Topic - Economy

Much has been said in these pages about Mexico City’s traffic. But there is little that can be compared to those days in the year when pay day coincides with Friday. Typically, Mexican employers pay wages twice a month, on the 15th and 30th, or the Friday before if they fall on a weekend. These [...]

Convenience stores have come a long way in Mexico, expanding over the years so that now there are thousands of them all over the cities. To a certain extent, they have taken away custom from the traditional “tienditas,” the neighborhood shops that had already been losing ground to the big supermarket chains. Urban people do [...]

A fair rule about torn banknotes is that if you have more than half of the note, then it’s valid, but less than half isn’t. In Mexico merchants of all kinds will reject banknotes that have any part missing, and many will refuse to receive bills that are torn in any way, taped together, or [...]

Arráncame La Vida, a film about the life of a politician’s wife in post-revolution Mexico, is the latest home-made Mexican film to challenge the host of Hollywood productions for the moviegoer’s money. The film’s debut was an auspicious one, according to local press reports on the amount of people who saw it in its first [...]

Someone once wrote of John Steinbeck that he was the sort of man who would rather be duped out of a dollar by someone with a sob story than risk refusing the money to someone with a genuine need. In Mexico, there are plenty of opportunities to test the dilemma of the author of  Tortilla [...]

Mexico’s flirt with low-cost airlines could be coming to an end not too long after it got off the ground. The main reason is the high cost of jet fuel, which has led a number of airlines to cut back on flights, and several have been grounded for one reason or another – mostly involving [...]

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 [...]

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 their [...]

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 [...]

People who visit Mexico on business trips, and attend conferences, will have discovered that they aren’t much different here than anywhere else – the long introductions, the bad jokes, the charts, the strategic coffee breaks, the conference jargon. One word that is extremely popular among speakers at these events is “fundamental,” which for convenience’s sake [...]