Mexico News Daily's new podcast, "Confidently Wrong," helps encourage a deeper and more nuanced understanding of important topics around the country — starting with San Miguel de Allende.
Over the years, I have had countless family members and friends confidently tell me that I was crazy for spending so much time in Mexico. They first told me this nearly 30 years ago when I studied in Guadalajara and it has been a constant theme ever since. Why Mexico? Is it safe? Can you drive there? Can you drink the water? Can you have ice? Can you eat lettuce? Can you go out and walk at night?
I feel like for the better part of my adult life I have been trying to explain to people that much of what they have heard about Mexico, or much of what they have read or seen in the media, isn’t necessarily all true or might not be totally accurate. That’s not to say that Mexico is perfect or doesn’t have its share of problems — of course it does and some big ones at that — but I am consistently surprised at how many people seem so confident in expressing strong opinions about Mexico based on information that is incomplete, incorrect, and in some cases, just plain hearsay.
As our readers know, at Mexico News Daily we strive to be the most balanced and complete source of news and information about Mexico — and we create content each and every day to accomplish that. But, getting the big picture requires more than just the headlines and at times, a deeper dive is needed to really understand a topic. Context matters and sometimes, a conversation is needed.
That’s why I am excited to announce that MND is beginning a new podcast called “Confidently Wrong.” In this regular podcast, we will pick one topic where we see a significant amount of misinformation, incomplete information or just a general lack of understanding. We will talk through what people are saying and try to provide history, context and data that helps provide a more complete perspective on the topic.
The goal of the podcast is not to win an argument. It is not meant to convince you that we are right and you are wrong. It’s to help encourage a deeper and more nuanced understanding of important issues in the country. It is to provide you with the information needed to be able to think critically.
I will be joined by George Reavis, an American who has lived in Mexico for nearly a decade. He’s also the founder of MexEdge, a company that helps protect people against currency fluctuation risk when they are buying or building real estate in Mexico. Since George is working with people who are making big decisions, he is often on the front lines of people being confidently wrong on things they have heard about many topics in Mexico.
In this first episode, George and I are tackling the topic of San Miguel de Allende and the frequent comments we hear that only gringos live there, that it’s been ruined by foreigners, no longer attractive for Mexicans to visit, and ground zero of gentrification.
Please have a listen and tell us what you think. Also, if you have any suggestions on topics you think we should cover where you frequently hear people being “Confidently Wrong” about Mexico, please let us know and we will consider them for future episodes.
Check out our first episode:
MND presents "Confidently Wrong" - a new podcast that helps you better understand Mexico
Thanks for tuning in!
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for nearly 30 years.
Part poet, part historian and passionately Mexican, who was Fernando Jordán? (Barbro Dahlgren)
Sometime around 3 a.m. on the morning of May 14, 1956, at a house on Revolución de 1910 Street, a few blocks from the malecón in La Paz, Baja California Sur’s capital city, and on the block where the Hotel Seven Crown Centro Histórico stands today, someone fired a .44 caliber bullet into the heart of Fernando Jordán Juárez, killing him instantly.
Was it murder or suicide?
The gunshot may have been fired by Jordán himself, although a compelling case can be made for either murder or suicide. Jordán had recently fallen out with his mentor and editor at Impacto magazine, Regino Hernández Llergo, after he refused to run a piece on a corrupt businessman. This wasn’t the first influential person, from politicians to other powerful people, that the writer had felt compelled to go after in print.
The malecón of La Paz as it looked in 1957, the year after the city’s greatest poet was shot to death. (Howard E. Gulick Collection, UCSD)
Jordán, staying at the house of a friend the night he died, was also said to have burned several letters before the fatal gunshot was fired. But were these letters of a personal or professional nature? It was intimated at the time that Jordán was involved in an affair with a married woman, also not for the first time. Could his death have been at the hands of an angry husband?
Several people who knew Jordán well, including his brother Raúl, believed he was a suicide, and that was the official verdict rendered before he was interred at the Panteón de Los San Juanes cemetery in La Paz. On the other hand, how many suicides cover themselves with a sheet afterwards? Or indeed, shoot themselves in the heart? Nearly 90% of suicide shots are to the head. These unexplained clues led to many speculations after Jordán’s death, including the possibility of a state-sanctioned assassination.
Only one thing was certain. The state’s greatest writer and poet was dead at the age of 36.
The early life and journalistic career of Fernando Jordán
Remarkably, given how indelibly associated Jordán is with the Baja California peninsula, he spent time there during only six years. His final six, as it turned out. Jordan was born in Mexico City in 1920 to a father, Amado Jordán Sánchez de la Barquera, a military fencing master, and a mother, Elena Juárez Villegas, who was the daughter of two doctors. Given his parentage, he seemed destined for a good education. But the signal event of his young life was when, following his graduation from vocational school, he changed his mind about becoming an architect and decided to enroll in the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) to study anthropology.
Jordán met his wife, Swede Barbro Dahlgren, the mother of his two children, while at ENAH. His anthropological training informed everything he would write. However, while his wife became a respected academic (with notable work on Baja California’s prehistoric rock art), he opted for a career in journalism, starting at newspapers like La Prensa and Novedades before moving on to magazines such as Mañana and Impacto. Hernández Llergo was an important figure at the latter two, and Jordán’s talents were unleashed on assignments that took him all over the country, from the Revillagigedo Islands to Yucatán, Chiapas, and the Alta Tarahumara.
His biggest assignment, however, wouldn’t become clear until a September evening in 1949 at the Impacto offices on Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. In response to Hernández Llergo’s query as to what he wanted to do next, Jordán pulled out an aerial map of the Baja California peninsula and began speaking passionately of his travel plans.
Baja California: “The Other Mexico”
Jordán’s 1951 book, “El Otro Mexico: Biografia de Baja California,” was a landmark work whose legacy has been enduring. (Chris Sands)
The series of articles Jordán wrote about the Baja California peninsula for Impacto would ultimately be published, forty years after his death, as the book “Baja California, Tierra Incógnita.” However, the book that established his reputation during his life was published in 1951. Inspired by his travels, “El Otro Mexico: Biografía de Baja California” was a landmark work, a masterpiece, that the distinguished professor, historian, and journalist Arturo Sotomayor would call “the most transcendent and valuable Mexican book of the last quarter century.”
What makes this book so special, and why has it cast its spell on generations of readers since it first appeared? The book seamlessly integrates history, anthropology, and journalism, but with large helpings of what can only be called poetry. Jordán himself claimed he “handled history like a novel and geography like an adventure,” but without violating “any of the precepts of the historian, the geographer, or the biographer.”
The book’s first printing immediately sold out, and although it wouldn’t lead to a financial windfall for its author, its subject matter would also provide him with a canvas for his second masterpiece in 1955.
Calafia, Jordán’s lasting triumph and legacy
La Paz famously dates its birth as a city to May 3, 1535, when Hernán Cortés arrived there. Jordán’s poem “Calafia,” written in the 24 hours preceding the Juegos Florales of 1955, celebrating the 420th anniversary, and for which he received 500 pesos as the winner of the poetry contest, looks back at the first meeting between conquistadors and the Indigenous Guaycura, and the naming of the land California.
“Yours is the magical coast of pearls and sand,” he writes in a translated stanza from the Guaycura’s perspective, welcoming the conquistadors to “the forests of cardóns / the mountains that rise / to look out at the sea / the fountains that cut emeralds / over the dry earth / the valleys where the sun / takes its siesta / the islands of mysteries and fish / and the veins / these veins fused by the devil / with the bellows of God.”
Calafia remains the greatest poem ever written about La Paz, Baja California Sur, and the Baja California peninsula, and its legacy endures, even if, sadly, it was a valediction for its author, who died only a year after writing it.
Chris Sands is the Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best, writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook and a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily. His specialty is travel-related content and lifestyle features focused on food, wine and golf.
An MND health announcement, in conjunction with Sarah DeVries: Think before you deworm.(Danilo Alvesd/Unsplash)
Disclaimer: Y’all know that I’m not a doctor, right? Be sure to talk to an actual one before taking any action.
Even if you’ve lived here for a while, there’s something you might not know: lots and lots of Mexicans “de-worm” themselves periodically.
Not like this, though. (JL Zavala)
That’s right. Plenty of people just kind of expect to get parasites in their gastrointestinal systems. But that’s not to say that they take it sitting down! Many families, once or twice a year and together, take a one or two-dose “deworming” chewable to get rid of them, and then just move on with their normal lives.
When I first found out about this, I’ll admit I found it…odd. “Say what you will about the American food system,” I’d joke, “but we don’t all take de-worming as a matter of course.”
If Moctezuma’s Revenge has ever fallen upon you here in Mexico, it’s very possible that a “de-worming” pill was part of what the doctor ordered for your treatment. Why? Because intestinal parasites — especially if you’re accustomed to eating “on the street” — are prolific. That’s what the companies that sell de-worming pills say, anyway.
Then again,that’s what the IMSS says, too. It’s always struck me as strange, though, that a practice so prevalent in one country can be nearly unheard of in its neighbor. So what gives?
Much of the reason that de-worming is encouraged here is because of a fairly large variety of food and water sanitation. You know how everyone says, “Don’t drink the water” in Mexico? Well, there’s a reason for that. While water sanitation plants in Mexico do their best, the pipes that they flow through can’t necessarily be trusted, for example:
Everyone seems to have different levels of comfort with the risks they take. I don’t drink water straight from the tap myself, but I do drink it boiled in tea or coffee. I also brush my teeth with it. So far, so good!
For most of us reading this, it’s a matter of choice. But for the millions of Mexicans who don’t haveaccess to properly sanitized water, the risk is higher.
There’s also the question of keeping one’s food free of contamination. Some of this is simply cultural; you cook food, and then you leave it out during the day because you’re going to have some more later. Eggs don’t get stored in the refrigerator, and often mayo doesn’t either — even after opening.
Contrast this to my childhood, where almost any food that sat out on the counter for more than an hour had to be thrown away, deemed by my mother as officially no longer safe. I’m guessing others had similar experiences. We also tend to eat much more processed food in the US, which means more preservatives, which are what they sound like — they “preserve” the food.
But here in Mexico, we’re closer to nature. And when you’re closer to nature, you’re, well, closer to nature. And parasites are part of nature. At least in my case, that reminds me to not get too romantic about it all. “Nature” is not all frolicking through the forest as sunlight dapples on the soft mossy ground, after all. It’s also ticks and mosquitos. And parasites.
Caution: May contain extra protein. (depositphoto)
As I’ve written before, Mexicans areperfectly okay with getting away from nature. Take their cleaning practices: nothing is truly clean if it hasn’t been doused in bleach, and the fewer “uncontrolled weeds” you have on your property, the better. I’m not saying Mexicans hate plants. They just want to be able to control them to a certain degree if they can afford to.
In a way, Mexicans “de-worm” everything they can, whenever they can. Do you know anyone in your home country who washes their bathroom and kitchen with bleach at least every two days? It’s all about the cleanliness around here.
I myself have never been known as the queen of hygiene. I’ve never bathed more than twice a week (except after a visit to the gym). I grew up in a home that was pretty much always not just messy, but dirty; any self-respecting Mexican would have fainted to see it. Nowadays, my home is always neat and orderly (natural inclination or trauma response? We may never know.) But truly clean and disinfected, a la mexicana? That only happens once a week, when the lady who helps me with the house comes.
She may not worry about the food sitting out after breakfast, but boy does she make sure the floor is spotless.
In the end, I think de-worming is an extension of this tendency to keep the “bad” parts of nature at bay. Their presence is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we should let them defeat us! Especially for people who live in more rural areas. Or those too poor to have access to clean water or be choosy about how clean the food they ultimately consume is kept — I’ve known even city dwellers without refrigerators — those little de-worming pills can be a literal life-saver. You can’t stop eating or drinking water, but you can fight against any unwelcome guest that makes it in with them!
As for myself, it’s not often that I rush out to the pharmacy for one. But I could if I wanted to — they’re available without a prescription. Still, I wouldn’t recommend diving in without input from a doctor and perhaps a laboratory. Why take something you don’t need, after all?
Medical treatment can be, in the end, just like anything else:there are cultural components. Just ask the doctor who offered to have someone rub an egg on me to draw out an infection.
In the meantime, keep clean and when in doubt, ask a doctor!
FIFA President Gianni Infantino presents President Sheinbaum with a mockup of the first ticket to the opening match of the World Cup, set for June 11, 2026, in Mexico City. She also got a real ticket. (Presidencia/Cuartoscuro.com)
President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that she will give away the complimentary ticket she received for the opening match of the 2026 World Cup in Mexico City.
Sheinbaum welcomed Gianni Infantino, the president of the global governing body of soccer known as FIFA, to the National Palace on Thursday to discuss the preparations for the prestigious international soccer tournament. Mexico will be the site of 13 World Cup matches as it serves as joint host alongside Canada and the United States.
Estadio Banorte, a remodeled version of the Mexico CIty stadium long known as Estadio Azteca, will host the opening match and ceremonies of World Cup 2026. (Rogelio Morales/Cuartoscuro)
While the pair discussed match locations, economic impact and infrastructure plans, Infantino supplemented his gift by presenting Sheinbaum with a giant replica of the front-row ticket for the inaugural match, labeled Row 1, Seat 1, Ticket No. 00001.
During her Friday morning press conference, Sheinbaum said she will be giving away the real opening match ticket. That first match will be held at Mexico City’s Estadio Banorte (formerly Estadio Azteca) on June 11, 2026, along with the Opening Ceremonies
“I’m thinking of giving the ticket to a young girl who likes soccer and wouldn’t have an opportunity to come to the stadium,” Sheinbaum said.
Estimates of the number of viewers of the match have run as high as 6 billion.
In a Thursday social media post, Sheinbaum expressed appreciation for Infantino’s visit, while also recognizing the historic role Mexico will play in the quadrennial tournament.
Mexico will become the first nation to host three different World Cup tournaments after serving as lone host of the 1970 and 1986 events.
“It’s going to be a very important moment for Mexico,” she said on Friday. “The eyes of the world will be upon us and, as always, Mexico’s people will be generous and filled with joy.”
In addition to the ticket, Infantino presented Sheinbaum with a replica of the coveted World Cup trophy.
The Mexican Soccer Federation has said the tournament is expected to generate a US $3 billion economic windfall for Mexico and create roughly 24,000 jobs. Tourism revenues are projected to surpass US $1 billion from an estimated 5.5 million visitors.
In addition to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey will serve as host cities for the matches in Mexico.
Residents in certain parts of northern Mexico might want to prepare to bundle up as the first cold front of the season is on its way. (Fernando Carranza García/Cuartoscuro.com)
Mexico’s first cold front of the season is expected to arrive this weekend, primarily affecting the northeastern states of the country, according to the National Meteorological Service (SMN).
In the northeast, temperatures are expected to drop to between 0 and 5 degrees Celsius (32-41 F) during the early morning hours accompanied by heavy rains and potential hail.
Parts of the north can expect cold weather while much of the rest of Mexico will feel the heat. But rain is a threat everywhere over the next few days. (X)
On Monday, when children in Mexico go back to school, heavy rains are expected in the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Meanwhile, whirlwinds or tornadoes are expected in the state of Coahuila on Sunday, spreading to areas of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas on Monday.
Other states such as Puebla, Durango, and México state could see low temperatures and rain. The forecast predicts the rainy season will continue until Sept. 30, before the full onset of autumn.
While the northeast experiences the effects of the late-summer cold fronts, the rest of the country will see warm temperatures and rainfall. Over the weekend, a low-pressure zone with the potential for cyclonic development is expected to form south of the Guerrero coast, with occasional heavy rains in Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Tabasco.
Hot to very hot weather (35 to 40 degrees C, or 95-104 degrees F) will persist over states along the Pacific and southern Gulf of Mexico coasts, the Yucatán Peninsula, and further south in parts of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca.
The cold front season will officially run from Sept. 15 to May 15, 2026, bringing between 51 and 56 cold front systems throughout the country.
Here’s the latest rain by state for Friday:
Very heavy to intense rainfall (75 to 150 millimeters): Oaxaca (southwest), Chiapas (east and south) and Tabasco (east and south).
Heavy to very heavy rainfall (50 to 75 millimeters): Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, Veracruz, Campeche and Yucatán.
Showers with heavy rainfall (25 to 50 millimeters): Baja California, Zacatecas, Colima, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Mexico state, Mexico City, Morelos, Puebla and Quintana Roo.
Intervals of showers (5 to 25 millimeters): Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes, Hidalgo and Tlaxcala.
The predicted rain may bring lightning and hail, causing rising river and stream levels, landslides, and flooding in low-lying areas. Weather authorities have advised residents in affected areas to exercise caution.
Next week's security talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dominated President Sheinbaum's last mañanera of the week. (Presidencia)
The upcoming visit to Mexico of United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a key focus of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Friday morning press conference.
It will be Rubio’s first trip to Mexico since he became the United States’ top diplomat.
Sheinbaum was asked about the agenda for her meeting with the 54-year-old Trump administration official as well as the new bilateral security agreement (or “understanding”) that Mexico and the United States have been negotiating in recent months.
As usual, the president’s mañanera was held at the National Palace, where the meeting with Rubio will take place next week.
Sheinbaum will meet with Marco Rubio in CDMX on Sept. 3
Sheinbaum told reporters that Rubio is coming to Mexico next Wednesday Sept. 3.
Sheinbaum confirmed Rubio would visit Mexico on Wednesday, Sept. 3. (Michael Vadon/Flickr)
Sheinbaum said on Friday that the agreement — or “understanding” as she is now calling it on the advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — wouldn’t necessarily be signed during the secretary of state’s visit.
The U.S. Department of State announced on Thursday that Rubio would travel to Mexico and Ecuador between Sept. 2 and 4 “to advance key U.S. priorities.”
A statement from a Department of State spokesperson said those priorities include “swift and decisive action to dismantle cartels, halt fentanyl trafficking, end illegal immigration, reduce the trade deficit, and promote economic prosperity and counter malign extra continental actors.”
“The Secretary’s fourth trip to our hemisphere demonstrates the United States’ unwavering commitment to protect its borders, neutralize narco-terrorist threats to our homeland, and ensure a level playing field for American businesses,” the statement said.
“Secretary Rubio’s engagements will deepen bilateral ties with Mexico and Ecuador and foster broader burden sharing across our region,” it concluded.
Asked about the agenda for her meeting with the Miami-born former senator, Sheinbaum said that the secretary of state is coming to Mexico to conclude talks related to the new security “understanding.”
“And we’re going to take the opportunity to show him everything we’re doing in Mexico in many areas, and in particular on the issue of security,” she said.
Sheinbaum said that the new security pact “wouldn’t necessarily be signed” next week because “everything that has to do with bilateral relations has its protocols.”
She said that there is nothing “very new” in the “understanding,” apart from “some things that have to do with joint investigations into fentanyl precursors.”
The understanding includes new provisions related to joint investigations to trace fentanyl precursors, Sheinbaum said. (DEA)
“How do fentanyl precursors arrive? For example,” Sheinbaum said.
She also said there are “some other [new] frameworks for collaboration and coordination, within the framework of respect for our sovereignty.”
Sheinbaum indicated that the new Mexico-U.S. security “understanding” acknowledges the importance of campaigns to prevent drug use, and notes that the U.S. government has to work to “avoid the trafficking of weapons” to Mexico.
The president previously revealed that the bilateral pact is “fundamentally” based on “sovereignty, mutual trust, territorial respect … and coordination without subordination.”
Agreement? Understanding? ‘It’s the same thing,’ says Sheinbaum
A reporter asked the president what the difference is between a security agreement and a security understanding.
“It’s the same thing,” Sheinbaum responded.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the clarification,” she said, explaining that there are a variety of “categories” of bilateral pacts, each with a different name.
“Some even need approval from the [respective] senates, like the USMCA, for example,” Sheinbaum said.
The new understanding is similar to the Bicentennial Framework, a bilateral security agreement signed in 2021, the president said. (Presidencia)
“The Foreign Affairs Ministry just clarified what its name is,” Sheinbaum said.
“Let’s see if you can ask the foreign affairs minister for the exact name of this agreement, this understanding that we’ve been negotiating for several months,” she said.
Asked what is the difference between the new, soon-to-be signed “understanding” and the Bicentennial Framework that took effect in 2021, Sheinbaum said the former is “very similar” to the latter.
“They are high-level agreements for security issues and other issues,” she said.
‘They proposed greater intervention in our country and we said no’
Sheinbaum said that the United States asked for things “that weren’t acceptable for us” during the negotiations for the new security understanding.
She said that her government also proposed things that the United States thought “shouldn’t be in this document.”
Pushed as to what U.S. proposals were unacceptable for Mexico, Sheinbaum said:
“They proposed greater intervention in our country and we said no.”
On Friday, Sheinbaum said that her government will “never sign anything that, from our perspective, violates our sovereignty or our territory.”
“They can have the intention to do it, but we told them no,” she said.
“It’s the same as in the calls I’ve had with President Trump, where he says: ‘Don’t you want us to help you with the U.S. army?’ And I tell him, ‘No President Trump, that are many other forms of collaboration and cooperation, but not that.”
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies (peter.davies@mexiconewsdaily.com)
President Sheinbaum has proven to be highly popular since early in her term. She will give her first State of the Nation Address (Informe) on Monday, Sept. 1. (Presidencia/Cuartoscuro.com)
As Claudia Sheinbaum prepares to deliver her first State of the Nation Address (Informe) on Monday, a new poll indicates she is the most popular Mexican president at this stage of her incumbency in decades.
Eleven months into Sheinbaum’s six-year term, a public opinion survey conducted by the Mitofsky Group for the newspaper El Economista reveals that 71.4% of those polled support the president’s management of the country.
This result places Sheinbaum comfortably ahead of her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (62% in 2019), as well as Vicente Fox (62% in 2001), Felipe Calderón (66% in 2007) and Enrique Peña Nieto (56% in 2013).
Her approval rating soared early in her term, reaching 78% near the 100-day mark. That it’s still in the 70s near her one-year anniversary shows the December rating was not just a honeymoon effect.
Additionally, nearly 66% said Mexico is better off than when Sheinbaum took office last October and 58% said she has exceeded their expectations.
Those surveyed identified her top achievements as social welfare programs (8.9%), scholarships for students (8.8%), support for senior citizens (8.2%) and support for women (3.4%). Sheinbaum’s management of foreign policy came in sixth at 3.3%, while 4% said they believe she is successfully fighting crime.
However, nearly 46% of those surveyed identified the lack of security as the primary problem the country faces, though only 9.7% indicated that Sheinbaum’s biggest shortcoming thus far was failing to adequately combat crime.
Other primary issues of concern were the economy (9%), corruption (8.1%) and unemployment (5.6%).
The Mitofsky results are in line with a Buendía & Márquez poll conducted for the newspaper El Universal released on Monday which found 70% support for Sheinbaum.
Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez will present the printed version of the constitutionally mandated annual report to Congress on Monday morning, while Sheinbaum will deliver an address from the National Palace at 11 a.m.
The improved terminal at the Ciudad Juárez International Airport more than doubles the facility’s surface area and its per-year passenger capacity. (Nacho Ruiz/Cuartoscuro.com)
Ciudad Juárez International Airport (CJS) has opened a new terminal to streamline its operations in the latest phase of a major expansion that will continue through 2030, aimed at turning the border city into a key node in international connectivity.
Ricardo Dueñas, general director of Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte (OMA) — the Juárez airport’s operator that has developed 13 airports in Mexico — attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this week along with Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos.
Chihuahua Governor Maru Campos and OMA general director Ricardo Dueñas (to her left) were on hand at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new terminal at the Ciudad Juárez Interntional Airport, also known as the Abraham González International Airport. (Gobierno de Chihuahua)
“Today marks the arrival of a new, modern face for this airport, which contributes to our goal of generating trust, certainty, and competitiveness,” Governor Campos said.
With an investment of 828.4 million pesos (US $44 million), the renovation more than doubles the facility’s surface area from 6,210 square meters to 13,857, and its per-year passenger capacity (from 960,000 to 2.6 million).
The work created over 380 direct jobs as it refurbished the waiting rooms and restrooms, installed new furniture and more air conditioning, created three new boarding gates, improved the baggage handling system, added automatic doors and upgraded the communication and lighting systems.
The renovation also added automatic doors and fire vehicles. An innovative storm drainage system, electrical substations, backup power systems, and a redesigned parking area were also incorporated, in addition to expanding the concourse.
The upgraded airport is expected to strengthen the network of 14 domestic destinations served by airlines such as Viva, Volaris, Aeroméxico, and TAR, in addition to cargo operations with DHL and Aeronaves TSM. The new infrastructure streamlines logistics and supports bilateral trade while boosting tourism and business in the border region.
However, the most ambitious CJS expansion is yet to come. OMA has announced plans to invest approximately $1.1 billion pesos (US $58.9 million) between 2026 and 2030 on further expansion of the terminal to serve 2.9 million passengers and increase accessibility for people with disabilities.
The airport’s renovation is part of OMA and Vinci Airports’ global strategy to develop airports that meet high international standards of safety, efficiency, sustainability and accessibility.
Vinci Airports, a French subsidiary of the Vinci Group, is one of OMA’s largest shareholders. In 2022, Vinci Airports purchased 29.9% of the share capital of OMA. The move allowed Vinci to enter the Mexican market, adding the operation and management of 13 international airports across nine states mostly in the northern and central regions of the country.
