To put Slim’s wealth in perspective, consider this: relative to the size of his country’s economy, he is richer than Elon Musk. Musk’s fortune is equivalent to roughly 2.6% of the GDP of the US. Slim’s is equivalent to about 5.9% of Mexico’s GDP.

Yet, to truly understand Slim’s impact on Mexico, dollar figures are not enough. One has to look at the legacy he has built in the country or, more accurately, at the legacy he has failed to build.

That is why, in today’s edition of Mexico Decoded, we take a closer look at how Carlos Slim became Mexico’s richest man and how his rise may have come at the expense of Mexico’s growth.

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If you have visited Mexico City during the rainy season, you have probably noticed one of its most dreaded features: flooding. In 2026 alone, storms have flooded major roads, brought traffic to a standstill, and sent rainwater pouring into Mexico City’s international airport.

This leads many people to assume that the city gets most of its water from rainfall collected through the drainage system and later filtered. Yet, that is not how it works. In fact, most of the rainwater that enters the drainage system goes to waste.

Mexico City’s main source of water is a mysterious forest that few people know about. This week, Mexico Decoded will devote its essay to this forest and to show you how to plan a wonderful visit to it.

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As a result, the Mexican government has faced various accusations from the United States, including colluding with the drug cartels and benefitting China and Russia regarding the steel trade, followed by demands on both the political and economic fronts.

So, in this edition of Mexico Decoded, we’ll break down what Mexico should do to defend itself from the United States’ growing and abusive demands while keeping the relationship healthy enough to avoid a fallout.

To do so, we examine how other countries have successfully prevented the United States from overreaching and how Mexico could benefit from adopting some of their strategies.

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Source: Screenshot from Reddit post

A more realistic picture would point to an unequal distribution of these green areas, with the bigger part of them located in tourist-friendly areas such as Condesa, Roma, and Chapultepec.

What’s behind the uneven distribution of green areas in Mexico City? This week’s essay on Mexico Decoded will dive into some of the reasons behind it.

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This is an excellent measure for reducing corruption, but many analysts agree that it puts Morena at a disadvantage. Unlike other parties, which agreed on applying the anti-nepotism law in 2030, Morena unilaterally decided to enforce it immediately. This means that, in the 2027 election, opposition parties will be the only ones with the advantage of nominating political bosses and members of clans that control a significant number of votes in certain territories.

The question is why Morena is in a rush to eliminate nepotism within its ranks. The answer reveals more about how politics work in Mexico than the electoral results themselves.

That is why, today, we dedicate the Mexico Decoded essay to explaining the reasons why Morena’s leadership rightly believes that implementing this reform is not a disadvantage, but a critical step if the party is to remain in power.

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And while everyone knows Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world, what is less obvious is that inequality survives not only through low wages, inherited wealth, or weak public expenditure, but also through something more obscure like misleading tax statistics.

So today, we will dedicate the weekly essay of Mexico Decoded to analyzing how this works.

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At every World Cup, Mexico arrives with one of the largest and most visible fan bases in football. Yet its team never wins.

Mexico has not made it to the quarterfinals since 1986, which means that most of the country’s population, which is young, has not been alive to witness it.

For decades, this contradiction had a chant: “Sí se puede” (“Yes, we can”). It was the a battle cry that Mexican fans carried into stadiums and tournaments, a way of insisting that defeat was not inevitable, even when history suggested otherwise.

“Sí se puede” was the language of the hopeful underdog. It belonged to a country that knew its team was usually at a disadvantage, but refused to accept the match as lost before it began. It was less a prediction than an act of faith: maybe this time, somehow, things would finally go differently.

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Every Mexican fan knows that “Sí se puede” accumulated decades of disappointment. Mexico is a football country with a large public, a strong emotional investment in the sport, and a national team that has often promised more than it has delivered. The gap between expectation and result became part of the ritual.

That is why the rare moments of triumph mattered so much. There were not many occasions when fans could move from “Sí se puede” to “Sí se pudo” (“Yes, we did it”).

The reality is that over the last three decades, alongside the hollowing out and weakening of the state, Mexico’s national sport became precarious and privatized into fiefdoms of power. The Mexican league, which deserves the harshest criticism, became a plague of cronyism and corruption.

Perhaps that is why Mexico’s football chant has begun to dramatically change.

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Colombia’s left did what left-wing governments are supposed to do and what Mexico’s government is also trying to do. It reduced poverty, raised wages, and pushed reforms meant to improve the lives of workers and the elderly.

Yet this week, Colombian voters moved away from that government and replaced it with one by Abelardo de la Espriella, a wealthy hard-right lawyer promising a politics closer to Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro, and Bukele.

The question is why Colombian voters did this.

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While Mexico debates the World Cup and next year’s local elections, the question of how the country will cross the most consequential technological revolution of our era remains, at best, fuzzy.

Nobody, not inside the government, not inside the private sector, has come up with a concrete plan to make sure AI benefits Mexico. Or at least, that it doesn’t leave Mexico sidelined and dependent on technology that it doesn’t control and that will voraciously absorb the profits of Mexican companies.

As a result, Mexico is falling into one of its deepest development traps, yet one that is receiving very little attention.

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Countries have reacted in different ways. Some have ignored him. Others have complained behind closed doors. Mexico, however, is trying something different. Instead of simply brushing off Trump's remarks, Mexico is betting on a riskier approach: confronting him head-on.

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His argument is that pursuing a long-term USMCA extension under Trump is an illusion. Instead, he advocates for annual reviews because they would preserve the possibility of a swift, substantive renegotiation under a future administration, one that could align trade into a genuine engine of shared democratic prosperity.

I respect Dan and I know his work, but I want to dedicate this week’s Mexico Decoded essay to a respectful dissent.

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A small but vocal group of readers accused me of lying. In their view, the government data is manipulated and the reduction simply does not exist.

So today, I want to dedicate my weekly essay at Mexico Decoded to explaining why this reduction cannot be entirely dismissed as statistical manipulation, and to presenting the data that makes that case.

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There are doubts about the numbers. As we have reported in Mexico Decoded, it is likely that part of the reduction can be explained by the false reclassification of homicides as other types of crimes, whether accidents, disappearances, or other violent offenses. However, in recent months it has become evident that nearly all crimes are declining, including disappearances. The reduction in homicides appears to be real.

The news is excellent, but it hides a serious problem unfolding in Mexico, one that the international press is not covering. That is why I decided to dedicate this week’s essay in Mexico Decoded to discussing it.

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The comment was striking. Hearing that sentiment from ignorant and incendiary MAGA commentators is one thing, but hearing it from investors actively operating in Mexico really concerned me.

That is why I decided to use this week’s Mexico Decoded essay to address what a narco-state actually is, how corruption between authorities and criminal groups functions in Mexico, and why, despite the existence of such arrangements in certain regions, it is inaccurate to describe the Mexican state as being run by drug traffickers.

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One of the most common discussions at the forum was trying to understand why the Latin American left is losing so many elections.

There were many different takes, so I want to dedicate this week’s Mexico Decoded essay to discussing the ones that struck me as good, the bad ones, and above all, what can be learned from Mexico, by far the most electorally successful left in Latin America.

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The story spread quickly on social media, and people in the United States even reached out to congratulate me for living in a country they considered so socially advanced.

The problem is that none of it is true.

And it is worth being careful about which accounts you follow, because Trumpism has pushed many liberals to romanticize Mexico and its female president.

So I am going to use this week’s Mexico Decoded essay to explain what was actually announced in Mexico, why it matters (but does not mean Mexico has a real universal public healthcare system), and to give a clearer picture of how public healthcare in Mexico actually works.

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So for this week’s essay at Mexico Decoded, I went looking for evidence of that.

I pulled approval data from three of Mexico’s most widely cited pollsters (Enkoll, Mitovsky, and El Financiero) and compared where each leader stood among 61 demographic and political groups: gender, age, occupation, home state, issue priorities, party identification, and 2024 vote choice. To put them on equal footing, I normalized their approval figures so the comparison is about the shape of their coalitions, not just their overall numbers. The baseline for AMLO is his final months in office (August–September 2024), and for Sheinbaum is her most recent readings (January–February 2026). I only flagged differences that are statistically significant.

What came back is not what the conventional wisdom would predict.

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The problem is that the article contained multiple substantive errors that do not reflect the most recent economic studies in Mexico, but instead repeat dogmas that have been circulating for decades.

So I decided to dedicate this post to doing something we rarely do at Mexico Decoded: clarifying many of the errors made by The Economist based on academic evidence.

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1. AMLO Comes Out of Retirement

Former Mexican President López Obrador resurfaced this weekend to rally supporters to deposit money into a Mexican bank account allegedly aimed at sending humanitarian aid to Cuba, amidst growing tensions between the Caribbean island and the US.

DECODED: Unlike Sheinbaum, who faces the restraint of being Mexican head of State, AMLO can do a direct call to action without worrying about provoking Donald Trump’s wrath. However, his attitude does place the current President in a tight spot as T-MEC negotiations are underway.

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2. Government Coalition Shows Fractures

The original Electoral Reform presented by Sheinbaum was shut down in the Mexican Congress, facing rejection even from her government’s allies, PT and PVEM. The President opted for a “Plan B”, which is backed by her coalition, but discarded the most polemic proposals: reducing funding for political parties and changing the proportional representation system.

DECODED: Morena was unable to reach the votes needed to pass the original Electoral Reform, which shows the official party has weakened in the coalition while its allies have gained strength. This is key for the 2027 federal elections, in which the Chamber of Deputies and some state governors will be up for grabs.

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3. Mexico’s Trade Gap Narrows

Mexico’s trade surplus with the US dropped 20% during the first month of 2026, compared to the same month in 2025, totaling 10.9 billion USD. This is the biggest drop registered since 2009, excluding the pandemic period.

DECODED: The narrowing trade surplus is driven by a surge in Mexican imports of U.S. goods, even as exports to the U.S. also rose. With the dollar weaker, Mexican products are becoming more competitive abroad, boosting export volumes.

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4. Secretary of Public Security Appears On... Towels

Mexican Security Secretary, Omar Garcia Harfuch, has become an unexpected heartthrob, particularly among women. Markets now sell towels, dolls, blankets, and even cardboard cut-outs of him (shirtless or as Batman), as vendors capitalize on his rising popularity.

DECODED: Harfuch’s merchandising campaign points to a growing popularity that could result in a Presidential candidacy in 2030. This wouldn’t be the first time a male political figure has risen due to his appearance. This happened in 2012 with former President Peña Nieto.

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5. Mexico Becomes Older

The number of working Mexicans between the ages of 15 and 24 years is expected to decline in absolute terms during 2026. The country’s demographic shows an increase in the population aged 65+, growing by about 800k people annually.

DECODED: Companies may have to adapt to employing and retaining older workers, and compete against informal work schemes which offer more flexibility and daily pay. Some solutions, said Adecco, are using IA for talent recruitment and offering on-demand wages.