Letter from México

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

Your beloved columnist spent the last two weeks wheeling, dealing, wining & dining down in Mi México Lindo y Querido.
Some highlights of what I saw, heard, imbibed and inhaled during my stay.
You’re welcome.
Just another service provided by your friendly neighborhood rant-man.

THE JUNK & SUGAR TAX.
When Mexicans sit down to eat a meal, they enjoy one of the best and most varied cuisines in the world.
Mexicans eat with a capital E.
Plus, they consume soft drinks like there’s no tomorrow.
They swill them down.
At all times.
In between meals.
From the cradle to the grave.
They simply can’t get enough of the thing, which they happily pair with industrial amounts of snacks and confectionery big and small.
Soft drink manufacturers, marketers, bottlers and distributors simply print money south of the border.
As do dentists.
Unfortunately, sedentarism is also the norm in large swathes of the Mexican population.
This excellent pretext has lead the Peña Nieto administration to pass new legislation.
Of course, the government saw a much needed opportunity to funnel some serious cash into its perennially exhausted arcs.
Former NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s wet sweet dream.
Let’s call it the Junk & Sugar Tax.
All sales of junk food and confectionery will pay a tribute of 8% on its retail price.
Sugary soft drinks will be charged MX$1 (one peso) per liter sold (roughly eight Uncle Sam pennies per 1/3 of a gallon)
Moreover, soft drink marketing and advertising will be strictly regulated.
Among other rules, soft drink ads will be banned from the airwaves before 7 pm.
Sodas are the new tobacco.
A perfect bogeyman.
A beautiful cash cow.
Welcome to the nanny state.
How long until our NAFTA neighbors and partners export this legislation too?

THE MEZCAL MOVEMENT.
Tequila might have reached a state of market maturity in it home country.
When you walk the hyper sensory streets of México DF and you see a big bold campaign for Cucumber-flavored tequila, it makes you think.
The market is flooded.
By volume, Tequila outsells every other liquor in México, including scotch (by a slight margin).
But wait, there’s a new trend in town.
Actually an old staple of Mexican cantinas, fiestas & households.
Yeah: mezcal.
Mezcal is the new obsession of male & female folksters alike.
What exactly is a folkster, you might ask?
Duh: a folksy criollo hipster.
The proverbial early adopter & trendsetter.
Folksters are boutique-hotel owners, carpenters, artisans, poets, photographers.
They swear by sustainability and are obsessed with their carbon footprint.
They are strict locavores.
Their work ethic is, let’s put it this way, sporadic.
They only work when they need the money (which is not necessarily wrong).
They have lots of time to overshare their lifestyle and theorize about it on social media.
If they don’t actually move to Oaxaca to open a boutique hotel, they dream about it.
Oaxaca is the Mecca of the mescal movement.
The gravitational center of all things folkster.
Folksters have a permissive attitude to bodily hair.
Musicwise, folksters love Juana Molina, José González and Venezuelan-born, LA-raised Devendra Barnhart.
Che Guevara’s grandson, Canek Sánchez Guevara, who lived 8 years in Oaxaca, is the epitome of a folkster.
He openly and scaldingly criticises the Cuban regime, Fidel Castro & Nicolás Maduro.
Yet he has admitted on the record that he refuses to own a home or take a full-time job.
Of course, folksters are distant relatives of their Brooklyn hipster counterparts.
There are many similarities.
But they look down on them as quasi bourgeois, subway-riding, brand-obsessed sellouts.
A folkster worth his or her salt wouldn’t be caught dead with a bottle of Patrón on their table.
Mezcal is their poison of choice (no worm needed).
Needless to say, Mezcal is coming to America.
Big time.
Boutique brands are popping up like mushrooms down México’s way and training their cannons to a taquería, bar, gastropub, lounge, liquor store or mezcalería in your zip code.
Mezcal is the new Malbec.
Yours truly will make darn sure that happens soon.
Stay tuned for some kick-ass campaign coming to a mobile device near you.
You know what they say: what happens in México never stays in México.
Particularly in the booze territory.