Almost a quarter of your skeleton lives in your feet. Fifty-two bones. Dozens of joints. They will carry you 75,000 miles over a lifetime, enough to circle the Earth three times and usually without complaint… usually. Yet we spend most of that time ignoring them. Not to mention what lies beneath them. The trouble is, […]
Continue Reading
Alvin Starkman, M.A., J.D. The naysayers, as well as many pundits and so-called mezcal experts, are critical of the agave distillate industry, lamenting that it is no longer sustainable. They are the same people who blanketly criticize multinational corporations and celebrities owning mezcal brands. They appear to be against big business being in the industry, […]
Continue Reading
Magic is Mexico’s superpower. Here, the ordinary and the sacred intertwine like smoke and spirit. The sacred still whispers, and its relevance is ever-present to those willing to listen to its wisdom. Alongside colorful towns and festive celebrations runs a steady stream of healing rituals, sacred medicines, and ancestral wisdom that restore body, mind, and […]
Continue Reading
More than a deep dive into cool waters, cenotes (sinkholes) are portals to the past, conjuring up the history and lore of the Yucatán Peninsula, where they were thought to be passageways to the underworld or Xibalba: the place where the dead met the most powerful of gods and underwent trials and challenges. But who […]
Continue Reading
In 2021, Mexico City unveiled its innovative Cablebús system, a network of gondola lifts intended to revolutionize urban mobility. The project aimed to integrate historically under-served neighborhoods with the city’s sprawling public transportation network, providing a much-needed lifeline for its residents. What began as a practical solution to a logistical challenge, however, has become one […]
Continue Reading
When the Spaniards arrived in the region in west central Mexico that would become Aguascalientes, Caxcán farmers and nomadic Zacatecos Indians and other early indigenous people were already crafting wine by foraging and fermenting the grapes that grew wild in these high desert plains. But the Spaniards had brought with them cuttings of Vitis vinifera, […]
Continue Reading
Twelve of us, nine humans and three small pups, chugged up the mountainside to Mina El Redentor (Redeemer Mine) in the back of a 4×4 all-terrain vehicle with double traction. The rocky, cumbersome path from the village of La Trinidad up to the mine took about 20 minutes to conquer and put my gimbal camera […]
Continue Reading
The monkeys, they tell me, are asleep in a cave across the lagoon. But other than that disappointment, my trip to Pac Chen, a micro sized Maya village in the jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula, is the perfect way to step back in time. To get here from Playa del Carmen, our home base, we […]
Continue Reading
For far too long the history of 19th Century Mayan free rule in the Mexican Yucatán has been largely ignored. But local Maya are working to put it on the map. Through museums, ruins, guided tours and more, they are preserving the legacy of this largest post-colonial indigenous revolution in the Americas, commonly known as […]
Continue Reading
Mexico City has some of the best street/urban art murals in the world, but almost all the attention in the press is focused on work done in the center of the city. In reality, much of the best work is being done on the east side of the Mexico City Metro Area (MCMA). The muralism […]
Continue Reading