Hummingbirds are unhealthy and "unhinged" due to their poor diet, says a new report from Mexico's Health Ministry. (This image was generated using AI tools)
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In an unprecedented public advisory released Tuesday, Mexico’s Health Ministry condemned what it called “a reckless, sugar-fueled epidemic sweeping backyards, gardens and hanging feeders nationwide.” In other words, the hummingbird’s diet. This diet, officials said, places the birds at risk for what authors describe as “a lifetime of poor nutritional choices.”
When informed that hummingbirds have evolved over 42 million years to metabolize nectar at extraordinary rates, Dr. Elena Paloma, chair of the advisory panel, responded, “That’s exactly the kind of outdated thinking we’ve been trying to overcome.”
The hummingbird’s excessive intake of sugar is almost certainly why it beats its wings so fast, say health officials. (This image was generated using AI tools)
The 312-page report, “Hummingbirds: The Hidden Dangers of Nectar Dependency,” states that hummingbirds derive nearly 99% of their daily calories from sugar water and flower nectar while consuming “woefully inadequate amounts of kale, quinoa and lean poultry.”
“We’re done pretending this is ‘nature’ and not a public health emergency,” the report states.
The report also notes, with alarm, that a hummingbird’s heart can beat up to 1,200 times per minute. The Health Ministry attributes this not to one of the most extraordinary metabolic adaptations in the animal kingdom, but to “an all-carb diet finally catching up to them.”
Environmental groups expressed concern that the report unfairly stigmatizes hummingbirds. “They flap their wings up to 80 times a second,” said one ornithologist. “By lunchtime, they’ve burned enough calories to power a small drone.”
The advisory acknowledges this but notes that “exercise alone cannot compensate for poor dietary habits,” citing studies of office workers who occasionally use the stairs. Recommended interventions include: mandatory nutrition labels on nectar listing “added sugars” in bold red letters; a national campaign urging Mexicans to fill feeders with a “more balanced” ratio of sugar water, electrolytes and vitamins; and warning labels on flowers reading, “This bloom may contribute to excessive wing-flapping.”
Early field trials have yielded mixed results. “We filled our feeder with cucumber-infused electrolyte water,” said one volunteer. “The hummingbirds looked at it for about three seconds and then flew across the street to our neighbor’s house.”
Several violet-crowned hummingbirds observed near a patch of trumpet vine declined to comment, choosing instead to hover silently before accelerating from 0 to 30 miles per hour in approximately half a heartbeat.
Manufacturers of hummingbird feeders have pledged to cooperate by adding warning labels:
“Warning: Frequent consumption of sugar water may contribute to rapid wing movement, hyperactivity and an irresistible attraction to brightly colored tubular flowers.”
The Health Ministry said its next report will examine the dependence of monarch butterflies on milkweed, ocelots on tropical rodents and jaguars on peccaries, warning that “dietary diversity is essential, even when evolution strongly suggests otherwise.”
Jamieson Greer is in Mexico from Wednesday, July 22, to Friday, July 24, to continue bilateral discussions related to the Joint Review of USMCA. (@USTradeRep/X)
The U.S. government, which announced on July 1 that it had declined to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement (USMCA) in its current form, is seeking stronger automotive sector rules of origin (ROOs) in the North American free trade pact.
In a report submitted to U.S. Congress this month, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer stated that his office, the USTR, “intends to examine carefully the USMCA’s automotive rules of origin to identify areas where stronger rules can directly benefit U.S. manufacturers and workers.”
According to the USTR, the United States’ trade deficit in autos and parts with Mexico reached US $138.2 billion in 2024. (Cuartoscuro)
In the foreword of the same report — titled “Report to Congress on the Operation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement with respect to Trade in Automotive Goods” — Greer said that “the automotive industry remains a significant contributor to the U.S. and North American economies” and “the USMCA has had a positive impact on the global competitiveness of the regional auto industry.”
“… Yet, the United States has run a persistent, substantial, and growing trade deficit in autos and parts with Mexico for over 30 years,” the U.S. trade representative stated.
“In 2024, that deficit peaked at [US] $138.2 billion. In recent years, analysis indicates that the share of U.S. content within Mexico’s automotive exports to the United States has been declining, while the share of Chinese or other Asian content in those goods has been increasing.”
In the July 1 report, the USTR stated that the North American automotive industry “has faced external supply chain shocks, increased competitive pressures from China, and evolving U.S. trade policy.
“Further, evidence shows that U.S. content in vehicles produced in Mexico and Canada is declining, while automotive trade deficit with Mexico remains persistently large. The 2026 USMCA Joint Review will provide the United States the opportunity to assess and strengthen the USMCA automotive ROOs to incentivize the use of additional U.S. and North American content,” the USTR said.
“… In 2017, industry estimated 85 percent of the auto parts content for vehicles built in Canada originated in the United States, and more than 60 percent of the auto parts content of vehicles assembled in Mexico originated in the United States. But in 2024, industry reported that the estimated U.S.-origin content of vehicles built in Canada and Mexico dropped to 50 and 35 percent, respectively,” Greer’s office stated.
In an article published on Wednesday under the headline “U.S. insists on strengthening USMCA rules of origin,” the newspaper El Economista wrote that the USTR was seeking to bolster automotive ROOs in the three-way trade pact even though the rules are already “the strictest of any trade agreement in the world.”
In its report, the USTR noted that the USMCA “raised regional value content (RVC) requirements to 75 percent for passenger vehicles and light trucks, compared to 62.5 percent under the NAFTA,” the North American Free Trade Agreement that was superseded by the USMCA in 2020.
In accordance with the USMCA, clearing the 75% RVC threshold is one necessary condition for the tariff-free trade of vehicles within North America. However, U.S. President Donald Trump — who is determined to protect and grow the U.S. auto industry — last year imposed 25% tariffs on vehicles made in Mexico and Canada. The U.S. content in those vehicles — but not regional content — is exempt from the tariff, lowering the effective duty for most cars exported to the U.S. from Mexico.
Despite the United States’ decision not to extend the USMCA until 2042, the free trade pact remains in effect.
However, it is now set to be reviewed on an annual basis until 2036, although the three signatories can decide at any time to extend it for an additional 16 years.
Mexico-US trade talks continue in CDMX
The focus on possible changes to automotive ROOs in the USMCA comes as Mexican and U.S. officials engage in USMCA review talks in Mexico City. Mexico’s top USMCA negotiator, Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, is already participating in the bilateral discussions, which began Monday, and Greer is set to join them.
“Ambassador Jamieson Greer will travel to Mexico from Wednesday, July 22, to Friday, July 24, to continue bilateral discussions related to the Joint Review of USMCA,” the USTR said in a statement last week.
“During the bilateral meetings, Ambassador Greer and Secretary Ebrard will discuss a range of topics including steel and aluminum and derivative products, automobiles, economic security, labor, agriculture, and electronic payment services,” the USTR said, noting also that Greer will meet with President Claudia Sheinbaum at the National Palace. That meeting is scheduled for this Thursday.
One of Mexico’s main aims in its negotiations with the United States is to secure the reduction — if not the elimination — of U.S. tariffs that currently apply to Mexican vehicles, steel and aluminum. Among the measures the Mexican government has taken that could help it secure concessions from its northern neighbor is the imposition on Jan. 1 of new and higher tariffs on imports from China and other countries with which it doesn’t have free trade agreements. The government reported on Monday that the new tariffs approved by Congress in December 2025 had reduced imports across 1,463 product categories by 23.2% between January and May. The most impacted country is China.
However, the U.S. trade representative, who appeared before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in Washington, D.C., before departing for Mexico, said that the resolution of the automotive ROOs issue would “take a little more time” and involve discussions with U.S. Congress “in the following year.”
However, Greer said he hoped to strike some interim trade agreements with Mexico and Canada this year, according to Reuters.
“We are moving with all due speed on this,” he said.
Reuters reported that Greer “did not specify what separate ‘potential interim arrangements'” with Mexico and Canada “would look like, but said he wanted to have options for Trump, Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to consider by the end of this year.”
Sheinbaum said last Thursday that at this week’s talks with the U.S., Mexico would be aiming to “reach some agreements that give us greater stability in the coming years.”
She has stressed that “at any time,” Mexico, the United States and Canada can agree to extend the USMCA for 16 more years, something that the Mexican and Canadian governments wanted to do this month but which the Trump administration rejected.
Mexico and the United States are each other’s largest trade partners, while Canada is the second-largest market for Mexican exports. Most trade between Mexico and the United States occurs tariff-free under the USMCA, which governs North American trade worth around $2 trillion annually.
The 14-year-old Cueva twins are rising stars in the sport of synchronized diving. (gob.mx)
Mexico has long excelled in diving, and the latest gold-medal triumph of the 14-year-old Cueva twins from the Bajío state of Jalisco demonstrates the country’s potential.
Mexican divers finished their participation in the 2026 Zapopan Diving Cup, held between July 16 and 19, with 10 medals: three gold, four silver and three bronze. Mía and Lía Cueva Lobato defeated Chinese partners Shan Lin and Yiping Long to win gold in the synchronized 3-meter springboard final, marking the first time the duo had defeated Chinese competitors in an international competition.
Mexico’s Rut Páez and Yunuen Parra finished in fourth place in the same event.
“I felt very happy,” said Lía Cueva after receiving her gold medal. “It’s the first time we’ve beaten the Chinese, and it gives us a lot of motivation to do it again at the Olympic Games.”
“We know we still have a lot of work to do, but I’m convinced that we will continue training very hard so that results like this… become more and more frequent and visible,” added Mía Cueva. “They can expect us at the Olympic Games.”
The win followed previous success at the World Aquatics Diving World Cup in Jalisco’s capital of Guadalajara, held in April 2025, in which the Cueva twins took silver in the women’s 3-meter synchronized springboard final.
Meanwhile, Mexicans Randal Willars and Kevin Berlín delivered a strong performance on the men’s synchronized 10-meter platform, beating Great Britain and Colombia to take the gold medal, with a score of 414.72 points.
In the women’s 10-meter platform event, Mexico’s Suri Cueva took the silver medal, with 303.10 points, while Samantha Jiménez took bronze with 302.15 points. China’s Zhixin Qu took first place with 369.40 points.
The Metropolitan Aquatic Center hosted representatives from nine countries in preparation for the Santo Domingo 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games, to be held from July 24 to August 8. On Monday, President Sheinbaum presided over an official send-off for the more than 600 athletes who will compete across disciplines including diving, archery, gymnastics, boxing and more.
"Ceci" will support state police video surveillance, coordinated monitoring, facial recognition, license plate recognition, handling 911 calls and cases of violence against women. (Saúl López/Presidencia)
Sheinbaum’s mañanera in 60 seconds
📍Mañanera held in Toluca: President Sheinbaum took her Wednesday press conference to Toluca, capital of México state, Mexico’s most populous state with around 17 million residents.
📉 Homicides down sharply in México state: National Public Security System chief Marcela Figueroa reported an average of 2.8 homicides per day in the state in June, a 58% drop compared to September 2024. She said a “unified command” strategy launched in 15 high-crime municipalities last year contributed to the decline.
📅 Lowest homicide rate in 19 years: Figueroa said México state saw an average of 2.9 homicides per day in the first half of 2026, down 31% from 2025’s daily average and 68% below the 2013 rate.
👮 Over 3,300 arrests since Sheinbaum took office: Security Minister García Harfuch said 3,367 people have been detained for high-impact crimes in México state since October 2024, alongside seizures of 1,219 kg of drugs and 819 firearms.
🎯 No timeline on Iván Archivaldo Guzmán capture: Asked how close authorities are to detaining the Chapitos faction leader, García Harfuch declined to speculate, instead pointing to the recent killing of an alleged Culiacán plaza boss as a sign of progress against the faction.
⛓️ El Mayo’s prison transfer uncertain: Asked whether Ismael Zambada could serve his life sentence in a Mexican prison, García Harfuch said that would depend on whether Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office pursues extradition, though a transfer appears unlikely.
Why today’s mañanera matters
President Claudia Sheinbaum held her Wednesday morning press conference in Toluca, capital of México state.
Located in central Mexico, the state, commonly abbreviated as Edomex, is Mexico’s most populated with just under 17 million residents when the last census was conducted in 2020.
A good number of the state’s 125 municipalities are located in the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. They include two municipalities that are among the 10 most populated in the country: Ecatepec (1.64 million residents in 2020) and Nezahualcóyotl (1.07 million).
México state is also home to popular tourism destinations including the Teotihuacán archeological site and the magical towns of Valle de Bravo and Malinalco.
Like the vast majority of Mexico’s 32 federal entities, México state has seen a significant reduction in its homicide rate this year. Thus, federal and state officials, including Governor Delfina Gómez, who attended today’s mañanera, have statistics to back up their argument that their security initiatives are working.
There were an average of 2.8 homicides per day in the state in June, a 58% drop compared to September 2024. (Saúl López/Presidencia)
Beyond the presentation of the latest security statistics, Sheinbaum’s Wednesday morning press conference was significant as Security Minister Omar García Harfuch responded to questions about Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, a Sinaloa Cartel leader and son of convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and about Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a Sinaloa Cartel kingpin who on Monday was sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
Homicides decline significantly in México state
National Public Security System chief Marcela Figueroa told reporters that the security strategy in México state has prioritized “intelligence, coordination and the territorial presence” of security forces.
She noted that a specific “unified command” strategy was implemented in 15 high-crime municipalities in eastern México state in March 2025, contributing to a reduction in homicides in the state that borders Mexico City to the north, east and west.
Figueroa presented data that showed that there was an average of 2.8 homicides per day in México state in June, a reduction of 58% compared to the daily average in September 2024, the final month of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
She also reported that the homicide rate in México state in the first six months of 2026 was the lowest in the past 19 years. There was an average of 2.9 homicides per day between January and June, a reduction of 31% compared to the daily average across 2025.
Compared to 2013, when there was an average of 9.1 homicides per day, the reduction in the first six months of this year was 68.1%.
Figueroa noted there was an average of 116.1 reported high-impact crimes per day between January and June, a reduction of 19% compared to 2025. Among the offenses classified as high-impact crimes are murder, kidnapping, extortion and violent robbery.
More than 3,300 arrests in México state since Sheinbaum took office
At the start of his presentation, García Harfuch said that “México state is an example of how the coordination between the three levels of government yields results.”
The security minister also said that since the current government took office in October 2024, it has worked closely with the México state Attorney General’s Office and Security Ministry “to develop investigations, carry out joint operations and detain those who generate violence in the entity.”
“This coordinated work,” García Harfuch said, has resulted in the arrest of 3,300 people who allegedly committed high-impact crimes.
Data he presented showed that the exact number of people arrested between Oct. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026, was 3,367.
In addition, authorities seized 1,219 kilograms of drugs and 819 firearms in the same period.
“These results reflect a strategy based on intelligence and investigation, but above all operational coordination that has allowed us to disrupt criminal structures, provide faster assistance [when crimes are committed], … detain priority targets and strengthen the safety of Mexican families,” García Harfuch said.
Are authorities closing in on Iván Archivaldo Guzmán?
A reporter for the newspaper Milenio noted that Milenio recently published a report stating that Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, leader of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, is in a “situation of tactical vulnerability and extreme isolation.”
“How close is the security cabinet to detaining Iván Archivaldo?” the reporter asked García Harfuch.
Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, another of El Chapo’s sons, is a top target of security operations in Sinaloa. (DEA)
“In order not to speculate and say how close or how far [we are from detaining Guzmán], I prefer to talk about the progress the security cabinet has made [in Sinaloa],” the security minister said.
The slain man, identified in media reports as Cristhian Guadalupe Pérez Pérez, was one of the “main generators of violence in Culiacán and this entire area,” the security minister said, referring to Sinaloa.
“He was a key person for this organization, for this criminal leader,” he said, referring to Iván Archivaldo and the Chapitos.
García Harfuch said that federal security forces carry out operations in Sinaloa every week “to continue weakening” the Chapitos and “the other faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
He was referring to the Mayos faction, which is engaged in a long-running and extremely bloody feud with the Chapitos that intensified after Joaquín Guzmán López, another son of El Chapo, kidnapped El Mayo in July 2024 and forced him onto a private plane that flew him to New Mexico where he, and Guzmán López, were detained by U.S. authorities.
Could El Mayo be transferred to a Mexican prison?
The same Milenio reporter highlighted that Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Pérez, said in an interview that his client wants to serve his prison sentence in Mexico. He asked García Harfuch whether a transfer to a Mexican prison was possible.
The security minister said that the Federal Attorney General’s Office would have to determine whether or not it would seek the extradition of Zambada, who was also wanted in Mexico when he was arrested in the U.S. two years ago.
A transfer of the 76-year-old drug trafficker to a prison in Mexico appears extremely unlikely.
Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Monday that Zambada would “spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison, exactly where he belongs.”
For more than two decades, Vallarta Botanical Gardens has been showcasing, and safeguarding via conservation methods, the natural flora and fauna of western Mexico. (Charlotte Smith)
The Vallarta Botanical Gardens (VBG) has pulled back the curtain on the work taking place beyond its walking trails and colorful displays with the release of its 2025 Annual Report, offering the public a comprehensive look at the organization’s conservation, research and education efforts.
While visitors know the VBG for its orchids, jungle trails and riverside setting south of Puerto Vallarta, the report paints a broader picture of an institution that’s grown into one of western Mexico’s leading centers for plant conservation and environmental stewardship.
The history and scale of Vallarta Botanical Gardens
The Vallarta Botanical Gardens welcomed nearly 60,000 visitors in 2025, with admission helping to fund its conservation efforts. (Charlotte Smith)
Founded in 2004 on what was then degraded cattle pasture and agave fields, the non-profit VBG was established with a mission to conserve and celebrate unique regional plant biodiversity. More than two decades later, that mission now extends across habitat protection, botanical research, environmental education and sustainable community development.
Among the report’s most striking figures is the scale of the living collection at VBG. More than 1,200 plant species and hybrids are cultivated on the property, making it one of the region’s most significant botanical collections.
Throughout the year, more than 1,000 species flower at different times, creating an ever-changing landscape while providing opportunities to study and preserve rare native plants. The collection includes around 30 species found only in Jalisco, representing roughly 10% of the state’s endemic flora.
As these plants are naturally grown nowhere else in the world, protecting them holds a special significance.
Conservation challenges
Conservation remains at the heart of the VBG mission.
According to the report, the institution maintains at least 60 plant species officially classified by Mexican authorities as being at risk. In addition, more than 250 species in its collection are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.
Protection of habitat and conservation of flora and fauna, both native and non-native, are among the primary missions for the VBG. (Charlotte Smith)
Maintaining these collections is about far more than display. By cultivating threatened species outside their natural habitats, botanical gardens provide an important insurance policy against extinction, preserving genetic diversity that could one day support habitat restoration or species recovery efforts.
Areas of research
For many plants native to western Mexico, collections such as these may become increasingly important as climate change, urban development and habitat loss continue to place pressure on wild populations.
Research is another major focus highlighted throughout the report.
Many native plants from western Mexico have never been extensively cultivated, meaning scientists have limited information about how to propagate and maintain them successfully.
Garden staff conducts ongoing research to understand these species better, developing cultivation techniques that can be shared with botanical institutions and conservation organizations both within Mexico and abroad.
That work has helped establish the Vallarta Botanical Gardens as more than a display garden. It functions as a living laboratory where horticulture, science and conservation intersect, generating knowledge that contributes to the long-term preservation of Mexico’s botanical heritage.
The VBG as an educational tool
Last year, more than 1,000 schoolchildren were introduced to the diverse flora and fauna of Jalisco by the VBG. (Charlotte Smith)
Education also forms a central part of the organization’s mission.
Each year, thousands of Mexican schoolchildren visit the VBG through environmental education programs designed to foster an appreciation for native ecosystems, biodiversity and conservation.
Hands-on experiences allow students to connect with the natural world while learning about the environmental challenges facing the region and the role they can play in protecting it.
The report also highlights ongoing work beyond the garden gates.
Conservation efforts within the Los Horcones River Basin include habitat protection, watershed conservation and projects aimed at preserving the ecosystems that support countless plant and animal species. These initiatives are made possible through partnerships with local communities, volunteers, members and donors whose support extends the impact of the VBG far beyond its cultivated landscapes.
Visitorship and its importance
Although conservation is its primary mission, the Gardens remain one of Puerto Vallarta’s most visited attractions, welcoming travelers from around the world. Visitor admissions, memberships and donations help fund scientific research, conservation initiatives and educational outreach, creating a model in which tourism directly supports environmental protection.
Memberships and other forms of community involvement help to support conservation efforts for the VBG. (Charlotte Smith)
The report brings together these achievements in a single publication, offering supporters a clearer understanding of how the organization’s resources are being invested and where its priorities lie for the future. It also serves as an invitation for continued community involvement through memberships, volunteer opportunities and charitable giving.
For many visitors, the Vallarta Botanical Gardens are remembered for spectacular orchids, tropical flowers, hummingbirds and peaceful jungle walks. The 2025 Annual Report reveals another side of the institution. It’s one rooted in scientific discovery, conservation leadership and a long-term commitment to protecting the extraordinary biodiversity of western Mexico.
As environmental challenges continue to grow globally, the report underscores the increasingly important role botanical gardens play. Not simply as beautiful places to visit, but as living museums, research centers and conservation organizations working to safeguard plant life for future generations.
Charlotte Smith is a writer and journalist based in Mexico. Her work focuses on travel, politics and community. You can follow along with her travel stories at www.salsaandserendipity.com.
Miguel Covarrubias gained lasting fame as an artist and illustrator, but he forever changed other fields, too, including anthropology and Mexican history and dance. (Gaceta UNAM)
One Mexican showed New Yorkers how to draw the Jazz Age, introduced Vanity Fair’s high society to Harlem, helped rewrite the origin story of Mesoamerica and founded Mexico’s national school of dance … yet most people have never heard his name.
Meet Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud — better known as “El Chamaco,” or “The Kid,” to everyone who knew him. He was 19, spoke almost no English and had never left Mexico when he boarded a ship north in 1923. Within a year, he was one of the most talked-about artists in Manhattan. He never really stopped being talked about — he just kept turning up in fields nobody expected a painter and illustrator to end up in.
The origins of ‘El Chamaco’
Covarrubias illustration for The New Yorker magazine published in 1925, when he was only 21 years old, but already a sensation in New York City. (Miguel Covarrubias)
Born in 1904 to an intellectual family in Mexico City, Covarrubias blended French refinement (from his mother’s side) with Mexican scientific curiosity (from his father’s). He was a gifted, rebellious teenager who abandoned formal schooling at 14 — leaving the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria behind — and threw himself into drawing instead. By 16, he was working for major newspapers and government offices, crafting political caricatures and artistic illustrations.
In the post-revolutionary cultural ferment of 1920s Mexico, Covarrubias stood out. Artists like Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco took notice. So did José Juan Tablada, the poet and diplomat who secured him a government grant to study in New York — a strategic move in Mexico’s soft power campaign to reshape its global image following the Mexican Revolution. The new government urgently needed to project a peaceful, stable and reliable image to attract foreign investment.
A Mexican in Manhattan
New York in the 1920s was electric — jazz, Art Deco and speakeasies in a city that had just taken Paris’ crown as the cultural capital of the world. Tablada opened the first doors, but it was the critic Carl Van Vechten who championed Covarrubias’ entry into the “smart set,” the cosmopolitan circle that included the caricaturist Ralph Barton and, decisively, Frank Crowninshield, the editor of Vanity Fair. Covarrubias’ first caricatures ran in January 1924. By March, he had his own solo show at the Whitney Studio Club. Being drawn by him had become a form of social currency in a city obsessed with status.
What set his work apart wasn’t just speed or charm. His line blended Art Deco elegance with Cubist geometry and an almost surgical social insight — streamlined forms and confident black washes that captured not just a likeness, but an essence. He didn’t merely draw the who’s who of his time. In a very real sense, he helped define how they were seen.
Drawing Harlem, breaking barriers
The same eye that flattered the Rockefellers also turned, remarkably early, toward Harlem. In December 1924, Covarrubias published the first of his illustrations for Vanity Fair depicting African American artists, dancers and musicians — a list that would eventually include Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington — not as caricatures’ usual targets but as icons of modernity. Working alongside the Afro-Caribbean writer Eric Walrond, he helped visualize the Harlem Renaissance for a downtown readership that would otherwise never have looked.
He wasn’t free of his era’s blind spots. But there’s something worth sitting with in the fact that it took a Mexican artist — someone who understood, from the other side of a different border, what it meant to be flattened into a stereotype — to bring Harlem’s sophistication into a magazine built for old money. His outsider’s vantage let him do what few white artists of the period attempted: appreciate and gently challenge American racial dynamics in the same breath.
By the 1930s, Covarrubias was steering one of Vanity Fair’s signature features, the “Impossible Interviews,” pairing figures who could never plausibly meet — Clark Gable and the Prince of Wales, Mae West and Sigmund Freud — in imagined conversation, scripted by the humorist Corey Ford. It was satire with a velvet glove, and in hindsight, startlingly prophetic: a running joke about fame becoming untethered from actual achievement, decades before that became the defining condition of celebrity culture.
Rosa Rolanda and a life in motion
In 1924, Covarrubias met Rosa Rolanda, an American dancer trained in photography by Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. They married in 1930, and from then on their lives moved in tandem across Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and eventually Bali, where Rosa’s camera and Miguel’s sketchbook became two instruments of the same project. Their home in Mexico City later became a magnet for a genuinely improbable guest list — Orson Welles, Georgia O’Keeffe, Luis Buñuel, Nelson Rockefeller, Henri Cartier-Bresson and even Amelia Earhart.
The anthropologist’s eye
Covarrubias didn’t just want to draw other cultures — he wanted to understand them, and he won two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1930 and 1942, to do it. The 1937 book that resulted, “Island of Bali,” wove together sketches, paintings, Rosa’s photographs and genuine ethnographic text. It became a bestseller, helped ignite a “Bali craze” in American society, and is still cited today as a foundational text in visual anthropology, spoken of in the same breath as Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Unlike many Western observers of his era, Covarrubias didn’t study his subjects from a comfortable distance. Drawing, for him, was a form of conversation.
That same eye, redirected homeward in the late 1930s, produced one of his most consequential contributions. Working alongside Alfonso Caso — the “father of Mexican archaeology” — Covarrubias helped identify the Olmec as the foundational “mother culture” of Mesoamerica. It was his training as an artist, not as an academic, that made the difference: he recognized recurring stylistic patterns across scattered artifacts before professional archaeologists had connected them. In 1942, he and Caso presented their findings on the “Olmec style” to the Mexican Society of Anthropology. It’s a small, telling irony that a man dismissed by some as a mere illustrator ended up rewriting the origin story of Mexican civilization, because he was trained to notice a recurring line where others saw only unrelated fragments.
Mapping the Pacific
That same pattern-recognition found a monumental outlet in 1939, when Covarrubias was commissioned to paint six enormous murals — “The Pageant of the Pacific” — for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. The murals mapped the peoples, animals, trade routes and economies of the entire Pacific Rim, deliberately decentering Europe from the frame. It was cartography as argument: a world Covarrubias had already spent a decade learning to see differently.
A man who could not stop moving
There is one more Covarrubias worth introducing: the dance impresario. Back in Mexico in the late 1940s, he taught ethnology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and was named artistic director and director of administration for a new department at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, tasked with founding a national Academy of Dance. Rosa’s own background as a choreographer made her indispensable to the project. Together they recruited José Limón, bringing his New York company to Mexico for the Academy’s inaugural 1950 season — a move that helped ignite what dance historians now call the golden age of Mexican modern dance.
The Covarrubias painting “Mujer Sentada con Flores,” which dates from 1935. (Sotheby’s)
The same curiosity that let him see Harlem as sophistication instead of spectacle, that let him read a Balinese temple carving as living culture rather than curiosity and that let him spot an Olmec jaguar motif buried inside later Maya stone work, is exactly the curiosity that told him movement itself — bodies in space — belonged in the same national project as murals and museums. Covarrubias never separated the visual from the physical, the popular from the scholarly, or Mexico from the rest of the world. He simply kept looking, and kept insisting that what he saw belonged in the official record.
A life without borders
Covarrubias died in 1957, at 53, from complications likely related to diabetes or an ulcer. Friends said he seemed, toward the end, to lose his will to live — though by every account his mind kept generating new projects until the very last moment.
In barely five decades, he left behind an inheritance that quietly reshaped how two nations saw each other: an American visual culture that still carries his fingerprints, a body of ethnographic work that helped found visual anthropology as a discipline and an archaeological insight that permanently repositioned the Olmec at the root of Mesoamerican history. He was, before the term existed, a full-time cultural translator — someone who moved fluidly between elite salons and sacred ruins, between jazz clubs and faraway islands, between the pen and the choreographer’s studio, always convinced that culture belongs to whoever is curious enough to go looking for it.
Maria Meléndez writes for Mexico News Daily in Mexico City.
Beach access by the public and protection of coastal ecosystems were two issues cited by authorities for the revocation of the developer's permission to continue building at Punta Mita. (Angie Tovar/Cuartoscuro)
The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) said Monday it revoked a federal concession for the Las Cocinas beach project in Punta Mita after finding unauthorized construction and environmental violations by developer Cantiles de Mita, part of Grupo Dine.
Construction had already been underway, but relentless actions by activists and local residents put the project’s environmental concerns into the public spotlight and eventually led to its cancellation. (Angie Tovar/Cuartoscuro)
The agency said a review confirmed “non-compliance” with concession terms, including works carried out within the federal maritime-terrestrial zone (Zofemat) without approval.
Zofemat is the strip of federal land, usually 20 meters wide, that runs along the nation’s seashore — walkable areas that must remain publicly accessible under Mexican law.
Developers can build there only if they obtain a concession from the federal government.
In a press release issued this week, Semarnat said it had “decided to rethink the project” with a focus on “environmental impacts” and “the protection of coastal ecosystems and free passage along the beach.”
The project was to include a 145-room hotel, more than 60 luxury residences and amenities on roughly 20 hectares, with a planned 2027 opening. It was to be part of Montage Hotels & Resorts, which operates Montage Los Cabos and other luxury properties.
Protests by residents of Punta de Mita and nearby communities intensified in recent months, including clashes with police and allegations of arbitrary arrests. Punta de Mita is a coastal town in the municipality of Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit.
The luxury resort area of Punta Mita is part of the region, but the gated compound is legally and commercially run separately. Montage Punta Mita was to be within its boundaries.
The private cruise-ship playground had been planned by Royal Caribbean near Mahahual, a town of fewer than 3,000 people known for its clear, warm waters and proximity to the Mesoamerican Reef.
The cruise-ship giant had touted the project as including more than 30 waterslides, the world’s longest “lazy river,” and roughly 12 eateries and 24 bars — including the Tipsy Sombrero Bar, a standalone cantina topped by the “world’s largest sombrero.”
China, the main supplier of the goods on which duties were imposed, suffered the most as its tariffed goods fell by 28.4%, down from US $10.099 billion to US $7.228 billion. (Unsplash)
Tariffs imposed on imports from countries with which Mexico does not have free trade agreements are having a significant effect, with China being the most impacted.
Even so, overall imports during the first five months of the year from Asian markets — those most directly affected by the new duties — rose notably.
Though Chinese cars from companies like BYD, MG and Changan have surged in popularity in Mexico in recent years, imports have slowed since Mexico implemented new tariffs in January. (Shutterstock)
China, the main supplier of the goods on which duties were imposed, suffered the most as its tariffed goods fell by 28.4%, down from US $10.099 billion to US $7.228 billion.
The impact also landed on other important Asian markets including Taiwan (down 32%), South Korea (down 22%), India (down 12.3%) and Thailand (down 6.3%).
The effect of the new tariffs is reflected in specific industrial sectors, most particularly the light vehicle industry.
In monetary terms, this sector saw a decrease of US $1.18 billion in import revenue, equivalent to 29.7% compared to the same period last year.
Auto parts also experienced a significant decline, with imports falling by 39.5%, while steel products saw a 30% drop and the footwear sector declined by 37.9%.
Meanwhile, the data released by the Undersecretariat of Foreign Trade of the Economy Ministry indicated that overall imports from Asia rose by 42.5%, up from US $108.97 billion during the first five months of 2025 to US $155.23 billion this year.
Taiwan stood out, its imports to Mexico increasing by 233.76% annually during the January-May period, up from US $10.77 billion in 2025 to US $35.94 billion this year.
This surge is attributable to the increased demand for Artificial Intelligence services, prompting Mexico to import more products such as data processing units (chips and semiconductors) from Taiwan.
Overall, purchases from Asian countries represented 49.85% of total imports. In contrast, imports from the Americas stood at 39.61%, nearly all of this total — representing US $112.6 billion — coming from the U.S. and Canada (92.2%).
As such, the growth rate of imports from Asia grew 8.5 times more during the January-May period than those from the American continent.
Still, the United States remains Mexico’s top trade partner, boasting a 34.32% share of total imports in the period from January to May, followed by China with 17.42% and Taiwan with 11.54%.
Members of the Mexican team pose after participating in the International Mathematical Olympiad in China, with the bronze medal winners identified, along with the honorary mention (MH) recipient. (OMM)
Mexican high school students won five medals at the 2026 edition of the extremely challenging International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), with a special honor going to Andrea Sarahi Cascante Duarte of the state of Morelos, who won the Maryam Mirzakhani Award for having achieved the highest overall score among all the female participants in the Americas.
The five medals — all bronze — placed Mexico third in Ibero-America after Brazil and Peru, and down one position from last year’s competition. The country ranked 40th this year in the overall medal count among nearly 100 nations competing.
Andrea Sarahi Cascante Duarte displays her country’s flag after being honored with the Maryam Mirzakhani Award for achieving the highest overall score among female participants from the Americas in the International Mathematical Olympiad. (OMM)
The students who won bronze medals were Takumi Higashida Martínez (from Mexico City), Juan Luis Manríquez Sequera (Baja California Sur), Sebastián Sotomayor Trujillo (Nuevo León), Javier Caram Quirós (Mexico City) and Iker Torres Terrazas (Chihuahua).
China, which hosted this year’s competition in Shanghai, leads the global ranking, followed by the United States, Russia, Singapore and Vietnam.
The Mexican teenagers’ accomplishments were made possible by the Mexican Mathematics Olympiad (OMM), which congratulated the national delegation.
Guadalupe Russell Noriega, head of the OMM, told the newspaper La Jornada that the support of the private sector and the general public has allowed the national team’s continuous participation in the IMO since Mexico’s debut in the tournament in 1981. That Olympic community is made up of nearly 300 volunteers, including teachers and students, who contribute their talent and time to support the OMM’s activities.
Begun in Romania in 1959, the IMO has become a global benchmark for high school students, who face six highly challenging problems in individual written exams over two days.
About half of the competitors win a medal, with an approximate distribution of one gold medal for every two silver and three bronze.
The aim of the forums is to build a "consensus" regarding the regulation of minors' use of AI and social media sites, such as TikTok and Instagram. (Unsplash)
The federal government is set to hold three regional forums to canvass views on children’s use of social media and artificial intelligence tools and platforms ahead of drafting a legislative proposal to regulate these technologies.
The three forums, announced by President Claudia Sheinbaum at her Monday morning press conference, will be held in Nuevo León on Aug. 19, in Chiapas on Sept. 3 and in Guerrero on Sept. 17.
Mexico’s Ministry of Public Education (SEP), on Sheinbaum’s instructions, initiated a study on young people’s use of new technologies a year ago. (Juan Carlos Buenrostro/Presidencia)
“We don’t want this to be a government idea imposed on society,” Sheinbaum said, referring to planned legislation to regulate the use of social media and AI by Mexico’s children and adolescents.
Rather, the aim is to build a “consensus” regarding the regulation of minors’ use of AI and “especially” social media sites, such as TikTok and Instagram, she said.
Earlier in the press conference, Education Minister Mario Delgado said that Sheinbaum had proposed an “urgent” debate on the “impact of technologies, social media and artificial intelligence on our lives” and especially on children’s lives.
“This has changed the way in which we relate to each other, communicate, learn and research,” he said.
“It’s an issue that, without doubt, concerns all mothers and fathers,” Delgado said before noting that more than 70% of Mexicans over six, and over 90% of adolescents, use the internet.
He said that the government has a responsibility to not just “guarantee access” to the internet, but also ensure the “safety” and “mental health” of users.
The government needs to establish “regulatory frameworks capable of protecting fundamental rights,” Delgado said.
The education minister said there is evidence that the “massive proliferation” of smartphones and “the expansion of certain dynamics on social media have aggravated the emotional fragility” of young people, creating “insecurity, anxiety and symptoms of depression.”
“The idea that is being proposed in this national debate is not that we need to turn back the clock to a time before [electronic] devices, social media and artificial intelligence, but rather how do we create healthier, less competitive and more supportive environments in our schools and outside them in order to strengthen a protective community for our sons and daughters?”
Delagado said earlier this year that the Mexican government was exploring the possibility of imposing age restrictions on the use of social media.
“The State has the responsibility for the guardianship and education of minors. And that’s why we should think about setting certain limits, because I don’t see any responsibility from [technology] companies to take charge of this,” he told the AFP news agency in March.
It is not yet known whether the government will seek to ban young people under a certain age from using social media as part of a legislative proposal that could be submitted to Congress later this year.
Deputy education minister: ‘We have to go to the communities, we have to speak to parents’
Delgado said there will be a “broad and deep” debate on the use of social media and AI by minors in Mexico.
Deputy Education Minister Ricardo Villanueva subsequently said that the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), on Sheinbaum’s instructions, initiated a study on young people’s use of new technologies a year ago.
Villanueva noted that countries around the world have regulated the use of cell phones in schools in different ways, while countries such as Australia and France have banned social media for children under the age of 16 in the former case and 15 in the latter.
“It has been identified and there have been court cases that have documented that infinite scrolling, autoplay and [social media] algorithms are designed to create addiction,” said the official, who noted that the use of cell phones at schools is already subject to regulations in 16 of Mexico’s 32 states.
Villanueva highlighted that the SEP has already held discussions on young people’s use of the internet in Mexico City and in Mexico’s northwest and central-west regions. He said that 20,000 people have participated in those discussions, before noting that three regional forums will be held on the topic during the next two months.
“We want everyone to participate, to give us their opinion,” Villanueva said.
“We have invited … all the higher education institutions, all the research centers, asking them to send their experts … in order to approach this from the perspectives of economics, law, psychology, all the academic disciplines in order to enrich the national debate,” he said.
Villanueva added that “the conversation about digital devices can’t remain only among specialists.”
“… We have to go to the communities, we have to speak with parents,” he said before announcing that the SEP is organizing a “National Week of Traditional Games” in September to promote offline activities.
Sheinbaum: ‘It’s not about regulating just for the sake of regulating’
Speaking after presentations from educational psychologist Cimenna Chao Rebolledo and UNESCO’s representative in Mexico, Andrés Morales Arciniegas, Sheinbaum said that the “excessive use” of social media has an impact on children’s development.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo informó que iniciaron formalmente las discusiones y debates sobre el uso de las redes sociales en las infancias, adolescencia y juventudes de México.
Aclaró que “no se trata de regular por regular” pic.twitter.com/JwYdOdbZbQ
“If a girl or a boy takes a telephone at the age of three or two, her or his development will be very different from a girl or boy who only uses a phone at certain times or doesn’t use one at all,” she said.
Sheinbaum said that the consultation process with experts, parents, teachers, young people and others should lead to “some scheme of regulation” on the use of social media by minors.
However, she stressed that the government’s aim was not to regulate “just for the sake of regulating,” but rather to protect young people from potential harm.
“It’s not about banning [social media use] just for the sake of banning. It’s not about what the president thinks and putting it in a law,” Sheinbaum said.
The aim of “these debates” and “this discussion” is to understand the impact of social media, and technology more broadly, on children and young people, she said.
Sheinbaum also said that in upcoming Monday morning press conferences, the government will present “scientific evidence” on young people’s use of social media.
