Few foods have enjoyed a rise to global fame quite like the avocado. Once a regional staple in Mexico and Central America, it is now celebrated worldwide on toast, in smoothies, salads, and of course, guacamole. Rich in healthy fats, fiber, and vitamins, it has earned the title of a modern superfood. But behind its creamy green flesh lies a more complicated story.
Mexico produces nearly one-third of the world’s avocados, with the state of Michoacán supplying most of the fruit exported to the United States and Canada. The industry’s success has brought prosperity to many farming communities, creating thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in export revenue. Yet the avocado boom has also created unexpected challenges.
As international demand has soared, forests have been cleared to make room for new orchards, threatening biodiversity and reducing habitat for species such as the monarch butterfly. Avocados are also a thirsty crop, requiring significant amounts of water in regions where water resources are already under pressure.
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Perhaps the greatest controversy, however, is economic. The enormous value of the crop has attracted organized crime in parts of Mexico, where criminal groups have been known to extort growers, control transportation routes, and profit from the lucrative trade. These security concerns have occasionally disrupted exports and prompted increased government oversight.
For consumers, these realities can create mixed feelings. Buying Mexican avocados supports the livelihoods of thousands of honest farmers who depend on the industry, yet it also raises important questions about environmental stewardship, water use, and the need for stronger protections against criminal exploitation.
Like many foods that become global commodities, the avocado is neither entirely hero nor villain. It represents the opportunities and challenges of modern agriculture in an interconnected world.
Appreciating the fruit also means recognizing the people, landscapes, and complex issues behind every harvest—and understanding that the future of avocados depends not only on consumer demand, but on producing them in ways that are sustainable, transparent, and fair.
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I’ve always known avocados to be cool. I have this memory of hearing an interview with John Lennon in which he was asked if he had tried them. I also happen to know when I first tasted them: 1986 at the World’s Fair in Vancouver, British Columbia. My own avocado story, however, is just a speck of dust compared with the fruit’s remarkable history.
Hip But Not New
Avocados are a fruit, and like most fruits, their survival has historically depended on the digestive systems of animals. Evolution’s system of seed dispersal is simple: an animal eats the flesh, carries the seed in its intestines, and deposits it elsewhere with a little natural fertilizer. But what kind of creature could swallow an avocado pit whole? Something big. Really big. Prehistorically big. Scientists have suggested that extinct megafauna, possibly including giant ground sloths and gomphotheres (prehistoric, trunked relatives of modern elephants), may once have dispersed avocado seeds. When these giant animals disappeared at the end of the last Ice Age, humans gradually took over the role of cultivating and spreading avocado trees.
By the time the Spanish Conquistadors arrived, there were already cultivated avocado orchards. The Aztec/Nahuatl word for the fruit was āhuacatl, which also happened to be slang for testicle. The Spanish mispronounced this as aguacate, which English speakers eventually warped into avocado.
But there were still centuries to go before the millennial breakfast of avocado toast was born. It took a California mail carrier accidentally cultivating the dark-skinned avocado most of us are familiar with today to truly change the game.
The Hass Accident
Rudolph Hass was a Milwaukee-born son of German immigrants. As a high school dropout seeking his fortune, he worked many jobs before becoming a mailman in Pasadena, California. Around that time, the Los Angeles Times ran an article about “the hanging gardens of Southern California,” noting that avocados could be grown on steep slopes where ordinary crops couldn’t. One magazine ad even featured dollar bills growing on avocado trees. So, in 1925, Rudolph bought into that dream by emptying his savings and borrowing money from his sister to acquire a 1.5-acre piece of land. Unable to afford established trees, he bought a handful of random seeds to start his own avocado grove, accidentally planting one that changed culinary history.
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Rudolph quickly learned what every avocado grower knows: no two avocado trees produce the exact same fruit. Like a genetic lottery, any tree might bear watery, stringy, worthless fruit. The only way to reliably reproduce the variety you actually want is to graft a new tree from a cutting of a tree with desirable avocados. That was as true in Rudolph’s time as it is today.
The desirable avocado at the time was known as the Fuerte, a fruit proven able to withstand California’s cold snaps. Originally from Puebla, Mexico, it was the variety every grower wanted, and California growers grafted all their trees with a branch from a Fuerte tree. This, too, Rudolph Hass attempted to do. But one tree wouldn’t accept the graft and instead produced black, bumpy-skinned fruit. Rudolph’s children preferred the fruit from this rebellious tree, calling them the “ugly avocados.” They had a higher oil content and a richer, creamier flavour. This was the Hass avocado, which today dominates the international commercial avocado market.
Ripening and Marketing
Not yet, not yet, not yet… TOO LATE. This is the sentiment of most people looking to find a ripe avocado. Like all hip things, whether people or produce, the avocado is kind of a snob. It will not ripen while hanging from a branch and will just sit there for a year or more, unchanged. The avocado only begins to ripen once picked, and even then, it isn’t done making you wait.
For growers, the avocado tree is like a living warehouse. Once picked, though, the ripening clock starts, and timing becomes everything. This on-branch storage helps meet calendar-based demand, chief among them American Super Bowl parties, which would be incomplete without guacamole. In fact, the combined demand for guacamole around the Super Bowl, Cinco de Mayo, and the Fourth of July produces some of the largest spikes in U.S. avocado consumption.
But whether for guacamole or other culinary delights, nobody wants an unripe or overripe avocado. Because of this, there is a highly orchestrated process for getting an avocado to your grocery store in a state you’d actually be willing to pay three bucks for.
Once picked, they are chilled within hours to dramatically slow the ripening process. This allows up to four weeks for cold transport to reach grocery store distribution centers. The final ripening stage is then triggered by exposure to ethylene gas at the distribution center, ensuring the avocado reaches your grocery store primed to hit perfect ripeness within about a week.
Which leaves the last, most familiar stretch: standing in the produce section, squeezing avocado after avocado, divining each one’s readiness to eat. One final avocado factoid: once you get it home, putting it in the fridge will slow its final ripening by 80% to 90% compared to leaving it on the counter. Right to the end, the avocado does what it wants, when it wants.
The Millennial Breakfast
For me and many of my non-Mexican contemporaries, the avocado was unheard of until adulthood, arriving essentially when it became more widely available to North American consumers. Interestingly, its modern worldwide popularity has a lot to do with Australia, which is about as far from its historical Mexican origins as you can get. Australians actually originated the hippest avocado terms: smashed avo, smavo, avocado toast, and the Millennial breakfast.
Avocado toast gained mainstream popularity when Australian restaurateur Bill Granger introduced smashed avocado on toast at his Sydney café in 1993. He later included the recipe in one of his cookbooks, and it is widely regarded as the first published recipe for the now-iconic dish.
Gwyneth Paltrow raised its profile further with a recipe in her 2013 cookbook, and food bloggers and Instagram did the rest. Avocado toast got permanently tied to Millennials in 2016, when an Australian newspaper column went viral scolding young people for ordering $22 smashed avocado on toast instead of saving for a house deposit. This meme permanently solidified avocado toast as the definitive Millennial breakfast.
Hardly an early adopter, I had my first avocado toast years later in Huatulco, inadvertently bringing my personal avocado history full circle back to its Mexican roots. And how fitting that, as I finish writing this story from cooler northern lands, far from the nearest avocado tree, I’m happily munching on smavo on a toasted bagel for breakfast.
Randy Jackson blends local reporting from the perspective of a seasonal Huatulco resident with explorations of life and change in Huatulco, Oaxaca and Mexico. Email: box95jackson@gmail.com
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“Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles….If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
I live in a small village with a public address system where you still hear announcements like, “La señora Martínez tiene pollo a la venta.” These days there are fewer loudspeaker messages because most have moved to our community WhatsApp group. A typical post reads: “Hola, buen día. Ya les tengo a la venta los ricos tamales de frijol y chepil en el domicilio de la señora Mendoza.” It’s simply letting the neighborhood know that fresh tamales are ready and waiting at someone’s home.
Mexico is full of pop food stands. People sell bolis, sliced fruit, tacos, tamales, homemade bread, roasted chickens, and countless other foods. Economists call this the informal economy, but there is a misconception that “informal” means unregulated. As a restaurant owner, people often ask me whether businesses here need permits or pay taxes, as though selling food in Mexico is free from the bureaucracy found in the United States or Canada. It isn’t. Even street food vendors are typically required to obtain permits, licenses, and food safety training. What sets Mexico apart is not the absence of regulation—it is that we have not completely corporatized our food system.
This past May I was hiking the North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail. The forest was magnificent, and there is no better way to reconnect with nature. But every time I left the trail to resupply, I was struck by how many hikers—and local residents—relied almost entirely on processed food. Frozen meals, convenience stores, and an endless parade of fast-food restaurants lining the highways have become the default way to eat.
The numbers are hard to ignore. The United States has an estimated 180,000 to 210,000 corporate fast-food restaurants, compared with just 35,000 to 45,000 in Mexico. McDonald’s alone has 13,706 U.S. locations, compared with only 380 in Mexico, more than 36 times as many.
Recently, I drove nearly 900 kilometers from Huatulco to San Miguel de Allende. Do you know how many corporate fast-food restaurants I passed? Not one.
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That contrast matters. The recent U.S. Cyclospora outbreak, linked to contaminated shredded lettuce and affecting more than 1,600 people across over 30 states, illustrates the vulnerability of highly centralized food systems. When a single supplier distributes food across an entire country, one contamination event can quickly become a national public health crisis. Efficiency and scale have their advantages, but they also create fragility.
A few weeks ago I watched a social media video of a woman planting dried beans from a bag of mixed bean soup. The comments were filled with people insisting it was illegal to grow them. Whether or not those claims were true almost didn’t matter—the instinctive assumption was that growing your own food had somehow become suspect.
So the next time you see someone selling fresh food from a cart, a folding table, or the front of their home, recognize that they are preserving something valuable. Every tamale, taco, loaf of bread, and bag of fresh fruit represents a food system that is local, decentralized, and deeply human. Plant a garden. Buy from your neighbors. Skip the drive-through. Real food, sold by real people, is more than a meal; it is a quiet act of revolution.
See you in October,
Jane
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The August 2026 Food Issue celebrates the people, traditions, and flavors that make San Miguel de Allende one of Mexico’s most exciting culinary destinations.
A visit to Huatulco offers beautiful beaches and spectacular bays. Whether you’re looking to surf, snorkel, dive, fish, or explore Oaxaca’s rich cultural traditions, there are countless ways to experience the region. Here are a few ideas to help you make the most of your next visit.
Surfing
With warm water year-round, Huatulco is an excellent destination for surfers of all levels. For beginners, Playa La Bocana offers gentle, consistent waves that provide a comfortable environment for learning. More experienced surfers often head to Playa Mojón or Barra de la Cruz, located about 30 minutes down the coast, where larger and more challenging waves can be found.
Surf lessons and board rentals are available in Barra de la Cruz.
Diving & Snorkeling
Huatulco National Park protects one of the most important marine ecosystems on the Oaxacan coast. Coral formations, rocky reefs, mangroves, and abundant marine life make it a popular destination for both divers and snorkelers. Here, you can witness the underwater whims of the Pacific—look for the sea turtles, rays and a kaleidoscope of tropical fish.
Whether you’re exploring shallow reefs or venturing farther offshore, the park is an opportunity to experience the region’s underwater biodiversity firsthand.
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Fishing
Sport fishing has long been part of life on the Oaxacan coast. Half-day and full-day excursions are available throughout Huatulco, ranging from local fishing boats to fully equipped sport-fishing yachts. The summer months are particularly exciting for catching Marlin and Sailfish.
When booking a trip, consider choosing operators that follow sustainable fishing practices and respect local marine conservation efforts.
My Top Three Huatulco Water Experiences:
San Agustin Bay Snorkeling
This bay is my top choice for those seeking raw, untouched beauty. Located within the Huatulco National Park, it protects a vital marine ecosystem where the coral formation and rocky reefs are remarkably accessible. San Agustin Bay is located a 40-minute drive from Huatulco’s Hotel district.
Sunrise at La Bocana
One of the best ways to begin your day is catching the early morning sun at Playa La Bocana. It is a vital coastal ritual that allows you to enjoy the water before the midday heat. If you surf, bring your board. Breakfast at one of the beachfront restaurants rounds out the experience.
Copalitilla Waterfalls
Go beyond the beach and visit the Copalitilla Waterfalls. It’s totally worth it! These spectacular, crystal-clear series of cascading waterfalls are surrounded by a tropical jungle of towering ceiba and mahogany trees, orchids, lacey ferns and wild cacao plants. The best time to visit is from November to May. If you are visiting during the rainy season be careful with washed out roads and muddy water.
Practical Tips for Travelers
Booking: Use trusted sources, review the contact information, reviews from other guests. The Secretary of Tourism recommends using accredited tour guides and advises avoiding services offered on public roads. For tourist assistance during your visit to Oaxaca, contact:
Reservation and cancellation fees. Carefully review the fees for the service you are hiring. In some cases, services do not accept cancellations or refunds. It is suggested that you try to plan ahead your adventures.
Weather conditions. Review weather and respect notices of closed roads or beaches, especially during the rainy season.
Stay Hydrated. Drink water and limit alcohol consumption. Schedule outdoor activities during the early morning or late afternoon hours to avoid exposure to midday sun. In cases of overheating, a cold shower is recommended as the fastest way to bring down your body temperature.
And don’t forget your camera. As a recent Bad Bunny song reminds us, we often wish we had taken more pictures. Huatulco provides plenty of moments worth remembering.
Nancy Reyes, was born in Mexicali, holds a Language Sciences PhD, blends research and storytelling to bridge the profound connections between language and Mexico’s layered cultural identity.
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Mexico’s wine industry is enjoying a golden age, but behind the award-winning bottles and picturesque vineyards lies a challenge that is becoming impossible to ignore: water.
Historically, Mexican wines have thrived in the unique conditions found throughout the country, with lots of sunshine, patient vintners, and just enough water. But what happens when “just enough water” becomes increasingly difficult to find? Across Mexico’s wine regions, from the sun-soaked valleys of Baja California to the high plains of Coahuila and the rolling vineyards of Querétaro and Guanajuato, winemakers are confronting an uncomfortable reality: climate change is reshaping the future of wine.
Of course, wine has always depended on weather. Too much rain, and grapes become diluted. Too little, and vines struggle. Just the right combination of temperatures and precipitation is like lightning in a bottle. The famous Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California, for example, enjoys warm days, cool nights, and a Mediterranean-like climate ideal for grapes. But recent years have brought hotter temperatures, prolonged drought, and increasing pressure on groundwater supplies. Water scarcity, once a seasonal concern, has become a year-round conversation.
Baja is not alone. In Coahuila, home to some of the oldest wineries in the Americas, including the renowned Casa Madero, producers face hotter summers and shifting rainfall patterns. Central Mexican wine regions such as Querétaro and Guanajuato are also experiencing increasing climate variability, including unexpected frosts, hailstorms, and heat spikes. For winemakers, this unpredictability is becoming one of the industry’s greatest challenges. Grapes, after all, are fussy little creatures.
The good news? Mexican winemakers are famously resourceful.
Across the country, wineries are increasingly embracing sustainability, not only because it is environmentally responsible, but because savvy consumers demand it, and survival depends on it. Water conservation has become a major priority. Many vineyards now use drip irrigation systems that deliver precise amounts of water directly to the vine roots rather than wasting it through sprinklers or flood irrigation. Soil management techniques such as mulching and cover crops help retain moisture, reduce evaporation, and improve soil health.
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Some wineries are experimenting with dry farming, allowing vines to survive largely on natural rainfall once they become established. Others are investing in water recycling systems, treating and reusing water from cleaning processes or landscaping. Solar energy is becoming increasingly common as well, particularly in Baja California, where abundant sunshine makes renewable power a practical choice. Sustainability, in many vineyards, has shifted from trendy buzzword to practical necessity.
Then there is the grape question. Not all varieties respond equally well to heat and drought. Some grapes suffer in extreme heat, while others are perfectly happy basking under the Mexican sun.
Traditional French varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Grenache continue to perform well in parts of Baja California, particularly when growers carefully manage irrigation and canopy cover. Mediterranean grapes, however, are gaining increasing attention for their resilience. Varieties such as Mourvèdre, Tempranillo, Carignan, and Italian grapes like Nebbiolo tolerate heat and water scarcity better than more delicate varietals.
White wines are evolving too. In warmer conditions, grapes can ripen quickly, risking overly alcoholic wines with less acidity. To adapt, growers are experimenting with varieties that maintain freshness despite rising temperatures. Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Vermentino, and Viognier are showing promise in several Mexican regions.
Perhaps the clearest sign of climate change arrives during harvest season. Traditionally, grape harvests followed predictable schedules. Today, many vineyards are harvesting earlier, sometimes weeks earlier than in decades past. Rising temperatures accelerate ripening, meaning grapes can accumulate sugar faster. Harvesting earlier helps preserve balance and freshness in the finished wine.
Harvest itself is changing too. Some vineyards now pick grapes at night or during the cool hours before sunrise to protect delicate fruit from intense daytime heat. Workers equipped with headlamps gathering grapes beneath the stars may sound romantic, but it is also practical. Cooler grapes arrive at the winery in better condition, reducing energy needed for refrigeration and preserving flavor. So, what does the future of Mexican wine look like? In a word, optimistic.
Yes, climate change presents real challenges, particularly around water scarcity. But the Mexican wine industry has always been defined by adaptation and innovation. Unlike many European wine regions steeped in tradition and governed by centuries-old rules about what can be planted and where, Mexico’s wine industry has flexibility. Winemakers are free to experiment with new techniques and varietals, and to rethink old assumptions.
As the industry evolves, the wines will too. New wine regions at higher elevations may emerge. Sustainable farming practices will likely expand and take root across the country.
And consumers will increasingly value the story behind the bottle, including how thoughtfully a winery manages its land, water, and resources.
And so, fear not, wine enthusiasts! The future of Mexican wine remains bright, sustained by innovative growers who are learning to make every drop of water count.
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Mis lentes favoritos están rotos,
mi cartera guarda pocos billetes,
la libreta azul rebosa de notas,
de pequeños sigilos y ciegos poemas
que no me sirven para un carajo.
Hoy desperté pensando:
“nada para mí que no sea para los demás”.
Me sacudí la pereza de los ojos
y comencé a cantar al sol.
El canto salió torcido,
pero era mío.
El viento me lo devolvió
con un murmullo
y en él escuché a alguien reír,
como si la risa también se le contagiara.
A veces escribir es barrer el polvo,
otras, solo mirar cómo vuelve.
Pero sigo,
porque el silencio también tiene hambre
y yo tengo pan para compartir.
Repartí mis canciones
como sombra,
mis manos como promesa,
y entendí que la pobreza
no siempre está en los bolsillos,
sino en los días sin ternura.
Así que sigo,
con los lentes rotos,
la libreta llena,
viendo el mundo a través de sus grietas,
tal vez
por eso lo entiendo mejor.
Jordan Sánchez Armenta is a photographer from Cuautla, Morelos, currently based in the Riviera Maya. Passionate about storytelling, he seeks to tell stories in the simplest way possible, using whatever medium is available to him. Instagram: @jrdn.sa
I’ve spent much of my life building businesses, exploring new places, and pursuing creative challenges. That spirit has shaped both my artistic practice and the path that led me to create Allende Arts Space, an artist residency program in Santa Julia, San Miguel de Allende.
My creative journey began in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I spent nearly two decades working in digital graphic design during the early days of the technology boom. Looking for new experiences and a different perspective, I later moved with my family to Southeast Asia. Living in Sri Lanka exposed me to different cultures, architecture, traditions, and ways of seeing the world. It was there that I discovered oil painting, and what began as a creative outlet quickly became a lifelong passion.
Over the years, I dedicated myself to learning, practicing, and developing my voice as an artist. Along the way, I have been fortunate to receive recognition for my work, but what continues to motivate me most is the opportunity to keep learning, exploring, and growing creatively. In 2025, that journey led me to create Allende Arts Space in San Miguel de Allende.
After spending time in San Miguel and getting to know the creative community, I noticed a gap in the residency offerings available to visiting artists. I saw an opportunity to create something different: a space that combined comfortable accommodations, dedicated studio space, and a genuine sense of community. When I found the perfect building, I knew it could become the creative home base I had envisioned.
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Allende Arts Space was created for artists who need time to focus on their work while also having the opportunity to connect with other creatives. The residency offers private accommodations, dedicated workspaces, and a welcoming environment where painters, writers, photographers, musicians, and multidisciplinary artists can immerse themselves in their practice without the distractions of everyday life.
What makes the experience special is the balance between independence and connection. Artists have the freedom to work at their own pace, pursue their own projects, and shape their own experience. At the same time, they become part of a community of creatives from around the world who gather to share ideas, experiences, inspiration, and support.
Many residents arrive with a project they want to complete. Others come looking for renewal, direction, or simply the time and space to reconnect with their creativity. Some leave with finished work, while others leave with new friendships, fresh perspectives, and renewed energy for their artistic practice.
What consistently surprises people is how quickly the residency begins to feel like home. Shared meals, creative conversations, collaborations, and lasting friendships often become just as meaningful as the work created during a stay.
For me, Allende Arts Space is about creating the kind of environment I would have loved to discover throughout my own journey. A place where artists can fully immerse themselves in their work while being supported by a community that understands their creative process.
Kato Rempel, artist, entrepreneur, and founder of Allende Arts Space in San Miguel de Allende.
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Long before anyone measured cortisol in a lab, people were wading into rivers, lakes and streams to let go of what they were carrying. When we think of the health benefits of water, we usually think only of drinking it to stay hydrated. But water does more for us than simply keep us alive. For thousands of years, people have turned to water for more than just survival. They have sought it out for comfort, healing, renewal, purification, and perspective.
In Judaism, the mikvah is a ritual bath used not for hygiene but for spiritual cleansing and transformation. In Islam, wudu prepares the body and mind for prayer through ritual washing. In Hinduism, bathing in the Ganges is believed to purify the soul and release old burdens. Christian baptism symbolizes death and rebirth, the letting go of one identity and the emergence of another.
And here in Mexico, water has played a similarly powerful role.
The Maya viewed cenotes as sacred portals to Xibalba, the underworld, places where communication between worlds was possible. The temazcal, used by the Maya, Aztecs, and Toltecs, combined water, steam, heat, and ritual to support purification and renewal. Throughout Mexico, thermal springs became places where people gathered for both physical healing and spiritual restoration.
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Each of these practices emerged independently, in cultures separated by oceans and centuries, often with no contact at all. And yet they kept landing on the same instinct: that water engages human emotion. It changes us and it heals us.
The religious historian Mircea Eliade spent much of his career studying these patterns, and he noted something simple but profound, that across an enormous range of spiritual traditions, water consistently shows up as the element that dissolves, washes away, purifies, and renews.
Only recently has science begun building a vocabulary for what these traditions always knew to be true. Researchers have identified a measurable shift that happens in the nervous system when someone is near water. They experience lowered stress hormones, a calmer body, a different quality of attention.
Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols coined the term Blue Mind to describe this mildly meditative state. He described water as something that quiets all the surrounding noise and distraction and reconnects us to our own thoughts.
Researchers studying so-called “blue spaces” have reached similar conclusions. These environments, which include oceans, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and coastlines, are increasingly associated with improved mental wellbeing.
Environmental psychologist Mathew White of the University of Exeter has found that people who spend time near water often report greater happiness and lower levels of psychological distress. Some studies even suggest that people who live near coastlines experience higher overall wellbeing than those who live farther inland.
It seems modern-day science is “discovering” what our ancestors knew all along. But water’s influence doesn’t stop with the mind.
Research suggests that ocean swimming can reduce stress, lower anxiety, improve mood, stimulate circulation, and support overall health. Seawater contains minerals that benefit the skin, while ocean air carries microscopic sea particles that contribute to respiratory health and a greater sense of wellbeing.
Thermal waters also offer many health benefits. Long valued by cultures around the world, mineral-rich hot springs can relax muscles, improve circulation, reduce joint stiffness, and ease chronic pain. And people who soak in thermal waters often describe not just physical relief, but also mental restoration and renewal.
Even the sound of water appears to have beneficial effects on us. The rhythmic crash of waves, the gentle fall of rain, the steady movement of a river. These sounds calm the nervous system and promote deeper sleep.
Since ancient times, water has been used as medicine physically, emotionally, and spiritually. What’s telling is not that just a few cultures discovered this, but that nearly every culture has.
The Maya sought wisdom and connection through sacred cenotes. Romans built elaborate bathhouses devoted to healing. Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas used water and steam for purification and transformation. Today, that instinct has simply found a new vocabulary. Doctors in the UK are now writing “Bluescriptions”, as part of a growing program that uses nature to treat anxiety, stress, and other mental health struggles.
Because water is all around us, anyone can write their own Bluescription. Just consider which form of water would offer the most support, drinking it, bathing in it, swimming in it, listening to it, watching it, walking near it, or even just picturing it in your imagination. Each of these has demonstrated real benefits for better health. The idea is surprisingly simple: water doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be healing. It simply has to be present.
Kary Vannice is a writer and energetic healer who explores the intersections of culture, consciousness, and daily life in Mexico.
“And just for a second, while picturing her loved ones back home in New York, she forgot where she was and opened her mouth.”
There is a scene in Sex and the City: The Movie in which one of the characters, Charlotte, avoids drinking tap water or eating certain foods in Mexico at all costs because of the stereotype that every foreigner who visits the country, inevitably gets sick. It is a thing, and it’s colloquially called Montezuma’s revenge, although it is usually mild and short-lived.
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What these fears often overlook is that simply leaving your routine and the familiar circle of your own microbiome can make your body more sensitive. New foods, different bacteria, changes in climate, stress, travel itself: all of these can affect digestion.
On the other hand, the idea that a few drops of shower water will immediately send someone running to the bathroom is wildly exaggerated. It is true that people in Mexico generally do not drink tap water, not because of a stereotype, but because water coming through municipal systems is often not considered safe for consumption in much of the country, there are some exceptions but there are as well information gaps.
You would likely have to drink an actual glass of untreated tap water to experience discomfort and, again, it would rarely be serious.
Most Mexicans who have family roots in rural areas or the countryside have at least one older relative who talks about drinking directly from a stream coming down the mountain, from a well, a nearby river, a reservoir, or even melted snow in higher elevations. For many families, this was not some distant past. In some places, it still isn’t.
The Four Reasons That Built Mexico’s Bottled Water Industry Cities followed a different story.
After the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the idea spread that the city’s pipes could no longer safely carry drinking water. In many ways, this was true. Decades of neglected infrastructure collapsed alongside buildings, and parts of the system remained damaged for years. Yet the reconstruction of reliable drinking water systems never fully arrived.
Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) describes the earthquake as an accelerator of the bottled water industry:
“After the earthquake there was no water in many people’s homes. There were people in the streets. There was no water pressure. The biggest problem at the time was that there was no drinking water. In some homes there was a bad smell — the smell of contamination. The pipes had broken and the water was contaminated, so people couldn’t drink water from the tap.”
The earthquake became the first of four major factors cited by researchers that created the conditions for the bottled water boom. Today, Mexico is one of the world’s largest consumers of bottled water, reaching approximately 286 liters per person each year.
The remaining factors came later. The cholera epidemic between 1991 and 1999 further cemented public distrust in municipal water supplies. Economic crises during the same period made infrastructure investments more difficult, while aggressive marketing by bottled water companies transformed bottled water from an emergency solution into an everyday necessity.
Before this shift, many Mexican households routinely drank tap water, boiled it, or treated it with chlorine before consumption. Now, Conagua shares statistics on how many contaminants are present in the surface water, by analyzing in 2022 1,723 sites, of which 42.5% were classified in green and 39% in red. Hence the perception that drinking tap water may not be safe, since habitants have no way of making this analysis in their homes.
However, according to the National Survey of Government Quality and Impact, only 20.9% of households nationwide consider the water delivered to their homes through the public network to be drinkable as of 2023. The situation varies by state, ranging from 49.1% in Tlaxcala to 1.9% in Tabasco, according to the 2025 investigation The impact of bottled water on household expenditures in Mexico: is it a public policy problem? published in the Official Journal of the World Water Council.
Politics and Private Enterprise: A Partnership Without Consequences
I remember that sometime after the early 2000s, Bonafont became one of the loudest promoters of the idea that everyone should drink two litres of water a day to stay healthy, while this was not yet a truly spread and well-known idea in Mexican households. Conveniently, the company sold bottles in exactly the sizes needed to make sure you met that goal.
Once bottled water and refillable jugs became normalized in Mexican households, also as a part of a certain high-level kind of life, it was only a matter of time before soft drink companies entered the business. Coca-Cola, whose presence in Mexican family life is almost impossible to overstate, expanded aggressively into the water market.
Mexico loves Coca-Cola so much that one of its former executives, Vicente Fox Quesada, became president of the country in 2000. But the other side of the story is often left untold: Coca-Cola may love Mexico back, but it arguably needs Mexico even more.
Revenues for Coca-Cola FEMSA, the company’s Mexican subsidiary, tripled during Fox’s administration. Between 2002 and 2003 alone, FEMSA reported extraordinary growth, doubling revenues from approximately $2 billion to $4 billion, while its bottled water business expanded dramatically.
Nor was Coca-Cola alone. Bonafont, owned by Danone and once a relatively unknown brand, became the country’s leading bottled water company.
In Mexico there is a saying: a nadie se le niega un vaso de agua — no one should ever be denied a glass of water. The phrase works both ways: we offer it, and we ask for it. Yet institutionally, drinking a glass of water from the public system often feels almost forbidden.
Bottled water also represents a significant expense for many families. Lower-income households generally spend a larger proportion of their income on water, including both piped supplies and bottled alternatives.
And, as always, inequality runs through the entire system.
It is estimated that households without daily access to piped water spend a total of 503 million USD on bottled water. These households consume bottled water out of necessity. Households with daily access to piped water spend up to 902 million USD on bottled water, which they consume for pleasure or due to mistrust of the quality of piped water.
Researchers at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM Azcapotzalco) argue that water insecurity becomes even more unequal when examined by income levels. “When designing public policies regarding household water consumption,” they write, “it is imperative to consider not only accessibility and frequency of use, but also affordability.”
The Sinkhole That Exposed Water Stress in Puebla
The prioritization of private interests over public needs, together with decades of resource extraction and limited oversight, became visible in the town of Santa María Zacatepec, Puebla.
In 2021, residents occupied a Bonafont bottling plant in protest, arguing that the company had been extracting groundwater for more than two decades while local wells gradually dried up.
That same year, a massive sinkhole nearly 50 feet wide suddenly opened nearby. Although the exact causes remain debated, many residents connected the event to the long-term extraction of groundwater. Coincidentally or not, only weeks after the occupation forced the plant to suspend operations, local residents reported that water levels in wells and streams had begun to recover. Investigations also uncovered irregularities involving municipal permits and concessions that Bonafont claimed to possess.
The peaceful occupation, which included cultural events, artistic activities, and community gatherings, was eventually dismantled by the National Guard and state police. Bonafont later resumed operations.
“The More Polluted the Water, the More People Will Buy”
I cannot help but think of The Lorax, where a businessman becomes wealthy by selling encapsulated air after destroying the environment around him.
The comparison may seem exaggerated, yet there is something strangely familiar about it. In some regions, bottling companies extract groundwater from local aquifers, sell it back to nearby communities at a markup, and position themselves as the solution to a problem that increasingly appears impossible to solve without them. What would people drink otherwise?
But perhaps the more important question is not directed at the companies themselves. Where were the political actors who allowed private companies to gain access to public resources instead of prioritizing infrastructure, investment, and public policies capable of guaranteeing access to safe drinking water?
After all, access to water is not simply a market opportunity. It is a human right, one that is also recognized in the Mexican Constitution.
Estefanía Camacho is a freelance Mexican journalist working across media and digital magazines. She is a specialist in gender, SMEs, economics, and business.
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