Funding a Mexican anticorruption organization is treason, López Obrador said.
The federal government sent a diplomatic note to its United States counterpart on Thursday to ask it to explain why it has provided funding to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), a civil society organization that has been critical of President López Obrador and his administration.
In “an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty,” the United States Embassy in Mexico has financed the anti-graft group since 2018 with funds supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference on Friday morning.
“We have a report that this group of [businessman and outspoken government critic] Claudio X. González has received about 50 million pesos [US $2.5 million] from 2018 until now, these are the invoices,” the president said as an invoice was projected onto a screen behind him.
González is the group’s founder and former president.
According to its website, USAID’s mission focuses on “strengthening and promoting human rights, access to justice, accountable and transparent governance, and an independent and politically active civil society across all our work.”
The funding by a foreign government of an “opposition group” that through applications for injunctions has “dedicated itself to obstructing all the public works that are being carried out” is “reprehensible,” López Obrador said, adding that his administration is asking the U.S. government to consider suspending its funding.
María Amparo Casar, president of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity with Claudio X. González, the organization’s founder.
“… Yesterday we presented a diplomatic note asking the United States government for an explanation about this case,” López Obrador said, explaining that the instructions for it to be drawn up were given by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
“The financing for [González’s] group from the United States government is an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty. That’s why we’re asking that they explain, because it’s a foreign government. Money can’t be given to political groups from another country, our constitution prohibits it. Money can’t be received from another country for political purposes, it’s treason,” he said.
“It’s interference, it’s interventionism and it promotes golpismo [a coup mentality],” López Obrador said.
“To define it conceptually, golpismo doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the use of weapons or the army. Golpismo is a movement that develops over time and can be completed by the army … but the conditions to carry out the coup are created with the support of foreign governments and the media,” he said.
Founded in 2015, MCCI was part of a collective that filed more than 100 injunction requests against López Obrador’s cancellation of the former government’s Mexico City airport project and the current government’s construction of the airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force base.
After the president raised his concerns, MCCI defended itself on Twitter.
“… We reiterate the absolute legality of our work [and] energetically reject the use of concepts such as interference, interventionism and golpismo, [insults] hurled from the National Palace to discredit our work,” it said.
“Our commitment with Mexican society and democracy is unwavering,” MCCI said, adding that the government attacks, “which have become a constant in official discourse,” must stop.
It was all smiles in 2012 when then vice president Joe Biden met with AMLO for the first time while the latter was running for president.
“Probably nowhere in the world do two countries as different as Mexico and the United States live side by side.” — Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors, 1985
It is difficult to imagine in the modern history of Mexico and the United States two presidents as dissimilar as Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joseph R. Biden. Their visions of their countries’ present and future could not be more different. This becomes crystal clear when examining their agendas and priorities.
Perhaps one of the few things these two men have in common is their political persistence: three times, both made presidential bids, and both were elected on their third try.
These two heads of state not only differ in substance but also in their ways. Throughout the three decades of his political life, Mr. López Obrador has been a polarizing figure, well-known for being both strident and divisive.
On the other hand, in 50 years of public service as a senator and as vice president to Barack Obama, Mr. Biden has proven to be a sensible and empathic politician, a master of compromise renowned for his soft skills.
Upon taking office in 2018, López Obrador soon informed Conacyt, responsible for many of Mexico’s advances in science in the last 50 years, to expect budget cuts.
Notwithstanding the different strengths and challenges facing Mexico and the U.S., there are substantive issues on which the two presidents differ, completely or in part, and which may largely define the sort of relationship that the two countries will have in the remaining four years of both presidents’ administrations.
Issues around immigration, drug trafficking, trade, the role of the private sector, their nations’ international responsibilities and the role of independent institutions, particularly those in a position to challenge government excesses — such as autonomous bodies, not-for-profit organizations and the media.
Divergences between the two presidents may be most starkly revealed by how they are addressing three prominent issues: the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, science and transparency and the environment and climate change.
Amid the worst pandemic humanity has suffered through in a century, the human lives lost and the impact on financial systems in both the United States and Mexico have been devastating. Of the more than 3.2 million deaths worldwide due to Covid-19, nearly 600,000 have been in the U.S. and nearly 218,000 in Mexico — although the López Obrador administration recently admitted that, as of last March, there were actually 321,000 deaths in Mexico. Some estimates put the total figure closer to a 600,000.
Clearly distancing himself from the incompetent and shameful way his predecessor handled the pandemic, Mr. Biden boosted coronavirus testing, promoted the use of face masks and made decisions based on scientific evidence. In Biden’s first 100 days, his administration delivered 220 million vaccine shots.
As a result, today, 70% of Americans 65 years and older have been vaccinated, over half of all adults have gotten at least one jab and anybody older than 16 can be vaccinated.
The U.S. government also provided financial support to states, municipalities, small businesses and families all over the country — in fact, 85% of American households have already received cash assistance, and small businesses have been offered loans to reopen and avoid losing employees.
In contrast, the situation in Mexico could not be more different, nor more tragic. From the beginning, the government downplayed the pandemic, denied or ignored the scientific evidence of its seriousness and failed to substantially augment the number of tests, while the use of face masks was disincentivized.
And the economic support to those in need and to small businesses suffering from the crisis has been appallingly small. As of May 3, only around 12 million people have been vaccinated (Mexico’s population is 126 million) and 13 million jabs of the vaccine had been delivered, counting both first and second doses.
Mr. Biden reasserted his commitment to listening to science and to ensuring that decisions on public policies dealing with health, environment, climate change, etc. are communicated to people by trusted experts. He further pledged to boost trust, transparency and accountability on government actions and proposed to nearly triple U.S. science spending in the 2022 federal budget, raising it from 0.7% of GDP to close to 2%.
In contrast, during his administration’s first two years, Mr. López Obrador has devoted a good deal of time and energy to discrediting both science and scientists. In 2020, his government and his Morena party, which has a majority in Congress, extinguished 109 trusts, including those for international cooperation on science and technology, technological innovation, natural disasters, climate change and scientific and environmental research for education.
Mexico’s 2021 budget to support science, technology and innovation amounts to the equivalent of US $5.1 billion (just 0.38% of Mexico’s GDP). Of those funds, $1.3 billion were allocated to the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), an institution established 50 years ago that is largely responsible for many of Mexico’s key scientific advances but now has lost the trust of many scientists and is languishing, isolated and politicized.
President López Obrador recently proposed the US adopt his troubled climate change program, Sembrando Vida, as an immigration solution.
On the environment, President Biden has ordered a pause on licensing to exploit oil and gas on public lands and established an office for environmental justice at the White House. He has also pledged to protect 30% of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030.
On April 22, at the Leaders Summit on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., Mr. Biden committed the U.S. to a reduction in greenhouse gases by at least 50% by 2030 — more than double the U.S. commitment in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Furthermore, Biden proposed to Congress a federal investment of $1.7 trillion for work on climate and environmental justice over the next 10 years and a package of $2 trillion for infrastructure that supports the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy together with the promise to foster thousands of new green jobs.
After two years of his administration, it has become clear that the environment is not a priority for President López Obrador. The main federal environmental agencies (for biodiversity, forest, water and natural protected areas, as well as the climate change institute and the attorney general for environmental protection) have been all but dismantled.
The meager funds allocated to these agencies in 2021 are clear evidence of a lack of interest in environmental and climate change issues.
For example, while the highly distrusted Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) federal program — which has the declared goal of reforesting 1 million hectares — was granted $1.4 billion, the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), the agency responsible for conserving biodiversity and environmental services on 91 million hectares of land and at sea across the country, received only $43.3 million, despite the fact that the bulk of Mexico’s amazing biodiversity occurs in areas that Conanp must oversee and protect.
Mr. López Obrador has favored his mammoth pet projects, all of which have been criticized by independent scientists for the huge environmental and social damages they could cause. These include the so-called Maya Train, which received $1.5 billion from the 2021 federal budget, and the building of the Dos Bocas oil refinery located in the president’s home state of Tabasco, to which $2.25 billion was allocated.
In fact, 11.6% of Mexico’s total budget passed by Congress in 2021 will go to fossil fuel production, and only 1.1% will be invested in climate change mitigation and adaptation — and 75% of that will go to natural gas transport, an activity that generates the same gases that warm the planet.
If nothing changes, Mexico will certainly miss its commitments as part of the Paris Agreement, which include reducing greenhouse gases by 22% and black carbon by 51%, reaching a peak in emissions in 2026 and reducing emissions thereafter and producing 35% of its energy from clean sources by 2024 and 43% by 2030.
There is still time for the government of Mexico to change course on the way it deals with the environment, but even being the optimists we are, we know that time is not on our side. There is, however, hope.
In the midterm national elections, taking place on June 6, perhaps most Mexicans will decide to vote for those candidates committed to taking care of their country’s immense natural resources — for their own benefit and for the benefit of their children.
We choose to believe that Presidents López Obrador and Biden will somehow succeed in overcoming their differences, at least on the environment, climate change and the pivotal role that science and scientists play in the prosperity of the two countries. At a time when humanity is confronting unprecedented health, economic, social and political challenges, a strong Mexico-U.S. partnership in these crucial areas would be a powerful message to their own citizens and to the world.
Biden has reasserted his commitment to listening to science, taking a leading role on the world stage on issues like climate change.
A message that even neighbors as dissimilar as we are can join forces for the common good.
Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program and a former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund-México.
Richard C. Brusca is a research scientist at the University of Arizona, former executive director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and author of over 200 research articles and 20 books.
Plans for a fourth cruise ship dock on the island of Cozumel, Quintana Roo, have been criticized by residents and environmental groups for the damage they claim it will do to coral reefs.
Before the pandemic Cozumel was ranked as the world’s busiest port of call for cruise ships, but has not welcomed a single passenger since last June.
The US $25-million project is backed by the president.
Residents complain that the plan is antithetical to a coral reef restoration project on the sea floor.
The environmental group Global Coral Reef Alliance agrees. “The new proposal to build the fourth cruise ship dock on Cozumel will destroy the most important project to regenerate coral [on the island],” it said in a statement.
Activists say that volunteer divers have worked for years to transplant small chunks of living coral anchored to seabed structures to grow new reefs. They say that thousands of corals have been transplanted so far, repairing damage from human activity and hurricanes.
A Change.org petition has gained over 40,000 signatures.
The company behind the project tells a different story. Its building proposal says the location for the new dock was chosen “in order not to affect coral reefs … This was backed up by field work on the sea floor, which found no presence of coral reef structures.”
It says the cruise industry, which normally brings in US $480 million a year, is expected to grow.
Tens of thousands of tourist jobs were lost in Quintana Roo in the pandemic, in a sector which accounts for 87% of the state’s economic activity.
Thanks to friendships with a Hollywood producer and the director of the Mazatlán Aquarium, the writer’s fantasy about creating a reality TV show in Mexico about saving innocent bystanders from crocodiles on their streets was not immediately relegated to “that idea we had over a few too many drinks last night.”
In Part 1 of The Crocodile Chronicles, Bodie Kellogg successfully met with the then-mayor of Mazatlán about an adapted dream: using the outskirts of his city as a shooting location for the TV series The Gator Boys. He also convinced Discovery Channel officials that they wanted to know more. The next step was to head to an estuary supposedly full of crocodiles and home to the elusive, monstrously large “Godzilla” croc …
After arriving at the estuary which boasted 800-plus crocodiles throughout the four-square-kilometer area we were standing at the edge of, we set out on our voyage of discovery.
Our group was myself, my photographer friend Alwin and two of the shrimp farmers who utilized the estuary for their harvests. We were looking for a place on dry land where crocodiles could be approached and feasibly be captured without the loss of life or limb.
Our two guides led us along a narrow trail. When we got close to a possible croc location, they would hold up a hand. At that point, we would all pick our way through the tangled jungle as silently as possible until we could see a small beach with one or more crocs sunning themselves on the sand. However, even with the well-practiced stealth of our guides, we could get no closer than 30 or 40 meters before there was a flash of tail and a splash as the crocs hit the water.
After two hours of sneaking through a jungle of vegetation, most of it with thorns and some of it with snakes, we called a halt. As I stood in the shade examining the bloody scratches on my arms and legs as well as my shredded T-shirt, I felt seriously disappointed.
Our guides, sensing my defeat, quickly assured me that there was a really big croc that they could actually call and it would come. This buoyed my spirits that maybe not all was lost.
Even with experienced guides, it was impossible to get closer than 30 or 40 meters to the crocs.
When we all arrived back at the guides’ covered patio, I brought out the ice chest filled with cold Pacíficos and told them to help themselves. Over the years, I have learned that cold beer is an excellent emollient for lively conversations with working-class Mexicans.
After a couple of beers, they began to tell us about the large crocodile that would come when called. They explained that the V8 engine on their causeway ran both a large pump and a generator that powered several long strings of lights, which ran the full length of the causeway.
These lights were used to attract shrimp at night, so they could be easily netted without the need for a boat. The sound of the engine is what would bring in the big croc.
I was told that they started feeding it a bucket of shrimp scraps several years ago, and now it comes and expects to be fed. If it arrives and does not get something immediately, they said it would let out a roar that was terrifying.
With this news, I thought, we were back in business. I had found Godzilla.
One of the men had a cell phone picture, a view straight down at the surly beast with its head partway out of a three-foot culvert. The widest part of the croc’s head had about three inches of clearance at either side of it.
Perhaps a croc took a bite of this warning sign at some point?
Later calculations put this guy at 1,000 to 1,200 pounds and over 16 feet in length. One of the largest apex predators in North America and we were planning to send in a couple of good ‘ol boys from Florida to capture it? This was just getting better each day.
By this time, the people at The Discovery Channel had green-lit the project. We had less than four weeks to put together the rest of the required pieces.
I went to Acuario Mazatlán and told Jorge the game was on, but we were having a difficult time finding catchable crocodiles in the wild. He gave me a phone number for a crocodile farm outside of Culiacán, a few hours away by car.
We promptly named the croc farm Crocs-R-Us. I and The Captured Tourist Woman (TCTW) set off the following morning for Crocs-R-Us.
Having never rented or purchased a crocodile, we had no idea what to expect. We didn’t even know how to transport the damn things.
The facility occupied about 20 acres, with two large ponds and a lot of trees for shade. The very distinctive odor of croc crap was strong.
The crocodile farm outside Culiacán.
We met with the owner, promptly explained our mission and were pleasantly surprised when he said he knew of the TV series and would love to help us any way he could. The fenced enclosure contained several hundred crocodiles, ranging from three to 10 feet in length. We arranged for five of his largest snappers to be collected in a week or so. How that was going to happen was still a bit fuzzy.
When we told the producer of our success with five large crocs and the discovery of the monster, he promised a reptile handler would be sent ahead to Mazatlán to help with the logistics of the rapidly unfolding situation.
My next item on the list was to find suitable locations to stage the “catches.”
Since pictures of alligators on Florida’s golf courses have been going around the internet for years, my first location was the very exclusive golf resort of Estrella Del Mar, a half hour south of Mazatlán. When I approached the manager, I was hoping he would see the positive publicity angle and not the negative aspect of having a 10-foot, carnivorous reptile roaming the fairways of his pristine club.
Actually, he told me that crocodiles are sometimes seen on the back nine, which is adjacent to a major river. He introduced me to the head of maintenance, who could take me around the course to scout out a good spot.
This was going better than I expected, and I was hoping my luck would hold. I was starting to think that the possibility of being on TV was the elixir that promulgated the eager responses to my query for help.
Crocs heading for the water.
I spent a couple of days scouting both sides of the Río Presidio and the handful of villages that lay in the broad valley 10 miles south of Mazatlán. I found a number of suitable locations with sufficient interest from local villagers, all of whom wanted their five minutes of fame.
So far so good, but I still wanted a location with hysterical people, preferably gringos. After all, we would be making “reality” TV.
My next trip was north of town, to a condominium complex, far enough out to keep the mayor happy. It had a swimming pool in the central courtyard. After discussions, the condo owners thought it would be fun to see a croc in the pool and promised to be hysterical.
Ah, but then somebody brought up the possibility of croc crap; this could be a deal killer.
How will we transport five large crocs 140 miles? Can I get a croc in my VW? Where will we house them? How will we deal with the croc crap? Will we still have all our body parts when this is over? Watch for the next chapter of The Crocodile Chronicles.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at buscardero@yahoo.com.
German engineering and technology company Bosch will invest between US $90 and $100 million in 2021 to modernize 12 production lines.
Automotive plants in San Luis Potosí and Aguascalientes and two research and development centers will benefit from technological upgrades.
Last year Bosch invested $87 million in Mexico despite the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw its domestic sales earn $2.7 billion, a 20% fall on 2019.
The pandemic caused a two-month closure, rupturing the entire supply chain, according to Gonzalo Simental, vice president of finance at Bosch. Sales to third parties in Mexico fell by 23% last year.
Despite the fall in sales, Bosch president René Schlegel said the company’s investment strategy will continue. “You can see the way we invest, there’s constant investment in technology, buildings, production of goods, development and people … I think that stability is good news for Mexico,” he said.
He added that Bosch has expanded its workforce through the pandemic with 17,200 staff at the end of 2020: a 5% increase on 2019.
Eduardo Pérez, vice president of taxes and foreign trade, spoke of the importance of Bosch’s Mexican infrastructure. “In the automotive sector there are big plans to continue on the same path. San Luis Potosí is the second most important plant that we have … Aguascalientes, particularly for brake systems that are important for the industry, has been growing steadily year after year. That part of the Bajío, where these two plants are located, is a central point in the automotive sector and will continue to grow in 2021,” he said.
He added that in 2021 Bosch will launch thermo-technology products, and its power tools business will launch a wide range of cordless products.
Bosch entered Mexico in 1966 with a manufacturing plant in Toluca, state of México. It now has a corporate development center, headquarters and 12 manufacturing plants in the country.
Mexico’s real Covid-19 death toll is almost triple the federal government’s official total, according to a new analysis by a United States health research center.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine published an analysis on Thursday that shows that 617,127 people have died from Covid in Mexico.
The figure is 183% higher than Mexico’s official death toll, which rose to 218,007 on Wednesday.
The research center noted that many Covid-19 deaths go unreported because countries only report deaths that occur in hospitals or among patients with a confirmed infection.
Large numbers of Mexicans have died at home without being tested for Covid-19, and Mexico’s testing rate remains very low at about 51,000 tests per million people, according to German statistics portal Statista.
The IHME also said that weak health reporting systems and low access to health care magnifies the challenge of accurately counting all Covid-19 deaths.
According to its analysis, which was based on excess death rates in countries around the world, Mexico has recorded the third highest number of Covid-19 deaths after the United States and India. The IHME estimates that the United States has actually had more than 905,000 Covid-19 fatalities, about 56% higher than its official death toll, and that more than 654,000 people have succumbed to the disease in India, an increase of about 184%.
Globally, Covid-19 has caused approximately 6.9 million deaths, the IHME said, a figure more than double what official numbers show. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the global death toll is currently about 3.25 million and Mexico ranks fourth for fatalities behind the United States, Brazil and India.
“As terrible as the Covid-19 pandemic appears, this analysis shows that the actual toll is significantly worse,” said Dr. Chris Murray, IHME’s director.
“Understanding the true number of Covid-19 deaths not only helps us appreciate the magnitude of this global crisis, but also provides valuable information to policymakers developing response and recovery plans,” he said.
“Many countries have devoted exceptional effort to measuring the pandemic’s toll, but our analysis shows how difficult it is to accurately track a new and rapidly spreading infectious disease. We hope that today’s report will encourage governments to identify and address gaps in their Covid-19 mortality reporting, so that they can more accurately direct pandemic resources.”
A rendering of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport.
The head of Airports Council International (ACI), the sole global trade representative of the world’s airports, has heaped praise on the construction of the new Mexico City airport, describing the progress made to date as “incredible.”
In an interview with the aviation news website A21, ACI director general Luis Felipe de Oliveira also said that the new airport could one day completely replace Mexico City’s existing airport, the AICM, due to its potential for expansion.
Both he and Rafael Echevarne, ACI’s Latin America chief, said that there are challenges to overcome before the airport can begin operations, such as ensuring that airspace is managed to operate concurrently with the existing Mexico City and Toluca airports and making it easily accessible for passengers.
However, after visiting the site of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), currently under construction at the Santa Lucía Air Force base, they were both impressed with the progress made by the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) in building the facility, which is slated to open in March 2022.
“We’ve been big critics of the process because we never imagined that they were going to deliver what they’re doing,” de Oliveira said, apparently referring to the government’s decision to scrap its predecessor’s Mexico City airport project and start from scratch at a different site.
“We’ve seen business models in Latin America in which they promise a lot but deliver very little. But here, what they’ve done in two years is incredible. The construction is simple and modular but it flows and it’s well thought out. Sedena has learned a lot about airports in a very short time,” he said.
De Oliveira said that the AIFA won’t initially have the capacity to replace the AICM but could in the future because it clearly has the potential to expand.
“They’ve created an airport that is a kind of mirror, and it can be replicated on the other side [of the Air Force site], which would double the infrastructure” and create the kind of international hub airport Mexico needs, he said.
Initially at least, the AIFA is slated to operate in conjunction with the AICM and the Toluca airport as part of a three-pronged plan to meet rising demand — at least before the coronavirus pandemic — for airline services in the Valley of México metropolitan area.
Some aviation experts have questioned the viability of operating the AIFA and the AICM simultaneously due to their close proximity to each other. But Echevarne said the limited airspace issue can be overcome.
“We know that there are critics of the reconfiguration, but airspace shouldn’t be an obstacle. There are ways to organize all that; there is technology, and there are places in the world that are more complicated. With the will, it can be solved,” he said.
Echevarne and de Oliveira noted that the AIFA is quite far from Mexico City — about 50 kilometers north of the capital’s downtown — and therefore quick transportation connections will be essential. To that end, the federal government is building a new highway to the Santa Lucía airport and also plans to extend an existing suburban railway line to the site.
Although AMLO ran on a leftist platform that emphasized aiding the poor and vulnerable, programs intended for them have disappeared, Zambrano says.
The leader of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s former party has accused the president of recreating the old Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regime he fought for decades to replace.
Speaking at an event in Morelia, Michoacán, to mark the 32nd anniversary of the foundation of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Jesús Zambrano declared that the raison d’etre of his party — which AMLO, as the president is commonly known, represented at the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections — remains the same: “to put an end to anti-democratic, populist, centralizing and dictatorial practices.”
Zambrano, a former federal deputy, said the foundation of the PRD in 1989 — AMLO, also a former PRI member, was one of the founders — was the result of a fight for democracy and a response to the old political regime of the PRI, which implemented a quasi dictatorship for much of the 20th century before being voted out of office in 2000.
The PRI didn’t respect minority groups and controlled sham elections from the Ministry of the Interior, he said, explaining that it was in that context that the PRD came into being.
“And now, in the middle of 2021, 32 years after our birth, López Obrador and [the ruling party] Morena have returned to rebuild that old regime, accentuating its worst practices,” the PRD national president said.
President López Obrador and Democratic Revolution Party leader Jesús Zambrano in happier times, when they were close colleagues.
At the 2018 elections, Morena fooled millions of people, leading them to believe that it was a leftist party, Zambrano said. But now many of them have realized that the ruling party is not leftist at all but rather an enemy of democratic practices, the division of powers and social justice, he said.
(The Congress, in which Morena leads a majority in both houses, recently approved a law backed by the president to extend the term of the Supreme Court’s chief justice, an AMLO ally, even though it appears to be in clear violation of the constitution.)
“It’s enough to see how Morena abolished [public] trusts that benefited millions of people and helped the development of the country; they cut the budgets of both institutions and social programs,” Zambrano said.
The party leader also criticized López Obrador and Morena for perpetuating the militarization of public security, giving the military control of the nation’s ports and centralizing the purchase of medications, which he claimed has caused widespread shortages of drugs, including those used to treat children with cancer.
Zambrano also charged that Morena, under the guise of austerity and the push to eliminate corruption, has modified the structure of public administration, making it less effective and a shell of its former self. Institutions, government programs, shelters for women who are victims of violence and state-run childcare centers have all disappeared, he said, claiming also that AMLO is attempting to destroy bodies that have played a crucial role in democratizing Mexico, such as the National Electoral Institute.
“López Obrador assumes himself to be the bearer of morals that he doesn’t have,” Zambrano added.
“… This government has been unable to resolve problems. On the contrary, it has made them worse; it’s only focused on causing division and trying to win elections. … The president behaves … like the boss of a gang, not a head of state,” Zambrano said.
Despite Zambrano’s claim that many citizens who supported Morena in 2018 are now aware that the party is not what they thought it would be, the ruling party nevertheless has a commanding lead in the polls ahead of the June 6 elections, at which the entire lower house of Congress will be renewed.
Some political observers believe that López Obrador will become even more authoritarian in the second half of his six-year term — especially if Morena, as expected, wins convincingly in the midterm elections — and even seek to change the constitution so that he can remain in power beyond 2024.
The president himself has repeatedly ruled out that possibility, and even signed a written undertaking in March 2019 that he would not seek reelection. He reiterated last month that when his term as president ends, he will retire to his ranch in Palenque, Chiapas, where he intends to write a book.
The vehicle in which the two shooting victims were traveling near Caborca, Sonora.
The National Guard opened fire on two agents of the Sonora Attorney General’s Office Wednesday, killing one and wounding the other in what appears to have been a case of mistaken identity.
The incident occurred yesterday afternoon on a dirt road near the Ejido San Isidro, about 30 kilometers from the city of Caborca. The victims were José Ramón Reyes, 37, and his sister Verónica Reyes.
Early reports indicate that the two were riding in an SUV when they were attacked by guardsmen, who evidently believed the vehicle was that of a local criminal leader. At least seven shots were fired at the front windshield with high powered firearms.
José Reyes died at the scene while his sister was admitted to hospital with a bullet wound in the arm.
Several civil society organizations were quick to release a statement calling into question the value of deploying the National Guard in the state, claiming that the only result has been to generate more violence.
Police guard the scene where the dead bodies of landowners and activists Jesús Robledo Cruz and María Jesús Gómez Vega were found.
A couple opposed to a mining company’s operations in Sonora was murdered last week and 13 other anti-mining activists were threatened, triggering a call for government protection from an organization that defends the rights of people affected by mining.
The Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (Rema) said in a statement that community landowner José de Jesús Robledo Cruz and his wife María de Jesús Gómez Vega, opponents of the firm Penmont, a subsidiary of Grupo Peñoles, were murdered on April 29 in the municipality of Puerto Peñasco.
The organization said it had no doubt that the murders were committed by people in cahoots with Penmont, owned by billionaire businessmen Alberto Baillères, and Rafael Pavlovich Durazo, uncle of Sonora Governor Claudia Pavlovich. Rema claims that Pavlovich Durazo illegally seized more than 1,800 hectares of land from community landowners.
Penmont has a mine in Caborca, which landowners say encroaches on their land, an ejido known as El Bajío.
Rema said the bodies of Robledo and Gómez were dumped with a sign that made threats against 13 other ejidatarios, or community landowners. Those landowners are clearly at “high risk,” the group said.
The landowners at El Bajío say that Penmont illegally encroached on their land and have polluted it as well.
The murders occurred within the context of their demand for Penmont to comply with “multiple legal rulings” to pay rents to the ejidatarios “for the illegal occupation of their lands,” return illegally extracted gold to them and pay compensation for environmental damage, Rema said.
It noted that it was not the first time Robledo and Gómez were targeted. They were abducted and tortured in 2017 by hooded and armed men wearing army attire. It also said that landowners have been harassed and suffered acts of violence since 2002, when Penmont first entered El Bajío.
The organization said it took legal action against Penmont and was granted several rulings in its favor but “none of them have been executed.”
“On the contrary, since the first moment of complaint, acts of violence such as … intimidation, arbitrary detentions, homicides, abductions, forced disappearances, the use of public force, dispossession and forced displacement increased,” Rema said.
Robledo, as president of El Bajío, led the landowners’ defense of their ejido against the mining company’s encroachment, the organization said, putting him in direct opposition to “powerful people who are guarantors … in this country for murder and dispossession: Alberto Baillères, a powerful mining businessman and Rafael Pavlovich Durazo, a criminal protected by his niece, the current governor of the state.”
Penmont issued a press release denying any connection to the couple’s deaths.
“Penmont categorically rejects the assertion or insinuation of any kind of link with the criminal acts of this weekend,” the company said in a statement. “It rejects violence in any form and trusts the justice system with the resolution of problems.”
Billionaire Alberto Baillères is one of the owners of Penmont Mining.
Rema demanded that the federal government “assume its historical responsibility” and protect citizens as well as supervise the actions of the Sonora Attorney General’s Office, which it claimed is complicit with the violence perpetrated against El Bajío landowners.
It also demanded the implementation of protection measures for the 13 landowners who were threatened as well as for other El Bajío ejidatorios and their families.
For a country in which the president says every morning that corruption and impunity are no longer permitted, the murders and other acts of violence against community landowners opposed to mining are “shameful,” Rema said.
“The death of each defender of land is a wound that the political class will not be able to heal, hide or clean,” it said.
