SMA Day by Day
By Carol Schmidt, Nov 17, 2006

Q: How do I get an INSEN/INAPAM senior discount card? It’s easy to find out all about the latest fiestas, gallery openings and charity benefits, but where do you ask about getting ingredients for a traditional US Thanksgiving dinner? Is there any hope of finding an inexpensive apartment? Where do you look for a comfortable sofa stuffed to US tastes?

These are the kinds of questions about daily living in San Miguel that this biweekly column will try to answer. Send your questions to 

smadaybyday@hotmail.com. 

The question I’m asked most frequently is: How do I get the Mexico senior citizen discount card?

A: These discount cards for any resident of Mexico over 60 were called INSEN in the past, although the name is being phased over to INAPAM. The San Miguel DIF office on San Antonio Abad near Insurgentes issues INAPAM cards but requires an FM2. The Dolores Hidalgo office issues the cards, still called INSEN cards there, to expats over 60 who have only an FM3 “rentista” visa. The hours are 10am to 1pm weekdays, but as usual, you never know for sure.

We use our INSEN card mainly for buses within Mexico. We checked the fare to Nuevo Laredo recently and it was around 520 pesos each way without the card and half-price with the card—only about US$50 round-trip a person! Note: bus drivers will usually allow only two discount fares per bus, so buy your tickets early. 

Mexican museums accept the cards, as do some restaurants and businesses, but you have to ask before paying. The existing Gigante will give you a 5 percent discount—we’ll see if the new SuperGigante will. Some pharmacies will discount medicines, although stores like Farmacia Guadalajara that already offer a substantial discount policy won’t.

To apply for a card, you need three identical photos of the “infantil” size. Any photography shop that takes passport photos will know what an “infantil” size is and charges about 25 pesos. 

You also need a certified copy of your birth certificate. You can order one online by doing a Google search for your state and “birth certificate copy.” It took us two weeks to get new birth certificate copies—somehow in 60+ years mine got lost.

Get two copies of the photo pages of your US passport and your FM3, and bring the originals as well. Be sure to have copies of something proving you are a Mexican resident, such as a utility bill in your name. Also bring the letter you get from the Immigration office with your completed FM3 renewal. We also brought a copy of the letter from our landlord that we turn in with our FM3 renewals, documenting that we live on his property, since our utilities are in our landlord’s name. We also knew to bring money for a donation to senior programs: 30 to 50 pesos.

To get to the office, drive into Dolores as you would go to the main square and church, on Guanajuato. Before reaching the Jardín, at a corner with “Joyería” written in white on a green awning on a peach building, turn left on Tamaulipas. The office is six blocks farther, at the corner of Avenida Sur and Tamaulipas.

On the left side of the street will be a green and orange building on the corner. On the right side of the street you can barely tell it is a park, but there is a basketball court behind a chain-link fence, and on the other side of the basketball court is the sign, Gente Grande.

Park on Tamaulipas and cut across the basketball court to that door. Inside, it looks like a hall possibly used for senior citizen events. Right now Tamauilipas is under construction the last two blocks before the park, so you should park wherever you can before you come to the bridge, and walk the remaining distance.

If you’re taking the bus from San Miguel to Dolores, it will cross Tamaulipas on Avenue Norte at Kike’s, just before Vicente’s Carnitas. Get off at Kike’s and cross the street. At the corner of Tamaulipas is a bust in a small park, and there is a big Pepsi sign on that corner. Walk the nine blocks on Tamaulipas to Avenida Sur and the park.

The young woman asked whether we still worked, whether we were on pensions and this was our first INSEN card or a replacement, and what name we wanted on the back of our cards as our emergency contact person.

She got a bit confused on US-style married names versus the Mexican way of identifying people by father’s surname and then mother’s maiden surname. We said to follow what was on our passports, not our birth certificates.

She told us the cards were good for our lifetimes, and to be sure to have the cards copied and both the originals and copies laminated. (A few papelerías in SMA make copies and laminations. We had ours done later at Office Depot.)

It felt so good to have our discount cards that we drove up the next one-way street going back to Avenida Norte and had carnitas tortas for 12 pesos at Vicente’s.


Carol Schmidt and her partner of 27 years, Norma Hair, have a website with forums called www.fallinginlovewithsanmiguel.com  and recently published Falling … in Love with San Miguel: Retiring to Mexico on Social Security, available on Amazon and in local shops.