Soaring tortilla prices hit struggling Mexican households hard

Food price inflation, especially for tortillas, is straining household budgets in Mexico with the poor bearing the brunt because it eats up a bigger slice of their income.

Mexico City, Mexico – For 69-year-old Maria Eugenia Aguilera, her weekly shop has come with nasty sticker shocks over the last year. Prices have risen “suddenly”, she says, for basic staples like tortillas – the corn-based flatbread that is ubiquitous on dining tables across Mexico. The price hikes are so frequent that Aguilera, who lives on the periphery of Mexico City, no longer buys them at her local grocery store. She travels further afield to Centro de Abastos – the central food market that supplies much of the country, where she gets more bang for her peso.