AMLO government pledges ‘fiscal, financial discipline,’ targets budget surplus

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December 17, 2018

Urzúa, second from left, presents his budget on Saturday.

The new federal government presented its first budget Saturday, pledging “absolute commitment to fiscal and financial discipline” and a surplus of 1% of GDP in 2019 without introducing any new taxes.

Presentation of the 2019 Economic Package came just two weeks after leftist political veteran Andrés Manuel López Obrador was sworn in as president.

His party, the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, leads a coalition that has a majority in both houses of federal Congress.

Finance Secretary Carlos Urzúa outlined details of the 5.8 trillion-peso (US $288 billion) budget to the lower house, including spending of 252 billion pesos (US $12.5 billion) on “priority projects.”

One hundred billion pesos will be allocated to doubling old-age pensions, 44 billion pesos will go to a youth apprenticeship program, 18 billion to upgrading airport infrastructure, 15 billion to a reforestation program and 6 billion to construction of the Maya Train project on the Yucatán peninsula.

The budget earmarked 15 billion pesos to convert the Santa Lucía Air Force Base in México state for commercial aviation use.

López Obrador confirmed in late October that the partially-built US $13-billion airport project at Texcoco would be scrapped, triggering concern about the economic impact of the move.

Urzúa said the budget didn’t include funds to repay investors who purchased US $6 billion in bonds to help fund the cancelled project. Bondholders have so far rejected a buyback offer even though the government sweetened the deal last week.

The overall expenditure projected for 2019 is 6.1% higher in real terms than that outlined in the 2018 budget but was expected to be 0.2% lower than actual spending this year.

“Prudence, responsibility and objectivity are the premises under which the budget was constructed,” the Secretariat of Finance (SHCP) said in a statement.

The Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare, which will implement the apprenticeship scheme, gets a whopping 932% increase to its 2018 budget, while spending on energy will go up by an even higher 961%.

State oil company Pemex will be among the beneficiaries of the latter increase.

The army will get just under 93.7 billion pesos, an 11.3% increase on this year, while public education spending will increase 2.9% to just over 300 billion pesos.

Almost 2 billion pesos will be allocated to state governments and 8 billion will go to communities affected by last year’s earthquakes.

The secretariats of the Interior, Foreign Relations, Finance, Agriculture, Communications and Transportation, Economy, Health, the Navy, Culture and the Environment were among 15 secretariats that saw their funding reduced as the government seeks to cut government costs in line with its austerity program.

The budget predicted GDP growth of 2% next year, which is slightly above market forecasts of 1.8% to 1.9%. Urzúa said the government expected growth to actually be above 2% in 2019 but that he wanted to be “conservative.”

The budget forecast revenue of almost 5.3 trillion pesos next year, of which taxes and oil income are estimated to contribute 62.3% and 19.8% respectively.

Implementation of a free zone in the northern border area, which will see both value-added tax and income tax levels reduced, will cost the government around 40 billion pesos next year, Urzúa said, a figure that is less than half of some market estimates.

The government forecasts inflation of 3.4% in 2019, which is around 0.5% below the market outlook, and expects the exchange rate to remain near its current level of 20 pesos to the US dollar.

The budget forecasts that Mexican crude prices will drop to an average of US $55 per barrel next year, down from US $62.70 currently, and that oil production will be just over 1.8 million barrels a day, which is close to current levels.

López Obrador has pledged to increase oil production during his administration in order to reduce dependency on imports. The tendering process to build a US $8-billion refinery at Dos Bocas, Tabasco, is expected to start early next year.

Urzúa told reporters after his budget presentation that Mexico would continue with an oil hedging program in 2019 in order to protect government revenues but declined to give details apart from saying “it’s very reasonable, very well done and gives us lots of security.”

He said the conflict with the Supreme Court over the government’s plan to slash the wages of high-ranking public officials including judges was “irrelevant” in the calculation of the budget.

The finance secretary contended that the budget was reflective of the new government’s stringent austerity plan.

In his inauguration speech on December 1, López Obrador pledged to put an end to corruption and impunity and to begin a “profound and radical transformation” of Mexico.

The new president has adopted a range of personal austerity measures, including traveling on commercial flights and largely eschewing security.

Source: Financial Times (en), Milenio (sp), El Economista (sp)

How Mexico and the U.S. quietly defused the caravan crisis

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Raoul Lowery Contreras

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December 17, 2018

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The San Ysidro border crossing was shut down after a rush on the border last month.

When 5,000 Central Americans in a “caravan” arrived in Tijuana, it seemed every television camera in the civilized world arrived to show us the ongoing “invasion.”

Describing what the cameras saw were legions of reporters, mostly men, some of whom actually spoke Spanish. I watched them all while changing channels profusely during those hectic days last month.

They all missed a very important fact: the main encampment of Central American refugees was not just in Tijuana, it was less than 50 feet from the United States.

Whenever one of those international cameras faced north I could see something I see almost daily — the traffic on National Highway 1D that turns inland at Playas de Tijuana and then travels along the border with the United States. I live just south of Tijuana, so this highway is my 18-kilometer drive back to San Diego.

The now empty camp (the refugees have been moved several miles away to better circumstances) is covered in trash, empty of people. That is what I see from my car. The distance between the former camp and the U.S. border is exactly 42 feet. It consists of four eight-foot-wide traffic lanes, two chain link fences and a 15-foot-high barrier built by the United States several years ago to replace the Clinton-era military surplus steel panels.

On November 28, during a heavy downpour, I drove by the camp for the first time. Small dome tents covered the entire Benito Juárez soccer park. There were thousands of men, women and children who had walked and ridden over 2,000 kilometers from Honduras and Guatemala. When I drove by again on December 2, the tents and people had vanished.

The border crisis with televised tear gas billowing among men, women and children was for all intents and purposes over. Or was it just out of sight?

Most television reports concentrated on the caravan, its people and the border kerfuffle that ended in a cloud of tear gas. But that event was not the only thing going on, especially on the Mexican front.

What was Mexico to do? Act like a brutal dictatorship and tear gas and billy club the refugees, or shoot and kill them as unlawful people on Mexican territory? No.

What was the United States to do? Act like a brutal dictatorship and tear gas and billy club the refugees, or shoot and kill them as unlawful people on American territory? No.

Instead, both countries assembled ad hoc forces and set up new physical barriers to deal with refugees who tried to illegally cross the border.

The U.S. mobilized troops, laid concertina wire on top of all the fencing along the border between Tijuana and San Diego, and shut several normal crossing lanes through the San Ysidro port of entry.

The Mexicans brought more Federal Police to the border and lined up 10-foot-tall steel barriers at potential crossing points that weren’t fenced.

Luckily, the only mob action that occurred was on November 25 when a few hundred of the thousands tried running into the United States.

They were held off by uniformed Customs and Border Protection officers backed up by California Highway Patrol officers. The busiest border crossing the world was then shut for more than five hours. No one was seriously injured. Not a single Trump-ordered soldier or Marine was on the border.

Meanwhile, the intelligent business people of Tijuana, a world center for flat-screen television and medical-device manufacturing, joined with the Mexican government to organize something no one expected.

Tijuana businesses began interviewing the Central American refugees for over 5,000 jobs in the gigantic Tijuana industrial community. They interviewed and hired on the spot. The newly hired refugees then took their job paperwork over to a Mexican immigration table for a renewable “humanitarian work permit” that is good for a year.

Some refugees have registered to get into the proverbial “line” U.S. authorities have created. From that list, some 100 people a day are interviewed to start the asylum process. And some refugees decided to return home.

As I drive by the trash-covered former refugee camp, I thank the Mexican government, American border personnel and the bright people among them who ignored hysterical national media and a few local Mexicans who demonstrated against the refugees when they arrived.

The two governments quickly mobilized to defuse what could have been a serious episode resulting in injury and death that would certainly harm the reputation of the United States.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is a political consultant and author of the new book White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPS) & Mexicans. His work has appeared in the New American News Service of the New York Times Syndicate.

New migrant shelter in Tijuana can house up to 600

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MND Staff

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December 15, 2018

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Migrants camping outside the Tijuana sports complex.

A second new shelter has opened in Tijuana to house migrants who camped out in the street after the sports complex where they had been staying was shut down due to overcrowding and sanitary concerns.

Authorities opened a new shelter on the outskirts of the northern border city at the end of last month but fewer than half of the more than 6,000 migrants who were living at the original shelter took up the relocation offer.

A large group of Central American migrant caravan members decided to stay outside the Benito Juárez sports center, which is located in the center of the city, arguing that the new shelter was too far from the El Chaparral port of entry to the United States.

But around 300 migrants yesterday moved into a 3,800-square-meter warehouse located just 150 meters from the sports complex, and there is space for another 300.

Celeo Archaga, a Honduran pastor who arrived in Tijuana with the first migrant caravan, said that all those who wish to enter the new shelter are checked to ensure that they are not carrying drugs, weapons or any other undesirable items.

Archaga, who will be one of six coordinators at the new shelter, said that federal Morena party Senator Jaime Bonilla had secured the use of the warehouse and explained that it has been equipped with the basic services migrants require.

He added that those who are granted permission to stay will have to agree to abide by rules such as an 11:00pm curfew and noise restrictions.

“. . . The truth is we’re migrants, we’re not here to party. We’re in a fight [to seek asylum] and I believe that we have to respect others,” Archaga said.

The Central Americans currently in Tijuana, many of whom left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 13 as part of the first and largest migrant caravan, face a long wait to file asylum requests with United States authorities due to a “metering” system that limits the number of claims heard each day.

Frustrated with being stranded on the Mexico-United States border after a journey of more than 4,000 kilometers, a group of around 500 migrants rushed the border on November 25 and were met with tear gas and rubber bullets fired by U.S. border agents.

An increasing number of migrants are crossing or attempting to cross the border fence illegally to hand themselves in to border patrol agents in order to circumvent the lengthy wait to apply for asylum from Mexico.

On Thursday, three Honduran families broke into the backyard of a Tijuana home that adjoins the border fence to try to cross into the United States, the newspaper Milenio reported.

The migrants then climbed on to the house’s roof to scale the fence. However, only two of the migrant families – a total of 10 people – managed to get to the other side, where they were arrested, Milenio said, while one girl fell to the ground on the Mexican side while trying to cross.

The owner of the property filmed the migrants as they attempted to breach the border and called municipal police but ultimately decided not to press trespassing charges against those who were unsuccessful in their attempt to cross.

Further east, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died earlier this month after crossing illegally into a remote span of the New Mexico desert with her father and other migrants, United States Customs and Border Protection said Thursday.

Migration continues to be at the center of the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States.

President López Obrador spoke by telephone to his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump Wednesday about migration and job creation in Mexico and Central America.

Earlier in the week, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that the federal government will invest US $30 billion over five years on a development plan with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador aimed at curing migration to the United States.

Source: El Sol de Tijuana (sp), Milenio (sp)

Police seize 200,000 liters of stolen propane in Tlaxcala

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César Hernández

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December 15, 2018

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Nine tanker trucks were seized in the operation. — Some of the tanker trucks that were seized in the operation.

The Federal Police and the National Intelligence Center recovered over 200,000 liters of stolen propane yesterday and arrested 16 people implicated in the theft and distribution of the fuel.

Police said in a statement that intelligence work led to the discovery of a dirt road in the Puebla municipality of San Miguel Xotla, from which several tanker trucks were constantly coming and going.

The National Gendarmerie was deployed to the neighboring municipality of Zacatelco, Tlaxcala, and located an illegal pipeline tap.

The seizure of nine tanker trucks carrying 202,000 liters of propane followed, along with the arrests.

A propane gas industry association says Pemex and private businesses are losing about 13 billion pesos a year (US $642 million to propane theft. The theft is widespread, said Amexgas, but is seen principally in Puebla, Tlaxcala and Veracruz.

Source: Milenio (sp)

AMLO proposes including assisted dying in new federal health plan

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César Hernández

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December 15, 2018

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The president with state governors yesterday in Mérida.

President López Obrador has announced more details about a new integrated federal health system, including the news that he favours allowing voluntary assisted dying.

When someone is declared terminally ill and there are no options or alternatives, he said yesterday in Mérida, Yucatán, “it’s not enough to say, ‘OK, take the patient home.'”

“Why don’t we implement a program for dignified death? Why not assisted [dying]?”

It is not currently considered in health care in Mexico, he observed, adding “these are very important questions we have to solve together.”

Another element of the government’s new health plan is to make available the medications required by patients, a move that will entail the elimination of what is known as the basic list of medications.

Medications cannot be prescribed if they are not on the list. Instead, patients must purchase them themselves, sometimes at great cost.

The main focus of the new health program is those who have no health insurance. The two systems now in place — IMSS and ISSSTE — are for workers in the private and public sectors.

“More than half the population has no health insurance,” the president told an audience in Mérida. “So this program is for them. It is for everybody, but the emphasis is to care for those with no insurance, the poorest people.”

The uninsured will be able to obtain emergency treatment at hospitals in the two health systems, where funding and staffing will be improved, López Obrador said.

The president also intends to put all health workers on the payroll.

“This means regularizing thousands of workers who are on temporary contracts,” he said, observing that some workers have been employed on a contract basis for two decades.

“We are talking about some 80,000 workers . . . this can’t be done overnight, but we must commit to formally hiring them . . . .”

Another element of the plan is to standardize salaries and benefits.

Federal and state health workers doing the same job earn different salaries, he said.

The president announced on Friday morning that the delivery of health care services will become the responsibility of the federal government. The new integrated health system, which will cost 90 billion pesos (US $4.5 billion) to create, is to be fully implemented within two years.

Yesterday, he signed an agreement with the governors of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche, the first eight states in which the new plan will be launched.

Source: Sin Embargo (sp), Milenio (sp), Associated Press (en)

Government halts tenders on two sections of long-overdue Oaxaca highway

By

MND Staff

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December 15, 2018

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The highway between Oaxaca city and the coast could be delayed further.

The federal government has suspended some of the work needed to complete the long-overdue highway between the capital of Oaxaca and the Pacific coast, the Oaxaca infrastructure secretary said.

In an appearance before the state Congress, Fabián Herrera Villagómez said the López Obrador-led administration has declared void two of four tendering processes to award contracts for incomplete stretches of road on the Oaxaca-Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway.

However, he added that negotiations aimed at resuming the projects are ongoing.

The secretary said the Oaxaca government has no direct involvement in the highway project, explaining that it is only charged with resolving problems related the its right of way.

The federal Secretariat of Communications and Transportation has ultimate responsibility for building the highway, Herrera said.

He told state lawmakers that the company Omega was originally granted a concession to build the highway but when it was unable to fulfill its obligations it ceded its rights to another construction company, ICA, which continued the project.

However, ICA abandoned the project in 2016 when it experienced financial difficulties and was no longer able to fund the highway’s construction.

Herrera said that since then, 3 billion pesos (US $148.2 million at today’s exchange rate) has been invested to complete the highway.

“At the start of his administration, state Governor Alejandro Murat agreed with then-president Enrique Peña Nieto on a 3-billion-peso investment to conclude the highway, [money] that is not managed by the state but by the National Infrastructure Fund [Fonadin], that depends on [state development bank] Banobras . . .” he said.

Herrera explained that the process to buy back the concession from ICA took a year and that this year the plan was to award new contracts to build the four sections of highway that are incomplete.

But, the secretary said, “on the verge of awarding [the contracts] . . . the new administration arrived and decided to suspend the tendering processes [for two of four incomplete stretches of road], declaring them void.”

Herrera said the partial suspension of the project would push the highway’s completion date – which has been revised several times – back even further and that there is a risk that the cost will increase due to factors such as the rising price of concrete.

He explained that the highway is currently 52% complete and that work on some parts of it is still going ahead.

“. . . Two of the four incomplete sections are suspended . . . the rest of the work continues to progress. There are people currently working on the completion of three tunnels and a viaduct,” Herrera said.

Earlier this year, work on the highway was estimated to be completed by November 2019 but it is now unclear whether that target will be met.

The highway is expected to reduce travel time between the capital and the coast by half, making the tourist destinations of Huatulco and Puerto Escondido accessible within as little as three hours.

Another highway linking Oaxaca city to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is also well behind schedule.

Herrera said the SCT is trying to reach an agreement with the Carlos Slim-owned conglomerate Grupo Carso to complete the highway, which would cut travel time between the state capital and the isthmus from four and a half hours to two.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Mexico loses 10-year battle with US over tuna labeling after new WTO ruling

By

MND Staff

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December 15, 2018

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dolphin free tuna — May not contain Mexican tuna.

Mexico lost a 10-year legal battle with the United States over “dolphin safe” tuna labeling yesterday when World Trade Organization (WTO) appeals judges dismissed its argument that U.S. labeling rules violated WTO rules.

Mexico claimed that the U.S. rules unfairly penalized its fishing industry because most tuna caught in Mexican waters is not certified as “dolphin safe” even though dolphin deaths have been reduced to minimal levels.

The United States’ demands for paperwork reflected discrimination against the Mexican tuna industry, it said, pointing out that the same industry in other parts of the world didn’t face the same strict tests.

The United States has refused to grant a “dolphin safe” label to tuna caught by chasing and encircling dolphins with a purse seine net that is used to catch tuna swimming beneath them. That method is used almost exclusively by Mexico’s tuna fleet in the Pacific Ocean.

Because most Mexican-caught tuna is not considered “dolphin safe,” Mexico has largely been locked out of the United States lucrative canned tuna market.

The WTO ruled yesterday that “setting on” dolphins with a purse seine net was likely to kill or injure them, even if there was no clear evidence of such deaths or injuries and thus the United States was within its rights to refuse to grant a “dolphin safe” label to tuna caught in that way.

Mexico won two previous rounds of the long legal battle, which forced the United States to modify its labeling rules in 2013 and again in 2016.

In April last year, Mexico won the right to impose US $163 million in annual trade sanctions on its northern neighbor if the WTO ruled that U.S. labeling rules still didn’t comply with WTO rules.

Mexico had planned to impose duties on high-fructose corn syrup imports but the United States sought a review of the ruling and six months later the WTO said that its labeling laws were WTO-compliant.

Mexico appealed that ruling, which resulted in yesterday’s decision.

In a statement, the Secretariat of the Economy (SE) said that the latest WTO ruling “doesn’t recognize the high standards of sustainable practices in the Mexican [tuna] industry.”

The SE said “the government of Mexico and the [fishing] industry have played an important role in the protection of dolphins against the adverse effects of tuna fishing,” adding “thanks to Mexico’s efforts, the United States modified its rules on two occasions.”

It also said that “the [fishing] method used by the Mexican tuna fleet is regulated by the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act, [which is] recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as being the most sustainable program.”

In addition, the Mexican tuna industry’s fishing method “has been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as . . . sustainable in maintaining the target species and minimizing the impact on the environment,” the statement said.

The SE said that “Mexico hopes that beyond [yesterday’s] ruling, the United States recognizes the effect that fishing methods used by its fleet and that of other countries have on the marine ecosystem.”

Foreign trade undersecretary Luz María de la Mora said in a radio interview yesterday that Mexico will now focus on growing its tuna exports to other markets while attempting to enter into dialogue with the United States on the labeling issue.

She also defended the Mexican tuna industry’s use of seine nets and said that abandoning that fishing method was unlikely.

“The industry will have to decide if it’s convenient to modify its fishing method, but I don’t think that will happen because it’s a sustainable, responsible method,” de la Mora said.

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

Smaller states will feel loss of Tourism Promotion Council: travel agencies

By

MND Staff

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December 14, 2018

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Smaller states such as Tlaxcala could be hurt by the loss of Mexico's tourism promotion council. — Smaller states such as Tlaxcala could be hurt by the loss of Mexico's tourism marketing agency.

The imminent disappearance of the federal government’s tourism promotion agency will affect Mexico’s smaller states the most, tourism insiders agree.

Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco confirmed last week that the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM) would be disbanded and its international offices closed, with its budget going to the construction of the Maya Train project.

Jorge Hernández, president of the Mexican Association of Travel Agencies (AMAV), told the newspaper Milenio that Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Durango and some of the states in the Bajío region will be hardest hit by the decision.

They will now only have resources collected via state-based lodging taxes to fund tourism promotion, he said.

However, small states generate only modest income from the tax and there are questions over whether tourism officials will use the resources for their intended purpose.

According to the president of the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels (AMHM), hotel taxes in Tlaxcala and Hidalgo only generate between 20 and 30 million pesos (US $1 million to $1.5 million) a year whereas the city of Cancún alone collects 2 billion pesos (US $99 million) annually.

Rafael García said the money collected via the tax goes to tourism trusts in each state but contended that 90% of them lack transparency in the exercise of the resources they receive. In other words, at least part of the funds is likely siphoned off to line officials’ pockets.

Francisco Madrid, director of the faculty of tourism at Anáhuac University and a former federal tourism undersecretary, said the new government took a unilateral decision to disband the CPTM and warned that it would have a damaging impact in the short and medium term.

“Depriving Mexico of an organization specialized in the task of tourism promotion is a bad decision. Once again, the [view of] the private sector wasn’t taken into account, the same thing happened with the cancellation of the airport,” he said.

“The promotion council is creating employment in the sector, [attracting the entry of] foreign currencies, and generally [stimulating] the benefits that we know tourism provides,” Madrid added.

The National Tourism Business Council (CNET) has warned that with the elimination of the CPTM there is a risk that Mexico will return to the level of growth in international tourism recorded between 2008 and 2012, which was just 2.1% compared to around 8% currently.

The industry group suggested that the government could keep the CPTM open but reduce the size of its workforce in order for it to be compatible with the federal austerity plan.

Tourism is one of the most important sectors of Mexico’s economy, contributing 8.7% of total GDP and generating 3.7 million jobs.

Almost 40 million international tourists came to Mexico last year, making it the sixth most visited country in the world.

This year is expected to end with more than 42 million foreign arrivals while almost 45 million international tourists are predicted to visit Mexico next year.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Energy watchdog orders halt to work on new refinery after mangroves cleared

By

MND Staff

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December 14, 2018

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The refinery site where mangroves were allegedly removed.

Mexico’s energy sector watchdog has ordered that preparatory work on the Tabasco site where a new oil refinery is to be built must stop after mangroves were allegedly cleared without environmental authorization.

The Agency for Safety, Energy and the Environment (ASEA) directed the company Sistemas Empresariales del Golfo (SEG) to immediately cease all activities that alter the condition of the site, which is located on the Gulf of Mexico coast at Dos Bocas.

The Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda) filed complaints last month when both ASEA and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) claimed that neither environmental authorization nor permission to change the land use of the site had been granted before work began.

The National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio) confirmed the presence of mangroves on the site before the preparatory work took place.

After a December 4 inspection of the site where President López Obrador says a US $8-billion refinery will be built, ASEA set a timeframe of 30 days within which SEG must conduct a study to assess the environmental damage caused.

The watchdog also directed the company to show, within a period of 60 days, that it had acquired the necessary authorization to complete the work.

Cemda president Gustavo Alanís said the orders by ASEA are proof that the federal energy secretary is lying when she says that environmental impact studies have already been carried out and that permits have been granted.

“Rocío Nahle is disregarding the truth, she’s grabbing other supposed [environmental] impact authorizations but they have nothing to do with the construction of the refinery,” he said.

“If they [the federal government] want to do the refinery project, they have to comply with the damage study that ASEA is asking for and pay compensation for damages,” Alanís added.

The Mexican Environmental Impact Academy (AMIA) also said that there are inconsistencies in Nahle’s claims.

“Nahle says that the permits were issued by the state and municipal governments when they should have been issued by Semarnat [the federal Environment Secretariat],” the non-governmental organization said in a statement.

The academy added that environmental impact authorizations and a land use change permit that were granted in 2007 for oil wells to be installed on the site are not transferable.

López Obrador has pledged that the new refinery, which would be the nation’s seventh, will help Mexico to become self-sufficient in energy and boost the economy of southeastern states.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Residents protest parking meters in San Miguel de Allende

By

César Hernández

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December 14, 2018

0

A protest held earlier this year against parking meters in San Miguel.

Some residents of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, traveled to the state capital to protest what they called the “privatization” of their city’s streets.

A dozen members of Yo Soy San Miguel de Allende (I am San Miguel de Allende) protested outside the state Congress in the city of Guanajuato after lawmakers approved a parking meter project for the colonial city.

The organization’s spokesman said the municipal administration had signed a contract with a firm that will operate the parking meters, but citizens were not consulted about the project.

There were several processes through which public opinion was gauged, but José Luis Vargas said people were “lied to through a false consultation on transportation issues.”

The proponents of the parking meters also collected signatures and conducted a consultation during a bullfight, “but they did not adhere to citizen participation laws,” he accused.

The parking meters project has been approved under the “pretext” of obtaining resources to improve the urban mobility of disabled citizens, but Vargas questioned why only 20% of the revenue obtained through the meters will go to city coffers. The remaining 80% — of an estimated 360 million pesos (US $17.8 million) per year — will go to the firm operating the devices.

The protest concluded with a warning that injunctions would be filed against the municipal administration.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

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