AMLO’s press conferences ‘instrument of misinformation:’ press freedom body

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March 23, 2021

The president fields reporters' questions at the daily press conference.

President López Obrador’s weekday press conferences constitute “a worrying instrument of misinformation,” according to a press freedom advocacy organization.

The president appears before reporters every weekday morning to respond to questions at a press briefing that sometimes lasts as long as three hours. He uses the mañanera, as his morning presser is colloquially known, to promote the government and deride his critics and political opponents, setting the daily news agenda in the process.

Reporters known to be friendly to the government are often given preferential treatment when it comes to the opportunity to query the president while those who ask critical questions run the risk of being branded as members of the “elitist” or “conservative” press.

In its 2020 annual report published Tuesday, Article 19 said that the content of López Obrador’s press conferences is little more than government propaganda.

“Over time, the mañanera has moved away from being a true space of information, transparency and accountability and become a space in which the agenda of the executive is … positioned [in a positive light] at any cost, even by sacrificing the truth about government performance,” said the report, entitled Distortion: Discourse against Reality.

“… We additionally note that it represents a worrying instrument of misinformation,” Article 19 added.

The organization also said that 2020 was the worst year ever for violence against media workers with a total of 692 acts of aggression, an increase of 13.6% compared to 2019. Article 19 partially attributed the rise to verbal attacks against the media by López Obrador and other federal officials.

Such attacks cause a “cascade effect” that leads to harassment, threats or worse, the organization said, noting that six journalists were killed last year and 17 have been murdered since López Obrador took office in late 2018.

Article 19 also criticized the government for not responding adequately to information requests made by members of the public. On 389 occasions last year, the government provided clearly incompetent responses to citizens’ questions, the group said.

“… This strategy to avoid compliance with its obligation shows that [access to government] information … is closed,” it said.

The federal government has also been criticized for its plan to dismantle the national transparency watchdog.

Six investigative journalists who spoke with the newspaper El Economista last month warned that incorporating the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information, an autonomous body, into a government ministry or department would make accessing public information more difficult and pose a threat to their profession.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Senator proposes ban on smoking in vehicles—and quickly drops it

By

Michelle Aguilar

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March 23, 2021

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Monreal will consult with constituents on his smoking ban.

A day made all the difference for Morena party Senator Ricardo Monreal, who on Monday proposed a ban on smoking in private vehicles — and a day later made an abrupt about-face, telling journalists that he had withdrawn the idea and planned to consult his constituents first.

“There are other priorities,” he told the newspaper Reforma Tuesday in an interview.

The proposal would have fined smokers who lit up inside a vehicle 14,000 pesos (US $675).

“Although the health of minors and pregnant women is also important, I am going to listen to the opinion of citizens before presenting the bill formally, as I do with controversial initiatives,” he said,

Monreal has a habit of coming up with such initiatives, which he then generally withdraws. In the past, he has made proposals for merging the regulatory bodies in the energy and telecommunications sectors, regulating social media networks, reducing bank commissions, and imposing tougher regulations on credit rating agencies.

When he proposed the idea on Monday, Monreal said he was seeking to protect minors, pregnant women, and senior citizens from exposure to second-hand smoke, adding that around 8 million people are killed each year worldwide from exposure to tobacco, and 1.2 million of them are killed by second-hand smoke.

“Passive intake of tobacco causes series cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses since the smoke from these products contains around 4,000 known chemicals, of which 250 are harmful, and more than 50 are considered carcinogens to human beings,” he said.

On Tuesday, Monreal told Reforma that despite his polarizing announcement, his plans had not yet actually translated into a concrete initiative. “We’re going to listen to citizens’ opinions,” he said. “At the moment, the priority is the attention to health and the proper dynamic of economic reactivation.”

Monreal’s controversial proposal came in the context of Mexico’s lawmakers considering 16 wide-ranging changes to the nation’s tobacco control laws, many of which seek to put new restrictions on the consumption, sale, packaging and advertising of tobacco products, as well as prohibitions on the use, import and export, sale and manufacturing of e-cigarettes and vaping products.

Among the changes being proposed is a ban on the latter in public spaces.

Proponents of the reforms point to, among other things, the high cost of Mexico’s tobacco use: according to the Pan American Health Organization, smoking-related illnesses costs the government 80 billion pesos a year (US $3.85 billion) and result in disabilities and early death for more than 65,000 persons annually.

Opponents, among which are several business associations, say the reforms would hurt small business owners and would cause a rise in black-market sales of cigarettes at cheaper prices, which would lead to more consumption by minors not subject to age verification. They also point to what they say is the irony of Mexico putting such restrictions on cigarettes when it has just legalized marijuana.

Source: Milenio (sp), Reforma (sp)

New drug cartel in Michoacán has its roots in illegal logging

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MND Staff

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March 23, 2021

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Site of a checkpoint installed by Los Correa — Site of a checkpoint installed by the Los Correa Cartel on a Michoacán highway last month.

Authorities in Michoacán have identified a new drug cartel with roots in illegal logging in the east of the state.

According to a report by the news agency EFE, the Michoacán government last month launched a new security operation supported by the army and National Guard to locate narco-camps and members of a criminal organization called the Los Correa Cartel. All-terrain armored vehicles and helicopters are supporting the operation led by Michoacán state police.

EFE, which obtained information from the Michoacán Security Ministry, said Los Correa has been involved in illegal logging in the state for two decades.

The organization is reportedly led by Daniel Correa Velázquez, known by the alias “El Tigre” (The Tiger). His family’s first foray into the criminal world, according to the EFE report, was illegal logging. In more recent times the cartel has allegedly moved into marijuana cultivation, the production of synthetic drugs, extortion, kidnapping and other criminal activities.

It is currently believed to have an alliance with the Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel that has operated in Michoacán for years. Both organizations are engaged in a conflict with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is seeking to expand its presence in the state.

Michoacán police and federal security forces have been pursuing Los Correa since at least September last year, making 310 arrests and seizing 81 stolen vehicles and 42 weapons in a six-month period to mid-March. The authorities have also destroyed 43,600 marijuana plants allegedly grown by Los Correa, EFE reported.

In addition, authorities located four narco-camps in forested areas of the municipalities of Zitácuaro and Hidalgo that were used by Los Correa hitmen.

In the latter municipality, state police and federal forces clashed gangsters hiding out at a narco-camp near the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. One cartel sicario was killed in the gunfight and a member of the National Guard was wounded. The authorities arrested three other cartel members and seized vehicles, weapons and 20 kilograms of marijuana.

An alleged chief hitman of the cartel known by the nickname “El Feo” (The Ugly One) was arrested in México state last Thursday on charges that he murdered a Michoacán police commander in late February and wounded another officer.

The Familia Michoacana is believed responsible for an ambush the same day that left 13 México state police officers dead.

Source: EFE (sp)

US farm groups object to growing number of Mexican trade barriers

By

MND Staff

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March 23, 2021

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US producers are unhappy with a campaign in Mexico that disparages US corn-based sweeteners.

President López Obrador has ruled out changing his administration’s agriculture policies after more than 20 United States agricultural groups wrote to the U.S. government to raise concerns about trade with Mexico.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and 26 other agricultural organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Monday that noted that “the food and agriculture trade relationship with Mexico has declined markedly.”

The organizations said the implementation last July of the USMCA, the new North American free trade agreement, has not reversed that trend and urged Vilsack and Tai to address “this important but quickly deteriorating trade relationship.”

The groups, among which are also the American Feed Industry Association, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Potato Council and the U.S. Grains Council, raised concerns about Mexico’s plan to stop importing genetically modified corn and phase out the use of glyphosate, a controversial herbicide.

They also voiced opposition to increasing obstacles to dairy trade, an organic export certification requirement, Mexico’s “state-sponsored campaign of disparagement of corn sweeteners from the U.S.” – which the government has described as “poison,” meat industry market access rules, food labeling requirements and a potato import ban that has mostly shut American potato farms out of the Mexican market.

In addition, the agricultural groups asserted that the Mexican government has created “significant uncertainty for agricultural biotechnology” by halting the review and approval of biotechnology applications since May 2018.

“As a result, Mexico has become a significant barrier to launching new biotechnology products within North America, potentially restricting U.S. farmer access to new technologies that will assist in addressing critical issues such as sustainability and climate change,” the letter said.

“We are eager to work with you to address challenges in the Mexico trade relationship, which is critical to U.S. farmers, ranchers, producers, and workers,” it concluded.

Dave Salmonsen, AFBF senior director of congressional relations, told the agricultural newspaper Capital Press that some issues, such as the potato import ban, have been going on for years while others are fairly recent.

“Things just aren’t getting addressed,” he said, adding that it seemed like a good time to address the issues again given that a new government is in office. Salmonsen said Mexico has been a good market for U.S. producers and noted that it’s the leading market for some commodities such as corn and dairy products.

“It’s been a growing market, and we want to keep it growing,” he said.

Speaking at his regular news conference on Tuesday, López Obrador said the government would not alter its agriculture policies in light of the concerns.

“We very much respect those who raise these issues, that’s their right, but we’re applying a policy to put an end to corruption and boost the countryside to achieve food self-sufficiency and not harm the health of Mexicans at the same time,” he said.

“There are agro-chemicals that harm the health of farmers, producers and consumers and we’re not going to allow our people to be poisoned,” López Obrador said.

“… We have to make sure that the consumption of food matches health recommendations; we’re not going to allow genetically modified corn and in the case of glyphosate we’re regulating its entry [into Mexico] because it’s proven that it causes harm – it’s a herbicide, a chemical and we have to look after people’s health.”

Probed as to whether the government could tweak aspects of its agricultural policies to appease U.S. farmers, the president responded:

“No, it’s the same policy – to try to produce in Mexico what we consume so that we don’t have to buy corn, beans and rice. We’ve reached an extreme of buying [from abroad] 85% of the rice we consume; every time we’re at the table with a plate of rice we think that unfortunately it wasn’t produced in Mexico yet before it was.”

“The productive activity in the countryside was abandoned [by past governments], now we’re supporting the producers, that’s why we have the guaranteed prices [for five agricultural products],” López Obrador added.

Source: Reforma (sp), Capital Press (en)

Ikea México to open new store April 8 in Mexico City

By

Michelle Aguilar

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March 23, 2021

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Ikea's new store is located in the Encuentro Oceanía shopping center near the airport.

After a delay in opening last fall due to Covid-19, Ikea is set to open its first store in Mexico. But you’ll have to make a reservation to go shopping.

The retail giant announced that doors will open at its three-story, 23,500-square-meter store on April 8 in the Encuentro Oceanía shopping center. But to maintain Covid-19 social distancing measures, the store is requiring that visitors go online to schedule a visit.

Until Mexico City’s color on the national coronavirus stoplight map changes, only 7,500 people will be allowed inside the store at a time, 30% of the store’s capacity. However, customers can order items online and pick them up in the store, officials said.

Customers wishing to enter the store will be able to make a reservation — through the webpage or its mobile app — starting April 1. Members of the Ikea Family club — a rewards club for customers — will be notified when they can make a reservation, Ikea México said.

Director Malcom Pruys said the store has been the most challenging to set up due to Covid-19. The store was originally supposed to open in October, but the coronavirus pandemic pushed that date back.

Among other issues the company has faced in opening, said Pruys, is lower-than-normal store inventory: Ikea stores normally carry 7,400 different articles for sale, but the Mexico store will start with only 5,300 because of logistics delays.

The company also faced logistics issues when it opened its online store in October. Demand was immediately so high that within days the company was running out of products and the site was warning customers that deliveries could be delayed as much as a month.

Like other Ikea stores, the Mexico City branch, located near the Mexico City airport, will include a restaurant with a Swedish menu. What is less usual is that it will have inventory that the company says is meant to help customers create more environmentally sustainable homes. The building itself is equipped with solar panels and a rainwater capturing system.

The store will also have a customer service area where visitors can meet with home interior design experts.

Ikea plans to open a 9,900-square-meter store in the city of Puebla in the Via San Ángel shopping center sometime in the first half of 2022.

Source: Expansión (sp)

‘Deeply in love with bad ideas:’ AMLO takes Mexico back to the future

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Jude Webber and Michael Stott

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March 23, 2021

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President López Obrador: rebuilding the pillars of the 1970s Institutional Revolutionary Party?

Guadalupe Cáceres stands in her living room and points at the vintage tiles on the floor. Her family has lived for 127 years on this plot of land in Campeche, a colonial-era town on the Yucatán Peninsula that still boasts ramparts erected after attacks by marauding Caribbean pirates.

Now, a $7.8-billion government rail project is set to rip through the middle of her single-story blue-and-white painted home.

One of President López Obrador’s signature projects, the Maya Train aims to boost tourism and growth in the country’s poor southeast. Along with an $8-billion oil refinery under construction in the neighbouring state of Tabasco, it symbolizes his conviction that state-funded oil and train developments in left-behind areas are the way forward.

The populist leader won a landslide victory in 2018 when Mexicans, sickened by worsening corruption, spiraling violence and an economy that never grew fast enough to bring prosperity to the poor, gave him a mandate for revolutionary change. He promised a “profound and radical” transformation comparable to independence from Spain, and a government that would sweep away what he called the “calamity” of the free-market policies of the past four decades. And he pledged that growth in gross domestic product would be turbocharged to 6% a year.

When he took power, arriving at his inauguration in a simple white Volkswagen and promising a no-frills administration, Mexicans knew that López Obrador, sometimes known by his initials AMLO, would be a very different leader from his near-regal predecessors. But one big question remained: would he govern as a pragmatic centrist, as he had done while mayor of Mexico City from 2000-2005? Or would he return to his radical roots as a social activist from the 1970s?

Train to nowhere?

Cáceres knows all about revolutionary change. In 1938, her grandfather donated land to president Lázaro Cárdenas to lay the railway track that runs outside the front door of her house, its peeling facade now daubed with graffiti reading: “Change the route of the Maya Train.”

That was the year when Cárdenas, one of López Obrador’s heroes, expropriated foreign oil companies to create national oil champion Pemex. “They sold us the idea of modernity and more than 80 years on, they’re selling us the same idea,” says Cáceres, 64, a mother of three who has mobilized local opposition to the planned route. “If the train passes here, they’ll evict us, but I was born here and hope to die here.”

The Maya Train is scheduled to operate in a 1,550-kilometer loop around the Yucatán Peninsula. Its investors include China Communications Construction Company, an infrastructure group that has been mired in controversy, and Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim. Work so far has consisted of ripping up old tracks, a powerful metaphor: López Obrador is tearing down the present to create a future inspired by the past.

“He’s like Rip Van Winkle,” says Enrique Krauze, a Mexican historian, referring to the fictional character who falls asleep for 20 years and reawakens to a vastly changed world. “He comes from the past and he is stuck in the past.”

López Obrador grew up in Tabasco as oil and industrialization were transforming Mexico. He cut his teeth politically in the 1970s in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the authoritarian colossus that monopolized power after the Mexican Revolution until the end of the 20th century and was dubbed the “perfect dictatorship” by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

At that time, the country was still basking in the glow of state-led economic development and social programs — a model which had powered the “Mexican miracle” including a decade and a half of nearly 7% annual growth. A colossal oil discovery in the late 1970s promised to keep the boom alive but fiscal mismanagement and soaring borrowing — mistakes López Obrador does not want to repeat — plunged the economy into disastrous debt and currency crises.

By the end of the 1980s, Mexico had embarked on a different path and started opening up to foreign trade and investment. In 1994 it joined the OECD and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and Canada, a move which spawned thousands of factories in the north and center of the country assembling everything from trucks to TVs.

Time has moved on for Mexico, but not for López Obrador: when he visited the high-tech central Bajío region in 2019, he chose not to go to a car factory powering the nation’s export-led economy but to a horse-drawn sugarcane mill. After taking power, he scrapped a partially-built new airport in the capital, put the presidential jet up for sale and shunned foreign travel.

“He has firmly oriented the Mexican economic ship toward the 20th century,” says Ernesto Revilla, head of Latin American economics at Citigroup and a former Mexican finance ministry official.

The diesel engines that will run on most of the Maya Train’s route are anachronistic in a world hurtling towards electric power, say critics. López Obrador has rammed through a law favouring state-owned fossil fuel generation over renewable energy that contrasts with the plans of President Joe Biden to make the U.S. — Mexico’s biggest trade partner — carbon-neutral by 2050. His oil refinery is being built at a time when global energy companies are competing to dump such assets amid excess supply.

The 67-year-old López Obrador “is perhaps the top exponent in Latin America of what I call ‘ideological necrophilia’ — a passionate attraction to ideas and ideologies which have been tried and tested, and failed, an infinite number of times in Mexico and Latin America,” says Moisés Naím, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He is deeply in love with bad ideas.”

Falling short, but not responsible

His landslide victory was a triumph for an obstinate politician from the provinces with a folksy, man of the people style who promised to champion ordinary Mexicans because he was one of them.

On his long road to the presidency — it was his third attempt at winning power — López Obrador boasted of having visited every town in Mexico. He has astutely milked that grassroots understanding of everyday concerns, promising no hikes in taxes, gasoline or electricity bills.

A master media performer, he instituted the mañanera, a daily morning news conference lasting up to three hours in which he sets the news agenda and excoriates critics as corrupt lackeys of the rich. Negative numbers are swatted away with the phrase “I have other data.”

“He strengthens his popularity with this bellicose narrative but that reduces the likelihood that his government and his proposals will have a happy ending because it stops the wealthy third of this country from participating in his project,” says Jorge Zepeda Patterson, founder of the news website Sinembargo.mx. “That’s a tragedy … it undermines his ability to build something.”

Despite criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the spell López Obrador has cast over Mexico is holding. Lubricated by handouts — especially pensions and grants for young people, the elderly and farmers — López Obrador’s approval ratings remain a healthy 64%, even as voters fault the government’s handling of the economy and crime. “He has fallen short in every area, even in fighting poverty and corruption,” says Lorena Becerra, a pollster. “And yet, there is this widespread notion that López Obrador is not responsible.”

“I voted for the Pejito,” says Debbie Rodríguez, 33, a moto-taxi driver and shopkeeper in the rural community of La Chiquita, Campeche state, using a popular nickname for the president inspired by a local fish. She no longer receives any state aid and complains that work is scarce, but is loath to blame him. “I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. He can’t change the country overnight.”

Supporters say he is to be applauded for trying a different tack. “I was a neoliberal. I worked with [Carlos] Salinas and [Ernesto] Zedillo,” says Patricia Armendáriz, a businesswoman close to López Obrador, referring to two of his 1990s predecessors. “But we failed … López Obrador is passionate about income distribution and fighting poverty and corruption, that’s why he has all my support.”

She adds: “I can’t tell you this is working yet, but I see things going in the right direction.”

Such high ratings are especially surprising given López Obrador’s disastrous handling of Covid-19. His laissez-faire approach has resulted in one of the worst human tolls of the pandemic worldwide. Official data showing Mexico approaching 200,000 deaths is widely considered to be three times under-reported and excess deaths last year were well above pandemic hotspots such as the U.K., the U.S. and Brazil, when adjusted for population size.

The pandemic has highlighted another of López Obrador’s quirks. Despite his leftist politics, the shopkeeper’s son is a fiscal conservative. With investors spooked by abrupt policy changes and the president’s penchant for taking decisions based on unlawful “people’s polls,” Latin America’s second-biggest economy was in recession even before Covid-19 struck. Yet almost uniquely in the developing world, López Obrador’s fiscal response to the pandemic was to tighten Mexico’s belt, saying Mexico could not afford more debt.

Even though the G20 nation already had an untapped International Monetary Fund (IMF) credit line and plenty of room to borrow more, the government approved a Covid-19 stimulus package only fractionally bigger than Uganda’s as a percentage of GDP.

The result has been catastrophic: the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America says poverty levels have leapt 9.1 percentage points to a near two-decade high of 50.6% and official Mexican data show four out of 10 workers do not earn enough to buy basic food. López Obrador is relying on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA, to keep investment and trade flowing. But the IMF believes it will take until 2026 for Mexico’s GDP, which contracted 8.5% last year, to return to pre-pandemic levels.

“Average growth of GDP in the six-year [presidential term] is going to be close to zero and in terms of GDP per capita, it’s going to be negative,” says Citigroup’s Revilla. “The saddest part is that [this government] will end up hurting and impoverishing those it purports to represent.”

Sidelining the opposition

López Obrador’s record elsewhere is no less dismal, say critics. He has failed to reduce homicides — murders last year were just 0.34% lower than their record level in 2019 — despite creating a new federal police force largely staffed and run by the military. At the same time, he has pressed the army, his chief ally, into the construction of state-run bank branches and parts of the Maya Train route — which once complete will belong to the army — as well as the conversion of a military airport into a civilian facility to replace the canceled Mexico City project.

In one recent nationwide poll, 49% thought he was doing badly on the economy and 54% disapproved of his progress on public security.

López Obrador had promised to combat Mexico’s murderous drug cartels with “hugs not bullets;” true to his word, he called off a police operation to arrest the son of Mexico’s most notorious cartel boss in the northern city of Culiacán after cartel bosses flooded the streets with gunmen, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed.

Indeed, when Mexico dropped an investigation into former defence minister Salvador Cienfuegos, after persuading the U.S. to return him following his arrest in Los Angeles on drug-trafficking charges, and then accused the Americans of making up evidence against him, “it looked as though foreign policy was being dictated by the cartels,” Naím says. Cienfuegos denies the charges.

López Obrador has also picked a fight with women’s groups by refusing to criticize the choice of Félix Salgado Macedonio, an alleged serial rapist, as his ruling Morena party’s candidate for a state governor race, despite rampant gender violence and some 11 femicides a day in Mexico. The president spent March 8, International Women’s Day, barricaded inside the presidential palace, protected from female protesters by 3-meter-high metal walls, while police blasted demonstrators with pepper spray.

But the president is already looking past controversy and Covid-19, promising life will be back to normal within months — just in time for midterm legislative elections on June 6, when he hopes to tighten his grip on the country. Opposition parties, still licking their wounds after being decimated in 2018 and demonized by the president ever since, are lagging 20 points behind the Morena party in the polls.

For many critics, López Obrador’s extreme centralization of power, cultivation of an electoral base dependent on his government’s handouts and refusal to tolerate dissent means just one thing: “It’s nothing to do with the left-right ideology we like to impose on leaders,” says Shannon O’Neil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “He is rebuilding those pillars of the 1970s PRI.”

With 500 seats in the lower house and 15 governorships up for grabs in June, “the midterms really matter,” she adds. López Obrador commands majorities in both houses of Congress; if he can maintain or extend those, “it will be very hard to hold back the installation of an authoritarian political system.”

In the end, his unlikely obsession with fiscal prudence, a throwback to past crises, might reduce the risk of Mexico going off the rails like Venezuela — the example most often cited of a wealthy Latin American country descending into chaos. But it could be a bumpy ride.

“AMLO isn’t taking us in the right direction,” says Cristopher Herrera Sarmiento, a vet in the town of Escárcega, whose family business lies in the path of the Maya Train. “For me, a train doesn’t spell development.”

Over 1 million small and medium sized businesses didn’t survive Covid

By

MND Staff

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March 23, 2021

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closed stores — The economic cost of the business closures is estimated at 500 billion pesos.

One in five micro, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) didn’t survive the coronavirus pandemic, according to the national statistics institute Inegi.

Just over a million SMEs closed permanently in 2020, a figure that accounts for about 21% of the approximately 4.9 million SMEs in the country at the start of last year.

However, that figure was partially offset by the opening of almost 620,000 SMEs over the past 1 1/2 years, Inegi said.

José Luis de la Cruz, director of the Institute for Industrial Development and Economic Growth, a think tank, told the newspaper Milenio that SMEs bore the brunt of the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

“Micro, small and medium-sized businesses were the worst hit without a doubt. Small businesses are more easily affected by crises,” he said, adding that greater government support could have helped to reduce the number of closures.

José Manuel López Campos, president of the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco), estimated that the revenue of businesses in those sectors between the start of 2020 and now would have been 500 billion pesos (US $24.2 billion) higher had the pandemic not occurred.

He said that about 3 million jobs were lost in the formal and informal sectors last year and only two-thirds have since been recovered. Many people who regained their jobs are now earning less, López said, adding that lower salaries have a negative impact on domestic consumption and economic growth.

The Concanaco chief said that support for SMEs as the economy recovers from last year’s sharp downturn is important because they are the nation’s largest employers.

However, the government doesn’t have the money to roll out ambitious, large-scale support, de la Cruz said.

The government provided 25,000-peso (US $1,200) loans to small businesses affected by the pandemic but the support was widely seen as inadequate amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. President López Obrador, a fiscal conservative who has made “republican austerity” a hallmark of his administration, refused to increase public debt to support the economy amid the recession.

The president has remained upbeat about a quick recovery, and his administration is forecasting 4.6% growth in 2021. Deputy Finance Minister Gabriel Yorio said recently that the growth forecast would be revised upwards to over 5% but even if that level of expansion is achieved, the economy will still be smaller in 2021 than it was pre-pandemic in 2019.

Finance Minister Arturo Herrera said last October that a full recovery of the economy will occur once a coronavirus vaccine becomes available and widespread inoculation has occurred. Mexico’s vaccination has now been underway for almost three months but with only 4% of the population having received a shot, widespread inoculation is still a very long way off.

Source: Milenio (sp)

‘Covid can get screwed:’ having fun is the priority for spring break visitors

By

MND Staff

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March 23, 2021

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For spring breakers it's party time in Tulum.

Although the coronavirus remains a very real threat to people’s health, the pandemic is no longer a barrier to tourism in Quintana Roo, where thousands of spring break visitors – many of whom appear to have few concerns about the risk of infection – have flocked to enjoy the sun, sand and carefree party atmosphere in destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

And even more foreign and domestic visitors are expected to descend on the Caribbean coast state in the coming days as tourism-oriented businesses starved of revenue in 2020 gear up for a bumper Easter vacation period.

The Riviera Maya region, home to the state’s premier destinations, is open to tourism “without restrictions,” the newspaper Milenio reported, adding that it appears that the coronavirus – which has claimed almost 200,000 lives in Mexico including more than 2,000 in Quintana Roo – has magically disappeared.

In the beach destinations of Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Isla Mujeres and Mahahual, wild spring break partying started a week ago, Milenio reported, noting that there are large numbers of visitors from the United States, Canada, France and Italy as well as several Latin American countries including Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.

The streets, bars, nightclubs, hotels and public transit are full of tourists and expected to fill up even more over Easter, Milenio said. The concept of social distancing has largely been forgotten and many of the mainly young tourists eschew face masks as they cavort in close proximity to friends and strangers alike.

bar in tulum — More than 100,000 tourists are expected this spring in Quintana Roo.

Kissing, hugging and the sharing of drinks and cigarettes is commonplace while basic health measures such as temperature checks and the application of antibacterial gel have gone by the wayside at many venues, such is the eagerness to usher tourists in.

Milenio reported that there is little fear of infection among spring breakers, who are far more focused on having a good time while seemingly forgetting the very existence of the pandemic in the process.

“Covid can get screwed! [The pandemic] hasn’t come to an end but neither have we so let’s have fun,” a group of young vacationers from Mexico City told the newspaper as they strolled down 5th Avenue, Playa del Carmen’s main tourist strip, while passing around a bottle of tequila.

An older American tourist said that he had no fear being out and about among large crowds of people in Playa because he’s already been vaccinated. “I’ve had both doses so let’s celebrate,” he said.

While hundreds of communities in Mexico shut themselves off from outsiders to prevent the entry of the coronavirus, most residents of tourist destinations in Quintana Roo, where unemployment skyrocketed in 2020, welcome the influx of visitors – despite the risks that entails – because of the money they inject into the local economy.

The ease of entry into the state for international and domestic tourists flying into Cancún airport stands in stark contrast to the situation on Mexico’s southern border, which closed to nonessential traffic last week.

That decision, ostensibly taken to combat the pandemic, appears to be motivated more by the government’s desire to stem migration from Central America – and thus appease its counterpart in the United States.

Quintana Roo, which expects to receive more than 100,000 tourists this spring, is not the only state where tourism is recovering strongly even as authorities in the United States – the main source country for international visitors to Mexico – warn U.S. citizens not to travel here due to the high number of coronavirus cases.

Approximately 100,000 U.S. tourists are expected to vacation in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, in the coming weeks, the newspaper El Independiente reported, noting that the arrival of 60,000 Mexican visitors is also anticipated.

The insurance company Allianz recently analyzed more than 1.8 million flight itineraries of Americans taking short breaks during the spring and determined that the three most popular destinations were, in order, Cancún, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.

Although Mexico has suffered one of the worst pandemics in the world (it ranks third for total Covid-19 deaths behind only the United States and Brazil), measures to control the spread of the virus have been much less strict here than in many countries around the world.

In addition, the government has never closed the borders to foreigners arriving by air and no one is required to go into quarantine even if they arrive from countries where new, more contagious and potentially more dangerous strains of the coronavirus are circulating widely.

The lack of strict rules and restrictions has made Mexico an attractive destination for people seeking to “escape the pandemic,” even though the risk of infection here is likely just as high, or even higher, than in their home countries.

Health authorities have warned that Mexico could see a third wave of the coronavirus and urged people not to drop their guard over the Easter vacation period and not gather with family and friends in large numbers.

Whether the pandemic in Mexico, where new case numbers have been on the wane for almost two months after reaching a new peak in January, will worsen in the weeks after Easter remains to be seen. But if there is a Covid surge it will be unsurprising if infections in Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations drive it.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Independiente (sp)

It can be hard to find but good yogurt kicks all sorts of dishes up a notch

By

Janet Blaser

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March 22, 2021

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You'd probably never guess there's yogurt in these sweet, fluffy lemon meringue muffins.

One of the small frustrations about living in Mexico is the difficulty in finding unsweetened yogurt with actual live cultures.

I’m sure many of you know what I mean: even if the label says “natural,” it’s bound to contain some kind of sweetener and a host of thickeners. Or, worse, the label will exclaim “Sin Azucar!” but corn syrup (jarabe or edulcorante de maíz) is the second or third ingredient. Don’t even get me started about the lack of active cultures (Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus), which is the whole point of eating yogurt to begin with. (Those contain the probiotics everyone’s so keen on nowadays.)

What to do? Well, diligent label reading is a must if you’re buying yogurt. If you’re lucky (like we are in Mazatlán), there’s a dairy at your local farmers’ market that makes their own real, fresh yogurt. The best commercial yogurt I’ve found is from Flor de Alfalfa, an organic dairy in Querétero. When it’s available in the grocery store, I always buy two or three containers, depending on the expiration date, because it’s so fabulous. (They also make a variety of cheeses.) Usually, the farm is open for tours and there’s a restaurant on site too, but since the pandemic that’s all been stopped.

You can also make your own yogurt, which is easier than you’d think.

The trickiest part is maintaining a consistent temperature so that the cultures can grow; that can be accomplished by whisking warmed milk and starter (i.e., ¼ cup or so of yogurt), wrapping the container in a towel and setting it in the sun for 8–10 hours (think of a sunny window). Inside the microwave or oven with the light on works too. You can Google and find more specific directions. And if you have an Instant Pot (I’m a happy new owner!) it’s as simple as can be.

Good yogurt is a great creamy base for a mint sauce.

Wondering what Greek yogurt is? It’s just regular yogurt that’s been strained or hung to make it thicker. You can easily make that at home too.

Yogurt, salt and spices make an excellent marinade for all meats and is especially tenderizing for chicken. (See recipe below.) For optimal results, don’t leave any meat in a yogurt marinade for more than five hours. Especially with summer coming, the cooling, refreshing tang of yogurt is a welcome addition to smoothies, as a substitute for all or some of the mayonnaise in salads or dressings and to dollop on chili, soups, tacos or enchiladas.

Yogurt-Marinated Kebabs

Chicken thighs will yield more flavorful kebabs. The yogurt helps keep the chicken moist over high direct heat.

1 cup plain yogurt
¼ cup fresh lemon or lime juice
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. grated, peeled fresh ginger
1 Tbsp. salt
2-4 tsp. smoked or regular paprika
2 tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. black pepper
½ tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. cayenne
2 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1½ -inch cubes

Whisk together everything except chicken in a medium bowl. Place chicken in large resealable plastic bag, add marinade and seal, removing as much air as possible. Marinate in refrigerator for 4–5 hours.

Thread chicken tightly onto skewers. Discard marinade. On medium-high grill, cook over direct heat until well-browned on all sides and center of chicken registers 160–165 F on an instant-read thermometer, 3–4 minutes per side.

Transfer to platter; let rest 5 minutes, serve.

Minty Yogurt Sauce

Great with lamb, chicken or pork.

1 cup Greek yogurt
½ cup finely chopped mint leaves
2 tsp. minced fresh garlic
1 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
½ tsp. ground cumin
¼ tsp. cayenne
Salt and pepper

Whisk yogurt, mint, garlic, lime juice, cumin and cayenne in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Let sit 30 minutes to blend flavors.

These mango and feta appetizers are easy to make but hard to stop eating.

Chicken-Mango Tortilla Appetizers

1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken
¾ cup plain yogurt
1½ tsp. grated lime zest
2 Tbsp. lime juice
¼ tsp. salt
Dash black pepper
1 cup finely chopped peeled mango
1/3 cup finely chopped red onion
4 flour tortillas (8 inches)
½ cup crumbled feta or blue cheese
2 Tbsp. minced fresh cilantro

In small bowl, mix yogurt, lime zest and juice, salt and pepper. Add chicken, mango and onion.

Grill tortillas over medium heat 2-3 minutes or until puffed. Turn; top with chicken mixture and cheese.

Cook, covered, 2–3 minutes longer or until bottoms of tortillas are lightly browned.

Drizzle with yogurt mixture; sprinkle with cilantro. Cut each tortilla into 4 wedges.

Lemon Meringue Muffins

6 Tbsp. butter, softened
1 cup sugar, divided
2 eggs
½ cup plain yogurt
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
1-1/3 cups flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
2 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, cream butter and 2/3 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in yogurt, lemon juice, zest and vanilla.

In another bowl, whisk flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add to creamed mixture; stir just until moistened.

Fill lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake 17-19 minutes. Remove from oven. Increase oven setting to 400°.

In another small bowl, beat egg whites on medium speed until soft peaks form. Add remaining sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating on high after each addition until sugar is dissolved. Continue beating until stiff, glossy peaks form. Spread or pipe meringue onto muffins. Bake 6-8 minutes longer or until meringue is golden brown. Cool 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. — tasteofhome.com

Need a quick salad topper? This green dressing can be whipped up in no time.

Simple Green Dressing

½ cup plain yogurt
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 garlic clove, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
½ medium ripe avocado
3 green onions, chopped
2 Tbsp. minced fresh cilantro or parsley

Place ingredients in blender; process until smooth.

Janet Blaser is the author of the best-selling book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, featured on CNBC and MarketWatch. A retired journalist, she has lived in Mexico since 2006.

Kansas City Southern announces US $29bn merger with Canadian Pacific Railway

By

Gregory Meyer and James Fontanella-Khan

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March 22, 2021

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cp and KSC — Combined the two companies operate 20,000 miles of railway.

Car parts from Monterrey to Detroit. Propane from Alberta to Texas. Corn from Iowa to Mexico.

Canadian Pacific Railway’s proposed takeover of the Kansas City Southern railroad is a US $29-billion bet on smooth commerce between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico after the three countries replaced their contentious old trade pact with a new one.

The smallest of North America’s seven big freight railroads announced plans on Sunday to merge their companies to form a 20,000-mile network stretching across the continent, from the port of St John, New Brunswick, on Canada’s Atlantic coast to the Mexican port of Lázaro Cárdenas on the Pacific.

Executives pointed to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — a revamped version of the North American Free Trade Agreement championed by former U.S. president Donald Trump — as a rationale for the combination.

The USMCA pact came into force last July. The agreement brought to a close a tense period of tariffs and threats between the U.S. and its two neighbours. U.S. exports to and imports from Canada and Mexico were projected to increase under the deal, according to a 2019 analysis by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

The countries are now on course for a steady trade relationship for at least the next 16 years, said Patrick Ottensmeyer, Kansas City Southern’s chief executive.

“The USMCA agreement has created trade certainty and just a wonderful opportunity for North America to become an even more powerful trading bloc in the world,” he told the Financial Times.

Trains already cross North American borders but long hauls often require switching locomotives and crews between railroads. Calgary-based Canadian Pacific’s tracks currently end at the Kansas City, Missouri, rail yard it shares with Kansas City Southern, which runs across the Rio Grande to industrial cities and ports in Mexico.

Executives said the merger would create “single line” service for commodities such as grain from the U.S. Midwest and petroleum products from Canada that could reach the Gulf Coast and Mexico without interruption, as well for as intermodal trailer vans.

John Brooks, Canadian Pacific’s chief marketing officer, noted that Kansas City Southern served 16 Mexican car factories. “The new franchise will essentially tie the auto belts of Ontario, the Upper Midwest and Mexico,” Brooks said.

The deal comes as rail traffic rebounds from the early blow of the pandemic, with North American carloads up 2.8% year on year in the first 10 weeks of 2021, according to the Association of American Railroads.

The Canadian takeover of a U.S. company would require approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an intra-agency panel that can block deals on national security grounds, as well as competition authorities in Mexico and the U.S., executives said.

The U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which reviews whether mergers will benefit railroad customers and the public, was notified of the proposed merger at the weekend, a person close to the agency said.

Jennifer Hedrick, executive director of the National Industrial Transportation League, said the shipper group’s members had “outstanding relationships” with the two railroads and were optimistic about the venture.

But she added: “Any merger in this industry and on this scale will be viewed with healthy scepticism based on prior history and experience of rail mergers.”

Todd Tranausky, vice-president of rail and intermodal at FTR Transportation Intelligence, said the transaction was likely to be the first real test of enhanced merger rules that the Surface Transportation Board put in place in 2001. He said shippers could oppose the deal out of concerns that service would decline.

“There has never been a well-integrated rail merger and there has always been some level of disruption to the service levels that shippers have experienced moving their freight during the immediate aftermath of a successful rail merger,” Tranausky said.

The railroads’ executives downplayed concerns about competition, noting that their networks had no tracks in parallel. “As an end-to-end combination, we see this as very pro-competitive,” Ottensmeyer said.

Kansas City Southern rejected in September a buyout offer from a consortium led by Blackstone and Global Infrastructure Partners that valued its shares at $21 billion. The private equity groups were convinced that their offer had a better chance to win regulatory approval because they were not direct rivals of any existing player.

The consortium of investors is unlikely to propose a rival bid, said one person who closely follows the sector.

Canadian Pacific tried to acquire eastern U.S. railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern in recent years but both attempts were blocked partly over concerns that the deals would not win regulatory approval.

The combined companies would have a workforce of 20,000. Some initial redundancies will be followed by an increase in headcount between 2023 and 2025, said Nadeem Velani, Canadian Pacific’s chief financial officer.

“We expect volume growth, and as a result of that, we expect job growth,” said Keith Creel, Canadian Pacific’s chief executive.

The combined company, to be called Canadian Pacific Kansas City, would be able to increase annual revenue by $800 million, about 9% more than the companies’ combined revenues in 2020, Velani said.