Mexico is one of the world’s top countries in biodiversity, yet most people use only the most generic terms for the different plants and animals. Some English people, for example, pride themselves on knowing the difference between a rook and a raven. Urban Mexicans would tell you they’re both crows - cuervos, aquí y en […]

Mexico City’s new non-smoking rules have gone into effect, barring smoking in all enclosed areas of restaurants, bars and other public buildings.
The original plan - that smoking areas of restaurants had to be completely sealed off from non-smoking areas - was eventually abandoned in favor of a blanket ban, causing to vanish frightful images of […]

A trip to Mexico City could well be graced with a visit to the Aztec Stadium to see a football (soccer) match. The massive concrete structure located in the south of the capital on Calzada de Tlalpan, seats more than 100,000 people. It has been the site of two World Cup finals (1970 […]

Thanks to modern technology, there’s no longer any need to learn how to put accents on Spanish words. Instead of bothering with complicated, picky rules, just announce firstly and loudly that the keyboard on your palm pilot, or better yet, your iPhone, “doesn’t DO accents.” Contemporaries will take this as a perfectly acceptable euphemism for […]

Coffee is among Mexico’s important crops, with the country producing 240,000 metric tons a year of the beans, of which it exports about three quarters and consumes the rest. Along with its wide variety of coffees, Mexico has an ample choice of places to drink them in.
In years past, the coffee shop/restaurants run by Chinese […]

Among the better known of Mexico’s writers are those of the 20th century. Names such as Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, or Elena Poniatowska are probably familiar to the reader. Less well known, but well worth reading, is Manuel Payno (1810-1894), whose works bring post-Independence Mexico vividly to life.
Fans of Charles Dickens are likely to enjoy […]

More than a habit, it’s a tradition in Mexico to leave things to the last minute, particularly when they involve interaction with the bureaucracy. This means long queues for passports, visas and other documents ahead of the holidays, and long queues outside the local Treasury offices when the deadline for some overdue payment or other […]

When people think of tourism in Mexico, they most frequently think of the foreign visitor heading for Cancun, Los Cabos, or Mexico City. Tourists from abroad are, indeed, among the most important generators of foreign currency income in Mexico. Less obvious, but just as substantial in economic terms, is tourism by Mexicans traveling within […]

The Mexican Congress just passed a new law that places strict limits on smoking in public places. For the smoker long banished to the great outdoors, the bill passed in the lower house - and likely to clear the Senate - will come as no surprise. For years, Mexico’s rules on smoking have been somewhat […]

In Spanish double negatives are valid when referring to the absence of people and things.
“No hay nada,” — literally, “there isn’t nothing” — is a multi-purpose expression which can mean the fridge is empty, no one showed up for the game, or nobody knows anything about this. It can also mean “there’s nothing.”
Likewise, “no hay […]