No grandiose projects; magical towns to be reviewed: new tourism secretary

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July 4, 2018

Miguel Torruco will be Mexico's next tourism secretary.

Finishing projects that are already under way, reviewing programs currently in place and not undertaking new, grandiose ventures will be among the tourism priorities of the next federal government, according to the man who will be Mexico’s new tourism secretary.

Miguel Torruco Marqués told the newspaper Milenio that the incoming administration won’t discard projects currently in progress, citing the large-scale mixed tourism and residential development at Playa Espíritu in Sinaloa and the Escalera Nautica or “Nautical Staircase” marina project in Baja California.

“There won’t be grandiose projects that remain unfinished,” he said, adding that the government will seek to ensure that both visitors and residents benefit from tourism-oriented projects.

Torruco also said that he will carry out an “exhaustive review” of the Pueblos Mágicos (Magical Towns) scheme, charging that its rules and objectives had become unclear under the prior government.

“We have to remember that in the last six months of the previous [Felipe Calderón-led] administration, they started to hand out magical town designations as gifts. We have to be realistic, a town that enters into the program should have certain characteristics and commitments,” he said.

There are now 111 pueblos mágicos in Mexico, a number that has grown rapidly in recent years and led to claims that the scheme is more about politics than tourism and that a magical designation comes down to negotiations between state governors and federal authorities, with money being the main motivator.

Torruco said that in order for a new town to be awarded magical town status, it must not only meet certain requirements that make it worthy of the name but also that agreements with municipal, state and federal authorities as well as the private sector must be in place to ensure that it is funded and developed as it should be.

The incoming secretary cited San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas as an example of a destination that received the magical town destination but subsequently failed to meet the objectives of the scheme due to a lack of funding.

Meanwhile, the president of the Association of Hotels of Cancún and Puerto Morelos said that there was confidence in the sector that Torruco would attend to the problems that the tourism industry faces.

Roberto Cintrón Gómez identified the recovery of beaches in Quintana Roo, including the removal of sargassum, as a priority.

He also said that during a visit to the Caribbean coast state in May, Torruco said that diversifying the tourism market to avoid over-dependence on United States visitors would continue to be a priority for the next government.

Miguel Ángel Lemus Mateos, vice-president of the state’s branch of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), which organized a May 5 forum Torruco attended, said the next tourism secretary had made an assurance that tourism would be a national priority for an Andrés Manuel López Obrador-led government.

At that forum, the future secretary said he was committed to stamping out corruption in the tourism secretariat and implementing cost-cutting measures such as eliminating first-class travel for high-ranking officials.

“There will be a platform that allows [tourism sector] tenders to be seen in real time in order to avoid all kinds of corruption. We will continue to have the same budget at Sectur [the Secretariat of Tourism] but there is going to be a salary reduction for those at the top to increase salaries for those at the bottom,” Torruco said.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Economista (sp)

Mexico has been painted in a sea of maroon, the colors of Morena

By

MND Staff

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July 3, 2018

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Morena, Mexico's new dominant political force.

In a sea of maroon lies a single, small island of blue: Guanajuato, the only state in Mexico where Andrés Manuel López Obrador didn’t win the popular vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

The rest of the country was painted in the electoral colors of Morena, a party that was only formally registered four years ago but was the main vessel that swept its leader to a landslide victory with 53% of the national vote.

It will soon not only be the dominant force in federal politics but will also have a strong presence in many other parts of the country.

Morena and its political allies — the Labor Party (PT) and the conservative Social Encounter Party (PES) — didn’t just win the presidency but also a decisive majority in both houses of federal Congress, the governorships of four states and the capital, congressional majorities in 12 states and countless mayoral and other municipal positions.

From September, the Together We Will Make History coalition will hold 303 of 500 seats in the lower house of the federal Congress and 70 of 128 in the Senate.

That means for the first time in 24 years, the president of Mexico will have a legislative majority.

The Morena-led coalition’s main congressional opposition will come from the For Mexico in Front alliance — which is led by the National Action Party (PAN) and nominated Ricardo Anaya for the presidency — but its capacity to spoil the government’s agenda will be limited by having just 140 and 38 seats in the two respective houses.

Beyond the federal domain, Morena’s Claudia Sheinbaum will become the first popularly-elected female mayor of Mexico City, which is sometimes considered the second most important position in Mexican politics, while the party’s coalition candidates won the governor races in Morelos, Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas.

Morena was also successful in mayoral elections in many of the country’s state capitals and large population centers.

In México state, the party won control of the capital Toluca as well as at least eight municipalities that form part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area including Ecatepec, Tlalnepantla, Naucalpan and Texcoco. It also won the mayoral races in 11 of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs.

Even México state’s Atlacomulco, the birthplace of President Enrique Peña Nieto and a political cradle of other noted Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) politicians, fell into Morena’s hands.

Culiacán, Morelia, Zacatecas, Oaxaca, Cancún and Chetumal are some of the other state capitals and major cities where Morena experienced electoral success.

In López Obrador’s home state of Tabasco, Morena won mayoral races in 15 of 17 municipalities including Centro, which takes in the state capital of Villahermosa.

Of the 12 states where Together We Will Make History won congressional majorities, three were former PRI strongholds: México state, Colima and Hidalgo.

Returning to the presidential race, second-place candidate Anaya — who won 22% of the overall vote — only managed to save Guanajuato from the maroon-colored Morena tidal wave that swept over Mexico.

Anaya won there by over 203,000 votes but in neighboring Querétaro, his home state, AMLO came out on top by more than 61,000 votes.

And so it played out in states across the country, in PAN and PRI heartlands alike: the Morena tide could not be stopped, proving that the appetite for change was real and widespread.

The level of discontent with the ruling PRI, which has been plagued by corruption scandals and rising violence, is especially well illustrated by state election results in Veracruz.

While the PRI’s presidential candidate José Antonio Meade won just 16% of the federal vote, the party’s candidate in the gulf coast state fared even worse, polling just 14%.

What’s more, out of 30 positions up for grabs in the state Congress, the PRI didn’t win a single one.

It should be remembered that in addition to the generalized and widespread unpopularity of the federal PRI government, voters in Veracruz have only just emerged from the rule of one of Mexico’s most corrupt state governments of recent times, led by the now-imprisoned Javier Duarte.

That factor, no doubt, also played into voters’ rejection of the PRI and their warm embrace of Morena.

Yet, in neighboring Tabasco the PRI candidate fared even worse, winning just 12% of the vote.

In Mexico City, its candidate for mayor, Mikel Arriola, won under 13% of the vote and in Morelos, where former soccer player and current Cuernavaca mayor Cuauhtémoc Blanco seized power, the PRI candidate could only scrape together about 6%.

That hartazgo, the feeling of being fed up with the status quo, translated into the PRI not only losing the presidency and two state governorships, but also being diminished to a weak, third power in the federal Congress with the coalition it heads winning just 63 seats in the lower house and 20 in the Senate.

There can be no doubting that a major shift has taken place in Mexican politics.

The party that ruled Mexico uninterruptedly for 71 years until the year 2000 and was synonymous with political power in much of the 20th century is now a weakened third force whose influence at the federal level has been well and truly usurped by Morena.

While there is no doubt that a range of factors contributed to the PRI’s fall from grace, perhaps one reason— with which the party’s name has also far too often been synonymous — outweighs all others: corruption.

Source: Excelsiór (sp), El Financiero (sp), Milenio (sp)

The Mexican maple forest that time forgot — and amazed botanists

By

John Pint

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July 3, 2018

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View of the canopy in Jalisco's maple forest.

In the late 1990s, Fernando Aragón Cruz, acting as a guide for bird researchers from the University of Albuquerque, collected a sample of a kind of sugar maple from a remote spot 50 kilometers southeast of Puerto Vallarta.

As few native maples had ever been found in western Mexico, local botanists were surprised. They were even more surprised when they went out to look at the site. In a hidden-away arroyo called El Refugio, at 1,764 meters altitude, they were amazed to see not just one maple tree but a whole woods full of them, incorporated into an ancient fir-maple-conifer cloud forest, incomparably rich in diverse species of trees and plants.

But the botanists were puzzled: the flora in the forest included species going all the way back to the beginning of the Pliocene era. How, they asked, did this system of ecological sophistication and integration survive for over five million years?

In the first report on this extraordinary site, botanist José Antonio Vázquez stated that in his 20 years of experience in the field, he had never seen a forest “of such richness, structural exuberance and composition, which may have come together just after the melting of the glaciers which covered North America.”

I was lucky enough to visit the maple forest of El Refugio with one of western Mexico’s most famous botanists, Miguel Cházaro. From Guadalajara we drove west three hours to the town of Talpa, to which thousands of pilgrims flock (on foot) to celebrate the feast of St. Joseph each year on March 19.

From Talpa we headed south and eventually found ourselves on top of a narrow ridge 1,632 meters high, where we could look straight down a sheer drop from the windows on either side of the car. A few minutes later, we reached an isolated flat spot a few dozen meters off the road: a perfect place to park and a good spot for camping, with an impressive view of chain after chain of high mountains in the far distance.

Seventy meters downhill, we came to the “trailhead” of the “path” through the ancient forest. I put these words in quotes because in reality it was just what you so often find in Mexico: a barbed wire fence to be squeezed under and a vague semblance of a trail that becomes vaguer with every step you take.

Ah, but the forest we walked into was something wondrous! The maple trees began to appear after only a few minutes, incredibly tall and perfectly straight. These, for some years, were thought to be a subspecies of Acer saccharum, the sugar maple, but in 2017 it was learned that this Jalisco maple is a new species, now designated Acer binzayedii. It seems it was separated from the lineage of other maples at the beginning of the Pliocene, approximately 5.4 million years ago.

“Coming upon a grove of maple trees is no big deal,” commented Miguel Cházaro, “if you happen to be in Canada or someplace around 40° latitude north, with extremely cold winters. Finding sugar maples in a Jalisco cloud forest is another story.”

Cházaro explained to us that cloud forests are home to the richest flora in Mexico even though they occur in only 2% of the country. This we discovered to be true with every step we took deeper into the woods, which is located in a gently sloping ravine through which a small stream flows.

“That’s a walnut tree over there,” said our guide and next to it is a Guatemalan fir and over there a Podocarpus reichei, a kind of pine tree . . . .” But suddenly the botanist became nearly ecstatic. “Look at this! It’s a tree fern. This is a Cyathea costaricensis, not exactly what you’d expect to be growing among maple trees.”

In fact, it turned out there were at least 11 threatened or endangered species all around us in these woods, along with an extraordinary number of lichens and Spanish moss, which we quickly learned is neither Spanish nor a moss, but an epiphyte, a flowering plant which lives in happy symbiosis with its host.

So what is it like to hike through the Bosque de Maples? Not only are all the trees dripping with lichen and moss; you can also see mushrooms of every color and shape with every step. Then, when you come to a small stream, the trail transforms into a moss-covered fallen log which must be negotiated carefully. It’s like wandering through Jurassic Park. Finding a velociraptor hopping across one of the log bridges would come as no surprise at all!

Just before we turned back, we reached a little clearing. Huge fern trees gracefully spread their fronds all around us. I looked up. Silhouettes of maple and magnolia leaves framed a hole in the canopy above us and through that opening I could see tall pine trees on top of a nearby hillside. This ensemble seemed to summarize this curious place.

A few meters from the path, this jungle is impenetrable. I wonder how many more secrets lie beyond the short, 720-meter trail which allowed us to glimpse this mysterious throwback to prehistoric times.

Cházaro tried his best to explain to us that what made this place unique was its perfect balance. Plants and trees usually found in diverse climates had somehow learned to live together not just harmoniously, but so successfully that this forest had operated as a self-contained, self-sustaining unit since the Pliocene age. What might look like just another woods to most of us was, to him, the botanical equivalent of a symphony orchestra.

Unfortunately, efforts to preserve this unique forest are failing. Only a small, 150-hectare area has been declared a protected area, not enough, say environmentalists, to assure survival of the entire Bosque de Maples.

The greater part of this unique forest is unprotected at the moment and like all the woods in the Talpa area, is threatened by loggers, pot growers, pine-resin extractors, arsonists, wandering cattle, the Federal Electricity Commission and the huge number of pilgrims who swarm the area every March (yes, the last two are formally listed as threats). With enemies like that, the harmonious forest’s extraordinarily long life may soon come to an end.

“Acer binzayedii is on the road to extinction,” said University of Guadalajara professor Yalma Vargas, co-discoverer of the forest, in a 2017 Milenio interview. “If the state government doesn’t take urgent steps, we are going to lose this species.”

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.

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López Obrador, Peña Nieto have ‘cordial, friendly’ meeting to discuss transition

By

MND Staff

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July 3, 2018

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Peña Nieto and López Obrador today in the National Palace.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador met today with the man he will replace to become Mexico’s 58th president after he is sworn in on December 1.

Following an hour-long meeting at the National Palace in Mexico City’s historic center, the Morena party leader told a press conference that his encounter with President Enrique Peña Nieto was cordial and friendly and that the pair had agreed to work towards achieving an orderly and peaceful transition.

López Obrador, who swept to victory in a landslide Sunday with 53% of the vote, said that he and Peña Nieto discussed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the construction of the new Mexico City International Airport, the 2013 energy reform, the budget and security.

“The president had an open attitude,” the veteran leftist said, adding that Peña Nieto had offered that a meeting take place between the current finance secretary and his successor so that they could discuss the 2019 budget.

AMLO, as he is known by supporters and detractors alike, said that next year’s budget will include the pledges he made on the campaign trail, such as those to increase pensions for the elderly, offer more educational scholarships and work opportunities to the young and cut the salaries of high-ranking government officials.

López Obrador reaffirmed his commitment to work with the NAFTA negotiating team that is already in place and said he would continue to support Peña Nieto until the end of his six-year term.

With regard to the new airport, AMLO said that once he is formally the president-elect, joint teams will be formed to carry out an analysis of the US $13-billion project to determine “what is best for the general interest.”

The former Mexico City mayor has previously said that he would scrap the project, charging that it is corrupt, too expensive and not needed. An existing air base in México state could be used for commercial flights, López Obrador has proposed.

AMLO said today he had accepted Peña Nieto’s invitation to attend a Pacific Alliance meeting in Puerto Vallarta later this month.

He also said the government he leads will be “respectful of the autonomy of the Bank of México” and that “a macro-economic policy with fiscal balances” will be maintained.

López Obrador thanked Peña Nieto for not interfering in the electoral process, which he described as clean and fair. The president in turn pledged that the federal government would contribute to an orderly and efficient transition.

The “virtual” president-elect also said that as a result of his telephone conversation with United States President Donald Trump yesterday, it was agreed that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would visit Mexico to meet with him.

Mexican and U.S. officials announced shortly after that Pompeo will travel to Mexico on July 13 to meet with Peña Nieto and López Obrador. He will also meet with Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray Caso.

“Secretary Pompeo will reaffirm the partnership with Mexico to combat transnational criminal organizations and also the opioid epidemic,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “He will also discuss efforts to enhance trade, curb irregular migration and manage our shared border.”

Source: Milenio (sp), The Hill (en)

Mexicans swim Japan’s Tsugaru Strait in Oceans Seven marathon

By

César Hernández

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July 3, 2018

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Mexican swimmers Mariel Hawley and Nora Toledano swam across Japan’s Tsugaru Strait in record time Sunday as part of the Oceans Seven marathon swimming challenge.

It was their fifth completed swim in the seven-strait marathon.

It took the two swimmers 6 hours and 20 minutes to reach the island of Hokkaido, after wading into the waters off the coast of the island of Honshu.

“I swam with Nora Toledano and we made good time . . .,” Hawley told the newspaper Marca. “We started swimming at one in the morning, and we never stopped. I was never cold, [and] the water was between 15 and 17 C. We reached Hokkaido despite the rain and fog.”

The duo’s time broke all records set by women in the past, and was also the second best overall.

After successfully crossing Tsugaru, Hawley and Toledano are well on their way to completing the Oceans Seven challenge, which also includes the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, Cook Strait between New Zealand’s North and South islands, the Molokai Channel in Hawaii, the English Channel between England and France, the Catalina Channel between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles and the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco.

The Tsugaru crossing was Hawley’s second attempt at tackling the strait that connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. On that occasion, climate conditions severely hampered her progress. “After five hours of swimming I had advanced very little.”

Hawley described the contrasting conditions that led to this year’s success: “The night was spectacular, and by dawn the sea was flat. My daughter was my team, and she was supporting me all the time, encouraging me. I am very proud.”

Hawley’s and Toledano’s is the second successful crossing of the Tsugaru Strait by a Mexican. Antonio Argüelles crossed it last year as part of his successful completion of the challenge.

Source: Marca (sp)

AMLO announced his cabinet in December; this is who they are

By

MND Staff

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July 3, 2018

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The new federal cabinet takes office in December.

Long before he won Sunday’s presidential election in a landslide, Andrés Manuel López Obrador took the unusual step of naming the would-be members of his cabinet should he become the next president of Mexico.

With that being a reality now, here is a look at the backgrounds of the cabinet secretaries who will be charged with helping López Obrador, or AMLO, to implement his political agenda.

The 16-member cabinet, which AMLO announced in December, features an equal number of men and women, many of whom have had previous careers in academia and studied abroad.

Secretary of the Interior:

For the position usually considered the second-most powerful in Mexico’s federal government, López Obrador’s pick is 71-year-old Olga María del Carmen Sánchez Cordero Dávila.

Sánchez is a former Supreme Court judge who has seven honorary doctorates. She will be the first woman to hold the interior secretary role.

During the five-month transition period, Sánchez and AMLO’s campaign manager, Tania Clouthier, will manage the new administration’s internal political affairs.

Foreign Affairs:

The new government’s chief diplomat will be Héctor Vasconcelos, son of renowned former secretary of education José Vasconcelos.

The former political science professor has a doctorate from Oxford University and previously served as Mexico’s ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Iceland and consul general in Boston, Massachusetts.

Along with former Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard, Vasconcelos will head up AMLO’s foreign affairs team in the transition period.

At a time of strained relations with the United States, his role in the new administration will be pivotal.

Economy:

Graciela Márquez Colín, an academic with a history doctorate from Harvard, will be Mexico’s next economy secretary.

The former visiting professor to the University of Chicago has authored articles about trade policy and economic development during her long academic career.

She will replace outgoing Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, who has been Mexico’s chief negotiator in the talks to reach an updated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Finance:

Set to be Mexico’s next finance secretary is Carlos Manuel Urzúa Macías.

Urzúa previously served in the same position in the Mexico City government and has a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin.

He has also acted as a consultant on several occasions to the World Bank and is the founding director of the Graduate School of Public Administration at the Mexico City campus of Tec. de Monterrey.

Energy:

Norma Rocío Nahle García, a petrochemical engineer by profession, is López Obrador’s pick to head up the energy secretariat.

The portfolio will take on extra significance given that the Morena party leader has committed to reviewing contracts awarded to foreign and private companies in the sector.

Nahle is currently a federal deputy for Morena representing Veracruz and is the party’s leader in Congress.

Agriculture:

AMLO has committed to keeping the best interests of the nation’s farmers at heart and to make that promise a reality he has chosen Víctor Villalobos to be his agriculture secretary.

Villalobos is a director of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and has a doctorate from the University of Alberta in Canada.

He has previously served as an undersecretary in both the agriculture and environment secretariats.

Labor and Social Welfare:

Luisa María Alcalde Luján, who has a law degree from Mexico’s largest and most prestigious university, UNAM, is AMLO’s pick in this key secretariat.

Alcalde was a federal deputy between 2012 and 2015 and also worked as a research assistant at her alma mater.

She is currently a professor of law and has published several articles advocating for higher wages in Mexico.

At 30 years of age, Alcalde Luján will be the youngest member of López Obrador’s cabinet.

Education:

Esteban Moctezuma Barragán will become Mexico’s next education secretary.

López Obrador has pledged to restore cordial relations with the nation’s teachers after years of protests against the current administration’s education reform, which forced teachers to undergo compulsory evaluations.

Moctezuma, who has a masters in political economy from Cambridge University, will be tasked with developing a new plan that both protects teachers’ labor rights and improves educational standards.

He is a former member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and served as secretary of the interior and secretary of social development during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo from 1994 to 2000.

Culture:

The current general director of the Guerrero Institute of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, will step into a federal role in the same area in AMLO’s administration.

Frausto holds a law degree from UNAM and previously served as a cultural director at the Claustro de Sor Juana University in Mexico City.

Communications and Transportation:

Former Pemex deputy director Javier Jiménez Espriú will take on the role of secretary of communications and transportation.

Jiménez has previously headed up the Faculty of Engineering at UNAM and was a professor at the university for more than 30 years.

He has also made significant contributions to Mexico’s cultural life by founding a music school, a symphony orchestra and the international book fair at Mexico City’s Palace of Mining.

Jiménez is also a board member of the Mexican Institute of Petroleum.

Environment and Natural Resources:

Josefa González Blanco Ortiz Mena is AMLO’s pick to head up the environmental secretariat.

Blanco holds a law degree from Anahuac University and has previously worked on conservation projects in Chiapas.

Among her experiences is helping to reintroduce endangered species back into the wild.

Tourism:

The former chancellor of Mexico City’s University of Tourism and Administrative Sciences, Miguel Torruco Marqués, will become the new federal tourism secretary.

Tourism is a key driver of Mexico’s economy, meaning that Torruco will have a key role in López Obrador’s administration.

He previously served as tourism secretary in Mexico City during the administration of former mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera.

Public Administration:

Irma Eréndira Sandoval Ballesteros, a UNAM researcher with a doctorate in political science from the University of California, will become the next secretary of public administration.

Health:

Overseeing Mexico’s public hospitals and health system will be Jorge Alcocer Varela, who has a doctorate in medical science from UNAM.

Alcocer was formerly a researcher at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition.

Social Development:

In an AMLO-led government that looks set to focus on investing heavily on social programs, this key position will be occupied by María Luisa Albores González.

An agronomist by profession, Albores has more than 10 years of experience working for an indigenous organization in the mountain regions of Puebla, where she has focused on the development of organic farming, ecotourism and education.

Agrarian Development:

Román Guillermo Meyer Falcón has been designated to fill the position of secretary of agrarian development.

Meyer is a qualified architect and has a masters in urban management. He has taught urbanism and urban development courses at the Ibero-American University.

López Obrador and his cabinet will be sworn in on December 1.

The president-elect has also said that the chief of his office will be Alfonso Romo, who acted as a link between López Obrador and the private sector during the presidential campaign period.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

May’s record-high remittances clear US $3-billion mark

By

César Hernández

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July 3, 2018

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Remittances sent by Mexicans working abroad — mostly in the United States — hit a record-high US $3.09 billion in May, up 19.8% over May last year.

The amount was 17% higher than the previous record of $2.6 billion that was set last October.

The average remittance was $323, and there were almost 9.6 million operations over the fifth month of the year.

It was the first time monthly remittances have surpassed the $3-billion mark since the Bank of México started keeping records in 1995.

One financial analyst expects remittance levels will remain “solid” in the short term, given the healthy growth of employment in the United States.

“We expect that the growth of remittances . . . will stabilize at about 5% to 7% per year,” said Alberto Ramos of Goldman Sachs, noting that families with the lowest incomes have benefited most from the flow of cash from abroad.

When the peso’s 3.6% loss in value since May is taken into consideration, the real increase in the value of remittances is 24.3% on an annual basis, he said.

Remittances between January and May amounted to almost $12.9 billion, another record and a figure that represents yearly growth of 11.5%, the largest since 2006.

Fear over U.S. immigration policy and a greater number of jobs in the U.S. are seen as the principal reasons for growth in remittance money.

Remittances reached a historic level last year, coming in at over $28.7 billion. If the growth rate seen so far this year continues, 2018 could break that record.

According to a study carried out by the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (Cemla), Mexico could receive between $30.2 and $30.5 billion during 2018, an increase of 5% to 6% over 2017.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Tourist numbers continue to rise in Quintana Roo

By

César Hernández

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July 3, 2018

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Beaches help maintain tourism growth in Quintana Roo.

The jewel in Mexico’s tourism crown continues to be the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, popular with both domestic and foreign travelers.

The number of arrivals continues to rise, according to state tourism authorities, fueling high expectations by the industry for the coming summer vacation period.

The Quintana Roo Secretariat of Tourism (Sedetur) said passenger volumes on the three main domestic routes landing in Cancún were up during May. The biggest increase was in arrivals from Guadalajara, up by 25%. Flights from Monterrey and Mexico City were next, increasing by 16% and 5.9% respectively.

A similar story was reported on the international level: the number of passengers arriving from Toronto, Canada, rose by 14.5%, while those from the United States cities of Houston and Chicago were up by 3.8% and 1.9%.

Civil aviation authorities said that overall the number of domestic passenger arrivals increased by 13% in the first four months of the year, while international passengers rose by almost 3%.

Visitors from the United States, Canada, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Brazil continue to favor the Mexican Caribbean and the nearly 101,000 hotel rooms available in Quintana Roo’s 1,067 hotels.

Tourism Secretary Marisol Vanegas Pérez acknowledged that an outstanding issue for the state tourism industry is to bridge the inequality gap between the northern and southern parts of the state, and deliver the benefits of the state’s main economic activity to the areas that need it.

Tourism, she added, must help in raising the quality of life of residents.

Source: Milenio (sp)

‘We are not going to fight,’ AMLO says after phone call from Trump

By

MND Staff

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July 3, 2018

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AMLO and Trump spoke for half an hour yesterday.

A day after his historic landslide victory, president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke to United States President Donald Trump yesterday in a conversation that touched on border security, migration and NAFTA.

“I received a call from Donald Trump and we spoke for half an hour,” the 64-year-old political veteran tweeted about 12 hours after he had addressed thousands of supporters in Mexico City’s central square.

“I proposed that we explore an integral agreement of development projects, which generate jobs in Mexico and that reduce migration and improve security. There was respectful treatment and our representatives will speak more,” López Obrador wrote.

In a later interview with broadcaster Televisa, the president-elect emphasized the close ties between the two North American nations and said he was committed to developing a strong and cooperative relationship.

“We are conscious of the need to maintain good relations with the United States. We have a border of more than 3,000 kilometers, more than 12 million Mexicans live in the United States. It is our main economic-commercial partner,” he said.

“We are not going to fight. We are always going to seek agreement . . . We are going to extend our frank hand to seek a relationship of friendship, I repeat, of cooperation with the United States.”

At the White House, Trump also spoke positively about the conversation with AMLO, as he is commonly known.

“I think he’s going to try and help us with the border,” the U.S. president told reporters.

“We had a great conversation . . . We talked about border security, we talked about trade, we talked about NAFTA, we talked about a separate deal, just Mexico and the United States,” Trump said.

“. . . I think the relationship will be a very good one, we’ll see what happens but I really do believe it’s going to be a very good one. He had a very excellent election, I would say even better than anticipated. I told him a number of years ago when I saw him campaigning for a different race . . . I said someday he’s going to be the president of Mexico so he remembered that and it turned out to be correct.”

Later in the day, López Obrador’s pick to be his foreign affairs secretary said the two men — both of whom have been described as populists and nationalists although they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum — had also agreed to meet in the near future.

Héctor Vasconcelos, whose father was secretary of education in the first elected government after the Mexican revolution, said he thought Trump and López Obrador had got on well and said the call was successful because it was “characterized by absolute mutual respect” and that there was an “atmosphere of cordiality” between the two leaders.

The seemingly positive start to their personal relationship contrasts with the currently strained bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States that has worsened considerably since Trump took office. It has deteriorated to such an extent that many observers believe ties are at their lowest point in living memory.

Trump has frequently railed against Mexico, hitting out at the country on issues such as trade, drug trafficking and migration and repeatedly stressing that his long-proposed border wall is urgently needed.

Within that context, AMLO told supporters at a rally to launch his campaign in Ciudad Juárez earlier this year that “neither Mexico nor its people will be the piñata of any foreign government.”

He also said at a campaign rally in Oaxaca that “if Trump sends out an offensive tweet, I will take charge and answer him.”

But for now, at least, the two leaders seem intent on getting the relationship off to a good start.

Roberta Jacobson, the United States’ former ambassador to Mexico who only left the role in May, believes that López Obrador’s election could lead to improved bilateral relations between the two neighbors.

In an interview with United States broadcaster CBS as Mexicans went to the polls, Jacobson said that both López Obrador and his advisors had emphasized the importance of the Mexico-U.S. relationship to her and said that it needed to be positive.

“They’re going to work hard on that, which does not mean it’s going to be easier than it has been with the current Mexican government. I think there a number of issues on which it’s going to be difficult and maybe harder,” she said.

However, Jacobson added that AMLO “has been at pains to reassure people that he takes this relationship seriously” and that it shouldn’t “descend into insults.”

From the United States’ perspective, the former ambassador said “the most important thing that’s at stake is whether we continue to cooperate and work with Mexico as partners, whether you’re talking about economically or on trade or on migration or on security or whether that partnership we built over the last 30 years begins to deteriorate.”

During Trump’s administration, diplomacy between the United States and Mexico has increasingly been routed directly through the White House, especially via Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has developed a close relationship with Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray.

Jacobson said it remained to be seen how López Obrador would approach diplomatic relations with the U.S., but suggested that a return to “foreign secretary to foreign secretary” would be “much more probable.”

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp), CBS News (en)

Gunman assassinate mayor of Jalisco town where Italians disappeared

By

Tony Richards

-

July 3, 2018

0

The mayor of Tecalitlán, Jalisco, was assassinated yesterday by armed civilians who fired at least 30 times, killing Víctor Guadalupe Díaz Contreras and wounding a municipal employee.

Jalisco Attorney General Fausto Mancilla said the 28-year-old mayor had not reported threats or any type of aggression against him, although the windows of a vehicle belonging to his brother had been smashed on Sunday night.

Mancilla described the attack on the Institutional Revolutionary Party mayor as “cunning and vile.

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Tecalitlán is the town where three Italians disappeared in January. At the time Díaz insisted that their disappearance was an isolated incident and that municipal police were not involved.

Four local police were later arrested and charged. The Italians are believed to have been turned over by police to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

The police chief and another officer remain at large.

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)