Christmas festivities in Mexico are not just a one-day wonder but extend over several weeks, and are already well underway! Nativity scenes such as this one are popular with all ages: Unlike in many other countries, the custom of gift-giving at this time of year was not tied to Christmas Day but to Three Kings […]
This Guardian article – ‘My neighbourhood is being destroyed to pacify his supporters’: the race to complete Trump’s wall – highlights the problems created (not solved) by US efforts to build a wall along its southern border. For what it’s worth, here is my own take on the wall, written a few years ago as […]
We have frequently published international comparisons showing how Mexico fares in comparison with other Latin American countries and major world economies for a wide variety of indicators. Reliable comparisons for comparing countries on their Covid-19 response have been hard to come by, but here is a link to one compiled by Bloomberg News: Where is […]
Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers! Try the following links to learn more about Mexico’s contributions to Thanksgiving. For starters, what about the idea that Thanksgiving originated in Mexico, not in the USA! That idea may be slightly controversial, but most celebrations of Thanksgiving certainly have some close ties to Mexico since they are […]
The town of Chapala, on the shores of Lake Chapala—Mexico’s largest natural lake—played an important role in the history of tourism in North America and has become one of the world’s premier retirement destinations. Yet, the details of how and why this transformation occurred have never been adequately reconstructed… until now! My latest book If […]
This early postcard (cerca 1905) shows smoke billowing from Colima Volcano. The postcard was published by a curio store – La Joyita – based in downtown Mexico City at 1ra de San Francisco #13-14. Described by The Mexican Herald in 1898 as one “of the most interesting stores for visitors to be found in the […]
In honor of the award of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, we republish this post from five years ago in which we highlighted the significance of the pioneering work of Banerjee and Duflo: Every so often a book […]
Graphic designers often taken liberties with maps. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this otherwise beautiful tourism brochure promoting the Pacific Coast resort of Mazatlán, collected recently in British Colombia, Canada. Here is the map in question: Mexico’s relief, as shown on this map, is highly distorted. Accepting that the graphical designer was only […]
A recent edition of the New Scientist has an interesting article about dinosaurs and the rapid shifts in our knowledge of these ancient beasts based on recent fossil discoveries. If the New Scientist is to be believed, these discoveries have not only revolutionized our views of dinosaurs, they have also rearranged the Earth’s geography. The […]
The BBC has done it again! Not content with its previous entry in Geo-Mexico’s “Hall of Shame” for its TV documentary “Racing Green”, it now qualifies for a second entry for an episode of “Fake or Fortune.” Fiona Bruce – yes, the Oxford-educated journalist and newsreader and current host of Antiques Roadshow and other noteworthy […]