Mexico’s Motorcycle Revolution

What Mexico’s motorcycle explosion reveals about inequality, aspiration, and the future of mobility.

If you stand long enough at any major intersection in Mexico City, you’d notice a big difference from that same place a couple of decades ago. The rhythm of the street is no longer set by cars, buses, or the metro rumbling below. It is set by the constant, restless hum of motorcycles weaving through the city’s arteries as if they were reclaiming space that had always belonged to them.

What looks like a simple shift in transportation is one of the most overlooked social transformations in contemporary Mexico. It is a story about stalled economic mobility, the rise of precarious work, the search for autonomy, and the quiet rebellion of millions of people who found in a motorcycle what the broader economy refused to deliver. And it raises a question that Mexico’s political class has barely begun to grapple with: what happens when a huge sector of the economy changes how it moves, and nobody in charge is prepared for it?