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28 candidates form all-military ticket in Mexico City suburb

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MND Staff
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Campaign materials of the Fuerza Militar in Naucalpan.
Campaign materials of the Fuerza Militar in Naucalpan.

A group of former military personnel will run on an all-military ticket in elections this Sunday in Naucalpan, a densely-populated México state municipality that is part of the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City.

Twenty-eight retired military members, 16 of whom are women, will represent the Solidary Encounter Party (PES) in municipal, state and federal elections. The PES, formally known as the Social Encounter Party, is an ally of Mexico’s ruling Morena party.

Campaigning under the slogan Fuerza Militar, or Military Force, the candidates are seeking to win control of the Naucalpan government and to represent the municipality in the state and federal legislatures.

According to a report by the Associated Press (AP), the PES candidates are promising to bring order to Naucalpan, a city of 800,000 people that borders the northwest of Mexico City.

The presentation of an all-military ticket to voters could be regarded as a litmus test to gauge support for candidates who once served in the military. A recent national survey found that four in 10 Mexicans wouldn’t mind having a government led by the armed forces, suggesting that a significant number of people would be prepared to vote for current or former military men and women.

According to the Naucalpan military candidates, their decision to run on a joint ticket is not a political endeavor but rather an “apolitical” project that seeks to respond to security and corruption problems in the municipality. Candidates who spoke to AP said they proposed their joint ticket to several parties before reaching a deal with the PES, a socially-conservative minor party which polls indicate has lost support and could face political annihilation this Sunday.

The candidates said that if elected they will bring their military experience to their new jobs in areas such as management, order and hierarchy. They said that if they are successful in Naucalpan, all-military tickets could be formed in other parts of Mexico, a country in which the military already has enormous power thanks to President López Obrador’s delegation of a wide range of tasks to the armed forces.

“We could start as a base in Naucalpan, where we are going to seek peace and social justice to later spread it at a national level,” said Reyes Robles, a retired army general hoping to win a seat in federal Congress.

Robles, who with 45 years experience in the army is the highest-ranking member of the military ticket, rejected the suggestion that politics in Mexico are being militarized, despite the president relying on the armed forces for public security, infrastructure construction and a range of other non-traditional tasks.

Referring to his PES colleagues, the ex-general said that each candidate in Naucalpan is exercising a constitutional right to seek elected office that all citizens enjoy.

“Our country does not militarize,” Robles said. “Simply, our governments, when politics fail, they lean on the armed forces for the organization and the capacity to respond to the problems we’re facing.”

Retired Captain Oscar E. Hernández Mandujano, who is also seeking a seat in Congress, noted that members of the armed forces often retire early and need to find other pursuits in life. He compared exiting the military to graduating from a university, asserting that people who have served in the armed forces are equipped with military values that can be used in the outside world.

The Naucalpan PES candidates, if successful, will not be the first retired military personnel to hold elected office. Retired soldiers and marines have held congressional seats for various parties for over a decade, AP said, adding that the military sees their election in a positive light.

But the military hasn’t endorsed or sought to promote the PES ticket in Naucalpan, according to military expert Juan Ibarrola.

“[Current] military personnel don’t like to get involved in politics,” he said. “It’s not in their interest and they don’t need it” because they already have enough power, he told AP.

Source: AP (en) 

Mexico turns to private sector to develop lithium mining

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MND Staff
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lithium mine Chile
Separation ponds at a lithium mine in Chile's Atacama Desert. Open Commons

The ruling Morena party is no longer seeking to nationalize lithium mining and instead will encourage private investors to help develop Mexico’s potential to produce the sought-after, ultralight metal.

Mexico has large potential reserves of lithium, which is used in a range of batteries, including those that power electric vehicles, but most of it is in clay deposits that are technically difficult and expensive to mine.

Morena Senator Alejandro Armenta, head of the Senate’s finance committee and a close ally of President López Obrador, said late last year that the government could establish a state-run lithium monopoly. But in an interview with the news agency Reuters this week, he said he will author a bill promoting a regulated market for lithium mining.

“We’re convinced that we need private investment, and we’re allies of domestic investors and also foreign investors who respect us,” Armenta said.

The lawmaker told Reuters that his new stance was the result of having studied regulatory frameworks for lithium in other countries.

Senator Alejandro Armenta.
Senator Alejandro Armenta.

A market-friendly lithium bill will be taken to Congress at the start of the new sitting period in September, he said, when the makeup of the lower house will have changed as the result of elections this Sunday.

López Obrador, who is pushing to increase the state’s control of the oil and electricity markets after the previous government opened them up to private and foreign companies, said in March that his administration was looking at the possibility of taking a larger stake in the nascent lithium sector.

But Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier said in a radio interview last month that the government was considering a public-private partnership, suggesting that the state might seek to secure a 51% stake in the sector, which is centered on the northern state of Sonora.

Armenta told Reuters that he supports such an arrangement.

The news agency noted that large oil companies have mostly been unwilling to engage in joint ventures with Pemex if the state oil company is responsible for operations.

“It was unclear if lithium investors would react similarly,” Reuters said.

It also said that developing Mexico’s lithium potential could help diversify sources for the metal, for which there is growing demand as automakers such as General Motors and Ford make plans to manufacture new electric vehicles later this decade. Lithium production is currently concentrated in a small number of countries led by Chile and Australia.

Mining lithium in Mexico, however, poses significant challenges. Reuters said that about three-quarters of global production comes from lithium-rich saline brines, while the remainder is extracted via rock mining.

However, in Mexico, most lithium deposits located to date are trapped in clay soils. Former federal environment minister Víctor Manuel Toledo asserted in late 2019 that lithium will be Mexico’s “new oil,” such is the vastness of its reserves.

But Fernando Alanís, former CEO of major silver miner Peñoles and president of the Mexican Chamber of Mines, doesn’t share his optimism.

“Unfortunately, Mexico’s potential doesn’t really exist because there isn’t a commercial process to remove lithium from clays,” he said.

However, there are several lithium projects under development, Reuters noted. Lithium Americas Corp, which has a project in Nevada, said it is confident it will be able to extract the metal using a process that involves acid leaching.

Construction workers clearing road in preparation for construction of Bacanora Lithium's planned mine in Sonora.
Construction workers clearing a road in preparation for construction of Bacanora Lithium’s planned mine in Sonora.

Three years ago, Bacanora Lithium, which has four concessions in Sonora, predicted output of 17,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate by 2020. However, the firm — which hasn’t revealed how it intends to extract lithium — failed to begin production. It is now forecasting that it will commence mining in 2023 and eventually increase production to 35,000 tonnes annually. If it achieves that target, Mexico would be catapulted to “major producer status,” Reuters said.

Such a quantity would have accounted for 43% of last year’s global production, which was 82,000 tonnes, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Whether Mexico will become a major lithium producer and reap the economic rewards remains uncertain. But the potential for a windfall appears high, and the government — while willing to partner with private companies in order to tap their expertise — appears determined to take the lion’s share of the profits.

Source: Reuters (en) 

Student protest escalates in Chiapas after police attempt to clear blockade

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MND Staff
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An electoral institute office burns in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
An electoral institute office burns in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Student protests in Chiapas turned violent Monday as protesters threw stones and molotov cocktails as they fought security forces, injuring a state police officer with a missile to the face, and setting alight an office of the National Electoral Institute (INE). Riot police responded with tear gas.

Police were attempting to clear protesters — Mactumatzá teacher training college students — from the Tuxtla Gutiérrez-San Fernando highway.

Sources from the Ministry of Security reported that the clashes began when the students tried to enter a mechanical workshop belonging to the ministry, throwing explosives.

Earlier in the day, protesters set fire to the INE office in the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez and vandalized five INE vehicles at another office.

The ministry reported that the police recovered 11 commercial transport vehicles, a 20,000 liter fuel tank owned by Pemex and a pickup truck belonging to the Federal Electricity Commission, all of which had been commandeered on Friday and Saturday.

The INE delegate for Chiapas, Arturo de León Loredo, said a criminal complaint would be filed with the federal Attorney General’s Office and called the attack “a regrettable act … in a society governed by the rule of law.” He added, however, that human life had not been put at risk by the attacks on INE facilities.

Protests began last week in reaction to the arrest of trainee teachers on May 18 during a blockade on the Tuxtla Gutiérrez-San Cristóbal de las Casas toll road. Demanding in-person enrollment exams at their college, 19 male and 74 female teachers in training were arrested and taken to prison, accused of rioting, gang activity and robbery with violence.

The female students were released on a conditional basis, and the male students await trial in prison.

Sources: El Universal (sp), La Jornada (sp)

Let’s hear it for Mexico’s renaissance in community muralism

By
Sarah DeVries
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Rogelio Santos mural
Community murals in San Quintín, Baja California, painted by professionals with the participation of residents. Rogelio Santos

I met my new Aunt Georgeanne for the first time as a young teenager.

I think it was before she married my Uncle Jerry, but it’s hard to say now that so many years have passed. In addition to being a super cool and kind lady, I found out on the day that I met her that she was an artist like her new sister-in-law, my grandmother.

When I walked into her house for the first time, I saw the biggest canvases I had ever seen: they were as gigantic as the entire high-ceilinged walls and filled with complexity, dreamlike colorscapes with hints of recognizable scenes.

Before going into that house, it had never occurred to me that it was possible to paint things that were so … big.

Waco, Texas, in the 1980s and 1990s mostly had graffiti on walls, if anything at all, and murals were a thing I don’t remember discovering until I was an older teen living in Fort Worth. The place that really showed me what was possible when it came to “giant” art, of course, was Mexico.

In my hometown of Xalapa, there are several murals around the city, and I love them all … even the ones that seem to have been slapped up without much planning beforehand.

Art is art, and paint is an especially good way to really create a dramatic difference in pretty much any space. You don’t necessarily need to be talented to use it, and if you wind up creating something that you decide in the end looks stupid, you can always paint over it again. Is there any better metaphor for fresh starts?

So, no political or pandemic talk today. Today, I shall sing the praises of paint specifically, and good intentional design and planning in general.

Sifting for ideas through all the devastating news of the week in the paper, I was inspired by Leigh Thelmadatter’s articles (also here) on how murals are spreading throughout Mexico, as well as Robyn Huang’s piece on some of the giant murals popping up. Now that’s a contagion and cultural habit that I can get excited about!

From professionals to troops of amateurs, murals are blooming all over the place. I can’t think of a better way to spread around hope, community and beauty.

And when the people within communities participate in those projects themselves, the kind of ownership and sense of belonging that it gives them is not something you can put a price on. If we could expand this tendency to include municipal help with things like repairing streets, installing solar streetlights, etc … now that would really be something!

Because the way our communities look matters. It gives us pride and hope and inspires us to go above and beyond in the same types of ways; it reminds us of our own potential for transformation.

This is something that I know to be true on both the micro and macro levels.

I discovered it as a teenager upon seeing the difference that it made for my own family to have a clean, pleasant environment to live in (growing up, my house was usually close to hoarders-level messy, with predictable correlations especially to the adults’ sense of hopelessness).

As I got older, I came to understand my grandmother’s enthusiasm for keeping things clean on a level that had seemed obsessive to me, as well as her desire to create art. Like my own, her talent for creating things with paint wasn’t innate but, rather, born of a desire to make things beautiful for all who spent time in the space.

Order and art give me a sense of peace that I’ve struggled to find through other means, and it will always be my go-to technique to restore a sense of light and hope to even the most hopeless places.

I believe in this power so strongly, in fact, that I spend much of my time creating these spaces for myself and for others with my own fledgling business, using everything from safety evaluations to organization to (of course) mural painting. They say you should “niche down,” but I just can’t force myself to choose — I love it all!

Art and organization don’t heal everything, I know, but it makes such a bigger difference than we think it does. It inspires us, comforts us, makes us feel listened to and helps us express ourselves at a deeper, almost magical level.

And public art is something that belongs to everyone in a society in which the “finer things” are increasingly enjoyed in private, for a fee. What better way to bring people into the fold than giving them a piece of the beauty that’s for all of us?

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com and her Patreon page.

NGO denounces illegal fishing in 7 protected areas

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MND Staff
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The protected areas where illegal fishing has taken place.
The protected areas where illegal fishing has taken place. oceana

Illegal fishing in seven protected areas is putting endangered species at risk, a United States NGO has revealed.

A study by Oceana shows that at least 236 Mexican vessels have encroached into protected marine areas and fishing refuge zones since 2012, imperiling species of tortoise, shark, fish and other sea life, and that 10% of all vessels registered since that year could have engaged in violations.

Banning commercial fishing in certain areas allows species to reproduce and develop, before migrating to areas where fishing is allowed.

The report reveals that the worst affected area is Scorpion Reef off Yucatán, where 106 vessels were recorded in a place where no type of fishing is allowed. The reef is the largest coral structure in the southern Gulf of Mexico, home to four endangered species of turtle, 136 species of fish and 24 species of shark.

Sixty vessels were detected in the Veracruz Reef System National Park, and 47 in the Mary Islands Biosphere Reserve, off Nayarit.

Baja California Sur has seen illegal fishing at Punta Coyo, Guadalupe Island, in the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, at the Revillagigedo National Parks and and in deep Pacific waters.

Oceana used a platform called Global Fishing Watch (GFW) to conduct its research; it’s a free mapping platform it developed with Google which shows the activities of more than 70,000 fishing vessels around the world.

The irector of Oceana, Renata Terrazas, urged authorities to use the GFW tool. “We invite Conapesca [the National Commission of Aquaculture and Fisheries] to use this tool that facilitates the work of all the authorities involved in the surveillance of our seas,” she said.

Mariana Aziz, campaign director at Oceana, said transparency was key to protecting endangered species. “Knowing what is happening at sea is fundamental to protect its biodiversity. One of the main threats is illegal fishing. To combat it we need to make fishing activity more transparent, and put that information to the institutions that should be doing patrol operations, like the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas,” she said.

Mexico News Daily

AMLO insists there’s ‘peace and tranquility’ as election violence worst in history

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MND Staff
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Funeral for Alma Barragan Moroleón, Guanajuato
Funeral services for Alma Barragan, candidate for mayor in Moroleón, Guanajuato, who was killed at a campaign event on May 25.

Mexico is amidst its most violent electoral season on record, but President López Obrador sees things differently, declaring on Wednesday that there is “peace and tranquility” in the entire country.

The risk analysis firm Etellekt, which tracks election campaign violence, reported that there were 782 acts of aggression against politicians and candidates between September 7, 2020 and May 30, a 1% increase compared to the 2017–18 electoral season, when a total of 774 such incidents were recorded.

Eighty-nine politicians, including 35 candidates, were murdered in 22 states in the nine-month period, a 41% decline compared to 2017-18. Still, this electoral season has been the second deadliest since 2000. Fourteen women were among the slain politicians and candidates, while 11 political collaborators and 35 family members of political figures were also killed.

Despite electoral violence exceeding the record set three years ago, López Obrador asserted Wednesday that “the country is at peace.”

Speaking at his regular news conference, the president said there is no risk that insecurity will destabilize municipal, state and federal elections this Sunday.

President Lopez Obrador
President López Obrador told reporters Wednesday that political violence doesn’t exist any longer in Mexico.

“There is governability, there are no risks of instability. We’re fighting the scourge of violence every day and peace and tranquility can be spoken about throughout the country,” López Obrador said.

He claimed that his political adversaries are exaggerating the extent to which politically motivated violence is occurring before going so far as to say that it doesn’t even exist in Mexico.

“… In Mexico, there isn’t political violence. We have achieved this together,” López Obrador said. “As much as they want to exaggerate [the violence], it doesn’t match the reality. As the song of [Cuban singer-songwriter] Pablo [Milanés] says: we don’t live in a perfect society, but there is peace and tranquility in the country.”

Etellekt’s latest political violence report – and 2021 homicide statistics – paint a very different picture.

The 782 acts of politically motivated aggression — among which were threats, homicides, attempted murders, assaults and kidnappings — occurred in 460 municipalities across all 32 states, the report said. The number of victims of those 782 acts was 737.

Of those victims 260 were women.

Just over 70% of the victims, or 518, were political aspirants or officially nominated candidates. Of those, 75% were seeking municipal positions such as mayor or councilor.

Three quarters of the politicians or aspirants who were victims of aggression were opponents of the party in power in the state where the act of aggression against them occurred. Similarly, 75% of the politicians and candidates who were murdered were state government opponents.

“I think that this election will be remembered for that fact — an election in which the opposition was massacred,” Etellekt director Rubén Salazar told the newspaper El Financiero. “… It seems there is an attitude to get rid of everyone who is an opponent.”

The Etellekt report also shows that there was a sharp increase in acts of aggression in May — the final full month of the campaign period. The firm reported 476 incidents to the end of April, meaning that 306 acts of aggression — 39% of the total — occurred just last month.

“This increase is normal because it occurs when we’re in the most intense period of the campaigns,” Salazar said, adding that he hoped there would be no more political assassinations in the final days before voters go to the polls.

Veracruz stands out as having recorded more acts of political violence than any other state.

The Gulf coast state, currently governed by the Morena party’s Cuitláhuac García, led the country for both political homicides and total acts of aggression, with 16 of the former (including the murders of eight candidates) and 117 of the latter.

Oaxaca ranked second for political murders with 11, followed by Guerrero with eight, Guanajuato with seven and Baja California with six.

For total acts of aggression, Oaxaca ranked second with 68, followed by Puebla (58), México state (56), Michoacán and Guerrero (both 43). At the other end of the scale, only two acts of aggression have been reported in each of Durango and Baja California Sur, while Nayarit, Aguascalientes and Coahuila have recorded three, four and five, respectively.

Of the 89 politicians and candidates killed, 39 were affiliated with the Va por México coalition, which is made up of the National Action Party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Revolution Party. Etellekt said that 25 murder victims were members of the coalition led by Mexico’s ruling party Morena, whose allies are the Labor Party and the Green Party. The other 25 victims were affiliated with other parties or were independents.

Etellekt also reported that 99 public servants who didn’t belong to a political party or have political aspirations were murdered during the election period.

“It’s very probable that several of these 99 deceased people had some kind of electoral function, but they weren’t [party] members. It’s an important piece of information because it warns of the vulnerability of these public servants during the electoral process,” Salazar told El Financiero.

Ruben Salinas Orozco mayor Playa Vicente
Scared off: a month after becoming the PAN mayoral candidate in Playa Vicente, Veracruz, Ruben Salinas quit in May, citing electoral violence. Veracruz had the highest number of politically motivated acts of aggression this election cycle.

Etellekt said the 99 officials worked in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of all three levels of government.

Counting the slain politicians, candidates, political collaborators, family members and public servants, a total of 234 people were killed during the current electoral season. There have also been more than 20,000 homicides since the electoral period began.

Such statistics make debunking López Obrador’s claim of “peace and tranquility” in the whole country an elementary exercise. To disprove the president, one could also point to violence-plagued parts of the country where political campaigning has been extremely difficult if not impossible, such as Aguililla, Michoacán, and the broader Tierra Caliente region.

That’s exactly what Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, did in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning.

“’Peace and tranquility can be spoken about’ in Mexico, López Obrador says in his morning press conference. We found something different in our report about elections and violence in Tierra Caliente,” he wrote. “As a local political consultant told us: ‘You can’t govern without la maña [craftiness or guile].”

Mexico News Daily

Huge sinkhole in Puebla field is over 100 meters across, threatens house

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MND Staff
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Sinkhole in Puebla
An aerial view of the sinkhole in Puebla. The white construction is the Sánchez Xalamihua family's home.

A sinkhole filled with bubbling water that first appeared in a Puebla field on Saturday has grown rapidly and is threatening to swallow a family’s home.

The Sánchez Xalamihua family heard a loud crash on Saturday night and initially thought it was a clap of thunder. But the noise was in fact caused by the collapse of ground in a field that adjoins their home in Santa María Zacatepec, a community about 20 kilometers northwest of Puebla city.

The sinkhole, which was initially about 10 meters wide, grew to 30 meters across on Sunday and reached a diameter of 60 meters on Monday, according to authorities. It continued to expand on Tuesday as large chunks of earth broke away from its rim and now reaches more than 100 meters across, according to a report by Uno TV.

The sinkhole’s rapid growth has brought its edge dangerously close to the family’s home. Heriberto Sanchez, originally from Veracruz, told reporters that the house could fall into the 20-meter-deep chasm and they will be left without a home.

“We have nothing. We’re not from here. We have no relatives. We’re alone.”

According to authorities and scientists, among the possible causes for the sinkhole’s sudden appearance are a geological fault or variations in the soil’s water content. Some locals believe that it’s related to the overexploitation of groundwater reserves.

Magdalena Xalamihua said that her family noticed a sulfur smell three days before the sinkhole appeared.

State and federal authorities were dispatched to conduct geological studies and the area surrounding the sinkhole was cordoned off by municipal police.

A video posted to social media showed two men approaching the sinkhole just before it abruptly widened, forcing them to quickly retreat to safety. Locals have flocked to the site to look at the unusual phenomenon — from a safe distance.

“It will grow until nature decides, when the water stops exerting pressure,” Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa said. “The important thing now is public safety.”

Any people adversely affected by the sinkhole will be compensated by authorities, Barbosa said.

Magdalena Xalamihua speaks to reporters.
Magdalena Xalamihua speaks to reporters.

Source: AFP (en), UNO TV (sp) 

Lawmaker calls for end to censor bars in photos of criminal suspects

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MND Staff
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Two criminal suspects with censor bars and no surname.
Two suspects with censor bars and no surnames.

A Morena party lawmaker has called for an end to using censor bars in photos of criminal suspects, a practice intended to obscure their faces.

Guerrero Deputy Coyolxauhqui Soria Morales proposed an amendment to the criminal procedures code which would prohibit photos of suspects being distorted when they are given to the media.

Mexican law does not explicitly require the media to use censor bars. However, it does defend a suspect’s right not to be presented to the public as guilty, and not to be exposed in the media, hence the practice has become customary.

(Another measure designed to protect suspects is the use of the letter “N” instead of the person’s surname.)

Morales argued that anonymizing suspects is tantamount to putting their rights above those of victims. “Higher priority has been given to the alleged perpetrator, putting the victim second … negating the legal equality of both parties and overprotecting the accused …” she said.

Morales added that obscuring the identity of the accused is a barrier to securing a prosecution. “… the face of the detained defendants must be revealed to provide legal certainty and viability, in order to carry out physical identification by the victims,” she said.

Anticipating an objection, the deputy asserted that the principle of presumption of innocence does not afford suspects anonymity. “The presumption of innocence is not affected by the fact that their faces are covered or distorted, or that a bar is placed on their eyes. Their integrity is not protected by that measure, but with respect for their human rights as criminal suspects,” she said.

The proposed modification to article 113 of the National Code of Criminal Procedures reads: “When the alleged perpetrators are arrested, at the point they are presented to the media, it is forbidden to cover the face or distort the image or put a bar over the eyes of the accused, with the exception of minors.”

Source: Infobae (sp)

US has given $591mn to Mexican NGOs in the past three years

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MND Staff
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Mexico Evalua
Mexico Evalua, a Mexican organization that benefitted from the National Endowment for Democracy, at a 2018 panel on penal system reform.

President López Obrador has been railing against the United States’ funding of what he says are political groups opposed to his administration, accusing the U.S. government of meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs.

Now, more details have emerged about the quantity of money the U.S. government has sent south of the border since AMLO, as the president is commonly known, took office in late 2018 and who has received it.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have provided approximately US $591.5 million to organizations operating in Mexico, according to documents reviewed by the newspaper Milenio.

That figure — made up of the amounts the two agencies sent to Mexico in 2019, 2020 and the first five months of this year — is more than double the entire 2021 budget of Mexico’s Interior Ministry, Milenio said.

The newspaper said that the USAID and NED money goes to projects led by Mexican organizations, projects led by United States organizations that are active in Mexico and to municipal, state and federal governments.

USAID in Mexico
USAID will provide $90 million in funding to municipal, state and federal governments in Mexico this year.

“It’s used to help strengthen civil society organizations, improve public initiatives like the National Anti-Corruption System, protect human rights, combat drug trafficking, look for missing people, eradicate violence against women, promote democratic ideals, support the media and promote the use of renewable energy sources, among other projects,” Milenio said.

Among the organizations that have received funding from USAID since AMLO assumed the presidency are the Mexican Institute of Human Rights and Democracy, the Institute for Security and Democracy, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness and the National Social Communication Center.

Freedom House, a United States-based NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights, is one example of an American organization that has received USAID funding for its work in Mexico. 

USAID has also provided funding for a range of government projects. This year, it will provide $90 million in funding to municipal, state and federal governments. That figure is set to increase in 2022.

The NED, an agency founded in 1983 to promote democracy abroad at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were Cold War foes, has provided funding to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), México Evalúa — a public policy think tank — the news website Animal Político and a range of other organizations, Milenio said. It has also provided funding to events such as Mexico City’s International Documentary Film Festival.

The United States’ funding of MCCI, which has exposed corruption in the current and previous federal governments, has particularly roiled AMLO. The federal government sent a diplomatic note to its U.S. counterpart in May to ask it to explain why it has provided funding to the group. The government has also asked the U.S. to stop funding opposition groups, but López Obrador said Monday that there has been no response to that request.

Last August, AMLO accused civil society organizations and Animal Político of using funding they received from the NED and private U.S. foundations to oppose the federal government’s Maya Train project. But the NGOs and the news site rejected the accusation.

López Obrador said Monday that his government would continue asking the United States to stop funding groups such as MCCI and the press freedom organization Article 19, which has also criticized him.

Source: Milenio (sp) 

Israel summons ambassador after Mexico votes for Palestinian resolution at UN

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MND Staff
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Israel-Hamas conflict in May.
Effects of the intense fighting as it was going on in May.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Mexican ambassador this week to explain Mexico’s vote in favor of a United Nations investigation into alleged violations of international humanitarian law during last month’s intense fighting in the Middle East.

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted last Thursday in favor of establishing an international commission of inquiry into violations during fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Mexico was one of 24 countries that voted in favor of an investigation. Nine countries opposed the move while 14 abstained.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet told the Human Rights Council’s special session that Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, which killed more than 250 Palestinians, might constitute war crimes. She also said that Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, violated international humanitarian law by firing rockets into Israel.

In light of Mexico’s vote in favor Israeli Foreign Ministry official Modi Ephraim told Mexican Ambassador Pablo Macedo that Israel expects that its good relations with countries such as Mexico “be reflected in the international arena as well.”

Mexico's ambassador to Israel Pablo Macedo.
Mexico’s ambassador to Israel Pablo Macedo.

According to the ministry, Ephraim also told the ambassador that Mexico should “stand by Israel’s side just as Israel has done for it.”

Mexico “should show understanding for the security challenges Israel faces and recognize its right and duty to protect its citizens, who found themselves under fire by 4,300 Hamas rockets,” Ephraim said.  

In addition, the official told Macedo that it was “unthinkable” that Mexico would “stand beside Israel’s enemies in a decision that does not contribute to peace and constitutes a reward for terrorism.” 

The Mexican government has not publicly commented on the meeting.   

The resolution supported by Mexico and 23 other countries of the 47-member Human Rights Council states that the investigation will also examine “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.”

Mexico may have also made waves with Israel in early May when Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry expressed “grave concern” on social media about the intense fighting going on at the time and called on all sides to “reject violence and provocation.” It also expressed its support for a two-state solution to conflict in the region.

Source: Haaretz (en), Milenio (sp) 

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