Each year since its inception in 2011, more retailers and service providers have joined in the event, which is coordinated by the federal government and various business associations.

The past decade has coincided with a rapid increase in the number of people in Mexico buying goods online, and surveys carried out by the Mexican online sales association (AMVO), show a steady increase in the popularity and volume of online shopping in Mexico.  This willingness to acquire goods through electronic means reflects increasing trust in online markets and the ever-improving network of delivery systems that get goods to customers more quickly and make returns straightforward, and convenient.

Most of Mexico’s large retail chains have online shopping options, although the efficiency of their delivery services varies considerably. The best way to find out is to ask a frequent online buyer, preferably a millennial, as they just know these things. They also have an additional advantage in that they will probably also look up and compare Black Friday offers on sites like Amazon and Mercado Libre.

As usual, the most popular articles for online shoppers —according to the same surveys— are likely to be clothing, electronic goods, home appliances and cell phones, followed by personal care items, booking travel, and toys.

Don’t expect US-style shopping bargains

El Buen Fin has been criticized in the past for the lack of giveaway prices like the ones that lead shoppers to line up overnight in the US and make a mad rush when the doors open. A typical complaint of people surveyed in Mexico is that the offers aren’t all that attractive, or that they’re often restricted to interest-free months of credit if they use certain banks’ credit cards for the purchase.

Nevertheless, people do find some worthwhile discounts, and some people will delay the purchase of big-ticket items including domestic appliances and home improvement materials like tiles and blinds as well as bathrooms and kitchens to see what offers are presented during El Buen Fin.

Strays in Mexico

Stray dogs in Mexico are generally not treated very well, and the most common reaction of street dogs is to dodge when humans come close, probably a conditioned response to having been frequently kicked or stoned or hissed at to scat.

One overblown fear is that you could catch rabies. Years of government vaccination campaigns —since 1990— has reduced this probability to practically zero. In 2005, officials noted 125 cases of rabies among dogs and cats in nine states, compared with more than 3,000 cases in 1990 in 29 states. The latest data from Mexico’s health ministry demonstrate that in 2017 there were just three cases in three states—and not every case affected humans.

According to estimates from health officials, there are around 100,000 reported cases a year of dogs attacking humans, of which nearly half were vaccinated dogs, suggesting that dogs with owners are just as likely (or unlikely) to bite you as strays. This is in a population of 130 million people, and an estimated 18 million to 20 million dogs.

Concerns about stray dogs that have been mentioned by different local governments carrying out round-up campaigns include health problems caused by feces, and in one case in northern Durango state, dogs were said to be a threat to drivers as they crossed the highway.

Precise data are hard to come by

While there appear to be fewer street dogs every time you look, the number of dogs with owners seems to be increasing, along with other security measures in residential areas. (Keeping a dog is a deterrent to burglars.) Statistics in this case don’t go very far—the maze of data on the country’s National Statistics Institute web site turns-up little meaningful data about man’s best friend.

They don’t say, for example, how many dogs get taken for walks every day and how many are left to rot on rooftops, barking in desperation at anyone who walks below, and raising their level of excitement if the pedestrian is accompanied by a dog.

Trends observed by watching dog walkers

A walk in the park —or in one of Mexico City’s trendy neighborhoods where younger generations can be seen walking their dogs instead of pushing baby buggies— of a morning or an evening turns up a fair amount of anecdotal evidence about the habits of people and their dogs. The ‘poop scoop,’ for example, is becoming increasingly common, although it’s still sensible to keep an eye on the ground before you.

In middle-class suburbia, there is a good deal of oneupmanship when it comes to owning a dog. It’s not very practical to staple a pedigree certificate to the animal, and so the more obvious implicit superlatives are biggest, rarest, most expensive—things that people just know and dogs just don’t care about.

With many city dwellers living in apartments, sub-compact dogs appear to be more plentiful than the larger breeds. Schnauzers and Pugs enjoyed a period of popularity in recent years, although their fame has become overshadowed by the Bulldog. But most likely, as more and more people get Bulldogs, and their novelty wears-off, a need will arise for a new “in” dog.

Learn more about caring for pets in Mexico

Mexperience publishes guides and articles about bringing pets to Mexico and caring for them here:

• Latest articles about pets in Mexico
• Dog walkers in Mexico
• Bringing your pets to Mexico

These may ring out as early as 6 a.m. for morning mass, again around midday, and then again in the evening. Sundays are likely to involve more bellringing than other days of the week.

On religious holidays, of which there are plenty including Easter, Christmas, Candlemas, Day of the Dead, and the Virgin of Guadalupe day on Dec. 12, there may be more bells than usual, along with fireworks. And then there are innumerable local saints’ days, which could involve more pealing of bells, exploding of rockets, and eating of traditional foods.

The Church and church bells play a significant role in Mexican history. Anecdotes abound from the time of Spanish colonial rule, and of course the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla famously rang the bells in Dolores, Guanajuato to call insurgents to rise up against the Spanish in 1810.

In his essay “Campanas,” included in the book Ciudad de Entonces, the journalist, writer and now Mexican ambassador to the Holy See, Alberto Barranco Chavarría notes that the longest known continuous pealing of bells occurred on Dec. 27, 1867, at the Mexico City cathedral to mark the definitive triumph of the Liberals over the Conservatives. The ringing lasted from four in the morning until nine at night, on the orders of the bishop, he says.

In that essay, he tells the story of a bell in Spain that had rung out “of its own accord” one midnight, affrighting the local population. As the mayor’s cries to the bellringer to stop that confounded noise went unheeded, he had the doors to the bell tower knocked in to find only a cat at the end of the spiral staircase. Twenty days later, the Royal Council declared the ringing null and of no account, and ordered the clapper removed and the bell exiled to “The Indias,” which is how it found its way to Mexico and later fascinated viceroy Juan Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas.

In the picaresque novel, La Vida Inútil de Pito Pérez, by José Rubén Romero, the drunken protagonist carries around a number of bells among his collection of junk and explains that each carries the name of a town and they serve to bring back memories of his travels around Michoacán. “The big bell of Pátzcuaro rebukes its younger sister, the bell of Quiroga, because it shows its tongue to the lake.”

Speaking of Michoacán, this writer’s one visit to the town of Cuanajo during a tour of Pátzcuaro, Capula, Quiroga (great carnitas), Tzintzuntzan, and others, occurred on one of those bell-ringing days. A young lad sat with his legs hanging over the edge of the bell tower lazily pulling the clapper from side to side, letting out a dull clang for the whole time we were there. Cuanajo, let it be said, could well merit the description of “pueblo rascuache” and as such, had a church bell that clanged more than chimed, quite easily grating on the nerves.

This quality of the metal in a church bell can, it seems, make the difference between enjoying the local sounds and moving somewhere else.

Known locally as simply Reforma, the thoroughfare takes you from the downtown area all the way to the famous Chapultepec Park, running through one of the capital city’s main financial and business districts, and one of main tourist zones.

The original avenue was built by the Emperor Maximilian as a route from his residence at Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace in the city center, where the affairs of government were conducted. Its original name was Paseo de la Emperatriz, in honor of Carlota who, it would appear, made a good deal of the decisions at the castle.

Following the defeat of Maximiliano, the name of the avenue was changed to Reforma, in honor of the reforms carried out under President Benito Juárez.

Some of its more famous landmarks, particularly the Angel of the Independence, were built during the long dictatorial rule of Porfirio Diaz.  The Angel was built in the first decade of the 20th century and inaugurated in 1910 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war for independence. Others include the monument to Cuauhtémoc—the last Aztec emperor—and one to Christopher Columbus.

Reforma has benefited over the decades from  periods of renovation, or beautification, usually at the behest of the president of the country, or the city mayor, with additions such as the Diana fountain in the mid-1900s. Reforma is also now home to modern skyscrapers —hotels and high-rise office blocks— bustling with business activity and frequently, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Across from the Chapultepec Castle is the Torre Mayor, and adjacent Torre Reforma—two of Latin America’s tallest buildings.

It remains, however, a place for “paseos.” Aside from the historic monuments, moving up past the castle are the museums of anthropology and modern art, and of course the Chapultepec zoo, which was the first in the world outside China to breed giant pandas in captivity. At weekends it remains a place for leisure, with stretches of the road closed to traffic on Sundays so that cyclists, or mini-marathon runners, can use it.

The latest of the monuments along Reforma is the Estela de Luz (Pilar of Light), built to mark the 200th anniversary of the Independence and 100th anniversary of the 1910-1917 Revolution. The monument caused some controversy when it was erected: about the design, the cost, and the fact that it wasn’t ready in time for those bicentennial-centennial celebrations in 2010. The monument lies across Reforma from the Torre Mayor. Visitors should probably make up their own minds about its merits or faults next time they go for a paseo down Reforma.

Image of Paseo de la Reforma taken from the top of the Angel of Independence by Mundial Photo

Books’ row in Mexico City

In the south of Mexico City, where Miguel Angel de Quevedo avenue crosses Avenida Universidad —about five minutes from the Bohemian hangout of Coyoacán— is a mini paradise for bookworms.

Three major bookstores, Gandhi, El Sotano, and Fondo de Cultura Economica, and a dozen or so smaller ones, line both sides of the street. Outside are wooden trays with books at throw-away prices, and inside you’ll find special offers on those less likely to be thrown away.

Mexico City remains the place where the widest selection of books and bookshops can be found, and some well-known chains have most of their branches in the capital.

Bookshops are still popular in Mexico

But while in many developed countries bookshops have been closing, Mexican chains have been opening new stores. Like bookshops everywhere, they have also added small gifts, toys, games & puzzles, and other paraphernalia to their offerings to make the business work.  This may annoy some purists, but somehow it’s hard to get worked up about a model that means the book business can continue going.

• Cafebrería El Péndulo —coffee shop-bookstore— boasts several branches in Mexico City, including in trendy neighborhoods such as Polanco, Condesa, Roma, and San Ángel.
• Librerías Gandhi has expanded with new stores in Mexico City, and also has branches in 24 of Mexico’s 32 states.
• El Sótano and Casa del Libro have more than a dozen branches.
• Gonvill Librerías is the biggest chain in Guadalajara, Mexico’s third most populated city and which is also host to a major international book fair each year.

These chains tend to stock the best selection of books, often beyond the capacity of the shelves so that many are neatly piled up.  You can find most books in Spanish at these stores.

And while many, especially Gandhi and El Péndulo, have one or two shelves of books in English and French, here it tends to be hit and miss.  You might find occasional books of interest, but you are less likely to find a specific title. (For some you can check availability online.)

Buying eBooks in Mexico

Since eBooks are virtually borderless, there are as many options in Mexico as anywhere else.

Amazon’s Mexico shop sells Kindles, and you can usually find almost any book published in English or Spanish in the local Kindle store.  Apple Books are an option for those who use Apple devices —iPhone or iPad— although they don’t have a dedicated eReader like the Kindle.

There’s no accounting for taste, and online reviews show some people are impressed with the Apple Books app, others not so much. For those using Android, Google Books is an option, and again, it has the disadvantage of not having a dedicated eReader.

In Mexico, the Gandhi and Porrúa book chains have an agreement with Kobo Books and sell Kobo eReaders, which are popular in Canada and parts of Europe like France and Italy. (The Canadian digital bookseller Kobo was acquired by Japan’s Rakuten Group in 2012, so the app says Rakuten Kobo, although people still widely refer to Kobo books).

Both Gandhi and Porrúa sell eBooks on their own websites, which can be downloaded onto the Kobo reader or using the Kobo app installed on devices, and you can also download eBooks directly from the Kobo website.

Depending on how budget conscious the reader is, it can be advantageous to keep open several options, as sometimes a title will be available on one platform and not another, or cheaper on one than another.

The Kindle, Kobo, and Google Books apps are available on Apple and Android, but the Apple Books app isn’t available on Android.

Finding books not published in Spanish

When you are looking for a particular physical copy of a book not published in Spanish —such as a new release— the options are to stock-up on a trip abroad, or order it from a book seller online—most of which will ship books to Mexico with no problems, but not necessarily that quickly. If you want a particular book right now, eBooks are the way to go.

Mexico’s department stores and big box stores have book sections, but these vary widely in selection and quality. There are about 150 Sanborns stores with magazine sections offering international titles published in English, but not much in the way of books published in English beyond current best-sellers.

Fancy browsing

Even the most bourgeois of us like to dig around for books in a bohemian atmosphere, and for that there are plenty of elegant bookshops—although that isn’t where most Mexicans go to buy reading material.

You make a phone call and ask to speak to someone, giving their first and last name. Having ascertained, by shrewdness or direct inquiry, that the caller isn’t a person of any great importance, the secretary informs you curtly that el licenciado, or la licenciada (or el ingeniero, or la arquitecta)  is out, on another line, or in a meeting. The title will probably be stressed for your future information.

Ingeniero, or engineer, encompasses a range of technical professions, from civil engineering to electronics and computers. Arquitecto means architect; and even contador, or accountant, has made its way into the list of titles acceptable as improvements on the plain señor, señorita or señora.

The title licenciado traditionally applied to lawyers, but its use extends to anyone who has a degree in any number of fields: the highly popular business administration, the dizzying economics, the trendy marketing, the modern communications, or the stopgap history of art.

As with so many other things, titles have undergone a process of inflation. As the middle class grew, more and more people could afford to stay at five-star hotels, generating a “need” for a new category that stays ahead of the pack, and “Grand Tourism” was born.

Likewise, as more and more people had access to university education, plain licenciado became somewhat run-of-the-mill and the PhD came into fashion. Now it’s often the “doctora” who’s in a meeting, or on another line, after which she’ll be out to lunch, and then traveling.

The next step up from a bachelor’s degree is a masters —maestría— but nobody on that particular ladder uses the title maestro, and this is why: maestro, like its English counterpart ‘master,’ has plenty of meanings. It means teacher, or schoolmaster, and also refers to someone particularly skillful at a given pursuit, in the arts or sports, for example, but maestro is also applied to the skilled builder, the plumber, or the chief mechanic.

In this last sense, the maestro is chief among equals in the realm of oficios, or trades, but somewhat unappreciated in the world of the professions. If we weren’t such snobs, we could perhaps appreciate the irony of the maestro —who can build houses that won’t fall down in earthquakes— being much less in the eyes of polite society than the licenciado and licenciada, who happen to know their Manet from their Monet.

More about language and social etiquette

More insights about the the use of language and social etiquette in Mexico

• Guide to social etiquette in Mexico
• Articles about local customs
• PinPoint Spanish: learn about the nuances of Mexican Spanish

At one time, the stadium was home to four Mexico City first division teams, although Necaxa moved years ago to Aguascalientes where the team has a strong local following and high attendance at its games. Now the stadium houses Cruz Azul, the current champions, and América, nicknamed las Águilas or the Eagles. Atlante, which for years has been based in Cancún, is returning to the first division next season and will also play there.

There are two kinds of soccer fans in Mexico: those who support América and those who cheer on whoever is playing against América, regardless of who their favorite team is.

Among reasons given for hating the América team (apart from the head-scratching, “because it’s owned by Televisa,” the TV company), are that referees favor América in their decisions on the field. In years past, it was also claimed that other teams owned by Televisa let América win their games. This was frequently shown on the field to be nonsense, and now the point is moot, anyway, as Televisa no longer owns other first-division teams. In fact, Televisa doesn’t directly own América any more, either. The soccer club, along with the stadium and some gambling halls, was spun off in 2024.

The second most popular team in Mexico is Guadalajara. Among the liberal classes, the team of choice is often Pumas of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Admitting to one of these that you support América can be met with eyebrows raised in a look of incredulity, as much as if to say, “really, you ought to know better.” They suppose you must also watch soap operas.

Anyway, going to the Aztec Stadium is an exhilarating experience, particularly for a big match when there are likely to be anything from 60,000 to 80,000 spectators.

Some words of practical advice.

Get tickets before you go to the stadium, unless you plan to be there with plenty of time in hand. If you just show up an hour or so before a game, you will only be able to get tickets from touts for at least 50% more than the list price for regular matches, and double or more if it’s a “clásico,” such as América–Guadalajara or América–Pumas.

Buying from touts also risks being sold fake tickets which are checked and refused at the entry gate. Lines at the stadium’s box office —la taquilla— are long, ticket availability limited, and service painfully slow, even for games with relatively few spectators, so you are quite likely to miss the first part of the match. Tickets for events at the stadium can be purchased ahead of time from Fanki.

Learn more about sports and leisure in Mexico

Connect to more articles for insights and sports and other leisure pastimes.

• Latest articles about sports in Mexico
• Discover leisure experiences in Mexico
• Dining out in Mexico
• Festivals & Events in Mexico

You can take many walks by yourself and never actually speak to anybody you don’t know, much as you might do if you travel on the Metro or in buses. If you are in the habit —as many Mexico City residents are— of driving everywhere, your only communication with your fellow denizens may be a shaking of the head, blowing of the horn, or an untoward hand signal that goes unnoticed by its intended recipient

Striking up a conversation becomes more or less necessary, however, when you come face-to-face with someone who, like you, is on the defensive end of a leash being stretched to its limit by a pet whose intentions could be anything from simple acquaintance to a battle to the death.

This is as good a time as any to establish your “dog-expert” credentials.

You could start out with, ¿qué raza es?, which would be OK as long as the other’s dog isn’t a German Shepherd, a Labrador, or some other well-known breed.

Many dog breeds are the same in Spanish as in English or their original language. Examples are Rottweiler, Doberman, Schnauzer, Bulldog, Boxer. Others are literal translations, for example, pastor alemán (German Shepherd), pastor inglés (English Sheepdog), gran danés (Great Dane).

For some breeds, the habit of using an English adjective and turning it into a Spanish noun is applied. So a French Poodle becomes “un french,” a Golden Retriever “un golden,“ and a Cocker Spaniel, “un cocker.”

A mongrel in Mexico is described as corriente, or callejero (street dog), criollo, or euphemistically, cruzado con corriente (cross with mongrel).

Another possible opener, ¿es macho o hembra? would show you know that, ordinarily, there ought to be no problem if they are opposites, although it could do severe damage to your pose as someone who knows all about dogs.

¿Muerde? is probably the most sensible, yet impractical question. Besides, the growling and barking may only be directed at the other dog, and could also be mere frustration at being held back by a chain.

Anyway, once the preliminaries have been dispensed with, and a decision made whether to allow the dogs to associate freely, come what may, the owners can then get introduced and share impressions on the one thing they apparently have in common—a love of dogs.

Where you would expect to hear things like, what do you feed it? does he sleep indoors or outdoors? has she been spayed? what you actually get are things like, she’s normally quite sociable, he only fights if he’s afraid, he thinks he’s bigger than he actually is.

The habit of attributing psychological or sociological characteristics to an irrational quadruped appears to say more about the owner than the dog, but in any case it serves to get people talking to each other who might otherwise not so much as exchange a “good day.”

Sometimes you’ll come away from these meetings shaking your head and saying to yourself, “I can’t believe I said that!” And the dog, now more settled after a romp in the grass or a bit of a scrap, would probably agree if it could.

Greene traveled in southern Mexico during the anti-clerical persecutions of the 1930s, and produced two books, the commentary Lawless Roads and the novel The Power and The Glory.  Lawrence visited in the 1920s, and wrote The Plumed Serpent, while Lowry in the 1940s wrote Under The Volcano, which was made into a film in 1984.

The three can be associated with specific places in Mexico: Greene with sweltering Tabasco; Lowry with Cuernavaca, the land of eternal spring; and Lawrence with Lake Chapala—to this day a popular spot for foreign residents living in Mexico.

The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze considers in a 2015 article on British writers that lived in or visited Mexico that the works of the male authors lean toward what is dark in the country, while the female writers —Rosa King, Sybille Bedford, Rebecca West— tended rather to reflect the day.

More recently, writers like Tony Cohan, author of the memoir On Mexican Time (and its sequel, Mexican Days) show how the country continues to deliver inspiration for writers who come to visit or live here.  A good number of the more contemporary books are about people escaping to a quiet life south of the border —oblivious perhaps to Mexico’s own version of the rat race— and some are fiction.

Another modern-day writer, DBC Pierre of British and Australian parentage, grew up in Mexico in the 1970s.  While Mexico appears briefly in the latter part of his prize-winning first novel Vernon God Little, it’s in a later work, Release the Bats, that he shares several of his personal experiences in the country.

Modern writers are still finding inspiration in Mexico for turning out prose (not to mention blogs), and writing courses are also popular here.

Use the comments below to share your recommendation.

A bygone era of old-world coffee shops

In years past, the coffee shop/restaurants run by Chinese immigrants —of which there were several in and around the Chinese quarter of downtown Mexico City and more beyond that— were nearly always full.

The “café chino,” as these were only ever referred to, was typically a long thin hall moving back from the street front. Half of the façade would be taken up by a glass window filled with different kinds of sweet bread to eat in or take away (and the odd bluebottle).

Down one side of the entrance would be the coffee bar and the cash register, and the other side would be taken up by a row of tables or booths.  The specialty of the house would be café con leche: a small amount of concentrate would be poured from a metal coffee pot into the bottom of a glass mug, and hot milk from another poured on top, with the server lifting the spout farther and farther from the mug as it filled, creating, if done precisely, a frothy top.

Black coffee —café americano— was steam-pressed from the machine behind the bar, and each cup was charged at the same rate.  Hygiene was hardly of first importance to the café chino, and patrons did well not to be over-zealous inspecting the specks on the table or trying to steal a glance at the kitchen.

Perhaps the king of coffee shops was Café La Habana, on the corner of Bucareli and Morelos, a stone’s throw from the historical Chinese clock.  La Habana brewed the strongest coffee, served in thick white cups that were slightly wider at the base than at the brim (awkward for stirring).  It was popular among intellectuals and, being about a block from such erstwhile giants of the Mexican press as Excelsior and El Universal, a frequent meeting place for journalists of the old school: threadbare suits, beaten-up leather briefcases stuffed full with dog-eared press releases, political “tips” several times removed from reality.

The emergence of contemporary coffee houses

Against this, the chain restaurant/coffee shops such as VIPS, TOKS, and Sanborns provided free refills on drip-brewed coffee, competing in quality with “Golden Cup” plaques awarded by the Mexican Coffee Council, and in convenience with quick-service bars where the temporarily idle could while away several hours loading up on caffeine without having to keep paying.  This is still true today, although people are generally much more rushed.

In addition to these places, with the advent of the mall culture there sprung up a number of smart coffee shops —Coffee House, Coffee Station, and so on— which added snacks, coffee paraphernalia, and an assortment of home-grown and imported coffees, ground or whole, to the standard offerings while also increasing the number of derivative beverages to their range of refreshments on offer.

And then Starbucks came.  Agreeable to the modern business class, the tourist looking for something familiar, and the lover of things American, this comfortable hybrid of convenience and recreation proliferated and also became a favorite daytime hangout of the country’s middle-class youth.

Straddling this period from local shop to chain to franchise is Bisquets Obregon, which developed from La Perla de Oriente on Alvaro Obregón Avenue in the historical Colonia Roma.  Like the café chino, Los Bisquets is also a place to get café con leche, and the house specialty, scones.  Brighter and cleaner, with its characteristic green and yellow décor, the restaurant also sports a selection of freshly-baked sweet bread at the front counter.

Small independent coffee shops continue to thrive

Perhaps the most famous of the traditional Mexican cafés is El Jorocho, that serves quality coffee principally sourced from Veracruz; customers can also buy the beans and ground coffee in bags for home brew.  This family-run shop was set up in Mexico City during the early 1950s in the heart of the bohemian district of Coyoacán—a neighborhood that remains one of the capital’s most popular quarters for friends and families to meet and spend an afternoon or evening out together.

In towns and cities across Mexico, small independently-run coffee shops continue to trade, and thrive.  Like the local neighborhood tienditas, they have prevailed even in the presence and growth of franchise coffee shops.

The owners of these independent establishments often create comfortable nooks where patrons can meet, socialize, and take light refreshment amidst informal and often homely surroundings that are usually more intimate and feel less rushed than the cookie-cutter franchises.

Serendipitous discovery of independent coffee houses can happen by taking an exploratory walk down side streets of any towns you visit or asking locally.  Digital generations are likely to consult their map-app, or search on Instagram.

Mexico has long been going smoke-free in public places, but at the same time alternatives such as patches and nicotine gum disappeared from pharmacies. While in the U.S. and Europe those products are readily available, in Mexico it became impossible even to order them online.

This coincided with the emergence of vaping, which had the advantage of not filling up the area with smoke or leaving a stale smell on fingers, clothes and breath. Vaping products have been banned by the Mexican government on health grounds.

One new non-vaping nicotine option appearing at convenience stores —being sold under the brand name “ZYN”— are nicotine pouches that you put under your upper or lower lip and keep there for a while, absorbing the nicotine through the mouth. Some people may prefer gum or lozenges, but when there’s nothing else you take what you can get. They are priced about the same as a packet of cigarettes.

ZYN is made by a Swedish subsidiary of the tobacco giant Philip Morris and is part of the company’s shift toward smoke-free products, which have become popular for reasons such as those mentioned above. Information about them in Mexico, along with the  different presentations and risks (smokers may be shocked to know that nicotine is addictive), is available here.

Another option is Velo, made by British American Tobacco, which has a similar product, and similarly priced, also available in convenience stores in Mexico.

Without delving too deeply into confessions of a smoker, it might be well to warn those about to celebrate that nothing is necessarily permanent.

In 2024, a congressional committee approved a proposed constitutional ban on electronic cigarettes and vaping that was passed and is now in the process of becoming law. Meanwhile, notices have been posted in customs halls and some travelers are having vaping products confiscated when their personal items are examined.

Apparently, “but I thought they wanted people to stop smoking,” doesn’t carry a great deal of weight.

Changing tastes in coffee consumption

With the rising popularity of coffee-drinking for entertainment, the casual expert who knows that the good stuff is called arabica and grows on mountains is in ever-greater company, and the value of that knowledge as a conversation opener has dwindled somewhat.

The purveyors of the best coffees tend to print that kind of information all over the packages, and some even include rather sophisticated stories about how the coffee comes to be in the bag at all, almost rivaling the verbosity of the cereal companies who provide enough literature on the box to see you through a week of breakfasts without having to pick up a newspaper or speak to anyone else at the table, except to waffle something that sounds like “I’m reading” through soggy flakes.

There are many, if not infinite, combinations of roasts and grinds for the different coffees to make it impossible to say which are the best; besides, there is no accounting for taste.

Coffees grown in Mexico

Possibly the best known Mexican coffees come from Chiapas, which is the state that produces the most. But there is plenty to be said for Oaxaca state’s Pluma region, as well as coffees grown in Veracruz state’s Córdoba region.

For home consumption, a fair selection can be found at most Mexican supermarkets, although for a wider choice, the coffee shops that grind the beans on the premises are a good place to go: they also tend to have more sizes of bags, so you can try out different kinds quite frequently, ordering quarter-kilos (about a half-pound), “un cuarto,” or find one you always want, and buy a big bag of it. The handful of high-end food shops, some with branch networks across the country, also stocks ample ranges of high quality Mexican and imported coffees.

It’s probably fair to say, without being too nationalistic, that Mexico produces enough of its own good quality coffee as to make paying extra for imported grains a waste of money. Of course there is the Malinchista factor to consider, for which Colombian and Costa Rican coffees are readily available as well as the top Italian coffee brands, although generally speaking malinchismo doesn’t apply to hot drinks. That may be just as well as a majority of the coffee drunk in Mexico is still of the instant kind, and there you definitely want to stick with the Swiss company’s brand.

Instant coffee is still popular in Mexico

Not everywhere has good coffee, and some restaurants that specialize in other areas definitely fail in this. A number of taco restaurants have cottoned-on to the trend in customers’ demands for a decent coffee after a meal and now serve proper Café Americano, Cappuccino, or even Espresso, but there remain others whose only offering is “agua para Nescafé,” (they bring a cup of  hot water, a spoon and the instant coffee jar), or “café de olla,” which is coffee made in a cooking pot, la olla, and sweetened with treacle, piloncillo, and cinnamon. Tastes fine, but isn’t what you might expect.