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Street protests in the capital: A timeless feature of life in Mexico
I’m a teacher, I chose to be one. I’m a mom and a daughter. Do you think I would leave what I love the most to come here to fight without a reason?
— Words on a placard affixed to a tarpaulin shelter at the CNTE teachers’ union protest camp in the historic center of Mexico City.
A tent city spreads across the Zócalo, the political and cultural heart of Mexico, and for more than three weeks in May and June the site of a massive teachers’ sit-in. Just off Mexico City’s main square a stench emanates from a row of portable toilets, an olfactory indication of just one of the hardships of extended protest.
A group of young men partially block Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s most famous boulevard, after having traveled almost 1,000 kilometers to the capital from the southern state of Chiapas, where their teachers’ college classmate was allegedly shot dead by state police.
Protest is a constant in Mexico City, the seat of the federal government and thus a focal point for angry, disgruntled and dissatisfied citizens from around the country. As the National Palace — the seat of executive power and now the president’s residence as well — is located opposite the Zócalo, the central square is the most popular place for demonstrations, and many protest marches end there after commencing in other central parts of the capital.
Every day, early in the morning, the Mexico City government publishes a roundup of the protests it knows will take place that day. It often lists 10 or more, but inevitably fails to mention them all.
That’s no surprise given that there are around 3,000 protests and road blockades annually in Mexico City, according to the city government, equating to an average of more than eight organized expressions of disgruntlement every single day of the year. Indeed, protests are as much a part of the fabric of life in the capital as taco stands and traffic-clogged streets.
Of course, marches and street blockades don’t make traffic flow any easier, but rather add to the frustrations of the millions of daily motorists and public transport users in the greater Mexico City area.
The snarling of traffic is just one of the ways that protests disrupt everyday life in the capital.
But given the frequency with which they occur, many residents reluctantly accept them — what else can they do? — as just another unavoidable tax on their time, and in some cases, on their income as well.
One day of protest in Mexico City
On the morning of Friday June 6, I caught the metro into the historic center of Mexico City and walked over to the Zócalo, where thousands of teachers from various states around Mexico had been sleeping in tents since May 15. That Friday turned out to be the final day of the CNTE teachers’ union sit-in, as the many maestros who descended on the central square in May to express their various grievances finally packed up their tents on Saturday June 7 and left, without their demands having been met, but vowing to continue to fight.
I spoke to a number of teachers, who enumerated their complaints, chief among which is their vehement discontent with the 2007 ISSSTE Law, which changed their pension system and will leave them — they say — considerably worse off in retirement. Their anger with President Claudia Sheinbaum — who during the 2024 presidential election campaign pledged on numerous occasions to repeal the 2007 ISSSTE Law — was palpable.
My visit to the teachers’ protest camp came the morning after a group of CNTE members broke into the Mexico City headquarters of the rival SNTE teachers’ union, set a fire alight in the building and carried out other acts of vandalism. During their lengthy stay in Mexico City, some CNTE-affiliated teachers used other violent tactics as they sought to get their message across. On May 21, for example, CNTE members allegedly attacked journalists who were trying to get into the National Palace to attend Sheinbaum’s morning press conference. Earlier this month, a group of teachers vandalized the headquarters of the federal Interior Ministry.
A faction of the CNTE from Guerrero is especially known for being radical. But on June 6, all the teachers I met from that state, and others, were polite, friendly, soft-spoken and even shy in some cases.
They spoke about their concerns that they won’t have enough money in their retirement. They told me about the difficulties they face now to support themselves and their families on monthly salaries of just 5,000 to 7,000 pesos (US $265-$370) after tax and other deductions (including union dues). They complained about their inability to access medical treatments at public healthcare facilities that their ISSSTE health insurance is supposed to cover. And they spoke about their overwhelming disappointment with Sheinbaum, who was supported by teachers — including CNTE members — in large numbers at last year’s presidential election.
All the teachers I spoke to were clear with their convictions and steadfastly committed to their collective cause.
But they did not deny that they had faced a range of challenges camping out in the Zócalo for three weeks during the annual rainy season: smelly and dirty toilets, no ready access to showering facilities, leaky tents, difficulty maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.
A couple from the Montaña region of Guerrero spoke about missing their young children, who they left with relatives to join the Mexico City protest.
Despite the hardships, the protesting CNTE teachers’ union members believe that their struggle is worth it, that they have to stand up for what they know is right. They believe — they know — they have to resist.
Of course, they are not alone in thinking that way — not in Mexico, not in the world. The recent protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles, and the “No Kings” protests on June 14, captured the zeitgeist of millions in the United States, providing one example of discontent about countless issues around the world.
In Mexico City’s central core, disaffection is on display in a variety of ways.
After I left the Zócalo on the first Friday in June, I walked to the Alameda Central, the large public park adjacent to the striking orange and yellow-domed Palace of Fine Arts. Lining the sidewalk at the park’s perimeter were female vendors, their various wares laid out next to or below posters and banners denouncing “economic violence” against women.
On boarding in front of the Benito Juárez Hemicycle — erected to protect the monument from vandalism by passing protesters — art calling for a “stop to the genocide” in Palestine and describing and depicting Donald Trump as a “colonialist, genocidal, coup-plotting pig” was on display. When I got to the intersection of avenues Júarez and Balderas, I saw a protest march approaching — judicial workers calling for a pay rise.
After passing countless protest messages scrawled on walls and the facades of buildings, I reached the intersection of Paseo de la Reforma and Insurgentes Avenue, Mexico City’s longest street. A huge banner accusing Chiapas Governor Eduardo Ramírez of being a “murderer of students” greeted me.
I approached a group of young men and asked them exactly what they were protesting. Their classmate, 22-year-old Jesús Alaín, who had almost completed his studies to become a primary school teacher, was shot dead by state police during a protest in Tuxtla Gutiérrez on May 15, they told me. Have any police officers been arrested? None, they said.
The young normalistas, as students that attend teacher training colleges called Escuelas Normales are known, had been camping at the Paseo de la Reforma-Insurgentes intersection for four days when I spoke to them. They said that authorities hadn’t made any serious attempt to dislodge them, but neither had they granted their requests to discuss the contested circumstances of the alleged murder in Tuxtla.
Unsurprisingly, the still-grieving young men want justice for their deceased classmate and friend, who will never get the opportunity to teach this generation, or any generation, of chiapaneco children as a fully qualified teacher.
In a country with sky-high levels of impunity, clamoring for justice is an unfortunate reality for millions of other Mexicans as well.
A short history of protest in Mexico City
Protest in its various forms — some of them extremely violent — dates back hundreds if not thousands of years. The Peasants’ Revolt in England in the late 14th century. The Evil May Day xenophobic riot in London in 1517. The Boston Tea Party in 1773.
In Mexico, there were Indigenous uprisings during the Spanish colonial period, a riot in Mexico City in 1692 due to food shortages and racial resentment, and a groundswell of discontent that led to a revolt against Spanish rule in the Mexican War of Independence.
In the early 20th century, there was significant unrest as Porfirio Díaz’s already long-running presidency continued. Examples of this included the Cananea strike in Sonora in 1906, in which Mexican copper miners protested against poor working conditions and salaries that were lower than those received by their American colleagues, and the Río Blanco textile workers’ strike in Veracruz the following year. There was significant violence linked to both strikes.
A few years later, Díaz’s fraudulent re-election in 1910 was the catalyst for the commencement of the Mexican Revolution.
In the second half of the 20th century, student protesters were violently repressed — and killed — by government forces controlled by the-then ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
On October 2, 1968, just 10 days before the start of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the military opened fire on student protesters in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco neighborhood of the capital, killing hundreds.
Less than three years later, another state-sponsored massacre of student demonstrators occurred in Mexico City. Known as “El Halconazo” (The Hawk Strike), as it was perpetrated by a government-trained paramilitary group called Los Halcones, the massacre claimed the lives of scores of students on June 10, 1971. It is briefly depicted in the award-winning 2018 film Roma.
Both the Tlatelolco massacre and El Halconazo (also known as the Corpus Christi massacre) are considered part of the Mexican Dirty War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s in which successive PRI governments violently repressed left-wing student and guerrilla groups.
During this period, students and many other Mexicans participated in countless demonstrations against PRI authoritarianism. The students who participated in the 1968 protests had a range of demands, including the release of political prisoners and compensation for victims of police brutality and other state-sponsored repression. A march from Tlatelolco to the Zócalo commemorating those who lost their lives in 1968 takes place annually on Oct. 2.
In the first quarter of the 21st century, protest has remained a major facet of life in Mexico City.
Perhaps the most prominent protest movement of the first decade of the century was that led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) after his defeat at what he claimed was a fraudulent presidential election in 2006. AMLO led huge rallies in the Zócalo after the election won by Felipe Calderón, and set up a protest camp that extended kilometers down Paseo de la Reforma and remained in place for almost seven weeks.
He even had himself sworn in as Mexico’s “legitimate president” during a ceremony in the Zócalo in November 2006.
“The losing leftist candidate for president swore himself in on Monday as ‘the legitimate president of Mexico’ before a huge crowd of his avid fans, ignoring rulings by federal electoral authorities and the courts that he narrowly lost the election last July,” The New York Times reported at the time.
The following decade, massive protests broke out in Mexico City, and other parts of the country, after the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, on Sept. 26, 2014.
Hundreds of thousands of people descended on the historic center of the capital during a series of protest marches in late 2014 that called for the ouster of then-president Enrique Peña Nieto. “Fue el estado” (It was the state) and “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos” (They were taken alive, we want them back alive) became national catchphrases. In the almost 11 years since the 43 young men disappeared, large numbers of Mexicans, including the parents of the abducted and presumably murdered students, have continued to protest, including on the 10th anniversary of the still unresolved crime.
Among the other large protests that have taken place in Mexico City in recent years are ones led by Mexico’s madres buscadoras, or searching mothers; marches every year on International Women’s Day; an anti-AMLO camp in the Zócalo; and demonstrations in defense of the National Electoral Institute.
While most protests are peaceful, some are marred by violence, usually perpetrated by a minority of protesters. Some protesters use very different techniques to attract attention to their cause, such as farmers from Veracruz who, in years gone by, bared (almost) all on numerous occasions while in Mexico City.
While Mexico City draws protesters from around the country, there are also a lot of smaller protests revolving around local issues in the capital, as is the case with residents of the Benito Juárez borough fighting to save a 115-year-old laurel tree known as “Laureano.”
All protests, whether big or small, are guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution, which states that “the right to peacefully associate or assemble for any licit purpose cannot be restricted.”
It also states that “only citizens of the Republic may take part in the political affairs of the country,” meaning that foreigners are officially barred from participating in political protests.
Of course many of the protests in Mexico City and elsewhere fail to achieve their aims. The CNTE teachers haven’t yet gotten what they want. No one has been convicted of involvement in the abduction and murder of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Peña Nieto wasn’t forced out of office before the completion of his six-year term.
But even so, to protest is to do something; to not accept the status quo; to defy a feeling of helplessness; to demonstrate opposition; to resist.
In the words of Martin Luther King: “Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
Permanent protest: Mexico City’s ‘anti-monuments’
Whether as sit-ins, hunger strikes, marches or the signing of petitions — to name just four — protest, as noted above, comes in various forms.
In Mexico City, there is a form of permanent, defiant and (almost) unmovable protest as well: the “anti-monument.”
There are a number of these antimonumentos — essentially sculptures of various kinds — in the capital, most prominently on Paseo de la Reforma.
An anti-monument calling for justice for the 43 abducted students. An anti-monument denouncing the 1971 “Halconazo.” An anti-monument inscribed with the message “No more femicides.” And various others.
The Mexico City anti-monuments “aren’t just a protest,” The Washington Post reported in 2024.
“Mexico’s leaders have long tried to control the historical narrative to legitimize their rule — from the Mexican-American War of the 1840s to the Revolution starting in 1910. Now, a movement of artists, grieving families and feminists is trying to wrest that narrative away.”
Disruptions and the financial cost of protests
At their heart, protests are about people — their grievances, their demands, their heartbreak, their quest for justice. While authorities are often the primary target of protesters’ frustration and anger, the residents of Mexico City frequently become collateral damage.
Motorists and public transit users, as mentioned above, are among the capital-dwellers who are affected the most.
“What is the most frustrating thing about the traffic,” a Televisa reporter recently asked a taxi driver in Mexico City, a metropolis ranked as the “most congested” city in the world on the 2025 Tom Tom traffic index.
“The marches, when they close [streets],” he responded, adding that traffic congestion at such times becomes “unbearable.”
With their camp at the intersection of Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Insurgentes, the protesting normalistas from Chiapas prevented buses running on Line 1 of the Metrobús system from continuing on their normal route. Much to their annoyance, passengers traveling to the north or south of the city along Line 1 were forced to alight and walk a considerable distance to the next stop on the other side of the protest.
Back in the historic center of the capital, business owners incurred losses of 250 million pesos (US $13 million) due to lost sales during the three weeks of the CNTE teachers sit-in, according to an estimate from the Mexico City chapter of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Canaco).
In a shopping plaza opposite the Zócalo that is filled with jewelry stores, several business owners and employees told me that their sales had declined while the teachers were camping out. They cited drop-offs in sales ranging between 50% and 80%.
The presence of the teachers’ camp is a “great annoyance,” one jewelry store owner told me, explaining that the area around the Zócalo is not such a pleasant place to visit or shop when tents fill the square as well as nearby streets and sidewalks. Tourists hoping to stroll around the large square while taking in nearby sites including the Metropolitan Cathedral and the National Palace were simply unable to do so in the second half of May and early June.
According to Canaco president Vicente Gutiérrez Camposeco, almost 17,000 businesses were affected by the CNTE protest. He explained that restaurants, hotels and stores were among those that suffered during the 23-day period the teachers remained in the Mexico City downtown.
While the CNTE union members no longer occupy the Zócalo, protests in the central square, and indeed all over this sprawling capital city, will in all likelihood remain an ongoing recurrence as long as humans continue to live here.
Being held up by one — as will inevitably happen if you spend any length of time in the capital — is a Mexico City experience every bit as authentic as chowing down on a plate of tacos al pastor, floating through the canals of Xochimilco on a trajinera or watching the lucha libre with thousands of other michelada-guzzling fans.
Text and photographs by Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies (peter.davies@mexiconewsdaily.com)
Money of CIBanco and Intercam clients is ‘absolutely’ safe, officials say: Friday’s mañanera recapped
Mexico’s finance minister attended President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Friday morning press conference to speak about the government’s administrative takeover of three Mexican financial institutions that the United States government this week accused of laundering millions of dollars for drug cartels.
During her Q&A session with reporters, Sheinbaum made the argument that the U.S. government shouldn’t just focus on Mexico in the fight against narcotics, but address issues in its own backyard as well.
The money of CIBanco and Intercam account holders is ‘absolutely’ safe, says finance minister
Early in the press conference, Finance Minister Edgar Amador Zamora spoke about the decision of the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) to decree “temporary managerial interventions” at the Mexican banks CIBanco and Intercam and the Mexican brokerage firm Vector.
The move came after the United States Department of the Treasury accused the three financial institutions of laundering millions of dollars for drug cartels involved in the trafficking of fentanyl and other narcotics to the U.S.
Due to the money laundering concerns, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network prohibited certain transactions between U.S. banks and CIBanco, Intercam and Vector, all of which denied the accusations against them.
Amador said that after the close of financial markets on Wednesday, “it was found that the lines of financing for these three entities had problems.”
“With the aim of avoiding this situation and in a preventive way, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, the Bank of Mexico, the Institute for the Protection of Bank Savings and the National Banking and Securities Commission decided to carry out a temporary intervention in the management of these institutions,” he said.
The aim, Amador clarified, was to “ensure there were no interruptions in the banking system and to look after, in a preventive way as well, the savings of the clients of these institutions.”
“The Mexican banking system hasn’t experienced any interruption, it’s operating normally and it remains one of the strongest internationally,” the finance minister said.
“… The exchange rate has remained stable, in a range between 18.85 [pesos to the US dollar] and 18.95,” he added.
Amador said that the managerial interventions at the three financial institutions “provide certainty to savers and investors.”
Later in the press conference, a reporter asked the finance minister what it means to have “problems in the lines of financing.”
“Banks, like any business, also need lines of financing. There were some problems in the lines of financing for these financial institutions,” Amador said without going into further detail.
The three financial institutions’ capacity to access credit was presumably diminished as a result of the United States’ government accusing them of money laundering. On Friday, S&P Global lowered CIBanco’s credit rating.
Amador said that CIBanco, Intercam and Vector together hold less than 1% of “deposits in the banking system” in Mexico.
Nevertheless, “we didn’t want to take risks,” he said.
“The important thing is to protect savers, protect the integrity of the financial system,” Amador said.
Asked whether the money of account holders is safe, the finance minister responded, “Absolutely.”
Mexican government takes control of two Mexican banks facing US sanctions
Asked how long the managerial interventions would last, Amador responded:
“It’s a temporary intervention, only managerial, … to ensure that all liquidity conditions function normally. And we’re going to be assessing [the situation] and at the time it is considered appropriate to restore the original conditions, we’ll do so. But there is not a defined period.”
Amador said there would be no additional temporary government takeovers of Mexican financial institutions.
“They’re the only ones. And [this is] very important: It’s a very small scale,” he said before reiterating that CIBanco, Intercam and Vector hold less than 1% of deposits in Mexico.
Sheinbaum: ‘The issue is that the greatest demand for drugs is in the United States’
A reporter asked the president whether she considered the United States “measures” against CIBanco, Intercam and Vector — including the ban on U.S. banks completing transactions with them — were “fair.”
“For example,” the reporter continued, “United States banks that confessed in recent years that they have links to money laundering only received reprimands or fines from the United States government.”
Sheinbaum — who on Thursday said that the Treasury Department hadn’t provided any proof that CIBanco, Intercam and Vector were involved in money laundering — said that her government has raised the issue of fairness with relation to sanctions with the U.S. government.
“There is this idea that that problem of drug trafficking is an issue for Mexico,” she added.
“Of course we have to attend to what corresponds to us, and we are doing that, but the issue is that the greatest demand for drugs is in the United States,” Sheinbaum said.
She said that the United States shouldn’t just respond to the drug problem “with security measures” (such as by deploying troops to the U.S.-Mexico border), but also by “attending to young people and the people who have addictions.”
The United States needs to stop “more people from turning to drugs,” Sheinbaum said.
“… Drugs are sold on the other side [of the border]. Where is fentanyl sold? In the United States, in the cities of the United States,” she said.
The United States “also has the obligation to investigate and the obligation to stop the … weapons that come to Mexico from the United States. … It’s a reciprocal issue. It’s not just about the Department of the Treasury investigating banks in Mexico, but also about what’s happening there, what’s happening in the United States, and they are obliged to investigate,” Sheinbaum said.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies (peter.davies@mexiconewsdaily.com)
Mexican open-water swimmer David Olvera sets world record for fastest lap around Manhattan Island
Mexican open-water swimmer David Olvera has completed a swim around Manhattan Island in 5 hours, 34 minutes and 58 seconds — an unofficial world record that would surpass the previous mark by nearly seven minutes.
Olvera, 31, from Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosí, finished the 48.5-kilometer (30.1-mile) course Thursday morning, according to New York Open Water, a nonprofit that provides safety, support and funding for open-water swimming and kayaking events and competitions.
“Huge congratulations to David Olvera 🇲🇽, who powered through the night to set a new Manhattan 20 Bridges record!” New York Open Water posted on Facebook. “David crushed the previous mark of 5:41:48, touching the finish in an unofficial 5:34:58 — nearly seven minutes faster! What a fast and phenomenal swim.”
The swim is nicknamed “20 Bridges” for the number of bridges it goes under; not surprisingly, a double loop around Manhattan is called “40 Bridges.”
And, as Facebook user Alex Arevalo trumpeted in a comment on the N.Y. Open Water post, “Now both the 20B and the 40B records reside in México!”
Indeed, the “Fastest double circumnavigation swim around Manhattan Island” — at least the one certified by Guinness World Records — was set by Mexican Jaime Lomelín Gavaldón on July 5, 2023 …. at age 60! His time was 19 hours, 25 minutes and 1 second.
Olvera’s 20 Bridges swim this week broke the previous record set by Andrew Donaldson of the United Kingdom on Sept. 19, 2024.
Though Donaldson’s record is recognized by Guinness, the record-keeper has yet to ratify Olvera’s time. However, Rondi Davies, president of N.Y. Open Water, wrote in an email that it’s fully expected that Olvera’s time “will be accepted and published” by Guinness World Records.
In a post on Facebook, Donaldson referred to Olvera’s swim as “a thrilling one to follow” and “blisteringly quick.”
“Huge congrats David and your team on an outstanding performance,” he added. “A truly inspiring swim.”
The route around Manhattan Island is considered one of the world’s most challenging urban open water swims, with competitors contending with cold temperatures and strong currents.
Olvera said his preparation included 14-hour continuous swims in a pool and 10-hour sessions against the current in Mexico’s Huasteca Potosina region, an area in the state of San Luis Potosí known for its lush jungles, turquoise waterfalls, rivers, caves and canyons.
View this post on Instagram
In a post on Instagram after setting the record, Olvera wrote in Spanish: “All week I felt something different inside me. A calm, a deep instinct … as if I already knew that the only thing I could control, I had already done.
“After so many failed attempts, I finally did it. I hope you can feel the happiness that floods me right now. I’m a boy from a small town. For years, my mind was my worst enemy. It took me a long time to grow, to change, to create that unbreakable mindset. But I did it.”
Olvera has over 15 years of experience as a high-performance swimmer and used to work as an advanced instructor for Wim Hof Method, a wellness technique/breathing method.
He said his next goal is to swim from Isla Mujeres to Cozumel, a distance of approximately 83 kilometers (51.6 miles).
With reports from La Jornada, TresPM and LatinUS
Rare coral, sea stars and a jaguar: What the contents of a Templo Mayor altar tell us about Mexico’s past
This week, the Templo Mayor Project (PTM) provided an update on its latest significant archaeological exploration, an altar offering featuring nearly 20,000 items, including a jaguar adorned with copper bells.
Archaeologist Leonardo López Luján — the director of the project — provided details of the exploration of Ofrenda 178, one of a series of offerings believed to be dedicated to Huitzilopotchli, the Aztecs’ most important deity.
Ofrenda 178 — first discovered in 2018 among 221 offerings stretching across the axis mundi of the Aztecs’ capital city — has yielded 19,700 items since exploration began in 2019. The axis mundi is a concept representing the central point of connection between the heavens, the earthly realm and the underworld.
López Luján said the offering stands out for its richness and diversity, featuring elements from several different regions of Mesoamerica, including items from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of the Pacific.
“We have collected more than 400 coral fronds taken from the Pacific, perhaps from the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula, as well as 200 starfish, 95% of which are chocolate chip stars (Nidorellia armata),” López Luján said.
Also significant is the opportunity to observe the Aztec predilection for spatial organization and its symbolism.
López Luján said the jaguar was likely captured and kept in the vivarium of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin — who ruled as tlatoani from 1502 to 1520 in what is now Mexico City — until it was selected for sacrifice.
This is the third jaguar found at the Templo Mayor complex, including one dressed as a warrior and placed alongside an atlatl (a spear-throwing device that predates the bow and arrow), as reported by the newspaper El País in 2022.
The jaguar specimen at Ofrenda 178 was surrounded by a large variety of shells, the smallest deposited underneath like a bed. The jaguar was also accompanied by snails, which must have been collected alive because the periostracum (the outer layer of the shell) was preserved.
“All the marine elements must have arrived in pots with seawater to try to preserve them, just as they kept the feline alive until the moment of the grand ceremony,” said PTM archaeologist Miguel Baez.
Another fascinating aspect of the dig, Baez said, has been uncovering samples of an ancient biodiversity that has since been devastated.
“The corals we found, species of gorgonians of the genus Pacifigorgonia, currently proliferate in Nicaragua, but have disappeared from the coasts of Mexico,” he said, adding that the same is true for the four pufferfish that were found.
Baez admitted that it is not clear what contributed to the demise of these species and the loss of large mammal species from Mesoamerican ecosystems.
“These species no longer exist, at least not in the dimensions [found at Ofrenda 178],” he said.
Ofrenda 178 is located beneath the floor of a round structure known as Cuauhxicalco alongside the principal pyramid the Templo Mayor complex in Mexico City’s Historic Center.
Three Aztec political leaders known as tlatoanis — Axayácatl, Tízoc y Ahuítzotl — were interred within Cuauhxicalco, identified by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) as a ritual platform within the complex.
With reports from El Sol de México and Infobae
Mexico rolls out tax incentives for 15 economic development hubs, aiming to create 300,000 jobs
President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday signed agreements with 14 governors to establish the first 15 Economic Development Hubs for Well-being (Podecobis), a key facet of the government’s flagship Plan México policy. She also announced substantial tax incentives and plans for infrastructure projects to support hub development.
“Plan México is advancing; there is a lot of coordination and unity in our country with governors helping move Mexico forward,” Sheinbaum said, according to a press release.
Plan México is an ambitious economic plan whose goals include making Mexico the 10th largest economy in the world, reducing reliance on imports from China and other Asian countries and creating 1.5 million new jobs.
During the signing ceremony, Sheinbaum said letters of intent signed by state governors demonstrate broad support across the country, adding that her administration’s initial goal is to build the infrastructure and industrial parks necessary to get the Podecobis, or hubs, up and running quickly.
“One of Plan México’s central pillars to strengthen domestic and foreign investment is to organize investment into clusters … of development, primarily industrial, but also services and tourism,” Sheinbaum said. “These development hubs will attract investment from manufacturing and service companies, while also stimulating the construction of housing, schools and hospitals.”
The promotion of these hubs aims to prevent disorganized development processes that leave sources of employment far from the places where workers live, Sheinbaum said, while urging the governors to swiftly get through the red tape necessary to establish the hubs.
Los primeros 15 Polos de Desarrollo Económico para el Bienestar del Plan México permiten desarrollar industria, servicios y turismo, a través de inversión nacional y extranjera. Lo más importante es garantizar empleo, vivienda, escuelas y hospitales en todas las regiones. Es… pic.twitter.com/LQSsak5uNY
— Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (@Claudiashein) June 27, 2025
The sites of the initial 15 hubs are: Seybaplaya, Campeche; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Durango city, Durango; Nezahualcóyotl, México state; Celaya, Guanajuato; Morelia, Michoacán; Ciudad Modelo, Puebla; Chetumal, Quintana Roo; Topolobampo, Sinaloa; Altamira, Tamaulipas; Huamantla, Tlaxcala; Tuxpan, Veracruz; Hermosillo, Sonora; an area stretching from the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in México state to Tizayuca, Hidalgo; and, the area known as the Circular Economy of Hidalgo (near the city of Tula).
Governors of the corresponding states — including 11 members of the ruling Morena party, two from the National Action Party (PAN) and one from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) — signed a letter of intent, demonstrating their support for the project.
Sheinbaum said this is just the first phase of the Podecobis program. “We will continue working with other states and their governors in regions that are equally important (to Mexico’s development),” she said.
Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the priority of the hubs is to concentrate the efforts of federal and state authorities to boost economic activity and promote shared prosperity. The government expects the 15 hubs to create roughly 300,000 jobs.
The hubs aim to foster territorial development throughout the country, link productive processes, support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and increase national content. The hubs also aspire to meet the environmental, natural resource, energy and infrastructure requirements found in different parts of the country.
The strategy is implemented geographically through economic development corridors within which the hubs are concentrated. These regional corridors are designed to attract investment aligned with local strengths, while the hubs are defined areas where the government offers tax incentives to facilitate industrial growth. These initiatives are aimed at key sectors including automotive, aeronautics and pharmaceuticals.
The incentives for investing in the Podecobis, Ebrard explained, include a 100% immediate deduction on investment in new fixed assets, a 25% deduction for training programs and an additional 25% deduction for supporting research and development initiatives.
Ebrard said the initiatives are aimed at key sectors including automotive, aeronautics, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, consumer goods, electronics and semiconductors, energy, chemicals and petrochemicals, textiles, footwear and the circular economy.
With reports from El Economista, Eje Central and El Universal
No more blackouts in Yucatán? The governor has a plan
The Yucatán state government is working with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) on an ambitious energy infrastructure and modernization plan that seeks to eliminate by 2027 the blackouts that have been recurring over the last five years and to achieve energy self-sufficiency by the end of the current administration in 2030.
“Yucatán is facing a complex energy situation, especially during this season of extreme heat,” Yucatán Governor Joaquín Díaz Mena said at a recent press conference held jointly with CFE officials. He added that the service failures are a result of decades of neglect and a lack of planning in the development and maintenance of the electrical infrastructure, as previously the work was concentrated solely in Mérida.
The National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (Canacintra) agrees, noting that the entire Yucatán Peninsula’s electrical infrastructure is insufficient to meet growing residential, industrial, and tourist demand.
In March, the CFE announced that it would invest US $2.5 billion to develop five new power plants across Mexico. The new self-sufficiency plan for Yucatán state includes the construction of two combined-cycle plants: one located in Mérida (Mérida IV) and the other in Valladolid. These plants will run mostly on natural gas and are designed to increase by 92.16% the electricity generation capacity on the peninsula.
The announced plan also includes a natural gas pipeline dubbed Cuxtal II, which is under construction. According to CFE head Emilia Calleja Alor, the pipeline will optimize electricity generation and distribution throughout the Yucatan Peninsula. Once the pipeline starts operations, the Valladolid plant will be integrated into the Mérida IV plan, Calleja explained.
Officials expect the Mérida IV plan to begin operations in October this year, while the Valladolid one is expected to start by mid-2027.
Canacintra emphasizes that while planned and implemented projects to increase electricity supply are needed, the frequent service interruptions have been more due to the deficient transmission and distribution networks.
To that end, the CFE has also said that this year 145 transmission projects will begin operations to relieve congestion, transport energy more efficiently, prevent overloads and improve voltage control.
“All of this has a clear objective: that by the end of the six-year term, Yucatán will be self-sufficient in electricity generation,” Governor Díaz said, referring to the measures being taken in his state.
Power outages are not exclusive to Yucatán. Last May, the Yucatán Times reported that power outages occurred in at least 21 of the country’s 32 entities, leading the National Energy Control Center (Cenace) to declare a state of emergency in the nation’s electricity system on more than three occasions.
With reports from La Jornada Maya, Posta, El Universal and Estamos Aquí
Central bank cuts interest rate to lowest point in nearly 3 years
Mexico’s central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points in a split vote on Thursday, while leaving the door open for further cuts.
The decision by the Bank of Mexico, or Banxico, was largely expected and is the fourth straight half-point reduction, bringing the rate to 8.0%, its lowest level in nearly three years.
Interest rates in Mexico
The five-member board of governors voted 4-1 to cut the overnight interest-rate, with Deputy Gov. Jonathan Heath, the sole dissenter, voting to hold the rate at its previous 8.5% level.
The Mexican peso gained just over 0.2% against the dollar following the central bank’s decision, Reuters reported.
Heath, who agreed with the rate cuts in earlier decisions, told Reuters he supported a “more cautious, more prudent” approach until inflation resumed a clear downward trajectory.
Annual headline inflation in Mexico, Latin America’s second-biggest economy, has risen in recent months, surpassing the central bank’s target range in May. It cooled slightly in the first half of June, hitting 4.51%, still well above the central bank’s target range of 3%.
In its statement on Thursday, Banxico raised its forecast for year-end average headline inflation to 3.7% from the 3.3% it forecast in May, while reiterating its estimate that inflation will converge to 3% in the third quarter of 2026.
“Looking ahead, the board will assess further adjustments to the reference rate,” the central bank said, declining to specify that future half-point cuts were possible.
The bank noted moderate economic activity growth in April, but said uncertainty remains with trade tensions posing “significant downward risks.”
According to Reuters, Banxico is balancing dual challenges: “It is seeking to bring down inflation while also stimulating the economy amid weak economic growth and uncertainty tied to trade tensions and geopolitical developments.”
Thursday’s decision did not include language found in Banxico’s three most recent monetary policy decisions about considering future cuts of “similar magnitudes.”
“The accompanying communications were slightly less dovish and point to a slower pace of easing going forward,” Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics said in a note, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Reuters reported that Banxico is likely to slow its rate cuts the rest of the year, with private sector analysts projecting that the central bank will end 2025 with a benchmark rate of 7.5%.
With reports from Bloomberg News, El Financiero and Reuters
The day the world ended
Ask any class of seven-year-olds why the dinosaurs became extinct and a dozen voices will shout out the same answer: “It was the asteroid!” The story of a giant rock slamming into the Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs is so well-known that it often comes as a surprise to learn that the impact theory has only become universally accepted during the last couple of decades. It’s a story closely linked to Mexico, but it starts in Denmark and an area of white sea cliffs known as Stevns Klint.
Forty years ago, American geologist Walter Alvarez was drawn to Stevns Klint by a strange geological feature: a dark, unbroken line, about 10 centimeters in width, running through the cliffs. This line is known as fish clay, and while not unique to this site, there is nowhere else on the planet where the feature is so clear and dramatic.
A mysterious line in the fossil record
Fish clay appears just above the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, a mysterious point in the geological record approximately 66 million years ago when three-quarters of life on Earth disappears. In the 1980s, it was believed that, although dramatic, this mass extinction would have occurred gradually, and there were numerous proposed causes for it, ranging from disease to climate change to a period of violent volcanic action.
If, however, as Walter Alvarez believed, the change in the fossil record was linked to this mysterious black line, that would leave two likely possibilities for the extinction: Volcanic activity remained a suspect, but Alvarez felt an asteroid strike offered a better explanation. There was a relatively easy way to find out, and an analysis of the fish clay brought an exciting result. The clay was extremely rich in iridium, an element that is exceedingly rare on Earth but abundant in asteroids and comets. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, Alvarez concluded, must have been caused by an asteroid striking Earth.
In 1980, Science magazine published Alvarez’s paper, “Extraterrestrial cause of the cretaceous-tertiary extinction.” While not proving decisively that the mysterious line in the fossil record was evidence of an asteroid strike or that this strike had been the cause of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, it opened this possibility up to more serious scientific discussion.
Since the 1960s, scientists had understood the significance of shocked quartz in identifying meteorite impact sites. Put simply, shocked quartz has undergone intense pressure, changing the rock inside. This change does not occur during volcanic action and was first observed in the aftermath of nuclear explosions. In follow-up work to his 1980 paper, Alvarez found shocked quartz crystals and other telltale signs linking the Stevns Klint fish clay to an asteroid impact.
Then, in the late 1980s, researchers in Texas published a study of a giant tsunami around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary event. While this could have been the result of an earthquake, the scale of the event pointed to something more violent. The mystery fish clay that Walter Alvarez had studied in Italy and Denmark was also found in New Zealand and the North Pacific, suggesting that whatever event produced it had been truly global.
Hunting for a crater
The argument was slowly moving toward an asteroid strike, but many scientists would not be convinced until the impact site could be identified. This was proving difficult: Earth’s atmosphere protects us from many smaller objects, while any craters that do form are usually worn away by the climate and covered over by flora. It is usually only in desert areas that craters remain relatively untouched, and a crater, even one big enough to cover the entire earth in dust, might not be easy to find after 66 million years.
Ironically, the crater had already been located. It was just that nobody had taken any notice.
In the late 1970s, American geophysicist Glen Penfield was employed by Pemex, searching for promising oil drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico. His team’s aerial survey identified a mysterious half-circle of magnetic disturbance, half on land — where it seemed to center on the Yucatán village of Chicxulub — and half under the sea, 120 miles in diameter.
This strange feature had already been noted but was marked on geological maps as an ancient volcano. Penfield, who had studied volcanoes at university, felt that was unlikely: He believed that the ring was an impact crater. His colleague, Yucatecan geophysicist Antonio Camargo, agreed. To their frustration, however, the core samples that Pemex had collected from the region over the years — which might contain the geological evidence to both confirm his asteroid theory and put a date to it —had been lost in a storage fire.
Despite the lack of a smoking gun to prove their hypothesis, Penfield and Camargo went ahead and presented their findings at the 1981 Society of Exploration Geophysicists conference. The result was disappointing: The conference was poorly attended, and Penfield gave his speech to a nearly empty room. There was some coverage in the press but also some critical peer reviews, and the report was forgotten for a decade.
The missing piece of the puzzle
It was the Canadian scientist Alan Hildebrand, at the time a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona, who reopened the asteroid debate. In 1990, he traveled to Haiti, where a local professor had reported the discovery of what he believed to be the remains of a very ancient volcano. When Hildebrand and his colleagues examined the site, they found signs — including shocked quartz — that convinced the team they were seeing the debris from an asteroid strike.
The thickness of the layer of debris in Haiti suggested that this had been a major event, and that they were close to the impact point. As Hildebrand carried out his background research, he came across Penfield and Camargo’s neglected 1981 study, and the three men started to collaborate. Between them, they could put forward a convincing argument.
It was widely accepted that the Earth had undergone a traumatic extinction event around 66 million years ago. With the evidence found in Mexico and Haiti, there was now a convincing argument that a large extraterrestrial impact had occurred around the Gulf of Mexico. However, there was still no irrefutable evidence linking the Gulf crater to the mass extinction, and naysayers pointed out that the two events might have occurred millions of years apart.
The team needed those core samples from the Chicxulub crater, but drilling for new ones was way beyond any university budget. Then, in 1991, they got lucky, discovering that a few core samples had survived. This story is surrounded in mystery, but the samples had probably sat for years in a closet at the University of New Orleans. Once these surviving samples had been located, they not only yielded evidence of an asteroid strike but also allowed scientists to put a date to this event. The signs of a strike were clustered at exactly the right time: 66 million years ago, right on the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary event.
The impact theory today
Initially controversial, Walter Alvarez’s impact hypothesis became widely accepted and known over the following decades. In March of 2010, Science brought together an international panel of experts in geology, paleontology and related fields. The scientists reviewed decades of scientific literature and reached a consensus: The extinction event of 66 million years ago had been sudden and violent, and volcanoes were not to blame. As any seven-year-old can tell us today, the dinosaurs had been doomed by a large object hurtling in from outer space and striking the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientific attention returned to the Chicxulub crater in 2016, when money was found for a drilling expedition. Working off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, the team extracted core samples from ground zero, bringing up rocks from 670 meters beneath the seafloor. As scientists studied this new resource, a clearer picture of that day began to emerge. The major finding has been that the impact deformed the surrounding rocks, making them more porous and less dense, creating a nutrient-rich home for simple organisms. The ironic result was that the center of the devastation quickly became a sanctuary for microbes and plankton. This might have important implications for finding life on other planets and moons, where similar impacts have been observed.
There have also been developments in identifying the nature of the asteroid. A study analyzing the chemical signatures of rocks from the end of the Cretaceous period suggests that the Chicxulub asteroid was a carbonaceous chondrite, a class of meteorite that formed billions of years ago in the early solar system and now found in deep space, far beyond Jupiter. No doubt other discoveries await us in the years ahead as we continue to build our picture of the day death and destruction came to the shores of ancient Mexico.
The tiny town of Chicxulub Pueblo has been identified as being at the center of the ancient impact site. There is little to see and the village of 4,000 people attracts few tourists, but tourism related to the Chicxulub impact does exist in the region. The ring of cenotes, or natural sinkholes in limestone bedrock, which can be found all over the Yucatán Peninsula are popular with tourists and may have been created by the impact, though this is debated. The Chicxulub Science Museum is close to Mérida and has exhibit halls on the Solar System, the Chicxulub impact and mass extinctions. The Museo del Meteorito, dedicated specifically to the impact, opened in Progreso in 2022, with museography by the director of Coahuila’s acclaimed Museo del Desierto.
Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.
