Guerra — who has swum the English Channel, the nine bays of Huatulco, Oaxaca, and, last month, the Strait of Gibraltar — will swim 48 kilometers around Manhattan on Saturday, part of a project to prove women over 50 can stay physically fit. (Patricia Guerra/Twitter)
Mexican swimmer Patricia Guerra plans to swim 48 kilometers around Manhattan on Saturday, a month after breaking the women’s world record for swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco.
The 51-year-old athlete flew to New York on Wednesday to prepare for her latest challenge, which she aims to complete in under nine hours.
Guerra, 51, is a former triathlete who eventually shifted to taking on ocean-swimming challenges, starting with the English Channel in 2004. (Patricia Guerra/Twitter)
“The idea is to go around the 20 bridges on the island; in some sections there will be a favorable current, and thanks to that I will be able to swim at a speed of up to 6 km/h,” she told reporters.
“I will concentrate more on time than distance. It will be the way my head will deal with those 48 kilometers; do not pay attention to the distance.”
On July 8, Guerra swam the Strait of Gibraltar from Tarifa, Spain, to Tangier, Morocco, with a time of 2:43:04, beating the previous women’s record set by 21-year-old Nathalie Pohl in 2016.
Both swims are part of her 50 + 1: 2023 project, which aims to show that women over 50 do not have to lose their physical fitness.
Guerra, left, also is a philanthropist who founded her own foundation to support cancer-prevention and nutritional programs in disadvantaged sectors of Mexico. (Bernandino Hernández/Cuartoscuro)
“If you have hormonal and physical monitoring, you can continue chasing your dreams,” she said before taking on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Guerra is a former triathlete who has completed many strenuous open-water swims in her career, including the English Channel in 2004 and the nine bays of Huatulco, Oaxaca, in the Mexican Pacific, in 2006.
In 2007, she sustained multiple fractures after she was struck by a whale in southern Chile’s Strait of Magellan but still returned to competitive swimming.
She is also a dedicated philanthropist, who has supported numerous cancer-prevention and nutritional programs in disadvantaged sectors of Mexico through her Patricia Guerra Foundation.
An epidemiological report by the Health Ministry revealed there to be 300 cases of leprosy in Mexico nationwide. There are 12 municipalities in seven states with more than one leprosy case per 10,000 residents.
Three hundred people across 28 states are currently being treated for leprosy, the federal Health Ministry reported Tuesday.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s Disease, is a contagious infection caused by slow-growing bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae.
Leprosy is caused by a fungal bacteria. The disease is contagious but requires prolonged close contact to spread. (Department of Pathology, Calicut Medical College/Wikimedia Commons)
The Health Ministry said in an epidemiological report that leprosy cases have been registered in all states except Tlaxcala, Baja California, Chiapas and Sonora. Authorities in the final three states haven’t provided any information about the incidence of the disease, the ministry said.
It also said there are 12 municipalities in seven states with more than one leprosy case per 10,000 residents. The so-called “priority municipalities for leprosy” are:
Tuxcacuesco, San Sebastián del Oeste and San Cristóbal de la Barranca in Jalisco.
Nocupétaro and Nuevo Urecho in Michoacán.
Tlaltizapan in Morelos.
Lampazos in Nuevo León.
El Espinal, Santiago Niltepec and San Miguel Chimalapa in Oaxaca.
Choix in Sinaloa.
Tunkas in Yucatán.
The Health Ministry said that “intervention in these municipalities aimed at interrupting the chain of transmission” must be prioritized.
Illustration of leprosy-infected cells. Overall, leprosy in Mexico has been trending downward, declining 98% between 1989 and 2022, according to Mexico’s Health Ministry. (Wellcome/CC BY 4.0)
It said that 234 of the 300 cases are multibacillary leprosy, meaning that patients have various lesions on their skin, while the remaining 66 cases are paucibacillary leprosy, meaning that patients have just one or a few lesions.
According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “prolonged, close contact with someone with untreated Hansen’s disease over many months is needed to become infected.”
“… Leprosy can be cured with antibiotic treatment. Once someone starts treatment for Hansen’s disease, they can no longer spread the disease to other people,” the CDC said.
“… Leprosy was once feared as a highly contagious and devastating disease, but now we know it doesn’t spread easily and treatment is very effective. However, if left untreated, the nerve damage can result in crippling of hands and feet, paralysis, and blindness.”
Leprosy cases in Mexico declined 98% between 1989 and 2022, the Health Ministry said, adding that the country remains in the process of eliminating the disease as a public health problem.
Over 16,000 cases were reported in each of the four years between 1989 and 1992 before the incidence of leprosy declined significantly in the later years of the 1990s. Case numbers dropped below 1,000 in 2004 and have remained below that level since then. There were 618 cases across 24 states at the end of last year, the Health Ministry said.
Health Ministry official Fátima Luna and academic Patricia Guadarrama, both quoted in an El País newspaper report, say that leprosy is sometimes not diagnosed in a timely manner in Mexico. The lack of timely diagnosis allows the disease to continue spreading, especially among people who live together.
The CDC said earlier this week that there were 159 leprosy cases in the United States in 2020, the most recent year for which data was studied. Almost 70% of those cases were reported in the states of Florida, California, Louisiana, Hawaii, New York and Texas.
One of the bodies was found tangled in a buoy wall built by the Texas government to prevent migrants from crossing the Rio Grande as a way of illegally entering the U.S. via Eagle Pass, Texas. (Voice of Europe)
Two bodies have been found floating in the Río Grande on the United States border, including one that was caught in a barrier of buoys installed last month on the orders of Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
In astatement on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry (SRE) said that Mexican authorities are working to recover and identify the bodies, presumed to be migrants who were trying to cross to the United States.
The SRE also condemned the 305-meter-long buoy barrier, which was installed in July near Eagle Pass and is intended to make it more difficult for migrants to swim across.
“We reiterate the position of the Government of Mexico that the placement of chained buoys by Texas authorities is a violation of our sovereignty,” the SRE said. “We express our concern about the impact on the human rights and personal safety of migrants of these state policies, which run counter to the close collaboration between our country and the United States federal government.”
The buoy wall installed in the Rio Grande by the government of Texas.
The discovery of the bodies comes just days after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit demanding that Texas remove the floating barrier, due to humanitarian and environmental concerns.
However, U.S. authorities stressed that the cause of the recent deaths is unclear. Only one of the bodies was found caught in the buoys, while the other was discovered about five miles upstream. Migrants drown frequently in the Rio Grande, and it is unknown whether these two deaths were connected.
“Preliminary information suggests that this individual [found caught in the buoys] drowned upstream of the sea barrier and floated toward the buoys,” said Steve McCraw, director of the Department of Public Safety. “There are personnel stationed at the sea barrier at all times in case any migrants try to cross.”
The floating barrier is the latest attempt by Texas to reinforce the border, which has also included erecting wire fences and prosecuting migrants for trespass. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously denounced the barrier as a “propaganda act of the Governor of Texas” and demanded it be removed.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott. (Wikimedia Commons)
At his Thursday morning press conference, AMLO reiterated his criticism of Governor Greg Abbott. “He shouldn’t act like that, it’s inhumane,” AMLO said. “Nobody should be treated like that, that’s not what good people do.”
AMLO insisted that irregular migration had already dropped by as much as 50% between May and June, before the installation of the buoys. He attributed this to the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era immigration policy that allowed the U.S. to immediately expel asylum seekers to Mexico on public health grounds.
Since Title 42 ended on May 12, Mexican and U.S. authorities have reached new agreements to offer more legal pathways for asylum seekers trying to reach the U.S. and to expand development programs in Central America and the Caribbean.
“We can’t resolve the migration problem, which has social roots, with coercive measures,” AMLO said. “Nothing is fixed by militarizing the border, installing buoys or walls.”
Mushrooms are a central ingredient on the menu at Huitzil, a restaurant in the mushroom town of San José, Oaxaca. Its owner founded the region's famous Wild Mushroom Festival. (Photos by Anna Bruce)
July to October is the season for mushrooms in the mountains of Oaxaca. Days are humid as clouds build up to an afternoon of rain. But despite the weather, people arrive at this time of the year to explore and to forage for mushrooms in the state’s cloud forest, located just a few hours from Oaxaca City.
And on the first weekend of August this year, a festival will celebrate mushroom season and the culture in the towns of San José del Pacifico and San Mateo Río Hondo.
In the misty mountains outside Oaxaca city, the rainy season brings all sorts of mushrooms to the region — edible, toxic and hallucinogenic.
“Our main mission in the Wild Mushroom Festival is to meet every year to jointly celebrate the arrival of the rainy season and, with it, the mushrooms,” says one of the festival’s founders, Ariadna Pinacho Cruz, who also runs a beautiful restaurant on the outskirts between San José and San Mateo called Huitzil.
Huitzil pays homage to the area’s mushroom culture: its open-air dining room surrounded by wooded land showcases local mushrooms in beautiful broths, alongside steak and blended with pasta.
Pinacho remembers learning how to forage and identify wild varieties from her father.
“As a child, he used to take me to the forest for a walk to look for mushrooms during the rainstorm,” she says.
Mushrooms are a big part of the culture in the mountains of Oaxaca. Ariadna Pinacho Cruz’s restaurant, Huitzil, reflects that heritage in its menu. Pinacho is also a founder of an annual festival dedicated to the region’s fungi.
The pine trees, mist, rain and mushrooms of the environment here brings “a little piece of the forest to the palate of our diners.”
Pinacho has been running the event since 2020 in collaboration with two partners, Cesar Kevin Pérez Pacheco and Erik Gasgar. The festival consists of a guided walk with local mushroom growers and mycologists. Attendees get a unforgettable encounter with the fungi kingdom and learn how they function in an ecosystem.
The Wild Mushroom Festival’s experts teach the importance of fungi as food and how it fits in with local gastronomy. They also identify the toxic fungi in the region, and discuss mushrooms’ general impact on the health sector and society.
They also teach the importance of the sacred mushrooms from the genus Psilocybe within the culture of San José.
The Oaxaca towns in which these mushrooms are abundant, like San José del Pacifico and San Mateo Río Hondo, are small, rural, tight-knit communities.
For decades, Oaxaca’s mountains have famously been a destination for pilgrims seeking to explore the “magic” properties of mushrooms thanks mainly to American amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson, who traveled to Oaxaca in the 1950s to investigate rumors of a hallucinogenic variety in the region. His article in Life Magazine, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” (1957), about his experiences at a velada (vigil) in the village of Huautla with the Mazatec healer María Sabina, inspired travelers worldwide — including many rock stars and celebrities of the era — to pursue the world of mushrooms.
San José del Pacifico didn’t become known for its mushrooms until the 1970s, when an eclipse drew visitors to this town above the clouds. As with Huautla, there is a tradition of using “magic” mushrooms. Cruz remembers trying them for the first time when she was 14.
“They are very good for curing diseases, healing the mind, spirit, soul, clearing the conscience and many more benefits,” she says. “It is a healing introspection that I do only once a year, every August 22. First I take a temazcal [an indigenous traditional sweat lodge experience], like my dad, to detoxify my body, relax and prepare myself for the medicine.”
“Later it is the taking of the sacred mushrooms in the forest to be able to connect with Mother Earth and have your own healing,” she says.
Anna Bruce is an award-winning British photojournalist based in Oaxaca, Mexico. Just some of the media outlets she has worked with include Vice, The Financial Times, Time Out, Huffington Post, The Times of London, the BBC and Sony TV. Find out more about her work at her website or visit her on social media on Instagram or on Facebook.
In just the last month, Pemex has made the news several times for spills and a deadly fire, as well as downgraded credit ratings from two major ratings agencies: Moody's Analytics and Fitch Ratings. (Moisés Pablo Nava/Cuartoscuro)
July wasn’t a great month for the state-owned oil company Pemex.
Two workers were killed in a fire that broke out on an offshore platform in the Gulf on July 7. Then on July 26, Pemex admitted that oil spilled into the same body of water from an aging underwater pipeline soon afterward. And then last Sunday — the penultimate day of the month — Pemex shut down Mexico’s largest oil-exporting terminal due to a leak, according to a report by the Bloomberg news agency.
An area near Pemex’s Nohoch-A offshore platform in Campeche, which was involved in a fire on July 7, also appears to be the site of an oil spill that Pemex has failed to report, say environmental organizations and academics. (Carlos Álvarez/Twitter)
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Pemex closed the Yúum K’ak’ Náab floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit in the Gulf of Mexico because of a leak in one of its hose trains.
The news agency said it saw the information in a shipping report. Norwegian FPSO operator BW Offshore handed over ownership and operation of the Yúum K’ak’ Náab FPSO unit to Pemex just over a year ago.
The FPSO, located off the coast of Campeche, has storage capacity of 2.2 million barrels, with oil processing capacity of 200,000 barrels per day and gas handling capacity of 120 million cubic feet per day, according to the online business intelligence platform BNamericas.
Bloomberg noted that Pemex also shut its terminal in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, last month “after hoses loading a ship were blown off by strong winds.”
There were also problems at the Salina Cruz refinery, after strong winds interfered with tanker operations.(Presidencia/Cuartoscuro)
The string of mishaps occurred at a time of year when Pemex’s oil sales to the United States usually increase to meet demand generated by the summer vacation period, when many people go on road trips.
Bloomberg reported that the Yúum K’ak’ Náab FPSO vessel and the Salina Cruz terminal were expected to resume operations later this week. Citing a shipping report, the news agency also said that Pemex was reactivating a floating platform at the Cayos Arcas terminal off the Campeche coast on Wednesday.
The activation, Bloomberg said, “is meant to help ease a backlog of seven ships waiting to load 8 million barrels of oil for clients in the U.S., South Korea, China and India.”
Shortages of key drugs have been a serious issue in recent years. (Gobierno de la Ciudad de Mexico/Cuartoscuro)
A warehouse containing “all the medicines of the world” could be the solution to ongoing problems with the supply of pharmaceuticals, President López Obrador said Wednesday.
Speaking at his morning press conference, López Obrador said he would put his proposal to federal health authorities.
President López Obrador said he would put his proposal to stockpile medication to the federal health authorities. (lopezobrador.org.mx)
“We now have supply of over 90% in 14 states where IMSS Bienestar is operating,” he said, referring to the government’s new universal healthcare scheme.
“But to provide a definitive way out from the [medications] shortage, I’m going to propose the creation of a kind of pharmacy — a pharmacy in Mexico City, a warehouse, with all the medicines of the world in reasonable quantities,” López Obrador said.
He said the facility would serve as a “reserve bank of medications” and pledged that it would be in operation before he leaves office on Oct. 1, 2024.
“The idea is to have all the medications so that we never lack any,” López Obrador said, adding that his proposal is to have a permanent inventory of all pharmaceutical drugs including those that are “the most difficult in the world to obtain.”
In 2020, the president said he would create a state-owned company to distribute medications, medical supplies and vaccines, but it was never established. (Nastya Hulhiier/Unsplash)
He didn’t provide an estimate on the cost of creating a national stockpile of pharmaceuticals to supply public hospitals, which have faced shortages of some drugs – such as ones used to treat children with cancer and people with psychiatric disorders – during the term of the current government, which took office in late 2018.
Although López Obrador promised that the well-stocked warehouse will become a reality, if it doesn’t come to fruition it won’t be the first time that one of the president’s health sector proposals fails.
Almost two years ago, López Obrador directed Health Minister Jorge Alcocer and another senior official to resolve the problem of medication shortages “without excuses.”
AMLO’s administration has struggled to have enough of a variety of medications on hand in the country for public health service patients, who can end up waiting weeks and month for crucial medications to be available. Here, parents protest at Mexico City’s airport over a lack of chemotherapy medicines available for their children with cancer. (File foto/Cuartoscuro)
“I don’t want to hear that medications are lacking and I don’t want excuses of any kind. We can’t sleep soundly if there are no medications to treat sick people,” López Obrador said in November 2021.
“We won’t relax while there isn’t a sufficient supply of medications, … free medications, all of them, even those that are hardest to get,” he said.
López Obrador has said on repeated occasions this year that the government has purchased enough medications to cover needs for this year and 2024, but shortages of some drugs have continued to be reported.
The president has blamed shortages on distribution problems and, earlier in his government, corruption in the now-defunct purchasing system used by previous governments.
The government’s new purchasing system and insufficient spending have been cited as factors that have contributed to medication shortages during López Obrador’s presidency.
Mexico's avocado exports to the United States reached over 1 million tonnes in the 12 months to end of June this year. (Fernando Carranza García / Cuartoscuro.com)
Mexico exported a record amount of avocados to the United States in the 12 months to the end of June, according to an organization dedicated to promoting Mexican-grown “green gold,” as the fruit is colloquially known due to its lucrativeness.
Some 1.13 million tonnes, or almost 2.5 billion pounds, of Mexican avocados were shipped to the United States in the year to June 30, according to Avocados from Mexico (AFM), the U.S.-based marketing arm of the Association of Avocado Exporting Producers and Packers of Mexico (APEAM).
Avocados, or “green gold”, have become a major Mexican export. (CDMX/ Wikimedia Commons)
That volume is more than 2% higher than the previous record for a 12-month period between July 1 and June 30.
“This is very exciting for us as we broke our historical record,” AFM president and CEO Álvaro Luque told the U.S.-based publication The Produce News.
“And we believe we will break the record again this year,” he added, referring to the period ending June 30, 2024.
Luque told The Produce News that the crop in Michoacán – Mexico’s largest avocado-producing state – for the coming year appears similar to that of the past year, while export volumes from Jalisco to the United States are growing quickly.
An avocado farm in Michoacán, where the majority of Mexico’s avocados are grown. (Graciela López Herrera / Cuartoscuro.com)
Luque said that setting a new U.S. export record in the 12 months ending next June would be particularly special as AFM is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its foundation.
The record export volume shows that the marketing of AFM – which is well-known for its quirky commercials shown during television coverage of the Super Bowl – has been well received by U.S. consumers, the CEO said.
Luque, a native of Costa Rica, noted that AFM is committed to growing consumption of Mexican avocados in the United States through what he describes as “tentpole moments” – events that trigger an increase of avocado sales in U.S. supermarkets.
Guacamole has become a must-have snack at Superbowl parties in the U.S., causing a spike in avocado consumption every year. (Tessa Rampersad/Unsplash)
The best-known such event is the Super Bowl, which many U.S. residents watch in their homes while snacking on guacamole. Over 250 million pounds (113.4 million kilograms or more than 113,000 tonnes) of Mexican avocados were exported to the U.S. in the weeks leading up to the big match last February, The Produce News Reported.
“The Super Bowl is an incredible step in our success story as a company. It is the largest marketing arena in the United States,” Luque told the website The Costa Rica News last month.
He also said that “guacamole and American football go hand in hand” and noted that Mexican avocados are the only ones available in the U.S. at the start of the year, when the Super Bowl match is played.
Exports of Mexican avocados to the U.S. also spiked in the lead-up to Cinco de Mayo celebrations, with volume up more than 60% over 2022 and 18% over the previous record set in 2021.
Luque said that AFM is undertaking a robust promotion campaign this summer because that’s when production in Jalisco peaks. The organization has previously toned down its promotion in the summer months as export volumes from Mexico typically decline and more product from California and Peru enters the U.S. market.
“The U.S. market is big enough for us and others players,” Luque told The Produce News.
“As the market has grown, we still have had our 85% market share. But I don’t worry about market share. Our goal is to make the pie bigger,” he said.
The federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) noted in a statement on Tuesday that Mexico is the world’s largest avocado producer with 2.54 million tonnes produced in 2022.
A 2022 study by the Texas A & M University found that Haas avocado exports to the United States from Mexico were worth US $4 billion in a 12-month period between 2021 and 2022, up from $2.5 billion two years earlier.
SADER said that 73.1% of Mexico’s avocados were grown in Michoacán last year, while 12.1% were produced in Jalisco and 5% in México state.
The United States is easily the biggest export market for Mexican avocado producers, but Mexican oro verde (green gold) is also shipped to numerous other countries including Canada, Japan, Spain, France and China.
Until now, Apancalecan was known only through references in pre-Hispanic codices – but may now have finally been found. (Frédéric Henri Jean-Marc Bochet/INAH)
An archeological site believed to be the important Aztec settlement of Apancalecan has been discovered in the Costa Grande region of the state of Guerrero, about 100 km north of Acapulco, announced archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) this week.
Until now, Apancalecan was known only through references in codices — pictorial manuscripts that recorded the pre-Hispanic history of Mexico. Apancalecan’s name in Nahua means “place of the houses with water channels,” and it is referred to as a “main town” or “head town” in the Matrícula de Tributos codex of the early 1500s.
The glyph representing the town of Apancalecan. Its name in Nahua means “place of the houses with water channels.” (Mesolore)
The site in the El Cerrito community of Tecpan de Galeana — not far from the highway that connects Zihuatanejo and Acapulco — includes one large mound and “26 minor mounds … such as altars and elongated structures in a good state of conservation … as well as residential areas and ball-playing fields,” INAH noted in its Tuesday press release.
Located 850 meters from the Tecpan River and 1 km from the Tetitlán Lagoon, the complex also includes “deep holes … possibly associated with water storage and dams,” according to anthropologist Rodolfo Lobato Rodríguez.
Lobato is the head of the museum at a similar archeological zone, officials said — Soledad de Maciel-Xihuacan — near the town of Petatlán, Guerrero.
Lobato coordinated the work at the site during a three-day surface tour in June, logging it at 29 hectares (about 71 acres). He and representatives from INAH’s Guerrero center arrived after local residents informed officials of the existence of what seemed to be pre-Hispanic mounds.
The town, which predates the arrival of the Spanish, has been lost for many years. (Frédéric Henri Jean-Marc Bochet/INAH)
According to INAH, the preliminary survey revealed one large mound standing 25 meters (82 feet) tall with a base of 73.5 meters (241 feet) by 60 meters (about 197 feet), with adjacent spaces such as squares. The 26 smaller mounds surround the large one.
A rocky outcrop with carved pools was also recorded, and the site contains channeling systems and complex internal dams, said INAH, who said it will continue to investigate the site.
Apancalecan appears in The Matrícula de Tributos codex, which names the main towns that made up the province of Cihuatlán, established after the conquest of the region by the Mexica (1497–1502), INAH said.
Lobato said, “Due to the characteristics of the ceramic material recovered on the surface — among which Teotihuacán-style ring supports stand out — we think that the site was inhabited from the Classic period (A.D. 200–650), being [a] contemporary of Cihuatlán, another important settlement on the Costa Grande of Guerrero, and that [Apancalecan] continued until the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1200–1521).”
The find is another part of the archaeological puzzle of the Costa Grande, whose pieces have been fitting together in the last three decades and have revealed 1,300 years of development.
A perimeter will be set up around the area to guarantee its protection.
CORRECTION: The original version of this article contained a photo from the archaeological site of Xochicalco that misidentified it as being from the ruins of Teotihuacán.
The numeros species of agave found throughout Mexico have a long history of cultivation and distillation into both fermented and non-fermented beverages, including tequila, mezcal, pulque and aguamiel. (Margarito Pérez Retana / Cuartoscuro.com)
Tequila, pulque and mezcal form the golden triptych of Mexican elixirs. What do these three drinks have in common? Agave.
The plant, also known as maguey, that gives origin to these spirits is processed through the ritual of collecting aguamiel, the agave sap. This practice has deep roots in pre-Hispanic times. Stone scrapers used for hollowing out the agave’s core have been found in several archaeological sites in Mesoamerica, some dating back to the year 200 B.C.E.
A man on horseback rides through an agave field in Amatitán, Jalisco, in the heart of tequila country. (David García Sandoval / Unsplash)
In addition to fermented drinks, ancient peoples discovered the medicinal properties of agave and its use as a sweetener, after boiling and thickening the liquid into syrup. Furthermore, agave fibers have long been used to produce clothing, footwear, building materials, and paper; and the plant also produces several pounds of edible flowers during its final season.
Sap straight out of the plant, before fermentation, was served as a kind of milk for babies, before cows arrived on the continent. The first cattle were brought to the Americas from the Canary Islands by Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage across the Atlantic in 1493. The agave sap is naturally sweet, and was mixed with corn masa to create a comforting and nourishing porridge called atole.
The aguamiel production process is long and exacting. The agave plant needs 5 to 25 years of maturation before the sap can be extracted. When mature, its thick fleshy leaves are cut off and the liquid found within its hollowed-out core is collected twice a day for about four to twelve months before the plant finally dies. This center is regularly scraped out to keep the plant’s production of sap active during its fruitful phase.
Mezcal can be made from various species of agave, each imparting distinct flavors. Skilled farmers, known as jimadores, harvest the agave by hand and remove the leaves to reveal the piña or core, which can weigh up to several hundred pounds. These are roasted for several days within a rock pit in the ground. This cooking process imparts mezcal’s characteristic smoky flavor.
A man harvests agave for mezcal production. (Gob MX)
Once roasted, the piñas are removed from the pit, and crushed or shredded. The resulting fibers and juice are collected into large wooden vats or earthenware pits for fermentation. After fermentation, the liquid is distilled at least twice to increase its alcohol content and purity.
Some types of mezcal are aged in wooden barrels, usually made from oak or other local woods, to further develop their flavors and add complexity. However, not all are aged (reposado), and some producers prefer to showcase the spirit’s natural characteristics without any aging (joven).
All tequila is mezcal, but not all mezcal is tequila. Renowned across the globe, tequila is made exclusively from agave tequilana Weber, a blue agave species. It also differs in process: distillers steam the blue agave piña in a brick oven or autoclave according to strict methodology that leads to a more consistent flavor, and lends itself more easily to industrial production. Tequila was granted a Designation of Origin in 1974, which honors Mexico as the official home of tequila, and requires any drink called tequila to originate in select regions of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas.
Pulque is an acquired taste, but is regaining popularity today. (Shutterstock)
Pulque, which was central to religious rituals of the Mexica, is made by fermenting aguamiel. Mesoamericans permitted nursing women and the elderly to imbibe this drink that was normally reserved exclusively for priests and nobility. Modern analysis of the spirit has found that it contains vitamins C, B-complex, D, and E; and amino acids and minerals.
Pulque is regaining popularity thanks to its unique flavor and purported health benefits. It may improve intestinal flora as a natural probiotic, which can prevent development of harmful bacteria in the intestine.
As we sip and savor these liquid treasures, we immerse ourselves in a story woven through hard work and ancient wisdom. From the mystical agave plant to the hands of skilled artisans, each elixir carries with it the distilled essence of Mexico – a tale of rich flavors, tradition, and the deep-rooted connection between people and the land.
Sandra is a Mexican writer and translator based in San Miguel de Allende who specializes in mental health and humanitarian aid. She believes in the power of language to foster compassion and understanding across cultures. She can be reached at: [email protected]
According to a report by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) 110,843 new units were sold in Mexico during July, compared to 83,588 units sold in the same month of 2022. This represents an increase of 32.6% from last year’s figure.
More than 110,000 new cars were sold in July this year. (Photo: Cuartoscuro)
July’s sales also exceeded pre-pandemic levels by 4.4%, when 106,104 new units were sold in the same month of 2019.
However, July’s numbers are still below those registered in March, which saw 118,801 units sold, making it this year’s best month for car sales so far.
Rising car sales may be due to the recovery of the industry itself following the height of the pandemic.
According to a Citigroup-sponsored report by The Economist Intelligence Unit, the car industry was one of the manufacturing sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. Supply chain disruptions — in particular the semiconductor shortage — caused carmakers to “cancel or delay orders early in the pandemic.”
Automotive manufacturing is one of the industries benefiting from nearshoring, as manufacturers relocate operations closer to the U.S. market. The industry is a cornerstone of the Mexican economy. (Wikimedia Commons)
In 2020, according to INEGI data, less than 1 million cars were sold in Mexico — a 28% plunge from 2019 and the lowest figure since 2010, when 820,413 cars were sold.
In 2021, cars sold in Mexico again surpassed 1 million — though barely, just 1.01 million units. In 2022, 1.09 million cars were sold. The highest year for sales on record (which began to be kept in 2010), was 2016, when more than 1.6 million units were sold.
As for 2023, so far, 743,930 new units have been sold in Mexico from January to July, an increase of 23.6% over the same period in 2022.
