The process to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will resume over the summer, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week.
“We decided to continue our work in an intensive way over the summer,” Freeland told reporters Thursday after meeting with United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
“We didn’t set specific dates today [Thursday]. We talked about following up on setting up specific dates for meetings and that is what we are going to do,” she explained.
“All three countries are clear that meaningful progress has been made to date and we need to keep working hard to get to a deal on a modernized NAFTA.”
Canadian media reported that Freeland received the support of several United States senators during the meeting with Lighthizer, including two Republicans.
Republican Senator Bob Corker, who is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, later confirmed that the majority of U.S. senators are in favor of renewing NAFTA.
For her part, the minister said the meeting with Lighthizer was “constructive” and explained that its main aims were to set a path towards reaching a deal to continue the 24-year-old trade pact and to discuss and reconcile differences about the United States metal tariffs that were imposed on Canada and Mexico June 1.
Freeland also said that she had spoken with Mexico Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo and they had agreed to continue working to reach an agreement regardless of the outcome of the July 1 presidential election.
Following Freeland’s remarks, the president of Mexico’s influential Business Coordinating Council, Juan Pablo Castañón, said the three countries’ technical teams were continuing to work to reach a deal and that only the political will to achieve a deal was stagnant.
United States President Donald Trump has made repeated threats to terminate the agreement and more recently suggested that the U.S. could seek to negotiate separate trade deals with both Mexico and Canada.
However, Castañón said he was hopeful that “internal dialogue in the United States” would lead the Trump administration to reconsider its position and that the three chief negotiators —Guajardo, Freeland and Lighthizer — would sit down to new talks soon.
Following the United States’ decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both condemned the move but also reaffirmed their commitment to reaching a new NAFTA deal.
While the announcement of the new metal tariffs and Mexico and Canada’s retaliatory tit-for-tat measures didn’t deliver a knockout blow to an updated agreement, the trade tensions have further complicated a process that was already strained by differences on issues such as rules of origin for the auto industry and the so-called sunset clause.
According to former United States Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez, the United States’ decision to impose tariffs on its neighbors and allies effectively killed the possibility of reaching a new NAFTA in 2018.
The tropical storm warning area, between Acapulco and Chacahua lagoon, Oaxaca. the weather channel
The Guerrero Civil Protection office has raised its yellow weather warning to orange as Tropical Storm Carlotta continues to sit off the coast, generating steady and sometimes heavy rainfall in both Guerrero and Oaxaca.
Agency Secretary Marco César Mayares Salvador told a news conference this afternoon that Carlotta, which was designated a tropical storm yesterday, had been sitting off the coast of the two states for 72 hours.
Weather forecasts call for rain totaling 100-200 millimeters with totals up to 250 in some locations.
The United States National Hurricane Center’s report at 4:00pm CDT said Carlotta was about 70 kilometers west-southwest of Punta Maldonado, Guerrero, and 115 kilometers southeast of Acapulco.
Rainfall forecasts for today and tomorrow. the weather channel
It was drifting at two kilometers per hour towards the north and was expected to move inland within the tropical storm warning area — between Acapulco and Chacahua lagoon in Oaxaca — by late tonight or early Sunday.
Maximum sustained winds at the eye of the storm were 85 km/h, but no significant change in strength is anticipated before it makes landfall, likely near or just southeast of Acapulco, when it will quickly dissipate.
Tropical storm-force winds are expected in the warning area into Sunday.
The United States-based fast food chain Krispy Krunchy Chicken is coming to Mexico, with its first outlet to open this month in Yucatán.
The food service chain that saw record growth in the U.S. last year will open on June 27 in the GoMart Montecarlo mall in the city of Mérida.
Sometimes called gas-station chicken for the fact that its product is sold primarily inside gas stations and convenience stores, Krispy Krunchy Chicken closed 2017 with 509 new stores, bringing its total to 2,294. Most of those are in the U.S.; the company also has a presence in Malaysia and American Samoa.
Last year the it sold 14 million chicken breasts, 24.5 million wings and 20 million thighs.
In Mexico, Krispy Krunchy Chicken will compete with brands such as Pollo Feliz and KFC. The latter has 328 restaurants throughout the country, operated by Premium Restaurant Brands.
According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, the food service market in Mexico recorded year-on-year growth of 3.9% last year, with sales of 819 billion pesos (US $43.4 billion).
The firm also found that the consolidation of convenience stores continued to rise. Of all the fast food companies in Mexico, Oxxo recorded the highest sales and the largest number of locations.
The man who appears likely to win the presidential election in two weeks says it will take a miracle to stop him from winning.
Leading presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared yesterday that he is absolutely certain he will win the July 1 election and that not even electoral fraud can stop him.
Only a miracle would allow one of his main rivals, Ricardo Anaya or José Antonio Meade, to become the next president of Mexico, the third-time hopeful said.
“They [Meade and Anaya] already know [I’m going to win], but they’re hoping there may be a miracle . . . only with a miracle [could they win], not even by fraud now,” the Morena party leader told reporters in Colima.
Asked what kind of miracle would have to happen in order for Anaya or Meade to beat him, the political veteran widely known by his initials AMLO declined to explain.
“I don’t want to say because the people [of Mexico] love me a lot and I love them a lot as well. They’re protecting me from above and science is protecting me. That’s all I can say,” he said.
Earlier, López Obrador said that he and his campaign team were in a buoyant mood and charged that it was now “just a matter of waiting” until his inevitable victory.
“. . . We’re taking it step by step, poco a poquito [little by little], like the song,” he said in reference to the hit song Despacito that AMLO said he, his team and supporters will dance to after they triumph on July 1.
Despite his optimism, the candidate for the three-party Together We Will Make History coalition said that he was concerned that state governors hadn’t committed to not interfere in the elections and to respect the decision voters make on July 1.
“[The governors] are very quiet, they’re not committing themselves to defend a [free and fair] vote, they’re involved in campaigning and using money from the budget, not in all cases but in the majority [of cases], they’re involved in the electoral process . . .” López Obrador said.
Meade: hoping for a miracle?
“I’m waiting for them to declare that they are committed to respect citizens’ votes and committed to not carry out electoral fraud and to not use money from the budget . . . to buy votes,” he added.
Apart from electing a new president and federal Congress on July 1, voters in nine states will choose a new governor and thousands more municipal and state-level positions are also up for grabs.
Meanwhile, ruling party candidate José Antonio Meade shared two opinion polls via his Twitter account yesterday that showed that he had moved past Ricardo Anaya into second place.
The first poll — supposedly conducted by the Mexican Business Council (CMN) and disseminated by the journalist David Páramo — showed that AMLO had 44% support on June 5, followed by Meade with 24% and Anaya with 20%.
In addition to publishing a graphic of the poll, which tracked voter intentions starting last November, Meade wrote:
“Here’s the sign that many expected . . . We’re in a clear and ascendant second place and we’re heading firmly towards victory. I ask for your free, conscious, strategic and reasoned vote. I will not fail you!”
In the second “tracking poll” — conducted by a polling company called Innovación Encuestas y Investigación — Meade’s overall support was slightly lower at 23.2% but the margin between him and López Obrador was reduced to just 11 points.
Anaya, of the right-left For Mexico in Front coalition, was again in third place with 20.2% while independent candidate Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez dropped one point to 2% backing compared to the first poll Meade shared.
Perhaps significantly, the second poll showed that 20.4% of respondents said that they didn’t yet know who they would vote for, potentially giving Meade ample space to catch the frontrunner.
The polling company said the survey was conducted between May 20 and June 14 with 800 eligible voters and that its margin of error was ± four points.
The polls contrast with other surveys that have consistently shown Anaya in second place with Meade languishing in third.
A poll published by the newspaper Reforma in the last week of May showed AMLO with 52% support, compared to Anaya with 26% and Meade with 19%.
Bloomberg’s poll tracker, last updated on June 8, shows similar results with López Obrador at 50.8%, Anaya at 24.8% and Meade 21.6%.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate has failed to gain much traction with voters, perhaps partially because of his largely mild manner but mostly because of his association with a government that has been plagued by corruption scandals and is led by a deeply unpopular president.
However, Anaya too has been damaged by claims of corruption and scrutiny of his alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme has intensified over the past two weeks.
Two recently-released videos allegedly provide evidence of his complicity in the scheme related to real estate purchases and sales in his home state of Querétaro. The federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) continues to investigate the case.
Anaya has repeatedly denied the allegations. He has also accused López Obrador of making a pact of impunity with President Enrique Peña Nieto, which AMLO has rejected.
In contrast, Anaya says that if he wins he will launch a corruption investigation focusing on Peña Nieto’s time in office and if the president is found guilty, he will go to jail.
However, given that election day is just two weeks away and the size of López Obrador’s advantage over his rivals, the likelihood of Anaya or Meade causing an upset and beating López Obrador would seem, barring miracles, unlikely.
He’s 101 years old but Marcial Martínez Martínez has decided it’s time to go back to school.
The Mexico City man has just finished a course in which he learned how to read and is now planning to pursue further studies.
Even as an illiterate young man and father Martínez knew how important it was to be able to read and write.
“I put my children in school, I tried to get them all in, I decided that my children had to learn, it didn’t matter that I didn’t. Thank God my children know how to read. I didn’t want them to be like me . . .” he told the newspaper Milenio.
Martínez is one of 133,126 people enrolled at the National Institute for the Education of Adults (INEA) in a program that targets people 15 or older with gaps in their education.
While people of all ages are welcome in the program, INEA pays special attention to younger students, providing them with counseling and family planning courses.
INEA offers courses up to the preparatory school level, but Martínez has his sights set a bit lower than that, at least for now. His next step is to finish primary school.
He will not be alone in the classroom: there are currently over 53,000 parents enrolled in INEA’s courses.
The six officers who were slain yesterday in Puebla.
Two senior police officers in Amozoc, Puebla, have been arrested in connection with the murder yesterday of six municipal police officers who had filed a formal complaint about issues in the municipal government.
The state Attorney General’s office said the six victims had been tortured and executed after being lured to an ambush with a false alarm about a disturbance.
Initial reports said fuel thieves killed the officers. Two heavily armed civilians were arrested shortly after the execution, and a pipeline tap and tanker truck were found one kilometer away from the location where the bodies were found, state authorities said last night.
But today, the Attorney General’s office announced that the state investigation agency had arrested two Amozoc police officials for their presumed participation in the murders.
The six police who were killed had made an official complaint on Thursday before the municipal controller, the office said, but did not reveal any details regarding the nature of the complaint.
The bus that went off the road last night in Jalisco.
Some survivors of a bus accident that killed seven people last night in Jalisco are blaming excessive speed.
Thirty people were injured when the bus went off the road at about 11:00pm after the driver lost control. The vehicle overturned and plunged into a drainage canal on the San Martín de las Flores-El Verde highway in Tlaquepaque.
State Civil Protection officials said two children aged two and 11 were among the dead. There were about 40 passengers aboard.
Ambulances were called in from Guadalajara, Zapopan and Tlajomulco to transfer the injured to hospital.
Emergency personnel said there was a meter of water inside the bus, which caused panic among survivors who feared more water was going to enter.
Some said the driver was going too fast when he lost control.
The numbers indicate heavy rain (1), very heavy rain (2) and intense rain (3). The yellow symbol indicates electrical storms.
Three weather systems will bring rain to much of the country today, according to the National Meteorological Service (SMN).
Hurricane Bud was downgraded to a tropical storm Wednesday but the SMN said it could still bring strong to severe storms to the north of the country with wind gusts of 45 to 55 kilometers per hour and one to three-meter swells on the coasts of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora and Sinaloa.
In central and southern Mexico, Tropical Storm Carlotta is also producing strong winds and heavy rain.
The stormed formed in the Pacific Ocean near Acapulco, Guerrero, yesterday and is forecast to move inland late today or early tomorrow. A tropical storm warning is in effect between Acapulco and Lagunas de Chacahua, Oaxaca.
Wind gusts of 45 to 55 kilometers per hour are expected along with swells of one to three meters on the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca, the SMN said.
The United States National Hurricane Center said Carlotta would produce 75 to 150 millimeters of rainfall along the Guerrero and southwestern Oaxaca coasts, including the city of Acapulco, with isolated higher amounts of 250 millimeters possible.
It also said the rains are likely to produce life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, especially in areas of higher terrain.
Stormy weather is also forecast for Michoacán, Chiapas, Puebla and Veracruz.
The SMN said that a third tropical storm system will affect the Yucatán Peninsula and also bring heavy rains.
The system is currently located off the northern coast of Quintana Roo and there is a 10% chance that it could develop into a hurricane.
It will cause severe storms with torrential rains in the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán and strong storms with heavy rain in Campeche and Tabasco, the SMN said.
The rainfall expected today will add to what has already been a wet week in much of Mexico.
In Sinaloa, Hurricane Bud caused flooding, toppled trees, closed the ports of Topolobampo and Mazatlán, tore a roof off a building and forced at least 14 people to evacuate their homes.
In neighboring Sonora, the ports of Yavaros, Guaymas, Bahía de Kino, Puerto Libertad and Puerto Peñasco were also closed.
Steady rain has also fallen over the past three days in Mexico City, causing flooding in several parts of the city and shutting down five subway stations in the east of the city Thursday.
Migrants aboard the freight train nicknamed 'The Beast.' AP/Eduardo Verdugo
Mexico is often considered a transit country for migrants. It’s the territory Central Americans must cross to get to the United States.
But many generations of migrants have made Mexico their home. From 1930s-era Spanish Civil War exiles and Jewish World War II refugees to South Americans escaping military dictatorships throughout the 20th century, Mexico has welcomed successive waves of immigrants.
In 1948, during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the founding document of the international human rights system – Mexican delegate Pablo Campos Ortíz advocated for a “very broad conception” of asylum.
Seconding a Lebanese proposal, Campos Ortíz said the world should recognize “not only the right of seeking asylum but also the right to be granted asylum.”
Mexico and Lebanon lost that debate.
The 1951 Convention for Refugees and subsequent agreements require that signatory countries offer asylum to migrants who can prove they have a “credible fear” of certain kinds of persecution. As demonstrated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent exclusion of domestic abuse as grounds for asylum, they are not obliged to accept all applications.
Mexico provides an exception to that rule – in law, if not in practice. It took almost 60 years, but in August 2016 a Campos Ortíz-inspired amendment to the Mexican Constitution recognized migrants’ right to seek and be granted asylum. The amendment proposal called Mexico a “country of refuge.”
The next year, Mexico City approved a local constitution declaring itself a sanctuary city where authorities will “prevent, investigate, sanction and offer reparations for human rights violations.”
As a human rights scholar and immigrant, I have watched Mexico’s 2018 presidential election season closely. Would any candidates take a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook and demonize Central American migrants for political gain?
Despite an official commitment to the rights of migrants, Mexico has recently followed the U.S.’s punitive lead on immigration.
Between 2007 and March 2017, the U.S. government invested US $1.5 billion in the Mérida Initiative, a U.S.-Mexico partnership officially intended “to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
In recent years, however, Mérida Initiative funds have gone toward enhancing Mexican immigration enforcement. At the urging of the Obama administration, in 2014 President Enrique Peña Nieto launched an aggressive arrest and deportation program along its southern border.
The U.S. has funded Mexico to increase enforcement along its southern border with Guatemala. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
The Programa Frontera Sur targets Central American migrants attempting to cross Mexico. U.S.-trained Mexican immigration officials use American-funded surveillance towers and biometric data equipment to control the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tabasco.
Nearly 40% of Central American migrants entering Mexico are fleeing violent attacks or threats back home, according to Doctors Without Borders.
But Mexican authorities still routinely force people to return to dangerous conditions, Amnesty International reports. This practice, known as refoulement, is illegal under domestic and international law.
Despite Trump’s Twitter claims that Mexico has done “nothing at stopping people” from coming to the U.S., the Frontera Sur program has proven effective. Between 2014 and 2015, Mexican deportations of Central American migrants – primarily Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans – more than doubled, from 78,733 in 2013 to 176,726 in 2015.
During the same period, detentions of Central Americans along the U.S. border fell by half.
From restrictions on asylum claims to mass deportations, the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies may actually push Mexico closer to becoming the “refuge country” it claims to be.
According to a 2017 study by the country’s National Human Rights Commission, around 20% of 1,000 Central American migrants surveyed while passing through Mexican territory have now decided to stay in the country. The U.S. Border Patrol detained some 351,000 people attempting to cross illegally into the U.S. in 2017, down from 600,000 in 2016.
That has made migrants a hot topic in the lead-up to Mexico’s July 1 general election – but not in the way that might be expected. Presidential candidates have largely been largely sympathetic to their plight.
During the second presidential debate, which aired on May 21, an audience member from the border city of Tijuana asked the four candidates how they would improve Mexico’s “outrageous” treatment of undocumented Central Americans.
Frontrunner Andres Manuel López Obrador, from the Morena party, answered that he would stop doing the U.S.’s “dirty work” on immigration if elected.
López Obrador proposed instead an “alliance for progress” between the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Central America to foster regional job creation, economic development and security, thus reducing the need to migrate. He did not explain how he would persuade Trump to join.
Candidate Ricardo Anaya, who heads an unusual left-right alliance between the progressive Democratic Revolution Party and the conservative National Action Party, said Mexico must be the “moral authority” on immigration. It should treat Central American migrants the way Mexicans would like to be treated in the U.S.: justly and humanely.
Even José Antonio Meade, from President Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, acknowledged that criminals, economic migrants and victims of violence are different groups of people and should treated as such.
In a rebuke to a Trump administration policy of separating migrant children from their parents, Meade added that unaccompanied minor migrants should be offered special health services and legal protection.
Not even independent Jaime Rodríguez, a political renegade who once suggested that Mexico could fight crime by chopping off drug traffickers’ hands, has taken a hard line on immigration. He proposed making the southern state of Chiapas a “Mexican California” – evidently meaning a place where low-paid migrant workers would help drive the local economy.
None of the candidates attacked migrants in a populist bid to win votes.
But none addressed the gap between Mexico’s treatment of Central American migrants and its “refuge country” status, either.
For the next president, complying with Mexico’s new humanitarian law will mean passing policies that truly take migrants’ rights seriously.
Jaguar cubs at a zoo in México state. The numbers of their wild counterparts are up.
Mexico’s wild jaguar population has increased by 20% over the past eight years, according to a new study released yesterday.
The Second National Jaguar Census 2016-2018 found that there are now 4,800 wild jaguars in the country, compared to 4,000 reported in 2010.
News of the growing population is especially significant considering that jaguar numbers have been on the decline in recent years.
The study was carried out by researchers from 16 institutions and 25 academic groups using 396 remotely activated cameras which are triggered by sensors that detect the animals’ movements.
The president of the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation, Gerardo Ceballos, presented the results of the census at the International Symposium on Ecology and Conservation of the Jaguar in Cancún, Quintana Roo.
Ceballos said the aim of conservation efforts “is to have 7,000 or 8,000 jaguars throughout the country” in the near future.
“. . . If we continue with the conservation actions of recent years, I estimate that we will achieve it in the next three or four years. By doing that, we’ll remove the jaguar from the list of animals in danger of extinction . . .” he said.
He explained that the increase in the jaguar population was due to conservation work completed by the Jaguar Alliance, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Telmex Telcel Foundation, whose technology has played a crucial role in monitoring the jaguar.
Sergio Patgher, a Telcel brand manager, said the foundation has provided funds to purchase camera traps and has assisted researchers with the technology to remotely monitor the jaguars and their movements.
WWF Project Coordinator María José Villanueva said the main threats to jaguars in Mexico are habitat destruction, illegal hunting, wildlife trade and conflict with livestock farmers.
She and Ceballos agreed that jaguar conservation should be included in the government’s overall environmental strategy, ensuring that their protection is guaranteed beyond each six-year presidential term.
Both conservationists also said the private sector and citizens’ groups should be included in the efforts to protect the species.
Alejandro del Mazo, who heads up the government’s Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), said in March that Mexico will seek to create a trinational natural protected area for the jaguar in the southern jungle region that extends into Guatemala and Belize.
The project would add to a system of interconnected wildlife corridors known as the “Paseo del Jaguar” (Path of the Jaguar), which is already in place and extends through several countries in the Americas.
In Mexico, jaguars live in the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Colima, Sinaloa, Sonora y San Luis Potosí.
There are around 64,000 jaguars left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which has declared the mammal a “near-threatened” species.
The yellow, black-spotted cats are found in 18 countries across the Americas but an estimated 90% live in the Amazon rainforest.
For the next president, complying with Mexico’s new humanitarian law will mean passing policies that truly take migrants’ rights seriously.
