Mexico City Police Department arrested Carlos Caro Quintero on Monday around noon. (Photo: SSC-CDMX/Twitter)
Mexico City police have arrested a man identified as a brother of notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.
Police chief Omar García Harfuch announced the arrest on Twitter Monday, saying that Carlos “N” – identified as 61-year-old Carlos Caro Quintero in media reports – was taken into custody in the Miguel Hidalgo borough of the capital.
Convicted drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, who is currently in custody in the Altiplano prison in México state.
He said that the suspect is “a member of a criminal group that operates in the north of the country” and that Mexico City police were “alert” to “any situation” that could arise in response to his arrest.
The Mexico City Ministry of Citizens Security (SSC) said in a statement that Caro Quintero was detained in Lomas de Chapultepec, an affluent neighborhood west of the historic center. He was stopped after police noticed the vehicle in which he was traveling had its license plates covered, the SSC said.
It said that police seized a firearm and associated paraphernalia from the vehicle as well as what appeared to be eight kilograms of marijuana and “124 doses” of cocaine.
The arrest comes almost seven months after Rafael Caro Quintero – the founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara Cartel and the convicted murderer of United States DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena – was arrested in northern Mexico.
Caro Quintero was arrested while driving this Mercedes Benz automobile with covered license plates. (Photo: SSC-CDMX/Twitter)
Carlos Caro Quintero previously ran afoul of the law due to the possession of a firearm in the state of Jalisco in 2019 and causing a public scandal in Durango in 2022, according to reports.
The news website Infobae reported that he is one of 11 siblings of Rafael Caro Quintero, nicknamed “El Narco de Narcos.”
Carlos Caro Quintero hadn’t previously been linked to drug trafficking, Infobae said. He grew up in the Sinaloa municipality of Badiraguato, birthplace of imprisoned former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The merger of Kansas City Southern with Canadian Pacific is awaiting final approval from the US Surface Transportation Board, expected to come this quarter. (William HamlinTwitter)
Kansas City Southern México (KCSM), which for the moment owns the cross-border freight railroad at the heart of every rail transportation supply chain connecting the United States and Mexico, expects to make an investment of more than US $200 million in Mexico, says its president.
The investment, KCSM President Oscar del Cueto said at a press conference last week, seeks to improve the company’s connectivity and take advantage of nearshoring opportunities.
Kansas City Southern México President Oscar del Cueto.
Del Cueto said that the company saw 14% growth in sales in 2022, while its volume increased 7%, and that in 2023, he expects 7% growth in sales and 2% in volume, driven by the need for shipping by businesses in the automotive sector and the grain industry.
He said he also hopes the company’s numbers will improve once the US $31 billion merger between KCSM’s parent company Kansas City Southern and Canadian Pacific Railway is approved by U.S. officials and the two companies’ new merged railroad line — which will be the only single-line railroad connecting Canada, the United States and Mexico — can begin operation.
Assuming the merger receives authorization from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which del Cueto said he expects to happen this quarter and possibly by the end of February, CPKC will have a combined 32,000 km in rail lines crossing the three countries. It also gives the new company access to Kansas City Southern Mexico’s strategic ports of Lázaro Cárdenas, Altamira and Veracruz.
The merger between Kansas City Southern (KCS) and Canadian Pacific will stretch over three countries, which KCS México President Oscar del Cueto said would provide nearshoring alternatives to shipping by sea. (Photo: trains.com)
The merger comes at a strategic moment for international trade, del Cueto said, specifically for Mexico, which is benefiting from nearshoring particularly in the automotive sector, a strategic industry for the KCSM, del Cueto said.
Del Cueto did not address if and how KCSM would be restructured if the STB approves the merger. But he did say CPKC sees opportunity in Mexico after COVID-19’s disruption of logistics and supply chains, which has resulted in backlogged shipping seaports worldwide.
“With nearshoring, especially in the automotive sector, we have seen interest in the arrival of some companies, especially in the Bajío [area], and we are trying to offer a faster service regarding containers,” he said.
As an example, he spoke of what he said were CPKC’s plans to begin moving merchandise by rail from the Lázaro Cárdenas port in Michoacán to Chicago in 5 days.
By sea, the same trip normally takes 26–28 days, he said.
Nearshoring has occurred more in the northern part of Mexico, but CPKC also wants it to happen in the country’s central Bajío region, del Cueto said. With CPKC’s new extended railway, they will also offer three intermodal terminals.
“We already have three available in Toluca, San Luis Potosí and Salinas Victoria,” he said, adding that his company wants to offer containers to move both domestic and international merchandise.
Del Cueto also said that he recently met with Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT) head Jorge Nuño to discuss the benefits of the merger.
“We talked about how interesting it will be to have a single railway line in the three countries,” he said, adding that they will be “able to ship in Mexico and with reassurance that it will be the same supplier that takes the merchandise to Canada […].”
Del Cueto mentioned that this was already done case with the Volkswagen company, which transports many vehicles bound for Canada with Kansas City Southern México to the Mexico-U.S. border.
“We exchanged them at the border, and they were going on another railway to Canada. Now we will be a single line. It will be a service without borders, point-to-point, with a single lock.”
President López Obrador attended an event announcing the German carmaker's investment on Friday. (Gob MX)
German automotive manufacturer BMW announced on Friday that it will invest 800 million euros (US $866 million) in San Luis Potosí to produce high-voltage batteries and fully electric “Neue Klasse” vehicles. The company’s statement confirms President López Obrador’s announcement about the investment in mid-January.
The carmaker is investing in expanding its global production network to turn more than half of its global vehicle sales into all-electric models by the end of 2030.
BMW’s San Luis Potosí plant started operations in 2019. (BMW Group)
“We are systematically reconfiguring our production network to move towards electric mobility. In Mexico, we are investing 800 million euros in our plant and creating close to 1,000 new jobs,” BMW’s head of production Milan Nedeljkovic said during an event in San Luis Potosí attended by President López Obrador and the governor of San Luis Potosí, Ricardo Gallardo Cardona.
Approximately 500 million euros (US $536 million) are allocated for the battery assembly center on the company’s existing plant grounds, BMW said, and 500 additional employees will work there. Another 500 jobs will be created in other departments. The production center will cover an area of 85,000 square meters, Fortuna magazine reported.
The remaining 300 million euros (US $321 million) will be invested in adapting and extending the body shop and building a new assembly line to install the battery packs, plant head Harald Gottsche told Reuters.
“With the new investment, our plant in San Luis Potosí will play a central role in the transition of the BMW Group towards electric mobility,” Gottsche said. “The company reinforces its commitment to Mexico and its participation in our production network.”
AMLO, the governor of San Luis Potosí and CEO of the plant, Harald Gottsche (right), tour the facility. (SRE Twitter)
Gottsche added that the existing plant already produces three vehicle models delivered to 74 global markets.
Currently, the San Luis Potosí plant – which started operations in 2019 – has some 3,000 employees and manufactures the BMW 3 Series, 2 Series Coupé, and the new M2, the latter two exclusively for the global market.
A special feature of the “Neue Klasse” model to be manufactured at the plant is that the high-voltage battery is directly integrated into the vehicle structure. Thus, the assembly area in San Luis Potosí is expanding to incorporate this new process into its operations.
“We will start building, constructing the extensions and the new battery assembly in the beginning of 2024, and we will start (to ramp up) production at the beginning of 2027,” Gottsche said.
A BMW auto manufacturing plant. (BMW Group)
BMW’s investment comes hand in hand with its suppliers, as San Luis Potosí’s Ministry of Economic Development announced investments of up to US $300 million each by seven such companies.According to the state’s Economic Development Minister, Juan Carlos Valladeres Eichelmann, the first stage of investment could generate between 200-300 direct jobs.
According to Reuters, “the shocks of the pandemic and two years of supply chain chaos are colliding with a once-in-a-century shift of the industry’s fundamental technology as combustion vehicles give way to electric ones,” and Mexico appears ready to join the shift, at least in manufacturing.
Mexico wants to “attract all that we can,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard in a Thursday interview with Reuters.
Ebrard said companies like Audi, General Motors Fiat Chrysler and Tesla have all expressed interest in manufacturing in the country.
Mayor Sheinbaum, a strong contender for the Morena Party candidacy for president, said that she'd like to see the abandoned high-speed train project built. (Locomotive 74/Shutterstock)
A federal government led by current Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum could revive a rail project canceled by the 2012–18 administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sheinbaum — seen as a leading contender to succeed President López Obrador — expressed her support for the construction of a new rail link between Mexico City and Querétaro city, located just over 200 kilometers northwest of the capital.
Sheinbaum, center front, made the announcement in Queretaro on Sunday at an anniversary celebration of Mexico’s 1917 constitution. (Claudia Sheinbaum/Twitter)
The Peña Nieto government awarded a US $3.75 billion contract to a Chinese-led consortium to build a high-speed rail line between the two cities, but it was revoked in late 2014. The project was later postponed as part of budget cuts announced in January 2015, and it hasn’t been revived since.
But in Querétaro city on Sunday, Sheinbaum said she had spoken to Querétaro Governor Mauricio Kuri about the importance of building a railroad connection between the capital and the Bajío region city.
She said the project was viable, that she personally would like to see it built and that it could be a priority for the next federal government, which will take office in late 2024.
Sheinbaum is seeking to represent the ruling Morena party at next year’s presidential election, and is widely considered as the preferred candidate of López Obrador. Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard is her main rival for the Morena candidacy.
The proposed route for the high-speed railway that was to start construction in 2017 but was then postponed indefinitely in 2015 due to budget cuts. (Sarumo7/Creative Commons)
Sheinbaum noted that the rail project would require federal investment and asserted that it would help reduce the number of freight vehicles on the Mexico City-Querétaro highway.
High-speed passenger trains were slated to run on the tracks that were to be built by a consortium led by China Railway Construction Corporation. It was unclear whether a government led by Sheinbaum would want both freight and passenger trains to run on a new railroad between Mexico City and Querétaro.
López Obrador said last month that the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport was looking at the possibility of the rail project being revived, but acknowledged that construction wouldn’t begin during his term.
“The [Mexico City-Querétaro] highway is saturated. A Chinese company was going to build this train, [but] there were problems and it was canceled,” he said Jan. 23.
The current federal government is focusing its railroad construction efforts on the Maya Train project, which will link cities and towns in the states of Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas.
The railroad, along which tourist, commuter and freight trains are slated to run, is scheduled to begin operations in late 2023.
The meeting of governors, attended by AMLO, took place over two years after 10 governors withdrew in protest of the president's policies. (Cuartoscuro)
The governor of Oaxaca was elected as the new president of the National Conference of Governors (Conago) at a meeting in Querétaro city on Sunday.
Salomón Jara Cruz, a Morena party governor who took office last December, was elected unanimously by other state governors and the mayor of Mexico City as the new head of the two-decade-old cross-party group.
President López Obrador (left) with governors Mauricio Kuri of Querétaro (center) and Salomon Jara of Oaxaca (right) at the Conago meeting. (Salomon Jara Twitter)
He said on Twitter that he asked his colleagues to “transform this mechanism of dialogue and embrace an agenda of social and collective wellbeing.”
The governor said there will be a “new pact” with the federal government “to achieve the construction of a state of rights and wellbeing.”
Jara also tweeted that he would lead Conago into a “new era” and that its members would work hand in hand with President López Obrador “on a social agenda to build a state of rights and promote the transformation of Mexico.”
“… Neoliberalism has died and the transformation lives,” he wrote in another post, an apparent reference to the profound change López Obrador claims to be bringing to Mexico.
Mauricio Vila (center), the PAN governor of Yucatán, at the Conago conference. (Mauricio Vila Twitter)
In an address after his election as Conago president, Jara said that governors would “work together” amid a “new stage” in the country’s political life. “There must be a new way of looking at things,” he added.
His Conago deputy is Yucatán Governor Mauricio Vila, a National Action Party (PAN) governor who has maintained a good relationship with López Obrador despite belonging to a party that is vehemently opposed to the federal government.
Sunday’s meeting in Querétaro came 2 1/2 years after a group of 10 governors, including five from the PAN, withdrew from Conago after deeming that López Obrador was a threat to democracy due to his alleged efforts to concentrate power in the federal executive.
The governors of 28 of the 31 states – the majority of which are governed by Morena – Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and López Obrador were present at the gathering. The governors described the meeting as a “relaunch” of Conago, the newspaper El Economista reported.
Jara said that the group will work on a reform to the way federal resources are distributed to the states, and also focus on issues related to public security, the electoral reform and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the free trade pact that took effect in 2020.
The governors on Sunday approved the creation of a USMCA committee within Conago that will be headed up by Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla.
The governors will meet again in Oaxaca next month. Vila expressed confidence that progress on a review of Conago statutes will be made at the meeting scheduled for March 21.
The Yucatán leader asserted on Twitter that the governors are “working together to transform our states.”
President López Obrador covered topics from electoral reform to the end of cargo flights out of Mexico City International Airport this week. (Gob MX)
Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday completed his 50th month as president, a position he unsuccessfully attempted to attain at the 2006 and 2012 elections.
AMLO now has just 20 months left to continue carrying out what he calls the “fourth transformation” of Mexico, as his successor will take office on Oct. 1, 2024.
The president has 20 months left in his term. (Gob MX)
Monday
Yucatán Governor Mauricio Vila – a possible opposition candidate at the 2024 presidential election – joined López Obrador at his first press conference of the week, during which the government provided an update on construction of the Calkiní-Izamal section of the Maya Train railroad.
“In Yucatán we’ve supported the Maya Train project from the beginning because without a doubt … it will allow us to bring [to the state] a portion of the millions of tourists who today arrive in Cancún and the Riviera Maya,” said the National Action Party governor.
“Without a doubt it will generate economic development and employment for us,” added the 42-year-old former mayor of Mérida.
Yucatán governor Mauricio Vila speaks at the Monday morning press conference. (Gob MX)
The president also noted that while a majority of participants in a 2021 referendum voted in favor of investigating Mexico’s five most recent presidents for crimes they might have committed in office, turnout was below the level required to make the vote binding.
“On several occasions I’ve expresses that revenge is not my strong suit … We’re not persecuting anyone,” AMLO added.
“From my point of view he’s a public servant without principles, without ideals, a fraud,” López Obrador said.
“… I really regret it, because I knew his father [academic and politician Arnaldo Córdova], we were friends, colleagues,” he said.
“… Since long ago, the INE has been taken over by conservatives, the conservative bloc. We won [in 2018] despite them.”
In contrast with his remarks about the INE chief, AMLO spoke with significant affection about former U.S. president Donald Trump.
“I hold President Trump in high esteem because he was respectful with us, the [bilateral] relation was good,” he said toward the end of his Monday mañanera.
“With President Trump I believe I had just one very productive meeting in Washington and we spoke by telephone 11 or 12 times. … They were very important calls, respectful calls for the good of two peoples and two countries. I even described those calls in my latest book,” López Obrador said in reference to his 2021 tome, titled A la mitad del camino.
Tuesday
In a health update, the government’s pandemic point man declared that the sixth wave of COVID infections was receding.
“We reached the peak at the end of the year and from the first week of January a process of descent began,” said Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell.
The first question López Obrador took was on the formation of a new group called Colectivo por México, which says it is seeking to “change the [political] course” of the country.
“They have the right to demonstrate, to form a group, but they’re against us and the transformation of the country that we’re carrying out with millions of Mexicans,” AMLO said of the collective, whose members include former health minister Julio Frenk and ex-Supreme Court justice José Ramón Cossio.
“They have the complete right to express themselves. … We’re obliged to guarantee the right to dissent. That’s what I can say.”
The president described veteran leftist Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as an adversary due to his involvement in the group, which is abbreviated as Mexicolectivo.
“I hold him in high esteem, I respect him, I consider him a forerunner to this movement, but we’re living a time of definitions and this … [path] is very narrow, … it’s about being with the people or with the oligarchy,” he said.
An important figurehead of the Mexican left, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (son of President Lázaro Cárdenas) at a 2022 event.
Cárdenas – son of ex-president Lázaro Cárdenas, a former presidential candidate and co-founder of the Democratic Revolution Party – subsequently announced that he had taken the decision to cease collaborating with the collective.
Near the end of his presser, AMLO asked Mexican Social Security Institute chief Zoé Robledo to respond to a question about the 2009 fire at a daycare center in Hermosillo, Sonora, that claimed the lives of 49 children.
Some people found criminally responsible for the deaths have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms, but Robledo assured reporters that the federal government is still fighting for justice.
“From the beginning of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador – including in June 2019 when 10 years passed since this tragic fire, this crime – a criterion to attend to matters that have to do with justice has been maintained,” he said.
Wednesday
AMLO opened his third mañanera of the week with a broad attack on the media, one of his favorite punching bags.
Ana Elizabeth García Vilchis conducts the “Who’s who in the lies of the week” segment of the morning press conference. (Gob MX)
Many media organizations have decided to conduct a “dirty war” against us rather than publish “objective, professional, analytical, critical journalism with arguments,” he said.
They “attack and defame, with honorable exceptions of course, but those honorable exceptions are the exception not the rule,” the president charged during an introduction to the controversial “Who’s who in the lies of the week” segment.
López Obrador later turned his attention to drug smuggling through the Mexico City International Airport during past governments.
“A lot of you know how they got drugs through the airport. There was once even a shootout there. … The Mexico City airport was left without surveillance in order to get drugs through. It was managed by the Federal Police, which the conservatives defend so much,” he said.
Moving on to another matter, the acronym-nicknamed president welcomed Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ announcement of his decision to dissociate himself from Mexicolectivo.
“I was very pleased about the engineer’s letter,” AMLO said, acknowledging the 88-year-old’s civil engineering degree.
“I didn’t know but he had already informed the group [of his decision],” he said before confirming he had a good relationship with the veteran politician despite labeling him an adversary the previous day.
López Obrador later declared that Energy Minister Rocío Nahle – a Zacatecas native – could run for governor of Veracruz next year despite not being born in the state, and despite the Supreme Court’s ruling this week against a provision of a recent state law that allowed the parents of children born in the Gulf coast state to seek the position.
He said the minister qualifies as a candidate because she has been a Veracruz resident for more than five years – another still-standing provision of the so-called “Ley Nahle,” or Nahle Law.
“Rocío was already a federal deputy, a senator for Veracruz. [She was a] federal deputy for the district of Coatzacoalcos, … she’s a Veracruz senator on leave because she’s helping us in the Energy Ministry and in the construction and rehabilitation of the refineries,” López Obrador said.
Nahle confirmed on Twitter that she met the five-year residency requirement, even though she has lived in Mexico City in recent years.
Thursday
“Good morning. Ánimo, ánimo,” AMLO began, exhorting reporters to liven up for another early-morning press conference.
“We’re going to inform based on what you ask because there’s nothing to present today,” he said.
One reporter queried the president about the Federal Auditor’s Office detection of “irregularities” totaling over 830 million pesos during Delfina Gómez’s 2021-22 tenure as education minister.
“When the Federal Auditor’s Office conducts an investigation … irregularities aren’t acts of corruption in the majority of cases,” López Obrador replied.
“… As the maestra [teacher] Delfina is a pre-candidate or candidate [for governor] in México state they’ll be questioning her … [but] Delfina is an honest woman who has my complete confidence. She’s a woman who is incapable of stealing a centavo, nothing like the old-time politicians,” AMLO said.
Probed as to whether the money in question was “fairly channelled” to public education, he responded that it “surely” was before asserting that “there’s no problem at all.”
The president later offered his support for another politician – Nuevo León Governor Samuel García, a young and ambitious Citizens Movement party leader who is under pressure from the opposition over budgetary issues in the northern border state.
“We have a very good relationship with the Governor Samuel García, … we support the governor of Nuevo León because a lawsuit to strip his immunity has been presented, they want to remove him from office because his budget wasn’t approved,” López Obrador said.
“… He doesn’t have a majority in Congress and his adversaries came to an agreement and they wanted to impose a budget … and force him to allocate funds to public, supposedly autonomous companies run by the parties that are obstructing the governor,” he said.
In response to another question, the sexagenarian leader expressed confidence that the reforms his government has enacted will be long-lasting.
“Why will I be relaxed when my term ends? … Firstly because important changes are being carried out and it will be very difficult to reverse them. For example, how could they eliminate the pension for seniors? It won’t be easy if it’s in the constitution,” AMLO said.
“No matter who’s president, [the old-age pension] is a right. … Do you think that people will easily accept the pension being taken from them? No, touch wood, not even the conservatives could do it if they return.”
President López Obrador eating tamales on the Candelaria (Candlemas) holiday last year. (Presidencia)
At the closure of his presser, López Obrador noted that, in keeping with a Candlemas tradition, he would be eating tamales – specifically Michoacán-style ones known as corundas – for breakfast.
“One day I’ll buy [tamales] out of my salary and I’ll invite you to have breakfast and talk,” he told reporters.
“Really – we’ll talk, we’ll spend more time together. Thank you very much to all of you for being here.”
Friday
While responding to a question about unions’ compliance with USMCA trade pact obligations, AMLO spotted an opportunity to offer a lesson about the true meaning of the word democracy.
“Oligarchs … have a very peculiar way of thinking about democracy,” he opined.
“For them democracy is always having minorities in charge, … that’s the democracy they like, one of privileges,” López Obrador said.
“But democracy is power of the people, for the people and with the people. Democracy is people. Demos, I repeat, means people. Kratos means power. Democracy is the power of the people, oligarchy is the power of the minority.”
A YouTuber subsequently took the microphone and asked the president about the involvement of the National Electoral Institute (INE) in the process to elect the queen of the 2023 Fería Nacional de San Marcos, a huge fair held annually in Aguascalientes.
Candidates for the “Queen” of the San Marcos Fair in Aguascalientes. (Gob Aguascalientes Twitter)
The INE will facilitate electronic voting, Dany Santoyo noted before suggesting that the institute should instead focus on “more important issues” such as holding a citizens’ consultation to canvass opinions on the privatization of water services in Aguascalientes in the early 1990s.
“They could do both consultations,” AMLO said, acknowledging that the election of the fair reina is a “tradition.”
The INE should conduct that vote and one on the water issue at the same time, he said.
“That would be the best thing. … There are people who like [the fair queen contest], they enjoy it, that’s their right, it’s a very important fair. … It’s [also] very important to review water service contracts because they are abused – it’s the privatization policy [that is to blame],” López Obrador said.
The president later defended his decree suspending cargo airline operations at the Mexico City International Airport and asserted that the Felipe Ángeles International Airport has the facilities required to accommodate air freight carriers.
When you move to Mexico, even if your Spanish is good, interpreting street addresses can amount to a confusing bit of culture shock. (Photo: Suriel Ramzal/Shutterstock)
There are the things you know, the things you don’t know, and the things you don’t know that you don’t know.
When you’re in a new country, that last category can cause some issues. Today’s column, then, and like a few subsequent ones, aims to get ahead of a few of them.
Today, we’re talking about all things regarding understanding your new Mexican home address.
— Correos de México (@CorreosdeMexico) July 16, 2020
A Mexican postal service explainer on how to correctly address mail in Mexico City.
In Mexico, there are two things to remember when it comes to the street address: first, the street name comes before the house number and your address’ particular word for “street” (e.g. calle, avenida, privada — more on this in a minute) comes before either of those two things.
So if your house number is 55 and you live on Miguel Hidalgo street, then your address would be “Calle Miguel Hidalgo 55”. Note: whether your street name has a calle (street), avenida (avenue), privada (usually a dead-end street), or something else to define it, include it; you’ll see why it’s a good idea below.
If you live in an apartment, then the apartment number goes below that, and is sometimes written as Interior or abbreviated as Int. And if you live out in the country and don’t actually have a house number — it happens! — then “S/N” – sin número (no number) should be listed after the street name instead of a house number — and you’d better be prepared to give whoever’s delivering your stuff some visual references.
Another thing to remember is that the colonia, (neighborhood), which goes right below the street address, is all-important (it’s unclear how important the zip code actually is, though it will need to be included for any official address forms and presumably the post office uses them). Also, you may need to include your municipio (municipality), which may be different from the town you live in if you live somewhere small.
Why is listing this stuff so important? Because it’s very possible for there to be multiple streets with the same name in the same city (…I know). Proof positive: we actually wound up at the wrong address for a birthday party the other week because whoever made the invitation put the wrong colonia on it!
Due to this potential for confusion, many people, when wanting directions to your place, will ask to be sent your ubicación (location), using your phone’s GPS system. This is usually somewhat accurate depending on the last time Google maps updated things and how accurate they were at putting in street names in the first place. But it doesn’t always work; I’d recommend sending the address as well, with maybe even a picture of the front of where you want them to go.
Finally, stores with delivery services, including Amazon, will often ask you to fill in entre que calles (between what streets) your house is located, so be sure to learn the names of the next street over to you in both directions.
Now let’s talk about the difference between colonias and fraccionamientos. This one is a bit confusing and something that I’ll admit I only recently thought about and made sense of because of my own new address.
Colonia, again, is the neighborhood, and this is how cities and towns in Mexico identify certain areas of their city. Colonias can be anywhere from a few square blocks to areas of a size that resemble suburbs. Each colonia has a name and is a pretty defined area — perhaps not like what you might be used to in your country or origin, where neighborhoods are an unofficial notion open to interpretation. It’s the way that most people get an idea of where they are and where they’re going within a city.
A fraccionamiento is a housing development, usually of houses that were all built together. That said, I supposedly live in a fraccionamiento, but these houses definitely do not all look like they came up at the same time. A fraccionamiento can either be the name of a colonia if it’s very large (so you might write, for example, Fraccionamiento El Porvenir in the space for colonia), or it can be a development within a larger colonia.
My own address is a very tiny fraccionamiento (in name only, if you ask me), and if I say that name rather than the larger colonia’s name, taxi drivers aren’t quite sure what I’m talking about. As for what goes on your official address forms, use whatever was on previous bills – more on that below.
So what about providing proof of your address? This is where the comprobante de domicilio becomes important.
To get pretty much any kind of paperwork done in Mexico, you’ll need the comprobante de domicilio, which basically means “proof of address.” The actual definition, however, is much narrower than you’d probably imagine.
A few months ago, for example, some translation clients were surprised to learn that a signed letter from their landlord from whom they were renting at their current address, complete with copies of the landlord’s INE card, was not going to fit the bill: they needed a water bill, an electricity bill, or an internet bill.
One important thing to remember about a comprobante de domicilio is that in most cases, it doesn’t necessarily need to have your name on it. And really, it won’t have your name on it unless you’ve built the house, are the first buyers, or are subsequent buyers and have already gone to the trouble of changing the titular (the primary name) on all the bills. Unlike in some other countries, it’s rare for a landlord to expect tenants to put utility bills like electricity or water in their own name — or pay the bill themselves; it’s often factored into the rent. This is a known fact, and most of the time, whoever’s asking for a comprobante de domicilio won’t worry if your name’s not on it.
If you do need an official bill in your name, an internet bill will usually do the trick. But if you don’t have any of that, I’ve learned to keep a scanned copy of my rental agreement stored on my cell phone lest I need to print it out to prove where I live, like I had to do when I got my first COVID vaccine (they wanted to make very sure I actually lived here and wouldn’t be taking away someone else’s place).
By the way, a domicilio means “home delivery,” so if you ask for something, it means you want it delivered to your house. This applies to everything from packages to furniture to that pizza you’re ordering.
Domiciliar, on the other hand, is not exactly what it sounds like. This means that you give permission to an institution, usually something like internet or Netflix that’s the same price every month, to automatically withdraw an amount from your bank account each pay period. If you agree to domiciliar sus pagos, expect steady withdrawals!
Next time: gas and water!
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com
Hot chocolate has been a favorite the world over ever since it was first discovered by the Mayans.
Most people know that it was the Mayans who first consumed and used cacao. According to historians, they used cacao beans and paste extensively in ritual as well as for eating and drinking. There were some differences, though.
That ancient version of “hot cocoa,” wasn’t even hot — it was drunk cold — and was more like champurrado with a kick, made from ground cocoa beans, cornmeal, chili peppers and water, poured back and forth between two containers until foamy and thickened.
Cacao beans, like coffee beans, have a variety of flavors and aromas.
With the arrival of the conquistadors in the 1500s, that traditional chocolate drink began to evolve to the hot cocoa we know today. Hernán Córtes brought it back to Spain on one of his expeditions, and the bitter but delicious and exotic chocolate drink quickly became an indulgence of the wealthy upper class. (As with most imported foods — still true today! — cacao beans were expensive.) The chocolate-loving Spaniards omitted the chiles, added sweetener and served the drink hot, albeit still made with water.
It would be another 100 years before “hot cocoa” spread to other parts of Europe. In London, where “chocolate houses” became all the rage, milk was substituted for water, creating a richer, more palatable drink. That idea was also imported, this time from Jamaica, where the president of the London Royal College of Physicians had first encountered it.
Moving into the present, hot cocoa — and cocoa powder — runs the gamut between mundane and gourmet, from the American just-add-water packets to the luxurious, thick Italian cioccolata calda. In Mexico, the standard and most common version of a hot chocolate beverage is made from big round tablets of cocoa paste, cinnamon and sugar, sold in distinctive red and yellow boxes, the most popular being the Abuelita and Ibarra brands. (Word to the wise: Don’t be fooled into thinking you can eat the tablets like candy; they’re quite grainy and not very sweet.) These are crushed into a pan of milk, heated and then vigorously whisked to mix, using either a hand whisk or a traditional wood molinillo, which adds an element of fun to the process. If you’re lucky and determined, your efforts may yield the foam that’s a delicious part of this traditional drink.
If you prefer the kind of classic hot cocoa most of us grew up with,the most important factor to consider when making it is, of course, the type of cocoa. Without going into the many varieties of cacao beans (just like coffee, they have different flavors, aroma and qualities depending on where and how they’re grown and processed), the most basic question you’ll find yourself confronted with is whether to choose “Dutch process” or regular/natural cocoa powder.
Are they interchangeable? Yes. But if you do a side-by-side test, you’ll certainly taste and see a difference.
Again, some history: it was the Dutch — with a monopoly on the cocoa trade — who invented cocoa powder and then developed solid chocolate in 1876. Fresh cacao beans are fermented, dried and then roasted (again, much like coffee) and then crushed into tiny pieces called nibs, which are then ground into a paste. Next the surprisingly tasteless cocoa butter is extracted, leaving dry crumbled solids. That’s what’s ground to make “regular” or natural cocoa powder — think Hershey’s, Ghiradelli, Nestle’s — with a sharp, almost fruity flavor.
Dutch-process cocoa powder is rinsed with a solution of potassium carbonate to neutralize its acidity a little, giving it a smoother, more earthy flavor. Dutch-process cocoa powders are also darker than their natural counterparts; a good example of a really strong Dutch-process taste would be the almost black, distinctly flavored Oreo cookies.
For making hot chocolate, I’ve found that a combination of Dutch-process cocoa powder (which I bring from the U.S.) and crumbled dark chocolate yields the richest, most decadent flavor. Baking chocolate or a dark chocolate bar will work; chips won’t, though, as they have stabilizers added to prevent melting. Adding a little cornstarch thickens the drink and gives it an almost indefinable luxurious mouthfeel.
Whisking with a wooden molinillo gives Mexican hot chocolate its traditional froth on top — and it’s fun!
Rich Hot Cocoa Mix
2 (4-oz) bars baking chocolate or equivalent dark chocolate
1 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
½ tsp. salt
Freeze chocolate until completely frozen, about 10 minutes; remove from freezer, break into pieces. Process in food processor with cocoa powder, sugar, cornstarch and salt until completely powdered. Transfer to airtight container; store in cool, dark place for up to 3 months.
To make hot chocolate, combine 1–2 Tbsp. mixture with 1 cup boiling milk, stirring or whisking to mix. To thicken further, return to heat and simmer 30 seconds until thick and smooth, stirring constantly.
Spicy-Sweet Mezcal Hot Chocolate
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. sugar
Salt
2 cups milk
6 cinnamon sticks
1 whole dried ancho chili pod, split
8 oz. crumbled dark chocolate bar
5 oz. mezcal
Toppings: chile powder, dark chocolate shavings
Mix cocoa with sugar and salt in saucepan. Stir in milk, two cinnamon sticks, chile and crumbled chocolate. Heat over medium heat, stirring, until chocolate melts. Gently whisk to completely mix. Simmer over low, whisking occasionally, until fragrant, about 10 minutes.
Strain, discarding chile and cinnamon sticks. Return milk mixture to pot, add mezcal, and heat. Using a milk frother, whisk or molinillo, mix until foamy. Serve, garnished with chile powder or chocolate shavings and a cinnamon stick.
Makes 4 servings.
Barbajada Hot Chocolate
¼ cup cocoa powder
¼ cup sugar
½ cups milk
2/3 cup strong coffee or espresso
Whipped cream, for serving
In medium bowl, mix cocoa powder and sugar. Heat milk over moderate heat; whisk in cocoa/sugar mixture and coffee, whisking rapidly until frothy. Ladle into mugs and top with whipped cream.
Enveloped trout at a restaurant in Tenango del Valle, México state. Trout is raised in many of the high mountain streams of Mexico, primarily for local consumption. (Photo: Alejandro Linares García)
There has been much commentary on unusual Mexican food, with bugs and weird animal body parts always good for clickbait. Let’s put these aside, along with commercial crops like berries, which have not (yet) made their way into Mexico’s myriad of cuisines.
Mexican food has evolved greatly since the conquest of Tenochtitlán, and that evolution continues. Because of this, novice foreigners might find some surprisingly familiar-looking dishes.
A huge round of Edam cheese stuffed with seasoned ground meat. Queso relleno is a delicacy of the Yucatan, thanks to Dutch sailors (Photo: Gina Ela)
My inspiration for this article was trout — yes, trout. Believe it or not, Mexico produces over 4,000 tons of rainbow and other types of trout per year in 18 states. The fish was first introduced in México state at the end of the 19th century as a source of protein for those living in very high mountain areas. Today, Mexico’s cooks prepare it in a variety of ways, and it can be found in restaurants in tourist areas such as the Bosque de las Truchas in Hidalgo.
Shrimp is by far the best known of Mexico’s shellfish, but mollusks such as clams and oysters can be found in various coastal areas — and even lobster in some places. The most famous freshwater fish is the charal, which kind of looks like a small sardine but does not taste like one; even catfish can be found.
It is no secret that modern Mexican cuisine was revolutionized by foods introduced by the Spanish — pork, chicken, cheese, wheat, distilled spirits and more — that were integrated into the Mesoamerican diet. But not everything the Spanish introduced became widespread.
Sheep and goats were introduced early, but their meat is found mostly as barbacoa in central Mexico, birria in western Mexico and cabrito in the north.
Wheat was the Spaniards’ staple, but it never displaced the corn tortilla as the definitive “bread” of Mexico. It did manage to find its way, however, into the cuisine in the form of sweet yeast breads usually served with hot beverages like coffee and chocolate. Their forms and flavors will be familiar to most Westerners.
One bread has an interesting twist — pan de pulque, or pulque bread. It developed in Tlaxcala, using native fermented pulque to substitute for the then very expensive yeast. This bread is still made today, found from Mexico City to as far north as Coahuila.
Non-sweet bread like baguettes and the like are definitely less popular with one exception: the bolillo, a small oblong roll that often envelops a wide variety of meats, cheeses and more in something called a torta or lonche. Although it looks like a sub, Mexicans do not consider this to be a sandwich because it started out humbly as a roll stuffed with beans, with the other ingredients overwhelming said beans much later.
Bread is almost exclusively bought rather than made at home. This is because Mexican home cooking does not often include the oven.
Pan de Pulque fresh out of the oven. This soft, dinner roll-type bread has an important history in northeast Mexico. (Photo: Pan de Pulque Casero)
Many foreign fruits were introduced by the Spanish with varying success. Apples were introduced in Puebla early, then later in places like Querétaro and northern Mexico. As a result, Puebla developed a cider industry, paralleling the beverage’s popularity in Europe and Anglo-America.
Puebla cider still exists, but it tends to be very sweet with a minimum of alcohol. You can also find some apple baked goods and an apple salsa in Zacatlán.
Cumin and oregano were introduced by colonial-era immigrants from the Canary Islands and are now staples in northeast Mexico and Texas. Sugar cane does well in hot and humid areas in eastern Mexico, and Mexico does have rum and other cane-based alcohol, often under various names and mixed with fruit and other sweet flavorings.
One unusual colonial-era introduction is Edam cheese in the Yucatán, most often seen in the dish queso relleno, where the cheese is stuffed with a meat preparation. It is thought to have been introduced by the Dutch from their colonies in the Caribbean.
Arrivals after the colonial period have introduced both foods and food preparations. Possibly the most famous of these is the paste, Mexico’s riff on the Cornish pasty, introduced by British miners in the 19th century. It is one of the definitive foods of Pachuca, and very popular among intercity bus travelers in central Mexico.
Hot dogs can be found in many parts of Mexico now, but Sonora has taken the concept to a new level, making the dog larger and piling on a crazy slew of different toppings. (Photo: Ecos)
Christians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries migrated from what is now Lebanon, bringing the shawarma/gyro, which got renamed “Arab tacos,” then reinvented as tacos al pastor: what attracts attention here is that both versions are still cooked on the vertical spit.
More recent immigration and globalization has had some effect on Mexican cuisine, especially regionally. Hamburgers, pizza and hot dogs are ubiquitous in most of the country. Localization of these has resulted in some unusual twists, such as mole pizza and Sonora’s famous dogo, a hot dog with many toppings on a bolillo-type roll.
One of the most recent introductions is sushi, and while relatively authentic versions are widespread, it is definitely going through the same localization process, with chili-infused soy sauce, a larger filling-to-rice ratio, lots of cream cheese and a wider variety of fish and meat in the center, often mashed and mixed with mayonnaise.
More than a few native foods, however, have been forgotten or marginalized in Mexico, even as they (or their cousins) became popular abroad. Perhaps the most curious of these is the turkey.
It was hunted, and even domesticated, by the Mesoamericans, but since meat was only a small part of their diet, European meats became the norm. Only in the Yucatán Peninsula can one find a variety of native dishes featuring this bird. Oddly enough, in the rest of the country, turkey is most often eaten as a special meal for Christmas/New Year’s.
Markets would lead you to believe Mexico only has the introduced button and oyster mushrooms, but the many wild mushroom varieties in forested highlands are making a comeback, both in the areas in which they grow and in gourmet markets like San Juan in Mexico City.
Sweet potatoes and yams are indeed indigenous to Mexico, but over the centuries, they have become associated with other cuisines. Carts like this one in Mexico City roast them, along with plantains, as the vendor walks along the street. (Photo: Orlando Zamudio)
Finally, one other food that does not seem to be native is the yam/sweet potato. Today, you can find it at markets, but if you live in Mexico City, you know it from the wandering street vendors pushing a wood-fired cart and making a loud, high-pitched whistle impossible to forget.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar — in front, third from left — was among the dignitaries on hand for a victory lap at the nearly finished Puerto Peñasco solar farm in Sonora. (Alfonso Durazo/Twitter)
The Puerto Peñasco solar energy plant will come online in April, state officials announced during a visit of foreign diplomats to the nearly finished plant on Thursday.
Representatives of 80 countries and 25 international organizations traveled to Sonora to take part in the visit, which was led by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, right, led dignitaries around the Sonora solar farm, along with Sonora Governor Alfonso Durazo, left. (Photo: Cuartoscuro)
“Mexico is making a really great effort because it didn’t consider [the shift to renewable energy] would be so fast,” Ebrard told the diplomats.
He said the global energy price rises caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine had pushed Mexico and the United States to invest heavily in accelerating the region’s renewable energy transition.
The Puerto Peñasco plant was built by Mexico’s state electricity company with an investment of US $1.6 billion. Once completed, it will be the largest solar power plant in Latin America, with a generating capacity of 100,000 megawatts — enough to power half a million homes.
One of itsmain benefits will be to supply power to Baja California, which is not currently connected to the national electricity grid.
The first 129 megawatts of the project will be operational by April 29, Juan Antonio Fernández, strategic planning director of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), announced on Thursday.
“Today’s message is that Sonora will be the leading solar energy producer of Latin America,” Ebrard said. “The second message is that it will be the main generator of new electromobility technologies in the country in the coming months.”
Sonora state governor Alfonso Durazo, who also took part in the visit, explained that the Puerto Peñasco plant would form part of the Sonora Clean Energy Plan. This plan also seeks to mine Sonora’s large lithium reserves for use in electric car batteries and to make the state a hub for electric vehicle manufacturing.
Ebrard said that the plan represented a “new model of development” that would lead the way in transforming Mexico’s energy model.
Sonora Governor Alfonso Durazo told visitors that the Puerto Peñasco plant would form part of the Sonora Clean Energy Plan and about plans to mine Sonora’s lithium reserves. (Alfonso Durazo/Twitter)
President López Obrador has committed to generating at least 35% of the energy used in Mexico in 2023 from sustainable sources. He has also pledged to double the country’s renewable energy capacity by 2030, with a projected investment of $48 billion.
However, AMLO has also invested in subsidizing Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, and in constructing a new oil refinery, casting doubt on his green credentials.
