but from now until it rains again it will certainly go down even more,” Bourguett said.
Capacity of the dams is shown in gray; blue indicates water levels as of March 12. milenio
“… We’re 22 points below average storage for the same date. … Last year was very bad for rain,” Bourguett said.
He estimated there will be 320 million cubic meters of water in the three dams at the end of May or start of June – when the annual rainy season will likely begin – and that “could be the lowest level in history.”
Bourguett said that Conagua and authorities in the Valley of México will decide next week on a strategy to reduce supply to conserve water while minimizing the impact on people who rely on the Cutzamala system, which receives water from eight dams in total. Data shows that household water usage has increased 30% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic a year ago as people spend more time in their homes.
Bourguett said that some Mexico City and México state residents are already experiencing water shortages. If Conagua significantly reduces supply to the water departments responsible for supplying those entities, the problems will be exacerbated and water tankers won’t be able to keep up with demand.
Citing both the scarcity of water and the high costs associated with getting it to people’s homes in the high altitude capital and surrounding area, the official called on citizens to use the resource more efficiently.
“We don’t recognize the value of the resource except when we lack it – then we realize how valuable it is. It’s worrying, … we call on people to look after water, take measures [to limit use],” Bourguett said.
Conagua official Luis Antonio Aguilar Meza said in late February that 83 of Mexico’s 210 most important dams were less than 50% full and that only three were at 100% capacity.
Located about 60 kilometers northwest of México state capital Toluca, the Villa Victoria dam is currently at 39.1% of capacity, making it the least full of the three main Cutzamala system suppliers.
The water levels in the El Bosque dam, located in eastern Michoacán near the border with México state, and the Valle de Bravo dam, situated in the México state municipality of the same name, are 45.1% and 59.7%, respectively.
Clocks will change to daylight saving time on Sunday in 33 northern municipalities.
The time change — clocks will be turned forward by one hour — comes in the north three weeks ahead of other regions so as to remain in sync with border communities in the U.S., whose clocks will also change.
The affected municipalities are:
Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada, Playa Rosarito and Tecate in Baja California.
Ciudad Juárez, Ojinaga, Ascensión, Coyame del Sotol, Guadalupe, Janos, Manuel Benavides and Práxedis G. Guerrero in Chihuahua.
Acuña, Piedras Negras, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jiménez, Zaragoza, Nava and Ocampo in Coahuila.
Anáhuac and Los Aldama in Nuevo León.
Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros, Camargo, Guerrero, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Mier, Miguel Alemán, Río Bravo and Valle Hermoso in Tamaulipas.
López Obrador might be looking at sanctions by Biden over violations of the trade agreement.
President López Obrador’s “exaggerated nationalism” in pursuit of energy sovereignty will lead to clashes with the United States, predicts a Mexico expert and senior official of a United States think tank.
Duncan Wood, vice president for strategy and new initiatives at the Washington D.C.-based Wilson Center and a senior adviser to the center’s Mexico Institute, said Friday that AMLO, as the president is commonly known, has focused on achieving energy sovereignty for the past two years.
The most recent example of that goal was the enactment this week of a new electricity law that favors the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) by prioritizing the injection of power it produces into the national grid over that generated by private and renewable companies. The law, however, was promptly suspended by a judge after it was challenged by renewable energy companies.
Speaking during a round table discussion that was part of Mexico’s annual banking convention, Wood noted the quest’s negative impact on private energy companies, some of which have spent billions of dollars in Mexico since the sector was opened up to foreign and private investment by the previous federal government.
“There is an erosion of regulatory and legislative frameworks,” he said, adding that he has no doubt that AMLO will block outside investment in the energy sector in the second half of his 2018-2024 administration.
Wood: US will respond to electricity law using the framework of the USMCA.
Wood said that Mexico should be attracting billions of dollars in investment annually, noting that the United States still has a lot of trade conflicts and asserting that it’s “Mexico’s time.”
However, López Obrador is a “genius for squandering these kinds of opportunities,” he said.
Wood predicted that once the Electricity Industry Law is enacted definitively the United States government will seek to respond using the framework of the USMCA, the new North American free trade agreement that took effect last July. Many lawyers have already said that the law violates the terms of the pact.
“Energy is one of the areas where we’re going to see an increase in clashes [between Mexico and the United States],” Wood said.
The former director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute said there is a possibility that Mexico will be punished or sanctioned in some way for violating the USMCA.
Although López Obrador lauded the new North American trade pact and asserts that his administration welcomes foreign investment, some of the actions of his government have been downright hostile to investors.
In addition to legislating to sideline private and renewable energy companies in the electricity market, the federal government has canceled new oil and gas block auctions, rewritten pipeline contracts and scrapped the previous government’s Mexico City airport project and a United States company’s brewery project in Baja California.
Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California in San Diego, agreed with Wood that there will be friction between Mexico and its northern neighbor but predicted that migration and security will be the most contentious issues.
“On some issues there will be friction, on some issues there will be collisions,” he said.
With regard to the energy issue, Fernández said: “I don’t see a train crash but there is the USMCA and there will be reprisals for Mexico’s violations.”
Also speaking at the banking convention, the CEO of investment management corporation BlackRock, Larry Fink, warned that investors are increasingly looking to invest in sustainable, environmentally friendly businesses and sectors and are prepared to restructure their portfolios to do so.
Therefore, capital will leave companies, sectors and countries that show they are not willing to make changes to become more environmentally friendly, Fink said.
Investors are increasingly looking for environmental sustainability in the countries where they invest, said BlackRock’s Larry Fink.
He said climate change has come up in every conversation he has had with investors in Mexico, China, Japan and the United States, adding that he has fielded questions from them about how to withdraw their investment in unsustainable companies or sectors and reassign it elsewhere.
Fink said officials of all governments around the world need to meet with private sector representatives to discuss ways to increase long term investment in science and technology to reduce the impact of greenhouse gases on climate.
He acknowledged that there are differences between the Mexican and United States government but expressed confidence they can be resolved.
Meanwhile, the head of Iberdrola, Spain’s biggest power company, said in an interview with the Bloomberg news agency that he expects to see numerous legal challenges to Mexico’s new electricity law.
José Ignacio Sanchez Galán said that Iberdrola, which has invested almost US $12 billion in power projects in Mexico, could also file a lawsuit against the law.
If the company’s lawyers see “that the law affects our existing business, I’m sure we’ll try to defend the interest of our shareholders as we do in all countries,” he said. “I imagine everybody is going to do something similar.”
Iberdrola last year became the first major renewable energy company to halt new investment in Mexico, Bloomberg reported.
López Obrador, who has pledged to rescue the CFE and state oil company from years of neglect and give them a more central role in the energy market at the expensive of private companies, has been scathing in his criticism of the Spanish firm, accusing it of corruption and launching a media campaign against him.
Sanchez acknowledged that governments have the right to implement policies as they see fit but warned that the electricity law could raise power costs, harm the environment and damage investment.
“I’m sure that everybody is going to go to court to defend against these damages,” he said.
At Rambha distillery, the atmosphere is soothing, with hammocks at the tasting area ready to welcome you.
Oaxaca has so many things to offer — incredible food, beautiful landscapes, charming architecture — but one underappreciated gem is the state’s small, family-run distilleries sprinkled throughout the countryside. Here you find the masters of mezcal, the “elixir of the gods.” It’s a rapidly growing superstar among distilled spirits worldwide.
A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to visit some of these tiny oases in the Oaxacan desert and came back with the memories of five palenques (mezcal distilleries) that are captivatingly beautiful. Such visits are a good way to experience this distinctly Mexican liquor.
While the settings invite flights of fancy, each palenque is serious about the business of mezcal. Come to these distilleries prepared to engage your senses and your mind about this important Mexican tradition.
Real Minero
Run by the Ángeles family, the Real Minero distillery and tasting room got a luxurious revamp in 2018, converting the 20+-year-old family distillery into the bright and modern setting you find today. The company’s offices are set among a vast array of wild agaves that they are planting and propagating to protect against biodiversity loss in the area.
Mezcal vats at Real Minero and the wooden poles mezcaleros use to mash agave hearts into pulp.
A cozy collection of tables and chairs is set among the gardens for private tastings, and a large outdoor greenhouse demonstrates the results of their cultivation project. A five-minute drive from the offices is where guests can take a tour of the production center. Two massive pit ovens sit under a wooden framed roof, ready to cook up to 10 tonnes of agave hearts at a time.
Five stations set up in the back part of the property demonstrate the ancient clay-pot distillation process traditional to this area, and among rows and rows of aging mezcal in shimmering glass bottles is a small underground tasting room that can be booked for private events.
Rambha Mezcal
In the same town as Real Minero, Santa Catarina de Minas, a new distillery, sits in the middle of a vast section of desert: Rambha Mezcal is less than a year old.
With only the cactus between it and the majestic hills beyond, Mezcal Rambha is still in its nascent stage, simply decorated and laid out. A long family-style wooden table takes center stage. Hammocks hang from the posts that support the covered outdoor tasting room, and a string of brightly-colored baubles tinkle in the wind.
The distillery has plans for a full kitchen that will soon provide lunch between sips of mezcal for its guests. A much smaller operation than some on this list, owner and mezcalera (mezcal maker) Rosario Ángeles will take you through the distillation process and even let you try your hand at macerating the agave hearts with a giant wooden pole (that calls to mind The Flintstones cartoon) in a low, narrow “canoe” that is carved into the floor of the distillery. This crushing process for making the agave mash before it goes into the fermentation tanks is typical of the area.
Family ties bind Oaxaca’s smaller mezcal distilleries: this mural at Gracias a Dios’s entrance depicts the owner’s mother, who taught him to make mezcal.
Already hosting visitors on local mezcal tours, Mezcal Rambha is open by appointment with Ángeles. The idyllic setting is sure to tempt you into a post-mezcal siesta in one of those hammocks.
Los Amantes
The entrance to Los Amantes distillery and hotel is both inauspicious and tricky to find, but once you are through the gates, the landscaping — which uses endemic plants, cacti and the surrounding views of the countryside — will both soothe your soul and impress you with the property’s expansiveness.
This distillery combines urban industrial chic with the homegrown beauty of rural Mexico. Started by Oaxaca artist Guillermo Olguín, it offers a wide variety of mezcals that will please even the daintiest of palates, including a triple-distilled joven, a double-distilled reposado, añejo and some wild-agave varieties.
The distillery (and mezcal bar in Oaxaca city) works with a local family for most of their mezcal production, using cowhide fermentation and clay-pot distillation, both fascinating techniques to get to know.
Visits are by appointment only right now, but they are open on a regular schedule, and programming a tour is a pretty simple process. Guests can see the distillation area, taste a few varieties in the glassed-in tasting room or even have a picnic in the nearby fields.
Los Amantes’s sprawling property combines urban industrial chic with the homegrown beauty of rural Mexico. Anna Bruce
FaneKantsini
The trip out to see the FaneKantsini distillery is half the experience. Located the furthest from Oaxaca city on this list, the three-hour ride south loops through small towns accustomed to welcoming tourists on their way to Puerto Escondido — meaning plenty of tiny eateries and public bathrooms along the way.
Once you hit the town of Sola de Vega, you have to follow a circuitous route out to the FaneKantsini property, passing breathtaking rows of giant agaves, donkeys laboring under their cargo and local folks ambling in and out of town.
This distillery is run by a cooperative formed from a large family of mezcaleros who work together to produce several times a month. Their production area is rustic, with simple cement-floor buildings covered just enough to keep out the sun and the rain.
The surrounding property, however, is a grand expanse of agave fields where the cooperative is growing various types of the plants for production, as well as an undomesticated section of land where wild agaves are being test-planted among the natural vegetation.
The cooperative is working with Mexico’s National Autonomous University to create a seed bank for their plants as well as to ensure the most ecologically sustainable cultivation.
At Gracias a Dios distillery, workers stack agave hearts.
Gracias a Dios
A few years back, three friends who owned a nearby mezcal bar teamed up with local mezcalero Oscar Hernández to create the Gracias a Dios mezcal brand.
Their distillery is at one end of Santiago Matatlán, but its grounds are double or triple the size of the small palenques you are accustomed to seeing along that highway. The mural that greets you on the outside wall is homage to Oscar’s mother, who taught him how to make mezcal after his father died when he was just 12.
With a grassy front patio and the production area set in the back of the property, the grounds feel more like a mini-hacienda than a distillery.
The folks at Gracias a Dios are committed to sustainability: beyond replanting agaves and managing their land in an ecological way (as most of the distilleries listed here do), they also run their distillery on solar power and use rainwater for 60% of the water in their production. Buildings are constructed with adobe bricks, using leftover maguey from the mezcal process.
Visitors can take a tour, do a tasting and even reserve ahead for a home-cooked meal. It’s closed at the moment due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Gracias a Dios plans to reopen its doors in April, so get planning!
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Salgado will be Morena's candidate in the June 6 election.
The ruling Morena party has confirmed that alleged rapist Félix Salgado will be its candidate for governor in Guerrero after completing a new selection process in which the former senator was reportedly pitted against four women.
Morena’s election commission announced Friday night that citizens in Guerrero had once again chosen Salgado, who is accused of rape by several women, as the party’s candidate for the June 6 election.
Morena polled citizens in Guerrero last weekend to determine levels of support for five different possible candidates, according to media reports. Among the four women who were included in the process were Acapulco Mayor Adela Román and Senator Nestora Salgado.
Félix Salgado was the clear winner of the survey, even coming out on top when those polled were asked to opine on the potential candidates’ respect for the rights of women. He also prevailed in all other categories including honesty and knowledge of the municipality in which the poll respondents lived.
Women in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, march to protest Salgado’s candidacy.
Morena’s election commission said in a statement that it was obliged to respect the people’s will and therefore Salgado, who has maintained the support of President López Obrador and other party power brokers despite the allegations he faces, would be its candidate for governor.
“One of the great objectives of the fourth transformation [a nickname for the federal government and the Morena movement more broadly] is to live in an authentic democracy in which the people are in charge. The people of Guerrero assessed [the potential candidates] and took a decision. We’re obliged to respect it. In the new survey, Félix Salgado Macedonio proved to be the best positioned so the National Election Commission confirms him as the candidate for governor in Guerrero,” it said.
Many women have protested against Morena’s decision to nominate Salgado – including thousands at last Monday’s International Women’s Day march in Mexico City – but the election commission asserted that feminism is strong within the fourth transformation, or 4T.
“Feminism and the fourth transformation are the two main movements in 21st century Mexico (that’s why feminism is so strong inside the 4T). We can have painful disagreements about [certain] issues … but we’re historical allies. Both fight against oppression, violence, inequality and injustice,” the statement said.
“The macho culture in Mexico is a deep cultural problem that has hurt our country for centuries. We have to eradicate this culture.”
After the election commission made its candidacy announcement, Salgado took to social media.
“Thank you very much to the people of Guerrero for … your confidence in another democratic exercise that my party, Morena, carried out. We’re sure that we’re going to win and that the fourth transformation that our president Andrés Manuel López Obrador leads will come to Guerrero. Women and young people are the driving force of the 4T,” he wrote on Facebook.
It was his first post on the social media platform since Monday when he sent a message to women on International Women’s Day even as many of them raged against him.
“My respect and admiration for all the women of our state, Mexico and the whole world. Long live women,” Salgado wrote.
His confirmation as candidate for governor was unsurprisingly met with anger by those who have called for Morena to dump him.
The decision to make Salgado the candidate is “offensive” for the victims of the candidate and all women and citizens, Eunice Rendón, a security and migration expert, tweeted to her almost 30,000 followers. “There is very little shame and empathy with the victims of abuse of this man.”
The Oxxo convenience store chain is a story of how a national brand beat out foreign ones, as well as mom-and-pop stores.
“Rumor has it if you discard your Andatti [Oxxo’s house brand of coffee] cup in a vacant lot, up will sprout a new Oxxo” says Russell Parsons of Tijuana.
Obviously, that is a joke but despite them seeming to be everywhere, more and more Oxxos do keep appearing.
The first Oxxo opened on October 16, 1978, the brainchild of Eugenio Garza Lagüera of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma beer company, today FEMSA. Its initial purpose was to sell the company’s beer directly to the public, along with cigarettes and snacks. Its name most likely comes from its initial “shopping cart” logo (with the O’s standing in for the wheels), but another story says it comes from the percentage sign, indicating a discount.
Within two years, there were locations in Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California. In 1982, the company began its expansion program, recruiting Mexican families to operate new stores. These locations are not franchises but rather “mercantile commissions,” where the families become agents or “collaborators” with the company.
Meme making fun of just how ubiquitous Oxxo stores are, with the Mars Rover finding one. Russell Parsons
The stores are extremely profitable for FEMSA. They account for 40% of the income of the company, which is also the largest bottler of Coca-Cola in Latin America. As Oxxo grew and developed name recognition, it began to create its own branded products such as Andatti coffee and Bitz snack foods and even Oxxo gas. Today, it is the third most valuable brand name in Mexico, behind Corona and Telcel, with an estimated value of 44 billion pesos.
According to FEMSA’s website, Oxxos see 13.2 million customers per day at 19,556 stores, which employ over 150,000 people in Mexico. More recently, it has expanded into Chile and Colombia and even has a couple of stores in Texas. In Mexico, Oxxo dwarfs United States-based chains 7-Eleven and Circle K. Both have fewer than 2,000 stores in the nation, and neither are found in all 32 states. Circle K is something of a latecomer, but 7-Eleven México was founded two years before Oxxo.
For years, FEMSA has been opening up hundreds of Oxxos per month nonstop. However, 2020 saw the first significant decline in sales because the pandemic kept people home. By November 2020, there were only 139 new openings for the year, with 108 stores closing permanently.
Over its history, Oxxo expanded its stores’ inventory to include things such as basic staples, but beer, cigarettes, soft drinks and junk food remain the base. However, a real change came in the early 2000s, when it began providing electronic payment services, starting with buying airtime for cell phones. Today, you can do everything at an Oxxo: basic banking transactions, payment of utilities and other services, sending and receiving money, purchasing intercity bus tickets and more. These services are important in a country where many people still pay with cash and receive remittances from abroad.
But not all is rosy for the company. There are people, both foreigners and Mexicans, who at least try to avoid going into one.
One main issue is that the opening of an Oxxo puts pressure on local mom-and-pop corner stores, which often cannot compete with the chain’s ability to be open 24/7 and take debit and credit cards. A related issue is that it is owned by one of Mexico’s largest companies.
Oxxos in historic town centers are often required to tone down their facades. This does not always keep them from being controversial.
“I avoid them because they are part of the Coca-Cola monopoly here in Mexico, and I think monopolies are not good,” said Chucho Herrero of México state. “I use them only when I don’t have another option, such as when I get gas on the highway.”
Oxxo’s collaborator system has been criticized as unfair to the families who operate the stores.
There are also complaints about not being able to do electronic transactions sometimes, either because the system is down or the cashier does not have the cash available. This problem is common enough that there are popular Spanish-language memes about it on the internet — and about the cashiers being rude or unavailable.
Oxxos have also been associated with crime, blight and other social issues, even leading to restrictions against them in some communities. There have been movements to eliminate or seriously limit their presence, especially in the south.
Writer Juan Villoro wrote in a Reforma article in 2017 that Oxxos serve as a place to meet at whatever hour, even for illicit business like recruiting hitmen.
“Here in Xochimilco [in Mexico City], all Oxxos have been closed because they promote alcoholism in minors and others; also, they take away customers from traditional food stores,” said Alice Aguilar of Mexico City.
A very typical Oxxo store of today, with its blaring red and yellow facade. Wikimedia Commons
“Our [local government] decided not to allow them in Loreto,” says Baja California Sur reader Kathy Hill, “… and in their place, we have a chain of similar stores owned by a local family …”
But despite Oxxo’s problems and somewhat higher prices, it is obvious that many people love them — or at least find them very, well, convenient.
Regular users cite the hours, the electronic payments, the products not available anywhere else (like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) and proximity to home or work as reasons for their preference.
One thing people seem to be split on, however, is the coffee: you either love it or you hate it.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
The number of green light low risk states on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map will increase from two to three next week after the Health Ministry announced Friday that Sonora will switch on Monday.
The northern border state will join Campeche and Chiapas at the lowest risk level, while there will be 21 states at the yellow light medium risk level, an increase of one compared to the map currently in force, and eight at orange light high risk, a decrease of two. For a second consecutive fortnight there will be no red light maximum risk states.
The yellow states for the next two weeks will be Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Guerrero, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and Quintana Roo.
Nineteen of those states are already yellow and will remain so while Nuevo León and San Luis Potosí will switch to that color from orange on Monday.
The eight orange light states for the next two weeks will be Querétaro, México state, Mexico City, Morelos, Puebla, Oaxaca Tabasco and Yucatán. All of those states are orange on the current map. Health Ministry official Ricardo Cortés said that Querétaro is the state most at risk of regressing to red due to a recent increase in case numbers and hospitalizations.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Each stoplight color, determined by the Health Ministry using 10 different indicators including case numbers and hospital occupancy levels, is accompanied by recommended restrictions to slow the spread of the virus but it is ultimately up to state governments to decide on their own restrictions.
In Sonora, which has been at the yellow light risk level for the past month, authorities have begun making preparations to reopen schools but decided they won’t do so until teachers and other staff have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
According to federal government guidelines, schools can reopen in green light states but neither Chiapas nor Campeche has done so despite reaching the low risk level.
Sonora Governor Claudia Pavlovich welcomed the news that the state will switch to green but urged residents not to drop their guard.
“To be at the green light level is an achievement for all sonorenses but it doesn’t mean we should relax the [health] measures. … It’s the first truce that this pandemic has granted us but the virus is still present. Let’s keep taking care of ourselves. #Let’sStayGreen,” she wrote on Twitter.
Sonora has recorded just over 69,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and more than 6,000 deaths, according to federal data. There are just over 900 active cases in the state while the occupancy rate for general care hospital beds is 11%.
The Health Ministry added 6,743 new cases to the national case tally on Friday and registered 709 additional deaths. Mexico has now recorded just over 2.15 million cases and 193,851 fatalities since the coronavirus was first detected here just over a year ago. There are an estimated 46,291 active cases across the country and the hospital occupancy rate is 26% for general care beds and 29% for those with ventilators.
The Health Ministry reported that 147,891 additional vaccine doses were administered Friday, lifting the total number of doses given to just over 4 million.
The government has pledged to vaccinate everybody who wants a shot but the national vaccination program has not yet reached people aged under 60, apart from healthcare workers and some teachers, while millions of seniors are also waiting for their first jab.
