Foreign Native

For a country where people read notoriously few books, and not too many newspapers, Mexico has a reasonably large number of newsstands and vendors - on just about every street corner, in fact.
The larger stands sell more than just newspapers. They usually stock a variety of magazines, and also sell “special” collections of DVDs, books, […]

If you spend some time in Mexico, sooner or later  you’ll come across the word chilango, probably in some derogatory way, such as “¡típico chilango!” or ” ¡tenía que ser chilango!”
Chilango is the name given to inhabitants of Mexico City, who are notorious in the provinces for being obnoxious when they venture out of town. […]

An important part of Mexico’s past and present are its bread shops, which are found on many busy corners of its towns and cities. When you’re hungry, there’s nothing quite as enticing as the smell of fresh baked bread wafting out from the local panadería.
It’s not unusual in the evenings to see people hanging […]

When Mexicans make fun of Anglo-Saxon efforts at speaking Spanish, they usually focus on the flat r’s and incorrect verb conjugations.
Although foreigners from different parts of the world make different kinds of errors in pronunciation, it is almost invariably those made by English speakers that are the object of fun, most likely because Americans make […]

The Mexico City Metro system recently introduced rechargeable electronic cards, plunging its users into modernity. The yellow and white cards can be bought at the ticket counter for 10 pesos, and charged and recharged with as much or as little credit as you like.
The cards have several advantages over the 40-year-old system of paper tickets […]

To nary a whimper from once vocal opponents, the Mexican Congress, in one of its last acts of the spring sessions passed the bill setting a single price for new books all over the country, doing away with the discounts much appreciated in these pages. The votes in the senate and the lower house in […]

It had been mentioned that Mexico’s May 5 holiday - Cinco de Mayo - is more celebrated among Mexicans in the U.S. than it is in Mexico, and that nobody really seems to know why. It appears that many people in the U.S. think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day, the equivalent of the […]

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 and 1986), […]