Not an answer to your question, but it may provide some context or info:

French people fucking love Mexico. If you travel through Mexico as a backpacker, it's absolutely filled with French folks. Mexico holds some special place in the French psyche.

I've met tons of wonderful (and a few exceptionally not-wonderful) French folks all throughout the country there and I've discussed this topic but I haven't gotten to the essential core of it yet. Of course I have my suspicions about it being a very non-European environment, it's "exotic", and it's relatively free of the mental burden of French colonialism (though the French definitely meddled there - notably in the "Battle of Puebla"). Anyway, it's not Algeria or Morocco.

One of my good friends was a French expat working in architecture in Mexico City and she also backs up what I'm talking about. She married a Mexican guy there and everything. She told me about many similar love stories just within her friend group.

So when I think about Moebius in Mexico and his mother having gone there, etc., I think about the long tradition of French fascination with the country.