Environmental campaigners are celebrating an injunction preventing cargo ships from docking near the protected reef at Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo. (@MarthaluzCadena/Twitter)
A federal judge has provisionally blocked imports of Cuban ballast for the construction of the Maya Train after a transport ship damaged a coral reef near Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo.
The judge granted the injunction to a group of environmental activists who claimed the ship had damaged the reef with its anchor while bringing 20,000 tons of porphyrite stone to near Puerto Morelos in March.
The “Melody” is alleged to have caused damage to a protected coral reef near Puerto Morelos. (@gchristy65/Twitter)
The stone was intended to be transported by barge from the anchored ship to the port of Puerto Morelos, and then crushed for use as ballast under the tracks of the Maya Train.
“This damage to the reef could have been avoided with an environmental impact statement,” said Aracely Domínguez, president of the Mayab Ecologist Group (GEMA), one of the groups that filed the injunction.
“They do not have a defined guide of what to do and how they are going to do it.”
The damage occurred while the ship was anchoring in a protected area near Puerto Morelos, home to many corals. It wasoriginally reported by diver and underwater videographer Alberto Friscione.
Progress on the flagship Maya Train has been impeded by a lack of ballast, and by legal protests from indigenous and environmental groups. (Martín Zetina/Cuartoscuro.com)
“When [the ship] dropped the anchor, it fell on top of many [corals],” Friscione told EFE at the time. “They pulled the whole chain for several meters, and as the ship drifted, the chain moved and began to break the few or many corals that were there.”
After Friscione’s complaint, the tanker was moved to an area near the island of Cozumel, where there is a larger sand bank and fewer coral species.
The First District Court, based in Mérida, Yucatán, later issued a ruling stopping the boat from anchoring within the Biosphere Reserve next to the Puerto Morelos Reef National Park.
The latest injunction not only suspends stone imports for the Maya Train ballast but also the expansion of the road used for transporting stone from Puerto Morelos to the Maya Train construction areas. The judge found that expanding the road would involve clearing mangroves protected by Mexico’s General Wildlife Law.
This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the Maya Train, President López Obrador’s promised railway loop on the Yucatán peninsula. The project is now seriously delayed, partly due to a lack of ballast and other materials, and has faced numerous protests and legal actions by local activists.
“The environmental struggle cannot be just a movement with marches and protests,” Domínguez said. “We have dedicated 40 years to having the necessary legal tools to have this defense.”
The sale of the luxury airliner has been an important part of López Obrador's rhetoric to differentiate himself from his supposedly spendthrift, elitist predecessors. But he has struggled to find serious buyers. (Graciela López/Cuartoscuro)
A PREVIOUS VERSION OF THIS STORY WAS UPDATED ON APRIL 21 TO REFLECT NEW INFORMATION.
The Mexican presidential plane used by former president Enrique Peña Nieto has been sold to Tajikistan for 1.66 billion pesos (about US $92 million), and part of the proceeds will be used to fund two new IMSS hospitals, President López Obrador announced on Friday.
“The truth is, we’re happy because the ostentatious presidential plane is sold,” said the president, who also mentioned during his press conference Friday morning in Veracruz that his administration had been trying to sell the plane to the U.S. for years — first to former U.S. president Donald Trump, then to current president Joe Biden and also to Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris.
President Lopez Obrador has said that some proceeds of the sale will go to building two hospitals in the most needed areas of the country. (Moisés Pablo Nava/Cuartoscuro)
On Thursday, while announcing that a deal for the plane was in the works with a then-undisclosed buyer, AMLO mentioned that he’d recently offered Biden a deal where the two countries would exchange the plane for U.S. cargo aircraft and firefighting helicopters.
Some of the proceeds of the sale will go to build two social welfare hospitals: one will be an 80-bed facility for children with disabilities in the extremely poor area of Tlapa, Guerrero, meant to replace an existing, 50-year-old hospital that the president said is in “bad shape.” The other will be a hospital in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, which will also provide needed services to the region of Papaloapanan in Veracruz, the president said.
Both hospitals will be built by the Defense Ministry (Sedena), the president said. The one in Tlapa will not be built on the site of the current deteriorating one, he added, but on Sedena-owned land in order to avoid demolishing the current facility.
According to a post on the president’s Twitter page on Friday, the government of Tajikistan has deposited the sale money to Mexico’s national development bank, Banobras, into an account belonging to the government-created Institute for Return to the People That Which Was Robbed. Reuters reported that Tajikistan’s government has about 10 days to take possession of the custom-built Boeing 787 Dreamliner — which features marble accents, multiple flat-screen monitors and other luxuries.
When Mexico’s exiting president Felipe Calderón, left, passed the baton to his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, right, he also passed on the luxury plane that his administration bought but he never got to use. (Aarón Sánchez/Cuartoscuro
Selling the plane, which was purchased in 2012 by the Felipe Calderón administration and used by the subsequent Enrique Peña Nieto government, represents the long-awaited fulfillment of one of AMLO’s campaign promises. Selling the plane, he has said, would be a symbol that things in Mexico’s government were no longer the way they were when “corrupt” officials ran things.
On Friday, he told reporters that Calderón and Peña Nieto had run Mexico like “little pharaohs.”
Forbes México reported that Peña Nieto’s government spent 342 million pesos (US $19 million at current rate) on national and international travel during his first three years in office, while López Obrador’s expenditure from 2018–21 was 18.9 million pesos (US $1 million). AMLO has also traveled far less frequently overseas than previous presidents.
The writer with her Mexican tutor, Camila. Along with the years of weekly Spanish lessons, Camila also imparts a better understanding of Mexican society. (Louisa Rogers)
I’m with my Spanish tutor, Camila. As we sit opposite each other in the kitchen of the Mexican home my husband Barry and I bought in the heart of Guanajuato 17 years ago, we share details about our lives and she teaches me modismos and helps me with my pronunciation. My class is the highlight of my day.
Since we bought the house, I’ve had seven tutors, each of whom has not only taught me Spanish but also offered a window into Mexican culture that I could not have found as easily or quickly anywhere else.
In my experience, a tutor provides many more benefits than just language skills. A tutor helps me get beyond the stereotypes to understand the real culture.
Here are eight cultural insights I’ve learned from my different maestros:
The importance of courtesy. When Camila WhatsApps me, she always starts with Buenos días or a similar greeting. I’ve learned to use similar courtesies rather than do the American thing of just getting to the point.If approaching a stranger to ask directions or entering a shop, for example, I know to first sayBuenos días or Buenos tardes. As I get on a bus, I always greet the driver. And when I leave a restaurant, I say — as Mexicans do — buen provecho to the remaining diners.A U.S. expat married to a mexicana told me that when his mother-in-law orders a pizza, she spends five minutes on the phone: 30 seconds ordering the pizza and four and a half minutes greeting and offering courtesies.
Indirect communication. Even among Latino cultures, Mexicans tend to take longer to get to their point. For example, in my yoga class, one member coordinates a monthly breakfast. A few weeks ago, I was tickled when I read her long, effusive WhatsApp message to the group. She took 160 words to basically say, “Let’s figure out where to have our breakfast this month.” So different from my more direct, minimalist — and from a Mexican point of view — abrupt American style.
Hierarchy. Erika, one of our early teachers, explained that forms of address referring to titles and roles are an important sign of respect in Mexico.When we were remodeling our 150-year-old house, for example, we called our former architect by his first name, “David,” but soon learned that our foreman referred to him as Arquitecto, who in turn called him Maistro — meaning a trade specialist of some kind.
Ahorita and other diminutives. Mexicans add –ito and –ita to many words as a way of being warm and personal. The word ahorita means “pretty soon,” but beware of taking it literally — it could mean hours.When our neighbor comes over for a drink, she likes to have a palomita (tequila and Fresca). People refer to their grandparents not as abuelos but as their abuelitos. Camila wished me a fun time at la playita. I sometimes hear a Mexican referring to another person as llenito or gordito, meaning on the chubby side. Using such a term is not insulting as it is in the U.S.Recently, when Barry and I were visiting the state of Hidalgo, I asked a stranger where to get the combi for the pueblo mágico Real de Monte. “Derechito,” he replied, adding, “a la vueltita.” (Go straight, then around the corner). It cracked me up!
Personal space and body language. Mexicans stand and mingle much closer to each other while talking than do Americans. When they come out of a shop, it’s a mystery to me how they don’t seem to look left or right yet somehow join the stream of pedestrians without bumping into people.
A few years ago, a 25-year-old Spanish tutor told Barry that since her sister was getting married, she would have a room to herself for the first time in her life. Being British, he could think of nothing better.“Isn’t that wonderful?” he asked her.“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll be lonely.”Their respective reactions reflected very different cultural values!In Guanajuato, I see people touching and hugging frequently in public, as well as adolescents entwined on benches in squares and parks, enjoying a degree of freedom that I don’t see in the U.S. On Friday evenings it’s common for students in the secundaria (middle school) to converge in Guanajuato’s jardín,having fun and unsupervised by an adult.
Women marrying later. In 2020, the average age of mexicanas marrying was higher than that of the U.S. (30 vs. 27).One of our former Spanish teachers is now a law professor in Mexico City in her 40s, still unmarried. Another former tutor, a single mom with two grown sons, got back together with her high school sweetheart and now lives with him in Querétaro. Camila just turned 33 and has a boyfriend but is in no hurry to marry. This is completely different from when we first studied Spanish in Oaxaca in the 90s.
Different treatment of sons and daughters. I was puzzled to learn that even contemporary mothers tend to demand more of their daughters. Camila explained that this is partly because the moms are counting on their sons to financially subsidize them when they’re old and widowed. However, this attitude by mothers can backfire when a son grows up and expects his wife to wait on him.
But Mexican wives are not as financially dependent on their husbands as they once were and don’t have to put up with a husband who doesn’t pull his weight. In 2016, more than 43 percent of Mexican women over 60 were divorced, separated or widowed.
Close (sometimes too close) family ties. Mexicans have strong family ties, with a national tradition of an intergenerational comida together every Sunday. However, Camila says that family unity can fray, especially after the death of parents.All my teachers have pointed out that there are downsides to Mexican family life, like parents placing excess pressure on their adult children. For example, one of our first teachers was teaching Spanish part-time while simultaneously going to university. Because she came from a poor family, we offered to pay for her título, the diploma.
Later, we learned that her mother insisted on the money being used to repair the bathroom in the family home, which was muyfeo. Our teacher felt she simply couldn’t say no to her mom.
I’m usually at least a generation older than my Spanish teachers, but age is irrelevant; we share our lives: I consult with them when I face tricky cultural situations, and they help me decode Mexican culture. As my paid friends, informants and cultural experts, they’re worth every peso I invest.
Louisa Rogers and her husband Barry Evans divide their lives between Guanajuato and Eureka, on California’s North Coast. Louisa writes articles and essays about expat life, Mexico, travel, physical and psychological health, retirement and spirituality. Her recent articles are on her website, louisarogers.contently.com
Mexico's diversity of landscapes and rich culture have made it a favorite destination for global travelers, and the tourism industry's recovery since the pandemic appears to be solid. (Depositphotos)
From white-sand beaches to buzzing cities, archaeological sites and charming colonial towns, Mexico has something to appeal to every tourist. Tourism is vital to Mexico, contributing more than 8% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) over the last decade and employing up to4.4 million people. And it’s not only international tourism: in a huge and diverse country with nearly 130 million inhabitants, domestic tourism is also a major earner.
Mexico never closed its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, as President López Obrador insisted the economy must come first. As a result, although Mexico’s tourism sector was hit hard, it fared better than many around the world. In 2020, Mexico was the most visited country in Latin America and third most visited worldwide.
Mexico’s coastal resorts attract tourists from all over the globe. (Elizabeth Ruiz/Cuartoscuro)
Even so, the slump was keenly felt in Mexico’s most tourism-dependent destinations and in hard-hit business sectors like thecruise industry. But numbers are now nearly back to pre-pandemic levels and look set to keep growing.
In this edition of Mexico in Numbers, we break down some key facts and figures on Mexico’s tourism industry.
Tourist arrivals: before, during and after the pandemic
International tourism in Mexico has boomed over the last decade, almost doubling between 2010 and 2019, when it reached over 45 million visitors. Although numbers crashed to 24.3 million visitors in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, they were still higher than they had been just seven years earlier, in 2013.
By 2022, the number of visitors had jumped back to 38.3 million, and that figure is predicted to reachnearly 40 million in 2023. Data from theNational Statistical Institute (INEGI) shows that 18% more tourists visited Mexico in February 2023 than in February 2022, suggesting that total numbers this year could even come close to peak pre-pandemic levels.
Where do the tourists come from?
Just one country accounts for more than half ofinternational tourism in Mexico: the United States. Canada is a distant but fast-growing second — the number of Canadian nationals who visited Mexico leapt by 124% between February 2022 and February 2023. Colombia comes in third, and Argentina fifth. The only European country to make the top five is France.
U.S. tourists make up the bulk of visitors to Mexico from abroad.
Where do the tourists go?
In terms ofair arrivals, Cancún is by far Mexico’s top destination. Cancún International Airport (CUN) received 1.6 million international tourists in the first two months of 2023 — more than double Mexico City International Airport (AICM), which received 669,826. Puerto Vallarta and the Pacific coast resorts of Los Cabos came next, followed by Guadalajara, to make up the top five.
While the big-name beach resorts make up the bulk of Mexico’s tourism, the country also boasts132 Pueblos Mágicos (Magic Towns), as designated by the Tourism Ministry. Smaller cities and towns often found in the country’s interior, Pueblos Mágicos are known for their beauty, history and cultural significance and are popular with national tourists.
Most tourists arrive by air, and most arrive in Cancún, followed by Mexico City. Some of the country’s most popular interior destinations (for foreign and domestic tourists) include Taxco and Valle de Bravo.
The 10 Pueblos Mágicos with the most travel bookings for the first quarter of 2023 were Tulum, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Bacalar, Valladolid, Tepoztlán, Valle de Bravo, Taxco, Tequisquiapan, Isla Mujeres and Palenque, according to travel company Despegar.
Air travel on the rise
If tourism in Mexico is booming,air travel in Mexico is booming even more. Last week, theTourism Ministry announced that 9.43 million passengers were transported on international flights in Mexico during the first two months of 2023 — 29.5% more than in the same period of 2022, and 12.5% more than in the same period of 2019, before the pandemic.
Domestic flights showed a similar pattern, transporting 9.44 million passengers around Mexico during the first two months of 2023. This was 28.2% more than in the same period of 2022, and 24.2% more than during the same period of 2019, before the pandemic.
Tourism: a key economic sector
Tourism is an economic powerhouse in Mexico. It representedjust over 8% of the country’s GDP every year between 2010 and 2019, dropping to slightly under 7% in the pandemic year of 2020 and then rapidly bouncing back. Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco predicted last month that tourism would contribute 8.6% to national GDP in 2023.
Arecent study by the Tourism Research and Competitiveness Center (Cicotur) at Anáhuac University in Mexico City — which used INEGI data — found that Mexico’s tourism industry had a trade surplus of US $20.9 billion in 2022, the highest figure on record.
This dwarfs other sectors of the Mexican economy, which registered a foreign trade deficit of US $26.4 billion in 2022. Tourism’s surplus was even seven times greater than that registered in the successful manufacturing industry.
Maria Herrera Magadaleno has worked to teach people in rural communities how to search for missing loved ones. She has been internationally recognized for her efforts, even travelling to the Vatican to meet the Pope. (Isaac Esquivel/Cuartoscuro)
For over a decade, María Herrera Magdaleno has been searching for four of her eight children.
To help find them, she created a national network of local collectives to teach people how to investigate a loved one’s disappearance. She has met with Pope Francis, and in November, she sued the Mexican state in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for its failure to investigate her sons’ disappearances.
Herrera’s family members went missing probably due to organized crime activity. Poor families in rural areas like where she lives in Michoacán are at risk of violence from cartels and security forces alike. (Juan José Estada Serafín/Cuartoscuro)
Her leadership in a movement described by Time magazine this month as one “no one wants to join,” earned her a spot on the list of the most influential people of 2023 — alongside the likes of the rich and famous: King Charles III, Beyoncé and Elon Musk.
How did a 73-year-old Mexican woman from a small village in Michoacán end up meeting with world leaders, taking on her government in international court and on an international magazine’s radar?
“She is an extremely powerful woman, and she is a woman who has the ability to connect, to raise awareness, to transmit things that are not easy at all,” Montserrat Castillo, an activist who has known Herrera for a decade, told The New York Times in November.
Herrera, known affectionately as Doña Mari, is from Pajacuarán, a pueblo located at the northeastern edge of Michoacán. After her divorce, as she found herself a single mother raising her eight children and two stepchildren, she used that inner strength to start a business selling clothes, before eventually moving into metals. Her two sons, Raúl, 24, and Jesús Salvador, 24, joined her as the business succeeded and expanded. Things were looking up.
Herrera’s hometown of Pajacuarán in northeastern Michoacán is a typical working-class town on the border with Jalisco. (Visita Pajacuarán)
Then, on August 28, 2008, Raúl and José Salvador failed to return from a trip to the neighboring state of Guerrero. When they didn’t return, Herrera told the Times that she felt an overwhelming sadness come over her and she began to cry, sensing that “something terrible was happening.”
Neither her two sons nor their five other companions on the trip were ever seen again.
Herrera began a tireless search after a lack of support from local authorities. Her efforts eventually took her to Congress in Mexico City, where she also filed a complaint in the federal Attorney General’s Office, thanks in part to a congresswoman from Guerrero who lent her a car.
After two years of fruitless searching, tragedy knocked at her door again: her sons Gustavo, 28, and Luis Armando, 24, disappeared on a business trip to Veracruz. Later, a nephew and one of her grandsons also went missing.
Herrera was inspired to begin her work when she attended a protest led by poet Javier Sicilia, in Morelia. Her experience led her to begin organizing conferences across Mexico. (Isaac Esquivel/Cuartoscuro)
According to information obtained by Herrera and her family, all four of her sons’ disappearances were abetted by local police, who had ties with organized crime.
In 2011, less than a month into the disappearances of Gustavo and Luis Armando, the newspaper Excelsior interviewed Herrera.
“What is our crime?” she asked the reporter. “To be from Michoacán? To be from humble origins? To be hardworking people?”
That year, Herrera joined a protest in Morelia, Michoacán, led by poet Javier Sicilia – who lost his own son to gang violence. There, she spoke before a crowd.
As a result of her ordeal, Herrera has traveled extensively, advocating action to prevent disappearances, and teaching families how to look for clandestine burial sites. (@ChangeTheRef/Twitter)
“I heard a shivering scream as they yelled at me: ‘You are not alone! You are not alone!’. They said that several times,” Herrera told the Times.
This sense of connection fueled her to organize conferences where women from all over Mexico learned from anthropologists and forensic experts how to look for signs of disturbed earth that might point to a clandestine grave and how to identify human remains. She also approached universities to convince them to teach students how to look for missing people.
In her years of searching, Herrera has found many graves. However, none of the remains she’s discovered have belonged to her sons.
Fifteen years into her search, her work has provided visibility for Mexico’s tragic crisis of disappearances: according to Mexico’s National Search Commission, more than 112,000 people are listed as missing in the country. And that doesn’t include the doubtless thousands around the country who have never been formally reported missing because of a lack of trust in government agencies.
Herrera is not planning to quit — neither in the search for her missing relatives, nor in helping other Mexicans with missing relatives.
“A mother’s heart is in each of her children,” she told the Times. “Losing them is the worst thing that can happen to you.”
New state laws that would regulate ride-hailing services like Uber in Quintana Roo look set to pass in Congress despite protests by taxi drivers, who say such services will still have an unfair advantage. (Elizabeth Ruiz/Cuartoscuro)
Governor Mara Lezama on Wednesday sent a bill to the Quintana Roo Congress seeking to regulate ride-hailing services in the Caribbean coastal state.
The bill proposes changes to the state Transport Law, including the imposition of a levy on every trip provided by companies such as Uber and Didi in Quintana Roo.
Ride-hailing services legally arrived in Quintana Roo in 2018, when the state modified the Transport Law to permit Uber and other similar companies to operate in the state. Here, service workers celebrated the arrival of the first legal Ubers into Cancún’s hotel zone in 2018. (Cuartoscuro)
The money raised would be payable to the state government and go into a transport fund that will finance roadwork.
According to a statement from the Quintana Roo government, the bill contains “the specific regulatory elements” required for the “operation of digital and technological platforms” that provide transport services.
Its submission to Congress comes three months after a Quintana Roo court ruled that Uber could operate in the state without a public transport license. That ruling led to an escalation of a long-running conflict between taxi drivers and rideshare services.
Lezama, a Morena party governor, said the proposed reform to the Transport Law “promotes free and healthy economic competition and a level playing field” for all transport providers.
As well as regulation, it is hoped that the levy will raise funds to maintain roads throughout the Caribbean state.(Cuartoscuro)
Drivers for companies such as Uber won’t be required to hold a transport provider’s license if the bill passes Congress, as expected. They will, however, have to register with the Quintana Roo Transport Institute.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that Uber provides private rather than public transport and therefore is not subject to the same laws as public transport providers.
Even so, taxi drivers have complained that drivers for ride-hailing apps can work without the expensive license they have to obtain.
Lezama said that the proposed reform to the Transport Law also seeks to provide security to public and private transport users via a range of measures including “real-time geolocation, panic buttons, video cameras and voice recorders that will be connected to our security system.”
Drivers for ride-hailing services who violate regulations set out in the proposed law could have their registration with the Quintana Roo Transport Institute suspended or canceled, she said. Breaches by taxi drivers could result in the cancellation of their licenses.
The state government’s statement said that the bill was developed with input from different stakeholders, including taxi drivers and representatives of ride-hailing services.
Implementation of all the Transport Law changes proposed in the bill is expected to take two years following its approval, according to state government secretary Cristina Torres Gómez.
The
nonbinary ID card was the first to be issued in the Caribbean state, under new gender equality guidance issued by the National Electoral Institute. (INE Yucatán/Twitter)
A voter ID card without a male or female gender designation has been issued for the first time in the state of Yucatán.
The Yucatán office of the National Electoral Institute (INE) announced Wednesday that a nonbinary voter ID card had been issued in the state capital Mérida in accordance with “the affirmative action for inclusion” promoted by the autonomous elections and voting oversight agency.
Fausto Martínez became the first Mexican to be legally recognized as nonbinary in 2022, after petitioning the Supreme Court to issue a new birth certificate. (Fausto Martínez/Twitter)
The person who received the card was not identified by name but INE Yucatán posted photos of them to its Twitter account.
Members of the electoral institute’s general council voted in late February to allow genderless ID cards, and the first were issued in Aguascalientes last month.
Instead of an M for mujer (woman) or H for hombre (man), INE cards issued to people who identify as nonbinary have an X in the gender field. Applicants for genderless voter IDs simply have to identify themselves as nonbinary. Citizens can also request a voter ID card on which the gender field is left blank.
There is no requirement to present a birth certificate showing that the person is officially recognized as neither male nor female.
The first person in Mexico to be issued a birth certificate identifying them as nonbinary was Fausto Martínez. In late 2021, Martínez petitioned a federal court to recognize their gender identity after the Civil Registry in Guanajuato denied their request for a corrected birth certificate.
Early last year, a judge granted Martínez’s request for an injunction and ordered the registry to issue them a new birth certificate, which it did on Feb. 11, 2022.
More recently, Jesús Ociel Baena Saucedo, a judge with the Electoral Tribunal of the State of Aguascalientes, was granted an injunction that allowed them to get a new birth certificate without a male or female gender designation.
Online real estate platform Far Homes conducted a survey in February of mostly retired U.S. and Canadian citizens living in Mexico full time. Puerto Vallarta, pictured here, is one of the cities popular with foreigners. (Taylor Beach/Unsplash)
The international real estate platform Far Homes partnered with the magazine Expats in Mexico to poll non-Mexicans about the cost of living in Mexico. The results offer a snapshot of living expenses for foreigners who have relocated to the country.
The survey, carried out in February 2023, focused primarily on retirees over the age of 55 living full-time in Mexico, who had previously lived in the United States or Canada before relocating.
According to Far Homes, which sourced its data from the online database Numbeo, Mexico’s cities fall into the mid-range of popular expat cities worldwide.
The majority of respondents said they spend under US $2,200 per month on living expenses (34.3%), while according to 2021 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average retiree household spending in the United States is US $4,185 per month.
In terms of Mexican cities with a sizable population of U.S. and Canadian residents, Mexico City (44.62) ranks highest on the Numbeo Cost of Living (COL) index, which is calculated using consumer goods prices (groceries, restaurants, transportation, utilities) and does not include housing expenses.
These user-contributed prices are then compared to New York City; if a city has a Cost of Living Index of 80, for example, Numbeo estimates it to be 20% less expensive than New York (excluding housing costs).
This graph compares the cost of living in various cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, on a scale where New York is 100. (Far Homes)
Mexico City is followed by Cancún (43.14), Mérida (41.85) and Puerto Vallarta (41.15) on the COL index. Querétaro and Puebla City are on the low end, at 40.53 and 38.77, respectively, while Monterrey comes in as Mexico’s most expensive city, with a Cost of Living Index of 45.43, making it the 99th most expensive city in the Americas in the database.
While food costs for expats living in Mexico are comparable to the U.S., according to the Far Homes survey data (71.4% spending up to US $500 per month), the savings on rent and healthcare contribute to overall lower living expenses. The majority of respondents to the Far Homes survey pay between US $550 and US $1,100 per month on rent, and 62% say they only spend up to US $110 per month on healthcare, including medications.
Not surprisingly, the survey found that “cost of living” was given as one of the primary reasons for moving to Mexico (26.5%), second only to “lifestyle” at 32.2%. “Climate” came in as a close third at 24.2% of those polled.
The flight's passengers caught images of the VivaAerobus jet's engine shooting flames. (Turismo PV/Twitter)
A VivaAerobus aircraft caught fire just three minutes after takeoff from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara, forcing the crew to turn around and return to the resort city in order to make a safe landing.
In a statement, the airline explained that at around 4:04 p.m. on Wednesday, flight VB 3235 was traveling on the Puerto Vallarta-Guadalajara route when crew saw that it had “presented a failure in one of the engines.”
According to the industry publication the Aviation Herald, the airline’s Airbus A320-200 stopped its climb at 6,000 feet after the right-hand engine exploded, producing streaks of flames and smoke.
In a video shared on social media, the explosion can be heard while sparks and flames are seen shooting out of the plane’s engine.
“The passengers were disembarked in a timely manner, and the aircraft is on the apron for its review and corresponding maintenance,” the statement said, adding that passengers were moved to another plane to cover the interrupted flight and continue their trip “as soon as possible.”
The aircraft landed at the Puerto Vallarta airport at 4:20 p.m., according to flight data.
Avión de Viva Aerobus aterriza de emergencia, falla motor en pleno vuelo
A video of the plane’s engine on fire that has been circulating on the internet since the incident.
The aircraft, which bears a registration code of XA-VAV, had been used in over 90 flights in April before yesterday’s incident, apparently without problems, ferrying passengers on an average of five to seven flights per day from points of origin as varied as Puerto Vallarta, Tijuana, Guadalajara, Mexico City (AICM), La Paz, Hermosillo, Los Mochis, Huatulco, Cancún, Mérida and Guanajuato (Del Bajío) — as well as international airports, including Bush International in Houston, Chicago O’Hare, and El Dorado International in Bogotá.
Wednesday’s incident is at least the second such event of note involving planes to happen at one of Mexico’s airports this week: on Monday, an Aeromexico Boeing 737-800 and a Delta Airlines Boeing 757 collided on on a runway while taxiing at Mexico City International Airport (AICM).
Aeroméxico’s flight AM117 was bound for Ciudad Juárez, while Delta’s DL625 flight had arrived from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
From left to right: Frank and Kerry O'Brien, William Gross and the boat all three were sailing on when they went missing, the Ocean Bound. (Internet)
The Mexican Navy has suspended its search for three United States citizens who went missing after leaving Mazatlán, Sinaloa, on a sailing vessel in early April, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.
The United States Coast Guard said in a statement that the search was suspended “pending further developments” after the navy and its personnel “conducted 281 cumulative search hours covering approximately 200,057 square nautical miles … off Mexico’s northern Pacific coast with no sign of the missing sailing vessel nor its passengers.”
The Coast Guard noted that the area searched is larger than the state of California.
Kerry O’Brien, Frank O’Brien and William Gross left Mazatlán on a 44-foot Lafitte sailboat named Ocean Bound on April 4, according to a statement issued by the Coast Guard last Friday.
The missing group’s final intended destination was San Diego, California, but they planned to stop in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, on April 6 to pick up provisions and to report in, the Coast Guard said.
“However, they did not report in or arrive in Cabo San Lucas,” the Coast Guard said Wednesday.
William Gross’ daughter Melissa Spicuzza’s interview with NBC News in San Diego.
“Search and rescue coordinators contacted marinas throughout Baja, Mexico, which resulted in no sightings of the vessel. Urgent marine information broadcasts were also issued over VHF radio but yielded no additional information.”
Gross’ daughter Melissa Spicuzza told NBC News in San Diego Wednesday that a person in Mazatlán who was a friend of the O’Briens had called her on Sunday to inform her that the boat had been found, but when she contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, she said, they told her that the boat in question was not the Ocean Bound.
Spicuzza also told NBC News that her father had been contacted by the O’Briens through the sailing community when they had put out a call looking for help in bringing their boat from Mazatlán to San Diego — their planned ultimate destination.
It was Gross’ first sailing trip up the Baja Peninsula coast, Spicuzza said.
Spicuzza also told the news outlet that her father had told her before leaving Mazatlán that the Ocean Bound lacked tracking and communications technology and needed hand steering.
“My dad’s exact words were, ‘I wouldn’t cross an ocean in it,’” Spicuzza said, “‘but it’ll do for what we’re doing.’”
Commander Gregory Higgins, a Coast Guard command center chief, said that the Mexican Navy conducted “an exhaustive search” and that the U.S. and Canada provided “additional search assets.”
Mexican Navy and U.S. Coast Guard assets, including vessels and aircraft, “worked hand-in-hand for all aspects of the case,” Higgins said.
“Unfortunately, we found no evidence of the three Americans’ whereabouts or what might have happened. Our deepest sympathies go out to the families and friends of William Gross, Kerry O’Brien and Frank O’Brien,” he said.
