The file from Banxico is not just a spreadsheet filled with numbers. It is a living record of how the Mexican peso has danced with the U.S. dollar for decades. Each row is tied to a date, a specific day in history when someone in Mexico might have been exchanging pesos for dollars, paying for imported goods, or calculating the cost of a trip abroad. By opening the document, what you are really seeing is a diary of exchange, a memory bank of the peso’s value stretching back to the 1950s.

The content may seem overwhelming at first glance because it includes different types of exchange rates. There is the “spot” rate, the number most useful for everyday transactions, showing how many pesos you need to buy a dollar at that moment. There is the FIX rate, a value set by Banxico that serves as the official reference for legal and tax purposes. There are also interbank rates, which capture the movements of big financial players as they trade dollars among themselves. Even the long historical series, beginning in 1954, gives us a sense of just how much the peso has changed over time.

For someone unfamiliar with economics, this file can be seen as a kind of time machine. Scroll through it and you can witness the peso’s story unfold across crises, recoveries, and calm periods. You might notice how stable the peso once was in the mid-twentieth century, holding steady for years at a time, and how volatility became more common in later decades. Looking at more recent entries, you can see the peso’s ups and downs in relation to global events, oil prices, and domestic politics.

USD/MXN Exchange Rate

This chart shows the historical peso–dollar exchange rate using Banxico data. You can zoom by typing a month and year below.