https://mexicofeatured.com/features daily 0.75 2026-10-07 https://mexicofeatured.com/features/mascara-mascots-and-gansitos-my-day-at-the-azcapotzalco-bimbo-plant monthly 0.5 2026-10-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/ed6567b9-1229-49e2-9e28-888cb3c95c32/BimboHermosillo60a%C3%B1os-1.jpg Features - Mascara, mascots, and gansitos: My unsettling day at the Bimbo plant - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/b4cdecad-f521-46fc-a198-8cab92be642d/BIMBO+Rules+copy.jpeg Features - Mascara, mascots, and gansitos: My unsettling day at the Bimbo plant M's friends began arriving in packed Ubers and chauffeured SUVs. The first thing I noticed (and, judging by her widening eyes, M as well) was that nearly every woman wore makeup. Of the few men, one wore buttons. Most wore accessories. Would they even let us in? The rules were so clear and so strict: NO MAKEUP OR ACCESSORIES OR BUTTONS OF ANY KIND!! A kid of about 24 suddenly appeared with a megaphone. After several failed attempts, he rounded up the chattering seniors, whom he kept calling chicos, lined us up single file and walked us through the giant red gates toward the factory. A little apprehensive, I watched each woman walk in without anyone so much as glancing at her three layers of mascara. Here, it seemed, rules worked more like suggestions. (Bimbo, as it turns out, has a real talent for bending them. More on that later.) Despite the lax enforcement on all us chicos, rules were boldly posted everywhere. The footpath leading to the factory entrance offered endless reminders of all the things we couldn't do: No walking while looking at your cell phone No stepping outside the yellow lines No running, pushing, or shouting https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/4560841f-accf-41f2-b5ef-f20317011f7f/FutbolitoBimbo2026.jpeg Features - Mascara, mascots, and gansitos: My unsettling day at the Bimbo plant El Osito Bimbo is one of several characters Mexico loves (in some cases, loved): Farmacias Similares' Dr. Simi (who, at some point in the near future, I will gripe about), Choco Milk's Pancho Pantera, Choco Krispis' Melvin the Elephant, and Bimbo's own El Negrito, whose name the company shortened to Nito in 2013 after years of criticism over racist imagery. Of this list, only two still look the way Mexico remembers them: the bear and Dr. Simi, whose pharmacy shelves sit outside the food law that came next. In 2020, Mexico put a strict food-labeling regulation known as NOM-051 into effect. Its goal was to fight obesity and diabetes, and the need was hard to argue with: in 2023, the OECD named Mexico the member country with the highest rate of diabetes and second highest rate of obesity after the U.S. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/os7sz3jyb61b6pwlwfpi3e2lqkkser monthly 0.5 2026-10-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/193c071a-8db1-492e-9bfe-862749bbe5de/att.d86yHdaTACw59XZS_GIejBmNPzEmR-lgxUR7DBOvgz4.jpg Features - Mexico gave my kids more than anyone expected - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1791284372763-U67HHJTWMAZGJ75AN3IQ/unsplash-image-G08zYFYEooM.jpg Features - Mexico gave my kids more than anyone expected Education was one of my biggest questions, though probably not in the way people assumed. I expected Spanish to be the challenge. What I didn't expect was to look at what children their age were already learning and wonder whether our Canadian-educated kids were prepared for it. The entrance exams were my first hint that people's assumptions about Mexican education might be backwards. Conversations with teachers reinforced it. One teacher, who had studied in both Mexico and the United States, told me she'd had the same experience in reverse. She went to the US for her senior year of high school and found that much of what her classmates were studying, she had covered in Mexico two years earlier. Over the years, I've heard versions of that story again and again. The Facebook comment was simply the one that finally prompted me to write this. It becomes much less surprising when you look at the curriculum itself. In third-year secundaria, for example, SEP mathematics materials include quadratic equations, factoring, the quadratic formula, quadratic functions, the Pythagorean theorem, similarity and congruence, and probability. Mexico has a highly structured academic tradition, and secundaria alone covers a breadth of subjects that would surprise many Canadian and American parents. That doesn't mean Mexican students, as a national population, outperform Canadian students on every international standardized test. They don't. But that's a different question. National test results reflect enormous differences in poverty, access, resources, and socioeconomic circumstances. They don't tell you that the education offered inside a particular Mexican school isn't rigorous. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1791287647651-M6EP4CB1PULB1ITIBH75/unsplash-image-1lmGTHdQdjM.jpg Features - Mexico gave my kids more than anyone expected What we didn't fully appreciate when we made that choice was how demanding the environment would be. The material was harder, but the bigger difference was how broad and participatory the education turned out to be. I've watched science fairs where students don't simply hand in a project. They stand in front of parents and visitors and explain what they've learned. I've watched geography events built around research and presentation. The school has academic teams whose competitions have taken students far beyond Puerto Vallarta, including robotics students to Singapore and math students to Japan. The expectation is that students won't simply memorize something long enough to pass a test. They're expected to present it, explain it, demonstrate it, and sometimes compete with it. That kind of rigor isn't right for every child. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/a-broken-kayak-a-lost-morning-and-the-island-of-the-dolls monthly 0.5 2026-10-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/f2986934-2258-46a5-a060-0dbbaff3e0b7/IMG_3291.jpeg Features - A broken kayak, a lost morning and the Island of the Dolls - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/85e9d073-c0d3-4777-b409-ada5ab4c502f/IMG_3286.jpeg Features - A broken kayak, a lost morning and the Island of the Dolls And there THEY were. Dolls. Everywhere. The first thing you notice is that these dolls have seen quite considerably better days. They’re hanging from branches, tucked into the greenery, propped against tree trunks, and suspended from (or nailed to) bits of wood. Their clothes are torn and filthy. What’s left of their hair is matted. Their little faces have been stained and weathered by years of exposure to the elements. Some are missing limbs. Some are missing eyes. Some have heads that seem to have landed at angles no neck was ever designed to achieve. One had strings of hair hanging over its face so completely that you could barely see the features underneath. Another had one bright blue eye staring out while the other was dark and empty. All had little faces and tiny hands. Little bodies that still looked unmistakably like children’s toys despite the dirt, the damage, and the years of weathering. They aren’t arranged neatly behind glass, because there’s no polished museum display. They’re simply there, scattered throughout the island as though the trees themselves have slowly collected them. It’s creepy as hell. There’s no getting around that. But the longer I looked, the less frightening they seemed and the more sad they became. Because these aren’t horror props that were made to look abandoned. They actually are abandoned, and somehow, that felt more unsettling. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/f787b7d2-547d-45d1-b1b7-40424866a41b/IMG_3293.jpeg Features - A broken kayak, a lost morning and the Island of the Dolls I imagined them in their little outfits that had once been new. I saw them as toys that somebody, somewhere, had once chosen, bought, and loved. Now they hung from trees, slowly falling apart. I found myself thinking about Julián Santana Barrera. We can’t know what he felt, what he believed, why he amassed this collection, or what each doll meant to him. And we shouldn’t pretend that we can. Accounts of his life describe a man who lived a lonely existence, and I couldn’t help wondering whether he saw something in those dolls that the rest of us didn’t. Perhaps they offered comfort. Perhaps they gave him a sense of purpose. Perhaps they gave him company. Or perhaps, in some small way, he recognized something of himself in them. Something cast aside or misunderstood. Something left on the margins. Something that had once been wanted and was now forgotten. Maybe the dolls made the island feel a little less empty. It’s only a thought, of course. I never met the man, and I can’t claim to know what was happening inside his head. But standing among those hundreds of neglected little figures, it was difficult not to wonder whether the place he’d created was out of a need for something comforting. And that possibility has stayed with me. Our kayak eventually got repaired, allowing us to continue through the canals. And as we left that place that looked like it should have been the thing we needed rescuing from, I found myself smiling at how it, quite literally, was where we were saved. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve thought about it so much since. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/coca-cola-and-the-sacred monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/01e9099b-c830-47c9-bbd3-4e9e4e4ab832/images-1.jpeg Features - Coca-Cola and the sacred - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790947067963-ZUX4HEP4MWQACRVMYTHG/unsplash-image-pMYmKvVsCss.jpg Features - Coca-Cola and the sacred Diabetes has become one of the leading causes of death in the country, and in the indigenous communities of the highlands, where diets were once built on maize, beans and squash, the disease has spread with a speed resembling an epidemic. The same bubbles that drive out evil spirits in the church are letting in something worse. But how does a drink become both holy and harmful? Part of the answer lies in the most mundane facts of geography and infrastructure. In much of rural Chiapas, clean drinking water has long been unreliable, while Coca-Cola, with its formidable distribution network, reaches villages that the water pipes do not. A sealed bottle is safe in a way that the tap or the stream may not be, and it is often easier and cheaper to find. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/6f186a67-1d12-4feb-8e61-fcfc14248328/images.jpeg Features - Coca-Cola and the sacred If Coca-Cola has found a place in its rituals, that is in part because the culture made room for it, much as it once made room for a Christian God. Still, the freedom to choose is never exercised in a vacuum. A preference shaped by decades of advertising, by unreliable water, by the economics of local bosses and by the sheer ubiquity of the product is a preference of a peculiar kind. Mexico has not been idle in the face of all this. In 2014 the government introduced a tax on sugary drinks, one of the first of its kind among large countries, and early studies suggested that purchases fell, at least for a time. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/the-woman-who-remembered-the-future-the-enigma-of-elena-garro monthly 0.5 2026-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/37050ea3-a025-4cb7-991c-504d69bfdd80/GARRO-1.jpeg Features - Heretic, enigma, exile: An appreciation of Elena Garro - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790865956365-PFADG5U0JXRC3VE3VLC2/unsplash-image-d2qOd8zJ510.jpg Features - Heretic, enigma, exile: An appreciation of Elena Garro For Los recuerdos del porvenir is, among other things, a novel about the betrayal of the Revolution. Its villains are not the old landowners or the Church but the triumphant revolutionary generals who have become the new oppressors, persecuting Catholics and helping themselves to the land and the women of the town. In a country whose official mythology rested on the Revolution as a redemptive event, the founding act of a modern and just nation, this was not a neutral choice. Garro saw in the revolutionary state not the fulfilment of popular aspiration but its confiscation. The language of liberation had hardened into a vocabulary of power, and those who spoke it most fluently were often those who profited from it most handsomely. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/8b9e8c75-a03a-4336-8521-f1dec14cc898/17525087834604.jpg+copy.jpg Features - Heretic, enigma, exile: An appreciation of Elena Garro I am wary of reading that exile as a simple story of victimhood, though Garro herself sometimes invited the reading, with her tales of persecution, surveillance and conspiracy. She was both persecuted and self-destructive, both clear-sighted and paranoid, both brave and capable of real cruelty. Her fiction from those years, Testimonios sobre Mariana and Reencuentro de personajes among it, is crowded with women pursued by shadowy forces and trapped in marriages that resemble prisons, and reading it I often cannot tell where autobiography ends and nightmare begins. I suspect the distinction did not much matter to her. Which returns me to the question that first drew me to her: how did this woman, anticommunist, Catholic, accused of betraying the students of 1968, come to be embraced by a national culture whose intellectual heart has beaten on the left for the better part of a century? https://mexicofeatured.com/features/a-literary-second-act monthly 0.5 2026-09-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/3fee6ff3-32e0-4ea6-8bf7-5953679daa07/Unknown-1.jpeg Features - A literary second act - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/ec7ff846-32ea-4350-9cd1-567987410b89/Unknown-3.jpeg Features - A literary second act “Do you want to go inside a Boeing 737 and then go swimming before we hit up the skate park?” might be somewhat more exciting. Another retired Boeing aircraft was incorporated into Utopía Quetzalcóatl where the avión biblioteca provides internet access and educational activities. Then there’s Utopía Oyamel/CenTlalli in Magdalena Contreras, a newer addition to the city’s collection of unusual public spaces, incorporating a retired passenger aircraft into its cultural facilities. Which means what initially sounds like one wonderfully strange idea has turned out to be something so much bigger. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/5nekp64iyaqas0c0mm224aedy59zam monthly 0.5 2026-09-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790680332422-SJYG8ODWCUINWITEGKN2/unsplash-image-F9gbBt6EFsc.jpg Features - The day Europe got boring - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790680550199-LMYSTYRL2SO7ZAODKKJY/unsplash-image-6tgHYmerKyM.jpg Features - The day Europe got boring No one is doing anything, it seems, to generate change. New construction looks exactly like old construction. Cars are mostly white. The boldest fashion choice I’ve seen is a pair of red flats (with, of course, a white linen shirt and navy skirt). I saw one man playing music in the street – another man threatened to call the police. On the train from Madrid to Cadiz, no less than four of my neighbors pulled out a homemade ham and cheese sandwich to hold them over on the five hour ride. Every menu is pretty much the same as the menu next door. And I ask myself, again, as I’ve asked myself since the day I arrived in Madrid ten days ago, when did Europe get so boring? https://mexicofeatured.com/features/from-here-what-a-plaza-does monthly 0.5 2026-09-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/8391aafb-891e-49cc-994b-fbed3e1fae15/Fuente_de_los_Perritos_Plaza_de_Armas_Queretaro_Dr_Mark_A_Arcuri.jpg Features - From Here: What a plaza does - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790565218068-8GYAVE2SJXK8BMF0FDIZ/unsplash-image-TgWe9zdPId4.jpg Features - From Here: What a plaza does That possibility interests me because conversations about health and well-being often focus on what individuals do. We talk about sleep, movement, stress, food, relationships, and the choices people make each day. Those choices take place within surroundings that make some behaviors easier than others. A place where people can walk, sit, linger, and encounter one another creates opportunities that do not arise in the same way when daily life moves from a private home to a car to another private interior. The encounters themselves may be small. Most of the people sharing Plaza de Armas on a particular day will never know one another, and many will never speak. They are still aware of one another. A child near the fountain, a vendor passing with balloons, a conversation at another table, or music reaching beyond the restaurant where it began becomes part of the common experience for a few minutes. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/mexicos-7-wonders-of-the-world-mexico-and-the-world-heritage-list monthly 0.5 2026-09-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790344573383-N5W607CCZKEX02CPI5HX/unsplash-image-kO-USq1pmR4.jpg Features - Counting Mexico's wonders: The UNESCO list - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790344854673-5ZVMR0J2LOC0G839H97G/unsplash-image-NcrEv06c-HY.jpg Features - Counting Mexico's wonders: The UNESCO list The first drive towards Mexican participation came from the academic world, particularly the archaeologists and historians of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, who hoped that by adding sites to the UNESCO list they might acquire support for conservation. After Miguel de la Madrid became President in 1982 the movement gained support at the highest level, and Mexico ratified the World Heritage Convention in February 1984. Working through organizations such as the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), advisory bodies were established to evaluate each tentative site. These groups did not have to work in a vacuum. Earlier work from men such as Dr. Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, the influential Mexican historian who had spent his life fighting to preserve Mexico's colonial and indigenous architectural legacy, provided a solid starting point. A nation nominating a site is no guarantee that it will be accepted for Heritage status, for UNESCO demands not only a strong argument for inclusion but plans for long-term protection. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790345104581-0RTNBP0SXZPYRK4VOAYA/unsplash-image-0ljPm0uApdM.jpg Features - Counting Mexico's wonders: The UNESCO list There are also several sites around the country which would merit heritage status but where the local authorities have not yet found the inclination to start the process. Two that instantly come to mind are the beautiful old mining city of Taxco and Laguna Bacalar in Quintana Roo with its unique ecosystem. A third interesting suggestion, brought up on the internet, was to combine several "Pueblos Mágicos" with the World Heritage List. While individual villages such as Tequisquiapan or Linares might not merit Heritage Status, a collection of five or six villages representing rural Mexico might well do so. This collective approach has already been used to have 15 monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl inscribed as a single site. The latest, 2025 Mexican addition to the list is also one of the most intriguing. It is the Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites, an old pilgrim route that is an important part of the culture of the Huichol people. It stretches over 500 kilometers and crosses five states as it winds from the Pacific coast to the Chihuahuan Desert, taking in sacred mountain peaks, geological formations, and a series of ecosystems that anyone completing the full walk would pass through in turn. Mexico nominated its first half dozen sites forty years ago. Having scrolled through all 36, the Mexico Featured team have returned to the theme of the Seven Wonders to draw up their own. Readers are invited to let us know what they think. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/i-used-to-see-it-now-i-live-it monthly 0.5 2026-09-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/4f69b60e-3c00-470a-b295-ab7fcd840a0f/street.jpeg Features - I used to see it; now I live it - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/08a82cf3-45c2-4ab5-8968-f2589a9d3cf9/Screenshot+2026-09-24+083750.png Features - I used to see it; now I live it When I first arrived, I noticed everything. I noticed the noise of the gas trucks announcing their arrival, the fireworks going off without warning, the music spilling into the street, and the traffic moving according to rules I didn’t yet understand. I noticed the tangled wires, the stray dogs, the brightly painted houses, the water tanks on the rooftops, the pavements that seemed to end or change direction without explanation. I noticed the ways people solved problems creatively, often with whatever was available. I noticed how generous people could be, how neighbours looked out for one another, how much of daily life happened outdoors and in public view. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/a2ef5802-7290-4378-8bcf-cabbdb024dd4/IMG_3029.jpeg Features - I used to see it; now I live it The smell of tortillas being made nearby still drifted through the neighbourhood. Plastic chairs still appeared outside houses and shops, ready for conversation, food or simply the business of sitting. These things used to feel like Mexico. Now they feel like life. That doesn’t mean I no longer see them, or that they’ve somehow disappeared. It doesn’t mean I’ve become indifferent to them. They’re simply no longer observations I make about a foreign place. They’re now part of the setting of my everyday life. The same is true of the things that don’t work. I still see the potholes. I still notice the crumbling pavements, the unreliable services, the needless wait times, and the gaps in infrastructure. I see the inequality, and I understand that it’s not just a matter of aesthetic difference or cultural contrast. These things affect the people who live here, including me. Living here hasn’t made those problems acceptable. Nor has it made them invisible. If anything, they’re more immediate now because they’re no longer abstract. I don’t encounter them as a visitor noticing that something is different from England or Baton Rouge. I encounter them as a resident dealing with the consequences of the place I live. That matters, as there’s a difference between becoming familiar with something and deciding that it’s fine. There’s a difference between no longer being surprised by a problem and no longer caring about it. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/mexican-kids-are-going-outside-and-you-can-thank-tiktok-for-it monthly 0.5 2026-09-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/7b698d22-85f0-46dd-8d98-732867828071/436666_grande.jpg Features - Mexican kids are going outside, and you can thank TikTok for it - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790145175379-4J7WVLCHSSWC3G8XPNYM/unsplash-image-MU6Z-zj1n6c.jpg Features - Mexican kids are going outside, and you can thank TikTok for it The “farming” part comes from gaming, where players repeatedly do something to accumulate resources, experience, or points. So, young people are essentially “farming” imaginary social points for being cool. In an aura battle, that can involve a pose, a dance, a gesture, a facial expression, a physical skill, or some reference to internet culture that the audience understands. The crowd reacts, and someone is judged to have more aura than the other person. It’s silly, but it’s also completely understandable. Because teenagers trying to look cool is hardly a new phenomenon. We did it. We just didn’t call it “aura farming.” We had our clothes, our music, our hairstyles, our cars, our sports, our parties, and the places where we gathered. We knew which jeans were cool, which bands mattered, and which places were worth being seen in. We spent hours trying to impress one another. The difference is that our social lives didn’t come with an algorithm and the possibility of an audience of millions. I think my generation (X, if you’re wondering) sometimes gets a little unfair with the one coming after us. We look at young people spending time online and say they need to get outside. Go meet people. Have a conversation. Enjoy the fresh air. Get off your phone. And then, when they use the internet to find people who share their interests and organize an event where they can actually meet those people, we laugh at what they’re doing. What kind of message does that send? The world they’re growing up in isn’t the world we grew up in. Entertainment costs more. Eating out costs more. Transportation costs more. Even finding somewhere to spend an afternoon can require money that a teenager simply doesn’t have. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/255a9c3a-e13b-4896-a66b-f70d05d809d3/images.jpeg Features - Mexican kids are going outside, and you can thank TikTok for it Different cities. Different organizers. Same basic idea. Get together. There’s something particularly lovely, and particularly apt, about that happening in Mexico. Because the places where these kids are gathering are in city plazas. Mexico has been building social spaces like these for generations. The plaza has always been somewhere you go to be around other people. You go there to meet friends, listen to music, watch what’s happening, flirt a little, gossip a lot, let the kids run around, sit and talk, eat something and, yes, be seen. Long before anyone had a smartphone, generations of young Mexicans were heading to the plaza because that was where everyone else was. You went because your friends were there. You went because you might bump into someone you wanted to see. You went because something was happening. And sometimes you went simply because there was nowhere else you needed to be. The technology’s changed, but the reason hasn’t. These kids have essentially found their way to the same damn plaza via TikTok, and I love that. For all the talk about technology changing the way young people socialize, there’s something almost wonderfully traditional about what’s happening here. The internet may be the thing that tells them where to go, but once they get there, they’re doing something humans have been doing in Mexican plazas for generations. They’re gathering. They’re watching each other. They’re laughing and showing off and making friends, and figuring out who they are in relation to everyone else. They’re doing it because they’re teenagers in 2026, and apparently everything must be documented. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/a-wholly-unresearched-conclusion-about-mexican-skincare monthly 0.5 2026-09-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788954830735-VU4SCRRFOAK44JN6LEQ4/unsplash-image-ONuLIzB0UtA.jpg Features - A wholly unresearched conclusion about Mexican skincare - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788954916786-5RBNJC978ZQ1P3UU9S0O/unsplash-image-TzeTeFAhlh4.jpg Features - A wholly unresearched conclusion about Mexican skincare Your mother has no wrinkles, I say to my new boyfriend’s brother, who sits in the driver seat while I sit in the backseat, as my new boyfriend exits the car and walks his mother to her door. “Ayyy, that’s because she got rid of them,” he responds. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/the-ache-of-what-once-was-on-saudade-loss-and-ya-no-estoy-aqu monthly 0.5 2026-09-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/809abcd9-42b2-4658-ac48-490ac9c2c0c4/im_no_longer_here_-_ya_no_estoy_aqui_-_publicity_still_-_h_2020_.5937188.jpg Features - The ache of what once was: Saudade, loss, and ‘Ya no estoy aquí’ - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1790000644243-502H17Q0ES2O9DRYWTS6/Screenshot+2026-09-21+092349.png Features - The ache of what once was: Saudade, loss, and ‘Ya no estoy aquí’ What first appears excessive and cheap begins to feel distinctive, deeply intentional, and emblematic of a culture entirely their own.Ulises has been part of Kolombia culture for most of his life, but, as bad luck would have it, he is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and forced to abandon the world he belongs to.. Monterrey, like other parts of Mexico, was deeply affected by the war on drugs launched under former president Felipe Calderón, which unleashed devastating waves of violence in already vulnerable communities. After receiving death threats, Ulises flees Mexico for New York City, where he struggles to build a life in a place that leaves him profoundly disoriented and untethered. Losing the people, place, and specific moment in time that are central to Ulises’s life and identity devastates him. He moves differently in New York City. He walks with a heaviness of heart and a faraway look in his eyes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/acef3870-3759-48bc-bac9-4e33319c7c78/ya-no-estoy-aqui-representara-1.jpg Features - The ache of what once was: Saudade, loss, and ‘Ya no estoy aquí’ The film also stirred something open in me. I’ve always thought of nostalgia as a feature of my personality, but only as I’ve gotten older have I begun to wonder whether it has an origin. I left Durango for Chicago at 12, an age when childhood is receding but the teenage years—and seemingly the rest of your life—still stretch ahead of you. I gained a great deal by moving to the U.S. with my family, but Ya no estoy aquí helped me recognize that leaving also came with losses I did not fully understand at the time. I still remember returning to Santa Rosa only six months later and feeling strangely disoriented. Everything and everyone seemed different, even though, in many ways, almost nothing had changed. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/swept-up-together monthly 0.5 2026-09-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/e1cf08a0-e503-4b55-9c16-6d0ca7c7807d/Sweep.jpeg Features - Swept up together - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789728278209-YQNADS2CBYR56XFZ9EEY/unsplash-image-ao9unOO1CXs.jpg Features - Swept up together When someone keeps their entranceway tidy, they’re signaling they’re present. They’re alert to the street’s small emergencies, ready to exchange news or lend a cup of sugar. There’s a moral grammar in these gestures. The neat line of swept dust is a modest declaration. We will not let disorder settle here without reply. It’s a ritual of regard for public space that’s neither bureaucratic nor institutional. It’s local, hands‑on stewardship. In an environment where infrastructure may be intermittent and where municipal services aren’t always prompt, pride of place becomes a civic act executed with brooms and water jugs. People take responsibility for the bits of the commons that intersect with their lives, and in doing so they protect one another. The water‑sprinkling itself carries particular meaning. In a region of wind and sun, a little water calms the day. It lifts dust from the soles of infants and from the lashes of elders, and it keeps the air bearable in the mornings and evenings. When a woman walks the lane with a plastic can and mists the pavement, she’s performing a small mercy. For the stray animals, for the neighbors with breathing troubles, for the children who’ll run without raising clouds. It’s both practical and generous. And you see the reciprocity. A neighbor who sweeps will also fetch medicine or hold a ladder when a roof needs repair. Neighbors mend crooked gates, paint peeling shutters, share buckets to wash a car or to clean windblown sand from a porch. Someone will notice if a potted plant is drooping and pass along a cutting. Someone else will bring a bowl of caldo to a household that is nursing a fever. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789729476332-KMFXZIM8MLDU7U2BD1OS/unsplash-image-yYvyBlHOBDM.jpg Features - Swept up together The time someone spends patching a gutter, the hour devoted to retying a net, the willingness to lend a ladder. When public services lag, neighbors compensate. When a storm topples a tree, it’s the street that mobilizes, piling limbs at the curb and sharing the labor. The practice of pride of place is thus also a practice of resilience. It makes a place able to receive trouble and to respond. I’ve come to understand these rituals as a form of citizenship. Like an everyday civicness that isn’t registered in vote counts or municipal budgets, but is felt in the steadiness of a swept path. It is, perhaps, the most honest kind of patriotism. Not the loud claim of flags and slogans but the quieter, daily defense of a good place to live. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/history-in-depth-mexico-before-the-aztecs monthly 0.5 2026-09-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1a86b2d3-d490-4d5e-ac81-84ddd8eda291/unsplash-image-D1WWRM76bWI.jpg Features - A place worth staying: The story of the first Mexicans - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789631394751-A6TA0NVB5RFOADMP059X/unsplash-image-JYU14tnbfOA.jpg Features - A place worth staying: The story of the first Mexicans Even limited farming brought an increase in the population, and a few of the small villages scattered across Mexico started to expand into larger communities. Around 3,500 years ago, people living in the village of Paso de la Amada, on the Pacific coast of Chiapas, constructed a ball court, where men competed in a prototype of the game the Spaniards would witness when they finally reached these shores. Deep in the Oaxaca Valley, one village grew into a regional center, where the population labored on a communal building known as the "men's house." Humans had already found their way up to the high plateau where Mexico City now stands, and here too the nomadic lifestyle gave way to farming. The climate at 2,000 meters was cold, and many areas lacked adequate water, but humans were drawn toward one central valley, a hundred kilometers long, sixty kilometers wide, that was blessed with lakes and marshes. Where there is water, there will be deer, birds, and edible plants, and where there is water and good volcanic soil, people can overcome almost any other problem and grow crops. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/0b9afb77-27d6-4a71-986e-4c4c250ed7bc/412A0681.png Features - A place worth staying: The story of the first Mexicans We can only guess whom these portraits represented, though the scale of them, and the individuality of the faces, points to rulers. The claim that their features are evidence of ancient sea links with Africa — first made in the nineteenth century, by the man who came across the earliest of the heads — has proved remarkably durable, but nothing supports it. The basalt is local. The style belongs to an unbroken Mexican tradition. No African object or burial has been found at an Olmec site, and the faces fall within the range of features still common along this coast. A more legitimate debate centers on whether the "helmets" had a military purpose, and are therefore evidence that, despite an apparent lack of weapons, this was an aggressive society. Alternatively, they might have been ceremonial, or even protection for players taking part in the ritual ball games. What is undisputed is that work on this scale must have been planned and directed, perhaps by a priestly elite. Yet, the human grip on the land was flimsy. There were only around a thousand people at Paso de la Amada, while the entire Oaxaca Valley, 40 kilometers from northwest to southeast, supported a population of perhaps two thousand. Even San Lorenzo was only a small town, while the rest of the country was occupied by little more than scattered villages. Even this fragile conquest of nature was about to be tested, for around 3,000 years ago there was a continent-wide disaster. In the north of the continent, drought killed off tracts of forest and allowed the prairies to expand westward. Far to the south, the people on the Peruvian coast surrendered parched fields back to nature, while the water level of Lake Titicaca dropped so low that the southern shore of the lake had to be abandoned. Mexico was not spared, and the community at San Lorenzo declined. It is tempting to lay this at the door of the weather. But was it the climate that emptied San Lorenzo? https://mexicofeatured.com/features/Blog Post Title One-3zaa9-6lamz monthly 0.5 2026-09-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/dcf8b3dd-4b16-4bd5-9de0-72968757183b/COMUNICADO-2003-2.jpeg Features - History, Pozole, and the power of a well-timed ‘¡Viva!’ - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/8cf30134-1fc3-4430-8310-1a3cc0bf5364/pozolebowl Features - History, Pozole, and the power of a well-timed ‘¡Viva!’ By 7 PM, the plaza was heaving with bodies. Families waving flags. Kids in tiny charro outfits. Food stalls steaming with sizzling tacos and hot tamales. Grandmas balancing trays of pozole like professional caterers. The smell alone could make you weep. All the roasted corn, sugar-dusted churros, and fried things I couldn’t name but immediately wanted to eat. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/c7b8cb39-1c29-4888-b61c-b30e401042c1/unsplash-image-NERhV4m5TgU.jpg Features - History, Pozole, and the power of a well-timed ‘¡Viva!’ Then came the Grito. An official raised his hand. The crowd quieted. The mayor rang a massive, ceremonial bell and launched into a passionate chant that named heroes of independence, justice, freedom, and the people of Mexico. And after every name, the crowd responded with a shout that shook the cobblestones: https://mexicofeatured.com/features/on-being-a-bad-immigrant monthly 0.5 2026-09-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789295716467-PAMXACOAFFF3A7M2KQ7I/unsplash-image-LIAfKnJoKJY.jpg Features - On being a bad immigrant - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789296467770-1XXMN08YG20S39YRQPK3/unsplash-image-ARcYI6x6msQ.jpg Features - On being a bad immigrant - While these extreme rules aren’t in place anymore, the process has gotten murky with time. It doesn’t help that no federal requirements exist – they range from state to state, but premarital blood testing still largely exists. On the bright side, in 2021, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the State of Mexico's marriage laws were discriminatory on the basis of health and impeded one's right to form a family. Quintana Roo officially dropped the prenuptial test mandate in June (2026). Nowhere on Mexico City’s online marriage certificate registration site does it say a medical exam is required. Thank the good whatever-you-believe-in, because that is one rule I’d absolutely refuse to engage in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789296736560-LCMOFE814AH90X0Y2X42/unsplash-image-qE8LzD58u70.jpg Features - On being a bad immigrant - While he chatters, I remove my headphones from around my neck and attempt to stuff them into my purse. They’re a bit clunky, so they don’t entirely fit. I’m sorry, senorita, but you must close your purse. I zip the purse to about 76%. My protruding headphones block me from zipping any further. You must close your purse all the way. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/from-here-remembering-september-11-from-mexico monthly 0.5 2026-09-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/6f714206-8742-4f1e-b655-414b2e1da05c/2026-09-08_Mexico_Featured_Remembering_September_11_Image.jpg Features - From Here: Remembering September 11 from Mexico - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788896918098-N98ALXR0J1FFMA8WPN45/unsplash-image-FQ9N8ewA5GA.jpg Features - From Here: Remembering September 11 from Mexico I have probably learned the most through language. My Spanish is better than it was when I arrived, and I am still regularly reminded that I came from somewhere else. There are conversations in which I am a few seconds behind, procedures everyone around me seems to understand without explanation, and small exchanges in which another person has to make an accommodation for me. Most are unremarkable moments. Taken together, they have made foreignness something I experience instead of something I observe. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/who-makes-the-giant-people-dance monthly 0.5 2026-09-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788724630920-Y0EU4GBV6F1MX2S43AYP/26454071545_65f3df44a3_b.jpg Features - Who makes the giant people dance? - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/bb39556b-3942-49c7-8a9f-2d01ec1ccfb7/14-calenda-monos.jpg Features - Who makes the giant people dance? This isn’t a case of ordering a giant puppet from Amazon and waiting for the delivery driver. The bodies are built by hand. The traditional structure uses carrizo, a type of reed, which is shaped into the frame. Paper and paste are then used to create and reinforce the figure before the head is painted and the clothing made to fit. These aren’t small projects either. Oaxacan makers learn the craft from their own experiences growing up around Oaxaca’s celebrations and eventually develop it into a business, Many work with their families from small workshops at home. Depending on the size and complexity of the figure, one can take anywhere from a week to a month to make. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/b56b322d-7661-4e06-b39d-56ccbac1612c/10-16.jpg Features - Who makes the giant people dance? But that’s almost beside the point, as the important part was that the children had made them. Because that’s how a tradition survives. Not by putting it behind glass or writing a plaque explaining where it came from, but by letting a child get covered in paste and paper and make a giant person with an enormous head. Oaxaca has plenty of traditions that have become familiar to outsiders, but the monos de calenda are different. They’re not really something you go to see. They’re something that happens. You might be walking through a town when suddenly there’s a band coming down the street and a collection of gigantic people dancing behind it. And, because this is Oaxaca, nobody seems particularly surprised. The figures themselves can change with the times, too. Historically, the characters could be satirical, representing different social groups or poking fun at recognizable figures. Over the years they’ve taken on characters from popular culture as well, including figures inspired by Mexican cinema. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/noble-savage monthly 0.5 2026-09-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/ba451ec4-ae25-4938-bcfb-65957ee2df26/3d915518-e962-4a43-84f1-0cdf57adf528_850x492.webp Features - The Noble Savage - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788722696067-IKDIYNMZZNEP8R9G3AMF/unsplash-image-Zy-W7KWEyFE.jpg Features - The Noble Savage - I feel at home. I feel like a rebel, and like a goldfish, I feel like I’m growing inside this enormous fish tank. My favourite rapper, Bocafloja, in his song "Memoria," uses the term: "El Buen Salvaje" (The Noble Savage). This term, created by colonizers, refers to natives and slaves who maintained the standard of behavior, morals, manners, and even aesthetics of the colonizer. I think I've never been this noble savage, and when I’ve tried to hide my deep insecurities, it’s when I’ve felt the most alien, the most foreign to myself and my spirit. I tried it for the first time in high school when I wanted to be part of the cool kids’ group and ended up more alone and disheartened than before. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1788722789250-WCK8BTXE060VHE9TX7K2/unsplash-image-Blb99aPvDX8.jpg Features - The Noble Savage - My first day in this apartment in the Lavapiés neighborhood, I felt like my father surely felt in his small apartment around the corner. Alone and overwhelmed. I went out, walked with a book in my hand, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. A book that has always accompanied me in new beginnings. I walked to a bar and sat down, opened a page at random, and found the drawing Kurt used to illustrate the tomb of protagonise Billy Pilgrim, which said: “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” https://mexicofeatured.com/features/blog-post-title-three-y3peb-ewhsb monthly 0.5 2026-09-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/6259deb5-d2d4-4b98-8e0c-ebde9bf764a6/53092622-ec5f-406e-938a-7dbab5cbafe3_850x570.webp Features - I knocked my cappuccino onto my computer and started googling one-way flights out of Mexico - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/1789300911660-MEUU9ZQEUPM4VOS43X8Q/unsplash-image-eTVi3vlx-sc.jpg Features - I knocked my cappuccino onto my computer and started googling one-way flights out of Mexico - I scribble “Gracias!” on a piece of paper, wrap it around two crisp 50 peso notes, and slip it between the screen and keyboard. I slam it shut (figuratively, of course) and think of how generous I am to think to do that. I give the laptop to the GM, the GM gives the laptop to a guy who doesn’t look quite as nerdy as I’d prefer an IT guy to look, but whatever, and he disappears to his world of cables and coding and, I assumed at the time, keyboard cleaning devices. The next hours I spend in a whirlwind of cobblestone alleyways and Neo-Gothic church facades made of pink sandstone. The sun beats down on my golden-tinged shoulders as I snap photos of bright bougainvillea, starbursts of magenta cascading over mustard-colored walls. https://mexicofeatured.com/features/blog-post-title-four-lr658-ns2jk monthly 0.5 2026-09-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/340c5b96-7885-4f3c-a680-888102f06fa0/images-1.jpeg Features - The many lives of Estación Indianilla - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/53bffee3-7ef2-4a26-aac9-452798dfcbee/estacion-indianilla.jpg Features - The many lives of Estación Indianilla - It became a film set. Luis Buñuel came to Mexico and used the building while making La ilusión viaja en tranvía (Illusion Travels by Streetcar). It’s difficult to imagine a more fitting location. Buñuel’s film follows a pair of tram workers who take a streetcar out for what was supposed to be a routine final journey and end up on an increasingly chaotic adventure through Mexico City. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6a78ad9bf8895c66f2dce085/11354518-6c62-46d9-a898-ad3dccce543d/luis-bunuel.jpg.webp Features - The many lives of Estación Indianilla - Mexico City is full of famous buildings with famous histories. You can spend an entire afternoon ticking them off a list. But there are other buildings that don’t announce themselves. They don’t have the enormous crowds or the grandest architecture. 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