The peso plunged more than 3% today on the news that United States President Donald Trump will impose a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports in order to pressure Mexico to do more to curb migration.
Banks were selling one U.S. dollar for 20.05 pesos, the newspaper El Financiero reported this morning, a 3.1% increase compared to a high yesterday of 19.45 pesos.
The interbank dollar rate also fell, dropping 3.1% to 19.74 pesos compared to 19.14 pesos at 4:00pm Thursday. The peso’s decline is the largest in seven months.
The Financial Times reported that in early London trading the currency fell 3.3% against the dollar. If the decline exceeds 3.5%, it would be the peso’s worst daily performance since Trump was elected in November 2017, when it tumbled 7.7%.
The tariffs will only be removed “if the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico,” Trump said.
“Given the specific and near-term implementation date the president cites, we believe at least the first tariff at 5% is likely to be implemented as stated,” Goldman Sachs analysts said.
“That said, we note that another of the president’s proposed immigration actions – closing the U.S.-Mexico border – was threatened but never implemented.”
President López Obrador called for “prudence and responsibility” in a letter to Trump, stating that “social problems are not solved with taxes or coercive measures.”
A delegation led by Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard is traveling to Washington D.C. today to meet with United States officials and, according to the president, “arrive at an agreement that benefits both nations.”
Ebrard said on Twitter that “the treatment of Mexico is unfair and doesn’t make economic sense for anybody.”
He added that the United States receives essential goods and services from Mexico and charged that migration flows from Central America and high drug consumption levels in the U.S. “are not the responsibility of Mexico.”
Women should think before getting pregnant, said a Puebla lawmaker this week to express his opposition to legislation that would reduce criminal penalties for women who procure abortions.
In an internet talk show interview Héctor Alonso Granados said he opposes legalizing abortion because he thinks women should have to take responsibility for their pregnancies.
“You have to think before spreading your legs and getting pregnant,” said the Morena party deputy. “Why should the government have to deal with an act of irresponsible sex?”
A bill to ease criminal penalties for women who obtain abortions was introduced on Monday by Institutional Revolutionary Party Deputy Rocío García Olmedo.
Currently, women convicted of procuring abortions or allowing others to perform abortions on them can be jailed for six to 12 months. The proposed legislation would reduce the jail time to between three and six months, and also give convicted women the option of performing 100 to 300 days of community service.
According to Periódico Central, García’s initiative has the support of seven Puebla deputies, including four from Morena and two independents. The bill would need the support of 15 more deputies to become law.
Cristina Tello Rosas, another Morena deputy in Puebla who has been outspoken in her opposition to decriminalizing abortion, is considering whether she will vote for the García bill. In an interview with Sin Embargo, Tello called moves towards the legalization of abortion a “fashion” and said she will consult specialists before making a decision.
“It shouldn’t be a personal decision,” she said. “I’m planning a campaign in my district so I can get help and find out what we really need . . . It will be a campaign with specialists, and I won’t make my decision based on following fashions, as many are doing.”
AMLO: social problems not solved with coercive measures. Trump: tariffs will force companies to leave Mexico.
United States President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he is placing a 5% tariff on all goods from Mexico to pressure the country to do more to stop immigration into the U.S.
The move provoked a strong response from President López Obrador, who wrote in a letter to his United States counterpart that “social problems are not solved with taxes or coercive measures” and instead proposed dialogue to reach an agreement that is beneficial to both nations.
In a White House statement, Trump said the tariffs will start on June 10 and increase by an additional 5% at the start of each subsequent month to a maximum of 25% if Mexico doesn’t take “action to dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing its territory into the United States.”
“If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the tariffs will be removed,” he explained.
The U.S. president warned that if Mexico should choose not to cooperate, “the sustained imposition of tariffs will produce a massive return of jobs back to American cities and towns.”
Trump: ‘Sustained imposition of tariffs will produce a massive return of jobs back to American cities and towns.’
However, Trump added that his administration was confident that Mexico “can and will act swiftly to help the United States stop this long-term, dangerous, and deeply unfair problem.”
The U.S. president said that in imposing the tariffs he was invoking authorities granted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Trump declared a national emergency at the southern United States border on February 15.
Tens of thousands of migrants have traveled through the country to the United States border in recent months, raising the ire of the U.S. president who in April threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican auto imports and close the border if Mexico doesn’t stop drug and migration flows within a year.
Experts warned that Trump’s new plan will be damaging to the economy on both sides of the border and that Mexico could introduce its own retaliatory tariffs, as occurred last year when the United States implemented duties on steel and aluminum.
Tariffs are paid by importers, meaning that companies that buy Mexican products will likely pass at least some of their increased costs on to United States consumers.
Mexico sent US $346.5 billion worth of goods to its northern neighbor last year, a figure that underscores the importance of the bilateral trade relationship.
Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades. Because of the Dems, our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!
If the proposed tariffs cause a downturn in the Mexican economy, more citizens would likely try to cross the border to find work in the United States, undermining Trump’s plan.
“Mexico is our friend and neighbor, a partner in trade and security,” Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the Washington Post.
“The president’s announcement is baffling and, if carried out, will be terribly damaging.”
José María Ramos García, an international relations professor at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, said “it’s very probable that Mexico will respond in a similar way” to Trump’s new universal tariffs, adding “that would generate [additional] tension” in the bilateral relationship.
He questioned the logic of the move given that “we’re trade partners, we share a border and we’re about to enter into a [new] free trade agreement.”
“If the president goes through with this, I’m afraid progress to get this trade agreement across the finish line will be stifled,” said Senator Joni Erst.
Jesús Seade, Mexico’s foreign affairs undersecretary for North America, told a press conference that the tariffs threatened by Trump would be “disastrous,” adding that Mexico would respond strongly.
“. . . If it happens, we must respond energetically. . . The right thing would be to respond eye for an eye but . . . we have to talk to the United States and we have to see . . . how to respond,” he said.
Seade acknowledged that reciprocal measures would lead to a trade war “and that is the last thing that we want.”
In his missive to Trump, López Obrador was in part conciliatory, writing that he doesn’t want confrontation and doesn’t believe in “a tooth for a tooth” and “an eye for an eye.”
He said that a government delegation headed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard would travel to Washington today to meet with United States officials and “arrive at an agreement that benefits both nations.”
In order not to pay Tariffs, if they start rising, companies will leave Mexico, which has taken 30% of our Auto Industry, and come back home to the USA. Mexico must take back their country from the drug lords and cartels. The Tariff is about stopping drugs as well as illegals!
But even as López Obrador suggested that there is a diplomatic solution to Trump’s planned protectionism, he condemned the United States government’s immigration policy.
“How did a country of fraternity for all the migrants in the world become, from night to dawn, a ghetto, a closed space where those who seek . . . to live free from misery are stigmatized, mistreated, persecuted, expelled and [their] right to justice is canceled?” López Obrador wrote.
“The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol,” he added.
López Obrador also said that Mexico is doing all it can to “avoid” the flow of migrants through Mexico “without violating [their] human rights.”
Indeed, statistics show that deportations by Mexican authorities have increased threefold in recent months compared to the same period last year. Notwithstanding, large numbers of mainly Central American migrants continue to evade authorities en route to the United States border and more than 1,000 crossed into the El Paso area on Wednesday to surrender to U.S. authorities.
United States officials say that corrupt Mexican officials are allowing buses transporting migrants to the border to pass through highway checkpoints.
To stop the flow of migrants, López Obrador reminded Trump that since the beginning of his government he has proposed cooperation on a development plan “to help Central American countries with productive investments in order to create jobs and resolve this difficult matter.”
López Obrador also said that Mexicans will soon have no need to go to the United States “because we’re combating corruption, Mexico’s main problem, like never before!”
Later in the letter, the president said: “Specifically, citizen president, I propose to you to deepen dialogue, to seek real alternatives to the immigration problem, and please remember that I do not lack courage, I’m not a coward or a wimp but rather I act on principles.”
The president’s letter has not made any discernible difference to Trump’s attitude towards Mexico.
In a series of tweets this morning, the U.S. president wrote that “Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” “the tariff is about stopping drugs as well as illegals!” and “it’s time” to act.
Anthodite Hall, one kilometer beneath the surface in Oaxaca's Huautla Cave System. Matt Tomlinson
For die-hard cave explorers around the world, Mexico has long been considered “the new frontier of caving.” Here cavers have a high likelihood of being among the first human beings ever to boldly set foot where “no one has gone before.”
Maybe the best example of Mexico’s magnificent caves is the Huautla Cave System located in Oaxaca’s Sierra Mazateca. Exploration began in 1965 when a group of cavers from Austin, Texas, arrived at the village of Huautla de Jiménez.
They soon discovered three beautiful and challenging caves in the area: Sótano de San Agustin, La Grieta and Nita Nanta. In time it became clear that these and other caves they kept finding were interconnected, all part of one big cave system, which became known as Sistema Huautla.
Numerous expeditions took place over the years and more than 65 kilometers of passages were mapped by cave explorers from all around the globe. In the late winter of 2013, an international team of cave divers entered the cave, rappelled through crashing waterfalls down chasms as tall as skyscrapers and carried out eight separate scuba dives past “the mother of all sumps” to reach a depth of -1,554 meters, making Huautla the western hemisphere’s deepest cave — and now the longest of the 17 deepest caves in the world.
In 2015, 47 speleologists from seven countries (Mexico, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, Switzerland and Romania) participated in a six-week expedition to venture into parts of the system which had not yet been explored.
A caver in The Metro, a typical room in Sistema Huautla. Matt Tomlinson
“We mapped and connected two caves 700 meters deep,” said veteran Huautla pioneer and Explorers Club member Bill Steele. “You need a lot more than 700 meters of rope to reach that point because you have horizontal traverses to do on the way down . . . and it takes a whole week just to put the ropes in place.”
In 2014, Steele helped to form PESH (Proyecto Espleleológico Sistema Huautla), a project dedicated to conducting a comprehensive speleological study of Sistema Huautla over a 10-year period.
Recently, I caught up with Steele just after he returned from the latest exploration of Huautla, which took place throughout April.
“Sistema Huautla is now 89 kilometers long,” he told me, “and 1,560 meters deep, which makes it the deepest cave in the western hemisphere and the ninth deepest in the world, tied for that place right now with a cave in Austria. This year we added three entrances to the system, so we’ve got 29 entrances now.”
“This was the sixth PESH expedition,” Steele went on, “and this year we had 42 people. They were from three countries: Mexico, the U.S. and Costa Rica. The way we structure it is we have 30 people at any given time: that’s what our infrastructure on the surface can handle. One thing of note this year is that at one point we had five deep underground camps going at the same time, a new benchmark for exploration in Huautla. These people stayed underground for a week at a time and then came out to report.
“Some of your readers may not realize that there is no radio in existence that works through that much rock, although there are a couple of people working on that sort of thing. So, at the moment, it’s like Pony Express: the way you find out what’s going on is when somebody comes out and tells you.
Cavers in a deep Sistema Huautla underground camp.
“And years ago we decided it’s better if these people actually write out their report before heading for the surface, because after climbing up so many ropes and working so hard for so long, people arrive up here so tired that they forget what it was they were supposed to tell you or they can’t quite remember all the details, so we now have a rule that all messages must be written down.”
As for scientific results, this year’s PESH expedition had a graduate student from Western Kentucky University who is studying karst hydrology. “His name is Fernando Hernández,” Steele told me, “and he’s a very good caver. He is still there in Huautla right now. He’s been there since February. In regard to biology, we have a collecting permit issued to us by Dr. Oscar Francke of UNAM in Mexico City. He’s described 48 different life forms that live in Sistema Huautla. Eleven of these have turned out to be highly adapted troglobic creatures.
“As for paleontology, Dr. Iván Alarcón Durán out of Puebla and his people are looking at some remains of Pleistocene megafauna that we’ve seen in the caves. They discovered the only complete skull ever found in Mexico of a Pleistocene sloth over 12,000 years old. So we are really happy about what Mexican cave scientists are finding here.”
The yearly presence of cave explorers in the local villages has had unexpected consequences. This is just one of many anecdotes told by Bill Steele:
“On the very last day of last year’s expedition, a school teacher walked up and he had a USB drive in his hand. Now he was a little shy. He lives in the same village where we rent houses, and he said: ‘This is my life’s work and I’m hoping that you can find a way to print a hundred copies of this to help children learn to read their native language, Mazateco. I teach it, but we don’t have a book. If you can print 100 copies, I would be so happy.’
“So I went back to Texas wondering, ‘How am I going to do that?’ Every page in that teacher’s manuscript was in color . . . and I looked into the cost and sort of gulped, because publishing really isn’t our thing. But I went to the Whole Earth Provision Company, which has been so good to cavers. They had printed our brochure, which explains what we were doing in Huautla.
An anthodite (gypsum formation) in the San Agustín section of the cave. Stephen Eginoire
“That brochure, by the way, is written in three languages: English, Spanish and Mazateco, and we found out that it is the only document in existence in those three languages, other than the Holy Bible! So schoolteachers like it.
“Of course, that teacher knew about the brochure because he is the very one who translated it into Mazateco. So, as for the primer, we said, ‘We’ll do what we can.’
“Well, we did better than 100 copies: we were able to print 180, beautifully done and spiral bound so they lay flat on a desk.”
Back to caving, I asked Bill Steele where Huautla stands in relation to the rest of the world’s caves.
“Well,” replied Steele, “Carlsbad Caverns is known for one very big chamber called the Big Room, but here in Huautla we’ve got at least 12 rooms just as big . . . and one of them is twice the size of the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium! . . .
“You know, way back in 1987, a famous Swiss caver named Phillipe Rouillier approached me deep inside the cave and said, with his German-Swiss accent, ‘Bill, I do believe this is the most magnificent cave on earth.’ Thirty-two years later — after numerous stupendous additions to the cave, I hear more and more speleologists saying the same.
[wpgmza id=”200″]
“This was my 25th Huautla expedition over 42 years. I was a young man of 28 the first time I went. Now I am 70 years old. I feel really blessed that I am able to be a part of such a significant exploration of a major geographical feature of this planet. It’s an incredible cave!
Would you like to visit the Huautla caves from your living room, without getting your clothes muddy? Have a look at the PESH page. The pictures are spectacular.
Photos courtesy of PESH and Bill Steele, unless otherwise indicated.
[soliloquy id="80106"]
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Thousands march in Monclova, Coahuila, in support of the steelmaker.
Around 9,000 people marched in Monclova, Coahuila, yesterday to support steelmaker Altos Hornos de México and its president, Alonso Ancira Elizondo, who was arrested in Spain earlier this week on corruption charges.
Altos Hornos managers and employees and state and local officials joined the march.
“Someone who isn’t familiar with Coahuila wouldn’t be able to understand the uncertainty we’re going through about the company,” Coahuila Labor Secretary Román Cepeda González told the assembled protesters after the march ended.
Cepeda said that Coahuila Governor Miguel Riquelme was worried about the operation of Altos Hornos in light of the arrest of its president, although the company continues operating.
Company general manager Luis Zamudio said the company’s operations were not at risk.
Altos Hornos CEO Ancira shows his handcuffs after his arrest this week in Spain.
Monclova Mayor Alfredo Paredes also spoke in support of the company.
“We will defend our families, our incomes, our economy,” he said. “We are coming out to defend legality. The way they’ve acted has created worry and uncertainty.”
The first move against the company came earlier this week when the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Attorney General’s Office froze its bank accounts. However, the accounts were freed after Ancira’s arrest on Tuesday in Mallorca, Spain, by Interpol agents who were acting on a Mexican arrest warrant.
Ancira faces corruption charges related to the 2014 sale by Altos Hornos of a fertilizer plant to Pemex, although federal officials have released few details of the charges.
A warrant for the arrest of former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya has also been issued, but he has obtained a temporary suspension against the warrant, according to his attorney.
Monclova-headquartered Altos Hornos is the largest integrated steel plant in Mexico and employs over 20,000 people.
According to an attorney for the company it generates 18% of the state’s Gross Domestic Product.
Combating narcos has been a key focus of the navy but now marines are fighting sargassum as well.
The federal government will build four vessels designed to collect sargassum from the sea, the governor of Quintana Roo said yesterday.
Carlos Joaquín said in a statement that federal authorities made the announcement at a meeting to discuss strategies to combat the arrival of the seaweed on Caribbean coast beaches.
Each of the catamaran-style boats will cost 15 million pesos (US $783,500) and the first will be ready for service in six months, the governor said. The navy will build the vessels.
They will be equipped with a crane that can deposit the seaweed they collect into another boat or a vehicle prior to disposal.
Sargassum has already started washing up on Quintana Roo beaches and it is predicted that more than a million tonnes of the unsightly and smelly macroalgae will invade the state’s coastline this year.
At yesterday’s meeting, federal, state and municipal authorities as well as tourism sector representatives and members of civil society discussed medium and long-term strategies to combat and manage the arrival of sargassum.
They also looked at funding sources for clean-up efforts and canvassed opinions about where the sargassum should be discarded after collection.
President López Obrador announced earlier this month that the navy would lead efforts to combat the macroalgae’s annual arrival but hotel owners said this week that government inaction is forcing them to act on their own to deal with the tonnes of sargassum that are washing up.
In contrast, Joaquín said that authorities have taken immediate action to clean up beaches.
Also present at yesterday’s meeting was navy chief José Rafael Ojeda Durán, who said that the military is developing its own satellite system to identify the presence of clumps of sargassum as they approach the coast.
He also said that weekly flyovers of the Caribbean Sea will help authorities detect which parts of the Quintana Roo coastline are worst affected by the seaweed.
Two navy vessels arrived off the Quintana Roo coast nearly two weeks ago and began gathering sargassum. In two days, they collected 10 tonnes.
Artist's conception of the new US Consulate in Guadalajara.
The United States is investing more than US $1.5 billion to build a new embassy and several consulates in Mexico including three whose construction started this month.
Diplomatic staff and officials from the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations held groundbreaking ceremonies during May at sites in Guadalajara, Jalisco; Hermosillo, Sonora; and Nogales, Sonora.
Construction of the new $374-million four-story, energy-efficient consulate in Guadalajara began in the middle of the month.
Consul General Robin Matthewman said the facility in the west of the Jalisco capital will have the capacity to attend to 2,000 people per day.
“The new consulate will demonstrate the importance that the United States gives to the strong political, economic and personal ties that have grown between our countries over time,” she said.
The $230-million consulate in Hermosillo and the $211-million facility in Nogales are both expected to be completed in 2022. Their construction will generate 750 jobs for local workers.
All three new consulates will be high-security facilities equipped with cutting-edge technology.
Commencement of the three new projects follows the beginning of construction in February last year of a new embassy in the Mexico City neighborhood of Nuevo Polanco. It is also expected to open in 2022.
In a series of Twitter posts today, the United States Embassy in Mexico also noted that new consulates opened in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, this month, and in Nuevo Laredo in the same state in April 2018.
“In total, these projects represent investment greater than $1.5 billion in the Mexican economy through contracts with builders, suppliers and workers,” the embassy said.
“These new diplomatic facilities incorporate design concepts that pay tribute to Mexican and American architectural traditions and include art installations that represent our shared border, history and culture and celebrate our long-lasting friendship and association with Mexico.”
The Angelos State University String Quartet will be among the festival's performers.
The ninth edition of OperaMaya’s International Summer Music Festival opened this week in Cancún.
The festival got under way on Monday and is offering a series of eight concerts in Cancún’s Dos Playas Hotel as well as two more in Valladolid, another in Puerto Morelos and one more at the Cobá archaeological site before it closes June 10.
The event, which in previous years has been held in various locations, will feature opera, symphony, chamber and Mexican music performances from more than 50 artists hailing from South Korea, Poland, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States, China, Canada and Austria, including the Angelo State University String Quartet, Piotr Wisniewski, Joanna Ruszala, Simón Kyung Lee, Kathleen Maurer, James Jeffery, John Irish and Fragner Magrinelli.
In addition to the concert series, the festival will also feature a reunion for professors from the Quintana Roo Mayan Intercultural University and the festival participants, as well as a sponsored cultural exchange between the festival’s featured musicians and artists.
Festival director and celebrated soprano Mary Grogan explained that the goal of the event is to celebrate and raise awareness of Mayan culture, not just as an element of an ancient society, but as a relevant expression of a modern people.
“Foreigners are very interested in learning their language and we believe that through music we can invite people to participate in their culture and language.”
Grogan added that the name of this year’s festival series, “Dignificada” (meaning “dignified” in Spanish), came from singer-songwriter Lila Downs’ tribute to Digna Ochoa, a Mexican human rights lawyer who was murdered in 2001 in Mexico City for her activism on behalf of peasants in Guerrero.
“We are celebrating, as the name says, the dignity that we all have, especially women. We are honoring their lives and the sacrifices they have made.”
Miguel Cortés, manager of the Dos Playas Hotel, said the festival is a unique opportunity to experience world-class music.
“This is an experience of life and of exchange . . . [the musicians] are coming to give us the gift of their art.”
This morning's accident on the Mazatlán-Durango highway.
The Mazatlán-Durango highway was closed this morning after a bus collided with a truck, killing five people and injuring 21 others.
The Futura line bus, which was traveling from Monterrey, Nuevo León, to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, with 38 passengers aboard, plowed into the back of a stationary truck at the 133-kilometer mark.
The truck, carrying a load of lumber, had stopped due to a mechanical problem and was occupying at least half the lane.
State Civil Protection authorities said three of the victims were transported via air ambulance to Durango city hospitals due to the severity of their injuries.
The accident occurred at 8:00am at the Neverías bridge.
The Federal Highways and Bridges Agency had issued a warning 10 minutes before that there was fog on the highway and urged drivers to turn on their headlight and reduce their speed.
There aren't enough police in Morelos, says security commissioner.
The incidence of high-impact crimes soared in Morelos in the first four months of the year, the worst being extortion, which skyrocketed by 705%.
According to data compiled by the security consulting firm GLAC, kidnappings surged by 158%, intentional homicides rose by 39% and theft of auto parts increased by 24%.
The statistics are bad news for Cuauhtémoc Blanco, a former soccer star and mayor of Cuernavaca who became Morelos governor on October 1, 2018.
In sheer numbers, there were 57 reported cases of extortion between January and April, 26 kidnappings, 313 intentional homicides and 690 auto parts robberies.
In the same period a year ago, when Graco Ramírez was governor, just seven cases of extortion and 10 kidnappings were reported.
Under Blanco’s administration, 86.4% of residents believe that the central Mexican state is unsafe, the GLAC Index indicated. Statistics show that homicides increased in the state capital while Blanco was mayor, between 2016 and 2018.
Referring to the governor’s ascension to the top job earlier this month, activist Javier Sicilia observed that the state had replaced the corrupt with the inept.
“Graco Ramírez was bad and it seems that this one [Blanco] is going to be worse,” he said.
According to the state security commissioner, organized crime groups are responsible for most of the murders and other high-impact crimes in Morelos.
José Antonio Ortiz Guarneros said that five gangs operate in the state: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Los Rojos, La Familia Michoacana, Los Tlahuicas and Los Mayas.
Interior Secretary Pablo Ojeda Cárdenas said the gangs, most notably the CJNG and Los Rojos, are fighting over the route between the two locations.
Earlier this month he said that Morelos needs more police because it currently has a force of only 600 officers.
However, Ojeda expressed confidence that with a future deployment of the National Guard, recruitment of more police officers and greater coordination, authorities will be able to significantly improve the security situation.
