Former cabinet minister Luis Videgaray rejected the finding and said he would challenge the Ministry of Public Administration's decision.
The federal government has banned former cabinet minister Luis Videgaray from holding public office for 10 years for failing to disclose all his assets when he was a member of the 2012–2018 administration led by ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto.
The Ministry of Public Administration (SFP) announced Tuesday that it had applied the maximum possible punishment against the former finance and foreign affairs minister for making incorrect asset declarations during three consecutive years between 2015 and 2017.
Videgaray, a highly influential member of the Peña Nieto government who also faces allegations of corruption, rejected the SFP’s finding and said he would challenge its decision “without litigating the matter in the media or on social networks.”
In a statement posted to Twitter, the former minister, now working as an academic in the United States, said the SFP considers him “administratively responsible” for omitting details about bank accounts in his 2015–2017 assets declarations.
“The ‘bank accounts’ to which the SFP refers are in fact credit cards, which didn’t have a debit balance at the reporting date for each declaration,” Videgaray said.
He added that he did in fact mention them, writing that the cards were not included in the liabilities section of his declarations because there was no debt on them but were included in the “observations and clarifications” section.
“The declarations are correct, and there was no intention to hide information about assets from the SFP,” Videgaray wrote.
“Finally, it’s important to highlight that in the letter through which I was notified of the resolution, the SFP itself expressly acknowledges that I didn’t obtain any benefit or profit derived from the supposed lack of veracity in the declarations,” he said.
“… It’s the duty of all Mexicans to support the fight against corruption led by President López Obrador. In my case, I will do it contesting the resolution institutionally, with full respect to the Ministry of Public Administration.”
The SFP countered Videgaray’s statement, asserting that the former minister had indeed failed to report bank accounts, in which it said there was money that the minister had an obligation to declare.
“The failure to report balances in accounts constitutes a serious administrative offense,” the government’s internal corruption watchdog said, adding that the decision to ban the former official from holding office had gone through an administrative process and didn’t amount to a “mere accusation.”
“We welcome the [legal] challenge announced, where we’ll defend the legality … of our penalty,” it said.
The SFP notified Videgaray of his sanction on May 11, but the decision was not made public at the time because Mexico was in the official campaign period leading up to Sunday’s elections, during which the government is obliged by electoral rules to refrain from acts that might be viewed as propaganda that favors the ruling party.
Videgaray is also under investigation for his possible involvement in a case in which the state oil company Pemex bought a fertilizer plant at an allegedly vastly inflated price during Peña Nieto’s government. He is also linked to a bribery case involving Pemex and Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.
The accusations are “false, absurd, inconsistent and reckless,” he said. “Lozoya’s accusations are invented lies to try to get out of the consequences of his own actions.”
AMLO with supporters in El Fuerte, Sinaloa in 2019.
As I was scrolling through the New York Times last night, I found an editorial by Mexican economist and sociologist Jorge Zepeda Patterson titled, “Despite it all López Obrador has my vote.”
Obviously, I had to read it. While Mexico’s president is someone I would have voted for all three times (when he ran for president in 2006, 2012 and won in 2018), though not a fourth, his behavior since becoming president is something that’s had me completely bewildered more than a few times.
But Zepeda made a great point: there are essentially “two Mexicos,” and the side that AMLO has made it clear that he’s on — despite the fact that many of the “have-nots” are not actually currently being helped by him — makes up a significantly larger population. Numerous social programs plus rhetoric aimed at reminding the underprivileged that he’s on their side maintain the popularity of both the man and the party that he leads.
The “two Mexicos” Zepeda referenced made me think back to the several years I spent teaching at an American high school in the city of Querétaro. It was my first exposure to “the other Mexico,” as before then, I’d only really hung around with what could best be described as middle-class Mexicans.
The campus itself was beautiful and well-kept, the students well-dressed and mostly light-skinned. It was regarded as one of the top schools in the state, and teachers were recruited both nationally and internationally to ensure the students’ consistent exposure to both languages.
This was my first exposure in Mexico — ever, really — to kids who had grown up having everything they needed and wanted. Most were the children of the city’s elites: business owners and politicians. Tuition for just one child was quite a bit more than would be affordable under Mexico’s minimum wage, and all the students’ families had servants employed in their homes.
Many students there also had their own (new) car as soon as they turned 16, and a few had bodyguards waiting for them right outside the school parking lot to escort them home. Some of them were “poor” by comparison to their more extremely wealthy classmates: maybe they drove an older car or went on less-elaborate vacations.
I was certainly poor compared to even the poorest ones — and I was not poor (not for Mexico, anyway).
The year I started teaching, 2006, was the year that López Obrador ran for president against Felipe Calderón. Those of you who were here, or who followed the news during that time, will remember that AMLO set up his “legitimate government” in Mexico City’s zócalo for several months, insisting that he had actually won the presidential election.
My students were mad about it. They weren’t so mad about the ideological issues but rather about the increased traffic problems from the ongoing protest that they encountered on their regular trips to Mexico City.
While there were a few sympathetic students (“To what length would you go if you believed that I had unfairly failed you and the administration refused to do anything about it,” I asked them), most made clear that they were not happy with the situation. Still, they were teenagers, a group in any social class not known for thinking of the greater good over their own convenience.
I taught mostly social science classes, so social class and stratification were topics we discussed quite a bit. To my surprise, many students told me that they considered themselves “middle class” when asked.
They were young, of course, and I suppose that if you were just basing it off American TV, then maybe they could see themselves living like some of those upper-middle-class families popular in sitcoms who are somehow always magically rich. They’d squint in puzzlement at charts that showed them to be in the top 5% richest families in Mexico.
Though the students were, for the most part, polite, intelligent and very decent people, teaching there was hard for me. In addition to realizing that I was simply too sensitive to be a teacher in the first place (one kid saying “this is boring” could ruin my day and send me home in tears), it was hard to see a kid who was rude and disrespectful in class and could barely write his own name drive up to school in a Jaguar day after day.
If that was rough for me, what might it have been like for the janitorial staff, the guards, the food service workers — who all got up extra early to catch the bus for their long shifts at the school?
It’s no surprise to me that AMLO and his party have become, and stayed, so popular as the distance between the types of incomes my students’ families were used to and those that the workers who served them earned have expanded even more in recent years.
And the president constantly saying things like “No, we’re not going to help them; they don’t need any help, they’re the exploiters!” has yet to get old for most of his followers. While AMLO’s appeal isn’t just about “sticking it” to the rich guys, I do think that’s part of it.
The president speaks to the disconnect between the economic expectations and the realities of the majority of Mexicans.
Do you easily pay a 300-peso cover to go into a bar and then run an open tab — or do you know exactly the price of a kilo of tomatoes, of rice and of tortillas because every peso counts? For most Mexicans, the latter is the reality, and those are “his people.”
So whether the increasing number of poor are prospering under AMLO or not is almost irrelevant. The coronavirus has caused many formerly lower-middle-class Mexicans to fall downward into their ranks, but that is not part of the divisive conversation — you know, the one that the president controls via his “good vs. bad” rosters presented in his mañaneras (morning press conferences) every day.
For those struggling, it must just feel good to have someone say, “I’m not on the side of the people that you have to watch win over and over and over again; I’m on your side.”
So, while Morena lost its supermajority in Congress, which would have allowed López Obrador to change the constitution without consulting the opposition (thank goodness), the party’s popularity on the more local level has increased. Morena’s candidates won the majority of governorships up for grabs this election.
“The other Mexico” can certainly continue to ignore the plight of the increasing number of those left behind as inequality grows here, but unless they offer an alternative, they will do so at their own peril.
The National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
Academics consider the Autonomous University of México (UNAM) to be the best university in Latin America, giving it a score of 94.6% on the QS World University Rankings. On the final multivariate list it held its place as the second best institution in the region.
Employers also gave UNAM a positive review, putting it in the world’s top 50 with a 93.2% score.
The final list placed the Mexico City university as the 105th best globally; a five place drop after entering the top 100 last year.
The second-highest Mexican university to rank was the private university Tec de Monterrey, at 161st; the fifth highest in Latin America.
In total, 24 Mexican universities appear on the rankings. In Latin America only Brazil has a greater number of universities within the ranking.
QS’s list ranks the top universities in the world based on criteria such as academic reputation, reputation among employers, citations from research papers, the professor-student ratio and the ratios of international students and professors.
Ben Sowter, director of research at QS, confirmed UNAM’s strong reputation. “The latest edition of QS World University Rankings shows us that UNAM is comfortably among the Latin American elite. In an increasingly competitive graduate labor market, employers who respond to our surveys continue to express their confidence in UNAM graduates, while the global academic community rates them increasingly highly,” he said.
Sowter also offered a recommendation to move Mexican academic institutions further up the ranking. “Once again, we continue to see that Mexican performance is hampered by low scores on research impact … data from our research partners … suggest[s] a strong correlation between international collaboration and the impact … it is essential that Mexican political institutions find ways to intensify commitment to the global academic community,” he said.
Globally, the top placed university on the list was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which broke a record by coming first place for the 10th consecutive year. The University of Oxford climbed to second place for the first time since 2006, while Stanford University and University of Cambridge shared third place.
Regionally, the highest ranked university was the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
The president with Herrera, left, and Ramírez at the National Palace on Wednesday. office of the president
President López Obrador has named Rogelio Ramírez de la O, a consultant who lacks public-sector experience, as a replacement for Finance Minister Arturo Herrera, who is being moved to run the country’s central bank.
Flanked by the two officials, López Obrador in a video on Wednesday hailed Ramírez as a “master of the economy . . . experienced, serious.”
Ramírez, 72, is director-general of Ecanal, a private Mexican consultancy, and holds a doctorate from Cambridge. He is a longtime ally of the president and had been earmarked to become finance minister if López Obrador had won elections in 2006 and 2012.
He had, however, turned down invitations to take the portfolio after López Obrador became president in 2018.
The peso eased fractionally after the announcement. Mexico’s financial markets have been buoyed this week following midterm elections on Sunday, in which López Obrador failed to hold on to his two-thirds majority in the lower house of Congress, denying him the ability to change the constitution at will.
Some analysts were sceptical of the choice. “He has literally zero practical experience,” said Eduaro Suárez, vice-president for Latin America economics at Scotiabank.
Ramírez is not expected to oppose López Obrador’s economic vision, especially in energy, where he favours state-run oil and utility companies over private investment.
The president reiterated there would be no change to his priorities: no debt, tax or energy price increases, and “the poor come first.”
That meant “he’s going to have to continue juggling,” said Gabriela Siller, head of economic analysis at Banco Base. López Obrador has slashed spending to the bone and spent rainy-day savings to pour resources into pensions, scholarships and pet infrastructure projects.
However, Mexico’s economy is rebounding from Covid-19 and is expected to grow as much as 6.5% this year, after falling 8.5% in 2020.
“If he’s taking over 2 1/2 years into the president’s administration, Rogelio must know the game plan for public spending very well,” said Alonso Cervera, chief economist for Latin America at Credit Suisse. “He will very likely enable the president’s ideas regarding the energy sector.”
He said Ramírez was likely to draw up the budget, which must be presented by September. Also pending is a tax reform which top government sources said would not contain wealth or inheritance taxes.
Alejandro Díaz de León, current central bank governor, is scheduled to leave his post in December. López Obrador said he had announced his replacement now to avoid market jitters.
If confirmed by the Senate, Herrera — who counts former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke among key influences — would complete a line-up of non-Banxico insiders on the central bank board. López Obrador had stressed the need for a “moral economist” at the helm.
Herrera is well-known to investors, but his closeness to the president makes his ability to uphold the central bank’s autonomy less clear.
Díaz de León mounted a stern defence last year when legislators had pushed a bill that would have forced the central bank to absorb dollars that banks were unable to repatriate.
“I think Herrera has proven to be prudent, and has earned markets’ trust,” Suárez said. But he added: “He will have to work hard to signal strong independence from the government.”
President López Obrador suggested that Morena might approach Institutional Revolutionary Party legislators in pursuit of a supermajority in Congress.
A new, highly pragmatic yet unlikely political pact appears to be brewing in Mexico.
In remarks that indicate he is prepared to dance with those he regards as one of the devils of Mexican politics, President López Obrador on Tuesday floated the possibility that the ruling Morena party, which he founded, could forge an alliance with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s once omnipotent party whose name became a byword for corruption.
López Obrador, who says he is in the process of transforming Mexico and curing it of ills that have plagued it for decades, is talking up the possibility of striking a deal with the PRI — a party he has blamed for all manner of problems in Mexico — so that Morena can reach a supermajority in the Congress. The move would allow him to enact constitutional changes, among which, critics say, could even be a bid to extend his rule beyond the single-term limit of six years.
“With Morena, the Labor Party and part of the Green Party, not all [deputies], there is a majority of 50% plus one, what I call a simple majority,” said AMLO, as the president is best known, referring to the results of Sunday’s congressional elections, which showed that the ruling party and its allies would maintain its majority in the Chamber of Deputies but lose the two-thirds control it currently enjoys.
“If you wanted to have a supermajority, which is two-thirds, an agreement could be reached with some of the PRI legislators or those of any other party, … not many are needed for constitutional reform,” the president told reporters at his morning news conference.
PRI leader Alejandro Moreno said his party has its own agenda but that it was willing to “sit down to talk with the president,” about some kind of alliance.
But it takes two to tango, and surely the PRI wouldn’t enter into an uneasy alliance with the party that unceremoniously stripped it of power in 2018 and blames it frequently for Mexico’s persistent problems, such as corruption, insecurity and economic inequality.
But it’s apparently not as simple as that.
The national leader of the PRI, which entered into a coalition with the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) to contest the June 6 elections in many districts and states, indicated that the party is at least willing to discuss the president’s proposition.
“An opposition bloc was built in order to have a joint agenda. [But] that doesn’t set aside the fact that the PRI has its own agenda and will sit down to talk with the president,” PRI leader Alejandro Moreno said Tuesday, adding that he wouldn’t allow himself to be influenced in such discussions by the federal government’s persecution of his party.
However, not all priístas, as PRI politicians, members and supporters are known, were as open as Moreno to the party discussing a pact with Morena.
“The dialogue [with the president and Morena] must be with the opposition front, not with him [Moreno] nor with the PRI,” said Coahuila Governor Miguel Riquelme.
Any talks aimed at reaching a supermajority in Congress must be governed by the national interest, not the interest of the 4T (the fourth transformation), the governor said, referring to the federal government by its self-anointed nickname.
In addition to musing about how his government could reach a coveted supermajority, AMLO has used this week’s morning press conferences to talk up Morena’s election performance and offer an assessment as to why it didn’t fare better, especially in Mexico City, where the party lost considerable ground.
The president declared Monday that he was “happy, happy, happy” with the results of the lower house election, asserting that they favor the ongoing “transformation of Mexico,” even though the number of seats held by the Morena-led coalition in the Chamber of Deputies will fall from 334 to below 300.
The opposition parties couldn’t wrest control of the lower house despite warning Mexicans that “either we leave [the government] without the chamber or it will leave us without a country,” AMLO boasted. “Well, they couldn’t [do it]. And there is a country for everyone, and a preference for the poor,” he said.
The president also emphasized that with a simple majority in Congress, his government wouldn’t have any problem getting its annual budget approved.
Although his remarks suggest otherwise, López Obrador has, at best, muted cause for celebration vis-à-vis the federal election results, given that the ruling party lost both its own majority and the supermajority it shares with its allies.
One of many post-election internet memes comparing a now politically divided Mexico City to Soviet-era Berlin, with the phrase “Wall of Pejín” a play on AMLO’s nickname, “El Peje” and the Berlin Wall. Twitter
Nevertheless, Morena clearly demonstrated that it remains Mexico’s most potent political force, winning almost double the vote of its clearest rival, the PAN, in the federal poll and triumphing in 10 or 11 of the 15 state gubernatorial elections, a result that will allow it to govern about half of Mexico’s states.
López Obrador identified negative media coverage of the government and a tragic subway accident that claimed the lives of 26 people last month as among the reasons why Morena didn’t fare better in the capital.
“… We have to take into account that here [in Mexico City] there is more media bombardment; here is where the dirty war is felt more. Here is where you can read that magazine from the United Kingdom, The Economist,” he said Monday.
“Everything is here [in Mexico City]. I’ve always said you put the radio on, and it’s against, against, against, against [the government]. You change the station and it’s the same. So, it bewilders and confuses [people]. It’s propaganda, day and night, against [us],” López Obrador said, characterizing the media’s coverage of politics as “perverse, biased, slanderous and toxic.”
On Tuesday, the president said that some Mexico City residents punished Morena for the subway crash, which occurred on a new line that was mainly built when Marcelo Ebrard, the federal foreign minister, was mayor, and appeared to be caused by structural faults in an overpass.
The people most affected by the accident, such as residents of the southeastern boroughs of Iztapalapa and Tláhuac, which are served by Line 12, didn’t vote in large numbers against Morena, but those in more affluent parts of the city did, López Obrador said.
“The most affected people, those in Iztapalapa and Tláhuac — humble, hard-working, good people — understand that these things unfortunately happen, and it doesn’t have a political, electoral impact … [in those boroughs]; However, in the middle class, upper-middle-class neighborhoods, it does,” AMLO said.
Indeed, Morena won most of Mexico City’s poorer boroughs, many of which are located on the capital’s eastern side, while the PAN-PRI-PRD coalition took the more affluent ones, situated on the western side.
That result spawned countless memes, including maps that showed a West Berlin/East Berlin type scenario in which Mexico City was split down the middle with residents in eastern boroughs living in the “communist” east controlled by Morena and those in western boroughs residing in the “capitalist” west governed by the PAN-PRI-PRD alliance.
Bodies of trapped miners are removed from the mine in Múzquiz.
Three miners are still missing after an accident Friday at a Coahuila coal mine, where 150 people are involved in the search.
The bodies of four miners have been recovered since the accident, which followed heavy rainfall at the Micarán mine in Múzquiz. All four drowned in the flooded mine.
Landslides blocking access to part of the mine have so far jeopardized efforts to reach the final three.
Most of the water has been extracted from the mine, but the rescue workers have been impeded by mud and rocks blocking their path.
Some of those involved in the operation said they are still a long distance from the part of the mine where the missing miners are believed to be located. The small-scale mine is about 800 meters long and 100 meters deep; a deep and narrow open coal pit with steep sides, according to the Associated Press.
Governor Miguel Ángel Riquelme confirmed the unlikelihood of finding survivors on Sunday. “Oxygen is an issue due to the time that has already passed,” he said.
Coahuila Attorney General Gerardo Márquez said the miners are probably in the most flooded part where one of the walls is also damaged.
He added that an investigation into the accident would be conducted by the federal Attorney General.
Rescue experts, technicians from the mining company, public safety officers and National Guard sniffer dogs are all involved in the rescue effort.
Avocado exports rocketed 26.1% in the first four months of the year in annual terms, totalling 565,000 tonnes and bringing in about US $1.25 billion.
The increase has been attributed to a 15.1% reduction in the export price. The price also fell by 20% in the domestic market.
Last year, 1.36 million tonnes were sold and a 1.5% increase is predicted for 2021.
The avocado has radically grown to become a major Mexican export. In 1999 only 41,118 tonnes of avocado went abroad.
The land used to cultivate avocados is also on the increase, going from 187,000 hectares in 2019 to 190,000 in 2020. The fruit is is largely grown by small scale producers, 64% of whom cultivate it on an area of less than 10 hectares.
Mexico exports avocados to 34 countries; principally to the United States, but also to Japan, France, Honduras and China.
The last major volcano in the area being monitored by UNAM researchers was Paricutín, seen here erupting in 1943.
For the second time in less than two years, scientists are considering the possibility that increased seismic activity in Michoacán could be the precursor to the birth of a new volcano.
There were 236 low magnitude micro-earthquakes and six tremors of a magnitude above 4 in the area surrounding Uruapan between May 1 and June 8. There were also more than 300 micro-quakes in the same area in the first four months of the year.
Carlos Valdés González, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and a former National Disaster Prevention Center chief, said it’s essential to monitor such earthquake swarms — the name for sequences of similar magnitude seismic events occurring in a local area in a relatively short period of time — because they could indeed foretell the creation of a new volcano.
He told the newspaper Milenio that for a volcanic eruption to occur and for a new volcano to form, there must be seismic activity.
“… Mexico is a volcanically active country, especially in that region [near Uruapan], where there are more than 1,200 small volcanoes in the so-called Michoacán-Guanajuato volcanic field,” Valdés said.
Uruapan, site of a possible volcano birth.
The researcher recalled that the Paricutín volcano, located about 50 kilometers northwest of Uruapan, suddenly emerged in 1943 following a series of earthquakes.
A team of experts carried out studies early last year after more than 3,000 low magnitude earthquakes were recorded in January and February, but it was ultimately determined that the increased seismic activity would not lead to the birth of a new volcano. Scientists concluded that most of the magma movements detected were horizontal rather than vertical and for that reason, the molten material would not ascend to the surface.
The question that researchers are entertaining is if the earthquake swarms being observed more recently mean that anything has changed.
Valdés and two other UNAM researchers have said that there is no current conclusive evidence that a new volcano will appear, but all emphasized the need for ongoing scientific monitoring and advised people in the area to follow all recommendations issued by Civil Protection authorities in order to ensure their safety.
Denis Xavier Francois Legrand, another UNAM researcher, told Milenio that while an earthquake swarm is an important pre-condition for the formation of a new volcano, it is not the only one. Among the others are a deformation in the Earth’s crust that allows a volcano to pierce through from below and the upward, rather than sideways, movement of magma. When Institute of Geophysics researchers investigated the earthquake swarm last year, they noted that such deformations were minimal.
“We assume that these [earthquake] swarms are associated with the movement of magma, but it doesn’t always reach the surface. These swarms [also] occurred in 1997, 1999 and 2006, but magma didn’t reach the surface [of the Earth]. Perhaps the same thing is happening now, but it’s very important to keep monitoring [the magma movements],” Francois told a virtual press conference Tuesday.
Luis Antonio Domínguez Ramírez, a Morelia-based UNAM seismologist, said that people who live in the area where the micro-quakes have been occurring should be alert to any gas odors that could indicate the forthcoming appearance of a volcano.
“The emission of gases is to some extent easy to detect due to the smell of sulfur as well as hydrothermal manifestations and impacts on vegetation, which dries out when it … [is exposed to] higher temperatures than usual from the soil,” he said.
United States Vice President Kamala Harris meets with President López Obrador.
Mexico and the United States are “embarking on a new era” in bilateral relations, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris told President López Obrador during a migration-focused meeting in Mexico City on Tuesday that Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard described as “very successful.”
“I strongly believe that we are embarking on a new era that makes clear the interdependence and interconnection between nations,” the vice president told AMLO, as the president is commonly known, at the start of their meeting in the National Palace.
Ebrard said the hour-long bilateral meeting covered economic matters, security and development in southern Mexico and Central America. “It was a very successful meeting!!” he wrote on Twitter.
Prior to the meeting, López Obrador showed Harris around the National Palace, where they paused to admire murals painted by acclaimed Mexican artist Diego Rivera.
The pair also watched on as Ebrard and the chargé d’affaires of the United States Embassy in Mexico signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a strategic partnership to address the lack of economic opportunities in northern Central America, namely Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, countries from which large numbers of migrants have fled recently to seek asylum in the United States.
Vice President Harris and President López Obrador do a walk and talk through the National Palace.
The White House said in a statement that the U.S. and Mexico “will work together to foster agricultural development and youth empowerment programs” in those three countries and “will co-create and co-manage a partnership program enabling them to better deliver, measure, and communicate about assistance to the region.”
The Associated Press reported that “the Mexican government’s inability to provide security in parts of the country” is also of interest to the United States in an immigration context, “both for the people who are displaced by violence and the impact it has on a severely weakened economy trying to reemerge from the pandemic.”
The Mexican government said in its own statement that López Obrador and Harris made progress on plans to address “the structural causes of migration in the region [and] to protect human rights, particularly those of migrants.”
“… The governments of Mexico and the United States subscribe to a common humanist vision, under which orderly, safe and regular migration flows are sought together with cooperation mechanisms that confront the structural causes of migration. In that sense, the memorandum of understanding between both countries reflects the shared will to sustainably boost economic development in the south of Mexico and the north of Central America,” the government said.
López Obrador has proposed that the United States support a further extension of his government’s tree-planting employment program to Central America as part of the strategy to stem migration.
It was unclear whether the joint support for agricultural development and youth empowerment programs involved United States support for Mexico’s Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) scheme and the Mexican government’s youth apprenticeship program, which López Obrador has also extended to Central America.
The U.S. government did say that it will aim to create $250 million in new investment and sales in southern Mexico by strengthening rural value chains such as cacao, coffee, and eco-tourism.
Harris’ visit to Mexico, made during her first international trip since she took office in January, came a day after she met with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala City and sent a clear message to would-be migrants: the Biden administration wants to “help Guatemalans find hope at home,” she said.
“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border,” the vice president said in a press conference on Monday.
She didn’t repeat such a blunt warning in Mexico on Tuesday — she faced significant criticism for her frank remarks, including from within the U.S. Democratic Party — even though the number of Mexicans attempting to cross into the United States has recently increased as migrants, encouraged by the change of government in the U.S. and its winding back or abolition of many of former president Donald Trump’s hardline migration policies, flock to the northern border.
The news website Axios reported that according to preliminary U.S. Customs and Border Protection data it obtained, the number of migrants illegally crossing the Mexico-U.S. border this fiscal year, which still has four months to run, is already the highest since 2006.
Instead of sending forthright messages to people considering seeking asylum in the United States, Harris on Tuesday was at pains to emphasize the importance of the bilateral relationship with Mexico, U.S. cooperation with its neighbor and the need to seek substantive solutions to the migration problem.
Responding to criticism of her remarks in Guatemala, the vice president told reporters in Mexico City: “I’m really clear: we have to deal with the root causes [of migration], and that is my hope. Period.”
Harris and López Obrador’s meeting came a month after they spoke during a video call. AMLO told the vice president then that his administration agreed with the migration policies the U.S. government was developing and would aid in their implementation. “You can count on us,” he said.
López Obrador said in a Twitter post that his meeting with Harris today was “important, beneficial for our people and very pleasant.”
In addition to migration, López Obrador and Harris discussed workers’ rights within the context of the new North American free trade agreement, and the former thanked the latter for sending shipments of Covid-19 vaccines to Mexico, according to the Mexican government’s statement.
The White House said that the United States will “invest an additional US $130 million in technical assistance and cooperation over the next three years to work with Mexico as it implements labor legislation and to fund programs that will support workers, improve working conditions and address child and forced labor.”
In addition to pledging to cooperate on migration issues, Mexico and the United States agreed to hold high-level economic talks in September, to maintain a cabinet-level security dialogue and to partner to disable human trafficking and human smuggling organizations.
“… These organizations often use lies and threats to lure migrants into being trafficked or leave them stranded in Mexico or at the border, far from help and without basic supplies,” the White House said.
“Law enforcement agencies will work jointly to identify targets, develop investigations and take enforcement actions such as freezing bank accounts associated with criminal groups.”
Mexico and the United States also agreed to work together to resolve missing person cases in Mexico.
The two countries “will work to expand forensic capacity and partnerships to help solve the more than 82,000 cases of missing persons and disappearances in Mexico, potentially bringing closure to tens of thousands of families and ending impunity for offenders,” the White House said.
The US has warned citizens to reconsider traveling to Mexico.
The United States has downgraded its travel advisory for Mexico to level 3, or “Reconsider travel.”
Previously, the Department of State’s advisory for U.S. citizens regarding Mexico was at level 4, or “Do not travel.”
“Reconsider travel to Mexico due to Covid-19. Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk,” reads the latest advisory, issued Tuesday.
The Department of State warns against any travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán and Sinaloa due to crime and Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
It also urges citizens to reconsider travel to a further 11 states due to crime. Those are Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Jalisco, state of México, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Sonora and Zacatecas.
Many more states are categorized under the heading “Exercise increased caution.”
The Department of State continues to warn that crime poses serious danger to travelers. “Violent crime – such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery – is widespread,” the advisory reads.
