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Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

Holy Guacamole: The Unexpected History of the Avocado

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By Randy Jackson—

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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The Restless Pull Of The Sea

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By Randy Jackson—

In a forest, gentle nature surrounds us. On the stark edge of a mountain peak, nature’s architecture lies beneath us. But at the edge of the sea, we stop. We stand where the world is wide open, where the horizon meets the sky. Where the spin of the earth jostles the oceans, and our own restlessness matches the swell and crash of waves.

The sea draws each of us in our individual ways. For some, the restlessness favours adventure, for others, the call is inward, but for all of us, the sea is ready and willing. The waters off Huatulco know that well. Long before resorts lined the shore, Spanish galleons and legendary pirates like Francis Drake prowled them. That same magnetic pull still exists today. But not every sea adventurer is a conqueror; the sea also issues a more private calling, as these three modern stories show.

Floating in a Car across the Atlantic
The restlessness of Giorgio Amoretti was legendary. This free-spirited Italian photojournalist once rode his Vespa from the Arctic Circle to Cape Town, South Africa. He then crossed the Sahara, hanging from a parachute towed by a car. Perhaps it was standing at the Cape of Good Hope, looking out to the Southern Ocean, where his restless spirit met the sea’s calling. His idea was to float across the ocean in a Volkswagen Beetle. In 1978, he was stopped by Spanish maritime authorities in his Styrofoam-stuffed Beetle and had to abandon the attempt.

Yet the dream did not die in Giorgio, and his three sons seemed to be infected by it. So much so that, 20 years later, after Giorgio received a fatal cancer diagnosis, his three sons and a friend sought to complete Giorgio’s dream. They modified a Volkswagen Passat and a Ford Taunus for an ocean crossing. On May 4, 1999, the four set out from the Canary Islands in these bizarre-looking crafts.

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To avoid the Spanish port authorities, they left well before dawn, using outboard motors until they ran out of gasoline, after which they threw the motors overboard. They had hoped that currents would pull them across the Atlantic, but they were soon stuck in a circular current far from shore. While stuck, two members of the group had to be rescued by helicopter due to severe seasickness. The remaining two car-sailors persevered, eventually breaking free of the circular current, and made progress slowly with the help of the trade winds.

The journey took longer than expected, and they ran out of provisions. But with fishing and capturing plankton in women’s stockings, an idea they got out of a survival book, they made do with a survival-level diet for four months before reaching Martinique in the Caribbean.

During their time at sea, the restless dreamer, Giorgio, passed away, never doubting his sons would complete the journey he had initiated. It is a testament to the sea’s power to inspire such beautiful madness in the human spirit. Yet, floating in a station wagon across the Atlantic is just one way the sea coaxes the restlessness out of us in adventurous ways.

Rowing 12,000 Kilometers Alone in the Pacific
Years after the floating cars arrived in the Caribbean, on the other side of the world, a fourteen-year-old Australian boy stood in front of his bathroom mirror and made a personal commitment to become the youngest person ever to row across the Pacific.

Up to that point, Tom Robinson’s restlessness had been gradual. Although his father loved the sea and sailing, Tom’s interest lay elsewhere. That is, until his family moved to a house on the Brisbane River. There, he began rowing a plywood boat to and from school, drawn increasingly to the particular silence that nature and open water provide. Then, on a solo five-day rowing trip down the Brisbane River and out to sea toward the Gold Coast, the restless call of the open ocean evoked that personal promise, although it would take nine years to realize.

In those nine years, Tom finished high school and apprenticed as a boat builder. Based on 19th-century whale-hunting boats, Tom designed and built a wooden rowboat capable of crossing the open Pacific. In 2022, Tom had his boat shipped to Peru to begin his journey, hoping to catch the same Humboldt Current that his adventure hero Thor Heyerdahl had ridden on his Kon-Tiki expedition seventy-five years earlier.

Tom’s departure was delayed for some months, putting him closer to the cyclone season. He planned to row to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, some 6,400 kilometres distant, to wait out the cyclone season. But the sea had other ideas. After almost three months of rowing, it became clear to Tom that he could not reach the Marquesas Islands. With supplies running low, he consulted his nautical maps and found the nearest inhabited island in the Northern Cook Islands, another 1,500 kilometres away.

Finally, after 8,000 kilometres of rowing, Tom noticed a grey smudge on the horizon and knew it to be land. He had been at sea for five months at this point and was overwhelmed with euphoria and relief upon spotting land. “Land Ho,” he yelled to the open Pacific. He had made it to the island of Penrhyn.

Tom was the first international visitor the islanders had seen in three years. He was warmly welcomed, and in the Polynesian tradition, he was given a new name, Mahuta-Hoehoe-Asanga, the warrior who has paddled from afar.

Tom joined the islanders’ work and pastimes for four months before setting off again, stopping first in American Samoa to treat an illness, then rowing through the island archipelago of Vanuatu, before setting out on the final leg to Australia.

On day 265 of his journey from Peru, his boat was hit by a rogue wave while his cabin hatch was open, flipping the boat upside down. Tom was unable to right it. As the salt water activated his emergency beacon, a passing cruise ship came to his rescue, its passengers crowded at the railings, watching the approach and recovery of a naked man sitting atop the hull of his upturned boat in the middle of the Pacific. The Pacific had taken his boat, but his restless quest was etched into history.

The Pull Beyond Adventure
The sea pulled the Amoretti brothers toward their father’s dream and pulled Tom Robinson toward a personal quest across the Pacific. But for Bernard Moitessier, the pull was something else entirely, something beyond adventure.

Moitessier is probably best known for what he did in the 1968 Golden Globe sailing race. The first race in which solo sailors would circumnavigate the globe non-stop. Moitessier’s times were impressive, and he was likely to win, except that his love of the sea and his deep mystical spirituality changed his course and the direction of his life.

After circumnavigating the globe, sailing almost 60,000 kilometres over 10 months, with just the final leg from the Cape of Good Hope to Britain to go, Moitessier quit the race. To notify race officials, he catapulted a message canister containing a written message onto the deck of a passing ship. The message was simple: “I am continuing non-stop toward the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also to save my soul.” He then carried on across the Pacific to Tahiti.

Bernard Moitessier lived until 1994, continuing his pursuit of the sea and writing several books, including The Long Way, which has become a must-read for solo sailors and lovers of tales of the sea’s pull.

In our own way, we are all familiar with the restless pull of the sea and what that means to us. It is a pull of nature, but unlike the pull we feel in forests and on mountains. The American artist Robert Henri once said, “Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”

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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The Comfort Zone: Body Heat And The Snowbird Experience

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By Randy Jackson—

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Even that image from Victorian London seems warmer than this. Here, no sun or shade, only grey and flurries, and it’s mid-April already. The steady heat of Huatulco is now a distant memory. Standing at the window watching snow that should have stopped weeks ago, the body does what bodies do in the cold. It complains. Specifically, and elaborately at the cellular level, and more ‘whiny’ at the snowbird level. Why is it such a struggle to stay warm?

HOW DO OUR BODIES CREATE HEAT?

In a nutshell, body heat is a waste byproduct of cellular activity. Those cellular activities are enormously complex and varied, like running our organs, firing our muscles and digesting our food. But they have one thing in common. Like a car engine that heats up trying to turn the wheels, our cells cannot do their job without generating heat.

The energy that drives all our cells to perform their different functions comes from the body’s universal energy packet, the ATP molecule. This molecule is produced by the digestive process, transferring energy from the food we eat into a fuel that every cell in our bodies needs to perform its function. But not all parts of the body generate heat equally. There are four functions that account for most of the heat generation.

MUSCLES: Even sitting idle, muscles have their engines running. They need to be ready for that dash to the bus or to get up to pee. For a muscle to fire, or remain ready to fire, muscle cells hold that ATP energy molecule in a primed state. When our brains send the electronic signal, the muscle-primed ATP molecule splits, releasing energy, and the muscle fires. But that muscle firing is not perfectly efficient, and some of that energy simply escapes as heat. At rest, muscles produce about 25% of our body heat. And WAY more when sprinting from a bear.

THE LIVER: Muscles may get all the headlines in the body gazette, but the liver is relentlessly busy in the background, processing food, filtering toxins and making proteins. Liver cells, like all cells, run on ATP, and all that constant consumption generates significant heat as a byproduct. But unlike the muscle cells, liver cells don’t perform a mechanical function, and so most of the ATP energy ends up as heat, about 20% of our body’s heat overall.

ESSENTIAL SERVICES – HEART, BRAIN, KIDNEYS: These organs run 24/7 and, as a result of their constant consumption of ATP, contribute about 10% each to our body’s heat generation

BROWN FAT: Unlike all those busy organs, doing stuff and accidentally creating heat, brown fat just hangs out and creates heat. Sort of like your nephew who plays computer games in the basement. Except when brown fat isn’t working, everyone notices. Our bodies need a certain amount of heat, and when we don’t have enough, things can go south quickly. Unlike other body cells, where heat is a byproduct of other functions, brown fat cells contain a protein that essentially converts all the ATP energy into heat. This is critical for newborns who are unable to shiver to create heat. And for adults who do not spend their winters in Huatulco, brown fat saves them from having to shovel the whole block just to keep warm.

WHY DO OUR BODIES REGULATE HEAT?

We all know that people can suffer and even die when their bodies get too much or not enough heat. It turns out our Goldilocks body temperature is 37°C (98.6°F), and our bodies have evolved to keep us at or near this temperature. There is a chemical reason for this. Back at the cellular level, the chemical processes cells use to produce proteins and enzymes are highly sensitive to temperature. Nudge that temperature a bit too far in either direction, and the whole system starts to break down.

So the body has a highly sophisticated heating and cooling system to keep us, like Goldilocks’s porridge, ‘just right’. Our body’s thermostat is the hypothalamus, a small region of the brain that constantly monitors our core temperature and triggers responses to keep it within range. Too hot, and it triggers sweating and redirects blood toward the skin to release heat. Too cold and it triggers shivering, ramps up metabolism and redirects blood away from the skin to conserve warmth.

LIVING OUTSIDE THE COMFORT ZONE

All this sophisticated biological body heat regulation can only do so much. Our bodies are happiest when our environment is in the Thermoneutral Zone of 20°C to 25°C (68°F to 77°F ). Moving further from this temperature range in either direction requires action on our part.

TOO COLD: It has been said that one of the most important inventions in human history was the sewing needle. Fifty thousand years ago, needles enabled the making of fur clothing, thus enabling humans to adapt to climates colder than those in tropical Africa. As with most important things, this was both good news and bad news. The good news is that the vast majority of Earth’s landmass lies north of the tropical zone, opening up entire continents for human expansion. The bad news was that humans needed parkas. Yes, chafing was involved, but it also left humans, to this day, spending a great deal of time and energy just trying to stay warm.

Besides clothing and huddling around whatever could be burned, the ‘endurance option’, nature offered warm-blooded creatures just two alternatives: get out or go unconscious. Migrate or hibernate.

The ‘get out’ option came naturally to birds. Birds also have a hypothalamus, which, in migratory species, contains photoreceptors that detect day length. This triggers a hormonal release that drives the migratory instinct. When the days shorten, the hypothalamus sounds the alarm, and the bird heads south. In the highly evolved ‘snowbird’, their computer calendar reminds them to book airfare. Hormones kick in, and they find themselves inexplicably drawn to bathing suits, suitcases, and Huatulco Facebook posts.

Unconsciousness, nature’s only other winter coping option, requires hibernation. Hibernation works reasonably well for bears, chipmunks and squirrels, who don’t have Netflix. Again, the hypothalamus is involved, triggering hormones that dial down metabolism, heart rate and core body temperature to the minimal levels required for survival. During hibernation, an animal’s body is too cold to produce the electrical currents required for dreaming, and that just sucks.

TOO HOT: Options for regulating body heat when temperatures exceed the thermoneutral zone are far less onerous than those on the too-cold end of the spectrum. The body’s cooling mechanism triggers sweat glands on the skin, and blood vessels near the skin surface dilate to bring more warm blood to the surface for cooling. Shade, water and moving air all accelerate exactly these processes.

Water, pool, ocean or shower is the most immediate solution, pulling heat from the body twenty-five times faster than air alone. Moving air, whether breeze or ceiling fan, amplifies the cooling effect by accelerating evaporation from the skin, the same process your sweat glands are already working hard to achieve. Using wind-chill calculations as a rough approximation, a light breeze or a moderate ceiling fan speed in a 30°C (86°F) environment reduces your felt skin temperature to around 28°C (82°F), nudging your body back toward the thermoneutral zone while you possibly enjoy a margarita.

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

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

The Emperor’s Ghost in the Mural: The French Connection to Mexican Muralism

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By Randy Jackson—

On June 19, 1867, on a hill outside Querétaro called the Hill of the Bells, Emperor Maximilian, appointed by Napoleon III to rule a country that had never wanted him, faced a firing squad. His execution reverberated through Mexican and European history. Yet how that moment was understood was shaped not by those who witnessed it, but by those who painted it. In Europe, that response was immediate. In Mexico, it would take decades, passing through a classroom, before it found its voice on the great public walls of the Revolution.

In Paris, Édouard Manet’s series of paintings on the execution, collectively known as The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, demonstrated the power of art to shape historical memory. Painted from written accounts, they portrayed the event as a condemnation of Napoleon III’s imperial folly and were subsequently banned. In Mexico, the effects were slower and paradoxical. The execution did not silence Maximilian’s court painter; it freed him to walk into a classroom and change the course of Mexican art.
When Maximilian’s court collapsed, his retinue fled to the coast. One man, however, walked in the opposite direction, not toward a ship, but toward a classroom in the Mexican National Academy of Fine Arts.

Santiago Rebull
That man was Santiago Rebull, the official court painter to Emperor Maximilian, appointed to use art as an instrument of imperial legitimacy, to make a foreign emperor look like he belonged.

Rebull was born in 1829 to a Catalan father and a Mexican mother. His talent was recognized early. He won first place at the Academy of San Carlos in 1851 with his painting La Muerte de Abel. That victory earned him a scholarship to study in Rome, where he spent seven years, and what he learned there would shape Mexican art, passing through his hands to the students who would later paint the Revolution.

In Rome, at a Catholic arts school, he learned the techniques and principles of the Nazarene Movement. The Nazarenes believed art should serve a moral or religious purpose, and their major project was to revive the medieval art of fresco painting. It was a tradition built for walls, designed to tell stories to anyone who stood before them.

Rebull returned to Mexico in 1859 and, within two years, had risen to Director of the Academy of San Carlos. In 1865, he painted the official portrait of Emperor Maximilian – Retrato de Maximiliano. The Emperor was so pleased that he appointed Rebull as court painter and awarded him the Order of Guadalupe, the Empire’s highest honour.

Within two years, the firing squad on the Hill of the Bells ended that empire. Rebull returned to the classroom carrying everything Europe — and the Empire — had taught him.

The Protégé: Rivera at San Carlos
Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato in 1886, nineteen years after the firing squad on the Hill of the Bells. When he arrived at the National Academy of Fine Arts at San Carlos as a student at the age of ten, Santiago Rebull was still teaching there.

As director of the Academy and as an instructor who took personal interest in the young Rivera’s progress, Rebull brought his influence to bear beyond technique. He transmitted the Nazarene conviction that scale gave art its purpose. Frescoes were consequential, not just because of their size, but because their ambitions were monumental. Art was meant to instruct, to elevate, to speak to anyone who stood before it. Not for palace staterooms, but for the public walls.

As important as Rebull was to the painting style Rivera came to create, there were two other notable instructors at the Fine Arts Academy of San Carlos.

Félix Parra was a trailblazer in depicting Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past with the dignity usually reserved for emperors. Parra’s painting, Episodes of the Conquest, depicted the brutality of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. For a young Rivera, it was likely the first time he saw Mexican history treated as something proud and worthy of monumental art.

The other notable instructor was José María Velasco, arguably the greatest landscape painter in Mexican history. With paintings like The Valley of Mexico from the Hill of Santa Isabel, Velasco taught Rivera how to organize a massive, sprawling horizon into a coherent, balanced composition. It was a skill that would serve Rivera well when his canvas became walls and mountains and valleys were replaced by the epic history of Mexico.

By the time Rivera left the Academy at the age of twenty, he had spent half his life under the tutelage of these old masters. He had become a formidable talent recognized by these men, significant artists in their own right. Rebull famously remarked of his student: “He draws as well as I do, and he has a better sense of colour.”
But his education was not finished. Like Rebull before him, Rivera left for Europe on a Mexican government scholarship, spending years in Spain, France and Italy. What he found there, the Cubists of Paris, the great fresco cycles of the Italian Renaissance, only deepened what Rebull had taught him.

The art that would come to define Mexican national identity, defiant, indigenous, and revolutionary, returned home with Diego Rivera. Mexico gained something unexpected from the defeat of the French-appointed emperor. Hidden in plain sight on those great public walls, in the very conviction that art belonged to the people who stood before it, was the ghost of a court painter who had once made a foreign emperor look like he belonged.

Randy Jackson blends local reporting from the perspective of a seasonal Huatulco resident with explorations of life and change in Huatulco, Oaxaca and Mexico.

Huatulco

The Convention Centre – Huatulco’s Unfinished Promise

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By Randy Jackson—

In December 2025, formal notices of seizure were posted across the skeletal structure of the Huatulco Convention Center overlooking the Chahué Marina. Issued by the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of Oaxaca, the notices designate the unfinished building as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, legally immobilizing the site. With that act, a project once promoted as a cornerstone of Huatulco’s future tourism economy entered a new phase, no longer merely incomplete, but formally frozen.

Projects like this are often referred to in Mexico as elefantes blancos: costly public works that never fully deliver on their promise. They are not unique to Oaxaca, nor to Mexico. What makes the Huatulco Convention Center distinctive is how its fate now sits at the intersection of ambitious planning, technical complexity, and a political transition that has left the structure and the community caught in prolonged limbo.

A PROMISE OF DEVELOPMENT

On October 5, 2019, the Oaxacan legislature authorized 3.5 billion pesos in financing for a broad portfolio of infrastructure projects across the state, intended to stimulate employment and reduce poverty. Among them was a proposed convention center for Huatulco. At the time, then-governor Alejandro Murat pledged that a special committee would closely monitor the use of public funds, and that all projects would be completed before the end of his term in 2022.

According to early project documentation, the Huatulco Convention Center was initially budgeted at 70 million pesos (US $3.7 million). Even in retrospect, that figure now appears unrealistically low, reflecting a preliminary concept rather than a fully defined architectural or engineering plan.

Shortly thereafter, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted public works across Mexico. During that pause, however, the project was not merely postponed; it was substantially reimagined. State officials reframed it as a “strategic trigger” capable of elevating Huatulco into the international convention market alongside destinations such as Cancún or Los Cabos.

A VISION TAKES SHAPE

In December 2020, Governor Murat announced a dramatically upgraded project: an iconic waterfront convention center designed to attract international MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions) tourism. To realize that vision, he appointed architect Enrique Norten, founder of TEN Arquitectos, a Mexican firm internationally recognized for contemporary civic and cultural projects characterized by glass, steel, and bold structural expression.

The proposed design called for an approximately 11,000-square-meter facility integrated into the Chahué Marina, including a 1,285-seat auditorium with advanced acoustics capable of hosting concerts, theatrical productions, and academic conferences. Public plazas and green spaces were incorporated to ensure the building functioned as a community asset rather than a sealed, single-purpose venue.

WHEN REALITY COLLIDES WITH VISION

As the project moved from concept to engineered design, costs escalated rapidly. Building a large-scale performance venue on reclaimed waterfront land introduced significant technical challenges. According to statements from state infrastructure officials at the time, the site required extensive geotechnical reinforcement, including deep foundation work and large-scale soil stabilization, to create a stable foundation before vertical construction could even begin.

As planning advanced and architectural designs were finalized, cost estimates were revised upward. By the time construction formally began in 2022, official figures placed the project at over 320 million pesos. While that amount represented a dramatic increase over early estimates, it more closely reflected the market realities of constructing a specialized, architecturally complex facility in a marine environment. What had begun as a modest line item had evolved into a technically sophisticated public landmark.

A PROJECT IN POLITICAL LIMBO

On November 29, 2022, just forty-eight hours before his term ended, Governor Murat formally inaugurated the Huatulco Convention Center in its unfinished state. Without lighting, equipment, or connection to the electrical grid, the structure nonetheless stood complete enough for a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

For the incoming state administration, the building quickly became a focal point, symbolizing unfinished business and, potentially, deeper irregularities. Rather than advancing construction, authorities shifted their attention to investigation.

Transitions between political administrations in Mexico often involve heightened scrutiny of major public works, particularly those left incomplete. Supporters see this as accountability; critics argue that prolonged investigations can indefinitely freeze projects, regardless of their potential public benefit. In Huatulco, the result has been paralysis: a completed shell, neither advanced nor dismantled, sitting idle on one of the town’s most prominent waterfront sites.

JUSTICE OR POLITICAL THEATER?

The seizure notices posted on the convention center walls are tied to a broader investigation into the 2019 infrastructure program. In late 2023, the Oaxacan Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office arrested Javier Lazcano Vargas, charging him with illicit enrichment and misuse of public funds related to those projects.

Meanwhile, former governor Alejandro Murat has followed a surprisingly different political trajectory. After leaving office, he joined the ruling MORENA party and secured a seat in the Senate, thereby obtaining fuero, the constitutional immunity afforded to high-ranking legislators. The contrast has not gone unnoticed locally. For many in Huatulco, the stalled convention center has become less a symbol of justice pursued than of accountability deferred.

None of this is to suggest that investigations should be abandoned or that financial irregularities, if proven, should go unpunished. But when a criminal process indefinitely halts a project with clear public value, questions arise about balance: between enforcing accountability and fulfilling the state’s obligation to serve the community.

THE COST OF STANDSTILL

For local tourism operators, business owners, and residents, the convention center represents more than a political controversy. It was envisioned as an economic catalyst, one capable of extending the tourist season, supporting local employment, and anchoring complementary cultural and commercial activity around the marina. Its continued dormancy carries opportunity costs that compound with each passing year.

Justice and development need not be mutually exclusive. Yet as long as the Huatulco Convention Center remains sealed off as an immobilized site, it stands as a reminder that infrastructure can become collateral damage in political struggles. The unfinished structure on the Chahué waterfront is no longer just an unrealized building; it is a test of whether governance in Oaxaca can reconcile accountability with the practical needs of the communities it serves.

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

Huatulco

Huatulco Snowbird Survey

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By Randy Jackson—

In another time, long ago, I owned a travel bookstore. This was before the internet, back when the world was still big and filled with foreign places. Mostly, my bookstore attracted adventurers bound for faraway lands, and I shared their excitement from behind the counter. But one pattern was persistent: Long-term travellers often returned early, cutting their trips short and citing a need for belonging, for Home.

As a long-time seasonal resident of Huatulco, I remain interested in the paradox of the impulse to explore versus the need for belonging: Have Huatulco snowbirds solved this conundrum, or are they simply seeking tropical warmth and companionship over margaritas? This question led me to conduct the Huatulco Snowbird Survey. Presented here are some of the key findings from that effort; the full results can be found on the website http://www.seasonedhuatulco.com.

I’ve tabulated anonymous results from 106 seasonal and long-term visitors of Canadian and American origin. While the actual size of the snowbird population is unknown (likely between 2,000 and 5,000), these responses offer an intriguing snapshot of the attributes and lifestyle choices of Huatulco’s seasonal residents. It’s not a scientific survey, given the small sample size, but it still provides a unique window into this community.

Longevity and Loyalty

Snowbirds have been consistently returning to Huatulco for several years. The bar graph shows two main humps. Almost 20% of respondents fall into the 4–6 year range, while the larger cluster, of nearly 30%, is in the 12 to 16 year range. When applying the results to a standard distribution curve (for any statistical nerds), it tells us the overall average number of years snowbirds have been returning to Huatulco is thirteen.

Where Winter Ends

Predictably, the geographical origin of Huatulco’s seasonal residents tells the story of escaping the deepest winter cold. The survey data were insufficient to provide a breakdown of the home states of the US snowbirds, but for Canada, the top three home provinces are Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia. The complete breakdown by province is in the full survey results on http://www.seasonedhuatulco.com.

Staying and Mobility – The Mechanics of Huatulco Snowbird Life

The survey reveals a near-perfect split between accommodation choices: 55% of respondents rent their properties, many of whom are consistent year-over-year renters, while 45% have chosen to purchase their own homes, indicating a long-term investment in a second home.

While the vast majority, 97% of respondents (survey says), choose the convenience of flying to and from Huatulco each season rather than drive, once here, their local transportation options are varied. 24% of those surveyed have purchased a car, and another 10% own a motorcycle or scooter, illustrating a desire for greater independence beyond taxis and local buses.

More than Margaritas: Activities and Engagement

It seems like a truism that trading cold weather for the tropics encourages a more active lifestyle, and our survey results for Huatulco snowbirds support this assumption. Forty-three percent (43%) of respondents report being more physically active in Huatulco than at home, compared to only 10% who are less active.

The survey responses show a commitment to activity, often driven by Huatulco’s best asset: the warm Pacific Ocean. When asked about regular activities, water-based activities dominate the list. While Huatulco also attracts dedicated participants in Pickleball, Yoga and other activities, where the primary driver of physical activity is the surrounding natural environment.

The survey asked; What activities do you regularly participate in while in Huatulco? (Select all that apply to you)

Beyond physical activity, many Huatulco snowbirds demonstrate an evident dedication to cultural engagement, particularly through language acquisition. The majority of survey respondents are actively attempting to improve their Spanish communication skills.

The motivation to learn Spanish is rooted in both personal enrichment and respect for the local culture. However, proficiency levels indicate the journey is ongoing for most.

Beyond Activities: Why Snowbirds Return To Huatulco

Back in our northern homes, our personal history shapes who we know and what we do. Here, strangers become companions without any of those usual ties. The survey results show that
Snowbirds return to Huatulco for more than the activities they enjoy here; they return for how this place makes them feel, and how that unexpected community of strangers forms each winter.

For an explanation of how these results were tabulated, and for results on suggested improvements in Huatulco, why snowbirds would stop coming, and the travel experience of Huatulco snowbirds, check out the full results at seasonedhuatulco.com.

Have Snowbirds Solved The Travellers’ Paradox?

Has the snowbird lifestyle solved the paradox of the impulse to explore versus the need for belonging?

In those conversations with my bookstore customers who cut their travels short, I always assumed their impulse to explore wasn’t exhausted; it just needed a rest. Travel has long been linked with personal growth; as a quote often attributed to Saint Augustine puts it, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” The survey offers us facts about who we are as a snowbird community in Huatulco, but it also echoes an observation I once read in a study: snowbirds seem to be looking for something. And that “something” may well be reflected in the top categories used to group the responses to the question: What does the snowbird experience mean in your life? These include Growth, Freedom, Friendship, Community, Identity, and Belonging. In the end, these may be the real coordinates of the Huatulco snowbird experience.

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

Huatulco

Reviving Rail: A New Era for Mexico’s Transportation

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By Randy Jackson—

For fifteen years, our annual migration south meant driving the length of Mexico—from Nuevo Laredo to Huatulco. But not anymore. Over time, the toll roads have steadily improved and extended, now reaching all the way to the Oaxacan coast. But as the roads improved, so too did the volume of semi-trucks. What began as an encouraging sign of economic growth, especially in the northern half of Mexico, has become a source of gridlock. The tollways are now truckways—clogged with freight traffic that slows travel and occasionally brings highways to a standstill.

And it’s not just the highways. Urban congestion is becoming unbearable. Try stopping in San Luis Potosí, and you may find yourself mired in a 24/7 rush hour. The operations of global manufacturers like General Motors and BMW largely drive that gridlock. Efficient transportation is vital to economic life, but Mexico’s current road-based system is straining under pressure. For the first time in decades, the country is signalling a shift—from asphalt to steel—investing in rail projects that aim not only to reduce road traffic, but to position rail as a driver of future growth.

MEXICO’S GOLDEN AGE OF RAILWAYS

Mexico’s golden age of rail came under the pre-revolutionary presidency of Porfirio Díaz. When Díaz took office, Mexico had just 670 km of rail; by the end of his term in 1910, that number had jumped to 24,700 km. The building boom was fueled by concessions to foreign investors, a practical but flawed approach that produced inconsistent track gauges and just three nationwide connections. The destruction and disorder of the Mexican Revolution halted progress. Later, foreign-owned railways were nationalized, which helped standardize track width and improve interconnectivity.

Though rail suffered for decades from poor maintenance, corruption, and union strife, it still marked a major step in Mexico’s industrialization. In its early days, rail was up to ten times faster than roads and slashed freight costs by as much as 80%. But under investment, administrative failures, and shifting government priorities gradually relegated rail to a secondary role. Roads took precedence, and the consequences—congestion, emissions, economic bottlenecks—are now coming home to roost.

A DETOUR INTO ASPHALT

In 1995, under President Ernesto Zedillo, Mexican railways were privatized. The national rail system was divided among three major companies that still operate today: Kansas City Southern de México (KCSM) in the northeast, and Ferromex and Ferrosur, both now owned by the conglomerate Grupo México.

Over time, these private operators shut down nearly all passenger services, citing a lack of profitability. For many years, only two tourist trains remained: El Chepe in the Copper Canyon and the José Cuervo Express on the Guadalajara–Tequila line.

That downward trajectory began to reverse under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who made passenger rail a national priority. His administration launched high-profile projects like the Maya Train and the Interoceanic Corridor and passed reforms requiring private freight lines to support or offer passenger service.

His successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has pledged to continue this shift—supporting existing projects while proposing new routes. Together, these efforts signal a strategic turn: new rail infrastructure designed to support regional economies, diversify tourism, and ease the country’s dependence on highways.

STEEL AMBITIONS
Mexico’s new rail projects are large-scale passenger projects and freight modernization, aiming to cut road dependency, stimulate tourism, and strengthen industrial corridors.

Tren Maya – This project’s cost has ballooned to $28B USD—a passenger train stretching 1,500 km across five southeastern states. The train is now partially operational, with more sections and stations scheduled to open in the future. It aims to spread tourism away from the Riviera Maya’s concentration, create jobs, and link new economic hubs. However, the project has also been a source of significant controversy due to its environmental and social impacts.

Mexico–Toluca Interurban Train – With costs swelling to nearly $10B USD, this 58-km commuter line connects Toluca with western Mexico City. Well-publicized delays have pushed full operation out to 2026, though partial service began in 2023. The train is designed to ease congestion and reduce emissions. Its escalating costs and long delays, however, have demonstrated the hurdles faced in new infrastructure construction in Mexico.

Mexico City–Pachuca & Querétaro Lines – Two proposed high-speed routes, with the Pachuca line estimated at $2.5B USD and the Querétaro line at $7B USD. Construction began in 2025. They are intended to extend rail northward, linking the capital with fast-growing industrial centers. Strategically, they would strengthen central Mexico’s manufacturing corridor, provide alternatives to crowded highways, and reduce emissions. Political will and financing are key uncertainties for moving these projects forward.

Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT): This is a freight modernization project with a reported cost of over $7 billion USD. It upgrades a 300-km rail line between the ports of Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast and Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico. While limited passenger and freight services began in late 2023, the project is still undergoing major expansions, with the full system expected to be completed in 2026. This project is strategically significant as it is meant to create a competitive alternative to the Panama Canal. It also aims to stimulate economic development in one of Mexico’s poorest regions. Besides port expansions, the project’s plans call for new industrial parks along the route to attract investment. As promising as the project is, questions remain about its ability to attract sustained international shipping and investment.
RELIEF IN RAIL? THE VIEW FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT
After decades of pouring resources into asphalt, the shift back to steel marks a strategic bet on efficiency and economic development. For those of us who have spent long days driving south, boxed in by semis on endless tollways, the return of rail isn’t just policy; it feels like long-overdue relief. Still, with costs climbing and schedules slipping, the success of these projects will depend on sustained political will and the willingness to commit serious resources in the years ahead

Huatulco

Huatulco’s Next Wave: Adapting to Mexico’s Changing Tourism Priorities

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By Randy Jackson

Each year, when we arrive at La Bocana for the first time, boogieboards tucked under one arm, we stop to see how the forces of nature have reshaped the beach since our last visit six months earlier. The sand is never the same; sometimes subtly shifted, sometimes dramatically reformed. But we always adapt. We watch the waves, find the rhythm, and surf. Huatulco, too, is shaped by forces of change, not only hurricanes and earthquakes but shifts in national policy and priorities. These changes may not be as visible as a redrawn shoreline, but they carry consequences just the same.

A New Presidency, Old Currents

This year, Mexico marks the first anniversary of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term. She has been celebrated for breaking gender barriers and bringing a more academic tone to politics. But for resorts like Huatulco, the most significant shifts began earlier. The rethinking of tourism as an economic driver, along with the changes implemented by agencies like FONATUR, took root under the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. So far, Sheinbaum appears poised to follow those policies.

The Fourth Transformation

To understand how Huatulco fits into this national realignment, it’s helpful to revisit what AMLO called the Fourth Transformation, his sweeping effort to redefine Mexico’s relationship with markets, foreign investment, and development itself. Drawing on three foundational periods in Mexican history—independence from Spain, the 19th-century Reform movement, and the Mexican Revolution—AMLO positioned his administration as the next great change. AMLO’s Fourth Transformation (4T) marked a departure from decades of neoliberal policies, aiming to reclaim national sovereignty and redistribute power away from economic elites, allowing the state to play a more active role in development.

Whether the 4T will live up to its historical billing remains to be seen. Still, President Sheinbaum has made her stance clear: “We are going to deepen the transformation, not reverse it.” For Huatulco, like other destinations born under FONATUR’s original vision, the Bob Dylan refrain still applies: The times, they are a-changin’.

FONATUR’s Rise and Retreat

Mexico continues to invest heavily in economic development, but large-scale, master-planned tourist resorts are no longer the centrepiece. When FONATUR was created in the 1970s, its mission was to plan, finance, and build integrated tourism destinations in remote coastal areas. The federal government would install airports, roads, water systems, and other infrastructure, setting the stage for private investors to bring hotels, restaurants, and jobs. The result was supposed to be a trickle-down boost for nearby communities.

In the 1980s, FONATUR transformed a string of untouched bays along Oaxaca’s coast into the resort of Huatulco. For some time, the concept seemed viable. But like the beachgoers adjusting to new surf, FONATUR found itself navigating shifting economic currents. The global tourism market for beach resorts became crowded, and other destinations, such as Caribbean all-inclusive resorts, and even competing FONATUR projects like Cancún and Los Cabos, offered cheaper and easier alternatives to Huatulco.

From Resorts to Railways

Still, the lesson took some time to sink in. FONATUR continued launching new mega-projects, such as Loreto in Baja California. In 2007, Loreto briefly topped destination real estate sales charts. However, the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent U.S. recession halted the momentum. Investors paused. Projects stalled. And gradually, Mexico’s tourism strategy began to shift.

Under President Peña Nieto (2012–2018), a sector-wide review led to a curtailment of FONATUR’s expansion. Funding to destinations like Huatulco focused more on infrastructure maintenance than growth. Then came AMLO, who dramatically reoriented the agency. FONATUR’s traditional role in resort development and maintenance was significantly reduced. Resources were redirected to the Maya Train, a controversial infrastructure project billed as a tourism initiative, although it is perhaps better understood as a regional economic development initiative. President Sheinbaum has embraced and extended this strategy, most recently announcing the Maya Train’s expansion into Guatemala.

For Huatulco, this confirms what many already sensed: the national spotlight has moved elsewhere. The cartoon image below may exaggerate the moment, but the message is real: while some of us wave tourists into the surf, a much larger wave of policy, budget, and priorities is cresting behind us.

Still, FONATUR isn’t gone. It remains a significant landholder in Huatulco, controlling the unsold parcels from its original 1984 expropriation. The question is whether it can be repurposed as a steward, rather than a builder, which is less about launching new resorts and more about maintaining what already exists.

A New Kind of Partnership?

A new pivot might align well with Sheinbaum’s emphasis on sustainability. For Huatulco to ride the next wave, a new kind of partnership is needed —one that brings together FONATUR, the state of Oaxaca, and local stakeholders at the same table. A coordinated strategy could target essential needs, such as water and sewage infrastructure. Revenues from FONATUR’s Huatulco land sales, combined with FIDELO’s operational expertise and input from local businesses, could support a development plan that is realistic, sustainable, and tailored to the region’s needs.

Surfing Ahead

Whatever form it takes, the priority must be to protect what sustains Huatulco’s economy while preserving the natural beauty that draws people here in the first place. If successful, it could offer a model for other FONATUR-born resorts navigating similar transitions.

As President Sheinbaum completes her first year in office, balancing domestic pressures and global uncertainties, this type of pragmatic regional initiative could represent a meaningful path forward. The wave of change is real, and while Huatulco may seem like a small fish in Mexico’s broader political sea, it is of significant importance to us Huatulcoites. And as the surfers at La Bocana know, timing and effort often make the difference between riding the wave and being pulled under.

Huatulco

Can Desalination Quench Huatulco’s Thirst?

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By Randy Jackson

Check into a luxury resort in Huatulco, and you’ll find cascading pools and long, powerful showers. Water feels abundant. Yet just down the road, a neighbourhood may be waiting days for a water truck to arrive. Between the blue Pacific and the green forested mountains, this idyllic destination hides a growing imbalance: Huatulco’s potable water supply is no longer keeping pace with the demands of an expanding resort and its surrounding communities.

This struggle mirrors water issues found across Mexico. While long-term infrastructure investment remains essential, relying solely on public funding may no longer be realistic. To meet the growing needs of Huatulco, it’s time to consider new approaches, ones that combine modern water technologies, public-private partnerships, and conservation. There is no silver bullet, but with the right vision, Huatulco could become a model for sustainable water management across Mexico and beyond.

Huatulco’s Water Situation

Huatulco’s water infrastructure was planned and built by Mexico’s national tourism agency, FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo), in the 1990s as part of the original development blueprint for the resort. The system draws from eight semi-deep wells in the Copalita River watershed, feeding into 16 storage tanks along a 12-kilometre distribution main line. While still operational, the system is showing its age. In 2022, CONAGUA (Comisión Nacional del Agua) classified the Copalita aquifer as having medium availability but noted that the downstream infrastructure was increasingly outdated. A year later, the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) confirmed the need for major upgrades.

Today, over 50% of Huatulco’s potable water goes to the tourism and hotel sector. Per capita use is heavily skewed, with oceanside hotels and condominiums consuming a disproportionate share. Meanwhile, population growth has steadily increased overall demand, straining both supply and delivery. Much of this concentrated water use takes place within the tourism corridor, a relatively compact stretch of just four bays and eight kilometres of coastline. Inland neighbourhoods, in contrast, often face shortages and delays.

This imbalance, while problematic, may also represent an opportunity. Could the tourism sector pilot a localized, sustainable solution, one that draws from the very ocean it overlooks?

Modern Desalination Technology

In the 1967 film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, receives career advice in an iconic exchange. A friend of his father says, “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word: plastics.” It was sound advice for the industrial boom of the 1960s. Today, if I had just one word to offer, it would be desalination.

As climate change alters rainfall patterns and droughts become more frequent, desalination is no longer an experimental method; it’s a proven way to convert seawater into drinking water. Countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia now rely on it for the majority of their potable water. In Israel, up to 80% of the drinking supply comes from desalination. Mexico, too, is investing in the technology. Across the country, some 350 plants are currently processing around 750,000 cubic meters (198 million gallons) of water per day. For context, Huatulco’s wells produce about 11,000 cubic meters daily, a small fraction by comparison.

There are two primary methods for removing salt from seawater. The older method is thermal desalination, where water is boiled, the steam is condensed, and you’re left with fresh water. It’s effective but expensive and energy intensive. The more common method today is reverse osmosis (RO), where seawater is forced through a semi-permeable membrane that filters out the salt. Thermal plants, such as the one built in Rosarito, Baja California, in the 1960s, have largely given way to RO systems due to their lower energy demands and reduced environmental impact. Today, nearly all new and planned desalination projects in Mexico and worldwide use RO technology.

Several small to mid-scale RO projects are now being implemented in coastal communities, some driven by necessity, others by innovation. A closer look at a few of these projects may offer valuable insights for Huatulco.

Some Innovative Public-Private Projects

The municipality of Los Cabos, Baja California, requires major new developments, especially luxury resorts, to install their own desalination plants. There are now between 25 and 30 such facilities in the region, many of which are privately or community-operated, often located within gated developments. One notable example is Pedregal, a high-end residential community perched above the blue Pacific in Cabo San Lucas. Its privately operated desalination plant supplies water to the development, but soon it will do more. Pedregal is set to become the first private desalination facility in Baja California Sur to sell potable water to the public system. Construction is expected to begin in 2024-25 on the infrastructure necessary to connect the existing plant to the municipal network, demonstrating how the public and private sectors can collaborate to address local water needs.

A very different kind of project is taking shape in the city of Fort Bragg on the northern coast of California. The city is piloting a small-scale desalination system powered entirely by ocean waves. The unit, developed by Oneka, a Canadian water technology firm, is tethered offshore and utilizes the motion of waves to generate pressure. That pressure drives seawater through reverse osmosis filters, producing fresh water that’s piped back to shore. The pilot will begin with a single “iceberg-class” unit capable of producing about 50 cubic meters (13,000 gallons) per day. More units can be added to increase capacity as needed. Though modest in scale, the project demonstrates how renewable energy and desalination can be combined to meet local needs.

Thinking beyond the wells, such examples are worth considering for Huatulco, especially since the tourism zone is just eight kilometres long and accounts for a large share of overall water use while inland neighbourhoods face periodic shortages. With the town’s freshwater supply already stretched and the distribution system in need of repair, Huatulco will need to look beyond conventional solutions. Could a small-scale desalination plant focused on the tourism corridor provide the necessary stability to ease shortfalls and support continued growth?

What If?

What if the leaders of Huatulco’s resort development, the all-inclusive hotel operators, and officials from FIDELO (Oaxaca’s state-level development commission), FONATUR and CONAGUA sat down together in the spirit of Mexico’s new National Water Plan, which covers 2024-30? Could they envision a shared solution, such as a small-scale desalination plant serving the tourism zone, that would relieve pressure on the existing water system? Could that, in turn, free up more of the town’s limited freshwater supply for inland neighbourhoods that suffer water shortages? Might it also allow public resources to focus on repairing leaks and upgrading infrastructure rather than drilling more wells?

It wouldn’t solve everything. But it could be a first step, concrete, local, and scalable. And perhaps, if done thoughtfully and transparently, Huatulco could become not just a resort town managing a water crisis but a model for how public and private interests can come together to build a more sustainable and equitable future.

For contact or comment, email: box95jackson@gmail.com.

Huatulco

A Land in Between: The Istmo de Tehuantepec

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By Randy Jackson

If you were to drive east from Huatulco for about two hours, you’d arrive at a narrow neck of land where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans nearly meet. You’ll know you’re there when you see a landscape covered by hundreds of windmills and feel and hear the force of wind as it hurtles against your vehicle. These are the Tehuano Winds, born from the clash of cool northern air spilling down from the Gulf of Mexico and the rising heat of the Pacific. Channeled through the Chivela Pass in the Sierra Madre, they come roaring toward the coast, sometimes with the force of a hurricane.

This region, known as the Istmo de Tehuantepec, is one of the eight distinct regions of Oaxaca, and it’s known for far more than wind. It’s a crossroads in every sense: a cultural crossroads between the heartlands of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, an ecological crossroads bridging diverse geographical zones, and now, with the Interoceanic Corridor project, a potential crossroads for global trade.

Ecological Crossroads

The Istmo de Tehuantepec is an ecological crossroads. While the southern portions near the Pacific are dry and windswept, the northern reaches include part of Mexico’s largest tropical rainforest, the Selva Zoque, home to much of the nation’s biodiversity. This varied topography also gives rise to pine-oak forests and more than 300 species of native orchids.

The Istmo holds an extraordinary range of ecosystems within this relatively narrow band of land. There are cloud forests in the Sierra Madre, coastal lagoons along the Gulf of Mexico, and everything in between. Its geographic position bridges the flora and fauna of North and Central America, creating a vital migratory and evolutionary corridor where species from different regions meet, interact, and adapt.

Cultural Crossroads

For millennia, the Istmo de Tehuantepec has served as a crossroads between the heartlands of the Mesoamerican civilizations. The first of these civilizations was the Olmec, widely recognized for their iconic colossal stone heads. Their civilization was centred just to the north of the Istmo in the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico. Later, as the Olmec declined, the Zapotec civilization emerged in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Archaeological finds suggest trade between these two civilizations, with goods like obsidian and jade traversing the Istmo between these two powers. Trade also existed in later times between the Maya civilization, located south and east of the Istmo, and the formidable city-state of Teotihuacán in the valley of Mexico.

Today, the Zapotec are the principal indigenous group of the Istmo, and their identity here is distinct. The Zapotec language in the Istmo differs significantly from the version in the Valley of Oaxaca. There are also cultural differences, such as the matrilineal social structures in the Istmo compared to the more patriarchal structures of the Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca. Other indigenous groups in the region of Istmo de Tehuantepec are the Mixe, roughly centred around the area of Matías Romero, and the Huave (they call themselves the Ikoots), located around San Mateo del Mar on the Pacific coast.

Global Crossroads – Mexico’s Interoceanic Corridor

Among the defining projects of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the Interoceanic Rail Corridor may turn out to be the most transformative. Beyond the potential benefits to Mexico overall, the state of Oaxaca, particularly the Istmo de Tehuantepec, could develop into an economic engine. Spanning 303 kilometres (188 miles), this rail link connects the Pacific port of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca with the Gulf port of Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz. Its aim is ambitious: to serve as a land-based alternative, or complement, to the Panama Canal, allowing cargo to be offloaded at one coast, transported swiftly across the Istmo, and reloaded on the other side.

The corridor project aims to stimulate industrial growth in southern Mexico through major infrastructure upgrades, chief among them the modernization of the Salina Cruz and Coatzacoalcos seaports. To draw private investment, the federal government plans to establish ten industrial parks along the route, offering tax incentives to companies willing to build and operate there.

The project is well underway. The expanded seaports are already under construction, and the rail line now has limited passenger service between the two coasts. One of the most high-profile developments tied to the corridor came in December 2024, when President Claudia Sheinbaum announced a $10 billion USD green hydrogen facility to be built by Helax, a subsidiary of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Scheduled for completion in 2028, the project signals a push toward sustainable industry in the region.

If fully realized, the Interoceanic Corridor could mark a historic shift in Mexico’s economic geography, channeling investment and opportunity toward the poorer southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. The road ahead, however, isn’t without obstacles: land disputes, environmental concerns, and questions about who truly benefits, especially among local Indigenous communities.

For centuries, the Istmo de Tehuantepec has stood at the intersection of movement and change – a crossroads where two oceans, multiple climate zones, and cultures converge. The Istmo continues in its role as a landscape of transition and is now, possibly, a passageway for global trade.

For contact or comment: box95jackson@gmail.com.