If you’ve ever stepped foot in Mexico, you’ve likely encountered one of the country’s most surprisingly defining features: an Oxxo.
With more than 20,000 outlets across the country, they’re one of the few 24-hour convenience stores you can head to in a moment of need. The iconic corner shop — with its hard-to-miss red, yellow and white facade — is seemingly infinite, with locations along the busiest urban streets to every stillwater pueblo. Often, you might walk past an Oxxo just to be greeted by the next, only a few intersections away. And if you’ve lived in Mexico long enough, you’ve probably frequented your neighborhood Oxxo — a one-stop shop for water, snacks, toiletries and monthly phone charges. I am an unabashed racker-up of Oxxo points.
And yet, despite their sheer ubiquity and de facto symbolism of national identity, they’re not all exactly alike. In fact, there’s specifically no Oxxo like the one located in Boca del Rio, Veracruz. That’s because the increasingly popular location is a one-of-one singularity with an array of funky offerings and unbeatable real estate that has already captured the attention of Mexican customers, social media influencers and regional outlets.
The main draw? It’s located at the land’s end, on the edge of Mexico’s eastern shore, with a natural vista point of the Gulf of Mexico’s extensive horizon and its flanking Malecón that leads to the famous port of Veracruz. It’s practically on Playa Boca Del Rio, a popular beach just south of the city of Veracruz and around the corner from a pirate museum. For Jarochos — the people of Veracruz, known for their seafood and diving skills — it’s fitting, if not essential, to have an Oxxo on the beach. And it draws both out-of-town visitors and regular patrons from the community alike.
It’s one thing to step foot inside a traditional, nondescript Oxxo in Mexico City or Guadalajara, but the Boca del Río Oxxo is making rounds on local news and among Mexicans, who seem to appreciate its coastal quirks. Apart from the killer view with a calming sea breeze — there are benches placed outside of the shop with a panorama of the water — this Oxxo apparently offers Zumba classes. As if that’s not enough, fresh elotes are regularly sold in the outside lot.
The magic doesn’t end there. This past February, for Valentine’s Day, this specific location transformed into an Instagram-friendly lover’s lane, playing on the “XOXO” factor of their name and adorning their storefront with giant neon hearts, a heart-shaped sunglasses-wearing Cupid and an entirely pink and red paint job. The seasonal effort drew even more visitors and further cemented the Boca del Río outlet’s reputation as the best, if not most outlandish Oxxo in all of Mexico. Though the decorations have gone down, plenty of videos have circulated of them.
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Once heralded as a tourist destination, the port of Veracruz’s allure has declined in recent decades much in the way Acapulco’s glory days are behind it as a party-going Mexican beach town for socialites. But Veracruz still retains a handful of gems, lechero-loving coffee culture notwithstanding.
I recently visited the city with my mom, who grew up in the state capital of Xalapa, about 90 minutes from the famous port. It was a drenchingly hot afternoon, the kind of heat where you have no choice but to take your shirt off, and as we were making our tourist rounds, strolling the beach, I suddenly came face to face with the quirky shop.
At the time, I hadn’t known that it was a cult favorite for locals, but you can imagine how heaven-sent it feels on a day like that to be blessed with a shop where you can pick up a cold beverage without leaving the beach. It’s the kind of thing that feels like a mirage. Afterwards, I kept wondering to myself if it actually existed; if that Oxxo was real or a dream. Trust me, when you walk in heat like that for kilometers, you’ll start to question lots of things. It wasn’t until I recently saw it popping up all over Mexican social media accounts that I remembered how cool (and uncommon) that vibrant little beach hut Oxxo is.
It’s not much, but here in Veracruz, any spot with air conditioning and beverages is welcome in unexpected moments.
Alan Chazaro is the author of “This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album,” “Piñata Theory” and “Notes From the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge” (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His writing can be found in GQ, NPR, The Guardian, L.A. Times and more. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, he is currently based in Veracruz.
