It is becoming harder and harder to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of drug cartel territories. As the government crack-down leads to more and more high-profile arrests, some cartels are struggling to reorganize and lose ground (literally) as rival groups step in to take control. This has resulted in drug-related violence in the past […]
A few months ago, we highlighted the outstanding work of photographer Peter McBride. McBride traveled the length of the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its vast delta in the otherwise arid Sonoran desert in northern Mexico where the river emptied into the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California). Now, […]
The cacao bean, the basis of cocoa and chocolate, is one of Mexico’s many culinary gifts to the world. Cacao beans come from the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). The main area for cacao cultivation is the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, known for its cacao for over three thousand years, since Olmec times. Cacao became […]
This image of the Mexico-USA border tells its own story. Tijuana is on the right, San Diego on the left. Related posts: The Transnational Metropolitan Areas of Mexico-USA Two examples of trans-border air pollution on the Mexico-USA border
How is Mexico City’s choking sewer system cleaned? Have you ever wondered who is responsible for the gross job of cleaning the city’s sewer system to help ensure it never gets blocked? Well, we did and were surprised at the answer… In previous posts, we looked at the history of attempts to drain Mexico City: […]
Coffee trees are planted on 688,000 ha in 12 states, mainly in southern Mexico. The main coffee-producing states are Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero. As we reported in an earlier post, Mexico is financing a program to gradually replace aging coffee trees. The average yields of coffee in the 2010-11 season did show a […]
Looking for a practical exercise about migration and remittance flows to challenge your students? Click for printable pdf map Remittances (the funds sent by migrant workers back to their families) are a major international financial flow into Mexico. Remittances bring more than 20 billion dollars a year into the economy, an amount equivalent to 2.5% […]
As we saw in an earlier post – Attempts to provide drainage for Mexico City date back to Aztec times – Mexico City has serious drainage problems. Because of the shifting subsoil as the land on which the city was built sinks an average of 10 cm/yr, the main drainage tunnels built years ago no […]
In the past 20 years, wildfires have destroyed 47,000 square kilometers (18,000 sq. mi) in Mexico, equivalent to five times the area of all sections of Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park, the largest urban park in Latin America. The average fire in Mexico affects 32 hectares (80 acres); this figure has not changed significantly in recent […]
In recent years, a farming boom has completely changed the landscape in parts of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. The new landscape is comprised of organic farms, specializing in growing fresh produce, especially out-of-season, certified organic, fruits and vegetables, which carry premium prices. “Organic” has come to mean very different things in different countries, but the […]
A coniferous tree plantation is being formed on the lower slopes of Ajusco, the 3,930 m (12,894 ft) volcanic peak that overlooks the southern part of Mexico City. After decades of uncontrolled land clearance, local farmers are replanting 800,000 trees as part of a sustainable project which will ensure them a reliable income for years […]
The annual prediction of the hurricane activity on the Atlantic/Gulf/Caribbean side of Mexico for 2011 by Dr Philip Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray (Colorado State University) was for a slightly more active season than in 2010. For 2011, they introduced some modifications to their predictive model, which now takes into account: Predictor 1. Gradient of […]
The Chiapas state government has redrawn the map of its municipal boundaries to create four new municipalities (municipios), bringing the number in the state to 122. The four new municipalities are: 1. Belisario Domínguez (formerly part of the municipality of Cintalapa de Figueroa). The new municipio aims to resolve a long-standing agrarian conflict over land […]
The Mexican Attorney General’s Office has released data for narco-related homicides for the first nine months of 2011. The data show that 12,903 narco-related deaths occurred in that period. The 2011 figure is 11% higher than the number of narco-related deaths reported for the same nine months in 2010. Even in the absence of data […]
The list of Mexican consulates in Canada on the website of the Mexican Embassy in Ottawa includes one massive surprise. In addition to consulates in such obvious locations as Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary, it also includes one in the small city of Leamington in Ontario, designated to provide service to Essex County (South). Just […]
Mexico’s 2010 census found that 961,121 individuals living in Mexico had been born outside the country. In 2000 there were only about half as many (492,617). The 2010 figure is less than 1% of Mexico’s total population of 112 million. (Compare Canada where 21% are foreign-born and USA where 13% are foreign born). Of the […]
The impacts of Mexico’s “War on Drugs” in recent years have been apparent in many parts of the country, particularly in the Mexico-USA border region. Apart from the obvious and well-documented increased levels of violence in several northern border states, we have looked briefly in a previous post at how some businesses closed their factories […]
Earlier today, President Felipe Calderón inaugurated the Puente Balarde, the world’s tallest cable-stayed bridge. The bridge is 1.124 km long and wide enough for 4 lanes of traffic. Its central span extends 520 meters. At its highest point, it is a gravity-defying 403 metres (1322 feet) above the River Baluarte from which it takes its […]
In chapter 24 of Geo-Mexico, we described a typology of rural settlement locations and wrote that “rural localities near roads” (defined as those settlements within 3 km (2 mi) of a paved road) are an important category since they house 54% of all Mexico’s rural population. In fact, such settlements account for almost 90% of […]
The XVI Pan American Games were held from October 14–30, 2011 in Guadalajara (Jalisco) with some events held in outlying locations such as Ciudad Guzmán, Puerto Vallarta, Lagos de Moreno and Tapalpa. They were the largest multi-sport event of 2011. Some 6,000 athletes from 42 nations participated in 36 sports. The largest contingents of athletes […]
As large urban areas grow in size, they change their local climate in various ways. The best known effect is that called the urban heat island: the air above cities is significantly warmer than the surrounding air in suburban and rural areas. The transfer of heat energy from people, homes, vehicles and factories warms the […]
Home Town Associations (HTAs) are associations created by migrants to promote links between their hometown communities of origin (Mexico) and their communities of residence in the USA. Many HTAs raise money (via dances, raffles, beauty pageants and other events) to fund public works and social projects in Mexico. Mexico offers important additional funding to multiply […]
What are the characteristics of a “typical” remittance? The average remittance amount has remained fairly stable in the past decade. Migrants sending remittances do so about once every month, and send between $280 and $370 each time. Remittance amounts tend to decrease over time; migrants who have lived in the USA for a long time […]
Mexico City authorities have set up largest nativity scene in the world as part of their Christmas festivities. The nativity scene, which cost two million dollars to create, was opened by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard in early December and is located in the parking lot of the city’s giant Estadio Azteca (Aztec stadium). The nativity scene […]
A recent OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) study – “Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising” – shows that in the last 25 years, the “real” (adjusted for inflation) income of the richest 10% of Mexican households has risen by 1.7%, compared to only 0.8% for the poorest 10% of households. The gap […]
Mexico’s Magic Town (Pueblo Mágico) designation is given to inland destinations that offer a complementary tourism based on historic and cultural attributes. Mexico’s federal Tourism Secretariat has announced there will be 52 Magic Towns by 2012, when the promotional program is due to end. Mexico currently has 48 Magic Towns. Since our list earlier this […]
The 2010 census provides many indicators of minimal housing quality such as sanitary drainage (indoor drains and toilets), electricity, piped water, overcrowding, and dirt floors. A previous post discussed the rapid expansion of household electricity, especially in remote areas. This post focuses on the other measures of housing quality, and considers three different scales: national, […]
In a previous post, we looked briefly at the role of plastics recycling in Mexico City’s waste separation program. In this post, we describe two other developments related to solid waste disposal. Recycling finally reaches the take-off point in Mexico Nationwide, it took an entire decade for the plastics recycling rate in Mexico to increase […]
In an earlier post –International financial flows: how do Mexican migrants send remittances back home?– we looked at some of the ways used by Mexican migrants to send remittance payments back to their families and friends in Mexico. The World Bank study headed by Raúl Hernández-Coss (2005) breaks down the discussion about how remittance payments […]
In the past two decades, Mexico has made very impressive progress in providing electricity to its citizens, especially those living in rural areas. The 87.5% of Mexicans that had electricity in 1990 lived mostly in cities and towns. Many of the 95.0% that had electricity in 2000 lived in rural areas. The proportion without electricity […]